Datasets:
beatrizsainzm
/
zhuangzi_texts

Dataset card Data Studio Files Community
1
title
stringlengths
9
148
author
stringlengths
4
462
⌀
publication_date
stringlengths
20
20
⌀
subject
stringlengths
4
6.66k
⌀
description
stringlengths
7
35.4k
⌀
content
stringlengths
0
1.64M
Experimental essays on Chuang-tzu
null
1983-01-01T00:00:00Z
Chuang-tzu. Nan-hua ching
xvii, 171 p. ; 23 cm. --,Includes bibliographical references and index,Taoist spontaneity and the dichotomy of "is" and "ought" / A.C. Graham -- A Tao of Tao in Chuang-tzu / Chad Hansen -- Chuangtse, the happy fish / Hideki Yukawa -- A metaphorical analysis of the concept of mind in the Chuang-tzu / Harold H. Oshima -- Chuang-tzu and Erasmus / Victor H. Mair -- On walking without touching the ground / Michael Mark Crandell -- The perfected person in the radical Chuang-tzu / Lee Yearley -- The Chuang-tzu nei-pʻien / Michael Saso -- Chuang-tzu translations, a bibliographical appendix / Hellmut Wilhelm
Chuang Tzu, mystic, moralist, and social reformer
Chuang-tzu,Giles, Herbert Allen, 1845-1935. tr
1889-01-01T00:00:00Z
null
xxviii, 467 p. 25 cm,"Note on the philosophy of Chuang Tzu, by Canon Moore": p. [xviii]-xxviii
Full text of "Chuang Tzu, mystic, moralist, and social reformer" Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "Chuang Tzu, mystic, moralist, and social reformer" See other formats Chuang TzO Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer TRANSLATED FROM THE CHINESE BY HERBERT A. GILES H. B. M.'s Consul at Tarn sin London BERNARD OUARITCH 1889 CONTENTS, Page Introduction v Note on the Philosophy of Chuang Tzu, by Canon Moore . . . xviii CHAPTER I— Transcendental Bliss i „ II — The Identity of Contraries 12 ,, III — Nourishment of the Soul 33 ,, IV — Man among Men 38 „ V — The Evidence of Virtue Complete 56 „ VI — The Great Supreme 68 I „ VII — How TO Govern 91 „ VIII — Joined Toes 99 „ IX — Horses' Hoofs 106 „ X — Opening Trunks no „ XI — On Letting Alone 119 „ XII — The Universe 135 XIII— The Tao of God 157 ,, XIV — The Circling Sky 173 „ XV — Self-Conceit 190 ,, XVI — Exercise of Faculties 195 ,, XVII — Autumn Floods 200 „ XVIII — Perfect Happiness 220 ,, XIX — The Secret of Life 229 iv Cojitents Page CHAPTER XX— Mountain Trees 245 „ XXI— T'lEN Tztj Fang 261 XXII — Knowledge travels North 276 XXIII — Keng Sang Ch'u 294 XXIV— Hsu Wu KuEi 311 XXV— Tse Yang 335 ,, XXVI — Contingencies 352 ,, XXVII — Language 363 „ XXVIII — On Declining Power 370 ,, XXIX — Robber Che 387 „ XXX — On Swords 407 ,, XXXI — The Old Fisherman 413 „ XXXII— LiEH Tzu 423 ,, XXXIII — The Empire 437 Index 455 Errata and Addenda 466 Introduction. C HUANG TZU^ belongs to the third and fourth centuries before Christ. He lived in the feudal age, when China was split up into a number of States owning a nominal allegiance to the royal, and weakly, House of Chou. He is noticed by the historian Ssii-ma Ch'ien, who flourished at the close of the second century B.C., as follows : — Chuang Tzii was a native of Meng.^ His per- sonal name was Chou. He held a petty official post at Ch'i-ylian in Meng.^ He lived contempo- raneously with Prince Hui of the Liang State and Prince Hsuan of the Ch'i State. His erudition was most varied ; but his chief doctrines are based upon the sayings of LagJTzu.* Consequently, his writ- ings, which extend to over 100,000 words, are mostly allegorical.^ 1 Pronounce Chwongdza. 2 In the modern province of An-hui. ^ Hence he is often spoken of in the book language as " Ch'i-yiian." ■* Pronounce Lowdza. The lo7C' as in allotv. See p. vii. ^ Of an imaginative character, in keeping with the visionary teachings of his master. b vi Chiiang Tzii He wrote The Old Fisherman, Robber Che, and Opeiiing Trunks, with a view to asperse the Con- fucian school and to glorify the mysteries of Lao Tzu.^ Wei Lei Hsii, Keng Sang Tzit, and the like, are probably unsubstantial figments of his imagina- tion.^ Nevertheless, his literary and dialectic skill was such that the best scholars of the age proved unable to refute his destructive criticism of the Confucian and Mihist schools.^ His teachings were like an overwhelming flood, which spreads at its own sweet will. Consequently, from rulers and ministers downwards, none could apply them to any definite use.^ Prince Wei of the Ch'u State, hearing of Chuang Tzu's good report, sent messengers to him, bearing costly gifts, and inviting him to become Prime Minister. At this Chuang Tzu smiled and said to the messengers, " You offer me great wealth and a proud position indeed ; but have you never seen a sacrificial ox ? — When after being fattened up for several years, it is decked with embroidered trappings and led to the altar, would it not willingly then change places with some uncared-for pigling .-* . ..... Begone ! Defile me not ! I would rather disport myself to my own enjoyment in the 1 See chs. xxxi, xxix, and x, respectively. 2 The second of these personages is doubtless identical, though the name is differently written, with the Keng Sang Ch'u of ch. xxiii. The identity of the first name has not been satisfactorily settled. 3 See p. 17. * This last clause is based upon a famous passage in the Lun Yii : — The perfect man is not a mere thing ; i.e., his functions are not limited. The idea conveyed is that Chuang Tzu's system was too far-reaching to be practical. Introduction vii mire than be slave to the ruler of a State. I will never take office. Thus I shall remain free to follow my own inclinations." ^ To enable the reader to understand more fully the writings of Chuang Tzu, and to appreciate his aim and object, it will be necessary to go back a few more hundred years. In the seventh century B.C., lived a man, now commonly spoken of as Lao Tzii. He was the great Prophet of his age. He taught men to return good for evil, and to look forward to a higher life. He professed to have found the clue to all thinofs human and divine. He seems to have insisted that his system could not be reduced to words. At any rate, he declared that those who spoke did not know, while those who knew did not speak. But to accommodate himself to conditions of mortality, he called this clue TAO, or The Way, explaining that the word was to be understood metaphorically, and not in a literal sense as the way or road upon which men walk. The following are sentences selected from the indis- putably genuine remains of Lao Tzu, to be found scattered here and there in early Chinese literature : — All the world knows that the goodness of doing good is not real goodness. When merit has been achieved, do not take it to yourself. On the other hand, if you do not take it to yourself, it shall never be taken from you. By many words wit is exhausted. It is better to preserve a mean. 1 See p. 434- b 2 L^ viii CJuuDi^r Tzit <b 7 Keep behind, and you shall be put In front. Keep out, and you shall be kept in. What the world reverences may not be treated with irreverence. Good words shall gain you honour In the market- place. Good deeds shall gain you friends among men. He who, conscious of being strong, Is content to be weak, — he shall be a cynosure of men. The Empire is a divine trust, and may not be ruled. He who rules, ruins. He who holds by force, loses. Mighty is he who conquers himself. He who Is content, has enough. To the good I would be good. To the not-good I would also be good, in order to make them good. If the government Is tolerant, the people will be without guile. If the government is meddling, there will be constant infraction of the law. Recompense injury with kindness. The wise man's freedom from grievance is because he will not regard grievances as such. Of such were the pure and simple teachings of Lao Tzu. But it is upon the wondrous doctrine of Inaction that his claim to immortality is founded : — Do nothing, and all things will be done. I do nothing, and my people become good of their own accord. Abandon wisdom and discard knowledge, and the people will be benefited an hundredfold. The weak overcomes the strong, the soft over- comes the hard. All the world knows this ; yet none can act up to it. Introduction ix The softest things in the world override the hardest. That which has no substance enters where there is no fissure. And so I know that there is advantage in Inaction. Such doctrines as these were, however, not h'kely to appeal with force to the sympathies of a practical people. In the sixth century B.C., before Lao Tzu s death, another Prophet arose. He taught his countrymen that duty to one s neighbour comprises the whole duty of man. Charitableness of heart, justice, sincerity, and fortitude, — sum up the ethics of Confucius. He knew nothing of a God, of a soul, of an unseen world. And he declared that the unknowable had better remain untouched. Against these hard and worldly utterances, Chuang Tzii raised a powerful cry. The idealism of Lao Tzu had seized upon his poetic soul, and he determined to stem the tide of materialism in which men were being fast rolled to perdition. He failed, of course. It was, indeed, too great a task to persuade the calculating Chinese nation that by doing nothing, all things would be done. But Chuang Tzii bequeathed to posterity a work which, by reason of its marvellous literary beauty, has always held a foremost place. It is also a work of much originality of thought. The writer, it is true, appears chiefly as a disciple insisting upon the principles of a Master. But he has contrived to extend the field, and carry his own speculations Into regions never dreamt of by Lao Tzii. It may here be mentioned that the historian Ssti-ma Ch'ien, already quoted, states in his notice of Lao Tzu that the latter left behind him a small volume in 5,000 X Chuang Tzu and odd characters. Ssu-ma Ch'ien does not say, nor does he give the reader to understand, that he himself had ever seen the book in question. Nor does he even hint (see p. V.) that Chuang Tzu drew his inspiration from a book, but only from the " sayings " of Lao Tzu. Confucius never mentions this book. Neither does Mencius, China's *' Second Sage," who was born about one hundred years after the death of the First. But all this is a trifle compared with the fact that Chuang Tzu himself never once alludes to such a book ; although now, in this nineteenth century, there are some, happily few in number, who believe that we possess the actual work of Lao Tzti's pen. It is, perhaps, happier still that this small number cannot be said to include within it the name of a single native scholar of eminence. In fact, as far as I know, the whole range of Chinese literature yields but the name of one such individual who has ever believed in the genuineness of the so-called Tao-Te-CIiiiig} Even he would probably have remained unknown to fame, had he not been brother to Su Tung-p'o.^ Chuang Tzu, indeed, puts into the mouth of Lao Tzu sayings which are now found in the Tao-Ti-Ching, mixed up with a great many other similar sayings which are not to be found there. But he also puts sayings, which now appear in the Tao-Te-Cking, into the mouth of 1 The Canon of Tao^ and of Te, the exempHfication the reof. See p. I5. I have discussed the claims of this work at some length in T7ie Remains of Lao Tzu: Hong Kong, 1886. 2 The brilliant philosopher, statesman, poet, &c., of the Sung dynasty (a.d. 1036-1101). Introduction xi Confucius (p. 275) ! And even into the mouth of the Yellow Emperor (pp. 277-278), whose date is some twenty centuries earlier than that of Lao Tzii himself! ! Two centuries before the Christian era, an attempt was made to destroy, with some exceptions, the whole of Chinese literature, in order that history might begin anew from the reign of the First Emperor of united China. The extent of the actual mischief done by this " Burning of the Books " has been greatly exaggerated. Still, the mere attempt at such a holocaust gave a fine chance to the scholars of the later Han dynasty (a.d. 25-221), who seem to have enjoyed nothing so much as forging, if not the whole, at any rate portions, of the works of ancient authors. Some one even produced a treatise under the name of Lieh Tzu, a philosopher mentioned by Chuang Tzu, not seeing that the individual in question was a creation of Chuang Tzu's brain ! And the 7"^^- Zk^-OzV^^ was undoubtedly pieced together somewhere about this period, from recorded sayings and conversations of Lao Tzu.^ Chuang Tzu's work has suffered in like manner. Several chapters are clearly spurious, and many episodes have been interpolated by feeble imitators of an inimitable style. The text, as it now stands, consists of thirty-three chapters. These are a reduction from fifty-three, which 1 A curious parallelism will be found in Supernatural Religion, vol. i, p. 460 ; — "No period in the history of the world ever produced so many spurious works as the first two or three centuries of our era. The name of every Aposde, or Christian teacher, not excepting that of the great Master, was freely attached to every description of religious forgery." xii Chuang TzU appear to have been in existence in the fourth century a.d.' The following is the account given in the Imperial Cata- logue of the first known edition : — Chuang Tzii, with Commentary, in lo books. By Kuo Hsiang of the Chin dynasty (a.d. 265-420). The Shik-shuo-ksin-yu^ states that Kuo Hsiang stole his work from Hsiang Hsiu.^ Subsequently, Hsiang Hsiu's edition was issued, and the two were in circulation together. Hsiang Hsiu's edition is now lost, while Kuo H slang's remains. Comparison with quotations from Hsiang Hsiu's work, as given in Chuang Tzu Explained, by Lu Te-ming, shows conclusive evidence of plagiarism. Nevertheless, Kuo Hsiang contributed a certain amount of independent revision, making it impossible for us to regard the whole as from the hand of Hsiang Hsiu. Consequently, it now passes under the name of Kuo Hsiang. Since Kuo Hsiang's time, numberless editions with ever-varying interpretations have been produced to delight and to confuse the student. Of these, I have chosen six, representative as nearly as possible of different schools of thought. Their editors are : — I. — Kuo Hsiang of the Chin dynasty, [a) As given in the Skih Tzii Cltiian Shu, or Complete Works of the Ten Philosophers, {b) As edited by Tan Yiian-ch'un, of the Ming dynasty, with his own valuable notes. 2. — Li) Hui-ch'ing of the Sung dynasty. 1 On the authority of the I-wcn-chih. " A work of the fifth century a.d. 3 Of the Han dynasty. Mayers puts him a Uttle later, viz., a.d. 275. Introdtidion xiii 3. — Lin Hsi-yi of the Sung dynasty. 4. — Wang Yi) of the Sung dynasty. Son of the famous Wang An-shih. 5. HsiNG Tung, a Taoist priest of the Ming dynasty. 6. — Lin Hsi-chung, of the Ming and Ch'ing dynas- ties. Where there is a consensus of opinion, I have followed such interpretation without demur. But where opinions differ, I have not hesitated to accept that interpretation which seemed to me to be most in harmony with the general tenor of Chuang Tzu's philosophy. And where all commentators fail equally, as they sometimes do, to yield anything at all intelligible, I have then ventured to fall back upon what Chuang Tzu himself would have called the "light of nature." Always keeping steadily in view the grand precept of Lin Hsi-chung, that we should attempt to interpret Chuang Tzu neither according to Lao Tzu, nor according to Confucius, nor according to Buddha, but according to Chuang Tzu himself. Of the thirty-three existing chapters, the first seven are called " inside " chapters, the next fifteen " outside," and the remaining eleven " miscellaneous." The meaning of " inside " and " outside " is a matter of dispute. Some Chinese critics have understood these terms in the obvious sense of esoteric and exoteric. But it is simpler to believe with others that the titles of the first seven chapters are taken from the inside or subject- matter, while the outside chapters are so named because their titles are derived casually from words which happen to stand at the beginning or outside of each. xiv Chuaiig Tzu Compared with the " miscellaneous," these latter seem to have been classed together as elucidating a single principle in terms more easy of apprehension ; while the " miscellaneous " chapters embrace several distinct trains of thought, and are altogether more abstruse. The arrangement is unscientific, and it was probably this which caused Su Tung-p'o to decide that division into chapters belongs to a later age. He regards chaps, xxix-xxxii as spurious, although Ssu-ma Ch'ien alludes to two of these as Chuang Tzu's work. It has indeed been held that the inside chapters alone (i-vii) are from Chuang Tzu's own pen. But most of the other chapters, exclusive of xxix-xxxii, contain unmistakable traces of a master hand. Ch. xvii, by virtue of an exquisite imagery, has earned for its author the affectionate sobriquet of " Chou of the Autumn Floods." Chuang Tzu, it must be remembered, has been for centuries classed as a heterodox writer. His work was an effort of reaction against the materialism of Confucian teachings. And in the course of it he was anything but sparing of terms. Confucius is dealt with in language which no modern literate can approve. But the beauty and vigour of the language are facts admitted by all. He is constantly quoted in the great standard lexicon which passes under the name of K'ang Hsi. But no acquaintance with the philosophy of Chuang Tzu would assist the candidate for honours at the com- petitive examinations which are the portals to official place and power. Consequently, Chuang Tzu is studied chiefly by older men, who have retired from office, or who have been disappointed in their career. Those too who are Introduction xv dominated by a religious craving for something better than mortality, find in his pages much agreeable solace against the troubles of this world, with an implied promise of another and a better world to come. It has been publicly announced that translations of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu are to appear among the Sacred Books of the East} Now to include the Tao-Ti-Chingm such a series would be already a doubtful step. Apart from spuriousness, it can only by a severe stretch of courtesy be termed a " sacred book." It undoubtedly contains many of Lao Tzu's sayings, but it also undoubtedly contains much that Lao Tzu never said and never could have said. It illus- trates rather that period when the pure Tao of Lao Tzu began to be corrupted by alchemistic research and gropings after the elixir of life. It was probably written up in self- defence against the encroachments of Buddhism, in those early days of religious struggle when China was first flooded with the "sacred books" of the West. It is not seriously recognised as the Canon of ancient Taoism. Among the Taoists of to-day, not one in ten thousand has more than heard its name. For modern Taoism is but a hybrid superstition, — a mixture of ancient nature-worship and Buddhistic ceremonial, with Tao as the style of the firm. Its teachinofs are farther removed from the Tag of Lao Tzu than Ritualism from the Christianity of Christ. As to Chuang Tzu, his work can in no sense be called " sacred." Unless indeed we modify somewhat the ' The China Review, vol. xvi, p. 195. xvi Chuang Tzu accepted value of terms, and reckon the works of Aristotle among the " sacred " books of the Greeks. Chuang Tzii was scarcely the founder of a school. He was not a Prophet, as Lao Tzii was, nor can he fairly be said ever to have been regarded by genuine Taoists as such. When, many centuries later, the light of Lao Tzu's real teachings had long since been obscured, then a foolish Emperor conferred upon Chuang Tzii's work the title of Holy Canon of Nan-hua) But this was done solely to secure for the follies of the age the sanction of a great name. Not to mention that Lieh Tzu's alleged work, and many other similar forgeries have also been equally honoured. So that if works like these are to be included among the Sacred Books of the East, then China alone will be able to supply matter for translation for the next few centuries to come. Partly of necessity, and partly to spare the general reader, I have relegated to a supplement all textual and critical notes involving the use of Chinese characters. This supplement will be issued as soon as possible after my return to China. It will not form an integral part of the present work, being intended merely to assist students of the language in verifying the renderings I have here seen fit to adopt. As a compromise I have supplied a kind of running commentary, introduced, in accordance with the Chinese system, into the body of the text. It is hoped that this will enable any one to understand the drift of Chuang Tzu's allusions, and to follow arguments which are usually subtle and oft-times obscure. ' In A.I). 742. In trodiiction x v i i Only one previous attempt has been made to place Chuang Tzu in the hands of English readers.^ In that case, the knowledge of the Chinese language possessed by the translator was altogether too elementary to justify such an attempt.^ HERBERT A. GILES. 1 The Divine Classic of Nan-hiia. By Frederic Henry Balfour, RR.G.S., Shanghai and London, 1881. 2 One example will sufifice. In ch. xxiii (see p. 309) there occurs a short sentence which means, "A one-legged man discards ornament, his exterior not being open to commendation." Mr. Balfour translated this as follows : — " Servants will tear up a portrait, not liking to be confronted with its beauties and its defects." Note on the Philosophy of Chaps, i-vii. By the Rev. AUBREY MOORE, Tutor of Keble and Magdalen Colleges, Oxford ; Hon. Canon of Christ Church, &c. The translator of Chuang Tzu has asked me to append a note on the philosophy of chs. i-vii. It is difficult to see how one who writes not only in ignorance of Chinese modes of thought, but with the preconceptions of Western philosophy, can really help much towards the understanding of an admittedly obscure system, involving terms and expressions on which Chinese scholars are not yet agreed. But an attempt to point out parallelisms of thought and reasoning between East and West may be of use in two ways. It may stimulate those who are really competent to understand both terms in the comparison to tell us where the parallelism is real and where it is only apparent ; and it may help to accustom ordinary readers to look for and expect resemblances in systems in which an earHer age would have seen nothing but contrasts. There was a time when historians of Greek philosophy used to point out what were considered to be the characteristics of Greek thought, and then to put down to " Oriental influence " anything which did not at once agree with these characteristics. How and through what channels this " Oriental influence " was exercised, it was never easy to determine, nor was it always thought worthy of much discussion. In recent times, however, a greater knowledge of Eastern systems has familiarised us with much which, on the same principle, ought to be attributed to " Greek influence." And the result has been that we have learned to put aside theories of derivation, and to content ourselves with tracing the evolution of reason and of rational problems, and to expect parallelisms even where the circum- stances are widely different. One instance may be worth quoting in illustration. We used to be told that the Greek mind, in its speculation and its art, was characterised by its love of order, harmony, and symmetry, in contrast with the monstrous creations of the Oriental imagination, and the " colossal ugliness of the Pyramids"; and it was said with reason that the Aristotelian doctrine ot Note on the Philosophy of Chaps, i-vii. xix " the mean " was the ripe fruit of the practical inquiries of the Greeks, and was the ethical counterpart of their artistic development. But in 1 86 1 we were introduced by Dr. Legge to a Confucianist work, attributed to Tzu Tzii, grandson of Confucius and a contemporary of Socrates, and entitled T/ie Doctrine of the Meati} which is there represented as the true moral way in which the perfect man walks, while all else go beyond or fall short of it. Yet even those who discovered the doctrine of the Trinity in the Tao-Te-Ching have not, we believe, suggested that Aristotle had private access to the Li Chi. We may then, without bringing any charge of piracy or plagiarism against either, point out some parallels between Chuang Tzu and a great Greek thinker. Chuang Tzii's first chapter is mainly critical and destructive, pointing out the worthlessness of ordinary judgments, and the unreality of sense knowledge. The gigantic Rukh, at the height ot 90,000 //, is a mere mote in the sunbeam. For size is relative. The cicada, which can just fly from tree to tree, laughs with the dove at the Rukh's high flight. For space also is relative. Compared with the mushroom of a day, P'eng Tsu is as old as Methuselah ; but what is his age to that of the fabled tree, whose spring and autumn make up 16,000 years? Time, then, is relative too. And though men wonder at him who could " ride upon the wind and travel for many days," he is but a child to one who " roams through the realms of For-Ever." This doctrine of "relativity," which is a commonplace in Greek as it is in modern philosophy, is made the basis, both in ancient and modern times, of two opposite conclusions. Either it is argued that all sense knowledge is relative, and sense is the only organ of knowledge, therefore real knowledge is impossible ; or else the relativity of sense knowledge leads men to draw a sharp contrast between sense and reason and to turn away from the outward in order to listen to the inward voice. The one alternative is scepticism, the other ideaHsm. In Greek thought the earliest representatives of the former are the Sophists, of the latter Heracleitus. There is no doubt to which side of the antithesis Chuang Tzii belongs. His exposure of false and superficial thinking looks at first like the 1 In 1885 this treatise was republished by Dr. Legge in its place as Bk. xxviii of the Li Ki or Li Chi (Sacred Books of the East, vols, xxvii, xxviii), with a new title The State of Equilibritim and Llannotiy. But the parallelism with the Aristotelian doctrine is as obvious as ever. XX Chitang Tzu destruction of knowledge. Even Socrates was called a Sophist because of his destructive criticism and his restless challenging of popular views. But Chuang Tzii has nothing of the sceptic in him. He is an idealist and a mystic, with all the idealist's hatred of a utilitarian system, and the mystic's contempt for a life of mere external activity. " The perfect man ignores self ; the divine man ignores action ; the true sage ignores reputa- tion " (p. 5). The Emperor Yao would have abdicated in favour of a hermit, but the hermit replies that " reputation is but the shadow of reality," and will not exchange the real for the seeming. But greater than Yao and the hermit is the divine being who dwells on the mysterious mountain in a state of pure, passionless inaction. For the sage, then, life means death to all that men think life, the life of seeming or reputation, of doing or action, of being or individual self- hood. This leads on to the " budget of paradoxes " in chap. 11. As in the moral and active region we escape from the world and self, and are able to reverse and look down upon the world's judgments, so in the speculative region we get behind and beyond the contradictions of ordinary thinking, and of speech which stereotypes abstractions. The sage knows nothing of the distinction between subjective and objective. It exists only ex analogia hominis. " From the standpoint of Tao " all things are one. People " guided by the criteria of their own mind," see only the contra- diction, the manifoldness, the difference ; the sage sees the many disappearing in the One, in which subjective and objective, positive and negative, here and there, somewhere and nowhere, meet and blend. For him, "a beam and a pillar are identical. So are ugliness and beauty, greatness, wickedness, perverseness, and strangeness. Separation is the same as construction : construction is the same as destruction" (pp. 19-20). The sage " blends everything into one harmonious whole, rejecting the comparison of this and that. Rank and precedence, which the vulgar prize, the sage stolidly ignores. The universe itself may pass away, but he will flourish still" (p. 29). "Were the ocean itself scorched up, he would not feel hot. Were the milky way frozen hard he would not feel cold. Were the mountains to be riven with thunder, and the great deep to be thrown up by storm, he would not tremble" (pp. 27-28). Si fractus illabatur orbis, Impavidum ferient ruinse. He is " embraced in the obliterating unity of God," and passing into the realm of the Infinite finds rest therein (p. 31). It is impossible in reading this chapter on "The Identity of Contraries " not to be reminded of Heracleitus. The disparagement of sense knowledge, Note on the Philosophy of Chaps, i-vii. xxi and the contempt for common views is indeed equally marked in Eleaticism, and there is much in Chuang Tzia which recalls Parmenides,^ so far as the contrast between the way of truth and the way of error, the true belief in the One and the popular belief in the Many, is concerned. But it seems to me that the " One " of Chuang Tzu is not the dead Unit of Eleaticism, which resulted from the thinking away of differences, but the living Unity of Heracleitus, in which contraries co-exist. Heracleitus, indeed, seems to have been a man after Chuang Tzu's own heart, not only in his obscurity, which won for him the title of 6 ctkoteivoc, but in his indifference to worldly position, shown in the fact that, like the Emperor Yao, he abdicates in his brother's favour {Diog. Laert. ix. i), and in his supercilious disregard for the learned like Hesiod and Pytha- goras and Xenophanes and Hecataeus,^ no less than for the common people^ of his day. "Listen," says Heracleitus, "not to me, but to reason, and confess the true wisdom that ' All things are One.' "^ " All is One, the divided and the undivided, the begotten and the unbegotten, the mortal and the im- mortal, reason and eternity, father and son, God and justice."^ " Cold is hot, heat is cold, that which is moist is parched, that which is dried up is wet."6 " Good and evil are the same."'' " Gods are mortal, men im- mortal : our Ufe is their death, our death their life."^ " Upward and downward are the same."^ "The beginning and the end are one."^^ " Life and death, sleeping and waking, youth and age are identical."^! This is what reason tells the philosopher. "All is One." The world IS a unity of opposing forces (TraXtrrpojroe ap/jtopir) k6(tjxov OKUxnrep XvpaQ Kul ToEov).'^^ " Join together whole and not whole, agreeing and different, harmonious and discordant. Out of all comes one : out of one all.''^' " God is day-night, winter-summer, war-peace, repletion-want. "^^ The very rhythm of nature is strife. War, which men hate and the poets would banish, " is the father and lord of all."!^ But " men are without under- standing, they hear and hear not,"^^ or " they hear and understand not."i7 1 See the fragments in Ritter and Preller's H/sf. Phil. Grcec. § 93 and § 94 A. B. Seventh edition. " Heracl. Eph. Rell. Bywater, xvi. 2 oxXoXoi^opog 'UpaKXeiroc. Tmion ap. Diog. Laert. ix. i. * OuK kfxiv dtXXa tov \oyov itKovalivTaq ojiokoyitiv aocpoi' iirri ev Travra tJi'ai. Heracl. Eph. Rell. i. 5 Hippolytus Ref. haer. ix. 9. ^ Heracl. Eph. Rell. xxxix. 7 Ibid., Ivii. ^ Ibid.., Ixvii. ^ Ibid.., Ixix. ^'^ Ibid., Ixx. ^^ Ibid., Ixxviii. 12 Ibid., xlv. 13 /^/^.^ lix. u jhid,^ xxxvi. 15 /^/^.^ xliv. 16 Ibid., iii. 17 Ibid., V. xxii Chuang Tzu For they trust to their senses, which are " false witnesses."^ They see the contradictions, but know not that " the different is at unity with itself. "2 They cannot see the "hidden harmony, which is greater than the harmony which is seen."^ For they live in the external, the common- place, the relative, and never rise above the life of the senses. " The sow loves the mire."* *' The ass prefers fodder to gold."" And men love their " private conceits " instead of clinging to the universal reason which orders all things," and which even the sun obeys.^ Of the fragments which remain to us of Heracleitus, the greater number belong to the region of logic and metaphysics, while Chuang Tzu devotes much space to the more practical side of the question. He not only ridicules those who trust their senses, or measure by utilitarian standards, or judge by the outward appearance ; — he teaches them how to pass from the seeming to the true. The wonderful carver, who could cut where the natural joints are,^ is one who sees not with the eye of sense but with his mind. When he is in doubt he "falls back upon eternal principles"; for he is " devoted to Tao " (chap. iii). There is something of humour, as well as much of truth, in the rebuke which Confucius, speaking pro hac vice as a disciple of Lao Tzii, administers to his self-confident follower who wanted to *' be of use." '* C\xM\vzX% fasting ; — not bodily fasting, but the fasting of the heart." Tag can only abide in the life which has got rid of self. So the Duke of She is reminded that there is something higher than duty,^ viz., destiny^ the state, that is, in which conscious obe- dience has given way to that which is instinctive and automatic. The parable of the trees (pp. 50-53), with its result in the survival of the good- for-nothing, is again a reversal of popular outside judgments. For as the first part of the chapter had taught the uselessness of trying to be useful, so the last part teaches the usefulness of being useless. And the same thought is carried on in the next chapter, which deals with the reversal of common opinion as to persons. Its motto is : — Judge not by the appear- ance. Virtue must prevail and outward form be forgotten. The loath- some leper Ai T'ai To is made Prime Minister by the wise Duke Ai. The 1 Heracl Eph. Rell. iv. 2 /^/^.^ xlv. 3 /^/^,^ ^Ivii. * Ibid., liv., and notes. ^ Jlnd., li. 6 /^/^^ ^ci, xix. ^ Ibid., xxix. ^ Cf. Plat. Phaedr. 265 : KaT apdpa p irecpvKet' Kni fitj ein'^^EipEiv Karayrvvai fitpog fiijdey KaKov fxayei'pov rpoTro) ^pwyLtfj'oc. ^ C/. Herbert Si)encer's well-known paradox, — "The sense of duty or moral obligation is transitory, and will diminish as fast as moralisation increases." — Data of Ethics, p. 127. Note on the Philosophy of Chaps, i-vii. xxiii mutilated criminal is judged by Lao Tzii to be a greater man than Con- fucius. For the criminal is mutilated in body by man, while Confucius, though men know it not, by the judgment of God is TrcTrrjpw^tj'oc Trpoc aptTi]v. This protest of Chuang Tzu against externality, and judging only by the outward appearance, might easily be translated into Christian language. For Christianity also teaches i?iwardness, and, in common with all idealism, resents the delimitation of human life and knowledge to " the things which are seen." In its opposition to a mere practical system like Confucianism, Taoism must have appealed to those deeper instincts of humanity to which Buddhism appealed some centuries later. In prac- tice, Confucianism was limited to the finite. Action, effort, benevolence, unselfishness, — all these have a place in it, and their theatre is the world as we know it. Its last word is worldly wisdom ; not selfishness, but an enlarged prudentialism. To the Taoist such a system savours of " the rudiments of the world." Its " charity and duty," its " ceremonies and music," are the "Touch not, taste not, handle not," of an ephemeral state of being, and perish in the using. And the sage seeks for the Absolute, the Infinite, the Eternal. He seeks to attain to Tao. It is here that we reach (in chaps, vi, vii) what properly constitutes the mysticism of Chuang Tzii. Heracleitus is not a mystic, though he is the founder of a long line, which through Plato, and Dionysius the Areopagite and John the Scot in the ninth century, and Meister Eckhart in the thirteenth, and Jacob Bohme in the sixteenth, reaches down to Hegel. Heracleitus despises the world and shuns it ; but he has not yet made flight from the world a dogma. Even Plato, when in a well-known passage in the Theaetetus,' he counsels flight from the present state of things, explains that he means only " flee from evil and become like God." Still less has Heracleitus got so far as to aim at self-absorption in God. In Greek thought the attempt to get rid of consciousness, and to become the unconscious vehicle of a higher illumination, is unknown till the time of Philo. Yet this is the teaching of Chuang Tzu. " The true sage takes his refuge in God, and learns that there is no distinction between subject and object. This is the very axis of Tag" (p. i8). Abstraction from self, then, is the road which leads to Tao (chap. vi). The pure of old did not love life and hate death. They were content to be j^assive vehicles of Tag. They had reached the state of sublime indifference, ^ Tlieaet. 176. A. ^10 kiCl ireipdcrdai ■^pij EyOirSe EKelfre (pEvysii' o ti ra^KTra . ^uy// de oi^ioiwrriQ Of(p /caret to dufaroy . ojuoiwcnQ oe CiKaioi' kul omor ^lETCi (Ppon'](TSUic ytrinQai. xxiv Chuartg Tzu they had become " oblivious of their own existence." Everything in them was spontaneous ; nothing the result of effort. " They made no plans ; therefore failing, they had no cause for regret ; succeeding, no cause for congratulation " (p. 69). "They cheerfully played their allotted parts, waiting patiently for the end." They were free, for they were in perfect harmony with creation (p. 71). For them One and not One are One: God and Man. For they had attained to Tao, and Tao is greater than God. " Before heaven and earth were, Tao was. It has existed without change from all time. Spiritual beings draw their spirituality therefrom ; while the universe became what we see it now. To Tag the zenith is not high, nor the nadir low ; no point of time is long ago, nor by lapse of ages has it grown old" (p. 76). The great legislators obtained Tao, and laid down eternal principles. The sun and moon, and the Great Bear are kept in their courses by Tao. " Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong." He who would attain to Tao must get rid of the thought of " charity and duty," of " music and ceremonies," of body and mind. The flowers and the birds do not toil, they simply live. That is Tao. And for man a state of indifference and calm, the dropa^m not of the sceptic but of the mystic, a passive reflecting of the Eternal, is the ideal end. " The l)erfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing, it refuses nothing. It receives but does not keep. And thus he can triumph over matter without injury to himself" (See p. 98.) It would of course be presumption to attempt to assign a meaning to Tao, and still more to discover an equivalent in Western thought. But it may be lawful to say that Heracleitus often speaks of Aoyoe as Chuang Tzii speaks of Tao. It is Necessity [avayKr]), or Fate {elfiapiiirr]), or Mind {yvujur)), or Justice (Aikti). In nature it appears as balance and equipoise ; in the State as Law ; in man as the universal Reason, which is m him but not <?/ him. Sometimes it is identified with the mysterious name of Zeus, which may not be uttered;^ sometimes Hke the 'AfayKr) of the Greek poets, it is supreme over gods and men. If it is hard to say what is the relation of Tao to God, it is not less hard to define the relation of Aoyoe to Zeus. To speak of Chuang Tzii and Heracleitus as pantheists is only to say that, so far as we can translate ^ Herad. Eph. Rell. Ixv. Note on the Philosophy of Chaps, i-vii. xxv their language into ours, that name seems less inappropriate than Theist or Deist. But it is doubtful whether the distinction between Pantheism and Theism would have been intelligible to either philosopher, and certain that if they could have understood it, they would have denied to it reality. Both held the immanence of the Eternal Principle in all that is. Both taught that the soul is an emanation from the Divine, and both, though in very different degrees, seem to teach that a life is perfect in proportion as it becomes one with that from which it came, and loses what is individual in it. In Chuang Tzu, as in all mystics, there is an element of antinomianism. That "good and evil are the same," may contain a deep truth for the sage, but " take no heed of time, nor of right and wrong" (p. 31) is, to say the least, dangerous teaching for the masses. The mystic's utterances will not bear translation into the language of the world, and to take them au pied de la lettre can hardly fail to produce disastrous results. This is why antino- mianism always dogs the heels of mysticism. And this may perhaps help to explain the debased Taoism of to-day. But of this I know nothing. It would be interesting to know whether in the undisputed utterances of Lao Tzii (/. e. putting on one side the Tao-Te-Chifig), Quietism and the glorification of Inaction are as prominent as they are in Chuang Tzu. One would be prepared a priori to find that they are not. Lao Tzu was born at the end of the seventh century B.C., and was, therefore, some fifty years older than Confucius, with whom in 517 b c, he is said to have had an interview.^ By the time of Chuang Tzti, who was possibly contemporary with Mencius, and therefore some two or three centuries after Lao Tzu, Confucianism had become to some extent the established religion of China, and Taoism, like Republicanism in the days of the Roman Empire, became a mere opposition de salon. Under such circumstances any elements of mysticism latent in Lao Tzii's system would develop rapidly. And the an- tagonism between the representatives of Lao Tzu and Confucius would pro- portionately increase. But philosophy does not become mystical and take refuge in flight until it abandons all hope of converting the world. When effort is useless, the mind idealises Inaction, and seeks a metaphysical basis for it. For mysticism and scepticism flourish in the same atmo- sphere though in different soils, both, though in different ways, implying the abandonment of the rational problem. The Sceptic, the Agnostic or Positivist of to-day, declares it insoluble, and settles down content to Chuang Tzu, chap, xiv, p. i82-i< xxvi Chttang Tzil take things as they are ; the mystic retires into himself, and dreams of a state of being which is the obverse of the world of fact. The triumph of Confucianism in the centuries which intervened between Lao Tzii and Chuang Tzii would account for the antagonism between Taoism and Confucianism as we find it. But it fails to account for the way in which Confucius is sometimes represented as playing into the hands of Taoism. On p. 85 i. n. the translator explains it as a literary coup de main. Dr. Chalmers, quoted by Dr. Legge,i says that both Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzii introduced Confucius into their writings "as the lords of the Philis- tines did the captive Samson on their festive occasions, ' to make sport for them.' " But there is not a hint of this given in the text, though throughout one long chapter (chap, iv) we find Confucius giving a Taoist refutation of Confucianist doctrines when defended by his own pupil Yen Hui. It might seem like an attempt to draw a distinction between Confucius and Confucianism, though elsewhere Confucius is ridiculed as wanting in sense. May not the explanation be as follows ? — (i.) Lao Tzii and Confucius were probably much nearer to one another philosophically than the Taoism of Chuang Tzu and the Confucianism of Mencius. The passages in which Confucius talks Taoism would, on this hypothesis, represent a traditional survival of their real relations to one another. The episode of Confucius' visit to Lao Tzii " to ask about the Tao," would, whether it records a fact or not, tend in the same direction. (ii.) From the first we may assume that the one took an ideal, the other a practical and utilitarian view of Tao "the Way"; Confucius finding it in social duties and the work of practical life, Lao Tzii in the hidden and the inward, the " interior life," as Christian mystics would call it. Thus the historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien^ says, " Lao Tzu cultivated the Tao and virtue, his chief aim in his studies being how to keep himself concealed and unknown. Seeing the decay of the dynasty he withdrew himself out of sight, and no one knows where he died." (iii.) The divergence between the two views, the ideal and the actual, the mystical and the practical, would increase with time, each intensifying the other by opposition and reaction, until the practical won its way to security, and the mystical got left out in the cold, perhaps persecuted, certainly suspected, and treated as heterodox, and naturally retaliating by scornful criticism of the dominant view. When this stage is reached, Encycl. Met., Art. " Lao Tzu." - Quoted by Dr. Legge, he. cif. Note 071 the Philosophy of Chaps, i-vii. xxvii Mencius regards Lao Tzu as a heresiarch, while Chuang Tzii often treats Confucius with contempt and ridicule. For " the Way that is walked upon is not the Way," and " the Tao which shines forth is not Tao" (p. 25). But Confucianism being " established," the Taoists are now "dissenters," and not being strong enough to disestablish Confucianism become more and more mystical, and content themselves with a policy of protest. If there is little direct evidence for this theory as to the relations of Taoism and Confucianism, there is a curious parallel in Western thought. \\Tien Plato was known only in a neo-Platonic disguise, and Aristotle judged by the Organon, it was possible for partisans to represent the two philosophers as typical opposites, and to assume that " every one is born a Platonist or an Aristotelian," forgetting that Aristotle was Plato's pupil, and both were followers of Socrates. Later on, when Aristotelianism became " established " as the Christian philosophy, Platonism, which survived in the more mystical schoolmen, fell under suspicion, and not unfrequently justified the suspicion by developing in the direction of Pantheism. It was not till the thirteenth century that the world appealed from Platonists and Aristotelians to Plato and Aristotle, and discovered that the divergent streams flowed from neighbouring springs. Such an appeal, it is to be feared, is hardly possible in the case of Lao Tzii and Confucius, especially as the authenticity of the Tao-Te-Chingis still in controversy among Sinologues. My object, however, in this note, which has grown out of all propor- tion, was not to suggest a theory as to the possible relations of Lao Tzii and Confucius, but to point out what seemed to be a remarkable parallel between the teaching of Chuang Tzii and Heracleitus. In doing this I have accepted Mr. Giles's translation as an ultimate fact, for the simple reason that I do not know a single Chinese character. So far, therefore, as the translation prejudices or prejudges questions of Chinese scholarship, I must leave the defence to the translator. It is also possible, and more than possible, that my Western preconceptions may have biassed my judgment of Chuang Tzu's philosophical teaching. Recent attempts^ to draw a parallel between the life of Gautama and the life of 1 E.g. Mr. Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia, and still more Professor Seydel's Das Evangelium von Jesu in seinen Verhiiltnissen zu Buddha- Sage und Buddha-Lehre. On the other side of the question, cf. Dr. Kellogg's The Light of Asia and the Light of the World. London, 1885. And an article in the Nineteenth Century for July, 1888, on Buddhism, by the Bishop of Colombo. xxviii Ckuang Tzii Christ have shown how easy it is unconsciously to read between the lines, and find .parallelisms where they do not exist. If I have been guilty in the same way, then, with Socrates in the Republic, I say, " I can but suffer the penalty of ignorance ; and that penalty is, to be taught by those who know." A. L. M. Chuang Tzu. CHAPTER I. Transcendental Bliss. Argument: — Space infinite — Time infinite — Relativity of magnitudes, physical and moral — The magnitude absolute — Usefulness as a test of value — The usefulness of the useless. IN the northern ocean there is a fish, called the Leviathan, many thousand li in size. This leviathan changes into a bird, called the Rukh, whose back is many thousand li in breadth. With a mighty effort it rises, and its wings obscure the sky like clouds. At the equinox, this bird prepares to start for the southern ocean, the Celestial Lake. And in the Record of Marvels we read that when the rukh flies southwards, the water is smitten for a space of three thousand li around, while the bird itself mounts upon a typhoon to a height of ninety thousand //, for a flight of six months' duration. Just so are the motes in a sunbeam blown aloft by God. For whether the blue of the sky is its real colour, or only the result of distance without 2 Chuang Tzii end, the effect to the bird looking down would be just the same as to the motes. Distance being relative. The rukh at an altitude of 90,000 li (three li to a mile) is no more than a mote in a sunbeam a few feet from the ground. If there is not sufficient depth, water will not float large ships. Upset a cupful into a small hole, and a mustard-seed will be your boat. Try to float the cup, and it will stick, from the disproportion between water and vessel. So with air. If there is not a sufficient depth, it cannot support large birds. And for this bird a depth of ninety thousand // is necessary ; and then, with nothing save the clear sky above, and no obstacle in the w^ay, it starts upon its journey to the south. A cicada laughed, and said to a young dove, " Now, when I fly with all my might, 'tis as much as I can do to get from tree to tree. And some- times I do not reach, but fall to the ground mid- way. What then can be the use of going up ninety thousand // in order to start for the south ? " He who goes to Mang-ts'ang, A short distance into the country. taking three meals with him, comes back with his stomach as full as when he started. But he who travels a hundred // must grind flour enough for a night's halt. And he who travels a thousand // must supply himself with provisions for three months. Those two little creatures, — what should CAP. I.] Transcendental Bliss 3 they know? Small knowledge has not the compass of great knowledge any more than a short year has the length of a long year; How can we tell that this is so ? The mush- room of a morning knows not the alternation of day and night. The cljrysalis knows not the alter- nation of spring and autumn. Theirs are short years. But in the State of Ch'u there is a tortoise whose spring and autumn are each of five hundred years' duration. And in former days there was a large tree which had a spring and autumn each of eight thousand years' duration. Yet, P'eng Tsu The Methusaleh of China. His age has not been agreed upon by Chinese writers, but the lowest computation gives him a life of eight hundred years. is still, alas ! an object of envy to all. It was on this very subject that the Emperor T'ang B.C. 1766. spoke to Chi, as follows : — " At the barren north there is a great sea, the Celestial Lake. In it there is a fish, several thousand li in breadth, and I know not how many in length. It is called the Leviathan. There is also a bird, called the Rukh, with a back like Mount T'ai, China's most famous mountain, situated in the province of Shantung. and wings like clouds across the sky. Upon a typhoon it soars up to a height of ninety thousand B 2 4 Chuang Tzit li, beyond the clouds and atmosphere, with only the clear sky above it. And then it directs its flight towards the south pole. "A quail laughed, and said: Pray, what may that creature be going to do ? I rise but a few yards in the air, and settle again after flying around among the reeds. That is the most I can manage. Now, where ever can this creature be going to ?" The repetition of this story, coupled with its quota- tion from the Record of Marvels, is considered to give an air of authenticity to Chuang Tzu's illus- tration, which the reader might otherwise suppose to be of his own invention. Such, indeed, is the difference between small and great. Take, for instance, a man who creditably fills some small office, or who is a pattern of virtue in his neighbourhood, or who influences his prince to right government of the State, — his opinion of himself will be much the same as that quail's. The philosopher Yung laughs at such a one. He, if the whole world flattered him, would not be affected thereby, nor if the whole world blamed him would he lose his faith in himself. For Yung can dis- tinguish between the intrinsic and the extrinsic, between honour and shame, — and such men are rare in their generation. But even he has not established himself. Beyond the limits of an external world. His achievements are after all only of the earth, earthy. There was Lieh Tzu again. A personage of whom nothing is really known. CAP. I.] Transcendental Bliss 5 He is considered by the best authorities to have been of Chuang Tzu's own creation. This, however, did not prevent some enterprising scholar, probably of the Han dynasty, from discovering a treatise which still passes under Lieh Tzii's name. He could ride upon the wind, and travel whither- soever he wished, staying away as long as fifteen days. Among mortals who attain happiness, such a man is rare. Yet although Lieh Tzu was able to dispense with walking, he was still dependent upon something. Sc. the wind. But had he been charioted upon the eternal fitness of Heaven and Earth, driving before him the elements as his team while roaming through the realms of For-Ever, — upon what, then, would he have had to depend ? That is, nourished upon the doctrines of inaction, the continuity of life and death, etc., which will be dealt with in later chapters. Thus it has been said, "The perfect man ignores self; the divine man ignores action ; the true Sage ignores reputation^ His — for the three are one — is a bliss "beyond all that the minstrel has told." Material existences melt into thin air ; worldly joys and sorrows cease for him who passes thus into the everlasting enjoyment of a transcendental peace. The Emperor Yao B.C. 2356. His reign, coupled with that of Shun 6 Chuang Tzii who succeeded him, may be regarded as the Golden Age of China's history. See p. 8. wished to abdicate in favour of Hsii Yu, A worthy hermit. ^ saying, " If, when the sun and moon are shining, you persist in lighting a torch, is not that a mis- application of fire ? If, when the rainy season is at its height, you still continue to water the ground, is not this a waste of labour? Now, sir, do you assume the reins of government, and the empire will be at peace. I am but a dead body, conscious of my own deficiency. I beg you will ascend the throne." " Ever since you, sire, have directed the adminis- tration," replied Hsii Yu, " the empire has enjoyed tranquillity. Supposing, therefore, that I were to take your place now, should I gain any reputation thereby ? Besides, reputation is but the shadow of reality ; and should I trouble myself about the shadow? The tit, building its nest in the mighty forest, occupies but a single twig. The tapir slakes its thirst from the river, but drinks enough only to fill its belly. To you, sire, belongs the reputation : the empire has no need for me. If a cook is un- able to dress his funeral sacrifices, the boy who impersonates the corpse may not step over the wines and meats and do it for him." This illustrates rejection of reputation by the true Sage. See ch. vii. Chien Wu said to Lien Shu, Both fictitious personages. CAP. I.] Transcendental Bliss 7 " I heard Chieh Yu utter something unjustifiably extravagant and without either rhyme or reason. This was an individual, named Lu T'ung, who feigned madness in order to escape an official career. For his interview with Confucius, see ch. iv, ad fin. I was greatly startled at what he said, for it seemed to me boundless as the Milky Way, though very improbable and removed from the experiences of mortals." "What was it?" asked Lien Shu. " He declared," replied Chien Wu, " that on the Miao-ku-she mountain Which is as fabulous as the story. there lives a divine man whose flesh is like ice or snow, whose demeanour is that of a virgin, who eats no fruit of the earth, but lives on air and dew, and who, riding on clouds with flying dragons for his team, roams beyond the limits of mortality. This being is absolutely inert. Yet he wards off corruption from all things, and causes the crops to thrive. Now I call that nonsense, and do not believe it." ''Well," answered Lien Shu, "you don't ask a blind man's opinion of a picture, nor do you invite a deaf man to a concert. And blindness and deaf- ness are not physical only. There is blindness and deafness of the mind, diseases from which I fear you yourself are sufl"ering. The good influence of that man fills all creation. Yet because a 8 Chiiang Tzit paltry generation cries for reform, you would have him condescend to the details of an empire 1 Not seeing that the greater contains the less. ** Objective existences cannot harm him. In a flood which reached to the sky, he would not be drowned. In a drought, though metals ran liquid and mountains were scorched up, he would not be hot. Out of his very dust and siftings you might fashion two such men as Yao and Shun. And you would have him occupy himself with objectives !" Illustrating the inaction of the divine man. A man of the Sung State carried some sacri- ficial caps into the Ylieh State, for sale. But the men of Ylieh used to cut off their hair and paint their bodies, so that they had no use for such things. And so, when the Emperor Yao, the ruler of all under heaven and pacificator of all within the shores of ocean, paid a visit to the four sages of the Miao-ku-she mountain, on re- turning to his capital at Fen-yang, the empire existed for him no more. This illustrates the rejection of self by the perfect man. Yao had his eyes opened to the hollowness and uselessness of all mortal possessions. He ceased, therefore, to think any more of himself, and per consequens of the empire. Hui Tzu A celebrated schoolman, contemporary with and CAP. 1.] Transcendental Bliss 9 antagonistic to Chuang Tzii. For an account of his theories, see ch. xxxiii. said to Chuang Tzu, "The Prince of Wei gave me a seed of a large-sized kind of gourd. I planted it, and it bore a fruit as big as a five-bushel mea- sure. Now had I used this for holding liquids, it would have been too heavy to lift ; and had I cut it in half for ladles, the ladles would have been ill adapted for such purpose. It was uselessly large, so I broke it up." " Sir," replied Chuang Tzu, " it was rather you who did not know how to use large things. There was a man of Sung who had a recipe for salve for chapped hands, his family having been silk-washers for generations. Well, a stranger who had heard of it, came and offered him 100 oz. of silver for this recipe ; whereupon he called together his clansmen and said, 'We have never made much money by silk- washing. Now, we can make 100 oz. in a single day. Let the stranger have the recipe.' " So the stranger got it, and went and informed the Prince of Wu who was just then at war with the Yiieh State. Accordingly, the Prince used it in a naval battle fought at the beginning of winter with the Yiieh State, the result being that the latter was totally defeated. They suffered from chapped hands, while their rivals of the Wu State were protected by their patent salve. The stranger was rewarded with territory and a title. Thus, while the efficacy of the salve to cure 10 Chuang Tzii chapped hands was in both cases the same, its application was different. Here, it secured a title; there, a capacity for washing silk. " Now as to your five-bushel gourd, why did you not make a boat of it, and float about over river and lake? You could not then have complained of its not holding anything ! But I fear you are rather woolly inside." Like it. This, of course, is a sneer. Hui Tzu could not see that the greatness of a thing depends upon the greatness of its application. Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu, '' Sir, I have a large tree, of a worthless kind. Its trunk is so irregular and knotty that it cannot be measured out for planks ; while its branches are so twisted as to admit of no geometrical subdivision what- ever. It stands by the roadside, but no carpenter will look at it. And your words, sir, are like that tree ; — big and useless, not wanted by any- body." " Sir," rejoined Chuang Tzu, " have you never seen a wild cat, crouching down in wait for its prey ? Right and left it springs from bough to bough, high and low alike, — until perchance it gets caught in a trap or dies in a snare. On the other hand, there is the yak with its great huge body. It is big enough in all conscience, but it cannot catch mice. The adaptability of a thing is oft-times its bane. The inability of the yak to catch mice saves it from the snare which is fatal to the wild cat. CAP. I.] Transcendental Bliss 1 1 " Now if you have a big tree and are at a loss what to do with it, why not plant it in the domain of non-existence, Beyond the limits of our external world. Referring to the conditions of mental abstraction in which alone true happiness is to be found. whither you might betake yourself to inaction by its side, to blissful repose beneath its shade ? *' Why does the horizon hold me fast, with my joy and grief in this centre ? " — Emerson. There it would be safe from the axe and from all other injury ; for being of no use to others, itself would be free from harm." Illustrating the advantage of being useless. That which is small and useful is thus shown to be inferior to that which is large and useless. 12 CHAPTER II. The Identity of Contraries. Argument: — Contraries spring from our subjective individuality — Identity of subjective and objective — The centre where all distinctions are merged in One — How to reach this point — Speech an obstacle — The negative state — Light out of darkness — Illustrations. TZU CH'I of Nan-kuo sat leaning on a table. Looking up to heaven, he sighed and became absent, as though soul and body had parted. Yen Ch eng Tzu Yu, who was standing by him, exclaimed, "What are you thinking about that your body should become thus like dry wood, your mind like dead ashes ? Surely the man now leaning on the table is not he who was here just now." " My friend," replied Tzu Ch'i, " your question is apposite. To-day I have buried myself. . . . Do you understand ? . . . Ah ! perhaps you only know the music of Man, and not that of Earth. Or even if you have heard the music of Earth, you have not heard the music of Heaven." " Pray explain," said Tzii Yu. " The breath of the universe," continued Tzu Ch'i, " is called wind. At times, it is inactive. But when active, every aperture resounds to the CAP. II.] The Identity of Contraries 13 blast. Have you never listened to its growing roar ? " Caves and dells of hill and forest, hollows in huge trees of many a span in girth ;— ^ these are like nostrils, like mouths, like ears, like beam-sockets, like goblets, like mortars, like ditches, like bogs. And the wind goes rushing through them, sniffing, snoring, singing, sough- ing, puffing, purling, whistling, whirring, now shrilly treble, now deeply bass, now soft, now loud ; until, with a lull, silence reigns supreme. Have you never witnessed among the trees such a disturbance as this ? " "■ Well, then," enquired Tzu Yu, '' since the music of earth consists of nothing more than holes, and the music of man of pipes and flutes, — of what consists the music of Heaven?" " The effect of the wind upon these various apertures," replied Tzu Ch'i, " is not uniform. But what is it that gives to each the individu- ality, to all the potentiality, of sound ? " Great knowledge embraces the whole : Sees both "the upper and under side of the medal of Jove " at once. small knowledge, a part only. Great speech is universal : Speech, according to Chuang Tzii's ideal, always covers the whole ground in question, leaving no room for positive and negative to appear in antagonism. small speech is particular. 14 Chiiang Tzii " For whether when the mind is locked in sleep or whether when in waking hours the body is released, we are subject to daily mental perturbations, — indecision, want of penetration, concealment, fretting fear, and trembling terror. Now like a javelin the mind flies forth, the arbiter of right and wrong. Thus recognising contraries. Now like a solemn covenanter it remains firm, the guardian of rights secured. Adhering to an opinion formed. Then, as under autumn and winter's blight, comes gradual decay, a passing away, like the flow of water, never to return. Finally, the block when all is choked up like an old drain, — the failing mind which shall not see light again. " Joy and anger, sorrow and happiness, caution and remorse, come upon us by turns, with ever- changing mood. They come like music from hollowness, like mushrooms from damp. Daily and nightly they alternate within us, but we cannot tell whence they spring. Can we then hope in a moment to lay our finger upon their very Cause ? " But for these emotions / should not be. But for me, they would have no scope. So far we can go ; but we do not know what it is that brings them into play. 'Twould seem to be a soitl ; but the clue to its existence is wanting. That such a Power CAP. II.] The Identity of Contraries 15 operates, is credible enough, though we cannot see its form. It has functions without form. As will be gathered later on, Chuang Tzu conceives of the soul as an emanation from God, passing to and from this earth through the portals of Life and Death. " Take the human body with all its manifold divisions. Which part of it does a man love best ? Does he not cherish all equally, or has he a pre- ference ? Do not all equally serve him ? And do these servitors then govern themselves, or are they subdivided into rulers and subjects ? Surely there is some soul which sways them all " But whether or not we ascertain what are the functions of this soul, it matters but little to the soul itself. For coming into existence with this mortal coil of mine, with the exhaustion of this mortal coil its mandate will also be exhausted. To be harassed by the wear and tear of life, and to pass rapidly through it without possibility of arresting one's course, — is not this pitiful indeed ? To labour without ceasing, and then, without living to enjoy the fruit, worn out, to depart, suddenly, one knows not whither, — is not that a just cause for grief? "What advantage is there in what men call not dying ? The body decomposes, and the mind goes with it. This is our real cause for sorrow. Can the world be so dull as not to see this ? Or is it I alone who am dull, and others not so ? 1 6 Chuang TzU " If we are to be guided by the criteria of our own minds, who shall be without a guide ? The mind should be a tabula rasa, free from all judgments or opinions of its own as to the external world, and ready only to accept things as they are, not as they appear to be. What need to know of the alternations of passion. As above described. when the mind thus affords scope to itself? — verily even the minds of fools ! Whereas, for a mind without criteria As it should be. to admit the idea of contraries, is like saying, / went to Yileh to-day, and got there yesterday. One of Hui Tzii's paradoxes. See ch. xxxiii. Or, like placing nowhere somewhere, — topography which even the Great Yii The famous engineer of antiquity (b.c. 2205), who drained the empire of a vast body of water and arranged its subdivision into nine provinces. would fail to understand ; how much more I ? " Speech is not mere breath. It is differentiated by meaning. Take away that, and you cannot say whether it is speech or not. Can you even dis- tinguish it from the chirping of young birds ? " But ho\v^ can Tag be so obscured that we speak of it as true and false '> And how can speech be CAP. II.] The Identity of Contraries 17 so obscured that it admits the idea of contraries? How can Tag go away and yet not remain ? Being omnipresent. How can speech exist and yet be impossible ? See p. 13. " Tag is obscured by our want of grasp. Speech is obscured by the gloss of this world. I.e. by the one-sided meanings attached to words and phrases. Hence the affirmatives and negatives of the Con- fucian and Mihist schools, Mih Tzu was a philosopher of the fourth century B.C., who propounded various theories which were vigorously attacked by the Confucianists under Mencius. We shall hear more of him by-and-by. each denying what the other affirmed and affirming what the other denied. But he who would recon- cile affirmative with negative and negative with affirmative, The "union of impossibilities," which Emerson credits to Plato alone. must do so by the light of nature. I.e. Have no established mental criteria, and thus see all things as ONE. " There is nothing which is not objective : there is nothing which is not subjective. But it is im- possible to start from the objective. Only from '\' 1 8 Chuaiig Tzii subjective knowledge is it possible to proceed to objective knowledge. Hence it has been said, By Hui Tzu. ' The objective emanates from the subjective ; the subjective is consequent upon the objective. This is the Alternation Theory! Nevertheless, when one is born, the other dies. When one is possible, the other is impossible. When one is affirmative the other is negative. Which being the case, the true sage rejects all distinctions of this and that. He takes his refuge in God, and places himself in subjective relation with all things. It was to this end that Tzu Ch'i " buried himself." "And inasmuch as the subjective is also objec- tive, and the objective also subjective, and as the contraries under each are indistinguishably blended, does it not become impossible for us to say whether subjective and objective really exist at all ? What is positive under the one will be negative under the other. Yet as subjective and objective are really one and the same, their positives and negatives must also be one and the same. It is as though we were to view them through a kind of mental Pseudoscope, by which means each would appear to be the other. " When subjective and objective are both with- out their correlates, that is the very axis of Tag. And when that axis passes through the centre at which all Infinities converge, positive and negative alike blend into an infinite One. Hence it has CAP. II.] The Identity of Contraries 19 been said that there is nothing like the light of nature. Probably an allusion to Lao Tzu's " Use the light that is within you to revert to your natural clearness of sight." We should then be able to view things in their true light. See Tao-Te-Cliijtg\ ch. Hi., and The Remains of Lao TzU, p. 34. " To take a finger in illustration of a finger not being a finger is not so good as to take something which is not a finger. To take a horse in illustra- tion of a horse not being a horse is not so good as to take something which is not a horse. " So with the universe and all that in it is. These things are but fingers and horses in this sense. The possible is possible : the impossible is impossible. Tao operates, and given results follow. Things receive names and are what they are. They achieve this by their natural affinity for what they are and their natural antagonism to what they are not. For all things have their own particular constitutions and potentialities. Nothing can exist without these. These last few sentences are repeated in ch. xxvii. ad init. " We can never know anything but phenomena. Things are what they are, and their consequences will be what they will be."— 7. S. Mill. " Therefore it is that, viewed from the stand- point of Tao, a beam and a pillar are identical. The horizontal with the vertical. So are ugliness and beauty, greatness, wickedness, c 2 20 Chuaiig Tzic perverseness, and strangeness. Separation is the same as construction : construction is the same as destruction. Nothing is subject either to construc- tion or to destruction, for these conditions are brought together into One. " Only the truly intelligent understand this prin- ciple of the identity of all things. They do not view things as apprehended by themselves, sub- jectively ; but transfer themselves into the position of the things viewed. Avoiding the fallacious channels of the senses. And viewing \ them thus they are able to compre- hend them, nay, to master them ; — and he who can master them is near. So it is that to place oneself in subjective relation with externals, without con- sciousness of their objectivity, — this is Tao. But to wear out one's intellect in an obstinate adher- ence to the individuality of things, not recognisi'ng the fact that all things are One, — this is called Three in the Morning T " What is Three in the Morning?'' asked Tzu Yu. " A keeper of monkeys," replied Tzu Ch'i, *' said with regard to their rations of chestnuts that each monkey was to have three in the morning and four at night. But at this the monkeys were very angry, so the keeper said they might have four in the morning and three at night, with which arrange- ment they were all well pleased. The actual number of the chestnuts remained the same, but there was an adaptation to the likes and dislikes of CAP. II.] The Identity of Contraries 21 those concerned. Such is the principle of putting oneself into subjective relation with externals. " Wherefore the true Sage, while regarding con- traries as identical, adapts himself to the laws of Heaven. This is called following two courses at once. He is thus prevented from trying to v/alk through walls, etc., as later Taoists have professed themselves able to do, of course with a view to gull the public and enrich themselves. "God," says Locke, "when he makes the prophet, does not unmake the man." So Carlyle in his essay on Novalis : — "To a Trans- cendentalist, matter has an existence but only as a Phenomenon It is a mere relation, or rather the result of a relation between our living souls and the great First Cause." " The knowledge of the men of old had a limit. It extended back to a period when matter did not exist. That was the extreme point to which their knowledge reached. ^ " The second period was that of matter, but of matter unconditioned. By time or space. " Being, in itself," says Herbert Spencer, " out of relation, is itself unthinkable." Principles of Psychology, iii. p. 258. " The third epoch saw matter conditioned, but contraries were still unknown. When these appeared, Tao began to decline. And with the decline of Tag, individual bias arose. " Have then these states of falling and rising real existences ? Surely they are but as the falling 22 Chtiang Tzu and risingof Chao W^n's music, — the consequences of his playing. Chao Wen played the guitar. Shih K'uang wielded the bdton. To keep time. Hui Tzu argued. Herein these three men excelled, and in the practice of such arts they passed their lives. " Hui Tzu's particular views being very different from those of the world in general, he was corre- spondingly anxious to enlighten people. But he did not enlighten them as he should have done, By the cultivation and passive manifestation of his own inward light. and consequently ended in the obscurity of the * hard and white.' Hui Tzii regarded such abstractions as hardness and whiteness as separate existences, of which the mind could only be conscious separately, one at a time. Subsequently, his son searched his works for some clue, but never succeeded in establishing the prin- ciple. And indeed if such were possible to be established, then even I am established ; but if not, then neither I nor anything in the universe is established 1 " Therefore what the true Sage aims at is the light which comes out of darkness. He does not view things as apprehended by himself, subjec- tively, but transfers himself into the position of the things viewed. This is called using the light. " There remains, however, Speech. Is that to be CAP. II.] The Identity of Contraries 23 enrolled under either category of contraries, or not? Whether it is so enrolled or not, it will in any case belong to one or the other, and thus be as though it had an objective existence. At any rate, I should like to hear some speech which belongs to neither category. Contraries being disposed of, there remains the vehicle Speech, i.e. the actual terms in which it is stated that contraries have ceased to be. " If there was a beginning, then there was a time before that beginning. And a time before the time which was before the time of that beginning. " If there is existence, there must have been non- existence. And if there was a time when nothing existed, then there must have been a time before that — when even nothing did not exist. Suddenly, when nothing came into existence, could one really say whether it belonged to the category of existence or of non-existence ? Even the very words I have just now uttered, — I cannot say whether they have really been uttered or not. I.e. The words in the text, denying the existence of contraries. " There is nothing under the canopy of heaven greater than the tip of an autumn spikelet. A vast mountain is a small thing. Neither is there any age greater than that of a child cut off in infancy. P'^ng Tsu himself died young. The universe and ^^ I came into being together ; and I, and everything therein, are One. " If then all things are One, what room is there V 24 Chuaiig Tzu for Speech ? On the other hand, since I can utter these words, how can Speech not exist ? " If it does exist, we have One and Speech=two ; and two and one=three. From which point onwards even the best mathematicians will fail to reach : Tao. how much more then will ordinary people fail ? " Hence, if from nothing you can proceed to something, and subsequently reach three, it follows that it would be still more easy if you were to start from something. To avoid such progression, you must put yourself into subjective relation with the external. " Before conditions existed, Tao was. Before definitions existed. Speech was. Subjectively, we are conscious of certain delimitations which are, — Right and Left Relationship and Obligation Division and Discrimination Emulation and Contention These are called the Eight Predicables. Not, of course, in the strict logical sense. For the true Sage, beyond the limits of an external world, they exist, but arc not recognised. By the true Sage, within the limits of an external world, they are recognised, but are not assigned. And so, with regard to the wisdom of the ancients, as embodied in the canon of Spring and Autnmn, Confucius' history of his native State. Now one of the canonical books of China. CAP. II.] The Identity of Contraries 25 the true Sage assigns, but does not justify by argu- ment. And thus, classifying he does not classify ; arguing, he does not argue." " How can that be ? " asked Tzu Yu. " The true Sage," answered Tzu Ch'i, *' keeps his knowledge within him, while men in general set /- forth theirs in argument, in order to convince each other. And therefore it is said that in argument he does not manifest himself. Others try to establish their own subjective view. The true Sage remains passive, aiming only at the annihilation of contraries. " Perfect Tao does not declare itself. Nor does ^ perfect argument express itself in words. Nor does ,(^ perfect charity show itself in act. Nor is perfect honesty absolutely incorruptible. Nor is perfect courage absolutely unyielding. " For the Tao which shines forth is not Tao. Speech which argues falls short of its aim. Charity which has fixed points loses its scope. Honesty which is absolute is wanting in credit. Courage which is absolute misses its object. These five are, as it were, round, with a strong bias towards squareness. Therefore that knowledge which stops at what it does not know, is the highest know- ledge. *' Who knows the argument which can be argued without words ? — the Tao which does not declare itself as Tao ? He who knows this may be said to be of God. To be able to pour in without making full, and pour out without making empty, in igno- 26 Chumig Tzii ranee of the power by which such results are accomplished, — this is accounted Light.'' Of old, the Emperor Yao said to Shun, " I would smite the Tsungs, and the Kueis, and the Hsu-aos. Ever since I have been on the throne I have had this desire. What do you think ? " " These three States," replied Shun, " are paltry out-of-the-way places. Why can you not shake off this desire ? Once upon a time, ten suns came out together, and all things were illuminated thereby. How much more then should virtue excel suns ? " Illustrating the use of "light." Instead of active force, substitute the passive but irresistible influence of virtue complete. The sun caused the traveller to lay aside his cloak when the north wind succeeded only in making him draw it tighter around him. Yeh Ch'iieh asked Wang I, A disciple and tutor of remote antiquity. Said to have been two of the four Sages on the Miao-ku-she mountain mentioned in ch. i. saying, " Do you know for certain that all things are subjectively the same ? " " How can I know?" answered Wang I. " Do you know what you do not know ? " " How can I know ? " replied Yeh Ch ueh. "But can then nothing be known ? " " How can I know?" said Wang I. "Never- theless, I will try to tell you. How can it be known that what I call knowing is not really not knowing, and that what I call not knowing is not CAP. II.] The Identity of Contraries 27 really knowing ? Now I would ask you this. If a man sleeps in a damp place, he gets lumbago and dies. But how about an eel ? And living up in a tree is precarious and trying to the nerves ; — but how about monkeys ? Of the man, the eel, and the monkey, whose habitat is the right one, abso- lutely? Human beings feed on flesh, deer on grass, centipedes on snakes, owls and crows on mice. Of these four, whose is the right taste, absolutely ? Monkey mates with monkey, the buck with the doe ; eels consort with fishes, while men admire Mao Ch'iang and Li Chi, Beauties of the fifth and seventh centuries B.C., re- spectively. The commentators do not seem to have noted the very obvious anachronism here involved. at the sight of whom fishes plunge deep down in the water, birds soar high in the air, and deer hurry away. For shame at their own inferiority. Yet who shall say which is the correct standard of beauty? In my opinion, the standard of human virtue, and of positive and negative, is so ob- scured that it is impossible to actually know it as such." " If you then," asked Yeh Ch ueh, " do not know what is bad for you, is the Perfect Man equally without this knowledge ? " 1 " The Perfect Man," answered Wang I, " is a spiritual being. Were the ocean itself scorched up, he would not feel hot. Were the Milky Way 28 Chuang- Tzil <b frozen hard, he would not feel cold. Were the mountains to be riven with thunder, and the great deep to be thrown up by storm, he would not tremble. In such case, he would mount upon the clouds of heaven, and driving the sun and the moon before him, would pass beyond the limits of this external world, where death and life have no more victory over man ; — how much less what is bad for him ? " Chii Ch'iao addressed Chang Wu Tzu A disciple and tutor of antiquity. as follows : — " I heard Confucius say, ' The true sage pays no heed to mundane affairs. He neither seeks gain nor avoids injury. He asks nothing at the hands of man. He adheres, without question- ing, to Tao. Without speaking, he can speak ; and he can speak and yet say nothing. And so he roams beyond the limits of this dusty world. These,' added Confucius, ' are wild words.' Han Fei Tzu tells us that Lao Tzu, whose doctrines Confucius seems to be here deriding, said exactly the opposite of this ; viz : " The true Sage is before- hand in his attention to mundane affairs," i.e. "takes time by the forelock." Neither utterance, however, appears in the Tao-Tc-Ching. See The Remains of Lao TzU, p. 44. Now to me they are the skilful embodiment of Tag. What, Sir, is your opinion ? " " Points upon which the Yellow Emperor CAP. II.] The Identity of Contraries 29 doubted," replied Chang Wu Tzu, '' how should Confucius know ? Lao Tzu and the Yellow Emperor have always been mixed up in the heads of Taoist writers, albeit separated by a chasm of some two thousand years. Confucius is here evidently dealing with the actual doctrines of Lao Tzu. You are going too fast. You see your ^<g^,^ and expect to hear it crow. You look at your cross-bow, and expect to have broiled duck before you. I will say a few words to you at random, and do you listen at random. '' How does the Sage seat himself by the sun and moon, and hold the universe in his grasp? He blends everything into one harmonious whole, rejecting the confusion of this and that. Rank and precedence, which the vulgar prize, the Sage stolidly ignores. The revolutions of ten thousand years leave his Unity unscathed. The universe itself may pass away, but he will flourish still. " How do I know that love of life is not a delusion after all ? How do I know but that he who dreads to die is not as a child who has lost the way and cannot find his home ? '' The lady Li Chi was the daughter of Ai Feng. A border chieftain. When the Duke of Chin first got her, she wept until the bosom of her dress was drenched with tears. But when she came to the royal residence, and lived with the Duke, and ate rich food, she u J 30 Chtiang Tzil repented of having wept. How then do I know but that the dead repent of having previously clung to life? ** Those who dream of the banquet, wake to lamentation and sorrow. Those who dream of lamentation and sorrow wake to join the hunt. While they dream, they do not know that they dream. Some will even interpret the very dream they are dreaming ; and only when they awake do they know it was a dream. By and by comes the Great Awakening, and then we find out that this life is really a great dream. Fools think they are awake now, and flatter themselves they know if they are really princes or peasants. Confucius and you are both dreams ; and I who say you are dreams, — I am but a dream myself. This is a paradox. Tomorrow a sage may arise to explain it; but that tomorrow will not be until ten thousand generations have gone by. " Granting that you and I argue. If you beat me, and not I you, are you necessarily right and I wrong? Or if I beat you and not you me, am I necessarily right and you wrong ? Or are we both partly right and partly wrong? Or are we both wholly right and wholly wrong ? You and I cannot know this, and consequently the world will be in ignorance of the truth. " Who shall I employ as arbiter between us ? If I employ some one who takes your view, he will side with you. How can such a one arbitrate between us ? If I employ some one who takes my CAP. II.] The Identity of Contraries 31 view, he will side with me. How can such a one arbitrate between us ? And if I employ some one who either differs from, or agrees with, both of us, he will be equally unable to decide between us. Since then you, and I, and man, cannot decide, '-^ must we not depend upon Another ? Upon God, in whose infinity all contraries blend indistinguishably into One. Such dependence is as though it were not depend- ence. We are embraced in the obliterating unity of God. There is perfect adaptation to whatever may eventuate ; and so we complete our allotted span. " But what is it to be embraced in the obliterat- ing unity of God ? It is this. With reference to positive and negative, to that which is so and that which is not so, — if the positive is really positive, it must necessarily be different from its negative : there is no room for argument. And if that which is so really is so, it must necessarily be different from that which is not so : there is no room for argument. ** Take no heed of time, nor of right and wrong. But passing into the realm of the Infinite, take your final rest therein." Our refuge is in God alone, the Infinite Abso- lute. Contraries cannot but exist, but they should / exist independently of each other without antagonism. Such a condition is found only in the all-embracing unity of God, wherein all distinctions of positive and negative, of right and wrong, of this and of that, are obliterated and merged in One. Herbert Spencer says, "The antithesis of subject 32 Chuang Tzu and object, never to be transcended while conscious- ness lasts, renders impossible all knowledge of the Ultimate Reality in which subject and object are united." Principles of Psychology, i. p. 272. The Penumbra said to the Umbra, " At one moment you move : at another you are at rest. At one moment you sit down : at another you get up. Why this instability of purpose?" *' I de- pend," replied the Umbra, " upon something which causes me to do as I do ; and that some- thing depends in turn upon something else which causes it to do as it does. My dependence is like that of a snake's scales or of a cicada's wings. Which do not move of their own accord. How can I tell why I do one thing, or why I do not do another ? " Showing how two or more may be the phenomena of one. Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzii, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly, I awaked, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a barrier. The transition is called Metempsychosis. Showing how one may appear to be either of two. 33 CHAPTER III. Nourishment of the Soul. Argument :—lAie too short— Wisdom unattainable— Accommodation to circumstances— Liberty paramount— Death a release— The soul immortal. 1\ /r Y life has a limit, but my knowledge is with- ^^^ out limit. To drive the limited in search of the limitless, is fatal ; and the knowledge of those who do this is fatally lost. In striving for others, avoid fame. In striving for self, avoid disgrace. Pursue a middle course. Thus you will keep a sound body, and a sound mind, fulfil your duties, and work out your al- lotted span. Prince Hui's cook was cutting up a bullock. Every blow of his hand, every heave of his shoulders, every tread of his foot, every thrust of his knee, every whshh of rent flesh, every chhk of the chopper, was in perfect harmony, — rhythmical like the dance of the Mulberry Grove, simultaneous like the chords of the Ching Shou. Commentators are divided in their identifications of these ancient morcea-ux. D 34 Chuang Tzu "Well done!" cried the Prince. "Yours is skill indeed." " Sire," replied the cook ; " I have always de- / voted myself to Tao. It is better than skill. When I first began to cut up bullocks, I saw before me simply luhole bullocks. After three years' practice, I saw no more whole animals. Meaning that he saw them, so to speak, in sec- tions. And now I work with my mind and not with my eye. When my senses bid me stop, but my mind urges me on, I fall back upon eternal principles. I follow such openings or cavities as there may be, according to the natural constitution of the animal. I do not attempt to cut through joints : still less through large bones. For a curious parallelism, see Plato's Phcrdrus, 265. " A good cook changes his chopper once a year, — because he cuts. An ordinary cook, once a month, — because he hacks. But I have had this chopper nineteen years, and although I have cut up many thousand bullocks, its edge is as if fresh from the whetstone. For at the joints there are always interstices, and the edge of a chopper being without thickness, it remains only to insert that which is without thickness into such an interstice. These words help to elucidate a much-vexed pas- sage in ch. xliii of the Tao-Te-Ching. See The Remaiiis of Lao Tzii, p. 30. CAP. III.] Nourishment of the Soul 35 By these means the interstice will be enlarged, and the blade will find plenty of room. It is thus that I have kept my chopper for nineteen years as though fresh from the whetstone. *' Nevertheless, when I come upon a hard part where the blade meets with a difficulty, I am all caution. I fix my eye on it. I stay my hand, and gently apply my blade, until with a hwah the part yields like earth crumbling to the ground. Then I take out my chopper, and stand up, and look around, and pause, until with an air of triumph I wipe my chopper and put it carefully away." " Bravo ! " cried the Prince. " From the words of this cook I have learnt how to take care of my life." Meaning that which informs life, sc, the soul. When Hsien, of the Kung-wen family, beheld a certain official, he was horrified, and said, *' Who is that man ? How came he to lose a foot ? Is this the work of God, or of man ? " Why, of course," continued Hsien, " it is the work of God, and not of man. When God brought this man into the world, he wanted him to be unlike other men. Men always have two feet. From this it is clear that God and not man made him as he is. It was by God's will that he took office with a view to personal aggrandisement. That he got into trouble and suffered the common punishment of loss of feet, cannot therefore be charged to man. D 2 36 Chuang Tzii " Now, wild fowl get a peck once in ten steps, a drink once in a hundred. Yet they do not want to be fed in a cage. For although they would thus be able to command food, they would not be free." And had our friend above kept out of the official cage he would still have been independent as the fowls of the air. When Lao Tzu died, Ch'in Shih went to mourn. He uttered three yells and departed. A disciple asked him saying, " Were you not our Master's friend?" " I was," replied Ch'in Shih. " And if so, do you consider that a sufficient ex- pression of grief at his loss ? " added the disciple. " I do," said Ch'in Shih. " I had believed him to be the man of all men, but now I know that he was not. When I went in to mourn, I found old persons weeping as if for their children, young ones wailing as if for their mothers. And for him to have gained the attachment of those people in this way, he too must have uttered words which should not have been spoken, and dropped tears which should not have been shed, thus violating eternal principles, increasing the sum of human emotion, and forgetting the source from which his own life was received. The ancients called such emotions the trammels of mortality. The Master came, because it was his time to be born ; he went, because it was his time to die. For those who accept the phenomenon of birth and death in this sense, CAP. III.] Notirishinent of the Soul 2!7 lamentation and sorrow have no place. The ancients spoke of death as of God cutting down a man suspended in the air. The fuel is consumed, but the fire may be transmitted, and we know not that it comes to an end." The soul, according to Chuang Tzu, if duly- nourished and not allowed to wear itself out with the body in the pursuits of mortality, may become immortal and return beatified to the Great Unknown whence it came. 38 CHAPTER IV. Man Among Men. Argument: — Man must fall in with his mortal environment — His virtue should be passive, not active — He should be rather than do — Talents a hindrance — But of petty uselessness great usefulness is achieved. A7EN HUI went to take leave of Confucius. A disciple of the Sage. Also known as Tzu Yiian. " Whither are you bound ?" asked the Master. " I am going to the State of Wei," was the reply. "And what do you propose to do there?" con- tinued Confucius. " I hear," answered Yen Hui, " that the Prince of Wei is of mature age, but of an unmanageable disposition. He behaves as if the State were of no account, and will not see his own faults. Conse- quently, the people perish ; and their corpses lie about like so much undergrowth in a marsh. They are at extremities. And I have heard you. Sir, say that if a State is well governed it may be neglected ; but that if it is badly governed, then we should visit it. In the L7m Vic, Confucius says exactly the opposite of this. CAP. IV.] Man Among Men 39 The science of medicine embraces many various diseases. I would test my knowledge in this sense, that perchance I may do some good to that State." "Alas!" cried Confucius, "you will only succeed in bringing evil upon yourself For Tao must not be distributed. If it is, it will lose its unity. If it loses its unity, it will be uncertain ; and so cause mental disturbance, — from which there is no escape. "The sages of old first got Tao for themselves, and then got it for others. Before you possess this yourself, what leisure have you to attend to the doings of wicked men ? Besides, do you know what Virtue results in and where Wisdom ends ? Virtue results in a desire for fame ; Wisdom ends in contentions. In the struggle for fame men crush each other, while their wisdom but provokes rivalry. Both are baleful instruments, and may not be incautiously used. " Besides, those who, before influencing by their own solid virtue and unimpeachable sincerity, and before reaching the heart by the example of their own disregard for name and fame, go and preach charity and duty to one's neighbour to wicked men, — only make these men hate them for their very goodness' sake. Such persons are called evil speakers. And those who speak evil of others are apt to be evil spoken of themselves. That, alas ! will be your end. " On the other hand, if the Prince loves the good 40 CImang Tzu and hates the bad, what object will you have in inviting him to change his ways ? Before you have opened your mouth to preach, the Prince himself will have seized the opportunity to wrest the victory from you. Your eye will fall, your expression fade, your words will stick, your face will change, and your heart will die within you. It will be as though you took fire to quell fire, water to quell water, which is popularly known as ' pouring oil on the flames.' And if you begin with concessions, there will be no end to them. Neglect this sound advice, and you will be the victim of that violent man. " Of old, Chieh murdered Kuan Lung Feng, and Chou slew Prince Pi Kan. Their victims were both men who cultivated virtue themselves in order to secure the welfare of the people. But in doing this they offended their superiors ; and therefore, because of that very moral culture, their superiors got rid of them, in order to guard their own reputations. Chieh and Chou are the two typical tyrants of Chinese history. '' Of old, Yao attacked the Ts'ung-chih and Hsii-ao countries, and Yii attacked the Yu-hu country. Homes were desolated and families de- stroyed by the slaughter of the inhabitants. Yet they fought without ceasing, and strove for victory to the last. These are instances known to all. Now if the Sages of old failed in their efforts against this love of fame, this desire for victory, — CAP. IV.] Man Amojtg Men 41 are you likely to succeed ? But of course you have a scheme. Tell it to me." '' Gravity of demeanour," replied Yen Hui, " and dispassionateness ; energy and singleness of pur- pose,— will this do ? " " Alas ! " said Confucius, " that will not do. If you make a show of being perfect and obtrude yourself, the Prince's mood will be doubtful. Ordinarily, he is not opposed, and so he has come to take actual pleasure in trampling upon the feelings of others. And if he has thus failed in the practice of routine virtues, do you expect that he will take readily to higher ones ? You may insist, but without result. Outwardly you will be right, but in- wardly wrong. How then will you make him mend his ways?" " Just so," replied Yen Hui. " I am inwardly straight, and outwardly crooked, completed after the models of antiquity. " He who is inwardly straight is a servant of God. And he who is a servant of God knows that the Son of Heaven The Emperor. and himself are equally the children of God. Shall then such a one trouble whether man visits him with evil or with good ? Man indeed regards him as a child ; and this is to be a servant of God. (i) Children are everywhere exempt. — This is the first limb of a threefold argument. " He who is outwardly crooked is a servant of 42 Chiiang Tzu man. He bows, he kneels, he folds his hands ; — such is the ceremonial of a minister. What all men do, shall I dare not to do ? What all men do, none will blame me for doing. This is to be a servant of man. (2) The individual is not punished for the faults of the community. *' He who is completed after the models of antiquity is a servant of the Sages of old. Although I utter the words of warning and take him to task, it is the Sages of old who speak, and not I. Thus my uprightness will not bring me into trouble, the servant of the Sages of old. — Will this do?" (3) The responsibility rests, not with the mouth- piece, but with the authors of the doctrines enunciated. " Alas ! " replied Confucius, " No. Your plans are too many, and are lacking in prudence. How- ever, your firmness will secure you from harm ; but that is all. You will not influence him to such an extent that he shall seem to follow the dictates of his own heart." "Then," said Yen Hui, " I am without resource, and venture to ask for a method." Confucius said, ''FAST Let me explain. You have a method, but it is difficult to practise. Those which are easy are not from God." " Well," replied Yen Hui, " my family is poor, CAP. IV.] Man Ainoiig Men 43 and for many months we have tasted neither wine nor flesh. Is not that fasting ? " '' The fasting of religious observance it is," answered Confucius, *' but not the fasting of the heart." " And may I ask," said Yen Hui, " in what con- sists the fasting of the heart ? " " Cultivate unity," replied Confucius. Make of the mind as it were an undivided in- divisible ONE. " You hear not with the ears, but with the mind ; not with the mind, but with your soul. The vital fluid which informs your whole being ; in fact, " with your whole self." But let hearing stop with the ears. Let the work- ing of the mind stop with itself. Then the soul will be a negative existence, passively responsive to externals. In such a negative existence, only' Tag can abide. And that negative state is the fasting of the heart." " Then," said Yen Hui, *' the reason I could not get the use of this method is my own individuality. If I could get the use of it, my individuality would have gone. Is this what you mean by the negative state ? " " Exactly so," replied the Master. " Let me tell you. If you can enter this man's domain without offending his amour propre, cheerful if he hears you, passive if he does not ; without science, with- 44 Clmaiig Tzii out drugs, simply living there in a state of com- plete indifference, — you will be near success. It is easy to stop walking : the trouble is to walk with- out touching the ground. As an agent of man, it is easy to deceive ; but not as an agent of God. You have heard of winged creatures flying. You have never heard of flying without wings. You have heard of men being wise with wisdom. You have never heard of men wise without wisdom. Wise of God, without the wisdom of man. " Look at that window. Through it an empty room becomes bright with scenery ; but the land- scape stops outside. Were this not so, we should have an exemplification of sitting still and running away at one and the same time. An empty room would contain something, — a para- dox like that in the text. " In this sense, you may use your ears and eyes to communicate within, but shut out all wisdom from the mind. Let the channels of your senses be to your mind what a window is to an empty room. And there where the supernatural Something which is and yet is not, like the landscape seen in, and yet not in, a room. can find shelter, shall not man find shelter too ? This is the method for regenerating all creation. By passive, not by active, virtue. CAP. IV.] Man Among Men 45 It was the instrument which Yii and Shun em- ployed. It was the secret of the success of Fu Hsi and Chi Chii. Shall it not then be adopted by mankind in general ? " Who stand much more in need of regeneration than such worthies as were these ancient Emperors. Tzu Kao, Duke of She, A district of the Ch'u State. being about to go on a mission to the Ch'i State, asked Confucius, saying, " The mission my sovereign is sending me on is a most important one. Of course, I shall be received with all due respect, but they will not take the same interest in the matter that I shall. And as an ordinary person cannot be pushed, still less a Prince, I am in a state of great alarm. " Now you. Sir, have told me that in all under- takings great and small, Tao alone leads to a happy issue. Otherwise that, failing success, there is to be feared punishment from without, and with success, punishment from within ; while exemption in case either of success or non-success falls only to the share of those who possess the virtue required. I.e. those to whom the issue, as regards their own reward or punishment, is a matter of the completes! indifference. The term virtue, here as elsewhere unless specially notified, should be understood in the sense of ex- emplification of Tag. 46 Chiiang Tsu " Well, I am not dainty with my food ; neither am I always wanting to cool myself when hot. However, this morning I received my orders, and this evening I have been drinking iced water. I am so hot inside. Before I have put my hand to the business I am suffering punishment from within ; and if I do not succeed I am sure to suffer punishment from without. Thus I get both punishments, which is really more than I can bear. Kindly tell me what there is to be done." " There exist two sources of safety," Confucius replied. " One is Destiny : the other is Duty. A child's love for its parents is destiny. It is in- separable from the child's life. A subject's allegiance to his sovereign is duty. Beneath the canopy of heaven there is no place to which he can escape from it. These two sources of safety may be explained as follows. To serve one's parents without refer- ence to place but only to the service, is the acme of filial piety. To serve one's prince without reference to the act but only to the service, is the perfection of a subject's loyalty. To serve one's own heart so as to permit neither joy nor sorrow within, but to cultivate resignation to the inevitable, — this is the climax of Virtue. " Now a minister often finds himself in circum- stances over which he has no control. But if he simply confines himself to his work, and is utterly oblivious of self, what leisure has he for loving life or hating death ? And so you may safely go. CAP. IV.] Man Ammig Men 47 " But I have yet more to tell you. All inter- course, if personal, should be characterised by sincerity. If from a distance, it should be carried on in loyal terms. These terms will have to be transmitted by some one. Now the transmission of messages of good- or ill-will is the hardest thing possible. Messages of good-will are sure to be overdone with fine phrases ; messages of ill-will with harsh ones. In each case the result is exaggeration, and a consequent failure to carry conviction, for which the envoy suffers. Therefore it was said in the Fa-yen, Name of an ancient book. ' Confine yourself to simple statements of fact, shorn of all superfluous expression of feeling, and your risk will be small.' " In trials of skill, at first all is friendliness ; but at last it is all antagonism. Skill is pushed too far. So on festive occasions, the drinking which is in the beginning orderly enough, degenerates into riot and disorder. Festivity is pushed too far. It is in fact the same with all things : they begin with good faith and end with contempt. From small beginnings come great endings. " Speech is like wind to wave. Action is liable to divergence from its true goal. By wind, waves are easily excited. Divergence from the true goal is fraught with danger. Thus angry feelings rise up without a cause. Specious words and dishonest arguments follow, as the wild random cries of an 48 Chuang Tzii animal at the point of death. Both sides give way to passion. For where one party drives the other too much into a corner, resistance will always be provoked without apparent cause. And if the cause is not apparent, how much less will the ultimate effect be so ? " Therefore it is said in the Fa-yen, ' Neither deviate from nor travel beyond your instructions. " Travel beyond your instructions," is literally, " urge a settlement." To pass the limit is to go to excess.' "To deviate from, or to travel beyond instruc- tions, may imperil the negotiation. A settlement to be successful must be lasting. It is too late to change an evil settlement once made. " Therefore let yourself be carried along without fear, taking refuge in no alternative to preserve you from harm on either side. This is the utmost you can do. What need for considering your obligations ? Better leave all to Destiny, difficult as this may be." It is passing strange that this exposition of the , laissez-aller inaction doctrine of Tag should be placed ^ in the mouth of Confucius, who is thus made in some measure to discredit his own teachings. The com- mentators, however, see nothing anomalous in the position here assigned to the Sage. Yen Ho A philosopher from the Lu State. CAP. IV.] Man Among Men 49 was about to become tutor to the eldest son of Prince Ling of the Wei State. Accordingly he observed to Chii Poh Yu, Prime Minister of the Wei State. " Here is a man whose disposition is naturally of a low order. To let him take his own un- principled way is to endanger the State. To try to restrain him is to endanger one's personal safety. He has just wit enough to see faults in others, but not to see his own. I am consequently at a loss what to do." " A good question indeed," replied Chii Poh Yii, " You must be careful, and begin by self-reforma- tion. Outwardly you may adapt yourself, but inwardly you must keep up to your own standard. In this there are two points to be guarded against. You must not let the outward adaptation penetrate within, nor the inward standard manifest itself without. In the former case, you will fall, you will be obliterated, you will collapse, you will lie prostrate. In the latter case, you will be a sound, a name, a bogie, an uncanny thing. If he would play the child, do you play the child too. If he cast aside all sense of decorum, do you do so too. As far as he goes, do you go also. Thus you will reach him without offending him. ** Don't you know the story of the praying mantis? In its rage it stretched out its arms to prevent a chariot from passing, unaware that this was be- yond its strength, so admirable was its energy ! E 50 Chtiang Tzil Be cautious. If you are always offending others by your superiority, you will probably come to grief. " Do you not know that those who keep tigers do not venture to give them live animals as food, for fear of exciting their fury when killing the prey? Also, that whole animals are not given, for fear of exciting the tigers' fury when rending them ? The periods of hunger and repletion are carefully watched in order to prevent such out- bursts. The tiger is of a different species from man ; but the latter too is manageable if properly managed, unmanageable if excited to fury. " Those who are fond of horses surround them with various conveniences. Sometimes mosquitoes or flies trouble them ; and then, unexpectedly to the animal, a groom will brush them off, the result being that the horse breaks his bridle, and hurts his head and chest. The intention is good, but there is a want of real care for the horse. Against this you must be on your guard." A certain artisan was travelling to the Ch'i State. On reaching Ch'ii-yuan, he saw a sacred // tree, A worthless species of oak. large enough to hide an ox behind it, a hundred spans in girth, towering up ten cubits over the hill top, and carrying behind it branches, many tens of the smallest of which were of a size for boats. Crowds stood gazing at it, but our artisan took no notice, and went on his way with- CAP. IV.] Man Among Men 51 out even casting a look behind. His apprentice however gazed his fill, and when he caught up his master, said, " Ever since I have handled an adze in your service, I have never seen such a splendid piece of timber as that. How was it that you, sir, did not care to stop and look at it?" " It's not worth talking about," replied his master. " It's good for nothing. Make a boat of it, — 'twould sink. A coffin, — 'twould rot. Furni- ture,— 'twould soon break down. A door, — 'twould sweat. A pillar, — 'twould be worm-eaten. It is wood of no quality, and of no use. That is why it has attained its present age." When the artisan reached home, he dreamt that the tree appeared to him in a dream and spoke as follows : — " What is it that you compare me with ? Is it with the more elegant trees ? — The cherry-apple, the pear, the orange, the pumelo, and other fruit-bearers, as soon as their fruit ripens are stripped and treated with indignity. The great boughs are snapped off, the small ones scattered abroad. Thus do these trees by their own value injure their own lives. They cannot fulfil their allotted span of years, but perish pre- maturely in mid-career from their entanglement with the world around them. Thus it is with all things. For a long period my aim was to be useless. Many times I was in danger, but at length I succeeded, and so became useful as I am to-day. But had I then been of use, I E 2 5 2 Chiiang Tzu should not now be of the great use I am. More- over, you and I belong both to the same category of thines. Have done then with this criticism of others. Is a good-for-nothing fellow whose dangers are not yet passed a fit person to talk of a good-for- nothing tree ? " When our artisan awaked and told his dream, his apprentice said, '' If the tree aimed at useless- liess, how was it that it became a sacred tree ? " Which of course may be said to be of use. " What you don't understand," replied his master, " don't talk about. That was merely to escape from the attacks of its enemies. Had it not become sacred, how many would have wanted to Cut it down ! The means of safety adopted were different from ordinary means. In order to reach the somewhat extraordinary goal of uselessness. and to test these by ordinary canons leaves one far wide of the mark." Tzu Ch'i of Nan-poh Said to be identical with the individual mentioned at the beginning of ch. ii. was travelling on the Shang mountain when he saw a large tree which astonished him very much. A thousand chariot teams could have found shelter under its shade. " What tree is this ?" cried Tzu Ch'i. " Surely it CAP. IV.] Man A7no7ig Men 53 must have unusually fine timber." Then looking up, he saw that its branches were too crooked for rafters ; while as to the trunk he saw that its irregular grain made it valueless for coffins. He tasted a leaf, but it took the skin off his lips ; and its odour was so strong that it would make a man as it were drunk for three days together. " Ah ! " said Tzu Ch'i. " This tree is good for nothing, and that is how it has attained this size. A wise man might well follow its example." And so escape danger from his surroundings. In the State of Sung there is a place called Ching-shih, where thrive the beech, the cedar, and the mulberry. Such as are of a one-handed span or so in girth are cut down for monkey-cages. Those of two or three two-handed spans are cut down for the beams of fine houses. Those of seven or eight such spans are cut down for the solid sides of rich men's coffins. To this day, the very best kinds of wood are still reserved for the " planks of old age." Thus they do not fulfil their allotted span of years, but perish in mid-career beneath the axe. Such is the misfortune which overtakes worth. For the sacrifices to the River God, neither bulls with white cheeks, nor pigs with large snouts, nqr men suffering from piles, were allowed to be used. This had been revealed to the soothsayers, and these characteristics were consequently regarded a?; inaus^ 54 C/iULDig Tzu picious. The wise, however, would regard them as extremel}' auspicious. Readers of Do7i yuan will recollect how the master's mate had reason to share his view. There was a hunchback named Su. His jaws touched his navel. His shoulders were higher than his head. His hair knot looked up to the sky. His viscera were upside down. His buttocks were where his ribs should have been. By tailoring, or washing, he was easily able to earn his living. By sifting rice he could make enough to support a familv of ten. In all of which occupations a man would necessarily stoop. When orders came down for a conscription, the hunchback stood unconcerned among the crowd. And similarly, in matters of public works, his deformity shielded him from being emploved. On the other hand, when it came to donations of grain, the hunchback received as much as three chung, An ancient measure of uncertain capacity. and oi firewood, ten faggots. And if physical deformity was thus enough to preser\-e his body until its allotted end, how much more would not moral and mental deformity avail ! A moral and mental deviation would be still more likely to condemn a man to that neglect from his fellows which is so conducive to our real welfare. CAP. IV.] Man Among Men 55 When Confucius was in the Ch'u State, the eccentric Chieh Yli passed his door, saying, " O phoenix, O phoenix, how has thy virtue fallen ! — By thus issuing forth out of due season. unable to wait for the coming years or to go back into the past. When you might be, or might have been, of use. The idea conveyed is that Confucianism was un- suited to its age. See Lun-yii, ch. xviii. If Tao prevails on earth, prophets will fulfil their mission. If Tao does not prevail, they will but preserv^e themselves. At the present day they will but just escape. " The honours of this world are light as feathers, yet none estimate them at their true value. The misfortunes of this life are weighty as the earth itself, yet none can keep out of their reach. No more, no more, seek to influence by virtue. Beware, beware, move cautiously on ! O ferns, O ferns, wound not my steps ! Through my tortuous journey wound not my feet ! Hills sufter from the trees they produce. Fat burns by its own com- bustibility. Cinnamon trees furnish food : there- fore they are cut down. The lacquer tree is felled for use. All men know the use of useful things ; but they do not know the use of useless things," i^ 56 CHAPTER V. The Evidence of Virtue Complete. Argument : — Correspondence between inward virtue and outward influence — The virtuous man disregards externals — The possession of virtue causes oblivion of outward form — Neglect of the human — Cultiva- tion of the divine. IN the State of Lu there was a man, named Wang T'ai, who had had his toes cut off. His disciples were as numerous as those of Confucius. Ch'ang Chi One of the latter. asked Confucius, saying, "This Wang T'ai has been mutilated, yet he divides with you. Sir, the teaching of the Lu State. He neither preaches nor discusses ; yet those who go to him empty, depart full. He must teach the doctrine which does not Jind expression in words ; The doctrine of Tao. These words occur in chs. il and xliii of the Tao-Tc-Ching. See TJic RetJiains of Lao Tzii, p. 7. and although his shape is imperfect, his mind is perhaps complete. What manner of man is this ? " *' He is a prophet," replied Confucius, "whose CAP. v.] The Evidence of Virtue Complete 57 instruction I have been late in seeking. I will go and learn from him. And if I, — why not those who are not equal to me ? And I will take with me, not the State of Lu only, but the whole world." " The fellow has been mutilated," said Chang Chi, " and yet people call him Master. He must be very different from the ordinary run. But how does he use his mind in this sense ?" " Life and Death are all powerful," answered Confucius, " but they cannot affect //. The mind, or soul, which is immortal. See ch. iii. Heaven and earth may collapse, but that will remain. If this is found to be without flaw, it will not share the fate of all things. It can cause other things to change, while preserving its own consti- tution intact." '* How so ? " asked Chang Chi. " From the point of view of difference," replied Confucius, " we distinguish between the liver and the gall, between the Ch'u State and the Yiieh State. From the point of view of sameness, all things are one. Such is the position of Wang T'ai. He does not trouble about what reaches him through the senses of hearing and sight, but directs his whole mind towards the very climax of virtue. He beholds all things as though one, without observing their discrepancies. And thus the dis- crepancy of his toes is to him as would be the loss of so much mud," 58 CJmang Tzii " He devotes himself in fact to himself," said Ch'ang Chi, "and uses his wisdom to perfect his mind, until it becomes perfect. But how then is it that people make so much of him ? " His virtue being wholly, as it were, of a selfish order. ** A man," replied Confucius, " does not seek to see himself in running water, but in still water. For only what is itself still can instil stillness into others. "The grace of earth has reached only to pines and cedars ; — winter and summer alike they are green. The grace of God has reached to Yao and to Shun alone ; — the first and foremost of all crea- tion. Happily they were able to regulate their own lives and thus regulate the lives of all mankind. " By nourishment of physical courage, the sense of fear may be so eliminated that a man will, single- handed, brave a whole army. And if such a result can be achieved in search of fame, how much more by one who extends his sway over heaven and earth and influences all things ; and who, lodging within the confines of a body with its channels of sight and sound, brings his knowledge to know that all things are one, and that his soul endures for ever ! Besides, he awaits his appointed hour, and men flock to him of their own accord. He makes no effort to attract them." That men thus gather around him is the outward sign or evidence of his inward virtue complete. CAP. v.] The Evidence of Virtue Complete 59 Sh^n T'u Chia had had his toes cut off. Sub- sequently, he studied under Poh Hun Wu Jen at the same time as Tzu Chan of the Cheng State. The latter said to him, "When I leave first, do you remain awhile. When you leave first, I will remain behind." Tzu Ch'an was a model minister of the sixth century B.C. Under his guidance the people of the Cheng State became so virtuous that doors were not locked at night, nor would any one pick up lost articles left lying in the road. He was hardly likely to be ashamed of walking out with a mutilated criminal. Next day, when they were again together in the lecture-room, Tzu Ch'an said, " When I leave first, do you remain awhile. When you leave first, I will remain. I am now about to go. Will you remain or not ? I notice you show no respect to a Minister of State. Perhaps you think yourself my equal ? " " Dear me ! " replied Shen T'u Chia, *' I didn't know we had a Minister of State in the class. Perhaps you think that because you are one you should take precedence over the rest. Now I have heard that if a mirror is perfectly bright, dust and dirt will not collect on it. That if they do, it is because the mirror was not bright. He who associates for long with the wise will be without fault. Now you have been improving yourself at the feet of our Master, yet you can utter words like these. Is not the fault in you ? " "You are a fine fellow, certainly," retorted Tzu 6o Chttang Tzii Chan, " you will be emulating the virtue of Yao next. To look at you, I should say you had enough to do to attend to your own short- comings ! " A sneer at his want of toes. " Those who disguise their faults," said Shen T'u Chia, " so as not to lose their toes, are many in number. Those who do not disguise their faults, and so fail to keep them, are few. To recognise the inevitable and to quietly acquiesce in Destiny, is the achievement of the virtuous man alone. He who should put himself in front of the bull's-eye when Hou I A Chinese Tell. was shooting, would be hit. If he was not hit, it would be destiny. Those with toes who laugh at me for having no toes are many. This used to make me angry. But since I have studied under our Master, I have ceased to trouble about it. It may be that our Master has so far succeeded in purifying rne. At any rate I have been w^ith him nineteen years without being aware of the loss of ' my toes, Now you and I are engaged in studying the internal, Do you not then commit a fault by thus dragging me back to the external ? " At this Tzii Chan began to fidget, and changing countenance, begged Shcn T'u Chia to say no more. There was a man of the Lu State who had been CAP. v.] The Evidence of Virtue Complete 6i mutilated, — Shu Shan No-toes. He came walking on his heels to see Confucius ; but Confucius said, "You did not take care, and so brought this mis- fortune upon yourself. What is the use of coming to me now ? " *' In my ignorance," replied No-toes, " I made free with my body and lost my toes. But I come with something more precious than toes which I now seek to keep. There is no man, but Heaven covers him : there is no man, but Earth supports him ; — and I thought that you, sir, would be as Heaven and Earth. I little expected to hear these words from you." " I must apologise," said Confucius. " Pray walk in and let us discuss." But No-toes walked out. "There!" said Confucius to his disciples. " There is a criminal without toes who seeks to learn in order to make atonement for his previous misdeeds. And if he, how much more those who have no misdeeds for which to atone ? " No-toes went off to Lao Tzu and said, " Is Confucius a sage, or is he not ? How is it he has so many disciples ? He aims at being a subtle dialectician, not knowing that such a reputation is regarded by real sages as the fetters of a criminal." " Why do you not meet him with the continuity of life and death, the identity of can and can not!' answered Lao Tzu, "and so release him from these fetters ? " " He has been thus punished by God," replied 62 Chuang Tzu No-toes. " It would be impossible to release him." A sneer at Confucius. No-toes himself had only been punished by man. Duke Ai of the Lu State said to Confucius, " In the Wei State there is a leper, named Ai T'ai T'o. The men who live with him like him and make no effort to get rid of him. Of the women who have seen him, many have said to their parents, Rather than be another man's wife, I would be his concubine. " He never preaches at people, but puts him- self into sympathy with them. He wields no power by which he may protect men's bodies. He has at his disposal no appointments by which to gratify their hearts. He is loathsome to a degree. He sympathises, but does not instruct. His know- ledge is limited to his own State. Yet males and females alike all congregate around him. " So thinking that he must be different from ordinary men, I sent for him, and saw that he was indeed loathsome to a degree. Yet we had not been many months together ere my attention was fixed upon his conduct. A year had not elapsed ere I trusted him thoroughly ; and as my State wanted a Prime Minister, I offered the post to him. He accepted it sullenly, as if he would much rather have declined. Perhaps he didn't think me good enough for him ! At any rate, he took it ; but in a very short time he left me and went away. I grieved for him as for a lost friend, and as though CAP. v.] The Evidence of Virtue Complete 63 there were none left with whom I could rejoice. What manner of man is this ? " When I was on a mission to the Ch'u State," replied Confucius, " I saw a litter of young pigs sucking their dead mother. After a while they looked at her, and then they all left the body and went off. For their mother did not look at them any more, nor did she any more seem to be of their kind. What they loved was their mother ; not the body which contained her, but that which made the body what it was. " When a man is killed in battle, his arms are not buried with him. He has no further use for weapons. A man whose toes have been cut off does not value a present of boots. In each case the func- tion of such things is gone. "The concubines of the Son of Heaven do not cut their nails or pierce their ears. For fear of injuring their persons. He who has a marriageable daughter keeps her away from menial work. To preserve her beauty is quite enough occupation for her. How much more so for a man of perfect virtue ? Who should trouble himself only about the Internal. " Now Ai T'ai To says nothing, and is trusted. He does nothing, and is sought after. He causes a man to offer him the government of his own State, and the only fear is lest he should decline. 64 Chuang Tzu Truly his talents are perfect and his virtue without outward form ! " "What do you mean by his talents being per- fect ? " asked the Duke. " Life and Death," replied Confucius, " exist- ence and non-existence, success and non-success, poverty and wealth, virtue and vice, good and evil report, hunger and thirst, warmth and cold, — these all revolve upon the changing wheel of Destiny. Day and night they follow one upon the other, and no man can say where each one begins. There- fore they cannot be allowed to disturb the harmony of the organism, nor enter into the soul's domain. Swim however with the tide, so as not to offend others. Do this day by day without break, and live in peace with mankind. Thus you will be ready for all contingencies, and may be said to have your talents perfect." *' And virtue without outward form ; what is that ? " " In a water-level," said Confucius, " the water is in a most perfect state of repose. Let that be your model. The water remains quietly within, and does not overflow. It is from the cultivation of such harmony that virtue results. And if virtue takes no outward form, man \\\\\ not be able to keep aloof from it." Mankind will be regenerated thereby, in the same way that evenness is imparted by the aid of water to surfaces, although the water is all the time closed up and does not overflow. CAP. v.] The Evidence of Virtue Cojuplefe 65 Some days afterwards Duke Ai told Min Tzu, One of Confucius' disciples. saying, " When first I took the reins of govern- ment in hand, I thought that in caring for my people's lives I had done all my duty as a ruler. But now that I have heard what a perfect man is, I fear that I have not been succeeding, but foolishly using my body and working destruction to my State. Confucius and I are not prince and minister, but merely friends with a care for each other's moral welfare." A certain hunchback, named Wu Ch'un, whose heels did not touch the ground, had the ear of Duke Ling of Wei. The Duke took a great fancy to him ; and as for well-formed men, he thought their necks were too short. Another man, with a goitre as big as a large jar, had the ear of Duke Huan of Ch'i. The Duke took a great fancy to him ; and as for well-formed men, he thought their necks were too thin. Thus it is that virtue should prevail and outward form be forgotten. But mankind forgets not that which is to be forgotten, forgetting that which is not to be forgotten. This is forgetfulness indeed ! And thus with the truly wise, wisdom is a curse, sincerity like glue, virtue only a means to acquire, and skill nothing more than a commercial capacity. For the truly wise make no plans, and therefore require no wisdom. They do not separate, and therefore require no glue. They want nothing, and 66 Chuang Tzii therefore need no virtue. They sell nothing, and therefore are not in want of a commercial capacity. These four qualifications are bestowed upon them by God and serve as heavenly food to them. And those who thus feed upon the divine have little need for the human. They wear the forms of men, without human passions. Because they wear the forms of men, they associate with men. Because they have not human passions, positives and nega- tives find in them no place. Infinitesimal indeed is that which makes them man : infinitely great is that which makes them divine ! Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu, " Are there then men who have no passions ? " Chuang Tzu replied, " Certainly." "But if a man has no passions," argued Hui Tzu, "what is it that makes him a man ? " " Tao," replied Chuang Tzu, "gives him his expression, and God gives him his form. How should he not be a man ? " " If then he is a man," said Hui Tzu, " how can he be without passions ? " " What you mean by passions," answered Chuang Tzu, " is not what I mean. By a man without passions I mean one who does not permit good and evil to disturb his internal economy, but rather falls in with whatever happens, as a matter of course, and does not add to the sum of his mortality." The play of passion would tend to create conditions which otherwise would not exist. CAP. v.] The Evidejice of Virtue Complete 67 " But whence is man to get his body," asked Hui Tzii, '* if there is to be no adding to the sum of mortality?" This is of course a gibe. Hui Tzu purposely takes Chuanor Tzii's words a double entente. " Tao gives him his expression," said Chuang Tzu, ** and God gives him his form. He does not permit good and evil to disturb his internal economy. But now you are devoting your intelli- gence to externals, and wearing out your mental powers. You prop yourself against a tree and mutter, or lean over a table with half-closed eyes. God has made you a shapely sight, Yet your only thought is the hard and white.'' Chang Tzii puts his last sentence into doggerel, the more effectively to turn the tables against Hui Tzii, whose paradoxical theories he is never tired of ridiculing. See ch. ii. F 2 68 CHAPTER VI. The Great Supreme. A rgume ft f:— The human and the divine— The pure men of old— Their qualifications— Their self-abstraction— All things as one— The known and the unknown— Life a boon— Death a transition— Life eternal open to all — The way thither — Illustrations. HE who knows what God is, and who knows what Man is, has attained. Knowing what God is, he knows that he himself proceeded there- from. Knowing what Man is, he rests in the knowledge of the known, waiting for the know- ledge of the unknown. Working out one's allotted span, and not perishing in mid career, — this is the fulness of knowledge. God is a principle which exists by virtue of its own intrinsicality, and operates spontaneously, without self-manifestation. It is in the human that the divine finds expression. Man emanates from God, and should therefore be on earth, in this brief life of ours, what God is for all eternity in the universe. Herein, however, there is a flaw. Knowledge is dependent upon fulfilment. And as this fulfilment is uncertain, how can it be known that my divine is not really human, my human really divine ? Not until death lifts the veil can we truly know CAP. VI.] The Great Supreme 69 that this life is bounded at each end by an immor- tality to which the soul finally reverts. " Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate, All but the page prescribed, their present state." We must have pure 7ne7t, and then only can we have pure knowledge. " Pure " must be understood in the sense of tran- scendent. But what is a pure man ? — The pure men of old acted without calculation, not seeking to secure results. They laid no plans. Therefore, failing, they had no cause for regret ; succeeding, no cause for congratulation. And thus they could scale heights without fear ; enter water without becom- ing wet ; fire, without feeling hot. So far had v/ their wisdom advanced towards Tao. " The world-spirit is a good swimmer, and storms and waves cannot drown him." — Emerson. The pure men of old slept without dreams, and waked without anxiety. They ate without dis- crimination, breathing deep breaths. For pure men draw breath from their uttermost depths ; the vulgar only from their throats. " Uttermost depths" is literally " heels," but all the best commentators take the sentence to mean that pure men breathe with their whole being, and not as it were superficially, from the throat only. This passage is probably responsible for the trick of taking deep inhalations of morning air, practised 70 Chuang Tzu (not without scientific foundation) by the followers of the debased Taoism of modern times. Other tricks for prolonging life, such as swallowing the saliva three times in every two hours, etc., are more open to adverse criticism. See the T'ai-Hsi-Ching. Out of the crooked, words are retched up like vomit. If men's passions are deep, their divinity is shallow. The pure men of old did not know what it was to love life or to hate death. They did not rejoice in birth, nor strive to put off dissolution. Quickly come, and quickly go ; — no more. They did not forget whence it was they had sprung, neither did they seek to hasten their return thither. Cheerfully they played their allotted parts, waiting patiently for the end. This is what is called not to lead the heart astray from Tao, By admitting play of passion in the sense con- demned in ch. V. which would hinder the mind from resting quietly in the knowledge of the known. nor to let the human seek to supplement the divine. But to wait patiently for the knowledge of the unknown. And this is what is meant by a pure man. Such men are in mind absolutely free ; in de- meanour, grave ; in expression, cheerful. If it is freezing cold, it seems to them like autumn ; if blazing hot, like spring. Their passions occur like the four seasons. Each at its appointed time. CAP. VI.] The Great Supreme 7 1 They are in harmony with all creation, and none know the limit thereof. These last few words occur in the Tao-Te-Ching, ch. Iviii. See The Remains of Lao Tzu, p. 40. Also, with a variation, in ch. xxii of this work. And so it is that a perfect man can destroy a king- dom and yet not lose the hearts of the people, while the benefits he hands down to ten thousand generations do not proceed from love of his fellow- man. Whatever he does is spontaneous, and therefore natural, and therefore in accordance with right. He who delights in man, is himself not a perfect man. His affection is not true charity. Charity is the universal love of all creation which admits of no particular manifestations. Depending upon opportunity, he has not true worth. True worth is independent of circumstances. It is a quality which is always unconsciously operating for good, and needs no opportunity to call it into existence. He who is not conversant with both good and ^ evil is not a superior man. The good, to practise ; the evil, to avoid. He who disregards his reputation is not what a man should be. As a mere social unit. 72 Chttang Tzu \ He who is not absolutely oblivious of his own existence can never be a ruler of men. Thus Hu Pu Hsieh, Wu Kuang, Poh I, Shu Ch'i, Chi Tzii Hsii Yii, Chi To, and Shen T'u Ti, were the servants of rulers, and did the behests of others, not their own. A list of ancient worthies whose careers had been more or less unsuccessful. Of the first and second little is known, except that the ears of the latter were seven inches lonof. The third and fourth were brothers and are types of moral purity. Each refused the throne of their State, because each considered his brother more entitled thereto. Finally, they died of starvation on the mountains rather than submit to a change of the Imperial dynasty. More will be heard of these two later on. The fifth smeared his body all over with lacquer, so that no one should come near him. Of the sixth, nothing is recorded ; and of the seventh, only that he tied a stone around his neck and jumped into a river. See the Fragmenta at the end of the works of Shih Tzii. The pure men of old did their duty to their neighbours, but did not associate with them. Among them, but not of them. They behaved as though wanting in themselves, but without flattering others. Naturally rectan- gular, they were not uncompromisingly hard, They manifested their independence without going to CAP. VI.] The Great Supreme 73 extremes. They appeared to smile as if pleased, when the expression was only a natural response. As required by the exigencies of society. Their outward semblance derived its fascination from the store of goodness within. They seemed to be of the world around them, while proudly treading beyond its limits. They seemed to desire silence, while in truth they had dispensed with language. See ch. v. They saw in penal laws a trunk ; A natural basis of government, in social ceremonies, wings ; To aid man's progress through life. in wisdom, a useful accessory ; in morality, a guide. For them penal laws meant a merciful administra- tion ; social ceremonies, a passport through the world ; wisdom, an excuse for doing what they could not help ; and morality, walking like others upon the path. Instead of at random across country. At such an early date was uniformity a characteristic of the Chinese people. And thus all men praised them for the worthy lives they led. For what they cared for could be reduced to one, and what they did not care for to one also. That which was one was one, and that which was not 74 Chuang Tzu ONE was likewise one. In that which was one, they were of God ; in that w^hich w^as not one, they w^ere of Man. And so between the human and the divine no conflict ensued. This was to be a pure man. Life and Death belono^ to Destiny. Their sequence, Hke day and night, is of God, beyond the interference of man, an inevitable law. A man looks upon God as upon his father, and J loves him in like measure. Shall he then not love that which is greater than God ? ►S"^:. Tao. A man looks upon a ruler of men as upon some one better than himself, for whom he would sacrifice his life. Shall he not then do so for the Supreme Ruler of Creation ? Sc. Tao, the omnipresent, omnipotent Principle which invests even God himself with the power and attributes of divinity. The careful student of pure Taoism will find how- ever that the distinction between Tao and God is sometimes so subtle as altogether to elude his intelligence. When the pond dries up, and the fishes are left upon dry ground, to moisten them with the breath or to damp them with spittle is not to be compared / with leaving them in the first instance in their native rivers and lakes. And better than praising Yao and blaming Chieh would be leaving them both and attending to the development of Tao. CAP. VI.] The Great Supreme 75 Tao gives me this form, this toil in manhood, this repose in old age, this rest in death. And surely that which is such a kind arbiter of my life is the best arbiter of my death. A boat may be hidden in a creek, or in a bog, safe enough. The text has "or a mountain in a bog," which taken with the context seems to me to be nonsense. Yet all the commentators labour to explain away the difficulty, instead of making the obvious change of "mountain" into "boat," to which change the forms of the two Chinese characters readily lend them- selves. In over two thousand years of literary activity, it seems but rarely to have occurred to the Chinese that a texius receptus could contain a copyist's slip. But at midnight a strong man may come and carry away the boat on his back. The dull of vision do not perceive that however you conceal things, small ones in larger ones, there will always be a chance of losing them. The boat is figurative of our mortal coil which cannot be hidden from decay. But if you conceal the w^hole universe in the whole universe, there will be no place left wherein it may be lost. The laws of matter make this to be so. To have attained to the human form must be always a source of joy. And then, to undergo countless transitions, with only the infinite to look forward to, — what incomparable bliss is that ! 76 Chtiang Tzu Therefore it is that the truly wise rejoice in that which can never be lost, but endures alway. The soul which as Tao, is commensurate only with time and space. For if we can accept early death, old age, a J beginning, and an end, As inseparable from Destiny, — already a step in the right direction. why not that which informs all creation and is of all phenomena the Ultimate Cause ? The long chain of proximate causes reaches finality in Tag. Here we have the complete answer to such queries as that propounded to the Umbra by the . Penumbra at the close of ch. ii. Tao has its laws, and its evidences. It is devoid both of action and of form. It may be transmitted, but cannot be received. So that the receiver can say he has it. It may be obtained, but cannot be seen. Before heaven and earth were. Tag was. It has existed without change from all time. Spiritual beings drew their spirituality therefrom, w^hile the universe became what we can see it now. To Tag, the zenith is not high, nor the nadir low ; no point in time is long ago, nor by lapse of ages has it grown old. To the infinite all terms and conditions are relative. Hsi Wei obtained Tao, and so set the universe in order. A legendary ruler of remote antiquity. In what CAP. VI.] The Great Supre^ne 77 sense he set the universe In order has not been authentically handed down. Fu Hsi obtained it, and was able to establish eternal principles. The first in the received list of Chinese sovereigns (b.c. 2852). This monarch is said to have invented the art of writing and to have taught his people to cook. The Great Bear obtained it, and has never erred from its course. The sun and moon obtained it, and have never ceased to revolve. K'an P'i ob- tained it, and established the K'un-lun mountains. The divinity of the sacred mountains here men- tioned. P'ing I obtained it, and rules over the streams. Chien Wu obtained it, and dwells on Mount T'ai. See ch. i. The Yellow Emperor obtained it, and soared upon the clouds to heaven. The most famous of China's legendary rulers (b.c. 2697). He is said among other things to have invented wheeled vehicles, and generally to have given a start to the civilisation of his people. Some of Lao Tzu's sayings have been attributed to him ; and by some he has been regarded as the first promulgator of Tao. Chuan Hsu obtained it, and dwells in the Dark Palace. A legendary ruler {b.c. 2513), of whose Dark Palace nothing is known. 78 Chuang Tzit Yii Ch'iang obtained it, and fixed himself at the North Pole. As its presiding genius. Hsi Wang Mu obtained it, and settled at Shao Kuang ; since when, no one knows ; until when, no one knows either. A lady, — or a place, for accounts vary, — around whose name innumerable legends have gathered. P eng Tsu obtained it, and lived from the time of Shun until the time of the Five Princes. From 2255 to the 7th century B.C. See ch. i. Fu Yiieh obtained it, and as the Minister of Wu Ting A monarch of the Yin dynasty, B.C. 1324. got the empire under his control. And now, charioted upon one constellation and drawn by another, he has been enrolled among the stars of heaven. Nan Po Tzu K'uei Probably the individual mentioned in chs. ii. and iv. said to Nu Yii, By one authority said to be a woman. " You are old. Sir, and yet your countenance is like that of a child. How is this?" Nil Yii replied, " I have learnt Tao." " Could I get Tao by studying it ? " asked the other. CAP. VI.] The Great Supreme yg " I fear not," said Nu Yii. " You are not the sort of man. There was Pu Liang I. He had all the qualifications of a sage, but not Tao. Now I had Tao, though none of the qualifications. But do you imagine that much as I wished it I was able to teach Tag to him so that he should be a perfect sage ? Had it been so, then to teach Tao to one who has the qualifications of a sage would be an easy matter. No, Sir. I imparted as though with- holding ; and in three days, for him, this sublunary state had ceased to exist. With all its paltry distinctions of sovereign and subject, high and low, good and bad, etc. When he had attained to this, I withheld again ; and in seven days more, for him, the external world had ceased to be. And so again for another nine days, when he became unconscious of his own existence. He became first etherealised, next pos- sessed of perfect wisdom, then without past or present, and finally able to enter there where life [^ and death are no more, — where killing does not take away life, nor does prolongation of life add to the duration of existence. In Tag life and death are One. In that state, he is ever in accord with the exigen- cies of his environment ; Literally, there is no sense in which he is not accompanying or meeting, destroying or construct- ing. That is, in spite of his spiritual condition as above described, he can still adapt himself naturally V 8o Chitang Tzii to life among his fellow-men. The retirement of a hermit is by no means necessary to the perfection of the pure man. and this is to be Battered but 7tot Bruised. And he who can be thus battered but not bruised is on the way to perfection." "And how did you manage to get hold of all this ? " asked Nan Po Tzu K'uei. " I got it from books," replied Nii Yu ; " and the books got it from learning, and learning from investigation, and investigation from co-ordination, Of eye and mind. and co-ordination from application, and application from desire to know, and desire to know from the unknown, and the unknown from the great void, and the great void from infinity ! " Four men were conversing together, when the following resolution was suggested : — "Whosoever can make Inaction the head, Life the backbone, and Death the tail, of his existence, — that man shall be admitted to friendship with us." The four looked at each other and smiled ; and tacitly accepting the conditions, became friends forthwith. By-and-by, one of them, named Tzu Yu, fell ill, and another, Tzu Ssu, went to see him. " Verily God is great ! " said the sick man. " See how he has doubled me up. My back is so hunched that my viscera are at the top of my body. My cheeks are level with my navel. My shoulders are higher than my neck. My hair grows up towards the sky. CAP. VI.] The Great Sitpreme 8i The whole economy of my organism is deranged. Nevertheless, my mental equilibrimn is not dis- turbed." So saying, he dragged himself painfully to a well, where he could see himself, and con- tinued, "Alas, that God should have doubled me up like this ! " '' Are you afraid ? " asked Tzu Ssu. " I am not," replied Tzu Yti. ** What have I to fear ? Ere long I shall be decomposed. My left shoulder will become a cock, and I shall herald the approach of morn. My right shoulder will become a cross-bow, and I shall be able to get broiled duck. My buttocks will become wheels ; and with my soul for a horse, I shall be able to ride in my own chariot. I obtained life because it was my time : I am now parting with it in accordance with the same law. Content with the natural sequence of these states, joy and sorrow touch me not. I am simply, as the ancients expressed it, hanging in the air, unable to cut myself down, bound with the trammels of material existence. But man has ever given way before God : why, then, should I be afraid ? " "What comes from God to us, returns from us to God." — Plato. By-and-by, another of the four, named Tzu Lai, fell ill, and lay gasping for breath, w^hile his family stood weeping around. The fourth friend, Tzu Li, went to see him. '* Chut ! " cried he to the wife and children ; " begone 1 you balk his decomposi- tion." Then, leaning against the door, he said. 82 Chuang Tzii " Verily, God is great ! I wonder what he will make of you now. I wonder whither you will be sent. Do you think he will make you into a rat's liver The Chinese believe that a rat has no liver. or into the shoulders of a snake ? " " A son," answered Tzu Lai, " must go whither- soever his parents bid him. Nature is no other than a man's parents. The term " Nature " stands here as a renderingr of Yin and Yang, the Positive and Negative Principles of Chinese cosmogony, from whose interaction the visible universe results. If she bid me die quickly, and I demur, then I am an uniilial son. She can do me no wrong. Tao gives me this form, this toil in manhood, this repose in old age, this rest in death. And surely that which is such a kind arbiter of my life is the best arbiter of my death. " Suppose that the boiling metal in a smelting- pot were to bubble up and say, ' Make of me an Excalibur;' I think the caster would reject that metal as uncanny. And if a sinner like myself were to say to God, ' Make of me a man, make of me a man;' I think he too would reject me as uncanny. The universe is the smelting-pot, and God is the caster. I shall go whithersoever I am sent, to wake unconscious of the past, as a man wakes from a dreamless sleep." Tzu Sang Hu, Meng Tzu Fan, and Tzu Ch'in CAP. VI.] The Great Supreme 83 Chang, were conversing together, when it was asked, " Who can be, and yet not be ? Implying the absence of all consciousness. Who can do, and yet not do ? By virtue of inaction. Who can mount to heaven, and roaming through the clouds, pass beyond the limits of space, obli- vious of existence, for ever and ever without end ? " The three looked at each other and smiled ; and as neither had any misgivings, they became friends accordingly. Shortly afterwards Tzu Sang Hu died ; where- upon Confucius sent Tzu Kung One of his chief disciples. to take part in the mourning. But Tzii Kung found that one had composed a song which the other was accompanying on the lute, Strictly speaking, a kind of zitha, played with two hammers. as follows : — Ah ! Wilt thou come back to us, Sang Hu ? Ah ! Wilt thou come back to us, Sang Hu ? Thou hast already returned to thy God, While we still remain here as men, — alas ! Tzu Kung hurried in and said, " How can you sing alongside of a corpse ? Is this decorum ? " The two men looked at each other and laughed, G 2 84 Chuang Tzil saying, " What should this man know of decorum indeed ? " Not the outward decorum of the body, but the inward decorum of the heart. Tzu Kung went back and told Confucius, asking him, " What manner of men are these ? Their object is nothingness and a separation from their corporeal frames. Various commentators give various renderings of this sentence, — mostly forced. They can sit near a corpse and yet sing, unmoved. There is no class for such. What are they ?" " These men," replied Confucius, " travel beyond the rule of life. I travel within it. Consequently, our paths do not meet ; and I was wrong in send- you to mourn. They consider themselves as one with God, recognising no distinctions between human and divine. They look on life as a huge tumour from which death sets them free. All the same they know not where they were before birth, nor where they will be after death. Though admitting different elements, they take their stand upon the unity of all things. They ignore their passions. They take no count of their ears and eyes. Backwards and forwards through all eternity, they do not admit a beginning or end. They stroll beyond the dust and dirt of mortality, to wander in the realms of inaction. How should such men trouble themselves with the conventionalities of this world, or care what people may think of them ? " CAP. VI.] The Great Supreme 85 " But if such is the case," said Tzu Kung, " why should we stick to the rule ? " " Heaven has condemned me to this," replied Confucius. " Nevertheless, you and I may perhaps escape from it." " By what method ? " asked Tzu Kung. " Fishes," replied Confucius, " are born in water. Man is born in Tag. If fishes get ponds to live in, they thrive. If man gets Tag to live in, he may live his life in peace. Without reference to the outward ceremonial of this world. Hence the saying, ' All that a fish wants is water ; all that a man wants is Tag.' '^ It is of course by a literary coup de madn that Confucius is here and elsewhere made to stand sponsor to the Tao of the rival school. " May I ask," said Tzu Kung, '* about divine men ? " Divine men," replied Confucius, " are divine to man, but ordinary to God. Hence the saying that the meanest being in heaven would be the best on earth ; and the best on earth, the meanest in heaven." " Man is a kind of very minute heaven. God is the grand man." — Swedenborg. Yen Hui said to Confucius, " When M^ng Sun Ts'ai's mother died, he wept, but without snivelling; Which the Chinese regard as the test of real sorrow. 86 Chuang Tzu he grieved but his grief was not heartfelt ; he wore mourning but without howling. Yet although wanting in these three points, he is considered the best mourner in the State of Lu. Surely this is the name and not the reality. I am astonished at it." '' Meng Sun," said Confucius, " did all that was required. He has made an advance towards wisdom. Towards Tao, wherein there is no weeping nor gnashing of teeth. He could not do less ; Than mourn outwardly, for fear of committing a breach of social etiquette, in harmony if not in accordance with which the true Sage passes his life. while all the time actually doing less. As seen from the absence of those signs which prove inward grief. ** Meng Sun knows not whence we come nor whither we go. He knows not whether the end will come early or late. Passing into life as a man, he quietly awaits his passage into the unknown. What should the dead know of the living, or the living know of the dead ? Even you and I may be in a dream from which we have not yet awaked. *' Then again, he adapts himself physically, To the ceremonial of the body. while avoiding injury to his higher self. Keeping his soul free from the disturbance of passion. CAP. VI.] The Great Supreme 87 He regards a dying man simply as one who is going home. He sees others weep, and he naturally weeps too. " Besides, a man's personality is something of which he is subjectively conscious. It is impos- sible for him to say if he is really that which he is conscious of being. You dream you are a bird, and soar to heaven. You dream you are a fish, and dive into the ocean's depths. And you cannot tell whether the man now speaking is awake or in a dream. "A pleasurable sensation precedes the smile it evokes. The smile itself is not dependent upon a reminding nudge, And just so was Meng Sun's outward expression of grief, — spontaneous, as being in harmony with his surroundings. Resign yourself, To your mortal environment, unconscious of all changes, Of life into death, etc. and you shall enter into the pure, the divine, the One." I Erh Tzu went to see Hsii Yu, ^' The latter asked him, saying, " How has Yao benefited you?" " He bade me," replied the former, " practise charity and do my duty, and distinguish clearly between right and wrong." " Then what do you want here ? " said Hsii Yu. 88 Chtiang Tzii " If Yao has already branded you with charity and duty, and cut off your nose with right and wrong, what do you do in this free-and-easy, care- for-nobody, topsy-turvy neighbourhood ? " Of Tao. " Nevertheless," replied I Erh Tzu, " I should like to be on its confines." '' If a man has lost his eyes," retorted Hsii Yu, " it is impossible for him to join in the apprecia- tion of beauty. A man with a film over his eyes cannot tell a blue sacrificial robe from a yellow one. "Wu Chuang's disregard of her beauty," an- swered I Erh Tzu, " Chii Liang's disregard of his strength, the Yellow Emperor's abandonment of wisdom, — all these were brought about by a pro- cess of filing and hammering. And how do you know but that God would rid me of my brands, and give me a new nose, and make me fit to become a disciple of yourself?" " Ah ! " replied Hsii Yu, " that cannot be known. But I will just give you an outline. The Master I serve succours all things, and does not account it duty. He continues his blessings through count- less generations, and does not account it charity. Dating back to the remotest antiquity, he does not account himself old. Covering heaven, supporting earth, and fashioning the various forms of things, he does not account himself skilled. He it is whom you should seek." And he is Tag. CAP. VI.] The Great Supreme 89 " I am getting on," observed Yen Hui to Confucius. The most famous of all the disciples of Confucius, admitted by the latter to have been as near per- fection as possible. " How SO? " asked the latter. " I have got rid of charity and duty," replied the former. " Very good," replied Confucius, '' but not perfect." Another day Yen Hui met Confucius and said, ** I am getting on." " How so ? " asked Confucius. " I have got rid of ceremonial and music," answered Yen Hui. " Very good," said Confucius, " but not perfect." On a third occasion Yen Hui met Confucius and said, " I am getting on." " How so?" asked the Sage. " I have got rid of everything," replied Yen Hui. " Got rid of everything! " said Confucius eagerly. " What do you mean by that? " " I have freed myself from my body," answered Yen Hui. "I have discarded my reasoning powers. And by thus getting rid of body and mind, I have become One with the Infinite. This is what I mean by getting rid of everything." "■ If you have become One," cried Confucius, " there can be no room for bias. If you have passed into space, you are indeed without begin- 90 Chiiang TzU ning or end. And if you have really attained to this, I trust to be allowed to follow in your steps." Tzu Yii and Tzu Sang were friends. Once when it had rained for ten days, Tzu Yii said, " Tzu Sang is dangerously ill." So he packed up some food and went to see him. In accordance with the exigencies of mortality. How Tzu Yii knew that his friend was ill is not clear. An attempt has been made by one com- mentator on the basis of animal magnetism, in which the Chinese have believed for centuries. Arriving at the door, he heard something between singing and lamentation, accompanied with the sound of music, as follows : — " O father ! O mother ! O Heaven ! O Man 1" These words seemed to be uttered with a great effort ; whereupon Tzu Yii went in and asked what it all meant. " I was trying to think who could have brought me to this extreme," replied Tzii Sang, " but I could not guess. My father and mother would hardly wish me to be poor. Heaven covers all equally. Earth supports all equally. How can they make me in particular poor ? I was seeking to know who it was, but without success. Surely then I am brought to this extreme by Destiny T " The word Fate, or Destiny, expresses the sense of mankind in all ages — that the laws of the world do not always befriend, but often hurt and crush us." — Emerson. 91 CHAPTER VII. How TO Govern. Argument : — Princes should reign, not rule — Rulers find their standards of right in themselves — They thus coerce their people into obeying artificial laws, instead of leaving them to obey natural laws — By action they accomplish nothing — By inaction there is nothing which they would not accomplish — Individuals think they know what the empire wants — In reality it is the empire itself which know best — Illustrations. YEH CH'UEH asked Wang I See ch. ii. four questions, none of which he could answer. Thereat the former was greatly delighted, For now he discovered that iofnorance is true know- ledge : — an explanation which I adopt only for want of a better. and went off and told P'u I Tzu. Of whom nothing definite is known. *' Have you only just found that out ? " said P'u I Tzu. " The Emperor Shun was not equal to T'ai Huang. A legendary ruler. For Shun, see ch. i. Shun was all for charity in his zeal for mankind ; but although he succeeded in government, he him- self never rose above the level of artificiality. Now 92 Chtiang Tzil T'ai Huang was peaceful when asleep and Inactive when awake. At one time he would think himself a horse ; at another, an ox. So effectually had he closed all channels leading to consciousness of self His wisdom was substantial and above suspicion. His virtue was genuine indeed. And yet he never sank to the level of artificiality." He was a monarch after the pattern of Tao. Chien Wu meeting the eccentric Chieh Yii, the latter enquired, saying, "What did Jih Chung Shih teach you ? " Of the last nothing is known. The first two have been already mentioned in chs. i. and vi. " He taught me," replied Chien Wu, " about the laws and regulations which princes evolve, and which he said none would venture not to hear and obey." "That is a false teaching indeed," replied Chieh Yii. "To attempt to govern mankind thus, — as well try to wade through the sea, to hew a passage through a river, or make a mosquito fly away with a mountain ! " The government of the truly wise man has no concern with externals. He first perfects himself, and then by virtue thereof he is enabled to accom- plish what he wants. Passively, without effort of any kind. "The bird flies high to avoid snare and dart. CAP. VII.] How to Govern 93 The mouse burrows down below the hill to avoid being smoked or cut out of its nest. Is your wit below that of these two creatures ? " That you should be unable to devise means of avoiding the artificial restraints of princes. Better than coercing into goodness is letting men be good of their own accord. T'ien K^n Of whom nothing is known. was travelling on the south of the Yin mountain. He had reached the river Liao when he met a certain Sage to whom he said, " I beg to ask about the government of the empire." "Begone!" cried the Sage. "You are a low fellow, and your question is ill timed. God has just turned me out a man. That is enough for me. Borne on light pinions I can soar beyond the car- dinal points, to the land of nowhere, in the domain of nothingness. And you come to worry me with government of the empire ! " But T'ien K^n enquired a second time, and the Sage replied, " Resolve your mental energy into abstraction, your physical energy into inaction. Allow yourself to fall in with the natural order of phenomena, without admitting the element of self, — and the empire will be governed." By virtue of natural laws which lead, without man's interference,, to the end desired. Yang Tzu Chii went to see Lao Tzu, and said, " Suppose a man were ardent and courageous, 94 Clmang Tzii acquainted with the order and principles of things, and untiring in the pursuit of Tag — would he be accounted a wise ruler ? " " From the point of view of a truly wise man," replied Lao Tzu, " such a one would be a mere handicraftsman, wearing out body and mind alike. The tiger and the pard suffer from the beauty of their skins. The cleverness of the monkey, the tractability of the ox, bring them both to the tether. It is not on such grounds that a ruler may be accounted wise." " But in what, then," cried Yang Tzu Chli, " does the government of a wise man consist ? " " The goodness of a wise ruler," answered Lao Tzu, " covers the whole empire, yet he himself seems to know it not. It influences all creation, yet none is conscious thereof. It appears under countless forms, bringing joy to all things. It is based upon the baseless, and travels through the realms of Nowhere." The operation of true government is invisible to the eye of man. In the State of Cheng there was a wonderful magician, named Chi Han. He knew all about birth and death, gain and loss, misfortune and happiness, long life and short life, — predicting events to a day with supernatural accuracy. The people of Cheng used to flee at his approach ; but Lieh Tzu See ch. i. CAP. VII.] How to Govern 95 went to see him, and became so infatuated that on his return he said to Hu Tzu, Who appears to have been his tutor. " I used to look upon your Tag as perfect. Now I know something more perfect still." " So far," replied Hu Tzu, " I have only taught you the ornamentals, not the essentials, of Tag ; and yet you think you know all about it. Without cocks in your poultry-yard, what sort of eggs do the hens lay ? If you go about trying to force Tag down people's throats, you will be simply exposing yourself. Bring your friend with you, and let me show myself to him." So next day Lieh Tzu went with Chi Han to see Hu Tzu, and when they came out Chi Han said, "Alas! your teacher is doomed. He cannot live. I hardly give him ten days. I am astonished at him. He is but wet ashes." And cannot burn much longer. Lieh Tzu went in and wept bitterly, and told Hu Tzu ; but the latter said, " I showed myself to him just now as the earth shows us its out- ward form, motionless and still, while production is all the time going on. I merely prevented him from seeing my pent-up energy Of Tag. within. Bring him again." Next day the interview took place as before ; but as they were leaving Chi Han said to Lieh Tzu, " It is lucky for your teacher that he met me. He 96 Chnang Tzil is better. He will recover. I saw he had recupe- rative power." Lieh Tzu went in and told Hu Tzu ; w^hereupon the latter replied, " I showed myself to him just now as heaven shows itself in all its dispassionate grandeur, letting a little energy run out of my heels. He was thus able to detect that I had some. Bring him here again." Next day a third interview took place, and as they were leaving, Chi Han said to Lieh Tzu, " Your teacher is never one day like another. I can tell nothing from his physiognomy. Get him to be regular, and I will then examine him again." This being repeated to Hu Tzu as before, the latter said, " I showed myself to him just now in a state of harmonious equilibrium. Where the whale disports itself, — is the abyss. Where water is at rest, — is the abyss. Where water is in motion, — is the abyss. The abyss has nine names. These are three of them." Alluding to three phases of Tao as manifested at the three interviews above described, Tao being the abyss. Next day the two went once more to see Hu Tzu ; but Chi Han was unable to stand still, and in his confusion turned and fled. " Pursue him ! " cried Hu Tzu ; whereupon Lieh Tzu ran after him, but could not overtake him, so he returned and told Hu Tzu that the fugitive had disappeared. " I showed myself to him just now/' said Hu Tzu, CAP. VII.] How to Govern 97 " as Tao appeared before time was. I was to him as a great blank, existing of itself. He knew not who I was. His face fell. He became confused. And so he fled." Upon this Lieh Tzu stood convinced that he had not yet acquired any real knowledge, and at once set to work in earnest, passing three years without leaving the house. He helped his wife to cook the family dinner, and fed his pigs just like human beings. He discarded the artificial and reverted to the natural. He became merely a shape. Amidst confusion. Of this material world. he was unconfounded. And so he continued to the end. By Inaction, fame comes as the spirits of the dead come to the boy who impersonates the corpse. See ch. i. In the old funeral rites of China, a boy was made to sit speechless and motionless as a corpse, for the reason assigned in the text. By Inaction, one can become the centre of thought, the focus of responsibility, the arbiter of wisdom. Full allowance must be made for others, while remaining unmoved oneself. There must be a thorough compliance with divine principles, with- out any manifestation thereof.. Non mihi res, sed me rebus, subjungere conar. All of which may be summed up in the one word passivity. For the perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing : it refuses nothing. H 98 Chua7ig Tzii It receives, but does not keep. And thus he can triumph over matter, without injury to himself. Without the wear and tear suffered by those who allow their activities free play. The ruler of the southern sea was called Shu. The ruler of the northern sea was called Hu. The ruler of the central zone was called Hun Tun. This term is generally used to denote the condition of matter before separation and subdivision into the phenomena of the visible universe. Shu and Hu often met on Hun Tun's territory, and being always well treated by him, determined to repay his kindness. They said, "All men have seven holes, — for seeing, hearing, eating, and breathing. Hun Tun alone has none. We will bore some for him." So every day they bored one hole ; but on the seventh day Hun Tun died: Illustrating the perils of action. "The empire," says Lao Tzii, " is a divine trust, and may not be ruled. He who rules, ruins. He who holds by force, loses." " Men's actions," says Emerson, " are too strong for them." With this chapter Chuang Tzii completes the out- line of his system. The remaining chapters are either supplementary to the preceding seven, or independent essays upon cognate subjects. 99 CHAPTER VIII. Joined Toes. Argument : — Virtues should be natural, not artificial; passive not active. [Chs. viii to xiii inclusive are illustrative of, or supplementary to, ch. vii.] JOINED toes and extra fingers are an addi- tion to nature, though, functionally speaking, superfluous. Wens and tumours are an addition to the bodily form, though, as far as nature is con- cerned, superfluous. And similarly, to include charity and duty to one's neighbour among the functions of man's organism, is not true Tao. The whole of this chapter is a violent tirade against the leading doctrines of Confucianism. For just as joined toes are but useless lumps of flesh, and extra fingers but useless excrescences, so are any artificial additions to our internal economy but harmful adjuncts to real charity and duty to one's neighbour. Which are the outcome of Tao. and are moreover prejudicial to the right use of intelligence. People with extra keenness of vision muddle themselves over the five colours, exaggerate the value of shades, and of distinctions of greens H 2 100 Chtiang Tzu and yellows for sacrificial robes. Of such was Li Chu. Who could see a pin's point at a distance of i,ooo li. He is mentioned by Mencius. People with extra keenness of hearing muddle themselves over the five notes, exaggerate the tonic differences of the six pitch-pipes, and the various timbres of metal, stone, silk, and bamboo, of the Huang-chimg, and of the Ta-lil. Of such was Shih K'uang. The blind musician mentioned in ch. ii. The Huang -chung and the Ta-lil were two of the twelve bamboo tubes, or pitch - pipes, on which ancient Chinese music was based. Six were male or positive, and six female or negative. Hence they are spoken of collectively as six. People who graft on charity, force themselves to display this virtue in order to gain reputation and to enjoy the applause of the world for that which is of no account. Of such were Tseng and Shih. Tseng Shen, a famous disciple of Confucius, and Shih Yu, both noted for their high moral characters. People who refine in argument do but pile up \ tiles or knot ropes in their maunderings over the hard and white, the like and the unlike, wearing themselves out over mere useless terms. Of such were Yang and Mih. Yang Chu, a philosopher of the fourth century B.C., whose "selfish" system was condemned by Mencius; and Mih Tzu, already mentioned in ch. ii. CAP. VIII.] Joined Toes loi Therefore every addition to or deviation from nature belongs not to the ultimate perfection of all. Which is in Tao. He who would attain to such perfection never loses sight of the natural conditions of his exist- ence. With him the joined is not united, nor the separated apart, nor the long in excess, nor the short wanting. For just as a duck's legs, though short, cannot be lengthened without pain to the duck, and a crane's legs, though long, cannot be shortened without misery to the crane, so that which is long in man's moral nature cannot be cut off, nor that which is short be lengthened. All sorrow is thus avoided. Intentional charity and intentional duty to one's neighbour are surely not included in our moral nature. Yet what sorrow these have involved. Divide your joined toes and you will howl : bite off your extra finger and you will scream. In one case there is too much, in the other too little ; but the sorrow is the same. And the charitable of the age go about sorrowing over the ills of the age, while the non-charitable cut through the natural con- ditions of things in their greed after place and. wealth. Surely then intentional charity and duty to one's neighbour are not included in our moral nature. Yet from the time of the Three Dynasties downwards what a fuss has been made about them ! Those who cannot make perfect without arc, line, compasses, and square, injure the natural constitu- 102 Chtiang Tzu tion of things. Those who require cords to bind and glue to stick, interfere with the natural functions of things. And those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering with ceremonies and music and preaching charity and duty to one's neighbour, thereby destroy the intrinsicality of things. For such intrinsicality does exist, in this sense : — Things which are curved require no arcs ; things which are straight require no lines ; things which are round require no compasses ; things which are rectangular require no squares ; things which stick require no glue ; things which hold together require no cords. And just as all things are produced, and none can tell how they are produced, so do all things possess their own intrinsic qualities and none can tell how they possess them. From time immemorial this has always been so, without , variation. Why then should charity and duty to J one's neighbour be as it were glued or corded on, and introduced into the domain of Tag, to give rise to doubt among mankind ? Lesser doubts change the rule of life ; greater doubts change man's nature. How do we know this ? By the fact that ever since the time when Shun bid for charity and duty to one's neighbour in order to secure the empire, men have devoted their lives to the pursuit thereof. Is it not then charity and duty to one's neighbour which change the nature of man ? \ Therefore I have tried to show that from the time of the Three Dynasties it has always been the CAP. VIII.] Joined Toes 103 external which has changed the nature of man. If a mean man, he will die for gain. If a superior man, he will die for fame. If a man of rank, he will die for his ancestral honours. If a Sage, he will die for the world. The pursuits and ambi- tions of these men differ, but the injury to their natures involved in the sacrifice of their lives is the same. Tsang and Ku were shepherds, both of whom lost their flocks. On inquiry, it appeared that Tsang had been engaged in reading, while Ku had gone to take part in some trials of strength. Their occupations had been different, but the result was in each case loss of the sheep. Poh I died for fame at the foot of Mount Shou- yang. See ch. vi. Robber Ch^ died for gain on Mount T'ai. Robber Che has a chapter to himself, from which, though spurious, it may be gathered that he was a very remarkable personage in his day. Mount T'ai has been mentioned in ch. i. Their deaths were not the same, but the injury to their lives and natures was in each case the same. How then can we applaud the former and blame the latter ? And so, if a man dies for charity and duty to his neighbour the world calls him a noble fellow; but if he dies for gain, the world calls him a low fellow. The dying being the same, one is I04 Chuang Tzu nevertheless called noble and the other low. But in point of injury to life and nature, the robber Ch^ and Poh I are one. Where then does the distinction of noble and low come in ? Were a man to apply himself to charity and duty towards his neighbour until he were the equal of Tseng or Shih, this would not be what I mean by perfection. Or to flavours, until he were the equal of Yii Erh. Probably identical with I Ya, the Soyer of China. Or to sounds, until he were the equal of Shih K'uang. Or to colours, until he were the equal of Li Chu. What I mean by perfection is not what is meant by charity and duty to one's neighbour. It is found in the cultivation of Tao. And those whom I regard as cultivators of Tao are not those who cultivate charity and duty to one's neighbour. They are those who yield to the natural conditions of things. What I call perfection of hearing is not hearing others but oneself. What I call per- fection of vision is not seeing others but oneself. A saying attributed by Han Fei Tzu to Lao Tzu : — " To see oneself is to be clear of sight." See The Remains of Lao Tzii, p. i8. For a man who sees not himself but others, takes not possession of himself but of others, thus taking what others should take and not what he himself should take. Multi sunt, qui urbes, qui populos habuere in potestate, paucissimi, qui se. CAP. VIII.] Joined Toes 105 Instead of being himself, he in fact becomes some one else. And if a man thus becomes some one else instead of himself, this is a fatal error of which both the robber Che and Poh I can be equally guilty. And so, conscious of my own deficiency in regard to Tao, I do not venture at my best to \y/ practise the principles of charity and duty to my neighbour, nor at my worst to fall into the fatal error above-mentioned. io6 Chtiang Tzit CHAPTER IX. Horses' Hoofs. Argument : — Superiority of the natural over the artificial — Application of this principle to government. HORSES have hoofs to carry them over frost and snow ; hair, to protect them from wind and cold. They eat grass and drink water, and fling up their heels over the champaign. Such is the real nature of horses. Palatial dwellings are of no use to them. One day Poh Loh A Chinese Rarey, of somewhat legendary character. appeared, saying, *' I understand the management of horses." So he branded them, and clipped them, and pared their hoofs, and put halters on them, tying them up by the head and shackling them by the feet, and disposing them in stables, with the result that two or three in every ten died. Then he kept them hungry and thirsty, trotting them and galloping them, and grooming, and trimming, with the misery of the tasselled bridle before and the fear of the knotted whip behind, until more than half of them were dead. CAP. IX.] Horses Hoofs 107 The potter says, " I can do what I will with clay. If I want it round, I use compasses ; if rectangular, a square." The carpenter says, " I can do what I will with wood. If I want it curved, I use an arc ; if straight, 1)) ine. But on what grounds can we think that the natures of clay and wood desire this application of compasses and square, of arc and line ? Neverthe- less, every age extols Poh Loh for his skill in managing horses, and potters and carpenters for their skill with clay and wood. Those who govern the empire make the same mistake. Now I regard government of the empire from quite a different point of view. The people have certain natural instincts ; — to weave and clothe themselves, to till and feed them- selves. These are common to all humanity, and all are agreed thereon. Such instincts are called " Heaven-sent." And so in the days when natural instincts pre- vailed, men moved quietly and gazed steadily. At that time, there were no roads over mountains, nor boats, nor bridges over w^ater. All things were produced, each for its own proper sphere. Birds and beasts multiplied ; trees and shrubs grew up. The former might be led by the hand ; you could climb up and peep into the raven's nest. For then man dwelt with birds and beasts, and all creation was one. There were no distinctions of good and bad men. Being all equally without knowledge, iX io8 Chuang Tzit their virtue could not go astray. Being all equally without evil desires, they were in a state of natural integrity, the perfection of human existence. But when Sages appeared, tripping people over charity and fettering with duty to one's neighbour, doubt found its way into the world. And then with their gushing over music and fussing over cere- mony, the empire became divided against itself. Music and ceremonies are important factors in the Confucian system of government. Were the natural integrity of things left un- harmed, who could make sacrificial vessels ? Were white jade left unbroken, who could make the regalia of courts ? Were Tag not abandoned, who could introduce charity and duty to one's neigh- bour ? Were man's natural instincts his guide, what need would there be for music and ceremonies? Were the five colours not confused, who would practise decoration ? Were the five notes not confused, who would adopt the six pitch-pipes ? See chs, viii and x. Destruction of the natural integrity of things, in order to produce articles of various kinds, — this is the fault of the artisan. Annihilation of Tag in order to practise charity and duty to one's neigh- bour,— this is the error of the Sage. Horses live on dry land, eat grass and drink water. When pleased, they rub their necks together. When angry, they turn round and kick ip their heels at each other. Thus far only do CAP. IX.] Horses Hoofs 109 their natural dispositions carry them. But bridled and bitted, with a plate of metal on their foreheads, they learn to cast vicious looks, to turn the head to bite, to resist, to get the bit out of the mouth or the bridle into it. And thus their natures become depraved, — the fault of Poh Loh. In the days of Ho Hsii A legendary ruler of old. the people did nothing in particular when at rest, and went nowhere in particular when they moved. Having food, they rejoiced ; having full bellies, they strolled about. Such were the capacities of the people. But when the Sages came to worry them with ceremonies and music in order to rectify the form of government, and dangled charity and duty to one's neighbour before them in order to satisfy their hearts, — then the people began to develop a taste for knowledge and to struggle one with the other in their desire for gain. This was the error of the Sages. The simplicity of style, and general intelligibility of this chapter have raised doubts as to its genuineness. But as Lin Hsi Chung justly observes, its sympa- thetic tone in relation to dumb animals, stamps it, in spite of an undue proportion of word to thought, as beyond reach of the forger's art. I lo Chttang Tzu CHAPTER X. Opening Trunks. Argument : — All restrictions artificial, and therefore deceptive — Only by shaking off such fetters, and reverting to the natural, can man hope to attain. THE precautions taken against thieves who open trunks, search bags, or ransack tills, consist of securing with cords and fastening with bolts and locks. This is what the world calls wit. But a strong thief comes who carries off the till on his shoulders, with box and bag to boot. And his only fear is that the cords and locks should not be strong enough ! Therefore, what the world calls wit, simply amounts to assistance given to the strong thief. And I venture to state that nothing of that which the world calls wit, is otherwise than serviceable to strong thieves ; and that nothing of that which the world calls wisdom is other than a protection to strong thieves. How can this be shown ? — In the State of Ch'i a man used to be able to see from one town to the next, and hear the barking and crowing of its dogs and cocks. So near were they. This sentence has been incor- CAP. X.] Opening Trunks 1 1 1 porated in ch. lxxx of the Tao-Te-Ching. See The Remains of Lao Tzu, p. 50. The area covered by the nets of fishermen and fowlers, and pricked by the plough, was a square of two thousand and odd //. Of which three go to a mile, roughly. This state- ment is intended to convey an idea of prosperity. And within its four boundaries not a temple or shrine was dedicated, nor a district or hamlet governed, but in accordance with the rules laid down by the Sages. Yet one morning B.C. 481. T'ien Ch eng Tzu slew the Prince of Ch'i, and stole his kingdom. And not his kingdom only, but the wisdom-tricks which he had got from the Sages as well ; so that although T'ien Ch eng Tzu acquired the reputation of a thief, he lived as comfortably as ever did either Yao or Shun. The small States did not venture to blame, nor the great States to punish him ; and so for twelve generations his descendants ruled over Ch'i. Commentators have failed to explain away this last sentence. On the strength of an obvious anachron- ism, some have written off the whole chapter as a forgery; but the general style of argument is against this view. Was not this stealing the State of Ch'i and the wisdom-tricks of the Sages as well in order to secure himself from the consequences of such theft ? 1 1 2 Chuang Tzu This amounts to what I have already said, namely that nothing of what the world esteems great wit is otherwise than serviceable to strong thieves, and that nothing of what the world calls great wisdom is other than a protection to strong thieves. Let us take another example. Of old, Lung Feng was beheaded, Pi Kan was disembowelled, Chang Hung was sliced to death, Tzu Hsii was chopped to mince-meat. The first two have been already mentioned in ch. iv. Chang Hung was minister to Prince Ling of the Chou dynasty. Tzu Hsli was a name of the famous Wu Yiian, prime minister of the Ch'u State, whose corpse is said to have been sewn up in a sack and thrown into the river near Soochow. All these four were Sages, but their wisdom could not preserve them from death. In fact, it rather hastened their ends. An apprentice to Robber Che asked him saying, " Is there then Tag in thieving ? " " Pray tell me of something in which there is not ^ Tag," Che replied. " There is the wisdom by which booty is located. The courage to go in first, and the heroism of coming out last. There is the shrewdness of calculating success, and justice in the equal division of the spoil. There has never yet been a great robber who was not possessed of these five." Thus the doctrine of the Sages is equally indis- CAP. X.] Opening Trunks 113 pensable to good men and to Chd. But good men are scarce and bad men plentiful, so that the good the Sages do to the world is little and the evil great. Therefore it has been said, 'Tf the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold." It was the thinness of the wine of Lu which caused the siege of Han Tan. The prince of Ch'u held an assembly, to which the princes of Lu and Chao brought presents of wine. That of Lu was poor stuff, while the wine of Chao was rich and generous. Because, however, the Master of the Cellar to the prince of Ch'u failed to get a bribe of wine from the prince of Chao, he maliciously changed the presents ; and the prince of Ch'u, displeased at what he regarded as an insult, shortly after laid siege to Han Tan, the chief city of Chao. It was the appearance of Sages which caused the appearance of great robbers. Drive out the Sages and leave the robbers alone, — then only will the empire be governed. As when ^ the stream ceases the gully dries up, and when the hill is levelled the chasm is filled ; so when Sages are extinct, there will be no more robbers, but the empire will rest in peace. On the other hand, unless Sages disappear, neither will great robbers disappear ; nor if you double the number of Sages wherewithal to govern the empire will you do more than double the profits of Robber Ch^. 1 1 4 Chnang Tzii If pecks and bushels are used for measurement, they will also be stolen. There will simply be something more to steal. If scales and steelyards are used for weighing, they will also be stolen. If tallies and signets are used for good faith, they will also be stolen. If charity and duty to one's neighbour are used for rectifica- tion, they will also be stolen. How is this so? — One man steals a purse, and is punished. Another steals a State, and becomes a Prince. But charity and duty to one's neighbour are integral parts of princedom. Does he not then steal charity and duty to one's neighbour together with the wisdom of the Sages ? So it is that to attempt to drive out great robbers Who steal States. is simply to help them to steal principalities, charity, duty to one's neighbour, together with measures, scales, tallies, and signets. No reward of official regalia and uniform will dissuade, nor dread of sharp instruments of punishment will deter such men from their course. These do but double the profits of robbers like Che, and make it impos- sible to get rid of them, — for which the Sages are responsible. Therefore it has been said, " Fishes cannot be taken away from water : the instruments of govern- ment cannot be delegated to others." These words were uttered by Lao Tzii. So say CAP. X.] Opening Trunks 115 Han Fei Tzu and Huai Nan Tzu. They have been incorporated in ch. xxxvi of the Tao-Te-Ching. In the wisdom of Sages the instruments of government are found. This wisdom is not fit for enlightening the world. Away then with wisdom and knowledge, and great robbers will disappear ! Discard jade and destroy pearls, and petty thieves will cease to exist. Burn tallies and break signets, and the people will revert to their natural integrity. Split measures and smash scales, and the people will not fight over quantities. Utterly abolish all the restrictions of Sages, and the people will begin to be fit for the reception of Tao. Confuse the six pitch-pipes, break up organs and flutes, stuff up the ears of Shih K'uang, — and each man will keep his own sense of hearing to himself. Put an end to decoration, disperse the five cate- gories of colour, glue up the eyes of Li Chu, — and each man will keep his own sense of sight to himself. Destroy arcs and lines, fling away square and compasses, snap off the fingers of Kung Ch'ui, — A famous artisan who could draw an exact circle with his unaided hand. and each man will use his own natural skill. Wherefore the saying, " Great skill is as clumsiness." Extremes meet. These words are attributed to Lao Tzu by Huai Nan Tzu, and are incorporated in ch. xlv of the Tao-Ti-CJiing. I 2 1 1 6 Chuaug Tzii Restrain the actions of Tseng and Shih, stop the mouths of Yang and Mih, get rid of charity and duty to one's neighbour, — and the virtue of the people will become one with God. If each man keeps to himself his own sense of sight, the world will escape confusion. If each man keeps to himself his own sense of hearing, the world will escape entanglements. If each man keeps his knowledge to himself, the world will escape doubt. If each man keeps his own virtue to himself, the world will avoid deviation from the true path. Tseng, Shih, Yang, Mih, Shih K'uang, Kung Ch'ui, and Li Chu, all set up their virtue outside themselves and involve the world in such angry discussions that nothing definite is accomplished. Have you never heard of the Golden Age, — This question must be addressed to the reader. the days of Yung Ch eng, Ta T'ing, Poh Huang, Chung Yang, Li Lu, Li Hsii, Hsien Yuan, He Hsii, Tsun Lu, Chu Yung, Fu Hsi, and Shen Nung? Ancient rulers, several of whom have already been mentioned. J Then the people used knotted cords. As a means of intercommunication. The details of the system have not, however, come down to us. They were contented with what food and raiment they could get. They lived simple and peaceful lives. Neighbouring districts were within sight, CAP. X.] Opening Trunks 117 and the cocks and dogs of one could be heard in ^^ the other, yet the people grew old and died without ever interchanging visits. In those days, government was indeed perfect. But nowadays any one can excite the people by saying, ** In such and such a place there is a Sage." Immediately they put together a few provisions and hurry off, neglecting their parents at home and their master's business abroad, filing in unbroken line through territories of Princes, with a string of carts and carriages a thousand // in length. Such is the evil effect of an exaggerated desire for know- ledge among our rulers. And if rulers aim at knowledge and neglect Tao, the empire will be overwhelmed in confusion. How can it be shown that this is so ? — Bows and cross-bows and hand-nets and harpoon-arrows, involve much knowledge in their use ; but they carry confusion among the birds of the air. Hooks and bait and nets and traps, involve much know- ledge in their use ; but they carry confusion among the fishes of the deep. Fences and nets and snares, involve much knowledge in their use ; but they carry confusion among the beasts of the field. In the same way the sophistical fallacies of the hard and white and the like and the unlike of schoolmen involve much knowledge of argument ; but they overwhelm the world in doubt. Therefore it is that whenever there is great confusion, love of knowledge is ever at the bottom of it. For all men strive to grasp what they do ii8 Chiiaiig Tzu not know, while none strive to grasp what they already know ; and all strive to discredit what they do not excel in, while none strive to discredit what they do excel in. The result is overwhelming confusion. Thus, above, the splendour of the heavenly bodies is dimmed ; below, the energy of land and water is disturbed ; while midway the influence of the four seasons is destroyed. There is not one tiny creature which moves on earth or flies in air but becomes other than by nature it should be. So overwhelming is the confusion which desire for knowledge has brought upon the world ever since the time of the Three Dynasties downwards ! The simple and the guileless have been set aside ; the specious and the false have been exalted. Tranquil inaction has given place to a love of disputation ; and by disputation has confusion come upon the world. 119 CHAPTER XL On Letting Alone. Argument: — The natural conditions of our existence require no artificial aids — The evils of government — Failure of coercion — Tao the refuge — Inaction the secret — The action of Inaction — Illustrations. THERE has been such a thing as letting mankind alone ; there has never been such a thing as governing mankind. With success. Letting alone springs from fear lest men's natural dispositions be perverted and their virtue laid aside. But if their natural dispositions be not perverted nor their virtue laid aside, what room is there left for government ? Of old, when Yao governed the empire, he caused happiness to prevail to excess in man's ^ nature ; and consequently the people were not satisfied. When Chieh See p. 40. governed the empire he caused sorrow to prevail to excess in man's nature ; and consequently the people were not contented. Dissatisfaction and discontent are subversive of virtue ; and without virtue there is no such thing for an empire as stability. Virtue, here in its ordinary sense. J 1 20 Chiiang Tsil When man rejoices greatly he gravitates towards the positive pole. When he sorrows deeply he gravitates towards the negative pole. These "poles" are the male and female principles already alluded to on p. 82. Originally developed from the Great Monad, they became the progenitors of all creation. If the equilibrium of positive and negative In nature. is disturbed, the four seasons are interrupted, the balance of heat and cold is destroyed, and man himself suffers physically thereby. Because men are made to rejoice and to sorrow and to displace their centre of gravity, they lose their steadiness, and are unsuccessful in thought and action. And thus it is that the idea of surpassing others first came into the world, followed by the appearance of such men as Robber Che, Tseng, and Shih, the result being that the whole world could not furnish enough rewards for the good nor dis- tribute punishments enough for the evil among mankind. And as this great world is not equal to the demand for rewards and punishments ; and as, ever since the time of the Three Dynasties The legendary emperors Fu Hsi, Shen Nung, and Huang Ti, or the Yellow Emperor, already men- tioned. downwards, men have done nothing but struggle over rewards and punishments, — what possible CAP. XI.] On Letting Alone 121 leisure can they have had for adapting themselves to the natural conditions of their existence ? Besides, over-refinement of vision leads to debauchery in colour; over-refinement of hearing leads to debauchery in sound ; over-refinement of charity leads to confusion in virtue ; Here again the manifestation of Tao. See p. 45. over-refinement of duty towards one's neighbour leads to perversion of principle ; The eternal principles which are of Tao and not of man. over-refinement of ceremonial leads to divergence from the true object ; over-refinement of music leads to lewdness of thought ; over-refinement of wisdom leads to an extension of mechanical art ; and over-refinement of shrewdness leads to an extension of vice. As shown in the preceding chapter. If people adapt themselves to the natural con- ditions of existence, the above eight Vision, hearing, charity, duty to one's neighbour, ceremonial, music, wisdom, and shrewdness. may be or may not be ; it matters not. But if people do not adapt themselves to the natural conditions of existence, then these eight become hindrances and spoilers, and throw the world into confusion. 122 Chuang Tzii In spite of this, the world reverences and cherishes them, thereby greatly increasing the sum of human error. And not as a passing fashion, but with admonitions in words, with humility in prostrations, and with the stimulus of music and song. What then is left for me ? Therefore, for the perfect man who is unavoid- ably summoned to power over his fellows, there is naught like Inaction. It is not according to the spirit of Tao that a man should shirk his mortal responsibilities. On the con- trary, Tao teaches him how to meet them. By means of inaction he will be able to adapt him- self to the natural conditions of existence. And so it is that he who respects the State as his own body is fit to support it, and he who loves the State as his own body, is fit to govern it. This last sentence is attributed by Huai Nan Tzu to Lao Tzu, and has been incorporated in the Tao- Te-Cking, ch. xiii. It is curious that Chuang Tzii should say nothing about its authorship, and perhaps even more curious that Kuo Hsiang, his editor and commentator of the fourth century a.d., should say nothing either about the claims of Lao Tzu or the Tao- Te- Ch ing. And if I can refrain from injuring my internal economy, and from taxing my powers of sight and hearing, sitting like a corpse while my dragon- power is manifested around, in profound silence while my thunder-voice resounds, the powers of heaven responding to every phase of my will, as ^^ CAP. XI.] On Letting Alone 123 under the yielding influence of inaction all things are brought to maturity and thrive, — what leisure then have I to set about governing the world ? Some of this passage is repeated in ch. xiv. Ts'ui Chii A casual personage. asked Lao Tzu, saying, " If the empire is not to be governed, how are men's hearts to be kept in order ? " " Be careful," replied Lao Tzu, " not to interfere with the natural goodness of the heart of man. Man's heart may be forced down or stirred up. In each case the issue is fatal. " By gentleness, the hardest heart may be softened. But try to cut and polish it, — 'twill glow like fire or freeze like ice. In the twinkling of an eye it will pass beyond the limits of the Four Seas. In repose, profoundly still ; in motion, far away in the sky. No bolt can bar, no bond can bind, — such is the human heart." " Of old, the Yellow Emperor first caused charity and duty to one's neighbour to interfere with the ^ natural goodness of the heart of man. In con- sequence of which, Yao and Shun wore the hair off their legs in endeavouring to feed their people. They disturbed their internal economy in order to find room for charity and duty to one's neighbour. They exhausted their energies in framing laws and statutes. Still they did not succeed. 124 Chuang Tzil " Thereupon, Yao confined Huan Tou on Mount Tsung ; drove the chief of San-miao and his people into San-wei, and kept them there ; and banished the Minister of Works to Yu Island. These words are quoted (with variants) from the Shti Ching or Canon of History. They refer to individuals who had misconducted themselves in carrying out the new regime. But they were not equal to their task, and through the times of the Three Princes The Great Yii, T'ang, and Wen Wang, founder of the Chou dynasty. the empire was in a state of great unrest. Among the bad men were Chieh and Che ; among the good were Tseng and Shih. By and by, the Confu- cianists and the Mihists arose ; and then came exultation and anger of rivals, fraud between the simple and the cunning, recrimination between the virtuous and the evil, slander between the honest and the dishonest, — until decadence set in, men fell away from their original virtue, their natures became corrupt, and there was a general rush for knowledge. "The next thing was to coerce by all kinds of physical torture, thus bringing utter confusion into the empire, the blame for which rests upon those who would interfere with the natural goodness of the heart of man. " In consequence, virtuous men sought refuge in mountain caves, while rulers of States sat trembling CAP. XI.] On Letting Alone 1 25 in their ancestral halls. Then, when dead men lay about pillowed on each others' corpses, when cangued prisoners and condemned criminals jostled each other in crowds, — then the Confucianists and the Mihists, in the midst of gyves and fetters, stood forth to preach ! Salvation from the ills of which they and their sys- tems had been the cause. Alas, they know not shame, nor what it is to blush ! " Until I can say that the wisdom of Sages is not a fastener of cangues, and that charity and duty to one's neighbour are not bolts for gyves, how should I know that Tseng and Shih are not the forerunners Lit. " sounding arrows," used by bandits as a signal for beginning the attack. of Chieh and Ch^ ? The meaning intended is that £'ood cannot exist without its correlative evi/. "Therefore I said, 'Abandon wisdom and dis- card knowledge, and the empire will be at peace.' " These words have been incorporated in ch. xix of the Tao-Te-Ching. The present rendering some- what modifies the view I expressed on p. 16 of The Remains of Lao Tzii. The Yellow Emperor sat on the throne for nine- teen years, and his laws obtained all over the empire. Hearing that Kuang Ch'eng Tzu Said by some commentators to be another name for 126 Chtiang Tzii Lao Tzu, but if so, then it must have been Lao Tzii as he existed, an incarnation of Tao, before his appearance in the Confucian age. was living on Mount K'ung-t'ung, he went thither to see him, and said, " I am told, Sir, that you are in possession of perfect Tao. May I ask in what perfect Tao consists ? I desire to avail myself of the good influence of heaven and earth in order to secure harvests and feed my people. I should also like to control the Two Powers of nature The Yin and the Yang. See pp. 82, 120. in order to the protection of all living things. How can I accomplish this ? " " What you desire to avail yourself of," replied Kuang Ch eng Tzu, *' is the primordial integrity of matter. What you wish to control are the disin- tegrators thereof. Ever since the empire has been governed by you, the clouds have rained without waiting to thicken, the foliage of trees has fallen without waiting to grow yellow, the brightness of the sun and moon has paled, and the voice of the flatterer is heard on every side. How then speak of perfect Tao ? " The Yellow Emperor withdrew. He resigned the Throne. He built himself a solitary hut. He lay upon straw. For three months he remained in seclusion, and then went again to see Kuang Ch eng Izu. The latter was lying down with his face to the south. The Yellow Emperor approached after the manner of an inferior, upon his knees. Prostrating CAP. XI.] On Letting Alone 1 27 himself upon the ground he said, " I am told, Sir, that you are in possession of perfect Tao. May I ask how my self may be preserved so as to last ? " Kuang Ch'^ng Tzu jumped up with a start. "A good question indeed ! " cried he. " Come, and I will speak to you of perfect Tao. " The essence of perfect Tao is profoundly mysterious ; its extent is lost in obscurity. " See nothing ; hear nothing ; let your soul be wrapped in quiet ; and your body will begin to take proper form. Let there be absolute repose and absolute purity ; do not weary your body nor dis- turb your vitality, — and you will live for ever. For if the eye sees nothing, and the ear hears nothing, and the mind Lit, the heart. thinks nothing, the soul will preserve the body, and the body will live for ever. Not in the grosser worldly sense, but as a sublimated unit in eternity. " Cherish that which is within you, and shut off that which is without ; for much knowledge is a curse. Then I will place you upon that abode of Great Light which is the source of the positive Power, and escort you through the gate of Pro- found Mystery which is the source of the negative Power. These Powers are the controllers of heaven and earth, and each contains the other. Knowledge thereof is knowledge of the great mys- tery of human existence. 128 Chuang Tzii " Cherish and preserve your own self, In accordance with the above. and all the rest will prosper of itself. The welfare of the people, the success of their har- vests, etc. I preserve the original One, while resting in har- mony with externals. It is because I have thus cared for my self now for twelve hundred years that my body has not decayed." The Yellow Emperor prostrated himself and said, " Kuang Ch eng Tzu is surely God " Whereupon the latter continued, " Come, I will tell you. That self is eternal ; yet all men think it mortal. That self is infinite ; yet all men think it finite.- Those who possess Tao are princes in this life and rulers in the hereafter. Those who do not possess Tao, behold the light of day in this life and become clods of earth in the hereafter. " Nowadays, all living things spring from the dust and to the dust return. But I will lead you through the portals of Eternity into the domain of Infinity. My light is the light of sun and moon. My life is the life of heaven and earth. I know not who comes nor who goes. Men may all die, but I endure for ever." "A mighty drama, enacted on the theatre of Infini- tude, with suns for lamps, and Eternity as a back- ground ; whose author is God, and whose purport and thousandfold moral lead us up to the ' dark with excess of light' of the throne of God." — Carlyle. I CAP. XI.] On Letting Alone 129 The Spirit of the Clouds when passing east- wards through the expanse of Air The term here used has also been explained to mean some supernatural kind of tree, over which we may imagine the Cloud-Spirit to be passing. happened to fall in with the Vital Principle. The latter was slapping his ribs and hopping about ; whereupon the Spirit of the Clouds said, "Who are you, old man, and what are you doing here ? " " Strolling ! " replied the Vital Principle, without stopping. Activities ceaseless in their imperceptible operation. *' I want to know something," continued the Spirit of the Clouds. "Ah ! " uttered the Vital Principle, in a tone of. disapprobation. " The relationship of heaven and earth is out of harmony," said the Spirit of the Clouds ; " the six influences do not combine, The positive and negative principles, wind, rain, darkness, and light. and the four seasons are no longer regular. I desire to blend the six influences so as to nourish all living beings. What am I to do ? " "I do not know!" cried the Vital Principle, shaking his head, while still slapping his ribs and hopping about ; " I do not know ! " So the Spirit of the Clouds did not press his question ; but three years later, when passing east- wards through the Yu-sung territory, he again fell K 130 Chuang Tzii in with the Vital Principle. The former was over- joyed, and hurrying up, said, " Has your Holiness forgotten me ? " He then prostrated himself, and desired to be allowed to interrogate the Vital Principle ; but the latter said, " I wander on without knowing what I want. I roam about without knowing where I am going. I stroll in this ecstatic manner, simply awaiting events. What should I know ? " " I too roam about," answered the Spirit of the Clouds ; " but the people depend upon my move- ments. I am thus unavoidably summoned to power ; and under these circumstances I would gladly receive some advice." " That the scheme of empire is in confusion," said the Vital Principle, " that the conditions of life are violated, that the will of God does not triumph, that the beasts of the field are disorganised, that the birds of the air cry at night, that blight reaches the trees and herbs, that destruction spreads among creeping things, — this, alas ! is the fault of government.'' " True," replied the Spirit of the Clouds, " but what am I to do ? " " It is here," cried the Vital Principle, " that the poison lurks ! Go back ! " To the root, to that natural state in which by inaction all things are accomplished. " It is not often," urged the Spirit of the Clouds, " that I meet with your Holiness. I would gladly receive some advice." CAP. XI.] On Letting Alone 131 " Feed then your people," said the Vital Prin- ciple, " with your heart. By the influence of your own perfection. Rest in inaction, and the world will be good of itself. Cast your slough. Spit forth intelligence. Ignore all differences. Become one with the infinite. Release your mind. Free your soul. Be vacuous. Be Nothing ! *' Let all things revert to their original consti- tution. If they do this, without knowledge, the result will be a simple purity which they will never lose ; but knowledge will bring with it a divergence therefrom. Seek not the names nor the relations of things, and all things will flourish of themselves." " Knowledge is the knowing that we cannot know." Emerson. " Your Holiness," said the Spirit of the Clouds, as he prostrated himself and took leave, " has in- formed me with power and filled me with mysteries. What I had long sought, I have now found." The men of this world all rejoice in others being like themselves, and object to others not being like themselves. "The man, and still more the woman, who can be accused either of doing ' what nobody does,' or of not doing * what everbody does,' is the subject of as much depreciatory remark as if he or she had com- mitted some grave moral delinquency." Mill's Essay on Liberty y ch. iii. Those who make friends with their likes and do K 2 132 Chuang TzH not make friends with their unlikes, are influenced by a desire to difl"erentiate themselves from others. But those who are thus influenced by a desire to differentiate themselves from others, — how will they find it possible to do so ? As all have similar ambitions, they will only be on the same footing as the rest. To subordinate oneself to the majority in order to gratify personal ambition, is not so good as to let that majority look each one after his own affairs. Those who desire to govern kingdoms, clutch at the advantages of the Three Princes without seeing the troubles involved. In fact, they trust to luck. But in thus trusting to luck not to destroy the kingdom, their chances of preserving it do not amount to one in ten thousand, while their chances of destroying it are ten thousand to nothing and even more. Such, alas ! is the ignorance of rulers. The above somewhat unsatisfactory paragraph con- demns those who strive to distinofuish themselves from, and set themselves up as governors of, their fellow-men. For, given territory, there is the great thing — Man. Given man, he must not be managed as if he were a mere thing; though by not managing him at all he may actually be managed as if he were a mere thing. And for those who understand that the management of man as if he were a mere thing is not the way to manage him, the issue is not con- fined to mere government of the empire. Such men may wander at will between the six limits of space or CAP. XI.] On Letting Alone 133 travel over the continent of earth, unrestrained in coming and in going. This is to be distinguished from one's fellows, and this distinction is the highest attainable by man. The doctrine of the perfect man is to him as shadow to form, as echo to sound. Ask and it responds, fulfilling its mission as the help-mate of humanity. Noiseless in repose, objectless in motion, it guides you to the goal, free to come and free to go for ever without end. Alone in its exits and its entrances, it rivals the eternity of the sun. As for his body, that is in accordance with the usual standard. Being in accordance with the usual standard it is not distinguished in any way. But if not distinguished in any way, what becomes of the distinction by which he is distinguished ? Those who see what is to be seen, — of such were the perfect men of old. Those who see what is not to be seen,— they are the chosen of the universe. Spiritual sight carries them beyond the horizon where natural vision stops short. Low in the scale, but still to be allowed for, — matter. Humble, but still to be followed, — Rather than guided, mankind. Of others, but still to be attended to, — / affairs. Harsh, but still necessary to be set forth, — the law. Far off, but still claiming our presence, — duty to one's neighbour. Near, but still claiming extension, — charity. Of sparing use, but still to be of bounteous store, — ceremony. Of middle course, but still to be of lofty scope, — virtue. One, but 134 Clmang Tzic not to be without modification, — Tao. Spiritual, yet not to be devoid of action, — God. In inaction there is action. Therefore the true Sage looks up to God, but does not offer to aid. He perfects his virtue, but does not involve himself. He guides himself by , Tao, but makes no plans. He identifies himself with charity, but does not rely on it. He extends to duty towards his neighbour, but does not store it up. He responds to ceremony, without tabooing it. Although really recognising only the ceremony of the heart which requires no outward sign. He undertakes affairs without declining them. He metes out law without confusion. He relies on his fellow-men and does not make light of them. He accommodates himself to matter and does not ignore it. Thus the action of the Sage is after all inaction, j While there should be no action, there should be also no inaction. Of a positive, premeditated character. He who is not divinely enlightened will not be sub- limely pure. He who has not clear apprehension of Tao will find this beyond his reach. And he who is not enlightened by Tao, — alas indeed for him ! J What then is Tao ?— There is the Tao of God, and the Tao of man. Inaction and compliance make the Tao of God : action and entanglement the Tao of man. The Tao of God is fundamental : the Tao of man is accidental. The distance which separates them is great. Let us all take heed thereto ! 135 CHAPTER XII. The Universe. Argument: — The preeminence ofTAO — All things informed thereby — The true Sage illumined thereby — His attributes — His perfection — Man's senses his bane — Illustrations. VAST as is the universe, its phenomena are regular. Countless though its contents, the laws which govern these are uniform. Many though its inhabitants, that which dominates them is sovereignty. Sovereignty begins in virtue and ends in God. Therefore it is called divine. The term here used has been elsewhere rendered " infinite." Of old, the empire was under the sovereignty of inaction. There was the virtue of God, — nothing more. Meaning, of course, Tag. In other words, all things existed under their own natural conditions. Words being in accordance with Tao, the sovereignty of the empire was correct. Delimita- tions being in accordance with Tao, the duties of prince and subject were clear. Abilities being in accordance with Tag, the officials of the empire 136 Chiiang Tzu governed. The point of view being always in accordance with Tao, all things responded thereto. Under the reign of inaction, the natural prevailed over the artificial. (1) The sovereign could utter no cruel mandate. (2) Sovereign and subject each played his allotted part. (3) The right men were in the right place. (4) All things were as they were, and not as man would have them. / Thus, virtue was the connecting link between God and man, while Tao spread throughout all creation. Men were controlled by outward circum- stances, applying their in-born skill to the develop- ment of civilised life. This skill was bound up with the circumstances of life, and these with duty, and duty with virtue, and virtue with Tao, and •^ Tao with God. Therefore it has been said, "As for those who nourished the empire of old, having no desires for themselves, the empire was not in want. They did nothing, and all things proceeded on their course. They preserved a dignified repose, and the people rested in peace." We are not told who said these words. They are not in the Tao-Te-Ching ; and yet if Lao Tzu did not utter them, it is difficult to say who did. The Record says, " By converging to One, all things may be accomplished. By the virtue which is without intention, even the supernatural may be subdued." ' How much more man? Kuo Hsiang says the CAP. XII.] The Universe 1 37 Record was the name of a work ascribed to Lao Tzu. The Master said, " Tao covers and supports all things," — so vast is its extent. Each man should prepare his heart accordingly. This " Master " has been identified with both Chuang Tzii and Lao Tzu. " To act by means of inaction is God. To speak ^ by means of inaction is Virtue. To love men and care for things is Charity. To recognise the unlike as the like is breadth of view. To make no distinc- tions is liberal. To possess variety is wealth. And so, to hold fast to virtue is strength. To complete virtue is establishment. To follow Tao is to be prepared. And not to run counter to the natural bias of things is to be perfect. " He who fully realises these ten points, by stor- ing them within enlarges his heart, and with this enlargement brings all creation to himself. Such a man will bury gold on the hillside and cast pearls into the sea. He will not struggle for wealth, nor strive for fame. He will not rejoice at old age, nor grieve over early death. He will find no pleasure in success, no chagrin in failure. He will not account a throne as his own private gain, nor the empire of the world as glory personal to himself. His glory is to know that all things are One, and that life and death are but phases of the same existence ! " " Let man learn that he is here, not to work, but to 1^8 C/llt(Ulir Tzu .b be worked upon ; and that, though abyss open under abyss, and opinion displace opinion, all are at last contained in the Eternal Cause." Efuerson. The Master said, " How profound in its repose, how infinite in its purity, is Tao ! "If metal and stone were without Tag, they would not be capable of emitting sound. And just as they possess the property of sound but will not emit sound unless struck, so surely is the same principle applicable to all creation. Meaning that all creation is responsive to proper influences, in accordance with Tag, if we only knew where to seek them. " The man of complete virtue remains blankly passive as regards what goes on around him. He is as originally by nature, and his knowledge extends to the supernatural. Thus, his virtue expands his heart, which goes forth to all who come to take refuge therein. His heart does not initiate the movement, but simply responds to an influence brought to bear. ** W^ithout Tag, form cannot be endued with life. W^ithout virtue, life cannot be endued with intelligence. To preserve one's form, live out one's life, establish one's virtue, and realise Tag, — is not this complete virtue ? " Issuing forth spontaneously, moving without premeditation, all things following in his wake, — such is the man of complete virtue ! CAP. XII.] The Universe 139 " He can see where all is dark. He can hear where all is still. In the darkness he alone can see light. In the stillness he alone can detect harmony. He can sink to the lowest depths of materialism. To the highest heights of spirituality he can soar. This because he stands in due relation to all things. Though a mere abstraction, he can minister to their wants, and ever and anon receive them into rest, — the great, the small, the long, the short, for ever without end." He is, as it were, a law of compensation to all things. The Yellow Emperor travelled to the north of the Red Lake and ascended the K'un-lun Mountains. Returning south he lost his magic pearl. His spiritual part, his soul. He employed Intelligence to find it, but without success. He employed Sight to find it, but with- out success. He employed Speech Also explained as " Strength." to find it, but without success. Finally, he employed Nothing, and Nothing got it. He did not employ Nothing to fi7id it. He only employed Nothing. " Strange indeed," quoth the Emperor, " that Nothing should have been able to get it ! " ^ Knowledge, sight, and speech, tend to obscure 140 Chuang Tzu rather than illuminate the spiritual nature of man. Only in a state of negation can true spirituality be found. Yao's tutor was Hsii Yu. The latter's tutor was Yeh Chueh, and Yeh Chueh's tutor was Wang I, whose tutor was Pei I. Yao enquired of Hsii Yu, saying, " Would Yeh Ch'iieh do to be emperor ? I am going to get Wang I to ask him." "Alas!" cried Hsu Yu, "that would be bad indeed for the empire. Yeh Ch'iieh is a clever and capable man. He is by nature better than most men, but he seeks by means of the human to reach the divine. He strives to do no wrong ; but he is ignorant of the source from which wrong springs. Emperor forsooth ! He avails himself of the artificial and neglects the natural. He lacks unity in himself. He worships intelligence and is always in a state of ferment. He is a slave to circum- stances and to things. Wherever he looks, his surroundings respond. He himself responds to his surroundings. He is not yet an abstraction, informed by Tao. He is always undergoing modifications and is wanting in fixity. How should such a one be fit for emperor ? Still every clan has its elder. He may be leader of a clan, but not a leader of leaders. A captain who has been successful in suppressing rebellion, as minister is a bane, as sovereign, a thief." CAP. XII.] The Universe 141 Yao went to visit Hua. The border-warden of Hua said "Ha! a Sage. My best respects to you, Sir. I wish you a long life." " Don't ! " replied Yao. " I wish you plenty of money," continued the border-warden. " Don't ! " replied Yao. " And many sons," added he. " Don't ! " replied Yao. ** Long life, plenty of money, and many sons," cried the warden, " these are what all men desire. How is it you alone do not want them ? " " Many sons," answered Yao," are many anxieties. Plenty of money means plenty of trouble. Long life involves much that is not pleasant to put up with. These three gifts do not advance virtue ; therefore I declined them." " At first I took you for a Sage," said the warden, " but now I find you are a mere man. God, in sending man into the world, gives to each his proper function. If you have many sons and give to each his proper function, what cause have you for anxiety ? " And similarly, if you have wealth and allow others to share it, what troubles will you have ? " " The true Sage dwells like the quail At random. and feeds like a fledgeling. Which is dependent on its parents. He travels like the bird, leaving no trace behind. 142 Chua7ig Tzii If there be Tao in the empire, he and all things are in harmony. If there be not Tao, he culti- vates virtue in retirement. After a thousand years of this weary world, he mounts aloft, and riding upon the white clouds passes into the kingdom of God, whither the three evils do not reach, and where he rests secure in eternity. What is there to put up with in that ? " Thereupon the border-warden went off, and Yao followed him; saying, " May I ask ," to which the warden only replied '* Begone ! " The style of the above episode varies enough from Chuang Tzu's standard to make its authorship doubtful. When Yao was Emperor, Poh Ch eng Tzu Kao Lao Tzu under a previous incarnation. See the Kuang Cheng Tzu of p. 125. was one of his vassals. But when Yao handed over the empire to Shun, and Shun to the Great Yii, Poh Ch eng Tzu Kao resigned his fief and betook himself to agriculture. The Great Yu going to visit him, found him working in the fields ; whereupon he approached humbly, saying, " When Yao was emperor, you, Sir, were a vassal ; but when Yao handed over the empire to Shun, and Shun to me, you resigned your fief and betook yourself to agriculture. May I enquire the reason of this ? " " When Yao ruled the empire," said Tzii Kao, CAP. XII.] The Universe 143 " the people exerted themselves without reward and behaved themselves without punishment. But now you reward and punish them, and yet they are not good. From this point virtue will decline, the reign of force will begin, and the troubles of after ages will date their rise. Away with you ! Do not interrupt my work." And he quietly went on ploughing as before. The above episode is unmistakably spurious. At the beginning of the beginning, even Nothing did not exist. Then came the period of the Nameless. "The Nameless," says the Tao-T^-Ching, ch. i, "was the beginning of heaven and earth." See also ch. ii, ante. When One came into existence, there was One, but it was formless. When things got that by which they came into existence, it was called their virttte. Sc. that, by virtue of which they are what they are. See p. 45. That which was formless, but divided. I.e. allotted, though without interstice, Unbroken in continuity. was called destmy. Then came the movement which gave life, and 144 CJmang Tzii things produced in accordance with the principles of life had what is called form. When form encloses the spiritual part, each with its own characteristics, that is its nature. By cultivating this nature, we are carried back to virtue ; and if this is perfected, we become as all things were in the beginning. We become unconditioned, and the unconditioned is great. As birds join their beaks in chirping, Unconsciously. and beaks to chirp must be joined, — to be thus joined with the universe without being more con- scious of it than an idiot, this is divhie virtue, this is accordance with the eternal fitness of things. Confucius asked Lao Tzu, saying, "There are persons who cultivate Tao according to fixed rules of possible and impossible, fit and unfit, just as the schoolmen speak of separating hardness from whiteness as though these could be hung up on different pegs. See p. 22. Could such persons be termed sages ?" " That," replied Lao Tzu, " is but the skill of the handicraftsman, wearing out body and soul alike. The powers of the hunting-dog involve it in trouble ; It is kept by man instead of being free. CAP. XII.] The Universe 145 the cleverness of the monkey brings it down from the mountain. Into the hands of man. Ch'iu, what I mean you cannot understand, neither can you put it into words. Ch'iu was the personal name of Confucius. It is never uttered by the Confucianist, the term " a certain one " being usually substituted. Neither is it ever written down, except with the omission of some stroke, by which its form is changed. Those who have a head and feet, but no mind nor ears, are many. Those who have a body without a body or appearance of one^ and yet there they are, — are none. Movement and rest, life and death, rise and fall, are not at the beck and call of man. Cultivation of self is in his own hands. To be unconscious of objective existences and of God, this is to be unconscious of one's own per- sonality. And he who is unconscious of his own personality, combines in himself the human and the divine." Chiang Lii Mien went to see Chi Ch'^, Two obscure personages. and said, " The Prince of Lu begged me to instruct him, but I declined. However, he would take no refusal, so I was obliged to do so. I don't know if I was correct in my doctrine or not. Please note what I said. I told him to be decorous and thrifty ; 146 Chnang Tzil to advance the public-spirited and loyal, and to have no partialities. Then, I said, no one would venture to oppose him." Chi Che sniggered and said, " Your remarks on the virtues of Princes may be compared with the mantis stretching out its feelers and trying to stop a carriage, — not likely to effect the object proposed. See ch. iv, where the same figure is used. Besides, he would be placing himself in the position of a man who builds a lofty tower and makes a dis- play of his valuables where all his neighbours will come and gaze at them." Attracting people by means not in accordance with Tao. ''Alas! I fear I am but a fool," replied Chiang Lii Mien. " Nevertheless, I should be glad to be instructed by you in the proper course to pursue." " The government of the perfect Sage," explained Chi Ch'^, " consists ia influencing the hearts of the people so as to cause them to complete their education, to reform their manners, to subdue the rebel mind, and to exert themselves orte and all for the common good. This influence operates in accordance with the natural disposition of the people, who are thus unconscious of its operation. He who can so act has no need to humble himself before the teachings of Yao and Shun. He makes the desires of the people coincident with virtue, and their hearts rest therein." CAP. XII.] The Universe 1 47 When Tzu Kung See ch. vi. went south to the Ch'u State on his way back to the Chin State, he passed through Han-yin. There he saw an old man engaged in making a ditch to connect his vegetable garden with a well. He had a pitcher in his hand, with which he was bringing up water and pouring it into the ditch, — great labour with very little result. "If you had a machine here," cried Tzu Kung, " in a day you could irrigate a hundred times your present area. The labour required is trifling as compared with the work done. Would you not like to have one ? " " What is it ? " asked the gardener. " It is a contrivance made of wood," replied Tzu Kung, " heavy behind and light in front. It draws up water as you do with your hands, but in a con- stantly overflowing stream. It is called a well- sweep." Still used all over China. Thereupon the gardener flushed up and said, " I have heard from my teacher that those who have cunning implements are cunning in their dealings, and that those who are cunning in their dealings have cunning in their hearts, and that those who have cunning in their hearts cannot be pure and incorrupt, and that those who are not pure and incorrupt are restless in spirit, and that those who are restless in spirit are not fit vehicles for Tao. L 2 148 Chimng Tzii It is not that I do not know of these things. I should be ashamed to use them." At this Tzu Kung was much abashed, and said nothing. Then the gardener asked him who he was, to which Tzu Kung replied that he was a disciple of Confucius. " Are you not one who extends his learning with a view to being a Sage ; who talks big in order to put himself above the rest of mankind ; who plays in a key to which no one can sing so as to spread his reputation abroad ? Rather become uncon- scious of self and shake off the trammels of the flesh, — and you will be near. But if you cannot govern your own self, what leisure have you for governing the empire ? Begone ! Do not interrupt my work." Tzu Kung changed colour and slunk away, being not at all pleased with this rebuff ; and it was not before he had travelled some thirty // that he recovered his usual appearance. ** What did the man w^e met do," asked a dis- ciple, " that you should change colour and not recover for such a long time ? " " I used to think there was only one man in all the world," replied Tzu Kung. Meaning Confucius. " I did not know that there was also this man. I have heard the Master say that the test of a scheme is its practicability, and that success must be certain. The minimum of effort with CAP. XII ] The Universe 149 the maximum of success, — such is the way of the Sage. The absurdity of attributing such doctrines to Con- fucius will be apparent to every student of the Sage's remains. " Not so this manner of man. Aiming at Tao, he perfects his virtue. By perfecting his virtue he perfects his body, and by perfecting his body he perfects his spiritual part. And the perfection of the spiritual part is the Tao of the Sage. Coming into life he is as one of the people, knowing not whither he is bound. How complete is his purity ? Success, profit, skill, — these have no place in his heart. Such a man, if he does not will it, he does not stir ; if he does not wish it, he does not act. If all the world praises him, he does not heed. If all the world blames him, he does not repine. Reminding us of the philosopher Yung of ch. i. The praise and the blame of the world neither advantage him nor otherwise. He may be called a man of perfect virtue. As for me, I am but a mere creature of impulse." So he went back to Lu to tell Confucius. But Confucius said, " That fellow pretends to a know- ledge of the science of the ante-mundane. He knows something, but not much. His government is of the internal, not of the external. What is there wonderful in a man by clearness of intel- ligence becoming pure, by inaction reverting to his 150 Chuang Tzii original integrity, and with his nature and his spiritual part wrapped up in a body, passing through this common world of ours ? Besides, to you and to me the science of the ante-mundane is not worth knowing." It is only the present which concerns man. This last is an utterance which might well have fallen from the lips of Confucius. But the whole episode is clearly an interpolation of later times. As Chun Mang was starting eastwards to the ocean, he fell in with Yiian Feng on the shore of the eastern sea. These names are probably allegorical, but it is difficult to say in exactly what sense. " Whither bound ? " cried the latter. " I am going to the ocean," replied Chun Mang. " What are you going to do there ? " asked Yiian Feng. '* The ocean," said Chun Mang, '' is a thing you cannot fill by pouring in, nor empty by taking out. I am simply on a trip." You cannot do anything to the infinite. " But surely you have intentions with regard to the straight-browed people ? . . . , Come, tell me how the Sage governs." The straight-browed, lit. horizontal-eyed, people, are said by one commentator to have been " savages." " Oh, the government of the Sage," answered CAP. XII.] The Universe 151 Chun Mang. '' The officials confine themselves to their functions. Ability is secure of employ- ment. The voice of the people is heard, and action is taken accordingly. Men's words and deeds are their own affairs, and so the empire is at peace. A beck or a call, and the people flock together from all sides. This is how the Sage governs." "Tell me about the man of perfect virtue," said Yuan Feng. " The man of perfect virtue," replied Chun Mang, " in repose has no thoughts, in action no anxiety. He recognises no right, nor wrong, nor good, nor bad. Within the Four Seas, when all profit — that is his pleasure ; when all share — that is his repose. Men cling to him as children who have lost their mothers ; they rally round him as wayfarers who have missed their road. He has wealth and to spare, but he knows not whence it comes. He has food and drink more than suffi- cient, but knows not who provides it. Such is a man of virtue." "And now," said Yiian Feng, "tell me about the divine man." " The divine man," replied Chun Mang, " rides upon the glory of the sky where his form can no longer be discerned. This is called absorption into light. He fulfils his destiny. He acts in accord- ance with his nature. He is at one with God and man. For him all affairs cease to exist, and all things revert to their original state. This is called envelopment in darkness." / 152 Chit an g Tzil Men Wu Kuei and Ch'ih Chang Man Chi were looking at Wu Wang's troops. The famous founder of the Chou dynasty, B.C. 1 169-1 1 16. " He is not equal to the Great Yii," said the latter; and consequently "we are involved in all these troubles." " May I ask," replied Men Wu Kuei, " if the empire was under proper government when the Great Yii began to govern it, or had he first to quell disorder and then to proceed to government ?" " If the empire had all been under proper govern- ment," said the other," what would there have been for the Great Yii to do ? He was as ointment to a sore. Only bald men use wigs ; only sick people want doctors. And the Sage blushes when a filial son, with anxious look, administers medicine to cure his loving father. Because to need drugs, the father must first have been sick ; and this, from a Chinese point of view, is clearly the fault of the son. "In the Golden Age, good men were not appre- ciated ; ability was not conspicuous. Rulers were mere beacons, while the people were free as the wild deer. They were upright w^ithout being conscious of duty to their neighbours. They loved one another without being conscious of charity. They were true without being conscious of loyalty. They were honest without being conscious of good faith. They acted freely in all things without CAP. XII.] The Universe 153 recognising obligations to any one. Thus, their deeds left no trace ; their affairs were not handed down to posterity. Rousseau, in Dit Contrat Social, thus describes society as it would be if every man was a true Christian : — "Chacun remplirait son devoir; le peuple serait soumis aux lois, les chefs seraient justes et moderes, les magistrats integres, incorruptibles, les soldats mepriseraient la mort, il n'y aurait ni vanite ni luxe." "A filial son does not humour his parents. A loyal minister does not flatter his prince. This is the acme of filial piety and loyalty. To assent to whatever a parent or a prince says, and to praise whatever a parent or a prince does, this is what the world calls unfilial and disloyal conduct, though apparently unaware that the principle is of uni- versal application. For though a man assents to whatever the world says, and praises whatever the world does, he is not dubbed a toady ; from which one might infer that the world is severer than a father and more to be respected than a prince ! " If you tell a man he is a wheedler, he will not like it. If you tell him he is a flatterer, he will be angry. Yet he is everlastingly both. But all such sham and pretence is what the w^orld likes, and consequently people do not punish each other for doing what they do themselves. For a man to arrange his dress, or make a display, or suit his expression so as to get into the good graces of the world, and yet not to call himself a flatterer ; to 154 Chiiang Tzil identify himself in every way with the yeas and nays of his fellows, and yet not call himself one of them ; — this is the height of folly. " A man who knows that he is a fool is not a great fool. A man who knows his error is not greatly in error. Great error can never be shaken off; a great fool never becomes clear-headed. If three men are travelling and one man makes a mistake, they may still arrive at their destination, error being in the minority. But if two of them make a mistake, then they will not succeed, error being in the majority. And now, as all the world is in error, I, though I know the true path, am alas ! unable to guide. '' Grand music does not appeal to vulgar ears. Give them the ChS-yang or the Huang-hua^ The " Not for Joseph" and " Sally Come Up " of ancient China. and they will roar with laughter. And likewise great truths do not take hold of the hearts of the masses. And great truths not finding utterance, common-places carry the day. Two earthen in- struments will drown the sound of one metal one ; and the result will not be melodious. " And now, as all the world is in error, I, though I know the true path, — how shall I guide ? If I know that I cannot succeed and yet try to force success, this would be but another source of error. Better, then, to desist and strive no more. But if I strive not, who will ? CAP. XII.] The Universe 155 " An ugly man who has a son born to him in the middle of the night will hurry up with a light, in dread lest the child should be like himself. '* An old tree is cut down to make sacrificial vessels, which are then ornamented with colour. The stump remains in a ditch. The sacrificial vessels and the stump in the ditch are very dif- ferently treated as regards honour and dishonour ; equally, as far as destruction of the wood's original nature is concerned. Similarly, the acts of Robber Che and of Tseng and Shih are very different ; but the loss of original nature is in each case the same. "The causes of this loss are five in number; viz. — The five colours confuse the eye, and the eyes fail to see clearly. The five sounds confuse the ear, and the ear fails to hear accurately. The five scents confuse the nose, and obstruct the sense of smell. The five tastes cloy the palate, and vitiate the sense of taste. Finally, likes and dislikes cloud the understanding, and cause dispersion of the original nature. " These five are the banes of life ; yet Yang and Mih regarded them as the summimi bonimi. As attainment of Tao. For Yang Chu and Mih Tzu, see chs, ii and viii. They are not my sitmmum bommi. For if men who are thus fettered can be said to have attained the siumnuni bomim, then pigeons and owls in a cage may also be said to have attained the siiiiimuni bo nun I ! 156 Chiiang Tzu " Besides, to stuff one's inside with likes and dislikes and sounds and colours ; to encompass one's outside with fur caps, feather hats, the carry- ing of tablets, or girding of sashes — full of rubbish inside while swathed in magnificence without — and still to talk of having attained the siiminuni I bonimi ; — then the prisoner with arms tied behind him and fingers in the squeezer, the tiger or the leopard which has just been put in a cage, may justly consider that they too have attained the S2imnmm bomim ! " " L'homme," says Rousseau [op. ciL), " est ne libre, et partout il est dans les fers." This chapter, as it stands, is clearly not from the hand of Chuang Tzu. One critic justly points out the want of logical sequence in arrangement of argument and illustrations. Another, while admitting creneral refinement of style, calls attention to a superficiality of thought noticeable in certain portions. " Yet only those;" he adds, "who eat and sleep with their Chuang Tzus would be able to detect this." 157 CHAPTER XIII. The Tao of God. Argument: — Tao is repose — Repose the secret of the universe — Cultivation of essentials — Neglect of accidentals— The sequence of Tag — Spontaneity of true virtue — Tao is unconditioned — Tao cannot be conveyed — Illustrations. THE Tao of God operates ceaselessly; and all things are produced. The Tao of the sovereign operates ceaselessly ; and the empire rallies around him. The Tao of the Sage operates ceaselessly ; ^y and all within the limit of surrounding ocean ac- knowledge his sway. He who apprehends God, who is in relation with the Sage, and who recognises the radiating virtue of the sovereign, — his actions will be to him unconscious, the actions of repose. With him all will be inaction, by which all things will be accomplished. The repose of the Sage is not what the world calls repose. His repose is the result of his mental atti- tude. All creation could not disturb his equilibrium: hence his repose. When water is still, it is like a mirror, reflecting the beard and the eyebrows. It gives the accuracy of the water-level, and the philosopher makes it his model. And if water thus derives lucidity from i 158 Chtiang Tzii stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind ? The mind of the Sage being in repose becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation. ^ Repose, tranquillity, stillness, inaction, — these were the levels of the universe, the ultimate per- fection of Tao. In the early days of Time, ere matter had assumed shape, it was by such levels that the spiritual was adjusted. Therefore wise rulers and Sages rest therein. Resting therein they reach the unconditioned, from which springs the conditioned ; and with the conditioned comes order. Meaning those laws which are inseparable from concrete existences. Again, from the unconditioned comes repose, and from repose comes movement, When once inner repose has been established, outer movement results as a matter of necessity, without injury to the organism. and from movement comes attainment. Further, from repose comes inaction, and from inaction comes potentiality of action. When inaction has been achieved, action results spontaneously and unconsciously to the organism. And inaction is happiness ; and where there is happiness no cares can abide, and life is long. ^ Repose, tranquillity, stillness, inaction, — these were the source of all things. Due perception of CAP. XIII.] The Tao of God 1 59 this was the secret of Yao's success as a ruler, and of Shun's success as his minister. Due perception of this constitutes the virtue of sovereigns on the throne, the Tao of the inspired Sage and of the uncrowned King below. Keep to this in retire- ment, and the lettered denizens of sea and dale will recognise your power. Keep to this when coming forward to pacify a troubled world, and your merit shall be great and your name illustrious, and the empire united into one. In your repose you will be wise ; in your movements, powerful. By inaction you will gain honour ; and by confining yourself to the pure and simple, you will hinder the whole world from struggling with you for show. To fully apprehend the scheme of the universe. Lit. : " the virtue of heaven and earth," meaning their inaction by which all things are brought to maturity. this is called the great secret of being in accord with God, whereby the empire is so administered that the result is accord with man. To be in accord with man is human happiness ; to be in accord with God is the happiness of God. Chuang Tzu said, " O my exemplar! Thou who destroyest all things, and dost not account it cruelty; thou who benefitest all time, and dost not account it charity ; thou who art older than antiquity and dost not account it age ; thou who supportest the universe, shaping the many forms therein, and dost not account it skill ; — this is the happiness of God ! " >^ i6o Chitang Tzii Therefore it has been said, " Those who enjoy the happiness of God, when born into the world, are but fulfilling their divine functions ; when they die, they do but undergo a physical change. In repose, they exert the influence of the Negative ; in motion, they wield the power of the Positive." See ante, chs. vi and xi. Thus, those who enjoy the happiness of God have no grievance against God, no grudge against man. Nothing material injures them ; nothing spiritual punishes them. Accordingly it has been said, " Their motion is that of heaven ; One of ceaseless revolution, without beginning or end. their repose is that of earth. Mental equilibrium gives them the empire of the world. Evil spirits do not harass them without ; demons do not trouble them within. Mental equilibrium gives them sove- reignty over all creation." Which signifies that in repose to extend to the w^hole universe and to be in relation with all creation, — this is the happiness of God. This enables the mind of the Sage to cherish the whole empire. For the virtue of the wise ruler is modelled upon the universe, is guided by Tao, and is ever occupied in inaction. By inaction, he administers the em- pire, and has energy to spare ; but by action he finds his energy inadequate to the administration of the empire. Therefore the men of old set great store by inaction. CAP. XIII.] TJie Tao of God i6i But if rulers practise inaction and the ruled also practise inaction, the ruled will equal the rulers, and will not be as their subjects. On the other hand, if the ruled practise action and rulers also practise action, rulers will assimilate themselves to the ruled, and will not be as their masters. Rulers must practise inaction in order to administer the empire. The ruled must practise action in order to subserve the interests of the empire. This is an unchangeable law. And one over which the commentators have ex- hausted not a little wit. At the end of the chapter, the reader will be able to draw his own conclusions. Thus, the men of old, although their knowledge did not extend throughout the universe, were not troubled in mind. Although their intellectual powers beautified all creation, they did not rejoice. Although their abilities exhausted all things within the limits of ocean, they did not act. Heaven has no parturitions, yet all things are evolved. Earth knows no increment, yet all things are nourished. The wise ruler practises inaction, and the empire applauds him. Therefore it has been said, "There is nothing more mysterious In its action, than heaven, nothing richer than earth, nothing greater than the wise ruler." Wherefore also it has been said, ** The virtue of the wise ruler makes him the peer of heaven and earth." Charioted upon the universe, with all creation for his team, he passes along the highway of mortality. M v^ 1 62 Chuang Tzu The essential is in the ruler; the accidental in the ruled. Lit. the "root," and the "tip" of the branch, respectively. The ultima ratio lies with the prince ; representa- tion is the duty of the minister. Appeal to arms is the lowest form of virtue. Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education. Ceremonies and laws are the lowest form of government. Music and fine clothes are the lowest form of happiness. Weeping and mourning are the lowest form of grief. These five should follow the movements of the mind. The ancients indeed cultivated the study of acci- dentals, but they did not allow it to precede that of essentials. The prince precedes, the minister follows. The father precedes, the son follows. The elder brother precedes, the younger follows. Seniors precede, juniors follow. Men precede, women follow. Husbands precede, wives follow. Distinc- tions of rank and precedence are part of the scheme of the universe, and the Sage adopts them accord- ingly. In point of spirituality, heaven is honourable, earth is lowly, Springand summer precede autumn and winter : such is the order of the seasons. In the constant production of all things, there are phases of existence. There are the extremes of maturity and decay, the perpetual tide of change. And if heaven and earth, divinest of all, admit of rank and precedence, how much more man ? CAP. XIII.] The Tao of God 163 In the ancestral temple, parents rank before all ; at court, the most honom-able ; in the village, the elders ; in matters to be accomplished, the most trustworthy. Such is the order which appertains to Tao. He who in considering Tao disregards this order, thereby disregards Tao ; and he who in considering Tao disregards Tao, — whence will he secure Tao ? Therefore, those of old who apprehended Tao, first apprehended God. Tao came next, and then charity and duty to one's neighbour, and then the functions of public life, and then forms and names, and then employment according to capacity, and then distinctions of good and bad, and then dis- crimination between right and wrong, and then rewards and punishments. Thus wise men and fools met with their dues ; the exalted and the humble occupied their proper places. And the virtuous and the worthless being each guided by their own natural instincts, it was necessary to dis- tinguish capabilities, and to adopt a corresponding nomenclature, in order to serve the ruler, nourish the ruled, administer things generally, and elevate self. Where knowledge and plans are of no avail, one must fall back upon the natural. This is perfect peace, the acme of good government. Therefore it has been written, " Wherever there is form, there is also its name." Forms and names indeed the ancients had, but did not give precedence to them. Thus, those of old who considered Tao, passed M 2 164 Chuang Tzii through five phases before forms and names were reached, and nine before rewards and punishments could be discussed. As given in the preceding paragraph. To rise per salttim to forms and names is to be ignorant of their source ; to rise per saltuni to rewards and punishments is to be ignorant of their beginning. Those who invert the process of dis- cussing Tao, arguing in a directly contrary sense, are rather to, be governed by others than able to govern others themselves. To. rise per saltiun to forms and names and rewards and punishments,, this is, to understand the instrumental part of goverment, but not to under- stand the great principle of government. Which is Tao. This is to be of use in the administration of the empire, but not to be able to admiuister the em- pire. This is to be a sciolist, a man of narrow views. Ceremonies and laws were indeed cultivated by the ancients; but they were employed in the service of the rulers by the ruled. Rulers did not employ them as a means of nourishing the ruled. From the beginning of this chapter, the argument has been eminently unsatisfactory^ Of old, Shun asked Yao, saying, " How does your Majesty employ your faculties ? " CAP. XIII.] The Tao of God 1 65 " I am not arrogant towards the defenceless," replied Yao. " I do not neglect the poor. I grieve for those who die. I pity the orphan. I sympa- thise with the widow. Beyond this, nothing." " Good indeed ! " cried Shun, '' but yet not great." " How so?" inquired Yao. *' Be passive," said Shun, " like the virtue of God. The sun and moon shine ; the four seasons revolve ; day and night alternate ; clouds come and rain falls." " Alas ! " cried Yao, " what a muddle I have been making. You are in accord with God ; I am in accord with man." Of old, heaven and earth were considered great ; and the Yellow Emperor and Yao and Shun all thought them perfection. Consequently, what did those do who ruled the empire of old ? They did what heaven and earth do ; no more. When Confucius was going west to place his works in the Imperial library of the House of Chou, Tzu Lu The most popular of all the disciples of Confucius. In the striking words of Mr. Watters, " He was equally ready to argue, fight, be silent, pray for his master, and die with him. So It is very unfair in Dr. Legge to call him a kind of Peter, meaning of course Simon Peter, a man who lacked faith, courage, and fidelity, and who morever cursed and swore." — Guide to the Tablets in a Coifucian Temple. counselled him, saying, "I have heard that a 1 66 . Ckuajig Tzii certain librarian of the Cheng department, by name Lao Tan, Or, as usually named in this work, Lao Tzu. " Cheng" appears to have been merely a distinctive name. has resigned and retired into private life. Now as you, Sir, wish to deposit your works, it would be advisable to go and interview him." " Certainly," said Confucius ; and he thereupon went to see Lao Tzu. The latter would not hear of the proposal ; so Confucius began to expound the doctrines of his twelve canons, in order to convince Lao Tzu. These twelve have been variously enumerated as (i) the Book of Changes, Parts i and ii, with the ten Wings. (2) The twelve Dukes of the Spring and Autumn, etc. " This is all nonsense," cried Lao Tzu, interrupt- ing him. " Tell me what are your criteria." " Charity," replied Confucius, " and duty towards one's neighbour." ** Tell me, please," asked Lao Tzu, ''are these part of man's original nature ? " The question of an innate moral sense early occupied the attention of Chinese thinkers. "They are," answered Confucius. "Without charity, the superior man could not become what he is. Without duty to one's neighbour, he would be of no effect. These two belong to the original nature of a pure man. What further would you have ? " CAP. XIII.] The Tao of God 167 "Tell me," said Lao Tzu, "in what consist charity and duty to one's neighbour ? " "They consist," answered Confucius, "in a capacity for rejoicing in all things ; in universal love, without the element of self. These are the characteristics of charity and duty to one's neigh- bour." "What stuff!" cried Lao Tzu. "Does not universal love contradict itself? If every one loves every one, there can be no such thing as love, just as absolute altruism only achieves the same result as absolute egoism. Is not your elimination of self a positive mani- festation of self? On the " Don't nail his ear to the pump " principle. Sir, if you would cause the empire not to lose its source of nourishment, — there is the universe, its regularity is unceasing ; there are the sun and moon, their brightness is unceasing ; there are the stars, their groupings never change ; there are birds and beasts, they flock together without vary- ing ; there are trees and shrubs, they grow up- y wards without exception. Be like these ; follow Tao ; and you will be perfect. Why then these vain struggles after charity and duty to one's neighbour, as though beating a drum in search of a fugitive. Alas ! Sir, you have brought much confusion into the mind of man." The drum similitude occurs again in ch. xiv. 1 68 Chiiamy Tzii «b Shih Ch eng Ch'i Of whom nothing is known. visited Lao Tzu, and addressed him, saying, " Having heard. Sir, that you were a Sage, I put aside all thought of distance to come and visit you. Travelling many stages, the soles of my feet thickened, but I did not venture to rest. And now I see you are not a Sage. While rats feasted off your leavings, you turned your sister out of doors. This is not charity. Though you have no lack of food, raw and cooked, you are stingy beyond all bounds." At this Lao Tzu was silent and made no reply ; and the next day Shih Ch eng Ch'i came again and said, " Before, I was rude to you ; now, I am sorry. How is this ? " " I have no pretension," replied Lao Tzu, " to be possessed of cunning knowledge nor of divine wisdom. Had you yesterday called me an ox, I should have considered myself an ox. Had you called me a horse, I should have considered myself a horse. " For if men class you in accordance with truth, and you reject the classification, you only double the reproach. My humility is natural humility. It is not humility for humility's sake." Shih Ch'eng Ch'i moved respectfully away. Without allowing his shadow to fall on Lao Tzu. Bringing one foot up to the other only. Not venturing to let it pass as in ordinary walking. CAP. XIII.] The Tao of God 169 Then he advanced again, also respectfully, and said, *' May I ask you about personal cultivation ?" Lao Tzu said, "Your countenance is a strange one. Your eyes protrude. Your jaws are heavy. Your lips are parted. Your demeanour is self- satisfied. You look like a man on a tethered horse. His body there, his mind elsewhere. You are too confident. You are too hasty. You think too much of your own powers. Such men are not trusted. Those who are found on the wrong side of a boundary line are called thieves." Lao Tzu said, " Tao is not too small for the greatest, nor too great for the smallest. Thus all things are embosomed therein ; wide indeed its boundless capacity, unfathomable its depth. ** Form, and virtue, and charity, and duty to one's neighbour, these are the accidentals of the spiritual. Except he be a perfect man, who shall determine their place ? The world of the perfect man, is not that vast? And yet it is not able to involve him in trouble. All struggle for power, but he does not join. Though discovering nothing false, he is not tempted astray. In spite of the utmost genuineness, he still confines himself to essentials. To the root, not to the branch. " He thus places himself outside the universe, beyond all creation, where his soul is free from lyo Chitang Tsil care. Apprehending Tao, he is in accord with virtue. He leaves charity and duty to one's neighbour alone. He treats ceremonies and music as adventitious. And so the mind of the perfect man is at peace. "Books are what the world values as representing Tao. But books are only words, and the valuable part of words is the thought therein contained. That thought has a certain bias which cannot be conveyed in words, yet the world values words as being the essence of books. But though the world values them, they are not of value ; as that sense in which the world values them is not the sense in which they are valuable. " That which can be seen with the eye is form and colour ; that which can be heard with the ear is sound and noise. But alas ! the people of this generation think that form, and colour, and sound, and noise, are means by which they can come to understand the essence of Tao. This is not so. And as those who know, do not speak, while those who speak do not know, whence should the world derive its knowledge ? " The first half of this last sentence has been pitch- forked a pi'opos de bottes into ch. Ivi of the Tao- Te-Ching. See The Re mams of Lao Tzii, pp. 7 and 38. Duke Huan. The famous ruler of the Ch'i State. Flourished 7th century B.C. I CAP. XIII.] The Tao of God 171 was one day reading in his hall, when a wheel- wright who was working below, Below the covered dais, termed " hall," which has an open frontage, in full view of which such work might be carried on. flung down his hammer and chisel, and mounting the steps said, ''What words may your Highness be studying? " *' I am studying the words of the Sages," replied the Duke. "Are the Sages alive?" asked the wheelwright. " No," answered the Duke; " they are dead." "Then the words your Highness is studying," rejoined the wheelwright, " are only the dregs of the ancients." " What do you mean, sirrah ! " cried the Duke, " by interfering with what I read ? Explain yourself, or you shall die." " Let me take an illustration," said the wheel- wright, " from my own trade. In making a wheel, if you work too slowly, you can't make it firm ; if you work too fast, the spokes won't fit in. You must go neither too slowly nor too fast. There must be co-ordination of mind and hand. Words cannot explain what it is, but there is some mys- terious art herein. I cannot teach it to my son ; nor can he learn it from me. Consequently, though seventy years of age, I am still making- wheels in my old age. If the ancients, together with what they could not impart, are dead and 172 Chuang Tzu gone, then what your Highness is studying must be the dregs." This episode of the wheelwright is to be found in the works of Huai Nan Tzu, of the 2nd century B.C. He used it to illustrate the opening words of the Tao-Te-Ching ; and in The Remains of Lao Tzil, p. 6, it is stated that he stole it from Chuang Tzu without acknowledofment. When that statement was made I had not come to the conclusion, now forced upon me, that the above chapter is not from the hand of Chuang Tzu. As one critic remarks, the style is generally admirable ; but it is not the style of Chuang Tzu. 173 CHAPTER XIV. The Circling Sky. Argument: — The Ultimate Cause — Integrity of Tao — Music and Tao — Failure of Confucianism — Confucius and Lao Tzii — Confucius attains to Tag — Illustrations. [This chapter is supplementary to ch. v.] THE sky turns round ; the earth stands still ; sun and moon pursue one another. Who causes this ? Who directs this ? Who has leisure enough to see that such movements continue ? " Some think there is a mechanical arrangement which makes these bodies move as they do. Others think that they revolve without being able to stop. " The clouds cause rain ; rain causes clouds. Whose kindly bounty is this ? Who has leisure enough to see that such, result is achieved ? ''Wind comes from the north. It blows now east, now west ; and now it whirls aloft. Who puffs it forth ? Who has leisure enough to be flapping it this way or that ? I should like to know the cause of all this." We are not told the name of this questioner. Wu Han Chao An ancient worthy. 174 Chiiang Tzii said, "Come here, and I will tell you. Above there are the Six Influences The Ym and Yang principles, wind, rain, darkness, and light ; as in ch. xi. Some commentators read, the "Six Cardinal Points," i viz. : N., E., S., W., above, and below. 1 and the Five Virtues. Charity, duty to one's neighbour, order, wisdom, and truth. If a ruler keeps in harmony with these, his rule is good ; if not, it is bad. By following the nine chapters of the Lo book. Containing a mystic revelation of knowledge in the form of a diagram,, supposed to have been delivered to one of the legendary rulers of China more than 2,000 years before the Christian era. his rule will be a success and his virtue complete ; he will watch over the interests of his people, and all the empire will owe him gratitude. This is to be an eminent ruler." "A very round answer," says Lin Hsi Chung, "to a very square question." Tang, a high official of Sung, asked Chuang Tzu about charity. Chuang Tzu said, " Tigers and wolves have it." " How so?" asked Tang. " The natural love between parents and offspring," replied Chuang Tzii, — " is not that charity?" CAP. XIV.] The Circling Sky 1 75 Tang then inquired about perfect charity. " Perfect charity," said Chuang Tzu, ** does not admit of love for the individual." It embraces all men equally. To love one person would imply at least the possibility of hating another. See also p. 167, where Lao Tzu refutes the doctrine of universal love, " Without such love," replied Tang, " it appears to me there would be no such thing as affection, and without affection no filial piety. Does perfect charity not admit of filial piety ?" " Not so," said Chuang Tzu. " Perfect charity is the more extensive term. Consequently, it was unnecessary to mention filial piety. It was not that filial piety was omitted. It was merely not particularised. " A man who travels southwards to Ying, Capital of the Ch'u State. cannot see Mount Ming in the north. Why ? Because he is too far off. " Therefore it has been said that it is easy to be respectfully filial, but difficult to be affectionately filial. The artificial is easier than the natural. But even that is easier than to become unconscious of one's natural obligations, which is in turn easier than to cause others to be unconscious of the operations thereof. I.e. to be filial without letting others be conscious of the fact. \J 176 Chuang Tzii Similarly, this is easier than to become altogether unconscious of the world, which again is easier than to cause the world to be unconscious of one's influence upon it. Such is perfect charity, which operates without letting its operation be known, " True virtue does nothing, yet it leaves Yao and Shun far behind. Its good influence extends to ten thousand generations, yet no man knoweth it to exist. What boots it then to sigh after charity and duty to one's neighbour ? " Filial piety, fraternal love, charity, duty to one's neighbour, loyalty, truth, chastity, and honesty, — these are all studied efforts, designed to aid the development of virtue. They are only parts of a whole. " Therefore it has been said, * Perfect honour includes all the honour a country can give. Perfect wealth includes all the wealth a country can give. Perfect ambition includes all the reputation one can desire.' And by parity of reasoning, Tao does not admit of sub-division." Pei Men Ch'eng; _ I Of whom nothing is recorded. I said to the Yellow Emperor, " When your Majesty played the Han-cJiilL Name of a piece of music, the meaning of which is not known. in the wilds of Tung-t'ing, the first time I heard CAP. XIV.] The Circling Sky 177 it I was afraid, the second time I was amazed, and the last time I was confused, speechless, over- whelmed." ** You are not far from the truth," replied the Yellow Emperor. " I played as a man, drawing inspiration from God. The execution was punc- tilious, the expression sublime. ** Perfect music first shapes itself according to a human standard ; then it follows the lines of the divine ; then it proceeds in harmony with the five virtues ; then it passes into spontaneity. The four seasons are then blended, and all creation is brought into accord. As the seasons come forth in turn, so are all things produced. Now fulness, now decay, now soft and loud in turn, now clear, now muffled, the harmony of Yin and Yang. Like a flash was the sound which roused you as the insect world is roused. By the warm breath of spring", followed by a thundering peal, without end and without beginning, now dying, now living, now sinking, now rising, on and on without a moment's break. And so you were afraid. " When I played again, it was the harmony of the Yin and Yang, lighted by the glory of sun and moon ; now broken, now prolonged, now gentle, now severe, in one unbroken, unfathomable volume of sound. Filling valley and gorge, stopping the ears and dominating the senses, adapting itself to the capacities of things, — the sound whirled around on all sides, with shrill note and clear. The spirits 178 CJmang Tzit of darkness kept to their domain. Sun, moon, and stars, pursued their appointed course. When the melody was exhausted I stopped ; if the melody did not stop, I went on. The music was naturally what it was, independently of the player. You would have sympathised, but you could not understand. You would have looked, but you could not see. You would have pursued, but you could not overtake. You stood dazed in the middle of the wilderness, leaning against a tree and crooning, your eye conscious of exhausted vision, your strength failing for the pursuit, and so unable to overtake me. Your frame was but an empty shell. You were completely at a loss, and so you were amazed. "Then I played in sounds which produce no amazement, the melodious law of spontaneity, springing forth like nature's countless buds, in manifold but formless joy, as though poured forth to the dregs, in deep but soundless bass. Begin- ning nowhere, the melody rested in void ; some would say dead, others alive, others real, others ornamental, as it scattered itself on all sides in never to be anticipated chords. " The wondering world enquires of the Sage. He is in relation with its variations and follows the same eternal law. ** When no machinery is set in motion, and yet the instrumentation is complete, this is the music of God. The mind awakes to its enjoyment with- CAP. XIV.] The Circling Sky 1 79 out waiting to be called. Accordingly, Yu Piao praised it, saying, * Listening you cannot hear its sound ; gazing you cannot see its form. Yu Piao is said to have been one of the pre-historic rulers of China. Readers of the Tao-Te-Ching (ch. xiv) will here find another nail for the coffin of that egregious fraud. See The Reinains of Lao Tzii, p. 14. Also ch. xxii of this work. It fills heaven and earth. It embraces the six cardinal points.' Now you desired to listen to it, but you were not able to grasp its existence. And so you were confused. " My music first induced fear ; and as a con- sequence, respect. I then added amazement, by which you were isolated. From consciousness of your surroundings. And lastly, confusion ; for confusion means absence of sense, and absence of sense means Tao, and Tao means absorption therein." When Confucius travelled west to the Wei State, Yen Yiian The "John" among the disciples of Confucius. He closed a pure and gentle life at the early age of 32, to the inexpressible grief of the Sage. asked Shih Chin, Chief musician of the Lu State. saying, ** What think you of my Master?" "Alas!" replied Shih Chin, "he is not a success." N 2 i8o Chuang Tzu " How so ?" enquired Yen Yiian. " Before the straw dog has been offered in sacrifice," replied Shih Chin, '* it is kept in a box, wrapped up in an embroidered cloth, and the augur fasts before using it. But when it has once been offered up, passers-by trample over its body, and fuel-gatherers pick it up for burning. Then, if any one should take it, and again putting it in a box and wrapping it up in an embroidered cloth, watch and sleep alongside, he would not only dream, but have nightmare into the bargain. The thing being uncanny. From which it would appear that the use of the straw dog was to induce dreams of future events. " Now your Master has been thus treating the ancients, who are like the dog which has already been offered in sacrifice. He causes his disciples to watch and sleep alongside of them. Conse- quently, his tree Beneath which he used to teach. has been cut down in Sung ; they will have none of him in Wei ; in fact, his chances among the Shangs and the Chous are exhausted. Is not this the dream ? And then to be surrounded by the Ch'^ns and the Ts ais, seven days without food, death staring him in the face, — is not this the nightmare ? " For travelling by water there is nothing like a boat. For travelling by land there is nothing like a cart. This because a boat moves readily in CAP. XIV.] The Circling Sky 1 8 1 water ; but were you to try to push it on land you would never succeed in making it go. Be in harmony with your surroundings. Now ancient and modern times may be likened unto water and land ; Chou and Lu to the boat and the cart. To try to make the customs of Chou succeed in Lu, is like pushing a boat on land : great trouble and no result, except certain injury to one- self. Your Master has not yet learnt the doctrine of non-angularity, of self-adaptation to externals. " Have you never seen a well-sweep ? You pull it, and down it comes. You release it, and up it goes. It is the man who pulls the well-sweep, and not the well-sweep which pulls the man ; so that both in coming down and going up, it does not run counter to the wishes of the man. And so it was that the ceremonial and obligations and laws of the Three Emperors and Five Rulers did not aim at uniformity of application but at good government of the empire. Their ceremonial, obligations, laws, etc., were like the cherry-apple, the pear, the orange, and the pumelo, — all differing in flavour but each palatable. They changed with the changing season. " Dress up a monkey in the robes of Chou Kung, See ch. iv. and it will not be happy until they are torn to shreds. And the difference between past and present is much the same as the difference between Chou Kung and a monkey. 1 82 Chuang Tzit " When Hsi Shih A famous beauty of old. was distressed in mind, she knitted her brows. An ugly woman of the village, seeing how beautiful she looked, went home, and having worked herself into a fit frame of mind, knitted her brows. The result was that the rich people of the place barred up their doors and would not come out, while the poor people took their wives and children and departed elsewhere. That w^oman saw the beauty of knitted brows, but she did not see wherein the beauty of knitted brows lay. In suitability to the individual. Alas ! your Master is emphatically not a success." Confucius had lived to the age of fifty-one with- out hearing Tao, when he went south to P'ei, to see Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu said, " So you have come, Sir, have you ? I hear you are considered a wise man up north. Have you got Tag ?" '* Not yet," answered Confucius. " In what direction," asked Lao Tzu, " have you sought for it?" " I sought it for five years," replied Confucius, " in the science of numbers, but did not succeed." "And then? . . . ." continued Lao Tzu. " Then," said Confucius, ** I spent twelve years seeking for it in the doctrine of the Yin and Yang, also without success." I CAP. XIV.] The Circling Sky 183 '' Just so," rejoined Lao Tzu. " Were Tao some- thing which could be presented, there is no man but would present it to his sovereign, or to his parents. Could it be imparted or given, there is no man but would impart it to his brother or give it to his child. But this is impossible, for the following reason. Unless there is a suitable endow- ment within, Tao will not abide. Unless there is outward correctness, Tag will not operate. The external being unfitted for the impression of the internal, the true Sage does not seek to imprint. The internal being unfitted for the reception of the external, the true Sage does not seek to receive. Attempting neither to teach nor to learn. " Reputation is public property ; you may not appropriate it in excess. Charity and duty to one's neighbour are as caravanserais established by wise rulers of old ; you may stop there one night, but not for long, or you will incur reproach. " The perfect men of old took their road through charity, stopping a night with duty to their neigh- bour, on their way to ramble in transcendental space. Feeding on the produce of non-cultivation, and establishing themselves in the domain of no obligations, they enjoyed their transcendental inac- tion. Their food was ready to hand ; and being under no obligations to others, they did not put any one under obligation to themselves. The ancients called this the outward visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. 184 Chitang Tzii ." Those who make wealth their all in all, cannot bear loss of money. Those who make distinction their all in all, cannot bear loss of fame. Those who affect power will not place authority in the hands of others. Anxious while holding, distressed if losing, yet never taking warning from the past and seeing the folly of their pursuit, — such men are the accursed of God. " Resentment, gratitude, taking, giving, censure of self, instruction of others, power of life and death, — these eight are the instruments of right ; but only he who can adapt himself to the vicissi- tudes of fortune, without being carried away, is fit to use them. Such a one is an upright man among the upright. And he whose heart is not so consti- tuted,— the door of divine intelligence is not yet opened for him." Confucius visited Lao Tzu, and spoke of charity and duty to one's neighbour. Lao Tzu said, " The chaff from winnowing will blind a man's eyes so that he cannot tell the points of the compass. Mosquitoes will keep a man awake all night with their biting. And just in the same way this talk of charity and duty to one's neighbour drives me nearly crazy. Sir I strive to keep the w^orld to its own original simplicity. And as the wind bloweth where it listeth, so let Virtue esta- blish itself. Wherefore such undue energy, as though searching for a fugitive with a big drum ? See p. 167. CAP. XIV.] The Circling Sky 185 " The snow-goose is white without a daily bath. The raven is black without daily colouring itself. The original simplicity of black and of white is be- yond the reach of argument. The vista of fame and reputation is not worthy of enlargement. When the pond dries up and the fishes are left upon dry ground, to moisten them with the breath or to damp them with a little spittle is not to be compared with leaving them in the first instance in their native rivers and lakes." Repeated from ch. vi. On returning from this visit to Lao Tzii, Confucius did not speak for three days. A disciple asked him, saying, " Master, when you saw Lao Tzu, in what direction did you admonish him ? " "I saw a Dragon," replied Confucius, '' — a Dragon which by convergence showed a body, by radiation became colour, and riding upon the clouds of heaven, nourished the two Principles of Creation. My mouth was agape : I could not shut it. How then do you think I was going to admonish Lao Tzu ? " Upon this Tzu Kung remarked, " Ha ! then a man can sit corpse-like manifesting his dragon- power around, his thunder-voice heard though profound silence reigns, his movements like those of the universe ? I too would go and see him." More repetition, this time from ch. xi. 1 86 Chtiang Tzu So on the strength of his connection with Confu- cius, Tzu Kung obtained an interview. Lao Tzu received him distantly and with dignity, saying in a low voice, " I am old. Sir. What injunctions may you have to give me ? " "The administration of the Three Kings and of the Five Rulers," replied Tzu Kung, " was not uniform ; but their reputation has been identical. How then, Sir, is it that you do not regard them as Sages ? " *' Come nearer, my son," said Lao Tzu. *' What mean you by not uniform ? " " Yao handed over the empire to Shun," replied Tzu Kung; "and Shun to Yii. Yii employed labour, and T'ang employed troops. Wen Wang followed Chou Hsin and did not venture to oppose him. Wu Wang opposed him and would not follow. Therefore I said not uniform^ " Come nearer, my son," said Lao Tzu, "and I will tell you about the Three Kings and the Five Rulers. " The Yellow Emperor's administration caused the affections of the people to be catholic. Nobody wept for the death of his parents, and nobody found fault. All loved each other equally. " The administration of Yao diverted the affec- tions of the people into particular channels. If a man slew the slayer of his parents, nobody blamed him. Filial affection began to predominate. 1 CAP. XIV.] The Circling Sky 187 " The administration of Shun brought a spirit of rivalry among the people. Children were born after ten months' gestation ; when five months old, they could speak ; and ere they were three years of age, Including gestation. could already tell one person from another. And so early death came into the world. A veritable anti-climax, hopelessly unworthy of either Lao Tzu or Chuanor Tzii. "The administration of Yu wrought a change in the hearts of the people. Individuality pre- vailed, and force was called into play. Killing rob- bers was not accounted murder ; and throughout the empire people became sub-divided into classes. There was great alarm on all sides, and the Con- fucianists and the Mihists arose. At first the relationships were duly observed ; but what about the women of to-day ? Meaning that in the olden days men could not marry before thirty, women before twenty, whereas now the State is cursed with early marriages. Or, according to Dr. Legge's view of a famous passage in the Book of Rites, that formerly it was shameful in men and women not to be married at the age of thirty and twenty, respectively, whereas now the State is cursed with late marriages. " Let me tell you. The government of the Three Kings and Five Rulers was so only in name. In reality, it was utter confusion. The wisdom of 1 88 Chuang Tzii the Three Kings was opposed to the brilliancy of the sun and moon above, destructive of the energy of land and water below, and subversive of the influence of the four seasons between. More repetition. See ch. x. ad fin. That wisdom is more harmful than a hornet's tail, preventing the very animals from putting them- selves into due relation with the conditions of their existence, — and yet they call themselves Sages! Is not their shamelessness shameful indeed ? " At this Tzu Kung became ill at ease. The whole of the above episode may without hesitation be written off as a feeble forgery. Confucius said to Lao Tzu, " I arranged the Six Canons of Poetry, History, Rites, Music, Changes, j and Spring and Autumn. I spent much time over them, and I am well acquainted with their purport. I used them in admonishing seventy-two rulers, * by discourses on the wisdom of ancient sovereigns and illustrations from the lives of Chou and Shao. Yet not one ruler has in any way adopted my sug- gestions. Alas that man should be so difficult to persuade, and wisdom so difficult to illustrate." '* It is well for you, Sir," replied Lao Tzu, " that you did not come across any real ruler of mankind. Your Six Canons are but the worn-out foot-prints of ancient Sages. And what are foot-prints ? Why, the words you now utter are as it were foot-prints. Foot-prints are made by the shoe : they are not the shoe itself. CAP. XIV.] The Circling Sky 189 " Fish-hawks gaze at each other with motionless eyes, — and their young are produced. The male of a certain insect chirps with the wind while the female chirps against it, — and their offspring is produced. There is another animal which, being an hermaphrodite, produces its own offspring. Nature cannot be changed. Destiny cannot be altered. Time cannot stop. Tao cannot be ob- structed. Once attain to Tao, and there is nothing which you cannot accomplish. Without it, there is nothing which you can accomplish." For three months after this Confucius did not leave his house. Then he again visited Lao Tzu and said, " I have attained. Birds lay eggs, fish spawn, insects undergo metamorphosis, and mam- mals suckle their young. Lit. " when a younger brother comes, the elder cries," — from which may be inferred the meaning in the translation. The whole sentence signifies that every development proceeds according to fixed laws. It is useless to try to do anything. Nature is always self-similar. For a long time I have not been enlightened. And he who is not enlightened himself, — how should he enlighten others ? " Lao Tzu said, " Ch'iu, you have attained ! " "The style of this chapter," says Lin H si Chung, "gives it a foremost place among the 'outside' essays of Chuang Tzu. But the insertion of that dialogue between Confucius and Lao Tzu on charity and duty towards one's neighbour is like eking out a sable robe with a dog's tail." 190 CHAPTER XV. Self-Conceit. Argument : — Would-be sages — The vanity of effort — Method of the true Sage — Passivity the key — The soul and mortality — Re-absorption into the immortal. SELF-CONCEIT and assurance, which lead men to quit society, and be different from their fellows, to indulge in tall talk and abuse of others, — these are nothing more than personal over-estimation, the affectation of recluses and those who have done with the world and have closed their hearts to mundane influences. Preaching of charity and duty to one's neigh- bour, of loyalty and truth, of respect, of economy, and of humility, — this is but moral culture, affected by would-be pacificators and teachers of mankind, and by scholars at home or abroad. Preaching of meritorious services, of fame, of ceremonial between sovereign and minister, of due relationship between upper and low^er classes, — this is mere government, affected by courtiers or patriots who strive to extend the boundaries of their own State and to swallow up the territory of others. Living in marshes or in wildernesses, and passing CAP. XV. J Self-Conceit 191 one's days in fishing, — this is mere inaction, affected by wanderers who have turned their backs upon the world and have nothing better to do. Exhaling and inhaling. The "breathing" theory. See ch. vi., adinit. getting rid of the old and assimilating the new, stretching like a bear and craning like a bird, — As these creatures are supposed to do in order to get good air into their systems. — this is but valetudinarianism, affected by pro- fessors of hygiene and those who try to preserve the body to the age of P eng Tsu. See ch. i. But in self-esteem without self-conceit, in moral culture without charity and duty to one's neigh- bour, ill government without rank and fame, in retirement without solitude, in health without hygiene, — there we have oblivion absolute coupled with possession of all things; an infinite calm which becomes an object to be attained by all. Such is the Tao of the universe, such is the virtue of the Sage. Wherefore it has been said, " In tranquillity, in stillness, in the unconditioned, in inaction, we find the levels of the universe, the very constitution of Tag." Almost verbatim from ch. xiii, p. 158, where the passage appears as part of Chuang Tzu's own text, and not as a quotation from any other author. Wherefore it has been said, ''The Sage is a 192 Chuang Tzu negative quantity, and is consequently in a state of passivity. Being passive he is in a state of repose. And where passivity and repose are, there sorrow and anxiety do not enter, and foul influ- ences do not collect. And thus his virtue is complete and his spirituality unimpaired." Wherefore it has been said, *'The birth of the Sage is the will of God ; his death is but a modifi- cation of existence. In repose, he shares the passivity of the Yi)i ; in action, the energy of the Yang. He will have nothing to do with happi- ness, and so has nothing to do with misfortune. Each of which proceeds from the other in an endless chain. He must be influenced ere he will respond. He must be urged ere he will move. He must be compelled ere he will arise. Ignoring the future and the past, he resigns himself to the laws of God. " And therefore no calamity comes upon him, \ nothing injures him, no man is against him, no spirit punishes him. He floats through life to rest in death. He has no anxieties ; he makes no plans. His honour does not make him illustrious. His good faith reflects no credit upon himself. It is all God's, as part of the great scheme. His sleep is dreamless, his awaking without pain. His spirituality is pure, Without desires, and his soul vigorous. Thus unconditioned and 1 CAP. XV.] Self-Conceit 193 in repose, he is a partaker of the virtue of God." Wherefore it has been said, " Sorrow and happi- ness are the heresies Evil influences. of virtue ; joy and anger lead astray from Tao ; love and hate cause the loss of virtue. The heart unconscious of sorrow and happiness, — that is perfect virtue. One, without change, — that is perfect repose. Without any obstruction, — that is the perfection of the unconditioned. Holding no relations with the external world, — that is perfec- tion of the negative state. Without blemish of any kind, — that is the perfection of purity." Wherefore it has been said, ''If the body toils without rest, it dies. If the mind is employed without ceasing, it becomes wearied ; and being wearied, its power is gone." Pure water is by nature clear. If untouched, it is smooth. If dammed, it will not flow, neither will it be clear. It is an emblem of the virtue of God. Wherefore it has been said, " Pure, without admixture ; uniform, without change ; negative, without action ; moved, only at the will of God ; — such would be the spirituality nourished according to Tag." Those who possess blades from Kan The Wu State. or Yueh, keep them carefully in their scabbards, and do not venture to use them. For they are o 194 Chuang Tzil precious in the extreme. The spirit spreads forth on all sides : there is no point to which it does not reach, attaining heaven above, embracing earth beneath. Influencing all creation, its form cannot be portrayed. Its name is then Of-God. Such is man's spiritual existence before he is born into the world of mortals. The Tao of the pure and simple consists in preserving spirituality. He who preserves his spirituality and loses it not, becomes one with that spirituality. And through that unity the spirit operates freely, and comes into due relationship with God. Returning after its brief career on earth, to the eternity whence it came. A vulgar saying has it, "The masses value money ; honest men, fame ; virtuous men, resolu- tion ; and Sages, the soul." Thus, the pure is that in which there is nothing mixed ; the simple is that which implies no injury to the spirituality. And he who can keep the pure and simple within himself, — he is a divine man. It requires but scant acumen to relegate this chapter to the limbo of forgeries. Lin Hsi Chung thinks it is probably from the hand of the unknown artist who is responsible for ch. xiii. 195 CHAPTER XVI. Exercise of Faculties. Argument : — Tao unattainable by mundane arts — To be reached through repose — The world's infancy — The reign of peace — Government sets in — Tao declines — The true Sages of old — Their purity of aim. THOSE who exercise their faculties in mere worldly studies, hoping thereby to revert to their original condition ; and those who sink their aspirations in mundane thoughts, hoping thereby to reach enlightenment ; — these are the dullards of the earth. The ancients, in cultivating Tao, begat know- ledge out of repose. When born, this knowledge was not applied to any purpose ; and so it may be said that out of knowledge they begat repose. Knowledge and repose thus mutually producing each other, harmony and order were developed. Virtue is harmony ; Tao is order. Virtue all-embracing, — hence charity. Tao all- J influencing, — hence duty to one's neighbour. From the establishment of these two springs loyalty. Then comes music, an expression of inward purity and truth ; followed by ceremonial, or sincerity ex- pressed in ornamental guise. If music and ceremonial are ill regulated, the empire is plunged O 2 196 Chuang Tzii into confusion. And to attempt to correct others while one's own virtue is clouded, is to set one's own virtue a task for which it is inadequate, the result being that the natural constitution of the object will suffer. Primeval man enjoyed perfect tranquillity throughout life. In his day, the Positive and Negative principles were peacefully united ; spiri- tual beings gave no trouble ; the four seasons followed in due order; nothing suffered any injury; death was unknown ; men had knowledge, but no occasion to use it. This may be called perfection of unity. All things, all conditions, were One. At that period, nothing was ever made so; but every- thing was so. By and by, virtue declined. Sui Jen The Prometheus of China, and Fu Hsi See ch. vi. ruled the empire. There was still natural adapta- tion, Of man to his surroundings. but the unity was gone. The tide of coercion had set in. A further decline in virtue. Shen Nung The inventor of agriculture, and Huang Ti The Yellow Emperor. See ch. vi. CAP. XVI.] Exercise of Faculties 197 ruled the empire. There was peace, but the natural adaptation was gone. Again virtue declined. Yao and Shun ruled the empire. Systems of government and moral reform were introduced. Man's original integrity was scattered. Goodness led him astray from Tao ; But for goodness, evil could not exist. his actions imperilled his virtue. As opposed to inaction. Then he discarded natural instinct and took up with the intellectual. Mind was pitted against mind, but it was impossible thus to settle the empire. So art and learning were added. But art obliterated the original constitution, and learning overwhelmed mind ; upon which confusion set in, and man was unable to revert to his natural instincts, to the condition in which he at first existed. Thus it may be said that the world destroys Tao, and that Tao destroys the world. And the world and Tao thus mutually destroying each other, how can the men of Tao elevate the world, and how can the world elevate Tao? Tao cannot elevate the world ; neither can the world elevate Tao. Though the Sages were not to dwell on mountain and in forest, their virtue would still be hidden ; — hidden, but not by themselves. Those of old who were called retired scholars, were not men who hid their bodies, or kept back their words, or concealed their wisdom. It was that the age was not suitable for their mission. If 198 Chuang TzU the aofe was suitable and their mission a success over the empire, they simply effaced themselves in the unity which prevailed. If the age was unsuit- able and their mission a failure, they fell back upon their own resources and waited. Such is the way to preserve oneself. Those of old who preserved themselves, did not ornament their knowledge with rhetoric. They did not exhaust the empire with their knowledge. They did not exhaust virtue. They kept quietly to their own spheres, and reverted to their natural instincts. What then was left for them to do ? Tao does not deal with detail. Virtue does not take cognizance of trifles. Trifles injure virtue ; detail injures Tag. Wherefore it has been said, " Self-reformation is enough." He whose happi- ness is complete has attained his desire. Of old, attainment of desire did not mean office. It meant that nothing could be added to the sum of happiness. But now it does mean office, though office is external and is not a part of oneself. That which is adventitious, comes. Coming, you cannot prevent it ; going, you cannot arrest it. Therefore, not to look on office as the attainment of desire, and not because of poverty to become a toady, but to be equally happy under all conditions, — this is to be without sorrow. But now-a-days, both having and not having Office, are causes of unhappiness. From which we may CAP. XVI.] Exercise of Faculties 199 infer that even happiness is not exempt from sorrow. A reductio ad absurdum. Wherefore it has been said, " Those who over-esti- mate the external and lose their natural instincts in worldliness,-— these are the people of topsy- turvydom." We are left in the dark as to the authorship of the numerous quotations in this and the preceding chapter. It is, however, a point of minor impor- tance, neither chapter having the slightest claim to be regarded as the genuine work of Chuang Tzti. 200 CHAPTER XVII. Autumn Floods. Argument: — Greatness and smallness always relative — Time and space infinite — Abstract dimensions do not exist — Their expression is concrete — Terms are not absolute — Like causes produce unlike effects — In the unconditioned alone can the absolute exist — The only • absolute is Tao — Illustrations. [This chapter is supplementary to chapter ii. It is the most popular of all, and has earned for its author the sobriquet of " Autumn Floods."] IT was the time of autumn floods. Every stream poured into the river, which swelled in its turbid course. The banks receded so far from one another that it was impossible to tell a cow from a horse. Then the Spirit of the River laughed for joy that all the beauty of the earth was gathered to himself. Down with the stream he journeyed east, until he reached the ocean. There, looking eastwards and seeing no limit to its waves, his countenance changed. And as he gazed over the expanse, he sighed and said to the Spirit of the Ocean, " A vulgar proverb says that he who has heard but part of the truth thinks no one equal to himself. And such a one am I. " When formerly I heard people detracting from CAP. XVII.] Atitumn Floods 201 the learning of Confucius or underrating the hero- ism of Poh I, See ch. vi. I did not believe. But now that I have looked upon your inexhaustibility — alas for me had I not reached your abode, I should have been for ever a laughing-stock to those of comprehensive enlighten- ment ! " The Spirit of a paltry river learns that the ripple of his rustic stream is scarcely the murmur of the world. To which the Spirit of the Ocean replied, " You cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog, — the creature of a narrower sphere. You cannot speak of ice to a summer insect, — ^the creature of a season. You cannot speak of Tao to a pedagogue : his scope is too restricted. But now that you have emerged from your narrow sphere and have seen the great ocean, you know your own insignificance, and I can speak to you of great principles. " There is no body of water beneath the canopy of heaven which is greater than ocean. All streams pour into it without cease, yet it does not overflow. It is constantly being drained off, yet it is never empty. Spring and autumn bring no change ; floods and droughts are equally unknown. And thus it is immeasurably superior to mere rivers and brooks, — though I would not venture to boast on this account, for I get my shape from the universe, my vital power from the Yin and Yang. In the 202 Chttang Tzu universe I am but as a small stone or a small tree on a vast mountain. And conscious thus of my own insignificance, what is there of which I can boast ? " The Four Seas, — are they not to the universe but like puddles in a marsh ? The Middle King- dom,— is it not to the surrounding ocean like a tare- seed in a granary? Of all the myriad created things, man is but one. And of all those who inhabit the land, live on the fruit of the earth, and move about in cart and boat, an individual man is but one. Is not he, as compared with all creation, but as the tip of a hair upon a horse's skin ? " The succession of the Five Rulers, the conten- tions of the Three Kings, the griefs of the philan- thropist, the labours of the administrator, are but this and nothing more. ►S^. ambition. Poh I refused the throne for fame's sake. Confucius discoursed to get a reputation for learning. This over-estimation of self on their part, was it not very much your own in reference to water ?" " Very well," replied the Spirit of the River, " am I then to regard the universe as great and the tip of a hair as small ? " " Not at all," said the Spirit of the Ocean. " Dimensions are limitless ; time is endless. Con- ditions are not invariable ; terms are not final. Thus, the wise man looks into space, and does not regard the small as too little, nor the great as too CAP. XVII.] Autumn Floods 203 much ; for he knows that there is no limit to dimension. He looks back into the past, and does not grieve over what is far off, nor rejoice over what is near ; for he knows that time is without end. Space infinite has been illustrated by Locke by a centre from which you can proceed for ever in all directions. Time infinite, by a point in a line from which you can proceed backwards and forwards for ever. He investigates fulness and decay, and does not rejoice if he succeeds, nor lament if he fails.; for he knows that conditions are not invariable. Fulness and decay are the inevitable precursors of each other. He who clearly apprehends the scheme of existence, does not rejoice over life, nor repine at death ; for he knows that terms are not final. Life and death are but links in an endless chain. *' What man knows is not to be compared with what he does not know. The span of his existence is not to be compared with the span of his non- existence. With the small to strive to exhaust the great, necessarily lands him in confusion, and he does not attain his object. How then should one be able to say that the tip of a hair is the ne plus ultra of smallness, or that the universe is the ne plus ultra of greatness ? " These predicates are abstract terms, which are not names of real existences but of relations, states, or conditions of existences ; not things, but conditions of things. 204 Chuang Tzii " Dialecticians of the day," replied the Spirit of the River, " all say that the infinitesimally small has no form, and that the infinitesimally great is beyond all measurement. Is that so? " " If we regard greatness as compared with that which is small," said the Spirit of the Ocean, " there is no limit to it ; and if we regard small- ness as compared with that which is great, it eludes our sight. That is, if we proceed from the concrete to the abstract. Given a large or a small thing, there is no limit to the smallness or greatness with which each may be respectively compared. i The infinitesimal is a subdivision of the small ; the colossal is an extension of the great. In this sense the two fall into different categories. " Both small and great things must equally possess form. The mind cannot picture to itself a thing without form, nor conceive a form of un- limited dimensions. The greatness of anything may be a topic of discussion, or the smallness of anything may be mentally realized. But that which can be neither a topic of discussion nor be realized mentally, can be neither great nor small. " Therefore, the truly great man, although he J does not injure others, does not credit himself with charity and mercy. These are natural to him. He seeks not gain, but does not despise his follow- ers who do. He struggles not for wealth, but does 1 \ CAP. XVII. J Autumn Floods 205 not take credit for letting it alone. He asks help from no man, but takes no credit for his self- reliance, neither does he despise those who seek preferment through friends. He acts differently from the vulgar crowd, but takes no credit for his exceptionality ; nor because others act with the majority does he despise them as hypocrites. The ranks and emoluments of the world are to him no cause for joy; its punishments and shame no cause for disgrace. He knows that positive and negative cannot be distinguished, What is positive under certain conditions will be negative under others. These terms are in fact identical. See ch. ii. that great and small cannot be defined. They are infinite. " I have heard say, the man of Tao has no repu- tation ; perfect virtue acquires nothing ; the truly great man ignores self ; — this is the height of self- discipline." Clause 2 of the above quotation appears with varia- tions in ch. xxxviii of the Tao-Te-Ching. The variations settle the correctness of the renderino- already given in The Remains of Lao Tzii, p. 26. *' But how then," asked the Spirit of the River, " are the internal and external extremes of value and worthlessness, of greatness and smallness, to be determined ? " With no standard of measurement. " From the point of view of Tag," replied the Spirit of the Ocean, '' there are no such extremes 2o6 Chtimig Tzu \ of value or worthlessness. Men individually value themselves and hold others cheap. The world collectively withholds from the individual the right of appraising himself. " If we say that a thing is great or small because it is relatively great or small, then there is nothing in all creation which is not great, nothing which is not small. To know that the universe is but as a tare-seed, and that the tip of a hair is a mountain, — this is the expression of relativity. " If we say that something exists or does not exist, in deference to the function it fulfils or does not fulfil, then there is nothing which does not exist, nothing which does exist. To know that east and west are convertible and yet necessary terms, — this is the due adjustment of functions. Any given point is of course east in relation to west, west in relation to east. Absolutely, it may be said that its westness does not exclude its easiness ; or, that it is neither east nor west. " If we say that anything is good or evil because it is either good or evil in our eyes, then there is nothing which is not good, nothing which is not evil. To know that Yao and Chieh were both good and both evil from their opposite points of view, — this is the expression of a standard. M " Of old Yao abdicated in favour of Shun, and the latter ruled. Kuei abdicated in favour of Chih, and the latter failed. Kuei was a prince of the Yen State, who was hum- bugged into imitating the glorious example of Yao CAP. XVII.] Auhmin Floods 2.Qri and abdicating in favour of his minister Chih. Three short years of power landed the latter in all the horrors of a general revolution. T'ang and Wu See ch. xii. got the empire by fighting. By fighting, Poh Kung lost it. A revolutionary leader who, on the failure of his scheme, ended his life by strangulation. See the Tso C/man, i6th year of Duke Ai. From which it may be seen that the rationale of ab- dicating or fighting, of acting like Yao or like Chieh, must be determined according to the opportunity, and may not be regarded as a constant quantity. " A battering-ram can knock down a wall, but it cannot repair the breach. This sentence has sorely puzzled all commentators. Different things are differently applied. " Ch'ih-Chi and Hua Liu could travel i,ooo li in one day, but for catching rats they were not equal to a wild cat. Two of the eight famous steeds of Muh Wang, a semi-historical ruler of old. Different animals possess different aptitudes. " An owl can catch fleas at night, and see the tip of a hair, but if it comes out in the daytime its eyes are so dazzled it cannot see a mountain. Different creatures are differently constituted. "Thus, as has been said, those who would have right without its correlative, wrong ; or good 2o8 Chuang Tzit government without its correlative, misrule, — they do not apprehend the great principles of the uni- verse nor the conditions to which all creation is subject. One might as well talk of the existence of heaven without that of earth, or of the negative principle without the positive, which is clearly absurd. Such people, if they do not yield to argu- ment, must be either fools or knaves. " Rulers have abdicated under different condi- tions, dynasties have been continued under different conditions. Those who did not hit off a favourable time and were in opposition to their age, — they were called usurpers. Those who did hit off the right time and were in harmony with their age, — they were called patriots. Fair and softly, my River friend ; what should you know of value and worth- lessness, of great and small ? " It is therefore quite unnecessary to teach you where to fix the limits of that of which you know nothing. " In this case," replied the Spirit of the River, '* what am I to do and what am I not to do ? How am I to arrange my declinings and receivings, my takings-hold and my lettings-go ? " " From the point of view of Tao," said the Spirit of the Ocean, "value and worthlessness are like slopes and plains. A slope to-day may be a plain to-morrow. To consider either as absolutely such would involve great injury to Tag. Few and many are like giving and receiving presents. These must not be regarded CAP. XVII. J Autumn Floods 209 from one side, or there will be great confusion to Tao. It would be unfair only to regard, from the receiver's standpoint, the amount given. The intention of the giver must also be taken into the calculation. Be discriminating, as the ruler of a State whose administration is impartial. Be dispassionate, as the worshipped deity whose dispensation is impar- tial. Be expansive, like the points of the compass, to whose boundlessness no limit is set. Embrace all creation, and none shall be more sheltered than another. This is the unconditioned. And where all things are equal, how can we have the long and the short ? " Tao is without beginning, without end. Other things are born and die. They are impermanent ; and now for better, now for worse, they are cease- lessly changing form. Past years cannot be recalled: time cannot be arrested. The succession of states is endless ; and every end is followed by a new beginning. Thus it may be said that man's duty to his neighbour is embodied in the eternal principles of the universe. All he has to do is to be. " The life of man passes by like a galloping horse, changing at every turn, at every hour. What should he do, or what should he not do, other than let his decomposition go on ? " " If this is the case," retorted the Spirit of the River, " pray what is the value of Tao ? " \y i^ 2IO Chiiang Tzii "Those who understand Tao," answered the Spirit of the Ocean, " must necessarily apprehend the eternal principles above mentioned and be clear as to their application. Consequently, they do not suffer any injury from without. They never oppose, but let all things take their course. "The man of perfect virtue cannot be burnt by fire, nor drowned in water, nor hurt by frost or sun, nor torn by wild bird or beast. Not that he makes light of these ; but that he discriminates between safety and danger. Happy under prosperous and adverse circumstances alike, cautious as to what he discards and what he accepts ; — nothing can harm him. Plato taught that it was impossible to make a slave of a wise man, meaning that the latter by virtue of his mental endowment would rise superior to mere physical thrall. "A wise and just man," said he, •' could be as happy in a state of slavery as in a state of freedom." " Therefore it has been said that the natural abides within, the artificial without. Virtue abides in the natural. Knowledge of the action of the natural and of the artificial has its root in the natural, its development in virtue. And thus, whether in motion or at rest, whether in expansion or in contraction, there is always a reversion to the essential and to the ultimate." Those eternal principles which embody all human obligations. CAP. XVII.] Autumn Floods 211 " What do you mean," enquired the Spirit of the River, '' by the natural and the artificial ?" " Horses and oxen," answered the Spirit of the Ocean, *' have four feet. That is the natural. Put a halter on a horse's head, a string through a bullock's nose, — that is the artificial. ** Therefore it has been said, do not let the arti- ficial obliterate the natural; do not let will obliterate . destiny ; do not let virtue be sacrificed to fame. Diligently observe these precepts without fail, and thus you will revert to the divine." If man does not set himself in opposition to God, the result will be Tag. The walrus envies the centipede ; Its many legs and nimble gait, the centipede envies the snake ; Which moves without legs, the snake envies the wind ; Which moves far more quickly even without body, the wind envies the eye ; Which travels even without moving. the eye envies the mind ; Which can comprehend the whole universe, past and present alike. The walrus said to the centipede, " I hop about on one leg, but not very successfully. How do you manage all these legs you have ? " " Walrus" is of course an analogue. But for the one r 2 212 Chuang Tzu leg, the description given by a commentator of the creature mentioned in the text applies with signifi- cant exactitude. " I don't manage them," replied the centipede. " Have you never seen saliva ? When it is ejected, the big drops are the size of pearls, the small ones like mist. They fall promiscuously on the ground and cannot be counted. And so it is that my mechanism works naturally, without my being con- scious of the fact." The centipede said to the snake, " With all my legs I do not move as fast as you with none. How is that ? " " One's natural mechanism," replied the snake, " is not a thing to be changed. What need have I for legs ? " The snake said to the wind, '* I can manage to wriggle along, but I have a form. Now you come blustering down from the north sea to bluster away to the south sea, and you seem to be without form. How is that ? " " Tis true," replied the wind, " that I bluster as you say ; but any one who can point at me or kick at me, excels me. As I cannot do as much to them. On the other hand, I can break huge trees and destroy large buildings. That is my strong point. Out of all the small things in which I do not excel I make one great one in which I do excel. CAP. XVII.] Autmnii Floods 213 And to excel in great things is given only to the Sages." Everything has its own natural qualifications. What is difficult to one is easy to another. No illustration is given of the "eye" and "mind." "'Tis the half-length portrait," says Lin Hsi Chung, "of a beautiful girl;" — which is ingenious if not sound. When Confucius visited K'uang, the men of Sung surrounded him closely. This is a mistake. " K'uang" was in the Wei State, and it was by the men of Wei that Confucius was surrounded. Yet he went on playing and singing to his guitar without ceasing. '' How is it, Sir," enquired Tzu Lu, ** that you are so cheerful ? " See p. 165. Tzu Lu would have been the first to be cheerful himself. " Come here," replied Confucius, " and I will tell you. For a long time I have been struggling against failure, but in vain. Fate is against me. For a long time I have been seeking success, but in vain. The hour has not come. " In the days of Yaoand Shun, no man through- out the empire was a failure, though no one was conscious of the gain. In the days of Chieh and Chou, no man throughout the empire was a success, though no one was conscious of the loss. The times and circumstances were adapted accordingly. 214 Chitaiig Tzii " To travel by water and not avoid sea-serpents and dragons, — this is the courage of the fisherman. To travel by land and not avoid the rhinoceros and the tiger, — this is the courage of hunters. When bright blades cross, to look on death as on life, — this is the courage of the hero. To know that failure is fate and that success is opportunity, and to remain fearless in great danger, — this is the courage of the Sage. Yu ! rest in this. My destiny is cut out for me." Shortly afterwards, the captain of the troops came in and apologised, saying, '' We thought you were Yang Hu ; consequently we surrounded you. We find we have made a mistake." Whereupon he again apologised and retired. Yang Hu was "wanted" by the people of Wei, and it appears that Confucius was unfortunately like him in feature. But the whole episode is clearly the interpolation of a forger. Kung Sun Lung A philosopher of the Chao State, whose treatise on the " hard and white " etc. is said to be still extant. See ch. ii. said to Mou of Wei, " When young I studied the Tao of the ancient Sages. When I grew up I knew all about the practice of charity and duty to one's neighbour, the identification of like and unlike, the separation of hardness and whiteness, and about making the not-so so, and the impossible possible. I vanquished the wisdom of all the philosophies. I CAP. XVII.] Atttumn Floods 215 exhausted all the arguments that were brought against me. I thought that I had indeed reached the goal. But now that I have heard Chuang Tzu, I am lost in astonishment at his grandeur. I know not whether it is in arguing or in knowledge that I am not equal to him. I can no longer open my mouth. May I ask you to impart to me the secret ? " Kung Tzu Mou leant over the table and sighed. Then he looked up to heaven, and smiling replied, saying, " Have you never heard of the frog in the old well ? — The frog said to the turtle of the eastern sea, ' Happy indeed am I ! I hop on to the rail around the well. I rest in the hollow of some broken brick. Swimming, I gather the water under my arms and shut my mouth. I plunge into the mud, burying my feet and toes ; and not one of the cockles, crabs, or tadpoles I see around me are my match. [Fancy pitting the happiness of an old well against all the water of Ocean ! ] Why do you not come, Sir, and pay me a visit ? ' "■ Now the turtle of the eastern sea had not got its left leg down ere its right had already stuck fast, so it shrank back and begged to be excused. It then described the sea, saying, ' A thousand // would not measure its breadth, nor a thousand fathoms its depth. In the days of the Great Yii, there were nine years of flood out of ten ; but this did not add to its bulk. In the days of T'ang, there were seven years out of eight of drought ; but this did not narrow its span. Not to be affected by duration of 2i6 CJmang Tzii time, not to be affected by volume of water, — such is the great happiness of the eastern sea.' To be impervious to external influences. " At this the well-frog was considerably aston- ished, and knew not what to say next. And for one whose knowledge does not reach to the positive- negative domain, Where contraries are identical. to attempt to understand Chuang Tzu, is like a mosquito trying to carry a mountain, or an ant to swim a river, — they cannot succeed. And for one whose knowledge does not reach to the abstrusest of the abstruse, but is based only upon such victories as you have enumerated, — is not he like the frog in the well ? "Chuang Tzu moves in the realms below while soaring to heaven above. For him north and south do not exist ; the four points are gone ; he is en- gulphed in the unfathomable. For him east and west do not exist. Beginning with chaos, he has gone back to Tag; and yet you think you are going to examine his doctrines and meet them with argu- ment ! This is like looking at the sky through a tube, or pointing at the earth with an awl, — a small result. The area covered by an awl's point being infini- tesimal. " Have you never heard how the youth of Shou- ling went to study at Han-tan? They did not learn CAP. XVII.] AtUimiJi Floods 217 what they wanted at Han-tan, and forgot all they knew before into the bargain, so that they returned home in disgrace. And you, if you do not go away, you will forget all you know, and waste your time into the bargain." Kung Sun Lung's jaw dropped ; his tongue clave to his palate ; and he slunk away. Another spurious episode, as is evident from its general weakness, not to mention repetitions of figures and allusions taken from other chapters. Chuang Tzu was fishing in the P'u when the prince of Ch'u sent two high officials to ask him to take charge of the administration of the Ch'u State. Chuang Tzu went on fishing, and without turning his head said, " I have heard that in Ch'u there is a sacred tortoise which has been dead now some three thousand years. And that the prince keeps this tortoise carefully enclosed in a chest on the altar of his ancestral temple. Now would this tortoise rather be dead and have its remains venerated, or be alive and wagging its tail in the mud ? " *' It would rather be alive," replied the two officials, "and wagging its tail in the mud." ** Begone ! " cried Chuang Tzu. '* I too will wag my tail in the mud." Hui Tzu was prime minister in the Liang State. Chuang Tzu went thither to visit him. Some one remarked, " Chuang Tzu has come. He wants to be minister in your place." 2i8 Chita ng Tzic Thereupon Hui Tzu was afraid, and searched all over the State With warrants. for three days and three nights to find him. Then Chuang Tzu went to see Hui Tzu, and said, '* In the south there is a bird. It is a kind of phoenix. Do you know it ? It started from the south sea to fly to the north sea. Except on the wU'ftmg tree, Eleococca verrucosa. Williams. it would not alight. It would eat nothing but the fruit of the bamboo, drink nothing but the purest spring w^ater. An owl which had got the rotten carcass of a rat, looked up as the phoenix flew by, and screeched. To warn It off. Are you not screeching at me over your kingdom of Liang ? " Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu had strolled on to the bridge over the Hao, when the former observed, " See how the minnows are darting about ! That is the pleasure of fishes." " You not being a fish yourself," said Hui Tzu, " how can you possibly know in what consists the pleasure of fishes ? " " And you not being I," retorted Chuang Tzu, " how can you know that I do not know ? " " If I, not being you, cannot know what you CAP. XVII.] Auhtmn Floods 219 know," urged Hui Tzii, " it follows that you, not being a fish, cannot know in what consists the pleasure of fishes." " Let us go back," said Chuang Tzu, "to your original question. You asked me how I knew in what consists the pleasure of fishes. Your very question shows that you knew I knew. For you asked me how I knew. I knew it from my own feelings on this bridge." From my own feelings above the bridge I infer those of the fishes below. 220 CHAPTER XVIII. Perfect Happiness. Argument: — The uncertainty of human happiness — -What the world aims at is physical well-being — This is not profitable even to the body — In inaction alone is true happiness to be found — Inaction the rule of the material universe — Acquiescence in whatever our destiny may bring forth — Illustrations. [This chapter is supplementary to chapter vi.] IS perfect happiness to be found on earth, or not ? Are there those who can enjoy life, or not? If so, what do they do, what do they affect, what do they avoid, what do they rest in, accept, reject, like, and dislike? What the world esteems comprises wealth, rank, old age, and goodness of heart. What it enjoys comprises comfort, rich food, fine clothes, beauty, and music. What it does not esteem comprises poverty, want of position, early death, and evil behaviour. What it does not enjoy comprises lack of comfort for the body, lack of rich food for the palate, lack of fine clothes for the back, lack of beauty for the eye, and lack of music for the ear. If men do not get these, they are greatly miserable. Yet from the point of view of our physical frame, this is folly, h Physically we can, and most of us do, get along very well without these extras. CAP. XVIII.] Perfect Happiness 221 Wealthy people who toil and moil, putting to- gether more money than they can possibly use, — from the point of view of our physical frame, is not this going beyond the mark ? Officials of rank who turn nio^ht into dav in their endeavours to compass the best ends ; — from the point of view of our physical frame, is not this a divergence ? Man is born to sorrow, and what misery is theirs whose old age with dulled faculties only means prolonged sorrow ! From the point of view of our physical frame, this is going far astray. Patriots are in the world's opinion admittedly good. Yet their goodness does not enable them to enjoy life ; Patriotism has been illustrated In China by countless heroic deeds, associated always with the death of the hero concerned. and so I know not whether theirs is veritable good- ness or not. If the former, it does not enable them to enjoy life ; if the latter, it at any rate enables them to cause others to enjoy theirs. It has been said, " If your loyal counsels are not attended to, depart quietly without resistance." Thus, when Tzu Hsii The famous Wu Ylian, 6th century B.C., whose opposition to his sovereign led to his own disgrace and death. resisted, his physical frame perished ; yet had he not resisted, he would not have made his name. Is there then really such a thing as this goodness, or not? 222 Chttang Tzu K's> to what the world does and the way in which people are happy now, I know not whether such happiness be real happiness or not. The happiness of ordinary persons seems to me to consist in slav- ishly following the majority, as if they could not help it. Yet they all say they are happy. " The general average of mankind are not only moderate in intellect, but also in inclinations : they have no tastes or wishes strong enough to incline them to do anything unusual." Mill's Essay on Liberty. But I cannot say that this is happiness or that it is not happiness. Is there then, after all, such a thing as happiness ? I make true pleasure to consist in inaction, which the world regards as great pain. Thus it has been said, " Perfect happiness is the absence of happiness ; The non-existence of any state or condition neces- sarily includes the non-existence of its correlate. If we do not have happiness, we are at once exempt from misery ; and such a negative state is a state of " perfect happiness." perfect renown is the absence of renown." Now in this sublunary world of ours it is impos- sible to assign positive and negative absolutely. Nevertheless, in inaction they can be so assigned. Perfect happiness and preservation of life are to be sought for only in inaction. Let us consider. Heaven does nothing ; yet it is clear. Earth does nothing ; yet it enjoys repose. CAP. XVIII.] Perfect Happiness 223 From the inaction of these two proceed all the modifications of things. How vast, how infinite is inaction, yet without source ! How infinite, how vast, yet without form ! The endless varieties of things around us all spring from inaction. Therefore it has been said, " Heaven and earth do nothing, yet there is nothing which they do not accomplish." But among men, who can attain to inaction ? Lin Hsi Chung condemns the whole of the above exordium as too closely reasoned forChuang Tzu, with his rugged, elliptical style. When Chuang Tzu's wife died, Hui Tzu went to condole. He found the widower sitting on the ground, singing, with his legs spread out at a right angle, and beating time on a bowl. "To live with your wife," exclaimed Hui Tzu, *' and see your eldest son grow up to be a man, and then not to shed a tear over her corpse, — this would be bad enough. But to drum on a bowl, and sing ; surely this is going too far." " Not at all," replied Chuang Tzu. " When she died, I could not help being affected by her death. Soon, however, I remembered that she had already existed in a previous state before birth, without form, or even substance ; that while in that uncon- ditioned condition, substance was added to spirit ; that this substance then assumed form ; and that the next stage was birth. And now, by virtue of a further change, she is dead, passing from one phase L^- 224 Chiiang Tzu to another like the sequence of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. And while she is thus lying asleep in Eternity, for me to go about weeping and wailing would be to proclaim myself ignorant of these natural laws. Therefore I refrain." A hunchback and a one-legged man were looking at the tombs of departed heroes, on the K'un-lun Mountains, where the Yellow Emperor rests. Sud- denly, ulcers broke out upon their left elbows, of a very loathsome description. " Do you loathe this?" asked the hunchback. " Not I," replied the other, " why should I ? Life is a loan with which the borrower does but add more dust and dirt to the sum total of existence. Life and death are as day and night ; and w^hile y you and I stand gazing at the evidences of mortality around us, if the same mortality overtakes me, why should I loathe it ? " ^ Chuang Tzu one day saw an empty skull, bleached, but still preserving its shape. Striking it with his riding whip, he said, "Wert thou once some ambitious citizen whose inordinate yearnings brought him to this pass? — some statesman who plunged his country in ruin and perished in the fray? — some wretch who left behind him a legacy of shame ? — some beggar who died in the pangs of hunger and cold ? Or didst thou reach this state by the natural course of old age ? " When he had finished speaking, he took the CAP. XVIII.] Perfect Happiness 225 skull, and placing it under his head as a pillow, went to sleep. In the night, he dreamt that the skull appeared to him and said, " You speak well, Sir; but all you say has reference to the life of mortals, and to mortal troubles. In death there are none of these. Would you like to hear about death ? " Chuang Tzu having replied in the affirmative, the skull began : — " In death, there is no sovereign above, and no subject below. The workings of the four seasons are unknown. Our existences are bounded only by eternity. The happiness of a king among men cannot exceed that which we enjoy." Chuang Tzu, however, was not convinced, and said, " Were I to prevail upon God to allow your body to be born again, and your bones and flesh to be renewed, so that you could return to your parents, to your wife, and to the friends of your youth, — would you be willing?" At this, the skull opened its eyes wide and knitted its brows and said, " How should I cast aside happiness greater than that of a king, and mingle once again in the toils and troubles of mortality ? " Reminding us strangely of Hamlet. When Yen Yiian See p. 179. went eastwards to the Ch'i State, Confucius was sad. Tzu Kung arose and said, *Ts it, Sir, because Hui Yen Yuan's personal name. has gone east to Ch'i that you are sad ? " Q 226 Chuang Tzii "A good question," replied Confucius. " There is a saying by Kuan Chung Prime Minister to Duke Huan of the Ch'i State, 7th century B.C. of old which I highly esteem : ' Small bags won't hold big things ; short ropes won't reach down deep wells.' Thus, destiny is a pre-arrangement, just as form has its limitations. From neither, to neither, can you either take away or add. And I fear lest Hui, on his visit to the prince of Ch'i, should preach the Tao of Yao and Shun, and dwell on the words of Sui Jen and Shen Nung. The prince will then search within himself, but will not find. And not finding, he will doubt. And when a man doubts, he will kill. Lit. "he will die." But the verb " to die" is often used in the sense of "to make to die;" and this seems to be the only available sense here. " Besides, have you not heard that of old when a sea-bird alighted outside the capital of Lu, the prince went out to receive it, and gave it wine in the temple, and had the Chiu Shao Music composed by the legendary Emperor Shun. played to amuse it, and a bullock slaughtered to feed it ? But the bird was dazed and too timid to eat or drink anything ; and in three days it was dead. This was treating the bird like oneself, and not as a bird would treat a bird. Had he treated it as a bird would have treated a bird, he would have CAP. xviii.] Perfect Happiness 227 put it to roost in a deep forest, to wander over a plain, to swim in a river or lake, to feed upon fish, to fly in order, and to settle leisurely. When the bird was already terrified at human voices, fancy adding music ! Play the Hsien ChHh Music of the Yellow Emperor. or the Chitt Shao in the wilds of Tung-t'ing, and birds will fly away, beasts will take themselves off, and fishes will dive down below. But men will collect to hear. See p. 244. " Water, which is life to fishes, is death to man. Being differently constituted, their likes and dis- likes are different. Therefore the Sages of the past favoured not uniformity of skill or of occupa- tion. Reputation was commensurate with reality ; means were adapted to the end. This was called a due relationship with others coupled with advantage to oneself." Several sentences of the above are clearly in imita- tion of parts of ch. ii. The whole episode is beyond doubt a forgery. Lieh Tzu, being on a journey, was eating by the roadside, when he saw an old skull. Plucking a blade of grass, he pointed at it and said, " Only you and I know that there is no such thing as life and no such thing as death. Lit. " that you have never died nor lived." Q 2 228 Chuaitp- Tzii <^ Are you really at peace ? Or am I really happy ? Who can say whether what we call death may not after all be life, and life death ? " Certain germs, falling upon water, become duckweed. When they reach the junction of the land and the water, they become lichen. Spreading up the bank, they become the dog-tooth violet. Reaching rich soil, they become wu-tsu, the root of which becomes grubs, while the leaves comes from butterflies, or hsil. These are changed into insects, born in the chimney corner, which look like skele- tons. Their name is cliil-to. After a thousand days, the cJtil-to becomes a bird, called Kan-yil-kit, the spittle of which becomes the ssii-mi. The ssu-mi becomes a wine fly, and that comes from an i-lit. The hiiang-k' uang produces the chm-yu and the moit-jid produces the glow-worm. The yang-clii grafted to an old bamboo which has for a long time put forth no shoots, produces the c/img- ning, which produces the leopard, which produces the horse, which produces man. "Then man goes back into the great Scheme, from which all things come and to which all things return." Such is the eternal round, marked by the stages which we call life and death. Many of the names in the above paragraph have not been identified even by Chinese commentators. On all counts then they may safely be left where they are. 229 CHAPTER XIX. The Secret of Life. Argument :— The soul is from God — Man's body its vehicle — The soul quickening the body is life — Care of the internal and of the external must be simultaneous — In due nourishment of both is Tag. [This chapter is supplementary to chapter iii.] THOSE who understand the conditions of life devote no attention to things which life cannot accomplish. Those who understand the conditions of destiny devote no attention to things over which knowledge has no control. For the due nourishment of our physical frames, certain things are needful. Yet where such things abound, the physical frame is not always nourished. For the preservation of life it is necessary that there should be no abandonment of the physical frame. Yet where the physical frame is not abandoned, life does not always remain. Life comes, and cannot be declined. It goes, and cannot be stopped. But alas ! the world thinks that to nourish the frame is enough to keep life. And if indeed it is not enough, what then is the world to do ? Although not enough, it must still be done. It cannot be neglected. For if one is to neglect the physical frame, better far to retire at once from the 230 Chtiang Tzu world. By renouncing the world, one gets rid of the cares of the world. The result is a natural level, which is equivalent to a re-birth. And he who is re-born is near. To Tao. But what inducement is there to renounce the affairs of men, to become indifferent to life ? — In the first case, the physical body suffers no wear and tear ; in the second, the vitality is left un- harmed. And he whose physical frame is perfect and whose vitality is in its original purity, — he is one with God. Mens Sana in corpore sano. Heaven and earth are the father and mother of all things. When they unite, the result is shape. When they disperse, the original condition is re- newed. As in the case of ordinary mortals . But if body and vitality are both perfect, this state is zd^^tdifit for translation. In the Biblical sense, as applied to Enoch. Such perfection of vitality goes back to the minister of God. " Vitality " is the subtle essence, the immaterial informing principle which, united with matter, ex- hibits the phenomenon of life. The term has already occurred in ch. xi. Lieh Tzu asked Kuan Yin, A sage who by some is said to have flourished five CAP. XIX.] The Secret of Life 231 or six hundred years before Lieh Tzu ; by others, to have been an immediate disciple of Lao Tzii, and to have been entrusted by him with the publication of the Tao-Te-Chi7ig. saying, " The perfect man can walk through solid bodies without obstruction. He can pass through fire without being burnt. He can scale the highest heights without fear. How does he bring himself to this ? " " It is because he is in a condition of absolute purity," replied Kuan Yin. " It is not cunning which enables him to dare such feats. Be seated, and I will tell you. " All that has form, sound, and colour, may be classed under the head thing. Man differs so much from the rest, and stands at the head of all things, simply because the latter are but what they appear and nothing more. But man can attain to formless- ness and vanquish death. And with that which is in possession of the eternal, how can mere things compare ? " Man may rest in the eternal fitness ; he may abide in the everlasting ; and roam from the beginning to the end of all creation. He may bring his nature to a condition of one ; he may nourish his strength ; he may harmonize his virtue, and so put himself into partnership with God. Then, when his divinity is thus assured, and his spirit closed in on all sides, how can anything find a passage within ? He is beyond the reach of objective existences. 232 Chiiang Tzzi " A drunken man who falls out of a cart, though he may suffer, does not die. His bones are the same as other people's ; but he meets his accident in a different way. His spirit is in a condition of security. He is not conscious of riding in the cart ; neither is he conscious of falling out of it. Ideas of life, death, fear, etc., cannot penetrate his breast ; and so he does not suffer from contact with objective existences. And if such security is to be got from wine, how much more is it to be got from God. It is in God that the Sage seeks his refuge, and so he is free from harm. " An avenger does not snap in twain the mur- derous weapon ; neither does the most spiteful man carry his resentment to a tile which may have hit him on the head. And by the extension of this principle, the empire would be at peace ; no more confusion of war, no more punishment of death. *' Do not develop your artificial intelligence, but develop that intelligence which is from God. From the latter, results virtue ; from the former, cunning. And those who do not shrink from the natural, nor wallow in the artificial, — they are near to per- fection." When Confucius was on his way to the Ch'u State, he came to a forest where he saw a hunch- back catching cicadas as though with his hand. It is still the delight of the Chinese gamin to capture the noisy " scissor-grinder " with the aid of a long bamboo tipped with bird-lime. CAP. XIX.] The Secret of Life 233 ** How clever you are ! " cried Confucius. " Have you any way of doing this ? " " Way," i.e. road, is the primary meaning of Tao. " I have a way," replied the hunchback. " In the fifth and sixth moons I practise balancing two balls one on top of the other. At the top of his pole. If they do not fall, I do not miss many cicadas. When I can balance three balls, I only miss one in ten ; and when five, then it is as though I caught the cicadas with my hand. My body is as motionless as the stump of a tree; my arms like dead branches. Heaven and earth and all creation may be around me, but I am conscious only of my cicada's wings. How should I not succeed ? " Confucius looked round at his disciples and said, " Singleness of purpose induces concentration of the faculties. Of such is the success of this hunch- back." Yen Yiian said to Confucius, " When I crossed over the Shang-sh^n rapid, the boatman managed his craft with marvellous skill. I asked him if hand- ling a boat could be learnt. * It can,' replied he. 'The way of those who know how to keep you afloat is more like sinking you. They row as if the boat wasn't there.' " I enquired what this meant, but he would not tell me. May I ask its signification." " It means," answered Confucius, ** that such a 234 Chiiajig Tzit man is oblivious of the water around him. He regards the rapid as though dry land. He looks upon an upset as an ordinary cart accident. And if a man can but be impervious to capsizings and accidents in general, whither should he not be able comfortably to go ? " A man who plays for counters will play well. If he stakes his girdle, In which he keeps his loose cash. he will be nervous ; if yellow gold, he will lose his wits. His skill is the same in each case, but he is distracted by the value of his stake. And every one who attaches importance to the external, becomes internally without resource." T'ien K'ai Chih had an audience of Duke Wei of Chou. The Duke asked him, saying, " I have heard that Chu Hsien is studying the art of life. As you are a companion of his, pray tell me any- thing you know about it." "I do but ply the broom at his outer gate," replied T'ien K'ai Chih ; " what should I know about my Master's researches ? " " Don't be so modest," said the Duke. " I am very anxious to hear about it." " Well," replied T'ien, " I have heard my master say that keeping life is like keeping a flock of sheep. You look out for the laggards, and whip them up." " What does that mean ? " asked the Duke. CAP. XIX.] The Secret of Life 235 " In the State of Lu," said T'ien, " there was a man named Shan Pao. He lived on the mountains and drank water. All worldly interests he had put aside. And at the age of seventy, his complexion was like that of a child. Unluckily, he one day fell in with a hungry tiger who killed and ate him. "There was also a man named Chang I, who frequented the houses of rich and poor alike. At the age of forty he was attacked by some internal disease and died. " Shan Pao took care of his inner self, and a tiger ate his external man. Chang I took care of himself externally, but disease attacked him internally. These two individuals both omitted to whip up the laggards." There is no particular record of the worthies men- tioned above. Confucius said, " Neither affecting obscurity, nor courting prominence, but unconsciously occupying the happy mean, — he who can attain to these three will enjoy a surpassing fame. ** In dangerous parts, where one wayfarer out of ten meets his death, fathers and sons and brothers will counsel each other not to travel without a suffi- cient escort. Is not this wisdom ? And there where men are also greatly in danger, in the lists of passion, in the banquet hour, not to warn them is error indeed." Physical precautions are not alone sufficient. Man's moral nature equally requires constant watchfulness and care. 236 Chuang Tzii The Grand Augur, in his ceremonial robes, approached the shambles and thus addressed the pigs :— *' How can you object to die ? I shall fatten you for three months. I shall discipline myself for ten days and fast for three. I shall strew fine grass, and place you bodily upon a carved sacrificial dish. Does not this satisfy you ? " Then speaking from the pigs' point of view, he continued, " It is better perhaps after all to live on bran and escape the shambles " " But then," added he, speaking from his own point of view, *' to enjoy honour when alive one would readily die on a war-shield or in the heads- man's basket." So he rejected the pigs' point of view and adopted his own point of view. In what sense then was he different from the pigs ? Even as a pig thinks of nothing but eating, so was the Grand Augur ready to sacrifice everything, life itself, for paltry fame. When Duke Huan was out hunting, with Kuan Chung as his charioteer, he saw a bogy. Catching hold of Kuan Chung's hand, he asked him, saying, ''What do you see?" " I see nothing," replied Kuan Chung. But when the Duke got home he became delirious, and for many days was unable to go out. There came a certain Huang Tzu Kao Ngao of j the Ch'i State " A sage of the Ch'i State," — as the commentators CAP. XIX.] The Secret of Life 237 usually say when in reality they know nothing about the individual. and said, "Your Highness is self-injured. How could a bogy injure you ? When the vital strength is dissipated in anger, and is not renewed, there is a deficiency. When its tendency is in one direction upwards, the result is to incline men to wrath. When its tendency is in one direction downwards, the result is loss of memory. When it remains stagnant, in the middle of the body, the result is disease." "Very well," said the Duke, " but are there such things as bogies?" " There are," replied Huang. " There is the mud spirit Li ; the fire spirit Kao ; Lei T'ing, the spirit of the dust-bin ; P'ei O and Wa Lung, sprites of the north-east ; Yi Yang of the north-west ; Wang Hsiang of the water ; the Hsin of the hills ; the K'uei of the mountain ; the Pang Huang of the moor ; the Wei I of the marsh." The garb and bearing of the above beings are very fully described by commentators. " And what may the Wei I be like?" asked the Duke. "The Wei I," replied Huang, " is as broad as a cart-wheel and as long as the shaft. It wears purple clothes and a red cap. It is a sentient being, and whenever it hears the rumble of thunder, it stands up in a respectful attitude. Those who see this bogy are like to be chieftains among men." The Duke laughed exultingly and said, " The 238 Chitaiig Tzii very one I saw I " Thereupon he dressed himself and sat up ; and ere the day had closed, without knowing it, his sickness had left him. The above episode teaches that the evils which appear to come upon us from without, in reality have their origin within. Chi Hsing Tzu was training fighting cocks for the prince. , Of Ch'i, says a commentator, i At the end of ten days the latter asked if they were ready. " Not yet," replied Chi ; " they are in the stage of seeking fiercely for a foe." Again ten days elapsed, and the prince made a further enquiry. " Not yet," replied Chi ; " they are still excited by the sounds and shadows of other cocks." Ten days more, and the prince asked again. " Not yet," answered Chi ; " the sight of an enemy is still enough to excite them to rage." | But after another ten days, when the prince again enquired, Chi said, "They will do. Other cocks may-crow, but they will take no notice. To look at them one might say they were of wood. Their virtue is complete. Strange cocks will not dare meet them, but will run." Illustratinof the value of internal concentration. Confucius was looking at the cataract at Lii- liang. It fell from a height of thirty/^;/, I jen = 7 Chinese feet. What the ancient Chinese J CAP. XIX.] The Secret of Life i^f) foot measured, it is impossible to say. For the height of the cataract it will be near enough to say 200 English feet. and its foam reached forty // away. No scaly, finny creature could enter therein. Meaning the rapids below. Yet Confucius saw an old man go in, and thinking that he was suffering from some trouble and de- sirous of ending his life, bade a disciple run along the side to try and save him. The old man emerged about a hundred paces off, and with flowing hair went carolling along the bank. Confucius followed him and said, ** I had thought, Sir, you were a spirit, but now I see you are a man. Kindly tell me, is there any way to deal thus with water ? " " No," replied the old man ; " I have no way. There was my original condition to begin with ; then habit growing into nature ; and lastly acqui- escence in destiny. Plunging in with the whirl, I come out with the swirl. I accommodate myself to the water, not the water to me. And so I am able to deal with it after this fashion." " What do you mean," enquired Confucius, " by your original condition to begin with, habit growing into nature, and acquiescence in destiny ? " " I was born," replied the old man, *' upon dry land, and accommodated myself to dry land. That was my original condition. Growing up on the water, I accommodated myself to the water. That was what I meant by nature. Habit is second nature. t/' 240 Chuang Tzu And doing as I did without being conscious of any effort so to do, that was what I meant by destiny." Objective existences cannot injure him who puts his trust in God. [This episode occurs twice, with textual differences, in the works of Lieh Tzu, chs. ii. and viii.] Ch'ing, the chief carpenter, Of the Lu State. was carving wood into a stand for hanging musical instruments. When finished, the work appeared to those who saw it as though of supernatural execution. And the prince of Lu asked him, saying, " What mystery is there in your art ? " " No mystery, your Highness," replied Ch'ing ; " and yet there is something. ''When I am about to make such a stand, I guard against any diminution of my vital power. I first reduce my mind to absolute quiescence. Three days in this condition, and I become oblivious of any reward to be gained. Five days, and I become oblivious of any fame to be acquired. Seven days, and I become unconscious of my four limbs and my physical frame. Then, with no thought of the Court present to my mind, my skill becomes con- centrated, and all disturbing elements from without are gone. I enter some mountain forest. I search for a suitable tree. It contains the form required, which is afterwards elaborated. I see the stand in my mind's eye, and then set to work. Otherwise, CAP. XIX.] The Secret of Life 241 there is nothing. I bring my own natural capacity into relation with that of the wood. What was suspected to be of supernatural execution in my work was due solely to this." To obliteration of self in the infinite causality of God. Tung Yeh Chi exhibited his charioteering skill before Duke Chuang. "Of Lu," says one commentator. But another points out that Yen Ho {infra) is mentioned in chapter iv. as tutor to the son of Duke Ling of Wei, which would involve an anachronism. Backwards and forwards he drove in lines which might have been ruled, sweeping round at each end in curves which might have been described by compasses. The Duke, however, said that this was nothing more than weaving ; and bidding him drive round and round a hundred times, returned home. Yen Ho came upon him, and then went in and said to the Duke, " Chi's horses are on the point of breaking down." The Duke remained silent, making no reply ; and in a short time it was announced that the horses had actually broken down, and that Chi had gone away. " How could you tell this ? " said the Duke to Yen Ho. " Because," replied the latter, " Chi was trying to make his horses perform a task to which they 242 Chiiang Tzu were unequal. Therefore I said they would break down." Illustrating the strain which mortality daily puts upon the bodies and minds of all men. Ch'ui the artisan could draw circles with his hand better than with compasses. His fingers seemed to accommodate themselves so naturally to the thing he was working at, that it was unnecessary to fix his attention. His mental faculties thus remained ONE, and suffered no hindrance. To be unconscious of one's feet implies that the shoes are easy. To be unconscious of a waist im- plies that the girdle is easy. The intelligence being unconscious of positive and negative implies that the heart is at ease. No modifications within, no yielding to influences without, But always following a natural course. — this is ease under all conditions. And he who beginning with ease, is never not at ease, is uncon- scious of the ease of ease. Such is the condition of oblivion necessary to the due development of our natural spontaneity. ^ A certain Sun Hsiu went to the house of Pien Ch'ing Tzu Both unknown to fame. and complained, saying, " In peace I am not con-j sidered wanting in propriety. In times of troubh CAP. XIX.] The Secret of Life 243 I am not considered wanting in courage. Yet my crops fail ; and officially I am not a success. From my village an outcast, I am an outlaw from my State. How have I offended against God that he should visit me with such a fate ? " " Have you not heard," replied Pien Tzu, *' how the perfect man conducts himself? He is oblivious of his physical organisation. He is beyond the reach of sight and hearing. He moves outside the limits of this dusty world, rambling transcen- dentally in the domain of no-affairs. This is called acting but not from self-confidence, influencing but not from authority. That is, acting not in consequeuce of self-confidence, but without reference to it ; sc. naturally. In- fluencing, not because of authority, but gaining authority because of natural influence. This quotation appears, though Chuang Tzu or whoever may be responsible for this episode does not say so, in chs. x. and li. of the Tao-Te-Ching. " But you, you make a show of your knowledge in order to startle fools. You cultivate yourself in contrast to the degradation of others. And you blaze along as though the sun and moon were under your arms. These last three sentences will be found verbatim in ch. XX. Whereas, that you have a whole body in a whole skin, and have not perished in mid career, dumb, blind, or halt, but actually hold a place among men, R 2 244 Chuang Tzit — this ought to be enough for you. Why rail at God ? Begone ! " Sun Hsiu went away, and Pien Tzu went in and sat down. Shortly afterwards, he looked up to heaven and sighed ; whereupon a disciple asked him what was the matter. " When Hsiu was here just now," answered Pien Tzii, " I spoke to him of the virtue of the perfect man. I fear lest he be startled and so driven on to doubt." " No, Sir," answered the disciple. *' If he was right and you were wrong, wrong will never drive right into doubt. If, on the other hand, he was wrong and you were right, he brought his doubt with him, and you are not responsible." " Not so," said Pien Tzu. *' Of old, when a bird alighted outside the capital of Lu, the prince was delighted, and killed an ox to feed it and had the Chiu Shao played to entertain it. The bird, how- ever, was timid and dazed and dared not to eat or drink. This was treating the bird like oneself. But to treat a bird as a bird would treat a bird, you must put it to roost in a deep forest, let it swim in river or lake, and feed at its ease on the plain. Now Sun Hsiu is a man of small understanding ; and for me to speak to him of the perfect man is like setting a mouse to ride in a coach or a band of music to play to a quail. How should he not be startled ? " The above episode has already appeared in ch. xviii., ad Jin. 245 CHAPTER XX. Mountain Trees. Argument: — The alternatives of usefulness and uselessness — Tao a tertium quid — The human a hindrance to the divine — Altruism — Adaptation — Destiny — Illustrations. [This chapter is supplementary to chapter iv.] C HUANG TZU was travelling over a mountain when he saw a huge tree well covered with foliage. A woodsman had stopped near by, not caring to take it ; and on Chuang Tzu enquiring the reason, he was told that it was of no use. " This tree," cried Chuang Tzu, " by virtue of being good for nothing succeeds in completing its allotted span." When Chuang Tzu left the mountain, he put up at the house of an old friend. The latter was delighted, and ordered a servant to kill a goose and cook it. "Which shall I kill?" enquired the servant; " the one that cackles or the one that doesn't ? " His master told him to kill the one which did not cackle. And accordingly, the next day, a disciple asked Chuang Tzu, saying, " Yesterday, that tree on the mountain, because good for nothing, was to succeed in completing its allotted span. But now. 246 Chuang Tzil our host's goose, which is good for nothing, has to die. Upon which horn of the dilemma will you rest ? " " I rest," replied Chuang Tzu with a smile, " halfway between the two. In that position, appearing to be what I am not, it is impossible to avoid the troubles of mortality ; The text is here doubtful, and commentators explain according to the fancy of each. When a Chinese commentator does not understand his text, he usually slurs it over. He never says " I do not understand." Chu Fu Tzu alone could rise to this height. though, if charioted upon Tao and floating far above mortality, this would not be so. No praise, no blame ; both great and small ; changing with the change of time, but ever without special effort ; both above and below ; making for harmony with surroundings ; reaching creation's First Cause ; swaying all things and swayed by none ; — how then shall such troubles come? This was the method of Shen Nung and Huang Ti. " If another guest had happened to arrive," says Lin Hsi Chung, " I fancy the chance even of the cackling goose would have been small." " But amidst the mundane passions and relation- ships of man, such would not be the case. For where there is union, there is also separation ; where there is completion, there is also destruction ; where there is purity, there is also oppression ; I CAP. XX.] Mountain Trees 247 where there is honour, there is also disparagement : where there is doing, there is also undoing ; where there is openness, there is also underhandedness : and where there is no semblance, there is also deceit. How then can there be any fixed point ? Alas indeed ! Take note, my disciples, that such is to be found only in the domain of Tao." I Liao A sage of the Ch'u State. of Shih-nan paid a visit to the prince of Lu. The latter wore a melancholy look ; whereupon the philosopher of Shih-nan enquired what was the cause. " I study the doctrines of the ancient Sages," replied the prince. ** I carry on the work of my predecessors. I respect religion. I honour the good. Never for a moment do I relax in these points ; yet I cannot avoid misfortune, and conse- quently I am sad." " Your Highness' method of avoiding misfor- tune," said the philosopher of Shih-nan, ** is but a shallow one. A handsome fox or a striped leopard will live in a mountain forest, hiding beneath some precipitous cliff. This is their repose. They come out at night and keep in by day. This is their caution. Though under the stress of hunger and thirst, they lie hidden, hardly venturing to slink secretly to the river bank in search of food. This is their resoluteness. Nevertheless, they do not "248 Chuaug Tzic escape the misfortune of the net and the trap. But what crime have they committed ? 'Tis their skin which is the cause of their trouble ; and is not the State of Lu your Highness' skin? 1 would have your Highness put away body and skin alike, and cleansing your heart and purging it of passion, betake yourself to the land where mortality is not. Tao. " In Nan-yiieh there is a district, called Estab- lished-Virtue. Its people are simple and honest, unselfish, and without passions. They can make, but cannot keep. They give, but look for no return. They are not conscious of fulfilling obli- gations. They are not conscious of subservience to etiquette. Theirs is the natural etiquette of well-regulated minds. Their actions are altogether uncontrolled, yet they tread in the way of the wise. Life is for enjoy- ment ; death, for burial. And thither I would have your Highness proceed, power discarded and the world left behind, only putting trust in Tao." " The road is long and dangerous," said the prince. " Rivers and hills to be crossed, and I without boat or chariot ; — what then ? " " Unhindered by body and unfettered in mind," replied the philosopher, " your Highness will be a chariot to yourself." " But the road is long and dreary," argued the prince, " and uninhabited. This is a play on "where mortality is not," above. CAP. XX.] Mountain Trees 249 I shall have no one to turn to for help ; and how, without food, shall I ever be able to get there ? " " Decrease expenditure ^ Of energy. and lessen desires," answered the philosopher, *' and even though without provisions, there will be enough. And then through river and over sea your Highness will travel into shoreless illimitable space. From the border-land, those who act as escort will return ; but thence onwards your High- ness will travel afar. " It is the human in ourselves which is our hindrance ; and the human in others which causes our sorrow. The great Yao had not this human element himself, nor did he perceive it in others. And I would have your Highness put off this hindrance and rid yourself of this sorrow, and roam with Tao alone through the realms of Infinite Nought. " Suppose a boat is crossing a river, and another empty boat is about to collide with it. Even an -^ irritable man would not lose his temper. But supposing there was some one in the second boat. Then the occupant of the first would shout to him to keep clear. And if the other did not hear the first time, nor even when called to three times, bad language would inevitably follow. In the first case there was no anger, in the second there was ; because in the first case the boat was empty, and in the second it was occupied. And so it is with man. 250 Chuang Tzit If he could only roam empty through life, who would be able to injure him ? " Widi his mind in a negative state, closed to all impressions conveyed within by the senses from without. Pei Kung She, minister to Duke Ling of Wei, levied contributions for making bells. An altar was built outside the city gate ; For purposes of sacrifice. and in three months the bells, upper and lower, were all hung. The bell-chime consisted of a frame with bells swun^ on an upper and lower bar. When Wang Tzu Ch'ing Chi Minister to the rulinof House of Chou. saw them, he asked, saying, " How, Sir, did you manage this ? " "In the domain of one," replied She, "there may not be managing. I have heard say that which is carved and polished reverts nevertheless to its natural condition. And so I made allowances for ignorance and for suspicion. I betrayed no feeling when welcomed or dismissed. I forbade not those who came, nor detained those who went away. I showed no resentment towards the unwilling, nor gratitude towards those who gave. Every one sub- scribed what he liked ; and thus in my daily collection of subscriptions, no injury was done. — CAP. XX.] Mountain Trees 251 How much more then those who have the great WAY ? " If my success was due to the simple principle above enunciated, what a success would result from Tag, which is the infinite extension of such principles into every phase of existence ! The Chinese word here used for " way," as a synonym of Tao, settles the original meaning of the latter in the sense of " road." Thus Lao Tzu is said to have explained that the Way he taught was not the way which could be walked upon. When Confucius was hemmed in between Ch'^n and Ts'ai, he passed seven days without food. The minister Jen went to condole with him, and said, " You were near, Sir, to death." " I was indeed," replied Confucius. " Do you fear death. Sir ? " enquired Jen. *' I do," said Confucius. " Then I will try to teach you," said Jen, '' the way not to die. "In the eastern sea there are certain birds, called the i-erh. They behave themselves in a modest and unassuming manner, as though unpossessed of ability. They fly simultaneously : they roost in a body. In advancing, none strives to be first; in retreating, none ventures to be last. In eating, none will be the first to begin ; it is considered proper to take the leavings of others. Therefore, in their own ranks they are at peace, and the outside world is unable to harm them. And thus they escape trouble. 252 Chtiang Tzii " Straight trees are the first felled. Sweet wells are soonest exhausted. And you, you make a show of your knowledge in order to startle fools. You cultivate yourself in contrast to the degradation of others. And you blaze along as though the sun and moon were under your arms ; consequently, you cannot avoid trouble. See p. 243. '' Formerly, I heard a very wise man say, Self- praise is no recommendation. In merit achieved there is deterioration. In fame achieved there is loss. Who can discard both merit and fame and become one with the rest ? Tao pervades all things but is not seen. T£: This is "virtue," the expression of Tag. moves through all things but its place is not known. In its purity and constancy, it may be compared with the purposeless. Remaining concealed, rejecting power, it works not for merit nor for fame. Thus, not censuring others, it is not cen- sured by others. ** And if the perfect man cares not for fame, why, Sir, should you take pleasure in it ? " " Good indeed ! " replied Confucius ; and forth- with he took leave of his friends and dismissed his disciples and retired to the wilds, where he dressed himself in skins and serge and fed on acorns and chestnuts. He passed among the beasts and birds and they took no heed of him. And if so, how much more among men ? An unquestionably spurious episode. CAP. XX.] Mountain Trees 253 Confucius asked Tzu Sang Hu, See ch. vl. saying, " I have been twice expelled from Lu. My tree was cut down in Sung. I have been tabooed in Wei. I am a failure in Shang and Chou. I was surrounded between Chen and Ts'ai. And in addition to all these troubles, my friends have separated from me and my disciples are gone. How is this?" See p. 180. " Have you not heard," replied Sang Hu, " how when the men of Kuo fled, one of them, named Lin Hui, cast aside most valuable regalia and carried away his child upon his back ? Some one suggested that he was influenced by the value of the child ; — but the child's value was small. Or by the incon- venience of the regalia ; — but the inconvenience of the child would be much greater. Why then did he leave behind the regalia and carry off the child ? ** Lin Hui himself said, * The regalia involved a mere question of money. The child was from God.' "And so it is that in trouble and calamity mere money questions are neglected, while we ever cling nearer to that which is from God. And between neglecting and clinging to, the difference is great. "The friendship of the superior man is negative like water. The friendship of the mean man is full-flavoured like wine. That of the superior man 254 Chnang Tzii passes from the negative to the affectionate. That of the mean man passes from the full-flavoured to nothing. The friendship of the mean man begins without due cause, and in like manner comes to an end. " I hear and obey," replied Confucius ; and forthwith he went quietly home, put an end to his studies and cast aside his books. His disciples no longer saluted him as teacher; but his love for them deepened every day. On another occasion. Sang Hu said to him again, " When Shun was about to die, he commanded the Great Yu as follows : — Be careful. Act in accord- ance with your physical body. Speak in accordance with your feelings. You will thus not get into difficulty with the former nor suffer annoyance in the latter. And as under these conditions you will not stand in need of outward embellishment of any kind, it follows that you therefore will not stand in need of anything." Also an episode of doubtful audiorship. The com- mentators, however, have nothing to say against its genuineness. Chuang Tzu put on cotton clothes with patches in them, and arranging his girdle and tieing on his shoes, To keep them from falling off. went to see the prince of Wei. "How miserable you look. Sir ! " cried the prince. " It is poverty, not misery," replied Chuang Tzu. CAP. XX.] Mountain Trees 255 " A man who has Tao cannot be miserable. / Ragged clothes and old boots make poverty, not misery. Mine is what is called being out of har- mony with one's age. " Has your Highness never seen a climbing ape ? Give it some large tree, and it will twist and twirl among the branches as though monarch of all it surveys. Yi and Feng Meng An ancient archer and his apprentice. can never catch a glimpse of it. " But put it in a bramble bush, and it will move cautiously with sidelong glances, trembling all over with fear. Not that its muscles relax in the face of difficulty, but because it is at a disadvantage as regards position, and is unable to make use of its skill. And how should any one, living under foolish sovereigns and wicked ministers, help being miserable, even though he might wish not to be so ? " It was under such circumstances that Pi Kan was disembowelled." See ch. iv. The above episode is too much even for Chinese critics, and has been condemned accordingly. When Confucius was hemmed in between Ch'^n and Ts'ai and had gone seven days without food, then, holding in his left hand a piece of dry wood and in his right hand a dry stick, he sang a ballad of Piao Shih. An ancient ruler. 256 CJmang Tzii He had an instrument, but the gamut was wanting-. There was sound, but no tune. The sound of the wood accompanied by the voice of the man yielded a harsh result, but it was in keeping with the feelings of his audience. Yen Hui, who was standing by in a respectful attitude, thereupon began to turn his eyes about him ; and Confucius, fearing lest he should be driven by exaltation into bragging, or by a desire for safety into sorrow, As a result of hearing the song. spoke to him as follows : — " Hui ! it is easy to escape injury from God ; it is difficult to avoid the benefits of man. There is no beginning and there is no end. Man and God are one. Who then was singing just now ?" " Pray, Sir, what do you mean," asked Yen Hui, " by saying that it is easy to escape injury from God ? " " Hunger, thirst, cold, and heat," replied Con- fucius, " are but as fetters in the path of life. They belong to the natural laws which govern the uni- verse ; and in obedience thereto I pass on my allotted course. The subject dares not disregard the mandates of his prince. And if this is man's duty to man, how much more shall it be his duty to God?" " What is the meaning of difficult to avoid the benefits of man ? " asked Yen Hui. " If one begins," replied Confucius, " byadapta- CAP, XX.] Mountain Trees 257 tion to surroundings, rank and power follow without cease. Such advantages are external ; they are not derived from oneself. And my life is more or less dependent upon the external. The superior man does not steal these ; nor does the good man pilfer them. What then do I but take them as they come ? " Therefore it has been said that no bird is so wise as the swallow. If it sees a place unfit to dwell in, it will not bestow a glance thereon ; and even though it should drop food there, it will leave the food and fly away. Now swallows fear man. Yet they dwell among men. Because there they find their natural abode." In the same way, man should adapt himself to the conditions which surround him. " And what is the meaning," enquired Yen Hui, " of no beginning and no end ? " ** The work goes on," replied Confucius, " and no man knoweth the cause. How then shall he know the end, or the beginning ? There is nothing left to us but to wait." " And that man and God are One," said Yen Hui. " What does that mean ? " ^ " That man is," replied Confucius, " is from God. That God is, is also from God. That man is not God, is his nature. Sc. that which makes him man. The Sage quietly waits for death as the end. * Which shall unite him once aorain with God. o 258 Chuang Tzu When Chuang Tzu was wandering in the park at Tiao-ling, he saw a strange bird which came from the south. Its wings were seven feet across. Its eyes were an inch in circumference. And it flew close past Chuang Tzu's head to alight in a chestnut grove. "What manner of bird is this?" cried Chuang Tzu. " With strong wings it does not fly away. With large eyes it does not see." Or it would not have flown so near. So he picked up his skirts and strode towards it with his cross-bow, anxious to get a shot. Just then he saw a cicada enjoying itself in the shade, forgetful of all else. And he saw a mantis spring and seize it, forgetting in the act its own body, which the strange bird immediately pounced upon and made its prey. And this it was which had caused the bird, to forget its own nature. And approach so close to man. This episode has been widely popularised in Chinese every-day life. Its details have been expressed pictorialjy in a roughly-executed woodcut, with the addition of a tiger about to spring upon the man, and a well into which both will eventually tumble. A legend at the side reads, — "All is Destiny !" " Alas ! " cried Chuang Tzu with a sigh, " how creatures injure one another. Loss follows the pursuit of gain." CAP. XX.] Mountain Trees 259 Those who would prey on others are preyed upon in turn themselves. So he laid aside his bow and went home, driven away by the park-keeper who wanted to know what business he had there. For three months after this, Chuang Tzu did not leave the house ; and at length Lin Chii A disciple. asked him, saying, '' Master, how is it that you have not been out for so long ? " ''While keeping my physical frame," replied Chuang Tzu, " I lost sight of my real self. Gazing at muddy water, I lost sight of the clear abyss. Besides, I have learnt from the Master as follows : — " When you go into the world, follow its customs." This saying is attributed, in uncanonical works, to Confucius. But if any one was "Master" to Chuang Tzu, it would of course be Lao Tzu. Now when I strolled into the park at Tiao-ling, I forgot my real self. That strange bird which flew close past me to the chestnut grove, forgot its nature. The keeper of the chestnut grove took me for a thief. Consequently I have not been out." When Yang Tzii Yang Chu. See ch. viii. s 2 26o Chuang Tzu went to the Sung State, he passed a night at an inn. The innkeeper had two concubines, one beautiful, the other ugly. The latter he loved ; the former, he hated. Yang Tzii asked how this was ; whereupon one of the inn servants said, " The beautiful one is so conscious of her beauty that one does not think her beautiful. The ugly one is so conscious of her ugliness that one does not think her ugly." " Note this, my disciples ! " cried Yang Tzu. " Be virtuous, but without being consciously so ; and wherever you go, you will be beloved." 26 1 CHAPTER XXL T'lEN Tzu Fang. Argument: — Tao cannot be imparted in words — It is not at man's disposal — It does not consist in formal morality — It is an inalienable element of existence — Without it the soul dies — With it man is happy and his immortality secure — Illustrations. [This chapter is supplementary to chapter vi.] T 'I EN Tzu Fang was in attendance upon Prince Wen of Wei. Whose tutor he was. He kept on praising Ch'i Kung, until at length Prince Wen said, *' Is Ch'i Kung your tutor ? " " No," replied Tzu Fang ; " he is merely a neighbour. He discourses admirably upon Tao. That is why I praise him." ' Have you then no tutor?" enquired the Prince. " I have," replied Tzu Fang. " And who may he be ? " said Prince Wen. " Tung Kuo Shun Tzu," answered Tzu Fang. " Then how is it you do not praise him ?" asked the Prince. " He is perfect," replied Tzu Fang. " In ap- pearance, a man ; in reality, God. Unconditioned himself, he falls in with the conditioned, to his 262 Chtiang Tzit own greater glory. Pure himself, he can still tolerate others. If men are without Tao, by a mere look he calls them to a sense of error, and causes their intentions to melt away. How could I praise him ?" Thereupon Tzu Fang took his leave, and the Prince remained for the rest of the day absorbed in silence. At length he called an officer in waiting and said, " How far beyond us is the man of perfect virtue ! Hitherto I have regarded the discussion , y of holiness and wisdom, and the practice of charity and duty to one's neighbour, as the utmost point attainable. But now that I have heard of Tzu Fang's tutor, my body is relaxed and desires not movement, my mouth is closed and desires not speech. All I have learnt, verily it is mere undergrowth. And the kingdom of Wei is my bane. Tag is not to be reached by the superficial worker, or by such as value the distinctions of this world. When Wen Po Hsiieh Tzu " A sage from the south," as the commentators say, anticipating the " Middle Kingdom " below. w^as on his way to Ch'i, he broke his journey in Lu. A certain man of Lu begged for an interview, but Wen Po Hsiieh Tzu said, *' No. I have heard that the gentlemen of the Middle Kingdom are experts in ceremonies and obligations, but wanting in CAP. XXI.] T'ie7i Tzii Fang 263 knowledge of the human heart. I do not wish to see him." So he went on to Ch'i ; but once more at Lu, on his way home, the same man again begged to have an interview. "When I was last here," cried Wen Po Hsueh Tzu, " he asked to see me, and now again he asks to see me. Surely he must have something to communicate." Whereupon he went and received the stranger, and on returning gave vent to sighs. Next day he received him again, and again after the inter- view gave vent to sighs. Then his servant asked him, saying, ** How is it that whenever you receive this stranger, you always sigh afterwards ?" " I have already told you," replied Wen Po Hsiieh Tzu, " that the people of the Middle Kingdom are experts in ceremonies and obligations but w^anting in knowledge of the human heart. The man who visited me came in and went out as per compasses and square. His demeanour was now that of the dragon, now that of the tiger. He criticised me as though he had been my son. He admonished me as though he had been my father. Therefore I gave vent to sighs. When Confucius saw Wen Po Hsiieh Tzu, the former did not utter a word. Whereupon Tzu Lu said, " Master, you have long wished to see Wen Po Hsueh Tzu. How is it that when you do see him you do not speak ? " " With such men as these," replied Confucius, 264 Chiiang Tzic v^ you have only to look, and Tao abides. There is no room for speech." See ch. v, ad init., on " the Doctrine which is not expressed in words." Yen Yiian See p. 179. asked Confucius, saying, " Master, when you go at a walk, I go at a walk. When you trot, I trot. When you gallop, I gallop. But when you dash beyond the bounds of mortality, I can only stand staring behind. How is this ? " " Explain yourself," said Confucius. " I mean," continued Yen Yiian, " that as you speak, I speak. As you argue, I argue. As you preach Tao, so I preach Tao. And by ' when you dash beyond the bounds of mortality I can only stand staring behind,' I mean that without speaking you make people believe you, without striving you make people love you, without factitious attrac- tions you gather people around you. I cannot understand how this is so." " What is there to prevent you from finding out ? " replied Confucius. " There is no sorrow to be compared with the death of the mind. The death of the body is of but secondary importance. Cf. ch. ii, " The body decomposes, and the mind goes with it. This is our real cause for sorrow." " The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. CAP. XXI.] T'ien Tzii Fang 265 There is no place which he does not illuminate ; and those who have eyes and feet depend upon him to use them with success. When he comes forth, that is existence ; when he disappears, that is non- existence. " And every human being has that upon which he depends for death or for life. Mind, which rises with life and sets at death. But if I, receiving this mind-informed body, pass without due modification to the end, So that the mind perishes with the body. day and night subject to ceaseless wear and tear like a mere thing, unknowing what the end will be, and in spite of this mind-informed body Which should teach a higher lesson. conscious only that fate cannot save me from the inevitable grave-yard, — then I am consuming life until at death it is as though you and I had but once linked arms to be finally parted for ever ! Is not that indeed a cause for sorrow ? The motive of this involved paragraph is identical with that of Mr. Mallock's famous essay Is Life Worth Living f '' Now you fix your attention upon something in me which, while you look, has already passed away. Yet you seek for it as though it must be still there, — like one who seeks for a horse in a market-place. In the interim the animal has been sold. 266 Chuang Tzil What I admire in you is transitory. Nevertheless, why should you grieve? Although my old self is constantly passing away, there remains that which does not pass away." The mind, which feeds and thrives upon change. Confucius went to see Lao Tzu. The latter had just washed his head, and his hair was hanging down his back to dry. He looked like a lifeless body ; so Confucius waited awhile, but at length approached and said, " Do my eyes deceive me, or is this really so ? Your frame. Sir, seems like dry wood, as if it had been left without that which informs it with the life of man." Chuang Tzu ( .-*) is here repeating himself " I was wandering," replied Lao Tzu, " in the unborn." Reflecting upon the state of man before his birth into the world. " What does that mean ? " asked Confucius. " My mind is trammelled," replied Lao Tzu, " and I cannot know. My mouth is closed and I cannot speak. But I will try to tell you what is probably the truth. " The perfect Negative principle is majestically passive. The perfect Positive principle is power- fully active. Passivity emanates from heaven above ; activity proceeds from earth beneath. The interaction of the two results in that harmony by CAP. XXI.] THen Tzii Fang 267 which all things are produced. There may be a First Cause, but we never see his form. His report fills space. There is darkness and light. Days come and months go. Work is being constantly performed, yet we never w^itness the performance. Life must bring us from somewhere, and death must carry us back. Beginning and end follow ceaselessly one upon the other, and we cannot say when the series will be exhausted. If this is not the work of a First Cause, what is it ? " " Kindly explain," said Confucius, *' what is to jbe got by wandering as you said." " The result," answered Lao Tzu, " is perfect goodness and perfect happiness. And he who has these is a perfect man." " And by what means," enquired Confucius, " can this be attained ? " "Animals," said Lao Tzii, ''that eat grass do ynot mind a change of pasture. Creatures that live in water do not mind a change of pond. A slight :hange may be effected so long as the essential is untouched. *' Joy, anger, sorrow, happiness, find no place !n that man's breast ; for to him all creation is )ne. And all things being thus united in One, is body and limbs are but as dust of the earth, ^nd life and death, beginning and end, are but as hight and day, and cannot destroy his peace. How jinuch less such trifles as gain or loss, misfortune or good fortune ? " He rejects rank as so much mud. For he 268 Chttang Tzii knows that if a man is of honourable rank, the honour is in himself, and cannot be lost by change of condition, nor exhausted by countless modifica- tions of existence. Who then can grieve his heart ? Those who practise Tao understand the secret of this." " Master," said Confucius, " your virtue equals that of Heaven and Earth ; yet you still employ perfect precepts in the cultivation of your heart. Who among the sages of old could have uttered such words ? " "Not so," answered Lao Tzu. "The fluidity of water is not the result of any effort on the part of the water, but is its natural property. And the virtue of the perfect man is such that even without cultivation there is nothing which can withdraw from his sway. Heaven is naturally high, the earth is naturally solid, the sun and moon are naturally bright. Do they cultivate these attributes ? " Confucius went forth and said to Yen Hui, " In point of Tao, I am but as an animalcule in vinegar. Had not the Master opened my eyes, I should not have perceived the vastness of the universe." He who would concentrate himself upon life after death must first familiarise himself with life before birth. When Chuang Tzu was at an interview with Duke Ai of Lu, Who had then been dead 1 20 years. CAP. XXI.] T'ien Tzu Fang 269 the latter said, " We have many scholars, Sir, in Lu, but few of your school." " In Lu," replied Chuang Tzu, " there are but few scholars." " Look at the number who wear scholars' robes," said the Duke. " How can you say they are few?" " Scholars who wear round hats," answered Chuang Tzu, " know the seasons of Heaven. Scholars who wear square shoes know the shape of Earth. According to ancient Chinese cosmogony, " Heaven is round : Earth is square." And scholars who loosely gird themselves are ready to decide whatever questions may arise. But scholars who have Tao do not necessarily wear robes ; neither does the wearing of robes necessarily mean that a scholar has Tao. If your Highness does not think so, why not issue an order through the Middle Kingdom, making death the punish- ment for all who wear the robes without having the Tag ? " Thereupon Duke Ai circulated this mandate for five days, the result being that not a single man in Lu dared to don scholars' robes, — with the excep- tion of one old man who, thus arrayed, took his stand at the Duke's gate. My Ming editor (a priest) says this was Confucius himself ! The Duke summoned him to the presence, and asked him many questions on politics, trying to entangle him, but in vain. Then Chuang Tzu said, 270 Chtimig Tzii " If there is only one scholar in Lu, surely that is not many." It is unnecessary, says Lin Hsi Chung, to descend to anachronisms in reference to the eenuineness of this episode. Rank and power had no charms for Po Li Ch'i. 7th century B.C. This story is alluded to by Mencius. So he took to feeding cattle. His cattle were always fat, which caused Duke Mu of Ch'in to ignore his low condition and entrust him with the administration. Shun cared nothing for life or death. He was therefore able to influence men's hearts. His parents even went so far as to try to kill him. Prince Yiian of Sung desiring to draw a map, the officials of that department presented them- selves, and after making obeisance stood waiting for the order, more than half of them already lick- ing their brushes and mixing their ink. One of them arrived late. He sauntered in without hurrying himself; and when he had made obeisance, did not wait but went off" home. The Prince sent a man to see what he did. He took off his clothes and squatted down bare-backed. " He will do," cried the Prince. " He is a true artist." ^ The commentators do not get much out of this episode. Lin Hsi Chung damns it as a forgery. CAP. XXI.] Tien Tzu Fang 271 When Wen Wang was on a tour of inspection in Tsang, he saw an old man fishing. But his fishing was not real fishing, for he did not fish to catch fish, but to amuse himself. Wherefore, from the standpoint of Tao, he was the more likely to succeed. So Wen Wang wished to employ him in the administration of government, but feared lest his own ministers, uncles, and brothers, might object. On the other hand, if he let the old man go, he could not bear to think of the people being deprived of such an influence. Accordingly, that very morning he informed his ministers, saying, " I once dreamt that a Sage of a black colour and with a large beard, riding upon a parti-coloured horse with red stockings on one side, appeared and instructed me to place the ad- ministration in the hands of the old gentleman of Tsang, promising that the people would benefit greatly thereby." The ministers at once said, " It is a command from your Highness' father." " I think so," answered Wen Wang. " But let us try by divination." " It is a command from your Highness' late father," said the ministers, " and may not be dis- obeyed. What need for divination ? " So the old man of Tsang was received and entrusted with the administration. He altered none of the existing statutes. He issued no unjust regulations. And when, after three years, Wen 272 Chuang Tzu Wang made another inspection, he found all dangerous organisations broken up, the officials doing their duty as a matter of course, while the use of measures of grain was unknown within the four boundaries of the State. There was thus unanimity in the public voice, singleness of official purpose, and identity of interests to all. So W^n Wang appointed the old man Grand Tutor ; and then, standing with his face to the north, An attitude of respect. Facing the south was the conventional position of a ruler. asked him, saying, " Can such government be extended over the empire ? " The old man of Tsang was silent and made no reply. He then abruptly took leave, and by the evening of that same day had disappeared, never to be heard of again. Yen Ylian said to Confucius, "If Wen Wang was unable to do this of himself, how was he able to do it by a dream ? " " Silence ! " cried Confucius : " It is not for you to criticise Wen Wang who succeeded in fulfilling his mission. The dream was merely to satisfy the vulgar mind." The whole episode is of course spurious. Lieh Yii K'ou Or Lieh Tzii. See ch. i. instructed Po Hun Wu Jen See ch. v. in archery. Drawing the bow to its full, he placed CAP. XXI.] T'ien Tzil Fang 273 a cup of water on his elbow and began to let fly. Hardly was one arrow out of sight ere another was on the string, the archer standing all the time like a statue. ''But this is shooting under ordinary conditions," cried Po Hun Wu Jen ; " it is not shooting under extraordinary conditions. Now I will ascend a high mountain with you, and stand on the edge of a precipice a thousand feet in height, and see how you can shoot then." Thereupon Wu Jen went with Lieh Tzu up a high mountain, and stood on the edge of a preci- pice a thousand feet in height, approaching it back- wards until one-fifth of his feet overhung the chasm, when he beckoned to Lieh Tzu to come on. But the latter had fallen prostrate on the ground, with the sweat pouring down to his heels. " The perfect man," said Wu Jen, " soars up to the blue sky, or dives down to the yellow springs, The infernal regions. or flies to some extreme point of the compass, without change of countenance. But you are terrified, and your eyes are dazed. Your internal economy is defective." You have not Tag. Chien Wu See ch. i. said to Sun Shu Ao, A famous minister of the Ch'u State. T 274 Chttmig Tzii " Sir, you have been three times called to office without showing any elation, and you have been three times dismissed without displaying any chagrin. At first, I doubted you ; but now I notice that your breathing is perfectly regular. How do you manage thus to control your emotions ? " " I am no better than other people," replied Sun Shu Ao. " I regard office when it comes as something which may not be declined ; when it goes, as something which cannot be kept. To me both the getting and losing are outside my own self; and therefore I feel no chagrin. How am I better than other people ? " Besides, I am not conscious of office being either in the hands of others or in my own. If it is in the hands of others, my own personality disappears ; if in mine, theirs. And amidst the cares of deliberation and investigation, what leisure has one for troubling about rank ? " When Confucius heard this, he said, " The per- fect Sages of old ! — cunning men could not defeat them ; beautiful women could not seduce them ; robbers could not steal from them ; They were unmoved in the face of danger. Fu Hsi and the Yellow Emperor could not make friends of them. Life and death are great ; yet these gave them no pang. That would cause them to sacrifice truth. How much less then rank and power ! "The souls of such men pierced through huge I CAP. XXI.] THen Tzii Fang ori^ mountains as though they had been nothing; descended into the abyss without getting wet ; occupied lowly stations without chagrin. They filled the whole universe ; and the more they gave to others, the more they had themselves." These last words occur in chapter Ixxxi. of the Tao-Te-Ching. It is, to say the least, strange to find them here in the mouth of Confucius without a hint as to their alleged Taoistic source. The explanation is that when this episode was penned, that patchwork treatise which passes under the name of the Tao-Ti-Ching \i2iA not been pieced together. The Prince of Ch'u was sitting with the Prince of Fan. By and by, one of the officials of Ch'u said, " There were three indications of the destruc- tion of the Fan State." "The destruction of the Fan State," cried the Prince of Fan, " did not suffice to injure my existence. Which was already, by virtue of Tao, beyond the reach of mundane influences. And while the destruction of the Fan State did not suffice to injure my existence, the preservation of the Ch'u State will not be enough to preserve yours. You being without Tag. From this point of view it will be seen that while we Fans have not begun to be destroyed, you Ch'us have not begun to exist." A good specimen of the Fallacia A7npJiibolice. T 2 276 CHAPTER XXII. Knowledge travels North. Argument : — Inaction and Tao — The universe our model — Spontaneity our watchword — Omnipresence and indivisibility of Tao — External activity, internal passivity — Man's knowledge finite — Illustrations. [This chapter is supplementary to chapter vi.] WHEN Knowledge travelled north, across the Black Water, and over the Dark-Steep Mountain, he met Do-nothing Say-nothing and asked of him as follows : — " Kindly tell me by what thoughts, by what cogitations, may Tao be known ? By resting in what, by according in what, may Tao be ap- proached ? By following what, by pursuing what, may Tao be attained ?" To these three questions. Do-nothing Say- nothing returned no answer. Not that he would not answer, but that he could not. So when Knowledge got no reply, he turned round and went off to the south of the White Water and up the | Ku-chiieh Mountain, where he saw All-in-extremes, and to him he put the same questions. " Ha!" cried All-in-extremes, " I know. I will tell you " .. 1 But just as he was about to speak he forgot , CAP. XXII.] Knowledge travels North 277 what he wanted to say. So when Knowledge got no reply, he went back to the palace and asked the Yellow Emperor. The latter said, " By no thoughts, by no cogitations, Tag may be known. By resting in nothing, by according in nothing, Tag may be approached. By following nothing, by pursuing nothing, Tag may be attained." Then Knowledge said to the Yellow Emperor, " Now you and I know this, but those two know it not. Who is right?" " Of those two," replied the Yellow Emperor, " Do-nothing Say-nothing is genuinely right, and All-in-extremes is near. You and I are wholly wrong. Those who understand it do not speak about it, those who speak about it do not under- stand it. These words occur in the Tao-Te-Chingy ch. vi. See also ante, p. 1 70. Therefore the Sage teaches a doctrine which does not find expression in words. See ante, ch. v. Also The Remains of Lao Tzit, p. 7. Tag cannot be made to come. Virtue cannot be reached. Virtue (Tl:), here the exemplification of Tag. Charity can be evoked. Duty to one's neighbour can be wrongly directed. Ceremonies are mere shams. " Therefore it has been said, ' If Tag perishes, then T£ will perish. IfT£: perishes, then charity will perish. If charity perishes, then duty to one's neighbour will perish. If duty to one's neighbour 278 Chuang Tzu perishes, then ceremonies will perish. Ceremonies are but a showy ornament of Tag, while oft-times the source of trouble.' The above is from the Tao-Te-Ching, ch. xxxviii. It is interesting to note how the Yellow Emperor annihilates time by quoting a work not written until many centuries after his date. "Therefore it has been said, ' Those who prac- tise Tao suffer daily loss. If that loss proceeds until inaction ensues, then by that very inaction there is nothing which cannot be done.' Also in the Tao-Te-Chiiig, ch. xlviii. " Now, we are already beings. And if we desire to revert to our original condition, how difficult that is ! 'Tis a change to which only the greatest among us are equal. " Life follows upon death. Death is the begin- ning of life. Who knows when the end is reached? The life of man results from convergence of the vital fluid. Its convergence is life ; its dispersion, death. If then life and death are but consecutive states, what need have I to complain ? " Therefore all things are One. What we love is animation. What we hate is corruption. But corruption in its turn becomes animation, and animation once more becomes corruption. " Therefore it has been said. The world is per- meated by a single vital fluid, and Sages accordingly venerate One." " Tota formatio procedens ex nomine uno." Liber jfezirah,-"^. Bi. (Parisiis : G. Postello, 1552.) CAP. XXII.] Knowledge travels North 279 Then Knowledge said to the Yellow Emperor, " I asked Do-nothing Say-nothing, but he did not answer me. Not that he would not ; he could not. So I asked All-in-extremes. He was just going to tell me, but he did not tell me. Not that he would not ; but just as he was going to do so, he forgot what he wanted to say. Now I ask you, and you tell me. How then are you wholly wrong ? " " Of those two," replied the Yellow Emperor, " the former was genuinely right, inasmuch as he did not know. The latter was near, inasmuch as ht forgot. You and I are wholly wrong, inasmuch as we know.'' Tao is attained, not by knowledge, but by absence of knowledge. When All-in-extremes heard of this, he con- sidered that the Yellow Emperor had spoken well. " Spoken knowingly " gives the only chance of bringing out what is here a forced play upon words. The universe is very beautiful, yet it says nothing. The four seasons abide by a fixed law, yet they are not heard. All creation is based upon absolute principles, yet nothing speaks. And the true Sage, taking his stand upon the beauty of the universe, pierces the principles of created things. Hence the saying that the per- 28o Chuang Tzu feet man does nothing, the true Sage performs nothing, beyond gazing at the universe. In the hope of attaining, by contemplation, a like spontaneity. For man's intellect, however keen, face to face with the countless evolutions of things, their death and birth, their squareness and roundness, — can never reach the root. There creation is, and there it has ever been. But the secret of life is withheld. The six cardinal points, reaching into infinity, are ever included in Tag. An autumn spikelet, in all its minuteness, must carry Tao within itself. There is nothing on earth which does not rise and fall, but it never perishes altogether. Nihilo nil posse reverti. The Yin and the Yang, and the four seasons, keep to their proper order. Apparently destroyed, yet really existing ; the material gone, the immaterial left ; — such is the law of creation, which passeth all understanding. This is called the root, whence a glimpse may be obtained of God. From this point, upon which the finger of man can never be laid, his mind may perhaps faintly discern the transcendent workings of that Power by which all creation is swayed; — "uncover those secret recesses where Nature is sitting at the fires in the depths of her laboratory." Swedenborg. CAP. XXII.] Knowledge travels North 281 Yeh Ch'iieh enquired of P'i I about Tag. For the former see ch. ii. Of the latter there is no record. The latter said, " Keep your body under proper control, your gaze concentrated upon One, — and the peace of God will descend upon you. Keep back your knowledge, and concentrate your thoughts upon One, — and the holy spirit shall abide within you. Virtue shall beautify you, Tao shall establish you, aimless as a new-born calf which recks not how it came into the world." While P'i I was still speaking, Yeh Ch'iieh had gone off to sleep ; at which the former rejoiced greatly, and departed singing, " Body like dry bone, Mind like dead ashes ; This is true knowledge. Not to strive after knowing the whence. In darkness, in obscurity. The mindless cannot plan ; — What manner of man is that ? " His mortal trammels had fallen off by his absorp- tion into Tag. Shun asked Ch'^ng, His tutor. saying, "Can one get Tag so as to have it for one's own?" " Your very body," replied Ch'eng, " is not your own. How should Tag be?" 282 Chuang Tzu " If my body," said Shun, " is not my own, pray whose is it ?" " It is the delegated image of God," replied Ch eng. " Your life is not your own. It is the delegated harmony of God. The affinity of the Ym and Yang causes them, when in due proportions, to combine and produce life. Your individuality is not your own. It is the delegated adaptability of God. Providing the endless variety of shapes with an endless variety of complexion. Your posterity is not your own. It is the dele- gated exuviae of God. As God sends us into the world, so He wishes us to " increase and multiply." You move, but know not how. You are at rest, but know not why. You taste, but know not the cause. These are the operation of God's laws. How then should you get Tag so as to have it for your own ?" Cf. " Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost," etc. I, Corinthians vi. 19. Confucius said to Lao Tzu, " To-day you are at leisure. Pray tell me about perfect Tao." " Purge your heart by fasting and discipline," answered Lao Tzu. " Wash your soul as white as snow. Discard your knowledge. Tag is abstruse and difficult of discussion. I will try, however, to speak to you of its outline. CAP. XXII.] Knowledge travels North 283 " Light is bom of darkness. Classification is born of formlessness. The soul is born of Tao. The body is born of the vital essence. Existence springs from non-existence. "Thus all things produce after their kind. Creatures with nine channels of communication are born from the womb. Creatures with eight are born from the ^^g. Nature is always self-similar. Of their coming there is no trace. In their de-- parture there is no goal. No entrance gate, no dwelling house, they pass this way and that, as though at the meeting of cross-roads. ''Those who enter herein become strong of limb, subtle of thought, and clear of sight and hearing. They suffer no mental fatigue, nor meet with phy- sical resistance. '' Heaven cannot but be high. Earth cannot but be broad. The sun and moon cannot but re- volve. All creation cannot but flourish. To do so is their Tao. " But it is not from extensive study that this may be known, nor by dialectic skill that this may be made clear. The true Sage will have none of these. It is in addition without gain, in diminution without loss, that the true Sage finds salvation. " Unfathomable as the sea, wondrously ending only to begin again, informing all creation with- out being exhausted, the Tao of the perfect man is spontaneous in its operation. That all creation 284 Clmang Tzii can be infornicd by it without exhaustion, is its Tau. The 'X i\() of '\\\(). "In tlie Middle Kini^doni tliere are men who rccot;nise neither positive nor nej^^'itive. They al)ide l)etween heaven and earth. They act their part as mortals, and then return to the Cause. " From that stand] )oint, Of the Cause, sc. God, which is commensurate with infinity. life is but a concentration of the vital fluid, whose longest and shortest terms of existence vary by an inai)preeiable space, — hardly enoui;"h for the classi- hcation of Yao and Chieh. As good and had. See ch. iv. " Tree-fruits and plant-fruits exhibit order in their varieties; and the relationshii)s of man, though more difficult to be dealt with, may still be reduced to order. These havi! hcenclassified as follows : — 1. S(wereion and Suhject. 2. Husband „ Wife. 3. r\aher ,, Son. 4. Elder Brother ,, Younger Brother. 5. Friend ,, Friend. The true Sai^e who meets with these, docs not violate them. Neither does he continue to hold fast by them. lie adapts himself to the exigencies of his ciivlron- nicnl. CAP. XXII.] Knowledge tyaveh Norfh 285 Adai)tation by arrangement is Tft. Spontaneous . adaptation is Tao, by whieh sovereigns flourish and princes succeed. " Man passes through this subkuiary life as a white horse passes a crack. Here one moment, gone the next. Neither are there any not equally subject to the ingress and egress of mortality. One modification brings life; then another, and it is death. Living creatures cry out ; human beings sorrow. The bow-sheath is slipped off; the clothes-bag is dro[)ped ; and in the confusion the soul wings its llight, and the body follows, on the great journey home I " The reality of the formless, the unreality of that which has form, — this is known to all. Those who are on the road to attainment care not for these things, but the people at large discuss them. Attainment implies non-discus- sion : discussion implies non-attainment. Mani- fested, Tag has no objective value ; hence silence is better than argument. It cannot be translated into speech; better then say nothing at all. This is called the great attainment." Tung Kuo Tzii asked Chuang Tzii, saying, "What you call Tag, — where is it?" " There is nowhere," replied Chuang Tzu, " where it is not." " Tell me one place at any rate where it is," said Tung Kuo Tzii. " It is in the ant," replied Chuang TzCi. 286 Chuang Tzu "Why go so low down?" asked Tung Kuo Tzu. " It is in a tare," said Chuang Tzu. "Still lower," objected Tung Kuo Tzu. " It is in a potsherd," said Chuang Tzu. " Worse still ! " cried Tung Kuo Tzu. " It is in ordure," said Chuang Tzu. And Tung Kuo Tzu made no reply. "Sir," continued Chuang Tzu, "your question does not touch the essential. When Huo, inspector of markets, asked the managing director about the fatness of pigs, the test was always made in parts least likely to be fat. Do not therefore insist in any particular direction ; for there is nothing which escapes. Such is perfect Tao ; and such also is ideal speech. IVJiole, entire, all, are three words which sound differently but mean the same. Their purport is One. " Try to reach with me the palace of Nowhere, and there, amidst the identity of all things, carry your discussions into the infinite. Try to practise with me inaction, wherein you may rest motionless, without care, and be happy. For thus my mind becomes an abstraction. It wanders not, and yet is not conscious of being at rest. It goes and comes and is not conscious of stoppages. Backwards and forwards without being conscious of any goal. Up and down the realms of Infinity, wherein even the greatest intellect would fail to find an end. " That which makes things the things they are, is not limited to such things. The limits of things CAP. xxn.j Knowledge travels North 287 are their own limits in so far as they are things. The limits of the limitless, the limitlessness of the limited, — these are called fulness and emptiness, renovation and decay. Tao causes fulness and emptiness, but it is not either. It causes renovation and decay, but it is not either. It causes beginning and end, but it is not either. It causes accumulation and dispersion, but it is not either." O Ho Kan was studying with Shen Nung under Lao Lung Chi. No record of the first and last. Shen Nune was a legendary emperor who invented agriculture. See p. 196. Shen Nung used to remain shut up, with his head on the table, absorbed in day-dreams. On one occasion, O Ho Kan knocked at the door, and entering said, " Lao Lung is dead ! " Thereupon Shen Nung, leaning on his staff, arose ; and flinging down his staff with a bang, smiled and said, " O my Master, thou knewest me to be worthless and self-sufficient, and thou didst leave me and die. Now I, having no scope for my vain talk, I too will die." When Yen Kang Tiao "A man of Tag." Co7nm. heard this, he said, " Those who exemplify Tao are sought after by all the best men in the empire. Now if one who has not attained to more Tao than the ten-thousandth part of the tip of an autumn 288 Chtiang Tzu spikelet, is still wise enough to withhold vain talk and die, — how much more those who exemplify Tao? To the eye it is formless, and to the ear it is noise- less. Those who discuss it, speak of it as ' the obscure.' But the mere fact of discussing Tao makes it not Tao." At this the Empyrean asked Without-end, saying, " Do you know Tao ? " " I do not," replied Without-end; whereupon the Empyrean proceeded to ask Inaction. " I do know Tao," said Inaction. " Is there any method," asked the Empyrean, " by which you know Tao ? " " There is," replied Inaction. " What is it ? " asked the Empyrean. j "I know," answered Inaction, "that Tao may honour and dishonour, bind and loose. That is the method by which I know Tao." The Empyrean repeated these words to No-begin- ning, and asked him which was right, the ignorance of Without-end or the knowledge of Inaction. " Not to know," replied No-beginning, " is pro- found. To know is shallow. Not to know is internal. To know is external." Here the Empyrean broke in with a sigh, " Then ignorance is knowledge, and knowledge ignorance ! But pray whose knowledge is the knowledge of not knowing ?" " Tao," said No-beginning, " cannot be heard. Heard, it is not Tao. It cannot be seen. Seen, it CAP. XXII.] Knowledge travels North 289 is not Tao. It cannot be spoken. Spoken, it is not Tao. That which imparts form to forms is itself formless ; therefore Tag cannot have a name." Form precedes name. No-beginning continued, "He who replies to one asking about Tag, does not know Tag. Although one may hear about Tag, he does not really hear about Tag. There is no such thing as asking about Tag. There is no such thing as answering such questions. To ask a question which cannot be asked is vain. To answer a question which cannot be answered is unreal. And one who thus meets the vain with the unreal is one who has no physical perception of the universe, and no mental perception of the origin of existence, — unfit alike to roam over the K'un-lun peak or to soar into the Supreme Void." Light asked Nothing, saying, " Do you, Sir, exist, or do you not exist ? " But getting no answer to his question. Light set to work to watch for the appearance of Nothing. Hidden, vacuous, — all day long he looked but could not see it, listened but could not hear it, grasped at but could not seize it. See The Remains of Lao Tzu, p. 31. " Bravo! " cried Light. " Who can equal this ? I can get to be nothing. Darkness. u 290 Chuang Tzii but I cannot get as far as the absence of nothing. Assuming that Nothing has an objective ex- istence, how can it reach this next stage ? " The man who forged swords for the Minister of War was eighty years of age. Yet he never made the slightest slip in his work. The Minister of War said to him, " Is it your skill, Sir, or have you any method ? " Any Tao ? — in its earlier sense of way of doing things. " It is concentration," replied the man. " When twenty years old, I took to forging swords. I cared for nothing else. If a thing was not a sword, I did not notice it. I availed myself of whatever energy I did not use in other directions in order to secure greater efficiency in the direction required. Still more of that which is never with- out use ; — Tao. So that there was nothing which did not lend its aid. Jen Ch'iu asked Confucius, saying, " Can wc know about the time before the universe existed ? " "We can," replied Confucius. " Time was of old precisely what it is now." At this rebuff, Jen Ch'iu withdrew. Next day he again visited Confucius and said, "Yesterday when I asked you that question and you answered me, I was quite clear about it. To-day I am con- fused. How is this ? " CAP. XXII.] Knowledge travels North 291 " Your clearness of yesterday," answered Con- fucius, " was because my answer appealed direct to your natural intelligence. Your confusion of to-day results from the intrusion of something other than the natural intelligence. You have passed from " simple apprehension " to "judgment." There is no past, no present, no beginning, no end. To-day will be the yesterday of to-morrow. To have posterity before one has posterity, — is that possible ? " Jen Ch'iu made no answer, and Confucius con- tinued, " That will do. Do not reply. If life did not give birth to death, and if death did not put an end to life, surely life and death would be no longer correlates, but would each exist independently. What there was before the universe, was Tao. Tag makes things what they are, but is not itself a thing. Nothing can produce Tao ; yet everything has Tag within it, and continues to produce it with- out end. In its offspring. And the endless love of the Sage for his fellow-man is based upon the same principle." Yen Yiian asked Confucius, saying, " Master, I have heard you declare that there may be no eager- ness to conform, no effort to adapt. If so, pray how are we to get along ? " Reach that condition which is only attained by adaptation to environment. u 2 292 Chuang Tzu J " The men of old," replied Confucius, " practised physical, but not moral, modification. ' ^ They adapted themselves to the requirements of matter, while their hearts remained the same. The men of to-day practise moral, not physical modification. They allow their hearts to be influenced while resisting the exigencies of the external. Let your modification extend to the external only. Internally, be constant without modification. " How shall you modify, and how shall you not modify ? How reconcile the divergence ? — By not admitting division. I.e. ** by being constant without modification," says Lin Hsi Chung. " There was the garden of Hsi Wei, the park of the Yellow Emperor, the palace of Shun, the halls of T'ang and Wu. The allusion appears to be to schools of learning, like the Grove of Academus. See chs. vi, xii. These were perfect men ; but had they been taught by Confucianists and Mihists, they would have hammered one another to pieces over scholastic quibbles. How much more then the men of to-day ? "The perfect Sage, in his relations with the external world, injures nothing. Neither does any- thing injure him. And only he who is thus exempt can be trusted to conform and to adapt. CAP. XXII.] Knowledge travels North 293 " Mountain forests and loamy fields swell my heart with joy. But ere the joy be passed, sorrow is upon me again. Familiarity destroys the charm, Joy and sorrow come and go, and over them I have no control. " Alas ! the life of man is but as a stoppage at an inn. He knows that which comes within the range of his experience. Otherwise, he knows not. He knows that he can do what he can do, and that he cannot do what he cannot do. But there is always that which he does not know and that which he cannot do ; and to struggle that it shall not be so, — is not this a cause for grief? " The best language is that which is not spoken, the best form of action is that which is without deeds. Then conformity and adaptation are not required. Spread out your knowledge and it will be found to be shallow." It will by no means cover the area of the knowable. " Read this chapter," says one critic, " and the Tripitaka and the Mahdydna will open out before you as beneath a sharp-edged blade." 294 CHAPTER XXIII. Keng Sang Ch'u. Argument : — The operation of Tao is not seen — Spheres of action vary — Tag remains the same — Spontaneity essential — Tao can be divided but remains entire — It is infinite as Time and Space — It is uncon- ditioned— The external and the internal — Illustrations. AMONG the disciples of Lao Tzu was one named K^ng Sang Ch'u. He alone had attained to the Tao of his Master. He lived up north, on the Wei-lei Mountains. Of his attendants, he dismissed those who were systematically clever or conventionally charitable. The useless remained with him ; the incompetent served him. And in three years the district of Wei-lei was greatly benefited. One of the inhabitants said in conversation, " When Mr. Keng Sang first came among us, we did not know what to make of him. Now, we could not say enough about him in a day, and even a year would leave something unsaid. Surely he must be a true Sage. Why not pray to him as to the spirits, and honour him as a tutelary god of the land ? " On hearing of this, Keng Sang Ch'u turned his face to the south Towards the abode of Lao Tzii. CAP. XXIII.] Kdng Sang CJiu ■ 295 in shame, at which his disciples were astonished. But Keng Sang said, " What cause have you for astonishment? The influence of spring quickens the life of plants, and autumn brings them to maturity. In the absence of any agent, how is this so ? It is the operation of Tao. " I have heard that the perfect man may be pent up like a corpse in a tomb, yet the people will be- come unartificial and without care. So powerful will be his influence. But now these poor people of Wei-lei wish to exalt me among their wise and good. Surely then I am but a shallow vessel ; and therefore I was shamed for the doctrine of Lao Tzu." The disciples said, " Not so. In a sixteen-foot ditch a big fish has not room to turn round ; but 'tis the very place for an eel. On a six or seven-foot hillock a large beast finds no shelter, while the un- canny fox gladly makes its lair therein. Besides, ever since the days of Yao and Shun it has always been customary to honour the virtuous, advance the able, give precedence to the good and useful. Why not then among the people ol Wei-lei ? Let them do it, Sir." "Come here, my children," said Keng Sang Ch'u. " A beast big enough to swallow a cart, if it wanders alone from the hills, will not escape the sorrow of the snare. A fish big enough to gulp down a boat, if stranded on the dry shore will become a prey to ants. Therefore it is that birds and beasts 296 Chitang Tzii love height, and fishes and turtles love depth. And the man who cares for himself hides his body. He loves the occult. There is a play here upon words. " As to Yao and Shun, what claim have they to praise ? Their fine distinctions simply amounted to knocking a hole in a wall in order to stop it up with brambles ; They had better have left the wall alone. to combing each individual hair ; to counting the grains for a rice pudding ! How in the name of goodness did they profit their generation ? " If the virtuous are honoured, emulation will ensue. If knowledge be fostered, the result will be theft. People will employ their knowledge against each other. These things are of no use to make people good. The struggle for wealth is so severe. Sons murder their fathers ; ministers their princes ; men rob in broad daylight, and bore through walls at high noon. I tell you that the root of this great evil is from Yao and Shun, and that its branches will extend into a thousand ages to come. A thousand ages hence, man will be feeding upon man ! " Nan Yung Ch'u A disciple. sadly straightened his seat and said, " But what is one of my age to do that he may attain to this ? " CAP. XXIII.] Kdng Sang Ch'ti 297 " Preserve your form complete," said KengSang, "your vitality secure. Let no anxious thoughts intrude. And then in three years' space you may attain to this." " I do not know," said Nan Yung, " that there is any difference in the form of eyes ; yet blind men cannot see. I do not know that there is any difference in the form of ears ; yet deaf men cannot hear. I do not know that there is any difference in the form of hearts ; The seat of the intellect. yet fools cannot use theirs to any purpose. The forms are alike ; yet there is something which differentiates them. One will succeed, and another will not. Yet you tell me to preserve my form complete, my vitality secure, and let no anxious thoughts intrude. But so far I only hear Tag with my ears." "Well said!" cried Keng Sang; and then he added, " Small wasps cannot transform huge caterpillars. According to Chinese notions, the wasp has no young. It transforms a small caterpillar into the required offspring. Bantams cannot hatch the eggs of geese. The fowls of Lu can. Not that there is any difference in the hatching power of chickens. One can and another cannot, because one is naturally fitted for working on a large, the other on a small scale. My talents 298 Chuang Tzii are of the latter order. I cannot transform you. Why not go south and see Lao Tzu ? " So Nan Yung took some provisions, and after a seven days' journey arrived at the abode of Lao Tzu. " Have you come from Keng Sang Ch'u?" said the latter. *' I have," replied Nan Yung. " But why," said Lao Tzu, "bring all these people with you ? " Meaning the questions he was going to ask. Nan Yung looked back in alarm, and Lao Tzu continued, " Do you not understand what I say?" Nan Yung bent his head abashed, and then looking up, said with a sigh, *T have now forgotten how to answer, in consequence of missing what I came to ask." He was so confused by Lao Tzu's question coming before he had had time to state his mission. " What do you mean ? " said Lao Tzu. " If I do not know," replied Nan Yung, " men call me a fool. If I do know, I injure myself. If I am not charitable, I injure others. If I am, I injure myself. If I do not do my duty to my neighbour, I injure others. If I do it, I injure myself. My trouble lies in not seeing how to escape from these three dilemmas. On the strength of my connection with Kcng Sang, I would venture to ask advice." "When I saw you," said Lao Tzu, " I knew in the twinkling of an eye what was the matter with you. And now what you say confirms my view. CAP. XXIII.] King Sang Cliti 299 You are confused, as a child that has lost its parents. You would fathom the sea with a pole. You are astray. You are struggling to get back to your natural self, but cannot find the way. Alas ! alas ! " Nan Yung begged to be allowed to remain, and set to work to cultivate the good and eliminate the evil within him. At the expiration of ten days, with sorrow in his heart, he again sought Lao Tzu. " Have you thoroughly cleansed yourself? " said Lao Tzu. " But this grieved look There is some evil obstruction yet. " If the disturbances are external, Sc. sensual. do not be always combating them, but close the channels to the mind. If the disturbances are internal, do not strive to oppose them, but close all entrance from without. And the mind will recover itself. If the disturbances are both internal and external, then you will not even be able to hold fast to Tao, still less practise it." " If a rustic is sick," said Nan Yung, " and another rustic goes to see him; and if the sick man can say what is the matter with him, — then he is not seriously ill. Yet my search after Tao is like swallowing drugs which only increase the malady. Although really not so very far from Tao [sc. health) as evidenced by my being able to describe my 300 Chuang Tzu complaint, which a man sick of some serious dis- ease is scarcely" able to do. I beg therefore merely to ask the art of preser\-ing life." "The art of pre5er\nng life," replied Lao Tzu, " consists in being able to keep all in One, Sc. Body and soul. See the Tao-Te-Ching, ch. x, where this idea has been reproduced. to lose nothing, to estimate good and evil without dixination, To know that each is bound up in the other. to know when to stop, and how much is enough, to leave others alone and attend to oneself, to be with- out cares and without knowledge, — to be in fact as a child. A child will cry all day and not become hoarse, because of the perfection of its constitutional harmony. Also reproduced in the Tao-Te-Chiyig, ch- Iv. It will keep its fist tightly closed all day and not open it, because of the concentration of its virtue. It \\'ill gaze all day without taking off its eyes, because its sight is not attracted by externals. Ir. motion, it knows not whither it is bound ; at rest, it is not conscious of doing amthing ; but uncon- sciously adapts itself to the exigencies of its en\-iron- ment. This is the art of preser\-ing life." '' Is this then the virtue of the perfect man ? cried Xan Yung. • Not so," said Lao Tzu. '* I am, as it were, bu. breaking the ice. CAP. XXIII.] K6ng Sang Cliu 301 " The perfect man shares the food of this earth, but the happiness of God. He does not incur trouble either from men or things. He does not join in censuring, in plotting, in toadying. Free from care he comes, and unconscious he goes ; — this is the art of preserving life." ** This then is perfection ? " inquired Nan Yung. " Not yet," said Lao Tzu. " I specially asked if you could be as a child. A child acts without knowing what it does ; moves without knowing whither. Its body is like a dry branch ; its heart like dead ashes. Thus, good and evil fortune find no lodgment therein ; and there where good and evil fortune are not, how can the troubles of mor- tality be ? " Those whose hearts are in a state of repose give forth a divine radiance, by the light of which they see themselves as they are. And only by cultivating such repose can man attain to the constant. " Those who are constant are sought after by men and assisted by God. Those who are sought after by men are the people of God ; those who are assisted by God are his chosen children. The stuff of which rulers are made. " To study this is to study what cannot be learnt. To practise this is to practise what cannot be accomplished. To discuss this is to discuss what can never be proved. Let knowledge stop 302 Chuang Tzii at the unknowable. That is perfection. And for those who do not follow this, God will destroy them 1 " Knowledge," says Emerson in his Montaigne, or the Sceptic, " is the knowing that we cannot know." " With such defences for the body, ever prepared for the unexpected, deferential to the rights of others, — if then calamities overtake you, these are from God, not from man. Let them not disturb what you have already achieved. Let them not penetrate into the soul's abode. For there resides the Will. And if the will knows not what to will, it will not be able to will. Inability to exercise the functions of will is Tao. " Whatsoever is not said in all sincerity, is wrongly said. And not to be able to rid oneself of this vice is only to sink deeper towards per- dition. ''Those who do evil in the open light of day, — men will punish them. Those who do evil in secret, — God will punish them. Who fears both man and God, he is fit to walk alone. The term here used for " God " means strictly those *' spirits " which are the avenging emissaries of the Deity. Those who are devoted to the internal, To self-culture. in practice acquire no reputation. Those who are devoted to the external, strive for pre-eminence CAP. XXIII.] King Sang Ch'u 303 among their fellows. Practice without reputation throws a halo around the meanest. But he who strives for pre-eminence among his fellows, he is as a huckster whose weariness all perceive though he himself puts on an air of gaiety. '* He who is naturally in sympathy with man, to him all men come. But he who forcedly adapts, has no room even for himself, still less for others. And he who has no room for others, has no ties. It is all over with him. ** There is no weapon so deadly as man's will. Excalibur is second to it. There is no bandit so powerful as Nature. The interaction of the Positive and Negative prin- ciples, which produces the visible universe. In the whole universe there is no escape from it. Yet it is not Nature which does the injury. It is man's own heart. " Tao informs its own subdivisions, their suc- cesses and their failures. What is feared in sub- division is separation. From the parent stock of Tao. What is feared in separation, is further separation. So that all connection is severed. Thus, to issue forth without return, this is deve- lopment of the supernatural. To issue forth and attain the goal, this is called death. To be anni- hilated and yet to exist, this is convergence of the supernatural into One. To make things which 304 Chiiang Tzu have form appear to all intents and purposes form- less,— this is the sum of all things. Man's final triumph over matter. " Birth is not a beginning ; death is not an end. There is existence without limitation ; there is continuity without a starting-point. Existence without limitation is Space. Continuity without a starting-point is Time. There is birth, there is death, there is issuing forth, there is entering in. That through which one passes in and out without seeing its form, that is the Portal of God. " The Portal of God is Non-Existence. All things sprang from Non-Existence. Existence could not make existence existence. It must have proceeded from Non-Existence, The idea of existence, independent of its correlate, cannot be apprehended by the human intellect. And Non-Existence and Nothing are One. If all things sprang from non-existence, it might be urged that non-existence had an objective existence. But non-existence is nothing, and nothing excludes the idea of something, making subjective and ob- jective nothings One. Herein is the abiding-place of the Sage. \ There where the matter of mortality shares the tenuity of the formless. " The knowledge of the ancients reached the highest point, — the time before anything existed. CAP. XXIII.] King Sang C/tu 305 This is the highest point. It is exhaustive. There is no adding to it. " The second best was that of those who started from existence. Life was to them a misfortune. Death was a return home. There was already separation. '* The next in the scale said that at the beginning there was nothing. Then life came, to be quickly followed by death. They made Nothing the head, Life the trunk, and Death the tail of existence, claiming as friends whoever knew that existence and non-existence, and life and death were all One. " These three classes, though different, were of the same clan ; as were Chao Ching who inherited fame, and Chia who inherited territory. The fact of Inheritance was the same, but not the thing inherited, — by these men of Ch'u. There are various interpretations of this passage. No two commentators agree. " Man's life is as the soot on a kettle. Meaning, concentrated smoke. ■ Yet men speak of the subjective point of view. But this subjective point of view will not bear the test. It is a point of knowledge we cannot reach. Individual standards are fallacious. What Is subjec- tive from one point of view Is objective from another. " At the winter sacrifice, the tripe may be sepa- rated from the great toe ; yet these cannot be separated » Each carries away the characteristics of the whole. X 3o6 Chuang Tzii He who looks at a house, visits the ancestral hall, and even the latrines. Thus every point is the subjective point of view. Or else he has not seen the house but only a part. Where then is the subjective point of view of the house, and by analogy, of the man ? " Let us try to formulate this subjective point of view. It originates with life, and, with knowledge as its tutor, drifts into the admission of right and wrong. In the abstract. But one's own standard of right is the standard, and others have to adapt themselves to it. Men will die for this. Such people look upon the useful as appertaining to wisdom, the useless as apper- taining to folly; upon success in life as honourable, upon failure as dishonourable. Not knowing the value of the useless, or perceiving that what is so at one time is not so at another. The subjective pqint of view is that of the present generation, who like the cicada and the young dove see things only from their own standpoint. See ch. i. " If a man treads upon a stranger's toe in the market-place, he apologises on the score of hurry. If an elder brother does this, he is quit with an exclamation of sympathy. And if a parent does so, nothing whatever is done. The child being part of himself. CAP. XXIII.] King Sang Ch'u 307 "Therefore it has been said, ' Perfect politeness is not artificial ; Kuo Hsiang says this means treating others as oneself. Lin HsI Chung takes the " natural " or " spontaneous " view which is here adopted. perfect duty to one's neighbour is not a matter of calculation ; perfect wisdom takes no thought ; perfect charity recognises no ties ; perfect trust requires no pledges.' " Discard the stimuli of purpose. Free the mind from disturbances. Get rid of entanglements to virtue. Pierce the obstructions to Tao. " Honours, wealth, distinction, power, fame, gain, — these six stimulate purpose. " Mien, carriage, beauty, arguments, influence, opinions, — these six disturb the mind. Referring, of course, to the mien, carnage, etc. of others. " Hate, ambition, joy, anger, sorrow, pleasure, — these six are entanglements to virtue. " Rejecting, adopting, receiving, giving, know- ledge, ability, — these six are obstructions to Tao. The key to which is inaction. " If these twenty-four be not allowed to run riot, then the mind will be duly ordered. And being l|duly ordered, it will be in repose. And being in repose, it will be clear of perception. And being clear of perception, it will be unconditioned. And Ibeing unconditioned, it will be in that state of X 2 3o8 Chuang Tzu inaction by which there is nothing which cannot be accomplished. " Tao is the sovereign lord of Te. Te is the " virtue " of spontaneity. Life is the glorifier of Te. By means of which it can be manifested. Nature is the substance of life. The code of which life is the embodiment. The operation of that nature is action. The per- version of that action is error. " People who know put forth physical power. People who know employ mental effort. But what people who know do not know is to be as the eye. Which sees without looking. ** Emotion which is spontaneous is called virtue passive. Emotion which is not evoked by the external is called virtue active. The names of these are antagonistic ; but essentially they are in accord. All "virtue" should proceed from the real self, sc. from God. " Yi was skilled in hitting the bull's-eye ; but stupid at preventing people from praising him for so doing. See ch. v. The Sage devotes himself to the natural and neg- lects the artificial. For only the Perfect Man can CAP. XXIII.] King Sang CJiu 309 devote himself profitably to the natural and arti- ficial alike. Insects influence insects ; So as to make others like themselves because insects are natural. When the Perfect Man hates the natural, it is the artificially natural which he hates. How much more man's alternate naturalness and artificiality? '* If a bird falls in with Yi, Yi will get it. Such is his skill. And if the world were made into a cage, birds would have no place of escape. So it was that by cookery T'ang got hold of I Yin, and by five rams' skins Duke Mu of Ch'in got Po Li Ch'i. But had these princes not been themselves successful at getting, they never would have got these men. Apocryphal stories both. I Yin was the successful and famous minister of the founder of the Shangf dynasty. For Poh Li Ch'i, see p. 270. "A one-legged man discards ornament, his exterior not being open to commendation. Con- demned criminals will go up to great heights without fear, for they no longer regard life and death from their former point of view. And those who pay no attention to their moral clothing Artificial virtues. and condition become oblivious of their own per- sonality; and by thus becoming oblivious of their personality, they proceed to be the people of God. "Wherefore, if men revere them, they rejoice 3IO Chiiang Tzii not. If men insult them, they are not angered. But only those who have passed into the eternal harmony of God are capable of this. " If your anger is external, not internal, it will be anger proceeding from not-anger. If your actions are external, not internal, they will be actions proceeding from inaction, " If you would attain peace, level down your emotional nature. If you desire spirituality, cultivate adaptation of the intelligence. If you would have your actions in accordance with what is right, allow yourself to fall in with the dictates of necessity. For necessity is the Tao of the Sage." Do nothing save what you cannot help doing. The authorship of this chapter has been disputed. Lin Hsi Chung regards the question as by no means settled. 311 CHAPTER XXIV. Hsij Wu KuEi. Argionent : — Tao is passionless — Immorality of the moral — Obstructions to natural virtue — The evils of action — Too much zeal — The outward and visible — The inward and spiritual — Illustrations. H SU wu KUEI, introduced by Nu Shang, went to see Wu Hou of Wei. A hermit, a minister, and a prince, respectively. The Prince greeted him sympathisingly, and said, "You are suffering. Sir. You must have endured great hardships in your mountain life that you should be willing to leave it and visit me." " It is I who should sympathise with your Highness, not your Highness with me," answered Hsii Wu Kuei. " If your Highness gives free play to passion and yields to loves and hates, then the natural conditions of your existence will suffer. Internally. And if your Highness puts aside passion and abjures loves and hates, then your senses of sight and hearing will suffer. Externally. It is I who should sympathise with your Highness, not your Highness with me." 312 Chiiang Tzu The Prince was too astonished to reply ; and after a while Hsii Wu Kuei continued, " I will try to explain to your Highness how I judge of dogs. The lowest in the scale will eat their fill and then stop, like a cat. Those of the middle class are as though staring at the sun. The highest class are as though they had parted with their own indi- viduality. *' But I do not judge of dogs as well as I judge of horses. I judge of horses as follows. Their straightness In running. must be that of a line. Their curve must be that of an arc. Their squareness, that of the square. Their roundness, that of the compasses. One commentator applies all this to the shape of the animals. These are the horses of the State. They are not equal to the horses of the Empire. The horses of the Empire are splendid. They move as though anxious to get along, as though they had lost the way, as though they had parted with their own individuality. Thus, they outstrip all competitors, over the unstirred dust, out of sight ! " The Prince was greatly pleased and smiled. But when Hsii Wu Kuei went out, Nii Shang asked him, saying, " What can you have been saying to his Highness? Whenever I address him, it is either in a pacific sense, based upon the Canons of Poetry ^ History, Rites, and Music; or in a belligerent CAP. XXIV.] Hsil IVu Kuei 313 sense, based upon the Golden Roster or the Six Plans of Battle. Ancient military treatises. I have transacted with great success innumerable matters entrusted |o me, yet his Highness has never vouchsafed a smile. What can you have been saying to make him so pleased as all this ? " " I merely told him," replied Hsii Wu Kuei, " how I judged of dogs and horses." " Was that all ? " enquired Nu Shang, incredu- lously. " Have you not heard," said Hsii Wu Kuei, " of the outlaw of Yiieh ? After several days' absence from his State, he was glad to meet any one he had known there. After a month, he was glad to meet any one he had even seen there. And after a year, he was glad to meet any one who was in any way like to his fellow-countrymen. Is not this a case of absence from one's kind increasing the desire to be with them ? '' Thus a man who had fled into the wilderness, where bishop-wort chokes the path of the weasel and stoat, now advancing, now stopping, — how he would rejoice if the footfall of a fellow-creature broke upon his ear. And how much more were he to hear the sound of a brother's, of a relative's voice at his side. Long it is, I ween, since his Highness has heard the voice of a pure man at his side ! " Hsii Wu Kuei went to visit the Prince. The 314 Chiiang Tzu latter said, " Living, Sir, up in the hills, and feeding upon berries or satisfying yourself with leeks, you have long neglected me. Are you now growing old ? Or do you hanker after flesh-pots and wine ? Or is it that mine is such a well-governed State ? " '' I am of lowly birth," replied Hsii Wu Kuei. '' I could not venture to eat and drink your High- ness' meat and wine. I came to sympathise with your Highness." " What do you mean ? " cried the Prince ? " What is there to sympathise about ? " " About your Highness' soul and body," replied Hsii Wu Kuei. " Pray explain," said the Prince. " Nourishment is nourishment," said Hsii Wu Kuei. To a peasant as to a prince. " Being high up does not make one high, nor does being low make one low. Your Highness is the ruler of a large State, and you oppress the whole population thereof in order to satisfy your sensuali- ties. But your soul is not a party to this. The soul loves harmony and hates disorder. For disorder is a disease. Therefore I came to sympathise. How is it that your Highness alone is suffering ? " " I have long desired to see you," answered the Prince. " I wish to love my people, and by cultiva- tion of duty towards one's neighbour to put an end to war. Can this be done ? " " It cannot," replied Hsii Wu Kuei. " Love for the people is the root of all evil to the people. CAP. XXIV.] Hsil IVti Ktiei 315 Cultivation of duty towards one's neighbour in order to put an end to war is the origin of all fight- ing. If your Highness starts from this basis, the result can only be disastrous. Why try to "do" anything ? " Everything that is made good, turns out bad. The artificial is impermanent. And although your Highness should make charity and duty to one's neighbour, I fear they would be spurious articles. For the inward intention would appear in the outward manifestation. The adoption of a fixed standard I.e. of the personal standard of individuals. See PP- 305. 306. would lead to complications. And revolutions within lead to fighting without. Surely your Highness would not make a bower into a battle- field, nor a shrine of prayer into a scene of warfare ! This, of course, refers to the mind. " Have nothing within which is obstructive of virtue. Seek not to vanquish others in cunning, in plotting, in war. If I slay a whole nation and annex the territory in order to find nourishment for my passions and for my soul, — irrespective of military skill, wherein does the victory lie ? ''What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ?" ** If your Highness will only abstain, that will be 3i6 Chnang Tzu enough. Cultivate the sincerity that is within your breast, so as to be responsive to the conditions of your environment, and be not aggressive. The people will thus escape death ; From oppression, and what need then to put an end to war ? " When the Yellow Emperor went to see Tao upon the Chu-tz'u Mountain, Fang Ming was his charioteer, Chang Yii sat on his right, Chang Jo and Hsi Peng were his outriders, and K'un Hun and Hua Chi brought up the rear. Commentators tear this passage to tatters. On reaching the wilds of Hsiang-cheng, The limit of the known. these seven Sages lost their way and there was no one of whom to ask the road. By and by, they fell in with a boy who was grazing horses, and asked him, saying, " Do you know the Chii-tz u Moun- tain ? " " I do," replied the boy. "And can you tell us," continued the Sages, " where Tao abides ? " " I can," replied the boy. " This is a strange lad," cried the Yellow Em- peror. " Not only does he know where the Chii- tz'u Mountain is, but also where Tag abides ! Come tell me, pray, how would you govern the empire ? " CAP. XXIV.] Hsil Wu Kiiei 3 1 7 " I should govern the empire," said the boy, "just the same as I look after my horses. What else should I do ? '' When I was a little boy and used to live within the points of the compass, In Vanity Fair. my eyes got dim of sight. An old man advised me to mount the chariot of the sun I.e. of Intelligence. and visit the wilds of Hsiang-ch'^ng. My sight is now much better, and I continue to dwell without the points of the compass. I should govern the empire in just the same way. What else should I do?" *' Of course," said the Yellow Emperor, '* govern- ment is not your trade. Still I should be glad to hear what you would do." The boy declined to answer, but on being again urged, cried out, "What difference is there between governing the empire and looking after horses ? See that no harm comes to the horses, that is all ! " Thereupon the Emperor prostrated himself before the boy ; and addressing him as Divine Teacher, took his leave. Divine Teacher means " inspired by God." The term used is that employed in modern times for the head or Pope of debased Taoism, often wrongly rendered as the " Master of Heaven." If schemers have nothing to give them anxiety, 3i8 Chuang Tzu they are not happy. If dialecticians have not their premisses and conclusion, they are not happy. If critics have none on whom to vent their spleen, they are not happy. Such men are the slaves of objec- tive existences. Those who attract the sympathies of the world, start new dynasties. Those who win the people's hearts, take high official rank. Those who are strong undertake difficulties. Those who are brave en- counter dangers. Men of arms delight in war. Men of peace think of nothing but reputation. Men of law strive to improve the administration. Pro- fessors of ceremony and music cultivate deportment. Moralists devote themselves to the obligations between man and man. Take away agriculture from the husbandman, and his classification is gone. Take away trade from the merchant, and his classification is gone. Daily work is the stimulus of the labourer. The skill of the artisan is his pride. If money cannot be made, the avaricious man is sad. If his power meets with a check, the boaster will repine. Am- bitious men love change. Thus, men are always doing something ; inaction is to them impossible. They observe in this the same regularity as the seasons, ever without change. They hurry to destruction, dissipating in all direc- tions their vital forces, alas ! never to return. Chuang Tzu said, " If archers who aimed at nothing and hit something were accounted good CAP. XXIV.] Hsil Wu Kuei 319 shots, everybody in the world would be another Yi. See p. 308. Could this be so ? " " It could," replied Hui Tzu. "If there was no general standard of right in the world," continued ChuangTzu, " but each man had his own, then everybody would be a Yao. Could this be so ? " " It could," replied Hui Tzu. " Very well," said Chuang Tzu. " Now there are the Confucianists, the Mihists, the schools of Yang Yang Chu. See ch. viii. and Ping, Kung Sun Lung. See ch. xvii. making with your own five in all. Pray which of these is right ? " Possibly it is a similar case to that of Lu Chu ? Of whom there is no record. — A disciple said to him, ' Master, I have attained to your Tao. I can do without fire in winter: I can make ice in summer.' " * You merely avail yourself of latent heat and latent cold,' replied Lu Chu. ' That is not what I call Tao. I will demonstrate to you what my Tag is.' "Thereupon he tuned two lutes, and placed one in the hall and the other in the adjoining room. 320 Chuang Tzu And when he struck the Knng note on one, the Ktmg note on the other sounded ; when he struck the chio note on one, the chio note on the other sounded. This because they were both tuned to the same pitch. " But if he changed the interval of one string, so that it no longer kept its place in the octave, and then struck it, the result was that all the twenty- five strings jangled together. There was sound as before, but the influence of the key-note was gone. Is this your case ? " " The Confucianists, the Mihists, and the follow- ers of Yang and Ping," replied Hui Tzu, "are just now engaged in discussing this matter with me. They try to overwhelm me with argument or howl me down with noise. Yet they have not proved me wrong. Why then should you ? " " A man of the Ch'i State," replied Chuang Tzu, j " sent away his son into the Sung State, to be a door-keeper, with maimed body, i Doorkeepers in ancient tim^ were, for obvious reasons, deprived of their feet. But a vase, which he valued highly, he kept care- fully wrapped up. Thus Hui Tzu sacrifices the greater to the less. " He who would seek for a stray child, but will not leave his home, is like to lose him. Thus restricted to his four antagonistic schools is Hui Tzu s search for Tao. CAP. XXIV.] Hsil JVit Ktiei 321 " If a man of Ch'u, who was sent away to be a door-keeper, began, in the middle of the night, when no one was about, to fight with the boatman, I should say that before his boat left the shore he would already have got himself into considerable trouble." A maimed man (Hui Tzu) should avoid quarrels. His own share of Tao is insufficient even for himself. Chuang Tzu was once attending a funeral, when he passed by the grave of Hui Tzu. Turning to his attendants, he said, " A man of Ying Capital of the Ch'u state. who had his nose covered with a hard scab, no thicker than a fly's wing, sent for a stone-mason to chip it off. The stone-mason plied his adze with great dexterity while the patient sat still and let him chip. When the scab was all off, the nose was found to be uninjured, the man of Ying never having moved a muscle. " When Yiian, prince of Sung, heard of this, he summoned the stone-mason and said, * Try to do the same for me.' " * I used to be able to do it Sire,' replied the stone-mason, ' but my material has long since perished.' j " And I too, ever since he perished, have been Without my material, having no one with whom I |can speak." A generous compliment to an old adversary. •' There was no one," says Lin Hsi Chung, " in all 322 Chuang Tzu Chuang Tzu's generation who could understand him ; neither is there any one now, at this late date, any more than there was then." Kuan Chung being at the point of death, Duke Huan went to see him. See p. 226. " You are ill, venerable Sir," said the Duke, " really ill. You had better say to whom, in the event of your getting worse, I am to entrust the administration of the State/' " Whom does your Highness wish to choose ? " enquired Kuan Chung. " Will Pao Yu do ?" asked the Duke. Kuan Chung and Pao Yu are the " Damon and Pythias" of China. " He will not," said Kuan Chung. " He is pure, incorruptible, and good. With those who are not like himself, he will not associate. And if he has once heard of a man's wrong-doing, he never forgets it. If you employ him in the administration of the empire, he will get to loggerheads with his prince and to sixes and sevens with the people. It would not be long before he and your Highness fell out." " Whom then can we have ?" asked the Duke. " There is no alternative," replied Kuan Chung ; " it must be Hsi P eng. He is a man who forgets the authority of those above him, and makes those CAP. XXIV.] Hsil IVu Kuei 323 below him forget his. Ashamed that he is not the peer of the Yellow Emperor, In virtue. he grieves over those who are not the peers of himself. " To share one's virtue with others is called true wisdom. To share one's wealth with others is reckoned meritorious. To exhibit superior merit is not the way to win men's hearts. To exhibit inferior merit is the way. There are things in the State he does not hear ; there are things in the family he does not see. Purposely ignoring petty faults. There is no alternative; it must be Hsi P'eng." Of whom commentators give no further notice. The prince of Wu took a boat and went to the Monkey Mountain, which he ascended. When the monkeys saw him, they fled in terror and hid them- selves in the thicket. One of them, however, dis- ported himself carelessly, as though showing off its skill before the prince. The prince took a shot at it ; but the monkey, with great rapidity, seized the flying arrow with its hand. Then the prince bade his guards try, the result being that the monkey was killed. The skill of the poor monkey availed nothing against the cloud of arrows discharged by the guards. On Y 2 324 Chiiang Tzii petit etre plus fin qtiun autre, mais on ne pent pas itre plus fin que tous les autres. Thereupon the prince turned to his friend Yen Pu I, and said, " That monkey flaunted its skill and its dexterity in my face. Therefore it has come to this pass. Beware ! Do not flaunt your su- periority in the faces of others." Yen Pu I went home, and put himself under the tuition of Tung Wu,. A professor of Tao. with a view to get rid of such superiority. He put aside all that gave him pleasure and avoided gain- ing reputation. And in three years his praise was in everybody's mouth. Tzu Chi of Nan-poh See ch. iv. was sitting leaning on a table. He looked up to heaven and sighed, at which juncture Yen Ch eng Tzu entered and said, " How, Sir, can such an important person as yourself be in body like dry w^ood, in mind like dead ashes ?" Instead of exerting yourself for the benefit of mankind. The speaker, says one commentator, was "a disciple." " I used to live in a cave on the hills," replied Tzu Chi. '' At that time, T'ien Ho, The famous founder of the later House of Ch'i. because he once saw me, was thrice congratulated CAP. XXIV.] Hsil Wii Ktiei 325 by the people of Ch'i. Now I must have given some indication by which he recognised me. As a Sage. I must have sold for him to buy. For had I not manifested myself, how would he have recognised me ? Had I not sold, how could he have bought ? "Alas ! I grieve over man's self-destruction. As reputation comes, reality goes. And then I grieve over one who grieves for another. And then I grieve over him who grieves over one who grieves for another ! And so I get daily farther and farther away." And become like dry wood, my soul absorbed into Tao. When Confucius went to Ch'u, the prince enter- tained him at a banquet. Sun Shu Ao stood up with a goblet of wine in his hand, and I Liao of Shih-nan poured a libation, saying, *' On such occasions as this, the men of old were wont to make some utterance." " Mine," replied Confucius, " is the doctrine of wordless utterances. Shall I who make no utter- ances, make utterance now ? " I Liao of Shih-nan played with his ball, and the trouble of two houses was arranged. A man of great strength who refused to aid in settling a State quarrel. He was a great ball player, — whatever that may have been. 326 Chuang Tzil Sun Shu Ao remained quietly in repose, and the men of Ying threw down their arms. No one dared attack them, so powerful was the prestige of their minister. I should want a three-foot tongue indeed ! To achieve more by talk than these two achieved by inaction. " Theirs was the Tao of inaction. His was the argument of silence. Wherefore, for Te The manifestation of Tao. to rest in undivided Tao, By which all things are One. and for speech to stop at the unknowable,- — this is perfection, " With undivided Tao, Te cannot be coincident. \ The latter is multiform. No argument can demonstrate the unknowable, j Subdivision into Confucianists and Mihists only makes confusion worse confounded. " The sea does not reject the streams which flow eastward into it. Therefore it is immeasurably great. The true Sage folds the universe in his bosom. His good influence benefits all throughout the empire, without respect to persons. Born without rank, he dies without titles. He does not take credit for realities. But attributes it all to circumstances. He does not establish a name. For what he has done. This is to be a great man. CAP. XXIV.] Hsii Wu Kuei 327 "A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker. He must also bite. A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker. How much less in the case of greatness } And if doing great things is not enough to secure greatness, how much less shall it secure virtue ? " In point of greatness, there is nothing to be compared with the universe. Yet what does the universe seek in order to be great .-* " He who understands greatness in this sense, seeks nothing, loses nothing, rejects nothing, never suffers injury from without. He takes refuge in his own inexhaustibility. He finds safety in according with his nature. This is the essence of true greatness." Tzu Chi had eight sons. He ranged them before him, and summoning Chiu Fang Yin, said to him, " Examine my sons physiognomically, and tell me which will be the fortunate one." " K'un," replied Chiu Fang Yin, " will be the fortunate one." ** In what sense ? " asked the father, beaming with delight. "K'un," said Chiu Fang Yin, "will eat at the table of a prince, and so end his days." Thereupon Tzu Chi burst into tears and said, " What has my son done that this should be his fate ? " 328 Chiiang Tzii " Eating at the table of a prince," replied Chiu Fang Yin, " will benefit the family for three gene- rations. How much more his father and mother ! But for you, Sir, to go and weep is enough to turn back the luck from you. The son's fortune is good, but the father's bad." " Yin," said Tzu Chi, " I should like to know what you mean by calling K'un fortunate. Wine and meat gratify the palate, but you do not say how these are to come. " Supposing that to me, not being a shepherd, a lamb were born in the south-west corner of my hall ; or that to me, not being a sportsman, quails were hatched in the north-east corner. If you did not call that uncanny, what would you call it ? " My sons and I do but roam through the uni- verse. With them I seek the joys of heaven ; with them I seek the fruits of earth. With them I engage in no business ; with them I concoct no plots ; with them I attempt nothing out-of-the- way. With them I mount upon the truth of the universe, and do not offer opposition to the exi- gencies of our environment. With them I accom- modate myself naturally ; but with them I do not become a slave to circumstances. Yet now the world is rewarding me ! " Every uncanny effect must be preceded by some uncanny cause. Alas ! my sons and I have done nothing. It must be the will of God. There- fore I weep." Shortly afterwards, when K'un was on his way CAP. XXIV.] Hsii IVu Kuei 329 to the Yen State, he was captured by brigands. To sell him as he was, would be no easy matter. To sell him without his feet would be easy enough. So they cut off his feet and sold him into the Ch'i State, where he became door-keeper to Duke Chii and had meat to his dinner for the rest of his life. Commentators make terrible havoc here. Yeh Ch'iieh meeting Hsii Yu, said to him, " Where are you going ? " " Away from Yao ! " replied the latter. " What do you mean ? " asked Yeh Ch'iieh. " Yao," said Hsii Yu, ** thinks of nothing but charity. I fear he will become a laughing-stock to the world, and that in future ages men will eat one another. See p. 296. " There is no difficulty in winning the people. Love them and they will draw near. Profit them and they will come up. Praise them and they will vie with one another. But introduce something they dislike, and they will be gone. " Love and profit are born of charity and duty to one's neighbour. Those who ignore charity and duty to one's neighbour are few ; those who make capital out of them are many. ** For the operation of these virtues is not dis- interested. It is like lending gear to a sportsman. With a view to share the game. Wherefore, for one man to dogmatise for the good 330 Chuang Tzu of the whole empire, is like splitting a thing at a single blow. Without reference to method or the requirements of the case in point. " Yao knows that good men benefit the empire. But he does not know that they injure it Only those on a higher level than good men know this. " There are nincompoops ; there are parasites ; there are enthusiasts. " A man who learns from a single teacher, and then goes off exultant, satisfied with his acquire- ments though ignorant that there was a time when nothing existed, — such a one is a nincompoop. " Parasites are like the lice on a pig's back. They choose bald patches, which are to them palaces and parks. The parts between the toes, the joints, the dugs, and the buttocks, are to them so many com- fortable and convenient resting-places. They know not that one day the butcher will tuck up his sleeves and spread straw and apply fire, and that they will perish in the singeing of the pig. As they sow, so do they reap. This is to be a parasite. " Of enthusiasts. Shun is an example. Mutton does not care for ants ; it is the ants which care for the mutton. Mutton has a frowsy smell ; and there is a frowsiness about Shun which attracts the people. Therefore it was that after three changes of residence, when he came to the Teng district, he had some hundred thousand families with him. \ CAP. XXIV.] Hsil JVu Kuei 331 " Then Yao, hearing of his goodness, appointed him to a barren region, trusting, as he said, that Shun's arrival would enrich it. When Shun took up this appointment, he was already old, and his intellect was failing ; yet he would not cease work and retire from office. He was, in fact, an enthu- siast. " So it is that the spiritual man dislikes a crowd. For where there is a crowd there is diversity, and where there is diversity advantage does not accrue. He is therefore neither very intimate, nor very distant. He clings to virtue and nourishes a spirit of harmony, in order to be in accord with his fellow-men. This is to be a divine man. " Leave wisdom to ants. Strive for what fishes desire. To be left alone in the water. Leave attractiveness to mutton. Use your eyes to contemplate, your ears to listen to, your mind to consider, their own internal workings. For him who can do these things, his level will be that of a line, his modifications in due and proper season. " Therefore, the divine man trusts to the natural development of events. He does not strive to introduce the artificial into the domain of the natural. Accordingly, life is a gain and death a loss, or death is a gain and life a loss. According to circumstances. " For instance, drugs. They are characteristically poisonous. Such are Chieh-Keng, Chi-Yung, and 332 Chuang Tzil SIiiJi-Ling. Circumstances, however, make of each a sovereign remedy. The list is inexhaustible. Chieh-Keng is the Platycodon grandiflorzwi. It is used by Chinese doctors as a tonic, astringent, and vermifuge. "When Kou Chien encamped with three thou- sand armed warriors at Kuei-ch'i, Leading the men of Wu to attack the Yiieh State. only Chung Wen Chung, minister of Yiieh. saw that defeat would be followed by a rally. Yet he could not foresee the evil that was to come upon himself. Wherefore it has been said, * An owl's eyes are adapted to their use. A crane's leg is of the length required. 'Twould be disastrous to shorten it.' This illustration has been used in ch. viii, p. loi. "Thus it has been said, 'The wind blows and the river suffers. The sun shines and the river suffers.' But though wind and sun be both brought into relation with the river, it does not really suffer therefrom. Fed from its source, it still continues to flow on. The Saee too has a source from which the nourish- ment of his soul is supplied. " The relation between water and earth is deter- minate. The relation between a man and his shadow is determinate. The relation between thing and thing is determinate. CAP. XXIV.] Hsil Wu Kuei 333 "The relation between eye and vision is baneful. Because indeterminate. The relation between ear and hearing is baneful. The relation between mind and object is baneful. The relation between all kinds of capacity and man's inner self is baneful. If such banefulness be not corrected, disasters will spring up on all sides. Retrogression is hard to achieve, and success long in coming. Yet alas ! men regard such capacities as valuable possessions. " The destruction of States and the ceaseless slaughter of human beings result from an inability to examine into this. '' The foot treads the ground in walking; never- theless it is the ground not trodden on which makes up the good walk. A man's knowledge is limited ; but it is upon what he does not know that he depends to extend his knowledge to the apprehen- sion of God. " Knowledge of the great One, of the great Negative, of the great Nomenclature, of the great Uniformity, of the great Space, of the great Truth, of the great Law, — this is perfection. "The great One is omnipresent. The great Negative is omnipotent. The great Nomenclature is all-inclusive. The great Uniformity is all- assimilative. The great Space is all-receptive. The great Truth is all-exacting. The great Law is all- binding. "The ultimate end is God. He is manifested in 334 Chtiang Tzil the laws of nature. He is the hidden spring. At the beginning, he was. Had an objective existence. This, however, is inexplicable. It is unknowable. But from the unknowable we reach the known. " Investigation must not be limited, nor must it be unlimited. It must be undertaken from the standpoint of the unconditioned. In this vague undefinedness there is an actuality. Time does not change it. It cannot suffer diminu- tion. May we not then call it our great Guide ? " Why not bring our doubting hearts to investi- gation thereof? And then, using certainty to dispel doubt, revert to a state without doubt, in which doubt is doubly dead ? " Doubt dispelled leaves conviction firmer still. Lin Hsi Chung says that this essay begins with the subtle to end in the abstruse. " The force of lan- guage," adds he, " can no farther go ! " 335 CHAPTER XXV. Tsl: Yang. Argument : — Influence of virtue concealed — The true Sage a negative quantity — The great, the small, the infinite — Crime and Capital — Rulers and their vices — What is Society? Predestination or Chance? Illustrations. WHEN Ts^ Yang visited the Ch u State, I Chieh An official of Ch'u. spoke of him to the prince ; but the latter refused an audience. Upon I Chieh's return, Tse Yang went to see Wang Kuo, A local Sage. and asked him to obtain an interview with the prince. " I am not so fitted for that," replied Wang Kuo, *' as Kung Yiieh Hsiu." A hermit. ''What sort of a man is he?" enquired. Ts^ Yang. "In winter," said Wang Kuo, "he catches turtles on the river. In summer, he reposes in some mountain copse. If any passers-by ask of him, he 336 Chuang Tzii tells them, ''This is my home." Where I Chieh could not succeed, still less should I. I am not equal even to him. " He is a man without virtue, but possessed of | knowledge. Were it not for an air of arrogance, he would be very popular with his superiors. But help without virtue is a hindrance. Shivering people borrowing clothes in the coming spring ! Hot people thinking of last winter's icy blast ! " The prince of Ch'u is dignified and severe. In punishing, he is merciless as a tiger. Only a very practised or a very perfect man could influence him. "The true Sage, when in obscurity, causes those around him to forget their poverty. When in I power, he causes princes to forget ranks and emolu- ' ments, and to become as though of low estate. He rejoices exceedingly in all creation. He exults to ^ see Tao diffused among his fellow-men, while suffering no loss himself. Tao is a constant quantity. It can be shared, but cannot be divided. "Thus, although silent, he can instil peace ; and by his mere presence cause men to be to each other \ as father and son. From his very return to pas- sivity comes this active influence for good. So widely does he differ in heart from ordinary men. Wherefore I said, ' Wait for Kung Yiieh Hsiu.' "The true Sage is free from all embarrassments. All things are to him as One. Yet he knows not that this is so. It is simply nature, In the midst CAP. XXV.] Tse Yang 337 of action he remains the same. He makes God his y^ guide, and men make him theirs. He grieves that wisdom carries one but a short distance, and at times comes altogether to a deadlock. " To a beauty, mankind is the mirror in which she sees herself. If no one tells her she is beautiful, she does not know that she is so. But whether she knows it or whether she does not know it, whether she hears it or whether she does not hear it, her joy will never cease, neither will mankind ever cease to take pleasure therein. It is nature. " The love of a Sage for his fellows likewise finds expression among mankind. Were he not told so, he would not know that he loved his fellows. But / whether he knows it or whether he does not know it, whether he hears it or whether he does not hear it, his love for his fellows is without end, and man- kind cease not to repose therein. "The old country, the old home, gladden a wan- derer's eyes. Nay, though nine-tenths of it be a howling wilderness, still his eye will be glad. How much more to see sight and hear hearing, from a lofty dais suspended in their very midst ! " The joy of the wanderer is as that of the mind returning to a consciousness only of itself Jen HsiangShih reached the centre and attained. The centre at which all Infinities converge. See p. 18. This individual was a legendary ruler of old. He recognised no beginning, no end, no quantity, no time. Daily modified together with his environ- 338 Chiiang Tzu ment, as part of One he knew no modification. Why not rest in this ? To strive to follow God and not to succeed is to display an activity fatal to itself. How can success ever be thus achieved ? The true Sage ignores God. He ignores man. He ignores a beginning. He ignores matter. He moves in harmony with his generation and suffers not. He takes things as they come and is not over- whelmed. How are we to become like him ? T'ang appointed his Equerry, Men Yin Teng H^ng, to be his tutor, listening to his counsels but not being restricted by them. He got Tag for him- self and a reputation for his tutor. But the reputa- tion was a violation of principle, and landed him in the domain of alternatives. Instead of One. No ingenuity of commentator has here succeeded in making sense. As a tutor, Confucius pushed care and anxiety to an extreme limit. Yung Cheng Shih Lao Tzu's tutor. said, ** Take away days, and there would be no years. No inside, no outside." Prince Hui of Wei had made a treaty with prince Wei of Ch'i, which the latter broke. Thereupon prince Hui was wroth, and was about to send a man to assassinate him. But the Captain- General heard of this, and cried out in shame, CAP. xx^.] • Tsi Yang 339 " Sire, you are ruler over a mighty State, yet you would seek the vengeance of a common man. Give me two hundred thousand warriors, and I will do the work for you. I will take his people prisoners, and carry off their oxen and horses. I will make the heat of the prince's mind break out on his back. Then I will seize his country, and he will flee. Then you can wring his neck as you please." When Chi Tzu heard this, he cried out in shame and said, ** If you are building a ten-perch wall, and when the wall is near completion, destroy it, you inflict great hardship on the workmen. Alluding to the corvie system of public works. The speaker was an official of Wei. Now for seven years the troops have not been called out. That is, as it were, your Highness' foundation work. Listen not to the Captain- General. He is a mischievous fellow." When Hua Tzu Also an official of Wei. heard this, he was very indignant and said, " He who argued in favour of punishing the Ch'i State was a mischievous fellow. And he who argued against punishing the Ch'i State was a mischievous fellow. And he who says that either of the above is a mischievous fellow, is a mischievous fellow himself." " Where then shall I find what to do? " enquired the prince. z 2 340 Chuang Tsil " In Tao alone," said Hua Tzu. When Hui Tzu heard this, he introduced Tai Chin Jen to the prince. A Sage of the Liang State. For Hui Tzu, see p. 8. " There is a creature called a snail," said Tai Chin Jen. " Does your Highness know what I mean ? " " I do," replied the prince. " There is a kingdom on its left horn," continued Tai Chin Jen, "ruled over by Aggression, and another on its right horn, ruled over by Violence. These two rulers are constantly fighting for terri- tory. In such cases, corpses lie about by thousands, and one party will pursue the other for fifteen days before returning." "Whew! " cried the prince. " Surely you are joking." "Sire," replied Tai Chin Jen, "I beg you to regard it as fact. Does your Highness recognise any limit to space ? " " None," said the prince, " It is boundless." " When, therefore," continued Tai Chin Jen, " the mind descends from the contemplation of boundless space to the contemplation of a king- dom with fixed boundaries, that kingdom must seem to be of dimensions infinitesimally small ?" " Of course," replied the prince. " Well then," said Tai Chin Jen, " in a kingdom with fixed boundaries Meaning the then empire of the Chous. CAP. XXV.] Tse Yang 341 there is the Wei State. In the Wei State there is the city of Liang. In the city of Liang there is a prince. In what does that prince differ from Violence ? " In his pettiness. " There is no difference," said the prince. Thereupon Tai Chin Jen took his leave, and the prince remained in a state of mental perturbation, as though he had lost something. When Tai Chin Jen had gone, Hui Tzu pre- sented himself, and the prince said, " Our friend is truly a great man. Sages are not his equal." " If you blow through a tube," replied Hui Tzu, " the result will be a note. If you blow through the hole in a sword-hilt, the result will be simply whssh. Yao and Shun have been belauded by mankind ; yet compared with Tai Chin Jen they are but whssh y When Confucius went to Ch'u, he stopped at a restaurant on Mount I. The servant to a man and his wife who lived next door, got up on top of the house. "Whatever is he doing up there?" asked Tzu Lu. " He is a Sage," replied Confucius, " under the garb of a menial. He buries himself among the people. So as to get into closer relation v/ith them. He effaces himself at the wayside. Fame, he has 342 Chttang Tzii none ; but his perseverance is inexhaustible. Though his mouth speaks, his heart speaks not. He has turned his back upon mankind, not caring to abide amongst them. He has drowned himself on dry land. I think 'tis I Liao of Shih-nan." See p. 325. Tzu Lu asked to be allowed to go and call him ; but Confucius stopped him, saying, " No. He knows that I know what he is. He knows that I have come to Ch'u to recommend him to the prince. And he looks on me as a toady. Under the circumstances, as he would scorn to hear the words of a toady, how much more would he scorn to see him in the flesh ! How could you keep him ? " Tzu Lu went to see, but the house was empty. The border-warden of Ch'ang-wu said to Tzu Lao, Ch'in Lao, or Ch'in Chang, a disciple of Confucius. " A prince in his administrative details must not lack thoroughness ; in his executive details he must not be inefficient. Formerly, in my plough- ing I lacked thoroughness, and the results also lacked thoroughness. In my weeding I was ineffi- cient, and the results were also inefficient. By and by, I changed my system. I ploughed deep, and weeded carefully, the result being an excellent harvest, more than I could get through in a year." Chuang Tzii, upon hearing this, observed, "The CAP. XXV.] Tse Yang 343 men of to-day in their self-regulation and their self-organisation are mostly as the Border-warden has described. They put their Godhead out of sight. They abandon their natural dispositions. They get rid of all feeling. They part with their souls, carried away by the fashion of the hour. " Those who lack thoroughness in regard to their natural dispositions suffer an evil tribe to take the place thereof. The physical senses. These grow up rank as reeds and rushes, at first of apparent value to the body, but afterwards to destroy the natural disposition. Then they break out, at random, like sores and ulcers carrying off pent-up humours." Poh Chii was studying under Lao Tzu. " Let us go," said he, " and wander over the world." One commentator says Poh Chii was a " criminal," probably from his sympathetic remarks in the con- text. " No," replied Lao Tzu, " the world is just as you see it here." But as he again urged it, Lao Tzii said, "Where would you go to begin with ? " " I would begin," answered Poh Chii, " by going to the Ch'i State. There I would view the dead bodies of their malefactors. I would push them to make them rise. I would take off my robes and cover them. I would cry to God and bemoan their 344 Cliiiang Tzii lot, as follows : — ' O sirs, O sirs, there was trouble upon earth, and you were the first to fall into it ! ' " I would say, ' Perhaps you were robbers, or perhaps murderers?' .... Honour and disgrace were set up, and evil followed. Wealth was accu- mulated, and contentions began. Now the evil which has been set up and the contentions which have accumulated, endlessly weary man's body and give him no rest. What escape is there from this ? This might almost have come from The Curse of Capital (Aveling) or from one of Mr. Hyndman's discourses. " The rulers of old set off all success to the credit of their people, attributing all failure to themselves. All that was right went to the credit of their people, all that was wrong they attributed to themselves. Therefore, if any matter fell short of achievement, they turned and blamed them- selves. " Not so the rulers of to-day. They conceal a thing and blame those who cannot see it. They impose dangerous tasks and punish those who dare not undertake them. They inflict heavy bur- dens and chastise those who cannot bear them. They ordain long marches and slay those who cannot make them. " And the people, feeling that their powers are inadequate, have recourse to fraud. For when there is so much fraud about, In the rulers. CAP. XXV.] Tse Yang 345 how can the people be otherwise than fraudulent ? If their strength is insufficient, they will have re- course to fraud. If their knowledge is insufficient, they will have recourse to deceit. If their means are insufficient, they will steal. And for such robbery and theft, who is really responsible ? " When Chu Poh Yii See p. 49. reached his sixtieth year, he changed his opinions. What he had previously regarded as right, he now came to regard as wrong. But who shall say whether the right of to-day may not be as wrong as the wrong of the previous fifty-nine years ? See p. 365. Things are produced around us, but no one knows the whence. They issue forth, but no one sees the portal. Men one and all value that part of knowledge which is known. They do not know how to avail themselves of the unknown in order to reach knowledge. Is not this misguided ? Men value the phenomena of which the senses make them conscious, but not the phenomena of the senses themselves. Alas ! alas ! the impossibility of escaping from this state results in what is known as elective affinity. Adaptation to the suitable ; being as one is because more adapted to that than to something to which 34^ Chuang T::i( one is not adapted. See ch. ii, where this idea is first broached. Confucius asked the historiographers Ta T'ao, Poh Chang Ch'ien, and Hsi Wei, saying, " Duke Ling was fond of wine and given up to pleasure, and neglected the administration of his State. He spent his time in hunting, and did not cultivate the goodwill of the other feudal princes. How was it he came to be called LtJig ? " The name Lmg means "knowing," which may be taken in two senses. " For those very reasons," replied Ta T'ao. " The Duke," said Poh Chang Ch'ien, " had three wives. He was having a bath together with them when Shih Ch'iu, summoned by his High- ness, entered the apartment. Thereupon the Duke covered himself and the ladies. So outrageously did he behave on the one hand, and yet so respect- ful was he towards a virtuous man. Hence he was called Liiigy "When the Duke died," said Hsi Wei, " divina- tion showed that it would be inauspicious to bury him in the old family burying-ground, but auspi- cious to bury him at Sha-ch'iu. And upon digging a grave there, several fathoms deep, a stone coffin was found, which, being cleaned, yielded the fol- lowing inscription : — Posterity cannot be trusted. Ditkc Ling wit I seise this for /lis tomb. " As a matter of fact, Duke Ling had been CAP. XXV.] Tsi Yang 347 named Ling long before. What should these two persons know about it ? " As evidenced by the inscription, the Duke had been so named long before, in the Book of Fate. Shao Chih asked T'ai Kung Tiao, saying, " What is meant by society ? " The first name signifies Small Knowledge, Of the second personage there is no record. " Society," replied T'ai Kung Tiao, '' is an agree- ment of a certain number of families and indivi- duals to abide by certain customs. Discordant elements unite to form a harmonious whole. Take away this unity and each has a separate indivi- duality. '' Point at any one of the many parts of a horse, and that is not a horse, although there is the horse before you. It is the combination of all which makes the horse. '' Similarly, a mountain is high because of its individual particles. A river is large because of its individual drops. And he is a just man who regards all parts from the point of view of the whole. "Thus, in regard to the views of others, he holds his own opinion, but not obstinately. In regard to his own views, while conscious of their truth, he does not despise the opinions of others. " The four seasons have different characteristics. 348 CJniang Tzil but God shows no preference for either, and there- fore we have the year complete. With results which could not be otherwise achieved. The functions of the various classes of officials differ ; but the sovereign shows no partiality, and therefore the empire is governed. There arc the civil and the military ; but the truly great man shows no preference for either, and therefore their efficacy is complete. All things are under the operation of varying laws ; but Tao shows no partiality and therefore it cannot be identified. As the given part of anything. Not being able to be identified, it consequently does nothing. And by doing nothing all things can be done. " Seasons have their beginnings and their ends. Generations change and change. Good and evil fortune alternate, bringing sorrow here, happiness there. Nunc mihi, nunc alio, benigna. He who obstinately views things from his own standpoint only, may be right in one case and wrong in another. Just as in a great jungle all kinds of shrubs are found together ; or as on a mountain you see trees and stones indiscriminately mixed, — so is what we call society." " Would it not do then," asked Shao Chih, " if we were to call this Tao ? " " It would not," replied T'ai Kung Tiao. " All CAP. XXV.] Tsi Yang 349 creation is made up of more than ten thousand things. We speak of creation as the Ten Thousand Things merely because it is a convenient term by which to express a large number. In point of out- ward shape the universe is vast. In point of influ- ence the Positive and Negative principles are mighty. Yet Tao folds them all in its embrace. For convenience' sake the bond of society is called great. But how can that which is thus conditioned By having a name. be compared with Tao ? There is as wide a difference between them as there is between a horse and a dog." " Whence then," enquired Shao Chih, '' comes the vitality of all things between the four points of the compass, between heaven above and earth beneath ? " "The Positive and Negative principles," answered T'ai Kung Tiao, " influence, act upon, and regulate each other. The four seasons alternate with, give birth to, and destroy one another. Hence, loves and hates, and courses rejected and courses adopted. Hence too, the intercourse of the sexes. " States of peril and safety alternate. Good and evil fortune give birth to one another. Slowness and speed are mutually exclusive. Collection and dispersion are correlates. The actuality of these may be noted. There is the name and the embodiment. The essence of each can be verified. There is 350 Chiiang Tzu regular movement forward, modified by deflection into a curve. Exhaustion leads to renewal. The end introduces a new beginning. This is the law of material existences. The force of language, the reach of knowledge, cannot pass beyond the bounds of such material existences. The disciple of Tao refrains from prying into the states after or before. Human speculation stops short of this," "Chi Ch^n," said Shao Chih, " taught Chance ; Chieh Tzu taught Predestination. " Two Sages." Cotmn. In the speculations of these two schools, on which side did right lie ? " " The cock crows," replied T'ai Kung Tiao, " and the dog barks. So much we know. But the wisest of us could not say why one crows and the other barks, nor guess why they crow or bark at all. " Let me explain. The infinitely small is inap- preciable ; the infinitely great is immeasurable. Chance and Predestination must refer to the con- ditioned. Consequently, both are wrong. " Predestination involves a real existence. Of a God. Chance implies an absolute absence of any principle. To have a name and the embodiment thereof, — this is to have a material existence. To have no name and no embodiment, — of this one can speak and think ; but the more one speaks the farther off one gets. CAP. XXV.] Tse Yang 35 1 " The unborn creature cannot be kept from life. So powerful is its " will to live." The dead cannot be tracked. From birth to death is but a span ; yet the secret cannot be known. Chance and Predestination are but a priori solutions. " When I seek for a beginning, I find only time infinite. When I look forward to an end, I see only time infinite. Infinity of time past and to come implies no beginning and is in accordance with the laws of material existences. Predestination and Chance give us a beginning, but one which is compatible only with the existence of matter. And not with the time before matter was. "Tao cannot be existent. If it were existent, it could not be non-existent. The very name of Tao is only adopted for convenience' sake. Pre- destination and Chance are limited to material existences. How can they bear upon the infinite ? " Were language adequate, it would take but a day to fully set forth Tao. Not being adequate, it takes that time to explain material existences. Tao is something beyond material existences. It cannot be conveyed either by words or by silence. In that state which is neither speech nor silence, its transcendental nature maybe apprehended." "With this essay in China," says Lin Hsi Chung, " what need to fetch Buddhist books from the West?" y 352 CHAPTER XXVI. Contingencies. Argument : — The external uncertain — The internal alone without harm — Life and death are external — The soul only is under man's control — Folly of worldliness — Illustrations. CONTINGENCIES are uncertain. Hence the decapitation of Lung Feng, the disembowel- ment of Pi Kan, the enthusiasm of Chi Tzu, the death of Wu Lai, the flights of Chieh and Chou. See pp. 40, 72. Wu Lai was an intriguing official who held office under the tyrant Chou Hsin. No sovereign but would have loyal ministers ; yet loyalty does not necessarily inspire confidence. Hence Wu Yiian found a grave in the river ; See p. 221. and Chang Hung perished in Shu, his blood, after being preserved three years, turning into green jade. No parent but would have filial sons ; yet filial piety does not necessarily inspire love. Hence Hsiao Chi sorrrowed, and Tseng Shen grieved. The first, prince of the House of Yin, was turned out of doors by his stepmother. The second, one of the disciples of Confucius and a rare pattern of filial CAP. XXVI.] Contingencies 353 piety, grieved because his mother was too old to hit him hard enough. See p. 100. Wood rubbed with wood produces fire. Metal exposed to fire will liquefy. If the Positive and Negative principles operate inharmoniously, heaven and earth are greatly disturbed. Thunder crashes, and with rain comes lightning, scorching up the tall locust-trees. One fears lest sky and land should collapse and leave no escape. Unable to \\^ perdtt, the heart feels as though suspended between heaven and earth. So in the struggle between peace and unrest, the friction between good and evil, much fire is evolved which consumes the inner harmony of man. But the mind is unable to resist fire. It is destroyed, and with it Tao comes to an end. Chuang Tzu's family being poor, he went to borrow some corn from the prince of Chien-ho. "Yes," said the prince. "I am just about collecting the revenue of my fief, and will then lend you three hundred ounces of silver. Will that do?" At this Chuang Tzu flushed with anger and said, " Yesterday, as I was coming along, I heard a voice calling me. I looked round, and in the cart- rut I saw a stickleback. " 'And what do you want, stickleback?' said I. " * I am a denizen of the eastern ocean,' replied the stickleback. ' Pray, Sir, a pint of water to save my life.' 2 A 354 Chtiang Tzu " ' Yes,' said I. * I am just going south to visit the princes of Wu and Yiieh. I will bring you some from the west river. Will that do ? ' " At this the stickleback flushed with anger and said, * I am out of my element. I have nowhere to go. A pint of water would save me. But to talk to me like this, — you might as well put me in a dried-fish shop at once.' " The above episode is condemned by Lin Hsi Chung on the score of style. J^n Kung Tzu A young noble of the Jen State. Coinm, got a huge hook on a big line, which he baited with fifty oxen. He squatted down at Kuei-chi, and cast into the eastern ocean. Every day he fished, but for a whole year he caught nothing. Then came a great fish which swallowed the bait, and dragging the huge hook dived down below. This way and that way it plunged about, erecting the dorsal fin. The white waves rolled mountain high. The great deep was shaken up. The noise was like that of so many devils, terrifying people for many miles around. But when Jen Kung Tzu had secured his fish, he cut it up and salted it. And from Chih-ho east- wards, and from Ts'ang-wu northwards, there was none but ate his fill of that fish. Even among succeeding generations, gobemoiiches of the day recounted the marvellous tale. CAP. XXVI.] Contingencies 355 To take a rod and line, and go to a pool, and catch small fry is a very different thing from catch- ing big fish. And by means of a little show of ability to secure some small billet is a very different thing from really pushing one's way to the front. So that those who do not imitate the example of J^n Kung Tzu will be very far from becoming leaders in their generation. Also spurious. When some Confucianists were opening a grave in accordance with their Canons of Poetry and Rites, the master shouted out, " Day is breaking. How are you getting on with the work ? " '* Not got off the burial-clothes yet," answered an apprentice. " There is a pearl in the mouth." Now the Canon of Poetry says — The greenest corn Grows over graves. In life, no charity ; In death, no pearl. So seizing the corpse's brow with one hand, and forcing down its chin with the other, these Confu- cianists proceed to tap its cheeks with a metal hammer, in order to make the jaws open gently and not injure the pearl ! The above, pronounced by Lin Hsi Chung to be spurious, is aimed at the Confucianists, who are ready to commit any outrage on natural feeling so long as there is no violation of the details of their own artificial system. 2 A 2 35^ Chuang Tzii A disciple of Lao Lai Tzu A sage of the Ch'u State, while out gathering fuel, chanced to meet Confucius. On his return, he said, "There is a man over there with a long body and short legs, round shoulders and drooping ears. He looks as though he were sorrowing over mankind. I know not who he can be." " It is Confucius ! " cried Lao Lai Tzu. " Bid him come hither." When Confucius arrived, Lao Lai Tzu addressed him as follows : — " Ch'iu ! Get rid of your dogmatism and your specious knowledge, and you will be really a supe- rior man." Confucius bowed and was about to retire, when suddenly his countenance changed and he enquired, " Shall I then be able to enter upon Tao ? " " The wounds of one generation being too much," answered Lao Lai Tzu, "you would take to your- self the sorrows of all time. Are you not weary ? Is your strength equal to the task? " To employ goodness as a passport to influence through the gratification of others, is an everlasting shame. Yet this is the common way of all, to lure people by fame, to bind them by ties of grati- fication. " Better than extolling Yao and cursing Chieh is oblivion of both, keeping one's praises to oneself. These things react injuriously on self ; the agitation of movement results in deflection. CAP. xxvi.j Contingencies 2>S1 " The true Sage is a passive agent. If he suc- ceeds, he simply feels that he was provided by no effort of his own with the energy necessary to success." Prince Ylian of Sung dreamed one night that a man with dishevelled hair peeped through a side door and said, " I have come from the waters of Tsai-lu. I am a marine messenger attached to the staff of the River God. A fisherman, named Yii Ch'ieh, has caught me." When the prince awaked, he referred his dream to the soothsayers, who said, "This is a divine tortoise." " Is there any fisherman," asked the prince, '* whose name is Yu Ch'ieh ? " Being told there was, the prince gave orders for his appearance at court ; and the next day Yii Ch'ieh had an audience. "Fisherman," said the prince, "what have you caught ? " " I have netted a white tortoise," replied the fisherman, " five feet in semi-circumference." " Bring your tortoise," said the prince. But when it came, the prince could not make up his mind whether to kill it or keep it alive. Thus in doubt, he had recourse to divination, and received the following response : — Slay the tortoise for purposes of divination and good fortune will result. So the tortoise was despatched. After w^hich, 358 Chuang Tzu out of seventy-two omens taken, not a single one proved false. " A divine tortoise," said Confucius, " can appear to prince Yuan in a dream, yet it cannot escape the net of Yii Ch'ieh. Its wisdom can yield seventy-two faultless omens, yet it cannot escape the misery of being cut to pieces. Truly wisdom has its limits ; spirituality, that which it cannot reach. "In spite of the highest wisdom, there are count- less snares to be avoided. If a fish has not to fear nets, there are always pelicans. Get rid of small wisdom, and great wisdom will shine upon you. Put away goodness and you will be naturally good. A child does not learn to speak because taught by professors of the art, but because it lives among people who can themselves speak." Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu, " Your theme, Sir, is the useless." " You must understand the useless," replied Chuang Tzu, " before you can discuss the useful. " For instance, the earth is of huge proportions, yet man uses of it only as much as is covered by the sole of his foot. By and by, he turns up his toes and goes beneath it to the Yellow Spring. Has he any further use for it ? " " He has none," replied Hui Tzu. " And in like manner," replied Chuang Tzu, " may be demonstrated the use of the useless. " Could a man transcend the limits of the CAP. XXVI.] Contingencies 359 human," said Chuang Tzu, '' would he not do so ? Unable to do so, how should he succeed ? " The determination to retire, to renounce the world, — such alas ! is not the fruit of perfect wis- dom or immaculate virtue. From cataclysms ahead, these do not turn back ; nor do they heed the approach of devouring flame. Although there are class distinctions of high and low, these are but for a time, and under the changed conditions of a new sphere are unknown. In the transcendental state. " Wherefore it has been said, ' The perfect man leaves no trace behind.' " For instance, to glorify the past and to con- demn the present has always been the way of the scholar. Laudator temporis acti. Yet if Hsi Wei Shih and individuals of that class Sc. patriarchs. were caused to re-appear in the present day, which of them but would accommodate himself to the age? " Only the perfect man can transcend the limits of the human and yet not withdraw from the world, live in accord with mankind and yet suffer no injury himself. Of the world's teachings he learns nothing. He has that within which makes him independent of others. " If the eye is unobstructed, the result is sight. If the ear is unobstructed the result is hearing. If 360 Chuang Tzu the nose is unobstructed, the result is sense of smell. If the mouth is unobstructed, the result is sense of taste. If the mind is unobstructed, the result is wisdom. If wisdom is unobstructed, the result is Te. " Tao may not be obstructed. To obstruct is to strangle. This affects the base, and all evils spring into life. "All sentient beings depend upon breath. If this does not reach them in sufficient quantity, it is not the fault of God. God supplies it day and night without cease, but man stops the passage. " Man has for himself a spacious domain. His mind may roam to heaven. If there is no room in the house, the wife and her mother-in-law run against one another. If the mind cannot roam to heaven, the faculties will be in a state of anta- gonism. Those who would benefit mankind from deep forests or lofty mountains are simply unequal to the strain upon their higher natures. It is for that reason they become hermits. " Ill-regulated virtue ends in reputation. Ill- regulated reputation ends in notoriety. Scheming leads to confusion. Knowledge begets contentions. Obstinacy produces stupidity. Organised govern- ment is for the general good of all. " Spring rains come in due season, and plants and shrubs burst up from the earth. Weeding and tending do not begin until such plants and shrubs have reached more than half their growth, and without being conscious of the fact. CAP. XXVI.] Contingencies 361 " Repose gives health to the sick. Rubbing the eyelids removes the wrinkles of old age. Quiet will dispel anxieties. These remedies however are the resource only of those who need them. Others who are free from such ills pay no attention thereto. " That which the true Sage marvels at in the empire, claims not the attention of the Divine man. That which the truly virtuous man marvels at in his own sphere, claims not the attention of the true Sage. That which the superior man marvels at in his State, claims not the attention of the truly virtuous man. How the mean man adapts himself to his age, claims not the attention of the superior man. " The keeper of the Yen gate. Of the capital of the Sung State. having maltreated himself severely in consequence of the death of his parents, received a high official post. In reward for his filial piety. His relatives thereupon maltreated themselves, and some half of them died. In the vain endeavour to secure like rewards. " Yao offered the empire to Hsii Yu, but Hsii Yu fled. T'ang offered it to Wu Kuang, but Wu Kuang declined with anger. See pp. 6, 72. " When Chi T'o heard of Hsii Yu's flight, he 362 Chuang Tzu took all his disciples with him and jumped into the river K'uan ; As a tribute to his eminent virtue. upon which the various feudal princes mourned for three years, They did not resign their fiefs at his example. and Shen T'u Ti had the river filled up. Fearing similar ill-advised acts. For names, see pp. 6, 72. " The raison dStre of a fish-trap is the fish. When the fish is caught, the trap may be ignored. The raiso7t detre of a rabbit-snare is the rabbit. When the rabbit is caught the snare may be ignored. The raison detre of language is an idea to be expressed. When the idea is expressed, the language may be ignored. But where shall I find a man to ignore language, with whom I may be able to converse ? " 363 CHAPTER XXVII. Language. Argument : — Speech, natural and artificial — Natural speech in harmony with the divine — Destiny — The ultimate cause — Purification of the soul — Illustrations, OF language put into other people's mouths, nine tenths will succeed. Of language based upon weighty authority, seven tenths. But language which flows constantly over, as from a full goblet, is in accord with God. The natural overflowings of the heart. When language is put into other people's mouths, outside support is sought. Just as a father does not negotiate his son's marriage ; for any praise he could bestow would not have the same value as praise by an outsider. Thus, the fault is not mine, but that of others. Who will not believe the original speaker. To that which agrees with our own opinions we assent ; from that which does not we dissent. We regard that which agrees with our own opinion as right. We regard that which differs from our opinion as wrong. Language based on weighty authority is used to bar further argument. The 364 Chtiang Tzu authorities are our superiors, our elders in years. But if they lack the requisite knowledge and ex- perience, being our superiors only in the sense of age, then they are not our superiors. And if men are not the superiors of their fellows, no one troubles about them. And those about whom no one troubles are merely stale. Language which flows constantly over, as from a full goblet, is in accord with God. Embracing both positive and negative in One. Because it spreads out on all sides, it endures for all time. Without language, contraries are iden- tical. The identity is not identical with its ex- pression : the expression is not identical with its identity. Therefore it has been said. Language not expressed in language is not language. Con- stantly spoken, it is as though not spoken. Con- stantly unspoken, it is not as though not spoken. From the subjective point of view, there are possibilities and impossibilities, there are suit- abilities and unsuitabilities. This results from the natural affinity of things for what they are and their natural antagonism to what they are not. For all things have their own particular constitu- tions and potentialities. Nothing can exist without these. See p. 19. But for language that constantly flows over, as from a full goblet, and is in accord with God, how should the permanent be attained ? CAP. XXVII.] Language 365 All things spring from germs. Under many diverse forms these things are ever being repro- duced. Round and round, like a wheel, no part of which is more the starting-point than any other. This is called the equilibrium of God. And he who holds the scales is God. Alluding to the Identity-philosophy, which means, in the words of Emerson, "that nature iterates her means perpetually on successive planes .... The whole art of the plant is still to repeat leaf on leaf without end." Chuang Tzu said to Hui Tzu, "When Confucius reached his sixtieth year he changed his opinions. What he had previously regarded as right, he ulti- mately came to regard as wrong. But who shall say whether the right of to-day may not be as wrong as the wrong of the previous fifty-nine years ? " See p. 345. " He was a persevering worker," replied Hui Tzu, "and his wisdom increased day by day." His conversion was no spasmodic act. " Confucius," replied Chuang Tzu, " discarded both perseverance and wisdom, but did not attempt to formulate the doctrine in words. He said, * Man has received his talents from God, together with a soul to give them life. He should speak in accord- ance with established laws. His words should be in harmony with fixed order. Personal advantage 366 CJiuang Tzit and duty to one's neighbour lie open before us. Likes and dislikes, rights and wrongs, are but as men choose to call them. But to bring submission into men's hearts, so that they shall not be stiff- necked, and thus fix firmly the foundations of the empire, — to that, alas ! I have not attained.' " " From the above," says Lin Hsi Chung, " we may see that Hui Tzii, though skilled in winning debates was unskilled in winning hearts." Tseng Tzu held office twice. His emotions varied in each case. See pp. 100, 352. "As long as my parents were alive," said he, " I was happy on a small salary. When I had a large salary, but my parents were no more, I was sad." A disciple said to Confucius, " Can we call Ts^ng Tzu a man without cares to trouble him ?" Money being no object to him. " He had cares to trouble him," replied Confucius. " Can a man who has no cares to trouble him feel grief? His small salary and his large salary were to him like a heron or a mosquito flying past." Yen Ch'eng Tzu Yu said to Tung Kuo Tzu Chi, See p. 324. " One year after receiving your instructions I be- came naturally simple. After two years, I could adapt myself as required. After three years, I un- CAP. XXVII.] Language 367 derstood. After four years, my intelligence deve- loped. After five years, it was complete. After six years, the spirit entered into me. After seven, I knew God. After eight, life and death existed for me no more. After nine, perfection. " Life has its distinctions ; but in death we are all made equal. That death should have an origin, but that life should have no origin, — can this be so ? What determines its presence in one place, its absence in another ? " Heaven has its fixed order. Visible to all. Earth has yielded up its secrets to man. But where to seek whence am I ? " Not knowing the hereafter, how can we deny the operation of Destiny ? Not knowing what pre- ceded birth, how can we assert the operation of Destiny ? When things turn out as they ought, who shall say that the agency is not supernatural ? When things turn out otherwise, who shall say that it is?" The various Penumbrae said to the Umbra, " Before you were looking down, now you are look- ing up. Before you had your hair tied up, now it is all loosed. Before you were sitting, now you have got up. Before you were moving, now you are stopping still. How is this ? " " Gentlemen," replied the Umbra, " the question is hardly worth asking. Ultimate causes being unknowable. 368 C/ntang Tzii I do these things, but I do not know why. I am like the scaly back of the cicada, the shell of the locust, — apparently independent, but not really so. By firelight or in daylight I am seen : in darkness or by night I am gone. And if I am dependent on these, how much more are they dependent on some- thing else ? When they come, I come with them. When they go, I go with them. When they live, I live with them. But who it is that gives the life, how shall we seek to know?" Repeated, with variations, from ch. ii. Yang Tzu Chii See p. 100. went southwards to P'ei, and when Lao Tzu was travelling westwards to Ch'in, hastened to receive him outside the city. Arriving at the bridge, he met Lao Tzu ; and the latter standing in the middle of the road, looked up to heaven and said with a sigh, " At first, I thought you could be taught. I think so no more." Yang Tzu Chii made no reply, but when they reached the inn, handed Lao Tzu water for washing and rinsing, and a towel and comb. He then re- moved his own boots outside the door, and crawling on his knees into the Master's presence, said, " I have been wishing to ask for instruction, Sir, but as you were travelling and not at leisure, I did not venture. You are now, Sir, at leisure. May I enquire the reason of what you said ? " CAP. XXVII.] Lmigiiage 369 *' You have an overbearing look," said Lao Tzu. "Who would live with such a man? He who is truly pure behaves as though he were sullied. He who has virtue in abundance behaves as thouQ^h it were not enough." These last two sentences occur in the Tao-Te-Cki'ng, ch. xH, and also in the works of Lieh Tzii as part of that author's own text. See The Reniains of Lao Tzii, p. 29. Yang Tzii Chii changed countenance at this, and replied, " I hear and obey." Now when Yang Tzii Chii first went to the inn, the visitors there had come out to receive him. Mine host had arranged his mat, while the land- lady held towel and comb. The visitors had given him up the best seats, and those who were cooking had left the stove free for him. But when he went back, After his Interview with Lao Tzu. the other visitors struggled to get the best seats for themselves. So changed was he in spirit. Lin Hsi Chung considers that this chapter should immediately precede what is now ch. xxxii, from which it has been separated by the interpolation of the four following chapters, all admittedly spurious. 2 B 370 CHAPTER XXVIII. On Declining Power. [Spurious.] YAO offered to resign the empire to Hsii Yu, but the latter declined. He then offered it to Tzii Chou Chih Fu, who said, " There is no objection to making me em- peror. But just now I am suffering from a trouble- some disease, and am engaged in trying to cure it. I have no leisure to look after the empire." Now the empire is of paramount importance. Yet here was a man who w^ould not allow it to injure his chance of life. How much less then would he let other things do so ? Yet it is only he who would do nothing in the way of government who is fit to be trusted with the empire. Those personages who have not been previously mentioned may be taken to be allegorical. g Shun offered to resign the empire to Tzu Chou Chih Poh. The latter said, " Just now I am suffering from a troublesome disease, and am engaged in trying to cure it. I have no leisure to look after the empire." CAP. XXVIII.] On DecliniJig Poiuev 371 Now the empire is a great trust ; but not to sacrifice one's life for it is precisely where the man of Tao differs from the man of the world. Shun offered to resign the empire to Shan Chiian. Shan Chiian said, " I am a unit in the sum of the universe. In winter I wear fur clothes. In summer I wear grass-cloth. In spring I plough and sow, toiling with my body. In autumn I gather in the harvest, and devote myself to rest and enjoy- ment. At dawn I go to work ; at sunset I leave off. Contented with my lot I pass through life with a light heart. Why then should I trouble myself with the empire? Ah, Sir, you do not know me." So he declined, and subsequently hid himself among the mountains, nobody knew where. Shun offered the empire to a friend, a labourer of Shih Hu. ** Sire," said the latter, " you exert yourself too much. The chief thing is to husband one's strength ; " — meaning that in point of real virtue Shun had not attained. Then, husband and wife, bearing away their household gods and taking their children with them, went off to the sea and never came back. When T'ai Wang Shan Fu was occupying Pin, he was attacked by savages. He offered them skins and silk, but they declined these. He offered them dogs and horses, but they declined these also. 2 B 2 372 Chuaug Tzu He then offered them pearls and jade, but these too they declined. What they wanted was the territory. " To live with a man's elder brother," said T ai Wang Shan Fu, Addressing his own people. "and slay his younger brother; to live with a man's father and slay his son, — this I could not bear to do. Make shift to remain here. To be my sub- jects or the subjects of these savages, where is the difference ? Besides I have heard say that we ought not to let that which is intended to nourish life become injurious to life." Alluding to the "territory." Thereupon he took his staff and went off. His people all followed him, and they founded a new State at the foot of Mount Ch'i. Now T'ai Wang Shan Fu undoubtedly had a proper respect for life. And those who have a proper respect for life, if rich and powerful, do not let that which should nourish injure the body. If poor and lowly, they do not allow gain to involve them in physical wear and tear. But the men of the present generation who occupy positions of power and influence, are all afraid of losing what they have got. Directly they see a chance of gain, away goes all care for their bodies. Is not that a cause for confusion ? In three successive cases the people of Yiieh had CAP. XXVIII.] On Declining Power 373 put their prince to death. Accordingly, Shou, the son of the last prince, was much alarmed, and fled to Tan Hsiieh, leaving the State of Yiieh without a ruler. Shou was at first nowhere to be found, but at length he was traced to Tan Hsiieh. He was, how- ever, unwilling to come forth, so they smoked him out with moxa. They had a royal carriage ready for him ; and as Shou seized the cord to mount the chariot, he looked up to heaven and cried, '' Oh ! ruling, ruling, could I not have been spared this?" It was not that Shou objected to be a prince. He objected to the dangers associated with such positions. Such a one was incapable of sacri- ficing life to the State, and for that very reason the people of Yiieh wanted to get him. The States of Han and Wei were struggling to annex each other's territory when Tzii Hua Tzu went to see prince Chao Hsi. Finding the latter very downcast, Tzii Hua Tzii said, *' Now suppose the representatives of the various States were to sign an agreement before your Highness, to the effect that although cutting off the left hand would involve loss of the right, while cutting off the right would involve loss of the left, nevertheless that who- soever would cut off either should be emperor over all, — w^ould your Highness cut? " " I would not," replied the prince. " Very good," said Tzii Hua Tzii. '' It is clear therefore that one's two arms are worth more than 374 Chtiang Tzft the empire. And one's body is worth more than one's arms, while the State of Han is infinitely less important than the empire. Further, what you are struggling over is of infinitely less importance than the State of Han. Yet your Highness is wearing out body and soul alike in fear and anxiety lest you should not get it." '' Good indeed ! " cried the prince. '' Many have counselled me, but I have never heard the like of this." From which we may infer that Tzii Hua Tzii knew the difference between what was of importance and what was not. The prince of Lu, hearing that Yen Ho had attained to Tag, despatched messengers with presents to open communications. Yen Ho lived in a hovel. He wore clothes of coarse grass, and occupied himself in tending oxen. When the messengers arrived. Yen Ho went out to meet them ; whereupon they enquired, ''Is this where Yen Ho lives ? " " This is Yen Ho's house," replied the latter. The messengers then produced the presents ; but Yen Ho said, " I fear you have made a mis- take. And as you might get into trouble, it would be as well to go back and make sure." This the messengers accordingly did. When however they returned, there was no trace to be found of Yen Ho. Thus it is that men like Yen Ho hate wealth and power, CAP. XXVIII.] On Declining Power 375 Wherefore it has been said that the best part of Tao is for self-culture, the surplus for governing a State, and the dregs for governing the empire. From which we may infer that the great deeds of kings and princes are but the leavings of the Sage. For preserving the body and nourishing vitality, they are of no avail. Yet the superior men of to- day endanger their bodies and throw away their lives in their greed for the things of this world. Is not this pitiable ? The true Sage in all his actions considers the why and the wherefore. But there are those now-a- days who use the pearl of the prince of Sui to shoot a bird a thousand yards off. A wonderfully brilliant gem, of a " ten chariot " illuminating power. And the world of course laughs at them. Why ? Because they sacrifice the greater to get the less. But surely life is of more importance even than the prince's pearl ! Lieh Tzii was poor. His face wore a hungry look. A visitor one day mentioned this to Tzu Yang Prime Minister. of Cheng, saying, " Lieh Tzu is a scholar who has attained to Tao. He lives in your Excellency's State, and yet he is poor. Can it be said that your Excellency does not love scholars ? " Thereupon Tzu Yang gave orders that Lieh 37^ Chuaiig Tzii Tzu should be supplied with food. But when Lieh Tzu saw the messengers, he bowed twice and declined. When the messengers had gone, and Lieh Tzu went within, his wife gazed at him, and beating her breast said, " I have heard that the wife and chil- dren of a man of Tao are happy and joyful. But see how hungry I am. His Excellency sent you food, and you would not take it. Is not this flying in the face of Providence ? " " His Excellency did not know me personally," answered Lieh Tzu with a smile. " It was because of what others said about me that he sent me the food. If then men were to speak ill of me, he would also act upon it. For that reason I refused the food." Subsequently, there was trouble among the people of Cheng, and Tzu Yang was slain. When Prince Chao of the Ch'u State lost his kingdom, he was followed into exile by his butcher, named Yiieh. On his restoration, as he was distributing rewards to those who had remained faithful to him, he came to the name of Yiieh. Yueh, however, said, " When the prince lost his kingdom, I lost my butchery. Now that the prince has got back his kingdom, I have got back my butchery. I have recovered my office and salary. What need for further reward ? " On hearing this, the prince gave orders that he should be made to take his reward. CAP. XXVIII.] On Declining Power 377 " It was not through my fault," argued Yiieh, " that the prince lost his kingdom, and I should not have taken the punishment. Neither was it through me that he got it back, and I cannot there- fore accept the reward." When the prince heard this answer, he com- manded Yiieh to be brought before him. But Yiieh said, " The laws of the Ch'u State require that a subject shall have deserved exceptionally well of his prince before being admitted to an audience. Now my wisdom was insuflicient to preserve this king- dom, and my courage insufficient to destroy the invaders. When the Wu soldiers entered Ying, I feared for my life and fled. That was why I followed the prince. And if now the prince wishes to set law and custom aside and summon me to an audience, this is not my idea of proper behaviour on the part of the prince." '' Yiieh," said the prince to Tzii Chi, his master of the horse, " occupies a lowly position ; yet his principles are of the most lofty. Go, make him a San Ching." '' I am aware," replied Yiieh to the master of the horse, " that the post of San Ching is more honour- able than that of butcher. And I am aware that the emolument is larger than what I now receive. Still, because I want preferment and salary, I cannot let my prince earn the reputation of being injudicious in his patronage. I must beg to decline. Let me go back to my butchery." And he adhered to his refusal. 37^ CJmang Tzu Yiian Hsien dwelt in Lu, — in a mud hut, with a grass-grown roof, an apology for a door, and two mulberry-trees for door-posts. The windows which lio^hted his two rooms were no bieeer than the mouth of a jar, and were closed by a w^ad of old clothes. The hut leaked from above and was damp under foot ; yet Yiian Hsien sat gravely there playing on the guitar. Tzu Kung came driving up in a fine chariot, in a white robe lined with purple ; but the hood of the chariot was too big for the street. When he went to see Yiian Hsien, the latter came to the door in a flowery cap, with his shoes down at heel, and leaning on a stalk. " Good gracious ! " cried Tzii Kung, " whatever is the matter with you ? " *' I have heard," replied Yiian Hsien, "that he who is without wealth is called poor, and that he who learns without being able to practise is said to have something the matter with him. Now I am merely poor ; I have nothing the matter with me." Tzu Kung was much abashed at this reply ; upon which Yiian Hsien smiling continued, " To try to thrust myself forward among men ; to seek friend- ship in mutual flattery ; to learn for the sake of others ; to teach for my own sake ; to use benevo- lence and duty to one's neighbour for evil ends ; to make a great show with horses and carriages, — these things I cannot do." Tseng TzCi lived in the Wei State. His wadded CAP. XXVIII.] On Declining Power 379 coat had no outside cloth. His face was bloated and rough. His hands and feet were horny hard. For three days he had had no fire ; no new clothes for ten years. If he set his cap straight the tassel would come off. If he drew up his sleeve his elbow would poke through. If he pulled up his shoe, the heel would come off. Yet slipshod he sang the Sacrificial Odes of Shang, his voice filling the whole sky, as though it had been some instrument of metal or stone. The Son of Heaven could not secure him as a minister. The feudal princes could not secure him as a friend. For he who nourishes his purpose becomes oblivious of his body. He who nourishes his body becomes oblivious of gain. And he w^ho has attained Tao becomes oblivious of his mind. " Come hither," said Confucius to Yen Hui. ''Your family is poor, and your position lowly. Why not go into official life ? " " I do not wish to," replied Yen Hui. " I have fifty acres of land beyond the city walls, which are enough to supply me with food. Ten more within the walls provide me with clothes. My lute gives me all the amusement I want ; and the study of your doctrines keeps me happy enough. I do not desire to go into official life." " Bravo! well said!" cried Confucius with beam- ing countenance. " I have heard say that those who are contented do not entangle themselves in the pursuit of gain. That those who have really 380 CJmang Tzu obtained do not fear the contingency of loss. That those who devote themselves to cultivation of the inner man, though occupying no position, feel no shame. Thus indeed I have long preached. Only now, that I have seen Yen Hui, am I conscious of the realisation of these words." Prince Mou of Chung-shan said to Chan Tzii, " My body is in the country, but my heart is in town. What am I to do ? " " Make life of paramount importance," answered Chan Tzii, ''and worldly advantage will cease to have weight." " That I know," replied the Prince ; " but I am not equal to the task." '' If you are not equal to this," said Chan Tzii, " then it were well for you to pursue your natural bent. Not to be equal to a task, and yet to force oneself to stick to it, — this is called adding one injury to another. And those who suffer such two-fold injury do not belong to the class of the long-lived." Prince Mou of Wei was heir to the throne of a large State. For him to become a hermit among the hills was more difficult than for an ordinary cotton-clothed scholar. And although he had not attained to Tao, he may be said to have been on the way thither. When Confucius was caught between the Ch ens and the Ts'ais, he went seven days without proper CAP. XXVIII.] On Declining Power 381 food. He ate soup of herbs, having no rice. He looked very much exhausted, yet he sat within playing his guitar and singing to it. Yen Hui was picking over the herbs, while Tzu Lu and Tzii Kung were talking together. One of them said, " Our Master has twice been driven out of Lu. They will have none of him in Wei. His tree was cut down in Sung. He got into trouble in Shang and Chou. And now he is surrounded by the Ch'ens and the Ts'ais. Whoever kills him is to be held guiltless. Whoever takes him prisoner is not to be interfered with. Yet all the time he goes on playing and singing without cease. Is this the right thing, for a superior man to do ? " Yen Hui said nothing, but went inside and told Confucius, who laid aside his guitar and said with a loud sigh, " Yu and Tz'ii are ignorant fellows. These were their personal names. Bid them come, and I will speak to them." When they entered Tzii Lu said, ** We seem to have made a thorough failure." " What do you mean ? " cried Confucius. '' The superior man who succeeds in Tao, has success. If he fails in Tao, he makes a failure. Now I, holding fast to the Tao of charity and duty towards one's neighbour, have fallen among the troubles of a dis- ordered age. What failure is there in that ? ** Therefore it is that by cultivation of the inner man there is no failure in Tao, and when danger comes there is no loss of virtue. It is the chill 382 Chuang Tzii winter weather, it is frost, it is snow, which bring out the luxuriance of the pine and the fir. See Lim Yii, ix, 27. I regard it as a positive blessing to be thus situated as I am." Thereupon he turned abruptly round and went on playing and singing. At this Tzii Lu hastily seized a shield and began dancing to the music, while Tzii Kung said, " I had no idea of the height of heaven and of the depth of earth." The ancients who attained Tao were equally happy under success and failure. Their happiness had nothing to do with their failure or their success. Tag once attained, failure and success became mere links in a chain, like cold, heat, wind, and rain. Thus Hsii Yu enjoyed himself at Ying-yang, and Kung Poh found happiness on the hill-top. Whither he retired after a reign of 14 years. Shun offered to resign the empire to his friend Pei Jen Wu Tse. " What a strange manner of man you are ! " cried the latter. " Living in the furrowed fields, you exchanged such a life for the throne of Yao. And as if that was not enough, you now try to heap in- dignity upon me. I am ashamed of you." Thereupon he drowned himself in the waters of Ch'ing-ling. " But how about preservation of life ? " asks Lin HsI Chung with a sneer. CAP. XXVIII.] On Declining Power 383 When T'ang was about to attack Chieh, he went to consult with Pien Sui. '' It is not a matter in which I can help you," said the latter. " Who can ? " asked T'ang. " I do not know," replied Pien Sui. T'ang then went to consult with Wu Kuang. " It is not a matter in which I can help you," said the latter. " Who can ? " asked T'ang, " I do not know," replied Wu Kuang. " What do you think of I Yin ?" asked T'ang. " He forces himself," said Wu Kuang, " to put up with obloquy. Beyond this I know nothing of him." So T'ang took I Yin into his counsels. They attacked Chieh, and vanquished him. Then T'ang offered to resign the empire in favour of Pien Sui. But Pien Sui declined, saying, "When your Majesty consulted with me about attacking Chieh, you evidently looked on me as a robber. Who would steal territory. But men of Tao wage no wars. Now that you have vanquished him, and you offer to resign in my favour, you evidently regard me as covetous. I was born indeed in a disordered a^-e. But for a man without Tag to thus insult me twice, is more than I can endure." So he drowned himself in the river Chou. Then T'ang offered to resign in favour of Wu Kuang, saying, '' The wise plan, the brave execute, the good rest therein, — such was the Tag of the 384 Chuaug Tzii ancients. Why, Sir, should not you occupy the throne ? " But Wu Kuang declined, saying, '' To depose a ruler is not to do one's duty to one's neighbour. To slay the people is not charity. For others to suffer these wrongs, while I enjoy the profits, is not honest. I have heard say that one should not accept a wage unless earned in accordance with right ; and that if the world is without Tao, one should not put foot upon its soil, still less rule over it ! I can bear this no longer." Thereupon he took a stone on his back and jumped into the river Lu. At the rise of the Chou dynasty there were two scholars, named Po I and Shu Ch'i, who lived in Ku-tu. One of these said to the other, " I have heard that in the west there are men who are apparently in possession of Tao. Let us go and see them." Meaning the men of Chou. When they arrived at Ch'i-yang, Wu Wang The writer meant Wen Wang, father of Wu Wang. heard of their arrival and sent Shu Tan Chou Kung. to enter into a treaty with them. They were to receive emoluments of the second degree and rank of the first degree. The treaty was to be sealed with blood and buried. CAP. XXVIII.] On Declining Power 385 At this the two looked at each other and smiled. "Ah ! " said one of them, " this is strange indeed. It is not what we call Tao. " When Shen Nung ruled the empire, he wor- shipped God without asking for any reward. Some- times it was the law he put in force ; sometimes it was his personal influence he brought to bear. He was loyal and faithful to his people without seeking any return. He did not build his success upon another's ruin, nor mount high by means of another's fall, nor seize opportunities to secure his own advantage. " But now that the Chous, beholding the ini- quities of the Yins, have taken upon themselves to govern, we have intrigues above and bribes below. Troops are mobilised to protect prestige. Victims are slaughtered to give good faith to a treaty. A show of virtue is made to amuse the masses. Fighting and slaughter are made the means of gain. Confusion has simply been exchanged for disorder. *' I have heard tell that the men of old, living in quiet times, never shirked their duties ; but lighting upon troublous times, nothing could make them stay. The empire is now in darkness. The virtue of the Chous has faded. For the empire to be united under the Chous would be a disgrace to us. Better flee away and keep our actions pure." Accordingly, these two philosophers went north to Mount Shou-yang, where they subsequently starved themselves to death. 2 c 386 Chuang Tzil Men like Poh I and Shu Ch'i, if wealth and honour came to them so that they could properly accept, would assuredly not have recourse to such heroic measures, nor would they be content to follow their own bent, without giving their services to their generation. Such was the purity of these two scholars. 387 CHAPTER XXIX. Robber Che. [Spurious.] CONFUCIUS was on terms of friendship with Liu Hsia Chi, whose younger brother was known as " Robber Ch^." This is an anachronism. Liu Hsia Chi {or Hui) was a virtuous official of the Lu State. He flourished some 80 and more years before the time of Con- fucius. Robber Ch^ had a band of followers nine thou- sand strong. He ravaged the whole empire, plundering the various nobles and breaking into people's houses. He drove off oxen and horses. He stole men's wives and daughters. Family ties put no limit to his greed. He had no respect for parents nor for brothers. He neglected the worship of his ancestors. Wherever he passed, the greater States flew to arms, the smaller ones to places of safety. All the people were sore distressed. '*A father," said Confucius to Liu Hsia Chi, " should surely be able to admonish his son ; an elder brother to teach his younger brother. If this be not so, there is an end of the value attached to these relationships. 2 c 2 388 Chiiang Tzii " Now you, Sir, are one of the scholars of the age, while your younger brother is the Robber Ch^, the scourge of the empire. You are unable to teach him, and I blush for you. Let me go and have a talk with him on your behalf." " As to what you say, Sir, about fathers and elder brothers," answered Liu Hsia Chi, " if the son will not listen to his father, nor the younger brother to his elder brother, what becomes of your arguments then? " Besides, Ch^'s passions are like a bubbling spring. His thoughts are like a whirlwind. He is strong enough to defy all foes. He can argue until wrong becomes right. If you follow his inclina- tions, he is pleased. If you oppose them he is angry. He is free with the language of abuse. Do not go near him." Confucius paid no attention to this advice ; but with Yen Hui as charioteer and Tzu Kung on his right, went off to see Robber Che. The latter had just encamped to the south of T'ai-shan, and was engaged in devouring a dish of minced human liver. Confucius alighted from his chariot, and advancing addressed the doorkeeper as follows : — ** I am Confucius of the Lu State. I have heard of the high character of your captain." He then twice respectfully saluted the door- keeper, who went in to announce his arrival. When Robber Che heard who it was, he was furious. His eyes glared like stars. His hair raised CAP. XXIX.] Robber CkS 389 his cap from his head as he cried out, " What ! that crafty scoundrel Confucius of Lu ? Go, tell him from me that he is a mere word-mongerer. That he talks nonsense about Wen Wang and Wu Wang. That he wears an extravagant cap, with a thong from the side of a dead ox. That what he says is mostly rhodomontade. That he consumes where he does not sow, and wears clothes he does not weave. That his lips patter and his tongue wags. That his rights and wrongs are of his own coining, whereby he throws dust in the eyes of rulers and prevents the scholars of the empire from reverting to the original source of all things. Sc. Tao. That he makes a great stir about filial piety and brotherly love, glad enough himself to secure some fat fief or post of power. Tell him that he deserves the worst, and that if he does not take himself off his liver shall be in my morning stew." But Confucius sent in again, saying, " I am a friend of Liu Hsia Chi. I am anxious to set eyes upon your captain's shoe-strings." Anodier interpretation is " upon your captain's feet visible from beneath the screen." When the doorkeeper gave this second message. Robber Che said, ** Bring him before me ! " There- upon Confucius hurried in, and avoiding the place of honour stepped back and made two obeisances. Robber Che, flaming with anger, straddled out his two legs, and laying his hand upon his sword 390 Chuang Tzii. glared at Confucius and roaring like a tigress with young, said, " Ch'iu ! come here. If what you say suits my ideas, you will live. Otherwise you will die." " I have heard," replied Confucius, *' that the world contains three classes of virtue. To grow up tall, of a beauty without compare, and thus to be the idol of young and old, of noble and lowly alike, — this is the highest class. To be possessed of wisdom which embraces the universe and can ex- plain all things, — this is the middle class. To be possessed of courage which will stand test and gather followers around, — this is the lowest class. " Now any man whose virtue belongs to either of these classes is fit to occupy the place and title of ruler. But you. Captain, unite all three in yourself. You are eight feet two in height. Your expression is very bright. Your lips are like vermilion. Your teeth like a row of shells. Your voice is like a beautiful bell ;^yet you are known as Robber Che. Captain, I blush for you. " Captain, if you will hearken to me I will go south for you to Wu and Yiieh, north to Ch'i and Lu, east to Sung and Wei, and west to Chin and Ch'u. I will have a great wall built for you of many // in extent, enclosing hamlets of many hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, over which State you shall be ruler. Your relations with the empire will enter upon a new phase. You will disband your men. You will gather your brothers around you. You will join in worship CAP. XXIX.] Robber Che 39 1 of your ancestors. Such is the behaviour of the true Sage and the man of parts, and such is what the world desires." " Ch'iu! come here," cried Robber Ch^ in a great rage. "Those who are squared by offers and cor- rected by words are the stupid vulgar masses. The height and the beauty which you praise in me are legacies from my parents. Even though you did not praise them, do you think I should be ignorant of their existence? Besides, those who flatter to the face speak evil behind the back. Now all you have been saying about the great State and its numerous population simply means squaring me by offers as though one of the common herd. And of course it would not last. *' There is no State bigger than the empire. Yao and Shun both got this, yet their descendants have not territory enough to insert an awl's point. Tang and Wu Wang both sat upon the Imperial throne, yet their posterity has been obliterated from the face of the earth. Hardly in Chuang Tzu's time. Was not this because of the very magnitude of the prize ? '' I have also heard that in olden times the birds and animals outnumbered man, and that the latter was obliged to seek his safety by building his domi- cile in trees. By day he picked up acorns and chestnuts. At night he slept upon a branch. Hence the name Nest-builders. 392 Chuang Tzu " Of old, the people did not know how to make clothes. In summer they collected quantities of fuel, and in winter warmed themselves by fire. Hence the name Provident. "In the days of Shen Nung, they lay down without caring where they were and got up without caring whither they might go. A man knew his mother but not his father. He lived among the wild deer. He tilled the ground for food. He wove cloth to cover his body. He harboured no thought of injury to others. These were the glorious results of an age of perfect virtue. ** The Yellow Emperor, however, could not attain to this virtue. He fought with Ch'ih Yu at Cho-lu, and blood flowed for a hundred //. Then came Yao and Shun with their crowd of ministers. Then T'ang who deposed his sovereign, and Wu Wang who slew Chou. After which time the strong took to oppressing the weak, the many to coercing the few, In fact, ever since T'ang and Wu Wang we have had none other than disturbers of the peace. "And now you come forward preaching the old dogmas of Wen Wang and palming off sophistries without end, in order to teach future generations. You wear patched clothes and a narrow girdle, you talk big and act falsely, in order to deceive the rulers of the land, while all the time you yourself are aiming at wealth and power ! You are the biggest thief I know of ; and if the world calls me Robber Che, it most certainly ought to call you Robber Ch'iu. CAP. XXIX.] Robber CM 393 " By fair words you enticed Tzu Lu to follow you. You made him doff his martial cap, Shaped like a cock's comb. and ungird his long sword, and sit a disciple at your feet. And all the world cried out that Con- fucius could stop violence and prevent wrong-doing. By and by, when Tzu Lu wished to slay the prince of Wei, but failed, and was himself hacked to pieces and exposed over the eastern gate of Wei, — that was because you had not properly instructed him. See the account in the Tso Chuan. " You call yourself a man of talent and a Sage forsooth ! Twice you have been driven out of Lu. You were tabooed in Wei. You were a failure in Ch'i. You were surrounded by the Ch ens and the Ts'ais. In fact, the empire won't have you any- where. It was your teaching which brought Tzu Lu to his tragical end. You cannot take care, in the first place, of yourself, nor, in the second place, of others. Of what value can your doctrine be ? '* There is none to whom mankind has accorded a higher place than to the Yellow Emperor. Yet his virtue was not complete. He fought at Cho- lu, and blood ran for a hundred //. Yao was not paternal. He killed his eldest son. Shun was not filial. He banished his mother's younger brother. 394 Chttang Tzil The great Yii was deficient in one respect. He was wanting in natural feeling. When engaged in his great engineering work of draining the empire, he even passed his own door without going in to see his family. T'ang deposed his sovereign. Wu Wang van- quished Chou. Wen Wang was imprisoned at Yin Li. " Now these six worthies enjoy a high reputation among men. Yet a fuller investigation shows that in each case a desire for advantage disturbed their original purity and forced it into a contrary direc- tion. Hence the shamelessness of their deeds. " Among those whom the world calls virtuous were Poh I and Shu Ch'i. They declined the sovereignty of Ku-chu and died of starvation on Mount Shou-yang, their corpses deprived of burial. " Pao Chiao made a great show of virtue and abused the world in general. He grasped a tree and died. Tzu Kung, one of Confucius' disciples, is said to have scolded Pao Chiao so vigorously that the latter withered up into dead wood. '* Shen T'u Ti, when no heed was paid to his counsels, jumped into the river with a stone on his back and became food for fishes. See p. 72. " Chieh Tzu T'ui was truly loyal. He cut a slice from his thigh to feed Wen Wang. Afterwards, when Wen Wang turned his back upon him, he CAP. XXIX.] Robber Che 395 retired in anger, and grasping a tree, was burnt to death. He took refuge in a forest, from which Wen Wang, anxious to recover his friend, tried to smoke him out! " Wei Sheng made an assignation with a girl beneath a bridge. The girl did not come, and the water rose. But Wei Sheng would not leave. He grasped a buttress and died. *' These four differed in no way from dogs and pigs going about begging to be slaughtered. They all exaggerated reputation and disregarded death. They did not reflect upon their original nature and seek to preserve life into the old age allotted. ** Among ministers whom the world calls loyal, none can compare with Wang Tzii, Pi Kan, and Wu Tzu Hsii. The last-mentioned drowned him- self. Pi Kan was disembowelled. These two worthies are what men call loyal ministers ; yet, as a matter of fact, all the world laughs at them ! " Thus, from the most ancient times down to Tzu Hsii and Pi Kan, there have been none de- serving of honour. And as to the sermon you, Ch'iu, propose to preach to me, — if it is on ghostly subjects, I shan't understand them, and if it is on human affairs, why there is nothing more to be said. I know it all already. " I will now tell you a few things. The lust of the eye is for beauty. The lust of the ear is for music. The lust of the palate is for flavour. The lust of ambition is for gratification. Man's greatest 39^ Chiiang Tzii age is one hundred years. A medium old age is eighty years. The lowest estimate is sixty years. Take away from this the hours of sickness, disease, death, mourning, sorrow, and trouble, and there will not remain more than four or five days a month upon which a man may open his mouth to laugh. Heaven and Earth are everlasting. Sooner or later every man has to die. That which thus has a limit, as compared with that which is ever- lasting, is a mere flash, like the passage of some swift steed seen through a crack. And those who cannot gratify their ambition and live through their allotted span, are men who have not attained to Tao. '* Ch'iu ! all your teachings are nothing to me. Begone ! Go home ! Say no more ! Your doctrine is a random jargon, full of falsity and deceit. It can never preserve the original purity of man. Why discuss it further? " Confucius made two obeisances and hurriedly took his leave. On mounting his chariot, he three times missed hold of the reins. His eyes were so dazed that he could see nothing. His face was ashy pale. With down-cast head he grasped the bar of his chariot, unable to find vent for his feelings. Arriving outside the eastern gate of Lu, he met Liu Hsia Chi, who said, " I have not seen you for some days. From the look of your equipage I should say you had been travelling. I guess now you have been to see Che." CAP. XXIX.] Robber CM 397 Confucius looked up to heaven, and replied with a sigh, " I have." "And did he not rebuff you," asked Liu Hsia Chi, " as I said he would ? " *' He did," said Confucius. " I am a man who has cauterized himself without being ill. I hurried away to smooth the tiger's head and comb out his beard. And I very nearly got into the tiger's mouth." Tzu Chang asked Man Kou Te, Which means "Full of the Ill-gotten." saying, *' Why do you not practise virtue ? Other- wise, it is impossible to inspire confidence. And without confidence, no place. And without place, no wealth. Thus, with a view to reputation or to wealth, duty towards one's neighbour is the true key. As leading to reputation, which was what Tzu Chang wanted. If you were to discard all thoughts of reputation and wealth and attend to the cultivation of the heart, surely you would not pass one day without practising the higher virtues." " Those who have no shame," replied Man Kou Meaning himself. *' grow rich. Those who inspire confidence make themselves conspicuous. Meaning Tzii Chang. 398 Chuang Tzii Reputation and wealth are mostly to be got out of shamelessness and confidence inspired. Thus, with a view to reputation or to wealth, the confidence of others is the true key. As leading to wealth, which was what Man Kou Te wanted. If you were to discard all thoughts of reputation and wealth, surely the virtuous man would then have no scope beyond himself." Beyond his own nature. " Of old," said Tzu Chang, " Chieh and Chou sat upon the Imperial throne, and the whole empire was theirs. Yet if you were now to tell any com- mon thief that his moral qualities resembled theirs, he would resent it as an insult. By such miserable creatures are they despised." '' Confucius and Mih Tzu, on the other hand, were poor and simple enough. Yet if you were to tell any Prime Minister of to-day that his moral qualities resembled theirs, he would flush with pride and declare you were paying him too high a compliment. So truly honourable is the man of learning. " Thus, the power of a monarch does not neces- sarily make him worthy ; nor do poverty and a low station necessarily make a man unworthy. The worthy and the unworthy are differentiated by the worthiness and unworthiness of their acts." " A petty thief," replied Man Kou Te, " is put in gaol. A great brigand becomes ruler of a State. CAP. XXIX.] Robber CM 399 And among the retainers of the latter, men of virtue will be found. " Of old, Duke Huan, named Hsiao Poh, slew his elder brother and took his sister-in-law to wife. Yet Kuan Chung became his minister. " T'ien Cheng Tzu killed his prince and seized the kingdom. Yet Confucius accepted his pay. See p. III. "To condemn a man in words, yet actually to take service under him, — does not this show us practice and precept directly opposed to one another ? " Therefore it was written, ' Who is bad ? Who is good ? He who succeeds is the head. He who does not succeed is the tail.' " " But if you do not practise virtue," said Tzu Chang, " and make no distinction between kith and kin, assign no duties to the worthy and to the unworthy, no precedence to young and old, how then are the Five Bonds and the Six Ranks to be distinguished ? " Commentators are divided as to these Bonds and Ranks. One makes the former calendaric. Another considers that the five cardinal virtues and six ranks of nobility are meant. Of the latter there are only- five, but " sovereign " is added to patch the defici- ency. " Yao slew his eldest son," answered Man Kou T^. " Shun banished his mother's brother. Was there kith and kin in that ? "T'ang deposed Chieh. Wu Wang slew Chou. 400 Chuang Tzu Was that the duty of the worthy towards the un- worthy ? " Wang Chi was the legitimate heir, but Chow Kung slew his elder brother. W^as that precedence of young and old ? " The false principles of the Confucianists, the universal love of the Mihists, — do these help to distinguish the Five Bonds and the Six Ranks ? " You, Sir, are all for reputation. I am all for wealth. As to which pursuit is not in accordance with principle nor in harmony with right, let us refer to the arbitration of Wu Yoh." " The mean man," said Wu Yoh, " devotes him- self to wealth. The superior man devotes himself to reputation. The moral results are different in each case. But if both would set aside their acti- vities and devote themselves to doing nothing, the results would be the same. " Wherefore it has been said, * Be not a mean man. Revert to your natural self. Be not a su- perior man. Abide by the laws of heaven.' "As to the straight and the crooked, view them from the standpoint of the infinite. All distinctions are thus merged. Gaze around you on all sides, until time withdraws you from the scene. "As to the right and the wrong, hold fast to your magic circle, At the centre of which all positives and negatives converge. See ch. ii, p. i8. CAP. XXIX,] Robber Chi 401 and with independent mind walk ever in the way of Tao. " Do not swerve from the path of virtue ; do not bring about your own good deeds, — lest your labour be lost. Do not make for wealth ; do not aim at success, — lest you cast away that which links you to God. " Pi Kan was disembowelled. Tzu Hsii had his eyes gouged out. Better known as Wu Yuan. Seep. 112. He ex- pressed a wish to be buried on the road to the YUeh State that he might witness the defeat of the Wu State. Whereupon the prince of the latter State at once had him deprived of sight. Such was the fate of loyalty, '* Chih Kung bore witness against his father. Wei Sheng was drowned. Such are the misfortunes of the faithful. " Pao Chiao dried up where he stood. Shen Tzu would not justify himself. He would not defend himself against a charge of putting poison in his father's food. Such are the evils of honesty. " Confucius did not visit his mother. There is no authority for this statement. K'uang Tzu did not visit his father. By whom he had been turned out of doors. Such are the trials which come upon the upright. " The above instances have been handed down to us from antiquity and are discussed in modern 2 D 402 Chuang Tzii times. They show that men of learning em- phasized their precepts by carrying them out in practice ; and that consequently they paid the penalty and fell into these calamities." Discontent asked Complacency, saying, " There is really no one who does not either aim at repu- tation or make for wealth. If a man is rich, others flock around him. These necessarily take a sub- ordinate position, and consequently pay him court. And it would seem that such subordination and respect constitute a royal road to long life, comfort, and general happiness. How is it then that you. Sir, have no mind for these things ? Is it that you are wanting in wit ? Or is it that you are physi- cally unable to compete, and therefore go in for being virtuous, though all the time unable to forget ? " " You and your friends," replied Complacency, " regard all men as alike because they happen to be born at the same time and in the same place as yourselves. You look on us as scholars who have separated from humanity and cast off the world, and who have no guiding principle beyond poring over the records of the past and present, or in- dulging in the logomachy of this and that. "Were we to lead the mundane lives you do, it would be at the sacrifice of the very conditions of existence. And surely thus we should be wan- dering far from the royal road to long life, comfort, and general happiness. The discomfort of wretch- CAP. XXIX.] Robber Chi 403 edness, the comfort of well-being, you do not refer to the body.. But to some external cause of which the body becomes subjectively conscious. The abjectness of terror, the elation of joy, you do not refer to the mind itself. You know that such things are so, but you do not know how they are so. Wherefore, though equalling the Son of Heaven in power, and with all the empire as your personal property, you would not be free from care." " Wealth," replied Discontent, " is of the greatest service to a man. It enables him to do good, and to exert power, to an extent which the perfect man or the true Sage could never reach. He can borrow the courage and strength of others to make himself formidable. He can employ the wisdom and coun- sels of others to add clearness to his own delibera- tions. He can avail himself of the virtue of others and cause it to appear as his own. Without being in possession of a throne, he can wield the authority of a prince. '' Besides, the pleasures of music, beauty, rich food, and power, do not require to be studied before they can be appreciated by the mind ; nor does the body need the example of others before it can enjoy them. We need no teacher to tell us what to like or dislike, to follow or to avoid. Such knowledge is instinctive in man. The world may condemn this view, but which of us is free from the taint ? " 2 D 2 404 Chuang Tzu "The wise man," answered Complacency, "acts for the common weal, in pursuit of which he does not overstep due limits. Wherefore, if there is a sufficiency, he does not strive for more. He has no use for more, and accordingly does not seek it. But if there is not a sufficiency, then he seeks for more. He strives in all directions, yet does not account it greed. If there is a surplus, he declines it. Even though he refused the whole empire, he would not account it honesty. To him, honesty and greed are not conditions into which we are forced by outward circumstances, but characteristics innate in the indi- vidual. He may wield the power of the Son of Heaven, but will not employ it for the degradation of others. He may own the whole empire, yet will not use his wealth to take advantage of his fellows. But a calculation of the troubles and the anxieties inseparable therefrom, cause him to reject these as injurious to his nature, not from a desire for reputation. " When Yao and Shun occupied the throne, there was peace. They did not try to be beneficent rulers. They did not inflict injury by doing good. They were simply natural, and good results fol- lowed. " Shan Chiian and Hsii Yu both declined the proffered throne. Theirs was no empty refusal. They would not cause injury to themselves. " In all these cases, each individual adopted the profitable course in preference to the injurious CAP. XXIX.] Robber Chi 405 course. And the world calls them virtuous, whereby they acquire a reputation at which they never aimed." ** It is necessary," argued Discontent, " to cling to reputation. If all pleasures are to be denied to the body and one's energies to be concentrated upon health with a view to the prolongation of life, such life would be itself nothing more than the prolonged illness of a confirmed invalid." " Happiness," said Complacency, "is to be found in contentment. Too much is always a curse, most of all in wealth. " The ears of the wealthy man ring with sounds of sweet music. His palate is cloyed with rich meats and wine. In the pursuit of pleasure, busi- ness is forgotten. This is confusion. " He eats and drinks to excess, until his breath ing is that of one carrying a heavy load up a hill. This is misery. " He covets money to surround himself with comforts. He covets power to vanquish rivals. But his quiet hours are darkened by diabetes and dropsy. This is disease. " Even when, in his desire for wealth, he has piled up an enormous fortune, he still goes on and cannot desist. This is shame. " Having no use for the money he has collected, he still hugs it to him and cannot bear to part with it. His heart is inflamed, and he ever seeks to add more to the pile. This is unhappiness. " At home, he dreads the pest of the pilfering 4o6 Chuang Tzu thief. Abroad, the danger of bandit and highway- man. So he keeps strict guard within, while never venturing alone without. This is fear. " These six are the greatest of the world's curses. Yet such a man never bestows a thought upon them, until the hour of misfortune is at hand. Then, with his ambitions gratified, his natural powers exhausted, and nothing but wealth remain- ing, he would gladly obtain one day's peace, but cannot do so. "Wherefore, if reputation is not to be enjoyed and wealth is not to be secured, how pitiable it is that men should harass their minds and wear out their bodies in such pursuits ! " 407 CHAPTER XXX. On Swords. [Spurious.] OF old, Wen Wang of Chao loved sword-play. Swordsmen thronged his halls, to the number of three thousand and more. Day and night they had bouts before the prince. In the course of a year, a hundred or so would be killed or wounded. Yet the prince was never satisfied. Within three years, the State had begun to go to rack and ruin, and other princes to form designs upon it. Thereupon the Heir Apparent, Li, became troubled in mind ; and said to the officers of his household, '' Whosover shall persuade the prince to do away with these swordsmen, to him I will give a thousand ounces of silver." To this his officers replied, " Chuang Tzu is the man." Thereupon the Heir Apparent sent messengers to Chuang Tzu with a thousand ounces of silver, which he would not accept, but accompanied the messen- gers back to their master. " What does your Highness require of me," 4o8 Chuang Tzic asked Chuang Tzu, " that you should bestow upon me a thousand ounces ? " " I had heard," replied the young prince, " that you were a famous Sage, and I ventured to send this money as a present to your servants. Merely a ceremonious phrase. But as you would not receive it, what more can I say? " I understand," answered Chuang Tzu, " that your Highness would have me cure the prince of his peculiar weakness. Now suppose that I do not succeed with the prince, and consequently with your Highness, the punishment of death is what I have to expect. What good would the thousand ounces be to me then ? " ** On the other hand, if I succeed with the prince, and consequently with your Highness, the whole State of Chao contains nothing I could not have for the asking." " You must know, however," said the young prince, " that my father will only receive swords- men." " Well," replied Chuang Tzu, " I am a good swordsman myself." " Besides which," added the Heir Apparent, " the swordsmen he is accustomed to see have all dis- hevelled hair hanging over their temples. They wear slouching caps with coarse tangled tassels, and short-tailed coats. They glare with their eyes and talk in a fierce tone. This is what my father CAP. XXX.] On Swords 409 likes. But if you go to him dressed in your ordinary scholar's dress, the result is sure to be disastrous." " I will accustom myself to the dress," replied Chuang Tzu ; and after practising for three days, he went again to see the young prince, who accom- panied him into his father's presence. The latter drew a sharp sword and awaited Chuang Tzu's approach. But Chuang Tzu, when he entered the door of the audience chamber, did not hurry forward, neither did he prostrate himself before the prince. "What have you to say to me," cried the prince, '* that you have obtained your introduction through the Heir Apparent ? " " I have heard," replied Chuang Tzu, " that your Highness loves sword-play. Therefore I have come to exhibit my skill." " What can you do in that line ? " asked the prince. " Were I to meet an opponent," said Chuang Tzu, " at every ten paces, I could go on for a thou- sand //without being stopped." " Bravo ! " cried the prince. " There is not your match in the empire." " When I fight," continued Chuang Tzu, " I make a show of being weak but push a vigorous attack. The last to start, I am the first to arrive. I should like your Highness to make trial of me." " Rest awhile," replied the prince. " Stay here and await orders. I will arrange a day for you." 410 Chiiang Tzu Thereupon the prince spent seven days in trying his swordsmen. Some sixty of them were either killed or wounded, but at length he selected five or six and bade them attend in the audience-chamber with their swords. He then summoned Chuang Tzu and said, *' Now I will see what your swords- manship is worth." " I have been longing for this," replied Chuang Izu. " Does it matter to you," asked the prince, '* of what length your weapon may be ? " . " Not at all," replied Chuang Tzu. " I have three swords, of which I will ask your Highness to choose one. We will then proceed to the trial." " Which are your three swords ? " enquired the prince. " There is the sword of the Son of Heaven," said Chuang Tzu, " the sword of the Princes, and the sword of the People." "What is the sword of the Son of Heaven?" asked the prince. " The stone wall of Yen-ch'i is its point," replied Chuang Tzu. Some take " stone wall" as the name of a place. The mountains of Ch'i are its edge. Chin and Wei are its back. Chou and Sung are its hilt. Han and Wei are its sheath. It is enclosed in the four hordes of barbarians, wrapped in the four seasons, surrounded by the great ocean. It is made of the five elements. It is the arbiter of punishment and CAP. XXX.] On Swords 4 1 1 reward. It operates under the influence of the Yin and the Yang. In spring and summer it is at rest. In autumn and winter it moves abroad. Push it, it does not advance. Raise it, it does not go up. Lower it, it does not go down. Whirl it around, it does not change position. Above, it cleaves the floating clouds ; below, it cuts through the density of earth. One flash of this blade, and the princes of the empire submit. Such is the sword of the Son of Heaven." At this the prince seemed absorbed in his reflec- tions. Then he enquired, saying, "And what is the sword of the Princes ? " "The wise and brave," replied Chuang Tzu, " are its point. The incorruptible are its edge. The virtuous are its back. The loyal are its hilt. The heroic are its sheath. You may push this sword too, it will not advance. Raise it, it will not go up. Lower it, it will not go down. Whirl it around, it will not change position. Above, it models itself upon the round heaven, in order to keep in harmony with the sun, moon, and stars. Below, it models itself upon the square earth, in order to keep in harmony with the four seasons. It adapts itself to the wishes of the people, in order to diffuse peace on all sides. One flash of this blade is like a roaring clap of thunder. Between the boundaries of the State there is not left one but who yields and obeys the command of his prince. Such is the sword of the Princes." 412 Chuang Tzu " And the sword of the People ? " enquired the prince. " The sword of the People," replied Chuang Tzu, " has dishevelled hair hanging over its temples. It wears a slouching cap with coarse tangled tassel, and a short-tailed coat. It glares with its eyes and talks in a fierce tone. When it engages in conflict, above, it cuts off head and neck; below, it smites liver and lungs. Such is the sword of the People. It is like a game-cock. One day, its life is cut short, and it is of no more use to the State. " Now you, great prince, wield sovereign power, and yet you devote yourself to this sword of the People. I am truly ashamed of it." Thereupon the prince drew Chuang Tzu up on to the dais, and the attendants served food, the king three times assisting with his own hand. The prince each time received the dish from the attendants, handed it to Chuang Tzii, and then walked round to his own seat again. " Be seated, great prince," said Chuang Tzu, ** and compose your mind. I have said all I have to say on swords." After this the prince did not quit his palace for three months, while the swordsmen, submitting to the new order of things, died in their own homes. One commentator says " killed themselves in their own dwellings." But if so, Chuang Tzii's influence was of small practical value as far as the swordsmen were concerned. They might as well have con- tinued their profession of arms. 413 CHAPTER XXXI. The Old Fisherman. [Spurious.] CONFUCIUS, travelling in the Black Forest, rested awhile at Apricot Altar. His disci- ples sat down to their books, and he himself played upon the lute and sang. Half way through the song, an old fisherman stepped out of a boat and advanced towards them. His beard and eyebrows were snowy white. His hair hung loose, and he flapped his long sleeves as he walked over the foreshore. Reaching firm ground, he stood still, and with left hand on his knee and right hand to his ear, listened. When the song was finished, he beckoned to Tzu Kung and Tzu Lu, both of whom went to him. Then pointing with his finger, he enquired, saying, " What is that man doing here ? " '* He is the Sage of Lu," replied Tzu Lu. " Of what clan ? " asked the old man. "Of the K'ung family," replied Tzu Lu. " And what is his occupation ? " said the old man. " He devotes himself," replied Tzu Lu, " to 414 Chuang Tzu loyalty and truth. He practises charity and duty' towards his neighbour. He regulates ceremonies and music. He distinguishes the relationships of man. He is loyal to his prince above, a reformer of the masses below. Thus he will be of great service to the whole empire. Such is his occupation." " Is he a ruler of a State ? " asked the old man. " He is not," said Tzu Kung. " A minister ? " said the old man. " No," said Tzu Kung. Then the old man laughed and walked away, saying, " Charity is charity, yet I fear he will not escape the wear of mind and tear of body which imperil the original purity of man. How far, alas, has he wandered from the true path ! " From Tao. Tzu Kung went back and told Confucius, who, laying aside his lute, arose and said, " This man is a Sage ! " I Thereupon he followed the old man down the shore, catching him up just as he was drawing in his boat with his staff. Perceiving Confucius, the old man turned round to receive him, at which Con- fucius stepped back and prostrated himself twice before advancing. "What do you want, Sir?" asked the fisher- man. " Just now, venerable Sir," replied Confucius, "you left without finishing your remarks. In my stupidity I cannot make out what you mean. CAP. XXXI.] The Old Fishennan 4 1 5 Therefore I have come in the humble hope of hearing any words with which you may deign to help me." "Well," said the old man, ''you are certainly anxious to learn." At this Confucius prostrated himself twice, and when he got up said, " Yes, I have been a student from my youth upwards until now, the sixty-ninth year of my age. Yet I have never heard the true doctrine, which I am now ready to receive without bias." " Like species follow like," answered the old man. " Like sounds respond to like. See p. 283, and the experiment of the two lutes, p. 319- This is a law of nature. I will now with your leave apply what I know to what you occupy yourself with, — the affairs of men. " The Son of Heaven, the princes, the ministers, and the people, — if these four fulfil their proper functions, the result is good government. If they quit their proper places, the result is unutterable confusion. When the officials mind their duties and the people their business, neither is injured by the other. " Barren land, leaky roofs, want of food and clothing, inability to meet taxation, quarrels of wives and concubines, no precedence between young and old, — such are the sorrows of the people. " Capacity unequal to one's duties, and inability to carry on routine work, absence of clean-handed- 41 6 Chtiang Tzu ness, and carelessness among subordinates, lack of distinction and want of preferment, — such are the sorrows of ministers. "The Court without loyal ministers and the State in rebellion, the artisan unskilful and the tribute unsatisfactory, the periodical levees unat- tended and the Son of Heaven displeased, — such are the sorrows of the princes. ** The two great principles of nature working inharmoniously, heat and cold coming at irregular seasons so that men and things suffer, the princes rebellious and fighting among themselves so that the people perish, music and ceremonies ill regu- lated, wealth dissipated, the relationships of man disregarded, the masses sunk in immorality, — such are the sorrows which fall to the share of the Son of Heaven. " But now you. Sir, occupying neither the more exalted position of ruler nor performing the subor- dinate functions of minister, nevertheless take upon yourself to regulate music and ceremonies and to distinguish the relationships of man, in order to reform the masses. Are you not travelling out of your own sphere ? " Further, men have eight blemishes, and there ^ are four things which obstruct business. These should be investigated. " Meddling with matters which do not matter to / you, is prying. ** To push one's way in, regardless of neglect, is 2 to be forward. CAP. XXXI.] The Old Fisherman 417 " To adapt one's thoughts and arrange one's i words, is sycophancy. " To applaud a person, right or wrong, is ^ flattery. " To love speaking evil of others, is slander. r " To sever friendships and break ties, is mis- ^ chievousness. " To praise people falsely with a view to injure 7 them, is malice. " To give ready assent with a view to worm out the wishes of others, good and bad alike, is to be a t hypocrite. " These eight blemishes cause a man to throw others into confusion and bring injury upon him- self. The superior man will not have him for a friend ; the enlightened prince will not employ him as his minister. " To love the conduct of great affairs, and to in- / troduce change into established order with a view to gain reputation, — this is ambition. " To strive to get all into one's own hands, and to usurp what should be at the disposal of others, — -^ this is greed. " To know one's faults but not to correct them, to receive admonition but only to plunge deeper, — this o' is obstinacy. " To suffer those who are like oneself, but as for those unlike not to credit them with the virtues ^ they really possess, — this is bigotry. " Such are the four things which obstruct busi- ness. And only he w^ho can put aside the above 2 E 4i8 CImang Tzti, eight and abstain from the above four is fit for instruction." At this Confucius heaved a sigh of distress. Then having twice prostrated himself, he arose and said, " Twice was I driven from Lu. I was tabooed in Wei. My tree was cut down in Sung. I was surrounded by the Ch ens and the Ts'ais. I know not what my fault is that I should have suffered these four persecutions." " Dear me ! " said the old man in a vexed tone, " How slow of perception you are. " There was once a man who was so afraid of his shadow and so disliked his own footsteps that he determined to run away from them. But the oftener he raised his feet the more footsteps he made, and though he ran very hard his shadow never left him. From this he inferred that he went too slowly, and ran as hard as he could without rest- ing, the consequence being that his strength broke down and he died. He was not aware that by > going into the shade he would have got rid of his ! shadow, and that by keeping still he would have put an end to his footsteps. Fool that he was ! '' Now you occupy yourself with charity and duty to one's neighbour. You examine into the dis- tinction of like and unlike, the changes of motion and rest, the canons of giving and receiving, the emotions of love and hate, and the restraint of joy and anger. Yet you cannot avoid the calamities you speak of. " Reverently care for your body. Carefully pre- CAP. XXXI.] The Old Fisher man 419 serve your natural purity. Leave externals to others. Then you will not be involved. But as it is, instead of improving yourself you are trying to improve other people. Surely this is dealing with the external." "Then may I enquire," said Confucius in a tone of distress, "what is the original purity?" " Our original purity," replied the fisherman, " is the perfection of truth unalloyed. Without this, we cannot influence others. Hence, those who weep to order, though they mourn, do not grieve. Those who assume anger, though violent, do not inspire awe. Those who affect friendship, though they smile, are not in unison." " Real mourning grieves in silence. Real anger awes without expression. Real friendship is unison without the aid of smiles. Our emotions are dependent upon the original purity within ; and accordingly we hold the latter in esteem. " If applied to human affairs, then in serving our parents we are filial, in serving our prince we are loyal, in the banquet hour we are merry, in the hour of mourning we are sad. " The object of loyalty is successful service ; of a banquet, mirth; of mourning, grief; of serving parents, gratifying their wishes. If the service is accomplished, it matters not that no trace remain. In the way of kudos to the accornplisher. If parents be gratified, it matters not how. If a banquet results in mirth, the accessories are of no 2 E 2 420 Chttang Tzu importance. If there be real grief in mourning, it matters not what ceremonies may be employed. " Ceremonial is the invention of man. Our original purity is given to us from God. It is as it is, and cannot be changed. Wherefore the true Sage models himself upon God, and holds his original purity in esteem. He is independent of human exigencies. Fools, however, reverse this. They cannot model themselves upon God, and have to fall back on man. They do not hold original purity in esteem. Consequently they are ever suffering the vicissitudes of mortality, and never reaching the goal. Alas ! you. Sir, were early steeped in deceit, and are late in hearing the great doctrine." Confucius, having again prostrated himself twice, arose and said, " It has been a godsend to meet you. Sir, to-day. Pray allow me to follow you as your servant, that I may benefit by your teaching. I venture to ask where you live that I may enter upon my duties and learn the great doctrine." " I have heard," replied the old man, " that if a man is a fit companion, one may travel with him into the uttermost depths of Tag. But that if he is not a fit companion, and does not know Tag, one must avoid his company, that no harm may befall. Excuse me, I must leave you." Thereupon he pushed off his boat, and disappeared among the reeds. " Yen Yuan then brought up the chariot, and CAP. XXXI.] The Old Fisherman 42 1 Tzu Lu offered the hand-cord to Confucius. But the latter paid no attention. He waited until the ripples on the water had smoothed down and the sound of the punt-pole had died away, before he ventured to get up. Tzu Lu, who was at the side of the chariot, en- quired saying, " Master, I have been in your service now for a long time, yet never did I see you treat any man like this. In the presence of a ruler of ten thousand or a thousand chariots, I have never seen you treated other than with great respect, while you yourself would wear a haughty air. Yet before this old fisherman, leaning on his punt-pole, you cringe and bow and prostrate yourself twice before answering. Is not this too much? The disciples do not know what to make of it. Why this behaviour to an old fisherman ? " " Yu ! " cried Confucius, resting on the bar of the chariot ; " it is difficult to make anything of you. You have long studied ceremonies and duty to your neighbour, yet you have not succeeded in getting rid of the old evil nature. Come here, and I will tell you. " To meet an elder without respect is want of ceremony. To see a Sage and not to honour him, is not to be in charity with man. Unless you are in charity with man, you cannot humble yourself before a fellow-creature. And unless you can honestly do this, you can never attain to that state of original purity ; but the body will constantly suffer. Alas ! there is no greater evil than not to 422 Chuang Tzic be in charity with man. Yet in such a plight, O Yu, are you. *' Further. Tao is the source of all creation. Men have it, and live. They lose it, and die. Affairs in antagonism thereto, fail ; in accordance therewith, succeed. Therefore, wherever Tao abides, there is the reverence of the true Sage. And as this old fisherman may be said to possess Tao, could I venture not to respect him } " 423 CHAPTER XXXII. LlEH Tzu. Argument: — Outward manifestation of inward grace — Its dangers — Self-esteem — Its errors — Inscrutability of Tao — Artificiality of Con- fucius— Tests of virtue — Chuang Tzii declines office — His death. W HEN Lieh Tzu Lith Yli K'ou, a name well known in connection with Tao. But it is extremely doubtful if such a man ever lived. His record is not given by the historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien, and he may well have been no more than an allegorical personage created by Chuang Tzii for purposes of illustration. It was however thought necessary under the Han dynasty to supply his " Works " ; and the treatise thus pro- vided still passes under his name, though generally regarded as a forgery. See pp. 4, 5. went to Ch'i, half way there he turned round and came back. Falling in with Poh Hun Wu Jen, the latter said, " How is it you are so soon back again?" " I was afraid," replied Lieh Tzu. " Afraid of what ? " asked Poh Hun Wu Jen. " Out of ten restaurants at which I ate," said Lieh Tzu, " five would take no payment," 424 Chuang Tzu " And what is there to be afraid of in that ? " enquired Poh Hun Wu Jen. " The truth within not being duly assimilated," replied Lieh Tzu, "a certain brightness is visible externally. And to conquer men's hearts by force of the external is to induce in oneself a disregard for authority and age which is the precursor of trouble. " A restaurant keeper is one who lives by retail- ing soup. When his returns are counted up, his profit is but small, and his influence is next to nothing. But if such a man could act thus, how much more the ruler of a large State ? His bodily powers worn out in the duties of his position, his mental powers exhausted by details of administra- tion, he would entrust me with the government and stimulate me by reward. That is what I was afraid of." ** Your inner lights are good," replied Poh Hun Wu Jen ; " but if you remain stationary at this point, the world will still gather around you." Contrary to Tag. Shortly afterwards Poh Hun Wu Jen went to visit Lieh Tzu, and lo ! his court-yard was filled with boots. Of the visitors come to hear him. These were left outside the door, in accordance with an ancient custom mentioned in the Book of Rites. See p. -^(iZ. Poh Hun Wu Jen stood there awhile, facing the CAP. XXXII.] Lieh Tzu 425 north, his cheek all wrinkled by resting it on his staff. Then, without a word, he departed. Upon this being announced to Lieh Tzu, By the servant whose duty it was to receive guests. he seized his shoes and ran out barefoot. In his hurry. When he reached the outer gate, he called aloud, " Master ! now that you have come, will you not give me medicine?" " It is all over ! " cried Poh Hun Wu Jen. *' I told you that the world would gather around you. It is not that you can make people gather around you. You cannot prevent them from doing so. Of what use would my instruction be ? Exerting influence thus unduly over others, you are by them influenced in turn. You disturb your natural con- stitution, and are of no further account. None of your companions Warn you of this. Their paltry talk Is but poison to a man. They are not awake, not alive to the situation. How should one of these help you ? In the original, these lines rhyme. " The shrewd grow weary, the wise grieve. Those who are without abilities have no ambitions. With full bellies they roam happily about, like drifting boats, not caring whither they are bound." There was a man of the Cheng State, named 426 Chuang Tzii \ Huan. He pursued his studies at a place called Ch'iu-shih. After three years only, he had gra- duated as a Confucianist ; and like a river which fertilises its banks to a distance of nine li, so did his good influence reach into three families. His father's, his mother's, and his wife's. He caused his younger brother to graduate as a Mihist. But inasmuch as in the question of Con- fucianism versus Mihism, The philosophy of Mih Tzu, who taught the doctrine of universal love, etc. See pp. 1 7, 440. the father took the side of the Mihist, at the end of ten years Huan committed suicide. Then the father dreamed that Huan appeared to him and said, " It was I who caused your son to become a Mihist. Why give all the credit to him who is but as the fruit of an autumn pine ? " Various interpretations of this simile are given : none satisfactory. E.g. (i) Like a dry cone. (2) Which another has planted and reared. Verily God does not reward man for what he does, but for what he is. I.e. for the natural, not for the artificial. And it was in this sense that the younger brother was caused to become a Mihist. He was naturally so inclined. Whereas a man who should regard his distinctive abilities as of his own making, without reference to ;ap. XXXII.] Lieh Tzii 427 pis parents, would be like the man of Ch'i who [dug a well and then wanted to keep others away [from it. Forgetting that God put the spring there in the first instance. Hence the saying that the men of to-day are all Huans. Wherefore it follows that men of true virtue are unconscious of its possession. How much more then the man of Tag ? This is what the ancients called escaping the vengeance of God. Which would be incurred by aping his goodness. The true Sage rests in that which gives rest, and not in that which does not give rest. The world rests in that which does not give rest, and not in that which does give rest. The natural and the artificial. Chuang Tzu said, " To know Tag is easy. The difficulty lies in the elimination of speech. To know Tag without speech appertains to the natural. To know Tag with speech appertains to the artificial. The men of old were natural, not artificial. " Chu P'ing Man spent a large patrimony in learning under Chih Li I how to kill dragons. To acquire Tag. There is no record of the persons mentioned. By the end of three years he was perfect, but there was no direction in which he could show his skill. Tag cannot be put into practice. 428 Chuang Tzu ' "The true Sage regards certainties as uncer- tainties ; therefore he is never up in arms. In a state of mental disturbance. Men in general regard uncertainties as u,. ' mties ; therefore they are constantly up in To accustom oneself to arms causes one t( > arms 1 ' "* 11 ?ltP 7\ s on every provocation ; and to trust to aiv.. "^.o perish. " The intelligence of the mean man does not rise beyond bribes and letters of recommendation. His mind is be-clouded with trivialities. Yet he would penetrate the mystery of Tao and of creation, and rise to participation in the One. The result is that he is confounded by time and space ; and that trammelled by objective existences, he fails to reach apprehension of that age before anything was. " But the perfect man, — he carries his mind back to the period before the beginning. Content to rest in the oblivion of nowhere, passing away like flowing water, he is merged in the clear depths of the infinite. " Alas ! man's knowledge reaches to the hair on a hair, but not to eternal peace." I A man of the Sung State, named Ts'ao Shang, acted as political agent for the prince of Sung at the court of the Ch'in State. When he went thither, he had a few carriages ; but the prince of Ch'in was so pleased with him that he added one hundred more. CAP. XXXII.] Lieh Tzii 429 On his return to Sung, he visited Chuang Tzu and said, " As for living in poverty in a dirty- hovel, earning a scanty subsistence by making sandals, with shrivelled face and yellow ears, — this I could not do. Interviewing a powerful ruler, with a retinue of a hundred carriages, — that is my forte." " When the prince of Ch'in is sick," replied Chuang Tzu, "and he summons his physician to open a boil or cleanse an ulcer, the latter gets one carriage. The man who licks his piles gets five. The more degrading the work, the greater the number of carriages given. You, Sir, must have been attending to his piles to get so many car- riages. Begone with you I " "Not," says Lin Hsi Chung, "from the pen of Chuang Tzu." Duke Ai of Lu asked Yen Ho, saying, " Were I to make Confucius a pillar of my realm, would the State be profited thereby ? " " It would be most perilous ! " replied Yen Ho. " Confucius is a man of outward show and of specious words. He mistakes the branch for the root. Accessories for fundamentals. He seeks to impress the people by an overbearing demeanour, the hollowness of which he does not perceive. If he suits you, and you entrust him 430 Chit an g Tzit with the welfare of the State, it will only be by mistake that he will succeed. This passage is variously interpreted. " To cause the people to leave the true and study' the false does not so much affect the people of to-day as those of coming generations. Wherefore i it is better not to have Confucius. | " The difficulty of governing lies in the inability to practise self-effacement. Man does not govern as God does. Regardless of self. " Merchants and traders are altogether out of the pale. Of Tao. Or if chance ever brings them within it, their rights are never freely admitted. " External punishments are inflicted by metal and wood. Internal punishments are inflicted by anxiety and remorse. Fools who incur external punishment are treated with metal or wood. Those who incur internal punishment are devoured by the conflict of emotions. It is only the pure and perfect man who can succeed in avoiding both." Confucius said, " The heart of man is more dan- gerous than mountains and rivers, more difficult to understand than Heaven itself. Heaven has its periods of spring, summer, autumn, winter, day- CAP. XXXII. J Lieh Tzu 431 time and night. Man has an impenetrable exterior, and his motives are inscrutable. Thus some men appear to be retiring when they are really forward. Others have abilities, yet appear to be worthless. Others are compliant, yet gain their ends. Others take a firm stand, yet yield the point. Others go slow, yet advance quickly. " Those who fly to duty towards their neighbour as though thirsting after it, drop it as though something hot. Thus the loyalty of the superior man is tested by employing him at a distance, his respectfulness by employing him near at hand. His ability, by troublesome missions. His know- ledge, by unexpected questions. His trustworthi- ness, by specification of time limits. His integrity by entrusting him with money. His fidelity, by dangerous tasks. His decorum, by filling him with wine. His morality, by placing him in dis- reputable surroundings. Under the application of these nine tests, the inferior man stands revealed. " Cheng K'ao Fu, on receiving his first appoint- ment, bowed his head. On receiving his second appointment, he hunched his back. On receiving his third appointment, he fell upon his face, walk- ing away at the side of the path. Instead of in the middle as any blustering braggart would have done. Who would not try to be like him ? " Yet ordinary men, on their first appointment, become self-important. On their second, they give 432 CJiuang Tzii themselves airs in their chariots. On their third, they call their own fathers by their personal names. As we should say, " by their Christian names." The term " fathers " includes uncles. Which of them can be compared with Ilsii Yu of old? " There is nothing more fatal than intentional virtue, when the mind looks outwards. Spontaneity is the essence of real virtue. For by thus looking outwards, the power of intro- spection is destroyed. " There are five sources of injury to virtue. Eyes, nose, mouth, ears, and thought. Of these, that which aims at virtue is the chief What is it to aim at virtue ? Why a man who aims at virtue practises what he approves and condemns what he does not practise. Compounds for sins he feels inclined to By damning those he has no mind to. " There are eight causes of failure, three certain elements of success. There are six sources of strength and weakness. " Beauty, a long beard, size, height, robustness, grace, courage, daring, — these eight, in which men surpass their fellows, are therefore passports to failure. " Modesty, compliance, humility, — these three are sure roads to success. CAP. xxxii.] Lieli Tzii 433 " Wisdom manifests itself in the external. Whereby the internal suffers. Courage makes itself many enemies. Charity and duty towards one's neighbour incur many re- proaches. Three sources of weakness. " To him who can penetrate the mystery of life, all things are revealed. He who can estimate wisdom at its true value, Sc. at nothingr. is wise. He who comprehends the Greater Destiny, becomes himself part of it. Of the great scheme of the universe, seen and unseen. He who comprehends the Lesser Destiny, resigns himself to the inevitable." Referring to life as ordinarily regarded by mortals. Three sources of strength. A man who had been to see the prince of Sung and had been presented with ten chariots, was putting on airs in the presence of Chuang Tzu. " At Ho-Shang," said the latter, " there was a poor man who supported his family by plaiting rushes. One day his son dived into the river and got a pearl worth a thousand ounces of silver. The father bade him fetch a stone and smash it to pieces, explaining that he could only have got such a pearl very deep down from under the nose of the dragon, which must have been asleep. And he 2 F 434 Chuang Tzit | said he was afraid that when the dragon waked, the boy would have a poor chance. If found with it in his possession, " Now the State of Sung is deeper than a deep river, and the prince of Sung is fiercer than a dragon. To get these chariots, you must have caught him asleep. And when he wakes, you will be ground to powder." Some prince having invited Chuang Tzu to enter his service, Chuang Tzu said in reply to the envoy, " Sir, have you ever noticed a sacrificial ox? It is bedecked with ribbons and fares sumptuously. But when it comes to be slaughtered for the temple, would it not gladly exchange places with some neglected calf?" Quoted, with variants, by the historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien, in his biographical notice of Chuang Tzu. See Introduction. When Chuang Tzu was about to die, his dis- ciples expressed a wish to give him a splendid funeral. But Chuang Tzu said, *' With Heaven and Earth for my coffin and shell ; with the sun, moon, and stars as my burial regalia ; and with all creation to escort me to the grave, — are not my funeral paraphernalia ready to hand ? " And had he not hio^h honour } — The hillside for his pall ; To lie in state while angels wait With stars for tapers tall ; CAP. XXXII.] Lieh Tzu 435 And the dark rock pines like nodding plumes Above his bier to wave, And God's own hand in that lonely land To lay him in the grave. The Burial of Moses (Mrs. Alexander). " We fear," argued the disciples, " lest the car- rion kite should eat the body of our Master"; to which Chuang Tzu replied, '* Above ground I shall be food for kites ; below I shall be food for mole-crickets and ants. Why rob one to feed the other? With this may be compared the reply of Diogenes on a similar occasion. When the old cynic asked to be left unburied, his friends objected that he would be eaten by dogs and birds. " Place my staff near me," said Diogenes, " that I may drive them away." " How will you manage that .'*" enquired the friends. " You will not be conscious." " What then will it matter to me to be torn by beasts," cried Diogenes, "if I am not conscious of it .? " " If you adopt, as absolute, a standard of even- ness which is so only relatively, your results will not be absolutely even. If you adopt, as absolute, a criterion of right which is so only relatively, your results will not be absolutely right. Those who trust to their senses become slaves to objective existences. Those alone who are guided by their intuitions find the true standard. So far are the senses less reliable than the intuitions. Yet fools 2 F 2 436 CJmang Tzil trust to their senses to know what is good for mankind, with alas ! but external results." As the genuine text of the Spring and Autumn ends with the appearance of the citi lin (or kilin) and the death of Confucius, so have disciples of Chuang Tzii agreed that the genuine text of Chuang Tzu comes to a fitting close at the death-bed of their great Master. The final chapter is but a summary of the whole, compiled by the early editors of the work. 437 CHAPTER XXXIII. The Empire. [Summary by early editors.] SYSTEMS of government are many. Each man thinks his own perfect. Where then does what the ancients called the system of Tag come in ? There is nowhere where it does not come in. It may be asked whence our spirituality, whence our intellectuality. The true Sage is born ; the prince is made. Yet all proceed from an original One. He who does not separate from the Source is one with God. He who does not separate from the essence is a spiritual man. He who does not separate from the reality is a perfect man. He who makes God the source, and Te the root, and Tag the portal, passively falling in with the modifica- tions of his environment, — he is the true Sage. These are but four different denominations of the ideal man. He who practises charity as a kindness, duty to one's neighbour as a principle, ceremony as a con- venience, music as a pacificator, and thus becomes } 438 CJmang Tzu compassionate and charitable, — he is a superior man. We sink here to a lower level, though still a higfh one. The " superior man " is the ideal man of Confucian ethics. In him divinity finds no place. He who regulates his conduct by law, who re- gards fame as an external adjunct, who verifies his hypotheses, who bases his judgment upon proof, — such men rank one, two, three, four, etc. It is thus that officials rank. In a strict sense of duty, in making food and raiment of paramount importance, in caring for and nourishing the old, the weak, the orphan, and the widow, they all exemplify the principle of true government. Partly, if not wholly. This the dead level of ordi- nary mortality, still within the operation of Tao. Thus far-reaching was the extension of Tao among the ancients. The companion of the gods, the purifier of the universe, it nourishes all creation, it unites the empire, it benefits the masses. Illuminating the fundamental, it is bound up with the accessory, reaching to all points of the compass and to the opposite extremes of magnitude. There is indeed nowhere where it is not ! How it enlightened the polity of past ages is evidenced in the records which historians have preserved to us. Its presence in the Canons of Poetry, History, Rites, and Music, has been made clear by many scholars of Chou and Lu. It in- CAP. XXXIII.] The Empire 439 forms the Canon of Poetry with its vigour, the Canon of History with its usefulness, the Canon of Rites with its adaptability, the Canon of Music with its harmonising influence, the Canon of Changes with its mysterious Principles, and the Spring and Autumn with its discriminations. Spread over the whole world, it is focussed in the Middle Kingdom, and the learning of all schools renders constant homage to its power. But when the world is disorganised, true Sages do not manifest themselves, Tao ceases to exist as One, and the world becomes cognisant of the idio- ^ syncrasies of the individual. These are like the senses of hearing, sight, smell, and taste, — not common to each organ. Or like the skill of various artisans, — each excellent of its kind and each useful in its turn, but not equally at the command of all. Consequently, when a mere specialist comes for- ward and dogmatises on the beauty of the universe the principles which underlie all creation, the posi- tion occupied by the ancients in reference to the beauty of the universe, and the limits of the super- natural,— it follows that the Tao of inner wisdom and of outer strength is obscured and prevented from asserting itself Every one alas ! regards the course he prefers as the infallible course. The various schools diverge never to meet again ; and posterity is debarred from viewing the original purity of the universe and the grandeur of the ancients. For the system of Tao is scattered in fragments over the face of the earth. 440 Chuang Tzu Not to covet posthumous fame, nor to aim at dazzling the world, nor to pose as a benefactor of mankind, but to be a strict self-disciplinarian while lenient to the faults of others, — herein lay the Tao of the ancients. Mih Tzu and Ch'in Hua Li A disciple of Mih Tzu. became enthusiastic followers of Tao, but they pushed the system too far, carrying their practice to excess. The former wrote an essay Against Music, and another which he entitled Economy. To be found in the collection which passes under the name of Mih Tzu. There was to be no singing in life, no mourning after death. He taught universal love and benefi- cence towards one's fellow men, without contentions, without censure of others. He loved learning, but not in order to become different from others. Yet his views were not those of the ancient Sages, whose music and rites he set aside. The Yellow Emperor gave us the Hsien-cliih. Yao gave us the Ta-chang. Shun, the Ta-shao. Yii, the Ta-hsia. T'ang, the Ta-hu. Wen Wang, the Fi-yu7ig. Wu Wang and Chou Kung added the Wu. Famous musical compositions. The mourning ceremonial of old was according to the estate of each, and determined in proportion to rank. Thus, the body of the Son of Heaven J CAP. XXXIII.] The Empire 441 was enclosed in a seven-fold coffin. That of a feudal prince, in a five-fold coffin. That of a minister, in a three-fold coffin. That of a private individual, in a two-fold coffin. But now Mih Tzu would have no singing in life, no mourning after death, and a single coffin of only three inches in thickness as the rule for all alike ! Such doctrines do not illustrate his theory of universal love; They betray a want of sympathy with human weak- nesses. neither does his practice of them establish the fact of his own personal self-respect. They may not suffice to destroy his system altogether ; though it is unreasonable to prohibit singing, and weeping, and rejoicing in due season. He would have men toil through life and hold death in contempt. But this teaching is altogether too unattractive. It would land mankind in sorrow and lamentation. It would be next to impossible as a practical system, and cannot, I fear, be re- garded as the Tao of the true Sage. It would be diametrically opposed to human passions, and as such would not be tolerated by the world. Mih Tzu himself might be able to carry it out ; but not the rest of the world. And when one separates from the rest of the world, his chances of develop- ing an ideal State become small indeed. Mih Tzu argued in favour of his system as follows : — Of old, the great Yu drained off the 442 Chiiang Tzil flood of waters, and caused rivers and streams to flow through the nine divisions of the empire and the parts adjacent thereto, — three hundred great rivers, three thousand branches, and streams with- out number. With his own hands he plied the bucket and dredger, in order to reduce confusion to uniformity. Make all streams flow to the sea. until his calves and shins had no hair left upon them. The wind bathed him, the rain combed him ; but he marked out the nations of the world, and was in very truth a Sage. And because he thus sacrificed himself to the commonwealth, ages of Mihists to come would also wear short serge jackets and straw sandals, and toil day and night without stopping, making self-mortification their end and aim, and say to themselves, " If we cannot do this, we do not follow the Tao of Yii, and are unworthy to be called Mihists." The disciples of Hsiang Li Ch'in, A professor of Mihism. the followers of the five princes, Mihists of the south, such as K'u Huo, Chi Ch'ih, and Teng Ling, — all these studied the canon of Mih Tzu, but their disagreements and agreements were not identical. They called each other schismatics, and quarrelled over the " hard and white," the '' like and unlike," and argued over questions of " odd and even." Chii Tzu was their Sage, and they wanted to canonise him as a saint, that they might CAP. XXXIII.] The Empire 443 carry on his doctrines into after ages. Even now these differences are not settled. Thus we see that Mih Tzu and Ch'in Hua Li, while right in theory, were wrong in practice. They would merely have taught mankind to vie with each other in working the hair off their calves and shins. The evil of that system would have predominated over the good. Nevertheless, Mih Tzu was undoubtedly a well-meaning man. In spite of failure, with all its w^ithering influences, he stuck to his text. He may be called a man of genius. But not a true Sage. Not to be involved in the mundane, not to indulge in the specious, not to be overreaching with the individual, nor antagonistic to the public ; . but to desire the tranquillity of the world in general with a view to the prolongation of life, to seek no more than sufficient for the requirements of oneself and others, and by such a course to purify the heart, — herein lay the Tao of the ancients. Sung Hsing and Yin W^n became enthusiastic followers of Tag. They adopted a cap, shaped like the Hua Mountain, as a badge. They bore them- selves with kindly discrimination towards all things. They spoke of the passive qualities of the heart as though they had been active ; and declared that whosoever could bring joy among mankind and peace within the girdle of ocean should be made ruler over them. They suffered obloquy without noticing the 444 Chiiang Tzii insult. They preserved the people from strife. They prohibited aggression and caused arms to lie unused. They saved their generation from wars, and carried their system over the whole empire, to the delight of the high and to the improvement of the lowly. Though the world would have none of them, yet they struggled on and would not give way. Hence it was said that when high and low became tired of seeing them, they intruded them- selves by force. In spite of all this, they did too much for others, and too little for themselves. " Give us," said they, " but five pints of rice, and it will be enough." The master could not thus eat his fill ; but the disciples, although starving, did not forget the world's claims. This is not satisfactorily explained by any com- mentator. Kuo Hsiang says that these two men regarded the world as their " master." Day and night they toiled on, saying, " Must we necessarily live ? Shall we ape the so-called saviours of mankind ? " " The superior man," they say, " is not a fault- finder. He does not appropriate the credit of others. He looks on one who does no good to the world as a worthless fellow. He regards prohibi- tion of aggressive actions and causing arms to lie unused, as external ; the diminution and restraint of our passions, as internal. In all matters, great or small, subtle or gross, such is the point to which he attains." To be public-spirited and belong to no party, in CAP. XXXIII.] The Einpire 445 one's dealings not to be all for self, to move with- out being bound to a given course, to take things as they come, to have no remorse for the past, no anxiety for the future, to have no partialities, but to be on good terms with all, — herein lay the Tao of the ancients. P eng Meng, T'ien P'ien, and Sh^n Tao, became enthusiastic followers of Tao. Their criterion was the identity of all things. , " The sky," said they, " can cover but cannot support us. The earth can support but cannot cover us. Tao can embrace all things but cannot deal with particulars." They knew that in creation all things had their possibilities and their impossibilities. Therefore they said, " Selection excludes universality. Train- ing will not reach in all directions. But Tag is comprehensive." Consequently, Sh^n Tao discarded all knowledge and self-interest and became a fatalist. It is about as difficult to apprehend Tag apart from fatalism as the omniscience of God apart from pre- destination. Passivity was his guiding principle. " For," said he, " we can only know that we know nothing, and a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. " Take any worthless fellow who laughs at man- kind for holding virtue in esteem, any unprincipled vagabond who reviles the great Sages of the world, and subject him to torture. In his agony he will sacrifice positive and negative alike. If he can but get free, he will trouble no more about knowledge y i/ 44^ C/majig Tzii and forethought. Past and future will cease to exist for him, in his then neutral condition. ** Move when pushed, come when dragged. Be like a whirling gale, like a feather in the wind, like a mill-stone going round. The mill-stone as an existence is perfectly harmless. In motion or at rest it does no more than is required, and cannot therefore incur blame. "Why? Because it is simply an inanimate thing. It has no anxieties about itself. It is never entangled in the trammels of knowledge. In motion or at rest it is always governed by fixed laws, and therefore it never becomes open to praise. Hence it has been said, ' Be as though an inanimate thing, and there will be no use for Sages.' " For a clod cannot be without Tao," — at which some full-blooded young buck covered the argu- ment with ridicule by crying out, " Shen Tao's Tao is not for the living, but for the dead ! " It was the same with T'ien P'ien. He studied sj under P eng Meng ; with the result that he learnt nothing. Tao cannot be learnt. P eng Meng's tutor said, " Those of old who knew Tao, reached the point where positive and negative ceased to exist. That was all." Now the bent of these men is one of opposition, which it is difficult to discuss. They act in every way differently from other people, but cannot escape the imputation of purpose. Which takes the place of spontaneity. CAP. XXXIII.] The Empire 447 What they call Tao is not Tao ; and what they predicate affirmatively cannot escape being negative. The fact is that P'^ng M^ng, T'ien P'ien, and Shen -^ Tao, did not know Tao. Nevertheless they all had a certain acquaintance with it. To make the root the essential, to regard objective existences as accidental, to look upon accumulation . as deficiency, and to meekly accept the disposi- tions of Providence, — herein lay the Tao of the ancients. Kuan Yin and Lao Tzu became enthusiastic followers of Tao. For Kuan Yin, see p. 230. They based their system upon nothingness, with One as their criterion. Their outward expression ^ was gentleness and humility. Their inward belief was in unreality and avoidance of injury to all things. Kuan Yin said, "Adopt no absolute position. Let externals take care of themselves. In motion, ^ be like water. At rest, like a mirror. Receptive, but not permanently so. Respond, like the echo. Only when called upon. Be subtle, as though non-existent. Be still, as though pure. Regard uniformity as peace. Look on gain as loss. Do not precede others. Follow them." Lao Tzii said, " He who conscious of being 44^ Chnang Tzu strong, is content to be weak, — he shall be a cynosure of men. This is quoted by Huai Nan Tzii as a saying by Lao Tzu, and appears in ch. xxviii of the Tao-Te-Ching. See The Remains of Lao Tzii, p. 21. " He who conscious of purity, puts up with dis- grace,— he shall be the cynosure of mankind. " He who when others strive to be first, contents himself with the lowest place, is said to accept the contumely of the world. " He who when others strive for the substantial, contents himself with the unsubstantial, stores up nothing and therefore has abundance. There he is in the midst of his abundance which comes to him without effort on his part. He does nothing, and laughs at the artifices of others. " He who when others strive for happiness is content with security, is said to aim at avoiding evil. Compare the Tao-T^-Ching, ch. xxii. " He who makes depth of fundamental impor- tance and moderation his rule of life, is said to crush that which is hard within him and temper that which is sharp. " To be in liberal sympathy with all creation, and not to be aggressive towards one's fellow-men, — this may be called perfection." O Kuan Yin ! O Lao Tzu ! verily ye were the true Sages of old. Silence, formlessness, change, impermanence, now life, now death, heaven and earth blended in one, CAP. xxxiii.] The Empire 449 the soul departing, gone no one knows where : suddenly, no one knows whither, as all things go in turn, never to come back again ; — herein lay the Tag of the ancients. Chuang Tzu became an enthusiastic follower of Tag. In strange terms, in bold words, in far- reaching language, he gave free play to his thoughts, without following any particular school or committing himself to any particular line. He looked on the world as so sunk in corruption that it was impossible to speak gravely. There- fore he employed "goblet words" which apply in various directions ; he based his statements upon weighty authority in order to inspire confidence ; and he put words in other people's mouths in order to secure breadth. See ch. xxvii ad init. In accord with the spirit of the universe, he was at peace with all creation. He judged not the rights and wrongs of mankind, and thus lived quietly in his generation. Although his book is an extra- ordinary production, it is plausible and harmless enough. Although the style is most irregular, it is at the same time ingenious and attractive. As a thinker, he is endlessly suggestive. Above, he roams with God. Below, he consorts with those who are beyond the pale of life and death, who deny a beginning and an end. In relation to the root, The origin of all things, he speaks on a grand and extensive scale. In rela- tion to Tag, he establishes a harmony between man 2 G ^' 450 Chuang Tzii and the higher powers. Nevertheless, he yields to the modifications of existence and responds to the exigencies of environment. His arguments are inexhaustible, and never illogical. He is far- reaching, mysterious, and not to be fully explored. \ It is impossible for a European critic to believe that Chuang Tzu penned the above paragraphs. See post, p. 454. Hui Tzu was a man of many ideas. His works would fill five carts. But his doctrines are para- doxical, and his terms are used ambiguously. He calls infinite greatness, beyond which there is nothing, the Greater One. He calls infinite smallness, within which there is nothing, the Lesser One. Recognising two absolute extremes. He says that that which is without dimensions measures a thousand //. On the principle that mathematical points, though themselves without dimensions, collectively fill up space. That heaven and earth are equally low. That mountain and marsh are equally level. It depends upon the point of view. That the sun at noon is the sun setting. To people living farther east. That when an animal is born, it dies. As regards its previous state it dies when leaving it for a new state. That the likeness of things partly unlike is called CAP. XXXIII.] The Empire 451 the lesser likeness of unlikes. That the likeness of things altogether unlike is called the greater like- ness of unlikes. That southwards there is no limit, and yet there is a limit. That one can reach Ytieh to-day and yet be there before. That joined rings can be separated. That the middle of the world is north of Yen and south of Yiieh. It Is wherever the speaker is. The space between Yen and Yiieh is as zero compared with the infinite. That he loves all creation equally, just as heaven and earth are impartial to all. In covering and supporting all. Accordingly, Hui Tzu was regarded as a great philosopher and a very subtle dialectician ; and became a favourite with the other dialecticians of the day. He said that there were feathers in an tgg. Because on a chicken. That a fowl had three feet. The third being volition. That Ying was the world. As you cannot say it is not the world. That a dog could be a sheep. That a mare could lay eggs. That a nail has a tail. Names being arbitrary in all cases. That fire is not hot. It is the man who feels It hot. That mountains have mouths. As evidenced by echoes. 2 G 2 452 Chtiang Tzu That wheels do not press down the ground. Touching only at a point. That the eye does not see. It is the man. That the finger does not touch. That the utter- most extreme is not the end. That a tortoise is longer than a snake. Because longer lived ! That a carpenter's square is not square. Like Horace's whetstone which makes other things sharp, " exsors ipsa secandi." That compasses will not make a circle. It is the draughtsman. That a round hole will not surround a square handle. That the shadow of a flying bird does not move. That there is a moment when a swiftly- flying arrow is neither moving nor at rest. That a dog is not a hound. Two things cannot be identical unless even their names are the same. That a bay horse and a dun cow are three. Taken separately they are two. Taken together they are one. One and two make three. That a white dog is black. If his eyes are black. Part standing for the whole. That a motherless colt never had a mother. When it had a mother, it was not an orphan. CAP. XXXIII.] The Empire 453 That if you take a stick a foot long and every day cut it in half, you will never come to the end of it. Compare " Achilles and the Tortoise," and the sophisms of the Greek philosophers. And such was the stuff which dialecticians used to argue about with Hui Tzu, also without ever getting to the end of it. Huan T'uan and Kung Sun Lung were of this class. By specious premisses they imposed on people's minds and drove them into false con- clusions. But though they won the battle in words, they did not carry conviction into their adversaries' hearts. Theirs were but the snares of the sophist. Hui Tzu daily devoted his intelligence to such pursuits, purposely advancing some preposterous thesis upon which to dispute. That was his charac- teristic. He had besides a great opinion of his own wisdom, and used to say, "The universe does not hold my peer." Hui Tzu makes a parade of his strength, but is devoid of any sound system. An eccentric fellow in the south, named Huang Liao, asked why the sky did not fall and the earth sink ; also, whence came wind, rain, and thunder. Hui Tzu was not backward in replying to these questions, which he answered unhesitatingly. He went into a long discussion on all creation, and talked away without end, though to himself he seemed to be saying very little. He supplemented 454 Chuang Tzii this with most extraordinary statements, making it his chief object to contradict others, and being desirous of gaining fame by defeating all comers. Thus, he was never popular. Morally, he was weak ; physically, he was violent. His was a dark and narrow way. Looked at from the point of view of the Tao of the universe, the value of Hui Tzu may be com- pared with the efforts of a mosquito or a gadfly. Of what use was he to the world ? As a specialist, he might have succeeded. But to let him put himself forward as an exponent of Tao, would have been dangerous indeed. He would not however be content to be a specialist. He must needs roam insatiably over all creation, though he only succeeded in securing the reputation of a sophist. Alas for the talents of Hui Tzu ! He is ex- travagantly energetic, and yet has no success. He investigates all creation, but does not conclude in Tag. He makes a noise to drown an echo. He is like a man running a race with his own shadow. Alas! As to the genuineness of this concluding chapter, every one may form his own opinion. The question has been hotly fought, and great names could be mentioned on each side. Wang An Shih and Su Tung P'o both thought that it might well have come from the hand of Chuang Tzii. Lin Hsi Chung thought not, and on his side the majority of Western students will in all probability be ranged. 455 INDEX Accidentals, 162 Achilles and the Tortoise, 453 Action, 5, 266, 293 Affirmative and Negative, 1 7 Aggression, 340 Ai, Duke, 62, 268, 429 Ai Feng, 29 Ai T'ai T'o, 62 All-in-extremes, 276 Alternation theory, 18 Anger, 310 Ants and Mutton, 330 Apricot Altar, 413 Archery, 60, 255, 272, 308, 309, 318 Argument, Futility of, 30 Arms, Appeal to, 162 Arms, Men of, 318 Artificial, The, 147, 175, 210, 232, 309 Augur and the pigs, The Grand, 236 Balancing balls, 233 Bantams, 297 Battered but not Bruised, 80 Battering-ram, 207 Battle, The Six Plans of, 313 Beauty, 182, 260, 337 Bells, Chime of, 250 Bird, The strange, 258 Bishop-wort, 313 Black Forest, The, 413 Black Water, The, 276 Blades from Kan, 193 Boats, 75, 249, 295 Body, The human, 15 ; (without body) 145 Body and soul parted, 12, 324 Bogy, A, 236 Books, 170 Boots, (for the toeless) 63 ; (out- side door) 368, 424 Border- warden. The, 141 Breathing from the heels, 69 Business, 133 Butcher, The faithful, 376 Butterfly, Chuang Tzu a, 32 Canon of Confucianism, 166, 188, 312, 438, 439 Cataract, A, 238 Caterpillars, 297 Cats, 312 ; (wild) 10 Centipede, The, 211 Ceremonial, 89, 108, 121, 133, 162, 195) 277, 318, 440 Chance, 350 Chan Tzu, 380 Ch'ang Chi, 56 Chang Hung, 112 Ch'ang Hung, 352 Chang I, 235 Chang Jo, 316 Chang Wu Tzii, 28 Ch'ang Yii, 316 Chao Hsi, 373 Chao Wen, 22 Chapped hands. Salve for, 9 Charioteering, 241 Charity, 88, 100, loi, 108, 114, 122, 133. 277> 307 Che, Robber, 103, 112, 120, 155, 387 Ch'ens and Ts'ais, 180, 251, 253, 255, 380 Che-yang, The, 154 456 ChitciJig Tzii Ch'eng, 281 Cheng K'ao Fu, 431 Cheng State, The, 59, 94 Ch'i, Mt, 372 Ch'i Kung, 261 Ch'i State, The, 50, 65, no Ch'i-yang, 384 Chi Ch'e, 145, 146 Chi-yung, 331 Chi T'o, 72, 361 ChiTzu (i) 72, 352; (2) 339 Chi Chen, 350 Chi Ch'ih, 442 Chi Chii, 45 Chi Hsing Tzii, 238 Chi Han, Magician, 94 Chiang LU Mien, 145, 146 Chieh, 40, 119, 383 Chieh-keng, 331 Chieh Tzu, 350 Chieh Yii, 7, 55, 92 Chien Ho, 353 Chien Wu, 6, 77, 92, 273 Chih, 206 Ch'ih Chang Man Chi, 152 Ch'ih Chi, 207 Chih-ho, 354 Chih Kung, 401 Ch'ih Yu, 392 Children, 299, 300, 301, 358 Chin, Duke of, 29 Chin State, The, 147 Ch'in Hua Li, 440 Ch'in Lao, 342 Chin-shao, The, 226, 244 Ch'in Shih, 36 Ch'in State, The, 368 Ch'ing, Carpenter, 240 Ch'ing-ning, The, 228 Ching-shih, 53 Ching Shou, The, 33 Ch'iu (Confucius), 145, 189 Chiu Fang Yin, 327 Ch'iu-shih, 426 Chiu-yu, The, 228 Cho-lu, 392 Chou, 40 Chou, River, 383 Chou Kung, 181, 384 Chrysalis, 3 Chu Hsien, 234 Chu Yung, 116 Ch'u State, The, 3 et alt. pass. Chuan Hsii, 77 Chuang, Duke, 241 Chuang Tzii, 9, (and the butterfly) 32; 66, 137, 159, 215, 216, (asked to take office) 217, 434, (and the fishes) 218, (death of wife) 223, (and the skull) 224, (and the geese) 245 ; 254, 258, 268, (and Tao) 285, 318, (at Hui Tzii's grave) 321, (and the stickleback) 353, (and the use- less) 358, (on Confucius) 365 ; 407, 427, (death of) 434, (his genius) 449 Chui, 115, 242 Chun Mang, 150 Chung, 332 Chung Yang, 116 Chii Ch'iao, 28 Chii Liang, 88 Chii Poh Yii, 49, 345 Ch'ii-to, 228 Chii Tzu, 442 Ch'ii Tzu, Mt., 316 Chii Yiian, 50 Cicadas, 2, 258, 306, (catching) 232 Class distinctions, 187 Classification, 168 Clouds and rain, 165, 173 Cocks and dogs, 117, 350 Cock-fighting, 238 Coffins, 53, 441 Cold, Latent, 319 Colossal, The, 204 Colour Sense, The, 99, 108, 115, 121, 155 Common-places, 154 Complacency, 402 Concentration, 34, 240, 300 Conditioned, The, 158 Confucius, 28, 38, 45, 55, 56, (and the leper) 62, 83, (and Lao Tzii) 144, 166, 182, 184, 188, 266, 282 ; 149, 179, 182, 201, (in dan- ger) 213, 251 ; 225, (on concen- tration) 232, 235, (at the cataract) Index 457 238; 253, 255, 263, 272, 274, 282, 290, 291, 325, 338, 341, 346, (and Lao Lai Tzu) 356 ; (changed his opinions) 365; 366, (and Robber Che) 387 ; 429 Conscription, 54 Cooks, 6, 33, 104 Correlatives, 207, 208 Corpse, (boy who impersonates) 6, 97 ; (singing near a) 83 Cunning, 315 Crane's legs. A, loi, 332 Criteria (of our minds), 16, (of Confucius), 166 Dark, Seeing in the, 139 Dark Palace, The, 77 Dark-Steep Mt., The, 276 Death. See Life and Death. Death of Chuang Tzii's wife, 223 Destiny, 46, 64, 74, 90, 143, 189, Determinate relations, 332 Dialecticians, 318 Dimensions, 202 Discontent, 402 Discord and accord, 320 Distance relative, 2 Diversity, 331 Divination, 357 Divine Man, 7, 85, 151, 193, 331, 361 Divine Teacher, The, 317 Do-nothing Say-nothing, 276 Doctrine of Silence, 56 Dogs, (straw) 180, (how to judge of) 312, 327, (why they bark) 350 Dog-tooth violet, 228 Doorkeepers, 320, 329 Doubts, 102, 117, 244, 334 Dove, young, 2, 306 Dragon, Lao Tzu a, 185 Dragons, 214, 263 Dragon-power, 122, 185 Dream, Life a, 30, 86 Dreamless sleep, 82, 192 Dregs of knowledge, 172 Drugs, 299, 331 Drunken man. A, 232 Duck's legs. A, TO I Duckweed, 228 Dust-bin, Spirit of the, 237 Duty, 46, 88, loi, 108, 114, 121, 122, 133, 166, 277, 298, 307, 367, 433 Dying, No advantage in not, 15 Ear, The, 333 Earth, 161, 173, 223 ; (music of) 12 Eel's habitat, The, 27, 295 Ego, Whence the, 14 Emotions, 308 Empyrean, The, 288 Energy, Hu Tzu shows his internal, 96 Enthusiasts, 330 Essentials, 162 Evil speakers, 39 Excalibur, 82, 303 Exhaling and inhaling, 191 Existence and non-existence, 206, 304 External, The, 49, 82, 103, 156, 235, 299. 302, 310, 315 Extremes meet, 115 Eye, The, 211, 333 Fa Yen, The, 47 Failure, Causes of, 432 Fallacia amphibolise, 275 Fame or Reputation, 5, 103 Fan, Prince of, 275 Fang Ming, 316 Fasting, 42, 43, 282 Father praising son, 363 Fen-yang, 8 Feng Meng, 255 Fighting, 207, 315 Fighting-cocks, 238 Filial piety, 153, 175, 186, 361 Finger, 19 Fire eternal, 37 Fire Spirit, The, 237 Fire, Production of, 353 First Cause, 246, 267 Fisherman, 357 Fishes, 114, 174, 185, 295, 296, ll'^^ 354; happiness of, 218 Fish-hawks, 189 Five Bonds, The, 399 458 Chuang Tzu Five Princes, 78 Five Rulers, The, 186, 202 Flattery, 153 Fools, 154 Foot, The, 333 Footprints, 188 Footsteps, Afraid of his, 418 Forgetfulness, 65 Form, 144, 297 Forms and Name, 163 Four Seas, The, 123, 151, 202 Foxes, 247, 295 Friendship, 253 Frog of the Well, 201, 215 Fu Hsi, 45, 77, 116, T96, 274 Fu Yixeh, 78 Fulness and decay, 203, 287 Gain, 103 Gambling, 234 Geese, 297 Gentleness, 123 Glow-worm, 228 Glue, Sticking without, 102 God, I, 15, 31, 68, 82, 163, 257, 282, 301, 2,?)2, Goitre, A large, 65 Golden Age, 116, 152 Golden Roster, 313 Goose, The cackling, 245 Gourd, Five-bushel, 9 Government, (a curse) 92; 107, 114, T19. 123, 130, 132, 146; (by the true Sage) 151 ; 163, 164, 186, 187,317 Grand Augur, The, 236 Grand Tutor, 272 Grave, Opening a, 355 Great Bear, The, 77 Great truths, 154 Great Yii, The, 16, 142, 152, 215, 254 Grief, Real, 85 Han-ch'ih, The, 176 Han-tan, 216, 217 ; (siege of) 113 Han-yin, 147 Happiness, (in inaction) 158, 159, (elements of) 220, 405, (of fishes) 218, (and sorrow) 199, 221 Hard and White, The, 22, 67, 100, 117 He Hsii, 116 Hearing, Sense of, 99, 104, 115, 121, 3ii» 333. 359 Heart, Natural goodness of, 123, (the seat of intellect) 297 Heat, Latent, 319 Heaven, 161, 173, 223 Hermaphrodites, 189 Heron, 366 Ho Hsii, 109 Ho-shang, 434 Horses, 19, 106, 209, 228, 285, 312, 316, 347 Hou I or Yi, 60, 255, 308, 309, 319 House, A, 306 Hsi P'eng, 316, 322 Hsi Shih knits her brows, 182 Hsi Wang Mu, 78 Hsi Wei, 76, 292, 346 Hsi Wei Shih, 359 Hsiang-ch'eng, 316 Hsiang Li Ch'in, 442 Hsiao Chi, 352 Hsiao Poh (Duke Huan), 399 Hsien of the Kung-wens, 35 Hsien-ch'ih, The, 227 Hsien Yiian, 116 Hsin, The, 237 Hsii (butterflies), 228 Hsii-aos, The, 26, 40 Hsii Wu Kuei, 311 Hsii Yu, 6, 87, 140, 329, 361, 382, 404, 432 Hsii Yii Chi T'o, 73, 361 Hu, 98 Hu Pu Hsieh, 72 Hu Tzii, 94 Hua, 141 ; (Mt.) 443 Hua Chi, 316 Hua Lin, 207 Hua Tzii, 339 Huan (Confucianist), 426 Huan of Ch'i, Duke, 65, 170, 236. 322, 399 Huan Tou, 124 Huan T'uan, 453 Huang-chung, 100 Index 459 Huang-hua, The, 154 Huang-k'uang, The, 22S Huang Liao, 453 Huang Ti. See Yellow Emperor Huang Tzu Kao Ngao, 236 Hui, Prince, 33, (of AVei) 338 Hui Tzii, 8, 66, 217, 218, 223, 318, 321, 341, 358> 361, 365. 450 Hunchbacks, 55, 65, 224, 232 Hun Tun, 98 I, Mt., 341 I Chieh, 335 I-erh, The, 251 I Erh Tzu, 87 I Liao, 247, 325, 342 I-lu, 228 I Yin, 309, 383 Immunity of Drunkards, 232 Inaction, 80, 97, 122, 131, 134, 136, 137, 158, 159. 160, 165, 222, 288, 308, 318 Infinite, One with the, 89 Infinitesimal, The, 204 Influences, The Six, 119, 174 Instincts, 107 Intelligence, 139 Internal, The, 49, 122, 156, 235, 299^302, 310, 315 Intrinsicality, 102 Irrigation, 147 Jen, 251 Jen Ch'iu, 290 Jen Hsiang Shih, 337 Jen Kung Tzu, 354 Jih Chung Shih, 92 Joy and sorrow, 293 Kan, Blades from, 193 Kan-yii-ku, 228 Kao, 237 Keng Sang Ch'u, 294 Kings, The Three, 186 Knotted Cords, 116 Knowledge, (Great) 13 ; (of the ancients) 21, 161, 304; (limit to) 302 ; (perfection of) 333 ; (a curse) 115, 118, 125, 129, 298; (from repose) 195 ; (shallowness of) 293; (personified) 276; (of the wherefore) 368 Kou Chien, 332 Ku, Shepherd, 103 K'u Huo, 442 Ku-tu, 384 Ku-chiieh, Mt., 276 Kuan Chung, 226, 236, 322, 399 Kuan Lung Feng, 40, 112, 352 Kuan Yin, 230, 447 K'uang, 213 Kuang Ch'eng Tzu, 125 K'uang Tzu, 401 Kuei, 206 K'uei, The, 237 Kueis, The, 26 Kuei-ch'i, 332 Kuei Chi, 354 K'un, 327 K'un Hun, 316 K'un-lun Mountains, 139, 224, 289 Kung Ch'ui the artisan, 115, 242 Kung Poh, 382 K'ung-t'ung, 126 Kung Sun Lung, 214, 319, 453 Kung Tzu Mou, 215 Kung Yiieh Hsiu, 335 Kuo, men of, 253 Laggards, Whipping up the, 234 Language, The best, 293 Lao Lai Tzij, 356 Lao Lung Chi, 287 Lao Tzu (and No-toes), 61 ; 93, 123, 137, 142 ; (and Confucius) 144, 166; 168, 169, 182, 184, 266, 282 ; (and Keng Sang Ch'u) 294 ; (and Nan Yung), 298 ; (and Poh Chii) 343 ; (and Yang Tzu Chu) 368 ; (death of) 36 Law, The, 133, 162 ; (men of), 318 Laws of Nature, 135 Lei T'ing, 237 Leopard, The, 228, 247 Leper, A, 62 Leviathan, The, i, 3 Li, 237 Li to a mile, Three, 2 460 Chuang Tzu Li Chi, 27, 29 Li Chu, 104, 115 Li Hsii, 116 Li Lu, 116 Li tree, Sacred, 50 Liang, City of, 341 Liang State, The, 218 Liao, River, 93 Liberty, 36, 37 Lichen, 228 Lieh Tzu (his supernatural power) 4, (and the magician) 94, (and the skull) 227, (and the perfect man) 230, (and archery) 272, (declines food) 375 ; 423 Lien Shu, 6 Life (art of) 234; (and death) 203, 229, 291, 305 ; (a tumour) 84 ; (transitory) 209, 285 Light (personified) 289, (of Nature) Likes and dislikes, 155, 156, 366 Like and the Unlike, The, 100, 117 Lin Chii, 259 Lin Hsia Chi, 387 Lin Hui, 253 Ling of Chou, Prince, 112 Ling of Wei, Prince, 49, 65, 250, 346 Lo Book, The, 174 Long life, 141 Love for the people, 314, 329 Lu Chii, 319 Lu State, The, 56, 113, 145, et ait. pass. Lu T'ung, 7 Lun Yii, The, 382 Lung Feng, 40, 112, 352 Lutes, The two, 319 Lii-liang, Cataract at, 238 Magic Circle, The, 400 Man (not a free agent) 145, (origin of) 228, (pre-eminent) 231 Mang-ts'ang, 2 Mankind, 133 Man Kou Te, 397 Mantis, The praying, 49, 258 Mao Ch'iang, 27 Map-making, 270 Matter, 133 Measures, 114, 115 Mechanical, The, 147 Men Wu Kuei, 152 Men Yin Teng Heng, 338 Meng Sun Ts'ai, 85 Meng Tzii Fan, 83 Mental criteria, 16 Mental equilibrium, 160 Metempsychosis, 32 Methusaleh, A Chinese, 3 Miao-ku-she Mountain, 7, 8 Middle Kingdom, The, 202, 262, 269, 284 Mih Tzu, 17, 100, 116, 155, 292; (his works and doctrines) 440 Min Tzu, 65 Mind, The, (without body) 145, 211, 264, 333 ; (function of) 97, 360 Minister of War, 290 Mirror, The mind a, 97, (mankind a) 337 Modification, Physical and moral, 292 Monkeys, 20, 27,145, 181, 255, 323 Monkey Mountain, The, 323 Moon, The, 29, 165, 173 Moses, Burial of, 435 Mosquitoes, 184, 366 Motes in sunbeam, i Mother-in-law and wife, 360 Mou of Chung-shan, Prince, 380 Mou of Wei, 214 Mou-jui, The, 228 Mourning, 162, 186 Mu of Ch'in, Duke, 309 Mud spirit. The, 237 Muh Wang, 207 Mulberry Grove, The, 33 Murder, Origin of, 296 Music and Ceremonial, 89, 100, 108, 115, 155, 162, 177, 195,318, 440 Music of Heaven, 12, 13, 178 Mutilation, 35, 56, 59, 61, 320, 329 Mutton and Ants, 330 Names, 163 Nameless, The, 143 Index 461 Nan Po Tzu K'uei, 78 Nan-yiieh, 248 Nan Yung Ch'u, 296 Nature, 189, 303 ; (habit second) 239 Natural, The, 102, 131, 144, 175, 210, 232, 309 Necessity, 310 Negative, Positive and, 120, 127, 266, 349 Negative quantity, The Sage a, 192 Neglect better than care, 74 Nest-builders, The, 391 Nincompoops, 330 Nightmare, 180 No-beginning, 288 No-Toes, 61 Non-existence, Domain of, 1 1 Nose, Scab on the, 321 Nothing, (as an existence) 23 ; (its success) 139, 143, 289 Nil Shang, 311 Nil Yii, 78 O Ho Kan, 287 Objective, The, 17, 18, 145 Obstinacy, 360 Office, Value of, 198, 434 Officials, 221 ONE, All things, 23, 73, 89, 128, 136, 143' 250, 278, 281, 303, 333, 336 ; (the Greater and Lesser) 450 One-legged men, 224, 309 Owl's sight. An, 207, 332 P'ang Huan, 237 Pao Chiao, 394, 401 Pao Yii, 322 Parasites, 330 Passions, 66, 311 Passivity, 97, 138, 165, 192, 266 Patriots, 208, 221 Peace, Men of, 318 Pearl in corpse's mouth, 355 Pecks and bushels, 114 P'ei, 368 Pei I, 140 Pei Jen Wu Tse, 382 Pei Kung She, 250 Pei Men Ch'eng, 176 P'ei O, 237 P'eng Meng, 445 P'eng Tsu, 3, 78 Penumbra and Umbra, 32, 367 Perfect ambition, honour, &c., 176 Perfect Man, The, 27, 97, 146, 151, 169, 183, 210, 231, 295, 301, 359 Perfect music, 177 Personality, Man's, 87 Physical life, 230 P'il, 281 Pi Kan, 40, 112, 352, 395 Piao Shih, 255 Pien Ch'ing Tzii, 242 Pien Sui, 383 Pigs, 236, 286, 330 Pin, 371 Ping, 319 P'ing I, 77 Plains, Slopes and, 208 Ploughing, 342 Po Li Ch'i, 270, 309 Poh Ch'ang Ch'ien, 346 Poh Ch'eng Tzii Kao, 142 Poh Chii, 343 Poh Huang, 116 Poh Hun Wu Jen, 59, 272, 423 Poh I, 72, 103, 201, 384, 394 Poh Kung, 207 Poh Loh, 106 Politeness, Perfect, 307 Portal of God, 304 Positive and Negative, 120, 127 205, 266, 349 Precedence, 162 Predestination, 350 Predicables, Eight, 24 Prometheus, A Chinese, 196 Provident, The, 392 P'u I Tzii, 91 Pu Liang I, 79 Punishments, 124, 162 Pure Man, The, 69, 72, (a) 313 Purity, Absolute, 127 Purpose, Discard, 307 Quail, 4 462 Chiiang Tzu Rain, 165, 173 Rarey, A Chinese, 106 Rat's liver, 82 Raven, Blackness of, 185 Record of Marvels, The, i, 4 Red Lake, The, 139 Relations determinate, &c., 332 Relativity, (of Distance) 2, (of Time) 3 Repose, 127, 157, 158, 195 Reputation, 5, 360 Retired scholars, 197 Rewards and Punishments, 162 Rhinoceros, 214 Rice-pudding, Grains in a, 296 Riches, 141 Right and Wrong, 244, 306, 345, 366 Rings, Joined, 45 1 River God, 53, 200, 357 Rivers perennial, 332 Robber Che, 103, 112, 120, 155, 387 Robbers v. Sages, 113 Robbery, Origin of, 296 Round Squareness, 25 Rukh, The, i, 3 Rule of life, 84 Ruler, The Wise, 161 Rulers (of old) 344, (the Five) 186 Rustic, The sick, 299 Sacrifices, 6, 53, 305 Sacrificial caps, 8 Sage, The True, 146, 192, 326, 336 Sages a curse, 108, 1T3, 117, 125 Salve for chapped hands, 9 San Ching, 377 San-miao, 124 San-wei, 124 Sang Hu, 83, 253, 254 Scales and Steelyards, 114 Schemes, 317, 360 Scholars' robes, 269 Sciolist, The, 164 Sea-bird, Arrival of a, 226, 244 Sea-serpents, 214 Seasons, The, 162, 165, 348 Secret of existence, 280 Self, 5, 145 Senses, The, 20, 99, 100, 155, 311, 343 . Sha-ch'iu, 346 Shadow, Afraid of his, 418 Shadow, Man and his, 332 San Chiian, 371, 404 Shan Pao, 235 Shang Mountain, 52 Shang-shen Rapid, The, 233 Shao Chih, 347 Shao Kuang, 78 She, Duke of, 45 Shen Nung, 116, 196, 226, 246, 287, 385 Shen T'u Chia, 59 Shen T'u Ti, 72, 394 Shen Yao, 443 Shih Ch'eng Chi, 168 Shih Chin, 179 Shih Ch'iu, 346 Shih-hu, 371 Shih K'uang, 22, 100, 104, 115 Shih-ling, 331 Shih-nan, 247, 325, 342 Shih Yii, 100, 116, 120, 155 Shou (Prince of Yiieh), 373 Shou-ling, The youth of, 216 Shou-yang, Mt, 103, 385 Shu, 98, 352 Shu Ch'i, 72, 384, 394 Shu Shan No-toes, 61 Shu Tan (Chou Kung), 384 Shun, The Emperor, 5 et alt. pass. Sight, Sense of, (its failure) 139 ; 311,359 Silence, Doctrine of, 56, 293, 325 Sincerity, Cultivation of, 316 Singing alongside a corpse, 83 Six Influences, The, 129, 174 Six Ranks, The, 399 Skull (Chuang Tzii and the) 224; (Lieh Tzu and the) 227 Sky, The, 173 Slopes and plains, 208 Smell, Sense of, 155, 360 Snake, The (moves without legs' 211 ; (its shoulders) 82 Snail, The, 340 Snow-goose, Whiteness of, 185 Society, 347 Index 463 Sons, 141 Soot, Life as mere, 305 Sophistry, 117; (of Hui Tzu) 45 1 Sorrow, 199, 221, 293 Soul, The, 14, 37, 57 Soyer, A Chinese, 104 Space, 202, 304, 340 Speech, (Great) 13 ; (not mere breath) 16, 17, 22; (a surplus) 23 ; (like wind to wave) 47 ; (failure of) 139; (no room for) 264 Spirit of the Clouds, 129 „ ,, Ocean, 200 „ „ River, 200 "Spring and Autumn," 24 Square and Compasses, loi, 263 Ssu-mi, The, 228 Standard of right, 306 Standards must be absolute, 436 Stars, The, 167 Stealing purses, 114; (States) 114 Stickleback, Chuang Tzu and the, 353 Stoat, The, 313 Stone-mason's skill, A, 321 Straight-browed people. The, 150 Straw dog, The, 179 Strength of no avail, 139 Stupidity, 360 Su, Hunchback, 55 Subjective, The, 17, 18, 305, 306, 364 Success, Causes of, 432 Sui Jen, 196, 226 Summum bonum. The, 155 Sun and Moon, 29, 165, 167, 173, 243 Sun Hsiu, 242 Sun Hsiu Ao, 273, 325 Sung Hsing, 443 Sung State, The, 8, 9, 53 Supreme Void, The, 289 Swallow, Wisdom of the, 257 Swords, Forging, 290; (the Three), 410 Ta-lii, 100 Ta T'ao, 346 Ta T'ing, 116 T'ai, Mt., 3, 77, 103 Tai Chin Jen, 340 T'ai Huang, 91 T'ai Kung Tiao, 347 T'ai Wang Shan Fu, 371 Talkers, 327 Tan-hsiieh, 373 T'ang, The Emperor, 3, 207, 215, 292, 309. 361, 383 Tag, 16; (axis of ) 18, 24; (perfect) 25; (gives form) 75, 76, 79; (man born in) 85 ; (in everything) 112; (in abstraction) 127; (of God and man) 134, 135, 137, 138, 157, 163, 167; (capacity of) 169, 182, 197 ; (eternal) 209 ; (how to reach) 277, 281 ; (is everywhere) 285, 288, 303, 316 (and Te) 326 ; (functions of) 438 ; (and fatalism) 446 T'ai Hsi Ching, The, 70 Tao-Te-Ching, The, 19, 34, 56, 71, III, 115, i22,'i25, 136, 143, 170, 172, 179, 205, 231, 243, 275, 277, 278) 30O) 369> 448 Tapir, The, 6 Taste, Sense of, 155 Te (see Virtue), 45 Teeth cold, 113 Tell, A Chinese, 60, 255 Teng Ling, 442 Thieves, no, 169 Thieving, Art of, 112 Things, 231 Thoroughness, 342 Thought, 170 Three in the Morning, 20 Three Dynasties, loi, 118, 120 Three Princes, 124, 132, 186, 202 Tiao-ling, 258 T'ien Ch'eng Tzu, or T'ien Ho III, 324 T'ien K'ai Chih, 234 T'ien Ken, 93 T'ien P'ien, 443 Tigers, 174, 214, 263 Time, 189, 202, 291, 304 Tit, The, 6 Toes, 305, 306 Tongue, A three-foot, 326 464 CJmang Tzii Topsy-turvydom, 199 Tortoise, 3, 357 ; (ChuangTzu and the) 217 Translation (as of Enoch), 230 Travelling, 180 Trees Useless, 10, 51, 52, 245 Tripe, 305 Tsang, Old man of, 271 Tsang, Shepherd, 103 Ts'ang-wu, 354 Ts'ao Shang, 428 Tse Yang, 335 Tseng Shen, 100, 116, 120, 155, 352, 366 Tseng Tzu, 378 Ts'ui Chii, 123 Tsun Lu, 116 Tsung, Mt., 124 Tsungs, The, 26 Ts'ung-chih, 40 Tung Kuo Shun Tzu, 261 Tung Kuo Tzu, 285 Tung Kuo Tzu Chi, 366 Tung-t'ing, 176, 227 Tung Yeh Chi, 241 Turtle of eastern sea, 215,296, 335 Tzu Ch'an, 59 Tzu Chang, 397 Tzii Ch'i, 12, 52, 324, 327 Tzu Ch'in Chang, 83 Tzu Chou Chih Fu, 370 Tzu Chou Chih Poh, 370 Tzii Hsii or Wu Yiian, 112, 221, 352, 401 Tzu Hua Tzii, 373 Tzu Kao, 45 Tzu Kung, 83, 147, 185, 225, 378, 381, 388, 413 Tzti Lai, 81 Tzu Lao, 342 Tzu Li, 81 Tzii Lu, 165, 231, 263, 342, 381 ; (death of) 393 ; 413 Tzu Sang, 90 Tzu Sang Hu, 83, 253, 254 Tzii Ssu, 80 Tzii Yang of Cheng, 375 Tzu Yii, 80, 90 Ugliness, 260 Umbra and Penumbra, 32, 367 Uncanny events, 328 Unconditioned, The, 158, 209, 307 Uniformity (of results), 186, 132, 227, 331 Universe, The, 19, 29, 161, 167, 279, 290 Universal Love, 167 Untrodden ground, 333 Useful and Useless, The, 11, 306, 358 Usurpers, 208 Valetudinarianism, 191 Vengeance not extended against things, 232 Violence, 340 Virtue (Te), 45, 133, 143, 151, 176, 185, 252, 277, 308, 326, 360 Virtue, Man of Perfect, 210 Vision (Eye and) ^t^t^ ; (perfection of) 104, 139 Vital Principle, The, 129 Wa Lung, 237 Walrus, The, 211 Wang Hsiang, 237 Wang I, 26, 91, 140 Wang Kuo, 335 Wang T'ai, 56 Wang Tzu, 395 Wang Tzu Ch'ing Chi, 250 ^'ar, 315, 318 Wasps, 297 Water, (Fluidity of) 268; (to men and fishes) 227 Water-level, The, 64, 157 Wealth, 221 ; (value of) 403 ; (evil of) 405 Weasel, The, 313 Weeding plants, 360 Weeping, 162 ; (without snivelling) 85 Wei, Prince of, 9, 38, 254, 338 Wei, Prince Wu of, 311 Wei, The State of, 38, 49 Wei of Ch'i, Prince, 338 Wei of Chou, Duke, 234 Wei I, The, 237 Wei-lei Mountains, 294 Index 465 Wei Sheng, 395, 401 Weights and measures a curse, 114 Well-sweep, A, 147, 181 Wen of Wei, Prince, 261 Wen Chung, 332 Wen Po Hsiieh Tzii, 262 Wen Wang, 273 Wen Wang of Chao, 407 Wheel of Existence, The, 228 Wheelwright, The, 1 7 i Whole made up of parts, 347 Wife, Mother-in-law and, 360 Wigs, 152 Wind, 173, 211, 332 Wine, Thin, 113 Winnowing, Chaff from, 184 Wisdom a curse, 115, 121, 125, 188 Wisdom-tricks, 1 1 1 Without-end, 288 Wolves, 174 Words, 170, 171 Wu, Prince of, 9, 323 Wu Chuang, 88 Wu Ch'un, Hunchback, 65 Wu Han Chao, 173 Wu Kuang, 72, 361, 383 Wu Lai, 352 W^u Ting, 78 Wu-tsu, 228 Wu Tzu Hsii, 395 Wu Wang, 152, 207, 292, 384 Wu Yoh, 400 Wu Yiian, 112, 221, 352, 401 Yak, The, 10 Yang-ch'i, The, 228 Yang Chu, 100, 116, 155, 259, 318 Yang Hu, 214 Yang Tzu Chii, 93, 368, 369 Yao, The Emperor, 5, et alt. pass. Yeh Ch'iieh, 26, 91, 140, 281, 329 Yellow Emperor, The, 28, 77, 123, 125, 139, 176, 196, 224, 246, 27^, 277» 292, 316 Yellow Spring, The, 358 Yen Gate, The, 361 Yen State, The, 329 Yen Ch'eng Tzu Yu, 12, 324, 366, 441 Yench'i, 410 Yen Ho, 48, 241, 374, 429 Yen Hui or Yen Yiian, 38, 85, 179, 225, 233, 256, 264, 272, 291, 379. 381, 388 Yen Kang Tiao, 287 Yen Pu I, 324 Yi, 60, 255, 308, 309, 319 Yi Yang, 237 Yin, Mountain, 93 Yin and Yang, The, 82, 120, 126, 177, 192, 201, 280 Yin-li, 394 Yin Wen, 443 Ying, 451 Ying, A man of, 321 Ying-yang, 382 Yii, The Great, 16, 142, 152, 215, 254 Yu Ch'iang, 78 Yii Ch'ieh, 357 Yii Erh, 104 Yu-hu, 40 Yu island, 124 Yu Piao, 179 Yiian of Sung, Prince, 270, 321 Yiian Feng, 150 Yiian Hsien, 378 Yiieh State, The, 8, 9, 16, 313, 451 Yung Ch'eng, 116 Yung Ch'eng Shih, 338 Yung, The philosopher, 4 2 H 466 ERRA TA AND ADDENDA Page I, line 3 (from bottom), insert comma after " sunbeam." „ 49, line 2, Prince Ling is the same individual as the Duke Ling of pp. 65, 250, 346. [All such terms are, of course, arbitrary, being used merely as convenient equivalents of the Chinese titles in the text.] 60, „ 13, For " Hou I " read " Hou Yi." [This for the sake of uniformity. &<? pp. 255, 308, &c.] „ 65, ,, 16, For "too short" read "too scraggy." ,, 65, „ 20, For "too thin" read "too scraggy." 72, „ 4, For " Chi Tzii Hsii Yii " read " Chi Tzu, Hsii Yii.' ,, 170, ,, 3 (from bottom), After "Duke Huan." omit the full stop. „ 228, ,,14, For "glow-worm " read " fire-fly." ,, 230, ,, 22, For " to the minister" read "to be the minister," „ 262, „ 22, For "Wen Po" read "Wen Poh." „ 270, „ 6, For " Po Li Ch'i " read " Poh Li Ch'i." ,, 272, ,, 3 (from bottom), For " Po Hun " read " Poh Hun." „ 309, „ 12 For "Duke Mu " read "Duke Muh." „ 309, „ 12 For " Po Li Ch'i " read " Poh Li Ch'i." ,, 314, last line, " Love for the people," &c. Compare p. 329, lines 17 and 18, " There is no difficulty," <S:c. The con- flict between the meanings of these two passages has not been pointed out. The first passage is rendered by some commentators, " Not to be able to love the people is the," &:c. Neither rendering is quite satisfactory ; for reasons which would require quotations from the Chinese text. Errata and Addenda 467 Page 324, lines 15 and 26, For "Tzu Chi" read "Tzu Ch'i." „ 327, „ 18 and 28, For "Tzu Chi" read "Tzu Ch'i." „ 328, line 7, For "Tzu Chi " read " Tzii Ch'i." „ 346, „ 5, After "Duke Ling," add "of Wei." „ 371, „ 17, For "Shih Hu"read "Shih-hu." ,» 373> n 3, For "Tan Hsueh"read "Tan-hsiieh." „ 394, „ 8, For "YinLi"read "Yin-li." [These last three corrections mean that I have written names of places with a hyphen between the transliteration of the component Chinese characters, the names of meti with a capital letter to the transliteration of each of the Chinese cha- racters which go to make up the surname and personal name.] THE END. WVMAN AND SONS, PRINTERS GREAT QUEEN STREET, LONDON, W.C. in' THE SAME AUTHOR. Chinese Sketches. Pcath of an Emperor — l^liiiuctte — ^Cambling- Feng-shui — Opium — Pawnbrokers — Slang — Inquests, &c. &c. Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. Translation of the Liao Choi. 2 vols. Svo. Historic China, and other Sketches. Gems of Chinese Literature. Containing Extracts from various Authors, tVom n.c. 500 to A.n. 1600. A Short History of Koolangsu. On Some Translations and Mistranslations in Williams' Syllabic Dictionary. Dictionary of Colloquial Idioms in the Mandarin Dialect. Chinese without a Teacher: Being a Collection of Easy and Useful Sentences in the Mandarin Dialect. With a ^'ocabulary. 2nd Edition. Synoptical Studies in Chinese Character. Handbook of the Swatow Dialect. Record of the Buddhistic Kingdoms. Translated from the Chinese. With copious Notes. Two Chinese Poems : The San Tzii Ching, or the Trimctrisal Classic ; and the Ch'ien TZU Wen, or Thousand Character Essay. Metrically translated. From Swatow to Canton : An Overland Journey. A Glossary of Reference, on Subjects connected with the Far East. 2nd Edition. The Remains of Lao Tzii. lions: Kong: 1SS6. BL1900.C5G46 Chuang Tzu, mystic, moralist, and socral Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 1 1012 00009 8840
The Book of Chuang Tzu
Zhuangzi
null
The Book of Chuang Tzu,Zhuangzi,Chuang-Tzu,Taoism,Daoism,Tao,Dao,Taoist,Daoist,Chinese Philosophy,Chinese Spirituality,Chinese Religion,Chinese Ethics,Daoist Thought,Taoist Thought,Taoist Practice,Daoist Practice,Meditation,Spirituality,Religion,Educational Texts
The Book of Chuang Tzu (Zhuangzi), translated by Martin Palmer, Elizabeth Breauilly, Chang Wei Ming, and Jay Ramsay, is available here in EPUB, AZW3, and PDF formats. Book Description: A masterpiece of ancient Chinese philosophy, second in influence only to the Tao Te Ching. One of the founders of Taoism, Chuang Tzu was firmly opposed to Confucian values of order, control, and hierarchy, believing the perfect state to be one where primal, innate nature rules. Full of profundity as well as tricks, knaves, sages, jokers, unbelievably named people, and uptight Confucians, The Book of Chuang Tzu perceives the Tao - the Way of Nature - not as a term to be explained but as a path to walk. Radical and subversive, employing wit, humor, and shock tactics, The Book of Chuang Tzu offers an intriguing look deep into Chinese culture.
Full text of "The Book of Chuang Tzu" Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "The Book of Chuang Tzu" See other formats The Book of Chuang Tzu PENGUIN V-V CLASSICS THE BOOK OF CHUANG TZU MARTIN PALMER is Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education and Culture (ICOREC). A student of Chinese for over twenty years, he has translated many Chinese classics and folk religion texts, as well as having commented upon the major religious traditions of China in print and also on radio and television. As Director of ICOREC he works as a religious adviser to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) around the world, directing religion-based environmental programmes. Currently he is working with the China Taoist Association on a project to protect the main Taoist Sacred Mountains of China. ELIZABETH BREUILLY is a member of ICOREC. She specializes in educational books and in assisting faith groups in articulating their fundamental teachings clearly to non-specialist audiences. CHANG WEI MING, a practising lawyer, was Martin Palmer’s first teacher of Chinese. Her interest in Chinese philosophy has been an abiding passion for many years. JAY RAMSAY has collaborated with Martin Palmer on a number of translations of Chinese texts, bringing his gifts as a poet to bear upon the translations. He is the founder of the Chrysalis poetry project. *,Jk*-**l V't # The Book of Chuang Tzu Translated by MARTIN PALMER With ELIZABETH BREUILLY, CHANG WAI MING and JAY RAMSAY PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Mairangi Bay, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England www.pengum.com First published by Arkana 1996 Published in Penguin Books 2006 3 Copyright © ICOREC, 1996 Illustrations copyright © Circa Photo Library, 1996 All rights reserved The moral right of the translators has been asserted Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser For Vicky with all my heart Contents Preface Introduction 1 Wandering Where You Will 2 Working Everything Out Evenly 3 The Nurturing of Life 4 Out and About in the World 5 Signs of Real Virtue 6 The Great and Original Teacher 7 Dealing with Emperors and Kings 8 Webbed Toes 9 Horses’ Hooves 10 Broken Suitcases 11 Leaving the World Open 12 Heaven and Earth 13 Heaven’s Tap 14 Does Heaven Move? 15 Rigid and Arrogant 16 The Deceived and Ignorant Ones 17 Season of Autumn Floods 18 Perfect Happiness 19 Grasping the Purpose of Life 20 The Huge Tree 21 Tien Tzu Fang 22 The Shores of the Dark Waters 23 Keng Sang Chu 24 Hsu Wu Kuei 25 Travelling to Chu 26 Affected from Outside 27 Supposed Words 28 Abdication 29 Robber Chih 30 The Lover of Swords 31 Hie Old Fisherman 32 LiehYuKou 33 Governing the World Index Preface Translating an author as rich, diverse and as intense as Chuang Tzu is an immense undertaking. There are few full translations of Chuang Tzu, so I felt that there was space for another, especially one aimed at a more popular market. For this reason, there are one or two ways in which this translation differs from others. Firstly, I have adopted a simplified form of romanization of Chinese names. There are two commonly used systems: Wade-Giles and Pinyin. Tire differences can be seen in the way they spell the capital of China: Peking (Wade-Giles) or Beijing (Pinyin). In many instances, Pinyin gives a more accurate phoneticization of the Chinese - as in ‘Beijing’. But in Pinyin, ‘Chuang Tzu’ becomes ‘Zhuang Zi’ - which is not as close to the original as the Wade-Giles. In using Wade-Giles, I have opted for a more familiar system for the average reader. However, to help the flow of reading, I have dropped the diacritical marks, and capitalized all parts of the name. Thus, in chapter 5 . 1 have changed the name of the man with the terrible appearance from Ai T’ai-t’o to Ai Tai To. In chapter 4 . the minister, Ch’u Po-yu, becomes Chu Po Yu. I hope purists will forgive me this in the interests of greater ease for readers. Secondly, I have dropped some of the more obscure names which are given and only make a great deal of sense if one is able to see the puns in Chinese. For example, the last paragraph of chapter 18 in the Chinese contains detailed names for every bug and insect. I have dropped all but the most necessary because they get very confusing! Thirdly, in the first seven chapters, we have marked out the text to show that it does not flow sequentially. The first seven chapters in particular contain self-contained stories and discussions. Trying to read Chuang Tzu sequentially is a mistake. The text is a collection, not a developing argument. In the first seven chapters, we have indicated this with clear breaks. Approaching a text as ancient and as fascinating as Chuang Tzu, any translator needs all the help possible! Having translated a number of ancient Chinese texts in the last few years (The Tao Te Ching, the I Ching) I feel relatively at home in the linguistic and cultural world of China between the sixth and third centuries BC. But I was delighted to have three guides who either in part or in whole had made the journey into the Chuang Tzu and lived to tell the tale. In confirming or debating my own translations, I turned to these three other translators for inspiration or for argument. The three translators are, first and foremost, the excellent translator of the first seven chapters, Fung Yu-Lan, professor of Chinese in the USA and China during most of this century. His excellent translation A Taoist Classic Chuang-Tzu is published by the Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, from an original edition first published in 1931. It is masterful. Tire second translator, who has translated the whole text, is Burton Watson of the Columbia University translation program. His The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, published by Columbia University Press in 1968 and still in print, is a joy to read. Clear and informative, it provides the most readable translation I have come across. I owe a great debt to Burton Watson, even if at times I differ from some of his usage and interpretations. Finally, that master of translation - not necessarily for the ease of his translation but for the depth of his work - James Legge. Produced in the 1880s, his The Writings oj Kwang Tze is a rich resource for any translator. It is to be found in volumes 39 and 40 of Sacred Books of the East, edited by Max Muller, Oxford University Press, 1891. Apart from these books, I owe an immense debt of gratitude to colleagues. The Taoist scholars at the White Cloud Temple in Beijing, home of the China Taoist Association, taught me a great deal about how to read Chuang Tzu. To my old friend and first mentor in Chinese, Chang Wai Ming, I owe more than I can say. Over twenty years ago she taught me to love and enjoy the Chinese language and culture and I have never looked back. Her intensity of love for her own culture and language is truly infectious. Jay Ramsay cannot read a word of Chinese - thank goodness! He thus makes a perfect sparring partner. As a poet he has a sense for English which challenges and thrills me as a writer. As someone who has entered into the Chinese world through the translations we have done together, he has a sense of Chinese symbolism and literature which is quite extraordinary. I owe him a great deal for making the most of my turns of phrase. Elizabeth Breuilly is really the main other translator. Like Jay she knows no Chinese but she has a rigorous and vigorous understanding of English. She took sheets of barely legible scrawl sent back from all round the world -1 translate as I travel - and turned it into readable English. She has given untold hours to this, as has Jo Edwards, who put most of it on disk. I cannot say how grateful I am to both of them for their work and for enjoying the old rogue Chuang Tzu as much as I have. Martin Palmer August 1995 Introduction When the School of Taoism first began to look for its roots, sometime around 100 BC, it identified three great founder teachers. These were, and still are, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu. Taoism is the search for the Tao, the Way of Nature which, if you could become paid of it, would take you to the edge of reality and beyond. One of the core teachings of Taoism is that: The Tao that can be talked about is not the true Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.- In the light of this, perhaps it should not cause too much surprise to discover that, of these three founder-figures, only one can be definitely rooted in a given time and place! For Lao Tzu may well never have existed, and even if he did, he certainly didn’t write the Tao Te Ching, the book usually ascribed to him as author. Lieh Tzu may also be a fictional figure. Again, even if he did exist, the book which bears his name contains few of his actual words and was probably composed some six hundred or more years after his supposed lifetime. Which leaves us with Chuang Tzu. Of all the figures whom Taoism claims as its own from the extraordinary period of intellectual ferment of the sixth to third centuries BC, only Chuang Tzu emerges from the mists as a discernible figure. And the figure who does emerge is one of the most intriguing, humorous, enjoyable personalities in the whole of Chinese thought and philosophy. Hie only ‘historical details’ we have of Chuang Tzu’s life come from the first great historian of China, Ssu Ma Chien (died c. 85 BC). In his Historical Records, he tried to trace the histories of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. He virtually gives up on Lao Tzu, lamenting that he found it almost impossible to discover any facts or details about him. With Chuang Tzu he had more success. He says that Chuang Tzu was born in the town of Meng, which is thought to be somewhere in the present-day provinces of Anhui or Henan. His personal name was Chuang Chou, and it is as Chuang Chou that he is usually referred to in the book which we know as Chuang Tzu. The title ‘Tzu’ found in the names of the three founder-figures is an honorific title meaning ‘Master’. In the text as translated here I have changed ‘Chuang Chou’ to ‘Chuang Tzu’ to avoid confusion. Ssu Ma Chien goes on to say that Chuang Tzu worked as a minor official at Chi Yuan, which can be translated as ‘The Lacquer Garden’. Quite what this means is unclear. Was this just a name of a place, in the same way that Salford means ‘The Ford by the Willows’, or was it actually an area of natural beauty? As with so much in the early histories of Taoism, we don’t know. The historian says that Chuang Tzu lived at the same time as Prince Hui of Liang (370-319 BC) and Prince Hsuan of Chi (319-301 BC). He also says that Prince Wei of Chu (338-327 BC) visited him. This puts him firmly into the last half of the fourth century and leads Needham to give his dates as 369-286 BC.= For once, we can be fairly sure about the approximate dates of such a figure. Ssu Ma Chien continues Iris account by noting that Chuang Tzu was noted for his erudition, which was eclectic but rooted in the sayings of Lao Tzu, of which more later. He says that, because of this, Chuang Tzu’s writings were largely imaginative or allegorical - a fact which is most definitely borne out by even a cursory glance at his book. It is also noted that his surviving writings in the first century BC were over 100,000 words in length. Ssu Ma Chien then discusses three specific chapters of the book, chapters 31 . 29 and 10, in that order, and claims they were written explicitly to refute the arguments of the Confucians and to ‘glorify the mysteries of Lao Tzu\ It is then noted that some of the characters in his writings are figments of his imagination but that such was his erudition and skill in public debate that not even the greatest scholars of his time could defend themselves against Iris pitiless attacks on both the Confucians and the followers of Mo Tzu. Ssu Ma Chien goes on to state that Chuang Tzu’s writings and teachings were like a tidal wave which swamped everything and could not be stemmed, and his work so free-flowing that no ruler has ever been able to encapsulate it or harness it to specific statecraft - unlike the Lao Tzu, which has often been subtitled ‘A Manual of Leadership’. To illustrate this and to highlight Chuang Tzu’s own sense of personal freedom from the niceties of power or the temptations of title - a theme which he often explores - Ssu Ma Chien relates a story which is actually recorded in the book itself: Someone offered Chuang Tzu a court post. Chuang Tzu answered the messenger, ‘Sir, have you ever seen a sacrificial ox? It is decked in fine garments and fed on fresh grass and beans. However, when it is led into the Great Temple, even though it most earnestly might wish to be a simple calf again, it’s now impossible.’ ( Chapter 32 . this translation) In the version told by Ssu Ma Chien, Chuang Tzu goes on: Go away! Don’t mess with me! I would rather enjoy myself in the mud than be a slave to the ruler of some kingdom. I shall never accept such an office, and so I shall remain free to do as I will. This exchange captures to perfection the spirit of Chuang Tzu which emerges from his writings. For unlike the Tao Te Ching, which tells no stories, contains no anecdote or personal details about anyone, the Chuang Tzu is full of stories, personalities, characters and incidents. It is a bag of tricks, knaves, sages, jokers, unbelievably named people and uptight Confucians! And through it strides the occasionally glimpsed figure of Chuang Tzu himself, leaving a trail of humour, bruised egos and damaged reputations. There are two particular insights which the book affords us of the personality and personal history of Chuang Tzu himself, which bring him vividly to life in a way unusual for philosophers. Hie first is his great friendship and rivalry with the philosopher Hui Tzu. The two represented different strands of philosophy but were close enough to enjoy the delights of sparring. In particular, Hui Tzu took exception to one of Chuang Tzu’s key points, that meaning depends entirely upon the context and that there is no such thing as a ‘fact’ which stands apart from the context of the speaker. Hie most famous example of this comes at the end of chapter 17 : Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu were walking beside the weir on the River Hao, when Chuang Tzu said, ‘Do you see how the fish are coming to the surface and swimming around as they please? Tliat’s what fish really enjoy.’ ‘You’re not a fish,’ replied Hui Tzu, ‘so how can you say you know what fish enjoy?’ Chuang Tzu said: ‘ Yo u are not me, so how can you know I don’t know what fish enjoy?’ Hui Tzu said: ‘I am not you, so I definitely don’t know what it is you know. However, you are most definitely not a fish and that proves that you don’t know what fish really enjoy.’ Chuang Tzu said: ‘Ah, but let’s return to the original question you raised, if you don’t mind. You asked me how I could know what it is that fish really enjoy. Therefore, you already knew I knew it when you asked the question. And I know it by being here on the edge of the River Hao.’ The intensity of this friendship of rivalry is poignantly captured in a story told in chapter 24 : Chuang Tzu was following a funeral when he passed by the grave of Hui Tzu. He looked round at those following him and said, ‘Tire man of Ying had on the end of his nose a piece of mud as small as a fly’s wing. He sent for the craftsman Shih to cut it off. Shih swirled his axe around and swept it down, creating such a wind as it rushed past that it removed all trace of the mud from the man of Ying, who stood firm, not at all worried. The ruler Yuan of Sung heard of this and called craftsman Shih to visit him. ‘ “Would you be so kind as to do this for me?” he said. ‘Craftsman Shih replied, “Your servant was indeed once able to work like that, but the type of material I worked upon is long since dead.” ‘Since the Master has died, I have not had any suitable material to work upon. I have no one I can talk with any longer.’ This sad story brings me to the second detail which we can glean about Chuang Tzu from the book. Unlike perhaps our standard vision of the philosopher-sage of Taoism, whom we associate with remote mountains and an ascetic lifestyle, Chuang Tzu was married and brought up a family, though one does get the impression that, perhaps luckily for them, the bulk of the responsibility for rearing the children fell to his wife. These details come out in a story told in chapter 18 : Chuang Tzu’s wife died and Hui Tzu came to console him, but Chuang Tzu was sitting, legs akimbo, bashing a battered tub and singing. Hui Tzu said, ‘You lived as man and wife, she reared your children. At her death surely the least you should be doing is to be on the verge of weeping, rather than banging the tub and singing: this is not right!’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘Certainly not. When she first died, I certainly mourned just like everyone else! However, I then thought back to her birth and to the very roots of her being, before she was born. Indeed, not just before she was born but before the time when her body was created. Not just before her body was created but before the very origin of her life’s breath. Out of all of this, through the wonderful mystery of change she was given her life’s breath. Her life’s breath wrought a transformation and she had a body. Her body wrought a transformation and she was born. Now there is yet another transformation and she is dead. She is like the four seasons in the way that spring, summer, autumn and winter follow each other. She is now at peace, lying in her chamber, but if I were to sob and cry it would certainly appear that I could not comprehend the ways of destiny. This is why I stopped.’ What is so wonderfully typical of these stories is the way Chuang Tzuuses incidents around him to deliver himself of a philosophical reflection or comment. Unlike the Tao Te Ching, which simply gives a saying or proverb and then comments upon it in a somewhat dry fashion, Chuang Tzu teaches through narrative, humour and detail. At times when translating this book, I was swept along by the desire to find out what happened next, or what point he was going to draw out of some incident. It must also be one of the few books written well over two thousand years ago that can make a translator burst out laughing aloud! All of which brings me to the vexed question which has dominated the study of Chuang Tzu for centuries. Which parts of the book can be ascribed to Chuang Tzu himself and which come from different, later pens? The custom in many cultures of the past was to ascribe a book to a great figure from the past. By doing so you were not necessarily trying to claim that they had written every word. But neither were you too worried if people thought so, so long as they read it! Indeed Chuang Tzu himself comments upon the tendency to claim that one’s own words are those of some great figure of the past as a way of gaining an audience. He saw nothing inherently wrong in this (see the opening of chapter 27 1. So it was that around sayings or writings of a key figure, other writings which were felt to complement or expand those of the Master would be gathered. Eventually these would be edited and the entire collection known as the writings of, for example, Lao Tzu or Chuang Tzu. A similar process took place in Judaism at roughly the same time. Thus, for example, the five books of the Torah (Genesis to Deuteronomy) were ascribed to Moses, despite the fact that they record his death! That tins happened to the book we know as Chuang Tzu is without doubt. We even know who did the final editing job which produced the text as we have it with three sections. It was Kuo Hsiang, who died in 312 AD. He divided the text into three parts: Chapters 1 -7: The Inner Chapters. Traditionally believed to have been written by Chuang Tzu; Chapters 8 - 22 : The Outer Chapters. Traditionally seen as being the product of the Yangist school of philosophy. Chapters 23 - 33 : Miscellaneous Chapters. A catch-bag of odds and ends. It is thought that Kuo Hsiang edited his text down from a collection of fifty-three chapters, so what we have is a reduction from an even wider collection of material. Almost from Kuo Hsiang’s time onwards, the debate has raged about which bits Chuang Tzu wrote and which bits he did not. It has become customary to hold chapters 1 -7 as being from Chuang Tzu. Yet some would maintain that when Kuo Hsiang spoke of ‘Inner Chapters’, he wasn’t giving them any greater authority, but simply stating that their titles came from their content, whereas the next fifteen chapters take their titles from the first words of each chapter - from their outer skin as it were. It is interesting that of the three chapters which Ssu Ma Chien specifically highlights in Iris life of Chuang Tzu, written some two hundred years after Chuang Tzu and some four hundred years before Kuo Hsiang, one appears in the miscellaneous section and two in the Outer Chapters. None appears in the Inner Chapters. This alone should caution us against making easy or simplistic judgements based upon the present order of the chapters. Personally speaking, having now worked my way through the whole text in Chinese, I would find it very hard to cut up the book into bits that are obviously from Chuang Tzu himself and bits that are obviously not. Rather, I believe that we have a great deal of material which comes from Chuang Tzu or which was directly inspired by Chuang Tzu’s life and teachings. For example, the story of Chuang Tzu and the fish comes from chapter 17 and the tale of passing Hui Tzu’s grave comes from chapter 24 . Neither of these are allowed as authentic Chuang Tzu chapters by certain purists, yet they breathe the very spirit of Chuang Tzu just as much as, for example, the famous ‘butterfly passage’ of chapter 2 . There is a considerable industry in the remote and dustier shelves of Chinese studies, which engages itself in detailed and unending debate about which sections are genuine or not. But ironically, it seems that the author can speak more clearly to us if we do not concern ourselves with his existence or his authorship. For in the end, it really does not matter which bits come from the pen or life of Chuang Tzu and which are additions. The book simply should not be viewed as one consistent discourse. It is a catch-bag, an anthology of stories and incidents, thoughts and reflections which have gathered around the name and personality of Chuang Tzu. Trying to read the book through logically will only produce faint, ghostly laughter. And the one who will be laughing at you from afar will be the spirit of Chuang Tzu. For if there is one constant theme in the book, it is that logic is nonsense and that eclecticism is all, if you wish to open yourself to the Tao and the Te - the Way and the Virtue of all. The Book of Chuang Tzu is like a travelogue. As such, it meanders between continents, pauses to discuss diet, gives exchange rates, breaks off to speculate, offers a bus timetable, tells an amusing incident, quotes from poetry, relates a story, cites scripture. To try and make it read like a novel or a philosophical handbook is simply to ask it, this travelogue of life, to do something it was never designed to do. And always listen out for the mocking laughter of Chuang Tzu. This can be heard most when you start to make grand schemes out of the bits, or wondrous philosophies out of the hints and jokes. For ultimately this is not one book but a variety of voices swapping stories and bouncing ideas off each other, with Chuang Tzu striding through the whole, joking, laughing, arguing and interrupting. This is why it is such an enjoyable book to enter, almost anywhere, as if dipping into a cool river in the midst of summer. So you will find no great theories set out in this Introduction as to what Chuang Tzu means. Rather I want to try and set him, his terminology and some of his ideas into context and at times draw out certain comparisons with our own times. To begin with, we must avoid calling Chuang Tzu a Taoist. He wasn’t. There were no ‘Taoists’ in his day. There were thinkers who explored the notion of the Tao - the Way of Nature which, if you could become part of it, would carry you in its flow to the edge of reality and beyond, into the world of nature. Most of the great philosophers of the time struggled with the notion of the Tao, not least of them Kung Fu Tzu (better known in the West as Confucius). As is obvious from the number of times he crops up in the Chuang Tzu, Kung Fu Tzu was fascinated by the Tao. Indeed, he appears more often in the Chuang Tzu than either Lao Tzu or Chuang Tzu himself - albeit often in the role of a butt for Chuang Tzu’s humour. But the point remains that, in his own writings, Kung Fu Tzu talks more about the Tao than the Tao Te Ching does, page for page. What marks out the three books of the Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu from, for example, the writings of Kung Fu Tzu is their insistence on experiencing the Tao as a path to walk, rather than as a term to be explained. Experience is all. For example, take the story which Chuang Tzu tells in the first half of chapter 17 . concerning the Lord of the Yellow River and the god of the North Ocean, Jo. The Yellow River has flooded because of the autumn rains, and the god of the Yellow River believes he is the greatest, mightiest being in the world - until he flows into the North Ocean. Then he realizes that he is puny in comparison to the North Ocean. Jo of the North Ocean replied, ‘A frog in a well cannot discuss the ocean, because he is limited by the size of his well. A summer insect cannot discuss ice, because it knows only its own season. A narrow-minded scholar cannot discuss the Tao because he is constrained by his teachings. Now you have come out of your banks and seen the Great Ocean. You now know your own inferiority, so it is now possible to discuss great principles with you.’ In other words, the god Jo of the North Ocean can now begin to teach the Lord of the Yellow River because the Lord has experienced the limits of his own knowledge. This approach - that the Tao which can be talked about is not the true Tao - marks out those writers whom later generations titled as Taoists. It is captured in the famous phrase ‘ wu-weV , which I have usually translated here as ‘actionless action’. This is beautifully captured in what seems to be a direct quote from Chuang Tzu found in chapter 13 : Chuang Tzu said, ‘My Master Teacher! My Master Teacher! He judges all life but does not feel he is being judgemental; he is generous to multitudes of generations but does not think this benevolent; he is older than the oldest but he does not think himself old; he overarches Heaven and sustains Earth, shaping and creating endless bodies but he does not think himself skilful. This is what is known as Heavenly happiness.’ Further on in the same chapter he spells out wu-wei even more clearly: ‘Heaven produces nothing, yet all life is transformed; Earth does not support, yet all life is sustained; the Emperor and the king take actionless action, yet the whole world is served.’ Wu-wei also encompasses the approach of Chuang Tzu to official status and power. He rejects anything which elevates one aspect of life over another. To him, all are equal, and he brings this out in various ways, such as the stories of Robber Cliih. For example, at the end of chapter 8 he tells of Po Yi, a former king, who abdicated in favour of his brother and later died of starvation rather than serve an unjust ruler. For this he was held up by Confucians and others as a model of righteousness. Robber Cliih, an invented figure, is used by Chuang Tzu at various places through the book as an example of utter greed, cruelty and ruthlessness. Yet in this text Chuang Tzu puts the two men side by side: Po Yi died for the sake of fame at the bottom of Shou Yang mountain, Robber Chih died for gain on top of the Eastern Heights. These two both died in different ways but the fact is, they both shortened their lives and destroyed their innate natures. Yet we are expected to approve of Po Yi and disapprove of Robber Chih - strange, isn’t it? The term ‘innate nature’ is a key one in Chuang Tzu. ‘Hsing\ as it is pronounced phonetically, is used throughout the text to indicate that which is naturally the way a given species or part of creation either simply is in its givenness, or how it reacts to life. In contrast to this innate nature, this hsing, which I sometimes have put as true nature, Chuang Tzu presents the artifices and ways of ‘civilization’ as contrary and destructive to the innate nature. Thus at the start of chapter 9 we have: Horses have hooves so that they can grip on frost and snow, and hair so that they can withstand the wind and cold. They eat grass and drink water, they buck and gallop, for this is the innate nature of horses. Even if they had great towers and magnificent halls, they would not be interested in them. However, when Po Lo [a famous trainer of horses] came on the scene, he said, ‘I know how to train horses.’ He branded them, cut their hair and their hooves, put halters on their heads, bridled them, hobbled them and shut them in stables. Out of ten horses at least two or three die... The potter said, ‘I know how to use clay, how to mould it into rounds like the compass and into squares as though I had used a T-square.’ Tire carpenter said, ‘I know how to use wood: to make it bend, I use the template; to make it straight, I use the plumb line.’ However, is it really the innate nature of clay and wood to be moulded by compass and T-square, template and plumb line? It is true, nevertheless, that generation after generation has said, ‘Po Lo is good at controlling horses, and indeed the potter and carpenter are good with clay and wood.’ And the same nonsense is spouted by those who rule the world. From that point on in chapter 9 . Chuang Tzu launches into one of his characteristic attacks on the way in which the people’s true innate nature has been lost and broken. He pictures a perfect world when all were equal and none had any sense of being greater or lesser. They just followed their innate nature. He then depicts the fall from this age of primal, innate, natural living: Then the perfect sage comes, going on about benevolence, straining for self-righteousness, and suddenly everyone begins to have doubts... If the pure essence had not been so cut about, how could they have otherwise ended up with sacrificial bowls? If the rawjade was not broken apart, how could the symbols of power be made? If the Tao and Te - Way and Virtue - had not been ignored, how could benevolence and righteousness have been preferred? If innate nature had not been left behind, how could rituals and music have been invented?... The abuse of the true elements to make artefacts was the crime of the craftsman. The abuse of the Tao and Te - Way and Virtue - to make benevolence and righteousness, this was the error of the sage. Chuang Tzu sees all attempts to impose ‘civilization’ upon the innate nature of the world, and especially on the people, as a terrible mistake which has distorted and abused the natural world - the world of the Tao, the flow of nature. And so he stands firmly opposed to all that the Confucians stood for - order, control and power hierarchies. This is why the Book of Chuang Tzu was always ignored or despised by Confucians and why it, along with other such ‘Taoist’ classics, was never formally counted as being amongst the Classics of Academia in Imperial China. This man is a subversive, and he knows it! Hie Chuang Tzu is a radical text of rejection and mockery aimed at the pretensions of human knowledge and powers. This rejection of the constructions of meaning which we place upon the world and which we then assume to be ‘natural’ is central to Chuang Tzu as it was to Lieh Tzu as well. They are perhaps the first deconstructionists. Let me give you an example from Lieh Tzu. hi chapter 8 of Lieh Tzu we are introduced to a gentleman by the name of Mr Tien. He is about to set off on a long journey so invites his friends and relatives to come for a farewell banquet. As the dishes of fish and goose are brought in, Mr Tien looks benignly on them and says, ‘How kind Heaven is to humanity. It provides the five grains and nourishes the fish and birds for us to enjoy and use.’ In response to this quaint piece of anthropocentrism, everyone nods in agreement, except for a twelve-year-old boy, the son of Mr Pao. He steps forward and says, ‘My Lord is wrong! All life is born in the same way that we are and we are all of the same kind. One species is not nobler than another; it is simply that the strongest and cleverest rule over the weaker and more stupid. Ilrings eat each other and are eaten, but they were not bred for this. To be sure, we take the things which we can eat and consume them, but you cannot claim that Heaven made them in the first place just for us to eat. After all, mosquitoes and gnats bite our skin, tigers and wolves eat our flesh. Does this mean Heaven originally created us for the sake of the mosquitoes, gnats, tigers and wolves?’ Here is the authentic voice of the Taoist. Here is the debunking of human pretensions and the re-assertion of the natural as the highest order. Here is the Tao of Chuang Tzu in the mouth of a twelve-year-old. By stressing the abuses that have happened to our innate natures, Chuang Tzu constantly calls us to look with our heads on one side at what is ‘normal’. He uses humour, shock tactics, silly names, the weirdest characters (such as Cripple Shu or Master Yu) and totally unbelievable scenarios (such as the ‘willow tree’ incident in chapter 18 ) to make us look again at what we hold to be true. He uses contradiction to explode convention. Take these exchanges from chapter 2 : There is the beginning; there is not as yet any beginning of the beginning; there is not as yet beginning not to be a beginning of the beginning... I have just made a statement, yet I do not know whether what I said has been real in what I said or not really said. Under Heaven there is nothing greater than the tip of a hair, but Mount Tai [the greatest of the mighty sacred mountains] is smaller; there is no one older than a dead child, yet Peng Tsu [who, according to mythology, lived thousands of years] died young. So where does all tins leave Chuang Tzu in his understanding of life and his relationship to the rest of creation - the ‘Ten Thousand Things’, as it is put in Chinese? The next line in this quote from chapter 2 spells it out. If Chuang Tzu could conceivably be imagined uttering any kind of credal statement, perhaps this would be it: Heaven and Earth and I were born at the same time, and all life and I are one. This is the understanding that Chuang Tzu wishes us to return to. The uselessness of language is the other key point of Chuang Tzu’s discourses. He wants us to break beyond words and to realize how they imprison us. This is captured in a quote from chapter 2 which echoes the opening of the Tao Te Ching: The great Way is not named, the great disagreement is unspoken, great benevolence is not benevolent, great modesty is not humble, great courage is not violent. The Tao that is clear is not the Tao, speech which enables argument is not worthy, benevolence which is ever present does not achieve its goal, modesty if flouted, fails, courage that is violent is pointless. I want to move on now from this glance at some of the key threads in Chuang Tzu’s writings, to his place within ‘Taoist’ thought and belief. What was his relationship to the book we now know as the Tao Te Ching? Traditionally, the chronology of the three ‘classics’ of Taoism has been, first Lao Tzu with the Tao Te Ching, second Chuang Tzu, third Lieh Tzu. Lao Tzu has been ascribed to the sixth to fifth centuries BC, while Chuang Tzu has always been known to be around the 330-290 BC era. It would thus seem that Chuang Tzu must have known of the book by Lao Tzu. However, as I have mentioned earlier, it is highly unlikely, even if such a person as Lao Tzu existed, that he wrote more than a few of the chapters of the Tao Te Ching. This book dates from around 300 BC at the earliest, though it uses much much older material. When Jay Ramsay and I with our colleague Man Ho Kwok produced our translation and exploration of the Tao Te Ching, we discovered that each chapter consists of two very different strata, clearly discernible in the original Chinese. Tire first layer is a proverb, wisdom saying or oracle which has been passed down through generations and has become rounded and smooth as a result of re-telling. In quatrains which each have an identical number of characters, the saying is preserved in the midst or at the start of each chapter. Around it, written in a totally different style of Chinese, is a commentary, which indicates the fourth- to third-century BC world of China. In Chuang Tzu we can see a similar process at work. At no point is there a direct quote from the Tao Te Ching. This is hardly surprising if the dates given above are accurate. The Tao Te Ching was not written down when Chuang Tzu was writing, or if it was, it was being compiled at roughly the same time. But it is clear that both books relied upon the same stock of folk wisdom, wisdom sayings and oracles. What is distinctive is the different ways each book handled the same common material. For example, compare how they each use a series of sayings about babies. In chapter 55 of the Tao Te Ching we have: ‘Those who have true te Are like a newborn baby.’ - and if they seem like this, they will not be stung by wasps or snakes, or pounced on by animals in the wild or birds of prey. A baby is weak and supple, but his hand can grasp your finger. He has no desire as yet, and yet he can be erect - he can cry day and night without even getting hoarse such is the depth of his harmony. It’s stupid to rush around. When you fight against yourself, it shows in your face. But if you draw your sap from your heart then you will be truly strong. You will be great. 3 Chuang Tzu handles the same proverbial wisdom in a characteristically different way in chapter 23 . Lao Tzu has been asked by Nan Jung Chu how one can protect one’s life. Lao Tzu replies: ‘The basic way of protecting life - can you embrace the One?’ said Lao Tzu. ‘Can you hold it fast?... Can you be a little baby? Tire baby cries all day long but its throat never becomes hoarse: that indeed is perfect harmony. The baby clenches its fists all day long but never gets cramp, it holds fast to Virtue. The baby stares all day long but it is not affected by what is outside it. It moves without knowing where, it sits without knowing where it is sitting, it is quietly placid and rides the flow of events. Tlris is how to protect life.’ ... ‘Just now I asked you, ‘Can you become a little baby?” The baby acts without knowing why and moves without knowing where. Its body is like a rotting branch and its heart is like cold ashes. Being like this, neither bad fortune will affect it nor good fortune draw near. Having neither bad nor good fortune, it is not affected by the misfortune that comes to most others!’ So a common source in tlris instance is even cited as having been used in discourse by Lao Tzu, but it is used in very different ways. This is no rigid adherence to a fixed text - for no such fixed Tao Te Ching text existed. It is the use of a common source which later solidified into sacred texts - both the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu. So what was the religious background out of which these two great texts arose? We have to rid ourselves of any notion that they arose from a Taoist world. As I have said, there was no Taoism until much later. Indeed the philosopher Hsun Tzu, who lived from c. 312 to 221 BC, thus overlapping in his earlier years with Chuang Tzu, puts Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu into altogether different schools of philosophy in his list of such schools. By the time of Ssu Ma Chien, Chuang Tzu is being spoken of as a pupil of Lao Tzu’s thought. It is obvious from Chuang Tzu himself that he holds Lao Tzu in very high esteem, even if he then goes off on his own path. Perhaps it is more important in Chuang Tzu’s case to see who he was not in favour of, for this gives us a clue to the religious thought from which he comes. He is an implacable enemy of the bureaucrats, the petty officials, the sages who teach benevolence and righteousness. He is opposed to all those who seek to tame or harness the innate nature of all aspects of creation, of nature - most especially that of the people. Ssu Ma Chien’s inclusion of the story of Chuang Tzu rejecting outright any offer of a position of authority highlights this. But it is deeper than this. Chuang Tzu has a profound hatred of all that enslaves or controls the human spirit. In this he is against the state cult of Confucians, the cruel, almost fascist teachings of the Legalists and Mohists, who felt that human nature was evil and therefore had to be brutally ruled, and yet he is also against the sentimentality of those who believe that everyone is really good. Chuang Tzu is fed by shamanism, the earliest stream of Chinese spirituality, but is also in touch with the latest thinking in fourth-century BC cosmology. He draws his inspiration for the flow of nature from the shamanistic role of acting as an intermediary between the spiritual and physical worlds, where the Way of Heaven is the superior Way and the material world just a pale reflection of the true reality of the Heavenly world. Hris comes out time and time again when he compares the natural way of Heaven and Earth with the unnatural way of the rulers, sages and Emperors. But he is also a man who is teasing out the depths in new terms and models which were beginning to percolate into general Chinese thought. Most important amongst these is the role and significance of the individual as a being in his or her own right within the cosmos. There is no place here for the subsuming of the individual within the needs of the state. In contrast to the State Cult of China, where the ruler is the intermediary between the rest of humanity and Heaven, Chuang Tzu sees the rulers as the problem, and turns to the right of individuals to strike out for their own salvation, their own sense of place in a world which they are encouraged to deconstruct and then to re¬ assemble by turning to their innate nature. This is quite the most radical aspect of his religio-social thought and lays the seeds for the later rise of Taoism as a specific religious expression where individual salvation, purpose and meaning became the central tenet of the new religion. For in elevating the free individual against the incorporation and subsuming of the individual within the corporate, he is moving in a much more radical direction than the Tao Te Ching does and is challenging the whole superstructure of conventional Chinese religious and social life. So where does he get this idea from? Heaven knows! But I would conjecture that much of it is from pure speculation and from his own logical developments from the contextual nature of all knowledge, which lead him to see all previous attempts to impose order and meaning on the universe as just so much wordy wind in the air. Because his critique of language and knowledge is so ruthless, he is left with nothing fixed, nothing ‘given’. In such circumstances the human spirit can make great leaps forward. I believe that Chuang Tzu is one of the great innovators of human thought - a man whose time, maybe, has yet to come. Certainly the remarkable thing about him, to someone writing in the final days of the second millennium after Christ, is how modern he sounds, and yet how in his modern-ness he actually undermines that modern-ness’s notion of its own modernity! So I would claim that, while one can to some extent unravel the context of Chuang Tzu’s arguments and the nature of his opponents, while one can see some antecedents of his thought in the shamanistic culture which these bureaucratic opponents were busy destroying, while one can see elements of what he was saying reflected in Lao Tzu, ultimately in Chuang Tzu we meet an original man. A thinker who broke through all the conventions of his time and entered new fields of thought. That he could do so with such humour, through such wonderful stories and with such amazing characters, puts him on a level with the most truly original and enjoyable thinkers the world has ever seen. 4 , 3 , A ■ 1 ? CHAPTER 1 Wandering Where You Will In the darkness of the north there is a fish, whose name is Vast. This fish is enormous, I don’t know how many thousand miles long. It also changes into a bird, whose name is Roc, and the roc’s back is I don’t know how many thousand miles across. When it rises in the air, its wings are like the clouds of Heaven. When the seas move, this bird too travels to the south darkness, the darkness known as the Pool of Heaven. Tire Book of Wonders records a variety of marvels. It tells how ‘when the roc flies to the southern darkness, the waters are stirred up for three thousand miles, and he rises up in a whirlwind, soaring ninety thousand miles, not ceasing for six months’. It is like the swirling of the dust in the heat, blowing around below the deep blue of Heaven. Is this its true colour? Or is it because it is so far away that it appears like this? To one flying above looking down, the pattern is indeed the same. If the waters are not great enough, they will not have the ability to carry a large boat. Spill a cupful of water into a small hollow and even a scrap will look like a boat. However, if you try and float the cup upon it, it will just sit there, for the water is not sufficient to carry such a boat. And if there is not enough wind, it will not have enough strength to bear up the great wings. Hie roc needs ninety thousand miles and the strength of the wind below him, so that he can rest upon the wind. Thus, with the light of Heaven on his back and with nothing to restrain him, the great bird can follow his course to the south. A cicada taught a young dove, saying with a laugh, ‘I try to fly, with considerable effort, into an elm or sandalwood tree, but I find that, before I can reach it, I am pulled back down to earth. So what chance does this creature have of rising to ninety thousand miles and heading south?’ Someone who goes into the countryside with his lunch, and returns in time for the evening meal will be as full as when he left. Someone travelling a hundred miles needs to take enough food to see him through. And someone who travels a thousand miles needs to carry food for three months. What do these two understand? The understanding of the small cannot be compared to the understanding of the great. A few years cannot be compared to many years. How do we know this? The morning mushroom does not know of the waxing and waning of the moon. The cicada does not know of spring and autumn, for theirs are but short lives. To the south of Chu there is a vast creature for whom five hundred years is but a spring, and five hundred years is but an autumn. In ancient antiquity there was a giant tree called Chun, for whom spring was eight thousand years and for whom autumn was eight thousand years. Yet Peng Tsu- is the only man renowned for his great age, something envied by many people, which is rather pathetic! When the Emperor Tang debated with Chi, a similar issue arose, for he said: ‘In the barren north there is a dark sea called Heaven’s Pool. Here there is a fish, several thousand miles wide and goodness knows how long. This creature is called Vast. There is also a bird, whose name is Roc, and whose back is like Mount Tai- and whose wings cover the heavens. He rises up on a whirlwind, ninety thousand miles high, soaring through the clouds and breaking through the clear blue sky, then turns to plot his course south, travelling to the southern darkness. A quail laughs at him, saying, “Where are you travelling to? I leap up high but come down again after just a few feet, falling to earth amongst the bushes. And frankly that is the best you can expect from flying! So where is that creature going?” This is what distinguishes the small from the great.’ Someone who can fulfil the duties of one office, or behaves well enough to please one district, or has enough virtue to please one leader and is used to rule one country, views himself in the same way as these creatures. However, Sung Jung Tzu- would laugh at such a person. The whole world might praise him but he would not do more as a result. The whole world might condemn him, but he would not be affected. He knew the difference between the inner and the outer and the boundaries between honour and disgrace, but he went no further. He did not care about the world’s opinion, but there were boundaries he did not manage to overcome. The great Lieh Tzu- could ride the wind, going to the edges without concern, but returning after fifteen days. In the search for good fortune he knew no boundaries. Although he never had to bother with walking, nevertheless he needed some way of getting around. If instead he had risen through the naturalness of Heaven and Earth, travelled on the six elemental forces and voyaged into the unknown and unlimited, he would have had to depend upon nothing! As the saying goes The perfect man has no self; The spiritual man has no merit; The holy man has no fame. Yao,- giving up rule of the earth to Hsu Yu,- said, ‘When the sun and moon have risen, there is no point in keeping the torches lit, because it’s a waste of light! When the rainy season comes, there is little point in continuing to water the ground! If you, great Master, were to take over the rule of everything under Heaven, then all would be well, whereas if I continue, all I am aware of is my failures. Please, take over ruling the earth.’ Hsu Yu said, ‘Sir, you rule everything below Heaven, and everything below Heaven is well ruled. If I take over from you, Sir, won’t people think I’m doing it just for the fame? But fame is nothing compared to reality. I would be like a guest, wouldn’t I? Tire tailor bird makes its nest deep in the forest, but only uses one branch. The tapir drinks from the river Ho, but only takes what it needs. Return home, my noble Lord, for I have no interest in ruling the kingdom. The cook may not run his kitchen well, but the shaman does not jump up and take over.’ Chien Wu said to Lien Shu, ‘I was listening to the words of Chieh Yu— - his words sounded fine, but there was no substance, going on and on but coming to no conclusion. I was considerably astonished by his words, for they seemed endless like the Milky Way; vast overstatements and not related to the world of humanity.’ Lien Shu said, ‘What was he talking about?’ ‘He said, ‘Tar away on a mountain called Ku She, there lives a holy man whose skin is like ice and pure snow, and his manner is like a shy virgin. He does not eat the five grains, but lives off the wind and dew. He climbs the clouds and rides the dragons, and travels beyond the boundaries of the known world. He has distilled holiness and uses tins to heal all and to bring full harvests.” Now I think this is nonsense and don’t believe such words.’ Lien Shu said, ‘Obviously. You wouldn’t ask a blind man to appreciate a scene of beauty, nor a deaf man to enjoy the sounds of drums and bells. But it is possible to be blind and deaf in one’s deep understanding, as well as physically. Your very words show this, for you spoke like a young woman waiting for her appointed time! ‘This man with such virtue can hold all existence and roll it into one. Reform is called for, so you, you fool, would just ask such a one to take over the empire! Such a man as this, nothing harms him, not even great floods pouring from the sky can drown him, nor the great drought which melts gold and stone and burns mountains and hills. One like him could make a Yao or Shun- just from his dust and debris, but he is not bothered by such things! A man from Sung who traded in official ceremonial hats travelled to Yueh. but the people of Yueh, who cut their hair and tattoo themselves, have no use for such tilings. Yio brought peace to the people of the earth and within the boundaries of the seas. But he went to visit the four masters of distant Ku She mountain, north of the river Fen, and he became aware that his rule was meaningless.’ Hui Tzu spoke to Chuang Tzu, saying, ‘The King of Wei gave me the seeds of an enormous gourd, which I planted and it produced a fruit big enough to hold five bushels of anything, so I used it to hold water, but it was then too heavy to pick up. I cut it into two to make scoops, but they were too awkward to use. It was not that they weren’t big, I just found I could not make use of them, so I destroyed them.’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘Dear Sir, surely the problem is that you don’t know how to use big things. There is a man in Sung who could make a cream which prevented the hands from getting chapped, and generation after generation of his family have made a living by bleaching silk. A pilgrim heard this and offered to buy the secret for a hundred pieces of gold. All the family came together to respond and said, ‘Tor generation after generation we have bleached silk, yet we have never made more than a few pieces of gold; now in just one morning we can earn a hundred pieces of gold! Let’s do it.” So the pilgrim got the secret and went to see the King of Wu. He was struggling with the state of Yueh. Tire King of Wu gave the pilgrim command of the army and in the depths of winter they fought the men of Yueh on the water, inflicting a crushing blow on the forces of Yueh, and the traveller was rewarded by the gift of a vast estate from the conquered territory. The cream had stopped the hands chapping in both cases: one gained an estate, but the others had never got further than bleaching silk, because they used this secret in such different ways. Now, Sir, you have a gourd big enough to hold five bushels, so why didn’t you use it to make big bottles which could help you float down the rivers and lakes, instead of dismissing it as being useless? Because, dear Sir, your head is full of straw! ’ Hui Tzu spoke to Chuang Tzu, saying, ‘I have a big tree, which people call useless. Its trunk is so knotted, no carpenter could work on it, while its branches are too twisted to use a square or compass upon. So, although it is close to the road, no carpenter would look at it. Now, Sir, your words are like this, too big and no use, therefore everyone ignores them.’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘Sir, have you never seen a wild cat or weasel? It lies there, crouching and waiting; east and west it leaps out, not afraid of going high or low; until it is caught in a trap and dies in a net. Yet again, there is the yak, vast like a cloud in heaven. It is big, but cannot use this fact to catch rats. Now you, Sir, have a large tree, and you don’t know how to use it, so why not plant it in the middle of nowhere, where you can go to wander or fall asleep under its shade? No axe under Heaven will attack it, nor shorten its days, for something which is useless will never be disturbed.’ CHAPTER 2 Working Everything Out Evenly Master Chi of the Southern District sat leaning forward on his chair, staring up at Heaven and breathing steadily, as if in a trance, forgetful of all around him. Master Yen Cheng Yu stood beside him and said, ‘What is it? Is it true that you can make the body like a shrivelled tree, the heart like cold, dead ashes? Surely the man here now is not the same as the one who was here yesterday.’ Master Chi said, ‘Yen, this is a good point to make, but do you really understand? ‘I have lost myself, do you understand? You hear the pipes of the people, but not the pipes of earth. Even if you hear the pipes of earth, you don’t hear the pipes of Heaven! ’ ‘Please explain this,’ said Master Yu. Master Chi replied, ‘Hie vast breath of the universe, this is called Wind. Sometimes it is unmoving; when it moves it makes the ten thousand openings resound dramatically. Have you not heard it, like a terrifying gale? Mountains and forests are stormed by it, great trees, a hundred spans round with dips and hollows, are like noses, like mouths, like ears, like sockets, like cups, like mortars, like pools, like gulleys; sounding like a crashing wave, a whistling arrow, a screech; sucking, shouting, barking, wailing, moaning, the winds ahead howling yeeh, those behind crying yooh, light breezes making gentle sounds, while the typhoon creates a great din. When the typhoon has passed, all goes quiet again. Have you not witnessed this disturbance settle down again?’ Master Yu said, ‘What you’ve just described are the notes of the earth, while the notes of humanity come from wind instruments, but you have said nothing about the notes of Heaven.’ ‘The role of these forces on all forms of living things is not the same,’ said Master Chi. ‘For each is different, using what they need to be, not influenced by any other force!’ True depth of understanding is wide and steady, Shallow understanding is lazy and wandering, Words of wisdom are precise and clear, Foolish words are petty and mean. When we sleep, our spirits roam the earth, when awake our bodies are alert, whatever we encounter captures us, day by day our hearts are struggling. Often simple, often deep, often intimate. Minor troubles make them unsettled, anxious, Major troubles are plain and simple. Urey fly off like an arrow, convinced that they know right from wrong; it is like one who makes a sacred promise, standing sure and true and on their way to victory. Urey give way, like autumn and winter, decaying away with the ebb and flow of each day; it is like a stream of water, it cannot be brought back; they stagnate, because they are like old blocked drains, brought on by old age, which makes their minds closed as if near death, and there is nothing which can draw their hearts into the power of the yang - the life-giving light. Joy and anger, sadness and delight, hope and disappointment; faithlessness and certainty, forcefulness and sloth, eagerness and reticence, like notes from an empty reed, or mushrooms growing in dampness, day and night follow each other before our very eyes and we have no idea why. Enough, enough! Morning and night exist, we cannot know more about the Origin than this! Without them, we don’t exist, Without us, they have no purpose. This is close to our meaning, but we cannot know what creates things to be thus. It is as if they have a Supreme Guidance, but there is no way of grasping such a One. He can certainly act, of that there is no doubt, but I cannot see his body. He has desires, but no body. A hundred parts and nine orifices and six organs, are parts that go to make up myself, but is any part more noble than another? You say I should treat all parts as equally noble: But shouldn’t I also treat some as better than others? Don’t they all serve me as well as each other? If they are all servants, then aren’t they all as bad as each other? Or are there rulers amongst these servants? Tlrere must be some Supreme Ruler who is over them all. Tlrough it is doubtful that you can find his true form, and even if it were possible, is it not meaningless to his true nature? When someone is born in this body, doesn’t life continue until death? Either in conflict with others or in harmony with them, we go through life like a runaway horse, unable to stop. Working hard until the end of his life, unable to appreciate any achievement, worn out and incapable of resting, isn’t he apathetic sight? He may say, ‘I’m still alive,’ but so what? When the body rots, so does the mind - is this not tragic? Is this not ridiculous, or is it just me that is ridiculous and everyone else is sane? If you allow your mind to guide you, who then can be seen as being without a teacher? Why is it thought that only the one who understands change and whose heart approves this can be the teacher? Surely the fool is just the same. But if you ignore your mind but insist you know right from wrong, you are like the saying, ‘Today I set off for Yucli and arrived yesterday.’ This is to claim that what is not, is; That what is not, does exist - why, even the holy sage Yu cannot understand this, let alone poor old me! Our words are not just hot air. Words work because they say something, but the problem is that, if we cannot define a word’s meaning, it doesn’t really say anything. Is it possible that there really is something here? Or does it really mean nothing? Is it possible to make a proper case for it being any different from the chirruping of chicks? How is it that we have the Tao so obscured that we have to distinguish between true and false? What has clouded our words so that we can have both what is and what is not? How can it be that the Tao goes off and is no longer? How can it be that words are found but are not understood? When the Tao is obscured by pettiness and the words are obscured by elaboration, then we end up having the ‘this is, this is not’ of the Confucians and Mohists, with what one of them calls reality being denied by the other, and what the other calls real disputed by the first. If we want to confound what they call right and confirm what they call wrong, we need to shed light on both of them. Nothing exists which is not ‘that’, nothing exists which is not ‘this’. I cannot look at something through someone else’s eyes, I can only truly know something which I know Therefore ‘that’ comes out of ‘this’ and ‘this’ arises from ‘that’. That is wiry we say that ‘that’ and ‘this’ are born from each other, most definitely. Compare birth with death, compare death with life; compare what is possible with what is not possible and compare what is not possible with what is possible; because there is, there is not, and because there is not, there is. Thus it is that the sage does not go down this way, but sheds the light of Heaven upon such issues. Hris is also that and that is also this. The ‘that’ is on the one hand also ‘this’, and ‘this’ is on the other hand also ‘that’. Does this mean he still has a this and that? Does this mean he does not have a this and that? When ‘this’ and ‘that’ do not stand against each other, this is called the pivot of the Tao. Hris pivot provides the centre of the circle, which is without end, for it can react equally to that which is and to that which is not. Hris is why it is best to shed light on such issues. To use a finger to show that a finger is not a finger, is not really as good as using something that is not a finger to show that a finger is not a finger; to use a horse to show a horse is not a horse is not as good as using something other than a horse to show that a horse is not a horse. Heaven and Earth are as one as a finger is, and all of creation is as one as a horse is. What is, is, what is not, is not. The Tao is made because we walk it, things become what they are called. Why is this so? Surely because this is so. Why is this not so? Surely because this is not so. Everything has what is innate, everything has what is necessary. Nothing is not something, nothing is not so. Therefore, take a stalk of wheat and a pillar, a leper or a beauty like Hsi-shih, the great and the insecure, the cunning and the odd: all these are alike to the Tao. In their difference is their completeness; in their completeness is their difference. Through the Tao they are all seen as one, regardless of their completeness or difference, by those who are capable of such extended vision. Such a person has no need for distinctions but follows the ordinary view. Tire ordinary view is firmly set on the ground of usefulness. The usefulness of something defines its use; the use is its flexibility; its flexibility is its essence and from this it comes to a stop. We stop but do not know why we stop, and this is called Tao. To tax our spirits and our intellect in this way without realizing that everything is the same is called ‘Three in the Morning’. And what is ‘Three in the Morning’? A monkey trainer was giving out acorns and he said, ‘In the morning I will give you each three acorns and in the evening you will get four.’ The monkeys were very upset at this and so he said, ‘All right, in the morning you will get four and in the evening, three.’ This pleased the monkeys no end. His two statements were essentially the same, but got different reactions from the monkeys. He gained what he wanted by Iris skill. So it is with the sage, who manages to harmonize right and wrong and is content to abide by the Natural Equality of Heaven. This is called walking two roads. The men of old understood a great deal. How much? In the beginning they did not know that anything existed; this is virtually perfect knowledge, for nothing can be added. Later, they knew that some things existed but they did not distinguish between them. Next came those who distinguished between things, but did not judge things as ‘being’ or ‘not being’. It was when judgements were made that the Tao was damaged, and because the Tao was damaged, love became complete. Is anything complete or damaged? Is anything not complete or damaged? There is completion and damage, just as Chao Wen— played the lute. There is nothing which is complete or damaged, just as Chao Wen did not play the lute. Chao Wen played the lute, Shih Kuang conducted, Hui Tzu debated. The understanding of these three was almost perfect and they followed it to the end of their years. They cared about this because it was different, and they wanted to teach others about it. But it was not possible to make things clear, though they tried to make tilings simple. Urey ended up instead with the folly of the ‘hard’ and the ‘white’. Wen’s son ended up continuing to play Wen’s lute and achieved nothing for himself. If someone like this is called complete, then am I not also? And if someone like this is called incomplete, then surely neither I nor anyone else has ever been complete. Also, by the light shining out of chaos, the sage is guided; he does not make use of distinctions but is led on by the light. Now, however, I have something to say. Do I know whether this is in the same sort of category as what is said by others? I don’t know At one level, what I say is not the same. At another level, it most definitely is, and there is no difference between what I say and what others say. Whatever the case, let me try and tell you what I mean. There is the beginning; there is not as yet any beginning of the beginning; there is not as yet beginning not to be a beginning of the beginning. There is what is, and there is what is not, and it is not easy to say whether what is not, is not; or whether what is, is. I have just made a statement, yet I do not know whether what I said has been real in what I said or not really said. Under Heaven there is nothing greater than the tip of a hair, but Mount Tai is smaller; there is no one older than a dead child, yet Peng Tsu died young. Heaven and Earth and I were born at the same time, and all life and I are one. As all life is one, what need is there for words? Yet I have just said all life is one, so I have already spoken, haven’t I? One plus one equals two, two, plus one equals three. To go on from here would take us beyond the understanding of even a skilled accountant, let alone the ordinary people. If going from ‘nothing’ to ‘some-thing’ we get to three, just think how much further we would have to go if we went from ‘some-thing’ to something!— Don’t even start, let’s just stay put. The great Tao has no beginning, and words have changed their meaning from the beginning, but because of the idea of a ‘this is’ there came to be limitations. I want to say something about these limitations. There is right and left, relationships and their consequences, divisions and disagreements, emulations and contentions. These are known as the eight Virtues. The sage will not speak of what is beyond the boundaries of the universe - though he will not deny it either. What is within the universe, he says something about but does not pronounce upon. Concerning the record of the past actions of the kings in the Spring and Autumn Annals, the sage discusses but does not judge. When something is divided, something is not divided; when there is disagreement there are things not disagreed about. Tbu ask, what does this mean? The sage encompasses everything, while ordinary people just argue about things. This is why I say that disagreement means you do not understand at all. The great Way is not named, the great disagreement is unspoken, great benevolence is not benevolent, great modesty is not humble, great courage is not violent. The Tao that is clear is not the Tao, speech which enables argument is not worthy, benevolence which is ever present does not achieve its goal, modesty if flouted, fails, courage that is violent is pointless. These five are fine: they are, as it were, rounded. But if they lose this they can become awkward. This is why the one who knows how to stop at what he knows is best. Who knows the argument that needs no words, and the Tao that cannot be named? To those who do, this is called the Treasury of Heaven. Pour into it and it is never full; empty it and it is never empty. We do not know where it comes from originally, and this is called our Guiding Light. In the olden days Yao said to Shun, ‘I want to attack Tsung, Kuai and Hsu Ao. I have wanted to do this since I became king. What do you think?’ Shun replied, ‘These three rulers are just primitives living in the backwoods - why can’t you just forget them? In ancient times, ten suns rose and all life was illuminated. But how much more does Virtue illuminate life than even these suns!’ Yeh Chueh said to Wang Ni, ‘Do you know, Master, what everything agrees upon?’ ‘How can I possibly know?’ said Wang Ni. ‘Do you know, Master, what you do not know?’ ‘How can I know?’ he replied. ‘Then does nothing know anything?’ ‘How could I know that?’ said Wang Ni. ‘Nevertheless, I want to try and say something. How can I know that what I say I know is not actually what I don’t know? Likewise, how can I know that what I think I don’t know is not really what I do know? I want to put some questions to you: ‘If someone sleeps in a damp place, he will ache all over and he will be half paralysed, but is it the same for an eel? If someone climbs a tree, he will be frightened and shaking, but is it so for a monkey? Out of these three, which is wisest about where to live? ‘Humans eat meat, deer consume grass, centipedes devour snakes and owls and crows enjoy mice. Of these four, which has the best taste? ‘Monkeys mate with each other, deer go with deer. People said that Mao Chiang and Li Chi were the most beautiful women in the world, but fish seeing them dived away, birds took off into the air and deer ran off. Of these four, who really knows true beauty? As I see it, benevolence and righteousness, also the ways of right and wrong, are completely interwoven. I do not think I can know the difference between them!’ Yeh Chueh said: ‘Master, if you do not know the difference between that which is good and that which is harmful, does this mean the perfect man is also without such knowledge?’ ‘Hie perfect man is pure spirit,’ replied Wang Ni. ‘He does not feel the heat of the burning deserts nor the cold of the vast waters. He is not frightened by the lightning which can split open mountains, nor by the storms that can whip up the seas. Such a person rides the clouds and mounts upon the sun and moon, and wanders across and beyond the four seas. Neither death nor life concern him, nor is he interested in what is good or bad!’ Chu Chiao Tzu asked Chang Wu Tzu, ‘I have heard from the Master that the sage does not labour at anything, does not look for advantage, does not act benevolently, does not harm, does not pursue the Tao; He speaks without speaking, and does not speak when he speaks, and looks beyond the confines of this dusty world. ‘The Master sees all this as an endless stream of words, but to me they are like the words of the mysterious Tao. Master, what do you think?’ Chang Wu Tzu said, ‘Such a saying as this would have confused even the Yellow Emperor,— so how could Confucius be able to understand them! However, you are getting ahead of yourself, counting your chickens before your eggs are hatched and looking at the bowl, imagining the roasted fowl. I will try to speak to you in a random way, so you listen to me likewise. How can the wise one sit beside the sun and moon and embrace the universe? Because he brings all things together in harmony, he rejects difference and confusion and ignores status and power. While ordinary people rush busily around, the sage seems stupid and ignorant, but to him all life is one and united. All life is simply what it is and all appear to him to be doing what they rightly should. ‘How do I know that the love of life is not a delusion? Or that the fear of death is not like a young person running away from home and unable to find his way back? Tire Lady Li Chi was the daughter of a border warden, Ai. When the state of Chin captured her, she wept until she had drenched her robes; then she came to the King’s palace, shared the King’s bed, ate his food, and repented of her tears. How do I know whether the dead now repent for their former clinging to life? ‘Come the morning, those who dream of the drunken feast may weep and moan; when the morning comes, those who dream of weeping and moaning go hunting in the fields. When they dream, they don’t know it is a dream. Indeed, in their dreams they may think they are interpreting dreams, only when they awake do they know it was a dream. Eventually there comes the day of reckoning and awakening, and then we shall know that it was all a great dream. Only fools think that they are now awake and that they really know what is going on, playing the prince and then playing the servant. What fools! The Master and you are both living in a dream. When I say a dream, I am also dreaming. This very saying is a deception. If after ten thousand years we could once meet a truly great sage, one who understands, it would seem as if it had only been a morning. ‘Imagine that you and I have a disagreement, and you get the better of me, rather than me getting the better of you, does this mean that you are automatically right and I am automatically wrong? Suppose I get the better of you, does it follow that I am automatically right and you are therefore wrong? Is it really that one of us is right and the other wrong? Or are we both right and both wrong? Neither you nor I can really know and other people are even more in the dark. So who can we ask to give us the right answer? Should you ask someone who thinks you are right? But how then can that person give a fair answer? Should we ask someone who thinks I am right? But then if he agrees with me, how can he make a fair judgement? Then again, should we ask someone who agrees with both of us? But again, if he agrees with both of us, how can he make a true judgement? Should we ask someone who disagrees with both of us? But here again, if he disagrees with both of us, how can he make an honest judgement? It is clear that neither you, I nor anyone else can make decisions like this amongst ourselves. So should we wait for someone else to turnup? ‘To wait for one voice to bring it all together is as pointless as waiting for no one. Bring all things together under the Equality of Heaven, allow their process of change to go on unimpeded, and learn to grow old. What do I mean by bringing everything together under the Equality of Heaven? With regard to what is right and wrong, I say not being is being and being is not being. But let us not get caught up in discussing this. Forget about life, forget about worrying about right and wrong. Plunge into the unknown and the endless and find your place there! ’ The Outline said to the Shadow, ‘First you are on the move, then you are standing still; you sit down and then you stand up. Why can’t you make up your mind?’ Shadow replied, ‘Do I have to look to something else to be what I am? Does this something else itself not have to rely upon yet another something? Do I have to depend upon the scales of a snake or the wings of a cicada? How can I tell how things are? How can I tell how things are not?’ Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt that I was a butterfly, flitting around and enjoying myself. I had no idea I was Chuang Tzu. Then suddenly I woke up and was Chuang Tzu again. But I could not tell, had I been Chuang Tzu dreaming I was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming I was now Chuang Tzu? However, there must be some sort of difference between Chuang Tzu and a butterfly! We call this the transformation of things. CHAPTER 3 The Nurturing of Life Our life has a boundary but there is no boundary to knowledge. To use what has a boundary to pursue what is limitless is dangerous; with this knowledge, if we still go after knowledge, we will run into trouble. Do not do what is good in order to gain praise. If you do what is bad be sure to avoid the punishment. Follow the Middle Course, for this is the way to keep yourself together, to sustain your life, to care for your parents and to live for many years. Cook Ting was butchering an ox for Lord Wen Hui. Every movement of his hand, every shrug of his shoulder, every step of his feet, every thrust of his knee, every sound of the sundering flesh and the swoosh of the descending knife, were all in perfect accord, like the Mulberry Grove Dance or the rhythm of the Ching-shou.— ‘Ah, how excellent!’ said Lord Wen Hui. ‘How has your skill become so superb?’ Cook Ting put down his knife and said, ‘What your servant loves best is the Tao, which is better than any art. When I started to cut up oxen, what I saw was just a complete ox. After three years, I had learnt not to see the ox as whole. Now I practise with my mind, not with my eyes. I ignore my sense and follow my spirit. I see the natural lines and my knife slides through the great hollows, follows the great cavities, using that which is already there to my advantage. Thus, I miss the great sinews and even more so, the great bones. A good cook changes his knife annually, because he slices. An ordinary cook has to change his knife every month, because he hacks. Now this knife of mine I have been using for nineteen years, and it has cut thousands of oxen. However, its blade is as sharp as if it had just been sharpened. Between the joints there are spaces, and the blade of a knife has no real thickness. If you put what has no thickness into spaces such as these, there is plenty of room, certainly enough for the knife to work through. However, when I come to a difficult part and can see that it will be difficult, I take care and pay due regard. I look carefully and I move with caution. Then, very gently, I move the knife until there is a parting and the flesh falls apart like a lump of earth falling to the ground. I stand with the knife in my hand looking around and then, with an air of satisfaction, I wipe the knife and put it away.’ ‘Splendid!’ said Lord Wen Hui. ‘I have heard what cook Ting has to say and from his words I have learned how to live life fully.’ When Kung Wen Hsien saw the Commander of the Right he was surprised and said, ‘Who is this man? Why has he only got one foot? Is this from Heaven or from man?’— ‘From Heaven, not from man,’ said the Commander. ‘My life came from Heaven, which also gave me just one foot. The human appearance is a gift, which is wiry I know that this is from Heaven, not from man. The marsh pheasant manages one peck every ten paces, and one drink every hundred steps, but it does not wish to be kept in a cage. Even if you treated it like a king, its spirit would not be happy.’ When Lao Tzu died, Chin Shih came to mourn for him. He uttered three shouts and then left. A follower of the Master said, ‘Wasn’t the Master a friend of yours?’ ‘Certainly,’ he replied. ‘Then do you really think this way of mourning is best?’ ‘Certainly. To begin with I thought these were real men, but now I am not so sure. When I came in to mourn, there were old folk weeping as though they had lost a child; there were young people wailing as if for the loss of a mother. Such a gathering of everyone, all talking away though he didn’t ask them to talk and weeping even though he didn’t ask for tears! This is to turn from Heaven and to indulge in emotions, ignoring what is given. The ancient ones called this the result of violating the principles of Heaven. When the Master came, it was because he was due to be born. When he died, it was entirely natural. If you are prepared to accept this and flow with it, then sorrow and joy cannot touch you. Tire ancient ones considered this the work of the gods who free us from bondage. ‘We can point to the wood that has been burned, but when the fire has passed on, we cannot know where it has gone.’ CHAPTER 4 Out and About in the World Yen Hui— went to see Confucius and asked his permission to leave. ‘Where are you going?’ asked Confucius. ‘To the state of Wei.’ ‘For what reason?’ He replied, ‘Hui, Prince of Wei, is full of youthful vigour and determined in all he does. He treats his country with scant regard and is incapable of seeing his own faults. He has scant regard for the death of the people, and the dead lie across his country like scrub in the marshland. As for the people, they don’t know where to turn. About Hui, I have heard you say, my Master, “Pay no heed to the state that is well run, but go to the state that is in real trouble. Around the door of the doctor gather many who are ill.” Using these words of yours as a guide, I want to see if I can do anything for that state.’ ‘Alas!’ said Confucius. ‘You will certainly bring sorrow and even death upon yourself! The great Way doesn’t get involved like this, mixing many things together. In such a mixture, the one true path gets lost in the many. With many paths comes confusion; with confusion comes problems; when problems arise, the situation cannot be resolved. Tire perfect man of old looked after himself first before looking to help others. If you look to yourself and find there are troubles, what use will you be if you try to sort out a dictator? ‘Do you know how virtue is ruined, or where knowledge comes from? Virtue is ruined by fame and knowledge comes from argument Struggling for fame, people destroy each other, and knowledge is used for argument. Both of them are used for evil and you should have nothing to do with them. You may have great virtue and unquestionable sincerity. You may be kind-hearted and without interest in fame, but if you do not understand how people feel and think, you will do harm, not good. Such people try to force the people to be benevolent, to act properly and impose laws, and as a result they end up being hated precisely because they care about others. This is known as hurting others. Those who hurt will themselves be hurt and this is likely to be what will happen to you! ‘Imagine, he could be the sort of king who values the good and hates the bad, so what point would there be in you trying to make him change his ways? Keep your advice for yourself. Kings and princes tend to assume they are right and will do all they can to win. You will find your eyes dazzled, your colour changing and your mouth trying to find words to apologize with, you will bend in contrition and your mind will agree with whatever he says. This is like trying to fight fire with fire, or water with water. This is to pile more on to more. Once you do this, you will be unable to argue with him again. Your words will be of no avail, for he will not believe them. As a result, you will be killed by a dictator like this. ‘In earlier times, Chieh— murdered Kuan Lung Feng and Chou killed Prince Pi Kan.— Both these two were men who developed their characters best in order to pass the benefits down to their people. Those who ruled them were upset by the concern of these two, and as a result of their morality, they were destroyed by the rulers. Both the good and the bad struggle for fame. In ancient times, Yao attacked the states of Tsung Chih and Hsu Ao, Yu attacked the state of Yu Hu, and as a result these states were destroyed, their kings killed. Hieir desire for warfare had been insatiable and their wish for power inexhaustible. All of these sought fame and fortune - surely you know of them? The sages could not handle such people, how much less can you! However, you obviously have some plan in mind, so go on, tell me what it is!’ ‘If I am stern in intent and dispassionate, keen and single- minded, will this be enough?’ asked Yen Hui. Confucius said, ‘Is that it? That will not do! This man acts as if he were supremely confident and puts himself about with style, yet you cannot judge what he really thinks from his demeanour. Ordinary people do not get in his way, so he has developed a taste for trampling upon other people’s feelings. Given that normal virtues are wasted on him, how do you expect to present him with yet higher ones! He will dig his toes in and refuse to change. He may pretend to agree with you, but there will be no inner change. How can you imagine you will succeed?’ ‘I will retain my inner integrity, but outwardly be deceptive. I shall cite historical precedent. Inwardly genuine, I shall be guided by Heaven. Guided by Heaven, I shall know that both I and the Prince, the Son of Heaven, are both children of Heaven. Who then cares whether what he says is listened to or not? Surely someone like this is called a child by the people. This is what comes of being a child of Heaven. With this external guile, I can befriend people. Bowing and scraping, paying obeisance, this is what all ministers do. As this is what everyone does, no one will hold it against me. If I do just what others do, no one can criticize me. Citing historical precedent, I will be the dutiful student of antiquity. The words I shall use will condemn and reprove, but the point is they will be seen as the words of the old ones, not mine. This means I can tell the truth but be free from any blame. This is what I mean by citing historical precedent. If I do this, do you think it will work?’ Confucius said, ‘Is that it? That will not do! There are too many schemes here, good ones but not well thought out. They may get you out of trouble, but they will not do what you want, as they are far from perfect. You are still being guided by your expectations.’ ‘I have nothing else to suggest,’ said Yen Hui, ‘so tell me what you would do.’ Confucius said, ‘Go away and fast, then I will tell you what to do. While still plotting, do you think you can really be guided in what to do? The one who thinks he has it will not easily be guided by the Light of Heaven.’ ‘The Hui family is poor,’ said Yen Hui, ‘and we have not drunk wine or eaten meat for months. In this instance, will this count as having fasted?’ ‘This is fasting for the sacrifice, but not fasting of the heart.’ ‘Then what is fasting of the heart?’ ‘Your mind must become one, do not try to understand with your ears but with your heart. Indeed, not with your heart but with your soul. Listening blocks the ears, set your heart on what is right, but let your soul be open to receive in true sincerity. The Way is found in emptiness. Emptiness is the fasting of the heart.’ Yen Hui said, ‘Previously, when I fasted, but not with the fast of the heart, I felt I was Hui; when I went on to the fast of the heart, I found I was not Hui. Is this what is called emptiness?’ Tire great Master said, ‘Precisely! I’ll tell you. Go and join this man in his cage, but don’t set out to impress him. If he comes to like you, then you may sing for him. If he will not listen, keep quiet. Do not appear to be an open door, nor seek to be a balm. Be at one with all in his house and learn to bear what cannot be changed. Do this, and you might almost be successful. It’s not difficult to stop walking, but to walk without touching the earth is more difficult. If you act like any other person, it is easy to be hypocritical, but if you act in the style of Heaven, the reverse is true. One hears of flying by means of wings, but never of flying without them; one hears of knowing as a result of knowledge, but never of knowing without knowledge. Take a look at the room that is shut off, the empty room where true light is born, and there is really contentment and stillness. But if you cannot remain still, then your mind goes racing off, even though physically you remain sitting. Use your ears and eyes to speak to what is within and use your heart and knowledge to speak to what is without. Then you will draw down the very gods themselves as well as other people. This is the mystery of all life: that which links Yu and Shun, that which Fu Hsi and Chi Chu— lived by. Just think how even more important it is for ordinary mortals!’ Duke Tzu Kao of She, just before he left on a mission to the state of Chi, asked Confucius, ‘The King has given me a most important mission to Chi. They will show me great courtesy, but they are unlikely to make much speed in the issue. Given how hard it is to push an ordinary person along, a nobleman is likely to be even more difficult. I really am worried. You used to tell me that “in whatever we set ourselves to do, no matter how great or small, following the Tao alone leads to success. To fail is to bring the judgement of others upon you. To succeed brings disturbance of the yin and yang. To escape any distress regardless of success or failure is only possible to a really virtuous man.” I eat sensible food so that my kitchens are never overheated. However, this very morning I was given my commission and this evening I am drinking iced water. I wonder if I am getting sick. So already I have got into the bad state of disturbed yin and yang. If I fail, I shall have trouble from others. This means I am suffering on two fronts, and as a minister I doubt if I can carry out this commission. Perhaps you could give me some advice?’ ‘Under Heaven there are two great principles,’ replied Confucius. ‘Tire first is destiny, the other one is duty. Tire love of a child for its parents, this is destiny, it is there in his heart. A subject’s service of his lord, this is duty, because he must have an overlord, this is how it is in the wide world. These are known as the two great principles. To be obedient to your parents and be prepared to follow them come what may, this is true filial piety. To serve your lord happily, regardless of what he asks you to do, this is real loyalty. To serve your own soul in such a way as to prevent either joy or sorrow within, but outwardly to handle what life throws at you as inevitable and not to be worried by this, this is the perfection of Virtue. Therefore, the person who finds himself in the position of a son or subject has at times to do what he has to do. Caught up in these affairs of state, he forgets his own life. He has no time to sit and contemplate the love of life or the fear of death! Therefore, my dear Sir, go on your mission! ‘Let me tell you something else I have found out. In the ebb and flow of relationships between two states, if they live side by side and have regular links, they can show how mutual their interests are through their actions. If, however, they are separated by distance, then they have to rely upon the spoken word, and such messages have to be relayed by someone. But trying to convey the areas of joy and displeasure of both sides in such messages, is about the most thankless task under Heaven. When both sides are happy, the messages have to be laden down with excessive praise. When both sides are angry, the messages have to be laden with excessive aggression. Any exaggeration is false. Where there is falsehood, no one can trust a word and the messenger is in real trouble. This is why the Fa Yen— says, “Convey what each side wishes to say, but leave out the exaggerations.” Do that and you may well be all right. ‘When people gather to wrestle and sport, they always begin in a friendly mood, but always end with anger and aggression. As the pressure mounts, they resort to amazing tricks. When people gather to drink at special ceremonies, they begin in a proper and restrained manner, but soon degenerate into rowdiness. As this grows, their behaviour becomes more and more excessive. This is true of all things. People start off with sincerity but degenerate into rudeness. Things start simply enough, but soon become complex and confusing. ‘Words are like the ebb and flow of the wind-blown seas: the purpose of them can become overwhelmed. The wind and seas are easily stirred, and what was attempted can be swamped and lost. Likewise, anger can be whipped up by cunning words and biased speeches. When anger comes, people bellow their rage like animals being driven to their death, their breath comes out in bursts of distress. Then the hearts of both sides are turned to rage. People are driven into a corner, having little idea how they got there but they respond with brutality. They do not know how this happens, so what hope is there of stopping all this? This is why the Fa Yen says, “Do not wander from the original charge you are given. Do not try to force the pace of negotiation. To go beyond what is asked is to be excessive.” To go outside what your charge was, and to try to solve everything yourself, is dangerous. It takes time to arrive at an appropriate settlement. A bad settlement, once made, cannot be changed! Therefore, take care, let your heart follow whatever happens. Accept what happens as it occurs in order to find your true place, follow the middle way. The best thing to do is leave it all to fate, even if this is not easy to do!’ Yen Ho was about to start as tutor to the eldest son of Duke Ling of the state of Wei, so he went to visit Chu Po Yu— and said, ‘Here is a man whom Heaven has given a nature devoid of all virtue. If I simply allow him to go on in this way, the state is at risk; if I try to bring him back to a principled life, then my life is at risk. He can just about recognize the excesses of others, but not his own excesses. In a case like this, what can I do?’ ‘This is a good question!’ said Chu Po Yu. ‘Be on guard, be careful, make sure you yourself are right. Let your appearance be in agreement, let your heart be content and harmonious. However, both these strategies have their dangers. Do not let your outward stance affect your inner self, nor allow your inner self to be drawn out. If you allow yourself to be sucked into his way of things, you will be thrown down, ruined, demolished, and will fall. If your inner harmony becomes drawn out, then you will have fame and a name, you will be called an evil creature. If he acts like a child, then be a child with him; if he permits no restraints, do the same. If he goes beyond the pale, follow him! Understand him, and then guide him back subtly. ‘Don’t you know the story of the praying mantis? In its anger it waved its arms in front of a speeding carriage, having no understanding that it could not stop it, but having full confidence in its own powers! Be on guard, be careful! If you are over-confident in this way, you will be in the same danger. ‘Don’t you know what a tiger trainer does? He does not give them living animals for food, in case it over-excites them and breeds a love of killing. He does not even give them whole carcasses, for fear of exciting the rage of tearing the animals apart. He observes their appetite and appreciates their ferocity. Tigers are a different creature from humans, but you can train them to obey their trainer if you understand how to adapt to them. People who go against the nature of the tiger don’t last long. ‘People who love horses collect their manure and urine in fine baskets and bottles. However, if a mosquito or gadfly lands on the horse, and the groom suddenly swipes it away, the horse breaks its bit, damages its harness and hurts its chest. Tire groom, out of affection, tried to do what was good, but the end result is the reverse of that. So should we exercise caution!’ Carpenter Shih was on his way to Chi, when he came to the place called Chu Yuan, where he saw an oak tree which was venerated as the home of the spirits of the land. The tree was so vast that a thousand oxen could hide behind it. It was a hundred spans round and it soared above the hill to eighty feet before it even began to put out branches. There were ten such branches, from any one of which an entire boat could be carved. Masses of people came to see it, giving the place a carnival atmosphere, but carpenter Shih didn’t even look round, just went on his way. His assistant looked at it with great intensity, and then chased after his master and said, ‘Since I first took up my axe and followed you, I have never seen wood such as this. Sir, wiry did you not even glance at it nor stop, but just kept going?’ He said, ‘Silence, not another word! Tire tree is useless. Make a boat from it and it would sink; make a coffin and it would rot quickly; make some furniture and it would fall to pieces; make a door and it would be covered in seeping sap; make a pillar and it would be worm-eaten. This wood is useless and good for nothing. This is why it has lived so long.’ When Master Shih was returning, the tree appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘What exactly are you comparing me with? With ornamental fruit trees? Trees such as the hawthorn, pear trees, orange trees, citrus trees, gourds and other such fruit trees? Their fruits are knocked down when they are ripe and the trees suffer. Tire big branches are damaged and the small ones are broken off. Because they are useful, they suffer, and they are unable to live out the years Heaven has given them. They have only their usefulness to blame for this destruction wrought by the people. It is the same with all things. I have spent a long time studying to be useless, though on a couple of occasions I was nearly destroyed. However, now I have perfected the art of uselessness, and this is very useful, to me! If I had been of use, could I have grown so vast? Furthermore, you and I are both things. How can one thing make such statements about another? How can you, a useless man about to die, know anything about a useless tree?’ When carpenter Shih awoke, he told his apprentice what he had dreamt. Tire apprentice said, ‘If it wants to be useless, why is it used as the shrine for the spirits of the land?’ ‘Hush! Don’t say another word!’ said Shih. ‘Tire tree happens to be here so it is an altar. By this it protects itself from harm from those who do not realize it is useless, for were it not an altar, it would run the risk of being chopped down. Furthermore, this tree is no ordinary one, so to speak of it in normal terms is to miss the point.’ Nan Po Tzu Chi, wandering amongst the mountains of Shang, came upon a great and unusual tree, under which could shelter a thousand chariots, and they would all be covered. Tzu Chi said, ‘What kind of a tree is this? It is surely a most wondrous piece of timber!’ However, when he looked up, he could see that the smaller branches were so twisted and gnarled that they could not be made into rafters and beams; and looking down at the trunk he saw it was warped and distorted and would not make good coffins. He licked one of its leaves and his mouth felt scraped and sore. He sniffed it and it nearly drove him mad, as if he had been drunk for three days. ‘This tree is certainly good for nothing,’ said Tzu Chi. ‘This is wiry it has grown so large. Alr-ha! This is the sort of uselessness that sages live by. ‘In the state of Sung there is the district of Ching Shih, which is excellent for growing catalpas, cypresses and mulberry trees. However, those which are more than a handspan or so around are cut down by people who want to make posts for their monkeys; those which are three or four spans around are cut down to make beams for great houses; those of seven to eight spans are cut down by lords and the wealthy who want single planks to form the side of their coffins. As a result, the trees do not live out the years Heaven has allotted them, but instead are cut down by the axe in the prime of their life. This is all the result of being useful! At the sacrifice, oxen marked by the white forehead, pigs that have turned-up noses and men suffering from piles are useless as offerings to the River Ho. Shamans know this and as a result they consider such creatures as being inauspicious. However, the sage, for exactly this same reason, values them highly. ‘Crippled Shu, now, is a man with his chin lost in his navel, his shoulders higher than the top of his head and his topknot pointing to Heaven, his five vital organs all crushed into the top of his body and his two thighs pressing into his ribs. By sharpening needles and washing clothes he earns enough to eat. By winnowing rice and cleaning it he was able to feed ten people. When the officials called up the militia, he walked about freely, with no need to hide; when they are trying to raise a large work gang, because of his deformities, no one bothers him. Yet when the officials were handing out grain to the infirm, he received three great portions and ten bundles of firewood. If a man like this, deformed in body, can make a living and live out the years Heaven sends him, how much more should a man who is only deformed in terms of his Virtue!’ Confucius went to Chu, and Chieh Yu, the madman of Chu, wandered to his gate and said, ‘O Phoenix, O Phoenix! How your virtue has faded! Tire future cannot be awaited, nor the past reclaimed. When the whole world has the Tao, the sage can succeed. When the whole world has lost the Tao, the sage can only just survive. At a time like this, we are lucky if we can escape punishment. Happiness is as light as a feather, but who knows how to hold it? Misfortune is heavier than the very earth, but who knows how to escape it? Give up, give up trying to teach people Virtue! Watch out, watch out - rushing on into areas already marked out by you! Idiot, idiot, don’t harm my path. I go on my way, walking crookedly, to preserve my feet from harm! Tire mountain trees are the cause of their own destruction. Hie fat throws itself into the fire. Hie cinnamon tree is edible, so it is cut down. Hie varnish tree is useful and it is cut about. Everyone knows the usefulness of the useful but no one knows the usefulness of the useless CHAPTER 5 Signs of Real Virtue In the state of Lu there lived a man called Wang Tai, who had lost a foot - yet the number of his followers was as great as those of Confucius. Chang Chi asked Confucius, ‘Wang Tai has lost a foot, yet he manages to divide up the state of Lu equally with you, Master. He doesn’t preach, he doesn’t debate, but people come empty and leave full. Is it true that there is teaching without words, and that even if the body is not whole, the heart is complete? What kind of man is he?’ Confucius replied, ‘This master is a sage, and the only reason I have not been his disciple is that I was slow in going to him. I will certainly now go to him as my teacher, and, therefore, how much more should those who are not equal to me! Why stop at just the state of Lu? I will bring all under Heaven to follow him.’ ‘He is a man who has lost a foot,’ said Chang Chi, ‘yet his authority is above yours! Sir, how very different he is from ordinary people. How exactly does his heart function?’ ‘Death and birth are matters of great significance,’ said Confucius, ‘but they have no effect on him. Even if Heaven and Earth were to collapse, he would not be disturbed. He truly understands the primary tilings in life and is not moved by mere things, he understands that some things are predestined and therefore holds true to the unchanging.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘If you look at things in terms of their difference,’ replied Confucius, ‘then the liver and gall are as different as the states of Chu and Yueh; however, study them from the perspective of their sameness, and all life is one. This is what this master does. Such a man is not guided by his eyes and ears, instead he lets his heart decide what is harmonious in its Virtue. He observes the unity and does not see that which is lost. He considers the loss of his foot as being like a lump of earth thrown away.’ Chang Chi said, ‘In the way he has nurtured himself with knowledge, he has followed his heart, his true heart. Following his heart, he has cultivated an eternal heart, but why should it be that he becomes such a focal point?’ ‘People don’t look at a flowing river for a mirror, they look at still waters, because only what is still stills things and holds them still. Of those things which are given life by the earth, only the pine and cypress are the best, for they remain green throughout winter and summer. Of those things given life by Heaven, only Shun was true, for he made his own life an example and so guided others’ lives. Holding to the primal strength and eliminating fear, a lone brave knight can overcome nine armies. If this can be achieved by a brave man seeking renown, just imagine what can be achieved by one who is in control of Heaven and Earth and who encompasses all life, who simply uses his physical body as a place to dwell, whose ears and eyes he knows only convey fleeting images, who knows how to unite all knowledge, and whose heart never dies! Such a man as this, when he chooses a day to ascend on high, will be followed by many people. Yet why should he worry about such matters?’ Shen Tu Chia had lost a foot, and he was a student of Po Hun Wu Jen, along with Cheng Tzu Chan.— Tzu Chan said to Shen Tu Chia, ‘If I go away from here first, please will you remain behind, and if you go away first, I shall remain behind.’ The very next day they were both sitting together again on the same mat in the hall. Tzu Chan said to Shen Tu Chia, ‘If I go away from here first, please will you remain behind, and if you go away first, I’ll remain behind. Now I am just about to leave, and I really want to know, will you remain behind or not? When you see a top official, you don’t even try to get out of his way. Do you think you are his equal?’ Shen Tu Chia replied, ‘Within the house of our Master, does such a tiring as a top official exist? You behave like a top official and are proud of your status. I recall the saying “If a mirror is bright, then no dust or dirt will collect upon it. And if they do, then the mirror is not bright. If you live for long around virtuous people, you are free from all excess.” Now, you have chosen this master as a master to make you great, yet you can still utter these words. Are you not at fault?’ ‘Someone like you tries to be as great as Yao,’ said Tzu Chan. ‘Look at your Virtue, isn’t that enough to make you stop and think about yourself?’ ‘There are many who have caused trouble but who think that they do not deserve punishment,’ said Shen Tu Chia. ‘However, those who do not cause trouble and who think they deserve nothing are few indeed. To know what is beyond your ability to change, and to live with this as your destiny, is the action of a virtuous one. Anyone who wanders into the middle of Archer Yi’s— target will find that such a central place is exactly where you get hit! If they are not hit, then that is destiny. People with both feet often laugh at me for having only one and I used to get very angry But when I come before our Master, I forget all about that. I don’t know, maybe the Master has cleansed me of all that? I have followed the Master for nineteen years without worrying about the loss of my foot. Now you and I are trying to move beyond the physical body, yet you keep drawing attention to it. Isn’t this rather excessive of you?’ Tzu Chan felt uncomfortable and wriggled about and said, ‘Sir, please, say no more about this.’ In the state of Lu there was a mutilated man— called Shu Shan the Toeless. He came upon his stumps to see Confucius. Confucius said, ‘You were not careful and therefore suffered this fate. It is too late to come and see me now.’ ‘Because of my lack of knowledge and through lack of care for my body, I lost my feet,’ said Toeless. ‘Now I have come to you because I still have that which is of greater value than my foot and I wish to save it. There is nothing that great Heaven does not cover, nor anything that the Earth does not sustain. I had hoped you, Sir, would be as Heaven and Earth to me, and I did not expect you to receive me like this!’ ‘I am being stupid!’ said Confucius. ‘Good Sir, please do not go away and I will try to share with you what I have learnt!’ However, Toeless left and Confucius said, ‘Be watchful, my followers! Great Toeless has lost his feet but still he wants to learn in order to recompense for his evil deeds. How much more so should you who are able-bodied want to learn!’ Toeless told his story to Lao Tzu, saying, ‘Confucius has definitely not become a perfect man yet, has he? So why does he try to study with you? He seems to be caught up with the search for honour and reputation, without appearing to understand that the perfect man sees these as chains and irons.’ Lao Tzu said, ‘Why not help him to see that death and birth are one thing and that right and wrong are one thing, and so free him from the chains and irons?’ ‘Given that Heaven punishes him, how can he be set free?’ asked Toeless. Duke Ai of Lu said to Confucius, ‘In Wei there was a man with a terrible appearance called Ai Tai To. But those around him thought the world of him and when women saw him they ran to their mothers and fathers saying, “I would rather be the concubine of this gentleman than anyone else’s wife.” This has happened more than ten times. He was never heard to take the lead in anything, but was always in accord with others. He was not powerful and thus able to save people from death, nor was he wealthy and able to feed people. Furthermore, he was so hideous he could scare the whole world. He never took the lead, just agreed with whatever was suggested, and he knew little about the world beyond his own four walls. But people came flocking to him. It is clear he is different from ordinary people, so I asked him to come and see me. He certainly was ugly enough to frighten the whole world. Yet he had only been with me for less than a month when I began to appreciate him. Within a year I had full trust in him. In my country there was no prime minister, so I offered him the post. His response to my request was to look most sorrowful and diffident as if he was going to turn it down. I was ashamed of myself but in the end simply handed over the country to him. Very soon after, he upped and left. I was distressed and felt this a great loss, for I had no one with whom to share the cares of the state. Now, what sort of man is this?’ Confucius said, ‘I was once in the state of Chu on a commission, and I saw some piglets trying to suckle from their dead mother. After a while they started up and left her. She did not seem to notice them and so they no longer felt any affinity with her. What they loved about their mother was not her body but what gave life to the body. When a man is killed in battle, at his burial his battle honours are of little use to him. A man without feet has little love for shoes. In both cases they lack that which makes these of any significance. Indeed, the consorts of the Son of Heaven— do not cut their own nails or pierce their ears; a newly wed gentleman stays outside the court and is freed from onerous duties. With so much attention being paid to caring for the body, imagine what care should be given to preserving Virtue! Now Ai Tai To speaks not a word, yet he is believed. He does nothing and is loved. People offer him their kingdoms, and their only fear is that he will refuse. He must indeed be a man of perfect character, whose Virtue is without shape!’ ‘What do you mean by “perfect character”?’ asked Duke Ai. Confucius replied, ‘Death, birth, existence and trouble, auspicious and inauspicious signs, wealth, poverty, value and worthlessness, glory and blame, hunger and thirst, cold and hot - all these are the way the world goes and the result of destiny. Day and night follow each other, but there is no way of knowing where they come from. Don’t allow this to disrupt your innate balance, don’t allow this to perturb your mind. If you can balance and enjoy them, have mastery over them and revel in tins, if you can do this day in and day out without a break and bring all things together, then this brings forth a heart prepared for changes and this is perfect character.’ ‘But what do you mean when you say his Virtue is without shape?’ ‘Perfect balance is found in still waters. Such water should be an example to us all. Inner harmony is protected and nothing external affects it. Virtue is the result of true balance. Virtue has no shape or form yet nothing can be without it,’ said Confucius. A few days later, Duke Ai commented to Ming Tzu— on this discussion, saying, ‘To begin with, I took up the position of authority and became a ruler of all under Heaven, caring for the people and concerned lest they die. I perceived this as being perfect. Now, hearing the thoughts of the perfect man, I fear that I really understood very little, for I cared more for my own self than for the country. Confucius and I are not in a relationship of subject and nobleman, for our friendship is founded upon Virtue.’ The Crooked Man with No Lips offered advice to Duke Ling of Wei, who greatly appreciated his words of advice, so much so that he thought ordinary people had backs too straight and lips too big. The Man with a Jug-sized Goitre offered advice to Duke Huan of Chi. Duke Huan appreciated his counsel, so much so that he thought ordinary people had necks which were too thin and short. If virtue is foremost, the physical body is ignored. When people do not ignore what they should ignore, but ignore what they should not ignore, this is known as true ignorance. The sage sees his role as that of a wanderer, sees knowledge as a curse, convention as a glue, virtue as just a means, and effort as common trade. Tire sage has no great plans, so what use has he for knowledge? He makes no divisions, so what use has he for glue? He has no problems, so what use has he for virtue? He has no career, so what need has he for common trade? These four, they are the nourishment of Heaven. Fed by Heaven, he is nourished by Heaven. As he loves being nourished by Heaven, he has no need of humanity! He has the form of a man, but not the emotions of a man. Because he has the form of a man, he can be amongst men, but not having the emotions of a man, he does not have to follow the ways of right and wrong. Inconsequential and small, he stays amongst men! Substantial and large, he is at one with Heaven! Hui Tzu asked Chuang Tzu, ‘Is it possible for someone to be without emotion?’ ‘Certainly,’ said Chuang Tzu. ‘A man without emotion - can you really call him a man?’ asked Hui Tzu. Chuang Tzu replied, ‘Hre Way gives him a face and Heaven provides a shape, so how can it follow he is not called a man?’ ‘But if he is already called a man, how can it follow that he has no emotion?’ ‘That’s not what I mean by emotions,’ said Chuang Tzu. ‘When I say a man has no emotions, what I mean by this is someone who does not allow either the good or the bad to have any effect upon him. He lets all things be and allows life to continue in its own way.’ Hui Tzu said, ‘If he doesn’t interfere with life, then how does he take care of himself?’ ‘Tire Way gives him a face and Heaven provides a shape. He does not allow either the good or the bad to have any effect on him. But you now, you wear your soul on your sleeve, exhausting your energy, propping yourself up on a tree, mumbling, or bent over your desk, asleep. Heaven gives you a form and you wear it out by pointless argument!’ CHAPTER 6 The Great and Original Teacher Hie one who understands Heaven and understands the ways of humanity has perfection. Understanding Heaven, he grows with Heaven. Understanding humanity, he takes the understanding of what he understands to help him understand what he doesn’t understand, and so fulfils the years Heaven decrees without being cut off in his prime. This is known as perfection. However, it is true that there are problems. Real understanding has to have something to which it is applied and this something is itself uncertain. So how can I know that what I term Heaven is not human? Or that what I call human is not Heaven? Only the true man has understanding. So what is a true man? Hie true man of old did not fight against poverty, nor did he look for fulfilment through riches - for he had no grand plans. Therefore, he never regretted any failure, nor exulted in success. He could scale the heights without fear, plumb the depths without difficulties and go through fire without pain. This is the kind of person whose understanding has lifted him up towards the Tao. The true man of old slept without dreaming and awoke without anxiety. He ate without tasting, breathing deeply, incredibly deeply. Tlie true man breathes from his feet up, while ordinary people just breathe from the throat. Hie words of broken people come forth like vomit. Wallowing in lust and desire, they are but shallow in the ways of Heaven. The true man of old did not hold on to life, nor did he fear death. He arrived without expectation and left without resistance. He went calmly, he came calmly and that was that. He did not set out to forget his origin, nor was he interested in what would become of him. He loved to receive anything but also forgot what he had received and gave it away. He did not give precedence to the heart but to the Tao, nor did he prefer the ways of humanity to those of Heaven. Hiis is what is known as a true man. Being like this, his heart forgets, his appearance is calm, his forehead is plain; He is as chilly as autumn and as warming as spring. His joy and anger arise like the four seasons. He acts properly towards all things and none know where this will lead. So if the sage summons the army and conquers states, he does not lose the affections of the people. His magnanimous nature enriches ten thousand generations, yet he has no affection for the people. One who seeks to share his happiness with others is not a sage. One who displays his feelings is not benevolent. One who waits for Heaven is not a wise man. The noble who cannot harmonize the good and the destructive is not a scholar. One who seeks for fame and thereby loses his real self is no gentleman. One who loses his true self and his path is unable to command others. Men such as Hu Pu Chieh, Wu Kuang, Po Yi, Shu Chi, Chi Tzu, Hsu Yu. Chi To, Shen Tu Ti— — all followed the example of others, tried to get for them what they desired but they did not seek for themselves what they desired. The true man of old appeared aloof but was in no danger of falling. He appears deficient, yet takes nothing. He does what he wills but is not judgemental. His emptiness was clear, but there was no showing off. Cheerfully smiling, he seemed to be content. He responded immediately as if there was no choice. If upset, he showed it. If content, he was at ease with Virtue. When calm, he appeared to be one with the world. When superior, the world had no control over him. His inner nature seemed unknowable. Never being really aware, he forgot what to say. He saw the law as the external form of government. Tire rituals he saw as the wings, knowledge as being the same as what is appropriate at the time. Virtue he saw as what is proper. Viewing law as the external form of government, he was flexible in imposing the death sentence. Viewing the rituals as the wings, he got on well with society. Viewing knowledge as being that which is appropriate, he followed the natural course of events. Viewing virtue as that which is proper, he walked along with others who were capable of leading. So he acted spontaneously, but others thought it was at great cost. Thus all that he sought was one. What he disowned was also but one. What is one is one, and what is not one is also one. In the one, he was with Heaven. In the not-one, he was one with humanity. When heaven and humanity are not in dispute, then we can say this is really the true man. Death and birth are fixed. Drey are as certain as the dawn that comes after the night, established by the decree of Heaven. Dris is beyond the control of humanity, this is just how things are. Some view Heaven as their father and continue to love it. How much more should they show devotion for that which is even greater! Some people consider their lord as being better than themselves and would willingly the for him. How much more should they do the same for one who is more true than their lord! When the springs dry out, the fish are found stranded on the earth. Drey keep each other damp with their own moisture, and wet each other with their slime. But it would be better if they could just forget about each other in rivers and lakes. People sing the praises of Yao and condemn Chieh, but it would be better if they could forget both of them and just follow the Tao. Dre cosmos gives me the burden of a physical form, makes life a struggle, gives me rest in old age and peace in death. What makes life good, therefore, also makes death good. A boat can be hidden in a gorge, and a fishing net in a pool, and you may think they are therefore safe. However, in the middle of the night a strong man comes and carries them off. Small-minded people just cannot see that hiding smaller things in larger things does not mean they will not be stolen. If you take everything under Heaven and try to store it under Heaven, there is no space left for it to be lost in! This is the real truth about things. To have a human form is a joyful thing. But in the universe of possible forms, there are others just as good. Isn’t it a blessing to have these uncountable possibilities! Tire sage goes where nothing escapes him, and rests contented there with them. He takes pleasure in an early death, in old age, in the origin and in the end and sees them all as equally good - he should be an example to others. If this is so, then how much more should our example be that which holds together the whole of life and which is the origin of all that changes! Hie great Tao has both reality and expression, but it does nothing and has no form. It can be passed on, but not received. It can be obtained, but not seen. It is rooted in its own self, existing before Heaven and Earth were born, indeed for eternity. It gives divinity to the spirits and to the gods. It brought to life Heaven and Earth. It was before the primal air, yet it cannot be called lofty; it was below all space and direction, yet it cannot be called deep. It comes before either Heaven or Earth, yet it cannot be called old. It is far more ancient than antiquity, yet it is not old. Hsi Wei— obtained it, and with it he framed Heaven and Earth. Fu Hsi obtained it and through it he entered into the Mother of life’s breath. The Great Dipper constellation obtained it and from of old has never wavered. The Sun and Moon obtained it and from of old have never ceased. Kan Pi obtained it and was able to enter the Kun Lun mountains. Feng Yi obtained it and was able to journey to the great river. Chien Wu obtained it and was able to live on Mount Tai. The Yellow Emperor obtained it and was able to ascend into the clouds of Heaven. Chuan Hsu obtained it and was able to dwell in the Dark Palace. The Queen Mother of the West— obtained it and was able to take her seat on Shao Kuang Mountain - no one knew her origin, no one knows her end. Peng Tsu obtained it and was able to live from the time of Shun to that of the Five Lords. Fu Yuch obtained it and was able to become the Prime Minister of Wu Ting, so he controlled all under Heaven. Then, riding upon one constellation, he climbed upon another and soared to the Milky Way to dwell as a star. Nan Po Tzu Kuei said to Nu Chu, ‘Master, you are old, yet your appearance is one of youthfulness. Why is this?’ The reply came, ‘I have studied the Tao.’ ‘Can I study how to obtain the Tao?’ Hie reply was, ‘Definitely not! Most definitely not! You are not the kind of man who could do this. ‘Now there was Pu Liang Yi, who had the genius of a sage but not the Tao. I have the Tao, but not the genius. I wanted to teach him in order that he might become a sage. It seemed as if teaching the Tao to a man of genius would be easy. But no! I taught him for three days and he was able to ignore worldly matters. Having dispensed with worldly matters, I continued to teach him for seven days, so that he was able to ignore all external matters. Having disposed of all external matters, I continued to teach him for nine days, whereupon he could observe his own being as irrelevant. Having discerned his own self as irrelevant, he saw with true clarity. Having seen with true clarity, he could see by the One. Seeing by the One, he could ignore both past and present. Having ignored both past and present he was able to enter where there is neither death nor birth. Tire end of life is not death, and the coming to birth is not life. He could follow anything, he could receive anything. To him, all was being destroyed, all was being built. This is known as Tranquillity in Struggle. Tranquillity in Struggle means perfection.’ Na Po Tzu Kuei said, ‘Master, where did you learn this?’ ‘I learned it through the medium of the spirit of writing; writing learned it from the offspring of continuous study; continuous study learned it from clarity of vision; clarity of vision heard it from quiet agreement; quiet agreement from being used; being used from great enjoyment; great enjoyment from deepest mystery; deepest mystery from absorption in mystery; absorption in mystery from the ultimate.’ The Masters, Ssu, Yu, Li and Lai, said one to another, ‘Anyone who can conceive of nothingness as his head, life as his back and death as his tail and who knows that death and birth, being and no-being, are one and the same - one like this shall be our friend.’ Tire four men smiled and agreed in their hearts and therefore became friends. Shortly after, Master Yu fell ill. Master Ssu went to visit him and Yu said, ‘How great is the Maker of All! He has made me deformed. My back is like a hunchback’s, and all my organs are on top while my chin is lost in my navel and my shoulders rise up above my head and my topknot points to Heaven!’ His yin and yang were in disarray. However, his heart was calm and he was not worried. He limped to a well and looked in at his reflection and said, ‘Goodness me! Tire Maker of All has made me completely deformed!’ ‘Do you dislike it?’ asked Master Ssu. ‘Not really, why should I? For example, perhaps my left arm will become a cockerel and then I shall be able to tell the time at night. Maybe, eventually, my right arm will become a crossbow and then I can hunt a bird and eat it. Possibly my bottom will become wheels and my soul will be a horse which I shall climb upon and go for a ride. After all, I wouldn’t then need any other vehicle again! I obtained life because the time was right. I will lose life because it is time. Those who go quietly with the flow of nature are not worried by either joy or sorrow. People like these were considered in the past as having achieved freedom from bondage. Those who cannot free themselves are constrained by things. However, nothing can overcome Heaven - it has always been so. So why should I dislike this?’ Later Master Lai fell ill. Gasping and heaving, he lay close to death. His wife and children were mourning around him. Master Li came to see him and Master Lai said, ‘Hush, get out! Do you want to disrupt the processes of change?’ Leaning against the doorway Li commented, ‘How great is the Maker of All! What will you be made into next? Where will you be sent? Will you come back as a rat’s liver? Or will it be as a pest’s arm?’ Master Lai said, ‘When a mother and father tell a child to go somewhere, be that east, west, south or north, the child obeys. Yin and yang are the mother and father of humanity. They have brought me close to death and if I disobey this would be just perversity. My death is not their problem! The cosmos gives me form, brings me to birth, guides me into old age and settles me in death. If I think my life good, then I must think my death good. A good craftsman, casting metal, would not be too pleased with metal that jumped up and said, “I must be made into a sword like Mo Yeh.”— Now, given that I have been bold enough to take on human shape already, if I then said, “I must be a human, I must be a human!”, the Maker of All would view me somewhat askance! If Heaven and Earth are like a furnace and Nature is the craftsman, then is it possible he could send me anywhere that was not appropriate? Peacefully we die, calmly we awake.’ Masters Sang Hu, Meng Tzu Fan and Chin Chang, three good friends, said to each other, ‘Who can be together without any being together, or collaborate with others without any collaboration? Who can ascend to Heaven, ride the clouds, journey through the infinite, and forget about existence for ever and ever?’ The three men looked at each other and smiled, agreeing in their hearts with one another and becoming firm friends. Some time later Master Sang Hu died. Before he was buried, Confucius heard of his death and sent Tzu Kung to participate in the rituals. On arrival, Tzu Kung found one of the dead man’s friends was making up songs while the other played a lute. Together they sang, ‘Woe! Sang Hu! Woe! Sang Hu! You have returned to the true form, while we are still but men!’ Tzu Kung hurried forward and said, ‘Is it really seemly and proper to sing before a dead body?’ Tire two men looked at him, laughed and said, ‘What does a man like this know about proper ceremony?’ Tzu Kung went back to Confucius, told him what had happened, and asked, ‘What kind of people are they? They are uncouth and pay no heed to their external appearance. They sing in the presence of a dead body without any change of face! There is no appropriate title for them. What kind of people are they?’ Confucius said, ‘They go beyond the human world, while I travel within. That beyond and that within can never meet. It was a mistake to send you to join the mourning. Urey have truly become one with the Maker of All and now wander as the original breath of Heaven and Earth. Urey view life as a grotesque tumour, a swelling they inhabit. Urey view death as the removal of this growth. Since they see life like this, they simply do not consider whether death or birth comes first. Urey view their bodies as just so many collected different pieces. Urey forget their liver and gall and ignore their ears and eyes. They begin and cease without knowing what is beginning or ceasing. Unaware, they wander beyond the mundane world and stroll in the world of non-action. Why should they have to worry about proper conduct just to please ordinary people?’ ‘In that case, Master,’ said Tzu Kung, ‘why do you conform to convention?’ ‘I am one punished by Heaven,’ said Confucius. ‘Nevertheless, this is what I will share with you.’ ‘Can you tell me a little more?’ said Tzu Kung. ‘Fish enjoy water, humans enjoy the Tao. Enjoying water, the fish stick to the pond and find all they need to survive there. Enjoying the Tao, people do nothing and their lives are fulfilled. Tire saying goes that fish forget about each other in the pond and people forget each other in the Tao.’ Tzu Kung said, ‘May I ask about the man alone?’ ‘Tire man alone is only alone when compared to others, but he is alongside Heaven. It is said that the mean-minded man of Heaven is a nobleman amongst ordinary people and the nobleman is a mean-minded man of Heaven.’ Yen Hui asked Confucius, ‘When Meng Sun Tsai’s mother died, he cried without tears, there was no distress in his heart. When he mourned, there was no sorrow. Although he was deficient on these three points, nevertheless he is renowned throughout the state of Lu for his excellence as a mourner. Is it possible to obtain such a reputation, even when there is nothing to substantiate it? I find this very surprising.’ ‘Master Meng Sun Tsai did what was right,’ said Confucius. ‘He was far beyond mundane understanding. He could have restricted his actions even more but that was not really feasible. Nevertheless, he did cut out a great deal. Meng Sun Tsai does not know how he came to be born, nor how he will die. He just knows enough not to want one or the other. He doesn’t know why he should continue, he just follows what happens without understanding! As we are all in a process of change, how can we know what unknown thing we will be changed into? As what we are changing into has not yet happened, how can we understand what change is? Perhaps you and I are in a dream from which we are yet to awake! In Meng Sun Tsai’s case the body changes but this does not affect his heart. His body, housing his soul, may be affected, but his emotions are not harmed. Meng Sun Tsai alone has awoken. People cry, so he cries. He considers everything as his own being. How could he know that others call something their own particular self? You dream you are a bird and rise into the Heavens. You dream you are a fish and swim down deep into the lake. We cannot tell now if the speaker is awake or asleep. Contentment produces the smile; a genuine smile cannot be forced. Don’t struggle, go with the flow and you will find yourself at one with the vastness of the void of Heaven.’ Yi Erh Tzu went to visit Hsu Yu, who asked him, ‘In what way has Yao been helpful to you?’ Yi Erh Tzu said, ‘Yao said to me, “Practise benevolence and justice. Speak up for what is right and against what is wrong.” ’ Hsu Yu said, ‘So wiry have you troubled yourself to visit me? Master Yao has already branded on you the practice of benevolence and justice and mutilated you with the distinction between right and wrong. So how can you now expect me to help you meander alone in freedom and aimlessness, enjoying things as they happen through the process of change?’ ‘Maybe that is so,’ said Yi Erh Tzu, ‘but I’d like to find some small corner for myself.’ Hsu Yu said, ‘No, it can’t be done! If you have been blinded, it is impossible to appreciate beauty of face or form. Eyes with no pupils cannot see the beauty of fine, coloured silks.’ Yi Erh said, ‘Wu Chuang paid no attention to her looks; Chu Liang ignored his strength; the Yellow Emperor disregarded his wisdom - all these were transformed by being worked upon. How can you know that the Maker of All will not remove the mark of my branding, heal my mutilation and, having thus restored me, enable me to follow you as my teacher?’ ‘Well!’ said Hsu Yu. ‘You never know. I will just tell you the basic outline of the teachings. ‘Oh my Master, oh my Master! He judges all life but doesn’t believe himself to be ajudge. His blessings extend to all life, but he doesn’t see himself as blessed. Older than antiquity, yet not old. Overarching Heaven, carrying Earth and forming all things, he is no craftsman. It is through him that I wander.’ Yen Hui said, ‘I’m getting better.’ Confucius said, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I have forgotten kindness and justice.’ ‘Fine, but that is not enough.’ On another occasion, they met again and Yen Hui said, ‘I’ve improved.’ Confucius said, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I have forgotten rituals and music.’ ‘Good, but that is still not enough.’ On another occasion they met and Yen Hui said, ‘I’m getting better.’ Confucius said, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I can sit right down and forget everything.’ Confucius was certainly disturbed by this and said, ‘What do you mean by sit right down and forget?’ Yen Hui replied, ‘My limbs are without feeling and my mind is without light. I have ignored my body and cast aside my wisdom. Hrus I am united with the Tao. Hris is what sitting right down and forgetting is.’ Confucius said, ‘If you are one with the great Way, then you no longer have preferences. If you are one with the cosmos, you are transformed. If this is what you have done, then I would like to follow you.’ Masters Yu and Sang were friends. It happened to rain for ten days, and Master Yu said, ‘Master Sang may be in trouble!’ So he packed some food to take to him. Arriving at Master Sang’s door he heard strange noises and someone playing a lute, singing, ‘Oh Father! Oh Mother! Oh Heaven! Oh humanity!’ It sounded as if the singer’s voice was about to break and the singer was rushing to finish the verse. Master Yu entered and said, ‘Master, why are you singing like this?’ He said, ‘I was trying to work out what has reduced me to this. My father and mother wouldn’t want me to be so poor, surely? Heaven treats all alike. Earth supports all alike. Heaven and Earth wouldn’t wish me poor, would they? I seek to know who has done this, but I can’t find an answer. When you come down to it, it must be simply fate.’ CHAPTER 7 Dealing with Emperors and Kings Yeh Chueh questioned Wang Ni. Four times he raised a question and four times he said he did not know. Yeh Chueh started jumping around in great excitement and went off to inform Master Pu Yi. Master Pu Yi said, ‘Have you only just discovered this? The noble ruler Shun— was not equal to the noble ruler Tai.— Noble ruler Shun tried to use benevolence to bind the people to him. This certainly worked, but he was unable to escape into being aware of no-man. Noble ruler Tai slept the sleep of innocence and awoke in calm collectedness. Sometimes he believed himself to be a horse, other times he might believe he was an ox. His wisdom was utterly true, his Virtue was profoundly real. He never came into awareness of no-man.’ Chien Wu went to visit the eccentric Chieh Yu, who asked him, ‘What did Chung Shih say to you recently?’ Chien Wu replied, ‘He said to me that the nobleman who has authority over people should set a personal example by proper regulations, law and practices. The corollary of this will be that no one will disobey him and everyone will be transformed as a result.’ Eccentric Chieh Yu said, ‘That would ruin Virtue. If someone tries to govern everything below Heaven in this way, it’s like trying to stride through the seas or cut a tunnel through the river or make a mosquito carry a mountain. When a great sage is in command, he doesn’t try to take control of externals. He first allows people to do what comes naturally and he ensures that all things follow the way their nature takes them. The bird flies high in the sky and thereby escapes from the risk of being shot with arrows. The mouse burrows down under the hill of the spirits and thus escapes being disturbed. Don’t you even have as much understanding as these two creatures?’ Tien Ken was travelling to the south of Yin Mountain. He reached the river Liao, where he met the Man without a Name and said to him, ‘I wish to ask you about governing everything under Heaven.’ The Man without a Name said, ‘Get lost, you stupid lout! What an unpleasant question! I am travelling with the Maker of All. If that is too tiring, I shall ride the bird of ease and emptiness and go beyond the compass of the world and wander in the land of nowhere and the region of nothing. So why are you disturbing me and unsettling my heart with questions about howto rule all below Heaven?’ Tien Ken asked the same question again. Tire Man without a Name replied, ‘Let your heart journey in simplicity. Be one with that which is beyond definition. Let things be what they are. Have no personal views. This is how everything under Heaven is ruled.’ Yan Tzu Chu went to visit Lao Tzu and he said, ‘Here is a man who is keen and vigilant, who has clarity of vision and wisdom and who studies the Tao without ceasing. Such a person as this is surely a king of great wisdom?’ ‘In comparison to the sage,’ said Lao Tzu, ‘someone like this is just a humble servant, tied to his work, exhausting himself and distressing his heart. The tiger and the leopard, it is said, are hunted because of the beauty of their hides. The monkey and the dog end up in chains because of their skills. Can these be compared to a king of great wisdom?’ Yang Tzu Chu was startled and said, ‘May I be so bold as to ask about the rule of a king who is great in wisdom?’ Lao Tzu said, ‘Hie rule of a king who is great in wisdom! His works affect all under Heaven, yet he seems to do nothing. His authority reaches all life, yet no one relies upon him. There is no fame nor glory for him but everything fulfils itself. He stands upon mystery and wanders where there is nothing.’ In Chen there was a shaman of the spirits called Chi Hsien. He could foretell when people would die and be born; he knew about good fortune and failure as granted by Heaven; he knew about happiness and distress, life and its span, knowing the year, month, week and day, as if he were a god himself. As soon as the people of Cheng saw him coming, they would run away. Lieh Tzu went to see him and was fascinated by him. Coming back to Hu Tzu, he said, ‘I used to believe, Master, that your Tao was perfection. Now I have found something even better.’ Hu Tzu said, ‘What I have shown you is the outward text of my teaching, but not what is central. How can you think you have grasped my Tao? If you have hens but no cockerel, how can you have eggs? You flaunt your Tao before the world. This is wiry this man can read your fortune. Bring this shaman to me and let us meet.’ The next day Lieh Tzu brought the shaman to visit Hu Tzu. And as he left Hu Tzu’s house with Lieh Tzu, the shaman said, ‘Oh dear! Your Master is dying. There’s virtually no life left - he has maybe a week at most. I saw a strange sight - it was like wet ashes!’ Lieh Tzu went in again, weeping so copiously that tears soaked his coat, and told Hu Tzu what had been said. Hu Tzu said, ‘I made myself appear like the earth. I was as solid as the mountain, showing nothing to him. He probably perceived me to be a closed book, apparently without virtue. Bring him again if you can.’ Tire next day Lieh Tzu came again with the shaman to see Hu Tzu. As they went out, the shaman said to Lieh Tzu, ‘How lucky for your Master that he has met me. He is getting better. Indeed he is truly alive. Life is flowing again.’ Lieh Tzu went back in and commented on this to Hu Tzu. Hu Tzu said, ‘I made myself appear to him like Heaven, without fame or fortune on my mind. What I am wells up in me naturally. He saw in me the full and natural workings of life. Bring him again if you can.’ The next day they came again to see Hu Tzu. As they went out, the shaman said to Lieh Tzu, ‘Tbur Master is never the same. I cannot grasp the fortune shown in his face. If he returns to some constancy then I will come and see him again.’ Lieh Tzu went back in and reported this to Hu Tzu. ‘I showed him myself as the great Void where all is equal,’ said Hu Tzu. ‘He almost certainly saw in me the harmony of my innate forces. When water moves about, there is a whirlpool; where the waters are calm, there is a whirlpool; where the waters gather, there is a whirlpool. There are nine types of whirlpool and I have shown him just three. Bring him back again if you can.’ Tire next day they both came again to see him. However, before he had even sat down, the shaman panicked and ran off. Hu Tzu said, ‘Followhim!’ Lieh Tzu ran after him. But he could not catch up with him. Coming back to Hu Tzu, he said, ‘He has gone, I’ve lost him. I couldn’t catch him.’ Hu Tzu said, ‘I just appeared to him as hitherto unrevealed potential. I presented myself as not knowing who is who, nor what is what. I came flowing and changing as I willed. Hrat’s wiry he bolted.’ As a result of this, Lieh Tzu realized that he had so far learnt nothing real, so he returned home. For three years he did not go out. He cooked for his wife and tended the pigs as if they were humans. He showed no interest in his studies. He cast aside his desires and sought the truth. In his body he became like the ground itself. In the midst of everything he remained enclosed with the One and that is how he remained until the end. Do not hanker for fame. Do not make plans. Do not try to do things. Do not try to master knowledge. Hold what is but do not hold it to be anything. Work with all that comes from Heaven, but do not seek to hold it. Just be empty. Hie perfect man’s heart is like a mirror. It does not search after things. It does not look for things. It does not seek knowledge, just responds. As a result he can handle everything and is not harmed by anything. The Emperor of the South Sea is known as Change. Tire Emperor of the North Sea is called Dramatic. Tire Emperor of the Centre is called Chaos. Change and Dramatic met every so often in the region of Chaos. Chaos always treated them kindly and virtuously. Change and Dramatic said, ‘Everyone has seven orifices so they can see, hear, eat and breathe. Chaos does not have these. Let us bore some holes into him.’ Each day they bored a hole into Chaos... but on the seventh day Chaos died. CHAPTER 8 Webbed Toes The big toe being webbed with the other toes, or an extra finger, may both be quite natural, but they do not spring from virtue. Swellings and tumours certainly arise from the body, but do not spring from what is natural. There are many acts of kindness and justice and they are often associated with the five vital organs.— But tins is not the correct way according to the Tao (the Way) and Te (Virtue). In fact, webbed feet are simply useless extra pieces of skin; an additional finger is useless. So to associate these with the five vital organs is to confuse the use of kindness and justice. It places too much emphasis on hearing and sight. So heightened visual perception will cause confusion in distinguishing the five colours. One will be overwhelmed by interesting designs and dazzled by the bright and luminous shades of blue and yellow. As a result, it will be like Li Chu the keen-sighted. And doesn’t an extraordinary faculty for hearing lead to confusion about the five notes, and excessive use of the six tones created by metal, stone, silk and bamboo together with the huang chung and ta lu pipes. As a result, it will be like the music master Kuang. The result is that someone like this misuses the power of Virtue and destroys his inner self in a quest for fame and fortune, leading everything under Heaven to follow his music in pursuit of the unobtainable - is this not so? This results in Tseng and Shih.— A great skill in debate leads to the construction of arguments like a builder using bricks, or a netmaker working with string. He makes his arguments circular and his heart delights to go into pointless nitpicking debate about similarity and divergence. He goes slogging on uphill still spouting nonsense - is this not so? This results in Yang and Mo.— As a result, all of these types of people walk a complex road, with little to do with the correct Tao, the true path of all the world. One on the true path does not lose his innate given nature. To such a man that which is united presents no problem; That which is divided is all right; What is long is not too long; That which is short is not too short. The duck’s legs for example are short, but trying to lengthen them would cause pain. The legs of a crane are long, but trying to shorten them would produce grief. What nature makes long we should not cut, nor should we try to stretch what nature makes short. That would not solve anything. Perhaps then, benevolence and righteousness are not an inherent part of human nature? For look how much anxiety is suffered by those who wish to be kind. If one toe is united to another by extra skin, trying to separate them will only cause tears. Likewise, if you try to bite off the extra finger, this will provoke screams: of these two, one has more, the other less, but the distress they cause is the same. The benevolent person of today looks at the evils of society with distressed eyes, while people who are not benevolent uproot their proper inborn nature and rush after wealth and honour. Hie conclusion, therefore, is that benevolence and righteousness are not part of the true nature of humanity! From the Three Dynasties— onwards they have created such trouble and nuisance for everyone. When a template or plumb line is used, or a compass and set-square, in order to get things right, this involves cutting away parts of what is naturally there. When cords or buckles, glue or varnish are used, this means we affect the original Virtue. Likewise, the bending and pauses in the rituals and music, or the smiles and happy face of benevolence and righteousness, are meant to hearten everyone, but they ignore the inbuilt principles of existence. Everything has its innate nature. Given this, then, what is curved is not curved by the use of a template nor made straight by using a plumb line. It is not rounded by using a compass, nor made square by using a set-square; not made adhesive through glue and varnish, nor bound together by ropes and bands. Then everything under Heaven is made as it is by the ways of nature, without understanding wiry or how. Everything achieves what is intended, but does not understand why or how. Both today and in the ancient past it has always been so, and nothing can affect this. There is no point in holding to benevolence and righteousness, like a mixture of glue and varnish, ropes and bands, as a means of trying to journey in the Tao and Te - the Way and Virtue - for this merely confuses everything under Heaven. A minor deception alters the sense of purpose. A major deception alters the very nature of a thing. How is it that I can be so certain this is so? Ever since the time of the ruler Shun,— who began to teach about benevolence and righteousness, everything under Heaven has been troubled and distorted by this and everything under Heaven has never ceased rushing about trying to live up to this. Is this not because benevolence and righteousness have changed our basic nature? I will try and explain what I mean by this. Ever since the Three Dynasties, and on down to today, everything under Heaven has had its innate nature affected by others. The mean or petty person has been willing to risk his very body for gain. The scholar risks his own self for fame. The senior officials risk their lives for their families. Tire sage risks his very self for everything under Heaven. All of these different types, with differing claims to fame, have all damaged their innate nature and risked their lives in the same way. For example, a slave boy and girl: the two of them were out, each looking after their sheep, but they lost the sheep. Ask the slave boy what happened - the fact is, he was holding his bamboo strips and reading; ask the slave girl what happened - the fact is, she was playing a game. These two were doing different things, but they both lost the sheep. Po Yi— died for the sake of fame at the bottom of Shou Yang mountain, Robber Chih— died for gain on top of the Eastern Heights. These two both died in different ways but the fact is, they both shortened their lives and destroyed their innate natures. Yet we are expected to approve of Po Yi and disapprove of Robber Chih - strange, isn’t it? In situations like this world-wide, if someone makes sacrifices for reasons of benevolence and righteousness, people call such a person a nobleman, a gentleman; if someone makes such sacrifices for wealth and power, then people call such a person a mean and petty man! The action of sacrifice is one and the same, yet we call one a gentleman and the other a petty man! In terms of sacrificing his life and harming his true nature, Robber Chih and Po Yi did the same. So why should we make a difference of one being a noble gentleman and the other a mean, petty person? Those who apply themselves to benevolence and righteousness may travel the same path as Tseng and Shih, but I would not call them wise. Those who apply themselves to the five flavours may travel the same path as the chef Yu Erh, but I would not call them wise. Those who apply themselves to the five colours may travel the same path as Li Chu, but I would not call them very bright. My description of wisdom has nothing to do with benevolence and righteousness, it is to do with being wise in one’s own virtue, nothing more. My description of being wise has nothing to do with benevolence and righteousness, it is that one should be led by one’s innate nature, nothing more. When I talk about having good hearing, I don’t mean just listening, but listening to yourself. When I talk about good eyesight, I don’t mean just looking, but looking at yourself. The fact is that those who do not see themselves but who see others, who fail to get a grasp of themselves but who grasp others, take possession of what others have but fail to possess themselves. Urey are attracted to what others enjoy but fail to find enjoyment in themselves. In such cases, whether he be Robber Chih or Po Yi, such a person is just as deceived and just as wrong. What I am ashamed of is of failing the Tao and Te - the Way and Virtue - so I don’t try to elevate myself through acts of benevolence and righteousness, nor to sink down into useless and idiotic ways. CHAPTER 9 Horses’ Hooves Horses have hooves so that their feet can grip on frost and snow, and hair so that they can withstand the wind and cold. They eat grass and drink water, they buck and gallop, for this is the innate nature of horses. Even if they had great towers and magnificent halls, they would not be interested in them. However, when Po Lo— came on the scene, he said, ‘I know how to train horses.’ He branded them, cut their hair and their hooves, put halters on their heads, bridled them, hobbled them and shut them up in stables. Out of ten horses at least two or three die. Then he makes them hungry and thirsty, gallops them, races them, parades them, runs them together. He keeps before them the fear of the bit and ropes, behind them the fear of the whip and crop. Now more than half the horses are dead. Hie potter said, ‘I know how to use clay, how to mould it into rounds like the compass and into squares as though I had used a T-square.’ The carpenter said, ‘I know how to use wood: to make it bend, I use the template; to make it straight, I use the plumb line.’ However, is it really the innate nature of clay and wood to be moulded by compass and T-square, template and plumb line? It is true, nevertheless, that generation after generation has said, ‘Po Lo is good at controlling horses, and indeed the potter and carpenter are good with clay and wood.’ And the same nonsense is spouted by those who rule the world. I think that someone who truly knows how to rule the world would not be like this. The people have a true nature, they weave their cloth, they farm to produce food. This is their basic Virtue. They are all one in this, not separated, and it is from Heaven. Thus, in an age of perfect Virtue the people walk slowly and solemnly. They see straight and true. In times such as these the mountains have neither paths nor tunnels, on the lakes there are neither boats nor bridges; all life lives with its own kind, living close together. Tire birds and beasts multiply in their flocks and herds, the grass and trees grow tall. It is true that at such a time the birds and beasts can be led around without ropes, and birds’ nests can be seen with ease. In this time of perfect Virtue, people live side by side with the birds and beasts, sharing the world in common with all life. No one knows of distinctions such as nobles and the peasantry! Totally without wisdom but with virtue which does not disappear; totally without desire they are known as truly simple. If people are truly simple, they can follow their true nature. Then the perfect sage comes, going on about benevolence, straining for self-righteousness, and suddenly everyone begins to have doubts. Urey start to fuss over the music, cutting and trimming the rituals, and thus the whole world is disturbed. If the pure essence had not been so cut about, how could they have otherwise ended up with sacrificial bowls? If the raw jade was not broken apart, how could the symbols of power be made? If the Tao and Te - Way and Virtue - had not been ignored, how could benevolence and righteousness have been preferred? If innate nature had not been left behind, how could rituals and music have been invented? If the five colours had not been confused, how could patterns and designs have occurred? If the five notes had not been confused, how could they have been supplanted by the six tones? The abuse of the true elements to make artefacts was the crime of the craftsman. The abuse of the Tao and Te - Way and Virtue - to make benevolence and righteousness, this was the error of the sage. Horses, when they live wild, eat grass and drink water; when they are content, they entwine their necks and rub each other. When angry, they turn their backs on each other and kick out. This is what horses know. But if harnessed together and lined up under constraints, they know to look sideways and to arch their necks, to career around and try to spit out the bit and rid themselves of the reins. The knowledge thus gained by the horse, and its wicked behaviour, is in fact the fault of Po Lo. At the time of Ho Hsu,— people stayed where they were, not knowing anything else; they walked but did not know where they were going; filled themselves with food and were happy slapping their bellies to show their contentment. This was what the people had. Then came the sage. He brought the cringing and grovelling of the rituals and music and infected all under Heaven with his offer of benevolence and righteousness, which he said would comfort the hearts of all. As a result the people desired and longed for knowledge, and warred against each other to gain the advantage. Nothing could stop them. All this was the fault of the sage. CHAPTER 10 Broken Suitcases To guard yourself against thieves who slash open suitcases, rifle through bags and smash open boxes, one should strap the bags and lock them. The world at large knows that this shows wisdom. However, when a master thief comes, he simply picks up the suitcase, lifts the bag, carries off the box and runs away with them, his only concern being whether the straps and locks will hold! In such an instance, what seemed like wisdom on the part of the owner surely turns out to have been of use only to the master thief! I will try to explain what I am saying. What the world at large calls a wise man, is he not really just someone who stores things up for the master thief? Likewise, isn’t the one they call a sage just a guardian of the master thief’s interests? How do I know all this? Long ago in the state of Chi, all the little towns could see each other and the cockerels and dogs called to each other. Nets were cast and the land ploughed over an area of two thousand square miles. Within its four borders, ancestral temples were built and maintained and shrines to the land and the crops were built. Its villages and towns were well governed and everything was under the guidance of the sage. However, one morning Lord Tien Cheng killed the ruler and took his country. But was it just his country he took? He also took the wisdom of the laws of the state, created by the sages. So Lord Tien Cheng earned the title of thief and robber, but he was able to live out his days as secure as Yao or Shun had done. Tire smaller states dared not criticize him and the larger states did not dare attack. So for twelve generations his family ruled the state of Chi. Is this not an example of someone stealing the state of Chi and also taking the laws arising from the wisdom of the sages and using them to protect himself, although he was both robber and thief? I will try to explain this. What the world at large calls someone of perfect knowledge, is this not in fact the person who stores up things for a great thief? Those commonly called sages, are they not responsible for securing tilings for the great thief? How do I know all this? Long ago Lung Feng was executed, Pi Kan was torn apart, Chang Hung was ripped open, and Tzu Hsu was smashed to pieces.— Good men though these four were, they could not escape their terrible ends. A member of Robber Chih’s gang asked him, ‘Is there a Tao for the thief?’ Chih replied, ‘What profession is there without its Tao? The robber works out what is worth stealing: this shows he is a sage; his courage is shown by being the first to break in; his righteousness is shown by being last to leave; his understanding is shown by deciding whether the raid is possible; his benevolence is shown by his dividing the spoils equally. Without these five attributes, no one in the world could become such a great thief.’ Considering all this, it is clear that good men do not arise without following the Tao of the sages and therefore that Robber Chih had to also follow the sages’ Tao, or he could not have succeeded. But in this world, the good men are few and far between, while the bad are numerous. So it is that the sage brings little to the world but inflicts much harm. It is said, ‘When the lips have gone, the teeth get cold; the bad wine of Lu brought warfare to Han Tan.’— When the sage is born, the great thief arises. Beat the sages and let the thieves and robbers go, then the world will be all right. When the rivers dry up, the valley is empty When the hill is levelled, the pool is filled. If the sage does not die, then great thieves will continue to arise. The more sages are brought forth to rule the world, the more this helps people like Robber Chih. Create weights and measures to judge by and people will steal by weight and measure; create balances and weights and people will steal by balances and weights; create contracts and legal agreements to inspire trust and people will steal by contracts and legal agreements; create benevolence and righteousness to ensure honesty and even in this instance benevolence and righteousness teach them to steal. How do I know all this? This one steals a buckle and he is executed, that one steals a country and he becomes its ruler. Tht it is at the gates of rulers that benevolence and righteousness are professed. Surely this is a case of the wisdom of the sages, benevolence and righteousness being stolen? So people rush to become great robbers, to seize estates, stealing benevolence and righteousness, and taking all the profits of the weights and measures, balances and weights, contracts and legal arguments. Try to prevent them with promises of the trappings of power, they don’t care. Threaten them with execution, and this doesn’t stop them. For by profiting those like Robber Chih, whom none can stop, the sage has made a great mistake. It is said, ‘Just as you do not take the fish away from the deep waters, so the means of controlling a country should not be shown.’ Tire sage is the means of control, so the world should not see him clearly. Thus, if sages and wisdom were abandoned, great robbers would cease; destroy the jade and shatter the pearls, then petty thieves would not appear; burn the accounts and rip up the contracts, and the people will return to simplicity; break up the weights and the measures and the people will no longer argue; obliterate the laws of the world the sages have made, then the people can begin to be reasoned with. Throw away the six tones, destroy the pipes and lute, block the ears of Blind Kuang the musician, then every person in the world would for the first time be able to hear properly. If adornments were abolished, the five colours cast away and the eyes of Li Chu glued shut, then everyone in the world would be able to see clearly for the first time. Shatter the template and plumb line, discard the compass and T-square, break the fingers of a craftsman such as craftsman Chui, then for the first time everyone in the world will have and use real skills. There is a saying: ‘Tire greatest art in the world is like foolishness.’ Ignore the behaviour of Tseng and Shilr, shut the mouth of Yang and Mo, purge benevolence and righteousness, and the true Virtue of all under Heaven will display its mystic power. When people have true clear vision, no one in the world will be duped; if everyone has true hearing, then no one in the world will be distracted; if everyone has true wisdom, then no one in the world will be fooled; if everyone has Virtue, then no one in the world will be debased. Those such as Tseng, Shih, Yang, Mo, the musician Kuang, craftsman Chui or Li Chu showed off their virtue on the outside. They made the world aflame with admiration and so confused the world: a way of proceeding which was pointless. Sir, are you the only person who does not know about the age of perfect Virtue? In times past, in the era of Yung Cheng, Ta Ting, Po Huang, Chung Yang, Li Lu, Li Hsu, Hsien Yuan, Ho Hsu, Tsun Lu, Chu Jung, Fu Hsi and Shen Nung— the people followed their ways, knotting string and using the nets. They enjoyed their food; they took pleasure in their clothes; they were content with their lifestyles; they were at ease in their homes. Even though the states were so close to each other that they could hear their neighbours’ dogs and chickens, nevertheless the people lived until a good age before dying and never travelled beyond their own borders. At that time, perfect harmony was the norm. Now the people are agitated, trying to see what is going on, saying, ‘In such and such a place there is a wise man!’ So they pack their bags and rush off, leaving their parents at home and failing to fulfil their duties to their ruler. You can see their footprints making a track from one state to another and the grooves made by their carriages, stretching for more than a thousand li. This is the fault of those in authority who search for good knowledge. If those in authority search for knowledge, but without the Tao, everything under Heaven will be in terrible confusion. How do I know about all this? A great deal of knowledge is needed to make bows, crossbows, nets, arrows and so forth, but the result is that the birds fly higher in distress. A great deal of knowledge is needed to make fishing lines, traps, baits and hooks, but the result is that the fish disperse in distress in the water. Agreat deal of knowledge is needed to make traps, snares and nets, but the result is that the animals are disturbed and seek refuge in marshy lands. In the same way, the versatility needed to produce rhetoric, to plot and scheme, spread rumours and debate pointlessly, to dust off arguments and seek apparent agreement, is also considerable, but the result is that the people are confused. So everything under Heaven is in a state of distress, all because of the pursuit of knowledge. Everything in the world knows how to seek for knowledge that they do not have, but do not know how to find what they already know. Everything in the world knows how to condemn what they dislike, but do not know how to condemn what they have which is wrong. This is what causes such immense confusion. It is as if the brightness of the sun and moon had been eclipsed above, while down below the hills and streams have lost their power, as though the natural flow of the four seasons had been broken. There is no humble insect, not even any plant, that has not lost its innate nature. This is the consequence for the world of seeking after knowledge. From the Three Dynasties down to the present day it has been like this. The good and honest people are ignored, while spineless flatterers are advanced, lire quiet and calm of actionless action is cast aside and pleasure is taken in argument. It is this nonsense which has caused such confusion for everything under Heaven. CHAPTER 11 Leaving the World Open I have heard of leaving the world open to its own way and not interfering, but I have never heard of trying to control the world. We let the world be, fearful of spoiling its innate nature; we leave it alone, fearful of those who adversely affect the world’s Virtue. If the nature of everything under Heaven is not distorted, if the world’s Virtue is not despoiled, then what need is there to govern the world? In times gone by Yao controlled everything under Heaven, everyone was happy and the whole world was joyful, living in its true way. Nowhere was there stagnation. But when Chieh governed everything under Heaven, he made all life wearisome and distressed, and all people found their own nature turning bad and diseased. To be without peace, to be without fulfilment, is to turn against Virtue. No one can struggle against Virtue for long and still survive. Are people too cheerful? If so, they harm the yang. Are people too vengeful? If so, they harm the yin. If both yin and yang are corrupted, then the four seasons will not follow each other, the balance of hot and cold will not be kept and this results in distress to the very bodies of the people! People will be unable to control a balance between joy and anger. It makes them restless, moving here, moving there, plotting to no purpose, travelling for no good reason or result. The consequence of this is that the world becomes concerned with mighty goals and plots, ambition and hatred, which brings in its wake the likes of Robber Chih, Tseng and Shih. As a result, the world may wish to reward the good, but there are not enough rewards available; nor can it adequately punish the bad, for there are not enough punishments. The whole world is indeed vast, but it cannot provide enough rewards nor punishments. Given all this, how could people be expected to find enough time to rest quietly in the essential qualities of their innate nature? Do people enjoy what they can see clearly? In fact they are disturbed by colours. Do they enjoy what they hear? In fact they are spoiled by sounds. Do they revel in benevolence? In fact they confuse Virtue. Do they take pride in righteousness? In fact they reject reason. Do they delight in ritual? In fact they resort to pretence. Do they take pleasure in music? In fact they sink into dissolution. Do they appreciate the sage? In fact they take pride in falsehood. Do they rejoice at knowledge? In fact they celebrate quibblers. While the world exists in its true nature, it is irrelevant whether these eight treasures exist or not. However, when the world exists in a way which distorts, twists, mixes up and confuses its true innate nature, these eight treasures cause immense confusion instead. It gets even worse if the world goes on to honour and value them! It is said, all this is passing! However, people go to great lengths, fasting, praying, teaching these treasures, beating drums and prancing around. I don’t know what can be done about all this! So it is that the noble master who finds he has to follow some course to govern the world will realize that actionless action is the best course. By non-action, he can rest in the real substance of his nature and destiny. If he appreciates his own body as he appreciates the world, then the world can be placed in his care. He who loves his body as he loves the world can be trusted to govern the world. If the noble master can prevent his five main organs from being destroyed, and his vision and hearing also; if he can become as lifeless as a corpse and develop his dragon powers; if he can thus still himself, his words will sound like thunder while his actions will be seen as the actions of a spirit from Heaven, who is guided by Heaven. If he is unconcerned and engaged in actionless action, his gentle spirit will draw all life to him like a dust cloud. How then would such a person have time for governing the world? Tsui Chu questioned Lao Tzu, saying, ‘If the world is not ruled, how can you improve people’s hearts?’ Lao Tzu said, ‘Take care how you play with people’s hearts. People’s hearts should not be shoved down nor pushed up, for this yo-yoing up and down makes the heart either a prisoner or an avenging fury. It can be gentle and giving, moulding even the hard and sharp, or it can be sharp and pointed, tough enough to cut, carve or chisel. It can be as hot as a searing fire; it can be as cold as ice. So swift that in the nodding of one’s head it has twice roared over the four seas and beyond all boundaries. At rest, it is as deep as the abyss; when it is active, it is like a star in Heaven. It races beyond anything that seeks to bind it, for this is in truth the heart of humanity! Long, long ago, the Yellow Emperor was the first to disturb the hearts of the people with all his cant about benevolence and righteousness. Yao and Shun came after him and wore themselves out trying to feed the material bodies of the people. Urey distressed their five vital organs with their benevolence and righteousness; they wore out their life’s blood in drawing up codes of laws, and yet they failed. Yao had to send Huan Tou to Mount Chung, banish the three Miao tribes to the area of San Wei, and exile the Minister of Works to the Dark City. Tlris is the measure of their failure to rule the world. Tlris brings us to the Three Dynasties, when the world was in chaos. At the bottom we have people such as the dictator Chieh and Robber Chih; at the top we have people like Tseng and Shih. At this time the Literati and the Mohists also arose. As a result, contentment and fury squared up to each other, foolishness and wisdom rose against each other, good and bad insulted each other, the vainglorious and the sincere traded insults, and the whole of the world fell into decline. lire great Virtue was no longer unified, and innate nature and destiny broke apart. The whole world sought knowledge and all the different peoples of the world were distracted. At this stage the axe and saw came into their own; the plumb line determined truth and brought execution; the hammer and gouge made their deep marks and the whole world fell into great disarray. The crime lies in playing around with people’s hearts. The result was that leaders of worth hid below the mountains and princes in charge of vast armies hid shaking in their ancestor shrines. In this generation, those condemned to death are piled up; those who wear the punishment yoke press upon each other; those sentenced to beatings are never out of sight of each other. Out of this lot now appear the Literati and Mohists, waving their arms. Oh dear! That this lot should be so audacious! Urey have no shame! Isn’t it strange that we can see neither sageness nor wisdom, neither benevolence nor righteousness in the yoke and shackles of punishment! How can we tell whether or not Tseng and Shih are the arrows heralding the coming of Chieh and Chih? Hris is why I say, ‘Destroy the sage, throw away wisdom and the whole world will have great order.’ Tire Ye I low Emperor was the master of the world for nineteen years: the whole world followed his edicts. Then he heard of Master Kuang Cheng, who was dwelling on top of Kung Tung mountain, and he went to see him, saying, ‘I understand that you, Master, have found the perfect Tao. I dare to ask you what is the essence of the perfect Tao? I would like to grasp the essence of Heaven and Earth and use them to assist the harvest of the five crops in order to help the people. I would like to be able to direct the yin and yang in order to bring all things to life. How can this be done?’ Master Kuang Cheng replied, ‘What you ask about is the true element of all tilings; what you seek control over is in essence divided. Since you began governing all below Heaven, the very breath of the clouds has not yet formed, and yet it rains; the trees and bushes drop their leaves before they have turned yellow; the light of the sun and moon grows ever weaker. You are a man whose heart has become numbed by words, you are insubstantial and feeble. It would be unworthy to teach you the Tao.’ The Yellow Emperor withdrew and ceased ruling the world. He constructed a rude hut, filled only with a white grass mat, and he dwelt there for three months undisturbed. Then he went again to make his request. Master Kuang Cheng was lying down facing south.— The Yellow Emperor, with an air of deference, came forward kneeling. He bowed low twice and said, ‘I have heard it said, Master, that you are a master of the perfect Tao. I would like to ask, how should I govern my body in order to live a long life?’ Master Kuang Cheng sat up suddenly and said, ‘This question of yours! Splendid! I will teach you about the perfect Tao. The essence of the perfect Tao is hidden in darkness, lost in silence. Nothing seen; nothing heard. Embrace the spirit in quietness, the body with its own rightness. Be still, be pure, do not make your body struggle, do not disturb your essence. All this will result in a long life. The eye does not see, the ear does not hear, the heart knows nothing, yet your spirit will guard your body and your body will have a long life. Guard what is within, block that which is outside, for much knowledge is dangerous. ‘I will go with you up towards the great Light,— to the origins of the perfect other, the perfect yang. I will go with you through the gate of Deepest Mystery to the origin of the perfect other,— the perfect yin. Heaven and Earth have those who rule them, yin and yang have their places of concealment. Guard and take care of your body, then the rest takes good care of itself. I sustain the unity and dwell in harmony, thus have I remained alive for one thousand two hundred years and my body has not aged.’ The Yellow Emperor bowed his head to the ground twice and said, ‘Master Kuang Cheng, to me you are Heaven itself.’ Master Kuang Cheng said, ‘Splendid! I will teach you. This is inexhaustible, but people still think it has an end; this is incomprehensible, and yet people feel they can encompass it. The one who follows my Tao, if he is amongst the stars, will be elevated, if down below, will be a king. The one who fails to follow my Tao can see the brightness above but will still be just like the soil below. Every creature born comes from the soil and returns to soil. Therefore, I shall now leave you and enter the gate of that which has no limit in the fields of the boundless. There I shall combine with the sun and the moon. There I shall combine with Heaven and Earth forever. I combine with whatever is with me! What is apart from me, I ignore! All the people may die, but I alone will survive!’ Yun Chiang was travelling east, carried along upon the wings of a whirlwind. Suddenly he met Hung Mung, who was jumping around, slapping his thighs and hopping like a bird. Yun Chiang saw this and stopped dead, standing still in respect, and said, ‘Elderly man, who are you? What are you doing?’ Hung Mung continued to slap his thighs and hop like a bird, then replied, ‘Enjoying myself!’ Yun Chiang said, ‘I would like to ask a question.’ Hung Mung looked at Yun Chiang and said, ‘That’s a shame!’ Yun Chiang said, ‘Hie very breath— of Heaven is no longer in harmony. Earth’s very breath is ensnared, the six breaths do not mix, the four seasons do not follow each other. Now I want to combine the six breaths in order to bring life to all things. How do I do this?’ Hung Mung slapped his thighs, hopped around and said, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know!’ Yun Chiang could go no further with this questioning. But three years later, travelling east, he passed the wilderness of Sung and came upon Hung Mung again. Yun Chiang, very pleased, rushed towards him, stood before him and said, ‘Heaven, have you forgotten me? Heaven, have you forgotten me?’ Bowing his head twice, he asked for teaching from Hung Mung. Hung Mung said, ‘Wandering everywhere, without a clue why. Wildly impulsive, without a clue where. I wander around in this odd fashion, I see that nothing comes without reason. What can I know?’ Yun Chiang replied, ‘I am also wildly impulsive, but the people follow me wherever I am. I cannot stop them following me. Now, because they follow me, I want to have a word of teaching from you.’ ‘The disruption of the ways of Heaven distresses the true being of things, halting the fulfilment of Heaven’s Mysteries,’ said Hung Mung. ‘This causes the animals to disperse, the birds to sing throughout the night, misfortune to hit the crops and the woods, and disaster to blight the very insects themselves. Alas, all this is caused by the people’s error of thinking they know howto rule!’ ‘What should I do then?’ said Yun Chiang. ‘Oh, you distress them! Like a spirit, a spirit I will dance away,’ said Hung Mung. ‘I have had such trouble meeting you,’ said Yun Chiang. ‘Oh Heaven, just give me one other word.’ ‘Oh ho!’ said Hung Mung. ‘Strengthen your heart. Remain sure in actionless action, and all things will then transform themselves. Reject your body, throw out hearing and eyesight, forget that you are anyone, become one with the Vast and the Ybid. Loosen the heart, free the spirit, be calm as if without a soul. All living things return to their root, return to their root, not knowing wiry. Constantly in darkness, constantly in darkness, and throughout their physical existence they never depart from this. If they tried to understand this, they would depart from this. Ask not for its name, seek not for its shape. So all life comes to birth through itself.’ Yun Chiang replied, ‘Heaven, you have honoured me with this Virtue, taught me through Mystery; my whole life I sought it, now I have it.’ He bowed his head twice and got up. He said farewell and left. Ordinary people are happy when someone agrees with them and distressed when others disagree with them. This happiness and distress comes from the desire to be marked apart from the common crowd, a desire set within their hearts. But if they have set their hearts upon distinguishing themselves from the rest, how does this draw them out beyond the rest? Better to go with everyone and be at peace rather than struggle, for, regardless of how clever you are, the others have more skills. However, when people want to rule a country on someone’s behalf, they do so by following the ways of the kings of the Three Dynasties, but they do not see the evil which comes with such methods. Tire country is at the mercy of their fortune, but this usually ends in destruction! Only perhaps one in ten thousand men can save the country by this; the chances are less than one in ten thousand, so they ruin the country. It is very distressing that those in power do not understand the risks of using such people! Tire one who has a great country owns a great tiling. Having such a great thing, he should not be treated as if he were just anyone. Being himself something and yet not just a humble something, he should consider all others as just things. If he really, truly clearly comprehends that treating other things as just something, he is not himself just a humble something, he will not just be content with ruling all things under Heaven. He will go out and come in through the whole cosmos, ranging wide across all lands, solitary in going, solitary in returning. He is the sole possessor, and as sole possessor he is the most perfect of all. Tire great man in what he teaches is like the shadow that follows a body, the echo that follows a sound. Presented with a question, he replies, confronting the questioner with such a depth of understanding, as if the whole of the cosmos was poured out. He lives in silence; he acts no¬ where, guides those who are rushing hither and thither in their search and journeys through that which has no origin. His movements leave no trace as he goes in and out. He is as the sun, beyond time. To describe him, you talk about his unity with the great All. Tire great All has no self. Having no self, he does not see himself having belongings! The one who wants possessions is the nobleman of old, while the one who has nothing is the real companion of Heaven and Earth. Most tilings are mundane but useful. The people are lowly but have to be relied upon. Affairs are secretive but need to be fulfilled. Laws are crude but necessary. Righteousness is distant but is needed within. Benevolence is intimate but needs to be made universal. Rituals are restricted but need to be extended. Virtue is central but needs to be raised higher. The Tao is perpetually One but needs to be modified. Heaven is spiritual but also practical. So the sages contemplate Heaven but do not assist it. Urey are concerned to perfect their Virtue but do not allow it to encumber them. They set forth according to the Tao but do not make plans. Urey work with benevolence but put no reliance upon it. Urey draw extensively upon righteousness but do not try to build it up. They observe the rituals but do not set great store by them. Urey do what they have to and never shirk their responsibilities. They try to make their laws applicable but do not believe them effective. Urey value the people and do not take them for granted. Urey make use of things and do not dismiss them lightly. True, things are worthless but they must be used. Those who do not see Heaven clearly will not be pure in Virtue. Hrose who fail to follow the Tao cannot follow any other path. What a disaster for those who cannot follow the Tao! What is this Tao? Hrere is the Tao of Heaven; there is the Tao of humanity. Non-action brings respect: this is Heaven’s Tao. To be active is the Tao of humanity. It is Heaven’s Tao that is the ruler; the Tao of humanity is the servant. Hie Tao of Heaven and the Tao of humanity are poles apart. Do not fail to reflect upon this. & $1 CHAPTER 12 Heaven and Earth Heaven and Earth are vast, and their diversity comes from one source. Although there are ten thousand forms of life, they are one in their order. Human beings are multitudinous, but they are governed by one ruler. Hie ruler is rooted in Virtue and perfected by Heaven. It is said that long ago the rulers of everything below Heaven ruled through actionless action, through Heavenly Virtue and nothing else. If we look at words in the light of the Tao, then the title ‘Ruler of the World’ makes sense. If we look at the distinctions between rulers and others in the light of the Tao, then the separation of rulers and ministers is relevant and clear. If we look at their abilities in the same light of the Tao, then we see that the officials are in the right places. Look at anything in the light of the Tao and you will see that the response of all life is fulfilling. Pervading all Heaven and Earth there is Virtue; stirring all life is the Tao. Tire ruling classes govern those below them: this is hierarchy. Where ability is trained, this is called skill. Such skill is absorbed into administration and administration is righteousness. Righteousness is of Virtue; Virtue is of the Tao; the Tao is of Heaven. It is said that in olden times those who ruled everything under Heaven wanted nothing and the world was fulfilled; they practised non-action and the whole of life was transformed; they were immensely deep in their stillness and the many families of the world were calm. Tire Records say, ‘Remain true to the One and all manner of tasks will be completed. Be without emotion and the very ghosts and spirits will submit.’ Tire great Master said, ‘Tire Tao supports and sustains all life, so immense, so immense is its vastness! Tire nobleman should most definitely not have it on his heart. ‘Tire action of non-action is called Heaven. Hie words of non-action are called Virtue. To love all humanity and to bring success to them is called benevolence. To unite that which is not united is called greatness. To go beyond barriers and boundaries is called open-handedness. To have a vast multitude of diverse things is called wealth. To have and to hold Virtue is called guidance. To grow in maturity in Virtue is called stability To be aligned with the Tao is called completion. To refuse to allow anything external which distracts you is called perfection. ‘Tire nobleman who clearly perceives these ten things will be also magnanimous in his ventures and his actions will benefit all life. ‘Such a man will leave the gold in the mountain and the pearls to lie in the deep. He does not view money and goods as true profit, nor is he attracted by fame and fortune, nor by enjoyment of long life, nor sadness at an early death; he does not value wealth as a blessing, nor is he ashamed by poverty He will not lust for the wealth of a generation to have as his own; he has no wish to rule the whole world as his private domain. His honour is clarity of understanding that all life are part of one treasury and that death and birth are united.’ The Sage Master said, ‘Tire Tao, how deep and quiet it lies; how pure is its clarity! Without it neither gold nor stone would resonate. The gold and stones have sounds within them but if they are not struck, then no sound comes forth. All the multitudinous creatures have dimensions beyond calculation! 'Hie man of regal Virtue moves without complexity and is ashamed to be found concerned with the affairs of state. His knowledge is firmly rooted in the origin of self, and encompasses even the spirits. His Virtue embraces widely. His heart goes out to what is beyond him. Were there no Tao, then his body would have no life, and without Virtue, his body has no brightness. One who preserves his body and lives out his full life, who establishes Virtue and clarifies the Tao, is he not imbued with regal Virtue? He suddenly surges forth, wide and unlimited. He moves unexpectedly and all life comes after him! This is what is meant by the man of regal Virtue. ‘He can see in darkest darkness, hears where there is no sound. In the midst of darkest darkness, he alone sees clearly; in the midst of no sound, he alone hears the harmony. Where depth plunges into depth, he can discern things; in world upon world of the spirits he can discern the core of all. So in his dealings with the multitude of beings he can fulfil all their wants from perfect nothingness. Always in pursuit he returns for the night’s rest. Great and small, long and short, distant and near.’ The Ye I low Emperor was travelling to the north of Red Water, ascending to the summit of Kun Lun and looking out southwards. Returning home he lost his dark pearl. He commissioned Knowledge to look for it, but Knowledge was unable to trace it. He commissioned Li Chu to look for it, but he could not trace it. He commissioned Heated Debate to look for it, but he also could not trace it. Finally he commissioned Pointless to look for it and he traced it. Tire Yellow Emperor said, ‘How strange! How is it that only Pointless could trace it?’ Yao’s teacher was Hsu Yu; Hsu Yu’s teacher was Yeh Chueh; Yeh Chueh’s teacher was Wang Ni; Wang Ni’s teacher was Pi I. Yao asked Hsu Yu, ‘Could Yeh Chueh be counted the equal of Heaven? I could then ask Wang Ni to request that he take over from me.’ Hsu Yu said, ‘Take care, for this could put everything under Heaven at risk! Yeh Chueh is sharp, clear-thinking, quick-witted and alert. By nature he is superior to others, but he can exploit what Heaven gives him. He would try to prevent flaws, but he does not understand where they spring from. Make him the equal of Heaven? Beware, for he would rely upon others rather than on Heaven, caring for his own self first and having little regard to the lives of others. He would pursue knowledge, and his actions would be like swift fire. He would be in bondage to his own ideas, in thrall to them, constantly looking all around to see how things are going. He would be at the mercy of demands, changing as they change and having no dependability at all. How could he be the equal of Heaven? Hrere are small clans with common ancestors, and he could be the father of one such small branch, but not the father of the fathers of all the extended family. His rule would bring disaster, both to the ministers facing north and the ruler facing south.’ Yao was touring the sights of Hua. Tire guards of Hua said, ‘Oh, a sage! Let me pray to the sage. Long life to the sage!’ Yao said, ‘Never!’ ‘May the sage be wealthy! ’ ‘Never!’ ‘May the sage have many sons!’ ‘Never!’ ‘Long life, wealth and many sons are what most people want,’ said the guard. ‘Why do you not want them?’ ’Many sons bring many anxieties, wealth brings many troubles, long life brings many problems. These three things do not enhance Virtue. I dismiss them.’ The guard said, ‘When I first saw you I thought you were a sage. Now I can see you are just a nobleman. Heaven gives life to all the multitudinous peoples and gives them their place. Many sons will have diverse assignments given to them, so there is nothing to fear! If you share your wealth with others, there is no trouble! ‘Tire sage finds his place as a quail settles, or as a fledgling is fed and as a bird flying leaves no mark of its passage. If the whole world has the Tao, he is part of that well-being. When the whole world has lost the Tao, he develops Virtue and avoids involvement. After a thousand years, wearied by the world, he departs and rises to be with the immortals, soaring up upon the white clouds, arriving at the Supreme One’s abode. The three troubles you quote never affect him; they do not touch his body; Such a man suffers no shame!’ The guard then left. Yao pursued him, saying, ‘I would just like to ask if ‘Get lost!’ said the guard. When Yao ruled all under Heaven, Po Cheng Tzu Kao was made a governor. Yao passed the throne to Shun, then Shun passed it to Yu. At this point Po Cheng Tzu Kao resigned his commission and began farming. Yu went to see him and found him ploughing. Rushing up to him and bowing in deference, he halted and said, ‘When Yao ruled the world, you, Sir, were made a governor. Yao gave way to Shun and Shun gave way to me and then you, Sir, resigned your commission and began farming. Dare I ask the reason why?’ Tzu Kao said, ‘When Yao ruled the world, people worked, although he gave no rewards; the people were in awe of him, although he gave out no punishments. Now, you use both rewards and punishments but the people are without benevolence. Virtue will now decay and punishments will prevail. Tire chaos of the age to come has its origin here and now. So, Sir, wiry don’t you leave? Do not disturb my work! ’ He pushed on with his farming and did not look around. At the great Origin there was nothing, nothing, no name. Hie One arose from it; there was One without form. In taking different forms, it brought life, and became known as Virtue. Before any shape was given, their roles were assigned, varied and diverse but all linked to one another. Hiis was their lot. Hie forces worked on and things were created, they grew and took distinct shapes, and these were called ‘bodies’. Hie bodies contained spirits, each distinct and mortal. This is what we call the innate nature. Train this innate nature and it will return to Virtue; Virtue at its best is identical with the Origin. Being of the One is to be ultimately formless, and this formlessness is vast. This is like the opening and shutting of a bird’s beak, where the opening and shutting is like Heaven and Earth united. This unity is chaotic and disorderly; it looks stupid or foolish. This is known as Mysterious Virtue, being, without knowing it, part of the great Submission. Confucius said to Lao Tzu, ‘Some people try to grasp the Tao through argument. They try to make what is impossible seem possible. They try to make what is not seem as if it is. Like debaters, they make pointless distinctions and then claim they are actually significant - as real as this roof! Can such people as this be called sages?’ ‘Such people are the workers kept in bondage,’ replied Lao Tzu, ‘wearing out their bodies and bringing anxiety to their hearts. Like the dog who is tied to a leash because he catches vermin, or the monkey which is brought down from the mountains because it is skilful. Chiu,— I’m telling you, telling you something you have not heard of and cannot discuss. Those who have heads and feet but no heart and no ears are numerous. Those who have their bodies but who value that which is without body or form, are virtually unheard of! Life stops and starts, is born and dies, grows and declines, and there is nothing which can be done about this. People think the ruler of all this is humanity. Forget that, forget Heaven and be known as one of those who forget self. Tire person who forgets self can be known as the one who enters Heaven.’ Chiang Lu Mien travelled to visit Chi Che and said, ‘Tire ruler of Lu asked me, saying, ‘Teach me.” I refused, but he kept hold of me and I had to say something. I am not sure I chose the right path but I will tell you what I said. I said to the ruler of Lu, ‘You must be courteous and disciplined. Note and promote those who are public-spirited and loyal; note and oppose those who are selfish and subservient. If you do this, who could possibly wish to be against you?” ’ Chi Che nearly choked with laughter and said, ‘Your words, dear Sir, regarding the Virtue of Emperors and kings, are like the praying mantis waving his arms around in a fury, trying to stop a carriage - pretty pointless. If he followed your advice, he would end up building taller towers in which to store his increasing number of valuables, and the people would just follow his example.’ Chiang Lu Mien was taken aback and said in amazement, ‘I am astonished at your words, Master, but I would dearly like to hear what you have to say on this issue.’ Chi Che said, ‘If a great sage ruled the world, he would free the hearts of his people, make his teachings accessible and change people’s behaviour. He would erase all falsehood and betrayal from their hearts and enable them to act as their own consciences dictate. It would arise from their very innate natures, yet they would not realize this. If he proceeded like this, wiry should such a person look up to Yao or Shun for guidance as to how to rule the people, or even bother to despise their methods? He simply wants all to be united in Virtue and in the tranquillity of the heart.’ Tzu Kung travelled south to Chu and as he returned through Chin, he was journeying along the side of the river Han. He saw a lone old man working on his land. Tire man had prepared the ground and had drawn water from the well and was carrying ajar of water to pour on the earth. Huffing and puffing, he was using up much of his strength and yet had little to show for it. Tzu Kung said, ‘There are machines which can water a hundred fields in one day, for very little effort but with much to show for it. Wouldn’t you like to have one, Master?’ Tire gardener looked up and said, ‘How does this work?’ He said, ‘It is made from wood, solid at the rear and lighter at the other end and it raises the water just as you would pour it out, or the way boiling water overflows. It is called a well dip.’ Tire gardener was furious, then laughed and said, ‘I have heard from my teacher that where you have machines, then you get certain kinds of problems; where you get certain kinds of problems, then you find a heart warped by these problems. Where you get a heart warped, its purity and simplicity are disturbed. When purity and simplicity are disturbed, then the spirit is alarmed and an alarmed spirit is no place for the Tao to dwell. It isn’t that I don’t know of these machines, but I would be ashamed to use one.’ Tzu Kung was covered in confusion, hung his head and said nothing in reply. After a while, the gardener said, ‘Sir, who are you?’ ‘Adisciple of Confucius,’ said Tzu Kung. The gardener said, ‘Sir, are you one of those types who expand their knowledge so as to try and appear to be a sage, seeking to impress everyone with your superiority, singing sad songs all alone in the hope of becoming famous in this world? It would be better for you to forget your breath and spirit and disregard the care of your body. Then you might make progress! As it is, you cannot care for yourself, so how do you expect to rule the world? Off you go, Sir, and do not disturb my work! ’ Tzu Kung was disturbed and nonplussed by all this. He wandered off puzzled and disorientated, and he did not recover until he had travelled thirty li. His followers said, ‘Who was that man? Master, why did you change colour when you saw him and change your bearing so that it took you all day to recover?’ He said, ‘Previously I thought that there was only one true man in the world, because I did not know of this man. I have heard the Master say that in actions you aim for that which is true and in ventures you aim for success. Use little energy but have great results, this is the Tao of the sage. Now I don’t believe this any more. Those who hold to the Tao are endowed with its Virtue. Being virtuous, they are complete in body. Being complete in their bodies, they are complete in spirit. Being complete in spirit, as a result they are in the Tao of the sages. Hiey live in the world side by side with the people, travelling with them, but never knowing where they are going. Their simplicity is mind- boggling! Urey consider accomplishments, gain, machines, talents, to be inappropriate in the affections of the people. People like this do not go where they do not want to go nor do they do what their heart tells them not to do. Even if the whole world sings their praises and acclaims them, they will pay no attention at all; if the whole world blames them and accuses them of losing things, they are calm and unperturbed. Neither the praise nor the blame of the world gives them either gain nor loss. Such a one as this is called a man of complete Virtue! In contrast, I am just a wind¬ blown wave.’ When he returned to Lu, he reported the discussion to Confucius. Confucius said, That farmer is just a false man, a practitioner of the ways of Primal Chaos. He grasps the first thing, but does not know the second. He controls what is internal but cannot rule over that which is external. If you had met one who has the clarity of purity and simplicity, who through non-action can restore the original, give shape to his innate nature and enfold his spirit and thus wander at will throughout the world - had you met one such as this, then you would be alarmed! But this man of Primal Chaos, why do we need to worry about him?’ Chun Mang was travelling on his way east to the Great Gorge of the ocean and met Yuan Fung on the shore of the Eastern Ocean. Yuan Fung said, ‘Master, where are you going?’ ‘I am going to the Great Gorge.’ ‘Why?’ ‘The Great Gorge is the sort of place that can never be filled by the waters entering it, nor emptied by the waters that flow out of it. I shall have a fine time, wandering beside it,’ said Chun Mang. Yuan Fung replied, ‘Master, do you not care about the people? Can’t you tell me about the way sages rule?’ ‘The way sages rule?’ said Chun Mang. ‘Only appoint those who are fit for the office; make appointments in accordance with the worthiness of those appointed; act only after studying the situation thoroughly. When deeds and words are in accord, the whole world is transformed. Consequently, a wave of the hand or a sharp look will bring the peoples of all the world rushing to you. This is the way sages rule.’ ‘Can I ask about the Virtuous ones?’ ‘The Virtuous one is still and without thought; when he moves he is without design; he keeps no tally of right and wrong, good or bad. Virtuous ones share their gains with all within the four seas and from this they derive pleasure. Urey share what they have and are content. Mournful, they are like a child who has lost his mother; uncertain, they are like travellers who are lost. Though blessed with great wealth and comforts, they have no idea where it comes from; they have more than enough to eat and drink, but have no idea where it comes from. This is the style of Virtuous ones.’ ‘What about the spiritual ones?’ Chun Mang said, ‘Their spirits rise up to the brightest light and their bodies disappear. They are gloriously enraptured. They live out their fate, The spiritual one pursues to its end what is truly him and dwells in the delight of Heaven and Earth while his multitudinous cares fall away. All things return to their true nature. This is called Primal Mystery.’ Men Wu Kuei and Chih Chang Man Chi were observing the army of King Wu.— ‘He is not of the stature of the noble Lord of Yu and that is why he has this problem,’ said Chih Chang Man Chi. Men Wu Kuei said, ‘Was the world really well ruled under the noble Lord Yu? Or was it already in trouble and then Yii came and ruled it?’ ‘Everyone wants the world to be well governed,’ said Chih Chang Man Chi. ‘If it was already well governed, do you think anyone would have then commented upon the good rule of Yu?— He brought healing to wounds, a wig to cover baldness, medicines for the sick. He was like a dutiful son bringing medicines to a loving father, yet wearing a grim look. Any sage would be ashamed of this. In a time of perfect Virtue, the wise are not valued, the able are unemployed. Hie rulers are like the top branches of a tree, the people like deer: they do what is right but they do not understand righteousness. They love each other but they do not understand benevolence. They are dependable but they do not understand loyalty. Hiey are trustworthy but do not understand good faith, hi their movements amongst each other they care for each other but do not understand kindness. In this way they move without leaving any sign, act without leaving any recordable effect.’ The dutiful son who does not indulge his father and the loyal minister who does not flatter his ruler, these are the best of ministers and sons. The son who agrees with his parents in everything they say and do is viewed by the ordinary people as an unworthy son. The minister who agrees with everything his ruler says and does is viewed by the ordinary people as an unworthy minister. Yet people don’t seem to understand the truth of this. Those who agree with everything that the people say and think good whatever the people think is good, are never called just yes-men or sycophants. Does this mean popular opinion is of greater authority than parents or rulers? Someone is immediately angry if you tell him he is a yes-man or a sycophant. Nevertheless, throughout this life he will be a yes-man and all his life he will be a sycophant. His stories are designed to agree with people, his turns of phrase are intended to impress them. From start to finish, from beginning to end he never disagrees with them. He displays his robes, exhibiting the colours; his whole carriage is intended to impress and earn him favour with his peers and yet he cannot stand being called a sycophant! He just follows the fashion, liking this and disliking that as others do and yet he does not see himself as just one of the crowd. Tlris is how far his stupidity has reached! Tire one who knows he is stupid is not that stupid; the one who knows he is confused is not that confused. Tire greatly deluded will never be rid of delusion; the monumentally foolish will never be very bright. If there are three men walking along together and one of them is confused, they will still reach their goal, because confusion is in the minority; but if two of them are confused, they will not arrive, because confusion is in the majority. So nowadays, with so much confusion in the world, I can indicate to the people where to go, but they do not follow me. Distressing, isn’t it? Classical music is wasted upon the simple peasant, but let them hear ‘Tire Breaking of the Willows’ or ‘Tire Bright Flowers’ and they will be very jolly. Similarly, wise words do not rest in the hearts of the people. Perfect words do not stay, because vulgar words are in the ascendant. Two basic drums can drown out the sound of the bell and deny the pleasure it could give. These days the whole world is confused. Even if I wanted to go in a particular direction, what good would it do? Since I understand this, if I were to try and force people to go my way, that would just be to fall into a delusion of my own. It is better just to let things be and not force them. If I don’t get into such struggles, I shan’t have anything to worry about. A leper has a son born at night-time and he rushes to find a light to look at him. His eagerness to see is based on his fear that the child will look like him. A hundred-year-old tree is chopped up and from that is fashioned a sacrificial bowl, engraved and coloured green and yellow. Tire rest is thrown away into a ditch. Now, if we compare the sacrificial bowl and that which was cast away, there is certainly a difference between them in terms of beauty and ugliness, but they are one in that they have both lost their innate nature. Robber Chih, as distinct from Tseng and Shih, is very different from the others, but they are all one in having lost their innate nature. There are five ways in which the innate nature is lost. Tire first is when the five colours confuse the eye and deprive it of clarity of vision. Tire second is when the five notes confuse the ear and deprive it of the ability to hear. The third is when the five smells affect the nose and cause pains and distress to the forehead. Tire fourth is when the five flavours deaden the mouth and deprive the sense of taste of its ability to enjoy. Tire fifth is when pleasures and dislikes unsettle the heart and make the innate nature unstable. These five bring troubles to life. Now the followers of Yang and Mo start spreading out, thinking they have discovered something. But I would not describe this as news. What they have grasped only brings distress, so how can this be the right thing? If they have, then we could claim that the dove in the cage has found something worthwhile. Likes and dislikes, music and colours just confuse your inner self, while wearing caps of leather and feathered hats, carrying official decrees in hand and wearing ceremonial robes hinder appreciation of that which is external. Stuffed full of nonsense on the inside and bound by cords externally, people still look around, even when tied up like this, and claim they have grasped something. Why, they are no better off than criminals who are clamped in irons, their fingers in the screw, or tigers and leopards trapped in cages, yet they still think they have grasped something worth following. CHAPTER 13 Heaven’s Tao It is Heaven’s Tao to journey and to gather no moss, thus all the forms of life are brought to perfection. It is the Emperor’s Tao to journey and to gather no moss, which is why the whole world comes to his feet. It is the sages’ Tao to journey and to gather no moss, thus all that lies within the oceans venerates them. To understand Heaven clearly, to comprehend the sages, to journey through the entire cosmos following the Virtue of the Emperors and the kings but also to be spontaneous themselves: this is the nature of those who comprehend, seeming not to know but being centred in stillness. The sages are quiescent, not because of any value in being quiescent, they simply are still. Not even the multitude of beings can disturb them, so they are calm. Water, when it is still, reflects back even your eyebrows and beard. It is perfectly level and from this the carpenter takes his level. If water stilled offers such clarity, imagine what pure spirit offers! Tire sage’s heart is stilled! Heaven and Earth are reflected in it, the mirror of all life. Empty, still, calm, plain, quiet, silent, non-active, this is the centredness of Heaven and Earth and of the Tao and of Virtue. Tire Emperor, king, and sages rest there. Resting, they are empty; empty, they can be full; fullness is fulfilment. From the empty comes stillness; in stillness they can travel; in travelling they achieve. In stillness they take actionless action. Through actionless action they expect results from those with responsibilities. Through actionless action they are happy, very happy; being so happy they are not afflicted by cares and worries, for these have no place, and their years of life are prolonged. Empty, still, calm, plain, quiet, silent, actionless action is the foundation of all life. If you are clear on this and facing south, it means you are a noble like Yao; if you are clear on this and facing north, you will become a minister like Shun. Looking up to them, you observe the Virtue of Emperors, kings and the Sons of Heaven. Looking down on them, you observe the Tao of the dark sages and the uncrowned king. If you retire as they did, amongst the hermits of the rivers and oceans, mountains and forests, you will be considered like them as true scholars. Coming forward and offering help to this generation brings great fame and merit and the whole world becomes one. Tire sage is still; the king travels. Actionless action brings honour. Hie beauty radiated, since it arises from simplicity, outshines the rest of the world. Clarity is the Virtue of Heaven and Earth: this is the great Origin, the great Beginning. To have it is to be in harmony with Heaven, to bring equality with everything below Heaven and to be in harmony with all people. To be in harmony with all people is called human happiness; to be in harmony with Heaven, this is called Heavenly happiness. Chuang Tzu said, ‘My Master Teacher! My Master Teacher! He judges all life but does not feel he is being judgemental; he is generous to multitudes of generations but does not think this benevolent; he is older than the oldest but he does not think himself old; he overarches Heaven and sustains Earth, shaping and creating endless bodies but he does not think himself skilful. This is what is known as Heavenly happiness. ’There is a saying: “If you know the happiness of Heaven, then you know that life is from Heaven and death is the transformation of things. In their stillness they are yin and in their journeying they are yang.” To know Heavenly happiness means that you do not upset Heaven, nor go against others. You are not reliant on material things, you are not rebuked by the ghosts. There is a saying: ”He moves with Heaven and rests with Earth, his heart is one, he is the king of the whole world; the ghosts do not worry him and hissoul is not wearied, his heart is one with all living beings.” This means his emptiness and stillness enter all beings in Heaven and Earth, travelling alongside all beings. This is known as the Heavenly happiness. Heavenly happiness is the heart of the sage; this is how he cares for all under Heaven.’ Tire Virtue of Emperors and kings considers Heaven and Earth as its parents, the Tao and Virtue as its master and actionless action as its core. Through actionless action they can make the whole world do as they will and yet not be wearied. Through action they cannot even begin to fulfil what the world requires. This is why the ancient ones valued actionless action. When both the leaders and those below them are in actionless action, then both the leaders and the underlings have the same Virtue. If those below and those above share the same Virtue, then none of them is in the position of a minister. If those below act and those aboveact also, then those above and those below share the same Tao. If those above and those below share the same Tao, then there is no one to be the lord. However, those above tend to care for the world by actionless action, while those below care for the world by action. This has always been the case. Thus the ancient kings of the world, who knew everything about Heaven and Earth, had no designs; even though they understood the whole of life, they did not speak out; though their skills were greater than any in the lands bounded by oceans, they did nothing. Heaven produces nothing, yet all life is transformed; Earth does not support, yet all life is sustained; the Emperor and the king take actionless action, yet the whole world is served. There is a saying that there is nothing as spiritual as Heaven, nothing as rich as Earth, nothing as great as Emperors and kings. It is also said that the Virtue of Emperors and kings finds its match in that of Heaven and Earth. Thus can one ascend with Heaven and Earth, gallop with all life and harness all people to the Tao. The beginning lies with those above, the outworking with those below; the important lies with the ruler, the details with the minister. The three armies and five types of weapons— are the irrelevant aspects of Virtue. Handing down rewards and punishments, advantage and loss and the inflicting of the five types of sentence,— these are the irrelevant aspects of teaching. Rituals and laws, weights and measures and all the attention to self and name are the irrelevant aspects of governing. The sound of bells and drums, the attention to feathers and hangings, these are the irrelevant aspects of music. The attributes of official mourning are the irrelevant aspects of grief. These five unimportant aspects await the movement of the spirit and the liveliness of the heart’s skills before they can be of service. Tire ancient ones were aware of all these aspects but did not give them any importance. The ruler precedes and the minister follows; the father precedes and the son follows; the elder brother precedes and the younger brother follows; the senior one precedes and the junior follows; the man precedes and the woman follows; the husband precedes and the wife follows. This progression of the greater followed by the lesser mirrors that of Heaven and Earth. Tire sages take their example from this. Heaven is elevated, Earth lowly, and this reflects their spiritual illumination. Spring and summer precede and autumn and winter follow: this is the pattern of the four seasons. In the growth of all life, their roots and buds have their appointed place and distinct shape, and from this comes maturation and then decay, the constant stream of transformation and change. If Heaven and Earth, the most perfect in spirit, have their hierarchy of precedence and sequence, then how much more should this be so with the people! In the ancestor shrine it is kinship which brings honour; in the court it is nobility; in the local areas it is age; in the governing of things it is wisdom. This is the pattern of the great Tao. To speak about the Tao but not about its pattern of sequence goes against the Tao itself. If we speak about the Tao that has no Tao, then there is no Tao to guide! Thus it was that the ancient ones clearly grasped the great Tao, seeking first the meaning of Heaven and then the meaning of its Tao and Virtue. When they clearly understood the Tao and Virtue, they then understood benevolence and righteousness. When they clearly grasped benevolence and righteousness, they could see howto perform their duties, When they grasped how to perform their duties, they came to understand form and fame. When they comprehended form and fame, they were able to make appointments. When they had made appointments, they went on to examining people and their efforts. When they had examined people’s efforts, they moved to judgements of good or bad. When they had made judgements of good and bad, they went on to punishments and rewards. Following this, the foolish and the wise knew what they should do and the elevated and the lowly went to their appropriate places. Tire good and the worthy as well as those below them found in their own selves that all had assignments adapted to their skills, appropriate to their rank. Thus did they serve those above them and encourage those below; external matters were governed and their own selves developed. Knowledge and plotting were never used and they relied upon Heaven. This is known as the great peace and perfect government. The Book says, ‘There is form and there is title.’ Form and title were known to the ancient ones, but they gave it no importance. In the olden days, when they talked of the great Tao, they spoke of the five steps which brought them to ‘form and fame’, or they went to nine steps and debated ‘rewards and punishments’. If they had just gone straight to discussing ‘form and fame’ they would have shown up their ignorance of the origin; or if they had plunged straight into ‘rewards and punishments’ they would have shown their ignorance of the correct beginning. Those who turn the Tao upside down before talking of it, who in fact oppose the Tao before speaking of it, will be governed by other people, for they could not rule others! Those who plunge straight in, gabbling on about ‘form and fame’ or ‘rewards and punishments’, may have some understanding of the means of governing but do not understand the Tao of governing. Urey may be of use to the world, but they cannot use the world. Urey are typical pompous scholars, just stuck in their little corner. Rituals, laws, weights and measures, all the point-scoring of correct forms and titles: the ancient ones had all this, but they were the tools of those below to serve those above. Those above did not use this to rule those below. In days gone by Shun spoke to Yao, saying, ‘Being Heaven’s king, how do you use your heart?’ ‘I do not abuse those who are defenceless,’ said Yao, ‘nor do I ignore the poor. I mourn for those who die, caring for the orphaned child and for the widow. This is how I use my heart.’ ‘Righteous as far as righteousness goes, but not that great,’ commented Shun. ‘What ought I to do, then?’ said Yao. ‘When Heaven’s Virtue is found, the hills rejoice, the sun and moon shine and the four seasons are in line. The regular pattern of each day and night follows properly and the rain clouds are moved accordingly.’ Yao said, ‘So all I’ve really been doing is getting worked up and bothered! Ym seek compliance with Heaven, whereas I have sought compliance with humanity.’ Since earliest times Heaven and Earth have been known as great. The Yellow Emperor, Yao and Shun have all praised them. The ancient kings who ruled all under Heaven, did they need to act? Heaven and Earth were sufficient for them. Confucius travelled west to place his books in the archives of Chou. Tzu Lu offered advice, saying, ‘I have heard that the official in charge of the Royal Archives is Lao Tzu. But he has resigned and lives at home. Sir, if you want to place your books there, go and see him and ask his assistance.’ ‘Splendid,’ said Confucius. So off he went to see Lao Tzu, but Lao Tzu refused to help. So Confucius took out his Twelve Classics,— and started to preach. When he was halfway through, Lao Tzu said, ‘This is too much. Put it briefly.’ Confucius said, ‘In essence, it is benevolence and righteousness.’ ‘May I ask,’ said Lao Tzu, ‘are benevolence and righteousness of the very essence of humanity?’ ‘Certainly,’ said Confucius. ‘If the nobleman is without benevolence, he has no purpose; if without righteousness, he has no life. Benevolence and righteousness, these are truly of the innate nature of humanity. How else could it be?’ ‘May I ask, what are benevolence and righteousness?’ ‘To be at one, centred in one’s heart, in love with all, without selfishness, this is what benevolence and righteousness are,’ replied Confucius. ‘Really! Your words reveal misunderstanding,’ said Lao Tzu. ‘ “Love of all”, that’s both vague and an exaggeration! “Without selfishness”, isn’t that rather selfish? Sir, if you want people to remain simple, shouldn’t you look to the ways of Heaven and Earth? ‘Heaven and Earth have their boundaries which are constant; the sun and moon hold their courses in their brightness; the stars and planets proceed in the boundaries of their order; the birds and creatures find their confines within their herds and flocks. Think of the trees which stand within their own boundaries in order. ‘So Sir, walk with Virtue and travel with the Tao, and you will reach the perfect end. Why bother with all this benevolence and righteousness, prancing along as if you were beating a drum and looking for a lost child? Sir, you will just confuse people’s true nature!’ Shih Cheng Chi came to see Lao Tzu and asked him, ‘I have heard tell that you, Sir, are a sage, so I came to see you, regardless of the length of the journey. Over the hundred nights of the journey my feet became blistered, but I did not stop nor rest. Now I find, Sir, that you are not a sage. Even though you were wealthy enough for even the rat holes of your house to be full of left-over rice, you nevertheless kicked your poor little sister out of the house. What an unkind action! When your food is placed before you, even if you cannot eat it all, you hoard it, whether it is raw or cooked.’ Lao Tzu showed no emotion and made no reply. Tire next day Shih Cheng Chi came to see him again and said, ‘Yesterday I was rude to you, Sir. Today I have no heart for it. Why is this?’ Lao Tzu said, ‘I think I have freed myself from knowledge, from the spiritual and from being a sage. If you had called me an ox yesterday, Sir, then I would have said I was an ox. If you had called me a horse, I would have said I was a horse. If people name a reality, but someone won’t have it, then he just makes life more problematic. I am always like this, I don’t just put it on for certain occasions.’ Shih Cheng Chi shrank back so as not to be even near Lao Tzu’s shadow, then he came forward once more in a humble way and asked how he could cultivate himself. Lao Tzu said, ‘Your face is unpleasant; your eyes glare; your forehead is broad; your mouth hangs open; your style is pompous; you are like a tethered horse waiting to bolt, ready to go like an arrow from a crossbow; you examine everything in too much detail; you are cunning in your use of knowledge, yet you lounge around. All this makes me distrust you. Out on the frontier someone like you would be called a bandit.’ The Master said, ‘The Tao does not hesitate before that which is vast, nor does it abandon the small. Thus it is that all life is enlivened by it. So immense, so immense there is nothing which is not held by it; so deep, so unfathomable beyond any reckoning. The form of its Virtue is in benevolence and righteousness, though this is a minor aspect of its spirit. Who but the perfect man could comprehend all this? Tire perfect man has charge of this age, a somewhat daunting task! However, this does not fool him or trap him. He holds the reins of power over the whole world but it is of little consequence to him. His discernment unearths all falsehood but he gives no thought to personal gain. He gets to the heart of issues and knows how to protect the foundation of truth. Thus Heaven and Earth are outside him, he ignores all life and his spirit is never wearied. He travels with the Tao, is in agreement with Virtue, bids farewell to benevolence and righteousness and ignores ritual and music, because the perfect man has set his heart upon what is right.’ Tliis generation believes that the value of the Tao is to be found in books. But books are nothing more than words, and words have value but only in terms of their meaning. Meaning is constantly seeking to express what cannot be said in words and thus passed on. This generation values words and puts them into books, yet what it values is perhaps mistaken, because what it values is not really all that valuable. So we look at things and see tilings, but it is only an outward form and colour, and what can be heard is just the name and sound. How sad that this generation imagines that the form, colour, name and sound are enough to capture the essence of something! Tire form, colour, name and sound are in no way sufficient to capture or convey the truth, which is wiry it is said that the knowledgeable do not speak and those who speak are not knowledgeable. But how can this generation understand this? Duke Huan was sitting up in his hall reading a book. Tire wheelwright Pien was down below in the courtyard making a wheel. He put down his chisel and hammer, went up to the hall and asked Duke Huan, ‘May I ask you, Sir, what words you are reading?’ Duke Huan replied, ‘lire words of the sages.’ ‘Are these sages still living?’ ‘They are long dead,’ said Duke Huan. ‘Then, Sir, what you are reading is nothing but rubbish left over from these ancient men!’ ‘How dare you, a wheelwright, comment on what I read! If you can explain this, fine, if not you shall die!’ thundered Duke Huan. Tire wheelwright Pien replied, ‘Your Lordship’s servant looks at it from the perspective of his own work. When I work on a wheel, if I hit too softly, pleasant as this is, it doesn’t make for a good wheel. If I hit furiously, I get tired and the thing doesn’t work! So, not too soft, not too vigorous, I grasp it in my hand and hold it in my heart. I cannot express this by word of mouth, I just know it. I cannot teach this to my son, nor can my son learn it from me. So for seventy years I have gone along this path and here I am still making wheels. Tire ancient ones, when they died, took their words with them. Which is wiry I can state that what Your Lordship is reading is nothing more than rubbish left over from these ancient ones!’ CHAPTER 14 Does Heaven Move? Does Heaven move? Does the Earth stand still? Do the sun and moon argue about where to go? Who is lord over all this? Who binds and controls it? Who, doing nothing, makes all of this be? Is there some hidden cause that makes things as they are, whether they wish or not? Or is it just that everything moves and turns because it has no choice? Do the clouds come before the rain, or does the rain cause the clouds? What causes them to be? Who, doing nothing, brings all this joyful excess into being? The winds come from the north, going first to west then to east, swirling up on high, to go who knows where? Whose breath are they? Who, doing nothing, creates all this activity? Shaman Hsien said, ‘Come, I will tell you. Heaven has six directions and five cardinal elements.— Emperors and kings follow them and there is good government. If they act against them, there is bad government. Consider the Nine Lo, whereby harmony can rule and Virtue can be established. The scholar will illuminate all below and the whole world will be with him. This is what life is like under the August Rulers.’ Tang, the Prime Minister of Shang, asked Chuang Tzu about benevolence. Chuang Tzu said, ‘Tigers and wolves are benevolent.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Hie father cares for his children,’ said Chuang Tzu. ‘Is this not benevolence?’ ‘But it is perfect benevolence that I am interested in.’ ‘Perfect benevolence has nothing to do with affection,’ said Chuang Tzu. But the Prime Minister replied, ‘I have heard that where there is no affection, there is no love; where there is no love, there is no filial piety. Do you mean to say that perfect benevolence is without filial piety?’ ‘Certainly not. Perfect benevolence is of the highest order, and words such as “filial piety” cannot describe it. What you want to say is not that filial piety is surpassed, but that nothing even comes close to it. When a traveller goes south and then turns to face north when he has reached Ying, he cannot see Ming mountain. Why is this? Because it is far away. Tlrere is the saying: filial piety arising from respect is easy, filial piety arising from love is hard. If filial piety from love is easy, then to forget your parents is hard. It is easy to forget your parents, but it is hard to make my parents forget me. It is easy to make my parents forget me, but it is hard to make me forget the whole world. It is easy to forget the whole world, but it is hard for the whole world to forget me. ‘Virtue ignores Yao and Shun and dwells in actionless action. Its benefits embrace every generation, though no one in the world understands this. Despite your protestations, how can you talk of benevolence and filial piety? Filial piety, mutual respect, benevolence, righteousness, loyalty, integrity, resoluteness and purity, all of these can be of service to Virtue. But they are not worthy in themselves. So it is said, ‘ “Perfect nobility disregards the honours of state; Perfect richness ignores the wealth of the country; Perfect fulfilment ignores fame and glory. Alone of all, the Tao never alters.” ’ Cheng of the North Gate asked the Yellow Emperor, ‘My Lord, when you had the Hsien Chih music performed in the area around Lake Tung Ting, I listened and at first I was afraid; I listened again and I was weary; I listened to the end and I was bewildered. I became upset and incapable of coherent speech and finally I lost my self assurance.’ The Ye I low Emperor said, ‘That is what I would expect! I had it performed by the people, I attuned it to Heaven, I proceeded according to the principles of ritual and I rooted it in great purity. Perfect music must first of all find its response in the world of the people. It must conform to the principles of Heaven and walk with the five Virtues. It should merge with spontaneity; as a result of which it can order the sequence of the four seasons, bring great harmony to all life. This will be seen in the procession of the four seasons, bringing all life to birth. At one moment swelling, at one declining, constrained by both martial and civil boundaries. At one moment clear, at one obscure, the yin and yang are in harmony, the sounds pour forth. It is as if I were an insect awaking from hibernation or a crash of thunder; without end, without beginning, at one, death, at one, life, at one, finished, at one, surging forth. It is constant but there is no dependable pattern, this is what alarmed you. ‘Next I played it with the harmony of yin and yang, and illuminated it by the light of the sun and moon. The notes changed from short to long, from gentle to harsh. Urey all hung upon a single harmony but were not determined by anything. The notes filled the valleys and the gorges, and it was useless for you to try to block them out or protect your spirit, for such notes move as they wish. The notes are measured and are clear and sharp. So the ghosts and the spirits hide in the dark, and the sun, moon and stars follow their own courses. I stopped when the music stopped but the sounds flowed on. This worried you; you could not understand it; you looked for them, but could not see them; you went after them, but could not find them. You were stunned and so you stood before the universal witness of the Tao or leaned against an old tree and groaned. Your eyes could not understand and so failed you; your strength collapsed beneath you. I could not catch it. Your body dissolved into emptiness and you lost control and so achieved release. It was this which wore you out. ‘In the final section, I used notes that did not wear you out. I brought them together spontaneously. This seemed like chaos, like a thicket sprung from one root, like natural music produced from no one knows what, moving yet going nowhere, hidden in deep darkness. Some call this death, others life. Some call it fruit, others the flower. Tire notes moved, flowed, separated and changed, following no clear pattern. Understandably, the world is uncertain about them. Tire world sought advice from the sages, believing the sage to know true shape and true fate. When Heaven has not wound up the spring of life, but the five vital organs are all there ready, this is what is known as the music of Heaven, which delights the heart without words. So the Lord of Yen praised it saying, “Listening for it, you do not hear it; looking for it, you do not see its shape. It fills all Heaven and Earth, embracing the six directions.” Tbu desire to hear it, but it is beyond you, which is what confused you. ‘I first performed the music which would induce awe, and because of this awe, fear arose like some spectre. Next I came up with weariness and this weariness brought on compliance in you. I ended with confusion and this made you feel stupid. But this stupidity reveals the Tao, the Tao that can be carried with you, wherever you are.’ Confucius was travelling in the west, in Wei State. Tfen Yuan asked musician Chin, ‘What do you think of the way my Master proceeds?’ Musician Chin replied, ‘It’s a shame! It seems likely to end in problems!’ ‘Why’s that?’ said Yen Yuan. ‘Hie straw dogs,— before they are set out for the sacrifice, are kept in a basket which is covered by a beautifully designed embroidery. Meanwhile, the representatives of the dead and the official in charge of the rituals pray and prepare themselves to fetch the straw dogs. However, once they have been presented, they are just trampled on, head and back, by those around. The left-over bits are swept up and burnt by the grass-cutters. That’s all they’re worth by then. If anyone takes them and puts them back in their baskets, covers them again with the embroidery and then hangs around or even lies down beside them to sleep, he will either have fearful dreams or, more likely, constant nightmares. ‘Now your Master seems to have picked up some straw dogs originating from previous kings and has summoned his followers to lie down and sleep beneath them. The result was that the tree was chopped down in Sung; he was forced out of Wei; he got into considerable problems in Shang and Chou. Aren’t these events like bad dreams? He was besieged in Chen and Tsai, and for seven days he had no cooked food, leaving him suspended between death and life. Aren’t these events like nightmares? ‘If you’re travelling by water, using a boat is a good idea: if you’re travelling by land, try using a carriage. Hie boat is fine for travelling by water, but if you try and drag it across the land, you can try for a whole lifetime but it is unlikely to go very far. Are not the past and the present like water and land? Are not the states of Chou and Lu like the boat and carriage? To try nowadays to behave in Lu as if you were in Chou is like trying to drag the boat across the land: a great deal of effort for no return, and harmful to one’s self as well. Anyone who tries to do so does not understand that the efforts and the works of one age cannot, without great contortions, be made to fit another age. ‘Have you never seen a well-pump in action? Pull it up, down it goes, let go and up it comes. So, people pull it, it is not the pump that is pulling the people. Thus, whether it rises or falls, the well-pump itself cannot be blamed by people. Therefore, it is the same with the rituals and prescriptions of the Three August Ones and the Five Emperors,— who gained their reputation not from being the same, but through their ability to govern. As a result we can compare the Three August Ones and the Five Emperors to haws, pears, oranges and lemons. Their taste is quite distinct but all can enjoyably be eaten. ‘So it is with rituals and prescriptions - they change according to the age. Now, take a monkey and dress it up to look like the Duke of Chou and the poor monkey will struggle and bite until he has got rid of the clothes. Look carefully and you will see that the past and present are like the monkey and the Duke of Chou. Take the case of Hsi Shih, the famous beauty, whose heart was troubled and so she often frowned on those around her. An ugly woman of the area saw the beauty of Hsi Shih, went home, lamented, and frowned on those around her. As soon as they saw her, the wealthy people in the area slammed their gates shut and refused to venture out! When the poor people saw her, they rushed to gather up their women and children and fled! This poor woman knew that a frown could be beautiful but she did not know why a frown could be beautiful. Poor soul! ‘It’s all up for your Master!’ Confucius had pottered along for fifty-one years and had never heard anyone speak of the Tao until he went south to Pei and went to see Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu said, ‘So you’ve come then, Sir? I have heard of you, that you are the wise man of the north. Have you, Sir, followed the Tao?’ ‘I have not yet followed it,’ replied Confucius. ‘Well, Sir, where have you looked?’ ‘I looked for it in what can be measured and regulated, but even after five years I still haven’t been able to find it.’ ‘So, Sir, what did you do then?’ asked Lao Tzu. ‘I looked for it in yin and yang, but ten, twelve years went by and I still couldn’t find it.’ ‘Obviously!’ said Lao Tzu. ‘If the Tao could be served up, everyone would serve it up to their lords. If the Tao could be offered, there is no one who would not offer it to their parents. If the Tao could be spoken of, there is no one who would not speak of it to their brothers and sisters. If the Tao could be passed on, there is no one who would not pass it on to their heirs. However, it obviously cannot be so and the reason is as follows. ‘If there is no true centre within to receive it, it cannot remain; if there is no true direction outside to guide it, it cannot be received. If the true centre is not brought out it cannot receive on the outside. Hie sage cannot draw it forth. If what comes in from the outside is not welcomed by the true centre, then the sage cannot let it go. Fame is something sought by all, but don’t go for too much of it. Benevolence and righteousness are as the houses of the former kings, useful for one night’s shelter, but don’t stay there too long. To stay long causes considerable adverse comment. ‘The perfect man of old walked the Tao of benevolence, a path which he took on loan; he used righteousness as a place to lodge for a night. So it was that he ambled through the void and uncontrolled places; found food in the open fields and enjoyed the gardens which were not Ms. To be in such freedom, you must take actionless action. The open fields make living easy. He gives nothing and requires nothing. The ancient ones knew this as the wandering of the Truth Gatherer. ‘Someone who believes wealth is the most important thing cannot give up their income; someone who seeks pre¬ eminence cannot give up the hunt for fame; those who love power cannot hand it over to others. ‘Those who cling to things like these are usually fearful. Letting them go just once causes such agony that they will not consider even once doing so, although it would show them the folly of their ways. These are people bearing the punishment of Heaven. Hatred and kindness, taking and giving, correction and instruction, life and death, these eight things are tools of reform. However, only the one who abides by the great change and who does not stand in its way can use them. So it is said, to correct is to reform. If the heart cannot accept this, then the gate of Heaven is not opened.’ Confucius went to see Lao Tzu and talked with him about benevolence and righteousness. Lao Tzu said, ‘If you get grit in your eye from winnowing chaff, then Heaven and Earth and the four directions get mixed up. A mosquito or gadfly which stings you can keep you awake all night. And benevolence and righteousness, when forced upon us, disturb your heart and produce great distress. You, Sir, if you want to stop everything below Heaven losing its original simplicity, you must travel with the wind and stand firm in Virtue. Why do you exert yourself so much, banging a big drum and hunting for a lost child? Tire snow goose doesn’t need a daily bath to stay white, nor does the crow need to be stained every day to stay black. Black and white comes from natural simplicity, not from argument. Fame and fortune, though sought after, do not make people greater than they actually are. When the waters dry up and the fish are stranded on the dry land, they huddle together and try to keep each other moist by spitting and wetting each other. But wouldn’t it be even better if they could just forget each other, safe in their lakes and rivers?’ After seeing Lao Tzu, Confucius went home and for three days he said nothing. His followers asked him, ‘Master, now you have seen Lao Tzu, what do you make of him?’ ‘I have now seen a dragon!’ said Confucius. ‘A dragon coils up to show its form, it stretches out to display its power. It rides upon the breath of the clouds and is nourished by yin and yang. My mouth gaped open and I could not shut it. What can I say about Lao Tzu?’ Tzu Kung said, ‘So it is really true that this man can be as still as the dead and see like a dragon, have a voice like thunder and be as still as deep waters? Can he travel through Heaven and Earth? Could I also set off to meet him?’ So, with a note from Confucius, he set off to see Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu sat himself down and spoke softly: ‘I have seen many years roll by. What do you want, Sir?’ Tzu Kung replied, ‘The Three August Ones and the Five Emperors ruled all under Heaven, but not in the same way, yet their fame is as the same. Sir, why do you not consider them as sages?’ ‘Come a little closer, my boy!’ said Lao Tzu. ‘Why do you say they were not the same?’ ‘Yao gave the throne to Shun and Shun gave it to Yu. Yu drew upon his strength and Tang resorted to war. King Wen was faithful to Chou and did not rebel. King Wu revolted against Chou and would not be loyal. This is why I say they were different.’— ‘Come a little closer, my boy! I will tell you how the Three August Ones and the Five Emperors ruled the whole world. Hie Yellow Emperor ruled everything below Heaven in such a way as to make the hearts of all people one. If someone’s parents died, but he did not cry, none of the people blamed him. Yao ruled the whole world in such as way as to make the hearts of the people truly affectionate. So, if someone wished to mourn for a longer or shorter period for other relatives than they did for their parents, none of the people blamed them. ‘Shun ruled all under Heaven in such a way as to make the hearts of all the people divided. Hie wives gave birth to the children after ten months. By the time they were five months old, these children were talking; they were already calling people by their proper titles when they were still just babies. It was then that premature death first began. ‘Yu ruled all under Heaven in such a way as to make the hearts of the people change. As a result, each person was felt to have their own heart and warfare was seen as legitimate. They killed thieves but not others. Everyone in the world seemed only concerned with his own self. This meant the whole world was full of anxiety, and from this came the Literati and the Mohists. For the first time ever they created the regulation of behaviour, but what would they say today about the customs of marrying wives and daughters? ‘Let me tell you frankly about the Three August Ones and the Five Emperors and their rule - for it can be called ruling, although it was nothing less than terrible chaos. Tire knowledge of the Three August Ones rose up like a cloud against the clarity of light of the sun and moon; bore down upon the tranquillity of the hills and rivers and levelled the distinctive aspects of the flow of the four seasons. Their knowledge was more deadly than the sting of the scorpion or the bite of a beast. Unable to be true to their innate natures and being, they still saw themselves as sages. Is this not shameful, that they were not ashamed?’ Tzu Kung was deeply shocked and knew not what to say. Confucius said to Lao Tzu, ‘I have mastered the Poems, the Histories, the Rites, the Music, the I Ching and the Spring and Autumn - all of the Six Classics. I know them inside out. However, I have discussed them with seventy- two rulers, telling them of the Tao of the first kinds and the illumination of the path trodden by Chou and Shao, but not one king has been interested. They’ve done nothing! It is so difficult to preach to such people! How can I make the Tao clear to them?’ Lao Tzu said, ‘It is very lucky, Sir, that you did not discover a ruler who would try to govern this generation in such a way! The Six Classics are the tired footpaths of the first kings, not the actual feet that trod those paths! Now, Sir, what you are going on about is just these worn footpaths. But footpaths are created by the feet that first walked them. Urey are not the feet themselves! The white herons only have to look into each other’s eyes without blinking for impregnation to happen. A male insect buzzes above and the female replies from below and impregnation takes place, borne upon the air. Hie creature called Lei contains both male and female and so impregnates itself. Innate nature does not change; fate is unalterable; time cannot be stopped and the Tao cannot be halted. Hold fast to the Tao and there is nothing it cannot do; lose it and there is nothing that can be done.’ Confucius did not go out for three months, then he went to see Lao Tzu and said, T’ve grasped it! Hie raven hatches its young; the fish spew forth their eggs; the slim-waisted wasp transforms, and when a younger brother comes along the elder brother weeps. For too long I have not been able to work in harmony with these changes. So, given that I did not play my part in harmony with others, how could I expect to change people?’ Lao Tzu replied, ‘Well done. So nowyou’ve grasped it.’ CHAPTER 15 Rigid and Arrogant To be rigid and arrogant; to be above this generation and distant from its ways; to talk of great principles; to be critical and disparaging: these are approved by scholars who dwell in the mountains, by men who are not of this age, who are worn and weary or who cast themselves into the deep. To preach about benevolence, righteousness, loyalty and faithfulness; to be humble, moderate, selfless and civil: these are the marks of self-development and are the signs of the scholars who wish to reform this generation. These are approved by the one who wishes to preach and teach, whether at home or abroad. To talk of great achievements; to make a great name; to arrange the rituals between ruler and minister; to sort out those above from those below; to organize the ruling of the state: this is what is approved by the scholar who values the court and state, who loves his ruler and honours his country, who does what he can and who seizes lands. To live amongst the wilds and lakes; to dwell in isolated places; to fish alone; actionless action: this is what is approved by the scholar who retreats to the rivers and seas, who leaves this generation alone, who is in no hurry. Huffing, puffing; grunting and groaning; expelling the old breath and taking in the new; undertaking physical exercises to preserve the body and soul; long life his sole concern: this is what is approved, this is the Tao of the scholar who infuses his self with breath, feeding his body, hoping to live as long as Peng Tsu. To achieve loftiness without the burden of bias; to follow the ways of improvement without benevolence or righteousness; to rule successfully without achievement or fame; who rest without rivers and oceans; long life without organization; to lose everything and yet to have all; to drift calmly and endlessly, while all good things pay court to them: this is the Tao of Heaven and Earth, the Virtue of the sages. Tire saying goes, ‘Calm, detachment, silence, quiet, emptiness and actionless action, these are what maintain Heaven and Earth, the Tao and Virtue.’ The saying goes, ‘Tire sage rests, truly rests and is at ease.’ This manifests itself in his calmness and detachment, so that worries and distress cannot affect him, nothing unpleasant can disturb him, his Virtue is complete and his spirit is not stirred up. The saying goes, that the sage’s life is the outworking of Heaven and Iris death is the transformation of everything. When he is still, his Virtue is like yin; when he is moving, his pervasiveness is like yang. He brings neither good fortune nor bad. He acts and moves in response to forces beyond. When he finds something, he rises up. He ignores knowledge and nostalgia, following only the pattern of Heaven. So he risks no disaster from Heaven, nor complications from things, no accusation from anyone, no charges from the spirits of the dead. In life he floats; at death he rests. He does not consider and plot, nor design for the future. He shines but is not seen; his good faith has no record; his sleep is dreamless and he wakes without fear. His spirit is pure and without blemish; his soul never tires. Empty, selfless, calm and detached, he is in harmony with Heaven’s Virtue. It is said that sadness and happiness are corruptions of Virtue; joy and anger are errors of the Tao; goodness and evil are contrary to Virtue. So, for the heart to be without sadness and happiness, is to have perfected Virtue. To be one and changeless, this is to have perfected stillness; to encounter no opposition is to have perfected emptiness; to have no dealings with anything is to have perfected indifference; to have no feelings of dissent is to have perfected purity. So it is said that, if the body is overworked and is allowed no rest, it will collapse, and if the spirit is employed without stopping, it becomes tired and eventually reaches exhaustion. Water, if not mixed with other things, is by nature clear, and if it is not stirred up, it is level. However, if it is blocked and cannot flow, it cannot remain clear. This is like the Virtue of Heaven. It is said that to be innocent and pure, free from contamination, still and level, never changing, detached and acting without action, is to move with Heaven and to follow the Tao of sustaining the spirit. To have a sword like Kan Yuch, you must look after it in a special box and hardly dare use it, for this is the greatest of treasures. Tire spirit emanates in all four directions, without restriction, rising to Heaven and sinking down to enfold the Earth. It changes and nourishes all forms of life yet no one can find its shape. Its title is Harmony in the Supreme. It is only the Tao of true simplicity which guards the spirit; if you are guarded and never lost, you become one with the spirit. In being one you are in communion with the Order of Heaven. Peasant wisdom says, ‘Tire common people prize profit above all else; the worthy scholar, fame; the wise man, ambition and the sage Iris essential purity.’ Simplicity means no mixing; purity means an unimpaired spirit. Tire one who manifests simplicity and purity can truly be called the true man. CHAPTER 16 The Deceived and Ignorant Ones These are the people who are called the deceived and ignorant ones: those who seek to improve their innate nature by means of vulgar learning in order to return to their origin, and those who wish to control their desires by following vulgar ways of thinking in the hope of achieving illumination. Tire ancient ones ruled by the Tao: they developed their understanding in calm; knowledge was their life, yet they did nothing with knowledge. When knowledge and calm nourish each other, then harmony and order emerge as from innate nature. Virtue is harmony; the Tao is order. When Virtue enfolds everything, there is benevolence. When the Tao is set out in order, there is righteousness. When righteousness is clearly understood and all adhere to it, there is loyalty. When the centre is pure and true and returns to its proper form, there is music. When sincerity is articulated through the body and is expressed in style, there is ritual. However, following ritual and music in an inappropriate way will lead the whole world into confusion. When someone tries to correct others, his own Virtue is clouded over, and his Virtue will no longer reach all others. Trying to do so will destroy everyone’s innate nature. Even in chaos, the ancient ones were centred, for they were one with their generation and followed the paths of simplicity and silence. In those times, yin and yang were in harmony, ghosts and spirits did nothing wicked, the four seasons followed each other, all forms of life were without injury and no living thing suffered early death. The people had knowledge but they did not use it; all this was perfect Oneness. In those times no one planned anything, for everyone maintained constant spontaneity. This was the case until the time when Virtue deteriorated and then Sui Jen and Fu Hsi came to govern everything below Heaven, with the result that there was compliance but no unity. Virtue continued to deteriorate and then Shen Nung and the Yellow Emperor came to govern everything below Heaven, with the result that there was satisfaction but no compliance. Virtue continued to deteriorate and then Yao and Shun came to govern all below Heaven, with the result that, ruling by decrees and grand plans, they polluted the purity of nature and destroyed simplicity. The Tao was abandoned and Good substituted. Virtue was put at risk for the sake of opportunity. Uren innate nature was abandoned and hearts allowed to determine their own way. Heart linked with heart through knowledge, but were unable to give the world peace. Pomp and ceremony were added to this knowledge. This displaced simplicity and the heart was swamped, resulting in the people being confused and disobedient, with no way back to true innate nature nor to their origin. Perceiving this, we can see how the world has lost the Tao, and the Tao has lost this world. In this sort of world, how can the Tao lead the world, or a person of the Tao be seen by this world, or the world come to appreciate the Tao? Hie Tao cannot direct the world, nor the world direct the Tao. Even if the sage does not retreat to the centre of the forest and mountains, nevertheless his Virtue is still hidden, whether he likes it or not. These hidden so-called scholars of old did not hide themselves and refuse to be seen. Urey did not close the doors on their words and refuse to let them out. They did not shut away their wisdom and refuse to share it. But those times were all haywire. If it had been possible for them to act, they could have done great things, bringing all to Oneness without any sign of doing so. However, the times were not favourable and it was not possible, so they put down deep roots, remained still and waited. This was the Tao by which they survived. Tire ancient ones, wishing to keep themselves alive, did not use elaborate style to express their knowledge. They did not disturb everything in the whole world through their knowledge, nor use knowledge to try and disrupt Virtue. Alone and hermit-like they stayed where they were and looked to restore their innate nature. What more could they do than this? Tire Tao has no place for pettiness, and nor has Virtue. Pettiness is dangerous to Virtue; petty actions are dangerous to the Tao. It is said, rectify yourself and be done. Happiness which is complete is called the Timeliness of Purpose. Tire ancient ones talked of the Timeliness of Purpose, but they did not mean having official carriages and badges of office. Urey simply meant that it was happiness so complete as to need nothing more. Today what is called Timeliness of Purpose means having official carriages and badges of office. Carriages and badges are of the body, they do not touch the innate nature. From time to time such benefits may come. When this happens, you cannot help it, no more than you can stop them going again. So having carriages and badges of office is no reason for becoming proud and arrogant in our purposes, nor are distress and poverty any reason for becoming vulgar. View both conditions as one and the same, so be free from anxiety and leave it at that. So if loss of what gives happiness causes you distress when it fades, you can now understand that such happiness is worthless. It is said, those who lose themselves in their desire for things also lose their innate nature by being vulgar. They are known as people who turn things upside down. ^ M ^ a x%- # * ^ V I X11*-* <x*\ $ 5 * ^ tl\ Ai- ^ *■ *- Wt-Sf-k* CHAPTER 17 Season of Autumn Floods Hie season of the autumn floods had come and the hundred rivers were pouring into the Yellow River. The waters were churning and so wide that, looking across from one bank to the other, it was impossible to distinguish an ox from a horse. At this the Lord of the Yellow River was decidedly pleased, thinking that the most beautiful thing in the whole world belonged to him. Flowing with the river, he travelled east until he came at last to the North Ocean, where he looked east and could see no end to the waters. He shook his head, the Lord of the Ye I low River, and looked out to confront Jo, god of the Ocean, sighing and saying, ‘The folk proverb says, “The person who has heard of the Tao a hundred times thinks he is better than anyone else.” This refers to me. I have heard people mock the scholarship of the Confucians and give scant regard to the righteousness of Po Yi, but I didn’t believe them. Now I have seen your endless vastness. If I had not come to your gate, I would have been in danger, and been mocked by those of the Great Method.’ Jo of the North Ocean replied, ‘A frog in a well cannot discuss the ocean, because he is limited by the size of his well. A summer insect cannot discuss ice, because it knows only its own season. A narrow-minded scholar cannot discuss the Tao, because he is constrained by his teachings. Now you have come out of your banks and seen the Great Ocean. Ybu now know your own inferiority, so it is now possible to discuss great principles with you. Under Heaven there are no greater waters than the ocean. Ten thousand rivers flow into it, and it has never been known to stop, but it never fills. At Wei Lu the water disappears but the ocean never empties. Spring and autumn bring no changes. It pays no attention to floods or droughts. It is so much more than the waters of the Yangtze and the Ye I low Rivers, it is impossible to estimate. However, I have never made much of this. I just compare myself with Heaven and Earth and my life-breath I receive from yin and yang. I am just a little stone or a little tree set on a great hill, in comparison to Heaven and Earth. As I perceive my own inferiority, how could I ever be proud? ‘To compare all the space filled by the four oceans, is it not like a pile of stones beside a marsh in comparison with the vastness between Heaven and Earth? To compare China with all the space between the oceans, is it not like one single piece of grain in a granary? When talking of all life, we count them in tens of thousands, and humanity is just one of them. People inhabit the Nine Provinces, but humanity is just one portion of all the life that is sustained by grain, wherever carriages or boats can go. In comparison to all the multitudinous forms of life, isn’t humanity like just a single hair on a horse? ‘What the Five Emperors handed on, the Three Kings— argued over, the officials have struggled for, and benevolent people worry about, is nothing more than this. Po Yi was considered famous, because he gave up things, Confucius was known as scholarly, because he taught about it. Yet, in acting in such a way, making much of themselves, were they not like you who just now were so proud of yourself because of your flood?’ The Lord of the Yellow River said, ‘Very well, so if I recognize Heaven and Earth as big and a tip of a hair as small, will that do?’ ‘No,’ replied Jo of the North Ocean. ‘Ym cannot define the capacity of things; time never stops; there is nothing constant in fate; beginning and end have no regulation. ‘Great knowledge considers both that which is near and that which is far off, sees that which is small as not insignificant, sees that which is large as not necessarily significant, knowing that you cannot define the capacity of things. ‘Great knowledge has a clear understanding of the past and present, which is why it can be unconcerned by the remoteness of the past and not worry about striving to grasp the present, for it knows that time never stops. ‘Great knowledge understands the differences between fullness and emptiness, and is neither exalted by success nor disheartened by failure, for it knows of the inconsistency of fate. ‘Great knowledge knows the straight and quiet road, so it does not get excited about life nor dejected by death, for it knows that neither beginning nor end is regulated. ‘What people know is as nothing to what they don’t know. Tire time since they were born is nothing in comparison to the time before they were born. When people take something minor and try to make it major, this is the path to mistake and confusion and they cannot achieve what they set out to do. Consider it thus: how can you know the tip of a hair can be used as a measure of smallness? How can we know that Heaven and Earth are equal to being the measure of the truly great?’ Hie Lord of the Yellow River said, ‘The debaters of this generation say, “The tiniest tiling has no body, the most enormous thing cannot be contained.” Are these words true?’ Jo of the North Ocean replied, ‘From the viewpoint of the tiniest, we look at what is so enormous and we cannot comprehend it. From the viewpoint of the most enormous, we look at what is tiniest and we cannot see it clearly. The tiniest is the smallest of the small, the biggest is the largest of the large; so we must distinguish between them, even though this is just a matter of circumstance. However, both the coarse and the refined have form. Without any form, there is no way to enumerate them. What can be said in words is the coarseness of things; what can be grasped through ideas is the subtlety of things. But words cannot describe nor ideas grasp, and this has nothing to do with coarseness or refinement. ‘So it is that the great man through his actions will not set out to harm others, nor make much of benevolence and charity; he does not make any move for gain, nor consider the servant at the gate as lowly; he will not barter for property and riches, nor does he make much of his having turned them down; he asks for no one’s help, nor does he make much of his own self-reliance, nor despise the greedy and mean; he does not follow the crowd, nor does he make much of being so different; he comes behind the crowd, but does not make much of those who get ahead through flattery. The titles and honours of this world are of no interest to him, nor is he concerned at the disgrace of punishments. He knows there is no distinction between right and wrong, nor between great and little. I have heard it said, “Tire Tao man earns no reputation, perfect Virtue is not followed, the great man is self-less.” In perfection, this is the path he follows.’ Tire Lord of the Yellow River asked, ‘Whether they are external or internal, how come we have these distinctions between noble and mean? Why do we distinguish between small and great?’ ‘Viewed from the perspective of the Tao,’ said Jo of the North Ocean, ‘things are neither elevated nor lowly. Viewed from the perspective of things, each one considers itself as elevated and the rest as lowly. Viewed from the perspective of the everyday opinion, neither elevation nor lowliness is to be understood from the perspective of individual tilings. Taking into account differing views, something which is seen as big because it is big means that, in all the multitudes of life, everything can be viewed as big. Likewise, if something is seen as small because it is small, then all forms of life can be viewed as small. If we know that Heaven and Earth are as tiny as a grain or the tip of a hair is as vast as a mountain range, then we will have grasped that our understanding of size is relative. In terms of what each does, we view something as useful because it is useful, which means that, in all the multitudes of life, everything can be viewed as useful. In the same way, if something is viewed as useless because it appears useless, then all forms of life can be viewed as useless. If we know that east and west are opposite each other, but also need each other, then we can understand how mutual exchange and interaction work. Viewed from the perspective of choice, if something is seen as good because it undoubtedly is good, then in all the multitudes of life there is nothing which is not good. Likewise, if something is viewed as wrong because it undoubtedly is wrong, then there is no form of life which cannot be viewed as wrong. If we understand that Yao and Chieh both considered themselves good, but saw the other as wrong, then we can understand how we perceive things differently. ‘In the past Yao gave way to Shun and Shun ruled as Emperor. Ki Kuai— resigned and was disgraced. Chih ruled then and was finished off. Tang and Wu struggled and became kings. Duke Po— struggled and was executed. Looking at these models of struggle and defeat, acting like Yao or like Chieh, we can see that there is a time for noble behaviour and a time to be mean. There is nothing fixed about either. A battering ram can be used to storm a city wall but it is useless for filling a little hole: there is a difference here of function. The horses Chih Chi and Hua Liu could cover a thousand miles in a day, but were useless for catching rats, unlike a wild dog or weasel: there is a difference in skills. At night the horned owl can catch even a flea or spot the tip of a hair; in daylight, no matter how hard it tries, its eyes cannot see even a hill or mountain: there is a difference of nature. There is a saying, “Shouldn’t we follow the right but not make wrong our ruler?” To do so shows that you have not been illuminated by Heaven and Earth and by the multitudinous differences of all life. This is like being a devout follower of Heaven and ignoring Earth, or like being a devout follower of yin and ignoring yang. It is quite clear this is not possible. ‘Now, it is certainly the case that people talk like this endlessly, like fools or con-men. Emperors and kings have different ways of abdicating, and the Three Dynasties have different hereditary succession. Anyone who behaves differently from the customs of his time and contrary to its ways is called a rebel. Whoever complies and goes with the prevailing customs is called a friend of righteousness. ‘Be quiet, be quiet, Lord of the Yellow River! How could you know anything about the gateway to nobility or meanness or the dwelling place of greatness or pettiness?’ ‘All right then,’ said the Lord of the Yellow River. ‘What am I to do and what may I not do? How can I decide what is worth keeping or rejecting and what is worth going for or leaving?’ Jo of the North Ocean said, ‘Viewed from the perspective of the Tao, what is noble and what is mean are both just ceaseless changes. Don’t cling to your own ideas, for this is contrary to the greatness of the Tao. What is little and what is much, these are terms of very limited use. Do not try to be just One, this just highlights how far away you are from the Tao. Be stern and strict like a ruler of a country who favours no one. Be gentle, be gentle like the local earth god to whom offerings are made and who does not grant fortune selfishly. Be open like air, like the four compass points shed light but do not permit boundaries. If you lovingly tend all forms of life, how could you favour one? Uris is known as being impartial. Consider all life as unified and then how could you talk in terms of long or short? Tire Tao has neither beginning nor end, but all living things have both death and birth, so you cannot be sure of them. One moment they are empty, the next moment full. They are unreliable. Tire years cannot be reversed nor time halted. Decay, maturity, fullness and emptiness, when they end, begin over again. So we can talk of great righteousness, and discuss the fundamental principle within all forms of life. Tire life force is a headlong gallop, speeding along, changing with every movement and altering every minute. As to what you should and should not do? Just go with this process of change.’ ‘If this is the case,’ said the Lord of the Yellow River, ‘then what is so important about the Tao?’ Jo of the North Ocean replied, ‘To understand the Tao is to understand the principle. If you understand the principle, you know how to deal with things as they arise. Knowing this, you can ensure that nothing detrimental to yourself occurs. If someone has perfect Virtue, it is not possible for fire to harm, nor for water to drown, nor for either cold or heat to affect, nor birds and beasts to injure him. Not that I say that he dismisses all these things, but that he is able to discriminate between where he is safe and where he is in danger. He is at ease with both calamity and fortune, takes care as to what he approaches or avoids, and therefore nothing harms him. There is a saying that Heaven is internal, humanity external and Virtue comes from the Heavenly. Know Heaven and humanity’s actions, root yourself in Heaven and follow Virtue. Hren you can bend, stretch, rush forward or hold back, because you will always return to the core and it will be said you have achieved the supreme.’ ‘But what do you call the Heavenly? What do you call the human?’ Jo of the North Ocean said, ‘Oxen have four feet: this is what I call the Heavenly. When horses are harnessed and oxen have pierced noses, this I call the human way. There is the saying. “Don’t allow the human to displace the Heavenly,” don’t allow your intentions to nullify what is ordained. Be careful, guard it and don’t lose it, for this is what I call coming back to the True.’ Tire one-legged creature is envious of the millipede; the millipede is envious of the snake; the snake is envious of the wind; the wind is envious of the eye; the eye is envious of the heart. The one-legged creature said to the millipede, ‘I have one foot that I hop on and I can hardly go anywhere. But you, Sir, have a multitude of feet. How do you manage?’ Tire millipede said, ‘Don’t be so certain. Have you never seen someone spit? Out comes a big blob followed by a spray, which falls down like a shower of uncountable drops. Now I just set the Heavenly machinery in motion and as for the rest -1 haven’t a clue!’ Tire millipede said to the snake, ‘I get about with all these feet, but I can’t keep up with you, Sir, who have no feet. Why is this?’ The snake said, ‘I am moved by the designs of Heaven, how can I control that? What could I use feet for!’ Tire snake said to the wind, ‘By moving my backbone and ribs, I get along and at least I have some visible form. Now you, Sir, come hurtling along from the North Ocean and disappear off to the South Ocean but without any visible form. How is that?’ The wind said, ‘True, I come hurtling along from the North Ocean and disappear off to the South Ocean. However, it is true that, if you point your finger at me, you are greater than me, or if you stamp on me, you also win. But it is also true that I can bring down great trees and bowl over great houses; only I can do this. Therefore, the one who can overcome all the small problems is in truth the great victor. To have a great victory, why, this is what a sage does.’ Confucius was travelling in Kuang and the men of Sung encompassed him with a number of rings of soldiers,— but he went on singing to his lute with no hesitation. Tzu Lu went in to see him and said, ‘How is it, Master, that you are so contented?’ ‘Come!’ said Confucius, ‘I shall explain to you. For ages I’ve done my best to avoid difficulties. I have failed, but that’s fate. For a long time I have tried to be given an appointment. I have not been given one, such are the times. In Yao and Shun’s time, there was no one in the whole wide world who had difficulties, but it was not because of knowledge that this happened. In Chieh and Chou’s time, no one in the whole wide world succeeded, but this was not as a result of lack of understanding. This was certainly a sign of the times. Those who travel the waters are not afraid of snakes or dragons: this is the courage of fishermen. To travel overland and not to tremble upon meeting rhinoceroses or tigers, this is the courage of hunters. To see swords clash and to regard death as a return, this is the courage of the bold soldier. To know that hardship is part of life, to know that success depends upon the times and to confront great disasters with fortitude, this is the courage of the sage. Be patient, and my fate will then become clear to you.’ Not long after, the leader of the troops came and humbly said, ‘We thought you were Yang Huo and so we surrounded you. Now we know you are not, so we wish to apologize and retreat.’ Kung Sun Lung— asked Mou of Wei,— ‘When I was younger, I learned the Tao of the earlier kings, and as I grew up, I saw clearly the significance of benevolence and righteousness. I brought together difference and similarity, discerned hardness and whiteness, what was certain and what was not, what was possible and what was not. I laboured at understanding the Hundred Schools of Philosophy— and spoke out against their teachings. I thought I had understanding of all things. Now, however, I have heard the words of Chuang Tzu, and to my surprise I am disturbed by them. Is it that my knowledge is not as good as his, or is it that his understanding is greater? I find I can’t even open my mouth, so I ask you what I can do.’ Duke Tzu Mou leaned forward, sighed heavily, looked to Heaven, smiled and said, ‘Dear Sir, have you not heard of the frog in the broken-down old well? He said to the turtle of the Eastern Ocean, “1 have a great time! I leap on to the well wall, or I go down in the well, stepping along the broken bricks. When I enter the water, I float with it supporting my chin, feet up; on the mud, I dig my feet deep in. I look about me at the larvae, crabs and tadpoles and there is none that is as good as I. To have complete control of the waters of the gorge and not to wish to move but to enjoy the old well, this is great! Dear Sir, why don’t you come down and see me sometime?” ‘Tire turtle of the Eastern Ocean tried, but before he had put his left foot into the well, his right knee was stuck. At this he paused, shuffled out backwards and then began to speak about the ocean. “Adistance such as a thousand miles doesn’t come close to describing its length, nor a depth of a thousand leagues describe its deepness. In the time of Yii, nine years in every ten there were floods, but this did not raise the ocean an inch. In the time of Tang, seven years in every eight there were droughts, but this did not lower the ocean shore an inch. Nothing changes these waters, neither in the short term nor in the long term; they neither recede nor advance, grow larger nor smaller. Hris is the great happiness of the Eastern Ocean.” When the frog in the broken-down old well heard this, he was utterly amazed and astonished; he was utterly astonished, dumbfounded and at a loss. ‘For someone whose understanding can’t handle such knowledge, such debates about right and wrong, if they persist in trying to see through the words of Chuang Tzu, it is like a mosquito trying to carry a mountain on its back, or a scuttle bug rushing as fast as the Yellow River. This is plainly impossible. For someone whose understanding cannot handle such knowledge, such words of subtlety, all they are capable of is gaining some short-term reward. Urey are like the frog in the broken-down well, are they not? But Chuang Tzu is not planted firmly in the Yellow Springs of the Underworld, nor leaping, jumping into the stratosphere. There is neither south nor north: he scatters freely to the four points of the compass, and disappears into the depth. There is neither east nor west: starting in the darkest depth, he comes back to the great path. Then you, Sir, you in your astonishment try to sift his views to criticize them, or trawl through them in order to debate. Why, this is like trying to examine Heaven through a narrow tube or using an awl to explore the whole earth. Such tools are too small, aren’t they? You, Sir, be on your way! Or possibly, Sir, you have not heard of the young students of Shou Ling and how things went for them in Han Tan? Having not yet learnt the lessons that the people of that country were trying to teach them, they forgot what they had learnt at home, so were reduced to crawling back home. So, Sir, if you don’t get out now, you will forget, Sir, what you already knew and fail, Sir, in your career! ’ Kung Sun Lung’s mouth fell open and would not shut, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and wouldn’t drop down, and he shuffled off and ran away Chuang Tzu was one day fishing in the Pu river when the King of Chu despatched two senior officials to visit him with a message. The message said, ‘I would like to trouble you to administer my lands.’ Chuang Tzu kept a firm grip on his fishing rod and said, ‘I hear that in Chu there is a sacred tortoise— which died three thousand years ago. The King keeps this in his ancestral temple, wrapped and enclosed. Tell me, would this tortoise have wanted to die and leave his shell to be venerated? Or would he rather have lived and continued to crawl about in the mud?’ The two senior officials said, ‘It would rather have lived and continued to crawl about in the mud.’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘Shove off, then! I will continue to crawl about in the mud! ’ Hui Tzu was made Minister of State in Liang and Chuang Tzu went to see him. Someone told Hui Tzu, ‘Chuang Tzu is coming, because he wants to oust you from your office.’ This alarmed Hui Tzu and he scoured the kingdom for three days and nights trying to find this stranger. Chuang Tzu went to see him and said, ‘In the south there is a bird known as the Young Phoenix, do you know about this, Sir? This bird, it arises in the Southern Ocean and flies to the Northern Ocean and it never rests on anything except the begonia tree, never eats except the fruit of the melia azederach and never drinks except from springs of sweet water. There was once an owl who had clutched in his talons a rotting rat corpse. As the Young Phoenix flew overhead the owl looked up and said, “Shoo!” Now you, Sir, you have the state of Liang and you feel you have to shoo me away?’ Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu were walking beside the weir on the River Hao, when Chuang Tzu said, ‘Do you see how the fish are coming to the surface and swimming around as they please? That’s what fish really enjoy.’ ‘You’re not a fish,’ replied Hui Tzu, ‘so how can you say you know what fish enjoy?’ Chuang Tzu said: ‘ You are not me, so how can you know I don’t know what fish enjoy?’ Hui Tzu said: ‘I am not you, so I definitely don’t know what it is you know. However, you are most definitely not a fish and that proves that you don’t know what fish really enjoy.’ Chuang Tzu said: ‘Ah, but let’s return to the original question you raised, if you don’t mind. You asked me how I could know what it is that fish really enjoy. Therefore, you already knew I knew it when you asked the question. And I know it by being here on the edge of the River Hao.’ CHAPTER 18 Perfect Happiness Is it possible anywhere in this whole wide world to have perfect happiness or not? Is there a way to keep yourself alive or not? Now, what can be done and what is to be trusted? What should be avoided and what adhered to? What should be pursued and what abandoned? Where is happiness and where is evil? What the whole wide world values is riches, position, long life and fame. What brings happiness is good times for oneself, fine foods, beautiful clothes, lovely sights and sweet music. What is despised is poverty, meanness, untimely death and a bad reputation. What is considered sour is a lifestyle which gives the self no rest, a mouth which never has fine foods, a body without good clothes, eyes that never rest upon lovely views, an ear that never hears sweet music. Those who cannot get these things become greatly agitated and fearful. This is a foolish way to treat the body! Those who are wealthy weary themselves dashing around working, getting more and more riches, beyond what they need. The body is treated therefore as just an external thing. Those in positions of power spend day and night plotting and pondering about what to do. The body is treated in a very careless way. People live their lives, constantly surrounded by anxiety. If they live long before dying, they end up in senility, worn out by concerns: a terrible fate! The body is treated in a very harsh fashion. Courageous men are seen by everyone under Heaven as worthy, but this doesn’t preserve them from death. I am not sure I know whether this is sensible or not. Possibly it is, but it does nothing towards saving them. Possibly it is not, but it does save other people. It is said, ‘If a friend doesn’t listen to the advice you offer him, then bow out and don’t argue.’ After all, Tzu Hsu argued and lost his life.— If he had not argued, he would not be famous. Is it possible that there really is goodness, or not? Now, when ordinary people attempt to find happiness, I’m not sure whether the happiness found is really happiness or not. I study what ordinary people do to find happiness, what they struggle for, rushing about apparently unable to stop. Urey say they are happy, but I am not happy and I am not unhappy either. Ultimately, do they have happiness or not? I regard actionless action as worthy of being called happiness, though the ordinary people regard it as a great burden. It is said: ‘Perfect happiness is not happiness, perfect glory is not glory.’ The whole world is incapable of judging either right or wrong. But it is certain that actionless action can judge both right and wrong. Perfect happiness is keeping yourself alive, and only actionless action can have this effect. This is why I want to say: Heaven does without doing through its purity, Earth does without doing through its calmness. Thus the two combine their actionless action and all forms of life are changed and thus come out again to live! Wonder of wonders, they have not come from anywhere! All life is mysterious and emerges from actionless action. Hiere is a saying that Heaven and Earth take actionless action, but yet nothing remains undone. Amongst the people, who can follow such actionless action? Chuang Tzu’s wife died and Hui Tzu came to console him, but Chuang Tzu was sitting, legs akimbo, bashing a battered tub and singing. Hui Tzu said, ‘You lived as man and wife, she reared your children. At her death surely the least you should be doing is to be on the verge of weeping, rather than banging the tub and singing: this is not right!’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘Certainly not. When she first died, I certainly mourned just like everyone else! However, I then thought back to her birth and to the very roots of her being, before she was born. Indeed, not just before she was born but before the time when her body was created. Not just before her body was created but before the very origin of her life’s breath. Out of all this, through the wonderful mystery of change she was given her life’s breath. Her life’s breath wrought a transformation and she had a body. Her body wrought a transformation and she was born. Now there is yet another transformation and she is dead. She is like the four seasons in the way that spring, summer, autumn and winter follow each other. She is now at peace, lying in her chamber, but if I were to sob and cry it would certainly appear that I could not comprehend the ways of destiny. This is why I stopped.’ Uncle Legless and Uncle Cripple were touring the area of the Hill of the Dark Prince and the zone of Kun Lun where the Yellow Emperor stayed.— Without warning a willow tree suddenly shot up out of Uncle Cripple’s left elbow. He was certainly most surprised and somewhat put out. ‘Sir, do you dislike this?’ said Uncle Legless. ‘No,’ said Uncle Cripple. ‘What should I dislike? Life exists through scrounging; if life comes through scrounging, then life is like a dump. Death and birth are like the morning and the night. You and I, Sir, observe the ways of transformation and now I am being transformed. So how could I dislike this?’ Chuang Tzu went to Chu to see an ancient desiccated skull, which he prodded with Iris riding crop, saying, ‘Sir, did you follow some unfortunate course which meant you brought dishonour upon your father and mother and family and so end up like this? Sir, was it perhaps the cold and hunger that reduced you to this? Sir, perhaps it was just the steady succession of springs and autumns that brought you to this?’ So saying, he pulled the skull towards him and lay down to sleep, using the skull as a head-rest. At midnight he saw the skull in a dream and it said, ‘Sir, you gabble on like a public speaker. Every word you say, Sir, shows that you are a man caught up with life. We dead have nothing to do with this. Would you like to hear a discourse upon death, Sir?’ ‘Certainly,’ said Chuang Tzu. The skull told him, ‘The dead have no lord over them, no servants below them. There is none of the work associated with the four seasons, so we live as if our springs and autumns were like Heaven and Earth, unending. Make no mistake, a king facing south could not be happier.’ Chuang Tzu could not believe this and said, ‘If I got the Harmonizer of Destinies to bring you back to life, Sir, with a body, flesh and blood, and companions, wouldn’t you like that?’ The skull frowned, looked aggrieved and said, ‘Why should I want to cast away happiness greater than that of kings and become a burdened human being again?’ Yen Yuan went east to Chi and Confucius looked very anxious. Tzu Kung stood up and asked him, ‘May I ask, as a junior master, why you have looked so anxious, Sir, since Hui has gone east to Chi?’ Confucius said, ‘That is a very good question! Kuan Tzu— had a saying that I think is very apposite. He said, “A small bag cannot hold anything big and a bucket on a short rope cannot reach the water in the depths.” Likewise it is also true that destiny has its particular structure and the body its proper uses, which you can neither add to nor subtract from. I am worried that when Hui arrives he will talk to the Duke of Chi about the Tao of Yao, Shun and the Yellow Emperor, and thereafter he will continue by talking about Sui Jen and ShenNung.— The ruler will then try to see if he measures up to all this and will find he does not. As he is unable to measure up he will be distressed and when such a person is distressed - death! ‘Have you never heard this story before? Once upon a time, a seabird alighted in the capital city of Lu. Tire Earl of Lu carried it in procession to the ancestral shrine, where he played the Nine Shao music and offered the offerings of the sacrifice to it. However, the poor bird just looked confused and lost and did not eat a single piece of meat, nor did it drink even one cup of wine, and within three days it died. The problem was trying to feed a bird on what you eat rather than what a bird needs. ‘To feed a bird so it survives, let it live in the midst of the forest, gambol on the shores and inlets, float on the rivers and lakes, devour mudfish and tiddlers, go with the flock, either flying or resting, and be as it wishes. Birds dislike hearing human voices, never mind all the other noises and trouble! If you try to make them happy by playing the Nine Shao music in the area around their lakes, when the birds hear it they will fly away. If the animals hear it, they will run away and hide and if the fish hear it they will dive down to escape. Only the people, if they hear it, will come together to listen. ‘Fish can live in water quite contentedly, but if people try it, they die, for different beings need different contexts which are right and proper for them. This is why the ancient sages never expected just one response from the rest of the creatures nor tried to make them conform. Titles should not be over-stretched in trying to capture reality and ideas should be only applied when appropriate, for this is not only sensible, it will bring good fortune.’ Lieh Tzu was following the Tao and one day he was eating by the roadside and saw a one-hundred-year-old skull, which he pulled clear of the weeds and addressed, saying, ‘Just you and I know that you never died nor were you ever born. Does this distress you? Do I really enjoy myself?’ Where does everything come from? From the water come creeping plants, from the water’s edge comes Frog’s Robe, this gives birth to Hill Slippers, and these in turn produce Crow’s Feet, and Crow’s Feet become maggots, and the leaves become butterflies. Tire butterflies change and become insects to be found below the stove, which are similar to snakes and are called Chu To. A thousand days later they become birds called Dried Old Bones. From the spit of the Dried Old Bones comes a type of bug and these bugs turn into Vinegar Drinkers. Other bugs are born from the Vinegar Drinkers and Huang Shuang insects are born from Chiu Yu insects, which themselves are born from Mou Jui maggots, and Mou Jui maggots are born from Rotting maggots, which themselves are born from Sheep’s Groom. Sheep’s Groom comes together in intercourse with bamboo that has not put forth any shoots for years and they give birth to Green Peace plants. These give birth to leopards, leopards give birth to horses, horses give birth to humans, humans eventually sink back to what was in the beginning. All the multitudes of life arise from the mystery of beginning and return there. CHAPTER 19 Grasping the Purpose of Life If you have grasped the purpose of life there is no point in trying to make life into something it is not or cannot be. If you have grasped the purpose of destiny, there is no point in trying to change it through knowledge. If you wish to care for your body, first of all take care of material tilings, though even when you have all the things you want, the body can still be uncared for. Since you have life, you must first of all take care that this does not abandon the body. However, it is possible for the body to retain its life, but still not be sustained. Birth cannot be avoided, nor death be prevented. How ridiculous! To see the people of this generation who believe that simply caring for the body will preserve life. But if caring for the body is not sufficient to sustain life, why does the world continue to do this? It may be worthless, but nevertheless it cannot be neglected, we are unable to avoid it. If someone wishes to stop doing anything to sustain the body, they are advised to leave this world, for by leaving they can be free from any commitments, and, being free from commitments, they can be virtuous and peaceful. Being virtuous and peaceful, they can be born again like others and, being born again, they approach close to the Tao. But why is it such a good idea to leave the troubles of this existence and to forget the purpose of life? If you leave the troubles of existence, your body will not be wearied; if you forget life, your energy will not be damaged. Thus, with your body and energy harmonized, you can become one with Heaven. Heaven and Earth are the father and mother of all life. Together they create a form, apart they create a beginning. If body and energy are without fault, this is known as being able to adapt. Strengthened and again strengthened, you come back again to assist Heaven. Master Lieh Tzu asked gatekeeper Yin, ‘Only the perfect man can walk underwater and not drown, can walk on fire without burning, and can pass over the multitude of forms of life without fear. I would like to ask, how does the perfect one do this?’ Gatekeeper Ym replied, ‘It is because he preserves his original breath and this has nothing to do with knowledge, work, persistence or bravery. Sit down, and I will tell you all about it. ‘Everything has a face, forms, sounds and colour: these are just appearances. How is it possible that this thing and that thing are separated from each other? Indeed, why should any of them be viewed as truly the first of all beings? Urey are just forms and colours, and nothing more. However, everything arises from what is formless and descends into that which is changeless. ‘If you grasp and follow this, using it to the full, nothing can stand in your way! It means being able to reside within limits which have no limit, be secluded within boundaries which have no beginning, ramble to where both the beginning and the end of all life is; combine the essential nature, nourish the original breath, harmonize Virtue and, by following this path, commune with the origin of all life. Someone like this guards his unity with Heaven, his spirit is without fault, and thus nothing can get inside and attack him! ‘If a drunk falls out of his carriage, even if the carriage is going very fast, he will not die. He is just the same as others, bone and joints, but he is not injured, for his spirit is united. Since he does not realize he was travelling, he has no idea that he has fallen out, so neither life nor death, alarm nor fear can affect him, and he just bumps into things without any anxiety or injury ‘If it is possible to stay united through being drunk on wine, just imagine how much more together one could be if united with Heaven! Tire sage retreats to the serenity of Heaven, as a result nothing causes him harm. Even someone who is out for revenge does not break his opponent’s sword. Nor does someone get cross with a tile that just fell on him, no matter how upset he is. Instead, we should recognize that everything under Heaven is united. Thus it is possible to get rid of chaos, violence and warfare and of the rigours of punishment and execution, for this is the Tao. ‘Do not hearken to the Heavenly in humanity, but listen to the Heavenly in Heaven, for paying attention to Heaven’s Virtue is life-giving, while attending to humanity damages life. Do not cast aside the Heavenly, and do not ignore the human aspect: then the people will draw closer to the realization of Truth! ’ Confucius was travelling to Chu and he went through the heart of a forest, where he saw a hunchback trapping cicadas, using a sticky pole with such ease that it seemed as if he used his hands. ‘Sir, what skill!’ said Confucius. ‘Do you have the Tao?’ ‘Indeed, I have the Tao. The first five to six months I learned how to balance two balls on top of each other on a pole, and when they did not fall, I knew I could catch a few cicadas. Next I practised with three balls, and when they did not fall, I knew I could catch one cicada in ten. Next I practised with five balls, and when they did not fall, I knew I could catch cicadas very easily. I brace my body as if it were a straight tree trunk and stick out my arms like a pole. Never mind how vast Heaven or Earth are, or the vast numbers of the multitudes of living beings, I concentrate my knowledge on catching cicadas. Never tiring, never leaning, never being aware of any of the vast number of living beings, except cicadas. Following this method, how could I fail?’ Confucius turned and said to his followers, ‘His will undivided and his spirit energized, that is how I would describe this hunchbacked gentleman!’ Yen Yuan commented on Confucius, saying, ‘I was crossing the gorge at Chang Shan and the boatman guided the boat with real verve. I said to him, “Can one study how to guide a boat?” He said, “Indeed. Someone who can swim well will have no trouble. If someone can dive under water, he may not have seen a boat before but he will know what to do.” I asked him what this meant, but he could not say, so I am asking you: what do his words mean?’ ‘A good swimmer learns quickly,’ said Confucius, ‘because he knows how to ignore the water. Someone who can swim under the water may indeed have never seen a boat, but he regards the waters as though they were dry land, and the overturning of a boat as nothing more serious than a waggon turning over. So he too learns quickly. All forms of life can be overturning or sliding downwards right in front of his eyes, but he is not affected, nor does it disturb his inner calm, so there is nothing bad that can disturb him! In an archery competition, you shoot as skilfully as possible, hoping to win. If you compete to win decorated buckles, you are concerned with your aim. If you compete for gold, it can make you very nervous. Tbur skills are the same in all these cases, but because one of these is more significant than the others, this puts external pressure on you. To pay too much attention to such external things makes you thoughtless about the internal things.’ Tien Kai Chih went to see Duke Wei of Chou, and the Duke asked him, ‘I hear Chu Hsien is studying life. As Chu Hsien’s companion, what have you heard of this, Sir?’ Tien Kai Chih replied, ‘I just sweep the courtyard and guard the gate, so how could I have heard anything about it?’ ‘Master Tien, don’t be so modest,’ said Duke Wei. ‘I want to hear more.’ ‘Well,’ said Kai Chili, ‘I have heard the Master say, “Someone who sustains life is definitely like a shepherd who watches for the stragglers and brings them into line.” ’ ‘What does this mean?’ said Duke Wei. ‘In Lu they had Shan Po, who dwelt in the caves, drank nothing but water and was not interested in profit like the rest of the people,’ said Tien Kai Chih, ‘and for seventy years he lived like this and had the complexion of a girl. Then, sadly, he encountered a fierce tiger which killed and ate him. You have Chang Yi, who knocked on all the doors of the wealthy and powerful, never missing an opportunity to visit. He continued like this for forty years, then caught a fever, became sick and soon died. Po took care of what was internal and a tiger devoured his externals, while Yu took care of his external image and the illness destroyed him from the inside. These two masters did not manage to keep their herd together.’ Confucius said, ‘Don’t hide inside, don’t come out and shine like yang, but hold steadfastly to the middle ground. Follow these three rules and you will be known as one of the truest. When people are about to set out on a dangerous journey, if they hear that one person in ten has been killed, then fathers, sons, elder and younger brothers will all warn them to be careful and they will not set off until they have an armed escort. That is wise, isn’t it? People should really worry about what truly worries them, the thoughts that come when they are lying awake in bed or at table eating and drinking. But they don’t understand these warnings - what an error!’ The priest of the ancestors looked into the pigsty and said, ‘What’s so bad about dying? I fatten you up for three months, then I undergo spiritual discipline for ten days, fast for three days, lay out the white reeds, carve up your shoulders and rump and lay them on the place of sacrifice. Surely you’re OK with that, aren’t you?’ It is, however, true to say that from the perspective of the pig it would be better to eat oats and bran and stay there in the pigsty. It is also true that, looking at this from my perspective, I’d like to be honoured as an important official while alive and, when I die, be buried with a horse-drawn hearse, lying upon a bed of feathers. I could live with that! From the pig’s point of view, I wouldn’t give a penny for such a life, but from my point of view, I’d be very content, though I wonder why I perceive things so differently from a Pig? Duke Huan— was out hunting in the fields, accompanied by Kuan Chung— as his driver, when they saw a ghost. The Duke grabbed Kuan Chung’s hand and said, ‘Kuan Chung, what do you see?’ He replied, ‘I don’t see anything.’ The Duke returned home, fell ill, got worse, and for a number of days did not venture out. A scholar of Chi called Huang Tzu Kao Ao said, ‘Sire, you are harming yourself, for the ghost does not have the evil to harm you! When the original breath within is scattered and will not reunite, then weakness follows. If it goes up but will not come down, it makes a man bad-tempered. If it goes down but will not come up, it makes a man very forgetful. If it goes neither up nor down, but centres upon the body, at the heart, then illness comes.’ ‘Is it certain that ghosts exist?’ asked Duke Huan. ‘Tliere are such tilings,’ he replied. ‘The hearth has one,— the store has one. Tire pile of rubbish outside the walls has one. Tire northeast under the eaves has two; the north-west under the eaves has one. In the water there is one; in the hills there is another. The mountains have their own, as do the meadows and the swamps.’ ‘Can I ask you what a swamp ghost looks like?’ said the Duke. ‘The swamp ghost is as big as a wheel rim, as high as a carriage axle, wears a purple gown, a fur hat and is hideous, as such things usually are. Hearing the sound of a waggon or thunder, it holds its head and rises. To see this creature means you will become a dictator.’ Duke Huan was absolutely delighted and laughed, and he said, ‘So that is the man I saw!’ Then he sat up, tidied himself and even before the day ended, though he did not realize it, he was better. Chi Hsing Tzu was raising game birds for the King. Ten days later he asked, ‘Are the game birds ready?’ ‘Not yet,’ said Chi Hsing Tzu, ‘I need to work on their arrogance and control their spirit.’ Ten days later the King asked again, and he said, ‘Not yet, they glare easily alarmed.’ Ten days later the King asked again, and he said, ‘Not yet, they glare about them and I need to control their spirit.’ Ten days later the King asked again and Chi Hsing Tzu told him, ‘Good enough. A cock nearby can crow and they are not disturbed: if you saw them from afar, you’d think they look like wood. They have harmonized their Virtue, and other cocks will not challenge them, but run away.’ Confucius was sightseeing in Lu Liang, where the waterfall is thirty fathoms high and the river races along for forty miles, so fast that neither fish nor any other creature can swim in it. He saw one person dive in and he assumed that this person wanted to embrace death, perhaps because of some anxiety, so he placed his followers along the bank and they prepared to pull him out. However, the swimmer, having gone a hundred yards, came out, and walked nonchalantly along the bank, singing a song with water dripping off him. Confucius pursued him and said, ‘I thought you were a ghost, but now I see, Sir, that you are a man. I wish to enquire, do you have a Tao for swimming under the water?’ He said, ‘No, I have no Tao. I started with what I knew, matured my innate nature and allow destiny to do the rest. I go in with the currents and come out with the flow, just going with the Tao of the water and never being concerned. That is how I survive.’ Confucius said, ‘What do you mean when you say you started with what you knew, matured your innate nature and allow destiny to do the rest?’ He said, ‘I was born on the dry land and feel content on the land, where I know what I know. I was nurtured by the water, and felt safe there: that reflects my innate nature. I am not sure why I do this, but I am certain that this is destiny.’ Woodcarver Ching— carved a piece of wood to form a bell support, and those who saw it were astonished because it looked as if ghosts or spirits had done it. The Marquis of Lu saw it, and asked, ‘Where does your art come from?’ ‘I am just a woodcarver,’ Ching replied. ‘How could I have “art”? One thing is certain, though, that when I carve a bell support, I do not allow it to exhaust my original breath, so I take care to calm my heart. After I have fasted for three days, I give no thought to praise, reward, titles or income. After I have fasted for five days, I give no thought to glory or blame, to skill or stupidity. After I have fasted for seven days, I am so still that I forget whether I have four limbs and a body. By then the Duke and his court have ceased to exist as far as I am concerned. All my energy is focused and external concerns have gone. After that I depart and enter the mountain forest, and explore the Heavenly innate nature of the trees; once I find one with a perfect shape, I can see for certain the possibility of a bell support and I set my hand to the task; if I cannot see the possibility, I leave it be. By so doing, I harmonize the Heavenly with Heaven, and perhaps this is wiry it is thought that my carvings are done by spirits!’ Tung Yeh Chi was showing his driving skills to Duke Chuang. He drove up and down holding a straight central line like a plumb line, and turned to left and right with the grace of a curve drawn with a compass. Duke Chuang was impressed, and felt that no one could do better, so he commanded him to do a further hundred circuits. Yen Ho came by and went in to see the Duke, saying, ‘Chi’s horses are almost worn out.’ But the Duke said nothing. Shortly after, the chariot broke down and the Duke said, ‘Sir, how did you know this would happen?’ Ho replied, ‘The strength of the horses was spent but he urged them on. That’s why I said they would collapse.’ Workman Chui could draw as straight as a T-square or as curved as a compass, because his fingers could follow the changes and his heart did not obstruct. Thus his mind was one and never blocked. The feet can be forgotten when you walk in comfortable shoes. The waist can be forgotten when your belt fits comfortably. Knowledge can forget yes and no, if the heart journeys contentedly. Nothing changes inside, nothing proceeds from outside, if you respond to what occurs in a contented way. By starting with what is contented, not undergoing that which is disturbing, it is possible to know the contentment of forgetting what contentment is. There was a man called Sun Hsiu who came to the gate of Master Pien Ching Tzu to call upon him, and said, ‘I used to live in the countryside and no one I ever met said that I didn’t behave properly, nor did anyone I met say that, when confronted with problems, I didn’t display fortitude. However, when I worked in the fields, the crops were never good, and when I worked for the ruler, things didn’t go well in the world. Therefore, I have been expelled from the countryside and exiled from the court, yet what is the nature of my offence against Heaven? How did this misfortune become my destiny?’ Ching Tzu replied, ‘Sir, have you not heard of how the perfect man behaves? He forgets his liver and intestines and disregards his ears and eyes. With no defined goal he meanders through the rubbish. What he is good at is doing nothing. Indeed, it is called being but not expecting any reward, bringing up but not controlling. Now you display your knowledge in order to impress the foolish; you strive for fame to highlight your distance from others, polishing yourself so as to be as bright as the very sun and moon. Thus far you have harmonized with your body, having the usual nine apertures, and you have not been struck midway through life by blindness or deafness, lameness nor any deformity, so in comparison to many, you are fortunate. So why do you wander around grumbling about Heaven? Be gone, Sir!’ Master Sun left. Master Pien came in, sat down and rested, then turned Ms face to Heaven and moaned. His followers said, ‘Teacher, wiry are you groaning?’ Master Pien said, ‘I have just been visited by Hsiu and I told him about the Virtue of the perfect man. I fear he was disturbed and has ended up completely confused.’ His followers said, ‘Not necessarily. Were the words of Master Sun correct? Were our teacher’s words wrong? If wrong, then nothing can make it right. But what if Master Sun’s words were wrong? And our teacher’s words were right? This means he was already confused, so nothing has changed!’ Master Pien said, ‘Not necessarily. Once upon a time a bird landed on the outskirts of the capital city of Lu. The ruler of Lu was very pleased and prepared a special sacrifice for it to enjoy and the Nine Shao— music was performed for its entertainment. The bird was distressed and bewildered and did not eat or drink. This is known as trying to sustain a bird with that which sustains us. If you want to feed a bird, then let him go in the midst of a forest, or float on a river and lake and devour snakes. This is what a bird wants. ‘Now Hsiu, he is foolish and has heard little, so when I try to tell him about the perfect man’s virtue, it is as if I was trying to take a mouse for a ride in a horse-drawn waggon, or trying to make a quail happy by providing the sounds of bells and drums. It is not surprising that he was startled!’ CHAPTER 20 The Huge Tree Chuang Tzu was walking through the heart of the mountains when he saw a huge verdant tree. A woodcutter stopped beside the tree, but did not cut it. When asked why he didn’t he said, ‘It’s no good.’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘Because this tree is not considered useful, it can follow all the years Heaven has given it.’ Tire Master came out of the mountains and stayed a night at a friend’s house. This man was delighted and told his son to kill a goose and cook it. Tire son answered, saying, ‘One goose can cackle, the other one can’t. Tell me which one to prepare?’ Tire father replied, ‘Prepare the one that does not cackle.’ On the next day Chuang Tzu’s followers asked him, ‘Yesterday there was a tree in the heart of the mountains which was able to live all the years Heaven gives because it is no use. Now, at your friend’s house, there is a goose who dies because it is no use. Teacher, what do you think of this?’ Chuang Tzu laughed and said, ‘Personally, I’d find a position between useful and useless. This position between useful and useless might seem a good position, but I tell you it is not, for trouble will pursue you. It would certainly not be so, however, if you were to mount upon the Virtue of the Tao; ‘never certain, never directed, never praised, never condemned, on the one hand a dragon, on the other a snake, going as it seems appropriate. Now up, now down, using harmony as your guide, floating on the source of all life. ‘Let things be, but don’t allow things to treat you as just an object, then you cannot be led into difficulties! This is the path taken by Shen Nung and the Yellow Emperor. Now, however, because of the multitudinous varieties of species and the ethical codes of humanity, tilings certainly aren’t what they were! ‘There is unity only in order to divide; fulfilment only in order to collapse; a cutting edge is blunted; those who are elevated are overthrown; ambition is thwarted; the wise are conspired against; the fools are conned. ‘So what can be trusted? My followers, just the Tao and its Virtue!’ I Liao— from the Southern Market came to see the Marquis of Lu.— The Marquis had a very troubled expression. ‘Why does the ruler look so anxious?’ said the Master of the Southern Market. ‘I have studied the Tao of the first kings and the methods of the first rulers,’ replied the Marquis of Lu. ‘I honour the ghosts and worthy people, try to follow them and never depart from them. But nevertheless I cannot avoid failure, so yes, I am anxious.’ The Master from the Southern Market said, ‘Marquis, your method for avoiding troubles is pretty feeble! The elegant, fur-dressed fox and the graceful snow leopard live in the mountain forests: this is where they are at peace. At night they set off but during daylight they stay at home, being cautious. It is hunger and thirst that drives them out one by one, after careful planning, to find food beside the rivers and lakes. Nevertheless, they do not avoid the misfortune of falling into traps and nets. Who is to blame? Their own fur is to blame. Now, the country of Lu, is this not the fur of the ruler? Cast away this body, get rid of the fur, cleanse your heart, scorn the passions and go where there is no one. In Nan Yueh there is a place called Virtuously Founded. In that country the people are fools, caring little for themselves, wanting little. Urey know how to produce, but not how to preserve; they give away, but expect nothing back; they don’t know righteousness or what ritual requires. Urey are ill-mannered, careless and take no care how they proceed, and as a result they don’t walk the way of the great skill. At birth they are happy, at death they celebrate. So I say to you, O ruler, cast aside your country, break with tradition and, helped by the Tao, travel on.’ ‘To follow the road there is both long and arduous,’ said the Marquis, ‘with some rivers and mountains to cross. I have neither a boat nor a carriage, so what should I do?’ The Master of the Southern Market replied, ‘Ruler, don’t follow form, don’t follow convention and this will be your carriage.’ 'Hie road is dark and long and there are no people along it. Who will accompany me? I have no rations, I have nothing to eat, so how can I follow the path to perfection?’ ‘Have simple needs, Sir, diminish your desires, Sir, then you can step out without any rations,’ said the Master of the Southern Market. ‘O ruler, you will be able to cross rivers and float upon the ocean, which, no matter how hard you stare, you will never see the end of, nor know where it goes. O Sir, those who bid you farewell will depart from the seashore while the ruler will journey out into the unknown! ’ ‘Hie one who has responsibility for others always faces difficulties, and those who are recognized by others as their ruler also suffer. Hiis is why Yao never had responsibility or allowed others to own him. Hierefore, ruler, I suggest you get rid of difficulties, cast aside your worries and travel alone with the Tao which leads to the Country of Great Silence. If someone ties two boats together and then uses them to cross the lake, and he is hit by an empty boat, he won’t be angry, no matter what sort of a temper he has. However, if there is a man in the other boat, he will shout at him to get out of the way! If nothing happens after his initial shout, he yells again and a third time, with a lot of abuse and swearing. To begin with he is not angry, now he is. To start with he had no one to be angry with, now there is someone. If a person can be emptied, and thus journey through this world, then who would harm him?’ Duke Ling of Wei wanted to cast new bells. So Pei Kung She, his collector of taxes, built a scaffold outside the city gate and in three months the bells were finished, top and bottom. King Ching Chi saw this and asked, ‘Master, what is this art of yours?’ Pei said, ‘Centred on Oneness, how could I dare to try anything? I have heard it said, “After the carving and smoothing, revert to simplicity.” Being slow, I have no comprehension; being still, I wander and drift; strangely, mysteriously, I let go what goes and greet what comes; what comes cannot be ignored and what goes cannot be held. I amble after the louts and thugs, wander after the humble and meek, seeing what becomes of them. In this way I collect taxes all day long and never have an argument. Just imagine how more significant this would be for someone who grasped the great path! ’ Confucius was besieged in the area between Chen and Tsai and had no hot food for seven days. Tire Grand Duke Jen came out to express his concern and said, ‘Master, do you think you will die?’ ‘Certainly,’ said Confucius. ‘Master, are you frightened by death?’ ‘Certainly.’ ‘I would like to tell you the Tao of never dying,’ said Jen. ‘There is a bird that dwells in the Eastern Ocean called Helpless. This bird is helpless for it flips and flops, flips and flops, as if it had no strength, flying only with the assistance of the other birds and jostling to return to the nest. None of them likes to be in front or behind, preferring to pick away at what others leave. Thus, when the bird flies, it is never alone, and no others outside the flock, such as humans, can do it any harm, so it avoids disasters. ‘Tire straight tree is the first to be chopped down; the well of sweet water is the first to run dry. Sir, your intention is to display your knowledge in order to astonish the ignorant, and by developing your self, to cast a light upon the crudeness of others. You shine, you positively glow, as if you carried with you the sun and moon. All this is why you cannot avoid disasters. ‘I have heard the great fulfilment man say, “Tire boastful have done nothing worthwhile, those who do something worthwhile will see it fade, fame soon disappears.” There are few who can forget success and fame and just return to being ordinary citizens again! Tire Tao moves all, but the perfect man does not stand in its light, his Virtue moves all, but he does not seek fame. He is empty and plain, and seems crazy. Anonymous, abdicating power, he has no interest in work or fame. So he doesn’t criticize others and they don’t criticize him. The perfect man is never heard, so why, Sir, do you so want to be?’ Confucius said, ‘Splendid!’ then said farewell to his friends, left his followers and retired into a great marsh, put on animal skins and rough cloth and lived off acorns and chestnuts. He went out amongst the animals and they were not afraid, amongst the birds and they did not fly away. If the birds and animals were not alarmed, then neither should people be either! Confucius asked Master Sang Hu, ‘I have been exiled from Lu twice, a tree was toppled on top of me in Sung, all records of me have been wiped out in Wei, I was impoverished in Shang and besieged in Chen and Tsai. I have had to endure so many troubles. My friends and acquaintances have wandered off and my followers have begun deserting me. But why is this happening?’ Master Sang Hu said, ‘Have you not heard of the man of Clria who ran away? Lin Hui threw aside his jade emblem- worth a thousand pieces of gold, tied his son to his back and hurried away. People asked, “Was it because the boy was worth more? Surely a child isn’t that valuable. Was it because of all the effort required to carry the jade? But surely a child is even more trouble. So why throw away the jade emblem worth a thousand pieces of gold and rush off with the young child on your back?” Lin Hui told them, “It was greed that brought me and the jade emblem together, but it was Heaven that linked my son and me together.” ‘When the ties between people are based upon profit, then when troubles come, people part easily. When people are brought together by Heaven, then when troubles come, they hold together. To hold together or to separate, these are two very different things. Tire relationship with a nobleman can be as bland as water, that with a mean-spirited person sickly sweet as wine. However, the blandness of the nobleman can develop into affection, but the sweetness of the mean-spirited person develops into revulsion. That which unites for no apparent reason, will fall apart for no apparent reason.’ Confucius said, ‘I have heard your advice with true respect!’ And so, with an ambling gait and a leisurely air, he went home, gave up his studies and gave away his books. His followers no longer came to bow to him, but their regard for him grew greater. One day Sang Hu also said to him, ‘When Shun was close to death he commanded Au, ‘Take care of what I say! Concerning the body, just let it go with the flow. Concerning feelings, let them follow their course. If you go with the flow, you avoid separation. If you follow the course of feelings, you avoid exhaustion. No separation, no exhaustion, so no need to adorn the exterior of the body. When you no longer need to do this, you are free of concern with material things.”’ Chuang Tzu, dressed in a worn, patched gown made of coarse cloth and with shoes held together with string, went to visit the King of Wei. The King of Wei said, ‘Why are you in such a state, Master?’ Chuang Tzu replied, ‘This is poverty but not distress. If a scholar has the Tao and the Virtue but is unable to use them, that is distress. If his clothes are worn and shoes held together with string, that is poverty but not distress. This is known as not being around at the right time. Your Majesty, have you never seen monkeys climbing? When they are amongst plane trees, the oaks and camphor trees, they cling to branches and leaves with such ease that not even the archers Yi or Peng Meng could spot them. However, when they are amongst the prickly mulberry, thorny date trees and other spiky bushes, they move cautiously, looking from side to side, shaking with fear. This is not because their sinews and bones have gone stiff or unable to bend, but because the monkeys are not in their own environment and so cannot use their skills. Now that I find myself living with a benighted leader and with rebellious ministers above me, how can I avoid distress? Observe how Pi Kan’s heart was cut out— - that illustrates my point!’ Confucius was confronted by troubles between Chen and Tsai and he had no hot food for seven days. He grasped a rotting tree in his left hand, while his right hand beat out a rhythm on a rotting branch and he sang the poem of the Lord of Piao. He had an instrument but no beat, he had sound but no blend of melody. The tree gave sound and the singer gave voice to a sadness that touched people’s hearts. Yen Hui, standing erect, arms folded, cast his eyes towards him. Confucius, anxious that Hui might overdo the respect and honour due to him, or that his love would make him vulnerable, said, ‘Hui, it is easy not to care about what comes from Heaven. It is hard not to care about what comes from people. Nothing begins which will not end, Heaven and humanity are one. So who, now, is actually singing?’ ‘How can one avoid the inflections of Heaven with ease?’ said Hui. ‘Hunger, thirst, cold and heat and being unable to progress beyond barriers,’ said Confucius, ‘these are the effects of Heaven and Earth, aspects of ever-changing cycles. They are known as travelling together with others. The minister of a ruler dare not disobey. If he is true to his ruler, then how much more true should we be to respond to the decrees of Heaven!’ ‘What do you mean when you say it is difficult not to respond to the works of humanity?’ Confucius replied, ‘Someone landing a new position goes out in all four directions at the same time. Honours and wealth become his without ceasing, but these do not come from who you are, they are just the external attributes of that particular job. Tire nobleman is no thief, an honest man is not a robber. Why should I be like that? It is said that there is no bird wiser than the swallow. If its eyes cannot find a good place, it will not give it another thought. If the food it is carrying falls from its mouth, it leaves it and goes on. It is cautious around humans, but it nests amongst them, finding protection by being close to the altars of the Earth and the Grain.’ ‘What do you mean, nothing begins that does not end?’ ‘Tire change and transformation of all forms of life goes on,’ said Confucius, ‘but we do not know who sustains this change. How, therefore, can we know beginnings? How can we know ends? There is nothing else to do but wait.’ ‘What do you mean when you say Heaven and humanity are one?’ ‘You have Heaven, therefore humanity is. You have Heaven, which is because it is Heaven. Humanity cannot create Heaven, because of humanity’s own innate nature. Tire sage calmly passes on with his body, and that is the end.’ Chuang Tzu was wandering through the park at Tiao Ling, when he saw a strange jackdaw come flying from the south. Its wing-span measured seven feet and its eyes were large, about an inch across. It brushed against Chuang Tzu’s forehead as it passed and then came to rest in a copse of chestnut trees. Chuang Tzu said, ‘What sort of bird is this, with wings so vast but going nowhere, eyes so large but it can’t see properly?’ Hitching up his robe, he hurried after it with his crossbow in order to take a pot shot at it. On the way he saw a cicada which was basking in a beautiful shady spot, without a thought for its bodily safety. Suddenly, a praying mantis stretched forth its feelers and prepared to spring upon the cicada, so engrossed in the hunt that it forgot its own safety. The strange jackdaw swept down and seized them both, likewise forgetting its own safety in the excitement of the prize. Chuang Tzu sighed with compassion and said, ‘Air! So it is that one thing brings disaster upon another, and then upon itself!’ He cast aside his crossbow and was on his way out, when the forester chased after him, shouting at him for being a poacher. Chuang Tzu went home and was depressed for three months. Lin Chou, who was with him, asked him, ‘Master, why are you so miserable?’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘I was so concerned with my body that I forgot my self. It was like looking into cloudy water, thinking it was really clear. Furthermore, I heard my Master say once, “When associating with the locals, act like a local.” So I went out walking in the park at Tiao Ling and forgot my own self. A strange jackdaw touched my forehead, then settled in a copse of chestnut trees and there forgot its own true being. The forester thought I was to blame. This is why I’m miserable.’ Yang Tzu was travelling to Sung and stopped for the night at an inn. The innkeeper had two concubines, one beautiful, the other ugly. The ugly one was given all consideration, while the beautiful one was made to serve. Yang Tzu asked why this was, and a young boy from the inn said, ‘The beautiful one knows her beauty, so we don’t think of her as beautiful. The ugly one realizes her ugliness and therefore we don’t think of her as ugly.’ Yang Tzu said, ‘My followers, remember this! If you act rightly but unselfconsciously, you will be universally loved!’ & CHAPTER 21 Tien Tzu Fang Tien Tzu Fang was in attendance on the Marquis Wen of Wei,— and he frequently referred to Chi Kung. Marquis Wen said, ‘This Chi Kung, is he your master?’ ‘No,’ said Tzu Fang, ‘but he comes from the same region as I do. In discussing the Tao with him I find he is often spot on, which is why I refer to him.’ ‘Is it the case, then, that you have no master?’ said Marquis Wen. Tzu Fang said, ‘I have.’ ‘Who then is your master?’ ‘Master Shun from the Eastern Wall,’ said Tzu Fang. ‘Then wliy have you never praised this great master?’ ‘He is indeed a man of Truth,’ said Tzu Fang, ‘having the appearance of a man but the expanse of Heaven. He is empty and his being is Truth; he is pure and holds all tilings. He greets those without the Tao with a proper manner, and they are enlightened, their conceits are dissolved. How could I present his thoughts?’ Tzu Fang left, and Marquis Wen sat profoundly shaken for the whole day and didn’t say a word. He then summoned his ministers and said to them, ‘How distant from us is the nobleman of complete Virtue! I used to believe that the words of the sages and the actions of benevolence and righteousness were the most perfect we could achieve. I have now heard of the teacher of Tzu Fang and my body is all at sixes and sevens, I don’t want to move, my mouth is shut and I don’t want to talk. Hiat which I was studying has turned out to be a thing of straw. Hie whole state of Wei really is a weight on me!’ Wen Po Hsueh Tzu was travelling to Wei, when he stopped in the state of Lu. A citizen of Lu asked to see him, but Wen Po Hsueh Tzu said, ‘Certainly not. I have heard that these noblemen of the Middle Kingdom are clear about the principles of ritual but foolish in their understanding of people’s hearts. I do not wish to see him.’ He duly arrived in Wei but as he returned home he passed once more through Lu, and the citizen appeared again, asking to see him. Wen Po Hsueh Tzu said, ‘He asked to see me before, now he’s trying again. Obviously, he cares enough to say something to me.’ He went out to see the citizen and came back moaning softly. The next day he saw him again and again returned with a low moan. His servant asked, ‘Why is it that, when you see this visitor, you come back moaning?’ He replied, ‘I have said before, “These people of the Middle Kingdom are clear about the principles of ritual, but foolish in their understanding of people’s hearts.” Each time I see this visitor his coming forward and withdrawing is so precise it might have been calculated on a compass or set-square. His appearance is first like a dragon, then a tiger. He argues with me as if he was my son, and tries to give me advice like my father, which is why I am sighing.’ Confucius went to see him but did not say a word. Tzu Lu said, ‘Sir, you have wished to visit Wen Po Hsueh Tzu for a while, yet when you saw him you didn’t say a word. Why?’ ‘As soon as I saw him, I could see the Tao,’ said Confucius. ‘There was no need to say anything.’ Yen Yuan said to Confucius, ‘Master, when you stroll, I stroll. When you stride, I stride. When you gallop, I gallop. But when you break into a headlong rush that leaves nothing but dust behind, I just stand and stare after you in astonishment.’ ‘Hui, what are you talking about?’ said the Master. ‘Master, when you stroll, I stroll; when you speak, I speak. When you stride, I stride; when you contrast, I also contrast. When you gallop, I gallop; when you speak of the Tao, I also speak of the Tao. But when I say you break into a headlong rush and leave the dust behind you and I just stand and stare, I mean you do not even need to speak to be believed, everyone salutes your universality and your lack of prejudice; even though you have no official status, people are inspired to follow you. I simply do not understand how this is.’ ‘Air ha!’ said Confucius. ‘So we must enquire into this! There is no greater sadness than the death of the heart - beside which the death of the body is secondary. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and all forms of life are guided by this. All beings that have eyes and feet await the sun and then do what is necessary. When it rises, they come out; when it sets, they disappear. This is certain for all forms of life. Urey have to await their time of death; they have to await their time of birth. ‘Having been given this prescribed shape, I hold to it unchangingly and in this way I wait for the end. I exist, acted upon by others both day and night without end, and I have no idea when I shall end. Obviously I am here in this particular shape and I understand my destiny, but not what has happened beforehand. This is how I am, day after day ‘I am sharing my ideas with you, and here we are side by side and you don’t understand me. This is a shame! Tbu can see the part of me that I have shown you, but that is no longer relevant - yet you still hunt for it as if it were. This is like looking for a horse after the sale is over. I am of the greatest service to you when I forget you, and you are of the greatest service to me when you forget me. Given this is so, why get so upset? It is my former self that you forget, and what I retain is what cannot be forgotten.’ Confucius went to see Lao Tzu and found him washing his hair. He had spread it out over his shoulders to dry. He stood there without moving, as if no one else existed in the world. Confucius stood quietly and then, after a while, quietly came into his vision and said, ‘Were my eyes dazzled, is this really you? Just now, Sir, your body was as still as an old dead tree. You seemed to have no thought in your head, as if you were in another world and standing utterly alone.’ ‘I let my heart ponder upon the origin of beginnings,’ said Lao Tzu. ‘What do you mean?’ asked Confucius. ‘Tire heart may try to reason this out but doesn’t understand it, and the mouth may hang open but can’t find words to say. Still, I will attempt to describe this to you. Perfect yin is harsh and cold, perfect yang is awesome and fiery. Harshness and coldness emanate from Earth, awesomeness and fieriness emanate from Heaven. Tire two mingle and join, and from their conjunction comes to birth everything that lives. Maybe there is one who controls and ensures all this, but if so, then no one has seen any form or shape. Decay and growth, fullness and emptiness, at one time dark, at another bright, the changes of the sun and the transformation of the moon, these go by day after day, but no one has seen what causes this. Life has its origin from which it emerges and death has its place to which it returns. Beginning and end follow each other inexorably and no one knows of any end to this. If this is not so, then who is the origin and guide?’ ‘I want to ask what it means to wander like this,’ said Confucius. Lao Tzu said, ‘To obtain this is perfect beauty and perfect happiness, and to obtain perfect beauty and wander in perfect happiness is to be a perfect man.’ ‘I would like to hear how this is done,’ said Confucius. Lao Tzu replied, ‘Creatures that eat grass are not put out by a change of pasture. Creatures that are born in the water are not put out by a change of water. Urey can live with a minor change, but not with a change to that which is the most significant. Joy, anger, sadness and happiness do not enter into their breasts. All under Heaven, all forms of life, come together in the One. Obtain the One and merge with it and all your four limbs and hundred joints will become just dust and ashes. For death and birth, ending and beginning are nothing more than the sequence of day and night. Then you will never be disturbed in your contentment by such trifles as gain and loss, for example, good fortune or bad! Those who ignore the status of authority, casting it aside like so much mud, they know that their own self is of greater significance than any title. Tire value of your self lies within and is not affected by what happens externally. The constant transformation of all forms of life is like a beginning without end. What is there in this to disturb your heart? Those who comprehend the Tao are freed from all this.’ ‘Master,’ said Confucius, ‘your Virtue is like that of Heaven and Earth, but even you have to resort to these perfect words to guide you. Who amongst the great men of antiquity could have lived this out?’ Lao Tzu replied, ‘I certainly do not. The flowing of the stream does nothing, but it follows its nature. Tire perfect man does the same with regard to Virtue. He does nothing to cultivate it, but all is affected by its presence. He is like the height of Heaven: natural; or the solidity of Earth, the brightness of sun and moon: all natural. There is no need to cultivate this!’ Confucius came out and commented upon all this to Yen Hui: ‘When it comes to comprehending the Tao I am about as significant as a fly in vinegar! Had the Master not revealed things to me, I would never have understood the great unity of Heaven and Earth.’ Chuang Tzu went to see Duke Ai of Lu. Duke Ai said, ‘There are many learned scholars in Lu but few of them study your works, Master.’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘Lu has few learned ones.’ Duke Ai said, ‘There are men wearing the dress of learned scholars throughout the state of Lu. How can you say there are few?’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘I have heard that those learned ones who wear round caps on their heads, know the seasons of Heaven; those who wear square shoes know the shape of the Earth; those who tie semi-circular disks to their belts deal perfectly with all that comes before them. But a nobleman can follow the Tao without having to dress the part. Indeed, he might wear the dress but not understand the Tao at all! Should my Lord not be sure on this point, why not issue an order of state saying, “Any wearing the dress but not practising the Tao will be executed!”’ This is exactly what Duke Ai did, and five days later throughout the kingdom of Lu not a single learned one wore the dress! Only one old man wore the dress of the learned and stood at the Duke’s gate. The Duke immediately called him in and discussed the affairs of the kingdom with him, and though they went through a thousand issues and tens of thousands of digressions, the old man was never at a loss. Chuang Tzu said, ‘So, in the whole kingdom of Lu there is just this one man who is among the learned ones. How can you claim there are many?’ Po Li Hsi— did not allow thoughts of fame and fortune to enter his heart. Instead, he looked after cattle, and his cattle prospered. Seeing this, the Duke Mu of Chin forgot Po Li Hsi’s servile state and he turned over the running of the government to him. Shim of the Yu— family did not allow death nor birth to enter his heart, and this is how he could influence others. Ruler Yuan of Sung wanted a map drawn up and so the artists flocked to him. They received their materials and instructions and formed up in line, licking their pencils and grinding their ink. There were so many that half had to remain outside. One artist arrived late, insolently and without any concern for speed. Having received his instructions and materials, he did not join the line, but went off to his own studio. The ruler sent someone to see what he was up to. He found him with his robe off, sitting cross- legged and almost naked. The ruler said, ‘Splendid, this is indeed a true craftsman!’ King Wen— was touring the sights of Tsang and he saw an old man fishing. However, his fishing was not real fishing. He was not fishing as if he had to fish for any good reason, but just because he fished. King Wen wanted to summon him to take over governing the kingdom, but he was worried that such an action would upset his great ministers, uncles and cousins. He tried to erase the matter from his mind, but he could not bear the thought that all his people, all one hundred families, would be deprived of such a gift from Heaven. The next morning he summoned his great ministers and said, ‘Last night I dreamed that I saw a man of quality, bearded and with a dark complexion, riding a dappled horse, half of whose hooves were red. This man ordered me, “Pass your government over to the old man of Tsang and the woes of your people will be healed!’” The great ministers were certainly impressed and said, ‘It was the late king, Your Majesty.’ King Wen said, ‘Let us ask the diviner.’ The great ministers said, ‘It is the command of the late King. Your Majesty should not doubt this, so there is no need for a diviner!’ So in due course the King handed over the government to the Old Man of Tsang. However, all the old order and regulations persisted unchanged and no new laws were sent out. Three years later King Wen toured his kingdom. He found that the officers in the districts had broken down the gates of the different groups and dispersed them, that the chiefs of the departments no longer bragged about their positions, and that no one brought illegal weights or measures into the country. The district officials had destroyed the fortified places and scattered those within, because they identified with those above them. Tire chiefs of departments sought no special honours, because they saw even the most mundane task as an honour. With no different weights and measures, the princes were no longer in two minds whether to use the official ones. King Wen appreciated the true worth of having found a great teacher, and, facing north, he asked him, ‘Could this government be extended to all the Earth?’ The Old Man of Tsang looked confused and gave no answer. The next morning he gave orders with a distracted look, and by night he was gone and was never heard of again. Yen Yuan asked Confucius about this. ‘King Wen wasn’t really up to it, was he? What was all that stuff about a dream?’ Confucius said, ‘Silence, don’t say a word! King Wen knew what he was about. Let there be no criticism of him! He only used the dream to extract himself from his difficulty.’ Lieh Yii Kou was displaying his skills at archery to Po Hun Wu Jen. He drew his bow fully back and placed a bowl of water upon his elbow. Tire arrow flew from his bow and no sooner had it gone than a second arrow was there and fired, followed by a third at the ready. And all this time he stood still as a statue. Po Hun Wu Jen said, ‘This is indeed the archery of an archer, not the non-archery of an archer. Let us go to the top of a high mountain, climbing up the rocks until we come to the edge of a drop eight hundred feet deep. Could you shoot then?’ So they set off, to the top of a high mountain, scrambling over the rocks, until they reached a drop of eight hundred feet. Here Wu Jen turned round and walked backwards towards the drop until his feet were half over the edge, whereupon he bowed to Yu Kou and asked him to join him. Yu Kou fell to the ground, sweat pouring from him, drenching him to his feet. Po Hun Wu Jen said, ‘Tire perfect man can stare at the azure Heavens above, or go down into the Yellow Springs below, or journey away to the eight ends of the cosmos, without affecting his spirit and original breath. Now here you are grovelling and your eyes agog. In such a state of mind, if you were to take aim, you would be in great danger!’ Chien Wu said to Sun Shu Ao, ‘Sir, three times you were appointed Prime Minister without showing any enthusiasm and three times you were dismissed without showing any distress. To begin with I really didn’t believe this. But now I see you, nose to nose, I see how calm and unruffled you are. Sir, have you some special influence over your heart?’ Sun Shu Ao said, ‘Do I really exceed others? When I was offered the post, I did not feel I could refuse. When the post was withdrawn, I did not feel I could stop it. Neither having nor losing affect who I am, so there was no point in looking miserable. Do I really exceed others? I did not know where the glory lay, in the job or in me. If it is in the prime ministerial post, then why should it mean anything to me? If in me, then what did it have to do with being Prime Minister? With all these questions, I have decided just to wander in the four directions. What leisure do I have to speculate about whether my position is high or low?’ Confucius heard about this and said: ‘He is a true man of the past: the wise could not follow his words; the charming ones cannot make him follow them, nor the aggressive force him to do their will. Neither Fu Hsi nor the Yellow Emperor could have made him be their friend. Death and birth are momentous times but they do not affect him; how much less do fame and fortune! Die spirit of one such as he can sail across the great mountain Tai without the slightest difficulty, enter into the deepest troughs of the ocean and not be wet, or fill the lowest position without any anxiety. He is filled with Heaven and Earth, and the more he gives to others, the more he has.’ Die King of Chu and the Lord of Fan were sitting together. Diree of the King of Chu’s servants came to report that the state of Fan had been destroyed. Die Lord of Fan said, ‘Fan’s destruction does not deter me from preserving what is most significant. I say, ‘If the destruction of Fan is not sufficient to make me lose what I most value, then the preservation of Chu is not enough to ensure the preservation of what I should preserve. Viewed this way, Fan has not begun to be destroyed and Chu has not begun to be preserved.’ * f'k* CHAPTER 22 The Shores of the Dark Waters Knowledge strolled north to the shores of the Dark Waters, scaled the mount of Secret Heights and came upon Words-of-Actionless-Action. Knowledge said to Words-of-Actionless-Action, ‘I want to ask you something. What sort of thought and reflection does it take to know the Tao? In what sort of place and in what sorts of ways should we undertake to rest in the Tao? What sort of path and what sort of plans do we need to obtain the Tao?’ These three questions he asked of Words-of-Actionless-Action, but he did not answer. Not only did he not answer, he had no idea what to answer. Knowledge did not obtain any answers, so he travelled to the White Waters of the south, climbed up on to the top of Doubt Curtailed and there caught sight of Wild-and-Surly. Knowledge put the same question to Wild-and-Surly. Wild- and-Surly said, ‘Air ha! I know, and I will tell you.’ In the middle of saying this, he forgot what he was going to say! Knowledge did not obtain any answers, so he went back to the Emperor’s palace to see the Yellow Emperor and to ask him. Hie Yellow Emperor said, ‘Practise having no thoughts and no reflections and you will come to know the Tao. Only when you have no place and can see no way forward will you find rest in the Tao. Have no path and no plans and you will obtain the Tao.’ Knowledge said to the Yellow Emperor, ‘Ym and I know this, but the others did not know, so which of us is actually right?’ Hie Yellow Emperor said, ‘Words-of-Actionless-Action was truly right. Wild-and-Surly seems right. In the end, you and I are not close to it. ‘Hiose who understand, do not say. Hiose who say, do not understand. And so the sage follows the teachings without words. The Tao cannot be made to occur, Virtue cannot be sought after. However, benevolence can be undertaken, righteousness can be striven for, rituals can be adhered to. It is said, “When the Tao was lost, Virtue appeared; when Virtue was lost, benevolence appeared; when benevolence was lost, righteousness appeared; when righteousness was lost, ritual appeared. Rituals are just the frills on the hem of the Tao, and are signs of impending disorder.” ‘It is said, “One who follows the Tao daily does less and less. As he does less and less, he eventually arrives at actionless action. Having achieved actionless action, there is nothing which is not done.” Now that we have become active, if we wish to return to our original state, we will find it very difficult! Who but the great man could change this? ‘Life follows death and death is the forerunner of life. Who can know their ways? Human life begins with the original breath; When it comes together there is life, When it is dispersed, there is death. ‘As death and life are together in all this, which should be termed bad? All the forms of life are one, yet we regard some as beautiful, because they are spiritual and wonderful; others we count as ugly, because they are diseased and rotting. But the diseased and rotting can become the spiritual and wonderful, and the spiritual and wonderful can become the diseased and rotting. It is said, “All that is under Heaven is one breath.” Hre sages always comprehend such unity.’ Knowledge said to the Yellow Emperor, ‘I asked Words- of-Actionless-Action, and he didn’t say anything to me. Indeed, not only did he not say anything to me, but he didn’t know what to say to me. I asked Wild-and-Surly and he was in the midst of explaining to me, though he did not say anything, then in the midst of it all he forgot what he wanted to say. Hren I asked you and you know the answer, so why do you say you are not close to the answer?’ The ''fellow Emperor said, ‘Words-of-Actionless-Action was actually right, because he knew nothing. Wild-and- Surly was almost right, because he forgot everything. However, you and I are not close, because we know.’ When Wild-and-Surly heard about this, he concluded that the Yellow Emperor knew what he was talking about. Heaven and Earth have great beauty but no words. Tire four seasons follow their regular path but do not debate it. All forms of life have their own distinct natures but do not discuss them. Hie sage looks at the beauties of Heaven and Earth and comprehends the principle behind all life. So the perfect man does without doing and the great sage initiates nothing, for, as we say, they have glimpsed Heaven and Earth. Now even the Tao, spirit-like and with perfect clarity, in common with all other forms of life, undergoes the transformations of life. All life forms are already dead or living; they are square or round, and they do not comprehend their beginning. Yet life goes on, just as it has done from time immemorial. Even the vastness of distances between the six areas of the world is encompassed by the Tao. Indeed, even the smallest hair relies upon the Tao for its very being. Every living thing below Heaven, those arising and those declining, are guided by this. Ym and yang. Hie four seasons are kept moving by it, each within its own sphere. Seeming lost in darkness, it still exists; Glorious and free, it has no body: it is spirit. All forms of life are guided by it, though they do not know it. This is what is called the root and origin. It is this which we discern in Heaven. Yeh Chueh asked Pi I about the Tao, and Pi I said, ‘Attend to your body, concentrate upon the One, and the perfect harmony of Heaven will be yours. ‘Rein in your understanding, unify your stance and the spirit will dwell within you. ‘Virtue will be your beauty and the Tao will be your dwelling place. ‘You will seem like a simple new-born calf and you won’t try to understand the reason why! ’ Before he could finish what he was saying, Yeh Chueh fell fast asleep. Pi I was very pleased indeed and wandered off singing this song: ‘Body like a rotten tree stump, Heart like cold dead ashes, His understanding is true and real, Not inclined to pursue questions. Obscure, obscure, deeply dark, Heartless, no advice forthcoming, What sort of person is this!’ Shun asked Cheng, ‘Is it possible to obtain the Tao and have it as mine?’ He said, ‘As you aren’t in control of your own body, how could you hope to obtain and hold the Tao?’ Shun said, ‘If I don’t control my own body, then who does?’ He said, ‘Your shape is given you by Heaven and Earth. Life is not yours to have, it is the combining harmony of Heaven and Earth. Your innate nature and destiny are not yours to have, they are constructs given you by Heaven and Earth. Grandsons and sons are not yours to have: they are the sloughed-off skins bequeathed to you from Heaven and Earth. You should walk, therefore, as if you don’t know where you are going; remain where you are without knowing why; eat without knowing what you’re tasting. All this arises from the yang breath of Heaven and Earth. How can it then be possible for you to obtain and hold anything?’ Confucius said to Lao Tzu, ‘Now, today, you seem relaxed, so I would like to ask about the perfect Tao.’ Lao Tzu said, ‘You should cleanse and purify your heart through fasting and austerities, wash your spirit to make it clean and repress your knowledge. The Tao is profound and almost impossible to describe! I will attempt to offer some understanding of it: ‘The brightly shining is born from the deeply dark; that which is orderly is born from the formless; the spiritual is born from the Tao; the roots of the body are born from the seminal essence; all forms of life give each other shape through birth. Those with nine apertures are born from the womb, while those with eight are born from eggs. Of its coming there is no trace, no sign of its departure, neither entering the gate nor dwelling anywhere, open to all the four directions. Those who travel with the Tao will be strong in body, sincere and profound in their thought, clear of sight and hearing, using their hearts without tiring, responding to all without prejudice. As a result of this, Heaven is high and Earth wide, the sun and moon move and everything flourishes. This is the Tao! ‘Even the broadest knowledge does not comprehend it. Reason does not mean wisdom, so the sage casts these aside. There is something which is complete, no matter what you add; is not diminished, no matter what you take away. This is what the sage holds to. It is as the ocean, deeply deep, as the mountains, high and proud, its end is its beginning, it carries all forms of life and never fails. Tire Tao of the nobleman is just external garb! That which sustains all forms of life and never falters, this is the true Tao! ‘Here is a man of China, balanced between yin and yang, dwelling between Heaven and Earth. For a while he is a man and then he returns to the origin. Viewed from the perspective of the origin, when life begins for him, he is just a collection of breath. When he dies, whether he is young or very old, these different destinies make little difference, Ms life-span is so short. What does it mean then to ask which is good and bad between Yao and Shun? Hie fruits of the trees and the trailing plants have their distinctive patterns. Even human relationships, for all their troubles, have an order and a structure. Hie sage does not oppose them when he meets them: since he exceeds them by far, he has no need to hold on to them. He responds to them harmoniously: this is his Virtue. He greets them in friendship: this is his Tao. Hiis is how Emperors and kings have arisen. ‘Human life between Heaven and Earth is like a white colt glimpsed through a crack in the wall, quickly past. It pours forth, it overwhelms, yet there is nothing that does not emerge. It drifts, it swirls, yet there is nothing that does not return. Life is transformation, death is also transformation. All living creatures are saddened, all humanity mourns. However, it is simply the releasing of the Heavenly bowstring, or the emptying of the Heavenly satchel, a yielding and a changing which release the soul, as the body follows, back at long last to the great Returning. Hrat without shape comes from shape, that with shape returns to the shapeless. ‘All people know this: those with a perfect understanding do not discuss it, while everyone argues how to set about achieving it. Those who have achieved it do not discuss it. Hrose who discuss have not achieved it. Hrose who eagerly search with their keen eyes will not discern it. Be silent, do not debate. Hie Tao cannot be heard, so it is better to close your ears than strive to hear. Hiis is called the great Achievement.’ Master Tung Kuo asked Chuang Tzu, ‘That which is called the Tao, where is it?’ Chuang Tzu replied, ‘There is nowhere where it is not.’ ‘But give me a specific example.’ ‘In this ant,’ said Chuang Tzu. ‘Is that its lowest point?’ ‘In this panic grass,’ said Chuang Tzu. ‘Can you give me a lower example?’ ‘In this common earthenware tile,’ said Chuang Tzu. ‘This must be its lowest point!’ ‘It’s in shit and piss too,’ said Chuang Tzu. Master Tung Kuo had no answer to this. Chuang Tzu said, ‘Sir, your questions miss the point. When Inspector Huo asked the superintendents of the market how best to test the value of a pig by treading down on it with his foot, they told him that the lower down the animal you pressed, the closer you were to finding the truth. So you should not look for the Tao in anything specific. There is nothing without it. Tire perfect Tao is like this - so it is called the Great. Complete, all embracing, universal: three different words but with the same reality, all referring back to the One. ‘Imagine that we were wandering in the palace of No-Place. Harmony and unity would be our themes, never ending, never failing! Join with me in actionless action! In simplicity and quietude! In disinterest and purity! In harmony and ease! My intentions are now aimless. I go nowhere and have no idea how I got there; I go and I come and don’t know why. I have been, I have gone. I have no idea when my journey is over. I wander and rest in limitless vastness. Great knowledge comes in and I have no idea where it will all end. ‘If you can regard things as simply things, then you do not share the limited nature of things. Tire limitless arises out of the limited, and the boundless arises out of the restricted. ‘We talk of fullness and emptiness; of withering and decaying. Tire Tao makes them full or empty but is not defined by fullness or emptiness. It creates withering and decay, but it is not defined by withering or decay It produces the roots and branches, but it is neither root nor branch. It gathers together and it disperses, but it is neither of these itself.’ Air Ho Kan and Shen Nung were fellow students of Lao Lung Chi. One midday Shen Nung was sitting on his seat with the door shut and he was fast asleep, when Air Ho Kan opened the door and came in, saying, ‘Lao Lung is dead.’ Shen Nung leaned forward, grasped Iris staff and rose to his feet. Hren he dropped his staff and burst out laughing, ‘Our Heavenly wise Master, he knew just how cramped and mean, arrogant and wilful I am and this is wiry he has gone and cast me aside and died. My Master has gone off! He has died without giving me words to control my wildness!’ Yen Kang Tiao heard all this and said, ‘Tire one who embodies the Tao has noblemen from all over the world coming to him. Now, regarding the Tao, you who haven’t grasped even a tip of the hair of it, not even a ten- thousandth part, nevertheless you still know enough to curb your wild words and to die without uttering them. How much more is this the case with someone who embodies the Tao! You can look for it but it has no shape. You can listen for it, but it has no voice. Those who discuss it call it deeply dark. To talk of the Tao is not to know the Tao.’ Great Purity asked Endless, ‘Sir, do you know the Tao?’ ‘I do not know it,’ said Endless. Then he asked Actionless Action, who replied, ‘I know the Tao.’ ‘Sir,’ asked Great Purity, ‘about your knowledge of the Tao, do you have some special hints?’ ‘I have.’ ‘What are they?’ Actionless Action said, ‘I know that the Tao can elevate and bring low, bind together and separate. These are the hints I would give you to know the Tao.’ With these different answers Great Purity went to No Beginning and said, ‘Between Endless’s statement that he doesn’t know, and Actionless Action’s statement that he does know, I am left wondering which of these is right and which is wrong.’ No Beginning said, ‘Not to know is profound and to know is shallow. To be without knowledge is to be inward, to know is to be outward.’ Then indeed did Great Purity cast his eyes upward and sigh, ‘Not to know is to know and to know is not to know! Who knows about not knowing about knowing?’ No Beginning said: ‘Hie Tao cannot be heard: what is heard is not the Tao. Hie Tao cannot be seen: what can be seen is not the Tao. Hie Tao cannot be spoken: what is spoken is not the Tao. Do we know what form gives form to the formless? Hie Tao has no name.’ No Beginning continued: ‘To be questioned about the Tao and to give an answer means that you don’t know the Tao. ‘One who asks about the Tao has never understood anything about the Tao. ‘Do not ask about the Tao, for the asking is not appropriate, nor can the question be answered, because it is like asking those in dire extremity. To answer what cannot be answered is to show no inner understanding. When someone without inner understanding waits for an answer from those in dire extremity, they illustrate that they neither grasp where they stand outwardly nor understand the great Beginning within. So they cannot cross the Kun Lun mountains nor wander in the great Void.’ Starlight asked No Existence, ‘Master, do you exist? Or do you not exist?’ Starlight could get no answer, but he looked upon the form of the other and saw a deep void. All day long he stared but could see nothing, listened but heard nothing, reached out his hand but held nothing. Starlight said, ‘Perfect! Who can reach such heights? I can imagine existence and non-existence but not non¬ existing non-existence; yet here we have non-existence of non-existence, how amazing! ’ The swordsmith of the Grand Marshal was eighty years old, but he had not lost any of his skills. Tire Grand Marshal said, ‘Master, you are so skilful! Do you have the Tao?’ He said, ‘I do have the Tao. From the age of twenty onwards I have been devoted to making swords. I pay no heed to anything else, I look at nothing but swords. By being so constant I am now able to do it without thinking. Time brings one to such art, so imagine how much more significant this would be for one who used the same method but never ignored anything. Everything would depend on him and everything would be achieved! ’ Jan Chiu asked Confucius, ‘Is it possible to know anything about what there was, before Heaven and Earth?’ Confucius replied, ‘It is. As it was in the past, so it is now.’ Jan Chiu got no further and left. Tire next day he saw Confucius again and said, ‘Yesterday I asked if it’s possible to know anything of what there was before Heaven and Earth and you said, Master, “It is. As it was in the past so it is now.” Yesterday that seemed fine to me, but now it seems problematic. What does all this mean?’ Confucius said, ‘Yesterday it was clear to you, because your spirit was ready for such an answer. Now it is problematic because you are no longer responding in the spirit, are you? There is no past, nor present, no beginning and no end. Is it possible to say that you had grandsons and sons before you had grandsons and sons?’ Jan Chiu did not answer. Confucius said, ‘Enough, don’t try to answer! Don’t use life to give birth to death, don’t use death to bring death to life. Do death and life depend upon each other? They are both held within the One. What was there before Heaven and Earth, was it a thing? That which creates things each in their own way is not a thing. Things that are produced cannot come before things that produce them because these already exist. Likewise, they were produced by things existing before them, and so on through time. The sage’s love of humanity never ends and is based on this way of seeing.’ Yen Yuan asked Confucius, ‘Master, I have heard you say that you should not welcome anything in, nor move out to greet anything. I would like to know how this is done.’ Confucius said, ‘Tire people of old didn’t change inwardly in the midst of external changes. Today people change inwardly but pay no attention to the externals. To note the changes around but not to change oneself is not to change. Where is change to be found? Where is there no change? How can one be affected by changes of the external? One needs to hold back from others. ‘Hsi Wei had his park and the Yellow Emperor his garden. Tire Lord Shun had his palace and Tang and Wu had their manors. Then amongst the noblemen there were those such as the teachers of the Literati and the Mohists whose teachings caused people to begin considering what was right and what was wrong and arguing with each other, and the present day is even worse! Sages, in their dealings with others, do them no harm; those who do no harm cannot themselves be harmed. Only the person who does no harm can welcome others in or go out to meet them. ‘The mountains and forest delight! Tire hills and valleys delight! However, this delight of mine ends and sadness comes. When sadness and joy come, I cannot prevent them. When they go, I cannot stop them. How distressing that the people of this world are but rest-houses for things. Urey know what they encounter but they do not know what they do not encounter. Urey know how to do the things they know, but not how to do those things they do not know. Not knowing, not doing, this is what traps humanity. Still some people attempt to escape from the inevitable. This is how it goes! Perfect speech is no speech; perfect action is no action. To know only what is known is a tragedy.’ CHAPTER 23 Keng Sang Chu One of the followers of Lao Tzu was Keng Sang Chu, who had grasped something of Lao Tzu’s teaching of the Tao. He went north and settled at the mountain of Wei Lei. He dismissed those servants of his who were brisk and efficient. He sent away any of his concubines who were kind and benevolent. Into his home he took the off-hand and rude, and employed the indolent and aggressive. Three years later Wei Lei had become a very prosperous place. Tire people of Wei Lei said to each other, ‘When Master Keng Sang came here, we were frightened of him. Now, if we think about it day to day, there doesn’t seem to be sufficient for everyone, but if we reckon him by the years, we can see there is more than enough to go round. It is possible that he really is a sage! Perhaps we should revere him as our priest before the dead and put all our altars of the grain and earth under his command.’ Master Keng Sang heard this, but he turned his face to the south and was certainly not pleased. His followers were perplexed by this. Master Keng Sang said, ‘My followers, why do you think this is strange? When the life-giving breath of spring emerges, the plants begin to come to life, and then in autumn they produce their multitudes of fruits. Do spring and autumn do this of their own volition? They just follow Heaven’s Tao. I have heard that the perfect man lives without effort within the confines of his house, leaving the different peoples to their own wild and unthinking ways. Now these busybodies of Wei Lei in their arrogant ways want to present their offerings to me and make me one of their leaders, as if I were really some kind of standard for others! This is why I am annoyed, because I remember the words of Lao Tzu.’ His followers said, ‘Surely not. In ditches eight to sixteen feet wide the big fishes can’t turn around, but the minnows and eels can. On a hill just six or seven feet high the big animals don’t have space to hide themselves, but the cunning fox finds it perfect. Honour should be shown to the worthy and offices given to those who are capable, with preference shown to the good and thoughtful. In the past Yao and Shun behaved like this, so why shouldn’t the people of Wei Lei! Master, let them do this!’ Master Keng Sang said, ‘Come here my little ones! If a creature large enough to swallow a carriage whole leaves its mountain, it cannot avoid the dangers of being trapped in the net. If a fish great enough to swallow a boat whole is left stranded by the loss of water, it can fall prey even to the ants. This is wiry birds and creatures don’t care how high they go to escape, nor do fish and turtles care how deep they go to escape. In the same way, those people who wish to preserve their bodies and lives are concerned only with how to hide away, and don’t mind how remote their place of hiding is. ‘Regarding the two masters you mentioned, what was so great about them as to be worthy of special mention? Their nit-picking philosophies make them like people who go around poking holes in walls and fences and sowing wild seeds in these places. They are like balding men contemplating combing their hair, or like a cook who counts each grain of rice before cooking! They take painstaking care, but to what end? Urey are useless to the world! If people of worth are elevated, there will be chaos as people fight to be promoted. If you choose people on the basis of their knowledge, then the people will try to steal this from each other. None of this makes the people any better. Indeed, what happens is that the people become more ambitious for gain. A son will kill his father for it and a minister will kill his ruler. People will steal in broad daylight and break down walls in the middle of the day. I say to you, the roots of all this great trouble will be found to have begun with Yao and Shun, and the consequences of this will remain for a thousand generations. A thousand generations later you will still have men who will eat each other!’ Nan Jung Chu sat upright on his mat looking perplexed and said, ‘How can someone as old as I am study to achieve the state of which you speak?’ Master Keng Sang said, ‘Keep your body in unity, hold on to life, don’t become too anxious. Do this for three years and you can achieve the state of which I have spoken.’ Nan Jung Chu said, ‘The eyes are a part of the body, I have never considered them to be anything other, but a blind person can’t see through his eyes. Ears are a part of the body, I have never considered them to be anything other, but a deaf person can’t hear through his ears. lire heart is a part of the body, I have never considered it to be anything other, but the madman can’t experience feelings with his. Tire body is also part of the body, but my soul seems separated from it, because I try to find my self, but why can’t I find it? Now you say to me, ‘Keep your body in unity, hold on to life, do not become too anxious.” Despite all my attempts to understand your Tao, this goes in one ear and out the other.’ Master Keng Sang said, ‘That’s all I can say. There is a saying, mud daubers are incapable of changing into caterpillars. Tire fowl of Yueh cannot hatch goose eggs, but those of Lu can. It is not that the virtue of one kind of hen is better than that of another. That one can and the other cannot is to do with their size, big and small. My talents are limited and cannot effect a change in you, Master. So, Sir, why don’t you go south and see Lao Tzu?’ Nan Jung Chu gathered his provisions and set off, and after seven days and seven nights he arrived at the home of Lao Tzu. ‘Have you come from Chu?’ said Lao Tzu, and Nan Jung Chu replied, ‘I have.’ ‘So, Sir, why have you brought this great crowd of other people with you?’ Nan Jung Chu spun round and looked behind him in astonishment. ‘Sir, don’t you understand what I am saying?’ said Lao Tzu. Nan Jung Chu hung his head in shame and then looked up, sighed and said, ‘Now I can’t remember what to say in response and have therefore also forgotten what I was going to ask.’ ‘What are you saying?’ said Lao Tzu. ‘Do I have any understanding?’ said Nan Jung Chu. ‘People will call me a fool. Do I understand? This just upsets me. If I am not benevolent, then I distress others. If I am benevolent, then I distress myself. If I am not righteous, then I harm others. If I am righteous, then I upset myself. How can I get out of all this? These three issues perplex me, so following Chu’s instructions I have come to ask you about them.’ Lao Tzu replied, ‘Just now I looked deep into your eyes and I could see what sort of a person you are. What you have just said convinces me I am right. Tbu are bewildered and confused, as if you had lost your father and mother and were looking for them using a pole to reach the bottom of the sea. Tbu are lost and frightened. You want to rediscover your self and your innate nature but you haven’t a clue how to set about this. What a sorry state you are in!’ Nan Jung Chu asked to be allowed to go into his room. He sought to develop the good and rid himself of the bad. After ten days of misery he came out and went to see Lao Tzu again. ‘I can see that you have been washing and purifying yourself thoroughly,’ said Lao Tzu, ‘but you are still impure despite the outward cleanliness. Something is stirring inside you and there is still something rotten within. Outside influences will press upon you and you will find it impossible to control them. It is wiser to shut the gate of your inner self against them. Likewise, when interior influences disturb you and you find it impossible to control them, then shut the gate of your self so as to keep them in. To struggle against both the outside and inside influences is more than even one who follows the Tao and its Virtue can control, so how much more difficult it is for one who is just starting out along the Tao.’ Nan Jung Chu said, ‘A villager fell ill and his neighbour asked how he was. He was able to describe his illness, even though he had never suffered from it before. When I ask you about the great Tao, it is like drinking medicine that makes me feel worse than before. I would like to know about the normal method for protecting one’s life, that is all.’ ‘Tire basic way of protecting life - can you embrace the One?’ said Lao Tzu. ‘Can you hold it fast? Can you tell good from bad fortune without using the divination of the tortoise shell or the yarrow sticks? Do you know when to stop? Do you know when to desist? Can you forget others and concentrate upon your inner self? Can you escape lures? Can you be sincere? Can you be a little baby? Tire baby cries all day long but its throat never becomes hoarse: that indeed is perfect harmony. Tire baby clenches its fists all day long but never gets cramp, it holds fast to Virtue. Tire baby stares all day long but it is not affected by what is outside it. It moves without knowing where, it sits without knowing where it is sitting, it is quietly placid and rides the flow of events. This is howto protect life.’ ‘So this is what it takes to be a perfect man?’ said Nan Jung Chu. ‘Indeed no. This is what is known as the melting of the ice, the dissolving of the cold. Are you up to it? The perfect man is as one with others in seeking his food from the Earth and his joy from Heaven. However, he remains detached from consideration of profit and gain from others, does not get embroiled in plots and schemes nor in grandiose projects. Alert and unceasing he goes, simple and unpretentious he comes. This indeed is called the way to protect life.’ ‘So it is this which is his perfection?’ ‘Not quite,’ replied Lao Tzu. ‘Just now I asked you, “Can you become a little baby?” Tire baby acts without knowing why and moves without knowing where. Its body is like a rotting branch and its heart is like cold ashes. Being like this, neither bad fortune will affect it nor good fortune draw near. Having neither bad fortune nor good, it is not affected by the misfortune that comes to most others!’ One whose inner being is fixed upon such greatness emits a Heavenly glow. Even though he has this Heavenly glow, others will see him as just a man. Someone who has reached this point will begin to be consistent. Because he is consistent, people will unite with him and Heaven will be his guide. Those with whom people wish to unite are called the People of Heaven. Those whom Heaven guides are called Sons of Heaven. Study is to study what cannot be studied. Undertaking means undertaking what cannot be undertaken. Philosophizing is to philosophize about what cannot be philosophized about. Knowing that knowing is unknowable is true perfection. Those who cannot grasp this will be destroyed by Heaven. Draw on the generosity of life to sustain your body. Protect yourself from cares and you will give life to your heart. Revere what is central within and manifest it. Do this, and even if a multitude of evils befall you, they will be Heavenly in origin, not the works of fellow human beings. They will not overcome your serenity, they will not enter into your Spirit Tower.— Your Spirit Tower has its guardian but unless you know this guardian, it will not guard you. If you cannot see this sincerity within you and you try to manifest it, it will fail. You will be invaded by external influences and will be unable to rid yourself of them. Then, whatever you do will inevitably fail. If you act badly in full public view, then people will seize you and punish you. If you act badly by night, then you will be seized by ghosts and punished. Understand this properly, know how you stand with regard to both people and ghosts and then reflect on this alone. Someone who focuses on the internal is not interested in fame. Someone who focuses on the external is intent on gaining whatever he can. The one who does things which bring no glory, shines brightly in all he does. One who looks to make gains at any cost is just a trader. Others see he is just standing on tiptoe, but he thinks he is above all others. Someone who struggles to succeed gets worn out, while someone who doesn’t really mind can’t be possessed by such forces. To exclude others is to show lack of concern and not to be concerned with others means that everyone is a stranger. There is no weapon more lethal than the will - even Mo Tfeh was inferior to it. There are no greater adversaries than yin and yang, because nothing in Heaven or on Earth escapes them. But it is not yin and yang that do this, it is your heart that makes it so. Hie Tao is in all things, in their divisions and their fullness. What I dislike about divisions is that they multiply, and what I dislike about multiplication is that it makes people want to hold fast to it. So people go out and forget to return, seeing little more than ghosts. They go forth and, to be sure, they say they have laid hold of something, but it is in fact what we call death. They are killed off and gone, just like a ghost. It is only when the formed learns from the unformed that there is understanding. There is something which exists, though it emerges from no roots, it returns through no opening. It exists but has no place; it survives yet has no beginning nor end. Though it emerges through no opening, there is something which tells us it is real. It is real but it has no permanent place: this tells us it is a dimension of space. It survives, but has no beginning nor end: this tells us it has dimensions of time. It is born, it dies, it emerges, it returns, though in its emergence and return there is no form to be seen. This is what we call the Heavenly Gate. Tire Heavenly Gate is non¬ existence, and all forms of life emerge from non¬ existence. That which exists cannot cause things to exist. Urey all arise from non-existence. Non-existence is the oneness of non-existence. This is the hidden knowledge of the sages. In former times people had a knowledge which was almost perfect. How nearly perfect? Some of them thought that in the beginning there was nothing and that the future brings nothing. There were others who believed that there was something in the beginning, and they saw life as decline and death as return, so they began to make divisions. Yet others said that at the beginning there was Non-Existence. Later there was life and with life there came immediately death. We believe non-existence to be the head, life the body and death the buttocks. Those who know that life and death are all One, we are all friends together. These three different perspectives, while diverging, belong to the same dynasty but are like the Chao and Ching families whose names show the line of succession and the Chu family whose name comes from its lands: they are not the same. From the grime you have life, and when the grime is different in form, it is called different. You try to express this difference in words, though this is not a subject for words. But it is certain that this is not something you can understand. At the Winter Sacrifice you can indicate the intestines and the hooves of the sacrifice as being separate, yet they shouldn’t be viewed as separate sacrifices. When someone visits a house they are thinking of buying, they inspect the whole house, from the ancestor shrines to the toilets, evaluating each part separately but also as a whole. I will try to describe this discernment. It is rooted in life and has knowledge as its teacher, and from there proceeds to debate right and wrong. For example, we have fame and fortune, with people thinking they can determine what is really important. People think that they are the model of propriety and therefore try to make others see them like this, even to the point of dying for their views. These kinds of people believe that being an official means you are wise, and not being an official means you are a fool. Urey consider success as meaning they are famous and failure as being a disgrace. Tire people of this generation who follow this method are like the cicada and the little dove: they agree because they are the same. If someone treads on another person’s foot in the marketplace, he apologizes profusely for the accident. If an older brother treads on the foot of a younger brother, he comforts him. If a parent treads on a child’s foot, there is no need to ask for forgiveness. There is a saying: ‘Perfect behaviour does not discriminate amongst people; perfect righteousness takes no account of things; perfect knowledge makes no plans; perfect benevolence exhibits no emotion; perfect faith makes no oath of sincerity.’ Suppress the whims of the will and untie the mistakes of the heart. Expunge the knots of Virtue, unblock the flow of the Tao. Honours and wealth, distinctions and authority, fame and gain, these six are formed by the illusions of the will. Looks and style, beauty and reason, thrill of life and memories, these six are the faults of the heart. Hatred and desire, joy and anger, sadness and happiness, these six are the knots of Virtue. Rejection and acceptance, giving and taking, knowledge and ability, these six are the impediments to the free flow of the Tao. When these four sets of six no longer trouble the breast, then you will be centred. Being centred, you will be calm. Being calm, you will be enlightened. Being enlightened, you will be empty. Being empty, you will be in actionless action, But with actionless action nothing remains undone. The Tao is the centrepiece of the devotions of Virtue. Life is the brightness of Virtue. Innate nature is what motivates life. Motivation which is untrue is lost. Knowledge extends and knowledge plans. But knowing what is not known is like looking at things like a child. Action which arises because you cannot stop yourself is called Virtue. When action arises from self, this is called governing. These titles seem to contradict each other but in fact they agree. Yi the Archer was a master at hitting the centre of the tiniest target, but he was foolish in that he could not stop wanting praise from others. The sage is skilful with regards to Heaven, but foolish in his dealings with people. Being skilful in both Heavenly concerns and human affairs is the mark of a complete man. Only an insect can be an insect, because what they are is given by Heaven. Does the complete man dislike Heaven? Does he hate what is of Heaven in people? If so, then imagine how much he hates the element of egocentricity in himself, which sets him and the rest of humanity above Heaven! If a sparrow flew past Yi, he would have him, so good was he at his art. If everywhere in the world were to be caged, then the sparrows would be unable to escape. Indeed, this was why Tang caged Yi Yin by making him his cook and Duke Mu of Chin caged Po Li Hsi at the cost of five rams’ skins. However, if you wish to cage people, you must use the things they like or you will never be successful. A man whose feet have been chopped off casts aside fancy clothes, because his external appearance is incapable of being admired. A criminal condemned to death will scale the highest peaks, because he has no fear of life or death. If someone ignores the advances of friendship, he forgets about others and through forgetting others he is viewed as a man of Heaven. Such a person can be treated with respect, which will not please him, or be treated with contempt, which will not make him angry. This is because he is part of the Heavenly unity. Anyone who expresses anger but is not really angry will exhibit non-anger. Anyone who acts yet is not really acting, his actions will be non-action. If he wants to be still, he must be at peace. If he wants to be spiritual, he must calm his heart. When he wants to act, and to be successful, then he is moved by a force beyond him. That which one does because it is impossible to do other, that is the Tao of the sage. CHAPTER 24 Hsu Wu Kuei Through the kind offices of Nu Shang, Hsu Wu Kuei was able to see Marquis Wu of Wei. Marquis Wu greeted him fondly saying, ‘Sir, you are unwell! Tire rigours of living in the wild mountain forests have been so great, and yet you have been kind enough to come and see me.’ To this Hsu Wu Kuei replied, ‘I have come to comfort you, Sir, not for you to comfort me! Now, Sir, if you persist in sating your sensual appetites and desires and engaging in likes and dislikes, then you will adversely affect your true innate nature and your destiny. And if, Sir, you try to desist from sating your appetites and desires and make yourself change your likes and dislikes, then your ears and eyes will be afflicted. I have come to comfort you, and you, Sir, wish to comfort me!’ Marquis Wu looked very scornful and made no reply. A little later Hsu Wu Kuei said, ‘Let me tell you, Sir, how I judge dogs. Tire lowest kind of dog grabs his food, gorges himself and then stops, having the virtues of a fox. Tire ordinary sort of dog is always staring arrogantly at the sun. Tire most superior kind of dog appears to have forgotten himself. That is how I judge dogs, but that is nothing in comparison with how I judge horses. I judge horses by whether they run straight as a line, or curve round holding the centre, or turn as on a T-square, or circle like a compass. Such a horse I describe as being indeed a national horse, but not an international horse. A truly international horse is complete. He looks anxious, he appears to lose his way, to forget himself. However, a horse like this suddenly prances along or rushes past, kicking up the dust, and no one knows where he has gone.’ The Marquis was very pleased, and laughed. Hsu Wu Kuei came out and Nu Shang said, ‘Sir, what did you discuss with the ruler? When I discuss with him, I do so in a roundabout way using the Book of Poetry and the Book of History, and in this way I can discuss rituals and music. More directly, I use the Golden Tablets and the Six Bow Cases, and so guide him in decisions which have been very successful. Yet in all our meetings I have never seen him smile. So what is it that you discuss that makes him so pleased?’ ‘I simply explained how I judge dogs and horses,’ said Hsu Wu Kuei. ‘That was it?’ ‘Have you never heard of the exile from Yueh?’ said Hsu Wu Kuei. ‘A few days after leaving the country he was delighted if he met someone he had known in the country A month after leaving the country he was delighted if he met someone he had seen in the country A year after leaving the country he was delighted to meet someone who just looked as if he came from the country. Tire longer he was absent from his country, the more fond of it he became, is this not so? Those people who have retreated into the wild valleys where thick bushes block the path of even the weasels, and who have to struggle to move around, are delighted if they hear even the sound of a human footstep. How much more delighted are they if they hear the sounds of their own brothers and family talking and laughing beside them. Perhaps it has been rather a long time since a true man has sat and talked with your ruler! ’ Hsu Wu Kuei went to see Marquis Wu, who said, ‘Sir, you have been living in the forests of the mountains for a long time, surviving on acorns and chestnuts, filling yourself with onions and herbs and totally ignoring me! Now, is it old age? Do you want to eat meat and drink wine? Or have you come here to bless our altars of the Earth and the harvest?’ ‘Sir,’ said Hsu Wu Kuei, ‘I have lived in poverty and have never been able to eat or drink at Your Lordship’s table, but I have come to bring comfort to you.’ ‘Really! Comfort me?’ said the ruler. ‘I wish to comfort both your body and your spirit.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Heaven and Earth sustain all things,’ said Hsu Wu Kuei. ‘No matter how high you get, you should never consider that this shows you to be better. No matter how low you get, you should never consider that this shows you to be useless. Tbu are ruler of the tens of thousands of chariots, the only ruler who taxes all the people of this country in order to satisfy the desires of your senses, even though your spirit does not wish to do this. The spirit prefers goodness and harmony and does not like wild living. Wild living is like an illness and this is what I have to comfort you over. What do you think of this, Sir?’ ‘Sir, I have wanted to see you for some time,’ replied Marquis Wu. ‘I wish to love the people and to act righteously and stop warfare. Would that do?’ ‘Certainly not. Loving the people is the beginning of harming the people. To act righteously and to cease warfare is the root of increased warfare. If you set about things thus, Sir, you will not succeed. All attempts to create beauty end in evil consequences. Your Grace may plan to act benevolently and righteously, but the result is the same as hypocrisy! You may give shape to things, but success leads to argument and argument leads to violence. Your Grace must not have hosts of troops massing in your forts nor lines of cavalry parading in front of the Palace of the Dark Shrine. ‘Do not harbour thoughts that betray your best interests. Do not try to overcome others by cunning. Do not try to conquer others through plots. Do not try to defeat others by battle. If I kill the leaders and people of another ruler and seize the lands to satisfy my material wants, while my spirit is unsure of the validity of such actions, what is the point? Yrur Grace, the best thing is to do nothing, except develop true sincerity and thus be able to respond without difficulty to the true nature of Heaven and Earth. Thus the people will not die and it will not be necessary for you to have to enforce the end of warfare!’ The Yellow Emperor went to see Great Kuei at Chu Tzu Mountain. Fang Ming was the driver and Chang Yu travelled beside him. Chang Jo and Hsi Peng guided the horses and Kun Hun and Ku Chi rode behind the carriage. When they eventually arrived in the wild region of Hsiang Cheng, the seven sages were all confused and couldn’t find anyone to ask the way. They came upon a boy leading horses and asked him the way, saying, ‘Do you know how to get to Chu Tzu Mountain?’ ‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘Do you know where Tai Kuei lives?’ ‘Certainly.’ ‘What a remarkable lad!’ said the Yellow Emperor. ‘Not only does he know how to reach Chu Tzu Mountain, he also knows where Tai Kuei lives. I would like to ask you how to govern everything below Heaven.’ ‘Governing everything below Heaven is surely the same as what I am doing at the moment, what’s so hard about that?’ said the lad. ‘When I was younger, I liked to wander within the confines of the six directions but my eyesight began to fail. A wise elderly gentleman told me, ‘Climb up and ride in the carriage of the sun and explore the wild region of Hsiang Cheng.” Now my eyesight is better and I am able to wander beyond the borders of the six directions. Ruling everything under Heaven is just like this. So what’s the big problem?’ ‘Ruling everything under Heaven is, I agree, not your problem, my boy,’ said the Yellow Emperor. ‘However, I would like to hear howto do it.’ Hie lad did not answer. So the Yellow Emperor asked again. Hie boy said, ‘Governing everything below Heaven is surely rather like leading horses! Get rid of anything that might harm the horses!’ Hie Yellow Emperor bowed twice to him, called him his Heavenly Master and departed. If philosophers cannot see the effect of their ideas, they are not happy. If debaters cannot argue cogently, they are not happy. If interrogators cannot find candidates for criticism, they are not happy. All of these are restrained by such attitudes. Hiose scholars who are noticed by their generation rise to power. Hiose who win the affections of the people consider high office a reward. Hiose with great strength enjoy a challenge. Hiose who are brave and fearless revel in troubles. Hiose skilled in sword and spear look for wars. Hiose who are retiring rest on the laurels of their fame. Those who are lawyers want more power to legislate. Those who perform rituals and ceremonies enjoy their status. Those who like benevolence and righteousness like to be able to display them. Farmers who cannot weed their fields are not contented. The merchant who cannot trade at the market or by the well is not satisfied. Hie common folk like to have work to do from sunrise to sunset, as they keep each other going. Hie various craftsmen like to be using their skills. If his wealth does not grow, the greedy man is unhappy. If he is not getting more powerful, the ambitious man is distressed. Such people, driven by circumstance, are only happy when things are changing, and when an opportunity arises, they inevitably throw themselves into it. So they all proceed, like the changes of the seasons, unchanging even though others change. They drive their bodies and their innate nature and are overwhelmed by the forms of life, never turning themselves back, which is sad! Chuang Tzu said, ‘An archer, not bothering to take aim, by sheer luck hits the centre of the target. We could call him a good archer, but in that case, everyone in the world could be called a Yi the Archer, isn’t that right?’ ‘OK,’ saidHui Tzu. Chuang Tzu said, ‘People differ over what they consider to be right, but everyone knows what they think is right. So everyone in the world could be called a Yao, isn’t that right?’ ‘OK,’ saidHui Tzu. Chuang Tzu said, ‘So, there are four schools - the Literati, Mohists, Yangists and Pingists - which along with your own, Sir, make five. So which of these is right? Perhaps it is more like the case of Lu Chu? One of his followers said, “I have taken hold of your Tao, Master, and I can heat the pot in winter and make ice in summer.” Lu Chu said, “But this is surely just using yang for yang and yin for yin. This is not what I would call the Tao. I will show you my Tao.” So he tuned up two lutes and put one in the hall and the other in a private apartment. On striking the note Kung on one, the Kung note vibrated on the other. Likewise with the Chueh note, for the instruments were in harmony. Then he re-tuned one so that it was not in harmony with any of the five key notes. When this was played, all twenty-five of the strings on the other one vibrated, all faithful to their own note and all set off by the one note on the other lute. So, if you insist you are right, aren’t you like this?’ Hui Tzi replied, ‘Hie followers of Confucius, Mo, Yang and Ping,— like to tackle me in debate, each one trying to defeat the other, each violently trying to shout me down with their various arguments - but they haven’t succeeded yet. So what about that?’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘Acitizen of Chi, not concerned by any mutilation,— sold his son to someone in Sung, where he became a gatekeeper. Yet this same man would go to great lengths to protect any of his bells or chimes. But he would not go looking for his son beyond the borders of his own country, such was his understanding of what is worthwhile! Or what if that well-known character, the citizen of Chu who was maimed and a gatekeeper, at midnight in another country, were to pick a fight with a boatman? Then he would never get across the river and would only have provoked the boatman’s anger.’ Chuang Tzu was following a funeral when he passed by the grave of Hui Tzu. He looked round at those following him and said, ‘The man of Ying had on the end of his nose a piece of mud as small as a fly’s wing. He sent for the craftsman Shih to cut it off. Shih swirled his axe around and swept it down, creating such a wind as it rushed past that it removed all trace of the mud from the man of Ying, who stood firm, not at all worried. Hie ruler Yuan of Sung heard of this and called craftsman Shih to visit him. ‘ “Would you be so kind as to do this for me?” he said. ‘Craftsman Shih replied, ‘Ybur servant was indeed once able to work like that, but the type of material I worked upon is long since dead.” ‘Since the Master has died, I have not had any suitable material to work upon. I have no one I can talk with any longer.’ Kuan Chung was ill and Duke Huan, hearing of this, said, ‘Father Chung, you are seriously ill. What if - which I had hoped I wouldn’t have to say - your illness gets worse? Who should I hand over government of the country to?’ Kuan Chung replied, ‘Your Grace, who do you wish to give it to?’ ‘Pao Shu Ya,’ said the Duke. ‘Not him! He is a good man, a scholar of integrity and he is honest, but he won’t mix with those who are not the same as him. If he ever learns of someone’s error, he won’t forgive him, ever. If you put him in charge of the state, he will argue with you and upset everyone below him. Before too long you will view him as having done the unforgivable.’ ‘Then who can do this?’ said the Duke. The reply was, ‘If I have to say anyone, then it should be Hsi Peng who should undertake this. He is the sort of man who forgets his high status and who will be supported by those below. He is ashamed that he is not like the Yellow Emperor, and is sorry for those who are not like him. Tire one who shares his Virtue with other people is known as a sage, he who shares his abilities with others is known as a worthy man. One who uses his worthiness to oppress others will never gain their support. One who uses his worthiness to lower himself can never fail to win the people’s support. This man is hardly heard of in the country, nor does his own family have a great opinion of him. But as you ask me to speak, then I must say Hsi Peng.’ Tire King of Wu was sailing on the Yangtze River, and he moored in order to climb a mountain known for its monkeys. When the monkeys saw him they fled in terror and hid in the bushes. However, there was one monkey who didn’t seem bothered in the slightest, swinging around and showing off before the King. Tire King fired an arrow at him, which the monkey simply caught cleverly in his hand. Tire King then called up his followers to join the hunt and soon they had the monkey trapped and killed. Tire King said to his friend Yen Pu I, ‘This monkey showed off, relied on its skills and was rude to me, and this resulted in its death! Be warned by this! Ah, do not let yourself seem arrogant to others!’ So Yen Pu I went home and began to study with Tung Wu, to eliminate this look of arrogance from his face, to give up happiness and to leave reasoning. Within three years he was praised by everyone. Tzu Chi of the Southern Suburb was sitting, leaning on the arm of his chair, gazing into Heaven and singing. Yen Cheng Tzu came in and, seeing him. said, ‘Master, you surpass all others. Is it true that your body can be made to look like a pile of dried bones and your heart be made like cold, dead ashes?’ Tzu Chi replied, ‘I used to live in a cave in a mountain. At that time Tien Ho— came to see me for a visit, and the citizens of the kingdom of Chi congratulated him three times. I must have shown him who I am, since he obviously knew me. I must have been selling something and that is why he came to buy. If I had not displayed something, then how could he have known who or what I was? If I had not been selling something, then how could he have been able to buy anything? Oh dear! I do so pity those who lose themselves. I also pity those who pity others. However, I also pity those who pity those who pity others, but that was long ago.’ Confucius went to Chu, and the King of Chu offered a toast in wine. Sun Shu Ao stepped forward and raised the wine glass in his hand and I Liao from the Southern Market took some wine and poured it out as a libation, saying, ‘You are like a man of old! They would make speeches.’ Confucius said, ‘I have heard of speech which is without words, but I have never spoken it. I shall do so now. I Liao from the Southern Market played with a set of balls and the problems between the two houses were solved. Sun Shu Ao slept quietly,— his fan waving gently, and the men of Ying prepared for war. How I wish I had a beak three feet long.’— People like these follow the Tao that is not the Tao, and this discussion is the Argument Without Words. So it is that, when Virtue is fully integrated into the Tao and words stop where knowledge can know nothing more, there is perfection. Tire oneness of the Tao is beyond Virtue and what knowledge does not know is beyond what argument can cover. To label things as the Literati and the Mohists do is useless. The sea does not reject the rivers that flow into it from the east; this is great perfection. The sage holds both Heaven and Earth and his benign influence reaches out to all below Heaven, yet we know nothing of his background. So it is that he has no official title while he is alive and no eulogies when he is dead. His reality is not known and labels do not stick to him: this is known as the great man. A dog is not thought special just because it can bark, and no man is thought wise just because he can speak. Even less is he thought to be great. Anyone who thinks he is great is not to be counted as such, nor seen as virtuous. Nothing is greater than Heaven and Earth, but they do not seek greatness. One who knows what it is to be great does not go looking for it, does not lose it nor reject it and does not change his opinions in order to be great. He turns inward and finds what is without end. He follows the ancient ways and finds what never dies. This is the sincerity of the great man. Tzu Chi had eight sons, and he called them before him, and summoned Chiu Fang Ym and said, ‘Study the physiognomy of my sons and tell me which one is to be the greatest.’ ‘Kun is the most fortunate,’ said Chiu Fang Ym. Tzu Chi was stunned and yet also delighted. ‘How is this?’ he said. ‘Kun will dine with the ruler of a kingdom and this will last all his life.’ Tears poured from Tzu Chi’s eyes and he said unhappily, ‘What has my son done to deserve this?’ ‘One who shares the table of a ruler of a kingdom brings blessings to all three sections of his family, and especially to his father and mother!’ said Chiu Fang Yin. ‘Now, Master, when I said this to you, you wept. This will disturb the fortune. The son is fortunate indeed, but Iris father is not so fortunate.’ Tzu Chi said, ‘Yin, how do you know that this will be fortune for Kun? What you describe, the food and drink, only touches on the nose and the mouth, so how can you claim to know where such things come from? I have never been a shepherd, but a ewe gave birth to a lamb in the south¬ west corner of my fields. I have never been a hunter, but a flock of quail have arrived in the south-east corner of my fields.— If this isn’t strange, then what is? When I go out wandering and travelling with my son, we journey through Heaven and Earth. We look for pleasure in Heaven and we look for nourishment from Earth. He and I don’t get caught up in the affairs of the world, or in plots or in any strange practices. He and I ride upon the reality of Heaven and Earth and let nothing come between us. He and I are one in undisturbed unity and we not interested in doing what others think would be useful. Now you come and tell us that he has this crude and common “success”! In my experience, when something untoward happens, this is the result of something untoward having been done. This comes not from any action of mine nor of my son, but it must come from Heaven! Yes, this is what makes me weep.’ A little while after this he sent Kun to do some work in the kingdom of Yen. While on the road, bandits captured him. Urey decided that it would be difficult to sell him as he was, but if they cut off his foot, then they could sell him easily.— Urey did this, and sold him in the kingdom of Chi, where, as fortune would have it, he became a palace official in the palace of Duke Kang and so had food to sustain him until the end of his days. Nieh Chueh bumped into Hsu Yu and said, ‘Master, where are you heading?’ ‘I am escaping Yao.’ ‘What do you mean?’ Hsu Yu said, ‘Yao has become obsessed with benevolence and I am worried that he will be mocked throughout the world. Future generations might even resort to eating each other because of this! The people come together without difficulty. Give them love, and they will care for you, assist them, and they will rally round you, praise them, and they will be excited, upset them, and they will desert you. Love and assistance arise from benevolence and righteousness, and while some people will deny benevolence and righteousness, the majority look to them for assistance. Benevolence and righteousness conducted under these circumstances become insincere, and possibly may be evil, like lending traps to others. Allowing one man to determine what the world needs through his own powers is like trying to comprehend everything in one moment. Yao knows that the worthy man can assist the whole world, but he does not know that such a person can ruin the whole world, for it is only those outside this sphere of influence who can really understand.’ Yo li have the gullible and the weak, you have the quick and vain and you have the greedy and bent. Those who are known as the gullible and the weak study under just one master, they say yes to him and then feel privately smug, believing that they have understood all that is necessary, when in fact they have not grasped a single thing. These are known as the gullible and the weak. Tire quick and the vain are like lice on a pig. Tire lice find a place where the bristles are long and well-spaced and they view this as a great palace or vast park. Urey might choose the groove between the hoof or the area of the nipples and the thigh and in such a safe place they consider this to be their quiet retreat. Urey do not know that one morning the butcher will make a sweep with his arm, lay out the grass, light the fire and that then they will be burnt up along with the pig. Their progress is limited and their retreat is limited. These are known as the quick and the vain. Hie greedy and bent are similar to Shun. Mutton doesn’t want ants, but ants want mutton, especially when it is off. Shun was also off: this was why the hundred tribes were so delighted with him and followed after him. Even though he changed his place of residence three times, each one was counted as a capital city. When he arrived at the wilderness of Teng, he had a hundred thousand families with him. Yao heard of Shun and gave him control over the new and untamed country and said he hoped Shun would bring benefits to all. When Shun was given this command, he was already quite elderly and his hearing and eyesight were poor, but he was unable to retire to his home. Hiese are known as the greedy and the bent. So it is that the spiritual man dislikes people crowding around him. If they insist on coming, he argues with them, and from this argument comes nothing of any benefit to anyone. Therefore, he ensures he has no attachment to anything, and nothing from which he is separated. Holding fast to Virtue and dwelling in harmony, he follows the world. This is what is known as the true man. He leaves knowledge for the ants, follows the style of fish and abandons the ideas of sheep. See using the eyes, hear using the ears, have vision using the heart. If you do this the course is straight as if measured using a line, the changes are congenial. The true man of the past waited upon Heaven when dealing with people and did not wait upon people when dealing with Heaven. Hie true man of the past obtained it and was born, lost it and died, obtained it and died, and lost it and was born. Medicines are like this. There is monkshood, ballflower, cockscomb and chinaroot. They each have their time when they are best suited, though to list all their uses would be impossible. Kou Chien— retreated to Mount Kuai Chi with three thousand soldiers in armoured jackets and carrying shields, and Minister Chung alone understood how to save the disaster-ridden state, but he didn’t know how to save himself from a tragic fate. It is said that the eye of the owl is specially adapted and the leg of the crane has its right proportion. To try and cut out anything from these would be disaster to these creatures. It is said that the wind blows over the river and the river is diminished. When the sun passes over the river, it loses something. If the sun and wind remain watching over the river, then the river will not be alarmed that they are doing anything to it, for it would continue to draw from the streams and go on its way. Water stays close to the earth and the shadow stays close to its source, for things stick together. There is danger for the eye in seeing too clearly, danger for the ear in hearing too sharply and danger to the heart from caring too greatly. Indeed, it is dangerous to use any of our faculties. If these dangers are not dealt with, then disaster after disaster will ensue. To turn back from this to the original state takes much effort and time, but people consider these faculties as their greatest treasure, isn’t that sad! As a result there is constant destruction of states and endless massacre of the people, while no one knows howto look into how this happened. Tire foot only touches a small part of the earth, yet people can travel great distances into the unknown. The knowledge of people is minor, and though minor it has to trust in that which they do not know, to know what is meant by Heaven. It is known as the great One, the great mystery, the great yin, the great eye, the great equal, the great skill, the great truth, the great judge. All this is perfection. Tire great One knows, the great mystery reveals, the great yin observes, the great eye sees, the great equal is the origin, the great skill creates it, the great trust touches it, the great judge holds fast to it. Heaven is in everything: follow the light, hide in the cloudiness and begin in what is. Do this and your understanding will be like not understanding and your wisdom will be like not being wise. By not being wise you will become wise later. When you ask questions, set no limits, even though they cannot be limitless. Although things seem to be sometimes going up and sometimes descending, sometimes slipping away, nevertheless there is a reality, the same today as in the past. It does not change, for nothing can affect it. Could we not say it is one great harmony? So wiry shouldn’t we ask about it and why are you so confused? If we use that which does not confuse to understand that which does confuse, then we can come back to that which does not confuse. Hris will be the great unconfusing. ' M CHAPTER 25 Travelling to Chu Peng Yang was once travelling to Chu and hoped that Yi Chieh would mention him to the King. But before the King would see him, Yi Chieh left to go home. So Peng Yang went instead to Wang Kuo and said, ‘Sir, would you be kind enough to mention me to the King?’ Wang Kuo said, ‘I’m not as useful a contact as Kung Yucli Hsiu.’ Peng Yang said, ‘What sort of a person is this Kung Yucli Hsiu?’ ‘In winter he spears turtles beside the river, in summer he holidays in the mountains. Hrose passing ask him what he is doing and he answers, “This is where I live.” ‘As Yi Chieh could not persuade the King to see you, what use will I be? I am not equal to Yi Chieh. He is the sort of man who has no virtue but who does have understanding, who is not lax with himself but devotes all his energy to furthering those around him. He’s attracted to fame and fortune, so if he helps you, it is not because of any virtue but out of contrariness. It is like trying to pretend spring has come by putting on extra clothes, or wanting winter’s cold winds to come and cool you in the summer. Tire King of Chu is also like this, overbearing and stern, and if he is upset by someone, he is as merciless as a tiger. No one except a toadying minister or one of true Virtue is able to discuss anything with him! ‘The sage living humbly makes even his family forget their poverty; when he is powerful, he makes kings and dukes forget their status and properties and become humble. With life he just tags along and enjoys himself. With the people he delights in the successes of others and holds true to himself. Sometimes, without a word, he brings harmony to people. Simply by being with them, he transforms people until they feel towards him as do father and son who are on good terms with each other, in unity. All this happens without any effort, for he is guided by his heart. This is why I say wait for Kung Yucli Hsiu.’ Hie sage goes beyond confusion and diversity and makes everything into one body. Even though he does not know for certain how, he is true to his innate nature. He comes back to destiny and reacts appropriately, with Heaven as his guide, so that people follow him and accord him titles. If he was concerned with what he knew and what he did was inconsistent, then how could he be stopped? If someone is born with a beautiful appearance, you can give them a mirror, but they will never know that they have a beautiful appearance if you never tell them so. Whether they know it or not, whether they are told or not, their fine appearance will never be changed. Other people admire their good fortune, for it comes from their innate nature. The sage loves the people and the people bestow titles on him, yet if they do not tell him, he won’t know that he loves the people. Whether he knows it or he doesn’t, whether he is told this or not, his love for the people is unchanged and their tranquillity in him is endless, for this is his innate nature. Someone who sees his native kingdom or his old city is bound to be excited. Even if it has become nothing but mounds, trees and bushes, and when he enters it, he finds nine-tenths of those whom he knew gone, nevertheless he is most definitely glad to see the place. Imagine his joy when he sees what he used to see and hears what he used to hear, for it is like a mighty eighty-foot tower of which he has heard talk. Lord Jin Hsiang grasped that core principle around which everything revolves and followed it to its end. He went with all other things, with no end and no beginning, no desire, no time. Every day he saw change, but he himself was one with what never changes, so there was never any need for him to stop! Anyone who seeks Heaven as his teacher will never obtain Heaven as his teacher. He will end up just following things, and no matter what he does, he cannot help it. Tire sage has no thoughts of Heaven, no thoughts of humanity, no thoughts of beginning, no thoughts of others. He goes with his generation and does not stop. He does everything and is never blocked. Others want to unite with him, but then, what else could they do? Tang obtained the services of the rider Teng Heng and made him his instructor. He followed this teacher but was not restricted by him, so he was able to pursue his interests to their conclusion. This resulted in various honours. These honours were superfluous and revealed for all to see the twin aspects of what he had obtained. Confucius commands, ‘Work at what is at hand, that can be your teacher.’ Yung Cheng said, ‘Remove the days and there are no more years, no internal, no external.’ Ying of Wei made a treaty with the Marquis Tien Mou, but Marquis Tien Mou broke it. Ying of Wei was furious and was planning to send an assassin. lire duke responsible for war heard of this and said, ‘Sire, you are the lord of ten thousand chariots and yet you, as ruler, would use a common man to exact revenge! Let me have two hundred thousand soldiers so that I can attack him, capture his people and seize his cattle and horses, stoking up a fire within him that will burn into his back. I shall then attack his capital. When his commander Chi attempts to escape, I will strike from behind and break his spine.’ Chi Tzu was ashamed when he heard this and said, ‘We have been building our walls up to eighty feet high and now, when they are almost complete, we’re about to make a breach in them. This will be an immense waste of the convict labour we have used. Now, we have not had to use our troops for seven years and this is what Your Lordship’s power rests upon. Yen is a trouble-maker and you should take no notice of him.’ Hua Tzu heard this and did not agree. ‘Those who say attack the state of Chi are trouble-makers,’ he said. ‘Those who say don’t attack are also trouble-makers. Tire one who says those who urge you to attack and those who don’t are both trouble-makers, is himself a trouble-maker.’ ‘So, what should I do?’ said the ruler. ‘Just seek to discover the Tao!’ Hui Tzu heard this and brought Tai Chen Jen to see the ruler. Tai Chen Jen said, ‘There is a creature known as the snail, do you know this, Sire?’ ‘For sure,’ he said. ‘It has on its left horn a kingdom called Provoke and on its right horn one called Foolish. These kingdoms are often arguing over territory and fighting. The dead are heaped up in multitudes with the defeated army fleeing - but within a few days they are back.’ Tire ruler said, ‘Ha! What is this empty chatter about?’ ‘I just want to show Your Majesty what this is about. When you contemplate the four directions and up and down, Sire, is there any limit to them?’ Tire ruler said, ‘No limit.’ ‘When the heart has wandered through unlimited realms, do you know how to return to this kingdom in such a way that its troubles seem to be insignificant?’ The ruler said, ‘Certainly.’ ‘In the centre of these lands through which one wanders, is the state of Wei, and in the centre of this state of Wei is the capital, Liang, and at the centre of this capital Liang is the King. Is there really any difference between the King and the Foolish kingdom?’ Hie ruler said, ‘No difference.’ After his visitor had departed, the ruler sat, dumbfounded, as if lost to the world. Then Thai Tzu came to see him and the ruler said, ‘That visitor, he is a great man, a sage cannot equal him.’ Hui Tzu said, ‘If you blow a flute, you get a good sound, but if you blow on the pommel of your sword, you get a wheezing noise. Yao and Shun are often praised by people, but if you talk about them in front of Tai Chien Jen, then it sounds like one little wheeze.’ Confucius travelled to Chu and stayed at a tavern on Ant Hill. In the neighbouring house, the husband, wives and servants, male and female, climbed on to the roof to see him. Tzu Lu said, ‘What are those people doing up there?’ Confucius said, ‘They are followers of a sage. He is hidden among the people, hidden away in the fields. Fame no longer interests him, but his resolve is unlimited. His mouth speaks words, but his heart offers none. He is not at ease with this generation and his heart is not concerned with it. He is like someone who has drowned on dry land. I imagine he is Liao of the Southern Market?’ Tzu Lu wanted to bring him over. Confucius said, ‘Stop! He knows that I comprehend all this and he knows I am travelling to Chu. He assumes that I will seek promotion from the King of Chu and thus he views me as a time-server. Someone like him is embarrassed just hearing the words of a time-server, let alone being seen with him! And why do you believe he is still around?’ Tzu Lu went and looked and found the house empty Hie border guard at Chang Wu said to Tzu Lao, ‘Hie ruler of a state must not be careless, nor should he be careless with the people. Previously when plouhing my fields, I was careless, and the result was a poor crop. When weeding, I was thoughtless, and the result was a diminished harvest. In recent years I changed my ways, I ploughed deep and was careful to bury the seed. My harvests are now plentiful and therefore I have all I need all year round.’ Chuang Tzu heard this and said, ‘People today, when looking after themselves and caring for their hearts, are very much like this border guard’s description. Hiey ignore Heaven, wander from their innate nature, dissolve their real being, extinguish their spirit and follow the common herd. So it is that someone who is careless with their innate nature causes evil and hatred to arise, affecting their innate nature like rank weeds and bushes. Hrese weeds and bushes, when they first appear, seem helpful and supportive, but slowly they affect the innate nature. Hrey become like a mass of suppurating sores which break out in scabs and ulcers, oozing pus from this disease. This is how it is.’ Po Chu studied under Lao Tzu and said, ‘I would like to be allowed to wander the world.’ Lao Tzu said, ‘No! Everywhere under Heaven is the same.’ He asked again and Lao Tzu said, ‘Where will you go first?’ ‘I will start with Chi.’ When he arrived in Chi he saw the corpse of a criminal. He lugged the body about to put it into the proper ritual position, took off his robes and covered the body, crying to Heaven and saying, ‘My son, my son! Everyone under Heaven is in great trouble, and you, my son, have found this out earlier than the rest of us. It is said, “Don’t steal, don’t murder.” However when praise and failure have been defined, suffering appears. When goods and fortunes have been amassed, argument appears. To establish things that bring suffering, to amass what brings argument, to cause distress and restlessness to others, one asks how is this possible?’ Tire scholar rulers of old saw their success in terms of the people and saw their failures in terms of themselves. They viewed the people as right and themselves as wrong. Thus, if even one person suffered, they would accept this as being their responsibility and retire. This is certainly not the case today. Today’s rulers hide what should be done and then blame the people when they don’t understand. Urey make the problems greater and punish those who cannot manage. Urey push people to the limit and execute those who can’t make it. When people realize that they simply haven’t the energy, they use pretence. When every day there is so much falsehood, how can the scholars and the people not become compromised! When strength is lacking, deceit is used; when knowledge is lacking, deception is used; when material goods are lacking, theft is used. But who really is to blame for these thefts and robbery?’ Chu Po Yu had lived for sixty years and he changed at sixty. He had never questioned that he was right, but he came to change his views and saw that from the beginning he had been wrong. Now it was not possible to know whether what he had been saying for fifty-nine years was right or wrong. All forms of life are born, yet it is not possible to see their source. Urey all go forth, but it is not easy to see by which gate. People all respect what they understand as knowledge, but they do not understand what their knowledge does not understand and so gain understanding. So isn’t this simply great confusion? Well, well! There is no way out of that. This comes from saying definitely this, definitely that, doesn’t it? Confucius asked the Great Historians, Ta Tao, Po Chang Chien and Hsi Wei, ‘Duke Ling of Wei enjoyed wine, women and song, and didn’t look after the affairs of his kingdom, going off hunting with nets and bows, not attending to the sessions with the other lords. Why then is he called Duke Ling?’ TaTao said, ‘Because this was so, he was titled so.’ Po Chang Chien said, ‘This Duke Ling had three wives and he bathed with them in the same bathtub. However, when Shih Chiu appeared before him with imperial gifts, he himself would serve him. Duke Ling was corrupt in the first case and yet, when he saw a worthy man, he behaved quite correctly. Hris was the reason he was called Duke Ling.’ Hsi Wei said, ‘Duke Ling died and divination was made to see whether he should be buried in the family tomb, but the oracle said no. When divination was made to see if he should be buried on Sand Hill, the oracle was good. When they dug down, they discovered a stone tomb. After cleaning it and looking carefully at it they found an inscription which said: ‘Do not rely upon your descendants, Duke Ling will take this for himself.’ It’s obvious, therefore, that Duke Ling was called Ling long before he was born. However, you can’t expect these two to know anything about all this!’ Little Knowledge asked Great Official Accord, saying, ‘What do people mean when they say Talk of the Villages?’ Great Official Accord said, ‘Talk of the Villages refers to the union of the ten surnames and hundred names into one code of living. What is different is united to form a commonality. What is in common is broken up to form the differences. If you point to different parts of a horse you do not have “a horse”. However, if you have the whole animal in all its parts standing before you, you have a horse. In this way the hills and mountains arise, little layer upon little layer, and so become lofty, and the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers have become great through the conjoining of small streams. ‘Hie great man shows his greatness by combining all the common aspects of humanity. So, when ideas come to him from outside, he can receive them but does not cling to them. Likewise, when he brings forth some idea from within himself, they are like guides to those around but they do not seek to dominate. ‘Tire four seasons each have their own original life, and Heaven does not discriminate, so the cycle is fulfilled. The five government offices have different roles, but the ruler does not discriminate, so the state is well run. The great man does not discriminate between war and peace, so his Virtue is perfect. All the forms of life are different, but the Tao does not discriminate, so it has no name. Being nameless, it is also actionless action, yet all life occurs. The seasons end and begin; the generations change and transform. Inauspicious and auspicious fortune falls upon you, sometimes unwelcomed, other times welcomed. Settle into your own views, argue with others, at times condemn those who are upright, then those who are bent. You should be like a great marsh land with space for a hundred kinds of trees. Or be like a great mountain where the trees and grasses rest on the same ground. This is what is meant by Talk of the Villages.’ Little Knowledge said, ‘Surely, if we call this the Tao, that will be enough?’ Great Official Accord said, ‘Certainly not. For example, if we add up all that is, it definitely exceeds the conventional description of ten thousand things. However, we use the term “ten thousand things” as a way of saying that the number of things is very large. So also we use “Heaven and Earth” to describe great things, and “yin and yang” as original breaths of life which are vast, and the term ‘Tao” as being that term which covers them all. If we use this term to cover everything, there is no problem. However, if we try to go further and define this term by comparing it to what can be discerned, then we would be like those who call a dog and a horse by the same name, even though they are so different.’ Little Knowledge said, ‘Within the limits of the four compass points and the six boundaries, where do the ten thousand things all have their origin?’ Great Official Accord said, ‘Yin and yang reflect each other, oppose each other and control each other. The four seasons follow each other, give birth to each other and finish each other off. Good and evil, rejection and reception thus arose in definition against each other, giving rise to the distinction between male and female. People change from security to insecurity; auspicious and inauspicious fortune are born. Relaxation and tension are side by side. Collecting and scattering emerge and round it all off. These names and their developments can be examined and their actions recorded exactly. The notions of following in orderly sequence, of interaction, of returning when the limit has been reached, of starting again when they end, all this is inherent in things. Words can define them and knowledge can comprehend them, but that is all that can be said of things. The one who seeks the Tao does not try to go beyond this nor try to find the source. Quite simply, this brings all discussion to a close.’ Little Knowledge said, ‘Chi Chen’s point that there is no cause and Chieh Tzu’s argument that there is a cause are two different perspectives. So which one is right and which one is mistaken?’ Great Official Accord said, ‘Chickens cackle and dogs bark: this is what people know. However, even though they have this level of understanding, they can’t explain how the chicken and dog have such different voices, nor can they conceive of what the future might be. We can examine and define to such a point that what is left is minute, or we can make it so great that we can’t take it in. So whether you say there is a cause or there is not, you are still trapped in relative terms and so you’re in error. If there is a cause, then that is true, if there is no cause, then there is nothing. If there is a name, there is reality and they really exist, if there is no name, there is no reality and no thing. ‘It is possible to describe, to say, but these words take you away from its reality. Before things are born, they cannot stop being born, and once dead, they cannot resist going. Death and birth are not far apart, but what causes them is beyond our sight. Notions of a cause or no cause are irrelevant. I search for their historic roots but they disappear into the past. I look for the end of the future, but it never ceases to arrive. Infinite, unlimited, there are no words for this. To try to define it is to place it in the same category as “Is there a cause or is there not?” These are just words and they begin and end with things. ‘Tire Tao does not have an existence, nor does it not have an existence. By using the title ‘Tao”, we use a limited term. Ts there a cause or is there not?” are therefore words of very minor significance. Do they have anything to do with the great work? If what you say is of significance, then all day long you can discuss the Tao. If what you say is insignificant, you can talk all day long and all you will discuss is minor issues. Tire Tao takes us to the edge and neither words nor silence are able to describe this. No words, no silence, this is the highest form of debate.’ CHAPTER 26 Affected from Outside It is not possible to determine what will affect us from outside us. For example, Lung Feng was executed, Pi Kan was sentenced to death, Prince Chi— pretended to be mad, E Lai— was murdered and Chieh and Chou both perished. All rulers want their ministers to be loyal, but such loyalty may not always be sincere. So Wu Yun was cast into the Yangtze and Chang Hung died in Shu, where the people preserved his blood for three years, by which time it had become green jade. All parents want their children to be filial, but filial sons are not necessarily so from love. This is why Hsiao Chi— was distressed and Tseng Shen— was sad. If wood rubs against wood, it starts to burn. When metal is heated, it melts. When yin and yang go wrong, Heaven and Earth are hugely disturbed. Then comes the crash of thunder, and fire from the midst of the rains which destroys the great trees. Gaining and losing, the people are caught between them both and there is no way out. Trapped and entombed, they can never complete anything. Hreir hearts are strung out as if suspended between Heaven and Earth, sometimes comforted, sometimes frightened, plagued with problems. Gain and loss rub against each other and start fires beyond number that burn up the balances of the heart in most people. The moon cannot contain such fires. All is destroyed, the quest for the Tao ends. Chuang Tzu’s family were poor so he went to borrow some rice from the Marquis of Chien Ho. The Marquis of Chien Ho said, ‘Of course. I am about to receive the tax from the people and will give you three hundred pieces of gold - is that enough?’ Chuang Tzu flushed with anger and said, ‘On my way here yesterday I heard a voice calling me. I looked around and saw a large fish in the carriage rut. I said, “Fish! What are you doing there?” He said, “I am Minister of the Waves in the Eastern Ocean. Sire, do you have a measure of water you could give me?” Well, I told him, “I am going south to visit the Kings of Wu and Yuch and after that I would redirect the course of the Western River so it will flow up to you. Would that do?” The large fish flushed with anger and said, “I am out of my very element, I have nowhere to go. Give me just a little water and I can survive. But giving me such an answer as that means you will only ever find me again on a dried fish stall!”’ Prince Jen had a great fish-hook and a vast line. He baited the hook with fifty bulls, sat down on Mount Kuai Chi and cast his line into the Eastern Ocean. Morning after morning he cast his line, but after a whole year he had still caught nothing. Finally, a great fish was hooked which dived into the depth, dragging the great fish¬ hook down with him. Then it turned and rushed to the surface and shot out, shaking its fins and churning up the sea so the waves rose like mountains and the waters turned white with its fury. The noise was like gods and demons fighting and terror spread over a thousand miles. Eventually, Prince Jen landed the fish and cut it and dried it. From Chih Ho in the east to Tsang Wu in the north, everyone had more than he could eat. Ever since, those with little talent in later generations have told and retold this story, never ceasing to amaze people. If people take their rod and line and set off to fish in marshes and ditches, looking for minnows and sprats, then they will have some difficulty in catching a big fish. Those who make much of their little notions and strut around in front of officials are a long way off being companions of the greater comprehension. Indeed, if someone has never heard of Prince Jen, he is far from being competent to be one of this generation who rule the world. A group of Literati students of the Odes of Ritual were robbing a grave. The main scholar in charge said, ‘The sun is rising in the east, how’s it going?’ The younger Literati said, ‘We haven’t got his clothes off him yet, but there’s a pearl in his mouth.— As the Odes say, ‘Green, green the grain Dwelling on the slopes of the mound. If during life you give nothing. At death, does he deserve a jewel?’ So saying, they pulled back his beard and moustache and then one of them carefully prised open the mouth so as not to damage the pearl. A follower of Lao Lai Tzu— was gathering firewood, when he chanced to meet Confucius. On his return he said, ‘There is a man who has a long body and short legs, a slightly humped back and his ears far back. He seems like one who is preoccupied with all the troubles within the four oceans. I don’t know who he is.’ Lao Lai Tzu said, ‘This is Confucius. Call him over here.’ Confucius came. Lao Lai Tzu said, ‘Confucius! Rid yourself of your pride and that smug look on your face and you could then become a nobleman.’ Confucius bowed and retreated and then a look of astonishment came over his face and he asked, ‘Do you think I could manage this?’ Lao Lai Tzu said, ‘You can’t bear the sufferings of this one generation, therefore you go and cause trouble for ten thousand generations to come. Do you set out to be this miserable, or don’t you realize what you are doing? You insist that people should only be joyful in a way you prescribe. The infamy of this will follow you all your life. This is the action of a nondescript type of person, one who wants to rule through fame, who enjoys plotting with others, praising Yao and criticizing Chieh, when really you should just forget them and silence your tendency to glorify. What is wrong cannot but harm and what is active cannot fail to be wrong. The sage is cautious and hesitates before any action, and so always succeeds. But really, what can I say about your actions? For ultimately they are only bragging!’ The Lord Yuan of Song dreamt in the middle of the night that a man with dishevelled hair peered in at him through the side door and said, ‘I have come from the depths of Tsai Lu and was on my way from the clear Yangtze as an ambassador to the Lord of the Yellow River, when a fisherman called Yu Chu caught me.’ Immediately Lord Yuan woke up and asked a diviner to find out what this meant. ‘This is a sacred turtle,’ said the diviner. ‘Is there a fisherman called Yu Chu?’ asked the Lord. ‘There is,’ he was told. The Lord said, ‘Command that Yu Chu comes here.’ Next day, Yu Chu arrived and the ruler asked him, ‘What have you caught recently?’ He replied, ‘I have caught a white turtle in my nets recently. It is about five feet in circumference.’ ‘Present your turtle,’ said the ruler. When the turtle came, the ruler couldn’t decide whether to kill it or keep it. His heart was troubled, so he asked the diviner, who said, ‘Kill the turtle and use it to make divinations and receive an oracle.’ So the turtle had its shell removed and seventy-two holes drilled into its shell for divination.— Not one of them failed to offer a good oracle. Confucius said, ‘Hie sacred turtle could manifest itself in a dream to Lord Yuan but could not escape the nets of Yii Chu. It had sufficient wisdom to give seventy-two correct divinations, but it could not escape having its vital organs cut out. This is how it is, wisdom has its limits and even spirituality has something beyond its reach. Even perfect wisdom can be defeated by a multitude of scheming people. ‘Fish seem not to fear nets, they only seem to fear pelicans. Rid yourself of petty knowledge and allow great wisdom to enlighten you. Rid yourself of goodness, and goodness will naturally arise. When a child is born, it needs no great teacher; nevertheless it learns to talk as it lives with those who talk.’ Hui Tzu argued with Chuang Tzu and said, ‘What you say is useless!’ ‘You have to understand what is useless, then you can talk about what is useful,’ said Chuang Tzu. ‘Heaven and Earth are vast indeed and yet human beings only use the tiny part of the universe on which they tread. However, if you dug away beneath your feet until you came to the Yellow Springs, could anyone make use of this?’ ‘Useless,’ said Hui Tzu. ‘So indeed it is true that what is useless is clearly useful,’ said Chuang Tzu. Chuang Tzu continued, ‘If someone has the itch to travel, what can stop him? But if someone does not wish to travel, then what can make him? Tire one who hides in conformity or the one who is distant and seeks oblivion, both fail to achieve perfect understanding and Virtue! They stumble and fall but do not recover. Urey crash ahead like fire and never look back. Even if they are a ruler with ministers, this too passes. These titles change with each generation and neither is better than the other. It is said that the perfect man leaves no trace of his actions. ‘To respect the past and despise the present, this is what scholars do. Even the followers of Chi Hsi Wei, who view this generation in that way, are swept along without choice. Only the perfect man is able to be in the world and not become partisan, can follow others and not get lost. He does not absorb their teachings, he just listens and understands without any commitment. ‘The eye that is penetrating can see clearly; the ear that is acute hears well; the nose that discriminates distinguishes smells; the mouth with a keen sense of taste enjoys the flavours; the heart that feels deeply has wisdom and the wisdom that cuts to the quick is Virtue. ‘Through all that is, the Tao will not be blocked, for if it is blocked, it gasps, and if it gasps, chaos breaks through. Chaos destroys the life in all. Everything that lives does so through breath. However, if breath will not come, this cannot be blamed on Heaven. Heaven seeks to course breath through the body day in and day out without ceasing: it is humanity which impedes this. Tire womb has its chambers and the heart has its Heavenly journey. However, if rooms are not large enough, then mother-in-law and wife will argue. If the heart does not wander in Heaven, then the six openings of sensation will compete with each other. Tire great forests, the hills and mountains surpass humanity in their spirit because they cannot be overcome. ‘Virtue overflows into fame and desire for fame overflows into excess. Plans arise from a crisis and knowledge comes through argument. Obstinacy fuels resolution and official actions arise from the desires of all. When spring comes, the rains come along with the sunshine, the plants surge into life and harvesting tools are made ready again. Half of all that has fallen begins to sprout, and no one knows why for sure. ‘Quietude and silence are healing for those who are ill; massage is beneficial to the old; peaceful contemplation can calm the distressed. To be sure, it is only the disturbed person who needs these. Someone who is at ease and is untroubled by such things has no need of this. The sage reforms everything below Heaven, but the spiritual man does not enquire how. Hie worthy person improves his generation, but the sage does not enquire how. Hie ruler governs the country, but the worthy person does not enquire how. Hie petty man makes do in these times, but the ruler does not enquire how. 'Hie gatekeeper of Yen Gate had a father who died and the gatekeeper was praised for the extremities of self¬ deprivation he inflicted on himself, and was honoured by the title of Model Officer. Some others in the area also underwent such extremities, and half of them died. Yao offered the country to Hsu Yu and Hsu Yu fled from him. Tang offered the kingdom to Wu Kuang and Wu Kuang became angry. Chi To heard this and retreated with his followers to the waters of the Kuan, where the local nobles came and commiserated with him for three years. For the same reason, Shen Tu Ti threw himself into the Yellow River. A fish trap is used to catch fish, but once the fish have been taken, the trap is forgotten. The rabbit trap is used to snare rabbits, but once the rabbit is captured, the trap is ignored. Words are used to express concepts, but once you have grasped the concepts, the words are forgotten. I would like to find someone who has forgotten the words so I could debate with such a person!’ CHAPTER 27 Supposed Words Supposed words constitute nine-tenths of discourse, quotes make up seven tenths and flowing words are brought forth every day, refined by the influence of Heaven. Supposed words which constitute nine-tenths are similar to people who are brought in from outside. For example, no father is used as a reference for his son, for the father cannot be as objective as someone not of the family. It is not my fault but the fault of other people (who otherwise wouldn’t listen to me), for otherwise people would only pay attention to what they already know and dismiss anything else. Hrus they say that whatever agrees with them is right, but whatever they dislike they call wrong. Quotes make up seven-tenths and are there to stop arguments, which they do because they are respected as the words of sagacious elders. However, those who are old but have not grasped the warp and weft, the root and branch of things cannot be quoted as sagacious elders. A person like this hasn’t understood the Tao. Nor has he understood the Tao of humanity. He is just a sad remnant of another time. Flowing words are spoken every day and they harmonize through the influence of Heaven, continuing for ever and so extending my years. If nothing is said about them, they remain in agreement, and agreement is not affected by words: words are in agreement but agreement is not words. So it is said, ‘say nothing’. Words say nothing, so you can talk all your life and say nothing. In contrast you can live your life without speaking and have said things of worth. There is that which makes things acceptable and that which makes things unacceptable. There is that which makes things certain and that which makes things uncertain. How is this? Because it is. How is this not so? It is not so, because it is not so. How does this occur? Because it occurs. How does this not occur? It does not occur, because it does not occur. Everything is defined by what is right and everything is defined by what is possible. If there is nothing, then it cannot be. If there is nothing, then it cannot occur. If there are no flowing words every day, influenced by Heaven, then how could all this persist? All forms of life arise from the same base and in their diverse forms they succeed each other. Tlrey begin and end like an unbroken circle, and none can say why. This is the influence of Heaven. Hris influence of Heaven is the harmony of Heaven. Chuang Tzu asked Hui Tzu, ‘In reaching the age of sixty, Confucius has changed his views sixty times, so what he once held to be right he now holds to be wrong. So who knows now whether what he once called right he hasn’t fifty-nine times called wrong?’ Hui Tzu said, ‘Confucius sincerely tries to pursue understanding and tries to act in accord with this.’ ‘Confucius has abandoned that,’ said Chuang Tzu, ‘but he doesn’t talk about it. Confucius said, “We all received our abilities from the Great Origin, and we should try to show them in our lives.” Our singing should accord with the chords and our speech should be an example. But you parade profit and righteousness before us, and your likes and dislikes, and what you approve and disapprove, and you produce nothing more than servile agreement. To ensure people’s hearts submit, so that they dare not resist, that would make everyone under Heaven rest secure. Dear oh dear! I have no chance of managing all this!’ Tseng Tzu twice held power but twice he changed his heart, saying, ‘At first, when I was caring for my parents, my salary was three fu of rice, but I was happy. Tire second time I received three thousand chung of rice, but my parents were gone and I was sad.’ One of the followers of Confucius said, ‘Surely Tseng Tzu can be described as being free from the folly of entanglement?’ ‘But he was already entangled,’ replied Confucius. ‘If he had been free, why should he have been so sad? He would have viewed both his three fu and his three thousand chung as just so many sparrows or mosquitoes flying in front of him.’ Yen Cheng Tzu Yu said to Tzu Chi of the Eastern Suburb. ‘When I listened to your words, Master, the first year I was just a country bumpkin. Tire second year I was happy to be led. Tire third year I began to journey with you. The fourth year I was just a thing. Tire fifth year I began to progress. Tire sixth year the ghosts came into me. Tire seventh year Heaven’s perfection came. Tire eighth year I could not understand death nor life. Hre ninth year I achieved the great mystery. ‘When life completes its purpose, death results. What is, follows, and each of us has to contemplate death, for it’s the path we tread. That which lives in yang is without a path. Is this certain? How does all this happen? Why is it not so here? Heaven has its time and space and Earth has its calculating peoples. Yet how can I discern all this? We have no idea when and how life will end. But how can we try and decide that they are not destined? Given that we have no idea how and when they began, how can we try and decide that they are destined? Given that there is something there, how is it possible to claim that there are no ghosts? If there is nothing there, how can we possibly claim that there are ghosts?’ The Outline asked the Shadow, ‘A few minutes ago you were looking down, now you are looking up; a few minutes ago your hair was piled up, now it is hanging down; a few minutes ago you were sitting down, now you are standing up; a few minutes ago you were walking, now you are standing still. Why?’ Shadow said, ‘Petty! Petty! Why do you ask me about all this? This is all true to me but I haven’t a clue why I do it. I am like the shell of a cicada or the shed skin of a snake: something which seems real but is not. In the sunlight I appear, in darkness I disappear. However, do you think I arise from these? For they are themselves dependent upon others. When it comes, I come also. When it goes, I go with it. If they arise from the mighty yang, so do I. However, there is no point in asking about the mighty yang!’ Yang Tzu Chu travelled south to Pei, Lao Tzu went west to Chin but Yang asked him to go to the border at Liang where they met. Lao Tzu stood in the middle of the road, gazed up to Heaven and said with a sigh, ‘At first I thought you could be taught, but now I know it is not possible.’ Yang Tzu Chu said nothing. Later they arrived at the inn and he went to fetch water in order to wash his teacher, and a towel and a comb. Removing his shoes outside the door, he crawled across the floor and said, ‘Earlier, Master, your follower wanted to ask you about what you said, but you were busy and I did not dare to. Now, it seems an appropriate time, so I would like to ask what I’ve done wrong.’ Lao Tzu said, ‘Such pride and arrogance, such elevation and certainty; who could bear being with you? Tire greatest purity is soiled, overflowing virtue is not enough.’ Yang Tzu Chu, when he first arrived at the inn, was greeted by the people there. Hie innkeeper brought out a mat, his wife brought towels and a comb. Others in the inn respectfully moved aside from their mats. However, when he came back, everyone tried to shove him off his very own mat! CHAPTER 28 Abdication Yao wanted to abdicate the country to Hsu Yu. but Hsu Yu would not accept. He then offered it to Tzu Chou Chih Fu. Tzu Chou Chih Fu said, ‘You wish me to be the Son of Heaven, which is fine. But unfortunately I suffer from a deep-rooted and painful disease which I am currently trying to overcome. As I need to use all my energy to deal with this, I am unable to rule the country.’ Tire country is of course of tremendous significance, yet he would not put his life at risk, so why do so for even less important things? Someone who doesn’t wish to rule the country is exactly the person to ask to do so. Shun wanted to abdicate the country to Tzu Chou Chih Po, but Tzu Chou Chih Po said, ‘At this time I have an unpleasant and disturbing illness and I am using all my energy to deal with it, which means I have no time to rule the country.’ It is said that the country is the greatest of ventures, but he would not risk his life for it, which shows how those who have the Tao are very different from the ordinary person. Shun tried to abdicate in favour of Shan Chuan, but Shan Chuan said, ‘Here I am in the midst of space and time. During the winter I wear skins and furs, in summer I wear vine leaves and linen. In the spring I plough and plant and my body is exercised by this. In the autumn I harvest and pile up and then I rest and eat. When the sun rises I wake up and work, while at sunset I rest. I journey where I will between Heaven and Earth to my heart’s desire. So why would I want to rule the country? Alas, Sire, you do not understand!’ So he said no and went away, deep into the mountains, and no one knew where he went. Shun wanted to abdicate the country to his friend the farmer of Sliih Hu. Die farmer of Shih Hu said, ‘But you have such strength and endurance, my Lord!’ Realizing that Shun’s Virtue would not be enough, he collected his wife, took hold of his son’s hand and went off into the islands of the coast. He never ever came back.— Die great king Tan Fu— lived in Pin, and the Ti peoples invaded. He tried to pay them off with skins and silks but this did not satisfy them. He tried to appease them with dogs and horses, but they didn’t like that. He offered them pearls and jade but they didn’t like that, for the Ti peoples were only interested in his lands. Great King Tan Fu said, ‘To live here with the older brothers, to despatch the younger brothers to death, to live amongst the fathers and despatch the sons to death - I cannot do it! My children, stay here! Does it really matter whether I rule you or the Ti people do? I have heard people say that you should not use that by which you care for the people, to harm the people.’ Then he picked up his staff and riding crop, and left. However, the people came after him, all following one another, and soon they founded a new country under Chi Mountain.— The great King Tan Fu knew how to care for life. Those who honour life, even if they are rich and powerful, misuse what should nourish, and so cause injury to themselves. Likewise, even if they are poor and lowly, they will endanger themselves for the sake of profit. The people of this generation, if they achieve greatness and title, are then preoccupied with holding on to them. Looking only for profit, they forget the risks involved. Surely this is madness! The people of Yueh assassinated their rulers three times in one generation. Upset by all this, Prince Sou fled to the caves of Tan, which meant that the kingdom of Yueh was without a ruler. The people of Yueh tried to find Prince Sou but couldn’t, until they discovered the caves of Tan. Prince Sou refused to come out, but the people of Yueh smoked him out with noxious fumes. Then they put him in the royal carriage. Prince Sou grasped the strap and hauled himself up into the carriage, looked to Heaven and said, ‘O ruler, O ruler! Couldn’t I have been spared all this?’ Prince Sou was not frightened of being the ruler, it was all the troubles that go with it that he was afraid of. It can be said of Prince Sou that he was not willing to allow the concerns of the kingdom to damage his life and it was exactly because of this that the people of Yueh wished to have him as their ruler. Tire countries of Han and Wei were at war over a territorial dispute. Master Hua Tzu went to see Marquis Chao Hsi of Han, who looked worried. Master Hua Tzu said, ‘Now imagine that the people of the world were to present you with a document which read, “If you lay hold of this with your left hand, you will lose your right hand; lay hold with your right hand, and you will lose your left hand; however, if you lay hold of this, you will also rule the world.” So, Lord, would you do so?’ The Marquis Chao Hsi said, ‘I wouldn’t touch it.’ Master Hua Tzu said, ‘Excellent! From that point of view, I can certainly see that two hands are more important than the whole world. Furthermore, your body itself is more important than just your two hands. The whole of Han is much less important than the whole of the world and this scrap of land you are fighting over is of less significance than Han. However, surely, my Lord, if you so value your body and your life, you should not be following a path of misery and distress trying to seize this territory!’ Marquis Chao Hsi said, ‘Splendid! I have been offered all sorts of advice from different people, but I have never before been offered words of such wisdom.’ Master Hua Tzu, it can be said, knew the difference between what was significant and what was minor. Tire ruler of Lu had heard that Yen Ho had gained the Tao and so he sent a messenger bearing gifts of silk to start up discussions with him. Tfen Ho was sitting in the doorway of his simple house, dressed in coarse hemp cloth and feeding a cow. Tire ruler of Lu’s messenger arrived and Yen Ho met him. Tire messenger asked, ‘Is this Yen Ho’s house?’ Yen Ho replied, ‘This is Ho’s house.’ Tire messenger proceeded to offer the gifts to him, but Yen Ho said, ‘I think that unfortunately you have got your instructions confused. If you present these to the wrong person, you will get into trouble. I suggest you return and check that you are doing the right thing.’ So the messenger went back, ensured his instructions were accurate and then came back to look for him, but he could not find him. It is true that those like Yen Ho really do hate honours and wealth. It is said, the true purpose of the Tao is in caring for yourself, its edges are concerned with running the country and the family, while it is only its dregs which are concerned with ruling the world. So, from this we can understand that what Emperors and kings do is surplus to what the sage does, for it does not relate to care of the self or of life. Tire leaders of this generation, that is to say most of them, throw away their lives in pursuit of material gain. Isn’t it pathetic! When the sage starts something, he will certainly have considered what he is doing and why he is doing it. Now this is like a man who takes the pearl of the Marquis of Sui and shoots a bird in the sky with it, high up in the air. People would obviously laugh at him. Why is this so? Because he has used something of great value to obtain something of little value. Now surely life is even more valuable than the pearl of the Marquis of Sui! Master Lieh Tzu was in great poverty and had a hungry look about him. A visitor spoke about this to Tzu Yang, Prime Minister of Cheng, saying, ‘Lieh Tzu Kou looks like a scholar who has the Tao, yet here he lives in your state and you let him exist in poverty?’ Prime Minister Tzu Yang sent an officer to see him with a gift of rice. Master Lieh Tzu greeted him and bowed, but twice refused the gift. After the messenger had gone, Master Lieh Tzu went inside, and his wife looked scornfully at him and beat her breast saying, ‘I have been told that the wife and children of one who has the Tao have comfort and happiness, but right now we are starving. The ruler understood his mistake, and sends you some food to eat, Master. But the Master refuses it. Is this then our destiny?’ Master Lieh Tzu laughed and said, ‘The ruler does not know me. He sent the rice because someone told him to. Likewise, one day someone could speak against me and he could treat me like a criminal. That is why I will not accept.’ As it so happened, the people rose against Tzu Yang in civil war and put him to death. When King Chao of Chu— was forced into exile from his country, sheep-butcher Yu eh fled also and followed King Chao into exile. King Chao eventually returned in triumph to his kingdom and rewarded those who had followed him. When he met sheep-butcher Yueh, Yu eh said, ‘Oh great King, you lost your kingdom, and Yueh lost his butcher’s shop. The great King has regained his kingdom and Yueh has regained his butcher’s shop. I have received back what I needed, so why should you speak of rewarding me?’ Hie King said, ‘Make him! ’ Sheep-butcher Yueh said, ‘Hie great King lost his kingdom but not because of anything I did, so I could not be punished for that. Hie great King has regained his kingdom, again not because of anything I did, therefore I wouldn’t expect to rewarded for that.’ ‘I want to meet him,’ said the King. Sheep-butcher Yueh said, ‘Hie laws of the kingdom of Chu say that someone must have achieved great deeds and been the recipient of acclaim before he can be called to meet the King. Now, my knowledge did not save the kingdom, nor was I courageous enough to die in battle with the invaders. When the armies of Wu entered Ying, I was terrified of the danger and fled from the invaders. I did not purposely follow the King. Yet the King intends breaking with convention and wants to see me. Hiis is not the sort of thing I want the rest of the world to hear about me.’ The King said to Tzu Chi, the War Minister, ‘Sheep- butcher Yueh occupies a lowly place, yet what he says about righteousness is very profound. I want you to promote him to one of the three most senior positions in the government.’ Sheep-butcher Yu eh said, ‘I appreciate that being one of the three most senior ministers is more noble than being a sheep-butcher, and that ten thousand chung is a better salary than what I currently earn. However, I cannot, through my desire for profit, allow the ruler to become known for being so profligate with his favours! I dare not accept, but wish simply to return to my stall as a sheep-butcher.’ He never did accept. Yuan Hsien— lived in Lu, where his house was only a few steps wide and looked as if its thatch was shorn grass. Its broken door was made from brushwood and the door¬ posts were of mulberry wood. Earthenware pots minus their bottoms and stuffed with rags served as the two windows, while the house leaked above and was damp below, but he sat contentedly playing music. Tzu Kung,— wearing an inner robe of purple and an outer one of white and travelling in a carriage drawn by large horses, the top of which could not fit through the gate, came to see Yuan Hsien. Yuan Hsien emerged at his gate to greet him, wearing a hat made of bark and slippers worn down to the heel, holding a staff made of hellebore. Tzu Kung said, ‘Good grief, Sir! You must be in terrible distress.’ Yuan Hsien replied, ‘I have heard say that to have no money is to be poor, and to have studied but to have no way to use one’s studies is to be in distress. Now, I may be poor, but I am not in distress.’ Tzu Kung stepped back in astonishment and embarrassment. Yuan Hsien laughed and said, ‘To act only in order to be praised; to pretend to be even-handed and yet to be biased; to study just so as to show off; to teach just in order to boast; to hide your real intentions behind a pretence of righteousness and benevolence; to show off through extravagant use of horses and chariots, I can’t bear all this!’ Tseng Tzu lived in Wei, wearing a worn hemp quilt coat and no outer garment, with a haggard and emaciated visage and his hands and feet callused and hardened. He could go three days without lighting a fire, ten years without having a new set of clothes. If he put his hat on straight, the straps broke; if he pulled Iris coat together, his elbows came through the cloth; and if he pulled on his shoes, his heels broke through at the back. Nevertheless, as he shuffled along, he sang the Odes of Sacrifice of Shang— with a voice that penetrated Heaven and Earth as if it came from a struck bell or a chiming stone. The Son of Heaven could not get him to be a minister nor could the princes make him their friend. Hius it is with those who feed their souls while forgetting their body. Those who feed their bodies forget about ideas of profit, and those who follow the Tao forget about the concerns of the heart. Confucius said to Yen Hui, ‘Hui, come here! Your family is poor and you are lowly, so wiry not seek high office?’ Ydn Hui replied, ‘I don’t want to be an official. I have fifty acres of farm land outside the city, which supplies me with basic foods. I have ten acres of land within the outer wall and this supplies me with luxuries. I take delight in playing my lute and I am more than happy just to study the Tao of my Master. I don’t want any positions.’ Confucius looked upset. Then his demeanour changed and he said, ‘What a splendid mind you have, Hui! I have heard it said, ‘ “One who knows he is contented will not get mixed up in the pursuit of gain; one who truly understands what is good will not be worried by any loss; one who knows himself inwardly will not be worried by lack of external positions.” ‘I have been preaching this for a long time, but now I see it embodied in you, Hui, and I have certainly benefited from that today.’ Prince Mou of Wei from Chung Shan said to Chan Tzu, ‘My body is here beside the rivers and oceans, but my heart is back in the courts of Wei. What advice can you give me?’ Chan Tzu said, ‘Value life. If you value life then you will put profit into perspective.’ ‘I understand all that,’ said Prince Mou of Wei from Chung Shan, ‘but I find I can’t overcome my feelings.’ Chan Tzu said, ‘If you can’t handle your feelings, how can you avoid harming your spirit? If you can’t control your emotions, but nevertheless try to to stop yourself following them, you will harm yourself twice over. Those who do this double injury to themselves are not counted amongst those with long life.’ Wei Mou had command of ten thousand chariots, so for him to retire and live alone in the caves and cliffs was much more difficult than for a scholar. He may not have had the Tao, but we can say he had the intention. Confucius was trapped in between Chen and Tsai and for seven days he did not eat cooked food, simply a vegetable soup without any rice. His face was drawn and haggard yet he sat contentedly playing his lute and singing inside the house. Yen Hui was outside choosing the vegetables, and Tzu Lu and Tzu Kung were talking to each other. Urey said to Yen Hui, ‘Our Master has twice been chased out of Lu, he has fled from Wei, had his tree chopped down in Sung, been in distress in Shang and Chou and is now trapped between Chen and Tsai. If anyone kills the Master, they will be free of any guilt; if anyone imprisons him, they will be without blame. Yet here he sits, endlessly playing and singing. Can a noble gentleman be so lacking in shame as this?’ Yen Hui had nothing to say in reply, so he went in to report this conversation to Confucius. Confucius laid aside his lute and said, ‘Those two are just petty people. Tell them to come here and I will explain to them.’ Tzu Lu and Tzu Kung came in. Tzu Lu said, ‘The current situation is one of considerable distress!’ ‘What sort of talk is this?’ said Confucius. ‘When the nobleman flows with the Tao, that is called flowing. When he cannot flow with the Tao, he doesn’t flow. Now, I hold to the Tao of righteousness and benevolence and am thus able to confront this chaotic generation, so what prevents me from flowing? Looking within, I am unconcerned by any difficulties of the Tao and I confront any problems which arise without losing my Virtue. When we see the winter coming and the frost and snow arrive, that is when we appreciate the endurance of the pine and cypress. The difficulties between Chen and Tsai are in fact a blessing!’ Confucius picked up his lute and started to play and sing again. Tzu Lu siezed hold of a shield and began to prance about while Tzu Kung said, ‘I had no idea that Heaven is so high and Earth so far below.’ The people of the past who had the Tao were happy if they were trapped and happy if they could flow. Their happiness was unconnected to either of these. If they had the Tao and its Virtue, then being trapped or flowing were simply to them like the regular succession of cold and hot or wind and rain. So Hsu Yu was content on the warm slopes of the Ying River and Kung Po enjoyed himself on the top of Kung Hill.— Shun wanted to hand over the world to his friend from the north, Wu Tse, but Wu Tse said, ‘You are a strange person, my Lord, for at first you lived in the fields and ditches and then you went into the gate of Yao. As if that were not enough, he now wants to drag me into his awful mess and taint me with his crimes. I am ashamed to be seen with you.’ And having said this, he threw himself into the deep waters of the Ching Ling. Tang— was planning to attack Chieh and so he visited Pien Sui, who said, ‘It is nothing to do with me.’ ‘Then who can help?’ said Tang. ‘I don’t know.’ Tang looked for advice from Wu Kuang, and Wu Kuang said, ‘It is nothing to do with me.’ ‘Then who can help?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Could Yi Yin?’ said Tang. ‘He is a violent man who acts disgracefully. I don’t know more than that.’ So Tang went to Yi Yin and they planned the attack together. When Chieh had been conquered, Tang offered to abdicate to Pien Sui. Pien Sui said, ‘When you were planning to attack Chieh, you asked my advice, so you must consider me a villain. Now you have conquered Chieh, you offer the throne to me, so you must also think I am ambitious. I was born into this disorderly generation, yet a man who has nothing of the Tao comes to me twice, trying to stain me with his actions. I cannot stand to hear these words repeated time and time again.’ So saying, he threw himself into the waters of the Chou River and died. Tang wanted to offer the throne to Wu Kuang and said, ‘Hie man of wisdom has planned this, the fighting man has carried it out and now the benevolent one should take over, for this is the Tao of the past. So why should you not do so, Sir?’ Wu Kuang refused: ‘To overthrow the ruler is not righteous; to massacre the people is not benevolent; to cause distress to others and to take your own pleasure is not honourable. I have heard it said that, if someone does not act righteously, don’t accept their commission. If a generation is without the Tao, don’t set foot on their land. So there is no question of me accepting! I cannot stand looking at you any longer.’ And so saying, he fastened a stone to his back and drowned himself in the River Lu. Earlier, in the time of the Chou Dynasty’s triumph,— there were two scholars who lived in Ku Chu called Po Yi and Shu Chi. The two said to each other, ‘I have heard that in the west there is a man who has the Tao, so let’s go and visit him.’ When they reached the sunlit side of Mount Chi, King Wu heard about them and sent Shu Tan to see them. He suggested they make an agreement, saying, ‘Your wealth will be second in rank and your titles of the first rank if you agree to this proposal, and seal it with blood and bury it.’— The two friends looked at each other and burst out laughing. ‘Hull, how odd!’ they said. ‘This is not what we would call the Tao. hr the ancient past Shen Nung had the whole world, and he carried out the ritual sacrifices at the appointed times and with great respect, but he never dreamt of praying for blessings. When sorting out the people, he was true and honest and did what was right, but never expected anything from them. He liked to rule fairly, and when necessary would be stern and strict. He didn’t exploit the failures of others in order to further his own powers. He didn’t use other people’s weaknesses to increase his own strength. He didn’t exploit favourable openings in order to make profit. But now the Chou Dynasty, seeing that the Yin have fallen into disarray, suddenly seize the government from them, asking advice from the leaders and bribing the ordinary people. Urey have brought out their weapons and offered sacrifices and made pacts with people to try and show how serious they are. Urey shout their own praises in order to impress the people and they attack just for the sake of gain, which is just to overthrow disorder and replace it with tyranny. ‘We have heard that, even if by good luck the scholars of old lived in peaceful times, they did not shirk public office. However, if they lived in a time of chaos, they tried not to remain in office if they could help it. Now the world is in darkness and the Virtue of the Chou has rotted. Rather than stay here and be associated with it, it is better if we flee and thus maintain our purity.’ lire two scholars went north to Mount Shou Yang, where they died of starvation. Now, if men like them have managed to avoid getting any fame or fortune, they did so by being high-minded and conscientious in behaviour, taking pleasure in their own ideas without having to lower themselves to serve the world. This is what these two scholars achieved. CHAPTER 29 Robber Chih Confucius was friendly with Liu Hsia Chi, whose brother was called Robber Chih. Robber Chih had nine thousand followers who pillaged wherever they wished in the land, attacking and robbing the princes, breaking into houses, stealing the people’s cattle and horses, seizing their wives and daughters. Having stolen so much wealth, they forgot their families, ignored their fathers and mothers and did not sacrifice to their ancestors. Whenever they rampaged through the countryside, if it was a big kingdom, the people guarded their walls, and if it was a small kingdom, the people fled into their forts. All the multitude of peoples dreaded them. Confucius said to Liu Hsia Chi, ‘Those who are fathers should be able to set out the law for their sons, and those who are elder brothers should be able to instruct their younger brothers. If a father is unable to set out the law for his son, and an elder brother is not able to instruct his younger brother, then the filial relationship between father and son and between elder and younger brother is pointless. Now, Sir, you are one of the best scholars of this generation, and your younger brother is Robber Chih, who threatens the whole world, yet you have not instructed him well. I am ashamed of you. I suggest I go on your behalf, Sir, to try and advise him better.’ Liu Hsia Chi said, ‘Sir, you have said that a father should set out the law for his son and that elder brothers should instruct their younger brothers. However, if the son will not listen to the father, or if the younger brother pays no attention to his elder brother, then even if someone comes with skill such as yours, what can he do? Furthermore, Chih is a man whose heart is like a gushing fountain, and whose will is like a hurricane, strong enough to see off any enemy and clever enough to gloss over his evil. If you agree with him, he is pleased, but if you disagree with him, he becomes angry and he will curse you with the most foul language. Do not go and see him, Sir.’ Confucius did not listen. Accompanied by Yen Hui as his driver, and with Tzu Kung by his side, he went off to see Robber Chih. Robber Chih was camped with his followers on the sunlit side of Mount Tai, savouring a meal of human livers. Confucius stepped down from the carriage and went to see the officer in charge of visitors. ‘I am Confucius of Lu,’ he said, ‘and I have heard that your commander is a man of lofty righteousness.’ And he bowed twice to the officer. The officer went in and passed on the message. On hearing this, Robber Chih flew into a great rage. His eyes blazed like bright stars and his hair stood on end under his hat. ‘This must be that crafty one from Lu kingdom, the man Confucius, is it not? Tell him this from me: “You talk away, inventing phrases and eulogizing the kings Wen and Wu. Your hat is so decorated it is like the boughs of a tree and your belt is skin from the ribs of a cow. The more you say, the more ridiculous it is. You eat yet you do not plough, dress without ever weaving. You wag your lips and use your tongue like a drumstick. You just decide what you think is right and wrong and lead the rulers astray, preventing scholars from studying the roots of the whole world. You establish notions of filial piety and fraternal duty just as you fancy, yet you also want to wriggle your way into favour with the princes, the wealthy and the nobility. Your wickedness is vast and your sins weighty. Get off home now, for if you don’t then I will take your liver and add it to this meal.” ’ Confucius sent another message in: ‘I have the friendship of your brother Chi and so I hope for the favour of being able to view your feet from below the tent.’ When the officer passed this on, Robber Chih said, ‘Tell him to come here!’ Confucius hurried forward, and declining the mat offered, he stepped back and then bowed twice to Robber Chih. Robber Chih was still in a terrible temper. He stretched out his legs, placed his hand upon his sword and glared with his eyes, speaking with a roar like a tigress defending her young: ‘Confucius, come here! If what you say pleases me, you will live. If it angers me, you will die.’ Confucius said, ‘I have heard that there are three kinds of Virtue in this world. The highest Virtue is to grow tall and strong with wonderful looks so that all, young and old, noble and commoner, are delighted to see you. The middle Virtue is to understand Heaven and Earth and to be able converse eloquently on all subjects. The lowest Virtue is to be brave and fearless, resolute and dashing, gathering all to oneself and leading them. ‘Anyone who has just one of these Virtues is suitable to stand facing south and be called the Lone One, the Ruler. Now, here you are with all three. You soar up to eight feet two inches; light pours forth from your face and eyes; your lips look as though coloured with vermilion; your teeth are like rows of precious shells; your voice is in tune with the musical notes, yet you are simply called Robber Chih. Surely this is something to be ashamed of, and I disapprove of you. ‘However, should you so wish, you could listen to my ideas and send me as your ambassador to Wu and Yucli in the south, to Chi and Lu in the north, east to Sung and Wei and west to Chin and Chu, arguing with them that they should form a great walled city several hundred li wide. From there they could rule over towns containing several hundred inhabitants, and I would argue that you should be established there as lord. Then you could begin your career again with this city. Yon can stop fighting, send your followers home, bring your family together there and offer sacrifices to your ancestors. This is what a sage would do, or a true scholar, and it is what the whole world desires.’ Robber Chih was in a towering rage. ‘Confucius, come here!’ he roared. ‘Tire sort of person who can be won over by promises of profit or reformed through speeches are simply fools, idiots and the most common sort. That I am tall and strong, and so handsome that everyone delights to see me, is a virtue descended from my parents. Even if you hadn’t told me, don’t you think I’d know this? ‘What’s more, I have heard that those who praise people to their face will also speak against them behind their backs. Now, Confucius, you tell me about a great walled city filled with people, and you hope to make me change by such promises of profit, attempting to make me follow your words like some common person. But how long would such a place survive? There is no walled city as big as the whole world which was ruled by Yao and Shun, yet their descendants own so little land that they can hardly stick the point of an awl into it! Tang and Wu announced themselves as Sons of Heaven, but within a few generations their dynasties were dead and gone. Surely this was because what they had was considered such a valuable prize? ‘What is more, I have heard that in the past— the birds and animals were many and the people few. As a result, the people lived in nests to escape the animals. During daylight they gathered acorns and chestnuts and during darkness they hid in their tree nests. This is why they were known as the Nest-Building People. In the ancient past the people didn’t know how to make clothes. During the summer they gathered firewood and in the winter they kept warm by burning it. This is why they were called the People who Know how to Keep Alive. In the time of Shen Nung the people lay down in peace and contentment and rose in serene security. The people knew their mothers but not their fathers, and they lived side by side with the elks and deer. They ploughed and ate, they wove and made clothes, never dreaming of harming others, for this was the era of the perfect Virtue. ‘However, the Yellow Emperor was unable to sustain this era of Virtue. He battled with Chih Yu in the area of Cho Lu until the blood flowed over a hundred miles. Yao and Shun ascended the throne, establishing hordes of ministers. Tang exiled his ruler Chieh and King Wu murdered his ruler Chou, and from then on the strong oppressed the weak and the many abused the few. From Tang and Wu until now they have all been instruments of disorder and confusion. Now, Sir, you come here promoting the ways of Kings Wen and Wu, using your skills in debate to teach them to the whole world and to all generations. Dressed in your distinctive garb and wearing a narrow belt, armed with false speeches and hypocritical behaviour, you fool the many lords and princes of diverse countries and prowl around looking for riches and fame. There is no greater robber than you, Sir. Why doesn’t the whole world, which calls me Robber Chih, call you Robber Confucius? ‘Using your sweet words, you persuaded Tzu Lu— to follow you. You caused him to put aside his high cap, to lay down his long sword and attend to your teachings, with the result that the whole world says, “Confucius is able to suppress violence and stop evil.” But in the end Tzu Lu attempted to murder the ruler of Wei, messed that up and his body was pickled and hung over the east gate of the city, so, yes, Sir, your teachings were no good to him. ‘Do you call yourself a scholar, of some skill, a sage? You have been driven out of Lu twice, fled from Wei, got into trouble in Chi and been besieged in Chen and Tsai. There is nowhere in the world that will have you. You advised Tzu Lu and this resulted in Iris being pickled. On one hand you can’t care for yourself, and on the other, you can’t help others. Is this Tao of yours worth anything? ‘There is no one thought more of by all generations than the Yellow Emperor, yet the Yellow Emperor could not maintain the harmony of Virtue, for he fought on the battlefield of Cho Lu and the blood flowed for a hundred miles. Yao was not compassionate, Shun was not filial, Yu was paralysed down one side,— Tang exiled his ruler, King Wu attacked Chou and King Wen was imprisoned at Yu Li. These seven men are thought of as lofty by the whole world. However, if we study them carefully, we can see that the pursuit of profit made them all act against what was true and violate their innate selves. Their actions cause deep embarrassment. ‘When the world discusses worthy scholars, Po Yi and Shu Chi are mentioned. However Po Yi and Shu Chi both refused the role of ruler for the state of Ku Chu and preferred to go and die of starvation in the mountains of Shou Yang, where no one buried them. Pao Chiao showed off and condemned the world. He embraced a tree and stayed there till he died. Shen Tu Ti spoke out in protest but was ignored, so he fastened a stone to his back and drowned himself in the river, where the fish and turtles ate him. Chieh Tzu Tui was a perfect follower, and cut out a piece of his own flesh for his lord, Duke Wen, to eat. However, later on the Duke ignored him and Chieh Tzu Tui was angry and stormed off into the woods where he burnt himself to death hugging a tree. Wei Sheng had an assignation with a young woman under a bridge, but the woman did not turn up. Tire water began to rise, but rather than leave, he wrapped his arms around the pillar of the bridge and died. These six men are hardly to be distinguished from a dog torn to shreds, a pig that is drowned or a beggar with his begging bowl in hand. Urey all succumbed to their desire for fame and honour and so they despised death. Urey did not nourish the roots of their life nor live out the time allocated by destiny. ‘Tire world discusses loyal ministers and says that none were better than Prince Pi Kan and Wu Tzu Hsu. However, Wu Tzu Hsu’s body sank in the river and Pi Kan’s heart was cut out. These two are called models of loyal ministers by the whole world, but they both ended up being laughed at by everyone. Taking the cases above down to Wu Tzu Hsu and Pi Kan, none of them deserves respect. ‘Regarding the speech you have given me, Confucius, were you to tell me about ghosts, then there would be no way I could tell whether you are right or not. However, if you talk to me about this world and its affairs, which is all you have dwelt upon so far, then I have heard it all before! ‘Now I will tell you about the innate nature of tilings. Eyes wish to look upon beauty, ears to hear music, the mouth to taste flavours, the breath of life to persist. Aman of considerable age will live to be a hundred, one of middle age will be about eighty and one of lesser years will be sixty. If you remove the time lost on recovering from illness, mourning the dead, worrying and being anxious, then this leaves you with only four or five days in every month when you can open your mouth and laugh. Heaven and Earth are without end, but humans die when their time is up. Take the longest period of possible finite time and compare it with what is without limit: it is gone as swiftly as when a horse dashes past a crack in a wall. Anyone incapable of fulfilling their will and innate nature and achieving their full years cannot be described as having gained the Tao. I reject everything you have said, Confucius. Get a move on and go. I don’t want to hear anything more from you. Your Tao is foolish, deceitful, artful, vain and hypocritical, incapable of sustaining the inner harmony of truth and so it’s not worth talking about!’ Confucius bowed twice and hurried off. Leaving by the gate, he mounted his carriage, dropping his reins three times. His eyes were glazed and he could not see; his face was the colour of dead ashes. Supporting himself on the crossbar of his carriage, his head hung down, he seemed to be losing his life’s breath. He journeyed back to Lu and when he arrived at the eastern gate, he chanced upon Liu Hsia Chi. ‘So here you are at the city gate,’ said Liu Hsia Chi. ‘I haven’t seen you for days. Your carriage and horses have got dusty. Have you been by any chance to see Chih?’ Confucius looked to Heaven and groaned. ‘I most certainly did,’ he said. ‘Chih was infuriated by what you said, I suspect?’ ‘He certainly was,’ said Confucius. ‘I am rather like someone who has given himself moxibustion treatment, even though he was not ill. I dashed off and stroked the tiger’s head and played with his whiskers and I only just escaped from his mouth!’ Tzu Chang asked Man Kou Te, ‘Why do you not try and do better? If you don’t, your words will not be believed. If your words are not believed, you will not be employed. No proper employment means no gain. So whether you view this from the perspective of fame, or consider it in terms of profit, then righteousness is the true thing to do. If you can cast aside fame and fortune, and revert to the true calling of your heart, then you can see that a real scholar should not let a single day go by without pursuing a true course!’ ‘Hie one without shame grows rich,’ said Man Kou Te, ‘and the one in whom many place their trust becomes famous. So it would appear that the grandest reputations and profit come to those who are both trusted and without shame. So if you’re concerned with reputation or gain, then trust is crucial. If, however, you cast aside thought of fame and fortune, and revert to the true calling of your heart, then you will see that the scholar follows the path of his Heavenly nature!’ ‘In the past,’ said Tzu Chang, ‘Chieh and Chou both enjoyed the honour of being the Sons of Heaven; all the wealth of the world was theirs. Now if you say to a mere sweeper, ‘Your behaviour is like Chieh or Chou,” he will look embarrassed and his heart will be disturbed by such words, for even the lowliest person despises them. Confucius and Mo Ti, however, were poor and common people. Now, however, if you say to a prime minister that his conduct is like that of Confucius and Mo Ti, he will be abashed and look disconcerted and proclaim that he is not worthy, for these two are revered by all scholars. So, to be as powerful as the Son of Heaven does not mean you are respected. And to be poor and common does not mean you will automatically be despised. Tire difference between being honoured and despised is to be found in the worth or worthlessness of your behaviour.’ Man Kou Te said, ‘Minor criminals are locked up while great criminals are made into lords and rulers. Yet in the gates of such lords, righteous scholars are to be found. In the past, Hsiao Po, Duke Huan murdered Iris elder brother and made his sister-in-law his wife. However, Kuan Chung still became his minister. Chang Tien Cheng murdered his ruler and usurped his country, but Confucius still accepted gifts from him. In their debates they condemn such people, but in their actions they acquiesce before them. Surely their words and their deeds must have been in conflict with each other in their breasts! This is why the Book says, “What is evil and what is beautiful? The successful is considered the head and the unsuccessful is the tail.” ’ ‘Sir,’ said Tzu Chang, ‘if you don’t pay attention to the normal ways of behaviour, and make no distinction between near and distant family, between noble and commoner, between elder and younger, how can you maintain the order of the five arrangements and the six kinships?’ Man Kou Te replied, ‘Yao killed his eldest son and Shun exiled his uncle. Do either of these have proper regard for the rules about near and distant kinship? Tang exiled his ruler Chieh and King Wu overthrew his lord Chou. Do either of these have proper regard for the distinctions between noble and commoner? King Chi usurped his brother and the Duke of Chou killed his elder brother. Do either of these have proper regard for the distinction between elder and younger? Tire Literati speak hypocritically and the Mohists say everyone should be loved equally. Do either of these have proper regard for the distinction between the five arrangements and the six kinships? ‘Add to this that you. Sir, are concerned with reputation, while I care about profit. In reality neither fame nor fortune are in accord with principle and they cannot stand examination in the light of the Tao. lire other day we referred this to the one who is unbound by opinion. He said, ‘ “Tire mean person desires wealth, Tire nobleman desires fame. In the ways in which they affect their true form, and change their innate natures, they are different. But as they both cast aside what they have in pursuit of something they don’t have, they are identical.” So it is said, Do not be a mean person, Turn again and desire the heavenly within. Do not be a nobleman, Pursue the path of Heaven within. Whether bent or true, See all in the light of Heaven. Learn to face all four directions, and flow with the tides of the seasons. Whether right or wrong, Hold firm to that centring point within. Alone fulfil your will. Travel only in the company of the Tao. Do not stray from your path, Do not try to be perfect in righteousness, For then you will fail at what you do. Make no haste to become wealthy, Take no risks for fame, Or you will lose the Heavenly within. ‘Pi Kan’s heart was cut out, Tzu Hsu’s eyes were put out: this is what faithfulness gave them. Kung the True spoke against his father,— Wei Sheng died by drowning, so misfortune was the result of their loyalty. Pao Chiao stood till he dried out and Shen Tzu would not defend himself,— so harm was the result of their integrity. Confucius never saw his mother and Kuang Tzu never saw his father: these are the mistakes of the righteous. These are the models passed down from generation to generation. They clearly indicate that the scholar who is determined to be faithful in his words and firm in his actions pays the price and brings upon himself such disasters.’ Not Enough asked Knowing Harmony, ‘There is no one who doesn’t seek fame and fortune. When someone is rich, everyone wants to know him. Urey are willing to abase themselves, hoping to impress. To have others fall down before you is one way of ensuring long life and comfort for the bodily needs as well as peace for the mind. Do you alone have no idea of this, Sir? Do you have no understanding or simply lack the will power? Or have you decided what is right and resolved never to deviate from this?’ Knowing Harmony said, ‘Now there is this man who lives around here and who was born at the same time as us: we who see ourselves as scholars, who have cast aside the common lot of this generation and risen above it. He has given up trying to define the principle of right. He studies the ancient past and this present time, the different views on what is right and what is wrong. He follows this degenerate generation in changing as the world changes, ignoring what has been deemed important, casting aside what is worthy, just doing whatever he wants. Yet is he not wrong in thinking this will prolong life, give the body all it needs for pleasure and joy to his will? He swings from grief and distress to happiness and joy, yet doesn’t understand how these affect the body. He suffers fear and fright and excitement and delight, yet this does nothing to help him understand why. He knows what is to be done, but not why it should be done. Indeed, you might have all the status of being a Son of Heaven and all the wealth of the whole world, yet still not escape disaster and distress.’ Not Enough said, ‘There is nothing that riches cannot give you. Urey bring the best in beauty and the summits of power, which neither the perfect man nor the sage can ever achieve. They buy strength and bravery from others which then make the owner feared and powerful. Urey can buy up the wisdom and the skills of others which then make the owner seem wise and knowledgeable. Urey can entice the virtues of others so that the owner can seem a man of consequence and principle. Even though he has no kingdom of his own, the wealthy man is as much respected as a ruler or even a father. Furthermore, music, beauty, good food and power can be enjoyed even by those who have never studied them before. The body can enjoy these without ever having had to learn from others. ‘Desire, dislikes, what to pursue and what to avoid: no one needs to be taught about these, for they are part of our innate nature. Nor am I the only person under Heaven to think like this. Who could ever give them up?’ Knowing Harmony said, ‘lire wise man does things because of his concern for the well-being of everyone, and he does not do anything against convention. So if he has enough, he doesn’t seek for more, for as there is no need, he needn’t seek for anything. However, if there is too little, then he will seek for more. To do this he goes in all directions but would never see himself as being self- indulgent. If there is too much, he gives it away. He can give away all under Heaven and still not see himself as open-minded. ‘Open-minded or greedy are not caused by any external influence, they arise from the inborn state of being of each of us. Someone might be as powerful as the Son of Heaven, but never use this to dominate others. He could own the whole world, but never use his wealth to degrade others. He sizes up the situation and bears in mind the harm that could be inflicted upon his innate nature. This might lead him to withdraw from something he is offered - but not in order to win false praise and honour. Yao and Shun were Emperors and there was harmony, but not because they strove to be benevolent, for they would not permit what was good to harm them. Shan Chuan and Hsu Yii could have become Emperors, but they refused, not because they sought to impress by this but because they did not wish to inflict harm upon themselves through this. All of these followed what was to their advantage and refused what was harmful, and so the whole world celebrates them. Though they gained praise, they did not act as they did in order to have such praise.’ Not Enough replied, ‘But in order to do this they distressed their bodies and renounced what was pleasurable, restricting themselves to a meagre existence in order to survive. Urey were like those who exist for years in sickness and distress, waiting to die.’ ‘Peaceful contentment is happiness,’ said Knowing Harmony, ‘while excess is dangerous. This is true for all things, but most especially in the case of wealth. Rich men hear the sounds of the bell and drum, flute and pipe, and their mouths are stuffed full of the most tasty meats and fine wines, until they are satiated and have forgotten what they are supposed to be doing. This is a disorderly state. Sinking into the depths of their desires, they are like someone carrying a heavy burden up a hill. This is bitter suffering. Urey desire riches and hope to find some comfort there. Urey desire power and try to hold on to it all. In the quiet of their private moments they sink into indulgence. Even if their bodies are fit and tanned, they become inflated with pride. Hris is a state of sickness. Desiring wealth, lusting after profit, they fill their rooms to overflowing and cannot desist. Urey are unable to escape this lust, they want even more and they ignore all those who advise against this. This is a state of disgrace. Urey heap up their wealth beyond anything they could ever use, but cling to it frantically. Even when they know the distress it causes, they want yet more and more. Hris state is called pathetic. Behind doors, they fear robbers and thieves. Out of doors, they are afraid of being mugged. Urey fortify themselves at home with towers and moats, and when travelling they dare not walk alone. This is the state of terror. These six states are the worst possible. But they forget them all and seem to have lost the faculty of reason. Once disaster comes, even if they wish to draw on all their innate nature or use up all their wealth, they can’t regain a single day of peacefulness. So it is that those who look for fame will not find it and those who look for fortune will not be able to find it. To wear out their minds and destroy their bodies in searching for these - surely this is simply terrible delusion!’ CHAPTER 30 The Lover of Swords In the past King Wen of Chao loved swords. Specialists came to his gate, over three thousand of them, all experts in swordsmanship. They were his guests. Day and night they fought before him until the dead or wounded each year were more than a hundred. But the King never ceased to be delighted at watching them. This went on for three years, then the country began to fall apart and the other princes began to plot its overthrow. Crown Prince Kuei was distressed by this, and he presented the situation to his followers: ‘If there is anyone here who can persuade the King to put away these swordsmen, I will give him a thousand pieces of gold,’ he said. His followers replied, ‘Chuang Tzu can do this.’ Hie Crown Prince sent an ambassador with a thousand pieces of gold to Chuang Tzu. Chuang Tzu refused the gold but returned with the ambassador. He came in to see the Crown Prince and said, ‘Oh Prince, what is it you wish to tell me that you send me a thousand pieces of gold?’ ‘I have heard, Sir, that you are an illustrious sage,’ said the Crown Prince. ‘The gift of a thousand pieces of gold was a gift for your attendants. However, you have refused to accept this, so what more dare I say?’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘I have heard that the Crown Prince wants to use me to help the King give up his abiding passion. If in trying to do so I upset the King and fail to achieve what you hope for, then I might be executed. So what use would the gold be to me then? Or, if I could get the King to give up, and fulfil your hopes, what is there in this whole kingdom of Chao that I could not ask for and be given?’ ‘You’re right,’ said the Crown Prince. ‘However the King will only see swordsmen.’ ‘That’s all right. I’m quite good with a sword,’ replied Chuang Tzu. ‘Fair enough,’ said the Crown Prince, ‘but the swordsmen the King sees are all tousle-headed with spiky beards, wearing loose caps held on with simple, rough straps and robes that are cut short behind. Urey look about them fiercely and talk only of their sport. The King loves all this. Now, if you go in wearing your scholar’s garb you will start off on completely the wrong foot.’ ‘With your permission I will get a full swordsman’s outfit,’ said Chuang Tzu. Within three days he had got this and returned to see the Crown Prince. Tire Crown Prince took him to see the King, who drew his sword and sat waiting for him. Chuang Tzu walked slowly into the hall through the main door. When he saw the King, he did not bow. ‘What instruction have you for me, that you have persuaded the Crown Prince about beforehand?’ demanded the King. ‘I have heard that the King likes swords and so I have brought my sword for the King to see.’ ‘What use is your sword in combat?’ ‘My sword can kill one person every ten paces, and after a thousand miles it is not faltering.’ Tire King was pleased and said, ‘There can be no one else like you under Heaven! ’ ‘A fine swordsman opens with a feint then gives ground, following up with a cut, stalling his opponent before he can react,’ replied Chuang Tzu. ‘I would like to show you my skills.’ ‘Rest awhile in your rooms, Master, and await my commands,’ said the King. ‘I shall make arrangements for the contest and I will call you.’ The King spent the next seven days testing his swordsmen. More than sixty died or were severely wounded, leaving five or six who were selected and commanded to present themselves in the hall. Then he called in Chuang Tzu and said, ‘Now, this very day I shall pit you against these men to show your skills.’ ‘I have longed for such an opportunity,’ said Chuang Tzu. ‘Sir, what sort of sword will you choose, long or short?’ asked the King. ‘Any kind will do,’ said Chuang Tzu, ‘but I have three swords, any of which I could use if the King agrees. But first I would like to say something about them and then use them.’ ‘I would like to hear about these three swords,’ said the King. ‘I have the sword of the Son of Heaven, the sword of the noble Prince and the sword of the commoner,’ said Chuang Tzu. ‘What is this sword of the Son of Heaven?’ 'Hie Son of Heaven’s sword has as its point the Valley of Yen, and the Great Wall and Chi and Tai mountains as its blade edge. Chin and Wey are its ridge, Chou and Sung are its hilt and Han and Wei its sheath. On all four sides it is surrounded by barbarians and it is wrapped in die four seasons. Hie Sea of Po encompasses it and the eternal mountains of Chang are its belt. Hie five elements control it and it enacts what punishment and compassion dictate. It comes out in obedience to yin and yang, stands alert in spring and summer and goes into action in autumn and winter. Hirust forward, there is nothing in front of it; lift it high, and there is nothing above it; swing it low, and there is nothing below it; spin it around, there is nothing encompassing it. Raised high, it cleaves the firmaments; swung low, it severs the very veins of the Earth. Use this sword but once and all the rulers revert to obedience; all below Heaven submit. Hiis is the sword of the Son of Heaven.’ King Wen was astonished and seemed to have forgotten everything else. ‘What of the sword of the noble Prince?’ he asked. Chuang Tzu said, ‘Hie sword of the noble Prince, its point is sagacious and courageous people; its blade is those of integrity and sincerity; its ridge is those of worth and goodness; its hilt is those who are trustworthy and wise; its sheath is of the brave and outstanding. When this sword is thrust forward, it encounters nothing; when wielded high, it has nothing above it; when swung low, it has nothing below it; when swirled about, it finds nothing near it. Above, its guidance comes from Heaven and it proceeds with the three great lights.— Below, it is inspired by the square, stable nature of the earth, proceeding with the flow of the four seasons. In the middle lands it restores harmony to the people and is in balance with the four directions. Use this sword but once and it is like hearing the crash of thunder. Within the four borders everyone obeys the laws and everyone attends to the orders of the ruler. This is the sword of the noble Prince.’ ‘What of the sword of the commoner?’ ‘Hie sword of the commoner is used by those who are tousle-haired with spiky beards, wearing loose caps held on by ordinary coarse cords, with their robes cut short behind. They stare about them fiercely and will only talk about their swordsmanship while fighting before the King. Raised high, it cuts through the neck; swung low, it slices into the liver and lungs. Hie people who use the sword of the commoner are no better than fighting cocks who at any time can have their lives curtailed. Hiey are useless to the state. Now you, O King, have the position of the Son of Heaven but you make yourself unworthy by associating with the sword of the commoner. This is what I dare to say.’ The King brought him up into his hall where the butler presented a tray of food, while the King strode three times round the room. ‘Sire, sit down and calm yourself,’ said Chuang Tzu. ‘Whatever there was to say about swords has been said.’ Following this, King Wen did not go out for three months and all his swordsmen killed themselves in their own rooms. CHAPTER 31 The Old Fisherman Confucius wandered through the Black Curtain Forest and sat down beside the Apricot Tree Altar. His followers started reading their books while Confucius played his lute and sang. He was not even halfway through the song when a fisherman stepped out of his boat and came towards him. His beard and eyebrows were white and his hair was wild, while his sleeves hung down beside him. He walked up the slopes until he reached the drier ground and then stopped, resting his left hand on his knee and his chin in his right hand, and listened until the song was over. Then he called over Tzu Kung and Tzu Lu and the two of them went to him. ‘Who is that?’ he said, pointing at Confucius. ‘He is a nobleman from Lu,’ replied Tzu Lu. Tire fisherman then enquired as to Confucius’ family. Tzu Lu replied, ‘Tire family of Kung.’ ‘What does this man of Kung do for a living?’ Tzu Lu was working out what to say when Tzu Kung replied, saying, ‘This man of the Kung family in his innate nature holds fast to loyalty and faithfulness; in his behaviour he shows benevolence and righteousness; he makes the rituals and music beautiful, and balances human relationships. He pays respect above him to the ruler of his generation and in his dealings with those below him he tries to transform the ordinary people, as he wants to bless the whole world. This is what this man of the Kung family does.’ Tire fisherman enquired further, ‘Does he have any land over which he rules?’ ‘No,’ said Tzu Kung. ‘Is he an adviser to a king?’ ‘No.’ Tire stranger laughed and backed away, saying, ‘So benevolence is benevolence, yet he won’t escape without harm to himself. Exhausting the heart and wearing out the body puts his true nature in jeopardy. Sadly, I believe he is far removed from the Tao.’ Tzu Kung went up and told Confucius about this. Confucius laid aside his flute and stood up, saying, ‘Maybe he is a sage!’ and he went down the slope to find him. He reached the water’s edge as the fisherman was about to pole away. Seeing Confucius, he poled back again and confronted him. Confucius stepped back somewhat hastily, bowed twice and went forward. ‘What do you want, Sir?’ said the stranger. ‘Just now, Master, you said a few words but didn’t finish,’ said Confucius. ‘Being unworthy, I do not understand them. So I would like to be with you and to hear even just the sounds of your words in the hope that they might enlighten me!’ ‘Oh-ho, you have a good love of study, Sir!’ Confucius bowed twice and stood up. ‘Ever since I was little I have pursued study, and now here I am sixty-nine years old, yet I have never heard the perfect teaching, so what can I do but keep my heart open?’ The stranger said, ‘Like seeks like and each note responds to its own. This is the boundary established by Heaven. I will not discuss that which concerns me, but will concentrate on what you need to know about. Tbu, Sir, are wrapped up in the affairs of the people. Tire Son of Heaven, the noble princes, the great ministers and the common folk, when these four groups do what is right, there is the beauty of unity. If these four groups break apart, then there is terrible great disorder. If ministers do what they should and the ordinary people are concerned with what they do, then no one infringes upon another. ‘Fields in ruin, leaking roofs, lack of food and clothing, unjust taxes, disputes between wives and concubines, disorder between the young and the old, these are what trouble the common folk. ‘Inability to do the job, being bored by their work, bad behaviour, carelessness and laziness in those below, failure to succeed, insecurity in employment, these are what trouble the great ministers. ‘Lack of loyal ministers, civil war in the kingdom, workmen with no skills, tributes that are worthless, poor positioning at the spring and autumn gatherings, the disquiet of the ruler, these are what trouble the noble princes. ‘Ym and yang out of harmony, fluctuations in heat and cold which damage all, oppression and rebellion by nobles, all leading to uprisings, ravage and abuse of the people, the rituals badly performed, the treasury empty, social relationships in turmoil and the people debauched, these are what trouble the Son of Heaven and his people. ‘Now, Sir, at the higher end of the scale, you are not a ruler, nor a noble nor even a minister in a court, while at the other end you are not in the office of a great minister with all his portfolios. Nevertheless, you have decided to bring beauty to the rituals and the music and to balance human relationships and thus to reform the ordinary people. Isn’t this rather overdoing it? ‘Furthermore, there are eight defects that people are liable to, as well as four evils that affect their affairs, which must not be ignored: ‘To be involved with affairs that are not yours is to be overbearing. ‘To draw attention to yourself when no one wants you is to be intrusive. ‘To suck up to someone with speeches designed to please is to be sycophantic. ‘Not to distinguish between good and evil in what others say is to be a flatterer. ‘To gossip about other’s failings is to be slanderous. ‘To separate friends and families is to be malevolent. ‘To give false praise in order to hurt others is to be wicked. ‘Having no concern for right or wrong, but to be two- faced in order to find out what others know, is to be treacherous. ‘These eight defects cause disorder to others and harm to the perpetrator. A nobleman will not befriend one who has them, nor will an enlightened ruler appoint such a person to be a minister. ‘With regard to the four evils of which I spoke, they are: ‘Ambition - To be fond of taking on vast enterprises, altering and changing the old traditions, thus hoping that you can increase your fame and standing. ‘Greediness - To be a know-all and to try and get everything done your way, seizing what others do and claiming it as your own. ‘Obstinacy - To see your errors without doing anything to change them and to persist in doing things the wrong way. ‘Bigotry - To smile upon someone who agrees with you but when that person disagrees, to disown and despise them. ‘These are the four evils. If you can cast aside the eight defects and avoid the four evils, then you are at a point where it is possible to be taught.’ Confucius looked sad and sighed, bowed twice, stood up and said, ‘Lu has exiled me twice, I have fled from Wei, they have felled a tree on me in Sung and laid siege to me between Chen and Tsai. I have no idea what I did to be so misunderstood. Why was I subject to these four forms of trouble?’ The stranger looked distressed, then his expression changed and he said, ‘It is very difficult, Sir, to make you understand! There was once a man who was frightened by his own shadow and scared of his own footprints, so he tried to escape them by running away. But every time he lifted his foot and brought it down, he made more footprints, and no matter how fast he ran, his shadow never left him. Thinking he was running too slowly, he ran faster, never ceasing until finally he exhausted himself and collapsed and died. He had no idea that by simply sitting in the shade he would have lost his shadow, nor that by resting quietly he would cease making footprints. He really was a great fool! ‘You, Sir, try to distinguish the spheres of benevolence and righteousness, to explore the boundaries between agreement and disagreement, to study changes between rest and movement, to pontificate on giving and receiving, to order what is to be approved of and what disapproved of, to unify the limits of joy and anger, and yet you have barely escaped calamity. If you were to be serious in your cultivation of your own self, careful to guard the truth and willing to allow others to be as they are, then you could have avoided such problems. However, here you are, unable to cultivate yourself yet determined to improve others. Are you not obsessed with external things?’ Confucius, really cast down, said, ‘Can I ask you about truth?’ ‘True truth is simple purity at its most perfect,’ replied the stranger. ‘To be without purity, to be without sincerity means you cannot move other people. So if you fake mourning and weeping, then no matter how thoroughly you do this, it’s not real grief. If you make yourself act angry, even if you sound very fierce, this won’t inspire awe. If you force yourself to be affectionate, no matter how much you smile, you cannot create harmony. True grief may make no sound but is really sorrowful; true anger, even if there is no manifestation of it, creates awe; true affection doesn’t even need to smile but creates harmony. When someone has truth within, it affects his external spirit, which is why truth is so important. In terms of human relationship it works thus: ‘in service of parents, it is affection and filial piety; in service of rulers, it is loyalty and integrity; in celebrations, it is enjoyable pleasures; in conducting the mourning rituals, it is sadness and grief. ‘For in loyalty and integrity, service is all-important; in celebration, enjoyment is all-important; in mourning, grief is all-important; in service of parents, making them content is all-important. ‘The splendour of service doesn’t mean just doing the same thing every time. When making your parents content, you don’t worry about what to do. In getting jolly at a festival, you don’t get worked up about the crockery. In mourning at times of death, you don’t get het up over the precision of the rituals. Rituals have emerged from the common needs of the ordinary people. Truth itself comes to us from Heaven: this is how it is and it never changes. So the sage models himself upon Heaven, values truth but does not kowtow to convention. Tire fool does the opposite. He cannot take his model from Heaven and so is swayed by the mundane. He simply doesn’t know the value of truth, but is under the domination of the ordinary people and so is affected by this common crowd and is never at peace. Sadly for you, Sir, you started early in such nonsense and have only recently heard of the great Tao!’ Confucius yet again bowed twice, stood up and said, ‘Now that I have had the opportunity to meet you, I feel as if I have been blessed by Heaven. Master, if you wouldn’t be embarrassed by this, will you allow me to join those who serve you and to be taught by you, and therefore tell me where I might find your house? I want to go there to hear your teachings from you and to complete my study of the great Tao.’ The stranger replied, ‘I have heard it said that if you find someone with whom you can walk, then go with him to the deepest mysteries of the Tao. However, if it is someone you cannot walk with, and he doesn’t know the Tao, do not link yourself with him, and then you cannot be blamed. Do what you must, Sir! I will now depart from you, Sir, I will depart from you!’ With this he pushed off with his pole and went away through the reeds. Yen Yuan returned with the carriage and Tzu Lu held out the strap for Confucius to pull himself up and in, but Confucius did not look their way. He waited till the last ripples had died away and he could no longer hear the sound of the pole and then he returned and climbed into his seat. ‘I have been your servant for many years, Master,’ said Tzu Lu, running alongside the carriage, ‘but I have never before seen you behave with such awe towards another. Tire rulers of ten thousand chariots, of a thousand chariots, when they see you, Sir, they never put you in another room or treat you with anything less than the respect due to an equal, while you yourself always conduct yourself with an air of rigid politeness. Now this old fisherman stood tall before you with his pole, while you bent double like a musical chime bar, and you always bowed twice before speaking to him. Wasn’t this going a bit too far? We are all wondering about this. Why did this fisherman command such respect from you?’ Confucius leaned upon the crossbar of his carriage, sighed and said, ‘Oh, Yu, it’s very hard to change you! You have studied ritual and order for so long, yet your base and mean heart has not yet been changed. Come here and I will explain! If you meet someone who is older than you and are not respectful, then this is a failure of etiquette. If you meet a worthy person and fail to offer respect, this is a lack of benevolence. If the fisherman was not a perfect man, he would not have the power to make others humble before him. If people do not humble themselves before him, they are lacking in sincerity and thus are unable to obtain the truth, so they harm themselves. Sadly, there is nothing worse that can befall us than the lack of such benevolence, but you alone, O Yu, risk such a calamity! ‘Furthermore, the Tao is that by which all the forms of life have life. All that lose it die. All that obtain it live. To struggle against it in practice is to face ruin. To flow with it is to succeed. So it is that where the Tao is, the sage will honour it. Now the old fisherman most certainly has the Tao, so how could I risk not showing respect to him?’ CHAPTER 32 Lieh Yu Kou Lieh Yu Kou— was on his way to Chi but he returned before he got halfway down the road. He encountered Po Hun Wu Jen, who said, ‘Why have you come back?’ ‘I was frightened.’ ‘What scared you?’ ‘I went into ten soup shops en route,’ said Lieh Yu Kou, ‘and in five of them I was served before anyone else.’ ‘Really? But what exactly alarmed you?’ said Po Hun Wu Jen. ‘Even if you try to hide the inner true nature of someone, the body gives it away like a traitor and shines out. Once this is external, it overpowers the hearts of people and makes them treat you, for petty reasons, like someone who is a noble or venerable. From such actions all sorts of problems arise. Now, soup sellers don’t make much in the way of profit and have only their soup to sell. If such people, with so little to offer and so little power, treat me thus, imagine what would happen were I to meet the lord of ten thousand chariots! With his body worn out by the concerns of state, and his wisdom stretched by its governance, he would offer all this to me and ask me to solve his problems! That is what alarmed me.’ ‘How very perceptive of you!’ said Po Hun Wu Jen. ‘However, given who you are, people will still come to you!’ Shortly after this, Po Hun Wu Jen went to see Lieh Tzu’s home and found the doorway full of the shoes of his many visitors. Po Hun Wu Jen stood facing north, with his staff upright in his hand and his chin resting upon it, until his chin became creased. He stood there some time, then he went away without a word. Tire porter at the gate went in to Lieh Tzu and told him about this. Lieh Tzu grabbed his shoes and ran barefooted after Po Hun Wu Jen, catching up with him at the outer gate, where he said, ‘Sire, having come here, are you now going to go away without giving me some medicine?’ ‘It is pointless,’ he replied. ‘I said to you that people would crowd round you, and so they have. It is not your fault that they come, but you cannot keep them away, so what use was my warning? It is the way your extraordinary attributes shine forth which attracts people to you and makes them happy. But if you so move others, this in turn disturbs you to the very roots of your being. But there is nothing more to be said about this. The sort of people who gather round you will never tell you this. The silly words they speak actually poison a person. There is no comprehension and no conception of this among them, so who can make this clear to you? The clever person labours on and the wise person is distressed. However, someone without skills looks for nothing. He eats what he wants and wanders around, drifting like an empty boat, aimlessly, vacuously.’ A man of Cheng called Huan studied texts at a place called Chiu Shih. After three years Huan had become one of the Literati and just as the Yellow River spreads its blessing over nine miles on either side, so did he bestow blessings upon the three levels of his family relations. He helped his younger brother study the teachings of Mo, and he and his brother debated, though his father always took the brother’s side. Ten years later Huan committed suicide. He appeared to his father in a dream saying, ‘It was I who had your son trained as a Mohist. Why don’t you acknowledge this by taking a look at my grave where I have become the berries on the cypress?’ When Creation blesses someone, it blesses not that which is human in the person, but that which is from Heaven. In the same way was Huan’s brother guided to be a Mohist. When Huan thought he was the one who made his brother a Mohist, he despised his own family and was like the people of Chi who try to prevent others from also drinking from the well. It is said that nowadays, in this generation, we have only people like Huan. Tliey act as if only they are right. However, note that people who have Virtue do not even know this, and imagine how much more this is true of those who have the Tao! In the past people like Huan were known as those who have escaped Heaven’s retribution. The sage rests where there is true rest and does not rest when there is no real rest. Tlie bulk of humanity rests when there is no real rest and does not know how to truly rest. Chuang Tzu said, ‘To know the Tao is easy, not to speak about it is hard. Knowing and not saying, this is to aspire to the Heavenly. Knowing and saying, this is to be subject to the human element, hi the past people paid attention to the Heavenly, not to the human.’ Chu Ping Man studied how to slay the dragons— under Cripple Yi and it cost a thousand pieces of gold, which was all his family had. Three years later he had mastered the art but he could never use it. The sage sees what is thought to be necessary as unnecessary, so there is no call for warfare. The ordinary person sees what is not necessary as necessary, with the result that there is frequent warfare. Tire one who looks to warfare always resorts to it in any situation. But relying upon warfare leads to destruction. The comprehension of the petty person does not go beyond the external wrappings and the ephemera of gifts, business cards and letterheads. He exhausts his spirit on that which is insignificant and vacuous, but wants to be seen as leading others to the Tao and as bringing all things into the great Oneness. Someone like this will most certainly get lost in time and space. His body is trapped and can never know the great beginning. Tire perfect man, in contrast, concentrates his spirit upon that which was before the beginning and rests in the strangeness of being in the fields of nothingness. Like water he flows without form, or pours out into the great purity. How pathetic you are! Those of you whose understanding is no greater than the tip of a hair, and who do not understand the great peacefulness! A man from Sung, called Tsao Shang, was sent by the King of Sung as an ambassador to the state of Chin. When he left Sung he was given only a few carriages. However, the King of Chin was so delighted with him that he gave him a hundred more. On returning to Sung he met Chuang Tzu and said, ‘Living in poor streets of an impoverished village, making sandals and starving, with a shrivel led neck and a sickly face, this I cannot stand! But being in the confidence of a ruler of ten thousand chariots and being given a hundred of them, this I enjoy and am good at.’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘Well now. When the King of Chin falls ill, he summons his doctor who lances die ulcer or squeezes the boil and as a reward receives one carriage. Hie doctor who applies a suppository gets five carriages. Hie lower down the service, the more carriages given. So, Sir, I assume you must at least have been licking his piles to have been given so many carriages? Be gone, Sir!’ Hie Duke Ai of Lu asked Yen Ho, ‘If I were to take Confucius as the main prop of my government, would the problems of the country be resolved?’ ‘To take on Confucius would be dangerous!’ replied Yen Ho. ‘He likes to decorate feathers and to use flowery language in his work and cannot differentiate the trunk of issues from the mere branches. He is willing to distort true nature in order to convince the people, and yet he has no understanding of what he is doing. He draws inspiration from his own heart and judges according to his own lights, so how could you put such a person in charge? Do you approve of him? Could you entrust things to him? If you do so, it is a mistake. Surely a person who makes the people turn away from reality and learn what is hypocritical is no fit model for the people. If you care about the future, you should forget this idea.’ It is hard to govern people and not to forget yourself, for this is not Heaven’s model. Merchants and traders won’t want to be associated with someone like this. Hreir lowly position might make you think they are the same, but such a charge rankles with them. Punishments on the outside are inflicted with metal and wood instruments. Punishments to the inner person are inflicted by agitation and excess. When minor people encounter external punishments, the instruments of metal and wood deal with them. When they encounter internal punishments, it is the yin and the yang that consume them. Only the true man can avoid both external and internal punishments. Confucius said, ‘Die human heart is more dangerous than mountains or rivers, more difficult to know than Heaven. Heaven has its seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter, and its times for sunrise and sunset. But humanity has a thickly cloaked exterior and its true nature is hidden deep within. So it is that someone can have an honest face but be miserly; can be truly gifted but be without skills; seem featherbrained but actually have a very clear plan; appear firm but be bent; look slow but be fast. Thus, those who gather around righteousness as if it were there to slake their thirst will later flee from righteousness as if it were a fire. ‘So it is that the nobleman observes those working for him at a distance and considers their loyalty, and observes them close at hand to consider their respect. He tests their skills by confronting them with difficult issues and tests their knowledge by suddenly asking a question. He tests their faithfulness by getting their commitment and he tests their benevolence by giving them wealth, while he tests their fortitude and resolve by informing them of coming dangers. By getting them drunk he tests their ability to take care of themselves and by mixing them with all manner of people, he tests their chastity. By these nine tests, it is possible to uncover the unworthy ones.’ When Cheng Kao Fu— received the first grade of office, he bowed his head. When he received the second grade, he bent his back. On receiving the third grade, he doubled over and ran along the wall, hugging it. Who would not have him as a model! But a common fellow, on receiving his first grade, puts on airs. On receiving his second grade, dances on top of his carriage. On his third grade, dares to address his uncles by their personal names! How far removed this is from Hsu in the time of Tang! There is nothing more dangerous than for Virtue to have a heart, but for that heart to have eyelashes that obscure vision. For if they have such eyelashes, then they can only look within and this leads to ruin. There are five evil Virtues, of which the central one is worst. What am I talking about when I say the central Virtue? The central Virtue is that which makes people think well of what they say but despise what others say. There are eight extreme conditions which limit people, three that assist and six repositories in the body. The eight things that bring trouble if someone has all eight in excess are: beauty, a good beard, height, size, strength, class, bravery and courage. Tire three that will bring advancement are: following and copying others; bowing and scraping; and ambition to be better than others. Tire six repositories are: knowledge that goes out to all things; bravery, determination and the many troubles they create; benevolence, righteousness and the many requests that arise; comprehending life in its essence - a massive task; understanding knowledge is a lesser thing; comprehending the great destiny you follow after - comprehending the lesser destiny, you are just swept along. A man went to see the King of Sung and was given ten carriages, and with the ten carriages he went and showed off with them to Chuang Tzu. Chuang Tzu said, ‘Up on the Yellow River there lives a family which earns enough to eat by weaving things out of rushes. Their son was diving in the very deepest pools when he found a pearl worth a thousand pieces of gold. His father said to him, “Bring me a stone and I will smash it to pieces. A pearl worth a thousand pieces of gold must have come from a pool nine levels deep, from under the chin of the Black Dragon. My son, to have got this pearl, the dragon must have been asleep, for had he been awake, you would have been cut to pieces, my son!” Now the kingdom of Sung, is it not really deeper than the nine levels pool; and the King of Sung, is he not really more ferocious than the Black Dragon? My boy, if you were able to get these carriages, he must have been asleep. For if the King of Sung had been awake, you would be in pieces by now, my lad!’ Someone offered Chuang Tzu a court post. Chuang Tzu answered the messenger, ‘Sir, have you ever seen a sacrificial ox? It is decked in fine garments and fed on fresh grass and beans. However, when it is led into the Great Temple, even though it most earnestly might wish to be a simple calf again, it’s now impossible!’ Chuang Tzu was dying and his followers wanted to provide a glorious funeral. Chuang Tzu said, ‘I will have Heaven and Earth as my shroud and coffin; the sun and moon as my symbols of jade; the stars for my pearls and jewels; all the forms of life as my mourners. I have everything for my funeral, what is there missing? What more could I need?’ His followers said, ‘We are worried, Master, that the crows and kites will eat you.’ ‘Above ground I shall be eaten by crows and kites,’ said Chuang Tzu, ‘and below ground by worms and ants. Aren’t you just being rather partisan in wanting to feed only one of these groups, so depriving the others? ‘Trying to use what isn’t equal to produce equality is to be equally unequal. Trying to prove something by something uncertain is only certain to make things uncertain. Tire person whose eyesight is clear and thinks he understands is victim to these sights, whereas the one who is guided by the spirit perceives the reality. That there is a difference between what we see with our eyes and what we know through our spirit is a wisdom from long ago. But the fool relies upon his eyes and loses himself in what is merely human, and everything he does is just a lag ad c - how sad! ’ CHAPTER 33 Governing the World There are many ways of running the world, and each of those who use a particular one considers theirs to be so good as to be incapable of improvement. In the past, this was known as the way of the Tao, but where is that now? I say, ‘There is nowhere where it is not.’ You say, ‘Where does the spirit come from? Where does enlightenment emerge from?’ ‘Tire sage brings them to be and the king completes them, and the origin is the One.’ Tire one who is not cut off from his primal origin is known as the Heavenly man. Tire one not cut off from the true nature is known as the spiritual man. The one who is not cut off from the truth, is known as the perfect man. The one who views Heaven as the primal source, Virtue as the root and the Tao as a gate, and sees change and transformation as natural, such a one we call a sage. The one who makes benevolence the model for kindness, righteousness the model for reason, ritual the model for behaviour, music the model for harmony, who is content in benevolence and pity, we call such a one a nobleman. This is how the people should be governed: laws should be seen as defining difference, and their titles as indications of status. Comparison should be used to provide evidence and enquiry to establish decisions, so that they can be numbered one, two, three, four and so on, and thus give the hundred ranks their ranking. One should be observant in business, and should ensure adequate food and clothing, and that the cattle are fed and cared for and the grain stored. One should be concerned for the old, the infirm, the orphans and the widow. Tire people of the past were so thorough! They were equals in spirituality and enlightenment, they were as all- seeing as Heaven and Earth. Tlrey tended all the forms of life and unified the whole world. Their care reached all people, they clearly perceived the roots of all things and they were attentive to even the smallest details. Their influence extended to the six directions and the four quarters, so that small and great, coarse or fine, there was no place that they were not. Their insights, as discernible in their laws and practices, were passed down from age to age in their codes and in the Histories. In Tsou and Lu— there are scholars, gentlemen of the girdled class who can understand what is to be found in the Book of Poetry and the Book of History, in the Rites and the Music. The Book of Poetry has the Tao of the will, the Book oj History has the Tao of events, the Rites has the Tao of conduct, the Music has the Tao of harmony. The Book oj Changes has the Tao illustrating the yin and yang and the Spring and Autumn Annals has the Tao of titles and procedures. These teachings are found across the face of the whole world, and in China they are mentioned by many of the hundred schools of philosophy of the Tao. Everywhere under Heaven is in great disarray, the worthy ones and the sages have no light to shed, the Tao and Virtue are no longer united, and the whole world tends to see one aspect and think that they have grasped the whole of it. They can be compared to the ear, the eye, the nose and the mouth. Each has its own light to shed but you cannot interchange their functions. Likewise, the hundred schools of philosophy have their points and each has its time of usefulness. Though this is true, nevertheless not one of them covers the whole truth, just like the scholar who lived in one corner. He tried to judge whether Heaven and Earth are beautiful, to grasp the principle of all forms of life, to calculate the worth of the ancient wise men. Yet it is rare indeed for one such as he to be able to encompass all the beauty of Heaven and Earth, or to describe that which is spiritual and clear. As a result, the Tao which is within the sage and which manifests itself externally in the king fell into obscurity and was dulled, was constrained and became lost. Tire people of the whole world just followed their own desires and were their own judges. Sadly, the hundred schools persist, fated to never be able to unite again, or agree. Tire scholars of these later generations did not see the purity of Heaven and Earth united, and the great wisdom of the ancient ones of the Tao was scattered and torn by the world. To show no model of extravagance to later generations, to leave all forms of life unaffected, to avoid embroidering ritual, to rule oneself by strict regulation in one’s behaviour so as to be ready to deal with crises, thus helping other generations: this was what the ancients took to be the Tao. Mo Ti and Chin Hua Li heard of their opinions and were pleased. But they pursued them to great excess and and were too particular in applying the opinions to themselves. Mo Tzu wrote a treatise called ‘Against Music’, and united this with ‘Moderation in Economies’. He did not believe in singing during life, nor in mourning at death. He taught universal love and universal consideration. He forbade warfare and would allow no space in his Tao for anger. He thought study good and did not disagree with others. But he did not agree with the primal kings but rather attacked the rituals and music of the ancient times. Tire Yellow Emperor had Hsien Chih music, Yao had Ta Chung, Shun had Ta Shao, Yu had Ta Hsia, Tang had Ta Huo, King Wen had the music of the Pi Yung Hall and King Wu and Duke Chou created Wu music. In ancient times the rituals for mourning outlined exactly what was due to the noble and the ordinary, the highest and the lowest. Tire coffin of the Son of Heaven had seven layers, those of the nobles five layers, those of the prime ministers had three layers, those of officers two layers. Now Mo Tzu only said there should be no singing during life, and at death no mourning. For everyone he would just have a plain wooden coffin, three inches thick and with no outer case. If he teaches people this, he can have no real affection for people. If he did this for Iris own funeral, then he does not have much affection for himself. Yet this has not led to the ignoring of Mo Tzu’s Tao. Far from it, even though people continue to sing when he says no singing, people continue to feel like crying when he says no crying, people still want to be happy after he has said no happiness. Is what he advocates really human? Alife that is laborious and a death which is insignificant: this Tao is one of great thoughtlessness. Making people sad and depressed by practices which are hard to follow cannot be seen as the Tao of the sage. It is universally against human nature, and the whole world rejects it. Even if Mo Tzu himself could stand it, how can the rest of the world be expected to live this way? With the whole world so opposed, this Tao has wandered far from the ways of the real king. Mo Tzu thought a great deal of his Tao, saying, ‘In the past, when Yu held back the waters and controlled the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, he sent them to flow through the lands of the four barbarian tribes and the nine provinces. Urey were united with the three hundred rivers, the three thousand streams and the smaller streams too many to number. Yu himself carried the sandbags and dug with the spade, until he had united all the rivers of the whole world, and there was no hair left on his legs from his knee to his ankle. He washed his hair in the pouring rain and combed it with the harsh winds, while creating the ten thousand states. Yii was a great sage, but he wore out his body for the sake of the whole world.’ Tire result is that in later years Mohists wear skins and coarse cloth, wooden shoes or hemp sandals, never stop night or day, and view such fervent activity as their highest achievement. Urey say, ‘Anyone who cannot do this is not acting in the spirit of Yu and is not worthy of being called a Mohist.’ The followers of Hsiang Li Chin and the disciples of Wu Hou and the Mohists of the south such as Ku Huo, Chi Chih, Teng Ling Tzu and so forth, all recite the texts of Mo, but they argue and do not agree on these texts, calling each other heretical Mohists. In their debates they argue about hard and white, about sameness and difference, and they dispute the use of terms such as odd and even. They consider the main teacher of their group as a sage, each hoping that their particular one will be seen as the teacher by later generations. These same arguments continue up to the present time. Mo Ti and Chin Ku Li had perfectly good ideas but were wrong in what they proceeded to do. They have made later generations of Mohists feel that they have to labour on until there is not a hair left on their calves, their driving ambition being to outdo each other. This is the height of their folly and the low point of their unity. Indeed, it is true that Mo Tzu was one of the good of this world and you will not find his equal. He was weary and worn, but do not despise him for he was a scholar of ability. This should be the purpose of the heart: not to be trapped by convention, nor to be concerned with adornments; not to be thoughtless in treating others, nor to be in opposition to the crowd; to want the whole world to live in peace and balance for the sake of the people’s unity, to look to the needs of others as well as yourself. This should be the purpose of the heart and this is what the ancient ones considered to be the Tao’s way. Sung Chien and Yin Wen heard of these ideas and were pleased. They made their hats in the shape of Hua Mountain as their distinguishing feature. In their intercourse with all forms of life, they accepted difference as given. They discoursed upon the nature of the heart and they sought a unity proceeding from the heart. By such concerns they sought to unite everyone in joyfulness and to harmonize all within the boundaries of the oceans. Their greatest desire was to see this achieved everywhere, by their efforts. Urey could face insults and not be disturbed; they struggled to save the people from warfare; they aimed to prevent aggression and to silence arms and thus to deliver future generations from violence. In pursuit of such ideals, they walked across the whole world, advising the high and teaching the low, and even though the world would not listen, they just continued even more strongly and would not give up. So it is said that high and low were tired of seeing them, but they never gave up putting themselves forward. Indeed, this is so, but they did too much for others and too little for themselves, saying, ‘All that we ask and need is five pints of rice and this will suffice.’ It is inconceivable that the Master had enough by this means. Even though the followers were hungry, they never forgot the whole of the world, persevering day and night without ceasing, saying, ‘We have to take care to preserve lives!’ What wonderful aims these masters have for their generation! Urey say, ‘Hie nobleman does not scrutinize others too harshly, nor does he take from others to adorn himself.’ If an idea does not benefit the world, then they see that it’s not worth struggling with. Hiey see banning aggression and ridding the world of violence as their major area of concern, and see diminishing their own desires and feelings as an internal goal. Hiey sought this both on a grand scale and a small scale, both in subtle things and in the more common way, and when they had perfected this, they stood tall. This was the way of the ancient one who followed the Tao: public-spirited and completely non-partisan, flexible and not fixed upon one idea, open-minded and without a guide, following others without a second thought, not casting anxious glances, not using knowledge to make plots, not choosing one thing rather than another, instead going with all: this was the way of the ancient one who followed the Tao. Peng Meng, Tien Pien and Shen Tao— heard of these ideas and were delighted. They believed that all the various forms of life are held in the Tao. They said, ‘Heaven can overarch but not support; Earth can support but not overarch; the great Tao embraces all but cannot distinguish between them. We conclude that all forms of life have that which they can do and that which they cannot do. It is said, if you select, you abandon comprehensibility; if you contrast, then you lose perfection. But the Tao leaves out nothing whatsoever.’ So it was that Shen Tao put aside knowledge and any concern for himself, went where he could not avoid going, seeking always to be without interest and pure in all that he did, seeing this as being true to the Tao, and saying that understanding is not understanding, thus viewing knowledge as dangerous and struggling to be rid of it. He was without ambition and so he was carefree, taking no responsibility and scorning those in the world who praised the worthy. Drifting and unconcerned, he did nothing and laughed at those whom the world saw as sages. Cutting corners, smoothing the rough, he flowed and twisted with all things. He ignored right and wrong and simply worked at avoiding trouble. Having nothing to gain from knowledge or reflection, and with no understanding of what was going on, he went through life with a lofty ease and disregard. He walked only when he was pushed, and only started when he was forced to. He was like a whirlwind, like a feather spinning round and round, like the turning of a grindstone. He had integrity, he was without any wrong, without failure or excess, whether in action or in stillness. How was this possible? Those who are without knowledge are free from the tribulations of self-promotion, from the entrapment that arises from working with knowledge. Whether moving or resting, he never left the proper path, and throughout his life was never praised. I would like to be one without knowledge, not trapped in the teachings of a sage. Such people, like the very earth itself, never lose the Tao. People in positions of authority laughed at him together, saying, ‘Shen Tao’s Tao is not for the living but is the way for those who are already dead, which is why they are so odd.’ Tien Pien was the same, for he studied under Peng Meng and understood that one should not make distinctions. Peng Meng’s master said, ‘Tire Tao of the scholars of old taught that nothing is right and nothing is wrong. Their essence was like the wind; how can it be expressed in words?’ But he was always opposed to the views of others, never seeing things as they saw them, and he was prone to cut corners. What they named the Tao he said was not the Tao, and what was called right he always had to argue might be wrong. Peng Meng, Tien Pien and Shen Tao did not properly understand the Tao. Nevertheless, they had all had the chance to hear about it. To consider the origin as pure and that which emerges as coarse; to view accumulation as inadequate; to live by oneself in peace and with spiritual clarity, this is what in ancient times was known as the way of the Tao. Kuan Yin— and Lao Tzu heard these ideas and were pleased. They founded their system upon the belief that nothing exists ultimately, and they were guided in this by the notion of the great one. Gentleness and weakness combined with humility and self-emptying were its distinguishing features and its core was the prevention of harm to all forms of life. Kuan Ym said, ‘One who does not exist in self sees others as they really are. His movement is like water, his calmness like a mirror, his response is like that of an echo. When he is empty, he seems to have forgotten; unmoving, he is as still as water; peaceful, he is as one with all; he views success as failure, and he never tries to take the lead but always to follow.’ Lao Tzu said, ‘Know the masculine but hold to the feminine, become the valley of the whole world. Know your purity but hold to the impure, be a channel for the whole world.’ Most people choose to be first, he chooses to be last and says that he will accept the dregs of the whole world. Most people choose fulfilment; he chooses to be empty. He has never hoarded, so has more than enough; he prefers to be alone, yet has many around him. Living by actionless action, he mocks at ability. While others look for good fortune, he feels free to bend and twist. He says that he only wishes to avoid blame. He considers what is most profound to be the core and takes what is most severe as his guide, and he says that which is strong will break and that which is sharp becomes blunted. He is always open- handed and tolerant with all and seeks no harm to any. This can be called perfection. Kuan Yin and Lao Tzu! Truly great men of the past! The blank and the motionless have no form; change and transformation are never at rest; what is death? what is life? what is the companionship of Heaven and Earth? where does the spirit of clarity go? when forgotten, what becomes of it? All forms of life are gathered around us, yet none of them is our destination. In the past people thought this was the way of the Tao. Chuang Tzu heard of these ideas and was pleased. He taught them using strange and mysterious expressions, wild and extraordinary phrases, and terms which had no precise meaning. He taught what he believed, yet was never partisan, nor did he view things from just one perspective. He saw the whole world as lost in foolishness and thus incapable of understanding anything sensible. Therefore he used supposed words to offer a constant insight, quotes to have a ring of truth and flowing words to give greater depth. He came and went with the spirit of Heaven and Earth but he never viewed all the forms of life as being beneath him. He did not dispute right and wrong, but dwelt alongside his generation and its ways. Some might consider his writings insignificant, for they are inoffensive and fluent. But though his words are varied, in amongst the twists and turns there is more than might be expected, for there is much which is true and eternal. He travels with the Creative above and he makes friends with those below who view life and death as meaningless and who see neither beginning nor end. His vision of the origin is vast and penetrating, ever expanding and open-minded, unshackled by anything or anybody. It can be said that he is in accord with the Author of the Tao, and soars to the highest heights. Indeed this is so, but he still continues to explore with us the changes and transformations that arise within all, and come from him. His teachings have never been fully appreciated, as they are difficult and subtle. Hui Shih made many efforts and all his books would fill five carriages, but his Tao was false and confused and what he said never hit the centre. Jumping from idea to idea, he would say things like: ‘The greatest thing has nothing outside it and we call this the great One. Hie smallest thing has nothing inside it and we call this the smallest One.’ Or: ‘No substance, incapable of being hoarded, yet greater than a thousand miles.’ Or: ‘Heaven is on the same level as Earth and the mountains are equal to the marshes.’ Or: ‘When the sun is in the centre, it is in the decline. That which is born is dying.’ Or: ‘That which is very similar is different from that which is only a little similar and this is called being a little different. All forms of life are similar and all differ. This we call the great similarities and differences.’ Or: ‘Tire south is limitless but has borders.’ Or: ‘Today I left for Yueh and arrived yesterday.’ Or: ‘That which is joined is separated.’ Or: ‘I know where the centre is of the whole world, north of Yen and south of Yueh.’— Or: ‘Love embraces all forms of life and Heaven and Earth are of One.’ Hui Shih made these great statements to help the whole world to be more creative in debate and other speakers throughout the world were delighted to follow his lead, saying, ‘An egg has feathers, a chicken has three feet, Ying has the whole world, a dog could be called a sheep, horses have eggs, a toad has a tail, fire is not hot, mountains emerge from the mouth, chariot wheels never touch the ground, eyes cannot see, pointing is not the same as being there, being there is not the culmination, the tortoise is longer than the snake, a T-square does not work, a compass doesn’t make circles, chisels do not fit into handles, a bird’s shadow never moves, swift though the arrowhead is, at times it is neither moving nor still, a dog is not a dog, a bay horse and a black ox make three, a white dog is black, a motherless colt never had a mother, if you have a pole one foot long and every day you cut off half, ten thousand generations will not exhaust it.’ These are the sorts of sayings speakers came up with in response to Hui Shih, rattling on in this fashion eternally to the end of their lives. Huan Tuan and Kung Sun Lung are to be numbered amongst these. Urey were more vocal than others, overwhelming the hearts of the people and changing their ideas. But they could not subdue people’s hearts, they just encompassed them with argument. Hui Shih drew upon his knowledge every day to argue with these speakers, these talkers from around the world, as can be seen from the examples above. Indeed, Hui Shih’s style of speaking illustrates that he thought himself the very best, saying that Heaven and Earth are also equal! Shih certainly maintained his vigour, but unfortunately he had no real skill. In the south there was a man with very odd views called Huang Liao, and he enquired why Heaven and Earth didn’t fall or collapse, where the wind and rain come from, likewise the thunder and lightning. Hui Shih didn’t try to avoid these questions and, without pausing to think, he charged right in and gave answers to everything affecting all the forms of life, without ceasing, with no end of words. Nevertheless, he feared he hadn’t said enough, so he began embroidering his answers with fantastic theories. If he spoke contrary to what others thought, he saw this as confirmation of the veracity of what he said and was delighted at the fame he gained. In this he was indeed like all other such speakers. He was weak in terms of true Virtue and forceful in his engagement with what is external. He trod a dark and confused path. From the perspective of the Tao of Heaven and Earth, we can see that Hui Shih’s ability was simply like the buzzing of a mosquito or gnat. What was the real use of it? Certainly, he can be credited with founding one school of thought, though to be honest I have to say he needed to follow the Tao more! Hui Shih found no sense of achievement in doing this. Instead he persisted in trying endlessly to diagnose all the forms of life, until finally all he is remembered for is his fame as a debater! Poor old Hui Shih! With all that talent he never obtained any significant achievement. Racing after the multitude of things in this world and never returning, he was indeed like someone who tries to have the last word with an echo, or who tries to show that you can outrun your shadow. What a shame! 1. The Illustrated Tao Te Ching, translated by Man Ho Kwok, Martin Palmer and Jay Ramsay, Element Books, 1993, p. 27. 2. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China , Cambridge University Press, 1956, volume II, p. 35. 3. The Illustrated Tao Te Ching, p. 137. 4. Mythological figure, reputed to have lived to a great age. 5. The greatest of the Sacred Mountains of China, believed to be the birthplace of creation and humanity. 6. Philosopher who taught simple living and pacifism. 7. One of the three great ‘Taoist’ writers, along with Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. 8. One of the five original Emperors of Chinese mythology and pre-history. Amodel of Confucian wisdom. 9. A hermit who, according to legend, refused to take over the kingdom. 10 . Acritic of Confucius, known as ‘the Madman of Chu’. 11. Shun took over the kingdom from Yao and is another model ruler. 12. Afamous musician. 13. This passage plays on the use of positive and negative signifiers in Chinese characters. 14 . Hie greatest of the five original Emperors of Chinese mythology, a symbol of wisdom and civilization. 15 . Two very ancient forms of music. 16 . Amputation of one foot was a common form of punishment for criminals. 17. The favourite follower of Confucius. 18 . Chi eh is the archetypal evil ruler who murdered his ministers when they tried to control him. 19 . Pi Kan tried to restrain the last Shang Emperor’s excesses. 20 . Two primordial founder figures. Fu Hsi is credited with discovering the eight Trigrams and with inventing writing. 21 . Abook of rules and proverbs. 22 . Figures from the history of the fifth century BC. 23 . Prime Minister of Cheng, died 522 BC. 24 . Hie most famous archer of Chinese mythology. 25 . Mutilated as a punishment for crime. 26 . A formal title for the Emperors, marking their special relationship with Heaven. 27. Adisciple of Confucius. 28 . Historical figures who were either reformers or upholders of the status quo, but who were all killed or committed suicide. 29 . Hie following characters are all from the earliest myths of China. 30 . Primal mother figure, an early Heavenly goddess, later adopted as a major deity in Taoism. 31 . A famous sword belonging to King Ho Lu (c. 500 BC) of Wu. 32 . One of the five original Emperors of mythology, a model of Confucian piety. 33 . Amythological ruler of antiquity. 34 . Hie five vital organs of early Chinese medicine are the liver, lungs, heart, kidneys and spleen, and are linked to the five elements: water, wood, fire, earth and metal. 35 . Models of benevolence and righteousness in Confucian teachings. 36 . Yang taught hedonism, while Mo Tzu taught love of all. 37. Hsia, Shang and Chou (2200-600 BC). 38.2255 BC. 39 . Ruler who abdicated to his brother and then refused to serve an unjust ruler, so dying of starvation. 40. Famous for Iris wickedness. 41. A famous trainer of horses. 42 . Mythological ruler of ancient China. 43 . Advisers who tried to reform their rulers and were executed for their pains. 44 . At a great feast in Chu the Lord of Lu gave poor-quality wine, while the Lord of Chao (whose capital was Han Tan) gave good wine. Tire steward, having some desire for mischief, swapped them. The ruler of Chu took offence at the poor wine, attacked Chao and sacked Han Tan. 45 . All mythological rulers or sages of antiquity. 46 . Traditionally, this position and direction was only taken by Emperors. 47 . The sun. 48. Tire moon. 49 . Chi - the breath which animates all life and, when used up, causes death. 50. Confucius’ own name. 51 . At the annual re-enactment of the Chou conquest of the Shang in the twelfth or eleventh century BC. 52 . Name for the model Emperor Shun. 53 . Hie three armies are the standard subdivisions of a feudal state, and the five weapons are the spear, halberd, axe, shield and bow. 54 . Hie five sentences are branding or tattooing, cutting off the nose, cutting off the feet, castration and execution. 55 . It is unclear what the twelve were, but they certainly include the Six Classics of Confucianism. 56 Fire, wood, earth, metal, water. 57 . Models used at sacrifices to distract evil spirits, which were thrown away afterwards. 58 . The two main categories of mythological early rulers of China. The Three August Ones were Fu Hsi, Nu Kua and Shen Nung. The Five Emperors were the Yellow Emperor, Cliuan Hsu, Kao Hsin, Yao and Shun. 59 . This paragraph describes the last rulers of the Three Dynasties and their successors or usurpers. 60 . Hie Three Kings were the founders of the Three Dynasties Hsia, Shang and Chou. 61 . King Ki Kuai of Yen was urged to imitate Yao and to abdicate. He did this in 316 BC and Tzu Chi, his minister, took over, but it was a disaster. 62 . He launched an assault on his relatives, who ruled Chu, trying to emulate the Dynastic founders Tang (of the Shang) and Wu (of the Chou), but he failed. 63 . Apparently they thought he was an enemy of theirs called Yang Huo. 64 . A philosopher ridiculed by Chuang Tzu as one who argues about the difference between ‘hard’ and ‘white’. 65 . Author of a ‘Taoist’ text, now lost. 66 . Traditional title for the remarkable flourishing of different schools of philosophy between the sixth and fourth centuries BC. 67. Used for divination and oracles. 68 . Wu Tzu Hsu tried to alert his master the King of Wu that a neighbouring kingdom would invade. In the end the King grew to distrust Tzu Hsu and made him commit suicide in 484 BC. 69 . All symbols or places of immortality. 70. Minister of Chi c. 650 BC, admired by Confucius. 21. Sometimes counted as two of the Three August Ones, but more often as mythological progenitors of the Chinese and their civilization. 72. This entire paragraph assumes traditional Chinese notions of how different species emerge as transmutations of other species. 73 . Despotic ruler of Chi 684-643 BC. 74 . Chief Minister of Duke Huan, who held him in very high esteem. 75 . In the Chinese, all the ghosts have specific names, which I have omitted to make the paragraph easier to read! 76 . Historical figure, c. 569 BC. 77 Formal ritual music. 78 Hsiung I Liao of Chu lived c. 480 BC. 79 Ai of Lu. 80 . Symbol of authority as a minister. 81 . Prince Pi Kan was murdered by the despot Chou, last ruler of Shang. This action was considered one of the reasons why the Shang Dynasty fell. 82 . A remarkable politician who won freedom for the state of Wei, c. 400 BC. 83 . A seventh-century BC minister who was taken prisoner when his state fell. He became a slave on a farm, but eventually rose to power again. 84 . His family tried to kill him, but he would not seek revenge when in power. 85 . Father of Wu who founded the Chou Dynasty. According to tradition, King Wen wrote the commentaries on the sixty-four hexagrams of the / Clung. 86. The heart and mind. 87 . Ping is the title of the philosopher Kung Sang Lung. 88 . A gatekeeper who could not run away was more valuable, so they were deliberately mutilated. 89 . Chief Minister of Chi who actually controlled the state, but was admired for his respect for the hermit Tzu Chi. 90 . Both men displayed coolness in times of trouble, and by their calm actions, not saying a word, stared down trouble. 91 . The beak refers to the chattering of birds - noisy conversation. 92 . i.e., tilings come to me, although I have done nothing to deserve them. 93. Slaves were usually doormen, and one who could not run away was the most valuable. 94 . King of Yueh who was overthrown by invaders and retreated to the mountain with his minister Chung. They won back the kingdom, but the King then feared Chung and made him commit suicide. 95 . Pretended to be mad in order to escape the wrath of Chou, the last Shang Emperor. 96 . A crony of Chou. 97. Amodel of filial piety, persecuted by his stepmother. 98 . Another model of filial piety, hated by his father. 99. Ajewel was placed in the mouth of a corpse to help pay its way through the Underworld. 100. A ‘Taoist’ teacher - not Lao Tzu. 101 . Heat was applied to the holes and the resulting cracks were read as prototype characters which furnished an answer to questions asked of the gods or ancestors. 102 . All the preceding instances of virtuous rulers wishing to abdicate in favour of sages, wise advisers or ministers, are drawn from history or mythology, and many have been explained more fully earlier. 103 . Founder of the Chou state. He is mentioned in the Book of Songs in similar terms as a model of wise kingship. 104 . The Sacred Mountain of Chou, site of the original oracles which form the I Ching. 105 . Hie country was invaded by Wu, but he regained his kingdom within a year, in 506 BC. 106 . One of Confucius’ followers, famous for not being bothered by Iris poverty. 107 . One of Confucius’ followers, renowned for his wealth. 108 . Ancient ritual hymns. 109 . Kung Po ruled for fourteen years, then in 828 BC retired to Kung Hill as a hermit. 110 . He overthrew the tyrant ruler Chieh, last king of the Hsia Dynasty, and founded the Shang Dynasty. Ill , c. eleventh century BC. 112 . Tliis describes traditional ways of concluding a contract by smearing it, and the parties to it, with blood from a sacrifice. 113 . The following paragraphs describe traditional myths of the founding of civilization by, amongst others, the Three August Ones. 114 . A follower of Confucius, previously renowned for his fighting abilities. 115 . Yao murdered his son; Shun exiled his mother’s youngest brother; Yu worked without ceasing for twelve years to harness the floods of the Yellow River and damaged his health as a result. 116 . Because his father stole a sheep. 117 . Because to do so he would have had to indict his father. 118 . Sun, moon and stars. 119 . Hie full name of Lieh Tzu - see p. xiv. 120 . Study the Tao. 121 . An ancestor of Confucius, eighth century BC. 122. Home states of Mencius and Confucius. 123 . Shen Tao is known as an originator of certain Legalist concepts. 124 . Hie traditional name of the Gatekeeper to the West, who asked Lao Tzu to write the Tao Te Ching before he left China for good. 125. Extreme north and extreme south. Index Actionless action; true Tao not to be talked about, xjji, xx i Actionless action (Wu Wei), 80, 83-4 . 92- 3, 103,107,150, 187-9 . 195 . 208 ‘Against Music’ (Mo Tzu), 298 Ah Ho Kan, 194 Ai (border warden), 19 Ai (Duke of Lu), 41-3 . 181 . 291 Ai Tai To, 41-2 ambition, 200 . 283 . 293 anger, 10, 31, 169-170 . 208 animals; cats, 6; deer, 17; leopards, 154 . 168 : monkeys, 13-14 . 17 . 122 . 172 . 216- 17; oxen, xv, 23, 293-4 : pigs 160 . 193 : rabbits, 242 : sacred tortoise, 146-7 : tigers, 32-3 : weasels, 6. See also dogs; horses Ant Hill, 228 Apricot Tree Altar, 280 archery, 183-4 . 214 argument, 19-20 . 26-7 . 67, 97-8 . 150 . 214-15 . 218 .221 August Rulers (Three August Ones), 117 . 121-2 and 124-6 . 152 and 264 n. babies, xxvii-xxviii . 200-203 beauty, 122, T75,226,268,293 beginning of the beginning, 15, 179 benevolence, 16, 57, 60, 67-70 . 79, 83, 90, 112 . 118 . 123-4 . 144, 202, 220, 257, 281, 293 bigotry, 283 birds; bird of ease and emptiness, 61; chickens, 233 : crane, 1, 67; dove, 2; Dried Old Bones, 154 : ducks, 67; feeding, 153 . 164 : game, 161 : goose that cackles, 167 : jackdaws, 174 : marsh pheasants, 23-4 : owl, 222 : pelicans, 240 : quail, 3; raven, 126 : Roc, 1, 2-3 : sparrow, 208 : swallow, 173-4 : tailor bird, 4; Young Phoenix, 147 birth, 49, 52, 88,142,156 Black Curtain Forest, 280 Black Dragon, 293 bodily parts, 10, 35, 53, 64, 66, 164 : control of body, 190-91 : five vital organs, 66 and n.,83, M; unity of, 201 Book ofChuang Tzu, xiv-xxx Book of History, 211 . 297 Book of Poetry, 2 11, 297 Book of Wonders, 1 books; archive of Confucius, H2; Classics, 112 and n ., 126 : value of Tao in, 114-15 bravery, 39,149,293 bureaucracy; minor officials, 68; top officials, 39-40 . See also government butchering skills, 22-3 butterflies, 20, 154 Chai (state), 43 Chan Tzu, 255-6 Chang Chi, 38-9 Chang Hung, 77 and n. Chang Jo, 212 Chang Tien Cheng, 268 Chang Wu, 229 Chang Wu Tzu, 18 Chang Yi, 159 Chang Yu, 212 change, 56-8 . 151 . 174 . 180 . 197, 201 . 214.226.230 Change (Emperor of the South Sea), 64 Chao, King of Chou, 253-4 Chao family, 205-6 Chao Hsi, Marquis of Han, 251 Chao Wen (lute player), 1_4 Chao (state), 77 n. Chaos (Emperor of the Centre), 64 chapped-hand cream, 5-6 Chen (state), 62 Cheng Kao Fu, 292 and n. Cheng of the North Gate, 118-19 Cheng, 190-1 Cheng (state), 289 Cheng Tzu Chan, 39-40 and n. Cheng Tzu Yu, 246 Chi, 2 Chi, Master, 8-9 Chi, Prince, 236 and n. Chi (state), 30, 33, 76£Z, 152, 160, 215 . 217 . 220 : attack on, 227-8 chi (breath of Heaven), 87 Chi Che, 98 Chi Chen, 233 Chi Chih, 299 Chi Chu, 27 Chi Hsien (shaman of spirits), 62-3 Chi Hsing Tzu, 161 Chi Kung, 177 Chi Mountain, 250 . 258 Chi To, 242 Chi Tzu, 227 Chiang Lu Mien, 98 Chieh (evil ruler), 27 and 50, 82, 84-5 . 144. 236 . 268-9 Chieh (state), 258 Chieh Tzu Tui, 266 Chieh Yu, 4 and 60-61 Chieh Yu (madman of Chu), 35 Chien Ho, Marquis of, 237 Chien Wu, 4, 51, 60-61 . 184 Chih, Robber, ®di, 69-70 . 77, 78, 82, 84-5 . 104 . 261-77 Chih, ruler, 141 Chih Chang Man Chi, 102-4 Chih Chi, 141 Chih Ho. 238 Chih Yu, 264 Chin (musician), 120 Chin (state), 19,99, 291 Clrin Chang (master), 54 Chin HuaLi, 298 Chin Ku Li, 300 Chin Shih, 24 Ching (woodcarver), 162-3 Ching family, 205-6 Ching Ling, 257 Ching-shou (form of music), 22 Clring Tzu, 164 Chiu Fang Yin, 219 Chiu Shih, 289 Chiu Yu insects, 154 Cho Lu (battlefield), 265 Chou, Duke of, 122 Chou Dynasty, 67 and 258-9 Chou (Shang Emperor), 27 and 144 . 236 . 268-9 Chu, King of, 146, 185,217, 225 Chu family, 206 Chu (state), 2, 35, 38,42, 77 and n., 99, 112 . 141 151, 158, 215, 217, 253; King of, 225 : travelling to, 225-34 Chu Chiao, 18 Chu Hsien, 159 Chu Jung, 79 andn. Chu Liang, 57 Chu Ping Man, 290 Chu Po Yu, 32,230 Chu To, 154 Chu Tzu Mountain, 212-13 Chu Yuan, 33 Chuan Hsu, 51 Chuang, Duke, 163 Chuang Tzu; on benevolence, 118; on carelessness, 229 : and Confucius, xx-xxi . xxviii : on desiccated skull, 151-2 : on excess of wealth, 237 : existence in dreams, 20; on forgetting one’s self, 174-5 : founder teacher, jdii; funeral, 294 : historical details, xiii-xiy . on limited nature of tilings, 194 : on location of Tao, 193 : on man without emotion, 44; on Master Teacher, 107 : mourning wife’s death, xvii . 150-51 : on perfect man, 240-41 : place in Taoist thought, xxvi-xxx : on poverty, 172-3 : refusal of status and power, xy, xxii . xxviii . 146-7 : religious backgrormd, xxviii-xxix : rivalry with Hui Tzu, xyi; scholars’ employment, 267-8 : and Tao, 290 : teaching method, 304 : understanding teaching of, 145-6 : on use of big things, 5-6 : and use of swords, 275-8 : on uselessness, 6, 240 : on wealth, 293 : writings (Chuang Tzu), xiv- xxvii Chui (craftsman), 79, 163 Chun (ancient tree), 2 Chun Mang, 101-2 Chung, Minister, 222 Chung, Mount, 84 Chung Shan, 255 Chung Yang, 79 and n. civilization, xxiii-xxv . 72-4 . 264-6 and n. Classics; Six, 126 : Twelve, 1T2 and n. Commander of the Right, 23-4 completeness, 14-15 Confucianism; arguments of, 215 : words used in, 12 Confucius (Kung Fu Tzu); appearance, 238 : archives of, 112 : on benevolence and righteousness, 1T2; on change, 174 . 197 : changing views, 245 : and Chuang Tzu, xx- xxi : on contentment, 255; criticized for being miserable, 239 : on death, 170-71 . 179 : on destiny, 30, 152 : on disfigurement, 42; on duty, 30; exiled, 171-2 . 256 . 283 : on farmer of Primal Chaos, 100 : fasting, 28-9 . 170-71 . 173 . 256 : on fate, 144 : first hearing of Tao, 122-7 : on flowing with the Tao, 256-7 : followers, 178-9 : and four evils, 283 : on government, 183 . 184-5 : on grasping Tao through argument, 97-8 : on Great Way, 26,29; on human heart, 292 : and hunchback, 158 : on innate nature of tilings, 266-7 : on judging men by their demeanour, 28; on keeping the law, 261-2 : and Lao Tzu, 124-7 : on learning, 41; on limits of wisdom, 240 : on middle way, 31-2 : as minister of government, 291 : on mourning, 55-6 : on mystery of life, 29; and old fisherman, 280- 86; on the past, 196-7 : on perfect man, 42- 3; preaching, 112 : reputation of, 268 : on responding to decrees of Heaven, 173 : and Robber Chih, 261-7 : role and influence of, 280-84 : scholarship of, 137 . 138 : singing and lute-playing, 144 . 257 . 280 : on speech without words, 217-18 : on swimming, 158- 9, 162 : on Tao, 55-6 . 181 . 191 . 257 : on time-servers, 229 : travelling methods, 120- 21 : understanding, 18, 29; on Wang Tai, 38; on words and their meaning, 31; on work, 227 : on worrying, 159-60 Country of Great Silence, 169 courage, 16, 144 . 293 craftsmanship, 72, 78, 182 Cripple Yi, 290 Crooked Man with No Lips, 43 Crows Feet, 153-4 Dark City, 84 Dark Palace, 51 death, 24, 47-8 . 49, 52, 53-4 . 55,142,149, 156 . 160 . 170-71 . 179 . 194 . 238 and n. See also mourning; reincarnation deformities, see disfigured men desiccated skull, 151-2 destiny, 30, 40, 293 difference, 12-14 . 15-16 . 38-9 . 52, 139= 44, 153-4 and «., 231, 233, 2M, 290, 303. See also right and wrong; yang; yin disfigured men, 35, 39-42 : acceptance of deformity, 53; Crooked Man with No Lips, 43; gatekeepers, 215 and n., 220 and «.; hunchback, 158 : Man with a Jug-sized Goitre, 43; Uncles Legless and Cripple, 151 : webbed toes, 66-8 divination, 83, 240 and n. dogs; barking, 233 : judging, 210-11 . 218 : straw, 120-21 and n. Doubt Curtailed, 187 dragon powers, M Dramatic (Emperor of the North Sea), 64 dreams; living in, 19; and transformation of things, 20 Dried Old Bones, 154 drunkenness, 19, 31, 157 E Lai, 236 and n. Earth, 13, 15, 89-90 . 92-104 . 113 . 117 . 150.156 Eastern Heights, 69 Eastern Ocean, 145 eight defects, 282 eight limiting conditions, 293 eight treasures, 83 elements, 66, 73, H7 and n. Emperor of the South Sea, 64 emperors, 60-4 . 96, 98, 107-9 : August Rulers, 117, 264 n.: Five Emperors, 121 and n., 124-7 . 138 . See also government; kings Endless, 195 existence, 12-14 . 15 . 19 . 20 . 22-4 . 68, 196 . 205-6 . 233-4 . 303 . See also life Fa Yen (book of rules and proverbs), 31 fame, 4, 26=7, 64, 68=9, HI, 123, 129, 138 . 149 . 182 . 225, Ml, 269-70 Fan, Lord of, 185 Fang Ming, 212 farmer; of Primal Chaos, 99-100 : of Shih Hu. 250 fate, 58, 144 Fen, river, 5 Feng Yi, 51 fish and fishing, xvi, 1, 2-3 . 50, 55, 147 . 153 . 182 . 237-8 . 239-40 . 280-6 five colours, 69, 73, 78, 104 five flavours, 69, 104 Five Lords, 51 five notes, 66, 73, 104 five smells, 104 five types of sentence, 109 and n. five types of weapons, 109 and n. five unimportant aspects, 109 five vital organs, 66 and 83, 84 forces on living things, 8-9 forecasting, 62-4 forgetting, 57-8 four evils, 282-3 friendship, 54-5 frogs, 137 Frog’s Robe, 153 Fu Hsi, 29, 51,19 and 134 Fu Yueh, 51 gate of Deepest Mystery, 86 gatekeepers, 215 and n.., 220 and 303 ghosts, 160-61 going with the flow, 172 . 256-7 Golden Tablets, 211 gourds, 5-6 government, 3-4 . 27 . 60-61 . 72-3 . 76-80 . 82-5 . 89, 92, 96=7, 102, 103, 109, m, 117 . 129 .142, 182-5 . 212, 213, 216, 219, Grand Marshal, 196 grave robbers, 238 Great Dipper, 51 Great Gorge, 101 Great Official Accord, 231-4 Great Origin, 245 Great Purity, 195 Great Temple, 294 Great Wall, 277 Great Way, 26,29, 58 greatness, 218-19 . 222-3 . 231-2 greed, 272 . 283 Green Peace plants, 154 Han, river, 99 Han (state), 251 Han Tan (capital of Chao), 77, 146 Hao, river, 147 happiness; 35, 88, 107-8 . 131 . 145 . 149- 54, 180.272 Harmonizer of Destinies, 152 harmony, 79, 117 . 127 hats; ceremonial, 5 hearing, 70, 78-9 . 83, M, 104, 201, 221 : hearts; of the people, 84-5 : purpose of, 300 Heaven; birth of, 15; blueness of, 1; boundaries, 113; breath of, 87; children of, 28; companion of, 89-90 : decrees of, 173 : disruption of ways of, 88; does it move?, 117-27 : and Earth, 92-104 : Equality of, 20; equals of, 95; establishing death and birth, 49 : in everything, 223 : examining through a narrow tube, 146 : father and mother of all life, 156 : government of everything below, 51, 213 : guidance from, 28; as guide to sages, 226 : happiness of, 107-8 : harmony of, 190 : Heaven’s Pool, 2 ; Heaven’s Tao, 106-15 : and humanity, 174 : internal, 143 : mean-minded man of, 56; as one with Earth, 13; as Primal source, 296 : produces nothing, 108 : providing shape, 44-5 : purity of, 150 : sages nourished by, 44; Sons of (Emperors), 42; as teacher, 226-7 : Treasury of, 1_6; troubled by benevolence and righteousness, 68 : understanding ways of, 47; united in, 157-8 : violation of principles of, 24; Virtue of, 112. 131 Heavenly Gate, 205 Hill of the Dark Prince, 151 Hill Slippers, 153 Histories , 126 . 297 Ho, River, 4, 35 Ho Hsu (mythological ruler), 74 and 79 and n. honour, 3, 173 . 200 . 252 horses, xxiii . 33 . 72-4 . 141 . 154 . 163 . 210- 11.213 Hsi Peng, 212 . 216 Hsi-shih (famous beauty), 13, 122 Hsia (Dynasty), 67 and n. Hsiang Cheng (wild region), 213 Hsiang Li Chin, 299-300 Hsiao Chi, 236 and n. Hsiao Po, Duke Huan, 268 Hsien, Shaman, 117 Hsien Chih music, 118-20 Hsien 'Yuan, 79 and n. Hsu Ao (ruler), L7 Hsu Ao (state), 27 Hsu Wu Kuei, 210-23 Hsu Yu (hermit), 3-4 and 6, 56-7 . 95 - 220 . 242-249.257 Hsuan, Prince of Chi, xiy Hsun Tzu (philosopher), xxviii Hu Tzu, 62-3 Hua, 95 Hua Liu, 141 Hua Mountain, 300 Hua Tzu, Master, 251 Huan, Duke of Chai, 43, 115 . 160-61 . 216 Huan (man of Cheng), 289-90 Huan Tou, 84 Huan Tuan, 306 huang chung, 66 Huang Liao, 306-7 Huang Shuang insects, 154 Huang Tzu Kao Ao, 160 Hui, Prince of Liang, xiv Hui Shih (Tzu) (philosopher and friend of Chuang Tzu), xvj, 5, 6, 14, 44, 147 . 215 . 228 . 240 . 304 . 305-7 humanity, 112 . 143 . 168 . 174 . 231 humility, 39-40 hunchback, 158 Hundred Schools of Philosophy, 143 and n. Hung Mung, 87-8 Huo, Inspector, 193 hurting others, 27 I Ching, 126 . 182 n. I Liao (Master of the Southern Market), 168-9 and 217-18 . 229 ignorance; deceived and ignorant ones, 133- 5; true, 44 insects; ants, 221 : bugs, 154 : Chiu Yu, 154 : cicada, 2; Huang Shuang, 154 : lice, 220-21 : millipedes, 143 : praying mantis, 32, 98; in reincarnation, 154 : rotting maggots, 154 jade, 73, 78, 171 and n. Jan Chiu, 196-7 Jen, Prince, 237-8 Jin Hsiang, Lord, 226 Jo (god of the North Ocean), xxi, 137 . 139 . 142 Kan Pi, 51 Keng Sang Chu, 199-208 Ki Kuai, King of Yen, 141 and n. King Chin Chi, 170 kings, 60-64 . 98, 107-9 . 138 and August Rulers, 117 . 264 ». See also emperors; government Knowing Harmony, 270-71 knowledge; of able-bodied and mutilated, 40 : from argument, 26-7 : can forget yes and no, 163 : distress at pursuit of, 80; of existence, J_4; futility of, 80; great, 138-9 : and inwardness and outwardness, 195 : knowing the unknowable, 203-5 : lack of boundary to, 22; of people, 222 : people’s longing for, 74; perfect, 77, 205 : power of, 39; rejoicing at, 83; ridding of petty, 240 : of right and wrong, 17-18 : ruining virtue, 26- 7; and shores of the Dark Waters, 187 : that goes out to all things, 293 : of those in authority, 79-80 : of what is now known, 17- 18; and Yellow Emperor’s pearl, 95. See also understanding; wisdom Kou Chien (King of Yueh), 222 Ku Chu (state), 258 Ku Huo, 299 Ku She (mountain), 4-5 Kuai Chi, Mount, 222 Kuai (ruler), 17 Kuan Chung, 160 and 216 . 268 Kuan Lung Feng, 27 Kuan Yin, 303 and n. See also Yin (gatekeeper) Kuang, Blind (musician), 78, 79 Kuang Chen, Master, 85-7 Kuang (state), 143 Kuei, Crown Prince, 275-6 Kun Hun, 212 Kun Lun mountains, 151 . 196 Kun (son of Tzu Chi), 218-20 Kung family, 280 Kung Fu Tzu, see Confucius (Kung Fu Tzu) Kung Po, 257 and n. Kung Sun Lung, 144-6 and n ., 306 Kung the True, 270 Kung Wen Hsien, 23 Kuo Hsiang, xviii-xix Lai (Master), 52, 53-4 language, see words Lao Lai Tzu, 238-9 and n. Lao Tzu; on benevolence and righteousness, 112-14 : and Confucius, 41, 122-7 : death, 24; on embracing the One, 201-2 : founder teacher, xiii; and Keng Sang Chu, 199 : lack of historical details, xiy, on people’s hearts, 84, 97-8 : on perfect man, 179-81 . 202-8 . 303 : on pride and arrogance, 247 : on Tao’s profundity, 191-3 : and Tzu Kung, 124-6 : on wandering, 229-30 : on wisdom, 61- 2; writings, xiii, xv, xxvi laws, 90, 109 . 296 Li (Master), 52, 53-4 Li Chi, 19 Li Chu, 66, 69, 78-9 . 95 Li Hsu, 79 andn. Li Lu, 79 and n. Liang (capital of Wei), 147 . 228 Liao, river, 61 Liao of the Southern Market, see I Liao Lieh Tzu (Lieh Yu Kou), Master, 2dii, xxiv- xxv, 3, 62-4 . 153 . 157 . 183-4 . 208-9 . 252- 3. 288-94 Lien Shu, 4 life; from actionless action, 150 : all forms held in Tao, 301 : boundary of, 22; comprehending, 293 : force, 142 : grasping purpose of, 156-65 : Middle Course (or Way), 22, 32; mystery of, 29; nurturing of, 22-4 : and profit, 256; study of, 159 : through breath, 241 : through scrounging, 151 : transmutation of species, 153-4 . See also existence Ling, Duke of Wei, 32,170,231 Literati, 84=5,197,214,218,238,289 Little Knowledge, 231-3 Liu Hsia Chi, 261 love, 19, 30, 112-13 . 212 loyalty, 50, U8, 236,266,2g4, 222 Lu, Marquess of, 162 . 168-9 Lu (state), 38, 41, 56, 77, 153, 159, 168 . 178 . 251-2 . 262 . 297 : learned men in, 181- 2 Lu Chu, 215 Lu Hsia Chi, 267 Lu Liang (state), 161-2 Lung Feng, 77 and ??., 236 machines, 99 Madman of Chu, 4 ??. Maker of All, 61 man, 3, 56, 139-40 . 296; spiritual, 3, 221 . 296; true, 131 . See also perfect man Man Kou Te, 267-9 Man with a Jug-sized Goitre, 43 Man without a Name, 61 Men Wu Kuei, 102 Mencius, 297 ??. Meng Sun Tsai, 56 Meng Tzu Fan (master), 54 Miao tribes, 84 Middle Course (or Way), 22, 32 Middle Kingdom, 178 Mih Tzu, xv Ming Tzu, 43 and n. misfortune, knowing how to escape, 35 Mo Ti (Tzu), 67 and 79, 104, 268, 298 . 299-300 ‘Moderation in Economics’ (Mo Tzu), 298 Mohists, 12, 84-5 . 197 . 214 . 218 . 289 . 299-300 Mou of Wei, Duke, 144-5 and 255-6 mourning, 24, 55-6 . 109 . 150-51 . 284 . 298-9 Mu, Duke of Chin, 208 mud on the nose, xvi, 215-16 Mulberry Grove Dance, 22 mushrooms, 2 Music, 126 . 297 music; ‘Against Music’ (Mo Tzu), 298 : classical, and peasants, 103 : Confucius singing and lute-playing, 144 . 257 . 280 : discussing, 211 : five notes, 66, 73, 104 : following appropriately, 133 : forgetting, 58; hearing, 78; Hsien Chih, 118-20 . 298 : Kung and Chueh notes, 215 : lute harmony, 215 : Nine Shao, 153 . 164 : pleasure in, 83; singing, 58; six tones, 66, 28; types used by emperors, 298 Nan Jung Chu, xxvii . 200-203 Nan Po Tzu Chi, 34, 51-2 Nan 'Yueh, 169 nature, 61, 68, 73, 83, 266-7 . 288 : innate, xxii-xxv . 83 . 104 . 135 . 266-7 Needham, Joseph, xiv and n. Nest-Building People, 264 Nieh Chueh, 190,220 Nine Lo, 117 Nine Provinces, 138 No Beginning, 195 No Existence, 196 no-men, 60 noblemen; ten things to be believed by, 93 non-action, see actionless action non-existing non-existence, 196 Northern Ocean, 137-8 . 143 . 147 Not Enough, 270-71 Nu Chu, 51-2 Nu Shang, 210-11 Odes of Sacrifice of Shang, 255 and n. Old Lung Chi, 194 Old Man of Tsang, 183 one-legged creature, 143 Oneness, 134 . 170 . 197 . 290 : embracing the One, 202-3 : great One and smallest One, 304 : life coming together in, 180 : seeing by the One, 52; of Tao, 218 Origin, U), 97, 107 Outline, 246 : and Shadow, 20 Pao Shu Ya, 216 parents and children, 102-3 . 118 . 171 : filial piety, 30, H8, 236 Pei (state), 122 . 247 Pei Kung She, 170 Peng Meng, 301 Peng Tsu (mythological figure of great age), 2,15,51,130 Peng Yang, 225 People Who Know how to Keep Alive, 264 perfect man, 3, 18, 157 . 164-5 . 181 . 184 . 199 : Confucius on, 42-3 : has no self, 33; heart like a mirror, 64; Lao Tzu on, 202-8 : leaving no trace of his actions, 241 : not cut off from truth, 296 : as pure spirit, 1_8; understanding Heaven and ways of humanity, 47 pettiness, 135 philosophy, schools of, 143 and «., 145 . 213-14 . 218 . 299-300 Pi I, 95,190 Pi Kan, 173 and n., 270 Pi Kan, Prince, 27, 77 and «., 236 . 266 Pien (wheelwright), 115 Pien Ching Tzu, Master, 163-4 Pien Sui, 258 Pin (state), 250 Pingists, 214-15 and n. pity, 217 Po, Duke, 141 and n. Po. Sea of. 277 Po Chang Chien (historian), 231 Po Cheng Tzu Kao, 96-7 Po Chu, 229 Po Huang, 79 and n. Po Hun Wu Jen, 39, 183-4 . 288 Po Li Hsi, 182 and «., 208 Po Lo, 72 and n., 74 Po Yi (scholar), 69-70 . 137 . 138 . 258-9 . 266 Poems, 126 Pointless, 95 Pool of Heaven, 1 poverty, 172,211,225,237, 252-5 . 268 Primal Mystery, 102 Provoke (kingdom), 228 Pu, river, 146 Pu Liang Yi, Master, 52 Pu Yi, 60 punishments, see rewards and punishments Queen Mother of the West, 51 Records, 93 Red Water, 94 reincarnation, 52, 55, 156-7 : transmutation of species, 153-4 relationships, 16, 171-2 religious background of Chuang Tzu, xxviii- xxix rewards and punishments, 82-3 . 96-7 . 109 . 111 . 291-2 right and wrong, 17-18 . 19-20 . 140 . 146 . 150.245 righteousness, 67-70 . 79, 90, 111-12 . 118 . 123-4 .144,202,267,270, 292 Rites, 126, 297 ritual, 58, 73, 83, 109, 111, U9, 120-22 . 133 . 178 . 211 : Odes of Ritual, 228 Roc (bird), 1, 2-3 sacrifice, xy, 69, 293-4 sages; activities of, 90; behaviour of, 18; definition of, 296 : destruction of, 85; as example to others, 50; Heaven as guide, 226 : and human relationships, 192 : life and death, 130-31 : poverty forgotten, 225-6 : quiescent, 106-7 : reality not known, 218 : rest where there is true rest, 290 : risking very self, 68: rule of, 101 : Sage Master, 93- 4; securing things for the great thief, 76-8 : seven, 212-13 : skilful and foolish, 208 : succeeding under Tao, 35; Tao of, 208 : understanding life, 18-19 : on the Universe, 16; as wanderers, 44; writings of, 115 . See what is necessary as unnecessary, 290 San Wei, 84 Sang Hu, Master, 54-5 . 58, 171-2 scholars, 129-30 . 134 . 137 . 181-2 . 230 . 266 . 267-8 . 299-300 seasons, 82, 110, H9, 134, 137-8 . 199 . 214.232.241 Secret Heights, mount of, 187 self; development, 129 : non-existence in, 303 : value of, 180 Shadow, 20, 246 shamanism, xxix Shan Chuan, 249 Shan Po, 159 Shaiig (Dynasty), 67 and n., 257«. Shang (state), 118 Shao Kuang Mountain, 51 She (state), 30 Sheep’s Groom, 154 ShenNung, 79 and 134 . 152 and 168 . 194.259 Shen Tao, 301-2 and 302 Shen Tu Chia, 39-40 Shen TuTi, 242.266 Shih (model of benevolence), 66 and 69, 79,82.84-5 Shih (craftsman), xvi-xvii . 33-4 . 215-16 Shih Cheng Chi, 113-14 Shih Chiu, 231 Shih Hu. 250 Shih Kuang, 14 Shou Ling, 146 Shou Yang, Mount, 69,259, 266 Shu (cripple), 35 Shu Chi (scholar) 48, 258-9 . 266 Shu Shan the Toeless, 41 Shu Tan, 258-9 Shun, Emperor, 5 and «., 102 w.. 17 . 29, 39, 51, 60, 68, 76, 84, 96, HI, JT2,125, Ml, 144 . 190 . 221 . 249-50 . 257 . 264 Shun (Master from the Eastern Wall), 177 sight, 78=9, 83, 84, 104,201, 221-2 . 294 Six Bow Cases, 211 six breaths, 87 six repositories, 293 six tones, 66, 78 snails, 228 snakes, 21, 143-4 . 154 Sou, Prince, 250-51 Southern Market, 168 . 218 . 229 Southern Ocean, 143 . 147 Southern Suburb, 217 Spirit Tower, 204 and n. Spring and Autumn Annals, 16, 126 Ssu Ma Chien; Historical Records, xiv-xv . xix . xxviii Ssu (Master), 52-3 Starlight, 196 states, 26,27, 30-31 . See also government Su Shu Ao, 184 Sui, Marquis of, 252 Sui Jen, 134 . 152 and n. suitcases, broken, 76 Sun Hsiu, Master, 163-5 Sun Shu Ao, 217-18 Sung (state), 5, 34, 87, 121, 144, 290-91 Sung (state), King of, 293 Sung Chien (Sung Jung Tzu), 3 and 300 swords; lover of, 275-8 : swordsmith, 196 ta lu pipes, 66 Ta Tao (historian), 231 TaTing, 79 and«. Tai, Noble Ruler, Emperor, 60 Tai, Mount, 2 and 15, 51 Tai Chen Jen, 228 Talk of the Villages, 231-2 Tan Fu, King, 250 and n. Tang, Emperor, 2, 125 . 141 and 145 . 197 . 208 . 227,242, 257-8 and 265,262, 298 Tang, Prime Minister of Shang, 118 Tao; abandoned, 134 : all forms of life held in, 301 : for all professions, 77; in all tilings, 205 : ancient understanding of, 300-303 : of benevolence, 257 . see also benevolence; chaos if blocked, 241 : comprehending all existence, 232-4 : Confucius and, 122-4 : discussion of, 137 : of Earth, 130 : failing, 70; flaunting, 62; flowing with, 256-7 : followers of, 50; fulfilment from, 55-6 : gaining, 251 : of governing, 111 : grasping through argument, 97-8 : Great, 193 : of Heaven, 90, 106-15 . 130 : of humanity, 90; immensity of, 93,114; knowledge without, 79-80 : location of, 193 : Mo Tzu’s, 182 . 299 : neither beginning nor end, 142 : never alters, 118 : nobility and meanness of, 140- 42; not to speak about, 290 : oneness of, 218 : pattern of, HO; perfect, 86, 193 : pivot of, 12; reality but no form, 50-51 : of righteousness, 257 : Ruler of the World, 92; of the sage, 77, 208 : of the scholar, 129-30 : slaying the dragons, 290 : as source of life, 286 : for swimming, 162 : teaching, 51-2 : that is clear is not the Tao, 1_6; true path, 67- 8; true purpose of, 252 : of true simplicity, 131 : true Tao not to be talked about, xiii . xxi : understanding, 142 . 180-81 . 187-97 : value in books, 114-15 : and Virtue, HO, 167-8 . 218 : Way, 66; written teachings, 297 : Yen Kang Tiao on, 194-5 Tao Te Ching, xiii, xv, xvii-xviii . xxi . xxvi Taoism; xiii, xx, xxviii . 3,12, 13-15 . 23, 30, 35 Te (Virtue), xxvii . 66 . 68 . 70 . see also Virtue templates, 72, 78 ten things to be believed by noblemen, 93 Teng Hang, 227 Teng Ling, 299 that and this, 12-13 . 15-16 thieves, 76-8 Three Dynasties, 67 and «., 68, 80, 88, 141 Three Kings, 138 and n. Ti people, 250 Tiao Ling, 174-5 Tien Cheng, Lord, 76-7 Tien Ho, 217 and n. Tien Kai Chih, 159 Tien Ken, 61 Tien Mou, Marquis, 227 Tien Pien, 301-2 Tien Tzu Fang, 177-85 Ting (cook), 22 transformation of tilings, 20, 153-4 . 166, 180 transmutation of species, 153-4 and n. travelling, 168-9 . 173 . 222 . 240 trees; Apricot Tree Altar, 280 : bamboo, 154 : cause of own destruction, 36; Chun, 2; cinnamon, 36; cutting down, 34-5 . 121 : huge, 167-75 : hundred-year-old, 104 : oak tree of Chu Yuan, 33; old, 167 : within own boundaries, H3; pines and cypresses, 257 : straight, 170 : useless, 6, 33-5 . 167 : varnish, 36 Truth, 143, T77, 2 84 true man, 47-9 . Tsang (state), 182 Tsang Wu, 238 Tsao Shang, 290-91 Tseng, 66 and 69, 79, 82, 84-5 Tseng Shen (Tzu), 236 and «., 246 . 254-5 Tsui Chu, 84 Tsun Lu, 79 and n. Tsung Chih (state), 27 Tsung (ruler), 17 Tung, Kuo, Master, 193 Tung Ting, Lake, 119 Tung Wu, 217 Tung Yeh Chi, 163 turtles, 145 . 239-40 Tzu Chang, 267 Tzu Chi (hermit), 127 . 218-19 . 246 Tzu Chi (War Minister), 253 Tzu Chou Chih Fu, 249 Tzu Chou Chih Po, 249 Tzu Hsu, 150 and n ., 270 Tzu Kao, Duke, 30 Tzu Kung, 54-5 . 99-100 . 124 . 152 . 254, 256.280 Tzu Lao, 229 Tzu Lu, 112,144, 229, 256-7 . 265 and n., 280.285 Tzu Yang (Prime Minister of Cheng), 252 Uncle Cripple, 151 Uncle Legless, 151 understanding; application of, 47; complete, 14 : with heart, not ears, 29; heaven, 47; how people feel, 27; Lao Tzu on, 201-2 : learning, 52; limitations of, 144-6 : by men of old, 14; people’s hearts, 178 : of petty person, 290 : sages, 16; of the small and great, 2; true depth of, 9; of true man, 47; use of words in, 15, 18; ways of humanity, 47; without virtue, 225. See also knowledge; wisdom unity from difference, 13-14 . 38-9 universe; what is beyond boundaries of, 16 uselessness, 33-6 : Chuang Tzu on, 240 : usefulness of the useless, 36; useless trees, 6, 33-5 : of words, xxv-xxvi Vast (fish), 1, 2-3 Virtue; in actionless action, 118 : central, 293; deformed in terms of, 35; despoiling world’s, 82; deterioration of, 134 : distress avoided by virtuous man, 30; eight Virtues, 16-17 : of Emperors and kings, 98, 107-9 : enough to please one leader, 3; era of, 264 : five evil Virtues, 293 : five Virtues, 119 : harmony in, 39; of Heaven, 112, 131 . 143 : highest, 263 : and humility, 39-40 : illuminating life, 17; man of Regal, 94; misuse of power of, 66; nobleman of complete, 177 : and Origin, 97, 107 : perfect, 73, 79, 142 : preservation of, 42; ruined by fame and knowledge, 26-7 : sadness and happiness corruptions of, 131 : sage’s lack of need for, 44; signs of real, 38-45 : struggle against, 82; and Tao, HO, 167-8 . 218 : Te, 66, 68, 70; teaching, 35; Virtuous Ones, 101 : without shape, 43 Virtuously Founded, 169 wandering, J-6, 44, 180, 184, 229, 241 . 289 Wang Kuo, 225 WangNi, 17-18 . 60,95 Wang Tai (teacher of Lu), 38-9 water, 106 . 131 : excess of, 237 : none greater than the Great Ocean, 137 : shores of the Dark Waters, 187 : staying close to earth, 222 : still, 43; swimming, 158-9 . 162 : White Waters of the south, 187 wealth, 123,149,173,182, 225, 237, 252 . 269-73 webbed toes, 66-8 Wei, Duke, 159 Wei, Prince of Chu, xrv Wei (state), 26, 32, 44,120,178, 22 8, 251 : King of, 5-6 . 172 Wei Lei, mountain of, 199 Wei Lu, 138 Wei Mou, 256 Wen, King, 182-3 and 275-8 Wen, Marquis of Wei, 177 and n. Wen Hui. 22-3 Wen Po Hsueh Tzu, 178 wisdom; description of, 69-70 : lack of, 4-5 : limits of, 240 : and virtue, 241 : words of, 9. See also knowledge; understanding woodcarving, 162-3 words; Argument Without Words, 218 : change of meaning of, 15-16 : of Chuang Tzu, 304 : of Confucius, 28; conveying joy and pleasure, 31; flowing, 244-5 : forgetting, 242 : of guidance, 180-81 : meaning of, 12 : need for, 15; quotes, 244 : speech without, 217-18 : supposed, 244-7 . 304 : of Tao, 18; teaching without, 38; uselessness of, xxv- xxvi : Words-of-Actionless-Action, 187-9 . 195 world; leaving open, 82; out and about in, 26-36 . See also Earth Wu, King, 102 and 141 and 216, 265 . 269 Wu, Marquis of Wei, 210-11 Wu (state), 253 Wu Chuang, 57 Wu Hou, 2£9 Wu Kuang, 212, 257-8 Wu ling (state), 51 Wu Tse, 257 Wu Tzu Hsu, 266 Wu Win. 236 Yan Tzu Chu, 61-2 yang, 10, 30, 53, 191 : going wrong, 236 : harming, 82; harmony of, 119 : in harmony with yin, 134 . 192 : perfect, 86, 180 : for yang, 215 Yang (teacher), 67 and /?., 79 Yang Huo, 144 and n. Yang Tzu, 175 Yang Tzu Chu, 247 Yangists, 214 Yangtse River, 138 . 216 . 239 Yao (Emperor of mythology), 3-5 and n., 17, 27, 50, 57, 76, 82, 84, 95-6 . 104 . 111 . 112 . Ml, 144,169,214, 220-21 . 242, 249, 264 . 265 and«. Yeh Chueh, 17, 60 Yellow Emperor, 18 and 51, 57, M, 85- 6, 9M5, H2, 118-19 . 134 . 151 . 168 . 187— 9. 197 . 212-13 . 264-5 Yellow River, 289 . 293 : Lord of, xxi, 137 . 138-42 Yellow Springs of the Underworld, 146 Yen Chung Yu, Master, 8-9 Yen Gate, 242 Yen Ho, 32. 251-2 . 291 Yen Hui (Prince of Wei), 26, 28-9 . 56 . 57- 8, 173 . 181 . 255-6 . See also Yen Yen Yuan Kang Tiao, 194 Yen Pu. 217 Yen (state), 141 /?.. 219 Yen Yian, 120,152,158,183,197,285- See also Yen Hui (Prince of Wei) Yi the Archer, 40, 208 . 214 Yi Chi eh, 225 Yi Erh Tzu, 56-7 Yi Yin, 208,258 yin, 10; going wrong, 236 : harming, 82; harmony of, 119 : in harmony with yang, 134 . 192 : perfect, 86, 180 : for yin, 215 Yin (gatekeeper), 157 . See also Kuan Yin Yin Wen, 300 Ying (state), 215-16 . 253 Ying of Wei, 227 Ying river, 257 Yu (holy sage), 11, 27, 29, 52-3 . 58, 96; rule of, 102 . 145 Yu Chu (fisherman), 239 Yu Erh (chef), 69 Yu Hu (state), 27 Yuan (ruler of Sung), 182 . 216 . 239 Yuan Fung, 101 Yuan Hsien, 254 and n. Yueh (sheep-butcher), 253-4 Yueh (state), 5-6 . H, 38, 250-51 : exile from, 211 Yun Chiang, 87-8 Yung Chen, 79 and n ., 227
The essential Chuang Tzu
Zhuangzi, author
1998-01-01T00:00:00Z
Zhuangzi. Nanhua jing,Taoism,Taoïsme,Philosophy, Chinese,Philosophy, Taoist
xx, 170 pages ; 24 cm,The ancient Chinese text known as CHUANG TZU has been translated into English many times, but never with the freshness, accessibility, and accuracy of this remarkable rendering--the result of a unique collaboration between one of America's premier poet-translators and a leading Chinese scholar. At turns playful and acerbic, the book presents a philosophy of life that is politically radical and deeply spiritual
4. Chuang Tzu
Changzi
2019-06-24T00:00:00Z
philosophy,Asian studies
Taoist writing of  chinese phiosopher, Chuangzi
Full text of "4. Chuang Tzu" Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "4. Chuang Tzu" See other formats Copyngtjted material Burton Watson, Associate Professor of Chinese at Columbia Uni¬ versity, is the author of Ssu-ma Ch'ien: Grand Historian of China (1958) and Early Chinese Literature (1962), and the translator of Records of the Grand Historian of China , translated from the Shih chi of Ssu-ma Ch'ien> 2 vols. (1961), Su Tung-p'o: Selections from a Sung Dynasty Poet (1965), and Basic Writings of Mo Tzu, Hsiin Tzu , arid Han Fei Tzu ( 1967). UNESCO COLLECTION OF REPRESENTATIVE WORKS CHINESE SERIES T his book has been accepted in the Chinese Series of the Translations Collection of the United Nations Educational , Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Portions of this work were prepared under a contract with the U.S. Office of Education for the production of texts to be used in undergraduate education. The draft translations so produced have been used in the Columbia College Oriental Humanities program and have subsequently been revised and expanded for publication in the present form. Copyright © 1968 Columbia University Press ISBN 0-231-03147-9 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 68-19000 Printed in the United States of America c 20 19 18 17 16 15 This book is printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. CONTENTS Foreword, by Wm. Theodore de Bary vii Introduction 1 one Free and Easy Wandering 29 two Discussion on Making All Things Equal 36 three The Secret of Caring for Life $0 four In the World of Men $4 five The Sign of Virtue Complete 68 six The Great and Venerable Teacher 77 seven Fit for Emperors and Kings 92 eight Webbed Toes 98 nine Horses' Hoofs 104 ten Rifling Trunks 107 eleven Let It Be, Leave It Alone 114 twelve Heaven and Earth 126 thirteen The Way of Heaven 142 fourteen The Turning of Heaven 194 fifteen Constrained in Will 167 sixteen Mending the Inborn Nature 77/ seventeen Autumn Floods 175 eighteen Perfect Happiness 190 nineteen Mastering Life 197 twenty The Mountain Tree 209 2 8 : INTRODUCTION tary on the Tao-te-ching , making it impossible to appreciate the form and relationship which they have in the original. To my mind, by far the most readable and reliable of all Chuang Tzu translations to date are those by Arthur Waley, though unfortunately they represent only a fraction of the text. Read¬ ers interested in the literary qualities of the text should also look at the “imitations” of passages in the Chuang Tzu pre¬ pared by Thomas Merton on the basis of existing translations in Western languages, in his The Way of Chuang Tzu (New York, New Directions, 1965). They give a fine sense of the liveliness and poetry of Chuang Tzu’s style, and are actually almost as close to the original as the translations upon which they are based. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. D. C. Lau, translator of Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching (Penguin Books, 1963), for his careful reading and criticisms of my Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings (Columbia University Press, 1964). I have availed myself of many of his suggestions in revising my earlier trans¬ lations. ONE FREE AND EASY WANDERING A \£ w the northern darkness there is a fish and his name is K’un. 1 The K’un is so huge I don’t know how many thousand li he measures. He changes and becomes a bird whose name is P eng. The back of the P’eng measures I don’t know how many thousand li across and, when he rises up and flies off, his wings are like clouds all over the sky. When the sea begins to move, 2 this bird sets off for the southern darkness, which is the Lake of Heaven. The Universal Harmony 3 records various wonders, and it says: “When the P’eng journeys to the southern darkness, the waters are roiled for three thousand li. He beats the whirl¬ wind and rises ninety thousand li, setting off on the sixth- month gale.” Wavering heat, bits of dust, living things blowing each other about—the sky looks very blue. Is that its real color, or is it because it is so far away and has no end? When the bird looks down, all he sees is blue too. If water is not piled up deep enough, it won’t have the strength to bear up a big boat. Pour a cup of water into a hol¬ low in the floor and bits of trash will sail on it like boats. But set the cup there and it will stick fast, for the water is too 1 K'un means fish roe. So Chuang Tzu begins with a paradox—the tiniest fish imaginable is also the largest fish imaginable. * Probably a reference to some seasonal shift in the tides or currents. * Identified variously as the name of a man or the name of a book. Prob¬ ably Chuane Tzu intended it as the latter, and is poking fun at the phi¬ losophers or other schools who cite ancient texts to prove their assertions. 30 : FREE AND EASY WANDERING shallow and the boat too large. If wind is not piled up deep enough, it won’t have the strength to bear up great wings. Therefore when the P’eng rises ninety thousand li, he must have the wind under him like that. Only then can he mount on the back of the wind, shoulder the blue sky, and nothing can hinder or block him. Only then can he set his eyes to the south. The cicada and the little dove laugh at this, saying, “When we make an effort and fly up, we can get as far as the elm or the sapanwood tree, but sometimes we don’t make it and just fall down on the ground. Now how is anyone going to go ninety thousand li to the south!” If you go off to the green woods nearby, you can take along food for three meals and come back with your stomach as full as ever. If you are going a hundred li, you must grind your grain the night before; and if you are going a thousand li, you must start getting the provisions together three months in ad¬ vance. What do these two creatures understand? Little under¬ standing cannot come up to great understanding; the short¬ lived cannot come up to the long-lived. How do I know this is so? The morning mushroom knows nothing of twilight and dawn; the summer cicada knows noth¬ ing of spring and autumn. They are the short-lived. South of Ch’u there is a caterpillar which counts five hundred years as one spring and five hundred years as one autumn. Long, long ago there was a great rose of Sharon that counted eight thou¬ sand years as one spring and eight thousand years as one au¬ tumn. They are the long-lived. Yet P’eng-tsu 4 alone is famous today for having lived a long time, and everybody tries to ape him. Isn’t it pitiful! Among the questions of T’ang to Ch’i we find the same 4 Said to have lived to an incredible old age. See below, p. 82, n. 12. Copyrighted material FREE AND EASY WANDERING : 31 M thing. 5 In the bald and barren north, there is a dark sea, the Lake of Heaven. In it is a fish which is several thousand li across, and no one knows how long. His name is K’un. There is also a bird there, named P eng, with a back like Mount T’ai and wings like clouds filling the sky. He beats the whirlwind, leaps into the air, and rises up ninety thousand li, cutting through the clouds and mist, shouldering the blue sky, and then he turns his eves south and prepares to journey to the southern darkness. The little quail laughs at him, saying, “Where does he think he's going? I give a great leap and fly up, but I never get more than ten or twelve yards before I come down fluttering among the weeds and brambles. And that’s the best kind of flying any¬ way! Where does he think he's going?” Such is the difference between big and little. Therefore a man who has wisdom enough to fill one office effectively, good conduct enough to impress one community, virtue enough to please one ruler, or talent enough to be called into service in one state, has the same kind of self-pride as these little creatures. Sung Jung-tzu 6 would certainly burst out laughing at such a man. The whole world could praise Sung Jung-tzu and it wouldn’t make him exert himself; the whole world could condemn him and it wouldn’t make him mope. 6 The text may be faulty at this point. The Fei-shan-lu> a work written around aj>. 800 by the monk Shen-ch’ing, contains the following passage, said by a T’ang commentator on the Pei-shan-lu to be found in the Chuang Tzu: “T’ang asked Ch’i, ‘Do up, down, and the four directions have a limit?’ Ch’i replied, ‘Beyond their limitlessness there is still another limitlessness.’ ” But whether this passage was in the original Chuang Tzu , or whether, if it was, it belongs at this point in the text, are questions that cannot be answered. a Referred to elsewhere in the literature of the period as Sung Chien or Sung K’eng. According to sec. 33 (p. 368), he taught a doctrine of social harmony, frugality, pacifism, and the rejection of conventional standards of honor and disgrace. Copyrighted material 32 : FREE AND EASY WANDERING He drew a clear line between the internal and the external, and recognized the boundaries of true glory and disgrace. But that was all. As far as the world went, he didn’t fret and worry, but there was still ground he left unturned. Lieh Tzu 7 could ride the wind and go soaring around with cool and breezy skill, but after fifteen days he came back to earth. As far as the search for good fortune went, he didn’t fret and worry. He escaped the trouble of walking, but he still had to depend on something to get around. If he had only mounted on the truth of Heaven and Earth, ridden the changes of the six breaths, and thus wandered through the boundless, then what would he have had to depend on? Therefore I say, the Perfect Man has no self; the Holy Man has no merit; the Sage has no fame. 8 Yao wanted to cede the empire to Hsii Yu. “When the sun and moon have already come out,” he said, “it’s a waste of light to go on burning the torches, isn’t it? When the seasonal rains are falling, it’s a waste of water to go on irrigating the fields. If you took the throne, the world would be well ordered. I go on occupying it, but all I can see are my failings. I beg to turn over the world to you.” Hsii Yu said, “You govern the world and the world is al¬ ready well governed. Now if I take your place, will I be doing it for a name? But name is only the guest of reality—will I be doing it so I can play the part of a guest? When the tailor- bird builds her nest in the deep wood, she uses no more than one branch. When the mole drinks at the river, he takes no more than a bellyful. Go home and forget the matter, my lord. 7 Lieh Yii-k’ou, a Taoist philosopher frequently mentioned in the Chuang Tzu. The Lieh Tzu , a work attributed to him, is of uncertain date and did not reach its present form until the 3d or 4th centuries aj>. 8 Not three different categories but three names for the same thing. FREE AND EASY WANDERING : 3 3 I have no use for the rulership of the world! Though the cook may not run his kitchen properly, the priest and the imper¬ sonator of the dead at the sacrifice do not leap over the wine casks and sacrificial stands and go take his place.” 9 Chien Wu said to Lien Shu, “I was listening to Chieh Yii’s talk—big and nothing to back it up, going on and on without turning around. I was completely dumfounded at his words— no more end than the Milky Way, wild and wide of the mark, never coming near human affairs!” “What were his words like?” asked Lien Shu. “He said that there is a Holy Man living on faraway Ku-she Mountain, with skin like ice or snow, and gentle and shy like a young girl. He doesn’t eat the five grains, but sucks the wind, drinks the dew, climbs up on the clouds and mist, rides a flying dragon, and wanders beyond the four seas. By con¬ centrating his spirit, he can protect creatures from sickness and plague and make the harvest plentiful. I thought this was all insane and refused to believe it.” “You would!” said Lien Shu. “We can’t expect a blind man to appreciate beautiful patterns or a deaf man to listen to bells and drums. And blindness and deafness are not confined to the body alone—the understanding has them too, as your words just now have shown. This man, with this virtue of his, is about to embrace the ten thousand things and roll them into one. Though the age calls for reform, why should he wear himself out over the affairs of the world? There is nothing that can harm this man. Though flood waters pile up to the sky, he will not drown. Though a great drought melts metal and stone and scorches the earth and hills, he will not be burned. # Or, following another interpretation, “the priest and the impersonator of the dead do not snatch his wine casks and chopping board away from him and take his place.” Copy righted material 34 : FREE AND EASY WANDERING From his dust and leavings alone you could mold a Yao or a Shun! Why should he consent to bother about mere things?” A man of Sung who sold ceremonial hats made a trip to Yiieh, but the Yiieh people cut their hair short and tattoo their bodies and had no use for such things. Yao brought order to the people of the world and directed the government of all within the seas. But he went to see the Four Masters of the far¬ away Ku-she Mountain, [and when he got home] north of the Fen River, he was dazed and had forgotten his kingdom there. Hui Tzu 10 said to Chuang Tzu, “The king of Wei gave me some seeds of a huge gourd. I planted them, and when they grew up, the fruit was big enough to hold five piculs. I tried using it for a water container, but it was so heavy I couldn’t lift it. I split it in half to make dippers, but they were so large and unwieldy that I couldn’t dip them into anything. It’s not that the gourds weren’t fantastically big—but I decided they were no use and so I smashed them to pieces.” Chuang Tzu said, “You certainly are dense when it comes to using big things! In Sung there was a man who was skilled at making a salve to prevent chapped hands, and generation after generation his family made a living by bleaching silk in water. A traveler heard about the salve and offered to buy the prescription for a hundred measures of gold. The man called everyone to a family council. ‘For generations we’ve been bleaching silk and we’ve never made more than a few meas¬ ures of gold,’ he said. ‘Now, if we sell our secret, we can make a hundred measures in one morning. Let’s let him have it!’ The traveler got the salve and introduced it to the king of Wu, who was having trouble with the state of Yiieh. The king put the man in charge of his troops, and that winter they fought 10 The logician Hui Shih who, as pointed out by Waley, in the Chuang Tzu “stands for intellectuality as opposed to imagination.” Copyrighted material FREE AND EASY WANDERING: 35 a naval battle with the men of Yiieh and gave them a bad beating . 11 A portion of the conquered territory was awarded to the man as a fief. The salve had the power to prevent chapped hands in either case; but one man used it to get a fief, while the other one never got beyond silk bleaching—because they used it in different ways. Now you had a gourd big enough to hold five piculs. Why didn’t you think of making it into a great tub so you could go floating around the rivers and lakes, instead of worrying because it was too big and un¬ wieldy to dip into things! Obviously you still have a lot of underbrush in your head!” Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu, “I have a big tree of the kind men call shu. Its trunk is too gnarled and bumpy to apply a measuring line to, its branches too bent and twisty to match up to a compass or square. You could stand it by the road and no carpenter would look at it twice. Your words, too, are big and useless, and so everyone alike spurns them!” Chuang Tzu said, “Maybe you’ve never seen a wildcat or a weasel. It crouches down and hides, watching for something to come along. It leaps and races east and west, not hesitating to go high or low—until it falls into the trap and dies in the net. Then again there’s the yak, big as a cloud covering the sky. It certainly knows how to be big, though it doesn’t know how to catch rats. Now you have this big tree and you’re dis¬ tressed because it’s useless. Why don’t you plant it in Not- Even-Any thing Village, or the field of Broad-and-Boundless, relax and do nothing by its side, or lie down for a free and easy sleep under it? Axes will never shorten its life, nothing can ever harm it. If there’s no use for it, how can it come to grief or pain?” n Because the salve, by preventing the soldiers’ hands from chapping, made it easier for them to handle their weapons. Copyrighted material TWO DISCUSSION ON MAKING ALL THINGS EQUAL tzu-ch’i of south wall sat leaning on his armrest, staring up at the sky and breathing—vacant and far away, as though he’d lost his companion . 1 Yen Ch’eng Tzu-yu, who was standing by his side in attendance, said, “What is this? Can you really make the body like a withered tree and the mind like dead ashes? The man leaning on the armrest now is not the one who leaned on it before!” Tzu-ch’i said, “You do well to ask the question, Yen. Now I have lost myself. Do you understand that? You hear the piping of men, but you haven’t heard the piping of earth. Or if you’ve heard the piping of earth, you haven’t heard the piping of Heaven!” Tzu-yu said, “May I venture to ask what this means?” Tzu-ch’i said, “The Great Clod belches out breath and its name is wind. So long as it doesn’t come forth, nothing hap¬ pens. But when it does, then ten thousand hollows begin cry¬ ing wildly. Can’t you hear them, long drawn out? In the mountain forests that lash and sway, there are huge trees a hundred spans around with hollows and openings like noses, like mouths, like ears, like jugs, like cups, like mortars, like rifts, like ruts. They roar like waves, whistle like arrows, screech, gasp, cry, wail, moan, and howl, those in the lead calling out yeeef , those behind calling out yuuu! In a gentle 'The word “companion” is interpreted variously to mean his associates, his wife, or his own body. DISCUSSION ON MAKING ALL THINGS EQUAL : 37 breeze they answer faintly, but in a full gale the chorus is gigantic. And when the fierce wind has passed on, then all the hollows are empty again. Have you never seen the tossing and trembling that goes on?” Tzu-yu said, “By the piping of earth, then, you mean simply [the sound of] these hollows, and by the piping of man [the sound of] flutes and whistles. But may I ask about the piping of Heaven?” Tzu-ch’i said, “Blowing on the ten thousand things in a dif¬ ferent way, so that each can be itself—all take what they want for themselves, but who does the sounding?” 2 Great understanding is broad and unhurried; little under¬ standing is cramped and busy. Great words are clear and lim¬ pid ; 3 little words are shrill and quarrelsome. In sleep, men’s spirits go visiting; in waking hours, their bodies hustle. With everything they meet they become entangled. Day after day they use their minds in strife, sometimes grandiose, sometimes sly, sometimes petty. Their little fears are mean and trembly; their great fears are stunned and overwhelming. They bound off like an arrow or a crossbow pellet, certain that they are the arbiters of right and wrong. They cling to their position as though they had sworn before the gods, sure that they are hold¬ ing on to victory. They fade like fall and winter—such is the way they dwindle day by day. They drown in what they do— you cannot make them turn back. They grow dark, as though sealed with seals—such are the excesses of their old age. And when their minds draw near to death, nothing can restore them to the light. Joy, anger, grief, delight, worry, regret, fickleness, inflex¬ ibility, modesty, willfulness, candor, insolence—music from * Heaven is not something distinct from earth and man, but a name ap¬ plied to the natural and spontaneous functioning of the two. * Reading tan instead of yen. Copyrighted material 38 : DISCUSSION ON MAKING ALL THINGS EQUAL empty holes, mushrooms springing up in dampness, day and night replacing each other before us, and no one knows where they sprout from. Let it be! Let it be! [It is enough that] morn¬ ing and evening we have them, and they are the means by which we live. Without them we would not exist; without us they would have nothing to take hold of. This comes close to the matter. But I do not know what makes them the way they are. It would seem as though they have some True Master, and yet I find no trace of him. He can act—that is certain. Yet I cannot see his form. He has identity but no form. The hundred joints, the nine openings, the six organs, all come together and exist here [as my body]. But which part should I feel closest to? I should delight in all parts, you say? But there must be one I ought to favor more. If not, are they all of them mere servants? But if they are all servants, then how can they keep order among themselves? Or do they take turns being lord and servant? It would seem as though there must be some True Lord among them. But whether I succeed in discovering his identity or not, it neither adds to nor detracts from his Truth. Once a man receives this fixed bodily form, he holds on to it, waiting for the end. Sometimes clashing with things, some¬ times bending before them, he runs his course like a galloping steed, and nothing can stop him. Is he not pathetic? Sweating and laboring to the end of his days and never seeing his ac¬ complishment, utterly exhausting himself and never knowing where to look for rest—can you help pitying him? I’m not dead yet! he says, but what good is that? His body decays, his mind follows it—can you deny that this is a great sorrow? Man’s life has always been a muddle like this. How could I be the only muddled one, and other men not muddled? If a man follows the mind given him and makes it his teacher, then who can be without a teacher? Why must you Copyrighted material DISCUSSION ON MAKING ALL THINGS EQUAL : 39 comprehend the process of change and form your mind on that basis before you can have a teacher? Even an idiot has his teacher. But to fail to abide by this mind and still insist upon your rights and wrongs—this is like saying that you set off for Yiieh today and got there yesterday. 4 This is to claim that what doesn’t exist exists. If you claim that what doesn’t exist exists, then even the holy sage Yii couldn’t understand you, much less a person like me! Words are not just wind. Words have something to say. But if what they have to say is not fixed, then do they really say something? Or do they say nothing? People suppose that words are different from the peeps of baby birds, but is there any difference, or isn’t there? What does the Way rely upon, 5 that we have true and false? What do words rely upon, that we have right and wrong? How can the Way go away and not exist? How can words exist and not be acceptable? When the Way relies on little accomplishments and words rely on vain show, then we have the rights and wrongs of the Confu- cians and the Mo-ists. What one calls right the other calls wrong; what one calls wrong the other calls right. But if we want to right their wrongs and wrong their rights, then the best thing to use is clarity. Everything has its “that,” everything has its “this.” From the point of view of “that” you cannot see it, but through un¬ derstanding you can know it. So I say, “that” comes out of “this” and “this” depends on “that”—which is to say that “this” and “that” give birth to each other. But where there is birth there must be death; where there is death there must be birth. Where there is acceptability there must be unacceptabil- 4 According to sec. 33 (p. 374), this was one of the paradoxes of the logi¬ cian Hui Tzu. 5 Following the interpretation of Chang Ping-lin. The older interpretation of yin here and in the following sentences is, “What is the Way hidden by,” etc. Copyrighted material 40 : DISCUSSION ON MAKING ALL THINGS EQUAL ity; where there is unacceptability there must be acceptability. Where there is recognition of right there must be recognition of wrong; where there is recognition of wrong there must be recognition of right. Therefore the sage does not proceed in such a way, but illuminates all in the light of Heaven . 6 He too recognizes a “this,” but a “this” which is also “that,” a “that” which is also “this.” His “that” has both a right and a wrong in it; his “this” too has both a right and a wrong in it. So, in fact, does he still have a “this” and “that”? Or does he in fact no longer have a “this” and “that”? A state in which “this” and “that” no longer find their opposites is called the hinge of the Way. When the hinge is fitted into the socket, it can respond endlessly. Its right then is a single endlessness and its wrong too is a single endlessness. So, I say, the best thing to use is clarity. To use an attribute to show that attributes are not attributes is not as good as using a nonattribute to show that attributes are not attributes. To use a horse to show that a horse is not a horse is not as good as using a non-horse to show that a horse is not a horse , 7 Heaven and earth are one attribute; the ten thousand things are one horse. What is acceptable we call acceptable; what is unacceptable we call unacceptable. A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called so. What makes them so? Making them so makes them so. What makes them not so? Making them not so makes them not so. Things all must have that which is so; things all must have that which is acceptable. There is nothing that is not so, nothing that is not acceptable. For this reason, whether you point to a little stalk or a great pillar, a leper or the beautiful Hsi-shih, things ribald and shady 8 'Fieri , which for Chuang Tzu means Nature or the Way. 7 A reference to the statements of the logician Kung-sun Lung, “A white horse is not a horse” and “Attributes are not attributes in and of them¬ selves.” Copyrighted material DISCUSSION ON MAKING ALL THINGS EQUAL : 41 or things grotesque and strange, the Way makes them all into one. Their dividedness is their completeness; their complete¬ ness is their impairment. No thing is either complete or im¬ paired, but all are made into one again. Only the man of far- reaching vision knows how to make them into one. So he has no use [for categories], but relegates all to the constant. The constant is the useful; the useful is the passable; the passable is the successful; and with success, all is accomplished. He re¬ lies upon this alone, relies upon it and does not know he is doing so. This is called the Way. But to wear out your brain trying to make things into one without realizing that they are all the same—this is called “three in the morning.” What do I mean by “three in the morning”? When the monkey trainer was handing out acorns, he said, “You get three in the morning and four at night.” This made all the monkeys furious. “Well, then,” he said, “you get four in the morning and three at night.” The mon¬ keys were all delighted. There was no change in the reality behind the words, and yet the monkeys responded with joy and anger. Let them, if they want to. So the sage harmonizes with both right and wrong and rests in Heaven the Equalizer. This is called walking two roads. The understanding of the men of ancient times went a long way. How far did it go? To the point where some of them be¬ lieved that things have never existed—so far, to the end, where nothing can be added. Those at the next stage thought that things exist but recognized no boundaries among them. Those at the next stage thought there were boundaries but recognized no right and wrong. Because right and wrong appeared, the Way was injured, and because the Way was injured, love be¬ came complete. But do such things as completion and injury really exist, or do they not? There is such a thing as completion and injury—Mr. Chao 42 : DISCUSSION ON MAKING ALL THINGS EQUAL playing the lute is an example. There is such a thing as no completion and no injury—Mr. Chao not playing the lute is an example . 8 Chao Wen played the lute; Music Master K’uang waved his baton; Hui Tzu leaned on his desk. The knowledge of these three was close to perfection. All were masters, and therefore their names have been handed down to later ages. Only in their likes they were different from him [the true sage]. What they liked, they tried to make clear. What he is not clear about, they tried to make clear, and so they ended in the foolishness of “hard” and “white.” 9 Their sons, too, devoted all their lives to their fathers ’ 10 theories, but till their death never reached any completion. Can these men be said to have attained completion? If so, then so have all the rest of us. Or can they not be said to have attained completion? If so, then neither we nor anything else have ever attained it. The torch of chaos and doubt—this is what the sage steers by . 11 So he does not use things but relegates all to the constant. This is what it means to use clarity. Now I am going to make a statement here. I don’t know whether it fits into the category of other people’s statements or not. But whether it fits into their category or whether it 8 Chao Wen was a famous lute ( ch'in ) player. But the best music he could play (i.e., complete) was only a pale and partial reflection of the ideal music, which was thereby injured and impaired, just as the unity of the Way was injured by the appearance of love—i.e., man’s likes and dis¬ likes. Hence, when Mr. Chao refrained from playing the lute, there was neither completion nor injury. •The logicians Hui Tzu and Kung-sun Lung spent much time discussing the relationship between attributes such as “hard” and “white” and the thing to which they pertain. “Following Yu-lan Fung and Fukunaga I read fu instead of wen. 11 He accepts things as they are, though to the ordinary person attempting to establish values they appear chaotic and doubtful and in need of clarifi¬ cation. Copyrighted material DISCUSSION ON MAKING ALL THINGS EQUAL : 43 doesn’t, it obviously fits into some category. So in that respect it is no different from their statements. However, let me try making my statement. There is a beginning. There is a not yet beginning to be a beginning. There is a not yet beginning to be a not yet begin¬ ning to be a beginning. There is being. There is nonbeing. There is a not yet beginning to be nonbeing. There is a not yet beginning to be a not yet beginning to be nonbeing. Sud¬ denly there is nonbeing. But I do not know, when it comes to nonbeing, which is really being and which is nonbeing. Now I have just said something. But I don’t know whether what I have said has really said something or whether it hasn’t said something. There is nothing in the world bigger than the tip of an autumn hair, and Mount T’ai is tiny. No one has lived longer than a dead child, and P’eng-tsu died young . 12 Heaven and earth were born at the same time I was, and the ten thousand things are one with me. We have already become one, so how can I say anything? But I have just said that we are one, so how can I not be saying something? The one and what I said about it make two, and two and the original one make three. If we go on this way, then even the cleverest mathematician can’t tell where we’ll end, much less an ordinary man. If by moving from nonbeing to being we get to three, how far will we get if we move from being to being? Better not to move, but to let things be! The Way has never known boundaries; speech has no con¬ stancy. But because of [the recognition of a] “this,” there came to be boundaries. Let me tell you what the boundaries are. “The strands of animal fur were believed to grow particularly fine in autumn; hence “the tip of an autumn hair” is a cliche for something ex¬ tremely tiny. P’eng-tsu, the Chinese Methuselah, has already appeared on p. 30 above. 44 : DISCUSSION ON making all things equal There is left, there is right, there are theories, there are de¬ bates , 18 there are divisions, there are discriminations, there are emulations, and there are contentions. These are called the Eight Virtues . 14 As to what is beyond the Six Realms , 16 the sage admits its existence but does not theorize. As to what is within the Six Realms, he theorizes but does not debate. In the case of the Spring and Autumn™ the record of the former kings of past ages, the sage debates but does not discriminate. So [I say,] those who divide fail to divide; those who dis¬ criminate fail to discriminate. What does this mean, you ask? The sage embraces things. Ordinary men discriminate among them and parade their discriminations before others. So I say, those who discriminate fail to see. The Great Way is not named; Great Discriminations are not spoken; Great Benevolence is not benevolent; Great Modesty is not humble; Great Daring does not attack. If the Way is made clear, it is not the Way. If discriminations are put into words, they do not suffice. If benevolence has a constant ob¬ ject, it cannot be universal . 17 If modesty is fastidious, it cannot be trusted. If daring attacks, it cannot be complete. These five are all round, but they tend toward the square . 18 Therefore understanding that rests in what it does not under¬ stand is the finest. Who can understand discriminations that “Following the reading in the Ts’ui text. 14 Many commentators and translators try to give the word te some special meaning other than its ordinary one of “virtue” in this context. But I believe Chuang Tzu is deliberately parodying the ethical categories of the Confucians and Mo-ists. “Heaven, earth, and the four directions, i.e., the universe. “Perhaps a reference to the Spring and Autumn Annals , a history of the state of Lu said to have been compiled by Confucius. But it may be a generic term referring to the chronicles of the various feudal states. “Reading chou instead of ch'eng . 18 All are originally perfect, but may become “squared,” i.e., impaired, by the misuses mentioned. Copyrighted material DISCUSSION ON MAKING ALL THINGS EQUAL : 45 are not spoken, the Way that is not a way? If he can under¬ stand this, he may be called the Reservoir of Heaven. Pour into it and it is never full, dip from it and it never runs dry, and yet it does not know where the supply comes from. This is called the Shaded Light . 19 So it is that long ago Yao said to Shun, “I want to attack the rulers of Tsung, K’uai, and Hsii-ao. Even as I sit on my throne, this thought nags at me. Why is this?” Shun replied, “These three rulers are only little dwellers in the weeds and brush. Why this nagging desire? Long ago, ten suns came out all at once and the ten thousand things were all lighted up. And how much greater is virtue than these suns!” 20 Nieh Ch’iieh asked Wang Ni, “Do you know what all things agree in calling right?” “How would I know that?” said Wang Ni. “Do you know that you don’t know it?” “How would I know that?” “Then do things know nothing?” “How would I know that? However, suppose I try saying something. What way do I have of knowing that if I say I know something I don’t really not know it? Or what way do I have of knowing that if I say I don’t know something I don’t really in fact know it? Now let me ask you some questions. If a man sleeps in a damp place, his back aches and he ends up half paralyzed, but is this true of a loach? If he lives in a tree, he is terrified and shakes with fright, but is this true of a monkey? Of these three creatures, then, which one knows the proper place to live? Men eat the flesh of grass-fed and grain- 1# Ori according to another interpretation, “the Precious Light.” “Here virtue is to be understood in a good sense, as the power of the Way. 46: DISCUSSION ON making all things equal fed animals, deer eat grass, centipedes find snakes tasty, and hawks and falcons relish mice. Of these four, which knows how food ought to taste? Monkeys pair with monkeys, deer go out with deer, and fish play around with fish. Men claim that Mao-ch’iang and Lady Li were beautiful, but if fish saw them they would dive to the bottom of the stream, if birds saw them they would fly away, and if deer saw them they would break into a run. Of these four, which knows how to fix the standard of beauty for the world? The way I see it, the rules of benevolence and righteousness and the paths of right and wrong are all hopelessly snarled and jumbled. How could I know anything about such discriminations?” Nieh Ch’iieh said, “If you don’t know what is profitable or harmful, then does the Perfect Man likewise know nothing of such things?” Wang Ni replied, “The Perfect Man is godlike. Though the great swamps blaze, they cannot burn him; though the great rivers freeze, they cannot chill him; though swift lightning splits the hills and howling gales shake the sea, they cannot frighten him. A man like this rides the clouds and mist, strad¬ dles the sun and moon, and wanders beyond the four seas. Even life and death have no effect on him, much less the rules of profit and loss!” Chii Ch’iieh-tzu said to Chang Wu-tzu, “I have heard Con¬ fucius say that the sage does not work at anything, does not pursue profit, does not dodge harm, does not enjoy being sought after, does not follow the Way, says nothing yet says something, says something yet says nothing, and wanders be¬ yond the dust and grime. Confucius himself regarded these as wild and flippant words, though I believe they describe the working of the mysterious Way. What do you think of them?” Chang Wu-tzu said, “Even the Yellow Emperor would be Copyrighted material DISCUSSION ON MAKING ALL THINGS EQUAL : 47 confused if he heard such words, so how could you expect Confucius to understand them? What’s more, you’re too hasty in your own appraisal. You see an egg and demand a crowing cock, see a crossbow pellet and demand a roast dove. I’m going to try speaking some reckless words and I want you to listen to them recklessly. How will that be? The sage leans on the sun and moon, tucks the universe under his arm, merges him¬ self with things, leaves the confusion and muddle as it is, and looks on slaves as exalted. Ordinary men strain and struggle; the sage is stupid and blockish. He takes part in ten thousand ages and achieves simplicity in oneness. For him, all the ten thousand things are what they are, and thus they enfold each other. “How do I know that loving life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death I am not like a man who, having left home in his youth, has forgotten the way back? “Lady Li was the daughter of the border guard of Ai . 21 When she was first taken captive and brought to the state of Chin, she wept until her tears drenched the collar of her robe. But later, when she went to live in the palace of the ruler, shared his couch with him, and ate the delicious meats of his table, she wondered why she had ever wept. How do I know that the dead do not wonder why they ever longed for life? “He who dreams of drinking wine may weep when morning comes; he who dreams of weeping may in the morning go off to hunt. While he is dreaming he does not know it is a dream, and in his dream he may even try to interpret a dream. Only after he wakes does he know it was a dream. And someday there will be a great awakening when we know that this is all a great dream. Yet the stupid believe they are awake, busily and brightly assuming they understand things, calling this “She was taken captive by Duke Hsien of Chin in 671 b.c., and later became his consort. Copyrighted material 48 : DISCUSSION ON MAKING ALL THINGS EQUAL man ruler, that one herdsman—how dense! Confucius and you are both dreaming! And when I say you are dreaming, I am dreaming, too. Words like these will be labeled the Supreme Swindle. Yet, after ten thousand generations, a great sage may appear who will know their meaning, and it will still be as though he appeared with astonishing speed. “Suppose you and I have had an argument. If you have beaten me instead of my beating you, then are you necessarily right and am I necessarily wrong? If I have beaten you instead of your beating me, then am I necessarily right and are you necessarily wrong? Is one of us right and the other wrong? Are both of us right or are both of us wrong? If you and I don’t know the answer, then other people are bound to be even more in the dark. Whom shall we get to decide what is right? Shall we get someone who agrees with you to decide? But if he al¬ ready agrees with you, how can he decide fairly? Shall we get someone who agrees with me? But if he already agrees with me, how can he decide? Shall we get someone who disagrees with both of us? But if he already disagrees with both of us, how can he decide? Shall we get someone who agrees with both of us? But if he already agrees with both of us, how can he decide? Obviously, then, neither you nor I nor anyone else can decide for each other. Shall we wait for still another person? “But waiting for one shifting voice [to pass judgment on] another is the same as waiting for none of them . 22 Harmonize them all with the Heavenly Equality, leave them to their end¬ less changes, and so live out your years. What do I mean by harmonizing them with the Heavenly Equality? Right is not right; so is not so. If right were really right, it would differ so “I follow the rearrangement of the text suggested by Lii Hui-ch’ing. But the text of this whole paragraph leaves much to be desired and the translation is tentative. Copyrighted material DISCUSSION ON MAKING ALL THINGS EQUAL : 49 clearly from not right that there would be no need for argu¬ ment. If so were really so, it would differ so clearly from not so that there would be no need for argument. Forget the years; forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home!” Penumbra said to Shadow, “A little while ago you were walking and now you’re standing still; a little while ago you were sitting and now you’re standing up. Why this lack of independent action?” Shadow said, “Do I have to wait for something before I can be like this? Does what I wait for also have to wait for some¬ thing before it can be like this? Am I waiting for the scales of a snake or the wings of a cicada? How do I know why it is so? How do I know why it isn’t so?” 23 Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Chuang Chou. Sud¬ denly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Chuang Chou. But he didn’t know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou. Between Chuang Chou and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transforma¬ tion of Things. *That is, to ordinary men the shadow appears to depend upon some¬ thing else for its movement, just as the snake depends on its scales (ac¬ cording to Chinese belief) and the cicada on its wings. But do such causal views of action really have any meaning? THREE THE SECRET OF CARING FOR LIFE 1 your life has a limit but knowledge has none. If you use what is limited to pursue what has no limit, you will be in danger. If you understand this and still strive for knowledge, you will be in danger for certain! If you do good, stay away from fame. If you do evil, stay away from punishments. Follow the middle; go by what is constant, and you can stay in one piece, keep yourself alive, look after your parents, and live out your years. Cook Ting was cutting up an ox for Lord Wen-hui . 2 At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee—zip! zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were performing the dance of the Mul¬ berry Grove or keeping time to the Ching-shou music . 8 “Ah, this is marvelous!” said Lord Wen-hui. “Imagine skill reaching such heights!” Cook Ting laid down his knife and replied, “What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now—now I go at it 1 The chapter is very brief and would appear to be mutilated. 1 Identified as King Hui of Wei, who has already appeared on p. 34 above, * The Mulberry Grove is identified as a rain dance from the time of King T*ang of the Shang dynasty, and the Ching-shou music as part of a longer composition from the time of Yao. THE SECRET OF CARING FOR LIFE : 51 by spirit and don’t look with my eyes. Perception and under¬ standing have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint. “A good cook changes his knife once a year—because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month—be¬ cause he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s plenty of room—more than enough for the blade to play about it. That’s why after nine¬ teen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone. “However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until—flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, com¬ pletely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away.” 4 “Excellent!” said Lord Wen-hui. “I have heard the words of Cook Ting and learned how to care for life!” 4 Waley (Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China , p. 73) takes this whole paragraph to refer to the working methods of a mediocre carver, and hence translates it very differently. There is a great deal to be said for his interpretation, but after much consideration I have decided to follow the traditional interpretation because it seems to me that the extreme care and caution which the cook uses •when he comes to a difficult place is also a part of Chuang Tzu’s “secret of caring for life.” 5 2 : THE SECRET OF CARING FOR LIFE When Kung-wen Hsiian saw the Commander of the Right , 6 he was startled and said, “What kind of man is this? How did he come to be footless? Was it Heaven? Or was it man?” “It was Heaven, not man,” said the commander. “When Heaven gave me life, it saw to it that I would be one-footed. Men’s looks are given to them. So I know this was the work of Heaven and not of man. The swamp pheasant has to walk ten paces for one peck and a hundred paces for one drink, but it doesn’t want to be kept in a cage. Though you treat it like a king, its spirit won’t be content.” When Lao Tan 6 died, Ch’in Shih went to mourn for him; but after giving three cries, he left the room. “Weren’t you a friend of the Master?” asked Lao Tzu’s dis¬ ciples. “Yes.” “And you think it’s all right to mourn him this way?” “Yes,” said Ch’in Shih. “At first I took him for a real man, but now I know he wasn’t. A little while ago, when I went in to mourn, I found old men weeping for him as though they were weeping for a son, and young men weeping for him as though they were weeping for a mother. To have gathered a group like that, he must have done something to make them talk about him, though he didn’t ask them to talk, or make them weep for him, though he didn’t ask them to weep. This is to hide from Heaven, turn your back on the true state of affairs, and forget what you were born with. In the old days, this was called the crime of hiding from Heaven. Your master happened to come because it was his time, and he happened to 6 Probably the ex-Commander of the Right, as he has been punished by having one foot amputated, a common penalty in ancient China. It is mutilating punishments such as these which Chuang Tzu has in mind when he talks about the need to “stay in one piece.” *Lao Tzu, the reputed author of the Tao-te-chmg. Copyrighted material THE SECRET OF CARING FOR LIFE : 5 3 leave because things follow along. If you are content with the time and willing to follow along, then grief and joy have no way to enter in. In the old days, this was called being freed from the bonds of God. “Though the grease bums out of the torch, the fire passes on, and no one knows where it ends.” 7 7 The first part of this last sentence is scarcely intelligible and there are numerous suggestions on how it should be interpreted or emended. I fol¬ low Chu Kuei-yao in reading “grease” instead of “finger.” For the sake of reference, I list some of the other possible interpretations as I under¬ stand them. “When the fingers complete the work of adding firewood, the fire passes on” (Kuo Hsiang). “Though the fingers are worn out gathering firewood, the fire passes on” (Yii Yiieh). “What we can point to are the fagots that have been consumed; but the fire is transmitted elsewhere” (Legge, Fukunaga). FOUR IN THE WORLD OF MEN 44 ' yen HUI went to see Confucius and asked permission to take a trip . 1 “Where are you going?” “I’m going to Wei.” What will you do there?” “I have heard that the ruler of Wei is very young. He acts in an independent manner, thinks little of how he rules his state, and fails to see his faults. It is nothing to him to lead his people into peril, and his dead are reckoned by swampfuls like so much grass . 2 His people have nowhere to turn. I have heard you say, Master, ‘Leave the state that is well ordered and go to the state in chaos! At the doctor’s gate are many sick men.’ I want to use these words as my standard, in hopes that I can restore his state to health.” “Ah,” said Confucius, “you will probably go and get yourself executed, that’s all. The Way doesn’t want things mixed in with it. When it becomes a mixture, it becomes many ways; with many ways, there is a lot of bustle; and where there is a lot of bustle, there is trouble—trouble that has no remedy! The Perfect Man of ancient times made sure that he had it in him¬ self before he tried to give it to others. When you’re not even 'Yen Hui was Confucius’ favorite disciple. Throughout this chapter Chuang Tzu refers to a number of historical figures, many of whom appear in the Analects , though the speeches ana anecdotes which he invents for them have nothing to do with history. ’Omitting the kuo , following Hsi T’ung. But there are many other in¬ terpretations of this peculiar sentence. IN THE WORLD OF MEN : 5 5 sure what you’ve got in yourself, how do you have time to bother about what some tyrant is doing? “Do you know what it is that destroys virtue, and where wisdom comes from? Virtue is destroyed by fame, and wisdom comes out of wrangling. Fame is something to beat people down with, and wisdom is a device for wrangling. Both are evil weapons—not the sort of thing to bring you success. Though your virtue may be great and your good faith unassail¬ able, if you do not understand men’s spirits, though your fame may be wide and you do not strive with others, if you do not understand men’s minds, but instead appear before a tyrant and force him to listen to sermons on benevolence and right¬ eousness, measures and standards—this is simply using other men’s bad points to parade your own excellence. You will be called a plaguer of others. He who plagues others will be plagued in turn. You will probably be plagued by this man. “And suppose he is the kind who actually delights in worthy men and hates the unworthy—then why does he need you to try to make him any different? You had best keep your ad¬ vice to yourself! Kings and dukes always lord it over others and fight to win the argument. You will find your eyes growing dazed, your color changing, your mouth working to invent excuses, your attitude becoming more and more humble, until in your mind you end by supporting him. This is to pile fire on fire, to add water to water, and is called ‘increasing the ex¬ cessive.’ If you give in at the beginning, there is no place to stop. Since your fervent advice is almost certain not to be be¬ lieved, you are bound to die if you come into the presence of a tyrant. “In ancient times Chieh put Kuan Lung-feng to death and Chou put Prince Pi Kan to death. Both Kuan Lung-feng and Prince Pi Kan were scrupulous in their conduct, bent down to comfort and aid the common people, and used their posi- Copyrighted material M 56 : IN THE WORLD OF MEN tions as ministers to oppose their superiors. Therefore their rulers, Chieh and Chou, utilized their scrupulous conduct as a means to trap them, for they were too fond of good fame. In ancient times Yao attacked Ts’ung-chih and Hsii-ao, and Yu attacked Yu-hu, and these states were left empty and un¬ peopled, their rulers cut down. It was because they employed their armies constantly and never ceased their search for gain. All were seekers of fame or gain—have you alone not heard of them? Even the sages cannot cope with men who are after fame or gain, much less a person like you! “However, you must have some plan in mind. Come, tell me what it is.” Yen Hui said, “If I am grave and empty-hearted, diligent and of one mind, won’t that do?” “Goodness, how could that do? You may put on a fine out¬ ward show and seem very impressive, but you can’t avoid hav¬ ing an uncertain look on your face, any more than an ordinary man can . 3 And then you try to gauge this man’s feelings and seek to influence his mind. But with him, what is called ‘the virtue that advances a little each day’ would not succeed, much less a great display of virtue! He will stick fast to his position and never be converted. Though he may make outward signs of agreement, inwardly he will not give it a thought! How could such an approach succeed?” “Well then, suppose I am inwardly direct, outwardly com¬ pliant, and do my work through the examples of antiquity? By being inwardly direct, I can be the companion of Heaven. Being a companion of Heaven, I know that the Son of Heaven and I are equally the sons of Heaven. Then why would I use my words to try to get men to praise me, or try to get them 3 1 follow Ma Hsii-lun in taking this sentence to refer to Yen Hui. The older interpretation of Kuo Hsiang takes it to mean: “He (the ruler of Wei) puts on a fine outward show and is very overbearing; his expression is never fixed, and ordinary men do not try to oppose him.” Copyrighted material IN THE WORLD OF MEN : 57 not to praise me? A man like this, people call The Child. This is what I mean by being a companion of Heaven. “By being outwardly compliant, I can be a companion of men. Lifting up the tablet, kneeling, bowing, crouching down —this is the etiquette of a minister. Everybody does it, so why shouldn’t I? If I do what other people do, they can hardly criticize me. This is what I mean by being a companion of men. “By doing my work through the examples of antiquity, I can be the companion of ancient times. Though my words may in fact be lessons and reproaches, they belong to ancient times and not to me. In this way, though I may be blunt, I cannot be blamed. This is what I mean by being a companion of antiquity. If I go about it in this way, will it do?” Confucius said, “Goodness, how could that do? You have too many policies and plans and you haven’t seen what is needed. You will probably get off without incurring any blame, yes. But that will be as far as it goes. How do you think you can actually convert him? You are still making the mind 4 your teacher!” Yen Hui said, “I have nothing more to offer. May I ask the proper way?” “You must fast!” said Confucius. “I will tell you what that means. Do you think it is easy to do anything while you have [a mind]? If you do, Bright Heaven will not sanction you.” Yen Hui said, “My family is poor. I haven’t drunk wine or eaten any strong foods for several months. So can I be con¬ sidered as having fasted?” “That is the fasting one does before a sacrifice, not the fast¬ ing of the mind.” “May I ask what the fasting of the mind is?” Confucius said, “Make your will one! Don’t listen with your 4 Not the natural or “given” mind, but the mind which makes artificial distinctions. Copyrighted material 58 : IN THE WORLD OF MEN ears, listen with your mind. No, don’t listen with your mind, but listen with your spirit. Listening stops with the ears, the mind stops with recognition, but spirit is empty and waits on all things. The Way gathers in emptiness alone. Emptiness is the fasting of the mind.” Yen Hui said, “Before I heard this, I was certain that I was Hui. But now that I have heard it, there is no more Hui. Can this be called emptiness?” “That’s all there is to it,” said Confucius. “Now I will tell you. You may go and play in his bird cage, but never be moved by fame. If he listens, then sing; if not, keep still. Have no gate, no opening , 6 but make oneness your house and live with what cannot be avoided. Then you will be close to success. “It is easy to keep from walking; the hard thing is to walk without touching the ground. It is easy to cheat when you work for men, but hard to cheat when you work for Heaven. You have heard of flying with wings, but you have never heard of flying without wings. You have heard of the knowledge that knows, but you have never heard of the knowledge that does not know. Look into that closed room, the empty chamber where brightness is born! Fortune and blessing gather where there is stillness. But if you do not keep still—this is what is called sitting but racing around . 6 Let your ears and eyes com¬ municate with what is inside, and put mind and knowledge on the outside. Then even gods and spirits will come to dwell, not to speak of men! This is the changing of the ten thousand things, the bond of Yu and Shun, the constant practice of Fu Hsi and Chi Ch’ii . 7 How much more should it t>e a rule for lesser men!” 6 Following Chang Ping-lin, I read tou instead of tu. 6 The body sits but the mind continues to race. 1 Mythical sage rulers. Copyrighted material IN THE WORLD OF MEN : 59 Tzu-kao, duke of She , 8 who was being sent on a mission to Ch’i, consulted Confucius. “The king is sending me on a very important mission. Ch’i will probably treat me with great honor but will be in no hurry to do anything more. Even a commoner cannot be forced to act, much less one of the feudal lords. I am very worried about it. You once said to me, ‘In all affairs, whether large or small, there are few men who reach a happy conclusion except through the Way. If you do not succeed, you are bound to suffer from the judgment of men. If you do succeed, you are bound to suffer from the yin and yang . 9 To suffer no harm whether you succeed or not—only the man who has virtue can do that.’ I am a man who eats plain food that is simply cooked, so that no one ever complains of the heat in my kitchens . 10 Yet this morning I received my orders from the king and by evening I am gulping ice water— do you suppose I have developed some kind of internal fever? I have not even gone to Ch’i to see what the situation is like and already I am suffering from the yin and yang. And if I do not succeed, I am bound to suffer from the judgment of men. I will have both worries. As a minister, I am not capable of carrying out this mission. But perhaps you have some advice you can give me . . .” Confucius said, “In the world, there are two great decrees: one is fate and the other is duty . 11 That a son should love his parents is fate—you cannot erase this from his heart. That a 8 A high minister of Ch’u and relative of the king. • The excitement and worry of success will upset the balance of the yin and yang within the body and bring about sickness. “The latter part of the sentence is barely intelligible and the translation tentative. Legge’s interpretation is ingenious, though strained: “In my diet I take what is coarse, and do not seek delicacies,—a man whose cookery does not require him to be using cooling drinks.” u Yij elsewhere translated as “righteousness.” Copy righted material 60 : IN THE WORLD OF MEN subject should serve his ruler is duty—there is no place he can go and be without his ruler, no place he can escape to between heaven and earth. These are called the great decrees. Therefore, to serve your parents and be content to follow them anywhere—this is the perfection of filial piety. To serve your ruler and be content to do anything for him—this is the peak of loyalty. And to serve your own mind so that sadness or joy do not sway or move it; to understand what you can do nothing about and to be content with it as with fate—this is the perfection of virtue. As a subject and a son, you are bound to find things you cannot avoid. If you act in accordance with the state of affairs and forget about yourself, then what lesiure will you have to love life and hate death? Act in this way and you will be all right. “I want to tell you something else I have learned. In all human relations, if the two parties are living close to each other, they may form a bond through personal trust. But if they are far apart, they must use words to communicate their loyalty, and words must be transmitted by someone. To trans¬ mit words that are either pleasing to both parties or infuriating to both parties is one of the most difficult things in the world. Where both parties are pleased, there must be some exaggera¬ tion of the good points; and where both parties are angered, there must be some exaggeration of the bad points. Anything that smacks of exaggeration is irresponsible. Where there is irresponsibility, no one will trust what is said, and when that happens, the man who is transmitting the words will be in danger. Therefore the aphorism says, ‘Transmit the estab¬ lished facts; do not transmit words of exaggeration.’ If you do that, you will probably come out all right. “When men get together to pit their strength in games of skill, they start off in a light and friendly mood, but usually end up in a dark and angry one, and if they go on too long IN THE WORLD OF MEN : 61 M they start resorting to various underhanded tricks. When men meet at some ceremony to drink, they start off in an orderly manner, but usually end up in disorder, and if they go on too long they start indulging in various irregular amusements. It is the same with all things. What starts out being sincere usually ends up being deceitful. What was simple in the beginning acquires monstrous proportions in the end. “Words are like wind and waves; actions are a matter of gain and loss. Wind and waves are easily moved; questions of gain and loss easily lead to danger. Hence anger arises from no other cause than clever words and one-sided speeches. When animals face death, they do not care what cries they make; their breath comes in gasps and a wild fierceness is born in their hearts. [Men, too,] if you press them too hard, are bound to answer you with ill-natured hearts, though they do not know why they do so. If they themselves do not understand why they behave like this, then who knows where it will end? “Therefore the aphorism says, ‘Do not deviate from your orders; do not press for completion/ To go beyond the limit is excess; to deviate from orders or press for completion is a dangerous thing. A good completion takes a long time; a bad completion cannot be changed later. Can you afford to be careless? “Just go along with things and let your mind move freely. Resign yourself to what cannot be avoided and nourish what is within you—this is best. What more do you have to do to ful¬ fill your mission? Nothing is as good as following orders (obeying fate)—that’s how difficult it is !” 12 11 The phrase chib ming can be interpreted either as “following orders” or as ‘^obeying fate,” and both meanings are almost certainly intended. Since for Chuang Tzu obeying fate is an extremely easy thing to do, the last part of the sentence is ironic. Throughout this passage Confucius, while appearing to give advice on how to carry out a diplomatic mission, is in fact enunciating Chuang Tzu’s code for successful behavior in general. Copy righted material 6 2 : IN THE WORLD OF MEN Yen Ho, who had been appointed tutor to the crown prince, son of Duke Ling of Wei, went to consult Ch’ii Po-yii . 13 “Here is this man who by nature is lacking in virtue. If I let him go on with his unruliness I will endanger the state. If I try to impose some rule on him, I will endanger myself. He knows enough to recognize the faults of others, but he doesn’t know his own faults. What can I do with a man like this?” “A very good question,” said Ch’ii Po-yii. “Be careful, be on your guard, and make sure that you yourself are in the right! In your actions it is best to follow along with him, and in your mind it is best to harmonize with him. However, these two courses involve certain dangers. Though you follow along, you don’t want to be pulled into his doings, and though you harmonize, you don’t want to be drawn out too far. If in your actions you follow along to the extent of being pulled in with him, then you will be overthrown, destroyed, wiped out, and brought to your knees. If in your mind you harmonize to the extent of being drawn out, then you will be talked about, named, blamed, and condemned. If he wants to be a child, be a child with him. If he wants to follow erratic ways, follow erratic ways with him. If he wants to be reckless, be reckless with him. Understand him thoroughly, and lead him to the point where he is without fault . 14 “Don’t you know about the praying mantis that waved its arms angrily in front of an approaching carriage, unaware that they were incapable of stopping it? Such was the high opinion it had of its talents. Be careful, be on your guard! If you 13 Yen Ho was a scholar of Lu, Ch’ii Po-yii a minister of Wei. The crown prince is the notorious K’uai-k’uei, who was forced to flee from Wei because he plotted to kill his mother. He reentered the state and seized the throne from his son in 481 b.c. 14 Waley ( Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China , p. 109) translates, “And if you probe him, do so in a part where his skin is not sore,” taking the verb ta, which I have translated as “understand thoroughly,” to refer to acupuncture. Copyrighted material IN THE WORLD OF MEN : 63 offend him by parading your store of talents, you will be in danger! “Don’t you know how the tiger trainer goes about it? He doesn’t dare give the tiger any living thing to eat for fear it will learn the taste of fury by killing it. He doesn’t dare give it any whole thing to eat for fear it will learn the taste of fury by tearing it apart. He gauges the state of the tiger’s appetite and thoroughly understands its fierce disposition. Tigers are a different breed from men, and yet you can train them to be gentle with their keepers by following along with them. The men who get killed are the ones who go against them. “The horse lover will use a fine box to catch the dung and a giant clam shell to catch the stale. But if a mosquito or a fly lights on the horse and he slaps it at the wrong time, then the horse will break the bit, hurt its head, and bang its chest. The horse lover tries to think of everything, but his affection leads him into error. Can you afford to be careless?” Carpenter Shih went to Ch’i and, when he got to Crooked Shaft, he saw a serrate oak standing by the village shrine. It was broad enough to shelter several thousand oxen and meas¬ ured a hundred spans around, towering above the hills. The lowest branches were eighty feet from the ground, and a dozen or so of them could have been made into boats. There were so many sightseers that the place looked like a fair, but the carpenter didn’t even glance around and went on his way without stopping. His apprentice stood staring for a long time and then ran after Carpenter Shih and said, “Since I first took up my ax and followed you, Master, I have never seen timber as beautiful as this. But you don’t even bother to look, and go right on without stopping. Why is that?” “Forget it—say no more!” said the carpenter. “It’s a worth¬ less tree! Make boats out of it and they’d sink; make coffins Copyrighted material 64 : IN THE WORLD OF MEN and they’d rot in no time; make vessels and they’d break at once. Use it for doors and it would sweat sap like pine; use it for posts and the worms would eat them up. It’s not a timber tree —there’s nothing it can be used for. That’s how it got to be that old!” After Carpenter Shih had returned home, the oak tree appeared to him in a dream and said, “What are you compar¬ ing me with? Are you comparing me with those useful trees? The cherry apple, the pear, the orange, the citron, the rest of those fructiferous trees and shrubs—as soon as their fruit is ripe, they are torn apart and subjected to abuse. Their big limbs are broken off, their little limbs are yanked around. Their utility makes life miserable for them, and so they don’t get to finish out the years Heaven gave them, but are cut off in mid¬ journey. They bring it on themselves—the pulling and tearing of the common mob. And it’s the same way with all other “As for me, I’ve been trying a long time to be of no use, and though I almost died, I’ve finally got it. This is of great use to me. If I had been of some use, would I ever have grown this large? Moreover you and I are both of us things. What’s the point of this—things condemning things? You, a worthless man about to die—how do you know I’m a worthless tree?” When Carpenter Shih woke up, he reported his dream. His apprentice said, “If it’s so intent on being of no use, what’s it doing there at the village shrine?” 16 “Shhh! Say no more! It’s only resting there. If we carp and criticize, it will merely conclude that we don’t understand it. Even if it weren’t at the shrine, do you suppose it would be cut 16 The shrine, or altar of the soil, was always situated in a grove of beau¬ tiful trees. So the oak was serving a purpose by lending an air of sanctity to the spot. Copyrighted material IO6 : HORSES* HOOFS any use for rites and music? If the five colors had not con¬ fused men, who would fashion patterns and hues? If the five notes had not confused them, who would try to tune things by the six tones? That the unwrought substance was blighted in order to fashion implements—this was the crime of the artisan. That the Way and its Virtue were destroyed in order to create benevolence and righteousness—this was the fault of the sage. When horses live on the plain, they eat grass and drink from the streams. Pleased, they twine their necks together and rub; angry, they turn back to back and kick. This is all horses know how to do. But if you pile poles and yokes on them and line them up in crossbars and shafts, then they will learn to snap the crossbars, break the yoke, rip the carriage top, champ the bit, and chew the reins . 4 Thus horses learn how to commit the worst kinds of mischief . 5 This is the crime of PoLo. In the days of Ho Hsu , 6 people stayed home but didn't know what they were doing, walked around but didn’t know where they were going. Their mouths crammed with food, they were merry; drumming on their bellies, they passed the time. This was as much as they were able to do. Then the sage came along with the crouchings and bendings of rites and music, which were intended to reform the bodies of the world; with the reaching-for-a-dangled-prize of benevolence and righteous¬ ness, which was intended to comfort the hearts of the world. Then for the first time people learned to stand on tiptoe and covet knowledge, to fight to the death over profit, and there was no stopping them. This in the end was the fault of the sage. ‘There are many different interpretations of the terms in this sentence. I follow the emendations and interpretations of Ma Hsii-lun. ‘Following texts which read neng rather than t'ai. 8 Legendary ruler of high antiquity. Copyrighted material ffc SUPREME HAPPINESS (section 18) Is there such a thing as supreme happiness in the world or isn't there? Is there some way to keep yourself alive or isn’t there? What to do, what to rely on, what to avoid, what to stick by, what to follow, what to leave alone, what to find happiness in, what to hate? This is what the world honors: wealth, eminence, long life, a good name. This is what the world finds happiness in: a life of ease, rich food, fine clothes, beautiful sights, sweet sounds. This is what it looks down on: poverty, meanness, early death, a bad name. This is what it finds bitter: a life that knows no rest, a mouth that gets no rich food, no fine clothes for the body, no beautiful sights for the eye, no sweet sounds for the ear. People who can’t get these things fret a great deal and are afraid—this is a stupid way to treat the body. People who are rich wear themselves out rushing around on business, piling up more wealth than they could ever use—this is a superficial way to treat the body. People who are eminent spend night and day scheming and wondering if they are doing right_ this is a shoddy way to treat the body. Man lives his life in company with worry, and if he lives a long while, till he’s u 1 and doddering, then he has spent that much time worry- mg instead of dying, a bitter lot indeed! This is a callous way to treat t K J 2 Chuang Tzm . , .1 are regarded by the world as good, but their Men of ar or 8^ ^ keep ing them alive. So I don’t f 0dneS hether their goodness is really good or not. Perhaps I E ^ good-but not good enough to save their lives. Per¬ haps I think it’s no good-but still good enough to save the lives of others. So I say, if your loyal advice tsn heeded give way and do not wrangle. Tzu-hsii wrangled and lost his body * But if he hadn’t wrangled, he wouldn’t have made a name. Is there really such a thing as goodness or isn t there? What ordinary people do and what they find happiness in _1 don’t know whether such happiness is in the end really happiness or not. I look at what ordinary people find happiness in, what they all make a mad dash for, racing around as though they couldn’t stop—they all say they’re happy with it. I’m not happy with it and I’m not unhappy with it. In the end is there really happiness or isn’t there? I take inaction to be true happiness, but ordinary people think it is a bitter thing. I say: the highest happiness has no happiness, the highest praise has no praise. The world can’t decide what is right and what is wrong. And yet inaction can decide this. The highest happiness, keeping alive—only inac¬ tion gets you close to this! Let me try putting it this way. The inaction of Heaven is its purity, the inaction of earth is its peace. So the two inac¬ tions combine and all things are transformed and brought to . Wonderfully’ mysteriously, there is no place they come ° . ysteriously, wonderfully, they have, no sign. Each g nun s its business and all grow up out of inaction. So ■Wu TWh^* Io6 ’ n - I5 * of tlae danger of attart S f Cr t °i^ e Wu, repeatedly warned the king ire and suspicion and e state °f Yiieh. He finally aroused the king's S ° rced to co mmit suicide in 484 b.c. Supreme Happiness n 3 I say, Heaven and earth do nothing and there is nothing that is not done. Among men, who can get hold of this inaction? Chuang Tzu s wife died. When Hui Tzu went to convey his condolences, he found Chuang Tzu sitting with his legs sprawled out, pounding on a tub and singing. “You lived with her, she brought up your children and grew old, said Hui Tzu. “It should be enough simply not to weep at her death. But pounding on a tub and singing—this is going too far, isn’t it?” Chuang Tzu said, “You’re wrong. When she first died, do you think I didn’t grieve like anyone else? But I looked back to her beginning and the time before she was born. Not only the time before she was born, but the time before she had a body. Not only the time before she had a body, but the time before she had a spirit. In the midst of the jumble of wonder 3iid mystery a change took place and she had a spirit. Another change and she had a body. Another change and she was born. Now there’s been another change and she’s dead. It’s just like the progression of the four seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter. “Now she’s going to lie down peacefully in a vast room. If I were to follow after her bawling and sobbing, it would show that I don’t understand anything about fate. So I stopped.” Uncle Lack-Limb and Uncle Lame-Gait were seeing the sights at Dark Lord Hill and the wastes of K’un-lun, the place where the Yellow Emperor rested. 3 Suddenly a willow ‘These are all places or persons associated in Chinese legend with im¬ mortality. The Yellow Emperor, as we have seen above, p. 78, did not die but ascended to Heaven. Chuang Tzw 1 , , „c i Tncle Lame-Gait’s left elbow. 4 He looked very Spr0 rf 0 nd slmed to be annoyed. startle a Uncle Lack-Limb. to resent?" sard Uncle Lame-Gait. "To V e is to borrow. And if we borrow to live, then the living mus t bl a pile of trash. Life and death are day and night. You and I came to watch the process of change, and now change has caught up with me. Why would I have anything to resent?” When Chuang Tzu went to Ch’u, he saw an old skull, all dry and parched. He poked it with his carriage whip and then asked, “Sir, were you greedy for life and forgetful of reason, and so came to this? Was your state overthrown and did you bow beneath the ax and so came to this? Did you do some evil deed and were you ashamed to bring disgrace upon your par¬ ents and family, and so came to this: 5 Was it through the pangs of cold and hunger that you came to this? Or did your springs and autumns pile up until they brought you to this?’’ When he had finished speaking, he dragged the skull over and, using it for a pillow, lay down to sleep. In the middle of the night, the skull came to him in a dream and said, “You chatter like a rhetorician and all your words betray the entanglements of a living man. The dead know nothing of these! Would you like to hear a lecture on the dead?” "Indeed,” said Chuang Tzu. The skull said, “Among the dead there are no rulers above, no subjects below,.and no chores of the four seasons. With hg to do, our springs and autumns are as endless as acter for “willow'^ 6 P rosaic interpretation of Li Tz u-ming, the char “ a loan ^r the word “tumor.” Supreme Happiness n$ heaven and earth. A king facing south on his throne could have no more happiness than this!” Chuang Tzu couldn’t believe this and said, “If I got the Arbiter of Fate to give you a body again, make you some bones and flesh, return you to your parents and family and your old home and friends, you would want that, wouldn’t you?” The skull frowned severely, wrinkling up its brow. “Why would I throw away more happiness than that of a king on a throne and take on the troubles of a human being again?” it said. When Yen Yuan went east to Ch’i, Confucius had a very worried look on his face. 5 Tzu-kung got off his mat and asked, May I be so bold as to inquire why the Master has such a worried expression now that Hui has gone east to Ch’i?” “Excellent—this question of yours,” said Confucius. “Kuan Tzu 6 had a saying that I much approve of: 'Small bags won’t hold big things; short well ropes won’t dip up deep water/ In the same way I believe that fate has certain forms and the body certain appropriate uses. You can’t add to or take away from these. I’m afraid that when Hui gets to Ch’i he will start telling the marquis of Ch'i about the ways of Yao, Shun, and the Yellow Emperor, and then will go on to speak about Sui- jen and Shen-nung. 7 The marquis will then look for similar greatness within himself and fail to find it. Failing to find it, he will become distraught, and when a man becomes dis¬ traught, he kills. "Yen Yuan or Yen Hui, who has appeared earlier, was Confucius' fa¬ vorite disciple. * Kuan Chung, a 7th-century statesman of Ch'i whom Confucius, judging from the Analects, admired. 7 Sui-jen and Shen-nung are mythical culture heroes, the discoverers of fire and agriculture respectively. n 6 Chuang Tzw “Haven't you heard this story? Once a sea bird alighted in the suburbs of the Lu capital. The marquis of Lu escorted it to the ancestral temple, where he entertained it, performing the Nine Shao music for it to listen to and presenting it with the meat of the Tai-lao sacrifice to feast on. But the bird only looked dazed and forlorn, refusing to eat a single slice of meat or drink a cup of wine, and in three days it was dead. This is to try to nourish a bird with what would nourish you instead of what would nourish a bird. If you want to nourish a bird with what nourishes a bird, then you should let it roost in the deep forest, play among the banks and islands, float on the rivers and lakes, eat mudfish and minnows, follow the rest of the flock in flight and rest, and live any way it chooses. A bird hates to hear even the sound of human voices, much less all that hubbub and to-do. Try performing the Hsien-ch’ih and Nine Shao music in the wilds around Lake TungTing— when the birds hear it they will fly off, when the animals hear it they will run away, when the fish hear it they will dive to the bottom. Only the people who hear it will gather around to listen. Fish live in water and thrive, but if men tried to live ”0 water they would die. Creatures differ because they have erent likes and dislikes. Therefore the former sages never required the same ability from all creatures or made them all o the same t hi ng . Names should stop when they have ex- h suitabl^TV “"“P' 5 ° f rigln should be foun ded on what and onnrl f 1S * S wbat me ans to have command of reason, d 8 ° 0d fortul * to support you.” y ^ j c| ^ ' be sa 'v a hundrervearTld"? T eati " g by the roadside wh “! pointing his t s kull. Pulling away the weeds and ‘ ’ 6 " 8 ”’ h ' "Only y„ u „ d I t„ow ,h„ P” Supreme Happiness ny have never died and you have never lived. Are you really un¬ happy? 8 Am 1 reall Y en j°y in g myself?” The seeds of things have mysterious workings. In the water they become Break Vine, on the edges of the water they be¬ come Frog’s Robe. If they sprout on the slopes they become Hill Slippers. If Hill Slippers get rich soil, they turn into Crow’s Feet. The roots of Crow’s Feet turn into maggots and their leaves turn into butterflies. Before long the butterflies are transformed and turn into insects that live under the stove; they look like snakes and their name is Ch’ii-t’o. After a thou¬ sand days, the Ch’ii-t’o insects become birds called Dried Left- over Bones. The saliva of the Dried Leftover Bones becomes Ssu-mi bugs and the Ssu-mi bugs become Vinegar Eaters. Yi-lo bugs are born from the Vinegar Eaters, and Huang-shuang bugs from Chiu-yu bugs. Chtu-yu bugs are born from Mou-jui bugs and Mou-jui bugs are born from Rot Grubs and Rot Grubs are born from Sheep’s Groom. Sheep’s Groom couples with bamboo that has not sprouted for a long while and pro¬ duces Green Peace plants. Green Peace plants produce leop¬ ards and leopards produce horses and horses produce men. Men in time return again to the mysterious workings. So all creatures come out of the mysterious workings and go back into them again . 9 • Following the interpretation of Yu Yiieh. The text of this last paragraph, a romp through ancient Chinese nature lore, is doubtful at many points. TEN RIFLING TRUNKS if one is to guard and take precautions against thieves who rifle trunks, ransack bags, and break open boxes, then he must bind with cords and ropes and make fast with locks and hasps. This the ordinary world calls wisdom. But if a great thief comes along, he will shoulder the boxes, hoist up the trunks, sling the bags over his back, and dash off, only worrying that the cords and ropes, the locks and hasps are not fastened tightly enough. In that case, the man who earlier was called wise was in fact only piling up goods for the bene¬ fit of a great thief. Let me try explaining what I mean. What the ordinary world calls a wise man is in fact someone who piles things up for the benefit of a great thief, is he not? And what it calls a sage is in fact someone who stands guard for the benefit of a great thief, is he not? How do I know this is so? In times past there was the state of Ch’i, its neighboring towns within sight of each other, the cries of their dogs and chickens within hearing of each other. The area where its nets and seines were spread, where its plows and spades dug the earth, measured over two thousand li square, filling all the space within its four borders . 1 And in the way its ancestral temples and its altars of the soil and grain were set up, its towns and villages and hamlets were governed, was there anything that did not accord with the laws of the sages? Yet one morning Viscount T’ien Ch’eng murdered the ruler of Ch’i and stole his state. And 1 1 .e., it was rich and fertile and had no wastelands. 108 : RIFLING TRUNKS was it only the state he stole? Along with it he also stole the laws which the wisdom of the sages had devised. Thus, al¬ though Viscount T’ien Ch’eng gained the name of thief and bandit, he was able to rest as peacefully as a Yao or a Shun. The smaller states did not dare condemn him, the larger states did not dare to attack, and for twelve generations his family held possession of the state of Ch’i . 2 Is this not a case in which a man, stealing the state of Ch’i, along with it stole the laws of the sages’ wisdom and used them to guard the person of a thief and a bandit? Let me try explaining it. What the ordinary world calls a man of perfect wisdom is in fact someone who piles things up for the benefit of a great thief; what the ordinary world calls a perfect sage is in fact someone who stands guard for the benefit of a great thief. How do I know this is so? In times past, Kuan Lung-feng was cut down, Pi Kan was disem¬ boweled, Ch’ang Hung was torn apart, and Wu Tzu-hsii was left to rot. All four were worthy men, and yet they could not escape destruction . 8 One of Robber Chih’s followers once asked Chih, “Does the thief too have a Way?” Chih replied, “How could he get anywhere if he didn’t have a Way? Making shrewd guesses as to how much booty is stashed away in the room is sageliness; being the first one in is bravery; being the last one out is righteousness; knowing a The assassination of the king of Ch’i took place in 481 b.c.; the actual usurpation of the state by the T’ien family, in 386 b.c. No one has satis¬ factorily explained the “twelve generations”; Yu Yiieh suggests that it is a copyist’s error for shih-shih (generation after generation.) * All four men attempted to give good advice to their erring sovereigns, and ended by being put to death or forced to commit suicide. On Kuan Lung-feng and Pi Kan, see p. 55; on Ch’ang Hung and Wu Tzu-hsii, see p. 294, n. 2.1 suppose this is meant to illustrate how the rulers “stole” the wisdom of their counselors, though it is hardly apt, since all the rulers came to violent ends as a result of their wickedness. Copyrighted material
The essential Chuang Tzu
Zhuangzi
1998-01-01T00:00:00Z
null
xx, 170 p. ; 24 cm
Chuang Tzu: Chinese classic books
Unknown
1991-01-01T00:00:00Z
null
null
the way of chuang tzu
null
1965-01-01T00:00:00Z
null
null
The way of Chuang Tzu
Merton, Thomas, 1915-1968,Zhuangzi
1969-01-01T00:00:00Z
Zhuangzi,Taoism
Free renderings of selections from the works of Zhuangzi, taken from various translations
Chuang Tzu : the inner chapters
Towler, Solala
2011-01-01T00:00:00Z
Zhuangzi. Nanhua jing. Nei pian
p. cm,Includes bibliographical references and index,The way of free and easy wandering -- The way of making all things equal -- The way of nourishing life -- The way of the human world -- The way of essential virtue -- The way of the great teacher -- The way of the sage ruler
The book of Chuang Tzu
Zhuangzi
1996-01-01T00:00:00Z
null
xxx, 320 p. : 20 cm,"A new, complete translation of the classic Taoist text"--Cover,Includes index
Chuang-tzu for spiritual transformation : an analysis of the inner chapters
Allinson, Robert E., 1942-
1989-01-01T00:00:00Z
Chuang-tzu. Nan-hua ching
203 p. ; 24 cm,Includes bibliographical references (p. 173-199) and index,97 03 07
The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu
Burton Watson
1968-01-01T00:00:00Z
null
ssics."
Musings of a Chinese Mystic: Selections from the Philosophy of Chuang Tzŭ
Lionel Giles, Chuang tzu, Herbert Allen Giles
1906-01-01T00:00:00Z
null
Book digitized by Google from the library of Harvard University and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.
Full text of "Musings of a Chinese Mystic: Selections from the Philosophy of Chuang Tzŭ" Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "Musings of a Chinese Mystic: Selections from the Philosophy of Chuang Tzŭ" See other formats This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online. It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover. Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you. Usage guidelines Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying. We also ask that you: + Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for personal, non-commercial purposes. + Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help. + Maintain attribution The Google "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it. + Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe. About Google Book Search Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at |http : //books . google . com/ s*r-^->~".--^ - *^>V-^ irj^ I Ube Midt>om of tbe East Series Edited by L. CRANMER-BYNG Dr. S. A. KAPADIA MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC WISDOM OF THE EAST MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC SELECTIONS FROM THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHUANG TZU WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY LIONEL GILES, M.A. (Oxon.) ASSISTANT AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1906 feu CONTENTS Note Introduction .... Thb Doctrine op Rblativity The Identitt op Contraries Illusions The Mysterious Immanence op Tao The Hidden Spring . Non-Interperence with Nature Passive Virtue .... Selp-Adaptation to Externals . Immortality op the Soul . The Saqe, or Ferpect Man Random Gleanings Personal Anecdotes . 5 7 11 37 42 48 51 60 66 69 77 82 86 93 109 NOTE rpHE extracts in this volume are drawn, with one or two very slight modifications, from the translation by Professor H. A. Giles (Quaritch, 1889). EDITORIAL NOTE THE object of the editors of this series is a very definite one. They desire above all things that, in their humble way, these books shall be the ambassadors of good-will and understanding between East and West, the old world of Thought, and the new of Action. In this endeavour, and in their own sphere, they are but followers of the highest example in the land. They are confident that a deeper know- ledge of the great ideals and lofty philosophy of Oriental thought may help to a revival of that true spirit of Charity which neither despises nor fears the nations of another creed and colour. Finally, in thanking press and public for the very cordial reception given to the " Wisdom of the East " series, they wish to state that no pains have been spared to secure the best specialists for the treatment of the various subjects at hand. L. CRANMER-BYNG. S. A. KAPADM. 4^ Habooubt BuiLDmas, Inneb Tbmpijb, Loin>oN« MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC INTRODUCTION ALTHOUGH Chinese history can'^show no authentic contemporary record prior to the Chou dynasty, some eleven hundred years before Christ, there is no doubt that a high pitch of civili- sation was attained at a much earlier period. Thus Lao Tzu was in no sense the first humanising instructor of a semi-barbaric race. On the con- trary, his was a reactionary influence, for the cry he raised was directed against the multiplication of laws and restrictions, the growth of luxury, and the other evils which attend rapid material progress. That his lifetime should have coin- cided with a remarkable extension of the very principles he combated with such energy is one of the ironies of fate. Before he was in his grave another great man had arisen who laid unex- ampled stress on the minute regulation of cere- 12 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC monies and ritual, and succeeded in investing the Tules of outward conduct with an importance they had never hitherto possessed. If Lao Tzu then had revolted against the growing artificiality of life in his day, a return to nature must have seemed doubly imperative to his disciple Chuang Tzii, who flourished more than a couple of centuries later, when the bugbear of civilisation had steadily advanced. With chagrin he saw that Lao Tzii's teaching had never obtained any firm hold on the masses, still less on the rulers of China, whereas the star of Confucius was unmistakably in the ascendant. Within his own recollection the propagation of Confucian ethics had received a powerful impetus from Mencius, the second of China's orthodox sages. Now Chuang Tzu was imbued to the core with the principles of pure Taoism, as handed down by Lao Tzu. He might more fitly be dubbed '' the Tao-saturated man " than Spinoza '' the God- intoxicated." Tao in its various phases pervaded his inmost being and was reflected in all his thought. He was therefore eminently qualifled to revive his Master's ringing protest against the materialistic tendencies of the time. Chuang Tzu's worldly position was not high. We learn from Ssu-ma Ch'ien that he held a petty official post in a small provincial town. But his literary and philosophical talent must soon have brought him into repute, for we find him mS OFFICIAL POSITION 13 in frequent contact with the leading scholars of the age, against whom he is said to have defended his tenets with success. It does not appear, however, that he gained promotion in the public service, which is doubtless to be attributed to his own lack of ambition and shrinking from an active career, as we have his personal account of a deputation which vainly tried to induce him to accept the post of Prime Minister in the Ch'u State. Official routine must have proved in the highest degree distasteful to this finely tempered poetic spirit, as it has to many a chafing genius since. Bold in fancy yet retiring by dis- position, prone to melancholy yet full of eager enthusiasm, a natural sceptic yet inspired with boundless belief in his doctrine, he was a man full of contradictions, but none the less fitted to make a breach in the cast-iron traditions of Confucianism, if not to draw others after him in the same track. Of his mental development there remains no record. His convictions, as they stand revealed in his great philosophical work, are already mature, if somewhat lacking in consistency ; he comes before the public as a keen adherent of the school of Lao Tzii, giving eloquent and impassioned utterance to the ideas which had germinated in the brain of his Master. Chuang Tzu, indeed, supplies the prime deficiency of Lao Tzu ; he has the gift of language which enables him to clothe in rich apparel the great 14 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC thoughts that had hitherto found their only expression in bare disconnected sayings. These scraps of concise wisdom, which are gathered together in the patchwork treatise known as the Too Ti Chingy seem to have formed the kernel of his doctrine, and he proceeded to develop them in a hundred different directions. It would be unjust, however, to infer from this that there is nothing in Chuang Tzu which cannot be traced back to the older sage, or that he was incapable of original thought of distinct and independent value. On the contrary, his mental grasp of elusive metaphysical problems was hardly if at all inferior to that of Lao Tzu himself, and certainly never equalled by any subsequent Chinese thinker. His writings also have that stimulating suggesti^eness which stamps the product of all great minds. After reading and re-reading Chuang Tzu, one feels there are latent depths still unplumbed. Moreover, he gives free rein to his own particular fancies and pre- dilections. There are sides of Lao Tzu's teaching at which he hardly glances, or which he passes over entirely, while in other directions he allows his brilliant imagination to carry him far out of sight of his fountain-head. If the analogy be not too heavily pressed, we may say that he was to the Founder of Taoism what St. Paul was to the Founder of Christianity. As with Lao Tzu, Tao forms the centre and THE MEANING OF TAO 16 pivot of Chuang Tzu's whole system ; and this imparts real unity to his work, which in other respects appears undeniably straggling and ill- compacted. But Tao as conceived by Chuang Tzii is not quite the same thing as the Tao of which Lao Tzu spoke with such wondering awe. The difference will be better understood after a brief sketch of the gradual development in the meaning of the word. The first meaning of Tao is " road " or " way," and in very early times it was used by a figure of speech for the " way " or method of doing a thmg. Thus it came to denote a rule of right conduct, moral action, or the principle underlying it. There also grew up in common speech a natural antithesis between the Way of Heaven (T'ien Tao) and the Way of man, the former expression signifying the highest standard of wisdom and moral excellence, as opposed to the blind groping after truth here below. Finally the " T'ien " was dropped, and Tao then stood alone for the great unseen prin- ciple of Good dominating and permeating the Universe. The transition is visible in Lao Tzu, who was probably the first to employ the term in its transcendental sense, but who also retains the older expression Tien Tao. In one of his sayings T^ien Tao is practically equivalent to Tao the First Cause, and must therefore be trans- lated not the Way but the Tao of Heaven. This brings us to the next stage, of which Chuang 16 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC Tzu is the representative. In his writings Tao never seems to mean " way." But he introduces a new element of perplexity by speaking of Tien and Tao as though they were two co-existent yet perfectly distinct cosmic principles. He also uses the combination Tien Tao, and it is here that the clue to the difficulty must be sought. The Tao of Heaven is evidently an attribute rather than a thing in itself, and it is T'ien which has now become the First Cause. It is a less im- personal conception, however, than Lao Tzu's transcendental Tao, and in fact closely approxi- mates to our own term " God." * What, then, is Chuang Tzu's Tao ? Though by no means always clear and consistent on the subject, he seems to regard it as the " Virtue " or mani- festation of the divine First Principle. It is what he somewhere calls '^ the happiness of God," — ^which to the Taoist of course means a state of profound and passionless tranquillity, a " sacred everlasting calm." Now Lao Tzu speaks of Tao as having existed before Heaven and Earth : " Heaven," he says, " takes its law from Tao ; but the law of Tao is its own spon- taneity." With him, therefore, Tao is the antecedent of T'ien, being what modem philo- sophers term the Unconditioned or the Absolute. As to his Tien, the ambiguity which lurks therein makes it doubtful whether he had any definite 1 It is translated thus in the acoompanying extracts. TIEN AND TAO COMPARED 17 conception of it at all. He simply appears to have accepted the akeady existing Chinese cosmogony, oblivious or careless of its incom- patibility with his own novel conception of Tao. Chuang Tzu to some extent removes this am- biguity by reverting to the older usage. He deposes Tao from its premier position as the Absolute, and puts Tien in its place. Tao becomes a mystic moral principle not unlike Lao Tzu's T6, or "Virtue," and the latter term when used at all has lost most of its technical significance. Thus broadly stated, some such explanation will prove helpful to the reader, though he may still be baffled by a passage like the following : " A man looks upon God ^ as upon his father, and loves Him in like measure. Shall he, then, not love that which is greater than God ? " The truth is that neither consistency of thought nor exact terminology can be looked for in Chinese philosophy as a whole, and least of all, perhaps, in such an abstract system as that of early Taoism. Leaving this somewhat barren discussion as to the relative position of Tao and Tien, we now come to what was undoubtedly Chuang Tzu's greatest achievement in the region of pure thought. As in so many other cases, the germ is provided by Lao Tzu, who has the sajdng : " inie recognition of beauty as such implies the 1 Tien. 18 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC idea of ugliness, and the recognition of good implies the idea of evil." FoUowing up this hint, Chuang Tzu is led to insist on the ultimate relativity of all human perceptions. Even space and time are relative. Sense-knowledge is gained by looking at things from only one point of view, and is therefore utterly illusory and untrust- worthy. Hence, it appears that the most funda- ment€d distinctions of our thought are unreal and crumble away when exposed to the "light of Nature." Contraries no longer stand in sharp antagonism, but are in some sense actually identical with each other, because there is a real and all-embracing Unity behind them. There is nothing which is not objective, nothing which is not subjective ; which is as much as to say, that subjective is also objective, and objective also subjective. When he pauses here to ask whether it be possible to say that subjective and objective really exist at all, he seems to be touching the fringe of scepticism pure and simple. But the point is not pressed ; he is an idealist at heart, and will not seriously question the existence of a permanent Reality underlying the flow of phenomena. True wisdom then consists in withdrawing from one's own individual standpoint and entering into " subjective re- lation with all things." He who can achieve this will " reject all distinctions of this and that," because he is able to descry an ultimate Unity THE QUIETIST IDEAL 19 in whicli they are merged, a mysterious One which " blends, transcends them all." Still keeping Lao Titt in sight, our author draws further curious inferences from this doc- trine of relativity. Virtue implies vice, and therefore will indirectly be productive of it. In any case, to aim at being virtuous is only an ignorant and one-sided way of regarding the principles of the universe. Rather let us tran- scend the artificial distinctions of right and wrong, and take Tao itself as our model, keeping our minds in a state of perfect balance, absolutely passive and quiescent, making no effort in any direction. The ideal then is something which is neither good nor bad, pleasure nor pain, wis- dom nor folly ; it simply consists in following nature, or taking the line of least resistance. The attainment of this state, and the spiritual blessings accruing therefrom, constitute the main theme of Ghuang Tzti's discourse. His whole duty of man is thus summed up and put into a nutshell : " Resolve your mental energy into abstraction, your physical energy into inaction. Allow yourself to fall in with the natural order of phenomena, without admitting the element of self." This elimination of self is in truth the sub- stitution of the ampler atmosphere of Tao for one's own narrow individuality. But Tao is not only inert and unchanging, it is also profoundly 20 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC unconscious — a strange attribute, which at once fixes a gulf between it and our idea of a personal God. And accordingly, since Tao is the grand model for mankind, Chuang Tzu would have us strive to attain so far as may be to a like uncon- sciousness. But absolute and unbroken uncon- sciousness during this life being an impossibility, he advocates, not universal suicide, which would plainly violate the order of nature, but a state of mental abstraction which shall involve at least a total absence of self-consciousness. In order to explain his thought more clearly, he gives a number of vivid illustrations from life, such as the parable of Prince Hui's cook, who devoted himself to Tao and worked with his mind and not with his eye.* He shows that the highest pitch of manual dexterity is attained only by those whose art has become their second nature, who have grown so familiar with their work that all their movements seem to come instinc- tively and of themselves, who, in other words, have reached the stage at which they are really " unconscious " of any effort. This application of Tao in the humble sphere of the handicrafts- man serves to point the way towards the higher regions of abstract contemplation, where it will find its fullest scope. The same idea is carried into the domain of ethics. As we have seen, Chuang Tzu would have men neither moral nor ^ See p. 52. FREEDOM FROM RESTRAINT 21 immoral, but simply non-moral. And to this end every taint of self-consciousness must be purged away, the mind^^must be freed from its own criteria, and all one's trust must be placed in natural intuition. Any attempt to impose fixed standards of morality on the peoples of the earth is to be condemned, because it leaves no room for that spontaneous and unforced accord with nature which is the very salt of human action. Thus, were it feasible, Chuang Tzu would transport mankind back into the golden age which existed before the distinction between right and wrong arose. When the artificial barrier between contraries was set up, the world had already, in his eyes, lost its primitive good- ness. For the mere fact of being able to call one's conduct good implies a lapse into the uncertain sea of relativity, and consequent deviation from the heavenly pattern. Herein lies the explana- tion of the paradox, on which he is constantly harping, that wisdom, charity, duty to one's neighbour and so on, are opposed to Tao. It is small wonder that China has hesitated to adopt a system which logically leads to such extreme conclusions. Nevertheless, we must not too hastily write Chuang Tzu off as an unprac- tical dreamer. Remote though his speculations seem from the world of reality, they rest on a substratum of truth. In order to set forth his views with more startling effect, he certainly 22 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC laid undue stress on the mystical side of Lao Tzu's philosophy, to the exclusion of much that was better worth handling. That he him- self, however, was not altogether blind to the untenability of an extreme position may be gathered from a remark which he casually lets fall : " While there should be no action, there should be also no inaction." This is a pregnant sa3ang, which shows how Chuang Tzu may have modified his stubborn attitude to meet the necessities of actual life. What he means is that any hard-and-fast, predetermined line of conduct is to be avoided, abstinence from action just as much as action itself. The great thing is that nothing be done of set purpose when it seems to violate the natural order of events. On the other hand, if a certain course of action presents itself as the most obvious and natural to adopt, it would not be in accordance with Tao to shrhik from it. This is known as the doctrine of inaction, but it would be more correctly named the doctrine of spontaneity. There is another noteworthy element in Chuang Tzu's system which does much to smooth away the difficulty of reconciling theory and practice. This is what he calls the doctrine of non-angularity and self-adaptation to externals. It is really a corollary to the grand principle of getting outside one's personality — a process which extends the mental horizon and creates sympathy with the SWIMMING WITH THE TIDE 23 minds of others. Some such wholesome cor- rective was necessary to prevent the Taoist code from drifting into mere quixotry. Here again Lao Tzu may have supplied the seed which was to ripen in the pages of his disciple. ''What the world reverences cannot be treated with disrespect," is the dictum of the older sage. But Ghuang Tzu went beyond this negative precept. He saw well enough that unless a man is prepared to run his head against a stone wall, he must, in the modem cant phrase, adjust himself to his environment. Without abating a jot of his inmost convictions, he must " swim with the tide, so as not to oflEend others." Outwardly he may adapt himself, if inwardly he keeps up to his own standard. There must be no raging and tearing propaganda, but infinite patience and tact. Gentle moral suasion and personal ex- ample are the only methods that Chuang Tzu will coimtenance ; and even with these he urges caution : " If you are always offending others by your superiority, you will probably come to grief." Above all, he abhors the clumsy stupidity which would go on forcing its stock remedies down the people's throat irrespective of place or season. Thus even Confucius is blamed for trying to revive the dead ashes of the past and ''make the customs of Chou succeed in Lu." This, he says, is like " pushing a boat on land, great trouble and no result, except certain injury 24 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC to oneself.'' There must be no blind and rigid adherence to custom and tradition, no unreason- ing worship of antiquity. " Dress up a monkey in the robes of Chou Kung/ and it will not be happy until they are torn to shreds. And the difference between past and present," he adds bitterly, ''is much the same as the difference between Chou Kung and a monkey." The rebuke conveyed in these remarks is not wholly unmerited. Chuang Tzu, while hardly yielding t)6 Confucius himself in his ardent admiration of the olden time, never fell into the mistake of supposing that the world can stand still, though he feared it might sometimes go backward. He believed that to be the wisest . statecraft, which could take account of changed conditions and suit its measures to the age. Plainly the in- activity he preached, hard though it be to fathom and harder still to compass, was something very different from stagnation. It was a lesson China needed ; well for her in these latter days if she had taken it more to heart ! The comparative neglect of Chuang Tzu among the literati of the Middle Kingdom is no doubt chiefly due to his cavalier treatment of Con- fucius, of which we have just had a sample. Most of the writers who mention him speak of 1 A great jurist emd social reformer of the twelfth century B.C., brother of the first sovereign of the Chou djmastjr. TREATMENT OP CONFUCIUS 25 his hostile attitude towards the head of the orthodox school. As a matter of fact, this hostility has been a little exaggerated. For one thing, Chuang Tzii's attitude is by no means consistent ; the tone adopted towards Confucius passes through every variety of shade. In the first seven chapters, which form the nucleus of Chuang Tzu's work, he is assigned a very pro- minent position, acting for the most part as the mouth-piece of the author's own views, which he is made to expound with an air of authority. In only one passage is he treated with disrespect, though in another it is implied that he was a prophet unsuited to his age. In chapter vi we may even discern a rough attempt at reconciling the two extremes of mystic Taoism and matter- of-fact Confucianism. It seems that all may not aspire to the more intimate communion with Tao, though Tao is the environment of all. For Confucius here resigns himself to the wiU of Heaven, which has ordained that he, like the bulk of mankind, shall travel within the ordinary " rule of life," with its limited outlook, its pre- judices, forms, and ceremonies ; but he frankly recognises the superior blessedness of the favoured few who can transcend it. In some of the later chapters (the genuineness of which is not always unimpeachable) the Master is more severely handled. Especially does he appear to dis- (uivantage, as might naturally be expected, in 26 MUSINGS OP A CHINESE MYSTIC his alleged interviews with Lao Tzu.* But in other places again he is represented as an earnest inquirer after truth, or even cited as an acknowledged authority. He quotes words which now stand in the Too T4 Ching, and generally behaves more like a disciple of Lao Tzu than as the head of a rival system. In chapter xxii, by a strange piece of inad- vertence, he is actually made to disparage the Confucianists with their scholastic quibbles. But it is in the last of the genuine chapters, entitled Lieh Tzu, that the acme of inconsistency is reached. Here Confucius is attacked as '' a man of outward show and specious words. He mistakes the branch for the root." If entrusted with the welfare of the State, " it will only be by mistake that he will succeed." Yet this tirade is immediately followed by a characteristic harangue in the Taoist vein, delivered by no other than the much-maligned sage himself. It is hard, indeed, to imagine the central figure of the Analects speaking in this strain : — " There is nothing more fatal than intentional virtue, when the mind looks outwards. For by thus looking outwards, the power of introspection is de- stroyed. . . . What is it to aim at virtue ? Why, a man who aims at virtue practises what he ap- proves and condemns what he does not practise." ^ Lao Tzu himself does not escape entirely. See the curious episode on p. 82 of the present volumot MAGNETISM OF CONPUCTOS 27 Misreprefientation is carried to such lengths that sayings are put into his mouth which are the exact opposite of what he really uttered. And it is unlikely that Chuang Tzu had much scruple in thus harnessing the great Teacher to his own doctrines. He was doubtless fully alive to the advantage of borrowing and, as it were, absorbing the unparalleled prestige of so great a man ; besides which, the sheer audacity of the scheme must have attracted him ; and he carried it out with what the Confucianists are justified in regarding as the utmost effrontery. Yet it would be too much to say that this curious form of homage was wholly insincere. There are signs that Chuang Tzu was impressed, almost in spite of himself, by the pure personal character of the man whose whole view of life he distrusted, but whose message was so deeply printed in the hearts of his countrymen. He could not escape the common influence ; the very frequency with which he brings Confucius upon the stage, whether as prophet or target for abuse, tells of a certain involuntary fascination. The state of doubt in which we are left with regard to our author's real estimate of Confucius may serve to call attention to the peculiar ironical quality of his mind, which pleasantly tempers his dogmatism and, indeed, often saves him from a sharp descent into the ridiculous. It would almost seem as if, true to the Taoist 28 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC precept, he were endeavouring to break through the restraming bonds of his individual self, and to contemplate his own judgments from the out- side. Needless to say, there is a fount of deep, almost fierce, earnestness in the man as well. But he never loses a certain delicacy of touch which lends peculiar aptness to the sobriquet of " butterfly," bestowed on him in allusion to his famous dream.^ To these qualities must be added, in order to complete a faint sketch of this unique figure in Chinese literature, a recurrent strain of pervasive melancholy, a mournful brooding over "the doubtful doom of human- kind." Take, for instance, these few lines picturing the mental faculties in their inevitable decline : " Then, as under autumn and winter's blight, comes gradual decay; a passing away, like the fiow of water, never to return. Finally, the block, when all is choked up like an old drain, — ^the failing mind which shall not see light again." Just as the form of Chuang Tzu's work hovers on the borderland of poetry and prose, so the content is poetic rather than strictly philosophic, by reason of the lightness and grace with which he skims over subjects bristling with difficulty. Lucidity and precision of thought are sometimes sacrificed to imagination and beauty of style. He seldom attempts passages of sustained rea- soning, but prefers to rely on fiashes of literary 1 See p, 50. CHUANG TZlJ'S METHOD 29 inspiration. He is said to have shone in his verbal conflicts with Hui Tzu, but the specimens of his dialectic that have been preserved are, perhaps, more subtle than convincing. The episode of the minnows under the bridge * only proves that in arguing with a sophist he could himself descend to sophistry naked and unabashed. A noteworthy feature of Chuang Tzu's method is the wealth of illustration which he lavishes upon his favourite topics. In a hundred various ways he contrives to point the moral which is never far from his thoughts. Realising as fully as Herbert Spencer after him, the necessity of constant iteration in order to force alien con- ceptions on unwilling minds, he returns again and again to the cardinal points of his system, and skilfully arrays his arguments in an endless stream of episode and anecdote. These anecdotes are usually thrown into the form of dialogue — not the compact and closely-reasoned dialogue of Plato, but detached conversations between real or imaginary persons, sometimes easy in tone, sometimes declamatory, and here and there rising to fine heights of rhetoric. It may be objected to this method that it hinders the proper development of thought by destroying its con- tinuity, and is therefore more suited to a merely popular work than to that of a really original * Seep. no. 30 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC thinker ; on the other side it can only be urged that it lends dramatic colouring and relieves the tedium inseparable from a long philosophical treatise. The objection, on the whole, has much force, and yet it is equally true that the alterna- tive method would have robbed Chuang Tzu's work of more than half its charm ; its immortality is after all due less to the matter, much of which to modern notions is somewhat crude, than to the exquisite form. And certainly, as a means of fixing a principle in the mind, a single anecdote told by Chuang Tzu is worth reams of dry dis- quisition. Though the diifficulty of his text and the abstruseness of his theme have been a bar to very wide-spread popularity, Chuang Tzu has never lost favour with the select band of scholars. From time to time, when Taoism happened to be in fashion, he also enjoyed considerable vogue at Court. His book, like the Too Ti Ching, formed the subject of lectures and examinations, and several Emperors are said to have studied and written upon it. In 713 a.d., it was specially decreed that those members of the public service should be singled out for promotion who were able to understand Chuang Tzu. That he was always considered a hard nut to crack is suffi- ciently shown by the flood of commentaries and other works devoted to his elucidation. Never- theless, we are told as usual of a marvellous boy — NATIVE CRITICISM 31 one of the infant prodigies in whom Chinese annals are so rich — ^who at twelve years of age understood the me€tning of both Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. The philosopher's works, in Kuo Hsiang's standard ^tion, were printed for the first time in the year 1005 a.d., and the reigning Emperor presented each of his Ministers with a copy. Until we come to Lin Hsi-chung at the be- ginning of the present dynasty, native criticism cannot be said to have thrown any very dazzling light on our author. An early writer, who may possibly have seen him in the flesh, complains that *' he hides himself in the clouds and has no knowledge of men." Another pronoimces him " reckless, one who submitted to no law." From a third we learn that " in his desire to free himself from the trammels of objective existences, he lost himself in the quicksands of metaphysics." Sometimes he is damned with the faintest of praise : *' In his teachings propriety plays no part, neither are they foimded on eternal prin- ciples ; nevertheless, they wear the semblance of wisdom and have their good points." On the other hand, rabid Confucianists insisted that '* his book was expressly intended to cast a slur on their Master, in order to make people accept his own heterodox teaching ; and, consequently, nothing would satisfy them but that his writings should be burnt and his disciples cut off. As 32 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC to the rights and wrongs of his system, they were not even worth discussing.'* From kindred poetic souls he has obtained more generous recognition. The great Po Chii-i, of the Tang dynasty, with whom he appears to have been a special favourite, was inspired by the perusal of his works to write three short poems, one of which contains the following stanzas ^ : PEACEFUL OLD AGE Chu&ng Tzu said : ** Tao gives me this toil in manhood, this repose in old age, this rest in death.'* Swiftly and soon the golden sun goes down, The blue sky wells afar into the night; Tao is the changeful world's environment, Happy are they that in its laws delight. Tao gives me toil — ^youth's passion to achieve. And leisure in life's autumn and decay : I follow Tao, — the seasons are my friends ; Opposing it, misfortune comes my way. Within my breast no sorrows can abide, I feel the great world's spirit through me thrill ; And as a cloud I drift before the wind. Or with the random swallow take my will. *■ My friend Mr. L. Cranmer-B3mg has kindly added the wings of his verse to my literal prose translation. All three poems will be found at the end of the section on Chuang Tzii m the great Tu Shu enoyolop»dia. INDIAN INFLUENCE 33 As underneath the mulberry tree I dream, The water-olook drips on, and dawn appears: A new day shines o'er wrinkles and white hair, The symbols of the fulness of my years. If I depart, I oast no look behind ; If still alive, I still am free from care. Since life and death in cycles come and go. Of little moment are the days to spare. Thus strong in faith I wait and long to be One with the pulsings of Eternity. The Brahmanistic influence which these lines betray is faithfully reflected from Chuang Tzu. There are critics who would trace the same influence further back still, and regard the specu- lations of Lao Tzu himself as borrowed directly from India. But in the absence of any trust- worthy evidence of communication between the two countries at that early date, the final verdict on this theory cannot yet be pronounced. With Chuang Tzu the case is somewhat different. The intervening period had seen the rise of Gautama and the spreading of a new and powerful religion which embodied in itself all the more essential parts of the Brahmanistic creed. By Chuang Tzu's time Buddhism had probably penetrated far and wide throughout Asia. It was not oflSi- cially introduced into China until much later, but it seems only reasonable to suppose that driblets must have filtered through here and there. 34 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC Certainly we find in the Chinese philosopher such striking points of similarity to Brahmanism as can hardly be explained as mere coincidences of thought. He believes, for instance, that every human being has a soul, which is an emanation from the great impersonal Soul of the universe. In contradistinction to the mind, which is only the scene or background of our ever-changing sensations and emotions, and dies with the body, the soul is in its nature immortal, and after passing through a series of different states in conditioned being, finally reunites with the divine essence whence it sprang. How to hasten the attainment of this goal of supreme bliss — that is the question which lies at the root of Chuang Tzu's philosophy. And his answer points to the abstract contemplation of Tao as the only means of destroying attachment to existence for its own sake, and thus loosening the soul from its bodily fetters. So far he resembles the Buddhist. But when he comes to touch on the contemplative life, we find him diverging from the recognised Buddhist ideal in one or two notable particulars. To him the highest form of virtue does not mean the mort&cation of animal instincts. Bather would he like these to have free and natural scope. Nor does it consist in living the life of a hermit. For ** the perfect man can transcend the limits of the human and yet not withdraw from the world.'* DECLINE OP TAOISM 36 " Those/' he says, " who would benefit mankind from deep forests or lofty mountains are simply unequal to the strain upon their higher natures." Again, his hatred of outward show leads him to condemn anything approaching ritualism or asceticism, which he perceives truly enough to be symptoms of decay in the moral fibre. The only form of fasting he will recommend is the " fasting of the heart.'* But divested thus of every shred of materialis- tic grossness, and converted into a purely spiritual creed, Taoism soon became altogether too shadowy and impalpable to stand alone against its formidable rival. It had to await the infusion of much-needed Buddhistic elements before it could re-assert itself as a national religion. This decline it was Chuang Tzu's fate to hasten rather than to arrest. His capital error lay in neglecting to develop those grand and simple moral truths with which Lao Tzu had leavened his abstruser speculations. The virtues of humility, gentle- ness and forgiveness of injury, which the earlier Taoist gospel held in such high esteem, are by him either passed over in silence or subordinated to the all-engrossing mystic purpose. Thus it was that the glowing promise of a singularly exalted moral code died away in later hands to the dust and ashes of a spurious metaphysic. No doubt, as a thorough-going exponent of his own principles, Chuang Tzu cared but little 36 MUSINGS OP A CHINESE MYSTIC for outward and visible results. He was in no sense a propagandist ; the kingdom of the mind was his real province. Yet the fact remains that the intellectual elevation and refinement of his system placed it beyond the grasp of all except a few ; unlike Confucius, he made little or no provision for the struggling mass of mankind which could not be expected to rise to the higher planes of abstract thought. This, however, is a criticism which leaves Chuang Tzu's literary position unaffected ; and it is literature, after all, which claims the im- mortal part of his name and fame. For he of all the ancients wielded the most perfect mastery over Chinese prose style, and was the first to show to what heights of eloquence and beauty his native language could attain. And in these respects, great as the achievements are of which later Chinese literature can boast, he has never been surpassed. Indeed, his master-hand sounded chords that have vibrated since to no other touch. Finally, what effect may his writings be expected to produce on the modern Western mind ? It is certain that to many, even through the necessarily imperfect medium of a transla- tion, he already makes a powerful appeal ; and it may at least be safely predicted that a far greater number of readers will be attracted by his originality and grace than repelled by the rather fantastic vagaries of his mysticism. THE DOCTRINE OF RELATIVITY In the northern ocean there is a fish, called the Leviathan, many thousand li ^ in size. This Leviathan changes into a bird, called the Rukh, whose back is many thousand li in breadth. With a mighty effort it rises, and its wings ob- scure the sky like clouds. At the equinox, this bird prepares to start for the southern ocean, the Celestial Lake. And in the Record of Marvels we read that when the rukh flies southwards, the water is smitten for a space of three thousand li around, while the bird itself mounts upon a typhoon to a height of ninety thousand li, for a fOght of six months' duration. Just so are the motes in a sunbeam blown aloft by God. For whether the blue of the sky is its real colour, or only the result of distance without end, the effect to the bird looking down would be just the same as to the motes. ... A cicada laughed, and said to a young dove, ** Now, when I fly with all my might, 'tis as much as I can do to get from tree to tree. And sometimes I do not reach, ^ The li is about one-third of an English mile. 37 38 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC but fall to the ground midway. What, then, can be the use of gomg up mnety thousand li in order to start for the south ? " . . . Those two little creatures, — what should they know ? Small knowledge has not the compass of great know- ledge any more than a short year has the length of a long year. How can we tell that this is so ? The mushroom of a morning knows not the alternation of day and night. The chrysalis knows not the alternation of spring and autumn. Theirs are short years. But in the State of Ch'u there is a tortoise whose spring and autumn are each of five hundred years' duration. And in former days there was a large tree which had a spring and autumn each of eight thousand years' duration. Yet P'^ng Tsu * is still, alas ! an object of envy to all. There is nothing under the canopy of heaven greater than the tip of an autumn spikelet. A vast mountain is a small thing. Neither is there any age greater than that of a child cut off in infancy. P'^ng Tsu himself died young. The universe and I came into being together ; and I, and everything therein, are One. It was the time of autumn floods. Every stream poured into the river, which swelled in its ^ Th« Methuselah of China. THE OCaEAN OF KNOWLEDGE 39 turbid course. The banks receded so far from each other that it was impossible to tell a cow from a horse. Then the Spirit of the River laughed for joy that all the beauty of the earth was gathered to himself. Down with the stream he journeyed east until he reached the ocean. There, looking eastwards and seeing no limit to its waves, his countenance changed. And as he gazed over the expanse, he sighed and said to the Spirit of the Ocean, "A vulgar proverb says that he who has heard but part of the truth thinks no one equal to himself. And such a one am I. " \\nien formerly I heard people detracting from the learning of C!onfucius or underrating the heroism of Poh I, I did not believe. But now that I have looked upon your inexhaustibility — alas for me had I not reached your abode, I should have been for ever a laughing-stock to those of comprehensive enlightenment ! " To which the Spirit of the Ocean replied : " You cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog, — the creature of a narrower sphere. You cannot speak of ice to a summer insect, — the creature of a season. You cannot speak of Tao to a pedagogue : his scope is too restricted. But now that you have emerged from your narrow sphere and have seen the great ocean, you know your own insignificance, and I can speak to you of great principles. . . . 40 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC " The Four Seas — are they not to the universe but like puddles in a marsh ? The Middle Kingdom — is it not to the surrounding ocean like a tare-seed in a granary ? Of all the myriad created things, man is but one. And of all those who inhabit the land, live on the fruit of the earth, and move about in cart and boat, an individual man is but one. Is not he, as com- pared with all creation, but as the tip of a hair upon a horse's skin ? '^ Dimensions are limitless ; time is endless. Conditions are not invariable; terms are not final. Thus, the wise man looks into space, and does not regard the small as too little, nor the great as too much ; for he knows that there is no limit to dimension. He looks back into the past, and does not grieve over what is far off, nor rejoice over what is near ; for he knows that time is without end. He investigates fulness and decay, and does not rejoice if he succeeds, nor lament if he fails ; for he knows that conditions are not invariable. He who clearly apprehends the scheme of existence does not rejoice over life, nor repine at death ; for he knows that terms are not final. "What man knows is not to be compared with what he does not know. The span of his existence is not to be compared with the span of his non-existence. With the small, to strive to exhaust the great necessarily lands him in con* CORRELATIVES 41 fusion, and he does not attain his object. How then should one be able to say that the tip of a hair is the ne jilua ultra of smallness, or that the universe is the ne plus vltra of greatness ? " Those who would have right without its correlative, wrong ; or good government without its correlative, misrule, — they do not apprehend the great principles of the universe nor the conditions to which all creation is subject. One might as well talk of the existence of heaven without that of earth, or of the negative principle without the positive, which is clearly absurd. If you adopt, as absolute, a standard of evenness which is so only relatively, your results will not be absolutely even. If you adopt, as absolute, a criterion of right which is so only relatively, your results will not be absolutely right. Those who trust to their senses become slaves to objec- tive existences. Those alone who are guided by their intuitions find the true standard. So far are the senses less reliable than the intuitions. Yet fools trust to their senses to know what is good for mankind, with alas ! but external results. THE IDENTITY OF CONTRARIES Tzfir Ch'i of Nan-kuo sat leaning on a table. Looking up to heaven, he sighed and became absent, as though soul and body had parted. Yen Ch'feng Tzu Yu, who was standing by him, exclaimed : " What are you thinking about that your body should become thus like dry wood, your mind like dead ashes ? Surely the man now leaning on the table is not he who was here just now." " My friend," replied Tzu Ch'i, " your question is apposite. To-day I have buried myself. . . . Do you understand ? . . . Ah ! perhaps you only know the music of Man, and not that of Earth. Or even if you have heard the music of Earth, you have not heard the music of Heaven." " Pray explain," said Tzu Yu. " The breath of the universe," continued Tzu Ch'i, " is called wind. At times, it is inactive. But when active, every aperture resounds to the blast. Have you never listened to its growing roar ? Caves and dells of hill and forest, hollows in huge trees of many a span in girth, — ^these 42 THE MUSIC OF HEAVEN 43 are like nostrils, like mouths, like ears, like beam- sockets, like goblets, like mortars, like ditches, like bogs. And the wind goes rushing through them, sniffing, snoring, singing, soughing, puffing, purling, whistling, whirring, now shrilly treble, now deeply bass, now soft, now loud ; until, with a lull, silence reigns supreme. Have you never witnessed among the trees such a disturb- ance as this ? " "Well, then," inqmred Tzu Yu, "since the music of Earth consists of nothing more than holes, and the music of Man of pipes and flutes, of what consists the music of Heaven ? " " The effect of the wind upon these various apertures," replied Tzii Ch'i, " is not uniform. But what is it that gives to each the individuality, to all the potentiality, of sound ? . . . Joy and anger, sorrow and happiness, caution and remorse, come upon us by turns, with ever-changing mood. They come like music from hollowness, like mushrooms from damp. Daily and nightly they alternate within us, but we cannot tell whence they spring. Can we then hope in a moment to lay our finger upon their very cause ? " But for these emotions, / should not be. But for me, they would have no scope. So far we can go ; but we do not know what it is that brings them into play. 'Twould seem to be a 8(ml ; but the clue to its existence is wanting^ That such a power operates is credible enough, 44 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC though we cannot see its form. It has functions without form. " Take the human body with all its manifold divisions. Which part of it does a man love best ? Does he not cherish all equally, or has he a preference ? Do not all equally serve him ? And do these servitors then govern themselves, or are they subdivided into rulers "and subjects ? Surely there is some soul which sways them all. " But whether or not we ascertain what are the functions of this soul, it matters but little to the soul itself. For, coming into existence with this mortal coil of mine, with the exhaustion of this mortal coil its mandate will also be ex- hausted. To be harassed by the wear and tear of life, and to pass rapidly through it without possibility of arresting one's course, — is not this pitiful indeed ? To labour without ceasing, and then, without living to enjoy the fruit, worn out, to depart, suddenly, one knows not whither, — is not that a just cause for grief ? " What advantage is there in what men call not dying ? The body decomposes, and the mind goes with it. This is our real cause for sorrow. Can the world be so dull as not to see this ? Or is it I alone who am dull, and others not so ? . . . There is nothing which is not objective : there is nothing which is not sub- jective. But it is impossible to start from the objective. Only from subjective knowledge is ALL THINGS ARE ONE 45 it possible to proceed to objective knowledge. Hence it has been said, * The objective emanates from the subjective ; the subjective is conse- quent upon the objective. This is the Alter- nation Theory.' Nevertheless; when one is born, the other dies. When one is possible, the other is impossible. When one is affirmative, the other is negative. Which being the case, the true sage rejects all distinctions of this and that. He takes his refuge in God, and places himself in subjective relation with all things. '' And inasmuch as the subjective is also objective, and the objective also subjective, and as the contraries under each are indistin- guishably blended, does it not become impossible for us to say whether subjective and objective really exist at all ? "When subjective and objective are both without their correlates, that is the very axis of Tao. And when that axis passes through the centre at which all Infinities converge, positive and negative alike blend into an infinite One. . . . Therefore it is that, viewed from the standpoint of Tao, a beam and a pillar are identical. So are ugliness and beauty, greatness, wickedness, perverseness, and strangeness. Separation is the same as construction : construction is the same as destruction. Nothing is subject either to construction or to destruction, for these con- ditions are brought together into One. 45 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC " Only the truly intelligent understand this principle of the identity of all things. They do not view things as apprehended by themselves, subjectively ; but transfer themselves into the position of the things viewed. And viewing them thus they are able to comprehend them, nay, to master them ; and he who can master them is near.^ So it is that to place oneself in subjective relation with externals, without con- sciousness of their objectivity, — this is Tao. But to wear out one's intellect in an obstinate adherence to the individuality of things, not recognising the fact that all things are One, — this is called Three in the Morning^ " What is Three in the Morning ? " asked Tzu Yu. " A keeper of monkeys," replied Tzii Chi, " said with regard to their rations of chestnuts, that each monkey was to have three in the morning and four at night. But at this the monkeys were very angry, so the keeper said they might have four in the morning and three at night, with which arrangement they were all well pleased. The actual number of the chest- nuts remained the same, but there was an adapta- tion to the likes and dislikes of those concerned. Such is the principle of putting oneself into subjective relation with externals. "Wherefore the true sage, while regarding ^ 8c,, to the great goal of Tao. THE THREE PERIODS OF TAO 47 contraries as identical, adapts himself to the laws of Heaven. This is called following two courses at once. " The knowledge of the men of old had a limit. It extended back to a period when matter did not exist. That was the extreme point to which their knowledge reached. The second period was that of matter, but of matter un- conditioned. The third epoch saw matter con- ditioned, but contraries were still unknown. When these appeared, Tao began to decline. And with the decline of Tao, individual bias arose." ILLUSIONS How do I know that love of life is not a delusion after all ? How do I know but that he who dreads to die is as a child who has lost the way and cannot find his home ? The lady Li Chi was the daughter of Ai FSng. When the Duke of Chin first got her, she wept until the bosom of her dress was drenched with tears. But when she came to the royal resi- dence, and lived with the Duke, and ate rich food, she repented of having wept. How then do I know but that the dead repent of having previously clung to life ? Those who dream of the banquet wake to lamentation and sorrow. Those who dream of lamentation and sorrow wake to join the hunt. While they dream, they do not know that they dream. Some will even interpret the very dream they are dreaming ; and only when they awake do they know it was a dream. By and by comes the Great Awakening, and then we find out that this life is really a great dream. Fools think they are awake now, and flatter them- 48 MAN'S LIMITED INTELLIGENCE 49 selves they know if they are really princes or peasants. Confucius and you are both dreams ; and I who say you are dreams, — I am but a dream myself. This is a paradox. To-morrow a sage may arise to explain it ; but that to- morrow will not be until ten thousand genera- tions have gone by. Granting that you and I argue. If you beat me, and not I you, are you necessarily right and I wrong ? Or if I beat you and not you me, am I necessarily right and you wrong ? Or are we both partly right and partly wrong ? Or are we both wholly right or wholly wrong ? You and I cannot know this, and consequently the world will be in ignorance of the truth. Who shall I employ as arbiter between us ? If I employ some one who takes your view, he will side with you. How can such a one arbi- trate between us ? If I employ some one who takes my view, he will side with me. How can such a one arbitrate between us ? And if I employ some one who either differs from or agrees with both of us, he will be equally unable to decide between us. Since then you, and I, and man, cannot decide, must we not depend upon Another ? Such dependence is as though it were not dependence. We are embraced in the obliterating unity of God. Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt D 60 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individu- ality as a man. Suddenly I awaked, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a barrier. The transition is called metempsychosis. THE MYSTERIOUS IMMANENCE OF TAO The Penumbra said to the Umbra, " At one moment you move : at another you are at rest. At one moment you sit down : at another you get up. Why this instability of purpose ? " " I depend," replied the Umbra, " upon some- thing which causes me to do as I do ; and that something depends in turn upon something else which causes it to do as it does. My dependence is like that of a snake's scales or of a cicada's wings. How can I tell why I do one thing, or why I do not do another ? " Prince Hui's cook was cutting up a bullock. Every blow of his hand, every heave of his shoulders, every tread of his foot, every thrust of his knee, every whshh of rent flesh, every chhk of the chopper, was in perfect harmony, — rhythmical like the dance of the Mulberry Grove, simultaneous like the chords of the Ching Shou. " Well done I " cried the Prince ; " yours is skill indeed." "Sire," replied the cook, "I have always 51 52 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC devoted myself to Tao. It is better than skill. When I first began to cut up bullocks, I saw before me simply whole bullocks. After three years' practice, I saw no more whole animals. And now I work with my mind and not with my eye. When my senses bid me stop, but my mind urges me on, I fall back upon eternal principles. I follow such openings or cavities as there may be, according to the natural con- stitution of the animal. I do not attempt to cut through joints : still less through large bones. "A good cook changes his chopper once a year, — because he cuts. An ordinary cook, once a month, — because he hacks. But I have had this chopper nineteen years, and although I have cut up many thousand bullocks, its edge is as if fresh from the whetstone. For at the joints there are always interstices, and the edge of a chopper being without thickness, it remains only to insert that which is without thickness into such an interstice.^ By these means the interstice will be enlarged, and the blade will find plenty of room. It is thus that I have kept my chopper for nineteen years as though fresh from the whetstone. "Nevertheless, when I come upon a hard part where the blade meets with a diflEiculty, I ^ An allusion to the saying of Lao Tsii : '* That which has no substanoe enters where there is no orevioe." PRINCE HUI'S COOK 63 am all caution. I fix my eye on it. I stay my kand, and gently apply my blade, until with a htjoah the part yields like earth crumbling to the ground. Then I take out my chopper, and stand up, and look around, and pause, until with an air of triumph I wipe my chopper and put it carefully away." " Bravo ! '* cried the Prince. " From the words of this cook I have learnt how to take care of my life." In the State of ChSng there was a wonderful magician named Chi Han. He knew all about birth and death, gain and loss, misfortune and happiness, long life and short life — ^predicting events to a day with supernatural accuracy. The people of Cheng used to flee at his approach; but Lieh Tzu went to see him, and became so infatuated that on his return he said to Hu Tzu,^ " I used to look upon your Tao as perfect. Now I know something more perfect still." " So far," replied Hu Tzii, " I have only taught you the ornamentals, not the essentials, of Tao ; and yet you think you know all about it. With- out cocks in your poultry-yard, what sort of eggs do the hens lay ? ' If you go about trying to * His tutor. 3 The hens here stand for the letter of the doctrine ; the OQO^ for its spirit ; and the eggs, for a real knowledge of it* 64 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC force Tao down people's throats, you will be simply exposing yourself. Bring your friend with you, and let me show myself to him." So next day Lieh Tzu went with Chi Han to see Hu Tzu, and when they came out Chi Han said : '' Alas ! your teacher is doomed. He can- not live. I hardly give him ten days. I am astonished at him. He is but wet ashes." Lieh Tzu went in and wept bitterly, and told Hu Tzu ; but the latter said : " I showed myself to him just now as the earth shows us its outward form, motionless and still, while production is all the time going on. I merely prevented him from seeing my pent-up energy within. Bring him again." Next day the interview took place as before ; but as they were leaving Chi Han said to Lieh Tzu : " It is lucky for your teacher that he met me. He is better. He will recover. I saw he had recuperative power." Lieh Tzu went in and told Hu Tzu ; whereupon the latter replied : " I showed myself to him just now as heaven shows itself in all its dispassionate grandeur, letting a little energy run out of my heels. He was thus able to detect that I had some. Bring him here again." Next day a third interview took place, and as they were leaving, Chi Han said to Lieh Tzu : ** Your teacher is never one day like another ; I can tell nothing from his physiognomy. Gret him CONFOUNDING A MAGICIAN 66 to be regular, and I will then examine him again." This being repeated to Hu Tzu as before, the . latter said : " I showed myself to him just now ) in a state of harmonious equilibrium. Where ^ f ^ the whale disports itself, — is the abyss. Where water is at rest, — is the abyss. Where water is in motion, — is the abyss. The abyss has nine names. These are three of them." ^ Next day the two went once more to see Hu Tzu ; but Chi Han was unable to stand still, and in his confusion turned and fled. " Pursue him ! " cried Hu Tzu ; whereupon Lieh Tzu ran after him, but could not overtake him ; so he returned and told Hu Tzu that the fugitive had disappeared. " I showed myself to him just now," said Hu Tzu, " as Tao appeared before time was. I was to him as a great blank, existing of itself. He knew not who I was. His face fell. He became confused. And so he fled." Upon this Lieh Tzu stood convinced that he had not yet acquired any real knowledge, and at once set to work in earnest, passing three years without leaving the house. He helped his wife to cook the family dinner, and fed his pigs just like human beings. He discarded the artificial and reverted to the natural. He became merely ^ Z.e., three phases of Tao, 65 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC a shape. Amidst confusion he was uncon- founded. And so he continued to the end. Books are what the world values as representing Tao. But books are only words, and the valuable part of words is the thought therein contained. That thought has a certain bias which cannot be conveyed in words, yet the world values words as being the essence of books. But though the world values them, they are not of value ; as that sense in which the world values them is not the sense in which they are valuable. . . . Duke Huan was one day reading in his hall, when a wheelwright who was working below flung down his hammer and chisel, and mounting the steps said : " What words may your Highness be studying ? " " I am studying the words of the Sages," replied the Duke. " Are the Sages alive ? •' asked the wheel- wright. " No," answered the Duke ; " they are dead." " Then the words your Highness is studying," rejoined the wheelwright, " are only the dregs of the ancients." " What do you mean, sirrah ! " cried the Duke, " by interfering with what I read ? Ex- plain yourself, or you shall die." " Let me take an illustration," said the wheel- wright, " from my own trade. In making a THE SECURITY OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS 57 wheel, if you work too slowly, you can't make it firm ; if you work too fast, the spokes won't fit in. You must go neither too slowly nor too fast. There must be co-ordination of mind and hand. Words cannot explain what it is, but there is some mysterious art herein. I cannot teach it to my son ; nor can he learn it from me. Consequently, though seventy years of age, I am still making wheels in my old age. If the ancients, together with what they could not impart, are dead and gone, then what your Highness is studying must be the dregs." A drunken man who falls out of a cart, though he may suffer, does not die. His bones are the same as other people's ; but he meets his accident in a different way. His spirit is in a condition of security. He is not conscious of riding in the cart ; neither is he conscious of falling out of it. Ideas of life, death, fear, etc., cannot penetrate his breast ; and so he does not suffer f roni con- tact with objective existences. And if such security is to be got from wine, how much more is it to be got from God ? It is in God that the Sage seeks his refuge, and so he is free from harm. Lieh Yii K'ou instructed Po Hun Wu J^n in archery. Drawing the bow to its full, he placed a cup of water pn his ^Ibow and be^an to let 68 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC fly. Hardly was one arrow out of sight ere another was on the string, the archer standing all the time like a statue. " But this is shooting under ordinary con- ditions," cried Po Htin Wu J6n ; " it is not shooting under extraordinary conditions. Now I will ascend a high mountain with you, and stand on the edge of a precipice a thousand feet in height, and see how you can shoot then." Thereupon Wu J^n went with Lieh Tzu up a high mountain, and stood on the edge of a pre- cipice a thousand feet in height, approaching it backwards until one-fifth of his feet overhung the chasm, when he beckoned to Lieh Tzu to come on. But the latter had fallen prostrate on the ground, with the sweat pouring down to his heels. *' The perfect man," said Wu JSn, " soars up to the blue sky, or dives down to the yellow springs,^ or flies to some extreme point of the compass, without change of countenance. But you are terrified, and your eyes are dazed. Your internal economy is defective." A disciple said to Lu Chii : " Master, I have attained to your Tao. I can do without fire in winter. I can make ice in summer." " You merely avail yourself of latent heat and ^ The infernal regions. HARMONY IN TAO 69 latent cold," replied Lu Chii. " That is not what I call Tao. I will demonstrate to you what my Tao is." Thereupon he tuned two lutes, and placed one in the hall and the other in the adjoining room. And when he struck the kung note on one, the bung note on the other sounded ; when he struck the chio note on one, the chio note on the other sounded. This because they were both tuned to the same pitch. But if he changed the interval of one string, so that it no longer kept its place in the octave, and then struck it, the result was that all the twenty-five strings jangled together. There was sound as before, but the influence of the key-note was gone. THE HIDDEN SPRING Tao has its laws and its evidences. It is devoid both of action and of form. It may be transmitted, but cannot be received. It may be obtained, but cannot be seen. Before heaven and earth were, Tao was. It has existed without change from all time. Spiritual beings drew their spirituality therefrom, while the universe became what we can see it now. To Tao, the zenith is not high, nor the nadir low ; no point in time is long ago, nor by lapse of ages has it grown old. Hsi Wei ^ obtained Tao, and so set the uni- verse in order. Fu Hsi ' obtained it, and was able to establish eternal principles. The Great Bear obtained it, and has never erred from its course. The sun and moon obtained it, and have never ceased to revolve. Chuang Tzu said : " my exemplar ! Thou who destroyest all things, and dost not account ^ A mythical personage. ^ The first in the received list of Chinese monarchy. THE HAPPINESS OF GOD 61 it cruelty ; thou who benefitest all time, and dost not account it charity ; thou who art older than antiquity and dost not account it age ; thou who supportest the universe, shaping the many forms therein, and dost not account it skill ; this is the happiness of God ! " Life follows upon death. Death is the be- ginning of life. Who knows when the end is reached ? The life of man results from con- vergence of the vital fluid. Its convergence is life ; its dispersion, death. If« then, life and death are but consecutive states, what need have I to complain ? Therefore all things are One. What we love is animation. What we hate is corruption. But corruption in its turn becomes animation, and animation once more becomes corruption. The universe is very beautiful, yet it says nothing. The four seasons abide by a fixed law, yet they are not heard. All creation is based upon absolute principles, yet nothing speaks. And the true Sage, taking his stand upon the beauty of the universe, pierces the principles of created things. Hence the saying that the perfect man does nothing, the true Sage performs nothing, beyond gazing at the universe. For man's intellect, however keen, face to face 62 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC with the countless evolutions of things, their death and birth, their squareness and roundness, — can never reach the root. There creation is, and there it has ever been. The six cardinal points, reaching into infinity, are ever included in Tao. An autumn spikelet, in all its minuteness, must carry Tao within itself. There is nothing on earth which does not rise and fall, but it never perishes altogether. The Yin and the Yang,^ and the four seasons, keep to their proper order. Apparently de- stroyed, yet really existing; the material gone, the immaterial left, — such is the law of creation, which passeth all understanding. This is called the root, whence a glimpse may be obtained of God. A man's knowledge is limited ; but it is upon what he does not know that he depends to extend his knowledge to the apprehension of God. Knowledge of the great One, of the great Negative, of the great Nomenclature, of the great UD&ormity, of the great Space, of the great Truth, of the great Law, — this is perfection. The great One is omnipresent. The great Negative is omnipotent. The great Nomenclature is all- inclusive. The great Uniformity is all-assimilative. ^ The positive and negative principles of Chinese cos- mogony. CHANCE AND PREDESTINATION 63 The great Space is all-receptive. The great Truth is all-exacting. The great Law is all- binding. The ultimate end is God. He is manifested in the laws of nature. He is the hidden spring. At the beginning, he was. This, however, is inexplicable. It is unknowable. But from the unknowable we reach the known. Investigation must not be limited, nor must it be unlimited. In this undefinedness there is an actuality. Time does not change it. It cannot suflEer diminution. May we not, then, call it our great Guide ? Why not bring our doubting hearts to investi- gation thereof ? And then, using certainty to dispel doubt, revert to a state without doubt, in which doubt is doubly dead ? " Chi Ch^n," said Shao Chih, " taught Chance ; Chieh Tzu taught Predestination, In the specula- tions of these two schools, on which side did right lie?" "The cock crows," replied Tai Kung Tiao, " and the dog barks. So much we know. But the wisest of us could not say why one crows and the other barks, nor guess why they crow or bark at all. "Let me explain. The infinitely small is inappreciable ; the infinitely great is immeasur- able. Chance and Predestination must refer to 64 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC the conditioned. Consequently, both are wrong. " Predestination involves a real existence. Chance implies an absolute absence of any principle. To have a name and the embodiment thereof, — this is to have a material existence. To have no name and no embodiment, — of this one can speak and think ; but the more one speaks the farther off one gets. " The unborn creature cannot be kept from life. The dead cannot be tracked. From birth to death is but a span ; yet the secret cannot be known. Chance and Predestination are but d priori solutions. " When I seek for a beginning, I find only time infinite. When I look forward to an end, I see only time infinite. Infinity of time past and to come implies no beginning and is in accordance with the laws of material existences. Pre- destination and Chance give us a beginning, but one which is compatible only with the existence of matter. " Tao cannot be existent. If it were existent, it could not be non-existent. The very name of Tao is only adopted for convenience' sake. Pre- destination and Chance are limited to material existences. How can they bear upon the infinite ? " Were language adequate, it would take but a day fully to set forth Tao. Not being adequate, it takes that time to explain material existences. HEAVENLY EQUILIBRIUM 66 Tao is something beyond material existences. It cannot be conveyed either by words or by silence. In that state which is neither speech nor silence, its transcendental nature may be apprehended." All things spring from germs. Under many diverse forms these things are ever being repro- duced. Round and round, like a wheel, no part of which is more the starting-point than any other. This is called heavenly equilibrium. And he who holds the scales is God. Life has its distinctions ; but in death we are all made equal. That death should have an origin, but that life should have no origin, — can this be so ? What determines its presence in one place, its absence in another ? Heaven has its fixed order. Earth has yielded up its secrets to man. But where to seek whence am I ? Not knowing the hereafter, how can we deny the operation of Destiny ? Not knowing what preceded birth, how can we assert the operation of Destiny ? When things turn out as they ought, who shall say that the agency is not supernatural ? When things turn out otherwise, who shall say that it is ? NON-INTERFERENCE WITH NATURE Horses have hoofs to oarry them over frost and snow ; hair, to protect them from wind and oold. They eat grass and drink water, and fling up their heels over the champaign. Such is the real nature of horses. Palatial dwellings are of no use to them. One day Po Lo appeared, saying : " I understand the management of horses." So he branded them, and clipped them, and pared their hoofs, and put halters on them, tying them up by the head and shackling them by the feet, and disposing them in stables, with the result that two or three in every ten died. Then he kept them hungry and thirsty, trotting them and galloping them, and grooming, and trimming, with the misery of the tasselled bridle before and the fear of the knotted whip behind, until more than half of them were dead. The potter says : " I can do what I will with clay. If I want it round, I use compasses ; if rectangular, a square." NATURAL mSTINCTS 67 The caxpenter says : " I can do what I will with wood. If I want it curved, I use an arc ; if straight, a line." But on what grounds can we think that the natures of clay and wood desire this application of compasses and square, of arc and line ? Never- theless, every age extols Po Lo for his skill in managing horses, and potters and carpenters for their sk&l with clay and wood. Those who govern the empire make the same mistake. Now I regard government of the empire from quite a diflEerent point of view. The people have certain natural instincts :— to weave and clothe themselves, to till and feed themselves. These are common to all humanity, and all are agreed thereon. Such instincts are called " Heaven-sent." And so in the days when natural instincts prevailed, men moved quietly and gazed steadily. At that time, there were no roads over mountains, nor boats, nor bridges over water. All things were produced, each for its own proper sphere. Birds a^ beasts multiplied ; trees and shrubs grew up^. The former might be led by the hand ; you could climb up and peep into the raven's nest. For then man dwelt with birds and beasts, and all creation was one. There were no dis- tinctions of good and bad men. Being all equally without knowledge, their virtue could not go astray. Being all equally without evil desires, 68 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC they were in a state of natural integrity, the peiJection of human existence. But when Sages appeared, tripping up people over charity and fettering them with duty to their neighbour, doubt found its way into the world. And then, with their gushing over music and fussing over ceremony, the empire became divided against itself. PASSIVE VIRTUE Yen Hui * went to take leave of Confucius. " Whither are you bound ? " asked the master. " I am going to the State of Wei," was the reply. " And what do you propose to do there ? " continued Confucius. " I hear," answered Yen Hui, " that the Prince of Wei is of mature age, but of an unmanageable disposition. He behaves as if the State were of no account, and will not see his own faults. Consequently, the people perish ; and their corpses lie about like so much undergrowth in a marsh. They are at extremities. And I have heard you, sir, say that if a State is well governed it may be neglected ; but that if it is badly governed, then we should visit it. The science of medicine embraces many various diseases. I would test my knowledge in this sense, that perchance I may do some good to that State." " Alas ! " cried Confucius, " you will only succeed in bringing evil upon yourself. For Tao ^ The Master's favourite disciple. 70 MUSINGS OP A CHINESE MYSTIC must not be distributed. If it is, it will lose its unity. If it loses its unity, it will be un- oertain ; and so cause mental disturbance, — from which there is no escape. " The Sages of old first got Tao for themselves, and then got it for others. Before you possess this yourself, what leisure have you to attend to the doings of wicked men 1 Besides, do you know what Virtue results in, and where Wisdom ends ? Virtue results in a desire for fame ; wisdom ends in contentions. In the struggle for fame men crush one another, while their wisdom but provokes rivalry. Both are baleful instruments, and may not be incautiously used. . . . But of course you have a scheme. Tell it to me." " Gravity of demeanour," replied Yen Hui, *' and dispassionateness ; energy and singleness of purpose, — ^will this do ? " " Alas ! " said Confucius, " that will not do. If you make a show of being perfect and obtrude yourself, the Prince's mood will be doubtful. Ordinarily, he is not opposed, and so he has come to take actual pleasure in trampling upon the feelings of others. And if he has thus failed in the practice of routine virtues, do you expect that he will take readily to higher ones ? You may insist, but without result. Outwardly you will be right, but inwardly wrong. How then will you make him mend his ways ? . . . Your THE FASTING OF THE HEART 71 firmness will secure you from harm ; but that is all. You will not influence him to such an extent that he shall seem to follow the dictates of his own heart." "Then," said Yen Hui, "I am without re- source, and venture to ask for a method." Confucius said : " Fast / . . . Let me explain. You have here a method, but it is difficult to practise. Those which are easy are not from God." " Well," replied Yen Hui, " my family is poor, and for many months we have tasted neither wine nor flesh. Is not that fasting ? " "The fasting of religious observance it is," answered Confucius, " but not the fasting of the heart." "And may I ask," said Yen Hui, "in what consists the fasting of the heart ? " " Cultivate unity," replied Confucius. " You hear not with the ears, but with the mind ; not with the mind, but with your soul. But let hearing stop with the ears. Let the working of the mind stop with itself. Then the soul will be a negative existence, passively responsive to externals. In such a negative existence, only Tao can abide. And that negative state is the fasting of the heart." '* Then," said Yen Hui, " the reason I could not get the use of this method is my own in- dividuality. If I could get the use of it, my 72 MUSINGS OP A CHINESE MYSTIC individuality would have gone. Is this what you mean by the negative state ? " " Exactly so," replied the Master. " Let me tell you. If you can enter this man^s domain without offending his amour propre, cheerful if he hears you, passive if he does not ; without science, without drugs, simply living there in a state of complete indifference, — ^you will be near success. . . . Look at that window. Through it an empty room becomes bright with scenery ; but the landscape stops outside. ... In this sense, you may use your ears and eyes to com- municate within, but shut out all wisdom from the mind. . . . This is the method for regener- ating all creation." Duke Ai of the Lu State said to Confucius : " In the Wei State there is a leper named Ai Tai To. The men who live with him like him and make no effort to get rid of him. Of the women who have seen him, many have said to their parents, Rather than be another man's wife, I would be his concubine. " He never preaches at people, but puts him- self into sympathy with them. He wields no power by which he may protect men's bodies. He has at his disposal no appointments by which to gratify their hearts. He is loathsome to a degree. He sympathises, but does not instruct. THE LEPER PRIME MINISTER 73 His knowledge is limited to his own state. Yet males and females alike all congregate around him. "' So thinking that he must be different from ordinary men, I sent for him, and saw that he was indeed loathsome to a degree. Yet we had not been many months together ere my attention was fixed upon his conduct. A year had not elapsed ere I trusted him thoroughly ; and as my State wanted a Prime Minister, I offered the post to him. He accepted it sullenly, as if he would much rather have declined. Perhaps he did not think me good enough for him ! At any rate, he took it ; but in a very short time he left me and went away. I grieved for him as for a lost friend, and as though there were none left with whom I could rejoice. What manner of man is this ? " " When I was on a mission to the Ch'u State," replied Confucius, " I saw a litter of young pigs sucking their dead mother. After a while they looked at her, and then they all left the body and went off. For their mother did not look at them any more, nor did she any more seem to be of their kind. What they loved was their mother ; not the body which contained her, but that which made the body what it was. . . . " Now Ai Tai To says nothing, and is trusted. He does nothing, and is sought after. He causes a man to offer him the government of his own 74 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC State, and the only fear is lest he should decline. Truly his talents are perfect, and his virtue without outward form ! " ''What do you mean by his talents being perfect ? " asked the Duke. " Life and Death," replied Confucius, " ex- istence and non-existence, success and non- success, poverty and wealth, virtue and vice, good and evil report, hunger and thirst, warmth and cold, — these all revolve upon the changing wheel of Destiny. Day and night they follow one upon the other, and no man can say where each one begins. Therefore they cannot be allowed to disturb the harmony of the organism, nor enter into the soul's domain. Swim how- ever with the tide, so as not to offend others. Do this day by day without break, and live in peace with mankind. Thus you will be ready for all contingencies, and may be said to have your talents perfect." " And virtue without outward form ; what is that ? " " In a water-level," said Confucius, " the water is in a most perfect state of repose. Let that be your model. The water remains quietly within, and does not overflow. It is from the cultivation of such harmony that virtue results. And if virtue takes no outward form, man will not be able to keep aloof from it." DUTY TO ONE'S NEIGHBOUR 75 " Tell me," said Lao Tzu, " in what consist charity and duty to one's neighbour ? " " They consist," answered Confucius, " in a capacity for rejoicing in all things ; in universal love, without the element of self. These are the characteristics of charity and duty to one's neighbour." " What stuff ! " cried Lao Tzu. " Does not universal love contradict itself ? Is not your elimination of self a positive manifestation of self ? Sir, if you would cause the empire not to lose its source of nourishment, — there is the universe, its regularity is unceasing ; there are the sun and tnoon, their brightness is unceasing ; there are the stars, their groupings never change ; there are birds and beasts, they flock together without varying ; there are trees and shrubs, they grow upwards without exception. Be like these ; follow Tao ; and you will be perfect. Why then these vain struggles after chmty and duty to one's neighbour, as though beating a drum in search of a fugitive ? Alas ! sir, you have brought much confusion into the mind of man." Suppose a boat is crossing a river, and another empty boat is about to collide with it. Even an irritable man would not lose his temper. But supposing there was some one in the second 76 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC boat. Then the occupant of the first would shout to him to keep clear. And if the other did not hear the first time, nor even when called to three times, bad language would inevitably follow. In the first case there was no anger, in the second there was ; because in the first case the boat was empty, and in the second it was occupied. And so it is with man. If he could only roam empty through life, who would be able to injure him ? SELF-ADAPTATION TO EXTERNALS Yen Ho was about to become tutor to the eldest son of Prince Ling of the Wei State. Accordingly he observed to Chii Po Yii : " Here is a man whose disposition is naturally of a low order. To let him take his own unprincipled way is to endanger the State. To try to restrain him is to endanger one's personal safety. He has just wit enough to see faults in others, but not to see his own. I am consequently at a loss what to do." "A good question, indeed," replied Chii Po Yii ; " you must be careful, and begin by self- reformation. Outwardly you may adapt your- self, but inwardly you must keep up to your own standard. In this there are two points to be guarded against. You must not let the outward adaptation penetrate within, nor the inward standard manifest itself without. In the former case, you will fall, you will be obliterated, you will collapse, you will lie prostrate. In the latter case you wUl be a sound, a name, a bogie, an uncanny thing. If he would play the cMld, do 77 78 MUSINGS OP A CHINESE MYSTIC you play the child too. If he cast aside all sense of decorum, do you do so too. As far as he goes, do you go also. Thus you will reach him without offending him. " Don't you know the story of the praying- mantis ? Li its rage it stretched out its arms to prevent a chariot from passing, unaware that this was beyond its strength, so admirable was its energy ! Be cautious. If you are always offending others by your superiority, you will probably come to grief. " Do you not know that those who keep tigers do not venture to give them live animals as food, for fear of exciting their fury when killing the prey ? Also, that whole animals are not given, for fear of exciting the tiger's fury when rending them ? The periods of hunger and repletion are carefully watched in order to prevent such out- bursts. The tiger is of a different species from man ; but the latter too is manageable if properly treated, immanageable if excited to fury. '' Those who are fond of horses surround them with various conveniences. Sometimes mos- quitoes or flies trouble them ; and then, unex- pectedly to the animal, a groom will brush them off, the result being that the horse breaks his bridle, and hurts his head and chest. The inten- tion is good, but there is a want of real care for the horse. Against this you must be on your guard." BLIND CONSERVATISM T9 For travelling by water there is nothing like a boat. For travelling by land there is nothing like a cart. This because a boat moves readily in water ; but were you to try to push it on land you would never succeed in making it go. Now ancient and modern times may be likened unto water and land ; Chou and Lu to the boat and the cart. To try to make the customs of Chou succeed in Lu, is like pushing a boat on land : great trouble and no result, except certain injury to oneself. . . . Dress up a monkey in the robes of Chou Kung, and it will not be happy until they are torn to shreds. And the difference between past and present is much the same as the difference between Chou Kung and a monkey. When Hsi Shih ^ was distressed in mind, she knitted her brows. An ugly woman of the village, seeing how beautiful she looked, went home, and having worked herself into a fit frame of mind, knitted her brows. The result was that the rich people of the place barred up their doors and would not come out, while the poor people took their wives and children and departed else- where. That woman saw the beauty of knitted brows, but she did not see wherein the beauty of knitted brows lay. 1 A famous beauty of old. 80 MUSINGS OP A CHINESE MYSTIC Kuan Chung being at the point of death, Duke Huan went to see him. " You are ill, venerable Sir,'* said the Duke, " really ill. You had better say to whom, in the event of your getting worse, I am to entrust the administration of the State." " Whom does your Highness wish to choose ? " inquired Kuan Chung. "WiUPao Yiido?" asked the Duke. " He will not," said Kuan Chung. " He is pure, incorruptible, and good. With those who are not like himself he will not associate. And if he has once heard of a man's wrong-doing, he never forgets it. If you employ him in the administration of the empire, he will get to loggerheads with his prince and to sixes and sevens with the people. It would not be long before he and your Highness fell out." " Whom then can we have ? " asked the Duke. "There is no alternative," replied Kuan Chung ; " it must be Hsi P'eng. He is a man who forgets the authority of those above him, and makes those below him forget his. Ashamed that he is not the peer of the Yellow Emperor, he grieves over those who are not the peers of himself. " To share one's virtue with others is called true wisdom. To share one's wealth with others is reckoned meritorious. To exhibit superior THE WAY OP THE SCHOLAR 81 merit is not the way to win men's hearts. To exhibit inferior merit is the way. There are things in the State he does not hear ; there are things in the family he does not see. There is no alternative ; it must be Hsi F6ng." To glorify the past and to condemn the present has always been the way of the scholar. Yet if Hsi Wei Shih ^ and individuals of that class were caused to re-appear in the present day, which of them but would accommodate himself to the age? ^ A patriarch. IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL When Lao Tzu died, Ch'in Shih went to mourn. He uttered three yells and departed. A disciple asked him, saying : " Were you not our Master's friend ? " " I was," replied Ch'in Shih. " And if so, do you consider that a sufficient expression of grief at his loss ? " added the disciple. "I do," said Ch'in Shih. "I had believed him to be the man of all men, but now I know that he was not. When I went in to mourn, I found old persons weeping as if for their children, young ones wailing as if for their mothers. And for him to have gained the attachment of those people in this way, he too must have uttered words which should not have been spoken, and dropped tears which should not have been shed, thus violating eternal principles, increasing the sum of human emotion, and forgetting the source from which his own life was received. The ancients called such emotions the trammels of mortality. The Master came, because it was his NATURE CAN DO NO WRONa 83 time to be bom ; he went, because it was his time to die. For those who accept the pheno- menon of birth and death in this sense, lamenta- tion and sorrow have no place. The ancients spoke of death as of God cutting down a man suspended in the air. The fuel is consumed, but the fire may be transmitted, and we know not that it comes to an end. To have attained to the human form must be always a source of joy. And then, to undergo countless transitions, with only the infinite to look forward to, — ^what incomparable bliss is that ! Therefore it is that the truly wise rejoice in that which can never be lost, but endures alway. A son must go whithersoever his parents bid him. Nature is no other than a man's parents. If she bid me die quickly, and I demur, then I am an unfilial son. She can do me no wrong. Tao gives me this form, this toil in manhood, tins repose in old age, this rest in death. And surely that which is such a kind arbiter of my life is the best arbiter of my death. Suppose that the boiling metal in a smelting-pot were to bubble up and say : " Make of me an Excalibur " ; I think the caster would reject that metal as uncanny. And if a sinner like 84 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC myself were to say to Grod : '^ Make of me a man, make of me a man " ; I tiiink he too would reject me as uncamiy. The universe is the smelting-pot, and God is the caster. I shall go whithersoever I am sent, to wake unconscious of the past, as a man wakes from a dreamless sleep. Chuang((Tzu one day saw an empty skuU, bleached, but still preserving its shape. Striking it with his riding-whip, he said : " Wert thou once some ambitious citizen whose inordinate yearnings brought him to this pass ? — some statesman who plunged his country into ruin and perished in the fray ? — some wretch who left behind him a legacy of shame ? — some beggar who died in the pangs of hunger and cold ? Or didst thou reach this state by the natural course of old age ? " When he had finished speaking, he took the skull and, placing it under his head as a pillow, went to sleep. In the night he dreamt that the skull appeared to him and said : " You speak well, sir ; but all you say has reference to the life of mortals, and to mortal troubles. In death there are none of these. Would you like to hear about death ? " Chuang Tzu having replied in the affirmative, the skull began : '^ In death there is no sovereign above, and no subject below. The workings of the four seasons are unknown. Our existences ETERNAL BLISS 85 are bounded only by eternity. The happiness of a king among men cannot exceed that which we enjoy." Chuang Tzii, however, was not convinced, and said : " Were I to prevail upon God to allow your body to be bom again, and your bones and flesh to be renewed, so that you could return to your parents, to your wife, and to the friends of your youth, — ^would you be willing ? " At this the skull opened its eyes wide and knitted its brows and said : " How should I cast aside happiness greater than that of a king, and mingle once again in the toils and troubles of mortality ? " THE SAGE, OR PERFECT MAN The perfect man ignores self ; the divine man ignores action ; the true Sage ignores reputation. The perfect man is a spiritual being. Were the ocean itself scorched up, he would not feel hot. Were the Milky Way frozen hard, he would not feel cold. Were the mountains to be riven with thunder, and the great deep to be thrown up by storm, he would not tremble. How does the Sage seat himself by the sun and moon, and hold the universe in his grasp ? He blends everything into one harmonious whole, rejecting the confusion of this and that. Rank and precedence, which the vulgar prize, the Sage stolidly ignores. The revolutions of ten thousand years leave his imity unscathed. The universe itself may pass away, but he will flourish still. With the truly wise, wisdom is a curse, sincerity like glue, virtue only a means to acquire, and MEN WITHOUT PASSIONS 87 skill nothing more than a commercial capacity. For the truly wise make no plans, and therefore require no wisdom. They do not separate, and therefore require no glue. They want nothing, and therefore need no virtue. They sell nothing, and therefore are not in want of a commercial capacity. These four qualifications are bestowed upon them by God And serve as heavenly food to them. And those who thus feed upon the divine have little need for the human. They wear the forms of men, without human passions. Because they wear the forms of men, they associate with men. Because they have not human passions, positives and negatives find in them no place. Infinitesimal, indeed, is that which makes them man ; infinitely great is that which makes them divine ! Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu : "Are there, then, men who have no passions ? " Chuang Tzii replied : " Certainly." " But if a man has no passions," argued Hui Tzu, " what is it that makes him a man ? " "Tao," replied Chuang Tzu, "gives him his expression, and God gives him his form. How should he not be a man ? " " If, then, he is a man," said Hui Tzu, " how can he be without passions ? " " What you mean by passions," answered Chuang Tzii, " is not what I mean. By a man without passions I mean on^ who does not 88 MUSINGS OP A CHINESE MYSTIC permit good and evil to disturb his internal economy, but rather falls in with whatever happens, as a matter of course, and does not add to the sum of his mortality." He who knows what Qod is, and who knows what Man is, has attained. Knowing what God is, he knows that he himself proceeded therefrom. Knowing what Man is, he rests in the knowledge of the known, waiting for the knowledge of the unknown. Working out one's allotted span, and not perishing in mid career, — ^this is the fulness of knowledge. Herein, however, there is a flaw. Knowledge is dependent upon fulfilment. And as this fulfil- ment is uncertain, how can it be known that my divine is not really human, my human really divine ? We must have pure men, and then only can we have pure knowledge. But what is a pure man ? — ^The pure men of old acted without calculation, not seeking to secure results. They laid no plans. Therefore, failing, they had no cause for regret ; succeeding, no cause for congratulation. And thus they could scale heights without fear ; enter water without becoming wet ; fire, without feeling hot. So far had their wisdom advanced towards Tao. The pure men of old slept without dreams, and waked without anxiety. They ate without dis- crimiAation, breathing deep breaths. For pure THE PURE MEN OF OLD 89 men draw breath from their uttermost depths ; the vulgar only from their throats. Out of the crooked, words are retched up like vomit. K men's passions are deep, their divinity is shallow. The pure men of old did not know what it was to love life nor to hate death. They did not rejoice in birth, nor strive to put oflE dissolution. Quickly come and quickly go ; — ^no more. They did not forget whence it was they had sprung, neither did they seek to hasten their return thither. Cheerfully they played their allotted parts, waiting patiently for the end. This is what is called not to lead the heart astray from Tao, nor to let the human seek to supplement the divine. And this is what is meant by a pure man. • • • • • The pure men of old did their duty to their neighbours, but did not associate with them. They behaved as though wanting in themselves, but without flattering others. Naturally rect- angular, they were not uncompromisingly hard. They manifested their independence without going to extremes. They appeared to smile as if pleased, when the expression was only a natural response. Their outward semblance derived its fascination from the store of goodness within. They seemed to be of the world around them, while proudly treading beyond its limits. They seemed to 4§strQ silence^ while in truth the^ had 90 MUSINGS OP A CHINESE MYSTIC dispensed with language. They saw in penal laws a trunk ^ ; in social ceremonies, wings ' ; in wisdom, a useful accessory ; in morality, a guide. For them penal laws meant a merciful adminis- tration ; social ceremonies, a passport through the world ; wisdom, an excuse for doing what they could not help ; and morality, walking like others upon the path. And thus all men praised them for the worthy lives they led. The repose of the Sage is not what the world calls repose. His repose is the result of his mental attitude. All creation could not disturb his equilibrium : hence his repose. When water is still, it is like a mirror, reflecting the beard and the eyebrows. It gives the accuracy of the water-level, and the philosopher makes it his model. And if water thus derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind ! The mind of the Sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation. The truly great man, although he does not injure others, does not credit himself with charity and mercy. He seeks not gain, but does not despise his followers who do. He struggles not * A natural basis of government. ' To aid man's progress through life. TOLERANCE AND EQUANIMITY 91 for wealth, but does not take credit for letting it alone. He asks help from no man, but takes no credit for his self-reliance, neither does he despise those who seek preferment through friends. He acts differently from the vulgar crowd, but takes no credit for his exceptionality ; nor, because others act with the majority, does he despise them as hypocrites. The ranks and emoluments of the world are to him no cause for joy ; its punishments and shame no cause for disgrace. He knows that positive and nega- tive cannot be distinguished, that great and small cannot be defined. The true Sage ignores God. He ignores man. He ignores a beginning. He ignores matter. He moves in harmony with his generation and suffers not. He takes things as they come and is not overwhelmed. How are we to become like him ? The true Sage is a passive agent. If he suc- ceeds, he simply feels that he was provided by no effort of his own with the energy necessary to success. External punishments are inflicted by metal and wood. Internal punishments are inflicted by anxiety and remorse. Fools who incur 92 MUSINGS OP A CHINESE MYSTIC external punishment are treated with metal or wood. Those who incur internal punishment are devoured by the conflict of emotions. It is only the pure and perfect man who can succeed in avoiding both. RANDOM GLEANINGS Take no heed of time, nor of right and wrong ; but, passing into the realm of the Infinite, take your final rest therein. k • • • • Our life has a limit, but knowledge is without limit. To serve one's prince without reference to the act, but only to the service, is the perfection of a subject's loyalty. • • • • • In trials of skill, at first all is friendliness ; but at last it is all antagonism. Tzu Ch'i of Nan-po was travelling on the Shang mountain when he saw a large tree which astonished him very much. A thousand chariot teams could have found shelter under its shade. " What tree is this ? " cried Tzu Ch'i. " Surely it must have unusually fine timber." Then, looking up, he saw that its branches were too crooked for rafters ; while, as to the trunk, he saw 94 MUSINGS OP A CHINESE MYSTIC that its irregular grain made it valueless for coffins. He tasted a leaf, but it took the skin off his lips ; and its odour was so strong that it would make a man as it were drunk for three days together. "Ah!" saidTzuCh'i. " This tree is good for nothing, and that is how it has attained this size. A wise man might well follow its example." . . . . • A man does not seek to see himself in running water, but in still water. For only what is itself still can instil stillness into others. Is Confucius a Sage, or is he not ? How is it he has so many disciples ? He aims at being a subtle dialectician, not knowing that such a reputation is regarded by real Sages as the fetters of a criminal. He who delights in man is himself not a perfect man. His affection is not true charity. De- pending upon opportunity, he has not true worth. He who is not conversant with both good and evil is not a superior man. He who disregards his reputation is not what a man should be. He who is not absolutely oblivious of his own exist- ence can never be a ruler of men. When the pond dries up, and the fishes are left INFERIORITY OF THE ARTIFICIAL 95 upon dry ground, to moisten them with the breath, or to damp them with spittle, is not to be compared with leaving them, in the first instance, in their native rivers and lakes. And better than praising Yao * and blaming Chieh* would be leaving them both and attending to the development of Tao. Fishes are bom in water. Man is bom in Tao. If fishes get ponds to live in, they thrive. If man gets Tao to live in, he may live his life in peace. « • • • . " May I ask," said Tzu Kung, " about divine men ? " *' Divine men," replied Confucius, " are divine to man, but ordinary to God. Hence the saying that the meanest being in heaven would be the best on earth ; and the best on earth, the meanest in heaven." The goodness of a wise ruler covers the whole empire, yet he himself seems to know it not. It influences all creation, yet none is conscious ^A legendary Emperor, whose reign, with that of his Buocessor Shun, may be regarded as the Gk>lden Age of China. 'The last sovereign of the Hsia dynasty, and a typical tyrant. 96 MUSINGS OP A CHINESE MYSTIC thereof. It appears under countless forms, bring- ing joy to cdl things. It is based upon the baseless, and travels through the realms of Nowhere. By inaction one can become the centre of thought, the focus of responsibility, the arbiter of wisdom. Full allowance must be made for others, while remaining unmoved oneself. There must be a thorough compliance with divine principles, without any manifestation thereof. All of which may be summed up in the one word passivity. For the perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing : it refuses nothing. It receives, but does not keep. And thus he can triumph over matter, without injury to himself. . . • • • Every addition to or deviation from nature belongs not to the ultimate perfection of all. He who would attain to such perfection never loses sight of the natural conditions of his exist- ence. With him the joined is not united, nor the separated apart, nor the long in excess, nor the short wanting. For just as a duck's legs, though short, cannot be lengthened without pain to the duck, and a crane's legs, though long, cannot be shortened without misery to the crane, so that which is long in man's moral nature cannot be cut NATURAL GOODNESS 97 off, nor that which is short be lengthened. All sorrow is thus avoided. What I mean by perfection is not what is meant by charity and duty to one's neighbour. It is found in the cultivation of Tao. And those whom I regard as cultivators of Tao are not those who cultivate charity and duty to one's neigh- bour. They are those who yield to the natural conditions of things. What. I call perfection of hearing is not hearing others, but oneself. What I call perfection of vision is not seeing others, but oneself. For a man who sees not himself, but others, takes not possession of himself, but of others, thus taking what others should take and not what he himself should take. Instead of being himself, he in fact becomes some one Ts'ui Chii asked Lao Tzu, saying : " If the empire is not to be governed, how are men's hearts to be kept in order ? " " Be careful," replied Lao Tzu, " not to inter- fere with the natural goodness of the heart of man, Man's heart may be forced down or stirred up. In each case the issue is fatal." The men of this world all rejoice in others G 98 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC being like themselves, and object to others not being like themselves. If metal and stone were without Tao, they would not be capable of emitting sound. And just as they possess the property of sound, but will not emit sound unless struck, so surely is the same principle applicable to all creation. In the Golden Age good men were not appre- ciated ; ability was not conspicuous. Rulers were mere beacons, while the people were free as the wild deer. They were upright without being conscious of duty to their neighbours. They loved one another without being conscious of charity. They were true without being conscious of loyalty. They were honest without being conscious of good faith. They acted freely in all things without recognising obligations to any one. ^us their deeds left no trace ; their affairs were not handed down to posterity. A man who knows that he is a fool is not a great fool. Appeal to arms is the lowest form of virtue. Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education. Ceremonies and laws are the lowest form of government. Music and fine clothes are THE CLIMAX OF PERFECTION 99 the lowest form of happiness. Weeping and mourning are the lowest form of grief. These five should follow the movements of the mind. The ancients indeed cultivated the study of accidentals, but they did not allow it to precede that of essentials. It is easy to be respectfully filial, but difficult to be affectionately filial. But even that is easier than to become unconscious of one's natural obligations, which is in turn easier than to cause others to be unconscious of the opera- tions thereof. Similarly, this is easier than to become altogether unconscious of the world, which again is easier than to cause the world to be unconscious of one's influence upon it. Charity and duty to one's neighbour are as caravanserais established by wise rulers of old ; you may stop there one night, but not for long, or you will incur reproach. Both small and great things must equally possess form. The mind cannot picture to itself a thing without form, nor conceive a form of unlimited dimensions. The greatness of anything may be a topic of discussion, or the smallness of anything may be mentally realised. But that 100 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC which can be neither a topic of discussion nor realised mentally, can be neither great nor smaU. The life of man passes by like a galloping horse, changing at every turn, at every hour. What should he do, or what should he not do, other than let his decomposition go on ? As to what the world does and the way in which people are happy now, I know not whether such happiness be real happiness or not. The happi- ness of ordinary persons seems to me to consist in slavishly following the majority, as if they could not help it. Yet they all say they are happy. But I cannot say thsA this is happiness or that it is not happiness. Is there, then, after all, such a thing as happiness ? I make true pleasure to consist in inaction^ which the world regards as great pain. Thus it has been said, '' Perfect happiness is the absence of happiness." A man who plays for counters will play well. If he stakes his girdle,^ he will be nervous ; if yellow gold, he wiU lose his wits. His skill is the same in each case, but he is distracted by the value of his stake. And every one who attaches ' In which he keeps his loose cash. THE AUGUR AND THE PIGS 101 importance to the external, becomes internally without resource. The Grand Augur, in his ceremonial robes, approached the shambles and thus addressed the pigs : '' How can you object to die ? I shall fatten you for three months. I shall discipline myself for ten days and fast for three. I shall strew fine grass, and place you bodily upon a carved sacrificial dish. Does not this satisfy you ? " Then, speaking from the pigs' point of view, he continued : " It is better, perhaps, after all, to live on bran and escape the shambles. ..." " But then," added he, speaking from his own point of view, " to enjoy honour when alive one would readily die on a war-shield or in the heads- man's basket." So he rejected the pigs' point of view and adopted his own point of view. In what sense, then, was he different from the pigs ? When Yang Tzu went to the Sung State, he passed a night at an inn. The innkeeper had two concubines — one beautiful, the other ugly. The latter he loved ; the former he hated. Yang Tzu asked how this was ; whereupon one of the inn servants said : " The beautiful one is so conscious of her beauty that one does not think 102 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC her beautiful. The ugly one is so conscious of her ugliness that one does not think her ugly." '' Note this, my disciples ! " cried Yang Tzu. *' Be virtuous, but without being consciously so ; and wherever you go, you will be beloved." Shun asked Ch'eng, saying : " Can one get Tao so as to have it for one's own ? " *' Your very body," replied Ch'feng, " is not your own. How should Tao be ? " ** If my body," said Shun, " is not my own, pray whose is it ? " '^ It is the delegated image of God," replied Ch'eng. " Your Itfe is not your own. It is the delegated harmony of God. Your individuality is not your own. It is the delegated adaptability of God. Your posterity is not your own. It is the delegated exuviae of God. You move, but know not how. You are at rest, but know not why. You taste, but know not the cause. These are the operation of God's laws. How then should you get Tao so as to have it for your own ? " Man passes through this sublunary life as a sunbeam passes a crack — ^here one moment, gone the next. Mountain forests and loamy fields swell my FUTILITY OF MAN*S LIFE 103 heart with joy. But ere the joy be passed, sorrow is upon me again. Joy and sorrow come and go, and over them I have no control. Alas ! the life of man is but as a stoppage at an inn. He knows that which comes within the range of his experience. Otherwise, he knows not. He knows that he can do what he can do, and that he cannot do what he cannot do. But there is always that which he does not know and that which he cannot do ; and to struggle that it shall not be so — is not this a cause for grief ? The best language is that which is not spoken, the best form of action is that which is without deeds. Spread out your knowledge, and it wiU be found to be shallow. As to Yao and Shun, what claim have they to praise ? Their fine distinctions simply amounted to knocking a hole in a wall in order to stop it up with brambles ; to combing each individual hair ; to counting the grains for a rice pudding ! How in the name of goodness did they profit their generation ? Let knowledge stop at the unknowable. That is perfection. 104 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC There is no weapon so deadly as man's will. Excalibur is second to it. There is no bandit so powerful as Nature. In the whole universe there is no escape from it. Yet it is not Nature which does the injury. It is man's own heart. Birth is not a beginning ; death is not an end. Discard the stimuli of purpose. Free the mind from disturbances. Get rid of entanglements to virtue. Pierce the obstructions to Tao. A one-legged man discards ornament, his exterior not being open to commendation. Con- demned criminals will go up to great heights without fear, for they no longer regard life and death from their former point of view. And those who pay no attention to their moral clothing and condition become oblivious of their own personality ; and by thus becoming oblivious of their personality, they proceed to be the people of God. Wherefore, if men revere them, they rejoice not. If men insult them, they are not angered. But only those who have passed into the eternal harmony of God are capable of this. If your anger is external, not internal, it wiU be anger proceeding from not-anger. If your actions are external, not intematl, they will be UNCONSCIOUS SERVITUDE 105 actions proceeding from inaction. If you would attain peace, level down your emotional nature. If you desire spirituality, cultivate adaptation of the intelligence. If you would have yoiur actions in accordance with what is right, allow yourself to fall in with the dictates of necessity. Eor necessity is the Tao of the Sage. If schemers have nothing to give them anxiety, they are not happy. If dialecticians have not their premisses and conclusions, they are not happy. If critics have none on whom to vent their spleen, they are not happy. Such men are the slaves of objective existences. A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker. A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker. The rulers of old set oflE all success to the credit of their people, attributing all failure to them- When Chii Po Yii reached his sixtieth year, he changed his opinions. What he had previously regarded as right, he now came to regard as wrong. But who shall say whether the right 106 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC of to-day may not be as wrong as the wrong of the previous fifty-nine years ? Shao Chih asked Tai Kung Tiao, saying : " What is meant by society ? " " Society," replied Tai Kimg Tiao, '' is an agreement of a certain number of families and individuals to abide by certain customs. Dis- cordant elements unite to form a harmonious whole. Take away this unity, and each has a separate individuality. '' Point at any one of the many parts of a horse, and that is not a horse, although there is the horse before you. It is the combination of all which makes the horse. '' Similarly, a mountain is high because of its individual particles. A river is large because of its individuatl drops. And he is a just man who regards all parts from the point of view of the whole. Thus, in regard to the views of others, he holds his own opinion, but not obstinately. In regard to his own views, while conscious of their truth, he does not despise the opinions of others." Wood rubbed with wood produces fire. Metal exposed to fire will liquefy. If the Positive and Negative principles operate inharmoniously, heaven and earth are greatly disturbed. Thunder FREEDOM FOR THE MIND 107 crashes, and with rain comes lightning, scorching^ up the tall locust-trees. ... So in the struggle between peace and unrest, the friction between good and evil, much fire is evolved which con- sumes the inner harmony of man. But the mind is unable to resist fire. It is destroyed, and with it Tao comes to an end. Get rid of small wisdom, and great wisdom will shine upon you. Put away goodness and you will be naturally good. A child does not leani to speak because taught by professors of the art^ but because it lives among people who can themselves speak. Man has for himself a spacious domain. His- mind may roam to heaven. If there is no room in the house, the wife and her mother-in-law run against one another. If the mind cannot roam to heaven, the faculties will be in a state of antagonism. The raison d'^etre of a fish-trap is the fish. When ^"> the fish is caught, the trap may be ignored. The raison d'^etre of a rabbit-snare is the rabbit. When the rabbit is caught, the snare may be ignored. The raison d^etre of language is an idea to be expressed. When the idea is expressed, the language may be ignored. But where shall I i 108 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC find a man to ignore language, with whom I may be able to converse ? Alas ! man's knowledge reaches to the hair on a hair, but not to eternal peace. • • • • • The heart of man is more dangerous than mountains and rivers, more difficult to understand than Heaven itself. Heaven has its periods of spring, summer, autumn, winter, daytime and night. Man has an impenetrable exterior, and his motives are inscrutable. Thus some men appear to be retiring when they are really forward. Others have abilities, yet appear to be worthless. Others are compliant, yet gain their ends. Others take a firm stand, yet yield the point. Others go slow, yet advance quickly. PERSONAL ANECDOTES Chuang Tzu was fishing in the P'u when the prince of Ch'u sent two high officials to ask him to take charge of the administration of the Ch'u State. Chuang Tzu went on fishing and, without turning his head, said : ''I have heard that in Ch'u there is a sacred tortoise which has been dead now some three thousand years, and that the prince keeps this tortoise carefully enclosed in a chest on the altar of his ancestral temple. Now would this tortoise rather be dead and have its remains venerated, or be alive and wagging its tail in the mud ? " " It would rather be alive," replied the two officials, " and wagging its tail in the mud." " Begone ! " cried ^luang Tzu. " I too will wag my tail in the mud." Hui Tzu was prime minister in the Liang State. Chuang Tzu went thither to visit him. Some one remarked : '^ Chuang Tzu has come. He wants to be minister in your place." 109 110 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC Thereupon Hui Tzu was afraid, and searched all over the State for three days and three nights to find him. Then Chuang Tzu went to see Hui Tzu and fiaid : ''In the south there is a bird. It is a kind of phoenix. Do you know it ? It started from the south sea to fly to the north sea. Ex- cept on the tvu-fung tree, it would not alight. It would eat nothing but the fruit of the bamboo, drink nothing but the purest spring water. An owl which had got the rotten carcass of a rat, looked up as the phoenix flew by, and screeched. Are you not screeching at me over your kingdom of Liang ? " Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu had strolled on to the bridge over the Hao, when the former ob- served : " See how the minnows are darting about ! That is the pleasure of fishes.'' " You not being a fish yourself," said Hui Tzu, " how can you possibly know in what consists the pleasure of fishes ? " " And you not being I," retorted Chuang Tzu, *' how can you know that I do not know ? " " If I, not being you, cannot know what you know," urged Hui Tzu, " it follows that you, not being a fish, cannot kaow in what consists the pleasure of fishes." " Let us go back," said Chuang Tzu, " to your PHASES OF EXISTENCE 111 original question. You asked me how I knew in what consists the pleasure of fishes. Your very question shows that you knew I knew.^ I knew it from my own feeliigs on this bridge." When Chuang Tzu's wife died, Hui Tzu went to condole. He found the widower sitting on the ground, singing, with his legs spread out at a right angle, and beating time on a bowl. " To live with your wife," exclaimed Hui Tzii, " and see your eldest son grow up to be a man, and then not to shed a tear over her corpse, — this would be bad enough. But to drum on a bowl, and sing ; surely this is going too far." "Not at all," replied Chuang Tzu. "When she died, I could not help being affected by her death. Soon, however, I remembered that she had already existed in a previous state before birth, without form, or even substance ; that while in that unconditioned condition, substance was added to spirit ; that this substance then assumed form ; and that the next stage was birth. And now, by virtue of a further change, she is dead, passing from one phase to another like the sequence of spring, summer, autumn and winter. And while she is thus lying asleep in Eternity, for me to go about weeping and wailing 1 For you asked me ?iow 1 knew. 112 MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC would be to proclaim myself ignorant of these naturatl laws. Therefore I refram.'' When Chuang Tzu was about to die, his dis- ciples expressed a wish to give him a splendid funeral. But Chuang Tzu said : " With Heaven and Earth for my coffin and shell ; with the sun, moon, and stars, as my burial regalia ; and with all creation to escort me to the grave, — are not my funeral paraphernalia ready to hand ? " " We fear," argued the disciples, '* lest the carrion kite should eat the body of our Master ; '^ to which Chuang Tzu replied : " Above ground I shall be food for kites ; below I shall be food for mole-crickets and ants. Why rob one to feed the other ? " Printed by HauUt Wat9on dt Vinty, Ld., London and AyUtbwry, THE ORIENT LIBRARY THE WISDOM OF THE EAST SERIES Edited by L. CRANMBR-BYNQ and Dr. S. A. KAPADIA The HON. ADVISORY COMMITTEE of the ORIENT LIBRARY (WISDOM or THE EAST SERIES) Lord REAY, G.C.S.I., Prtsident, Sir ARTHUR WOLLASTON, K.C.I.E., Chairman L. CRANMER-BYNG and S. A. KAPADIA, Hon, Stcs, Frof. T. W. Arnold (London Uni- versity C>)llege). Prof. L. D. Harnett (London Uni- versity College). Miss G. Bell. Syed Hosain Bilgrami, C.S.I. Prof. J. F. Blumhardt (Cambridge University). Prof. £. G. Browne (Cambridge University). L. Cranmer-Byng, Esq. Dr. J. Estlin Carpenter (Oxford University). A. G. Ellis, Esq. Prof. Gregory Foster (Provost, London University College). Dr. M. Gaster. Prof. H. A. Giles (Cambridge Uni- versity). Lionel Giles, Esq., M.A. Prof. Jgnaz (^ldziher (Budapest University). Dr. G. A. Grierson, CLE. Sir Henry Howorth, K.C.LE. Dr. S. A. Kapadia (London Univer- sity College). Sir Alfred Lyall, G.CI.E. Sir Charles Lyall, K.CS.I. Prof. D. S. Margoliouth (Oxford University). Mrs. D. S. Margoliouth. Prof. A. A. Macdonell (Oxford Uni- versityi Theodor Morison, Esq., M.A. J. Morris, Esq. (Japan). A. H. Hallam MURRAY, Esq. Prof. Reginald A. Nicholson (Cam- bridge University). Prof. Rapson (Ounbridge Univer- sity). Miss Kidding. Syed Amber Ali, CLE. F. W. Thomas, Esq., M.A. Prof. Anton Tien. Don M. DE Wickrbmasinghe (Ox- ford University). LONDON LUJNLIUJN J JOHN MURRAY, ALBE-U^CeA.^ ^'^^^^^^^>^| WISDOM OF THE EAST SERIES THE SPLENDOUR OP GOD. Being Extracts from the Sacred Writings of the Bahais. With Introdnction by Eric Hamiiond. 3/- net* A LUTE OP JADE. Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China. Rendered with an Introduction by L. Cranm biuBymg. 9/- net. THE CONPESSIONS OP AL GHAZZALI. Translated for the first time into English by Claud Fibld, M.A. i/- net. THE HEART OP INDIA. Sketches in the History of Hindu Religion and Morals. By L. D. Barnbtt, M.A., Lirr.D., Professor of Sanskrit at University College, London. 3/- net. THE BOOK OP PILIAL DUTY, Translated from the Chinese of the Hsiao Ching by Ixan CHfiK, first Secretary to the Chinese Legation, i/- net. THE DIWAN OP ABU'L-ALA. By Henry Babrlbin. 1/- net. BRAHMA-KNOWLEDGE: An Outline of the Philosophy of the Vedanta. As set forth by the Upanishads and by Sankara. By L, D. Barnett, M.A., Litt.D., Professor of Sanskrit at University College, London. 3/- net. THE CONDUCT OP LIPE; or, The Universal Order of Confucius. A translation of one of the four Confucian Books, hitherto known as the Doctiine of the Mean. By Ku Hung Ming, M.A. (Edin.). 1/. net. THE TEACHINGS OP ZOROASTER AND THE PHILO- SOPHY OP THE PARSI RELIGION. Translated with Introduction by Dr. S. A. Kapadia, Lecturer, University College London. 9/- net. THE PERSIAN MYSTICS. I. Jal£lu'd-din Riimf. By F. Hadland Davis. 2/- net. II. J^mi. By F. Hadland Davis. 2/- net. THE WAY OP THE BUDDHA. Selections from the Buddhist texts, together with the original Pali, with Introduction by Herbert Baynes, M.R.A.S. 3/- net. THE SAYINGS OP CONPUCIUS. A new Translation of the greater part of the Confucian Analects, with Introduction and Notes by Lionel Giles, M.A. (Oxon.\ Asaxstant in the I>epaftinent of Oriental Books and Manuscripts o! the BT\x,\aYvUv«fc>Msi. a\. t«x. WISDOM OF THE EAST SERIES MUSINGS OF A CHINESE MYSTIC. Selections from the Philosophy of Chuang TzS. With Introduction by Lionel Giles, M.A. (Oxon.), Assistant at the British Museum. 2/- net. THE AWAKENING OF THE SOUL. From the Arabic of Ibn Tufail. Transhited with Introduction by Paul Bronnle, Ph.D. x/6 net. THE RELIGION OF THE KORAN. With Introduction by Sir Arthur N. Wollaston, K.C.I.E. x/- net, THE WISDOM OF ISRAEL: Being Extracts from the Babylonian Talmud and Midrash Rabboth. Translated from the Aramaic with an Introduction by Edwin Collins, z/- net. SA'DI'S SCROLL OF WISDOM. By Shaikh Sa'di. With Introduction by Sir Arthur N. Wollaston, K.C.I.E. i/- net. With Persian Script added. 2/- net. THE INSTRUCTION OF PTAH-HOTEP AND THE INSTRUCTION OF KE'GEMNL The Oldest Books in the World. Translated from the Egyptian with Introduction and Appendix by Battiscombe G. Gunn. x/- net. THE ROSE GARDEN OF SA'DI. Selected and Rendered from the Persian with Introduction by L. Cranmer-Byng. x/- net. THE CLASSICS OF CONFUCIUS. I. The Book of History (Shu-King). By W. GoRN Old. x/- net. II. The Book of Odes (Shi-King). By L. Cranmer-Byng. 1/- net. THE SAYINGS OF LAO TZO. From the Chinese. Trans- lated with Introduction by Lionel Giles, of the British Museum, x/- net. WOMEN AND WISDOM OF JAPAN. With Introduction by S. Takaishi. x/- net. ARABIAN WISDOM. Selections and Translations from the Arabic by John Wortabet, M.D. x/- net. THE DUTIES OF THE HEART. By Rabbi Bachye. Translated from the Hebrew with Introduction by Edwin Colums« Hollier Hebrew Scholar, U.CL. x/. net. Ail literary contntunicatUms to be addressed to THE EDITORS OF THE ORIENT LIBRARY, c/o DR. & A. KAPADIA, ORIENTAL SECRETARY. NORTHBROOK SOCIETY^ 185 PICCADILLY, LONDON, W. 3 THE object of the Editors of this Series is a very definite one. They desire above all things that, in their humble way, these books shall be the ambassadors of good-will and understanding between East and West, the old world of Thought and the new of Action. In this endeavour, and in their own sphere, they are but followers of the highest example in the land. They are confident that a deeper knowledge of the great idesds and lofty philosophy of Oriental thought may help to a revival of that true spirit of Charity which neither despises nor fears the nations of another creed and colour. Finally, m thanking press and public for the very cordial reception given to the ** Wisdom of the East" Series, they wish to state that no pains have been spared to secure the best specialists for the treatment of the various subjects at hand. SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS The AthennanL— " We with that there were more of them ; they are dreamy, lifelike, and fascinating." Pall Mall Gaiatta.'— '*No translation of this important work has been made since the bes^inning of the eighteenth century." ManohMtei COUXitr.—" Worthy of close study by all who would penetrate to the depth of Eastern thought and feeling." Literary Olllde.— " We wish success to this little series of books." Outlook.—" This Series is published to help in the process of renewing the spiritual and moral life of the West." The Bootemail.— ''This Series should not fail to please readers of the more studious sort." BOUthport Gnardlan.— *' This Series will find considerable favour with all Students of Eastern Literature and Eastern Philosophy." BriatOl Mercury.— "We commend these little books to all who imag^ine that there is no knowledge worth having outside Europe and America." GlaeifOW Herald.— "This new Series has a definite and lofty aim, and is deservmgof support. The books are small, cheap, and well adapted fur the pocket. £very page is regularly refreshing and stimulating." Field.—" Such books are valuable aids to the understanding of a far-off age and people, and have a great interest for the student of literature." Irish TlmeB.— "The volumes are charming in form, low in price, and excellent in matter." LONDON JOHlg]J|]|^X, t\5.SXREET, W. iirir 3 2044 048 284 194 DATE DUE DEMCO INC 38-293A
The Complete Work of CHuang Tzu
Burton Watson
1968-01-01T00:00:00Z
null
null
the complete works of chuang tzu
burton watson
1968-01-01T00:00:00Z
null
null
Chuang tzu : world philosopher at play
Wu, Kuang-ming
1982-01-01T00:00:00Z
Zhuangzi,Taoists -- China -- Biography
xi, 138 p. ; 24 cm,Includes bibliographical references
Teachings and sayings of Chuang Tzŭ.
Zhuangzi.
2001-01-01T00:00:00Z
null
null
The Tao of happiness : stories from Chuang Tzu for your spiritual journey
Lin, Derek, 1964- author
2015-01-01T00:00:00Z
Zhuangzi,Tao,Taoism,Spiritual life -- Taoism
xi, 129 pages : 18 cm,Departure -- The flight of the Peng bird -- The frog in the well -- Useful and useless -- Secret formula -- Travel advisories -- Chaotic currents -- The mantis hunts the cicada -- The sacrificial cow -- The horse lover -- Travel tips -- The happiness of the fish -- The chef cuts the ox -- The wheelmaker -- Huangdi and the boy -- The Tao of the bandit -- Arrival -- The death of Chuang Tzu's wife -- The death of Chuang Tzu's friend -- The death of Chuang Tzu -- Tears of fears -- The dream of the butterfly
The concept of Tao in Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, ca. 600 - 200 B.C.
Lawrence P.C. Lau
1972-01-01T00:00:00Z
null
null
Full text of "The concept of Tao in Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, ca. 600 - 200 B.C." Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "The concept of Tao in Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, ca. 600 - 200 B.C." See other formats GLx MT5M5 awnsww Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2020 with funding from University of Alberta Libraries https://archive.org/details/Lau1972 THE UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA THE CONCEPT OF 'TAO IN LAO TZU AND C HUANG TZU, ca . 600 - 200 B .C . by LAWRENCE P.C. IAU A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY EDMONTON, ALBERTA FALL, 1972 THE UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH The undersigned certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, for acceptance, a thesis entitled THE CONCEPT OF TAO IN LAO TZU AND CHUANG TZU , ca. 600 - 200 B.C. submitted by LAWRENCE P.M. LAU in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts . Date October 3 , 1972. ABSTRACT Tao is an important concept; however , no one has been able to give a satisfactory definition of it, especially in the Taoist context. It is the intention of this thesis to try to trace the meaning and signifi¬ cation of Tao through the works of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu , who were the most prominent figures and founders of the School of Taoism. Tao was seen by both as the active ontological and cosmological principle of nature, of the universe. Since Tao is so difficult to define and explain, it is necessary to give an account of its different aspects, attributes and characteristics. To be natural, to practise wu wei or non-action, is the necessary means to come close to Tao, to realize Tao. This concept of Tao had a tremendous impact on the later thinkers and scholars. After Lao Tzu' s and Chuang Tzu 1 s time, scholars and thinkers spent much of their time and energy in considering the meaning of Tao. It was not uncommon that they inserted their own thinking and interpretations in the explanation of Tao. Some regarded Tao as an abstract concept while others took it to be something physical in the material realm. In present-day China, scholars are still having controversy on whether Tao is materialistic or idealistic. in 1 . ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Professor Brian L. Evans for his supervision and guidance in my studies in the past years and in the writing of this thesis. I would also like to thank Dr. H.J. Jones and Dr. Tova Yedlin for their valuable advice and encouragement. I am most indebted to Professor Leon Jankelevitch who, kindly and patiently, undertook a great deal of work in helping me translate the difficult texts, pointing out my errors, and giving me invaluable suggestions . In preparing this thesis, I must thank Professor Evans and Professor Jankelevitch for allowing me access to their collection of books and dictionaries. I am also grateful to the staff of the Reference and Inter- library Loan Departments of the Cameron Library, University of Alberta, and the Asian Studies Library of the University of British Columbia for their efficient service and assis¬ tance in loaning me the necessary materials. IV - TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ABSTRACT . iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . . . iv CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION . 1 A. Intuition and Chinese Philosophy . 1 B. Western Attempts at an Interpretation of Tao . 4 CHAPTER II LAO TZU'S TAO . 8 A. The Evolution of Tao and Its Relationship with T ' ien (Heaven) . 8 B. The Ontological and Cosmological Tao .. 15 C. The Characteristics of Tao . 24 CHAPTER III CHUANG TZU'S TAO . 38 A. Expansion of Lao Tzu's Concepts . 38 3. T ' ien (Heaven) as Nature . . 44 CHAPTER IV MATERIALISTIC AND IDEALISTIC INTERPRETATIONS . 50 A. Interpretations By Other Scholars and Commentators . 50 B. Materialistic Tao . 59 C. Idealistic Tao . 64 CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS . 71 BIBLIOGRAPHY 79 INTRODUCTION A. Intuition and Chinese Philosophy Observation reveals that of all the character¬ istics of Chinese philosophy, such as slow development of logical thinking, lack of skeptical spirit and analytical approach, the most outstanding feature is the use of intuitive thinking . Intuition is the direct perception of truths and facts not inferred from spoken or written words. Words and language cannot express intuition which is "in-felt". Therefore, intuition acquired through practice and experience is deemed as more important than learning obtained from the written or the spoken word. Statements in written form in Chinese philosophy are usually arbitrary, dogmatic, and have no dialectical basis . Chinese thinkers tend to jump to conclusions after forming certain conceptions and give no or little reason or proof to back up their statements. For example, Confucius once said that "the true man has no worries ; the wise man has no perplexities ; and the brave man has no fear" The Analects of Confucius, Book IX) . Why would the true man have no worries, the wise man no perplexities, and the brave man no fear? Confucius did not explain clearly. * 2 Probably he presumed that the true men, the wise men, and the brave men were supposed to have a direct per¬ ception on every phenomenon and were never confused. Automatically, it was taken for granted that they were exalted in what they were . Such statements may appear to be dogmatic and arbitrary, but they have been accepted by the Chinese who have faith in the validity of these statements . There is another old saying that "the true gentleman knows about the whole world without stepping out of his door" $ f~~] >A p - ^ b YJ'V ) • Such a statement is really difficult J to understand without an explanation. However, the Chinese thinkers most of the time presumed that, on hearing such statements, people would intuitively understand what they meant, and, interestingly enough, the Chinese, through the ages, have adopted this kind of learning attitude, to accept things intuitively. In the Tao Te Chinq ( 4.^ ) , arbitrary statements are not rare. The first two sentences in Chapter one are good examples : "The Tao that can be talked about is not the Eternal Tao. The Name that can be named is not the Eternal Name."-*- Chuang Tzu is no exception in making arbitrary statements. He once crossed the bridge 1 These two sentences translated as they are serve the purpose of being examples of arbitrary statements . However, the proper translation should be: The Tao (Way) that can be trodden is not the Unchanging Tao. The Name that can be named is not the Unchanging Name. The trans¬ lations given in direct quotations have been re-worked by the writer, unless otherwise indicated. - 3 over the Hao river ( -|j % ) with Hui Szu ( ) and remarked that the fish down below were happy. Hui Szu asked him how did he know since he was not a fish himself . Chuang Tzu just said that he knew by merely walking across the bridge. Why do the Chinese thinkers lack logical, argumentative and systematic thinking? It is not because they cannot do so, since some of their writings are highly dialectical (e.g. the writings of Kung-sun Lung ( ) , some chapters in the Mo Tzu, certain chapters of the Chuang Tzu and some sections of the Tao Te Ching) but because they are more addicted to intuitive thinking . Chuang Tzu remarked that when a person stood too close to a horse, what he saw was only part of a horse, maybe the shoulder, maybe the hair; a man must stand aloof enough to see the whole animal before he could claim that he saw a horse. In Chinese philosophy, intuition and seeing things as a whole rather than broken up by random observation or detailed analysis is emphasized. The concepts with which the Chinese philosophy works are usually obscure, ambiguous and have no clear-cut defini¬ tions. It is quite correct for Yiu-wei Hsieh ( fyfa Iff ) , a modern Chinese scholar , to remark that intuition has created Chinese philosophy, and at the same time, limited Chinese philosophy. 2 Chien-chung Huang, et al . , A Collection of Treatises on History of Chinese Philosophy ( Ta i p e i : Publisher not available, 1958), p.179. i 4 B . Western Attempts at Interpretations of "Tao" "Tao" is a very important concept in Taoism. However, it is ill-defined and obscurely described by the Taoist thinkers because of their intuitive, seemingly arbitrary statements . It will be the attempt of this thesis to try to analyze the meaning and significance of "Taon , as understood by Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu . Holmes Welch commented that the doctrine of "Tao" covers all the conventional branches of Western philosophy: a meta¬ physics based on the cosmology and ontology of "Tao" itself; a relativistic epistemology with aesthetic corollaries; and a joint ethics and politics in which wu wei ( ) , £u, ( ) and te ( ) are both means and ends. Only a logic is missing. ^ This does not tell us much about "Tao", and "Tao" is not a doctrine as we will find out. A number of Western scholars have made good efforts at defining the meaning of "Tao" . In the Latin version of the Tao Te Ching by Stanislas Julien, Professor of Chinese in Paris, "Tao" is taken in the sense of Ratio, or the Supreme Reason of the Divine Being, the Creator and Governor. ^ Stanislas 3 Holmes Welch, The Parting of the Way , Lao Tzu and the Taoist Movement (London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1957) , p . 86 . 4 James Legge , The Texts of Taoism (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1962) , p.12. 5 Julien found that "Tao" was devoid of action, of thought, of judgement, and of intelligence. He concluded that it was impossible to understand by it ,!the Primordial Reason, or the Sublime Intelligence which created and which governs the world, in other words, God.'' The character "Tao" ( ) itself primarily and properly meant "a way" As for F.H. Balfour, one of the early translators Of Taoist texts, he adopted Nature as the ordinary rendering of the Chinese "Tao" . "When the word is translated Way, it means the Way of Nature, - her processes, her methods, and her laws; when translated Reason, it is the same as li C JjL J > ~ the power that works in all created things, producing, preserving, and life-giving, - the intelli¬ gent principle of the world; when translated Doctrine, it refers to the True doctrine respecting the laws and mysteries of Nature. It is an honourable, laborious, and well-intentioned interpretation. However, Mr. James Legge did not agree with it. If "Tao" ever had the signification of Nature, he would not have hesitated to employ it freely because Nature is a handy term and appropriate in many contexts . To James Legge, "Tao" is the spontaneously operating cause of all movement in the phenomena of the universe, not a positive being, but a mode of being; it is nothing 5 Ibid . , pp. 12-13. ^ Ibid . , p .14 . . • . 6 7 material. Edward Herbert in A Taoist Notebook says that "Tao" is a word of wonder and power , which originally meant "path” and had come to mean "Truth" . "Tao" as a term for the Absolute in the Chuanq Tzu was a makeshift one: a name for the Nameless that was not a name, a clue O to the Clueless, no more than that. At this point, Mr. Herbert seemed to have had some understanding of what "Tao" is. Some earlier scholars. General Alexander 9 being one of them, accepted "Tao" as meaning God. How¬ ever, the editors and translators of Sacred Books and Early Literature of Medieval China expressed their view that : .... the Tao is not simply the trodden path; it is rather the impelling force which sweeps us on, the rushing wind of existence, the creative force; and in this sense the Tao comes very near to meaning what we mean by God. Only if we conceive the Tao thus, it must be as a wholly impersonal God standing apart not only from human form but from every quality of humanity which we are prone to attribute to His infinity. To regard "Tao" as God is definitely a misinterpretation, as will be shown in the latter part of this thesis. The ^ Ibid . , pp. 14-15, p.21. 8 Edward Herbert , A Taoist Notebook (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1960), p.10. 9 Medieval China, vol. 12, Sacred Books of the East, (14 vols. , London: Parke, Austin, and Ripscomb, Inc., 1917), p . 13 . ibid . , p.4 . ■ ■ 7 interpretations above are well-thought of and scholarly, yet they are inadequate and unsatisfactory, though not necessarily incorrect. Some scholars would accept some of the interpretations and reject others. However, when assembled together, these interpretations do help, to a certain extent, to throw some light on the topic. 9 ■ CHAPTER II LAO TZU ' S TAO A. The Evolution of Tao and its relationship with Tien ( / Heaven) It is generally admitted that Lao Tzu developed his teachings with the intention to help people go through the troubles and instability of his time, the Ch'un Ch'iu period, 722-481B.C. < 4- it 4^ ), during which the various feudal states were contending for power and did not honour the Royal House of Chou ( jf] ) . However, it should not be neglected that , besides the conditions of the time, the influence of the literary works and thinking of the past played an extremely important role in forming Lao Tzu1 s philosophy. Lao Tzu was an archi¬ vist, who had knowledge of ancient traditions, as well as of the literary materials out of which were later to evolve into the I Ching (Book of Changes fa'-L ) and the Shih Ching (Book of Odes ) . He made use of the didactic ideas contained in these works to form a pattern of philosophical thinking. Religious concepts and belief in non-material forces occupy a good portion of the classical literature, showing the values and ways of thought of the ancient people. The wax and wane cycle of the moon gave rise to 8 - 9 a wealth of rich imaginative thinking. The Book of Changes derived the idea of the Yin and of the Yang ( ) and its theory of changes from observing phenomenal changes in nature like the alternate changes of the moon. "The world," the last chapter in the Chuang Tzu, states: "The Book of Changes describes the Yin and Yang".'*'"*' ( Piflj ) There are obvious traces of the Book of Changes' influence upon the Tao Te Ching . For example, the Book of Changes plays with the notions of brightness ( $/j ) and haziness or colorlessness ( ) , of hardness ($)'] ) and softness ( ^ ) . In the Tao Te Ching , we read: "The bright way looks dim" (Chap. 41); "Look at it, but it 4* cannot be seen; it is called the Colorless" ( ^ ) (Chap. 14); "The softest of ail things overrides the hardest of all things" (Chap. 43); "To preserve what is soft and tender is strength" (Chap. 52). Many scholars have treated in their writings • the concepts of Shang Ti ( S- the Supreme Emperor) , T 1 ien (Heaven) and Ming ( Fate) as the same.*"^ It is necessary to point out that these concepts arose out of different cultural backgrounds and followed different lines of evolution as the attitude of the ■*■■*■ A Concordance to Chuang Tzu, Supplement No . 20 , Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956), p.91. ■*■2 Cheng-tung Wei, A Critical Approach to Chinese Philosophy and Thought (Taipei: The Buffalo Book Co., Ltd., 1968) , p.3 . IJU‘ * 10 people towards these concepts changed. Before the Hsia and Shang dynasties, multi-spirit worship together with sorcerers and witches was predominant 13 in religious practices. As the order of precedence of the spirits developed, the concept of the Supreme Emperor ( Ji l'p Shang Ti) , who was professed to be living above and to be in control of everything, emerged. The term "the Supreme Emperor" appeared in many places in the Shih Ching (ifm ) and the Shu Ching (“j^" Book of History) and other classical works. Alongside with Supreme Emperor worship, the Shang Dynasty also practised an extreme form of ancestor worship. Spirits of the dead were deified, and were supposed to dwell in heaven together with the Supreme Emperor. Sacrifices were offered and sorts were cast for 'guidance . The ancestral spirits had a great supernatural power because of their affinity with the Supreme Emperor , who was regarded as a tutelary deity of ancestors.^ In later literature, especially towards the time of the Chou Dynasty, there was a tendency to merge the Supreme Emperor with the ancestral spirits. However , the concept of the Supreme Emperor was well- accepted, and furthermore the idea of Heaven ( T'ien) Chih-hsin Wang , An Outline of the History of Chinese Religious Thought (Taipei: Chung Hua Book Co., 1960) , pp. 25-26. ^ Cheng-tung Wei , A Critical Approach to Chinese Philosophy and Thought , p.4. ' 11 began to become more prominent and to blend with that of the Supreme Emperor . The blending of the two divine forces could have originated at the end of the Hsia Dynasty, for in the Shu Ching , there is a speech made by T'ang { ) , the founder of Shang, saying: The Hsia have committed a lot of crimes. Heaven has commanded me to destroy them .... Fearing the command of the Supreme Emperor , I would not dare to conquer them .... and perform the punishment appointed by Heaven. ' In the classical literature, T'ien has been mentioned much more often than Shang Ti , and the meaning of T ' ien is richer and more extensive than that of Shang Ti. Probably it is because the ancient people thought too highly of, or expected too much protection from, the Shang Ti and gradually felt the Shang Ti as indifferent or impossible to reach as natural calamities such as floods and droughts still occurred despite offerings and sacrifices. Interest in Shang Ti decreased and shifted towards T 1 ien , as the ancient Chinese came to imagine in more detail the "nature" of their impersonal T 1 ien , and to believe that all the things in the world, no matter whether good or bad, were under the control of T 1 ien . According to Fung Yu-lan, T 1 ien or Heaven has five different meanings for the Chinese: first of all, T 1 ien is seen as physical or Yu-lan Fung, History of Chinese Philosophy (Hong Kong: The Pacific Book Co., 1959) , p.54. . ' 12 material, as something having the same phenomenal existence as its counterpart, the earth on which we live; second, as the ruling or presiding T 1 ien , which dominates everything else and which inherited the Shang Ti" s former supreme power; third, as the master of destiny, more or less cor¬ responding to the concept of Fate ( ) , over which human beings have no control; fourth, as the "naturalistic" T 1 ien , which controls the working forces of nature; fifth, as the "ethical" T 1 ien , which governs morality and which is the highest primordial principle of the universe.^ From the worship of the various spirits to the worship of Shang Ti and the evolution along different lines of the concept of T 1 ien , significant progress in thinking had taken place. More concern for men was emphasized. At the same time, religious elements were also changing into philosophical elements. The "Way of Heaven" (T 1 ien Tao ^ jit, ) # with its various meanings and implications mentioned above, constituted the foundation of the philosophical thought of the pre-Chin period. The ruling T 1 ien , the "ethical" T 1 ien , and the T 1 ien as master of fate, opened the gateway for Confucian thought (inclu¬ ding Mencius) , while the naturalistic T ' ien and the material T 1 ien provided the basis for Chinese metaphysics and cosmology. The evolution undergone by these concepts of Heaven had ridden them of the bondage of the spirits • / 16 Ibid p.55. . 13 of superstition and the Shang Ti . Men began to enquire into the forces of nature and the meaning of life (here came the Taoists and the Confucianist s) . The "naturalistic" T 1 ien was the forerunner of the basic thought of Lao Tzu's and Chuang Tzu's philosophy. In the Tao Te Ching and the Chuang Tzu there are passages which correspond to some pronouncements of the I Ching ( $,jl. ) about the Way of Heaven. The Lin Hexagram ( ) in the I Ching says, "Great progress is that whereby is made correct the way of Heaven.^ ( j ) In the hr same book, the Chien Hexagram ( ) says, "It is the Way of Heaven to send down benefit below and be bright and open-hearted .... It is the Way of Heaven to diminish the full and augment the humble . Zp )jfj ... )♦ In the Tao Te Ching , we read: The Way of Heaven may be likened to the bending of a bow. The upper part is depressed while the lower is raised. If too long (the bow-string) , it would be shortened; if too short, it would be lengthened. It is the Way of Heaven to diminish the excess to supplement the inadequate . 19 The Way of Heaven has no private affections, but always accords with the good . u 17 Z.D. Sung, The Text of Yi King, Chinese Original with English Translation (Shanghai: The China Modern Education Co. , 1935) , p . 87 . 19 Ibid . , p.71. 19 Chia-loh Yang, ed . , Commentary on Lao Tzu's Tao Teh Ching (Taipei: The World Book Company, 1969), p.45. 20 Ibid . , p .46 . 14 In the Chuanq Tzu , Chapter thirteen, the Way of Heaven w 9r fig ( Tv liL ) , it is said: It is the Way of Heaven to operate unceasingly and to allow no accumulation, hence the ten thousand things are brought into perfection. It is the Way of the sovereign to operate unceasingly and to allow no accumulation, hence all under the sky turn to him. It is the Way of the sage to operate unceasingly and to allow no accumulation, hence all within the seas submit to him. 21 Again, in Chapter twenty-five of the Tao Te Ching it is stated: Man follows the ways of the Earth, The Earth follows the ways of Heaven, Heaven follows the ways of Tao, Tao follows its own self-so-ness . , ( A -fis *<&>, ?£*., A , it, ?£ k & ) The term "Way of Heaven" (T 1 ien Tao ) carries with it traces of primitive religious connotations and legendary overtones. In expounding his philosophical thought, Lao Tzu even eliminated the "T 1 ien" from the term "T 1 ien Tao" and employed the word "Tao" independently. The meaning of "Tao" then used by Lao Tzu has become different from the meanings in the literary works before his time. His predecessors used "Tao" mainly as "road" or "path" , regulations or principles that must be followed, whereas Lao Tzu came to use "Tao" as the ontological principle of the universe, a sense in which it had never been used 21 A Concordance to Chuang Tzu, p.33. 22 Lao-Tzu, Tao Teh Ching, translated by J.C.H. Wu , (New York: St. John's University Press, 1966), p.34. ■ ■ - 15 before. The significance of that is that Lao Tzu thus i, destroyed the monopolistic commanding power of the idea of Shang Ti and T ' ien of the Shang and Chou periods and established a form of metaphysics. The Tao Te Ching signifies the transformation of Chinese religious belief into philosophy, and the -relationship between heaven (nature) and man has become the core of Chinese philosophy. Since ancient traditional thinking was so strong and metaphysical thinking was so difficult to express, Lao Tzu had to resort to intuitive thinking. Because he himself intui¬ tively understood what "Tao" was, he had to share it with other people and make them realize the working forces of "Tao", for T'ien Tao or Way of Heaven is not "Tao", although it is one of the manifestations of "Tao" . B. The Ontological and Cosmological Tao It was Taoism which first ushered in Chinese metaphysics; however, Taoist thought also concentrates on the philosophy of life. Lao Tzu ' s philosophy is connected with a cosmology; but it touches also upon a philosophy of life and politics. Fu Kuan Hsu ( ) , a modern Chinese scholar, remarked very appropriately, "The motive and goal of Lao Tzu ' s teaching is not the establishment of a cosmology, but a step by step search, from the necessary . . - 16 requisite of life to the original source of the universe, for a place in which life could find rest and stability. Therefore the cosmology of Taoism can be said to be a by-product of a philosophy of life. He (Lao Tzu) not only intends to discover the origin of human nature from the origin of the universe, but also, from the origin of the universe he wants to find a mode and attitude of life that would correspond to human nature within the framework of the universe . ... That is to say, Lao Tzu wants to derive a way of life from the working force of Nature which he terms "Tao" . Even before Lao Tzu, Kuan Tzu ( 'g7 '3" ) had already talked about "Tao" as the original source of everything. He believed that the universe came into being from "air-" ( ^ ch'i) , which is formless, quiet and intangible. He called this air "Tao" saying, "Tao has no root, no stalk, no leaf and no flower. The ten thousand things depend on it for life and completion . . .." When Lao Tzu came to talk about "Tao" , his "Tao" was different from Kuan Tzu's. Lao Tzu believed that the coming into 23 Ku-ying Chen, Present-day Interpretation and Commentary on the Lao Tzu Book (Taipei: The Commercial Press, 1970) , p .44 . ^ Kuan Tzu is more popularly known as Kuan Chung ( 'Jf ij ) , a respected scholar of the early Ch'un Ch'iu period. He later was appointed by the Prince of Chi ( ^ £ ) as the Prime Minister of the State of Chi, and was praised as a competent administrator and statesman. 2 5 Kung-wie Huang, History of Chinese Philosophy (Taipei: Kashmir Book Co., 1966), p.92. - 17 being of all the myriad things had a primordial principle. This primordial principle was what he termed "Tao" . "Tao" is Lao Tzu's ontological principle. Before Lao Tzu, people believed that Heaven was the creator of all the things in the cosmos. Lao Tzu went further to search for the origin of Heaven, and believed that there was something before the existence of Heaven, that was the primal source of Heaven. That something was "Tao". The Tao Te Ching says: There was Something undefined and yet complete in itself, born before heaven and earth, silent and boundless, standing alone without change, yet pervading all without fail , it may be re¬ garded as the Mother of the world. I do not know its name; I style it "Tao"; and in the 26 absence of a better word, call it "The Great". The coming into being of the ten thousand things has to follow a given order. There must be something which comes first. The order or sequence of coming into being is not in terms of time but in terms of logic. If we hold that there should be apes before men (i.e. evolution), this priority of the existence of apes before men is in terms of time. If we hold that there should be living creatures before there are men, then this priority of living creatures before men can be taken in terms of logic. Therefore, when we say "there are men in existence" we automatically include "there are animals also" since logically existence 26 Lung-yuan Sung, Explanatory Notes on the Tao Teh Ching (Taipei: San Min Book Co., Ltd., 1970), pp. 39-40. ■ ■ 18 of animals is orior to that of men. 27 To Lao Tzu , "Tao" is logically the first order before the existence of any- J- 28 thing. ’Tao" is "In Being" ( ) . One may ask what is before "In Being" ( )? Lao Tzu ' s answer is "Non-being" . "In-Being" and "Non-being" appear to be two opposing entities; however, they are one in "Tao" and are the equivalent of "Tao" ; they are the two aspects of one thing . "The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; The Named is the Mother of All Things." '< Z * , H\ Z $7 ) 29 The explanation is that "Tao" is not something concrete that can be pinned down. It has no name and is unnameable; thus "Non-being" is the term employed to describe it. The Nameless is the beginning of the universe, and the Named, which refers to things already come into being and thus nameable, is the mother of the myriad things. In other words, "Tao" can be called "The Nameless" ( ) . "Tao" is the unadorned element which has no name ( yf) ) ^ . Although "Tao" has no name, it is the life- giving factor to all those which have names . The reason 27 Yu-lan Fung, The New Original Tao (Shanghai: The Commercial Press, 1945) , p.39. 28 jt is almost impossible to find an equivalent English term for the Chinese characters, yu ('7a ) and wu (■%£,) in this context. "In Being" here means there is something metaphysically existing. "Non-being" here means out of void, from nowhere, but not nothingness in the actual literal sense. 28 Yu tang Lin, ed . , The Wisdom of Laotse (New York: The Modern Library, 1948), p.41. 28 Lung-yuan Sung, Explanatory Notes on the Tao Teh Chinq , pp. 61-62. - 19 is that, since there are things in existence, there must be "Something" which gives birth to their existence. This "Something" is properly unnameable, but to designate it, we use, as a matter of convenience, the word "Tao" , shortened, as shown above, of the of earlier thinking. "Without a name is the beginning of the universe" does not tell any fact nor does it ascertain anything. For the use of the word "Tao" , Fung Yu-lan fails to give any factual information. "Tao", "Non-being", "In Being" or "One" , none of the words belongs to any kind of definite thing; they transcend any form. "Tao" is the concept employed to ascertain the rationale behind the formation of all the myriad things. It is the metaphysical, non- empirical "Tao" which is in true existence. Since it does not belong to the material world, it is formless, and does not have any term appropriate for it; it cannot be apprehended directly by the senses. Lao Tzu repeatedly emphasized that "Tao" is unnameable, because once having a name, Tao would be confined by the name. For convenience sake, the word "Tao" is used to designate this mysterious, undefinable "Thing". But "Tao" is not non-existent. Its potentiality is stated in Chapter twenty-one of the Tao Te Ching: Tao as a "Something" is elusive, evasive ...., yet latent in it are forms . . . yet latent in it 20 are objects. Dark and dim, yet latent in it is the life-force. The life-force being very real, latent in it are evidences. i The quotation proves that, in Lao Tzu ' s mind, "Tao" is something really in existence. While the ten thousand things in the world are multiple and are relative, "Tao" is the only "one" , the "Absolute" . It is permanently in existence, it would not disappear, nor would it change because of outside forces . That is why it is "standing alone without change. "32 Chan Ku-ying ) pointed out that some people equate "Tao" with the 33 Greek philosopher Parmenides' "Being". In fact, it seems to be the same, but it is not the same. Parmenides' "Being" means the "Absolute", it is eternal, and at the same time does not change or move. Moreover, Parmenides denied even the conceivability of "non-being", which is completely at odds with Lao Tzu ' s idea of "non-being" in "Tao". Lao Tzu ' s "Tao" is not static. Although in itself it is without change, it is "in effect", in action all the time. When it is "in effect", it causes Yutang Lin, ed.. The Wisdom of Laotse (New York: The Modern Library, 1948) , p.132. 32 Lung-yuan Sung, Explanatory Notes on the Tao Teh Ching, p.40. ' 33 Ku-ying Chen, Present-day Interpretation and Commentary on the Lao Tzu Book, p.4. ' • : f If v ~ ' 21 changes which lead to the creation of all the myriad things . Therefore "Tao" is “the fountain-head of all 34 things", the primordial natural force of the cosmos. As mentioned earlier, "In Being" ) and "Non-being" ( 4j£ ) are two terms derived from "Tao" to explain the formation of the universe . The two terms are comple¬ mentary to each other and are interrelated. "Non-being" implies an unlimited potentiality of life-force , including an unlimited amount of "In Being" . The transformation of "Non-being" into "In Being" or "Something" is the process by which the metaphysical "Tao" becomes the producer of all the myriad things. Thereby, "Non-being" does not mean zero, because "Tao" is a hind of potentiality; before it comes into actuality it is latent. "Tao" is latent, hidden, and is nameless ( f j|. ^ . Therefore, "Tao" cannot be felt by our senses, it cannot be described by any terminology, it is beyond our ordinary cognition. It cannot be helped that "Non-being" is employed as another name for "Tao". In other words, since they are the aspects of "Tao", "Non-being" and "Something There" are both applied to "Tao", showing the working 34 chia-loh Yang, ed . , Commentary on the Lao Tzu's Tao Teh Chinq, p.3. 35 Ibid . , p . 26 . . 22 force of "Tao" turning the formless into a form. This process is the link between the transcendental "Tao" and the concrete world. Thus "Tao" is not an empty concept without basis . Lao Tzu applied many terms of the empirical world to explain "Tao", and then discarded all of them since they are totally inadequate to describe "Tao" . Fung Yu-lan interprets "Tao" as the all-embracing first principle through which all things are brought into being. "Tao's" operations are the operations of all things, and at the same time it is through "Tao" that all things are activated to be all things . He further explains that "Tao", since it is the first principle of all things, cannot itself be a 'thing' in the way that 3 6 'the ten* thousand things' are things. To quote him directly : Objects can be said to be Being (yu ^ ) , but Tao is not an object, and so may only be spoken of as Non-being (wu ) . At the same time, however, Tao is what has brought the universe into being, and hence in one way it may also be said to be Being. For this reason Tao is spoken of as both Being and Non-being. Non-being refers to its essence; Being to its function. 37 36 Yu-lan Fung, A History of Chinese Philosophy, translated by Derk Bodde , (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952) , p.178. 87 Ibid . , p.178. Emphasis added by the writer. ‘ - 23 Thus Fung Yu-lan also affirms the idea that "Non-being" ) and "In Being" ( ^ ) are one in "Tao" as discussed earlier . In order to grasp Lao Tzu's philosophical frame¬ work Feng Kuan ( /f;^~ ) and Yd Shih Lin ( ) , two renowned scholars of the Republic of China, point out that it is necessary to understand the two terms "constant Non-being" and "constant Being" ) 38 because Lao Tzu's "Tao" is the unification of the two. Thus they also support the thesis discussed so far. They explain that the "Being" ( ) in "constant Being" ( v^> /j^ ) means in existence, but not necessarily in actual existence. "Constant Being" means that it ("Tao") would not disappear, it is always there. The "Non-being" ( ) in "constant Non-being" ( vj*j^ ) does not mean not existing, it is conceived as the opposite of the actual "being" ) which has forms, occupying time and space like the material things. "Constant Non-being" means that it ("Tao") is eternally and invariably "Non- being"; it is "existence without form". It ("constant Non-being") produces all the myriad things while it 38 The word Chang ( ^ ) has been translated several ways. Some scholars translated it as "regular"; Fung Yu-lan translated it as "invariable"; James Legge translated it as "constant" . Here I also interpret it as "constant" as I find it fits better in this context. | ! 24 itself does not turn into the myriad things . It is all the time itself; it never disappears. All the things which have a form and concrete body are inconstant . They all undergo the process of production, development, and disappearance. They are neither "constant Non-being" nor "constant Being", for they are in concrete existence; they have a beginning and an end. As for Lao Tzu ' s "Tao", it is a "constant Tao" ( ^ ) ; that is, it ("Tao") is all the time itself. "Constant Non-being" and "constant Being" are synthesized as a thesis and an antithesis. It is because "Tao" is constantly "Non-being" that it (Non- being) can be constantly in existence, in being itself (i.e. "Being") . Lao Tzu ' s "Tao" is the "constant Tao" because it is the unity of "constant Non-being" and "constant Being". In this way, "Tao" becomes Lao Tzu ' s O Q ontological metaphysics, "The Being" . ^ C . The Characteristics of Tao Although "Tao" itself cannot be described, it reveals certain characteristics which can be observed and pointed out when it is in force and manifested in the ten 39 Feng Kuan and Ytl S. Lin, A Collection of Treatises on the History of the Philosophy of the Ch 1 un Ch 1 iu Period (Pehing: The People's Publication Co., 1963), p . 276 . ' . 25 thousand things. "Tao" is the way of, a principle of, reversion; it is meek, natural, tranquil, void, wu wei * non-action) , gentle and weak. In Chapter forty of the Tao Te Ching it is said: Reversion is the action of Tao. Weakness is the means Tao employs. The operation of "Tao" obeys a principle of reversion. Things move and develop in opposite directions and would finally reach or return to their original state . The word return" c& ) . ) in Chinese can also mean " "opposite" Life and death, east and west, are opposites. Without east there will be no west. If one starts from the west to the east, and if one keeps on going, one would finally come back to the west, or his original point. When a life comes into being, it undergoes a process of changes, and would ultimately reach its so-called "end" . The "end" could be another beginning. To Lao Tzu, things appear in polarities, but the polarities should not be taken as two distinct, different entities; they go together, they are one, a unity. When one of two contradictory aspects appears, the opposite aspect would inevitably follow. When there is life, there is death; when there is beauty, there must be ugliness; when there is warmth, there must ^ Lung-yuan Sung, Explanatory Notes on the Tao Teh Ching, pp. 68-69. ‘ 26 be coldness . That is to say every phenomenon encompasses its opposite. To quote Chapter two of the Tao Te Ching: Being and non-being produce each other; Difficult and easy complete each other; Long and short measure each other; High and low overhang each other; Tones and voice harmonize with each other ; Front and behind follow each other. 1 Therefore, one who knows "Tao" would not be perplexed by the relativity of things and phenomena . Polarity is the force which impels things and phenomena to change and develop. Misfortune may encompass elements of blessing; on the other hand blessing may have latent in it mis¬ fortune . The Tao Te Ching says : Disaster', on which good fortune leans'. Good fortune', on which disaster crouches Lao Tzu here reminds people not to see things on a super¬ ficial level, but to penetrate further into the reversible effects that are possibly hidden as well. One should realize that creation and destruction are just different aspects of the same process. If one can see the different aspects of a thing (i.e. the opposing possibilities) , one can be said to understand that thing thoroughly; then one would not be obsessed by anything that happens. Lao Tzu further points out the function of the inseparability 4^ Ihid . , pp.3-4. 42 Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, translated by D.C. Lau (Baltimore: Penguin Books Inc., 1963), p.119. ‘ ' 27 of opposites . It is out of the unity of the polarities that things can be of use. By the existence of things we profit, by the non-existence of things we are served ( ] , rr£ *43 Wien the ear is cleared of obstacles it hears well. When the nose is not congested, it smells well. When knowledge is cleared of obstacles, 44 one attains the character of Tao . Chapter eleven of the Tao Te Ching illustrates well the function of the unity of two polarities, material existence and empty space: We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel; But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends. We turn clay to make a vessel; But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends . We piece doors and windows to make a house; And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends. Therefore, just as we take advan¬ tage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not. People usually see only one aspect of a thing and neglect the other aspects. As a result, they can never come to realize "Tao", which is obscure and which permeates all 43 Yutang Lin, ed . , The Wisdom of Laotse (New York: the Modern Library, 1948) , p.87. 44 Ibid. , p.87. 43 Arthur Waley, The Way and Its. Power, A Study of the Tao Te Ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1958) , p.155. 28 the aspects of things . Lao Tzu further illustrates the effect of universal reversion which is one of the charac¬ teristics of "Tao" : What is in the end to be shrunk Must first be stretched. Whatever is to be weakened Must begin by being made strong , What is to be overthrown Must begin by being set up . b The state of things is constantly changing, reaching a high tide and immediately ebbing. It is like a flower: after coming to full bloom it is on its way to withering. A full moon is bound to wane, and a new moon to wax again. In this way, reversion is like a cycle in constant revolution. "Tao" is the first order of everything. From its "Being" ( ^ ) aspect springs the myriad things: • Tao gives them life, Te nurses them, grows them, fosters them, shelters them, comforts them, nourishes them, and covers (i.e. protects) them. 47 Herein, a question arises. What is Te? What does it have to do with "Tao"? (We cannot just try to understand it intuitively) . Te ) is usually taken as virtue, etymologically it signifies the influence ( ^ for ^ ) of a righteous ( ^ for ) heart (/*b' ) , and can mean 46 Ibid. , p.187. 47 Chia-loh Yang, ed . , Commentary on Lao Tzu 1 s Tao Teh Chinq, p.31. ' ■ ' 29 /0 / Jb. "to get, to obtain (if > " - In certain cases, te ( ) , virtue, can be bad as well as good. In the Taoist context, te refers to the virtue of a thing which is what it "gets ( )" from the "Tao" . That means, the te (j^? ) of a thing is the nature of that thing ( ^ ) , because it is in virtue of its te that a thing is what it is. Thus te is a latent power, a "virtue" inherent in a thing. In the Chuang Tzu , it is said: In the Great Beginning, there was Non-being; in Non-being there was the Nameless .48 Out of it arose One (i.e. first existence) ; but the One there had not yet come into any form. That which things got hold of (i.e. the One) to come to life, that is called "Virtue" ( by virtue of which they are what they are) . Before things had forms they (all) had their (own preordained) lots; temporarily {-ki £l. ) without any crack (to separate them from each other, those lots, taken toge¬ ther) are what is called Fate (there is a . Fate, which breaks down into individual lots) . Out of the flow and flux, things were born. As things realized their native principle (the principle which was in germ in them at their birth) , (they became) what is called forms. The forms and bodies nurtured ( ) (within themselves) a spirit, each having its 48 Burton Watson translates this sentence as "there was nonbeing; there was no being, no name." Mr. James Legge translates it as "there was nothing in all the vacancy of space; there was nothing that could be named." I translate it as "there was Non-being; in Non- being there was the Nameless", because I understand the text as "• Chapter one of the Tao Te Ching confirms my interpretation: The Nameless^ was the beginning of heaven and earth ( & ) . The important word in this sentence is the first 7^ , which shows that, for Chuang Tzu, 7®; is not nothingness, but something slightly more substantial. -|fr , in fact, is the "chaos" , as opposed to the "cosmos" . The character shows a barrier and refers to what is outside, just as, in Latin, we have "foras" , outside, coming from "fores", gate . . 30 own way to manifest itself (the fK and this was called the inborn nature ( ) . If its inborn nature is cultivated, it returns "In the Great Beginning, there was Non-being" . The "Non- being" is one aspect of "Tao" . That of which things get hold ( the "Tao" , the One) in order to come to life is called te ( ) . Thus "Tao" is revealed in te ; te is the actualization and manifestation of "Tao" . This is what Lao Tzu called "Tao" giving things life and be rearing them. It is the te in them which makes them develop into what they are, which lets them follow their life course according to their inborn nature. Chiang Mou ( 52- Jl ) pointed out that "Tao" and te are in fact the same, but with different names. "Tao" is the common ground of all things, and te is the form from which each thing gets for itself its inborn nature. Water is a good example which may be used to clarify the above statement. Sea water is different from pool water and river water. The property they hold in common is that they are all water. In this sense, water is the "Tao". However, water in a river flows and water in a pool is still; it is because of their te that they are what they are, that river water will flow and pool water remains still. 90 49 A Concordance to Chuang Tzu, p.30. 99 Yu-lan Fung, Philosophy of Life (Hong Kong; Shih Hsueh Book Store, 1924) , pp. 22-23. ‘ 31 Therefore, "Tao" and te are playing the roles of substance and attributes of a thing. When the metaphysical "Tao" gives birth to the ten thousand things, it turns into the te of the ten thousand things . Te is the metaphysical "Tao" "descending" onto the empirical world. Therefore, the characteristics of "Tao" such as being natural, meek, tranquil and non-active, all belong to the sphere of te ; they are the "Virtue" of "Tao" . Taoism initiated Chinese metaphysics. As men¬ tioned before, the main stress of Taoist philosophy is on the understanding of life, and the proper way to lead a meaningful life. "Tao" is transcendental, but it provides a good guideline for men to follow. "Tao" is the ontological principle of the cosmos and the ten thousand things, and te is the fundamental, inborn nature of all the myriad things. Sze-ma T ' an (^Ji ) in his Examination of the Six Schools talked of the Taoist School as the school of wu wei ( ) . To be natural and to practise wu wei is for the Taoists the key to a meaningful life. Wu wei and naturalness have to be defined in the Taoist context in order to make things clear. The literal trans¬ lation of wu wei by "doing nothing" or "non-action" is very misleading. It does not mean "doing nothing". It 51 Szu-ma Ch'ien, The History, Vol .X (10 vols . Hong Kong: Chung Hua Book Co., 1969) , p.3292. 32 means "not to act deliberately or needlessly, not to take any avoidable, unnecessary action". The Taoist sage is not like the Indian hermit who sits cross-legged in com¬ plete immobility performing his "transcendental meditation" . He can do the minimum necessary to sustain life, but does not have to be grim; on the contrary, he is quietly and peacefully cheerful, not to say inclined to banter and mockery. In order to understand the term wu wei better, it is necessary to explain the meaning of nature and naturalness Tzu Jan) in the Taoist context. Nature is not to be taken simply as the concrete universe or all the things which exist in the external world: it should, likewise, include the qualities, properties, potentialities and capacities of every being, every particle; also the characteristics of a thing are inborn in them. The nature of a thing is inseparable from a thing, neither could anything be added to it. To be natural is to let things develop freely by themselves without any deliberate outside action to contradict their nature. In planting a seed, it is its nature that it will germinate, grow, go through its life cycle and die. It is the nature of man that he eats when he is hungry, puts on clothes when he feels cold. Those are acts performed naturally according to nature, and to act this way is to practise wu wei . Then everything will be performing its ' ‘ 33 own duty, playing its part in its proper place, and, as a result, everything will be accomplished. Nature or naturalness is not a concrete thing but a descriptive term depicting "spontaneous" and "self-so-ness" . In observing the physical world and its phenomena, and in perceiving the natural force working behind it, Lao Tzu, through an inductive leap, came to the belief that every natural phenomenon is perfect, following a well-built order or procedure . It may appear to be in a loose or dispersed condition, however: "Vast is Heaven's net; sparse-meshed it is, and yet nothing can slip through it. Therefore all things revere "Tao" ) and honour "Virtue" (te yjf ) . Yet if "Tao" is revered and "Virtue" honoured, it is not on account of a positive command to do so, but because it is natural for them to be treated C O so. "Tao" and jte never interfere with the naturalness of anything. Following the example of "Tao", the sage only helps all the creatures to go along with their own 54 natures and does not venture to impose anything on them. When his task is accomplished the people all say, "It ,.52 52 chien-chung Huang, et al . , A Collection of Treatises on History of Chinese Philosophy (Taipei: publisher not available, 1958), p.291. 5 3 Chia-loh Yang, ed . , Commentary on Lao Tzu 1 s Tao Teh Chinq (Taipei: The World Book Co., 1969) , p.31. 54 Ibid . , p . 39 . . ' 34 happened of our own naturalness." Nature or naturalness is spoken of as the working state of the physical world while wu wei is spoken of as the activity of man, especially in the political aspect. "Tao" never acts, yet it does everything Lao Tzu directs this sentence to advise against those rulers who meddle with the common people, i . e . yu we i < > or who indulge in deliberate, pur¬ poseful activity, as opposed to wu wei . Lao Tzu says: The people are difficult to govern: It is because those in authority are too fond of action that the people are difficult to govern . ^ The common people would benefit a great deal more if the ruler followed wu wei . Then both the ruler and the ruled would be at ease. I take no action and the people of themselves are transformed. I love tranquility and the people of themselves become correct. I engage in no activity and the people of themselves become prosperous. I have no desires and the people of themselves become simple.^ Love of tranquility, abstention from unnecessary activity, and absence of desire are the qualities of wu wei . If 55lbid „ , p.10. ^ ^ Ibid . , p . 2 1 . ^Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, translated by D.C. Lau , p .137 . S^wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1963), p.167. ' 35 the government exercises wu we i , self-fulfillment by the people themselves will come about. In view of this, Lao Tzu would like to see people have the greatest freedom to carry out their will, so as to permit the free develop¬ ment of each person's particularity, variety, and indi¬ viduality, as long as it does not disrupt other people's free development . Another aspect of wu wei has to be clarified. To practise wu wei does not mean to be lazy or to lack the will to do anything. Some people, on the other hand, misunderstand it as an attitude of not doing anything outwardly, but secretly doing everything possible to achieve one's own aims. Ch ' ien Mu ( ^ f'-fr ) thus suspects Lao Tzu of having been a secret plotter with 59 private ends to serve. It is a complete misinterpretation Wu wei is a way and attitude of doing things . To practise wu wei is to adopt the "wu wei" way of "doing" . Lao Tzu does not oppose human effort itself but opposes the employment of more effort than is needed; he still wants people to act, to express their abilities, realize their potentialities and realize their energy; but he does not want them to strive, to cling to their achievements or to crave for the enjoyment of the fruits thereof. Chapter two of the Tao Te Ching says, "To act, but without intent." 59 Ku -ying Chen, Present-day Interpretation and Commentary on the Lao Tzu Book, p.45. ■ • 36 That means acting without a self aim or intent for glory. The last chapter also says, "To act, but not to compete." ^ Thus humility, weakness, tranquility, relaxation and non-striving are the characteristics of wu wei and "Tao" . It is because "Tao" is lonely, never full, that the use of it is inexhaustible. Tao seems to be empty, yet it cannot be exhausted by use. Fathomless, it seems ^ to be the origin of the ten thousand things. The word "empty" here does not mean nothing in the physical sense; it is equivalent to Non-being, and there concealed in it is the factor of creativity. Since it is empty ( ) , it seems to be quiet, desireless. Lao Tzu said, "To be dispassionate is to be still. The whole empire would be 62 (then) at peaceful rest of its own accord .... Limpidity and tranquility is the Norm of the world."00 Although "Tao" seems to be weak, it is all the time persistent. Weakness is the way in which Tao operates (Ch. 40). "Tao" is continuous, and seems to be always existing. Use it and you will never wear it out (Ch. 6) . It is because of this "weakness" manifested by "Tao" that the myriad Ibid., pp.30-31 Chia-loh Yang, ed . , Commentary on Lao Tzu's Tao Teh Chinq (Taipei: The World Book Co . , 1969) , p . 3 . 62 Ibid. , p . 2 1 . 63 Ibid. , p. 28 . 37 things feel themselves not as created by a will, but as coming into being of themselves, spontaneously. Lao Tzu also applies this idea of weakness to life, saying that the tender and weak will triumph over the hard and strong. He made another observation of the physical and empirical world and pointed out that when alive, man is supple and weak, but stiff and hard when dead. Grass and trees are tender and supple when alive, but withered and dried when dead. Thus the hard and stiff are the companions of death; the supple and weak are the companions of life. 4 To Lao Tzu, the hard and strong are at their climax and are inevitably on the decline, while the soft and weak are full of life. Water is his best example of the tender and weak overcoming the hard and strong. There is nothing softer and weaker than water , yet there is nothing better for attacking the hard and strong. For this reason there is no substitute for it. 65 What Lao Tzu wants to stress is not just the softness and weakness of water , but also the power of its persistence and perseverance. Softness and weakness have the conno¬ tations of flexibility, adaptability, and aptitude to take the shape of anything else, which are qualities useful for survival. Lao Tzu advocates these qualities because they are going side by side with "Tao" . 64 Ibid. , p .45 . 65 ibid . , p.46. ■ / * ' CHAPTER III CHUANG TZU'S "TAO" A. Expansion of Lao Tzu* s Concepts Chuang Tzu's "Tao" also has cosmological and ontological connotations . There has been an unsettled controversy as to whether the Tao Te Ching was written after or before Chuang Tzu's time. Both opposing parties have good bases for their respective stands . It is beyond the scope of this thesis to discuss this issue, but I take the position that Lao Tzu, the person, existed before Chuang Tzu and that his ideas did influence Chuang Tzu's views, maybe from the bits and pieces of the not yet compiled Tao Te Ching which may have come to the knowledge of the latter thinker. Chuang Tzu appears to us as the most mature among all the thinkers of his time. The Chuang Tzu, although many are skeptical of its authorship, especially of that of the so-called "Outer Chapters" ( ) / is both more explicit and more detailed than the Tao Te Ching . Chuang Tzu expands some ideas which Lao Tzu had left undeveloped and unexplained. He raises Taoism to another level and unintentionally sets up the foundation for the Taoist School of philosophy. (The names of the various schools of 38 39 thought were given currency by Szu-ma Ch'ien ) , the "grand historian" of the Han Dynasty, in the 2nd century B.C.) In the same way as Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu also takes "Tao" as his first ontological and cosmological principle; at the same time, he looks upon "wu wei" and "Nature" in the same way as his predecessor. Many of his sayings are similar to those of the Tao Te Ching . To Lao Tzu, "Tao" is unnameable, born before heaven and earth, and is the origin of the myriad things . We read in the Chuang Tzu: Tao cannot be heard; that which is heard is not Tao. Neither can it be seen; that which is seen is not Tao. Nor can it be told; that which is told is not Tao. Do you know that that which gives form to the formed is itself formless? Tao should not be named. ^ Again ; There is (in the hearts of men) a feeling of, and a belief in (the existence of) , Tao, (although) it has no (apparent) action and no form. It may be transmitted but can¬ not be seen. It is its own source, its own root. It existed before heaven and earth, firm since ancient times . It gives their spiritual powers to demons and to gods. It ranks before (in point of height) the highest summit, yet it is not lofty. It underlies the six directions, yet it is 66 Ling-feng Yen, A New Edition of the Four Eminents of the Taoist School (Taipei: The Commercial Press, 1968) , p.605. In the Wisdom of Lao Tze Lin Yutang trans¬ lates the last but one sentence of this quotation ? as "Do you realize that which is invisible in all the visible things?" I think it would come closer to the intended meaning if translated as "Do you know that that which gives form to the formed is itself formless?" . I ' 40 not deep. It is prior to heaven and earth, but it is not ancient. It antedates the utmost antiquity, but it is not old.^7 To Chuang Tzu, "Tao" is everywhere, not just limited to man or physical things; it is within everything. Tung-kuo Tzu once asked Chuang Tzu where the so-called Tao is? Chuang Tzu replied that it is in the ant, in weeds, in earthenware and tiles, and even in excrement. He further remarked that the question does not touch the essentials. One should not specify any particular place, for nothing can be outside of Tao. "Complete", "Entire", and "All", are three different words with the same meaning. They all designate one reality. Chuang Tzu wants to point out that "Tao" is the all- embracing One, the ultimate reality of everything. One, or Completeness, is the word to describe "Tao". The last chapter of the Chuang Tzu says : They (the Taoists) built their system on Constancy (#) , Non-being (-i£) , Being (^ ) , and headed their doctrine with the concept of the Great One (^ — ) . ^ 67 National Studies Arrangement Board, The Accumulated Works of the Ancient Thinkers and Philosophers , Vol.3 (8 vols.) , (Shanghai; The World Book Co., Ltd., 1935) , pp .111-112 . 68 Hsien-chien Wang, Explanatory Notes on the Chuang Tzu Book (Taipei: San Min Book Co., Ltd., 1963) , p.127 . 69 A Concordance to Chuang Tzu, pp. 92-93 . 41 Again : In the Great Beginning, there was Non-being; in Non-being there was the Nameless . Out of it arose One; but the One there had not yet come into any form. 70 The Great One is "Tao"; it is out of "Tao" that the "One" arose. "Tao" is, therefore, the "Great One" ( 7k.. — ' ) , it ranks higher than One . Every matter or thing is derived from "Tao" ; "Tao" is "Complete" . What is destruction to some is production to others, and what is production to others is destruction to some . Whether things are produced or destroyed, "Tao" identifies them as one. 71 Thus no matter whether production or destruction, they are all in "Tao", which is all- inclusive, complete. If somebody sees only one side of a thing, then the view he gets of it is partial and cannot be called complete; therefore, for Chuang Tzu, all sides, or the whole thing, must be seen. Chuang Tzu ' s idea of "Completeness", of equalizing all thing (^^7) or turning all into one, has greatly expanded Lao Tzu ' s "Tao". Since "Tao" is "Complete", devoid of any relativity or polarity, logically it cannot be "Being ('£}*)" , nor can it be "Non-being (-±2t ) " , because if there is "Being" , its opposite, "Non-being", must exist. In this case, 70 Ibid . , p . 30 . 71 Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy , p.184. 5 I- * ' l'“A ' ' • : f4 C ZjTXi ;l r$ 42 "Tao" can only be a "Non-non-being . 7 2 When "Being" and "Non-being" go together, they are "Complete". Thus Chuang Tzu confirms the vagueness and ineffability of Lao Tzu ' s "Tao". Chuang Tzu also wants people to see things as a whole, to realize that the opposite aspect of a thing is just as important. He told a story of his being a butterfly in his dream and wondered if he was really a butterfly dreaming that he was Chuang Tzu, or if it was Chuang Tzu himself dreaming that he was a butterfly. There are different ways to under¬ stand this anecdote. What he wants to demonstrate could be that people should not regard real life as a dream nor should they regard dreams as reality. Dreams are part of life; both dream and life belong to the same process. Both "Being" and "Non-being" must come together in order to produce any effect. When one thing occurs, its opposite would automatically come into being. But people usually just pay attention to one or the other. Music and oriental painting illustrate this well. The musical notes and the drawing can be the "Being"; the pause or interval between the notes and the blank space in the painting can be the "Non-being" . It is only when there is pause and empty space that music and painting can come about . 72 Yu-lan Fung, A New Edition of the History of Chinese Philosophy (Peking: The People's Publication Co., 1964) , p .373 . 43 By means of logic, Chaung Tzu proves that "Tao" is non-material . In Chapter twenty-two of the Chuang Tzu, it is said: There is that which was born before Heaven and Earth, but is it a thing? That which makes things things is not a thing. When things (first) came forth, they had no predecessors, (because, if) there still were things, there would still be (other) things, and so on without end. 7 3 This means that what makes the myriads of things what they are must itself not be a thing { ^7) ) , for if it itself is also a thing, then before it there should be another thing to make it into a thing, and this can go on this way for ever. Therefore, this "Thing" which makes things things and is itself not a thing has to be a "Non-being". Since it is a "Non-being", it has no name, and "Tao" is a name ascribed to it for the sake of convenience . "Tao" is not anything, it is transcendental, but it is everywhere; it is also in the world, in which sense, it is clearly not transcendental. It is the whole of the spontaneity or naturalness of the world. Everything in the world spontaneously produces itself; the totality of the spontaneity of all things is "Tao" . Things are spontaneously what they are and do what they 73 Hsien-ch'ien Wang, Explanatory Notes on the Chuang Tzu Book, p.130. . . 44 do; in this way "Tao" is not doing anything. But from another standpoint, since "Tao" is the total spontaneity of all things, what things spontaneously are and do is also the work of "Tao" . Thus "Tao" cam do everything by 74 doing nothing. By giving such an exposition of "Tao" Chuang Tzu's idea of wu wei is also revealed. B T 1 ien (Heaven) as Nature Chuang Tzu and his followers did not believe in a Controller or God other than "Taor' . "Tao's" working force is that of spontaneity. To Lao Tzu, man follows the way of the earth, the earth follows the way of heaven, heaven follows the way of "Tao", and "Tao" follows its own self-so-ness . Chuang Tzu holds the same view. Chapter twelve of the Chuang Tzu says: Skill is implicit in a job; a job results from duty; duty is attached to virtue; virtue derives from Tao and Tao is inherent in Nature Here, Heaven means nature, spontaneity. To say that "Tao" is inherent in Nature is the same as saying that "Tao" follows its own self-so-ness ). Although Chuang Tzu's teaching is also centered on "Tao" , the mention of the ontological "Tao" is not so frequent in his book as in the Lao Tzu. 75 74 Yu-lan Fung, Chuang-Tzu , A New Selected Translation with an exposition of the Philosophy of Kuo Hsiang , (New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp., 1964, pp. 6-7. 75 James Legge , tr . , The Texts of Taoism, Part I (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1962), p. 308. ‘ ' 45 In many places, T 1 ien or Heaven is a substitute for "Tao" or nature. "Way of Heaven" or "Nature" versus "way of man" occupies the major part of his work. As mentioned in an earlier chapter, Heaven has several meanings. In the Chuanq Tzu, Heaven mainly refers either to the material T 1 ien or the naturalistic T 1 ien , depending on the context. In his teaching, Chuang Tzu tends to stress the proper attitude and activity of man according to nature. In many occasions. Heaven and man are mentioned together. There is a conversation between Kung-wen Hsien and the Commander of the Right: "....How did he come to have only one foot?^6 Was it Heaven? Or was it man?" The Commander said, "It was Heaven, not man. When Heaven produced me, it made me one-footed .... this was the work of Heaven, not of man."^ In the beginning of Chapter six, it is said that he who knows the work of Heaven and the work of man has reached perfection . ^8 In Chapter five, Chuang Tzu said, "The Tao gives personal 76 Mr. B. Watson translates this sentence as "How did he come to be footless?" while it should be "How did he come to have only one foot." The text is Jr -*• ^ ^ l _ * ^ t S' h ( It } * means one foot, 77 Hsien-ch'ien Wang, Explanatory Notes on the Chuang Tzu Book, p.19. 78 Ibid . , p . 35 . . 46 appearance (and powers) ; Heaven gives bodily form . ..."79 Chuang Tzu did not expatiate as much on metaphysics as did Lao Tzu. Chuang Tzu ' s main concern was with Heaven and man. He talked about nature as "Tao" and nature as Heaven . It is because Chuang Tzu gave so much importance to nature that Hsun Tzu commented that his teaching did not see man for Heaven .so To c;huang Tzu, in order to comply with nature, the best way is to follow wu wei (as also advocated by Lao Tzu) and to understand Heaven, which covers everything. "To act by not acting is called Heaven (Nature) . if man wants to meddle around and go against nature, then pain and suffering will ensue. Chuang Tzu gave a good example, when he pointed out that ducks ' legs are short and cranes ' legs are long, and that neither can the former be lengthened nor the latter be shortened. If man shortens what is by nature long or lengthens what is by nature short, he will only cause harm. Kuo Hsiang a famous commentator on the Chuang Tzu, explained nature and 79 James Legge , tr . , The Texts of Taoism, Part I, p . 235 . 80 Lecture notes on Classical Chinese. 81 Yutang Lin, ed . , The Wisdom of Laotse, p.75. ' 47 and wu wei very well in his commentary on Chapter four: "The feet can walk; let them walk. The hands can hold; let them hold. Hear what is heard by your ears; see what is seen by your eyes. Let your knowledge stop at what you do not know; let your ability stop at what you can¬ not do. Use what is naturally useful; do what you spontaneously can do. Act according to your will within the limits of your nature, but have nothing to do with what is beyond it. This is the most easy matter of non-action. When you believe in the principle of non-action, your life cannot but be perfect ...."82 To show the importance of knowing nature, Chuang Tzu talked of a butcher who knew the structure of a cow so well and cut, accordingly, so accurately that he did not make his knife blunt through years of butchering. The same applies to man; if man knows nature and lives according to nature, he will have a perfect life. The problem is that man does not even know his nature well . Wu wei is also the ideal political theory for the Taoists . "Those above (the rulers, the sages) must practise wu wei and thus put the world at their service . Those below (the common people who do not practise wu wei) will act deliberately and thus be made to serve the world ) ♦"83 It does not mean that the ruler above does not do anything; he is just Yu-lan Fung, Chuang-Tzu, A New Selected Trans¬ lation with an Exposition of the Philosophy of Kuo Hsiang, pp . 9-11 . ^8 Hsien-ch'ien Wang, Explanatory Notes on the Chuang Tzu Book, p.75. ■ 48 channelling the talent of the people into its proper use. Then everything will be accomplished without excessive effort. If the ruler tries to do everything himself, or to meddle in people's work, then he is hindering a smooth process dft and this is against wu wei . Again, Kuo Hsiang has an excellent commentary on this issue: The carpenter is in nonaction when carving wood, but he is in action when using the axe. The prince is in nonaction in the management of affairs, but he is in action in the control of ministers . The ministers can manage affairs, while the prince can control ministers. The axe can carve wood, while the carpenter can use the axe .... Everything has its office . The high and the low both have their proper places . This is the perfection of the principle of non -action . ° 1 The carpenter is letting the axe carry out its proper function. If he uses the axe to do things which are not meant for the axe, like rowing a boat, then he would be violating wu wei and would be exerting excessive effort. The same case applies to the prince and the ministers . Mr. W.E. Soothill quoted from the Chuanq Tzu a saying that "inaction (i.e. effortlessness) but honourable, that is the Tao of Heaven. Action (i.e. effort, striving) with (consequent) embarrassment, that is human Tao. (Of 84 Yu-lan Fung, Chuanq Tzu, A New Selected Translation with an Exposition of the Philosophy of Kuo Hsiang , p.152. ■ 8 I ■ 49 these) the celestial Tao means lordship, human Tao bondage. How far apart are the celestial Tao and human Tao from each «85 other. He further remarked that Tao seems to be the creator, preserver and destroyer, for in the Chuang Tzu it is said: "My master! My master! thou dost break in pieces all things, and dost not account it cruelty; thou sprinklest favours on all generations without accounting it as beneficence ; . ... "86 This means that "Tao" is indifferent, treating everything in the same way. In the course of wu wei, things just happen; construction, destruction, good, or bad, all have their own course to run. Through these, Chuang Tzu developed the idea of equalizing all things and the attitude that joy and sorrow, life and death can be disregarded . Chuang Tzu ' s concept of the "Tao", te and wu wei is the same as that of Lao Tzu. His philosophy differs from Lao Tzu ' s in the way that he expanded Lao Tzu's ideas to a much broader sphere . More concern for nature and man is revealed in his stress on the unification of man and nature, which was his main intent. 86 w.E. Soothill, The Three Religions of China (London: Oxford University Press, 1930), pp. 65-66. 86 Ibid. , p . 66 . CHAPTER IV MATERIALISTIC AND IDEALISTIC INTERPRETATIONS A. Interpretations by other Scholars and Commentators Since Lao Tzu adopted the word "Tao" to designate the cosmological and ontological principle, many thinkers and scholars also used the word "Tao" as a name for their own concepts of the original principle of the universe and the ten thousand things . Some of these thinkers followed Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu very closely and their concepts of "Tao" were quite the same as that of those two thinkers. However, some of them developed their own ideas or blended the ideas of other schools of philosophy to form their concepts of "Tao", especially the thinkers of the post-Ch'in period. Their ideas may differ, but credit must be given to Lao Tzu who was among the first ones to use "Tao" to explain the origin of the myriad things and thus gave them inspiration to form those new ideas . Some of those thinkers took the stand that the origin of the cosmos was abstract, mysterious and beyond knowledge, while some others took the stand that there must be some substance which originated the ten thousand things. Thus, many scholars, especially those from the People's Republic of China, raised the question 50 ■ . 51 of whether Lao's and Chuang ' s concept of "Tao" was taken from an idealistic viewpoint or from a materialistic viewpoint . In the Han and the post-Han period, the teaching of the Yin Yang School was very popular. Yin Yang and the five elements which were believed to be the basic components of the material world, namely, metal, wood, water, fire, and earth, penetrated not only into the preoccupations of the populace but also into the thoughts of scholars . Tung ChungT-shu (-^ 4-f ) / a Confucian scholar as well as the Prime Minister of Emperor Han Wu Ti ( ) / believed that the "Prime One" ( ""7L) ) y; was the Great Beginning, and it was "Air" ( ^ ) , formless and invisible, which gave rise to the formation of the myriad things. The "Prime One" was the unity of the "Air" ( ) from Heaven and Earth, which was divided equally into Yin and Yang . He further expounded that the Yin "Air" and the Yang "Air" could change into one another . He took the example of a pot of water . When the water was not heated, it was purely Yin , and when o n it was heated to a boil, it became purely Yang . Han Ying ( ) / another scholar, also held the same belief as Tung Chung Shu, thinking that it was "Air" out of 8 7 Shun-ch'in Yao, History Philosophy (Shanghai: The Commercial 121 . of the Ch'in and Han Press, 1936) , pp.120- - ‘ 52 88 which evolved Heaven and Earth. This notion of "Air" sharply implied that they (Tung and Han) looked upon Lao Tzu ' s "Tao" from a materialistic viewpoint. When it came to Yang Hsiung ) / be based his onto- logical principle on "the Mysterious" ( )t which is very similar to Lao Tzu ' s "the Mystery of mysteries is 89 the Door of all secret essences." Yang Hsiung said: "When you raise your head and look up, it is above; when you lower your head and look down, it is below; when you stand straight and look forward, it is in front; when you give it up and ignore it, it is behind you ..."^ It does not mean that his "Mysterious" can be seen, nor is it a concrete thing . Yang is just trying to show that "the Mysterious" is everywhere, just as, in Lao Tzu ' s description, "Tao'). which, when confronted, cannot be seen, and, when followed, still cannot be seen.^ Therefore, in this respect, his concept of "the Mysterious" is the same as Lao Tzu ' s "Tao". However, he believed ^ Ibid . , p.164. ^9 Lung-yuan Sung, Explanatory Notes on the Tao Teh Ching, p.2. 90 Pu-hsien Han, The Essential History of Medieval and Ancient Chinese Philosophy (Taipei: Cheng Chung Book Co., 1960) , p.46. 91 Lung-yuan Sung, Explanatory Notes on the Tao Teh Ching, p.21. 53 that the evolution of the cosmos was from the interchange 92 of the Yin and the Yang elements. His view of 'the Mysterious' seems to be idealistic and his Yin Yang theory for the outcome of the ten thousand things seems to be materialistic, because the interchange of the Yin and the Yang elements means the interchange of the Yin air and the Yang air which has been conceived of as a very fine material substance. In the post -Han period, it was Ho Yen ( j ) and Wang Pi (jLjisij) who initiated the "Refined conversa¬ tions on esoteric researches' ( ^ ^ ) • In their explanation and interpretation of Lao Tzu's 'Tao' they had inserted in it their own way of thinking. They believed that Being arose out of Non-being, and 'Tao' belonged to Non-being. 'Tao' to them was self-so-ness , spontaneity. Ho Yen made a quote from Hsia Hou-hsuan Y/T ) - ( JL & )/ a contemporary scholar: “Heaven and earth move according to spontaneity and the sage acts according 93 to spontaneity ( W iz\ f ^ XL y/ ) . " Wang said, "Heaven and earth employ spontaneity, wu wei , and non-purposef ul creation. The ten thousand things take care of and govern themselves.... The earth does not produce fowls for the beasts but the beasts eat fowls, nor 92 Pu-hsien Han, The Essential History of Medieval and Ancient Chinese Philosophy, p. 47. 93 Chao-tsu Yung, The Naturalism of the Wei T'sin Period , (Taipei: The Commercial Press, 1966), pp. 11-12. - 54 does the earth produce dogs for men but men eat dogs . Practise wu wei in respect to the ten thousand things and they will all occupy their proper places. "94 Ho in his commentary to the Lao Tzu said, "The ten thousand things are produced from Tao but they do not know why 95 or how they are being produced." (This is because there is no purpose behind their creation.) This means that, to them, "Tao" was spontaneity; there was "nothing" behind the creation of all things; therefore. Non-being is used to describe this "Tao" . But still there must be an explanation for the outcome of Being. Wang Pi 96 maintained that Being must have come from Non-being, for if Being came from another Being, this might go on indefinitely. So, logically. Being has to be from Non- being. In this respect, they fell in line with the idealistic view of "Tao" . \ Wang Ch 1 ung ( ) , a scholar of the Later Han period, based his ontological and cosmological prin¬ ciple on Lao Tzu's "Way of Heaven ) . He said, 94 Pu-hsien Han, The Essential History of Medieval and Ancient Chinese Philosophy, pp . 75-76. 99 ibid . , p .76 . 96 Ibid., p .77 . I 55 "The Way of Heaven is natural, wu wei; if it reprimands and warns people, then it is having deliberate activity and is not natural ...."97 He stressed heavily "natural¬ ness" and "spontaneity" and a special essay ( ^ ^ ) / which is a good exposition of his philosophy, has been written by him about it. "Heaven does not deliberately produce the five cereals, silk and hemp, in order to feed men, .... Things come out by them¬ selves and men make them into clothing and food ' .... "98 Still, the Way of Heaven did not explain too well how things first came about. Then he supplemented that with "Air" ) , out of which evolved the myriad things. He said, "Heaven and Earth mix their effluvia; the ten thousand things come about by themselves." ) 9.9 This effluvium was, to Wang Ch'ung, the primal origin of all things. He did not explain what was before "Air". In his research on Wang's philosophy, A. A. Petrov, a Soviet scholar on Chinese studies, found that Wang Ch'ung' s "Air" was the pre-existent material on which the ten thousand things were based. He believed that 97 Hui Huang, ed . , The Balance of Opinions (Ch'ang Sha: The Commercial Press, 1938), p.635. 98 Ibid . , p.775. " Ibid. , p.775. ‘ 56 since Wang regarded "Air" as the common substance in all the five elements (metal, wood, water, fire, and earth), "Air" must have a material content and must be a certain thing with material form. Wang's main concern was not on "Air" being the mother of all things, but on spontaneity. Heaven and earth mixed their effluvia and things came out by themselves. Such was the opinion of Wang Ch 1 ung . Mixing is here the activity of wu wei , mixing without a purpose, mixing naturally, at random. It is likened to the movement of the universe, which has no purpose, but is naturally and mechanically per¬ forming wu wei . Again he said that Heaven moves, not with a will to produce things; but, out of this movement, things came out by themselves; this was spontaneity . ^ ^ In this way, wu wei and spontaneity were considered as the cause and the effect of creation. His notion of "Air" is materialistic; but the coming into existence of "Air", being "spontaneous", coming out by itself, mixing at random, is still a mystery, for he did not give details on this apsect of the question. Huai Nan Tzu ( V^7 , a Taoist prince of -*-00 Compiled by the Editorial Committee of Literary, Historical and Philosophical. Magazines, An Assemblage of Treatises on Ancient Chinese Philosophy (Peking: The China Book Co., 1957), p.168. Hui Huang, ed . , Discourses on Judgement and Evaluation , p.776. ■ jj . 57 the end of the Former Han Dynasty, developed his philosophy through a combination of Lao Tzu's and Chuang Tzu's ideas, the I Ching , the Yin Yang theory, and the mystical thought of the Han times. He gave a substantial des¬ cription of the "Tao" , incorporating the ideas of natural¬ ness, wu wei , and the properties of "Tao". The first chapter of his book states: Now, Tao overlays the heavens and supports the earth. It surrounds the four quarters of space and goes beyond the eight poles (the eight points of the compass in the periphery of the world) . Its height is such that it cannot be reached, its depth such that it cannot be plumbed. It envelops heaven and earth; it distributes and hands over what has not (yet) received a form, (i.e. the primal substance). Flowing like a fountain and bubbling like a spring, it empties and gradually replenishes; gurgling chaotically, it becomes turbid and gradually clarifies. Therefore, vertically, it occupies (the whole space between) heaven and earth; hor izontally , it fills up (the whole space between) the Four Seas. It spends itself without exhaustion and (unlike the sun) without (difference between) morning and evening. If spreading, it will cover the six main directions os space; if rolled up, it would not fill the hollow of the hand. Contracted, it can expand; concealed, it can come to light; weak, it can be (come) strong; soft, it can be (come) hard. Lying athwart the four cardinal points, it holds within itself the yin and the yang; it binds the universe together and emblazons it with the "three luminaries" . It is imbued with highest eminence and instinct with superior powers; it is most tenuous and subtle. Mountains owe it their height; abysses, their depth; quadrupeds, their power to walk; birds, - 58 to fly. Sun and moon owe it their bright¬ ness; stars and planets, their power to follow their courses. 102 As for the origin of the cosmos, he attributed it to the forces of Yin and Yang , which in turn came out of Tao . He said in the same chapter: In the beginning, the two August Ones, Fu- hsi and Shen-nung (meaning herb the two forces of Yin and Yang ) , having got a hold on the Tao, stood in the centre (of power). Their minds roamed in harmony with Change and thus did they pacify the four quarters of space. The theme of Huan Nan Tzu is that "Tao" is seen as the all-pervading power, and "Tao" is also naturalness. With Taoist teachings as the main core, teachings of other schools are also included in the body of his thought. The scholars and thinkers cited in the above section have been classified by the modern scholars in China as idealistic thinkers (e.g. Ho Yen and Wang Pi), materialistic thinkers (e.g. Wang Ch'ung), and a com¬ bination of both (e.g. Yang Hsiung) . Thus a literary debate has been waged to determine whether the philosophy of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu is idealistic or materialistic. With the conceptions expounded by the previous commentators, thinkers, and scholars as background and model, modern 102 Liu, Hui Nan Tzu (Taipei: Chung Hua Book Co . , 1965 ) , p . 1 . 103 Ibid . , p. 1 . ■ 59 Chinese scholars back up their arguments by analyzing the materialistic and idealistic elements in Lao Tzu's and Chuang Tzu's philosophy. B. The Materialistic "Tao" The ancient materialistic thinkers were searching for an answer to the question of the origin of the material world: How did things come into existence? They tried to reach back to an absolute primary substance to account for the origin of the Myriad things, and the substance was believed to be "air" or "essence of air". "Air" is a special term in Chinese metaphysics indicating a very fine material substance which is versatile, changeable, /js in constant motion. Kuan Tzu ( -g ) devoted a number of chapters to the discussion of this "air" problem. He believed that the cosmos arose out of "air", which 104 was void, quiet, and formless, and he called it "Tao". It was a great break-through in religion and philosophy, because such a view substituted for a creation by a god or any supernatural power a process of intelligible evolution. Such a stand is very materialistic. Many later thinkers also hold the same view. The Kuan Tzu says that "Tao" , lies between heaven and earth; its immensity 104 Kung-wei Huang, History of Chinese Philosophy (Taipei: Kashmir Book Co., 1966), p.92. 60 has no outer limit, and its smallness has no inner part 105 at all. Since "Tao" was taken as "air" which was made of minute particles devoid of extent, it could be said that, "in its smallness, it had no inner part" ). However, as it was everywhere, it could also be said that, "in its immensity, it had no outer limit " <;£<>& 4 >• "Tao" was believed to be every¬ where and was the originator of everything. Similar writing can be found in the Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu . For example , in Chapter sixty-seven of the Tao Te Ching it is said: The whole world says that "my way" is great (the meaning of Jz. is given by chap, xxv) , but seems worthless, like nothing. But it is just because "ray way" is great that it is like nothing . 6 In the last chapter of the Chuang Tzu it is said: The largest thing has no outer limit; it is called the Great One. The small-est thing has nothing within it; it is called the Small One. That which has not thickness cannot be piled up; yet it is limitless m dimension. ^ Since Kuan Tzu's view of the "Tao" has a materialistic content, some scholars tend to think that the "Tao" in ■^-05 Yu-lan Fung, A Collection of Discourses on History of Chinese Philosophy (Shanghai: Shanghai People's Publication Co., 1958), p.136. 6 Chia-loh Yang, ed . , Commentary on Lao Tzu's Tao Teh Ching , p.67. 107 National Studies Arrangement Board, The Accumulated Works of the Ancient Thinkers and Philosophers, Vol.3 (8 vols.) , p.476. ■ 61 the Lao Tzu and the Chuang Tzu is also materialistic. Those who believe in Lao Tzu1 s philosophy being materia¬ listic point out that, first, Lao Tzu's "Tao" is the spontaneous nature of the ever-existing material world and is a material existence, that is to say it is within the material realm. Second, "Tao" is made of infinitely minute material particles, probably like atoms or electrons, or the constituents of "air",- or "Tao" may be the primary chaotic form of matter. Third, "Tao" is the objective principle ( of the material world. Some regard "Tao" as only a concept and thus think that Lao Tzu's philosophy is idealistic. But there are some who take "Tao" not as a concept, but as a true substance and thus think that Lao's philosophy is materialistic. For Fung Yu-lan, there are different possible inter preations of the Tao Te Ching. The "Tao" in the Tao Te Ching in many instances can be interpreted in two ways. However, there is one place where "Tao" can only be interpreted as a true substance. This is in Chapter twenty-five: "There is something formed in a confusion, born before heaven and earth." The phrase "formed in a confusion" ( ) is what Fung Yu-lan wants to pinpoint, for 108 peng Kuan and Ytl S. Lin, A Collection of Treatises on the History of the Philosophy of the Ch ' un Chiu Period , p.274. ■ " 62 that phrase should be used to describe material things, and conceptual things cannot be described as "formed in a confusion". According to Fung, that material thing, in Chinese philosophical terms, is called "air". Mr. Fung further states that Lao Tzu ' s "Tao" is not the ordinary air which flows around, but is the "essence of d/jfc k. 109 air" ( jo ZfX ) which is a very, very fine substance. Since there are various interpretations for the Tao Te Ching , the "Nameless" or "Non-being" as an alternative name of "Tao" can be taken as material like the "essence of air". "Tao" is "air" or "essence of air" which is invisible and intangible; therefore Lao Tzu tells us that we can "look at it, but it cannot be seen; listen to it, but it cannot be heard . . . . " It is called the "Nameless" because there is no suitable term to designate such a thing, especially in Lao Tzu ' s time. Therefore, in this respect, Mr. Fung does not regard Lao Tzu1 s "Non-being" or the "Nameless" as something mysterious , ... , . . . HI and idealistic. As for Chuang Tzu, he is regarded by most as 109 yu- lan Fung, A Collection of Discourses on History of Chinese Philosophy, pp. 58-59. HO Lung-yuan Sung, Explanatory Notes on the Tao Teh Ching , p.20. Ill yu- lan Fung, A Collection of Discourses on History of Chinese Philosophy (Shanghai: Shanghai People's Publication Co., 1958), p.59. 63 an idealistic thinker 112 However , there are still traces of what may be described as materialism, especially in his cosmology. In the Chuang Tze , there are passages speaking about "air" or "essence of air" as the primary element in the formation of the myriad things. In the chapter of "Knowledge Wandering North" , it is said: The life of man is the result of the accu¬ mulation of the vital breath. Its accumu¬ lation is life; its dispersion is death. If life and death are companions, what do we have to worry about'. Now, the ten thousand things are one. What we admire is the lively; what we loathe is the decaying. But the decaying in turn will become the lively and the lively will turn again into the decay. Therefore, it is said: "Pervading the world there is but one "breath" . "113 * u . ( - This shows only that, in this passage at least, Chuang Tzu seems to have looked upon "breath" or " air " <<?P as the primal substance of the "ten thousand things" , and that "breath" , in all this context , should probably not be understood by "breath" , but rather by something like "subtle primal substance." Again, in replying to Hui Szu about the death of his wife, Chuang Tzu said: 112 Chuang Tzu is also regarded by some as a mystic. He liked to use fancy terms in his speech and intelligent imaginative tales to illustrate his points. His teachings are mainly conceptual dealing with ideas, the mind, and attitude towards things. Therefore some view him as an idealist. ■*■■*-3 Hsien-ch'ien Wang, Explanatory Notes on the Chuang Tzu Book, p.124. 64 If we 'examine how things began, there was no life; not only no life, but also originally no (bodily) form; not only no form, but originally no (vital) breath. There, amid the intermingling of the dark chaos, a change took place and (the vital) breath came into being. (The vital) breath changed and there was a (bodily) form. There was a change in the (bodily) form and then there was lif Nov{^ another change occurred and death came. 14 Again, the quotation confirms how important the "vital air" is in giving birth to concrete things as well as life. It is "air" which causes all the transformations. This change taking place in the "air" was seen by Chuang Tzu and his followers as a process for the ten thousand things, and there are Fung Yu-lan who regard such a stand as the evolution of scholars including materialistic . C. The idealistic "Tao" As opposed to the materialistic interpretation, there are those who firmly believe that the "Tao" in Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu is solely idealistic. Research has been done to back up their standpoint. Judging from his writings, Mr. Fung Yu-lan thinks that there are both materialistic and idealistic elements in the Lao Tzu and 114 Ibid. , p.100 . 115 yu-lan Fung, A New Edition of the History of Chinese Philosophy, p.381. . 65 Chuang Tzu , materialistic, because the "Tao" has over¬ thrown the belief in a creator god, a belief of a super¬ stitious, or religious, nature; and idealistic, because the "Tao" has such an elusive meaning, so difficult to pin down, that the ultimate search for it can hardly fail to veer towards abstraction, and to lead to "idealism" Kuan Feng and Lin Ytt-shih ( ) are among the most prominent modern Chinese scholars who have tried to prove that "Tao" is idealistic, a completely spiritual concept, not corresponding to any material reality such as air, atom, or chaos. "Tao" is void, "Non-being", a metaphysical concept transcending time and space. They are very doubtful if there is any material thing that is formless, not occupying any space and is "in effect" all the time. As far as they can see, Lao Tzu ' s "Tao" is neither the process by which things come into effect , nor is it the active principle by which the material things are kept in motion; but "Tao" is what produced heaven and earth and the ten thousand things. As dis¬ cussed before, "Tao" is both "Non-being" and "Being", two aspects of a single ontological principle. The "Non- being" gives rise to "Being" which is the beginning of 116 Feng Kuan and Yti S. Lin, A Collection of Treatises on the History of the Philosophy of the Ch 1 un Chiu Period, p.287. wMk 66 all the myriad things, and "Non-being" is a state imagined to account for the stage which came before the appearance of "Being". It can, of course, only be of a non-material nature, which means that the cosmos and the ten thousand things spring, in last analysis, from "Non-being", which makes no sense from a materialistic point of view. Kuan Feng and Lin Yh-shih refute the view of "Tao" as an atomic "aura" or as the "essence of air" which 117 many people have made it out to be. Actually, atoms and "essence of air" are similar in the fact that they cannot be felt by the hand or seen by the eye, but they are not entirely non-material; they dc> occupy space and have weight. Lao Tzu , however, never said that "Tao" has a form or has weight, but suggests just the oppositE.. Atoms have a form and air can be felt when it is in move¬ ment. Another point being raised is that "Tao" has been compared with the "Uncarved Block" and thus been held as of material nature. But the "Uncarved Block" is only used as a picturesque phrase to illustrate the state of nature as untouched by any artificial effort, unpolished, unadorned, and just being itself as it is. An "objective" idealist would say that the absolute spirit or ideal is 118 the "Uncarved Block" . 117 ibid . , p.289. HQ Ibid. , p.302. i 4 ■ 67 From the sentence "there is Something formed in confusion" Fung Yu-lan concludes that "Tao" is materialistic. However, one should not exclude the possibility that "Tao" is an absolute spiritual entity or Being, formed within an undefinable realm, and that is why it is formed in some sort of confusion. Mr. Kuan and Mr . Lin contend that "Tao" is not even an objective principle or law because an objective principle is the arrangement according to which material things are kept in motion and existence, and it cannot be divorced from material things and be independent. If it can stand by itself without the existence of the material things or if it is the producer of the material things, it can no longer be an objective principle any more, otherwise God can also be taken as an objective principle. Lao Tzu's "Tao" can be independent of the material things and exist by itself; it is prior to the ten thousand things and is the producer of everything; therefore it is not an objective principle.119 They think the question is that a preliminary decision has to be made as to whether the matter or the spirit comes first ) . Materialism would put matter first and spirit second, while for idealism spirit would ibid . , p.301 . 4 ■ 68 come first, and matter second. As discussed in the above section, Lao Tzu's "Tao" cannot be an objective prin¬ ciple, nor does it belong to the material realm, and so it can only be a spirit ( 7\'^ ) , though not in a religious sense, an absolute spirit existing before man and anything else. In this way, Lao Tzu gives priority to spirit over matter, this spirit being an "absolute" spirit, independent of human thought and existing by itself, so that Lao Tzu's thought is classified as "objective" idealism.'1'20 ( ^ ) As discussed above, Fung Yu-lan believes that the "air" or "essence of air" which is the origin of life and of the ten thousand things is something material. However, he points out that, for Chuang Tzu, there is another thing ranking higher than "air", "air" coming only second. For him, "Tao" comes first, and it is from "Tao" that "air" is produced. Mr. Fung remarks that, if there is another thing above "air", that thing must be of a conceptual nature; thereupon, Chuang Tzu is 121 turning towards idealism. In the thinking of Chuang Tzu, everything is in constant change. A thing at present 120 Ibid. , pp. 303-304. 121 Yu-lan Fung, A Collection of Discourses on History of Chinese Philosophy, p . 60 . ■ ' 69 is no longer the same as a moment ago. Things are relative and exist along with their opposite counter-part. When there is bigness, there is smallness; when there is life, there is death. Thus far, his thought is dualist and relativist. "Tao" , however, transcends this realm of dualism; it is prior to being; it is non-material. There is another important point which can be adduced in favour of the view that "Tao” is non-material. Chuang Tzu said that that which makes things as things must itself not be a thing. Further similar remarks can be adduced: The destroyer of life does not die and the begetter of life does not go through birth ( M t-% 1/d , 1 /g <J 1 „ ) .^-23 This indicates that such a "thing" (destroyer or begetter of life) , no matter what it is, is not likely to be material. It has to be some¬ thing constant, eternal, and absolute. This means that it is something spiritual, and abstract. Fung Yu-lan comments that Chuang Tzu’s "Tao" is an "empty logical construction" ( ^ ), and his thought is 124 empty mysticism. To Kuan Feng, Chuang Tzu's "Tao" is the transformation of Lao Tzu's objective idealism Ibid . , p . 60 . 123 Feng Kuan, The Inner Chapters of the Chuang Tzu Book: Interpretations and Criticisms (Peking: The China Book Co., 1961), p.43. 124 yu_ian Fung, A New Edition of the History of Chinese Philosophy, p.385. ■ k 70 into subjective idealism due to the fact that true man or perfect man , who is like Chuang Tzu himself, has unified with "Tao" as one body: "Tao" is himself, and himself is "Tao". There is no more relativism, the realms of time and space have been transcended, and the state of the selfless absolute has been reached. He can be totally independent and absolutely free, wandering in perfect happiness. From such a viewpoint, Chuang Tzu' s philosophy has been classified as "subjective idealism" ) . 125 125 Feng Kwan , The Inner Chapters of the Chuang Tzu Book: Interpretations and Criticisms, pp.2-5. CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS "Tao" , which means "the way" , is a very common word in Chinese: we speak of the way of heaven, the way of man, the way of doing things, the way of .... Since very ancient times, the word has been frequently used. It underlies all ancient Chinese thought, no matter from what school it proceeds. For the Confucianist s , "Tao" is an ethical concept representing the proper way of acting, be it moral, ethical, social, or political. For the Taoists, it is a metaphysical concept, standing for the universe as a whole. Generally, "Tao" was conceived by the ancient Chinese thinkers as a cosmic whole in which all things, visible and invisible, coexisted in mutual interdependence. The Confucianist s , the Mohists, and the Legalists strove to regulate human behaviour and keep things in order so as to maintain harmony in the cosmic whole. On the contrary, the Taoists saw the cosmic whole as in a state of natural equilibrium, which deliberate human action would only disturb. If left alone, equilibrium would always restore itself. It was from this belief that the concept of wu wei evolved. "Tao" was seen as something in the nature of an all- pervasive force, a field of energy, which bathed and 71 - t - 72 pervaded everything. It was the ultimate source and sustainer of all existence, and life was only a specialized j 26 aspect of it.- Since "Tao" is so closely tied in with the notion of nature, ontology and cosmology, some scholars are tempted to equate "Tao" with the Western notion of God, to whom creation owes its origin. Canon Farrar said, "We have long personified under the name of Nature the sum total of God's laws as observed in the physical world; and now the notion of Nature as a distinct, living, independent entity seems to be ineradicable alike from our literature and our systems of philosophy."' Although the attributes of "Tao" in many instances are very similar to the attributes of God, it has been argued in this thesis that "Tao" is not God. "Tao", unlike God, is too elusive to be described. Professor Jankelevitch commented that all attempts to describe the "Tao" are doomed to fail because the Taoists, being somewhat sloppy thinkers, found it easier and more pleasant to rhapsodize about it (e.g. Lao Tzu) or to impart, through anecdotes and approximations, some elusive, unconnected, glimpses of it (e.g. Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu), than to make the 126 Lecture notes from Professor L. Jankelevitch. 127 James Legge , tr . , The Texts of Taoism, P ar t I , p . 1 3 . . 73 necessary effort to try and realize it fully in their own consciousnesses. The comment is a bit harsh on the Taoist thinkers. They may be unsystematic in their thinking, but their ideas are original and insightful. Lao Tzu's writing is terse and preceptive while Chuang Tzu's is allusive and much appreciated for its literary value. It is just their style, and such way of writing seems to suit them best; and indeed, "Tao" itself is almost impossible to describe. Evan Morgan's view on this matter is that behind all, both the visible and the invisible world, "there is a Supreme Power, to which Lao Tzu gave the conventional name of Tao. It is only a conventional term because we cannot comprehend it and therefore it is impossible to give it an adequate name. It’s quality, power, and magnitude is so vast and deep that no human language, -- language belonging to the material universe alone — ■ can describe it. Were any term comprehensive enough to connote it, it would at once lose its chief characteristic of the Infinite. Once a thing is defined, it becomes limited. Therefore, the conventional name of Great Tao is only an indicative name , — indicative of immensity and quality and the way. But whilst no name can adequately define it, yet it is possible for the mind to have a good conception of it, through description of its works and by analogues 74 Ml 2P of what it is like. That is, through an effort of literary empathy, one may come to realize "Tao". Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu have given us the qualities, charac¬ teristics, and. the works of "Tao" thus enabling us to glimpse the various facets of "Tao" . Although Lao and Chuang lived about two hundred years apart their philosophy was essentially the same. While Lao Tzu was succinct on most of his topics, Chuang Tzu elaborated more on nature and the unnecessary, futile, effort of man. In regard to "Tao", both of them shared the same view that it is the ontological principle, the understanding of which has to come through an inner awareness, in which our true consciousness inter¬ fuses with the ultimate reality of all things. Such an understanding cannot be expressed by words and has to be acquired through a long period of an experiencing process and cultivation. "Tao" has always been obscured by inadequate understanding. In his writings, Chuang Tzu is trying to tell us that there is no real distinction between affirmation and negation; as soon as there is affirmation, there is negation; as soon as there is negation, there is affirmation. There is nothing which 128 Evan Morgan, Tao The Great Luminant (New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp., 1969), p.xxxii. ■ 75 is not this, and there is nothing which is not that When this and that are not placed in polarized positions, 129 we come to the principle of "Tao" . As opposed to intuitive thinking, systematic and analytical thinking tends to break things up to examine their different parts to study bits by bits in detail. However, after divisional studies, it is necessary to put the parts and pieces together in order to understand the whole thing. In like manner, the Taoists put the stress on the understanding of the unity of multiplicity, or the Oneness , for all things are interdependent; there is no phenomenon which can be truly understood by isolating it from other things. However , it has to be pointed out that the Taoists do not work much on analysis, and instead, they jump to the final stage of taking in the whole thing or the Oneness which is their main concern. There is a famous saying of Chuang Tzu: Heaven and Earth and I live together; the ten thousand things and I are one t ). This togetherness and oneness is the result of his ontological awareness, which is beyond our ordinary senses. It is the realm of non-being, the Great Infinite in which there is neither time nor space, no limitations 129 Chung-yuan Chang, "The Meaning of Tao", Traditional China, edited by James T.C. Liu and Wei-ming Tu (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1970), p.148. 76 130 and distinctions. Chuang Tzu gives a description of the realm of non-being: There is birth, there is death; there is issuing forth, there is entering in. That through which one passes in and out without seeing its form — that is the Gate of Heaven. The Gate of Heaven is Non-being. All things sprang from Non-being. ^ This realm of Non-being is what Lao Tzu called "Tao" , the "Mother of All Things" , the Absolute Reality from which 132 all birth comes about. Lao Tzu 1 s greatness lies in his bringing out the notion of 'Tao' outside the reign of heaven and earth and the ten thousand things. Fung Yu-lan has done substantial work on Taoist philosophy but he has not explained why and how the word 'Tao' was used; he just said 'Tao' was used for convenience sake. Amid the superstitious beliefs of his time Lao Tzu forwarded a great breakthrough in the history of thought. From the 'Way of Heaven' , 'Way of the Emperors' , and 'Way of Man' , he dropped Heaven, Emperors, and Man to single out 'Tao' , the way, and at the same time cast away the religious, superstitious connotations of those phrases to establish his unprecedented metaphysical and ontological principle. Lao Tzu also opened up the gateway for later 130 Ibid . , p . 150 . 131 Ibid . , p . 150 . 132 Ibid . , p . 150 . ' 77 philosophical and intellectual thought development on nature, on man, and on reason. Man's inquisitive mind was further expanded in all dimensions. Lao Tze first talked about "Tao"; when it came to Chuang Tzu, he talked about heaven (nature) and man. In the later Ch'in and Han periods, thinkers came to talk about naturalness and spontaneity, as exemplified in Wang Ch'ung's Essay on Spontaneity and Fan Chen's Essay on the Extinction of the Spirit (after death) ( & Hjj AjL X- ) . At that stage, the importance of the notion of "Tao" had faded and the principle of spontaneity had taken over as the basis for the explanation of the world and human activities. Under the challenge of Hinayana Buddhism, Neo-Confucianist and Taoist thought emerged in the Sung and Ming periods. The Taoist stress on the principle of nature and of the natural order rather than on the work of a creator or a divine Providence may have had some influence on the Eighteenth Century French Physiocrats, the economist Quesnay and the philo- sopher La Mettrie. In reviewing Taoist thought, Szu- ma T ' an ( ) commented: The Taoist school of thought enables men to concentrate the mind on things they do, I33 Cheng-tung Wei, A Critical Approach to the Chinese Cultures (Taipei: The Buffalo Book Co., Ltd.;, 1968), pp . 329-330 . * 78 . to enjoy whatever is around them. Its technique is to act according to the smooth succession of the Yin and the Yang , to pick out the good points of Confucianism and Mohism, to grasp the essence of the Nominalism and the Legalism, to handle human affairs by following the trend of time and events. Its ideas are terse and easy to master. It accomplishes more with less effort. 134 Some people say that Taoist thought is pessimistic, mis¬ anthropic, and that it is a philosophy of escape. This is merely a misunderstanding. One who knows Taoist thought well finds it lively, optimistic, comforting and a source of strength. It recommends a proper, natural development of the potentiality of an individual , as the fundamental unit which in turn would further the development of the whole network of society, the world, and the universe. If it is a philosophy of escape, it, at least, offers a place and a way to escape, to find a way out, instead of remaining tied to the ground. p.3289. 134 szu-ma Ch'ien, The History, Vol.X (10 vols.) ' BIBLIOGRAPHY I. Bibliographies Chan, Wing-tsit. An Outline and An annotated Bibliography of Chinese Philosophy. Honolulu: East West Center Press , 1967 . Chan, Wing-tsit. Chinese Philosophy, 1949-63, An Annotated Bibliography of Mainland China Publications. Honolulu: East-West center Press, 1967. Hucher, Charles, 0. China: A Critical Bibliography. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1966. II. Primary Sources in Chinese Chang, Shun-i, ed . Eighteen Categories of the Essence of the Ancient Thinkers and Philosophers. Taipei: Hung Yeh Booh Co., 1970. 34 ht - ife . ^ li-P v A . Wo*-. Ch'en, Ku-ying . Present-day Interpretation and Commentary • oh the Lao Tzu Booh . Taipei: The Commercial Press 1970 . Compiled by the Committee of the Chinese Philosophical History of the Philosophical Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Science . An Anthology of Chinese Philosophy of the Various Periods. Vols . I-II (3 vols. ) . Pehing: The China Booh Co., 1962. x.if * f)*K£ . 1 h £ ^ y $ t is? , ftp , \ °l b d fv uT, 7 79 - 80 Compiled by the Committee of the Chinese Philosophical History of the Philosophical Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Science . Selected Materials and Sources on History of Chinese Philosophy, Section on the Pre-Ch'in Period, Vol . II (3 vols.) . Peking: The China Book Company, 1964. ' b $ if fb t# f lH 5i % 1 fa b.% , & $ Iffc- , Haivard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series . Supple¬ ment No. 20. A Concordance to Chuang Tzu . Cam¬ bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956. P-3r$U I , f, \ KM *\ . y&Jr\ % » t jft. M /I 5t4 -Ml &)&. Kao , Heng . Present-day Commentary on the Old Text of the Chou I . Shanghai: Kai Ming Book Co., 1948. Ku , Shih . Commentary and Explanation on the Collection of the Literature of the Han Times . Taipei: K'uang Wen Book Co., Ltd., 1970. i- 1 • >% % % i %4%-ib , \v°4 , f b '*-% & % f ’VikQ Kuan, Feng. The Inner Chapters of the Chuarg Tzu Book: Inter- pretations and Criticisms. Peking: The China Book Co . , 1961 . Liu, An. Hui Nan Tzu . Taipei: Chung Hua Book Co., 1965 . 81 Sung, Lung -yuan . Explanatory Notes on the Tao Teh Ching. Taipei: San Min Book Co., Ltd., 1970. # % in . nkb , ' ^ ^ -t & % f &. k 51 Teaching and Research Chamber of Chinese Literary History at Peking University. Reference Materials on the Literary History of the Pre-Ch'in Period. Hong Kong: Hung Chih Book Co., 1957. Tsao, Sing. A New Interpretation of the Chou I . Taipei: Committee of Publication Undertakings of Chinese Culture, 1956. iA Yang, Chia-loh, ed . Commentary on Lao Tzu 1 s Tao Teh Ching. Taipei: The World Book Company, 1969. Yen, Ling-feng. A New Edition of the Four Eminents of the Taoist School . Taipei: The Commercial Press, 1968 Wang, Hsien-ch ' ien . Explanatory Notes on the Chuang Tzu Book Taipei: San Min Book Co., Ltd., 1963. ‘ 82 III . Primary Sources in English Blakeney, R.B. The Way of Life, A New Translation of the Tao Te Ching . New York: The New American Library, 1955. Chan, Wing-tsit. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1963. Chuang-Tzu . The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu . Translated by B. Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968 . Chuang-Tzu. Chuang-Tzu, Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer. Translated by H.A. Giles. London: Bernard Quaritch Limited, 1926 . Fung, Yu-lan. Chuang-Tzu. A New Selected Translation with an Exposition of the Philosophy of Kuo Hsiang. New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp . , 1964. Graham, A.C.> tr . The Book of Lieh-tzu . London: Butler and Tanner Ltd., 1960. Lao-Tzu. Tao Teh Ching. Translated by J.C.H. Wu . New York: St. John's University Press, 1966. Lao-Tzu. Tao Te Ching . Translated by D.C. Lau . Baltimore: Penguin Books Inc., 1963. Legge, James, tr . The Texts of Taoism, Part I and Part II. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1962. Legge, James, tr . I Ching, Book of Changes. New York: University Books, Inc., 1966. Morgan, Evan. Tao the Great Luminant . New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp., 1969. Sung, Z.D. The Text of Yi King, Chinese Original with English Translation . Shanghai: The China Modern Education Co . , 1935 . Waley, Arthur. The Way and Its Power, A Study of the Tao Te Ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1958. • / . . . 83 Ware, James R. The Sayings of Chuang Chou. Toronto: The New American Library of Canada Ltd., 1963. IV. Secondary sources in Chinese Chang , b Tai-mien. A Brief History of Materialistic Thoughts in China. Peking: The Chinese Youth Publication Co., 1957. Chi, Cheh,, Studies on the Pre-Ch'in Thinkers and Philosophers v Hong Kong: Kan Chai Book Co & & ■ M l f , \ 1 fc b * , k >% tv f * 1966. )% Chi, Wen-fu. A Talk on the History of Thoughts of the Ch 1 un Chiu and Chan Kuo Periods. Peking: Chinese Youth Publication Co., 1963. \ <\ 6 3 ^ , ib i i a £ fch & ft k Ch'ien, Mu. A History of Chinese Thoughts. Hong Kong: New Asia College Press, 1962. ^ w t a , 4->,t bifimk. Ch'ien, Mu. History of Chinese Thoughts. Hong Kong: Hsin Hua Publishing Co., Ltd., 1956. , I <\ Mis fesl UL , Ch'ien, Mu. A Talk on Some Common Chinese Thoughts. Hong Kong: Chiu Tsing Publishing Co., 1955. ' 84 Chung , Tai . History of Chinese Philosophy. Taipei: Commercial Press, 1967. The Compiled by the Editorial Committee of Literary, Historical and Philosophical Magazines . An Assemblage of Treatises on Ancient Chinese Philosophy. Peking: The China Book Co., 1957. Fan, Shou-k'ang. Gist and Outline of History of Chinese Philosophy. Taipei: Kai Ming Book Company, 1964. W ■f > 1 Fu, Ch in-chia Taipei History of the Chinese Taoist Religion. : The Commercial Press, 1960. Fung, Yu-lan. Philosophy of Life. Hong Kong: Shih Hsueh '4 1 $ . w ^ , 4r>£ % $ £ & » M- . Fung, Yu-lan. A Collection of Discourses on History of Chinese Philosophy . Shanghai: Shanghai People's Publication Co . , 1958 . tfi\ . $ \gi it t , 1^8 ^ , P ?&- , z • . 85 Fung, Yu-lan. The Preliminary Draft on the Technique of Arranging Historical Materials in the History of Chinese Philosophy. Shanghai: Shanghai People's Publication Co., 1962 Y ji- u; i. m \i- F >iK . Fung, Yu-lan. History of Chinese Philosophy. Hong Kong: The Pacific Booh Co., 1959. , l , Y € | 'T \t , rts-ty, f f Fung, Yu-lan. The New Original Tao. Shanghai: The Commercial Press, 1945. i a i? Fung, Yu-lan. A New Edition of the History of Chinese Philosophy. Peking: The People's Publication Co., 1964. -if . y *4- <*t -t i #&. y a . Han, Pu-hsien. The Essential History of Medieval and Ancient Chinese Philosophy. Taipei: Cheng Chung Book Co., 1960. . Y j|| yt fJt- . ' $ fy ± hK . Hou , Wai-lu, et al . A General History of Chinese Thoughts. ‘ Vols . I-II (5 vols.) . ■ Peking :People J s Publication Co., 1957. YjUf . y tSI £.&&£ , uf '^74. i ic ±, i, b'k. Hsu,Wen-san. A Directed Reading on the Thinkers and Philo¬ sophers of the Pre-Ch'in Period. Taipei : Yu Shih Book Co . , 1964 . 4lc \ i Hfe. X. . Hu, Shih. History of Ancient Chinese Philosophy. Taipei The Commercial Press, 1960. Y/j J$j_ _ f if) Y 4 /‘UoJj- . t -Jt ,i) 4! <y it f i i h*. . . 86 Hu, Shih. An Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy. Shanghai: The Commercial Press, 1934. ^ ^ 4 "t \t\ ^ i^/ % %% & Vrk_ Huang, Chien-chung, et al . A Collection of Treatises on History of Chinese Philsophy. Taipei: (Publisher not avail¬ able) , 1958 . Huang, Hui, ed . The Balance of Opinions . Ch'ang Sha : The Commercial Press, 1938. Huang, Rung -we i . History of Chinese Philsophy. Taipei: Kashmir Booh Co., 1966. Kuan, Feng and Yu S . Lin . A Collection of Treatises on the History of the Philsophy of the Ch'un Chiu Period. Peking: The People's Publication Co., 1963. > Ilf - % %-V- ll#|. , Kuo, Chan-po . History of Chinese Medieval and Ancient Thoughts . Hong Kong: Lung Men Book Co., 1967. h'4}t, y ^ t, Jhf j t % a fetL. Kuo, Mo- jo. Ten Criticisms . Peking: Scientific Publication Co . , 1956 . . t %\ % , v^S'fc ^ Lai, Yung-hsiang. A Study on the Philosophy of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu . Taiwan: Tainan, 1970. %\\%%% . -fe fc $ !j.4p. Lao, Sze-kwang. A History of Chinese Philosophy. Hong Kong: Chung Chi College, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1968. 4 $ # ■ % *- , iW Lecture Notes on Classical Chinese. Lu, Chen-yu . History of Chinese Political Thoughts. Peking: The People's Publication Co., 1961. jfi 1 , \%\ ^ National Studies Arrangement Board. The Accumulated Works of the Ancient Thinkers and Philsophers . Vol . 3 (8 vol s . ) . Shanghai: The World Book Co., Ltd. 1935. 87 Kb $ 5U ^ fMfflr') > \^ ^ ^ ^ , £ >is- Szu-ma Ch'ien. The History. Vol . X (10 vols.) Hong Kong: Chung Hua Book Co., 1969. Tang, Ching-fan . A Brief Discussion on the History of Thoughts of the Pre-Ch'in Period. Sian: Shansi People's Publication Co., 1959. \^i 5f , <$> iUL. The Twenty-five Dynastic Histories . Vol. I (12 vols.) Taipei: Kai Ming Book Store, 1934. Tu , Erh-wei . The Religious System of Ancient China. Taipei: Hua Ming Book Co., 1951. \fl v°i r l ^ Wang, Ch'ang-chih. The -Chinese Thinkers and Philosophers as I understand Them. Taipei: Kuang Kai Publication Co . , 1961 . * Wang, Chih-hsin . An Outline of the History of Chinese Religious Thoughts . Taipei: Chung Hua Book Co., 1960 ± '4 k Wang, Chu-ch’ang. The Essentials of the Hundred Schools of Philosophy . Shanghai: The China Book Co., 1936. Wei, Cheng-tung. A Critical Approach to Chinese Philosophy and Thought . Taipei: The Buffalo Book Co., Ltd. 1968 $ i#<- , Wei, Cheng-tung. A Critical Approach to the Chinese Cultures. Taipei: The Buffalo Book Co., Ltd. 1968. ^ 7\L^- \Vk3\ _ * 88 Yang, Yung-kuo . A History of Ancient Chinese Thoughts . Hong Kong: San Lien Book Co., 1962. k ■ ■ in if- k ^ Yao, Shun-ch'in. History of the Ch ' in and Han Philosophy. Shanghai: The Commercial Press, 1936. ■*k^Ak . i 'A t 1 1 A. . '*3^, r /% ^ tfiAU «K_ Yu, T'ung. History of Chinese Philosophical Problems . Hong Kong: Lung Men Book Co., 1968. ’tf >*) • vt if) ^ r°3 m -ft, kj -t p t m Yu , Yueh . A Fair Discussion on the Chinese Thinkers and Philosophers . Peking: The China Book Co., 1954. Yung, Chao-tsu . The Naturalism of the Wei T'sin Period. Taipei: The Commercial Press, 1966. t, M, (a L K? % A , \‘U i iy . \i J t f(i? ^j7 ■£& 1 uk . V. Secondary Sources in English Bahm, Archie J. Tai Teh King by Lao Tzu , Interpreted as Nature and Intelligence. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1958. Chai, Ch'u. The Story of Chinese Philosophy. New ,York: Washington Square Press, Inc., 1961. Chan, Wing-tsit. The Great Asian Religions; an Anthology. London: Collier-Macmillian Ltd., 1969. Chang, Chung-yuan. "The Meaning of Tao . " Traditional China. Edited by James T. C. Liu and Wei-ming Tu . Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1970. Creel, H.G. Chinese Thought, from Confucius to Mao Tse-tunq. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd., 1954. Day, Clarence B. The Philosophers of China: Classical & Con¬ temporary . New York: The Citadel Press, 1962. ~ ■ 89 Dawson, R. ed . The Legacy of China . London: Oxford University Press, 1964. de Barv, W.T., et al . , ed . Sources of Chinese Tradition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1960. Fung, Yu-lan . A History of Chinese Philosophy. Translated by Derk Bodde . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952. Fung, Yu-lan. A Short History of Chinese Philosophy. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1960. Fung, Yu-lan. The Spirit of Chinese Philosophy. Tr . by E.R. Hughes. London: Kegan Paul, Trench Trubner & Co., Ltd., Broadway House., 1947. Granet, M. Festivals and Songs of Ancient China. London: George Roultedge & Sons Ltd., 1932. Harvey, E .D . The Mind of China . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1933. Herbert, Edward. A Taoist Notebook. New York: Grove Press, Inc . , 1960 . Hughes, Ernest R. Chinese Philosophy in Classical Times. London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1954. Hughes, E.R. ed . & tr . Chinese Philosophy in Classical Times . London: Everyman's Library, 1942. Liang, Chi-chao. History of Chinese Political Thought During the Early Tsin Period. Taipei: Ch ' eng Wen Publishing Co., 1968. Lin, Yutang, ed . The Wisdom of Confucius . New York: The Modern Library, 1938. Lin, Yutang, ed . The Wisdom of Laotse. New York: The Modern Library, 1948. McNaughton, W. The Taoist Vision. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1971. Moore, Charles A. ed . The Chinese Mind. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1967. Parker, E.H. Studies in Chinese Religion. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1910. . ■ 90 Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East. 14 vols . , vol . 12: Medieval China . London: Parke, Austin, and Lipscomb, Inc., 1917. Soothill, W.E. The Three Religions of China. London: Oxford University Press, 1930. Thompson, L.G. Chinese Religion: An Introduction. Belmont, Calif.: Dickenson Publishing Co., Inc., 1969. Waley, A. Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China . London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1939. Waley, Arthur, tr . The Analects of Confucius . New York: Random House, 1938. Wang, Gung-hsing . The Chinese Mind. New York: Greenwood Press, Publishers, 1968. Watts, A.W. The Way of Zen . New York: Pentheon Books Inc., 1957 . Ware, J.R. Alchemy, Medicine, Religion in the China of A.D. 320. The Nei P 1 ien of Ko Hung (Pao-p'u tzu) TWJPf ) Cambridge , Mass . : The M . I . T . Press , 1966 . Welch, Holmes. The Parting of the Way. London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1957. VI. Secondary Sources in Japanese Kano, Naoki . History of Chinese Iwanami Shoten, 1964. Philosophy . Tokyo: f>S 3. -fk, if , Lectures on East Asian Thoughts, Vol. Ill, Chinese Thoughts II: The Taoist School and the Taoist Religion . Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1967. 91 Takeuchi, Yoshio. History of Chinese Thought . Tokyo; Iwanami Shoten, 1961. % 'A- t fe % ^ ■ Tokiwa , Dai jo. Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism in China . Tokyo; T5y5 Bunko, 1966. 0g VS if, yf_ ft Ufa. . Yoshikawa, Kojiro. The Chinese Classics and Their Related Life Style. Tokyo; Iwanami Shoten, 1965. & 1 \2 1 •£- r . £- ^ A t ^ y ^ Jl # M & >&-.
Chinese Philosophy: Sayings of Confucius, Sayings of Mencius, Sayings of Lao Tzu, Sayings of Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu
Confucius
2011-05-15T00:00:00Z
null
null
Chinese philosophy : sayings of Confucius, sayings of Mencius, sayings of Lao Tzu, sayings of Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu
Giles, Lionel, 1875-,Peter Pauper Press
1949-01-01T00:00:00Z
Philosophy, Chinese
Colored title-vignette; headlines in blue,"The majority of the paragraphs in this book are in translation of ... Lionel Giles."
Lao Tzu and Taoism
Kaltenmark, Max
1969-01-01T00:00:00Z
Laozi,Lao-tzu,Laozi ca. Ende v4./Anfang 3. Jh,Taoism,Taoismus,Taoïsme,Philosophy, Taoist,Philosophy, Chinese
vi, 158 pages 23 cm,Deals with two incompatible and incongruous Chinese doctrines: philosophical Taoism, and magico-religious Taoism, sometimes indiscriminately known in the West under the term Taoism. Some practices remind one of the Hindu Yoga,Includes bibliographical references (pages 151-152),Lao Tzu -- Teaching -- Holy man -- Chuang Tzu -- Taoist religion
Wisdom of the Daoist masters : the works of Lao Zi (Lao Tzu), Lie Zi (Lieh Tzu), Zhuang Zi (Chuang Tzu)
null
1984-01-01T00:00:00Z
Taoism Scriptures Texts
x,302p. : 22cm,Includes indexes
To win a race : (on a theme from Chuang-tzu)
Weiss, Renée Karol,Sills, Joyce, illus,Zhuangzi
1966-01-01T00:00:00Z
Fables
[26] p. : 16 x 22 cm
The Empty Boat : Reflections on the Stories of Chuang Tzu
Osho, 1931-1990
2011-01-01T00:00:00Z
Zhuangzi -- Criticism and interpretation,Chinese literature -- To 221 B.C. -- History and criticism,Spiritual life
1 online resource (234 p.),Description based on print version record
When the Shoe Fits: Talks on the Stories of Chuang Tzu
Osho Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
1976-01-01T00:00:00Z
null
null
Wandering on the way : early Taoist tales and parables of Chuang Tzu
Zhuangzi
1994-01-01T00:00:00Z
null
liv, 402 p. : 21 cm,Includes bibliographical (p. [387]-392) references
Wandering on the way : early Taoist tales and parables of Chuang Tzu
Zhuangzi
1998-01-01T00:00:00Z
Taoist parables,Taoism,RELIGION -- Taoism,Eastern Religions,Religion,Philosophy & Religion
1 online resource (liv, 402 pages) :,Includes bibliographical references (pages 387-392),Print version record
The second book of the Tao : compiled and adapted from the Chuang-tzu and the Chung yung, with commentaries
Mitchell, Stephen, 1943-
2009-01-01T00:00:00Z
Zhuangzi. Nanhua jing,Zhong yong
xvi, 202 p. ; 25 cm,Mitchell has composed this innovative work drawn from the work of Lao-tzu's disciple, Chuang-tzu and Confucius's grandson, Tzu-ssu to offer Western readers a path into realityby providing commentary that shows what it means to be in harmony with the way things are. Its wisdom provides a psychological and moral acuity as deep as the Tao Te Ching itself,Includes bibliographical references (p. [201]-202)
Do nothing : inner peace for everyday living : reflections on Chuang Tzu's philosophy
Sorajjakool, Siroj
2009-01-01T00:00:00Z
Zhuangzi. Nanhua jing,Nanhua jing (Zhuangzi),Philosophy, Chinese
xiv, 154 pages ; 21 cm,Includes bibliographical references (pages 145-148) and index,Chuang Tzu -- The way -- Nothing -- Nothing and the journey of ninety thousand li -- Do nothing -- The nothing of love and the love of nothing -- Good for nothing -- Conclusion: be ordinary. APPENDICES: Chuang Tzu: historical background -- The psychology of nondoing
Three ways of thought in ancient China
Waley, Arthur,Chuang-tzu,Mencius,Han, Fei, d. 233 B.C
1956-01-01T00:00:00Z
Philosophy, Chinese,Philosophie chinoise,Chinese filosofie
"Consists chiefly of extracts from Chuang Tzu, Mencius and Han Fei Tzu."
Three ways of thought in ancient China
Waley, Arthur,Chuang-tzu,Mencius,Han, Fei, d. 233 B.C
1956-01-01T00:00:00Z
Philosophy, Chinese,Philosophie chinoise,Chinese filosofie
"Consists chiefly of extracts from Chuang Tzu, Mencius and Han Fei Tzu."
Zhuang zi
Chuang-tzu
1998-01-01T00:00:00Z
Taoist philosophy
96 pages ; 18 cm,Includes bibliographical references (page 96)
The essential Tao : an initiation into the heart of Taoism through the authentic Tao te ching and the inner teachings of Chuang-Tzu
Cleary, Thomas F., 1949-
1998-01-01T00:00:00Z
Mind, Body, Spirit,Oriental & Indian philosophy,Sale Adult - Philosophy / Eastern Religion,Religion,Eastern - Taoism,Taoism,Sale Books,Reference,Laozi,Zhuangzi,Dao de jing (Laozi),Nanhua jing (Zhuangzi)
Includes bibliographical references
Three ways of thought in ancient China
Waley, Arthur
1939-01-01T00:00:00Z
Chuang-tzu,Mencius,Han, Fei, -233 B.C,Zhuangzi,Philosophy, Chinese
"Consists chiefly of extracts from Chuang Tzu, Mencius and Han Fei Tzu."
Three In The Morning And Four In The Afternoon
Wide Ocean
2021-01-07T00:00:00Z
Chuang-tzu,taoism,daoism,daoist philosophy,taoist philosophy,chinese metaphysics,mysticism,chinese philosophy
Three in the Morning and Four in the Afternoon explores the ideas and teachings of the fourth century BCE Chinese Daoist mystic and philosopher Chuang-tzu through selections from the Chuang-tzu .
Full text of "Three In The Morning And Four In The Afternoon" Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "Three In The Morning And Four In The Afternoon" See other formats and three in the morning and four in the afternoon Wide Ocean Copyright © 2020 Wide Ocean Edited by lan Wilson ISBN: 978-1-922409-84-3 Published by Vivid Publishing A division of Fontaine Publishing Group P.O. Box 948, Fremantle Western Australia 6959 www.vividpublishing.com.au A catalogue record for this EEE — book is available from the LIBRARY National Library of Australia OF AUSTRALIA All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. In memory of Sifu Chan When the lunatics have taken over the asylum does it make any difference who is in charge? Contents Preface 0.00.00 ccc cece cece ccc cceec eee ce eee tcteeeeetteevttvetetvitvtteveteeereees Xili LtrOdUCHON: cnc nk 45.4.0 bb aKa wba eo DRE HO. oe Cee xiv ae ests ceo cce eatnictecg oo anid eb ese task Gata ed ei ee xv Selections from the Chuang-tzu Part I: Possibilities 1 Bite Or Preee Oth sts ccosteceas cette toto oeaivinicbenia seed aes 3 2 Wisi SOrie ie BiG gfe coyscxeunpsonearevinge aipterelndsevanarenterensers 4 tng OIG eke ys anistleveaah ayedeaninedaueeanesvea ceedn sans aatncheueeenesen 5 BMH OCG KG ails: vierasek iieah pahuechgstaneateteah Oemuaneanhaatenediueentenes 6 SY ee} o) V8 10) ee ed oe oe ee ere renee eae 7 Part II: The Mysterious Care weiy 0 Vy She EY eas nase xcs sarichieadity ere vsieahaehrecoateelnalar cee 11 To MOOS! I SWAIN is 3 5. cece soa ene eRe te sere alew a eens 12 8. Who Creates: All Unis Joy? ccvsvesiscs cxsprvecuoieesevsaverarmeesensd ieee 13 9. Mysterious Working of Things ..........000.0..00.ccc ccc 14 10. Fille up and Ermmptying Out... sctcvcssecnoesdesacesneeteomucentaves 16 Part ITI: Looking for Joy PA Ta conse teach aesehte otaeoeeoectipacctaseeoeneeteed 19 12. hat People Wait ti vcnitinckinieenrenvegundiers nniteenneenreteyeid 20 13. Die) I AOU yo fcc ert dace iooeetene eee 21 14, Whats Peopledor Youtcnceisn ace evan eeee 22 15. Not What You Want to Hear ....0..0.0 0.00.0 cc cece cece ceccecec sevens 23 Part IV: The Hollow Spaces 16. Blowing Through the Hollow Spaces........0.......0.....00000eees 27 17. The Music of Heaveni.....cccccc.cccoseesnschvecgecgevansveessonbedpoans 28 De Pulways ISIE PAV ccs veri coc eacd nde menehtatepaeatenes 29 Part V: Following Nature BOs Fae Aa GAN ct tenis int pencabcicccnidadcebbrsattplpenteiceiminbreedes 33 2), INS UPAIESS, 5<.0.hen0850 isi a deunds ehmeeeteec eines abteeeaesaemeet 34 ZA. ome WV nat W666. .c a esters 35 Part VI: Loosening the Noose DANG TE MG ots cern cen tevin scioareorstennngviinmdperssnteune sousoie ness 39 2 OM UU, Jos sttgo nave lgtathee yume easane teeaeceeamacks wenases onan tone aes 40 24, Hiding the World in the World...02¢cicce.oecessdenedshecnnovedonsats 41 Die RMT Mf UCAS OG recat scnevneclenn tacge Cana Rie ace idee es 42 26; Dont Bea Clothes Flange x. oun. c. inn deal ciensMacnisions 43 Part VII: Balancing on One Wheel Fe WSR a a ba aie hsp idan Pasian sls a Maspevid enna Ao Bc de cea vn ee doncia 47 28. Ihe Beautiful and thé Ugly. oi coscisexcoioe cee cesnteteansennetcatnene! 49 DO. TeV SALCMOR ve cvciciee. accvea tes cine concep Miexepedorventabernacennes 50 Part VIII: Strategizing 30, #pang Someene Wises W686. .5<.onevnerncennacnenexwiaemrennerbeaks Bi) eG vers ehcay 20) 011 en es ee ere eee eee See 56 So DOMOUS SMNESS 25551324405 0iid edi ibd ebb oinehadebicateseeubedioa! By Jo IreasOrIe Wat bd MU cases meri 58 Oy 0h er eee ee eee noe ee errr 59 55, Reach ICC OF so ese: csicrscimokanerneneevescrmaortpnavateunnuernenenees 60 36, Leave the World Outside ¢ cveiisciececperns ccysensencivaseneaeseennens 61 Df aA OINS TRO RTOBS 2 c).0l ics ervinsine ek netisrsnesBecenWeAeeneasbveneescecknent 62 38. Porcetime about Every ei e esa. dsi acon vuenind nicenoededp nets 63 Part IX: Words BS VE es pxcchet ng an tevestoctslene coutestor nana Saat a neestecab toeneune umanetn otsoeres 67 AQ). Now Whats: Stupidity jiccisc0déccesuiyesebedadbal chnestesbeaae esx eeeesne 68 PA EOS 1h WM ica ceed cd Sa RAs Wie REA RAEN Ra 69 BT Mis RA ME CANO Nac octets cet ca ace eee ioe ct ecae acl dact ia ded Se el 70 Ae LG By Ae E16 TAB cad cae nenicawintou ovine eed eletomne nerds 71 Part X: Knowing and Not Knowing AA, Seeking Answers: sicsceis.sivesnisecsevdnesnershenvasssibvadbararedyaee re 45. A Visit to the Yellow Emperor..........00...00....00:: ccc 76 BG: WEG SIRO TIED cc readcccusaytenctshcentssueannsreqsnete sary retenmerncanneues ve Af < Lorne 2689 ENEEY DIA), cnconmanversouncanaecnaihwentavenamnennanivenes 78 Part XI: Perspectives 48. Whom Shall We Ask? ...0..0.05.ccccccccceccecneesssdensevecsverensens 81 Le A cS (ea oak al (6) al 6 107 0 ope ee ee re ee ere ere ner eee ere 82 SO aac 9220 A ee ee 83 51. Containing the Large in the Small....0000.0000. ee. 84 52. When a Finger is Nota Pinger: cccovescxcuvevneveexssaeveterronens 85 5a: No Bad to Weighing apc) cicces ecuedelaccesabcanasceeaesabecvedeeenes 86 BA Ota Plas Oe cis conricdnsvpeenoncdeteensgreavtachenssreeaatianeeneeanes 87 Part XII: Walking Two Ways at Once BO MS A NN ae tose ttc Date cease hak wee ee iments ae Se na 91 SOc Ol TIC Pel ser patiowadsceae atnctisnnete denied eoeeu outa ee utente 92 SA Picea pea le atid LIMACrS HAS dcdksules ecruvensiacdvachoaraloavansiyn 93 58. The Princess and the Paupet .:....2..<.-060css.0sceepieassenedsnvenvess 94 52. Wearing Vourselt Ong gerecisvercpsavasicenasnevetseseap Wesaomnnoevenatis 95 Part XIII: Witch’s Brew Be papain area ence eee nausaeea aaa eon aeeenns 09 GL, Name teet IIa ysis sj. 2245 celenesnedeicd bub uinindind stehitehwebaaRbeh ieee eyeen 100 62. Whe WU nboOrnh cc aeorenes & ceca euctodsataishactle duce eecadeccos naseed 101 63.. Where Did You: Get lt Prot? ei ieviediesesicasaceuansicds cab vesvleliaies 102 Part XIV: Transformation GA, Tae aril We ai es. ics ntsian'aivutlicnadchatimonsietediaeipiswidwtandecetnses 105 5. Peat nOk LASat sets cto derrvervetavuesaddetsWaereitnaventaberseserts 107 OO Une ye aie sid boa cists eennesiecn espa verve he ona eee eae 108 GP ONOW SOME RES NEE pcre ce aes ticeaceie wserenceamacneticenneteees 109 Boe VV AE ER ics ce teciieeu thick tetas hhet kei ea ecat hid til okies 110 BF Ere By ccs ch vets dh oolbeedntinnctionk kite etoev heres ininieiekeotvnndali 111 PO, WAV OUa SI yee dace aevoscducnsasuuivadetessedseustinmnuaamnionas 112 Part XV: Dreaming Tle WAN NET a csc: cinta econ tctatevin stenecarioneaee nares stenininn tenons 115 Tp ICAU vexipirinen grea terdoters sxonsenig iineseprinemgortceassxcporaisiione nse 116 Da Sr tis paeuiciessecan ers oases beni asc ee eed a oan 118 Part XVI: The Who Knows What P hedeh AAO CMOWG se. oesctcretea nection nesneroohnetae deme ntsle Ghnenkeeneer 121 pie Bio | 6) ts cal | a eae ee ae to ay ee eee Pe era er eae ee 122 FO: WV Here Vo Ne BRACE viuiscssimnienmnons biensmsconnoapewtnsns inden vandal 123. Fic WN Inet One) Pe Otte iissicedoteassdss uticensletsdisessntsetGsuas'ecsies 124 78, Ube VV be: KnOwes W Wat oss cs vesvnion sadescecs¥earedssccvendetecsscosas 126 Ce JOSE PACINO TO Loses cede revnkun natn avleseey en cuentenevesteneerkne vis 127 OU. Me Vel Gy? Rivers cs; ecixcesscage ohnannatncuxes reaereaasaaikoereoeenas 128 LAS aie Fai LE cc ucer) onuteeneeusenneance rnerncenzeumtnwtaeeganen 129 Be INOUE SUCISIO ob cci bic eedeiiateceeasvares cy bebateetel didimenaigeneils 130 Ho, OMEN UNO LUG. irc adem ieee 131 ro OS (6 ale.) 91 Lae ee eee eee ee ere eee 132 Part XVII: Going Along with Things i NAO siorocsoisone sien oteaiend Hciv-ghins Arain enna trionee wercevsieoiereusenrins iss GTi CS VAY ac) cece ticecashbehmaucechaenlgelenfieveheheennesunishenemoonees 136 S/.POmmtinge VOUE Pel oii cdc ccrcomaigcereadwee end te RA Medes 137 38.ioont Lire Yoursel® Outs .ccecs sss ds ais indvussetsanissasnirnndaelaveds 138 Part XVIII: Finding Ease o2, Running trom: Your Pootoranttsiicss.ciesnccddevanscerenimerwetevtonied: 141 ON Mea eat decease chat od veo tnreaente cae cat a cea ea 142 OMe Rap at Loe, 2c.) vee nicaiad ner ee ae aes 143 2, PCA POW 3:5 care ritacearnewneracoumibeancavedersermnanen 144 DSi NMA 4 or acetitinn nish at AeUacbd ae babteabh Pedthd SRiGLRS oh lee babatebiet 145 94. When the Shoe Pate sc cceshs tess risduercieies iadaeeiisebeeeneacee 146 Part XIX: Loose Talk Ooi Ane payin Cre TOROS orc drone nnctadio eens: 149 96. even an dit Pas a Vea et oa1.:8-oxesorcexdstevensantsusechectevers 150 OF RAEI AUDARE pico s:ctiniireestinpandiene sts reivexeyneaeroenernpnawavaren 151 08. [he Clever and the Diulll 0. ccsieceeseisscavescaeavedepeostenpsvncses 152 OO: Vurmane Wout Bach aia cincisnesacashecgosurecconaicanesn yoked iegeietheet 153 TOU: Circles anid! Saute: cc dcqoiics nce onaic es can tech eons mies 154 TOT RECO GIONS as cer ee netsie ein dedeka tn atinn ee recat ete neeeheneey coe 155 102. The Secret of the Universe... ......000000.000.00ccecesecsecss on 156 MSP RO PIONe suisse oouat vn secs giale ae ecacwenesbebat se eeeatertdente cents 157 104, More Carriages ics os cicnorntiinvaina viernes eternardeverpernnispekacxendes 158 TOS Pen OR ye coon cacneateaanaseteteemenietiee oun neneaderteacneens 159 TOG Compete a aie ic cnseniaacceranemensanta cancer zavena caters 160 PO7, each to: Tis (Wits ich isciackiiigapenstuesid ni cbhai tae ieaebehicteges 161 DOS ie LI GtstA HOI cnc peeechrurcsees ideas obeheverhivbeiepieebtes 162 10): heal. Money one Dine .tcciccncsscartnncrmaennte 163 TU Cate CICA AS ao cie ev senie cagvieneexprtspeniptovetsinemnesonearorere 164 TC WV Es A ow, ces ouwerSecnrsdecteverstexsesies erieieanangleckoness 165 TN AaiprOv na ANC ag. cacaseectetteersadtine saab ee se paaio cheebeecesbee os 166 Part XX: Back-to-frontness LES Fiddle to tne NOG Ca aves so cesresersenerereinaievieusie everson 169 DAE a WAC cei ccctebecieaser cana eeenmoeeeceentenimesercnee erences 170 Ti WANS VORO NICE oc cite tectotn nyo daar co actekete Aucune enAneaden caters 171 116. Daybsht Robbery. 203 eiateeden on edd cine ean 172 TF, aU Tt 6 esos iets-aitr icndaetaeieaieessans ebeteasetaataceealesuiece: 173 AS. IN Gat TS BST assets baas siecle ciate adsios cuits adorns lacah vets mbonaies 174 Part XXI: Uselessness OTD DMs ANB eaves cede hes tea eus vi sccstlar cas ava. cxcite boxe dvenceua ve uke 177 120, Weer tie Weel ese y, .israciaccet-tareoterenemenccataceeeeteees 178 121, Determine Usetulniess, <..ciezicanceanesmeernercinrneeneyieeumeriios sae 0 Ue CE) a ea oy Oe oe ere eee 180 Part XXII: Clear As the Morning 123: Merced Baey Wal tte tnsidacsieatinrisrnetiamesaehanies 183 124, Alegnied with the Uniwerse ic cc schcnsimeenieelasnece 184 125; DUKeMOSSSs..6 ia:.045vendndincasiaesiorshsesierdsacsdieess vevdeseuveneue' 185 126, Nowhrete t0 Ballo c.5 Sc sucewsast sea vevevieveneeusvetsateuseveveenedee 186 127, Bevyorid the Boundary e.\..0iceciceseeniaohevixeossarcecerscarkesnnes 187 128 NOPE Well aiczko1idrevesssveachuabaesnsaseuepertieensubaveeaevenees 188 129. No Limite Mies. tog cnieonseriie care goiaecanatien 189 Part XXIII: In a Village Where There’s Not Any Thing At All NO PG TASH SE is ccdslcsy otides rian ciate Sasaerides Sage ees Seiwa seas nee! 193 131, Onthe Banks of Erapty Rivet sciecndoacieiussreteciserresiens 194 E92. ING Oe MCG ahi sic Ua ced te rasa cen ca case oaodateuetste ras 195 Endnotes. ...0.0.00 000000000 ccc cece cece cece eect eet ctee et cteteetetttreettenes 196 GGA hs, suectseths cuanamaananaansta wanted aie dunasiuatua cn sucGis hea cetsnaen geet 239 Preface Two men meet on the corner. One man says, “Did you just see that one legged unicorn walking across the road?” The other man replies, “Don't be ridiculous! How can a unicorn walk on one leg?” Now, according to people who know, Lao-tzu said: When you talk about the Dao People respond in different ways. When the astute hear about it They immediately attune to it. When the mediocre hear about it They rationalize about it. When the thick-headed hear about it They laugh and turn away. If it were not something to laugh about It would not be the Dao. — xili — THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON Introduction It’s difficult to talk about Chuang-tzu. I mean it’s probably not a good idea to try to explain too much. People have tried that approach and I don’t think they’ve come out of it very well. It’s sort of like pulling your trousers down in front of everyone in the middle of the street. The Chuang-zzu is a collection of tall stories, parables, riddles, and absurdities. They are observations on life. It’s a kaleidoscopic work full of contradictions. It doesn’t neatly fit into any particular box. Each ob- servation can be read from different angles at the same time. In fact what you find in them depends upon the perspective from which you are looking. What you see will be different to what I see. Ultimately what each of us sees will depend on how good our eyesight is. If youre looking for Chuang-tzu to make sense of things for you I think you may be disappointed. In fact you might even find that things make less sense than they did before you met him. And if you're looking for a comfortable chair to sit on, you can be sure that Chuang-tzu will take it away from under you just as you are about to sit down. Chuang-tzu isn’t presenting you with a metaphysical belief system that you can put in your pocket. He isn’t telling you what to think or what to do. He’s not trying to convert you to his way of thinking or impose anything on you. He’s not selling you a cheap off the rack ready- made suit with bad stitching. All he is inviting you to do is to open your eyes and take a look for yourself and to listen in to the song of the universe. Wide Ocean Autumn 2020 — xiv - The Text ‘The pieces presented in this volume are derived from a selection of the writings of Chuang-tzu. This volume doesn’t pretend to be either a literal or poetic translation of the Chuang-zzu. I’ve rendered the sections as I hear them. My apologies to the academics out there who might feel offended by what I have done. But I really don't think Chuang-tzu himself would care too much. I don’t think he was that kind of person. As to Chuang-tzu we don’t know very much about him. How could we? It was so long ago. He is believed to have been a minor government official who lived from around 370 to 290 BCE during the Warring States period (403-221 BCE) in south-eastern China. He was married but had no children. Although technically China was united under the Chou dynasty it was a period of unrest and instability when states jostled for power and influence. Early historical records describe Chuang-tzu as an idiosyncratic man of independent thought who was erudite and had a way with words. It is recorded that a small group of students informally gathered to study with him. That’s probably how the stories and sayings in the Chuang-tzu came to be written down in the first place. The version of the Chuang-tzu that has been handed down to us today is the text that was edited by the Daoist scholar Kuo-hsiang who lived during the fourth century CE. He re-organized and edited the writings thematically into thirty-three sections and divided them into the inner chapters (or the essential chapters), the outer chapters and the miscellaneous chapters. He also wrote a commentary. It is generally thought that the writings contained in the “Inner Chapters” are attrib- utable to Chuang-tzu whereas the other writings are accretions that were added later. We'll probably never know definitively.’ Selections from the Chuang-tzu Part |: Possibilities All things emerge out of possibility. If there were no possibility nothing would be possible. It is possible that even the impossible is possible. PART |: POSSIBILITIES 1. Bird of Freedom In the barren north there’s a dark sea called the lake of heaven. In it there lives a small fish who thinks big. This fish metamorphoses into an odd bird called the Peng.” The Peng has a back as high as a moun- tain. He beats his wings, and creating a whirlwind he leaps into the air, soaring up ninety thousand miles through the clouds and the mist. He then turns and heads south.* The quail laughs derisively and says, “I never go further than twelve yards. That’s what flying is all about. So where the hell does he think he’s going?” Commentary In his or her heart every child dreams of flying. The soul longs for freedom. It wants to leap into the sky and sail free leaving the humdrum world far behind. It is said that one day a man approached Chuang-tzu and asked him, “Is there a Way or isn’t there a Way?” Chuang-tzu replied, “There both is a Way and there isn’t a Way. Have you ever watched a bird take flight? He leaps up, extends his wings and flaps them around making a real commotion until he finds the air stream. And then he glides free through space.” THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 2. Using Something Big One day Hui-tzu* said to Chuang-tzu, “The king of Wei gave me a seed from a huge gourd which I planted. When it grew the gourd was enormous. When I filled it with water it was so heavy that I couldn't even lift it. Then I cut it in half thinking that I could use it as a ladle but it wouldnt fit into any of my pots. So seeing it was absolutely useless I smashed it to pieces.” “You're pretty thick when it comes to using something big!” replied Chuang-tzu, “If it were me, I would have turned it into a boat and gone out floating across rivers and lakes rather than try to make it fit into some small pot.” Commentary When we're born we all receive something big. The seed that is given by the king of Wei represents the gift of life. It is called the gift of infinite possibility. It is the potential for the unfurling of great, unimaginable and wondrous things. PART I: POSSIBILITIES 3. Small Ponds Once upon a time Prince Jen took his fishing rod, put a huge hook on the end of the line and baited it with fifty oxen. Sitting on top of Mt. Tall he cast his line into the East Sea and waited. Day after day he sat there but even after a year nothing took the bait. Finally there was a tug on the line. A huge fish swallowed the bait and was running the line. Trying to get free the huge fish plunged for the depths and then just as suddenly rose up towards the sky. The sea churned and fumed as if hit by a hurricane whilst Prince Jen hung on for dear life. Finally the fish was subdued. Prince Jen reeled it in and chopped it into pieces sharing it with all across the country so that no one went hungry. Since that time people have repeated this tale over and over. Yet people continue to cast their lines in small ponds and ditches and go after minnows. Honestly, how can you expect to catch a big fish like that? Commentary Minnows are small things. But a big fish is a great big thing. It is some- thing indescribably expansive. It has enormity. It has no limits. Have you ever observed trees? They are rooted in the earth but see how they reach for the sky. They reach up towards the light. It is the organic process of life itself. Growth is the movement of expansion. Openness and freedom are the nutrients. THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON 4. Crooked Chu Let me tell you about Crooked Chu. Bent over double his chin almost touches his belly-button. His shoulders look down on his head and his pigtail points up at the sky. His intestines are bulging out of his back and you can hardly tell apart his thighs from his ribs. He’s a real sight! He does a little bit of helping out with this and that and for that he never goes hungry. And with a little bit of fortune-telling on the side he can make more in a day than others can make in a fortnight. When the authorities are rounding up soldiers to fight, he’s there in the main square with his sleeves rolled up. And he’s there again waving them off when they leave. When there’s construction work to be done on some project Crooked Chu is there but they don’t want him. When they’re handing out food to the needy he gets three bags of rice and ten bundles of firewood. Crooked Chu is not doing badly considering. Imagine what you could do if you tried. Commentary Who would want to be less than what he could be? We're only here for a short time. So why live half-heartedly? Why hold back? In the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine (Huangdi neijing suwen), Huang di says: I have heard that long ago there were natural people. Their knowledge was broad and their understanding was deep. ‘They stood straight like a pole between heaven and earth and held the universe in their hands. They knew how to balance yin and yang. They were directly connected to the life-force and their spirits were bright. Their body and mind was as one. PART |: POSSIBILITIES 5. Preparations When you go walking in the green woods for the day you carry enough for a picnic and then you don't come home hungry. If you’re intending to walk a hundred miles you prepare your provisions the night before. Now if you're thinking of going a thousand miles, you have to start to get in your provisions well before you go. Small understanding can't be compared to big understanding. And those who are in a hurry will never go the distance. Commentary Slow cooking makes for the best flavour. Good things take time. Big things start with small things. In verse 64 of the Dao de jing Lao-tzu says: A nine storey building starts with one brick. A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step. Part II: The Mysterious You can divide this into that and then add this and subtract that and finally multiply it all by your shoelaces. What do you get? The same thing you started with. Mystery of mysteries. PART Il: THE MYSTERIOUS 6. Gateway to Mystery In the beginning of things there was non-being and this non-being had no name. And out of this non-being there arose being. This being had no form. Things got hold of being and it came to life and so it is called the creative. Before things became things they were potentials. This potentiality was also without form and yet it contained the imprint of all the forms that might be. And out of these potentials things were born. They had particular shapes and forms, each with their own charac- teristics as the expression of their essential nature. If the essential nature is cultivated it returns to the creative. When the creative is complete it becomes identical to the beginning of things. Being identical with the beginning of things it is empty and being empty it is full. Commentary Whatever has a beginning has an end. But what can we say about some- thing that has no beginning? Talking about where things have come from is always a bit tricky. I mean there’s always the chance that you could be wrong. Still, in Chapter 2 of the Dao de jing it is stated: Dao brought forth the One. The One brought forth the Two. The Two brought forth the Three. The Three brought forth the ten thousand things. S4i THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 7. Always a Beginning People like to talk of beginnings. And so there is always a beginning. Before that beginning there was a beginning. And before that beginning there was another beginning. And before that an even earlier beginning. In the same way, people like to talk of being and what came before that. They say before being there was non-being. And before non-being there was before non-being. And before that there was before before non-being. But when it comes to all this business I’m really not too sure which is being and which is non-being.° Commentary People look for the beginning of things in time. But real beginnings can never be found there. Do you ever listen to the sound of life waking up? If you listen, just around dawn you will hear the very first bird sing. It’s a delight. Every morning is the beautiful first morning of creation. Every day is a brand new beginning. Every day is a new journey around the sun. The found- ing emperor of the Shang Dynasty (c.1766 BCE) had engraved in his bath-house the following: Renew yourself afresh each day; Make yourself always new.’ = 120 = PART Il: THE MYSTERIOUS 8. Who Creates All This Joy? How does it all work? Does the earth turn or is it everything else that moves? Do the sun and the moon try to outshine each other? Or do you think that they get along? Who makes the whole circus run? Who pulls the strings? Who pushes the buttons? Is there some sort of spring mechanism that keeps it all going round? Maybe it has all got so used to going round and round that it has forgotten how to stop? Do the clouds make the rain? Or is it the rain that makes the clouds? Who pufts up the clouds like that? And who tells them where to drop their rain? Who huffs and pufts and makes the wind blow? Who makes the clouds blow this way and that like they do? Who creates all this joy? Commentary Have you looked around recently? Who designed all this? Who is it that pulls the levers? Who is it that oils the moving bits and keeps it all from breaking down? Everything hisses and buzzes and whirs and rattles and hums. It’s a symphony of mesmerizing unstoppable movement. If you're looking for miracles, here it is.® 2434 THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 9. Mysterious Working of Things The way things work is mysterious indeed. When a seed lands in the water it might become a grape-vine. If it lands on the water’s edge it could turn into a frog’s robe. On the other hand if it sprouts on the hillside it might turn into something that looks like a hanging shoe. If the hanging shoe is left there then it might turn into a crow’s foot. Then a caterpillar might move in under the crow’s foot. One day the cater- pillar might turn into a butterfly and he flies in your kitchen window and hides behind the stove. After a while he turns into something that looks like a snake. After a period of time the snake turns into a kind of small flying bird called a drizabone which flies back out your window. The drizabone flits around for a while but soon runs out of gas and crash lands in the pond where he gets gobbled up by a little yellow fish who sees his reflection on the surface. Now this is far from the end of the tale. Whilst the little yellow fish is congratulating himself on his catch he gets picked up by a sparrow. ‘The sparrow turns into a magpie who picks up all sorts of strange things and then leaves seeds all around your garden. Out of the seeds comes some bamboo. The bamboo sprouts next to the cabbage plant which gives birth to tigers who like bamboo. Tigers in the end make donkeys and donkeys produce monkeys and they turn into people. People plant more cabbage plants and so it goes on. All things come from mystery and return to mystery. Commentary All things turn into something else. Who knows what you might turn into next>? Ge Hong (283-342 CE) who compiled the work called the Sage who Embraces Simplicity (Pao pu tzu) wrote: ~14- PART Il: THE MYSTERIOUS To suggest that all beings follow exactly the same trajec- tory of transformation does not make sense. A pheasant may turn into an oyster. A sparrow might become a clam. A caterpillar might acquire wings. An oyster might turn into a frog and a frog might yet fly. oe THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 10. Filling up and Emptying Out The thing that allows things to be things is not limited by things. All things have their limits and so they are regarded as limited things. Yet all things regarded as limited things are also unlimited. People talk about filling up and emptying out. And they talk about the decay and disap- pearance of things. The Who Knows What fills things up and empties them out without itself either filling up or emptying out. Likewise it knows neither decay nor disappearance. It allows for causes and effects but it is without cause or effect itself. It allows for accumulation and dispersal but itself can be neither accumulated nor dispersed. Commentary Things keep miraculously appearing and disappearing. Come rain or shine and even when it’s snowing outside, the postman keeps delivering the parcels from the warehouse in the sky. There could be nothing at all but instead there is this banquet we call life. It is startling is it not? Is it not a miracle? Have you ever walked the trails in early spring? It’s the best time. ‘The earth is overflowing with life. It is bursting with the sheer abandon of delight. Pink wildflowers carpet the ground. There’s white bliss with yellow eyes like big daisies. There are yellow buttons and purple pride. There are emerald fountains, green dreams, blueberry ash, grevillea coconut ice, little robins, woolly bears, snake vines, pink cascades, frosty tops, lime tufts, blue violet, pink champagne and grey myrtle. Who creates all this overflowing cascade of abundant joy? Who creates all this heaven? 2.16. Part Ill: Looking for Joy We are not born into this world to find unhappiness. We come here to discover joy. PART Ill: LOOKING FOR JOY 11. Joy In this world is there such a thing as a joy that is complete? Is it possible to live fully in this body and experience the joy of being alive? Is it possible to find innate delight? How are we to find it? What should we do? What should we avoid? What should we pick up? What should we put down? Commentary Joy and delight are like wild apples. They taste best picked straight off the tree. Over two thousand years ago, Chuang-tzu asked the fundamental ques- tion for both the individual and the human race. How should we live in this world? How can we live as a human being in a relationship of harmony and completeness with the earth and the cosmos? How can we live in a way where we find complete fulfilment in the very act of living itself? —~19 — THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 12. What People Want What people want above all else is happiness. The things that people of the world look for happiness in are wealth, reputation, importance, power and long life. People generally revere such things and when they see others with them, then they say to themselves, “Hey, that’s exactly what I want for myself!” A life of comfort, good food, fine clothes and good scenery is what they wish for. What they don't like is poverty, low status, being a nobody and a short life. To get hold of these things that bring happiness, it is as though almost nothing is too much trouble. To attain wealth they scheme and calculate until they’ve piled up such a mountain of useless things that they'll never be able to use them themselves. To attain reputation and power they contort themselves into strange shapes and bow and scrape whilst they try to climb up the slippery slope. Yet one small loss of footing and they find themselves right down the bottom again exactly where they started. To attain long life they worry about their health and take all kinds of steps to lengthen it. Yet the more they worry about it and strive after this and that the shorter it gets. Commentary Why stand at the end of the queue for the bus that goes to unhappi- ness?! Lao-tzu says in verse 46 of the Dao de jing: ‘There’s no greater misfortune than discontentment; And there’s no greater disaster than desiring what you don't have. The one who is content with contentment Will never be lacking in anything. — 20 - PART Ill: LOOKING FOR JOY 13. No Turning Around The clever person is not happy unless he has something to be clever about. The debater is not happy without something to debate. The intel- lectual is not satisfied unless he has something to analyse. Those who like attention can’t wait to jump on the stage. Those who feel indispensable run for public office. Men with bulging muscles have to demonstrate how many push ups they can do. People of bravery can’t wait to put on their armour and grab their sword. Legislators long for more rules to make. The pious like to dress up in full regalia. The farmer is not content unless he has some seeds to plant. The merchant is not content unless he has something to sell. The artisan is not happy unless he has a piece of wood to carve. The engineer is not happy unless he has some gadget to play with. The ambitious man is not happy without a promotion. The man of accounts is not happy unless there is a profit on his ledger. People are the servants of circumstance. They just can’t wait to make themselves useful. Driving themselves on like this they wear themselves out day after day. There’s just no turning around. Commentary Preoccupied you can go through life without ever actually noticing that youre alive. If you don't turn around you wont see it. If you notice the beauty of it then you are alive and awake. There is no formula. There’s no system. There is no technique. 7) THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 14. That’s People for You When people sleep their spirits go out restlessly travelling here and there. When they wake up they immediately start running around doing this and that from morning ‘til night. Day in and day out they get involved in all kinds of schemes. When things go their way they make grand gestures. When things go against them they resent it and get mean. In the background there are always worries about something. Some worries are small and niggly. Some are so big and heavy that it’s like carrying ten tonnes of rocks on your head. People are always on the ready to fire off a missile or two. When- ever they hear something they don’t like they pull the trigger. Strangely they always seem to know exactly who's right and who’s wrong. And somehow they’re always right. People are peculiar all right. Once they get set in their ways, there’s no turning back. Once they start digging they just can’t stop until they find themselves right at the bottom of their own dark hole. That’s people for you! Commentary If by mistake you jump on the wrong bus you end up somewhere you never wanted to go in the first place. As Lao-tzu says in verse 46 of the Dao de jing: When things are in accord with the Way Then horses graze contentedly in the pastures. When things get restless Then the cavalry goes galloping through the streets. = 0. PART Ill: LOOKING FOR JOY 15. Not What You Want to Hear People do all kinds of things and then they claim to be happy and ful- filled. But whether they are or not, I cannot honestly say. I see them making a mad dash for the happiness that they see in front of them. They race around with great haste as though this happiness will dis- appear if they don't run faster. They say that these things make them happy. I’m not one to argue with anyone. ‘The way I see it, joy is not something that you find by chasing after it. In fact it seems to me that the more you chase after it, the further away it gets. I suspect that the less that you chase after it, the closer you will get to it. But I’m not at all sure that this is something that people would like to hear. Let me put this another way so that you'll understand me. Heaven (yin) is inactive and yet it is luminous. Earth (yang) is active and yet it is tranquil. When Heaven and Earth combine and interpenetrate then the joy of life is born. How amazing it is! Inaction combines with action and there you have the birth of abundance and innate joy. Mysteriously and amazingly it appears out of nowhere. There is no place that it comes from. Heaven and Earth do nothing and yet when they combine all is complete just as it is. Commentary Joy is always now. Joy does not cost anything. But who puts any value on a thing that is absolutely free? There’s nothing to practice. There’s no position to hold. As Lao-tzu explains in verse 32 of the Dao de jing: a.93 = EE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN Heaven and earth combine And sweet rain falls. No one makes it so; Yet in abundance it showers down. ey ae TH ERNOON Part IV: The Hollow Spaces When you play a tune on a flute, it is the breath flowing through the instrument that produces the music. The tune that you make depends on the notes that you play. PART IV: THE HOLLOW SPAC Mm Cp) 16. Blowing Through the Hollow Spaces One day Master South Wall and Sideman Cheng were engaged in light-hearted banter. Said Master South Wall, “I’m sure you've heard the music of men but I bet you haven't heard the music of the earth. And if you have heard the music of the earth then I bet you haven't heard the music of heaven!” “What on earth are you talking about?” replied Sideman Cheng. “Well,” said Master South Wall, “the great clod" puffs out steam and we call it wind. When the wind doesn't blow then nothing happens. But as soon as this wind starts to blow through the ten thousand hollow spaces then the ten thousand hollow spaces start to wail and moan. You must have heard them yourself. All across the mountain woods, the tall trees bend and sway and the hollow spaces with shapes just like noses and mouths, ears and cups and jugs and ditches and holes and buckets and bathtubs sing out. They roar like thunder, whistle like arrows, screech like cats, gasp and moan and cry, howl like ghosts and warble like birds. They call out to each other. Some call out “yeeha” and the others reply “yahoo”. When the wind is blowing gently they sound like a soft melody and then when the wind picks up into a full force gale it’s a cacophony of noise. It’s like an orchestra blasting. And then when the wind has passed, the hollow spaces fall silent once again. Have you never noticed the constant swaying and shaking that goes on?” Commentary There’s always music playing. Sometimes it’s a brass band. Sometimes it’s a violin solo.” 97 = THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 17. The Music of Heaven “Ah,” said Sideman Cheng, “now I get it. So by the music of earth you mean the sound made by the hollow spaces and by the music of men you mean the sound of flutes and whistles. That’s all very well, but what then do you mean by the music of heaven?” Replied Master South Wall, “You're not very sharp today are you? It’s the masterful playing of the ten thousand things so that each thing makes its own sound and yet no one ever sees who it is that does the playing.” Commentary Have you ever listened to the conductor-less orchestra play? When the instruments are all in tune and playing together then the music of heaven plays. As the wind blows the sound of the leaves rustling on the trees massages your body. The sound of birds singing cleanses the inside of your mind. The sound of thunder rumbles through your spine. The sound of rain falling flows down like honey dripping from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet." — 28 - PART IV: THE HOLLOW SPAC Mm Cp) 18. Always Music Playing The music is always playing through the hollow spaces. There’s elat- edness and disappointment. Satisfaction and regret. Anger and worry, grasping and grabbing and pulling and pushing and doubtfulness and deceit. Then there’s fickleness and foolishness and liking and hating. And there’s woodenness and wilfulness, recklessness, thoughtfulness and thoughtlessness. You get the drift. This music seems to keep playing like mushrooms sprouting out of nowhere. Who knows where they come from? It’s enough that they’re there in the morning and they’re still there in the evening. Why not just leave them alone? Let them be. Without them where would we be? And without us where would they be? That’s about all you can say about it. I have no idea where they come from. It would seem that they have some sort of a master yet so far no one has seen him. He’s there, that’s for certain, but no one has ever seen his face. Commentary There’s no end to the tunes that a piano can play. Trying to control each note is not the best way to get the feel for the melody.'* As Lao-tzu says in verse 60 of the Dao de jing: It’s best to rule a big country As you would fry small fish. 299 Part V: Following Nature Just as a dandelion is bound to give expression to dandelion- ness, you are bound to give expression to you-ness. PART V: FOLLOWING NATURE 19. Fate and Destiny In this world there are two things you can't change. The first is fate and the second is destiny. Where and to whom you are born is fate. You have no choice. There’s nothing you can do about it. Destiny means that what you are bound to do, you must do. Inner proclivity is brought with you. There’s nothing you can do about it. It is an inborn requirement. So these two, fate and destiny, they are called the two great non-negotia- bles. There is no way that you can escape from them. Commentary There are lots of different coloured crayons in the colouring box. No two people are the same. Each is born with their own destiny (ming). Each person is born with his or her own nature or energetic signature. Just as each seed will unfold a different tree, each person will unfold something different.’ As Ge Hong (283-342 CE) observes: Of all living beings there are none that express the range of capacities to the extent that human beings do. We might expect that a being that contains such potential for the expression of intelligence to be all the same but that is not the case. Human beings differ amongst themselves as much as ice and fire. The differences in clarity and torpidity of mind, alertness and dullness, brightness and stupidity and humanity and inhumanity are as different as heaven and earth. = 33 2 THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 20. Naturalness When you follow what’s natural you don’t need to worry about using the compass and square to line things up. You don’t need to use glue and lacquer to make things stack up. You don't need to use ropes and pulleys to lever things into position. All those forced bendings and twistings of convention, manufac- tured smiles and good intentions which are intended to reassure, bit by bit just destroy what is natural. Commentary How will you ever get a square peg to go into a round hole? Everyone arrives here with something different. So each must find his or her own leaning; his or her own intrinsic nature. To give expression to this inner dimension is to follow one’s nature. Not forcing there is naturalness. The Yellow Court Scripture (Huang Ting-jing) says: Go beyond yourself and fly; That’s how you enter heaven. If you can follow your inner-nature, then, as Chuang-tzu says, you don't need to use glue and lacquer to make things stack up. You don't need to use ropes and pulleys to lever things into position. Isn't this beautiful? = 34. PART V: FOLLOWING NATURE 21. Doing What It Does Lao-tzu said to Confucius, “Once you realize the innate value in your own life you will lose all interest in the superficial interests and pursuits of gain and fame. Flowing along with what’s natural to you, you will do whatever you must do. Why should you be anxious about gain or loss or what might befall you>” Confucius said, “This is indeed a valuable teaching. This is a valuable practice to be cultivated.” Replied Lao-tzu, “I don't think you understand. When water goes downhill, its inherent nature is to flow. There is no deliberation involved. What is there for water to cultivate? It is simply doing what it does.” Commentary When you pick a ripe orange from the tree, it’s already sweet. You don't need to add sugar. Water flows downhill. That’s what it’s supposed to do. The nature of life and living is to give expression to itself. This is called ¢zu-jan or naturally flowing. Doing what you are supposed to do in an uncontrived way with an open heart and mind is following nature or the innate. In verse 37 of the Dao de jing, Lao-tzu says: The Way is always free of contrivance; It allows things to unfold naturally. —- 35 - Part VI: Loosening the Noose When you've got your necktie on too tight it’s hard to breathe. Buying a new pair of shoes won't relieve the tightness. You have to loosen the necktie. PART VI: LOOSENING THE NOOSE 22. No Let Up As soon as a person gets given a body, there’s just no let up. He starts to tangle with things. He starts all this business of pushing and pulling things around. He goes off galloping out of control like a horse with his tail on fire. Nothing can stop him. Someone puts some idea in his head and then he labours away grunting and sweating to accomplish something that he’s been told he must accomplish. He exhausts himself without rest. He says, “Look I’m doing fine! I'll get there. I’m not quite dead yet!” But to what avail is it allP Am I the only one who feels bewil- dered by all this? Commentary Some people consider life to be a battlefield. But if you want to eat ice-cream don't follow the soldiers to the battlefield. In the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine (Huangdi neijing suwen), the Yellow Emperor says: In the past people followed the natural way of living. They understood the principle of balance and of harmonizing yin and yang. They avoided overtaxing their bodies and minds and they refrained from excess. These days people have changed how they live. They engage in destructive activities and drain their vital essence. They don’t know how to conserve their vitality. They seek emotional excite- ments and transient pleasures and disregard the natural order and rhythm of the cosmos. They fail to harmonize the way they live. Is it any wonder that by the age of fifty they are worn out and ready for death? — 39 — THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 25. Fortune In the old days when wise people talked about the fulfilment of ambi- tion, they weren't referring to the accumulation of expensive houses or the receiving of awards. They meant fulfilment in joy. They meant an innate joy that is complete so that there is no need to add anything to it. Now it might be the case that good things and recognition come your way. If they come you can't keep them from coming. And when they go, you cant keep them from going. But the joy the wise ancestors were talking about is a joy that neither arrives nor departs. It’s a joy that keeps on bubbling up. Commentary When the heart and mind is open the ice-cream man comes to park his van in your street. One is exactly what one makes oneself. One paints one’s own destiny. ‘The boat going through the water creates its own wake. Good fortune and misfortune are created by oneself. In the Treatise on Action and Ret- ribution it is stated: Good fortune and misfortune are not arbitrary. People create such things for themselves. They are like your shadow that follows you wherever you go. —~ 40 — PART VI: LOOSENING THE NOOSE 24. Hiding the World in the World You might well hide your boat in a ravine or your fishing net in a marsh and think that they are perfectly safe there. But in the middle of the night whilst you are fast asleep someone could easily find them and carry them off. In your bewilderment you can’t understand it. You think that by hiding something small in something big that it’ll be safe. But still things get away from you. Now if you had some sense, you would give up this stupid approach. Why not hide the world in the world? Then there’s no possibility of losing anything. After all, where could it be taken to? Commentary Day and night the furniture removalists keep on carrying everything away. Is there any sense in trying to manufacture certainty out of the uncer- tain? Isn’t it rather like parking your boat in the middle of the ocean and throwing out your anchor on a short piece of string? ~41- THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 25. Piling up Treasure In life people take precautions. There are always common thieves around who would enter your house, steal your money and ransack your precious possessions. So people keep their doors locked and bolted. They put their treasures in chests and the chests in vaults and keep them under padlock and chain. This is called the everyday wisdom of the world. But when a really great thief comes along he won't be deterred. He will pick the locks and cut through the chains without batting an eye. So really arent you just piling up all your treasures for the great thief who's sure to come along one day? Commentary Heavy treasures are awkward to carry with you when you have to move. As everybody knows, there’s no one whose house the great thief doesn't visit in the end. But in verse 67 of the Dao de jing, Lao-tzu says: I have three treasures That I always pile up. ‘The first is love. ‘The second is contentment. And the third is standing behind. Because of love there is fearlessness. Because of contentment there is generosity. Because of standing behind one moves ahead. = AD. = PART VI: LOOSENING THE NOOSE 26. Don’t Be a Clothes Hanger Dont be clothes hanger for fame. Don't be a warehouse for ideas. Don't be a developer of projects. Don't be a repository of wise sayings. Open yourself up to what has no limit. Wander freely without following paths. Absorb the bounty of the cosmos but don't imagine that you've gotten your hands on anything. Commentary Everyone desires freedom. It’s just not always quite apparent what it is.'° If you don’t make any rules, there are no rules to break. In verse 22 of the Dao de jing, Lao-tzu says: To yield is to stand firm. To bend is to become straight. To be empty is to be full. To give to be replenished. To own little is to have much. To have much is to be weighed down. —~ 43 - Part VII: Balancing on One Wheel If you want to ride a one wheel bicycle the trick is not to lean too much either to the left or to the right. PART Vil: BALANCING ON ON WH 27. Excess Balance brings prosperity and good fortune. Excess causes harm. This applies to all situations but hardly more so than when it comes to the delicate matter of wealth. ‘The ears of the rich person are filled with the noise of music and dance from morning to night. The mouth is stuffed full with meat and wine until he can’t cram more in. Before he knows it he’s overcome with sleep and has forgotten even what day it is. This is called confusion. His passions inflamed he’s like a donkey with a heavy load on his back going uphill. This is called suffering. Amassing huge profits, no matter how big the pile of money sitting in his bank account, it still isn’t enough for him. Driven by his lust for power and influence he drives himself to exhaustion. Finally falling ill he dives into the pit of darkest depression and can’t work out why. This is called disease. His house is gauche and it’s bursting at the seams with kitsch. He has more useless things in it than he can ever make use of. And yet, not knowing how to stop, he wants even more. His mind can't rest for a moment. This is called captivity. At home with all his accumulated junk he starts to fear that robbers might break in and take it all away. So he builds a huge wall around his house and barricades himself in. This is called anxiety. When he goes outside he feels frightened that bandits might take him hostage. This is called fear. Together confusion, suffering, disease, captivity, anxiety and fear spell one word: disaster. Commentary Twenty jam doughnuts on one plate. Now that’s a lot of jam doughnuts. a AF ERNOON THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF Everybody gets indigestion sometimes. But bad taste is just inexcusable. As Lao-tzu says in verse 9 of the Dao de jing: Stretch a bow too far And you'll wish that youd stopped in time. Sharpen the knife too much And it won't stay sharp for long. Fill your halls with gold and jade And you wont be able to keep the robbers out. Amass great wealth and prestige And your downfall will be assured."” = AS PART Vil: BALANCING ON ON WH 28. The Beautiful and the Ugly When Master Yang was travelling on his way to Sung, he stopped over to spend the night in an inn. The innkeeper had two barmaids. One was beautiful and the other was ugly. The ugly one was treated with great respect whereas the beautiful one was treated with disdain. When Master Yang asked the reason, the innkeeper explained, “The beautiful one is conscious of her beauty and so we don’t think of her as beautiful. The ugly one is conscious of her ugliness so we don't think of her as ugly.” Commentary Imagine a see-saw in the playground. There’s a little girl on one end and a little boy on the other end and they keep going up and down. The beautiful girl represents the positive. The ugly girl represents the negative. Everything is a flux of the positive and negative, yin and yang. You can't have one without the other. In life it is necessary to balance them out against each other. When a boat has a hole in it, it starts to take on water and lists to one side. If it’s sailing lopsidedly it can't cut through the water cleanly. But when it’s balanced there’s smooth sailing.'8 In the Huai-nan tzu written in the second century BCE it is stated: Spirit is from heaven (yang) whilst the body of material form (yin) is of the earth. The joy of unity depends on the balancing of yin and yang. —~ 49 — THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 29. Never Satisfied Hui-tzu said to Chuang-tzu, “Is it really possible for a person to be without feelings?” “Yes of course,” replied Chuang-tzu. “But if he is without feelings how can you call him human?” asked Hui-tzu. “The Who Knows What gives everybody a face and a character, so why can't he be human?” replied Chuang-tzu. “But if you say he’s a person, then how can he be without feelings? That’s not human,” said Hui-tzu. Replied Chuang-tzu, “That’s not what I mean by without feelings. What I mean is that he doesn’t let his likes and dislikes get in his way. He allows things to be the way they are and he doesn’t try to push things out of the way.” “Tf he doesn't try to change things, then how does he get by?” asked Hui-tzu. Replied Chuang-tzu, “The Who Knows What gave him a face and a character. He just doesn’t twist himself out of shape over good and bad and liking and disliking things. Now, take you for example. You don't know how to look after yourself. You wear yourself out morning to night with liking and disliking things and trying to push and pull things this way and that. You moan and groan and are never content. Despite all that the Who Knows What delivers to your door, there’s no gratitude at all in you and you are just never satisfied.” Commentary The apple tree produces so many apples yet they are somehow never enough. = 506 PART Vil: BALANCING ON ON WH The cosmos is a web of relationship. So to find one’s own inner balance is to find one’s balance within the whole. Accordingly it is said that when the heart-mind is settled within itself then there is cosmic balance. In the Yellow Emperor’ Classic of Internal Medicine it is stated: Those who understand the principles of living in balance cultivate their minds and wisdom. They do not use force on themselves or others. They know contentment and therefore live in harmony. This is the natural way of the ancients." ee Part VIII: Strategizing How many ways are there to boil an egg? When it comes to strategies there’s no end to human inventiveness. PART VIII: STRATEGIZING 30. Fixing Someone Else’s Mess > One day Yen Hui” went to see Confucius” and said, “I’m going to Wei.’ “What are you going there for?” asked Confucius. Replied Yen Hui, “There’s a young upstart ruler there who can’t see wrong from right. The whole place is an absolute mess and things are getting out of control. So I’m going there to fix things up.” “That’s generous of you,” said Confucius, “you'll probably just get your head chopped off for your trouble. Haven't you heard that when you interfere and try to stop a fight it’s usually you that ends up with a black eye. It used to be the case that people would make sure they had the goods themselves before they offered to sell them to others. If you’re not too sure about whether you've got your hands on the goods or not, why do you want to go running around to fix up someone else’s mess?” Commentary When you try to stop a fight it’s easy to end up on the ground yourself. How do you deal with a troublesome tyrant?” In the Ancient Classic on Needle Therapy (Huang di nei jing ling shu) it is stated: ‘The best practitioner initiates a cure where there is no disease yet. He does not cure where there is already disease. —- 55 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 31. Chasing Applause Confucius said to Yen Hui, “Do you know what it is that poisons a perfectly good man>” “No, what?” asked Yen Hui. Replied Confucius, “It’s reputation and cleverness. Chasing ap- plause is like beating yourself on the head with a club. Showing people just how much you know is like standing naked in the ring and asking to be punched. It’s sure to end in a nasty confrontation. Running around offering to improve someone else’s complexion is really just a way of showing how good you think yours is. It’s only going to end badly.” Commentary Pointing your finger at the pimple on someone else’s nose is a great way to deflect attention away from your own. How do you flatten the ripples on a pond? In the Ancient Classic on Needle Therapy (Huang di nei jing ling shu) it is stated: Knowing how an adjustment can be made is useful; Not knowing how to make adjustments is harmful. —- 56 - PART VIII: STRATEGIZING 32. Serious Business Confucius said to Yen Hui, “I can see you've got some plan up your sleeve. Come, tell me what it is.” Replied Yen Hui, “How did you know? I do actually.” “What is it?” asked Confucius. “Well,” said Yen Hui, “I’m going to get serious, adopt a grave de- meanor and be absolutely uncompromising. That way he will see that I mean business and he’ll follow exactly what I say.” “Goodness me!” laughed Confucius, “You've really outdone yourself. You may well put on a good show by wearing a dark suit but eventually he’ll notice that wobbly leg of yours.” Commentary If you want to be alive then don’t call the undertaker. Some people take a hard line. They try to strong-arm the little tyrant into submission by adopting a very serious and determined approach. They grit their teeth, close their eyes, block up their ears and padlock their door. They even refuse to laugh at a good joke. i BF st THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON 33. Reasoning with Him The next day Yen Hui came to Confucius and said, “All right, you didn't like my last proposal. Do you want to hear my new strategy?” “Yes, why not?” replied Confucius. “Well,” said Yen Hui, “this is what Ill do. PI befriend him. Ill pretend outwardly to go along with him. I'll adopt the decorum of court life and then Pll reason with him and get him to listen to me. That way Pll change him.” Replied Confucius, “Goodness! Youre really full of strategies today! ‘That is creative, I must say. But you still don’t get it. You might well keep him under control a little and stop him from rampaging around for a while but that’s as far as you'll get.” Commentary Only a madman sends in a madman to cure a madman. Strategizing leads to more strategizing. Complexity brings the profu- sion of further complexity. If you move the furniture around, the little tyrant will just change the chair he’s sitting in. 2665 PART VIII: STRATEGIZING 34. Listening Yen Hui said to Confucius, “I’m all out of ideas. What should I do? You have to help me out.” “Ok,” said Confucius, “as long as you are in the way whatever you try wont work. I'll give you a hint. You have to try going without.” * “Oh,” replied Yen Hui, “I haven't had a good dinner with a nice drop of wine to wash it down for a couple of days now. Does that count?” “No. That’s not what I’m talking about,” replied Confucius. “Can you explain what you mean by going without then?” asked Yen Hui. Replied Confucius, “You must unify the heart-mind. On the one hand there’s listening with the ears. On the other there is listening with the mind. But beyond both there is listening with your spirit.** What do I mean by this? Listening with the ears only goes as far as hearing sounds. Listening with the mind goes only as far as a superficial un- derstanding of things. But the spirit is spacious, empty” and aware and intuits all things. The Way is born in openness. Opening the heart-mind is what I mean by going without. It’s also called getting yourself out of the way.” Said Yen Hui, “Before I heard about all this, I thought I was Yen Hui. Now I can see that the I that I thought I was is not I.” Commentary One cannot expect to hear anything if one doesn’t listen. Everyone hears what they want to hear. But what is the sound of no sound?° —- 59 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 35. Reaching Deeper Yen Hui asked Confucius, “So is that all there is to it?” Replied Confucius, “That’s it. Go and sing and dance in the bird- cage’ but don't look for applause. If someone asks you then you can tell. But don't make a habit of talking out of turn. Keep on reaching deeper into the beginning of things and you'll be well on your way.” Yen Hui asked, “Is there any more?” Replied Confucius, “Yes, one more thing. Walking is easy, but to walk without touching the ground is difficult.” Commentary One note rings out constantly across the universe. A string of pearls hangs suspended from the sky. If you hold out your hand to try to grab a raindrop falling then you miss the next one. When you go lightly there’s no need to touch the ground.”* — 60 —- PART VIII: STRATEGIZING 36. Leave the World Outside Confucius continued, “People know about flying with wings, but they’ve never heard of flying without wings. People know all about knowing through knowing but have never heard of knowing without knowing. Spend some time in the chamber where brightness is born. Leave the world outside and rest in the beginning of things. Prosperity comes to the person who is patient.” Commentary If one can leave the world at one’s doorstep what else is there to be done? In listening one returns to the beginning of things. The beginning of things is always now.” ae a ee THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON 37. Some Progress Some time after Yen Hui met with Confucius and said, “I think ’m getting the hang of it.” Confucius asked, “What on earth do you mean?” Replied Yen Hui, “I’ve forgotten all about trying to be proper and upright.” Said Confucius, “That’s a good start. But you're still not there yet!” A while later Yen Hui met with Confucius again and said, “I think I’m getting the hang of it.” Confucius asked, “What on earth do you mean?” Replied Yen Hui, “I’ve forgotten all about conforming with conven- tional ideas and beliefs.” Said Confucius, “That’s progress. But you're still not there yet!” Commentary Progress is always a matter of measurement. It’s that counting of the steps and wondering how many more are left to go.*° There is an old Chinese saying: When you start climbing a mountain, you don't keep asking how high it is. =60.= PART VIII: STRATEGIZING 38. Forgetting about Everything Some more time went by and then Yen Hui met with Confucius and said, “I think I’m getting the hang of it.” Confucius asked, “What on earth do you mean?” Replied Yen Hui, “I’ve forgotten about everything.”*" Said Confucius, “What do you mean you've forgotten about every- thing?” Replied Yen Hui, “When I sit down, I don’t try to do anything and I dont try to not do anything. Before long I forget body and mind. And then after that I completely blend into the Who Knows What. That’s what I mean about forgetting all about everything.” Said Confucius, “Well, this time you've really surprised me. From now on [Il have to start carrying your bags for you.” Commentary When there’s no more measuring then there’s no longer the need to talk about progress. Constantly arriving one arrives, so one has nowhere to arrive to.*” In the Inner Training chapter of the Guanzi*® it is stated: When you open your mind and let go And relax your body so that energy expands; Then the body at ease and unmoving You will rest in wholeness. Profit and loss won't entice you And fears won't disturb you. You will be relaxed and unbounded Yet awake and alert in inner silence. 263-2 Part |X: Words There are all kinds of words. Big ones and little ones. Short ones and long ones. Nice ones and nasty ones. There are whole worlds made out of words. PART IX: WORDS 39. Words Are words just hot air? Do they have anything meaningful to say? If what they refer to is not actually screwed down and keeps on chang- ing, then is there anything worthwhile that they can describe? Some say “yes” to this. Others say “no” to that. What one person calls right, another declares to be wrong. And so some people say that all talk is useless. They say that it’s no better than the chirping of birds. But come now, let’s not take sides. Surely it all depends on what you have to say?** Commentary If you could collect all the words in the world, how many bags could you fill? Words are the articulation of thoughts. But what are thoughts? They seem to appear out of nowhere. They fly around like flies buzzing around your head. Sometimes if you go out with your net, you can catch thoughts. You can catch them just like fish. And just like fish there are so many different kinds. Have you ever sat there with your net? Have you ever caught a thought? a THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 40. Now That’s Stupidity Knowledge is limited but understanding is not. To try to understand the unlimited through the limited is craziness. But to do this and to consider it to be real understanding — now that’s just stupidity. Commentary Thoughts can be contagious. You can catch these things from others if you're not careful. Every thought comes from somewhere. Every thought goes somewhere. Put lots of them together and you have what is called knowledge. In verse 48 of the Dao de jing, Lao-tzu says: ‘The person who pursues knowledge Accumulates more and more each day. The one who follows the Way Day by day forgets what he knows. — 68 - PART IX: WORDS 41. Frog in a well It’s not possible to discuss the ocean with a frog in a well. He’s never been outside of his well. You can't talk about the snow in winter with a summer insect. He has never flown outside of summer. And you can't talk about the Who Knows What with an intellectual. He’s never looked beyond the limits of his own narrow ideas. Commentary Sometimes thoughts get in the way. They can be like a truck that’s broken down in the street and is blocking the road so no one can get past. The more narrow and fixed ideas that one holds about things, the harder it is to see how things are. Chuang-tzu says: When there is nothing obstructing the eye, it sees clearly. When nothing blocks the ear, it hears without impedi- ment. When the nose is not blocked it smells perfectly well. When the mouth is not full it can taste well. When the mind is empty it can receive. When knowing is not obstructed one is attuned to the Way. The Way should not be blocked. When it’s blocked it’s like being constricted with something heavy on your chest. — 69 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 42. Limitation People who live in the world are like travellers. One day they stop over at this inn. And the next day they stop over at that inn. They understand the things that are familiar to them but have no interest in those things which are unfamiliar. They know how to do the things they can do but have no interest in the things that they can't do. To confine one’s under- standing to what one already knows, isn't that rather limiting? Commentary Thoughts can go anywhere. They can travel across oceans and they can go through walls too. Probably there’s nowhere they can't go. Knowing can take many forms. Everything one experiences is a form of knowing. One’s experience is like a kaleidoscope of a billion colours. Whatever the mind’s gaze is turned towards is enlivened in conscious- ness. So whichever way one turns that is what one will see. — 70 - PART IX: WORDS 43. Fish and Fish Traps The whole point of a fish trap is to catch fish. Once you've got the fish you dont need the trap. The whole point of the rabbit snare is to catch the rabbit. Once you've got the rabbit, you don’t need the snare. It’s the same with words. The whole point of words is the meaning they convey. Once you've got the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a person who has forgotten words so that I can have a word with him? Commentary One day a man was out walking in the country. Passing by a signpost to the next village he picked it up and put it in his bag. Another man seeing this was rather perplexed and asked him what he was doing. He replied, “I’m taking it with me so that I don't lose my way.” Some people take photographs. They feel that their memory will let them down. So they take lots of photographs and then they never look at them. Some people take notes. They write things out and then store them away somewhere. Some people even collect quotes and the sayings of things that somebody important once said. They collect them as you would collect trinkets and put them on their mantle piece. It’s com- pletely ridiculous isn’t it? Before you know it you've got a whole suitcase of useless rubbish that you are carrying around on your back. a ie Part X: Knowing and Not KNOWING Some say they know. Some say they don’t know. Sometimes knowing is knowing that you don’t know. Sometimes not knowing is thinking that you know. PART X: KNOWING AND NOT KNOWING 44. Seeking Answers One day Know-all headed for the North Country. When he got to the black lake he climbed Tall Peak and there he ran into Silent Hu. He said, “I’m looking to get my hands on the Who Knows What. There’s just a few things I'd like to ask you about. First what kind of thinking do I need to do? Second what kind of ideas should I embrace? And third what kind of path do I have to follow?” Silent Hu didn't say anything. In fact he just didn’t even know what to say to him. Disappointed at not getting an answer, Know-all returned to the South. When he got to Bright Lake he climbed up to Halfway Pass where he ran into Madman Wen. He said, “I’m looking to get my hands on the Who Knows What. There’s just a few things I'd like to ask you about. First what kind of ideas should I embrace? Second what kind of techniques do I need to employ? And third what kind of path do I have to follow?” “Ah, I’ve got the answer for you,” said Madman Wen enthusiastically, “Just a minute and I'll tell you.” But just as he was about to tell Know-all what he wanted to know, he forgot what he was about to tell him. Commentary If you ask a wrong question how can you expect a right answer? Lao-tzu says in verse 47 of the Dao de jing: One can know the whole universe Without going out of one’s door. One can understand the Way Without even looking out of the window. The further away one travels The less one understands. is FE es THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 45. A Visit to the Yellow Emperor Coming back empty-handed Know-all was very disenchanted. So he returned to the imperial palace and sought an audience with the Yellow Emperor. When he was received by the Yellow Emperor, he said, “Tm looking to get my hands on the Who Knows What. There’s just a few things I’d like to ask you about. First what kind of ideas should I embrace? Second what kind of techniques do I need to employ? And third what kind of path do I have to follow?” The Yellow Emperor replied, “If you're after the Who Knows What then first you'll have to abandon the ideas business. Next you'll also have to forget about techniques. And finally if you're really after the Who Knows What you'll have to wander off the beaten track.” Commentary What is the right answer to a wrong question? In Chapter VI of the Chuang-tzu, Confucius says: There are those who wander freely beyond the boundary of convention whilst those like me are only free to walk within the boundaries. Ges PART X: KNOWING AND NOT KNOWING 46. Who’s Right? Know-all said to the Yellow Emperor, “I’ve just come back from running up and down the country where I met Silent Hu in the North and Madman Wen in the South. When I asked them the same questions they didn't have the faintest idea. Fortunately there’s at least the two of us who know the way things stand.” Replied the Yellow Emperor, “Those who know don't talk. Those who talk don't know. As to you and I, neither of us are even close.” Know-all said to the Yellow Emperor, “When I asked Silent Hu, he didn’t say anything. When I asked Madman Wen, he was going to say something but then he didn’t. When I asked you, you gave me the answer. So why do you say that you are nowhere near?” The Yellow Emperor replied, “Silent Hu is completely right because he doesn't know. Madman Wen is half right because he forgets. But you and I are nowhere near because we think we know.” When word got back to Madman Wen about all this he said, “This [? Yellow Emperor, he knows a thing or two Commentary Surely someone must know the way things stand? Lao-tzu says in verse 71 of the Dao de jing: To know that you don't know is best; To pretend to know when you don't is an illness. Only when you can see the illness Will you be free of it. a yee THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 47. Doing Less Every Day The Yellow Emperor said, “The Who Knows What doesn't yield to people’s demands. The Who Knows What can't be forced. So it is said that the person who understands does less doing every day. Each day he does less and less until he reaches the point where he does nothing. But in doing nothing, there is nothing that does not get done.” Commentary The only point of all that doing is to see that there is no point in it. In verse 38 of the Dao de jing it is stated: When inferior virtue acts There’s doing in the doing. When superior virtue acts There’s doing without any doing.** a Fe = Part XI: Perspectives When we experience something we experience something which is not something else. It is precisely because it is not something else that it is what it is. But what it actually is, is not always so clear. It all deobends on where you're standing. PART Xl: PERSPECTIVES 48. Whom Shall We Ask? Let’s suppose you and I have an argument. If you win and I lose, then are you necessarily right? Now if I win and you lose, are you necessarily wrong? Is one of us right and the other wrong? Or are we both right or are we both wrong? Now, if neither of us has the right answer, then does someone else have it? Shall we get someone who agrees with your opinion to decide? Or shall we get someone who agrees with me to decide? But if he already agrees with me then what is there for him to decide? So should we get someone who disagrees with both of us? But if he already disagrees with both of us then what would there be for him to decide? So then should we get someone who agrees with both of us to decide? But if he already agrees with both of us then how can there be something to decide? So then if you can’t decide and I can't decide and nor can anyone else, then who shall we ask? Commentary Heads I win, tails you lose. If even two people standing right next to each other don’t see exactly the same thing then if a third person comes along, is there any telling what he might see? As Lao-tzu says in verse 2 of the Dao de jing: Being and non-being create each other. Difficult and easy are relative to each other. Long and short define each other. High and low depend on each other. Before and after give rise to each other. —~ 81 —- THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 49. Right Is Not Right Listen to me. Right is not right. And is-so is not is-so. If right were always right then it would be so far away from not-right that there would be no possibility of an argument. If is-so is really so, then it would be so far away from not-so that there would never be anything to argue about. Forget all these distinctions. Pull down your walls. Take a leap into open space. Commentary Inside the apple hides the worm that is going to eat it. Yin flows into yang and yang flows into yin. Yin carries within it the seed of yang and yang carries within it the seed of yin. All positions depend on an opposite position. You can’t have a position without there being another position on the other side. Lao-tzu says in the Dao de jing: If you force your views too strongly; You will become exactly that which you oppose. = 82 = PART Xl: PERSPECTIVES 50. Perspective When we compare things, if we regard a thing as big because it has a certain bigness about it, then in the end there is nothing that is not big. Likewise, if we regard a thing as small because it has a certain smallness about it, then in the end there is nothing that is not small. If we can see that the earth is but a grain of sand and that the tip of a hair is like a mountain then we have understood this matter of perspective. Commentary If you look at an elephant from a yard away he looks big. But if you look at the same elephant from a mile away he looks small. The world is how you paint it. It’s how you see things. All perspectives are perspectives. All perspectives depend on where youre standing. Lao-tzu says in the Dao de jing: When people see some things as beautiful Other things become ugly. When people see some things as good Other things become bad. £793 2 THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON 51. Containing the Large in the Small Even when you consider the most knowledgeable person, what he knows can never compare with what he doesn't know. Likewise when you compare the lifetime that a person spends on this earth, it can hardly compare with all the time that he’s not here. Trying to contain the large in the small is futile. How do you expect to get anywhere like that? Commentary How can you illuminate the entire cosmos with a candle? If there is something then there’s always more. The more you know, the more you realize how much more there is that you don’t know. As Ch- uang-tzu says, “The biggest thing has no outside.” How are you going to fit it into your small ideas? = 94.= PART XI: PERSPECTIV IT n 52. When a Finger is Not a Finger To use a finger to point out that a finger is not a finger is not as effective as using a non-finger to demonstrate that a finger is not a finger. To use a horse to demonstrate that a horse is not a horse is not as effective as using a non-horse to show that a horse is not a horse. Heaven and earth are one finger. The ten-thousand things are one horse. Commentary Sometimes a finger is a finger and sometimes it’s not. A person may at once be a father, son, grandfather, grandson, brother, uncle, cousin, sinner, saint, friend, foe and none of them all at the same time. And so a thing becomes a thing because of all that it’s not. Take away all the things that it’s not and it wouldn't be the thing that it is. Take away the thing that it is and the entire cosmos would collapse. & Be THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 53. No End to Weighing-up There’s no end to weighing things up once you start. There’s no end to dividing this from that once you get going with it. So if you've got any sense you have to know where to draw the line. That means that you can see the near as the near and you can see the distant as the distant. You can recognize what is small without saying it’s insignificant. You can recognize what’s large without calling it cumbersome. Commentary If you cut up the flower you wont find the fragrance. The taste of wholeness is not found by dividing things up. As Ch- uang-tzu observes: If you look at things from the perspective of differences then no two things are the same. As anyone can see the liver and the kidney are as different as the states of Ch’u and Yueh. But if you look at things from the point of view of relatedness then the ten thousand things are all one wholeness. = 8672 PART Xl: PERSPECTIV IT n 54. One Plus One There is nothing in this world that is bigger than the tip of an autumn hair and Mt. Enormous is tiny.*” No one has ever lived longer than a dead infant and after seven hundred years Ancestor Tsu died young. All of heaven and earth were born when I was. Heaven, earth and I, we’re one. There. I’ve just told you. We're one. What more can I usefully say? By saying it, I’ve just added one on top of one and that makes two. If I keep talking that’ll make it three and we’ll be even further away. We can keep going like this and who knows where we'll end up? Commentary Because I am, the world is. Because the world is, I am.** One plus one equals one. One minus one equals one. Wholeness cannot be arrived at by intellectual rationalization. When microcosm and mac- rocosm or inner and outer vibrate in coherence there is no separation. No-separation is love. SBP a Part XII: Walking Two Ways at Once A man sets off for the market and comes to a fork in the road. There’s a sign pointing one way and a sign pointing the other way. Both signs are pointing to the market. PART XII: WALKING TWO WAYS AT ONC 55. This or That Wherever you go, people talk about “this” or “that”. Sometimes things are this and sometimes things are that. People like to say that this comes from that and that is because of this. But when you look closer you find that this is this because of that and that is that because of this. Take away either this or that and you wont find either this or that. When you say that something is agreeable that means that something else must be disagreeable. When you say that something is right it means that there must be something wrong. You wont’ find one without the other. So if you're awake you won’ get drawn into this business of right or wrong and this or that. Commentary A stick wouldn't be a stick if it didn't have two ends. Life itself is the expression of opposites.*’ In explanation of walking two ways at once it is said: Find stillness in movement; Experience movement in stillness.” Ea° ae THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 56. It All Depends If youre awake you won't get yourself into a muddle over “this” and “that”. That’s because this is not always this and that is not always that. Sometimes this is this and sometimes this is that. Sometimes that is that and sometimes that is this. It all depends. Walking two ways at once is like a hinge on a door. Sometimes the door moves this way and sometimes it moves that way. If the door could only move one way, what kind of a door would that be? Commentary What is the use of a door that won't open? Walking in the forest have you observed how trees are? The young sapling is flexible and it bends with the wind. On the other hand the old tree dries out. The branches become rigid and inflexible. In the end they break in the wind and fall down. The mind that is inflexible is like a dried out branch. In verse 76 of the Dao de jing, Lao-tzu says: People are born soft and flexible But in death they become stiff and hard. Plants are born soft and pliable In death they are brittle and dried out. Those who are inflexible and rigid Imitate death; Whilst those who are flexible Are the companions of life. = 199) = PART XII: WALKING TWO WAYS AT ONCE 57. Acceptable and Unacceptable What is acceptable we call acceptable. What is unacceptable we call unacceptable. A path is made by people walking on it. Things are the way they are because that’s the way that people say they are. But why are they that way? It’s because people make them so. What would make them not so? People making them not so would make them not so. If a thing is so it must mean that the thing is in some degree acceptable. That must be that case even if you say it’s unacceptable. Commentary Some see the bad in the good whilst others see the good in the bad. It is the mind that makes things the way they are. It is how you think about things that shape the way that they are. It’s you that brings things into existence. It’s you that rubs them out. You are the canvas on which you sketch. And your life is what you sketch. — 93 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON 58. The Princess and the Pauper The blade of grass and the great tree, the princess and the pauper, the twisted and the strange; wherever you look, all things seem so irrec- oncilable and so different. Yet they all form part of the whole. Their differences are all contingent. In their differences is to be found their completeness. And so in actuality there is nothing to be found that is either complete or deficient, since all that appears, appears only in the indivisibility of the whole. Commentary When you look at something too close to your nose it looks strange. On the other hand if you are looking from too far away you dont see it at all. ‘The various shades and textures of the human experience all form part of one whole palette of colours. The experience of life is full of contra- diction. Everywhere you look there is the perplexing and the paradox- ical. At the same time, if all things were the same then there would be no differences between things. And if there were no differences between things there could not be anything. Without the poor there would be no rich. Without the sinner there would be no saint. You can’t eliminate one thing without also removing the other. = 94. = PART XII: WALKING TWO WAYS AT ONCE 59. Wearing Yourself Out Exhausting yourself trying to make things complete without realizing that everything is already complete is called “three in the morning.” What is meant by this? Feeding acorns to the monkeys, the monkey trainer told them: “I'll give you three in the morning and four at night.” The monkeys were very upset. “Ok, then,” he said, “Ill give you four in the morning and three at night.” And the monkeys were happy. This is called walking two ways at once. Commentary Half a cup of tea is both half full and half empty at the same time. One cannot unify or make complete that which is already complete. If you try you'll just be creating incompleteness. So then that really just leaves you and how you see things. Now you can either arm yourself with your own opinions or you can attune yourself to life. Lao-tzu says in verse 28 of the Dao de jing: If you can go along with the male But remain receptive like the female You will be like the axis of the world. How can you fall away from the centre? a 95 = Part XIII: Witch's Brew No one really knows what the ingredients are that go into the witch’s brew. Even the witch herself doesn’t know. PART XIIl: WITCH'S BREW 60. Not for You One day Sunflower-child went to visit Old Woman Yu."' He said to her, “People say you're over a hundred years old but your face looks so young and attractive. How do you manage to look so good at your age?”” Replied Old Woman Yu, “It’s called the Who Knows What.” Asked Sunflower-child, “Is it something that one can learn?” Old Woman Yu replied, “No, of course not. And besides, I can see it’s really not for you.” Commentary What is it to live a long time? What is it to live a short time? How long is now? In verse 3 of the Dao de jing Lao-tzu says: In the government of his affairs ‘The sage empties the mind And he fills the belly. He lets go of ambition And strengthens the bones.” —~ 99 — THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 61. Nineteen Days Old Woman Yu said, “Once I was approached by Dome-head. Now Dome-head was a genius all right but he didn’t have the Who Knows What. As for me, I am no genius but I had the Who Knows What. So I thought that I would try to show him the Who Knows What. I thought with someone of his genius it would be really easy and he'd get it straight away but it turned out to be much more difficult than I had imagined. I kept Dome-head with me for three days and I instructed him care- fully. After that he was able to keep the world outside of himself. Then I had to instruct him further and after another seven days he was just about able to put inside things out. So I continued to prod him in the right direction and after another nine days he was able to forget himself. After he forgot himself completely there came the brightness of dawn. Standing alone in the brightness of dawn he lost track of time. Time forgotten he entered the place where there’s neither life nor death.” Commentary Four ounces of strength topples a thousand pounds of weight. Nineteen days is metaphorically the time it takes to prepare the witches brew. But actually how long is nineteen days? Nineteen days could be as short as nineteen seconds or as long as nineteen billion years. Nineteen days is the length of time it takes for the natural person to become natural.“ — 100 - PART XIII: WITCH'S BREW 62. The Unborn Old Woman Yu said, “That which kills life never dies. That which creates life is never born. It sends all things into the world and it welcomes them all back with open arms. That’s the way it is. It both gives and takes away. It’s called stillness in movement. It is original completion.” Commentary After arriving one keeps on arriving. The unborn comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. ‘The principle of life is endless creativity. The road of transformation has no end. After arriving one arrives again and keeps on arriving. It is a road without end. — 101 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 63. Where Did You Get It From? “Where did you get this from?” asked Sunflower-child. “Well, I got it from the son of old Ink-stand,” replied Old Woman Yu, “Ink-stand learnt from the granddaughter of Repeated-again. Repeated-again got it from Bright-lamp and Bright-lamp got it from Whispered-rumour. Whispered-rumour heard it from Waiting-around and Waiting-around got it from Never-seen. Never-seen heard it from Dark-obscurity. As far as 1 know, Dark-obscurity got it from Bottom- less-well.” Commentary If it doesn’t go anywhere, where could it come from? When a person sees another person wearing a nice pair of shoes he immediately wants to know where they were purchased. — 102 - Part XIV: Transformation People always want to know where we come from. And then they ask where we go when we leave. But not many are interested in where they are now. PART XIV: TRANSFORMATION 64. Life and Death Life and death go together. Life comes out of death and death follows life. A person's life is the coming together of vital energy. When the subtle energies assemble in a certain way there’s life. When they dis- sipate, there’s what we call death. Life and death are the two sides of the same thing. Does it make sense to be fixated on one and to fear the other? The myriad things are really just the expression of the one energy. We look at the things we like and we call them beautiful. We look at the things we don't like and we say they are ugly. But the beautiful turns into the ugly and the ugly turns into the beautiful. All things change, one thing into another. If you want to comprehend this you have to understand that the nature of energy is to change.* Commentary One day a magnolia flower appears on a magnolia tree. After a few days you notice that it has gone. And then another flower appears. In the Mysteries of the Dao (Dao hsuan pien) Wang Dao says: Day and night alternate because of the rotation of the heavens. Birth and death are the expression of the coming together and dispersal of energy. The cycles of day and night and birth and death follow natural laws. Where there is day there must be night and where there is birth there must be death. Where there is a coming together there will be departure. However where the spirit (sem) and energy (ch?) are unified there is brightness. In this emptiness there is neither birth nor death nor coming and going. You will arrive to where you are going without walking anywhere and all things will spontaneously = 105 5 EE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON accomplish themselves. If you can understand the princi- ple of what I am describing then the comings and goings of life and death won't disturb you. — 106 - PART XIV: TRANSFORMATION 65. Fearful of Death How do you know that in being so attached to life and fearful of death you are not making a mistake? Perhaps by being afraid of death you are like a man who left his home when he was young and then forgot his way back? Lady Grace was the daughter of a border guard on the frontier at Ai. She was captured and taken to the state of Chin where she cried so much that her dress was drenched in tears. But later, when she found herself in the palace of the king sharing his couch and eating fine foods at his banquet table, she wondered why she had ever been so upset. Commentary Some people fear death. But more frightening than death is to not be properly alive. One clings to the known and fears the unknown. But actually what we call the known is really the unknown — we just don’t think of it that way. Seen from the perspective of self-identity death is unpalatable. But life and death go together like the two sides of the hand. You can't have one without the other. All things are the transformation of one thing into another. What we call death is merely the transformation of one state of being into another. = 107 = ERNOON THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF 66. The Departed Once when Chuang-tzu was travelling in Ch’u he came across a skull by the side of the road. Pointing at it with a stick he said, “How did you end up here like this? Did you do something bad? Perhaps you betrayed your country or you fled from the battlefield? Did you disgrace someone? Or perhaps you ran short of food in winter and died by the road?” Chuang-tzu then took the skull and using it as a pillow lay down by the road to take a nap. Whilst he was dozing, the previous owner of the skull appeared to him and said, “All your chatter is enough to wake the dead! Your talk is off the mark. Do you want to hear a little about how the dead live?” “Yes, I'd be most interested to hear,” replied Chuang-tzu. “Over on this side,” said the dead man, “there are no superiors and no underlings and there’s no back-breaking labour to do here. There’s nothing but the dreamy days of spring and autumn. It’s pure happiness from morning to night.” Chuang-tzu was most surprised when he heard this and said, “What if you could come back again to be in your old house with your family and enjoy spending time with your friends again. Surely youd be tempted?” Replied the dead man, “You've got to be joking! I wouldn't swap the happiness I enjoy here for a king’s ransom.” Commentary If they serve tea and biscuits there, surely it can't be all bad? Ever since people have been on this earth they have speculated about what happens after death. The only thing one can reasonably say is that one day you'll find out for yourself.*° — 108 - PART XIV: TRANSFORMATION 67. Show Some Respect One day Chuang-tzu’s wife died. When Mr Tzu went to express his condolences he found Chuang-tzu sitting on the steps with a cup of rice wine in his hand singing merrily. Mr Tzu was shocked. He said, “Your wife has just died. You spent your life together and she cooked your rice for you. Now she’s dead and youre celebrating. This is outrageous! Show some respect.” Replied Chuang-tzu, “You're not seeing things clearly. Of course I was sad when she passed on. But then I saw that it was silly. I mean, she came, she spent some time here and now she’s gone on to her next adventure. Who am I to lament change? Right now she’s in the waiting room deciding upon where she wants to go next. If I run after her wailing and carrying on, she might try to come back!” Commentary When you go to the railway station to see someone off, one person leaves and one is left behind. Practically speaking, when the train leaves the station all the tears in the world won't bring it back. Everybody knows this but usually it takes a little while to accept that this is the case.*’ — 109 — THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 68. What’s Next? One day Master Lai fell ill. He had a nasty fever and he was at death’s door. His family gathered around and they were crying and carrying on. Just then Master Li arrived and seeing all this said, “Be quiet. You're disturbing change.” Master Li said to Master Lai, “How amazing all this is! What’s the master craftsman going to do with you next? I wonder what he’s going to turn you into? Maybe he’ll turn you into a fish or perhaps a cloud? Where do you think he’s going to send you next?” Replied Master Lai, “It’s really not for me to dictate terms. I do as I’m asked. I go where change takes me. Whatever the master craftsman has in mind for me that’s good enough for me. When metal is being cast, the metal doesn't jump up and say, Tll only go into this mould. I refuse to go into that one.’ Now if I were to insist that I only want to take human form then what would the master craftsman think of me?” Commentary Everybody wants to look around the corner to see what’s next. It would appear that there are the rare few who can see around corners. Fortunately most of us can't. After all, if you could, you might not like what you see.*® — 110 - PART XIV: TRANSFORMATION 69. Living Fully Lao-tzu came because it was the time to come. He departed because it was the time to go. He followed the natural course of life. Live fully in the moment you have and don’t try to oppose the natural flow of things. If you live like this then there will be no room for regrets or grief. In the old days this was called living free. The oil burns in the lantern and is consumed but the flame passes on. No one can say where it goes. Commentary One day you'll be called away. Everyone is. Some want to prolong life at all costs. But all this prolonging is just the prolonging of prolonging.” -— 111 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 70. Favouritism When Chuang-tzu was near to passing over to the other side, his stu- dents gathered round and expressed their desire to give him an expensive burial site. Said Chuang-tzu, “Listen, let the open sky be my coffin and the sun and the moon my jade coverings. Let the stars be my ornaments. All is prepared, what more is there to be done?” “But the crows and the vultures will eat you if we don't bury you properly,” said his students. “What difference does it make?” said Chuang-tzu. “If you let my carcass rot on the ground the birds of prey will eat it. If you bury the carcass, the worms and the bugs will have it. Why should you favour one lot over another?” Commentary If you want to make sure someone has gone give him an expensive burial and a rowdy send-off so he doesn’t show his face again. People on this side are very particular about gravestones and mauso- leums. For those who are called away it is unlikely that they care too much. = 112 - Part XV: Dreaming There are many varieties of dreams. There are big dreams and small dreams. There are long dreams and short dreams. There are unreal dreams and there are real dreams. PART XV: DREAMING 71. The Butterfly Chuang-tzu once dreamt that he was a butterfly. He was fluttering about so freely and happily doing cartwheels in the air. He had no idea at all that he was Chuang-tzu. Abruptly he woke up. And there he was again, Chuang-tzu. Completely solid and unmistakeably Chuang-tzu. Now he was confused. He thought, “Am I Chuang-tzu who just dreamt he was a butterfly or am I really the butterfly who is now dreaming he is Chuang-tzu? Surely there must be a distinction between Chuang-tzu and the butterfly.” This is called the transformation of things.*° Commentary If you're going to dream, why not dream a beautiful dream? The butterfly happily floats about and dances in the air without a care in the world. He’s in heaven. He climbs on flowers and rides on sun- beams. The gnomes and the little elves are enchanted by his antics. Who wouldn't want to be a butterfly for a day? = 115.6 THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 72. Dreaming You may well have a dream in which you are drinking fine wine from a crystal goblet. And then in the morning you wake up and you are weeping. And although you wake up weeping in the morning you might yet find that before you know it you have joined the royal hunt. While you are dreaming you have no idea it is a dream although in the dream you may even rationalize about what is going on in the dream. But only when you wake up do you know it was a dream. One day you'll wake up and you'll see that all this stuff you are dreaming is just your own dream. Yet the foolish think that they are awake. They busily engage in their schemes and contrivances as though they were awake. They act so enthusiastically and taking themselves very seriously they think that they understand the way things are. One man they call king and they kowtow to him and the other they label peasant and disregard him as a person of no importance. How stupid can you get! In reality you're just a dream and so am I. And me telling you all about this is also just a dream. Now people will just say that what I’m saying is just nonsense. And the fact that they will say this merely shows the truth of it. A person who is able to understand what I’m saying only appears once in every ten thousand years. Commentary ‘The person who can understand what Chuang-tzu is saying only appears once in every ten thousand years. But does he appear inside the dream or outside of it? The human being has two faces. One faces outward. And the other faces inward. The inner is the reflection of the outer and the outer is — 116 - PART XV: DREAMING the reflection of the inner. As he dreams so he experiences. And as he experiences so he dreams. Each is woven of the fabric of the other. And so in the end his dream and his reality are indistinguishable. -— 117 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 735. si i is a ag Each of us thinks that “I” is “I” and because we think “I” is “I”, we think that “you” is “you”. But how can we be sure that this “I” is actually “I”? One moment you dream you're a fish diving into a dark pool. The next moment you imagine you're a bird flying high as the sky. Now you tell me, where’s the reality in any of it? Commentary A man paints a picture on a canvas. If he likes the way it looks he says, “That’s me!” If he doesn't he says, “That’s you!” Some people say that there is an “I”. Other people run around saying that there is no “I”. Some say that there is a little “I”. And others say that there is a big “I”. It would seem that everybody has their own idea about these things. Now, if there truly were an “I” then there would have to be another “T’ that can point to the “I” and say, “There he is!” On the other hand if there were no “I”, then who is it that is saying that there is no I? Isn't it all rather like the proverbial man running around town proclaiming, “T’ve got no head!”? — 118 - Part XVI: The Who Knows What Everybody wants to know what the Who Knows What is. Now if you could say what it was then surely it wouldn’t be the Who Knows What would it? PART XVI: THE WHO KNOWS WHAT 74. A Large Crowd One day Nan-jung Chu went to visit Master Keng and asked, “I’m already getting on in years. What do I need to do in order to get hold of the Who Knows What?” Master Keng replied, “Give up your calculations about this and that, don't waste energy and make yourself whole. If you can manage this for a few years, the Who Knows What will become apparent to you.” Nan-jung Chu said, “I can hear what you have explained but it’s not clear to me what you mean.” Master Keng said, “I’ve said as much as I can. We all look basically similar from the outside but we all have different capacities. ’'m afraid I’m just not the one to be able to get through to you. Why don’t you travel to the South and visit Lao-tzu who is much better at explaining these things?” So the next day Nan-jung Chu packed his bags and made the sev- en-day journey to visit Lao-tzu in the South. When he arrived, Lao-tzu asked, “Where did you come from?” Nan-jung Chu replied, “I came from Master Keng.” Said Lao-tzu, “Why did you come with such a large, unruly crowd of people?” Perplexed, Nan-jung Chu turned around but he couldn't see anyone. Commentary Crowds always make a lot of noise. ‘There is no constancy in the unsettled mind. It changes a hundred times before breakfast. It’s like a room full of contentious people all shouting at each other. —- 121 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 75. Describing It If we look at what is big from the perspective of what is small, we can hardly even see the smallest part of it. If we look at what is small from the perspective of what is big, even if we squint we can barely see it. It is of course useful to distinguish the large from the small but really it’s just a matter of convenience. If a thing has no form, then when it comes to describing it numbers and measurements don’t help. Likewise we can say that the thing is like this or that, but if there is nothing that it can be compared with of what use will it be? Commentary Does an apple taste half way between an orange and a pear? When you dont have something to compare a thing with, how can you describe it? Chuang-tzu says: If the Way could be described then it wouldn't be the Way.?! — 122 - PART XVI: THE WHO KNOWS WHAT 76. Where Is It Exactly? One day Master East-facing Wall asked Chuang-tzu, “This Who Knows What, where is it exactly?” Replied Chuang-tzu, “There’s nowhere it’s not.” “Can you be a bit more specific?” asked Master East-facing Wall. “Well, it’s in the little ants and the crickets,” replied Chuang-tzu. “In such small things?” asked Master East-facing Wall. “Yes, why not? It’s in the grass too!” replied Chuang-tzu. “But that’s even smaller!” exclaimed Master East-facing Wall. “It’s in the gravel and the dust too,” said Chuang-tzu. “That too?” asked Master East-facing Wall. “Sure, and in the piss and shit in the toilet,” said Chuang-tzu. Master East-facing Wall didn’t know what to say. Said Chuang-tzu, “Your questioning is all wrong. You're like a man at the market sizing up a pig. The more you question, the more you hope to find out. But you'll never discover the Who Knows What like that. Where do you find something that’s everywhere and nowhere at once? It has been described as whole, all-inclusive and indivisible. That should give you the idea.” Commentary If it wasn't right here, then where exactly would it be? One always looks for the Who Knows What other than where it actu- ally is. For some reason one imagines that it is to be found elsewhere. Where is elsewhere?’ In verse 34 of the Dao de jing, Lao-tzu says: ‘The great Dao flows everywhere; Like a flood it flows to the left and to the right. The myriad things derive their life from it, It never turns away. — 123 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 77. Which One Is Correct? One day Mr. Need-to-know asked Master Open-end, “Do you know the Who Knows What?” Master Open-end replied, “No, I don’t know it.” Then Mr. Need-to-know approached Master No-doing and asked, “Do you know the Who Knows What?” Master No-doing replied, “Yes. Sure I do.” Mr. Need-to-know asked, “Is there some trick to knowing it?” Master No-doing said, “The trick is to see that The Who Knows What can lift things up and it can bring them down. It can keep things together and it can pull them apart.” Confused, Mr. Need-to-know then went to see Master No-start and said, “Master Open-end says he doesnt know the Who Knows What and Master No-doing says he does. Who is correct?” Master No-start said, “To not know is deep. To know is shallow. To know the Who Knows What is to be on the outside. To not know is to be on the inside.” Mr. Need-to-know sighed and threw his hands in the air. He said, “So you mean not to know means to know and to know means you don't know. But then who is it that knows this not knowing?” Master No-start replied, “Ihe Who Knows What cannot be heard. If you hear it, that’s not it. The Who Knows What cannot be seen. If you see it, it’s not that. The Who Knows What cannot be described. Whatever can be described is not that. That which gives form to the forms is itself without form. Can you understand that? The Who Knows What cannot be named. That’s why it’s the Who Knows What.” Commentary If the Who Knows What could be understood by the intellect can you imagine how big the head would become? — 124 - PART XVI: THE WHO KNOWS WHAT In verse 56 of the Dao de jing, Lao-tzu says: He who knows doesn’t speak; He who speaks doesn't know.°? 125 = ERNOON THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF 78. The Who Knows What The Who Knows What is neither real nor unreal. You may sense it yet it can't be directly seen with your eyes or heard with your ears. It never actually shows its hand yet it’s behind the ten thousand things. It never causes anything to happen yet by virtue of it all kinds of things go on. You can point your finger at it but you cannot actually hold it in your hands. You can lean on it but you cannot tell it what to do. It is high without being high. It is deep without being deep. It arrives without ar- riving and it leaves without leaving. It was there before there was before and it will be there after there is after. Commentary Imagine a cat with a short tail. He knows he has a tail. He just can't see it. Lao-tzu says in verse 14 of the Dao de jing: It is looked at but never seen; And so it is called the invisible. It is listened to but it can't be heard; And so it is called the inaudible. It is grasped but cannot be touched; And so it is called the intangible. This one thing eludes description — So that’s as much as we can say. — 126 - PART XVI: THE WHO KNOWS WHAT 79. Just Adding to It The Who Knows What permeates all things. It is and yet it is not. It comes from no place and it has no place to go. There is no place in particular where it resides and so there is no place where it is not. And so it is complete. Now let’s consider people. People look for completeness in divided- ness. And so they only find incompleteness. What is most perplexing is that not understanding completeness they add to their dividedness trying to make it more complete. And then to top things off they think that it’s completeness. But all this adding to incompleteness is just adding to their dividedness. Commentary ‘The nature of true completeness is that it is at the same time incomplete. To conventional thinking a thing that is complete is a thing that has been completed. Now that’s one way of looking at things. However from another perspective the thing that has been completed is incapable of further transformation. And that would make it incomplete. And if it were incomplete, how could it be complete? Lao-tzu says in verse 45 of the Dao de jing: That which is most complete, Appears to be incomplete. That which is most full Appears to be empty. ct THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 80. The Yellow River When the Autumn floods arrived the ten thousand streams all poured into the Yellow River. The Yellow River burst its banks and covered the land all around so that it was impossible to tell a horse from a cow. At that time the Yellow River started to think, “Hey, look at me now! ’'m a really big deal!” Then he travelled east until he got to the East Sea. Looking out over the vast expanse of the East Sea his eyes popped out of his head and he was speechless. Of all the waters of the world none is as great as the ocean. The ten thousand rivers and streams all pour into it, yet it is never full. Water is drawn out of it all the time, yet it never empties out. Commentary Sailors used to fear that if they sailed too far they would sail off the edge of the world. Through study and the acquisition of knowledge one might start to get the impression that one knows a lot. One examines this and that and compares this with that. One creates postulates, invents theories and draws conclusions. One then explains and erects boundaries around things. The cleverer one gets, the more one thinks that one knows. In the end one starts to stick one’s chest out. Only an encounter with something really big can truly put an end to all this business. — 128 - PART XVI: THE WHO KNOWS WHAT 81. Can’t Explain It One day Duke Huan was reading aloud from a book. Wheelwright Pien was in the courtyard below working on a wheel. He abruptly stopped and went into the hall and asked Duke Huan, “What is the book you're reading from, Sir?” “It’s the teachings of the great sages,” replied Duke Huan. “Are they still around?” asked Wheelwright Pien. “No, they departed long ago,” replied Duke Huan. “Tf that’s the case then aren't these writings just their old leftovers?” asked Wheelwright Pien. “How dare you? Who asked you to open your mouth? You had shouted |? better have something worthwhile to say or it’ll be your head Duke Huan. “Well,” said Wheelwright Pien, “it is my own observation from the work I do that it’s all in the application of the chisel to the wood. When the blows from the mallet are too soft, the chisel doesn’t penetrate. When the blows from the mallet are too hard, the chisel goes in too deep. You can’t explain this in words but after doing it for a long time you get the feel for it until it takes care of itself. Now I’ve been doing it for fifty years but still I can’t even pass on what I know to my son. So if that’s the case, how can those old sages of yours hand down what they knew in the pages of your book?” Commentary Art is always underestimated. People always think that there’s a “how to” or a technique to be learned. They always think that it’s just a matter of mechanics. But not every- thing is a question of calculations or counting beans. — 129 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON 82. Not Surprising Confucius kept himself busy unnecessarily for fifty years before he got serious about the Who Knows What. In his fifty-first year he finally put his shoes on and went to call on Master Lao. Master Lao said, “Ah at last you have come! But have you brought with you the Who Knows What?” “No, I don't have it.” Replied Confucius. “Where have you looked for it?” asked Master Lao. “T looked for it in following rules and disciplining myself. Ten years went by like that but it was of no use.” “Where else did you look?” asked Master Lao. “T looked for it in learning. I divided one thing from another, sep- arated this from that and analysed the ten thousand things. Another twenty years went by like that but it also got me nowhere.” “That’s really not surprising.” replied Master Lao. “If the Who Knows What could be given by one to another like that then can you imagine what would happen? Fathers would give it to their sons. Gen- tlemen would confer it upon their favourite concubines. Grandparents would bequeath it to their grandchildren. Those with gambling debts would trade it in for cash. Fortunately it doesn’t work like that. Unless a person is ready to receive it how can it be received? If you don't come with an empty container to put it in, where can it be put?” Commentary For thirty years a person may see the tree outside his door and yet still never see it. Since the world began people have always been trying to get their hands on the Who Knows What. Many people like to say that they’ve got their hands on it but it seems to be slippery as soap. — 130 - PART XVI: THE WHO KNOWS WHAT 83. Something Lost One day the Yellow Emperor went on an expedition north of the great lake and into the Kun-lun Mountains where he enjoyed the sights. When he got back he realized that he had lost something but he couldn't remember what it was. So he sent Professor Know-a-lot to find it but he came back empty-handed. Then he sent Mr Work-hard-at-it to find it but he too came back empty-handed. Then he sent Mr Wrangle to find it but he came back empty-handed too. Finally in exasperation he sent Mr Empty-head to look for it and to everyone’s surprise he brought it back. The Yellow Emperor exclaimed, “How funny that it was old Empty- head who found it in the end!” Commentary If you're going out to look for water it’s best to carry an empty bucket. Chang San-feng said: Those who wish to know the Way should cultivate love. — 131 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 84. Not Babbling To be in accord with the Who Knows What is easy. To avoid babbling about it is difficult. Commentary People who carelessly show their money in the street always attract beggars. Everybody likes to talk. Not many have the patience to listen. In The Yellow Emperor’ Classic of Internal Medicine it is said: The Way is delicate. Instruction concerning it cannot be passed on unless the student is sincere and has humility. — 132 - Part XVII: Going Along with Things Take a look at water. When something is in its way it goes around. It might seem slow but it always gets to where it’s going. PART XVII: GOING ALONG WITH THINGS 85. Change If you look at grazing animals, they don’t get upset about a change of pasture. On the contrary, they move with the seasons. If you consider fish, they don't get upset when the river changes direction. They are happy enough to go along with it. If you can be like that then you won't be troubled much by the things that keep on changing all around you. If you can float along with the beginning of things, then how will gain and loss and good or bad fortune disturb you? Commentary There’s nothing in this world that doesn’t bob up and down. There’s nothing nailed down so that it can’t move. The Chinese ideogram for person depicts a person walking. What this represents is the procession of life as the movement of change.** When you are driving a car you can’t go round the corner if you don’t turn the wheel. In verse 8 of the Dao de jing Lao-tzu says: ‘The highest good is like water. Water does not compete — Without self-consciousness it adapts And so it accommodates all things. = 135 = THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 86. In the Way When a person is rowing across a river in a boat and an empty boat floats into his path then no matter how bad a temper he might have, he doesn't get angry. He simply steers his boat in the other direction and avoids collision. But if there happens to be another person in that other boat, he’ll shout at him to get out of his way. If the person doesn’t react, he’ll shout louder. Finally, if the person in the other boat still doesn’t change course, he’ll call him filthy names and wave his fist at him. Now if the person could treat every boat that gets in his way as though it were the empty boat, this would be called going along with things. Wouldn't things be easy? Commentary When something gets in the way of something else it is usually one’s self that is in the way. Wu-wei means going along with. If you go along with things then you wont keep colliding with things. In explanation of how to go along with things, in verse 22 of the Dao de jing Lao-tzu says: I don’t contend with others; So others don’t contend with me. — 136 - PART XVII: GOING ALONG WITH THINGS 87. Pointing Your Finger Running around pointing your finger at others is not nearly as good as enjoying a good laugh. Enjoying a good laugh is not as good as going along with things. If you know how to go along with things you won't be too bothered about everything changing all around you. And if you can forget about all the things changing all around you then you will come to know the mystery of undividedness. Commentary Laughter dissolves anger. Forgetfulness swallows the universe.* Lao-tzu says in verse 7 of the Dao de jing: ‘The sage puts himself last And so ends up in front. He doesnt concern himself with his own interests And so his interests are looked after. =o = THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON 88. Don’t Tire Yourself Out Listen to me carefully. As far as the body is concerned, it’s best to let it go along with things. As to your feelings, let them go where they will. If you go along with things then you wont get divided up. By letting them go where they will, you dont need to get dragged into a fight with them. If you don't get involved in fights then you won't tire yourself out. If you don’t tire yourself out then you don't waste your energy. If there’s neither division nor tiredness then there’s nothing lacking. And if there’s nothing lacking then things are just as they are. Then what more is there to be done? Commentary When a rope gets tangled, the more forcefully you pull on it, the more tangled it gets. Wanting things to be other than they are just makes them more what they are. Lao-tzu says in verse 78 of the Dao de jing: There is nothing softer and weaker than water. Yet for overcoming the hard and the strong Nothing can compare with water.°° — 138 - Part XVIII Finding Ease Ease is not something that you can bottle and sell. It’s more like a deck-chair that’s in the right spot to catch the sun. PART XVIII: FINDING AS 89. Running from Your Footprints There was once a man who was terrified of his own shadow and who feared his own footprints. And so he tried to escape from them by running. But the more he ran the more footprints there were behind him. And no matter how much he ran, his shadow was always right there behind him. Eventually he had enough. He said, “Ok. Now ’'m going to run so fast that you'll never catch me!” And so the man ran and ran faster and faster until all of a sudden his strength ran out and he died. Isn't it a shame that he didn't see that simply by standing still his problem would have gone away? Commentary You carry yourself with you wherever you go. One may run all around the world looking for oneself to no avail. One can try this or try that. One might even retreat from the world entirely in the attempt to escape from oneself. There’s no end to the things that one might try. But in the end one must make peace with oneself. « {41 = THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 90. Ease ‘The wise person finds ease where there is ease and doesn't try to find ease where there is no ease to be found. The fool looks for ease where there is no ease to be found and doesn't find ease where there is ease to be found. Commentary One person digs for water where there’s water whereas the other digs where there isn’t any. An anxious mind cannot exist in a relaxed body. Energy cannot flow through a rigid structure. Equally it cannot flow through something that is too loose. In Chinese the word for relaxation is song. Song also means soft. When the heart-mind is soft and aware, the body is relaxed too. When there is relaxation of body and mind, energy flows. When energy flows without blockage body, mind and cosmos are in tune.*” — 142 - PART XVIII: FINDING AS 91. The Right Tool A huge log is great for battering down a door but when it comes to blocking a mouse hole it’s of no use at all. A thoroughbred is great for galloping along at great speed, but when it comes to catching rats it is of no use at all. At night an owl can see the tip of a hair at fifty paces but when daylight comes he can hardly see in front of himself. Commentary You cant use a hammer to turn a screw. You need a different approach for different things. In verse 33 of the Dao de jing, Lao-tzu says: ‘The person who can read others is smart But the one who knows himself is wise. The one who can control others is powerful But the one who masters himself is unfindable. = 443 = THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 92. A Beautiful Frown The great beauty Hsi-shih was once troubled with heartburn which caused her to frown at her neighbours. There was something quite charming in it and her neighbours smiled. A very ugly woman in the district saw this and started to frown at all the people around. At the sight of this gentlemen ran for their houses and bolted their doors. Merchants grabbed their wares and closed their shops early. Labourers downed their tools and disappeared. The poor woman understood that sometimes a frown could be attractive. She just didn’t understand when! Commentary When you are hard of hearing you speak out of turn. Skill in living means responding to circumstances naturally. Liu I-ming (1734-1821 CE) in his Inner Teachings says: The person of accomplishment lives concealed in the world right in the midst of people. He harmonizes his inner understanding with the day-to-day events of life. He merges with the world and mixes with people without letting anyone know of his inner-state of tranquillity. When one is able to harmonize inner and outer in this way one is said to be outwardly round whilst inwardly square.**® add = PART XVIII: FINDING AS 93. Cooking One day Cook Ting was cutting up an ox for Lord Wen-hui. Zip zap went the knife in perfect rhythm. Every movement he made was pure precision. “This is amazing!” said Wen-hui, “I’ve never seen anything like it. How do you do it?” Explained Cook Ting, “It’s a matter of attunement. When things are in tune, they take care of themselves. When I started I could see nothing but an ox. As I got better at it I only saw the ox half the time. Now I dont even notice the ox. I just go with the flow of things. The knife goes where it needs to go and I just give a little help to guide it. Sometimes there’s a difficult bit so I size it up and go slow. But before you know it, what do you know? ‘The knife has sliced right through and there, it’s done! Often I’m quite amazed myself how it works. A good cook has to change his knife once a year. A mediocre cook has to change his knife every month. I’ve had this knife for nineteen years and it’s still cutting fine. In fact it’s still as good as the day I bought it. ” Commentary When a piano is tuned right the melody sounds sweet. When you tune an instrument the strings should be neither too tight nor too loose. Skill in living can be compared with a musical instrument that is in tune. In attunement there is a natural resonance with life. = 445 = THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 94. When the Shoe Fits ‘There was a very good draftsman called Chui. People always wondered what made him such a good draftsman. Well, the fact is that when he drew he never let his fingers get in the way of his pen and his mind was always relaxed and at ease. It’s like this. When your shoes fit right, you don't notice your feet. When your belt isn’t too tight you don't notice your waist. When your mind is at ease you don’t notice it. And real ease is when you have for- gotten all about ease. Commentary When the bread is baked just right you don’t think about how to make it taste better. In ¢zu-jan the fingers move of their own accord. You don't need to make them move. That’s the natural spontaneity of ¢zu-jan. If youre thinking about it, then that’s not ¢zw-jan. You've just missed it.*” ~ 146 - Part XIX: Loose Talk When there’s a lot of loose talk eventually your ears start ringing. PART XIX: LOOSE TALK 95. Repaying Generosity The emperor of the South was called Shu. The emperor of the North was called Hu. And the emperor of the Centre was called Hun Tun. From time to time Shu and Hu would come together and meet in the land of Hun Tun. Hun Tun was always very generous and hospitable and let them meet in his territory. Shu and Hu got together one day and started to discuss how they could repay Hun Tun’s generosity. They said, “People all have seven openings so that they can see, hear, eat and breathe but Hun Tun doesn’t seem to have any! Let’s make some holes for him.” So each day they made a hole. On the seventh day, Hun Tun was dead. Commentary Whichever way you turn it a circle looks the same. Hun Tun represents wholeness or the primordial condition of undivid- edness. It is like a circle. The generosity of Shu and Hu represents the essentialist approach which seeks carve distinctions out of wholeness. This attempt to capture wholeness by the intellect is the same move- ment as the attempt to grasp the objects of the world through the seven openings. It can’t be done.” = 449°= THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON 96. Even an Idiot Has a Teacher Everybody has a teacher. Even an idiot has a teacher. If you're awake then you dont need to run around looking for one. If you can be receptive and listen, you'll hear him. But if you make up your mind about things and insist that they are like this or like that before you've even opened your front door, then how can you possibly ever discover anything? It’s like trying to set off for the capital today and arrive yesterday. Commentary If you haven't been to Spain how do you know what it’s like? Once upon a time there was a man with a question that no one could answer. Now there was someone who people said knew everything. So he went to see this man who knew everything and he received a very nice answer which he liked. In fact he liked it so much that he put it in a box on his shelf where he kept all his other useless stuff. =.150 = PART XIX: LOOSE TALK 97. Standing Apart Most people tend to favour those who are similar to themselves and dislike those who are different. The reason they like those who are similar and dislike those who are different is so that they can set them- selves apart from the rest. In setting themselves apart they feel that they know more than the others. Yet if they really want to set themselves apart from the rest, this doesn’t make sense. After all, no matter how much they may think they know, they can never know more than all combined. Commentary The most exclusive club is the one that has no members. Why do human beings make exclusive groups and then get into fist fights with other groups? As a race it seems we’ve been doing this since the world began. It’s a peculiar thing is it not? = 151 4 ERNOON THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF 98. The Clever and the Dull The person who is aware that he’s a fool is not the biggest fool. The person who realizes that he’s confused is not the most confused. ‘The person who is the most confused will live out his days in confusion and still never get himself straightened out. The biggest fool is the one who not seeing his foolishness comes to the end of his days and dies without ever seeing the light. Commentary A man had been walking down a road for five hours when he ran into another man who said, “You're going in the wrong direction.” The man thought, “If I turn around now, I'll have wasted five hours so I may as well keep going.” In the Yellow Emperor's Scripture of Unifying with the Unseen (Huang di yin fu) it is stated: In this world there are both the clever and the dull. Sometimes what seems like cleverness is just dullness; And what seems like dullness is cleverness. = 152. = PART XIX: LOOSE TALK 99. Turning Your Back People of the world all like to stick their necks out over things. When a wealthy man engages in philanthropy so that he can see his name enshrined over the entrance to a public building, people laud him and call him a generous and good man. When a stall-holder is caught short-changing customers at the market, people call him a petty man and a swindler. Yet in turning their backs on the innate both Gentleman Jim and the stall-holder are no different. Commentary Sometimes what seems like going forward is actually going backwards. One can engage in all kinds of things to enhance one’s position. However, it is said that you don’t really appreciate what you have until it’s gone. In the Yellow Emperor’ Scripture of Unifying with the Unseen (Huang di yin fu) it is stated: Those who are blind hear very well; Those who are deaf see very clearly. = 153-2 THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 100. Circles and Squares Chuang-tzu said, “I have heard that the followers of Confucius wear round hats on their heads to show that they follow the cycles of heaven. And they wear square ended shoes which demonstrate that they un- derstand the proper way of acting in the world. However, as far as I can see, a person may well embrace a certain philosophy without necessarily wearing the trappings that go along with it. Equally a person may well wear all the trappings without understanding the philosophy that they signify.” Commentary A nice looking box is a nice looking box. But it might have nothing in it. There are so many different religions and metaphysical philosophies which promise this or that. However in the Yellow Emperor's Scripture of Unifying with the Unseen (Huang di yin fu) it is stated: The Way cannot be manufactured — It doesn’t fit in with people’s schemes and ideas. — 154 - PART XIX: LOOSE TALK 101. Recognition You can’t see your reflection in running water. It’s only in water that’s stopped moving that you can see yourself. Only that can know that. Commentary Amazement only comes to someone who’ not looking for amazing things. In the bazaar you can buy most things if you're prepared to haggle. But this thing can't be bought. That must be why everyone’s selling it. = 155-4 THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 102. The Secret of the Universe When Chia was being attacked, Lin-hui strapped his small child to his back and fled leaving all his priceless jade behind. Someone asked him, “What on earth were you thinking? Why did you take that worthless child leaving behind all that wealth of yours?” Lin-hui replied, “The jade and I were joined by profit whereas the boy and I were joined by love.” Commentary When you are called away you can't carry much. But it’s said that because love is so light there’s absolutely no limit to how much you can take with you. Love is the hidden secret of the universe. The stillness of silence is the empty space where love grows. The only point of having an empty space is so that it can be filled. = 156 = PART XIX: LOOSE TALK 103. Promotions When Master Cheng got his first promotion he bowed deeply. When he got his second promotion he put his head down. When he got his third promotion he hid himself away. It’s so different nowadays. When someone gets his first promotion he puffs his chest out. When he gets his second promotion he sticks his chin out and looks down his nose. When he gets his third promotion he expects to be saluted when he enters the room. Commentary If you really want to see a person's character give him a promotion. You can achieve all kinds of almost-impossible-to-do things but getting out of the way is more difficult. It is said: When being praised act as though you've been criticized; When being criticized act as though being blamed. = 1575 THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 104. More Carriages Master Shang was sent by the Prince of Sung to be envoy in the State of Chin. On his departure he was given five carriages. The Prince of Ch’in was really taken with him and gave him one hundred carriages. When he got back to Sung he went to see Chuang-tzu. Dressed up in the finest silk he boasted, “Listen, all this back-street living and cheap wine is not for me. Winning recognition for my talents and enjoying the high life, that’s what I was born for.” Chuang-tzu replied, “Yes I can see that. It’s generally the case that the lower down that you are prepared to stoop, the more carriages you get. ” Commentary To have is not to have and not to have is to have. Isn't it peculiar that in the human world, such a fuss is made over the acquisition of things. For some reason that no one has ever adequately explained, people consider someone who has lots of things to be of more worth than someone who doesn't have a lot of things. In the Mysteries of the Dao (Dao hsuan pien) Wang Dao says: To have but not to possess is the right attitude. Not to have and yet still to seek to possess is the wrong attitude. ‘The natural person realizes that to have is not to have. The shallow person chases possession of things yet does not realize that in the end there is nothing that can be had. = 158 = PART XIX: LOOSE TALK 105. Performing One time the Prince of Wu went boating on the Yangtze River. When he got to Monkey Mountain the prince and his attendants decided to climb up. When the monkeys saw the prince coming they all ran away except for one monkey who sat lounging on a branch. Seeing the monkey, the prince fired off a couple of arrows at him. The monkey, showing his great dexterity, grabbed the arrows out of the air and started to dance on the branch. The prince became so enraged that he ordered his attendants to immediately capture the monkey in a net and the monkey was killed. Commentary When a nail is sticking out the carpenter is sure to take a hammer and bang it back in. It is generally the case that the more attention you attract to yourself the more difficulties will arise. Lao-tzu says in verse 2 of the Dao de jing: ‘The natural person does without doing; He demonstrates without attracting attention. = 159°> THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 106. Competitive Games When people engage in competitive games with each other, things usually start off in a light-hearted and friendly way. But as the game goes on, one person starts winning and the other starts losing and the mood can easily turn sour. As the evening progresses someone starts to cheat. Then finally before you know it, in a fit of anger someone has turned over the card table. Commentary When you are given a box of chocolates it’s good manners to share them around.®! In the Mysteries of the Dao (Dao hsuan pien) Wang Dao says: The Dao never competes with anyone. Those who engage in competition are not in harmony with the Way. The Dao does not grasp at things. Those who grasp at things are not in harmony with the Way. If you compete you will only create dividedness. If you grasp at things you'll always be looking over your shoulder to see what someone else has got. If you are always concerned with the trivial then you will have no time to notice the Dao. — 160 - PART XIX: LOOSE TALK 107. Each to His Own Fish swim in water. The person of the Way swims in the Who Knows What. For those who like to swim in water, dig them a small pond and they'll be happy enough swimming around. For those of the Way, just leave them alone and they'll be well content. That’s why it’s said that fish get along fine when they’re swimming around in rivers and lakes whilst those who follow the Way swim in the Who Knows What. Commentary The Who Knows What never stops Who Knows What-ing. ‘The entire universe is massaging and caressing you from morning to night. It never stops. The softness of the air is massaging your skin. The light of the sun is cleansing your eyes. The beautiful colours you see are refreshing your mind. The sounds you hear are caressing your ears. The food that you eat is from the banquet table of the gods. The fragrances you smell are like doorways to heavenly realms. The water you drink is straight from the fountain of life. — 161 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 108. Big Understanding Big understanding of things is expansive and has all the time in the world. Small understanding is always boxed in and harried. Expansive talk is sonorous and pleasant to the ear. Small talk is high-pitched and abrasive. Sooner or later it gives you a headache. Commentary Generally it is the case that the more excitedly you wave your arms around the less persuasive it is. Small understandings always have to persuade and convince. In the Mysteries of the Dao (Dao hsuan pien) Wang Dao says: If you dislike the world then the world will dislike you. If you respect others, then others will respect you. If you are straight with others then others will be straight with you. — 162 - PART XIX: LOOSE TALK 109. Real Money on the Line In an archery contest when youre shooting for fun, you shoot with verve and the hand is steady as a rock. When youre shooting for a round of drinks you start to think about your aim. Now when there’s real money on the line your hand starts to wobble and before you know it your eye has developed a twitch. Commentary There are no practice runs. This is it. Real wisdom is acquired through living. It’s not found in theories or metaphysical ideas. In the Yellow Emperor’ Scripture of Unifying with the Unseen (Huang di yin fu) it is stated: The dull-witted study the theory of heaven; Those with intelligence observe life. — 163 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 110. Catching Cicadas One day when Confucius was travelling through a forest, he saw a hunchback who was catching cicadas with a long pole. Confucius said, “That’s amazing! How do you do that?” The hunchback replied, “I'll tell you. This is how you do it. To start with, for six months you have to practice balancing two balls on top of each other on the end of a long pole. Once you get the hang of that you do the same but this time with three balls. Once you've mastered that then you do it with four balls. Once you can do that with your eyes shut then you're ready to give it a go. So what you do then is keep very still and think only of cicadas. Once a cicada comes along, how can you fail to catch it?” Commentary Circus performers and tight-rope walkers always make their tricks look easy. If circus tricks were easy everybody could do them. On the other hand if they were impossible, no one could perform them.” As Lao-tzu says in verse 63 of the Dao de jing: ‘The way to attend to that which is difficult Is to deal with it whilst it is yet easy. ‘The way to manage big things Is to attend to them whilst they are still small. — 164 - PART XIX: LOOSE TALK 111. What Fish Like One day Chuang-tzu and Hui-tzu, the prime minister of Liang, were walking along by the Huo River. Chuang-tzu said, “Do you see how the fish swim about freely going this way and that, doing as they please?” Hui-tzu replied, “You're not a fish, so how would you know about what they like to do?” Replied Chuang-tzu, “You're not me. So how would you know what I know or don't know?” Commentary Every face has two eyes, a nose and a mouth but not every face carries a smile. The inner and outer worlds always reflect each other. That which is closed is always repressed. So it can't breathe. It is without joy. It’s easy to see because there are no smiles. On the other hand in that which is open there is the expression of aliveness. There is joy. There is laughter. = 165 = THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 112. Improving Others Mr Chu asked Lao Tan, “If you don't tell people what to do, how can you improve their minds?” Lao Tan replied, “If I were you I wouldnt interfere. It’s easy to pump people up or deflate them with all kinds of big ideas but all this pumping up and deflating just gets you nowhere in the end. It’s like stirring up waves in a small pot.” Commentary It’s said that it is easy to see the dirt on someone else’s face but hard to notice the dirt on the back of one’s own neck. In Chapter 6 of the Yang Zhu part of the Lieh-tzu, Lie Yukou says: A person who goes around trying to regulate the lives of others succeeds in little other than overworking and dis- rupting his own life. But the person who puts his energy into regulating his own life comes into accord with his true nature and has no need to interfere with the lives of others. — 166 - Part XX: Back-to-frontness If you keep wearing your shirt back-to-front for long enough, eventually you start to think it’s the right way around. PART XX: BACK-TO-FRONTNESS 113. Adding to the Noise The most beautiful symphony will be lost on a person who has no musical sense. But play him Yankee Doodle and he’ll merrily sing along. In the same way thoughtful ideas will not make any impression on those who are not accustomed to them. When people are confused about what’s natural and what’s not, no matter how far they walk they never reach their destination. These days there’s so much confusion. No matter how many times you try to point things out, people don’t get it. So if you keep on shouting it’ll only add to the noise. Sometimes it’s better just to leave things as they are. If you dont force things then no one gets upset. Commentary There’s no use in shouting at someone who can't hear. It takes a long time to get a freight train to slow down and go back. As Lao-tzu says in verse 70 of the Dao de jing: My ideas are very easy to understand And they’re very easy to practice; Yet the world doesn't understand And doesn’t put them into practice.® — 169 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 114. Saving Time Master Kung went travelling in the South. On his way back he passed by the south bank of the Han River where he saw an old man who was getting his fields ready for planting. He was going to and from the river, lugging back water to pour on his fields. When Master Kung saw him he thought to himself how silly the old man was and said to him, “Don't you know that you can buy an irrigation machine which will do what you're doing in no time at all?” “Oh,” said the farmer, “how does that work?” “Well,” said Master Kung, “it’s a mechanical device that uses pulleys and ropes to fetch the water. You don't have to do a thing!” Replied the old man, “Do you think I don't know about such con- traptions? My teacher always told me to steer clear of them. He said that once you rely on techniques and shortcut devices, before long you become just like a machine yourself. It may seem like a great conve- nience, but before you know it in your rush to save yourself time you have completely lost touch with the innate.” Commentary Why would you want to turn into a gadget? If you see everything in terms of pulleys and ropes, weights and mea- sures and the bean-counter’s ledger of profit and loss, how will you ever find real joy?®* Lao-tzu says in verse 58 of the Dao de jing: When government is lazy and relaxed ‘The people are content. When there is over-efficiency ‘The people are discontented. =) = PART XX: BACK-TO-FRONTNESS 115. No Reverence As long as people in their cleverness run after knowledge but have no reverence for life itself, the human world will lurch from one catastrophe to another like a ship with a drunken captain. How do I know this to be the case? With knowledge you can make guns and ammunition, mortars and rockets and other contraptions. But where does this get you? The birds all scatter in the sky with the first shot. With knowledge you can make hooks and nets and create tasty bait but the fish will just head for the depths. With knowledge you can make traps and snares and cages but the animals will all just run the other way. With knowledge you can invent schemes, plunder the land, poison the rivers, pillage the oceans, enslave the free and create a flood of rhetoric to bewilder yourself until you can’t see which way is up and which way is down. Is it any wonder that it’s so dark nowadays in the human world? Commentary Thinking he’ll be able to breathe better, one man stands on the head of another, pushing him under the water. Lao-tzu says in verse 65 of the Dao de jing: When there’s too much cleverness; It’s impossible to live harmoniously.® - 171 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 116. Daylight Robbery In the old days, gentlemen would attribute any success that came their way to others and any failures to themselves. But it’s all different today. Now people make things complicated and then blame others for not understanding. They create impediments and then blame others for not jumping high enough. They create requirements and then blame people for not meeting them. They lengthen the road and then wonder why no one arrives. And so day by day this great big mountain of artifice in the world gets higher and higher. It’s like an ongoing bank robbery in broad daylight. The thing is that so far no one seems to have noticed the robber. Commentary The most artful robbery is the one where you don’t even know you've been robbed. Lao-tzu says in verse 18 of the Dao de jing: When people lost sight of the natural Philosophies and laws emerged. When knowledge and cleverness appeared 66 Artifice and hypocrisy followed in its wake. = 172 = PART XX: BACK-TO-FRONTNESS 117. Real Distress It is said that Master Hsien was a natural person. He lived in a small house whose walls were in disrepair. Grass grew out of the roof which leaked like a pipe when it rained. The paper in the windows was torn so that when the wind blew there wasn't much difference between the inside and outside. One day Master Kung, who had once been a fellow student, came to visit. He arrived in a fine carriage which was too big to manoeuvre down the little laneway where Master Hsien’s house was. Wearing a fine coat of blue and white, Master Kung strode up and knocked on his door. When Master Hsien opened the door, Master Kung exclaimed, “Good lord! You really have fallen into distress haven't you?” Replied Master Hsien, “If what you mean by distress is that I am poor, then yes I am in distress. But to my way of looking at things, real distress is when you turn your back on the innate.” Commentary If you keep looking at something in the wrong way it looks right. In the Mysteries of the Dao (Dao hsuan pien) Wang Dao says: People with much wealth are often proud without reason. Those with position and power feel that they are im- portant. Those with much learning often look down on those who are without knowledge. Those who are popular tend to love themselves too much. On the other hand the natural person delights in simplicity. Whether in stillness or activity, he is in harmony with the Way. = 1s = THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON 118. Nourishment An exotic colourful bird once arrived in the capital. On seeing it, Duke Lu had it brought to his home where he entertained it lavishly. He engaged the best court musicians to play to it the most beautiful music. He presented it with the richest food available in the capital. Yet the bird looked on, dazed and unhappy. He even refused to eat the fine meats and would not drink the wine. Within three days he was dead. Duke Lu’s idea of nourishment was not the same as the bird’s. Commentary Duke Lu was well intentioned but he hadn’t heard of soul food. What is nourishment? Swimming in an ocean of delight the fish is not aware of the ocean.*’ = 174 = Part XXI: Uselessness Whether a thing is useful or useless all depends on what you want from it. It deoends upon your perspective. What is useful for one person is useless for another. PART XXIl: USELESSNESS 119. Usefulness The mountain pine gets itself cut down for being so tall and gets turned into the house you're sitting in. Lamp-oil has a lovely golden colour but it soon burns itself up giving you light. Cinnamon tastes so good that it is stripped from the tree and ends up in your tea. Lacquer is drained from the lacquer tree and finds itself pasted onto the chair that you're sitting on. Everybody knows the usefulness of being useful. Few know how useful it is to be useless! Commentary People run around from morning to night trying to be useful. But how useful is all this usefulness? People of the world attribute value to that which is considered useful. And so some things are worth more than others. Some people are con- sidered more useful than others and so they are valued more highly than others. But what about life itself? Is life intrinsically of any use? Is there any usefulness in it? You might say that there is or there isn't. If there isn't then we might say that it has no value. If there is, then what value should we attribute to it? = ie = THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 120. Use of the Useless One day Hui-tzu said to Chuang-tzu, “Your talk is absolutely useless!” Chuang-tzu replied, “Before you can understand what is useful you have to understand what is useless. I’m sure that you will agree that even though the earth is very wide, a man cannot stand on any more of it than he’s presently standing on. On that basis we might say that all that other land is useless. So what if we cut away around his feet and got rid of all that other land?” “No, that wouldn't be a good idea,” replied Hui-tzu. Said Chuang-tzu, “So you see even the useless has it use.” Commentary Empty space is useless. But if it wasn’t there where exactly would you put everything? Usefulness represents form. Uselessness represents emptiness. They are two sides of the same thing. Without one you can't have the other. Lao-tzu explains this in verse 11 of the Dao de jing: Thirty spokes radiate from the hub of a wheel. It’s from the hole in the middle of the wheel That the carriage derives its usefulness. Clay is used to make a cup; It’s the space in the cup that makes it useful. Doors and windows are cut to make a room; It’s the holes that make it useful. Value is not derived from what’s there; Usefulness comes from what’s not there. = 178 = PART XXIl: USELESSNESS 121. Determining Usefulness From the perspective of functionality, if we look at things in terms of the uses they have, then out of the ten thousand things, there is nothing that cannot be made use of. If we look at things in terms of their use- lessness, then out of the ten thousand things, there are no things that are not useless. Everything has both a left and a right. If we understand that there’s no left without right and no right without left, then we will be able to determine how useful a thing is. Commentary If you don’t know what is useless how will you ever understand what is useful? In the Treatise on Clarity and Harmony Scripture it is stated: The Dao is without motivation; Yet the sun and moon revolve. Intrinsically things do not have purposes. It is the human being than assigns purposes to things. It is the human being that creates goals and then runs after them. The Dao does not have goals. It is the constant expression of itself being itself. The cosmos itself giving expression to itself is called the by-itself-so (¢zw-jan). It is spontaneous arising. It is the taste of amazement. ce a a THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 122. Uselessness One day Hui-tzu said to Chuang-tzu, “Ive got this big old tree. Its trunk is gnarled and knotted and it’s really ugly to look at. It’s so bumpy that you can't even put a ruler next to it to measure it. The branches are so twisted and contorted that you could not make anything worthwhile out of them even if you tried. Even though it’s right next to the roadside, no woodmen even bother with it. Your talk is as useless as this tree. That’s why no one pays any attention to you at all.” Replied Chuang-tzu, “Have you ever seen a wildcat? He’s really fast and quick-witted. He leaps this way and that but sooner or later he bounds into a trap and is caught in the net. Then again there’s the yak. He’s as big as a house and he knows all about being big and important. You can't miss him. Yet he can’t even catch a mouse. Now you, you're so upset about this tree being useless. Why don't you go and plant it in a village where there’s not any thing at all beside a field with no boundaries? You could sit under it free and easy in the shade and relax to your heart’s content. You won't have to worry about any idiots with axes coming to chop it down. When a thing is useless, no one comes to bother it.” Commentary When it comes to usefulness sometimes it’s more useful to be useless. From the perspective of the Way, it is said that before you can under- stand what is useful and what is not, you have to understand uselessness. When you have got to the bottom of uselessness then you can under- stand usefulness. People often imagine that to attain uselessness they must cover their eyes and block their ears and retire from life. However as the saying goes, the obstinate attempt to cook without water in the pot merely ruins the pot. — 180 - Part XXII: Clear As the Morning Isn’t there something wonderful about the brilliance of the early morning? It is clear and still but at the same time it soarkles with the radiance of a jewel. PART XXII: CL m > RAS THE MORNING 123. Free and Easy Wandering One day Confucius asked, “What does it mean to let one’s mind wander free at the beginning of things?” Master Tan replied, “You can wear your brain out trying to under- stand it yet you'll still never understand it. But P'll do my best to try to explain. At one extreme yin is cool and even-handed. At the other extreme yang is energetic and likes to dance. The coolness is from heaven and the brightness is from earth. When the two come together in the middle there is an intermingling. It seems like someone brings them together but I’ve never seen him. And so every day there’s appearing and disappearing, comings and goings and heads and tails. One moment the sun shines and the next there is rain whilst in the heavens there is the waxing and waning of the moon, and no one has ever heard of all this coming to a stop. Day in day out things proceed like this but no one has ever seen the one who makes it so.” “What’s it like to wander in such a place?” asked Confucius. Replied Master Tan, “It is joy and happiness. The natural person wanders free and easy through this place.” Commentary When there’s nowhere else to be then where is there to go? When spirit and energy become unified, it is referred to as the flowing mind. This is the mind of wholeness. In the Guanzi it is stated: Wholeness cannot be restrained within the body. When there is wholeness it overflows and spills out everywhere. When someone meets a person who radiates this positive energy, they will feel as though they had met their very own brother. — 183 — THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 124. Aligned with the Universe The natural person balances the sun and the moon and aligns with the universe.® He goes along with things. When things seem confused and twisted, he doesn't try to straighten them out but leaves them as they are. For him the high are not high and the low are not low. People struggle and strain against things but he doesn’t put his back out trying to lift things that can’t be lifted. He lets the ten thousand things be as they are and so the ten thousand things take care of themselves. Commentary If you observe a bird soaring you'll notice that he rides on the wind. In his Fifteen Teaching Points (Chongyang lijiao shiuwu lun) the Daoist sage Wang Chongyang (1113-1170) says: Inner nature is spirit. Destiny is energy. The relationship between spirit and energy is like that of long-distance flying birds to the wind. They sense the flow of the air-cur- rents and use them to float and soar and are carried along. ‘They save their strength and so they arrive at distant con- tinents with ease. The way that birds control their flight is through understanding the flow of the wind. — 184 - PART XXII: CLEAR AS THE MORNING 125. Drunkenness The small-minded person never gets past the wrapping paper. He wastes his energy on the trivial but he can’t see it. He runs after everything at the same time and so he loses what he already has. Such a person never can get back to the beginning of things. But the natural person lets his spirit return to the beginning of things. He understands what it means to relax in the village where there’s not any thing at all. He understands how to roll about in a field with no boundaries. Illuminated from within, life flows like water running through the formless. Commentary When the current flows the light bulb glows. The nature of life flowing without impedance is described as celestial joy (zhenle), or put another way, it’s bliss-love.” As the adept Tang guang- jen (960-1278 CE) wrote: Not knowing about spirit and energy, You divide the undivided into two. But the day you join them together — You'll fall drunken into the vat. = 185 > THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 126. Nowhere to Fall When a drunken man falls out of the back of a moving cart he doesn't get hurt. Even if it’s speeding along, he wont get killed. Why is this? He’s no different to anyone else but he’s lost track of himself. In the first place he didn’t even know that he was riding along and so he had no idea even that he had fallen out. Now in the same way that a person suffers no injury due to being drunk, how can the natural person who's rolling along in the by-itself-so really suffer harm? Commentary When your feet are on the ground where is there to fall to? It is impossible to determine the happenings in life. But when you don’t fight with life, life won't fight with you. It is said that when a child falls down he cries but he doesn’t get hurt. In verse 10 of the Dao de jing, Lao-tzu says: If you nurture your spirit You will become whole. By retaining your vital energy You will become supple like a young child. — 186 - PART XXII: CLEAR AS THE MORNING 127. Beyond the Boundary The natural person doesn't get upset when things don’t go his way. And when things do go his way he doesn’t puff himself up and say, “Look what I’ve done!” He doesn’t scheme or try to take advantage of things. With this kind of understanding you can stand in the highest place and not get dizzy, you can also be submerged in water and not get wet and you can stand in fire and not get burnt. The natural person sleeps without dreaming and wakes without worries. He eats without hurry and breathes from the depths. He takes things at a leisurely pace. He breathes through his heels and feels at ease. But the harried man of today is always short of time. He rasps from the throat. He feels bound and constricted at every turn. He gasps and sucks at life but he still can’t get enough. Shallow in understanding, he hasn't heard of what’s natural. Commentary To go beyond the boundary you have to jump over it. Some only know about straight lines. But when you see that the straight line is not a straight line you are free of straight lines. In the Biography of Chen Tuan (Lishi zhenxian tidao tongjian) compiled by Zhao Daoyi in 1294 CE, it says: The natural person doesn't dream; He receives visits from the immortals. Those who are awake dont sleep; They float up with the clouds. Les = THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON 128. No-neck Wen Duke Ling used to enjoy conversation with One-legged Lee. After an hour or two he always felt that other people had too many legs. Duke Huan liked to listen to No-neck Wen. After being with him for an hour or two he always felt that other people’s necks were too long. It’s all a question of seeing things straight. In general people remember what should be forgotten and forget that which should be remembered. Commentary When a boatman wears a boatman’s cap it looks right. When someone else wears it, it looks odd. When a person doesn't try to be what he’s not, then he’s simply as he is. Uncontrived, even if your neck is too short, it still looks right. The nature of the cosmos is to spontaneously give expression to itself. That is the activity of the by-itself-so (¢zu-jan). Verse 38 of the Dao de jing says: Real naturalness isn’t natural; And so it has naturalness. Contrived naturalness tries to be natural; So it has no naturalness. — 188 - PART XXII: CLEAR AS THE MORNING 129. No Limit to Things The natural person is neither fearful of life nor fearful of death. He doesn’t resist coming and he doesn’t make a hullabaloo about going. One moment he’s here and the next he’s gone. That’s all there is to it! In tune with the beginning of things he’s not concerned with what may befall him. He’s not aiming to get anywhere other than where he is. When he receives something in the morning he takes enjoyment in it. And then he forgets all about it and hands it back again in the evening. At ease he doesn’t employ his mind to divide the world up. If you can be like that you will be constant through all the four seasons. Then there will be no limit to what is possible.” Commentary If you remove all the walls is a room still a room? In love there’s no separation. When the window is open the outer can flow in and the inner can flow out. There is no dividing line between things. It’s the gateway to the unlimited. In the Mysteries of the Dao (Dao hsuan pien) Wang Dao says: If you emphasise only the inside you will miss the outside. If you emphasise only the outside you will miss the inside. This is not the way of Dao. What does it mean to be whole and bright? It means that there is no dividing line between inside and outside. Inside and outside only appear to exist because of the perception of form. When one is not entrapped by form one is not constrained. The way of the natural person is like a circle. And so he leaves no traces in the world. — 189 — Part XXIII: Ina Village Where There’s Not Any Thing At All People speculate about what there is in a village where there’s not any thing at all. Some say it’s full and some Say it’s empty. PART XXII INA VILLAGE WHERE THERE’S NOT ANY THINGAT ALL 150. No Interest Master Chu studied the art of slaying dragons under Cripple Lee. It took quite some years and it cost him pretty much all he had.” But after he had finally mastered the art, no one was interested in hiring him. Commentary Who wants to hire someone who has no credentials? You may wonder why no one wanted to hire Master Chu. What kind of person would pay a removalist to take away all their best furniture and dump it in the river? As the Tang dynasty adept Cui Shao-xuan wrote: Flowing locks and good looks, How long do they remain? Before you know it Grey hairs sprout like weeds. But from where I’m standing By the open window — Everywhere I see plum blossoms. Why delay the arrival of spring? — 193 — THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON 131. On the Banks of Empty River One day Wandering Head was travelling near Mt. Abundance when he ran into Sage Nobody on the banks of Empty River. He asked, “How can I bring order to the world?” “What do you want?” said Sage Nobody, T’ve got no time today for your tiresome questions. You see I’m about to depart for the beginning of things. Once I get going I fly on the back of the wingless bird out past the six horizons and wander in the village where there’s not any thing at all and play in the field with no boundaries. Who do you think you are to come here and disturb the peace with your silly talk about bringing order to the world?” But Wandering Head was persistent and asked again, “How can I bring order to the world?” Finally relenting, Sage Nobody replied, “Let your mind wander as it pleases and blend your energy body into the unlimited. Just go along with things and don't get in your own way. Then there will be natural order in the world.” Commentary When you wander free and easy what difference does it make whether you wander here or you wander there? In the Far-off Travels (Yuanyou) from the Songs of Chu, the third century BCE poet Qu Yuan describes the free and easy wandering of the soul as follows: As I travel far beyond the world; I forget all about returning. I am so light and travel ever up and away. Such joy to be so free. ~ 194 - PART XXIII INA VILLAGE WHERE THERE’S NOT ANY THINGAT ALL 132. No One There Word somehow got around to the governor of Lu that natural man Yen-ho had gotten hold of something. So one day he decided to send a messenger to him. Yen-ho was in his small back-street house tending to his garden patch when the messenger arrived. The messenger knocked on the door and Yen-ho came out to answer. The messenger asked, “I have some gifts for Yen-ho from the governor. Is this the house where Yen-ho lives?” Yen-ho replied, “I’m afraid he’s not here today. He went out of town. You had better come back next week when he’s here. That way you can give the gifts to him in person.” So the messenger went away. When he returned the following week to present the gifts there was no one there. Commentary Why wait until next week to grow the flowers of love? Life passes quickly so why make it a dull and laborious affair? As the adept Cui Shao-xuan wrote: I have no supporters And no followers either. Who cares for such things? The world dances before me Like a million reflections That glimmer in my eyes. All things go their own way. The Way extends ever further — It is without end. The mystic jewel Shines always in the heart. = 195-5 THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON Notes Introduction ' Chuang-tzu lived during the period of the so-called Hundred Schools of Thought which prevailed during the Spring and Autumn periods of the Warring States (700 BCE - 221 BCE). It has subsequently been called the golden age of Chinese philosophy and the classical period of Daoism. It was the time of the great thinkers and sages. It might be compared to the age of the philosophers in ancient Greece. The Chuang-tzu is considered to be one of three foundational or classic texts of Daoism along with the Dao de jing (Book of the Way and Integrity) of Lao-tzu (literally old-boy) com- piled in the sixth century BCE and the Lieh-tzu attributed to Lie Yukou which was compiled during the fourth or fifth century BCE. However it is important to recognize that at the time that Chuang-tzu lived during the third century BCE there was no “Daoism” as such, although that is not to say that there was no Way. The teachings of the Way were referred to as Huang-Lao teachings after the Yellow Emperor (Huang di) and Lao-tzu. Part I: Possibilities * The Peng, sometimes called the Roc is a mythical bird like a giant eagle whose wings are so big that when spread they are compared to clouds cov- ering the sky. It is a metaphor for transformation and metamorphosis. 3 The north represents the unknown and so it is described as deepest dark- ness. The south represents the creative energy of the light. Light as spirit is expansive and open. Darkness is contracted and closed. So we could say that metaphorically darkness represents ignorance, whilst light represents clarity. The whirlwind describes the spiralling motion of the energy of consciousness increasing, transforming and expanding. It is sometimes described as the ecstatic inner mystic wind. * Hui-tzu was a logician of the rationalist school of Chinese philosophy. — 196 - NOTES Part II: The Mysterious ° In verse 1 of the Dao de jing, it is stated: Reaching through mystery into mystery, You enter the gateway of infinite subtleties. In Daoist cosmology, all things originate from the undifferentiated abso- lute or mystery of mysteries and return to it. Mystery is denoted by the ideogram Asuan which means black with just a hint of red in it. It breathes existence into all things and yet it is unknowable. As to the Dao, as the seen and the unseen, it is like a multi-layered reflecting crystal of inter- penetrating and inter-supporting realities which take expression from the subtle to the gross and from spirit to matter. Wu-chi is the symbol for the undifferentiated and unlimited absolute as the ontological ground of all things. Lao-tzu says in Verse 21 of the Dao de jing: ‘The thing that is called Dao Is elusive and difficult to know. Elusive and difficult to know it is; Yet latent within it is potentiality. Elusive and difficult to know it is; Yet within it are the patterns of things. Obscure and deep it is; Yet within it is the life-force. ‘The life-force is the real; And through it life is experienced. Mystery of mysteries The Wu-chi which means literally “no-polarity” is the source of all things as the undifferentiated. It is the unknowable as neither being nor non-be- ing. It is the metaphysical absolute. The Chinese characters symbolize that = 17S THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON which exists before anything emerges from non-existence. It is also referred to as primordial chaos. It is beyond either existence or non-existence. It is the undifferentiated absolute. In verse 4 of the Dao de jing, Lao-tzu says: Dao is like an empty bowl. No matter how much is poured from it; It never dries up. It is like a bottomless well. The One From the Wu-chi as the source or ground of existence comes the Tai-chi as creative potentiality. Tai-chi means “great pole” or “extreme polarity”. Tai-chi is the differentiated. It is the wholeness of potentiality as pure in- telligence prior to the activity of manifestation. It is the One as the Great Unity. As creative potentiality it contains the opposites of yin and yang as potentiality within itself. The One is described as the Great Unity which permeates all of manifestation. It is the indwelling principle within all things. In verse 39 of the Dao de jing, Lao-tzu says: If the clarity of heaven (the celestial realms) was not supported by the One it would disperse. If the earth (matter/phenomena) was not given solidity by the One it would collapse. If the spirits (agents of transformation) were not able to exercise the divine powers by virtue of the One all manifestation would cease. If the valley (cosmic energy) was not constantly replenished it would become exhausted. If the lords and kings (cosmic intelligence) were not made lofty by the One there would not be order. Mother of the ten thousand things From Tai-chi comes the Two. The Two is the division of wholeness into the opposites of subject and object, heaven and earth and male and female. — 198 - NOT Mm C2) It is the cosmic duality. It is the mother of the ten thousand things. It represents being and becoming as unending dynamic creativity. It might be described as desire as the flame of life or the life-force. It is described as the mysterious female since it is constantly giving birth to the manifold expressions of life. ‘The two are the opposing polarities or forces of yin and yang, each con- taining the seed of the other. Yin is represented as the shadow side of a mountain. Yang is the bright side. The sun keeps moving (or rather the planet keeps revolving), so what is the shadow side in the morning will become the bright side in the afternoon and vice versa. Everything is in the process of transformation. And so yin turns into yang and yang turns into yin. As complementary opposites, they are the two revolving sides of a continuum. In verse 1 of the Dao de jing, Lao-tzu says: The nameless is the origin of heaven and earth; The named is the mother of the ten thousand things. In verse 4 of the Dao de jing, Lao-tzu further elucidates: ‘The spirit of the valley is immortal; It is called the mysterious female. It is the source of heaven and earth — Like a wheel it keeps turning. Heaven and Earth The Two combine in co-operation and from the combination of the two comes a third, the Three. The Three is the cosmos which is represented as heaven and earth. Heaven is the unseen (the subtle realms of the celes- tial and the etheric) and earth is the seen (matter/ form). In metaphysical terms the Three represents the metamorphosis of creativity. It is expressed phenomenally through the transformations of the five agents (or forces) of transformation namely water, fire, metal, wood and earth. They are the unseen agents that give form and structure to the universe. — 199 — THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON ‘The five agents refer to the fundamental metaphysical forces that shape all phenomenal experience in the etheric sphere. Water is the energy of fluidity and change. It is the energy of dreaming and therefore inception. It is the descending. Fire is the energy of radiating and therefore it represents life or power. It is the ascending. Metal is the binding force that holds things together. It is attraction. Therefore it represents contraction. Wood is the energy of expansion or increase. It is the energy of pulling apart. There- fore it is associated with growth. Earth is the energy of circular movement. It is the force of shaping or giving form. It is the energy of containment. There are three sequences that relate to the five agents. The first is the cosmogenic sequence according to which the five agents are generated. Ac- cording to this first comes water and then fire, wood, metal and lastly earth. ‘The second is the sequence of production of each other. Wood produces fire which produces earth which produces metal which produces water and so on. The third is the order of displacement (reverse cycle). Water displaces fire, which displaces metal which displaces wood which displaces earth. The ten thousand things - the human realm From the Three, or yin and yang in productive interaction come the ten thousand things which represent the phenomenal world of human sensible experience. The human realm is the experience of the infinite permutations of the combinations of yin and yang brought about through the five agents of transformation. The five agents of transformation carry the breath of the mysterious female and represent the differentiation of the world of multiplicity. The human being as the nexus of heaven and earth is a field for the projection of all these transformations. The human being is the meeting point of heaven and earth or spirit and matter. And so within the human realm the five agents are further related to the spatial directions, the time cycles, colours, heavenly bodies and the inner organs of the human body. By further extension we can postulate that in the human realm the ten thousand things are the production of the myriad “things” through the — 200 - NOT m Yn active creative potential of the mind. Whilst all of the myriad things contain within themselves their own identity they are also ultimately the expressions of the absolute constantly revealing itself to itself through the ten thousand things. 6 In the Huainanzi which dates back to the second century BCE, this passage is interpreted as a description of the transformative phases that take place within the inchoate state referred to as primordial chaos (Hun Tun) which give rise to manifestation. On the one hand this might be interpreted as a theory of creation. On the other it might be interpreted from a phenomenological perspective as a description of the processes that are taking place moment by moment as the brain processes information from the senses and makes sense of and translates this into an intelligible picture of the world. ” In verse 52 of the Dao de jing, Lao-tzu says: All things under heaven have a beginning which is to be regarded as the mother of the universe (multiplicity). Because there is the mother you experience her children. If you don't ignore the mother there’s no need to turn away from her children. Holding the hand of the mother you won't run into difficulty. The mother or the mysterious female is the creative source. It is the life-force that gives expression to life. * Some people would have it that the universe is a machine. It is not a machine. The cosmos is relationship as the perfect expression of balance which is intelligence and beauty. Another way of saying it is that it is love. If you observe carefully you will see that the cosmos is a delicate web of balances, each thing supporting the other. At the macrocosmic level stars are born and out of stars come galaxies and solar systems. Planets orbit stars. Moons orbit planets. None of it is arbitrary. Everything moves in intelligent rhythms and cycles. These rhythms are reflected from the mac- roscopic to the microscopic. — 201 — THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON At the planetary level we can observe the cycle of the rotation of the earth around its axis. This gives us the cycle of day and night. As the earth orbits the sun, there are the seasons. Each season gives rise seamlessly to the next in the cycle. Day follows night and night follows day. The human being partakes of all these rhythms and cycles of the cosmos. He doesn’t stand outside of it. The physical body is integrated into all of these cycles. There are the sleep cycles, the digestive cycles, the monthly cycles, the cre- ative cycles and the emotional cycles. When there is harmony (4e) with the natural cycles there is prosperity. To go against the cycles of nature is to bring disharmony, discord and illness (/van). In the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine (Huangdi neijing suwen), the Yellow Emperor says: ‘The transformation of yin and yang through the four seasons is the foundation of the changes in nature. Therefore the sages cultivated their yang energies in spring and summer and conserved their yin energies in autumn and winter. They followed the natural order of the cosmos. If one disregards the natural order of life then one damages one’s own life essence. ” In the same way as the yin-yang formulations in the hexagrams of the I Ching can be combined and recombined in different ways, so life gives rise to great diversity on account of its almost infinite potential to combine and recombine in endlessly different permutations. We experience this as the great unfolding of life. You might well say that this comes from that and that is because of this, but at the same time you never actually know how things will unfold and what will be revealed next. All things are as much determined by themselves as by other things. These things are only the things they are for a while before they themselves turn into other things. The things that they seem to be today soon turn into something else. All things follow a continuous pattern of transformation. This pattern of transformation applies as to the — 202 - NOTES inner world as it does to the outer. All things are continuously evolving one thing into another. Part III: Looking for Joy '© In the section of the Lieh-¢zu titled Life in the World, there is the follow- ing passage: People generally think that they can find satisfaction in good food, nice clothes, exciting music and sexual pleasures. But when they enjoy these things they find that they are still not fully satisfied. They realize that having their material needs met is not enough to satisfy them completely. So society is organized in such a way to create a hierarchy of rewards that go beyond the purely material. So there are all kinds of invented titles, recognition, social status and political power. All this is sold as a package of success and fulfilment. Attract- ed by these glittering things and goaded on by the idea that someone else might be climbing up quicker than they are, people spend their entire lives tiring themselves out chasing after these elusive things. Perhaps it gives them some sort of sense of purpose and achievement but in reality it’s a sacrifice that’s paid for with their own life-force that day by day just ebbs away. Bit by bit they lose touch with the innate until they can no longer feel from their hearts. Everything is seen in terms of the ledger of profit and loss. As they approach the end they might realize that they’ve spent their whole lives follow- ing the demands of others and have hardly done a single thing that they really wanted to do. How different is living like this to being a prisoner in jail? Life is a temporary affair. We are not here for long. So in the short time we are here, we should listen to our own inner voice and follow our heart. Why not live as you wish to live? Why follow the rules of others and do things just because that’s what you have been told you should do? When something pleasing comes your way you should — 203 — THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON enjoy it fully. Don't fall into the tiresome demands of social conven- tions and don’t run after meaningless titles and the recognition and admiration of others. When you've been called away, what good will all these utterly useless titles do you? Part IV: The Hollow Spaces 4 The “great clod” is a reference either to the earth or the cosmos depend- ing on the context. 2 The life-force flows energizing all living things permeating and animat- ing and giving manifest expression to the ten thousand things. The wind refers to the life-force or the unseen pulsating and vibrating energetic fields of Dao that gives expression to all the living forms of the natural world. Since the play of human life and nature takes place within the earthly sphere, the human being and all natural life forms appear from the life- force energies of the planet earth, which itself is sustained by the cosmos as a whole. These energies are the manifestation of the cosmic wind in the earth energy system. Without the energy of the life-force there would be no life and no movement. ‘The life forms on earth are described as the “hollow spaces” since they in themselves are nothing unless shaped and animated by the energies of the life-force. In metaphysical terms we might say that the hollow spaces are all differ- ent shapes and sizes, but they take on these shapes and sizes not by virtue of any intrinsic unchanging characteristics of their own but because of their relationship to the forms around them. In themselves they have no intrinsic shape or form. In other words they are not self-existent entities. They are “hollow spaces”. Their existence is at all times contingent on the existence of all other things. When animated they each sing their song and collec- tively they make music which is sometimes harmonious and sometimes discordant until they fall silent when the life-force is withdrawn. ‘8 Sound as acoustic waves is perceived not only by the human brain but is also directly transmitted through the viscous medium of the human — 204 - NOT m Ca) body. The physicians of ancient China were well aware of the properties of particular sounds. It is recorded that the Eastern Han dynasty physician Hua Tuo experimented with and made use of the resonant properties of sound. Each sound carries its own signature. There are harmonious sounds and discordant sounds. It was long recognized that particular sounds had healing effects and the vibrations of the sounds resonated with the internal energies of the body. Sound was used to cure ailments that were associated with particular organs of the body. The five main inner organs were associ- ated with the qualities of the five agents of transformation (the elements) which were further correlated with particular colours or frequencies of light. ‘The fifth century physician Tao Hung-ching describes this methodology of healing with sound in his text, Zhe Maintenance and Prolonging of Life. ‘The thoughts, feelings and emotions are like different notes played by an orchestra. If you have listened to an orchestra warming up you will un- derstand what a cacophony of sound is. Discordant thoughts, feelings and emotions create an energetic incoherence that permeates the energy body of the organism. It translates as the contraction of energy. Chuang-tzu suggests that contracted energy must be allowed to dissolve. The only thing you can do is to let it relax by itself. So he says, if you want the discordant thoughts, feelings and emotions to disperse, it’s better to just leave them alone. Part V: Following Nature 5 In ancient Chinese astrology fate and destiny were tied to the move- ments of the planets and their configurations in the heavens. Well before the night sky became saturated with artificial light human beings were keen observers of the stars. The ancient Chinese as well as the Indians and the Persians had elaborate systems for calculating the effects of the movements of the heavens on the individual soul. Whether one believes in astrological correspondences or not is immaterial. What is notable is that the ancient peoples were keen observers. They had the time to observe. And in this observation they realized the connections between things. What — 205 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON they noticed was that the planet earth was a part of something infinitely greater. At the same time they realized that life on the planet earth was influenced and correlated with the rest of the cosmos. When you look up at the night sky you cannot help but notice the im- mensity of the cosmos. There is an inherent mystery. Is it any wonder that our ancestors looked to the heavens and wondered where we have come from and where we return to? ‘There is a verse in the Yellow Court Scripture (Huang ting-jing) that states: When the a child is conceived, He enters the Milky Way. Some people can remember where they came from before they were born. Most can't. Some people can determine where they are born. Most can't. Either way once you are here in the earth energy system, you are here. There’s no going back. As Ge Hong (283-342 CE) wrote: Life and death and beginnings and endings form the bookends of life but within them there are many variations of possibility. What one person affirms another repudiates. Within life there are endless transformations that occur. On the face of it things may appear as one thing yet may turn out to be something else. The roots of a tree may seem to be sound but the branches may yet turn out topsy-turvy. One cannot treat all things in the same manner. Part VI: Loosening the Noose 6 What is freedom? Does it have anything to do with the acquisition of anything that you imagine you don't already have? Does it have anything to do with going from here to there? Does it have anything to do with con- torting one’s body or mind to fit into this position or that? In the Treatise on Action and Retribution, it is stated: The Way leads to advancement. Not following the Way leads to — 206 — NOT m C2) regression. Avoid going against the natural. Be true to yourself. Maintain your own balance and independence. Be kind to all living beings. Be straightforward and friendly to others. Be polite. If you want to transform others, fix yourself up first. Don't harm the trees and small insects. Feel compassion for the unfortunate, the orphaned and widowed. Respect the elderly and be kind to the young. Feel joyful when others experience good fortune. Be empathetic when you hear of others’ misfortunes. Help those in immediate need. See other people’s gains as though they were your own and see other people’s losses as though they were yours too. Don’t talk about your own excellence and don't talk about the shortcomings of others. Avoid the harmful and encourage the bene- ficial. Give as much as you can and try to take little. Accept criticism without resentment and receive praise as though it were for someone else. Be kind without expectation that others return your kindness. Give without expectation of anything in return. Part VII: Balancing on One Wheel 7 Moderation and balance go together. Excess always brings discord and disharmony. An upside down understanding of things always brings harm. The desire to accumulate much is merely the indication of inner poverty. In the Yellow Emperor's Scripture of Unifying with the Unseen (Huang di yin fu) it is stated: Heaven is assailed by five robbers; ‘Those who understand this attain illumination. Heaven here refers to the innate or the natural state of mind which is present when there is balance. The five robbers are the five negative emo- tional states associated with the five agents of transformation which are in disharmony. They are anger/dislike, grasping, anxiety, sadness and fear. In traditional Chinese medicine the body is viewed as a cosmos. The ce THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON health of the body depends upon the healthy flow of energy between the inner organs. When there is blockage in the flow of energy in a particular area, it causes imbalance in the rest of the internal cosmos. Each of the five main inner organs corresponds to one of the five agents of transformation. The liver is wood, the heart is fire, the spleen is earth, the lungs are metal and the kidneys are water. The five main inner organs are further correlated with the sense organs and the inner physiology of the body. In particular it is explained that the five inner organs are correlated with the emotions. Each of the five inner organs is related to corresponding positive and negative states of mind. Therefore it is explained that when the heart does not resonate properly there is grasping and lack of tolerance. When the lungs are weak, sadness and depression may result. When the stomach and spleen are weak, there may be worry. When the liver is out of balance one is quick to express anger. When the energy of the kidney is low, there is fear. On the other hand when the c47 circulates without blockage there is balance and the energy is evenly distributed among the organs. Natural joyfulness, openness and love is expressed through the heart. Enthusiasm and fearlessness is expressed through the lungs. Equanimity and justness are expressed through the stomach and spleen. Vitality and wisdom are ex- pressed when the kidneys function properly. And kindness and humaneness manifests when the liver is in balance. Collectively these positive emotional states are referred to as virtue. It is explained that the spleen is depleted by too much thinking (pensive- ness) and absorption of external negative energies. The lungs are depleted by grief, sorrow and anxiety. The kidneys which include the adrenal glands are depleted by stress and by fear. The body becomes contracted and the immune system is weakened. The liver is depleted by anger which leads to muscular tension, headaches and erratic moods. One can interpret the physiological correspondences either literally or metaphorically. What is of import is the explication of the direct relation- ship between mind, emotions and the body. When the emotional energies of the body-mind are not in balance there is disfunction and illness. The — 208 - NOTES emphasis is therefore on balancing. The rationale is not to eliminate or suppress the emotions but to balance them. When the life-force energy circulates without impediment through the body, negative energy which expresses itself as contraction and closure is dissolved. In the Huang di nei Jing ling shu it is stated: When the energies subdue one another there is harmony. When they do not there is illness. 8 In the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine (Huangdi neijing suwen), the Yellow Emperor says: Health and well-being are achieved by centering the spirit, retaining vitality, encouraging the free flow of energy (ch), maintaining the balance of yin and yang, adapting to the changes of the seasons and nourishing life. This is the way to live joyously and to live long. The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine explains the physio- logical relationship between the heart-mind and the inner physiology of the body. Whilst a distinction is drawn between mind and body or spirit and energy, there is no arbitrary dividing line between the two. Both are considered to be forms of energy, one very subtle and the other less so. And so the state of mind and the feelings and emotions are seen to be directly related to the health and balance of the internal physiology. Each affects the other. Mental disposition affects the physical body and in turn the balance of energy in the body affects the mental disposition. Negative emotional energies that become entrenched are associated with disequi- librium, disharmony and absence of joy. Ultimately this may translate as physical illness (/van) when the negative energy penetrates the biological structure of the organism. The Classic on Eradicating the Three Corpse Spirits and Nine Worms describes the connection between the illnesses of the physical body and mental and energetic states of the etheric body. With unhappiness comes a — 209 — THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON sense of incompleteness and lack. On the other side of the equation, a sense of completeness and wholeness comes from equilibrium and inner balance. Balance manifests as composure and vitality and natural emotionality. If there is balance and harmony then there is order (z4i). In the Secret method of Tai-chi (T’ai-chi lien-tan pi-chueh), Chang San-feng (b.1247 CE)* advises that the following ten excesses should be avoided: 1. Physical overexertion harms the nerves. 2. Excessive standing adversely affects the bones and joints. 3. Excessive sleep damages the blood circulation. 4. Sitting too long causes coagulation of the blood. 5. Excessive listening impairs the generative energy (ching). 6. Too much looking at things impairs the spirit (shen). 7. Too much talking tires the inner breath (ch’i). 8. Too much thinking upsets the stomach. 9. Overindulgence in sex impairs the life-force. 10. Overeating damages the heart. * According to his hagiography Chang San-feng (b.1247 CE) was a county magistrate in the north-eastern province of Liaoning. He was a scholar and wrote a number of works on Daoist practices. In mid-life he retired from his position and dedicated himself to the cultivation of the Way. He is credited as having developed Tai Chi Chuan. In his later years he wandered freely from mountain to mountain and studied with Daoist hermits. It is said that he lived to the age of 170. ' Tf one observes the cosmos and the rhythms of the planets and the stars what one notices is an almost inconceivable sense of relatedness and balance. Likewise if one observes the cycles of nature one sees that the fabric of life is the expression of this very delicate balance. To the Daoist way of thinking, the human being is not a self-sufficient system. It exists inter causally both in dependence upon and in relationship with the universe as a whole. And so the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Inter- nal Medicine draws a holistic picture of life. It does not separate the outer — 210 - NOT m C2) from the inner. Correspondences are drawn between the outer changes of the natural world such as the astrology of the heavens, geography of the landscape, seasons and climate with the inner physiology of the body, the emotions and the psychology of the mind. In relation to the connection with the greater cosmos, in the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine it is stated: The planets within our galaxy exert the most influence on the phe- nomena in our world. There are a further twenty-eight constellations that are observable to the naked eye which also have a significant effect on human life. In relation to the connection between the body and the monthly cycles, in the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine we find: During the phase of the new moon, the blood and energy (c4’) starts to flow more easily. At the height of the full moon, life-force energy is at its height and the muscles are invigorated. When the moon wanes, the blood-flow diminishes and life-force energy decreases. One must observe the rhythms of nature to regulate one’s energy. In terms of Daoist physiology, each of the inner organs is related to different aspects of our being. The liver controls the nervous system and corresponds with the ethereal soul, dreaming, imagination and extra-sen- sory perception. It represents the more subtle dimensions or potentialities of our consciousness. The lungs connect us with earth, physical strength and our corporeality. They connect us to the air around us and to the rest of the body through the nervous system and the limbic system. The spleen relates to our capacity for thought, reasoning and intelligence. When the spleen is healthy thinking is clear and concentration is strong. The kidneys are related to the will and drive. When the kidneys are healthy the will- power is strong. But it is the heart that is at the centre. It is the heart that is the — 211 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON coordinator of all the inner organs. The Chinese character for the heart organ is zang. On the non-corporeal plane it corresponds with the heart- mind. The Chinese character for heart-mind is xin. Its physical location is in the chest cavity in the centre of the body. It also means centre. It is the seat of consciousness and the spirit (shen). It therefore carries the thoughts (nian), creativity, the emotions and feelings (ging), the deep memories of life and the sense of self-being. In the Hidden Text of Luminescence, the adept Chang Po-tuan (987- 1082 CE) says: The heart is the residence of the spirit. When the heart-mind is quiescent the spirit is whole. When the spirit is whole the original nature is revealed. The heart-mind is described psychologically and energetically in two modes. On the one hand there is the original heart-mind (4enxin) which is the heart-mind that is coherent. It is the heart-mind that is settled or open and is in tune with life and the pervading cosmos. On the other hand there is the mundane or unsettled heart-mind (suxin) which is closed, isolated, unstable and incoherent. It is out of accord with the life-force. It is out of relationship with the pervading cosmos. The heart-mind can therefore either be the source of perceived disconnection from life or the seat of awakened consciousness which is not other than the recognition of one’s inalienable connection to life itself. Interestingly, similar ideas flow into the English language. When we say that when a person “loses heart” it means that they lose their enthusiasm. They lose their passion for life and their sense of deeper connectedness and well-being. When a person completely loses heart he or she falls into a state of disconnectedness from the world and can even die. In the Yellow Emperor’ Classic of Internal Medicine it is stated: The heart is the root of life and the centre of all spiritual transfor- mation. Its brightness can be seen in the complexion of the face. Its = 212 = NOT Mm Yn health is felt in the pulse of the blood. The heart corresponds to the energy of summer. Accordingly it is said that the heart is the indicator of the balance of all the inner organs. Part VIII: Strategizing °° ‘Yen-hui was the favourite student of Confucius. *1 Tn the text of the Chuang-tzu sometimes the sage Confucius (551-479 BCE) appears as a foolish and conservative character who represents a plodding and conventional approach to life. And then sometimes, as in this section, he is used as the mouthpiece for expounding the ideas of Ch- uang-tzu. * "The aggregation of mental conditioning and impulses contracts ener- getically within the etheric body. As energy taking on a particular form it is a construct of perceived relationship. And so the nasty little tyrant as the aggregation of the self-concept is someone who’s neither there nor not there. 8 “Going without” means literally mind-fasting (xin zhai). ”» « 4 “Spirit” might be rendered as “whole being”, “centre”, “heart” or in- ner-energy. *° "The Chinese word for empty used here is xu. 'This describes or denotes the state of mind which is open and spacious. *6 To listen means to open the heart and mind. If the heart and mind is not open one cannot come into true relationship with life. The heart-mind that is closed is incapable of listening because it only hears what it wants to hear. It excludes that which is not compatible. And so one sees but doesn’t discern anything. One listens but doesn’t really hear anything at all. One is not truly connected to one’s own existence. And so there is the inability to properly and fully feel anything. And if one can't feel, one is not truly alive. There’s no joy. There’s no appreciation. There’s no love. Listening is not an exclusionary activity. It takes in everything. Only the heart-mind that is open can hear the sound of the universe. — 213 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON *7 The “bird cage” is the human world. It is the world of day-to-day life. To sing in the bird cage means to engage in the ordinary day-to-day activities of life. To walk without touching the ground means to live each moment completely. It means to leave no residue. *8 In the Secret method of T ai-chi (Tai-chi lien-tan pi-chueh), Chang San- feng advises as follows: Settle the mind then the body will follow. Relax the abdomen. Calm the spirit (shen) and still the body. In movement there is stillness and in stillness there is movement. As you move the energy (ch’) should be centred in the back and flow along the spinal column. Inside your spirit will be calm and at ease and outwardly you will be composed. Move alertly with the lightness of a cat. Move with the smoothness of silk. Focus should always be in the spirit and not on the breath. If you follow the breath there will be constraint. Deliberate breathing is to be avoided. Just breathe naturally. That’s called breathing without breathing. Your energy (ch) should turn freely like a wheel with your spinal column as the axis. ” In the Treatise on Clarity and Tranquillity (Tai shang lao jun shuo chang ging ching miao jing) it is explained that when there is much thinking and grasping after things (turbulence) the spirit gets agitated. When the spirit or heart-mind is agitated it loses sight of itself. It is stated: When tranquillity and clarity are balanced there is a gradual accord with the Way. Entering the Way is sometimes called attaining the Dao. Even though it’s called attaining the Dao, the reality is that nothing is attained. When body and mind is relaxed muddy water settles. In balance there is no doing of any doing. It is not blank dullness (deadly stillness) but lively tranquillity. The liveliness of balance maintains itself. It is the natural harmonization or interpenetration of spirit (shen) and energy (ch’1). It is like a gyroscope. When it spins it stands up on its axis. = 214 = NOTES *° True forgetting is the unwinding of conditioning in the inner-space of silence. This silence is the empty space of awareness. It has nothing to do with either conformity or non-conformity. Good and bad and better don’t come into the equation. It is the endeavour of a lifetime. It is a road with no end. In the Mysteries of the Dao (Dao hsuan pien) Wang Dao, an adept of the Southern school of Daoism who lived during the twelfth century, says: When we are born we are endowed with the energy of life. The energy of the life-force is accompanied by the original nature. The original nature is the spirit (mind) and the life-force is ch? (energy). Spirit as intention directs the life-force whilst the life-force harbours the spirit. The spirit will not cause trouble if we leave it be. The life-force energy will not be lost if we cultivate it. When spirit and energy are one, we will be in resonance with the Dao. If we are in resonance with the Dao there will be long life and we won't be troubled by the world. 3! “Forgotten about everything” is a reference to the ancient Daoist practice of “sitting and forgetting” (zo wang). * In stillness the conditionings of the mind start to unwind and the neurological systems of the body and the brain can regenerate. The ha- bituated disorder and disorientation of the heart-mind that has produced imbalance and dislocation can unravel. The negative emotional energy that has become lodged psychosomatically in the inner organs and the etheric body can dissipate. That’s why it’s called mind-bathing. The etheric body is cleansed by ch’. Eventually one returns to the place where there is no doing to be done. In the Queen Mother of the West (Xiwang mu) from the Record of the Assembled Immortals of the Heavenly Walled City (Yong-cheng Jixian) written in the first century BCE there is the following passage that explains what is intended: If you keep on filling yourself up, You will never be light and at ease. = 415. THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON If you keep worrying and thinking, Your spirit will never be clear. If you keep running after things, Your heart-mind will never be still. If your heart-mind is not still, Your spirit won't be bright. And if your spirit isn’t bright, You won't feel the connection to Dao. You wont find what you're looking for In worshiping the gods in the heavens. ‘That’s just the way to exhaust yourself And lose all your energy. Rather unify your heart-mind. All effort is counter-productive. ‘This is how you come into accord with Dao, And how you will naturally live long. 3 The Guanzi is an ancient Chinese philosophical text that dates back to the 7" Century BCE. Part IX: Words ** ‘Words as a medium for the expression of intelligence can either indi- cate something or not. It all depends on how they are used. Words can have enormous potency. But when they are used carelessly they become devalued. When they are devalued they lose their potency and no longer convey meaning. If one considers the ancient languages of the world such as Chinese or Sanskrit one observes the potency of the words contained in these languages. They are very closely connected to their source, which is the innate intelligence that has given rise to them. In the Chinese language — 216 - NOT Mm C2) a single ideogram can convey much. Let’s take as an example the word “bright”. It is composed of the ideograms for sun and moon. Together they mean bright. And so the derivative meaning of the word is to understand. What indeed is understanding if not the immediate and spontaneous acti- vation of the brightness of intelligence? Part X: Knowing and Not Knowing * The Yellow Emperor (Huang di) is said to have reigned during the third millennium BCE. °° In this verse of the Dao de jing, the distinction is drawn between non-do- ing (wu-wei) and doing (you-wei). Non-doing is the heart-mind that is open and present. You might say that it is the mind that is free of motives or expectations. Free of motives and expectations of obtaining anything, it is centered in the present and so it is neither here nor there. And centered in the present there is nowhere else for it to be. This is “no-mind”. It is the mind that is undivided. It is free of the perturbations of anxiety, striving, calculation and expectation of something else or something more. And so it is able to take in what is. Doing or yowwi on the other hand is the mind of striving, calculations and expectation. It is the mind that psychologically is doing something with the expectation that it will obtain something or achieve a certain result. In verse 3 of the Dao de jing, Lao-tzu says: Acting without contrivance, Everything is just as it should be. ‘The difference between wu-wei and you-wei is experienced energetically. Energetically, in the non-doing of wu-wei open awareness is settled in itself as the unification of spirit and energy. There is nowhere else for it to be. There is nowhere else it could be. And so the thought simply does not arise that there is somewhere else that it should, could or might be. It should be noted however that although distinction is drawn between wu-wei and you-wei it is also acknowledged that what might begin as 21 = THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON you-wei will one day become wu-wei. In Awakening to Reality (Wu-jen pien) Chang Po-tuan (987-1082 CE) says: It all begins with doing and you can hardly see a thing. It’s only when non-doing arises that you begin to understand. But if you simply talk on and on about non-doing, How will you see that the foundation of non-doing lies in doing? Part XI: Perspectives *” The “tip of an autumn hair” is an expression than means something minuscule. *8 ‘You are part of the cosmos and the cosmos is part of you. It is perplexing to the intellect. The billions of galaxies and universes are within us and we are within the billions of galaxies. Each cell of the body contains a galaxy. And each galaxy within contains the entire universe. Part XII: Walking Two Ways at Once * If you consider carefully you may realize that the whole of your expe- rience is constructed from the coming together of opposites. ‘There is life because there’s death. There’s time and yet the passing of time is never ex- perienced since it is always the present. There’s movement and yet motion is only experienced because there’s stillness. There’s inside because there’s outside. There’s form yet it only exists because of the emptiness of space. And then there’s you. And there’s only you because there appears to be other. You can't have one without the other. Take one away and you take away the other too. “0 “Walking two ways at once” is referred to as following nature (shiou- shing) whilst at the same time cultivating life (shiou-ming). Following nature means to engage in the activities of living. That is to say it means to meet the needs of the physical embodiment in the human dimension. Through the process of living (movement) the emotions are brought into balance and through attentive observation wisdom grows. Cultivating life — 218 - NOTES refers to the union of spirit (awareness) and energy (life-force) in stillness. Following nature (shing) and cultivating life (ming) do not preclude each other. The temporal and the so-called spiritual do not contradict each other. Following nature and cultivating life mutually support each other. 41 In Chinese characters Old Woman Yu’s name connotes crooked, contort- ed or hunched. This kind of term may have been applied to practitioners of daoyin (guiding energy) which was an ancient form of kinesiologie or yoga that involved stretching and bending. By bending and stretching different parts of the body, the channels that carry the life-force through and around the body are unblocked leading to the uncontracted free flow of the life- force or ch’. Part XIII: Witch’s Brew ” Why do we grow old? Why do some age quicker than others? What is the secret to longevity and health? It is recorded that given the right conditions the longevity of the human body can be extended to several hundred years or more. The concern with health and longevity (immortal- ity) in China dates back to pre-history. During the reign of the great Emperor Yu, the Great Dances (Ta Wu) were practiced. The Great Dances enacted the union of heaven and earth. Emperor Wu ordered that the dances be performed with shields and banners. The dances were inscribed in the Book of Rites (Li C47). The true origins of these dances are obscure. It is likely that the origins are to be found in ancient shamanistic practices. In tombs discovered in Sunjiazai in Qinhai Province, pottery has been found from the Majiayao Period (5000 years ago) depicting ancient shamanic dance and the practice of daoyin (leading and guiding energy). ‘There are many forms of daoyin. The Five Animal Exercises were devised by Hua-tuo during the third century BCE. Hua-tuo is considered to be the father of Chinese medicine. The Daoyin tu (kinesiologie pictogram), dating back to 168 BCE, was found in a Han tomb at Mawangdui. By the time of the Sung Dynasty many of these exercises had been assembled and — 219 -— THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON described in the Red Phoenix Kinesiologie Guide (Ch’i feng sui) compiled by Chen Hsi-yi. All of these systems of kinesiologie (science of movement) were designed to condition the physical body whilst at the same time accu- mulate and circulate the internal energies. ‘The practice of kinesiologie included physical movement, breathing ex- ercises (¢u-na), dance, massage, application of pressure (‘wina), percussion, and the manipulation of sound and harmonic vibration to stimulate the energy flows in the body-mind continuum. Collectively such practices were referred to as nourishing life techniques (yangsheng). In connection with these practices diet and nutrition was considered to be of great impor- tance. Diet (4i-gu) included fasting and the ingesting of medicinal herbs and pharmacological tonics derived from mushrooms, roots and other mountain plant formulations as well as minerals (weidan). Internal energy practices (neidan) for activating and circulating the energy in the body as well as sexual yoga (clouds and rain) were also utilized. At the root of all these practices was the understanding that the human being as a living organism consists of the flow and interactions of subtle energies (chi). They perceived that the human being was in relationship with the immediate environment as well as the physical universe as a whole and that the entire physical world itself was composed of a fabric or con- tinuum of different spectrums of energy. Therefore they developed specific practices for harmonizing with the energies of the cosmos and the natural energies of the earth. ‘8 The human being or humanity (rem) is the conduit between heaven (iem) and earth (tz). The human being stands on his feet with his head pointing out into the cosmos. Through the heavenly gate (7i-wam) at the crown of the head he is connected to the cosmos and receives the energy of heaven. Through the bubbling spring (ywng-chuan) in the soles of his feet he is connected to the earth. Man is the conduit between heaven as pure spirit or the formless and earth as form or matter. He stands as the in-between. Spirit (she) is the heart-mind as the active spiritual principle. It includes awareness and intelligence and also incorporates conscious will, intention and the creative imagination. The creative imagination is able to visualize — 220 - NOTES and project itself into form. Form is the sculpting of energy through the projection of spirit. So metaphorically one might say that the human being is the nexus between heaven and earth or spirit and matter. When spirit and energy are unified the fields of intelligence, feeling and energy are brought into harmony. When body, heart and mind are harmonized they give rise to knowledge, love and bliss. In the Refinement of Spirit and Energy (Cunshen lianchi ming), the adept, alchemist and physician Sun Simiao (581-682 CE)* explains: ‘The body is the abode of spirit (mind-intentionality-consciousness) and energy (life-force). Whilst there is spirit and energy, the body remains healthy and there is vitality. Once the two part company, the body dies. Therefore if you wish to maintain good health you must make the spirit calm and not dissipate energy. Energy is the mother of the spirit and spirit is the son of energy. Only when the two are harmoniously balanced can there be long life. Now if you wish to calm the spirit, the easiest way is to accumu- late the primordial energy. When this energy is accumulated and pervades the body, then the spirit is calm and at ease. When the ocean of energy (ch7-hai) is full and brimming over, mind will be calm and the spirit stable. When the energy is not dispersed then body, mind and spirit remain tranquil. This is the key to long life. As long as energy is not dissipated, then the ocean of energy will remain full and your mind and spirit will be at ease. Naturally you will have a youthful complexion which will remain despite the aging of the body. It is explained in Daoist alchemical texts that there are three main centres in the body which correspond to crown, the heart and the ocean of energy. The head or crown centre is the centre through which one is connected to subtle thought, subtle energies and non-corporeal dimensionality. ‘The heart or middle centre is the centre through which one is connected to the universe and all living things and so it is described as the seat of the self. — 221 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON Therefore it is the centre of relationship or connectedness to all things and to love as the unifying principle of the cosmos. The ocean of energy in the space corresponding approximately to the area between the perineum, the base of the spine and the lower abdomen is the reservoir of energy which belongs to earth. Although they are described representationally as centres with locus they should not be taken too literally since they are without physical form. They might also be described as interpenetrating fields, spectrums or layers of one essential energy that pervades the entire lattice of the form-body. ‘They connect along the central channel (chong-mai) that runs through the centre of the subtle or etheric body following the spinal column from the perineum to the crown of the head. This is the main corridor or axis along which the life-force flows. It is non-physical. Connected with this are the twelve principal meridians, the eight extraordinary meridians and countless minor conduits which carry the life-force throughout the body. The twelve principal meridians include the governor channel which travels along the back of the spine and the concep- tion channel which travels down the front of the body. In addition to the ni-wan in the crown of the head and the yung-chuan in the soles of the feet, there are major energy gates between the eyes, in the heart, solar-plexus, navel, perineum and in the palms of the hands. Whether one is aware of it or not, subtle energy is constantly streaming through the energy system of the body. In the Refinement of Spirit and Energy (Cunshen liangi ming) Sun Simiao further says: If you wish to learn how to cultivate and refine energy you need to start by abstaining from eating grains.** Then you slowly allow the chi to accumulate in the ocean of energy. With your mind centred your thoughts will become tranquil so that they won't bother you. As the ocean of energy fills, you will feel contentment. As long as the energy is not scattered, your spirit (heart-mind) will be stable and at ease. Naturally you will retain your youthful complexion irrespective = 222 = NOTES of the aging of the body. This method does not require that you go without eating, do special breathing exercises to accumulate energy, swallow elixirs, concentrate on the end of your nose, visualize and supplicate deities or undergo any particular hardships. When you are hungry you eat. When you are tired, you should rest. If you proceed gently in this way you will become unconstricted and you will no longer feel ob- structed. When mind-intent/awareness (shen) and energy (ch?) are brought to- gether in union then the life-force will become enlivened. This is some- times referred to as “immersion of fire (/2) in water (Aan)”. The essence of yang is fire and that of yin is water. When yin and yang control each other they are mutually stabilizing. The trigrams for kan (water) and /i (fire) when combined give the trigram fai which means peace or tranquillity. * Sun Simiao (581-682 CE) sometimes referred to as the “King of Med- icines” was a physician, herbalist and mystic who lived during the T’ang dynasty. He wrote a number of medical texts including the Essential Golden Prescriptions for Emergencies (Qian jin yao fang) and the Refinement of Spirit and Energy (Cunshen liangi ming). He was also renowned for his knowledge of herbal remedies. He lived to the age of 101. The Essential Golden Pre- scriptions for Emergencies includes prescriptions for the diagnosis of illness (pathogenic energy) and therapy, medicinal recipes, daoyin, massage and acupuncture. Sun Simiao also experimented with the healing properties of sound and explained how particular sound energies could be harnessed for healing purposes in the Six Sy//able Secret. **“Abstaining from eating grains” is a metaphor for regulating one’s outlook and behaviour so as to let go of a grasping and self-centred attitude to life. “* Old Woman Yu describes how the witches brew is prepared: “Keeping the world outside of himself” refers to putting aside matters of the world and the ledger of gain and loss. When the world of acquisitions — 223 — THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON and the accountant’s ledger is forgotten there is relaxed tranquillity. “Putting inside things out” refers to emptying out or letting the subcon- scious mind which contains all the memories and conditionings bubble up and empty out. Energetically one might say that all of these residues accu- mulate in the etheric field of the body and “block” the free flow of the life- force. Often it is said that in the practice of so-called “meditation” thought must be cut off. But to try to stop thought is like trying to get rid of the bubbles in a flowing stream. Thought must be allowed to bubble up like the fizz in soft drink in order for it to naturally subside. Forceful concentration will merely cause the suppression of all of the negative energy contained in the psyche. The state of no-mind (wu-Asin) or no-thought (ww-nien) does not mean no thoughts. It means not attaching to the content of thought. In other words to simply let them arise and pass by. “Able to forget himself” refers to sitting in spacious blissful ease. Every cell of the body is dancing with the bliss of the life-force. The experience is called the joy of heaven. “The brightness of dawn” refers to the brightness or illumination of the unification of mind. Observer and observed cannot be distinguished. ‘This is the light of shen or the spirit. “Losing track of time” refers to the non-dual timelessness of no past, present or future. Human being and universe are one. “The place where there’s neither life nor death” refers to leaping from the top of a hundred foot pole. It is referred to as the beginning of things. It is neither existence nor non-existence and so it is said that it cannot be either described or explained in any way. Part XIV: Transformation * When spirit (shen) and energy (ch?) come together in a certain way then there’s what we call life. When the life-force withdraws then there’s what we call death. But it is not the end. It merely means that that which came together in a certain combination has dispersed and taken on other forms. 46 Materialists take the view that death is the end and that there is no — 224 - NOTES further experience after the body disaggregates. The myths of the Egyptians and the Greeks as well as many of the metaphysical systems of the East suggest that the experiences of the soul continue in one form or another. Chuang-tzu, whilst not being specific, suggests that there might indeed be more to it than the materialists believe. Now you might well have your own view. But let’s not get into an argument about it. What does it matter anyway? Everybody finds out for themselves when the time comes. “7 When a person is much attached to something it’s hard to let it go. So it is said that sorrow and grief hold back the progress of the departed soul. We are attracted to those things that we like. Thus, when the soul is too much enmeshed with the world it finds it hard to let go of it. It is said that there are many intermediate states where, unable to let go of circumstances, the soul is unable to relinquish the energy of this physical world system. These are called the “in-between” states. Sometimes when a human being dies unexpectedly in sudden traumatic circumstances the spirit might not even realise or be able to accept that it is no longer of this physical world. ‘8 ‘When it comes to the matter of the dissolution of the physical form, in the end, unless one has cultivated the energy-body to a high degree, it is likely that one has little control. And so the general proposition that pre- vails is that like attracts like. On the other hand it is said that a person who has found a high degree of inner freedom and has raised their vibration level may be able to determine a new context or place of rebirth. ” ‘There have always been those who seek immortality through practic- es designed to prolong the lifespan. ‘These are the practices of you-wei. However the immortality of Chuang-tzu is the spontaneously arisen time- less present. It is a world away from the deliberate cultivation practices of you-wei. Chuang-tzu says: The man who withdraws from the world spends all his days inhaling and exhaling, puffing, panting, sipping and spitting out old breath and replacing it with new. He practices stretching like a bear and turning like a crane imagining that he will become immortal. These = 225-2 THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON people have only one aim and that is to preserve themselves and to live as long as P’eng Tsu.* Chuang-tzu is referring to the deliberate cultivation of yogic type practices similar to pranayama and hatha yoga. Chuang-tzu is suggesting that whilst these practices may be useful for health and regenerative purposes and may even lead to unusual psychic powers and physical longevity they do not necessarily lead to either intuitive wisdom or to the spontaneous freedom of the selflessness of true wz-wei. * Peng Tsu was the Chinese counterpart of Methuselah who was said to have lived for 800 years. Part XV: Dreaming °° As the planet turns there is the constant oscillation between day and night, light and dark. In cosmic terms it is the movement between the solar and the lunar. The solar represents the conscious. The conscious is the active. The lunar represents the unconscious. It is the passive. During the day in the solar light the world is illuminated. At night you might say that the world is withdrawn from our grasp. No longer illuminated, it is taken away. Each night we are carried by the motion of the planet from the con- scious to the unconscious. The world of the conscious is the world of the senses. The world of the unconscious is where the inner landscape of the soul is revealed. It is in the lunar landscape of dreams where we stand facing ourselves. It is the mysterious world of other dimensions of knowing and unknowing and of time and timelessness. Part XVI: The Who Knows What *! Tn relation to the Dao, the Scripture of Clarity and Tranquillity (Qingjing Jing) states: — 226 - NOT m Yn ‘The great Dao is never seen; Yet it gives birth to heaven and earth. ‘The great Dao is without motives; Yet it gives motion to the sun and the moon. ‘The great Dao is nameless; Yet it nourishes the ten thousand things. I don’t know what to call it; So I just call it “Dao”. °*? Noumena permeate phenomena and phenomena permeate noumena. Mind or thought draws a distinction between them but reality knows of no such distinctions. In the Chuang-tzu it is recorded that one day Confucius went to visit Lao-tzu. Said Confucius, “We have a little free time today so can I ask you what the Dao is?” Replied Lao-tzu, “All right, Pll try to explain. But first take a bath and wash out your ears. Forget about all that cleverness that’s piled up in your head. Dao is slippery. It’s hard to explain. The seen comes from the unseen and form comes from the formless. The life-force comes from Dao and the physical body is animated by the life-force. In this way all things take form and evolve through different transformations of matter. Life springs into existence without appearing to come from anywhere and just as quickly disappears back into the infinity of the unseen.” °3 Understanding is not understanding. Not understanding is understand- ing. The Who Knows What is neither being nor non-being. If it were being then it would be limited. If it were non-being then how could it give rise to being? And so it is said that it is neither existence nor non-existence. It is neither affirmation nor negation. It’s not for no reason that the Dao de jing starts with the verse: The Dao that can be described Is not the Dao; ee ite THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON The names that can be given to it Are only names. Part XVII: Going Along with Things * ‘The nature of all things is to transform one thing into another. The ancients were keen observers of nature. They watched nature and described the movement of natural forces in terms of the interactions of yin and yang and in terms of the transformations of the five agents: water, fire, wood, metal and earth. Observing and understanding the natural flow of life enables one to go along with it rather than arbitrarily resisting it. To resist is to expend energy. To expend energy fruitlessly is to waste energy. It causes one to fall out of harmony with the spontaneously arisen suchness of life. Life expressing itself spontaneously is called tzu-jan. The Daoist scholar Kuo-hsiang who lived during the fourth century CE explains the way of water as follows: One finds spaciousness without intentionality and cultivates the Way without recourse to righteousness and do-gooding. One puts one’s life in order without pursuing reputation or acknowledgement. One relaxes gently into oneself wherever one is and so there is no need to depart for distant mountains and rivers. Unconcerned about whether one lives a short life or a long one, one can dispense with the practice of special health exercises to prolong life. Since nothing is sought to be possessed one can rest at ease and take delight in the multitude of beautiful things that are constantly appearing. Such is the Way of heaven and earth in mutual harmony and balance. °° People are generally in a hurry. They try this or that technique and look for signs of progress to reassure themselves that they are “getting some- where”. But wu-wei is the way of water. Water flows. It goes at its own pace. It doesn’t draw attention to itself. It always gravitates to the lowest point. And so, ultimately, going along with things means patience and patience means going along with things. — 228 - NOT Mm Yn In verse 15 of the Dao de jing, Lao-tzu asks: Do you have the patience To allow muddy water to settle? Are you able to give expression to it Amidst the daily activities of life? °° In Chinese calligraphy, the Way is represented by the two combined characters which are “water” and “move”. Put together they mean “water flowing” or “watercourse way”. Water has two attributes. The first is fluidity. When water meets an obstacle it simply flows around it. The second attri- bute is persistence. Given time it will wear down a mountain. Wu-wei means not forcing. When you force something you set up an energetic dynamic where there will be a counter-force or reaction from the other side. It creates a tension. This is observable in the physical world. It equally applies in the inner world of the psyche. It translates as the division between how things are and how you think things should be. The more that you try to force things to be how you think they should be, the more uncomfortable things will be. *” The adept Sun Simiao explains: When the breath is deep and relaxed, the various sicknesses won't arise. When breathing is shallow and tense, illness follows. Those who wish to preserve their health should first learn how to adjust their breathing. Breathing from the ocean of energy cures most sicknesses. When the mind is at ease and the emotions are balanced then there is harmony. The expression of harmony is intrinsic joy and happiness. ‘The body-mind is relaxed and energetically open. = 229. = THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON Part XVIII: Finding Ease °§ In Chinese the character /e is generally translated as virtue. But it is not meant in the sense of righteousness or some kind of petty morality. There is no one-word English equivalent. One might say that it is the combination of integrity, balance, intelligence, responsiveness and modesty. It translates perhaps as skill in living. To be skilful in life has nothing to do with amass- ing a large bank balance. To be skilful in life you have to have the sensitivity to appreciate the context. If you don't understand context you're like a man who’s hard of hearing who only hears a small part of the conversation. * Liu I-ming (1734-1821 CE) in his Inner Teachings says: ‘The birth of natural awareness as the unification of mind is a ques- tion of balancing yin and yang and staying in the centre. It’s called the clay pot because earth symbolizes the centre. So what we are talking about is balance. If you maintain balance then yin and yang unify and the five agents of transformation come together. If you lose the centre then yin and yang will become lopsided, the five agents of transformation get out of harmony and the unified mind is lost. So maintaining balance is the secret to moving along in the Way. Part XIX: Loose Talk 60 Hun Tun means original chaos or the inchoate. It is sometimes repre- sented cosmologically as an egg. Sometimes it’s depicted as a man with a round head with no eyes, ears, nose or mouth. Ontologically it represents primordial non-being, before the dividing up of things or before discrimi- nation. It is before you give form to form. Shu and Hu represent duality or the polarity of yin and yang. It is division or differentiation. It is the divided. *! Tf the organization of human society is wholly based on competition with an absence of humaneness then it is inevitable that inequality, imbalance and unhappiness will be the result. Those who are good at appropriating things will appropriate more than they need. Those who are not good at appropriating things will be left out. And lacking in material needs they — 230 - NOT m Ca) will start to resent those that have appropriated all the things. This is the root cause of all revolutions and many wars. ° In the Five Phases of the Mind contained in the Refinement of Spirit and Energy (Cunshen liangi ming) the adept Sun Simiao (581-682 CE) discusses the gradual progress of the mind from dividedness to unity or undividedness. In the first stage the mind is most often agitated and rarely ever tranquil. The thought processes are conditioned by habit energies and the accumulation of conditioned patterns of thinking. The mind is full of projections and imaginings. There is the constant acceptance and rejection of things. ‘There is little constancy of mind. Anxieties, worries, scheming and calculations occupy the mind constantly and keep turning in the mind like horses running wild. This is called the ordinary mind. In the next stage, the mind is sometimes tranquil but still much agitated. This is the stage of observation, of watching the mind. There are moments of peace but it does not last. The mind again scatters and divides almost immediately. It’s difficult to centre the mind because it is constantly running wild in every direction. Nevertheless the observation yields some small progress in the right direction. The mind is half agitated and half tranquil. The unification or stillness of mind and its diffusion or dividedness are about equal. The effort of constant observation is paying off. Awareness has been born and is growing. Gradually you feel more centred within yourself. The mind is mostly tranquil and occasionally agitated. Gradually awareness has increased. As soon as the mind starts to divide and scatter you notice it and bring it back. The mind is unified. Body and mind is one undivided whole. There is just the stream of effortless constant awareness flowing naturally. It has solidified into the natural state. When thoughts arise they cause no disturbance to the undividedness of the whole. Whether one is engaged in doing things or not the mind is centred on its axis. — 231 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON Part XX: Back-to-frontness °3 ‘The state of affairs in the world is interesting to observe. In spite of the fact that the human being only exists because the earth and the universe gives him life, there seems to be a pervasive belief that the human being is somehow not part of it. He seems to have arrived at the point where he thinks he is unrelated and therefore he can do whatever he wants irre- spective of the damage that it may cause to other life forms. This idea is perplexing. One wonders how it came to this. And so the human being with his chest puffed out continues to talk in terms of conquests and domination. Instead of going with the natural contours of the land he seeks to indiscriminately bulldoze every hill he perceives as being in his way. He seeks to wrestle nature’s secrets from her bosom so that he can exploit them for his own benefit. He exploits his environment and his fellow beings. And so he has become a master of exploitation. One can only wonder sometimes whether perhaps the de- scription of the human being as “human” was a little presumptuous? * More than two thousand years ago Chuang-tzu was alive to the dangers of a mechanistic and purely functional approach to life. It’s not that he’s against technology. Rather he is talking about the mental outlook that sees everything mechanistically. This kind of thinking only thinks in terms of uses and purposes, how’s and why’s, means and ends and gains and losses. This kind of utilitarian outlook is precisely what destroys the innate ap- preciation for and direct connection with life itself. Life is seen only in terms of how it can be dissected or what can be extracted from it. And so one becomes incapable of experiencing the abundance of the intrinsic and freely available joy of being alive. This kind of thinking that Chuang-tzu is exposing translates directly into the so-called spiritual life. Thus the whole inner-life becomes a race to get from here to there. It becomes a race to get hold of something whether that be a special immunity from the ordinary experience of life or some imagined special state of consciousness. Life becomes divided into the inner life and the outer life as the “world”. And so there is the arbitrary = 232 = NOTES division into the ordinary and the spiritual. Before you know it you have the whole technology of enlightenment. You have all the steps and stages and the hoops that you have to jump through. All the techniques, the methodologies, the practices and the paraphernalia of nonsensical beliefs and rules that promise to take you from un-enlightenment to so called “en- lightenment”. But if your way of seeing things is completely upside down to begin with, what kind of enlightenment do you think you'll ever find? °° When one is unable to feel the sanctity of life and feel gratitude for the abundance that life provides then one’s own life has no value. And if one attributes no value to the life one has been given then one sees no value in other living beings and treats them accordingly. With this kind of outlook it is inevitable that the planet and the cosmos is seen as a kind of inanimate and insentient machine. In short, life itself is devalued. And if life is devalued then one’s own life becomes meaningless and without intrinsic value. The next step, of course, is the exploitation of the planet and all the species of life that coinhabit it, not to mention the exploitation of one human being by another. So the planet and all the things on it, including the people and other living beings are viewed as a resource to be exploited, irrespective of the damage and cost. The result of this is plain to see in the appalling degradation of the land, the waterways and the oceans, the frightful treatment of animals, and the general suffering and unhappiness that is prevalent in the world. In the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine (Huangdi neijing suwen) the Yellow Emperor says: Do not forget that the myriad things in the universe are all intimate- ly related to each other. They might appear to be quite different like yin and yang, inner and outer, male and female, higher and lower, but they are all completely interconnected and inter-dependent. If you can maintain a holistic and integral perspective you will come to understand the nature of the Dao. This circle of interdependence that Huang-di is talking about is not an — 233 - THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON intellectual theory of relationships like some sort of complicated mechan- ical supply-chain for bringing jam-doughnuts to a supermarket. Rather, it is a communion of wholeness, a circle of love. 6° What does it mean to be human? This is a question that has been asked by philosophers for thousands of years. Etymologically to be human means to be humane. So how does one live in a way that is humane? In verse 57 of the Dao de jing, Lao-tzu says: The more restrictions and prohibitions you impose, ‘The poorer the people will become. ‘The more weapons you keep, The more troubled will be the state. The more cunning and skilful you are, ‘The more vicious things will become. The more laws and orders you promulgate, ‘The more the robbers and thieves will proliferate. *’ Once upon a time people grew their own food and made their own clothes, so there was a strong natural connection with the earth and the seasons. People knew where things came from and so they said grace, which is an expression of gratitude. Now nobody says thank you for anything. If one becomes incapable of feeling gratitude then in the end one feels nothing at all. One no longer has any connection with the cosmos. It’s as good as being dead. So let’s talk about soul nourishment. ‘There is the nourishment of beauty. Every time you see a beautiful form, a beautiful face, a beautiful smile or the natural beauty of flowers or the landscape you are nourished by beauty. There is the nourishment of colours. Each time you absorb the green of hill and dale or the bright colours of a kite against the deep blue of the sky you are nourished by colour. There is the nourishment of the earth. Each time you walk on the grass or feel the stones and earth beneath your feet you are nourished by the energy of the earth. ‘There is the nourishment of the rain. Each time you hear the rain falling you are nourished by the softness of water. There is the nourishment — 234 - NOTES of scents. Every time you smell the fragrance of the earth, the rains and the natural perfume of plants you are nourished by the scent of life. There is the nourishment of the trees and plants. Every time you stand under a tree you receive the loving energy of the tree. There is the nourishment of water. Each time you bathe in water you are refreshed and receive the nourishment of the water of life. There is the nourishment of air. Each time you take in the fresh air you are revitalized and refreshed. There is the nourishment of the light of the sun. Each time you are bathed in light you are nourished by the essence of cosmic fire. There is the nourishment of the light of the moon and the stars and the planets. When you look deep into the night sky you receive the nourishment of distant dimensions. There is the nourishment of the food you eat. Each time you eat food beautifully prepared you take in the love of this whole planet and you are reminded of the earth that sustains you. There is the nourishment of sound. Each time you listen to the birds singing and the beautiful harmonies of music you are nourished by the soothing resonance of sound. There is the nourishment of beautiful thoughts and expansive far-reaching ideas. When the mind receives beautiful thoughts and far-reaching ideas the soul is replenished and vitalized with intelligence. There is the nourishment of warmth and kindness from other living beings. When you receive warmth and kindness you receive the love of the universe through them. There is the nourishment of the golden energy of the soundless sound. In the golden light of the soundless sound you return to yourself. Part XXI: Uselessness °° Most of the accomplished Daoist adepts of the classical period culti- vated the Way whilst engaged in the ordinary occupations of life. They applied the practice of dual cultivation. In Awakening to Reality (Wu-jen pien) Chang Po-tuan (987-1082 CE) says: Until you have cultivated energy there is no use in running to the mountains. You'll find nothing useful there. The treasure is right where you are, it’s just that you don’t recognize it. 235 > THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON It is said that Lao-tzu only left his position at the court archives to wander in the mountains when he was older and well after he had attained the Way. In the Discourse on Correct Cultivation (Cheng-tao hsiu-lien chih- Jun) Liu Hua-yang says: People nowadays think that the Way is cultivated by abandoning the family to live in seclusion in the mountains or running off to a monastic community. They think that just by sitting still as a log they can attain the Way. Unfortunately they haven't received proper instructions and don't understand the dynamics of the life-force. And so they sit there cultivating quietude and get nowhere. It’s like a cat sitting outside an empty hole waiting for a mouse to pop out. Part XXII: Clear as the Morning ® ‘The triad of the sun, moon and the stars (Milky Way) are called the Three Luminaries (san-kuang). On the cosmic plane they reflect the triad of heaven, earth and man. In the Yellow Court Scripture (Huang-ting ching) it is stated that heaven as macrocosm possesses the three luminaries and man as the microcosm has the three elixir fields (lower, middle and upper centres). ‘The sun and the moon represent yin and yang. The Milky Way represents the spinal column. The spinal column is the centre. All things emanate and revolve around the central axis. The sun is warmth (yang) and the moon is coolness (yin). The sun is connected with the left side of the body. ‘The moon is connected with the right side. ” Chuang-tzu says: For the person who has found celestial joy, heaven is found right here in life and what is called death is merely the transformation of things. In stillness and in motion there is the same single thread of joyfulness. Such a person is in attunement with the cosmos and so he is in harmony with the human realm too. He is not entangled by things and so things don’t interfere with him. — 236 — NOTES ” In the Refinement of Spirit and Energy (Cunshen liangi ming), the adept Sun Simiao (581-682 CE) talks about what’s possible as follows: After the mind has become unified and undivided then the seven further stages of development of the body-mind may naturally follow. ‘They are the natural progression of progressing without progress. First all the ailments of the body which have been accumulated will gradually disappear. The body will become light and expansive and the mind will be radiant. The mind will be restful and the spirit tranquil. The emotions will be balanced and the energy stable. There will be joyfulness and light-heartedness fresh each day. You will feel as though you are floating. This is called realizing or becoming one with the Way. Next you will transcend the boundaries of ordinary life. You will recover your youthful complexion. Your mind and body at ease you will radiate joy and happiness. You will experience the mysterious and inexplicable. You will experience the transparency of the world and see into the workings of things. You might at this stage consider settling down in a quiet place. It’s better not to be around too many people. Next it will be possible to extend your life. You might travel mountain to mountain and draw energy from nature drinking dew and mountain mist. Next you can refine the physical form of the body into pure energy. At this point you can consider yourself to be a truly realized person of the Way. You can come and go at will. There is radiant clarity whether day or night that does not diminish. From here you can refine the energy body into pure spirit and become a spirit being. You can transform yourself spontaneously and appear at will wherever you wish across the cosmos. You are no longer constrained by time or space. Now by refining the spirit further you can become a perfected being. You can numinously pervade existence as you wish. Your = J31 = THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF ERNOON appearance and form is no longer definite and has no limitation. You can transform at will and appear in any form wherever you wish. Finally you will transcend all form. At this stage you return fully to the source. This is called the final ultimate. Part XXIII: In a Village Where There’s Not Any Thing at All ” In the section of the Lieh-tgu titled Riding the Wind there is the follow- ing anecdote: When I asked Old Shang to be my teacher I decided to be diligent in learning the Way. Initially I dared not even hold any opinions of my own and never spoke out of turn. After three years my teacher acknowledged my presence with a nod. After five years I knew what was to be done and what was not to be done. My teacher gave me a smile. After seven years, my intuition started working and things came to me spontaneously. I couldn't care less about either pleasing or offending anyone. My teacher asked me to sit next to him. After nine years no matter what came out of my mouth, it was all the same. I no longer even thought of Old Shang as my teacher. It was then that I realized that there was no separation between what was inside and what was outside. My spirit became bright. I heard with my eyes and saw with my ears. I used my nose as a mouth and my mouth as a nose. My experience of the world was of one undividedness. I could hardly tell where I started and where I ended. My spirit became light and joyous and I felt just like a leaf riding the wind. Tn traditional Chinese medicine the political state was used as a met- aphor for the internal psycho-physical state of the person. Order in the world (z/u) is a metaphor for internal equilibrium and harmony. — 238 — Glossary Beginning of things:: By-itself-so: Chi: Dao: Daoyin: Five agents (of transformation): Hun Tun: Innate: Natural person: Neidan: No-mind: Te: GLOSSARY ‘The centre. The origin. Timelessness. No-time and no-space. The in-between. The eternal pres- ent. The great silence. See Tzu-jan. Life energy. Life-force. One encounters great difficulty when trying to define ch’7. Etymologi- cally the character for ch’ is represented as steam rising from cooking rice. In traditional Chinese medicine ch’i has been variously categorized into seven types in relation to the human physiology. However in Daoism it has a looser and broader meaning. See Way. Kinesiologie. Literally “guiding and pulling” or leading and guiding ch’. Water, fire, wood, metal and earth: these repre- sent the five forces of transformation. Primordial chaos, the inchoate or the undiffer- entiated. The natural. The by-itself-so. The spontaneously arisen. The true person (Chen-jen). Inner alchemy or the cultivation of inner-energy. Wt-hsin. Virtue, potency, integrity, skill at living, attune- ment. — 239 — THREE IN THE MORNING AND FOUR IN THE AF Weidan: (The) Who Knows What: Wu-wet: Yin and yang: You-wet: ERNOON Naturalness. The spontaneously arising. Life giving expression to itself. The naturally just so. Suchness. Watercourse-way. The naturally flowing. Dao. Great mystery. It is best left untranslated but if it were translated it should be thought of in the active sense as a verb rather than as a noun. Exterior cultivation or alchemy. The ingesting of plant-derived pharmaceuticals and minerals. See “Way”. Non-doing, non-action. Activity without self-striving. Selfless action. Going along with things. Non-forcing. The symbolism of conjoined opposites. Negative and positive, male and female, rational and intu- itive, sun and moon, warm and cold. Doing. Activity with self-striving. — 240 -
The Taoism Reader
Thomas Cleary
null
Taoism,Thomas Cleary,Daoism,Tao,Dao,Lao-tzu,Laozi,Chuang-tzu,Zhuang Zhou,Lieh-tzu,Liezi,Huai-nan-tzu,Wen-tzu,Chinese Religion,Chinese Philosophy,Chinese Spirituality,Lü Yen,Complete Reality,Yin-Yang,Religion,Spirituality,Taoist Practice,Educational Texts
This is the ebook version of The Taoism Reader , an anthology of key Taoist texts edited by Thomas Cleary, available here in EPUB, AZW3, and PDF formats. Description: From the time of its earliest sages in prehistoric China, Taoism has looked to the underlying Way of all things (the Tao) as a guide to thoughts and actions. For the Taoists, the patterns of nature revealed the answers to their deepest spiritual questions and provided the inspiration for their unique teachings. Over the centuries, Taoism has blossomed into a profound tradition with a variety of forms—all united by a single, core philosophy of radical simplicity and natural living. Today, Taoism is most widely known through the Tao-te Ching, yet its corpus of literature is vast—ranging from philosophical dialogues and essays to astonishing fables, legends, proverbs, and more. This compact collection of Taoism’s greatest masterpieces introduces its most fundamental teachings and reveals the essential spirit of Tao. The Taoism Reader includes: * Tao-te Ching: the foundational source of Taoist thought by the legendary Lao Tzu * Chuang-tzu: philosophical dialogues from one of Taoism’s most famous sages * Huai-nan-tzu: teachings from the time of the Han dynasty on affairs of state, natural science, and Taoist psychology * Wen-tzu: records of further sayings by Lao Tzu on the art of living * Tales of Inner Meaning: fables, stories, and jokes from the Lieh-tzu and others on the subtleties of Taoist philosophy * Sayings of Ancestor Lü: teachings from Lü Yen, a seminal figure in the founding of the Complete Reality school of Taoism and master synthesizer of China’s classic spiritual traditions
Full text of "The Taoism Reader" Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "The Taoism Reader" See other formats Taoism READER ABOUTTHEBOOK From the time of its earliest sages in prehistoric China, Taoism has looked to the underlying Way of all things (the Tao) as a guide to thoughts and actions. For the Taoists, the patterns of nature revealed the answers to their deepest spiritual questions and provided the inspiration for their unique teachings. Over the centuries, Taoism has blossomed into a profoimd tradition with a variety of forms—all united by a single, core philosophy of radical simplicity and natural living. Today, Taoism is most widely known through the Tao-te Ching, yet its corpus of literature is vast—ranging from philosophical dialogues and essays to astonishing fables, legends, proverbs, and more. This compact collection of Taoism’s greatest masterpieces introduces its most fundamental teachings and reveals the essential spirit of Tao. The Taoism Reader includes: • Tao-te Ching: the foundational source of Taoist thought by the legendary Lao Tzu • Chuang-tzu: philosophical dialogues from one of Taoism’s most famous sages • Huai-nan-tzu: teachings from the time of the Han dynasty on affairs of state, natural science, and Taoist psychology • Wen-tzw. records of further sayings hy Lao Tzu on the art of living • Tales of Inner Meaning: fahles, stories, and jokes from the Lieh-tzu and others on the subtleties of Taoist philosophy • Sayings of Ancestor Lii: teachings from Lii Yen, a seminal figure in the founding of the Complete Reality school of Taoism and master synthesizer of China’s classic spiritual traditions THOMAS CLEARY holds a PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University and a JD from the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law. He is the translator of over fifty volumes of Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, and Islamic texts from Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, Pali, and Arabic. The TAOISM READER Translated and Edited by Thomas Cleary SHAM BH ALA Boston & London 2012 Shambhala Publications, Inc. Horticultural Hall 300 Massachusetts Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02115 www.shambhala.com © 1991, 1993 by Thomas Cleary Cover art: Emperor Huizong Cranes of Good Omen. Northern Song dynasty, early 12th century. Handscroll; ink and colors on silk; 51 x 138.2 cm. Liaoning Provincial Museum, Shenyang This book was previously published as The Spirit ofTao. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Catalogjng-in-Publication Data The Taoism reader/translated and edited by Thomas Cleary, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. elSBN 978-0-8348-2780-6 ISBN 978-1-59030-950-6 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Taoism—Sacred books—Quotations. I. Cleary, Thomas F., 1949- II. Title. BL1900.A1S65 2011 299.5T482—dc23 2011028691 CONTENTS Classic Sources Tao-te Ching Chuang-tzu Huai-nan-tzu Wen-tzu Tales of Inner Meaning Sayings of Ancestor Lii Notes on Sources E-mail Sign-Up Classic Sources INTRODUCTION Tao-te Ching The Tao-te Ching is the most widely read of Taoist texts and the most universally accepted by followers of all Taoist orders. It has been dated variously, with estimates generally ranging from around 500 to 300 b.c.e. Although it is conventionally attributed to Lao-tzu, a semilegendary ancestor of Taoism, the Tao-te Ching is evidently not an original composition by an individual author, but contains redactions of even more ancient lore. In any case, it is one of the earliest sources of Taoist theory and praxis. The present anthology includes several key selections from the classic illustrating these teachings. Chuang-tzu The next great Taoist classic after the Tao-te Ching is the equally famous Chuang-tzu, or Book of Master Chuang, attributed to the philosopher Chuang-tzu, or Chuang Chou (ca. 369-286 b.c.e ). Although it elaborates on many of the ideas of the Tao-te Ching, the Chuang-tzu is very different in its transmission and manner of presentation. Whereas the former text consists of proverbs and aphorisms, the latter is largely made up of allegorical stories interspersed with philosophical discussions. The Tao-te Ching, closely linked to ancient tradition, is attributed to a semilegendary sage and is very difficult to place historically with precision; the Chuang-tzu, on the other hand, is attributed to a clearly historical personage, and the marks of its time, during which the chaos and violence of the Warring States era rose inexorably toward a climax, are quite evident in the psychological mood and philosophical attitude of the text. Huai-nan-tzu The next great Taoist classic after Chuang-tzu is the Huai- nan-tzu (Huainanzi), or “Masters of Huai-nan,” composed approximately 150 years later in a very different social and political climate. Centuries of civil war had ended around 200 B.C.E. with the founding of the monumental Han dynasty, which was to rule China for the next four himdred years, with but a brief interruption in the early part of the first century c.e. Although the later impact of Buddhism was so great as to be immeasurable, nevertheless the culture of the Han dynasty left an indelible imprint, exerting a lasting influence on the development of Chinese civilization. The early emperors of Han adopted a Taoist policy of minimalist government in order to allow the nation and its people to recover from the violence and destruction of the long era of Warring States. China had been united into an empire under the militaristic Ch’in dynasty in the middle of the third century b.c.e.; taking over from the Ch’in, the Han dynasty attempted to restore classical culture, which had been suppressed by the Ch’in government in favor of a mechanical form of legalism. One of the great patrons of this revival was Liu An, a grandson of the founding Han emperor and king of a small feudal domain. Known as the king of Huai-nan after the region where his fief was at one time located, Liu An opened his court to scholars and savants from all over the empire, developing it into a major center of learning and culture. According to legend, the classic Huai-nan-tzu is the product of an inner circle of eight Taoist sages at Liu An’s court. This group of wizards is said to have appeared at court when it was already in full bloom as a seat of arts and sciences. Challenged by the king to demonstrate knowledge not already represented at his illustrious court, the eight ancients proceeded to astound him with uncanny displays of occult powers. Duly humbled, the king of Huai-nan welcomed the sages and apprenticed himself to them. The Huai-nan-tzu purports to be records of their talks. Because of the historical circumstances of its origin, the Huai-nan-tzu contains a great deal of material relating to political science and affairs of state; but it also synthesizes other aspects of Taoism, including natural and spiritual sciences. In this respect it is the richest of the early Taoist classics. The dissemination of these teachings was inhibited, however, by two events: the downfall and disappearance of Liu An, victim of an intrigue; and the official adoption of a form of Confucianism as the orthodox system of thought and education throughout the empire. The brand of Confucianism that won the imperial stamp of approval was really a hybrid of Confucianism, legalism, and a peculiar cosmology that revived the ancient doctrine of the divine right of kings and bestowed on it the dignity and authority of natural law. Thus the liberal, egalitarian idealism of the Taoist Huai- nan masters was eclipsed by the imperial ideology of political despotism and intellectual conformism. Nevertheless, the essential vitality, energy, and spirit of Taoism remained stored within its own secret reservoirs in spite of external barriers to its effective application on a large scale: as the Huai-nan masters themselves said, ‘To blame the Way for not working in a polluted world is like tying a unicorn down from two sides and yet expecting it to run a thousand miles.” The teachings of the Huai-nan-tzu may not have had the social and political impact that could have been possible under more favorable conditions, but they retained incalculable value as a basic resource for Taoist principles and practices. Although the Huai-nan-tzu follows the Tao-te Ching and the Chuang-tzu in its fundamental understanding of human nature and life, because of the historical circumstances of its composition it is more positive and constructive than either of its great predecessors, especially the Chuang-tzu. Wen-tzu After the downfall of Liu An, the disappearance of the Huai-nan masters, and the establishment of Confucian orthodoxy in the second century b.c.e., the classical Taoist tradition of the Tao-te Ching, the Chuang-tzu, and the Huai-nan-tzu went underground. There remained considerable private interest in Taoism among the Confucian intelligentsia, but over the course of the Han dynasty their ‘Taoism” became mixed with superstitions and mechanical thought systems characteristic of hybrid Han Confucianism. Among Taoist purists, it is said that so- called Real People, or true Taoist adepts, went into hiding during the Han dynasty and did not reemerge for hundreds of years. The Wen-tzu (Wen zi) occupies a unique position in this complex historical context. Its compilation is attributed to a disciple of Lao-tzu, with virtually all of its contents presented as sayings of Lao-tzu himself. Although later Taoist literature includes many texts ascribed to Lao-tzu, they refer to the ancient master by honorific epithets attached to him as the apotheosized founder of Taoism, a transhistorical immortal reappearing in the world from age to age. Wen-tzu, on the other hand, uses the names Lao-tzu and Lao Tan, suggesting greater antiquity. This is reinforced by the contents of the work, which follow more closely on the classic tradition than do later texts attributed to the transcendental personalities of the founder. Non-Taoist historical evidence would seem to indicate that the text may have been compiled around 100 b.c.e., not long after the Huai-nan-tzu, and later augmented to form an expanded version. Linguistic evidence also suggests an early Han dynasty origin. The Wen-tzu contains many extracts from its predecessors, Tao-te Ching, Chuang-tzu, and particularly the Huai-nan-tzu. In a sense, the Wen-tzu may be considered something like an early commentary on these texts, or an attempt to continue the classic tradition after its fall from political grace. In terms of format the Wen-tzu follows the Tao-te Ching; generally abstract and timeless like its model, the Wen-tzu does not include the kind of stories and allusions that make Chuang-tzu and Huai-nan- tzu extravagantly colorful and difficult to read. It does, nevertheless, contain many images and metaphors that are not found in the earlier texts but are effective in illustrating and vivifying the ancient teachings. Like the Huai-nan-tzu, its immediate predecessor, the Wen-tzu embraces a wide range of related topics, from physiology and health lore to social and political science. TAO-TE CHING Carrying Vitality and Consciousness Carrying vitality and consciousness, embracing them as one, can you keep them from parting? Concentrating energy, making it supple, can you be like an infant? Purifying hidden perception, can you make it flawless? Loving the people, governing the nation, can you be uncontrived? As the gate of heaven opens and closes, can you be impassive? As understanding reaches everywhere, can you be innocent? Producing and developing. producing without possessing, doing without presuming, growing without domineering: this is called mysterious power. Colors Colors blind people’s eyes, sounds deafen their ears; flavors spoil people’s palates, the chase and the hunt craze people’s minds; goods hard to get make people’s actions harmful. Therefore sages work for the core and not the eyes, leaving the latter and taking the former. Attain the Climax of Emptiness Attain the climax of emptiness, preserve the utmost quiet: as myriad things act in concert, I thereby observe the return. Things flourish, then each returns to its root. Returning to the root is called stillness: stillness is called return to Life, return to Life is called the constant; knowing the constant is called enlightenment. Acts at random, in ignorance of the constant, bode ill. Knowing the constant gives perspective; this perspective is impartial. Impartiality is the highest nobility; the highest nobility is divine, and the divine is the Way. This Way is everlasting, not endangered by physical death. Knowing the Male Knowing the male, keep the female; be humble to the world. Be humble to the world, and eternal power never leaves, returning again to innocence. Knowing the white, keep the black; be an examplar for the world. Be an exemplar for the world, and eternal power never goes awry, returning again to infinity. Knowing the glorious, keep the ignominious; be open to the world. Be open to the world, and eternal power suffices, returning again to simplicity. Simplicity is lost to make instruments, which sages employ as functionaries. Therefore the great fashioner does no splitting. The Way Is Always Uncontrived The Way is always uncontrived, yet there’s nothing it doesn’t do. If lords and monarchs could keep it, all beings would evolve spontaneously. When they have evolved and want to act, I would stabilize them with nameless simplicity. Even nameless simplicity would not be wanted. By not wanting, there is calm, and the world will straighten itself. Return Is the Movement of the Way Return is the movement of the Way; yielding is the function of the Way All things in the world are born of being; being is born of nonbeing. When the World Has the Way When the world has the Way, running horses are retired to manure the fields. When the world lacks the Way, warhorses are bred in the countryside. No crime is greater than approving of greed, no calamity is greater than discontent, no fault is greater than possessiveness. So the satisfaction of contentment is always enough. The World Has a Beginning The world has a beginning that is the mother of the world. Once you’ve found the mother, thereby you know the child. Once you know the child, you return to keep the mother, not perishing though the body die. Close your eyes, shut your doors, and you do not toil all your life. Open your eyes, carry out your affairs, and you are not saved all your life. Seeing the small is called clarity, keeping flexible is called strength. Using the shining radiance, you return again to the light, not leaving anything to harm yourself. This is called entering the eternal. The Richness of Subliminal Virtue The richness of subliminal virtue is comparable to an infant: poisonous creatures do not sting it, wild beasts do not claw it, predatory birds do not grab it. Its tendons are flexible, yet its grip is firm. Even while it knows not of the mating of male and female, its genitals get aroused; this is the epitome of vitality. It can cry all day without choking or getting hoarse; this is the epitome of harmony. Knowing harmony is called constancy, knowing constancy is called clarity; enhancing life is called propitious, the mind mastering energy is called strong. When beings climax in power, they wane; this is called being unguided. The unguided die early. When People Are Born When people are born they are supple, and when they die they are stiff. When trees are born they are tender, and when they die they are brittle. Stiffness is thus a cohort of death, flexibility is a cohort of life. So when an army is strong, it does not prevail. When a tree is strong, it is cut for use. So the stiff and strong are below, the supple and yielding on top. CHUANG-TZU Small fear is fearful, great fear is slow. In aetion they are like a bolt, an arrow, in terms of their control over judgment. In stillness they are like a prayer, a pledge, in terms of their attachment to victory. They kill like fall and winter, in the sense of daily dissolution. Their addiction to what they do is such as to be irreversible. Their satiation is like a seal, meaning that they deepen with age. The mind drawing near to death cannot bring about a restoration of positivity. Joy, anger, sadness, happiness, worry, lament, vacillation, fearfulness, volatility, indulgence, licentiousness, pretentiousness—these are like sounds issuing from hollows, or moisture producing mildew Day and night they interchange before us, yet no one knows where they sprout. Stop, stop! From morning to evening we find them; do they arise from the same source? If not for other, there is no self. If not for self, nothing is apprehended. This is not remote, hut we don’t know what constitutes the cause. There seems to be a real director, but we cannot find any trace of it. Its effectiveness is already proven, but we don’t see its form. It has sense, but no form. The whole body is there with all of its members, openings, and organs: with which is the self associated? Do you like any of them? That means you have selfishness therein. Then do all sometimes act as servants? As servants, are they incapable of taking care of one another? Do they alternate as ruler and subject? Evidently there is a real ruler existing therein: the matter of whether or not we gain a sense of it does not increase or decrease its reality. Once we have taken on a definite form, we do not lose it until death. We oppose things, yet also follow them; we violate things, yet also submit to them: that activity is all like a galloping horse that no one can stop. Isn’t it pitiful? We work all our lives without seeing it accomplish anything. We wearily work to exhaustion, without even knowing what it all goes back to. How can we not be sad about this? People may say at least it isn’t death, but what help is that? As the physical constitution changes, so does the mind; how can this not be considered a great sorrow? Once a butcher was cutting up an ox for a king. As he felt with his hand, leaned in with his shoulder, stepped in and bent a knee to it, the carcass fell apart with a peculiar sound as he played his cleaver. The king, expressing admiration, said to the butcher, “Good! It seems that this is the consummation of technique.” The hutcher put down his cleaver and replied, “What I like is the Way, which is more advanced than technique. But I will present something of technique. “When I first began to cut up oxen, all I saw was an ox. Even after three years I still had not seen a whole ox. Now I meet it with spirit rather than look at it with my eyes. “When sensory knowledge stops, then the spirit is ready to act. Going by the natural pattern, I separate the joints, following the main apertures, according to the nature of its formation. I have never even cut into a mass of gristle, much less a large bone. “A good butcher changes cleavers every year because of damage, a mediocre butcher changes cleavers every month because of breakage. I’ve had this cleaver for nineteen years now, and it has cut up thousands of oxen; yet its blade is as though it had newly come from the whetstone.” Yen Hui asked Confucius, “May I hear about mental fasting?” Confucius replied, ‘You unify your will: hear with the mind instead of the ears; hear with the energy instead of the mind. Hearing stops at the ears, the mind stops at contact, but energy is that which is empty and responsive to others. The Way gathers in emptiness; emptiness is mental fasting.” Yen Hui said, ‘The reason I haven’t been able to master this is because I consider myself really me. If I could master this, ‘F would not exist. Could that be called emptiness?” Confucius said, ‘That’s all there is to it. I tell you, you can go into the political arena without being moved by repute. If you are heard, then speak; if not, then stop. Let there be no dogma, no drastic measures: remain consistent and abide by necessity. Then you’ll be close. “It is easy to obliterate tracks, hard not to walk on the ground. It is easy to use falsehood in working for people; it is hard to use falsehood in working for nature. “1 have heard of flying with wings; I have never heard of flying without wings. I have heard of knowing with knowledge; I have never heard of knowing without knowledge. ‘Tor those who gaze into space, the empty room produces white light; auspicious signs hover in stillness. But if one does not stay here, that is called galloping even while sitting. “If you have your ears and eyes penetrate inwardly, and are detached from conceptual knowledge, then even if ghosts and spirits come after you they will stop; how much the more will people!” Hui-tzu said to Chuang-tzu, “1 have a gigantic tree, hut its trunk is too gnarled for the plumb line and its branches too twisted for the ruler: even if it were set in the middle of the road, carpenters would pay no attention to it. What you say is similarly grandiose but useless, rejected by everyone alike.” Chuang-tzu replied, “Have you not seen a wildcat? It lowers itself close to the ground to watch for careless prey; it leaps this way and that, light and low, but then gets caught in a trap and dies. A yak, on the other hand, is enormous; it can do big things, but cannot catch a rat. Now you have a huge tree and worry that it is useless: why not plant it in the vast plain of the homeland of Nothing Whatsoever, roaming in effortlessness by its side and sleeping in freedom beneath it? The reason it does not fall to the axe, and no one injures it, is that it cannot be exploited. So what’s the trouble?” HUAI-NAN-TZU Heaven is ealm and elear, earth is stable and peaceful. Beings who lose these qualities die, while those who emulate them live. Calm spaciousness is the house of spiritual light; open selflessness is the abode of the Way. Therefore there are those who seek it outwardly and lose it inwardly, and there are those who safeguard it inwardly and gain it outwardly. The Way of heaven and earth is enormously vast, yet it still moderates its manifestation of glory and is sparing of its spiritual light. How then could human eyes and ears work perpetually, without rest? How could the vital spirit be forever rushing around without becoming exhausted? Don’t be surprised, don’t be startled; all things will arrange themselves. Don’t cause a disturbance, don’t exert pressure; all things will clarify themselves. Human nature is developed by profound serenity and lightness, virtue is developed by harmonious joy and open selflessness. When externals do not confuse you inwardly, your nature finds the condition that suits it; when your nature does not disturb harmony, virtue rests in its place. If you can get through life in the world by developing your nature and embrace virtue to the end of your years, it can be said that you are able to embody the Tao. If so, there will be no thrombosis or stagnation in your blood vessels, no depressing stifling energy in your organs. Calamity and fortune will not be able to disturb you, censure and praise will not be able to affect you. Therefore you can reach the ultimate. When the mind neither sorrows nor delights, that is supreme attainment of virtue. To succeed without changing is supreme attainment of calm. To be unburdened by habitual desires is supreme attainment of emptiness. To have no likes and dislikes is supreme attainment of equanimity. Not getting mixed up with things is supreme attainment of purity. Those who can accomplish these five things reach spiritual illumination. Those who reach spiritual illumination are those who attain the inward. Therefore when you master the outward by means of the inward, all affairs are unspoiled. If you can attain this within, then you can develop it outwardly. When you attain it within, your internal organs are peaceful and your thoughts are calm; your muscles are strong, your eyes and ears are alert and clear. Tbu have accurate perceptions and understanding; you are firm and strong without snapping. In a small domain you are not cramped, in a large domain you are not careless. Your soul is not excited, your spirit is not disturbed. Serene and aloof, you are the toughest in the world. Sensitive and responsive, when pressed you can move, infinitely calm and inscrutable. Human nature is generally such that it likes tranquillity and dislikes anxiety; it likes leisure and dislikes toil. When the mind is always desireless, this can be called tranquillity; when the body is always unoccupied, this can be called leisure. If you set your mind free in tranquillity and relinquish your body in leisure, thereby to await the direction of nature, spontaneously happy within and free from hurry without, even the magnitude of the universe cannot change you at all; even should the sun and moon be eclipsed, that does not dampen your will. Then you are as if noble even if lowly, and you are as if rich even if poor. When the spirit controls the body, the body obeys; when the body overrules the spirit, the spirit is exhausted. Although intelligence is useful, it needs to be returned to the spirit. This is called the great harmony. The mind is the ruler of the body, while the spirit is the treasure of the mind. When the body is worked without rest, it collapses. When the spirit is used without cease, it becomes exhausted. Sages value and respect them, and do not dare to be excessive. Sages respond to being by nonbeing, unfailingly finding out the inner pattern; they receive fullness by emptiness, unfailingly finding out the measure. They live out their lives with calm joy and empty tranquillity. Therefore they are not too distant from anything and not too close to anything. What sages learn is to return their nature to the beginning and let the mind travel freely in openness. What developed people learn is to link their nature to vast emptiness and become aware of the silent infinite. The learning of ordinary worldlings is otherwise. They grasp at virtues and constrict their nature, inwardly worrying about their physical organs while outwardly belaboring their eyes and ears. Sages send the spirit to the storehouse of awareness and return to the beginning of myriad things. They look at the formless, listen to the soundless. In the midst of profound darkness, they alone see light; in the midst of silent vastness, they alone have illumination. When the perceptions are clear, with profound discernment free from seductive longings, and energy and will are open and calm, serenely joyful and free from habitual desires, then the internal organs are settled, full of energy that does not leak out. The vital spirit preserves the physical body inwardly and does not go outside. Then it is not difficult to see the precedents of the past and the aftermath of the future. Outwardly go along with the flow, while inwardly keeping your true nature. Then your eyes and ears will not be dazzled, your thoughts will not be confused, while the spirit within you will expand greatly to roam in the realm of absolute purity. When the spiritual light is stored in formlessness, vitality and energy return to perfect reality Then the eyes are clear, but not used for looking; the ears are sharp, but not used for listening. The mind is expanded, but not used for thinking. When vitality passes into the eyes, the vision is clear; when it is in the ears, the hearing is sharp. When it is in the mouth, speech is accurate; and when it gathers in the mind, thought is penetrating. The energy of heaven is the higher soul, the energy of earth is the lower soul. Return them to the mystic chamber, so each is in its place. Keep watch over them and do not lose them; you will be connected to absolute unity above, and the vitality of absolute unity is connected to heaven. There are countless sights, sounds, and flavors, rarities from distant lands, oddities and curiosities, that can change the aim of the mind, destabilize the vital spirit, and disturb the circulation and energy. The vital spirit belongs to heaven, the physical body belongs to earth: when the vital spirit goes home and the physical body returns to its origin, where then is the self? WEN-TZU Lao-tzu said: Consider the world light, and the spirit is not burdened; consider myriad things slight, and the mind is not confused. Consider life and death equal, and the intellect is not afraid; consider change as sameness, and clarity is not obscured. Perfected people lean on a pillar that is never shaken, travel a road that is never blocked, are endowed from a resource that is never exhausted, and learn from a teacher that never dies. They are successful in whatever they undertake and arrive wherever they go. Whatever they do, they embrace destiny and go along without confusion. Calamity, fortune, profit, and harm cannot trouble their minds. Those who act justly can be pressed by humanitarianism but cannot be threatened by arms; they can be corrected by righteousness but cannot be hooked by profit. Ideal people will die for justice and cannot be stayed by riches and rank. Those who act justly cannot be intimidated by death; even less can those who do not act at all. Those who do not act deliberately have no burdens. Unburdened people use the world as the marker of a sundial: above they observe the ways of perfected people to delve deeply into the meanings of the Way and virtue; below they consider the behaviors customary in the world, which are enough to induce a feeling of shame. Not doing anything with the world is the drum announcing learning. Lao-tzu said: Those who are known as Real People are united in essence with the Way, so they have endowments yet appear to have none; they are full yet appear to be empty. They govern the inside, not the outside. Clear and pure, utterly plain, they do not contrive artificialities but return to simplicity. Comprehending the fundamental, embracing the spirit, thereby they roam the root of heaven and earth, wander beyond the dust and dirt, and travel to work at noninvolvement. Mechanical intelligence does not burden their minds; they watch what is not temporal and are not moved by things. Seeing the evolution of events, they keep to the source. Their attention is focused internally, and they understand calamity and fortune in the context of unity. They sit unconscious of doing anything, they walk unconscious of going anywhere. They know without learning, see without looking, succeed without striving, discern without comparing. They respond to feeling, act when pressed, and go when there is no choice, like the shining of light, like the casting of shadows. They take the Way as their guide; when there is any opposition they remain empty and open, clear and calm, and then the opposition disappears. They consider a thousand lives as one evolution, they regard ten thousand differences as of one source. They have vitality but do not exploit it; they have spirit but do not make it labor. They keep to the simplicity of wholeness and stand in the center of the quintessential. Lao-tzu said: Those whom we call sages rest peacefully in their places according to the time and enjoy their work as appropriate to the age. Sadness and happiness are deviations of virtue; likes and dislikes are a burden to the mind; joy and anger are excesses on the Way. Therefore their birth is the action of nature, their death is the transformation of things. When still, you merge with the quality of darkness; when active, you are on the same wave as light. So mind is the master of form, spirit is the jewel of mind. When the body is worked without rest, it collapses; when vitality is used without rest, it is exhausted. Therefore sages, heedful of this, do not dare to be excessive. They use nonbeing to respond to being, and are sure to find out the reason; they use emptiness to receive fullness, and are sure to find out the measure. They pass their lives in peaceful serenity and open calm, neither alienating anyone nor cleaving to anyone. Embracing virtue, they are warm and harmonious, thereby following Nature, meeting with the Way, and being near Virtue. They do not start anything for profit or initiate anything that would cause harm. Death and life cause no changes in the self, so it is called most spiritual. With the spirit, anything that is sought can be found, and anything that is done can be accomplished. Lao-tzu said: Rank, power, and wealth are things people crave, but when compared to the body they are insignificant. Therefore sages eat enough to fill emptiness and maintain energy, and dress sufficiently to cover their bodies and keep out the cold. They adjust to their real conditions and refuse the rest, not craving gain and not accumulating much. Clarifying their eyes, they do not look; quieting their ears, they do not listen. Closing their mouths, they do not speak; letting their minds be, they do not think. Abandoning intellectualism, they return to utter simplicity; resting their vital spirit, they detach from knowledge. Therefore they have no likes or dislikes. This is called great attainment. To get rid of pollution and eliminate burdens, nothing compares to never leaving the source. Then what action will not succeed? Those who know how to nurture the harmony of life cannot be hooked by profit. Those who know how to join inside and outside cannot be seduced by power. Beyond where there is no beyond is most great; within where there is no within is most precious. If you know the great and precious, where can you go and not succeed? Lao-tzu said: Those who practiced the Way in ancient times ordered their feelings and nature and governed their mental functions, nurturing them with harmony and keeping them in proportion. Enjoying the Way, they forgot about lowliness; secure in virtue, they forgot about poverty. There was that which by nature they did not want, and since they had no desire for it they did not get it. There was that which their hearts did not enjoy, and since they did not enjoy it they did not do it. Whatever had no benefit to essential nature they did not allow to drag their virtue down; whatever had no advantage for life they did not allow to disturb harmony. They did not let themselves act or think arbitrarily, so their measures could be regarded as models for the whole world. They ate according to the size of their bellies, dressed to fit their bodies, lived in enough room to accommodate them, acted in accord with their true condition. They considered the world extra and did not try to possess it; they left everyone and everything to themselves and did not seek profit. How could they lose their essential life because of poverty or riches, high or low social status? Those who are like this can be called able to understand and embody the Way. Lao-tzu said: The energy that people receive from nature is one in terms of the feelings of the senses toward sound, form, scent, and temperature. But the way in which it is managed differs: some die thereby, and some live thereby; some become exemplary people, some become petty people. The spirit is where knowledge gathers; when the spirit is clear, knowledge is illumined. Knowledge is the seat of the heart; when knowledge is objective, the heart is even. The reason people use limpid water for a mirror, not a moving stream, is that it is clear and still. Thus when the spirit is clear and the attention is even, it is then possible to discern people’s true conditions. Therefore use of this inevitably depends on not exploiting. When a mirror is clear, dust does not dirty it; when the spirit is clear, habitual cravings do not delude it. So if the mind goes anywhere, the spirit is there in a state of arousal; if you return it to emptiness, that will extinguish compulsive activity, so it can be at rest. This is the freedom of sages. This is why those who govern the world must realize the true condition of essence and life before they can do so. Lao-tzu said: Sages close up together with darkness and open up together with light. Able to reach the point where there is no enjoyment, they find there is nothing they do not enjoy. Since there is nothing they do not enjoy, they reach the pinnacle of enjoyment. They use the inner to make the external enjoyable, and do not use externals to make the inner enjoyable; therefore they have spontaneous enjoyment in themselves, and so have their own will, which is esteemed by the world. The reason it is so is that this is essential to the world in the world’s own terms. It is not up to another, but up to oneself; it is not up to anyone but the individual. When the individual attains it, everything is included. So those who understand the logic of mental functions regard desires, cravings, likes, and dislikes as externals. Therefore nothing delights them, nothing angers them, nothing pleases them, nothing pains them. Everything is mysteriously the same; nothing is wrong, nothing is right. So there is consistent logic for men and consistent behavior for women: they do not need authority to be noble, they do not need riches to be wealthy, they do not need strength to be powerful; they do not exploit material goods, do not crave social reputation, do not consider high social status to be safe and do not consider low social status to be dangerous; their body, spirit, energy, and will each abides in its proper place. The body is the house of life; energy is the basis of life; spirit is the controller of life: if one loses its position, all three are injured. Therefore when the spirit is in the lead, the body follows it, with beneficial results; when the body is in the lead, the spirit follows it, with harmful results. Those people whose lives are gluttony and lust are tripped and blinded by power and profit, seduced and charmed by fame and status, nearly beyond human conception. When your rank is high in the world, then your vitality and spirit are depleted daily, eventually to become dissipated and not return to the body. If you close up inside and keep them out, they have no way to enter. For this reason there are sometimes problems with absentmindedness and work being forgotten. When the vitality, spirit, will, and energy are calm, they fill you day by day and make you strong. When they are hyperactive, they are depleted day by day, making you old. Therefore sages keep nurturing their spirit, make their energy gentle, make their bodies normal, and bob with the Way. In this way they keep company with the evolution of all things and respond to the changes in all events. Their sleep is dreamless, their knowledge is traceless, their action is formless, their stillness is bodiless. When they are present, it is as if they were absent; they are alive, but are as if dead. They can appear and disappear instantaneously, and can employ ghosts and spirits. The capabilities of vitality and spirit elevate them to the Way, causing vitality and spirit to expand to their fullest effectiveness without losing the source. Day and night, without a gap, they are like spring to living beings. This is harmonizing and producing the seasons in the heart. So the physical body may pass away, hut the spirit does not change. Use the unchanging to respond to changes, and there is never any limit. What changes returns to formlessness, while what does not change lives together with the universe. So what gives birth to life is not itself born; what it gives birth to is what is born. What produces change does not itself change; what it changes is what changes. This is where real people roam, the path of quintessence. Tales of Inner Meaning INTRODUCTION Fables, stories, and jokes have been used by practical philosophers for thousands of years as a means of conveying ideas and impressions to the receptive mind. They are particularly useful for subtleties that do not translate well into formal logic, and for making a direct impression, bypassing intellectual prejudices in the mind of the reader. Several examples of such tales of inner meaning are presented in this section of the present anthology. The first group of stories is drawn from the Lieh-tzu {Lie zi), a well-known classic and source of numerous popular tales whose currency has long since expanded beyond the realm of Taoism per se. There is a wide range of opinion about the date of this text, a question to which there would appear to be no satisfactory solution in conventional historical terms. For the purposes of the present translations, the extent of the significance of this matter is that there appear to be additions and comments that flatten some of the tales and tend to diffuse rather than clarify their inner Taoist meaning. Therefore the stories from Lieh-tzu are rendered here in forms reflecting a synthesis of the written text and oral tradition. The Learned Man One day Confucius was walking along with some disciples when they came upon two hoys arguing. Confucius asked the boys what the dispute was about. They told him they were arguing about whether the sun was nearer at dawn and farther away at noon, or farther away at dawn and nearer at noon. One of the boys argued that the sun appeared larger at dawn and smaller at noon, so it must be closer at dawn and farther away at noon. The other boy argued that it was cool at dawn and hot at noon, so the sun must be farther away at dawn and closer at noon. Confucius was at a loss to determine which one was correct. The boys jeered at him, “Who said you were so smart?” The Story of Old Mister Shang Old Mister Shang was a poor peasant whose strange fate began to unfold on the day his ramshackle little house was commandeered by a couple of arrogant young men belonging to the establishment of a local gangster. At that time wealthy families, with many followers and hangers-on, could be as if a law unto themselves. Some families might have thousands of armed men on their estates. The gangster in question was the head of one such clan, and his followers were all young bullies from local well-to-do families. They spent their time dressing up in costly attire and gallivanting around, doing as they pleased. The boss of the clan was well known for being able to make a poor man rich or a rich man poor with a single word or a nod of the head. Even the government had him on the payroll, though he had no regard whatsoever for law and order and contributed nothing at all to the general well¬ being. Countless were the deluded young men who had been maimed or killed in senseless duels staged to fire the ambitions of yet other deluded young men, and to amuse the gangster and his gang. Old Mister Shang thought he had discovered his chance to become a success when he overheard the two young men that had taken over his house talking about their leader. The very next day old Shang set out for the residence of the gangster, who was such a big man that even the government paid him not to secede from the empire. When old Shang arrived, he was greeted with hoots and hollers of laughter and derision. Who was this bumpkin, come to join their gang? Clearly he was going to be no fun for a duel, so the boys decided to see how it looked when an old man hit the ground after a fall from a building seven stories high. Anumber of young men took poor old Shang up this high tower and told him the boss was offering a hundred pieces of gold to anyone who would jump off. Several of them made for the railing, as if to be the ones to get the prize, so old Shang hurriedly jumped over. The hooligans held their breaths for a moment as they prepared to see the old man plummet to a gruesome death. What met their eyes instead was the sight of old Shang drifting lightly to the earth like a feather in the air. Unable to believe what they had seen, the young men dismissed it as a fluke, due perhaps to the sudden gust of wind that everyone had noticed. Next they decided to take him to the river bend, where there was an infamous rapids full of holes with unmeasured depths. They told him of an enormous pearl lying at the bottom of a deep hole under the swift current, and said the boss had offered it to anyone who could fish it out. Old Shang plunged into the current without a moment’s hesitation, only to surface moments later holding a huge pearl in his hand. This could no longer be passed off as a fluke, and old Shang was now given a place among the guests of the master of the house. Not long after that, a fire broke out in the storehouse. The boss told his followers that he would reward anyone who could retrieve his silk. Old Shang rushed right into the burning building and emerged unscorched with the silk. At this point, the hooligans were convinced that old Shang must be one of those who had attained the Tao, and they all begged forgiveness for having tricked him. They said, “We played tricks on you, not realizing you were one of those imbued with the Tao. We derided you, unaware you were a man of the spirit. You must think us ignorant, deaf, and blind indeed, but we wish to ask about your Way.” Old Shang said, ‘You mean you were joking?” When this was reported to Confucius, he said, “Someone who is perfectly sincere can affect things thereby. Old Shang believed in falsehoods, and things did not betray his trust. How much the more effective would truth and sincerity on both sides be. Make a note of this.” The Poor Man and the Gold Apoor man decided one day to get rich, so he put on his hat and coat and went to town. As he walked through the center of town, pondering the question of how to obtain riches, his glance happened to fall on someone carrying a quantity of gold. The poor man rushed up and grabbed some of the gold. He was caught as he tried to flee. The magistrate asked the poor man, “How did you expect to get away with the gold, with all those people around?” “1 only saw the gold,” explained the poor man, “1 didn’t see the people.” Who for Whom Once a man held a huge banquet with a thousand guests. When someone presented a gift of fish and fowl, the host said appreciatively, “Heaven is generous to the people indeed, planting cereals and creating fish and fowl for our use.” The huge crowd of guests echoed this sentiment. A youth about twelve years old, however, who had been sitting in the most remote corner of the banquet hall, now came forward and said to the host, “It is not as you say, sir. All beings in the universe are living creatures on a par with us. No species is higher or lower in rank than another, it’s just that they control each other by differences in their intelligence and power; they eat each other, but that does not mean they were produced for each other. People take what they can eat and eat it, but does that mean that heaven produced that for people? If so, then since mosquitoes bite skin and tigers and wolves eat flesh, does that not mean that heaven made humans for the mosquitoes and created flesh for tigers and wolves?” Suspicion Once a man found that his axe was missing, and suspected his neighbor’s son of having taken it. Observing the youth walking aroimd, the man was convinced that his was the walk of a thief. The youth looked like a thief and talked like a thief; everything he did pointed to his having stolen the axe. Then one day the man happened to find his missing axe. After that, he noticed his neighbor’s son wasn’t behaving like a thief anymore. Ups and Downs Mr. Ym of the state of Chou was a prosperous husinessman. His employees worked without rest from early morning until late at night. Among them was an old laborer whose physical strength was virtually exhausted, yet who worked all the harder for that. By day he did his work huffing and puffing, grunting and groaning; by night he slept soundly, thoroughly exhausted. As the old worker slept, his spirit relaxed and expanded. Every night he dreamed he was a king, a leader of the people, commanding the affairs of the nation, roaming at leisure and reveling in villas, enjoying whatever he wanted, his delight beyond compare. When he woke up, he would go back to work. When someone expressed pity at how hard the old man toiled, he responded, ‘Teople may live a hundred years, but that is divided half and half into day and night. In the daytime I work like a slave, and I can’t deny that it is miserable. At night, however, I am a king, and my pleasure is incomparable. So what have I got to complain about?” As for the boss, Mr. Ym, his mind was occupied with his business, his thoughts concentrated on his affairs, so his body and mind were both tired. At night he also collapsed with fatigue into a deep sleep. Every night he dreamed he was a servant, rushing around all the time doing one chore after another, being scolded and beaten time and again. So he used to huff and puff and grimt and groan the whole night through. Mr. Ym was unhappy about this state of affairs and consulted a friend about it. His friend said, ‘You have status and wealth far beyond that of most people, but at night you say you dream you are a servant. Well, the alternation of suffering and ease is normal; if you want to have it good both in working life and dream life. I’m afraid that is asking too much.” After that Mr. Ym lightened his workers’ load and reduced his own concerns, so both got a bit of relief. Forgetfulness A man named Hua-tzu suffered from forgetfulness when he reached middle age. He would forget by nighttime what he had gotten during the day, and he would forget by morning what he had given at night. On the road he would forget to walk, at home he would forget to sit down. At any given time he was imconscious of what had gone before, and later he would not know what was going on at the present. His whole family was distressed by his condition. They called on a fortune-teller to figure it out, but there was no prognosis. They called on a shaman to pray for him, but that did not stop it. They called on a doctor to treat him, but that did not cure it. Now there was a Confucian who reckoned he could heal the man, and his wife and children offered him half of their estate for the remedy. The Confucian said, ‘This cannot be figured out by omens, cannot be alleviated by prayer, cannot be treated by medicine. I will try to transform his mind and change his thought, in hopes that he will get better.” Now when the Confucian tested him by exposing him to the elements, the man asked for clothing. When he starved him, the man asked for food. When he shut him up in the dark, the man asked for light. The Confucian joyfully announced to the children, ‘This sickness can be cured. My remedy, however, is secret and not to be revealed to others. Please clear everyone out and leave me alone with him for seven days.” The family did as he said, so no one knew what measures the Confucian took, but one day the ailment from which the man had suffered for years was all gone. When the man woke up, he flew into a rage. He threw his wife out of the house, punished his children, and went after the Confucian with a hatchet. The local people grabbed him and asked him what it was all about. He said, “In my past forgetfulness I was clear and free, unaware even of the existence or nonexistence of heaven and earth. Now that I am suddenly conscious, all these decades of gains and losses, sorrows and joys, likes and dislikes, suddenly occur to me in a welter of confusion. I am afraid that future gains and losses, sorrows and joys, likes and dislikes, will disturb my mind like this. Will I ever have a moment’s forgetfulness again?” The Ailment Lung Shu said to the physician Wen Chi, ‘Your art is subtle. I have an ailment; can you cure it?” The physician said, “1 will do as you say, hut first tell me about your symptoms.” Lung Shu said, “1 am not honored when the whole village praises me, nor am I ashamed when the whole county criticizes me. Gain does not make me happy, loss does not grieve me. I look upon life as like death, and see wealth as like poverty. I view people as like pigs, and see myself as like others. At home I am as though at an inn, and I look upon my native village as like a foreign country. With these afflictions, rewards cannot encourage me, punishments cannot threaten me. I cannot be changed by flourishing or decline, gain or loss; I cannot be moved by sorrow or happiness. Thus I cannot serve the government, associate with friends, run my household, or control my servants. What sickness is this? Is there any way to cure it?” The physician had Lung Shu stand with his back to the light while he looked into his chest. After a while he said, “Aha! I see your heart; it is empty! Tbu are nearly a sage. Six of the apertures in your heart are open, one of them is closed. This may be why you think the wisdom of a sage is an ailment. It cannot be stopped by my shallow art.” The Story of Wan Baochang Wan Baochang (Pao-ch’ang) was a man of unknown origin. A bom genius, he had a subtle understanding of music and crafted all sorts of musical instruments. Once when he was in the wilds, he saw a group of ten people dressed in beautiful clothes riding on magnificent bannered chariots. They were standing in rows, as if waiting on someone. Wan moved to get out of their way, but they sent someone to summon him to them. When he approached, they said to him, ‘Abu have been given a musical nature, and you are going to hand on eight kinds of musical instruments in a degenerate age, to save its music from imminent corruption. But you do not yet completely know all the soimds of correct beginnings, so the supreme God has sent officers of the highest heaven to show you the mysterious and subtle essentials.” Then they had Wan sit there while they taught him the music of the ages, the sounds of order and disturbance. They set forth everything in detail, and Wan recorded it all. After awhile, the group of immortals took off into the sky, and Wan went back home. When he returned, he found that he had been gone for five days. After this he studied all the music of the human world. During the Northern Zhou and Sui dynasties in the latter sixth century, Wan gained recognition for his unusual talent and learning. He did not serve in government, however, and lived a bohemian lifestyle. In the early 590s, when a certain nobleman completed a musical composition and submitted it to the throne for official adoption as court music for the newly established Sui dynasty. Emperor Wen summoned Wan to consult him. After listening to it. Wan said, “This is the sound of the destruction of a nation: sad, bitter, fleeting, scattered. It is not the sound of true elegance. It will not do for classical music.” The emperor had Wan make musical instruments. All of the instruments he made were lowkeyed, different from those in use hitherto. Wan also said there was a mode in the ritual music of the ancient Chou dynasty nearly two thousand years earlier that none of the experts had been able to understand for centuries. When he composed a piece in this mode, people all laughed in derision, but when he had it performed, everyone marveled. Subsequently Wan readjusted coimtless musical instruments, but their resulting tone was elegant and serene, not in accord with popular tastes; so they never became fashionable. When Wan heard a musical composition called ‘Torever and Ever,” he wept and told people, “It is licentious, harsh, and sad; it won’t be long before people are killing each other everywhere.” Now at this time there was peace throughout the land and the economy was flourishing, so everyone who heard this statement of Wan’s thought he was all wrong. But by the end of the era of Great Works [618, when the Sui dynasty collapsed]. Wan’s words proved to be true. Wan Baochang had no children and was abandoned by his wife. He passed away in loneliness and sorrow, intimating that he had been punished by heaven for becoming too passionately involved with the world. Golden Butterflies In the time of the emperor Mu-tsung (Muzong) of the T’ang dynasty, in the ninth century, among the members of the elite corps of the imperial guard was a Japanese man named Kan Shiwa. Kan Shiwa was a most extraordinary sculptor. He could fashion any sort of bird and make it so that it could drink water, hop around, stretch out its neck and call, and so on, all in the most beautiful and charming manner. He put machinery in the bellies of the birds he made, so that besides having beautiful plumage they could also fly one or two hundred feet in the air. Also, Shiwa sculpted cats that could do even more; they could run around and even catch small birds. Now the captain of the guard thought this was truly marvelous, and wrote to the emperor about it. Emperor Mu-tsung summoned Kan Shiwa into his presence, and he too was captivated by Shiwa’s skill. The emperor asked Shiwa if he could carve something yet more marvelous. Shiwa told the emperor he would make a “dais for seeing dragons.” Several days later, the dais was done. It was two feet high and looked like an ordinary footstool. When he saw it, the emperor wondered what was so special about it. Shiwa told him he would soon see if he stepped up onto the dais. Not without misgivings, the emperor stepped up. The moment he did so, a gigantic dragon appeared in the sky. It was about twice the size of a man and had scales, a mane, claws, and horns; it flew into the clouds and rode on a mist, dancing in the sky. Its energy and appearance were such that one would never think it to have been made by human hands. The emperor was flabbergasted. Frantically he jumped off the little platform and said, ‘Tine, fine, very good—now take it away with you!” Strange to say, the moment he got off the dais the big dragon disappeared. All that remained was to put it back in its place. Now Shiwa apologized to the emperor for startling him so, and offered to make good by doing something amusing. The emperor, after protesting that he had not been frightened but merely surprised, asked Shiwa what he intended to fashion. “Something small,” replied Shiwa, producing a box from his pocket. When he opened it up, inside were little scarlet bugs. “What are they?” the emperor asked. ‘They’re like spiders,” said Shiwa. ‘They’re flycatchers.” “Are they real?” the emperor asked, amazed by their lifelike quality. “No, they’re manmade,” Shiwa answered. ‘Then why are they scarlet?” asked the emperor. “Because I feed them cinnabar powder,” Shiwa explained. “Similarly,” he continued, “if I fed them sulfur they’d be golden, and if I fed them powdered pearl they’d be pearly.” Then the emperor asked what the insects could do. Shiwa said, ‘They will dance for Tbur Majesty. And so that we may have Your Majesty view the dance, I have invited the musicians to play ‘The Song of Liang-chou,’ which is the insects’ favorite tune.” Now as the musicians prepared to play, the little red spiders scrambled out of the box and arranged themselves in five rows. They now stood in formation, waiting for the music to start. When the orchestra began to play, the spiders began a very orderly dance in harmony with the music. They went forward, then backward; the rows came together, then rearrayed at angles, now suddenly shifted to form a circle. The choreography was beautiful indeed, resembling an intricate and picturesque brocade, truly dazzling to the eye. And as the music played, the spiders also made a humming sound, as loud as the buzzing of a fly, keeping time with the music. Finally, when the music ended, the spiders went back to their beginning position, arrayed in five rows; in unison they bowed to the emperor, and then went in orderly files back into the box. The emperor exclaimed his delight. Shiwa went on to explain that the spiders were, as their name suggested, indeed flycatching bugs. To demonstrate, he took one of them and placed it on the palm of his hand; pointing to a fly near a tree, he said, “Grab it.” The spider caught the fly just as a hawk might catch a sparrow. Then spiders leaped from Shiwa’s hand to catch flies alighting on people’s shoulders, or even flies buzzing through the air. Catching the flies, one by one they returned to Shiwa’s palm. The emperor marveled at this. He gave Shiwa a big reward of silver, which Shiwa ungrudgingly gave away to poor people in the city. Now the rumor passed around among the people of the city was that Kan Shiwa was a spiritual immortal from the Isles of the Blest in the Eastern Sea. Just when this gossip reached its peak, Kan Shiwa disappeared from the imperial guard, and no one ever saw him again. Meanwhile, Emperor Mu-tsung had planted his garden with the finest and most luxuriant peonies, which filled the palace with their fragrance in season. Every evening, myriads of butterflies danced and chased each other amidst these blossoms. Strange to say, the butterflies were all golden or pearly, and their dazzling brilliance made the palace seem as beautiful as the celestial realms. Countless thousands of them appeared in the evenings, but not one was to be found in the morning. Every evening the palace ladies would vie with one another to catch these beautiful butterflies, and they found it very easy to do so. They used silk thread to tie the butterflies to their bosoms, or to their hairpins. These shining butterflies, used as ornaments, were very pretty indeed, but when morning came, they were found to have lost their sheen, so the girls took them off. Then the following evening the butterflies would come to life again, flashing their brilliant lights as they danced among the flowers. At these times Emperor Mu-tsung would roam around the garden happily, but what he liked most was to catch several hundred of the butterflies, let them loose in the palace, and enjoy watching the palace girls chase them. The emperor enjoyed this sport every evening, never tiring of it, until one day the butterflies did not return to the flower garden. Emperor Mu-tsung and his ladies thought they had caught them all, but that wasn’t so. Wherever flowers grew throughout the city, there now began to appear these strange and beautiful butterflies. They proved to be especially easy to catch among the flowers and trees planted by poor people; and so the poor would often catch them and sell them to rich people for a high price, using the proceeds to purchase things they needed. One day the emperor went to his treasure house to get a certain dish made of gold. When he got there, he found that his precious article had already been smashed to pieces, and so had other items of gold and pearl. From the midst of the fragments he could vaguely discern the pattern of a butterfly, and at that moment realized that the missing butterflies were the work of Kan Shiwa. He immediately searched the whole treasure house, but could find no trace of the wizard. After that he had the palace and the whole capital city, from its avenues to its alleyways, searched thoroughly, but the man was never found again. And the butterflies never returned. The Story ofNieh Shih-tao Nieh Shih-tao was styled One Who Had Penetrated the Subtle. He was a brilliant man, yet simple and straightforward. Modest and prudent in his speech and behavior, he was known for taking care of his parents well in their old age, and was highly respected in his community. When he was young, he became the student of one of those beyond convention. At the age of thirteen, he was ordained as a Taoist priest, and at the age of fifteen received an esoteric symbol of a method for cultivating reality. According to his own account, once when he was reading Taoist books he came across a prescription for eating pine sap and decided to climb Hundred Fathoms Mountain with a Taoist colleague to gather some sap. This mountain was very steep and high, and from its peak one had a view of all four directions. At night the two Taoists rested under the pines on the summit of the mountain; the sky was clear, the moon was bright. Suddenly they heard immortal music coming from Purple Cloud Mountain to the southeast, far far away, slowly passing Stone and Metal Mountain, which was the same height as Hundred Fathoms Mountain and, though ten miles away on the surface of the earth, seemed very close from peak to peak. When they heard the immortal music reach them, it stopped a while; then there were three beats of a small drum, and a whole orchestra was clearly heard to play again. Though percussion instruments kept a beat, it was impossible to determine the melody. The sounds were high and clear, not like the music of the human world. It continued from midnight until dawn, finally stopping at cock crow. Later they heard from the villagers who lived at the foot of the mountain that they had all heard it. Nieh’s colleague said, “When we were gathering mystic medicine, we suddenly heard immortal music. This must mean that our intentions have been felt in the other world. I also regard it as a sign that you will attain the Tao.” After that, Nieh traveled around, then went to Nanyue, the southern Holy Mountain, where he prostrated himself before the altars of Jade Purity and Blue Jade of the Heaven of Light. Subsequently he stayed at the Immortal Summoning Observatory and entered the Wellspring of the Spirit of Open Clarity. Now it was springtime, and he heard that the old hermitage of Real Human Ts’ai (Cai), a famous adept of centuries past, was not far away. He also heard there were strange flowers and trees around there, and that woodcutters sometimes saw Real Human Ts’ai. Nieh Shih-tao, delighted at the prospect of possibly getting to see Real Human Ts’ai, fasted for seven days to purify himself, then rose early one morning and went alone into the mountains. As he went along, he smelled an unusual floral fragrance. Before he realized it, it was already evening, and he found himself by a large valley stream. He saw a woodcutter sitting on the sand, facing the water. Nieh quickened his steps, heading over toward the woodcutter, who now picked up his bundle and began to go down the valley. The woodcutter turned around and looked at Nieh, then put his bundle back down and asked, “Where are you going, ah alone?” Nieh replied, “I’m doing my best to learn the Tao and find the immortals. I’ve heard Real Human Ts’ai is hidden in these mountains, and I just want to meet him once.” The woodcutter said, “Master Ts’ai’s abode is extremely deep—people can’t go there.” Nieh said, “I’ve already come this far, climbing vines up cliffs—if there are mountains to cross, what does distance matter?” The woodcutter said, “Anyway, it’s getting late, almost nightfall; for now, go past this mountain, and to the east you’ll find a home where you can stay.” Nieh wanted to go along with the woodcutter, but the woodcutter quickly stepped into the stream. It seemed quite shallow when the woodcutter walked in, but the moment Nieh stepped in, the stream turned out to be extremely deep, with a swift current. So Nieh did not dare try to wade across. The woodcutter said, ‘You’ll be able to cross this stream fifty years from now.” Nieh watched as the woodcutter walked across the water and disappeared out of sight on the farther shore. Nieh then went several miles around the mountain and saw in the distance a rustic cottage with a fenced yard, chickens, and dogs. Approaching nearer, he saw a pale man who looked like a farmer, about thirty years old, living alone. When this man saw Nieh, he thought it very odd that anyone would be traveling alone deep in the mountains. Suddenly he said, ‘The troubles of the family come out together; who is in charge?” And he asked Nieh, “Where are you going?” Nieh said, “Tm looking for the hermitage of Real Human Ts’ai.” The man said, “Did you see a woodcutter on the way here?” Nieh said that he had. The man said, ‘That was the Taoist adept Ts’ai, who just passed by.” When Nieh heard this, he prostrated himself in prayer and said, “When an ordinary ignoramus meets an immortal sage and does not recognize him, that too is in the order of things.” It was already nightfall, and the mountain forest was pitch black. Nieh had no place to stay. The man asked him, ‘Where do you come from?” In reply, Nieh told him of his beginnings and his journey in search of reality. Then the man allowed him into the house and even had him sit on the platform near the fireplace. The man said, “1 happen to be out of provisions here in the mountains.” Nieh said, “Tve been fasting a long time, and I’m not hungry.” He saw beside the fire a kettle of hot water and several covered yellow porcelain bowls. The host said, ‘You can drink what’s in the bowls—feel free to take what you want.” Nieh then took the cover off one of the bowls and found that there was tea in it. The host told him to pour hot water on it and drink. Drinking the tea, Nieh found that its energy and savor were far different from ordinary tea. After a time he again wanted some tea and went to take the cover off another bowl, but found that he could not do so. He tried all the bowls, but found that he could not uncover any of them. Realizing with some diffidence that this was not an ordinary villager’s house, he did not dare say anything. The host, who slept in another room, did not get up the next morning even though the sun was high in the sky. And there was no fire in the hearth. In his sleep, the host said, “In this solitary and desolate place, suddenly I am concerned that I have nothing to offer you. There are a lot of homes in the village up ahead—you should go there.” Nieh went a couple of miles, but didn’t see any houses, nothing but cliffs and defiles. When he turned around and looked back, he found that he had lost the way to where he had stayed the night. He went about ten miles, when he suddenly saw an old man. Nieh and the old man sat on a flat rock to talk, and the old man asked him about why he had ventured into the mountains. Nieh told him all that had happened. The old man said, “Master Ts’ai and his son both hide in these mountains. Last night you stayed with his son.” The old man also told Nieh, ‘You have a rich air of the Tao about you, but your immortal bones are not yet complete. You will starve and thirst in the mountains—how can you stay here long?” Then the old man suddenly broke off a stalk of a plant and handed it to Nieh. It was shaped like a ginger sprout and was over a foot long. Nieh chewed it and found it sweet and delicious. The old man also had him drink some spring water. When Nieh raised his head after drinking from the spring, he found the old man had already disappeared. Now Nieh was very disappointed, but after having taken the tea and eaten the herb, he felt stronger and lighter than when he had come. He wanted to follow the mountain trail to look for a place to stay, but the trail was already covered and blocked by brambles and vines, impossible to get through. So Nieh returned to the Immortal Summoning Observatory, where the Taoist priests there exclaimed with surprise, ‘This observatory is near the spiritual crags, but there are many poisonous creatures and wild beasts, so people are rarely able to go alone. We were wondering why you suddenly left over a month ago, and we’ve been worrying about you for a long time.” Nieh said, “1 just left yesterday, and only stayed overnight.” He then told all about seeing the woodcutter, the cottage where he spent the night, and also about meeting the old man. The priests were impressed. They said, ‘While we have been living in this observatory, we have just been studying Taoism; we knew of the existence of Real Human Ts’ai, but haven’t had any opportunities to see him. You must have the Tao in you already, because you’ve now seen both Master Ts’ai and his son. And as for the old man, in the past it has been said that Real Human P’eng also is hidden in these mountains; maybe the old man was this Master P’eng. As soon as you go into the mountains, you meet three immortals, and spend a day and a night there that is over a month long in the human world. In reality, this is what accumulated practice has led you to.” Nieh himself was amazed. He stayed at Immortal Summoning Observatory for years. Later he decided to return to his native place because his parents were getting old; he went back to the mountain hermitage near his home, where he had stayed as a youth. When he went into the mountains to gather firewood and herbs, if he ran into tigers or leopards, when they saw Nieh they would let their ears droop and wag their tails, crouching down to the ground. Nieh would pet and talk to them, and they would get up and follow him. Sometimes he would fasten kindling or herbs on their backs; they would carry it home for him and then leave. There are many similar examples of how people of the Way could influence wild animals. There was a mountain nearby where Nieh lived that was notorious for being inhabited by many fierce animals that didn’t harm people; this was attributed to Nieh’s influence. His parents asked him how he had benefited from his traveling studies, and he told them the whole story. His parents were very happy because not only did they receive his care on the ordinary plane, they were also enriched by the all-embracing Tao through him. They considered themselves very fortunate to be the parents of Nieh. Later he went traveling again, having heard that Real Human Mei and Administrator Siao were hiding on Jade Tube Mountain, and that many people of the time had seen them. Mei was Mei Fu, and had been an official; Siao was a prince of the Liang dynasty (sixth century c.e), Siao Tzu- yun. When the governor of their district fled the rebellion of the infamous Hou Ching, whole families went into the mountains, and these two had both attained the Tao here. Nieh, staying for a while at the Observatory of Pure Space on Jade Tube Mountain, wanted to look for Mei and Siao, so he made a special trip in hopes of seeing them. He set off with determination and went very deep into the mountains. Suddenly he saw a man dressed in muslin, with a black silk cap. By his face, he appeared to be about fifty years old. Nieh paid his respects to this man and asked him who he was. At first the man said he was a worker and asked Nieh where he was going. Nieh told him he was looking for Mei and Siao. The worker said, “We have heard you are very diligent in your quest for the Tao, traveling to all the famous mountains. This is not easy at all. If you want to see those two masters, I can take you there. Tbur past deeds are very pure, already worthy of a name on the Jade Register; though you will not go on the ultimate flight right away, you will still cross over the world.” The workman also said, “1 am Hsieh T’ung-hsiu (Xie Tongxiu). You may not know me, so I introduce myself. I have been living in seclusion in the mountains with the immortals P’eng and Ts’ai for three hundred years now. I know you have traveled to the Spring of Clear Awareness; I happen to have been ordered by the Master of the Eastern Flower to take charge of the mountain, forest, and earth immortals on Jade Tube Mountain, and am also in charge of the sanctuary shrines of the Observatory of Pure Space, so you and I have a spiritual connection already. That is why we have been able to meet. As for Master Mei and Master Siao, during the day they were called by the king of the Heaven of Little Existence, and I doubt that they will be back soon, so there is no use in waiting for them.” Nieh now bowed respectfully and said, ‘Mortals in the ordinary world search for the Tao in the wrong way, freezing their spirits and concentrating their thoughts from morning to night without yet knowing the essential wonder. They are like people adrift in a shoreless ocean. This unexpected meeting with you today is really a rare bit of good luck for me, as I have gotten to see a master of the Tao.” T’ung-hsiu said, ‘Your sincere devotion is very touching. You haven’t finished your tasks in the world, so I am going to show you a way out of the mountains. We’ll go to where I stay.” Nieh followed T’ung-hsiu for a couple of miles, when suddenly he saw a two-room reed house, very new and clean. Inside were low platform seats and a little kettle over a fire, with water boiling in it. It looked like a scholar’s studio, with no one there. T’ung-hsiu had Nieh come in and sit on a wooden horse, while T’ung-hsiu himself sat on a white stone deer. Suddenly a child came in and gave Nieh a cup of hot water. When he drank it, Nieh felt very clear and refreshed. T’ung-hsiu also had him take a book from the shelf. He said, ‘This is the Basic Book. Be diligent in learning it, and you will attain the essence of reality.” Nieh wanted to stay there and learn from T’ung-hsiu, but before he said anything, T’ung-hsiu, aware of what Nieh was thinking, said “Y)u have parents who are getting old, and though you have an older brother who can take care of them, I cannot tell you to stay, in case you may want to travel to study more. I have a disciple living on a certain mountain; if you go see him, give him a message for me, and also show him the Basic Book. Then you will be able to find out what it means. If you don’t see him, just throw the Basic Book in the cave above a certain ravine, and scratch my message on a rock there. Then my disciple will teach you the essential Way himself.” After he had said this much, T’ung-hsiu sent Nieh back. All of a sudden Nieh found that T’ung-hsiu had disappeared, and he himself was near the place he had started from. He went back to the Observatory of Pure Space, where the Taoist priests said in astonishment that he had been gone for seven days. Where did he go? Nieh told them the whole story, and two of the priests were so excited that they begged to go back with him. They did go, and when they reached the place where Nieh had been, the rock formations and vegetation were as he had seen them, but they could not find the reed house. They looked around all day in dismay and finally returned to the observatory. Anyway, Nieh had the Basic Book, which was written in readable characters, telling about the true secret of the esoteric essentials used by the Queen Mother of the Celestial Court to order and educate the Community of Immortals. When those immortals put it into practice, they should attain the ability to ascend to heaven; when mortals in the world receive it, while on earth they participate in the Inner Government. There were some points, however, whose meaning eluded him, so he later went to the Observatory of Reality and stayed there for a month looking for traces of Hsieh T’ung-hsiu’s disciple. Some people said there was a hermit who lived around the ravine T’ung-hsiu had mentioned, but no one knew his name, though sometimes people saw him. Nieh went into the mountains time and time again looking for him, but did not see him. At length he did as T’ung-hsiu had told him, throwing the book into the cave and scratching the message on a rock face. After that he dreamed that a spiritual man named Purple Sacred Mushroom, the disciple of T’ung- hsiu, taught him in such a way that his mental blocks melted away. Then he awoke. A year or more later, he again returned to his original hermitage on the mountain near his hometown, and lived there for over twenty years. He regarded the Real Humans T’sai, P’eng, and Hsieh as his occult mentors, and personally oversaw the collection of tales about these immortals from among the Taoist priests and the general populace. Eventually Nieh Shih-tao was recognized as a Taoist adept of great powers, respected by all. His prayers were always answered, and he had over five hundred disciples, at least fifteen of whom also attained adepthood and graced the Mystic School. People came from all aroimd to study with him, and he taught them according to their natures and perceptions. He died at the age of sixty-eight, but like many of the Real People was seen from time to time for years and years afterward. Sayings of Ancestor Lu INTRODUCTION Lii Yen (Lii Yan), commonly known in folklore as Lii Tung- pin (Lii Dongbin), is also called Lii Tsu (Lii Zu), or “Ancestor Lii,” in recognition of his place in Taoist history as a progenitor of the school of Complete Reality In Taoist tradition he is believed to have lived in the T’ang dynasty (618-905 C.E.). Some sources place his birth as early as the year 646, but other materials suggest much later dates. He is one of the greatest figures of folk Taoism and esoteric Taoism alike, and an enormous body of literature is attributed to his spiritual inspiration. His own work, along with later writings ascribed to him, is particularly noteworthy for its integration of Confucianism and Buddhism with classical, religious, and alchemical Taoism. Almost all of the writings and sayings attributed to Lii Yen are evidently products of mediums and other workers in the T’ien-hsien-p’a, or Sect of the Celestial Immortals, an offshoot of the Southern school of Complete Reality Taoism tracing its ancestry back through Lord Lii to the ancient Taoist schools of the Han and Chou dynasties. The present anthology contains works from both what would seem to be the original body of the writings of Ancestor Lii, who founded the Complete Reality school, and what are later developments in the literature of the Celestial Immortals Sect. The sayings and writings translated in the present section are taken from the larger body of work deriving from the later activity of Lii’s followers and the mediums of the Celestial Immortals Sect. They are particularly useful for the elegant simplicity with which they introduce the broad range of traditional teachings to which they are heir in a manner that makes the principles accessible to the lay person without sacrificing inner meaning. The Three Treasures The human body is only vitality, energy, and spirit. Vitality, energy, and spirit are called the three treasures. Ultimate sagehood and noncontrivance are both attained from these. Few people know these three treasures, even by way of their temporal manifestations. What is inconceivable is their primordial state—is it not lost? If you lose these three treasures, you are incapable of noncontrivance, and so are imaware of the primordial. The Primordial Not only is the primordial imcontrived, it has nothing to it that could he contrived. When you reach nonexistence of even uncontrivance, there is no nonexistence of noncontrivance, and so no nonexistence of nonexistence. This nonexistence of nonexistence is the primordial, yet the primordial contains everything. It is because there is the primordial that there is the temporal. The primordial of everything is one single primordial. The unique primordial is the primordial state of each thing, each individual, and thus it forms the temporal. Thus we get the three treasures. These three treasures are complete as a human being. Vitality In heaven, vitality is the Milky Way, it is the light of the sun, moon, and stars, it is rain and dew, sleet and hail, snow and frost. On earth it is water, streams, rivers, oceans, springs, wells, ponds, and marshes. In people it is vitality, the root of essence and life, the body of blood and flesh. Energy In heaven, energy is substance and form, yin and yang, the movement of the sun, moon, and stars, the processes of waxing and waning; it is clouds, mist, fog, and moisture; it is the heart of living beings, evolution and development. On earth, it is power, fuel, the pith of myriad beings, the source of mountain streams; it is lifegiving and killing, activating and storing; it is the passage of time, flourishing and decline, rising and falling, sprouts and sprout sheaths. In humans it is energy, physical movement, activity, speech, and perception; it is use of the body, the gateway of death and life. Spirit In heaven, spirit is the pivot, the true director, the silent mover; it is the essence of the sun, moon, and stars; it is the wind blowing, thunder pealing; it is compassion and dignity; it is the force of creation, the basis of the origin of beings. On earth, it is ability, communion, opening; it is the shapes of myriad species, mountains and waters; it is peace and quietude, the source of stability; it is calm, warmth, and kindness. In humans, it is the spirit, the light in the eyes, thought in the mind; it is wisdom and intelligence, innate knowledge and capacity; it is the government of vitality and energy, awareness and understanding; it is the basis of the physical shell, the foundation of the life span. Stabilizing Vitality The three treasures are not easily obtained. Since they are not easy to obtain, how can we not take care of them? They are to be taken care of, and this is accomplished by purity and tranquillity, not agitating the vitality, not letting it leak, so that it abides peacefully in its original home, true to reality as it is, circulating three hundred and sixty-one times in a day and night, returning to its original home, true to its own nature, immutable, forming the stabilizing ingredient of the elixir of immortality Guarding Energy Vitality is always controlled by energy. Once energy runs outside, vitality eventually leaks out. Therefore, to stabilize vitality one should guard the energy. How is energy to be guarded? This requires freedom from craving, clear openness and serenity, not acting impulsively. The energy is to be placed in the mysterious pass, where it is brought to be nurtured and calmed. Always free, the energy is then unified, whole, unfragmented, all-pervasive, without gaps. After the energy is thus developed, it is brought down to merge with the vitality, unobstructed, like water and milk blending into one. Then the medicinal ingredients of the great elixir are naturally completed. Now just add the firing, and the effect will appear in the crucible. Preserving Spirit The firing is the spirit. Vitality cannot be concentrated except by energy, but vitality and energy cannot be operated without the spirit to stabilize the vitality, and nurturing the energy is just a matter of preserving the spirit. In the work of preserving the spirit, it is important to stop rumination, with nothing coming out from within and nothing coming in from outside. With all signs of emotion gone, one plimges into a state of boundlessness, lightness, blissful fluidity, tranquil independence. Emergence of the Spirit When the spirit is preserved in this way, it abides in its chamber. The chamber of the spirit is in the alchemical storehouse. Once the alchemical storehouse is firmly secured, the spirit is calm and collected: controlling and operating the vitality and energy, thereby it crystallizes the great elixir, which is in the form of an infant resembling oneself. This then emerges from the forehead to travel through the universe; in the interval of an exhalation and inhalation, it travels unhindered through the ten directions, inconceivably serene and content. If you stick to this, however, and do not hear of the Great Way or meet Real People, you will be affected by three calamities. Then if you do not awaken, the accomplishment that has been achieved will all go to waste. The Three Calamities What are the three calamities? One is called the hard wind. The hard wind is sharp, cutting, and piercing; it enters through the forehead and penetrates the bones and joints, right down to the bottom of the feet. The limbs and hair fall apart, becoming wispy threads floating about loose. If the hard wind cannot invade you, then there is a poisonous fire, which rises from below and enters through the top of the head, attacking the internal organs and burning the limbs. The pores and the hairline are instantly turned into ashes. If your achievement is not harmed by this wind and fire, then it can be said to be consummate, unless you still have not learned the Way. Then there are five thunders, each with accompaniments, which circle and attack. As long as you have not learned the Great Way, the vital spirit will scatter in a moment, never to stabilize and unify. Therefore it is imperative to study the Great Way, for if you do not study the Great Way you cannot escape these three calamities and will lose your three treasures. So it is only people of understanding who know this and therefore go in search of elevated Real People who will teach them the Great Way so that they can be forever free from the three calamities. The Great Way The Great Way is very difficult to express in words. Because it is hard to speak of, just look into beginninglessness, the beginningless beginning. When you reach the point where there is not even any beginninglessness, and not even any nonexistence of beginninglessness, this is the primordial. The primordial Way cannot be assessed; there is nothing in it that can be assessed. What verbal explanation is there for it? We cannot explain it, yet we do explain it—^where does the explanation come from? The Way that can be explained is only in doing. What is doing? It is attained by nondoing. This nondoing begins in doing. Doing How is doing applied? To study its application, one must ask the autonomous mind. The autonomous mind is imbued with great understanding; it observes the changes of movement and stillness of yin and yang, looks to absolute yang and emulates its firm action, looks to absolute yin and communes with its process. The autonomous mind also studies the four seasons and models itself on their cycle. Silently comprehending the ultimate, it plumbs the original source. Thus extensively observing all processes of creation and evolution, sitting calmly with the mind in trance, the energy of trance exists alone, calm sitting exists alone. Now there is nothing whatsoever in the autonomous mind, and the infant resembling the self that was previously cultivated and crystallized by the alchemical elixir communes with heaven and earth. Transmission It is necessary, however, to seek the guidance of elevated real people. If you do not meet real people who can point out the refinements and subtleties, you will not understand the Great Way. In that case, whatever you understand will still be superficial, and you will ultimately fail to attain the mysterious profundities. If you do not attain the profundities, how can you understand the Great Way? So we know that the Great Way requires us to seek true transmission. This true transmission is received individually from a teacher; there is an opening up in the darkness, resulting in clear understanding. Once you are capable of clear understanding, you eventually realize the hidden mystery. Upon realizing the hidden mystery, you know the Great Way. This is called having knowledge and is regarded as attainment. When you attain this ultimate mystery, then nondoing is finally possible. Undertakings and Worthy Deeds Even if you have attained nondoing, you should still carry out undertakings, fulfilling them and realizing their proper results. After many undertakings, you should accomplish worthy deeds, fulfilling them completely and realizing their proper results. Those whose worthy deeds are great realize great fruits of their causes; they may become incorruptible immortals and take their places in the ranks of the celestials, or they may remain in the human world as masters of all things, or they may live in a state of pure bliss. Those whose worthy deeds rank next also lie in highest heaven as nondoing immortals, roaming in ecstasy, or they may live on special mountains, or they may travel in the polluted world as guides to the Way. Those whose worthy deeds are shallow abide eternally in natural settings, among the springs and rocks, unborn and undying, forever free from the three calamities. Some know that there is a distinct order in learning the Way. There is neither difficulty nor ease, but for the proper results look to deeds and undertakings; the deeds and undertakings accumulated each produce their proper results, but if you want the proper results you must learn the Great Way. Order on the Way If you want to learn the Great Way, you must value the three treasures. Without the three treasures you cannot live long, and deep attainment cannot be reached in a limited time; so you will not learn the Great Way. Without learning the Great Way there is no purpose to accumulating deeds, so deeds thus accumulated are not great achievements. If you immediately think of the elevated sages and thereupon grasp the Great Way without establishing great works or fulfilling great imdertakings, it is as though you have gained nothing. Entering the Way Observe what people who arrived did to enter the Way. They strove mightily, as if they feared they wouldn’t reach it, and looked all over for elevated Real People to teach them the mysterious wonder. Plunged into danger, they were not cowed; plunged into difficulty, they were not disturbed; faced with obstacles, they were not confused; confronted with hardships that refined them, they had no regrets. Such was their sincerity that they moved the Real People to teach them the essential, and thus they were able to attain penetrating understanding, without distortion. Then they came back and sat, silently carrying on mystic work, gazing above and examining below, realizing the mystery of mysteries. Tht they still did not become complacent: they mixed in with the ordinary world and carried out various undertakings and performed various deeds in the cities, towns, and villages. Thinking their works were still shallow, they made yet broader commitments, to carry out unlimited undertakings and accomplish unlimited deeds. They vowed that all people through the ages, those with knowledge and those without, would hear of the Great Way and ascend to the ultimate goal. The Ultimate Goal So this undertaking could not be finished even in ten million eons. If this were ever fully accomplished, it would be truly supreme, reaching nondoing, reaching to where there is not even any nondoing. This nondoing is coextensive with heaven and earth, but not coterminous. This is because both heaven and earth are created, and they consist of that which is created, so they must end. Because heaven does something, it too must suffer wastage. People who have arrived on the Way have no doing, and nondoing cannot suffer wastage or aging. These ultimate people exist before heaven and earth exist, and emerge once heaven and earth come to exist. While heaven and earth wear out, these ultimate people are safe. This is very subtle indeed; I can hardly describe such ultimate people, but in the final analysis all people are like this. How are they like this? Because of the primordial. The primordial is inherent in everyone. The Primordial and the Acquired People have the primordial, but are mostly unaware of it. What is the reason for this? It is because while there is the primordial, there is also the acquired. Since there is that which is temporally acquired, there are six organs of sense. Once there are sense organs, they produce six consciousnesses. What are the six organs? One is the eye; this eye organ looks at color and form and produces various states of mind that obscure the primordial. Another is the ear; this organ listens to sounds and produces various states of mind that obscure the primordial. Another is the mouth, which utters judgments that produce various states of mind that obscure the primordial. Another is the nose; this organ smells odors and produces various states of mind that obscure the primordial. Another is the tongue; this organ tastes flavors and produces various states of mind that obscure the primordial. Another is the body; this experiences situations and produces various states of mind that obscure the primordial. Therefore these six organs are called the six robbers. If you want to learn the Great Way, first remove the six organs. As long as the six organs are not removed, they produce wrong consciousness. Removing the Six Organs How are the six organs removed? In ancient times there were adepts who knew the way to remove them. They did not dwell on any objects of sense: they saw without using their eyes, heard without using their ears, shut their mouths and withdrew their tongues, being like imbeciles all day long. They breathed from their heels, set their bodies aside unused, and performed all actions by the operation of the spirit. In this way the six organs were all there, yet it was as if they did not exist. If one does not have the six organs, how can bad tendencies arise? There being no such tendencies of consciousness, as a result there is no obstruction. There being no obstruction, the mind is at peace. With the mind thus free from defilement and attachment, you set up the furnace and put in the three treasures; they can crystallize the great elixir, because that is what is produced by their conjunction. Making the Elixir Using real knowledge, harmony, and awareness, combine them with the three treasures. When the three become one, the great elixir is made. Once you have made the great elixir, essence and sense submit, and the earthly and celestial are in their places. It is necessary, however, to seek elevated Real People to indicate to you the hidden subtleties in order that the proper results be attained. Malpractice Lesser people do not know the basis and so act out erroneous ideas. They carry out various deviant practices, turning further and further away from the Way Because of this aberration, they are beset by various bedevilments and obstacles. They incur the anger of heaven above and violate civil laws below. If they take to seclusion, addicted to natural settings, as they know about the aforementioned type, they refine their energy and tranquilize the spirit, gathering the three treasures in hopes of producing the great elixir. But if they do not obtain directions in genuine method, ultimately they will be afflicted by the three calamities. Dissipation The human body is only vitality, energy, and spirit. If you do not care about your vitality and waste it arbitrarily, that is like putting water into a leaking cup; it will not fill the cup, but will gradually leak away Finally it will be all gone, not a drop left. If you do not care about your energy but let it go whichever way it will, that is like placing incense on a red- hot brazier, letting it burn away; add more fuel and fire, and the incense will become ash. If you do not care about your spirit and dissipate it arbitrarily, that is like placing a lone lamp in the wind, letting it be blown by the wind, imcovered, so that it goes out. The Seed of Emotions Because of the six organs, people produce the six consciousnesses; and because of the six consciousnesses they produce emotions. They hardly realize that emotions confuse them in regard to fundamental reality. Once fundamental reality is lost sight of, then emotions run wild. But the seed of all emotions is craving. Why is this? Because craving is at the root of emotions. If you don’t crave anything, you don’t want anything; if you don’t want anything, how can you be attracted to anything? If you are not attracted to anything, you are not repulsed by anything; if you have neither attraction nor repulsion, what anger can there be? When there is no anger, fear does not occur; without fear, sadness disappears. So we know that craving is the root of emotions. If you try to control emotions forcibly without extirpating the root, you control nothing but outgrowths. This is like a flood of water: if you try to dam it without stopping the source or clearing the flow, eventually you’ll be drowned. It is also like a blazing fire: if you try to beat it out without removing its fuel or cutting off its path, you’ll just increase the force of the flames, so that you’ll be threatened at every turn. It is also like the waves of the ocean, one following another endlessly. Feeling emotions and evoking them, they all accompany the mind, growing according to circumstances. Only developed people, knowing the seed, use the sword of wisdom with great aspiration and fierce determination to cut through the root and sprouts, extirpate undesirable syndromes, and prevent emotions from growing on them like parasites. Disorientation The emotions are a huge bolt, and craving is the lock on the bolt. When you cut through the lock and take away the bolt, you can get beyond the barrier and go in peace, freely, without hindrance. Mastering understanding of the ultimate Way, you then ascend to exalted reality. I pity people who create all sorts of demons and obstacles because of craving. They are confused and disoriented all their lives, rarely taking stock of themselves. Even when people of high attainment try to enlighten them, it is like beating a drum for the deaf, like presenting a lamp to the blind. After all they do not wake up. What a pity! Still they feign interest in the Way, but their interest is misguided—^what they seek is immortality. This is like opening Pandora’s box —it’s not that they don’t find anything, but there is harm in it. Removing Emotions How can you remove emotions? The way to remove them is to think there is no self. What is called no self? The self is originally not self; we are not these selves. So what does the self cleave to? Once there is self and you cling to it as yourself, when clinging to the self as yourself, then nothing is not self. When nothing is not self, there is nothing to which the self does not cleave. The country is not one’s own, yet one will die for love of it; the home is not one’s own, yet one will die for love of it. Things are not one’s own, yet one dies for them, like flies seeking ordure, like ants gathering in putrid flesh, like bees trying to get through a closed window, smashing themselves against it when they see the sunlight. Gluttony and greed make people like vultures, insatiably voracious. But try to think of the self; before the self existed, it wasn’t like this: it must have been clear and cool. The self is transient, like a fleeting shadow, like the morning dew—in a moment the self is gone. Since the self has no self, what is the piupose of self-love? Tbu will grab your heart and laugh in astonishment; when you meditate in this way, what craving will not disappear? Detachment Once craving is eliminated, everything will disappear— desire, aversion, attraction, sorrow, fear, anger, ego, emotion. All will end with this craving. But people stick to craving as though they have fallen into an abyss. Though they try to swim out, there is no shore. What is needed first is patience, which means that you should think to yourself and reflect with increasing intensity. In ancient times there was a rich man with many wives and children, surrounded by every luxury. One day he lost everything dear to him, and his mind was impressed with the Way. At this point he was surrounded by demons calling to him enticingly, trying to hold him back, taunting him, weeping, encircling and embracing him, not letting him go free. But this high-minded man remained patient and unconcerned. He looked upon what he had lost as like a broken pot, like worn-out shoes. Quietly disappearing into the mountains, stilling his breath and plunging into profound silence, not seeing or hearing anything, he caused his mind to be entirely free of emotion, vastly expanded, open and empty. Tdt when one has reached this stage, it is still necessary to go into the ordinary world with all its clamor and toil, experience all kinds of situations, observe all sorts of phenomena, and become familiar with people. When you can roam playfully, going in and out of the world without becoming influenced or attached, then you humbly seek the secret of the mysterious pass and refine the three treasures. Governing the Mind Since the refinement of the three treasures requires removal of emotions, it is necessary to govern the mind. What is governing the mind? The mind is originally pure, the mind is originally calm; openness and freedom are both basic qualities of mind. When we govern the mind, this means we should keep it as it is in its original fundamental state, clear as a mountain stream, pure, fresh, unpolluted, silent as an immense canyon, free from clamor, vast as the universe, immeasurable in extent, open as a great desert, its bounds unknown. In this way, the mind with nothing in it is like charcoal or still water: charcoal can burn, still water can reflect. It may also be likened to a clear mirror, with no images in it once objects are gone. It is also like enlightenment, constituting the root of the Way. When the clear mirror is always polished and enlightenment is refreshed from time to time, the clear mirror is cold, and the heart of enlightenment leaves its impression. Being cold means all objects disappear; when the heart leaves its impression, all paths arise. Sitting Forgetting I know without knowing, see without seeing; I have no ears, no eyes, no mind, no thought, no cognition. Thus having nothing, then reaching absence of even nothingness, after that the mind cannot he disturbed by anything. Being imperturbable is called sitting forgetting. Once you can forget, you can be given the Way. You can thus pass through the barriers, tame essence and sense, establish the foundation of enlightenment and make it accessible to consciousness. If, however, in forgetting things you can battle with things but cannot settle them, and you seek to learn the secrets of the Way in this condition, it will not only be of no benefit, it will even be harmful. The Chief Hoodlum To learn the Way we first kill off the chief hoodlum. What is the chief hoodlum? It is emotions. We need to wipe out that den of thieves to see once again the clear, calm, wide open original essence of mind. Don’t let conditioned senses spy in. What is this about? It is about quelling the mind. One removes emotions to quell the mind, then purifies the mind to nurture its great elixir. Essence Some people practice aberrant techniques that not only obscure the Way but also obscure their own essence. Essence is that which is bestowed by Nature. Therefore quelling the mind is done for the sake of this essence. When the mind is surely quelled, how can essence be obscured? So the effort to nurture essence is not to be relaxed. How is essence to be nurtured? This essence is rooted in the beginningless, espied in the absolute, and becomes fragmented in the temporal. In the temporally conditioned essence there is inner design and energy. Inner design is divided into real and false; the false has lost the natural reality. Energy is divided into pure and polluted; the polluted is murky, and being murky and degraded cannot be called essence any more but is called temporally acquired conditioning. The Absolute In the absolute, inner design and energy are whole and integrated; there is nothing false, and no pollution. This is the celestial state of nature. Now when it comes to the beginningless, we cannot say it is essence and cannot say it is life; it being neither essence nor life, how can we say nature is rooted in the beginningless? We must realize that the beginningless is neither essence nor life, it is a seed in the absolute void. This seed becomes the root of the ultimate, whereupon there is life and essence. To nurture this essence is to nurture this seed. Nurturing the Seed The seed of the beginningless is undefinable, imperceptible, formless; how does one set about nurturing it? The way to nurture it is to nurture the temporal first. The temporal nature has inner design and energy, pure and polluted, real and false, which cannot be equated; what can be nurtured? Nurtrrring and quelling means to get rid of the false and purify the polluted. Getting rid of the false is not easy, prrrifying the polluted is difficult. Out of pity for people, I will point out the way to start. Where do you start? From pure desirelessness. When you have no desire, there is reality. Reality is without fabrication; when there is no fabrication, there is purity. When pure, you can be clear; when real, you can understand. What can you clearly ruiderstand? The attainment of pure reality illumines everything; the clarity of illumination ruiderstands every way. Removing Falsehood and Pollution How are falsehood and pollution removed? On the lower terrestrial plane, falsehood and pollution are mixed together; therefore I will give directions. It is necessary to be buoyant, to rise on high, making a profound effort to avoid entanglement in worldly objects. Sit in deep tranquillity with eyes downcast. Do not see, do not hear, and the mind will be clear and calm, without any garbage in it. After that you can get rid of falsehood and clean away acquired pollution. Once acquired pollution is cleared away, the mind is pure and no externals can adhere to it. Mastering Mind In order to master the mind it is necessary to banish five kinds of consciousness, thereby get rid of five obstacles, and thus understand five natures and penetrate five mysteries. Causeless Consciousness When people sit quietly in total stillness, with no images appearing to them, their ears not receiving anything, their eyes not making contact with anything, in a state of profound silence, undifferentiated, with steadily concentrated awareness, it may happen that suddenly a thought arises, drawing forth an outburst like wild animals galloping in all directions, out of control. This is very harmful to the Way, so students of the Way first get rid of this kind of consciousness. Where does this consciousness come from, and how does one get rid of it? The way to get rid of it is to eliminate falsehood and maintain truthfulness. Consciousness of the Future Before situations have been experienced, before matters arise, you should make your mind clear and calm. Clarity and calm are roots of the Way, but it can happen that you may for no reason get caught up in all sorts of before-the- fact considerations, assailed by a hundred thoughts; then when you go through situations, dealing with people and events, they turn out differently than you thought, and so you try to make your thoughts fit them. This depletes the vitality, wearies the spirit, and exhausts the energy. It is better not to be conscious of the future, letting it be as it may. Therefore students who do not get rid of this consciousness can hardly learn the Way. The way to get rid of this consciousness is to forget objects, dismiss concerns, and clear the mind so that it is like space. Consciousness of Sound and Form What the ear hears and what the eye sees may be beautiful or ugly, fair or foul, may have any of a countless variety of features. You view them subjectively, like dreams, yet you do not understand this and become actually attached to them. First conscious of what is pleasing and displeasing, you devise strategies, uneasy and anxious, agitated and restless, so the luminous essence of mind is covered by shadows and you become feebleminded, unable to attain clarity. How can you study the great Way in this condition? You will on the contrary destroy yourself. Therefore students of the Way silence the superficial intellect and cause the inner mind to be ever alert, realizing that if this consciousness remains it produces affliction, with no prospect of getting out of the confusion caused by affliction, anxious and insecure. When the autonomous mind emerges, it will get rid of this, clearly aware, free from entanglement or dependence, thoroughly equanimous outwardly and inwardly. Using ears for eyes and eyes for ears, no matter how extreme the situation may be, you do not see or hear. Consciousness of the Past Whether there is good or bad fortune, if feelings are forgotten along with situations, what gain or loss is there, what weakness or strength? The ignorant are bound up in many concerns, upset and uneasy, confused and worried, going mad by losing their minds for no reason. To try to comprehend the Way in this condition is like trying to cross the ocean in a tub, leaving you helplessly adrift; it is like trying to descend into an abyss of a thousand fathoms by means of a well rope, which is not only impossible but dangerous. Therefore students of the Way must clear away this consciousness and not be fixated by it, so that nothing retards them and they are in a state of wholeness, everything evaporating, leaving no more false awareness mixing up true awareness. Consciousness of Personal Knowledge Considering oneself to be intelligent and enlightened is not going by the right Way. Unaware that presumption of personal knowledge greatly obstructs the Way, you go back and forth in a fog, stagnant, without expanding. This not only obstructs the Way, it actually destroys essential life. Therefore students of the Way work to eliminate this consciousness, because if they do not eliminate this consciousness they will never clarify true consciousness even if they eliminate other consciousnesses. The Level Road The Great Way is like a level road. If you do not proceed to traverse the level road by way of true consciousness, you fall into sidetracks. When people get mixed up in any of the countless cults, even if they are admonished they can rarely wake up, and even if there is true guidance they do not follow it. Even if causeless consciousness, consciousness of the future, consciousness of soimd and form, and consciousness of the past are all forgotten, still if the consciousness of personal knowledge is kept you will be lost after all. Spontaneity Serenely accord with spontaneity; don’t act willfully, or you’ll lose the fundamental. What is the fundamental? It is the essence of mind. The awareness in this essence is called true awareness. The awareness of true awareness is called accurate awareness. The awareness of accurate awareness is great awareness. This great awareness is primal awareness; it doesn’t depend on calculation or reasoning, it is not willful, insistent, fixated, or egotistic. If you follow its basic truth and let it be as it spontaneously is, then you will understand the beginningless and endless, penetrating the universe. This is very subtle and abstruse. Taoists call it the knowledge of sages, Confucians call it spiritual communication, Buddhists call it silent illumination. These are all terms for true awareness, accurate awareness, great awareness, primal awareness. Consciousness without this awareness is called false consciousness. Unless false consciousness is eliminated, it will obscure true awareness. But to eliminate false consciousness, it is best to get rid of five obstacles. Bedevilment The obstacle of bedevilment may arise in the mind, may attach to objects, may operate through other people, or may pertain to the body Bedevilments arising in the mind are ideas of self and others, ideas of glory and ignominy, ideas of gain and loss, ideas of right and wrong, ideas of profit and honor, ideas of superiority These are dust on the pedestal of the spirit, preventing freedom. Bedevilment in the body is when it is invaded by illness, hunger, cold, satiation, pain and pleasure; when one becomes comfortable, one becomes lazy, repeating vicious circles into which one becomes trapped and bound. There is disharmony in action, which carries over into the way one deals with situations. There are both pleasant and unpleasant situations: the pleasant are considered easy, the unpleasant are considered difficult. To enter the world is easy, to leave the world is hard; when confronted with fine things, then jealousy, willfulness, and attraction take over. Everyone has such bedevilments; if students of the Way do not get rid of this obstacle, they will never be able to learn the Way. So get rid of these obstructing bedevilments one by one. Doubt What is the obstacle of doubt? The Great Way is easy to know, simple to do; the indications of an illumined teacher are a lamp in a dark room, bright and clear, like a crystal globe. Nevertheless, the obstacle of doubt plants its roots. When one person talks about the Way, many people add their remarks and opinions, until the influence of the clamor becomes blinding, and people turn from that which is accurate to that which is deviant, confusing the true with the false. This is like falling off a tree into a deep canyon. The words of the sages are supreme indeed: ‘The open spirit does not die; it is the entry to all marvels.” The Way of the sages is great indeed: open and free, responding to cause, pure and serene. What is the use of different doctrines? Arbitrary indulgence in fuss and confusion makes the obstacle of doubt, by which people impede themselves. What a pity that they do not understand and wind up subject to pernicious influences. It is necessary for practitioners to learn from genuine teachers; don’t be confused by false doctrines, and don’t take to sidetracks. Clear openness, calm stability, nurturing vitality, nurturing spirit, the mysterious pass, mystic receptivity, pure attention, nascent enlightenment, yin and yang, real knowing and conscious knowing, overcoming pitfalls, illimination, creative strength and receptive tranquillity—ah are in the mind. What is the use of names? Forms do not remain. It is so simple and easy—^what doubt is there? If you do not get rid of the obstacle of doubt, there will be a thicket of confusion. The Obstacle of Principle Even when the obstacle of doubt is removed, there is still the obstacle of principle, which is even more harmful to the Way. The obstacle caused by individual clinging to partiality prevents comprehensive perception. The obstacle of Confucians is in reification, the obstacle of Taoists is in nothingness, and the obstacle of Buddhists is in emptiness. Reification Those obstructed by reification cling to their partial principle; while they act in illusory situations, deal with illusory affairs, and see illusory persons, they take them all to actually exist. They belabor their minds, wear out their bodies, and exhaust their energy, considering all this obligatory in principle, unaware that these ideas are obstacles. Now in human life, benevolence, duty, kindness, generosity, loyalty, respect, restraint, and vigor are all the abundant energy of heaven and earth; they are to be practiced genuinely and should not be considered vain. If the principles one observes are not fully digested, however, and one clings only to partial principles, then this will degenerate into a bad cause. Sentimental benevolence, ostentatious dutifulness, petty loyalty, and ignorant respectfulness are criticized even in Confucianism, to say nothing of Taoism. It is lamentable how people are obstructed by reification; they fall into a pit of fire, without real understanding. The psychological certitude of sages is comprehended and penetrated by silent recognition and thorough investigation; there is nothing idle in it at all. Nothingness Those obstructed by nothingness, clinging one-sidedly to this principle, sit blankly to clear away sense objects and think that the Way is herein. None of them seeks the secret of nurturing the three treasures. Though they speak of reaching nothingness, this is really not the Way. The ultimate Way is not in reification, nor simple nothingness. The mystic essential is to balance openness and realism. Emptiness Those obstructed by emptiness cling to this partial principle; not knowing true essence, they vainly talk of empty emptiness, and emptiness is not voided, so it becomes nihilistic emptiness. Ultimately they are unaware of the independence of original true suchness. Sectarianism All those obstructed by the three obstacles of reification, nothingness, and emptiness are unable to reconcile the three teachings of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. This results in sectarian differences and disputes. Confucians criticize the nothingness of Taoism, Taoists criticize the emptiness of Buddhism, Buddhists criticize the path of Confucianism—and so it goes on endlessly, back and forth. They do not realize that the basis is really one, even though the doctrines may be different. Their perception is divisive because they are obstructed by their principles. Integration The obstacle of reification leads to delusion, which makes it hard to wake up. The obstacle of nothingness leads to withering, in which there is no realism. The obstacle of emptiness leads to quietism, which reverts to nihilism. The ancient sages were realistic yet open, empty yet realistic. They saw that emptiness is not empty, that emptiness does not void anything. This is the supreme Way. It is attained by integration. It is only because of succumbing to the obstacle of principle that no one knows this. So students of the Way should be careful. The Obstacle of Writings For the obstacle of principle to be removed, there is an obstacle whose roots derive from writings. But in reality, the obstacle of writings is an obstacle of mind. The mystic sayings of the Tao-te Ching all come from profound enlightenment: if you view them literally and lose their inner sense, if you fail to understand and succumb to this obstacle, then all sorts of false statements, aberrated doctrines, curiosities, and fantasies enter your mind, causing damage to the nature and body. So what ancient adepts set up as truths were mostly in the form of indirect allusions. For example, the terms water and fire, furnace and cauldron, girl and boy, dragon and tiger, yin and yang, and mysterious female—all are allusions to something else. People who are obstructed by words often do exercises without knowing the Great Way is in vitality, energy, and spirit. Nurturing these three treasures is nurturing the seed; this seed is the root of the ultimate. What all those terms refer to is this one energy; the basis of the energy is this seed. When you recognize the seed, all the various explanations are dregs. Why consume the dregs? So writings are not real explanations of the Way. When you personally realize the Way, you can dispense with all the writings. The Obstacle of Tradition If you do away with writings but still stick to a teacher’s tradition, this very teacher’s tradition becomes a source of obstruction. You should by all means examine clearly and go to visit adepts who can transmit the profound marvel. If you don’t find such a person, you will suffer from obstruction all your life. Generally speaking, beginners have dreams about the Way; once they make a mistake in choosing a teacher and are given false teachings, they are confused and cannot attain enlightenment. They follow false teachings all their lives, thinking them true guidance. Their bodies and minds become imprisoned, so that even if real people point out true awakening to them, they may repudiate it and turn away. Once they have tasted fanciful talk, they sell falsehood by falsehood, believe falsehood through falsehood. All sorts of obstructions arise from this. Therefore students of the Way should be careful to choose high illuminates, to get rid of obstructions of body and mind. When these obstacles are eliminated, all obstructions disappear. Once obstructions dissolve, the spiritual base is clear and clean; then one can be given explanation of the subtleties of the five natures. Five Natures The earthy nature is mostly turbid, and the turbid are mostly dull. The metallic nature is mostly decisive, and the decisive are mostly determined. The wooden nature is mostly kind, and the kind are mostly benevolent. The fiery nature is mostly adamant, and the adamant are mostly manic. The watery nature is mostly yielding, and the yielding are mostly docile. The docile tend to wander aimlessly. The manic tend to undergo extremes. The benevolent tend to harmonize warmly. The determined tend to be strong and brave. The dull tend to be closed in. The closed-in are ignorant; the strong and brave are unruly; those who wander aimlessly are shifty; those who harmonize warmly fall into the traps; those who are adamant and can endure extremes are cruel. Therefore each of the five natures has a bias, so it is important to balance each with the others. By yielding one can overcome being adamant, by being adamant one can overcome yielding. Benevolence is balanced by effectiveness, effectiveness is balanced benevolence. The ignorance of earthy dullness is to be overcome by developed understanding. If developed understanding is not dominant, one loses the function of yielding. Those who are too yielding tend to be lazy. Those who are too benevolent are foolish, and being foolish tend to be blind. Those who are too adamant tend to be rebellious. Those who are too determined tend to be stubborn. Those who are too dull do not have clear understanding and become alienated from reality. Balanced Personality In terms of social virtues, the water nature corresponds to wisdom, the fire nature corresponds to courtesy, the wood nature corresponds to henevolence, the metal nature corresponds to righteousness, and the earth nature corresponds to trustworthiness. In a balanced personality, these five natures should be able to produce and control one another. Wisdom should be able to produce benevolence. Benevolence should be able to produce courtesy. Courtesy should be able to produce trustworthiness. Trustworthiness should be able to produce righteousness. Righteousness should be able to produce wisdom. Wisdom should control courtesy. Courtesy should control righteousness. Righteousness should control benevolence. Benevolence should control trustworthiness. Trustworthiness should control wisdom. When these five natures produce and control each other thus in a continuous circle, then no element of personality dominates; they all interact, balancing each other, resulting in completeness of the five natures. Those who know this truly understand the ultimate design; then when they are told of the subtleties of the five mysteries, they can understand them on their own. The Five Mysteries The five mysteries are the mystery of heaven, the mystery of earth, the mystery of natnral law, the mystery of the Way, and the total mystery of mysteries. When you penetrate the mystery of heaven, then you know the course of heaven; emulating its spontaneity, you can be uncontrived. When you penetrate the mystery of earth, then you know the pattern of earth; emulating its firmness and flexibility, you can master balanced interaction. When you penetrate the mystery of natural law, you know cause and response, and assess unexpected changes before they become apparent. When you penetrate the mystery of the Way, then you comprehend the subtleties of the temporal and the primordial, of doing and nondoing; this is penetration of the mystery of mysteries. Heaven above, earth below, the natural law of the Way, the refined and the profound—you will then know them all. You know, yet have no knowledge; and still there is nothing you do not know. Knowing all events but really having no knowledge is called attaining the Way. The Mystery of Heaven The deep blue of heaven spreads all over; it has shape but is not shape, has form but is not form. Its shape and form have a certain appearance; this is called substantiality. Yet that appearance is vague and ungraspable; substantiality has no definite form, but is open and traceless, and can only be called empty. Only by emptiness can one be aware, only by substantiality can one cover all. Now empty, now substantial, changing most marvelously, is that whereby one penetrates the mystery of heaven. When you know how to be both empty and substantial, there is no congestion; emulating nature, you work and adapt at will, in a comprehensive cycle that never ceases. Then the great elixir of life is made. The Mystery of Earth Earth is thick, broad, boundless. Insofar as it is empty above and substantial below, myriad beings are born from it; insofar as it is substantial above and empty below, myriad beings return to the root. Now empty, now substantial, it lasts forever with heaven. Its body is still, its function flows; mountains manifest its wonderful substance, rivers reveal its spirit. By its substance it supports being, by its spirit it gathers consciousnesses. Without spirit there is no substance, without substance there is no spirit. Spirit is active, substance receptive; substance acts through spirit. Emptiness and substantiality interact and balance each other, subtly combining into one whole. Taoists who master understanding of this principle combine the qualities of firmness and flexibility; as emptiness and substantiality produce one another, they penetrate the mystery of earth. Also, by understanding the basis of this, creativity and receptivity are established in their proper places, and the great elixir of life is made. The Mystery of the Way The mystery of the Way is not explained by words. If you consider it substantial, still all substance is empty. If you consider it empty, still all emptiness is substantial. If you want to talk about its alternating and interacting emptiness and substantiality, where does the substantiality exist, where is the emptiness clarified? The substantiality within emptiness cannot be called substantial, the emptiness within substantiality cannot be called empty. Substantiality is not to be considered substantial, emptiness is not to be considered empty; yet though they are not to be considered empty or substantial, ultimately they are not nonexistent. Now empty, now substantial, it is difficult to express in words. Now empty, now substantial—it is subtle indeed. Though you cannot consider it empty, it really is empty; though you cannot consider it substantial, it really is substantial. It cannot be called alternating emptiness and substantiality, yet it is really none other than alternating emptiness and substantiality. Ultimate indeed is the mystery of the Way! It has no name or form. So profound are its depths that it is difficult to fathom. Therefore if you understand this mystery, the elixir of life is thoroughly refined. The Mystery of Natural Law The mystery of natural law is learned from a teacher, but it is based on the celestial order, which circulates throughout the earth. Once the Great Way is accomplished, then miracles, at the extreme end of natural law, are manifested at will, and supernatrrral powers are unfathomable. Then sky and earth are like a pouch, sun and moon are in a pot, the minuscule is gigantic, the macrocosm is minute; you can manipulate the cosmos at will, looking upon the universe as a mote of dust. Now integrating, now vanishing, now detached, now present, you enter the hidden and emerge in the evident; space itself disappears. You can even employ spirits and ghosts and make thruider and lightning. Y)u might call this emptiness, but there is nothing it doesn’t contain; you might call this substantiality, but nothing in it really exists. When you attain it in the mind, activity corresponds; mind and activity reflect each other. The mind has no such mind; nothing is added by action. It is not attained in action, but operates in accord with the mind, changing unpredictably like a dream. Heaven and earth are the witnesses; it is most subtle, endlessly creative. Only when you penetrate the mystery of the Way do you then arrive at this essence; thereby you penetrate the mystery of natural law, and then the Way is completed. The Mystery of Mysteries There is no way to explain the mystery of mysteries in words, for it is even beyond thought. It is very subtle, ungraspable, extremely rarefied. From heaven up to the infinite heaven there are perfected people, most mysterious, by whom heaven is directed and earth controlled. They understand people and things, the hidden and the obvious, to the furthest possible extent. They operate time without any fixed track, and are invisibly in charge of the accounting of the ages. Sages cannot recognize them as sages, spirits cannot recognize them as spirits. The mystery of mysteries is nonexistent, yet exists; it is empty, yet substantial. It is not more in sages, not less in the ignorant. Heaven is within it, yet even heaven does not know it; earth receives its current, yet even earth does not recognize it. It penetrates the depths of all things, yet they go on unawares. Its presence is not presence, its passing is not passing. How can this mystery of mysteries be conceived of, how can it be imagined? If you penetrate the essence, it is mystery upon mystery. Learned Ignorance In the absence of understanding, all sorts of different arguments, opinions, and theories arise, resulting in different schools and sects that each hold on to one point and repudiate others. Stubbornly holding on to their theories, they attack and goad each other; each maintaining one view, they argue and assert their own doctrines. They all want to be protectors of the Way, but though they speak out, they go to extremes. The mind that imderstands the Way is entirely impartial and truthful. But because Taoist tradition has gone on so long, personalistic degenerations have cropped up. People attack one another and establish factions of supporters; they call themselves guardians of the Way, but they are really in it for their own sakes. When you look into their motivations, you find they are all outsiders. People like this are rot in Confucianism, bandits in Taoism, troublemakers in Buddhism. They are confused and obsessed. A Day fly Human life in the world is no more than that of a dayfly. This is true not only of ordinary people hut also of the wizards and buddhas of all times as well. However, though a lifetime is limited, the spirit is unlimited. If we look on the universe from the point of view of our lifetime, our lifetimes are those of dayflies. But if we look on the universe from the point of view of our spirit, the universe too is like a dayfly. High Minds People should have lofty vision and broad minds. They should be hesitant to accept favor and patient in ignominy With a capacity vast as the ocean, a mind open as space, if they are to receive much they should do so without considering it glorious, and if they should refuse something small they should do so without making excuses. Ancient sages ruled without taking it personally, or even abandoned rulership like a worn-out shoe. When did they ever keep wealth or poverty on their minds? Nowadays many people tie up their minds with such thoughts, unable to change. If some day they should be given high rank and a large salary, I don’t know what they would be like. Mothers A woman carries a child in the womh for ten months, then gives hirth in pain. Breast-feeding for three years, she watches over the infant with great care, aware of when it is sick, in pain, uncomfortable, itching. Whatever she does, even when she is not there, she always thinks of the baby. She is happy when she sees it laugh and worries when it cries. Seeing it stand and walk, she is at once anxious and exhilarated. She will go hungry to feed her child, she will freeze to clothe it. She watches, worries, and works, all for the child’s future. How can one ever repay the debt one owes to one’s mother? Fathers Fathers should not be too indulgent, nor be too strict. Only when there are wise fathers are there good children. Only when there are kind fathers are there respectful children. How many people could ever become talented without teaching, act on their own without encouragement, gain a sense of purpose without study? Fathers should be aware of this. Good Deeds Don’t be concerned about whether merit in helpful deeds is great or small, much or little. Just be completely sincere. Then if you save even one insect, or care for one plant or tree, doing whatever you can, there is immeasurable merit in this. Stable Perception People’s minds need stable perception. If the mind is unstable, you cannot apply it usefully to the realm of true enlightenment. Eventually you will become biased and opinionated and will not believe good words. Craftily employing mental tricks, contesting against others, unwilling to tame the crazy mind and return it to unity, you will be out of harmony with true enlightenment. As a result, though there be some good in what you do from time to time, since the mind is the root, if the root is defective a little goodness won’t help. Those who have this affliction should endeavor to change. Do not flaunt personal knowledge, do not cling to biased views. Purify your mind through and through, so there is no obstruction or attachment; act with all your heart. People of true enlightenment perform deeds of true enlightenment. Going higher with every step, wherever they go there is profit. To seek this in yourself, just fully exert your own sincerity. Ah the sages are ultimately one; once you understand, you receive blessings without end. The True Eternal Tao Whenever I see those whom the vulgar call devotees of the Tao, I find that all of them seek to be taken in by spirits and immortals, or they seek lasting life and preservation of wealth by the practice of material alchemy or sexual yoga. When it comes to the great Tao of true eternity, pure and open, tranquil and dispassionate, there are few who are interested in it. Entering the Tao The Tao is entered by way of sincerity. When you reach complete sincerity, the Tao is not far off. Therefore a classic says, “Before practicing the way of immortality, first practice the way of humanity.” What does practicing the way of humanity mean? The Tao is fundamentally empty, yet it fills the imiverse. People should embody the Tao in action, making the extent of their minds reach everywhere and encompass everything, so that all living creatures are embraced within the mind of the individual. Also one should investigate the root of consciousness and the nature of intelligence, from time to time looking inward and using the mind to ask the mind whether one’s actions are in accord with truth, and whether one is really contributing positively to society. Life and Death People usually fear death, but when they become seriously ill they long for a quick death to relieve them of their misery, and when they are utterly exhausted in a perilous situation they want to die quickly to escape their suffering. When you look at life and death in reverse this way, you break right through the mental block. Restoring the Mind To restore the mind to its imfragmented origin, sit quietly and meditate. First count the breaths, then tune the breath until it is imperceptible. Sense the body as like the undifferentiated absolute, and you won’t hear anything. Those who can regain their composure after a mountain crumbles before them are second best; not even being startled is expertise. A Temporary Device As long as there is any thought left unterminated, one’s essence is not whole. As long as the hreath is even slightly unsettled, one’s life is not secure. It is necessary to reach the point where mind and breath rest on each other, and thoughts are forgotten in the midst of thought. In essence it requires relaxation and patience. The secret is put this way: “No need to stay by the furnace and watch the firing. Just settle spirit and breath, and trust nature. When exhalation and inhalation stop and the body is as though dead, you will realize meditation is just a temporary device.” Joyfulness One should not be happy or delighted when the spiritual work takes effect, for when the mind is delighted the energy floats up and one becomes greedy. When sitting meditating, joyfulness in the mind is the blooming of the mind blossom—it is best to nurture it. States As for the states experienced through the exercise of quiescence, first there is dullness, oblivion, and random thought. Then there is lightness and freshness. Later it is like being inside curtains of gold mesh. Finally it is like returning to life from death, a clear breeze under the bright moon coming and going, the scenery unobstructed. Not Hearing As for the exercise of sitting until one does not hear, at the extreme of quiet stillness, the mind is not drawn into movement hy the ears. One hears only sound, not tone. This is not hearing. Three Levels of Attainment There are three levels of attainment of the Tao. One is the alchemy of nondoing. Another is the alchemy of spiritual power. The third is the alchemy of preserving unity. In the alchemy of nondoing, the mind is the crucible. The intent is the fire. Walking, standing, sitting, and reclining are the laboratory. Joy, anger, sadness, and happiness are the firing process. Himanity, justice, loyalty, and truthfulness are culling and ingesting the elixir. Spring, summer, autumn, and winter are extraction and addition. Essence and sense are the medicinal ingredients. In this alchemy, a month is condensed into a day, and the elixir takes one year to refine. When you use it all your life, you go beyond the heavens, leave being, and enter nonbeing. This is the method of unsurpassed true adepts, in which myriad practices are completely fulfilled. Tranquil, open, empty, mystery of mysteries, one joins the ancestor of heaven and earth. Working for the benefit of all people, participating in evolution, one joins the origin of heaven and earth. Even before the achievement is complete, the humane heart is universal; even before the virtue is consimmate, the mystic wonder is inconceivable. Thus one is an assistant of heaven and earth. This is the highest level. In the alchemy of spiritual power, heaven and earth are the crucible. The sun and moon are the medicinal ingredients. Spirit, energy, and vitality are culling and ingesting the elixir. Exhalation and inhalation are extraction and addition. The inner circulation of energy through the psychic channels is the firing process. This is the path of spiritual immortals. It is not easy to fulfill. One year is concentrated into one month, and it takes ten years to cultivate. When you use it all your life, you transcend the realms of desire, form, and formlessness, and become the same as heaven. If its highest attainment is consummated, three thousand practices are fulfilled and one becomes a spiritual immortal able to liberate people. In the middling grade there are eight hundred lofty achievements, and one becomes a flying wizard able to rescue people. In the lower echelon, one gathers medicine that boosts and enhances, and becomes a celestial wizard able to bring one’s whole family to heaven. This is the second level. In the alchemy of preserving unity, truthfulness is the crucible. Works are the medicinal ingredients. Humanity and duty are the firing process. Chronicles and history are culling and ingesting the elixir. Speech and action are extraction and addition. This is the path of the lower adepts. The method is easy to practice, but hard to perfect. Ten years are concentrated into one day, and it takes one hundred years to cultivate to completion. The higher echelons forget themselves for the public welfare and are deputies of heaven. The lower echelons include the benefit of others in what they do for themselves and are lesser functionaries of heaven. The very lowest ones ingest herbs for long life and become earthly wizards. These are the lowest of the three levels, the dregs of the path of immortality. Those on the foremost level leave being and enter nonbeing and are unfathomable, not trapped by life or death. Those on the second level can transform and die at will. They plunge into the origin, embrace the pristine, free the spirit, leave the body, and disappear from the world. They have birth but not death. Those on the third level work hard and accumulate achievement, becoming immortal after death. Even if they live a long time, it is not more than five hundred years. Walk Slowly Walk slowly, at a relaxed pace, and you won’t stumble. Sleep soundly and you won’t fret through the night. Practitioners first of all need serenity and patience. Second, they need dispassion, not to think about the past or be concerned about the future. If you think about the past, your former self will not die. If you think about the future, the road seems long and hard to traverse. It is better to be serene and relaxed, not thinking of past or future but just paying attention to the present, acting normally. Each accomplishment is an achievement, and this will build up. If you are eager for completion and vow to do so many deeds or practices, this is still personal interest, calculating merit and striving for gain. Then the mind cannot be pure. This is the root of inconsistency. NOTES ON SOURCES A more extensive seleetion of translations from Taoist writings is available in my Vitality, Energy, Spirit: A Taoist Sourcebook (Shambhala Publications, 1991). My complete annotated translation of the Tao-te Ching and the ‘Inner Chapters” of Chuang-tzu are to be found in The Essential Tao (HarperCollins, 1991). My abridged translation of Huai-nan-tzu is to be found in The Book of Leadership and Strategy: Lessons of the Chinese Masters (Shambhala Publications, 1992). The selections from the ‘Tales of Inner Meaning” have been taken from the following sources, with added material from oral tradition: Zhongxi shide shen-jing, Xianzhuanshiyi, and Gaodaozhuan. The selection of sayings attributed to Ancestor Lii has been taken from Luzu huiji and Yulu daguan. BOOKS ON TAOISM BY THOMAS CLEARY Too Te Ching: Zen Teachings on the Taoist Classic ( 2010 )* Alchemists, Mediums & Magicians (2008)* Taoist Classics: The Collected Translations of Thomas Cleary, 4 vols. (2003)* The Book of Balance and Harmony: A Taoist Handbook (2003)* Taoist Meditation: Methods for Cultivating a Healthy Mind and Body (2000)* Ways of Warriors, Codes of Kings: Lessons in Leadership from the Chinese Classics (2000)* Sex, Health, and Long Life: Manuals of Taoist Practice (1999)* Practical Taoism (1996)* The Tao of Organization: The I Chingybr Group Dynamics, by Cheng Yi (1995)* Thunder in the Sky: Secrets on the Acquisition and Exercise of Power (1993)* The Book of Leadership and Strategy: Lessons of the Chinese Masters (1992)* Wen-tzu: Understanding the Mysteries, by Lao-tzu (1992)* The Essential Tao (1992) The Secret of the Golden Flower (1991) Vitality, Energy, Spirit: A Taoist Sourcebook (1991)* Back to Beginnings: Reflections on the Tao (1990)* Mastering the Art of War, by Zhuge Liang & Liu Ji (1989)* The Art of War, by Sun Tzu (1988)* Awakening to the Tao, by Liu I-ming (1988)* The Buddhist I Ching, by Chihhsu Ou-i (1987)* The Inner Teachings of Taoism, by Chang Po-tuan (1986)* The Taoist I Ching, by Liu I-ming (1986)* * Published by Shambhala Publications
Various Microscopic Methods for Investigating the Venuloid Idioblasts of Pteris grevilleana Wall
Tzu-Tong Kao,Shiang-Jiuun Chen,Wen-Liang Chiou,Yi-Chun Chuang,Ling-Long Kuo-Huang
2008-01-01T00:00:00Z
null
null
Full text of "Various Microscopic Methods for Investigating the Venuloid Idioblasts of Pteris grevilleana Wall" Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "Various Microscopic Methods for Investigating the Venuloid Idioblasts of Pteris grevilleana Wall" See other formats Taiwania, 53(4): 394-400, 2008 Various Microscopic Methods for Investigating the Venuloid Idioblasts of Pteris grevilleana Wall. Tzu-Tong Shiang-Jiuun Wen-Liang Chiou^^\ Yi-Chun Chuang*^"^^ and Ling-Long Kuo-Huang*^'’^’^^ (Manuscript received 5 July 2008; accepted 12 October 2008) ABSTRACT: Venuloid idioblasts are vein-like structures. In Pteris, they are long epidermal cells with very thick cell walls. In this study, venuloid idioblasts of Pteris grevilleana were investigated with various light microscopic (LM) and scanning electron microscopic (SEM) techniques and the main purposes of these microscopic techniques are summarized and discussed. To investigate the morphology and distribution of venuloid idioblasts, partial polarization LM technique and cryo-tabletop-SEM technique were used. The idioblasts had lobed margins, acute or round ends, and could be found on both upper and lower epidermis of fertile fronds and sterile fronds. They are distributed on veins, interveinal regions, and leaf margins, but not on costules, costae, and false indusia. By using histochemical staining and SEM with energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer (EDS), it was confirmed that the idioblasts contained silicon. In addition, the venuloid-idioblast-like silica bodies were extracted by wet oxidation method. These indicate that the venuloid indioblast in P. grevilleana is a kind of spicular cell (long epidermal cells containing silica bodies, which are found in Adiantoids and Vittarioids). KEY WORDS: EDS, false vein, partial polarization, Pteridaceae, Pteris grevilleana, silica body, spicular cell, tabletop SEM, venuloid idioblast, wet oxidation. INTRODUCTION Venuloid idioblasts are tiny veinlet-like structures scattered in interveinal, submarginal, or sinus regions of laminas, which never attach to true veins (Wagner, 1978). These structures are known as false veins, a taxonomical character in ferns. In Pteris, they are specialized long epidermal cells with thickened cell walls, which can be observed by hand lens. This structure was first reported in Pteris grevilleana Wall. (Holttum, 1954), a terrestrial fern distributed over tropical and eastern Asia. In Taiwan, they can be found in the understory of low altitude broad-leaved forest (Fig. 1 A). Spicular cells are defined as long epidermal cells containing spicules of silica (Williams, 1927). They have hyaline and pronouncedly thickened cell walls which almost occlude their cell lumens (Nayar, 1961). This kind of cell is found in Adiantoids and Vittarioids. The molecular evidence shows the two 1. Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, National Taiwan University, 1, Roosevelt Rd., Sec. 4, Taipei 106, Taiwan. 2. Department of Life Science, National Taiwan University, 1, Roosevelt Rd., Sec. 4, Taipei 106, Taiwan. 3. Division of Forest Biology, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute, 53, Nan-Hai Rd., Taipei 100, Taiwan. 4. TC5-Bio-image tools. National Taiwan University, 1, Roosevelt Rd., Sec. 4, Taipei 106, Taiwan. 5. Corresponding author. Tel: 886-2-33662510; Email: linglong@ ntu.edu.tw taxa are sister groups nested in Pteridaceae sensu lato (Smith et ah, 2006; Schuettpelz et al, 2007). However, spicular cells in these two taxa may not be homologous structures because of the difference in their distribution patterns (Nayar, 1961). In Vittarioids, spicular cells are distributed on foliar epidermis, but in Adiantoids they are distributed over the veins and restricted to areas contiguous with sclerenchyma sheaths of the veins. The morphology of venuloid idioblasts is similar to the spicular cells (Wagner, 1978), but whether the venuloid idioblasts of Pteris is a kind of spicular cell is not sure. The silica contained is needed for testing. The distribution of venuloid idioblasts in Pteris also needs to be further tested. By Wagner’s observation, they are never attached to true veins (Wagner, 1978). However, in P. grevilliana, idioblasts are similar to true veins under Nomarski interference contrast illumination (DIC) and in another species, Pteris multifida Poir., they tend to cluster along the veins. In this study, several light microscopic (LM) and scanning electron microscopic (SEM) techniques were used to investigating venuloid idioblasts of Pteris grevilleana with emphases on containing silica and their distribution. We also summarized major observation characteristics of each microscopic technique used in this study. This may contribute to the future works on venuloid idioblast investigation in Pteridaceae. December, 2008 Kao et al.: Venuloid idioblasts of Pteris grevilleana 395 MATERIALS AND METHODS Plant materials Pteris grevilleana were collected from the understory of a secondary forest in Fuyang Eco Park (25° 01 N, 121° 33 E, altitude 50 m), in southern Taipei, Taiwan in October, 2007 and June, 2008. Pinnules from the middle of mature fronds were sampled (Fig. IB). Voucher specimen {Kao, Tzu-Tong 08051) was made and deposited in TAI herbarium. Dissecting microscope observation Samples were directly examined under a WILD M3Z dissecting microscope (Leica). Photographs were taken by a COOLPIX 4500 digital camera (Nikon). LM observation Samples for LM observation were pretreated with five different ways: (1) direct observation, (2) epidermis impression, (3) clearing, (4) paraffin section, and (5) wet oxidation. The direct observa¬ tion: samples were directly observed without any treatment. The epidermis impression (Hilu and Randoll, 1984): a thin layer of clear nail polish was applied on the frond surface. The applied nail polish was air dried and then peeled off by forceps. The peeled nail polish films were observed. The clearing: samples were boiled in 95% ethanol with a hot water bath for 3-5 hours to remove the chlorophyll. The samples were transferred into 4% NaOH aquatic solution for 5 days until the samples were clear (without color). Then the samples were stored in 70% ethanol. The paraffin section: samples were subdivid¬ ed into fragments about 5x5 mm^ and fixed in FPGA (Formalin: Propionic acid: Glycerol: 95% Ethanol: distilled water = 1: 1: 3: 7: 8) at 4°C overnight. The fixed samples then were dehydrated by Alcohol-TBA (Tert-Butyl Alcohol) series at room temperature for a day, infiltrated by paraffin at 65°C for three days, and embedded in paraffin. Next step, the embedded samples were sectioned into 20 pm thick sections by an 820 rotary microtome, AO. The sections were attached to a slide by Stay-On (Surgipath) and extended on a hot plate at 40°C. Continuously, slides were emerged into xylene to remove the paraffin. Then the slides were rehydrated in ethanol series and stored in 70% ethanol. The wet oxidation (Pipemo, 2006): 1 g fronds were fragmented and washed with 1% potassium hypochlorite aquatic solution. The washed materials were boiled in concentrated nitric acid with a hot water bath for 2 hours and solid potassium chlorate was added during the procedure. The solutions were centrifuged 10 minutes at 3000 rpm and the supernatant was removed. The precipitates were resuspended in distilled water. The centrifuged processes were repeated three times. The final suspended solution was filtered with a 125 pm sieve and a 10 pm sieve (the latter one was under ultrasonic condition). The silica bodies were washed out from the 10 pm sieve and stored in a 1.5 mL microtube with 1.0 mL distilled water. The pretreated samples were directly observed under LM or stained with silica body specific dyes, SAC (Silver-ammine chromate), CVL (Crystal Violet Lactone), and MR (Methyl Red) (Dayanandan et al., 1983). SAC was saturated Ag 2 Cr 04 in 3% NH 4 OH; MR was saturated methyl red solution in benzene; and CLV was 0.1% crystal violet lactone solution in benzene. For SAC staining, samples were transferred into distilled water and stained by SAC. For MR and CLV, samples were dehydrated by ethanol series (except silica bodies obtained from wet oxidation, which were direct air dried), transferred into benzene, and stained with MR and CLV. The pretreated samples were examined under a LEITZ DMRB LM, Leica. Bright field (BF), dark field (DF), phase contrast (Phase), polarization contrast (Polarization) (including partial polariza¬ tion), and Die were used. SEM observation Two tabletop SEMs, TM-1000 (Hitachi) and PHENOM (FEI) were used. They were low pressure SEMs, which detected backscatter electrons and the accelerating voltages were 15 kV and 5 kV. Fresh pinnules and silica bodies obtained from wet oxidation were used. For fresh pinnule observation, samples were mounted on carbon stubs with carbon tape. The stubs were placed on a cold stage (Pre-cryogenic electron microscope specimen holder, patent pending), which was pre-frozen by liquid nitrogen, and observed as soon as possible. For silica bodies, 10 pL samples were dropped on carbon stubs (with carbon tape) and air dried overnight. The dried samples were directly taken for observation. For ordinary SEM observation, fresh pinnules and samples pre-observed by tabletop SEMs were used. The samples were fixed in Kamovsky’s fixative (Kamovsky et al., 1965) overnight at 4°C, washed by 0.1 M sodium phosphate buffer (pH 7.2), post-fixed in 1% osmium tetroxide in 0.1 M sodium phosphate buffer, washed by O.IM sodium phosphate buffer again, dehydrated in ethanol series, transferred into acetone, and dried with liquid CO 2 by HCP-2 CPD (Critical Point Dryer), Hitachi (Except for silica bodies which were directly taken for coating after 396 TAIWANIA Vol. 53, No. 4 December, 2008 Kao et al.: Venuloid idioblasts of Pteris grevilleana 397 they were observed by tabletop SEM). The dried samples were mounted on carbon stages with carbon tape and coated with carbon by K950X, EMITECH. Samples were observed with S-2400 SEM, Hitachi. Besides, trace element analyses and Silicon dot mapping were done with KEVEX LEVEL4 Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectrometer (EDS) (Lin et ah, 2004). RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Venuloid idioblasts of Pteris grevilleana were found on both upper and lower surfaces (Figs. IB-D, IG-L) of fertile as well as sterile fronds. Under dissecting microscope, both venuloid idioblasts and veins are slightly protruded on frond surface and glistened when exposed to light (Figs. IB-D). By EM and SEM, venuloid idioblasts are long epidermal cells parallel to the veins (free veins on fronds; rachids, costa, and costules are not included). They ranged from 100 to 1600 pm in length, which have lobed margins and acute or round ends (Figs. IE & F). They could be found on veins, interveinal regions, and frond margin but not on costules, costae, and false indusia (Figs. IG-L). Interestingly, by SEMs under backscatter electron detecting condition, the idioblasts were significantly lighter than ordinary epidermal cells (Fig. IF). This indicates the difference in chemical composition between them. Venuloid idioblasts had thick cell walls which almost occupied the cell lumens (Figs. IM-P). They showed different colors under different polarization conditions, which could easily be distinguished from other cells. At 0°, they are hyaline (Fig. IM); at around 30°, the inner parts (regions near the cell lumen) of cell walls are brown and the outer part is hyaline (Fig. IN); at around 60°, they are blue (Fig. 10); and at 90°, they are light yellow or white (the back ground was black) (Fig. IP). This indicates something in the cell wall is arranged in a particular way. Other EM techniques, including dark field, phase contrast, and DIG were also used. Under dark field and phase contrast venuloid idioblasts were brighter than other cells. Under DIG, the result was similar to the result of polarization (data not shown). SEM trace element analysis showed the idioblasts contain mass of silicon (Fig. 2A) and Si dot mapping showed the silicon composition was significantly higher than other epidermal cells (Figs. 2B & G). Venuloid-idioblasts-like silica bodies were obtained by wet oxidation, which can be stained with silanol group [-SiOH] specific dyes SAG, MR, and GLV (Fig. IR-T). They have characteristically large silica bodies (Figs. IQ and 3) (15-25 pm in width and the length could up to 1mm), which is specific to Polypods (Pipemo, 2006). They have undulated lateral surfaces and flat upper and lower surfaces with wavy protrusions. The upper surface is coarser and smaller than the lower surface and often had a concave long axis. On the other hand, they could not easily react with SAG (in Fig. IR, an hour was spent for staining and the red brown sliver chromate participates did not be formed homogeneously on silica body). This may be resulted from the tightly compact silica on outer boundaries of silica bodies (Dayanandan et al., 1983). However, the silica bodies could easily be stained with MR and GLV. This indicates the surfaces of silica bodies have entrances large enough for the MR and GLV molecules to pass through (The molecular area of MR and GLV are about 1.16 nm2 and 1.64 nm^ respectively) (Dayanandan et al., 1983). Investigating methods which were used in this study were summarized in Table 1. Among them, two methods are most efficient on investigating the morphology and distribution of venuloid idioblasts; one is partial polarization EM technique; the other is cryo-tabletop-SEM technique (under backscatter Fig. 1. Morphology, distribution and histochemistry of venuloid idioblasts. A: Habitat of P. grevilleana, an understory terrestrial fern. Venuloid idioblasts can be found on both fertile fronds (FF, erect and have longer stipes ones) and sterile fronds (SF). B: Lower surface of a mature fertile pinnule. The veins are oblique joined to costae (Ct) and the false indusia (FI) is formed by reflexed frond margins. (Bar = 1 mm). C: Partial enlargement of Fig. B., glisten lines parallel to veins are venuloid idioblasts. (Bar = 500 pm) D: Upper surface of a mature fertile pinnule. Two veins are showed in the micrograph. All the other vein-like raised lines are venuloid idioblasts. (Bar = 500 pm) E: Using partial polarization LM technique to observe the idioblasts, the sample was pre-treated with clearing technique. The idioblasts can be easily distinguished from other cells. Note that the idioblasts can be found on true veins. (Bar = 50 pm) F: Using cryo-tabletop-SEM (scanning electron microscope) technique to observe the idioblasts, the idioblast is significant lighter than ordinary epidermal cells. (Bar = 50 pm) G-L: Distribution of venuloid idioblasts. (Bar = 500 pm) Upper (G-I) and lower surface (J-L) of pinnules were observed with a tabletop SEM TM-1000, Hitachi. Venuloid idioblasts (white bright lines) are randomly dispersed on both upper and lower epidermis. They distribute on veins, interveinal regions, and leaf margins, but cannot be found on costae (Co), costules (Ct), and false indusia (FI). M-P: Paraveinal section of a frond, the idioblasts can be found on upper and lower epidermis of a vein. The thick hyaline cell walls almost occupy the cell lumens of the idioblasts, which show different color under different partial polarization conditions ((M) 0° (N) 30° (O) 60° and (P) 90° respectively). (Bars = 50 pm) Q: Morphology of the venuloid-idioblast-like silica body. (Bars =100 pm) R-T: Histochemical staining of the silica body. (Bars =100 pm) (R) Staining with silver ammonium chromate (SAC), red brown silver chromate is deposited on surface of silica bodies. (S) Silica bodies show red color when stain with methyl red (MR), (t) Silica bodies shows blue or purple color when stain with crystal violet lactone (CLV). Arrow: veins; Solid arrow heads: venuloid idioblasts on upper epidermis; Empty arrow head: venuloid idioblasts on lower epidermis. 398 TAIWANIA Vol. 53, No. 4 Table 1. The major observation characters of investigating methods which were used in this paper. Investigating methods Major observation characters Dissecting microscope direct observation Light microscope direct observation epidermis impression clearing paraffin section wet oxidation * histochemical staining *LM techniques (especially partial polarization) Scanning electron microscope ** tabletop SEM **EDS position of venuloid idioblasts on plant body and preliminary observations preliminary observations contour of epidermal tissues morphology and distribution of venuloid idioblasts on frond anatomical structure of venuloid idioblasts extracting silica bodies for further observations confirm the venuloid idioblast containing silica and distinguish them from other structures optical characters of venuloid idioblast and distinguishing them from other structures morphology and distribution of venuloid idioblast and distinguishing them from other structures trace element analysis and check the Silicon-containing * Partial polarization can easily distinguish venuloid idioblasts from other cells, the containing of silica could be further checked by histochemical staining. ** Table top SEM can easily distinguish venuloid idioblasts from other cells. After observation, the samples can be recycled for trace element analysis under SEM to confirm the containing of silicon. Fig. 2. SEM trace element analysis and silicon dot mapping show the venuloid idioblast containing silicon. A: Trace element analysis shows that a venuloid idioblast containing mass of silicon (arrow). B and C: Si dot mapping method shows the silicon depositions corresponds to the distribution of venuloid idioblasts (arrow head). (Bar =100 pm) electron detecting condition). Because of the difference in physical properties (contain mass of silicon), the idioblasts can be distinguished from other cells by these two techniques. For silica body investigation, wet oxidation is a reliable and widely used method for extracting silica bodies from plant materials. Using this method, further quantitative and qualitative studies on silica bodies can be done. Silica bodies have several functions in plant bodies. They take part in growth, development, and stress resistance of plants in several ways. Mechanical support, photosynthesis improvement, ion balancing, and pathogen resistance are four well known functions of silica bodies (summarized from Pry chid et al., 2004; Ma and Yamaji, 2006). On the other hand, they are important in pharmacognosy (Komatsu et al., 1996), plant systematics (Rapp and Mulholland, 1992), and archaeoecology (Pipemo, 2006). However, a systematically study on silica bodies in Polypods is still lacking (Wang and Lue, 1993). The venuloid idioblast of Pteris is a kind of spicular cell (long epidermal cells containing spicules of silica), which is found in all species of Vittariaceae (or except Monogramma) (Wiliams, 1927; Ogura, Fig. 3. Morphology of silica bodies. The bottom view (BV), top view (TV), and side view (SV) of the silica bodies are showed. A silica body has plate-like upper and lower surfaces and a pair of undulating ridges. The lower surface is smoother and larger than the upper surface. (Bar =50 pm) December, 2008 Kao et al.: Venuloid idioblasts of Pteris grevilleana 399 1972) and most Adiantum (Nayar, 1961). Similar cells can be found in Lygodium, Onychium (Nayar, 1961), and Pityrogramma (Gracano et al., 2001). Except for Lygodium, all of these taxa belong to Pteridaceae sJ. (Smith et al., 2006). Nevertheless, not all taxa in Pteridaceae sJ. contain spicular cells, at least they were not found in Taenitis, Syngramma (Holttum, 1974), some species in Hemionitis, Pteris (Gracano et al., 2001), and Adiantum (Sundue and Prado, 2005). The distribution of spicular cells on fronds is another issue. In Vittariaceae and some species in Pteris this structure is scattered on fronds, but in Adiantum, Lygodium, Onychium, Pityrogram¬ ma and Pteris multifida they are restricted to veins. The latter type is easy to be neglected because it is not easily distinguished from the long epidermal cells on veins. In this study, we found partial polarization LM technique, cryo-tabletop-SEM technique are useful methods on spicular cell identification. Spicular cells (or venuloid idioblasts) are long and silica containing epidermal cells, which are found in Pteridaceae sd. However, they are not present on all species in Pteridaceae sd. and their distribution on frond is different between genuses. Thus, the evolution and function of such a characteristic cell in Pteridaceae sd. is an interesting question. This study provides us some efficient investigation methods for further studies on spicular cell in Pteridaceae sd. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank C.-Y. Tang and C.-Y. Lin for providing technical support and operating assistance in the SEM portion of this study. This study was supported by a project grant (NSC-92- 2313-B-002-045) from the National Science Council of Taiwan. LITERATURE CITED Dayanandan, P., P. B. Kaufman and C. I. Franklin. 1983. Detection of silica in plants. Am. J. Bot. 70: 1079-1084. Gracano, D., A. A. Azevedo and J. Pardo. 2001. Anatomia foliar das especies de Pteridaceae do Parque Estadual do Rio Doce (PERD) - MGl. Revista Brasileira de Botanica, Sao Paulo 24: 333-347. Hilu, K. W. and J. L. Randall. 1984. Convenient method for studying grass leaf epidermis. Taxon 33:413-415 Holttum, R. E. 1954. Ferns of Malaya, Vol. II. Government Printing Office, Singapore, p. 402. Kamovsky, M. J. 1965. A formaldehyde- glutaraldehyde fixative of high osmolality for use in electron microscopy. J. Cell Biol. 27: 137A-138A. Komatsu, K., K. lida, S.-Q. Cai, M. Mikage and T. Yoshizawa. 1996. Pharmacognostical studies on adiantum plants. V. Classification based on spore morphology and distributional patterns of silicon and calcium in the ultimate pinnules. J. Pharm. Soc. Jpn. 116: 125-137. Lin, M. L., T. B. Yen and L. L. Kuo-Huang. 2004. Formation of calcium carbonate deposition in the cotyledons during the germination of Justicia procumbens L. (acanthaceae) seeds. Taiwania 49: 250-262. Ma, J. F. and N. Yamaji. 2006. Silicon uptake and accumulation in higher plants. Trends Plant Sci. 11: 392-397. Nayar, B. K. 1962. Studies in Pteridaceae V. Contributions to the morphology of some species of the maidenhair ferns. Bot. J. Linn. Soc. 185: 185-199. Ogura, Y. 1972. Comparative Anatomy of Vegetative Organs of the Pteridophytes. 2ed. Gebriider Bomt raeger, Berlin, Germany. 395pp. Pipemo D. R. 2006. Phytoliths: a Comprehensive Guide for Archaeologists and Paleoecologists. AltaMira Press. Lanham, Maryland, USA. 228pp. Prychid C. J., P. J. Rudall and M. Gregory. 2004. Systematics and biology of silica bodies in monocotyledons. Bot. Rev. 69: 377-440 Rapp, G., Jr. and S. C. Mulholland. 1992. Phytolith Systematics: Emerging Issues. Plenum, New York, USA. 350pp. Schuettpelz, E., H. Schneider, L. Huiet, M. D. Windham and K. M. Pryer. 2007. A molecular phylogeny of the fern family Pteridaceae: Assessing overall relationships and the affinities of previously unsampled genera. Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 44: 1172-1185. Sundue, M. A. and J. Prado. 2005. Adiantum diphyllum, a rare and endemic species to Bahia State, Brazil and its close relatives. Brittonia 57: 123-128. Wagner, Jr. W. H. 1978. Venuloid idioblast in Pteris and their systematic implications. Acta Phytotaxon. Geobot. 29: 33-40. Wang, Y.-C. and H.-Y. Lu. 1993. Researches and application of plant phytolith. Ocean, Beijing, Germany. 228pp. Williams, M. Sc. 1927. A critical examination of Vittarieae with a view to their systematic comparison. Trans. R. Soc. Edinburgh 9: 173-217. 400 TAIWANIA Vol. 53, No. 4 December, 2008 Kao et al.: Venuloid idioblasts of Pteris grevilleana 401 ^'J ^ {Pteris grevilleana Wall.) (2,4) 5) (•Itm a : 2008 ^7,^58 ; ■ 2008 ^ 10 12 0 ) ■f® ^ (venuloididioblast) ° M {Pteris) ^ ' d'%T 'M^X.'ltii: (wet oxidation) If (silicabody) o lll,tb ’ t (spicular cells) ° IflMts] : X ' Mm ' ' 1114,^^+ ' «M,4^ ' 1. HiLjrjf ’ 106 #tbTl?l|*Tti5S-4|l 1 ?* > J:;f » 2. 0iL|:jf ’ 106 #tb1f||*TtiS§-4|l 1 life > Jrjf » 3. ’ 100 ^db17I^J/•t^^ 53 « 4. BiLlrif TC5 ’ 106 ^dbl7»*TtSS^4|S: 1 M, > *if « 5. ° Tel: 886-2-33662510; Email: [email protected]
Varieties of Taoism in Ancient China: A Preliminary Comparison of Themes in the Nei Yeh and Other Taoist Classics
Russell Kirkland
null
Varieties of Taoism,Daoism,Nei Yeh,Neiye,Russell Kirkland,Lao-tzu,Chuang-tzu,Taoist Meditation,Daoist Meditation,Taoism,Taoist,Daoist,Tao,Dao,Taoist Practice,Taoist Thought,Chinese Spirituality,Meditation,Yin-Yang,Qi,Chi,Qigong,Educational Texts
"Varieties of Taoism in Ancient China: A Preliminary Comparison of Themes in the Nei Yeh and Other Taoist Classics" by Russell Kirkland is available here in PDF form. This is an essay discussing the nature of early Taoism in Ancient China and compares and contrasts its basic ideas as found in its earliest texts, which form the foundation of later Taoism. Kirkland argues that the text known as Nei Yeh (also spelled Neiye ) or "Inner Cultivation", which is older than Tao te Ching , provides hints as to original Taoism before even the teachings of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu.
Full text of "Varieties of Taoism in Ancient China: A Preliminary Comparison of Themes in the Nei Yeh and Other Taoist Classics" Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "Varieties of Taoism in Ancient China: A Preliminary Comparison of Themes in the Nei Yeh and Other Taoist Classics" See other formats VARIETIES OF TAOISM IN ANCIENT CHINA: A PRELIMINARY COMPARISON OF THEMES IN THE NEIYEH AND OTHER TAOIST CLASSICS 1 Russell Kirkland University of Georgia This discussion of "Taoism" in classical China will begin with the observation that there was actually no such thing, at least not in the sense that is commmonly accepted among non¬ specialists. Both in Asia and in the West, many scholars, and their students, have ignored the many advances in Taoist studies since the 1970s, and have continued to cling to outdated stereotypes of what Taoism was/is. In particular, they often cling to simplistic notions about "philosophical Taoism" that now seem unable to withstand critical analysis, in light of recent advances in textual and historical research. The concept of "philosophical Taoism" is, to a large extent, a modem fiction, which has been developed and embraced by people around the world for specific and identifiable social, intellectual, and historical reasons. 2 Current research reveals that the so-called "Taoist school" of classical times was actually "a retrospective creation": it began as the reification of a Han-dynasty bibliographic classi¬ fication, and it took its present form in post-Han times, i.e., in the third century CE. 3 1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs, St. Louis, 1995. 2 See, e.g., Kirkland, "Person and Culture in the Taoist Tradition," Journal of Chinese Religions 20 (1992), 77-90; and Steve Bradbury, "The American Conquest of Philosophical Taoism," in Translation East and West: A Cross-Cultural Approach, ed. by Cornelia N. Moore and Lucy Lower (Honolulu: University of Hawaii College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature & East-West Center, 1992), 29-41. The complete social and intellectual history of the Western concept of "Taoism" has yet to be written. The same is true of the Japanese concept of Dokyo, and for modern Chinese concepts of Tao-chiao. 3 See, e.g., A. C. Graham, The Book of Lieh-tzu (1960; rept. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), p. xii. As Harold D. Roth has put it, "the 'Lao-Zhuang' tradition...is actually a Wei-Jin literati reconstruction, albeit a powerful and enduring one." Harold Roth, "Some Issues in the Study of 1 The importance of these facts is that we need to press non-specialists to re-evaluate their commonly accepted ideas of what "Taoism" is. For most of this century, there has been nearly universal agreement among philosophers, historians, and the general public — in Asia and in the West — that "Taoism" could simply be equated with a set of ideas that are embodied (or are perceived to be embodied) in the Tao te ching and the Chuang-tzu. Current research has begun to demonstrate that that common understanding is far too simplistic. To begin with, it is now clear to most specialists that those two texts were not, in fact, the expositions of two great philosophers, but rather the product of a prolonged period of accre¬ tion. That is, each contains ideas from a variety of minds generations or even centuries apart, not to mention different geographical regions. The Chuang-tzu probably originated in scattered jottings of a man named Chuang Chou ca. 320 BCE, and was developed into its present form over the following 500 years. 4 The earlier layers of the Chuang-tzu were apparently composed by someone who had never seen the Tao te ching. For its part, the Tao te ching dates only to around the beginning of the third century BCE, i.e., to several decades after the Chuang-tzu began to be compiled. 5 But once again, there is no evidence that the Tao te ching's compilers were aware either of the ideas of the fourth-century writer Chuang Chou or of the text that eventually came to bear his name. Though the provenance of the Tao te ching is still the subject of debate, one Chinese Mysticism: A Review Essay," China Review international 2 no. 1 (Spring 1995), p. 157. The origins of the concept of a tao-chia in Han historiography is discussed in Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Co., 1989), pp. 170-71. 4 See, e.g., Graham, Disputers of the Tao , p. 172-73. One might argue that the Chuang-tzu is — in its present form — actually of post-Han date, since the 52-chapter edition that existed in Han times was cut down to the present 33 chapters by Kuo Hsiang (died ca. 312 CE). See, for instance, Livia Knaul (Kohn), "Some Lost Chuang-tzu Passages," Journal of Chinese Religions 10 (1982), 53- 79. 5 As reported by Donald Harper at the 1997 meeting of the Society for the Study of Early China, 1993 excavations in Ching-men, Hupei, unearthed texts "identified with Laozi" from a Ch'u tomb that has been attributed to the late 4th century BCE. The texts remain unpublished, and their identification as copies of the Tao te ching remains unsubstantiated. The dating of the Kuo-tien tomb also remains unconfirmed. 2 current line of research suggests that it may have emerged from the re-working of oral traditions of a community in the southern state of Ch'u. 6 So far, research has been unable to shed virtually any light upon the identity of its compiler or redactor. And I certainly do not expect to establish that identity here. But what is, in fact, possible is to examine possible evidence of that redactor's familiarity with another ancient text, a text of which few today — even among scholars of Chi¬ nese thought or religion — have ever heard. That text is a brief work, about one-half the length of the Tao te ching, entitled the Nei yeh (or "Inner Cultivation"). 7 There is little doubt that the Nei yeh is several generations older than the Tao te ching. It seems to date to some time in the second half of the fourth century BCE. That is, it may have been compiled by a contemporary of Chuang Chou, though again there is virtually no data as to the compiler's identity. 8 The Nei yeh fell out of general circulation when it became incorporated into a larger collection, the Kuan-tzu, sometime before the middle of the second century BCE. After that, it was seldom noted by Chinese scholars or philosophers until the 20th century, and even today its thought and significance have barely begun to be explored. For instance, though it has never, to my knowledge, hitherto been noticed, the influence of 6 On these matters, see Kirkland, "The Book of the Way," in Ian P. McGreal, ed., Great Literature of the Eastern World (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 24-29. 7 Very little has been written on the Nei Yeh, in any language. To date, the only complete English translation is in W. Allyn Rickett, Kuan-tzu: A Repository of Early Chinese Thought (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1965), I, 151-79. While Rickett's scholarship is impeccable, his renderings are sometimes infelicitous. There is a brief discussion of the Nei Yeh in Graham, Disputers of the Tao, pp. 100-105, though Graham's interpretations of the text's ideas are sometimes questionable. A much better introduction to the text is Harold D. Roth, "The Inner Cultivation Tradition of Early Daoism," in Donald S. Lopez, Jr., ed., Religions of China in Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 123-38. Roth is currently completing a full translation of the text. 8 Rickett dated the Nei Yeh to the late 4th or early 3rd century; Graham to the 4th; and Roth to the mid-4th. There is evidence to suspect a direct connection with teachings attributed to the Con- fucian thinker Mencius (Mengzi, d. ca. 308 BCE); see below, note 22. Since the ideas in question seem more integral to the thought-system of the Nei Yeh, it is logical to conclude that the ideas in this text, if not the text itself, may have been known to Mencius or at least to the parties who com¬ piled sections of the text attributed to him. If Mencius did indeed know the Nei Yeh, its date would certainly be well before the end of the 4th century. 3 the Nei yeh on Chinese thought was profound and extensive. For example, it is here that one first encounters comprehensible references to the personal cultivation of such forces as ch'i ("life-ener¬ gy"), ching ("vital essence"), and shen ("spiritual consciousness"). The cultivation of such forces became a central theme in certain versions of modem Taoism, as well as in Chinese medicine. 9 But there is also evidence that the Nei yeh may have profoundly influenced the Tao te ching. In this essay, I attempt to identify basic thematic differences between the Nei yeh, the Chuang-tzu, and the Tao te ching, and to suggest certain interpretive strategies for understanding the rela¬ tionship among them. The primary difference between the Nei Yeh and the Tao te ching is signalled by the title of the former. Nei means "internal," and in ancient times yeh meant in one sense "cultiva¬ tion/production" and in another sense "what one studies." Thus the work's title refers directly to "Inner Cultivation" or "Inner Development." Its contents provide the reader with instruction and advice for applying oneself to a task involving what is inside oneself. That is, it teaches the 9 They play a prominent role, for instance, in the teachings and practices of Ch'uan-chen ("Inte¬ gral Perfection") Taoism. Ch'uan-chen originated in the teachings of Wang Che (Wang Ch'ung- yang), a twelfth-century scholar who taught that immortality can be attained in this life by entering seclusion, cultivating one's internal spiritual realities (hsing), and harmonizing them with one's external life (ming). Ch'uan-chen Taoism apparently drew upon the presentation of ching, ch'i , and shen in the Huai-nan-tzu, a Han-dynasty text that drew directly from the Nei yeh. (On the Huai-nan- tzu's use of these concepts, see Harold D. Roth, "Psychology and Self-Cultivation in Early Taoistic Thought," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 51 [1991]: 599-650.) But this facet of Chinese intellectual and religious history remains completely untouched in Western scholarship, for though Ch'uan-chen Taoism endures today, both intellectually and institutionally, though it is largely unknown to Westerners, and has attracted little attention from Western scholars, especially in North America. German studies of Ch'uan-chen Taoism include Gunther Endres, Die Sieben Meister des Volkommenen Verwirklichung (Frankfurt, 1985); Herbert Franke, "Der Tempel der Reinen Vollendung (Ch'ing-chen kuan) in Hsiu-wu: Ein Beitrag zum Ch'uan-chen-Taoismus der Chin-Zeit," Monumenta Serica 42 (1994), 275-293; and several works by Florian Reiter, of which the most important are Grundeiemente und Tendenzen des Reiigiosen Taoismus (Stuttgart, 1988), and "Ch'ung-yang Sets Forth his Teachings in Fifteen Discourses," Monumenta Serica 36 (1984-85), 33-54. In North America, the only comparable scholarship is that of Yao Tao-chung, in "Ch'uan-chen: A New Taoist Sect in North China during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries" (Ph.D. dissertation, Univer¬ sity of Arizona, 1980). The enduring importance of ching, ch'i, and shen in the Chinese medical tradition may be seen, for instance, in their inclusion as "basic principles" in Warner J.-W. Fan, A Manual of Chinese Herbal Medicine (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1996), 29-30: Dr. Fan's explanation of ching, ch'i, and shen are in close harmony with the explanations seen in the Nei-yeh and the Huai-nan-tzu. 4 reader how and why to practice certain specific forms of biospiritual cultivation. In fact, unl ik e the Tao te ching, the Nei Yeh is concerned with virtually nothing else besides biospiritual cultivation. The Teachings of the Nei Yeh The teachings of the Nei Yeh are quite distinct from the ideas that most non-specialists associate with "philosophical Taoism." Its teachings will sound more familiar to people ac¬ quainted with the traditions of modern Taoism that focus on the cultivation of ch'i. w The Nei Yeh indeed begins with the assumption of a powerful salubrious reality called ch'i, "life-energy." In the Nei Yeh, ch'i is present both within all things and all around them. Within each being, ch'i is centered in the "essence," ching — which Roth describes as "the source of the vital energy in human beings [and] the basis of our health, vitality, and psychological well-being." 11 But the central focus of the Nei Yeh's teachings have to do more with how the individual manages his/her hsin, the "heart/mind." 12 The "heart/mind" is the ruling agency in the individual's biospiritual 10 Some Westerners have begun to learn about Taoism at a number of "Taoist centers" that have been established in North America during the last twenty years. There are two distinct traditions in¬ volved. One was founded by a Chinese Taoist named Ni Hua-ching, who immigrated to Southern California in 1976 and established centers in Malibu, Los Angeles, and more recently, suburban Atlanta. Ni claims affiliation with certain Taoists of the Six Dynasties and T'ang (such as Ssu-ma Ch’eng-chen), though his lineage seems rather dubious. Another set of Taoist centers are affiliated with the Fung Loy Kok Taoist Temple, founded in Hong Kong in 1968. It "traces its lineage from the Hsin T’ien Wu-chi sect of the Huashan system." It now operates temples in Denver, Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, and Tallahassee. The idea that Taoist practice basically involves "the cultivation of ch'i" is common to both of these organizations, despite the fact that many Taoists through Chinese history may have been unacquainted with such ideas. 11 Roth, "The Inner Cultivation Tradition of Early Daoism," p. 126. It should be clearly noted that there is no trace in the Nei Yeh of the much later Chinese idea that ching ought to be identified with some sexual force or substance. It should also be noted that such later ideas are fundamentally non-Taoist, as explained in my review of Douglas Wile's Art of the Bedchamber, in Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 16 (1994), 161-66. 12 Though I use both pronouns here, it is important to beware assuming that any text or thinker of ancient China taught ideas that would, at that time, have necessarily been considered applicable to women's lives as well as to men's. In the case of Confucius, for instance, that assumption would be highly unwarranted. In the case of Taoist texts, however, the situation is much more ambiguous. Since there is little evidence as to the intended audience of the Nei Yeh, and since it is difficult to 5 nexus, i.e., in the entire personal complex of body/mind/heart/spirit). 13 The Nei Yeh's principal teaching is that one should make sure that one's "heart/mind" is balanced and tranquil, without excessive cogitation or emotion. If one can maintain a tranquil "heart/mind," then one will become a receptor of life's salubrious energies, and will be able to retain them; without tranquility, those healthful energies will leave, and one's health, and very life, will become threatened. In the Nei Yeh, the specific nature and identity of life's desirable energies are still some¬ what vague. One key term that it uses is shen, "spirit" or "spiritual consciousness." "Spirit" involves perception and comprehension: it is the basis for all higher forms of awareness. According to the Nei Yeh, the practitioner must align his/her biospiritual nexus with the unseen forces of the world in order to attract "spirit" and receive it into one's quietened "heart/mind." One's ability to succeed in this endeavor is called te. Te has often been dubbed a key concept in "philosophical Taoism," but the meaning of the term in the Nei Yeh hardly resembles any of the common descriptions of the term as it is used in the more familiar Taoist texts. 14 In the Nei Yeh, the term te does retain the generic meaning of "the inner moral power of an individual," and even the archaic (Shang-dynasty) concept of te as "a proper disposition toward the unseen forces." But here, te is clearly not a force that is intrinsic to our natures, as many modern descriptions of Te in "philosophical Taoism" would have us believe. Rather, te, like "spirit," is something that we acquire when all elements of the body/heart/mind are completely peaceful and properly aligned. Here we can discern the full meaning of the traditional Chinese explanation that the word te meaning "inner power" may be understood in terms of the homophone te which is the common see anything in its teachings that could be readily construed as gender-specific, I shall write as though the practitioner of its teachings could theoretically be either male or female. One should bear in mind, however, that there is little evidence that anyone in ancient China ever gave thought to these issues. 13 The term hsin occurs some 25 times in the brief text, compared to 17 uses of the term ch'i and 12 uses of the term ching. 14 An interesting study of the term te and of related themes in the Tao te ching is John Emerson, "The Highest Virtue is Like the Valley," Taoist Resources 3 no. 2 (May 1992), 47-61. 6 verb in both classical and modern Chinese for getting or acquiring. In the Nei Yeh, te may be termed "the acquisitional agency," for it is not just what we attract and receive, but that whereby we attract and receive the higher forces of life (e.g., ch'i and shen). What is more, in the Nei Yeh one is told that one's te is something that one must work on each and every day. (Once again, such teachings vary widely from the concept of what Te means in common notions of "philosophical Taoism.") The practitioner builds up his/her te by practicing daily self-control over his/her thought, emotion, and action. One who succeeds at these practices can become a sheng-jen, a "sage." The "sage" is described as being "full of spirit" and "complete in heart/mind and in body." One might well ask what role the concept of tao plays in the Nei Yeh. The way the term is used in the Nei Yeh does not always coincide with the way it is used in the more familiar texts. In the Nei Yeh, the term tao is actually quite vague: it is sometimes used rather indiscriminately to refer to the salubrious forces of life that the practitioner is working to cultivate. For instance, one passage reads as follows: The Way is what infuses the structures [of the mind] yet men are unable to secure it. It goes forth but does not return, it comes back but does not stay. Silent! none can hear its sound. Sudden! so it rests in the mind. Obscure! one cannot see its form. Surging! it arises along with me. We cannot see its form, we cannot hear its sound, yet we can put a sequence to its development. Call it "Way." 15 One also encounters a line that is virtually identical to passages in the Tao te ching. "What gives ^Translation from Roth, p. 130. Cf. Rickett, p. 159. 7 life to all things and brings them to perfection is called the Way." But otherwise, the term tao is seldom identified in the terms that are familiar to readers the Tao te ching or the Chuang-tzu. In the Nei Yeh, the term is generally used as an equivalent of its technical terms for the spiritual realities that the practitioner is being instructed to attract and retain by means of tranquillizing the heart/mind. Thematic Contrasts between the Nei Yeh and the Familiar "Taoist Classics" Clearly, the Nei Yeh has a specific and identifiable focus, articulated in terms compre¬ hensible to the careful reader. But it is also clear that if we are intellectually honest, the teachings of this text are quite distinguishable from those of the more familiar texts of classical Taoism. For instance, while terms like te and tao appear frequently in all the texts, they are used in different senses in different texts, as well as in different passages of the same text. Neither term is thus a "basic concept" of some general philosophical system: each term carried a variety of meanings among the people who developed "Taoist" ideas across ancient China. We should thus beware the common tendency of assuming that certain teachings of the Tao te ching and Chuang-tzu were in any sense representative of a coherent ancient Chinese school of thought, much less normative for identifying "Taoist" beliefs and values in general. Secondly, it should be noticed that the portrait of the Taoist life in the Nei Yeh is in some ways quite dissimilar to that which we generally encounter in the Tao te ching and Chuang-tzu. For instance, the key to life in the Nei Yeh is one's diligent effort to attract and retain spiritual forces named ch'i, ching and shen. While each of those terms does occur here and there in both the Tao te ching and the Chuang-tzu , seldom in those texts do we find the specific teachings that are so basic to the Nei Yeh. 16 In particular, it is hard to think of passages from either of the more 16 The terms ching and shen are both used in the Tao te ching , but never together, and never clearly referring to spiritual forces or processes within a person. Ching appears in Tao te ching 21. Shen is used in ch. 39 to refer to spiritual beings; in ch. 29 as a modifier of t'ien-hsia ("the world"); and in chs. 6 and 60 — where it is usually understood as referring to spiritual beings, but might familiar texts that suggest that the thing called tao is a force that can come into or go out of a person, or that one it is necessary to engage in specific practices to get the tao to come or to keep it from going away. 17 In the more fa mi liar texts, the term tao generally seems to suggest a universal reality from which one can never really be ontologically separated. 18 In addition, the practices commended in the Nei Yeh are much more clearly physiological in nature than we are accustomed of thinking of Taoist practice as being. Indeed, one of the reasons that some of the teachings of the Tao te ching have become domesticated in Western culture is that the public believes those teachings to involve no regular, definable practices that involve one's physical existence. According to such beliefs, the Taoist life is essentially stative: it never involves specific practices that carry historical or cultural baggage, and certainly never involves any work . It should also be noted that the Nei Yeh never presents the spiritual life in terms of "prac¬ ticing wu-wei." Here, the Taoist life is not a stative life of "just being," or of "being spontane¬ ous," but rather a very active life of specific practices, practices that must be carefully learned and properly performed if one is ever to come into possession of such elusive forces as tao. In this framework, the Taoist life involves personal responsibility, dedication to a life of constant conceivably refer to spiritual forces within a person. In the "inner chapters" of the Chuang-tzu, the term ching appears but twice. It appears much more frequently (30 times) in the "outer" and "mixed" chapters, where the compound term ching-shen appears 8 times. 17 Harold Roth (private communication) has noted that the "Syncretist" 15th chapter of the Chuang-tzu contains ideas akin to those found in the Nei yeh. Graham has included that chapter in his translation, Chuang-tzu (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981), pp. 264-67. 18 A religious comparison may be in order here. In many religious contexts (e.g., in Shinto), people engage in ritual worship in the devout expectation that a certain divinity will approach the place of worship and stay for the period of worship. In other contexts (e.g., in Christianity and Judaism), believers generally assume that God is always present in some meaningful sense. In a Christian cathedral, God is never truly absent: worship does not cause God to come hither from some other place, and the conclusion of worship is not experienced as God leaving to go elsewhere. The former scenario is reminiscent of the spiritual practices described in the Nei Yeh, while the latter is more reminiscent of the worldview envisaged in the Tao te ching and the Chuang- tzu. 9 self-discipline, and conscientious daily practice. Moreover, this practice involves the purification and proper ordering of one's body as well as one's "heart/mind." It would be excessive to say that the Nei Yeh teaches a "Taoist yoga," but it clearly does assume that the spiritual life involves practices that also have physical components, even extending to moderation in eating. I thus refer to such activities more broadly as "biospiritual practices." Neither the Tao te ching nor the Chuang-tzu are so clearly focussed upon biospiritual practices. While they do contain passages that allude to such practices, their writers (or at least the editors) have many other teachings to convey, teachings that are generally absent from the Nei Yeh. For instance, as Rickett observed long ago, the concepts of yin and yang are nowhere seen in the Nei Yeh. 19 Modern beliefs egregiously exaggerate the centrality of those concepts in the Tao¬ ist tradition. In reality, the concepts of yin and yang were never specifically Taoist. The terms do appear in the Tao te ching and the Chuang-tzu , though in quite minor roles. But the world of the Nei Yeh is a world quite devoid of yin and yang. Other differences between the Nei Yeh and the more familiar texts seem not to have been remarked upon by other readers. For instance, there are few teachings in the Nei Yeh involving issues of government. Though modern conceptions commonly associate Taoism with the life of the individual rather than with social or political concerns, such was never really the case. Social and political concerns always played an important role in Taoism, from classical times into the later imperial period. 20 The Tao te ching , for its part, contains dozens of passages discussing the problems involved with ruling a state. Indeed, some respected scholars have long characterized the Tao te ching as "a handbook for rulers." Such a characterization is actually something of an exaggeration, but the point here is that the Nei Yeh displays little interest in issues of govern- 19 Rickett, p. 155. 20 See, for instance, Kirkland, "The Roots of Altruism in the Taoist Tradition," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 54 (1986), 59-77; and "Taoism," in The Encyclopedia of Bioethics, 2nd edition (New York: Macmillan, 1995), 5: 2463-2469. 10 ment. 21 In addition, the Nei Yeh differs from both the Tao te ching and the Chuang-tzu in that it never critiques or ridicules the beliefs or practices of Confucians. Once again, there is a common misconception that "Taoism" arose as a reaction against Confucianism, and that Taoists always clearly differentiated their teachings from those of the Confucians. However, there is nothing in the Nei Yeh that criticizes Confucian teachings. In fact, there are clear and unmistakable continuities between the teachings of the Nei Yeh and certain elements of the teachings of the 4th- century Confucian known as Mencius. 22 What is missing from the Nei Yeh is the Confucian emphasis upon saving society by reviving within one's personal life the principles of proper 21 Pace Graham, who issues the unsubstantiated assertion that the Nei Yeh is "as usual addressed primarily to the ruler" (104). There is only a single passage the entire text of the Nei Yeh that suggests a political framework: To transform without altering the ch'i, To change without altering the awareness, Only the gentleman (chun-tzu) who clings to oneness is able to do this! If one can cling to oneness and not lose it, one can master (chun) the myriad things. The gentleman acts on things; he is not acted on by things. From the orderliness of having attained oneness He has a well-governed heart/mind within himself. (Consequently,) well-governed words issue from his mouth, And well-governed activity is extended to others. In this way, he governs the world. When a single word is obtained, the world submits; When a single word is fixed, the world heeds. This is what is called "public rightness" (kung). (translation mine; cf. Rickett, 161; Roth does not translate this passage.) Note, however, that this passage does_not assume that the reader is already a ruler. Rather than assuming that the reader has been born into the position of ruler, or has maneuvered himself into political power, the pas¬ sage teaches that a highly adept practitioner can, by meditational practice, achieve the ability to exert influence over the world. There seems to be no other passage in the text that assumes a political interest on the part of the reader. Generally, the Nei Yeh instructs the individual in the performance of certain practices, and its intended readership was either a small group of students practicing in a specific lineage (as Roth suggests) or, like perhaps the readership of Chuang-tzu, a fairly general audience of thoughtful people who are willing to do what is necessary to live wisely. 22 On the commonalities in the use of the term ch'i in the two texts, see Rickett, 155-56. We may also note that both Mencius and the Nei-yeh seem to assume (1) that one is born with a heart/mind that is inherently pure or perfected; (2) that we lost those qualities and became confused, and (3) that by returning to the original purity of our heart/mind, we allow an inherent harmony to take the place of unnatural confusion. When one reads in the Nei Yeh that "the emotions of the heart are benefited by rest and quiet" (Rickett, 159), one cannot but think of Mencius' comments about Ox Mountain in Meng-tzu 6A8. 11 moral/social behavior known as li. The reader of the Nei Yeh is taught how to align him/herself with the forces at work in the world, because doing so is necessary for one's personal well-being. There is little trace of a belief that one is responsible for changing society. On the other hand, those who held such beliefs are neither faulted nor mocked. So while sections of both the Tao te ching and the Chuang-tzu were composed by opponents of Confucianism, such sentiments are not found in the Nei Yeh. Another theme conspicuously absent is the idea that the ideal society is a small-scale community without civilized technology or complex socio-political institutions. That idea is most familiar to the modern audience from the 80th chapter of the Tao te ching, though there are other examples in the Chuang-tzu. Several scholars have recently begun referring to such ideals as a distinct "phase" or "voice" of early Taoism, to which they refer as "Primitivist." 23 But as some of those scholars have already noted, the Nei Yeh is completely devoid of such ideals. Thus, the Rousseau-esque idea that Taoism consists of a rejection of civilization in favor of simpler ways of living is inaccurate. It would seem that a person could follow the teachings of the Nei Yeh within nearly any social context, and that it never occurred to the text's compilers that any one type of social setting might be preferable to any other. The Nei Yeh does not, therefore, provide the antidote to the Industrial Revolution that Westerns have sometimes claimed to find in "philosophical Taoism." So if we have here a form of Taoism that is fundamentally disinterested in social issues, would it be correct to say that it is basically more concerned with our place in the universe? Well, in a certain sense, yes, but it is important to note that the Nei Yeh is also unconcerned with many of the cosmological issues with which modern readers are often so fascinated. For example, there is no real discussion of cosmogony in the Nei Yeh. Other Taoist texts sometimes discuss 23 See Graham, Disputers of the Tao, pp. 306-11; and Roth, 123. 12 the origin of the world, in terms that sometimes seem to combine poetry with philosophy. 24 But the Nei Yeh contains no such passages. It alludes to no "Non-Being" from which "Being" comes, and it posits no eternal reality ontologically prior to, or separate from, the present world — no "noumenon" to contrast with the "phenomena" of life as we know it. The closest thing to a cosmogonic passage in the Nei Yeh would seem to be its opening lines: The vital essence ( ching ) of all things — This is what makes life come into being: Below, it generates the five grains, Above, it brings about the constellated stars. When it flows in the interstices of Heaven and Earth, It is called "spiritual beings"; When it is stored up inside [a person's] chest, He is called "a sage." 25 But here we are clearly dealing with a life-force that operates within the world, a force of gen¬ eration that is spiritual in nature, and can be localized either within independent spiritual beings or within a person who successfully collects and stores it. But there is no suggestion here of any noumenal reality that has an ontological existence separate from the reality of which we are all a part. "Being" does not come from "Non-Being," and the composers show no interest in con¬ structing any cosmological theories. These facts are brought home most clearly when we encounter the term tao in the text, for as noted earlier, in the Nei Yeh the term tao clearly refers to a transient reality that a person needs to attract and to retain. It is not some universal transcen¬ dent that one attains by developing some "mystical gnosis" qualitatively distinct from normal 24 One thinks most readily of chapters 1 and 25 of the Tao te ching , and of the opening chapter of the Huai-nan-tzu. The cosmogonic chapters of the Tao te ching are examined in Norman J. Girardot, "Myth and Meaning in the Tao te ching," History of Religions 16 (1976-77), 294-328. 25 Translation mine; cf. Roth, p. 129. 13 experience. 26 Nor is there any discussion in the Nei Yeh of the theme of "change." There is little trace, for instance, of the notion that there is un unchanging cosmic force beyond the world of change. Nor is there a poetic image of a sagely person who blissfully flows or drifts along with life's ongoing processes. The latter idea may be present in passages of the Chuang-tzu, but there is nothing like it in the Nei Yeh, any more than there is in the Tao te ching. In the Nei Yeh, one neither transcends change nor adapts to it: there is, in fact, no mention of life as a process of change or flux. Rather, the Nei Yeh teaches that there is a salubrious natural force, or set of forc¬ es, that are elusive: they are not ephemeral — they are enduring — but they do not stay in one place unless a person has transformed him/herself into an efficient receiver and receptacle for those forces. A good analogy for them might be radio waves, which are constantly flowing around and through us, but can only be held and put to use by a device that is properly tuned. To extend this metaphor a bit more, the Nei Yeh seems to suggest that we are radios that were all properly designed, and were originally fully functional; but now we experience interference in the form of excessive activity in the heart/mind, and we need to re-tune ourselves to eliminate that interference and begin functioning properly again. For these reasons, it would be correct to say that the Nei Yeh requires self-corrective activity, just as the other Taoist texts do, but that the Nei Yeh s model for understanding and practicing self-correction is fairly unique. The Nei Yeh also gives the lie to yet other misconceptions of Taoism, including some held by thoughtful philosophers. One such misconception is that Taoist teachings are deeply iconoclastic, antinomian, even revolutionary. According to this view, the basic thrust of Taoism is to jolt the individual into a realization that he/she should reject traditional beliefs and values, 26 Chad Hansen has argued persuasively that the common belief that the more familiar Taoist texts present "the Tao" as a Parmenidean "unchanging, abstract one behind the many" is deeply mistaken, and explains the mistake as having originated among the Neo-Confucians. See his A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 27. 14 condemning them as the artificial constructs of an oppressive society. This interpretation of classical Taoism is not just the conceit of 1960s Hippies who saw it as a condemnation of "estab¬ lishment culture." Generations of Westerners — Americans in particular, perhaps — have read the Tao te ching, and parts of the Chuang-tzu, as a post-Enlightenment gospel of individual free¬ dom, freedom from the uncomfortable aspects of "Society" in general, and of Western culture in particular. One version of this modern concept of Taoism can be seen in certain recent analyses by the respected philosopher Chad Hansen. Hansen seems to perpetuate the notion that Taoism is essentially an attempt to undermine acceptance of "convention." He argues that the Tao te ching and Chuang-tzu both begin from a "linguistic skepticism (which) arises against a background assumption that language is a social mechanism for regulating people's behavior." Speaking of the composer of the Tao te ching , Hansen says, "His political and practical advice is almost invariably the reversal of conventional political and moral attitudes. He reverses conventional values, preferences, or desires..." Why? "All learning of distinctions comes with dispositions to prefer one or the other... (But) trained discriminations are not a constantly reliable guide to behavior. Culturally motivated preferences based on those distinctions are, on the whole, unreliable. And they control us in insidious, unnatural ways." 27 While Hansen may be partly or wholly correct in his assessment of the role of culture in forming individuals' dispositions, it is dubious whether that assessment was present in the minds of the Taoists of classical China, particularly in the mind in the compiler of the Tao te ching. Most of Hansen's "Daoist theory of knowledge" is woven from certain themes in Chuang-tzu, where such issues do indeed seem to be addressed. But such intricate treatment of "knowledge," "language," "convention," etc., are not found in the Tao te ching, which addresses concerns that are quite distinguishable from those of the compiler(s) of the Chuang-tzu, especially a variety of moral and political concerns. And in 27 Hansen, pp. 223-24. 15 the Nei Yeh, there is no trace of any critique of the relationship between culture and knowledge or desire. The Nei Yeh does not critique "conventional society" and urge us to reject it, nor does it critique language, nor does it urge us to beware socially-inculcated valuations. There are yet other distinctive features to the teachings of the Nei Yeh. For instance, unlike the Tao te ching, it has nothing to say about issues of gender. There are several passages in the Tao te ching that commend a "feminine" attitude or behavior, such as humility or yielding. Such passages appear to imply that what is wrong with our normal attitudes and behavior is that they are excessively "masculine." Such ideas, however, are seldom seen in texts like the Chuang- tzu, and they are likewise absent from the Nei Yeh. The compilers of the Nei Yeh do teach that there are attitudes and behaviors that we should forego, but there is no gender imagery associated with them. In this connection, one might ask whether the three texts share the same intended audi¬ ence. Were any or all of them intended specifically for men? Well, one may infer that when the reader is given advice presumed useful for achieving political goals, the reader was presumed to be male, since, in ancient China, political participation by women was not an option (except for a spouse or immediate family member of a man who held a position of authority). As mentioned earlier, the Nei Yeh is comparable to most sections of the Chuang-tzu in that the reader is seldom assumed to be someone attempting to engage in political rule. It is also true that in ancient China women seldom achieved literacy, so one could argue that any written text was intended only for men. But such reasoning ignores other possibilities, such as that of a family or group that included both men and women, all interested in learning how to live from a text that few of them could actually read themselves. One should also note that the Nei Yeh (like much of the Tao te ching) is composed largely in verse, and that some scholars believe that certain sections "may have been borrowed from some early Taoist hymn." 28 We must bear in mind that though ancient 28 Rickett, 154. 16 China did produce some written texts, it was still largely an oral society, in which most people of either gender acquired and dispensed information and advice primarily, if not exclusively, by word of mouth. The Nei Yeh is almost certainly a text containing teachings that originated in an oral tradition. And there is little in the content of those teachings that would seem to be either more or less practiceable by members of either gender. Another distinctive feature of the Nei Yeh is that it seems to lack the idea of "Heaven" (T'ien) as a benign guiding force in life. Both the Confucians and the Mohists shared some version of that idea, reflecting more generally held beliefs that dated back to at least the end of the second millennium BCE. Today such ideas are not generally associated with Taoism, for Taoists, by modem definition, believe in an impersonal reality called "Tao" that transcends all other reali¬ ties, including "Heaven." Such is not entirely the case, of course. Several chapters of the Tao te ching speak of "the Way of Heaven" ( T'ien-tao or T'ien-chih-tao ), a beneficent force that seems to have will as well as agency. 29 But there is little trace of such ideas in the Nei Yeh. 30 Finally, we should address the issue of morality. Are the teachings of the Nei Yeh concerned solely with internal self-cultivation? Is there any evidence that the practitioner is ever to give any thought to anyone other than him- or herself? This is a key question, because virtually all modem interpreters, Chinese and Western alike, have accused Taoism of being inimical to the idea that a person should be concerned about others: Taoism pictures the person as a wanderer in the void, and perceives his happiness to lie in drifting with the stream, unanchored by the network of demands and responsibilities....[In Taoism, the] happiness one is concerned with is one's own, 29 See Tao te ching 47, 73, 77, 79, 81. 30 The character T'ien appears in a number of passages of the Nei Yeh, but usually as part of the compound T'ien-Ti ("Heaven and Earth"). There is one passage stating that if one practices properly, one's will or intention will proceed in a Heavenly fashion (cf. Rickett, p. 167). So if the compilers believed in Heaven as an active agency that makes choices about life's events and intervenes to guide those events in a certain direction, there is little indication of it in the text. 17 logically independent of the happiness of others....[The] follower of the Way is necessarily a loner.... 31 Elsewhere I have attempted to demonstrate that such accusations are wholly inaccurate, at least in regard to the Tao te ching. That text enjoins the reader to practice "goodness" (, shan ), which involves extending oneself toward others impartially so as to benefit them. In the Tao te ching, the Taoist life is one in which one achieves self-fulfillment as one is selflessly benefitting the lives of others. 32 Do we find such ideals in the Nei Ye hi I can find little evidence of them. There are a few passages for which one might be able to make an argument that the reader is to think of providing benefits to others, but none that seems clearly to express such ideals. 33 Certainly, as compared to the Tao te ching, the Nei Yeh lacks any clear moral concern, and does in fact give the overall impression that "the happiness one is concerned with is one's own." Conclusion It is clear that the Nei Yeh is quite distinct in content from either the Tao te ching or the Chuang-tzu, despite the texts' many similarities. The Nei Yeh, we should recall, was earlier than the Tao te ching, and could even be interpreted as an example of "the earliest Taoist teachings." The Tao te ching shows clear evidence that its compilers were deeply concerned with the social 31 Arthur C. Danto, Mysticism and Morality: Oriental Thought and Moral Philosophy (1972; rpt. Co¬ lumbia University Press, 1988), 114-17. 32 See Kirkland, "Selflessness and Self-Fulfillment: The Moral Teachings of the Daode Jing," in Michael G. Barnhart, ed., Varieties of Ethical Reflection (in progress). 33 The most likely possibility would seem to be a line that, in Ricketts' translation, says that when one has brought the ch'i to rest by means of one's te, "all things obtain their fulfilment" (Rickett, 158). But the original text is actually far less clear. It reads wan-wu pi te, which Roth translates more literally as, "the myriad things will to the last one be grasped" (Roth, 129). Rickett's reading feels more comfortable in light of the overall tenor of classical Chinese thought, but Roth's seems more in line with the tenor of the Nei Yeh. The commentator clearly shares Rickett's interpretation, for he says concerning this line, "if one uses one's awareness to bring peace to things, things all obtain benefit." But there is no reason a priori to assume that the commentator understood the original sense of the line. Most other passages that might seem to suggest moral teachings are equally debatable. 18 and political issues that concerned members of other schools of thought, particularly the Mohists and Confucians. One could thus reasonably even characterize the teachings of the Nei Yeh as "original Taoism," and the teachings of the Tao te ching as "applied Taoism." Though the Tao te ching may have, in some sense, emerged from the same general tradition that produced the Nei Yel% its compilers were interested in the issues of living in human society as much as, if not more than, they were interested in the practice of "inner cultivation." Further attention to the differences among the assumptions and concerns of all these texts should provide greater insight into the divergent communities that produced such materials, and of the divergent models of the Taoist life that they envision. 19
Identification of Gene Expression Biomarkers for Predicting Radiation Exposure.
Lu, Tzu-Pin,Hsu, Yi-Yao,Lai, Liang-Chuan,Tsai, Mong-Hsun,Chuang, Eric Y.
2014-09-05T00:00:00Z
null
This article is from Scientific Reports , volume 4 . Abstract A need for more accurate and reliable radiation dosimetry has become increasingly important due to the possibility of a large-scale radiation emergency resulting from terrorism or nuclear accidents. Although traditional approaches provide accurate measurements, such methods usually require tedious effort and at least two days to complete. Therefore, we provide a new method for rapid prediction of radiation exposure. Eleven microarray datasets were classified into two groups based on their radiation doses and utilized as the training samples. For the two groups, Student's t-tests and resampling tests were used to identify biomarkers, and their gene expression ratios were used to develop a prediction model. The performance of the model was evaluated in four independent datasets, and Ingenuity pathway analysis was performed to characterize the associated biological functions. Our meta-analysis identified 29 biomarkers, showing approximately 90% and 80% accuracy in the training and validation samples. Furthermore, the 29 genes significantly participated in the regulation of cell cycle, and 19 of them are regulated by three well-known radiation-modulated transcription factors: TP53, FOXM1 and ERBB2. In conclusion, this study demonstrates a reliable method for identifying biomarkers across independent studies and high and reproducible prediction accuracy was demonstrated in both internal and external datasets.
Full text of "Identification of Gene Expression Biomarkers for Predicting Radiation Exposure." Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "Identification of Gene Expression Biomarkers for Predicting Radiation Exposure." See other formats SCIENTIFIC REPORTS OPEN SUBJECT AREAS: DATA MINING GENE EXPRESSION Received 24 June 2014 Accepted 19 August 2014 Published 5 September 2014 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to M.-H.T. (motiont@ntu. edu.tw) orE.Y.C. ([email protected]. tw) Identification of Gene Expression Biomarkers for Predicting Radiation Exposure Tzu-Pin Lu' Yi-Yao Hsu^, Liang-Chuan Lai'''*, Mong-Hsun Tsai'''^ & Eric Y. Chuang^ '' 'Department of Public Health, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, ^Graduate Institute of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, '^Graduate Institute of Biomedical Electronics and Bioinformatics and Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, ''Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Core, Center of Genomic Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, ^Graduate Institute of Physiology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, '^Institute of Biotechnology, Notional Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. A need for more accurate and reliable radiation dosimetry has become increasingly important due to the possibUity of a large-scale radiation emergency resulting from terrorism or nuclear accidents. Although traditional approaches provide accurate measurements, such methods usually require tedious effort and at least two days to complete. Therefore, we provide a new method for rapid prediction of radiation exposure. Eleven microarray datasets were classified into two groups based on their radiation doses and utilized as the training samples. For the two groups. Student's ^tests and resampling tests were used to identify biomarkers, and their gene expression ratios were used to develop a prediction model. The performance of the model was evaluated in four independent datasets, and Ingenuity pathway analysis was performed to characterize the associated biological functions. Our meta-analysis identified 29 biomarkers, showing approximately 90% and 80% accuracy in the training and validation samples. Furthermore, the 29 genes significantly participated in the regulation of cell cycle, and 19 of them are regulated by three well-known radiation-modulated transcription factors: TP53, FOXMl and ERBB2. In conclusion, this study demonstrates a reUable method for identifying biomarkers across independent studies and high and reproducible prediction accuracy was demonstrated in both internal and external datasets. Radiation exposure has become an important concern for human beings in everyone's daUy life, because a person may receive irradiation from many different sources. For example, radiological weapons are able to cause radiation exposure to many people in a short time even if they are only small dirty bombs. A nuclear power plant may change into a dangerous radiation source when natural disasters happen, such as the devastating tsunami in Fukushima in Japan. In such cases, a large number of people wiU receive different amounts of radiation exposure and suffer a corresponding variety of ill effects. Several literature reports have shown that distinct biological functions and damage patterns are triggered in cells in response to different doses of ionizing radiation (IR) ' Therefore, how to estimate the radiation exposure of IR-treated samples, which is called radiation dosimetry, has become a critical and urgent issue. Several methods have been developed for assessing the radiation doses received by exposed samples'" but their applications may be limited in a severe radiation emergency. For instance, the dicentric assay requires much effort and at least three days to be completed'"'^. Another popular approach is to observe the declining lymphocyte counts in the first 48 hours after irradiation''; however, such measurement still takes at least two days to be done, which may make it difficult to be used in a large-scale radiation emergency. Therefore, developing a new methodology to assess radiation exposure in tissue samples more quickly is necessary and beneficial for future applications. With the advancement in high-throughput technologies, data from DNA microarrays and next-generation sequencing provide a good basis to address this issue. In recent years, several studies have demonstrated the success and effectiveness of predicting radiation doses based on gene expression levels' For example, Paul et al. identified a 74-gene signature that can be utilized to predict four radiation doses from human peripheral blood', and Dressman et al. reported a 25-gene signature to classify irradiated human samples based on the radiation doses*. Such studies had high prediction accuracies within their own datasets; however, challenges arise when trying to validate the predictions in independent datasets. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:6293 | DOI: 1 0. 1 038/srep06293 1 Datasets Two groups: higher-dose ( > 8 Gy) or lower-dose ( < 2 G>) Step 1 : Pre-process of data Log; transformation, quantile normalization Stej) 2: Identification of differentially expressed (DE) genes Step 2.1: Student's /-test {0 < 0. 1 ) Step 2.2: Re-sampling test (Empirical P < 0.05) Step 2,1 Higher close: 5.949 genes Lower dose: 11.413 genes Step 2.2 — Higher dose: 502 genes Lower dose: 697 genes Step 3: Identification of stable biomarkres Step 3.1: Meta-false discov er} rate (mFDR. 0 < 0.03) Step 3.2: Student's Mest (P < 0.05) Step 3.1 Higher do.se: 35 genes Lower dose: 51 genes Step 3.2 Higher and Lower doses: 29 genes Step 4: Establishment of a i)rediction model Support Vector Machine (SVM) I Internal a alidation 10-fold cross-\ alidation External dataset validation Independent datasets Figure 1 | Flowchart for identification of differentially expressed genes associated with radiation doses and development of a prediction modeL The number of genes shown in the right dotted box denotes the union of genes across multiple signatures. It is well known that biomarkers identified in one microarray dataset are usually irreproducible across studies, even if the investi- gated samples have similar clinical parameters'" ". The reasons for such high inconsistency in identified biomarkers across datasets may be attributed to different microarray platforms, various experimental protocols, and dissimilar statistical approaches. Consequently, the practical application of the identified biomarkers is limited. One possible approach to address this issue is to perform a large-scale meta-analysis of microarray data in the public domain'"'. In this study, 11 microarray datasets from tissue samples irra- diated by y-rays were retrieved from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and utilized as an integrated training set. A set of 29 biomarkers associated with different radiation doses was iden- tified based on several criteria, such as Student's t-test and resam- pling tests. Furthermore, a machine learning algorithm, called support vector machine (SVM), was used to develop a prediction model based on the genes' expression ratios. More than 80% accuracy was shown in classifying samples treated with higher and/or lower doses of radiation using 10,000 repetitions of 10-fold cross-validation in the training set. The prediction model showed similar accuracy in four independent datasets, suggesting its potential application to predict radiation doses across different studies. Methods Data collection and pre-processing. A protocol to identify differentially expressed (DE) genes associated witli radiation dosage is illustrated in Figure 1. A total of 11 microarray datasets retrieved from the GEO^"* were utilized as the training set (Table 1). To reduce the effects of confounding factors, only samples irradiated with y-rays and collected 4-8 hours after radiation exposure were included. Furthermore, distinct cell lines were considered as different signatures and analyzed separately. Two pre-processing steps, including Iog2 transformation and quantile normalization, were performed to eliminate systematic biases across different platforms. Identification of biomarliers associated with different radiation doses. Based on the radiation dosage, each microarray was classified as higher (^8 Gy) or lower (^2 Gy) dose. To reduce redundancy and difficulty in processing multiple probes targeting the same gene, only probes with the largest coefficient of variation (CV) were retained for further analyses. Student's i-test was performed to compare the gene expression levels in radiation-treated cells to those in untreated cells. The estimated false discovery rate (Q-value) was computed to address the issue of multiple test correction and only those genes with Q- values <0. 1 were selected^^ ". The formula for calculating Q-value is Q — (P*N)/I, where P is the P-value from the t-test, N is the total number of genes, and I is the ranking of the P- value among N (Figure 1: Step 2.1). To exclude genes identified by chance, a resampling test was performed^''. The number of DE genes for each signature was set from previous analyses, but genes in each DE signature were randomly selected. We repeated this procedure 10,000 times and tallied the number of signatures that each gene was selected as a DE gene to establish a null baseline. In other words, a null baseline of identifying one gene as a DE gene in the number of signatures was simulated after 10,000 repetitions. In this way, an empirical P-value for each gene was determined according to its number of significance in multiple signatures versus the null baseline. Only genes with empirical P-values less than 0.05 were included for the following analyses (Figure 1; Step 2.2). To consider multiple signatures simultaneously, we adopted an approach to estimate the minimum meta-false discovery rate (mFDRfviiN)'^ 3s shown in the fol- lowing equation; mFDRwiN = Minimum ([Ei + l]/[Ni]) f or i = 1 to S, SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:6293 | DOI: 1 0. 1 038/srep06293 2 Table 1 | Characteristics o Accession No.° training samples Sample No. Cell type Dose (Gy) Time after radiation (h) JOZ L LI Lymphoblast 1 U.U 0 O y LINl^ap, rt^o, UU 140 inn 1 U.U A 0 OotoV 1 / 0 Peripheral blood O.U A 0 A o uiAn p\/-u Q ft O.U A 4 O uo/ O.O A A GSE23515' 12 Peripheral blood 2.0 6 GSE25772 4 Fibroblast 2.0 8 GSE30044'' 3 HEK 2.0 4 GSE8917 5 Peripheral blood 2.0 6 GSE6971 4 Fibroblast 1.5 6 GSE7075 6 Fibroblast 1.5 6 "GEO accession number. ^Samples treated with multiple-fraction irradiation were excluded. "Samples from smokers were excluded. "^Samples treated with DNA minor groove binding ligond were excluded. where S denotes the number of signatures, Ej denotes the number of DE genes selected at random, and N, denotes the number of DE genes present in the ith signature, respectively. This measurement estimates the possibility of randomly identifying DE genes in multiple signatures (Figure 1: Step 3.1). Lastly, Student's l-test was used to select biomarkers showing significant differences between microarrays exposed to higher or lower dose radiation (Figure 1; Step 3.2, P < 0.05). Development of a prediction model using support vector machine. After identification of the DE genes associated with radiation dosage, a machine learning algorithm, SVM'^, was utilized to develop a classifier for predicting the radiation exposure of tissue samples (Figure 1: Step 4). For each biomarker identified in Step 3.2, the ratio of gene expression levels between radiation treated and untreated cells was used as an input variable for the SVM model. As shown in Table 1, for the samples treated with higher radiation dose, GSE26835 has 362 samples compared to only 23 samples m total from the other four datasets (GSE36720, GSE8917, GSE35372, GSE30043). In order to compensate the imbalanced sample size, we randomly selected 23 samples from dataset GSE26835, and combined them with the 23 samples from the other four datasets to develop the prediction model. A 10-fold cross- validation was performed for 10,000 iterations to calculate the accuracy and stability of prediction performance in the training samples. In addition, the reproducibility of the proposed classifier in independent datasets was evaluated by using several microarrays collected at different time points after irradiation (Table SI). Results Identification of biomarkers associated with radiation dosage. As shown in Figure 1, several filtering and selection steps were utilized to identify DE genes associated with radiation dosage. A signature was defined as one set of genes summarized from one cell line or one dataset. The results of Student's t-test (Step 2.1) showed that 5,949 genes in the higher-dose group and 11,413 genes in the lower-dose group had differential expression in at least one signature. To address multiple hypothesis testing and concurrently integrate different signatures, a resampling test following Rhodes's study'^ was adopted and repeated 10,000 times (Step 2.2). As shown in Table 2, only 502 and 697 genes were found to be significantly DE (P < 0.05) in response to higher or lower doses of radiation. These results showed that more than 90% of the DE genes identified in Step 2.1 were excluded due to their high possibility of being selected randomly, suggesting that such a resampling test (Step 2.2) is useful to exclude false positive genes. Next, we utilized an approach called mFDRjyfiN to determine the cutoff value of a biomarker in multiple signatures (Figure 1, Step 3.1). This study aimed to develop a prediction model, and large numbers of biomarkers would make it difficult to use the model for practical applications. Therefore, to considering the issues of practicability and false positive rates simultaneously, we determined that a bio- marker must be identified in at least five signatures in response to higher-dose radiation and three signatures in response to lower-dose (Table 2). This cutoff of significance in multiple signatures was deter- mined based on the low mFDR (Q s 0.3) and an acceptable number of biomarkers (N < 100). The results indicated that 35 genes in higher dose and 51 genes in lower dose were significantly different from untreated cells (Table 3). Among them. Student's t-test was performed to exclude genes having no differences in expression in response to higher and lower doses of radiation (Figure 1, Step 3.2; P < 0.05). A set of 29 biomarkers showed significant differences at both higher and lower radiation doses, and thus all 29 biomarkers were included for developing the prediction model (Table 3). Internal 10-foId cross-validation of the 29 biomarkers. After identifying the final set of 29 biomarkers, a prediction model was developed based on the ratios of gene expression in radiation treated versus untreated cells using the SVM algorithm. A 10-fold cross- validation was repeated 10,000 times to evaluate the prediction Table 2 | Num bers of identified biomarkers in different steps in Figure 1 Higher Dose (aS Gy) Lower Dose (£2 Gy) # of signatures # of DE genes # of Sig genes hiFDRmin # of DE genes # of Sig genes mFDR/viiN (Q< 0.1: Step 2.1 (P < 0.05: Step 2.2) (Step 3.1) (Q< 0.1: Step 2.1) (P < 0.05: Step 2.2) (Step 3.1) 8 0 0 7 1 1 1.00 6 5 5 0.20 0 0 5 29 29 0.03 1 1 1.00 4 83 83 0.01 6 6 0.16 3 551 258 0.53 44 44 0.02 2 2,534 126 0.95 603 595 0.01 1 8,210 0 1.00 5,295 51 0.99 Total 1 1,413 502 5,949 697 #: Number; DE: differentially expressed; Sig: Significant; mFDRMiN^ minimum meta-false discovery rate. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:6293 | DOI: 1 0. 1 038/srep06293 3 Table 3 | Identified biomarkers for samples treated by higher and/or lower radiation doses Group (Gene No.) Gene symbol Higher Dose (35) TPX2, ASPM. AURKB, CDCA3, CENPA. CENPF, AURKA, BIRC5, C12orf5, CCNBl, CCNF. CDC6, CDC20, CDCA2, CENPE, DLGAP5, E2F5, FAM83D, GTSEl, KIAA1333, KIF2C, KIF20A, MTIF2, MXD3, NDC80, NEK2, NIF3L1, PLKl, PRRll, PSRCl, RAD54L, RFC5, SPTBNl, TMEM19, TNFRSFIOB Lower Dose (51) CDKNIA, FDXR. FHL2, GADD45A, MYC, TP53I3, TRIAPl ,ACAP1 . AEN, AFFl, APOBEC3H, BLOC1S2, BSTl, C12orf5, C13orf30, C14orfl28, COL27A1, CPT2, DDB2, ECHDCl, FANCE, FBXL4, FXYD2, GRIAl, IGFBP7, JAM2, LY9, MCM3, MDM2, MSH6. NMT2, NSRPl, NSUN7. PHLDA3, PITHDl. PLK2. PLK3. REV3L, RPS27L, SAP30, SESNl. SESN2, SLBP, SLFNl 1, SS18L2, TNFRSFIOB, TNFSF4, TRIM22, VWCE WHSCILI, ZDHHC14 High and Low Doses (29) AEN, ASPM, AURKB, BtRC5. CCNBl, CCNF, CDC20. CDCA3. CENPA, CENPE CENPF, DLGAP5, FBXL4. FDXR. FHL2, GTSEl, KIF20A, KIF2C, LY9, MXD3, NDC80, NEK2, PLKl, PLK2, PSRCl, RPS27L, SESNl, SLBP TPX2 performance and consistency in the training samples. As shown in Figure 2A, the average values of accuracy in the training samples were approximately 0.9 for the identified 29 biomarkers. The standard deviations were only around 0.03 for the 10,000 repetitions, suggesting that the prediction performances of the 29 biomarkers were highly consistent, even if the 23 samples from GSE26835 were used. In addition, a 10-fold cross-validation was performed by using all 419 samples shown in Table 1, and the prediction accuracy (0.86) was highly similar to that obtained from using 80 training samples. Therefore, these results demonstrated that the prediction model based on the 29 biomarkers was accurate in classifying samples treated with higher versus lower radiation doses. Comparisons with published signatures. To further evaluate the 29 biomarkers, their predictive performance was also compared with two published signatures for predicting radiation dosage^ *. Only the genes that existed in the training samples and showed no missing values were included in the analysis (Table S2). The same 10-fold cross-validation approach described previously was performed to investigate their performance. The 29 biomarkers identified in our approach showed significantly (P <0.05) better accuracy than the other two signatures (Figure 2A). Notably, the standard deviations were also not high for the two published studies and thus the random selection of samples in GSE26835 was not a critical factor in affecting the prediction performance. External evaluations of the 29 biomarkers in independent datasets. To validate the prediction performance of the 29 biomarkers and the two published signatures, four microarray datasets collected within 3-6 hours after irradiation treatments were examined (Table SI). As described previously, a total of 10,000 analyses were performed to calculate the accuracy. The results are summarized in Figure 2B, which shows that the 29 biomarkers identified in this study were significantly better predictors than the genes obtained from Paul's study. The accuracy of the 29 biomarkers in the samples treated with higher-dose radiation was similar to that of the meta-genes obtained from Dressman's study. However, compared with the 29 identified biomarkers, Dressman's genes showed poor performance in the prediction of the samples treated with lower-dose radiation. The 29 identified biomarkers showed around 90% accuracy in classifying samples treated with higher-dose radiation, 65% accuracy in lower-dose radiation samples, and 83% accuracy overall. Functional characterization of the 29 biomarkers. Ingenuity pathway analysis was used to explore possible upstream regulators and characterize associated biological pathways of the 29 biomarkers (Table S3). As shown in Figure 3, 19 out of the 29 biomarkers can be regulated by three genes including TP53, FOXMl, and ERBB2. All three regulators have been reported to have pivotal roles in modulating radiation responses"" '". In addition to transcription regulators, two major biological pathways — cell cycle regulation and the pyrimidine salvage pathway — were significantly enriched (P < 0.01). Several studies also have shown that irradiation is able to cause transcriptional changes in genes involved in these two functions""'"'^", suggesting that the 29 biomarkers not only can be used for predicting radiation doses but also participate in important functions in response to radiation exposure. Discussion A large-scale radiation emergency may affect many people at one time, and thus how to efficiently and accurately measure radiation exposure becomes an important issue. Several studies have identified predictive biomarkers for radiation dose using gene expression microarrays^ However, the generalizabUity (i.e., reproducibility) of those reported biomarkers was not evaluated and validated in external independent datasets, which makes them difficult to apply. To address this issue, this study developed a meta-analysis flowchart to select biomarkers across independent microarray datasets. The 29 identified biomarkers had approximately 90% accuracy in the train- ing samples, which were composed of 1 1 datasets, and had more than 80% accuracy in four independent datasets, suggesting the effective- ness of our proposed method. Two different approaches can be used to identify biomarkers for predicting radiation exposure across independent datasets. One pos- sibility is to select one dataset as the training set and then validate the identified biomarkers in external samples^''^^. Notably, the most important limitation of such an approach is that a dataset with a large sample size is required because potential biomarkers are selected based solely on it. However, the sizes of irradiated micro- array datasets that are available in the published domain are usually not very large, which makes this approach difficult to execute. In addition, most of these datasets were investigated by distinct plat- forms, including both one-color and two-color systems. Challenges arise when trying to merge those datasets into one integrated meta- dataset due to their huge discrepancy and systematic biases. Therefore, we chose an alternative approach (Figure 1) in which multiple datasets were considered individually. The 29 biomarkers identified by our methods were compared with two published sets of biomarkers shown in Table S2. Six and zero of the 29 biomarkers were in common with those obtained from Paul's study and Dressman's study, respectively, illustrating the fact that biomarkers identified in one microarray dataset rarely overlap with those reported in other studies" . As shown in Figure 2, the prediction performance of the 29 biomarkers was generally higher than that of Paul's and Dressman's studies, except the accuracy of external sam- ples treated with higher radiation dose (91% in our study versus 95% in Dressman's). Notably, Dressman's biomarkers showed much bet- ter performance in classifying samples treated with higher radiation doses than classifying those with lower doses. One possible reason for this imbalance is that most of their original samples were irradiated with 200-1,350 cGy, which fell primarOy into the higher radiation dose group in the current study. Since radiation doses in future samples are unknown, a balanced prediction performance is more practical for real-world applications. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:6293 | DDI: 1 0. 1 038/srep06293 4 (A) 100 80 60 o 40 20 m X i 1 Lu's Paul's Dressman's higher dose + lower dose higher dose lower dose (B) higher dose + lower dose higher dose lower dose Figure 2 | Prediction performance ofthe three sets of biomarkers. A 10-fold cross-validation was repeated 10,000 times and the accuracies in the samples treated with higher and/or lower radiation doses were plotted. (A) Training samples (46 higher-dose and 34 lower-dose). (B) External independent datasets (64 higher-dose and 30 lower-dose). SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:6293 | DOI: 1 0. 1 038/srep06293 5 Figure 3 | Gene-gene interaction networks of the 29 biomarkers. Three possible upstream regulators were enriched. Direct evidence between two genes from previous literature reports is shown as a solid line and indirect evidence is depicted as a dashed line. There are some limitations of the prediction model developed in this study. First, the collection of microarray datasets analyzed in this study included only samples that were treated with y-rays and har- vested 3-8 hours later. It is well known that the radiation source plays an important role in driving downstream gene expression, and different signaling pathways are triggered in response to the different types of irradiation"^'''"^''. In addition, dissimilar genes and biological functions are induced in cells at different time points after radiation exposure'^^'^''. To reduce potential variations in gene expression levels, a unified radiation source (y-ray) and post-irra- diation time period (3-6 hours) were utilized in the analyses. Therefore, the prediction model only showed about 55% accuracy in identifying radiation dose in samples harvested 24 hours after irradiation (Figure SI), suggesting this model is useful in classifying radiation exposures during the early-response period but not the late-response period. Furthermore, the prediction model classified samples into higher or lower radiation dose groups, instead of numerically estimating their exposed radiation dose. Although spe- cific definition of exposed radiation dose in samples may provide better classification performance, the sizes of published irradiated microarrays are not sufficient to develop a prediction model. Meanwhile, some variations in gene expression levels were still observed, even if the samples were reclassified in the opposite group, especially the lower-dose ones. This may be attributed to the fact that transcriptional changes in response to radiation are not linear, and genes may be switched on/off after a certain threshold of radiation exposure''^^. However, more samples irradiated by different doses are required to develop a regression model across independent datasets. Analyses of upstream regulators (Figure 3) and biological func- tions were performed to elucidate how the 29 biomarkers participate in the radiation response. Unsurprisingly, TP53 was a consistently significant regulator (P < 10~'°) in the three-biomarker sets for samples treated with higher and/or lower radiation doses (Table S4). A previous report demonstrated that inhibition of FOXMl expression can elevate radiation sensitivity in cells after 8 or 10 Gy y-ray irradiation'^, which is consistent with our finding that FOXMl was the most significant regulator (P = 2.04 * 10"^") after higher- dose radiation exposure. As the second most significant regulator after higher-dose irradiation (P = 1.07 * lO"'*), ERBB2 is able to reduce radiation induced apoptosis by activating NFKB-related sig- naling in cells exposed to 5 Gy"*. In addition, the 29 biomarkers were significantly involved in cell cycle regulation and in the pyrimidine salvage pathway. Undoubtedly, the identified biomarkers were assoc- iated with these pathways because deoxyribonucleotide synthesis was observed in two irradiated cell lines with different radiosensitiv- ities"'". We conclude that these 29 biomarkers not only are regulated by well-known radiation modulators but also have important roles in response to radiation exposure. 1 . Lu, T.P.etal. Distinct signaling pathways after higher or lower doses of radiation in three closely related human lymphoblast cell lines. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 76, 212-9 (2010). 2. Ding, L. H. et al. Gene expression profiles of normal human fibroblasts after exposure to ionizing radiation; a comparative study of low and high doses. Radiat Res 164, 17-26 (2005). 3. Short, S. C. et al. Dose- and time-dependent changes in gene expression in human glioma cells after low radiation doses. Radiat Res 168, 199-208 (2007). 4. Donnelly, E. H. et al. Acute radiation syndrome: assessment and management. South Med J 103, 541-6 (2010). 5. Straume, T., Lucas, J. N., Tucker, J. D., Bigbee, W. L. & Langlois, R. G. Biodosimetry for a radiation worker using multiple assays. Health Phys 62, 122-30 (1992). 6. Blakely, W. F., Salter, C. A. & Prasanna, P. G. Early-response biological dosimetry- -recommended countermeasure enhancements for mass-casualty radiological incidents and terrorism. Health Phys 89, 494-504 (2005). 7. Paul, S. & Amundson, S. A. Development of gene expression signatures for practical radiation biodosimetry. Int ] Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 71, 1236-1244 (2008). 8. Dressman, H.K.etal. Gene expression signatures that predict radiation exposure in mice and humans. PLoS Med 4, el06 (2007). 9. Ding, L. H. et al. Distinct transcriptome profiles identified in normal human bronchial epithelial cells after exposure to gamma-rays and different elemental particles of high Z and energy. BMC Genomics 14, 372 (2013). 10. Lu, T. P., Chuang, E. Y. & Chen, J. J. Identification of reproducible gene expression signatures in lung adenocarcinoma. BMC Bioinformatics 14, 371 (2013). 1 1 . Lau, S. K. ij/. Three-gene prognostic classifier for early-stage non small-cell lung cancer. / Clin Oncol 25, 5562-9 (2007). 12. Rhodes, D. R. et al. Large-scale meta-analysis of cancer microarray data identifies common transcriptional profiles of neoplastic transformation and progression. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 101,9309-14 (2004). 13. Edgar, R., Domrachev, M. & Lash, A. E. Gene Expression Omnibus: NCBI gene expression and hybridization array data repository. Nucleic Acids Res 30, 207-10 (2002) . 14. Storey, J. D. & Tibshirani, R. Statistical significance for genomewide studies. Proc Nad Acad Sci USA 100, 9440-5 (2003). 15. Furey, T. S. et al. Support vector machine classification and validation of cancer tissue samples using microarray expression data. Bioinformatics 16, 906-14 (2000). 16. Fei, P. & El-Deiry, W. S. P53 and radiation responses. Oncogene 22, 5774-83 (2003) . 17. Halasi, M. & Gartel, A. L. Suppression of FOXMl sensitizes human cancer cells to cell death induced by DNA-damage. PLoS One 7, e31761 (2012). 18. Guo, G. et al. Expression of ErbB2 enhances radiation-induced NF-kappaB activation. Oncogene 23, 535-45 (2004). 19. Teyssier, F., Bay, J. O., Dionet, C. & VerreUe, P. [Cell cycle regulation after exposure to ionizing radiation]. Bull Cancer 86, 345-57 (1999). 20. Wei, S. et al. Radiation-induced changes in nucleotide metabolism of two colon cancer cell lines with different radiosensitivities. Int J Radiat Biol 75, 1005-13 (1999). 21. Lu, T. P. et al. Integrated analyses of copy number variations and gene expression in lung adenocarcinoma. PLoS One 6, e24829 (2011). 22. Chen, D. T. et al. Prognostic and predictive value of a malignancy-risk gene signature in early-stage non-small cell lung cancer. J Natl Cancer Inst 103, 1859-70 (2011). 23. Nikjoo, H. 8c Lindborg, L. RBE of low energy electrons and photons. Phys Med Biol 55, R65-109 (2010). 24. Asaithamby, A. & Chen, D. J. Mechanism of cluster DNA damage repair in response to high-atomic number and energy particles radiation. Mutat Res 711, 87-99 (2011). 25. Kim, K. H. et al. Time-course analysis of DNA damage response-related genes after in vitro radiation in H460 and H1229 lung cancer cell lines. Exp Mol Med 43, 419-26 (2011). 26. Ghandhi, S. A., Ming, L., Ivanov, V. N., Hei, T. K. & Amundson, S. A. Regulation of early signaling and gene expression in the alpha-particle and bystander response of IMR-90 human fibroblasts. BMC Med Genomics 3, 31 (2010). SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:6293 | DOI: 1 0. 1 038/srep06293 6 27. Hoel, D. G. & Li, P. Threshold models in radiation carcinogenesis. Health Phys 75, 241-50 (1998). Acknowledgments This study was supported partly by the grant from National Taiwan University, Taiwan (grant no. 103R8400). Author contributions T.P.L. and E.Y.C. conceived and designed the experiments; T.P.L. and Y.Y.H. performed the experiments and analyzed the data. L.C.L., M.H.T. and E.Y.C. contributed reagents, materials, and/or analysis tools. T.P.L., L.C.L., M.H.T. and E.Y.C. wrote the paper. Additional information Supplementary information accompanies this paper at http://www.nature.com/ scientificreports Competing financial interests: The authors declare no competing financial interests. How to cite this article: Lu, T.-P., Hsu, Y.-Y., Lai, L.-C, Tsai, M.-H. & Chuang, E.Y. Identification of Gene Expression Biomarkers for Predicting Radiation Exposure. Sci. Rep. 4, 6293; DOI:I0.1038/srep06293 (2014). ©0®@ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike 4.0 Intemational License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, uiiless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder in order to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http:// creativecommons .org/licenses/by-nc- sa/4.0 / SCIENTIFICREPORTS | 4:6293 | DOI: 1 0. 1 038/srep06293 7
Zhuangzi Burton Watson ( 1)
Zhuangzi, trans. Burton Watson
2013-12-31T00:00:00Z
daoism,zhuangzi,daoist books,tao,dao,taoism,chuang tzu
Classic Daoist text, Zhuangzi, translated by Burton Watson, of Columbia U.
Full text of "Zhuangzi Burton Watson ( 1)" Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "Zhuangzi Burton Watson ( 1)" See other formats The Complete Works of huangzi Translated by Burton Watson The Complete Works of huangzi Translated by Burton Watson THE COMPLET WORKS OF ZHUANGZ) FROM ASIAN CLASS TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ASIAN CLASSICS Editorial Board Wm. Theodore de Bary, Chair Paul Anderer Donald Keene George A. Saliba Haruo Shirane Burton Watson Wei Shang Zhuang: THE COMP! WORK OF ZHUAN TRANSLATI BY Burton Watson COLUMBIA UNIVERSIT PRESS NEW YORK COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS Publishers Since 1893 NEW YORK CHICHESTER, WEST SUSSEX cup.columbia.edu Copyright © 2013 Columbia University Press All rights reserved E-ISBN 978-0-23 1-53650-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Zhuangzi. [Nanhua jing. English] The Complete works of Zhuangzi / translated by Burton Watson. p. cm.—(Translations from the Asian classics) “Columbia University Press first published Watson’s translation as The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu in 1968.” Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-231-16474-0 (cloth : alk. paper)— ISBN 978-0-23 1-53650-9 (e-book) I. Watson, Burton, 1925-— IL. Title. BL1900.C46E5 2013 181.095 14—dc23 2012047986 Book design by Chang Jae Lee AColumbia University Press E-book. CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup- [email protected]. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION OUTLINE OF EARLY CHINESE HISTORY 1. Free and Easy Wandering 2. Discussion on Making All Things Equal 3. The Secret of Caring for Life 4. In the World of Men 5. The Sign of Virtue Complete 6. The Great anerable Teacher 7. Fit for Emperors and Kings 8. Webbed Toes 9. Horses’ Hoofs 11. Let It Be, Leave It Alone 12. Heaven and Earth 14. The Turning of Heaven 15. Constrained in Will 17. Autumn Floods 18. Supreme Happiness 27. Imputed Words 28. Giving Away a Throne 29. Robber Zhi 30. Discoursing on Swords 31. The Old Fisherman INTRODUCTION All we know about the identity of Zhuangzi, or Master Zhuang, are the few facts recorded in the brief notice given him in the Shiji or Records of the Historian (ch. 63) by Sima Qian (145?-89? BCE). According to this account, his personal name was Zhou, he was a native of a place called Meng, and he once served as “an official in the lacquer garden” there. Sima Qian adds that he lived at the same time as King Hui (370-319 BCE) of Liang and King Xuan (319-301 BCE) of Qi, which would make him a contemporary of Mencius, and that he wrote a work in 100,000 words or more that was “mostly in the nature of fable.” A certain number of anecdotes concerning Zhuangzi appear in the book that bears his name, though it is difficult, in view of the deliberate fantasy that characterizes the book as a whole, to regard these as reliable biography. Scholars disagree as to whether “lacquer garden” is the name of a specific location or simply means lacquer groves in general, and the location of Meng is uncertain, though it was probably in present-day Henan, south of the Yellow River. If this last supposition is correct, it means that Zhuang Zhou was a native of the state of Song, a fact that may have important implications. When the Zhou people of western China conquered and replaced the Shang or Yin dynasty around the eleventh century BCE, they enfeoffed the descendants of the Shang kings as rulers of the region of Song in eastern Henan, in order that they might carry on the sacrifices to their illustrious ancestors. Though Song was never an important state, it managed to maintain its existence throughout the long centuries of the Zhou dynasty until 286 BCE, when it was overthrown by three of its neighbors and its territory divided up among them. It is natural to suppose that both the ruling house and many of the citizens of Song were descended from the Shang people and that they preserved to some extent the rites, customs, and ways of thought that had been characteristic of Shang culture. The Book of Odes, it may be noted, contains five “Hymns of Shang” that deal with the legends of the Shang royal family and that scholars agree were either composed or handed down by the rulers of the state of Song. Song led a precarious existence, constantly invaded or threatened by more powerful neighbors, and in later centuries its weakness was greatly aggravated by incessant internal strife. The ruling house of Song possessed a history unrivaled for its bloodiness, even in an age of disorder. Its inhabitants, as descendants of the conquered Shang people, were undoubtedly despised and oppressed by the more powerful states that belonged to the lineage of the Zhou conquerors, and the “man of Song” appears in the literature of late Zhou times as a stock figure of the ignorant simpleton. All these facts of Song life—the preservation of the legends and religious beliefs of the Shang people, the political and social oppression, the despair born of weakness and strife—may go far to elucidate the background from which Zhuangzi’s thought sprang and to explain why, in its skepticism and mystical detachment, it differs so radically from Confucianism, the basically optimistic and strongly political-minded philosophy that developed in the Zhou lineage states of Lu and Qi. But since we know so little about the life and identity of Zhuang Zhou or his connection with the book that bears his name, it is perhaps best not to seek too assiduously to establish a direct causal connection between the background and the philosophy. Whoever Zhuang Zhou was, the writings attributed to him bear the stamp of a brilliant and original mind. Instead of speculating on the possible sources from which this mind drew its ideas, let us turn to an examination of the ideas themselves. I shall simply state that from here on, when I speak of Zhuangzi, I am referring not to a specific individual known to us through history but to the mind, or group of minds, revealed in the text called Zhuangzi, particularly the first seven sections of that text. The central theme of the Zhuangzi may be summed up in a single word: freedom. Essentially, all the philosophers of ancient China addressed themselves to the same problem: how is man to live in a world dominated by chaos, suffering, and absurdity? Nearly all of them answered with some concrete plan of action designed to reform the individual, to reform society, and eventually to free the world from its ills. The proposals put forward by the Confucians, the Mohists, and the Legalists, to name some of the principal schools of philosophy, all are different but all are based on the same kind of commonsense approach to the problem, and all seek concrete social, political, and ethical reforms to solve it. Zhuangzi’s answer, however, the answer of one branch of the Daoist school, is radically different from these and is grounded on a wholly different type of thinking. It is the answer of a mystic, and in attempting to describe it here in clear and concrete language, I shall undoubtedly be doing violence to its essentially mystic and indescribable nature. Zhuangzi’s answer to the question is: free yourself from the world. What does he mean by this? In section 23 he tells the story of a man named Nanrong Zhu who went to visit the Daoist sage Laozi in hopes of finding some solution to his worries. When he appeared, Laozi promptly inquired, “Why did you come with all this crowd of people?” The man whirled around in astonishment to see if there was someone standing behind him. Needless to say, there was not; the “crowd of people” that he came with was the baggage of old ideas, the conventional concepts of right and wrong, good and bad, life and death, that he lugged about with him wherever he went. It is this baggage of conventional values that man must first of all discard before he can be free. Zhuangzi saw the same human sufferings that Confucius, Mozi, and Mencius saw. He saw the man-made ills of war, poverty, and injustice. He saw the natural ills of disease and death. But he believed that they were ills only because man recognized them as such. If man would once forsake his habit of labeling things good or bad, desirable or undesirable, then the man-made ills, which are the product of man’s purposeful and value-ridden actions, would disappear, and the natural ills that remain would no longer be seen as ills but as an inevitable part of the course of life. Thus in Zhuangzi’s eyes, man is the author of his own suffering and bondage, and all his fears spring from the web of values created by himself alone. Zhuangzi sums up this whole diseased, fear-struck condition of mankind in the macabre metaphor of the leper woman who “when she gives birth to a child in the deep of the night, rushes to fetch a torch and examine it, trembling with terror lest it look like herself” (sec. 12). But how is one to persuade the leper woman that disease and ugliness are mere labels that have no real validity? It is no easy task, and for this reason the philosophy of Zhuangzi, like most mystical philosophies, has seldom been fully understood and embraced in its pure form by more than a small minority. Most of the philosophies of ancient China are addressed to the political or intellectual elite; Zhuangzi’s is addressed to the spiritual elite. Difficult though the task may be, however, Zhuangzi employs every resource of rhetoric in his efforts to awaken the reader to the essential meaninglessness of conventional values and to free him from their bondage. One device he uses to great effect is the pointed or paradoxical anecdote, the non sequitur or apparently nonsensical remark that jolts the mind into awareness of a truth outside the pale of ordinary logic—a device familiar to Western readers of Chinese and Japanese Zen literature. The other device most common in his writings is the pseudological discussion or debate that starts out sounding completely rational and sober and ends by reducing language to a gibbering inanity. These two devices are found in their purest form in the first two sections of the Zhuangzi, which together constitute one of the fiercest and most dazzling assaults ever made, not only on man’s conventional system of values, but on his conventional concepts of time, space, reality, and causation as well. Finally, Zhuangzi uses throughout his writings that deadliest of weapons against all that is pompous, staid, and holy: humor. Most Chinese philosophers employ humor sparingly—a wise decision, no doubt, in view of the serious tone they seek to maintain—and some of them seem never to have heard of it at all. Zhuangzi, on the contrary, makes it the very core of his style, for he appears to have known that one good laugh would do more than ten pages of harangue to shake the reader’s confidence in the validity of his pat assumptions. In Zhuangzi’s view, the man who has freed himself from conventional standards of judgment can no longer be made to suffer, for he refuses to recognize poverty as any less desirable than affluence, to recognize death as any less desirable than life. He does not in any literal sense withdraw and hide from the world—to do so would show that he still passed judgment on the world. He remains within society but refrains from acting out of the motives that lead ordinary men to struggle for wealth, fame, success, or safety. He maintains a state that Zhuangzi refers to as wuwei, or inaction, meaning by this term not a forced quietude but a course of action that is not founded on purposeful motives of gain or striving. In such a state, all human actions become as spontaneous and mindless as those of the natural world. Man becomes one with Nature, or Heaven, as Zhuangzi calls it, and merges himself with Dao, or the Way, the underlying unity that embraces man, Nature, and all that is in the universe. To describe this mindless, purposeless mode of life, Zhuangzi turns most often to the analogy of the artist or craftsman. The skilled woodcarver, the skilled butcher, the skilled swimmer does not ponder or ratiocinate on the course of action he should take; his skill has become so much a part of him that he merely acts instinctively and spontaneously and, without knowing why, achieves success. Again, Zhuangzi employs the metaphor of a totally free and purposeless journey, using the word you (to wander, or a wandering) to designate the way in which the enlightened man wanders through all of creation, enjoying its delights without ever becoming attached to any one part of it. But like all mystics, Zhuangzi insists that language is, in the end, grievously inadequate to describe the true Way, or the wonderful freedom of the man who has realized his identity with it. Again and again, he cautions that he is giving only a “rough” or “reckless” description of these things and what follows is usually a passage of highly poetic and paradoxical language that in fact conveys little more than the essential ineffability of such a state of being. These mystical passages, with their wild and whirling words, need not puzzle the reader if he recognizes them for what they are, but there is one aspect of them that calls for comment. Often Zhuangzi describes the Daoist sage or enlightened man in terms suggesting that he possesses magical powers, that he moves in a trancelike state, that he is impervious to all harm and perhaps even is immortal. In these descriptions, Zhuangzi is probably drawing on the language of ancient Chinese religion and magic, and there were undoubtedly men in his day, as there were in later centuries, who believed that such magical powers, including the power to become immortal, were attainable. I am inclined to believe that Zhuangzi—that is, the author of the most profound and penetrating portions of the book that bears his name—intended these descriptions to be taken metaphorically. But there is evidence elsewhere in the Zhuangzi that they were taken literally, and countless followers of the Daoist school in later ages certainly interpreted them that way. Perhaps, as Arthur Waley says, the best approach is not to attempt to draw any sharp line between rationalism and superstition, between philosophy and magic, but to be prepared to find them mingled and overlapping. After all, it is the drawing of forced and unnatural distinctions that Zhuangzi most vehemently condemns. In the end, the best way to approach Zhuangzi, I believe, is not to attempt to subject his thought to rational and systematic analysis, but to read and reread his words until one has ceased to think of what he is saying and instead has developed an intuitive sense of the mind moving behind the words, and of the world in which it moves. Zhuangzi, along with Laozi, or Lao Dan, has long been revered as one of the founders of the Daoist school. Because it was believed that Laozi was a contemporary of Confucius and that he was the author of the book known as the Laozi, or Daodejing, he has long been honored as the prime patriarch of the school, and Zhuangzi, as a later disciple and continuer of his doctrines. Most scholars now agree that it is impossible to say whether Laozi ever lived or, if he did, to determine exactly when. He appears in the pages of the Zhuangzi as one of a number of Daoist sages, but this signifies very little, since so many of the figures in Zhuangzi’s writings are clearly fictitious. Zhuangzi at no point makes any reference to the Daodejing; there are a few places where he uses language that is similar to or identical with that of the Daodejing, but these do not prove that one text is earlier than the other or that there is any direct connection between them. Moreover, Zhuangzi’s brand of Daoism, as is often pointed out, is in many respects quite different from that expounded in the Daodejing. Therefore, though the two may have drawn on common sources and certainly became fused in later times, it seems best to consider them separately—which is why I have not discussed the philosophy of the Daodejing here. There is much disagreement among scholars as to when the Daodejing attained its present form, though it is safe to assume, I believe, that both the Zhuangzi and the Daodejing circulated in something like their present form from the second century BCE on, that is, from the beginning of the Han dynasty (202 BCE—220 CE). In the early years of the Han dynasty, the Daodejing, probably because of its brevity and relative simplicity of language, seems to have enjoyed greater popularity than the Zhuangzi. It is repeatedly quoted or alluded to in the literature of the period, and several influential statesmen of the time, including a strong-willed empress dowager, advocated its doctrines. The court official Sima Tan (d. 110 BCE), father of the historian Sima Qian, wrote a brief essay, “A Discussion of the Essentials of the Six Schools,” in which he reviewed the doctrines of the most important philosophical schools of the time and came out strongly in favor of Daoism. The Huainanzi, an eclectic work compiled by scholars of the court of Liu An (d. 122 BCE), the king of Huainan, dates from the same period; it includes many excerpts from the Zhuangzi and Laozi and, like Sima Tan, reserves the highest praise for the teachings of the Daoist school. In spite of this relative popularity, however, Daoism was gradually overshadowed by Confucianism, which won official recognition from the Han emperor toward the end of the second century BCE and was declared the orthodox philosophy of the state, with a government university set up in the capital to teach its doctrines to prospective officials. This did not mean that Daoist writings were in any way suppressed. People were still free to read and study them, and we may be sure that educated men of the Han continued to savor the literary genius of Zhuangzi and Laozi as they had in the past. It simply meant that Daoist writings were not accorded any official recognition as the basis for decisions on state and public affairs. In the intellectual world of late Zhou times, a number of rival doctrines had contended for supremacy, and the thinkers of the age had frequently attacked one another with vigor and asperity. Mozi had denounced Confucianism; Mencius and Xunzi had denounced Mohism; and the Legalist philosopher Han Feizi had denounced both doctrines. Zhuangzi had spent a certain amount of time attacking the philosophers of other schools—the pompously moralistic Confucians and Mohists, the Logicians Hui Shi and Gongsun Long with their hairsplitting semantics—though his customary weapon was parody and ridicule rather than polemic. But by the first century BCE, many of the old sharp differences of opinion had been forgotten or softened by time. Mohism and the School of Logic had all but disappeared from the intellectual scene, and the principal battle was between the two rival philosophies of government: Confucianism, nominally the official doctrine of the state, with its emphasis on moral guidance of the people, and Legalism, which stressed regimentation through stern and detailed laws and held a strong attraction for the totalitarian-minded rulers and statesmen of the time. Daoism, being basically apolitical, remained in the background, to be drawn on by either side, though in Han times it was more often the Confucian scholars who utilized the Daoist concept of inaction to oppose the state monopolies and other large-scale government enterprises advocated by the Legalist-minded officials. One should therefore think of Confucianism and Daoism in Han times not as rival systems demanding a choice for one side or the other but rather as two complementary doctrines, an ethical and political system for the conduct of public and family life, and a mystical philosophy for the spiritual nourishment of the individual, with the metaphysical teachings of the Book of Changes acting as a bridge between the two. This approach is well exemplified in the lives of two scholars, Shu Guang and his nephew Shu Shou, students of the Confucian classics who served as tutors to the heir apparent of Emperor Xuan (r. 74-49 BCE), instructing him in the Analects and the Classic of Filial Piety. When Shu Guang felt he had reached the pinnacle of success and honor, he announced, in the words of Laozi, that “he who knows what is enough will not be shamed; he who knows where to stop will not be in danger.” He and his nephew then petitioned the emperor for release from their official duties and, when it had been granted, retired to the country (Hanshu 71). Or, to turn from officialdom to the world of private citizens, we may note the case of a scholar named Yan Junping of the region of Sichuan, who made his living as a diviner in the marketplace of Chengdu. He admitted that this was a rather lowly occupation but explained that he pursued it “because I can thereby benefit the common people. When men come to me with questions about something that is evil or improper, I use the oracle as an excuse to advise them on what is right. I advise sons to be filial, younger brothers to be obedient, subjects to be loyal, utilizing whatever the circumstances may be to lead the people to what is right—and more than half of them follow my advice!” So Yan Junping spent his days instructing the people in this ingenious fashion, in the dictates of conventional morality. But when he had made enough money for one day, “he shut up his stall, lowered the blinds, and gave instruction in the Laozi” (Hanshu 72). He was the author of a work, which was based on the doctrines of Laozi and Zhuangzi, and was a teacher of the most eminent Confucian philosopher of the time, Yang Xiong (53 BCE-— 18 CE). So compatible did the two doctrines seem, in fact, that one eulogist of the period went so far as to describe the ruling house of the Eastern Han as “pondering Confucius’s injunction to ‘master self,’ practicing Laozi’s ideal of ‘constant sufficiency” (Zhang Heng [78-139 CE], “Fu on the Eastern Capital’’). Thus, like so many Chinese of later centuries, these men of the Han were both Confucians and Daoists by turns, depending on which doctrine was appropriate to their particular activities or phase of life, and in this way they contrived, with considerable success, to enjoy the best of two superb philosophies. Confucianism continued to receive official support and to dominate the intellectual life of China during the remaining centuries of the Han dynasty. With the decay and final collapse of the dynasty in 220 CE, the empire split into three rival kingdoms and entered an era of strife and disunion, aggravated by repeated foreign invasion, that was to last until the Sui once more unified China in 581 CE. Though Daoism had by no means been forgotten during the long years of the Han, the shock occasioned by the downfall of the dynasty and the political disorder that ensued led men to reexamine the texts of Daoism and the other ancient schools of philosophy with fresh interest to see if their teachings could be used in some way to supplement or correct the tenets of Confucianism, which had to some extent been discredited or called into doubt by the fall of the dynasty that had espoused them. The gradual spread of Buddhism during these same centuries helped foster this revival of interest in Daoism, often referred to as Neo-Daoism, because so many of the doctrines of the Indian religion appeared, on the surface at least, to be strikingly similar to those of Laozi and Zhuangzi. At this time, the philosophy of Zhuangzi came to be studied and appreciated to a degree unknown before. Its unconventionality and skepticism appealed to an age of disorder in which conventional moral standards seemed to have lost all validity; its implications of a spiritual elite who could transcend the bonds of the world and wander in a realm beyond life and death—whether such release was interpreted metaphorically or literally—appealed to a society dominated by aristocratic tastes. It was an age of ferment, of widening intellectual horizons, in many ways like that of Zhuangzi himself, and one in which Zhuangzi’s mystic vision of freedom seemed to make better sense than it ever had during the staid and stable years of the Han empire. It was also, to note its grimmer side, an age of political peril and violent reversal of fortune, and Zhuangzi’s assurances that death is as much to be desired as life must have brought comfort to the numerous officials and intellectual leaders of the time who, victims of some sudden shift of power, were obliged to face the executioner’s ax. Our present version of the Zhuangzi dates from this period and was edited by Guo Xiang (d. 312 CE), one of the leaders of the Neo-Daoist movement. Guo Xiang appended a commentary to the text, the oldest commentary now in existence, which may in part be the work of a predecessor, Xiang Xiu, who lived in the first half of the third century CE. In any event, it is the text and commentary of Guo Xiang’s edition of the Zhuangzi that form the basis for all our present versions of the work. The bibliography compiled at the end of the first century BCE and preserved in the “Treatise on Literature” of the Hanshu lists a Zhuangzi in fifty-two sections. When Guo Xiang compiled his edition some three centuries later, he discarded a number of sections that he considered to be inferior and of patently spurious nature and settled on a text consisting of thirty-three sections. These he divided into three groups in the following order: seven sections called neipian or “inner chapters,” fifteen sections called waipian or “outer chapters,” and eleven sections called zapian or “miscellaneous chapters.” The titles of the “inner chapters” are descriptive of the theme of the chapter as a whole and were probably affixed by the writer himself. Those of the “outer” and “miscellaneous” chapters, on the other hand, are taken from the opening words of the chapter and often have little to do with the chapter as a whole, suggesting that they were added later and that in some cases, these chapters are more in the nature of collections of fragments. It is generally agreed that the seven “inner chapters,” all of which are translated here, constitute the heart of the Zhuangzi. They contain all the important ideas, are written in a brilliant and distinctive—though difficult—style, and are probably the earliest in date, though so far no way has been found to prove this last assumption. Whether they are the work of the man called Zhuang Zhou we do not know, but they are certainly in the main the product of a superbly keen and original mind, though they may contain brief interpolations by other hands. The remainder of the Zhuangzi is a mixture, sections of which may be as old— they are at times almost as brilliant—as the “inner chapters,” sections of which may date from as late as the third or fourth centuries CE. In places these remaining sections seem to represent a deliberate imitation or reworking of passages and ideas found in the “inner chapters.” Earlier scholars, who believed that the Zhuangzi was mainly, if not entirely, the work of a single writer, suggested that Zhuangzi fashioned these later chapters to act as “commentaries” or “explications” of his basic text, the seven “inner chapters,” and this view is by no means untenable, though it seems more likely that they are the work of somewhat later writers. Some parts of the “outer” and “miscellaneous” chapters, for example, sections 8-11, seem, by their style and philosophical vocabulary, definitely to date from a period later than that of the “inner chapters.” They contain a number of passages that closely parallel the Daodejing of Laozi, and it has been suggested that they represent the efforts of a writer or writers belonging to a “Laozi” wing of the Daoist school to bring about a fusion between the philosophies of Zhuangzi and Laozi, which, as we have seen, were at first quite separate. They are particularly insistent in their view of history as a steady devolution from the simplicity of high antiquity, a view characteristic of the Daodejing, and attack all man’s inventions, all human civilization and culture, with a shrill, almost pathological fury that is unlike anything found in the “inner chapters.” Other passages, for example, the final part of section 11, appear to be attempts to combine the ideals of the Daoist, Confucian, Mohist, and Legalist schools into a single hierarchical system of values, the type of sweeping syncretism so common in philosophical works of the Qin and early Han periods. Sections 28-31 of the “miscellaneous chapters” have long been eyed with suspicion, for reasons of both style and content. Section 30 is particularly suspect because it lacks any commentary by Guo Xiang and has little or nothing to do with the philosophy of the Zhuangzi. These four sections, though of little originality in thought, are important to the study of Chinese literature because of the skill with which the rather elaborate settings of the anecdotes are handled, particularly in section 29. They represent an intermediate stage between the pure philosophical anecdote of early times such as is found in the “inner chapters,” which has little or no narrative or descriptive framework, and the fully developed “tale” of later centuries. If we could determine their date of composition—my own guess would be early Han, since they are so close in form and style to such works as the “Diviners of Lucky Days” chapter in the Shiji2—we might fit them into their proper place in the history of the development of Chinese fiction. It was customary in the compiling of early Chinese books to place at the end of such material as we in the West place at the beginning, that is, a table of contents, a summary of the work as a whole, biographical information on the author and his aims, and so forth. Section 32 probably owes its present position as the next to last chapter in the text to the fact that it contains an anecdote dealing with the funeral of Zhuangzi and thus in a sense represents the conclusion of his “biography.” Section 33, with which the Zhuangzi ends, differs in nature from all the other chapters. Entitled “The World,” it is a survey of the world of Chinese philosophy in late Zhou times, containing descriptions of most of the major thinkers and philosophical schools, including that of Zhuangzi himself. It is the earliest such description we have and is of enormous value in the study of Chinese thought, particularly as it contains accounts of thinkers whose writings no longer survive. Exactly what relation it is intended to bear to the rest of the Zhuangzi is uncertain; we can only be thankful that because of its inclusion in that work, it has survived the centuries. Waley, in his discussion of the authorship of the Zhuangzi, states that “some parts are by a splendid poet, others are by a feeble scribbler” (Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China, p. 255). In my earlier selected translation, Zhuangzi: Basic Writings, | tried to avoid the feeble scribbler, presenting only sections 1-7, 17-19, and 26. The present work, however, is a complete translation of the Zhuangzi, and the reader must take the dull parts with the good. I have already noted how the thought of the “outer” and “miscellaneous” chapters sometimes merely apes, at other times departs from, or even contradicts, that of the “inner chapters.” The same may be said of the style. The “inner chapters” are characterized by a wealth of lively and witty anecdotes, and anecdotes of a similar excellence may be found in the other chapters as well, among them some of the most famous passages in the Zhuangzi. But this high level is not always maintained, and one also finds anecdotes that are long-winded, clumsy in construction, or even seem to lack any point, though these defects may be due in part to faulty transmission of the text. Passages in which the writer sermonizes in his own words, relatively few in the “inner chapters,” increase in length and frequency, sometimes occupying a whole chapter, and are often marred by wearisome prolixity. Even the techniques of wordplay and paradox, so brilliantly exploited in the “‘tnner chapters,” tend at times to deteriorate into mere mannerism, and the pure poetry of the Dao gives way to Daoist jargon and cant. All this is hardly to be wondered at in a work composed by various hands over a considerable period of time; I mention it here only to prepare the reader for the unevenness he will encounter and to encourage him to push on to the delights that lie ahead. Though a considerable amount of critical work has been done on the text of the Zhuangzi, and there are an almost endless number of commentaries, the meaning of many passages remains a matter of doubt. There are two reasons for this: the intrinsic difficulty of Zhuangzi’s language and thought, and the textual corruption that has arisen, almost inevitably we may suppose, in the transmission of such a difficult text. Zhuangzi, as I have said, rejects all conventional values, and as a result, like so many mystical writers, he rejects the conventional values of words as well, deliberately employing them to mean the opposite of what they ordinarily mean in order to demonstrate their essential meaninglessness. When a writer does this, he of course invites misunderstanding, no matter how dazzling the literary effect he achieves. This is what has happened to Zhuangzi. His grammar is regular enough; his sentence patterns are, for the most part, like those of other writers of the period; but because what he says is so often the direct opposite of what anyone else would say, commentators have again and again been led to wonder if he really does not mean something other than what he says or if the text is perhaps corrupt. In order to pry men loose from their conventional concepts of goodness and beauty, for example, Zhuangzi deliberately glorifies everything that to ordinary eyes appears sordid, base, or bizarre—ex-criminals who have suffered mutilating punishments, men who are horribly ugly or deformed, creatures of grotesque shape or size. As an illustration—and because the passage is so important to Daoist philosophy—let me quote one of Zhuangzi’s most famous descriptions of the Dao or the Way: Master Dongguo asked Zhuangzi, “This thing called the Way—where does it exist?” Zhuangzi said, “There’s no place it doesn’t exist.” “Come,” said Master Dongguo, “you must be more specific!” “Tt is in the ant.” “As low a thing as that?” “Tt is in the panic grass.” “But that’s lower still!” “Tt is in the tiles and shards.” “How can it be so low?” “Tt is in the piss and shit.” (sec. 22) But in Zhuangzi’s language, if ugly stands for beautiful, or something beyond both beauty and ugliness, and bad stands for good, or something beyond it, then what do beautiful and good stand for? In other words, since Zhuangzi deliberately turns the values of words upside down, how are we ever to know for certain when he is sincerely praising something? This is the most serious problem one encounters in the interpretation of Daoist writings, as it is in the interpretation of the writings of Zen Buddhism. In any given passage, is the writer, regardless of what words he uses, describing a state of affairs that is in his eyes commendable or uncommendable? Depending on how one answers this question, the interpretation of the entire passage will differ radically. (An example of this problem is pointed out in note 4 to section 3.) As has already been suggested, Zhuangzi, though he writes in prose, uses words in the manner of a poet, particularly in the lyrical descriptions of the Way or the Daoist sage, where meaning often takes second place to sound and emotive force. In the broader sense of the word, his work is in fact one of the greatest poems of ancient China. For this reason, it seems to me_ particularly important to stick as closely as possible to the precise wording and imagery of the Chinese. For example, in section 5 there is a passage in which Confucius is pictured discussing the need to harmonize with and delight in all the manifold ups and downs of human existence, to “master them and never be at a loss for joy,” adding that one should “make it be spring with everything.” This last phrase, literally, “with things make spring,” is an example of the highly poetic language that Zhuangzi employs in such passages and for which he is justly admired. To render the phrase as “live in peace with mankind” (Giles), or “be kind with things” (Feng Youlan) not only blurs the image of the original beyond recognition but suggests that Zhuangzi is mouthing platitudes when in fact he is using the Chinese language as it had never been used before. No other text of early times, with the possible exception of the Zuozhuan, so fully exploits the beauties of ancient Chinese—its vigor, its economy, its richness and symmetry—and it is for this reason that I have chosen to render the wording of the original as closely as possible, even though the English that results may at times sound somewhat strange. Zhuangzi uses words in unconventional ways, and he deserves a translation that at least attempts to do justice to his imaginativeness. I have not hesitated to make free use of colloquialisms —a great part of the Zhuangzi is in the form of informal dialogues—or of slang; I do so, however, not in order to create a “jazzy” effect but because such words or constructions seem to me to get closer to the original than more formal English could. I have also tried to suggest some of the auditory effects and wordplays of the original. Frequently Zhuangzi takes a single word such as “knowledge,” or a pair such as “Heaven” and “man,” and plays at great length on their various usages and shades of meaning, employing them now as nouns, later as verbs. In order to follow the continuity of such passages, the reader must realize that it is a single word that is being played with, and I have therefore worked to preserve this unity in translation, though it may lead at times to a certain amount of awkwardness and pleonasm. The alliterative and rhyming binomes that contribute so much to the vividness of ancient Chinese I have tried to suggest by the use of similar devices in English, though I have employed them with somewhat less frequency than has the original, lest they become obtrusive. I have not attempted to reproduce the occasional rhymed passages, merely pointing out their existence in notes, since rhyme in present-day English, unless used with great skill, has a tendency, it seems to me, to sound either ironic or facetious, and I do not believe that was its effect in ancient Chinese. Whenever I have substantially added to the wording of the original in translation, I have enclosed the added words in brackets. Needless to say, for all my zeal to render the literal meaning of the original, I could not do so until I had first decided what it was, and in this sense my translation is as much an interpretation, and as tentative in many places, as any other. Waley remarks that translations of the Zhuangzi often tend to be “translations of the commentaries rather than of the text,” because “the text itself is so corrupt as to be frequently quite unintelligible” (Zhree Ways of Thought, p. 199). In his own study of Zhuangzi, he attempts to get around this difficulty by translating at times not from the Zhuangzi itself but from parallel passages found in the Huainanzi, a work of the second century BCE already mentioned, and the Liezi, a Daoist work of uncertain date, whose text is more intelligible. These passages in the Huainanzi and Liezi may in fact represent the original version of passages that later became corrupt in the Zhuangzi itself. On the other hand, however, they may represent emended and rewritten versions created by the compilers of the Huainanzi and Liezi because they could not understand the Zhuangzi text itself. What, then, are we to do with the passages that, in Waley’s words, are “quite unintelligible’? If they are not to be omitted entirely, emendation would seem to be the only solution. But here we must note some of the dangers involved. First of all, is the passage in fact really unintelligible? Often, in the case of ancient Chinese, a different punctuation of the text or a different interpretation of the words makes sense of what at first glance seemed nonsense. In the Han Feizi translation I did some years ago, for example, I allowed myself at one point to be awed by the flat assertion of the Chinese commentator I was following that the text made no sense as it stood, and I adopted the emendation he suggested; it has since been pointed out to me that the sentence makes perfectly good sense when properly understood and can even be supported by examples of the same usage in other works of the period. In this case, the commentator was too quick in emending, and I, too uncritical in accepting his judgment that emendation was necessary. Again, what seems like a garble in the text may be unintelligible only because we lack sufficient knowledge of early Chinese society, customs, or religion. This is apt to be particularly true with a text like the Zhuangzi, which makes such frequent reference to folk beliefs and scenes of everyday life. Let me give an example, not from the Zhuangzi, but from the Confucian classic known as the Shujing, or Book of Documents, traditionally supposed to have been compiled and edited by Confucius himself. In the first section, the “Canon of Yao,” near the beginning, there is a passage describing certain ritual and governmental activities associated with each of the four directions. Four times a brief sentence appears that begins “Its people. ...” Thanks to information gained from the study of Shang period oracle bone inscriptions, we now know that the characters that follow the word “people” are the names of deities associated with each of the four directions, and of the winds of those directions. But by the time the first commentaries on the text were written, this fact was no longer known, and commentators had no choice but to struggle valiantly in an effort to interpret the names of the wind gods as verbs or adjectives descriptive of the people of the four directions. Now that we know the solution to the riddle, their struggles seem pathetic; but the point to note is that because of the sanctity of the text, they did not resort to facile emendation, and so the riddle continued to remain soluble until such time as the right data could be brought to bear on it. With examples such as these in mind, one may well shudder at the very thought of emendation. Nevertheless, there are cases when emendation seems justifiable. Like Theobald’s famous “a’ babbled of green fields” emendation in Henry V, they may or may not represent what the author wrote, but they make beautiful sense of what was gibberish before and allow us to get on to the next line. Moreover, with a few notable exceptions such as the closing sentence of section 2, these garbles in the Zhuangzi, as the reader will see from my notes, appear for the most part not in places that are crucial to the overall philosophical import of the text but in the anecdotes or homely analogies with which Zhuangzi illustrates his ideas. Even if emended or interpreted incorrectly, therefore, they will not greatly affect the meaning of the whole. The real peril here is that commentators who are inclined by nature to emendation are seldom content to emend only those passages that are real gibberish but, giddy with their own ingenuity, go on to suggest ways to “improve” the reading of what is already intelligible, albeit a bit awkward or strange. The translator, if he is not to be seduced into following them in this beguiling but indefensible pastime, must constantly ask himself, is this emendation necessary? As I trust I have made clear, the Zhuangzi confronts the translator with countless passages in which, in order to make sense, he must choose from a wide variety of interpretations and/or suggestions for emendation—more, probably, than any other full-length text of ancient China— and of course, critics may in turn question each of his choices if they feel it was not wisely made. There is no end to this game. In the note on bibliography at the end of this introduction, I mention briefly the commentaries and translations that I have drawn on. But the result inevitably represents my own interpretation of the text and will not be quite like that of anyone else. With a work of such difficulty, there can never be anything like a definitive translation, because there is no such thing as a definitive interpretation. Every translator who takes up the text will produce his own Zhuangzi, and the more that are available for the reader to enjoy and compare, the better. As I have said, much of the Zhuangzi consists of anecdotes, often two or three anecdotes in a row that illustrate the same general theme and appear to be hardly more than different versions of a single story. In these anecdotes a variety of historical and semihistorical personages appear, as well as a delightful assortment of gods, mythical heroes, and talking trees, birds, insects, and other creatures. One such historical figure, the logician philosopher Hui Shi or Huizi, who seems to have been a friend of Zhuangzi, always represents the same viewpoint: that of “intellectuality as opposed to imagination,” as Waley puts it (Three Ways of Thought, p. 12). But there is no consistency in the variety of viewpoints which the other figures are made to expound. Thus Confucius sometimes preaches conventional Confucian morality, while at other times he speaks in the words of a true Daoist sage, and even Zhuangzi himself appears on occasion in the role of the convention-ridden fool. The reader must learn to expect any opinion whatsoever from any source, to savor the outrageous incongruities, and to judge for himself which of the opinions offered represents the highest level of enlightenment. In closing, I may add a word on the translation of certain key philosophical terms in the Zhuangzi. The term Dao I have translated throughout as “the Way,” in order to remain consistent with the practice adopted in my earlier translations from other Chinese philosophers of the late Zhou. It is perfectly true that Zhuangzi means by this word something quite different from what Mozi, Xunzi, or Han Feizi meant. But all of them used the same Chinese word, and the reader may easily judge for himself how they interpreted it by observing the ways in which they used it. For the same reason, I have rendered Jian as “Heaven” or “heavenly” in nearly all cases. Zhuangzi uses the word to mean Nature, what pertains to the natural, as opposed to the artificial, or as a synonym for the Way. This, too, is very different from what Mozi or Xunzi meant by the word Tian, but again the reader may judge the differences for himself. In nearly all cases I have rendered de as “virtue” except when it has the meaning of a favor or good deed done for someone. This word presents certain difficulties in Zhuangzi. Sometimes he employs it to mean conventional virtue—that is, virtue in the Confucian or Mohist sense—in which case it has bad connotations; at other times he employs it in a good sense to mean the true virtue or vital power that belongs to the man of Dao. (Compare Waley’s rendering of the title Daodejing as The Way and Its Power). 1 prefer not to try to distinguish these two usages in the translation because I do not wish to impose on the English a distinction that is not explicit in the original. The reader should keep in mind, incidentally, that the words “virtue” (de) and “gain” or “to get” (de) are homophones, and this fact is the basis of frequent puns and wordplays— that is, the man of true Daoist virtue is one who, as we would say in English, has “got it.” As already mentioned, I render wuwei as “inaction” and you as “to wander” or “wandering.” In addition to inventing legendary figures with amusing and often significant names, Zhuangzi invents a variety of mysterious and high-sounding pseudotechnical terms to refer to the Way or the person who has made himself one with it. I have given a literal translation of such terms and capitalized them in order to indicate their special character—for example, Great Clod, Supreme Swindle, True Man. The reader need not puzzle over their precise meaning, since in the end they all refer to essentially the same thing—the inexpressible Absolute. I used as the basis of my translation the Zhuangzi buzheng of Liu Wendian (Shanghai, 1947), principally because of its magnificent legibility, though I did not always follow its punctuation. It would be impractical to list all the commentaries I drew on directly or indirectly; I mention by name in my notes the commentator I followed in questionable passages, and the reader may identify the works by consulting the exhaustive bibliography of Zhuangzi commentaries in Guan Feng’s modern-language translation and study, Zhuangzi neipian yijie he pipan (Peking, 1961), pp. 370-403. Two works have been of particular assistance to me: one is the modern Chinese translation by Guan Feng just cited; the other is the Japanese translation by Fukunaga Mitsuji, Soshi, in the Chigoku kotensen series. The former is confined to the “nner chapters,” the first seven sections of the text; the latter, a complete translation, is in three volumes, Naihen (Tokyo, 1956), Gaihen (1966), and Zappen (1967). Both works draw on all the important recent studies and contain invaluable notes and explanation. I have also consulted the complete modern Japanese translation by Hara Tomio, Gendaigoyaku Soshi (Tokyo, 1962). Three works of the philosophy of Zhuangzi may be noted here: the Zhuangzi zhexue taolun ji (Peking, 1962), a collection of essays by Feng Youlan, Kuan Feng, and other Zhuangzi experts; and Sdshi (Tokyo, 1964) by Fukunaga Mitsuji, a study of Zhuangzi’s thought intended for the general reader. Also of aid to the student and translator of Zhuangzi is the Concordance to Chuang Tzu, Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement No. 20 (1947). I have consulted several earlier English translations: that by Herbert A. Giles, Chuang Tzu: Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer (London, 1889); that by James Legge in The Sacred Books of the East, vols. XXXIX—XL,; that by James R. Ware, The Sayings of Chuang Chou (New York, New American Library [Mentor], 1963); that by Yu-lan Fung (Feng Youlan), Chuang Tzu (Shanghai, 1933); and the excerpts translated by Arthur Waley in Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China (London, 1939), and by Lin Yutang in The Wisdom of Laotse (Modern Library, 1948). The first three are complete translations of the Zhuangzi; the fourth is a translation of the “inner chapters”; while the last two contain excerpts from many different sections. Giles, who produced the first complete English translation, is very free in his rendering and again and again substitutes what strike me as tiresome Victorian clichés for the complex and beautiful language of the original. In spite of his offensive “literary” tone, however, he generally gets at what appears to me to be the real meaning of the text. Legge, whose translation appeared in 1891, is far more painstaking in reproducing the literal meaning, but perhaps because of his long years of work on the Confucian texts, he seems to miss Zhuangzi’s point rather often and to labor to make common sense out of paradox and fantasy. Professor Ware’s translation is marked by the peculiar terminology and unconventional interpretations characteristic of his other translations from early Chinese philosophy—for example, he describes Zhuangzi as a member of the ‘progressive, dynamic wing of Confucianism’”—and for this reason, and because it lacks notes or adequate introductory material, it is of questionable value. Youlan Feng’s work is important today mainly because it contains translations from the Guo Xiang commentary. Lin Yutang’s The Wisdom of Laotse contains a great many well-translated anecdotes and isolated passages from the Zhuangzi, but they have been chopped up and completely rearranged to serve as a commentary on the Daodejing, making it impossible to appreciate the form and relationship that they have in the original. To my mind, by far the most readable and reliable of the Zhuangzi translations to date are those by Arthur Waley, though unfortunately they represent only a fraction of the text. Readers interested in the literary qualities of the text should also look at the “imitations” of passages in the Zhuangzi prepared by Thomas Merton on the basis of existing translations in Western languages, in his The Way of Chuang Tzu (New York, New Directions, 1965). They give a fine sense of the liveliness and poetry of Zhuangzi’s style and are actually almost as close to the original as the translations on which they are based. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. D. C. Lau, translator of Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching (Penguin Books, 1963), for his careful reading and criticisms of my Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings (Columbia University Press, 1964). I have availed myself of many of his suggestions in revising my earlier translations. 1. See, for example, the Yantie lun, or Debates on Salt and Iron, sec. 57, where the Confucian literati quote Laozi to support their ideal of laissez-faire government. Similarly, they quote or refer to Mohist teachings when they wish to emphasize frugality and the need to reduce government expenditures. 2. Shiji 127; see the translator’s Records of the Grand Historian (New York, Columbia University Press, 1961), II, 468-75. It should be noted that the SAiji, in its account of Zhuangzi, mentions two of these sections by name, sec. 29, “Robber Zhi,” and sec. 31, “The Old Fisherman,” though of course we cannot be certain that the texts of these sections we have today are the ones that Sima Qian knew. OUTLINE OF EARLY CHINESE HISTORY (Dates and entries before 841 BCE are traditional) BEE 2852 aTI7 2697 2357 aass 2205 Hak 1766 [ea ry00} 1154 ‘bree Dynasties tize my a8 78 tics ets Dynasty Shang or Yin Dynasty Dynascy Qin Dynasty (221-107 BCE) Heroes Fu Xi, inventor of writing, fishing, trapping Shennong, inventor of agriculture, commerce Yellow Emperor Yao Shun Yu, virtuous founder of dynasty Jie, degenerate terminator of dynasty King Tang, virtuous founder of dynasty [Beginning of archaeological evidence] Zhou, degenerate terminator of dynasty King Wet, vtrrucns foctuder tf dynasty, King Wu, virtuous founder of dynasty King Cheng, virtuous founder of dynasty (Duke of Zhou, regent to King Cheng) King Li King You Spring and Ausime, petiod (72.2-4¥t) Period of the “hunedred philosophers” (sstca.az3): Confucius, Mozi, Laozi (?), Mencius, Zhuangzi, Hui Shi, Shang Yang, Gongsun Long, Xunzi, Han Feizi Warring Scares period (403-222) Extensive wall-building and waterworks by Qin and other states Lu Bowel, prime minister of Qin ‘The First Emperor, Li Si, prime minister ‘The Great Wall complered 1 FREE AND EASY WANDERING In the northern darkness there is a fish and his name is Kun! The Kun is so huge I don’t know how many thousand li he measures. He changes and becomes a bird whose name is Peng. The back of the Peng measures I don’t know how many thousand /i across, and when he rises up and flies off, his wings are like clouds all over the sky. When the sea begins to move,2 this bird sets off for the southern darkness, which is the Lake of Heaven. The Universal Harmony3 records various wonders, and it says: “When the Peng journeys to the southern darkness, the waters are roiled for three thousand /i. He beats the whirlwind and rises ninety thousand /i, setting off on the sixth-month gale.” Wavering heat, bits of dust, living things blown about by the wind—the sky looks very blue. Is that its real color, or is it because it is so far away and has no end? When the bird looks down, all he sees is blue, too. If water is not piled up deep enough, it won’t have the strength to bear up a big boat. Pour a cup of water into a hollow in the floor, and bits of trash will sail on it like boats. But set the cup there, and it will stick fast, for the water is too shallow and the boat too large. If wind is not piled up deep enough, it won’t have the strength to bear up great wings. Therefore when the Peng rises ninety thousand li, he must have the wind under him like that. Only then can he mount on the back of the wind, shoulder the blue sky, and nothing can hinder or block him. Only then can he set his eyes to the south. The cicada and the little dove laugh at this, saying, “When we make an effort and fly up, we can get as far as the elm or the sapanwood tree, but sometimes we don’t make it and just fall down on the ground. Now how is anyone going to go ninety thousand /i to the south!” If you go off to the green woods nearby, you can take along food for three meals and come back with your stomach as full as ever. If you are going a hundred Ji, you must grind your grain the night before; and if you are going a thousand /i, you must start getting the provisions together three months in advance. What do these two creatures understand? Little understanding cannot come up to great understanding; the short-lived cannot come up to the long- lived. How do I know this is so? The morning mushroom knows nothing of twilight and dawn; the summer cicada knows nothing of spring and autumn. They are the short- lived. South of Chu there is a caterpillar that counts five hundred years as one spring and five hundred years as one autumn. Long, long ago there was a great rose of Sharon that counted eight thousand years as one spring and eight thousand years as one autumn. They are the long-lived. Yet Pengzu4 alone is famous today for having lived a long time, and everybody tries to ape him. Isn’t it pitiful! Among the questions of Tang to Qi we find the same thing. In the bald and barren north, there is a dark sea, the Lake of Heaven. In it is a fish that is several thousand /i across, and no one knows how long. His name is Kun. There is also a bird there, named Peng, with a back like Mount Tai and wings like clouds filling the sky. He beats the whirlwind, leaps into the air, and rises up ninety thousand /i, cutting through the clouds and mist, shouldering the blue sky, and then he turns his eyes south and prepares to journey to the southern darkness. The little quail laughs at him, saying, “Where does he think he’s going? I give a great leap and fly up, but I never get more than ten or twelve yards before I come down fluttering among the weeds and brambles. And that’s the best kind of flying, anyway! Where does he think he’s going?” Such is the difference between big and little. Therefore a man who has wisdom enough to fill one office effectively, good conduct enough to impress one community, virtue enough to please one ruler, or talent enough to be called into service in one state, has the same kind of self-pride as these little creatures. Song Rongzi® would certainly burst out laughing at such a man. The whole world could praise Song Rongzi and it wouldn’t make him exert himself; the whole world could condemn him and it wouldn’t make him mope. He drew a clear line between the internal and the external and recognized the boundaries of true glory and disgrace. But that was all. As far as the world went, he didn’t fret and worry, but there was still ground he left unturned. LieziZ could ride the wind and go soaring around with cool and breezy skill, but after fifteen days he came back to earth. As far as the search for good fortune went, he didn’t fret and worry. He escaped the trouble of walking, but he still had to depend on something to get around. If he had only mounted on the truth of Heaven and Earth, ridden the changes of the six breaths, and thus wandered through the boundless, then what would he have had to depend on? Therefore I say, the Perfect Man has no self; the Holy Man has no merit; the Sage has no fame.8 Yao wanted to cede the empire to Xu You. “When the sun and moon have already come out,” he said, “it’s a waste of light to go on burning the torches, isn’t it? When the seasonal rains are falling, it’s a waste of water to go on irrigating the fields. If you took the throne, the world would be well ordered. I go on occupying it, but all I can see are my failings. I beg to turn over the world to you.” Xu You said, “You govern the world and the world is already well governed. Now if I take your place, will I be doing it for a name? But name is only the guest of reality— will I be doing it so I can play the part of a guest? When the tailorbird builds her nest in the deep wood, she uses no more than one branch. When the mole drinks at the river, he takes no more than a bellyful. Go home and forget the matter, my lord. I have no use for the rulership of the world! Though the cook may not run his kitchen properly, the priest and the impersonator of the dead at the sacrifice do not leap over the wine casks and sacrificial stands and go take his place.”2 Jian Wu said to Lian Shu, “I was listening to Jie Yu’s talk— big and nothing to back it up, going on and on without turning around. I was completely dumbfounded at his words —no more end than the Milky Way, wild and wide of the mark, never coming near human affairs!” “What were his words like?” asked Lian Shu. “He said that there is a Holy Man living on faraway Gushe Mountain, with skin like ice or snow and gentle and shy like a young girl. He doesn’t eat the five grains but sucks the wind, drinks the dew, climbs up on the clouds and mist, rides a flying dragon, and wanders beyond the four seas. By concentrating his spirit, he can protect creatures from sickness and plague and make the harvest plentiful. I thought this all was insane and refused to believe it.” “You would!” said Lian Shu. “We can’t expect a blind man to appreciate beautiful patterns or a deaf man to listen to bells and drums. And blindness and deafness are not confined to the body alone—the understanding has them, too, as your words just now have shown. This man, with this virtue of his, is about to embrace the ten thousand things and roll them into one. Though the age calls for reform, why should he wear himself out over the affairs of the world? There is nothing that can harm this man. Though floodwaters pile up to the sky, he will not drown. Though a great drought melts metal and stone and scorches the earth and hills, he will not be burned. From his dust and leavings alone, you could mold a Yao or a Shun! Why should he consent to bother about mere things?” A man of Song who sold ceremonial hats made a trip to Yue, but the Yue people cut their hair short and tattooed their bodies and had no use for such things. Yao brought order to the people of the world and directed the government of all within the seas. But he went to see the Four Masters of the faraway Gushe Mountain, [and when he got home] north of the Fen River, he was dazed and had forgotten his kingdom there. Huizi!2 said to Zhuangzi, “The king of Wei gave me some seeds of a huge gourd. I planted them, and when they grew up, the fruit was big enough to hold five piculs. I tried using it for a water container, but it was so heavy I couldn’t lift it. I split it in half to make dippers, but they were so large and unwieldy that I couldn’t dip them into anything. It’s not that the gourds weren’t fantastically big—but I decided they were of no use, and so I smashed them to pieces.” Zhuangzi said, “You certainly are dense when it comes to using big things! In Song there was a man who was skilled at making a salve to prevent chapped hands, and generation after generation his family made a living by bleaching silk in water. A traveler heard about the salve and offered to buy the prescription for a hundred measures of gold. The man called everyone to a family council. ‘For generations we’ve been bleaching silk, and we’ve never made more than a few measures of gold,’ he said. ‘Now, if we sell our secret, we can make a hundred measures in one morning. Let’s let him have it!’ The traveler got the salve and introduced it to the king of Wu, who was having trouble with the state of Yue. The king put the man in charge of his troops, and that winter they fought a naval battle with the men of Yue and gave them a bad beating LL A portion of the conquered territory was awarded to the man as a fief. The salve had the power to prevent chapped hands in either case; but one man used it to get a fief, while the other one never got beyond silk bleaching—because they used it in different ways. Now you had a gourd big enough to hold five piculs. Why didn’t you think of making it into a great tub so you could go floating around the rivers and lakes, instead of worrying because it was too big and unwieldy to dip into things! Obviously you still have a lot of underbrush in your head!” Huizi said to Zhuangzi, “I have a big tree called a shu. Its trunk is too gnarled and bumpy to apply a measuring line to, its branches too bent and twisty to match up to a compass or square. You could stand it by the road, and no carpenter would look at it twice. Your words, too, are big and useless, and so everyone alike spurns them!” Zhuangzi said, “Maybe you’ve never seen a wildcat or a weasel. It crouches down and hides, watching for something to come along. It leaps and races east and west, not hesitating to go high or low—auntil it falls into the trap and dies in the net. Then again there’s the yak, big as a cloud covering the sky. It certainly knows how to be big, though it doesn’t know how to catch rats. Now you have this big tree, and you’re distressed because it’s useless. Why don’t you plant it in Not-Even-Anything Village or the field of Broad- and-Boundless, relax and do nothing by its side, or lie down for a free and easy sleep under it? Axes will never shorten its life, nothing can ever harm it. If there’s no use for it, how can it come to grief or pain?” 1. Kun means fish roe. So Zhuangzi begins with a paradox —the tiniest fish imaginable is also the largest fish imaginable. 2. Probably a reference to some seasonal shift in the tides or currents. 3. Identified variously as the name of a man or the name of a book. Probably Zhuangzi intended it as the latter and is poking fun at the philosophers of other schools who cite ancient texts to prove their assertions. 4. Said to have lived to an incredible old age. See p. 46, n. 12. 5. The text may be faulty at this point. The Beishanlu, a work written around 800 CE by the monk Shengqing, contains the following passage, said by a Tang commentator on the Beishanlu to be found in the Zhuangzi : “Tang asked Qi, ‘Do up, down, and the four directions have a limit?’ Qi replied, ‘Beyond their limit lessness there is still another limitlessness.’” But whether this passage was in the original Zhuangzi or whether, if it was, it belongs at this point in the text, are questions that cannot be answered. 6. Referred to elsewhere in the literature of the period as Song Jian or Song Keng. According to the last section of the Zhuangzi, he taught a doctrine of social harmony, frugality, pacifism, and the rejection of conventional standards of honor and disgrace. 7. Lie Yukou, a Daoist philosopher frequently mentioned in the Zhuangzi. The Liezi, a work attributed to him, is of uncertain date and did not reach its present form until the third or fourth centuries CE. 8. Not three different categories but three names for the same thing. 9. Or following another interpretation, “the priest and the impersonator of the dead do not snatch his wine casks and chopping board away from him and take his place.” 10. The logician Huizi who, as Waley pointed out, in the Zhuangzi “stands for intellectuality as opposed to imagination.” 11. Because the salve, by preventing the soldiers’ hands from chapping, made it easier for them to handle their weapons. 2 DISCUSSION ON MAKING ALL THINGS EQUAL Ziqi of South Wall sat leaning on his armrest, staring up at the sky and breathing—vacant and far away, as though he’d lost his companion. Yan Cheng Ziyou, who was standing by his side in attendance, said, “What is this? Can you really make the body like a withered tree and the mind like dead ashes? The man leaning on the armrest now is not the one who leaned on it before!” Ziqi said, “You do well to ask the question, Yan. Now I have lost myself. Do you understand that? You hear the piping of men, but you haven’t heard the piping of earth. Or if you’ve heard the piping of earth, you haven’t heard the piping of Heaven!” Ziyou, “May I venture to ask what this means?” Ziqi said, “The Great Clod belches out breath, and its name is wind. So long as it doesn’t come forth, nothing happens. But when it does, then ten thousand hollows begin crying wildly. Can’t you hear them, long drawn out? In the mountain forests that lash and sway, there are huge trees a hundred spans around with hollows and openings like noses, like mouths, like ears, like jugs, like cups, like mortars, like rifts, like ruts. They roar like waves, whistle like arrows, screech, gasp, cry, wail, moan, and howl, those in the lead calling out yeee/, those behind calling out yuuu! Ina gentle breeze they answer faintly, but in a full gale the chorus is gigantic. And when the fierce wind has passed on, then all the hollows are empty again. Have you never seen the tossing and trembling that goes on?” Ziyou said, “By the piping of earth, then, you mean simply [the sound of] these hollows, and by the piping of man, [the sound of] flutes and whistles. But may I ask about the piping of Heaven?” Ziqi said, “Blowing on the ten thousand things in a different way, so that each can be itself—all take what they want for themselves, but who does the sounding?”2 Great understanding is broad and unhurried; little understanding is cramped and busy. Great words are clear and limpid:2 little words are shrill and quarrelsome. In sleep, men’s spirits go visiting; in waking hours, their bodies hustle. With everything they meet they become entangled. Day after day they use their minds in strife, sometimes grandiose, sometimes sly, sometimes petty. Their little fears are mean and trembly; their great fears are stunned and overwhelming. They bound off like an arrow or a crossbow pellet, certain that they are the arbiters of right and wrong. They cling to their position as though they had sworn before the gods, sure that they are holding on to victory. They fade like fall and winter—such is the way they dwindle day by day. They drown in what they do—you cannot make them turn back. They grow dark, as though sealed with seals—such are the excesses of their old age. And when their minds draw near to death, nothing can restore them to the light. Joy, anger, grief, delight, worry, regret, fickleness, inflexibility, modesty, willfulness, candor, insolence— music from empty holes, mushrooms springing up in dampness, day and night replacing each other before us, and no one knows where they sprout from. Let it be! Let it be! [It is enough that] morning and evening we have them, and they are the means by which we live. Without them, we would not exist; without us, they would have nothing to take hold of. This comes close to the matter. But I do not know what makes them the way they are. It would seem as though they have some True Master, and yet I find no trace of him. He can act—that is certain. Yet I cannot see his form. He has identity but no form. The hundred joints, the nine openings, the six organs, all come together and exist here [as my body]. But which part should I feel closest to? I should delight in all parts, you say? But there must be one I ought to favor more. If not, are they all of them mere servants? But if they all are servants, then how can they keep order among themselves? Or do they take turns being lord and servant? It would seem as though there must be some True Lord among them. But whether or not I succeed in discovering his identity, it neither adds to nor detracts from his Truth. Once a man receives this fixed bodily form, he holds on to it, waiting for the end. Sometimes clashing with things, sometimes bending before them, he runs his course like a galloping steed, and nothing can stop him. Is he not pathetic? Sweating and laboring to the end of his days and never seeing his accomplishment, utterly exhausting himself and never knowing where to look for rest—can you help pitying him? I’m not dead yet! he says, but what good is that? His body decays, his mind follows it—can you deny that this is a great sorrow? Man’s life has always been a muddle like this. How could I be the only muddled one, and other men not muddled? If a man follows the mind given him and makes it his teacher, then who can be without a teacher? Why must you comprehend the process of change and form your mind on that basis before you can have a teacher? Even an idiot has his teacher. But to fail to abide by this mind and still insist on your rights and wrongs—this is like saying that you set off for Yue today and got there yesterday.4 This is to claim that what doesn’t exist exists. If you claim that what doesn’t exist exists, then even the holy sage Yu couldn’t understand you, much less a person like me! Words are not just wind. Words have something to say. But if what they have to say is not fixed, then do they really say something? Or do they say nothing? People suppose that words are different from the peeps of baby birds, but is there any difference, or isn’t there? What does the Way rely on, that we have true and false? What do words rely on, that we have right and wrong? How can the Way go away and not exist? How can words exist and not be acceptable? When the Way relies on little accomplishments and words rely on vain show, then we have the rights and wrongs of the Confucians and the Mohists. What one calls right, the other calls wrong; what one calls wrong, the other calls right. But if we want to right their wrongs and wrong their rights, then the best thing to use 1s clarity. Everything has its “that,” everything has its “this.” From the point of view of “that,” you cannot see it; but through understanding, you can know it. So I say, “that” comes out of “this,” and “this” depends on “that”—which is to say that “this” and “that” give birth to each other. But where there is birth, there must be death; where there is death, there must be birth. Where there is acceptability, there must be unacceptability; where there is unacceptability, there must be acceptability. Where there is recognition of right, there must be recognition of wrong; where there is recognition of wrong, there must be recognition of right. Therefore the sage does not proceed in such a way but illuminates all in the light of Heaven.© He, too, recognizes a “this” but a “this” that is also “that,” a “that” that is also ‘this.” His “that” has both a right and a wrong in it; his “this,” too, has both a right and a wrong init. So, in fact, does he still have a “this” and “that”? Or does he, in fact, no longer have a “this” and ‘that’? A state in which ‘this” and “that” no longer find their opposites is called the hinge of the Way. When the hinge is fitted into the socket, it can respond endlessly. Its right, then, is a single endlessness, and its wrong, too, is a single endlessness. So I say, the best thing to use is clarity. To use an attribute to show that attributes are not attributes is not as good as using a nonattribute to show that attributes are not attributes. To use a horse to show that a horse is not a horse is not as good as using a non-horse to show that a horse is not a horse;Z Heaven and earth are one attribute; the ten thousand things are one horse. What is acceptable we call acceptable; what is unacceptable we call unacceptable. A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called so. What makes them so? Making them so makes them so. What makes them not so? Making them not so makes them not so. Things all must have that which is so; things all must have that which is acceptable. There is nothing that is not so, nothing that is not acceptable. For this reason, whether you point to a little stalk or a great pillar, a leper or the beautiful Xishi, things ribald and shady, or things grotesque and strange, the Way makes them all into one. Their dividedness is their completeness; their completeness is their impairment. No thing is either complete or impaired, but all are made into one again. Only the man of far-reaching vision knows how to make them into one. So he has no use [for categories] but relegates all to the constant. The constant is the useful; the useful is the passable; the passable is the successful; and with success, all is accomplished. He relies on this alone, relies on it and does not know he is doing so. This is called the Way. But to wear out your brain trying to make things into one without realizing that they are all the same—this is called “three in the morning.” What do I mean by “three in the morning’? When the monkey trainer was handing out acorns, he said, “You get three in the morning and four at night.” This made all the monkeys furious. “Well, then,” he said, “you get four in the morning and three at night.” The monkeys all were delighted. There was no change in the reality behind the words, and yet the monkeys responded with joy and anger. Let them, if they want to. So the sage harmonizes with both right and wrong and rests in Heaven the Equalizer. This is called walking two roads. The understanding of the men of ancient times went a long way. How far did it go? To the point where some of them believed that things have never existed—so far, to the end, where nothing can be added. Those at the next stage thought that things exist but recognized no boundaries among them. Those at the next stage thought there were boundaries but recognized no right and wrong. Because right and wrong appeared, the Way was injured, and because the Way was injured, love became complete. But do such things as completion and injury really exist, or do they not? There is such a thing as completion and injury—Mr. Zhao playing the lute is an example. There is such a thing as no completion and no injury—Mr. Zhao not playing the lute is an example.8 Zhao Wen played the lute; Music Master Kuang waved his baton; Huizi leaned on his desk. The knowledge of these three was close to perfection. All were masters, and therefore their names have been handed down to later ages. Only in their likes were they different from him [the true sage]. What they liked, they tried to make clear. What he is not clear about, they tried to make clear, and so they ended in the foolishness of “hard” and “white.”2 Their sons, too, devoted all their lives to their fathers’L0 theories but, till their death, never reached any completion. Can these men be said to have attained completion? If so, then so have all the rest of us. Or can they not be said to have attained completion? If so, then neither we nor anything else has ever attained it. The torch of chaos and doubt—this is what the sage steers byt So he does not use things but relegates all to the constant. This is what it means to use clarity. Now I am going to make a statement here. I don’t know whether or not it fits into the category of other people’s statements. But whether it fits into their category or whether it doesn’t, it obviously fits into some category. So in that respect, it is no different from their statements. However, let me try making my statement. There is a beginning. There is a not yet beginning to be a beginning. There is a not yet beginning to be a not yet beginning to be a beginning. There is being. There is nonbeing. There is a not yet beginning to be nonbeing, There is a not yet beginning to be a not yet beginning to be nonbeing. Suddenly there is being and nonbeing. But between this being and nonbeing, I don’t really know which is being and which is nonbeing. Now I have just said something. But I don’t know whether what I have said has really said something or whether it hasn’t said something. There is nothing in the world bigger than the tip of an autumn hair, and Mount Tai is little. No one has lived longer than a dead child, and Pengzu died young,12 Heaven and earth were born at the same time I was, and the ten thousand things are one with me. We have already become one, so how can I say anything? But I have just said that we are one, so how can I not be saying something? The one and what I said about it make two, and two and the original one make three. If we go on this way, then even the cleverest mathematician, much less an ordinary man, can’t tell where we’ll end. If by moving from nonbeing to being, we get to three, how far will we get if we move from being to being? Better not to move but to let things be! The Way has never known boundaries; speech has no constancy. But because of [the recognition of a] “this,” there came to be boundaries. Let me tell you what the boundaries are. There is left, there is right, there are theories, there are debates, 13 there are divisions, there are discriminations, there are emulations, and there are contentions. These are called the Eight Virtues 14 As to what is beyond the Six Realms,15 the sage admits it exists but does not theorize. As to what is within the Six Realms, he theorizes pe does not debate. In the case of the Spring and Autumn 3& © the record of the former kings of past ages, the sage debates but does not discriminate. So [I say, ] those who divide fail to divide; those who discriminate fail to discriminate. What does this mean, you ask? The sage embraces things. Ordinary men discriminate among them and parade their discriminations before others. So I say, those who discriminate fail to see. The Great Way is not named; Great Discriminations are not spoken; Great Benevolence is not benevolent; Great Modesty is not humble; Great Daring does not attack. If the Way is made clear, it is not the Way. If discriminations are put into words, they do not suffice. If benevolence has a constant object, it cannot be universalZ If modesty is fastidious, it cannot be trusted. If daring attacks, it cannot be complete. These five all are round, but they tend toward the square. 18 Therefore understanding that rests in what it does not understand is the finest. Who can _ understand discriminations that are not spoken, the Way that is not a way? If he can understand this, he may be called the Reservoir of Heaven. Pour into it and it is never full, dip from it and it never runs dry, and yet it does not know where the supply comes from. This is called the Shaded Light 12 So it is that long ago Yao said to Shun, “J want to attack the rulers of Zong, Kuai, and Xuao. Even as I sit on my throne, this thought nags at me. Why is this?” Shun replied, “These three rulers are only little dwellers in the weeds and brush. Why this nagging desire? Long ago, ten suns came out all at once, and the ten thousand things were all lighted up. And how much greater is virtue than these suns!"29 Nie Que asked Wang Ni, “Do you know what all things agree in calling right?” “How would I know that?” said Wang Ni. “Do you know that you don’t know it?” “How would I know that?” “Then do things know nothing?” “How would I know that? However, suppose I try saying something. What way do I have of knowing that if I say I know something I don’t really not know it? Or what way do I have of knowing that if I say I don’t know something I don’t really in fact know it? Now let me ask you some questions. If a man sleeps in a damp place, his back aches and he ends up half paralyzed, but is this true of a loach? If he lives in a tree, he is terrified and shakes with fright, but is this true of a monkey? Of these three creatures, then, which one knows the proper place to live? Men eat the flesh of grass-fed and grain-fed animals, deer eat grass, centipedes find snakes tasty, and hawks and falcons relish mice. Of these four, which knows how food ought to taste? Monkeys pair with monkeys, deer go out with deer, and fish play around with fish. Men claim that Maoqiang and Lady Li were beautiful; but if fish saw them, they would dive to the bottom of the stream; if birds saw them, they would fly away; and if deer saw them, they would break into a run. Of these four, which knows how to fix the standard of beauty for the world? The way I see it, the rules of benevolence and righteousness and the paths of right and wrong all are hopelessly snarled and jumbled. How could I know anything about such dis criminations?” Nie Que said, “If you don’t know what is profitable or harmful, then does the Perfect Man likewise know nothing of such things?” Wang Ni replied, “The Perfect Man is godlike. Though the great swamps blaze, they cannot burn him; though the great rivers freeze, they cannot chill him; though swift lightning splits the hills and howling gales shake the sea, they cannot frighten him. A man like this rides the clouds and mist, straddles the sun and moon, and wanders beyond the four seas. Even life and death have no effect on him, much less the rules of profit and loss!” Ju Que said to Zhang Wuzi, “I have heard Confucius say that the sage does not work at anything, does not pursue profit, does not dodge harm, does not enjoy being sought after, does not follow the Way, says nothing yet says something, says something yet says nothing, and wanders beyond the dust and grime. Confucius himself regarded these as wild and flippant words, though I believe they describe the working of the mysterious Way. What do you think of them?” Zhang Wuzi said, “Even the Yellow Emperor would be confused if he heard such words, so how could you expect Confucius to understand them? What’s more, you’re too hasty in your own appraisal. You see an egg and demand a crowing cock, see a crossbow pellet and demand a roast dove. I’m going to try speaking some reckless words, and I want you to listen to them recklessly. How will that be? The sage leans on the sun and moon, tucks the universe under his arm, merges himself with things, leaves the confusion and muddle as it is, and looks on slaves as exalted. Ordinary men strain and struggle; the sage is stupid and blockish. He takes part in ten thousand ages and achieves simplicity in oneness. For him, all the ten thousand things are what they are, and thus they enfold one another. “How do I know that loving life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death I am not like a man who, having left home in his youth, has forgotten the way back? “Lady Li was the daughter of the border guard of Ai2t When she was first taken captive and brought to the state of Jin, she wept until her tears drenched the collar of her robe. But later, when she went to live in the palace of the ruler, shared his couch with him, and ate the delicious meats of his table, she wondered why she had ever wept. How do I know that the dead do not wonder why they ever longed for life? ‘He who dreams of drinking wine may weep when morning comes; he who dreams of weeping may in the morning go off to hunt. While he is dreaming, he does not know it is a dream, and in his dream, he may even try to interpret a dream. Only after he wakes does he know it was a dream. And someday there will be a great awakening when we know that this is all a great dream. Yet the stupid believe they are awake, busily and brightly assuming they understand things, calling this man ruler, that one herdsman —how dense! Confucius and you both are dreaming! And when I say you are dreaming, I am dreaming, too. Words like these will be labeled the Supreme Swindle. Yet after ten thousand generations, a great sage may appear who will know their meaning, and it will still be as though he appeared with astonishing speed. “Suppose you and I have had an argument. If you have beaten me instead of my beating you, then are you necessarily right, and am I necessarily wrong? If I have beaten you instead of your beating me, then am I necessarily right, and are you necessarily wrong? Is one of us right and the other wrong? Are both of us right, or are both of us wrong? If you and I don’t know the answer, then other people are bound to be even more in the dark. Whom shall we get to decide what is right? Shall we get someone who agrees with you to decide? But if he already agrees with you, how can he decide fairly? Shall we get someone who agrees with me? But if he already agrees with me, how can he decide? Shall we get someone who disagrees with both of us? But if he already disagrees with both of us, how can he decide? Shall we get someone who agrees with both of us? But if he already agrees with both of us, how can he decide? Obviously, then, neither you nor I nor anyone else can know the answer. Shall we wait for still another person? “But waiting for one shifting voice [to pass judgment on] another is the same as waiting for none of them.22 Harmonize them all with the Heavenly Equality, leave them to their endless changes, and so live out your years. What do I mean by harmonizing them with the Heavenly Equality? Right is not right; so is not so. If right were really right, it would differ so clearly from not right that there would be no need for argument. If so were really so, it would differ so clearly from not so that there would be no need for argument. Forget the years; forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home!” Penumbra said to Shadow, “A little while ago you were walking, and now youw’re standing still; a little while ago you were sitting, and now you're standing up. Why this lack of independent action?” Shadow said, “Do I have to wait for something before I can be like this? Does what I wait for also have to wait for something before it can be like this? Am I waiting for the scales of a snake or the wings of a cicada? How do I know why it is so? How do I know why it isn’t sor23 Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he woke up, and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn’t know if he were Zhuang Zhou who had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhuang Zhou and a butterfly, there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things. 1. The word “companion” is interpreted variously to mean his associates, his wife, or his own body. 2. Heaven is not something distinct from earth and man, but a name applied to the natural and spontaneous functioning of the two. 3. Reading dan instead of yan. 4. According to the last section of the Zhuangzi, this was one of the paradoxes of the logician Huizi. 5. Following the interpretation of Zhang Binglin. The older interpretation of yin here and in the following sentences is, “What is the Way hidden by,” etc. 6. Tian, which for Zhuangzi means Nature or the Way. 7. Areference to the statements of the logician Gongsun Long, “A white horse is not a horse” and “Attributes are not attributes in and of themselves.” 8. Zhao Wen was a famous lute (gin) player. But the best music he could play (i.e., complete) was only a pale and partial reflection of the ideal music, which was thereby injured and impaired, just as the unity of the Way was injured by the appearance of love—that is, man’s likes and dis likes. Hence, when Mr. Zhao refrained from playing the lute, there was neither completion nor injury. 9. The logicians Huizi and Gongsun Long spent much time discussing the relationship between attributes such as “hard” and “white” and the thing to which they pertain. 10. Following Yu-lan Fung and Fukunaga, I read fu instead of wen. 11. He accepts things as they are, though to the ordinary person attempting to establish values, they appear chaotic and doubtful and in need of clarification. 12. The strands of animal fur were believed to grow particularly fine in autumn; hence “the tip of an autumn hair” is acliché for something extremely tiny. Pengzu, the Chinese Methuselah, appeared on p. 2. 13. Following the reading in the Cui text. 14. Many commentators and translators try to give the word de some special meaning other than its ordinary one of “virtue” in this context. But I believe Zhuangzi is deliberately parodying the ethical categories of the Confucians and Mohists. 15. Heaven, earth, and the four directions, that is, the universe. 16. Perhaps a reference to the Spring and Autumn Annals, a history of the state of Lu said to have been compiled by Confucius. But it may be a generic term referring to the chronicles of the various feudal states. 17. Reading zhou instead of cheng. 18. All are originally perfect but may become “squared,” that is, impaired, by the misuses mentioned. 19. Or according to another interpretation, “the Precious Light.” 20. Here virtue is to be under stood in a good sense, as the power of the Way. 21. She was taken captive by Duke Xian of Jin in 671 BCE and later became his consort. 22.1 follow the rearrangement of the text suggested by Lii Huiqing. But the text of this whole paragraph leaves much to be desired, and the translation is tentative. 23. That is, to ordinary men the shadow appears to depend on something else for its movement, just as the snake depends on its scales (according to Chinese belief) and the cicada on its wings. But do such causal views of action really have any meaning? 3 THE SECRET OF CARING FOR LIFE Your life has a limit, but knowledge has none. If you use what is limited to pursue what has no limit, you will be in danger. If you understand this and still strive for knowledge, you will be in danger for certain! If you do good, stay away from fame. If you do evil, stay away from punishments. Follow the middle; go by what is constant and you can stay in one piece, keep yourself alive, look after your parents, and live out your years. Cook Ding was cutting up an ox for Lord Wenhui2 At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee—zip! zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were performing the dance of the Mulberry Grove or keeping time to the Jingshou music.2 “Ah, this is marvelous!” said Lord Wenhui. “Imagine skill reaching such heights!” Cook Ding laid down his knife and replied, “What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now— now I go at it by spirit and don’t look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop, and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint. “A good cook changes his knife once a year—because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month —hbecause he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s plenty of room—more than enough for the blade to play about in. That’s why after nineteen years, the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone. “However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until—flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away.’ “Excellent!” said Lord Wenhui. “I have heard the words of Cook Ding and learned how to care for life!” When Gongwen Xuan saw the Commander of the Right,> he was startled and said, “What kind of man is this? How did he come to lose his foot? Was it Heaven? Or was it man?” “Tt was Heaven, not man,” said the commander. “When Heaven gave me life, it saw to it that I would be one-footed. Men’s looks are given to them. So I know this was the work of Heaven and not of man. The swamp pheasant has to walk ten paces for one peck and a hundred paces for one drink, but it doesn’t want to be kept in a cage. Though you treat it like a king, its spirit won’t be content.” When Lao Dan® died, Qin Shi went to mourn for him, but after giving three cries, he left the room. “Weren’t you a friend of the Master?’ asked Laozi’s disciples. “Yes.” “And you think it’s all right to mourn him this way?” “Yes,” said Qin Shi. “At first I took him for a real man, but now I know he wasn’t. A little while ago, when I went in to mourn, I found old men weeping for him as though they were weeping for a son, and young men weeping for him as though they were weeping for a mother. To have gathered a group like that, he must have done something to make them talk about him, though he didn’t ask them to talk or make them weep for him, though he didn’t ask them to weep. This is to hide from Heaven, turn your back on the true state of affairs, and forget what you were born with. In the old days, this was called the crime of hiding from Heaven. Your master happened to come because it was his time, and he happened to leave because things follow along. If you are content with the time and willing to follow along, then grief and joy have no way to enter. In the old days, this was called being freed from the bonds of God. “Though the grease burns out of the torch, the fire passes on, and no one knows where it ends.” 1. The chapter is very brief and would appear to be mutilated. 2. Identified as King Hui of Wei, who appeared on p. 5. 3. The Mulberry Grove is identified as a rain dance from the time of King Tang of the Shang dynasty, and the Jingshou music, as part of a longer composition from the time of Yao. 4. Waley (Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China, p. 73) takes this whole paragraph to refer to the working methods of a mediocre carver and hence translates it very differently. There is a great deal to be said for his interpretation, but after much consideration I have decided to follow the traditional interpretation because it seems to me that the extreme care and caution that the cook uses when he comes to a difficult place is also a part of Zhuangzi’s “secret of caring for life.” 5. Probably the ex-Commander of the Right, as he has been punished by having one foot amputated, a common penalty in ancient China. It is mutilating punishments such as these that Zhuangzi has in mind when he talks about the need to “stay in one piece.” 6. Laozi, the reputed author of the Daodejing. 7. The first part of this last sentence is scarcely intelligible, and there are numerous suggestions for how it should be interpreted or emended. I follow Zhu Guiyao in reading “grease” instead of “finger.” For the sake of reference, I list some of the other possible interpretations as I understand them: “When the fingers complete the work of adding firewood, the fire passes on” (Guo Xiang); “Though the fingers are worn out gathering firewood, the fire passes on” (Yu Yue); “What we can point to are the fagots that have been consumed, but the fire is transmitted elsewhere” (Legge, Fukunaga). 4 IN THE WORLD OF MEN Yan Hui went to see Confucius and asked permission to take a trip “Where are you going?” “Tm going to Wei.” “What will you do there?” “T have heard that the ruler of Wei is very young. He acts in an independent manner, thinks little of how he rules his state, and fails to see his faults. It is nothing to him to lead his people into peril, and his dead are reckoned by swampfuls like so much grass.2 His people have nowhere to turn. I have heard you say, Master, ‘Leave the state that is well ordered and go to the state in chaos! At the doctor’s gate are many sick men.’ I want to use these words as my standard, in hopes that I can restore his state to health.” “Ah,” said Confucius, “you will probably go and get yourself executed, that’s all. The Way doesn’t want things mixed in with it. When it becomes a mixture, it becomes many ways; with many ways, there is a lot of bustle; and where there is a lot of bustle, there is trouble—trouble that has no remedy! The Perfect Man of ancient times made sure that he had it in himself before he tried to give it to others. When you’re not even sure what you’ve got in yourself, how do you have time to bother about what some tyrant is doing? “Do you know what it is that destroys virtue and where wisdom comes from? Virtue is destroyed by fame, and wisdom comes out of wrangling. Fame is something to beat people down with, and wisdom is a device for wrangling. Both are evil weapons—not the sort of thing to bring you success. Though your virtue may be great and your good faith unassailable, if you do not understand men’s spirits, though your fame may be wide and you do not strive with others, if you do not understand men’s minds but instead appear before a tyrant and force him to listen to sermons on benevolence and righteousness, measures and standards —this is simply using other men’s bad points to parade your own excellence. You will be called a plaguer of others. He who plagues others will be plagued in turn. You will probably be plagued by this man. “And suppose he is the kind who actually delights in worthy men and hates the unworthy—then why does he need you to try to make him any different? You had best keep your advice to yourself! Kings and dukes always lord it over others and fight to win the argument. You will find your eyes growing dazed, your color changing, your mouth working to invent excuses, your attitude becoming more and more humble, until in your mind you end by supporting him. This is to pile fire on fire, to add water to water, and is called ‘increasing the excessive.’ If you give in at the beginning, there will be no place to stop. Since your fervent advice is almost certain not to be believed, you are bound to die if you come into the presence of a tyrant. “In ancient times Jie put Guan Longfeng to death, and Zhou put Prince Bi Gan to death. Both Guan Longfeng and Prince Bi Gan were scrupulous in their conduct, bent down to comfort and aid the common people, and used their positions as ministers to oppose their superiors. Therefore their rulers, Jie and Zhou, utilized their scrupulous conduct as a means to trap them, for they were too fond of good fame. In ancient times Yao attacked Congzhi and Xuao, and Yu attacked Youhu, and these states were left empty and unpeopled, their rulers cut down. It was because they employed their armies constantly and never ceased their search for gain. All were seekers of fame or gain—have you alone not heard of them? Even the sages cannot cope with men who are after fame or gain, much less a person like you! “However, you must have some plan in mind. Come, tell me what it is.” Yan Hui said, “If I am grave and empty-hearted, diligent and of one mind, won’t that do?” “Goodness, how could that do? You may put on a fine outward show and seem very impressive, but you can’t avoid having an uncertain look on your face, anymore than an ordinary man can.2 And then you try to gauge this man’s feelings and seek to influence his mind. But with him, what is called ‘the virtue that advances a little each day’ would not succeed, much less a great display of virtue! He will stick fast to his position and never be converted. Though he may make outward signs of agreement, inwardly he will not give it a thought! How could such an approach succeed?” “Well then, suppose I am inwardly direct, outwardly compliant, and do my work through the examples of antiquity? By being inwardly direct, I can be the companion of Heaven. Being a companion of Heaven, I know that the Son of Heaven and IJ are equally the sons of Heaven. Then why would I use my words to try to get men to praise me or to try to get them not to praise me? Aman like this, people call The Child. This is what I mean by being a companion of Heaven. “By being outwardly compliant, I can be a companion of men. Lifting up the tablet, kneeling, bowing, crouching down—this is the etiquette of a minister. Everybody does it, so why shouldn’t I? If I do what other people do, they can hardly criticize me. This is what I mean by being a companion of men. “By doing my work through the examples of antiquity, I can be the companion of ancient times. Though my words may in fact be lessons and reproaches, they belong to ancient times and not to me. In this way, though I may be blunt, I cannot be blamed. This is what I mean by being a companion of antiquity. If I go about it in this way, will it do?” Confucius said, “Goodness, how could that do? You have too many policies and plans, and you haven’t seen what is needed. You will probably get off without incurring any blame, yes. But that will be as far as it goes. How do you think you can actually convert him? You are still making the mind4 your teacher!” Yan Hui said, “J have nothing more to offer. May I ask the proper way?” “You must fast!” said Confucius. “I will tell you what that means. Do you think it is easy to do anything while you have a mind? If you do, Bright Heaven will not sanction you.” Yan Hui said, “My family is poor. I haven’t drunk wine or eaten any strong foods for several months. So can I be considered as having fasted?” “That is the fasting one does before a sacrifice, not the fasting of the mind.” “May I ask what the fasting of the mind is?” Confucius said, “Make your will one! Don’t listen with your ears, listen with your mind. No, don’t listen with your mind, but listen with your spirit. Listening stops with the ears, the mind stops with recognition, but spirit is empty and waits for all things. The Way gathers in emptiness alone. Emptiness is the fasting of the mind.” Yan Hui said, “Before I heard this, I was certain that I was Hui. But now that I have heard it, there is no more Hui. Can this be called emptiness?” “That’s all there is to it,” said Confucius. “Now I will tell you. You may go and play in his bird cage but never be moved by fame. If he listens, then sing; if not, keep still. Have no gate, no opening,» but make oneness your house and live with what cannot be avoided. Then you will be close to success. “It is easy to keep from walking; the hard thing is to walk without touching the ground. It is easy to cheat when you work for men but hard to cheat when you work for Heaven. You have heard of flying with wings, but you have never heard of flying without wings. You have heard of the knowledge that knows, but you have never heard of the knowledge that does not know. Look into that closed room, the empty chamber where brightness is born! Fortune and blessing gather where there is stillness. But if you do not keep still—this is what is called sitting but racing around.® Let your ears and eyes communicate with what is inside and put mind and knowledge on the outside. Then even gods and spirits will come to dwell, not to speak of men! This is the changing of the ten thousand things, the bond of Yu and Shun, the constant practice of Fu Xi and Ji Qu How much more should it be arule for lesser men!” Zigao, duke of She,8 who was being sent on a mission to Qi, consulted Confucius. “The king is sending me on a very important mission. Qi will probably treat me with great honor but will be in no hurry to do anything more. Even a commoner cannot be forced to act, much less one of the feudal lords. I am very worried about it. You once said to me, ‘In all affairs, whether large or small, there are few men who reach a happy conclusion except through the Way. If you do not succeed, you are bound to suffer from the judgment of men. If you do succeed, you are bound to suffer from the yin and yang.2 To suffer no harm whether or not you succeed—only the man who has virtue can do that.’ I am a man who eats plain food that is simply cooked, so that no one ever complains of the heat in my kitchens 12 Yet this morning I received my orders from the king and by evening I am gulping ice water—do you suppose I have developed some kind of internal fever? I have not even gone to Qi to see what the situation is like, and already I am suffering from the yin and yang. And if I do not succeed, I am bound to suffer from the judgment of men. I will have both worries. As a minister, I am not capable of carrying out this mission. But perhaps you have some advice you can give me....” Confucius said, “In the world, there are two great decrees: one is fate and the other is duty4t That a son should love his parents is fate—you cannot erase this from his heart. That a subject should serve his ruler is duty— there is no place he can go and be without his ruler, no place he can escape to between heaven and earth. These are called the great decrees. Therefore, to serve your parents and be content to follow them anywhere—this is the perfection of filial piety. To serve your ruler and be content to do anything for him—this is the peak of loyalty. And to serve your own mind so that sadness or joy does not sway or move it; to understand what you can do nothing about and to be content with it as with fate—this is the perfection of virtue. As a subject and a son, you are bound to find things you cannot avoid. If you act in accordance with the state of affairs and forget about yourself, then what leisure will you have to love life and hate death? Act in this way, and you will be all right. “J want to tell you something else I have learned. In all human relations, if the two parties are living close to each other, they may form a bond through personal trust. But if they are far apart, they must use words to communicate their loyalty, and words must be transmitted by someone. To transmit words that are either pleasing to both parties or infuriating to both parties is one of the most difficult things in the world. When both parties are pleased, there must be some exaggeration of the good points; and when both parties are angered, there must be some exaggeration of the bad points. Anything that smacks of exaggeration is irresponsible. Where there is irresponsibility, no one will trust what is said, and when that happens, the man who is transmitting the words will be in danger. Therefore the aphorism says, “Transmit the established facts; do not transmit words of exaggeration.’ If you do that, you will probably come out all right. “When men get together to pit their strength in games of skill, they start off in a light and friendly mood but usually end up in a dark and angry one, and if they go on too long, they start resorting to various underhanded tricks. When men meet at some ceremony to drink, they start off in an orderly manner but usually end up in disorder; and if they go on too long, they start indulging in various irregular amusements. It is the same with all things. What starts out being sincere usually ends up being deceitful. What was simple in the beginning acquires monstrous proportions in the end. “Words are like wind and waves; actions are a matter of gain and loss. Wind and waves are easily moved; questions of gain and loss easily lead to danger. Hence anger arises from no other cause than clever words and one-sided speeches. When animals face death, they do not care what cries they make; their breath comes in gasps, and a wild fierceness is born in their hearts. [Men, too,] if you press them too hard, are bound to answer you with ill-natured hearts, though they do not know why they do so. If they themselves do not understand why they behave like this, then who knows where it will end? “Therefore the aphorism says, ‘Do not deviate from your orders; do not press for completion.’ To go beyond the limit is excess; to deviate from orders or press for completion is a dangerous thing. A good completion takes a long time; a bad completion cannot be changed later. Can you afford to be careless? “Just go along with things and let your mind move freely. Resign yourself to what cannot be avoided and nourish what is within you—this is best. What more do you have to do to fulfill your mission? Nothing is as good as following orders (obeying fate)—that’s how difficult it isl2 Yan He, who had been appointed tutor to the crown prince, son of Duke Ling of Wei, went to consult Ju Boyu3 “Here is this man who by nature is lacking in virtue. If I let him go on with his unruliness, I will endanger the state. If I try to impose some rule on him, I will endanger myself. He knows enough to recognize the faults of others, but he doesn’t know his own faults. What can I do with a man like this?” “A very good question,” said Ju Boyu. “Be careful, be on your guard, and make sure that you yourself are in the right! In your actions, it is best to follow along with him, and in your mind, it is best to harmonize with him. However, these two courses involve certain dangers. Though you follow along, you don’t want to be pulled into his doings, and though you harmonize, you don’t want to be drawn out too far. If in your actions you follow along to the extent of being pulled in with him, then you will be overthrown, destroyed, wiped out, and brought to your knees. If in your mind you harmonize to the extent of being drawn out, then you will be talked about, named, blamed, and condemned. If he wants to be a child, be a child with him. If he wants to follow erratic ways, follow erratic ways with him. If he wants to be reckless, be reckless with him. Understand him thoroughly, and lead him to the point where he is without fault 44 “Don’t you know about the praying mantis that waved its arms angrily in front of an approaching carriage, unaware that it was incapable of stopping it? Such was the high opinion it had of its talents. Be careful, be on your guard! If you offend him by parading your store of talents, you will be in danger! “Don’t you know how the tiger trainer goes about it? He doesn’t dare give the tiger any living thing to eat for fear it will learn the taste of fury by killing it. He doesn’t dare give it any whole thing to eat for fear it will learn the taste of fury by tearing it apart. He gauges the state of the tiger’s appetite and thoroughly understands its fierce disposition. Tigers are a different breed from men, and yet you can train them to be gentle with their keepers by following along with them. The men who get killed are the ones who go against them. “The horse lover uses a fine box to catch the dung and a giant clam shell to catch the stale. But if a mosquito or a fly lights on the horse and he slaps it at the wrong time, then the horse will break the bit, hurt its head, and bang its chest. The horse lover tries to think of everything, but his affection leads him into error. Can you afford to be careless?” Carpenter Shi went to Qi and, when he got to Crooked Shaft, he saw a serrate oak standing by the village shrine. It was broad enough to shelter several thousand oxen and measured a hundred spans around, towering above the hills. The lowest branches were eighty feet from the ground, and a dozen or so of them could have been made into boats. There were so many sightseers that the place looked like a fair, but the carpenter didn’t even glance around and went on his way without stopping. His apprentice stood staring for a long time and then ran after Carpenter Shi and said, “Since I first took up my ax and followed you, Master, I have never seen timber as beautiful as this. But you don’t even bother to look, and go right on without stopping. Why is that?” ‘Forget it—say no more!” said the carpenter. “It’s a worthless tree! Make boats out of it and they’d sink; make coffins and they’d rot in no time; make vessels and they’d break at once. Use it for doors and it would sweat sap like pine; use it for posts and the worms would eat them up. It’s not a timber tree—there’s nothing it can be used for. That’s how it got to be that old!” After Carpenter Shi had returned home, the oak tree appeared to him in a dream and said, “What are you comparing me with? Are you comparing me with those useful trees? The cherry apple, the pear, the orange, the citron, the rest of those fructiferous trees and shrubs—as soon as their fruit is ripe, they are torn apart and subjected to abuse. Their big limbs are broken off, their little limbs are yanked around. Their utility makes life miserable for them, and so they don’t get to finish out the years Heaven gave them but are cut off in mid-journey. They bring it on themselves—the pulling and tearing of the common mob. And it’s the same way with all other things. “As for me, I’ve been trying a long time to be of no use, and though I almost died, I’ve finally got it. This is of great use to me. If I had been of some use, would I ever have grown this large? Moreover, you and IJ are both of us things. What’s the point of this—things condemning things? You, a worthless man about to die—how do you know I’m a worthless tree?” When Carpenter Shi woke up, he reported his dream. His apprentice said, “If it’s so intent on being of no use, what’s it doing there at the village shrine?”L5 “Shhh! Say no more! It’s only resting there. If we carp and criticize, it will merely conclude that we don’t understand it. Even if it weren’t at the shrine, do you suppose it would be cut down? It protects itself in a different way from ordinary people. If you try to judge it by conventional standards, you’ll be way off!” Ziqi of Nanbo was wandering around the Hill of Shang when he saw a huge tree there, different from all the rest. A thousand teams of horses could have taken shelter under it, and its shade would have covered them all. Ziqi said, “What tree is this? It must certainly have some extraordinary usefulness!” But looking up, he saw that the smaller limbs were gnarled and twisted, unfit for beams or rafters, and looking down, he saw that the trunk was pitted and rotten and could not be used for coffins. He licked one of the leaves, and it blistered his mouth and made it sore. He sniffed the odor, and it was enough to make a man drunk for three days. “It turns out to be a completely unusable tree,” said Ziqi, “and so it has been able to grow this big. Aha!—it is this unusableness that the Holy Man makes use of!” The region of Jingshi in Song is fine for growing catalpas, cypresses, and mulberries. But those that are more than one or two arm lengths around are cut down for people who want monkey perches; those that are three or four ie around are cut down for the ridgepoles of tall roofs;16 © and those that are seven or eight spans are cut down for the families of nobles or rich merchants who want side boards for coffins. So they never get to live out the years Heaven gave them but are cut down in mid- journey by axes. This is the danger of being usable. In the Jie sacrifice, 17 oxen with white foreheads, pigs with turned-up snouts, and men with piles cannot be offered to the river. This is something all the shamans know, and hence they consider them inauspicious creatures. But the Holy Man, for the same reason, considers them highly auspicious. There’s Crippled Shu—chin stuck down in his navel, shoulders up above his head, pigtail pointing at the sky, his five organs on the top, his two thighs pressing his ribs. By sewing and washing, he gets enough to fill his mouth; by handling a winnow and sifting out the good grain, he makes enough to feed ten people. When the authorities call out the troops, he stands in the crowd waving goodbye; when they get up a big work party, they pass him over because he’s achronic invalid. And when they are doling out grain to the ailing, he gets three big measures and ten bundles of firewood. With a crippled body, he’s still able to look after himself and finish out the years Heaven gave him. How much better, then, if he had crippled virtue! When Confucius visited Chu, Jie Yu, the madman of Chu, wandered by his gate crying, “Phoenix, phoenix, how has virtue failed! The future you cannot wait for; the past you cannot pursue. When the world has the Way, the sage succeeds; when the world is without the Way, the sage survives. In times like the present, we do well to escape penalty. Good fortune is as light as a feather, but nobody knows how to pick it up. Misfortune is as heavy as the earth, but nobody knows how to stay out of its way. Leave off, leave off—this teaching men virtue! Dangerous, dangerous—to mark off the ground and run! Fool, fool— don’t spoil my walking! I walk a crooked way—don’t step on my feet. The mountain trees do themselves harm; the grease in the torch burns itself up. The cinnamon can be eaten, and so it gets cut down; the lacquer tree can be used, and so it gets hacked apart. All men know the use of the useful, but nobody knows the use of the useless!”18 1. Yan Hui was Confucius’s favorite disciple. Throughout this chapter Zhuangzi refers to a number of historical figures, many of whom appear in the Analects, though the speeches and anecdotes that he invents for them have nothing to do with history. 2. Omitting the guo, following Xi Tong. But there are many other interpretations of this peculiar sentence. 3. I follow Ma Xulun in taking this sentence to refer to Yan Hui. The older interpretation of Guo Xiang takes it to mean: “He [the ruler of Wei] puts on a fine outward show and is very overbearing; his expression is never fixed, and ordinary men do not try to oppose him.” 4. Not the natural or “given” mind but the mind that makes artificial distinctions. In . Following Zhang Binglin, I read dou instead of du. ICN . The body sits, but the mind continues to race. IM . Mythical sage rulers. loo . Ahigh minister of Chu and a relative of the king. INO . The excitement and worry of success will upset the balance of the yin and yang within the body and bring about sickness. 10. The latter part of the sentence is barely intelligible and the translation tentative. Legge’s interpretation is ingenious though strained: “In my diet I take what is coarse, and do not seek delicacies,—a man whose cookery does not require him to be using cooling drinks.” 11. Yi, elsewhere translated as “righteousness.” 12. The phrase zhiming can be interpreted as either “following orders” or “obeying fate,” and both meanings are almost certainly intended. Since for Zhuangzi, obeying fate is an extremely easy thing to do, the last part of the sentence is ironic. Throughout this passage Confucius, while appearing to give advice on how to carry out a diplomatic mission, is in fact enunciating Zhuangzi’s code for successful behavior in general. 13. Yan He was a scholar of Lu, Ju Boyu a minister of Wei. The crown prince is the notorious Kuaikui, who was forced to flee from Wei because he plotted to kill his mother. He reentered the state and seized the throne from his son in 481 BCE. 14. Waley (Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China, p. 109) translates, “And if you probe him, do so in a part where his skin is not sore,” taking the verb da, which I have translated as “understand thoroughly,” to refer to acupuncture. 15. The shrine, or altar of the soil, was always situated ina grove of beautiful trees. So the oak was serving a purpose by lending an air of sanctity to the spot. 16. Following Ma Xulun, I read mian (roof) in place of ming. 17. Probably a spring sacrifice for the “dispelling (jie) of sins,” though there are other interpretations. Sacrifices of animals, and sometimes human beings, were made to the Lord of the River, the god of the Yellow River. 18. Zhuangzi bases this passage on the somewhat similar anecdote and song of the madman Jie Yu in Analects XVII, 5. 5 THE SIGN OF VIRTUE COMPLETE In Lu there was a man named Wang Tai who had had his foot cut off. He had as many followers gathered around him as Confucius. Chang Ji asked Confucius, “This Wang Tai who’s lost a foot—how does he get to divide up Lu with you, Master, and make half of it his disciples? He doesn’t stand up and teach, he doesn’t sit down and discuss, yet they go to him empty and come home full. Does he really have some wordless teaching, some formless way of bringing the mind to completion? What sort of man is he?” Confucius said, “This gentleman is a sage. It’s just that I’ve been tardy and haven’t gone to see him yet. But if I go to him as my teacher, how much more should those who are not my equals! Why only the state of Lu? Ill bring the whole world along, and we’ll all become his followers!” Chang Ji said, “If he’s lost a foot and is still superior to the Master, then how far above the common run of men he must be! But if that’s so, then what unique way does he have of using his mind?” Confucius said, “Life and death are great affairs, and yet they are no change to him. Though heaven and earth flop over and fall down, it is no loss to him. He sees clearly into what has no falsehood and does not shift with things. He takes it as fate that things should change, and he holds fast to the source.” “What do you mean by that?” asked Chang Ji. Confucius said, “If you look at them from the point of view of their differences, then there is liver and gall, Chu and Yue. But if you look at them from the point of view of their sameness, then the ten thousand things all are one. A man like this doesn’t know what his ears or eyes should approve—he lets his mind play in the harmony of virtue. As for things, he sees them as one and does not see their loss. He regards the loss of a foot as a lump of earth thrown away.” Chang Ji said, “In the way he goes about it, he uses his knowledge to get at his mind and uses his mind to get at the constant mind. Why should things gather around him?” Confucius said, “Men do not mirror themselves in running water—they mirror themselves in still water. Only what is still can still the stillness of other things. Of those that receive life from the earth, the pine and cypress alone are best—they stay as green as ever in winter or summer. Of those that receive life from Heaven, Yao and Shun alone are best—they stand at the head of the ten thousand things. Luckily they were able to order their lives and thereby order the lives of other things. Proof that a man is holding fast to the beginning lies in the fact of his fearlessness. A brave soldier will plunge alone into the midst of nine armies. He seeks fame and can bring himself to this. How much more, then, is possible for a man who governs Heaven and earth, stores up the ten thousand things, lets the six parts of his body2 be only a dwelling, makes ornaments of his ears and eyes, unifies the knowledge of what he knows, and in his mind never tastes death. He will soon choose the day and ascend far off. Men may become his followers, but how could he be willing to bother himself about things?” Shentu Jia, who had lost a foot, was studying under Bohun Wuren, along with Zichan of Zheng.2 Zichan said to Shentu Jia, “If I go out first, you stay behind, and if you go out first, Pl stay behind.” Next day the two of them were again sitting on the same mat in the same hall. Zichan said to Shentu Jia, “If I go out first, you stay behind, and if you go out first, I'll stay behind! Now I will go out. Are you going to stay behind, or aren’t you? When you see a prime minister, you don’t even get out of the way—do you think you’re the equal of a prime minister?” Shentu Jia said, “Within the gates of the Master, is there any such thing as a prime minister? You take delight in being a prime minister and pushing people behind you. But I’ve heard that if the mirror is bright, no dust will settle on it; if dust settles, it isn’t really bright. When you live around worthy men a long time, you'll be free of faults. You regard the Master as a great man, and yet you talk like this—it’s not right, is it?” Zichan said, “You, a man like this—and still you claim to be better than a Yao! Take a look at your virtue and see if it’s not enough to give you cause to reflect!” Shentu Jia said, “People who excuse their faults and claim they didn’t deserve to be punished—there are lots of them. But those who don’t excuse their faults and who admit they didn’t deserve to be spared—they are few. To know what you can’t do anything about and to be content with it as you would with fate—only a man of virtue can do that. If you play around in front of Archer Yi’s target, you're right in the way of the arrows, and if you don’t get hit, it’s a matter of fate. There are lots of men with two feet who laugh at me for having only one. It makes me boil with rage, but I come here to the Master’s place, and I feel calmed down again and go home. I don’t know whether he washes me clean with goodness or whether I come to understand things by myself. The Master and I have been friends for nineteen years, and he’s never once let on that he’s aware I’m missing a foot. Now you and I are supposed to be wandering outside the realm of forms and bodies, and you come looking for me inside itt you're at fault, aren’t you?” Zichan squirmed, changed his expression, and put a different look on his face. “Say no more about it,” he said. In Lu there was a man named Shushan No-Toes who had had his foot cut off. Stumping along, he went to see Confucius. “You weren’t careful enough!” said Confucius. “Since you’ve already broken the law and gotten yourself into trouble like this, what do you expect to gain by coming to me now?” No-Toes said, “I just didn’t understand my duty and was too careless of my body, and so I lost a foot. But I’ve come now because I still have something that is worth more than a foot and I want to try to hold on to it. There is nothing that heaven doesn’t cover, nothing that earth doesn’t bear up. I supposed, Master, that you would be like heaven and earth. How did I know you would act like this?” “Tt was stupid of me,” said Confucius. “Please, sir, won’t you come in? I'd like to describe to you what I have learned.” But No-Toes went out. Confucius said, “Be diligent, my disciples! Here is No- Toes, a man who has had his foot cut off, and still he’s striving to learn so he can make up for the evil of his former conduct. How much more, then, should men whose virtue is still unimpaired!” No-Toes told the story to Lao Dan. “Confucius certainly hasn’t reached the stage of a Perfect Man, has he? What does he mean coming around so obsequiously to study with you? He is after the sham illusion of fame and reputation and doesn’t know that the Perfect Man looks on these as so many handcuffs and fetters!” Lao Dan said, “Why don’t you just make him see that life and death are the same story, that acceptable and unacceptable are on a single string? Wouldn’t it be good to free him from his handcuffs and fetters?” No-Toes said, “When Heaven has punished him, how can you set him free?” Duke Ai of Lu said to Confucius, “In Wei there was an ugly man named Ai Taituo. But when men were around him, they thought only of him and couldn’t break away, and when women saw him, they ran begging to their fathers and mothers, saying, ‘I’d rather be this gentleman’s concubine than another man’s wife!’—there were more than ten such cases, and it hasn’t stopped yet. No one ever heard him take the lead—he always just chimed in with other people. He wasn’t in the position of a ruler in which he could save men’s lives, and he had no store of provisions to fill men’s bellies. On top of that, he was ugly enough to astound the whole world, chimed in but never led, and knew no more than what went on right around him. And yet men and women flocked to him. He certainly must be different from other men, I thought, and I summoned him so I could have a look. Just as they said—he was ugly enough to astound the world. But he hadn’t been with me more than a month or so when I began to realize what kind of man he was, and before the year was out, I really trusted him. There was no one in the state to act as chief minister, and I wanted to hand over the government to him. He was vague about giving an answer, evasive, as though he hoped to be let off, and I was embarrassed, but in the end I turned the state over to him. Then, before I knew it, he left me and went away. I felt completely crushed, as though I’d suffered a loss and didn’t have anyone left to enjoy my state with. What kind of man is he, anyway?” Confucius said, “I once went on a mission to Chu, and as I was going along, I saw some little pigs nursing at the body of their dead mother. After a while, they gave a start, and all ran away and left her because they could no longer see their likeness in her; she was not the same. In loving their mother, they loved not her body but the thing that moved her body. When a man has been killed in battle and people come to bury him, he has no use for his medals. When a man has had his feet amputated, he doesn’t care much about shoes. For both, the thing that is basic no longer exists. When women are selected to be consorts of the Son of Heaven, their nails are not pared and their ears are not pierced. When a man has just taken a wife, he is kept in posts outside [the palace] and is no longer sent on [dangerous] missions.© If so much care is taken to keep the body whole, how much more in the case of a man whose virtue is whole? Now Ai Taituo says nothing and is trusted, accomplishes nothing and is loved, so that people want to turn over their states to him and are afraid only that he won’t accept. It must be that his powers are whole, though his virtue takes no form.” “What do you mean when you say his powers are whole?” asked Duke Ai. Confucius said, “Life, death, preservation, loss, failure, success, poverty, riches, worthiness, unworthiness, slander, fame, hunger, thirst, cold, heat—these are the alternations of the world, the workings of fate. Day and night they change place before us, and wisdom cannot spy out their source. Therefore, they should not be enough to destroy your harmony; they should not be allowed to enter the storehouse of spirit. If you can harmonize and delight in them, master them and never be at a loss for joy; if you can do this day and night without break and make it be spring with everything, mingling with all and creating the moment within your own mind—this is what I call being whole in power.” “What do you mean when you say his virtue takes no form?” “Among level things, water at rest is the most perfect, and therefore it can serve as a standard. It guards what is inside and shows no movement outside. Virtue is the establishment of perfect harmony. Though virtue takes no form, things cannot break away from it.” Some days later, Duke Ai reported his conversation to Min ZiZ “At first, when I faced south and became ruler of the realm, I tried to look after the regulation of the people and worried that they might die. I really thought I understood things perfectly. But now that I’ve heard the words of a Perfect Man, I’m afraid there was nothing to my understanding—I was thinking too little of my own welfare and ruining the state. Confucius and I are not subject and ruler—we are friends in virtue, that’s all.” KOK Mr. Lame-Hunchback-No-Lips talked to Duke Ling of Wei, and Duke Ling was so pleased with him that when he looked at normal men, he thought their necks looked too lean and skinny. Mr. Pitcher-Sized-Wen talked to Duke Huan of Qi, and Duke Huan was so pleased with him that when he looked at normal men, he thought their necks looked too lean and skinny. Therefore, if virtue is preeminent, the body will be forgotten. But when men do not forget what can be forgotten but forget what cannot be forgotten—that may be called true forgetting. So the sage has his wanderings. For him, knowledge is an offshoot, promises are glue, favors are a patching up, and skill is a peddler. The sage hatches no schemes, so what use has he for knowledge? He does no carving, so what use has he for glue? He suffers no loss, so what use has he for favors? He hawks no goods, so what use has he for peddling? These four are called Heavenly Gruel. Heavenly Gruel is the food of Heaven, and if he’s already gotten food from Heaven, what use does he have for men? He has the form of a man but not the feelings of a man. Since he has the form of a man, he bands together with other men. Since he doesn’t have the feelings of a man, right and wrong cannot get at him. Puny and small, he sticks with the rest of men. Massive and great, he perfects his Heaven alone. Huizi said to Zhuangzi, “Can a man really be without feelings?” Zhuangzi: “Yes.” Huizi: “But a man who has no feelings—how can you call him a man?” Zhuangzi: “The Way gave him a face; Heaven gave him a form—why can’t you call him a man?” Huizi: “But if you’ve already called him a man, how can he be without feelings?” Zhuangzi: “That’s not what I mean by feelings. When I talk about having no feelings, I mean that a man doesn’t allow likes or dislikes to get in and do him harm. He just lets things be the way they are and doesn’t try to help life along.” Huizi: “If he doesn’t try to help life along, then how can he keep himself alive?” Zhuangzi: “The Way gave him a face; Heaven gave him a form. He doesn’t let likes or dislikes get in and do him harm. You, now—you treat your spirit like an outsider. You wear out your energy, leaning on a tree and moaning, slumping at your desk and dozing—Heaven picked out a body for you and you use it to gibber about ‘hard’ and ‘white"2 [— . As apenalty for some offense. INV . The legs, arms, head, and trunk. \es) 3. Zichan (d. 522 BCE) was prime minister of the state of Zheng. 4. Following Wang Maohong’s suggestion, I reverse the position of nei and wai. 5. The meaning is doubtful. I follow Guo Xiang in taking it to be areference to the legend that Confucius went to Laozi for instruction. 6. The sentence is unclear. Another interpretation would be: “he is allowed to spend nights at home and is not required to sleep in the officials’ dormitory.” 7. Adisciple of Confucius. 8. Originally the text probably had some other phrase at this point referring to the walk, back, or lips of normal men, which dropped out and was replaced by the phrase from the parallel sentence that follows. 9. On “hard” and “white,” see p. 12, n. 9. Zhuangzi’s description of Huizi is rhymed in the original. 6 THE GREAT AND VENERABLE TEACHER He who knows what it is that Heaven does, and knows what it is that man does, has reached the peak. Knowing what it is that Heaven does, he lives with Heaven. Knowing what it is that man does, he uses the knowledge of what he knows to help out the knowledge of what he doesn’t know and lives out the years that Heaven gave him without being cut off midway—this is the perfection of knowledge. However, there is a difficulty. Knowledge must wait for something before it can be applicable, and that which it waits for is never certain. How, then, can I know that what I call Heaven is not really man and what I call man is not really Heaven? There must first be a True Man! before there can be true knowledge. What do I mean by a True Man? The True Man of ancient times did not rebel against want, did not grow proud in plenty, and did not plan his affairs. A man like this could commit an error and not regret it, could meet with success and not make a show. Aman like this could climb the high places and not be frightened, could enter the water and not get wet, could enter the fire and not get burned. His knowledge was able to climb all the way up to the Way like this. The True Man of ancient times slept without dreaming and woke without care; he ate without savoring; and his breath came from deep inside. The True Man breathes with his heels; the mass of men breathe with their throats. Crushed and bound down, they gasp out their words as though they were retching. Deep in their passions and desires, they are shallow in the workings of Heaven. The True Man of ancient times knew nothing of loving life, knew nothing of hating death. He emerged without delight; he went back in without a fuss. He came briskly, he went briskly, and that was all. He didn’t forget where he began; he didn’t try to find out where he would end. He received something and took pleasure in it; he forgot about it and handed it back again. This is what I call not using the mind to repel the Way, not using man to help out Heaven. This is what I call the True Man. Since he is like this, his mind forgets:2 his face is calm; his forehead is broad. He is chilly like autumn, balmy like spring, and his joy and anger prevail through the four seasons. He goes along with what is right for things, and no one knows his limit. Therefore, when the sage calls out the troops, he may overthrow nations, but he will not lose the hearts of the people. His bounty enriches ten thousand ages, but he has no love for men. Therefore he who delights in bringing success to things is not a sage; he who has affections is not benevolent; he who looks for the right time is not a worthy man; he who cannot encompass both profit and loss is not a gentleman; he who thinks of conduct and fame and misleads himself is not a man of breeding; and he who destroys himself and is without truth is not a user of men. Those like Hu Buxie, Wu Guang, Bo Yi, Shu Qi, Ji Zi, Xu Yu, Ji Tuo, and Shentu Di—all of them slaved in the service of other men, took joy in bringing other men joy, but could not find joy in any joy of their own This was the True Man of old: his bearing was lofty and did not crumble; he appeared to lack but accepted nothing; he was dignified in his correctness but not insistent; he was vast in his emptiness but not ostentatious. Mild and cheerful, he seemed to be happy; reluctant, he could not help doing certain things; annoyed, he let it show in his face; relaxed, he rested in his virtue. Tolerant 4 he seemed to be part of the world; towering alone, he could be checked by nothing; withdrawn, he seemed to prefer to cut himself off; bemused, he forgot what he was going to say.> He regarded penalties as the body, rites as the wings, wisdom as what is timely, virtue as what is reasonable. Because he regarded penalties as the body, he was benign in his killing. Because he regarded rites as the wings, he got along in the world. Because he regarded wisdom as what is timely, there were things that he could not keep from doing. Because he regarded virtue as what is reasonable, he was like a man with two feet who gets to the top of the hill. And yet people really believed that he worked hard to get there.£ Therefore his liking was one, and his not liking was one. His being one was one, and his not being one was one. In being one, he was acting as a companion of Heaven. In not being one, he was acting as a companion of man. When man and Heaven do not defeat each other, then we may be said to have the True Man. Life and death are fated—constant as the succession of dark and dawn, a matter of Heaven. There are some things that man can do nothing about—all are a matter of the nature of creatures. If a man is willing to regard Heaven as a father and to love it, then how much more should he be willing to do for that which is even greater! If he is willing to regard the ruler as superior to himself and to die for him, then how much more should he be willing to do for the Truth! When the springs dry up and the fish are left stranded on the ground, they spew one another with moisture and wet one another down with spit—but it would be much better if they could forget one another in the rivers and lakes. Instead of praising Yao and condemning Jie, it would be better to forget both of them and transform yourself with the Way. The Great Clod burdens me with form, labors me with life, eases me in old age, and rests me in death. So if I think well of my life, for the same reason I must think well of my death.& You hide your boat in the ravine and your fish net2 in the swamp and tell yourself that they will be safe. But in the middle of the night, a strong man shoulders them and carries them off, and in your stupidity, you don’t know why it happened. You think you do right to hide little things in big ones, and yet they get away from you. But if you were to hide the world in the world, so that nothing could get away, this would be the final reality of the constancy of things. You have had the audacity to take on human form, and you are delighted. But the human form has ten thousand changes that never come to an end. Your joys, then, must be uncountable. Therefore, the sage wanders in the realm where things cannot get away from him, and all are preserved. He delights in early death; he delights in old age; he delights in the beginning; he delights in the end. If he can serve as a model for men, how much more so that which the ten thousand things are tied to and all changes alike wait for! The Way has its reality and its signs but is without action or form. You can hand it down, but you cannot receive it; you can get it, but you cannot see it. It is its own source, its own root. Before Heaven and earth existed, it was there, firm from ancient times. It gave spirituality to the spirits and to God; it gave birth to Heaven and to earth. It exists beyond the highest point, and yet you cannot call it lofty; it exists beneath the limit of the six directions, and yet you cannot call it deep. It was born before Heaven and earth, and yet you cannot say it has been there for long; it is earlier than the earliest time, and yet you cannot call it old. Xiwei got it and held up heaven and earth12 Fu xi got it and entered into the mother of breath. The Big Dipper got it and from ancient times has never wavered. The Sun and Moon got it and from ancient times have never rested. Kanpi got it and entered Kunlun. Pingyi got it and wandered in the great river. Jian Wu got it and lived in the great mountain! The Yellow Emperor got it and ascended to the cloudy heavens. Zhuan Xu got it and dwelled in the Dark Palace. Yuqiang got it and stood at the limit of the north. The Queen Mother of the West got it and took her seat on Shaoguang—nobody knows her beginning, nobody knows her end. Pengzu got it and lived from the age of Shun to the age of the Five Dictators 12 Fu Yue got it and became minister to Wuding, who extended his rule over the whole world; then Fu Yue climbed up to the Eastern Governor, straddled the Winnowing Basket and the Tail, and took his place among the ranks of stars.13 Nanpo Zikui said to the Woman Crookback, “You are old in years, and yet your complexion is that of a child. Why is this?” “T have heard the Way!” “Can the Way be learned?” asked Nanpo Zikui. “Goodness, how could that be? Anyway, you aren’t the man to do it. Now there’s Buliang Yi—he has the talent of a sage but not the Way of a sage, whereas I have the Way of a sage but not the talent of a sage. I thought I would try to teach him and see if I could really get anywhere near to making him a sage. It’s easier to explain the Way of a sage to someone who has the talent of a sage, you know. So I began explaining and kept at him for three days 14 and after that he was able to put the world outside himself. When he had put the world outside himself, I kept at him for seven days more, and after that he was able to put things outside himself. When he had put things outside himself, I kept at him for nine days more, and after that he was able to put life outside himself. After he had put life outside himself, he was able to achieve the brightness of dawn, and when he had achieved the brightness of dawn, he could see his own aloneness. After he had managed to see his own aloneness, he could do away with past and present, and after he had done away with past and present, he was able to enter where there is no life and no death. That which kills life does not die; that which gives life to life does not live 15 This is the kind of thing it is: there’s nothing it doesn’t send off, nothing it doesn’t welcome, nothing it doesn’t destroy, nothing it doesn’t complete. Its name is Peace-in-Strife. After the strife, it attains completion.” Nanpo Zikui asked, “Where did you happen to hear this?” “T heard it from the son of Aided-by-Ink, and Aided-by- Ink heard it from the grandson of Repeated-Recitation, and the grandson of Repeated-Recitation heard it from Seeing- Brightly, and Seeing-Brightly heard it from Whispered- Agreement, and Whispered-Agreement heard it from Waiting-for-Use, and Waiting-for-Use heard it from Exclaimed-Wonder, and Exclaimed-Wonder heard it from Dark-Obscurity, and Dark-Obscurity heard it from Participation-in-Mystery, and Participation-in-Mystery heard it from Copy-the-Source!”1® Master Si, Master Yu, Master Li, and Master Lai were all four talking together. “Who can look on nonbeing as his head, on life as his back, and on death as his rump?” they said. “Who knows that life and death, existence and annihilation, are all a single body? I will be his friend!” The four men looked at one another and smiled. There was no disagreement in their hearts, and so the four of them became friends. All at once, Master Yu fell ill. Master Si went to ask how he was. “Amazing!” said Master Yu. “The Creator is making me all crookedy like this! My back sticks up like a hunchback, and my vital organs are on top of me. My chin is hidden in my navel, my shoulders are up above my head, and my pigtail points at the sky. It must be some dislocation of the yin and yang!” Yet he seemed calm at heart and unconcerned. Dragging himself haltingly to the well, he looked at his reflection and said, “My, my! So the Creator is making me all crookedy like this!” “Do you resent it?” asked Master Si. “Why no, what would I resent? If the process continues, perhaps in time he’ll transform my left arm into a rooster. In that case I’ll keep watch during the night. Or perhaps in time he’ll transform my right arm into a cross-bow pellet, and I’ll shoot down an owl for roasting. Or perhaps in time he'll transform my buttocks into cartwheels. Then, with my spirit for a horse, I’ll climb up and go for a ride. What need will I ever have for a carriage again? “T received life because the time had come; I will lose it because the order of things passes on. Be content with this time and dwell in this order, and then neither sorrow nor joy can touch you. In ancient times this was called the ‘freeing of the bound.’ There are those who cannot free themselves because they are bound by things. But nothing can ever win against Heaven—that’s the way it’s always been. What would I have to resent?” Suddenly Master Lai grew ill. Gasping and wheezing, he lay at the point of death. His wife and children gathered round in a circle and began to cry. Master Li, who had come to ask how he was, said, “Shoo! Get back! Don’t disturb the process of change!” Then he leaned against the doorway and talked to Master Lai. “How marvelous the Creator is! What is he going to make out of you next? Where is he going to send you? Will he make you into a rat’s liver? Will he make you into a bug’s arm?” Master Lai said, “A child, obeying his father and mother, goes wherever he is told, east or west, south or north. And the yin and yang—how much more are they to a man than father or mother! Now that they have brought me to the verge of death, if I should refuse to obey them, how perverse I would be! What fault is it of theirs? The Great Clod burdens me with form, labors me with life, eases me in old age, and rests me in death. So if I think well of my life, for the same reason I must think well of my death. When a skilled smith is casting metal, if the metal should leap up and say, ‘I insist on being made into a Moye!1Z he would surely regard it as very inauspicious metal indeed. Now, having had the audacity to take on human form once, if I should say, ‘I don’t want to be anything but a man! Nothing but a man!’ the Creator would surely regard me as a most inauspicious sort of person. So now I think of heaven and earth as a great furnace, and the Creator as a skilled smith. Where could he send me that would not be all right? I will go off to sleep peacefully, and then with a start, I will wake up.” Master Sanghu, Mengzi Fan, and Master Qinzhang, three friends, said to one another, “Who can join with others without joining with others? Who can do with others without doing with others? Who can climb up to heaven and wander in the mists, roam the infinite, and forget life forever and forever?” The three men looked at one another and smiled. There was no disagreement in their hearts, and so they became friends. After some time had passed without event, Master Sanghu died. He had not yet been buried when Confucius, hearing of his death, sent Zigong to assist at the funeral. When Zigong arrived, he found one of the dead man’s friends weaving frames for silkworms, while the other strummed a lute. Joining their voices, they sang this song: Ah, Sanghu! Ah, Sanghu! You have gone back to your true form While we remain as men, O! Zigong hastened forward and said, “May I be so bold as to ask what sort of ceremony this is—singing in the very presence of the corpse?” The two men looked at each other and laughed. “What does this man know of the meaning of ceremony?” they said. Zigong returned and reported to Confucius what had happened. “What sort of men are they, anyway?” he asked. “They pay no attention to proper behavior, disregard their personal appearance and, without so much as changing the expression on their faces, sing in the very presence of the corpse! I can think of no name for them! What sort of men are they?” “Such men as they,” said Confucius, “wander beyond the realm; men like me wander within it. Beyond and within can never meet. It was stupid of me to send you to offer condolences. Even now they have joined with the Creator as men to wander in the single breath of heaven and earth. They look on life as a swelling tumor, a protruding wen, and on death as the draining of a sore or the bursting of a boil. To men such as these, how could there be any question of putting life first or death last? They borrow the forms of different creatures and house them in the same body. They forget liver and gall, cast aside ears and eyes, turning and revolving, ending and beginning again, unaware of where they start or finish. Idly they roam beyond the dust and dirt; they wander free and easy in the service of inaction. Why should they fret and fuss about the ceremonies of the vulgar world and make a display for the ears and eyes of the common herd?” Zigong said, “Well then, Master, what is this ‘realm’ that you stick to?” Confucius said, “I am one of those men punished by Heaven. Nevertheless, I will share with you what I have.” “Then may I ask about the realm?”L8 said Zigong. Confucius said, “Fish thrive in water, man thrives in the Way. For those that thrive in water, dig a pond, and they will find nourishment enough. For those that thrive in the Way, don’t bother about them, and their lives will be secure. So it is said, the fish forget one another in the rivers and lakes, and men forget one another in the arts of the Way.” Zigong said, “May I ask about the singular man?” “The singular man is singular in comparison to other men, but a companion of Heaven. So it is said, the petty man of Heaven is a gentleman among men; the gentleman among men is the petty man of Heaven.” KOR ok Yan Hui said to Confucius, “When Mengsun Cai’s mother died, he wailed without shedding any tears; he did not grieve in his heart; and he conducted the funeral without any look of sorrow. He fell down on these three counts, and yet he is known all over the state of Lu for the excellent way he managed the funeral. Is it really possible to gain such a reputation when there are no facts to support it? I find it very peculiar indeed!” Confucius said, “Mengsun did all there was to do. He was advanced beyond ordinary understanding, and he would have simplified things even more, but that wasn’t practical. However, there is still a lot that he simplified. Mengsun doesn’t know why he lives and doesn’t know why he dies. He doesn’t know why he should go ahead; he doesn’t know why he should fall behind. In the process of change, he has become a thing [among other things], and he is merely waiting for some other change that he doesn’t yet know about. Moreover, when he is changing, how does he know that he really is changing? And when he is not changing, how does he know that he hasn’t already changed? You and I, now—we are dreaming and haven’t waked up yet. But in his case, though something may startle his body, it won’t injure his mind; though something may alarm the house [his spirit lives in], his emotions will suffer no death. Mengsun alone has waked up. Men wail and so he wails, too—that’s the reason he acts like this. “What’s more, we go around telling one another, I do this, I do that—but how do we know that this ‘I’ we talk about has any ‘I’ to it? You dream you’re a bird and soar up into the sky; you dream you're a fish and dive down in the pool. But now when you tell me about it, I don’t know whether you are awake or whether you are dreaming, Running around accusing others!2 is not as good as laughing, and enjoying a good laugh is not as good as going along with things. Be content to go along and forget about change, and then you can enter the mysterious oneness of Heaven.” KOK Yi Erzi went to see Xu You.22 Xu You said, “What kind of assistance has Yao been giving you?” Yi Erzi said, “Yao told me, ‘You must learn to practice benevolence and righteousness and to speak clearly about right and wrong!’” “Then why come to see me?” said Xu You. “Yao has already tattooed you with benevolence and righteousness and cut off your nose with right and wrong. 21 Now how do you expect to go wandering in any faraway, carefree, and as-you-like-it paths?” “That may be,” said Yi Erzi. “But I would like, if I may, to wander in a little corner of them.” “Impossible!” said Xu You. “Eyes that are blind have no way to tell the loveliness of faces and features; eyes with no pupils have no way to tell the beauty of colored and embroidered silks.” Yi Erzi said, “Yes, but Wuzhuang forgot her beauty, Juliang forgot his strength, and the Yellow Emperor forgot his wisdom—all were content to be recast and remolded.22 How do you know that the Creator will not wipe away my tattoo, stick my nose back on again, and let me ride on the process of completion and follow after you, Master?” “Ah—we can never tell,” said Xu You. “J will just speak to you about the general outline. This Teacher of mine, this Teacher of mine—he passes judgment on the ten thousand things, but he doesn’t think himself righteous; his bounty extends to ten thousand generations, but he doesn’t think himself benevolent. He is older than the highest antiquity, but he doesn’t think himself long-lived; he covers heaven, bears up the earth, carves and fashions countless forms, but he doesn’t think himself skilled. It is with him alone I wander.” Yan Hui said, “I’m improving!” Confucius said, “What do you mean by that?” ‘Y’ve forgotten benevolence and righteousness!” “That’s good. But you still haven’t got it.” Another day, the two met again, and Yan Hui said, “I’m improving!” “What do you mean by that?” “‘T’ve forgotten rites and music!” “That’s good. But you still haven’t got it.” Another day, the two met again, and Yan Hui said, “I’m improving!” “What do you mean by that?” “T can sit down and forget everything!” Confucius looked very startled and said, “What do you mean, sit down and forget everything?” Yan Hui said, “I smash up my limbs and body, drive out perception and intellect, cast off form, do away with understanding, and make myself identical with the Great Thoroughfare. This is what I mean by sitting down and forgetting everything.” Confucius said, “If you’re identical with it, you must have no more likes! If you’ve been transformed, you must have no more constancy! So you really are a worthy man after all!22 With your permission, I’d like to become your follower.” Master Yu and Master Sang were friends. Once, it rained incessantly for ten days. Master Yu said to himself, Master Sang is probably having a bad time, and he wrapped up some rice and took it for his friend to eat. When he got to Master Sang’s gate, he heard something like singing or crying and someone striking a lute and saying: Father? Mother? Heaven? Man? It was as though the voice would not hold out and the singer were rushing to get through the words. Master Yu went inside and said, “What do you mean— singing a song like that!” “I was pondering what it is that has brought me to this extremity, but I couldn’t find the answer. My father and mother surely wouldn’t wish this poverty on me. Heaven covers all without partiality; earth bears up all without partiality—heaven and earth surely wouldn’t single me out to make me poor. I try to discover who is doing it, but I can’t get the answer. Still, here I am—at the very extreme. It must be fate.” 1. Another term for the Daoist sage, synonymous with the Perfect Man or the Holy Man. 2. Reading wang instead of zhi in accordance with Wang Maohong’s suggestion. 3. According to legend, these were men who either tried to reform the conduct of others or made a show of guarding their own integrity. All either were killed or committed suicide. 4. Following the Cui text, which reads guang. 5. There are many different interpretations of the words used to describe the True Man in this paragraph. I have followed those adopted by Fukunaga. 6. As Fukunaga pointed out, this paragraph, which describes the Daoist sage as a ruler who employs penalties, rites, wisdom, and virtue, seems out of keeping with Zhuangzi’s philosophy as expressed elsewhere. Fukunaga suggests that it is an addition by a writer of the third or second centuries BCE who was influenced by Legalist thought. 7. Since Zhuangzi elsewhere uses Jian or Heaven as a synonym of the Way, this passage has troubled commentators. Some would emend the order of the words to read “If a man is willing to regard his father as Heaven” or would substitute ren for Tian, that is, “If a man is willing to regard another man as his father.” 8. Or perhaps the meaning is “So if it makes my life good, it must for the same reason make my death good.” 9. Following Yu Yue’s interpretation. 10. The figures in this paragraph all are deities or mythical beings, but the myths to which Zhuangzi refers are in many cases unknown, so that the translation is tentative in places. 11. Kanpi is the god of the mythical Kunlun Mountains of the west; Pingyi is the god of the Yellow River; and Jian Wu is the god of Mount Tai. 12. The Yellow Emperor and Zhuan Xu are legendary rulers. The Queen Mother of the West is an immortal spirit who lives in the far west. Yuqiang is a deity of the far north. Pengzu’s life span as given here extends, by traditional dating, from the twenty-sixth to the seventh centuries BCE. 13. Fu Yue is frequently mentioned as a minister to the Shang ruler Wuding (traditional dates 1324-1266 BCE), but little is known of the legend that he ascended to the sky and became a star. 14. Following Wen Yiduo’s suggestion, I reverse the position of shou and gao. 15. That is, that which transcends the categories of life and death can never be said to have lived or died; only that which recognizes the existence of such categories is subject to them. 16. Reading nishi instead of yishi for the last name. But these names are open to a variety of interpretations. The whole list, of course, is a parody of the filiations of the other schools of philosophy. 17. Afamous sword of King Helii (r. 514-496 BCE) of Wu. 18. The word fang, which I have translated as “realm,” may also mean “method” or “procedure,” and Confucius’s answer seems to stress this latter meaning. 19. Following Xi Tong, I read ze instead of shi, but the sentence is obscure and there are many interpretations. 20. Arecluse of the time of Emperor Yao. He appeared on p. 3. 21. Tattooing and cutting off the nose were common punishments. 22. Judging from the context, Wuzhuang and Juliang must have been noted for their beauty and strength, respectively. Perhaps the former is the same as the beautiful Maoqiang mentioned on p. 15. All these persons forgot themselves in the Way and were remolded by the Creator. 23. Zhuangzi probably intends a humorous reference to Confucius’s words in Analects VI, 9: “The Master said, “What a worthy man was Hui!” (i FIT FOR EMPERORS AND KINGS Nie Que was questioning Wang Ni. Four times he asked a question, and four times Wang Ni said he didn’t know. Nie Que proceeded to hop around in great glee and went and told Master Puyi. Master Puyi said, “Are you just now finding that out?! The clansman Youyu was no match for the clansman Tai.2 The clansman Youyu still held on to benevolence and worked to win men over. He won men over all right, but he never got out into [the realm of] ‘notman.’ The clansman Tai, now—he lay down peaceful and easy; he woke up wide-eyed and blank. Sometimes he thought he was a horse; sometimes he thought he was a cow. His understanding was truly trustworthy; his virtue was perfectly true. He never entered [the realm of] ‘non- man. 9993 Jian Wu went to see the madman Jie Yu. Jie Yu said, “What was Zhong Shi telling you the other day? Jian Wu said, “He told me that the ruler of men should devise his own principles, standards, ceremonies, and regulations, and then there will be no one who will fail to obey him and be transformed by them.” The madman Jie Yu said, “This is bogus virtue! To try to govern the world like this is like trying to walk the ocean, to drill through a river, or to make a mosquito shoulder a mountain! When the sage governs, does he govern what is on the outside? He makes sure of himself first, and then he acts. He makes absolutely certain that things can do what they are supposed to do, that is all. The bird flies high in the sky where it can escape the danger of stringed arrows. The field mouse burrows deep down under the sacred hill where it won’t have to worry about men digging and smoking it out. Have you got less sense than these two little creatures?” Tian Gen was wandering on the sunny side of Yin Mountain. When he reached the banks of the Liao River, he happened to meet a Nameless Man. He questioned the man, saying, “Please may I ask how to rule the world?” The Nameless Man said, “Get away from me, you peasant! What kind of a dreary question is that! I’m just about to set off with the Creator. And if I get bored with that, then I'll ride on the Light-and-Lissome Bird out beyond the six directions, wandering in the village of Not- Even-Anything and living in the Broad-and-Borderless field. What business> do you have coming with this talk of governing the world and disturbing my mind?” But Tian Gen repeated his question. The Nameless Man said, “Let your mind wander in simplicity, blend your spirit with the vastness, follow along with things the way they are, and make no room for personal views—then the world will be governed.” Yangzi Ju® went to see Lao Dan and said, “Here is a man swift as an echo, strong as a beam, with a wonderfully clear understanding of the principles of things, studying the Way without ever letting up—a man like this could compare with an enlightened king, couldn’t he?” Lao Dan said, “In comparison with the sage, a man like this is a drudging slave, a craftsman bound to his calling, wearing out his body, grieving his mind. They say it is the beautiful markings of the tiger and the leopard that call out the hunters, the nimbleness of the monkey and the ability of the dog to catch rats! that make them end up chained. A man like this—how could he compare with an enlightened king?” Yangzi Ju, much taken aback, said, “May I venture to ask about the government of the enlightened king?” Lao Dan said, “The government of the enlightened king? His achievements blanket the world but appear not to be his own doing. His transforming influence touches the ten thousand things, but the people do not depend on him. With him there is no promotion or praise—he lets everything find its own enjoyment. He takes his stand on what cannot be fathomed and wanders where there is nothing at all.” In Zheng there was a shaman of the gods named Ji Xian. He could tell whether men would live or die, survive or perish, be fortunate or unfortunate, live a long time or die young, and he would predict the year, month, week,8 and day as though he were a god himself. When the people of Zheng saw him, they dropped everything and ran out of his way. Liezi went to see him and was completely intoxicated. Returning, he said to Huzi,2 “T used to think, Master, that your Way was perfect. But now I see there is something even higher!” Huzi said, “I have already showed you all the outward forms, but I haven’t yet showed you the substance—and do you really think you have mastered this Way of mine? There may be a flock of hens, but if there is no rooster, how can they lay fertile eggs? You take what you know of the Way and wave it in the face of the world, expecting to be believed! This is the reason men can see right through you. Try bringing your shaman along next time and letting him get alook at me.” The next day Liezi brought the shaman to see Huzi. When they had left the room, the shaman said, “I’m so sorry—your master is dying! There’s no life left in him— he won’t last the week. I saw something very strange— something like wet ashes!” Liezi went back into the room, weeping and drenching the collar of his robe with tears, and reported this to Huzi. Huzi said, “Just now I appeared to him with the Pattern of Earth—still and silent, nothing moving, nothing standing up. He probably saw in me the Workings of Virtue Closed off 10 Try bringing him around again.” The next day the two came to see Huzi again, and when they had left the room, the shaman said to Liezi, “It certainly was lucky that your master met me! He’s going to get better—he has all the signs of life! I could see the stirring of what had been closed off!” Liezi went in and reported this to Huzi. Huzi said, “Just now I appeared to him as Heaven and Earth—no name or substance to it, but still the workings, coming up from the heels. He probably saw in me the Workings of the Good One Try bringing him again.” The next day the two came to see Huzi again, and when they had left the room, the shaman said to Liezi, “Your master is never the same! I have no way to physiognomize him! If he will try to steady himself, then I will come and examine him again.” Liezi went in and reported this to Huzi. Huzi said, “Just now I appeared to him as the Great Vastness Where Nothing Wins Out. He probably saw in me the Workings of the Balanced Breaths. Where the swirling waves!2 gather, there is an abyss; where the still waters gather, there is an abyss; where the running waters gather, there is an abyss. The abyss has nine names, and I have shown him three.13 Try bringing him again.” The next day the two came to see Huzi again, but before the shaman had even come to a halt before Huzi, his wits left him and he fled. ‘Run after him!” said Huzi, but though Liezi ran after him, he could not catch up. Returning, he reported to Huzi, “He’s vanished! He’s disappeared! I couldn’t catch up with him.” Huzi said, “Just now I appeared to him as Not Yet Emerged from My Source. I came at him empty, wriggling and turning, not knowing anything about ‘who’ or ‘what,’ now dipping and bending, now flowing in waves—that’s why he ran away.” After this, Liezi concluded that he had never really begun to learn anything. 14 He went home and, for three years, did not go out. He replaced his wife at the stove, fed the pigs as though he were feeding people, and showed no preferences in the things he did. He got rid of the carving and polishing and returned to plainness, letting his body stand alone like a clod. In the midst of entanglement he remained sealed, and in this oneness he ended his life. Do not be an embodier for fame; do not be a storehouse of schemes; do not be an undertaker of projects; do not be a proprietor of wisdom. Embody to the fullest what has no end and wander where there is no trail. Hold on to all that you have received from Heaven, but do not think you have gotten anything. Be empty, that is all. The Perfect Man uses his mind like a mirror—going after nothing, welcoming nothing, responding but not storing. Therefore he can win out over things and not hurt himself. The emperor of the South Sea was called Shu [Brief]; the emperor of the North Sea was called Hu [Sudden]; and the emperor of the central region was called Hundun [Chaos]. From time to time, Shu and Hu came together for a meeting in the territory of Hundun, and Hundun treated them very generously. Shu and Hu discussed how they could repay his kindness. “All men,” they said, “have seven openings so they can see, hear, eat, and breathe. But Hundun alone doesn’t have any. Let’s trying boring him some!” Every day they bored another hole, and on the seventh day Hundun died. 1. On Nie Que and Wang Ni, see pp. 14-15. Master Puyi is probably the same as Master Piyi, who appears elsewhere in the Zhuangzi as Wang Ni’s teacher. According to commentators, Nie Que’s delight came from the fact that he had finally realized that there are no answers to questions. 2. “The clansman Youyu” is the sage ruler Shun, the ideal of the Confucian philosophers. “The clansman Tai” is vaguely identified as a ruler of high antiquity. 3. The existence of a category “not-man” depends on the recognition of a category “man.” Shun could get no further than the category “man”; hence he never reached the realm of ‘“not-man.” Tai, on the other hand, was able to transcend all such categories. 4. Jian Wu and Jie Yu appeared on p. 4. Nothing is known about Zhong Shi. I follow Yu Yue in taking ri to mean “the other day.” 5. I follow the traditional interpretation, though in fact no one has succeeded in determining the meaning of this character for certain. Other interpretations are “How do you have the leisure to come,” etc., or “What is this dream talk that you come with about governing the world,” etc. 6. Perhaps meant to be identified with the hedonist philosopher Yang Zhu. 7. Reading /iu in accordance with the parallel passage in sec. 12. 8. The ancient ten-day week. 9. The Daoist philosopher Liezi appeared on p. 3. Huzi is his teacher. 10. Virtue here has the sense of vital force. Compare Book of Changes, Xici 2: “The Great Virtue of Heaven and Earth is called life.” 11. The language of this whole passage is, needless to say, deliberately mysterious. The term “Good One” may have some relation to the passage in the Changes, Xici 1: “The succession of the yin and yang is called the Way. What carries it on is goodness.” 12. Following Ma Xulun’s emendation and interpretation. 13. According to commentators, the three forms of the abyss in the order given here correspond to the third, first, and second of Huzi’s manifestations. 14. That is, he had reached the highest stage of understanding. 8 WEBBED TOES Two toes webbed together, a sixth finger forking off— these come from the inborn nature but are excretions as far as Virtue is concerned Swelling tumors and protruding wens—these come from the body but are excretions as far as the inborn nature is concerned. Men over-nice in the ways of benevolence and righteousness try to put these into practice, even to line them up with the five vital organs!2 This is not the right approach to the Way and its Virtue. Therefore he who has two toes webbed together has grown a flap of useless flesh; he who has a sixth finger forking out of his hand has sprouted a useless digit; and he who imposes overnice ways, webs, and forked fingers on the original form of the five vital organs will become deluded and perverse in the practice of benevolence and righteousness, and overnice in the use of his hearing and sight. Thus he who is web toed in eyesight will be confused by the five colors, bewitched by patterns and designs, by the dazzling hues of blue and yellow, of embroidery and brocade—am I wrong? So we have Li Zhu He who is overnice in hearing will be confused by the five notes, bewitched by the six tones, by the sounds of metal and stone, strings and woodwinds, the huangzhong and dalii pitch pipes—am I wrong? So we have Music Master Kuang He who is fork fingered with benevolence will tear out the Virtue given him and stifle his inborn nature in order to seize fame and reputation, leading the world on with pipe and drum in the service of an unattainable ideal— am I wrong? So we have Zeng and Shih.2 He who is web toed in argumentation will pile up bricks, knot the plumb line, apply the curve,® letting his mind wander in the realm of “hard” and “white,” “likeness” and “difference,” huffing and puffing away, lauding his useless words—am I wrong? So we have Yang and Mo-Z All these men walk a way that is overnice, web toed, wide of the mark, fork fingered, not that which is the True Rightness of the world. He who holds to True Rightness® does not lose the original form of his inborn nature. So for him, joined things are not webbed toes; things forking off are not superfluous fingers; the long is never too much; the short is never too little.2 The duck’s legs are short, but to stretch them out would worry him; the crane’s legs are long, but to cut them down would make him sad. What is long by nature needs no cutting off; what is short by nature needs no stretching. That would be no way to get rid of worry. I wonder, then, whether benevolence and righteousness are part of man’s true form? Those benevolent men—how much worrying they do! The man with two toes webbed together would weep if he tried to tear them apart; the man with a sixth finger on his hand would howl if he tried to gnaw it off. Of these two, one has more than the usual number; the other has less; but in worrying about it, they are identical. Nowadays the benevolent men of the age lift up weary eyes, 10 worrying over the ills of the world, while the men of no benevolence tear apart the original form of their inborn nature in their greed for eminence and wealth. Therefore I wonder whether benevolence and righteousness are really part of man’s true form? From the Three Dynasties on down,LL what a lot of fuss and hubbub they have made in the world! If we must use curve and plumb line, compass and square, to make something right, this means cutting away its inborn nature; if we must use cords and knots, glue and lacquer, to make something firm, this means violating its natural Virtue. So the crouchings and bendings of rights and music, the smiles and beaming looks of benevolence and righteousness, which are intended to comfort the hearts of the world, in fact destroy their constant naturalness. For in the world, there can be constant naturalness. Where there is constant naturalness, things are arced not by the use of the curve, straightened not by the use of the plumb line, rounded not by the compasses, squared not by T squares, joined not by glue and lacquer, bound not by ropes and lines. Then all things in the world, simple and compliant, live and never know how they happen to live; all things, rude and unwitting,12 get what they need and never know how they happen to get it. Past and present, it has been the same; nothing can do injury to this [principle]. Why, then, come with benevolence and righteousness, that tangle and train of glue and lacquer, ropes and lines, and try to wander in the realm of the Way and its Virtue? You will only confuse the world! A little confusion can alter the sense of direction; a great confusion can alter the inborn nature. How do I know this is so? Ever since that man of the Yu clan!3 began preaching benevolence and righteousness and stirring up the world, all the men in the world have dashed headlong for benevolence and righteousness. This is because benevolence and righteousness have altered their inborn nature, is it not? Let me try explaining what I mean. From the Three Dynasties on down, everyone in the world has altered his inborn nature because of some [external] thing. The petty man?—he will risk death for the sake of profit. The knight? —he will risk it for the sake of fame. The high official?— he will risk it for family; the sage?—he will risk it for the world. All these various men go about the business in a different way and are tagged differently when it comes to fame and reputation; but in blighting their inborn nature and risking their lives for something, they are the same. The slave boy and the slave girl were out together herding their sheep, and both of them lost their flocks. Ask the slave boy how it happened: well, he had a bundle of writing slips and was reading a book./4 Ask the slave girl how it happened: well, she was playing a game of toss-and- wait-your-turn. They went about the business in different ways, but in losing their sheep, they were equal. Bo Yi died for reputation at the foot of Shouyang Mountain; Robber Zhi died for gain on top of Eastern Mound.1> The two of them died different deaths, but in destroying their lives and blighting their inborn nature, they were equal. Why, then, must we say that Bo Yi was right and Robber Zhi wrong? Everyone in the world risks his life for something. If he risks it for benevolence and righteousness, then custom names him a gentleman; if he risks it for goods and wealth, then custom names him a petty man. The risking is the same, and yet we have a gentleman here, a petty man there. In destroying their lives and blighting their inborn nature, Robber Zhi and Bo Yi were two of a kind. How then can we pick out the gentleman from the petty man in such a case? He who applies his nature to benevolence and righteousness may go as far with it as Zeng and Shi, but I would not call him an expert. He who eee a nature to the five flavors may go as far with it as Yu Ert6 © but I would not call him an expert. He who applies his nature to the five notes may go as far with it as Music Master Kuang, but I would not call this good hearing. He who applies his nature to the five colors may go as far with it as Li Zhu, but I would not call this good eyesight. My definition of expertness has nothing to do with benevolence and righteousness; it means being expert in regard to your Virtue, that is all. My definition of expertness has nothing to do with benevolence or righteousness;— 17 it means following the true form of your inborn nature, that is all. When I speak of good hearing, I do not mean listening to others; I mean simply listening to yourself. When I speak of good eyesight, I do not mean looking at others; I mean simply looking at yourself. He who does not look at himself but looks at others, who does not get hold of himself but gets hold of others, is getting what other men have got and failing to get what he himself has got. He finds joy in what brings joy to other men but finds no joy in what would bring joy to himself. And if he finds joy in what brings joy to other men but finds no joy in what brings joy to himself, then whether he is a Robber Zhi or a Bo Yi, he is equally deluded and perverse. I have a sense of shame before the Way and its Virtue, and for that reason I do not venture to raise myself up in deeds of benevolence and righteousness or to lower myself in deluded and perverse practices. 1. Virtue (de) here seems to mean inner power or vital force; see p. 58, n. 10. This and the following three sections are much closer in thought to the Daodejing of Laozi than the preceding sections, and the use of the word de seems to accord with its use in the Daodejing. Also, here we encounter for the first time in Zhuangzi the term xing or “inborn nature,” which is so important to Confucian thought. 2. The five vital organs—tiver, lungs, heart, kidneys, and spleen—were related to the five elements and later to the five Confucian virtues—benevolence, propriety, good faith, righteousness, wisdom. 3. Also called Li Lou; noted for his exceptionally keen eyesight. 4. Famous musician mentioned on p. 12. With this passage, compare Daodejing XII: “The five colors confuse the eye, the five sounds dull the ear.” 5. Zeng Shen, a disciple of Confucius, and Shih Yu, historiographer of the state of Wei, paragons of benevolence and righteousness, respectively. 6. All seem to be building metaphors, though the meaning of the last is doubtful. I read gou instead of ju. 7. The hedonist philosopher Yang Zhu and the advocate of universal love Mo Di. We would expect a reference to the logicians, however, since they were the ones who argued about “hard,” “white,” etc.; see p. 12, n. 9. 8. Reading zhizheng as in the preceding sentence. 9. At this point, the meaning of the symbolism seems to shift (with some violence to the logic of the argument). The webbed toes and extra fingers, which earlier represented the forced and unnatural morality of Confucianism, now become natural deformities such as we have seen in the earlier chapters, which it would be wrong to try to correct. 10. Following Ma Xulun’s interpretation. 11. The Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties. 12. Following Fukunaga, I read tong with the man radical. A similar phrase, tonghu, appears in sec. 9, and tongran in sec. 23. 13. The sage ruler Shun, idol of the Confucian philosophers. 14. An unusual slave boy who, in true Confucian fashion, was attempting to improve his mind. 15. On Bo Yi, the model of righteousness; see p. 126, n. 3; Robber Zhi, who appears later as the subject of sec. 29, represents the ultimate in greed and violence. 16. Apparently a famous chef and connoisseur of flavor. 17. This clause is excessively wordy and merely repeats what was said earlier. I suspect that it is corrupt and that in its original form it contained some reference to the five flavors. 9 HORSES’ HOOFS Horses’ hoofs are made for treading frost and snow, their coats for keeping out wind and cold. To munch grass, drink from the stream, lift up their feet and gallop—this is the true nature of horses. Though they might possess great terraces and fine halls, they would have no use for them. Then along comes Bo Luo. “?m good at handling horses!” he announces and proceeds to singe them, shave them, pare them, brand them, bind them with martingale and crupper, tie them up in stable and stall. By this time, two or three out of ten horses have died. He goes on to starve them, make them go thirsty, race them, prance them, pull them into line, and force them to run side by side, in front of them the worry of bit and rein, behind them the terror of whip and crop. By this time, more than half the horses have died. The potter says, “I’m good at handling clay! To round it, I apply the compass; to square it, I apply the T square.” The carpenter says, “I’m good at handling wood! To arc it, I apply the curve; to make it straight, I apply the plumb line.” But as far as inborn nature is concerned, the clay and the wood surely have no wish to be subjected to compass and square, curve and plumb line. Yet generation after generation sings out in praise, saying, “Bo Luo is good at handling horses! The potter and the carpenter are good at handling clay and wood!” And the same fault is committed by the men who handle the affairs of the world! In my opinion, someone who was really good at handling the affairs of the world would not go about it like this. The people have their constant inborn nature. To weave for their clothing, to till for their food—this is the Virtue they share. They are one in it and not partisan, and it is called the Emancipation of Heaven. Therefore, in a time of Perfect Virtue, the gait of men is slow and ambling; their gaze is steady and mild. In such an age, mountains have no paths or trails, lakes no boats or bridges. The ten thousand things live species by species, one group settled close to another. Birds and beasts form their flocks and herds; grass and trees grow to fullest height. So it happens that you can tie a cord to the birds and beasts and lead them about or bend down the limb and peer into the nest of the crow and the magpie. In this age of Perfect Virtue, men live the same as birds and beasts, group themselves side by side with the ten thousand things. Who then knows anything about “gentleman” or “petty man’? Dull and unwitting,2 men have no wisdom; thus their Virtue does not depart from them. Dull and unwitting, they have no desire; this is called uncarved simplicity. In uncarved simplicity, the people attain their true nature.2 Then along comes the sage, huffing and puffing after benevolence, reaching on tiptoe for righteousness, and the world for the first time has doubts; mooning and mouthing over his music, snipping and stitching away at his rites, and the world for the first time is divided. Thus, if the plain unwrought substance had not been blighted, how would there be any sacrificial goblets? If the white jade had not been shattered, how would there be any scepters and batons? If the Way and its Virtue had not been cast aside, how would there be any call for benevolence and righteousness? If the true form of the inborn nature had not been abandoned, how would there be any use for rights and music? If the five colors had not confused men, who would fashion patterns and hues? If the five notes had not confused them, who would try to tune things by the six tones? That the unwrought substance was blighted in order to fashion implements—this was the crime of the artisan. That the Way and its Virtue were destroyed in order to create benevolence and righteousness—this was the fault of the sage. When horses live on the plain, they eat grass and drink from the streams. Pleased, they twine their necks together and rub; angry, they turn back to back and kick. This all horses know how to do. But if you pile poles and yokes on them and line them up in crossbars and shafts, then they will learn to snap the crossbars, break the yoke, rip the carriage top, champ the bit, and chew the reins.4 Thus horses learn how to commit the worst kinds of mischief.> This is the crime of Bo Luo. In the days of He Xue people stayed home but didn’t know what they were doing, walked around but didn’t know where they were going. Their mouths crammed with food, they were merry; drumming on their bellies, they passed the time. This was as much as they were able to do. Then the sage came along with the crouchings and bendings of rites and music, which were intended to reform the bodies of the world; with the reaching-for-a-dangled-prize of benevolence and righteousness, which was intended to comfort the hearts of the world. Then for the first time, people learned to stand on tiptoe and covet knowledge, to fight to the death over profit, and there was no stopping them. This, in the end, was the fault of the sage. 1. Frequently mentioned in early texts as an expert judge of horses. 2. Reading tong with the man radical; see p. 62, n. 12. 3. The terms su and pu (uncarved simplicity), appear frequently in the Daodejing, for example, ch. XIX. Waley translates them as “Simplicity” and “the Uncarved Block,” respectively. 4. There are many different interpretations of the terms in this sentence. I follow Ma Xulun’s emendations and interpretations. 5. Following texts that read neng rather than tai. ION . Legendary ruler of high antiquity. 10 RIFLING TRUNKS If one is to guard and take precautions against thieves who rifle trunks, ransack bags, and break open boxes, then he must bind with cords and ropes and make fast with locks and hasps. This the ordinary world calls wisdom. But if a great thief comes along, he will shoulder the boxes, hoist up the trunks, sling the bags over his back, and dash off, only worrying that the cords and ropes, the locks and hasps, are not fastened tightly enough. In that case, the man who earlier was called wise was in fact only piling up goods for the benefit of a great thief. Let me try explaining what I mean. What the ordinary world calls a wise man is in fact someone who piles things up for the benefit of a great thief, is he not? And what it calls a sage is in fact someone who stands guard for the benefit of a great thief, is he not? How do I know this is so? In times past there was the state of Qi, its neighboring towns within sight of one another, the cries of their dogs and chickens within hearing of one another. The area where its nets and seines were spread, where its plows and spades dug the earth, measured more than two thousand /i square, filling all the space within its four borders. And in the way its ancestral temples and its altars of the soil and grain were set up, its towns and villages and hamlets were governed, was there anything that did not accord with the laws of the sages? Yet one morning Viscount Tian Cheng murdered the ruler of Qi and stole his state. And was it only the state he stole? Along with it, he also stole the laws that the wisdom of the sages had devised. Thus, although Viscount Tian Cheng gained the name of thief and bandit, he was able to rest as peacefully as a Yao or a Shun. The smaller states did not dare condemn him; the larger states did not dare attack; and for twelve generations, his family held possession of the state of Qi2 Is this not a case in which a man, stealing the state of Qi, along with it stole the laws of the sages’ wisdom and used them to guard the person of a thief and a bandit? Let me try explaining it. What that ordinary world calls a man of perfect wisdom is in fact someone who piles things up for the benefit of a great thief; what the ordinary world calls a perfect sage is in fact someone who stands guard for the benefit of a great thief. How do I know this is so? In times past, Guan Longfeng was cut down; Bi Gan was disemboweled; Chang Hong was torn apart; and Wu Zixu was left to rot. All four were worthy men, and yet they could not escape destruction.2 One of Robber Zhi’s followers once asked Zhi, “Does the thief, too, have a Way?” Zhi replied, “How could he get anywhere if he didn’t have a Way? Making shrewd guesses as to how much booty is stashed away in the room is sageliness; being the first one in is bravery; being the last one out is righteousness; knowing whether or not the job can be pulled off is wisdom; dividing up the loot fairly is benevolence. No one in the world ever succeeded in becoming a great thief if he didn’t have all five!” From this, we can see that the good man must acquire the Way of the sage before he can distinguish himself, and Robber Zhi must acquire the Way of the sage before he can practice his profession. But good men in the world are few, and bad men many, so in fact the sage brings little benefit to the world but much harm. Thus it is said, “When the lips are gone, the teeth are cold; when the wine of Lu is thin, Handan is besieged.”4 And when the sage is born, the great thief appears. Cudgel and cane the sages, and let the thieves and bandits go their way; then the world will at last be well ordered! If the stream dries up, the valley will be empty; if the hills wash away, the deep pools will be filled up. And if the sage is dead and gone, then no more great thieves will arise. The world will then be peaceful and free of fuss. But until the sage is dead, great thieves will never cease to appear, and if you pile on more sages in hopes of bringing the world to order, you will only be piling up more profit for Robber Zhi. Fashion pecks and bushels for people to measure by, and they will steal by peck and bushel.> Fashion scales and balances for people to weigh by, and they will steal by scale and balance. Fashion tallies and seals to ensure trustworthiness, and people will steal with tallies and seals. Fashion benevolence and righteousness to reform people, and they will steal with benevolence and righteousness. How do I know this is so? He who steals a belt buckle pays with his life; he who steals a state gets to be a feudal lord—and we all know that benevolence and righteousness are to be found at the gates of the feudal lords. Is this not a case of stealing benevolence and righteousness and the wisdom of the sages? So men go racing in the footsteps of the great thieves, aiming for the rank of feudal lord, stealing benevolence and righteousness and taking for themselves all the profits of peck and bushel, scale and balance, tally and seal. Though you try to lure them aside with rewards of official carriages and caps of state, you cannot move them; though you threaten them with the executioner’s ax, you cannot deter them. This piling up of profits for Robber Zhi to the point where nothing can deter him—this is all the fault of the sage! The saying goes, “The fish should not be taken from the deep pool; the sharp weapons of the state should not be shown to men.” The sage is the sharp weapon of the world, and therefore he should not be where the world can see himZ Cut off sageliness, cast away wisdom, and then the great thieves will cease. Break the jades, crush the pearls, and petty thieves will no longer rise up. Burn the tallies, shatter the seals, and the people will be simple and guileless. Hack up the bushels, snap the balances in two, and the people will no longer wrangle. Destroy and wipe out the laws that the sage has made for the world, and at last you will find that you can reason with the people. Discard and confuse the six tones; smash and unstring the pipes and lutes; stop up the ears of the blind musician Kuang; and for the first time; the people of the world will be able to hold on to their hearing. Wipe out patterns and designs; scatter the five colors; glue up the eyes of Li Zhu; and for the first time, the people of the world will be able to hold on to their eyesight. Destroy and cut to pieces the curve and plumb line; throw away the compass and square; shackle the fingers of Artisan Chui;8 and for the first time; the people of the world will possess real skill. Thus it is said, “Great skill is like clumsiness.”2 Put a stop to the ways of Zeng and Shi; gag the mouths of Yang and Mo; wipe out and reject benevolence and righteousness; and for the first time, the Virtue of the world will reach the state of Mysterious Leveling. —~ 10 When men hold on to their eyesight, the world will no longer be dazzled. When men hold on to their hearing, the world will no longer be wearied. When men hold on to their wisdom, the world will no longer be confused. When men hold on to their Virtue, the world will no longer go awry. Men like Zeng, Shi, Yang, Mo, Musician Kuang, Artisan Chui, or Li Zhu all displayed their Virtue on the outside and thereby blinded and misled the world. As methods go, this one is worthless! Have you alone never heard of that age of Perfect Virtue? Long ago, in the time of Yong Cheng, Da Ting, Bo Huang, Zhong Yang, Li Lu, Li Xu, Xian Yuan, He Xu, Zun Lu, Zhu Rong, Fu Xi, fas Shen Nong, the people knotted cords and used them. ! They relished their food, admired their clothing, enjoyed their customs, and were content with their houses. Though neighboring states were within sight of one another and could hear the cries of one another’s dogs and chickens, the people grew old and died without ever traveling beyond their own borders. At a time such as this, there was nothing but the most perfect order. But now something has happened to make people crane their necks and stand on tiptoe. “There’s a worthy man in such and such a place!” they cry, and bundling up their provisions, they dash off. At home, they abandon their parents; abroad, they shirk the service of their ruler. Their footprints form an unending trail to the borders of the other feudal lords; their carriage tracks weave back and forth a thousand /i and more. This is the fault of men in high places who covet knowledge.12 As long as men in high places covet knowledge and are without the Way, the world will be in great confusion. How do I know this is so? Knowledge enables men to fashion bows, crossbows, nets, stringed arrows, and _ like contraptions; but when this happens, the birds flee in confusion to the sky. Knowledge enables men to fashion fishhooks, lures, seines, dragnets, trawls, and weirs; but when this happens, the fish flee in confusion to the depths of the water. Knowledge enables men to fashion pitfalls, snares, cages, traps, and gins; but when this happens, the beasts flee in confusion to the swamps. And the flood of rhetoric that enables men to invent wily schemes and poisonous slanders, the glib gabble of “hard” and “white,” the foul fustian of “same” and “different,” bewilder the understanding of common men.13 So the world is dulled and darkened by great confusion. The blame lies in this coveting of knowledge. In the world, everyone knows enough to pursue what he does not know, but no one knows enough to pursue what he already knows. Everyone knows enough to condemn what he takes to be no good, but no one knows enough to condemn what he has already taken to be good.14 This is how the great confusion comes about, searing the vigor of hills and streams below, overturning the round of the four seasons in between. There is no insect that creeps and crawls, no creature that flutters and flies, that has not lost its inborn nature. So great is the confusion of the world that comes from coveting knowledge! From the Three Dynasties on down, it has been this and nothing else—shoving aside the pure and artless people and delighting in busy, bustling flatterers; abandoning the limpidity and calm of inaction and delighting in jumbled and jangling ideas. And this jumble and jangle has for long confused the world. 1. That is, it was rich and fertile and had no wastelands. 2. The assassination of the king of Qi took place in 481 BCE; the actual usurpation of the state by the Tian family, in 386 BCE. No one has satisfactorily explained the “twelve generations”; Yu Yue suggests that it is a copyist’s error for shishi (generation after generation). 3. All four men attempted to give good advice to their erring sovereigns and ended by being put to death or forced to commit suicide. On Guan Longfeng and Bi Gan, see p. 23; on Chang Hong and Wu Zixu, see p. 227, n. 2. I suppose this is meant to illustrate how the rulers “stole” the wisdom of their counselors, though it is hardly apt, since all the rulers came to violent ends as a result of their wickedness. 4. At a gathering of the feudal lords at the court of Chu, the ruler of Lu presented a gift of thin wine, while the ruler of Zhao presented rich wine. But the wine steward of Chu, having failed to receive a bribe from the ruler of Zhao, switched the gifts, and the ruler of Chu, angered, attacked Zhao and laid siege to its capital, Handan. Another version of the story asserts that the ruler of Chu, angered at Lu’s thin wine, attacked Lu; and a third state, which had hitherto been intimidated by Chu’s power, took advantage of the opportunity to attack Chu’s ally, Zhao. In both versions, the saying is meant to illustrate the existence of a causal connection between apparently unrelated phenomena. 5. Tian Chang, Viscount Cheng of Qi, who appeared as the “stealer” of the state of Qi, was said to have won the support of the people of Qi by using a larger-than-standard measure in doling out grain to the people, but the standard measure when collecting taxes in grain. See Zuozhuan, Duke Zhao, third year. The writer probably has this fact in mind. 6. An old saying, also found in Daodejing XXXVI. 7. If he is not to be a danger to the world, he must, like the true Daoist sage, remain unknown and unrecognized. 8. Askilled artisan of ancient times; see p. 153. 9. The same saying appears in Daodejing XLV. But here it does not seem to fit the context, and I suspect that as Wang Maohong suggested, it is an interpolation, probably by someone who wished to establish a connection between this passage and the Daodejing. 10. Xuantong, a term also found in Daodejing LVI. Waley explains it there as a state “in which there is a general perception not effected through particular senses.” 11. As ameans of reminding themselves of things; they had no use for writing. The men mentioned in this sentence appear to be mythical rulers of antiquity, some mentioned in other early texts, some appearing only here. The passage from this point on to the next to last sentence is all but identical with a passage in Daodejing LXXX. 12. In late Zhou times, the feudal lords competed to attract men of unusual intelligence and ability to their courts. The state of Qi, which, as we have seen, was ruled at the time by the Tian family, was particularly famous for the inducements that it offered to draw philosophers from all over China to its state-sponsored academy. 13. I follow Fukunaga in the interpretation of the terms in this sentence. 14. That is, to discard the concept of good; I read yi as identical with the yi in the earlier parallel sentence. 1l LET IT BE, LEAVE IT ALONE I have heard of letting the world be, of leaving it alone; I have never heard of governing the world. You let it be for fear of corrupting the inborn nature of the world; you leave it alone for fear of distracting the Virtue of the world. If the nature of the world is not corrupted, if the Virtue of the world is not distracted, why should there be any governing of the world? Long ago, when the sage Yao governed the world, he made the world bright and gleeful; men delighted in their nature, and there was no calmness anywhere. When the tyrant Jie governed the world, he made the world weary and vexed; men found bitterness in their nature, and there was no contentment anywhere. To lack calmness, to lack contentment, is to go against Virtue, and there has never been anyone in the world who could go against Virtue and survive for long. Are men exceedingly joyful?—they will do damage to the yang element. Are men exceedingly angry?—they will do damage to the yin. And when both yang and yin are damaged, the four seasons will not come as they should; heat and cold will fail to achieve their proper harmony; and this in turn will do harm to the bodies of men. It will make men lose a proper sense of joy and anger, to be constantly shifting from place to place, to think up schemes that gain nothing, to set out on roads that reach no glorious conclusion. Then for the first time, the world will grow restless and aspiring, and soon afterward will appear the ways of Robber Zhi, Zeng, and Shi. Then, although the whole world joins in rewarding good men, there will never be enough reward; though the whole world joins in punishing evil men, there will never be enough punishment. Huge as the world is, it cannot supply sufficient reward or punishment. From the Three Dynasties on down, there has been nothing but bustle and fuss, all over this matter of rewards and punishments. How could people have any leisure to rest in the true form of their inborn nature and fate! Do men delight in what they see?—they are corrupted by colors. Do they delight in what they hear?—they are corrupted by sounds. Do they delight in benevolence?— they bring confusion to Virtue. Do they delight in righteousness?—they turn their backs on reason. Do they delight in rites?—they are aiding artificiality. Do they delight in music?—they are aiding dissolution. Do they delight in sageness?—they are assisting artifice. Do they delight in knowledge?—they are assisting the fault finders. As long as the world rests in the true form of its in-born nature and fate, it makes no difference whether or not these eight delights exist. But if the world does not rest in the true form of its nature and fate, then these eight delights will begin to grow warped and crooked, jumbled and deranged, and will bring confusion to the world. And if on top of that, the world begins to honor them and cherish them, then the delusion of the world will be great indeed! You say these are only a fancy that will pass in time? Yet men prepare themselves with fasts and austerities when they come to describe them, kneel solemnly on their mats when they recommend them, beat drums and sing to set them forth in dance. What’s to be done about it, I’m sure I don’t know! If the gentleman finds he has no other choice than to direct and look after the world, then the best course for him is inaction. As long as there is inaction, he may rest in the true form of his nature and fate. If he values his own body more than the management of the world, then he can be entrusted with the world. If he is more careful of his own body than of the management of the world, then the world can be handed over to him.2 If the gentleman can in truth keep from rending apart his five vital organs, from tearing out his eyesight and hearing, then he will command corpse-like stillness and dragon vision, the silence of deep pools, and the voice of thunder. His spirit will move in the train of Heaven, gentle and easy in inaction, and the ten thousand things will be dust on the wind. “What leisure have I now for governing the world?” he will say. Cui Zhu was questioning Lao Dan. “If you do not govern the world, then how can you improve men’s minds?” Lao Dan said, “Be careful—don’t meddle with men’s minds! Men’s minds can be forced down or boosted up, but this downing and upping imprisons and brings death to the mind. Gentle and shy, the mind can bend the hard and strong; it can chisel and cut away, carve and polish. Its heat is that of burning fire, its coldness that of solid ice, its swiftness such that, in the time it takes to lift and lower the head, it has twice swept over the four seas and beyond. At rest, it is deep fathomed and still; in movement, it is far- flung as the heavens, racing and galloping out of reach of all bonds. This indeed is the mind of man!” In ancient times the Yellow Emperor first used benevolence and righteousness to meddle with the minds of men.» Yao and Shun followed him and worked till there was no more down on their thighs, no more hair on their shins, trying to nourish the bodies of the men of the world. They grieved their five vital organs in the practice of benevolence and righteousness, taxed their blood and breath in the establishment of laws and standards. But still some men would not submit to their rule, and so they had to exile Huan Dou to Mount Chung, drive away the Sanmiao tribes to the region of Sanwei, and banish Gong to the Dark City4 This shows that they could not make the world submit. By the time the kings of the Three Dynasties appeared, the world was in great consternation indeed. On the lowest level, there were men like the tyrant Jie and Robber Zhi, on the highest, men like Zeng and Shi, and the Confucianists and Mohists rose up all around. Then joy and anger eyed each other with suspicion; stupidity and wisdom duped each other; good and bad called one another names; falsehood and truth slandered each other; and the world sank into a decline. There was no more unity to the Great Virtue, and the inborn nature and fate shattered and fell apart. The world coveted knowledge, and the hundred clans were thrown into turmoil.2 Then there were axes and saws to shape things; ink and plumb lines to trim them; mallets and gouges to poke holes in them; and the world, muddled and deranged, was in great confusion. The crime lay in this meddling with men’s minds. So it was that worthy men crouched in hiding below the great mountains and yawning cliffs, and the lords of ten thousand chariots fretted and trembled above in their ancestral halls. In the world today, the victims of the death penalty lie heaped together; the bearers of cangues tread on one another’s heels; the sufferers of punishment are never out of one another’s sight. And now come the Confucianists and Mohists, waving their arms, striding into the very midst of the fettered and manacled men. Ah, that they should go this far, that they should be so brazen, so lacking in any sense of shame! Who can convince me that sagely wisdom is not in fact the wedge that fastens the cangue, that benevolence and righteousness are not in fact the loop and lock of these fetters and manacles? How do I know that Zeng and Shi are not the whistling arrows that signal the approach of Jie and Zhi? Therefore I say, cut off sageness, cast away wisdom, and the world will be in perfect order. The Yellow Emperor had ruled as Son of Heaven for nineteen years, and his commands were heeded throughout the world, when he heard that Master Guang Cheng was living on top of the Mountain of Emptiness and Identity. He therefore went to visit him. “I have heard that you, sir, have mastered the Perfect Way. May I venture to ask about the essence of the Perfect Way?” he said. “I would like to get hold of the essence of Heaven and earth and use it to aid the five grains and to nourish the common people. I would also like to control the yin and yang in order to ensure the growth of all living things. How may this be done?” Master Guang Cheng said, “What you say you want to learn about pertains to the true substance of things, but what you say you want to control pertains to things in their divided state.© Ever since you began to govern the world, rain falls before the cloud vapors have even gathered; the plants and trees shed their leaves before they have even turned yellow; and the light of the sun and moon grows more and more sickly. Shallow and vapid, with the mind of a prattling knave—what good would it do to tell you about the Perfect Way!” The Yellow Emperor withdrew, gave up his throne, built a solitary hut, spread a mat of white rushes, and lived for three months in retirement. Then he went once more to request an interview. Master Guang Cheng was lying with his face to the southZ The Yellow Emperor, approaching in a humble manner, crept forward on his knees, bowed his head twice, and said, “I have heard that you, sir, have mastered the Perfect Way. I venture to ask about the governing of the body. What should I do in order to live a long life?” Master Guang Cheng sat up with a start. “Excellent, this question of yours! Come, I will tell you about the Perfect Way. The essence of the Perfect Way is deep and darkly shrouded; the extreme of the Perfect Way is mysterious and hushed in silence. Let there be no seeing, no hearing; enfold the spirit in quietude, and the body will right itself. Be still, be pure, do not labor your body, do not churn up your essence, and then you can live a long life. When the eye does not see, the ear does not hear, and the mind does not know, then your spirit will protect the body, and the body will enjoy long life. Be wary of what is within you; block off what is outside you, for much knowledge will do you harm. Then I will lead you up above the Great Brilliance to the source of the Perfect Yang; I will guide you through the Dark and Mysterious Gate to the source of the Perfect Yin. Heaven and earth have their controllers, the yin and yang their storehouses. You have only to take care and guard your own body; these other things will of themselves grow sturdy. As for myself, I guard this unity, abide in this harmony, and therefore I have kept myself alive for twelve hundred years, and never has my body suffered any decay.” The Yellow Emperor bowed twice and said, “Master Guang Cheng, you have been as a Heaven to me!” Master Guang Cheng said, “Come, I will explain to you. This Thing I have been talking about is inexhaustible, and yet men all suppose that it has an end. This Thing I have been talking about is unfathomable, and yet men all suppose that it has a limit. He who attains my Way will be a Bright One on high,8 and a king in the world below. But he who fails to attain my Way, though he may see the light above him, will remain below as dust. All the hundred creatures that flourish are born out of dust and return to dust. So I will take leave of you, to enter the gate of the inexhaustible and wander in the limitless fields, to form a triad with the light of the sun and moon, to partake in the constancy of Heaven and earth. What stands before me I mingle with, what is far from me I leave in darkness.2 die; Ialone will survive!” All other men may Cloud Chief was traveling east and had passed the branches of the Fuyao when he suddenly came upon Big Concealment12 Big Concealment at the moment was amusing himself by slapping his thighs and hopping around like a sparrow. When Cloud Chief saw this, he stopped in bewilderment, stood dead still in his tracks, and said, “Old gentleman, who are you? What is this you’re doing?” Big Concealment, without interrupting his thigh slapping and sparrow hopping, replied to Cloud Chief, “Amusing myself.” “TI would like to ask a question,” said Cloud Chief. “Oh dear!” said Big Concealment, for the first time raising his head and looking at Cloud Chief. “The breath of heaven is out of harmony; the breath of earth tangles and snarls,” said Cloud Chief. “The six breaths do not blend properly; the four seasons do not stay in order. Now I would like to harmonize the essences of the six breaths in order to bring nourishment to all living creatures. How should I go about it?” Big Concealment, still thigh slapping and sparrow hopping, shook his head. “I have no idea! I have no idea!” So Cloud Chief got no answer. Three years later he was again traveling east and, as he passed the fields of Song, happened on Big Concealment once more. Cloud Chief, overjoyed, dashed forward and presented himself, saying, “Heavenly Master, have you forgotten me? Have you forgotten me?” Then he bowed his head twice and begged for some instruction from Big Concealment. Big Concealment said, “Aimless wandering does not know what it seeks; demented drifting does not know where it goes. A wanderer, idle, unbound, I view the sights of Undeception. What more do I know?” Cloud Chief said, “I, too, consider myself a demented drifter, but the people follow me wherever I go, and I have no choice but to think of them. It is for their sake now that I beg one word of instruction!” Big Concealment said, “If you confuse the constant strands of Heaven and violate the true form of things, then Dark Heaven will reach no fulfillment. Instead, the beasts will scatter from their herds; the birds will cry all night; disaster will come to the grass and trees; misfortune will reach even to the insects. Ah, this is the fault of men who ‘govern’!” “Then what should I do?” said Cloud Chief. “Ah,” said Big Concealment, “you are too far gone! Up, up, stir yourself and be off!” Cloud Chief said, “Heavenly Master, it has been hard indeed for me to meet with you—I beg one word of in struction!” “Well, then—mind-nourishment Concealment.12 “You have only to rest in inaction, and things will transform themselves. Smash your form and body, spit out hearing and eyesight, forget you are a thing among other things, and you may join in great unity with the deep and boundless. Undo the mind, slough off spirit, be blank and soulless, and the ten thousand things one by one will return to the root—return to the root and not know why. Dark and undifferentiated chaos—to the end of life, none will depart from it. But if you try to knowit, you have already departed from it. Do not ask what its name is; do not try to observe its form. Things will live naturally and of themselves.” Cloud Chief said, “The Heavenly Master has favored me with this Virtue, instructed me in this Silence. All my life I have been looking for it, and now at last I have it!” He bowed his head twice, stood up, took his leave, and went away. 1? said Big The common run of men all welcome those who are like themselves and scorn those who differ from themselves. The reason they favor those who are like themselves and do not favor those who are different is that their minds are set on distinguishing themselves from the crowd. But if their minds are set on distinguishing themselves from the crowd, how is this ever going to distinguish them from the crowd? It is better to follow the crowd and be content, for no matter how much you may know, it can never match the many talents of the crowd combined. Here is aman who wants to take over the management of another man’s state13 He thinks thereby to seize all the profits enjoyed by the kings of the Three Dynasties but fails to take note of their worries. This is to gamble with another man’s state, and how long can you expect to gamble with his state and not lose it? Fewer than one man in ten thousand will succeed in holding on to the state; the odds in favor of losing it are more than ten thousand to one. It is sad indeed that the possessors of states do not realize this! Now the possessor of a state possesses a great thing. Because he possesses a great thing, he cannot be regarded as amere thing himself.14 He is a thing, and yet he is not a mere thing; therefore he can treat other things as mere things. He who clearly understands that in treating other things as mere things, he himself is no longer a mere thing —how could he be content only to govern the hundred clans of the world and do nothing more? He will move in and out of the Six Realms, wander over the Nine Continents, going alone, coming alone. He may be called a Sole Possessor, and a man who is a Sole Possessor may be said to have reached the peak of eminence. The Great Man in his teaching is like the shadow that follows a form, the echo that follows a sound. Only when questioned does he answer, and then he pours out all his thoughts, making himself the companion of the world. He dwells in the echoless, moves in the directionless, takes by the hand you who are rushing and bustling back and forth! and proceeds to wander in the beginningless. He passes in and out of as boundless and is ageless as the sun. His face and form© blend with the Great Unity, the Great Unity that is selfless. Being selfless, how then can he look on possession as possession? He who fixed his eyes on possession—he was the “gentleman” of ancient times. He who fixes his eyes on nothingness—he is the true friend of Heaven and earth. What is lowly and yet must be used—things 12 What is humble “ yet must be relied on—the people. What is irksome!® and yet must be attended to—affairs. What is sketchy and yet must be proclaimed—laws. What seems to apply only to distant relationships and yet must be observed —righteousness. What seems to apply only to intimate relationships and yet must be broadened—benevolence. What is confining and yet must be repeatedly practiced— ritual. What is already apt and yet must be heightened— Virtue. What is One and yet must be adapted—the Way. What is spiritual and yet must be put into action—Heaven. Therefore the sage contemplates Heaven but does not assist it. He finds completion in Virtue but piles on nothing more. He goes forth in the Way but does not scheme. He accords with benevolence but does not set great store by it. He draws close to righteousness but does not labor over it. He responds to the demands of ritual and does not shun them. He disposes of affairs and makes no excuses. He brings all to order with laws and allows no confusion. He depends on the people and does not make light of them. He relies on things and does not throw them aside. Among things, there are none that are worth using, and yet they must be used. He who does not clearly understand Heaven will not be pure in Virtue. He who has not mastered the Way will find himself without any acceptable path of approach. He who does not clearly understand the Way is pitiable indeed! What is this thing called the Way? There is the Way of Heaven and the way of man. To rest in inaction, and command respect—this is the Way of Heaven. To engage in action and become entangled in it—this is the way of man. The ruler is the Way of Heaven; his subjects are the way of man. The Way of Heaven and the way of man are far apart. This is something to consider carefully! 1. The words “restless and aspiring” represent four characters in the original whose meaning is very doubtful. 2. Asimilar saying is found in Daodejing XI, though the wording is somewhat different. 3. Daoist writers ordinarily have only praise for the Yellow Emperor, and in Han times Daoism was known as Huanglao, the teaching of the Yellow Emperor and Laozi. It is surprising, therefore, to find him cited here as the prime meddler, though this is typical of the shifting roles assigned to the figures who appear in the Zhuangzi. It is unclear whether the following section should be taken as a continuation of Laozi’s speech or as the words of the writer; I have taken it as the latter. 4. These banishments of evil and insubordinate men are mentioned in the Book of Documents, “Canon of Shun,” in which their presence has long raised the troubling question of why there should have been any unsubmissive men during the rule of a sage. 5. Following Zhang Binglin’s interpretation. 6. That is, the yin and yang, being two, already represent a departure from the primal unity of the Way. What Master Guang Cheng is objecting to, of course, is the fact that the Yellow Emperor wishes to “control” them. 7. The Chinese ruler, when acting as sovereign, faces south. Master Guang Cheng, by assuming the same position, indicates his spiritual supremacy. 8. The term “Bright One” (huang) was originally an epithet for Heaven or a being commanding respect and awe, such as the sage rulers of antiquity. 9. The meaning is doubtful. 10. Cloud Chief and Big Concealment are inventions of the writer, the latter apparently representing the Daoist sage. Fuyao appeared in sec. | as aname for the whirlwind; here perhaps it is an error for Fusang, a huge mythical tree in the eastern sea from whose branches the sun rises. 11. Traditionally defined as the breaths of the yin, yang, wind, rain, darkness, and light. 12. “Mind-nourishment” may seem an odd thing to recommend, particularly as the whole anecdote is directed against purposeful “governing” or “nourishing.” But this is typical of Daoist paradox. As we soon see, it does not in fact mean what it seems to mean. 13. Probably a reference to the itinerant statesmen- advisers of late Zhou times who wandered about offering their services to the various feudal lords. 14. I follow Fukunaga in punctuating after the first ww. 15. Following Yu Yue’s interpretation. 16. Following Zhang Binglin’s interpretation. 17. The remainder of the chapter, with its recognition of the necessity for benevolence, righteousness, law, ritual, etc., seems to clash violently with what has gone before. Some commentators interpret it as a description of the kind of compromise that even the perfect Daoist ruler must make if he is to rule effectively. Others regard it as an interpolation or a passage misplaced from some other section. See the similar passage on p. 79. 18. Following Ma Xulun’s interpretation. 12 HEAVEN AND EARTH Heaven and earth are huge, but they are alike in their transformations. The ten thousand things are numerous, but they are one in their good order. Human beings are many, but they all are subjects of the sovereign. The sovereign finds his source in Virtue, his completion in Heaven. Therefore it is said that the sovereign of dark antiquity ruled the world through inaction, through Heavenly Virtue and nothing more. Look at words in the light of the Way—then the sovereign of the world will be upright. Look at distinctions in the light of the Way—then the duty2 of sovereign and subject will be clear. Look at abilities in the light of the Way—then the officials of the world will be well ordered. Look everywhere in the light of the Way— then the response of the ten thousand things will be complete. Pervading Heaven and earth: that is the Way Moving among the ten thousand things: that is Virtue. Superiors governing the men below them: that is called administration. Ability finding trained expression: that is called skill. Skill is subsumed in administration, administration in duty, duty in Virtue, Virtue in the Way, and the Way in Heaven. Therefore it is said, those who shepherded the world in ancient times were without desire, and the world was satisfied, without action, and the ten thousand things were transformed. They were deep and silent, and the hundred clans were at rest. The Record says: “Stick to the One, and the ten thousand tasks will be accomplished; achieve mindlessness, and the gods and spirits will bow down.”4 The Master said:> The Way covers and bears up the ten thousand things—vast, vast is its greatness! The gentleman must pluck out his mind! To act through inaction is called Heaven. To speak through inaction is called Virtue. To love men and bring profit to things is called benevolence. To make the unlike alike is called magnitude. To move beyond barrier and distinction is called liberality. To possess the ten thousand unlikes is called wealth. To hold fast to Virtue is called enrootment. To mature in Virtue is called establishment. To follow the Way is called completion. To see that external things do not blunt the will is called perfection. When the gentleman clearly comprehends these ten things, then how huge will be the greatness of his mind setting forth, how endless his ramblings with the ten thousand things! Such a man will leave the gold hidden in the mountains, the pearls hidden in the depths. He will see no profit in money and goods, no enticement in eminence and wealth, no joy in long life, no grief in early death, no honor in affluence, no shame in poverty. He will not snatch the profits of a whole generation and make them his private hoard; he will not lord it over the world and think that he dwells in glory. His glory is enlightenment, [for he knows that] the ten thousand things belong to one storehouse, that life and death share the same body. The Master said: The Way—how deep its dwelling, how pure its clearness! Without it, the bells and chiming stones will not sound. The bells and stones have voices, but unless they are struck, they will not sound. The ten thousand things —who can make them be still? The man of kingly Virtue moves in simplicity and is ashamed to be a master of facts. He takes his stand in the original source, and his understanding extends to the spirits. Therefore his Virtue is far-reaching. His mind moves forth only when some external thing has roused it. Without the Way, the body can have no life, and without Virtue, life can have no clarity. To preserve the body and live out life, to establish Virtue and make clear the Way—is this not kingly Virtue? Broad and boundless, suddenly he emerges, abruptly he moves, and the ten thousand things follow him—this is what is called the man of kingly Virtue! He sees in the darkest dark, hears where there is no sound. In the midst of darkness, he alone sees the dawn; in the midst of the soundless, he alone hears harmony. Therefore, in depth piled upon depth, he can spy out the thing; in spirituality piled upon spirituality, he can discover the essence.© So in his dealings with the ten thousand things, he supplies all their wants out of total nothingness. Racing with the hour, he seeks lodging for a night, in the great, the small, the long, the short, the near, the far! The Yellow Emperor went wandering north of the Red Water, ascended the slopes of Kunlun, and gazed south. When he got home, he discovered he had lost his Dark Pearl. He sent Knowledge to look for it, but Knowledge couldn’t find it. He sent the keen-eyed Li Zhu to look for it, but Li Zhu couldn’t find it. He sent Wrangling Debate to look for it, but Wrangling Debate couldn’t find it. At last he tried employing Shapeless, and Shapeless found it. The Yellow Emperor said, “How odd!—in the end it was Shapeless who was able to find it!” Yao’s teacher was Xu You; Xu You’s teacher was Nie Que; Nie Que’s teacher was Wang Ni; and Wang Ni’s teacher was Piyi. Yao asked Xu You, “Would Nie Que do as the counterpart of Heaven? I could get Wang Ni to ask him to take over the throne from me.” Xu You said, “Watch out! You’ll put the world in danger! Nie Que is a man of keen intelligence and superb understanding, nimble-witted and sharp. His inborn nature surpasses that of other men, and he knows how to exploit what Heaven has given him through human devices. He would do his best to prevent error, but he doesn’t understand the source from which error arises. Make him the counterpart of Heaven? Watch—he will start leaning on men and forget about Heaven. He will put himself first and relegate others to a class apart. He will worship knowledge and chase after it with the speed of fire. He will become the servant of causes, the victim of things, looking in all four directions to see how things are faring, trying to attend to all wants, changing along with things, and possessing no trace of any constancy of his own. How could he possibly do as counterpart of Heaven? However, there are clans, and there are clan heads. He might do as the father of one branch, though he would never do as the father of the father of the branch. His kind are the forerunners of disorder, a disaster to the ministers facing north, a peril to the sovereign facing south!” Yao was seeing the sights at Hua when the border guard of Hua said, “Aha—a sage! I beg to offer up prayers for the sage. They will bring the sage long life!” Yao said, “No, thanks.” “They will bring the sage riches!” Yao said, “No, thanks.” “They will bring the sage many sons!” Yao said, “No, thanks.” “Long life, riches, many sons—these are what all men desire!” said the border guard. “How is it that you alone do not desire them?” Yao said, “Many sons mean many fears. Riches mean many troubles. Long life means many shames. These three are of no use in nourishing Virtue—therefore I decline them.” The border guard said, “At first I took you for a sage. Now I see you are a mere gentleman. When Heaven gives birth to the ten thousand people, it is certain to have jobs to assign to them. If you have many sons and their jobs are assigned to them, what is there to fear? If you share your riches with other men, what troubles will you have? The true sage is a quail at rest, a little fledgling at its meal, a bird in flight that leaves no trail behind. When the world has the Way, he joins in the chorus with all other things. When the world is without the Way, he nurses his Virtue and retires in leisure. And after a thousand years, should he tire of the world, he will leave it and ascend to the immortals, riding on those white clouds all the way up to the village of God. The three worries you have cited never touch him; his body is forever free of peril. How can he suffer any shame?” The border guard turned and left. Yao followed him, saying, “Please—I would like to ask you ...” “Go away!” said the border guard. When Yao ruled the world, Bocheng Zigao was enfeoffed as one of his noblemen. But when Yao passed the throne to Shun, and Shun passed it to Yu, Bocheng Zigao relinquished his title and took up farming. Yu went to see him and found him working in the fields. Yu scurried forward in the humblest manner, came to a halt, and said, “In former times when Yao ruled the world, sir, you served as one of his noblemen. But when Yao passed the throne to Shun, and Shun passed it to me, you relinquished your title and took up farming. May I be so bold as to ask why?” Zigao said, “In former times when Yao ruled the world, he handed out no rewards, and yet the people worked hard; he handed out no punishments, and yet the people were cautious. Now you reward and punish, and still the people fail to do good. From now on, Virtue will decay; from now on, penalties will prevail. The disorder of future ages will have its beginning here! You had better be on your way now —don’t interrupt my work!” Busily, busily he proceeded with his farm work, never turning to look back. In the Great Beginning, there was nonbeing; there was no being, no name. Out of it arose One; there was One, but it had no form. Things got hold of it and it came to life, and it was called Virtue. Before things had forms, they had their allotments; these were of many kinds but not cut off from one another, and they were called fates. Out of the flow and flux, things were born, and as they grew, they developed distinctive shapes; these were called forms. The forms and bodies held within them spirits, each with its own characteristics and limitations, and this was called the inborn nature. If the nature is trained, you may return to Virtue, and Virtue at its highest peak is identical with the Beginning. Being identical, you will be empty; being empty, you will be great. You may join in the cheeping and chirping, and when you have joined in the cheeping and chirping, you may join with Heaven and earth. Your joining is wild and confused, as though you were stupid, as though you were demented. This is called Dark Virtue. Rude and unwitting, you take part in the Great Submission. Confucius said to Lao Dan, “Here’s a man who works to master the Way as though he were trying to talk down an opponent 8 making the unacceptable acceptable, the not so, so. As the rhetoricians say, he can separate ‘hard’ from ‘white’ as clearly as though they were dangling from the eaves there. Can a man like this be called a sage?” Lao Dan said, “A man like this is a drudging slave, a craftsman bound to his calling, wearing out his body, grieving his mind. Because the dog can catch rats, he ends up ona leash.2 Because of his nimbleness, the monkey is dragged down from the mountain forest. Qiu 12 I’m going to tell you something—something you could never hear for yourself and something you would never know how to speak of. People who have heads and feet but no minds and no ears—there are mobs of them. To think that beings with bodies can all go on existing along with that which is bodiless and formless—it can never happen! A man’s stops and starts, his life and death, his rises and falls—none of these can he do anything about. Yet he thinks that the mastery of them lies with man! Forget things, forget Heaven, and be called a forgetter of self. The man who has forgotten self may be said to have entered Heaven.” KOR Ok Jianglii Mian went to see Ji Che and said, “The ruler of Lu begged me to give him some instruction. I declined, but he wouldn’t let me go, and so I had no choice but to tell him something. I don’t know whether or not what I said was right, but I would like to try repeating it to you. I said to the ruler of Lu, “You must be courteous and temperate! Pick out and promote those who are loyal and public-spirited, allow no flattery or favoritism, and then who of your people will venture to be unruly?” Ji Che heehawed with laughter. “As far as the Virtue of emperors and kings is concerned,” he said, “your advice is like the praying mantis that waved its arms angrily in front of an approaching carriage—it just isn’t up to the job. If the ruler of Lu went about it in that way, he would simply get himself all stirred up,lt place himself on a tower or a terrace. Then things would flock around him, and the crowd would turn its steps in his direction!” Jianglii Mian’s eyes bugged out in amazement. “I am dumbfounded by your words,” he said. “Nevertheless, I would like to hear how the Master would speak on this subject.” Ji Che said, “When a great sage rules the world, he makes the minds of his people free and far wandering. On this basis, he fashions teachings and simplifies customs, wiping out all treason from their minds and allowing each to pursue his own will. All is done in accordance with the inborn nature, and yet the people do not know why it is like this. Proceeding in this way, what need has he either to revere the way in which Yao and Shun taught their people or to look down on it in lofty contempt? His only desire is for unity with Virtue and the repose of the mind.” Zigong traveled south to Chu, and on his way back through Jin, as he passed along the south bank of the Han, he saw an old man preparing his fields for planting. He had hollowed out an opening by which he entered the well and from which he emerged, lugging a pitcher, which he carried out to water the fields. Grunting and puffing, he used up a great deal of energy and produced very little result. “There is a machine for this sort of thing,” said Zigong, “In one day it can water a hundred fields, demanding very little effort and producing excellent results. Wouldn’t you like one?” The gardener raised his head and looked at Zigong. “How does it work?” “It’s a contraption made by shaping a piece of wood. The back end is heavy and the front end light and it raises the water as though it were pouring it out, so fast that it seems to boil right over! It’s called a well sweep.” The gardener flushed with anger and then said with a laugh, “I’ve heard my teacher say, where there are machines, there are bound to be machine worries; where there are machine worries, there are bound to be machine hearts. With a machine heart in your breast, you’ve spoiled what was pure and simple, and without the pure and simple, the life of the spirit knows no rest. Where the life of the spirit knows no rest, the Way will cease to buoy you up. It’s not that I don’t know about your machine—I would be ashamed to use it!” Zigong blushed with chagrin, looked down, and made no reply. After a while, the gardener said, “Who are you, anyway?” “A disciple of Kong Qiu. 2 “Oh—then you must be one of those who broaden their learning in order to ape the sages, heaping absurd nonsense on the crowd, plucking the strings and singing sad songs all by yourself in hopes of buying fame in the world! You would do best to forget your spirit and breath, break up your body and limbs—then you might be able to get somewhere. You don’t even know how to look after your own body—how do you have any time to think about looking after the world! On your way now! Don’t interfere with my work!” Zigong frowned, and the color drained from his face. Dazed and rattled, he couldn’t seem to pull himself together, and it was only after he had walked on for some thirty /i that he began to recover. One of his disciples said, “Who was that man just now? Why did you change your expression and lose your color like that, Master, so that it took you all day to get back to normal?” ‘I used to think there was only one real man in the world,” said Zigong. “I didn’t know that there was this other one. I have heard Confucius say that in affairs you aim for what is right, and in undertakings you aim for success. To spend little effort and achieve big results—that is the Way of the sage. Now it seems that this isn’t so. He who holds fast to the Way is complete in Virtue; being complete in Virtue, he is complete in body; being complete in body, he is complete in spirit; and to be complete in spirit is the Way of the sage. He is content to live among the people, to walk by their side, and never know where he is going, Witless, his purity is complete. Achievement, profit, machines, skill—they have no place in this man’s mind! A man like this will not go where he has no will to go, will not do what he has no mind to do. Though the world might praise him and say he had really found something, he would look unconcerned and never turn his head; though the world might condemn him and say he had lost something, he would look serene and pay no heed. The praise and blame of the world are no loss or gain to him. He may be called a man of Complete Virtue. IK—I am a man of the wind-blown waves.” When Zigong got back to Lu, he reported the incident to Confucius. Confucius said, “He is one of those bogus practitioners of the arts of Mr. Chaos.43 He knows the first thing but doesn’t understand the second. He looks after what is on the inside but doesn’t look after what is on the outside. A man of true brightness and purity who can enter into simplicity, who can return to the primitive through inaction, give body to his inborn nature, and embrace his spirit, and in this way wander through the everyday world— if you had met one like that, you would have had real cause for astonishment./4 As for the arts of Mr. Chaos, you and I need not bother to find out about them.” Zhun Mang was on his way east to the Great Valley of the sea when he happened to meet Yuan Feng by the shore of the eastern oceant5 Yuan Feng said, “Where are you going?” “‘1’m going to the Great Valley.” “What will you do there?” “The Great Valley is the sort of thing you can pour into and it never gets full, dip from and it never runs dry. I’m going to wander there.” Yuan Feng said, “Don’t you care about what happens to ordinary men? Please, won’t you tell me about the government of the sage?” “The government of the sage?” said Zhun Mang. “Assign offices so that no abilities are overlooked; promote men so that no talents are neglected. Always know the true facts, and let men do what they are best at. When actions and words proceed properly and the world is transformed, then at a wave of the hand or a tilt of the chin, all the people of the four directions will come flocking to you. This is called the government of the sage.” “May I ask about the man of Virtue?” “The man of Virtue rests without thought, moves without plan. He has no use for right and wrong, beautiful and ugly. To share profit with all things within the four seas is his happiness, to look after their needs is his peace. Sad faced, he’s like a little child who has lost his mother. Bewildered, he’s like a traveler who has lost his way. He has more than enough wealth and goods, but he doesn’t know where they come from. He gets all he needs to eat and drink, but he doesn’t know how he gets it. This is called the manner of the man of Virtue.” “May I ask about the man of spirit?” “He lets his spirit ascend and mount on the light; with his bodily form, he dissolves and is gone. This is called the Illumination of Vastness. He lives out his fate, follows to the end his true form, and rests in the joy of Heaven and earth while the ten thousand cares melt away. So all things return to their true form. This is called Muddled Darkness.” Men Wugui . Chizhang Manqui were watching the troops of King Wut © Chizhang Manqui said, “He is no match for the man of the Yu clan. That’s why he runs into all this trouble!” Men Wugui said, “Was the world already in good order when the man of the Yu clan came along to order it? Or was it in disorder, and later he brought it in order?” Chizhang Manqui said, “Everybody wants to see the world well ordered. If it had been so already, what point would there have been in calling on the man of the Yu clan? The man of the Yu clan was medicine to a sore. But to wait until you go bald and then buy a wig, to wait until you get sick and then call for a doctor, to prepare the medicine like a true filial son and present it to your loving father, wearing a grim and haggard look—this the true sage would be ashamed to do. In an age of Perfect Virtue, the worthy are not honored; the talented are not employed. Rulers are like the high branches of a tree; the people, like the deer of the fields. They do what is right, but they do not know that this is righteousness. They love one another, but they do not know that this is benevolence. They are truehearted but do not know that this is loyalty. They are trustworthy but do not know that this is good faith. They wriggle around like insects, performing services for one another, but do not know that they are being kind. Therefore they move without leaving any trail behind, act without leaving any memory of their deeds.” When a filial son does not fawn on his parents, when a loyal minister does not flatter his lord, they are the finest of sons and ministers. He who agrees with everything his parents say and approves of everything they do is regarded by popular opinion as an unworthy son; he who agrees with everything his lord says and approves of everything his lord does is regarded by popular opinion as an unworthy minister But in other cases, men do not realize that the same principle should apply. If a man agrees with everything that popular opinion says and regards as good everything that popular opinion regards as good, he is not, as you might expect, called a sycophant and a flatterer. Are we to assume, then, that popular opinion commands more authority than one’s parents or is more to be honored than one’s lord? Call a man a sycophant, and he flushes with anger; call him a flatterer, and he turns crimson with rage. Yet all his life, he will continue to be a sycophant; all his life, he will continue to be a flatterer. See him set forth his analogies and polish his fine phrases to draw a crowd, until the beginning and end, the root and branches of his argument no longer match!18 See him spread out his robes, display his bright colors, put on a solemn face in hopes of currying favor with the age—and yet he does not recognize himself as a sycophant or a flatterer. See him with his followers laying down the law on right and wrong, and yet he does not recognize himself as one of the mob. This is the height of foolishness! He who knows he is a fool is not the biggest fool; he who knows he is confused is not in the worst confusion. The man in the worst confusion will end his life without ever getting straightened out; the biggest fool will end his life without ever seeing the light. If three men are traveling along and one is confused, they will still get where they are going—because confusion is in the minority. But if two of them are confused, then they can walk until they are exhausted and never get anywhere—because confusion is in the majority. And with all the confusion in the world these days, no matter how often I point the way, it does no good. Sad, is it not? Great music is lost on the ears of the villagers, but play them “The Breaking of the Willow” or “Bright Flowers,” and they grin from ear to ear. In the same way, lofty words make no impression on the minds of the mob. Superior words gain no hearing because vulgar words are in the majority. It is like the case of the two travelers tramping along in confusion and never getting where they are going.12 With all the confusion in the world these days, no matter how often I point the way, what good does it do? And if I know it does no good and still make myself do it, this too is a kind of confusion. So it is best to leave things alone and not force them. If I don’t force things, at least I won’t cause anyone any worry. When the leper woman gives birth to a child in the dead of the night, she rushes to fetch a torch and examine it, trembling with terror lest it look like herself.22 The hundred-year-old tree is hacked up to make bowls for the sacrificial wine, blue and yellow with patterns on them, and the chips are thrown into the ditch. Compare the sacrificial bowls with the chips in the ditch, and you will find them far apart in beauty and ugliness; yet they are alike in having lost their inborn nature. Robber Zhi, Zeng, and Shi are far apart in deeds and righteousness, and yet they are the same in having lost their inborn nature. There are five conditions under which the inborn nature is lost. One: when the five colors confuse the eye and cause the eyesight to be unclear. Two: when the five notes confuse the ear and cause the hearing to be unclear. Three: when the five odors stimulate the nose and produce weariness and congestion in the forehead. Four: when the five flavors dull the mouth, causing the sense of taste to be impaired and lifeless. Five: when likes and dislikes unsettle the mind and cause the inborn nature to become volatile and flighty. These five all are a danger to life. And yet the followers of Yangzi and Mozi go striding around, thinking they have really gotten hold of something.21 This is not what I call getting hold of something. If what you have gotten has gotten you into trouble, then can you really be said to have gotten something? If so, then the pigeons and doves in their cage have also gotten hold of something. With likes and dislikes, sounds and colors, you cripple what is on the inside; with leather caps and snipe- feathered bonnets, batons stuck in belts and sashes trailing, you cramp what is on the outside. The inside hemmed in by pickets and pegs, the outside heaped with wraps and swathes, and still you stand in this tangle of wraps and swathes and declare that you have gotten hold of something? If so, then the condemned men with their chained wrists and manacled fingers, the tiger and the leopard in their pens and prisons, have also gotten hold of something!22 1. Perhaps a reference to the Confucian doctrine of the rectification of names, that is, the necessity to make certain that the one who is called “ruler” is in fact a true ruler, etc. The writer of this chapter seems to be attempting to effect a compromise between Daoist and Confucian ideals of government. 2. Yi, elsewhere translated as “righteousness.” 3. As pointed out by commentators, the position of the de and that of the dao in the next sentence should be reversed to match the order of the sorites that follows. But the text is probably faulty. 4. It is not known what “Record” the writer is quoting. 5. The Master has been variously identified as Laozi, Zhuangzi, or Confucius. 6. Compare Daodejing XXI: “shadowy and indistinct, within it is a thing; dim and dark, within it is an essence.” 7. That is, he accommodates himself to external phenomena as a traveler accommodates himself to the conditions of the journey. In the main, I follow Fukunaga’s interpretation, though the sentence is very obscure. 8. Following Ma Xulun, I read bang (slander) in place of fang. 9. Following Sun Yirang, I read /ei in place of si; compare the parallel passage on p. 56. 10. Confucius’s familiar name. In using it to address Confucius face to face, Laozi is expressing great familiarity and/or contempt. 11. Following texts that read ju (agitated) in place of chu. 12. Confucius. 13. On Mr. Chaos (Hundun), see p. 59. 14. That is, the true man of the Way does not retire from the world or reject society and its inventions. 15. The names of the persons in the anecdote are allegorical, Zhun Mang meaning something like “Artless and Forgetful” and Yuan Feng meaning “Little Wind.” 16. If they were viewing the actual troops, the episode must be set in the eleventh century BCE, when King Wu of the Zhou attacked and overthrew the last ruler of the Shang dynasty. But perhaps they were watching the court dances performed in later ages that reenacted the campaign. The “man of the Yu clan” in the following sentence is the sage ruler who did not have to launch any military expeditions. 17. Because it is the duty of the son and minister to reprimand his parents and lord, respectively, when they are clearly in the wrong. 18. Following texts that omit the zui and adopting Chu Boxiu’s interpretation; the reference is apparently to the rhetoricians. 19. Following Lu Deming’s emendations. 20. Is this sentence intended to belong with what precedes it or with what follows it? Iam unable to tell. 21. On Yangzi and Mozi, see p. 61, n. 7. They preached acceptance and rejection, repectively, of sensual pleasure. 22. These last two paragraphs, with their mention of Robber Zhi, Zeng, and Shi, and discussion of the five notes, flavors, etc., are close in thought and terminology to the preceding sections. Speculation is that they originally belonged to either sec. 9 or sec. 11. 13 THE WAY OF HEAVEN It is the Way of heaven to keep moving and to allow no piling up—hence the ten thousand things come to completion. It is the Way of the emperor to keep moving and to allow no piling up—hence the whole world repairs to his court. It is the Way of the sage to keep moving and to allow no piling up—hence all within the seas bow to him. Comprehending Heaven, conversant with the sage, walker in the six avenues and four frontiers of the Virtue of emperors and kings—the actions of such a man come naturally; dreamily, he never lacks stillness. The sage is still not because he takes stillness to be good and therefore is still. The ten thousand things are insufficient to distract his mind—that is the reason he is still. Water that is still gives back a clear image of beard and eyebrows; reposing in the water level, it offers a measure to the great carpenter. And if water in stillness possesses such clarity, how much more must pure spirit. The sage’s mind in stillness is the mirror of Heaven and earth, the glass of the ten thousand things. Emptiness, stillness, limpidity, silence, inaction—these are the level of Heaven and earth, the substance of the Way and its Virtue. Therefore the emperor, the king, the sage rest in them. Resting, they may be empty; empty, they may be full; and fullness is completion+ Empty, they may be still; still, they may move; moving, they may acquire. Still, they may rest in inaction; resting in inaction, they may demand success from those who are charged with activities. Resting in inaction, they may be merry; being merry, they may shun the place of care and anxiety, and the years of their life will be long. Emptiness, stillness, limpidity, silence, inaction are the root of the ten thousand things. To understand them and face south is to become a ruler such as Yao was; to understand them and face north is to become a minister such as Shun was.2 To hold them in high station is the Virtue of emperors and kings, of the Son of Heaven; to hold them in lowly station is the way of the dark sage, the uncrowned king. Retire with them to a life of idle wandering, and you will command first place among the recluses of the rivers and seas, the hills and forests. Come forward with them to succor the age, and your success will be great, your name renowned, and the world will be united. In stillness you will be a sage, in action a king. Resting in inaction, you will be honored; of unwrought simplicity, your beauty will be such that no one in the world may vie with you. He who has a clear understanding of the Virtue of Heaven and earth may be called the Great Source, the Great Ancestor. He harmonizes with Heaven; and by doing so he brings equitable accord to the world and harmonizes with men as well. To harmonize with men is called human joy; to harmonize with Heaven is called Heavenly joy. Zhuangzi has said, “This Teacher of mine, this Teacher of mine—he passes judgment on the ten thousand things, but he doesn’t think himself severe; his bounty extends to ten thousand generations, but he doesn’t think himself benevolent. He is older than the highest antiquity, but he doesn’t think himself long-lived; he covers heaven, bears up the earth, carves and fashions countless forms, but he doesn’t think himself skilled.”2 This is what is called Heavenly joy. So it is said, for him who understands Heavenly joy, life is the working of Heaven; death is the transformation of things. In stillness, he and the yin share a single Virtue; in motion, he and the yang share a single flow. Thus he who understands Heavenly joy incurs no wrath from Heaven, no Opposition from man, no entanglement from things, no blame from the spirits. So it is said, his movement is of Heaven, his stillness of earth. With his single mind in repose, he is king of the world; the spirits do not afflict him; his soul knows no weariness. His single mind reposed, the ten thousand things submit—which is to say that his emptiness and stillness reach throughout Heaven and earth and penetrate the ten thousand things. This is what is called Heavenly joy. Heavenly joy is the mind of the sage by which he shepherds the world. The Virtue of emperors and kings takes Heaven and earth as its ancestor, the Way and its Virtue as its master, inaction as its constant rule. With inaction, you may make the world work for you and have leisure to spare; with action, you will find yourself working for the world and never will it be enough. Therefore the men of old prized inaction. If superiors adopt inaction and inferiors adopt inaction as well, then inferior and superior will share the same virtue; and if inferior and superior share the same virtue, there will be none to act as minister. If inferiors adopt action and superiors adopt action as well, then superior and inferior will share the same way; and if superior and inferior share the same way, there will be none to act as lord. Superiors must adopt inaction and make the world work for them; inferiors must adopt action and work for the world. This is an unvarying truth. Therefore the kings of the world in ancient times, though their knowledge encompassed all Heaven and earth, did not of themselves lay plans; though their power of discrimination embraced® the ten thousand things, they did not of themselves expound any theories; though their abilities outshone all within the four seas, they did not of themselves act. Heaven does not give birth, yet the ten thousand things are transformed; earth does not sustain, yet the ten thousand things are nourished. The emperor and the king do not act, yet the world is benefited. So it is said, nothing so spiritual as Heaven, nothing so rich as earth, nothing so great as the emperor and the king. So it is said, the Virtue of the emperor and the king is the counterpart of Heaven and earth. This is the way to mount Heaven and earth, to make the ten thousand things gallop, to employ the mass of men. The source rests with the superior, the trivia with the inferior; the essential resides in the ruler, the details in his ministers. The blandishments of the three armies and the five weapons—these are the trivia of Virtue. The doling out of rewards and punishments, benefit and loss, the five penalties—these are the trivia of public instruction.> Rites and laws, weights, measures, the careful comparison of forms and names®—these are the trivia of good government. The tones of bell and drum, the posturings of feather and tassel—these are the trivia of music Lamentation and coarse garments, the mourning periods of varying lengths—these are the trivia of grief. These five trivia must wait for the movement of pure spirit, for the vitality of the mind’s art before they can command respect. The study of such trivia was known to antiquity, but the men of old gave them no precedence. The ruler precedes, the minister follows; the father precedes, the son follows; the older brother precedes, the younger brother follows; the senior precedes, the junior follows; the man precedes, the woman follows; the husband precedes, the wife follows. Honor and _ lowliness, precedence and following, are part of the workings of Heaven and earth, and from them the sage draws his model. Heaven is honorable, earth lowly—such are their ranks in spiritual enlightenment. Spring and summer precede, autumn and winter follow—such is the sequence of the four seasons. The ten thousand things change and grow, their roots and buds, each with its distinctive form, flourishing and decaying by degree, a constant flow of change and transformation. If Heaven and earth, the loftiest in spirituality, have yet their sequence of honorable and lowly, of preceder and follower, how much more must the way of man! In the ancestral temple, honor is determined by degree of kinship; in the court, by degree of nobility; in the village, by degree of seniority; in the administration of affairs, by degree of worth. This is the sequence of the Great Way. If you speak of the Way and not of its sequence, then it is not a way; and if you speak of a way that is not a way, then how can anyone make his way by it? Therefore the men of ancient times who clearly understood the Great Way first made clear Heaven and then went on to the Way and its Virtue. Having made clear the Way and its Virtue, they went on to benevolence and righteousness. Having made clear benevolence and righteousness, they went on to the observance of duties. Having made clear the observance of duties, they went on to forms and names. Having made clear forms and names, they went on to the assignment of suitable offices. Having made clear the assignment of suitable offices, they went on to the scrutiny of performance. Having made clear the scrutiny of performance, they went on to the judgment of right and wrong. Having made clear the judgment of right and wrong, they went on to rewards and punishments. Having made clear rewards and punishments, they could be certain that stupid and wise were in their proper place, that eminent and lowly were rightly ranked, that good and worthy men as well as unworthy ones showed their true form, that all had duties suited to their abilities, that all acted in accordance with their titles. It was in this way that superiors were served, inferiors were shepherded, external things were ordered, the inner man was trained. Knowledge and scheming were unused, yet all found rest in Heaven. This was called the Great Peace, the Highest Government. Hence the book says, “There are forms and there are names.”® Forms and names were known to antiquity, but the men of old gave them no precedence. Those who spoke of the Great Way in ancient times could count to five in the sequence [described earlier] and pick out “forms and names” or count to nine and discuss “rewards and punishments.” But to jump right in and talk about “forms and names” is to lack an understanding of the source; to jump right in and talk about “rewards and punishments” is to lack an understanding of the beginning. Those who stand the Way on its head before describing it, who turn it backward before expounding it, may be brought to order by others, but how could they be capable of bringing others to order? Those who jump right in and talk about “forms and names,” “rewards and punishments,” have an understanding of the tools for bringing order but no understanding of the way to bring order. They may work for the world, but they are not worthy to make the world work for them. They are rhetoricians, scholars cramped in one corner of learning. Rites and laws, weights and measures, the careful comparison of forms and names—the men of old had all these. They are the means by which those below serve those above, not the means by which those above shepherd those below. Long ago Shun asked Yao, “As Heaven-appointed king, how do you use your mind?” Yao replied, “I never abuse those who have nowhere to sue nor reject the poor people. Grieving for the dead, comforting the orphan, pitying the widow—I use my mind in these things alone.” Shun said, “Admirable as far as admirableness goes. But not yet great.” Yao said, “Then what should I do?” 9 Shun said, “Heaven raised on high, earth in peace, sun and moon shining, the four seasons marching—if you could be like the constant succession of day and night, the clouds that move, the rains that fall!” “And to think I have been going to all this bustle and bother!” said Yao. “You are one who joins with Heaven; I am one who joins with man.” Heaven and earth have been called great since ancient times, have been praised in chorus by the Yellow Emperor, Yao, and Shun. The kings of the world in ancient times— what need had they for action? Heaven and earth was enough for them. Confucius went west to deposit his works with the royal house of Zhou. Zilu advised him, saying, “I have heard that the Keeper of the Royal Archives is one Lao Dan, now retired and living at home. If you wish to deposit your works, you might try going to see him about it.” “Excellent!” said Confucius and went to see Lao Dan, but Lao Dan would not give permission. Thereupon Confucius unwrapped his Twelve Classics and began expounding them.12 Halfway through the exposition, Lao Dan said, “This will take forever! Just let me hear the gist of the thing!” “The gist of it,” said Confucius, “is benevolence and righteousness.” “May I ask if benevolence and righteousness belong to the inborn nature of man?” said Lao Dan. “Of course,” said Confucius. “If the gentleman lacks benevolence, he will get nowhere; if he lacks righteousness, he cannot even stay alive. Benevolence and righteousness are truly the inborn nature of man. What else could they be?” Lao Dan said, “May I ask your definition of benevolence and righteousness?” Confucius said, “To be glad and joyful! in mind, to embrace universal love and be without partisanship—this is the true form of benevolence and righteousness.” Lao Dan said, “Hmm—close—except for the last part. ‘Universal love’—that’s a rather nebulous ideal, isn’t it? And to be without partisanship is already a kind of partisanship. Do you want to keep the world from losing its simplicity2/2 Heaven and earth hold fast to their constant ways, the sun and moon to their brightness, the stars and planets to their ranks, the birds and beasts to their flocks, the trees and shrubs to their stands. You have only to go along with Virtue in your actions, to follow the Way in your journey, and already you will be there. Why these flags of benevolence and righteousness so bravely up-raised, as though you were beating a drum and searching for a lost child? Ah, you will bring confusion to the nature of man!” KOR Ok Shi Chengqi went to see Laozi. “I had heard that you were a sage,” he said, “and so, without minding how long the road was, I came to beg an interview—a hundred nights along the way, feet covered with calluses, and yet I did not dare to stop and rest. Now that I see you, though, I find you are no sage at all. Rat holes heaped with leftover grain, and yet you turn your little sister out of the house, an unkind act indeed! More raw and cooked food in front of you than you can ever get through, and yet you go on endlessly hoarding goods 113 Laozi looked blank and made no reply. The following day, Shi Chengqi came to see him again and said, “Yesterday I was very sharp with you, but now I have no heart for that sort of thing 14 I wonder why that is?” Laozi said, “Artful wisdom, the spirit-like sage—I hope I have shuffled off categories of that sort! If you’d called me an ox, I’d have said I was an ox; if you’d called me a horse, I’d have said I was a horse. If the reality is there and you refuse to accept the name that men give it, you’ll only lay yourself open to double harassment. My submission is a constant submission; I do not submit because I think it’s time to submit.” Shi Chengqi backed respectfully away so that he would not tread on Laozi’s shadow and then advanced once more in a humble manner and asked how he should go about cultivating his person. Laozi said, “Your face is grim, your eyes are fierce, your forehead is broad, your mouth is gaping, your manner is overbearing, like a horse held back by a tether, watching for a chance to bolt, bounding off as though shot from a crossbow. Scrutinizing ever so carefully, crafty in wisdom, parading your arrogance—all this invites mistrust. Up in the borderlands, a man like you would be taken for a thief!” The Master said: The Way does not falter before the huge, is not forgetful of the tiny; therefore the ten thousand things are complete in it. Vast and ample, there is nothing it does not receive. Deep and profound, how can it be fathomed? Punishment and favor,1> benevolence and righteousness—these are trivia to the spirit, and yet who but the Perfect Man can put them in their rightful place? When the Perfect Man rules the world, he has hold of a huge thing, does he not?—yet it is not enough to snare him in entanglement. He works the handles that control the world but is not a party to the workings. He sees clearly into what has no falsehood and is unswayed by thoughts of gain. He ferrets out the truth of things and knows how to cling to the source. Therefore he can put Heaven and earth outside himself, forget the ten thousand things, and his spirit has no cause to be wearied. He dismisses benevolence and righteousness, rejectsL® rites and music, for the mind of the Perfect Man knows where to find repose. Men of the world who value the Way all turn to books. But books are nothing more than words. Words have value; what is of value in words is meaning. Meaning has something it is pursuing, but the thing that it is pursuing cannot be put into words and handed down. The world values words and hands down books, but although the world values them, I do not think them worth valuing. What the world takes to be value is not real value. What you can look at and see are forms and colors; what you can listen to and hear are names and sounds. What a pity!—that the men of the world should suppose that form and color, name and sound, are sufficient to convey the truth of a thing. It is because in the end, they are not sufficient to convey truth that “those who know do not speak, those who speak do not know.”!Z But how can the world understand this! Duke Huan was in his hall reading a book. The wheel-wright Pian, who was in the yard below chiseling a wheel, laid down his mallet and chisel, stepped up into the hall, and said to Duke Huan, “This book Your Grace is reading—may I venture to ask whose words are in it?” “The words of the sages,” said the duke. “Are the sages still alive?” “Dead long ago,” said the duke. “In that case, what you are reading there is nothing but the chaff and dregs of the men of old!” “Since when does a wheelwright have permission to comment on the books I read?” said Duke Huan. “If you have some explanation, well and good. If not, it’s your life!” Wheelwright Pian said, “I look at it from the point of view of my own work. When I chisel a wheel, if the blows of the mallet are too gentle, the chisel will slide and won’t take hold. But if they’re too hard, it will bite and won’t budge. Not too gentle, not too hard—you can get it in your hand and feel it in your mind. You can’t put it into words, and yet there’s a knack to it somehow. I can’t teach it to my son, and he can’t learn it from me. So I’ve gone along for seventy years, and at my age I’m still chiseling wheels. When the men of old died, they took with them the things that couldn’t be handed down. So what you are reading there must be nothing but the chaff and dregs of the men of old.” 1. Following texts that read bei in place of lun. 2. Shun served as a minister under Yao before Yao ceded the throne to him; hence here he represents the ideal minister. 3. See p. 52, where these words are attributed to Xu You. 4. Reading zhou instead of diao in accordance with Zhang Binglin’s interpretation. 5. The “three armies” refers to the three-divisioned army of a feudal state. The five weapons are usually listed as spear, halberd, battle-ax, shield, and bow, though there are other lists. The five penalties are usually given as tattooing, cutting off the nose, cutting off the feet, castration, and death. 6. That is, the correspondence between an official’s title and his actual performance in office, an important principle in Legalist doctrine. 7. Music here includes the dance, in which feathers and tassels made of yak tails were used. 8. It is not known what book the writer is quoting. The whole passage appears to be an attempt to combine Daoist, Confucian, and Legalist terminology and concepts of government into one comprehensive system, the sort of eclecticism often found in thinkers of the Qin and early Han. 9. Reading deng in place of de, and tu in place of chu, in accordance with the emendations by Zhang Binglin and Sun Yirang, respectively. 10. There are various explanations of the phrase “Twelve Classics,” for example, the Six Confucian Classics with six commentaries, or the Spring and Autumn Annals, which covers the reigns of twelve dukes of Lu. 11. Reading yi (pleased) in place of wu in accordance with Zhang Binglin’s emendation. 12. Reading pu in place of mu to correspond to the parallel sentence in sec. 14, p. 115. 13. One can easily gather from the Daodejing that Laozi favored frugality, but nothing is known about these legends of his personal stinginess and lack of charity to his little sister. 14. Following Ma Xulun’s emendation and interpretation. 15. ALegalist term; see Han Feizi, sec. 7, where punishment and favor are called “the two handles” of political power. 16. Reading bin with the hand radical. 17. The section in quotation marks is identical with the beginning of Daodejing LVI. 14 THE TURNING OF HEAVEN Does heaven turn? Does the earth sit still? Do sun and moon compete for a place to shine? Who masterminds all this? Who pulls the strings? Who, resting inactive himself, gives the push that makes it go this way? I wonder, is there some mechanism that works it and won’t let it stop? I wonder if it just rolls and turns and can’t bring itself to a halt? Do the clouds make the rain, or does the rain make the clouds? Who puffs them up, who showers them down like this? Who, resting inactive himself, stirs up all this lascivious joy? The winds rise in the north, blowing now west, now east, whirling up to wander on high. Whose breaths and exhalations are they? Who, resting inactive himself, huffs and puffs them about like this? The shaman Xian beckoned2 and said, “Come—I will tell you. Heaven has the six directions and the five constants.2, When emperors and kings go along with these, there is good order; when they move contrary to these, there is disaster. With the instructions of the Nine Luo4 order can be made to reign and virtue completed. The ruler will shine mirror-like over the earth below, and the world will bear him up. He may be called an August One on high-"S Tang, the prime minister of Shang,® asked Zhuangzi about benevolence. Zhuangzi said, “Tigers and wolves—they’re benevolent.” “How can you say that?” Zhuangzi said, “Sire and cubs warm and affectionate with one another—why do you say they’re not benevolent?” “What I am asking to hear about is perfect benevolence.” ‘Perfect benevolence knows no _ affection,” said Zhuangzi. The prime minister said, “I have heard that where affection is lacking, there will be no love, and if there is no love, there will be no filial piety. Can you possibly say that perfect benevolence is unfilial?” “No, no,” said Zhuangzi. “Perfect benevolence is a lofty thing—words like filial piety would never do to describe it. And what you are talking about is not something that surpasses filial piety but something that doesn’t even come up to it. If a traveler to the south turns to look north again when he reaches the city of Ying, he will no longer see the dark northern mountains. Why? Because they are too far away. Thus it is said, to be filial out of respect is easy; to be filial out of love is hard. To be filial out of love is easy; to forget parents is hard. To forget parents is easy; to make parents forget you is hard. To make parents forget you is easy; to forget the whole world is hard. To forget the whole world is easy; to make the whole world forget you is hard. Virtue discards Yao and Shun and rests in inaction. Its bounty enriches ten thousand ages, and yet no one in the world knows this. Why all these deep sighs, this talk of benevolence and filial piety? Filial piety, brotherliness, benevolence, righteousness, loyalty, trust, honor, integrity —for all of these, you must drive yourself and make a slave of Virtue. They are not worth prizing. So it is said, Highest eminence scorns the titles of the kingdom; greatest wealth rejects the riches of the kingdom; loftiest desire ignores fame and reputation. It is the Way alone that never varies.” Cheng of North Gate said to the Yellow Emperor, “When Your Majesty performed the Xianchi music in the wilds around Lake Dongting, I listened, and at first I was afraid. I listened some more and felt weary, and then I listened to the end and felt confused. Overwhelmed, speechless, I couldn’t get hold of myself.” “{t’s not surprising you felt that way,” said the emperor. “{ performed it through man, tuned it to Heaven, went forward with ritual principle, and established it in Great Purity. Perfect music must first respond to the needs of man, accord with the reason of Heaven, proceed by the Five Virtues, and blend with spontaneity; only then can it bring order to the four seasons and bestow a final harmony on the ten thousand things. Then the four seasons will rise one after the other; the ten thousand things will take their turn at living. Now flourishing, now decaying, the civil and military strains will keep them in step; now with clear notes, now with dull ones, the yin and the yang will blend all in harmony, the sounds flowing forth like light, like hibernating insects that start to wriggle again, like the crash of thunder with which I awe the world. At the end, no tail; at the beginning, no head; now dead, now alive, now flat on the ground, now up on its feet, its constancy is unending, yet there is nothing that can be counted on. That’s why you felt afraid. “Then I played it with the harmony of yin and yang, lit it with the shining of sun and moon; its notes I was able to make long or short, yielding or strong, modulating about a single unity but bowing before no rule or constancy. In the valley they filled the valley; in the void they filled the void; plugging up the crevices, holding back the spirit, accepting things on their own terms. Its notes were clear and radiant,8 its fame high and bright. Therefore the ghosts and spirits kept to their darkness, and the sun, moon, stars, and constellations marched in their orbits. I made it stop where there is an end to things, made it flow where there is no stopping. You2 try to fathom it but can’t understand, try to gaze at it but can’t see, try to overtake it but can’t catch up. You stand dazed before the four-directioned emptiness of the Way or lean on your desk and moan. Your eyes fail before you can see; your strength knuckles under before you can catch up It was nothing I could do anything about. Your body melted into the empty void, and this brought you to an idle freedom. It was this idle freedom that made you feel weary. “Then I played it with unwearying notes and tuned it to the command of spontaneity. Therefore there seemed to be a chaos where things grow in thickets together, a maturity where nothing takes form, a universal plucking where nothing gets pulled, a clouded obscurity where there is no sound. It moved in no direction at all, rested in mysterious shadow. Some called it death, some called it life, some called it fruit, some called it flower. It flowed and scattered and bowed before no constant tone. The world, perplexed by it, went to the sage for instruction, for the sage is the comprehender of true form and the completer of fate. When the Heavenly mechanism is not put into action, and yet the five vital organs are all complete—this may be called the music of Heaven. Wordless, it delights the mind. Therefore the lord of Yan sang its praises thus: ‘Listen— you do not hear its sound; look—you do not see its form. It fills all Heaven and earth, enwraps all the six directions.’ You wanted to hear it but had no way to go about it. That was why you felt confused. “Music begins with fear, and because of this fear, there is dread, as of a curse. Then I add the weariness, and because of the weariness, there is compliance. I end it all with confusion, and because of the confusion, there is stupidity. And because of the stupidity, there is the Way, the Way that can be lifted up and carried around wherever you go.” When Confucius was away in the west visiting the state of Wei, Yan Yuan said to Music Master Jin, “What do you think of my master’s trip’ 2 Music Master Jin said, “A pity—your master will most likely end up in trouble.” “How so?” asked Yan Yuan. Music Master Jin said, “Before the straw dogs are presented at the sacrifice, they are stored in bamboo boxes and covered over with patterned embroidery, while the impersonator of the dead and the priest fast and practice austerities in preparation for fetching them. But after they have once been presented, then all that remains for them is to be trampled on, head and back, by passersby; to be swept up by the grass cutters and burned! And if anyone should come along and put them back in their bamboo boxes, cover them over with patterned embroidery, and linger or lie down to sleep beneath them, he would dream no proper dreams; on the contrary, he would most certainly be visited again and again by nightmares. “Now your master has picked up some old straw dogs that had been presented by the former kings and has called together his disciples to linger and lie down in sleep beneath them. Therefore the people chopped down the tree on him in Song, wiped away his footprints in Wei, and made trouble for him in Shang and Zhou—such were the dreams he had. They besieged him between Chen and Cai, and for seven days he ate no cooked food, till he hovered on the border between life and death—such were the nightmares he had14 “Nothing is as good as a boat for crossing water, nothing as good as a cart for crossing land. But although a boat will get you over water, if you try to push it across land, you may push till your dying day and hardly move it any distance at all. And are the past and present not like the water and the land, and the states of Zhou and Lu not like a boat and a cart? To hope to practice the ways of Zhou in the state of Lu is like trying to push a boat over land—a great deal of work, no success, and certain danger to the person who tries it. The man who tries to do so has failed to understand the turning that has no direction, that responds to things and is never at a loss. “Have you never seen a well sweep? Pull it, and down it goes; let go, and up it swings. It allows itself to be pulled around by men; it doesn’t try to pull them. So it can go up and down and never be blamed by anybody. “Thus it is that the rituals and regulations of the Three August Ones and the Five Emperors are prized not because they were uniform but because they were capable of bringing about order The rituals and regulations of the Three August Ones and the Five Emperors may be compared to the haw, the pear, the orange, and the citron. Their flavors are quite different, yet all are pleasing to the mouth. Rituals and regulations are something that change in response to the times. If you take a monkey and dress him in the robes of the Duke of Zhou, he will bite and tear at them, not satisfied until he has divested himself of every stitch. And a glance will show that past and present are no more alike than are a monkey and the Duke of Zhou! “The beautiful Xishi, troubled with heartburn, frowned at her neighbors. An ugly woman of the neighborhood, seeing that Xishi was beautiful, went home and likewise pounded her breast and frowned at her neighbors. But at the sight of her, the rich men of the neighborhood shut tight their gates and would not venture out, while the poor men grabbed their wives and children by the hand and scampered off. The woman understood that someone frowning could be beautiful, but she did not understand where the beauty of the frown came from. A pity, indeed! Your master is going to end up in trouble!” Confucius had gone along until he was fifty-one and had still not heard the Way. Finally he went south to Pei and called on Lao Dan. “Ah, you have come,” said Lao Dan. ‘Y’ve heard that you are a worthy man of the northern region. Have you found the Way?” ‘Not yet,” said Confucius. “Where did you look for it?” asked Lao Dan. “I looked for it in rules and regulations, but five years went by and I still hadn’t found it.” “Where else did you look for it?” asked Lao Dan. “J looked for it in the yin and yang, but twelve years went by and I still hadn’t found it.” “Tt stands to reason!” said Lao Dan. “If the Way could be presented, there is no man who would not present it to his ruler. If the Way could be offered, there is no man who would not offer it to his parents. If the Way could be reported, there is no man who would not report it to his brothers. If the Way could be bequeathed, there is no man who would not bequeath it to his heirs. But it cannot—and for none other than the following reason: If there is no host on the inside to receive it, it will not stay; if there is no mark on the outside to guide it, it will not go. If what is brought forth from the inside is not received on the outside, then the sage will not bring it forth. If what is taken in from the outside is not received by a host on the inside, the sage will not entrust it 16 ‘Fame is a public weapon—don’t reach for it too often. Benevolence and righteousness are the grass huts of the former kings; you may stop in them for one night, but you mustn’t tarry there for long. A lengthy stay would invite many reproaches. The Perfect Man of ancient times used benevolence as a path to be borrowed, righteousness as a lodge to take shelter in. He wandered in the free and easy wastes, ate in the plain and simple fields, and strolled in the garden of no bestowal. Free and easy, he rested in inaction; plain and simple, it was not hard for him to live; bestowing nothing, he did not have to hand things out. The men of old called this the wandering of the Truth-Picker. “He who considers wealth a good thing can never bear to give up his income; he who considers eminence a good thing can never bear to give up his fame. He who has a taste for power can never bear to hand over authority to others. Holding tight to these things, such men shiver with fear; should they let them go, they would pine in sorrow. They never stop for a moment of reflection, never cease to gaze with greedy eyes—they are men punished by Heaven. Resentment and kindness, taking away and giving, reproof and instruction, life and death—these eight things are the weapons of the corrector tZ Z Only he who complies with the Great Change and allows no blockage will be able to use them. Therefore it is said, The corrector must be correct. If the mind cannot accept this fact, then the doors of Heaven will never open!” Confucius called on Lao Dan and spoke to him about benevolence and righteousness. Lao Dan said, “Chaff from the winnowing fan can so blind the eye that heaven, earth, and the four directions all seem to shift place. A mosquito or a horsefly stinging your skin can keep you awake a whole night. And when benevolence and righteousness in all their fearfulness come to muddle the mind,18 the confusion is unimaginable. If you want to keep the world from losing its simplicity, you must move with the freedom of the wind, stand in the perfection of Virtue. Why all this huffing and puffing, as though you were carrying a big drum and searching for a lost child! The snow goose needs no daily bath to stay white; the crow needs no daily inking to stay black. Black and white in their simplicity offer no ground for argument; fame and reputation in their clamorousness!2 offer no ground for envy. When the springs dry up and the fish are left stranded on the ground, they spew one another with moisture and wet one another down with spit—but it would be much better if they could forget one another in the rivers and lakes!” When Confucius returned from his visit with Lao Dan, he did not speak for three days. His disciples said, “Master, you’ve seen Lao Dan—what estimation would you make of him?” Confucius said, “At last I may say that I have seen a dragon—a dragon that coils to show his body at its best, that sprawls out to display his patterns at their best, riding on the breath of the clouds, feeding on the yin and yang. My mouth fell open and I couldn’t close it; my tongue flew up and I couldn’t even stammer. How could I possibly make any estimation of Lao Dan!” Zigong said, “Then is it true that the Perfect Man can command corpse-like stillness and dragon vision, the voice of thunder and the silence of deep pools; that he breaks forth into movement like Heaven and earth? If only I, too, could get to see him!” In the end, he went with an introduction from Confucius and called on Lao Dan. Lao Dan was about to sit down in the hall and stretch out his legs. In a small voice he said, ‘T’ve lived to see a great many years come and go. What advice is it you have for me?” Zigong said, “The Three August Ones and the Five Emperors ruled the world in ways that were not the same, though they were alike in the praise and acclaim they won. I am told, sir, that you alone do not regard them as sages. May I ask why?” Lao Dan said, “Young man, come a little closer! Why do you say that they ruled in ways that were not the same?” “Yao ceded the throne to Shun, and Shun ceded it to Yu. Yu wore himself out over it, and Tang even resorted to war. King Wen obeyed Zhou and did not dare to rebel; but his son King Wu turned against Zhou and refused to remain loyal. Therefore I say that they were not the same.” Lao Dan said, “Young man, come a little closer, and I will tell you how the Three August Ones and the Five Emperors ruled the world. In ancient times the Yellow Emperor ruled the world by making the hearts of the people one. Therefore, if there were those among the people who did not wail at the death of their parents, the people saw nothing wrong in this. Yao ruled the world by making the hearts of the people affectionate. Therefore, if there were those among the people who decided to mourn for longer or shorter periods according to the degree of kinship of the deceased, the people saw nothing wrong in this. Shun ruled the world by making the hearts of the people rivalrous. Therefore the wives of the people became pregnant and gave birth in the tenth month as in the past, but their children were not five months old before they were able to talk, and their baby laughter had hardly rung out before they had begun to distinguish one person from another. It was then that premature death first appeared. Yu ruled the world by causing the hearts of the people to change. It was assumed that each man had a heart of his own, that recourse to arms was quite all right. Killing a thief is not a case of murder, they said; every man in the world should look out for his own kind. As a result, there was great consternation in the world, and the Confucians and Mohists all came forward, creating for the first time the rules of ethical behavior. But what would they say about those men who nowadays make wives of their daughters?22 “J will tell you how the Three August Ones and the Five Emperors ruled the world! They called it ‘ruling,’ but in fact they were plunging it into the worst confusion. The ‘wisdom’ of the Three August Ones was such as blotted out the brightness of sun and moon above, sapped the vigor of hills and streams below, and overturned the round of the four seasons in between. Their wisdom was more fearsome than the tail of the scorpion; down to the smallest beast, not a living thing was allowed to rest in the true form of its nature and fate. And yet they considered themselves sages! Was it not shameful—their lack of shame!” Zigong, stunned and speechless, stood wondering which way to turn. Confucius said to Lao Dan, “I have been studying the Six Classics—the Odes, the Documents, the Ritual, the Music, the Changes, and the Spring and Autumn, for what I would call a long time, and I know their contents through and through. But I have been around to seventy-two different rulers with them, expounding the ways of the former kings and making clear the path trod by the dukes of Zhou and Shao, and yet not a single ruler has found anything to excite his interest. How difficult it is to persuade others, how difficult to make clear the Way!” Laozi said, “It’s lucky you didn’t meet with a ruler who would try to govern the world as you say. The Six Classics are the old worn-out paths of the former kings—they are not the thing that walked the path. What you are expounding are simply these paths. Paths are made by shoes that walk them; they are by no means the shoes themselves! “The white fish hawk has only to stare unblinking at its mate for fertilization to occur. With insects, the male cries on the wind above, the female cries on the wind below, and there is fertilization. The creature called the Jez is both male and female, and so it can fertilize itself. Inborn nature cannot be changed, fate cannot be altered, time cannot be stopped, the Way cannot be obstructed. Get hold of the Way and there’s nothing that can’t be done; lose it and there’s nothing that can be done.” Confucius stayed home for three months and then went to see Lao Dan once again. “I’ve got it,” he said. “The magpie hatches its young; the fish spit out their milt; the slim-waisted wasp has its stages of transformation; and when baby brother is born, big brother howls.2! For a long time now, I have not been taking my place as a man along with the process of change. And if I do not take my own place as a man along with the process of change, how can I hope to change other men?” Laozi said, “Good, Qiu—now you’ve got it!” 1. The expression “clouds and rain” was used from early times to refer to sexual intercourse, and this may be why the writer employs the odd phrase “lascivious joy.” 2. Reading zhao with the hand radical, as Ma Xulun suggested. 3. Usually taken to be the five elements of Chinese philosophy: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. 4. Probably a reference to the “Great Plan” section of the Book of Documents, which is in nine divisions and was supposed to have been written on the back of a tortoise that emerged from the Luo River. 5. On the August Ones, see p. 113, n. 15. 6. Shang here presumably means the state of Song; see the introduction, p. viii. 7. The thirty-five characters that make up this sentence are omitted in some editions because there is strong suspicion that they are part of a commentary that was erroneously copied into the body of the text. 8. Following Ma Xulun’s interpretation. 9. Following the texts that read zi instead of yu. 10. Since in the preceding passage, the order of the verbs was “understand,” “see,” and “catch up,” this sentence probably began originally with a clause describing Cheng’s inability to understand, of which only the single character zhi now remains. 11. As the reader well may feel at this point. On the whole, I follow Fukunaga in the interpretation of this difficult and deliberately paradoxical passage, though I am not confident that I really understand what it is all about. It should be noted that because the words for “Joy” and “music” are written with the same character, phrases translated here as “perfect music,” “the music of Heaven,” etc., can also be interpreted to refer to the states of emotion. The phrase “perfect music” in fact appears later as the title of sec. 18, where I have rendered it as “Supreme Happiness.” 12. Yan Yuan, or Yan Hui, was Confucius’s favorite disciple. Music Master Jin was presumably an official of Confucius’s native state of Lu. 13. The straw dogs, also mentioned in Daodejing V, apparently acted as scapegoats to draw off evil influences at the sacrifice; hence they were treated with reverence before the sacrifice but thrown away afterward, and to attempt to put them back in their original boxes would only invite bad luck. 14. These various difficulties and persecutions that Confucius and his disciples encountered in their wanderings from state to state are mentioned in the Analects or other early texts; here, as earlier, the name Shang seems to stand for Song. 15. The Three August Ones (huang) and Five Emperors (di) are legendary sage rulers of high antiquity, though it is not certain just which of the numerous legendary rulers the writer would have included in his list of three and five. Later on in the chapter, the phrase seems to mean sage rulers in general. 16. There are other ways to interpret this perplexing passage. The point is that the Way can be transmitted only telepathically, and therefore the sage must make certain that the mind of the other party is capable of receiving it before he extracts it from his own mind and hands it over. 17. On one level, this refers to the ruler, who rules by means of punishments, rewards, etc.; zheng (to correct) is etymologically the same as zheng (to govern). On another level, the passage is talking about the enlightened man who has a “correct” understanding of the Way. 18. Following texts that read kui in place of fen. 19. Following texts that read huan in place of guan. 20. The sentence is obscure. It is apparent from Guo Xiang’s note that he took it as a reference to incest, although later commentators, repelled or unconvinced by his interpretation, have suggested various other interpretations or emendations. 21. That is, the older child is weaned when the younger is born; the phrase signifies mammalian birth, as opposed to the other three types of reproduction mentioned earlier. 15 CONSTRAINED IN WILL To be constrained in will, lofty in action, aloof from the world, apart from its customs, elevated in discourse, sullen and critical, indignation his whole concern—such is the life favored by the scholar in his mountain valley, the man who condemns the world, the worn and haggard one who means to end it all with a plunge into the deep. To discourse on benevolence, righteousness, loyalty, and good faith, to be courteous, temperate, modest, and deferential, moral training his whole concern—such is the life favored by the scholar who seeks to bring the world to order, the man who teaches and instructs, who at home and abroad lives for learning. To talk of great accomplishments, win a great name, define the etiquette of ruler and subject, regulate the position of superior and inferior, the ordering of the state his only concern—such is the life favored by the scholar of court and council, the man who would honor his sovereign and strengthen his country, the bringer of accomplishment, the annexer of territory. To repair to the thickets and ponds, living idly in the wilderness, angling for fish in solitary places, inaction his only concern—such is the life favored by the scholar of the rivers and seas, the man who withdraws from the world, the unhurried idler. To pant, to puff, to hail, to sip, to spit out the old breath and draw in the new, practicing bear-hangings and _ bird-stretchings, longevity his only concern—such is the life favored by the scholar who practices Induction, the man who nourishes his body, who hopes to live to be as old as Pengcu.t But to attain loftiness without constraining the will; to achieve moral training without benevolence and righteousness, good order without accomplishments and fame, leisure without rivers and seas, long life without Induction; to lose everything and yet possess everything, at ease in the illimitable, where all good things come to attend—this is the Way of Heaven and earth, the Virtue of the sage. So it is said, Limpidity, silence, emptiness, inaction—these are the level of Heaven and earth, the substance of the Way and its Virtue. So it is said, The sage rests; with rest comes peaceful ease, with peaceful ease comes limpidity, and where there is ease and limpidity, care and worry cannot get at him, noxious airs cannot assault him. Therefore his Virtue is complete and his spirit unimpaired. So it is said, With the sage, his life is the working of Heaven, his death the transformation of things. In stillness, he and the yin share a single Virtue; in motion, he and the yang share a single flow. He is not the bearer of good fortune or the initiator of bad fortune. Roused by something outside himself, only then does he respond; pressed, only then does he move; finding he has no choice, only then does he rise up. He discards knowledge and purpose and follows along with the reasonableness of Heaven. Therefore he incurs no disaster from Heaven, no entanglement from things, no opposition from man, no blame from the spirits. His life is a floating, his death a rest. He does not ponder or scheme, does not plot for the future. A man of light, he does not shine; of good faith, he keeps no promises. He sleeps without dreaming, wakes without worry. His spirit is pure and clean, his soul never wearied. In emptiness, nonbeing, and limpidity, he joins with the Virtue of Heaven. So it is said, Grief and happiness are perversions of Virtue; joy and anger are transgressions of the Way; love and hate are offenses against Virtue. When the mind is without care or joy, this is the height of Virtue. When it is unified and unchanging, this is the height of stillness. When it grates against nothing, this is the height of emptiness. When it has no commerce with things, this is the height of limpidity. When it rebels against nothing, this is the height of purity. So it is said, If the body is made to labor and take no rest, it will wear out; if the spiritual essence is taxed without cessation, it will grow weary, and weariness will bring exhaustion. It is the nature of water that if it is not mixed with other things, it will be clear, and if nothing stirs it, it will be level. But if it is dammed and hemmed in and not allowed to flow, then it, too, will cease to be clear. As such, it is a symbol of Heavenly Virtue. So it is said, To be pure, clean, and mixed with nothing; still, unified, and unchanging; limpid and inactive; moving with the workings of Heaven—this is the way to care for the spirit. The man who owns a sword from Gan or Yue lays it in a box and stores it away, not daring to use it, for to him it is the greatest of treasures. Pure spirit reaches in the four directions, flows now this way, now that—there is no place it does not extend to. Above, it brushes Heaven; below, it coils on the earth. It transforms and nurses the ten thousand things, but no one can make out its form. Its name is called One-with-Heaven. The way to purity and whiteness is to guard the spirit, this alone; guard it and never lose it, and you will become one with spirit, one with its pure essence, which communicates and mingles with the Heavenly Order2 The common saying has it, “The ordinary man prizes gain, the man of integrity prizes name, the worthy man honors ambition, the sage values spiritual essence.” Whiteness means there is nothing mixed in; purity means the spirit is never impaired. He who can embody purity and whiteness may be called the True Man. 1. In this last sentence, which describes the practitioner of Induction (daoyin), a kind of yoga technique involving exercises and breath control. I follow Waley’s translations of technical terms such as “bear-hangings” and “bird- stretchings,” whose meaning can only be guessed. See Waley’s Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China, p. 44. 2. The word jing is being used in this passage in a number of different ways, a fact that is very difficult to bring out in translation. At the beginning of the paragraph, jing, translated as “spiritual essence,” means the vital energy of the body; later the word appears as an adjective in the compound “pure spirit” (jingshen), that is, vital or essential spirit. Finally, it appears as a noun, “essence,” or “purity.” Because it may also mean “semen,” the passage can be interpreted as dealing with the sexual regimen. 16 MENDING THE INBORN NATURE Those who set about mending the inborn nature through vulgar learning, hoping thereby to return once more to the Beginning; those who set about muddling their desires through vulgar ways of thought, hoping thereby to attain clarity—they may be called the blind and benighted people. The men of ancient times who practiced the Way employed tranquillity to cultivate knowledge. Knowledge lived in them, yet they did nothing for its sake. So they may be said to have employed knowledge to cultivate tranquillity. Knowledge and tranquillity took turns cultivating each other, and harmony and order emerged from the inborn nature. Virtue is harmony, the Way is order. When Virtue embraces all things, we have benevolence. When the Way is in all respects well ordered, we have righteousness. When righteousness is clearly understood and all things cling to it, we have loyalty. When within there is purity, fullness, and a return to true form, we have music. When good faith is expressed in face and body and there is a compliance with elegance, we have rites. But if all emphasis is placed on the conduct of rites and music, then the world will fall into disorder. The ruler, in his efforts to rectify, will draw a cloud over his own wirtue, and his virtue will no longer extend to all things. And should he try to force it to extend, then things would invariably lose their in-born nature.2 The men of old dwelled in the midst of crudity and chaos; side by side with the rest of the world, they attained simplicity and silence there. At that time the yin and yang were harmonious and still; ghosts and spirits worked no mischief; the four seasons kept to their proper order; the ten thousand things knew no injury; and living creatures were free from premature death. Although men had knowledge, they did not use it. This was called the Perfect Unity. At this time, no one made a move to do anything, and there was unvarying spontaneity. The time came, however, when Virtue began to dwindle and decline, and then Suiren and Fu Xi stepped forward to take charge of the world. As a result there was compliance, but no longer any unity. Virtue continued to dwindle and decline, and then Shennong and the Yellow Emperor stepped forward to take charge of the world. As a result, there was security but no longer any compliance. Virtue continued to dwindle and decline, and then Yao and Shun stepped forward to take charge of the world.2 They set about in various fashions to order and transform the world and, in doing so, defiled purity and shattered simplicity. The Way was pulled apart for the sake of goodness; Virtue was imperiled for the sake of conduct. After this, inborn nature was abandoned, and minds were set free to roam, mind joining with mind in understanding; there was knowledge, but it could not bring stability to the world. After this, “culture” was added, and “breadth” was piled on top. “Culture” destroyed the substantial; “breadth” drowned the mind; and after this, the people began to be confused and disordered. They had no way to revert to the true form of their inborn nature or to return once more to the Beginning. From this we may see that the world has lost the Way and the Way has lost the world; the world and the Way have lost each other. What means does a man of the Way have to go forward in the world? What means does the world have to go forward in the Way? The Way cannot go forward in the world, and the world cannot go forward in the Way. So although the sage does not retire to dwell in the midst of the mountain forest, his Virtue is already hidden. It is already hidden, and therefore he does not need to hide it himself. The so-called scholars in hiding of ancient times did not conceal their bodies and refuse to let them be seen; they did not shut in their words and refuse to let them out; they did not stow away their knowledge and refuse to share it. But the fate of the times was too much awry. If the fate of the times had been with them and they could have done great deeds in the world, then they would have returned to Unity and left no trace behind. But the fate of the times was against them and brought them only great hardship in the world, and therefore they deepened their roots, rested in perfection, and waited. This was the way they kept themselves alive.4 Those in ancient times who wished to keep themselves alive did not use eloquence to ornament their knowledge. They did not use their knowledge to make trouble for the world; they did not use their knowledge to make trouble for Virtue. Loftily they kept to their places and returned to their inborn nature. Having done that, what more was there for them to do? The Way has no use for petty conduct; Virtue has no use for petty understanding. Petty understanding injures Virtue; petty conduct injures the Way. Therefore it is said, Rectify yourself, that is all> When joy is complete, this is called the fulfillment of ambition. When the men of ancient times spoke of the fulfillment of ambition, they did not mean fine carriages and caps. They meant simply that joy was so complete that it could not be made greater. Nowadays, however, when men speak of the fulfillment of ambition, they mean fine carriages and caps. But carriages and caps affect the body alone, not the inborn nature and fate. Such things from time to time may happen to come your way. When they come, you cannot keep them from arriving, but when they depart, you cannot stop them from going. Therefore carriages and caps are no excuse for becoming puffed up with pride, and hardship and poverty are no excuse for fawning on the vulgar. You should find the same joy in one condition as in the other and thereby be free of care, that is all. But now, when the things that happened take their leave, you cease to be joyful. From this point of view, though you have joy, it will always be fated for destruction. Therefore it is said, Those who destroy themselves in things and lose their inborn nature in the vulgar may be called the upside-down people. 1. I punctuate after xue and si. The writer is attacking both the Confucian and Mohist ideals of moral training and those schools of thought that advocated the lessening or elimination of desire. 2. This passage, which attempts to derive the Confucian virtues and concerns from the Way, presents many difficulties in interpretation. Probably the text is faulty— judging from the parallelism; for example, “good faith” ought to have a definition of its own instead of being part of the definition of ‘rites.” I follow Fukunaga’s interpretation. 3. All these figures are mythical rulers or cultural heroes; Suiren and Shennong are the discoverers of fire and agriculture, respectively. 4. As Fukunaga pointed out, this concept of good and bad times that are fated is quite contrary to the philosophy expressed in the inner chapters, according to which any time is as good as any other. The thinking here is, in fact, much closer to the ideas of timeliness and fate expressed in the Confucian Analects or the Book of Changes. 5. Why the writer quotes such an un-Daoist injunction as ‘Rectify yourself,” or what he means by it, Ido not know. 17 AUTUMN FLOODS The time of the autumn floods came, and the hundred streams poured into the Yellow River. Its racing current swelled to such proportions that, looking from bank to bank or island to island, it was impossible to distinguish a horse from a cow. Then the Lord of the River! was beside himself with joy, believing that all the beauty in the world belonged to him alone. Following the current, he journeyed east until at last he reached the North Sea. Looking east, he could see no end to the water. The Lord of the River began to wag his head and roll his eyes. Peering far off in the direction of Ruo,2 he sighed and said, “The common saying has it, ‘He has heard the Way a mere hundred times, but he thinks he’s better than anyone else.’ It applies to me. In the past, I heard men belittling the learning of Confucius and making light of the righteousness of Bo yi though I never believed them. Now, however, I have seen your unfathomable vastness. If I hadn’t come to your gate,4 I should have been in danger. I should forever have been laughed at by the masters of the Great Method!” Ruo of the North Sea said, “You can’t discuss the ocean with a well frog—he’s limited by the space he lives in. You can’t discuss ice with a summer insect—he’s bound to a single season. You can’t discuss the Way with a cramped scholar—he’s shackled by his doctrines. Now you have come out beyond your banks and borders and have seen the great sea—so you realize your own pettiness. From now on, it will be possible to talk to you about the Great Principle. “Of all the waters of the world, none is as great as the sea. Ten thousand streams flow into it—I have never heard of a time when they stopped—and yet it is never full. The water leaks away at Weilii2—I have never heard of a time when it didn’t—and yet the sea is never empty. Spring or autumn, it never changes. Flood or drought, it takes no notice. It is so much greater than the streams of the Yangzi or the Yellow River that it is impossible to measure the difference. But I have never, for this reason, prided myself on it. I take my place with heaven and earth and receive breath from the yin and yang. I sit here between heaven and earth as a little stone or a little tree sits on a huge mountain. Since I can see my own smallness, what reason would I have to pride myself? “Compare the area within the four seas with all that is between heaven and earth—is it not like one little anthill in a vast marsh? Compare the Middle Kingdom with the area within the four seas—is it not like one tiny grain in a great storehouse? When we refer to the things of creation, we speak of them as numbering ten thousand—and man is only one of them. We talk of the Nine Provinces where men are most numerous, and yet of the whole area where grain and foods are grown and where boats and carts pass back and forth, man occupies only one fraction.© Compared to the ten thousand things, is he not like one little hair on the body of a horse? What the Five Emperors passed along, what the Three Kings fought over, what the benevolent man grieves about, what the responsible man labors over—all is no more than this!2 Bo Yi gained a reputation by giving it up; Confucius passed himself off as learned because he talked about it. But in priding themselves in this way, were they not like you a moment ago priding yourself on your floodwaters?” “Well then,” said the Lord of the River, “if I recognize the hugeness of heaven and earth and the smallness of the tip of a hair, will that do?” “No indeed!” said Ruo of the North Sea. “There is no end to the weighing of things, no stop to time, no constancy to the division of lots, no fixed rule to beginning and end. Therefore great wisdom observes both far and near, and for that reason, it recognizes small without considering it paltry, recognizes large without considering it unwieldy, for it knows that there is no end to the weighing of things. It has a clear understanding of past and present, and for that reason, it spends a long time without finding it tedious, a short time without fretting at its shortness, for it knows that time has no end. It perceives the nature of fullness and emptiness, and for that reason, it does not delight if it acquires something or worry if it loses it, for it knows that there is no constancy to the division of lots. It comprehends the Level Road, and for that reason, it does not rejoice in life or look on death as a calamity, for it knows that no fixed rule can be assigned to beginning and end. “Calculate what man knows, and it cannot compare with what he does not know. Calculate the time he is alive, and it cannot compare with the time before he was born. Yet man takes something so small and tries to exhaust the dimensions of something so large! Hence he is muddled and confused and can never get anywhere. Looking at it this way, how do we know that the tip of a hair can be singled out as the measure of the smallest thing possible? Or how do we know that heaven and earth can fully encompass the dimensions of the largest thing possible?” The Lord of the River said, “Men who debate such matters these days all claim that the minutest thing has no form and the largest thing cannot be encompassed. Is this a true statement?” Ruo of the North Sea said, “If from the standpoint of the minute, we look at what is large, we cannot see to the end. If from the standpoint of what is large, we look at what is minute, we cannot distinguish it clearly. The minute is the smallest of the small, the gigantic is the largest of the large, and it is therefore convenient to distinguish between them. But this is merely a matter of circumstance. Before we can speak of coarse or fine, however, there must be some form. If a thing has no form, then numbers cannot express its dimensions, and if it cannot be encompassed, then numbers cannot express its size. We can use words to talk about the coarseness of things, and we can use our minds to visualize the fineness of things. But what words cannot describe and the mind cannot succeed in visualizing —this has nothing to do with coarseness or fineness. “Therefore the Great Man in his actions will not harm others, but he makes no show of benevolence or charity. He will not move for the sake of profit, but he does not despise the porter at the gate. He will not wrangle for goods or wealth, but he makes no show of refusing or relinquishing them. He will not enlist the help of others in his work, but he makes no show of being self-supporting, and he does not despise the greedy and base. His actions differ from those of the mob, but he makes no show of uniqueness or eccentricity. He is content to stay behind with the crowd, but he does not despise those who run forward to flatter and fawn. All the titles and stipends of the age are not enough to stir him to exertion; all its penalties and censures are not enough to make him feel shame. He knows that no line can be drawn between right and wrong, no border can be fixed between great and small. I have heard it said, ‘The Man of the Way wins no fame, the highest virtue® wins no gain, the Great Man has no self.’ To the most perfect degree, he goes along with what has been allotted to him.” The Lord of the River said, “Whether they are external or internal to things, I do not understand how we come to have these distinctions of noble and mean or of great and small.” Ruo of the North Sea said, “From the point of view of the Way, things have no nobility or meanness. From the point of view of things themselves, each regards itself as noble and other things as mean. From the point of view of common opinion, nobility and meanness are not determined by the individual himself. ‘From the point of view of differences, if we regard a thing as big because there is a certain bigness to it, then among all the ten thousand things there are none that are not big. If we regard a thing as small because there is a certain smallness to it, then among the ten thousand things there are none that are not small. If we know that heaven and earth are tiny grains and the tip of a hair is a range of mountains, then we have perceived the law of difference. “From the point of view of function, if we regard a thing as useful because there is a certain usefulness to it, then among all the ten thousand things there are none that are not useful. If we regard a thing as useless because there is a certain uselessness to it, then among the ten thousand things there are none that are not useless. If we know that east and west are mutually opposed but that one cannot do without the other, then we can estimate the degree of function. ‘From the point of view of preference, if we regard a thing as right because there is a certain right to it, then among the ten thousand things there are none that are not right. If we regard a thing as wrong because there is a certain wrong to it, then among the ten thousand things there are none that are not wrong. If we know that Yao and Jie each thought himself right and condemned the other as wrong, then we may understand how there are preferences in behavior. “In ancient times Yao abdicated in favor of Shun, and Shun ruled as emperor; Kuai abdicated in favor of Zhi, and Zhi was destroyed.2 Tang and Wu fought and became kings; Duke Bo fought and was wiped out 10 Looking at it this way, we see that struggling or giving way, behaving like a Yao or like a Jie, may at one time be noble and at another time be mean. It is impossible to establish any constant rule. “A beam or pillar can be used to batter down a city wall, but it is no good for stopping up a little hole—this refers to a difference in function. Thoroughbreds like Qiji and Hualiu could gallop a thousand /i in one day, but when it came to catching rats, they were no match for the wildcat or the weasel—this refers to a difference in skill. The horned owl catches fleas at night and can spot the tip of a hair, but when daylight comes, no matter how wide it opens its eyes, it cannot see a mound or a hill—this refers to a difference in nature. Now do you say that you are going to make Right your master and do away with Wrong, or make Order your master and do away with Disorder? If you do, then you have not understood the principle of heaven and earth or the nature of the ten thousand things. This is like saying that you are going to make Heaven your master and do away with Earth, or make Yin your master and do away with Yang. Obviously it is impossible. If men persist in talking this way without stop, they must be either fools or deceivers! “Emperors and kings have different ways of ceding their thrones; the Three Dynasties had different rules of succession. Those who went against the times and flouted custom were called usurpers; those who went with the times and followed custom were called companions of righteousness. Be quiet, be quiet, O Lord of the River! How could you understand anything about the gateway of nobility and meanness or the house of great and small?” “Well then,” said the Lord of the River, “what should I do and what should I not do? How am I to know in the end what to accept and what to reject, what to abide by and what to discard?” Ruo of the North Sea said, “From the point of view of the Way, what is noble or what is mean? These are merely what are called endless changes. Do not hobble your will, or you will be departing far from the Way! What is few, or what is many? These are merely what are called boundless turnings 1 Do not strive to unify your actions, or you will be at sixes and sevens with the Way! Be stern like the ruler of a state—he grants no private favor. Be benign and impartial like the god of the soil at the sacrifice—he grants no private blessing. Be broad and expansive like the endlessness of the four directions—they have nothing that bounds or hedges them. Embrace the ten thousand things universally—how could there be one you should give special support to? This is called being without bent. When the ten thousand things are unified and equal, then which is short and which is long? “The Way is without beginning or end, but things have their life and death—you cannot rely on their fulfillment. One moment empty, the next moment full—you cannot depend on their form. The years cannot be held off; time cannot be stopped. Decay, growth, fullness, and emptiness end and then begin again. It is thus that we must describe the plan of the Great Meaning and discuss the principles of the ten thousand things. The life of things is a gallop, a headlong dash—with every movement they alter, with every moment they shift. What should you do and what should you not do? Everything will change of itself, that is certain!” “Tf that is so,” said the Lord of the River, “then what is there valuable about the Way?” Ruo of the North Sea said, “He who understands the Way is certain to have command of basic principles. He who has command of basic principles is certain to know how to deal with circumstances. And he who knows how to deal with circumstances will not allow things to do him harm. When a man has perfect virtue, fire cannot burn him, water cannot drown him, cold and heat cannot afflict him, birds and beasts cannot injure him. I do not say that he makes light of these things. I mean that he distinguishes between safety and danger, contents himself with fortune or misfortune, and is cautious in his comings and goings. Therefore nothing can harm him. “Hence it is said: the Heavenly is on the inside, the human is on the outside. Virtue resides in the Heavenly. Understand the actions of Heaven “e man, base yourself on Heaven, take your stand in virtue 12 2 and then, although you hasten or hold back, bend or stretch, you may return to the essential and speak of the ultimate.” “What do you mean by the Heavenly and the human?” Ruo of the North Sea said, “Horses and oxen have four feet—this is what I mean by the Heavenly. Putting a halter on the horse’s head, piercing the ox’s nose—this is what I mean by the human. So I say: do not let what is human wipe out what is Heavenly; do not let what is purposeful wipe out what is fated; do not let [the desire for] gain lead you after fame. Be cautious, guard it, and do not lose it—this is what I mean by returning to the True.” The Kuil3 envies the millipede, the millipede envies the snake, the snake envies the wind, the wind envies the eye, and the eye envies the mind. The Kui said to the millipede, “I have this one leg that I hop along on, though I make little progress. Now how in the world do you manage to work all those ten thousand legs of yours?” The millipede said, “You don’t understand. Haven’t you ever watched a man spit? He just gives a hawk and out it comes, some drops as big as pearls, some as fine as mist, raining down in a jumble of countless particles. Now all I do is put in motion the heavenly mechanism in me—I’m not aware of how the thing works.” The millipede said to the snake, “I have all these legs that I move along on, but I can’t seem to keep up with you who have no legs. How is that?” The snake said, “It’s just the heavenly mechanism moving me along—how can I change the way I am? What would I do with legs if I had them?” The snake said to the wind, “I move my backbone and ribs and manage to get along, though I still have some kind of body. But now you come whirling up from the North Sea and go whirling off to the South Sea, and you don’t seem to have any body. How is that?” The wind said, “It’s true that I whirl up from the North Sea and whirl off to the South Sea. But if you hold up a finger against me you’ve defeated me, and if you trample on me you’ve likewise defeated me. On the other hand, I can break down big trees and blow over great houses—this is a talent that I alone have. So I take all the mass of little defeats and make them into a Great Victory. To make a Great Victory—only the sage is capable of that!” When Confucius was passing through Kuang, the men of Song surrounded him with several encirclements of troops, but he went right on playing his lute and singing without a stop.14 Zi Lu went in to see him and said, “Master, how can you be so carefree?” Confucius said, “Come, I will explain to you. For a long time I have tried to stay out of the way of hardship. That I have not managed to escape it is due to fate. For a long time I have tried to achieve success. That I have not been able to do so is due to the times. If it happens to be the age of a Yao or a Shun, then there are no men in the world who face hardship—but this is not because their wisdom saves them. If it happens to be the age of a Jie or a Zhou, then there are no men in the world who achieve success—but this is not because their wisdom fails them. It is time and circumstance that make it so. “To travel across the water without shrinking from the sea serpent or the dragon—this is the courage of the fisherman. To travel over land without shrinking from the rhinoceros or the tiger—this is the courage of the hunter. To see the bare blades clashing before him and to look on death as though it were life—this is the courage of the man of ardor1> To understand that hardship is a matter of fate, that success is a matter of the times, and to face great difficulty without fear—this is the courage of the sage. Be content with it, Zi Lu. My fate has been decided for me.” Shortly afterward the leader of the armed men came forward and apologized. “We thought you were Yang Huo, and that was why we surrounded you. Now that we see you aren’t, we beg to take leave and withdraw.” Gongsun Long said to Prince Mou of Wei,t© “When I was young, I studied the Way of the former kings, and when I grew older, I came to understand the conduct of benevolence and righteousness. I reconciled difference and sameness, distinguished hardness and whiteness, and proved that not so was so, that the unacceptable was acceptable. I confounded the wisdom of the hundred schools and demolished the arguments of a host of speakers. I believed that I had attained the highest degree of accomplishment. But now I have heard the words of Zhuangzi, and I am bewildered by their strangeness. I don’t know whether my arguments are not as good as his, or whether I am no match for him in understanding. I find now that I can’t even open my beak. May I ask what you advise?” Prince Mou leaned on his armrest and gave a great sigh, and then he looked up at the sky and laughed, saying, “Haven’t you ever heard about the frog in the caved-in well? He said to the great turtle of the Eastern Sea, ‘What fun I have! I come out and hop around the railing of the well, or I go back in and take a rest in the wall where a tile has fallen out. When I dive into the water, I let it hold me up under the armpits and support my chin, and when I slip about in the mud, I bury my feet in it and let it come up over my ankles. I look around at the mosquito larvae and the crabs and tadpoles, and I see that none of them can match me. To have complete command of the water of one whole valley and to monopolize all the joys of a caved-in well—this is the best there is! Why don’t you come some time and see for yourself?’ “But before the great turtle of the Eastern Sea had even gotten his left foot in the well, his right knee was already wedged fast. He backed out and withdrew a little, and then began to describe the sea. ‘A distance of a thousand /i cannot indicate its greatness; a depth of a thousand fathoms cannot express how deep it is. In the time of Yu, there were floods for nine years out of ten, and yet its waters never rose. In the time of Tang, there were droughts for seven years out of eight, and yet its shores never receded. Never to alter or shift, whether for an instant or an eternity; never to advance or recede, whether the quantity of water flowing in is great or small—this is the great delight of the Eastern Sea!’ “When the frog in the caved-in well heard this, he was dumbfounded with surprise, crestfallen, and completely at a loss. Now your knowledge cannot even define the borders of right and wrong, and still you try to see through the words of Zhuangzi—this is like trying to make a mosquito carry a mountain on its back or a pill bug race across the Yellow River. You will never be up to the task! “He whose understanding cannot grasp these minute and subtle words but is fit only to win some temporary gain—is he not like the frog in the caved-in well? Zhuangzi, now—at this very moment he is treading the Yellow Springs!Z or leaping up to the vast blue. To him there is no north or south—in utter freedom he dissolves himself in the four directions and drowns himself in the unfathomable. To him there is no east or west—he begins in the Dark Obscurity and returns to the Great Thoroughfare. Now you come niggling along and try to spy him out or fix some name to him, but this is like using a tube to scan the sky or an awl to measure the depth of the earth—the instrument is too small, is it not? You’d better be on your way! Or perhaps you’ve never heard about the young boy of Shouling who went to learn the Handan Walk. He hadn’t mastered what the Handan people had to teach him when he forgot his old way of walking, so he had to crawl all the way back home. Now if you don’t get on your way, you’re likely to forget what you knew before and be out of a job!” Gongsun Long’s mouth fell open and wouldn’t stay closed. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and wouldn’t come down. In the end he broke into a run and fled. Once, when Zhuangzi was fishing in the Pu River, the king of Chu sent two officials to go and announce to him: “T would like to trouble you with the administration of my realm.” Zhuangzi held on to the fishing pole and, without turning his head, said, “I have heard that there is a sacred tortoise in Chu that has been dead for three thousand years. The king keeps it wrapped in cloth and boxed, and stores it in the ancestral temple. Now would this tortoise rather be dead and have its bones left behind and honored? Or would it rather be alive and dragging its tail in the mud?” “Tt would rather be alive and dragging its tail in the mud,” said the two officials. Zhuangzi said, “Go away! I'll drag my tail in the mud!” When Huizi was prime minister of Liang, Zhuangzi set off to visit him. Someone said to Huizi, “Zhuangzi is coming because he wants to replace you as prime minister!” With this, Huizi was filled with alarm and searched all over the state for three days and three nights trying to find Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi then came to see him and said, “In the south there is a bird called the Yuanchu—I wonder if you’ve ever heard of it? The Yuanchu rises up from the South Sea and flies to the North Sea, and it will rest on nothing but the Wutong tree, eat nothing but the fruit of the Lian, and drink only from springs of sweet water. Once there was an owl who had gotten hold of a half-rotten old rat, and as the Yuanchu passed by, it raised its head, looked up at the Yuanchu, and said, ‘Shoo!’ Now that you have this Liang state of yours, are you trying to shoo me?” Zhuangzi and Huizi were strolling along the dam of the Hao River when Zhuangzi said, “See how the minnows come out and dart around where they please! That’s what fish really enjoy!” Huizi said, “You’re not a fish—how do you know what fish enjoy?” Zhuangzi said, “You’re not I, so how do you know that I don’t know what fish enjoy?” Huizi said, “I’m not you, so I certainly don’t know what you know. On the other hand, you’re certainly not a fish— so that still proves that you don’t know what fish enjoy!” Zhuangzi said, “Let’s go back to your original question, please. You asked me how I know what fish enjoy—so you already knew that I knew it when you asked the question. I know it by standing here beside the Hao.” 1. The Lord of the River, the god of the Yellow River, appeared on p. 45, under the name Pingyi. 2. The god of the sea. 3. Bo Yi, who relinquished his kingdom to his brother and later chose to die of starvation rather than serve a ruler he considered unjust, was regarded as a model of righteousness. 4. The Lord of the River has literally come to the gate of the sea. But a second meaning is implied, that is, “If I hadn’t become your disciple.” 5. Said by some commentators to be a huge fiery stone against which seawater turns to steam. 6. As it stands in the original, this sentence makes little sense to me, and the translation represents no more than a tentative attempt to extract some meaning. 7. The Five Emperors were five legendary rulers of high antiquity, of whom the Yellow Emperor, Yao, and Shun are the most famous. The Three Kings were the founders of the Three Dynasties, the Xia, the Shang, and the Zhou. 8. Aplay on the homophones de (virtue) and de (gain, or acquisition). 9. In316 BCE, King Kuai of Yan was persuaded to imitate the example of Yao by ceding his throne to his minister Zi Zhi. In no time the state was torn by internal strife, and three years later it was invaded and annexed by the state of Qi. 10. Tang and Wu were the founders of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, respectively. Duke Bo was a scion of the royal family of Chu who led an unsuccessful revolt against its ruler and was defeated and forced to commit suicide in 479 BCE. 11. I follow Fukunaga’s interpretation of these terms. 12. Actually, the text reads “gain” (de); perhaps this is merely a mistake for the de meaning “virtue,” or perhaps a play on the two words is intended. See p. 129, n. 8. 13. Abeing with only one leg. Sometimes it is des cribed as a spirit or a strange beast, sometimes as a historical personage—the Music Master Kui. 14. The Analects twice states (IX, 5; XI, 22): “The Master was put in fear in Kuang.” It is said that the people of the state in which Kuang was situated, here identified as Song, mistook Confucius for an enemy of theirs named Yang Huo. 15. Aman who is willing to sacrifice his life to save others or to preserve his honor. 16. The logician Gongsun Long, who spent much time discussing the concepts of sameness and difference or the relationship of attributes such as hardness and whiteness to the thing they qualify, was mentioned on p. 10, n. 7, and p. 12, n. 9. Prince Mou of Wei was the reputed author of a Daoist work in four sections that is no longer extant. 17. The underworld. 18 SUPREME HAPPINESS Is there such a thing as supreme happiness in the world, or isn’t there? Is there some way to keep yourself alive, or isn’t there? What to do, what to rely on, what to avoid, what to stick by, what to follow, what to leave alone, what to find happiness in, what to hate? This is what the world honors: wealth, eminence, long life, a good name. This is what the world finds happiness in: a life of ease, rich food, fine clothes, beautiful sights, sweet sounds. This is what it looks down on: poverty, meanness, an early death, a bad name. This is what it finds bitter: a life that knows no rest, a mouth that gets no rich food, no fine clothes for the body, no beautiful sights for the eye, no sweet sounds for the ear. People who can’t get these things fret a great deal and are afraid—this is a stupid way to treat the body. People who are rich wear themselves out rushing around on business, piling up more wealth than they could ever use— this is a superficial way to treat the body. People who are eminent spend night and day scheming and wondering whether they are doing right—this is a shoddy way to treat the body. Man lives his life in company with worry, and if he lives a long while till he’s dull and doddering, then he has spent that much time worrying instead of dying, a bitter lot indeed! This is a callous way to treat the body. Men of ardor! are regarded by the world as good, but their goodness doesn’t succeed in keeping them alive. So I don’t know whether or not their goodness is really good. Perhaps I think it’s good—but not good enough to save their lives. Perhaps I think it’s no good—but still good enough to save the lives of others. So I say, if your loyal advice isn’t heeded, give way and do not wrangle. Zixu wrangled and lost his body.2 But if he hadn’t wrangled, he wouldn’t have made a name. Is there really such a thing as goodness, or isn’t there? What ordinary people do and what they find happiness in —I don’t know whether or not such happiness is, in the end, really happiness. I look at what ordinary people find happiness in, what they all make a mad dash for, racing around as though they couldn’t stop—they all say they’re happy with it. ’m not happy with it, and I’m not unhappy with it. In the end, is there really happiness, or isn’t there? I take inaction to be true happiness, but ordinary people think it is a bitter thing. I say: the highest happiness has no happiness, the highest praise has no praise. The world can’t decide what is right and what is wrong. And yet inaction can decide this. The highest happiness, keeping alive—only inaction gets you close to this! Let me try putting it this way. The inaction of Heaven is its purity, the inaction of earth is its peace. So the two inactions combine, and all things are transformed and brought to birth. Wonderfully, mysteriously, there is no place they come out of. Mysteriously, wonderfully, they have no sign. Each thing minds its business, and all grow up out of inaction. So I say, Heaven and earth do nothing, and there is nothing that is not done. Among men, who can get hold of this inaction? Zhuangzi’s wife died. When Huizi went to convey his condolences, he found Zhuangzi sitting with his legs sprawled out, pounding on a tub and singing. “You lived with her, she brought up your children and grew old,” said Huizi. “It should be enough simply not to weep at her death. But pounding on a tub and singing—this is going too far, isn’t it?” Zhuangzi said, “You’re wrong. When she first died, do you think I didn’t grieve like anyone else? But I looked back to her beginning and the time before she was born. Not only the time before she was born, but the time before she had a body. Not only the time before she had a body, but the time before she had a spirit. In the midst of the jumble of wonder and mystery, a change took place and she had a spirit. Another change and she had a body. Another change and she was born. Now there’s been another change and she’s dead. It’s just like the progression of the four seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter. “Now she’s going to lie down peacefully in a vast room. If I were to follow after her bawling and sobbing, it would show that I don’t understand anything about fate. So I stopped.” Uncle Lack-Limb and Uncle Lame-Gait were seeing the sights at Dark Lord Hill and the wastes of Kunlun, the place where the Yellow Emperor rested.3 Suddenly a willow sprouted out of Uncle Lame-Gait’s left elbow He looked very startled and seemed to be annoyed. “Do you resent it?” said Uncle Lack-Limb. “No—what is there to resent?” said Uncle Lame-Gait. “To live is to borrow. And if we borrow to live, then life must be a pile of trash. Life and death are day and night. You and I came to watch the process of change, and now change has caught up with me. Why would I have anything to resent?” When Zhuangzi went to Chu, he saw an old skull, all dry and parched. He poked it with his carriage whip and then asked, “Sir, were you greedy for life and forgetful of reason and so came to this? Was your state overthrown, and did you bow beneath the ax and so came to this? Did you do some evil deed, and were you ashamed to bring disgrace on your parents and family and so came to this? Was it through the pangs of cold and hunger that you came to this? Or did your springs and autumns pile up until they brought you to this?” When he had finished speaking, he dragged the skull over and, using it for a pillow, lay down to sleep. In the middle of the night, the skull came to him in a dream and said, “You chatter like a rhetorician, and all your words betray the entanglements of a living man. The dead know nothing of these! Would you like to hear a lecture on the dead?” “Indeed,” said Zhuangzi. The skull said, “Among the dead, there are no rulers above, no subjects below, and no chores of the four seasons. With nothing to do, our springs and autumns are as endless as heaven and earth. A king facing south on his throne could have no more happiness than this!” Zhuangzi couldn’t believe this and said, “If I got the Arbiter of Fate to give you a body again, make you some bones and flesh, return you to your parents and family and your old home and friends, you would want that, wouldn’t you?” The skull frowned severely, wrinkling up its brow. “Why would I throw away more happiness than that of a king on a throne and take on the troubles of a human being again?” it said. When Yan Yuan went east to Qi, Confucius had a very worried look on his face. Zigong got off his mat and asked, “May I be so bold as to inquire why the Master has such a worried expression now that Hui has gone east to Qi?” “Excellent—this question of yours,” said Confucius. “Guanzi® had a saying that I much approve of: ‘Small bags won’t hold big things; short well ropes won’t dip up deep water.’ In the same way I believe that fate has certain forms, and the body, certain appropriate uses. You can’t add to or take away from these. I’m afraid that when Hui gets to Qi, he will start telling the marquis of Qi about the ways of Yao, Shun, and the Yellow Emperor and then will go on to speak about Suiren and Shennong.~ The marquis will then look for similar greatness within himself and fail to find it. Failing to find it, he will become distraught, and when a man becomes distraught, he kills. “Haven’t you heard this story? Once a sea bird alighted in the suburbs of the Lu capital. The marquis of Lu escorted it to the ancestral temple, where he entertained it, performing the Nine Shao music for it to listen to and presenting it with the meat of the Tailao sacrifice to feast on. But the bird only looked dazed and forlorn, refusing to eat a single slice of meat or drink a cup of wine, and in three days it was dead. This is to try to nourish a bird with what would nourish you instead of what would nourish a bird. If you want to nourish a bird with what nourishes a bird, then you should let it roost in the deep forest, play among the banks and islands, float on the rivers and lakes, eat mudfish and minnows, follow the rest of the flock in flight and rest, and live in any way it chooses. A bird hates to hear even the sound of human voices, much less all that hubbub and to-do. Try performing the Xianchi and Nine Shao music in the wilds around Lake Dongting—when the birds hear it, they will fly off; when the animals hear it, they will run away; when the fish hear it, they will dive to the bottom. Only the people who hear it will gather around to listen. Fish live in water and thrive, but if men tried to live in water, they would die. Creatures differ because they have different likes and dislikes. Therefore the former sages never required the same ability from all creatures or made them all do the same thing. Names should stop when they have expressed reality, concepts of right should be founded on what is suitable. This is what it means to have command of reason and good fortune to support you.” Liezi was on a trip and was eating by the roadside when he saw a hundred-year-old skull. Pulling away the weeds and pointing his finger, he said, “Only you and I know that you have never died and you have never lived. Are you really unhappy?2 Am I really enjoying myself?” The seeds of things have mysterious workings. In the water, they become Break Vine; on the edges of the water, they become Frog’s Robe. If they sprout on the slopes, they become Hill Slippers. If Hill Slippers get rich soil, they turn into Crow’s Feet. The roots of Crow’s Feet turn into maggots, and their leaves turn into butterflies. Before long, the butterflies are transformed and turn into insects that live under the stove; they look like snakes, and their name is Qutuo. After a thousand days, the Qutuo insects become birds called Dried Leftover Bones. The saliva of the Dried Leftover Bones becomes Simi bugs, and the Simi bugs become Vinegar Eaters. Yiluo bugs are born from the Vinegar Eaters, and Huangshuang bugs, from Jiuyou bugs. Jiuyou bugs are born from Mourui bugs, and Mourui bugs are born from Rot Grubs, and Rot Grubs are born from Sheep’s Groom. Sheep’s Groom couples with bamboo that has not sprouted for a long while and produces Green Peace plants. Green Peace plants produce leopards, and leopards produce horses, and horses produce men. Men in time return again to the mysterious workings. So all creatures come out of the mysterious workings and go back into them again.2 1. See p. 134, n. 15. 2. Wu Zixu, minister to the king of Wu, repeatedly warned the king of the danger of attack from the state of Yue. He finally aroused the king’s ire and suspicion and was forced to commit suicide in 484 BCE. 3. These all are places or persons associated in Chinese legend with immortality. The Yellow Emperor, as we have seen on pp. 45—46, did not die but ascended to Heaven. 4. According to the more prosaic interpretation of Li Ciming, the character for “willow” is a loan for the word “tumor.” 5. Yan Yuan or Yan Hui, who appeared earlier, was Confucius’s favorite disciple. 6. Guan Zhong, a seventh-century statesman of Qi whom Confucius, judging from the Analects, admired. 7. Suiren and Shennong are mythical culture heroes, the discoverers of fire and agriculture, respectively. 8. Following Yu Yue’s interpretation. 9. The text of this paragraph, a romp through ancient Chinese nature lore, is doubtful at many points. 19 MASTERING LIFE He who has mastered the true nature of life does not labor over what life cannot do. He who has mastered the true nature of fate does not labor over what knowledge cannot change. He who wants to nourish his body must, first of all, turn to things. And yet it is possible to have more than enough things and for the body still to go un-nourished. He who has life must, first of all, see to it that it does not leave the body. And yet it is possible for life never to leave the body and still fail to be preserved. The coming of life cannot be fended off; its departure cannot be stopped. How pitiful the men of the world, who think that simply nourishing the body is enough to preserve life! Then why is what the world does worth doing? It may not be worth doing, and yet it cannot be left undone—this is unavoidable. He who wants to avoid doing anything for his body had best abandon the world. By abandoning the world, he can be without entanglements. Being without entanglements, he can be upright and calm. Being upright and calm, he can be born again with others. Being born again, he can come close [to the Way]. But why is abandoning the affairs of the world worthwhile, and why is forgetting life worthwhile? If you abandon the affairs of the world, your body will be without toil. If you forget life, your vitality will be unimpaired. With your body complete and your vitality made whole again, you may become one with Heaven. Heaven and earth are the father and mother of the ten thousand things. They join to become a body; they part to become a beginning, When the body and vitality are without flaw, this is called being able to shift. Vitality added to vitality, you return to become the Helper of Heaven. Master Liezi said to the Barrier Keeper Yin, “The Perfect Man can walk under water without choking, can tread on fire without being burned, and can travel above the ten thousand things without being frightened. May I ask how he manages this?” The Barrier Keeper Yin replied, “This is because he guards the pure breath—it has nothing to do with wisdom, skill, determination, or courage. Sit down and I will tell you about it. All that have faces, forms, voices, colors—these are all mere things. How could one thing and another thing be far removed from each other? And how could any of them be worth considering as a predecessor? They are forms, colors—nothing more. But things have their creation in what has no form, and their conclusion in what has no change. If a man can get hold of this and exhaust it fully, then how can things stand in his way? He may rest within the bounds that know no excess, hide within the borders that know no source, wander where the ten thousand things have their end and beginning, unify his nature, nourish his breath, unite his virtue, and thereby communicate with that which creates all things. A man like this guards what belongs to Heaven and keeps it whole. His spirit has no flaw, so how can things enter in and get at him? “When a drunken man falls from a carriage, though the carriage may be going very fast, he won’t be killed. He has bones and joints the same as other men, and yet he is not injured as they would be, because his spirit is whole. He didn’t know he was riding, and he doesn’t know he has fallen out. Life and death, alarm and terror, do not enter his breast, and so he can bang against things without fear of injury. If he can keep himself whole like this by means of wine, how much more can he keep himself whole by means of Heaven! The sage hides himself in Heaven—hence there is nothing that can do him harm. “A man seeking revenge does not go so far as to smash the sword of his enemy; a man, no matter how hot tempered, does not rail at the tile that happens to fall on him. To know that all things in the world are equal and the same—this is the only way to eliminate the chaos of attack and battle and the harshness of punishment and execution! “Do not try to develop what is natural to man; develop what is natural to Heaven. He who develops Heaven benefits life; he who develops man injures life. Do not reject what is of Heaven, do not neglect what is of man, and the people will be close to the attainment of Truth”! When Confucius was on his way to Chu, he passed through a forest where he saw a hunchback catching cicadas with a sticky pole as easily as though he were grabbing them with his hand. Confucius said, “What skill you have! Is there a special way to this?” “J have a way,” said the hunchback. “For the first five or six months, I practice balancing two balls on top of each other on the end of the pole, and if they don’t fall off, I know I will lose very few cicadas. Then I balance three balls, and if they don’t fall off, I know Ill lose only one cicada in ten. Then I balance five balls, and if they don’t fall off, I know it will be as easy as grabbing them with my hand. I hold my body like a stiff tree trunk and use my arm like an old dry limb. No matter how huge heaven and earth or how numerous the ten thousand things, I’m aware of nothing but cicada wings. Not wavering, not tipping, not letting any of the other ten thousand things take the place of those cicada wings—how can I help but succeed?” Confucius turned to his disciples and said, “He keeps his will undivided and concentrates his spirit—that would serve to describe our hunchback gentleman here, would it not?” KOR Ok Yan Yuan said to Confucius, “I once crossed the gulf at Goblet Deeps, and the ferryman handled the boat with supernatural skill. I asked him, ‘Can a person learn how to handle a boat?’ and he replied, ‘Certainly. A good swimmer will get the knack of it in no time. And if a man can swim under water, he may never have seen a boat before, and still he’ll know how to handle it!’ I asked him what he meant by that, but he wouldn’t tell me. May I venture to ask you what it means?” Confucius said, “A good swimmer will get the knack of it inno time—that means he’s forgotten the water. If a man can swim under water, he may never have seen a boat before, and still he’ll know how to handle it—that’s because he sees the water as so much dry land and regards the capsizing of a boat as he would the overturning of a cart. The ten thousand things2 all may be capsizing and turning over at the same time right in front of him, and it can’t get at him and affect what’s inside—so where could he go and not be at ease? “When you're betting for tiles in an archery contest, you shoot with skill. When you're betting for fancy belt buckles, you worry about your aim. And when you’re betting for real gold, you’re a nervous wreck. Your skill is the same in all three cases—but because one prize means more to you than another, you let outside considerations weigh on your mind. He who looks too hard at the outside gets clumsy on the inside.” Tian Kaizhi went to see Duke Wei of Zhou. Duke Wei said, “‘T hear that Zhu Xian is studying how to live. You are a friend of his—what have you heard from him on the subject?” Tian Kaizhi said, “I merely wield a broom and tend his gate and garden—how should I have heard anything from the Master?” Duke Wei said, “Don’t be modest, Master Tian. I am anxious to hear about it.” Tian Kaizhi said, “I have heard the Master say, ‘He who is good at nourishing life is like a herder of sheep—he watches for stragglers and whips them up.” “What does that mean?” asked Duke Wei. Tian Kaizhi said, “In Lu there was Shan Bao—he lived among the cliffs, drank only water, and didn’t go after gain like other people. He went along like that for seventy years and still had the complexion of a little child. Unfortunately, he met a hungry tiger who killed him and ate him up. Then there was Zhang Yi—there wasn’t one of the great families and fancy mansions that he didn’t rush off to visit. He went along like that for forty years, and then he developed an internal fever, fell ill, and died. Shan Bao looked after what was on the inside and the tiger ate up his outside. Zhang Yi looked after what was on the outside and the sickness attacked him from the inside. Both these men failed to give a lash to the stragglers.> “Confucius has said, ‘Don’t go in and hide; don’t come out and shine; stand stock-still in the middle.’ He who can follow these three rules is sure to be called the finest. When people are worried about the safety of the roads, if they hear that one traveler in a party of ten has been murdered, then fathers and sons, elder and younger brothers, will warn one another to be careful and will not venture out until they have a large escort of armed men. That’s wise of them, isn’t it? But when it comes to what people really ought to be worried about—the time when they are lying in bed or sitting around eating and drinking— then they don’t have sense enough to take warning. That’s a mistake!” The Invocator of the Ancestors, dressed in his black, square-cut robes, peered into the pigpen and said, “Why should you object to dying? I’m going to fatten you for three months, practice austerities for ten days, fast for three days, spread the white rushes, and lay your shoulders and rump on the carved sacrificial stand—you’ll go along with that, won’t you? True, if I were planning things from the point of view of a pig, I’d say it would be better to eat chaff and bran and stay right there in the pen. But if I were planning for myself, I’d say that if I could be honored as a high official while I lived and get to ride in a fine hearse and lie among the feathers and trappings when I died, I’d go along with that. Speaking for the pig, I’d give such a life a flat refusal, but speaking for myself, I’d certainly accept. I wonder why I look at things differently from a pig?” Duke Huan was hunting in a marsh, with Guan Zhong as his carriage driver, when he saw a ghost. The duke grasped Guan Zhong’s hand and said, “Father Zhong, what do you see? “T don’t see anything,” replied Guan Zhong. When the duke returned home, he fell into a stupor, grew ill, and for several days did not go out. A gentleman of Qi named Huangzi Gaoao said, “Your Grace, you are doing this injury to yourself! How could a ghost have the power to injure you! If the vital breath that is stored up in a man becomes dispersed and does not return, then he suffers a deficiency. If it ascends and fails to descend again, it causes him to be chronically irritable. If it descends and does not ascend again, it causes him to be chronically forgetful. And if it neither ascends nor descends but gathers in the middle of the body in the region of the heart, then he becomes ill.” Duke Huan said, “But do ghosts really exist?” “Indeed they do. There is the Li on the hearth> and the Ji in the stove. The heap of clutter and trash just inside the gate is where the Leiting lives. In the northeast corner the Beia and Guilong leap about, and the northwest corner is where the Yiyang lives. In the water is the Gangxiang; on the hills, the Xin; in the mountains, the Kui;® in the meadows, the Panghuang; and in the marshes, the Weituo.” The duke said, “May I ask what a Weituo looks like?” Huangzi said, “The Weituo is as big as a wheel hub, as tall as a carriage shaft, has a purple robe and a vermilion hat, and, as creatures go, is very ugly. When it hears the sound of thunder or a carriage, it grabs its head and stands up. Anyone who sees it will soon become a dictator.” Duke Huan’s face lit up, and he said with a laugh, “That must have been what I saw!” Then he straightened his robe and hat and sat up on the mat with Huangzi, and before the day was over, though he didn’t notice it, his illness went away. Ji Xingzi was training gamecocks for the king. After ten days, the king asked if they were ready. ‘Not yet. They’re too haughty and rely on their nerve.” Another ten days and the king asked again. ‘Not yet. They still respond to noises and movements.” Another ten days and the king asked again. ‘Not yet. They still look around fiercely and are full of spirit.” Another ten days and the king asked again. “They’re close enough. Another cock can crow, and they show no sign of change. Look at them from a distance, and you’d think they were made of wood. Their virtue is complete. Other cocks won’t dare face up to them but will turn and run.” Confucius was seeing the sights at Liiliang, where the water falls from a height of thirty fathoms and races and boils along for forty Ji, so swift that no fish or other water creature can swim in it. He saw a man dive into the water, and supposing that the man was in some kind of trouble and intended to end his life, he ordered his disciples to line up on the bank and pull the man out. But after the man had gone a couple of hundred paces, he came out of the water and began strolling along the base of the embankment, his hair streaming down, singing a song. Confucius ran after him and said, “At first I thought you were a ghost, but now I see you’re a man. May IJ ask if you have some special way of staying afloat in the water?” “J have no way. I began with what I was used to, grew up with my nature, and let things come to completion with fate. I go under with the swirls and come out with the eddies, following along the way the water goes and never thinking about myself. That’s how I can stay afloat.” Confucius said, “What do you mean by saying that you began with what you were used to, grew up with your nature, and let things come to completion with fate?” “I was born on the dry land and felt safe on the dry land —that was what I was used to. I grew up with the water and felt safe in the water—that was my nature. I don’t know why I do what I do—that’s fate.” Woodworker Qing! carved a piece of wood and made a bell stand, and when it was finished, everyone who saw it marveled, for it seemed to be the work of gods or spirits. When the marquis of Lu sawit, he asked, “What art is it you have?” Qing replied, “I am only a craftsman—how would I have any art? There is one thing, however. When I am going to make a bell stand, I never let it wear out my energy. I always fast in order to still my mind. When I have fasted for three days, I no longer have any thought of congratulations or rewards, of titles or stipends. When I have fasted for five days, I no longer have any thought of praise or blame, of skill or clumsiness. And when I have fasted for seven days, Iam so still that I forget I have four limbs and a form and body. By that time, the ruler and his court no longer exist for me. My skill is concentrated, and all outside distractions fade away. After that, I go into the mountain forest and examine the Heavenly nature of the trees. If I find one of superlative form and I can see a bell stand there, I put my hand to the job of carving; if not, I let it go. This way I am simply matching up ‘Heaven’ with ‘Heaven.’® That’s probably the reason that people wonder if the results were not made by spirits.” Dongye Ji was displaying his carriage driving before Duke Zhuang. He drove back and forth as straight as a measuring line and wheeled to left and right as neat as a compass- drawn curve. Duke Zhuang concluded that even Zao Fu2 could do no better and ordered him to make a hundred circuits and then return to the palace. Yan He happened along at the moment and went in to see the duke. “Dongye Ji’s horses are going to break down,” he said. The duke was silent and gave no answer. In a little while Dongye Ji returned, his horses having in fact broken down. The duke asked Yan He, “How did you know that was going to happen?” Yan He said, “The strength of the horses was all gone, and still he was asking them to go on—that’s why I said they would break down.” Artisan Chui could draw as true as a compass or a T square because his fingers changed along with things and he didn’t let his mind get in the way. Therefore his Spirit Towerl2 remained unified and unobstructed. You forget your feet when the shoes are comfortable. You forget your waist when the belt is comfortable. Understanding forgets right and wrong when the mind is comfortable. There is no change in what is inside, no following what is outside, when the adjustment to events is comfortable. You begin with what 1s comfortable and never experience what is uncomfortable when you know the comfort of forgetting what is comfortable. A certain Sun Xiu appeared at the gate of Master Bian Qingzi to pay him a call. “When I was living in the village,” he said, “no one ever said I lacked good conduct. When I faced difficulty, no one ever said I lacked courage. Yet when I worked the fields, it never seemed to be a good year for crops, and when I served the ruler, it never seemed to be a good time for advancement. So I am an outcast from the villages, an exile from the towns. What crime have I committed against Heaven? Why should I meet this fate?” Master Bian said, “Have you never heard how the Perfect Man conducts himself? He forgets his liver and gall and thinks no more about his eyes and ears. Vague and aimless, he wanders beyond the dirt and dust; free and easy, tending to nothing is his job. This is what is called ‘doing but not looking for any thanks, bringing up but not bossing,’L1 Now you show off your wisdom in order to astound the ignorant, work at your good conduct in order to distinguish yourself from the disreputable, going around bright and shining as though you were carrying the sun and moon in your hand! You’ve managed to keep your body in one piece; you have all the ordinary nine openings; you haven’t been struck down midway by blindness or deafness, lameness or deformity—compared with a lot of people, you're a lucky man. How do you have any time to go around complaining against Heaven? Be on your way!” After Master Sun had left, Master Bian went back into the house, sat down for a while, and then looked up to heaven and sighed. One of his disciples asked, “Why does my teacher sigh?” Master Bian said, “Just now Sun Xiu came to see me, and I described to him the virtue of the Perfect Man. I’m afraid he was very startled and may end up in a complete muddle.” “Surely not,” said the disciple. “Was what Master Sun said right and what my teacher said wrong? If so, then wrong can certainly never make a muddle out of right. Or was what Master Sun said wrong and what my teacher said right? If so, then he must already have been in a muddle when he came here, so what’s the harm?” “You don’t understand,” said Master Bian. “Once long ago a bird alighted in the suburbs of the Lu capital. The ruler of Lu was delighted with it, had a Tailao sacrifice prepared for it to feast on, and the Nine Shao music performed for its enjoyment. But the bird immediately began to look unhappy and dazed and did not dare to eat or drink. This is what is called trying to nourish a bird with what would nourish you. If you want to nourish a bird with what will nourish a bird, you had best let it roost in the deep forest, float on the rivers and lakes, and live on snakes— then it can feel at ease 12 “Now Sun Xiu is a man of ignorance and little learning. For me to describe to him the virtue of the Perfect Man is like taking a mouse for a ride in a carriage or trying to delight a quail with the music of bells and drums. How could he help but be startled?” 1.1 follow the text as it stands, though it would perhaps be preferable to adopt Ma Xulun’s suggestion, dropping the min and translating “and you will be close to the attainment of Truth.” 2. Following the interpretation of Yu Yue, who supplies a wu after the wan. 3. That is, stick to a happy medium. 4. Duke Huan of Qi (1. 685-643 BCE) later became the first of the ba—dictators or hegemons who imposed their will on the other feudal lords. Guan Zhong (d. 645 BCE) was his chief minister. As a special mark of esteem, the duke customarily addressed him as “Father Zhong.” 5. Following Yu Yue’s emendation and interpretation. > The one-legged creature who appeared on p. 133. IN . Acarpenter of Lu, mentioned in the Zuozhuan under Duke Xiang, fourth year (569 BCE). 8. That is, matching his own innate nature with that of the tree. 9. Zao Fu was a famous master of the art of carriage driving. Iemend wen to fu. 10. ADaoist term for the mind. 11. The same saying is found in the Daodejing, secs. X and L _ 12. The text of the last part of the sentence appears to be corrupt, and I make little sense of it. The same anecdote, in somewhat more detailed form, appeared on p. 143. 20 THE MOUNTAIN TREE Zhuangzi was walking in the mountains when he saw a huge tree, its branches and leaves thick and lush. A wood-cutter paused by its side but made no move to cut it down. When Zhuangzi asked the reason, he replied, “There’s nothing it could be used for!” Zhuangzi said, “Because of its worthlessness, this tree is able to live out the years Heaven gave it.” Down from the mountain, the Master stopped for a night at the house of an old friend. The friend, delighted, ordered his son to kill a goose and prepare it. “One of the geese can cackle and the other can’t,” said the son. “May I ask, please, which I should kill?” “Kill the one that can’t cackle,” said the host. The next day Zhuangzi’s disciples questioned him. “Yesterday there was a tree on the mountain that gets to live out the years Heaven gave it because of its worthlessness. Now there’s our host’s goose that gets killed because of its worthlessness. What position would you take in such a case, Master?” Zhuangzi laughed and said, “I’d probably take a position halfway between worth and worthlessness. But halfway between worth and worthlessness, though it might seem to be a good place, really isn’t—you’ll never get away from trouble there. It would be very different, though, if you were to climb up on the Way and its Virtue and go drifting and wandering, neither praised nor damned, now a dragon, now a snake, shifting with the times, never willing to hold to one course only. Now up, now down, taking harmony for your measure, drifting and wandering with the ancestor of the ten thousand things, treating things as things but not letting them treat you as a thing—then how could you get into any trouble? This is the rule, the method of Shennong and the Yellow Emperor. “But now, what with the forms of the ten thousand things and the codes of ethics handed down from man to man, matters don’t proceed in this fashion. Things join only to part, reach completion only to crumble. If sharp edged, they are blunted; if high stationed, they are overthrown; if ambitious, they are foiled. Wise, they are schemed against; stupid, they are swindled. What is there, then, that can be counted on? Only one thing, alas!\—remember this, my students—only the realm of the Way and its Virtue!” Yiliao from south of the Market called on the marquis of Lu2 The marquis had a very worried look on his face. “Why such a worried look?” asked the Master from south of the Market. The marquis of Lu said, “I study the way of the former kings; I do my best to carry on the achievements of the former rulers; I respect the spirits, honor worthy men, draw close to them, follow their advice, and never for an instant leave their side. And yet I can’t seem to avoid disaster. That’s why I’m so worried.” The Master from south of the Market said, “Your technique for avoiding disaster is a very superficial one. The sleek-furred fox and the elegantly spotted leopard dwell in the mountain forest and crouch in the cliffside caves—such is their quietude. They go abroad by night but lurk at home by day—such is their caution. Though hunger, thirst, and hardship press them, they steal forth only one by one to seek food by the rivers and lakes—such is their forethought.2 And yet they can’t seem to escape the disaster of nets and traps. Where is the blame? Their fur is their undoing. And this state of Lu—is it not your coat of fur? So I would ask you to strip away your form, rid yourself of this fur, wash clean your mind, be done with desire, and wander in the peopleless fields. “In Nanyue there is a city, and its name is The Land of Virtue Established. Its people are foolish and naive, few in thoughts of self, scant in desires. They know how to make but not how to lay away; they give but look for nothing in return. They do not know what accords with right; they do not know what conforms to ritual. Uncouth, uncaring, they move recklessly—and in this way they tread the path of the Great Method. Their birth brings rejoicing, their death a fine funeral. So I would ask you to discard your state, break away from its customs, and, with the Way as your helper, journey there.” The ruler of Lu said, “The road there is long and perilous. Moreover, there are rivers and mountains between, and I have no boat or carriage. What can I do?” The Master from south of the Market said, “Be without imperiousness, be without conventionality—let this be your carriage.’”4 But the ruler of Lu said, “The road is dark and long, and there are no people there. Who will be my companion on the way? When I have no rations, when I have nothing to eat, how will I be able to reach my destination?” The Master from south of the Market said, “Make few your needs, lessen your desires, and then you may get along even without rations. You will ford the rivers and drift out on the sea. Gaze all you may—you cannot see its farther shore; journey on and on—you will never find where it ends. Those who came to see you off will all turn back from the shore and go home while you move ever farther into the distance. “He who possesses men will know hardship; he who is possessed by men will know care. Therefore Yao neither possessed men nor allowed himself to be possessed by them. So I ask you to rid yourself of hardship, to cast off your cares, and to wander alone with the Way to the Land of Great Silence. “If a man, having lashed two hulls together, is crossing a river, and an empty boat happens along and bumps into him, no matter how hot tempered the man may be, he will not get angry. But if there should be someone in the other boat, then he will shout out to haul this way or veer that. If his first shout is not heeded, he will shout again, and if that is not heard, he will shout a third time, this time with a torrent of curses following. In the first instance, he wasn’t angry; now in the second, he is. Earlier he faced emptiness, now he faces occupancy. If a man could succeed in making himself empty and, in that way, wander through the world, then who could do him harm?” Beigong She was collecting taxes for Duke Ling of Wei in order to make a set of bells. He built a platform outside the gate of the outer wall, and in the space of three months the bells were completed, both the upper and lower tiers.2 Prince Qingji, observing this, asked, “What art is it you wield?”® Beigong She replied, “In the midst of Unity, how should I venture to ‘wield’ anything? I have heard it said, When carving and polishing are done, then return to plainness. Dull, I am without understanding; placid, I dawdle and drift. Mysteriously, wonderfully, I bid farewell to what goes, I greet what comes; for what comes cannot be denied, and what goes cannot be detained. I follow the rude and violent, trail after the meek and bending, letting each come to its own end. So I can collect taxes from morning to night and meet not the slightest rebuff. How much more would this be true, then, of aman who had hold of the Great Road?” Confucius was besieged between Chen and Cai, and for seven days he ate no cooked food. Taigong Ren went to offer his sympathy. “It looks as if you’re going to die,” he said. “It does indeed.” “Do you hate the thought of dying?” “I certainly do!” Ren said, “Then let me try telling you about a way to keep from dying. In the eastern sea, there is a bird and its name is Listless. It flutters and flounces but seems to be quite helpless. It must be boosted and pulled before it can get into the air, pushed and shoved before it can get back to its nest. It never dares to be the first to advance, never dares to be the last to retreat. At feeding time, it never ventures to take the first bite but picks only at the leftovers. So when it flies in file, it never gets pushed aside, nor do other creatures such as men ever do it any harm. In this way, it escapes disaster. “The straight-trunked tree is the first to be felled; the well of sweet water is the first to run dry. And you, now— you show off your wisdom in order to astound the ignorant, work at your good conduct in order to distinguish yourself from the disreputable, going around bright and shining as though you were carrying the sun and moon in your hand! That’s why you can’t escape! “T have heard the Man of Great Completion say: ‘Boasts are a sign of no success; success once won faces overthrow; fame once won faces ruin.’ Who can rid himself of success and fame, return and join the common run of men? His Way flows abroad, but he does not rest in brightness; his VirtueZ moves, but he does not dwell in fame. Vacant, addled, he seems close to madness. Wiping out his footprints, sloughing off his power, he does not work for success or fame. So he has no cause to blame other men, nor other men to blame him. The Perfect Man wants no repute. Why then do you delight in it so?” “Excellent!” exclaimed Confucius. Then he said goodbye to his friends and associates, dismissed his disciples, and retired to the great swamp, wearing furs and coarse cloth and living on acorns and chestnuts. He could walk among the animals without alarming their herds, walk among the birds without alarming their flocks. If even the birds and beasts did not resent him, how much less would men! Kok Ok Confucius said to Master Sanghu, “Twice I have been driven out of Lu. The people chopped down a tree on me in Song, wiped away my footprints in Wei, made trouble for me in Shang and Zhou, and besieged me between Chen and Cai— so many calamities have I encountered. My kinfolk and associates drift further and further away; my friends and followers one after the other take leave. Why is this?” Master Sanghu said, “Have you never heard about Lin Hui, the man who fled from Jia? He threw away his jade disk worth a thousand measures of gold, strapped his little baby on his back, and hurried off. Someone said to him, ‘Did you think of it in terms of money? Surely a little baby isn’t worth much money! Or were you thinking of the bother? But a little baby is a great deal of bother! Why, then, throw away a jade disk worth a thousand measures of gold and hurry off with a little baby on your back?’ “Lin Hui replied, “The jade disk and I were joined by profit, but the child and I were brought together by Heaven. When pressed by misfortune and danger, things joined by profit will cast one another aside; but when pressed by misfortune and danger, things brought together by Heaven will cling to one another. To cling to one another and to cast one another aside are far apart indeed!’ “The friendship of a gentleman, they say, is insipid as water; that of a petty man, sweet as rich wine. But the insipidity of the gentleman leads to affection, while the sweetness of the petty man leads to revulsion. Those with no particular reason for joining together will, for no particular reason, part.” Confucius said, “I will do my best to honor your instructions!” Then with leisurely steps and a free and easy manner, he returned home. He abandoned his studies, gave away his books, and his disciples no longer came to bow in obeisance before him, but their affection for him was greater than it had ever been before. Another day Master Sanghu likewise said, “When Shun was about to die, he carefully3 instructed Yu in these words: ‘Mark what I say! In the case of the body, it is best to let it go along with things. In the case of the emotions, it is best to let them follow where they will. By going along with things, you avoid becoming separated from them. By letting the emotions follow as they will, you avoid fatigue. And when there is no separation or fatigue, then you need not seek any outward adornment or depend on the body. And when you no longer seek outward adornment or depend on the body, you have in fact ceased to depend on any material thing.” Zhuangzi put on his robe of coarse cloth with the patches on it, tied his shoes with hemp to keep them from falling apart, and went to call on the king of Wei. “My goodness, sir, you certainly are in distress!” said the king of Wei. Zhuangzi said, “I am poor, but I am not in distress! When a man possesses the Way and its Virtue but cannot put them into practice, then he is in distress. When his clothes are shabby and his shoes worn through, then he is poor, but he is not in distress. This is what they call being born at the wrong time. Has Your Majesty never observed the bounding monkeys? If they can reach the tall cedars, the catalpas, or the camphor trees, they will swing and sway from their limbs, frolic and lord it in their midst, and even the famous archers Yi or Peng Meng could not take accurate aim at them. But when they find themselves among prickly mulberries, brambles, hawthorns, or spiny citrons, they must move with caution, glancing from side to side, quivering and quaking with fear. It is not that their bones and sinews have suddenly become stiff and lost their suppleness. It is simply that the monkeys find themselves in a difficult and disadvantageous position in which they cannot exercise their abilities to the full. And now if I should live under a benighted ruler and among traitorous ministers and still hope to escape distress, what hope would there be of doing so? Bi Gan had his heart cut out— there is the proof of the matter!”2 Confucius was in trouble between Chen and Cai, and for seven days he ate no cooked food. His left hand propped against a withered tree, his right beating og on a withered limb, he sang the air of the lord of Yan12 The rapping of the limb provided an accompaniment, but it was without any fixed rhythm; there was melody, but none that fitted the usual tonal categories of gong or jue. The drumming on the tree and the voice of the singer had a pathos to them that would strike a man’s heart. Yan Hui, standing with hands folded respectfully across his chest, turned his eyes and looked inquiringly at Confucius. Confucius, fearful that Yan Hui’s respect for him was too great, that his love for him was too tender, said to him, “Hui! It is easy to be indifferent to the afflictions of Heaven but hard to be indifferent to the benefits of man. No beginning but has its end, and man and Heaven are one. Who is it, then, who sings this song now?” Hui said, “May I venture to ask what you mean when you say it is easy to be indifferent to the afflictions of Heaven?” Confucius said, “Hunger, thirst, cold, heat, barriers and blind alleys that will not let you pass—these are the workings of Heaven and earth, the shifts of ever turning things. This is what is called traveling side by side with the others. He who serves as a minister does not dare to abandon his lord. And if he is thus faithful to the way of a true minister, how much more would he be if he were to attend on Heaven!” “And what do you mean when you say that it is hard to be indifferent to the benefits of man?” Confucius replied, “A man sets out on a career, and soon he is advancing in all four directions at once. Titles and stipends come raining down on him without end, but these are merely material profits and have nothing to do with the man himself. As for me, my fate lies elsewhere. A gentleman will not pilfer, a worthy man will not steal. What business would I have, then, trying to acquire such things? So it is said, There is no bird wiser than the swallow. If its eyes do not light ona suitable spot, it will not give a second look. If it happens to drop the food it had in its beak, it will let it go and fly on its way. It is wary of men, and yet it lives among them, finding its protection along with men in the village altars of the soil and grain.” “And what do you mean by saying, “No beginning but has its end’?” Confucius said, “There is a being who transforms the ten thousand things, yet we do not know how he works these changes. How do we know what is an end? How do we know what is a beginning? The only thing for us to do is just to wait!” “And what do you mean by saying, ‘man and Heaven are one’?” Confucius said, “Man exists because of Heaven, and Heaven, too, exists because of Heaven. But man cannot cause Heaven to exist; this is because of [the limitations of] his inborn nature. The sage, calm and placid, embodies change and so comes to his end.” Zhuang Zhou was wandering in the park at Diaoling when he saw a peculiar kind of magpie that came flying along from the south. It had a wingspread of seven feet, and its eyes were a good inch in diameter. It brushed against Zhuang Zhou’s forehead and then settled down in a grove of chestnut trees. “What kind of bird is that!” exclaimed Zhuang Zhou. “Its wings are enormous, but they get it nowhere; its eyes are huge, but it can’t even see where it’s going!” Then he hitched up his robe, strode forward, cocked his crossbow, and prepared to take aim. As he did so, he spied a cicada that had found a lovely spot of shade and had forgotten all about [the possibility of danger to] its body. Behind it, a praying mantis, stretching forth its claws, prepared to snatch the cicada, and it, too, had forgotten about its own form as it eyed its prize. The peculiar magpie was close behind, ready to make off with the praying mantis, forgetting its own true self as it fixed its eyes on the prospect of gain. Zhuang Zhou, shuddering at the sight, said, “Ah!—things do nothing but make trouble for one another—one creature calling down disaster on another!” He threw down his crossbow, turned about, and hurried from the park, but the park keeper [taking him for a poacher] raced after him with shouts of accusation. Zhuang Zhou returned home and, for three months, looked unhappy! Lin Ju in the course of tending to his master’s needs, questioned him, saying, “Master, why is it that you are so unhappy these days?” Zhuang Zhou said, “In clinging to outward form, I have forgotten my own body. Staring at muddy water, I have been misled into taking it for a clear pool. Moreover, I have heard my Master say, ‘When you go among the vulgar, follow their rules!’ I went wandering at Diaoling and forgot my body. A peculiar magpie brushed against my forehead, wandered off to the chestnut grove, and there forgot its true self. And the keeper of the chestnut grove, to my great shame, took me for a trespasser! That is why I am unhappy.” Yangzi, on his way to Song, stopped for the night at an inn. The innkeeper had two concubines, one beautiful, the other ugly. But the ugly one was treated as a lady of rank, while the beautiful one was treated as a menial. When Yangzi asked the reason, a young boy of the inn replied, “The beautiful one is only too aware of her beauty, so we don’t think of her as beautiful. The ugly one is only too aware of her ugliness, so we don’t think of her as ugly.” Yangzi said, “Remember that, my students! If you act worthily but rid yourself of the awareness that you are acting worthily, then where can you go that you will not be loved?” 1. Following the emendation suggested by Yu Yue. The word “things” in this passage includes mankind. 2. Xiong Yiliao, a man of Chu, is mentioned in Zuozhuan, Duke Ai, sixteenth year (479 BCE); the “marquis of Lu” is presumably the Duke Ai of Lu. 3. That is, they never venture forth in groups. I follow texts that read gie in place of dan and adopt Ma Xulun’s interpretation of xusu. 4. Meaning very doubtful; Ma Xulun opines that something has dropped out of the text. 5. There were sixteen bells in a set, arranged in two tiers. Most commentators take the “platform” to be an altar on which a sacrifice was made in preparation for the casting of the bells, though Ma Xulun believes it was connected with the actual casting process. 6. Prince Qingji, son of King Liao of Wu, had fled to the state of Wei to escape from his father’s assassin and successor, King Helii, who took the throne of Wu in 514 BCE. 7. The text has the de, which means “gain,” which may be either an error for the de meaning “virtue” or a deliberate play on the two words. See p. 129, n. 8. 8. Reading shen (zhen with the heart radical). 9. On Prince Bi Gan, who was put to death by the tyrant Zhou, see p. 23. Zhuangzi is presumably explaining why he does not take public office in the troubled times in which he lived. 10. The lord of Yan appeared in sec. 14, p. 111; he was presumably a sage ruler of antiquity, identified by some commentators with Shennong. Some texts give his name as “the lord of Piao.” 11. Following Wang Niansun’s emendation. TIAN ZIFANG Tian Zifang was sitting in attendance on Marquis Wen of Weil When he repeatedly praised one Qi Gong, Marquis Wen asked, “Is Qi Gong your teacher?” ‘No,” replied Zifang. “He comes from the same neighborhood as I do. Discussing the Way with him, I’ve found he often hits the mark—that’s why I praise him.” “Have you no teacher then?” asked Marquis Wen. “T have,” said Zifang. “Who is your teacher?” “Master Shun from east of the Wall,” said Zifang. “Then why have you never praised him?” asked Marquis Wen. Zifang said, “He’s the kind of man who is True—the face of a human being, the emptiness of Heaven. He follows along and keeps tight hold of the True; pure, he can encompass all things. If men do not have the Way, he has only to put on a straight face, and they are enlightened; he causes men’s intentions to melt away. But how could any of this be worth praising!” Zifang retired from the room, and Marquis Wen, stupefied, sat for the rest of the day in silence. Then he called to the ministers who stood in attendance on him and said, “How far away he is—the gentleman of Complete Virtue! I used to think that the words of the wisdom of the sages and the practices of benevolence and righteousness were the highest ideal. But now that I have heard about Zifang’s teacher, my body has fallen apart, and I feel no inclination to move; my mouth is manacled, and I feel no inclination to speak. These things that I have been studying are so many clay dolls2—nothing more! This state of Wei is in truth only a burden to me!” Wenbo Xuezi, journeying to Qi, stopped along the way in the state of Lu. Aman of Lu requested an interview with him, but Wenbo Xuezi said, “No indeed! I have heard of the gentlemen of these middle states—enlightened on the subject of ritual principles but stupid in their understanding of men’s hearts. I have no wish to see any such person.” He arrived at his destination in Qi and, on his way home, had stopped again in Lu when the man once more requested an interview. Wenbo Xuezi said, “In the past he made an attempt to see me, and now he’s trying again. He undoubtedly has some means by which he hopes to ‘save’ me!” He went out to receive the visitor and returned to his own rooms with a sigh. The following day, he received the visitor once more and once more returned with a sigh. His groom said, “Every time you receive this visitor, you come back sighing. Why is that?” “I told you before, didn’t I? These men of the middle states are enlightened in ritual principles but stupid in the understanding of men’s hearts. Yesterday, when this man came to see me, his advancings and retirings were as precise as though marked by compass or T square. In looks and bearing, he was now a dragon, now a tiger. He remonstrated with me as though he were my son, offered me guidance as though he were my father! That is why I sighed.” Confucius also went for an interview with Wenbo Xuezi but returned without having spoken a word. Zilu said, “You have been wanting to see Wenbo Xuezi for a long time. Now you had the chance to see him; why didn’t you say anything?” Confucius said, “With that kind of man, one glance tells you that the Way is there before you. What room does that leave for any possibility of speech?” Kok Ok Yan Yuan said to Confucius, “Master, when you walk, I walk; when you trot, I trot; when you gallop, I gallop. But when you break into the kind of dash that leaves even the dust behind, all I can do is stare after you in amazement!” “Hui, what are you talking about?” asked the Master. “When you walk, I walk—that is, I can speak just as you speak. When you trot, I trot—that is, I can make discriminations just as you do. When you gallop, I gallop— that is, I can expound the Way just as you do. But when you break into the kind of dash that leaves even the dust behind and all I can do is stare after you in amazement—by that I mean that you do not have to speak to be trusted, that you are catholic and not partisan,4 that although you lack the regalia of high office, the people still congregate before you, and with all this, you do not know why it is so.” “Ah,” said Confucius, “we had best look into this! There is no grief greater than the death of the mind—beside it, the death of the body is a minor matter. The sun rises out of the east, sets at the end of the west, and each one of the ten thousand things moves side by side with it. Creatures that have eyes and feet must wait for it before their success is complete. Its rising means they may go on living; its setting means they perish. For all the ten thousand things, it is thus. They must wait for something before they can die, wait for something before they can live. Having once received this fixed bodily form, I will hold on to it, unchanging, in this way waiting for the end. I move after the model of other things, day and night without break, but I do not know what the end will be. Mild, genial, my bodily form takes shape. I understand my fate, but I cannot fathom what has gone before it. This is the way I proceed, day after day. “{ have gone through life linked arm in arm with you, yet now you fail [to understand me]—is this not sad? You see in me, I suppose, the part that can be seen—but that part is already over and gone. For you to come looking for it, thinking it still exists, is like looking for a horse after the horse fair is over I serve you best when I have utterly forgotten you, and you likewise serve me best when you have utterly forgotten me. But even so, why should you repine? Even if you forget the old me, I will still possess something that will not be forgotten!”® Confucius went to call on Lao Dan. Lao Dan had just finished washing his hair and had spread it over his shoulders to dry. Utterly motionless, he did not even seem to be human. Confucius, hidden from sight. stood waiting and then, after some time, presented himself and exclaimed, “Did my eyes play tricks on me, or was that really true? A moment ago, sir, your form and body seemed stiff as an old dead tree, as though you had forgotten things, taken leave of men, and were standing in solitude itself!” Lao Dan said, “I was letting my mind wander in the Beginning of things.” “What does that mean?” asked Confucius. “The mind may wear itself out but can never understand it; the mouth may gape but can never describe it. Nevertheless, I will try explaining it to you in rough outline. ‘Perfect Yin is stern and frigid; Perfect Yang is bright and glittering. The sternness and frigidity come forth from heaven; the brightness and glitter emerge from the earth;8 the two mingle, penetrate, come together, harmonize, and all things are born therefrom. Perhaps someone manipulates the cords that draw it all together, but no one has ever seen his form. Decay, growth, fullness, emptiness, now murky, now bright, the sun shifting, the moon changing phase—day after day these things proceed, yet no one has seen him bringing them about. Life has its sproutings, death its destination, end and beginning tail one another in unbroken round, and no one has ever heard of their coming to a stop. If it is not as I have described it, then who else could the Ancestor of all this be?” Confucius said, “May I ask what it means to wander in such a place?” Lao Dan said, “It means to attain Perfect Beauty and Perfect Happiness. He who attains Perfect Beauty and wanders in Perfect Happiness may be called the Perfect Man.” Confucius said, “I would like to hear by what means this may be accomplished.” ‘Beasts that feed on grass do not fret over a change of pasture; creatures that live in water do not fret over a change of stream. They accept the minor shift as long as the all-important constant is not lost. [Be like them,] and joy, anger, grief, and happiness can never enter your breast. In this world, the ten thousand things come together in One; and if you can find that One and become identical with it, then your four limbs and hundred joints will become dust and sweepings; life and death, beginning and end, will be mere day and night, and nothing whatever can confound you —certainly not the trifles of gain or loss, good or bad fortune! “A man will discard the servants who wait on him as though they were so much earth or mud, for he knows that his own person is of more worth than the servants who tend it. Worth lies within yourself, and no external shift will cause it to be lost. And since the ten thousand transformations continue without even the beginning of an end, how could they be enough to bring anxiety to your mind? He who practices the Way understands all this.”2 Confucius said, “Your virtue, sir, is the very counterpart of Heaven and earth, and yet even you must employ these perfect teachings in order to cultivate your mind. Who, then, even among the fine gentlemen of the past, could have avoided such labors?” “Not so!” said Lao Dan. “The murmuring of the water is its natural talent, not something that it does deliberately. The Perfect Man stands in the same relationship to virtue. Without cultivating it, he possesses it to such an extent that things cannot draw away from him. It is as natural as the height of heaven, the depth of the earth, the brightness of sun and moon. What is there to be cultivated?” When Confucius emerged from the interview, he reported what had passed to Yan Hui, saying, “As far as the Way is concerned, I was a mere gnat in the vinegar jar! If the Master hadn’t taken off the lid for me, I would never have understood the Great Integrity of Heaven and earth!” Zhuangzi went to see Duke Ai of Lu. Duke Ai said, “We have a great many Confucians here in the state of Lu, but there seem to be very few men who study your methods, sir!” “There are few Confucians in the state of Lu!” said Zhuangzi. ‘But the whole state of Lu is dressed in Confucian garb!” said Duke Ai. “How can you say they are few?” “T have heard,” said Zhuangzi, “that the Confucians wear round caps on their heads to show that they understand the cycles of heaven, that they walk about in square shoes to show that they understand the shape of the earth, and that they tie ornaments in the shape of a broken disk at their girdles in order to show that when the time comes for decisive action, they must ‘make the break.’ But a gentleman may embrace a doctrine without necessarily wearing the garb that goes with it, and he may wear the garb without necessarily comprehending the doctrine. If Your Grace does not believe this is so, then why not try issuing an order to the state proclaiming: ‘All those who wear the garb without practicing the doctrine that goes with it will be sentenced to death!” Duke Ai did in fact issue such an order, and within five days there was no one in the state of Lu who dared wear Confucian garb. Only one old man came in Confucian dress and stood in front of the duke’s gate. The duke at once summoned him and questioned him on affairs of state, and though the discussion took a thousand turnings and ten thousand shifts, the old man was never at a loss for words. Zhuangzi said, “In the whole state of Lu, then, there is only one man who is a real Confucian. How can you say there are a great many of them?” KOR Ok Boli Xi did not let title and stipend get inside his mind. He fed the cattle and the cattle grew fat, and this fact made Duke Mu of Qin forget Boli X1’s lowly position and turn over the government to him 12 Shun, the man of the Yu clan, did not let life and death get inside his mind. So he was able to influence others 1 Lord Yuan of Song wanted to have some pictures painted. The crowd of court clerks all gathered in his presence, received their drawing panels 12 and took their places in line, licking their brushes, mixing their inks; so many of them that there were more outside the room than inside it. There was one clerk who arrived late, sauntering in without the slightest haste. When he received his drawing panel, he did not look for a place in line but went straight to his own quarters. The ruler sent someone to see what he was doing, and it was found that he had taken off his robes, stretched out his legs, and was sitting there naked. “Very good,” said the ruler. “This is a true artist!” King Wen was seeing the sights at Zang when he spied an old man fishing 43 Yet his fishing wasn’t really fishing. He didn’t fish as though he were fishing for anything but as though it were his constant occupation to fish. King Wen wanted to summon him and hand over the government to him, but he was afraid that the high officials and his uncles and brothers would be uneasy. He thought perhaps he had better forget the matter and let it rest, and yet he couldn’t bear to deprive the hundred clans of such a Heaven-sent opportunity. At dawn the next day he therefore reported to his ministers, saying, “Last night I dreamed I saw a fine man, dark complexioned and bearded, mounted on a dappled horse that had red hoofs on one side. He commanded me, saying, ‘Hand over your rule to the old man of Zang—then perhaps the ills of the people may be cured!’ The ministers, awestruck, said, “It was the king, your late father!” “Then perhaps we should divine to see what ought to be done,” said King Wen. “It is the command of your late father!” said the ministers. “Your Majesty must have no second thoughts. What need is there for divination?” In the end, therefore, the king had the old man of Zang escorted to the capital and handed over the government to him, but the regular precedents and laws remained unchanged, and not a single new order was issued. At the end of three years, King Wen made an inspection tour of the state. He found that the local officials had smashed their gate bars and disbanded their cliques, that the heads of government bureaus achieved no special distinction, and that persons entering the four borders from other states no longer ventured to bring their own measuring cups and bushels with them. The local officials had smashed their gate bars and disbanded their cliques because they had learned to identify with their superiors 14 The heads of government bureaus achieved no special distinction because they looked on all tasks as being of equal distinction. Persons entering the four borders from other states no longer ventured to bring their own measuring cups and bushels with them because the feudal lords had ceased to distrust the local measures. King Wen thereupon concluded that he had found a Great Teacher, and facing north as a sign of respect, he asked, “Could these methods of government be extended to the whole world?” But the old man of Zang looked blank and gave no answer, evasively mumbling some excuse; and when orders went out the next morning to make the attempt, the old man ran away the very same night and was never heard of again. Yan Yuan questioned Confucius about this story, saying, “King Wen didn’t amount to very much after all, did he! And why did he have to resort to that business about the dream?” “Quiet!” said Confucius. “No more talk from you! King Wen was perfection itself—how can there be any room for carping and criticism! The dream—that was just a way of getting out of a moment’s difficulty.” Lie Yukou was demonstrating his archery to Bohun Wuren15 He drew the bow as far as it would go, placed a cup of water on his elbow, and let fly. One arrow had no sooner left his thumb ring than a second was resting in readiness beside his arm guard, and all the while he stood like a statue +© Bohun Wuren said, “This is the archery of an archer, not the archery of a nonarcher! Try climbing up a high mountain with me, scrambling over the steep rocks to the very brink of an eight-hundred-foot chasm—then we’ll see what kind of shooting you can do!” Accordingly, they proceeded to climb a high mountain, scrambling over the steep rocks to the brink of an eight- hundred-foot chasm. There Bohun Wuren, turning his back to the chasm, walked backward until his feet projected halfway off the edge of the cliff, bowed to Lie Yukou, and invited him to come forward and join him. But Lie Yukou cowered on the ground, sweat pouring down all the way to his heels. Bohun Wuren said, “The Perfect Man may stare at the blue heavens above, dive into the Yellow Springs below, ramble to the end of the eight directions, yet his spirit and bearing undergo no change. And here you are in this cringing, eye-batting state of mind—if you tried to take aim now, you would be in certain peril!” Jian Wu said to Sunshu Ao, “Three times you have become premier, yet you didn’t seem to glory in itZ Three times you were dismissed from the post, but you never looked glum over it. At first I doubted that this was really true, but now I stand before your very nose and see how calm and unconcerned you are. Do you have some unique way of using your mind?” Sunshu Ao replied, “How am I any better than other men? I considered that the coming of such an honor could not be fended off and that its departure could not be prevented. As far as I was concerned, the question of profit or loss did not rest with me, and so I had no reason to put ona glum expression, that was all. How am I any better than other men? Moreover, I’m not really certain whether the glory resides in the premiership or in me. If it resides in the premiership, then it means nothing to me. And if it resides in me, then it means nothing to the premiership. Now!’m about to go for an idle stroll, to go gawking in the four directions. What leisure do I have to worry about who holds an eminent position and who a humble one?” Confucius, hearing of the incident, said, “He was a True Man of old, the kind that the wise cannot argue with, the beautiful cannot seduce, the violent cannot intimidate; even Fu Xi or the Yellow Emperor could not have befriended him. Life and death are great affairs, and yet they are no change to him—how much less to him are things like titles and stipends! With such a man, his spirit may soar over Mount Tai without hindrance, may plunge into the deepest springs without getting wet, may occupy the meanest, most humble position without distress. He fills all Heaven and earth, and the more he gives to others, the more he has for himself.” The king of Chu was sitting with the lord of Fan18 After a little while, three of the king of Chu’s attendants reported that the state of Fan had been destroyed. The lord of Fan said, “The destruction of Fan is not enough to make me lose what I am intent on preserving? And if the destruction of Fan is not enough to make me lose what I preserve, then the preservation of Chu is not enough to make it preserve what it ought to preserve. Looking at it this way, then, Fan has not yet begun to be destroyed, and Chu has not yet begun to be preserved!” 1. Marquis Wen (r. 424-387 BCE) guided the state of Wei during the crucial years when it first won recognition as an independent feudal domain; he is famous in history as a patron of learning. Tian Zifang appears to have been one of the philosophers attracted to his court. 2. That melt and turn to mud when the rains come. 3. Wenbo Xuezi is vaguely identified as a man of the state of Chu in the south; hence he refers to the states of Qi and Lu, the centers of Confucian learning, as “middle states.” 4. Compare Analects II, 14: “The gentleman is catholic and not partisan.” 5. Reading kong in place of tang in accordance with Ma Xulun’s suggestion. 6. This beautiful passage, whose exact meaning I only dimly follow, presents numerous difficulties of interpretation. The verb fu, which I have translated as “serve,” may be taken in many different ways. 7. Following Zhang Binglin’s interpretation. 8. Ordinarily, the yang principle represents heaven, and the yin principle, earth. Whether the reversal of their roles here is deliberate or the result of textual error, I do not know. Waley (Three Ways of Thought, p. 16) emends the text to put them in their usual order. 9. One may also, like Guo Xiang, take the word jie (understand) to mean “free”; that is, “He who practices the Way is freed from all this.” Compare sec. 6, p. 48: “the freeing of the bound.” 10. Boli Xi, a statesman of the seventh century BCE, was taken captive when his state was overthrown and, for a time, led the life of a lowly cattle tender. His worth was eventually recognized by Duke Mu of Qin, who made him his high minister. 11. Shun’s parents and younger brother made several attempts to kill him, but he did not allow this to alter his filial behavior. 12. Following Ma Xulun’s emendation. It is not clear just what kind of paintings the ruler of Song is commissioning, and some commentators take them to be mere maps. But the description of the “true artist” that follows suggests a more creative type of activity. 13. King Wen, honored as the founder of the Zhou dynasty, was one of the ancient sages most often and extravagantly praised by Confucius and his followers. 14. The term “identifying with one’s superior” is taken from the teachings of Mozi. According to this doctrine, each class of society is to follow the orders and ethical teaching of the class above, the whole hierarchy being headed by the Son of Heaven, in this case, King Wen. 15. Lie Yukou appeared in sec. 1, p. 3; Bohun Wuren, in sec. 5, p.35. 16. In the interpretation of these archery terms, I follow Ma Xulun’s emendations. 17. Jian Wu appeared in sec. 1, p. 4, and sec. 7, p. 55. Sunshu Ao was a sixth-century statesman of Chu. 18. Fan was a small state subservient to the much larger and more powerful state of Chu, which eventually overthrew it. 19. That is, the Way. The whole passage is a play on the two levels of meaning, political and philosophical, of the words “destruction” (wang) and “preservation” (cun). 22 KNOWLEDGE WANDERED NORTH Knowledge wandered north to the banks of the Black Waters, climbed the Knoll of Hidden Heights, and there by chance came upon Do-Nothing-Say-Nothing. Knowledge said to Do-Nothing-Say-Nothing, “There are some things I'd like to ask you. What sort of pondering, what sort of cogitation does it take to know the Way? What sort of surroundings, what sort of practices does it take to find rest in the Way? What sort of path, what sort of procedure will get me to the Way?” Three questions he asked, but Do-Nothing-Say-Nothing didn’t answer. It wasn’t that he just didn’t answer—he didn’t know how to answer! Knowledge, failing to get any answer, returned to the White Waters of the south, climbed the summit of Dubiety Dismissed, and there caught sight of Wild-and-Witless. Knowledge put the same questions to Wild-and-Witless. “Ah—I know!” said Wild-and-Witless. “And I’m going to tell you.” But just as he was about to say something, he forgot what it was he was about to say. Knowledge, failing to get any answer, returned to the imperial palace, where he was received in audience by the Yellow Emperor, and posed his questions. The Yellow Emperor said, “Only when there is no pondering and no cogitation will you get to know the Way. Only when you have no surroundings and follow no practices will you find rest in the Way. Only when there is no path and no procedure can you get to the Way.” Knowledge said to the Yellow Emperor, “You and I know, but those other two that I asked didn’t know. Which of us is right, I wonder?” The Yellow Emperor said, “Do-Nothing-Say-Nothing— he’s the one who is truly right. Wild-and-Witless appears to be so. But you and I in the end are nowhere near it. Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know. Therefore the sage practices the teaching that has no words. The Way cannot be brought to light; its virtue cannot be forced to come. But benevolence—you can put that into practice; you can discourse2 on righteousness, you can dupe one another with rites. So it is said, When the Way was lost, then there was virtue; when virtue was lost, then there was benevolence; when benevolence was lost, then there was righteousness; when righteousness was lost, then there were rites. Rites are the frills of the Way and the forerunners of disorder.2 So it is said, He who practices the Way does less every day, does less and goes on doing less until he reaches the point where he does nothing; does nothing and yet there is nothing that is not done.4 Now that we’ve already become ‘things,’ if we want to return again to the Root, I’m afraid we’ll have a hard time of it! The Great Man—he’s the only one who might find it easy. “Life is the companion of death; death is the beginning of life. Who understands their workings? Man’s life is a coming-together of breath. If it comes together, there is life; if it scatters, there is death. And if life and death are companions to each other, then what is there for us to be anxious about? “The ten thousand things are really one. We look on some as beautiful because they are rare or unearthly; we look on others as ugly because they are foul and rotten. But the foul and rotten may turn into the rare and un-earthly, and the rare and unearthly may turn into the foul and rotten. So it is said, You have only to comprehend the one breath that is the world. The sage never ceases to value oneness.” Knowledge said to the Yellow Emperor, “I asked Do- Nothing-Say-Nothing, and he didn’t reply to me. It wasn’t that he merely didn’t reply to me—he didn’t know how to reply to me. I asked Wild-and-Witless, and he was about to explain to me, though he didn’t explain anything. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t explain to me—but when he was about to explain, he forgot what it was. Now I have asked you, and you know the answer. Why, then, do you say that you are nowhere near being right?” The Yellow Emperor said, “Do-Nothing-Say-Nothing is the one who is truly right—because he doesn’t know. Wild- and-Witless appears to be so—because he forgets. But you and I in the end are nowhere near it—because we know.” Wild-and-Witless heard of the incident and concluded that the Yellow Emperor knew what he was talking about. Heaven and earth have their great beauties but do not speak of them; the four seasons have their clear-marked regularity but do not discuss it; the ten thousand things have their principles of growth but do not expound them. The sage seeks out the beauties of Heaven and earth and masters the principles of the ten thousand things. Thus it is that the Perfect Man does not act, the Great Sage does not move—they have perceived [the Way of] Heaven and earth, we may say. This Way, whose spiritual brightness is of the greatest purity, joins with others in a hundred transformations. Already things are living or dead, round or square; no one can comprehend their source, yet here are the ten thousand things in all their stir and bustle, just as they have been since ancient times. Things as vast as the Six Realms have never passed beyond the border [of the Way]; things as tiny as an autumn hair must wait for it to achieve bodily form. There is nothing in the world that does not bob and sink to the end of its days, lacking fixity. The yin and yang, the four seasons follow one another in succession, each keeping to its proper place. Dark and hidden, [the Way] seems not to exist, and yet it is there; lush and unbounded, it possesses no form but only spirit; the ten thousand things are shepherded by it, though they do not understand it—this is what is called the Source, the Root. This is what may be perceived in Heaven. Nie Que asked Piyi about the Way. Piyi said, “Straighten up your body, unify your vision, and the harmony of Heaven will come to you. Call in your knowledge, unify your bearing, and the spirits will come to dwell with you. Virtue will be your beauty, the Way will be your home, and stupid as a newborn calf, you will not try to find out the reason why.” Before he had finished speaking, however, Nie Que fell sound asleep. Piyi, immensely pleased, left and walked away, Singing this song: Body like a withered corpse, mind like dead ashes, true in the realness of knowledge, not one to go searching for reasons, dim dim, dark dark, mindless, you cannot consult with him, what kind of man is this? Shun asked Cheng, “Is it possible to gain possession of the Way?” “You don’t even have possession of your own body— how could you possibly gain possession of the Way!” “If I don’t have possession of my own body, then who does?” said Shun. “Tt is a form lent you by Heaven and earth. You do not have possession of life—it is a harmony lent by Heaven and earth. You do not have possession of your inborn nature and fate—they are contingencies lent by Heaven and earth. You do not have possession of your sons and grandsons—they are castoff skins lent by Heaven and earth. So it is best to walk without knowing where you are going, stay home without knowing what you are guarding, eat without knowing what you are tasting. All is the work of the Powerful Yang> in the world. How, then, could it be possible to gain possession of anything?” Confucius said to Lao Dan, “Today you seem to have a moment of leisure—may | venture to ask about the Perfect Way?” Lao Dan said, “You must fast and practice austerities, cleanse and purge your mind, wash and purify your inner spirit, destroy and do away with your knowledge. The Way is abstruse and difficult to describe. But I will try to give you arough outline of it. “The bright and shining is born out of deep darkness; the ordered is born out of formlessness; pure spirit is born out of the Way. The body is born originally from this purity,© and the ten thousand things give bodily form to one another through the process of birth. Therefore those with nine openings in the body are born from the womb; those with eight openings are born from eggs. [In the case of the Way,] there is no trace of its coming, no limit to its going. Gateless, roomless, it is airy and open as the highways of the four directions. He who follows along with it will be strong in his four limbs, keen and penetrating in intellect, sharp eared, bright eyed, wielding his mind without wearying it, responding to things without prejudice. Heaven cannot help but be high; earth cannot help but be broad; the sun and moon cannot help but revolve; the ten thousand things cannot help but flourish. Is this not the Way? ‘Breadth of learning does not necessarily mean knowledge; eloquence does not necessarily mean wisdom —therefore the sage rids himself of these things. That which can be increased without showing any sign of increase; that which can be diminished without suffering any diminution—that is what the sage holds fast to. Deep, unfathomable, it is like the sea; tall and craggy, it ends only to begin again, transporting and weighing the ten thousand things without ever failing them. The ‘Way of the gentleman,’ [which you preach,] is mere superficiality, is it not? But what the ten thousand things all look to for sustenance, what never fails them—is this not the real Way? “Here is aman of the Middle Kingdom, neither yin nor yang, living between heaven and earth. For a brief time only, he will be a man, and then he will return to the Ancestor. Look at him from the standpoint of the Source, and his life is a mere gathering together of breath. And whether he dies young or lives to a great old age, the two fates will scarcely differ—a matter of a few moments, you might say. How, then, is it worth deciding that Yao is good and Jie is bad? “The fruits of trees and vines have their patterns and principles. Human relationships, too, difficult as they are, have their relative order and precedence. The sage, encountering them, does not go against them; passing beyond, he does not cling to them. To respond to them ina spirit of harmony—this is virtue; to respond to them in a spirit of fellowship—this is the Way. Thus it is that emperors have raised themselves up and kings have climbed to power. “Man’s life between heaven and earth is like the passing of a white colt glimpsed through a crack in the wall— whoosh!—and that’s the end. Overflowing, starting forth, there is nothing that does not come out; gliding away, slipping into silence, there is nothing that does not go back in. Having been transformed, things find themselves alive; another transformation and they are dead. Living things grieve over it, mankind mourns. But it is like the untying of the Heaven-lent bow-bag, the unloading of the Heavenlent satchel—a yielding, a mild mutation, and the soul and spirit are on their way, the body following after, on at last to the Great Return. “The formless moves to the realm of form; the formed moves back to the realm of formlessness. This all men alike understand. But it is not something to be reached by striving. The common run of men all alike debate how to reach it. But those who have reached it do not debate, and those who debate have not reached it. Those who peer with bright eyes will never catch sight of it. Eloquence is not as good as silence. The Way cannot be heard; to listen for it is not as good as plugging up your ears. This is called the Great Acquisition.” Master Dongguo® asked Zhuangzi, “This thing called the Way—where does it exist?” Zhuangzi, said, “There’s no place it doesn’t exist.” “Come,” said Master Dongguo, “you must be more specific!” “Tt is in the ant.” “As low a thing as that?” “Tt is in the panic grass.” “But that’s lower still!” “Tt is in the tiles and shards.” “How can it be so low?” “Tt is in the piss and shit!” Master Dongguo made no reply. Zhuangzi said, “Sir, your questions simply don’t get at the substance of the matter. When Inspector Huo asked the superintendent of the market how to test the fatness of a pig by pressing it with the foot, he was told that the lower down on the pig you press, the nearer you come to the truth. But you must not expect to find the Way in any particular place—there is no thing that escapes its presence! Such is the Perfect Way, and so too are the truly great words. ‘Complete,’ ‘universal,’ ‘all-inclusive’—these three are different words with the same meaning. All point to a single reality. “Why don’t you try wandering with me to the Palace of Not-Even-Anything—identity and concord will be the basis of our discussions, and they will never come to an end, never reach exhaustion. Why not join with me in inaction, in tranquil quietude, in hushed purity, in harmony and leisure? Already my will is vacant and blank. I go nowhere and don’t know how far I’ve gotten. I go and come and don’t know where to stop. I’ve already been there and back, and I don’t know when the journey is done. I ramble and relax in unbordered vastness; Great Knowledge enters in, and I don’t know where it will ever end. “That which treats things as things is not limited by things. Things have their limits—the so-called limits of things. The unlimited moves to the realm of limits; the limited moves to the unlimited realm. We speak of the filling and emptying, the withering and decay of things. [The Way] makes them full and empty without itself filling or emptying; it makes them wither and decay without itself withering or decaying. It establishes root and branch but knows no root and branch itself; it determines when to store up or scatter but knows no storing or scattering itself.” A Hegan and Shennong were studying together under Old Longji2 Shennong sat leaning on his armrest, the door shut, taking his daily nap, when at midday A Hegan threw open the door, entered, and announced, “Old Long is dead!” Shennong, still leaning on the armrest, reached for his staff and jumped to his feet. Then he dropped the staff with a clatter and began to laugh, saying, “My Heavensent Master—he knew how cramped and mean, how arrogant and willful I am, and so he abandoned me and died. My Master went off and died without ever giving me any wild words to open up my mind!” Yan Gangdiao, hearing of the incident, said, “He who embodies the Way has all the gentlemen of the world flocking to him. As far as the Way goes, Old Long hadn’t gotten hold of a piece as big as the tip of an autumn hair, hadn’t found his way into one ten-thousandth of it—but even he knew enough to keep his wild words stored away and to die with them unspoken. How much more so, then, in the case of aman who embodies the Way! Look for it, but it has no form; listen, but it has no voice. Those who discourse on it with other men speak of it as dark and mysterious. The Way that is discoursed on is not the Way at all! “ At this point, Grand Purity asked No-End, “Do you understand the Way?” “{ don’t understand it,” said No-End. Then he asked No-Action, and No-Action said, “I understand the Way.” “You say you understand the Way—is there some trick to it? “There is.” “What’s the trick?” No-Action said, “I understand that the Way can exalt things and can humble them, that it can bind them together and can cause them to disperse 12 This is the trick by which I understand the Way.” Grand Purity, having received these various answers, went and questioned No-Beginning, saying, “If this is how it is, then between No-End’s declaration that he doesn’t understand and No-Action’s declaration that he does, which is right and which is wrong?” No-Beginning said, “Not to understand is profound; to understand is shallow. Not to understand is to be on the inside; to understand is to be on the cae Ss Thereupon Grand Purity gazed up ! and sighed, saying, “Not to understand is to understand? To understand is not to understand? Who understands the understanding that does not understand?” No-Beginning said, “The Way cannot be heard; heard, it is not the Way. The Way cannot be seen; seen, it is not the Way. The Way cannot be described; described, it is not the Way. That which gives form to the formed is itself formless —can you understand that? There is no name that fits the Way.” No-Beginning continued, “He who, when asked about the Way, gives an answer does not understand the Way; and he who asked about the Way has not really heard the Way explained. The Way is not to be asked about, and even if it is asked about, there can be no answer. To ask about what cannot be asked about is to ask for the sky. To answer what cannot be answered is to try - split hairs. If the hair splitter waits for the sky asker,12 2 then neither will ever perceive the time and space that surround them on the outside or understand the Great Beginning that is within. Such men can never trek across the Kunlun, can never wander in the Great Void!”!3 Bright Dazzlement asked Nonexistence, “Sir, do you exist, or do you not exist?” Unable to obtain any answer, Bright Dazzlement stared intently at the other’s face and form— all was vacuity and blankness. He stared all day but could see nothing, listened but could hear no sound, stretched out his hand but grasped nothing. “Perfect!” exclaimed Bright Dazzlement. “Who can reach such perfection? I can conceive of the existence of nonexistence but not of the nonexistence of nonexistence. Yet this man has reached the stage of the nonexistence of nonexistence.14 How could I ever reach such perfection!” The grand marshal’s buckle maker was eighty years old, yet he had not lost the tiniest part of his old dexterity. The grand marshal said, “What skill you have! Is there a special way to this?” “T have a way13 From the time I was twenty, I have loved to forge buckles. I never look at other things—if it’s not a buckle, I don’t bother to examine it.” Using this method of deliberately not using other things, he was able, over the years, to get some use out of it. And how much greater would a man be if, by the same method, he reached the point where there was nothing that he did not use! All things would come to depend on him. Ran Qiu asked Confucius, “Is it possible to know anything about the time before Heaven and earth existed?” Confucius said, “It is—the past is the present.” Ran Qiu, failing to receive any further answer, retired. The following day he went to see Confucius again and said, “Yesterday I asked if it were possible to know anything about the time before Heaven and earth existed, and you, Master, replied, ‘It is—the past is the present.’ Yesterday that seemed quite clear to me, but today it seems very obscure. May I venture to ask what this means?” Confucius said, “Yesterday it was clear because your spirit took the lead in receiving my words. Today, if it seems obscure, it is because you are searching for it with something other than spirit, are you not? There is no past and no present, no beginning and no end. Sons and grandsons existed before sons and grandsons existed—may we make such a statement?” Ran Qiu had not replied when Confucius said, “Stop!— don’t answer! Do not use life to give life to death. Do not use death to bring death to life 1© Do life and death depend on each other? Both have in them that which makes them a single body. There is that which was born before Heaven and earth, but is it a thing? That which treats things as things is not a thing. Things that come forth can never precede all other things, because there already were things existing then; and before that, too, there already were things existing—so on without end. The sage’s love of mankind, which never comes to an end, is modeled on this principle.” Yan Yuan said to Confucius, “Master, I have heard you say that there should be no going after anything, no welcoming anything +Z May I venture to ask how one may wander in such realms?” Confucius said, “The men of old changed on the outside but not on the inside. The men of today change on the inside but not on the outside. He who changes along with things is identical with him who does not change. Where is there change? Where is there no change? Where is there any friction with others? Never will he treat others with arrogance. But Xiwei had his park, the Yellow Emperor his garden, Shun his palace, Tang and Wu their halls 48 And among gentlemen, there were those like the Confucians and Mohists who became ‘teachers.’ As a result, people began using their ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ to push one another around. And how much worse are the men of today! “The sage lives with things but does no harm to them, and he who does no harm to things cannot in turn be harmed by them. Only he who does no harm is qualified to join with other men in ‘going after’ or ‘welcoming.’ “The mountains and forests, the hills and fields, fill us with overflowing delight, and we are joyful. Our joy has not ended when grief comes trailing it. We have no way to bar the arrival of grief and joy, no way to prevent them from departing. Alas, the men of this world are no more than travelers, stopping now at this inn, now at that, all of them run by ‘things.’ They know the things they happen to encounter but not those that they have never encountered. They know how to do the things they can do, but they can’t do the things they don’t know how to do. Not to know, not to be able to do—from these, mankind can never escape. And yet there are those who struggle to escape from the inescapable—can you help but pity them? Perfect speech is the abandonment of speech; perfect action is the abandonment of action. To be limited to understanding only what is understood—this is shallow indeed!” 1. This and the sentence that precedes it appear in Daodejing Il and LVI, respectively. 2. Following the interpretation of Ma Xulun. 3. The sentence is nearly identical with parts of Daodejing XXXVI. . Identical with parts of Daodejing XLVIIL. . See sec. 27, p. 237. in RS ION . Or seminal fluid; see p. 121, n. 2. 7. Probably the words “it is like the mountains,” which would complete the parallelism, have dropped out at this point. 8. Literally, “East Wall Master,” perhaps intended to be the same as Master Shun from east of the Wall in sec. 21. 9. On Shennong, see p. 142. Old Longji’s name means Old Dragon Fortune. 10. That is, cause them to be born and to die. 11. Following Xi Tong, I read yang in place of zhong. 12. 1 follow Guo Xiang in the interpretation of the phrase “to ask for the sky,” that is, to try to measure the immeasurable. Neiwu, that which is so minute there is nothing inside it—translated here as “to split hairs’”— appears in sec. 33, p. 297. 13. The Kunlun, a fabulous range of mountains to the far west where the immortal spirits dwell, was mentioned on p. 141. 14. Tread wuwu, following the parallel passage in Huainanzi, sec. 2. 15. Following Wang Niansun, I read dao in place of shou; compare the similar passage, p. 147. 16. Compare sec. 6, p. 46: “That which kills life does not die; that which gives life to life does not live.” 17. Compare sec. 7, p. 59: “The Perfect Man uses his mind like a mirror—going after nothing, welcoming nothing, responding but not storing.” 18. The mythical figure Xiwei appeared on p. 45. The series “park,” “garden,” “palace,” “hall” probably represents a devolution from naturalness to increasing artificiality and extravagance, though the older interpretation is that these were the “groves of Academe” of high antiquity. 23 GENGSANG CHU Among the attendants of Lao Dan was one Gengsang Chu, who had mastered a portion of the Way of Lao Dan, and with it went north to live among the Mountains of Zigzag. His servants, with their bright and knowing looks, he discharged; his concubines, with their tender and solicitous ways, he put far away from him. Instead, he shared his house with drabs and dowdies and employed the idle and indolent to wait on him. He had been living there for three years when Zigzag began to enjoy bountiful harvests, and the people of Zigzag said to one another, “When Master Gengsang first came among us, we were highly suspicious of him. But now, if we figure by the day, there never seems to be enough, but if we figure by the year, there’s always some left over! It might just be that he’s a sage! Why don’t we make him our impersonator of the dead and pray to him, turn over to him our altars of the soil and grain?” When Master Gengsang heard this, he faced south with a look of displeasure. His disciples thought this strange, but Master Gengsang said, “Why should you wonder that I am displeased? When the breath of spring comes forth, the hundred grasses begin to grow, and later, when autumn visits them, their ten thousand fruits swell and ripen. Yet how could spring and autumn do other than they do?—the Way of Heaven has already set them in motion. I have heard that the Perfect Man dwells corpse-like in his little four- walled room, leaving the hundred clans to their uncouth and uncaring ways, not knowing where they are going, where they are headed. But now these petty people of Zigzag, in their officious and busybody fashion, want to bring their sacrificial stands and platters and make me one of their ‘worthies’! Am I to be held up as a model for men? That is why, remembering the words of Lao Dan, I am so displeased!” “But there’s no need for that!” said his disciples. “In a ditch eight or sixteen feet wide, the really big fish doesn’t even have room to turn around, yet the minnows and loaches think it ample. On a knoll no more than five or ten paces in height, the really big animal doesn’t even have room to hide, yet the wily foxes think it ideal. Moreover, to honor the worthy and assign office to the able, according them precedence and conferring benefits on them—this has been the custom from the ancient days of the sages Yao and Shun. How much more so, then, should it be the custom among the common people of Zigzag! Why not go ahead and heed their demands, Master?” Master Gengsang said, “Come nearer, my little ones! A beast large enough to gulp down a carriage, if he sets off alone and leaves the mountains, cannot escape the perils of net and snare; a fish large enough to swallow a boat, if he is tossed up by the waves and left stranded, is bound to fall victim to ants and crickets.2 Therefore birds and beasts don’t mind how high they climb to escape danger; fish and turtles don’t mind how deep they dive. So the man who would preserve his body and life must think only of how to hide himself away, not minding how remote or secluded the spot may be. “And as for those two you mentioned—Yao and Shun— how are they worthy to be singled out for praise? With their nice distinctions, they are like a man who goes around willfully poking holes in people’s walls and fences and planting weeds and brambles in them, like a man who picks out which hairs of his head he intends to comb before combing it, who counts the grains of rice before he cooks them. Such bustle and officiousness—how can it be of any use in saving the age? Promote men of worth and the people begin trampling over one another; employ men of knowledge and the people begin filching from one another. Such procedures will do nothing to make the people ingenuous. Instead, the people will only grow more diligent in their pursuit of gain till there are sons who kill their fathers, ministers who kill their lords, men who filch at high noon, who bore holes through walls in broad daylight. I tell you, the source of all great confusion will invariably be found to lie right there with Yao and Shun! And a thousand generations later, it will still be with us. A thousand generations later—mark my word—there will be men who will eat one another up!” Nanrong Zhu straightened up on his mat with a perplexed look and said, “A man like myself who’s already on in years —what sort of studies is he to undertake in order to attain this state you speak of?” Master Gengsang said, “Keep the body whole, cling fast to life! Do not fall prey to the fidget and fuss of thoughts and scheming. If you do this for three years, then you can attain the state I have spoken of.” Nanrong Zhu said, “The eyes are part of the body—I have never thought them anything else—yet the blind man cannot see with his. The ears are part of the body—I have never thought them anything else—yet the deaf man cannot hear with his. The mind is part of the body—lI have never thought it anything else—yet the madman cannot comprehend with his. The body, too, must be part of the body—surely they are intimately connected.2 Yet—is it because something intervenes?—I try to seek my body, but I cannot find it. Now you tell me, ‘Keep the body whole, cling fast to life! Do not fall prey to the fidget and fuss of thoughts and scheming.’ As hard as I try to understand your explanation of the Way, I’m afraid your words penetrate no farther than my ears.” ‘T’ve said all I can say,” exclaimed Master Gengsang. “The saying goes, mud daubers have no power to transform caterpillars. The little hens of Yue cannot hatch goose eggs, though the larger hens of Lu can do it well enough. It isn’t that one kind of hen isn’t just as henlike as the other. One can and the other can’t because their talents just naturally differ in size. Now I’m afraid my talents are not sufficient to bring about any transformation in you. Why don’t you go south and visit Laozi?” Nanrong Zhu packed up his provisions and journeyed for seven days and seven nights until he came to Laozi’s place. Laozi said, “Did you come from Gengsang Chu’s place?” “Yes, sir,” said Nanrong Zhu. “Why did you come with all this crowd of people?” asked Laozi. Nanrong Zhu, astonished, turned to look behind him. “Don’t you know what I mean?” asked Laozi. Nanrong Zhu hung his head in shame and then, looking up with a sigh, said, “Now I’ve even forgotten the right answer to that, so naturally I can’t ask any questions of my own.” “What does that mean?” asked Laozi. “If I say I don’t know, then people will call me an utter fool,” said Nanrong Zhu. “But if I say I do know, then, on the contrary, I will bring worry on myself. If I am not benevolent, I will harm others; but if I am benevolent, then, on the contrary, I will make trouble for myself. If I am not righteous, I will do injury to others; but if I am righteous, then, on the contrary, I will distress myself. How can I possibly escape from this state of affairs? It is these three dilemmas that are harassing me, and so through Gengsang Chu’s introduction, I have come to beg an explanation.” Laozi said, “A moment ago, when I looked at the space between your eyebrows and eyelashes, I could tell what kind of person you are. And now what you have said confirms it. You are confused and crestfallen as though you had lost your father and mother and were setting off with a pole to fish for them in the sea. You are a lost man— hesitant and unsure, you want to return to your true form and inborn nature, but you have no way to go about it—a pitiful sight indeed!” Nanrong Zhu asked to be allowed to repair to his quarters. There he tried to cultivate his good qualities and rid himself of his bad ones; and after ten days of making himself miserable, he went to see Laozi again. Laozi said, “You have been very diligent in your washing and purifying —as I can see from your scrubbed and shining look. But there is still something smoldering away inside you—it would seem that there are bad things there yet. When outside things trip you up and you can’t snare and seize them, then bar the inside gate. When inside things trip you up and you can’t bind and seize them, then bar the outside gate. If both outside and inside things trip you up, then even the Way and its virtue themselves can’t keep you going— much less one who is a mere follower of the Way in his actions.”© Nanrong Zhu said, “When a villager gets sick and his neighbors ask him how he feels, if he is able to describe his illness, it means he can still recognize his illness as an illness—and so he isn’t all that ill. But now, if I were to ask about the Great Way, it would be like drinking medicine that made me sicker than before. What I would like to ask about is simply the basic rule of life preservation, that is all.” Laozi said, “Ah—the basic rule of life preservation. Can you embrace the One? Can you keep from losing it? Can you, without tortoise shell or divining stalks, foretell fortune and misfortune? Do you know where to stop; do you know where to leave off? Do you know how to disregard it in others and instead look for it in yourself? Can you be brisk and unflagging? Can you be rude and unwitting? Can you be a little baby? The baby howls all day, yet its throat never gets hoarse—harmony at its height! The baby makes fists all day, yet its fingers never get cramped—virtue is all it holds to. The baby stares all day without blinking its eyes—it has no preferences in the world of externals. To move without knowing where you are going, to sit at home without knowing what you are doing, traipsing and trailing about with other things, riding along with them on the same wave—this is the basic rule of life preservation, this and nothing more.” Nanrong Zhu said, “Then is this all there is to the virtue of the Perfect Man?” “Oh, no! This is merely what is called the freeing of the ice bound, the thawing of the frozen. Can you do it?? The Perfect Man joins with others in seeking his food from the earth, his pleasures in Heaven. But he does not become embroiled with them in questions of people and things, profit and loss. He does not join them in their shady doings; he does not join them in their plots; he does not join them in their projects. Brisk and unflagging, he goes; rude and unwitting, he comes. This is what is called the basic rule of life preservation.” “Then is this the highest stage?” ‘Not yet! Just a moment ago I said to you, ‘Can you be a baby?’ The baby acts without knowing what it is doing, moves without knowing where it is going. Its body is like the limb of a withered tree, its mind like dead ashes. Since it is so, no bad fortune will ever touch it, and no good fortune will come to it, either. And if it is free from good and bad fortune, then what human suffering can it undergo?” He whose inner being rests in the Great Serenity will send forth a Heavenly light. But though he sends forth a Heavenly light, men will see him as a man, and things will see him as a thing. When a man has trained himself to this degree, then for the first time, he achieves constancy. Because he possesses constancy, men will come to lodge with him, and Heaven will be his helper. Those whom men come to lodge with may be called the people of Heaven; those whom Heaven aids may be called the sons of Heaven. Learning means learning what cannot be learned; practicing means practicing what cannot be practiced; discriminating means discriminating what cannot be discriminated. Understanding that rests in what it cannot understand is the finest2 If you do not attain this goal, then Heaven the Equalizer will destroy you. Utilize the bounty of things and let them nourish your body; withdraw into thoughtlessness, and in this way give life to your mind; be reverent of what is within and extend this same reverence to others. If you do these things and yet are visited by ten thousand evils, then all are Heaven sent and not the work of man. They should not be enough to destroy your pe ae they must not be allowed to enter the Spirit Tower The Spirit Tower has its guardian, but unless it understands who its guardian is, it cannot be guarded. If you do not perceive the sincerity within yourself and yet try to move forth, each movement will miss the mark. If outside concerns enter and are not expelled, each movement will only add failure to failure. He who does what is not good in clear and open view will be seized and punished by men. He who does what is not good in the shadow of darkness will be seized and punished by ghosts. Only he who clearly understands both men and ghosts will be able to walk alone 1 He who concentrates on the internal does deeds that bring no fame. He who concentrates on the external sets his mind on the hoarding of goods 12 He who does deeds that bring no fame is forever the possessor of light. He who sets his mind on the hoarding of goods is a mere merchant. To other men’s eyes, he seems to be straining on tiptoe in his greed, yet he thinks himself a splendid fellow. If a man goes along with things to the end, then things will come to him. But if he sets up barriers against things, then he will not be able to find room enough even for himself, much less for others. He who can find no room for others lacks fellow feeling, and to him who lacks fellow feeling, all men are strangers. There is no weapon more deadly than the will —even Moye is inferior to it13 There are no enemies greater than the yin and yang—because nowhere between heaven and earth can you escape from them. It is not that the yin and yang deliberately do you evil—it is your own mind that makes them act so 14 The Way permeates all things. Their dividedness is their completeness; their completeness is their impairment 5 What is hateful about this state of dividedness is that men take their dividedness and seek to supplement it; and what is hateful about attempts to supplement it is that they are a mere supplementation of what men already have. So they go forth and forget to return—they act as though they had seen a ghost. They go forth and claim to have gotten something—what they have gotten is the thing called death. They are wiped out and choked off—already a kind of ghost themselves. Only when that which has form learns to imitate the formless will it find serenity. It comes out from no source, it goes back in through no aperture. It has reality yet no place where it resides; it has duration yet no beginning or end. Something emerges, though through no aperture—this refers to the fact that it has reality. It has reality, yet there is no place where it resides—this refers to the dimension of space. It has duration but no beginning or end—this refers to the dimension of time. There is life, there is death, there is a coming out, there is a going back in—yet in the coming out and going back, its form is never seenl© This is called the Heavenly Gate. The Heavenly Gate is nonbeing. The ten thousand things come forth from nonbeing. Being cannot create being out of being; inevitably it must come forth from nonbeing. Nonbeing is absolute nonbeing, and it is here that the sage hides himself. The understanding of the men of ancient times went a long way. How far did it go? To the point where some of them believed that things have never existed—so far, to the end, where nothing can be added. Those at the next stage thought that things exist 42 They looked on life as a loss, on death as a return—thus they had already entered the state of dividedness. Those at the next stage said, “In the beginning, there was nonbeing. Later there was life, and when there was life, suddenly there was death. We look on nonbeing as the head, on life as the body, on death as the rump. Who knows that being and nonbeing, life and death, are a single way?L8 I will be his friend!” These three groups, while differing in their viewpoint, belong to the same royal clan; though, as in the case of the Zhao and Jing families, whose names indicate their line of succession, and that of the Qu family, whose name derives from its fief, they are not identical.12 Out of the murk, things come to life. With cunning, you declare, “We must analyze this!” You try putting your analysis in words, though it is not something to be put into words. You cannot, however, attain understanding. At the winter sacrifice, you can point to the tripe or the hoof of the sacrificial ox, which can be considered separate things and yet, in a sense, cannot be considered separate. A man who goes to look at a house walks all around the chambers and ancestral shrines, but he also goes to inspect the privies. And so for this reason, you launch into your analysis.22 Let me try describing this analysis of yours. It takes life as its basis and knowledge as its teacher and, from there, proceeds to assign “right” and “wrong.” So in the end, we have “names” and ‘realities,’ and accordingly each man considers himself to be their arbiter. In his efforts to make other men appreciate his devotion to duty, for example, he will go so far as to accept death as his reward for devotion. To such men, he who is useful is considered wise; he who is of no use is considered stupid. He who is successful wins renown; he who runs into trouble is heaped with shame. Analyzers—that is what the men of today are|21 They are like the cicada and the little dove who agreed because they were two of akind.22 If you step on a stranger’s foot in the marketplace, you apologize at length for your carelessness. If you step on your older brother’s foot, you give him an affectionate pat, and if you step on your parent’s foot, you know you are already forgiven. So it is said, perfect ritual makes no distinction of persons; perfect righteousness takes no account of things; perfect knowledge does not scheme; perfect benevolence knows no affection; perfect trust dispenses with gold.23 Wipe out the delusions of the will; undo the snares of the heart; rid yourself of the entanglements to virtue; open up the roadblocks in the Way. Eminence and wealth, recognition and authority, fame and profit—these six are the delusions of the will. Appearances and carriage, complexion and features, temperament and attitude—these six are the snares of the heart. Loathing and desire, joy and anger, grief and happiness—these six are the entanglements of virtue. Rejecting and accepting, taking and giving, knowledge and ability—these six are the roadblocks of the Way. When these four sixes no longer seethe within the breast, then you will achieve uprightness; being upright, you will be still; being still, you will be enlightened; being enlightened, you will be empty; and being empty, you will do nothing, and yet there will be nothing that is not done. The Way is virtue’s idol. Life is virtue’s light. The in- born nature is the substance of life. The inborn nature in motion is called action. Action that has become artificial is called loss. Understanding reaches out, understanding plots. But the understanding of that which is not to be understood is a childlike stare. Action that is done because one cannot do otherwise is called virtue. Action in which there is nothing other than self is called good order. In definition, the two seem to be opposites, but in reality they agree. Archer Yi was skilled at hitting the smallest target but clumsy in not preventing people from praising him for it. The sage is skilled in what pertains to Heaven but clumsy in what pertains to man. To be skilled in Heavenly affairs and good at human ones as well—only the Complete Man can encompass that. Only bugs can be bugs because only bugs can abide by Heaven. The Complete Man hates Heaven and hates the Heavenly in man. How much more, then, does he hate the ‘T’ who distinguishes between Heaven and man.24 If a single sparrow came within Archer Yi’s range, he was sure to bring it down—impressive shooting. But he might have made the whole world into a cage, and then the sparrows would have had no place to flee to. That was the way it was when Tang caged Yi Yin by making him a cook and Duke Mu caged Boli Xi for the price of five ram skins.2> But if you hope to get a man, you must cage him with what he likes, or you will never succeed. The man who has had his feet cut off in punishment discards his fancy clothes—because praise and blame no longer touch him. The chained convict climbs the highest peak without fear—because he has abandoned all thought of life and death. These two are submissive2® and un-ashamed because they have forgotten other men, and by forgetting other men, they have become men of Heaven. Therefore you may treat such men with respect, and they will not be pleased; you may treat them with contumely, and they will not be angry. Only because they are one with the Heavenly Harmony can they be like this. If he who bursts out in anger is not really angry, then his anger is an outburst of nonanger. If he who launches into action is not really acting, then his action is a launching into inaction. He who wishes to be still must calm his energies; he who wishes to be spiritual must compose his mind; he who in his actions wishes to hit the mark must go along with what he cannot help doing. Those things that you cannot help doing—they represent the Way of the sage. 1. That is, faced in Laozi’s direction. He is displeased, of course, because his worth has been discovered, whereas the true sage remains hidden and unrecognized. 2. For the sake of the parallelism, I follow Ma Xulun’s suggestion in adding the character Jou. 3. Following Ma Xulun’s interpretation. 4. The whole passage, as Fukunaga points out, seems to be related to the remark in sec. 1, p. 4: “And blindness and deadness are not confined to the body alone—the understanding has them, too, as your words just now have shown.” 5. According to Chinese nature lore, the mud dauber can transform mulberry caterpillars into its own young. 6. Laozi is referring perhaps to himself or to Gengsang Chu. I follow Fukunaga in the interpretation of this paragraph. 7. Almost identical with a passage in Daodejing LV. Parts of this paragraph are in rhyme. 8. This sentence has dropped out of most versions of the text. 9. Compare sec. 2, p. 14: “Therefore understanding that rests in what it does not understand is the finest. Who can understand discriminations that are not spoken, the Way that is not a way?” 10. “Spirit Tower,” like “Spirit Storehouse,” is a Daoist term for the mind; see the parallel passage in sec. 5, p. 39. 11. The thought and wording of this paragraph, particularly the key term “sincerity,” are closely allied to the Zhongyong or “The Mean,” a chapter of the Book of Rites that later became one of the most important texts in Confucian thought. 12.1 follow Yu Yue in the interpretation of the word chi. 13. Moye, the famous sword of antiquity, was mentioned in sec. 6, p. 48. 14. That is, the workings of the mind or will upset the balance of the yin and yang within the body and automatically bring on illness; see sec. 4, p. 26, n. 9. 15. Compare sec. 2, p. 11: “The Way makes them all into one. Their dividedness is their completeness; their completeness is their impairment.” I follow Fukunaga in supplying the characters chengye, which are found in the KOzanji text of the Zhuangzi, thus making the passage identical with that in sec. 2 just cited. 16. Compare sec. 2, p. 8: The “True Master ... can act— that is certain. Yet I cannot see his form. He has identity but no form.” 17. The paragraph up to this point is identical with the passage in sec. 2, pp. 11-12. 18. Following Wang Niansun, I read dao in place of shou; see sec. 22, p. 185, n. 19. I follow Zhang Binglin in the interpretation of dai, and Ma Xulun in emending the name Jia to Qu. The Zhao, Jing, and Qu families all were branches of the ruling family of the state of Chu. Zhao and Jing were the posthumous names of the rulers from whom the families descended: Qu was originally the name of the area where the Qu family was enfeoffed. 20. That is, because analysis is possible. This paragraph is a mass of textual problems and uncertainties, and only the most tentative translation can be offered. The point seems to be that although it is possible to analyze things such as an ox or a house into their component parts, nothing is gained by the process. 21. Following the texts that omit the fei. 22. On the cicada and the little dove, see sec. 1, p. 1-2. 23. With seals, tallies, and other pledges of good faith. 24. That is, though he “abides by Heaven’—that is, acts with complete naturalness and spontaneity—he deplores any conscious attempt to analyze or understand this naturalness, which is the Way. 25. Tang, founder of the Shang dynasty, recognized the worth of Yi Yin when the latter was serving as one of his cooks. Boli Xi, another worthy, was ransomed from captivity by Duke Mu of Qin for the price of five ram skins. On the latter, see sec. 21, p. 172, n. 10. 26. I follow Ma Xulun’s emendation. 24 XU WUGUI Through Nii Shang, the recluse Xu Wugui obtained an interview with Marquis Wu of Wei. Marquis Wu greeted him with words of comfort, saying, “Sir, you are not well. I suppose that the hardships of life in the mountain forests have become too much for you, and so at last you have consented to come and visit me.” “I am the one who should be comforting you!” said Xu Wugui. “What reason have you to comfort me? If you try to fulfill all your appetites and desires and indulge your likes and dislikes, then you will bring affliction to the true form of your inborn nature and fate. And if you try to deny your appetites and desires and forcibly change your likes and dislikes, then you will bring affliction to your ears and eyes. It is my place to comfort you—what reason have you to comfort me!” Marquis Wu, looking very put out, made no reply. After a little while, Xu Wugui said, “Let me try telling you about the way I judge dogs. A dog of the lowest quality thinks only of catching its fill of prey—that is, it has the nature of a wildcat. One of middling quality always seems to be looking up at the sun But one of the highest quality acts as though it had lost its own identity. And I’m even better at judging horses than I am at judging dogs. When I judge a horse, if he can gallop as straight as a plumb line, arc as neat as a curve, turn as square as a T square, and round as true as a compass, then I’d say he was a horse for the kingdom to boast of. But not a horse for the whole world to boast of. Ahorse the whole world can boast of—his talents are already complete. He seems dazed, he seems lost, he seems to have become unaware of his own identity, and in this way he overtakes, passes, and leaves the others behind in the dust. You can’t tell where he’s gone to!” Marquis Wu, greatly pleased, burst out laughing. When Xu Wugui emerged from the interview, Nui Shang said, “Sir, may I ask what you were talking to our ruler about? When I talk to him, I talk to him back and forth about the Odes and Documents, about ritual and music; and then I talk to him up and down about the Golden Tablets and the Six Bow-Cases.2 I have made proposals that led to outstanding success in more cases than can be counted, and yet he never so much as bared his teeth in a smile. Now what were you talking to him about that you managed to delight him in this fashion?” Xu Wugui said, “I was merely explaining to him how I judge dogs and horses, that was all.” “Was that all?” said Nii Shang. “Haven’t you ever heard about the men who are exiled to Yue?” said Xu Wugui. “A few days after they have left their homelands, they are delighted if they come across an old acquaintance. When a few weeks or a month has passed, they are delighted if they come across someone they had known by sight when they were at home. And by the time a year has passed, they are delighted if they come across someone who even looks as though he might be a countryman. The longer they are away from their countrymen, the more deeply they long for them—isn’t that it? A man who has fled into the wilderness, where goosefoot and woodbine tangle the little trails of the polecat and the weasel, and has lived there in emptiness and isolation for a long time, will be delighted if he hears so much as the rustle of a human footfall. And how much more so if he hears his own brothers and kin chattering and laughing at his side! It has been a long time, I think, since one who speaks like a True Man has sat chattering and laughing at our ruler’s side.” KOR Ok Xu Wugui was received in audience by Marquis Wu. “Sir,” said Marquis Wu, “for a long time now, you have lived in your mountain forest, eating acorns and chestnuts, getting along on wild leeks and scallions, and scorning me completely. Now is it old age, or perhaps a longing for the taste of meat and wine, that has brought you here? Or perhaps you have come to bring a blessing to my altars of the soil and grain.” Xu Wugui said, “I was born to poverty and lowliness and have never ventured to eat or drink any of your wine or meat, my lord. I have come in order to comfort you.” “What?” said the ruler. “Why should you comfort me?” “T want to bring comfort to your spirit and body.” “What do you mean by that?” asked Marquis Wu. Xu Wugui said, “Heaven and earth provide nourishment for all things alike. To have ascended to a high position cannot be considered an advantage; to live in lowliness cannot be considered a handicap. Now you, as the sole ruler of this land of ten thousand chariots, may tax the resources of the entire populace of your realm in nourishing the appetites of your ears and eyes, your nose and mouth. But the spirit will not permit such a way of life. The spirit loves harmony and hates licentiousness. Licentiousness is a kind of sickness, and that is why I have come to offer my comfort. I just wonder, my lord, how aware you are of your own sickness.” Marquis Wu said, “I have, in fact, been hoping to see you for a long time, sir. I would like to cherish my people, practice righteousness, and lay down the weapons of war— how would that do?” “Tt won't!” said Xu Wugui “To cherish the people is to open the way to harming them! To practice righteousness and lay down your weapons is to sow the seeds for more weapon wielding! If you go at it this way, I’m afraid you will never succeed. All attempts to create something admirable are the weapons of evil. You may think you are practicing benevolence and righteousness, but in effect you will be creating a kind of artificiality. When a model exists, copies will be made of it; when success has been gained, boasting follows; when debate4 exists, there will be outbreaks of hostility. On the other hand, it will not do, my lord, to have files of marching soldiers filling the whole area in your fortress towers, or ranks of cavalry drawn up before the Palace of the Black Altar. Do not store in your heart what is contrary to your interests. Do not try to outdo others in skill. Do not try to overcome others by stratagems. Do not try to conquer others in battle. If you kill the officials and people of another ruler and annex his lands, using them to nourish your personal desires and your spirit, then I cannot say which contender is the better fighter and to which the real victory belongs! If you must do something, cultivate the sincerity that is in your breast and use it to respond without opposition to the true form of Heaven and earth. Then the people will have won their reprieve from death. What need will there be for you to resort to this ‘laying down of weapons’?” The Yellow Emperor set out to visit Great Clod at Juci Mountain. Fang Ming was his carriage driver, while Chang Yu rode at his right side; Zhang Ruo and Xi Peng led the horses, and Kun Hun and Gu Ji followed behind the carriage. By the time they reached the wilds of Xiangcheng, all seven sages had lost their way and could find no one to ask for directions. Just then they happened on a young boy herding horses and asked him for directions. “Do you know the way to Juci Mountain?” they inquired. “Yes.” “And do you know where Great Clod is to be found?” “Yes.” “What an astonishing young man!” said the Yellow Emperor. “You not only know the way to Juci Mountain, but you even know where Great Clod is to be found! Do you mind if I ask you about how to govern the empire?” “Governing the empire just means doing what I’m doing here, doesn’t it?” said the young boy. “What about it is special? When I was little, I used to go wandering within the Six Realms, but in time I contracted a disease that blurred my eyesight. An elderly gentleman advised me to mount the chariot of the sun and go wandering in the wilds of Xiangcheng, and now my illness is getting a little better. Soon I can go wandering once more, this time beyond the Six Realms. Governing the empire just means doing what I’m doing—I don’t see why it has to be anything special.” “It’s true that governing the empire is not something that need concern you, sir,” said the Yellow Emperor. “Nevertheless, I would like to ask you how it should be done.” The young boy made excuses, but when the Yellow Emperor repeated his request, the boy said, “Governing the empire, I suppose, is not much different from herding horses. Get rid of whatever is harmful to the horses—that’s all.” The Yellow Emperor, addressing the boy as “Heavenly Master,” bowed twice, touching his head to the ground, and retired. The wise man is not happy without the modulations of idea and thought; the rhetorician is not happy without the progression of argument and rebuttal; the examiner is not happy without the tasks of interrogation and intimidation. All are penned in by these things. Men who attract the attention of the age win glory at court; men who hit it off well with the people shine in public office; men of strength and sinew welcome hardship; men of bravery and daring are spurred on by peril; men of arms and armor delight in combat; men of haggard-hermit looks reach out for fame; men of laws and regulations long for broader legislation; men of ritual and instruction revere appearances; men of benevolence and righteousness value human relationships. The farmer is not content if he does not have his work in the fields and weed patches; the merchant is not content if he does not have his affairs at the marketplace and well side. The common people work hardest when they have their sunup-to-sundown occupations; the hundred artisans are most vigorous when they are exercising their skills with tools and machines. If his goods and coins do not pile up, the greedy man frets; if his might and authority do not increase, the ambitious man _ grieves. Servants to circumstance and things, they delight in change, and if the moment comes when they can put their talents to use, then they cannot keep from acting. In this way, they all follow along with the turning years, letting themselves be changed by things $ Driving their bodies and natures on and on, they drown in the ten thousand things and, to the end of their days never turn back. Pitiful, are they not? Zhuangzi said, “If an archer, without taking aim at the mark, just happens to hit it, and we dub him a skilled archer, then everyone in the world can be an Archer Yi—all right?” “All right,” said Huizi. Zhuangzi said, “If there is no publicly accepted ‘right’ in the world, but each person takes right to be what he himself thinks is right, then everyone in the world can be a Yao—all right?” “All right,” said Huizi. Zhuangzi said, “Well then, here are the four schools of the Confucians, Mo, Yang, and Bing/ and, with your own, that makes five. Now which of you is, in fact, right? Or is it perhaps like the case of Lu Ju? His disciple said to him, ‘Master, I have grasped your Way. I can build a fire under the cauldron in winter and make ice in summer.’ ‘But that is simply using the yang to attract the yang, and the yin to attract the yin,’ said Lu Ju ‘That is not what I call the Way! I will show you my Way!’ Thereupon he tuned two lutes, placed one in the hall, and the other in an inner room. When he struck the gong note on one lute, the gong on the other lute sounded; when he struck the jue note, the other jue sounded—the pitch of the two instruments was in perfect accord. Then he changed the tuning of one string so that it no longer corresponded to any of the five notes. When he plucked this string, it set all the twenty-five strings of the other instrument to jangling. But he was still using sounds to produce his effect; in this case it just happened to be the note that governs the other notes. Now is this the way it is in your case?’2 Huizi said, “The followers of Confucius, Mo, Yang, and Bing often engage with me in debate, each of us trying to overwhelm the others with phrases and to silence them with shouts—but so far they have never proved me wrong. So what do you make of that?” Zhuangzi said, “A man of Qi sold his own son into service in Song, having dubbed him Gatekeeper and maimed him;0 but when he acquired any bells or chimes, he wrapped them up carefully to prevent breakage. Another man went looking for a lost son but was unwilling to go any farther than the border in his search—there are men as mixed up as this, you know. Or like the man of Chu who had been maimed and sold into service as a gatekeeper and who, in the middle of the night when no one else was around, picked a fight with the boatman. Though he didn’t actually arouse any criticism, what he did was enough to create the grounds for a nasty grudge.” LL Zhuangzi was accompanying a funeral when he passed by Huizi’s grave. Turning to his attendants, he said, “There was once a plasterer who, if he got a speck of mud on the tip of his nose no thicker than a fly’s wing, would get his friend Carpenter Shi to slice it off for him. Carpenter Shi, whirling his hatchet with a noise like the wind, would accept the assignment and proceed to slice, removing every bit of mud without injury to the nose, while the plasterer just stood there completely unperturbed. Lord Yuan of Song, hearing of this feat, summoned Carpenter Shi and said, ‘Could you try performing it for me?’ But Carpenter Shi replied, ‘It’s true that I was once able to slice like that —but the material I worked on has been dead these many years.’ Since you died, Master Hui, I have had no material to work on. There’s no one I can talk to any more.” When Guan Zhong fell ill, Duke Huan went to inquire how he was.12 “Father Zhong,” he said, “you are very ill. If—can I help but say it?—if your illness should become critical, then to whom could I entrust the affairs of the state?” Guan Zhong said, “To whom would Your Grace like to entrust them?” “Bao Shuya,” said the duke. “That will never do! He is a fine man, a man of honesty and integrity. But he will have nothing to do with those who are not like himself. And if he once hears of some-one’s error, he won’t forget it to the end of his days. If he were given charge of the state, he would be sure to tangle with you on the higher level and rile the people below him. It would be no time at all before he did something you considered unpardonable.” “Well then, who will do?” asked the duke. “If I must give an answer, then I would say that Xi Peng will do. He forgets those in high places and does not abandon those in low ones. 13 He is ashamed that he himself is not like the Yellow Emperor, and pities those who are not like himself. He who shares his virtue with others is called a sage; he who shares his talents with others is called a worthy man. If he uses his worth in an attempt to oversee others, then he will never win their support; but if he uses it to humble himself before others, then he will never fail to win their support. With such a man, there are things within the state that he doesn’t bother to hear about, things within the family that he doesn’t bother to look after. If I must give an answer, I would say that Xi Peng will do.” Kok Ok The king of Wu, boating on the Yangtze, stopped to climb a mountain noted for its monkeys. When the pack of monkeys saw him, they dropped what they were doing in terror and scampered off to hide in the deep brush. But there was one monkey who, lounging about nonchalantly, picking at things, scratching, decided to display his skill to the king. When the king shot at him, he snatched hold of the flying arrows with the greatest nimbleness and speed. The king thereupon ordered his attendants to hurry forward and join in the shooting, and the monkey was soon captured and killed. The king turned to his friend Yan Buyi and said, “This monkey, flouting its skill, trusting to its tricks, deliberately displayed its contempt for me—so it met with this end. Take warning from it! Ah—you must never let your expression show arrogance toward others! “ When Yan Buyi returned, he put himself under the instruction of Dong Wu, learning to wipe the expression from his face, to discard delight, to excuse himself from renown—and at the end of three years, everyone in the state was praising him. Ziai of Nanpo!4 sat leaning on his armrest, staring up at the sky and breathing. Yan Chengzi entered and said, “Master, you surpass all other things! Can you really make the body like a withered tree and the mind like dead ashes?” “Once I lived in a mountain cave. At that time, Tian He came to pay me one visit, and the people of the state of Qi congratulated him three times.15 I must have had hold of!© something in order for him to find out who I was; I must have been peddling something in order for him to come and buy. If I had not had hold of something, then how would he have been able to find out who I was? If I had not been peddling something, then how would he have been able to buy? Ah, how I pitied those men who destroy themselves! Then again, I pitied those who pity others, and again, I pitied those who pity those who pity others. But all that was long ago.” OK Ok When Confucius visited Chu, the king of Chu ordered a toast. Sunshu Ao came forward and stood with the wine goblet, while Yiliao from south of the Market took some of the wine and poured a libation, saying, “[You have the wisdom of ] the men of old, have you not? On this occasion, perhaps you would speak to us about it.” Confucius said, “I have heard of the speech that is not spoken, though I have never tried to speak about it. Shall I take this occasion to speak about it now? Yiliao from south of the Market juggled a set of balls, and the trouble between the two houses was resolved. Sunshu Ao rested comfortably, waving his feather fan, and the men of Ying put away their arms. I wish I had a beak three feet long!"LZ These were men who followed what is called the Way that is not a way, and this exchange of theirs is what is called the debate that is not spoken. Therefore, when virtue is resolved in the unity of the Way and words come to rest at the place where understanding no longer understands, we have perfection. The unity of the Way is something that virtue can never master;18 what understanding does not understand is something that debate can never encompass. To apply names in the manner of the Confucians and Mohists is to invite evil. The sea does not refuse the rivers that come flowing eastward into it—it is the perfection of greatness. The sage embraces all heaven and earth, and his bounty extends to the whole world, yet no one knows who he is or what family he belongs to. For this reason, in life he holds no titles, in death he receives no posthumous names. Realities do not gather about him, names do not stick to him—this is what is called the Great Man. A dog is not considered superior merely because it is good at barking; a man is not considered worthy merely because he is good at speaking. Much less, then, is he to be considered great. That which has become great does not think it worth trying to become great, much less to become virtuous. Nothing possesses a larger measure of greatness than Heaven and earth, yet when have they ever gone in search of greatness? He who understands what it means to possess greatness does not seek, does not lose, does not reject, and does not change himself for the sake of things. He returns to himself and finds the inexhaustible; he follows antiquity and discovers the imperishable—this is the sincerity of the Great Man. Ziqi had eight sons, and lining them up in front of him, he summoned Jiufang Yin and said, “Please physiognomize my sons for me and tell me which one is destined for good fortune.” Jiufang Yin replied, “Kun—he is the one who will be fortunate.” Ziqi, both astonished and pleased, said, “How so?” “Kun will eat the same food as the lord of a kingdom and will continue to do so to the end of his days.” Tears sprang from Ziqi’s eyes, and in great dejection he said, “Why should my boy be brought to this extreme?” “He who eats the same food as the ruler of a kingdom will bring bounty to all his three sets of relatives, not to mention his own father and mother,” said Jiufang Yin. “Yet now when you hear of this, sir, you burst out crying—this will only drive the blessing away! The son is auspicious enough, but the father is decidedly inauspicious!” Ziqi said, “Yin, what would you know about this sort of thing! You say Kun will be fortunate—but you are speaking solely of the meat and wine that are to affect his nose and mouth. How could you understand where such things come from! Suppose, although I have never been a shepherd, a flock of ewes were suddenly to appear in the southwest corner of my grounds or that, although I have no taste for hunting, a covey of quail should suddenly appear in the southeast corner—if this were not to be considered peculiar, then what would be? When my son and I go wandering, we wander through Heaven and earth. He and I seek our delight in Heaven and our food from the earth. He and I do not engage in any undertakings, do not engage in any plots, do not engage in any peculiarities. He and I ride on the sincerity of Heaven and earth and do not allow things to set us at odds with it. He and I stroll and saunter in unity, but never do we try to do what is appropriate to the occasion. Now you tell me of this vulgar and worldly ‘reward’ that is to come to him. As a rule, where there is some peculiar manifestation, there must invariably have been some peculiar deed to call it forth. But surely this cannot be due to any fault of my son and me—it must be inflicted by Heaven. It is for this reason that I weep!” Not long afterward, Ziqi sent his son Kun on an errand to the state of Yan, and along the way he was seized by bandits. They considered that he would be difficult to sell as a slave in his present state but that if they cut off his feet, they could dispose of him easily 12 Accordingly, they cut off his feet and sold him in the state of Qi. As it happened, he was made gatekeeper of the inner chamber in the palace of Duke Kang22 and so was able to eat meat until the end of his days. Nie Que happened to meet Xu You. “Where are you going?” he asked. “Tm running away from Yao.” “Why is that?” “Because Yao is so earnestly and _ everlastingly benevolent! I’m afraid he’ll make himself the laughingstock of the world. In later ages, men may even end up eating one another because of him!2+ There is nothing difficult about attracting the people. Love them and they will feel affection for you; benefit them and they will flock to you; praise them and they will do their best; do something they dislike and they will scatter. Love and benefit are the products of benevolence and righteousness. There are few men who will renounce benevolence and righteousness, but many who will seek to benefit by them. To practice benevolence and righteousness in such a fashion is at best a form of insincerity, at worst a deliberate lending of weapons to the evil22 and rapacious. Moreover, to have one man laying down decisions and regulations for the ‘benefit’ of the world is like trying to take in everything at a single glance. Yao understands that the worthy man can benefit the world, but he does not understand that he can also ruin the world. Only a man who has gotten outside the realm of ‘worthiness’ can understand that!” There are the smug-and-satisfied, there are the precariously perched, and there are the bent-with-burdens. What I call the smug-and-satisfied are those who, having learned the words of one master, put on a smug and satisfied look, privately much pleased with themselves, considering that what they’ve gotten is quite sufficient, and not even realizing that they haven’t begun to get anything at all. These are what I call the smug-and-satisfied. What I call the precariously perched are like the lice on a pig. They pick out a place where the bristles are long and sparse and call it their spacious mansion, their ample park; or a place in some corner of the hams or hoofs, between the nipples, or down around the haunches, and call it their house of repose, their place of profit. They do not know that one morning the butcher will give a swipe of his arm, spread out the grass, light up the fire, and that they will be roasted to a crisp along with the pig. Their advancement in the world is subject to such limitations as this, and their retirement from it is subject to similar limitations. This is what I call the precariously perched. What I call the bent-with-burdens are those like Shun. The mutton doesn’t long for the ants; it is the ants that long for the mutton. Mutton has a rank odor, and Shun must have done rank deeds for the hundred clans to have delighted in him so. Therefore, though he changed his residence three times, each place he lived in turned into a city, and by the time he reached the wilderness of Deng, he had a hundred thousand households with him. Yao heard of the worthiness of Shun and raised him up from the barren plains, saying, “May I hope that you will come and bestow your bounty on us?” When Shun was raised up from the barren plains, he was already well along in years, and his hearing and eyesight were failing, and yet he was not able to go home and rest. This is what I call the bent-with-burdens. Therefore the Holy Man hates to see the crowd arriving, and if it does arrive, he does not try to be friendly with it; not being friendly with it, he naturally does nothing to benefit it. So he makes sure that there is nothing he is very close to and nothing he is very distant from. Embracing virtue, infused with harmony, he follows along with the world—this is what is called the True Man. He leaves wisdom to the ants, takes his cue from the fishes, leaves willfulness to the mutton.23 Use the eye to look at the eye, the ear to listen to the ear, and the mind to restore the mind. Do this, and your levelness will be as though measured with the line; your transformations will be a form of compliance. The True Man of ancient times used Heaven to deal with man; he did not use man to work his way into Heaven. The True Man of ancient times got it and lived, lost it and died, got it and died, lost it and lived. Medicines serve as an example.24 There are monkshood, balloonflower, cockscomb, and chinaroot; each has a time when it is the sovereign remedy, though the individual cases are too numerous to describe. Goujian, with his three thousand men in armor and shield, took up his position at Kuaiji; at that time, Zhong alone was able to understand how a perishing state can be saved, but he alone did not understand how the body may be brought to grief.2> Therefore it is said, The owl’s eyes have their special aptness, the stork’s legs have their proper proportions; to try to cut away anything would make the creatures sad. It is said, When the wind passes over it, the river loses something; when the sun passes over it, it loses something. But even if we asked the wind and sun to remain constantly over the river, the river would not regard this as the beginning of any real trouble for itself—it relies on the springs that feed it and goes on its way. The water sticks close to the land; the shadow sticks close to the form; things stick close to things. Therefore keen sight may be a danger to the eye; sharp hearing may be a danger to the ear; and the pursuit of thought may be a danger to the mind. All the faculties that are stored up in man are a potential source of danger, and if this danger becomes real and is not averted, misfortunes will go on piling up in increasing number. A return to the original condition takes effort; its accomplishment takes time. And yet men look on these faculties as their treasures—is it not sad? Therefore we have this endless destruction of states and slaughter of the people—because no one knows enough to ask about This!2° The foot treads a very small area of the ground, but although the area is small, the foot must rely on the support of the untrod ground all around before it can go forward in confidence. The understanding of man is paltry, but although it is paltry, it must rely on all those things that it does not understand before it can understand what is meant by Heaven. To understand the Great Unity, to understand the Great Yin, to understand the Great Eye, to understand the Great Equality, to understand the Great Method, to understand the Great Trust, to understand the Great Serenity—this is perfection. With the Great Unity you may penetrate it;22 with the Great Yin, unknot it; with the Great Eye, see it; with the Great Equality, follow it; with the Great Method, embody it; with the Great Trust, reach it; with the Great Serenity, hold it fast. End with what is Heavenly, follow what is bright, hide in what is pivotal, begin in what is objective—then your comprehension will seem like noncomprehension; your understanding will seem like no understanding; not understanding it, you will later understand it. Your questions about it cannot have a limit, and yet they cannot not have a limit. Vague and slippery, there is yet some reality there. Past and present, it does not alter—nothing can do it injury. We may say that there is one great goal, may we not? Why not inquire about it? Why act in such perplexity? If we use the unperplexed to dispel perplexity and return to unperplexity, this will be the greatest unperplexity. 1. It is proud and self-confident. 2. Probably works on military affairs, though their identity is uncertain. 3. The meaning is doubtful. As Fukunaga points out, the sentence seems to be related to Daodejing LXXI. 4. I follow Fukunaga in taking bian as a loan for the bian that means argument or debate. 5. Great Clod (I take wei as standing for kuai) here represents the way. The names of the Yellow Emperor’s attendants probably have some allegorical significance as well, but their exact meaning is uncertain, and it seems best not to attempt to translate them. 6. I follow Ma Xulun in reading er in place of bu. 7. The philosophers Mo Di and Yang Zhu appeared on p. 61. Bing is the polite name of the logician Gongsun Long (see p. 135); some scholars take the fourth philosopher to be Song Keng (see p. 291). 8. Winter is dominated by yin, the element of cold and water; summer by yang, the element of heat and fire. But to produce fire, the disciple must have utilized some source of heat, and to produce ice, some source of cold; hence he was merely “using the yang to attract the yang,” etc. 9. The point of the story seems to be that although Lu Ju made fun of his disciple for “simply using the yang to attract the yang,” his own stunts were confined to the same level; that is, he used sounds to produce sounds. In the same way, the various philosophers debate back and forth, but none ever succeeds in going beyond the level of the relative. 10. It was the custom to employ condemned criminals who had had their feet cut off or maimed as gatekeepers, though not, as in this case, deliberately to maim men for that purpose. 11. This last paragraph is all but unintelligible as it stands. For the most part, I follow Fukunaga’s emendations and interpretations. Zhuangzi is warning Huizi that his debates with the other philosophers may actually put him in peril. 12. On Guan Zhong and Duke Huan, see p. 150. 13. Following the version in Liezi, sec. 6, I supply a bu before the second verb. There are many versions of this anecdote found in early philosophical texts, and this sentence appears in different form in each. 14. Presumably the same as Ziqi of South Wall; see p. 7. 15. Tian He was a high minister of Qi who became its virtual ruler; see p. 69. The people congratulated him because he recognized and paid honor to the sage recluse Ziqi. 16. I follow Xi Tong in taking xian as an error for you. Ziqi means that by becoming a recluse, he was deliberately courting notoriety and hence was no better than any other seeker of fame. 17. In 479 BCE, the year of Confucius’s death, a nobleman of one branch of the royal family of Chu led an uprising. He tried to enlist the support of Xiong Yiliao from south of the Market (see sec. 20, p. 157), first attempting to persuade him, then threatening him at the point of a sword, but Yiliao steadfastly refused. Partly as a result, the revolt quickly failed, and peace was restored among the various branches of the royal family. The juggling of the balls presumably symbolized unconcern in the face of danger. Sunshu Ao, a high minister of Chu who lived a generation before Confucius, governed so effectively that he was able to rest in ease, and the people of the Chu capital, Ying, with no fear of foreign invasion, could lay away their arms; see p. 174. Both men appear here as examples of the superiority of silence over talk. The “beak three feet long” apparently represents the “speech that is not spoken,” that is, the state of enlightenment; compare sec. 12, p. 89: “You may join in the cheeping and chirping, and when you have joined in the cheeping and chirping, you may join with Heaven and earth.” 18. Following texts that read zhou instead of tong. 19. As we have seen earlier, men whose feet were maimed were employed as gatekeepers because they couldn’t run away. 20. Following Sun Yirang’s emendations. 21. Compare sec. 23, p. 190. 2. Reading xiong in place of qin. 23. The ants and mutton (the text says “sheep,” but presumably the word “meat” has dropped out) appeared earlier; on the fishes who “forget one another in the rivers and lakes,” see sec. 6, p. 50. 24. As there are times when now one medicine, now another, will be appropriate, so there are times when life is appropriate, times when death is. The remainder of the chapter is rather disconnected in thought, and it is often difficult to make out the author’s intent. 25. Goujian, king of Yue, was defeated by the troops of Wu (see p. 5) and forced to flee with a band of followers to the top of Mount Kuaiji. There he plotted revenge with Zhong and another trusted minister. But later, when he had successfully turned the tables and defeated Wu, he grew suspicious of Zhong and forced him to commit suicide. 26. The Way. 27. The Way. ZEYANG When Zeyang was traveling in Chu, Yi Jie spoke to the king of Chu about him but gave up and went home without having persuaded the king to grant Zeyang an interview. Zeyang went to see Wang Guo and said, “Sir, I wonder if you would mention me to the king”! Wang Guo replied, “I would not be as good at that as Gong Yuexiu.” Zeyang said, “Gong Yuexiu? What does he do?” “In winter he spears turtles by the river; in summer he loafs around the mountains, and if anyone comes along and asks him about it, he says, “This is my house!’ Now since Yi Jie was unable to persuade the king, what could I do?—I am not even a match for Yi Jie. Yi Jie is the kind of man who has understanding, though he lacks real virtue. He is not permissive with himself but puts his whole spirit into pleasing his friends. He has always been dazzled and misled by wealth and eminence—so he is not the kind to help others out with virtue but instead will help them out with harm. A man who is chilled will think spring has come if he piles on enough clothes; a man suffering from the heat will think winter has returned if he finds a cool breeze.2 Now the king of Chu is the kind of man who is majestic and stern in bearing, and if offended, he is as unforgiving as a tiger. No one but a gross flatterer or a man of the most perfect virtue can hope to talk him into anything. “The true sage, now—living in hardship, he can make his family forget their poverty; living in affluence, he can make kings and dukes forget their titles and stipends and humble themselves before him. His approach to things is to go along with them and be merry; his approach to men is to take pleasure in the progress of others and to hold on to what is his own. So there may be times when, without saying a word, he induces harmony in others; just standing alongside others, he can cause them to change until the proper relationship between father and son has found its way into every home.2 He does it all ina spirit of unity and effortlessness—so far is he removed from the hearts of men. This is why I say you should wait for Gong Yuexiu.” The sage penetrates bafflement and complication, rounding all into a single body, yet he does not know why—1t is his inborn nature. He returns to fate and acts accordingly, using Heaven as his teacher, and men follow after, pinning labels on him. But if he worried about how much he knew and his actions were never constant for so much as a year or a season,4 then how could he ever find a stopping place? When people are born with good looks, you may hand them a mirror, but if you don’t tell them, they will never know that they are better looking than others. Whether they know it or don’t know it, whether they are told of it or are not told of it, however, their delightful good looks remain unchanged to the end, and others can go on endlessly admiring them—it is a matter of inborn nature. The sage loves other men, and men accordingly pin labels on him, but if they do not tell him, then he will never know that he loves other men. Whether he knows it or doesn’t know it, whether he is told of it or is not told of it, however, his love for men remains unchanged to the end, and others can find endless security in it—it is a matter of in-born nature. The old homeland, the old city—just to gaze at it from afar is to feel a flush of joy. Even when its hills and mounds are a tangle of weeds and brush, and nine out of ten of the ones you knew have gone to lie under them, still you feel joyful. How much more so, then, when you see those you used to see, when you hear the voices you used to hear—they stand out like eighty-foot towers among the crowd.» Mr. Renxiang held on to the empty socket and followed along to completion.2 Joining with things, he knew no end, no beginning, no year, no season./ And because he changed day by day with things, he was one with the man who never changes—so why should he ever try to stop doing this? He who tries to make Heaven his teacher will never get Heaven to teach him—he will end up following blindly along with all other things, and then no matter how he goes about it, what can he do? The sage has never begun to think of Heaven, has never begun to think of man, has never begun to think of a beginning, has never begun to think of things. He moves in company with the age, never halting; wherever he moves, he finds completion and no impediment. Others try to keep up with him, but what can they do? Tang got hold of the groom and guardsman Deng Heng and had him be his tutor. He followed him and treated him as a teacher but was not confined by him—so he could follow along to completion, becoming, as a result, a mere holder of titles. This is called making yourself superfluous, a method by which two manifestations can be attained.8 Confucius’s injunction “Be done with schemes!”—you could let that be your tutor as well. Or Mr. Yongcheng’s saying, “Be done with days and there will be no more years! No inside, no outside.” King Ying of Wei made a treaty with Marquis Tian Mou of Qi, but Marquis Tian Mou violated it2 King Ying, enraged, was about to send a man to assassinate him. Gong-sun Yan, the minister of war, heard of this and was filled with shame. “You are the ruler of a state of ten thousand chariots,” he said to the king, “and yet you would send a commoner to carry out your revenge! I beg to be given command of two hundred thousand armored troops so that I may attack him for you, make prisoners of his people, and lead away his horses and cattle. I will make him burn with anger so fierce that it will break out on his back 12 Then I will storm his capital, and when Tian J i tries to run away, I will strike him in the back and break his spine!” Jizi, hearing this, was filled with shame and said, “If one sets out to build an eighty-foot wall, and then, when it is already seven-tenths finished, 12 deliberately pulls it down, the convict laborers who built it will look upon it as a bitter waste. Now for seven years we have not had to call out the troops, and this peace has been the foundation of your sovereignty. Gongsun Yan is a troublemaker—his advice must not be heeded!” Huazi, hearing this, was filled with disgust and said, “He who is so quick to say ‘Attack Qi!’ is a troublemaker, and he who is so quick to say ‘Don’t attack Qi!’ is a troublemaker! And he who says that both those who are for and against the attack are troublemakers is a troublemaker, too!” “Then what should I do?” said the ruler. “Just try to find the Way, that’s all.” Huizi, hearing this, introduced Dai Jinren to the ruler. Dai Jinren said, “There is a creature called the snail—does Your Majesty know it?” “Yes.” “On top of its left horn is a kingdom called Buffet, and on top of its right horn is a kingdom called Maul.43 At times they quarrel over territory and go to war, strewing the field with corpses by the ten thousands, the victor pursuing the vanquished for half a month before returning home.” “Pooh!” said the ruler. “What kind of empty talk is this?” “But Your Majesty will perhaps allow me to show you the truth in it. Do you believe that there is a limit to the four directions, to up and down?” “They have no limits,” said the ruler. “And do you know that when the mind has wandered in these limitless reaches and returns to the lands we know and travel, they seem so small that it is not certain whether or not they even exist?” “Yes,” said the ruler. “And among these lands we know and travel is the state of Wei, and within the state of Wei is the city of Liang, and within the city of Liang is Your Majesty. Is there any difference between you and the ruler of Maul?” ‘No difference,” said the king. After the visitor left, the king sat stupefied, as though lost to the world. The interview over, Huizi appeared before him. “That visitor of ours is a Great Man,” said the king. “The sages themselves are unworthy of comparison with him!” Huizi said, “Blow on a flute, and you get a nice shrill note; but blow on the ring of your sword hilt, and all you get is a feeble wheeze. People are inclined to praise the sages Yao and Shun, but if you started expounding on Yao and Shun in the presence of Dai Jinren, it would sound like one little wheeze!” When Confucius was traveling to the capital of Chu, he stopped for the night at a tavern at Ant Knoll. Next door a crowd of husbands and wives, menservants and maid- servants, had climbed up to the rooftop [to watch].14 Zilu said, “Who are all those people milling around?” “They are the servants of a sage,” said Confucius. “He has buried himself among the people, hidden himself among the fields. His reputation fades away, but his determination knows no end. Though his mouth speaks, his mind has never spoken. Perhaps he finds himself at odds with the age and, in his heart, disdains to go along with it. He is one who has ‘drowned in the midst of dry land.’ I would guess that it is Yiliao from south of the Market.”15 “May I go next door and call him over?” asked Zilu. “Let it be!” said Confucius. “He knows that I am out to make a name for myself, and he knows I am on my way to the capital of Chu. He is sure to assume that I am trying to get the king of Chu to give me a position and will accordingly take me for a sycophant. A man like that is ashamed even to hear the words of a sycophant, much less appear in person before him! What makes you think he is still at home, anyway?” Zilu went next door to have a look and found the house deserted. The border guard of Zhangwu said to Zilao 1© “Tn running the government, you mustn’t be slipshod; in ordering the people, you mustn’t be slapdash! In the past, I used to grow grain. I plowed in a slipshod way and got a slipshod crop in return. I weeded in a slapdash way and got a slap-dash crop in return. The following year, I changed my methods, plowing deeper than before and raking with great care—the grain grew thick and luxuriant, and I had all I wanted to eat for the whole year!” Zhuangzi, hearing of this, said, “People of today, when they come to ordering their bodies and regulating their minds, too, often do it in a manner like that which the border guard described. They turn their backs on the Heavenly part, deviate from the inborn nature, destroy the true form, and annihilate the spirit, just to be doing what the crowd is doing. So he who is slipshod with his inborn nature will find the evils of desire and hate affecting his inborn nature like weeds and rushes. When they first sprout up, he thinks they will be a comfort to the body, but in time they end by stifling the inborn nature. Side by side, they begin to break out and ooze forth, not on just one part of the body, but all over. Festering ulcers and boils, internal fevers and pus-filled urine—these are the results!” Bo Ju, having studied under Lao Dan, said, “I would like permission to go wandering about the world.” “Let it be!” said Lao Dan. “The world is right here.” When Bo Ju repeated his request, Lao Dan said, “Where will you go first?” “J will begin with Qi.” When he arrived in Qi, he saw the body of a criminal who had been executed.Z Pushing and dragging until he had it laid out in proper position, he took off his formal robes and covered it with them, wailing to Heaven and crying out, “Alas, alas! The world is in dire misfortune, and you have been quicker than the rest of us to encounter it. “Thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not murder!’ they say. But when glory and disgrace have once been defined, you will see suffering; when goods and wealth have once been gathered together, you will see wrangling. To define something that brings suffering to men, to gather together what sets them to wrangling, inflicting misery and weariness on them, never granting them a time of rest, and yet to hope somehow that they will not end up like this— how could it be possible? “The gentlemen of old attributed what success they had to the people and what failure they had to themselves, attributed what was upright to the people and what was askew to themselves. Therefore, if there was something wrong with the body of even a single being, they would retire and take the blame themselves. But that is not the way it is done today. They make things obscure and then blame people for not understanding;!8 they enlarge the difficulties and then punish people for not being able to cope with them; they pile on responsibilities and then penalize people for not being able to fulfill them; they make the journey longer and then chastise people for not reaching the end of it. When the knowledge and strength of the people are exhausted, they will begin to piece them out with artifice; and when day by day the amount of artifice in the world increases, how can men keep from resorting to artifice? A lack of strength invites artifice; a lack of knowledge invites deceit; a lack of goods invites theft. But these thefts and robberies—who in fact deserves the blame for them?” KOK Qu Boyu has been going along for sixty years and has changed sixty times. There was not a single instance in which what he called right in the beginning he did not, in the end, reject and call wrong. So now there’s no telling whether what he calls right at the moment is not, in fact, what he called wrong during the past fifty-nine years. The ten thousand things have their life, yet no one sees its roots; they have their comings forth, yet no one sees the gate. Men all pay homage to what understanding understands, but no one understands enough to rely on what understanding does not understand and thereby come to understand. Can we call this anything but great perplexity? Let it be, let it be! There is no place you can escape it. This is what is called saying both “that is so” and “4s that sold Confucius said to the Grand Historiographers Da Tao, Bo Changqian, and Xi Wei, “Duke Ling of Wei drank wine and wallowed in pleasure, paying no heed to the government of the state; he went hunting and gaming with nets and stringed arrows, ignoring his obligations to the other feudal lords. How then does he come to be called Duke Ling?”’22 Da Tao said, “It fitted the facts.” Bo Changqian said, “Duke Ling had three wives with whom he would bathe in the same tub. But when Shi Qiu appeared in his presence to offer a gift of cloth, the duke would accept it in person and respectfully attend Shi Qiu.2t He was so depraved as to bathe with his wives and yet so correct in his behavior before a worthy man—this is why he was titled Duke Ling.” Xi Wei said, “When Duke Ling died, we divined to see if he should be buried in the family graveyard, but the omens were unfavorable. Then we divined to see if he should be buried at Sand Hill, and the omens were favorable. Digging down several fathoms, we found a stone coffin, and when we had washed and examined it, we discovered an inscription that said: “You cannot depend on your heirs— Duke Ling will seize this plot for his own burial.’22 So it appears that Duke Ling had already been titled Ling for a long long time. How could these two here know enough to understand this!” Little Understanding said to Great Impartial Accord, “What is meant by the term ‘community words’?” Great Impartial Accord said, ““Community words’ refers to the combining of ten surnames and a hundred given names into a single social unit22 Differences are combined into a sameness; samenesses are broken up into differences. Now we may point to each of the hundred parts of a horse’s body and never come up with a ‘horse’—yet here is the horse, tethered right before our eyes. So we take the hundred parts and set up the term ‘horse.’ Thus it is that hills and mountains pile up one little layer on another to reach loftiness; the Yangtze and the Yellow River combine stream after stream to achieve magnitude; and the Great Man combines and brings together things to attain generality — 24 Therefore, when things enter his mind from the outside, there is a host to receive them but not to cling to them; and when things come forth from his mind, rai is a mark to guide them but not to constrain them.2> The four seasons each differ in breath, but Heaven shows no partiality: 26 among them, and therefore the year comes to completion. The five government bureaus differ in function, but the ruler shows no partiality among them, and therefore the state is well ordered. In both civil and military affairs, the Great Man ils no partiality, and therefore his virtue is complete.22 7 The ten thousand things differ in principle, but the Way shows no partiality among them, and therefore they may achieve namelessness.28 Being nameless, they are without action; without action, yet there is nothing they do not do. “The seasons have their end and beginning, the ages their changes and transformations. Bad fortune and good, tripping and tumbling, come now with what repels you, now with what you welcome. Set in your own opinion, at odds with others, now you judge things to be upright, now you judge them to be warped. But if you could only be like the great swamp, which finds accommodation for a hundred different timbers, or take your model from the great mountain, whose trees and rocks share a common groundwork! This is what is meant by the term ‘community words.”” Little Understanding said, “Well, then, if we call these [general concepts] the Way, will that be sufficient?” “Oh, no,” said Great Impartial Accord. “If we calculate the number of things that exist, the count certainly does not stop at ten thousand. Yet we set a limit and speak of the ‘ten thousand things’—because we select a number that is large and agree to apply it to them. In the same way, heaven and earth are forms that are large, the yin and yang are breaths that are large, and the Way is the generality that embraces them. If from the point of view of largeness we agree to apply [the name ‘Way’] to it, then there will be no objection. But if, having established this name, we go on and try to compare it to the reality, then it will be like trying to compare a dog to a horse—the distance between them is impossibly far.”22 Little Understanding said, “Here within the four directions and the six realms, where do the ten thousand things spring from when they come into being?” Great Impartial Accord said, “The yin and yang shine on each other, maim each other, heal each other; the four seasons succeed each other, give birth to each other, slaughter each other. Desire and hatred, rejection and acceptance, thereupon rise up in succession;22 the pairing of halves between male and female thereupon becomes a regular occurrence. Security and danger trade places with each other; bad and good fortune give birth to each other; tense times and relaxed ones buffet each other; gathering together and scattering bring it all to completion. These names and realities can be recorded; their details and minute parts can be noted. The principle of following one another in orderly succession, the property of moving in alternation, turning back when they have reached the limit, beginning again when they have ended—these are inherent in things. But that which words can adequately describe, that which understanding can reach to, extends only as far as the level of ‘things,’ no further. The man who looks to the Way does not try to track down what has disappeared, does not try to trace the source of what springs up. This is the point at which debate comes to a stop.” Little Understanding said, “Ji Zhen’s contention that ‘nothing does it’ and Jiezi’s contention that ‘something makes it like this’-—of the views of these two schools, which correctly describes the truth of the matter, and which is one sided in its understanding of principles?” Great Impartial Accord said, “Chickens squawk, dogs bark—this is something men understand. But no matter how great their understanding, they cannot explain in words how the chicken and the dog have come to be what they are, nor can they imagine in their minds what they will become in the future. You may pick apart and analyze till you have reached what is so minute that it is without form, what is so large that it cannot be encompassed. But whether you say that ‘nothing does it’ or that ‘something makes it like this,’ you have not yet escaped from the realm of ‘things,’ and so in the end you fall into error. If ‘something makes it like this,’ then it is real; if ‘nothing does it,’ then it is unreal. When there are names and realities, you are in the presence of things. When there are no names and realities, you exist in the absence of things. 22 You can talk about it, you can think about it; but the more you talk about it, the further away you get from it. “Before they are born, things cannot decline to be born; already dead, they cannot refuse to go. Death and life are not far apart, though the principle that underlies them cannot be seen. ‘Nothing does it,’ ‘something makes it like this’—these are speculations born out of doubt. I look for the roots of the past, but they extend back and back without end. I search for the termination of the future, but it never stops coming at me. Without end, without stop, it is the absence of words, which shares the same principle with things themselves. But ‘nothing does it,’ ‘something makes it like this’-—these are the commencement of words, and they begin and end along with things. “The Way cannot be thought of as being, nor can it be thought of as nonbeing. In calling it the Way, we are only adopting a temporary expedient. ‘Nothing does it,’ ‘something makes it like this-—these occupy a mere corner of the realm of things. What connection could they have with the Great Method? If you talk in a worthy manner, you can talk all day long, and all of it will pertain to the Way. But if you talk in an unworthy manner, you can talk all day long, and all of it will pertain to mere things. The perfection of the Way and things—neither words nor silence is worthy of expressing it. Not to talk, not to be silent—this is the highest form of debate.” 1. Zeyang or Peng Yang (the name appears both ways in the passage) is vaguely identified as a native of Lu. In hopes of official appointment, he is obviously seeking an introduction to the king of Chu through various courtiers. 2.1 fail to see how this saying, if I understand it correctly, is meant to apply to the context. 3. The latter part of the sentence is unintelligible in the original, and the translation is no more than a guess. 4.1 follow Ma Xulun in the interpretation of qi; the sentence is vague, and there are many other interpretations. 5. Any number of different translations could be made of this haunting and troublesome paragraph, all as tentative as the one I offer here. It has traditionally been interpreted to express the joy a person experiences when he returns to his inborn nature. 6. Compare sec. 2, p. 10: “When the hinge is fitted into the socket, it can respond endlessly.” Mr. Renxiang is vaguely identified as an ancient sage ruler. 7. I take qi as in the earlier passage; see n. 4. 8. Compare sec. 2, p. 11: “This is called walking two roads.” It would seem that Tang turned over the actual affairs of government to Deng Heng and retained only the title of ruler for himself. But this whole passage is barely intelligible, and there are many interpretations. 9. There is some doubt about the names and identity of these noblemen. 10. Men who develop ulcers on their back as a result of intense anger and frustration are mentioned in other early Chinese texts. 11. The commander of the Qi army. 12. Following Yu Yue, I read gi in place of shi. 13. I borrow these translations of the names with gratitude from Waley (Three Ways of Thought, p. 64). 14. The text says only that they had climbed to the roof (if that is, in fact, the meaning of dengji). Commentators disagree as to why they were there, but it seems most natural to suppose that they had gathered to gawk at Confucius, the pseudo sage, unaware that they were actually in the employ of a real sage. 15. See sec. 20, p. 157, and sec. 24, p. 208. 16. Adisciple of Confucius. 17. Bodies of executed criminals were exposed in the marketplace. 18. Following Yu Yue, I read guo in place of yu, but perhaps the phrase should be further emended. 19. Compare sec. 2, p. 17, “If so were really so,” etc. 20. Ling was the posthumous title bestowed on him by the court historiographers, whose duty it was to choose a title that was appropriate to the life and moral qualities of the deceased ruler. Ling may have either good or bad connotations, depending on how one interprets it. In what follows, it is apparent that Confucius is taking it in a good sense, Da Tao in a bad one, and Bo Changqian in both senses. 21. This is Fukunaga’s guess as to what this impenetrable sentence means; he emends suo to er. 22. Following texts that read mai in place of Ji. 23. That is, “community words” are general terms or concepts that subsume a number of differing particulars. This section in parts resembles the discussion of semantics in sec. 17, pp. 129-131, and in Xunzi, sec. 22. 24. Gong, “common,” “public,” “generally accepted”; translated earlier as “impartial” in order to bring out the contract with “partiality.” 25. Compare the similar passage in sec. 14, p. 114. 26. Following Ma Xulun’s emendation. The word “breath” refers to the prevailing wind, temperature, and other weather phenomena associated with each season. 27. This sentence does not fit into the parallelism and is probably defective. 28. That is, can become one with the nameless Way. 29. That is, whatever name we agree to use in designating the Way, we must not suppose that it can in any sense adequately describe or convey an idea of the Way itself. 30. Following Wang Yun’s interpretation. 31. Ji Zhen and Jiezi are philosophers of whom little is known. As we see here, the latter taught the existence of some prime mover or governor of the universe, while the former denied it. 32. Are these two sentences meant to express a contrast between the relativistic and the absolute viewpoints, or to be two statements of the relativistic viewpoint? I am unable to decide. 26 EXTERNAL THINGS External things cannot be counted on. Hence Longfeng was executed, Bi Gan was sentenced to death, Prince Ji feigned madness, E Lai was killed, and Jie and Zhou were overthrown. There is no ruler who does not want his ministers to be loyal. But loyal ministers are not always trusted. Hence Wu Yun was thrown into the Yangzi, and Chang Hong died in Shu, where the people stored away his blood, and after three years it was transformed into green jade.2 There is no parent who does not want his son to be filial. But filial sons are not always loved. Hence Xiaoji grieved, and Zeng Shen sorrowed.2 When wood rubs against wood, flames spring up. When metal remains by the side of fire, it melts and flows away. When the yin and yang go awry, then heaven and earth see astounding sights. Then we hear the crash and roll of thunder, and fire comes in the midst of rain and burns up the great pagoda tree. Delight and sorrow are there to trap man on either side so that he has no escape. Fearful and trembling, he can reach no completion. His mind is as though trussed and suspended between heaven and earth, bewildered and lost in delusion. Profit and loss rub against each other and light the countless fires that burn up the inner harmony of the mass of men. The moon cannot put out the fire, so that in time, all is consumed, and the Way comes to anend.4 Zhuang Zhou’s family was very poor, and so he went to borrow some grain from the marquis of Jianhe. The marquis said, “Why, of course. I’ll soon be getting the tribute money from my fief, and when I do, I'll be glad to lend you three hundred pieces of gold. Will that be all right?” Zhuang Zhou flushed with anger and said, “As I was coming here yesterday, I heard someone calling me on the road. I turned around and saw that there was a perch in the carriage rut. I said to him, ‘Come, perch—what are you doing here?’ He replied, ‘I am a Wave Official of the Eastern Sea. Couldn’t you give me a dipperful of water so I can stay alive?’ I said to him, ‘Why, of course. I’m just about to start south to visit the kings of Wu and Yue. I'll change the course of the West River and send it in your direction. Will that be all right?’ The perch flushed with anger and said, ‘I’ve lost my element! I have nowhere to go! If you can get me a dipper of water, I’ll be able to stay alive. But if you give me an answer like that, then you’d best look for me in the dried fish store!” Prince Ren made an enormous fishhook with a huge line, baited it with fifty bullocks, settled himself on top of Mount Kuaiji, and cast with his pole into the eastern sea. Morning after morning, he dropped the hook, but for a whole year he got nothing. At last a huge fish swallowed the bait and dived down, dragging the enormous hook. It plunged to the bottom ina fierce charge, rose up and shook its dorsal fins until the white waves were like mountains and the sea waters lashed and churned. The noise was like that of gods and demons, and it spread terror for a thousand li. When Prince Ren had landed his fish, he cut it up and dried it, and from Zhihe east, from Cangwu north, there was no one who did not get his fill. Since then, the men of later generations who have piddling talents and a penchant for odd stories all astound one another by repeating the tale. Now if you shoulder your pole and line, march to the ditches and gullies, and watch for minnows and perch, then you'll have a hard time ever landing a big fish. If you parade your little theories and fish for the post of district magistrate, you will be far from the Great Understanding. So if a man has never heard of the style of Prince Ren, he’s a long way from being able to join with the men who run the world. The Confucians rob graves in accordance with the Odes and ritual. The big Confucian announces to his underlings: “The east grows light! How is the matter proceeding?” The little Confucians say: “We haven’t got the grave clothes off him yet, but there’s a pearl in his mouth!> Just as the Ode says: Green, green the grain Growing on grave mound slopes; If in life you gave no alms In death how do you deserve a pearl?” They push back his sidelocks, press down his beard, and then one of them pries into his chin with a little metal gimlet and gently pulls apart the jaws so as not to injure the pearl in his mouth. A disciple of Lao Laizi® was out gathering firewood when he happened to meet Confucius. He returned and reported, “There’s a man over there with a long body and short legs, his back a little humped and his ears set way back, who looks as though he were trying to attend to everything within the four seas. I don’t know who it can be.” Lao Laizi said, “That’s Kong Qiu. Tell him to come over here!” When Confucius arrived, Lao Laizi said, “Qiu, get rid of your proud bearing and that knowing look on your face, and you can become a gentleman!” Confucius bowed and stepped back a little, a startled and changed expression on his face, and then asked, “Do you think I can make any progress in my labors?” Lao Laizi said, “You can’t bear to watch the sufferings of one age, and so you go and make trouble for ten thousand ages to come! Are you just naturally a boor? Or don’t you have the sense to understand the situation? You take pride in practicing charity and making people happy®—the shame of it will follow you all your days! These are the actions, the ‘progress’ of mediocre men—men who pull one another around with fame, drag one another into secret schemes, join together to praise Yao and condemn Jie, when the best thing would be to forget them both and put a stop to praise! What is contrary cannot fail to be injured; what moves [when it shouldn’t] cannot fail to be wrong. The sage is hesitant and reluctant to begin an affair, and so he always ends in success. But what good are these actions of yours? They end in nothing but a boast!”2 Lord Yuan of Song one night dreamed he saw a man with disheveled hair who peered in at the side door of his chamber and said, “I come from the Zailu Deeps. I was on my way as envoy from the Clear Yangzi to the court of the Lord of the Yellow River when a fisherman named Yu Ju caught me!” When Lord Yuan woke up, he ordered his men to divine the meaning, and they replied, “This is a sacred turtle.” “Is there a fisherman named Yu Ju?’ he asked, and his attendants replied, “There is.” “Order Yu Ju to come to court!” he said. The next day Yu Ju appeared at court, and the ruler said, “What kind of fish have you caught recently?” Yu Ju replied, “I caught a white turtle in my net. It’s five feet around.” “Present your turtle!” ordered the ruler. When the turtle was brought, the ruler could not decide whether to kill it or let it live, and being in doubt, he consulted his diviners, who replied, “Kill the turtle and divine with it—it will bring good luck.” Accordingly the turtle was stripped of its shell, and of seventy-two holes drilled in it for prognostication, not one failed to yield a true answer 12 Confucius said, “The sacred turtle could appear to Lord Yuan in a dream, but it couldn’t escape from Yu Ju’s net. It knew enough to give correct answers to seventy-two queries, but it couldn’t escape the disaster of having its belly ripped open. So it is that knowledge has its limitations, and the sacred has that which it can do nothing about. Even the most perfect wisdom can be outwitted by ten thousand schemers. Fish do not [know enough to] fear a net but only to fear pelicans. Discard little wisdom, and great wisdom will become clear. Discard goodness, and goodness will come of itself. The little child learns to speak, though it has no learned teachers—because it lives with those who know how to speak.” Huizi said to Zhuangzi, “Your words are useless!” Zhuangzi said, “A man has to understand the useless before you can talk to him about the useful. The earth is certainly vast and broad, though a man uses no more of it than the area he puts his feet on. If, however, you were to dig away all the earth from around his feet until you reached the Yellow Springs 14 then would the man still be able to make use of it?” “No, it would be useless,” said Huizi. “Tt is obvious, then,” said Zhuangzi, “that the useless has its use.” Zhuangzi said, “If you have the capacity to wander, how can you keep from wandering? But if you do not have the capacity to wander, how can you wander? A will that takes refuge in conformity, behavior that is aloof and eccentric— neither of these, alas, is compatible with perfect wisdom and solid virtue. You stumble and fall but fail to turn back; you race on like fire and do not look behind you. But though you may be one time a ruler, another time a subject, this is merely a matter of the times. Such distinctions change with the age, and you cannot call either one or the other lowly. Therefore I say, the Perfect Man is never a stickler in his actions. “To admire antiquity and despise the present—this is the fashion of scholars. And if one is to look at the present age after the fashion of Xiwei, then who can be without prejudice?/2 Only the Perfect Man can wander in the world without taking sides, can follow along with men without losing himself. His teachings are not to be learned, and one who understands his meaning has no need for him3 “The eye that is penetrating sees clearly, the ear that is penetrating hears clearly, the nose that is penetrating distinguishes odors, the mouth that is penetrating distinguishes flavors, the mind that is penetrating has understanding, and the understanding that is penetrating has virtue. In all things, the Way does not want to be obstructed, for if there is obstruction, there is choking; if the choking does not cease, there is disorder; and disorder harms the life of all creatures. “All things that have consciousness depend on breath. But if they do not get their fill of breath, it is not the fault of Heaven. Heaven opens up the passages and supplies them day and night without stop. But man, on the contrary, blocks up the holes. The cavity of the body is a many-storied vault; the mind has its Heavenly wanderings. But if the chambers are not large and roomy, then the wife and mother-in-law will fall to quarreling. If the mind does not have its Heavenly wanderings, then the six apertures of sensation will defeat one another. “The great forests, the hills and mountains, excel man in the fact that their growth is irrepressible. [In man,] virtue spills over into aconcern for fame, and a concern for fame spills over into a love of show. Schemes are laid in time of crisis; wisdom is born from contention; obstinacy comes from sticking to a position; government affairs are arranged for the convenience of the mob.4 In spring, when the seasonable rains and sunshine come, the grass and trees spring to life, and the sickles and hoes are, for the first time, prepared for use. At that time, more than half the grass and trees that had been pushed over begin to grow again, though no one knows why.1> “Stillness and silence can benefit the ailing, massage can give relief to the aged, and rest and quiet can put a stop to agitation. But these are remedies that the troubled and weary man has recourse to. The man who is at ease does not need them and has never bothered to ask about them. The Holy Man does not bother to ask what methods the sage uses to reform the world. The sage does not bother to ask what methods the worthy man uses to reform the age. The worthy man does not bother to ask what methods the gentleman uses to reform the state. The gentleman does not bother to ask what methods the petty man uses to get along with the times. “There was a man of Yan Gate who, on the death of his parents, won praise by starving and disfiguring himself and was rewarded with the post of Official Teacher. The other people of the village likewise starved and disfigured themselves, and more than half of them died. Yao offered the empire to Xu You, and Xu You fled from him. Tang offered it to Wu Guang, and Wu Guang railed at him. When Ji Tuo heard of this, he took his disciples and went off to sit by the Kuan River, where the feudal lords went to console him for three years. Shentu Di, for the same reason, jumped into the Yellow River.1® “The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you’ve gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit; once you’ve gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning; once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him?” 1. Guan Longfeng, minister to the tyrant Jie, and Prince Bi Gan, minister to the tyrant Zhou, appeared on p. 23. Prince Ji was arelative of Zhou who had to feign madness in order to escape execution. E Lai assisted Zhou and was put to death when Zhou was overthrown. 2. Wu Yun, or Wu Zixu, the loyal minister of Wu, appeared on p. 140. He was forced by the king to commit suicide, and his body was thrown into the Yangzi. Chang Hong is mentioned in the Zuozhuan as aminister of the Zhou court who was killed in 492 BCE. But if this is the same man, the story of his exile and suicide in Shu and the miraculous transformation of his blood must come from later legend. 3. Xiaoji was the eminently filial son of King Wuding of the Shang; he was said to have been persecuted by an evil stepmother. Zeng Shen, a disciple of Confucius and likewise a paragon of filial piety, was despised by his father. 4. This paragraph presents numerous difficulties of interpretation, and the translation is tentative at many points. In places the language appears to be that of ancient Chinese medicine, with its theories of the influences of the yin and yang acting within the body. Thus the moon may represent the watery force of the yin, or perhaps the cold light of the mind. 5. The pearl or other precious stone customarily placed in the mouth of the corpse at burial. 6. A Daoist sage and reputed author of a work in sixteen sections that is no longer extant. He is sometimes identified with Laozi. 7. Following texts that read wu in place of ao. joo . The meaning is very doubtful. \O 9. This last speech of Lao Laizi presents numerous difficulties, and the translation is tentative. 10. Small indentations were drilled in the carapace, and heat was applied: divination was based on the shape of the cracks that resulted. 11. See p. 136, n. 17. 12. Xiwei, identified as a mythical ruler of high antiquity, appeared on p. 45, as the sage who “held up heaven and earth.” The Confucians and Mohists are the most notorious extollers of antiquity, but the same tendency is discernible at times in the Daoist school, for example, in Laozi’s description of the ideal simplicity and primitiveness of the society of very ancient times. I suspect that “the fashion of Xiwei” is areference to these advocates of ancient simplicity in the Daoist school, though our understanding of the passage is greatly hampered by the fact that we know almost nothing about the Xiwei legend. As this passage makes clear, Zhuangzi’s ideal “wandering’—that is, living in accordance with the Way—does not permit either a forced conformity with the world or a forced withdrawal from, and denial of, the world. 13. The second part of the sentence is obscure in the original. 14. I take fame, show, schemes, wisdom, and the arranging of government affairs for the convenience of the mob to be “unnatural” and undesirable aims and activities that interfere with man’s growth. 15. This whole paragraph, and especially the last sentence, is very difficult to interpret, and there is no agreement among commentators as to the exact meaning. 16. Xu You, the recluse who refused Yao’s throne, appeared on p. 3. Asimilar story is told about King Tang and the recluse Wu Guang. Ji Tuo and Shentu Di, along with Wu Guang, were mentioned on p. 43, but we know nothing of their stories. Apparently they withdrew or committed suicide out of sympathy for the insult that had been done to Wu Guang in offering him a throne. 27 IMPUTED WORDS Imputed words make up nine-tenths of it; repeated words make up seven-tenths of it; goblet words come forth day after day, harmonizing things in the Heavenly Equality These imputed words that make up nine-tenths of it are like persons brought in from outside for the purpose of exposition. A father does not act as go-between for his own son because the praises of the father would not be as effective as the praises of an outsider. It is the fault of other men, not mine, [that I must resort to such a device, for if I were to speak in my own words], then men would respond only to what agrees with their own views and reject what does not, would pronounce “right” what agrees with their own views and “wrong” what does not. These repeated words that make up seven-tenths of it are intended to put an end to argument. They can do this because they are the words of the elders. If, however, one is ahead of others in age but does not have a grasp of the warp and woof, the root and branch of things, that is commensurate with his years, then he is not really ahead of others. An old man who is not in some way ahead of others has not grasped the Way of man, and if he has not grasped the Way of man, he deserves to be looked on as a mere stale remnant of the past. With these goblet words that come forth day after day, I harmonize all things in the Heavenly Equality, leave them to their endless changes, and so live out my years. As long as I do not say anything about them, they are a unity. But the unity and what I say about it have ceased to be a unity; what I say and the unity have ceased to be a unity2 Therefore I say, we must have no-words! With words that are no-words, you may speak all your life long, and you will never have said anything. Or you may go through your whole life without speaking them, in which case you will never have stopped speaking. There is that which makes things acceptable; there is that which makes things unacceptable; there is that which makes things so; there is that which makes things not so. What makes them so? Making them so makes them so. What makes them not so? Making them not so makes them not so. What makes them acceptable? Making them acceptable makes them acceptable. What makes them not acceptable? Making them not acceptable makes them not acceptable. Things all must have that which is so; things all must have that which is acceptable. There is nothing that is not so, nothing that is not acceptable.2 If there were no goblet words coming forth day after day to harmonize all by the Heavenly Equality, then how could I survive for long? The ten thousand things all come from the same seed, and with their different forms they give place to one another. Beginning and end are part of a single ring, and no one can comprehend its principle. This is called Heaven the Equalizer, which is the same as the Heavenly Equality. Zhuangzi said to Huizi, “Confucius has been going along for sixty years, and he has changed sixty times. What at the beginning he used to call right he has ended up calling wrong. So now there’s no telling whether what he calls right at the moment is not, in fact, what he called wrong during the past fifty-nine years.”"4 Huizi said, “Confucius keeps working away at it, trying to make knowledge serve him.” “Oh, no—Confucius has given all that up,” said Zhuangzi. “It’s just that he never talks about it. Confucius said, ‘We receive our talents from the Great Source, and with the spirit hidden within us,> we live.’ [As for you, you] sing on key, you talk by the rules, you line up ‘profit’ and ‘righteousness’ before us, but your ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes,’ your ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs,’ are merely something that command lip service from others, that’s all. If you could make men pay service with their minds and never dare stand up in defiance—this would settle things for the world so they would stay settled. But let it be, let it be! As for me, what hope have I of ever catching up with Confucius?” Zengzi twice held office, each time with a change of heart “The first time, when I was taking care of my parents, I received a salary of only three fu of grain, and yet my heart was happy,” he said. “The second time I received a salary of three thousand zhong, but I no longer had them to take care of, and my heart was sad.” One of the disciples asked Confucius, “May we say that someone like Zeng Shen has escaped the crime of entanglement?” “But he was already entangled! If he hadn’t been entangled, how could he have had any cause for sorrow? He would have regarded three fu or three thousand zhong as so many sparrows or mosquitoes passing in front of him!” Yan Cheng Ziyou said to Zigi of East Wall, “When I began listening to your words, the first year I was a bumpkin; the second I followed along; the third I worked into it; the fourth I was just another thing; the fifth it began to come; the sixth the spirits descended to me; the seventh the Heavenly part was complete; the eighth I didn’t understand death and didn’t understand life; and with the ninth I reached the Great Mystery. “When the living start doing things, they are dead. When they strive for public causes because private ones mean death, they are following a path. But what lives in the light is following no path at alll What is the result then? How can there be any place that is fitting? How can there be any place that isn’t fitting? Heaven has its cycles and numbers, earth its flats and slopes8—yet why should I seek to comprehend them? No one knows when they will end— how then can we say that they are fated to die? No one knows when they began—how then can we say that they are not fated to die? There seems to be something that responds—how then can we say there are no spirits? There seems to be something that does not respond—how then can we say that spirits do exist?” Penumbra said to Shadow, “A little while ago you were looking down, and now you're looking up; a little while ago your hair was bound up, and now it’s hanging loose; a little while ago you were sitting, and now you’re standing up; a little while ago you were walking, and now you're still— why is this?” Shadow said, “Quibble, quibble! Why bother asking about such things? I do them, but I don’t know why. I’m the shell of the cicada, the skin of the snake—something that seems to be but isn’t. In firelight or sunlight, I draw together; in darkness or night, I disappear. But do you suppose I have to wait around for those things? (And how much less so in the case of that which waits for nothing!) If those things come, then I come with them; if they go, then I go with them; if they come with the Powerful Yang, then I come with the Powerful Yang. But this Powerful Yang— why ask questions about itr? Yang Ziju went south to Pei, and when he got to Liang, he went out to the edge of the city to greet Lao Dan, who had been traveling west to Qin, and escort him in. Laozi stood in the middle of the road, looked up to heaven, and sighed, saying, “At first I thought that you could be taught, but now I see it’s hopeless!” Yang Ziju made no reply, but when they reached the inn, he fetched a basin of water, a towel, and a comb and, taking off his shoes outside the door of the room, came crawling forward on his knees and said, “Earlier I had hoped to ask you, sir, what you meant by your remark, but I saw that you were occupied and didn’t dare. Now that you have a free moment, may I ask where my fault lies?” Laozi said, “High and mighty, proud and haughty—who could stand to live with you!l0 The greatest purity looks like shame; abundant virtue seems to be insufficient.”L1 When Yang Ziju first arrived at the inn, the people in the inn came out to greet him. The innkeeper stood ready with a mat, his wife with towel and comb, while the other guests moved politely off their mats, and those who had been warming themselves at the stove stepped aside. But when Yang returned from his interview with Laozi, the people at the inn tried to push him right off his own mat 12 1. See p. 17. The passage that follows describes three literary devises used in the Zhuangzi as a whole: (1) yuyan, “imputed words,” words put into the mouth of historical or fictional persons to make them more compelling; (2) chongyan, “repeated words” (another interpretation would make it zhongyan or “weighty words”), words of the wise old men of the past that are “repeated” or quoted to give authority to the argument; and (3) zhiyvan, “goblet words,” words that are like a goblet that tips when full and rights itself when empty, that is, that adapt to and follow along with the fluctuating nature of the world and thus achieve a state of harmony. 2. Compare sec. 2, p. 12, but it seems odd that the two clauses should repeat the same idea. 3. Compare sec. 2, p. 10. 4. The same remark was made on p. 222 in reference to Qu Boyu. 5. Following Zhang Binglin’s interpretation. 6. Zeng Shen, the paragon of filial piety, appeared earlier; see esp. sec. 26, p. 227. 7. Literally, “what lives in the yang’; compare sec. 2, p. 8. “And when their minds draw near to death, nothing can restore them to the light.” 8. Following Zhang Binglin’s interpretation. 9. The term “Powerful Yang” appeared in sec. 22, p. 180; the yang is the element of fire and hence is the essence of the firelight and sunlight mentioned earlier. This whole section is a reworking of the passage in sec. 2, p. 18. 10. According to another interpretation, these four adjectives are descriptions of good qualities, that is, of what Laozi wants Yang to become. Fukunaga takes them as synonymous with those in sec. 7, p. 55, translated as “peaceful and easy, wide-eyed, and blank.” 11. Almost identical with a passage in Daodejing XLI. 12. Because he has ceased to look and act like a man of any importance, that is, had become a true follower of the Way. 28 GIVING AWAY A THRONE Yao wanted to cede the empire to Xu You, but Xu You refused to accept it Then he tried to give it to Zichou Zhifu. Zichou Zhifu said, “Make me the Son of Heaven?— that would be all right, I suppose. But I happen to have a deep-seated and worrisome illness that I am just now trying to put in order. So I have no time to put the empire in order.” The empire is a thing of supreme importance, yet he would not allow it to harm his life. How much less, then, any other thing! Only he who has no use for the empire is fit to be entrusted with it. Shun wanted to cede the empire to Zizhou Zhibo, but Zizhou Zhibo said, “I happen to have a deep-seated and worrisome illness that I am just now trying to put in order. So Ihave no time to put the empire in order.” The empire is a great vessel, yet he would not exchange his life for it. This is how the possessor of the Way differs from the vulgar man. Shun tried to cede the empire to Shan Quan, but Shan Quan said, “I stand in the midst of space and time. Winter days, I dress in skins and furs; summer days, in vine cloth and hemp. In spring, I plow and plant—this gives my body the labor and exercise it needs; in fall, I harvest and store away —this gives my form the leisure and sustenance it needs. When the sun comes up, I work; when the sun goes down, I rest. I wander free and easy between heaven and earth, and my mind has found all that it could wish for. What use would I have for the empire? What a pity that you don’t understand me!” In the end, he would not accept but went away, entering deep into the mountains, and no one ever knew where he had gone. Shun wanted to cede the empire to his friend, the farmer of Stone Door. The farmer of Stone Door said, “Such vigor and vitality you have, my lord! You are a gentleman of perseverance and strength!” Then, surmising that Shun’s virtue would hardly amount to very much, he lifted his wife on his back, took his son by the hand, and disappeared among the islands of the sea, never to return to the end of his days. When the Great King Danfu was living in Bin, the Di tribes attacked his territory2 He offered them skins and silks, but they refused them; he offered them dogs and horses, but they refused them; he offered them pearls and jades, but they refused them. What the men of the Di tribes were after was his land. The Great King Danfu said, “To live among the older brothers and send the younger brothers to their death; to live among the fathers and send the sons to their death—this I cannot bear! My people, be diligent and remain where you are. What difference does it make whether you are subjects of mine or of the men of Di? I have heard it said, one must not injure that which he is nourishing for the sake of that by which he nourishes it”3 Then, using his riding whip as a cane, he departed, but his people, leading one another, followed him and, in time, founded a new state at the foot of Mount Qi. The Great King Danfu may be said to have known how to respect life. He who knows how to respect life, though he may be rich and honored, will not allow the means of nourishing life to injure his person. Though he may be poor and humble, he will not allow concerns of profit to entangle his body. The men of the present age, if they occupy high office and are honored with titles, all think only of how serious a matter it would be to lose them. Eyes fixed on profit, they make light of the risk to their lives. Are they not deluded indeed? The men of Yue three times in succession assassinated their ruler. Prince Sou, fearful for his life, fled to the Cinnabar Cave, and the state of Yue was left without a ruler. The men of Yue, searching for Prince Sou and failing to find him, trailed him to the Cinnabar Cave, but he refused to come forth. They smoked him out with mugwort and placed him in the royal carriage. As Prince Sou took hold of the strap and pulled himself up into the carriage, he turned his face to heaven and cried, “To be a ruler! Aruler! Could I alone not have been spared this?” It was not that he hated to become their ruler; he hated the perils that go with being a ruler. Prince Sou, we may say, was the kind who would not allow the state to bring injury to his life. This, in fact, was precisely why the people of Yue wanted to obtain him for their ruler. The states of Han and Wei were fighting over a piece of territory. Master Huazi went to see Marquis Zhaoxi, the ruler of Han. Marquis Zhaoxi had a worried look on his face. Master Huazi said, “Suppose the men of the empire were to draw up a written agreement and place it before you, and the inscription read: ‘Seize this with your left hand and you will lose your right hand; seize it with your right hand and you will lose your left; yet he who seizes this will invariably gain possession of the empire.’ Would you be willing to seize it?” “J would not!” said Marquis Zhaox1. “Very good!” exclaimed Master Huazi. “From this I can see that your two hands are more important to you than the empire. And of course, your body as a whole is a great deal more important than your two hands, while the state of Han is a great deal /ess important than the empire as a whole. Moreover, this piece of territory that you are fighting over is a great deal less important than the state of Han as a whole. And yet you make yourself miserable and endanger your life, worrying and fretting because you can’t get possession of it!” “Excellent!” said Marquis Zhaoxi. “Many men have given me advice, but I have never been privileged to hear words such as these!” Master Huazi, we may say, understood the difference between important and unimportant things. The ruler of Lu, having heard that Yan He was a man who had attained the Way, sent a messenger with gifts to open relations with him. Yan He was in his humble, back-alley home, wearing a robe of coarse hemp and feeding a cow, when the messenger from the ruler of Lu arrived, and he came to the door in person. “Js this the home of Yan He?” asked the messenger. “Yes, this is He’s house,” said Yan He. The messenger then presented his gifts, but Yan He said, ‘Ym afraid you must have gotten your instructions mixed up. You’ll surely be blamed if you give these to the wrong person, so you’d better check once more.” The messenger returned, checked his instructions, and then went looking for Yan He a second time, but he was never able to find him. Men like Yan He truly despise wealth and honor. Hence it is said, The Truth of the Way lies in looking out for oneself; its fringes and leftovers consist in managing the state and its great families; its offal and weeds consist in governing the empire. The accomplishments of emperors and kings are superfluous affairs as far as the sage is concerned, not the means by which to keep the body whole and to care for life. Yet how many gentlemen of the vulgar world today endanger themselves and throw away their lives in the pursuit of mere things! How can you help pitying them? Whenever the sage makes a move, you may be certain that he has looked carefully to see where he is going and what he is about. Now suppose there was a man here who took the priceless pearl of the marquis of Sui and used it as a pellet to shoot at a sparrow a thousand yards up in the air—the world would certainly laugh at him. Why? Because that which he is using is of such great value, and that which he is trying to acquire is so trifling. And life— surely it is of greater value than the pearl of the marquis of Sui! Master Liezi was living in poverty, and his face had a hungry look. A visitor mentioned this to Ziyang, the prime minister of Zheng, saying, “Lie Yukou appears to be a gentleman who has attained the Way. Here he is living in Your Excellency’s state, and in utter poverty! It would almost seem that Your Excellency has no fondness for such gentlemen, does it not?” Ziyang immediately ordered his officials to dispatch a gift of grain. Master Liezi received the messenger, bowed twice, and refused the gift. When the messenger had left and Master Liezi had gone back into his house, his wife, filled with bitterness, beat her breast and said, “I have heard that the wives and children of men who have attained the Way all live in ease and happiness—but here we are with our hungry looks! His Excellency, realizing his error, has sent the Master something to eat, but the Master refuses to accept it—I suppose this is what they call Fate!” Master Liezi laughed and said, “His Excellency does not know me personally—he sent me the grain simply because of what someone had told him. And someday he could just as well condemn me to punishment, again simply because of what someone told him. That’s why I refused to accept.” In the end, as it happened, rebellion broke out among the people of Zheng, and Ziyang was murdered. When King Zhao of Chu was driven from his state, the sheep butcher Yue fled at the same time and followed King Zhao into exile When King Zhao regained control of the state, he set about rewarding his followers, but when it came the turn of the sheep butcher Yue, Yue said, “His Majesty lost control of the state, and I lost my job as sheep butcher. Now His Majesty has regained the state, and I have also gotten back my sheep-butchering job. So my ‘title and stipend’ have already been restored to me. Why should there be any talk of a reward?” “Force him to take it!” ordered the king. But the sheep butcher Yue said, “The fact that His Majesty lost the kingdom was no fault of mine—therefore I would not venture to accept any punishment for it. And the fact that His Majesty has regained the kingdom is no accomplishment of mine—therefore I would not venture to accept any reward for it.” “Bring him into my presence!” ordered the king. But the sheep butcher Yue said, “According to the laws of the state of Chu, a man must have received weighty awards and accomplished great deeds before he may be granted an audience with the ruler. Now I was not wise enough to save the state or brave enough to die in combat with the invaders. When the armies of Wu entered the city of Ying, I was afraid of the dangers ahead, so I ran away from the invaders. I did not purposely follow after His Majesty. Now His Majesty wishes to disregard the laws and break the precedents by granting me an audience. But in view of the facts, that would not win me any kind of reputation in the world!” The king said to Ziqi, his minister of war, “The sheep butcher Yue is a man of mean and humble position, and yet his pronouncements on righteousness are lofty indeed! I want you to promote him to one of the ‘three banner’ offices.”> When told of this, the sheep butcher Yue said, “I am fully aware that the ‘three banner’ rank is a far more exalted place than a sheep butcher’s stall and that a stipend of ten thousand zhong is more wealth than I will ever acquire slaughtering sheep. But how could IJ, merely out of greed for title and stipend, allow my ruler to gain a reputation for irresponsibly handing out such favors? I dare not accept. Please let me go back to my sheep butcher’s stall.” And in the end, he refused to accept the position. Yuan Xian lived in the state of Lu, in a tiny house that was hardly more than four walls. It was thatched with growing weeds, had a broken door made of woven brambles and branches of mulberry for the doorposts; jars with the bottoms out, hung with pieces of coarse cloth for protection from the weather, served as windows for its two rooms.© The roof leaked, and the floor was damp, but Yuan Xian sat up in dignified manner, played his lute, and sang. Zigong, wearing an inner robe of royal blue and an outer one of white, and riding in a grand carriage whose top was too tall to get through the entrance to the lane, came to call on Yuan Xian. Yuan Xian, wearing a bark cap and slippers with no heels, and carrying a goosefoot staff, came to the gate to greet him. “Goodness!” exclaimed Zigong. “What distress you are in, sir!” Yuan Xian replied, “I have heard that if one lacks wealth, that is called poverty; and if one studies but cannot put into practice what he has learned, that is called distress. I am poor, but I am not in distress!” Zigong backed off a few paces with a look of embarrassment. Yuan Xian laughed and said, “To act out of worldly ambition, to band with others in cliquish friendships, to study in order to show off to others, to teach in order to please one’s own pride, to mask one’s evil deeds behind benevolence and righteousness, to deck oneself out with carriages and horses—I could never bear to do such things!” Zengzil lived in the state of Wei, wearing a robe of quilted hemp with the outside worn through, his face blotchy and swollen, his hands and feet hard and callused. He would go three days without lighting a fire, ten years without making himself a new suit of clothes. If he tried to straighten his cap, the chin strap would break; if he pulled together his lapels, his elbows poked through the sleeves; if he stepped into his shoes, his heels broke out at the back. Yet, shuffling along, he would sing the sacrificial hymns of Shang in a voice that filled heaven and earth, as though it issued from a bell or a chiming stone. The Son of Heaven could not get him for his minister; the feudal lords could not get him for their friend. Hence he who nourishes his will forgets about his bodily form; he who nourishes his bodily form forgets about questions of gain; and he who arrives at the Way forgets about his mind. Confucius said to Yan Hui, “Come here, Hui. Your family is poor and your position very lowly. Why don’t you become an official?” Yan Hui replied, “I have no desire to become an official. Ihave fifty mou of farmland outside the outer wall,8 which is enough to provide me with porridge and gruel, and I have ten mou of farmland inside the outer wall, which is enough to keep me in silk and hemp. Playing my lute gives me enjoyment enough; studying the Way of the Master gives me happiness enough. I have no desire to become an official.” Confucius’s face took on a sheepish expression, and he said, “Excellent, Hui—this determination of yours! I have heard that he who knows what is enough will not let himself be entangled by thoughts of gain; that he who really understands how to find satisfaction will not be afraid of other kinds of loss; and that he who practices the cultivation of what is within him will not be ashamed because he holds no position in society. I have been preaching these ideas for a long time, but now for the first time I see them realized in you, Hui. This is what / have gained.” Prince Mou of Wei, who was living in Zhongshan, said to Zhanzi, “My body is here beside these rivers and seas, but my mind is still back there beside the palace towers of Wei. What should I do about it?”2 “Attach more importance to life!” said Zhanzi. “He who regards life as important will think lightly of material gain.” “T know that’s what I should do,” said Prince Mou. “But I can’t overcome my inclinations.” “If you can’t overcome your inclinations, then follow them!” said Zhanzi. “But won’t that do harm to the spirit?” “Tf you can’t overcome your inclinations and yet you try to force yourself not to follow them, this is to do a double injury to yourself. Men who do such double injury to themselves are never found in the ranks of the long-lived!” Wei Mou was a prince of a state of ten thousand chariots, and it was more difficult for him to retire and live among the cliffs and caves than for an ordinary person. Although he did not attain the Way, we may say that he had the will to do so. Confucius was in distress between Chen and Cai. For seven days, he ate no properly cooked food but only a soup of greens without any grain in it. His face became drawn with fatigue, but he sat in his room playing the lute and singing. Yan Hui was outside picking vegetables, and Zilu and Zigong were talking with him. “Our Master was twice driven out of Lu,” they said. “They wiped out his footprints in Wei, chopped down a tree on him in Song, made trouble for him in Shang and Zhou, and are now besieging him here at Chen and Cai. Anyone who kills him will be pardoned of all guilt, and anyone who wishes to abuse him is free to do so. Yet he keeps playing and singing, strumming the lute without ever letting the sound die away. Can a gentleman really be as shameless as all this?” Yan Hui, having no answer, went in and reported what they had said to Confucius. Confucius pushed aside his lute, heaved a great sigh, and said, “Those two are picayune men! Call them in here—I’ll talk to them.” When Zilu and Zigong had entered the room, Zilu said, “T guess you could say that all of us are really blocked in this time.” 12 Confucius said, “What kind of talk is that! When the gentleman gets through to the Way, this is called ‘getting through.’ When he is blocked off from the Way, this is called ‘being blocked.” Now I embrace the way of benevolence and righteousness and, with it, encounter the perils of an age of disorder. Where is there any ‘being blocked’ about this? So I examine what is within me and am never blocked off from the Way. I face the difficulties ahead and do not lose its Virtue. When the cold days come and the frost and snow have fallen, then I understand how the pine and the cypress flourish! These perils here in Chen and Cai are a blessing to me!” Confucius then turned complacently back to his lute and began to play and sing again. Zilu excitedly snatched up a shield and began to dance, while Zigong said, “I did not realize that Heaven is so far above, earth so far below!” The men of ancient times who had attained the Way were happy if they were blocked in, and happy if they could get through. It was not the fact that they were blocked or not that made them happy. As long as you have really gotten hold of the Way,12 then being blocked or getting through are no more than the orderly alternation of cold and heat, of wind and rain. Therefore Xu You enjoyed himself on the sunny side of the Ying River, and Gong Bo found what he wanted on top of a hill 43 Shun wanted to cede the empire to his friend, a man from the north named Wuze. Wuze said, “What a peculiar man this ruler of ours is! First he lived among the fields and ditches, then he went wandering about the gate of Yao. Not content to let it rest at that, he now wants to take his disgraceful doings and dump them all over me. I would be ashamed even to see him!” Thereupon he threw himself into the deeps at Chingling. KOR Ok When Tang was about to attack Jie, he went to Bian Sui for help in plotting the strategy.14 “ft’s nothing ’'d know anything about!” said Bian Sui. “Who would be good?” asked Tang. “T don’t know.” Tang then went to Wu Guang and asked for help. “It’s nothing I’d know anything about!” said Wu Guang. “Who would be good?” asked Tang. “T don’t know.” “How about Yi Yin?” asked Tang. “A man of violence and force, willing to put up with disgrace—I know nothing else about him.” In the end Tang went to Yi Yin, and together they plotted the attack. Having overthrown Jie, Tang then offered to cede the throne to Bian Sui, Bian Sui refused, saying, “When you were plotting to attack Jie, you came to me for advice—so you must have thought I was capable of treason. Now you have defeated Jie and want to cede the throne to me—so you must think I am avaricious. I was born into this world of disorder, and now a man with no understanding of the Way twice comes and tries to slop his disgraceful doings all over me! I can’t bear to go on listening to such proposals again and again!” Thereupon he threw himself into the Chou River and drowned. Tang tried to cede the throne to Wu Guang, saying, “The wise man does the plotting, the military man the seizing, and the benevolent man the occupying—such was the way of antiquity. Now why will you not accept the position?” But Wu Guang refused, saying, “To depose your sovereign is no act of righteousness; to slaughter the people is no act of benevolence; to inflict trouble on other men and enjoy the benefits yourself is no act of integrity. I have heard it said, If the man is without righteousness, do not take his money; if the world is without the Way, do not tread on its soil. And you expect me to accept such a position of honor? I can’t bear the sight of you any longer!” Thereupon he loaded a stone onto his back and drowned himself in the Lu River. Long ago, when the Zhou dynasty first came to power, there were two gentlemen who lived in Guzhu named Bo Yi and Shu Qi. They said to each other, “We hear that in the western region there is a man who seems to possess the Way. Let us try going to look for him.” When they reached the sunny side of Mount Qi, King Wu, hearing of them, sent his younger brother Dan to meet them42 He offered to draw up a pact with them, saying, “You will be granted wealth of the second order and offices of the first rank, the pact to be sealed in blood and buried.”L6 The two men looked at each other and laughed, saying, “Hah—how peculiar! This is certainly not what we would call the Way! In ancient times, when Shennong held possession of the empire, he performed the seasonal sacrifices with the utmost reverence, but he did not pray for blessings. In his dealings with men, he was loyal and trustworthy and observed perfect order, but he did not seek anything from them. He delighted in ruling for the sake of ruling; he delighted in bringing order for the sake of order. He did not use other men’s failures to bring about his own success; he did not use other men’s degradation to lift himself up. Just because he happened along at a lucky time, he did not try to turn it to his own profit. Now the Zhou, observing that the Yin have fallen into disorder, suddenly makes a show of its rule, honoring those who know how to scheme, handing out bribes,1Z relying on weapons to maintain its might, offering sacrifices and drawing up pacts to impress men with its good faith, lauding its achievements in order to seize gain—this is simply to push aside disorder and replace it with violence! “We have heard that the gentlemen of old, if they happened upon a well-ordered age, did not run away from public office; but if they encountered an age of disorder, they did not try to hold on to office at any cost. Now the world is in darkness, and the virtue of the Zhou in decline.18 Rather than remain side by side with the Zhou and defile our bodies, it would be better to run away and thus protect the purity of our conduct!” The two gentlemen thereupon went north as far as Mount Shouyang, where they eventually died of starvation. Men such as Bo Yi and Shu Qi will have nothing to do with wealth and eminence if they can possibly avoid it. To be lofty in principle and meticulous in conduct, delighting in one’s will alone without stooping to serve the world— such was the ideal of these two gentlemen. 1. On Yao, Xu You, and the ceding of the throne, see p. 3. In this chapter, the writer illustrates the theme with tales of various historical or legendary figures. 2. Danfu, ancestor of the royal house of Zhou, was the grandfather of King Wen, the founder of the Zhou dynasty. 3. That is, the lives of his people are far more precious to the ruler than the possession of his territory. This moral and the story of Danfu that illustrates it are famous in early Chinese literature and are found in numerous texts of the period. 4. King Zhao was forced by the invading armies of Wu to flee his state in 506 BCE; he returned the following year. 5. Some versions of the text call them the “three scepter” offices; they are defined by commentators as the three highest ministerial posts in the state of Chu. 6. Yuan Xian, a disciple of Confucius, was famous for his indifference to poverty. Zigong, who figures in this anecdote, was the most affluent of Confucius’s disciples. 7. Zeng Shen; see p. 227. 8. About enough land to feed four people; cf. Mencius IA, 24. 9. Prince Mou of Wei appeared on p. 135. Apparently he was trying, without much success, to live the life of a hermit. Zhanzi, or Zhan He, is mentioned in early texts as a Daoist adept. 10. The passage that follows involves a great deal of wordplay on the various meanings of giong (to be blocked, hence, to be in trouble, in distress, etc.) and da (to get through, hence to master, to succeed). 11. Aparaphrase of Confucius’s remarks in Analects IX, 27: “Only when the year grows cold do we see that the pine and cypress are the last to fade.” 12. Reading de (get) in place of de (virtue); compare the parallel text in Liishi chunchiu, ch. 14, sec. 6. 13. Gong Bo was said to have occupied the throne for fourteen years (842-828 BCE) but abdicated and retired to a place called Mount Gong. 14. Tang attacked and overthrew his sovereign, Jie, the last ruler of the Xia dynasty, and founded the Shang or Yin dynasty. 15. Dan is better known by his title, the Duke of Zhou. Other versions of the story make it clear that the “man who seems to possess the Way,” whose reputation had attracted the brothers, was King Wu’s father, King Wen, who was already dead by this time. 16. According to ancient custom, an animal was sacrificed, and the parties to the pact smeared the corners of their mouths with its blood; then the text of the agreement was also smeared with blood and was buried beneath the sacrificial altar. 17. Following Wang Niansun’s suggestions, I omit the word xia. 18. That is, King Wu, by resorting to arms and overthrowing the Yin dynasty, has shown himself far inferior to his father, King Wen, or his great grandfather, the Great King Danfu of the anecdote on p. 240. But some commentators would emend this to read “the virtue of the Yin.” 29 ROBBER ZHI Confucius was a friend of Liuxia Ji, who had a younger brother known as Robber Zhi. Robber Zhi, with a band of nine thousand followers, rampaged back and forth across the empire, assaulting and terrorizing the feudal lords, tunneling into houses, prying open doors,+ herding off men’s horses and cattle, seizing their wives and daughters. Greedy for gain, he forgot his kin, gave not a look to father or mother, elder or younger brother, and performed no sacrifices to his ancestors. Whenever he approached a city, if it was that of a great state, the inhabitants manned their walls; if that of a small state, they fled into their strongholds. The ten thousand people all lived in dread of him. Confucius said to Liuxia Ji, “One who is a father must be able to lay down the law to his son, and one who is an elder brother must be able to teach his younger brother. If a father cannot lay down the law to his son and an elder brother cannot teach his younger brother, then the relationship between father and son and elder and younger brother loses all value. Now here you are, sir, one of the most talented gentlemen of the age, and your younger brother is Robber Zhi, a menace to the world, and you seem unable to teach him any better! If I may say so, I blush for you. I would therefore like to go on your behalf and try to persuade him to change his ways.” Liuxia Ji said, “You have remarked, sir, that a father must be able to lay down the law to his son, and an elder brother must be able to teach his younger brother. But if the son will not listen when his father lays down the law, or if the younger brother refuses to heed his elder brother’s teachings, then even with eloquence such as yours, what is there to be done? Moreover, Zhi is a man with a mind like a jetting fountain, a will like a blast of wind, with strength enough to fend off any enemy, and cunning enough to gloss over any evil. If you go along with his way of thinking, he is delighted, but if you go against him, he becomes furious, and it is nothing to him to curse people in the vilest language. You must not go near him!” But Confucius paid no attention, and with Yan Hui as his carriage driver, and Zigong on his right, he went off to visit Robber Zhi. Robber Zhi was just at that time resting with his band of followers on the sunny side of Mount Tai and enjoying a late afternoon snack of minced human livers. Confucius stepped down from the carriage and went forward till he saw the officer in charge of receiving guests. “I am Kong Qiu, a native of Lu, and I have heard that your general is a man of lofty principles,” he said, respectfully bowing twice to the officer. The officer then entered and relayed the message. When Robber Zhi heard this, he flew into a great rage. His eyes blazed like shining stars, and his hair stood on end and bristled beneath his cap. “This must be none other than that crafty hypocrite Kong Qiu from the state of Lu! Well, tell him this for me. You make up your stories, invent your phrases, babbling absurd eulogies of Kings Wen and Wu. Topped with a cap like a branching tree, wearing a girdle made from the ribs of a dead cow, you pour out your flood of words, your fallacious theories. You eat without ever plowing, clothe yourself without ever weaving. Wagging your lips, clacking your tongue, you invent any kind of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ that suits you, leading astray the rulers of the world, keeping the scholars of the world from returning to the Source, capriciously setting up ideals of ‘filial piety’ and ‘brotherliness,’ all the time hoping to worm your way into favor with the lords of the fiefs or the rich and eminent! Your crimes are huge, your offenses grave.2 You had better run home as fast as you can, because if you don’t, I will take your liver and add it to this afternoon’s menu!” Confucius sent in word again, saying, “I have the good fortune to know your brother Ji, and therefore I beg to be allowed to gaze from a distance at your feet beneath the curtain.”3 When the officer relayed this message, Robber Zhi said, “Let him come forward.” Confucius came scurrying forward, declined the mat that was set out for him, stepped back a few paces, and bowed twice to Robber Zhi. Robber Zhi, still in a great rage, sat with both legs sprawled out, leaning on his sword, his eyes glaring. In a voice like the roar of a nursing tigress, he said, “Qiu, come forward! If what you have to say pleases my fancy, you live. If it rubs me the wrong way, you die!” Confucius said, “I have heard that in all the world there are three kinds of virtue. To grow up to be big and tall, with matchless good looks, so that everyone, young or old, eminent or humble, delights in you—this is the highest kind of virtue. To have wisdom that encompasses heaven and earth, to be able to speak eloquently on all subjects— this is middling virtue. To be brave and fierce, resolute and determined, gathering a band of followers around you—this is the lowest kind of virtue. Any man who possesses even one of these virtues is worthy to face south and call himself the Lonely One.4 And now here you are, General, with all three of them! You tower eight feet two inches in height; radiance streams from your face and eyes; your lips are like gleaming cinnabar; your teeth like ranged seashells; your voice attuned to the huang zhong pitch pipe—and yet your only title is ‘Robber Zhi.’ If I may say so, General, this is disgraceful—a real pity indeed! But if you have a mind to listen to my proposal, then I beg to be allowed to go as your envoy south to Wu and Yue, north to Qi and Lu, east to Song and Wei, and west to Jin and Chu, persuading them to create for you a great walled state several hundred /i in size, to establish a town of several hundred thousand households, and to honor you as one of the feudal lords. Then you may make a new beginning with the world, lay down your weapons and disperse your followers, gather together and cherish your brothers and kinsmen, and join with them in sacrifices to your ancestors. This would be the act of a sage, a gentleman of true talent, and the fondest wish of the world.” Robber Zhi, furious as ever, said, “Qiu, come forward! Those who can be swayed with offers of gain or reformed by a babble of words are mere idiots, simpletons, the commonest sort of men! The fact that I am big and tall and so handsome that everyone delights to look at me—this is a virtue inherited from my father and mother. Even without your praises, do you think I would be unaware of it? Moreover, I have heard that those who are fond of praising men to their faces are also fond of damning them behind their backs. ‘Now you tell me about this great walled state, this multitude of people, trying to sway me with offers of gain, to lead me by the nose like any common fool. But how long do you think I could keep possession of it? There is no walled state larger than the empire itself, and yet, though Yao and Shun possessed the empire, their heirs were left with less land than it takes to stick the point of an awl into. Tang and Wu set themselves up as Son of Heaven, yet in ages after, their dynasties were cut off and wiped out. Was this not because the gains they had acquired were so great? “Moreover, I have heard that in ancient times the birds and beasts were many and the people few. Therefore the people all nested in the trees in order to escape danger, during the day gathering acorns and chestnuts, at sundown climbing back up to sleep in their trees. Hence they were called the people of the Nest Builder. In ancient times the people knew nothing about wearing clothes. In summer they heaped up great piles of firewood; in winter they burned them to keep warm. Hence they were called ‘the people who know how to stay alive.’ In the age of Shennong, the people lay down peaceful and easy, woke up wide-eyed and blank. They knew their mothers but not their fathers and lived side by side with the elk and the deer. They plowed for their food, wove for their clothing, and had no thought in their hearts of harming one another. This was Perfect Virtue at its height! “But the Yellow Emperor could not attain such virtue. He fought with Chi You in the field of Zhuolu until the blood flowed for a hundred /i.2 Yao and Shun came to the throne, setting up a host of officials; Tang banished his sovereign Jie; King Wu murdered his sovereign Zhou; and from this time on, the strong oppressed the weak, the many abused the few. From Tang and Wu until the present, all have been no more than a pack of rebels and wrongdoers. And now you come cultivating the ways of Kings Wen and Wu, utilizing all the eloquence in the world in order to teach these things to later generations! In your flowing robes and loose-tied sash, you speak your deceits and act out your hypocrisies, confusing and leading astray the rulers of the world, hoping thereby to lay your hands on wealth and eminence. There is no worse robber than you! I don’t know why, if the world calls me Robber Zhi, it doesn’t call you Robber Qiu! “With your honeyed words you persuaded Zilu to become your follower, to doff his jaunty cap, unbuckle his long sword, and receive instruction from you, so that all the world said, ‘Kong Qiu knows how to suppress violence and put a stop to evil.’ But in the end Zilu tried to kill the ruler of Wei, bungled the job, and they pickled his corpse and hung it up on the eastern gate of Wei. This was how little effect your teachings had on him!© You call yourself a gentleman of talent, a sage? Twice they drove you out of Lu; they wiped out your footprints in Wei, made trouble for you in Qi, and besieged you at Chen and Cai—no place in the empire will have you around! You gave instruction to Zilu, and pickling was the disaster it brought him. You can’t look out for yourself to begin with, or for others either— so how can this ‘Way’ of yours be worth anything? “There is no one more highly esteemed by the world than the Yellow Emperor, and yet even the Yellow Emperor could not preserve his virtue intact but fought on the field of Zhuolu until the blood flowed for a hundred /7. Yao was a merciless father, Shun was an unfilial son, Yu was half paralyzed, Tang banished his sovereign Jie, King Wu attacked his sovereign Zhou, and King Wen was imprisoned at YouliZ All these seven men® are held in high esteem by the world, and yet a close look shows that all of them, for the sake of gain, brought confusion to the Truth within them, that they forcibly turned against their true form and inborn nature. For doing so, they deserve the greatest shame! “When the world talks of worthy gentlemen, we hear “Bo Yi and Shu Qi.’ Yet Bo Yi and Shu Qi declined the rulership of the state of Guzhu and instead went and starved to death on Shouyang Mountain, with no one to bury their bones and flesh. Bao Jiao made a great show of his conduct and condemned the world; he wrapped his arms around a tree and stood there till he died. Shentu Di offered a remonstrance that was unheeded; he loaded a stone onto his back and threw himself into a river, where the fish and turtles feasted on him. Jie Zitui was a model of fealty, going so far as to cut a piece of flesh from his thigh to feed his lord, Duke Wen. But later, when Duke Wen overlooked him, he went off in a rage, wrapped his arms around a tree, and burned to death2 Wei Sheng made an engagement to meet a girl under a bridge. The girl failed to appear and the water began to rise, but instead of leaving, he wrapped his arms around the pillar of the bridge and died. These six men were no different from a flayed dog, a pig sacrificed to the flood, a beggar with his alms gourd in his hand. All were ensnared by thoughts of reputation and looked lightly on death, failing to remember the Source or to cherish the years that fate had given them. “When the world talks about loyal ministers, we are told that there were none to surpass Prince Bi Gan and Wu Zixu. Yet Wu Zixu sank into the river, and Bi Gan had his heart cut out2 These two men are called loyal ministers by the world, and yet they ended up as the laughingstock of the empire. Looking at all these men, from the first I mentioned down to Wu Zixu and Bi Gan, it is obvious that none is worth respecting. “Now in this sermon of yours, Qiu, if you tell me about the affairs of ghosts, then I have no way of judging what you say. But if you tell me about the affairs of men—and it is no more than what you’ve said so far—then I’ve heard it all already! “And now I’m going to tell you something—about man’s true form. His eyes yearn to see colors, his ears to hear sound, his mouth to taste flavors, his will and spirit to achieve fulfillment. A man of the greatest longevity will live a hundred years; one of middling longevity, eighty years; and one of the least longevity, sixty years. Take away the time lost in nursing illnesses, mourning the dead, worry and anxiety, and in this life there are no more than four or five days in a month when a man can open his mouth and laugh. Heaven and earth are unending, but man has his time of death. Take this time-bound toy, put it down in these unending spaces, and whoosh!—it is over as quickly as the passing of a swift horse glimpsed through a crack in the wall! No man who is incapable of gratifying his desires and cherishing the years that fate has given him can be called a master of the Way. What you have been telling me—I reject every bit of it! Quick, now—be on your way. I want no more of your talk. This ‘Way’ you tell me about is inane and inadequate, a fraudulent, crafty, vain, hypocritical affair, not the sort of thing that is capable of preserving the Truth within. How can it be worth discussing!” Confucius bowed twice and scurried away. Outside the gate, he climbed into his carriage and fumbled three times in an attempt to grasp the reins, his eyes blank and unseeing, his face the color of dead ashes. Leaning on the crossbar, head bent down, he could not seem to summon up any spirit at all. Returning to Lu, he had arrived just outside the eastern gate of the capital when he happened to meet Liuxia Ji. “T haven’t so much as caught sight of you for the past several days,” said Liuxia Ji, “and your carriage and horses look as though they’ve been out on the road—it couldn’t be that you went to see my brother Zhi, could it?” Confucius looked up to heaven, sighed, and said, “I did.” “And he was enraged by your views, just as I said he would be?” said Liuxia Ji. “He was,” said Confucius. “You might say that I gave myself the burning moxa treatment when I wasn’t even sick. I went rushing off to pat the tiger’s head and braid its whiskers—and very nearly didn’t manage to escape from its jaws!” Zizhang said to Man Goude, “Why don’t you think more about your conduct?! No distinguished conduct means no trust; no trust means no official position; no official position means no gain. So if it’s reputation you have your eye on or gain you’re scheming for, then righteous conduct is the real key. And if you set aside considerations of reputation and gain and return to the true nature of the heart, then, too, I would say that you ought not to let a single day pass without taking thought for your conduct.” Man Goude said, “Those who are shameless get rich; those who are widely trusted become famous. The really big reputation and gain seem to go to men who are shameless and trusted. So if your eyes are set on reputation and you scheme for gain, then trust is the real key. And if you set aside considerations of reputation and gain and return to the heart, then in your conduct, I think you ought to hold fast to the Heaven within you.”12 Zizhang said, “In ancient times, the tyrants Jie and Zhou enjoyed the honor of being Son of Heaven and possessed all the wealth of the empire. Yet now if you say to a mere slave or groom, ‘Your conduct is like that of a Jie or Zhou,’ he will look shamefaced and, in his heart, will not acquiesce to such charges, for even a petty man despises the names of Jie and Zhou. Confucius and Mo Di, on the other hand, were impoverished commoners. Yet now if you say to the highest minister of state, “Your conduct is like that of Confucius or Mo Di,’ he will flush and alter his expression and protest that he is not worthy of such praise, for a gentleman sincerely honors their names. Therefore, to wield the power of a Son of Heaven does not necessarily mean to be honored, and to be poor and a commoner does not necessarily mean to be despised. The difference between being honored and being despised lies in the goodness or badness of one’s conduct.” Man Goude said, “The petty thief is imprisoned but the big thief becomes a feudal lord, and we all know that righteous gentlemen are to be found at the gates of the feudal lords. In ancient times, Xiaobo, Duke Huan of Qi, murdered his elder brother and took his sister-in-law for a wife, and yet Guan Zhong was willing to become his minister. Chang, Viscount Tian Cheng, murdered his sovereign and stole his state, and yet Confucius was willing to receive gifts from him23 In pronouncement they condemned them, but in practice they bowed before them. Think how this contradiction between the facts of word and deed must have troubled their breasts! Could the two help but clash? So the book says, Who is bad? Who is good? The successful man becomes the head, the unsuccessful man becomes the tail.” “But,” said Zizhang, “if you take no thought for conduct, then there ceases to be any ethical ties between near and distant kin, any fitting distinctions between noble and humble, any proper order between elder and younger. How is one to maintain the distinctions decreed by the five moral principles and the six social relationships?” Man Goude said, “Yao killed his eldest son; Shun exiled his mother’s younger brother—does this indicate any ethical ties between near and distant kin? Tang banished his sovereign Jie; King Wu killed his sovereign Zhou—does this indicate any fitting distinctions between noble and humble? King Ji received the inheritance; the Duke of Zhou killed his elder brother—does this indicate any proper order between elder and younger?/4 The Confucians with their hypocritical speeches, the Mohists with their talk of universal love—do these indicate any attempt to maintain the distinctions decreed by the five moral principles and the six social relationships? Now your thoughts are all for reputation, mine all for gain, but neither reputation nor gain, in fact, accords with reason or reflects any true understanding of the Way. The other day when we referred the matter to Wu Yue for arbitration, he gave this answer:12 ““The petty man will die for riches, the gentleman will die for reputation. In the manner in which they alter their true form and change their inborn nature, they differ. But insofar as they throw away what is already theirs and are willing to die for something that is not theirs, they are identical. So it is said, Do not be a petty man—return to and obey the Heaven within you; do not be a gentleman— follow the reason of Heaven. Crooked or straight, pursue to the limit the Heaven in you. Turn your face to the four directions; ebb and flow with the seasons. Right or wrong, hold fast to the round center on which all turns; in solitude bring your will to completion; ramble in the company of the Way. Do not strive to make your conduct consistent;/6 do not try to perfect your righteousness, or you will lose what you already have. Do not race after riches; do not risk your life for success, or you will let slip the Heaven within you. Bi Gan’s heart was cut out; Wu Zixu’s eyes were plucked from their sockets—loyalty brought them this misfortune. Honest Gong informed on his father; Wei Sheng died by drowning—trustworthiness was their curse. Bao Jiao stood there till he dried up; Shenzi would not defend himself—integrity did them this injury. Confucius did not see his mother; Kuangzi did not see his father— righteousness was their mistakeZ These are the tales handed down from ages past, retold by the ages that follow. They show us that the gentleman who is determined to be upright in word and consistent in conduct will, as a result, bow before disaster, will encounter affliction.” Never-Enough said to Sense-of-Harmony, “After all, there are no men who do not strive for reputation and seek gain. If you’re rich, people flock to you; flocking to you, they bow and scrape; and when they bow and scrape, this shows they honor you. To have men bowing and scraping, offering you honor—this is the way to ensure length of years, ease to the body, joy to the will. And now you alone have no mind for these things. Is it lack of understanding? Or is it that you know their worth but just haven’t the strength to work for them? Are you, then, deliberately striving ‘to be upright and never forgetful’?” Sense-of-Harmony said, “You and your type look at those who were born at the same time and who dwell in the same community, and you decide that you are gentlemen who are far removed from the common lot, who are superior to the times. This shows that you have no guiding principle by which to survey the ages of past and present, the distinctions between right and wrong. Instead you join with the vulgar in changing as the world changes, setting aside what is most valuable, discarding what is most worthy of honor, thinking that there is something that has to be done, declaring that this is the way to ensure length of years, ease to the body, joy to the will—but you are far from the mark indeed! The agitation of grief and sorrow, the solace of contentment and joy—these bring no enlightenment to the body. The shock of fear and terror, the elation of happiness and delight—these bring no enlightenment to the mind. You know you are doing what there is to do, but you don’t know why there should be things to do. This way, you might possess all the honor of the Son of Heaven, all the wealth of the empire, and yet never escape from disaster.” “But,” said Never-Enough, “there is no advantage that riches cannot bring to a man—the ultimate in beauty, the heights of power, things that the Perfect Man cannot attain to, that the worthy man can never acquire. They buy the strength and daring of other men that make one awesome and powerful; they purchase the knowledge and schemes of other men that make one wise and well informed; they borrow the virtue of other men that make one a man of worth and goodness. With no kingdom to reign over, the rich man commands as much respect as a ruler or a father. Beautiful sounds and colors, rich flavors, power and authority—a man need not send his mind to school before it will delight in them, need not train his body before it will find peace in them. What to desire, what to hate, what to seek, what to avoid—no one needs a teacher in these matters; they pertain to the inborn nature of man. Don’t think this applies only to me. Where is there a man in the whole world who would be willing to give them up?” Sense-of-Harmony said, “When the wise man goes about doing something, he always moves for the sake of the hundred clans and does not violate the rules. Thus, if there is enough, he does not scramble for more. Having no reason to, he seeks nothing. But if there is not enough, he seeks, scrambling in all four directions, yet he does not think of himself as greedy. If there is a surplus, he gives it away. He can discard the whole empire and yet not think of himself as high-minded. Greed or high-mindedness, in fact, have nothing to do with standards imposed from the outside —they represent a turning within to observe the rules that are found there. So a man may wield all the power of a Son of Heaven and yet not use his high position to lord it over others; he may possess all the wealth in the empire and yet not exploit his riches to make a mockery of others. He calculates the risk, thinks of what may be contrary and harmful to his inborn nature. Therefore he may decline what is offered him, but not because he hopes for reputation and praise. Yao and Shun ruled as emperors and there was harmony—but not because they sought to bring benevolence to the world; they would not have let ‘goodness’ injure their lives. Shan Quan and Xu You had the opportunity to become emperors and declined, but not because they wished to make an empty gesture of refusal; they would not have let such matters bring harm to themselves. All these men sought what was to their advantage and declined what was harmful. The world praises them as worthies, and it is all right if they enjoy such repute—but they were not striving for any reputation or praise.” “But in order to maintain a reputation like theirs,” said Never-Enough, “one must punish the body and give up everything sweet, skimp and save merely to keep life going —in which case one is no different from a man who goes on year after year in sickness and trouble, never allowed to die!” Sense-of-Harmony said, “A just measure brings fortune, an excess brings harm—this is so of all things, but much more so in the case of wealth. The ears of the rich man are regaled with sounds of bell and drum, flute and pipe; his mouth is treated to the flavor of grass- and grain-fed animals, of rich wine, until his desires are aroused and he has forgotten all about his proper business—this may be called disorder. Mired and drowned by swelling passions, he is like a man who carries a heavy load up the slope of a hill—this may be called suffering. Greedy for riches, he brings illness on himself; greedy for power, he drives himself to exhaustion. In the quietude of his home, he sinks into languor; body sleek and well nourished, he is puffed up with passion—this may be called disease. In his desire for wealth, his search for gain, he crams his rooms to overflowing, as it were, and does not know how to escape, yet he lusts for more and cannot desist—this may be called shame. More wealth piled up than he could ever use, yet he is covetous and will not leave off, crowding his mind with care and fatigue, grasping for more and more with never a stop—this may be called worry. At home he is suspicious of the inroads of pilferers and inordinate demanders; abroad he is terrified of the attacks of bandits and robbers. At home he surrounds himself with towers and moats; abroad he dares not walk alone—this may be called terror. These six—disorder, suffering, disease, shame, worry, and terror—are the greatest evils in the world. Yet all are forgotten, and he does not know enough to keep watch out for them. And once disaster has come, then, though he seeks with all his inborn nature and exhausts all his wealth in hopes of returning even for one day to the untroubled times, he can never do so. “Therefore he who sets his eyes on reputation will find that it is nowhere to be seen; he who seeks for gain will find that it is not to be gotten. To entrap the mind and the body in a scramble for such things—is this not delusion indeed?” [— . Following the emendation suggested by Sun Yirang. ho . Following the emendation suggested by Yu Yue. eS) . Aphrase of utmost politeness; Confucius would not venture to come close or look up at the face of his host but only gaze at his feet where they show beneath the curtain of state. 4. That is, become aruler. The Chinese ruler faces south and refers to himself as the “Lonely One,” either because of the uniqueness of his position or, if he has inherited the throne, because his father is dead. 5. Chi You is a legendary being, often described as part man and part animal, who is associated in Chinese mythology with warfare and the invention of weapons. 6. According to legend, Zilu, before he met Confucius, was a brash warrior noted for his courage. In the revolt in Wei, which took place in 480 BCE, he seems to have fought and died out of a sense of loyalty to the man whose retainer he was; see Zuozhuan, Duke Ai, fifteenth year. 7. Yao killed his eldest son; Shun banished his mother’s younger brother; and Yu worked so hard trying to control the flood that he became paralyzed on one side. Confucian writers on the whole recognize the various assertions here made as historical fact but offer justifications for them all. 8. Reading “seven” instead of “six.” Some commentators would retain the “six” and delete King Wen’s name from the list. 9. Bao Jiao is said to have been a recluse who refused to acknowledge allegiance to any sovereign but lived in the forest and ate acorns. When someone pointed out that even this constituted a utilization of the land resources of the ruler, he committed suicide in the bizarre fashion mentioned here. Shentu Di has already appeared on pp. 43 and 233. Jie Zitui, retainer to Prince Chonger of Jin, faithfully served the prince during nineteen years of exile, saving him from starvation in the manner described. But when the prince returned to Jin in 636 BCE and became its ruler, he forgot to reward Jie Zitui. Angered, Jie withdrew to a forest; when the ruler tried to smoke him out, he chose to die in the fire. 10. On Prince Bi Gan, see p. 23, on Wu Zixu, see p. 140, n. N 11. The point of departure for this colloquy, as Legge pointed out, is probably the remark in Analects II, 18, that “Zizhang studies with a view to official emolument.” Man Goude is a fictitious name meaning “Full of Ill-Gotten Gains.” 12. That is, act naturally. 13. On Duke Huan and Guan Zhong, see p. 150; on Tian Cheng, see p. 68. 14. King Ji, a younger son of the Great King Danfu (see p. 240) succeeded his father instead of his elder brother; the usual explanation is that the elder brother, realizing Ji’s worth, deliberately withdrew and went into exile. The Duke of Zhou (reluctantly, we are told), executed his elder brother who was plotting revolt. 15. The name Wu Yue means “without bonds”; his answer, like all the speeches in this anecdote, is highly contrived and couched in rhymed and elaborately balanced phrases. 16. Following Wang Niansun’s interpretation. 17. Some of these figures appeared earlier, esp. on p. 257. Honest Gong of Chu informed the authorities when his father stole a sheep but, instead of receiving praise, was sentenced to death for his unfilial conduct. Shenzi is probably Shensheng, prince of Jin, who refused to clear himself of the false charge of trying to poison his father because to do so would expose his father to ridicule. Nothing definite is known about the charges against Confucius and Kuangzi, though commentators speculate that the meaning is that they were not present at the death of their parents. 30 DISCOURSING ON SWORDS In ancient times, King Wen of Zhao was fond of swords. Expert swordsmen flocked to his gate, and more than three thousand of them were supported as guests in his household, day and night, engaging in bouts in his presence till the dead and wounded numbered more than a hundred men a year. Yet the king’s delight never seemed to wane, and things went on in this way for three years while the state sank into decline and the other feudal lords conspired against it. The crown prince Kui, distressed at this, summoned his retainers around him and said, “I will bestow a thousand pieces of gold on any man who can reason with the king and make him give up these sword fights!” “Zhuangzi is the one who can do it,” said his retainers. The crown prince thereupon sent an envoy with a thousand pieces of gold to present to Zhuangzi, but Zhuangzi refused to accept the gift. Instead he accompanied the envoy on his return and went to call on the crown prince. “What instructions do you have for me, that you present me with a thousand pieces of gold?” he asked. “T had heard, sir,” said the crown prince, “that you are an enlightened sage, and I wished in all due respect to offer this thousand in gold as a gift to your attendants. But if you refuse to accept it, then I dare say no more about the matter.” Zhuangzi said, “I have heard that the crown prince wishes to employ me because he hopes I can rid the king of this passion of his. Now if, in attempting to persuade His Majesty, I should arouse his anger and fail to satisfy your hopes, then I would be sentenced to execution. In that case, what use could I make of the gold? And if I should be able to persuade His Majesty and satisfy your hopes, then what could I ask for in the whole kingdom of Zhao that would not be granted me?” “The trouble is,” said the crown prince, “that my father, the king, refuses to see anyone but swordsmen.” ‘Fine! said Zhuangzi. “I am quite able to handle a sword.” “But the kind of swordsmen my father receives,” said the crown prince, “all have tousled heads and bristling beards, wear slouching caps tied with plain, coarse tassels, and robes that are cut short behind; they glare fiercely and have difficulty getting out their words. Men like that he is delighted with! Now, sir, if you should insist on going to see him in scholarly garb, the whole affair would go completely wrong from the start.” “Then allow me to get together the garb of a swords- man,” said Zhuangzi. After three days, he had his swordsman’s costume ready and went to call on the crown prince. The crown prince and he then went to see the king. The king, drawing his sword, waited with bare blade in hand. Zhuangzi entered the door of the hall with unhurried steps, looked at the king but made no bow. The king said, “Now that you have gotten the crown prince to prepare the way for you, what kind of instruction is it you intend to give me?” “T have heard that Your Majesty is fond of swords, and so I have come with my sword to present myself before you.” “And what sort of authority does your sword command?” asked the king. “My sword cuts down one man every ten paces, and for a thousand /i it never ceases its flailing!” The king, greatly pleased, exclaimed, “You must have no rival in the whole world!” Zhuangzi said, “The wielder of the sword makes a display of emptiness, draws one out with hopes of advantage, is behind time in setting out, but beforehand in arriving.2 May I be allowed to try what I can do?” The king said, “You may leave now, sir, and go to your quarters to await my command. When I am ready to hold the bout, I will request your presence again.” The king then spent seven days testing the skill of his swordsmen. More than sixty were wounded or died in the process, leaving five or six survivors who were ordered to present themselves with their swords outside the king’s hall. Then the king sent for Zhuangzi, saying, “Today let us see what happens when you cross swords with these gentlemen.” Zhuangzi said, “It is what I have long wished for.” “What weapon will you use, sir,” asked the king, “a long sword or a short one?” “I am prepared to use any type at all. It happens that I have three swords—Your Majesty has only to indicate which you wish me to use. If I may, I will first explain them, and then put them to the test.” “Let me hear about your three swords,” said the king. “There is the sword of the Son of Heaven, the sword of the feudal lord, and the sword of the commoner.” “What is the sword of the Son of Heaven like?’ asked the king. “The sword of the Son of Heaven? The Valley of Yan and the Stone Wall are its point; Qi and Dai its blade; Jin and Wey its spine; Zhou and Song its sword guard; Han and Wei its hilt The four barbarian tribes enwrap it; the four seasons enfold it; the seas of Bo surround it; the mountains of Chang girdle it. The five elements govern it; the demands of punishment and favor direct it. It is brought forth in accordance with the yin and yang, held in readiness in spring and summer, wielded in autumn and winter. Thrust it forward, and there is nothing that will stand before it; raise it on high, and there is nothing above it; press it down, and there is nothing beneath it; whirl it about, and there is nothing surrounding it. Above, it cleaves the drifting clouds; below, it severs the sinews of the earth. When this sword is once put to use, the feudal lords return to their former obedience, and the whole world submits. This is the sword of the Son of Heaven.” King Wen, dumbfounded, appeared to be at an utter loss. Then he said, “What is the sword of the feudal lord like?” “The sword of the feudal lord? It has wise and brave men for its point, men of purity and integrity for its blade, men of worth and goodness for its spine, men of loyalty and sageliness for its sword guard, heroes and prodigies for its hilt. This sword too, thrust forward, meets nothing before it; raised, it encounters nothing above; pressed down, it encounters nothing beneath it; whirled about, it meets nothing surrounding it. Above, it takes its model from the roundness of heaven, following along with the three luminous bodies of the sky.4 Below, it takes its model from the squareness of earth, following along with the four seasons. In the middle realm, it brings harmony to the wills of the people and peace to the four directions. This sword, once put into use, is like the crash of a thunderbolt: none within the four borders of the state will fail to bow down in submission; none will fail to heed and obey the commands of the ruler. This is the sword of the feudal lord.” The king said, “What is the sword of the commoner like?” “The sword of the commoner? It is used by men with tousled heads and bristling beards, with slouching caps tied with plain, coarse tassels and robes cut short behind, who glare fiercely and speak with great difficulty, who slash at one another in Your Majesty’s presence. Above, it lops off heads and necks; below, it splits open livers and lungs. Those who wield this sword of the commoner are no different from fighting cocks—any morning their lives may be cut off. They are of no use in the administration of the state. “Now Your Majesty occupies the position of a Son of Heaven, and yet you show this fondness for the sword of the commoner If I may be so bold, I think it rather unworthy of you! The king thereupon led Zhuangzi up into his hall, where the royal butler came forward with trays of food, but the king merely paced round and round the room. “Your Majesty should seat yourself at ease and calm your spirits,” said Zhuangzi. “The affair of the sword is all over and finished!” After this, King Wen did not emerge from his palace for three months, and his swordsmen all committed suicide in their quarters. 1. The title may also be interpreted to mean “Delighting in Swords.” Why both meanings are appropriate will become apparent. 2. The sentence is deliberately cryptic and capable of interpretation on a variety of levels. 3. These all are feudal states or strategic places of northern China surrounding the state of Zhao. 4. The stars collectively make up the third luminous body. 5. The state of Zhao, situated in north central China, was never very powerful, and its king, only one among many feudal rulers of the time, in no sense occupied anything that could be called “the position of a Son of Heaven.” If the writer has not abandoned all pretense at historicity, he must mean that if the king of Zhao were to rule wisely, he might in time gain sufficient power and prestige to become a contender for the position of Son of Heaven. 31 THE OLD FISHERMAN Confucius, after strolling through the Black Curtain Forest, sat down to rest on the Apricot Altart While his disciples turned to their books, he strummed his lute and sang. He had not gotten halfway through the piece he was playing when an old fisherman appeared, stepped out of his boat, and came forward. His beard and eyebrows were pure white; his hair hung down over his shoulders; and his sleeves flapped at his sides. He walked up the embankment, stopped when he reached the higher ground, rested his left hand on his knee, propped his chin with his right, and listened until the piece was ended. Then he beckoned to Zigong and Zilu, both of whom came forward at his call. The stranger pointed to Confucius and said, “What does he do?” “He is a gentleman of Lu,” replied Zilu. The stranger then asked what family he belonged to, and Zilu replied, “The Kong family.” “This man of the Kong family,” said the stranger, “what’s his occupation?” Zilu was still framing his reply when Zigong answered, “This man of the Kong family in his inborn nature adheres to loyalty and good faith, in his person practices benevolence and righteousness; he brings a beautiful order to rites and music and selects what is proper in human relationships. Above, he pays allegiance to the sovereign of the age; below, he transforms the ordinary people through education and, in this way, brings profit to the world. Such is the occupation of this man of the Kong family!” “Does he have any territory that he rules over?” asked the stranger, pursuing the inquiry. “No,” said Zigong. “Is he the counselor to some king or feudal lord?” “No,” said Zigong. The stranger then laughed and turned to go, saying as he walked away, “As far as benevolence goes, he is benevolent all right. But I’m afraid he will not escape unharmed. To weary the mind and wear out the body, putting the Truth in peril like this—alas, I’m afraid he is separated from the Great Way by a vast distance indeed!” Zigong returned and reported to Confucius what had happened. Confucius pushed aside his lute, rose to his feet, and said, “Perhaps this man is a sage!” Then he started down the embankment after him, reaching the edge of the lake just as the fisherman was about to take up his punting pole and drag his boat into the water. Glancing back and catching sight of Confucius, he turned and stood facing him. Confucius hastily stepped back a few paces, bowed twice, and then came forward. “What do you want?” asked the stranger. “A moment ago, sir,” said Confucius, “you made a few cryptic remarks and then left. Unworthy as I am, I’m afraid I do not understand what they mean. If I might be permitted to wait on you with all due humility and be favored with the sound of your august words, my ignorance might in time be remedied.” “Goodness!” exclaimed the stranger. “Your love of learning is great indeed!”2 Confucius bowed twice and then, straightening up, said, “Ever since childhood I have cultivated learning, until at last I have reached the age of sixty-nine. But I have never yet succeeded in hearing the Perfect Teaching. Dare I do anything, then, but wait with an open mind?” “Creatures follow their own kind; a voice will answer to the voice that is like itself,” said the stranger; “this has been the rule of Heaven since time began. With your permission, therefore, I will set aside for the moment my own ways and try applying myself to the things that you are concerned about.2 What you are concerned about are the affairs of men. The Son of Heaven, the feudal lords, the high ministers, the common people—when these four are of themselves upright, this is the most admirable state of order. But if they depart from their proper stations, there is no greater disorder. When officials attend to their duties and men worry about their undertakings, there is no overstepping of the mark. ‘Fields gone to waste, rooms unroofed, clothing and food that are not enough, taxes and labor services that you can’t keep up with, wives and concubines never in harmony, senior and junior out of order—these are the worries of the common man. Ability that does not suffice for the task, official business that doesn’t go right, conduct that is not spotless and pure, underlings who are lazy and slipshod, success and praise that never come your way, titles and stipends that you can’t hold on to—these are the worries of the high minister. A court lacking in loyal ministers, a state and its great families in darkness and disorder, craftsmen and artisans who have no skill, articles of tribute that won’t pass the test, inferior ranking at the spring and autumn levees at court, failure to ingratiate himself with the Son of Heaven—these are the worries of a feudal lord. “The yin and yang out of harmony, cold and heat so untimely that they bring injury to all things, feudal lords violent and unruly, wantonly attacking one another till they all but destroy the common people, rites and music improperly performed, funds and resources that are forever giving out, human relationships that are not ordered as they should be, the hundred clans contumacious and depraved— these are the worries of the Son of Heaven and his chancellors. Now on the higher level, you do not hold the position of a ruler, a feudal lord, or a chancellor, and on the lower level, you have not been assigned to the office of a high minister with its tasks and duties. Yet you presume to ‘bring a beautiful order to rites and music, to select what is proper in human relationships’ and, in this way, to ‘transform the ordinary people.’ This is undertaking rather a lot, isn’t it? “Moreover, there are eight faults that men may possess, and four evils that beset their undertakings—you must not fail to examine these carefully. To do what it is not your business to do is called officiousness. To rush forward when no one has nodded in your direction is called obsequiousness. To echo a man’s opinions and try to draw him out in speech is called sycophancy. To speak without regard for what is right or wrong is called flattery. To delight in talking about other men’s failings is called calumny. To break up friendships and set kinfolk at odds is called maliciousness. To praise falsely and hypocritically so as to cause injury and evil to others is called wickedness. Without thought for right or wrong, to try to face in two directions at once so as to steal a glimpse of the other party’s wishes is called treachery. These eight faults inflict chaos on others and injury on the possessor. A gentleman will not befriend the man who possesses them; an enlightened ruler will not have him for his minister. “As for the four evils that I spoke of, to be fond of plunging into great undertakings, altering and departing from the old accepted ways, hoping thereby to enhance your merit and fame—this is called avidity. To insist that you know it all, that everything be done your way, snatching from others and appropriating for your own use—this is called avarice. To see your errors but refuse to change, to listen to remonstrance but go on behaving worse than before—this is called obstinacy. When men agree with you, to commend them; when they disagree with you, to refuse to see any goodness in them even when it is there—this is called bigotry. These are the four evils. If you do away with the eight faults and avoid committing the four evils, then and only then will you become capable of being taught!” Confucius looked chagrined and gave a sigh. Then he bowed twice, straightened up, and said, “Twice I have been exiled from Lu; they wiped away my footprints in Wei, chopped down a tree on me in Song, and besieged me between Chen and Cai. I am aware of no error of my own, and yet why did I fall victim to these four persecutions?” A pained expression came over the stranger’s face and he said, “How hard it is to make you understand! Once there was a man who was afraid of his shadow and who hated his footprints, and so he tried to get way from them by running. But the more he lifted his feet and put them down again, the more footprints he made. And no matter how fast he ran, his shadow never left him, and so, thinking that he was still going too slowly, he ran faster and faster without a stop until his strength gave out and he fell down dead. He didn’t understand that by lolling in the shade he could have gotten rid of his shadow and that by resting in quietude he could have put an end to his footprints. How could he have been so stupid! ‘Now you scrutinize the realm of benevolence and righteousness, examine the borders of sameness and difference, observe the alternations of stillness and movement, lay down the rules for giving and receiving, regulate the emotions of love and hate, harmonize the seasons of joy and anger—and yet you barely manage to escape harm. If you were diligent in improving yourself, careful to hold fast to the Truth, and would hand over external things to other men, you could avoid these entanglements. But now, without improving yourself, you make demands on others—that is surely no way to go about the thing, is it?” Confucius looked shamefaced and said, “Please, may I ask what you mean by ‘the Truth’?” The stranger said, “By ‘the Truth’ I mean purity and sincerity in their highest degree. He who lacks purity and sincerity cannot move others. Therefore he who forces himself to lament, though he may sound sad, will awaken no grief. He who forces himself to be angry, though he may sound fierce, will arouse no awe. And he who forces himself to be affectionate, though he may smile, will create no air of harmony. True sadness need make no sound to awaken grief; true anger need not show itself to arouse awe; true affection need not smile to create harmony. When a man has the Truth within himself, his spirit may move among external things. That is why the Truth is to be prized! “Tt may be applied to human relationships in the following ways: In the service of parents, it is love and filial piety; in the service of the ruler, it is loyalty and integrity; in festive wine drinking, it is merriment and joy; in periods of mourning, it is sadness and grief. In loyalty and integrity, service is the important thing; in festive drinking, merriment is the important thing; in periods of mourning, grief is the important thing; in the service of parents, their comfort is the important thing. In seeking to perform the finest kind of service, one does not always try to go about it in the same way. In ensuring comfort in the serving of one’s parents, one does not question the means to be employed. In seeking the merriment that comes with festive drinking, one does not fuss over what cups and dishes are to be selected. In expressing the grief that is appropriate to periods of mourning, one does not quibble over the exact ritual to be followed. ‘Rites are something created by the vulgar men of the world; the Truth is that which is received from Heaven. By nature it is the way it is and cannot be changed. Therefore the sage patterns himself on Heaven, prizes the Truth, and does not allow himself to be cramped by the vulgar. The stupid man does the opposite of this. He is unable to pattern himself on Heaven and instead frets over human concerns. He does not know enough to prize the Truth, but instead, plodding along with the crowd, he allows himself to be changed by wulgar ways and so is never content. Alas, that you fell into the slough of human hypocrisy at such an early age and have been so late in hearing of the Great Way! Confucius once more bowed twice, straightened up, and said, “Now that I have succeeded in meeting you, it would seem as though Heaven has blessed me. If, Master, you would not consider it a disgrace for one like myself to enter the ranks of those who wait on you, and to be taught by you in person, then may I be so bold as to inquire where your lodgings are? I would like to be allowed to go there, receive instruction, and at last learn the Great Way!” The stranger replied, “I have heard it said, If it is someone you can go with, then go with him to the very end of the mysterious Way; but if it is someone you cannot go with, someone who does not understand the Way, then take care and have nothing to do with him—only then may you avoid danger to yourself. Keep working at it! Now I will leave you, I will leave you.” So saying, he poled away in his boat, threading a path through the reeds. Yan Yuan brought the carriage around; Zilu held out the strap for pulling oneself up, but Confucius, without turning in their direction, waited until the ripples on the water were stilled and he could no longer hear the sound of the pole before he ventured to mount. Zilu, following by the side of the carriage, said, “I have been permitted to serve you for a long time, Master, but I have never seen you encounter anyone who filled you with such awe. The rulers of ten thousand chariots, the lords of a thousand chariots, when they receive you, invariably seat you on the same level as themselves and treat you with the etiquette due to an equal, and still you maintain a stiff and haughty air. But now this old fisherman, pole in hand, presents himself in front of you, and you double up at the waist, as bent as a chiming stone,4 and bow every time you reply to his words—this is going too far, isn’t it? Your disciples all are wondering about it. Why should a fisherman deserve such treatment?” Confucius leaned forward on the crossbar, sighed, and said, “You certainly are hard to change! All this time you have been immersed in the study of ritual principles, and you still haven’t gotten rid of your mean and servile ways of thinking. Come closer, and I will explain to you. To meet an elder and fail to treat him with respect is a breach of etiquette. To see a worthy man and fail to honor him is to lack benevolence. If the fisherman were not a Perfect Man, he would not be able to make other men humble themselves before him. And if men, in humbling themselves before him, lack purity of intention, then they will never attain the Truth. As a result, they will go on forever bringing injury on themselves. Alas! There is no greater misfortune than for a man to lack benevolence. And yet you alone dare to invite such misfortune! “Moreover, the Way is the path by which the ten thousand things proceed. All things that lose it, die; all that get it, live. To go against it in one’s undertakings is to fail; to comply with it is to succeed. Hence, wherever the Way is to be found, the sage will pay homage there. As far as the Way is concerned, this old fisherman may certainly be said to possess it. How, then, would I dare fail to show respect to him!” 1. The word “altar” here refers to a mesa or flat-topped hill rising out of the lowland. 2. Ajocular reference to Confucius’s remark that in any village of ten houses, one might find a person as loyal and true to his word as he, but none with such a great love of learning. Analects V, 27. 3. Another possible interpretation would be, “TI will explain my own ways and try applying them to the things,” etc. 4. Chiming stones were shaped like an inverted “V.” 32 LIE YUKOU Lie Yukou was going to Qi, but halfway there he turned around and came home. By chance he met Bohun Wuren. “What made you turn around and come back?” asked Bohun Wturen. “I was scared.” “Why were you scared?” “I stopped to eat at ten soup stalls along the way, and at five of them they served me soup ahead of everybody else!” “What was so scary about that?” said Bohun Wuren. “If you can’t dispel the sincerity inside you, it oozes! out of the body and forms a radiance that, once outside, overpowers men’s minds and makes them careless of how they treat their own superiors and old people. And it’s from this kind of confusion that trouble comes. The soup sellers have nothing but their broths to peddle, and their margin of gain can’t be very large. 2 If people with such skimpy profits and so little power still treat me like this, then what would it be like with the ruler of Qi, the lord of a state of ten thousand chariots? Body wearied by the burden of such a state, wisdom exhausted in its administration, he would want to shift his affairs onto me and make me work out some solution—that was what scared me!” “You sized it up very well,” said Bohun Wuren. “But even if you stay at home, people are going to flock around you.” Not long afterward, Bohun Wuren went to Liezi’s house and found the area outside his door littered with shoes.2 He stood gazing north, staff held straight up, chin wrinkled where it rested on it. After standing there a while, he went away without a word. The servant in charge of receiving guests went in and reported this to Liezi. Liezi snatched up his shoes and ran barefoot after him, overtaking him at the gate. “Now that you’ve come all this way, don’t you have any ‘medicine’ to give me?4 “Tt’s no use. I told you from the beginning that people would come flocking around you, and here they are flocking around you. It’s not that you’re able to make them come to you—it’s that you’re unable to keep them from coming. But what good is it to you? If you move other people and make them happy, you must be showing them something unusual in yourself. And if you move others, you invariably upset your own basic nature, in which case there’s nothing more to be said. These men you wander around with—none will give you any good advice. All they have are petty words, the kind that poison a man. No one understands, no one comprehends—so who can give any help to anyone else? The clever man wears himself out, the wise man worries. But the man of no ability has nothing he seeks. He eats his fill and wanders idly about. Drifting like an unmoored boat, emptily and idly he wanders along.” There was a man from Zheng named Huan who, after three years of reciting and memorizing texts at a place called Qiushi, finally became a Confucian scholar. As the Yellow River spreads its moisture for nine /i along its banks, so Huan’s affluence spread to his three sets of relatives. He saw to it that his younger brother Di became a Mohist, and the Confucian and the Mohist debated with each other, but their father always took sides with the younger brother. Ten years of this, and Huan committed suicide. Appearing to his father in a dream, he said, “It was J who made it possible for your son to become a Mohist. Why don’t you try taking a look at my grave—I have become the berries on the catalpa and the cypress there!”> When the Creator rewards a man, he does not reward what is man-made in the man but what is Heaven-made. It was what was in the younger brother that made him a Mohist. Yet there are those like Huan who think they are different from others and even despise their own kin. Like men from Qi drinking at a well, they try to elbow one another away.© So it is said, In the world today, we have nothing but Huans—they all think that they alone are right. But the man who truly possesses Virtue is not even aware of it, much less the man who possesses the Way. In ancient times it was said of men like Huan that they had committed the crime of hiding from Heaven. The sage rests where there is rest and does not try to rest where there is no rest. The common run of men try to rest where there is no rest and do not rest where rest is to be found. Zhuangzi said, To know the Way is easy; to keep from speaking about it is hard. To know and not to speak—this gets you to the Heavenly part. To know and to speak—this gets you to the human part. Men in the old days looked out for the Heavenly, not the human. Zhuping Man studied the art of butchering dragons under Crippled Yi. It cost him all the thousand pieces of gold he had in his house, and after three years he’d mastered the art, but there was no one who could use his services. The sage looks at the inevitable and decides that it is not inevitable—therefore he has no recourse to arms. The common man looks at what is not inevitable and decides that it is inevitable—therefore he has frequent recourse to arms. He who turns to arms is always seeking something. He who trusts to arms is lost. The understanding of the little man never gets beyond gifts and wrappings, letters and calling cards. He wastes his spirit on the shallow and trivial and yet wants to be the savior of both the world and the Way, to blend both form and emptiness in the Great Unity. Such a man will blunder and go astray in time and space; his body entangled, he will never come to know the Great Beginning. But he who is a Perfect Man lets his spirit return to the Beginningless, to lie down in pleasant slumber in the Village of Not- Anything-at-All; like water he flows through the Formless or trickles forth from the Great Purity. How pitiful—you whose understanding can be encompassed in a hair tip, who know nothing of the Great Tranquillity! A man of Song, one Cao Shang, was sent by the king of Song as envoy to the state of Qin. On his departure, he was assigned no more than four or five carriages, but the king of Qin, greatly taken with him, bestowed on him an additional hundred carriages. When he returned to Song, he went to see Zhuangzi and said, “Living in poor alleyways and cramped lanes, skimping, starving, weaving one’s own sandals, with withered neck and sallow face—that sort of thing I’m no good at. But winning instant recognition from the ruler of a state of ten thousand chariots and returning with a hundred of them in one’s retinue—that’s where I excel!” Zhuangzi said, “When the king of Qin falls ill, he calls for his doctors. The doctor who lances a boil or drains an abscess receives one carriage in payment, but the one who licks his piles for him gets five carriages. The lower down the area to be treated, the larger the number of carriages. From the large number of carriages you’ve got, I take it you must have been treating his piles. Get out!” Duke Ai of Lu said to Yan He, “If I were to make Confucius my pillar and stanchion, do you think it would improve the health of the state?” “Beware—that way lies danger! Confucius will deck things out in feathers and paint and conduct his affairs with flowery phrases, mistaking side issues for the crux. He is willing to distort his inborn nature in order to make himself a model for the people, not even realizing that he is acting in bad faith. He takes everything to heart, submits all to the judgment of the spirit—how could such a man be worth putting in charge of the people? Does he meet with your approval? Would you like to provide for his support? It would be a mistake, but you may do it if you like. Yet one who would induce the people to turn their backs on reality and study hypocrisy is hardly fit to be made a model for the people. If we are to take thought for later ages, it would be best to drop the scheme. “Governing is a difficult thing. To dispense favors to men without ever forgetting that you are doing so—this is not Heaven’s way of giving. Even merchants and peddlers are unwilling to be ranked with such a person; and although their occupations may seem to rank them with him, in their hearts they will never acquiesce to such a ranking 2 External punishments are administered by implements of metal and wood; internal punishments are inflicted by frenzy and excess. When the petty man meets with external punishments, the implements of metal and wood bear down on him; when he incurs internal punishment, the yin and yang eat him up& To escape both external and internal punishment—only the True Man is capable of this.” Confucius said, “The mind of man is more perilous than mountains or rivers, harder to understand than Heaven. Heaven at least has its fixed times of spring and fall, winter and summer, daybreak and dusk. But man is thick-skinned and hides his true form deep within. Thus he may have an earnest face and yet be supercilious; he may seem to have superior qualities and yet be worthless. He may appear to be going about things in a scatterbrained way and yet know exactly what he is doing. Seeming to be firm, he may in fact be lax; seeming to be mild, he may in fact be ruthless. Therefore those who flock to righteousness like thirsty men to water may later flee from it as though from fire. ‘For this reason the gentleman will employ a man on a distant mission and observe his degree of loyalty, will employ him close at hand and observe his degree of respect. He will hand him troublesome affairs and observe how well he manages them, will suddenly ask his advice and observe how wisely he answers. He will exact some difficult promise from him and see how well he keeps it, turn over funds to him and see with what benevolence he dispenses them, inform him of the danger he is in and note how faithful he is to his duties. He will get him drunk with wine and observe how well he handles himself, place him in mixed company and see what effect beauty has on him. By applying these nine tests, you may determine who is the unworthy man.” Zheng Kaofu—when he received his first appointment to office, he bowed his head; when he received his second appointment, he bent his back; when he received his third appointment, he hunched far over; hugging the wall, he scurried along.2 Who would dare to ignore his example? But the ordinary man—on receiving his first appointment, he begins to strut; on receiving his second appointment, he does a dance in his carriage; on receiving his third appointment, he addresses his father’s brothers by their personal names. What a difference from the ways of Yao and Xu You! There is no greater evil than for the mind to be aware of virtue and to act as though it were a pair of eyes. For when it starts acting like a pair of eyes, it will peer out from within, and when it peers out from within, it is ruined. There are five types of dangerous virtue, of which inner virtue is the worst 12 What do I mean by inner virtue? He who possesses inner virtue thinks himself always in the right and denigrates those who do not do as he does. There are eight extremes that bring a man trouble, three conditions necessary for advancement, and six respositories of punishment! Beauty, a fine beard, a tall stature, brawn, strength, style, bravery, decisiveness—when a man has all these to a degree that surpasses others, they bring him trouble. Tagging along with things, bobbing and weaving, cringing and fawning—if a man can do all three of these in a way that others do not, then he will succeed in advancing. Wisdom and knowledge, and the outward recognition they involve; bravery and decisiveness, and the numerous resentments they arouse; benevolence and righteousness, and all the responsibilities they involve— these six are what bring you punishment 12 He who has mastered the true form of life is a giant; he who has mastered understanding is petty. He who has mastered the Great Fate follows along; he who has mastered the little fates must take what happens to come his way. There was a man who had an audience with the king of Song and received from him a gift of ten carriages. With his ten carriages, he went bragging and strutting to Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi said, “There’s a poor family down by the river who make their living by weaving articles out of mugwort. The son was diving in the deepest part of the river and came upon a pearl worth a thousand pieces of gold. His father said to him, ‘Bring a rock and smash it to bits! A pearl worth a thousand in gold could only have come from under the chin of the Black Dragon who lives at the bottom of the ninefold deeps. To be able to get the pearl, you must have happened along when he was asleep. If the Black Dragon had been awake, do you think there’d have been so much as a shred of you left?’ Now the state of Song is deeper than the ninefold deeps, and the king of Song more truculent than the Black Dragon. In order to get these carriages, you must have happened along when he was asleep. If the king of Song had been awake, you’d have ended up in little pieces!” Someone sent gifts to Zhuangzi with an invitation to office. Zhuangzi replied to the messenger in these words: “Have you ever seen a sacrificial ox? They deck him out in embroidery and trimmings, gorge him on grass and beanstalks. But when at last they lead him off into the great ancestral temple, then, although he might wish he could become a lonely calf once more, is it possible?” When Zhuangzi was about to die, his disciples expressed a desire to give him a sumptuous burial. Zhuangzi said, “I will have heaven and earth for my coffin and coffin shell, the sun and moon for my pair of jade disks, the stars and constellations for my pearls and beads, and the ten thousand things for my parting gifts. The furnishings for my funeral are already prepared—what is there to add?” “But we’re afraid the crows and kites will eat you, Master!” said his disciples. Zhuangzi said, “Above ground, I’ll be eaten by crows and kites; below ground, I’ll be eaten by mole crickets and ants. Wouldn’t it be rather bigoted to deprive one group in order to supply the other? “If you use unfairness to achieve fairness, your fairness will be unfair. If you use a lack of proof to establish proofs, your proofs will be proofless. The bright-eyed man is no more than the servant of things, but the man of spirit knows how to find real proofs. The bright-eyed is no match for the man of spirit—from long ago this has been the case. Yet the fool trusts to what he can see and immerses himself in the human. All his accomplishments are beside the point— pitiful, isn’t it!” 1. Following Sun Yirang’s emendation. 2. Supplying a negative from the parallel passage in Liezi, sec. 2. 3. Chinese at this time sat on mats on the floor; consequently they removed their shoes before stepping up into a house. 4. That is, good advice. 5. Is the fact that he has changed into berries an indication of unappeased anger that will not let him rest in his grave, or has it some other significance? I do not know. 6. The story to which this refers is unknown. . Meaning very doubtful. i joo 8. An upset in the balance of the yin and yang within the body will bring on a consuming sickness; see p. 26, n. 9. 9. Zheng Kaofu, “The Upright Ancestor,” was a forebear of Confucius who served at the court of Song in the eighth century BCE. The three appointments represent three advancements in court rank. According to Zhuozhuan, Zhao seventh year, the passage describing him here was part of the inscription on a bronze vessel used in his mortuary temple. 10. The writer nowhere states what the other four types are. 11. Following Xi Tong, I read xing to mean “punishment.” 12. The end of this sentence has dropped out of most texts. 13. There would seem to be a play on the various meanings 99 66 of ming—“appointment,” “fate,” “command,” etc.; see p. 28, n. 12. Some commentators take it to mean “life span.” 33 THE WORLD Many are the men in the world who apply themselves to doctrines and policies, and each believes he has something that cannot be improved on. What in ancient times was called the “art of the Way’—where does it exist? I say, there is no place it does not exist. But, you ask, where does holiness descend from, where does enlightenment emerge from? The sage gives them birth, the king completes them, and all have their source in the One. He who does not depart from the Ancestor is called the Heavenly Man; he who does not depart from the Pure is called the Holy Man; he who does not depart from the True is called the Perfect Man. To make Heaven his source, Virtue his root, and the Way his gate, revealing himself through change and transformation—one who does this is called a Sage. To make benevolence his standard of kindness, righteousness his model of reason, ritual his guide to conduct, and music his source of harmony, serene in mercy and benevolence—one who does this is called a gentleman. To employ laws to determine functions, names to indicate rank, comparisons to discover actual performance, investigations to arrive at decisions, checking them off, one, two, three, four, and in this way to assign the hundred officials to their ranks; to keep a constant eye on administrative affairs, give first thought to food and clothing, keep in mind the need to produce and grow, to shepherd and store away, to provide for the old and the weak, the orphan and the widow, so that all are properly nourished—these are the principles by which the people are ordered. How thorough were the men of ancient times!— companions of holiness and enlightenment, pure as Heaven and earth, caretakers of the ten thousand things, harmonizers of the world, their bounty extended to the hundred clans. They had a clear understanding of basic policies and paid attention even to petty regulations—in the six avenues and the four frontiers, in what was great or small, coarse or fine, there was no place they did not move. The wisdom that was embodied in their policies and regulations is, in many cases, still reflected in the old laws and records of the historiographers handed down over the ages. As to that which is recorded in the Book of Odes and Book of Documents, the Ritual and the Music, there are many gentlemen of Zou and Lu, scholars of sash and official rank, who have an understanding of it. The Book of Odes describes the will; the Book of Documents describes events; the Ritual speaks of conduct; the Music speaks of harmony; the Book of Changes describes the yin and yang; the Spring and Autumn Annals describes titles and functions.2 These various policies are scattered throughout the world and are propounded in the Middle Kingdom, the scholars of the hundred schools from time to time taking up one or the other in their praises and preachings. But the world is in great disorder, the worthies and sages lack clarity of vision, and the Way and its Virtue are no longer One. So the world too often seizes on one of its aspects, examines it, and pronounces it good. But it is like the case of the ear, the eye, the nose, and the mouth: each has its own kind of understanding, but their functions are not interchangeable. In the same way, the various skills of the hundred schools all have their strong points, and at times each may be of use. But none is wholly sufficient, none is universal. The scholar cramped in one corner of learning tries to judge the beauty of Heaven and earth, to pry into the principles of the ten thousand things, to scrutinize the perfection of the ancients, but seldom is he able to encompass the true beauty of Heaven and earth, to describe the true face of holy brightness. Therefore the Way that is sagely within and kingly without has fallen into darkness and is no longer clearly perceived, has become shrouded and no longer shines forth. The men of the world all follow their own desires and make these their “doctrine.” How sad!—the hundred schools going on and on instead of turning back, fated never to join again. The scholars of later ages have unfortunately never perceived the purity of Heaven and earth, the great body of the ancients, and “the art of the Way” in time comes to be rent and torn apart by the world. To teach no extravagance to later ages, to leave the ten thousand things unadorned, to shun any glorification of rules and regulations, instead applying ink and measuring line to the correction of one’s own conduct, thus aiding the world in time of crisis—there were those in ancient times who believed that the “art of the Way’ lay in these things. Mo Di and Qin Guli heard of their views and delighted in them, but they followed them to excess and were too assiduous in applying them to themselves. Mozi wrote a piece “Against Music,” and another entitled “Moderation in Expenditure,” declaring there was to be no singing in life, no mourning in death With a boundless love and a desire to ensure universal benefit, he condemned warfare, and there was no place in his teachings for anger. Again, he was fond of learning and broad in knowledge and, in this respect, did not differ from others. His views, however, were not always in accordance with those of the former kings, for he denounced the rites and music of antiquity. The Yellow Emperor had his Xianchi music, Yao his Dazhong, Shun his Dashao, Yu his Daxia, Tang his Dahuo, and King Wen the music of the Biyong, while King Wu and the Duke of Zhou fashioned the Wu music. The mourning rites of antiquity prescribed the ceremonies appropriate for eminent and humble, the different regulations for superior and inferior. The inner and outer coffins of the Son of Heaven were to consist of seven layers; those of the feudal lords, five layers; those of the high ministers, three layers; those of the officials, two layers. Yet Mozi alone declares there is to be no singing in life, no mourning in death. A coffin of paulownia wood three inches thick, with no outer shell—this is his rule, his ideal. If he teaches men in this fashion, then I fear he has no love for them; and if he adopts such practices for his own burial, then he surely has no love for himself! I do not mean to discredit his teachings entirely; and yet men want to sing, and he says, “No singing!”; they want to wail, and he says, “No wailing!—one wonders if he is in fact human at all. A life that is all toil, a death shoddily disposed of—it is a way that goes too much against us. To make men anxious, to make them sorrowful—such practices are hard to carry out, and I fear they cannot be regarded as the Way of the Sage. They are contrary to the hearts of the world, and the world cannot endure them. Though Mozi himself may be capable of such endurance, how can the rest of the world do likewise? Departing so far from the ways of the world, they must be far removed indeed from those of the true king. Mozi defends his teachings by saying, “In ancient times, when Yu dammed the flood waters and opened up the courses of the Yangtze and the Yellow River so that they flowed through the lands of the four barbarians and the nine provinces, joining with the three hundred famous rivers,4 their three thousand tributaries, and the little streams too numerous to count—at that time Yu in person carried the basket and wielded the spade, gathering together and mingling the rivers of the world till there was no down left on his calves, no hair on his shins; the drenching rains washed his locks, the sharp winds combed them while he worked to establish the ten thousand states. Yu was a great sage, yet with his own body he labored for the world in such fashion!” So it is that many of the Mohists of later ages dress in skins and coarse cloth, wear wooden clogs or hempen sandals, never resting day or night, driving themselves on to the most bitter exertions. “If we cannot do the same,” they say, “then we are not following the way of Yu, and are unworthy to be called Mohists!” The disciples of Xiangli Qin, the followers of Wu Hou, and the Mohists of the south such as Ku Huo, Ji Chi, Deng Lingzi, and their like all recite the Mohist canon, and yet they quarrel and disagree in their interpretations, calling one another “Mohist factionalists.” In their discussions of “hard” and “white,” “difference” and “sameness,” they attack back and forth; in their disquisitions on the incompatibility of “odd” and “even,” they exchange volleys of refutation.> They regard the Grand Master of their sect as a sage, each sect trying to make its Grand Master the recognized head of the school in hopes that his authority will be acknowledged by later ages, but down to the present the dispute remains unresolved.© Mo Di and Qin Guli were right in their ideas but wrong in their practices, with the result that the Mohists of later ages have felt obliged to subject themselves to hardship “till there is no down left on their calves, no hair on their shins”—their only thought being to outdo one another. Such efforts represent the height of confusion, the lowest degree of order. Nevertheless, Mozi was one who had a true love for the world. He failed to achieve all he aimed for, yet, wasted and worn with exhaustion, he never ceased trying. He was indeed a gentleman of ability! To be unsnared by wilgar ways, to make no vain show of material things, to bring no hardship on others, to avoid offending the mob, to seek peace and security for the world, preservation of the people’s lives, full provender for others as well as oneself, and to rest content when these aims are fulfilled, in this way bringing purity to the heart— there were those in ancient times who believed that the “art of the Way” lay in these things. Song Jian® and Yin Wen heard of their views and delighted in them. They fashioned caps in the shape of Mount Hua to be their mark of distinction.2 In dealing with the ten thousand things, they took the “defining of boundaries” to be their starting point;12 they preached liberality of mind. which they called “the mind’s activity,” hoping thereby to bring men together in the joy of harmony, to ensure concord within the four seas. Their chief task lay, they felt, in the effort to establish these ideals. They regarded it as no shame to suffer insult but sought to put an end to strife among the people, to outlaw aggression, to abolish the use of arms, and to rescue the world from warfare. With these aims they walked the whole world over, trying to persuade those above them and to teach those below, and though the world refused to listen, they clamored all the louder and would not give up until men said, “High and low are sick of the sight of them, and still they demand to be seen!” Nevertheless, they took too much thought for others and too little for themselves. “Just give us five pints of rice and that will be enough,” they said, though at that rate I fear these teachers did not get their fill. Though their own disciples went hungry, however, they never forgot the rest of the world but continued day and night without stop, saying, “We are determined to make certain that all men can live!” How lofty their aims, these saviors of the world! Again they said, “The gentleman does not examine others with too harsh an eye; he does not need material things in which to dress himself.” If a particular line of inquiry seemed to bring no benefit to the world, they thought it better to abandon it than to seek an understanding of it. To outlaw aggression and abolish the use of arms—these were their external aims. To lessen the desires and weaken the emotions—these were their internal aims. Whether their approach was large scaled or small, detailed or gross, these were the goals they sought—these and nothing more. KOR Ok Public-spirited and not partisan, even-minded and not given to favoritism, vacant eyed, with none for a master, trailing after things without a second thought, giving not a glance to schemes, not a moment of speculation to knowledge, choosing neither this thing nor that, but going along with all of them—there were those in ancient times who believed that the “art of the Way” lay in such things. Peng Meng, Tian Pian, and Shen Dao heard of their views and delighted in them.2 The Way, they believed, lay in making the ten thousand things equal 13 “Heaven is capable of sheltering but not of bearing up,” they said. “Earth is capable of bearing up but not of sheltering. The Great Way is capable of embracing all things but not of discriminating among them.”/4 From this they deduced that each of the ten thousand things has that which is acceptable in it and that which is not acceptable. Therefore they said, “To choose is to forgo universality; to compare things15 is to fail to reach the goal. The Way has nothing that is left out of it.” For this reason, Shen Dao discarded knowledge, did away with self, followed what he could not help but follow, acquiescent and unmeddling where things were concerned, taking this to be the principle of the Way. “To know is not to know,” he said, and so he despised knowledge and worked to destroy and slough it off. Listless and lackadaisical 16 he accepted no responsibilities but laughed at the world for honoring worthy men. Casual and un-inhibited, he did nothing to distinguish himself but disparaged the great sages of the world. Lopping off corners, chiseling away the rough places, he went tumbling and turning along with things. He put aside both right and wrong and somehow managed to stay out of trouble. With nothing to learn from knowledge or scheming, no comprehension of what comes before or after, he merely rested where he was, and that was all. Pushed, he would finally begin to move; dragged, he would at last start on his way. He revolved like a whirlwind, spun like a feather, went round and round like a grindstone, keeping himself whole and free from condemnation. Without error, whether in motion or at rest, never once was he guilty of any fault. Why was this? Because a creature that is without knowledge does not face the perils that come from trying to set oneself up, the entanglements that come from relying on knowledge. In motion or in stillness, he never departs from reason—in this way he lives out his years without winning praise. Therefore Shen Dao said, “Let me become like those creatures without knowledge, that is enough1Z Such creatures have no use for the worthies or the sages. Clod-like, they never lose the Way.” The great and eminent men would get together and laugh at him, saying, “The teachings of Shen Dao are not rules for the living but ideals for a dead man. No wonder he is looked on as peculiar!” Tian Pian was a similar case. He studied under Peng Meng and learned what it means not to compare things. Peng Meng’s teacher used to say, “In ancient times the men of the Way reached the point where they regarded nothing as right and nothing as wrong—that was all.” But such ways are mute and muffled—how can they be captured in words? Peng Meng and Tian Pian always went contrary to other men and were seldom heeded. They could not seem to avoid lopping away at the corners. What they called the Way was not the true Way, and when they said a thing was right, they could not avoid raising the possibility that it might be wrong.18 Peng Meng, Tian Pian, and Shen Dao did not really understand the Way, though all had at one time heard something of what it was like. To regard the source as pure and the things that emerge from it as coarse, to look on accumulation as insufficiency; dwelling alone, peaceful and placid, in spiritual brightness there were those in ancient times who believed that the “art of the Way” lay in these things. The Barrier Keeper Yin and Lao Dan heard of their views and delighted in them12 They expounded them in terms of constant non-being and being and headed their doctrine with the concept of the Great Unity. Gentle weakness and humble self-effacement are its outer marks; emptiness, void, and the noninjury of the ten thousand things are its essence. The Barrier Keeper Yin said, “When a man does not dwell in self, then things will of themselves reveal their forms to him. His movement is like that of water, his stillness like that of a mirror, his responses like those of an echo. Blank eyed, he seems to be lost; motionless, he has the limpidity of water. Because he is one with it, he achieves harmony; should he reach out for it, he would lose it. Never does he go ahead of other men, but always follows in their wake.” Lao Dan said, “Know the male but cling to the female; become the ravine of the world. Know the pure but cling to dishonor; become the valley of the world.”22 Others all grasp what is in front; he alone grasped what is behind. He said, “Take to yourself the filth of the world.” Others all grasp what is full; he alone grasped what is empty. He never stored away—therefore he had more than enough; he had heaps and heaps of more than enough! In his movement, he was easygoing and did not wear himself out. Dwelling in inaction, he scoffed at skill. Others all seek good fortune; he alone kept himself whole by becoming twisted. He said, “Let us somehow or other avoid incurring blame!” He took profundity to be the root and frugality to be the guideline. He said, “What is brittle will be broken, what is sharp will be blunted.” He was always generous and permissive with things and inflicted no pain on others—this may be called the highest achievement. The Barrier Keeper Yin and Lao Dan—with their breadth and stature, they indeed were the True Men of old! Blank, boundless, and without form; transforming, changing, never constant. Are we dead? Are we alive? Do we stand side by side with Heaven and earth? Do we move in the company of spiritual brightness? Absentminded, where are we going? Forgetful, where are we headed for? The ten thousand things ranged all around us; not one of them is worthy to be singled out as our destination—there were those in ancient times who believed that the “art of the Way” lay in these things. Zhuang Zhou heard of their views and delighted in them. He expounded them in odd and outlandish terms, in brash and bombastic language, in unbound and unbordered phrases, abandoning himself to the times without partisanship, not looking at things from one angle only. He believed that the world was drowned in turbidness and that it was impossible to address it in sober language. So he used “goblet words” to pour out endless changes, “repeated words” to give a ring of truth, and “{mputed words” to impart greater breadth. He came and went alone with the pure spirit of Heaven and earth, yet he did not view the ten thousand things with arrogant eyes. He did not scold over “tight” and “wrong” but lived with the age and its vulgarity. Though his writings are a string of queer beads and baubles, they roll and rattle and do no one any harm.21 Though his words seem to be at sixes and sevens, yet among the sham and waggery, there are things worth observing, for they are crammed with truths that never come to an end. Above he wandered with the Creator, below he made friends with those who have gotten outside life and death, who know nothing of beginning or end. As for the Source, his grasp of it was broad, expansive, and penetrating; profound, liberal, and unimpeded. As for the Ancestor, he may be said to have tuned and accommodated himself to it and to have risen on it to the greatest heights. Nevertheless, in responding to change and expounding on the world of things, he set forth principles that will never cease to be valid, an approach that can never be shuffled off. Veiled and arcane, he is one who has never been completely comprehended. KOR Ok Hui Shi was a man of many devices, and his writings would fill five carriages. But his doctrines were jumbled and perverse, and his words wide of the mark. His way of dealing with things may be seen from these sayings: The largest thing has nothing beyond it; it is called the One of largeness. The smallest thing has nothing within it; it is called the One of smallness. That which has no thickness cannot be piled up; yet it is a thousand /i in dimension. Heaven is as low as earth; mountains and marshes are on the same level. The sun at noon is the sun setting. The thing born is the thing dying. Great similarities are different from little similarities; these are called the little similarities and differences. The ten thousand things all are similar and all are different; these are called the great similarities and differences. The southern region has no limit and yet has a limit. I set off for Yue today and came there yesterday.22 Linked rings can be separated. I know the center of the world: it is north of Yan and south of Yue.23 Let love embrace the ten thousand things; Heaven and earth are a single body. With sayings such as these, Hui Shi tried to introduce a more magnanimous view of the world and to enlighten the rhetoricians. The rhetoricians of the world happily joined in with the following sayings: An egg has feathers. Achicken has three legs 24 Ying contains the whole world.25 Adog can be considered a sheep. Horses lay eggs. Toads have tails. Fire is not hot.26 Mountains come out of the mouth.2Z Wheels never touch the ground. Eyes do not see. Pointing to it never gets to it; if it got to it, there would be no separation.28 The tortoise is longer than the snake. T squares are not right angled; compasses cannot make circles. Holes for chisel handles do not surround the handles. The flying bird’s shadow never moves. No matter how swift the barbed arrow, there are times when it is neither moving nor at rest. Adog is not a canine. Ayellow horse and a black cow make three. White dogs are black. The orphan colt never had a mother. Take a pole one foot long, cut away half of it every day, and at the end of ten thousand generations, there will still be some left. Such were the sayings that the rhetoricians used in answer to Hui Shi, rambling on without stop till the end of their days. Huan Duan and Gongsun Long were among such rhetoricians.22 Dazzling men’s minds, unsettling their views, they could outdo others in talking but could not make them submit in their minds—such were the limitations of the rhetoricians. Hui Shi, day after day, used all the knowledge he had in his debates with others, deliberately thinking up ways to astonish the rhetoricians of the world—the preceding examples illustrate this. Nevertheless, Hui Shi’s manner of speaking showed that he considered himself the ablest man alive. “Heaven and earth—perhaps they are greater!” he used to declare. All he knew how to do was play the hero; he had no real art. In the south there was an eccentric named Huang Liao who asked why Heaven and earth do not collapse and crumble or what makes the wind and rain, the thunder and lightning. Hui Shi, undaunted, undertook to answer him; without stopping to think, he began to reply, touching on every one of the ten thousand things in his peroration, expounding on and on without stop in multitudes of words that never ended. But still it was not enough, and so he began to add on his astonishing assertions. Whatever contradicted other men’s views he declared to be the truth, hoping to win a reputation for outwitting others. This was why he never got along with ordinary people. Weak in inner virtue, strong in his concern for external things, he walked a road that was crooked indeed! If we examine Hui Shi’s accomplishments from the point of view of the Way of Heaven and earth, they seem like the exertions of a mosquito or a gnat—of what use are they to other things? True, he still deserves to be regarded as the founder of one school, though I say, if he had only shown greater respect for the Way, he would have come nearer to being right. Hui Shi, however, could not seem to find any tranquillity for himself in such an approach. Instead, he went on tirelessly separating and analyzing the ten thousand things and, in the end, was known only for his skill in exposition. What a pity —that Hui Shi abused and dissipated his talents without ever really achieving anything! Chasing after the ten thousand things, never turning back, he was like one who tries to shout an echo into silence or to prove that form can outrun shadow. How sad! 1. Judging from the terminology, the “Sage” represents the Daoist ideal, the “gentleman,” the Confucian ideal, and what follows, the Legalist ideal of government by laws and bureaucratic control. But perhaps the writer intends all these concepts of government to represent different levels in the great, eclectic concept of ideal government. 2. These are the so-called Six Confucian Classics; Zou and Lu were the native states of Mencius and Confucius, respectively. It has been questioned whether there was ever an actual text called the Music, or whether this refers to the body of traditional court music and dances handed down by the Confucian scholars; here, however, the wording seems to indicate a written text. Descriptions such as this one of the nature of the Six Classics are found in many texts of Han or possibly pre-Han date. The description of the Odes, essentially a pun on the words shi (poetry) and zhi (will or emotion), could also be translated “the Book of Odes describes feelings,” an ambiguity that has led to much discussion among scholars of literary theory. 3. These are the titles of two sections in the Mozi, a text embodying the teaching of Master Mo Di; Mozi’s prescriptions concerning burial rites are found in another section entitled “Moderation in Funerals.” In fairness, it should be noted that Mozi did not prohibit mourning outright but thought it should be drastically simplified for reasons of economy. 4. Following Yu Yue, I read chuan in place of shan. 5. “Hard,” “white,” etc., were topics of logical debate taken up by the Mohist school; they seem to be essentially the same as the paradoxes of the Logicians mentioned on pp. 297-298. 6. Han Feizi, sec. 50, mentions three rival factions of the Mohist school, each of which claimed to represent the true teaching of Mo Di. These sects were well-organized groups under the strict control of an elder or grand master (Juzi), who had the right to choose his successor from among the members of the group. 7. Following Zhang Binglin, I read ku in place of gou. 8. The name is also romanized as Song Xing; in sec. 1, p. 3, he is referred to as Song Rongzi and in other texts as Song Keng. Little is known of him and Yin Wen beyond what is recorded here. 9. Flat on top, like Mount Hua, hence symbolic of equality and peace. 10. Compare sec. 1, p. 3: “He drewa clear line between the internal and the external and recognized the boundaries of true glory and disgrace.” 11. Or perhaps the meaning is “they discussed the phenomena of the mind.” Zhang Binglin would emend this to read “they discussed the desires of the mind.” 12. Little is known of Peng Meng and Tian Pian beyond what is recorded here. Shen Dao is often designated as a forerunner of the Legalist School; only fragments of his writings remain. 13. Following Xi Tong, I read dao in place of shou. 14. It seems odd in view of what follows that any imperfection should be imputed to the Way; perhaps the text is faulty. 15. Taking the jiao of the text as equivalent to the jiao that means “to compare,” that is, to try to determine the relative value of things. 16. No one has satisfactorily explained these two characters, but on the basis of the parallel phrase in the next sentence, it seems best to follow Ma Xulun in this interpretation. 17. That is, the whirlwind, feather, and grindstone just mentioned. 18. Compare sec. 2, p. 10: “Where there is recognition of right, there must be recognition of wrong,” etc. 19. Guan Yin or the Barrier Keeper Yin appeared on p. 146. Ashort work attributed to him is still extant but is generally agreed to be spurious. Legend says that when Laozi was leaving China, he was asked by the Barrier Keeper Yin for some written exposition of his teachings and produced the Daodejing as aresult, though modern scholarship questions whether the name Guan Yin in fact has anything to do with barriers. 20. This first quotation tallies almost exactly with parts of Daodejing XXVIII. The other sayings attributed here to Laozi agree in thought and terminology with the Daodejing but are not to be found in exactly this form in the present text of that work. 21. The meaning is uncertain. 22. This paradox was quoted on p. 9. As will be seen, most of these paradoxes deal with the relativity of space and time. Since in most cases, we do not know exactly how Hui Shi and the other logicians quoted later explained their paradoxes, it seems best not to try to comment at length on their meaning. 23. Yan and Yue represented the northern and southern extremities, respectively, of the China of this time. 24. Two legs plus the concept of “leg”; compare sec. 2, p. 13. 25. Ying was the capital of the state of Chu. 26. “Hot” is no more than an arbitrary label that men use to describe how they feel in the presence of fire. 27. When one pronounces their names? There are other explanations. 28. The word zhi, “pointing,” was translated on p. 10 as “attribute,” that is, what can be pointed to. The meaning here seems to be that the attributes of a thing, that which we can point to, never fully describe the thing itself; if they did, then it would be impossible to separate the thing from its attributes. 29. Awork in three zuan attributed to the latter, the Gongsun Longzi, is still extant. See Max Perleberg, The Works of Kung-sun Lung-tzu (Hong Kong, 1952). INDEX Page numbers refer to the print edition but are hyperlinked to the appropriate location in the e-book. A Hegan, 183 abyss, 38, 38nd 224, 235 i ahaa advice, xvi, 23, 26-28, 28n12, 69, 69n3, 20, 116, 140, fr affection: and benevolence, 43, 108—9, 197; and the friendship of a gentleman, 161; and rulers and subjects, 116, 210; true affection, 275—76 Ai, duke of Lu, 37-39, 157, 157n2, 171, 282. See also Lu, marquis of Ai Taituo (ugly man), 37-38 alcohol, 69, 69n4, 276, 284; drunken man, 146 ambition, 121, 124, 245—46. See also fame, eminence Analects, 33n18, 53n23, 124n4, 134n14, 248n11, 259n11, 272n2 analysis, 196, 196n20 Ancestor, 169, 181, 287, 296; Great Ancestor, 99. See also Creator; God; One; prime mover; Source, the ancients, the. See men of ancient times anger, 28, 159, 198; and damage to yin element, 74; as entanglement of virtue, 197; Mozi and, 289; true anger, 275-76; ulcers from, 218, 218n10 animals: attraction to their own kind, 15; death of, 28, 123; escaping danger, 189; and humans in ancient times, 255— 56; inauspicious creatures for sacrifice, 32; lack of appreciation for music, 143; nourishment according to their nature, 143, 154—55; reproduction, 118; transformation into one another, 144; and unity, 170. See also sacrifices; ten thousand things, the; specific animals ants, 182, 211-12, 212n23 archery, 147; Archer Peng Meng, 162; Archer Yi, 36, 162, 197-98, 204—5; arrogant monkey killed by arrow, 207; Lie Yukou and, 174 artisans, 204; Artisan Chui, 71, 153; buckle maker, 185; 66; potter, 65; smith, 48—49; wheelwright, 106—7. See also skill artists, 172 attributes and nonattributes, 10, 10n7. See also “hard” and “white” August Ones, 108, 113, 113n15, 116-17 “Autumn Floods,” 126-38 autumn hair, tip of. See hair, tip of avidity, 274 baby: Laozi on, 192—93; leper woman and newborn child, x, 96; and Shun’s rule, 117; value compared to money, 161; weaning, 118, 118n21 Bao Jiao (recluse), 257, 257n9, 261 Bao Shuya, 206 Barrier Keeper Yin, 146, 294—95, 294n18 beauty, xxii—xxiii, 15, 165, 177, 216; and blindness, 52; and determining worthiness of men, 284; Perfect Beauty, 170; and three kinds of virtue, 254—55; trouble from, 284 beginning, 12—13; Beginning, 88—89; no beginning but has its end, 163, 164 being and nonbeing, 9, 13, 47, 88, 120, 195—96, 226 bells, 159, 159n5 bell stand, 152—53 benevolence: and affection, 43, 108—9, 197; being fork- fingered in, 60; defined/described, 85; Great Benevolence, 14; paragon of (see Zeng Shen); Yao and, 210; Zhuangzi on, 108—9. See also benevolence and righteousness benevolence and righteousness, 102, 122; and age of Perfect Virtue, 94; Confucius on, 104; and confusion, 15, 115; dilemmas of, 191; forgetting, 52; and the gentleman, 287; and governance, 201—2; and inborn nature, 61—64; Laozi on, 114, 115; and loss of the Way, 66-67, 77, 177; love and benefit as products of, 210-11; necessity of, 82—83, 82n17; and the old fisherman, 272; and the Perfect Man, 114; reputation and righteous conduct, 259; risking life for, 63; and theft, 70 bent-with-burdens men, 211—12 Bian Qingzi, 153-54 Bian Sui, 249 Big Concealment, 79-81 bigotry, 274 birds: avoiding danger, 55, 160, 189; food for, 15; inborn nature, 61; Listless, 160; and men’s knowledge, 71; nourishment according to their nature, 143, 154-55; Peng, 1—2; shadows of, 298; and sufficiency, 3; transformations, 144; webbed toes, 60. See also specific birds birth, 10, 180 blame, 113, 120, 157; blame/credit for things beyond one’s control, 244; and criminals, 198; and influencing difficult students, 24—25, 29; and the Perfect Man/man of Complete Virtue, 92, 160; and personal responsibility, 221; and reproaches using words from antiquity, 24—25 blindness, 4, 52, 190, 190n4 blood, transformation into jade, 227 Bo, Duke, 130, 130n10 boats, 45, 112, 147, 159 Bo Changqian (historiographer), 222, 222n20 Bocheng Zigao, 86 body: entrusting the world to the man who values his body more than the world, 75—76; five vital organs, 60, 60n2; forgetting, 164—65; as form lent by Heaven and earth, 179; and going along with things, 162; keeping the body whole, 190; and life and death, 9, 168; and man of kingly Virtue, 85; nourishing the body, 145; origins of, 180; seven openings of, 59; six parts of, 35, 35n2; and supreme happiness, 139; True Lord of, 9; tumors and wens, 60, 1414; and weariness, 121 Bo Huang, 71 Bohun Wuren, 35, 174, 279-80 Bo Ju, 220-21 Boli Xi, 172, 172n10, 198 Bo Luo (horse trainer), 65, 65n1, 67 Book of Changes, 117, 124n4, 288 Book of Documents, 117, 200, 288 Book of Rites, 194n11 books, 106—7, 118-19, 280 border guards, 16, 86—87, 220 breathing, breath, 42, 80, 181, 232 Bright Dazzlement, 185 Bright One, 79, 79n8 brothers, 252, 261, 261n14, 280 buckle maker, 185 Buliang Yi, 46 burials, 229, 286 butterflies, 18, 144 calumny, 274 cangue, 77 Cao Shang, 282 carpenters, 65, 152—53, 152n7; Carpenter Shi, 30-31, 205-6 carriages, 124, 158; falling out of, 146; as gifts, 282, 285; and praying mantis, 29, 90; skill at driving, 153; and Weituo, 151 castration, 101n5 caterpillars, 2, 190 cattle tending, 172, 172n10 centipedes, 15 Chang Hong, 23, 227, 227n2 Chang Ji, 34—35 Chaos, Mr. (Hundun), 59, 92-93 Chen and Cai, Confucius besieged between, 112, 134-35, 161, 163, 247, 256, 275 Cheng of North Gate, 109-11 The Child, 24 children, 13, 231. See also baby; sons and parents Chinese history, outline of, xxxiii Chi You, 256, 256n5 Chizhang Manqui, 94 Chu (state), 175n18, 208n17, a 44, 243n4 Chu, king of, 137, 175, 215, 215nl. See also Zhao, king of Chu Chui (artisan), 71, 153 cicada, 1, 164-65, 196, 237; cicada-catching hunchback, 147; wings of, 18, 18n23 clay, inborn nature of, 65 clothing: Confucian clothing, 171; and humans in ancient times, 255; Mohist clothing, 290—91; monkey in, 113 Cloud Chief, 79-81 clouds and rain, 108, 108n1 coarseness and fineness, 129, 294 Commander of the Right, 20, 20n5 communication, 27. See also speech; words community words, 223-24, 223n23 companion of Heaven, 24, 44, 50 companion of men, 24, 44 Complete Man, 197-98. See also Great Clod; Great Man; Holy Man; Man of Great Completion; Man of the Way; Perfect Man; sage; Supreme Swindle; True Man concubines, 165, 188 Confucianism, will, 60-64, 77, 122, 122nn1.2, 204—5, 208, 288, 288n2; clothing, 171; and Daoism, xiv—xvii, xix; five virtues, 60n2; gentleman as Confucian ideal, 287n1; and grave-robbing, 229; and meaning of right and wrong, 10; as official state doctrine, xv; origins of, 117; and “Webbed Toes,” 61n9 Confucius, x, xxviii; and awareness of dreaming and waking, 51; on being whole in power, 39; on benevolence and righteousness, 104; Chang Ji and, 34—35; and Chinese history, xxxiii; and cicada-catching hunchback, 147; on determining worthiness of men, 283-84; difficulties and persecutions during travels, 112, 134-35, 159-61, 163, 247-48, 256, 275; and diving man, 151—52; Duke Ai of Lu and, 37—39; on duty, 27; on fate, 27, 28, 39, 134; and the fisherman, 271—78; and funeral of Master Sanghu, 49-50; and funeral of mother of Mengsun Cai, 51; Grand Historiographers and, 222—23; on handling boats, 147; on the happy medium, 149, 149n3; Jie Yu (madman of Chu) and, 32; Lao Laizi and, 229-30; Laozi (Lao Dan) Ji and, 252, 259; Lord of the Yellow River on, 126; love of learning, 272, 272n2; lute-playing, 134, 247; Master Sanghu and, 49-50, 161—62; mother, 261, 262n17; on the Perfect Man, 22; on profit, 28; Ran Qiu and, 185-86; retirement of, 160, 161; and right and wrong, 235; Robber Zhi and, 252—59; Ruo of the North Sea on, 127; on the sage, 15—16, 164; search for the Way, 113-14, 276-78; Shushan No-Toes and, 36—37; on skill, 147; on successful behavior, 27—28, 28n12; at tavern at Ant Knoll, 219-20; and traveling, 111—13, 219-20; on troubled times, 134; on virtue, 22, 39, 254—55; on Wang Tai’s success and virtue, 34—35; on the Way, 50, 104, 208; Wenbo Xuezi and, 167; on wisdom, 231; on worldly affairs, 22—26; Yan He on, 282—83; Yan Hui (Yan Yuan) 173-74, 186-87, 246, 247-48; and Yan Yuan’s travels to Qi, 142-43; Zigao and, 26; Zigong and, 49-50, 92—93, 142, 247-48, 271-72; Zilu and, 103—4, 134, 219-20, 247-48, 256, 271, 277-78 confusion: and benevolence and righteousness, 15, 115; and music of Heaven, 111; and pursuit of knowledge, 71— 73; and right and wrong, 15; and travelers, 95—96; and Yao and Shun, 190 Congzhi (state), 23 consorts, 38 “Constrained in Will,” 119-21 crane, 61 creation. See world, origins of Creator, 47-52, 52n22, 56, 281, 296. See also Ancestor; God; One; prime mover; Source, the criminals, xxii, 198, 221, 221n17; the five penalties, 101, 101n5; as gatekeepers, 205, 205n10; men with feet cut Crippled Shu, 32 Crippled Yi, 281 crowd, distinguishing oneself from, 81, 115 Cui Zhu, 76 Dai Jinren, 218—19 Dan. See Zhou, duke of dance, 19, 19n3, 101n7 Danfu, king, 240, 240n2, 251n18 Dao. See Way, the Daodejing (Laozi), xiii—xiv, xix, 60nn1,2, 71n9, 75n2, 86n6, 294n19, 295n20 Daoism, wiii—xvili; and other philosophies, xiv—xvii, xix—xx; revival of, xvii Dark Virtue, 89 Da Tao (historiographer), 222, 222n20 Da Ting, 71 deafness, 4, 190, 190n4 death: of animals, 28, 123; avoiding, 160—61; premature death, 117, 123; risking death for the sake of external things, 62—63, 134n15, 139-40, 196, 257, 261; and transformation, 99; and Zhuangzi’s dream of the skull, 142. See also life and death; mourning debate and argumentation, x—xi; and advice to kings and dukes, 23; being web-toed in, 60—61; debates among philosophers, 205, 205n9; determining the winner of an argument, 17; and “hard” and “white,” 291, 291n5; Huizi and, 298; and large and small, 128; Mohists and, 291; and not talking, not being silent, 226; and realm of formlessness, 181; and violence, 202. See also wrangling decisiveness, 284—85 deer, attraction to their own kind, 15 Deng Heng, 217, 217n8 dependence, 18n23; and the body, 162; Liezi and, 3; mutual dependence of things, 10—11, 186, 224; and the sage, 83 Diaoling, 164—65 Ding (cook), 19-20 ‘Discoursing on Swords,” 266—70 also likes and dislikes; “same” and “different” “Discussion on Making All Things Equal,” 7—18 divination, 173,222,230, diving man, 15 1—52 doctors, 282 Dongguo, Master, 182—83 Dongye Ji, 153 Do-Nothing-Say-Nothing, 176-78 dove, 1,97, 196 dragons, butchering, 281 dragon vision, 116 dreaming: awareness of dreaming and waking, 16—18, 51; butterfly dream, 18; father’s dream of Huan, 280; fisherman dream, falsely reported, 172—73; oak tree dream, 30—31; and straw dogs, 112; Zhuangzi’s dream of the skull, 142 droughts, 44, 136 duck, 61 eight delights, 75 eminence. See fame, eminence emotions. See feelings empires and kingdoms: and decline of Virtue, 256—57; “Giving Away a Throne,” 239—S 1; and itinerant statesmen, 8 1—82, 81n13; possessors of, 82; reluctant rulers, 241; rise of Zhou dynasty, 250—S5 1; rulers’ desire to cede to others, 3—4, 172-73, 233, 239—40, 248, 249; rules of succession, 131; states stolen/conquered, 68— 69, 130n10, 175, 249, 249n14, 257; thrones ceded to others, 116, 130, 130n9; uprisings, 208n17, 256n6. See also governance; rulers “enough.” See sufficiency equality, xi, 147, 293; “Discussion on Making All Things Equal,” 7—18; equal value of life and death, xi, xviii, 44— 223, 223n24, 293, 296; and mutual dependence of things, 10—11 ethics, code of, 157; dilemmas of ethics, 191; and righteous conduct, 259-60. See also benevolence and righteousness four evils besetting men’s undertakings, 274 exaggeration, 27 excrement, 182 261 exile, men in, 200, 243-44 existence and nonexistence. See being and nonbeing expertness, 63. See also skill eyesight, 66, 71, 213; being web-toed in, 60; blindness, 4, 52, 190, 190n4; and horse-herding boy, 203; looking at oneself, 64; and loss of inborn nature, 96—97 fairness and unfairness, 286 falcon, 15 fame, eminence, 25, 59, 109, 139, 194, 232; avoiding, 251; as delusions of the will, 197; and fate, 39; and inborn nature, 60; Laozi on, 114; and Man of the Way, 129; and the Perfect Man, 114; and premiership of Sunshu Ao, 174~—75; and recluses, 207, 207n16; risking life for, 62; and ruin, 160; Sole Possessor, 82; and trust, 259; virtue destroyed by, 22; and warfare, 23 family, risking life for, 62 Fan (state), 175, 175n18 Fan, lord of, 175 farming, 86, 90-91, 204, 220; farmer of Stone Door, 240 fasting, 25, 112, 152 fate, 124-25, 145; Confucius on, 27, 28, 39, 134; and diving man, 152; and origin of the world, 88; possession of, 179; and poverty, 39, 54; and progression of life and death, 141; and punishment, 36; resigning oneself to what cannot be avoided, 28, 36, 44; and troubled times, 134, 162-63. See also life and death favors, 283; and blame/credit for things beyond one’s control, 244; punishment and favor as “the two handles” of political power, 106; and rulers, 132; the sage and, 40. See also gifts; reward and punishment fear: brought on by sons, 86; great and little fears, 8; and Liezi and the soup sellers, 279; and music, 111; of shadows and footprints, 275; and worldly affairs, 114, 265 feelings, 120; as entanglements of virtue, 197; and going along with things, 162; and the sage, 40; and the True Man, 43—44; True Master of, 8; and yin and yang, 74; Zhuangzi on the man with no feelings, 40—41 feet: cut off (see criminals); fear of footprints, 275; Kun’s feet cut off by bandits, 209; one-footed men as gatekeepers, 205, 205n10; respectful gazing at, 254, 254n3; stepped on, 196—97; treading a small area of ground, 213 Feng Youlan, xxiv, XxxX—xxxi fertilization, 118 courts of, 72, 72n1 2; and itinerant statesmen, 81, 81n13; sword of, 268—69; as thief, 70, 260; worries of, 273 finger, extra, 60 fire, 21, 227, 298 fish, 118; attraction to their own kind, 15; in carriage rut, 228; and dry springs, 44; and enjoyment, 137-38; escaping/avoiding danger, 189; forgetting one another in rivers and lakes, 44, 50, 212n23; Kun, 1—2; likes and dislikes, 143; and men’s knowledge, 71 Fisherman,” 271—78; Prince Ren, 228—29; and sickness, 26n9; theft of fishnet, 45; Yu Ju and the turtle, 230-31 fish hawk, 118 ‘Fit for Emperors and Kings,” 55—59 flattery, 94-95, 274 floods, 136 flying, 25—26 food, 15, 63, 209-10, 279. See also nourishment foolish men, 95, 158,255, 286. See also stupidity forgetting: and criminals, 198; fish forgetting one another in rivers and lakes, 44, 50, 212n23; forgetting life, 145; forgetting the self in pursuit of gain, 165; forgetting the self in the Way, 50, 52, 52n22, 89; and what is comfortable, 153; Yan Hui (Yan Yuan) and, 52—53, 169 forms, 146; man’s true form, 258; and origin of the world, 89; size of formless things, 129; and transformation, 181 fox, 157 “Free and Easy Wandering,” 1—6 freedom, ix, xvii, 111 friendship, 161 frog in the caved-in well, 135-36 frugality, xvnl, 3n6, 105, 105n13 201n3, 238n11 function, 130, 131. See also usefulness and uselessness funerals, 49-51 Fuyao, 79, 79n10 Fu Yue (minister), 46, 46n13 gamecocks, training of, 151 games of skill, 27—28 gatekeepers, 205, 209 “Gengsang Chu,” 188—98 Gengsang Chu, 188—91 gentleman: characteristics and actions of, 287, 287n1; and determining worthiness of men, 283-84; dying for reputation, 261; friendship of, 161; as petty man of Heaven, 50; risking life for benevolence and righteousness, 63 ghosts and spirits, 110, 123, 150-51, 194, 195, 237 gifts, 69n4, 242, 243, 260, 266, 282, 285-86. See also favors Giles, Herbert A., xxiv, xxx—xxx1 “Giving Away a Throne,” 239-51 goblet words, 234—35, 296 God, 21, 45. See also Ancestor; Creator; One; prime mover; Source, the gods, 45, 132; Jian Wu (god of Mount Tai), 4, 45, 55, 174—75; river god, 45, 126-33, 126n1; sea god, 126-33; Yuqiang (deity of the far north), 46, 46n12 Golden Tablets, 200, 200n2 Gong (banished man), 76 Gong Bo, 248, 248n13 Gongsun Long (Bing; logician), xv, xxxiii, 10n7, 135-37, 135n16, 204—5, 204n7, 298 Gongsun Yan, 217-18 Gongwen Xuan, 20 Gong Yuexiu, 215-16 good fortune, 132, 224; Jie Yu (madman of Chu) on, 32; and Kun, son of Ziqi, 209-10; Laozi on, 170, 193; Liezi and, 3; and the sage, 120; and stillness, 26 See also benevolence and righteousness; Virtue goose, 156 gossip, 274 Goujian, king of Yue, 212, 212n25 gourds, 5—6 governance, 20 1—2, 287; benefiting the world, 211; care for the lives of subjects over possession of territory, 240, 240n3; Duke Ai of Lu and, 39; entrusting affairs of state to others, 206; entrusting the world to the man who values his body more than the world, 75—76, 239; and favors, 283; “Fit for Emperors and Kings,” 55—59; “Giving Away a Throne,” 239-51; and herding horses, 203; and hypocrisy, 256; and inaction, 75—76, 84, 100, 103; and inborn nature, 74, 90; Laozi (Lao Dan) on, 57; and men of ancient times, 288; Nameless Man on, 56; and necessity of benevolence, righteousness, law, ritual, etc., 82-83, 82n17; and office-holding, 250—51; and old man of Zang, 172—73; opposition to government enterprises, xv, xvnl, 23; and partiality, 223; and the people, 116—17, 201—2; and the Perfect Man, 106; reluctant rulers, 241 (see also empires and kingdoms: rulers’ desire to cede to others); and revenge, 217-18; and rise of Zhou dynasty, 250—5 1; and the sage, 55, 90, 93; Shennong and, 250; and sufficiency, 3—4; trivia of good governance, 101; and the True Man, 44, 44n6; and warfare, 201—2; “The Way of Heaven,” 98-107, 102n8; and “The World,” 287—89; Xian (shaman) on, 108; Xu Wugui on, 20 1—2; and Zichan, prime minister of Zheng, 35-36. See also empires and kingdoms; rulers; specific rulers Grand Purity, 184 “The Great and Venerable Teacher,” 42—54 Great Beginning, 88, 282 Complete Man; Great Man; Holy Man; Man of Great Completion; Man of the Way; Perfect Man; sage; Supreme Swindle; True Man Great Impartial Accord, 223-26 Great Man, 82, 177, 219; characteristics and actions of, 129, 208-9, 223. See also Complete Man; Great Clod; Holy Man; Man of Great Completion; Man of the Way; Perfect Man; sage; Supreme Swindle; True Man Great Purity, 110, 282 Great Serenity, 193, 213 Great Thoroughfare, 53, 136 Guan Feng, xxix—xxx Guang Cheng, 77—78, 78nn6, 7 Guan Longfeng, 23, 69, 227, 227nl Guan Yin. See Barrier Keeper Yin Gushe Mountain, 4, 5 hair, tip of, 13, 13n12, 127, 128, 130, 183 Han (state), 241—42 Handan, 69, 69n4 Handan Walk, 136 Han dynasty, xiv, xv—xvii, xvii, 102n8 Han Feizi (Legalist philosopher), xv, xxxiii happiness, 120; and the dead, 142; as entanglement of virtue, 197; and occupations of men, 203-4; Perfect Happiness, 170; “Supreme Happiness,” 139-44. See also joy Hara Tomio, xxx “hard” and “white,” 12, 12n9, 41, 61, 71, 89, 135, 135n16, 291, 291n5 hardship, 87, 125, 134, 163; avoiding disaster, 157—58, 160; being blocked, 248; and happiness of men of strength, 203; and Mohism, 291; responses to, 161; also Confucius: difficulties and persecutions during travels; disorder; misfortune; suffering hawks, 15 hearing, 71, 213; being overnice in, 60; deafness, 4, 190, 190n4; listening with the mind, 25; listening to oneself, 63; and loss of inborn nature, 96-97 heart, snares of, 197 Heaven: companion of Heaven, 24, 44, 50; crime of hiding from Heaven, 21, 281; and earth (see Heaven and earth); and governance, 83; the Heavenly and the human, 132— 33, 163, 164; Heavenly Equality, 17, 235; Heavenly Gate, 195; Heavenly Gruel, 40; Heavenly joy, 99-100; Heavenly Man, 287; Heavenly Virtue, 84; Heaven the Equalizer, 11; Helper of Heaven, 146; music of Heaven, 111; and one-footed men, 20; One-with-Heaven, 121; Reservoir of Heaven, 14; and responses to hardship, 161; and the sage, 10; Tian translated as, xxviii, 10n6, 44n7; and the True Man, 42; “The Turning of Heaven,” 108—18; unity of Heaven and man, 163, 164; “The Way of Heaven,” 98-107 Heaven and earth, 8n2; and attributes, 10; body lent by, 179; as father and mother of the ten thousand things, 145; “Heaven and Earth,” 84—97; Heaven as honorable, earth lowly, 101; Huizi on, 297; inaction of, 140; level of, 120; mirror of, 98; origin of, 45, 186; piping of, 7—8; time before, 185—86; and unspoken truths, 178; Virtue of, 99 hens, 190-91 He Xu (legendary ruler), 67, 67n6, 71 Holy Man, 233, 287; characteristics and actions of, 3, 212; and inauspicious creatures, 32; magical powers of, 4; and unusable trees, 31. See also Complete Man; Great Clod; Great Man; Man of Great Completion; Man of the Way; Perfect Man; sage; Supreme Swindle; True Man homeland: exile from, 200; return to, 216-17 Honest Gong, 261, 262n17 honor, 3n6, 75, 85, 94, 99, 101-2, 109, 260, 262, 278, 293 horsefly, 115 horse lover, 29-30 horses, 298; and attributes, 10, 10n7; broken down, 153; herding, 202—3; and the human, 133; inborn nature of, 65-67; judging, 199-200; and labeling, 223; Qiji and Hualiu (thoroughbreds), 131; transformations, 144 ‘Horses’ Hoofs,” 65—67 Hu [Sudden], emperor of the North Sea, 59 Huainanzi, xiv, Xxv Hualiu (horse), 131 Huan (Confucian scholar from Zheng), 280—82 Huan Dou (banished man), 76 Huan Duan, 298 Huang Liao, 299 Huangzi Gaoao, 150 Huazi, Master, 241—42 Hu Buxie, 43 Hui, king of Wei, vii, 5, 19 Huizi (Hui Shi; logician philosopher), xv, xxviii, 5n10, 218-19; and Chinese history, xxxiii; death of, 205—6; paradoxes of, 9n4, 297—99; and warfare, 218; Zhuangzi human relations: and communication, 27; ethical ties between people, 260—61; men’s affinity for those like themselves/disdain for those different from themselves, 81; and people in exile, 200; and responses to hardship, 161; and the sage, 181, 216; and trust, 27; and the Truth, 276; types of connections, 161. See also rulers; sons and parents; teachers and disciples/students humor, Zhuangzi’s use of, xi, xxi hunchback, 147 Hundun [Chaos], emperor of the central region, 59, 92 hunter, 134 Huzi, 57-59, 57n9 hypocrisy, 255—61, 283 Illumination of Vastness, 94 immortality, xii, 79, 141 296; Great Impartial Accord, 223—26 impersonator of the dead, 4, 188 imputed words, 234, 296 “Imputed Words,” 234-38 Confucianism, xy; and funeral of Master Sanghu, 50; and governance, 75—76, 84, 100, 103; and happiness, 140; and Laozi, 295; and the Perfect Man, 114; and true man of the Way, 93; wuwei translated as, xi, xxix. See also wandering inborn nature, 118, 125, 164, 197; conditions for losing, 96-97, 199, 261; and governance, 74, 90; “Horses’ Hoofs,” 65—67; joy upon return to, 217n5; and loss of the Way, 66-67, 123, 125, 282; “Mending the Inborn Nature,” 122-25; and origin of the world, 89; possession of, 179; and the sage, 216; and slipshod actions, 220; and true man of the Way, 93; “Webbed Toes,” 60—64; and worldly affairs, 65—66, 74—75 incest, 117, 117n20, 260 insects, 118, 144, 197. See also specific insects integrity, 109, 261,276 “In the World of Men,” 22—33 Invocator of the Ancestors, 149-50 irresponsibility, 27 Jianglti Mian, 90 Jian Wu (god of Mount Tai), 4, 45, 55, 174—75 Jian Xian (shaman), 57 Ji Che, 90 Jie (tyrant), 23, 74, 77, 130, 249, 257, 259-60 Jie sacrifice, 32, 32n17 Jie Yu (madman of Chu), 32, 55 Jiezi (philosopher), 225, 225n3 1 Jie Zitui, 257, 257n9 Jin (music master), 111—13 Jing family, 196, 196n19 Jingshi region of Song, 3 1—32 Jingshou music, 19 Ji Qu (sage king), 26, 26n7 Ji Tuo, 43, 233, 233n16 Ji Xingzi, 151 Ji Zhen (philosopher), 225, 225n31 Ji Zi, 43 joy, 125, 187; and being whole in power, 39; and damage to yang element, 74; as entanglement of virtue, 197; failure to find, 64; finding joy in what brings joy to others, not self, 43; and harmonizing with men and Heaven, 99-100. See also happiness Ju Boyu (minister of Wei), 28-29, 28n13 Juci Mountain, 202 juggling, 208, 208n17 Juliang (strong man), 52, 52n22 Ju Que, 15—16 Kanpi (god of Kunlun Mountains), 45 knife, 19-20 knowledge, 14—15, 26; confusion arising from pursuit of, 71—73; and loss of the Way, 67, 123; and lost Dark Pearl, 86; and men as travelers, 187; and men of ancient times, 122~—24; pursuit of, 19, 71—73; recognizing what is “enough,” xvi; as roadblock of the Way, 197; the sage and, 40, 180; Shen Dao on, 293; trouble from, 285; the True Man and, 42. See also learning; scholars “Knowledge Wandered North,” 175-87 Kuai, king of Yan, 130, 130n9 Kuaikui, crown prince of Wei, 28—29, 28n13 Kuan Feng, xxx Kuang (music master), 12, 60, 71 Kuangzi, 261, 262n17 Kul, crown prince, 266—67 Kui, the (one-legged being), 133, 133n13, 150 Kun (fish), 1—2 Kun (son of Ziqi), 209-10 Kunlun Mountains, 45, 45n11, 141, 185, 185n13 Lai, Master, 47—49 Lame-Hunchback-No-Lips, Mr., 40 Lao Laizi, 229, 229n6 Laozi (Lao Dan), ix, xvnl; Barrier Keeper Yin and, 294—95, 294n18; Bo Ju and, 220—21; and Chinese history, xxxiii; 82; Cui Zhu and, 76; and Daoism, xili—xiv; frugality of, 105, 105n13; on governance, 57; little sister, 105, 105n13; on meddling with men’s minds, 76; Nanrong Zhu and, 190—93; on preserving life, 192—93; Qin Qhi mourning the death of, 20—21; sayings, 295; Shi Chengqi and, 105; Shushan No-Toes and, 37; Yang Ziju and, 237— 38; Zigong and, 116 large and small, 13, 13n12, 127-30, 297 Lau, D.C., xxxi laughing, 51, 258 laws, 82, 82n17, 101,103 Legge, James, xxx—xxxi, 21n7, 26n10, 259n11 leopards, 56, 97, 144, 157 leper, 11; leper woman and newborn child, x, 96 “Let It Be, Let It Alone,” 74—83 Level Road, 128 Li, Lady, 16, 16n21 Li, Master, 47—49 Lian Shu, 4 licentiousness, 201 Lie Yukou. See Liezi “Lie Yukou,” 279-86 Liezi, xxv, 3n7 demonstration, 174; and hundred-year-old skull, 143; “Lie Yukou,” 279-86; on the Perfect Man, 146 life, 134; brevity of, 181; dangers from loss of inborn nature, 96; and death (see life and death); “Mastering Life,” 145-55; nourishing, 149; prescriptions for (see life, prescriptions for); preserving, 192—93, 240—43; and pursuit of knowledge, 19; shames brought on by long life, 86 life, prescriptions for, xi—xii; and carving oxen, 19—20; and eight delights, 75; and the eight faults and four evils, 274; and following inclinations, 247; and gaining possession of the Way, 179-80; and “Gengsang Chu,” 190-98; and going along with things, 162; Guang Cheng on, 78—79; and “Heaven and Earth,” 84—85; Laozi on, 192-93; life in the time of Perfect Virtue, 66; and looking out for oneself, 242—43; and the man with no feelings, 40—41; and office-holding, 250—51; old fisherman on, 276; and poverty, 245—46; and “Robber Zhi,” 261-65; “The Secret of Caring for Life,” 19-21; Shen Dao on, 293-94; Shun on, 162; warnings and bad 276; and “The Way of Heaven,” 98—100; and worldly affairs, 22—33, 43, 59, 75, 114—15; Yan Hui (Yan Yuan) on, 246. See also inaction; sage life and death: appropriateness of one or the other, 212, 212n24; and the body, 9, 168; equal value of, xi, xviii, 44-45, 48, 50, 85, 128; and fate, 39, 44, 141; loving life and hating death, 16, 43; and men of ancient times, 195; mutual dependence of, 10, 177, 186, 196; no singing in life, no mourning in death, 289—90; and prime mover, 225-26; risking death for the sake of external things, likes and dislikes, 12, 12n8, 130; and animals, 143; desire and hatred, 197, 224; and loss of inborn nature, 96—97, 199; and the man with no feelings, 41 Li Lu, 71 limited and limitless, the, 19, 183, 214 limpidity, 98, 120-21 Ling, duke of Wei, 40, 222, 222n20 Lin Hui, 161 Lin Ju, 165 Lin Yutang, xxx—xxxi Listless (bird), 160 Little Understanding, 223-25 Liu Wendian, xxix Liuxia Ji, 252, 259 Li Xu, 71 Li Zhu (Li Lou; man of keen eyesight), 60, 60n3, 63, 71 Logicians, xv Lonely One, 254, 254n4 longevity. See lifespans Lord of the Yellow River, 126—33, 230. See also Pingyi love, 109; and benevolence and righteousness, 210; and injury to the Way, 12, 12n8; snares of the heart, 197; and the Truth, 276. See also affection Lu (state), T12, 247: : and Confucian clothing: 171; and development of Confucianism, viii, 288; persecution of Confucius in, 247, 256, 275; wine of, 69, 69n4 Lu, man of, 167 Lu, marquis of, 143, 157, 157n2. See also Ai, duke of Lu Lu, ruler of, 158, 242 Lu Buwei (prime minister of Qin), xxxiii Lu Ju, 204—S5, 205n9 lute-playing, 12, 12n8, 53; Confucius and, 134, 247; matching pitches, 204—5 machines, 91—92, 112—13 maggots, 144 magical powers, xii—xili, 4, 15, 42, 146. See also harm, imperviousness to magpie, 118, 164—65 maliciousness, 274 Man Goude, 259-62, 259n11 Mangsun Cai, 51 man of ardor, 134, 139 Man of Great Completion, 160. See also Complete Man; Great Clod; Great Man; Holy Man; Man of the Way; Perfect Man; sage; Supreme Swindle; True Man Man of the Way, 129. See also Complete Man; Great Clod; Great Man; Holy Man; Man of Great Completion; Perfect Man; sage; Supreme Swindle; True Man Master Dongguo, 182—83 “Mastering Life,” 145—55 Master Lai, 47—49 Master Li, 47—49 Master Piyi, 55nl, 86, 179 Master Puyi, 55, 55nl Master Qinzhang, 49 Master Sang, 53—54 Master Sanghu, 49, 161—62 Master Si, 47—49 Master Yu, 47-49, 53-54 Ma Xulun, 196n19 meaning, 106, 233 medicinal plants, 212 men: bent-with-burdens men, 211—12; companion of, 24, 44; faults and evils of, 274, 284; food for, 15; foolish men, 95, 158, 255, 286 (see also stupidity); ideal man (see Complete Man; Great Clod; Great Man; Holy Man; Man of Great Completion; Man of the Way; Perfect Man; sage; Supreme Swindle; True Man); man of ardor, 134, 139; smug-and-satisfied men, 211; swords of different classes, 268—70; types of, 211—12; worries of different classes, 273. See also feudal lord; gentleman; human relations; people, the; petty men; rulers; spirits of men; specific occupations “Mending the Inborn Nature,” 122—25 Mengzi Fan, 49 men of ancient times, 102—3, 122-23, 232n12; and “art of the Way,” 289, 291, 293, 296; chaff and dregs of, 107, 118; and governance, 288; and hardship (being blocked), 248; and imputed words, 234; and knowledge, 122-24; and loss of the Way, 122—25; and office-holding, 250— 51; and personal responsibility, 221; and transformation, 186; understanding of, 11-12, 195. See also Perfect Man; ‘True Man Men Wugui, 94 merchant, 194, 204 merriment, 98, 276 Merton, Thomas, xxxi metal, transformation of, 48—49 Middle Kingdom, 127, 181, 288 millipede, 133 mind: death of, 168; emptiness as fasting of the mind, 25; and Heavenly wanderings, 232; ideal state of, 120-21; listening with, 25; and loss of the Way, 123; of the man of kingly Virtue, 85—86; meddling with, 76—77; mind- nourishment, 81n12; as mirror, 59; racing mind, 26, 26n6; as teacher, 9, 25; and the True Man, 43; and using skills, 153; Yao and, 103; and yin and yang, 195. See also feelings; knowledge; learning; Spirit Tower; understanding executions of, 227, 227n1, 258 (see also executions); Shun as minister under Yao, 99, 99n2; worries of, 273 Min Zi, 39, 39n7 mirrors, 35, 36, 59, 98 loyalty, trustworthiness, etc., 261—62; Jie Yu (madman of Chu) on, 32; and lacking benevolence, 278; Laozi on, 170, 193; and the sage, 120; and tenuous connections of those joined by profit, 161. See also Confucius: difficulties and persecutions during travels; hardship moderation, 264 modesty, 14 Mo Di (advocate of universal love), 61, 61n7, 71, 204—5, 204n7, 289-90 Mohism, ix, xv, xix, xvnl, 10, 77, 117, 122n1, 208, 280, 290-91, 291nn5.6 mole, 3—4 monkeys, 56, 113, 162; arrogance of, 207; attraction to their own kind, 15; and “three in the morning,” 11 Moon, 45, 110 mosquito, 115, 136 Mou, prince of Wei, 135, 135n16, 246-47, 246n9 Mountain of Emptiness and Identity, 77 Mountains of Zigzag, 188-89 “The Mountain Tree,” 156-66 Mount Kuaiji, 212, 212n25 Mount Tai, 13, 45n11, 253 mouse, 55 "56, L 155 Moye (sword), 48, 48n17, 194 Mozi, x, XV, XXVIil, Xxxi1i, 96, 96n21 Mu, duke of Qin, 172, 172n10, 198, 198n25 mud daubers, 190, 190n5 Muddled Darkness, 94 Mulberry Grove dance, 19, 19n3 Mozi’s “Against Music,” 289; Music, 117, 288; music of antiquity, 289; Nine Shao music, 143, 154; not appreciated by animals, 143, 155; perfect music, 111, 111n11; singing, 49-50, 53-54, 163, 289; trivia of, 101; Xianchi music, 109-10, 143, 289; Yellow Emperor and, 109-11, 289 musicians, 12, 12n8; Music Master Jin, 111—13, 111n12; Music Master Kuang, 12, 60, 71; Music Master Kui, 133n13 mutton, 211-12, 212n23 Nameless Man, 56 Nanpo Zikui, 46—47 Nanrong Zhu, ix, 190—93 Nature. See Heaven Never-Enough, 262—65 Nie Que, 14-15, 55, 86, 179, 209 Nine Luo, 108 Nine Provinces, 127 Nine Shao music, 143, 154 No-Beginning, 184 nobility and meanness, 129-30 No-End, 184 Nonexistence, 185 nose: cut off, 101n5; mud sliced off, 205-6 Not-Even-Anything Village, 6 not-man, 55, 55n3 Not Yet Emerged from My Source, 58 nourishment, 245—46; of birds vs. humans, 143, 154-55; and caring for the lives of subjects over possession of territory, 240; and length of journey, 2; mind- nourishment, 81, 81n12; nourishing life, 149; nourishing the body, 145, 246; nourishing what is within, 28; and the ten thousand things, 100; and those that thrive in the Way, 50 Nii Shang, 199-200 obsequiousness, 274, 285 obstinacy, 274 office-holding, 240, 284. See also governance; ministers officiousness, 274 “The Old Fisherman,” xxn2, 271-78 Old Longji, 183, 183n9 One, 88, 287. See also Ancestor; Creator; God; prime mover; Source, the One-with-Heaven, 121 opportunity, recognition of, 5—6. See also usefulness and uselessness owl, 137, 212 oxen, 19-20, 32, 133, 285-86 pacifism, 3n6, 289, 291-92 paintings, 172, 172n12 Palace of Not-Even-Anything, 182 paradoxical language and anecdotes, x, xxi—xxili, 1, 9, 12— 13, 81n12, 297-98. See also specific chapters parents. See sons and parents partisanship. See impartiality Peace-in-Strife, 47 pearls: and Black Dragon, 285; and grave-robbing, 229; lost Dark Pearl, 86; pearl of the marquis of Sui, 242—43 Peng (bird), 1—2 Peng Meng (archer), 162 Peng Meng (philosopher), 293—94, 293n12 Peng Yang. See Zeyang Pengzu (long-lived man), 2, 13, 46, 46n12, 119 Penumbra, 17—18, 237 people, the (subjects of aruler), 82—83; and age of Perfect Virtue, 94, 255—56; care for, 23, 78; care for the lives of subjects over possession of territory, 240, 240n3; gaining the affection of, 210; governance of, 116-17, 201-2 (see also governance); sword of the commoner, 269-70; worries of the common man, 273 perch, in carriage rut, 228 perfection, 85; age of Perfect Virtue, 66, 71, 94, 255-56; Perfect Beauty, 170; Perfect Happiness, 170; Perfect Unity, 123; Perfect Way, 78-79 Perfect Man: Bian Qingzi on, 154—55; Bohun Wuren on, 174; characteristics and actions of, 3, 114, 160, 178, Confucius on, 22; fisherman as, 278; Gengsang Chu on, 188; and governance, 106; Laozi on, 170; Liezi on, 146; magical powers of, 15, 146; and profit and loss, 15. See also Complete Man; Great Clod; Great Man; Holy Man; Man of Great Completion; Man of the Way; sage; Supreme Swindle; True Man petty men: and external punishments, 283; friendship of, 161; petty man of Heaven as gentleman among men, 50; and risking death for the sake of profit, 62—63, 261; understanding of, 281—82 Pian, wheelwright, 106—7 pigeon, 97 piles, 32, 282 pill bug, 136 Pingyi (god of the Yellow River), 45, 126-33, 126n1 Pitcher-Sized-Wen, Mr., 40 Piyi, Master, 55nl, 86, 179 possession, 82, 85, 158, 179-80 potter, 65 poverty, xi, 125, 139, 201; and fate, 39, 54, 162; Liezi and, 241; and the sage, 215; Yuan Xian and, 245, 245n6; Zeng Shen and, 245—46 practicing, 193 prayers, 86 praying mantis, 29, 90, 164-65 preceder and follower, 101 premiership, 174-75 207 prime mover, 225-26, 225n5. See also Ancestor; Creator; God; One profit, gain, 15, 85; Confucius on, 28; and corrupt government, 250; as delusion of the will, 197; and fate, 39; and forgetting the self, 164—65; happiness of greedy man, 204; and hypocrisy, 257, 261; ill effects of pursuit, 190; Laozi on, 170; and loss of the Way, 67; and responses to hardship, 161; risking life for, 62, 63, 240— 43, 261; and “Robber Zhi,” 262—65; and the sage, 92; and warfare, 23; Zhanzi on, 247 punishment, 75, 77; external and internal, 283; feet cut off, punishment and favor as “the two handles” of political power, 106, 106n15; Shentu Jia on, 36; tattooing, 52; Yao and, 52. See also reward and punishment purity, 121, 123, 140, 275; Grand Purity, 184; Great Purity, 110, 282 Puyi, Master, 55, 55n1 Qi (state), 130n9; and development of Confucianism, viii; theft of, 68-69, 69n2, 70n5; Zigao and, 26 Qi, man of, 205 Qi, marquis of, 142 Qi, Tang’s questions to, 2, 2n5 Qi Gong, 166 Qiji (horse), 131 Qin dynasty, xxxiii, 102n8 Qing (woodworker), 152—53, 152n7 Qingji, Prince, 159 Qin Guli, 289, 291 Qin Shi, 20—21 Qinzhang, Master, 49 Qiu. See Confucius quail, 2, 86, 155 Qu Boyu, 222 Queen Mother of the West, 46, 46n12 Qu family, 196, 196n19 rabbit snare, 233 Ran Qiu, 185—86 rat-catching, 6, 56, 89 recluses. See Bao Jiao; Mou, prince of Wei; Wu Guang; Xu Wugui; Xu You; Zigi of South Wall Record, the, 84 reincarnation. See transformation: and cycle of life and death rejection and acceptance. See acceptability and unacceptability Ren, Prince, 228—29 Renxiang, Mr., 217, 217n6 reputation, 109, 139; dying for, 63, 257, 261; and hypocrisy, 261; and inborn nature, 60; Never-Enough and Sense-of-Harmony on, 262, 265; and righteous conduct, 259 Reservoir of Heaven, 14 responsibility, personal, 221 revenge, 147, 212n25, 217-18 reward and punishment, 74—75, 101—3; and blame/credit for things beyond one’s control, 244; Bocheng Zigao on, 86; and the Creator, 281; and Kun, son of Zigqi, 209; and rulers, 115, 115n17, 243-45. See also punishment rhetoricians, 95n18, 103, 203, 297-99 ‘Rifling Trunks,” 68—73 right and wrong, 102, 130, 131, 196; and confusion, 15; and the Great Man, 129; and imputed words, 234; and injury to the Way, 12; mutual dependence of, 10; and Peng Meng, Tian Pian, and Shen Dao, 294; places switched, 222, 235; and the sage, 40; and words, 9-10 and Zhuangzi, 296 righteousnes. See benevolence and righteousness; Bo Yi rites, rituals, 49-50, 75, 82n17, 83, 101, 103, rs 122, 177, 197, 276, 289 Ritual, 117, 288 rivers, 213,223 Robber Zhi, 63, 64, 69-70, 74, 77, 96, 252-59 ‘Robber Zhi,” xxn2, 252-65 rose of Sharon, 2 rulers: and action/inaction, 100; care for the lives of subjects over possession of territory, 240, 240n3; comforting rulers, 201; and duty, 27, 84; entrusting affairs of state to others, 206; “Giving Away a Throne,” 239-51; “Lonely One” term, 254, 254n4; premiership of Sunshu Ao, 174—75; and reward and punishment, 115, 115n17, 243-45 (see also executions); rulers exiled, 243-44; rules of succession, 131; and three kinds of virtue, 254—55; thrones ceded to others, 116, 130, 130n9; and the Truth, 276; worries of, 273. See also empires and kingdoms; governance; people, the; Son of Heaven; specific rulers Ruo of the North Sea (sea god), 126-33 sacrifices, 132, 149-50, 196, 250, 250n16; inappropriate for birds, 154; and inauspicious creatures, 32; of oxen, 32, 285-86; straw dogs, 112, 112n13 sage: and books, 107; and border guard of Hua, 86—87; characteristics and actions of, 3, 15, 40, 43, 45, 92, 98, 287nl: Confusing ate 15— 16, 164: Saurane nor 134: and danger to the world, 70, 70n7; and discrimination, 13— 14; fault of, 66—67; and governance, 55, 90, 93; and human relations, 181, 216; impervious to harm, 146, 187; inborn nature, 216; magical powers of, xii—xiil; prayers for, 86; risking life for the world, 62; skill of, 197; stillness of, 98; and thieves, 69—70; and “this” and “that,” right and wrong, 10; and the Truth, 276; Virtue of, 120; Wang Tai as, 34—35; Way and talent of, 46. See also Complete Man; Great Clod; Great Man; Holy Man; Man of Great Completion; Man of the Way; Perfect Man; Supreme Swindle; True Man salve, 5, Snil “Same” and “different,” 61, 71, 130, 135, 291, 297 Sang, Master, 53—54 Sanghu, Master, 49, 161—62 scholars, 119, 124, 288-89. See also learning schools of philosophy, xx, 204—5, 280, 288-94. See also Confucianism; Legalism; Logicians; Mohism sea, 126-27, 135-36 sea bird, 143 seasons, 101, 110, 123, 178, 188, 204, 204n8, 223, 224 “The Secret of Caring for Life,” 19-21 seeds, 5, 143-44 Sense-of-Harmony, 262—65 serrate oak, 30 servants, 170, 188 sexual intercourse, 108n1 Shaded Light, 14 shadow, 213, 298; fear of, 275; Shadow, 17-18, 237 shame, 86, 238, 259, 264-65 Shan Bao, 149 Shang (state), 112, 247 Shang dynasty, xxxiii, 249n14 Shang people, vii—vi1i Shang Yang (philosopher), xxxili Shan Quan, 239-40 Shapeless, 86 sheep: mutton, 211—12, 212n23; shepherd boy and girl, 63 Shen Dao, 293-94, 293n12 183, 250, 255 Shenqing (monk), 2n5 Shentu Jia, 35-36 Shenzi, 261, 262n17 shepherd boy and girl, 63 Shi (carpenter), 30—31, 205-6 Shi Chengqi, 105 Shiji (Sima Qian), vii, xxn2 Shi Qiu, 222 77, 96 shoes, distinct from path, 118 Shouling, boy of, 136 Shu [Brief], emperor of the South Sea, 59 Shu Guang, xv—xvi Shun (sage king), xxxiii, 55n2, 62n13, 172; banishment of subordinate men, 76, 76n4; and benevolence and righteousness, 62; as a bent-with-burdens man, 211—12; Confucius on, 35; death of, 162; and decline of Virtue, 123, 256—57; desire to cede empire to others, 239, 240, 248; exile of nephew, 257n7, 260; and filial piety, 172n11; Gengsang Chu on, 189-90; on going along with things, 162; governance, 76, 116-17; heirs’ loss of land, 255; as minister, 99, 99n2; music of, 289; palace of, 187; throne ceded to Yu, 116; Yao and, 14, 99n2, 103, 130 Shu Qi, 43, 250, 251, 257 Shushan No-Toes, 36—37 Shu Shou, xv—xvi Si, Master, 47—49 sickness, 149; and the Creator, 47—49; as excuse for refusing a throne, 239; gifts for doctors, 282; of Guan Zhong, 206; and licentiousness, 201; and moderation, 264; and yin and yang, 26, 26n9 “The Sign of Virtue Complete,” 34—41 silence, 98, 120, 123, 232 silk, bleaching, 5—6 Sima Qian, vii Sima Tan, xiv simplicity, 92—93, 99, 115, 123 sincerity, 28, 275—76 singing, 49-50, 53-54, 163, 289 singular man, 50 sister of Laozi, 105, 105n1 Six-Bow-Cases, ae six breaths, 80 Six Classics, 117-18 Six Realms, 13, 13n15, 178 skill, xi-xui, 84; and Artisan Chui, 153; and buckle maker, 185; butchering dragons, 281; games of, 27—28; Laozi on, 295; and the sage, 40, 92, 197; and Woodworker Qing, 152—53; worry interfering with, 147, 174 skulls, 141-43 sky, asking for, 185, 185n12 sleeping and waking, 8, 15—18, 51. See also dreaming smell, sense of, 96 smith, and transformation of metal, 48—49 smug-and-satisfied men, 211 snail, 218 snake, 18, 18n23, 133, 23 ae snow goose, 115 social class, 173, 173n14, 268-70, 273 soldiers, 5 Sole Possessor, 82 Song (state), vii—vill; persecution of Confucius in, 112, 161, 247, 275; trees of Jingshi region, 31—32 Song, king of, 285 Song, man of: Confucius mistaken for enemy by men of Song, 134, 134n14; envoy to Qin, 282; hat seller, 5; as stock figure, viii Song Rongzi (Song Xing, Song Keng), 3, 3n6, 204n7, 291 291n8 Son of Heaven, 24, 77, 173n14, 259-60; consorts of, 38; inner and outer coffins, 289-90; sword of, 268-70; worries of, 273. See also rulers; specific rulers sons and parents, 27, 95, 101, 109; destiny of the sons of Ziqi, 209-10; fears brought on by sons, 86; and imputed words, 234; possession of sons and grandsons, 179; and prayers for the sage, 86; and the Truth, 276. See also filial piety Sou, Prince, 241 soup sellers, 279 Source, the, 181, 235, 296. See also Ancestor; Creator; God; One; prime mover sparrow, 198 speech, 13; children learning to speak, 231; and inaction, 85; perfect speech, 187; speech that is not spoken, 208, 208n17; unspoken truths, 178. See also words spirits of men: and advice-giving, 23; caring for/guarding, 121; and emptiness as the fasting of the mind, 25; man of spirit, 94; origins of, 180; and sleep and waking, 8; and transformation, 181; and weariness, 121 Spirit Tower, 153, 153n10, 194, 194n10 spiritual essence, 121, 121n2 spirituality, 86, 198 spitting, 133 spontaneity, xi—xii, 110, 111, 123. Spring and Autumn, 13, 13n16, 117 stars, 46, 46n13, 110 stillness, 35, 98, 99, 100, 232 stone. See Weilii Stone Door, farmer of, 240 stork, 212 straw dogs, 112, 112n13 strength, trouble from, 284 - ee also inaction 7, 288 276. See aise ‘foolishs men submission, 89, 105, 198 success, 160; dying for, 261; as matter of the times, 134; and sickness, 26. See also fame, eminence; life, — for; Lave gall, wealth misfortune — Sui, marquis oe 242 242-43 suicide, 43n3, 212n25, 248, 249, 250, 257, 257n9, 270, 280 Sui dynasty, xvii Suiren (culture hero), 123, 142, 142n7 Sun, 45, 110, 213, 297 Sunshu Ao, 174-75, 174n17, 208 Sun Xiu, 153-55 superiors and inferiors, 100—102, 173, 173nl14 “Supreme Happiness,” 139-44 Supreme Swindle, xxix, 17. See also Complete Man; Great Clod; Great Man; Holy Man; Man of Great Completion; Man of the Way; Perfect Man; sage; True Man swallow, 164 swamp pheasant, 20 swimming, 147; diving man, 151—52 sword, 48, 48n17, 121, 194; “Discoursing on Swords,” 266-70 sycophant, 95, 220, 274 Tai (clansman), 55, 55 Taigong Ren, 134—3 tailorbird, 3 Tang (founder of Shang dynasty), xxxiii, 130, 130n10, 255; Bian Sui and, 249; and decline of Virtue, 256—57; end of dynasty, 255; hall of, 187; music of, 289; overthrow of Xia dynasty, 249, 249n14, 257, 261; questions to Qi, 2; tutor of, 217; Wu Guang and, 233, 249; Yi Yin caged by, 198, 198n25 Tang (prime minister of Shang), 108—9, 108n6 taste, sense of, 63, 96 tattooing, 52, 101n5 teachers and disciples/students, 86, 99, 119, 154, 183; Deng Heng, 217; Ju Boyu’s advice to Yan He, tutor to Kuaikui, 28—29; Master Shun from east of the Wall, 166; mind as teacher, 9, 25; Wang Tai, 34—35. See also Confucius; Laozi; Zhuangzi; and specific disciples ten thousand things, the, 85, 178—79; and attributes, 10; defined, 127; and discrimination, 130, 132; and equality, 293; and kings in ancient times, 100; and life in a time of Perfect Virtue, 66; and music, 110; and mutual dependence of things, 224; and transformation, 100, 101, 132, 180, 235; and unity, 170, 177; and unspoken truths, 178—79; and waiting for life and death, 168 theft, thieves, 164; feudal lords as thieves, 70, 260; and hypocrisy, 260; “Rifling Trunks,” 68—73; “Robber Zhi,” 252-65; theft of boat and fish net, 45; and Yu’s rule, 117. See also Robber Zhi “this” and “that,” 10 Three August Ones, 113, 113n15, 116, 117 “three in the morning,” 11 Three Kings, 127 Tian Zifang, 166—67 Tian Cheng, Viscount, 68-69, 70n5, 260 Tian Gen, 56 Tian He, 207n15 Tian Ji, 218, 218n10 Tian Kaizhi, 147-48 Tian Mou, marquis of Qi, 217 Tian Pian, 293-94, 293n12 “Tian Zifang,” 166—75 tiger, 56, 97, 108, 149 tiger trainer, 29n14 time, 9, 128, 132, 195; past and future, 32; past and present, 46, 112—13, 128, 186 transformation, 118, 178; of animals, 144; and cycle of life ancient times, 186; and the ten thousand things, 100, 101, 132, 180, 235; Transformation of Things, 18 traveling, 109, 158; Confucius’s difficulties during, 112, 134-35, 159-60, 161, 163; and confusion, 95—96; and danger to the world, 149; humans as travelers, 187; returning home, 216-17 trees: chopped down on Confucius in Song, 112, 247, 275; growth of, 232—33; and inborn nature, 96; of Jinghshi region of Song, 3 1—32; lifespans, 30-32, 156; suicide by clinging to tree, 257; and usefulness/uselessness, 6, 30— 32, 156, 160 True Man, xxix, 42—44, 121, 166; characteristics and actions of, 42—44, 212; Laozi and Barrier Keeper Yin as, 295; magical powers of, 42; and punishment, 283; Sunshu Ao as, 175. See also Complete Man; Great Clod; Great Man; Holy Man; Man of Great Completion; Man of the Way; Perfect Man; sage; Supreme Swindle; True Man True Master, True Lord, 8, 9 True Rightness, 61 Truth, old fisherman on, 275—76 “The Turning of Heaven,” 108-18 turtle, 298; caught by Yu Ju, 230-31; and divination, 230, 230n10; great turtle of the Eastern Sea, 135—36; sacred tortoise in Chu, 137 Twelve Classics, 104, 104n10 ugliness, xxii—xxili, 165, 177; ugly man Ai Taituo, 37—38; ugly woman, 113 Uncle Lack-Limb, 141 Uncle Lame-Gait, 141 understanding, 187, 193-94, 194n9, 197, 222, 232; blindness and deafness of, 4; and discrimination, 14, 194n9; great and little understanding, 8; harmonizing with and understanding others, 29-30; Liezi and, 59, 59n14; of the little man, 281—82; and loss of the Way, 123; men of ancient times and, 11—12, 195; and transmission of the Way to others, 114; trick for, 184; understanding men and ghosts, 194; of the Way, 114, 184, 213-14; and what is comfortable, 153 unity, xi, 11; Great Unity, 81, 82, 213, 281, 295; Perfect Unity, 123; and the ten thousand things, 170, 177; unity of Heaven and man, 163, 164; and words, 234 Universal Harmony, 1 usefulness and uselessness, 130, 156—57, 196; and gourds, 5—6; Jie Yu (madman of Chu) on, 33; and salve given to soldiers, 5—6; and trees, 6, 30—32, 156, 160; and water wells, 160; Zhuangzi on, 156, 231 values, conventional: and confusion, 15; rejection of, ix—x, xxii, 3n6 (see also inborn nature); “Webbed Toes,” 60— 64. See also benevolence and righteousness; ethics, code of Village-of-Not-Anything-at-All, 282 violence, 201—2; and decline of Virtue, 256; and Yu’s rule, 117. See also warfare Virtue, 14, 14n20, 58, 74, 84, 132, 193, 281; age of Perfect Virtue, 66, 71, 94, 255-56; Confucius on, 22, 39, 254—55; dangerous virtues, 284; Dark Virtue, 89; decline of, 122—25; destroyed by fame, 22; de translated as, xxix, 13n14; Eight Virtues, 13; and expertness, 63; and feelings, 197; and governance, 83; and Holy Man, 4; and inability to be harmed, 26 (see also harm, imperviousness to); and inborn nature, 61—62; Jie Yu (madman of Chu) on, 32; man of, 85—86, 92, 93, 132, 154—55; and origin of the world, 88—89; and the Perfect Man, 170, 193; Robber Zhi and, 254—55; and the sage, 120; “The Sign of Virtue Complete,” 34—41; three kinds of, 254—55; Virtue of Heaven and earth, 99; as vital force, 58n10, 60n1; and “The Way of Heaven,” 99-102; Workings of Virtue Closed Off, 58n10; Zhuangzi on, 109, 156—57; Zigong on, 92 vital force, 58n10, 60n1, 121n2, 145-46 waking. See sleeping and waking Easy Wandering,” 1—6; and the Perfect Man, 114; and the sage, 40; you translated as, xii, xxix; Zhuangzi on, 23 1— 32 Wang Ni, 14—15, 55, 55n1, 86 Wang Niansun, 196n18 Wang Tai, 34 Ware, James R., xxx—xxxi of Virtue, 256—57; and happiness of men of arms, 203; King Danfu and the tribes of Di, 240; and states of Han and Wei, 241—42; Tang’s overthrow of Xia dynasty, 249, 249n14, 257, 261 water, 1, 213; clarity of, 121; fish thriving in, 50; levelness of, 39, 121; natural talent of, 170; still water as mirror, 35, 98; watering machine, 91; wells, 112—13, 160 waterfall, 151 Way, the, 98—107; “art of the Confucius on, 50, 104, 208; Confucius’s search for, 113-14, 276-78; consequences of embodying, 183; Dao translated as, xxviii; defined/described, xi, xxii— 129-31, 223; embodiment of (see Complete Man; Great Clod; Holy Man; Man of Great Completion; Man of the Way; Perfect Man; sage; Supreme Swindle; True Man); and emptiness, 25; and feelings, 120; forgetting the self in, 52, 52n22; and governance, 83, 84, 250 (see also governance); hinge of the Way, 10; and hypocrisy, 258; and impartiality, 223; indescribable nature of, xii, 14, Jie Yu (madman of Chu) on, 32; Laozi on, 114, 170; location of, xxii—xxili, 182; and nourishment, 50; obstacles to, 197; and origin of Heaven and earth, 45; and Peng Meng, Tian Pian, and Shen Dao, 293-94; prescriptions for finding, 179-80, 192-93 (see also life, prescriptions for); sequence of the Great Way, 102; straying from/losing, 66—67, 76—77, 86-87, 122-25, 177, 197, 227, 289 (see also life, prescriptions for: warnings and bad examples); and thieves, 69; transmission to others, 114, 114n16; understanding, 114, 184, 213-14; and unity, 11 (see also unity); and unspoken truths, 178—79; value of, 132; Woman Crookback on, 46—47; and words, 9-11; Yellow Emperor on, 111, 176—77; Zhuangzi on, 156—57, 232, 281; Zigong on, 92 “The Way of Heaven,” 98-107 wealth, xi, 85, 139; avoiding, 251; as delusion of the will, 197; and moderation, 264; and the Perfect Man, 114; and prayers for the sage, 86; and “Robber Zhi,” 263-65; and the sage, 215; and shamelessness, 259; troubles brought on by, 86, 265 on Swords,” 266-70; Moye (sword), 48, 48n17, 194 weasel, 6 “Webbed Toes,” 60—64 Wei (state), 219, 241—42; persecution of Confucius in, weights and measures, 101, 103, 173; and theft, 70, 70n5, 71 Weilti, 127, 127n5 Wei Sheng, 257, 261 Weituo (spirit), 150-51 wells, 160 well sweep, 112-13 Wen, duke, 257 Wen, king (founder of Zhou dynasty), 116, 172-74, 172n13, 251n18, 257, 289 Wen, king of Zhao, 266—70 Wen, marquis of Wei, 166, 166n1 Wenbo Xuezi, 167, 167n3 Wenhui, Lord (King Hui of Wei), 19 Wheelwright Pian, 106-7 wickedness, 274 Wild-and-Witless, 176-78 wildcat, 6 will, delusions of, 197 wind, 1, 7, 28, 108, 133-34, 2 wine, 69, 69n4, 276, 284 wisdom, 59, 196; Confucius on, 231; happiness of wise man, 203; and hardship, 134, 164; and large and small, 128; and loss of the Way, 77; the sage and, 180; and sage- kings, 117; and showing off, 154, 160; of the swallow, 164; and thieves, 68, 69; and three kinds of virtue, 254; trouble from, 285; and wrangling, 22 wives, 38, 59, 101, 117, 165, 232; wife of Duke Huan of Qi, 260; wife of Duke Ling, 222; wife of Zhuangzi, 140— 41; wife of Ziyang, 243; and worries of the common man, 273 wolf, 108 Woman Crookback, 46—47 women: beautiful women, 11, 52, 52n22, 113; consorts of the Son of Heaven, 38; leper woman and newborn child, x, 96; preceder and follower, 101; ugly women, 113. See also concubines; wives wood, inborn nature of, 65 Woodworker Qing, 152-53, 152n7 words: books as chaff and dregs of men of old, 106-7; 2 community words, 223—24, 223n23; and discrimination, 13-14; great and little words, 8; imputed words, 234, 296; “Imputed Words,” 234—38; labeling, x, 11, 216, 223; like wind and waves, 28; lofty words wasted on the mob, 96; and meaning, 9-10, 233; repeated words, goblet words, 24—25, 234-35, 234n1, 296; semantics, 224. See also speech Workings of the Balanced Breaths, 58 Workings of the Good One, 58 Workings of Virtue Closed Off, 58, 58n10 “The World,” xx, 287-99 world, affairs of, 114—15; abandoning, 145; and Holy Man, 4; “In the World of Men,” 22—33; and inborn nature, 65— 66, 74—75; men’s entanglement with, 8; and necessity of benevolence, righteousness, law, ritual, etc., 82-83, 82n17; the old fisherman on worries and faults of different classes of men, 273-74; and pitfalls of knowledge, 71—73; and the sage, 92; and True Man, 43. See also fame, eminence; governance; life, prescriptions for; profit, gain; wealth world, origin of, 86-88, 186, 225-26, 225n5 worries, 98, 120, 139; arn on an prayers for the sage, 86; of different classes of people, 273; interfering with skill, 147, 174; and machines, 91; and wealth, 265 worthiness and unworthiness, 39, 165, 283-84. See also usefulness and uselessness wrangling, 22, 86, 140, 221 Wu, king of, 5, 207 255; and decline of Virtue, 256—57; end of dynasty, 255; hall of, 187; music of, 289; sovereign Zhou killed by, 256, 257, 261 Wu, marquis of Wei, 199-201 Wu Guang (recluse), 43, 233, 233n16, 249 Wu Yue, 261, 261n15 Wuze, 248 Wuzhuang (beautiful woman), 52, 52n22 Xia dynasty, xxxili, 249, 249n14, 257, 261 Xian (shaman), 108 Xian, Duke of Jin, 16n21 Xianchi music, 109-10, 143 Xiang Xiu, xviii Xiang Yuan, 71 Xioaji (filial son of King Wuding), 227, 227n3 Xiong Yiliao from south of the Market, 157-59, 208, 208n17, 219-20 Xi Peng, 206 Xishi (beautiful woman), 11, 113 Xiwei, 45, 187, 232, 232n12 Xi Wei (historiographer), 222—23 Xuan, king of Qi, vil Xuao (state), 23 Xunzi (philosopher), xv, xxvill, Xxxiil “Xu Wugui,” 199-214 Xu Wugui (recluse), 199-202 248; Yao and, 3—4, 210-11, 233 yak, 6 Yan Buyi, 207 Yan Chengzi, 207 Yan Cheng Ziyou, 7—8, 236 Yan Gangdiao, 183 Yan Gate, man of, 233 Yang Huo, 134n14 Yang Xiong, xvi Yang Zhu (hedonist philosopher), 61, 61n7, 71, 204—5, 204n7 Yangzi, 96, 96n21, 165 Yangzi Ju, 56—57, 56n6 Yang Ziju, 237-38 Yan He (scholar of Lu), 28-29, 28n13, 153, 242, 282 Yan Hui (Yan Yuan), 22n1, 24n3, 111n12; Confucius and, 22-26, 51-53, 111-13, 147, 163, 168-69, 171, 173- 74, 186-87, 246, 247—48:; and forgetting, 52—53; travels to Qi, 142-43 Yan Junping, xvi Yan Yuan. See Yan Hui Yao (sage king), xxxili, 5, 130; attacks on other states, 14, 23; banishment of subordinate men, 76, 76n4; Bocheng Zigao and, 86; and border guard of Hua, 86-87; conditions under rule of, 74; Confucius on, 35; and decline of Virtue, 123, 256—57; desire to cede empire to others, 3—4, 239; Gengsang Chu on, 189-90; governance, 76, 211; heirs’ loss of land, 255; Jie and, 130; music of, 289; and possession of/by men, 158; and murdered by, 257n7, 260; teacher of, 86; throne ceded to Shun, 116, 130; Xu You and, 3—4, 210-11, 233; Yi Erzi and, 52 Cheng of North Gate and, 109-11; and decline of Virtue, 123, 256; garden of, 187; governance, 78, 116; Guang Cheng and, 77—78; Knowledge and, 176—78; and lost Dark Pearl, 86; and music, 109-11; and the Perfect Way, 78; as prime meddler, 76, 76n3; travels to visit Great Clod, 202-3; on the Way, 176—77; wisdom forgotten, 52 Yellow River god (Pingyi), 45, 126-33, 126n1 Yi (archer), 36, 162, 197-98, 204—5 Yi Erzi, 52 Yi Jie, 215 Yiliao from south of the Market (Xiong Yiliao), 157—59, 208, 208n17, 219-20 Yin (barrier keeper), 146, 294—95, 294n18 yin and yang, 99; damage from joy and anger, 74; as enemies, 194—95; gone awry, 227; and life and death, 48; and music, 110; mutual dependence of, 224; Perfect Yin and Yang, 169, 169n8; and possession, 180; Powerful Yang, 180, 237, 237n9; and the sage, 120; and the seasons, 204n8; and sickness, 26, 26n9, 283; “using the yang to attract the yang” etc., 204, 204n8, 205n9 Yin dynasty, 249n14, 250 Ying, king of Wei, 217 Yin Wen, 29 1—92 Yi Yin, 198, 249 yoga, 119nl Yong Cheng, 71 Youhu (state), 23 Youyu (clansman), 55, 55n2. See also Shun (sage king) Yu (sage king), xxxiii; attacks on other states, 23; Bocheng Zigao and, 86; governance, 117; music of, 289; paralysis of, 257, 257n7 Yu, Master, 47—49 Yuan, lord of Song, 172, 205—6, 230-31 Yuanchu (bird), 137 Yuan Feng, 93 Yuan Xian, 245, 245n6 Yu clan, man of, 94, 94n16, 172 Yue (sheep butcher), 243—45 Yue, arriving at before leaving, 9 Yue people, 5, 241 Yu Er (chef), 63, 63n16 Yu Ju (fisherman), 230-31 Yuqiang (deity of the far north), 46, 46n12 Yu Yue, 2 1n7 Zang, old man of, 172—73 Zao Fu (famous carriage driver), 153n9 Zeng Shen (paragon of benevolence), 60, 61n5, 63, 71, 74, 77, 96, 227, 227—28n3, 236, 245-46 “Zeyang,” 215—26 Zeyang (Peng Yang), 215-16, 215n1 Zhang Binglin, 196n19 Zhang Wuzi, 15-17 Zhang Yi, 149 Zhanzi (Zhan He), 246—47, 246n9 Zhao (state), 270n5 Zhao, king of Chu, 243—44 Zhao family, 196, 196n19 Zhao Wen, 12, 12n8 Zhaoxi, marquis of Han, 241—42 Zheng Kaofu, 284, 284n9 Zhong, 212n25 Zhong Shi, 55 Zhong Yang, 71 Zhou (state), 112, 247 Zhou, duke of (Dan), 250, 250n15, 261, 261n14, 289 Zhou dynasty, vii-vill, xxxiii, 250-51 Zhou people, vii Zhuang Xu (legendary ruler), 46 Zhuangzi : authorship of, xxi; central theme of, ix; dating of chapters, xix—xx; language and style of, xxi—xxiv; modern translations, xxix—xxxi; origins of, xili—xiv; present version of, xviii; structure of, xvili—xx1; translation and interpretation issues, xxli—xxix Zhuangzi (Zhuang Zhou): and “art of the Way,” 296; audience, x; background of, vii—vili; on benevolence, 108—9; butterfly dream, 18; and Chinese history, xxxiii; conversation with skull, 141—42; creatures observed while wandering at Diaoling, 164—65; death of, 286; death of wife, 140—41; Duke Ai of Lu and, 171; and fish in the carriage rut, 227—28; funeral of, xx; and gifts, 282, 285-86; and grieving, 140—41; and Heavenly joy, 99; 231, 235-36; and Huizi’s death, 205—6; king of Wei and, 162-63; and King Wen of Zhao and the swords, 266—70; on location of the Way, 182; Master Dongguo and, 182— 83; overview of philosophy, vii—xi1i; and sacred tortoise in Chu, 137; on slipshod actions, 220; Tang and, 108—9; and troubled times, 162—63, 163n9; and usefulness of things, 5—6, 231; use of language and rhetoric, x—xi, Xxli—xxiv, 296; use of metaphor and analogy, xi—xiii; on wandering, 23 1-32; and what fish enjoy, 138; on worth and worthlessness, 156—57 Zhu Guiyao, 21n7 Zhun Mang, 93, 93n15 Zhuping Man, 281 Zhu Rong, 71 Zhu Xian, 147—48 Ziai of Nanpo, 207, 207n14, 207n16. See also Zigi of South Wall Zichan (prime minister of Zheng), 35, 35n3 Zichou Zhifu, 239 Zigao. See Bocheng Zigao Zigao, duke of She, 26, 26n8 Zilao, 220 Zilu, 103—4 Zi Lu, 134 Ziqi of Nanbo, 31 Ziqi of South Wall (recluse), 7—8, 209-10, 236. See also Ziai of Nanpo Ziyang (prime minister of Zheng), 243 Zizhang, 259-62, 259n11 Zi Zhi, 130, 130n9 Zizhou Zhibo, 239 Zun Lu, 71 OTHER WORKS IN THE TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ASIAN CLASSICS SERIES Major Plays of Chikamatsu, tr. Donald Keene 1961 Four Major Plays of Chikamatsu, tr. Donald Keene. Paperback ed. only. 1961; rev. ed. 1997 Records of the Grand Historian of China, translated from the Shih chi of Ssu-ma Ch’ien, tr. Burton Watson, 2 vols. 1961 Instructions for Practical Living and Other Neo- Confucian Writings by Wang Yang-ming, tr. Wing-tsit Chan 1963 Hstin Tzu: Basic Writings, tr. Burton Watson, paperback ed. only. 1963; rev. ed. 1996 Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, tr. Burton Watson, paperback ed. only. 1964; rev. ed. 1996 The Mahabharata, tr. Chakravarthi V. Narasimhan. Also in paperback ed. 1965; rev. ed. 1997 The Manyoshi, Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai edition 1965 Su Tung-p’o: Selections from a Sung Dynasty Poet, tr. Burton Watson. Also in paperback ed. 1965 Bhartrihari: Poems, tr. Barbara Stoler Miller. Also in paperback ed. 1967 Basic Writings of Mo Tzu, Hstin Tzu, and Han Fei Tzu, tr. Burton Watson. Also in separate paperback eds. 1967 The Awakening of Faith, Attributed to ASvaghosha, tr. Yoshito S. Hakeda. Also in paperback ed. 1967 Reflections on Things at Hand: The Neo-Confucian Anthology, comp. Chu Hsi and Lii Tsu-ch’ien, tr. Wing- tsit Chan 1967 The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, tr. Philip B. Yampolsky. Also in paperback ed. 1967 Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko, tr. Donald Keene. Also in paperback ed. 1967 The Pillow Book of Sei Shénagon, tr. Ivan Morris, 2 vols. 1967 Two Plays of Ancient India: The Little Clay Cart and the Minister ’s Seal, tr. J. A. B. van Buitenen 1968 The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, tr. Burton Watson 1968 The Romance of the Western Chamber (Hsi Hsiang chi), tr. S. L Hsiung. Also in paperback ed. 1968 The Manyoshi, Nippon Gakujutsu ShinkOokai edition. Paperback ed. only. 1969 Records of the Historian: Chapters from the Shih chi of Ssu-ma Ch’ien, tr. Burton Watson. Paperback ed. only. 1969 Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T’ang Poet Han-shan, tr. Burton Watson. Also in paperback ed. 1970 Twenty Plays of the No Theatre, ed. Donald Keene. Also in paperback ed. 1970 Chishingura: The Treasury of Loyal Retainers, tr. Donald Keene. Also in paperback ed. 1971; rev. ed. 1997 The Zen Master Hakuin: Selected Writings, tr. Philip B. Yampolsky 1971 Chinese Rhyme-Prose: Poems in the Fu Form from the Han and Six Dynasties Periods, tr. Burton Watson. Also in paperback ed. 1971 Kukai: Major Works, tr. Yoshito S. Hakeda. Also in paperback ed. 1972 The Old Man Who Does as He Pleases: Selections from the Poetry and Prose of Lu Yu, tr. Burton Watson 1973 The Lion’s Roar of Queen Srimala, tr. Alex and Hideko Wayman 1974 Courtier and Commoner in Ancient China: Selections from the History of the Former Han by Pan Ku, tr. Burton Watson. Also in paperback ed. 1974 Japanese Literature in Chinese, vol. 1: Poetry and Prose in Chinese by Japanese Writers of the Early Period, tr. Burton Watson 1975 Japanese Literature in Chinese, vol. 2: Poetry and Prose in Chinese by Japanese Writers of the Later Period, tr. Burton Watson 1976 Love Song of the Dark Lord: Jayadeva’s Gitagovinda, tr. Barbara Stoler Miller. Also in paperback ed. Cloth ed. includes critical text of the Sanskrit. 1977; rev. ed. 1997 Ryokan: Zen Monk-Poet of Japan, tr. Burton Watson 1977 Calming the Mind and Discerning the Real: From the Lam rim chen mo of Tson-kha-pa, tr. Alex Wayman 1978 The Hermit and the Love-Thief: Sanskrit Poems of Bhartrihari and Bilhana, tr. Barbara Stoler Miller 1978 The Lute: Kao Ming’s P’i-p’a chi, tr. Jean Mulligan. Also in paperback ed. 1980 A Chronicle of Gods and Sovereigns: Jinno Shotoki of Kitabatake Chikafusa, tr. H. Paul Varley 1980 Among the Flowers: The Hua-chien chi, tr. Lois Fusek 1982 Grass Hill: Poems and Prose by the Japanese Monk Gensei, tr. Burton Watson 1983 Doctors, Diviners, and Magicians of Ancient China: Biographies of Fang-shih, tr. Kenneth J. DeWoskin. Also in paperback ed. 1983 Theater of Memory: The Plays of Kalidasa, ed. Barbara Stoler Miller. Also in paperback ed. 1984 The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century, ed. and tr. Burton Watson. Also in paperback ed. 1984 Poems of Love and War: From the Eight Anthologies and the Ten Long Poems of Classical Tamil, tr. A. K. Ramanujan. Also in paperback ed. 1985 The Bhagavad Gita: Krishna’s Counsel in Time of War, tr. Barbara Stoler Miller 1986 The Columbia Book of Later Chinese Poetry, ed. and tr. Jonathan Chaves. Also in paperback ed. 1986 The Tso Chuan: Selections from China's Oldest Narrative History, tr. Burton Watson 1989 Waiting for the Wind: Thirty-six Poets of Japan's Late Medieval Age, tr. Steven Carter 1989 Selected Writings of Nichiren, ed. Philip B. Yampolsky 1990 Saigyo, Poems of a Mountain Home, tr. Burton Watson 1990 The Book of Lieh Tzu: A Classic of the Tao, tr. A.C. Graham. Morningside ed. 1990 The Tale of an Anklet: An Epic of South India—The Cilappatikaram of lank Atikal, tr. R. Parthasarathy 1993 Waiting for the Dawn: A Plan for the Prince, tr. with introduction by Wm. Theodore de Bary 1993 Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees: A Masterpiece of the Eighteenth-Century Japanese Puppet Theater, tr., annotated, and with introduction by Stanleigh H. Jones, Jr. 1993 The Lotus Sutra, tr. Burton Watson. Also in paperback ed. 1993 The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, tr. Richard John Lynn 1994 Beyond Spring: Tz’u Poems of the Sung Dynasty, tr. Julie Landau 1994 The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, ed. Victor H. Mair 1994 Scenes for Mandarins: The Elite Theater of the Ming, tr. Cyril Birch 1995 Letters of Nichiren, ed. Philip B. Yampolsky; tr. Burton Watson et al. 1996 Unforgotten Dreams: Poems by the Zen Monk Shotetsu, tr. Steven D. Carter 1997 The Vimalakirti Sutra, tr. Burton Watson 1997 Japanese and Chinese Poems to Sing: The Wakan roei shi, tr. J. Thomas Rimer and Jonathan Chaves 1997 Breeze Through Bamboo: Kanshi of Ema Saiko, tr. Hiroaki Sato 1998 A Tower for the Summer Heat, by Li Yu, tr. Patrick Hanan 1998 Traditional Japanese Theater: An Anthology of Plays, by Karen Brazell 1998 The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors (0479-0249), by E. Bruce Brooks and A. Taeko Brooks 1998 The Classic of the Way and Virtue: A New Translation of the Tao-te ching of Laozi as Interpreted by Wang Bi, tr. Richard John Lynn 1999 The Four Hundred Songs of War and Wisdom: An Anthology of Poems from Classical Tamil, The Purandnuru, ed. and tr. George L. Hart and Hank Heifetz 1999 Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism, by Harold D. Roth 1999 Po Chii-i: Selected Poems, tr. Burton Watson 2000 Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching: A Translation of the Startling New Documents Found at Guodian, by Robert G. Henricks 2000 The Shorter Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, ed. Victor H. Mair 2000 Mistress and Maid (Jiaohongji), by Meng Chengshun, tr. Cyril Birch 2001 Chikamatsu: Five Late Plays, tr. and ed. C. Andrew Gerstle 2001 The Essential Lotus: Selections from the Lotus Sutra, tr. Burton Watson 2002 Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600- 1900, ed. Haruo Shirane 2002; abridged 2008 The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Korean Poetry, ed. Peter H. Lee 2002 The Sound of the Kiss, or The Story That Must Never Be Told: Pingali Suranna’s Kalapurnodayamu, tr. Vecheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman 2003 The Selected Poems of Du Fu, tr. Burton Watson 2003 Far Beyond the Field: Haiku by Japanese Women, tt. Makoto Ueda 2003 Just Living: Poems and Prose by the Japanese Monk Tonna, ed. and tr. Steven D. Carter 2003 Han Feizi: Basic Writings, tr. Burton Watson 2003 Mozi: Basic Writings, tr. Burton Watson 2003 Xunzi: Basic Writings, tr. Burton Watson 2003 Zhuangzi: Basic Writings, tr. Burton Watson 2003 The Awakening of Faith, Attributed to ASvaghosha, tr. Yoshito S. Hakeda, introduction by Ryuichi Abe 2005 The Tales of the Heike, tr. Burton Watson, ed. Haruo Shirane 2006 Tales of Moonlight and Rain, by Ueda Akinari, tr. with introduction by Anthony H. Chambers 2007 Traditional Japanese Literature: An Anthology, Beginnings to 1600, ed. Haruo Shirane 2007 The Philosophy of Qi, by Kaibara Ekken, tr. Mary Evelyn Tucker 2007 The Analects of Confucius, tr. Burton Watson 2007 The Art of War: Sun Zi’s Military Methods, tr. Victor Mair 2007 One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each: A Translation of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, tr. Peter McMillan 2008 Zeami: Performance Notes, tr. Tom Hare 2008 Zongmi on Chan, tr. Jeffrey Lyle Broughton 2009 Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma, rev. ed., tr. Leon Hurvitz, preface and introduction by Stephen R. Teiser 2009 Mencius, tr. Irene Bloom, ed. with an introduction by Philip J. Ivanhoe 2009 Clouds Thick, Whereabouts Unknown: Poems by Zen Monks of China, Charles Egan 2010 The Mozi: A Complete Translation, tr. Jan Johnston 2010 The Huainanzi: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Government in Early Han China, by Liu An, tr. John S. Major, Sarah A. Queen, Andrew Seth Meyer, and Harold D. Roth, with Michael Puett and Judson Murray 2010 The Demon at Agi Bridge and Other Japanese Tales, tr. Burton Watson, ed. with introduction by Haruo Shirane 2011 Haiku Before Haiku: From the Renga Masters to Basho, tr. with introduction by Steven D. Carter 2011 The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk and Popular Literature, ed. Victor H. Mair and Mark Bender 2011 Tamil Love Poetry: The Five Hundred Short Poems of the Ainkuruniru, tr. and ed. Martha Ann Selby 2011 The Teachings of Master Wuzhu: Zen and Religion of No- Religion, by Wendi L. Adamek 2011 The Essential Huainanzi, by Liu An, tr. John S. Major, Sarah A. Queen, Andrew Seth Meyer, and Harold D. Roth 2012 The Dao of the Military: Liu An's Art of War, tr. Andrew Seth Meyer 2012 Unearthing the Changes: Recently Discovered Manuscripts of the Yi Jing (I Ching) and Related Texts, Edward L. Shaughnessy 2013
Three ways of thought in ancient China
Waley, Arthur
1939-01-01T00:00:00Z
Mengzi, (0371?-0289 av. J.-C.),Han, Fei, (0280?-0233? av. J.-C.),Philosophy, Chinese,Philosophie -- Chine
275, [1] pages 20 cm,Consists chiefly of extracts from Chuang Tzu, Mencius and Han Fei Tzu,"First published in 1939.","This book consists chiefly of extracts from Chuang tzu, Mencius and Han fei tzu."--Preface,Includes bibliographical references
Curcumin inhibits HCV replication by induction of heme oxygenase-1 and suppression of AKT.
CHEN, MING-HO,LEE, MING-YANG,CHUANG, JING-JING,LI, YI-ZHEN,NING, SIN-TZU,CHEN, JUNG-CHOU,LIU, YI-WEN
2012-08-20T00:00:00Z
null
This article is from International Journal of Molecular Medicine , volume 30 . Abstract Although hepatitis C virus (HCV) affects approximately 130–170 million people worldwide, no vaccines are available. HCV is an important cause of chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma, leading to the need for liver transplantation. In this study, curcumin, a constituent used in traditional Chinese medicine, has been evaluated for its anti-HCV activity and mechanism, using a human hepatoma cell line containing the HCV genotype 1b subgenomic replicon. Below the concentration of 20% cytotoxicity, curcumin dose-dependently inhibited HCV replication by luciferase reporter gene assay, HCV RNA detection and HCV protein analysis. Under the same conditions, curcumin also dose-dependently induced heme oxygenase-1 with the highest induction at 24 h. Hemin, a heme oxygenase-1 inducer, also inhibited HCV protein expression in a dose-dependent manner. The knockdown of heme oxygenase-1 partially reversed the curcumin-inhibited HCV protein expression. In addition to the heme oxygenase-1 induction, signaling molecule activities of AKT, extracellular signal-regulated kinases (ERK) and nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) were inhibited by curcumin. Using specific inhibitors of PI3K-AKT, MEK-ERK and NF-κB, the results suggested that only PI3K-AKT inhibition is positively involved in curcumin-inhibited HCV replication. Inhibition of ERK and NF-κB was likely to promote HCV protein expression. In summary, curcumin inhibited HCV replication by heme oxygenase-1 induction and AKT pathway inhibition. Although curcumin also inhibits ERK and NF-κB activities, it slightly increased the HCV protein expression. This result may provide information when curcumin is used as an adjuvant in anti-HCV therapy.
Full text of "Curcumin inhibits HCV replication by induction of heme oxygenase-1 and suppression of AKT." Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "Curcumin inhibits HCV replication by induction of heme oxygenase-1 and suppression of AKT." See other formats INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR MEDICINE 30: 1021-1028, 2012 Curcumin inhibits HCV replication by induction of heme oxygenase- 1 and suppression of AKT MING-HOCHEN 1 , MING- YANG LEE 2 ' 3 , JING-JING CHUANG 4 , YI-ZHEN LI 4 , SIN-TZU NING 4 , JUNG-CHOU CHEN 5 ' 6 and YI-WEN LIU 4 Departments of 'Chinese Medicine and hematology and Oncology, Ditmanson Medical Foundation Chia-Yi Christian Hospital, Chiayi; Department of Medical Laboratory Science and Biotechnology, Chung Hwa University of Medical Technology, Tainan; 4 Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Biopharmaceuticals, National Chiayi University, Chiayi; 5 School of Post Baccalaureate Chinese Medicine, Chinese Medical University, Taichung; 'The School of Chinese Medicine for Post-Baccalaureate, I-SHOU University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, R.O.C. Received May 29, 2012; Accepted July 30, 2012 DOI: 10.3892/ijmm.2012.1096 Abstract. Although hepatitis C virus (HCV) affects approxi- mately 130-170 million people worldwide, no vaccines are available. HCV is an important cause of chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma, leading to the need for liver transplantation. In this study, curcumin, a constituent used in traditional Chinese medicine, has been evaluated for its anti-HCV activity and mechanism, using a human hepa- toma cell line containing the HCV genotype lb subgenomic replicon. Below the concentration of 20% cytotoxicity, curcumin dose-dependently inhibited HCV replication by luciferase reporter gene assay, HCV RNA detection and HCV protein analysis. Under the same conditions, curcumin also dose-dependently induced heme oxygenase- 1 with the highest induction at 24 h. Hemin, a heme oxygenase- 1 inducer, also inhibited HCV protein expression in a dose-dependent manner. The knockdown of heme oxygenase- 1 partially reversed the curcumin-inhibited HCV protein expression. In addition to the heme oxygenase- 1 induction, signaling molecule activi- ties of AKT, extracellular signal-regulated kinases (ERK) and nuclear factor-KB (NF-kB) were inhibited by curcumin. Using specific inhibitors of PI3K-AKT, MEK-ERK and NF-kB, the results suggested that only PI3K-AKT inhibition is positively involved in curcumin-inhibited HCV replication. Inhibition of ERK and NF-kB was likely to promote HCV protein expression. In summary, curcumin inhibited HCV replication by heme oxygenase- 1 induction and AKT pathway inhibition. Although curcumin also inhibits ERK and NF-kB activities, Correspondence to: Dr Yi-Wen Liu, Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Biopharmaceuticals, College of Life Sciences, National Chiayi University, 300 Syuefu Rd., Chiayi 600, Taiwan, R.O.C. E-mail: [email protected] Key words: hepatitis C, curcumin, heme oxygenase-1, AKT, extracellular signal-regulated kinases, nuclear factor-KB it slightly increased the HCV protein expression. This result may provide information when curcumin is used as an adju- vant in anti-HCV therapy. Introduction Hepatitis C virus (HCV) affects approximately 130-170 million people worldwide (1), however, no vaccines are avail- able. It is an important cause of chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), leading to a need for liver transplantation (2,3). Treatment of chronic HCV is currently based on the combination of pegylated interferon (IFN)-a and the nucleotide analogue ribavirin, which is only effective in approximately 50% of the patients, especially in HCV geno- type 1 (4,5). HCV belongs to the Hepacivirus genus within the Flaviviridae family, and is a positive-stranded RNA virus with a genome of ~9.6 kb. The HCV genome contains a single open reading frame (ORF) encoding a large polyprotein precursor of 3011 amino acids. The ORF is flanked by 5' and 3' untranslated regions. The precursor polyprotein is processed by cellular and viral proteases into 10 proteins: structural (core, El and E2), and non-structural proteins (p7, NS2, NS3, NS4A, NS4B, NS5A and NS5B) (3,6). There are six major genotypes in HCV classification (3). The major prevalent type in Southern Taiwan is HCV lb, which is the most resistant type to interferon therapy (5,7). Curcumin, derived from eastern traditional medi- cines, Curcuma longa, has been found to have a variety of beneficial properties, such as anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, chemopreventive and chemotherapeutic activities (8,9). Its multiple-target characteristics influence several activities of intracellular molecules, including transcription nuclear factor-KB (NF-kB), pro-inflammatory cyclooxygenase-2 and MAPK inhibitions, as well as heme oxygenase-1 induction (9). In the antivirus bioactivity, certain reports have indicated that curcumin showed anti-viral activity against the human immu- nodeficiency (10,11), the coxsackie- (12) and the hepatitis B (HBV) viruses (13). In the anti-HCV study, one report showed 1022 CHEN etal: CURCUMIN INHIBITS HCV BY HO-1 INDUCTION AND AKT INHIBITION that curcumin inhibited a lipogenic transcription factor, sterol regulatory element binding protein-1 (SREBP-l)-induced HCV replication via the inhibition of the PI3K-AKT pathway (14). The catabolism of heme by heme oxygenase (HO) resulted in the production of biliverdin, carbon monoxide and free iron. HO-1 , one of the phase II enzymes, is an enzyme in cells with cytoprotective properties against oxidative damage (15) that has been reported to be induced by the Nrf2 transcrip- tion factor (16). Curcumin-induced HO-1 expression was first found in human endothelial cells (17), suggesting that a low dose of curcumin induced HO-1 expression, which provided an intrinsic antioxidant ability. Curcumin also induced HO-1 expression in mesangial (18) and liver cells (19-21), as well as in macrophages (22,23). The induction or overexpression of HO-1 has been shown to interfere with the replication of certain viruses, such as the human immunodeficiency virus (24) , the HB V (25) and the HCV (26-28) . The properties of the transcription factor NF-kB are extensively exploited in cells (29). In general, NF-kB is of great importance in signal transduction pathways involved in chronic and acute inflammatory diseases, as well as various types of cancer, therefore, it is a good target for cancer preven- tion (30). Various reports have demonstrated the correlation between curcumin and NF-kB. One of those reports suggests the anti-inflammatory effect of curcumin, which suppresses the ox-LDL-induced MCP-1 expression via the p38 MAPK and NF-kB pathways in rat vascular smooth muscle cells (31). The anti-inflammatory effect of curcumin has been reported to be due to the IkB/NF-kB system in rat and human intestinal epithelial cells, including IEC-6, HT-29 and Caco-2 cells (32). Curcumin has also been found to have anti-metastatic prop- erties via the inhibition of NF-kB in the highly invasive and metastatic MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cell line (33). Another signaling pathway, Raf/MEK/extracellular signal-regulated kinases (ERK), is of crucial importance in the regulation of cell growth, differentiation, survival, as well as the transmis- sion of oncogenic signals (34). This pathway has also been reported to be a target of curcumin. For example, curcumin inhibited connective tissue growth factor gene expression by suppressing ERK signaling in activated hepatic stellate cells (35). Moreover, curcumin inhibited phorbol myristate acetate-induced MCP-1 gene expression by inhibiting ERK and NF-kB activities in U937 cells (36). However, the manner in which curcumin affects the activities of NF-kB and ERK in HCV-infected hepatoma cells has yet to be determine. Only one study suggesting that curcumin inhibited HCV replication by suppressing the AKT-SREBP-1 pathway is currently available (14). In this study, the correlation between curcumin-inhibited HCV replication, HO-1, AKT, ERK and NF-kB molecules was examined. Materials and methods Cell culture and reagents. Huh7.5 cells expressing the HCV genotype lb subgenomic replicon (Conl/SG-Neo(I) hRlucFMDV2aUb) containing Renilla luciferase reporter, kindly provided by Apath, were cultured in Dulbecco's Modified Eagle's Medium (DMEM) with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS), 100 U/ml penicillin, 100 mg/ml streptomycin and 0 .5 mg/ml G4 1 8 . The nuclear extraction kit was purchased from Chemicon (Temecula, CA, USA). Curcumin (Acros Organics, Geel, Belgium), LY294002, U0126 and Rol069920 were purchased from Tocris (Bristol, UK), and dissolved in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), then added into culture medium containing 0.1% DMSO. Cell viability assay. Cell viability was determined by colori- metric MTT assay. Cells were cultured on 24-well plates at a density of 1x10 s cells/well. After 24 h, the cells were incubated with varying concentrations of curcumin or 0.1% DMSO for another 24 h. MTT was added to medium for 2 h, the medium was discarded and DMSO was then added to dissolve the formazan product. Each well was measured by light absor- bance at 490 nm. The result was expressed as a percentage, relative to the 0.1% DMSO-treated control group. Luciferase reporter assay. Cells were subcultured at a density of 4xl0 5 cells/well in 1 ml of culture medium in a 12-well plastic dish for 6 h. Curcumin or DMSO was added to the medium for 24 h. The cells were lysed and cell lysates were prepared for a Renilla luciferase assay (Promega, Madison, WI, USA) and protein concentration assays, with Bio-Rad protein assay (Bio-Rad, Hercules, CA, USA). The relative luciferase activi- ties were normalized to the same protein concentration. Real-time RT-PCR analysis . Total RN A was isolated from Huh7 .5 cells expressing the HCV genotype lb subgenomic replicon. Reverse transcription (RT) was performed on 2 fig of total RNA by 1 .5 fiM random hexamer and Re vert Aid™ reverse transcrip- tase (Fermentas, Glen Burnie, MD, USA) . Then, 1/20 volume of reaction mixture was used for quantitative real-time PCR with HCV specific primers: 5 -AGCGTCTAGCCATGGCGT-3' and 5 -GGTGTACTCACCGGTTCCG-3', and GAPDH specific primers: 5 '-CGG ATTTGGTCGTATTGG-3 ' and 5 -AGATGGT GATGGGATTTC-3', as the endogenous control. The quantita- tive real-time PCR was followed by Maxima™ SYBR-Green qPCR Master Mix (Fermentas). Real-time PCR reactions contained optimal volume of the reverse transcription mixture, 600 nM each forward and reverse primer and IX SYBR-Green qPCR Master Mix in 25 Reactions were incubated for 40 cycles in an ABI Gene Amp® 7500 Sequence Detection System, with an initial denaturization step at 95°C for 10 min, followed by 40 cycles of 95°C for 15 sec and 63°C for 1 min. PCR product accumulation was monitored at several points during each cycle, by measuring the increase in fluorescence. Gene expression changes were assessed using the comparative Ct method. The relative amounts of mRNA for HCV were opti- mized by subtracting the Ct values of HCV from the Ct values of GAPDH mRNA (ACt). The ACt of the control group was then subtracted from the ACt of the curcumin-treated groups (AACt). Data were expressed as relative levels of HCV RNA. Western blotting. For western blotting, analytical 10% sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS)-polyacrylamide slab gel elec- trophoresis was performed. Tissue extracts were prepared and a 30-60 fig aliquot of protein extracts was analyzed. For immunoblotting, proteins in the SDS-PAGE gels were transferred to a polyvinylidene difluoride membrane using a trans-blot apparatus. Antibodies against HCV NS5A and HCV NA5B (Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Inc., Santa Cruz, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR MEDICINE 30: 1021-1028, 2012 1023 Curcumin (pM) Figure 1. Cytotoxicity of curcumin in Huh7.5-HCV cells is shown. Cells were initially seeded at 1x10 s cells/well in 24-well plates, then treated with varying concentrations of curcumin or vehicle (0.1% DMSO), for 24 h. Cell viability was measured by MTT assay. Measurement was obtained from three independent experiments. f"P<0.001 compared to vehicle). CA, US A), HO-1 (Assay Designs, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI, USA), pAKT (308) and pERK (Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Inc.), NF-kB (Cell Signaling Technology, Beverly, MA, USA), Spl (Millipore, Darmstadt, Germany), a-tubulin (GeneTex, Inc., Irvine, CA, USA) and (3-actin (Sigma- Aldrich, St. Louis, MO, USA) were used as the primary antibodies. Mouse, rabbit or goat IgG antibodies coupled with horseradish peroxidase were used as the secondary antibodies. An enhanced chemi- luminescence kit and VL Chemi-Smart 3000 were used for detection, while the quantity of each band was determined using MultiGauge software. HO-1 knockdown by siRNA. Cells (3xl0 6 ) were seeded in 10-cm dishes for 6 h, then negative control small interfering (siRNA) (10 nM) or HO-1 siRNA (10 nM) (Invitrogen) was trans- fected into cells using the RNAiMAX Transfection Reagent (Invitrogen), according to the manufacturer's instructions. Subsequent to adding siRNA for 6 h, the medium was changed 0 10 15 20 Curcumin (yuM) 0 10 15 20 Curcumin (yuM) 10 15 20 Curcumin (pM) NS5B NS5A p-actin 0 10 15 20 Curcumin (pM) 0 10 15 20 Curcumin (pM) Figure 2. Curcumin dose-dependently inhibits HCV replication. (A) Curcumin inhibits luciferase reporter gene activity in Huh7.5-HCV cells. Cells were subcultured at a density of 4xl0 5 cells/well in 1 ml of culture medium in a 12-well plastic dish for 6 h. Curcumin or DMSO was added to the medium for 24 h. The cells were lysed and cell lysates were prepared for Renilla luciferase assay. (B) Curcumin inhibits HCV RNA expression in Huh7.5-HCV cells. Cells were subcultured at a density of 1.5xl0 6 cells in 8 ml of culture medium in a 6-cm plastic dish for 6 h. Curcumin or DMSO was added to the medium for 24 h. Total RNA was isolated and analyzed by real-time RT-PCR. (C) Curcumin inhibits HCV protein expression in Huh7.5-HCV cells. Cells were subcultured at a density of 1.5xl0 6 cells in 8 ml of culture medium in a 10-cm plastic dish for 6 h. Curcumin or DMSO was added to the medium for 24 h. Total protein was isolated and analyzed by western blot analysis. Measurement was performed in triplicate and was repeated three times. 1024 CHEN etal: CURCUMIN INHIBITS HCV BY HO-1 INDUCTION AND AKT INHIBITION A 20//M Curcumin HO-1 p-actin 0 6 12 24 48 (h) HO-1 P-actin 0 1 5 10 15 20 Curcumin (/sM) Curcumin (//M) Figure 3. Curcumin induces HO-1 protein expression in Huh7.5-HCV cells. (A) Time course of curcumin-induces HO-1 protein expression is shown. Cells were subcultured at a density of 1 .5xl0 6 cells in 8 ml of culture medium in a 10-cm plastic dish for 6 h. Curcumin or DMSO was added to the medium for 6-48 h. Total protein was isolated and analyzed by western blot analysis. (B) Dose-dependent induction of HO-1 by curcumin is shown. Cells were subcultured at a density of 1 .5xl0 6 cells in 4 ml of culture medium in a 10-cm plastic dish for 6 h. Curcumin or DMSO was added to the medium for 24 h. Total protein was isolated and analyzed by western blot analysis. (C) Effect of curcumin on the expression of HO-1 and HCV proteins is shown. Cells were subcultured at a density of 1.5xl0 6 cells in 8 ml of culture medium in a 10-cm plastic dish for 6 h. Curcumin or DMSO was added to the medium for 24 h. Total protein was isolated and analyzed by western blot analysis. The experiments were repeated three times. to fresh condition medium for 18 h. Then the transfected cells were then analyzed by western blotting. Statistical analysis. Data were expressed as the mean ± SE. Statistical evaluation was carried out by one-way ANOVA followed by Dunn's test. All statistics were calculated using SigmaStat version 3.5 (Systat Software). P<0.05 was consid- ered to indicate a statistically significant difference. Results Cytotoxicity of curcumin in Huh7.5 cells expressing the HCV genotype lb subgenomic replicon (Huh7.5-HCV cells). Curcumin is known to be an anticancer chemical at high doses. To avoid the obvious cytotocicity in the subsequent experi- ments, the MTT assay was applied for cytotoxicity analysis. The results show that curcumin dose-dependently decreased cell viability (Fig. 1). The dose <20 pM was selected for subse- quent analysis, given that the viability of 25 pM curcumin treatment is <80%. A 5 Hemin (/vM) Figure 4. Hemin dose-dependently inhibits HCV replication. (A) Hemin inhibits luciferase reporter gene activity in Huh7.5-HCV cells. Cells were subcultured at a density of 4xl0 5 cells/well in 1 ml of culture medium in a 12-well plastic dish for 6 h. Hemin or DMSO was added to the medium for 24 h. The cells were lysed and cell lysates were prepared for the Renilla luciferase assay. (B) Effect of hemin on the expression of HO-1 and HCV proteins is shown. Cells were subcultured at a density of 1.5xl0 6 cells in 8 ml of culture medium in a 10-cm plastic dish for 6 h. Hemin or DMSO was added to the medium for 24 h. Total protein was isolated and analyzed by western blot analysis. The experiments were repeated three times. Curcumin reduced HCV replication and HCV protein expres- sion. Due to the presence of a luciferase reporter gene in the HCV subgenomic replicon of Conl/SG-Neo(I)hRlucFM- DV2aUb, the culture medium luciferase activity was first analyzed subsequent to curcumin treatment. The results show that curcumin dose-dependently inhibited luciferase activity (Fig. 2A). However, the HCV RNA was also detected by real-time PCR. Curcumin also reduced the intracellular HCV RNA expression in a dose-dependent manner. Subsequent to curcumin treatment the HCV-specific protein NS5A and NS5B were detected by western blot analysis, indicating that curcumin dose-dependently inhibited expression of the NS5A and NS5B. The above data suggest that curcumin inhibited HCV replication in hepatoma cells. Curcumin induced HO-1 protein expression. Curcumin is known to induce HO-1 expression in various cells. This effect was analyzed in Huh7.5-HCV cells. Curcumin slightly induced HO-1 expression in a 6-h treatment, while signifi- cantly inducing it in 12 and 24 h. The HO-1 induction declined after treatment for 48 h (Fig. 3A). Curcumin also induced HO-1 expression in a dose-dependent manner (Fig. 3B). The change of NS5A, NS5B and HO-1 protein expressions was simultaneously detected by western blot analysis, indicating that curcumin dose-dependently inhibited the expression of NS5A and NS5B, while increasing the HO-1 expression (Fig. 3C). INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR MEDICINE 30: 1021-1028, 2012 1025 B pAKT(308) Nuclear fraction Cytosolic fraction p-actin 20 Curcumin (juM) NF-kB Sp-1 a-tubulin 10 15 20 0 10 Curcumin (/jM) 15 20 c Control LY UP Ro 10//M Figure 5. The role of HO-1, AKT, ERK and NF-kB on curcumin-inhibited HCV protein expression is shown. (A) Knockdown of HO-1 partially reversed curcumin-inhibited HCV protein expression. Cells (3xl0 6 ) were seeded in a 10-cm dish for 6 h, and negative control small interfering (siRNA) (10 nM) or HO-1 siRNA (10 nM) was transfected into cells. Subsequent to a 6-h addition of siRNA, the medium was changed to fresh condition medium for 18 h, and the transfected cells were analyzed by western blotting (*P<0.05 and "*P<0.001, in 2 groups, respectively). (B) Curcumin inhibited AKT, ERK and NF-kB. Cells were subcultured at a density of 1.5xl0 6 cells in 8 ml of culture medium in a 10-cm plastic dish for 6 h. Curcumin or DMSO was added to the medium for 24 h. Total cell lysates (up) or cytosol-nuclear fraction (down) were isolated by western blot analysis. Spl is a dominant nuclear protein and a-tubulin is a cytosolic protein. (C) Effect of AKT, ERK and NF-kB inhibitors on the HCV protein expression is shown. Cells were subcultured at a density of 1.5xl0 6 cells in 8 ml of culture medium in a 10-cm plastic dish for 6 h. Chemical (LY, LY294002; U0, U0126; Ro, Rol069920) or DMSO was added to the medium for 24 h. Total cell lysates were isolated for western blot analysis. (* P<0.001 compared to control). The experiments were repeated three times. Hemin reduced HCV replication and the HCV protein expression. The HO-1 inducer hemin was used to analyze its effect on HCV replication as well as on the protein expres- sion of HCV NS5A and NS5B. The result showed that hemin dose-dependently decreased HCV replication (Fig. 4A). Furthermore, curcumin inhibited the protein expression of NS5A and NS5B, while enhancing the HO-1 protein expres- sion. This finding suggested that HO-1 protein inhibited HCV replication in Huh7.5-HCV cells (Fig. 4). HO-1 knockdown partially reversed the curcumin-reduced viral protein expression. In order to prove the direct relationship between curcumin-induced HO-1 and curcumin- inhibited HCV replication, the HO-1 specific siRNA was used for analysis. HO-1 siRNA significantly inhibited basal and curcumin-induced HO-1 expression (Fig. 5A). HO-1 knockdown slightly increased the NS5A and NS5B protein expressions in the basal condition. At the same time, it partially but significantly reversed the curcumin-inhibited the 1026 CHEN et ah CURCUMIN INHIBITS HCV BY HO-1 INDUCTION AND AKT INHIBITION expression of NS5A and NS5B, suggesting that curcumin- induced HO-1 was involved in curcumin-inhibited HCV replication, while having additional mechanisms regarding the anti-HCV effect of curcumin. Effect of the PI3K-AKT, MEK-ERK and NF-kB pathways on curcumin-inhibited HCV replication. Fig. 5A shows that HO-1 is partially involved in curcumin-inhibited HCV replication. Additional signaling pathways affected by curcumin were analyzed, demonstrating that curcumin inhibited the protein phosphorylation of ERK and AKT, as well as the cytoplasmic protein expression of NF-kB (Fig. 5B). Therefore, the specific inhibitors of PI3K-AKT (LY294002), MEK-ERK (U0126) and NF-kB (Ro 106-9920) were used to identify the role of AKT, ERK and NF-kB in the HCV protein expression. Fig. 5C shows that curcumin was the only chemical to induce the HO-1 expression. Of the three inhibitors, only PI3K-AKT LY294002 slightly inhibited the HCV protein expression, while MEK-ERK U0126 and NF-kB inhibitors Ro 1069920 had a slight effect on increasing the HCV protein expression, suggesting that curcumin-inhibited HCV replication was also partially mediated via PI3K-AKT inhibition. Discussion Curcumin is a common chemical ingredient of curry. It has, however, been studied in clinical trials regarding its applica- bility in treating patients suffering from pancreatic and colon cancer, as well as multiple myeloma (37). In Taiwan, several doctors of traditional Chinese medicine consider curcumin to be beneficial for patients suffering from hepatitis. The results of this study demonstrate that curcumin inhibits HCV replication in cellular analysis, and its mechanism partially occurs through HO-1 induction and PI3K-AKT inhibition. HO-1, a curcumin-induced gene, is thought to be a potential therapeutic protein for the re-establishment of homeostasis in several pathologic conditions (38) and is also involved in inhibiting HCV replication (28). The HO-1 products biliverdin and iron contribute to certain anti-HCV mechanisms of HO-1 (26,39,40). In this study, HO-1 knock- down partially reversed curcumin-inhibited HCV replication, supporting the evidence for the anti-HCV effect of HO-1. Since HO-1 is induced by ROS or certain electrophiles, ROS has also been reported to inhibit HCV replication (41,42). Arsenic trioxide-inhibited HCV replication is also suggested to be mediated through the induction of oxidative stress (43). HO-1, an oxidative stress-induced gene, may be involved in the ROS-inhibited HCV replication. As a downstream kinase of PI3K, AKT is an important molecule in regulating a wide range of signaling pathways (44). In HCV-infected cells, the PI3K-AKT signaling pathway is involved in certain pathological mechanisms. For example, the activities of PI3K, AKT and their downstream target mTOR are increased in the HCV-replicating cells (45). HCV NS5A binds to PI3K, while enhancing the phosphotransferase activity of the catalytic domain (46). The HCV-activated PI3K-AKT contributes to cell survival enhancement. In addi- tion to cell survival, AKT leads to the protein accumulation of SREBP-1, an important transcription factor regulating genes involved in fatty acid and cholesterol synthesis (47). HCV NS4B has been found to enhance the protein expression levels of SREBPs and fatty acid synthase through PI3K activity, subsequently inducing a lipid accumulation in hepatoma cells (48). Therefore, inhibition of the PI3K-SREBP signaling pathway should decrease the HCV-induced HCC development and the cellular fatty acid level. Curcumin has been reported to inhibit HCV replication via suppression of the AKT-SREBP-1 pathway (14). In the present study, data also demonstrated that curcumin-inhibited PI3K-AKT was slightly involved in the anti-HCV activity of curcumin. Activation of the MEK-ERK signal cascade enhances the replication of viruses, such as the human immunodeficiency (49), the influenza (50), the corona- (51) and the herpes simplex viruses (52). By contrast, in the case of HBV, activation of MEK-ERK signaling led to the inhibition of HBV replication (53) . In the HCV study, interleukin- 1 has been reported to have the potential to effectively inhibit HCV replication and protein expression by activating the ERK signaling pathway (54) . HCV IRES-dependent protein synthesis was enhanced by MEK-ERK inhibitor PD98059 (55). Another report also suggests that inhibition of MEK-ERK signaling leads to the upregulation of HCV replication and protein production (56). Consistent with the results of the present study, those findings confirm that the curcumin-inhibited MEK-ERK signaling pathway contributes to the increase of HCV replication. NF-kB, one of the major signaling transduction molecules activated in response to oxidative stress, is able to modulate the transcription of a large number of downstream genes. The HCV core protein has been shown to activate NF-kB, inducing resistance to TNF-a-induced apoptosis in hepatoma cells (57). HCV NS2 activates the IL-8 gene expression by activating the NF-kB pathway in HepG2 cells (58). In the infectious JFH1 model, HCV is suggested to enhance hepatic fibrosis progression through the induction of TGF-pl, mediated by a ROS-induced and NF-kB -dependent pathway (59). These evidences indicate that the activation of NF-kB by HCV induces hepatic disease progression. In this study, the NF-kB expres- sion is abundant in the cytoplasm of Huh7.5 cells, expressing the HCV genotype lb subgenomic replicon (Fig. 5B). The absence of NF-kB nuclear translocation indicates that NF-kB is not likely to participate in the mechanism of hepatocarcino- genesis in this cell line. The absense of complete HCV core and HCV NS2 sequences in the subgenomic replicon used in this study, is likely to be the reason for the absence of NF-kB nuclear translocation. Therefore, it is likely to contribute to the inability of the NF-kB inhibitor to suppress the HCV protein expression in this cell line. In fact, the genomic variation of HCV core protein generates a distinct functional regulation of NF-kB, which may inhibit or activate NF-kB activity (60). In certain reports, the inhibition of NF-kB shows anti- HCV activity: for example, the Acacia confusa (61) and San-Huang-Xie-Xin-Tang extracts (62) suppress HCV repli- cation associated with NF-kB inhibition. In the present study, curcumin-inhibited NF-kB does not have any benefit in anti- HCV activity. Thus, the presence or absence of the inhibition of NF-kB in anti-HCV therapy is likely to depend on the activation status of NF-kB, although additional investigations are required on the subject. In conclusion, this study proved that curcumin inhibits HCV replication through the induction of the HO- 1 expres- INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR MEDICINE 30: 1021-1028, 2012 1027 sion and the inhibition of the PI3K-AKT signaling pathway. However, the curcumin-inhibited MEK-ERK mechanism contributes negatively to its anti-HCV activity. Acknowledgements This study was financed by grants from the National Science Council (NSC98-2320-B-415-002-MY3) and from the Chiayi Christian Hospital, Taiwan. References 1. Lavanchy D: The global burden of hepatitis C. Liver Int 29 (Suppl 1): S74-S81, 2009. 2. Bostan N and Mahmood T: An overview about hepatitis C: a devastating virus. Crit Rev Microbiol 36: 91-133, 2010. 3. Moradpour D, Penin F and Rice CM: Replication of hepatitis C virus. Nat Rev Microbiol 5: 453-463, 2007. 4. Feld JJ and Hoofnagle JH: Mechanism of action of interferon and ribavirin in treatment of hepatitis C. Nature 436: 967-972, 2005. 5. Munir S, Saleem S, Idrees M, et ah. Hepatitis C treatment: current and future perspectives. Virol J 7: 296, 2010. 6. Lindenbach BD and Rice CM: Unravelling hepatitis C virus replication from genome to function. Nature 436: 933-938, 2005. 7. Lee CM, Hung CH, Lu SN, et ah. Viral etiology of hepatocellular carcinoma and HCV genotypes in Taiwan. Intervirology 49: 76-81,2006. 8. Hatcher H, Planalp R, Cho J, Torti FM and Torti SV: Curcumin: from ancient medicine to current clinical trials. Cell Mol Life Sci 65: 1631-1652, 2008. 9. Goel A, Kunnumakkara AB and Aggarwal BB: Curcumin as 'Curecumin': from kitchen to clinic. Biochem Pharmacol 75: 787-809,2008. 10. Li CJ, Zhang LJ, Dezube BJ, Crumpacker CS and Pardee AB: Three inhibitors of type 1 human immunodeficiency virus long terminal repeat-directed gene expression and virus replication. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 90: 1839-1842, 1993. 11. Mazumder A, Raghavan K, Weinstein J, Kohn KW and Pommier Y: Inhibition of human immunodeficiency virus type-1 integrase by curcumin. Biochem Pharmacol 49: 1165-1170, 1995. 12. Si X, Wang Y, Wong J, Zhang J, McManus BM and Luo H: Dysregulation of the ubiquitin-proteasome system by curcumin suppresses coxsackievirus B3 replication. J Virol 81: 3142-3150, 2007. 13. Rechtman MM, Har-Noy O, Bar-Yishay I, et ah Curcumin inhibits hepatitis B virus via down-regulation of the metabolic coactivator PGC-lalpha. FEBS Lett 584: 2485-2490, 2010. 14. Kim K, Kim KH, Kim HY, Cho HK, Sakamoto N and Cheong J: Curcumin inhibits hepatitis C virus replication via suppressing the Akt-SREBP-1 pathway. FEBS Lett 584: 707-712, 2010. 15. Otterbein LE, Soares MP, Yamashita K and Bach FH: Heme oxygenase-1: unleashing the protective properties of heme. Trends Immunol 24: 449-455, 2003. 16. Khor TO, Huang MT, Kwon KH, Chan JY, Reddy BS and Kong AN: Nrf2-deficient mice have an increased susceptibility to dextran sulfate sodium-induced colitis. Cancer Res 66: 11580-11584,2006. 17. Motterlini R, Foresti R, Bassi R and Green CJ: Curcumin, anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory agent, induces heme oxygenase-1 and protects endothelial cells against oxidative stress. Free Radic Biol Med 28: 1303-1312, 2000. 18. Gaedeke J, Noble NA and Border WA: Curcumin blocks fibrosis in anti-Thy 1 glomerulonephritis through up-regulation of heme oxygenase 1. Kidney Int 68: 2042-2049, 2005. 19. McNally SJ, Harrison EM, Ross JA, Garden OJ and Wigmore SJ: Curcumin induces heme oxygenase-1 in hepatocytes and is protective in simulated cold preservation and warm reperfusion injury. Transplantation 81: 623-626, 2006. 20. Bao W, Li K, Rong S, et ah Curcumin alleviates ethanol-induced hepatocytes oxidative damage involving heme oxygenase-1 induction. J Ethnopharmacol 128: 549-553, 2010. 21. Farombi EO, Shrotriya S, Na HK, Kim SH and Surh YJ: Curcumin attenuates dimethylnitrosamine-induced liver injury in rats through Nrf2-mediated induction of heme oxygenase-1. Food Chem Toxicol 46: 1279-1287, 2008. 22. Kim KM, Pae HO, Zhung M, et ah. Involvement of anti-inflam- matory heme oxygenase-1 in the inhibitory effect of curcumin on the expression of pro-inflammatory inducible nitric oxide synthase in RAW264.7 macrophages. Biomed Pharmacother 62: 630-636, 2008. 23. Hsu HY, Chu LC, Hua KF and Chao LK: Heme oxygenase-1 mediates the anti-inflammatory effect of Curcumin within LPS-stimulated human monocytes. J Cell Physiol 215: 603-612, 2008. 24. Devadas K and Dhawan S : Hemin activation ameliorates HIV- 1 infection via heme oxygenase-1 induction. J Immunol 176: 4252-4257,2006. 25. Protzer U, Seyfried S, Quasdorff M, et ah. Antiviral activity and hepatoprotection by heme oxygenase-1 in hepatitis B virus infection. Gastroenterology 133: 1156-1165,2007. 26. Lehmann E, El-Tantawy WH, Ocker M, et ah. The heme oxygenase 1 product biliverdin interferes with hepatitis C virus replication by increasing antiviral interferon response. Hepatology 51: 398-404, 2010. 27. Shan Y, Zheng J, Lambrecht RW and Bonkovsky HL: Reciprocal effects of micro-RNA-122 on expression of heme oxygenase-1 and hepatitis C virus genes in human hepatocytes. Gastroenterology 133:1166-1174,2007. 28. Zhu Z, Wilson AT, Mathahs MM, et ah. Heme oxygenase-1 suppresses hepatitis C virus replication and increases resistance of hepatocytes to oxidant injury. Hepatology 48: 1430-1439, 2008. 29. Tergaonkar V: NFkappaB pathway: a good signaling paradigm and therapeutic target. Int J Biochem Cell Biol 38: 1647-1653, 2006. 30. Luqman S and Pezzuto JM: NFkappaB: a promising target for natural products in cancer chemoprevention. Phytother Res 24: 949-963, 2010. 31. Zhong Y, Liu T and Guo Z: Curcumin inhibits ox-LDL-induced MCP-1 expression by suppressing the p38MAPK and NF-kappaB pathways in rat vascular smooth muscle cells. Inflamm Res 61: 61-67, 2012. 32. Jobin C, Bradham CA, Russo MP, et ah. Curcumin blocks cytokine-mediated NF-kappa B activation and proinflammatory gene expression by inhibiting inhibitory factor I-kappa B kinase activity. J Immunol 163: 3474-3483, 1999. 33. Bharti AC, Donato N, Singh S and Aggarwal BB: Curcumin (diferuloylmethane) down-regulates the constitutive activation of nuclear factor-kappa B and IkappaBalpha kinase in human multiple myeloma cells, leading to suppression of proliferation and induction of apoptosis. Blood 101: 1053-1062, 2003. 34. Johnson GL and Lapadat R: Mitogen-activated protein kinase pathways mediated by ERK, JNK, and p38 protein kinases. Science 298: 191 1-1912, 2002. 35. Chen A and Zheng S: Curcumin inhibits connective tissue growth factor gene expression in activated hepatic stellate cells in vitro by blocking NF-kappaB and ERK signalling. Br J Pharmacol 153: 557-567, 2008. 36. Lim JH and Kwon TK: Curcumin inhibits phorbol myristate acetate (PMA)-induced MCP-1 expression by inhibiting ERK and NF-kappaB transcriptional activity. Food Chem Toxicol 48: 47-52, 2010. 37. Shehzad A, Wahid F and Lee YS: Curcumin in cancer chemo- prevention: molecular targets, pharmacokinetics, bioavailability, and clinical trials. Arch Pharm 343: 489-499, 2010. 38. Soares MP and Bach FH: Heme oxygenase-1: from biology to therapeutic potential. Trends Mol Med 15: 50-58, 2009. 39. Zhu Z, Wilson AT, Luxon B A, et ah. Biliverdin inhibits hepatitis C virus nonstructural 3/4A protease activity: mechanism for the antiviral effects of heme oxygenase? Hepatology 52: 1897-1905, 2010. 40. Fillebeen C and Pantopoulos K: Iron inhibits replication of infec- tious hepatitis C virus in permissive Huh7.5.1 cells. J Hepatol 53: 995-999, 2010. 41 . Choi J, Lee KJ, Zheng Y, Yamaga AK, Lai MM and Ou JH: Reactive oxygen species suppress hepatitis C virus RNA replication in human hepatoma cells. Hepatology 39: 81-89, 2004. 42. Yano M, Ikeda M, Abe K, et ah. Oxidative stress induces anti-hepatitis C virus status via the activation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase. Hepatology 50: 678-688, 2009. 43. Kuroki M, Ariumi Y, Ikeda M, Dansako H, Wakita T and Kato N: Arsenic trioxide inhibits hepatitis C virus RNA repli- cation through modulation of the glutathione redox system and oxidative stress. J Virol 83: 2338-2348, 2009. 1028 CHEN etal: CURCUMIN INHIBITS HCV BY HO-1 INDUCTION AND AKT INHIBITION 44. Brazil DP, Yang ZZ and Hemmings BA: Advances in protein kinase B signalling: AKTion on multiple fronts. Trends Biochem Sci 29: 233-242, 2004. 45. Mannova P and Beretta L: Activation of the N-Ras-PI3K- Akt-mTOR pathway by hepatitis C virus: control of cell survival and viral replication. J Virol 79: 8742-8749, 2005. 46. StreetA,MacdonaldA,CrowderKand Harris M: The Hepatitis C virus NS5 A protein activates a phosphoinositide 3-kinase-depen- dent survival signaling cascade. J Biol Chem 279: 12232-12241 , 2004. 47. Porstmann T, Griffiths B, Chung YL, et at. PKB/Akt induces transcription of enzymes involved in cholesterol and fatty acid biosynthesis via activation of SREBP. Oncogene 24: 6465-6481, 2005. 48. Park CY, Jun HJ, Wakita T, Cheong JH and Hwang SB: Hepatitis C virus nonstructural 4B protein modulates sterol regu- latory element-binding protein signaling via the AKT pathway. J Biol Chem 284: 9237-9246, 2009. 49. Yangxand Gabuzda D: Regulation of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 infectivity by the ERK mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling pathway. J Virol 73: 3460-3466, 1999. 50. Pleschka S, Wolff T, Ehrhardt C, et at. Influenza virus propaga- tion is impaired by inhibition of the Raf/MEK/ERK signalling cascade. Nat Cell Biol 3: 301-305, 2001. 51. Cai Y, Liu Y and Zhang X: Suppression of coronavirus repli- cation by inhibition of the MEK signaling pathway. J Virol 81: 446-456, 2007. 52. Smith KD, Mezhir JJ, Bickenbach K, et at. Activated MEK suppresses activation of PKR and enables efficient replication and in vivo oncolysis by Deltagamma(l)34.5 mutants of herpes simplex virus 1. J Virol 80: 1110-1120, 2006. 53. Zheng Y, Li J, Johnson DL and Ou JH: Regulation of hepatitis B virus replication by the ras-mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling pathway. J Virol 77: 7707-7712, 2003. 54. Zhu H and Liu C: Interleukin-1 inhibits hepatitis C virus subge- nomic RNA replication by activation of extracellular regulated kinase pathway. J Virol 77: 5493-5498, 2003. 55. Murata T, Hijikata M and Shimotohno K: Enhancement of internal ribosome entry site-mediated translation and replica- tion of hepatitis C virus by PD98059. Virology 340: 105-115, 2005. 56. Ndjomou J, Park IW, Liu Y, Mayo LD and He JJ: Up-regulation of hepatitis C virus replication and production by inhibition of MEK/ERK signaling. PLoS One 4: e7498, 2009. 57. Tai DI, Tsai SL, Chen YM, et at. Activation of nuclear factor kappaB in hepatitis C virus infection: implications for patho- genesis and hepatocarcinogenesis. Hepatology 31: 656-664, 2000. 58. Oem JK, Jackel-Cram C, Li YP, et at. Hepatitis C virus non- structural protein-2 activates CXCL-8 transcription through NF-kappaB . Arch Virol 1 53 : 293-30 1 , 2008 . 59. Lin W, Tsai WL, Shao RX, et at. Hepatitis C virus regulates trans- forming growth factor betal production through the generation of reactive oxygen species in a nuclear factor kappaB-dependent manner. Gastroenterology 138: 2509-2518, 2518.el, 2010. 60. Ray RB, Steele R, Basu A, et at. Distinct functional role of hepatitis C virus core protein on NF-kappaB regulation is linked to genomic variation. Virus Res 87: 21-29, 2002. 61. Lee JC, Chen WC, Wu SF, et at. Anti-hepatitis C virus activity of Acacia confusa extract via suppressing cyclooxygenase-2. Antiviral Res 89: 35-42, 2011. 62. Lee JC, Tseng CK, Wu SF, Chang FR, Chiu CC and Wu YC: San-Huang-Xie-Xin-Tang extract suppresses hepatitis C virus replication and virus-induced cyclooxygenase-2 expression. J Viral Hepat 18: e315-e324, 2011.
Identification of Genes with Consistent Methylation Levels across Different Human Tissues.
Lu, Tzu-Pin,Chen, Kevin T.,Tsai, Mong-Hsun,Kuo, Kuan-Ting,Hsiao, Chuhsing Kate,Lai, Liang-Chuan,Chuang, Eric Y.
2014-03-12T00:00:00Z
null
This article is from Scientific Reports , volume 4 . Abstract DNA methylation plays an important role in regulating cell growth and disease development. Methylation profiles are examined by bisulfite conversion; however, the lack of markers for bisulfite conversion efficiency and appropriate internal control genes remains a major challenge. To address these issues, we utilized two bioinformatics approaches, coefficients of variances and resampling tests, to identify probes showing stable methylation levels from several independent microarray datasets. Mass spectrometry validated the consistently high methylation levels of the five probes (N4BP2, EGFL8, CTRB1, TSPAN3, and ZNF690) in 13 human tissue types from 24 cell lines. Linear associations between detected methylation levels and methyl concentrations of DNA samples were further demonstrated in three genes (N4BP2, EGFL8, and CTRB1). To summarize, we identified five genes which may serve as internal controls for methylation studies by analyzing large-scale microarray data, and three of them can be used as markers for evaluating the efficiency of bisulfite conversion.
Full text of "Identification of Genes with Consistent Methylation Levels across Different Human Tissues." Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "Identification of Genes with Consistent Methylation Levels across Different Human Tissues." See other formats SCIENTIFIC REPORTS OPEN SUBJECT AREAS: DNA METHYLATION MICROARRAYS Received 19 November 2013 Accepted 17 February 201 4 Published 12 March 2014 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to L.-C.L. ([email protected]. tw) orE.Y.C. ([email protected]. tw) Identification of Genes with Consistent Methylation Levels across Different Human Tissues Tzu-Pin Lu 1,2 , Kevin T. Chen 2 , Mong-Hsun Tsai 2,3 , Kuan-Ting Kuo 4 , Chuhsing Kate Hsiao 2,5 , Liang-Chuan Lai 2,6 & Eric Y. Chuang' 2,7 1 YongLin Biomedical Engineering Center, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, 2 Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Core, Center of Genomic Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, institute of Biotechnology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, 4 Department of Pathology, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, department of Public Health, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, 6 Graduate Institute of Physiology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, 7 Graduate Institute of Biomedical Electronics and Bioinformatics and Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. DNA methylation plays an important role in regulating cell growth and disease development. Methylation profiles are examined by bisulfite conversion; however, the lack of markers for bisulfite conversion efficiency and appropriate internal control genes remains a major challenge. To address these issues, we utilized two bioinformatics approaches, coefficients of variances and resampling tests, to identify probes showing stable methylation levels from several independent microarray datasets. Mass spectrometry validated the consistently high methylation levels of the five probes (N4BP2, EGFL8, CTRB1, TSPAN3, and ZNF690) in 1 3 human tissue types from 24 cell lines. Linear associations between detected methylation levels and methyl concentrations of DNA samples were further demonstrated in three genes (N4BP2, EGFL8, and CTRB1). To summarize, we identified five genes which may serve as internal controls for methylation studies by analyzing large-scale microarray data, and three of them can be used as markers for evaluating the efficiency of bisulfite conversion. I n recent years, epigenetic changes have been extensively studied, and many studies have demonstrated their I association with biological phenomena such as genomic imprinting, immune response regulation, and devel- I opmental programming 14 . Epigenetics is the study of the connections between genotype and phenotype and one of its unique revelations is that gene expression patterns can be regulated without altering DNA sequences 5,6 . Different types of epigenetic changes, such as DNA methylation, microRNA expression, and chromatin modi- fication, have been reported as important players in many physiological functions 6,7 . Among them, DNA methy- lation is the most studied mechanism and participates in the pathogenic processes of many diseases, such as cancers, neurodevelopmental disabilities, and allergic diseases 1,8,9 . Thus, a growing body of research has been devoted to dissecting the methylation profiles in patients and trying to identify potential methylation biomarkers. In the mammalian genome, DNA methylation usually occurs in a cytosine within a CpG dinucleotide and occasionally is found outside of CpG 10 . With the advancement in experimental technologies, several methods, including Illumina Infinium microarray and whole genome shotgun bisulfite sequencing, can be used to invest- igate genome-wide methylation profiles in tissue samples 11 . An important feature of these methods is that most of them need to perform bisulfite conversions on DNA samples in order to distinguish methylated and unmethy- lated nucleotides. Bisulfite conversion transforms cytosine residues into uracil residues but leaves 5-methylcy- tosine residues unchanged, which allows researchers to quantify the methylation levels. Challenges arise, however, when trying to treat DNA samples with bisulfite. A critical question is how to determine whether input DNA samples are completely converted by bisulfite or not. Although Illumina methylation microarrays do have quality control probes for assessing the efficiency of bisulfite conversion, such information was usually not available in the public datasets. An arbitrary threshold between the intensity ratios of bisulfite-treated and untreated DNAs was used to indicate whether the bisulfite conversion was completed or not, which cannot fully and quantitatively reflect the level of bisulfite conversion. However, incomplete bisulfite conversions lead to overestimation of the methylation levels, since only a portion of cytosine is converted. Alternatively, over- treatment of bisulfite causes degradation of DNA samples and increases the probability of converting a methy- SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:4351 | DOI: 10.1038/srep04351 1 lated cytosine to a thymine 11 . Consequently, identification of gene markers associated with the efficiency of bisulfite conversion may help to overcome this challenge. High-throughput technologies, such as microarrays and next-gen- eration sequencing, facilitate the identification of genes with altered methylation levels, and other experimental methods are usually per- formed to validate the results. For example, mass spectrometry has been widely used in methylation analyses 1214 . However, few studies have explored genes with consistent methylation levels across differ- ent samples. Similar to the concept of "housekeeping" genes showing consistent and stable gene expression levels 15 , appropriate internal controls for methylation studies can not only help to reduce the experimental bias from artificial effects, but also provide a better baseline to compare data from distinct biological samples. Therefore, we aimed to perform a large-scale analysis of methylation data in order to identify potential housekeeping genes with stable methylation levels across multiple human tissues. In this study, we analyzed a total of 682 methylation microarrays generated from Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation27 BeadChips and used a bioinformatics approach to identify 27 genes showing consistent methylation levels across all samples. The top five genes were validated using mass spectrometry in 24 human cell lines, and a linear association between detected methylation levels and methyl concentrations of DNA samples was demonstrated in three genes, suggesting their potential role as markers for the efficiency of bisulfite conversion. Results Identification of consistently methylated probes. After the quality checks of samples and probes, a total of 668 samples (Table 1) containing 7,829 probes remained for further analyses. These 668 samples were comprised of more than 10 different cell types from 8 independent experimental batches and ethnicities. The following analysis procedures were all carried out using R version 2.9. For each gene, the coefficient of variance (CV) value and stability score 16 were calculated to estimate the consistency of methylation levels among all samples, and the top 100 probes with the lowest CVs and highest stability scores were recorded as list A and A', respectively. To remove false-positive probes identified by coincidence, resampling tests were performed by randomly splitting the 668 samples into halves with equal sample sizes, i.e., 334 samples each. Similarly, the top 100 probes with lowest CVs were recorded as list B and C, and the top 100 probes with highest stability scores were recorded as list B' and C'. Detailed information about the resampling test is described under Methods. The results of the random trials are summarized in Table SI, which shows that the mean CVs and stability scores of the top 100 probes were generally larger than 80 and even approached or attained 90 among the six lists. Among the 10,000 trials, the number of probes identified in list B at least once was 224, and the number of probes identified at least once in any of the 6 lists was only 295. Such high concordance suggested that both CV value and stability score approaches were stable and their findings were generally very similar. In addition, these two approaches identified 69 common probes out of the top 100 probes in lists A and A', which further demonstrated the consistency of the results. Therefore, we focused on the intersecting set of probes (n = 27) among all six lists for the following analyses. Methylation levels of the selected 27 probes across different datasets. The 27 candidate probes consistently appearing in all six lists are shown in Table 2. As shown in Figure SI, all of these 27 probes (red dots) displayed high methylation levels and relatively very low CVs. For example, the highest CV value of the 27 probes was only 0.1347, whose rank was 36 th among 7,829 probes. To be more specific, we further examined the methylation levels of the 27 probes in all samples from different datasets (Table 2). In general, their (3 values of methylation were very stable across all 668 samples, independent of different experimental batches, and all of them were higher than 0.8, and even 0.9. For instance, as shown in Figure S2, the M-values of N4BP2 and EGFL8 in distinct datasets did not vary much. Therefore, these results suggested that our approach was able to successfully identify probes with consistent methylation levels. The 27 selected probes showed consistent methylation levels across samples with different diseases, tissue types, and ethnicities. Validation of selected probes using mass spectrometry. To narrow down the target probes for validation, we repeated the same procedures shown in Figure 1, except that only the top 20 probes were tallied. Among the 10,000 resampling trials, only 1.09% of probes (n = 85) were identified at least once in all six lists, indicating that our proposed approach to identify probes with stable methylation levels is not sensitive to a change in the number of probes selected. Next, an average number of appearances in the lists B-C was ranked for experimental validation. The top 5 probes (N4BP2, EGFL8, CTRB1, TSPAN3, and ZNF690) were selected (Table S2), and all of them were identified more than 9,885 times out of the 10,000 trials, suggesting they had stable methylation levels across different biological samples. Twenty-four cell lines derived from 13 different cell types were investigated using mass spectrometry (Table 3). After DNA was extracted and bisulfate converted, mass spectrometry experiment was performed according to the standard protocols provided by the manufacturer (Sequenom, San Diego, CA). The results of the mass spectrometry are illustrated in Figure 2, and all of the five genes generally showed consistent and stable methylation levels among all cell lines. N4BP2 and EGPL8, for example, had methylation levels higher than 0.75 in all cell lines, which demonstrated that these two genes were highly methylated independent of tissues type (Figure 2A-B). In addition, CTRB1, ZNF690, and TSPAN3 showed high p values (>0.75) in 24 (96%), 23 (92%), and 19 (76%) cell lines. Table 1 Characteristics of analyzed Illumina Infinium Data Set" Sample Number Human Methylation27 microarray datasets Description GSE 17648 44 Colorectal cancer, tumor vs. adjacent normal GSE 17769 10 Breast cancer, tumor cell lines vs. normal line GSE20067 195 Irish patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus GSE20080 48 Normal and preinvasive cervical smear samples GSE24087 4 HPV(+) and HPV(-) SCC cell lines GSE26133 160 HapMap Yoruba lymphoblastoid cell lines GSE27284 10 Primary NSCLC fibroblast and normal cell lines In-house studies 21 1 Lung adenocarcinoma; SLE, case vs. control; Cord blood samples with atopic dermatitis total 682 "Accession number is from Gene Expression Omnibus. HPV: human papillomavirus; SCC: squamous cell carcinoma; NSCLC: non-sma cell lung cancer; SLE: systematic lupus erythematosus. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:4351 | DOI: 10.1038/srep04351 2 Table 2 Information on the 27 probes commonly identified in the six lists Gene Description TargetID Chromosome Coordinate M-value fS value „ 1 J 1 QO o protein-coupled receptor 1 *-r»9 A 1 A7R/I 1 cgzzt i o/ i 1 9 1 z JJO/ JOUO t ^9n n ono u.yuy A pot I Apolipoprotein L, 1 (-nDR77'i7Q? cgvjo/ / j/ 70 99 zz "34Q7QAQQ 0*17/ oooo 9 R7zt Z .O/ zt u.oou Clarf38 Thvmor'vl'p pptinn n^^orintprl fnmi v mpmhpr 9 i 1 1 y 1 1 1 ul y i o c i ci^ 1 1 w 1 1 uojul iuicu i kj i i i i i y 1 1 id 1 1 ljch z_ rn27573888 1 28078930 4.21 8 0.949 Solute corrier fomily 35, member F6 LQZ4Z400 1 / 9 z 9ART9RR? D RQ9 Chorionic somotomommotropin hormone 1 (plocentol loctocjen) rn 1 1 RR09 1 1 cy i i oouz i i l 7 W3979r)0 9 zlR Chorionic somotomommotropin hormone 1 (plocentol loctocjen) C.CJZ/ 1 / 004J l 7 T DD9 u.007 CTRB1 l hvmotrvn^inonpn Rl x_, iiyiiiwii y ujm iuuci i lj i rnl6863382 16 73810196 3.604 0.924 DA 71 LSf-\AmL Deleted in ozoospermio-like rnfVi4991 0^ LCJL'O^Zy 1 7J T O 1 AA9 1 SRA 1 UUZ 1 JOU 1 9RA 0 .z 00 D QD7 CVrto EGF-like-dornain, multiple 8 f n 1 A9P9A7Q eg i ozozo/ y A O T997199R0 OZZ4ZZOO o.zoj n on/I F77R Fl 1 receptor cg07883333 1 159276377 4.743 0.964 FLJ45684 FLI456.84 lorus ra03410718 1 9 598423 3.543 0.921 Family with sequence similarity 83, member H cgzuo i yujj p o 1 /l/1PR'399A ^ A9y1 O .OZZ^ n 09^ vi/r l I Growth differentiation factor 1 1 1 9 1 z c. a An l 0A0 D 9 1 7 vj. y 1 / G protein pathway suppressor 2 rn 1 1 1 9, 1 70^ eg i i i o i / yj l 7 71 AOAQS / i ouoyj zt 07^ 0 Qzlzt HTRA3 rnii/A bciiiic ucuiiuubc o 1 UJ7 JO 4 p'39 1 A9S ooz i uyj 3 604 0 924 IL13 1 ntor oi i V i n 1 \ 1 I 1 1 CI leu IS. 1 1 1 I J rnl4593984 5 1 39091 51 3 1 JZV/Z. 1 J 1 J 2.847 0.878 IT/* A OR I f vM ZD Integrin, alpha 2b (platelet glycoprotein lib of llb/llla complex, ariTiuen i j eg i / / ^j-yozu 1 7 T0fi99n0^ jyozzuyo T 9H9 n oo9 vj.yuz N4BP2 rv 1 F ") 1 1 ^ l-\ I n fl I n i~i r\rr\ia i n 9 1 UlilUIIIU UlUltrlll Z. ml ? 1 071 A 9 4 o y / / 4uo o 3 219 0 903 PPP2R2A Prfitpin nnAcnnn \c\ c o 9 rofii ilnt("M"\/ ciihtiinit R n nnn 1 lUlGlll kJI IUjUI lUIUoCr Z. , 1 CLjUIUIUI y oUUUl Ml U, UlLJIIU ml 0907787 8 969041 1 9 Z.UZ.VH 1 1 L. 3 ] 86 0.901 PRH1 Proline-rich protein Haelll subfamily 1 egl 3383572 12 10927484 2.888 0.881 RDBP Negative elongation factor complex member E cg047 10641 6 32036236 3.107 0.896 RPS6KB2 Ribosomal protein S6 kinase, 70 kDa, polypeptide 2 cg2334791 1 1 1 66951485 3.286 0.907 S MARC A3 Helicase-like transcription factor cg2 1089667 3 150287952 4.585 0.960 TSPAN3 Tetraspanin 3 cg2 1377793 15 75151574 3.320 0.909 TUBA3D Tubulin, alpha 3d cg02774486 2 1 3 1 949903 3.732 0.930 ZNF142 Zinc finger protein 142 cg04970994 2 219234087 3.524 0.920 ZNF690 Zinc finger and SCAN domain containing 29 cgl2784172 15 41449249 3.303 0.908 Thus, the results indicated that our approach can successfully identify genes that are stably and highly methylated across different cell types. Lastly, we evaluated the sensitivity of detecting methylation levels in the top three genes showing stable methylation levels, including N4BP2, EGFL8, and CTRB1, using different concentrations of methylated samples. Two standard DNA samples, which were fully methylated (100%) and unmethylated (0%), were purchased from Qiagen (Valencia, CA) and used to make DNA samples with 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% methylation levels. Subsequently, these (27J57B probes, 682 samples) 1 Highly methylated probes: Remove protres with mean beta values 0.3 (9,341 probes, 582 samples) i Quality check or samples : Remove samples if more than 20 probes have missing values (9,-341 probes,^668 samples) Quality check on probes : Remove probes if missing values are in any of the remaining samples (7,829 probes, 668 samples) 1 M-value transformation : M = log 2 (£S/(l- P)) (7,829 probes, 668 samples) i Randomly divide samples into two groups ListA : Find top 100 probes with smallest CV values ListA : Find top 100 probes with highest stability scores Repeat for 10,000 trials List probes consistently found by lists A-C Figure 1 | Flowchart for identification of genes with consistent methylation levels across different samples. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:4351 | DOI: 10.1038/srep04351 3 Table 3 Characteristics of the 24 cell lines investigated using the MassARRAY system Cell line Feature TO ft • i-ii □rain glioblastoma 1 187 UO/ Brain glioblastoma 3n J 19 1 Neuroblastoma vIVloOoU riDroDiasT Fibroblast TIT A Lymphoblast W 1 IV 1 Lymphoblast fE8 1 T Esophageal cancer mCr/ Breast cancer O l -f\ \*L 1 u Lung cancer Lung cancer DEA9ZD Lung normal DAM/" 1 r AlNv-- 1 Pancreatic cancer mm Colon cancer UT.OO PI 1 "Z7 <^oion cancer |_|C 1 A UCLA Cervical cancer DDU 1 Prostate normal fWif AD1 Ovarian cancer SKOV3 Ovarian cancer JH514 Ovarian cancer OVTOKO Ovarian cancer OVTW59 PO Ovarian cancer TOV-1 12D Ovarian cancer OVEM Ovarian cancer samples were investigated in the MassARRAY system, and the methylation levels of N4BP2, EGFL8 and CTRB1 are shown in Figure 3. For each gene, a linear relationship (R 2 a 0.98) was observed between its methylation level and the methyl concentration of DNA samples. In addition, these three genes all showed low (<0.2) and high (>0.8) methylation levels in the 0% and 100% methylated samples, respectively. This suggested that the methylation levels of these three genes were highly associated with the methylated con- centrations of DNA samples. Therefore, these genes can serve as potential methylation markers for bisulfate conversion. Discussion Changes in methylation have been shown to be an important player in regulating cell growth, normal cellular functions, and even the development of diseases 17,18 . Thus, how to effectively and accurately measure the methylation levels of multiple genes simultaneously has become a critical issue. Although some experimental technologies, such as enzyme-based gel electrophoresis and affinity- enrichment methods, can be used in methylation studies without performing bisulfite conversions, most of the popular techniques still require treating samples with bisulfite in advance 11 . However, inappropriate bisulfite conversion may easily introduce systematic errors and lead to incorrect conclusions. A previous study has demonstrated that the rate of cytosine deamination to uracil highly depends on temperature and incubation time 19 . Therefore, identification of internal controls for assessing the conversion efficiency of DNA samples is necessary. In addition, internal controls can provide a baseline for comparison of the quality of input DNA samples and provide a stable reference line to normalize methylation data among different samples. For example, the delta-delta cycle threshold (ddCt) method has been widely used in analyzing PCR data for mRNA expression values 20,21 , and internal controls, such as ACTB and 18s rRNA, which have high and stable expression values in different tissues types, are essential for interpreting the results. In this study, we demonstrated that N4BP2, EGFL8, and CTRB1 were highly methylated not only in samples detected by microarrays (|3 values > 0.9, Table 2), but also in 24 cell lines across 13 tissue types examined by mass spectrometry (P values > 0.75, Figure 2). Therefore, the results of two independent techniques both showed that these genes had high methylation levels in several tissue types. In addition, a linear relationship (R 2 s 0.98) was demonstrated between the methylation levels of three identified genes and the methyl concentration of DNA samples (Figure 3). These data further suggested their capability for serving as internal controls because their methylation levels can be used to reflect the efficiency of bisulfite conversion in input samples. In conclusion, N4BP2, EGFL8, and CTRB1 were possible internal controls for methylation studies since their methylation levels were not only consistent in many different human tissues but also proportional to the methyl concentration of DNA samples. Two approaches, CVs and stability scores, were performed in this study to identify probes showing consistent methylation levels (Figure 1). For a given gene, the CV was used to evaluate consistency across different samples, whereas the stability score approach 16 uti- lized a rank product method to estimate its suitability in serving as a control in distinct datasets. Interestingly, the results of these two approaches were very similar and identified 69 probes in common out of the top 100 probes, motivating us to use both approaches. Also, moderate to high Pearson correlation coefficients (r = 0.62-0.76) were observed between the rankings of genes obtained from CV and stability score approaches, further suggesting their concordance. Resampling tests were used to exclude probes identified by ran- dom chance, and high similarities were observed in the results (Table 51) . In addition, although selecting the top 100 probes is an arbitrary threshold, the results showed minimal variation when the threshold number was changed to 20. To summarize, the results suggest that our procedures were not sensitive to the chosen parameters and were able to reproducibly identify probes by integrating two different approaches. The expression levels of hypermethylated genes are down-regu- lated, if these genes are subject to the regulation of DNA methyla- tion 18 . Such an epigenetic regulation mechanism is observed in several genes related to embryonic development 22 . For instance, DAZL. one of the top 27 probes, is an important regulator particip- ating in spermatogenesis and oogenesis, and its demethylation is only observed in germ cells but not somatic cells 23 . GDF1 1 is a growth factor involved in the formation of mesoderm and neurogenesis 24 , and its gene expression level can be induced by a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor and inhibited by HDAC3 25 . Accordingly, the results suggest that these identified genes have biological relevance. Although we used gene symbols to denote the CpG islands show- ing high methylation, readers should keep in mind that methylation levels are dependent on the specific chromosome coordinates (Table 52) , because different methylation statuses of distinct CpG loci in the same gene could be observed. For example, methylation changes were observed in the first exon of HTRA3 in smoking-related lung cancer, but such alterations were not detected in its promoter region 26 . However, gene symbols were chosen to represent the CpG islands in this study, since such methylation changes in CpG islands may affect the overall function of the corresponding gene. To date, the literature has rarely reported methylation changes in the top five genes identified by our analysis (N4BP2, EGFL8, CTRB1, TSPAN3, and ZNF690). A single study has shown that TSPAN3 was down-regulated in relapsed Wilms tumor; however, such gene expression changes were not controlled by methylation 27 . Therefore, additional studies of the methylation status of these five genes are required to evaluate their functional roles in relationship to methylation. In this study, we have demonstrated the consistent methylation levels of N4BP2, EGFL8, and CTRB1 in many human tissues and cell lines; however, one caveat is that methylation profiles in each cell line may be affected by in vitro cell culture procedures 28,29 . Epigenetic changes in cells are sensitive to their growth conditions, and thus subtle differences in environment may lead to huge differences in methylation profiles. Two previous studies showed that some varia- SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:4351 | DOI: 10.1038/srep04351 4 (A) N4BP2 (B) EGFL8 CD 2 cd > CD — I c o >, 1.0 0.8 - 0.4 - 0.2 - si co o £ 10 3 „ ^ °? | | CD j in ^_ v- ^ ^- O o c/>O^g><^<>20 ujO_iiftLij<-ii--Luo.>*T:> 050<m3:oxxmOc/3=50 w " I- > LU > o > O F O 1.0 2 1) > CD 0.4 0.2 II ^I 1 o 0- 1 Q 05 CM co x . — ' I — CM i " - ' w . -^7 — , " _. fZ CD >J Er^OmlOO^O^^OiOSVS ScolSS^t-iiiO_i5iii < _ii_iiiD_>^x>>0> i-3coC30i-S050<£acLQiicaOcy)-)OOi-0 (C) CTRB1 (D) ZNF690 1.0 JO 0 .8 - CD 5 06 o '-5 0 4 >, 0.2 - o D_ in <= <n p 9 S ™ V 000 h- CN 7 S S? ,f ^ 5 ^ ■= ^s^^co^S^^ZD'JJlOOSt-l-illJ Soox22^tiijO_ ll S L1 j < _ii-iilD.>^:x>>o> HDK)OOHS050<£ao:QIIcaOm= ! 500HO 1.0 CD Z5 > CD CD 06 c o 0.2 CO CC co Oo , ^ CO ^ ld CO CM ,. 1 ?fflffl lD ^co;L;?<zQ c ?Jioo5Hti!!J SroiSS2i-iiiO_ l 5uj<_ii- : -iiJD_>^x>>0> H30)OOHS050<cQQ;QxxiiiOa> :! ;OOHO (E) TSPAN3 1.0 CD 5 CD > CD 0.4 0.2 ■ in ° p| => c/3 O O I— CM i 5-, CD*5^?<ZQ<TOlO ^CTLijO_i L oLiJ<— II— LU Q_ > H>OSO<CQQ.QXXCDO 5^ w =3 H > W > o > OhO Figure 2 | Methylation levels of the five genes detected by mass spectrometry across 24 cell lines. The X-axis denotes the names of the different cell lines, and the Y-axis represents the average beta value of the methylation level. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:4351 | DOI: 10.1038/srep04351 5 (A) N4BP2 (B) 0 25 50 75 100 Methylation Concentration of DNA samples (%) EGFL8 o.oo - (C) 0 25 50 75 100 Methylation Concentration of DNA samples (%) CTRB1 0 25 50 75 100 Methylation Concentration of DNA samples (%) Figure 3 | Correlation between concentration and methylation levels of EGFL8, N4BP2, and CTRB1. Five concentrations, including 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%, of the methylated DNA samples were investigated by mass spectrometry. tions in the methylation profiles existed between cell lines and tis- sues, even if they were from the same organ 28,29 . Therefore, a prelim- inary test in different cell lines is prerequisite before utilizing the methylation markers identified in this study. In conclusion, we have identified five genes with stable hyper- methylation across different human tissue types. Among them, N4BP2, EGFL8, and CTRB1 not only can serve as internal controls for methylation studies, but also are markers for the efficiency of bisulfite conversion. Methods Sample collection. All methylation microarrays analyzed in this study were investigated by using Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation27 BeadChips, containing probes to interrogate 27,578 CpG loci covering more than 14,000 genes. Methylation levels in Illumina methylation assays were quantified by the P value using the ratio of methylated alleles over all alleles for a given CpG locus. Most of the microarray samples were retrieved from the Gene Expression Omnibus website 30 , with the accession numbers of GSE17648, GSE17769 31 , GSE20067 32 , GSE20080 32 , GSE24087, GSE26133 33 , GSE27284 34 , and the other microarrays were collected from our in-house studies. The details of analyzed microarrays are summarized in Table 3. Processing and filtering of microarray data. The protocol used to identify probes with high and consistent methylation levels is illustrated in Figure 1. First, to remove microarray samples with low quality and intensity, the mean signal of every probe within each slide was calculated in all 682 samples. Samples were excluded for subsequent analyses if the following condition was met: the mean of average P value across all probes was <0.3 35 . In addition, individual probes were filtered out if they displayed a missing value in any one of the samples. Consequently, 14 samples were excluded and approximately 20,000 probes were filtered out, which resulted in 7,829 probes as potential targets in the following approaches. Identification of probes with stable methylation levels across different samples. Prior to performing subsequent statistical approaches, the average P values in all microarrays were transformed into "M-values" based on the following equation. M = log 2 (P/(l-p)) Du et al. reported that this M-value transformation is able to improve the determination of methylation levels in statistical analyses by showing greater consistency and robustness 36 . After the M-transformation, the coefficient of variances (CV) was utilized to rank the investigated probes for suitability as "housekeeping" probes. Specifically, the CVs of the 7,829 probes were calculated over 668 samples and sorted in ascending order. Based on the results, the top 100 probes having the smallest CV values were reported as possible "housekeeping" candidates (list A). To establish a null baseline for comparison, a resampling test was performed 10,000 times through the following steps. First, the 668 methylation samples were randomly divided in half (334 samples each in lists B and C), and the CV values were calculated. Similar to the approach in identifying list A, the top 100 probes with smallest CV values were recorded and compared with the members of list A. In addition, the top 100 probes identified in list B were compared with the members in list C. Lastly, the matching probes between list A and lists B and C created from 10,000 random trials were recorded, and the common members in list B and C were also tallied for further comparisons. Verification of possible probes with consistent and stable methylation levels. To evaluate the reliability of identifying housekeeping methylation probes by using CV values, another established algorithm was utilized 15 . Briefly, this approach estimated the stability score of each probe based on its methylation level. The formula to calculate the stability score was: Sj = a log 2 (max{/( ; — /J, 0}) — c,. The symbols fa and denote the expression level of gene i and the standard deviation across all 668 samples, respectively. The coefficient a was set to its default value, 0.25, as suggested by the authors 16 . Similar to the CV value approach, a gene was excluded for further analyses if its mean P value was smaller than 0.3. This criterion was applied in order to yield the same number of probes investigated in both methods to establish a fair baseline for comparison. Moreover, since all samples used in this study were Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation27 BeadChips, the rank product score considering platform-independence, which was outlined by the original authors, was not performed here 16 . The scoring scheme in this approach was similar to the previous method implementing CV values, that is, lists of candidate probes over 668 samples were examined and ranked by the stability score in descending order. Likewise, 10,000 random trials were carried out, and three gene lists were obtained for each trial. Meanwhile, the three lists were also compared to each other and the numbers of times that each gene was identified in the lists B' and C were also tallied. Lastly, the candidate probes with stable methylation levels were narrowed down to those consistently found in all six lists after 10,000 random trials. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:4351 | DOI: 10.1038/srep04351 6 Validation of possible gene targets using the MassARRAY system. A total of 24 cell lines were analyzed using the MassARRAY system to validate the methylation levels of selected gene targets. The characteristics of the cell lines are summarized in Table 3. First, genomic DNA was isolated from the cells by proteinase K-phenol/chloroform extraction following standard protocols with 0.5% SDS and 200 u,g/ml proteinase K. The DNA concentration of each sample was adjusted to 50 ng/ml and total genomic DNA (500 ng) underwent DNA bisulfate conversion using an EZ DNA Methylation™ kit (ZYMO research, Orange, CA). Among the bisulfate treated DNA products, 200 ng of the bisulfate treated DNA were used for PCR amplification. The primers were designed by using the program EpiDesigner B (http://www.epidesigner. com/ start3.html). PCR conditions were optimized to preferentially amplify fragments within a size range of 300 to 500 bp. Subsequently, 2 uL of Shrimp Alkaline Phosphatase (SAP) enzyme was added into 5 uL PCR products to dephosphorylate unincorporated dNTPs. Lastly, in vitro transcription and RNase A cleavage were carried out, and the mass spectrum was obtained from the PCR reactions. Quantitative methylation analysis software provided by the manufacturer (Sequenom, San Diego, CA) was used to analyze the results. 1. Lovinsky-Desir, S. & Miller, R. L. Epigenetics, asthma, and allergic diseases: a review of the latest advancements. Curr Allergy Asthma Rep 12, 211-20 (2012). 2. Mohammad, F., Mondal, T. & Kanduri, C. Epigenetics of imprinted long noncoding RNAs. Epigenetics 4, 277-86 (2009). 3. Li, C. C, Maloney, C. A., Cropley, J. E. & Suter, C. M. Epigenetic programming by maternal nutrition: shaping future generations. Epigenomics 2, 539-49 (2010). 4. Wang, I. J., Chen, S. L., Lu, T. P., Chuang, E. Y. & Chen, P. C. Prenatal smoke exposure, DNA methylation, and childhood atopic dermatitis. Clin Exp Allergy 43, 535-43 (2013). 5. Goldberg, A. D., Allis, C. D. & Bernstein, E. Epigenetics: a landscape takes shape. Cell 128, 635-8 (2007). 6. Capell, B. C. & Berger, S. L. Genome- wide epigenetics. J Invest Dermatol 133, e9 (2013). 7. Jansson, M. D. & Lund, A. H. MicroRNA and cancer. Mol Oncol 6, 590-610 (2012). 8. Shen, H. & Laird, P. W. Interplay between the cancer genome and epigenome. Cell 153,38-55 (2013). 9. Gropman, A. L. & Batshaw, M. L. Epigenetics, copy number variation, and other molecular mechanisms underlying neurodevelopmental disabilities: new insights and diagnostic approaches. / Dev Behav Pediatr 31, 582-91 (2010). 10. Fouse, S. D., Nagarajan, R. O. 8c Costello, J. F. Genome-scale DNA methylation analysis. Epigenomics 2, 105-17 (2010). 11. Laird, P. W. Principles and challenges of genomewide DNA methylation analysis. Nat Rev Genet 11, 191-203 (2010). 12. Ehrich, M. et al. Quantitative high-throughput analysis of DNA methylation patterns by base-specific cleavage and mass spectrometry. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 102, 15785-90 (2005). 13. Popp, C. et al. Genome-wide erasure of DNA methylation in mouse primordial germ cells is affected by AID deficiency. Nature 463, 1101-5 (2010). 14. Gloss, B. S. et al. Integrative genome-wide expression and promoter DNA methylation profiling identifies a potential novel panel of ovarian cancer epigenetic biomarkers. Cancer Lett 318, 76-85 (2012). 15. Su, L. J. et al. Selection of DDX5 as a novel internal control for Q-RT-PCR from microarray data using a block bootstrap re-sampling scheme. BMC Genomics 8, 140 (2007). 16. Popovici, V. et al. Selecting control genes for RT-QPCR using public microarray data. BMC Bioinformatics 10, 42 (2009). 17. Bock, C. Analysing and interpreting DNA methylation data. Nat Rev Genet 13, 705-19 (2012). 18. Robertson, K. D. DNA methylation and human disease. Nat Rev Genet 6, 597-610 (2005). 19. Grunau, C., Clark, S. J. & Rosenthal, A. Bisulfite genomic sequencing: systematic investigation of critical experimental parameters. Nucleic Acids Res 29, E65-5 (2001). 20. Lu, T. P. et al. Distinct signaling pathways after higher or lower doses of radiation in three closely related human lymphoblast cell lines. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 76,212-9 (2010). 21. Lai, L. C. et al. Down- regulation of NDRGl promotes migration of cancer cells during reoxygenation. PLoS One 6, e24375 (2011). 22. Moore, L. D., Le, T. 8t Fan, G. DNA methylation and its basic function. Neuropsychopharmacology 38, 23-38 (2013). 23. Maatouk, D. M. et al. DNA methylation is a primary mechanism for silencing postmigratory primordial germ cell genes in both germ cell and somatic cell lineages. Development 133, 3411-8 (2006). 24. Mallo, M., Vinagre, T. tk Carapuco, M. The road to the vertebral formula. Int J Dev Biol 53, 1469-81 (2009). 25. Zhang, X. et al. Activation of the growth -differentiation factor 1 1 gene by the histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor trichostatin A and repression by HDAC3. Mol Cell Biol 24, 5106-18 (2004). 26. Beleford, D. et al. Methylation induced gene silencing of HtrA3 in smoking- related lung cancer. Clin Cancer Res 16, 398-409 (2010). 27. Maschietto, M. et al. Gene expression analysis of blastemal component reveals genes associated with relapse mechanism in Wilms tumour. Eur J Cancer 47, 2715-22 (2011). 28. Paz, M. F. et al. A systematic profile of DNA methylation in human cancer cell lines. Cancer Res 63, 1114-21 (2003). 29. Varley, K. E. et al. Dynamic DNA methylation across diverse human cell lines and tissues. Genome Res 23, 555-67 (2013). 30. Barrett, T. et al. NCBI GEO: archive for high -throughput functional genomic data. Nucleic Acids Res 37, D885-90 (2009). 31. Chari, R., Coe, B. P., Vucic, E. A., Lockwood, W. W. & Lam, W. L. An integrative multi-dimensional genetic and epigenetic strategy to identify aberrant genes and pathways in cancer. BMC Syst Biol 4, 67 (2010). 32. Teschendorff, A. E. et al. Age-dependent DNA methylation of genes that are suppressed in stem cells is a hallmark of cancer. Genome Res 20, 440-6 (2010). 33. Bell, J. T. et al. DNA methylation patterns associate with genetic and gene expression variation in HapMap cell lines. Genome Biol 12, R10 (2011). 34. Navab, R. et al. Prognostic gene-expression signature of carcinoma-associated fibroblasts in non-small cell lung cancer. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 108, 7160-5 (2011). 35. Nishino, K. et al. Defining hypo -methylated regions of stem cell-specific promoters in human iPS cells derived from extra- embryonic amnions and lung fibroblasts. PLoS One 5, el3017 (2010). 36. Du, P. et al. Comparison of Beta-value and M-value methods for quantifying methylation levels by microarray analysis. BMC Bioinformatics 11, 587 (2010). Acknowledgments This research was supported in part by a grant from the Department of Health of Taiwan (Grant No. 99-31 12-B-002-035). We thank Melissa Stauffer, PhD, of Scientific Editing Solutions, for editing the manuscript, and the YongLin Biomedical Engineering Center of National Taiwan University for additional financial support. Author contributions T.P.L., C.K.H. and E.Y.C. conceived and designed the experiments. T.P.L. and K.T.C. performed the experiments. T.P.L., C.K.H. and K.T.C. analyzed the data. M.H.T., K.T.K., L.C.L. and E.Y.C. contributed reagents, materials, and/or analysis tools. T.P.L., K.T.C., L.C.L. and E.Y.C. wrote the paper. All authors reviewed the manuscript. Additional information Supplementary information accompanies this paper at http://www.nature.com/ scientificreports Competing financial interests: The authors declare no competing financial interests. How to cite this article: Lu, T.-P. et al. Identification of Genes with Consistent Methylation Levels across Different Human Tissues. Set Rep. 4, 4351; DOI:10.1038/srep04351 (2014). I(cci®©(9)l ^ S wonc * s li cense d under a Creative Commons Attribution- ^-^q«.n«.J Noncommercial- ShareAlike 3.0 Unpoited license. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.Org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 SCIENTIFICREPORTS | 4:4351 | DOI: 10.1038/srep04351 7
The story of Chinese philosophy
Chai, Chʻu, 1906-1986
1961-01-01T00:00:00Z
Philosophy, Chinese,Geschichte,Philosophie,China
252 pages 16 cm,Includes bibliographical references,1. Confucius -- 2. Mencius -- 3. Lao Tzu -- 4. Chuang Tzu -- 5. Yang Chu -- 6. Mo Tzu -- 7. Hsun Tzu -- 8. Han Fei Tzu -- Conclusion: Chinese philosophy over the ages
Zebularine inhibits tumorigenesis and stemness of colorectal cancer via p53-dependent endoplasmic reticulum stress.
Yang, Pei-Ming,Lin, Yi-Ting,Shun, Chia-Tung,Lin, Shan-Hu,Wei, Tzu-Tang,Chuang, Shu-Hui,Wu, Ming-Shiang,Chen, Ching-Chow
2013-11-14T00:00:00Z
null
This article is from Scientific Reports , volume 3 . Abstract Aberrant DNA hypermethylation is frequently found in tumor cells and inhibition of DNA methylation is an effective anticancer strategy. In this study, the therapeutic effect of DNA methyltransferase (DNMT) inhibitor zebularine (Zeb) on colorectal cancer (CRC) was investigated. Zeb exhibited anticancer activity in cell cultures, tumor xenografts and mouse colitis-associated CRC model. It stabilizes p53 through ribosomal protein S7 (RPS7)/MDM2 pathways and DNA damage. Zeb-induced cell death was dependent on p53. Microarray analysis revealed that genes related to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and unfolded protein response (UPR) were affected by Zeb. Zeb induced p53-dependent ER stress and autophagy. Pro-survival markers of ER stress/UPR (GRP78) and autophagy (p62) were increased in tumor tissues of CRC patients, AOM/DSS-induced CRC mice and HCT116-derived colonospheres. Zeb downregulates GRP78 and p62, and upregulates a pro-apoptotic CHOP. Our results reveal a novel mechanism for the anticancer activity of Zeb.
Full text of "Zebularine inhibits tumorigenesis and stemness of colorectal cancer via p53-dependent endoplasmic reticulum stress." Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "Zebularine inhibits tumorigenesis and stemness of colorectal cancer via p53-dependent endoplasmic reticulum stress." See other formats SCIENTIFIC REPORTS OPEN SUBJECT AREAS: COLON CANCER APOPTOSIS CHEMOTHERAPY Received 15 July 2013 Accepted 24 October 2013 Published 14 November 2013 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to C.-C.C. (chingchowchen@ntu. edu.tw) * These authors contributed equally to this work. Zebularine inhibits tumorigenesis and sternness of colorectal cancer via p53-dependent endoplasmic reticulum stress Pel-Ming Yang''^*, Yi-Ting Lin^*, Chia-Tung Shun^, Shan-Hu Lin\ Tzu-Tang Wei\ Shu-Hui Chuang\ Ming-Shiang Wu'' & Ching-Chov^ Chen' ' Department of Pharmacology, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, ^The Ph.D. Program for Cancer Biology and Drug Discovery, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan, "'Department of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, ''Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Internal Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan. Aberrant DNA hypermethylation is frequently found in tumor cells and inhibition of DNA methylation is an effective anticancer strategy. In this study, the therapeutic effect of DNA methyltransferase (DNMT) inhibitor zebularine (Zeb) on colorectal cancer (CRC) was investigated. Zeb exhibited anticancer activity in cell cultures, tumor xenografts and mouse colitis-associated CRC model. It stabilizes p53 through ribosomal protein 87 (RPS7)/MDM2 pathways and DNA damage. Zeb-induced cell death was dependent on p53. Microarray analysis revealed that genes related to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and unfolded protein response (UPR) were affected by Zeb. Zeb induced p53-dependent ER stress and autophagy. Pro-survival markers of ER stress/UPR (GRP78) and autophagy (p62) were increased in tumor tissues of CRC patients, AOM/DSS-induced CRC mice and HCT116-derived colonospheres. Zeb downregulates GRP78 and p62, and upregulates a pro-apoptotic CHOP. Our results reveal a novel mechanism for the anticancer activity of Zeb. Aberrant DNA hypermethylation is a hallmark of cancer'. 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine (5-Aza-CdR) and 5- azacytidine (5-Aza-CR) are potent DNA methylation inhibitors approved for treating myelodysplasic syndrome'. Both drugs are incorporated into DNA where they bind and sequester DNA methyltrans- ferases (DNMTs), thus prevent the maintenance of methylation status^. In addition, they could elicit DNA damage response^. However, 5-Aza-CdR and 5-Aza-CR are unstable due to spontaneous aqueous hydrolysis or deamination by cytidine deaminase'*'^. A novel DNMT inhibitor zebularine (Zeb) is originally synthesized as a cytidine deaminase inhibitor and found to enhance the antineoplastic action of S-Aza-CdR*". Zeb is very stable and preferentially targets to cancer cells without toxicity in normal cells and mice' ". However, its clinical activity is rarely investigated. Both Zeb and 5-Aza-CR are cytidine analogues being able to incorporate into DNA and RNA. Actually, they are reported to be incorporated into RNA more than DNA' '", suggesting that RNA may be their primary target. Ribosomal RNA (rRNA) represents more than 80% of total RNA in a cell and forms the ribosomes that translate mRNAs into proteins"'^. 5-Aza-CR is found to induce a rapid breakdown of liver polyribosomes". Reduced total protein synthesis by 5-Aza-CR, which is proposed to be mediated by RNA incorporation, may explain the differential effects of 5-Aza-CR and 5- Aza-CdR'"\ More specifically, RNA-dependent inhibition of ribonucleotide reductase is shown to be a major pathway for 5-Aza-CR activity'**. Whether Zeb also exerts RNA-dependent effect is stiU unclear. Further investigation of Zeb effect may accelerate its clinical use. The tumor suppressor p53 is maintained at low level in unstressed cells by MDM2 which ubiquitinates p53 and promotes its degradation. Both the quantity and activity of p53 are greatly increased in response to DNA damage'"'. p53 can induce expression of different downstream genes including p2i, GADD45 and Bax to elicit cell-cycle arrest, apoptosis and DNA repair'^. In addition, p53 is stabilized by ribosomal stress. Disruption of ribosome biogenesis causes the releases of several ribosomal proteins including RPL5, RPLll, RPL23 and RPS7 from nucleolus to bind to MDM2 and prevent MDM2-mediated p53 ubiquitination and degradation"". SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 3 : 3219 | DOI: 10.1038/srep03219 1 Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is the site for synthesis and folding of secretory and membrane proteins. Accumulation of unfolded or misfolded proteins within ER activates unfolded protein response (UPR) through three signal pathways: protein kinase RNA-like ER kinase (PERK)/eukaryotic translation initiation factor alpha (eIF2cx), serine/threonine kinases inositol-requiring enzyme-1 (IREl), and activating transcription factor 6 (ATF6)". Cancer cells are often exposed to metabolic dysregulation, such as hypoxia, nutrient star- vation, oxidative stress, to cause ER stress and UPR, which can pro- vide either survival or death signals depending on the extent of ER stress"*. For example, a major ER chaperone, glucose regulated protein 78 (GRP78), binds to unfolded protein to prevent further accumulation, thus promoting cell survival. However, severe or unre- solved ER stress leads to apoptosis through induction of CCAAT/ enhancer binding protein (C/EBP) homologous protein (CHOP) that suppresses activation of Bcl-2 and NF-kB"*'''^. Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most common cancers worldwide. Despite advances in surgical techniques and adjuvant therapy, there is only a modest improvement in survival of CRC patients™. Thus, developing novel therapeutic strategies is still urgent. In this study, we found that Zeb exhibited in vitro and in vivo anticancer activity in cell cultures, tumor xenografts and mouse colitis-associated CRC model through induction of p53-dependent apoptosis, ER stress and autophagy. Higher expression of pro-sur- vival ER chaperone GRP78 and autophagic marker p62 was found in tumor tissues of CRC patients and in HCT116-derived colono- spheres. Zeb could downregulate GRP78 and p62, and upregulate a pro-apoptotic protein CHOP, providing a clinical intervention of Zeb in CRC. Results Zeb exhibited in vitro and in vivo anticancer effect. To evaluate the in vitro anticancer effect of Zeb, various types of human cancer cells including colon (HCT116), cervix (HeLa), lung (A549) and breast (MCF-7) were treated with Zeb. HCTl 16 and HeLa cells were found to be more sensitive to Zeb (Figure la). Consistently, Zeb-induced PARP cleavage was only seen in HeLa and HCTl 16 cells despite of its inhibition on DNMTl expression in all types of cells (Supplementary Figure 1). To investigate the in vivo anticancer activity of Zeb, nude mice bearing HCT116 tumor xenografts were orally administered with a daily dose of 750 mg/kg for two weeks and observed for another two weeks. Both tumor volume and weight were reduced by Zeb (Figure lb and Supplementary Figure 2). AOM/DSS-induced CRC in mice was established to further investigate the therapeutic effect of Zeb (Figure Ic, upper panel). Macroscopic observation showed that polyps were grown in the distal colon from week 8 to 11, and histological examination revealed the presence of dysplasia and adenocarcinoma (Figure Ic, lower panel and Id). Orally administered Zeb (750 mg/kg/day) from week 8 to 11 significantly cured the polyps, and recovered the dysplasia/adenocarcinoma lesion to surface tumor necrosis (Figure Ic, lower panel and Id). In addition, use of a lower dose of Zeb (100 mg/kg/day) also cured the polyps (data not shown). These results demonstrated that Zeb was effective for CRC treatment. Zeb induced damages of DNA and RNA, leading to p53 activation. Zeb is a cytidine analogue being able to incorporate into DNA and RNA. After incorporation into DNA, DNMT inhibitors could induce p53 expression through DNA damage"". Zeb indeed induced DNA damage as indicated by H2AX phosphorylation (yH2AX) and p53 expression (Figure 2a, left panel). However, the late induction of DNA damage (24 ~ 48 h) could not fully explain the rapid stabilization of p53 (6 ~ 24 h) (Figure 2a, right panel). Since Zeb is reported to be incorporated into RNA at least 7-fold greater than that of DNA', RNA may be its primary target. Indeed, global RNA synthesis was inhibited by Zeb, as demonstrated by the reduced incorporation of RNA precusor 5-bromouridine (Figure 2b, left panel). Transcription of ribosomal RNA (rRNA) constitutes up to 60% of RNA synthesis^'. Zeb rapidly reduced the expression of 45S rRNA precursor (pre-rRNA) (Figure 2b, right panel), suggested that it might disrupt rRNA biogenesis to induce ribosomal stress and the release of ribosomal proteins. Ribosomal protein S7 (RPS7) is reported to form ternary complex with MDM2 and p53 to inhibit the E3 ligase activity of MDM2, thus leading to the stabilization of p5322,23 -pi-^g interaction among MDM2, p53 and RPS7 was seen, and degradation of p53 was greatly reduced in the presence of Zeb (Figure 2c, upper panels). However, RT-PCR and realtime PCR analyses demonstrated that Zeb did not alter the p53 mRNA (Figure 2c, lower panels). These results indicated that Zeb could stabilize p53 through damages of both DNA and RNA. Zeb induced p53-dependent anticancer effect. To study the role of p53 in Zeb-induced cytotoxicity, various CRC cells with different p53 status were treated with Zeb and found that p53-mutant cells (HT29, SW480 and SW620) were more resistant to Zeb compared to p53- wildtype HCTl 16 and RKO cells (Figure 2d, left panel). Consistently, isogenic HCTl 16 p53 — /— cells were also more resistant to Zeb (Figure 2d, left panel). RNase protection assay showed that Zeb induced p21 mRNA expression in HCTl 16 wildtype but not p53 — /— cells (Supplementary Figure 3a). Zeb also increased p53 reporter and p21 promoter activities (Supplementary Figure 3b), and increased p21 protein expression was confirmed by western blot (Supplementary Figure 3c). Moreover, Zeb induced apoptosis in HCT116 cells, which was completely blocked in p53 — /— cells (Figure 2d, right panel). Therefore, the anticancer effect of Zeb was mainly dependent on p53. Zeb induced p53-dependent ER stress, leading to cell death. Microarray analysis was performed to further address the mole- cular mechanisms of Zeb. Among the most significant genes induced by Zeb (> 8-fold), eight of twenty-seven genes were associated with ER stress and UPR (Supplementary Table 1). Therefore, the ER stress/UPR related genes upregulated or downre- gulated at least 2-fold were further categorized (Supplementary Table 2, 3 and Figure 3a). The genes that regulate ER stress associated apoptosis were induced by Zeb (31.8% of increases and 13.6% of decreases). In contrast, Zeb tended to inhibit genes that promote cell survival in response to ER stress, like chaperones/protein folding (6.9% of increases and 31% of decreases), ubiquitination/ ER associated degradation (11.5% of increases and 26.9% of decreases) and unfolded protein binding/quality control (3.3% of increases and 20% of decreases) (Figure 3a). Therefore, we hypothe- sized that Zeb induced ER stress to promote cell death. An immediate response to protein overload in ER is the activation of PERK to phosphorylate eIF2a and then attenuate global protein synthesis". Zeb induced eIF2cx phosphorylation in HeLa, HCTl 16 and RKO but not A549 and MCF-7 cells (Figure 3b). Chemical chaperone 4- phenylbutyrate (4-PBA) was applied to examine the role of ER stress, and inhibition on Zeb-induced eIF2a phosphorylation and cytotoxicity was seen (Figure 3c). Zeb-induced eIF2a phosphoryla- tion was inhibited inHCT116p53—/— cells (Figure 3d, left panel), as well as in HCTl 16 p53-knockdown cells (Figure 3d, right panel). Overexpression of p53 into HCT116 p53 — /— cells increased eIF2a phosphorylation (Figure 3d, right panel). Therefore, Zeb induced p53-dependent ER stress to lead to cell death. Zeb induced p53-dependent autophagic cell death. ER stress has been linked to autophagy (self-digestion) through PERK/eIF2a and IREl/TRAF/JNK signaling pathways^*. Autophagy provides an alternative energy source during starvation, thus serving as a temporary survival mechanism. However, excess autophagy can induce autophagic cell death^^. Autophagy can be examined by the conversion of cytosolic LC3-I to autophagosomal membrane-bound SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 3 : 3219 | DDI: 10.1038/srep03219 2 120 100 e 80 ;^ 1 60 ■S 40 o 20 0 V ^ * \ -♦-HeLa — -^HCT116 -*-A549 -»-nicr7 50 100 150 Zeb (mM) 200 5 10 15 20 25 30 Day after transplantation 3.5% DSS 3.5% DSS 3.5%, DSS Zeb Zeb Zeb I 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 W1 W2 W3 W4 W5 we W7 W8 W9 W10 W11 t t t AOM Zeb Sacrifice AOM + DSS ** Control Vehicle (W8) Vehicle (W11) Zeb(W11) Veh Veh Zeb (W8) (W11) (W11) AOM + DSS Control Vehicle (W8) Vehicle {W11) Zeb (W11) 10X 20X dysplasia and adenocarcinoma surface tumor necrosis Figure 1 | Zeb exhibited in vitro and in vivo anticancer activity toward CRC. (a) HeLa, HCT116, A549, and MCF-7 cells were treated with indicated concentrations of Zeb for 3 days. The cell viability was examined by MTT assay, (b) Nude mice bearing HCT 116 tumor xenografts were randomly divided into two groups and orally given with 750 mg/kg/day of Zeb (n = 8) or ddH20 as vehicle (n = 7) for 2 weeks. After treatment, the mice were observed for another 2 weeks. The tumor volume was calculated as follows: V = 0.52 X (the length of width)^ X (the length of length), p < 0.05 (*) indicated the significant differences between vehicle and Zeb-treated mice, (c) Upper panel: The experimental protocol for the induction of colitis-associated colon cancer in B6 mice by AOM/DSS treatment. Lower panel: Colitis-associated colon cancer was induced in B6 mice by AOM/DSS treatment. Then, mice were orally given with 750 mg/kg/day of Zeb (n = 4) or ddH20 as vehicle (n = 3) for three weeks. The untreated control mice were littermates of similar age. Representative photographs of murine colons were shown and the numbers of colon tumors were calculated, p < 0.01 (**) indicated the significant difference between vehicle and Zeb-treated mice at week 11. (d) Histologic sections (hematoxylin-eosin) showing colon samples taken from mice that received vehicle or 750 mg/kg/day of Zeb. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 3 : 3219 | DOI: 10.1038/srep03219 3 Zeb (24 h) 0 25 50 100 ((iM) 7H2AX p53 Actin 100 Zeb 24 48 (h) 7H2AX pS3 Actin E Oh Isotvpe — 8h ^ 228.96 I . ^^^jjll^^^^^^^^^ ^ ^ (36.9%) 1 ^ BrU 16 h 24 h 150.91 (26.3%) 10" 10' lO*^ 10^ 10^ 10" 10' 10^ 10-* 10"* 10" 10' 10' BrU fluorescence 10"* 10^ 10"^ 10' 10*^ 10^ 10^ Zeb Input Basal Zeb MDM2 p53 RPS7 CHX 30 60 90 30 60 90 (min) p53 Actin 2.3 RPS7/lnput ratio Zeb 24 48 (h) ^^^B p53 Actin 2 5 o 4 h < i 3 h B 1 2 h Q. Q <t O S 0 a 1 ■ 6 24 Zeb (h) 48 HCT116 WT HCT116 p53-/- o O -^HT29 ^:^SW480 -A-SW620 -■-HCT116 p53-/ <^HCT116 RKO pS3 mut 50 100 150 Zeb (|aM) 200 0 h 24 h 48 h DNA content Figure 2 | Zeb stabilized p53 through DNA damage and RPS7/MDM2 pathways, (a) HCT116 cells were treated with indicated concentrations of Zeb for 24 h (left panel) or treated with 100 |iM Zeb for indicated time intervals (right panel). The protein expressions of yH2AX,p53 and Actin were analyzed by western blot, (b) Left panel: HCTl 16 cells were treated with 100 nM Zeb for 8, 16 and 24 h and then exposed to 1 mM 5-bromouridine (BrU) 1 h before cell harvest. Cells were frxed and stained with anti-BrdU antibody. The incorporation of 5-bromouridine was analyzed by flow cytometry. The number within each histogram plot indicated the mean of BrU fluorescence and the percentage of total ceUs in gate. Right panel: HCTl 16 and HeLa cells were treated with 100 [iM Zeb for indicated time intervals. The mRNA levels of 45S rRNA precursor and Actin were analyzed by RT-PCR. (c) Upper-left panel: HCTl 16 ceUs were treated with 100 |j.M Zeb for 16 h. Total protein lysates were immunoprecipitated with anti-MDM2 antibody. The protein expressions ofMDM2, p53 and RPS7 were analyzed by western blot. Upper-right panel: HCTl 16 cells were treated with 100 |iMZebfor 16 h, then exposed to 10 ng/mL cycloheximide (CHX) for indicated time intervals. The protein expressions of p53 and Actin were analyzed by western blot. Lower-left and -right panels: HCTl 16 ceUs were treated with 100 pM Zeb for indicated time intervals. The mRNA levels of p53 and Actin/GAPDH were examined by RT-PCR (lower-left panel) and realtime PCR (lower-right panel), (d) Left panel: HCT116, HCT116 p53-/-, RKO, HT-29, SW480 and SW620 cells were treated with indicated concentrations of Zeb for 3 days. The ceU viability was examined by MTT assay. Right panel: HCTl 16 wildtype (WT) and p53 — / — ceUs were treated with 100 |iM Zeb for indicated time intervals. The ceU cycle disruption was analyzed by flow cytometry. The number within each histogram plot indicated the percentage of subGl fraction. The images for each indicated probe in (a-c) were cropped from the same blot. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 3 : 3219 | DOI: 10.1038/srep03219 4 1 Decrease I Increase ER Stress associated apoptosis Chaperones and protein folding Ubiquitination and ER associated degradation Gene transcription and translation Unfolded protein binding and quality control Related gene expression (%) HeLa 8 4-PBA (mM) Zeb 0 25 50 100 200 (|.iM) p-elF2a — Zeb — Zeb — Zeb elF2a HeLa HCT116 to O X RKO Zeb 0 100 0 100 0 25 50 100 (|iM) 120 p-elF2a _ 100 elF2a r A549 MCF-7 Zeb 0 100 200 0 100 200 (^M) p-elF2a n (0 > o elF2a p-elF2a elF2a - RKO + 4-PBA - HeLa + 4-PBA -HCT116 + 4-PBA -HeLa -HCT116 -RKO 25 50 75 Zeb ( ^M) 100 WT p53-/- Zeb 0 25 50 100 0 25 50 100 (mM) p53 p-elF2a elF2a Actin WT p53-/- 0 6 24 48 0 6 24 48 (h) pS3 p-elF2a elF2a Actin WT si-Cont si-p53 Cont Zeb Cont Zeb p53-/- Vector Flag-p53 p53 p-elF2a elF2a Actin Figure 3 | Zeb induced p53-dependent ER stress leading to cell death, (a) HeLa cells were treated with 100 Zeb for 24 h. The global gene expression profiles were analyzed by microarray analysis, (b) HeLa (upper and middle panels), HCTl 16, RKO (middle panel), A549 and MCF-7 (lower panel) cells were treated with indicated concentrations of Zeb for 24 h. The protein expressions of p-eIF2a and eIF2a were analyzed by western blot, (c) Upper panel: HCT116 cells were pretreated with indicated concentrations of 4-PBA for 1 h and then exposed to 100 Zeb for 24 h. The protein expressions of p-eIF2a and eIF2Qt were analyzed by western blot. Lower panel: HeLa, HCT116 and RKO cells were pretreated with 8 mM 4-PBA for 1 h and then exposed to indicated concentrations of Zeb for 3 days. The cell viability was examined by MTT assay, (d) Left panel: HCT116 wildtype (WT) and p53 — / — cells were treated with indicated concentrations of Zeb for 24 h, or treated with 1 00 |.iM Zeb for indicated time intervals. The protein expressions of p53, p-eIF2a, eIF2a and Actin were analyzed by western blot. Right panel: HCTl 16 cells were transfected with 100 nM p53 siRNA for 2 days and then exposed to 100 [iM Zeb for 24 h. HCTl 16 p53— /— cells were transfected with Flag-p53 plasmid for 2 days. The protein expressions of p53, p-eIF2a, eIF2a and Actin were analyzed by western blot. The images for each indicated probe in (b-d) were cropped from the same blot. LC3-IP*. Zeb induced LC3-II accumulation in HCTl 16 and RKO cells (Figure 4a, and Supplementary Figure 4), which was attenuated in HCT116 p53— /— cells (Figure 4a). To analyze autophagic flux, Zeb-induced LC3-II accumulation in the presence or absence of a vacuolar-type H*-ATPase inhibitor, bafilomycin Al, blocking autophagosome-lysosome fusion was analyzed. As shown in Figure 4b, the basal LC3-II was increased in response to bafilo- mycin Al treatment. Zeb induced more LC3-II accumulation in SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 3:3219 | DOI: 10.1038/srep03219 5 the presence of bafilomycin Al, indicating that Zeb enhanced autophagic flux. To study the role of autophagy in Zeb-induced cytotoxicity, cells were pretreated with 3-methyladenine (3-MA), a class III PI3K inhibitor that blocks autophagosome formation. Zeb- induced cytotoxicity was rescued by 3-MA in HCTl 16 and RKO cells (Figure 4c), as was in Atg5 — /— MEF cells, in which early stage of autophagy was suppressed (Figure 4d). These results suggest that Zeb induced p53-dependent autophagic cell death. Clinical intervention of Zeb in CRC. ER stress can provide either survival or death signals depending on their extents'". The ER chaperone GRP78 has been reported to promote cell survival, whereas severe or unresolved ER stress leads to apoptosis through induction of CHOP'". Similarly, autophagy can also enhance cell survival or commit to autophagic death^'*. The autophagic marker p62 is reported to promote cell survival and its elimination is found to suppress tumorigenesis''^. Higher eIF2a expression and GRP78 (pro-survival)/CHOP (pro-apoptotic) ratio in tumor tissues of CRC patients compared to the adjacent normal tissues were seen (Figure 5a), suggesting that ER stress promoted tumor survival. In addition, the ratio of LC3-II/LC3-I and the p62 expression were also higher in tumor tissues (Figure 5a), indicating that autophagy also promoted cell survival in CRC tumors. These results imply the clinical benefit of Zeb for CRC patients. Indeed, Zeb inhibited the expression of GRP78 and p62, but induced CHOP in HCT116 and RKO cells (Figure 5b). To investigate whether Zeb-induced mole- cular events were also occurred in vivo, HCT116 tumor xenografts excised from mice was analyzed. Zeb induced the expression of p53 after 1 and 2 days treatment (Figure 5c, upper panel), and induced LC3-II accumulation and PARP cleavage at the end of 4 weeks experiment (Figure 5c, lower panel and Supplementary Figure 5). Zeb increased CHOP but decreased GRP78 and p62 expression in AOM/DSS-induced CRC tumors (Figure 5d). Therefore, Zeb might switch ER stress-induced pro-survival into pro-apoptotic responses, implying clinical intervention. Zeb inhibited sternness of CRC. The existence of cancer stem cells (CSCs) in CRC is recently identified in human surgical speci- mens^""™. CSCs are believed to mediate cancer relapse after chemo- therapy". The existence of CSC population in HCT116 cells was demonstrated by the formation of colonospheres (Supplementary Figure 6a), which was validated by the colorectal CSC markers CD44, CD166 and aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 (ALDHl)™'^' (Supple- mentary Figure 6b and Figure 6a). Colonospheres expressed higher levels of GRP78 and p62 (Figure 6b), and treatment with Zeb can induce phosphorylation of p53 and eIF2a, and inhibit the ratio of GRP78/CHOP and p62 expression (Supplementary Figure 6c). Zeb reduced the ALDH-positive and CD44+/CD166+ populations in HCT116 cells (Figure 6c and Supplementary Figure 6d), indicating that Zeb might selectively target CSCs of CRC. Indeed, Zeb showed higher cytotoxicity toward colonospheres (Figure 6d). Discussion Zeb is a novel DNMT-inhibiting cytosine nucleoside analogue, pref- erentially targeting cancer cells and exhibits low toxicity toward nor- mal cells and mice' ". Although it is more stable and oral-bioavailable compared to FDA-approved 5-Aza-CR and 5-Aza-CdR', its clinical benefit has not been evaluated yet. In this study, we found that Zeb displayed anticancer activity towards CRC in cell cultures and in mice through p53-dependent apoptosis, ER stress and autophagy. CRC develops from normal epithelial cells via the aberrant crypt foci- adenoma- carcinoma sequence to metastasis. AOM/DSS-induced colitis-associated CRC in mice is found to recapitulate the nature of human colitis-associated CRC^', thus being powerful for drug discovery. Zeb significantly eliminated the AOM/DSS-induced colon polyps with dysplasia and adenocarcinoma lesions. Examination of CRC patients and tumor-derived stem cells showed the increased expression of pro-survival markers of ER stress/UPR (GRP78) and autophagy (p62). Zeb could downregulate GRP78 and p62, and upre- gulate a pro-apoptotic CHOP. These findings revealed a clinical intervention by Zeb to switch ER stress-mediated pro-survival into pro-apoptotic responses. Since CRC is still the second leading cause of cancer-related death in the world''', our results provide a novel molecular insight into the anticancer mechanism of Zeb in CRC and strong rationale for its clinical trial in the future. DNMT inhibitors could induce p53 expression through DNA demethylation or DNA damage"*'''. We explored an alternative path- way that DNMT inhibitors could disrupt ribosome biogenesis to cause ribosomal stress, and lead to p53 stabilization. This event occurs earlier than Zeb-induced DNA damage. The major compon- ent of ribosome is ribosomal RNA (rRNA), and pre-rRNA express- ion is a key step in ribosome biogenesis^'. The accelerated synthesis of rRNA is widely found in cancers, and a number of approved thera- peutic agents are reported to inhibit its synthesis"". Zeb inhibited incorporation of RNA precursor, expression of pre-rRNA and induced the formation of MDM2-p53-RPS7 complex, suggesting that it might disrupt ribosome biogenesis through RNA incorpora- tion and provides a potential therapeutic benefit. We found that Zeb induced p53-dependent ER stress in HCTl 16 wildtype cells. Re-expression of p53 in HCT116 p53 — /— cells was sufficient to induce phosphorylation of eIF2a. This event might depend on cell type and cellular context since Zeb did not induce ER stress in A549 cells possessing wildtype p53. The endogenous p53 in HeLa cells is known to be inactivated by HPV E6 protein'', sug- gesting that Zeb-induced ER stress might also be independent of p53. This could explain the findings that Zeb-inhibited cell viability could not be fully rescued in HCT116 p53 — /— cells (Figure 2d, left panel). How p53 triggers ER stress is still unclear. Our recent study de- monstrates that cytoplasmic p21 induces ER stress'". However, Zeb-induced p2 1 only partially contributed to ER stress (Supplemen- tary Figure 7), indicating that other p53 target genes might be involved. The eIF2a kinase, a double-strand RNA-activated protein kinase (PKR), is also a p53 target gene and contributes to the p53- mediated apoptosis". Whether PKR is a mediator of Zeb-induced ER stress remains to be elucidated. Severe ER stress triggers apoptosis by inducing CHOP through PERK/ATF4/eIF2cx pathway'". CHOP, also known as DNA damage- inducible protein 153 (GADD153), is a transcriptional factor that promotes apoptosis through suppression of the pro-survival Bcl-2 and upregulation of the pro-apoptotic Bim''"'". Other CHOP- induced pro-apoptotic proteins include DR5, TRB3, GADD34 and CHACl"^"'. We found that Zeb activated eIF2cx and induced CHOP expression and apoptosis, indicating that Zeb-induced ER stress might promote apoptosis via CHOP-dependent pathway. This is consistent with microarray analysis that Zeb induced more than 8-fold expression of TRB3, GADD34 and CHACl genes (Supple- mentary Table 1). Because CHOP has also been shown to exert anti- apoptotic function in the leukodystrophy Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease'"', further investigation is needed to warrant its role in Zeb- induced anticancer activity. ER stress can activate autophagy to eliminate damaged ER and abnormal protein aggregates through the lysosome pathway^"*. Depending on the context, autophagy can enhance cell survival or commit to autophagic death^"*. Zeb also induced autophagy in CRC cancer cells. Microarray analysis indicated that Zeb reduced genes which promote protein folding and ER-associated degradation, sug- gesting that Zeb may accumulate more misfolded or unfolded pro- teins to lead to cell death. Indeed, rescue of cell viability in Atg5 — / — MEF cells and by 3-MA demonstrated that Zeb induced autophagic cell death. How cell fate is determined after induction of autophagy is currenfly unclear. p62 is an autophagic marker to promote cell sur- vival through interacting with TRAF6, a lysine 63 E3 ubiquitin ligase, SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 3 : 3219 | DDI: 10.1038/srep03219 6 WT p53-/- Zeb 0 25 50 100 0 25 50 100 to T~ t- — o X WT p53-/- Zeb 0 6 24 48 0 6 24 48 ;tii6 u X LC3-I LC3-II Tubulin LC3-I LC3-II Tubulin DMSO Baf - Zeb - Zeb Actin LC3-ll/Actin 1 2.1 2.4 3.3 □ MEFWT ■ MEF AtgS-/- - RKO + 3-MA -C1-HCT116 -^RKO 25 50 75 Zeb(^M) 100 25 50 100 Zeb(ialVI) Figure 4 | Zeb induced autophagic cell death, (a) HCTl 16 wildtype (WT) and p53— /— cells were treated with indicated concentrations of Zeb for 24 h (upper panel), or treated with 100 |^M Zeb for indicated time intervals (lower panel) . (b) HCT116 cells were treated with 100 jiMZeb for 24 h, then exposed to 50 nM bafilomycin Al (Baf) for another 4 h. The protein expressions of LC3B, Tubulin and Actin in (a-b) were analyzed by western blot, (c) HCT116 and RKO cells were pretreated with 5 mM 3-MA for 1 h and then exposed to indicated concentrations of Zeb for 3 days. The cell viability was examined by MTT assay. ( d) MEF wildtype (WT) and AtgS — / — cells were treated with indicated concentrations of Zeb for 3 days. The cell viability was examined by MTT assay. The images for each indicated probe in (a) and (b) were cropped from the same blot. to promote TRAF6 oligomerization and result in the activation of NF-kB*'. Thus, accumulation of p62 promotes cell survival and tumorigenesis^'. However, p62 binding LC3 is degraded after fusing with lysosome'"', leading to the elimination of p62 and suppression of tumorigenesis^'. Our results found the increase of p62 in tumor tissues of CRC patients, AOM/DSS-induced CRC mice and HCT116-derived colonospheres. Zeb could decrease the expression of p62 in cell cultures, xenografts and AOM/DSS-induced CRC mice (Figure 5b, Supplementary Figure 5 and Figure 5d), thus providing a therapeutic potential against CRC. The existence of colorectal cancer stem cells (CSCs) in human is identified, and CRC is reported to be initiated by a rare population of crypt cells called colorectal CSCs which play an important role in metastasis and recurrence^""'". Our results showed that GRP78 and p62 were correlated with the stemness of colorectal CSCs and over- expressed in tumor tissues of CRC patients and AOM/DSS-induced CRC mice. GRP78 is recognized as a putative candidate for medi- ating the stemness and tumorigenic properties of head and neck OSes'", and p62 mediates the migration and invasion of glioblastoma CSCs™. Therefore, targeting GRP78/p62 and stemness by Zeb may provide a promising approach to treat CRC. Previous works have focused on elucidating the molecular mech- anism of Zeb as a DNA methylation inhibitor^'. This study charac- terizes the novel action mechanism and preclinical activity of Zeb, and sheds new light on its clinical implication for CRC therapy. Future work can be conducted to put this drug or combination with other agents into practice as a clinical therapeutic agent for CRC patients. Methods Materials. The antibodies specific for eIF2a (sc-1 1386), GI^78 (sc-1050), CHOP (sc- 7351), p53 (sc-126), p21 (sc-397), MDM2 (sc-965), DNMTl (sc-10221), PARP (sc- 25780), and P-Actin (sc-161) were from Santa Cruz Biotechnology. The antibodies specific for LC3B (#2775) and phospho-Serl39-H2AX (#2577) were from Cell Signaling Technology. p62 (610832), CD44-FITC (555478) and CD166-PE (559293) antibodies were from BD Biosciences. Phospho-Ser51-eIF2a (#1090-1) antibody was from EPITOMICS. RPS7 (sc-100834) antibody was kindly provided by Dr. Edmund I-Tsuen Chen (Department of Biotechnology and Laboratory Science in Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan). Anti-Tubulin antibody (T6074), zebularine (Zeb; Z4775), 5-azacytidine (5-Aza-CR; A2385), 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine (5-Aza-CdR; A3656), 3-methyladenine (3-MA; M9281), 4-phenylbutyric acid (4- PBA; P21005), bafilomycin Al (B1793), cycloheximide (C7698) and azoxymethane (AOM; A5486) were from Sigma. Dextran sulfate sodium (DSS; 160110) was from MP Biomedicals. Recombinant human FGF-basic (bFGF; AF-100-18B) and EOF (AF-100-15) were from PeproTech. Aldefluor kit (01700) was from Stem Cell Technologies. Zebularine (NSC 309132) for animal studies was obtained from the Drug Synthesis and Chemistry Branch, Developmental Therapeutics Program, Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis, National Cancer Institute. The p53-Luc expression plasmid (50125333) was from Stratagene. The p21 promoter luciferase plasmid was kindly provided by Xiao-Fan Wang (Duke University Medical Center). Cell culture. A549, MCF-7 and HeLa cancer cells were from ATCC. RKO cells were kindly provided by Dr. Lih-Yuan Lin (Department of Life Science, National Tsing Hua University). Mouse embryonic fibroblast (MEF) wildtype and Atg5 — /— cells were kindly provided by Dr. Hsiao-Sheng Liu (Department of Microbiology and Immunology, College of Medicine, National Cheng- Kung University). These cells SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 3:3219 | DDI: 10.1038/srep03219 7 a patient # 1 te. a. 3 To (A T N T N T N T N 1 4.7 1.4 0.1 0.4 0.3 0.8 0.2 1 0.1 1 0.4 1.8 0.8 2.7 0.1 1 0.8 1.6 0.9 1.1 0.8 2.2 0.2 1 0.7 0.5 0.3 0.7 0.5 0.6 0.4 1 0.1 1.1 0.6 0.5 0.5 0.3 0.1 HCT116 0 6 24 48 1 0.7 0.2 0.1 1 0.9 0.6 0.3 RKO 0 25 50 100 ^^^^^ 1 0.8 1.1 0.3 1 1.1 1 0.7 GRP78 CHOP GRP78/CI p62 p62/Tubulii Tubulin (mM) GRP78 CHOP GRP78;CHO p62 p62/Actin Actin day 1 day 2 Vehicle Zeb Vehicle Zeb p-elF2a elF2a p-elF2a/e elF2a/Acl GRP78 CHOP LC3-I LC3-II #1 #2 #3 #1 #2 #1 #2 #1 #2 p53 1.8 1 1.6 5.5 3.3 1.6 2.9 3.9 5.1 p53/Actln p-elF2a 2.5 1 1.2 2.6 1.6 1.1 2.4 1.8 2.4 p-elF2a/elF2a elF2a Actin cleaved PARP LC3-II/LC3-I /Actin p53/Actin p-elF2a/elF2a p62 Actin .2 "* 1 5 in ^-^ o «> 1.2 > » 0.9 ♦ * Veh Zeb Veh Zeb Veh Zeb Veh Zeb ACM + DSS GRP78 CHOP p62 Control Vehicle (W8) Vehicle (W11 Zeb (W11) Mi ■ ■ ■ -. Figure 5 | Zeb promoted pro-apoptotic ER stress responses and autophagy. (a) Lysates of paired human normal and malignant colon tissues were resolved in SDS-PAGE and probed with specific antibody against p-eIF2a, eIF2a, GRP78, CHOP, LC3B, p62 and Actin. (b) Cells were treated with 100 )iM Zeb for indicated time intervals (HCTl 16), or treated with indicated concentrations of Zeb for 24 h (RKO). The protein expressions of GRP78, CHOP, p62. Tubulin and Actin were analyzed by western blot, (c) Upper panel: Nude mice bearing HCT116 tumor xenografts were orally treated with Zeb (750 mg/kg/day) for 24 and 48 h. The tumor lysates were subjected to western blot analysis. Lower panel: The tumor lysates of Figure lb were subjected to western blot analysis. The relative expression ratio was indicated, p < 0.05 (*) andp < 0.01 (**) indicated the significant differences between vehicle and Zeb-treated mice, (d) Colon sections of Figure Ic were subjected to IHC for GRP78, CHOP and p62, and representive results were shown. The images for each indicated probe in (a-c) were cropped from the same blot. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 3 : 3219 | DOI: 10.1038/srep03219 8 + DEAB DEAB S) o I o (0 o o o o 3 o . U) ■a (D ALDH activity + DEAB -DEAB O O CO w ra '> 0) O (A 0) (O losphei HCT1 color p53 1 0.7 P53/GAPDH GRP78 1 2.3 GRP78/GAPDH p-elF2a elF2a 1 1 p-elF2a/elF2a p62 1 1.8 P62/GAPDH LC3-I Pi. LC3-II 0.7 LC3-M/LC3-I GAPDH □ HCT116 ■ colonospheres ALDH activity Zeb Figure 6 | Zeb inhibited sternness of CRC. (a) HCT116 cells and HCTll6-derived colonospheres were dissociated and stained by Aldefluor reagent in the presence or absence of DEAB. The fluorescence was analyzed by flow cytometry, (b) Lysates of HCT116 cells and HCTll6-derived colonospheres were resolved in SDS-PAGE and probed with specific antibody against p53, GRP78, p-eIF2a, eIF2ot, p62, LC3B and GAPDH. (c) HCT116 cells were treated with 100 [iM Zeb for 24 h. Cells were stained by Aldefluor reagent in the presence or absence of DEAB. The fluorescence was analyzed by flow cytometry, (d) HCTl 16 cells and HCTll6-derived colonospheres were dissociated and spread into 96-well plate. After treatment with 100 Zeb for 48 h, cell viability was analyzed by WST-1 assay. The images for each indicated probe in (b) were cropped from the same blot. were cultured in DMEM medium. SW480, SW620 and HT-29 cells were from ATCC. HCT116 wildtype and p53-/- cells were gifts from Dr. M.W. Van Dyke (M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX). HCTl 16 p21 — /— cells were kindly provided by Dr. Yan-Hwa Wu Lee (Department of Biochemistry, National Yang- Ming University, Taiwan). These cells were cultured in RPMI-1640 Medium. AU media were supplemented with 10% heat- inactivated FBS, 1% L-glutamine, 1% AntibioticAntimycotic Solution, and incubated at 37"C in a humidified incubator containing 5% CO2. Cell viability assay. Cell viability was measured using 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)- 2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. Cells were plated in 96-well plates and treated with drugs. After 72 h incubation, 0.5 mg/mL MTT was added to each well for an additional 4 h. The blue MTT formazan precipitate was dissolved in 200 ]xL DMSO. The absorbance at 550 nm was measured on a multiwell plate reader. For the cell viability of colonospheres, dissociated colonospheres were plated in 96- well plates and treated with Zeb for 48 h. Cell viability was examined by the cell proliferation reagent WST-1 according to the manufacturer's instructions. Cells were treated with the WST-1 reagent for 3 h, and the absorbance at 450 nm was measured. Animal xenograft model. HCTl 16 cells {1 X 10^) were xenografted in male Balb/c nude mice. After two weeks, animals were orally received either vehicle (ddH20) or Zeb (750 mg/kg/day) for two weeks and observed for another two weeks. Tumor volume was measured twice per week with calipers and calculated using the formula V (mm') — 0.52* lab^], where a is the length and b is the width of the tumor. At the end of experiment, mice were sacrificed and tumors were excised. Lysates were prepared for western blot analysis. Alternatively, some tumor-bearing mice were treated with Zeb (750 mg/kg/day) for 1 and 2 days. Then, tumors were also excised and subjected for western blot analysis. AOM/DSS-induced colitis-associated CRC in mice. Male C57BL/6 mice were intraperitoneally injected with a single dose of 12.5 mg/kg azoxymethane (AOM) on the first week and received 3.5% dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) in drinking water for 5 days at weeks 2, 5, and 8. Mice were received Zeb for three weeks after three rounds of DSS administration. AU mice were sacrificed after Zeb administration and colon segments were fixed in formalin. H&E-stained colonic sections were examined for colonic aberrant crypts. All animal works were performed under protocols approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the College of Medicine, National Taiwan University. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 3 :3219 | DO!: 1 0. 1 038/srep032 1 9 9 Western blot analysis. After treatment, total cell lysates were prepared and subjected to SDS-PAGE. Western blot was done as described previously^^. Co-immunoprecipitaion. Total cell lysates (500 [ig) were immunoprecipitated with MDM2 antibody overnight at 4 C. Then, 20 |j.L protein A/G agarose was added to each sample and incubated for 2 h at 4 C. The immunoprecipitates were washed with PBS and separated using 10% SDS-PAGE. Western blot analysis was performed using antibodies specific for MDM2, p53 and RPS7. RT-PCR and realtime PGR. Total RNA is isolated by TRI^ol reagent. Reverse transcription reaction is performed using 2 jig of total RNA and reverse transcribed into cDNA using oligo dT primer, then PGR amplified using two oligonucleotide primers as following: 5'-AGAGCGGGGGAGAGAGGAAG-3' and 5'-GTTTTT- GGACTTGAGGTGGC-3'(p53), 5'-GCTGGTGTTGTCTCGGGCGTGCGAG-3' and 5'-AAGGGGTGAGAGGCAGGGGACGGAG-3'(pre-rRNA}, 5'-TGAGG- GGGTGAGCGAGACTGTGGGCATCTA-3' and 5'-GTAGAAGCATTTGG- GGGGACGATGGAGGG-3' (P-Actin). The PGR products are subjected to 1-2% agarose gel electrophoresis. Realtime PGR was performed using KAPA SYBR FAST qPGR Kit (KAPA Biosystems, KK4603) in ABI PRISM™ 7900 Sequence Detection System (Applied Biosystems). The primer sequences for p53 and GAPDH were (p53, 5'-CGGAAGGAATGGATGATTTGA-3' and 5'-GGGATTGTGGGAGGT- TGATGT-3') and (GAPDH, 5'-AGGGAGATGGGTGAGAGAG-3' and 5'- GGGGAATACGACGAAATGG-3'). All samples were read in triplicate, and values were normalized to GAPDH expression. Transient transfection. The p53 plasmid was transiently transfected into cells with Lipofetamine 2000 Reagent. The p53 siRNA was transiently transfected into cells with DharmaFEGT 4 siRNA Transfection Reagent. After 24-48 h, cells were treated with Zeb for 24 h and subjected to western blot analysis. Luciferase reporter assay. Gells were grown to 50% confluence in 12-well plates. A luciferase reporter vector that contains p53 response elements upstream of a minimal TK promoter (p53RE-Luc; 0.4 |j.g/well) or a luciferase reporter vector that contains p21 promoter (p21-Luc; 0.4 (J.g/well), and renUla luciferase reporter plasmids (p-RL- TK; 0.1 )j.g/well) were transiently transfected into cells with Lipofectamine 2000 Reagent. After 24 h, cells were treated with Zeb for 24 h. Gell extracts were then prepared, and luciferase activity was measured using Dual- Luciferase Reporter Assay System and normalized to renilla activity. Cell cycle analysis. Gells were plated in 6-well plates for 24 h, then treated with complete medium containing 100 |J.M Zeb for 24 and 48 h. The floating and adherent cells were harvested and fixed by 70% ethanol. The cell cycle distribution was determined by flow cytometry using a PI staining buffer (5 |j.g/mL PI and 50 |j.g/mL RNase A) and analyzed on a BD FAGSGalibur cytometer with GellQuest software. 5-bromouridine (BrU) incorporation assay. One hour before harvest, 5- bromouridine (BrU) was added to cell cultures to a final concentration of 1 inM. Gells were harvested and lysed with Landberg lysis buffer (PBS with 0.5% Triton X- 100,1% BSA and 0.2 pg/ml EDTA) for 15 min on ice. Then, cells were immediately fixed with 3 mL methanol at — 20'G. Fixed samples were washed once with cold PBS and then incubated in 50 |iL monoclonal anti-bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) antibody, diluted 10 X in PBS/0.1% NP-40. The samples were agitated for further 60 min and then washed once with cold PBS. 50 ]iL polyclonal FITG- conjugated rabbit anti-mouse antibody, diluted 10 X in PBS/1 %FBS, was added, and the samples were agitated for 60 min and washed once before flow cytometric analysis. Microarray analysis. Total RNA was extracted from HeLa cells that were treated with 100 |j,M Zeb for 24 h. The mRNA profiles were analyzed using Affymetrix Human Genome U133 plus 2.0 GeneGhip by the Microarray Gore Facility of National Research Program for Genomic Medicine of National Science GouncU in Taiwan. GeneChips from the hybridization experiments were read by the Affymetrix GeneGhip scanner 3000, and raw data were processed using GG-RMA algorithm. The raw data were also analyzed by GeneSpring GX software version 7.3.1. Patients and specimen preparation. Specimens of tumor and adjacent normal tissue of colon were obtained from 4 patients who have been pathologically diagnosed colorectal cancer and underwent surgical resection at the National Taiwan University Hospital. Tissue specimens were ground, then sonicated in the lysis buffer (50 mM Tris-HGl, pH 7.4, 1 mM EGTA, 150 mM NaGl, 5% Triton X-100) with protease inhibitors. The samples were microcentrifuged to remove the larger debris and subjected to western analysis. All patient- derived specimens were collected and archived under protocols approved by Institutional Research Board of National Taiwan University Hospital and supported by the National Science GouncU of Taiwan. A full verbal explanation of the study was given to all participants. They consented to participate on a voluntary basis. Colonosphere assay and analyses ofstemness markers. HGTl 16 cells (2 X 10^ cells/ mL) were cultured in serum-free DMEM/F12 medium supplemented with 1% Antibiotic: An timycotic Solution, 1% Insulin-Transferrin-Selenium (ITS), 20 ng/mL EGF and 25 ng/mL bFGF. After 7 days, the formation of colonospheres was evaluated by light microscopy. For the analyses of GD44/GD166 expression and ALDH activity, HGT116 cells and colonospheres were dissociated by trypsinization. Freshly dispersed cell suspension (10^ cells/mL) was stained in PBS/1% FBS buffer containing anti-GD44-FITG, anti-GD166-PE, or Aldefluor reagent. The fluorescence was analyzed by flow cytometry. Statistical analysis. Means and standard deviations of samples were calculated from the numerical data generated in this study. Data were analyzed using Student's t test, p values < 0.05 were considered significant. 1. Gopeland, R. A., Olhava, E. J. & Scott, M. P. Targeting epigenetic enzymes for drug discovery. Curr. Opin. Chem. Biol. 14, 505-510 (2010). 2. Bender, G. M. et al. Roles of cell division and gene transcription in the methylation of GpG islands. Mol. Cell. Biol. 19, 6690-6698 (1999). 3. Karpf, A. R, Moore, B. G., Ririe, T. O. & Jones, D. A. Activation of the p53 DNA damage response pathway after inhibition of DNA methyltransferase by 5-aza-2'- deoxycytidine. Mol. Pharmacol. 59, 751-757 (2001). 4. Laliberte, J., Marquez, V. E. & Momparler, R. L. Potent inhibitors for the deamination of cytosine arabinoside and 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine by human cytidine deaminase. Cancer Chemother. Pharmacol. 30, 7-11 (1992). 5. Ghabner, B. A., Drake, J. G. & Johns, D. G. Deamination of 5-azacytidine by a human leukemia cell cytidine deaminase. Biochem. Pharmacol. 22, 2763-2765 (1973) . 6. Lemaire, M., Momparler, L. F., Raynal, N. J., Bernstein, M. L. & Momparler, R L. Inhibition of cytidine deaminase by zebularine enhances the antineoplastic action of 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine. Cancer Chemother. Pharmacol 63, 411-416 (2009). 7. Gheng, J. G. et al. Inhibition of DNA methylation and reactivation of silenced genes by zebularine. /. Natl. Cancer Inst. 95, 399-409 (2003). 8. Cheng, J. G. et al. Preferential response of cancer cells to zebularine. Cancer Cell 6, 151-158 (2004). 9. Ben-Kasus, T., Ben-Zvi, Z., Marquez, V. E., Kelley, J. A. & Agbaria, R. Metabolic activation of zebularine, a novel DNA methylation inhibitor, m human bladder carcinoma cells. Biochem. Pharmacol. 70, 121-133 (2005). 10. Li, L. H., Olin, E. J., Buskirk, H. H. & Reineke, L. M. Cytotoxicity and mode of action of 5-azacytidine on L1210 leukemia. Cancer Res. 30, 2760-2769 (1970). 11. Gihak, A. Biological effects of 5-azacytidine in eukaryotes. Oncology 30, 405-422 (1974) . 12. Warner, J. R. The economics of ribosome biosynthesis in yeast. Trends Biochem. Sci. 24, 437-440 (1999). 13. Hollenbach, P. W. et al. A comparison of azacitidine and decitabine activities in acute myeloid leukemia cell lines. PLoS ONE 5, e9001 (2010). 14. Aimiuwu, J. et al. RNA-dependent inhibition of ribonucleotide reductase is a major pathway for 5-azacytidine activity in acute myeloid leukemia. Blood 119, 5229-5238 (2012). 15. Vousden, K. H. & Lu, X. Live or let die: the cell's response to p53. Nat. Rev. Cancer 2, 594-604 (2002). 16. Zhang, Y. & Lu, H. Signaling to p53: ribosomal proteins find their way. Cancer Cell 16, 369-377 (2009). 17. Shore, G. G., Papa, F. R. & Oakes, S. A. Signaling cell death from the endoplasmic reticulum stress response. Curr. Opin. Cell Biol 23, 143-149 (2011). 18. Tabas, I. & Ron, D. Integrating the mechanisms of apoptosis induced by endoplasmic reticulum stress. Nat. Cell Biol 13, 184-190 (2011). 19. Kim, R., Emi, M., Tanabe, K. & Murakami, S. Role of the unfolded protein response in cell death. Apoptosis 11, 5-13 (2006). 20. Stem, A., Atanackovic, D. & Bokemeyer, G. Current standards and new trends in the primary treatment of colorectal cancer. Eur. J. Cancer 47 Suppl 3, S312-314 (2011). 21. Hannan, K. M., Hannan, R. D. & Rothblum, L. I. Transcription by RNA polymerase I. Front. Bioscl 3, d376-398 (1998). 22. Chen, D. et al Ribosomal protein S7 as a novel modulator of p53-MDM2 interaction: binding to MDM2, stabilization of p53 protein, and activation of p53 function. Oncogene 26, 5029-5037 (2007). 23. Zhu, Y. et al Ribosomal protein S7 is both a regulator and a substrate of MDM2. Mol Cell 35, 316-326 (2009). 24. Hoyer-Hansen, M. & Jaattela, M. Connecting endoplasmic reticulum stress to autophagy by unfolded protein response and calcium. Cell Death Differ. 14, 1576-1582 (2007). 25. Mathew, R., Karantza-Wadsworth, V. & White, E. Role of autophagy in cancer. Nat. Rev. Cancer 7, 961-967 (2007). 26. Klionsky, D. J. et al Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy. Autophagy 8, 445-544 (2012). 27. Mathew, R. et al Autophagy suppresses tumorigenesis through elimination of p62. Cell 137, 1062-1075 (2009). 28. O'Brien, G. A., Pollett, A., Gallinger, S. & Dick, J. E. A human colon cancer cell capable of initiating tumour growth in immunodeficient mice. Nature 445, 106-110 (2007). 29. Ricci-Vitiani, L. et al Identification and expansion of human colon-cancer- initiating cells. Nature 445, 111-115 (2007). 30. Dalerba, P. et al. Phenotypic characterization of human colorectal cancer stem cells. Proc. Natl Acad. Scl U. S. A. 104, 10158-10163 (2007). 31. Todaro, M., Francipane, M. G., Medema, J. P. & Stassi, G. Colon cancer stem cells: promise of targeted therapy. Gastroenterology 138, 2151-2162 (2010). SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 3:3219 | DO!: 1 0. 1 038/srep032 1 9 10 32. Huang, E. H. et al. Aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 is a marker for normal and malignant human colonic stem cells (SC) and tracks SC overpopulation during colon tumorigenesis. Cancer Res. 69, 3382-3389 (2009). 33. Tanaka, T. et al. A novel inflammation- related mouse colon carcinogenesis model induced by azoxymethane and dextran sodium sulfate. Cancer Sci. 94, 965-973 (2003) . 34. Jemal, A. et al. Cancer statistics, 2008. CA. Cancer J. Clin. 58, 71-96 (2008). 35. Hodge, D. R. et al. Interleukin 6 supports the maintenance of p53 tumor suppressor gene promoter methylation. Cancer Res. 65, 4673-4682 (2005). 36. Burger, K. et al. Chemotherapeutic drugs inhibit ribosome biogenesis at various levels. /. Biol. Chem. 285, 12416-12425 (2010). 37. Kessis, T. D. et al. Human papillomavirus 16 E6 expression disrupts the p53- mediated cellular response to DNA damage. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 90, 3988-3992 (1993). 38. Yang, P. M. et al. Inhibition of autophagy enhances anticancer effects of atorvastatin in digestive malignancies. Cancer Res. 70, 7699-7709 (2010). 39. Yoon, C. H., Lee, E. S., Lim, D. S. & Bae, Y. S. PKR, a p53 target gene, plays a crucial role in the tumor-suppressor function of p53. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 106, 7852-7857 (2009). 40. McCullough, K. D., Martindale, J. L., Klotz, L. O., Aw, T. Y. & Holbrook, N. J. Gaddl53 sensitizes cells to endoplasmic reticulum stress by down- regulating Bcl2 and perturbing the cellular redox state. Mol. Cell Biol. 21, 1249-1259 (2001). 41. Puthalakath, H. et al. ER stress triggers apoptosis by activating BH3-only protein Bim. Cell 129, 1337-1349 (2007). 42. Ohoka, N., Yoshii, S., Hattori, T., Onozaki, K. & Hayashi, H. TRB3, a novel ER stress-inducible gene, is induced via ATF4-CHOP pathway and is involved in cell death. EMBO }. 24, 1243-1255 (2005). 43. Yamaguchi, H. & Wang, H. G. CHOP is involved in endoplasmic reticulum stress- induced apoptosis by enhancing DR5 expression in human carcinoma cells. /. Biol. Chem. 279, 45495-45502 (2004). 44. Marciniak, S. J. et al. CHOP induces death by promoting protein synthesis and oxidation in the stressed endoplasmic reticulum. Genes Dev. 18, 3066-3077 (2004) . 45. Mungrue, I. N., Pagnon, J., Kohannim, O., Gargalovic, P. S. 8f Lusis, A. J. CHACl/ MGC4504 is a novel proapoptotic component of the unfolded protein response, downstream of the ATF4-ATF3-CHOP cascade. /. Immunol. 182, 466-476 (2009). 46. Southwood, C. M., Garbern, J., Jiang, W. & Gow, A. The unfolded protein response modulates disease severity in Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease. Neuron 36, 585-596 (2002). 47. Moscat, J., Diaz-Meco, M. T. & Wooten, M. W. Signal integration and diversification through the p62 scaffold protein. Trends Biochem. Sci. 32, 95-100 (2007). 48. Shvets, E., Pass, E., Scherz-Shouval, R. & Elazar, Z. The N-terminus and Phe52 residue of LC3 recruit p62/SQSTMl into autophagosomes. /. Cell Sci. 121, 2685-2695 (2008). 49. Wu, M. J. et al. Elimination of head and neck cancer initiating cells through targeting glucose regulated protein78 signaling. Mol. Cancer 9, 283 (2010). 50. Galavotti, S. et al. The autophagy-associated factors DRAMl and p62 regulate cell migration and invasion in glioblastoma stem cells. Oncogene 32, 699-712 (2013). 51. Yoo, C. B., Cheng, J. C. & Jones, P. A. Zebularine: a new drug for epigenetic therapy. Biochem. Soc. Trans. 32, 910-912 (2004). 52. Liu, Y. L. et al. Autophagy potentiates the anti-cancer effects of the histone deacetylase inhibitors in hepatocellular carcinoma. Autophagy 6, 1057-1065 (2010). Acknowledgments This work was supported by a research grant from the National Science Council of Taiwan. Author contributions P.-M.Y. performed the majority of experiments and data analysis, and drafted the manuscript. Y.-T.L. performed the sphere formation assay and related experiments, and data analysis. S.-H.L. performed the related experiments in A549 cells. T.-T.W. and S.-H.C. performed mouse AOM/DSS-induced colon cancer model. C.-T.S. performed H&E stain and pathological examination. M.-S.W. provides patient specimens and pathological examination. C.-C.C. conceived and designed experiments, as well as coordinated and drafted the manuscript. Additional information Supplementary information accompanies this paper at http://www.nature.com/ scientificreports Competing financial interests: The authors declare no competing financial interests. How to cite this article: Yang, P. M. et al. Zebularine inhibits tumorigenesis and stemness of colorectal cancer via p53-dependent endoplasmic reticulum stress. Sci. Rep. 3, 3219; DOl:10.1038/srep03219 (2013). ©0®© This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license. To view a copy of this license. visit http://creativecommons.Org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0 SCIENTIFICREPORTS | 3 : 3219 | DOI: 10.1038/srep03219
A QoS-Guaranteed Coverage Precedence Routing Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks.
Jiang, Joe-Air,Lin, Tzu-Shiang,Chuang, Cheng-Long,Chen, Chia-Pang,Sun, Chin-Hong,Juang, Jehn-Yih,Lin, Jiun-Chuan,Liang, Wei-Wen
2011-03-24T00:00:00Z
null
This article is from Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) , volume 11 . Abstract For mission-critical applications of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) involving extensive battlefield surveillance, medical healthcare, etc., it is crucial to have low-power, new protocols, methodologies and structures for transferring data and information in a network with full sensing coverage capability for an extended working period. The upmost mission is to ensure that the network is fully functional providing reliable transmission of the sensed data without the risk of data loss. WSNs have been applied to various types of mission-critical applications. Coverage preservation is one of the most essential functions to guarantee quality of service (QoS) in WSNs. However, a tradeoff exists between sensing coverage and network lifetime due to the limited energy supplies of sensor nodes. In this study, we propose a routing protocol to accommodate both energy-balance and coverage-preservation for sensor nodes in WSNs. The energy consumption for radio transmissions and the residual energy over the network are taken into account when the proposed protocol determines an energy-efficient route for a packet. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed protocol is able to increase the duration of the on-duty network and provide up to 98.3% and 85.7% of extra service time with 100% sensing coverage ratio comparing with LEACH and the LEACH-Coverage-U protocols, respectively.
Full text of "A QoS-Guaranteed Coverage Precedence Routing Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks." Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "A QoS-Guaranteed Coverage Precedence Routing Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks." See other formats Sensors 2011, 11, 3418-3438; doi:10.3390/s 110403418 OPEN ACCESS sensors ISSN 1424-8220 www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors Article A QoS-Guaranteed Coverage Precedence Routing Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks Joe- Air Jiang *'*, Tzu-Shiang Lin \ Cheng-Long Chuang , Chia-Pang Chen , Chin-Hong Sun 2 ' 3 , Jehn-Yih Juang 2 , Jiun-Chuan Lin 2 and Wei- Wen Liang 3 1 Department of Bio-Industrial Mechatronics Engineering, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei 106, Taiwan; E-Mails: [email protected] (T.-S.L.); [email protected]. tw (C.-L.C); [email protected]. tw (C.-P.C.) Department of Geography, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei 106, Taiwan; E-Mails: [email protected] (C.-H.S.); [email protected]. tw (J.-Y.J.); [email protected]. tw (J.-C.L.) 3 Taiwan Geographic Information System Center, 6F 7 Roosevelt Road, Sec. 1, Taipei 10092, Taiwan; E-Mail: [email protected] (W.-W.L.) * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: [email protected]; Tel.: +886-2-3366-5341; Fax: +886-2-2362-7620. Received: 28 January 2011; in revised form: 9 March 2011 /Accepted: 21 March 2011 / Published: 24 March 2011 Abstract: For mission-critical applications of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) involving extensive battlefield surveillance, medical healthcare, etc., it is crucial to have low-power, new protocols, methodologies and structures for transferring data and information in a network with full sensing coverage capability for an extended working period. The upmost mission is to ensure that the network is fully functional providing reliable transmission of the sensed data without the risk of data loss. WSNs have been applied to various types of mission-critical applications. Coverage preservation is one of the most essential functions to guarantee quality of service (QoS) in WSNs. However, a tradeoff exists between sensing coverage and network lifetime due to the limited energy supplies of sensor nodes. In this study, we propose a routing protocol to accommodate both energy-balance and coverage-preservation for sensor nodes in WSNs. The energy consumption for radio transmissions and the residual energy over the network are taken into account when the proposed protocol determines an energy-efficient route for a packet. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed protocol is able to increase the duration of the on-duty Sensors 2011, 11 3419 network and provide up to 98.3% and 85.7% of extra service time with 100% sensing coverage ratio comparing with LEACH and the LEACH-Coverage-U protocols, respectively. Keywords: quality of service (QoS); routing algorithm; sensing coverage problem; wireless sensor network (WSN) 1. Introduction When applying a sensor network to fields that involve emergency events, such as battlefield surveillance, medical healthcare, illegal smuggling, etc., the primary concern is to preserve all valuable data acquired from the targeted area without any losses. For instance, sensor nodes have been deployed in the military area, and each sensor node was equipped with a sound sensor. The sound sensors can detect the sound made by the soldiers and military vehicles in a limited sensing range. The sensor network needs to discover any unusual sound made by enemies; hence, it is crucial to have low-power, new protocols, methodologies and structures for transferring data and information in a network with full sensing coverage capability for an extended working period. In recent years, the goal of constructing wireless sensor networks (WSNs) provides an ad hoc communication model serving in a specific region with mission-critical applications. WSNs consist of a great number of sensor nodes with wireless communication capability. With the advantage of integrated circuits and wireless communication technology, wireless sensor nodes have been manufactured using low-cost and low-power design for practical applications [1,2]. Due to the limited energy resources of sensor nodes, many previous studies, such as routing algorithms, coverage control, power management, node localization, and medium-access control, have been proposed to deal with the limited energy issue [3]. In many applications, WSNs are organized as clusters, which have been widely studied in recent years. The clustered architecture decreases the opportunity of communication overhearing and power dissipation of sensor nodes. The clustered architecture groups up sensor nodes that are nearby. The sensed data is sent to a cluster head for data fusion and aggregation. Thus, the size of the sensed data sent to the sink can be reduced, and the energy consumption of sensor nodes is further reduced. The clustered architecture has been proven to be successful in saving energy and prolonging the network lifetime [4-6]. In addition to energy efficiency, it is critical to maintain sensing coverage over the entire targeted area. The coverage preservation is a basic requirement for fulfilling the quality of service (QoS) in many mission-critical applications, such as battlefield or border surveillance [7]. Any hole that occurs in the coverage of a given network might be fatal and not be tolerable [8]. The network designed for mission-critical applications using WSN technologies exploits the features of ad hoc networking. The primary goal of the mission-critical network is to prevent the sensed data from being routed through sparsely populated areas covered by a small number of sensor nodes [9]. The idea behind this approach is that the nodes in the sparsely populated areas are less used as packet routers. Thus, these nodes can utilize their energy resources to collect data for a longer working period. Furthermore, in a mission-critical application, dynamic deployment of sensor nodes Sensors 2011, 11 3420 for the rapid exploration of the emergency area is essential. The sensor nodes should be able to be rapidly deployed without concerning the network topology that influences the sustenance of full sensing coverage. In this study, we integrate energy-efficiency and coverage-preserving techniques in a cooperative manner. A novel energy-aware coverage-preserving hierarchical routing protocol (referred as ECHR) is presented to maximize the working time of full coverage in a given WSN regardless of the deployment patterns of the sensor nodes. The basic idea of the proposed ECHR algorithm is to take the remaining energy of the nodes as well as the coverage redundancy of its sensing ranges into consideration when selecting a root node. Intuitively, the sensor nodes deployed in a densely populated area have a higher probability to be selected as the root node in each round. These nodes are frequently chosen to be the root node in the early stage of sensing phase, because the loss of nodes in the densely populated area is not significant for the network coverage. In addition, an energy-aware hierarchy routing mechanism is also proposed to determine an energy-efficient route when transmitting a packet that contains the sensed data. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides the- state-of-the-art review on related works. Section 3 explains definitions of the radio transmission model and the coverage model of the WSNs. The proposed ECHR protocol is presented in Section 4. Section 5 demonstrates the simulation results yielded by the proposed ECHR protocol. Finally, concluding remarks are given in Section 6. 2. Related Works Due to limited energy and communication ability of wireless sensor nodes, a number of energy-efficient routing protocols have been proposed to prolong their lifetime [10]. Some approaches select cluster heads according to residual energy of sensor nodes [11,12]. Others transmit data packets by finding the shortest or the most reliable path between any paired nodes [13-15]. A detailed review of energy-efficient protocols is given as follows. The low-energy adaptive cluster hierarchy (LEACH) [4] is one of the most well-known routing protocols to date. LEACH chooses cluster heads in a network to collect the data transmitted by remote sensor nodes. With data fusion and aggregation functions, the cluster heads are able to combine and compress the sensed data into significantly smaller-sized packets. Since the sensed data is fused in each hop, the energy consumption caused by radio transmission can be greatly reduced. Handy et al. modified the cluster-head selection algorithm originated from the LEACH protocol to reduce the overall energy consumption of the network [11]. The algorithm takes the residual energy of nodes into account when selecting a proper cluster-head, and also improves the energy-balancing of the network that contributes to prolong the network lifetime. In [12], they further utilize node proximity that allows sensor nodes to join the closest cluster-head in order to minimize the communication cost inside the cluster. However, in [4,11,12], the cluster heads transmit sensed data to a base station (BS) directly, and the long distance transmissions consume greater energy. By transmitting the sensed data to the BS using a multi-hop mechanism, the energy consumption of each sensor node can be further reduced. Another protocol focusing on energy-efficiency, the energy-efficient unequal clustering (EEUC) protocol [16], used a multi-hop transmission mechanism Sensors 2011, 11 3421 to connect cluster heads and a BS. It utilized an unequal probability density to select cluster heads to reduce the loading of nodes near the BS. The power efficient gathering algorithm in sensor information systems (PEGASIS) [17], also emphasizing the idea of reducing energy consumption, allows the sensor nodes to have communication capability to transmit the sensed data to the BS. The PEGASIS minimized the energy consumption of sensor nodes by selecting only one cluster-head in each round. Both EEUC and PEGASIS protocols have been found to outperform the LEACH protocol. The focus of these famous algorithms is to reduce overall energy consumption of the network, so the network lifetime can be extended. However, the full sensing coverage at any given time during a sensing phase is not guaranteed, unless the sensor nodes are equally distributed. In many practical applications, sensor nodes are not equally distributed over the monitoring area, and thus the sensing coverage is hard to maintain under such a circumstance [8]. This drawback would cause a great number of coverage holes, which makes the algorithms unsuitable for mission-critical applications. The coverage-time concept was proposed in [15], where the energy-balancing is taken into consideration in intra- and inter-cluster communications. In this protocol, the cluster-head chooses the shortest hop-count path for the data transmission in inter-cluster, and the sizes of all clusters are the same for energy -balancing. Moreover, Tsai [18] presented a coverage-preserving routing protocol, named "LEACH-Coverage-U". In contrast with the aforementioned protocols, the LEACH-Coverage-U protocol calculated the overlap sensing areas of all sensor nodes and then selected cluster heads starting from the nodes in a highly overlapped area. The simulation results showed that the LEACH-Coverage-U protocol could prolong the network lifetime compared with existing protocols. Moreover, the coverage and connectivity aware routing protocol based on neural networks was proposed in [19]. The cluster-head selection and optimized route of data transmission using adaptive learning in neural networks could cause a huge computation burden for sensor nodes. Moreover, Noh et al. [20] proposed a Coverage-Preserving Scheme (BCoPS), which is a novel approach that allows a BS to maintain the network with consideration of various factors, such as network coverage, wake-up strategies, and cluster formation. Although the proposed works in [18-20] prolong network lifetime, they cannot guarantee full sensing coverage of the network. Retaining full sensing coverage is an important issue when losing any sensed data is not affordable. The full coverage issue was mentioned in [21], and the authors proposed several cost metrics (coverage and energy-aware costs) for different application scenarios. The sensor nodes deployed in a densely populated area can serve as cluster heads, active sensor nodes, and routers. The cost metrics are not only used for the cluster-head selection but also for active node selection and routing-table update. However, using these metrics causes a larger computational burden on sensor nodes. Wang et al. [22] presented the coverage-aware clustering protocol (CACP) for randomly deployed networks, which simplifies the cost metric for cluster-head selection and active node selection. The CACP outperforms the protocol proposed in [21]; however, each cluster-head consumes much energy when the cluster head directly transmits the aggregated data to the BS. 3. Problem Formulation As mentioned above, the purpose of this study is to design a coverage precedence routing algorithm for mission-critical applications. The primary goals of a mission-critical network is to prevent the Sensors 2011, 11 3422 sensed data from being routed through sparsely populated areas covered by a small number of sensor nodes, and to maximize the network lifetime under full coverage. To accomplish these goals in the cluster-based WSNs, the problem here can be formulated as a root selection problem. Generally, the sink node (or known as base station) is assumed to be deployed at any location inside or outside of the monitoring area, and a root node is chosen to collect all sensed data and then transmit it to the base station. According to the general radio transmission model, transmitting a packet through a long path consumes great energy. The idea to achieve these tasks is that the nodes in the sparsely populated areas are less chosen to be root nodes (or as packet routers). Before we introduce the proposed algorithm, the mathematical models for network and coverage are defined in the following subsections. 3.1. Network Configuration Suppose a WSN is a hybrid network with a BS having additional processing power and n remote sensor nodes deployed in an L x x L y monitoring area. There are m points of interest (abbreviated as POI) in the monitoring area. The location of the sensor node is assumed to be known a priori. Thus, the network is represented by the Euclidean graph G, and G = (V, E), as depicted in Figure 1, with the following properties: Figure 1. Example for the coverage model of sensor node. — — \ " 1 s{J V. /?13 Pl4 Pl5 Pl6 • • • • □ BS • Point of interest O Wireless sensor node ' N ( Sensing range of V / sensor node > V is a set of nodes in the network and V = {S, BS}, where S is a set of sensor nodes with a circular sensing range r s and S = {si, si, ...,s n }, BS is the base station, and n is the number of sensor nodes. > Sensor nodes in V of the network know their location information. > Sj> e E, where Si ^ Sj. It is sustainable if the distance between si and Sj is shorter than the communication range of the sensor nodes in V. > All sensor nodes in S are homogeneous, i.e., their sensing range, wireless communication capability, and initial power are identical. > All nodes in V are stationary after the deployment. Sensors 2011, 11 3423 > All nodes in V have the power management capability; their radio power can be dynamically adjusted according to the transmission distance. > BS can be deployed at any location inside or outside of the monitoring area. 3.2. Coverage-Aware Cost Metric As mentioned in the Section 1, the primary goal of the proposed ECHR algorithm is to prevent the sensed data from being routed through sparsely deployed areas. Therefore, the nodes in these areas can be less used as data routers but more used as data collectors. This coverage-preservation task requires a coverage-aware cost metric to calculate the overall coverage ratio, the distribution of the remaining energy, and the overlapped sensing area covered by the neighboring sensor nodes. We assume that the mission-critical application requires every part of the area to be covered by the sensor nodes in V. Each sensor node performs a sensing task on the points of interest (POI) located within its sensing area. The sensing area of each node is approximated by a circular area around the node with radius r s . Such a model is the simplest and the most common method in determining the sensing coverage of a given WSN. A set of POIs that will be monitored is denoted by P, where P = [pj,j = 1, m}. If the distance between a sensor node Si and a POI pj is shorter than, or equal to, r s , the coverage set of the sensor node s, is then defined by: C(s i ) = {p j \d(s i ,p j )<r}, (1) where d(st, pj) is the Euclidean distance between the node and a POI pj. For example, the set of POIs covered by the sensor node s\ in Figure 1 is C(si), and C(si) = [pi, p2, P3, ps, pe, Pi} - Usually, multiple sensor nodes in the network cover the same POI. This case is called the coverage redundancy. According to the definition given above, the subset of POIs that are simultaneously covered by multiple sensor nodes can be determined by: o(, i ) = c(,,)n(c(, 1 )Uc(, 2 )U...Uc(, I , 1 )Uc(,, +1 )U...Uc(,„)), (2) where 0(si) is the intersection of the sets of POI covered by s, and other sensor nodes. If 0(sd = C{sj), the sensor node s, is identified as a redundant node. For a given WSN, the coverage ratio R of a given WSN is thereby defined by: R = \\c(s l )UC(s 2 )U...{jC(s n JUC^JI n) where ILPII is the number of POIs in P. In addition, if a sensor node s, runs out of its energy, C(si) in Equation (1) is deflated to an empty set. 4. The Proposed ECHR Algorithm The focus of this study is to apply a WSN to mission-critical applications. Extending network lifetime without the risk of data loss is the basic QoS requirement in such applications. In order to Sensors 2011, 11 3424 prolong the working time of the network with a full coverage of R, i.e., R = 100%, a root node selection mechanism based on energy-balancing and coverage-preserving techniques is presented. An energy-aware hierarchical routing algorithm is proposed to determine an energy-efficient path to route the data packets to the BS. In each round, the selection of the root node is decided by the BS, and energy-aware hierarchical routing algorithm is applied to each node. Detailed descriptions are provided in the following subsections. 4.1. Selection of the Root Node In each round of performing the ECHR protocol, the first step is to select the root node. Generally, the BS is assumed to be deployed at any location inside or outside of the monitoring area. According to the radio transmission model described in Section 3, transmitting a packet through a long path consumes greater energy. Since high energy consumption is not suitable for a power-limited network, the root node selection method is essential. In each round, we compute the root node weight of each node n t by: («,)' ll c 0 V 2 / x 1 d(s r BS) (4) where q t is the residual energy of Si, d(si, BS) is the Euclidean distance between node Si and the BS, and x\ and r 2 are the weighting coefficients for the residual energy factor and the coverage factor, respectively. After the weights of all nodes are computed, we can form a set of root node weights a by: a = a. (5) Next, we can select the //-th node of the network to be the root node via: H - arg max a - arg max a t , ieS (6) where S is a set of sensor nodes in the network. In each round, the root node broadcasts a beacon message with a packet format that includes its ID, residual energy, and level, toward other sensor nodes. Nodes that receive the beacon message of the root node are called the first level nodes. The first level nodes broadcast the beacon message, and the nodes that receive the beacon message from first level nodes are called the second level nodes. With the hierarchical broadcasting, each node is able to establish its level and receive the information of the neighboring nodes. After all sensor nodes broadcast the beacon message, each node is able to establish the neighbor set of its neighboring nodes. Sensors 2011, 11 3425 4.2. Energy-Aware Hierarchical Routing Algorithm Like the multi-hop transmission mechanism mentioned earlier, the communication range C r of any sensor node in network can be dynamically adjusted to reduce the power dissipation in data transmission. By shrinking the communication range C r , the sensor nodes are not able to transmit the sensed data to distanced nodes. Hence, all sensed data will be routed to the neighboring nodes of the sensing node by the multi-hop mechanism. Due to the hop-count information provided in the beacon message, the sensor nodes are able to determine which neighboring nodes are closer to the root node. The closest neighboring node can be chosen as the parent node to relay the sensed data. In each round, each sensor node transmits a sensed data to the root node. First, we compute the path weight for transmitting the data from a source node s t to a destination node (or relay node) s p by: f \\ *{<1pT> (7) Pi, P = 1 d(s.,s p ) where d(s t , s p ) is the Euclidean distance between nodes s, and s p , and X\ and 2.2 are weight coefficients to adjust the relative importance of the distance factor and the residual energy factor, respectively. After the values of all f} i>p are determined, we can organize them in a set of weights fi t by: Am fi = P,2 A,|iV(0|. (8) where \\N(i)\\ is the number of parent candidates of node s,. Subsequently, we can select the G,-th node to be the parent node for data transportation by: G i = argmax/? = arg max /? (9) where N(i) is the set of parent candidates of node s,. Hence, the sensor node Si is likely to choose a closer node with greater residual energy. The task of data relaying that requires high energy consumption can be then assigned to a possible neighboring node without creating any hot-spot in the network. After all of the sensed data are collected by the root node, the root node aggregates the data, and then transmits it to the BS. The ECHR algorithm utilizes the multi-hop transmission mechanism as a spanning tree topology to reduce the power dissipations in the packet transmission phase. The pseudo code of the proposed ECHR algorithm is shown in Figure 2. In the ECHR algorithm, Si.energy is the residual energy of node Si, and sulevel is the number of hops when transmits data to the root node. Figure 3 shows the data transmission paths of nodes using the ECHR algorithm for a specific network topology. Sensors 2011, 11 3426 Figure 2. Pseudo code of the proposed ECHR protocol. Algorithm: ECHR protocol Data: templevel = 1, while suenergy ^ 0, e S Si.level = 0; % Selecting the root node SelectRootNode(q r , 0(s r ), C(s r ), d(s r , BS), n, T2); % Assigning nodes to level 1 for node su Si e 5 do if Si.level = 0 and d(s r , s,) < C r do Si.level = 1; end if end for % Assigning nodes to the subsequent levels while Si.level = 0 do for Sj.level = templevel, Sj e S do % Determining whether node Sj is suitable to communicate with node St if d(su Sj) < C r and i 4- j do Sj.level*— Si.level + 1; end if end for templevel*— templevel + 1 ; end while % Selecting parent nodes for each node for node su Si e 5 do % Determining whether node s p is suitable to be the parent node of node 57 if node s p , s p e S, d(si, s p ) < C r and i 4- P do SelectParentNode(d(si, s p ), q p , Xj, A2); end if end for each node Si transmits sensing data to its parent node; the root node s r transmits sensing data of all nodes to BS; end while Function SelectRootNode(q r , 0(s r ), C(s r ), d(s r , BS), n, T2) begin return the root node s r with maximum a r by Equation (4) and Equation (6); end Function SelectParentNode(d(si, s p ), q p ,X\, Xi) begin return the parent node s p with maximum p itP by Equation (7) and Equation (9); end Sensors 2011, 11 3427 Figure 3. Data transmission paths using the ECHR algorithm for a specific network topology. 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 5 0 O Sensor node • Root node 5. Simulations 5.1. Radio Transmission Model In this study, we adopt the radio model stated in [4] to calculate the energy consumed by radio transmissions. There are two primary factors that involve in the radio model: E e i ec and e amp . E e \ ec represents the energy consumption per bit by either the electrical circuits of the transmitter node s t or the receiver node s r in S, and s amp is the energy consumption per bit by the signal amplifier of the transmitter node s t . The radio model is formulated by: E Tx (k,d) = k(E elec + s cmv d y ) (10) E Rx (k) = kE elec , (11) where E Tx is the energy consumption for transmitting data, E Rx denotes the energy consumption by receiving data, d is the distance between the transmitter node s t and the receiver node s r , and y is the path loss exponent. For the nodes that serve as intermediate nodes, besides energy consumption of transmitting data and receiving data, extra energy consumption is required to complete the tasks of aggregating and compressing the sensed data. When an intermediate node receives a packet of length fc-bits, the energy consumption can be formulated by E Rx . The packet is then compressed into a packet ofjuxk bits, and the energy consumption can be formulated by k x Eda, where Eda is the energy consumption per bit in data aggregation, and ju is the compression coefficient. After the data aggregation, the node transmits the aggregated data to the next-hop node. Hence, the total energy consumption of an intermediate node for receiving and transmitting a packet, denoted by E int , is: E uU= E R,+ kE DA+ME Tx . (12) Sensors 2011, 11 3428 It is worth noting that this radio transmission model may not be consistent with the specification of some radio-frequency transceivers. However, this radio transmission model has been widely utilized in many previously proposed studies. In order to conduct a fair comparison between the performances of the proposed approach and other existing methods, as well as to focus the scope of this study on the routing issue, the aforementioned radio transmission model is utilized. 5.2. Network Parameters The proposed method is most suitable for circumstances in which losing any sensing data is not acceptable, e.g., WSN-based perimeter surveillance in battlefields or other high security areas [23]. According to this scenario, sensor nodes can be randomly deployed by helicopters or aircrafts [7]. They are then self-organized into a functional WSN for comprehensive and continuous perimeter surveillance. In addition, the proposed method is also suitable for the WSN-based smart healthcare that requires continuous and remote monitoring [24]. Here, we take the battlefield surveillance as an example; a network with 100 sensor nodes is randomly distributed over a battle area of 50 x 50 m . The deployed nodes equipped with vibration sensors that can detect any object passing through the area within its sensing range. The sensing range r is set at 7.5 m. In addition, this battlefield consists of 2,500 POIs that are grid distributed. In each round live nodes need to report the sensed data to the BS, and the BS is located at the coordinate (25, -50). In order to prevent long distance transmissions and to reduce power dissipation in data transmission, a suitable communication range C r is chosen to make the average hop-count of nodes equal to 7.5. The initial energy of all nodes is assumed to be 1 joule, and the nodes cannot be recharged. Furthermore, the parameters of the radio model are summarized in Table 1, which are the same as those adopted by [18] in order to perform fair comparisons between the proposed method and the previous studies. The path loss of the radio model is set the same as the previous studies [11,18], in which y is 2 for data transmissions between nodes in a free-space. We specifically set y to 2.5 for the long range data transmissions from the root node to the BS [25]. The compression coefficient \x of Equation (12) is set at 0.05. In this study, each node should have some specific data which is different than other nodes, and the setting of compression coefficient fi set at 0.05 is much suitable in the real- world works. Hence, the compression coefficient ju is set at 0.05 in this work to evaluate the ECHR performance. Simulation results are obtained by averaging those obtained from 100 network topologies. Table 1. Parameter settings used in the simulations. Parameter Acronym Setting * Radio circuitry Eelec 50 nJ/bit Transmit amplifier &amp 0.1 nJ/bit/m y Aggregation cost Eda 5 nJ/bit Data packet size k 2,000 bits These parameter settings were adopted from [18]. In this section, the performance analysis of the proposed ECHR protocol is conducted via MATLAB simulation. The simulation consists of two parts. In the first part, the performance of the proposed ECHR is evaluated using different weighting coefficients. In the second part of the Sensors 2011, 11 3429 simulation, the performance of the ECHR protocol is compared with those of the LEACH and the LEACH-Coverage-U via numerical simulation. 5.3. Performance Evaluation of the ECHR Protocol under Varying Weighting Coefficients The main goal of this simulation is to evaluate the performance of the ECHR protocol when applying it to a network with different weighting factors. The lifetime of the network with a full sensing coverage ratio achieved by using the ECHR protocol is also investigated. These factors are used to select a root node in each round and determine an energy-efficient route for each node. The framework of the divide and conquer method [26] is borrowed to dissect the proposed ECHR protocol. The first part of simulation is to find optimal weighting coefficients of Equation (4), z\ and z%, in the root node selection mechanism. In the second part of simulation, the effects of the parameters of Equation (7) are identified in the energy-aware hierarchical routing mechanism, X\ and X%. In the first part of simulation, a same network model is setup as mentioned above. The network with 100 nodes is deployed in an area of 50 x 50 m . In order to study the effect of weighting coefficients on the residual energy factor and the coverage factor in Equation (4), X\ is set at 0.7 while X% is set at 3.3. Figure 4 shows three-dimensional plots of the lifetime of the network with a 100% sensing coverage ratio versus z\ and z%. After examining the simulation results, it is found that the optimum value of network lifetime with a 100% sensing coverage ratio can be obtained when z\ = 1 and T2 = 3.1. Figure 4. Plot of network lifetime with 100% sensing coverage versus z\ and xi when Xi = 0.7 and X 2 = 3.3. Figure 5 shows the coverage-lifetime comparison under varying z\ when set r 2 is set at 3.1. The coverage-lifetime demonstrated in Figure 5 is the network lifetime when 100%, 95%, 90%, and 80% of network coverage is preserved, respectively. When z\ = 1.0, the network lifetime can provide a full sensing coverage over other z\ values. In this case, if the root node selection does not take the residue energy into account (i.e., z\ = 0), the redundant nodes will always be chosen as the root node and their Sensors 2011, 11 3430 energy will run out fast. Under this circumstance, however, the data collected by active nodes needs to be transmitted for a long distance, because fewer intermediate nodes are used to transmit data. As a result, the active nodes run out of energy more quickly. On the contrary, the proposed root selection mechanism puts an emphasis more on energy-balancing than the coverage factor does when x\ is set at a large value, say 50. Such a situation leads to a scenario that the redundant node might not be chosen as the root node, network lifetime with a full sensing coverage may not last longer. Figure 5. Comparison of network lifetimes under different sensing coverage ratios with varying x\ when set r 2 = 3.1. Figure 6 shows the coverage-lifetime comparison results under different values of x 2 when setting x\ at 1.0. When the sensing coverage is 100%, the network lifetime is the longest, if x 2 = 3.1. In this case, the coverage factor in the root node selection is not taken into account (i.e., X2 = 0). Such a situation is similar to the scenarios where x\ is set at a large value, as mentioned above. Moreover, the impact of the coverage factor on the root node selection mechanism is greater than that of the residual energy factor if X2 is set at a large value, e.g., 50. In this circumstance, the performance of the network is similar to the case where x\ = 0. In addition, we analyze the effects of varying weighting coefficients of the distance factor, X\, and the residual energy factor, X 2 , of Equation (7) on the energy-aware hierarchical routing algorithm. Figure 7 shows three-dimensional plots of the network lifetime with a 100% sensing coverage versus X\ and X 2 , when x\ = 1 and x 2 = 3.1. After an extensive series of simulations, the optimal value is located at the area where 0.5 < X\ < 1.5 and 3.0 < hi < 4.0. Here, we find optimum weighting coefficients, X\, equal to 0.7, and X 2 , equal to 3.3, with the maximum network lifetime under a 100% sensing coverage ratio. Sensors 2011, 11 3431 Figure 6. Comparison of network lifetimes under different sensing coverage ratios with varying T2 when set t\ = 1 . ■S 1400 r 2, ] n<\ o E — c z 100% 95% 90% Sensing coverage ratio 80% Figure 7. Plot of network lifetime with 100% sensing coverage versus k\ and k% when T\ = 1 and i2 = 3.1. •S 1600 d S 1575 3 0.5 1600 1575 1550 Table 2 depicts the coverage-lifetime comparison under varying X\ when X 2 is set at 3.3. The network in which k\ = 0.7 provides longer coverage-lifetime under a 100% sensing coverage ratio, compared to other values of k\. For instance, when k\ = 0, the improvement in the network coverage-lifetime reaches 43%. In this case, the distance factor of the energy-aware hierarchical routing algorithm is not taken into account which means that farther neighboring nodes with higher residual energy can be chosen as the parent node. Under this situation, the energy consumption in data transmission increases. However, this fact causes the network to fast run out of power. On the other hand, the impact of the distance factor of Equation (7) on the energy-aware hierarchical routing mechanism is greater than that of the residual energy factor when k\ is set at a large value, say 50. Sensors 2011, 11 3432 Such a situation drives the node to choose the nearest node as a parent node which could be a critical node. If the essential node over used as an intermediate node, the node may quickly run out of energy, and thus causing the network cease working. Table 2 also shows the results of coverage-lifetime comparison using different values of X 2 when X\ = 0.7. The ECHR protocol has the best performance when X 2 = 3.3, despite the similarity in the coverage-lifetime under a 100% coverage ratio. If the residual energy factor of Equation (7) is not taken into account (i.e., X 2 = 0), and the distance factor, X\, will be the only factor that influences the result of selecting parent node. This case is similar to the scenario that X\ is set at a large value, as mentioned above. Furthermore, the effect of the residual energy factor is greater than that of the distance factor when X 2 is set at a large value, e.g., 50. This means that a node will choose its parent node depending on which one of possible parent candidates has the highest residual energy. Because the distance factor is also considered in this case, the performance of the network where X\ = 0.7 and X 2 = 50 is better than that of the network where X\ = 0 and X 2 = 3.3. Table 2. Comparison of network lifetimes under different sensing coverage ratios. Parameters Coverage-time (Rounds) h h 100% 95% 90% 80% 0 3.3 1,094 1,334 1,359 1,381 0.3 3.3 1,583 1,675 1,692 1,709 0.7 3.3 1,590 1,677 1,692 1,711 10 3.3 1,578 1,657 1,671 1,687 50 3.3 1,581 1,652 1,671 1,687 0.7 0 1,580 1,653 1,672 1,688 0.7 1 1,585 1,666 1,682 1,697 0.7 3.3 1,590 1,677 1,692 1,711 0.7 10 1,584 1,677 1,693 1,709 0.7 50 1,585 1,672 1,690 1,707 5.4. Performance of the ECHR Protocol In this section, the performance of the ECHR protocol is compared with those of the LEACH [4] and the LEACH-Coverage-U [18] protocols via an extensive series of simulations. The simulations using different protocols are ceased once all nodes run out of energy, and the comparison results generated. In the case I, the same network model in both approaches [4,18] mentioned above is used to examine the protocols. The LEACH and the LEACH-Coverage-U both set their BS in a remote place, and each node can directly transmit data to the BS. Such a condition, however, is not suitable for a real-world environment, because each tiny low-cost sensor node does not have such strong communication capability. Consequently, in the simulation a gateway is located in the center of the monitoring area, i.e., located at (25, 25), equipped with a long distance wireless communication module (e.g., the global system for mobile communications module) capable of transmitting the sensed data to the BS. In each round, sensor nodes transmit sensing data to the gateway, and the gateway sends the sensing data of sensor nodes to the BS. Moreover, the path loss exponent y of Equation (10) is set at 2.5 when transmitting data from the root node to the gateway [4,18]. In the case II, the Sensors 2011, 11 3433 gateway is served as the BS and located in the center of the monitoring area. Simulation results are presented as follows. Figure 8 shows the number of active sensor nodes versus the simulation rounds. In the case I, the LEACH and the LEACH-Coverage-U protocols lose their first node around the 600 th round. The proposed ECHR protocol is able to maintain all sensor nodes alive till the 1,500 th round, which is approximately 2.5 times longer than those generated by the LEACH and the LEACH-Coverage-U protocols. Moreover, the lifetime of first node that runs out of its energy using the proposed ECHR protocol is longer than those using the LEACH and the LEACH-Coverage-U protocols in the case II. By contract, using the ECHR protocol, after the first node runs out of energy, the number of the active nodes sharply falls. This is because the proposed ECHR protocol is able to equalize the energy consumption over the entire network. Furthermore, by maintaining nodes surviving longer time when relaying data, the energy consumed in transmission can be significantly reduced. Hence, using the proposed ECHR protocol guarantees the WSN with high coverage precedence when applying the WSN to specific mission-critical areas, such as military surveillance and e-health care. Figure 8. Comparison of the active nodes of the proposed ECHR protocol with those of other protocols. -o-- LEACH (case I) . _ LEACH-Coverage-U (case I) -0--ECHR (easel) -e— LEACH (case II) LEACH-Coverage-U (case II) -ECHR (case II) 2000 3000 4000 Network lifetime (rounds) 6000 Figure 9 depicts the coverage ratio versus the simulation rounds. The proposed ECHR protocol performs relatively well when comparing to the LEACH and the LEACH-Coverage-U protocols. In the case I, for example the ECHR protocol maintains 100% coverage ratio until the 1,590 th round, but the coverage ratios of LEACH protocol and the LEACH-Coverage-U protocol drop from 100% at the 802 th and the 856 th round, respectively. In other words, compared to the LEACH and the LEACH-Coverage-U protocols, the proposed ECHR protocol provides 98.3% and 85.7% increase in service time with a 100% sensing coverage ratio. The ECHR protocol also outperforms other protocols in the case II, and its network lifetime can be extended to nearly 1,250 rounds. Sensors 2011, 11 3434 Figure 9. Comparison of the coverage ratio of the proposed ECHR protocol with those of other protocols. 2000 3000 4000 Network lifetime (rounds) Figure 10 depicts the average energy consumption of each node versus the simulation rounds when using three different protocols in the cases I and II. The average energy consumption of the ECHR protocol steadily increases during the simulation due to its energy -balancing capability. Moreover, the comparison between the results yielded by the LEACH and the LEACH-Coverage-U protocols clearly indicates that the 100 nodes deployed in the network are still alive and maintain a 100% sensing coverage at the l,500 l simulation round in the case I when using the ECHR protocol. By contrast, the networks using the other two protocols have almost stopped working when the simulation reached the 1,500 th round. Moreover, in case II, the average energy dissipation of the ECHR protocol is almost the same as the other two protocols before the 3,000 th round, but after that, the average energy dissipation of sensor nodes using the LEACH and the LEACH-Coverage-U protocols are both less than that of the ECHR protocol. This is because some sensor nodes in the networks using the former two protocols have run out of energy before 3,000 th round. In other words, the cluster heads of the LEACH and the LEACH-Coverage-U network only need to transmit the data collected by a small number of sensor nodes. Nevertheless, the sensor networks using the LEACH and LEACH-Coverage-U protocols have lost a 100% coverage ratio when the simulation reaches the 3000 th round. In this regard, the proposed ECHR protocol more efficiently utilizes the energy of the redundant nodes, so the network lifetime is prolonged while a full sensing coverage is retained. Note that if the compression coefficient ju of Equation (12) is set at 0 which is the same as the settings in [4,18], the ECHR protocol provides 572.9% and 440.1% increases in service time with a 100% sensing coverage ratio comparing with the LEACH and LEACH-Coverage-U protocols in the case I. In the case II, the ECHR also increases 136.7% and 163.6% service time with a 100% sensing coverage ratio comparing with the LEACH and LEACH-Coverage-U protocols. These increases are better than the experimental results when the compression coefficient ju is set at 0.05. Sensors 2011, 11 3435 Figure 10. Comparison of the average energy consumption of the proposed ECHR protocol with those of other protocols. t 1 1 1 r Network lifetime (rounds) Figure 11 shows the distribution of active and dead nodes of the network in the case I. Figure 11(a) plots the distribution of the network topology of active and dead nodes when the number of dead nodes rises to 25, obtained by applying the LEACH protocol to the network. Figure 11. Distribution of alive and dead nodes yielded by (a) LEACH protocol, (b) LEACH-Coverage-U protocol, and (c) the proposed ECHR protocol, (d) Distribution of active and dead nodes before the network fails to maintain 100% sensing coverage obtained by applying the proposed ECHR protocol. 10 20 30 40 (a) LEACH 10 20 30 40 (b) LEACH-Coveragc-U 10 20 30 (c) ECHR-25 40 50 10 20 30 40 (d) ECHR-53 50 O active node X dead node In this case, most of the dead nodes are located at the upper side of the network, i.e., distanced from the BS. This fact is because the energy consumption for transmitting data between the BS and these nodes are greater than the energy use when nodes are located at the bottom side. Figure 11(b) depicts Sensors 2011, 11 3436 the distribution of active and dead nodes when the number of dead nodes is equal to 25 by applying the LEACH-Coverage-U protocol to the network. Comparing with Figure 11(a), the active nodes in Figure 11(b) are more dispersed because the locations of nodes are taken into account by the LEACH-Coverage-U protocol. However, the majority of dead nodes are still located at the upper side. Figure 11(c) shows the distribution of active and dead nodes when the number of dead node is equal to 25, obtained by applying the proposed ECHR protocol to the network. Because the ECHR protocol is able to manage the network with features of energy-balancing and coverage-preserving, the locations of dead nodes are more evenly distributed over the network, which can effectively prevent coverage holes from occurring. Furthermore, Figure 11(d) depicts the distributions of nodes before the network fails to maintain 100% sensing coverage. In this case, the dead nodes are equal to 53. The experiment results demonstrate that using the overlapped sensing ranges the proposed ECHR protocol utilizes the energy of the nodes more efficiently. Thus, the duration for maintaining full sensing coverage can be significantly prolonged. 6. Conclusions In this paper a hierarchical routing algorithm, capable of energy-balancing and coverage-preservation designed for wireless sensor networks, is proposed. The proposed ECHR algorithm aims to prolong network lifetime with a full sensing coverage for mission-critical applications. Extending network lifetime without the risk of data loss is a basic QoS requirement in such applications. The main idea of the ECHR algorithm is that in the stage of root node selection both of the energy-balancing and coverage-preservation mechanisms are taken into account. With this root node selection scheme, the redundant nodes can be chosen as the root node in early stages. In order to enhance the performance of the ECHR algorithm, the distance and the residual energy of neighboring nodes is incorporated into the algorithm when choosing an energy-efficient route for each node. The simulation results show that the proposed ECHR algorithm is able to prolong the network lifetime while retaining a 100% coverage ratio in case I and case II. The proposed ECHR algorithm outperforms the existing routing protocols such as the LEACH and the LEACH-Coverage-U. These results suggest that the QoS-guaranteed coverage precedence for WSNs in mission critical applications could be achieved when using the ECHR protocol. Some further information of the network can be utilized to enhance the feasibility of function- specific algorithms in WSN-based mission-critical applications. For example, the link quality indication (LQI) and the received signal strength indication (RSSI) can be used to estimate the distance between nodes. Thereby, the proposed ECHR algorithm can be adopted without knowing the exact location of the sensor nodes. Such an issue is left to research. Acknowledgements The authors are grateful for the financial support from the President of National Taiwan University under the contract No. 99R50105-2. This work was also supported in part by the National Science Council, Taiwan, under the financial contracts No.: NSC 99-2218-E-002-015, 99-2218-E-002-016 and by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan, under the Grants No.: 98-EC-17-A-02-S2-0132. Finally, the authors would like to thank the Council of Agriculture of the Executive Yuan, Taiwan, for their financial supporting under the contract No.: 98AS-6.1.5-FD-Z1. Sensors 2011, 11 3437 References 1. Kuorilehto, M.; Hannikainen, M.; Hamalainen, T.D. A Survey of Application Distribution in Wireless Sensor Networks. EURASIP J. Wirel. Commun. Netw. 2005, 5, 774-788. 2. Brandi, M.; Grabner, J.; Kellner, K.; Seifert, F.; Nicolics, J.; Grabner, S.; Grabner, G. A Low-Cost Wireless Sensor System and Its Application in Dental Retainers. IEEE Sens. J. 2009, 9, 255-262. 3. Stojmenovic, I. Handbook of Sensor Networks: Algorithms and Architectures, 1st ed.; Wiley-Interscience: New York, NY, USA, 2005. 4. Heinzelman, W.B.; Chandraksaan, A.P.; Balakrishnan, H. An Application-Specific Protocol Architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks. IEEE Tran. Wirel. Commun. 2002, 1, 660-670. 5. Al-Karaki, J.N.; Kamal, A.E. Routing Techniques in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey. IEEE Wirel. Commun. 2004, 11, 6-28. 6. Muruganathan, S.D.; Fapojuwo, A.O. A Hybrid Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks Based on a Two-Level Clustering Hierarchy with Enhanced Energy Efficiency. In Proceedings of the WCNC, Las Vegas, NV, USA, April 2008; pp. 2051-2056. 7. Diamond, S.M.; Ceruti, M.G. Application of Wireless Sensor Network to Military Information Integration. In Proceedings of the IEEE INDIN, Vienna, Austria, 23-27 June 2007; pp. 317-322. 8. Fan, G.J.; Jin, S.Y. Coverage Problem in Wireless Sensor Network: A Survey. J. Netw. 2010, 5, 1033-1040. 9. Lin, J.W.; Chen, Y.T. Improving the Coverage of Randomized Scheduling in Wireless Sensor Networks. IEEE Trans. Wirel. Commun. 2008, 7, 4807-4812. 10. Akkaya, K.; Younis, M. A Survey on Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks. Ad hoc Netw. 2005, 3, 325-349. 11. Handy, M.J.; Haase, M.; Timmermann, D. Low Energy Clustering Hierarchy with Deterministic Cluster Head Selection. In Proceedings of the MWCN, Stockholm, Sweden, September 2002; pp. 368-372. 12. Younis, O.; Fahmy, S. HEED: A Hybrid, Energy-Efficient, Distributed Clustering Approach for ad hoc Sensor Network. IEEE Tran. Mob. Comput. 2004, 3, 366-379. 13. Loh, P.K.K.; Jing, H.W.; Pans, Y. Performance Evaluation of Efficient and Reliable Routing Protocols for Fixed-Power Sensor Networks. IEEE Trans. Wirel. Commun. 2009, 8, 2328-2335. 14. Tan, H.O.; Korpeoglu, I.; Stojmenovic, I. Computing Localized Power-Efficient Data Aggregation Trees for Sensor Networks. IEEE Trans. Parallel Distrib. Syst. 2011, 22, 489-500. 15. Shu, T.; Krunz, M.; Vrudhula, S. Power Balanced Coverage-Time Optimization for Clustered Wireless Sensor Networks. In Proceedings of the MobiHoc, Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA, May 2005; pp. 111-120. 16. Li, C; Ye, M.; Chen, G.; Wu, J. An Energy-Efficient Unequal Clustering Mechanism for Wireless Sensor Networks. In Proceedings of the MASS, Washington, DC, USA, November 2005; pp. 598-604. 17. Lindsey, S.; Raghavendra, C; Sivalingam, K.M. Data Gathering Algorithms in Sensor Networks Using Energy Metrics. IEEE Trans. Parallel Distrib. Syst. 2002, 13, 924-935. 18. Tsai, Y.R. Coverage-Preserving Routing Protocols for Randomly Distributed Wireless Sensor Networks. IEEE Trans. Wirel. Commun. 2007, 6, 1240-1245. Sensors 2011, 11 3438 19. Kumar, N.; Kumar, M.; Patel, R.B. Coverage and Connectivity Aware Neural Network Based Energy Efficient Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks. Int. J. Appl. Graph Theory Wirel. ad hoc Netw. Sens. Netw. 2010, 2, 45-60. 20. Noh, Y.; Lee, S.; Kim, K. Basestation- Aided Coverage- Aware Energy-Efficient Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks. In Proceedings of the IEEE WCNC, Las Vegas, NV, USA, March 2008; pp. 2486-2491. 21. Soro, S.; Heinzelman, W.B. Cluster Head Election Techniques for Coverage Preservation in Wireless Sensor Networks. Ad Hoc Netw. 2009, 7, 955-972. 22. Wang, B.; Lim, H.B.; Ma, D.; Yang, D. A Coverage-Aware Clustering Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks. In Proceedings of the MSN, Huagang HNA Resort, Hangzhou, China, December 2010; pp. 85-90. 23. Onur, E.; Ersoy, C; Delic, H.; Akarun, L. Surveillance Wireless Sensor Networks: Deployment Quality Analysis. IEEE Netw. 2007, 21, 48-53. 24. Jafari, R.; Encarnacao, A.; Zahoory, A.; Dabiri, F.; Noshadi, H.; Sarrafzadeh, M. Wireless Sensor Nnetworks for Health Monitoring. In Proceedings of the MobiQuitous, San Diego, CA, USA, July 2005; pp. 479-481. 25. Rappaport, T.S. Wireless Communications Principles and Practice, 2nd ed.; Prentice Hall: Bergen County, NJ, USA, 2002; p. 104. 26. Cormen, T.; Leiserson, C; Rivest, R.; Stein, C. Introduction to Algorithms, 2nd ed.; McGraw-Hill Science: New York, NY, USA, 2003. © 2011 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.Org/licenses/by/3.0/).
The Taoism reader
null
2011-01-01T00:00:00Z
Taoism -- Sacred books -- Quotations
183 p. 18 cm,"This book was previously published as The Spirit of Tao"--T.p. verso,Includes bibliographical references,Classic sources -- Tao-te ching -- Chuang-tzu -- Huai-nan-tzu -- Wen-tzu -- Tales of inner meaning -- Sayings of ancestor Lü
A History of Chinese Literature
Herbert Allen Giles
1901-01-01T00:00:00Z
chinese,literature,emperor,wang,dynasty,liu,lao,han,imperial,tzu,chinese literature,lao tzu,hung lou,three years,long time,young lady,hsiian tsang,han dynasty,chuang tzu,sung dynasty
Book digitized by Google from the library of the University of Michigan and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.
Full text of "A History of Chinese Literature" Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "A History of Chinese Literature" See other formats Google This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online. It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover. Marks, notations and other maiginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you. Usage guidelines Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing tliis resource, we liave taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying. We also ask that you: + Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for personal, non-commercial purposes. + Refrain fivm automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help. + Maintain attributionTht GoogXt "watermark" you see on each file is essential for in forming people about this project and helping them find additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it. + Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liabili^ can be quite severe. About Google Book Search Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at |http: //books .google .com/I p Short Histories of the Literatures ■ of the World Edited by Edmund Gosse it LITERATURES QP THE WORLD. Edited by EDMUND OOSSE. Hon. m, A. ci Triaity College, Cambridge. A succession of attractive voliimes dealini; with the his- tory of literature in each country. "Each volume will contain about three hundred and fifty lamo pages, and will treat an entire literature, giving a uniform impression of its develop- ment, history, and character, and of its relation to previous and to contemporary work. Bach, zamo, cloth, $1.50. NOW READY. CHINESE LITERATURE. Bv Hbrbbrt A. Giles, M. A.. LL. D. (Aberd.), Profesaor of Chinese in die Univenity of Cambridge, and late H. B. M. Consul at Ningpo. SANSKRIT LITERATURE. By A. A. Macdonbxx, M. A., Deputy Boden Pzofeasor of Sanskrit at the Univenity of Oxibid. RUSSIAN LITERATURE. By K. Wauszbwski. BOHEMIAN UTERATURE. By Francis. Count LOtzow, audior of " Bohemia : An Hutoriosl Sketch.** JAPANESE LITERATURE. By W. G. Aston, C. M. G., M. A., hte Acting Secretary at the British Legation at Tokio. SPANISH LITERATURE. By J. Fitzmauricb-Kxlly, Mem- ber of the Spamsh Academy. ITALIAN LITERATURE. By Richard Garkbtt. C. B., LL. D., Keeper of I^ted Books in the British Museum. ANCIENT GREEK LITERATURE. By Gilbsrt Murray, M. A., Professor of Greek in die Unireruty of Glasgow. FRENCH LITERATURE. By Edward Dowdbn, D. C. L., LL. D., Professor of English Literature at the University of Dublin. MODERN BNQLISH UTERATURE. BytheEDrroR. IN PREPARATION. American Literature. By Prof. W. P. Trbmt, of the Univer- sity of the South. German Literature. Hungarian Literature. By Dr. ZoltXn BbOthy, Professor (tf Hungarian Literature at rae University of Budapest. Latin Literature. By Dr. Arthur Woolcar-Vbrrall, Fellow and Senior Tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge. Modern Scandinavian Literature. By Dr. Georg Brandbs, of Copenhagen. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. I A HISTORY OF CHINESE LITERATURE BY HERBERT A. ^LES, M. A., LL. D. (Aberd.) PROFESSOR OF CHINESE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE AND LATE H. B. M. CONSUL AT NINGPO NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1901 I > « <k %^. COPYMGHT, tgoi, By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. PREFACE This is the first attempt made in any language, including Chinese, to produce a history of Chinese literature. Native scholars, with their endless critiques and appreciations of individual works, do not seem ever to have contemplated anything of the kind, realising, no doubt, the utter hopelessness, from a Chinese point of view, of achieving even comparative success in a general historical survey of the subject. The volu- minous character of a literature which was already in existence some six centuries before the Christian era, and has run on uninterruptedly until the present date, may well have given pause to writers aiming at com- pleteness. The foreign student, however, is on a totally different footing. It may be said without offence that a work which would be inadequate to the requirements of a native public, may properly be submitted to Eng- lish readers as an introduction into the great field which lies beyond. Acting upon the suggestion of Mr. Gosse, to whom I am otherwise indebted for many valuable hints, I have devoted a large portion of this book to translation, thus enabling the Chinese author, so far as translation will allow, to speak for himself. I have also added, here and there, remarks by native critics, that the reader may be 300187 vi PREFACE able to form an idea of the point of view from which the Chinese judge their own productions. It only remains to be stated that the translations, with the exception of a few passages from Legge's ''Chinese Classics/' in each case duly acknowledged, are my own. HERBERT A. GILES. Cambridge, October 190a CONTENTS f BOOK THE FIRST— THE FEUDAL PERIOD (B.C. 600-200) CHAP. PAGE I. LEGENDARY AGES— EARLY CHINESE CIVILISATION— ORIGIN OF WRITING • . • . . 3 II. CONFUCIUS — THE FIVE CLASSICS 7 in. THE FOUR BOOKS — MENCIUS 32 IV. MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS .43 V. I*OETRY — INSCRIPTIONS 50 VI. TAOISM— THE **TAO-Tfe-CHING " 56 BOOK THE SECOND— THE HAN DYNASTY (B.C. 200-A.D. 200) L THE "FIRST EMPEROR " — THE BURNING OF THE BOOKS — MIS- CELLANEOUS WRITERS 77 II. POETRY 97 III. HISTORY — LEXICOGRAPHY 102 IV. BUDDHISM no BOOK THE THIRD— MINOR DYNASTIES (a.d. 200-600) I. POETRY— MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE II9 II. CLASSICAL SCHOLARSHIP I37 BOOK THE FOURTH— THE TANG DYNASTY (a.d. 600-900) I. POETRY 143 n. CLASSICAL AND GENERAL LITERATURE 1^9 r viii CONTENTS BOOK THE FiFTH-'THB SUNG DYNASTY (a.d. 900-1200) CHAP. PACE I. THE INVENTION OF BLOCK-PRINTING 209 II. HISTORY — CLASSICAL AND GENERAL LITERATURE . .212 III. POETRY - 232 IV. DICTIONARIES—ENCYCLOPiEDIAS— MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE 238 BOOK THE SIXTH— THE MONGOL DYNASTY (a.d. 1 200-1 368) I. MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE — POETRY 247 II. THE DRAMA 256 III. THE NOVEL 276 BOOK THE SEVENTH-^THE MING DYNASTY (A.D. 1368-1644} I. MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE — MATERIA MEDICA — ENCVCLO- PiCDIA OF AGRICULTURE 29I ir. NOVELS AND PLAYS 309 III. POETRY 329 BOOK THE EIGHTH—THE MANCHU DYNASTY (a.d. 1 644- 1 900) l the "liao chal"— the "hung lou mtng '* . . . 337 H. THE EMPERORS K*ANG HSI AND CH*IBN LUNG .... 385 in. CLASSICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE — POETRY . . 391 IV. WALL LITERATURE — ^JOURNALISM— WIT AND HUMOUR — PRO- VERBS AND MAXIMS 425 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 441 INDEX 443 BOOK THE FIRST THE FEUDAL PERIOD (b.c. 6oo-aoo) V BOOK THE FIRST THE FEUDAL PERIOD (b.c. 6cx>-20o) CHAPTER I LEGENDARY AGES— EARLY CHINESE CIVILISA- TION— ORIGIN OF WRITING The date of the beginning of all things has been nicely calculated by Chinese chronologers. There was first of all a period when Nothing existed, though some enthu- siasts have attempted to deal with a period antecedent even to that. Gradually Nothing took upon itself the form and limitations of Uni^, represented by a point at the centre of a circle. Thus there was a Great Monad, a First Cause, an Aura, a Zeitgeist, or whatever one may please to call it. After countless ages, spent apparently in doing nothing, this Monad split into Two Principles, one active, the other passive ; one positive, the other nega- tive ; light and darkness ; male and female. The inter- action of these Two Principles resulted in the production of all things, as we see them in the universe around us, 2,269,381 years ago. Such is the cosmogony of the Chinese in a autshell. mmmm^^Km^mmm 4 CHINESE LITERATURE The more sober Chinese historians, however, are con- tent to begin with a sufficiently mythical emperor, who reigned only 2800 years before the Christian era. The practice of agriculture, the invention of wheeled vehicles, and the simpler arts of early civilisation are generally referred to this period ; but to the dispassionate Euro- pean student it is a period of myth and legend : in fact, we know very little about it. Neither do we know much, in the historical sense, of the numerous rulers whose names anct dates appear in the chronology of the suc- ceeding two thousand years. It is not indeed until we reach the eighth century B.c. that anything like history can be said to begin. For reasons which will presently be made plain, the sixth century B.c. is a convenient starting-point for the student of Chinese literature. China was then confined to a comparatively small area, lying for the most part between the Yellow River on the north and the river Yang-tsze on the south. No one knows where the Chinese came from. Some hold the fascinating theory that they were emigrants from Accadia in the ancient kingdom of Babylonia ; others have identified them with the lost tribes of Israel. No one seems to think they can possibly have originated in the fertile plains where they are now found. It appears indeed to be an ethnological axiom that every race must have come from somewhere outside its own territory. However that may be, the China of the eighth century B.C. consisted of a number of Feudal States, ruled by nobles owning allegiance to a Central State, at the head of which was a king. The outward tokens of subjection were homage and tribute ; but after all, the allegiance must have been more nominal than real, each State being FEUDALISM 5 practically an independent kingdom. This condition of things was the cause of much mutual jealousy, and often of bloody wairfare, several of the States hating one an- other quite as cordially as Athens and Sparta at their best. There was, notwithstanding, considerable physical civilisation in the ancient States of those early days. Their citizens, when not employed in cutting each other's throats, enjoyed a reasonable security of life and pro- perty. They lived in well-built houses ; they dressed in silk or homespun; they wore shoes of leather; they carried umbrellas ; they sat on chairs and used tables ; they rode in carts and chariots ; they travelled by boat ; and they ate their food off plates and dishes of pottery, coarse perhaps, yet still superior to the wooden trencher common not so very long ago in Europe. They mea- sured time by the sundial, and in the Golden Age they had the two famous calendar trees, representations of which have come down to us in sculpture, dating from about A.D. 1 50. One of these trees put forth a leaf every day for fifteen days, after which a leaf fell off daily for fifteen more days. The other put forth a leaf once a month for half a year, after which a leaf fell off monthly for a similar period. With these trees growing in the courtyard, it was possible to say at a glance what was the day of the month, and what was the month of the year. But civilisation proved unfavourable to their growth, and the species became extinct. In the sixth century B.C. the Chinese were also in pos- session of a written language, fully adequate to the most varied expression of human thought, and indeed almost identical with their present script, allowing, among other things, for certain modifications of form brought about by the substitution of paper and a camel's-hair brush for '; 6 CHINESE LITERATURE i I I the bamboo tablet and stylus of old. The actual stages by which that point was reached are so far unknown to us. China has her Cadmus in the person of a prehistoric individual named Ts'ang Chieh, who is said to have had four eyes, and to have taken the idea of a written lan- guage from the markings of birds' claws upon the sand. Upon the achievement of his task the sky rained grain and evil spirits mourned by night. Previous to this mankind had no other system than rude methods of knotting cords and notching sticks for noting events or communicating with one another at a distance. As to the origin of the written language of China, invention is altogether out of the question. It seems probable that in prehistoric ages, the Chinese, like other peoples, began to make rude pictures of the sun, moon, and stars, of man himself, of trees, of fire, of rain, and they appear to have followed these up by ideograms of various kinds. How far they went in this direction we can only surmise. There are comparatively few obvi- ously pictorial characters and ideograms to be found even in the script of two thousand years ago ; but in- vestigations carried on for many years by Mr. L. C. Hopkins, H.M. Consul, Chefoo, and now approaching completion, point more and more to the fact that the I written language will some day be recognised as syste- matically developed from pictorial symbols. It is, at any rate, certain that at a very early date subsequent to the legendary period of " knotted cords " and " notches," while the picture-symbols were still com- paratively few, some master-mind reached at a bound the phonetic principle, from which point the rapid development of a written language such as we now find would be an easy matter. CHAPTER II CONFUCIUS— THE FIVE CLASSICS In B.C. SSI Confucius was born. He may be regarded as the founder of Chinese literature. During his years of office as a Government servant and his years of teaching and wandering as an exile, he found time to rescue for posterity certain valuable literary fragments of great antiquity, and to produce at least one original work of his own. It is impossible to assert that before his time there was anything in the sense of what we understand by the term general literature. The written language appears to have been used chiefly for purposes of administration. Many utterances, however, of early* not to say legendary, rulers h"^ been committed to ^'^writing at one time or another, and such of these as were still extant were diligently collected and edited by Confucius, forming what is now known as the Sku Ching >r Book of History. The documents of which this work s composed are said to have been originally one lundred in all, and they cover a period extending rom the twenty-fourth to the eighth century B.C. They ive us glimpses of an age earlier than that of Confucius, ' not actually so early as is claimed. The first two, for ^stance, refer to the Emperors Yao and Shun, whose bigns, extending from B.C. 23S7 to^220S, are regarded S the Golden Age of China. We read how the former 1 1 k 8 CHINESE LITERATURE moftarch ''united the various parts of his domain in bonds of peace, so that concord reigned among the black-haired people." He abdicated in favour of Shun, who is described as being profoundly wise, intelligent, and sincere. We are further told that Shun was chosen because of his great filial piety, which enabled him to live in harmony with an unprincipled father, a shifty stepmother, and an arrogant half-brother, and, moreover, to effect by his example a comparative reformation of their several characters. We next come to a very famous personage, who founded the Hsia dynasty in B.C. 2205, and is known as the G reat Y d. It was he who, during the reign of the Emperor Shun, successfully coped with a devastating flood, which has been loosely identified with the Noachic Deluge, and in reference to which it was said in the Tso Chuan, ** How grand was the achievement of Yii, how far-reaching his glorious energy ! But for Yii we should all have been fishes." The following is his own account (Legge's translation) : — " The inundating waters seemed to assail the heavens, and in their vast extent embraced the mountains and overtopped the hills, so that people were bewildered and overwhelmed. I mounted my four conveyances (carts, boats, sledges, and spiked shoes), and all along the hills hewed down the woods, at the same time, along with Yi, showing the multitudes how to get flesh to eat. I opened passages for the streams throughout the nine provinces, and conducted them to the sea. I deepened the channels and canals, and conducted them to th< streams, at the same time, along with Chi, sowing grain, and showing the multitudes how to procure the food of toil in addition to flesh meat. I urged them further 1-1 BOOK OF HISTORY 9 to exchange what they had for what they had not, and to dispose of their accumulated stores. In this way all the people got grain to eat, and all the States began to come under good rule." A small portion of the Book of History is in verse : — " The people should be cherished. And should not be doTvntrodden, The people are the root of a country. And if the root isfirm^ the country will be tranquil. • •*..•• The palace a wild for lust^ The country a wild for hunting. Rich wine, seductive music^ Lofty roofs, carved walls, — Given any one of these. And the result can only be ruin** From the date of the foundation of the Hsia dynasty the throne of the empire was transmitted from father to son, and there were no more abdications in favour of virtuous sages. The fourth division of the Book of History deals with the decadence of the Hsia rulers and their final displacement in B.C. 1766 by T*ang the Com- pleter, founder of the Shang dynasty. By B.C. 1 122, the Shang sovereigns had similarly lapsed from the kingly qualities of their founder to even a lower level of degra- dation and vice. Then arose one of the purest and most venerated heroes of Chinese history, popularly known by his canonisation as W6n Wang. He was hereditary ruler of a principality in the modern province of Shensi, and in B.C. ii44 he was denounced as dangerous to the throne. He was seized and thrown into prison, where he passed two years, occupying himself with the Book of Changes, to which we shall presently return. At length the Emperor, yielding to the entreaties of the people, backed up by the present of a beautiful concubine and some lO CHINESE LITERATURE fine horses, set him at liberty and commissioned him to make war upon the frontier tribes. To his dying day he never ceased to remonstrate against the cruelty and corruption of the age, and his name is still regarded as one of the most glorious in the annals of the empire. It was reserved for his son, known as Wu Wang, to overthrow the Shang dynasty and mount the throne as first sovereign of the Chou dynasty, which was to last for eight centuries to come. The following is a speech by the latter before a great assembly of nobles who were siding against the House of Shang. It is preserved among others in the Book of History, and is assigned to the year B.C. 1133 (Legge's translation): — •* Heaven and Earth are the parents of all creatures ; and of all creatures man is the most highly endowed. The sincere, intelligent, and perspicacious among men becomes the great sovereign, and the great sovereign is the parent of the people. But now, Shou, the king of Shang, does not reverence Heaven above, and inflicts calamities on the people below. He has been aban- doned to drunkenness, and reckless in lust. He has dared to exercise cruel oppression. Along with criminals he has punished all their relatives. He has put men into office on the hereditary principle. He has made it his pursuit to have palaces, towers, pavilions, em- bankments, ponds, and all other extravagances, to the most painful injury of you, the myriad people. He has burned and roasted the loyal and good. He has ripped up pregnant women. Great Heaven was moved with indignation, and charged my deceased father, W6n, reverently to display its majesty ; but he died before the work was completed. " On this account I, Fa, who am but a little child, have, BOOK OF HISTORY II by means of you, the hereditary rulers of my friendly States, contemplated the government of Shang ; but Shou has no repentant heart. He abides squatting on his heels, not serving God or the spirits of heaven and earth, neglecting also the temple of his ancestors, and not sacrificing in it. The victims and the vessels of millet all become the prey of wicked robbers ; and still he says, * The people are mine : the decree is mine,* never trying to correct his contemptuous mind. Now Heaven, to protect the inferior people, made for them rulers, and made for them instructors, that they might be able to be aiding to God, and secure the tranquillity of the four quarters of the empire. In regard to who are criminals and who are not, how dare I give any allowance to my own wishes ? " * Where the strength is the same, measure the virtue of the parties ; where the virtue is the same, measure their righteousness.' Shou has hundreds of thousands and myriads of ministers, but they have hundreds of thou- sands and myriads of minds ; I have three thousand min- isters, but they have one mind. The iniquity of Shang is full. Heaven gives command to destroy it. If I did not comply with Heaven, my iniquity would be as great. " I, who am a little child, early and late am filled with apprehensions. I have received charge from my de- ceased father, W6n ; I have offered special sacrifice to God ; I have performed the due services to the great Earth ; and I lead the muhitude of you to execute the punishment appointed by Heaven. Heaven compas- sionates the people. What the people desire, Heaven will be found to give effect to. Do you aid me, the one man, to cleanse for ever all within the four seas. Now is the time ! — it may not be lost." 1 12 CHINESE LITERATURE Two of the documents which form the Book of His- tory are directed against luxury and drunkenness, to both of which the people seemed likely to give way even within measurable distance of the death of WSn Wang. The latter had enacted that wine (that is to say, ardent spirits distilled from rice) should only be used on sacrificial occasions, and then under strict supervision ; and it is laid down, almost as a general principle, that all national misfortunes, culminating in the downfall of a dynasty, may be safely ascribed to the abuse of wine. The Shih Ching, or Book of Odes, is another work for the preservation of which we are indebted to Confucius. It consists of a collection of rhymed ballads in various metres, usually four words to the line, composed be- tween the reign of the Great Yii and the beginning of the sixth century B.C. These, which now number 305, are popularly known as the " Three Hundred," and are said by some to have been selected by Confucius from no less than 3000 pieces. They are arranged under four heads, as follows : — {a) Ballads commonly sung by the people in the various feudal States and forwarded periodically by the nobles to their suzerain, the Son of Heaven. The ballads were then submitted to the Imperial Musicians, who were able to judge from the nature of such compositions what would be the manners and customs prevailing in each State, and to advise the suzerain accordingly as to the good or evil administra- tion of each of his vassal rulers, {p) Odes sung at ordinary entertainments given by the suzerain, {c) Odes sung on grand occasions when the feudal nobles were gathered together, {d) Panegyrics and sacrificial odes. THE ODES 13 Confucius himself attached the utmost importance to his labours in this direction. " Have you learned the Odes?" he inquired upon one occasion of his son; and on receiving an answer in the negative, immediately told the youth that until he did so he would be unfit for the society of intellectual men. Confucius may indeed be said to have anticipated the apophthegm attributed by Fletcher of Saltoun to a *' very wise man," namely, that he who should be allowed to make a nation's *' ballads need care little who made its laws." And it was probably this appreciation by Confucius that gave rise to an extraordinary literary craze in reference to these Odes. Early commentators, incapable of seeing the simple natural beauties of the poems, which have furnished endless household words and a large stock of phraseology to the language of the present day, and at the same time unable to ignore the deliberate judg- ment of the Master, set to work to read into country- side ditties deep moral and political signitications. Every single one of the immortal Three Hundred has thus been forced to yield some hidden meaning and point an appropriate moral. If a maiden warns her lover not to be too rash — " Don'/ come in, sir, please / Don*t break my willow-trees / Not that that would very much grieve me / But alack'^-^ay / what would my parents say t And love you as I may, I cannot bear to think what that would be,** — commentators promptly discover that the piece refers to a feudal noble whose brother had been plotting against him, and to the excuses of the former for not visititrg the latter with swift and exemplary punishment. / I \ 14 CHINESE LITERATURE Another independent young lady may say — •* If you will love me dear, my lord, ril pick up my skirts and cross the for d^ But if from your heart you turn me out , . . IVell, you re not the only man about. You silly, silly, silliest lout / " — Still commentaries are not wanting to show that these straightforward words express the wish of the people of a certain small State that some great State would inter- vene and put an end to an existing feud in the ruling family. Native scholars are, of course, hide-bound in the traditions of commentators, but European students will do well to seek the meaning of the Odes within the compass of the Odes themselves. Possibly the very introduction of these absurdities may have helped to preserve to our day a work which would otherwise have been considered too trivial to merit the attention of scholars. Chinese who are in the front rank of scholarship know it by heart, and each separate piece has been searchingly examined, until the force of exegesis can no farther go. There is one famous line which runs, according to the accepted commentary, •* The muddiness of the Ching river appears from the (clear- ness of the) Wei river." In 1790 the Emperor Ch'ien Lung, dissatisfied with this interpretation, sent a viceroy to examine the rivers. The latter reported that the Ching was really clear and the Wei muddy, so that the wording of the line must mean '*The Ching; river is made muddy by the Wei river." i The following is a specimen of one of the l<^nger of the Odes, saddled, like all the rest, with an in^possible political interpretation, of which nothing more weed be said : — [ THE ODES 15 You seemed a guileless youth enough^ Offering for silk your woven stuff; ^ But silk was not required by you ; I wets the silk you had in view. With you I crossed the fordy and while We wandered on for many a mile Isaid^ * / do not wish delay , But friends must fix our wedding-day, . • • Ohy do not let my words give pain ^ But with the autumn come agcUn^ ** And then I used to watch and wait To see you passing through the gate; And sometimes^ when I watched in vain^ My tears would flow like falling rain; But when I saw my darling boy^ J laughed and cried cUoudforjoy, The fortune-tellers^ you declared. Had all pronounced us duly paired; • Then bring a carriage^ J replied^ *And 77/ away to be your bride^ •• The mulberry-leaf not yet undone By autumn chilly shines in the sun, O tender dove, I would advise. Beware the fruit that tempts thy eyes I O maiden fair, not yet a spouse. List lightly not to lover^ vows / A man may do this wrong, and time Will fling its shadow der his crime; A woman who has lost her name Is doomed to everlasting shame, " The mulberry-tree upon the ground Now sheds its yellow leaves around, ' Three years have slipped away from me Since first I shared your poverty ; And now again, cUas the day I Back through the ford I tcdse my way, * Supposed to have l)een stamped pieces of linen, used as a circulating medium before the invention of coins. 1 6 CHINESE LITERATURE My heart is still unchanged^ but you Have uttered wards now proved untrue; And you have left me to deplore A love that can he mine no more. ** For three long years I was your wife^ And led in truth a toilsome life; Early to rise and late to bed^ Each day alike passed der my head* I honestly fulfilled my Party And you — welly you have broke my heart* The truth my brothers will not know^ So all the more their gibes will flow, I grieve in silence and repine That such a wretched fate is mine, *• Ahy hand in hand to face old age / — Instead^ I turn a bitter page. Ofor the river-banks of yore; Ofor the much-loved marshy shore; The hours ofgirlhoody with my hair Ungatheredy as we lingered there. The words we spoke y. that seemed so true^ I little thought that I should rue; I little thought the vows we swore Would some day bind us two no more.** Many of the Odes deal with warfare, and with the separation of wives from their husbands; others, with agriculture and with the chase, with marriage and feast- ing. The ordinary sorrows of life are fully represented, and to these may be added frequent complaints against the harshness of officials, one speaker going so far as to wish he were a tree without consciousness, without home, and without family. The old-time theme of " eat, drink, and be merry " is brought out as follows :— " You have coats and robes^ But you do not trail them; You have chariots and horses^ But you do not ride in them. THE ODES 17 By and by you will die^ And another will enjoy thenu '^ You have courtyards and halls ^ But they are not sprinkled and swept; You have hells and drums^ But they are not struck. By and by you will die^ And another will possess them, " You have wine and food; Why not play daily on your lute^ That you may enjoy yourself now And lengthen your days t By and by you will die^ And another will take your place J* The Odes are especially valuable for the insight they 1 give us into the manners, and customs, and beliefs of I the Chinese before the age of Confucius. How far back/ they extend it is quite impossible to say. An eclipse of the sun, "an event of evil omen," is mentioned in one of the Odes as a recent occurrence on a certain day which works out as the 29th August, B.c. 775 ; and this eclipse has been verified for that date. The following lines are from Legge's rendering of this Ode : — "" The sun and moon announce evily Not keeping to their proper paths. All through the kingdom there is no proper government y Because the good are not employed. For the moon to be eclipsed Is but an ordinary matter. Now that the sun has been eclipsed^ How bad it is r The rainbow was regarded, not as a portent of evil, but as an improper combination of the dual forces of nature, — 1 8 CHINESE LITERATURE " There is a rainbow in the easfy And no one dares point at it^ — and is applied figuratively to women who form improper connections. The petition of women generally seems to have been very much what it is at the present day. In an Ode which describes the completion of a palace for one of the ancient princes, we are conducted through the rooms, — " Here will he live, here will he sity Here will he laughy here will he talk^ — until we come to the bedchamber, where he will awake, and call upon the chief diviner to interpret his dream of bears and serpents. The interpretation (Legge) is as follows : — " Sons shall be bom to him : — They will be put to sleep on couches; They will be clothed in robes; They will have sceptres to play with; Their cry will be loud. They will be resplendent with red knee-coverSy The future princes of the land. " Daughters shall be bom to him : — They will be put to sleep on the ground; They will be clothed with wrappers; They will have tiles to play with. It will be theirs neither to do wrong nor to do good. Only about the spirits and the food will they have to thinky And to cause no sorrow to their parents^^ The distinction thus drawn is severe enough, and it is quite unnecessary to make a comparison, as some writers on China have done, between the tile and the sceptro, as though the former were but a dirty potsherd, good e.nough for a girl. A tile was used in the early THE ODES 19 ages as a weight for the spindle, and is here used merely to indicate the direction which a girl's activities should take. Women are further roughly handled in an Ode which f traces the prevailing misgovernment to their interference | in affairs of State and in matters which do not lie within I their province : — "A clever man builds a ciiy^ A clever woman lays one low; With all her qualifications^ that clever woman Is but an ill-omened bird. A woman with a long tongue Is a flight of steps leading to calamity; For disorder does not come from heaven^ But is brought about by women. Among those who cannot be trained or taughtj Are women and eunuchs^^ \ About seventy kinds of plants are mentioned in the ' Odes, including the bamboo, barley, beans, convolvulus, dodder, dolichos, hemp, indigo, liquorice, melon, millet, peony, pepper, plantain, scallions, sorrel, sowthistle, tribulus, and wheat; about thirty kinds of trees, in- cludmg the cedar, cherry, chestnut, date, hazel, medlar, mulberry, oak, peach, pear, plum, and willow ; about thirty kinds of animals, including the antelope, badger, bear, boar, elephant, fox, leopard, monkey, rat, rhino- ceros, tiger, and wolf; about thirty kinds of birds, including the crane, eagle, egret, magpie, oriole, swallow, and wagtail; about ten kinds of fishes, including the barbel, bream, carp, and tench ; and about twenty kinds of insects, including the ant, cicada, glow-worm, locust, spider, and wasp. Among the musical instruments of the Odes are found the flute, the drum, the bell, the lute, and the Pandaean / 20 CHINESE LITERATURE pipes; among the metals are gold and iron, with an indirect allusion to silver and copper; and among the arms and munitions of war are bows and arrows, spears, swords, halberds, armour, grappling-hooks, towers on wheels for use against besieged cities, and gags for soldiers' mouths, to prevent them talking in the ranks on the occasion of night attacks. {The idea of a Supreme Being is brought out very fully n the Odes — " Great is God^ Ruling in majesty^ Also, " How mighty is God, The Ruler of mankind! Haw terrible is His majesty /" He is apparently in the form of man, for in one place we read of His footprint. He hates the oppression of great States, although in another passage we read — " Behold Almighty God; Who is there whom He hates ? *' He comforts the afflicted. He is free from error. His "Way" is hard to follow. He is offended by sin. He can be appeased by sacrifice : — " We fill the sacrificial vessels with offerings, Both the vessels of wood, and those of earthenware. Then when the fragrance is borne on high, God smells the savour and is pleased,^* One more quotation, which, in deference to space limits, must be the last, exhibits the husbandman of early China in a very pleasing light : — " The clouds form in dense masses, And the rainfalls softly down. Oh, may it first water the public lands. And then come to our private fields i BOOK OF CHANGES 2i Here sIuUl some com he left standings Here some sheaves unbound; Here some handfuls shall be dropped^ And there some neglected ears j These are for the benefit of the widow.^ The next of the pre-Confucian works, and possibly the oldest of all, is the famous / Ching^ or Book of Changes. It is ascribed to WfeN Wang, the virtual founder of the Chou dynasty, whose son, Wu Wang, became the first sovereign of a long line, extending from B.C. 1122 fo B.C. 249. It contains a fanciful system of philosophy, deduced originally from Eight Diagrams consisting of triplet combinations or arrangements of a line and a divided line, either one or other of which is necessarily repeated twice, and in two cases three times, in the same combination. Thus there may be three lines j or three divided lines = =, a divided line above or below two lines , a divided line between two lines — — r and so on, eight in all. These so-called diagrams are said to have been invented two thousand years and more before Christ by the monarch Fu Hsi, who copied them from the back of a tortoise. He subsequently increased the above simple combinations to sixty-four double ones, on the permutations of which are based the philosophical speculations of the Book of Changes. Each diagram represents some power in nature, either active or passive, such as fire, water, thunder, earth, and so on. The text consists of sixty-four short essays, enig-| matically and symbolically expressed, on important; themes, mostly of a moral, social, and political character, and based upon the same number of lineal figures, each made up of six lines, some of which are whole and the others divided. The text is followed by commentaries^ / 22 CHINESE LITERATURE called the Ten Wings, probably of a later date and commonly ascribed to Confucius, who declared that were a hundred years added to his life he would devote fifty of them to a study of the / Ching. The following is a specimen (Legge s translation) : — " Text. This suggests the idea of one tread- ing on the tail of a tiger, which does not bite him. There will be progress and success. " I. The first line, undivided, shows its subject tread- ing his accustomed path. If he go forward, there will be no error. *' 2. The second line, undivided, shows its subject tread- ing the path that is level and easy; — a quiet and solitary man, to whom, if he be firm and correct, there will be good fortune. " 3. The third line, divided, shows a one-eyed man who thinks he can see ; a lame man who thinks he can walk well ; one w-ho treads on the tail of a tiger and is bitten. All this indicates ill-fortune. We have a mere bravo acting the part of a great ruler. " 4. The fourth line, undivided, shows its subject tread- ing on the tail of a tiger. He becomes full of apprehen- sive caution, and in the end there will be good fortune. " 5. The fifth line, undivided, shows the resolute tread of its subject. Though he be firm and correct, there will be peril. "6. The sixth line, undivided, tells us to look at the whole course that is trodden, and examine the presage which that gives. If it be complete and without failure, there will be great good fortune. " Wing, — In this hexagram we have the symbol of weakness treading on that of strength. BOOK OF RITES 23 • " The lower trigram indicates pleasure and satisfaction, and responds to the upper indicating strength. Hence it is said, * He {reads on the tail of a tiger, which does not bite him ; there will be progress and success.' " The fifth line is strong, in the centre, and in its correct place. Its subject occupies the God-given position, and falls into no distress or failure;— his action will be brilliant." As may be readily inferred from the above extract, no one really. knows what is meaiit by the apparent gibberish of the Book of Changes. This is freely ad- mitted by all learned Chinese, who nevertheless hold tenaciously to the belief that important lessons could be derived from its pages if we only had the wit to under- stand them. Foreigners have held various theories on the subject. Dr. Legge declared that he had found the key, with the result already shown. The late Terrien de la Couperie took a bolder flight, unaccompanied by any native commentator, and discovered in this cher- ished volume a vocabulary of the, language of the Bdk tribes. A third writer regards it as a calendar of the lunar year, and so forth. The Li CAt, or Book of Rites, seems to have been a | compilation by two cousins, known as the Elder and the Younger Tat, who flourished in the 2nd and ist centuries B.c. From existing documents, said to have emanated from Confucius and his disciples, the Elder Tai prepared a work in 85 sections on what may be roughly called social rites. The Younger Tai reduced these to 46 sections. Later scholars, such as Ma Jung and Chdng Hsuan, left their mark upon the work, and it was not until near the close of the 2nd century A.D» 3 24 CHINESE LITERATURE that finality in this direction was achieved. It then became known as a Ckt = Record, not as a Ching = Text, the latter term being reserved by the orthodox solely for such books as have reached us direct from the hands of Confucius. The following is an extract (Legge's translation) : — Confucius said : " Formerly, along with Lao Tan, I was assisting at a burial in the village of Hsiang, and when we had got to the path the sun was eclipsed. Lao Tan said to me, 'Chiu, let the bier be stopped on the left of the road ; and then let us wail and wait till the eclipse pass away. When it is light again we will proceed.' He said that this was the rule. When we had returned and completed the burial, I said to him, ' In the progress of a bier there should be no re- turning. When there is an eclipse of the sun, we do not know whether it will pass away quickly or not; would it not have been better to go on ? ' Lao Tan said, 'When the prince of a state is going to the court of the Son of Heaven, he travels while he can see the sun. At sundown he halts and presents his offerings (to the spirit of the way). When a great officer is on a mission, he travels while he can see the sun, and at sundown he halts. Now a bier does not set forth in the early morning, nor does it rest anywhere at night ; but those who travel by starlight are only criminals and those who are hastening to the funeral rites of a parent.' " Other specimens will be found in Chapters iii. and iv. Until the time of the Ming dynasty, A.D. 1368, an- other and a much older work, known as the Chou Liy .or Rites of the Chou dynasty, and dealing more with THE SPRING AND AUTUMN 25 constitutional matters, was always coupled with the Li Chtf and formed one of the then recognised Six Classics. There is still a third work of the same class, and also of considerable antiquity, called the I Li. Its contents treat mostly of the ceremonial observances of everyday life. We now come to the last of the Five Classics as at present constituted, the CKunjCftiuy or Spring and Autumn Annals. This is a chronological record of the chief events in the State of Lu between the years B.C. 722-484, and is generally regarded as the work of Confucius, whose native State was Lu. The entries are of the briefest, and comprise notices of incursions, victories, defeats, deaths, murders, treaties, and natural phenomena. The following are a few illustrative extracts : — " In the 7th year of Duke Chao, in spring, the Northern Yen State made peace with the Ch*i State. " In the 3rd month the Duke visited the Ch'u State. '^ In summer, on the chia shin day of the 4th month (March nth, B.C. 594), the sun was eclipsed. " In the 7th year of Duke Chuang (B.C. 685), in summer, in the 4th moon, at midnight, there was a shower of stars like rain." The Spring and Autumn owes its name to the old custom of prefixing to each entry the year, month, day, and season when the event recorded took place ; spring, as a commentator explains, including summer, and autumn winter. It was the work which Confucius singled out as that one by which men would know and commend him, and Mencius considered it quite as im- portant an achievement as the draining of the empire by 26 CHINESE LITERATURE the Great Yu. The latter said, "Confucius completed the Spring and Autumn, and rebellious ministers and bad sons were struck with terror." Consequently, just as in the case of the Odes, native wits set to work to read into the bald text all manner of hidden meanings, each entry being supposed to contain approval or con- demnation, their efforts resulting in what is now known as the praise-and-blame theory. The critics of the Han dynasty even went so far as to declare the very title elliptical for "praise life-giving like spring, and blame life-withering like autumn." Such is the CItun Cliiu ; and if that were all, it is difficult to say how the boast of Confucius could ever have been fulfilled. But it is not all ; there is a saving clause. For bound up, so to speak, with the Spring and Autumn, and forming as it were an integral part of the work, is a commentary known as the Tso Chuan or Tso's Commentary. Of the writer himself, who has been canonised as the Father of Prose, and to Avhose pen has also been attributed the Kuo Yii or Episodes of the States, next to nothing is known, except that he was a disciple of Confucius ; but his glowing narrative remains, and is likely to continue to remain, one of the most precious heirlooms of the Chinese people. What Tso did was this. He took the dry bones of these annals and clothed them with life and reality by adding a more or less complete setting to each of the events recorded. He describes the loves and hates of the heroes, their battles, their treaties, their feastings, and their deaths, in a style which is always effective, and often approaches to grandeur. Circumstances of apparently the most trivial character are expanded into THE TSO CHUAN 27 interesting episodes, and every now and again some quaint conceit or scrap of proverbial literature is thrown in to give a passing flavour of its own. Under the 21st year of Duke Hsi, the Spring and Autumn has the following exiguous entry : — " In summer there was great drought." To this the Tso Chuan adds — " In consequence of the drought the Duke wished to burn a witch. One of his officers, however, said to him, *That will not affect the drought. Rather repair your city walls and ramparts ; eat less, and curtail your ex- penditure ; practise strict economy, and urge the people to help one another. That is the essential ; what have witches to do in the matter ? If God wishes her to be slain, it would have been better not to allow her to be . born. If she can cause a drought, burning her will only make things worse.' The Duke took this advice, and during that year, although there was famine, it was not very severe." Under the 12th year of Duke Hslian the Spring and Autumn says — " In spring the ruler of the Ch*u State besieged the capital of the Ch^ng State." Thereupon the Tso Chuan adds a long account of the whole business, from which the following typical para- graph is extracted : — '* In the rout which followed, a war-chariot of the Chin State stuck in a deep rut and could not get on. There- upon a man of the Ch*u State advised the charioteer to take out the stand for arms. This eased it a little, but again the horses turned round. The man then advised that the flagstaff should be taken out and used as a lever, and at last the chariot was extricated. ' Ah,' said the I 28 CHINESE LITERATURE charioteer to the man of Ch*u, 'we don't know so much about running away as the people of your worthy State.' " The Tso Chuan contains several interesting passages on music, which was regarded by Confucius as an im- portant factor in the art of government, recalling the well-known views of Plato in Book III. of his Republic. Apropos of disease, we read that "the ancient rulers regulated all things by music." Also that " the superior man will not listen to lascivious or seductive airs ; " " he addresses himself to his lute in order to regulate his conduct, and not to delight his heart." When the rabid old anti-foreign tutor of the late Emperor Tung Chih was denouncing the barbarians, and expressing a kindly desire to " sleep on their skins," he was quoting the phraseology of the Tso Chuan. One hero, on going into battle, told, his friends that he should only hear the drum beating the signal to advance, for he would take good care not to hear the gong sound- ing the retreat. Another made each of his men carry into battle a long rope, seeing that the enemy all wore their hair short. In a third case, where some men in possession of boats were trying to prevent others from scrambling in, we are told that the fingers of the assail- ants were chopped off in such large numbers that they could be picked up in double handfuls. Many maxims, practical and unpractical, are to be found scattered over the Tso Chuan^ such as, " One day's leniency to an enemy entails trouble for many genera- tions ; " ** Propriety forbids that a man should profit himself at the expense of another ; " " The receiver is as bad as the thief;" ''It is better to attack than to be attacked." KU-LIANG AND KUNG-YANG 29 When the French fleet returned to Shanghai in 1885, after being repulsed in a shore attack at Tamsui, a local wit at once adapted a verse of doggerel found in the Tso Chuan : — " See goggle-eyes and greedy-guts Has left his shield among the ruts ; Back from thefieldy back from the field H^s brought his beard^ but not his shield; " and for days every Chinaman was muttering the refrain — " YU saiy yU sai CKi chiafu laiP There are two other commentaries on the Spring and Autumn, similar, but generally regarded as inferior, to the Tso Chuan. They are by Ku-liang and KUNG- YANG, both of the fifth century B.C. The following are specimens (Legge's translation, omitting unimportant details) : — Text, — " In spring, in the king's first month, the first day of the moon, there fell stones in Sung — five of them. In the same month, six fish-hawks flew backwards, past the capital of Sung. The commentary of Ku-liang says, "Why does the text first say "there fell," and then "stones"? There was the fall- ing, and then the stones. In "six fish -hawks flying backwards past the capital of Sung," the number is put first, indicating that the birds were collected together. The lan- guage has respect to the seeing of the eyes. The Master said, " Stones are The commentary of Kung- yang says, " How is it that the text first says "there fell," and then " stones " ? " There fell stones " is a record of what was heard. There was heard a noise of something fall- ing. On looking at what had fallen, it was seen to be stones. On examination it was found there were five of them. Why does the text say "six,* and then " fish-hawks " ? 30 CHINESE LITERATURE things without any intelligence, and fish -hawks creatures that have a little intelligence. The stones, having no intelligence, are mentioned along with the day when they fell, and the fish- hawks, having a little intelli- gence, are mentioned along with the month when they appeared. The superior man (Confucius) even in regard to such things and creatures records nothing rashly. His expressions about stones and fish-hawks being thus exact, how much more will they be so about men 1 " " Six fish - hawks backwards flew" is a record of what was seen. When they looked at the objects, there were six. When they examined them, they were fish - hawks. When they exa- mined them leisurely, ihey were flying backwards. Sometimes these commentaries are seriously at vari- ance with that of Tso. For instance, the text says that in B.C. 689 the ruler of the Chi State "made a great end of his State." Tso's commentary explains the words to mean that for various urgent reasons the ruler abdi- cated. Kung-yang, however, takes quite a different view. He explains the passage in the sense that the State in question was utterly destroyed, the population being wiped out by the ruler of another State in revenge for the death in B.C. 893 of an ancestor, who was boiled to death at the feudal metropolis in consequence of slander by a contemporary ruler of the Chi State. It is important for candidates at the public examinations to be familiar with these discrepancies, as they are frequently called upon to "discuss " such points, always with the object of esta- blishing the orthodox and accepted interpretations. The following episode is from Kung-yang's commen- tary, and is quite different from the story told by Tso in reference to the same passage : — KUNG-YANG CHUAN 31 TexL — " In summer, in the 5th month, the Sung State made peace with the Ch*u State. ** In B.C. 587 King Chuang of CKu was besieging the capital of Sung. He had only rations for seven days, and if these were exhausted before he could take the city, he meant to withdraw. He therefore sent his general to climb the ramparts and spy out the condition of the besieged. It chanced that at the same time an officer of the Sung army came forth upon the ramparts, and the two met. 'How is your State getting on?' inquired the general. 'Oh, badly,' replied the officer. 'We are reduced to exchanging children for food, and their bones are chopped up for fuel.' 'That is bad indeed,' said the general ; ' I had heard, however, that the besieged, while feeding their horses with bits in their mouths, kept some fat ones for exhibition to strangers. What a spirit is yours ! ' To this the officer replied, ' I too have heard that the superior man, seeing another's misfortune, is filled with pity, while the ignoble man is filled with joy. And in you I recognise the superior man ; so I have told you our story.' ' Be of good cheer,' said the general. 'We too have only seven days' rations, and if we do not conquer you in that time, we shall withdraw.' He then bowed, and retired to report to his master. The latter said, 'We must now capture the city before we withdraw.' ' Not so,' replied the general ; ' I told the officer we had only rations for seven days.' King Chuang was greatly enraged at this ; but the general said, ' If a small State like Sung has officers who speak the truth, should not the State of ClVu have such men also ?' The king still wished to remain, but the general threatened to leave him, and thus peace was brought about between the two States." CHAPTER III THE FOUR BOOKS— MENCIUS No Chinaman thinks of entering upon a study of the Five Classics until he has mastered and committed to memory a shorter and simpler course known as The Four Books. The first of these, as generally arranged for students, is the Lun Yii or Analects, a work in twenty short chapters or books, retailing the views of Confucius on a variety of subjects, and expressed so far as possible in the very words of the Master. It tells us nearly all we really know about the Sage, and may possibly have been put together within a hundred years of his death. F;'om its pages we seem to gather some idea, a mere silhouette perhaps, of the great moralist whose mission on earth was to teach duty towards one's neighbour to his fellow- men, and who formulated the Golden Rule : " What you would not others should do unto you, do not unto them !" It has been urged by many, who should know better, that the negative form of this maxim is unfit to rank with the positive form as given to us by Christ. But of course the two are logically identical, as may be shown by the simple insertion of the word " abstain ; " that is, you would not that others should abstain from certain actions in regard to yourself, which practically conveys the positive injunction. 3a k » THE LUN YO 33 When a disciple asked Confucius to explain charity of heart, he replied simply, " Love one another." When, however, he was asked concerning the principle that good should be returned for evil, as already enunciated by Lao Tzu (see ch. iv.), he replied, " What then will you return for good ? No : return good for good ; for evil, justice." He was never tired of emphasising the beauty and necessity of truth : " A man without truthfulness ! I know not how that can be." *' Let loyalty and truth be paramount with you." "In mourning, it is better to be sincere than punc- tilious." "Man is born to be upright. If he be not so, and yet live, he is lucky to have escaped." " Riches and honours are what men desire ; yet except in accordance with right these may not be enjoyed." Confucius undoubtedly believed in a Power, unseen and eternal, whom he vaguely addressed as Heaven : "He who has offended against Heaven has none to whom he can pray." " I do not murmur against Heaven," and so on. His greatest commentator,- however, Chu Hsi, has explained that by "Heaven" is meant " Abstract Right," and that interpretation is accepted by Confucianists at the present day. At the same time, Confucius strongly objected to discuss the supernatural, and suggested that our duties are towards the living rather than towards the dead. He laid the greatest stress upon filial piety, and taught that man is absolutely pure at birth, and afterwards becomes depraved only because of his environment. Chapter x, of the Lun YU gives some singular details of the every-day life and habits of the Sage, calculated 34 CHINESE LITERATURE to provoke a smile among those with whom reverence for Confucius has not been a first principle from the cradle upwards, but received with loving gravity by the Chinese people at large. The following are extracts (Legge's translation) from this famous chapter : — *' Confucius, in his village, looked simple and sincere, and as if he were not able to speak. When he was in the prince's ancestral temple or in the court, he spoke minutely on every point, but cautiously. " When he entered the palace gate, he seemed to bend his body, as if it were not sufficient to admit him. "He ascended the dats, holding up his robe with both his hands and his body bent ; holding in his breath also, as if he dared not breathe. " When he was carrying the sceptre of his prince, he seemed to bend his body as if he were not able to bear its weight. *' He did not use a deep purple or a puce colour in the ornaments of his dress. Even in his undress he did not wear anything of a red or reddish colour. '* He required his sleeping dress to be half as long again as his body. ** He did not eat rice which had been injured by heat or damp and turned sour, nor fish or flesh which was gone. He did not eat what was discoloured, or what was of a bad flavour, nor anything which was not in season. He did not eat meat which was not cut pro- perly, nor what was served without its proper sauce. " He was never without ginger when he ate. He did not eat much. "When eating, he did not converse. When in bed, he did not speak. "Although his food might be coarse rice and vegetable MENCIUS 35 soup, he would offer a little of it in sacrifice with a grave respectful air. "If his mat was not straight, he did not sit on it. "The stable being burned down when he was at Court, on his return he said, ' Has any man been hurt ? ' He did not ask about the horses. "When a friend sent him a present, though it might be a carriage and horses, he did not bow. The only pre- sent for which he bowed was that of the flesh of sacrifice. " In bed, he did not lie like a corpse. At home, he did not put on any formal deportment. " When he saw any one in a mourning dress, though it might be an acquaintance, he would change coun- tenance ; when he saw any one wearing the cap of full dress, or a blind person, though he might be in his undress, he would salute them in a ceremonious manner. " When he was at an entertainment where there was an abundance of provisions set before him, he would change countenance and rise up. On a sudden clap of thunder or a violent wind, he would change countenance." Next in educational order follows the work briefly known as Mencius. This consists of seven books re- cording the sayings and doings of a man to whose genius and devotion may be traced the final triumph of Confucianism. Born in B.C. 372, a little over a hundred years after the death of the Master, Mencius was brought up under the care of his widowed mother, whose name is a household word even at the present day. As a child he lived with her at first near a cemetery, the result being that he began to reproduce in play the solemn scenes which were constantly enacted before his eyes. His mother accordingly removed to another house near 36 CHINESE LITERATURE the market-place, and before long the little boy forgot all about funerals and played at buying and selling goods. Once more his mother disapproved, and once more she changed her dwelling ; this time to a house near a college, where he soon began to imitate the ceremonial observances in which the students were in- structed, to the great joy and satisfaction of his mother. Later on he studied under K*ung Chi, the grandson of Confucius ; and after having attained to a perfect appre- hension of the roms or Way of Confucius, became, at the age of about forty-five. Minister under Prince Hsiian of the Ch'i State. But the latter, would not carry out his principles, and Mencius threw up his post. Thence he wandered away to several States, advising their rulers to the best of his ability, but making no very prolonged stay. He then visited Prince Hui of the Liang State, and abode there until the monarch's death in B.C. 319. After that event he returned to the State of Ch*i and resumed his old position. In B.C. 311 he once more felt himself constrained to resign office, and retired finally into private life, occupying himself during the remainder of his days in teaching and in preparing the philosophical record which now passes under his name. He lived at a time when the feudal princes were squabbling over the rival systems of federation and imperialism, and he vainly tried to put into practice at an epoch of blood and iron the gentle virtues of the Golden Age. His criterion was that of Confucius, but his teachings were on a lower plane, dealing rather with man's well-being from the point of view of political economy. He was therefore justly named by Chao Ch'i the Second Holy One or Prophet, a title under which he is still known. He was an uncompromising defender of the doctrines MENCIUS 37 of Confucius, and he is considered to have effectually " snuffed out " the heterodox schools of Yang Chu and Mo Ti. The following is a specimen of the logomachy of the day, in which Mencius is supposed to have excelled. The subject is a favourite one — human nature : — " Kao Tzu said, ' Human nature may be compared with a block of wood ; duty towards one's neighbour, with a wooden bowl. To develop charity and duty towards one's neighbour out of human nature is like making a bowl out of a block of wood.' "To this Mencius replied, ' Can you, without interfering with the natural constitution of the wood, make out of it a bowl ? Surely you must do violence to that con- stitution in the process of making your bowl. And by parity of reasoning you would do violence to human nature in the process of developing charity and duty towards one's neighbour. From which it follows that all men would come to regard these rather as evils than otherwise.' " Kao Tzii said, ' Human nature is like rushing water, which flows east or west according as an outlet is made for it. For human nature makes indifferently for good or for evil, precisely as water makes indifferently for the east or for the west.' " Mencius replied, ' Water will indeed flow indifferently towards the east or west ; but will it flow indifferently up or down ? It will not ; and the tendency of human nature towards good is like the tendency of water to flow down. Every man has this bias towards good, just as all water flows naturally downwards. By splashing water, you may indeed cause it to fly/over your head ; and by turning its course you may keep it for use on 38 CHINESE LITERATURE the hillside ; but you would hardly speak of such results as the nature of water. They are the results, of course, of a force majeure. And so it is when the nature of man is diverted towards evil/ " Kao Tzu said, 'That which comes with life is natvire.' " Mencius replied, ' Do you mean that there is such a thing as nature in the abstract, just as there is whiteness in the abstract ? ' '* * I do,' answered Kao Tzii. "'Just, for instance,' continued Mencius, 'as the white- ness of a feather is the same as the whiteness of snow, or the whiteness of snow as the whiteness of jade ? ' " ' I do,' answered Kao Tzu again. " ' In that case,' retorted Mencius, ' the nature of a dog is the same as that of an ox, and the nature of an ox the same as that of a man.' " Kao Tzu said, 'Eating and reproduction of the species are natural instincts. Charity is subjective and innate ; duty towards one's neighbour is objective and acquired. For instance, there is a man who is my senior, and I defer to him as such. Not because any abstract principle of seniority exists subjectively in me, but in thie same way that if I see an albino, I recognise him as a while man because he is so objectively to me. Consequently, I say that duty towards one's neighbour is objective or acquired.' " Mencius replied, ' The cases are not analogous. The whiteness of a white horse is undoubtedly the same as the whiteness of a white man ; but the seniority of a horse is not the same as the seniority of a man. Does our duty to our senior begin and end with the fact of his seniority ? Or does it not rather consist in the necessity of deferring to him as such ? ' MENCIUS 39 " Kao Tzu said, ' I love my own brother, but I do not love another man's brother. The distinction arises from within myself"; therefore I call it subjective or innate. But I defer to a stranger who is my senior, just as I defer to a senior among my own people. The distinc- tion comes to me from without ; therefore I call it objec- tive or acquired." *' Mencius retorted, * We enjoy food cooked by strangers just as much as food cooked by our own people. Yet extension of your principle lands us in the conclusion that our appreciation of cooked food is also objecu '^nd acquired.' » n The following is a well-known colloquy between Mencius and a sophist of the day who tried to entangle the former in his talk : — The sophist inquired, saying, " ' Is it a rule of social etiquette that when men and women pass things from one to another they shall not allow their hands to touch ? ' " 'That is the rule,' replied Mencius. "'Now suppose,' continued the sophist, 'that a man's sister-in-law were drowning, could he take hold of her hand and save her ?' "*Any one who did not do so,' said Mencius, 'would have the heart of a wolf. That men and women when passing things from one to another may not let their hands touch is a rule for general application. To save a drowning sister-in-law by taking hold of her hand is altogether an exceptional case.' " The works of Mencius abound, like the Confucian Analects, in sententious utterances. The following 4 40 CHINESE LITERATURE examples illustrate his general bias in politics: — "The people are of the highest importance ; the gods come second ; the sovereign is of lesser weight."' "Chieh and Chou lost the empire because they lost the people, which means that they lost the confidence of the people. The way to gain the people is to gain their confidence, and the way to do that is to provide them with what they like and not with what they loathe." This is how Mencius snuffed out the two heterodox philosophers mentioned above : — / " The systems of Yang Chu and Mo Ti fill the whole empire. If a man is not a disciple of the former, he is a disciple of the latter. But Yang Chu's egoism excludes the claim of a sovereign, while Mo Ti's universal altruism leaves out the claim of a father. And he who recognises the claim of neither sovereign nor father is a brute beast/' Yang Chu seems to have carried his egoism so far that even to benefit the whole world he would not have parted with a single hair from his body. " The men of old knew that with life they had come but for a while, and that with death they would shortly depart again. Therefore they followed the desires o their own hearts, and did not deny themselves pleasure to which they felt naturally inclined. Fame temptc them not ; but led by their instincts alone, they tO' such enjoyments as lay in their path, not seeking foi name beyond the grave. They were thus out of the reach of censure ; while as for precedence among men, or length or shortness of life, these gave them no concern whatever." I / / TA HSOEH and CHUNG YUNG 41 Mo Ti; on the other hand, showed that under the altruistic system all calamities which men bring upon one another would altogether disappear, and that the peace and happiness of the Golden Age would be renewed. In the Ta Hsiiehy or Great Learning, which forms Sect, xxxix. of the Book of Rites, and really mesCfJs learning for adults, we have a short politico-ethical treatise, the authorship of which is unknown, but is usually attributed partly to Confucius, and partly to Ts£ng Ts'an, one of the most famous of his disciples. In the former portion there occurs the following well- known climax : — "The men of old, in their desire to manifest great virtue throughout the empire, began with good govern-,e ment in the various States. To achieve this, it jj {^^ necessary first to order aright their own families, in turn was preceded by cultivation of their own jj^ jg and that again by rectification of the heart, fol^^^j. j^ ^pon sincerity of purpose which comes from exi when of knowledge, this last being derived from due im^ q£ ^j^^ tion of objective existences." \^i^ 2^nd r^^ to One more short treatise, known as the Chun^ nj.^. which forms Ch. xxviii. of the Book of Rites, bt ^^j / to the end of the Four Books. Its title has been. j. r lated in various ways.^ Julien rendered the ten* ^ I " L' Invariable Milieu," Legge by "The Doctrine of t ^ Mean." Its authorship is assigned to K*UNG Chi, grana * C^i^;;^ means "middle," and Yun^ means "course," the former being defined by the Chinese as "that which is without deflection or bias/' the Utter as " that which never varies in its direction." ) 42 CHINESE LITERATURE v.*' The \ come ^m V son of Confucius. He seems to have done little morel than enlarge upon certain general principles of hisl^^^^ grandfather in relation to the nature of man and right ^ . conduct upon earth. He seizes the occasion to pro- V*^ nounce an impassioned eulogium upon Confucius, concluding with the following words : — " Therefore his fame overflows the Middle Kingdom, ai^ reaches the barbarians of north and south. Wher- ever ships and waggons can go, or the strength of man penetrate ; wherever there is heaven above and earth below; wherever the sun and moon shed their light, or frosts and dews fall, — all who have blood and breath honour and love him. Wherefore it may be said that he is the peer of God." \ ^ ^ ni CHAPTER IV MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS Names of the authors who belong to this period, B.C. 600 to B.C. 200, and of the works on a variety of subjects attributed to them, would fill a long list. Many of the latter have disappeared, and others are gross forgeries, chiefly of the first and second centuries of our era, an epoch which, curiously enough, is remarkable for a similar wave of forgery on the other side of the world.- As to the authors, it will be seen later on that the Chinese even went so fai: as to create some of these for antiquity and then write up treatises to match. There was Sun TzO of the 6th century B.C. He is said to haVe written the Ping Fa, or Art of War, in thirteen sections, whereby hangs a strange tale. When he was discoursing one day with Prince Ho-lu of the Wu State, the latter said, " I have read your book and want to know if you could apply its principles to women." Sun Tzu replied in the affirmative, where- upon the Prince took 180 girls out of his harem and bade Sun Tzu deal with them as with troops. Accord- ingly he divided them into two companies, and at the head of each placed a favourite concubine of the Prince. But when the drums sounded for drill to begin, all the girls burst out laughing. Thereupon Sun Tzu, without a moment's delay, caused the two concubines in com- / 44 CHINESE LITERATURE mand to be beheaded. This at once restored order, and ultimately the corps was raised to a state of great efficiency. The following is an extract from the Art of War : — " If soldiers are not carefully chosen and well drilled to obey, their movements will be irregular. They will not act in concert. They will miss success for want of unanimity. Their retreat will be disorderly, one half fighting while the other is running away. They will not respond to the call of the gong and drum. One hundred such as these will not hold their own against ten well-drilled men. "If their arms are not good, the soldiers might as well have none. If the cuirass is not stout and close set, the breast might as well be bare. Bows that will not carry are no more use at long distances than swords and spears. Bad marksmen might as well have no arrows. Even good marksmen, unless able to make their arrows pierce, might as well shoot with headless shafts. These are the oversights of incompetent gene- rals. Five such soldiers are no match for one." It is notwithstanding very doubtful if we have any genuine remains of either Sun Tzu, or of Kuan Tzu, Wu Tzu, Wen Tzu, and several other early writers on war, political philosophy, and cognate subjects. The same remark applies equally to Chinese medical litera- ture, the bulk of which is enormous, some of it nomi- nally dating back to legendary times, but always failing to stand the application of the simplest test. The Erh Ya, or Nearing the Standard, is a work which has often been assigned to the 12th century B.C, It is a guide to the correct use of many miscel- T«AN KUNG 45 laneous termS; including names of animals, birds, plants, etc., to which are added numerous illustrations. It was first edited with commentary by Kuo Po, of whom we shall read later on, and some Chinese critics would have us believe that the illustrations we now possess were then already in existence. But the whole question is involved in mystery. The following wi\\ give an idea of the text : — "For metal we say lou (to chase); for wood k^o (to carve) ; for bone cXieA (to cut)," etc., etc. There are some interesting remains of a writer named Tan Kung, who flourished in the 4th and 3rd cen- turies 3.C., and whose work has been included in the Book of Rites. The three following extracts will give an idea of his scope : — I. "One day Yu-tzu and Tzii-yu saw a child weeping for the loss of its parents. Thereupon the former ob- served, ' I never could understand why mourners should necessarily jump about to show their grief, and would long ago have got rid of the custom. Now here you have an honest expression of feeling, and that is all there should ever be.' "*My friend,' replied Tzu-yu, 'the mourning cere- monial, with all its material accompaniments, is at once a check upon undue emotion and a guarantee against any lack of proper respect. Simply to give vent to the feelings is the way of barbarians. That is not our way. " ' Consider. A man who is pleased will show it in his face. He will sing. He will get excited. He will dance. So, too, a man who is vexed will look sad. He will sigh. He will beat his breast. He will jump about. The due 46 CHINESE LITERATURE regulation of these emotions is the function of a set ceremonial. "* Further. A man dies and becomes an object of loathing. A dead body is shunned. Therefore, a shroud is prepared, and other paraphernalia of burial, in order that the survivors may cease to loathe. At death there is a sacrifice of wine and meat; when the funeral cortige is about to start, there is another ; and after burial there is yet another. Yet no one ever saw the spirit of the departed come to taste of the food. " * These have been our customs from remote antiquity. They have not been discarded, because, in consequence, men no more shun the dead. What you may censure in those who perform the ceremonial is no blemish in the ceremonial itself.' " 2. "When Tzu-chii died, his wife and secretary took counsel together as to who should be interred with him. All was settled before the arrival of his brother, Tzii- h^ng; and then they informed him, saying, 'The deceased requires some one to attend upon him in the nether world. We must ask you to go down with his body into the grave.' ' Burial of the living with the dead,' replied Tzii-h^ng, 'is not in accordance with established rites. Still, as you say some one is wanted to attend upon the deceased, who better fitted than his wife and secretary ? If this contingency can be avoided altogether, I am willing; if not, then the duty will devolve upon you two.' From that time forth the custom fell into desuetude." 3. "When Confucius was crossing the T'ai mountain^ he overheard a woman weeping and wailing beside a grave. He thereupon sent one of his disciples to ask what was the matter; and the latter addressed the HSUN TZO 47 woman, saying, 'Some great sorrow must have come upon you that you give way to grief hke this ?' * Indeed it is so,' replied she. ' My father-in-law was killed here by a tiger ; after that, my husband ; and now my son has perished by the same death.' ' But why, then,' in- quired Confucius, ' do you not go away ?' *The govern- ment is not harsh,' answered the woman. ' There ! ' cried the Master, turning to his disciples; 'remember that. Bad government is worse than a tiger.' " The philosopher HsOn TzO of the 3rd century B.C. is widely known for his heterodox views on the nature of man, being directly opposed to the Confucian doctrine so warmly advocated by Mencius. The following pas- sage, which hardly carries conviction, contains the gist of his argument : — "By nature, man is evil. If a man is good, that is an artificial result. For his condition being what it is, he is influenced first of all by a desire for gain. Hence he strives to get all he can without consideration for his neighbour. Secondly, he is liable to envy and hate. Hence he seeks the ruin of others, and loyalty and truth are set aside. Thirdly, he is a slave to his animal passions. Hence he commits excesses, and wanders from the path of duty and right. "Thus, conformity with man's natural disposition leads to all kinds of violence, disorder, and ultimate barbarism. Only under the restraint of law and of lofty moral influences does man eventually become fit to be a mem- ber of regularly organised society. "From these premisses it seems quite clear that by nature man is evil ; and that if a man is good, that is an artificial result." 48 CHINESE LITERATURE The Hsiao Ching^ or Classic of Filial Piety, is assigned partly to Confucius and partly to TsfeNG Ts*an, though it more probably belongs to a very much later date. Considering that filial piety is admittedly the keystone of Chinese civilisation, it is disappointing to find nothing more on the subject than a poor pamphlet of common- place and ill-strung sentences, which gives the impression of having been written to fill a void. One short ex- tract will suffice: — *' The Master said, ' There are three thousand offences against which the five punishments are directed, and there is not one of them greater than being unfilial. "'When constraint is put upon a ruler, that is the disowning of his superiority ; when the authority of the sages is disallowed, that is the disowning of all law; when filial piety is put aside, that is the disowning of the principle of affection. These three things pave the way to anarchy.' " The Chia Yii, or Family Sayings of Confucius, is a work with a fascinating title, which has been ascribed by some to the immediate disciples of Confucius, but which, as it now exists, is usually thought by native scholars to have been composed by Wang Su, a learned official who died A.D. 256, There appears to have been an older work under this same title, but how far the later work is indebted to it, or based upon it, seems likely to remain unknown. • Another discredited work is the Lii Shih CKun Cliiu^ or Spring and Autumn of Lu Pu-WEI, who died B.C. 235 and was the putative sire of the First Emperor (see ch. vii.). It contains a great deal about the early history of China, some of which is no doubt based upon fact. Lastly, among spurious books may be mentioned the MU riEN TZO CHUAN 49 Mu T^ien TzU Chuatiy an account of a mythical journey by a sovereign of the Chou dynasty, supposed to have been taken about 1000 B.C. The sovereign is unfortu- nately spoken of by his posthumous title, and the work was evidently written up in the 3rd century A.D, to suit a statement found in Lieh Tzti (see chapter vi.) to the effect that the ruler in question did make some such journey to the West. CHAPTER V POETRY— INSCRIPTIONS The poetry which is representative of the period between the death of Confucius and the 2nd century B.C. is a thing apart. There is nothing like it in the whole range of Chinese literature. It illumines many a native pro- nouncement on the poetic art, the drift of which would otherwise remain obscure. For poetry has been defined by the Chinese as "emotion expressed in words/' a defini- tion perhaps not more inadequate than Wordsworth's " impassioned expression." " Poetry," they say, " knows no law." And again, " The men of old reckoned it the highest excellence in poetry that the meaning should lie beyond the words, and that the reader should have to think it out." Of these three canons only the last can be said to have survived to the present day. But in the fourth century B.C., Ch*u Yiian and his school indulged in wild irregular metres which consorted well with their wild irregular thoughts. Their poetry was prose run mad. It was allusive and allegorical to a high degree, and now, but for the commentary, much of it would be quite unintelligible. Ch'u Yuan is the type of a loyal Minister. He en- joyed the full confidence of his Prince until at length the jealousies and intrigues of rivals sapped his position in the State. Then it was that he composed the Li Sao, 50 LI SAO SI or Falling into Trouble, the first section of which ex- tends to nearly 400 lines. Beginning from the birth of the writer, it describes his* cultivation of virtue and his earnest endeavour to translate precept into practice. Discouraged by failure, he visits the grave of the Em- peror Shun (chapter ii.), and gives himself up to prayer, until at length a phoenix-car and dragons appear, and carry him in search of his ideal away beyond the domain of mortality, — the chariot of the Sun moving slowly to light him longer on the way, the Moon leading and the Winds bringing up the rear, — up to the very palace of God. Unable to gain admission here, he seeks out a famous magician, who counsels him to stand firm and to continue his search; whereupon, surrounded by gorgeous clouds and dazzling rainbows, and amid the music of tinkling ornaments attached to his car, he starts from the Milky Way, and passing the Western Pole, reaches the sources oj the Yellow River. Before long he is once again in sight of his native land, but without having discovered the object of his search. Overwhelmed by further disappointments, and sinking still more deeply into disfavour, so that he cared no longer to live, he went forth to the banks of the Mi-lo river. There he met a fisherman who accosted him, saying, "Are you not his Excellency the Minister? What has brought you to this pass?" ''The world," replied Ch*u Yiian, "is foul, and I alone am clean. There they are all drunk, while I alone am sober. So I am dismissed." " Ah ! " said the fisherman, " the true sage does not quarrel with his environment, but adapts himself to it. If, as you say, the world is foul, why not leap into the tide and make it clean ? If all men are drunk, why not drink with them and teach them to avoid 52 CHINESE LITERATURE excess ? " After some further colloquy, the fisherman rowed away ; and Ch'ii Yiian, clasping a large stone in his arms, plunged into the river and was seen no more. This took place on the fifth of the fifth moon ; and ever afterwards the people of Ch*u commemorated the day by an annual festival, when offerings of rice in bamboo tubes were cast into the river as a sacrifice to the spirit of their great hero. Such is the origin of the modern Dragon-Boat Festival, which is supposed to be a search for the body of Ch'ii Yiian. A good specimen of his style will be found in the following short poem, entitled "The Genius of the Mountain." It is one of "nine songs" which, together with a number of other pieces in a similar strain, have been classed under the general heading, Li Sao^ as above. "Methinks there is a Genius of the hills, clad in wistaria, girdled with ivy, with smiling lips, of witching mien, riding on the red pard, wild cats galloping in the rear, reclining in a chariot, with banners of cassia, cloaked with the orchid, girt with azalea, culling the perfume of sweet flowers to leave behind a memory in the heart. But dark is the grove wherein I dwell. No light of day reaches it ever. The path thither is danger- ous and difficult to climb. Alone I stand on the hill-top, while the clouds float beneath my feet, and all around is wrapped in gloom. "Gently blows the east wind ; softly falls the rain. In my joy I become oblivious of home ; for who in my decline would honour me now ? " I pluck the larkspur on the hillside, amid the chaos of rock and tangled vine. I hate him who has made me an outcast, who has now no leisure to think of me. "I drink from the rocky spring. I shade myself SUNG YU 53 beneath the spreading pine. Even though he were to recall me to him, I could not fall to the level of the world. " Now booms the thunder through the drizzling rain. The gibbons howl around me all the long night. The gale rushes fitfully through the whispering trees. And I am thinking of my Prince, but in vain ; for I cannot lay my grief." Another leading poet of the day was Sung Yu, of whom we know little beyond the fact that he was nephew of CKii Ylian, and like his uncle both a statesman and a poet. The following extract exhibits him in a mood not far removed from the lamentations of the Li Sao : — ^ Among birds the phcmix^ among fishes the leviathan holds the chiefest place ; Cleaving the crimson clouds the phanix soars apace ^ With only the blue sky above ^ far into the realms of space; But the grandeur of heaven and earth is as naught to the hedge-sparrow race. And the leviathan rises in one ocean to go to rest in a second^ While the depth of a puddle by a humble minnow as the depth of the sea is reckoned. And just as with birds and with fishes^ so too it is with man; Here soars apheenix^ there swims a leviathan . . . Behold the philosopher^ full ofnentous thought^ with aflame that never grows dim. Dwelling complacently alone; say, what can the vulgar herd know of him ? * S4 CHINESE LITERATURE As has been stated above, the poems of this school are irregular in metre ; in fact, they are only approximately metrical. The poet never ends his line in deference to a prescribed number of feet, but lengthens or shortens to suit the exigency of his thought. Similarly, he may rhyme or he may not. The reader, however, is never conscious of any want of art, carried away as he is by flow of language and rapid succession of poetical imagery. Several other poets, such as Chia I and Tung-fang So, who cultivated this particular vein, but on a somewhat lower plane, belong to the second century B.C., thus over- lapping a period which must be regarded as heralding the birth of a new style rather than occupied with the passing of the old. It may here be mentioned that many short pieces of doubtful age and authorship — some few unquestionably old — have been rescued by Chinese scholars from various sources, and formed into convenient collections. Of such is a verse known as " Yao's Advice," Yao being the legendary monarch mentioned in chapter ii., who is associated with Shun in China's Golden Age : — " With trembling heart and cautious steps Walk daily in fear of God . • . Though you never trip over a mountain^ You may often trip over a clod.*^ There is also the husbandman's song, which enlarges upon the national happiness of those halcyon days : — " Worhj work ;— from the rising sun Till sunset comes and the day is done I plough the sod And harrow the clod^ And meat and drink both come to me^ iiO what care J for the powers that be ? " INSCRIPTIONS 55 It seems to have been customary in early days to attach inscriptions, poetical and otherwise, to all sorts of articles for daily use. On the bath-tub of Tang, founder of the Shang dynasty in B.C. 1766, there was said to have been written these words : — " If any one on any one day can make a new man of himself, let him do so every day." Similarly, an old metal mirror bore as its legend, " Man combs his hair every morning : why not his heart ? " And the following lines are said to be taken from an ancient wash-basin : — ** Ohy rather them sink in the world* s foul tide I would sink in the bottomless main; For he who sinks in the world*s foul tide In noisome depths shall for ever adide^ But he who sinks in the bottomless main May hope to float to the surface again J* In this class of verse, too, the metre is often irregular and the rhyme a mere jingle, according to the canons of the stricter prosody which came into existence later on. CHAPTER VI TAOISM— THE **TAO.Tfi.CHING" The reader is now asked to begin once more at the sixth century B.C. So far we have dealt almost exclusively with what may be called orthodox literature, that is to say, of or belonging to or based upon the Confucian Canon. It seemed advisable to get that well off our hands before entering upon another branch, scarcely indeed as im- portant, but much more difficult to handle. This branch consists of the literature of Taoism, or that which has gathered around what is known as the Tao or Way of Lao TzC, growing and flourishing alongside of, though in direct antagonism to, that which is founded upon the criteria and doctrines of Confucius. Unfortunately it is quite impossible to explain at the outset in what this Tao actually consists. According to Lao Tzu himself, " Those who know do not tell ; those who tell do not know." It is hoped, however, that by the time the end of this chapter is reached, some glimmering of the mean- ing of Tao may have reached the minds of those who have been patient enough to follow the argument. Lao Tzu was born, according to the weight of evidence, in the year B.C. 604. Omitting all reference to the super- natural phenomena which attended his birth and early years, it only remains to say that we really know next to nothing about him. There is a short biography of Lao S6 LAO TZO 57 TzG to be found in the history of SsG-ma Ch'ien, to be dealt with in Book II., chapter iii., but internal evidence points to embroidery laid on by other hands. Just as it was deemed necessary by pious enthusiasts to interpolate in the work of Josephus a passage referring to Christ, so it would appear that the original note by Ssu-ma Ch*ien has been carefully touched up to suit the requirements of an unauthenticated meeting between Lao Tzu and Confucius, which has been inserted very much hpropos de bottes ; the more so, as Confucius is made to visit Lao Tzu with a view to information on Rites, a subject which Lao Tzu held in very low esteem. This biography ends with the following extraordinary episode : — " Lao Tzu abode for a long time in Chou, but when he saw that the State showed signs of decay, he left. On reaching the frontier, the Warden, named Yin Hsi, said to him, * So you are going into retirement. I beg you to write a book for me.' Thereupon Lao Tzu wrote a book, in two parts, on Tao and T^,^ extending to over 5000 words. He then went away, and no one knows where he died." It is clear from SsQ-ma Ch*ien's account that he him- self had never seen the book, though a dwindling minority still believe that we possess that book in the well-known Tao-Ti-Ching. It must now be stated that throughout what are gene- rally believed to be the writings of Confucius the name of Lao Tzu is never once mentioned.* It is not men- tioned by Tso of the famous commentary, nor by the editors of the Confucian Analects, nor by Ts^ng Ts'an, ^ T8 is Uie exemplification of Taa ' The name Lao Tan occurs in four passages in the Book of Rites, but we are expressly told that by it is not meant the philosopher Lao Tzd. 58 CHINESE LITERATURE nor by Mencius. Chuang TzQ, who devoted all his energies to the exposition and enforcement of the teach- ing of Lao Tzu, never once drops even a hint that his Master had written a book. In his work will now be found an account of the meeting of Confucius and Lao Tzu, but it has long since been laughed out of court as a pious fraud by every competent Chinese critic. Chu Hsi, Sh^n Jo-shui, and many others, declare emphatically against the genuineness of the Tao-T^Chtng; and scant allusion would indeed have been made to it here, were it not for the attention paid to it by several more or less eminent foreign students of the language. It is interest- ing as a collection of many genuine utterances of Lao Tzu, sandwiched however between thick wads of padding from which little meaning can be extracted except by enthusiasts who curiously enough disagree absolutely among themselves, A few examples from the real Lao Tzu will now be given : — "The Way (Tao) which can be walked upon is not the eternal Way." " Follow diligently the Way in your own heart, but make no display of it to the world." " By many words wit is exhausted ; it is better to pre- serve a mean." "To the good I would be good. To the not-good I would also be good, in order to make them good." " Recompense injury with kindness." " Put yourself behind, and you shall be put in front." "Abandon wisdom and discard knowledge, and the people will be benefited an hundredfold." These last maxims are supposed to illustrate Lao Tzii's favourite doctrine of doing nothing, or, as it has b«nPi- termed, Inaction, a doctrine inseparably associated with TAO-T£-CHING 59 his name, and one which has ever exerted much fascina- tion over the more imaginative of his countrymen. It was openly enunciated as follows : — " Do nothing, and all things will be done." " I do nothing, and the people become good of their own accord." To turn to the padding, as rendered by the late Drs. Chalmers and Legge, we may take a paragraph which now passes as chapter vi. : — Chalmers : — "The Spirit (like perennial spring) of the valley never dies. This (Spirit) I call the abyss-mother. The passage of the abyssrmother I call the root of heaven and earth. Ceaselessly it seems to endure, and it is employed without effort." Legge : — " The valley spirit dies not^ aye the same; The female mystery thus do we name. Its gate ^ from which at first they issued forth^ Is called the root from which grew heaven and earth. Long and unbroken does its power remain^ Used gently y and without the touch ofpainJ* One more example from Chalmers' translation will perhaps seal the fate of this book with readers who claim at least a minimum of sense from an old-world classic. " Where water abides^ it is good for adaptability. In Us hearty it is good for depth. In giving^ it is good for benevolence. In speakings it is good for fidelity P That there was such a philosopher as Lao Tzu who lived about the time indicated, and whose sayings have come down to us first by tradition and later by written and printed record, cannot possibly be doubted. The great work of Chuang Tzu would be sufficient to establish 6o CHINESE LITERATURE this beyond cavil, while at the same time it forms a handy guide to a nearer appreciation of this elusive Tao. Chuang TzO was born in the fourth century B.C., and held a petty official post. *' He Avrote," says the historian Ssu-ma Ch*ien, "with a view to asperse the Confucian school and to glorify the mysteries of Lao Tzu. ... His teachings are like an overwhelming flood, which spreads at its own sweet will. Consequently, from rulers and ministers downwards, none could apply them to any definite use." Here we have the key to the triumph of the Tao of Confucius over the Tao of Lao Tzu. The latter was idealistic, the former a practical system for everyday use. And Chuang Tzu was unable to persuade the calculating Chinese nation that by doing nothing, all things would be done. But he bequeathed to posterity a work which, by reason of its marvellous literary beauty, has always held a foremost place. It is also a work of much originality of thought. The writer, it is true, appears chiefly as a disciple insisting upon the principles of a Master. But he has contrived to extend the field, and carry his own speculations into regions never dreamt of by Lao Tzu. The whole work of Chuang Tzii has not come down to us, neither can all that now passes under his name be regarded as genuine. Alien hands have added, vainly indeed, many passages and several entire chapters. But a sable robe, says the Chinese proverb, cannot be eked out with dogs' tails. Lin Hsi-chung, a brilliant critic of the seventeenth century, to whose edition all students should turn, has shown with unerring touch where the lion left off and the jackals began. CHUANG TZO 6i The honour of the first edition really belongs to a volatile spirit of the third century A.D., named Hsiang Hsiu. He was probably the founder, at any rate a member, of a small club of bibulous poets who called themselves the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. Death, however, interrupted his labours before he had finished his work on Chuang Tzii, and the manuscript was purloined by Kuo Hsiang, a scholar who died a.d. 312, and with some additions was issued by the latter as his own. Before attempting to illustrate by extracts the style and scope of Chuang Tzu, it will be well to collect from his work a few passages dealing with the attributes of Tao. In his most famous chapter, entitled Autumn Floods, a name by which he himself is sometimes spoken of, Chuang Tzu writes as follows : — ''*^"^ao is without beginning, without end." Elsewhere he says, "There is nowhere where it is not." "Tao can- not be heard; heard, it is not Tao. Tao cannot be seen ; seen, it is not Tao. Tao cannot be spoken; spoken, it is not Tao. That which imparts form to forms is itself formless; therefore Tao cannot have a name (as form precedes name)." "Tao is not too small for the greatest, nor too great for the smallest. Thus all things are embosomed therein ; wide, indeed, its boundless capacity, unfathomable its depth." ^ "By no thoughts, by no cogitations, Tao may be known. By resting in nothing, by according in nothing, Tao may be approached. By following nothing, by pursuing nothing, Tao may be attained." In these and many like passages Lao Tzu would have been in full sympathy with his disciple. So far as it is possible to deduce anything definite from the scanty 62 CHINESE LITERATURE traditions of the teachings of Lao Tzu, we seem to obtain this, that man should remain impassive under the operation of an eternal, omnipresent law (Tao), and that thus he will become in perfect harmony with his \ environment, and that if he is in harmony with his environment, he will thereby attain to a vague condition of general immunity. Beyond this the teachings of Lao Tzii would not carry us. Chuang Tzu, however, from simple problems, such as a drunken man falling out of a cart and not injuring himself — a common superstition among sailors — because he is unconscious and there- fore in harmony with his environment, slides easily into an advanced mysticism. In his marvellous chapter on The Identity of Contraries, he maintains that from the standpoint of Tao all things are One. Positive and negative, this and that, here and there, somewhere and nowhere, right and wrong, vertical and horizontal, sub- jective and objective, become indistinct, as water is in water. "When subjective and objective are both with- out their correlates, that is the very axis of Tao. And when that axis passes through the centre at which all Infinities converge, positive and negative alike blend into an infinite One." This localisation in a Centre, and this infinite absolute represented by One, were too concrete even for Chuang TzQ. The One became God, and the Centre, assigned by later Taoist writers to the pole-star (see Book IV. ch. i.), became the source of all life and the haven to which such life returned after its transitory stay on earth. By ignoring the distinctions of contraries "we are embraced in the obliterating unity of God. Take no heed of time, nor of right and wrong ; but passing into the realm of the Infinite, make your final rest therein." CHUANG TZO 63 That the idea of an indefinite future state was familiar to the mind of Chuang Tzii may be gathered from many passages such as the following : — " How then do I know but that the dead repent of having previously clung to life ? " Those who dream of the banquet, wake to lamenta- tion and sorrow. Those who dream of lamentation and sorrow, wake to join the hunt. While they dream, they do not know that they dream. Some will even interpret the very dream they are dreaming; and only when they awake do they know it was a dream. By and by comes the Great Awakening, and then we find out that this life is really a great dream. Fools think they are awake now, and flatter themselves they know if they are really princes or peasants. Confucius and you are both dreams; and I who say you are dreams, — I am but a dream myself." The chapter closes with a paragraph which has gained for its writer an additional epithet. Butterfly Chuang : — "Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my in- dividuality as a man. Suddenly, I awaked, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man." Chuang TzQ is fond of paradox. He delights in dwelling on the usefulness of useless things. He shows that ill-grown or inferior trees are allowed to stand, that diseased pigs are not killed for sacrifice, and that a hunchback can not only make a good living by wash- 64 CHINESE LITERATURE ing, for which a bent body is no drawback, but escapes the dreaded press-gang in time of war. With a few illustrative extracts we must now take leave of Chuang Tzu, a writer who, although heterodox in the eyes of a Confucianist, has always been justly esteemed for his pointed wit and charming style. (i.) " It was the time of autumn floods. Every stream poured into the river, which swelled in its turbid course. The banks receded so far from one another that it was impossible to tell a cow from a horse. "Then the Spirit of the River laughed for joy that all the beauty of the earth was gathered to himself. Down with the stream he journeyed east, until he reached the ocean. There, looking eastwards and seeing no limit to its waves, his countenance changed. And as he gazed over the expanse, he sighed and said to the Spirit of the Ocean, ' A vulgar proverb says, that he who has heard but part of the truth thinks no one equal to him- self. And such a one am I. " ' When formerly I heard people detracting from the learning of Confucius, or underrating the heroism of Po I, I did not believe. But now that I have looked upon your inexhaustibility — alas for me had I not reached your abode, I should have been for ever a laughing-stock to those of comprehensive enlighten- ment ! ' " To which the Spirit of the Ocean replied, ' You can- not speak of ocean to a well-frog, — the creature of a narrower sphere. You cannot speak of ice to a summer- insect, — the creature of a season. You cannot speak of Tao to a pedagogue : his scope is too restricted. But now that you have emerged from your narrow sphere CHUANG TZO 6S and have seen the great ocean, you know your own insignificance, and I can speak to you of great principles.' " (2.) "Have you never heard of the frog in the old well ? — The frog said to the turtle of the eastern sea, ' Happy indeed am I ! I hop on to the rail around the well. I rest in the hollow of some broken brick. Swim- ^^& I gather the water under my arms and shut my mouth. I plunge into the mud, burying my feet and toes ; and not one of the cockles, crabs, or tadpoles I see around me are my match. [Fancy pitting the happiness of an old well, ejaculates Chuang Tzii, against all the water of Ocean !] Why do you not come, sir, and pay me a visit ? ' ^ " Now the turtle of the eastern sea had not got its left leg down ere its right had already stuck fast, so it shrank back and begged to be excused. It then described the sea, saying, 'A thousand /i would not measure its breadth, nor a thousand fathoms its depth. In the days of the Great Yii, there were nine years of flood out of ten; but this did not add to its bulk. In the days of T*ang, there were seven years out of eight of drought ; but this did not narrow its span. Not to be affected by duration of time, not to be affected by volume of water, — such is the great happiness of the eastern sea.' "At this the well-frog was considerably astonished, and knew not what to say next. And for one whose knowledge does not reach to the positive-negative domain, to attempt to understand me, Chuang Tzu, is like a ^ '*To the minnow, every cranny and pebble and quality and accident of its little native creek may have become familiar ; but does the minnow under- stand the ocean tides and periodic currents, the trade-winds, and monsoons, and moon's eclipses . . .?" — Sartor Hesartus, Natural Supernaturalism. 66 CHINESE LITERATURE mosquito trying to carry a mountain, or an ant to swim a river, — they cannot succeed." (3.) "Chuang Tzu was fishing in the P*u when the prince of Ch'u sent two high officials to ask him to take charge of the administration of the Ch'u State. "Chuang Tzu went on fishing, and without turning his head said, ^ I have heard that in Ch*u there is a sacred tortoise which has been dead now some three thousand years. And that the prince keeps this tortoise carefully enclosed in a chest on the altar of his ancestral temple. Now would this tortoise rather be dead, and have its remains venerated, or be alive and wagging its tail in the mud ? ' " * It would rather be alive,' replied the two officials, ' and wagging its tail in the mud.' " ' Begone ! ' cried Chuang Tzu. * I too will wag my tail in the mud.' " (4.) "Chuang Tzii one day saw an empty skull, bleached, but still preserving its shape. Striking it with his riding whip, he said, 'Wert thou once some ambitious citizen whose inordinate yearnings brought him to this pass ? — some statesman who pluitged his country in ruin, and perished in the fray ? — some wretch who left behind him a legacy of shame ? — some beggar who died in the pangs of hunger and cold ? Or didst thou reach this state by the natural course of old age ? ' "When he had finished speaking, he took the skull, and placing it under his head as a pillow, went to sleep. In the night, he dreamt that the skull appeared to him, and said, 'You speak well, sir; but all you say has reference to the life of mortals, and to mortal troubles. In death there are none of these. Would you like to hear about death ? ' CHUANG TZO 67 "Chuang Tzii having replied in the affirmative, the skull began : — ' In death, there is no sovereign above, and no subject below. The workings of the four seasons are unknown. Our existences are bounded only by eternity. The happiness of a king among men cannot exceed that which we enjoy.' " Chuang Tzu, however, was not convinced, and said, * Were I to prevail upon God to allow your body to be born again, and your bones and flesh to be renewed, so that you could return to your parents, to your wife, and to the friends of your youth — would you be willing ? ' " At this, the skull opened its eyes wide and knitted its brows and said, ' How should I cast aside happiness greater than that of a king, and mingle once again in the toils and troubles of mortality ? ' " (5.) " The Grand Augur, in his ceremonial robes, ap- proached the shambles and thus addressed the pigs : — " ' How can you object to die ? I shall fatten you for three months. I shall discipline myself for ten days and fast for three. I shall strew fine grass, and place you bodily upon a carved sacrificial dish. Does not this satisfy you ? ' " Then speaking from the pigs' point of view, he con- tinued, ' It is better perhaps after all to live on bran and escape the shambles. • • .' " ' But then,' added he, speaking from his own point of view, ' to enjoy honour when alive one would readily die on a war-shield or in the headsman's basket.' " So he rejected the pigs' point of view and adopted his own point of view. In what sense then was he different from the pigs ? " (6.) " When Chuang Tzu was about to die, his disciples expressed a wish to give him a splendid funeral. But 68 CHINESE LITERATURE Chuang Tzu said, ' With heaven and earth for my coffin and shell, with the sun, moon, and stars as my burial regalia, and with all creation to escort me to the grave, — are not my funeral paraphernalia ready to hand ? ' " ' We fear,' argued the disciples, ' lest the carrion kite should eat the body of our Master ' ; to which Chuang Tzu replied, 'Above ground I shall be food for kites, below I shall be food for mole-crickets and ants. Why rob one to feed the other ? ' " The works of Lieh TzO, in two thin volumes, may be procured at any Chinese book-shop. These volumes profess to contain the writings of a Taoist philosopher who flourished some years before Chuang Tzu, and for a long time they received considerable attention at the hands of European students, into whose minds no suspicion of their real character seems to have found its way. Gradually the work came to be looked upon as doubtful, then spurious ; and now it is known to be a forgery, possibly of the first or second century A.D. The scholar — ^for he certainly was one — who took the trouble to forge this work, was himself the victim of a strange delusion. He thought that Lieh Tzu, to whom Chuang Tzu devotes a whole chapter, had been a live philosopher of flesh and blood. But he was in reality nothing more than a figment of the imagination, like many others of Chuang Tzu's characters, though his name was less broadly allegorical than those of All-in- Extremes, and of Do-Nothing-Say-Nothing, and others. The book attributed to him is curious enough to deserve attention. It is on a lower level of thought and style than the work of Chuang Tzu ; still, it contains much traditional matter and many allusions not found else- I LIEH TZO 69 where. To its author we owe the famous, but of course apocryphal, story cf Confucius meeting two boys quarrelling about the distance of the sun from the earth. One of them said that at dawn the sun was much larger than at noon, and must consequently be much nearer ; but the other retorted that at noon the sun was much hotter, and therefore nearer than at dawn. Confucius confessed himself unable to decide between them, and was jeered at by the boys as an impostor. But of all this work perhaps the most attractive portion is a short story on Dream and Reality : — " A man of the State of Chtog was one day gathering fuel, when he came across a startled deer, which he pursued and killed. Fearing lest any one should see him, he hastily concealed the carcass in a ditch and covered it with plaintain leaves, rejoicing excessively at his good fortune. By and by, he forgot the place where he had put it, and, thinking he must have been dream- ing, he set off towards home, humming over the affair on his way. "Meanwhile, a man who had overheard his words, acted upon theni^ and went and got the deer. The latter, when he reached his house, told his wife, saying, * A woodman dreamt he had got a deer, but he did not know where it was. Now I have got the deer; so his dream was a reality.' ' It is you,' replied his wife, * who have been dreaming you saw a woodman. Did he get the deer ? and is there really such a person ? It is you who have got the deer : how, then, can his dream be a reality?' 'It is true,' assented the husband, 'that I have got the deer. It is therefore of little importance whether the woodman dreamt the deer or 1 dreamt the woodman.' 70 CHINESE LITERATURE ''Now when the woodman reached his home, he be- came much annoyed at the loss of the deer ; and in the night he actually dreamt where the deer then was, and who had got it. So next morning he proceeded to the place indicated in his dream, — and there it was. He then took legal steps to recover possession ; and when the case came on, the magistrate delivered the following judgment : — ' The plaintiff began with a real deer and an alleged dream. He now comes forward with a real dream and an alleged deer. The defendant really got the deer which plaintiff said he dreamt, and is now trying to keep it ; while, according to his wife, both the woodman and the deer are but the figments of a dream, so that no one got the deer at all. However, here is a deer, which you had better divide between you.' " Han Fei TztJ, who died B.C. 233, has left us fifty-five essays of considerable value, partly for the light they throw upon the connection between the genuine sayings of Lao Tzu and the Tao- Ti^Ching^ and partly for the quaint illustrations he gives of the meaning of the sayings themselves. He was deeply read in Igw, and obtained favour in the eyes of the First Emperor (see Book IL, ch. i.); but misrepresentations of rivals brought about his downfall, and he committed suicide in prison. We cannot imagine that he had before him the Tao-Ti- Ching. He deals with many of its best sayings, which may well have come originally from an original teacher, such as Lao Tzii is supposed to have been, but quite at random and not as if he took them from an orderly work. And what is more, portions of his own com- mentary have actually slipped into the Tao-Ti-Ching as text, showing how this book was pieced together from HAN FEI TZO 71 various sources. Again, he quotes sentences not to be found in the Tao-Ti-Ching. He illustrates such a simple saying as ** To see small beginnings is clearness of sight," by drawing attention to a man who foresaw, when the tyrant Chou Hsin (who died B.C. 1122) took to ivory chopsticks, that the tide of luxury had set in, to bring licentiousness and cruelty in its train, and to end in downfall and death. Lao TzQ said, '' Leave all things to take their natural course." To this Han Fei Tzii adds, "A man spent three years in carving a leaf out of ivory, of such elegant and detailed workmanship that it would lie undetected among a heap of real leaves. But Lieh Tzii said, Mf God Almighty were to spend three years over every leaf, the trees would be badly off for foliage.'" Lao Tzii said, " The wise man takes time by the fore- lock." Han Fei Tzii adds, "One day the Court physician said to Duke Huan, 'Your Grace is suffering from an affection of the muscular system. Take care, or it may become serious.' 'Oh no,' replied the Duke, 'I have nothing the matter with me ;' and when the physician was gone, he observed to his courtiers, ' Doctors dearly love to treat patients who are not ill, and then make capital out of the cure.' Ten days afterwards, the Court physician again remarked, ' Your Grace has an affection of the flesh. Take care, or it may become serious.' The Duke took no notice of this, but after ten days more the physician once more observed, 'Your Grace has an affection of the viscera. Take care, or it may become serious.' Again the Duke paid no heed ; and ten days later, when the physician came, he simply looked at his royal patient, and departed without saying anything. The Duke sent some one to inquire what 6 72 CHINESE LITERATURE was the matter^ and to him the physician said, ' As long as the disease was in the muscles, it might have been met by fomentations and hot applications ; when it was in the flesh, acupuncture might have been employed; and as long as it was in the viscera, cauterisation might have been tried; but now it is in the bones and mar- row, and naught will avail.' Five days later, the Duke felt pains all over his body, and sent to summon his physician ; but the physician had fled, and the Duke died. So it is that the skilful doctor attacks disease while it is still in the muscles and easy to deal with." To clear off finally this school of early Taoist writers, it will be necessary to admit here one whose life pro- perly belongs to the next period. Liu An, a grandson of the founder of the Han dynasty, became Prince of Huai-nan, and it is as HuAi-NAN TzO, the Philosopher of that ilk, that he is known to the Chinese people. He wrote an esoteric work in twenty-one chapters, which we are supposed still to possess, besides many exoteric works, such as a treatise on alchemy, none of which are extant. It is fairly certain, however, that alchemy was not known to the Chinese until between two and three centuries later, when it was introduced from the West. As to the book which passes under his name, it is difficult to assign to it any exact date. Like the work of Lieh Tzu, it is interesting enough in itself ; and what is more important, it marks the transition of the pure and simple Way of Lao Tzu, etherealised by Chuang Tzu, to the grosser beliefs of later ages in magicians and the elixir of life. Lao Tzu urged his fellow-mortals to guard their vitality by entering into harmony with their environment. Chuang Tzii added a motive, "to pass HUAI-NAN TZO 73 into the realm of the Infinite and make one's final rest therein." From which it is but a step to immortality and the elixir of life. Huai-nan Tzu begins with a lengthy disquisition " On the Nature of Tao," in which, as elsewhere, he deals with the sayings of Lao Tzfi after the fashion of Han Fei TzQ. Thus Lao TzQ said, "If you do not quarrel, no one on earth will be able to quarrel with you," To this Huai-nan TzQ adds, that when a certain ruler was be- sieging an enemy's town, a large part of the wall fell down ; whereupon the former gave orders to beat a retreat at once. " For," said he in reply to the remon- strances of his officers, " a gentleman never hits a man who is down. Let them rebuild their wall, and then we will renew the attack." This noble behaviour so de- lighted the enemy that they tendered allegiance on the spot. Lao Tztt said, " Do not value the man, value his abilities." Whereupon Huai-nan Tzil tells a story of a general of the Ch*u State who was fond of sur- rounding himself with men of ability, and once even went so far as to engage a man who represented himself as a master-thief. His retainers were aghast ; but shortly afterwards their State was attacked by the Ch'i State, and then, when fortune was adverse and all was on the point of being lost, the master-thief begged to be allowed to try his skill. He went by night into the enemy's camp, and stole their general's bed-curtain. This was returned next morning with a message that it had been found by one of the soldiers who was gathering fuel. The same night our master-thief stole the general's pillow, which was restored with a similar message ; and the following night he stole the long pin used to secure the hair. 74 CHINESE LITERATURE " Good heavens ! " cried the general at a council of war, " they will have my head next." Upon which the army of the Ch'i State was withdrawn. Among passages of general interest the following may well be quoted : — ' "Once when the Duke of Lu-yang was at war with the Han State, and sunset drew near while a battle was still fiercely raging, the Duke held up his spear, and shook it at the sun, which forthwith went back three zodiacal signs." The end of this philosopher was a tragic one. He seems to have mixed himself up in some treasonable enterprise, and was driven to commit suicide. Tradition, however, says that he positively discovered the eHxir of immortality, and that after drinking of it he rose up to heaven in broad daylight. Also that, in his excitement, he dropped the vessel which had contained this elixir into his courtyard, and that his dogs and poultry sipped up the dregs, and immediately sailed up to heaven after him I BOOK THE SECOND THE HAN DYNASTY (B.C. 200-A.D. 200) BOOK THE SECOND THE HAN DYNASTY {B.Q. 200-A.D. 200) CHAPTER I THE "FIRST EMPEROR"— THE BURNING OF THE BOOKS— MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS Never has the literature of any country been more closely bound up with the national history than was that of China at the beginning of the period upon which we are now about to enter. The feudal spirit had long since declined, and the bond between suzerain and vassal had grown weaker and weaker until at length it had ceased to exist. Then came the opportunity and the man. The ruler of the powerful State of Ch*in, after gradually vanquishing and absorbing such of the other rival States as had not already been swallowed up by his own State, found himself in B.C. 221 master of the whole of China, and forthwith proclaimed himself its Emperor. The Chou dynasty, with its eight hundred years of sway, was a thing of the past, and the whole fabric of feudalism melted easily away. This catastrophe waa by no means unexpected. Some forty years previously a politician, named Su Tai, was 77 78 CHINESE LITERATURE one day advising the King of Chao to put an end to his ceaseless hostilities with the Yen State. " This morning/' said he, " when crossing the river, I saw a mussel open its shell to sun itself. Immediately an oyster-catcher thrust in his bill to eat the mussel, but the latter promptly closed its shell and held the bird fast. * If it doesn't rain to-day or to-morrow/ cried the oyster- catcher, 'there will be a dead mussel.' 'And if you don't get out of this by to-day or to-morrow,' retorted the mussel, ' there will be a dead oyster-catcher.' Mean- while up came a fisherman and carried off both of them. I fear lest the Ch*in State should be our fisherman." The new Emperor was in many senses a great man, and civilisation made considerable advances during his short reign. But a single decree has branded his name with infamy, to last so long as the Chinese remain a lettered people. In B.C. 13, a trusted Minister, named Li Ssu, is said to have suggested an extraordinary plan, by which the claims of antiquity were to be for ever blotted out and history was to begin again with the ruling monarch, thenceforward to be famous as the First Emperor. All existing literature was to be de- stroyed, with the exception only of works relating to agriculture, medicine, and divination ; and a penalty of branding and four years' work on the Great Wall, then in process of building, was enacted against all who refused to surrender their books for destruction. This plan was carried out with considerable vigour. Many valuable works perished; and the Confucian Canon would have been irretrievably lost but for the devotion of scholars, who at considerable risk concealed the tablets by which they set such store, and thus made possible the discoveries of the following century and the LI SSO 79 restoration of the sacred text. So many, indeed, of the literati are said to have been put to death for dis- obedience that melons actually grew in winter on the spot beneath which their bodies were buried. Li SsC was a scholar himself, and the reputed inventor of the script known as the Lesser Seal, which was in vogue for several centuries. The following is from a memorial of his against the proscription of nobles and others from rival States : — " As broad acres yield large crops, so for a nation to be great there should be a great population ; and for soldiers to be daring their generals should be brave. Not a single clod was added to Tai-shan in vain : hence the huge mountain we now behold. The merest streamr let is received into the bosom of Ocean : hence the Ocean's unfathomable expanse. And wise and virtuous is the ruler who scorns not the masses below. For him, no boundaries of realm, no distinctions of nation- ality exist. The four seasons enrich him ; the Gods bless him ; and, like our rulers of old, no man's hand is against him." The First Emperor died in B.C. 210,1 and his feeble son, the Second Emperor, was put to death in 207, thus bringing their line to an end. The vacant throne was won by a quondam beadle, who established the glorious House of Han, in memory of which Chinese of the present day, chiefly in the north, are still proud to call themselves Sons of Han. So soon as the empire settled down to comparative peace, a mighty effort was made to undo at least some of the mischief sustained by the national literature. An ■ ^ An account of the mausoleum built to receive his remains will be found in Chapter iii. of this Book. 8o CHINESE LITERATURE extra impetus was given to this movement by the fact that under the First Emperor, if we can believe tradition, the materials of writing had undergone a radical change. A general, named Meng Tien, added to the triumphs of the sword the invention of the camel's-hair brush, which the Chinese use as a pen. The clumsy bamboo tablet and stylus were discarded, and strips of cloth or silk catoe into general use, and were so employed until the first century A.D., when paper was invented by Ts*ai Lun. Some say that brickdust and water did duty at first for ink. However that may be, the form of the written character underwent a corresponding change to suit the materials employed. Meanwhile, books were brought out of their hiding- places, and scholars like K'UNG An-kuo, a descendant of Confucius in the twelfth degree, set to work to restore the lost classics. He deciphered the text of the Book of History, which had been discovered when pulling down the old house where Confucius once lived, and tran- scribed large portions of it from the ancient into the later script. He also wrote a commentary on the Analects and another on the Filial Piety Classic. Ch'ag Ts'o (perished B.C. 155), popularly known as Wisdom-Bag, was a statesman rather than an author. Still, many of his memorials to the throne were considered masterpieces, and have been preserved accordingly. He wrote on the military operations against the Huns, plead- ing for the employment of frontier tribes, " barbarians, who in point of food and skill are closely allied to the Huns." "But arms," he says, "are a curse, and war is a dread thing. For in the twinkling of an eye the mighty may be humbled, and the strong may be brought CHAO TS'O— LI LING 8i low." In an essay "On the Value of Agriculture" he writes thus : — "Crime begins in poverty; poverty in insufficiency of food ; insufficiency of food in neglect of agriculture. Without agriculture, man has no tie to bind him to the soil. Without such tie he readily leaves his birth- place and his home. He is like tinto the birds of the air or the beasts of the field. Neither battlemented cities, nor deep moats, nor harsh laws, nor cruel punish- ments, can subdue this roving spirit that is strong within him. " He who is cold examines not the quality of cloth ; he who is hungry tarries not for choice meats. When cold and hunger come upon men, honesty and shame depart. As man is constituted, he must eat twice daily, or hunger ; he must wear clothes, or be cold. And if the stomach cannot get food and the body clothes, the love of the fondest mother cannot keep her children at her side^ How then should a sovereign keep his subjects gathered around him ? "The wise ruler knows this. Therefore he concen- trates the energies of his people upon agriculture. He levies light taxes. He extends the system of grain storage, to provide for his subjects at times when their resources fail." The name of Li Ling (second and first centuries B.c.) is a familiar one to every Chinese schoolboy. He was a military official who was sent in command of 800 horse to reconnoitre the territory of the Huns ; and returning successful from this expedition, he was promoted to a high command and was again employed against these troublesome neighbours. With a force of only 5000 82 CHINESE LITERATURE infantry he penetrated into the Hun territory as far as Mount Ling-chi (?), where he was surrounded by an army of 30,000 of the Khan's soldiers ; and when his troops had exhausted all their arrows, he was forced to surrender. At this the Emperor was furious ; and later on, when he heard that Li Ling was training the Khan's soldiers in the art of war as then practised by the Chinese, he caused his mother, wife, and children to be put to death. Li Ling remained some twenty years, until his death, with the Huns, and was highly honoured by the Khan, who gave him his daughter to wife. With the renegade Li Ling is associated his patriot contemporary, Su Wu, who also met with strange ad- ventures among the Huns. Several Chinese envoys had been imprisoned by the latter, and not allowed to return ; and by way of reprisal, Hun envoys had been imprisoned in China. But a new Khan had recently sent back all the imprisoned envoys, and in A.D. 100 Su Wu was despatched upon a mission of peace to return the Hun envoys who had been detained by the Chinese. Whilst at the Court of the Khan his fellow-envoys revolted, and on the strength of this an attempt was made to persuade him to throw off his allegiance and enter the service of the Huns; upon which he tried to commit suicide, and wounded himself so severely that he lay unconscious for some hours. He subsequently slew a Chinese renegade with his own hand ; and then when it was found that he was not to be forced into submission, he was thrown into a dungeon and left without food for several days. He kept himself alive by sucking snow and gnawing a felt rug ; and at length the Huns, thinking that he was a supernatural being, sent him away north and set him to LI LING 83 tend sheep. Then Li Ling was ordered to try once more by brilliant offers to shake his unswerving loyalty, but all was in vain. In the year 86, peace was made with the Huns, and the Emperor asked for the return of Su Wu. To this the Huns replied that he was dead ; but a former assistant to Su Wu bade the new envoy tell the Khan that the Emperor had shot a goose with a letter tied to its leg, from which he had learnt the where- abouts of his missing envoy. This story so astonished the Khan that Su Wu was released, and in B.C. 81 returned to China after a captivity of nineteen years. He had gone away in the prime of life ; he returned a white-haired and broken-down old man. Li Ling and Su Wu are said to have exchanged poems at parting, and these are to be found published in collections under their respective names. Some doubt has been cast upon the genuineness of one of those attri- buted to Li Ling. It was pointed out by Hung Mai, a brilliant critic of the twelfth century, that a certain word was used in the poem, which, being part of the personal name of a recent Emperor, would at that date have been taboo. No such stigma attaches to the verses by Su Wu, who further gave to his wife a parting poem, which has been preserved, promising her that if he lived he would not fail to return, and if he died he would never forget her. But most famous of all, and still a common model for students, is a letter written by Li Ling to Su Wu, after the latter's return to China, in reply to an affec- tionate appeal to him to return also. Its genuineness has been questioned by Su Shih of the Sung dynasty, but not by the greatest of modern critics, Lin Hsi- chung, who declares that its pathos is enough to make even the gods weep, and that it cannot possibly have 84 CHINESE LITERATURE come from any other hand save that of Li Ling. With this verdict the foreign student may well rest content. Here is the letter : — '' O Tzu-ch*ing, O my friend, happy in the enjoyment of a glorious reputation, happy in the prospect of an imperishable name, — there is no misery like exile in a far-off foreign land, the heart brimful of longing thoughts of home! I have thy kindly letter, bidding me of good cheer, kinder than a brother's words; for which my soul thanks thee. "Ever since the hour of my surrender until now, destitute of all resource, I have sat alone with the bitter- ness of my griefr All day long I see none but barbarians around me. Skins and felt protect me from wind and rain. With mutton and whey I satisfy my hunger and slake my thirst. Companions with whom to while time away, I have none. The whole country is stiff with black ice. I hear naught but the moaning of the bitter autumn blast, beneath which all vegetation has dis- appeared. I cannot sleep at night. I turn and listen to the distant sound of Tartar pipes, to the whinnying of Tartar steeds. In the morning I sit up and listen still, while tears course down my cheeks. O TzQ-ch*ing, of what stuff am I, that I should do au^ht but grieve ? The day of thy departure left me disconsolate indeed I thought of my aged mother butchered upon the threshold of the grave. I thought of my innocent wife and child, condemned to the same cruel fate. Deserv- ing as I might have been of Imperial censure, I am now an object of pity to all. Thy return was to honour and renown, while I remained behind with infamy and dis- grace. Such is the divergence of man's destiny. ''Born within the domain of refinement and justice, I LI LING 8S passed into an environment of vulgar ignorance. I left behind me obligations to sovereign and* family for life amid barbarian hordes; and now barbarian children will carry on the line of my forefathers. And yet my merit was great, my guilt of small account. I had no fair hearing ; and when I pause to think of these things, I ask to what end I have lived ? With a thrust I could have cleared myself of all blame : my severed throat would have borne witness to my resolution ; and be- tween me and my country all would have been over for aye« But to kill myself would have been of no avail : I should only have added to my shame. I therefore steeled myself to obloquy and to life. There were not wanting those who mistook my attitude for compliance, and urged me to a nobler course ; ignorant that the joys of a foreign land are sources only of a keener grief. " O TzQ-ch'ing, O my friend, 1 will complete the half- told record of my former tale. His late Majesty com- missioned me, with five thousand infantry under my command, to carry on operations in a distant country. Five brother generals missed their way : I alone reached the theatre of war. With rations for a long march, leading on my men, I passed beyond the limits of the Celestial Land, and entered the territory of the fierce Huns. With five thousand men I stood opposed to a hundred thousand : mine jaded foot - soldiers, theirs horsemen fresh from the stable. Yet we slew their leaders, and captured their standards, and drove them back in confusion towards the north. We obliterated their very traces : we swept them away like dust : we beheaded their general. A martial spirit spread abroad among my men. With them, to die in battle was to 86 CHINESE LITERATURE return to their homes; while I — I venture to think that I had already accomplished something. "This victory was speedily followed by a general rising of the Huns. New levies were trained to the use of arms, and at length another hundred thousand barbarians were arrayed against me. The Hun chieftain himself ap- peared, and with his army surrounded my little band, so unequal in strength, — foot-soldiers opposed to horse. Still my tired veterans fought, each man worth a thou- sand of the foe, as, covered with wounds, one and all struggled bravely to the fore. The plain was strewed with the dying and the dead : barely a hundred men were left, and these too weak to hold a spear and shield. Yet, when I waved my hand and shouted to them, the sick and wounded arose. Brandishing their blades, and pointing towards the foe, they dismissed the Tartar cavalry like a rabble rout. And even when their arms were gone, their arrows spent, without a foot of steel in their hands, they still rushed, yelling, onward, each eager to lead the way. The very heavens and the earth seemed to gather round me, while my warriors drank tears of blood. Then the Hunnish chieftain, thinking that we should not yield, would have drawn off his forces. But a false traitor told him all : the battle was renewed, and we were lost. " The Emperor Kao Ti, with 300,000 men at his back, was shut up in P*ing-ch*^ng. Generals he had, like clouds ; counsellors, like drops of rain. Yet he remained seven days without food, and then barely escaped with life. How much more then I, now blamed on all sides that I did not die ? This was my crime. But, O Tzu- ch'ing, canst thou say that I would live from craven fear of death ? Am I one to turn my back on my country LI LING 87 and- all those dear to me, allured by sordid thoughts of gain ? It was not indeed without cause that I did not elect to die. I longed, as explained in my former letter, to prove my loyalty to my prince. Rather than die to no purpose, I chose to live and to establish my good name. It was better to achieve something than to perish. Of old, Fan Li did not slay himself after the battle of Hui-chi; neither did Ts*ao Mo die after the ignominy of three defeats. Revenge came at last ; and thus I too had hoped to prevail. Why then was I over- taken with punishment before the plan was matured ? Why were my own flesh and blood condemned before the design could be carried out ? It is for this that I raise my face to Heaven, and beating my breast, shed tears of blood. "O my friend, thou sayest that the House of Han never fails to reward a deserving servant. But thou art thyself a servant of the House, and it would ill beseem thee to say other words than these. Yet Hsiao and Fan were bound in chains; Han and P'^ng were sliced to death ; Ch'ao Ts'o was beheaded. Chou Po was dis- graced, and Tou Ying paid the penalty with his life. Others, great in their generation, have also succumbed to the intrigues of base men, and have been overwhelmed beneath a weight of shame from which they were unable to emerge. And now, the misfortunes of Fan Li and Ts'ao Mo command the sympathies of all. "My grandfather filled heaven and earth with the fame of his exploits — the bravest of the brave. Yet, fearing the animosity of an Imperial favourite, he slew himself in a distant land, his death being followed by the secession, in disgust, of many a brother-hero. Can this be the reward of which thou speakest ? 7 88 CHINESE LITERATURE "Thou too, O my friend, an envoy with a slender equipage, sent on that mission to the robber race, when fortune failed thee even to the last resource of the dagger. Then years of miserable captivity, all but ended by death among the wilds of the far north. Thou left us full of young life, 'to return a graybeard ; thy old mother dead, thy wife gone from thee to another. Seldom has the like of this been known. Even the savage barbarian respected thy loyal spirit : how much more the lord of all under the canopy of the sky ? A many-acred barony should have been thine, the ruler of a thousand-charioted fief ! Nevertheless, they tell me 'twas but two paltry millions, and the chancellorship of the Tributary States. Not a foot of soil repaid thee for the past, while some cringing courtier gets the marqui- sate of ten thousand families, and each greedy parasite of the Imperial house is gratified by the choicest offices of the State. If then thou farest thus, what could 1 expect ? I have been heavily repaid for that I did not die. Thou hast been meanly rewarded for thy unswerving devotion to thy prince. This is barely that which should attract the absent servant back to his fatherland. "And so it is that I do not now regret the past. Wanting though I may have been in my duty to the State, the State was wanting also in gratitude towards me. It was said of old, 'A loyal subject, though not a hero, will rejoice to die for his country.' I would die joyfully even now ; but the stain of my prince's in- gratitude can never be wiped away. Indeed, if the brave man is not to be allowed to achieve a name, but must die like a dog in a barbarian land, who will be found to crook the back and bow the knee before an Imperial throne, where the bitter pens of courtiers tell their lying tales ? LU WfeN-SHU 89 ''O my friend, look for me no more. O Tzti-ch'ing, what shall I say ? A thousand leagues lie between us, and separate us for ever. I shall live out my life as it were in another sphere : my spirit will find its home among a strange people. Accept my last adieu. Speak for me to my old acquaintances, and bid them serve their sovereign well. O my friend, be happy in the bosom of thy family, and think of me no more. Strive to take all care of thyself ; and when time and oppor- tunity are thine, write me once again in reply. " Li Ling salutes thee I " One of the Chinese models of self-help alluded to in the San TzU Ching^ the famous school primer, to be described later on, is Lu WfeN-SHU (first century B.C.). The son of a village gaoler, he was sent by his father to tend sheep, in which capacity he seems to have formed sheets of writing material by plaiting rushes, and otherwise to have succeeded in educating himself. He became an assistant in a prison, and there the knowledge of law which he had picked up stood him in such good stead that he was raised to a higher position ; and then, attracting the notice of the governor, he was still further advanced, and finally took his degree, ultimately rising to the rank of governor. In B.C. 67 he submitted to the throne the following well-known memorial : — " May it please your Majesty. "Of the ten great follies of our predecessors, one still survives in the maladministration of justice which prevails. " Under the Ch'ins learning was at a discount ; brute force carried everything before it. Those who culti- vated a spirft of charity and duty towards their neigh- 90 CHINESE LITERATURE hour were despised. Judicial appointments were the prizes coveted by all. He who spoke out the truth was stigmatised as a slanderer, and he who strove to expose abuses was set down as a pestilent fellow. Consequently all who acted up to the precepts of our ancient code found themselves out of place in their generation, and loyal words of good advice to the sovereign remained locked up within their bosoms, while hollow notes of obsequious flattery soothed the monarch's ear and lulled his heart with false images, to the exclusion of disagree- able realities. And so the rod of empire fell from their grasp for ever. "At the present moment the State rests upon the immeasurable bounty and goodness of your Majesty. We are free from the horrors of war, from the calamities of hunger and cold. Father and son, husband and wife, are united in their happy homes. Nothing is wanting to make this a golden age save only reform in the administration of justice. "Of all trusts, this is the greatest and most sacred. The dead man can never come back to life : that which is once cut off cannot be joined again. 'Rather than slay an innocent man, it were better that the guilty escape.' Such, however, is not the view of our judicial authorities of to-day. With them, oppression and severity are reckoned to be signs of magisterial acumen and lead on to fortune, whereas leniency entails naught but trouble. Therefore their chief aim is to compass the death of their victims ; not that they entertain any grudge against humanity in general, but simply that this is the shortest cut to their own personal advantage. Thus, our market-places run with blood, our criminals throng the gaols, and many thousands annually suffer LU WfeN-SHU 91 death. These things are injurious to public morals and hinder the advent of a truly golden age. " Man enjoys life only when his mind is at peace ; when he is in distress, his thoughts turn towards death. Beneath the scourge what is there that cannot be wrung from the lips of the sufferer ? His agony is overwhelm- ing, and he seeks to escape by speaking falsely. The officials profit by the opportunity, and cause him to say what will best confirm his guilt. And then, fearing lest the conviction be quashed by higher courts, they dress the victim's deposition to suit the circumstances of the case, so that, when the record is complete, even were Kao Yao^ himself to rise from the dead, he would declare that death still left a margin of unexpiated crime. This, because of the refining process adopted to ensure the establishment of guilt. " Our magistrates indeed think of nothing else. They are the bane of the people. They keep in view their own ends, and care not for the welfare of the State. Truly they are the worst criminals of the age. Hence the saying now runs, 'Chalk out a prison on the ground, and no one would remain within. Set up a gaoler of wood, and he will be found standing there alone.' * Imprisonment has become the greatest of all misfor- tunes, while among those who break the law, who violate family ties, who choke the truth, there are none to be compared in iniquity with the officers of justice themselves. "Where you let the kite rear its young undisturbed, there will the phoenix come and build its nest. Do not punish for misguided advice, and by and by valuable ^ A famous Minister of Crime in the mythical ages. * Contrary to what was actually the case in the Golden Age. 92 CHINESE LITERATURE suggestions will flow in. The men of old said, ' Hills and jungles shelter many noxious things ; rivers and marshes receive much filth ; even the finest gems are not wholly without flaw. Surely then the ruler of an empire should put up with a little abuse/ But I would have your Majesty exempt from vituperation, and open to the advice of all who have aught to say. I would have freedom of speech in the advisers of the throne. I would sweep away the errors which brought the downfall of our predecessors. I would have reverence for the virtues of our ancient kings and reform in the administration of justice, to the utter confusion of those who now pervert its course. Then indeed would the golden age be renewed over the face of the glad earth, and the people would move ever onwards in peace and happiness boundless as the sky itself." Liu Hsiang (b.c. 80-89) was a descendant of the beadle founder of the great Han dynasty. Entering into official life, he sought to curry favour with the reigning Emperor by submitting some secret works on the black art, towards which his Majesty was much inclined. The results not proving successful, he was thrown into prison, but was soon released that he might carry on the publication of the commentary on the Spring and Autumn by Ku-liang. He also revised and re-arranged the historical episodes known as the Chan Kuo Ts^i^ wrote treatises on government and some poetry, and compiled Biographies of Eminent Women, the first work of its kind. His son, Liu Hsin, was a precocious boy, who early distinguished himself by wide reading in all branches of literature. He worked with his father upon the restora- YANG HSIUNG 93 tion of the classical texts, especially of the Book of Changes, and later on was chiefly instrumental in estab- lishing the position of Tso's Commentary on the Spring and Autumn. He catalogued the Imperial Library, and in conjunction with his father discovered — some say compiled — the Chou Ritual. A well-known figure in Chinese literature is YANG HsiUNG (B.C. 53-A.D. 18). As a boy he was fond of straying from the beaten track and reading whatever he could lay his hands on. He stammered badly, and consequently gave much time to meditation. He propounded an ethical criterion occupying a middle place between those insisted upon by Mencius and by Hsiin K*uang, teaching that the nature of man at birth is neither good nor evil, but a mixture of both, and that development in either direction depends wholly upon environment. In glorification of the Book of Changes he wrote the Tai Hsiian Ching^ and to em- phasise the value of the Confucian Analects he pro- duced a philosophical treatise known as the Fa Yen, both between A.D. i and 6. On completion of this last, his most famous work, a wealthy merchant of the pro- vince was so struck by its excellence that he offered to give 100,000 aish if his name should merely be mentioned in it. But Yang answered with scorn that a stag in a pen or an ox in a cage would not be more out of place than the name of a man with nothing but money to recommend him in the sacred pages of a book. Liu Hsin, however, sneeringly suggested that posterity would use Yang Hsiung's work to cover pickle-jars. Besides composing some mediocre poetry, Yang Hsiung wrote on acupuncture, music, and philology. /^ 94 CHINESE LITERATURE There is little doubt that he did not write the Fang Yen, a vocabulary of words and phrases used in various parts of the empire, which was steadily attributed to him luitil Hung Mai, a critic of the twelfth century, already mentioned in Chapter I. of this Book, made short work of his claims. A brilliant writer who attracted much attention in his day was Wang CrfuNG (a.d. 27-97). ^^ is said to have picked up his education at bookstalls, with the aid of a superbly retentive memory. Only one of his works is extant, the Lun Hingj consisting of eighty-five essays on a variety of subjects. In these he tilts against the errors of the age, and exposes even Confucius and Mencius to free and searching criticisms. He is conse- quently ranked as a heterodox thinker. He showed that the soul could neither exist after death as a spirit nor exercise any influence upon the living. When the body decomposes, the soul, a phenomenon inseparable from vitality, perishes with it. He further argued that if the souls of human beings were immortal, those of animals would be immortal likewise ; and that space itself would not sujfl&ce to contain the countless shades of the men and creatures of all time. Ma Jung (a.d. 79-166) was popularly known as the Universal Scholar. His learning in Confucian lore was profound, and he taught upwards of one thousand pupils. He introduced the system of printing notes or comments in the body of the page, using for that pur- pose smaller characters cut in double columns; and it was by a knowledge of this fact that a clever critic of the Tang dynasty was able to settle the spuriousness of an early edition of the Tao-Te-Ching with double-column TS'AI YUNG— CHfeNG HSOAN 95 commentary, which had been attributed to Ho Shang Kung, a writer of the second century B.C. Ts*Ai Yung (A.D. 133-192), whose tippling propen- sities earned for him the nickname of the Drunken Dragon, is chiefly remembered in connection with literature as superintending the work of engraving on stone the authorised text of the Five Classics. With red ink he wrote these out on forty-six tablets for the work- men to cut. The tablets were j)laced in the Hung-tu College, and fragments of them are said to be still in existence. The most famous of the pupils who sat at the feet of Ma Jung was CHfeNG HstJAN (A.D. 127-200). He is one of the most voluminous of all the commentators upon the Confucian classics. He lived for learning. The very slave-girls of his household were highly educated, and interlarded their conversation with quotations from the Odes. He was nevertheless fond of wine, and is said to have been able to take three hundred cups at a sit- ting without losing his head. Perhaps it may be as well to add that a Chinese cup holds about a thimbleful. As an instance of the general respect in which he was held, it is recorded that at his request the chief of certain rebels spared the town of Kao-mi (his native place), marching forward by another route. In A.D» 200 Confucius ap- peared to him in a vision, and he knew by this token that his hour was at hand. Consequently, he was very loth to respond to a summons sent to him from Chi-chou in Chihli by the then powerful Yiian Shao. He set out indeed upon the journey, but died on the way. It is difficult to bring the above writers, representatives of a class, individually to the notice of the reader. Though each one wandered into by-paths of his own, the common V 96 CHINESE LITERATURE lode-star was Confucianism — elucidation of the Confucian' Canon. For although, with us, commentaries upon the classics are not usually regarded as literature, they are so regarded by the Chinese, who place such works in the very highest rank, and reward successful commentators with the coveted niche in the Confucian temple. CHAPTER II POETRY At the beginning of the second century B.C., poetry was still composed on the model of the Li Sao, and we are in possession of a number of works assigned to Chia I (B.C. 199-168), Tung-fang So (6. B.C. 160), Liu Hsiangi and others, all of which follow on the lines of Ch'ii Yuan's great poem. But gradually, with the more definite establishment of what we may call classical influence, poets went brck to find their exemplars in the Book of Poetry, wK*' " came as it were from the very hand of Confucius hiP"^4f. Poems were written in metres of four, five, and s'Ven words to a line. Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju (rf. B.C. 117), a gay Lothario who eloped with a young widow, made such a name with his verses that he was summoned to Court, and appointed by the Emperor to high office. His poems, however, have not survived. Mei SHfeNG (d. B.C. 140), who formed his style on SsQ-ma, has the honour of being the first to bring home to his fellow-countrymen the extreme beauty of the five- word metre. From him modern poetry may be said to date. Many specimens of his workmanship are extant : — (i.) " Green f^aws the grass upon the batik^ The willow'shoots are long and lank; A lady in a glistening gown opens the casetnent and looks down 97 98 CHINESE LITERATURE The roses on her cheek blush bright^ Her rounded arm is dazzling white; A singing-girl in early life^ And now a careless roufs wife, . . . Ah^ if he does not mind his own^ Hd II find some day the bird has flown i n (2.) " Tlu red hibiscus and the reed^ The fragrant flowers of marsh and meady All these I gather as I stray ^ As though for one now far away, I strive to fierce with straining eyes The distance that between us lies, Alas that hearts which beat as one Should thus be parted and undone / " Liu HfeNG {d, b.c, 157) was the son by a concubine of the founder of the Han dynasty, and succeeded in B.C. 180 as fourth Emperor of the line. For over twenty years he ruled wisely and well. He is one of the twenty-four classical example ^ filial piety, having waited on his sick mother for three , ^ars without changing his clothes. He was a scholar, and was canonised after death by a title which may fairly be rendered " Beauclerc." The follow- ing is a poem which he wrote on the death of his illustri- ous father, who, if we can accept as genuine the remains attributed to him, was himself also a poet : — " / look upy the curtains are there as of yore; J look down^ and there is the fnat on the floor; These things 1 behold^ but the man is no more. •* To the infinite azure his spirit has flown^ And I am left friendless^ uncared-for^ alone^ Of sol cue bereft^ save to weep and to moan, •* The deer on the hillside caressingly bleat^ And offer the grass for their young ones to ecU^ While birds of the cur to their nestlings bring meai LIU HfeNG— LIU CH*£ 99 " But I a podr orphan must ever remain^ My hearty still so youngs overburdened with fain For him I shall never set eyes on again* ***Tis a well-worn old sayings which all men allow^ That grief stamps the deepest 0/ lines on the brow: Alas for my hair^ it is silvery now / *^ Alas for myfather^ cut off in his pride f Alas thai no more I may stand by his side / Ohy where were the gods when that great hero diedf" The literary fame of the Beauclerc was rivalled, if not surpassed, by his grandson, LiU Ch*!: (B.C. 156-87), who succeeded in B.C. 140 as sixth Emperor of the Han dynasty. He was an enthusiastic patron of literature. He devoted great attention to music as a factor in national life. He established important religious sacri- fices to heaven and earth. He caused the calendar to be reformed by his grand astrologer, the historian SsO-MA Ch'ien, from which date accurate chronology may be almost said to begin. His generals carried the Imperial arms into Central Asia, and for many years the Huns were held in check. Notwithstanding his enlightened policy, the Emperor was personally much taken up with the magic and mysteries which were being gradually grafted on to the Tao of Lao Tzu, and he encouraged the numerous quacks who pretended to have discovered the elixir of life. The following are specimens of his skill in poetry : — •* The autumn blast drives the white scud in the sky^ Leaves fade^ arul wild geese sweeping south meet the eye; The scent of late flowers fills the soft air above^ My heart full of thoughts of the lady I love. In the river the barges for revel-carouse Are lined by white waves which break over their bows; t \ lOO CHINESE LITERATURE Their oarsmen keep time to the piping and drumming, . . « Yet joy is as naught Alloyed by the thought Tltat youth slips away and that old age is coming," The next lines were written upon the death of a harem favourite, to whom he was fondly attached : — " The sound of rustling silk is stilled^ With dust the marble courtyard filled; No footfalls echo on the floor ^ Fallen leaves in heaps block up the door, . . • For she^ mypride^ my lovely one^ is lost^ And 1 am left^ in hopeless anguish tossedJ* A good many anonymous poems have come down to us from the first century B.C., and some of these contain here and there quaint and pleasing conceits, as, for instance — " Man reaches scarce a hundred^ yet his tears Would fill a lifetime of a thousand years!* The following is a poem of this period, the author of which is unknown : — ** Forth from the eastern gate my steeds I drive^ And lo ! a cemetery meets my view; Aspens around in wild luxuriance thrive^ The road is fringed with fir and pine and yew. Beneath my feet lie the forgotten dead^ Wrapped in a twilight of eternal gloom ; Down by the Yellow Springs their earthy bed^ And everlasting silence is their doom. How fast the lights and shadows come and go ! Like morning dew our fleeting life has passed; Many a poor traveller on earth beloWy Is gone^ while brass and stone can still outlast. 'i THE LADY PAN loi Time is inexorable y and in vain Against his might the holiest mortal strives; Can we then hope this precious boon to gain^ By strange elixirs to prolong our lives ? . . . Ohy rather quaff good liquor while we may^ And dress in silk and satin every day / " Women now begin to appear in Chinese literature. The Lady Pan was for a long time chief favourite of the Emperor who ruled China B.a 32-6. So devoted was his Majesty that he even wished her to appear alongside of him in the Imperial chariot. Upon which she replied, " Your handmaid has heard that wise rulers of old were always accompanied by virtuous ministers, but never that they drove out with women by their side." She was ultimately supplanted by a younger and more beau- tiful rival, whereupon she forwarded to the Emperor one of those fans, round or octagonal frames of bamboo with silk stretched over them,^ which in this country are called "fire-screens," inscribed with the following lines : — ** Ofair white silky fresh from the weaver^ s loom. Clear as the frosty bright as the winter snow — See / friendship fashions out of thee afany Round as the round moon shines in heaven above ^ At homey abroady a close companion thouy Stirring at every move the grateful gale. And yet Ifeary ahme / that autumn chillsy Cooling the dying summer^ s torrid ragCy Will see thee laid neglected on the shelf All thought of bygone daysy like them bygone J^ The phrase " autumn fan " has long since passed into the language, and is used figuratively of a deserted wife. ^ The folding fan, invented by the Japanese, was not known in Qiina until the eleventh century A.D., when it was introduced through Korea. CHAPTER III HISTORY— LEXICOGRAPHY So far as China is concerned, the art of writing history may be said to have been created during the period under review. SsO-ma Ch*ien, the so-called Father of History, was born about B.C. 145. At the age of ten he was already a good scholar, and at twenty set forth upon a round of travel which carried him to all parts of the empire. In B.C. no his father died, and he stepped into the hereditary post of grand astrologer. After devoting some time and energy to the reformation of the calendar, he now took up the historical work which had been begun by his father, and which was ultimately given to the world as the Historical Record. It is a history of China from the earliest ages down to about one hundred years before the Christian era, in one hundred and thirty chapters, arranged under five head- ings, as follows:— ^i) Annals of the Emperors; (2) Chronological Tables; (3) Eight chapters on Rites, Music, the Pitch-pipes, the Calendar, Astrology, Imperial Sacri- fices, Watercourses, and Political Economy ; (4) Annals of the Feudal Nobles ; and (5) Biographies of many of the eminent men of the period, which covers nearly three thousand years. In such estimation is this work justly held that its very words have been counted, and found to number 526,500 in all. It must be borne in mind I04 SSO-MA CH'IEN 103 that these characters were, in all probability, scratched with a stylus on bamboo tablets, and that previous to this there was no such thing as a history on a general and comprehensive plan ; in fact, nothing beyond mere local annals in the style of the Spring and Autumn. Since the Historical Record, every dynasty has had its historian, their works in all cases being formed upon the model bequeathed by Ssu-ma Ch'ien. The Twenty-four Dynastic Histories of China were produced in 1747 in a uniform series bound up in 219 large volumes, and to- gether show a record such as can be produced by no other country in the world. The following are specimens of SsQ-ma Ch*ien's style : — (i.) "When the House of Han arose, the evils of their predecessors had not passed away. Husbands still went off to the wars. The old and the young were employed in transporting food. Production was almost at a stand- still, and money became scarce. So much so, that even the Son of Heaven had not carriage-horses of the same colour ; the highest civil and military authorities rode in bullock-carts, and the people at large knew not where to lay their heads. " At this epoch, the coinage in use was so heavy and cumbersome that the people themselves started a new issue at a fixed standard of value. But the laws were too lax, and it was impossible to prevent grasping persons from coining largely, buying largely, and then holding against a rise in the market. The consequence was that prices went up enormously. Rice sold at 10,000 cash per picul ; a horse cost 100 ounces of silver. But by and by, when the empire was settling down to tran- quillity, his Majesty Kao Tsu gave orders that no trader 8 104 CHINESE LITERATURE should wear silk nor ride in a carriage ; besides which, the imposts levied upon this class were greatly increased, in order to keep them down. Some years later these restrictions were withdrawn ; still, however, the descen- dants of traders were disqualified from holding any office connected with the State. '' Meanwhile, certain levies were made on a scale cal- culated to meet the exigencies of public expenditure ; while the land-tax and customs revenue were regarded by all officials, from the Emperor downwards, as their own personal emolument. Grain was forwarded by water to the capital for the use of the officials there, but the quantity did not amount to more than a few hundred thousand piculs every year. ** Gradually the coinage began to deteriorate and light coins to circulate ; whereupon another issue followed, each piece being marked ' half an ounce.' But at length the system of private issues led to serious abuses, result- ing first of all in vast sums of money accumulating in the hands of individuals ; finally, in rebellion, until the country was flooded with the coinage of the rebels, and it became necessary to enact laws against any such issues in the future. "At this period the Huns were harassing our northern frontier, and soldiers were massed there in large bodies ; in consequence of which food became so scarce that the authorities offered certain rank and titles of honour to those who would supply a given quantity of grain. Later on, drought ensued in the west, and in order to meet necessities of the moment, official rank was again made a marketable commodity, while those who broke the laws were allowed to commute their penalties by money pay- ments. And now horses began to reappear in official SSO-MA CH'IEN 105 stableSi and in palace and hall signs of an ampler luxury were visible once more. "Thus it was in the early days of the dynasty, until some seventy years after the accession of the House of Han. The empire was then at peace. For a long time there had been neither flood nor drought, and a season of plenty had ensued. The public granaries were well stocked; the Government treasuries were full. In the capital, strings of cash were piled in myriads, until the very strings rotted, and their tale could no longer be told. The grain in the Imperial storehouses grew mouldy year by year. It burst from the crammed granaries, and lay about until it became unfit for human food. The streets were thronged with horses belonging to the people, and on the highroads whole droves were to be seen, so that it became necessary to prohibit the public use of mares. Village elders ate meat and drank wine. Petty government clerkships and the like lapsed from father to son ; the higher offices of State were treated as family heirlooms. For there had gone abroad a spirit of self-respect and of reverence for the law, while a sense of charity and of duty towards one's neighbour kept men aloof from disgrace and shame. " At length, under lax laws, the wealthy began to use their riches for evil purposes of pride and self-aggrandise- ment and oppression of the weak. Members of the Imperial family received grants of land, while from the highest to the lowest, every one vied with his neighbour in lavishing money on houses, and appointments, and apparel, altogether beyond the limit of his means. Such is the everlasting law of the sequence of prosperity and decay. "Then followed extensive military preparations in io6 CHINESE LITERATURE various parts of the empire ; the establishment of a tradal route with the barbarians of the south-west, for which purpose mountains were hewn through for many miles. The object was to open up the resources of those remote districts, but the result was to swamp the inhabitants in hopeless ruin. Then, again, there was the subjugation of Korea; its transformation into an Imperial dependency ; with other troubles nearer home. There was the ambush laid for the Huns, by which we forfeited their alliance, and brought them down upon our northern frontier. Nothing, in fact, but wars and rumours of wars from day to day. Money was con- stantly leaving the country. The financial stability of the empire was undermined, and its impoverished people were driven thereby into crime. Wealth had been frittered away, and its renewal was sought in corruption. Those who brought money in their hands received appointments under government. Those who could pay escaped the penalties of their guilt. Merit had to give way to money. Shame and scruples of conscience were laid aside. Laws and punishments were administered with severer hand. From this period must be dated the rise and growth of official venality." (2.) "The Odes have it thus: — 'We may gaze up to the mountain's brow : we may travel along the great road;' signifying that although we cannot hope to reach the goal, still we may push on thitherwards in spirit. "While reading the works of Confucius, I have always fancied 1 could see the man as he was in life ; and when I went to Shantung I actually beheld his carriage, his robes, and the material parts of his ceremonial usages. There were his descendants practising the old rites in SSO-MA CH'IEN 107 their ancestral home, and I lingered on, unable to tear myself away. Many are the princes and prophets that the world has seen in its time, glorious in life, forgotten in death. But Confucius, though only a humble member of the cotton-clothed masses, remains among us after many generations. He is the model for such as would be wise. By all, from the Son of Heaven down to the meanest student, the supremacy of his principles is fully and freely admitted. He may indeed be pronounced the divinest of men." (3.) "In the 9th moon the First Emperor was buried in Mount Li, which in the early days of his reign he had caused to be tunnelled and prepared with that view. Then, when he had consolidated the empire, he employed his soldiery, to the number of 700,000, to bore down to the Three Springs (that is, until water was reached), and there a foundation of bronze^ was laid and the sarcophagus placed thereon. Rare objects and costly jewels were collected from the palaces and from the various officials, and were carried thither and stored in vast quantities. Artificers were ordered to construct mechanical cross- bows, which, if any one were to enter, would immediately discharge their arrows. With the aid of quicksilver, rivers were made, the Yang-tsze, the Hoang-ho, and the great ocean, the metal being poured from one into the other by machinery. On the roof were delineated the constellations of the sky, on the floor the geographical divisions of the earth. Candles were made from the fat of the man-fish (walrus), calculated to last for a very long time. "The Second Emperor said, 'It is not fitting that the concubines of my late father who are without children ^ Variant '*firin»" i,e. was firmly laid. io8 CHINESE LITERATURE should leave him now;' and accordingly he ordered them to accompany the dead monarch to the next world, those who thus perished being many in number. " When the interment was completed, some one sug- gested that the workmen who had made the machinery and concealed the treasure knew the great value of the latter, and that the secret would leak out. Therefore, so soon as the ceremony was over, and the path giving access to the sarcophagus had been blocked up at its innermost end, the outside gate at the entrance to this path was let fall, and the mausoleum was effectually closed, so that not one of the workmen escaped. Trees and grass were then planted around, that the spot might look like the rest of the mountain." The history by Ssu-ma Chien stops about loo years before Christ. To carry it on from that point was the ambition of a scholar named Pan Piao (A.D. 3-54), but he died while still collecting materials for his task. His son. Pan Ku, whose scholarship was extensive and pro- found, took up the project, but was impeached on the ground that he was altering the national records at his own discretion, and was thrown into prison. Released on the representations of a brother, he continued his work ; however, before its completion he became in- volved in a political intrigue and was again thrown into prison, where he died. The Emperor handed the un- finished history to Pan Chad, his gifted sister, who had been all along his assistant, and by her it was brought to completion down to about the Christian era, where the occupancy of the throne by a usurper divides the Han dynasty into two distinct periods. This lady was also the author of a volume of moral advice to young women, and of many poems and essays. HSC SHfeN 109 Lexicography, which has since been so widely culti- vated by the Chinese, was called into being by a famous scholar named Hst; Sh£:n {d. A.D. 120). Entering upon an official career, he soon retired and devoted the rest of his life to books. He was a deep student of the Five Classics, and wrote a work on the discrepancies in the various criticisms of these books. But it is by his Skua Win that he is now known. This was a collection, with short explanatory notes, of all the characters — about ten thousand — which were to be found in Chinese literature as then existing, written in what is now known as the Lesser Seal style. It is the oldest Chinese dictionary of which we have any record, and has hitherto formed the basis of all etymological research. It is arranged under 540 radicals or classifiers, that is to say, specially selected portions of characters which indicate to some extent the direction in which lies the sense of the whole character, and its chief object was to exhibit the pictorial features of Chinese writing. CHAPTER IV BUDDHISM The introduction of Buddhism into China must now be considered, especially under its literary aspect. So early as B.C. 217 we read of Buddhist priests, Shih-li-fang and others, coming to China. The "First Emperor" seems to have looked upon them with sus- picion. At any rate, he threw them into prison, from which, we are told, they were released in the night by a golden man or angel. Nothing more was heard of Buddhism until the Emperor known as Ming Ti, in con- sequence, it is said, of a dream in which a foreign god appeared to him, sent off a mission to India to see what could be learnt upon the subject of this barbarian re- ligion. The mission, which consisted of eighteen persons, returned about A.D. 67, accompanied by two Indian Buddhists named Kashiapmadanga and Gobharana. These two settled at Lo-yang in Honan, which was then the capital, and proceeded to translate into Chinese the SQtra of Forty-two Sections— the beginning of a long line of such. Soon afterwards the former died, but the seed had been sown, and a great rival to Taoism was about to appear on the scene. Towards the close of the second century A.D. another Indian Buddhist, who had come to reside at Ch*ang-an in Shensi, translated the s^tra known as the Lotus of the no FA HSIEN III Good Law, and Buddhist temples were built in various parts of China. By the beginning of the fourth century Chinese novices were taking the vows required for the Buddhist priesthood, and monasteries were endowed for their reception. In A.D. 399 Fa Hsien started on his great pedestrian journey from the heart of China overland to India, his object being to procure copies of the Buddhist Canon, statues, and relics. . Those who accompanied him at starting either turned back or died on the way, and he finally reached India with only one companion, who settled there and never returned to China. After visit- ing various important centres, such as Magadha, Patna, Benares, and Buddha-Gaya, and effecting the object of his journey, he took passage on a merchant-ship, and reached Ceylon. There he found a large junk which carried him to Java, whence, after surviving many perils of the sea, he made his way on board another junk to the coast of Shantung, disembarking in A.D. 414 with all his treasures at the point now occupied by the German settlement of Kiao-chow. The narrative of his adventurous journey, as told by himself, is still in existence, written in a crabbed and difficult style. His itinerary has been traced, and nearly all the places mentioned by him have been identified. The following passage refers to the desert of Gobi, which the travellers had to cross : — ** In this desert there are a great many evil spirits and hot winds. Those who encounter the latter perish to a man. There are neither birds above nor beasts below. Gazing on all sides, as far as the eye can reach, in order to mark the track, it would be impossible to succeed but for the rotting bones of dead men which point the way." 112 CHINESE LITERATURE Buddha-Gaya, the scene of recent interesting explora- tions conducted by the late General Cunningham, was visited by Fa Hsien, and is described by him as follows : — "The pilgrims now arrived at the city of Gaya, also a complete waste within its walls. Journeying about three more miles southwards, they reached the place where the B6dhisatva formerly passed six years in self-mortification. It is very woody. From this point going west a mile, they arrived at the spot where Buddha entered the water to bathe, and a god pressed down the branch of a tree to pull him out of the pool. Also, by going two-thirds of a mile farther north, they reached the place where the two lay-sisters presented Buddha with congee made with milk. Two-thirds of a mile to the north of this is the place where Buddha, sitting on a stone under a great tree and facing the east, ate it. The tree and the stone are both there still, the latter being about six feet in length and breadth by over two feet in height. In Central India the climate is equable ; trees will live several thousand, and even so much as ten thousand years. From this point going north-east half a yojana, the pilgrims arrived at the cave where the B6dhisatva, having entered, sat down cross- legged with his face to the west, and reflected as fol- lows: Mf I attain perfect wisdom, there should be some miracle in token thereof.' Whereupon the silhouette of Buddha appeared upon the stone, over three feet in length, and is plainly visible to this day. Then heaven and earth quaked mightily, and the gods who were in space cried out, saying, 'This is not the place where past and future Buddhas have attained and should attain perfect wisdom. The proper spot is beneath the Bd tree, less than half a yojana to the south-west of this.' When the gods had uttered these words, they proceeded FA HSIEN 113 to lead the way with singing in order to conduct him thither. The B6dhisatva got up and followed, and when thirty paces from the tree a god gave him the kus'a grass. Having accepted this, he went on fifteen paces farther, when five hundred dark-coloured birds came and flew three times round him, and departed. The Bddhisatva went on to the B6 tree, and laying down his kus*a grass, sat down with his face to the east. Then Mara, the king of the devils, sent three beautiful women to approach from the north and tempt him ; he himself approaching from the south with the same object. The Bddhisatva pressed the ground with his toes, whereupon the infernal army retreated in confusion, and the three women became old. At the above-mentioned place where Buddha suffered mortification for six years, and on all these other spots, men of after ages have built pagodas and set up images, all of which are still in existence. Where Buddha, having attained perfect wisdom, contemplated the tree for seven days, experiencing the joys of emancipation ; where Buddha walked backwards and forwards, east and west, under the Bd tree for seven days ; where the gods produced a jewelled chamber and worshipped Buddha for seven days ; where the blind dragon Muchilinda enveloped Buddha for seven days; where Buddha sat facing the east on a square stone beneath the nyagrodha tree, and Brahm^ came to salute him ; where the four heavenly kings offered their alms-bowls ; where the five hundred traders gave him cooked rice and honey ; where he converted the brothers Kasyapa with their disciples to the number of one thousand souls — on all these spots st(ipas have been raised." The following passage refers to Ceylon, called by Fa Hsien the Land of the Lion, that is, Singhala, from 114 CHINESE LITERATURE the name of a trader who first founded a kingdom there : — "This country had originally no inhabitants; only devils and spirits and dragons lived in it, with whom the merchants of neighbouring countries came to trade. When the exchange of commodities took place, the devils and spirits did not appear in person, but set out their valuables with the prices attached. Then the merchants, according to the prices, bought the things and carried them off. But from the merchants going backwards and forwards and stopping on their way, the attractions of the place became known to the inhabitants of the neigh- bouring countries, who also went there, and thus it became^ a great nation. The temperature is very agree- able in this country ; there is no distinction of summer and winter. The trees and plants are always green, and cultivation of the soil is carried on as men please, without regard to seasons." Meanwhile, the Indian Kumarajiva, one of the Four Suns of Buddhism, had been occupied between a.d. 405 and 412 in dictating Chinese commentaries on the Budd* hist Canon to some eight hundred priests. He also wrote a sh&stra on Reality and Appearailce, and translated the Diamond SOtra, which has done more to popularise Buddhism with the educated classes than all the material parts of this religion put together. Chinese poets and philosophers have drawn inspiration and instruction from its pages, and the work might now almost be classed as a national classic. Here are two short extracts : — (i.) " Buddha said, O Subhuti, tell me after thy wit, can a man see the Buddha in the flesh ? KUMARAJIVA— HSCAN TSANG 115 *' He cannot, O World-Honoured, and for this reason : The Buddha has declared that flesh has no objective existence. "Then Buddha told Subhuti, saying, All objective existences are unsubstantial and unreal. If a man can see clearly that they are so, then can he see the Buddha." (2.) " Buddha said, O Subhuti, if one man were to col- lect the seven precious things from countless galaxies of worlds, and bestow all these in charity, and another virtuous man, or virtuous woman, were to become filled with the spirit, and held fast by this sHitray preach- ing it ever so little for the conversion of mankind, I say unto you that the happiness of this last man would far exceed the happiness of that other man. *' Conversion to what ? To the disregard of objective existences, and to absolute quiescence of the individual. And why ? Because every external phenomenon is like a dream, like a vision, like a bubble, like shadow, like dew, like lightning, and should be regarded as such." In A.D. 520 Bddhidharma came to China, and was received with honour. He had been the son of a king in Southern India. He taught that religion was not to be learnt from books, but that man should seek and find the Buddha in his own heart. Just before his arrival Sung Yun had been sent to India to obtain more Buddhist books, and had remained two years in Kandahar, returning with 175 volumes. Then, in 629, HslJAN Tsang set out for India with the same object, and also to visit the holy places of Buddhism. He came back in 645, bringing with him 657 Buddhist books, besides many images and pictures Ii6 CHINESE LITERATURE and 150 relics. He spent the rest of his life translating these books, and also, like Fa Hsien, wrote a narrative of his travels. This brings us down to the beginning of the Tang dynasty, when Buddhism had acquired, in spite of much opposition and even persecution, what has since proved to be a lasting hold upon the masses of the Chinese people. BOOK THE THIRD MINOR DYNASTIES (a.d. aoc— 600) BOOK THE THIRD MINOR DYNASTIES (a.d. 300—600) CHAPTER I POETRY— MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE The centuries which elapsed between a.d. 200 and 600 were not favourable to the development and growth of a national literature. During a great part of the time the empire was torn by civil wars; there was not much leisure for book-learning, and few patrons to encourage it. Still the work was carried on, and many great names have come down to us. The dark years between A.D. 196 and 221, which witnessed the downfall of the House of Han, were illu- mined by the names of seven writers, now jointly known as the Seven Scholars of the Chien-An period. They were all poets. There was Hstj Kan, who fell under the influence of Buddhism and translated into Chinese the PranyamUla shdstra tikd of NAgArdjuna. The fol- lowing lines are by him : — *' O floating clouds thai swim in heaven above. Bear on your wings these words to him I love, i . . j4las I you float along nor heed my pain. And leave m^ fure to love and long in vain / I20 CHINESE LITERATURE I see other dear ones to their homes returtt^ And for his coming shall not I too yearn f Since my lord left — ah me^ unhappy day / — • My mirror's dust has not been brushed away; My hearty like running water ^ knows nopeace^ But bleeds and bleeds forever without cectse!* There was K*ung Jung, a descendant of Confucius in the twentieth degree, and a most precocious child. At ten years of age he went with his father to Lo-yang, where Li Ying, the Dragon statesman, was at the height of his political reputation. Unable from the press of visitors to gain admission, he told the doorkeeper to inform Li Ying that he was a connection, and thus succeeded in getting in. When Li Ying asked him what the connection was, he replied, " My ancestor Con- fucius and your ancestor Lao Tzu were friends en- gaged in the quest for truth, so that you and I may be said to be of the same family." Li Ying was astonished, but Ch'^n Wei said, "Cleverness in youth does not mean brilliancy in later life," upon which K*ung Jung remarked, "You, sir, must evidently have been very clever as a boy." Entering official life, he rose to be Governor of Po-hai in Shantung; but he incurred the displeasure of the great Ts*ao Ts'ao, and was put to death with all his family. He was an open-hearted man, and fond of good company. "If my halls are full of guests," he would say, "and my bottles full of wine, I am happy." The following is a specimen of his poetry : — " The wanderer reaches home with joy From absence of a year and mare : His eye seeks a beloved boy — His wife lies weeping on the floor. K*UNG JUNG— WANG TS'AN 121 " They whisper he is gone. The glooms Of evening fall ; beyond the gate A lonely grave in outline looms To greet the sire who caTne too late, " Forth to the little mound he flings^ Where wild-flowers bloom on every side, • • • His bones are in the Yellow Springs^ His flesh like dust is scattered wide, " * O childy who never knew thy sire^ For ever now to be unknown^ Ere long thy wandering ghost shall tire Of flitting friendless and alone. " * O son, maris greatest earthly boony With thee I bury hopes andfears.^ He bowed his head in grief and soon His breast was wet with rolling tears. ^Lifis dread uncertainty he knows ^ But oh for this untimely close /'* There was Wang Ts*an (a.d. 177-217), a learned man who wrote an Ars Poetica^ not, however, in verse. A youth of great promise, he excelled as a poet, although the times were most unfavourable to success. It has been alleged, with more or less truth, that all Chinese poetry is pitched in the key of melancholy ; that the favourite themes of Chinese poets are the transitory character of life with its partings and other ills, and the inevitable ap- proach of death, with substitution of the unknown for the known. Wang Ts'an had good cause for his lamentations. He was forced by political disturbances to leave his home at the capital and seek safety in flight. There, as he tells us, " Wolves and tigers work their own sweet willP On the way he finds " Naught but bleached bones covering the plain aJiead^ 122 CHINESE LITERATURE and he comes across a famine-stricken woman who had thrown among the bushes a child she was unable to feed. Arriving at the Great River, the setting sun brings his feelings to a head : — " Streaks of light still cling to the hill-tops^ While a deeper shade falls upon the steep slopes; The fox makes his way to his burrow^ Birds fly back to their homes in the wood^ Clear sound the ripples of the rushing waves ^ Along the banks the gibbons scream and cry^ My sleeves are fluttered by the whistling gale^ The lapels of my robe are drenched with dew. The livelong night I cannot close my eyes. I arise and seize my guitar ^ Whichy ever in sympathy with mat^s changing moods^ Now sounds responsive to my griefs But music cannot make him forget his kith and kin — ^^ Most of them^ alas! are prisoners^ And weeping will be my portion to the end. With all the joyous spots in the empire^ Why must I retnain in this place f Ahy like the grttb in smartweed^ I am growing insensible to bitterness}^ By the last line he means to hint "how much a long communion tends to make us what we are." There was YiNG Yang, who, when his own political career was cut short, wrote a poem with a title which may be interpreted as " Regret that a Bucephalus should stand idle." There was LiU CnfeNG, who was put to death for daring to cast an eye upon one of the favourites of the great general Ts*ao Ts'ao, virtual founder of the House of Wei. CrffeN Lin and Yuan Yu complete the tale. To these seven names an eighth and a ninth are added TS'AO TSAO 123 by courtesy : those of Ts'ao Ts'ao above mentioned, and of his third son, Ts'ao Chih, the poet. The former played a remarkable part in Chinese history. His father had been adopted as son by the chief eunuch of the palace, and he himself was a wild young man much given to coursing and hawking. He managed, however, to graduate at the age of twenty, and, after distinguishing himself in a campaign against insurgents, raised a volunteer force to purge the country of various powerful chieftains who threatened the integrity of the empire. By degrees the supreme power passed into his hands, and he caused the weak Emperor to raise his daughter to the rank of Empress. He is popularly regarded as the type of a bold bad Minister and of a cunning unscrupulous rebel. His large armies are proverbial, and at one time he is said to have had so many as a million of men under arms. As an instance of the discipline which prevailed in his camp, it is said that he once condemned himself to death for having allowed his horse to shy into a field of grain, in accordance with his own severe regulations against any injury to standing crops. However, in lieu of losing his head, he was persuaded to satisfy his sense of justice by cutting off his hair. The following lines are from a song by him, written in an abrupt metre of four words to the line : — " Here is wine^ let us sing; For matis life is shorty Like the morning dew^ Its best days gone by. But though we would rejoice^ Sorrows are hard to forget^ What will make us forget themf Wine^ and only wine^^ After Ts'ao Ts'ao's death came the epoch of the Three 124 CHINESE LITERATURE Kingdoms, the romantic story of which is told in the famous novel to be mentioned later on. Ts*ao Ts'ao's eldest son became the first Emperor of one of these, the Wei Kingdom, and Ts'ao Chih, the poet, occupied an awkward position at court, an object of suspicion and dislike. At ten years of age he already excelled in com- position, so much so that his father thought he must be a plagiarist ; but he settled the question by producing off-hand poems on any given theme. " If all the talent of the world," said a contemporary poet, "were repre- sented by ten, Ts'ao Chih would have eight, I should have one, and the rest of mankind one between them/' There is a story that on one occasion, at the bidding of his elder brother, probably with mischievous intent, he composed an impromptu stanza while walking only seven steps. It has been remembered more for its point than its poetry : — " A fine dish of beans had been placed in the pot With a view to a good rness of pottage all hot. The beanstalks y aflame^ a fierce heat were begetting^ The beans in the pot were all fuming and fretting. Yet the beans and the stalks were not bom to be foes j Ohy why should these hurry to finish off those f^^ The following extract from a poem of his contains a very well-known maxim, constantly in use at the present day : — " The superior man takes precautions^ And avoids giving cause for suspicion. He will not pull up his shoes in a melonfield^ Kor under a plum-tree straiglUen his hat. Brothers- and sisters-in-law may not join hands^ Elders and youngers may not walk abreast; By toil and humility the handle is grasped; Moderate your brilliancy^ and difficulties disappear^ LIU LING 125 During the third century A.D. another and more mer- curial set of poets, also seven in number, formed them- selves into a club, and became widely famous as the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. Among these was Liu Ling, a hard drinker, who declared that to a drunken man "the affairs of this world appear but as so much duckweed on a river." He wished to be always accom- panied by a servant with wine, followed by another with a spade, so that he might be buried where he fell. On one occasion, yielding to the entreaties of his wife, he promised to "swear off," and bade her prepare the usual sacrifices of wine and meat. When all was ready, he prayed, saying, "O God, who didst give to Liu Ling a reputation through wine, he being able to consume a gallon at a sitting and requiring a quart to sober him again, listen not to the words of his wife, for she speaketh not truth." Thereupon he drank up the sacriiicial wine, and was soon as drunk as ever. His bias was towards the Tao of Lao TzQ, and he was actually plucked for his degree in consequence of an essay extolling the hetero- dox doctrine of Inaction. The following skit exhibits this Taoist strain to a marked degree : — "An old gentleman, a friend of mine (that is, himself), regards eternity as but a single day, and whole centuries as but an instant of time. The sun and moon are the windows of his house ; the cardinal points are the boundaries of his domain. He wanders unrestrained and free; he dwells within no walls. The canopy of heaven is his roof ; his resting-place is the lap of earth. He follows his fancy in all things. He is never for a moment without a wine-flask in one hand, a goblet in the other. His only thought is wine : he knows of naught beyond. 126 CHINESE LITERATURE "Two respectable philanthropists, hearing of my friend's weakness, proceeded to tax him on the subject ; and with many gestures of disapprobation, fierce scowls, and gnashing of teeth, preached him quite a sermon on the rules of propriety, and sent his faults buzzing round his head like a swarm of bees. "When they began, the old gentleman filled himself another bumper ; and sitting down, quietly stroked his beard and sipped his wine by turns, until at length he lapsed into a semi-inebriate state of placid enjoyment, varied by intervals of absolute unconsciousness or of partial return to mental lucidity. His ears were beyond the reach of thunder ; he could not have seen a moun- tain. Heat and cold existed for him no more. He knew not even the workings of his own mind. To him, the affairs of this world appeared but as so much duckweed on a river; while the two philanthropists at his side looked like two wasps trying to convert a caterpillar" (into a wasp, as the Chinese believe is done). Another was Hsi K*ang, a handsome young man, seven feet seven inches in height, who was married — a doubtful boon — into the Imperial family. His favourite study was alchemistic research, and he passed his days sitting under a willow-tree in his courtyard and experi- menting in the transmutation of metals, varying his toil with music and poetry, and practising the art of breath- ing with a view to securing immortality. Happening, however, to offend by his want of ceremony one of the Imperial princes, who was also a student of alchemy, he was denounced to the Emperor as a dangerous person and a traitor, and condemned to death. Three thousand disciples offered each one to take the place of their beloved master, but their request was not granted. He HSIANG HSIU— YCAN CHI 127 met his fate with fortitude, calmly watching the shadows thrown by the sun and playing upon his lute. The third was HsiANG Hsiu, who also tried his hand at alchemy, and whose commentary on Chuang Tzu was stolen, as has been already stated, by Kuo Hsiang. The fourth was YOan Hsien, a wild harum-scarum fellow, but a performer on the guitar and a great autho- rity on the theory of music. He and his uncle, both poverty-stricken, lived on one side of the road, while a wealthier branch of the family lived on the other side. On the seventh of the seventh moon the latter put out all their grand fur robes and fine clothes to air, as is cus- tomary on that day ; whereupon Yiian Hsien on his side forked up a pair of the short breeches, called calf-nose drawers, worn by the common coolies, explaining to a friend that he was a victim to the tyranny of custom. The fifth was YOan Chi, another musician, whose harp- sichords became the "Strads" of China. He entered the army and rose to a high command, and then exchanged his post for one where he had heard there was a better cook. He was a model of filial piety, and when his mother died he wept so violently that he brought up several pints of blood. Yet when Chi Hsi went to con- dole with him, he showed only the whites of his eyes (that is, paid no attention to him) ; while Chi Hsi's brother, who carried along with him a jar of wine and a guitar, was welcomed with the pupils. His best-known work is a political and allegorical poem in thirty-eight stanzas averaging about twelve lines to each. The allusions in this are so skilfully veiled as to be quite unrecognisable without a commentary, such concealment being abso- lutely necessary for the protection of the author in the troublous times during which he wrote. 128 CHINESE LITERATURE The sixth was Wang Jung, who could look at the sun without being dazzled, and lastly there was Shan T'ao, a follower of Taoist teachings, who was spoken of as " uncut jade " and as " gold ore." Later on, in the fourth century, comes Fu Mi, of whom nothing is known beyond his verses, of which the following is a specimen : — " Thy chariot and horses have gone^ and J fret And long for the lover I n^er can forget, O wanderer^ bound in far countries to dwell^ Would I were thy shadow / — Td follow thee well; And though clouds and though darkness my presence should hide^ In the bright light of day J would stand by thy side / " We now reach a name which is still familiar to all students of poetry in the Middle Kingdom. Tao CrfiEN (a.d. 365-427), or Tao Yuan-ming as he was called in early life, after a youth of poverty obtained an appoint- ment as magistrate. But he was unfitted by nature for official life ; all he wanted, to quote his own* prayer, was 'Mength of years and depth of wine." He only held the post for eighty-three days, objecting to receive a superior officer with the usual ceremonial on the ground that " he could not crook the hinges of his back for five pecks of rice a day," such being the regulation pay of a magis- trate. He then retired into private life and occupied himself with poetry, niusic, and the culture of flowers, especially chrysanthemums, which are inseparably asso- TAO CH'IEN 129 dated with his name. In the latter pursuit he was seconded by his wife, who worked in the back garden while he worked in the front. His retirement from office is the subject of the following piece, of the poetical-prose class, which, in point of style, is con- sidered one of the masterpieces of the language : — " Homewards I bend my steps. My fields, my gardens, are choked with weeds : should I not go ? My soul has led a bondsman's life : why should I remain to pine ? But I will waste no grief upon the past; I will devote my energies to the future. I have not wandered far astray. I feel that I am on the right track once again. " Lightly, lightly, speeds my boat along, my garments fluttering to the gentle breeze. I inquire my route as I go. I grudge the slowness of the dawning day. From afar I descry my old home, and joyfully press onwards in my haste. The servants rush forth to meet me ; my children cluster at the gate. The place is a wilderness; but there is the old pine-tree and my chrysanthemums. I take the little ones by the hand, and pass in. Wine is brought in full jars, and I pour out in brimming cups. I gaze out at my favourite branches. I loll against the window in my new-found freedom. I look at the sweet children on my knee. " And now I take my pleasure in my garden. There is a gate, but it is rarely opened. I lean on my staff as I wander about or sit down to rest. I raise my head and contemplate the lovely scene. Clouds rise, unwilling, from the bottom of the hills; the weary bird seeks its nest again. Shadows vanish, but still I linger around my lonely pine. Home once more! I'll have no friend- ships to distract me hence. The times are out of joint for me; and what have I to seek from men? In the I30 CHINESE LITERATURE pure enjoyment of the family circle I will pass my days, cheering my idle hours with lute and book. My hus- bandmen will tell me when spring-time is nigh, and when there will be work in the furrowed fields. Thither I shall repair by cart or by boat, through the deep gorge, over the dizzy cliff, trees bursting merrily into leaf, the streamlet swelling from its tiny source. Glad is this renewal of life in due season ; but for me, I rejoice that my journey is over. Ah, how short a time it is that we are here ! Why then not set our hearts at rest, ceasing to trouble whether we remain or go ? What boots it to wear out the soul with anxious thoughts ? I want not wealth ; I want not power ; heaven is beyond my hopes. Then let me stroll through the bright hours as they pass, in my garden among my flowers ; or I will mount the hill and sing my song, or weave my verse beside the limpid brook. Thus will I work out my allotted span, content with the appointments of Fate, my spirit free from care." The "Peach-blossom Fountain" of Tao Ch*ien is a well-known and charming allegory, a form of literature much cultivated by Chinese writers. It tells how a fisher- man lost his way among the creeks of a river, and came upon a dense and lovely grove of peach-trees in full bloom, through which he pushed his boat, anxious to see how far the grove extended. " He found that the peach-trees ended where the water began, at the foot of a hill ; and there he espied what seemed to be a cave with light issuing from it. So he made fast his boat, and crept in through a narrow entrance, which shortly ushered him into a new world of level country, of- fine houses, of rich fields, of fine pools, and of luxuriance of mulberry and bamboo. T'AO CH*IEN 131 Highways of traffic ran north and south; sounds of crowing cocks and barking dogs were heard around; the dress of the people who passed along or were at work in the fields was of a strange cut ; while young and old alike appeared to be contented and happy." He is told that the ancestors of these people had taken refuge there some five centuries before to escape the troublous days of the "First Emperor," and that there they had remained, cut off completely from the rest of the human race. On his returning home the story is noised abroad, and the Governor sends out men to find this strange region, but the fisherman is never able to find it again. The gods had permitted the poet to go back for a brief span to the peach-blossom days of his youth. One critic speaks of Tao Ch'ien as " drunk with the fumes of spring." Another says, " His heart was fixed upon loyalty and duty, while his body was content with leisure and repose. His emotions were real, his scenery was real, his facts were real, and his thoughts were real. His workmanship was so exceedingly fine as to appear natural ; his adze and chisel {labor limae) left no traces behind." Much of his poetry is political, and bristles with allusions to events which are now forgotten, mixed up with thoughts and phrases which are greatly admired by his countrymen. Thus, when he describes meeting with an old friend in a far-off land, such a passage as this would be heavily scored by editor or critic with marks of commendation : — " Ere words be spoke^ the heart is drunk; WJuit need to call for wine ? " 132 CHINESE LITERATURE The following is one of his occasional poems : — " A scholar lives on yonder hill, His clothes are rarely whole to view. Nine times a month he eats his fill. Once in ten years his hcU is new. A wretched lot I— and yet the while He ever wears a sunny smile. Longing to know what like was he. At dawn my steps a path unclosed Where dark firs left the passage free And on the eaves the white clouds dosed But he, as spying my intent. Seized his guitar and swept the strings; up flew a crane towards heaven bent. And now a startled pheasant springs. . . . Oh, let me rest with thee until The winter winds again blow chill /^ Pad Chao was an official and a poet who perished, A.D. 466, in a rebellion. Some of his poetry has been preserved : — " What do these halls of jasper mean, and shining floor. Where tapestries of satin screen window and door f A lady on a lonely seat, embroidering Fair flowers which seem to smell cu sweet ; as buds in spring. Swallows flit past, a zephyr shakes \ the plum-blooms down; | She draws the blind, a goblet takes \ her thoughts to drown. \ And now she sits in tears, or hums, nursing her grief That in her life joy rarely comes to bring relief . . . HSIAO YEN 133 Oh^for the humble turtles JUght^ my mate and I; Not the lone crane far out of sight beyond the sky / " The original name of a striking character who, in A.D. 502, placed himself upon the throne as first Emperor of the Liang dynasty, was Hsiao Yen. He was a devout Buddhist, living upon priestly fare and taking only one meal a day ; and on two occasions, in 527 and 529, he actually adopted the priestly garb. He also wrote a Buddhist ritual in ten books. Interpreting the Buddhist commandment ''Thou shalt not kill" in its strictest sense, he caused the sacrificial victims to be made of dough. The following short poem is from his pen : — " Trees grow^ not alike^ by the mound and the moat; Birds sing in the forest with varying note; Of the fish in the river some dive and some float. The mountains rise high and the waters sink low^ But the why and the wherefore we never can know.^ Another well-known poet who lived into the seventh century is HsiEH Tao-h£ng. He offended Yang Ti, the second Emperor of the Sui dynasty, by writing better verses than his Majesty, and an excuse was found for putting him to death. One of the most admired couplets in the language is associated with his name though not actually by him, its author being unknown. To amuse a party of friends Hsieh Tao-h^ng had written impromptu, ** A week in the spring to the exile appears lake an absence from home of a couple of years,* 134 CHINESE LITERATURE A "southerner" who was present sneered at the shallow- ness of the conceit, and immediately wrote down the following : — ^*' Jfhome^ with tlie wild geese of autumn^ w^re going y Our liearis will be off ere tlie spring flowers are blowing,** An official of the Sui dynasty was Fu I (a.d. 554-639), who became Historiographer under the first Emperor of the Tang dynasty. He had a strong leaning towards Taoism, and edited the Tao-Ti-Ching, At the same time he presented a memorial asking that the Buddhist religion might be abolished; and when Hsiao Yii, a descendant of Hsiao Yen (above), questioned him on the subject, he said, " You were not born in a hollow mul- berry-tree ; yet you respect a religion which does not recognise the tie between father and son I " He urged that at any rate priests and nuns should be compelled to marry and bring up families, and not escape from con- tributing their share to the revenue, adding that Hsiao Yii by defending their doctrines showed himself no better than they were. At this Hsiao Yii held up his hands, and declared that hell was made for such n>en as Fu L The result was that severe restrictions were placed for a short time upon the teachers of Buddhism. The Emperor Tai Tsung once got hold of a Tartar priest who could ''charm people into unconsciousness, and then charm them back to life again," and spoke of his powers to Fu I. The latter said confidently, " He will not be able to charm me ; " and when put to the test, the priest completely failed. He was the originator of epitaphs, and wrote his own, as follows : — WANG CHI 135 ** Fu I loved the green hills and the white clouds . . • Alas I he died of drink!" Wang Chi of the sixth and seventh centuries A.D., was a wild and unconventional spirit, with a fatal fondness for wine, which caused his dismissal from office. His capacity for liquor was boundless, and he was known as the Five-bottle Scholar. In his lucid intervals he wrote much beautiful prose and verse, which may still be read with pleasure. The following is from an account of his visit to Drunk- Land, the story of which is told with all due gravity and in a style modelled upon that which is found in ordinary accounts of strange outlandish nations : — ^^This country is many thousand miles from the Middle Kingdom. It is a vast, boundless plain, without mountains or undulations of any kind. The climate is equable, there being neither night, nor day, nor cold, nor heat. The manners and customs are everywhere the same. " There are no villages nor congregations of persons. The inhabitants are ethereal in disposition, and know neither love, hate, joy, nor anger. They inhale the breeze and sip the dew, eating none of the five cereals. Calm in repose, slow of gait, they mingle with birds, beasts, fishes, and scaly creatures, ignorant of boats, chariots, weapons, or implements in general. " The Yellow Emperor went on a visit to the capital of Drunk-Land, and when he came back, he was quite out oi conceit with the empire, the government of which seemed to him but paltry trifling with knotted cords. " Yuan Chi, Tao Ch'ien,* and some others, about ten in all, made a trip together to Drunk-Land, and sank, ^ Here the poet makes a mistake. These two were not contemporaries. 10 136 CHINESE LITERATURE never to rise again. They were buried where they fell, and now in the Middle Kingdom they are dubbed Spirits of Wine. "Alas, I could not bear that the pure and peaceful domain of Drunk-Land should come to be regarded as a preserve of the ancients. So I went there myself." The period closes with the name of the Emperor known as Yang Ti, already mentioned in connec- tion with the poet Hsieh Tao-hfing. The murderer, first of his elder brother and then of his father, he mounted the throne in A.D. 605, and gave himself up to extravagance and debauchery. The trees in his park were supplied in winter with silken leaves and flowers, and birds were almost exterminated to provide a suffi- cient supply of down for his cushions. After reigning for thirteen years this unlikely patron of literature fell a victim to assassination. Yet in spite of his otherwise disreputable character, Yang Ti prided himself upon his literary attainments. He set one hundred scholars to work editing a collection of classical, medical, and other treatises ; and it was under his reign, in a.d. 606, that the examination for the second or "master of arts" degree was instituted. CHAPTER II CLASSICAL SCHOLARSHIP In the domains of classical and general literature Huang- FU Mi (a.d. 215-282) occupies an honourable place. Beginning life at the ploughtail, by perseverance he became a fine scholar, and adopted literature as a pro« fession. In spite of severe rheumatism he was never without a book in his hand, and became so absorbed in his work that he would forget all about meals and bedtime. He was called the Book-Debauchee, and once when he wished to borrow works from the Emperor Wu Ti of the Chin dynasty, whose proffers of office he had refused, his Majesty sent him back a cart-load to go on with. He produced essays, poetry, and several important biographical works. His work on the Spring and Autumn Annals had also considerable vogue. Sun Shu-JAN, of about the same date, distinguished himself by his works on the Confucian Canon, and wrote on the Erh Ya. HsUN Hstt (d. A.D. 289) aided in drawing up a Penal Code for the newly-established Chin dynasty, took a leading part in editing the Bamboo Annals, which had just been discovered in Honan, provided a preface to the Mu T*ten TzH Chuan^ and also wrote on music. Kuo HsiANG {d. A.D. 312) occupied himself chiefly with the philosophy of Lao Tzu and with the writings a 37 138 CHINESE LITERATURE of Chuang Tz&. It was said of him that his conver- sation was like the continuous downflow of a rapid, or the rush of water from a sluice. Kuo Po {d. A.D. 324) was a scholar of great repute. Besides editing various important classical works, he was a brilliant exponent of the doctrines of Taoism and the reputed founder of the art of geomancy as applied to graves, universally practised in China at the present day. He was also learned in astronomy, divination, and natural philosophy. Fan Yeh, executed for treason in A.D. 445, is chiefly famous for his history of the Han dynasty from about the date of the Christian era, when the dynasty was interrupted, as has been stated, by a usurper, down to the final collapse two hundred years later. SHfeN Yo (a.d. 441-513), another famous scholar, was the son of a Governor of Huai-nan, whose execution in A.D. 453 caused him to go for a time into hiding. Poor and studious, he is said to have spent the night in repeating what he had learnt by day, as his mother, anxious on account of his health, limited his supply of oil and fuel. Entering official life, he rose to high office, from which he retired in ill-health, loaded with honours. Personally, he was remarkable for hav- ing two pupils to his left eye. He was a strict tee- totaller, and lived most austerely. He had a library of twenty thousand volumes. He was the author of the histories of the Chin, Liu Sung, and Ch'i dynasties. He is said to have been the first to classify the four tones. In his autobiography he writes, "The poets of old, during the past thousand years, never hit upon this plan. I alone discovered its advantages." The Emperor Wu Ti of the Liang dynasty one day said to HSIAO T'UNG 139 him, ''Come, tell me, what are these famous four tones?" "They are whatever your Majesty pleases to make them," replied Shfin Yo, skilfully selecting for his answer four characters which illustrated, and in the usual order, the four tones in question. Hsiao Tung (a,d. 501-531) was the eldest son of Hsiao Yen, the founder of the Liang dynasty, whom he predeceased. Before he was five years old he was reported to have learned the Classics by heart, and his later years were marked by great literary ability, notably in verse-making. Handsome and of charming manners, mild and forbearing, he was universally loved. In 527 he nursed his mother through her last illness, and his grief for her death impaired his naturally fine constitution, for it was only at the earnest solicitation of his father that he consented either to eat or drink during the period of mourning. Learned men were sure of his patronage, and his palace contained a large library. A lover of nature, he delighted to ramble with scholars about his beautiful park, to which he declined to add the attraction of singing-girls. When the price of grain rose in consequence of the war with Wei in 526, he lived on the most frugal fare ; and throughout his life his charities were very large and kept secret, being dis- tributed by trusty attendants who sought out all cases of distress. He even emptied his own wardrobe for the benefit of the poor, and spent large sums in burying the outcast dead. Against forced labour on public works he vehemently protested. To his father he was most respectful, and wrote to him when he himself was almost at the last gasp, in the hope of concealing his danger. But he is remembered now not so much for his virtues as for his initiation of a new department in I40 CHINESE LITERATURE literature. A year before his death he completed the W^n Ifsuan, the first published collection of choice works, whole or in part, of a large number of authors. These were classified under such heads as poetry of various kinds, essays, inscriptions, memorials, funeral orations, epitaphs, and prefaces. The idea thus started was rapidly developed, and has been continued down to modern times. Huge col- lections of works have from time to time been reprinted in uniform editions, and many books which might otherwise have perished have been preserved for grate- ful posterity. The Record of the Buddhistic Kingdoms by Fa Hsien may be quoted as an example. BOOK THE FOURTH THE T'ANG DYNASTY (a.d. 600-900) BOOK THE FOURTH THE TANG DYNASTY (x.d. 600-900) CHAPTER I POETRY The Tang dynasty is usually associated in Chinese minds with much romance of love and war, with wealth, culture, and refinement, with frivolity, extravagance, and dissipation, but most of all with poetry. China's best e£Forts in this direction were chiefly produced within the limits of its three hundred years' duration, and they have been carefully preserved as finished models for future poets of all generations. "Poetry," says a modern Chinese critic, "came into being with the Odes, developed with the Li Sao, burst forth and reached perfection under the Tangs. Some good work was indeed done under the Han and Wei dynasties ; the writers of those days seemed to have material in abundance, but language inadequate to its expression." The " Complete Collection of the Poetry of the Tang Dynasty," published in 1707, contains 48,900 poems of all kinds, arranged in 900 books, and filling thirty good- sized volumes. Some Chinese writers divide the dynasty into three poetical periods, called Early, Glorious, and »43 144 CHINESE LITERATURE Late ; and they profess to detect in the works assigned to each the corresponding characteristics of growth, fulness, and decay. Others insert a Middle period be- tween the last two, making four periods in all. For general purposes, however, it is only necessary to state, that since the age of the Hans the meanings of words had gradually come to be more definitely fixed, and the structural arrangement more uniform and more polished. Imagination began to come more freely into play, and the language to flow more easily and more musically, as though responsive to the demands of art. A Chinese poem is at best a hard nut to crack, expressed as it usually is in lines of five or seven monosyllabic root- ideas, without inflection, agglutination, or grammatical indication of any kind, the connection between which has to be inferred by the reader from the logic, from the context, and least perhaps of all from the syntactical arrangement of the words. Then, again, the poet is hampered not only by rhyme but also by ; tone. For purposes of poetry the characters in the Chinese language are all ranged under two tones, as flats and s/iarps^ and these occupy fixed positions just as dactyls, spondees, trochees, and anapaests in the con- struction of Latin verse. As a consequence, the natural order of words is often entirely sacrificed to the exigen- cies of tone, thus making it more difficult than ever for the reader to grasp the sense. In a stanza of the ordi- nary five-character length the following tonal arrange- ment would appear : — Sharp sharp flat flat sharp Flat flat sharp sharp flat Flat flat flat sharp sharp Sharp sharp sharp flat flat. POETRY 145 The effect produced by these tones is very marked and pleasing to the ear, and often makes up for the faulti- ness of the rhymes, which are simply the rhymes of the Odes as heard 2500 years ago, many of them of course being no longer rhymes at all. Thus, there is as much artificiality about a stanza of Chinese verse as there is about an Alcaic stanza in Latin. But in the hands of the most gifted this artificiality is altogether concealed by art, and the very trammels of tone and rhyme become transfigured, and seem to be necessary aids and adjuncts to success. Many works have been published to guide the student in his admittedly difficult task. The first rule in one of these seems so comprehensive as to make further perusal quite unnecessary. It runs thus : — " Discard commonplace form ; discard commonplace ideas ; discard commonplace phrasing ; discard com- monplace words ; discard commonplace rhymes." A long poem does not appeal to the Chinese mind. There is no such thing as an epic in the language, though, of course, there are many pieces extending to several hundred lines. Brevity is indeed the soul of a Chinese poem, which is valued not so much for what it says as for what it suggests. As in painting, so in poetry suggestion is the end and aim of the artist, who in each case may be styled an impressionist. The ideal length is twelve lines, and this is the limit set to candi- dates at the great public examinations at the present day, the Chinese holding that if a poet cannot say within such compass what he has to say it may very well be left unsaid. The eight-line poem is also a favourite, and so, but for its extreme difficulty, is the four-line epigram, or "stop-short," so called because of its abruptness, though, as the critics explain, " it is 146 CHINESE LITERATURE only the words which stop, the sense goes on," some train of thought having been suggested to the reader. The latter form of verse was in use so far back as the Han dynasty, but only reached perfection under the Tangs. Although consisting of only twenty or twenty- eight words, according to the measure employed, it is just long enough for the poet to introduce, to develop, to embellish, and to conclude his theme in accordance with certain established laws of composition. The third line is considered the most troublesome to produce, some poets even writing it first ; the last line should contain a '^ surprise" or dhumenunL We are, in fact, reminded of the old formula, ^'Omne epigramma sit instar apis," &c., better known in its English dress : — '* The qualities rare in a bee that we meet In an epigram never should fail; The body should always be little and sweety And a sting should be left in the tail^^ The following is an early specimen, by an anonymous writer, of the four-line poem : — " The bright moon shining overhead^ The stream beneath the breestis touchy Are pure and perfect joys indeed y — But few are they who think them suckj^ Turning now to the almost endless list of poets from which but a scanty selection can be made, we may begin with Wang Po (a,d. 648-676), a precocious boy who wrote verses when he was six. He took his degree at sixteen, and was employed in the Historical Departs ment, but was dismissed for satirising the cock-fightina propensities of the Imperial princes. He filled up his \ leisure by composing many beautiful poems. He never CH'feN TZO-ANG 147 meditated on these beforehand, but after having pre- pared a quantity of ink ready for use, he would drink himself tipsy and lie down with his face covered up. On waking he would seize his pen and write o£F verses, not a word in which needed to be changed; whence he acquired the sobriquet of Belly-Draft, meaning that his drafts, or rough copies, were all prepared inside. And he received so many presents of valuable silks for writing these odes, that it was said '' he spun with his mind." These lines are from his pen : — '^JVtar these islands a palace was built by a prince ^ But its music and song have departed long since ; The hill-mists of morning sweep down on the halls^ At night the red curtains lie furled on the walls. The clouds derihe water their shadows still casty Things change like the stars : how few autumns have passed And yet where is that prince t where is he t — No reply ^ Save the plash of the stream rolling ceaselessly byj^ A still more famous contemporary of his was CH*iN TzO-ANG (A.D. 656-698), who adopted somewhat sensa- tional means of bringing himself to the notice of the public. He purchased a very expensive guitar which had been for a long time on sale, and then let it be known that on the following day he would perform upon it in public. This attracted a large crowd ; but when Ch'£n arrived he informed his auditors that he had something in his pocket worth much more than the 148 CHINESE LITERATURE guitan Thereupon he dashed the instrument into a thousand pieces, and forthwith began handing round copies of his own writings. Here is a sample, directed against the Buddhist worship of idols, the "Prophet" representing any divinely-inspired teacher of the Con- fucian school : — " On Self the Prophet never rests his eye^ His to relieve the doom of humankind; Ao fairy palaces beyond the shy, Rewards to come, are present to his mind. And I have heard the faith by Buddha taught Lauded as pure and free from earthly taint; Why then these carved and graven idols, fraught With gold and silver, gems, and jade, and paint f TJu heavens that roof this earth, mountain and dale. All that is great and gr ami, shall pass away ; And if the art of gods may not prevail. Shall maris poor handiwork escape decay t Fools that ye are / In this ignoble light The true faith fades and passes out of sight" As an official, Ch'en Tzu-ang once gained great kuelos by a truly Solomonic decision. A man, having slain the murderer of his father, was himself indicted for murder. Ch*en Tzu-ang caused him to be put to death, but at the same time conferred an honorific distinction upon his village for having produced so filial a son. Not much is known of SUNG Chih-w£:n (d. A.D, 710), at any rate to his good. On one occasion the Emperor was so delighted with some of his verses that he took off the Imperial robe and placed it on the poet's shoulders. This is one of his poems : — " The dust of the mom had been laid by a shower. And the trees by the bridge were all covered with flower^ m£ng hao-jan 149 When a white palfrey passed with a saddle of gold^ And a damsel as fair as the fairest of old. But she veiled so discreetly her charms from my eyes That the boy who was with her quite felt for my sighs; And although not a lighted -love reckoned^ I deem^ It was hard that this vision should pass like a areamJ* MiNG Hao-MN (a.D. 689-740) gave no sign in his youth of the genius that was latent within him. He failed at the public examinations, and retired to the mountains as a recluse. He then became a poet of the first rank, and his writings were eagerly sought after. At the age of forty he went up to the capital, and was one day conversing with his famous contemporary, Wang Wei, when sud- denly the Emperor was announced. He hid under a couch, but Wang Wei betrayed him, the result being a pleasant interview with his Majesty. The following is a specimen of his verse : — *' The sun has set behind the western slope^ The ecutern moon lies mirrored in the pool j With streaming hair my balcony I ope^ And stretch my limbs out to enjoy the cooL Loaded with lotus-scent the breeze sweeps by^ Clear dripping drops from tall bamboos I hear^ I gaze upon my idle lute and sigh; ' A las J no sympathetic soul is near . And so I doze, the while before mine eyes Dear friends of other days in dream-clad forms ariseJ* Equally famous as poet and physician was Wang Wei (A.D. 699-759). After a short spell of official life, he too ISO CHINESE LITERATURE retired into seclusion and occupied himself with poetry and with the consolations of Buddhism, in which he was a firm believer. His lines on bidding adieu to M^ng Hao-jan, when the latter was seeking refuge on the mountains, are as follows : — " Dismounted^ der wine we had said our last say ; Then I whisper^ * Dear friend^ tell me J whither away f ' 'Alas/' he replied, * I am sick oflifis illsy And I long for repose on the slumbering hills. But oh seek not to pierce where my footsteps may stray : The white clouds will soothe me for ever and ay J " The accompanying "stop-short" by the same writer is generally thought to contain an effective surprise in the last line : — '* Beneath the bamboo grove^ alone^ I seise my lute and sit and croon ; No ear to hear me^ save mine own : No eye to see me — save the moon,*' Wang Wei has been accused of loose writing and incongruous pictures. A friendly critic defends him as follows : — " For instance, there is Wang Wei, who in- troduces bananas into a snow-storm. When, however, we come to examine such points by the light of scholar- ship, we see that his mind had merely passed into sub- jective relationship with the things described. Fools say he did not know heat from cold." A skilled poet, and a wine-bibber and gambler to boot, was Ts'ui Had, who graduated about A.D. 730. TS'UI HAO 151 He wrote a poem on the Yellow-Crane pagoda which until quite recently stood on the bank of the Yang-tsze near Hankow, and was put up to mark the spot where Wang Tzii-ch'iao, who had attained immortality, went up to heaven in broad daylight six centuries before the Christian era. The great Li Po once thought of writing on the theme, but he gave up the idea so soon as he had read these lines by Ts*ui Hao : — " Here a mortal once sailed up to heaven on a crane^ And the Yellow-Crane Kiosque^ will for ever remain; But the bird flew away and will come back no more^ Though the white cloudi are there as the white clouds of yore. Away to the east lie fair forests of tree s^ From the flowers on the west comes a scent-laden breeze^ Yet my eyes daily turn to their far^pway home^ Beyond the broad River ^ its wavesy and its foam!* By general consent Ll Po himself (a.d. 705-762) would probably be named as China's greatest poet. His wild Bohemian life, his gay and dissipated career at Court, his exile, and his tragic end, all combine to form a most effective setting for the splendid flow of verse which he never ceased to pour forth. At the early age of ten he wrote a *' stop-short " to a firefly : — *' Rain cannot quench thy Umtertis lights Wind makes it shine more brightly bright; Oh why not fly to heaven afar^ And twinkle near the moon — a start^ II IS2 CHINESE LITERATURE Li Po began by wandering about the country, until at length, with five other tippling poets, he retired to the mountains. For some time these Six Idlers of the Bamboo Grove drank and wrote verses to their hearts' content By and by Li Po reached the capital, and on the strength of his poetry was introduced to the Emperor as a "banished angel." He was received with open arms, and soon became the spoilt child of the palace. On one occasion; when the Emperor sent for him, he was found lying drunk in the street ; and it was only after having his face well mopped with cold water that he was fit for the Imperial presence. His talents, however, did not fail him. With a lady of the seraglio to hold his ink-slab, he dashed off some of his most impassioned lines ; at which the Emperor was so overcome that he made the powerful eunuch Kao Li-shih go down on his knees and pull off the poet's boots. On another occasion, the Emperor, who was enjoying himself with his favourite lady in the palace grounds, called for Li Po to commemorate the scene in verse. After some delay the poet arrived, sup- ported between two eunuchs. ** Please your Majesty," he said, " I have been drinking with the Prince and he has made me drunk, but I will do my best." There- upon two of the ladies of the harem held up in front of him a pink silk screen, and in a very short time he had thrown off no less than ten eight-line stanzas, of which the following, describing the life of a palace favourite, is one : — " O^f the joy of youth spent in a gold-fretted Jiall^ In the Crape-flower Pavilion^ the fairest ofall^ LI PO 153 My tresses for head-dress with gay garlands girt^ Carnations arranged o^er my jacket and skirt / Then to wander away in the soft-scented air^ And return by the side of his Majesty s chair . . . But the dance and the song will be der by and by^ And we sheUl dislimn like the rack in the sky? As time went on, Li Po fell a victim to intriguCi and left the Court in disgrace. . It was then that he wrote — '* My whitening hair would make a long^ long rofte^ Yet would not fathom all my depth of woe? After more wanderings and much adventure, he was drowned on a journey, from leaning one night too far over the edge of a boat in a drunken effort to embrace the reflection of the moon. Just previously he had indited the following lines : — " An arbour of flowers and a kettle of wine : Alas / in the bowers no companion is mine. Then the moon sheds her rays on my goblet and me^ And my shadow betrays w^re a party of three. ^ Though the moon cannot swallow her share of the grog^ And my shadow must follow wherever I jog^ — Yet their friendship P II borrow and gaily carouse^ And laugh away sorrow while spring-time allows* 1 54 CHINESE LITERATURE " See the moon^ — how she glanus response to my song; See my shadow^ — it dances so lightly along/ While sober I feel you are both my good friends; When drunken I reel^ our companionship ends* But w^ll soon have a greeting without a good-bye^ At our next merry meeting away in the skyj* His control of the "stop-short" is considered to be perfect : — (i.) " The birds have all flown to their roost in the tree^ The last cloud has just floated lazily by; But we never tire of each other ^ not we. As we sit there together^ — the mountains and /.» (2.) " / wakey and moonbeams play around my bed^ Glittering like hoar-frost to my wondering eyes; Up towards the glorious moon I raise my hecLd^ Then lay me down^ — and thoughts of home ariseJ* The following are general extracts : — A Parting. (i.) " TJu river rolls crystal as clear as the sky. To blend far away with the blue waves of ocean; Man alone ^ when the hour of departure is nigh^ With the wine-cup can soothe his emotion, " The birds of the valley sing loud in the sun^ Where the gibbons their vigils will shortly be keeping: I thought that with tears I had long ago done^ But now I shall never cease weeping/^ LI PO ISS (2.) " Homeward at dusk the clanging rookery wings its eager flight; Then^ chattering on the branches^ all are pairing for the night. Plying her busy loonty a high-bom dame is sitting near^ And through the silken window-screen their voices strike her ear. She stopSy af id thinks of the absent spouse she may never see again; And late in the lonely hours of night her tears flow down like rain^ (3.) " What is life after all but a dream f A nd why should such pother be made f Better far to be tipsy ^ I deem^ And doze cdl day long in the shade, '* When I wake and look out on the lawn^ J hear midst the flowers a bird sing; J ask, * Is it evening or dawn f * The mango-bird whistles^ ^'Tis spring.' " Overpowered with the beautiful sights Another full goblet I pour ^ And would sing till the moon rises bright — But soon Pm as drunk as bfforeP (4.) " You ask what my soul does away in the sky, 1 inwardly smile but I canru>t reply; Like the peach-blossoms carried away by the stream^ J soar to a world of which you cannot dream, ** One more extract may be given, chiefly to exhibit what is held by the Chinese to be of the very essence of real poetry, — suggestion. A poet should not dot his fs. The Chinese reader likes to do that for himself, each according to his own fancy. Hence such a poem as the following, often quoted as a model in its own particular line : — 156 CHINESE LITERATURE **A tortoise I see on a lotus-flower resting: A tnrd ^ mid the reeds and the rushes is nesting; A tight skiff propelled by some boettmat^sfair daughter^ Whose song dies away der the fast-flowing water!* Another poet of the same epoch, of whom his country- men are also justly proud, is Tu Fu (a.d. 712-770). He failed to distinguish himself at the public examina- tions, at which verse-making counts so much, but had nevertheless such a high opinion of his own poetry that he prescribed it as a cure for malarial fever. He finally obtained a post at Court, which he was forced to vacate in the rebellion of 755. As he himself wrote in political allegory — " Full with the freshets of the spring the torrent rushes on; The ferry-boat swings idly ^ for the ferry-man is gone** After further vain attempts to make an official career, he took to a wanderi;ig life, was nearly drowned by an inundation, and was compelled to live for ten days on roots. Being rescued, he succumbed next day to the effects of eating roast-beef and drinking white wine to excess after so long a fast. These are some of his poems : — (i.) "7^ setting sun shines low upon my door Ere dusk enwraps the river fringed with spring; Sweet perfumes rise from gardens by the shore^ And smoke, where crews their boats to anchor bring. " Now twittering birds are roosting in the bower. And flying insects fill the air around, ... O wine, who gave to thee thy subtle power f A thousand cares in one small goblet drowned I " TU FU 157 (2.) " A petal falls / — the spring begins to/ail^ And my heart saddens with the growing gale. Come theny ere autumn spoils bestrew the ground^ Do not forget to pass the wine-cup round Kingfishers build where man once laughed elate^ And now stone dragons guard his graveyard gate / Who follows pleasure^ he alone is wise; Why waste our life in deeds of high emprise f^ (3.) " My home is girdled by a limpid stream^ And there in summer days lif^s movements pause^ Save where some swallow flits from beam to beam^ And the wild sea-gull near and nearer draws, " The goodwife rules a paper board for chess; The children beat a fish-hook out of wire; My ailments call for physic more or less^ What else should this poor frame of mine require t^ (4.) ^^ Alone I wandered der the hills to seek the hermits den^ While sounds of chopping rang around the forests leafy glen, /passed on ice across the brook^ which had not ceased tofreese^ As the slanting rays of afternoon shot sparkling through the trees. " J found he did not joy to gloat der fetid wealth by nighty Buty far from taint ^ to watch the deer in the golden morning light, . . . My mind was clear at coming; but now Vve lost my guide^ And rudderless my little bark is drifting with the tide I " (5.) " From the Court every eve to the pawnshop ipass^ To come back from the river the drunkest of men; As often as not Vm in debt for my glass; — Welly few of us live to be threescore arid ten* rS8 CHINESE LITERATURE The butterfly flutters from flower to flower y The dragonfly sips and springs lightly away^ Each creature is merry its brief little hour^ So let us enjoy our short life while we ntayP Here is a specimen of his skill with the "stop-short," based upon a disease common to all Chinese, poets or otherwise, — nostalgia : — '' White gleam the gulls across the darkling tidcy On the green hills the red flowers seem to burn; Alas / / see another spring has died. . . . When will it come — the day of my return ? " Of the poet Chang Ch*ien not much is known. He graduated in 727, and entered upon an official career, but ultimately betook himself to the mountains and lived as a hermit. He is said to have been a devotee of Taoism. The following poem, however, which deals with dAydna, or the state of mental abstraction in which all desire for existence is shaken off, would make it seem as if his leanings had been Buddhistic. It gives a per- fect picture, so far as it goes, of the Buddhist retreat often to be found among mountain peaks all over China, visited by pilgrims who perform religious exercises or fulfil vows at the feet of the World-Honoured, and by contemplative students eager to shake off the " red dust " of mundane affairs : — ** The clear dawn creeps into the convent oldy The rising sun tips its tall trees with gold^ Asy darkly, by a winding path I reach Dhydnds hall, hidden midst fir and beech. Around these hills sweet birds their pleasure take^ Mar^s heart as free from shadows as this lake; Here worldly sounds are hushed, as by a spell. Save for the booming of the altar belL^* There can be little doubt of the influence of Buddhism WANG CHIEN 159 upon the poet Ts'feN Ts'an, who graduated about 750, as witness his lines on that faith : — •* A shrine whose eaves in far-off cloudland hide : I mounts and with the sun stand side by side. The air is clear j I see wide forests spread And mist'<rowned heights where kings of old lie dead. Scarce der my threshold peeps the Southern Hill; The Wei shrinks through my window to a rilL ... O thou Pure Faithy had I but known thy scope^ The Golden God^ had long since been my hopeP^ Wang Chien took the highest degree in 775, and rose to be Governor of a District, He managed, however, to offend one of the Imperial clansmen, in consequence of which his official career was abruptly cut short. He wrote a good deal of verse, and was on terms of inti- macy with several of the great contemporary poets. In the following lines, the metre of which is irregular, he alludes to the extraordinary case of a soldier's wife who spent all her time on a hill-top looking down the Yang- tsze, watching for her husband's return from the wars. At length — ** Where her husband she sought ^ By the river^s long tracks Into stone she was wrought. And can never come back; \Mid the wind and the rain-storm for ever and ay^ She appecUs to each home-comer passing that way!* The last line makes the stone figure, into which the unhappy woman was changed, appear to be asking of every fresh arrival news of the missing man. That is the skill of the artist, and is inseparably woven into the original. ' Alluding to the huge gilt images of Buddha to be seen in all temples. i6o CHINESE LITERATURE Passing over many poets equally well known with some of those already cited, we reach a name undoubt- edly the most venerated of all those ever associated in any way with the great mass of Chinese literature. Han Yu (A.D. 768-824), canonised and usually spoken of as Han W^n-kung, was not merely a poet, but a statesman of the first rank, and philosopher to boot. He rose from among the humblest of the people to the highest offices of State. In 803 he presented a memorial protesting against certain extravagant honours with which the Emperor Hsien Tsung proposed to receive a bone of Buddha. The monarch was furious, and but for the intercession of friends it would have fared badly with the bold writer. As it was, he was banished to Ch'ao- chou Fu in Kuangtung, where he set himself to civilise the rude inhabitants of those wild parts. In a temple at the summit of the neighbouring range there is to be seen at this day a huge picture of the Prince of Literature, as he has been called by foreigners from his canonisation, with the foll6wing legend attached : — " Wherever he passed, he purified." He is even said to have driven away a huge crocodile which was devasta- ting the watercourses in the neighbourhood ; and the denunciatory ultimatum which he addressed to the mon- ster and threw into the river, together with a pig and a goat, is still regarded as a model of Chinese com- position. It was not very long ere he was recalled to the capital and reinstated in office; but he had been delicate all his life and had grown prematurely old, and was thus unable to resist a severe illness which came upon him. His friend and contemporary, Liu Tsung- yiian, said that he never ventured to open the works of Han Yu without first washing his hands in rose-water. HAN YD i6i His writings, especially his essays, are often of the very highest order, leaving nothing to be desired either in originality or in style. But it is more than all for his pure and noble character, his calm and dignified patriot- ism, that the Chinese still keep his memory green. The following lines were written by Su Tung-p*o, nearly 300 years after his death, for a shrine which had just been put up in honour of the dead teacher by the people of Ch'ao-chou Fu : — " He rode on the dragon to the white cloud domain; He grasped ivith his hand the glory of the sky; Robed with the effulgence of the stars^ The wind bore him delicately to the throne of God. He swept away the chaff and husks of his generation. He roamed over the limits of the earth. He clothed all nature with his bright rays^ The third in the triumvirate ofgetUus^ His rivals panted after him in vain. Dazed by the brilliaficy of the light. He cursed Budiha ; he offended his prince ; He journeyed far away to the distant south; He passed the grave of Shun^ and wept over the daughters of Yao, The water-god went before him and stilled the waves. He drove out the fierce monster as it were a lamb. But above^ in heaven^ there was no music^ and God was sady And summoned him to his place beside the Throne, And noWy with these poor offerings^ I salute him; With red lichees and yellow plantain fruit, A leu! that he did not linger awhile on earthy But passed so soon^ with streaming hair^ into the great unknown!^ Han Yii wrote a large quantity of verse, frequently playful, on an immense variety of subjects, and under his touch the commonplace was often transmuted into wit. Among other pieces there is one on his teeth, which seemed to drop out at regular intervals, so that he * The other two were Li Po and Tu Fu. l62 CHINESE LITERATURE could calculate roughly what span of life remained to him. Altogether, his poetry cannot be classed with that of the highest order, unlike his prose writings, extracts from which will be given in the next chapter. The following poem is a specimen of his lighter vein : — ** To stand upon the fiver-bank and snare the purple fish^ My net well cast across the stream^ was all that I could wish. Or lie concealed and shoot the geese that scream cmdpass apace^ And pay my rent and taxes with the profits of the chase. Then home to peace and happiness^ with wife and children gay^ Though clothes be coarse and fare be hard^ cmd earned from day to day. But now I read and ready scarce knowing what Uis all about, Andj eager to improve my mind, I wear my body out, I draw a snake and give it legs, to find Pve wasted skill. And my hair grows daily whiter as I hurry towards the hilL^ I sit amid the sorrows I have brought on my own head^ And find myself estranged from all, among the living dead, I seek to drown my consciousness in wine, alas / in vain : Oblivion passes quickly and my griefs begin again. Old age comes on, and yet withholds the summons to depart, . . . So ril take another bumper just to ease my aching hearts* > Graves are placed by preference on some hillside. HAN YC 163 Humane treatment of the lower animals is not gene« rally supposed to be a characteristic of the Chinese. They have no Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which may perhaps account for some of their shortcomings in this direction. Han Yli was above all things of a kindly, humane nature, and although the following piece cannot be taken seriously, it affords a useful index to his general feelings : — " Oh^ spare the busy morning fly ^ Spare the mosquiios of the night / And if t/ieir wicked trade they ply^ Let a partition stop their fligHt, " Their span is brief from birth to death ; Like yoUy they bite their little day; And then^ with autumris earliest breathy Like you y too^ they are swept awayP The following lines were written on the way to his place of exile in Kuangtung : — ^^ Alas I the early season flies^ Behold the remnants of the spring I My boat in landlocked water lies^ At dawn I hear the wild birds sing. ** Then^ through clouds lingering on the slope ^ The rising sun breaks on to me^ And thrills me with a fleeting hope^ — A prisoner longing to be free. ** My flowing tears are long since driedy Though care clings closer than it did. But stop / All care we lay aside y" When once they close the coffin UdP Another famous poet, worthy to be mentioned even after Han Yu, was Po CHt)-i (a.d. 772-846). As a child 1 64 CHINESE LITERATURE he was most precocious, knowing a considerable number of the written characters at the early age of seven months, after having had each one pointed out only once by his nurse. He graduated at the age of seventeen, and rose to high office in the State, though at one period of his life he was banished to a petty post, which somewhat disgusted him with officialdom. To console himself, he built a retreat at Hsiang-shan, by which name he is sometimes called ; and there, together with eight con- genial companions, he gave himself up to poetry and speculations upon a future life. To escape recognition and annoyance, all names were dropped, and the party was generally known as the Nine Old Gentlemen of Hsiang-shan. This reaching the ears of the Emperor, he was transferred to be Governor of Chung-chou ; and on the accession of Mu Tsung in 821 he was sent as Governor to Hangchow. There he built one of the great embankments of the beautiful Western Lake, still known as Po's Embankment. He was subsequently Governor of Soochow, and finally rose in 841 to be President of the Board of War. His poems were collected by Imperial command and engraved upon tablets of stone, which were set up in a garden he had made for himself in imitation of his former beloved retreat at Hsiang- shan. He disbelieved in the genuineness of the T€Uh- Ti-Chingf and ridiculed its preposterous claims as follows : — " * Who knowy speak not; w/to speak^ know naughty An words from Lao Tsits lore, Whai then becomes of Lao TzHs own * Five thousand words and more ' / " Here is a charming poem from his pen, which tells PO CHC-I i6s the story of a poor lute-girl's sorrows. This piece is ranked very high by the commentator Lin Hsi-chung, who points out how admirably the wording is adapted to echo the sense, and declares that such workmanship raises the reader to that state of mental ecstasy known to the Buddhists as sam&dhi^ and can only be produced once in a thousand autumns. The " guest" is the poet himself, setting out a second time for his place of banishment, as mentioned above, from a point about half-way thither, where he had been struck down by illness : — " By night, at the riverside, adieus were spoken : beneath the maple's flower-like leaves, blooming amid autumnal decay. Host had dismounted to speed the parting guest, already on board his boat. Then a stirrup- cup went round, but no flute, no guitar, was heard. And so, ere the heart was warmed with wine, came words of cold farewell beneath the bright moon, glitter- ing over the bosom of the broad stream • . . when suddenly across the water a lute broke forth into sound. Host forgot to go, guest lingered on, wondering whence the music, and asking who the performer might be. At this, all was hushed, but no answer given. A boat approached, and the musician was invited to join the party. Cups were refilled, lamps trimmed again, and preparations for festivity renewed. At length, after much pressing, she came forth, hiding her face behind her lute ; and twice or thrice sweeping the strings, betrayed emotion ere her song was sung. Then every note she struck swelled with pathos deep and strong, as though telling the tale of a wrecked and hopeless life, while with bent head and rapid finger she poured forth her soul in melody. Now softly, now slowly, her plec- 1 66 CHINESE LITERATURE trum sped to and fro ; now this air, now that ; loudly, with the crash of falling rain ; softly, as the murmur of whispered words ; now loud and soft together, like the patter of pearls and pearlets dropping upon a marble dish. Or liquid, like the warbling of the mango-bird in the bush ; trickling, like the streamlet on its downward course. And then, like the torrent, stilled by the grip of frost, so for a moment was the music lulled, in a passion too deep for sound. Then, as bursts the water from the broken vase, as clash the arms upon the mailed horse- man, so fell the plectrum once more upon the strings with a slash like the rent of silk. '^ Silence on all sides : not a sound stirred the air. The autumn moon shone silver athwart the tide, as with a sigh the musician thrust her plectrum beneath the strings and quietly prepared to take leave. * My child- hood,' said she, ^ was spent at the capital, in my home near the hills. At thirteen, I learnt the guitar, and my name was enrolled among the primas of the day. The maestro himself acknowledged my skill: the most beauteous of women envied my lovely face. The youths ' of the neighbourhood vied with each other to do me honour : a single song brought me I know not how many costly bales. Golden ornaments and silver pins were smashed, blood-red skirts of silk were stained with wine, in oft-times echoing applause. And so I laughed on from year to year, while the spring breeze and autumn moon swept over my careless head. " ' Then my brother went away to the wars : my mothe; died. Nights passed and mornings came ; and wit^ them my beauty began to fade. My doors were no longer thronged ; but few cavaliers remained. So I took a husband and became a trader's wife. He was PO CHU-I 167 all for gain, and little recked of separation from me. Last month he went off to buy tea, and I remained behind, to wander in my lonely boat on moon-lit nights over the cold wave, thinking of the happy days gone by, my reddened eyes telling of tearful dreams/ " The sweet melody of the lute had already moved my soul to pity, and now these words pierced me to the heart again* * O lady,' I cried, ' we are companions in misfortune, and need no ceremony to be friends. Last year I quitted the Imperial city, and fever - stricken reached this spot, where in its desolation, from year's end to year's end, no flute or guitar is heard. I live by the marshy river-bank, surrounded by yellow reeds and stunted bamboos. Day and night no sounds reach my ears save the blood-stained note of the nightjar, the gibbon's mournful wail. Hill songs I have, and village pipes with their harsh discordant twang. But now that I listen to thy lute's discourse, methinks'tis the music of the gods. Prithee sit down awhile and sing to us yet again, while I commit thy story to writing.' " Grateful to me (for she had been standing long), the lute-girl sat down and quickly broke forth into another song, sad and soft, unlike the song of just now. Then all her hearers melted into tears unrestrained ; and none flowed more freely than mine, until my bosom was wet with weeping." Perhaps the best known of all the works of Po Chii-i is ^ a narrative poem of some length entitled " The Everlast- ^ ing Wrong." It refers to the ignominious downfall of the Emperor known as Ming Huang (a.d. 685-762), who him- ' self deserves a passing notice. At his accession to the ; throne in 712, he was called upon to face an attempt za V i68 CHINESE LITERATURE • on the part of his aunt, the T'ai-p'ing Princess, to dis- place him; but this he succeeded in crushing, and entered upon what promised to be a glorious reign. Hq began with economy, closing the silk factories and forbidding the palace ladies to wear jewels or embroideries, con- siderable quantities of which were actually burnt. Until 740 the country was fairly prosperous. The administra- tion was improved, the empire was divide4 into fifteen provinces, and schools were established in ^very village. The Emperor was a patron of literature, and* himself a poet of no mean capa,city. He published an edition of the Classic of Filial Piety, and caused the text to be en- graved on four tablets of stone, A.D. 745. His love of war, however, and his growing extravagance, led to in- creased taxation. Fond of music, he founded a college for training youth of both, sexes in this art. He sur- rounded himself by a brilliant Court, welcoming such men as the poet Li Po, at first for their talents alone, but afterwards for their readiness to participate in scenes of revelry and dissipation provided for the amusement of the Imperial concubine, the ever-famous Yang Kuei- fei. Eunuchs were appointed to official posts, and the grossest forms of religious superstition were encouraged. Women ceased to veil themselves as of old. Gradually the Emperor left off concerning himself with affairs of State; a serious rebellion broke out, and his Majesty sought safety in flight to SsQch'uan, returning only after having abdicated in favour of his son. The accompany- ing poem describes the rise of Yang Kuei-fei, her tragic fate at the hands of the soldiery, and her subsequent communication with her heart-broken lover from the world of shadows beyond the grave : — PO CHC-I 169 Ennui. — His Imperial Majesty^ a slave to beauty^ longed for a " subverter of empires ; " * For years he had sought in vain to secure such a treasure for his palace. • . • Beauty. — From the Yang family came a maiden^ just grown up to womanhood. Reared in the inner apartments^ altogether unknown to fame. But nature had amply endowed her with a beauty hard to conceal^ And one day she was summoned to a place at the monarcfis side. Her sparkling eye and merry laughter fascinated every beholder y . And among the powder and paint of the harem her loveliness reigned supreme. In the chills of springy by Imperial mandate^ she bathed in the Hua-cKhtg Pool^ Laving her body in the glassy wavelets of the fountain perennially warm. Theti, when she cameforth^ helped by attendants^ her delicate and graceful movements Finally gained for her grcunous favour , captivcUing his Majestys heart. Revelry. — Hair like a cloud, face like a flower ^ headdress which quivered as she walked^ Amid the delights of the Hibiscus Pavilion she passed the soft spring nights. Spring nights^ too short alas / for them, albeit prolonged till dawn^ — "^ _ From this time forth no more audiences in the hours of early mom. Revels and feasts in quick succession, ever without a break. She chosen always for the spring excursion^ chosen for the nightly carouse, ^ Referring to a famous beauty of the Han dynasty, one glance from whom would overthrow a city, two glances an empire. I70 CHINESE LITERATURE Tkret thousand peerless beauties adorned the apartments of the monarches harem^ Yet always his Majesty reserved his attentions for her alone. Passing her life in a *^ golden hause^* * with fair girls to wait on her^ She was daily wafted to ecstasy on the wine fumes of the banquet-hcUL Her sisters and her brothers^ one and ail^ were raised to the rank of nobles, Alas I for the ill-omened glories which she conferred on her family. For thus it came about theU fathers and mothers through the length and breadth of the empire Rejoiced no longer over the birth ofsons^ but over the birth of daughters. In the gorgeous palace piercing the grey clouds above^ Ditnne music^ borne on the breeze^ is spread around on all sides; Of song and the dance to the guitar andflutey All through the live long day^ his Majesty never tires. But sudtienly comes the roll of the fish-skin war-drums^ Breaking rudely upon the cur of the " Rcunbow Skirt and Feather Jacket Flight. — Clouds of dust envelop the lofty gates of the capital, A thousand war-chariots and ten thousand horses move towards the south-west. Feathers and jewels among the throngs onwards and then a halt, A hundred li beyond the western gate^ leaving behind them the city walls^ ^ Referring to A-chiao, one of the consorts of an Emperor of the Han dynasty. "Ah," said the latter when a boy, "if I could only get A-chiao, I would have a golden house to keep her in." PO CHC-I 171 The soldiers refuse to advance; nothing remains to be done Until she of the moth-eyebrows perishes in sight of all. On the ground lie gold ornaments with no one to pick them up^ Kingfisher wings, golden birds^ and hairpins of costly jacU. The monarch covers hisface^ powerless to save; And as he turns to look back, tears ctnd blood flow mingled together* Exile. — Across vast stretches of yellow sand with whistling winds. Across cloud-capped mountain-tops they make their way. : ^ Few indeed are the travellers who reach the heights of Mount Omi; The bright gleam of the standards grows fainter day by day. Dark the SsUch uan wcUers, dark the SsHcHuan hills; Daily and nightly his Majesty is consumed by bitter grief Travelling along, the very brightness of the moon saddens his heart, . And the sound of a bell through the evening rain severs his viscera in twain. RBmJKH.^Time passes, days go by, and once again he is there cU the well-known spot. And there he lingers on, unable to tear himself wholly away. Bui from the clods of earth . at the foot of the Ma-wei hill. No sign of her lovely face appears, only the place of death. ; ^ The eyes of sovereign and minister^ meet^ and robes are wet with tears. Eastward they depart and hurry on to the capital at full speed 172 CHINESE LITERATURE Home. — There is the pool and there are the flowers^ as of old. K. < L There is the hibiscus of the paviUon^ there are the willows of the palacen ^ In the hibiscus he sees herface^ in the willow he sees her eyebrows •* How in the presence of these should tears notflaw^ — In spring amid the flowers of the peach andplum^ In autumn rains when the leaves ofthe-wvL iungfall? To the south of the western palace are many trees^ And when their leaves cover the steps ^ no one now sweeps them away. The hair of the Pear-Garden musicians is white as though with age; The guardians of the Pepper Chamber'^ seem to him no longer youngs Where fireflies fUt through the hall^ he sits in silent grief ; Alone^ the lamp-^wick burnt outy he is still unable to sleep. Slowly pass the watches ^ for the nights are now too long^ And brightly shine the constellations^ as though dawn would never come. Cold settles upon the duck-anddrcJie tiles f and thick hoar-frosty The kingfisher coverlet is chilly with none to share its warmth. Parted by life and deathy time still goes on. But never once does her spirit come back to visit him in dreams. ^ A fancy name for th# women's apartments in the palace. * The mandarin duck and drake are emblems of conjugal fidelity. The allusion is to ornaments on the roof. r PO CHU-I 173 spirit-Land.— /f TaoUt priest ofLin-cHung^ of the Hung-tu school^ Was abUy by his perfect arty to summon the spirits of the dead. Anxious to relieve the fretting mind of his sovereign^ This magician receives orders to urge a diligent quest. Borne on the clouds ^ charioted upon ether ^ he rushes with the speed of lightning High up toheaven^ low down to earthy seeking everywhere, Above^ he searches the empyrean; below y the Yellow Springs ^ But nowhere in these vast areas can her place be found. At length he hears of an Isle of the Blest away in mid-ocean^ Lying in realms of vacuity •. dimly to be descried. There gaily decorated buildings rise up like rainbow clouds ^ And there many gentle and beautiful Immortals pass their days in peace. Among them is one whose name sounds upon lips as Eternal ^ And by her snow-white skin and fhwer-like face he knows that this is she. Knocking at the jade door at the western gate of the golden palace^ He bids a fair waiting-maid announce him to her mistress^ fairer still, She^ hearing of this embassy sent by the Son of Heaven^ Starts up from her dreams among the tapestry curtains, .^ Grasping her clothes and pushing away the pillow ^ she arises in haste ^ And begins to adorn herself I with pearls and jewels. 174 CHINESE LITERATURE Her cUmd-like coiffure^ dishevelled^ shows that she has just risen from sleeps And with her flowery head-dress awry^ she passes into the halL The sleeves of her immortal robes are filled out by the breese^ As once more she seems to dance to the " Rainbow Skirt and FecUher Jacket^ Her features are fixed and calmy though myriad tears f ally Wetting a spray of pear-bloom^ as it were with the raindrops of spring. Subduing her emotions^ restraining her grief she tenders thanks to his Majesty^ Saying how since they parted she has tnissed his form and voices And hoWy edthough their love on earth has so soon come to an endy The days and months among the Blest are still of long duration. And now she turns and gazes towards the abode of mortals y But cannot discern the ImpericU city lost in the dust and hase. Then she takes out the old keepsakeSy tokens of undying lovCy A goldhairpiny an enamel broochy and bids the magician carry these back* One half of the hairpin she keepSy and one half of the enamel broochy Breaking with her hands the yellow goldy and dividing the enamel in two. •* Tell him^ she scddy ^^to be firm of hearty as this gold and enamely And then in heaven or on earth below we two may meet once morel* Atpartingy she confided to the magician many earnest messages of love y Among the rest recalling a pledge mutually understood; « ) LI HO 175 I/ow on the sevenih day of the seventh moon^ in the Hall of Immortality^ At midnight^ when none were near^ he had whispered in her ear^ " / swear that we will ever fly ^ , like the one-winged birds^ * Or grow united like the tree with branches which twine together^ • Heaven and Earthy long-lasting as they are^ will some day pass away; But this great wrong shall stretch out for ever^ endlesSyfor ever and ay, A precocious and short-lived poet was Ll Ho, of the ninth century. He began to write verses at the age of seven* Twenty years later he met a strange man riding on a hornless dragon, who said to him, "God Almighty has finished his Jade Pavilion, and has sent for you to be his secretary." Shortly after this he died. The following is a specimen of his poetry : — " With flowers on the ground like embroidery spread^ At twenty^ the soft glow of wine in my heady My white courser^ s bit-tassels motionless gleam While the gold^threaded willow scent sweeps der the stream. Yet until she has smiled^ all these flowers yield no ray; When her tresses fall down the whole landscape is gay; My hand on her sleeve as I gaze in her eyes, A kingfisher halt pin will soon be my prizeP Chang Chi, who also flourished in the ninth century, was eighty years old when he died. He was on terms of close friendship with Han Yii, and like him, too, a vigorous opponent of both Buddhism and Taoism. The following is his most famous poem, the beauty of which, says a conmientator, lies beyond the words : — ^ Each bird having only on« wing, must always fly with a mate. * Such a tree was believed to exist, and has often been figured by the Chinese. 176 CHINESE LITERATURE ' I ^*' Knowings fair sir^ my tmUrimonial tkrally Two pearls thou senUsi me^ cosily withaL And /, seeing that Love thy heart possessed^ I wrapped them coldly in my silken vest, ** For mine is a household of high degree^ My husband captain in the King*s army; And one with wit like thine should say^ * The troth of wives is for ever and ay^ " With thy two pearls I send thee back two tears : Tears— that we did not meet in earlier years/* Many more poets of varying shades of excellence must here be set aside, their efforts often brightened by those quaint conceits which are so dear to the Chinese reader, but which approach so perilously near to bathos when they appear in foreign garb. A few specimens, torn from their setting, may perhaps have an interest of their own. Here is a lady complaining of the leaden- footed flight of time as marked by the water-clock : — ^' // seems that the clepsydra has been filled up with the sea^ To make the longy long night appear an endless night to me/^ The second line in the next example is peculiarly characteristic : — " Dusk comes, the east wind blows, and birds pipe forth a mournful sound ; Petals, like nymphs from balconies, coTne tumbling to the ground/^ The next refers to candles burning in a room where two friends are having a last talk on the night before parting for a long period : — •* The very wax sheds sympathetic tears. And gutters sadly down till dawn appears/^ { LI sh£ 177 This last is from a friend to a friend at a distance : — ** Ah^ when shall we ever snuff candles again^ And recall the glad hours of that evening of rain f " A popular poet of the ninth century was Li SHfe, especially well known for the story of his capture by highwaymen. The chief knew him by name and called for a sample of his art, eliciting the following lines, which immediately secured his release : — " The rainy mist sweeps gently der the village by the streamy When from the leafy forest glades the brigand daggers gleam. . . . And yet there is no needtofear^ nor step from out their way^ For more than half the world consists of bigger rogues than they / " A popular physician in great request, as well as a poet, was Ma TztJ-JAN {d. a.d. 880). He studied Taoism in a hostile sense, as would appear from the following poem by him ; nevertheless, according to tradition, he was ultimately taken up to heaven alive : — " Inyoutfi I went to study Tag at its living fountain-head^ And then lay tipsy half the day upon a gilded bed * WhcU oaf is thisi the Master cried^ ^content with human lotV And bade me to the world get back and call myself a sot. But wherefore seek immortal life by means of wondrous pills f Noise is not in the market-place^ nor quiet on the hills. 1/8 CHINESE LITERATURE The secret of perpetual youth is already knoTtm to me : Accept with philosophic cairn whatever fate may bei^ Hstt An-ch^n, of the ninth century, is entitled to a place among the Tang poets, if only for the following piece : — ** When the Bear athwart was lyings And the night was just on dyings And the moon was cUl but gone^ How my thoughts did ramble on I ** Then a sound of music breaks From a lute that some one wakes^ And I know that it is she, i The sweet maid next door to me. " And cu the strains steal o*er me Her moth-eyebrows rise before me^ A nd I feel a gentle thrill That her fingers must be chill. " But doors and locks between us So effectually screen us That I hasten from the street And in dreamland pray to meet" The following lines by Tu Ch'in-niang, a poetess of the ninth century, are included in a collection of 300 gems of the Tang dynasty : — *• / would fiot have thee grudge tko^e robes which gleam in rich array ^ But I would have thee grudge the hours of youth which glide away, GOy pluck the blooming flower betimes^ lest when thou conCst again Alas I upon the withered stem no blooming flowers remain I *' SSO-K'UNG ru 179 It is time perhaps to bring to a close the long list, which might be almost indefinitely lengthened. SsO- i^UNG Tu (A.D. 834-908) was a secretary in the Board of Rites, but he threw up his post and became a hermit. Re- turning to Court in 905, he accidentally dropped part of his official insignia at an audience, — an unpardonable breach of Court etiquette, — and was allowed to retire once more to the hills, where he ultimately starved him- self to death through grief at the murder of the youthful Emperor. He is commonly known as the Last of the Tangs ; his poetry, which is excessively difficult to under- stand, ranking correspondingly high in the estimation of Chinese critics. The following philosophical poem, con- sisting of twenty-four apparently unconnected stanzas, is admirably adapted to exhibit the form under which pure Taoism commends itself to the mind of a cultivated scholar: — i.— Energy— Absolute. ^Expenditure offeree leads to outward decay^ spiritual existence means inward fulness. Let us revert to Nothing and enter the Absolute^ Hoarding up strength for Energy. Freighted with eternal principles^ Athwart the mighty void^ Where cloud-mcuses darken^ And the wind blows ceaseless around^ Beyond the range of conceptions^ Let us gain the Centre^ And there holdfast without violence^ Fed from an inexhaustible supply^^ ii.— Tranquil Repose. ^ // dwells in quietude^ speechless^ Imperceptible in the cosmos^ Watered by the eternal harmonies^ Soaring with the lonely crane. i8o CHINESE LITERATURE // is like a gentle breeze in springy Softly bellying the flowing robej It is like ike note oftke bamboo flute^ Whose sweetness we would fain make. our own. Meeting by chance^ it seems easy ofaccess^ Seeking J we find it hard to secure. Ever shifting in semblance^ It shifts from the grasp and is gone J* ill— Slim— Stout. ** Gathering the water-plants From the wild luxuriance of springy Away in the depth of a wild valley Anon I see a lovely girl. With green leaves the peach-trees are loaded^ The breeze blows gently eUong the stream^ Willows shade the winding path ^ Darting orioles collect in groups. Eagerly I press forward As the reality grows upon me, .*. • '7V> the eternal theme Which^ though old^ is ever newP • iv. — Concentration. *• Green pities and a rustic hut^ The sun sinking through pure air^ I take off my cap and stroll alone ^ Listening to the song of birds. No wild geese fly hither^ And she is far away; But my thoughts make her present As in the days gone by. Across the water dark clouds are whirled^ Beneath the moonbeams the eyots stand revealed^ And sweet words are exchanged 'Though the great River rolls between,^ v.— Height— Antiquity. •* Lo the ImmortcUy borne by spirituality^ His hand grasping a lotus flower^ SSO-K*UNG TV l8i Away to Time everlastings Trackless through the regions of Space f With the moon he issues from the Ladle f' speeding upon a favourable galej Belowj Mount Hua loofns dark^ And from it sounds a clear-toned bell. Vacantly I gaze after his vanished image^ Now passed beyond the bounds of mortality, , , •, Ah^ the Yellow Emperor and Yao, They, peerless, are his models" vi.— Refinement. ** A jade kettle with a purchase of spring^ A shower on the thatched hut Wherein sits a gentle scholar, With tall bamboos growing right and left. And white clouds in the newly -clear sky. And birds flitting in the depths of trees. Then pillowed on his lute in the green shade, A waterfall tumbling overhead, Ltaves dropping, not a word spoken. The man placid, like a chrysanthemum, 'Noting down the flower-glory of the season, — A book well worthy to be recuiP vii.— Wash— Smelt. " As iron from the mines. As silver from lecul. So purify thy heart. Loving the limpid and clean. Like a clear pool in spring. With its wondrous mirrored shapes. So make for the spotless and true. And, riding the moonbeam, revert to the Spiritual, Let your gaze be upon the stars of heaven f Let your song be of the hiding hermit; * Like flowing water is our to-day. Our yesterday, the bright moon^ * ^ The Great Bear. * Wine which makes man see spring at all seasons. ' Emblems of purity. ^ Our previous state of existence at the eternal Centre to which the moon belongs. 1 82 CHINESE LITERATURE viiL— Strength. " The mind as though in the void^ The vitality eu though of the rainbow^ Among the thousand-ell peaks of Wu^ Flying with the cloudSy racing with the wind; Drink of the spiritual^feedonforce^ Store them for daily use^ guard them in your heart. Be like Him in His mighty For this is to preserve your energy; Be a peer of Heaven and Earthy A co-worker in Divine transformation. • • • Seek to be full ofthese^ And hold fast to them alway,** ix.— Embroideries. ^ If the mind has wealth and ranky One may make light of yellow gold Rich pleasures pall ere longt Simple joys deepen ever. A mist'cloud hanging on the river bank^ Pink almond-flowers along the bought A flower-girl cottage beneath the moon^ A painted bridge half seen in shadow^ A golden goblet brimming with wine^ A friend with his hand on the lute. • . • Take these and be content; They will swell thy heart beneath thy robe? X.--THE Natural. " Stoopy and there it is; Seek it not right and left. All roads lead thithery — One touch and you have spring/^ As though coming upon opening flowers^ As though gazing upon the new year y Verily I will not snatch iV, Forcedy it will dwindle away. ^ The Power whcs without loss of force, causes things to be what they are- God. ' Alluding to the art of the painter. SSO-K'UNG ru 183 / will b€ like the hermit on the hill^ Uke duckweed gathered on the stream^ And when emotions crowd upon me^ I will leave them to the harmonies of heaven? xL— Set Free. *^ Joying in flowers without let ^ Breathing the empyrean^ Through Tao reverting to ether^ And there to be wildly free^ Wide-spreading as the wind of heaven^ Lofty as the peaks ofocean^ Filled with a spiritual strength^ All creation by my side^ Before me the sun^ moon, and stars. The phamix following behind In the morning I whip up my leTnathans And wash my feet in FusangI* " xiu—CONSERVATION. ^ Without a word writ down. All wit may be attained^ If words do not a fleet the speakers They seem inadequate to sorrow.* Herein is the First Cause, With which we sink or rise. As wine in the strainer mounts high. As cold turns back the season of flowers. The Wide-spreading dust-motes in the air. The sudden spray-bubbles of ocean, Shallow, deep, collected^ scattered, — You grasp ten thousand, and secure one? xiii.— Animal Spirits. " That they might come back unceasingly. That they might be ever with us i — ^ A creature of chance, following the doctrine of Inaction* ' Variously identified with Saghalien, Mexico, and Japan. ' ... Si vis me flere dolendum est Primum ipsi tibi. . . • 13 1 84 CHINESE LITERATURE The bright river^ unfaihamabley The rare flower just openings The parrot of the verdant spring. The willow'trees, the terrace^ The stranger from the dark hills^ The cup overflowing with clear wine. . • • Oh, for life to be extended. With no dead ashes of writing. Amid tJie charms of the Natural, — Ah, who can compass itf^ xiv.— Close Woven. ** In all things there are veritable atoms. Though the senses cannot perceive them. Struggling to emerge into shape From the wondrous workmanship of God Water flowing, flowers budding. The limpid dew evaporating^ An important road, stretching far, A dark path where progress is slow. . • • So words should not shock. Nor thought be inept. But be like the green of spring. Like snow beneath the moon^ ^ XV.— Seclusion " Following our own bent. Enjoying the Natural, free from curb^ Rich with what comes to hand. Hoping some day to be with God To build a hut beneath the pines. With uncovered head to Pore over poetry^ Knowing only morning and eve. But not what season it may be, » . * Then, if happiness is ours. Why must there be action f If of our own selves we can reach this point. Can we not be said to have attained V* ^ Each invisible atom of which combines to produce a [lerfect whole. SSO.K*UNG ru 185 xvi.— Fascination. ** Lovely is the pine-grove^ Wiik the stream eddying below ^ A clear sky and a snow-clad bank^ Fishing-boats in the reach beyond And shey like untojcute^ Slowly sauntering,, as I follow through the dark woody Now moving on^ now stopping shorty Far away to the deep valley. ... My mind quits its tenement^ and is in the pasty Vaguey and not to be recalledy As though before the glow of the rising moony As though before the glory of autumn." xvii.— In Tortuous Ways. " / climbed the T^ai-hsing mountain By the green winding pathy Vegetation like a sea ofjadcy Flower-scent borne far and wide. Struggling with effort to advancey A sound escaped my lipiy Which seemed to be back ere ^twas gone^ As though hidiien but not concealed.^ The eddying waters rush to andfroy Overhead the great rukh soars and sails ^ Tao does not limit itself to a shapey But is round and square by tums^ xviii.— Actualities. ** Choosing plain words To express simple thought Sy Suddenly I happened upon a recluse^ And seemed to see the heart of Tao. Beside the winding brooky Beneath dark pine-tree^ shade y There was one stranger bearing a faggot^ Another listening to the lute. ^ Referring to an echo. 1 86 CHINESE LITERATURE And so^ where my fancy led me^ Better than if I had sought it^ I heard the music cfheaven^ Astounded by its rare strains,^ XIJC—DESPONDENT. " A gale ruffles the stream And trees in the forest crack; My thoughts are bitter as deaths For she whom I asked will not conu% A hundred years slip by like water^ Riches and rank are but cold ashes^ Tao is daily passing away^ To whom shall we turn for salvation t The brave soldier dtaws his sword^ And tears flow with endless lamentation; The wind whistles^ leaves fally And rain trickles through the old thatch:!* XX.— Form and Feature. ^ After gazing fixedly upon expression and substance The mind returns with a spiritual image^ As wlten seeking the outlines ofwaves^ As when painting the glory of spring. The changing shapes of wind-swept clouds^ The energies of flowers and plants^ The rolling breakers ofocean^ The crags and cliffs of mountains^ All these are like mighty Tao, Skilfully woven into earthly surroundings. . . . To obtain likeness withoutform^ Is not that to possess the man t " xxi.— The Transcendental. •* Not of the spirituality of the mind^ Nor yet of the atoms of the cosmos^ But as though reached upon white clouds^ Borne thither by pellucid breeses. AfaTy it seems at hand, Approach^ 'tis no longer there; SSO.K*UNG PU 187 Sharing thenatun of Tao, // shuns the limits of mortality. It is in thepHed'up hills^ in tall trtes^ In dark mosses^ in sunlight rays, • • • Croon o%ter it^ think upon it; Its faint sound eludes the ear,^* xxii. — Abstraction. ** Without friends, longing to be there^ Aloney away from the common herd^ Like the crane on Mount Hou, Like the cloud at the peak of Mount Hueu In ^e portrait of the hero The old fire still lingers; The leaf carried by the wind Floats on the boundless sea. It would seem as though not to be grasped^ But always on the point of being disclosed. Those who recognise this have already attained; Those who hope, drift daily farther awayj* xxiii.— Illumined. **Ufe stretches to one hundred years. And yet how brief a span; Its joys so fleeting. Its griefs so many / What has it like a goblet of wine. And daily visits to the wistaria arbour^ Where flowers cluster around the eaves. And light showers pass overhead! Then when the wine^cup is drained. To stroll about with staff of thorn; For who of us but will some day be an ancient f , , • Ah, there is the South Mountain in its grandeur !^* ^ xxiv. — Motion. " Like a whirling water-wheel. Like rolling pearls, — Yet how are these worthy to be named! They are but illustrations for fools, ^ This remains, while all other things pass away. X88 CHINESE LITERATURE There is the mighty axis of Earthy The never^resting pole of Heaven; Let us grasp their clue^ And with them be blended in One^ Beyond the bounds of thought^ Circling for ever in the great Void^ An orbit of a thousand years^ — Yes^ this is the key to my themeJ* CHAPTER II CLASSICAL AND GENERAL LITERATURE The classical scholarship of the Tang dynasty was neither very original nor very profound. It is true that the second Emperor founded a College of Learning, but its members were content to continue the traditions of the Hans, and comparatively little was achieved in the line of independent research. Foremost among the names in the above College stands that of Lu Yuan-lang (550-625). He had been Imperial Librarian under the preceding dynasty, and later on distinguished himself by his defence of Confucianism against both Buddhist and Taoist attacks. He published a valuable work on the explanations of terms and phrases in the Classics and in Taoist writers. Scarcely less eminent as a scholar was Wei Ch£nq (581-643), who also gained great reputation as a military commander. He was appointed President of the Commission for drawing up the history of the previous dynasty, and he was, in addition, a poet of no mean order. At his death the Emperor said, " You may use copper as a mirror for the person ; you may use the past as a mirror for politics ; and you may use man as a mirror to guide one's judgment in ordinary affairs. These three mirrors I have always carefully cherished ; but now that Wei Chfeng is gone, I have lost one of them." 189 ipo CHINESE LITERATURE Another well-known scholar is Yen Shih-ku (579- 645). He was employed upon a recension of the Classics, and also upon a new and annotated edition of the history of the Han dynasty ; but his exegesis in the former case caused dissatisfaction, and he was ordered to a provincial post. Although nominally reinstated before this degradation took effect, his ambition was so far wounded that he ceased to be the same man. He lived henceforth a retired and simple life. Li Po-yao (565-648) was so sickly a child, and swallowed so much medicine, that his grandmother insisted on naming him Po-yao = Pharmacopoeia, while his precocious cleverness earned for him the sobriquet of the Prodigy. Entering upon a public career, he neglected his work for gaming and drink, and after a short spell of office he retired. Later on he rose once more, and completed the History of the Northern Ch'i Dynasty. A descendant of Confucius in the thirty-second degree, and a distinguished scholar and public function- ary, was K'UNG YiNG-TA (574-648). He wrote a com- mentary on the Book of Odes, and is credited with certain portions of the History of the Sui Dynasty. Besides this, he is responsible for comments and glosses on the Great Learning and on the Doctrine of the Mean. Lexicography was perhaps the department of pure scholarship in which the greatest advances were made. Dictionaries on the phonetic system, based upon the work of Lu Fa-yen of the sixth century, came very much into vogue, as opposed to those on the radical system initiated by Hsii Shfin. Not that the splendid work of the latter was allowed to suffer from neglect. Li Yang-ping, of the eighth century, devoted much CHANG CHIH-HO 191 time and labour to improving and adding to its pages. The latter was a Government official, and when filling a post as magistrate in 763, he is said to have obtained rain during a drought by threatening the City God with the destruction of his temple unless his prayers were answered within three days. Chang Chih-ho (eighth century), author of a work on the conservation of vitality, was of a romantic turn of mind and especially fond of Taoist speculations. He took office under the Emperor Su Tsung of the Tang dynasty, but got into some trouble and was banished. Soon after this he shared in a general pardon ; where- upon he fled to the woods and mountains and became a wandering recluse, calling himself the Old Fisherman of the Mists and Waters. He spent his time in angling, but used no bait, his object not being to catch fish. When asked why he roamed about, Chang answered and said, " With the empyrean as my home, the bright moon my constant companion, and the four seas my inseparable friends, — ^what mean you by roaming?" And when a friend offered him a comfortable home instead of his poor boat, he replied, " I prefer to follow the gulls into cloudland, rather than to bury my eternal self beneath the dust of the world." The author of the Tung Tten^ an elaborate treatise on the constitution, still extant, was Tu Yu {d. 812). It is divided into eight sections under Political Economy, Examinations and Degrees, Government Offices, Rites, Music, Military Discipline, Geography, and National Defences. Among writers of general prose literature, Liu TsuNG- yOan (773-819) has left behind him much that for purity of style and felicity of expression has rarely been sur- 192 CHINESE LITERATURE passed. Besides being poet, essayist, and calligraphist, he was a Secretary in the Board of Rites. There he became involved in a conspiracy, and was banished to a distant spot, where he died. His views were deeply tinged with Buddhist thought, for which he was often severely censured, once in a letter by his friend and master, Han Yii. These few lines are part of his reply on the latter occasion : — " The features I admire in Buddhism are those which are coincident with the principles enunciated in our own sacred books. And I do not think that, even were the holy sages of old to revisit the earth, they would fairly be able to denounce these. Now, Han Yii objects to the Buddhist commandments. He objects to the bald pates of the priests, their dark robes, their renunciation of domestic ties, their idleness, and life generally at the expense of others. So do I. But Han Yii misses the kernel while railing at the husk. He sees the lode, but not the ore. I see both ; hence my partiality for this faith. " Again, intercourse with men of this religion does not necessarily imply conversion. Even if it did, Buddhism admits no envious rivalry for place or power. The majority of its adherents love only to lead a simple life of contemplation amid the charms of hill and stream. And when I turn my gaze towards the hurry-scurry of the age, in its daily race for the seals and tassels of office, I ask myself if I am to reject those in order to take my place among the ranks of these. "The Buddhist priest, Hao-ch*u, is a man' of placid temperament and of passions subdued. He is a fine scholar. His only joy is to muse o'er flood and fell, with occasional indulgence in the delights of composi* LIU TSUNG-YCAN 193 tion. His family follow in the same path. He is independent of all men, and no more to be compared with those heterodox sages of whom we make so much than with the vulgar herd of the greedy, grasping world around us." On this the commentator remarks, that one must have the genius of Han Yii to condemn Buddhism, the genius of Liu Tsung-yiian to indulge in it. Here is a short study on a great question : — ** Over the western hills the road trends away towards the north, and on the farther side of the pass separates into two. The westerly branch leads to nowhere in particular ; but if you follow the other, which takes a north-easterly turn, for about a quarter of a mile, you will find that the path ends abruptly, while the stream forks to enclose a steep pile of boulders. On the summit of this pile there is what appears to be an elegantly built look-out tower; below, as it were a battlemented wall, pierced by a city gate, through which one gazes into darkness. A stone thrown in here falls with a splash suggestive of water, and the reverberations of this sound are audible for some time. There is a way round from behind up to the top, whence nothing is seen far and wide except groves of fine straight trees, which, strange to say, are grouped symmetrically, as if by an artist's hand. "Now, I have always had my doubts about the existence of a God, but this scene made me think He really must exist. At the same time, however, I began to wonder why He did not place it in some worthy centre of civilisation, rather than in this out-of-the-way barbarous region, where for centuries there has been no one to enjoy its beauty. And so, on the other hand. ■^ 194 CHINESE LITERATURE such waste of labour and incongruity of position dis« posed me to think that there cannot be a God after all." One favourite piece is a letter which Liu Tsung-yiian writes in a bantering style to congratulate a well-to- do literary man on having lost everything in a fire, especially, as he explains, if the victim has been *' utterly and irretrievably beggared/' It will give such a rare opportunity, he points out, to show the world that there was no connection whatever between worldly means and literary reputation. A well-known satirical piece by Liu Tsung-yiian is entitled "Catching Snakes," and is directed- against the hardships of over-taxation : — "In the wilds of Hu-kuang there is an extraordinary kind of snake, having a black body with white rings. Deadly fatal, even to the grass and trees it may chance to touch ; in man, its bite is absolutely incurable. Yet, if caught and prepared, when dry, in the form of cakes, the flesh of this snake will soothe excitement, heal leprous sores, remove sloughing flesh, and expel evil spirits. And so it came about that the Court physician, acting under Imperial orders, exacted from each family a return of two of these snakes every year ; but as few persons were able to comply with the demand, it was subsequently made known that the return of snakes was to be considered in lieu of the usual taxes. Thereupon there ensued a general stampede among the people of those parts." It turned out, however, that snake-catching was actually less deadly than paying such taxes is were exacted from those who dared not face its risks and elected to contribute in the ordinary way. One man, whose father and grandfather had both perished from^ LIU TSUNG-YUAN 195 snake-bites, declared that after all he was better off than his neighbours, who were ground down and beggared by the iniquities of the tax-gatherer. " Harsh tyrants," he explained, " sweep down upon us, and throw everybody and everything, even to the brute beasts, into paroxysms of terror and disorder. But I, — I get up in the morn- ing and look into the jar where my snakes are kept ; and if they are still there, I lie down at night in peace. At the appointed time, I take care that they are fit to be handed in ; and when that is done, I retire to enjoy the produce of my farm and complete the allotted span of my existence. Only twice a year have I to risk my life : the rest is peaceful enough and not to be compared with the daily round of annoyance which falls to the share of my fellow-villagers." A similar satire on over-government introduces a deformed gardener called Camel-back. This man was extraordinarily successful as a nurseryman : — ** One day a customer asked him how this was so ; to which he replied, * Old Camel-back cannot make trees live or thrive. He can only let them follow their natural tendencies. Now in planting trees, be careful ,to set the root straight, to smooth the earth around them, to use good mould, and to ram it down well. Then, don't touch them ; don't think about them ; don't go and look at them ; but leave them alone to take care of themselves, and nature will do the rest. I only avoid trying to make my trees grow. I have . no special method of cultivation, no special means for securing luxuriance of growth. I only don't spoil the fruit. I have no way of getting it either early or in abundance. Other gardeners set with bent root and neglect the mould* They heap up either too much earth or too 196 CHINESE LITERATURE little. Or if not this, then they become too fond of and too anxious about their trees, and are for ever running backwards and forwards to see how they are growing ; sometimes scratching themi to make sure they are still alive, or shaking them about to see if they are sufRciently firm in the ground ; thus constantly interfering with the natural bias of the tree, and turning their affection and care into an absolute bane and a curse. I only don't do these things. That's all.' "*Can these principles you have just now set forth be applied to government ? ' asked his listener. ' Ah ! ' replied Camel-back, * I only understand nursery-garden- ing : government is not my trade. Still, in the village where I live, the officials are for ever issuing all kinds of orders, as if greatly compassionating the people, though really to their utter injury. Morning and night the underlings come round and say, * His Honour bids us urge on your ploughing, hasten your planting, and superintend your harvest. Do not delay with your spinning and weaving. Take care of your children. Rear poultry and pigs. Come together when the drum beats. Be ready at the sound of the rattle.' Thus are we poor people badgered from mom till eve. We have not a moment to ourselves. How could any one flourish and develop naturally under such conditions ? ' " In his prose writings Han Yii showed even more variety of subject than in his verse. His farewell words to his dead friend Liu Tsimg-yuan, read, according to Chinese custom, by the side of the bier or at the grave, and then burnt as a means of communicating them to the deceased, are widely known to his countrymen : — " Alas I Tzu-hou, and hast thou come to this pass ? — 198 CHINESE LITERATURE their bodies ; neither have they claws and fangs to aid them in the struggle for food. Hence their organisation, as follows : — ^The sovereign issues commands. The minister carries out these commands, and makes them known to the people. The people produce grain and flax and silk, fashion articles of everyday use, and inter- change commodities, in order to fulfil their obligations to their rulers. The sovereign who fails to issue his com- mands loses his raison cCitre; the minister who fails to carry out his sovereign's commands, and to make them known to the people, loses his raison (titre; the people who fail to produce grain and flax and silk, fashion articles of everyday use, and interchange commodities, in order to fulfil their obligations to their rulers, should lose their heads." '^ And if I am asked what Method is this, I reply that it is what I call the Method, and not merely a method like those of Lao TzQ and Buddha. The Emperor Yao handed it down to the Emperor Shun; the Emperor Shun handed it down to the Great Yii ; and so on until it reached Confucius, and lastly Mencius, who died with- out transmitting it to any one else. Then followed the heterodox schools of Hsiin and Yang, wherein much that was essential was passed over, while the criterion was vaguely formulated. In the days before Chou Kung, the Sages were themselves rulers ; hence they were able to secure the reception of their Method. In the days after Chou Kung, the Sages were all high officers of State ; hence its duration through a long period of time. " And now, it will be asked, what is the remedy ? I answer that unless these false doctrines are rooted out, the true faith will not prevail. Let us insist that the HAN Y(J 199 followers of Lao Tzii and Buddha behave themselves like ordinary mortals. Let us burn their books. Let us turn their temples into dwelling-houses. Let us make manifest the Method of our ancient kings, in order that men may be led to embrace its teachings." Of the character of Han Yii's famous ultimatum to the crocodile, which all Chinese writers have regarded as a real creature, though probably the name is but an allegorical veil, the following extract may suffice : — " O Crocodile ! thou and I cannot rest together here. The Son of Heaven has confided this district and this people to my charge ; and thou, O goggle-eyed, by disturbing the peace of this river and devouring the people and their domestic animals, the bears, the boars, and deer of the neighbourhood, in order to batten thyself and reproduce thy kind, — ^thou art challenging me to a struggle of life and death. And I, though of weakly frame, am I to bow the knee and yield before a croco- dile 7 No 1 I am the lawful guardian of this place, and I would scorn to decline thy challenge, even were it to cost me my life. ''Still, in virtue of my commission from the Son of Heaven, I am bound to give fair warning ; and thou, O crocodile, if thou art wise, will pay due heed to my words. There before thee lies the broad ocean, the domain alike of the whale and the shrimp. Go thither and live in peace. It is but the journey of a day." The death of a dearly loved nephew, comparatively near to him in age, drew from Han Yu a long and pathetic " In Memoriam/' conveyed, as mentioned above, to the ears of the departed through the medium of fire and smoke. These are two short extracts : — *' The line of my noble-hearted brother has indeed been 14 200 CHINESE LITERATURE prematurely cut off. Thy pure intelligence, hope of the family, survives not to continue the traditions of his house* Unfathomable are the appointments of what men call Heaven : inscrutable are the workings of the unseen : unknowable are the mysteries of eternal truth : unrecognisable those who are destined to attain to old age ! " Henceforth my grey hairs will grow white, my strength fail. Physically and mentally hurrying on to decay, how long before I shall follow thee ? If there is. knowledge after death, this separation will be but for a little while. If there is not knowledge after death, so will this sorrow be but for a little while, and then no more sorrow for ever." " O ye blue heavens, when shall my sorrow have end ? Henceforth the world has no charms. I will get me a few acres on the banks of the Ying, and there await the end, teaching my son and thy son, if haply they may grow up, — my daughter and thy daughter, until their day of marriage comes. Alas 1 though words fail, love endureth. Dost thou hear, or dost thou not hear ? Woe is me : Heaven bless thee ! " Of all Han Yii's writings in prose or in verse, there was not one which caused anything like the sensation produced by his memorial to the Emperor on the sub- ject of Buddha's bone. The fact was. Buddhism was making vast strides in popular esteem, and but for some such bold stand as was made on this occasion by a leading man, the prestige of Confucianism would have received a staggering blow. Here is an extract from this fiery document, which sent its author into exile and nearly cost him his life : — " Your servant has now heard that instructions have been issued to the priestly community to proceed to HAN YU 20I F^ng-hsiang and receive a bone of Buddha, and that from a high tower your Majesty will view its intro- duction into the Imperial Palace ; also that orders have been sent to the various temples, commanding that the relic be received with the proper ceremonies. Now, foolish though your servant may be, he is well aware that your Majesty does not do this in the vain hope of deriving advantages therefrom ; but that in the ful- ness of our present plenty, and in the joy which reigns in the heart of all, there is a desire to fall in with the wishes of the people in the celebration at the capital of this delusive mummery. For how could the wisdom of your Majesty stoop to participate in such ridiculous beliefs? Still the people are slow of perception and easily beguiled ; and should they behold your Majesty thus earnestly worshipping at the feet of Buddha, they would cry out, ' See ! the Son of Heaven, the All-Wise, is a fervent believer ; who are we, his people, that we should spare our bodies ? ' Then would ensue a scorching of heads and burning of fingers; crowds would collect together, and, tearing off their clothes and scattering their money, would spend their time from morn to eve in imitation of your Majesty's example. The result would be that by and by young and old, seized with the same enthusiasm, would totally neglect the business of their lives ; and should your Majesty not prohibit it, they would be found flocking to the temples, ready to cut off an arm or slice their bodies as an oflFer- ing to the god. Thus would our traditions and customs be seriously injured, and ourselves become a laughing- stock on the face of the earth ; — truly, no small matter I "For Buddha was a barbarian. His language was not the language of China. His clothes were of an 202 CHINESE LITERATURE alien cut. He did not utter the maxims of our ancient rulers, nor conform to the customs which they have handed down. He did not appreciate the bond between prince and minister, the tie between father and son. Supposing, indeed, this Buddha had come to our capital in the flesh, under an appointment from his own State, then your Majesty might have received him with a few words of admonition, bestowing on him a banquet and a suit of clothes, previous to sending him out of the country with an escort of soldiers, and thereby have avoided any dangerous influence on the minds of the people. But what are the facts 7 The bone of a man long since dead and decomposed is to be admitted, forsooth, within the precincts of the Imperial Palace ! Confucius said, ' Pay all respect to spiritual beings, but keep them at a distance.' And so, when the princes of old paid visits of condolence to one another, it was customary for them to send on a magician in advance, with a peach-wand in his hand, whereby to expel all noxious influences previous to the arrival of his master. Yet now your Majesty is about to causelessly introduce a disgusting object, personally taking part in the pro- ceedings, without the intervention either of the magician or of his peach-wand. Of the officials, not one has raised his voice against it ; of the censors, not one has pointed out the enormity of such an act. Therefore your servant, overwhelmed with shame for the censors, implores your Majesty that these bones be handed over for destruction by fire or water, whereby the root of this great evil may be exterminated for all time, and the people know how much the wisdom of your Majesty surpasses that of ordinary men. The glory of such a deed will be beyond all praise. And should LI HUA 203 the Lord Buddha have power to avenge this insult by the infliction of some misfortune, then let the vials of his wrath be poured out upon the person of your ser- vant, who now calls Heaven to witness that he will not repent him of his oath." A writer named Li HuA, of whom little is known except that he flourished in the ninth century, has left behind him one very much admired piece entitled "On an Old Battlefield " :— "Vast, vast, — a limitless extent of flat sand, without a human being in sight, girdled by a stream and dotted with hills, where in the dismal twilight the wind moans at the setting sun. Shrubs gone : grass withered : all chill as the hoar-frost of early morn. The birds of the air fly past : the beasts of the field shun the spot ; for it is, as I was informed by the keeper, the site of an old battlefield. 'Many a time and oft,' said he, Mias an army been overthrown on this spot ; and the voices of the dead may frequently be heard weeping and wailing in the darkness of the night.' " This is how the writer calls up in imagination the ghastly scene of long ago : — " And now the cruel spear does its work, the startled sand blinds the combatants locked fast in the death- struggle ; while hill and vale and stream groan beneath the flash and crash of arms. By and by, the chill cold shades of night fall upon them, knee-deep in snow, beards stiff with ice. The hardy vulture seeks its nest : the strength of the war-horse is broken. Clothes are of no avail ; hands frost-bitten, flesh cracked. Even nature lends her aid to the Tartars, contributing a deadly blast, the better to complete the work of slaughter begun. 204 CHINESE LITERATURE Ambulance waggons block the way : our men succumb to flank attacks. Their officers have surrendered : their general is dead. The river is choked wi,th corpses to its topmost banks : the fosses of the Great Wall are swimming over with blood. All distinctions are oblite- rated in that heap of rotting bones. . . . *' Faintly and more faintly beats the drum. Strength exhausted, arrows spent, bow-strings snapped, swords shattered, the two armies fall upon one another in the supreme struggle for life or death. To yield is to become the barbarian's slave : to fight is to mingle our' bones with the desert sand. . . . " No sound of bird now breaks from the hushed hill- side. All is still save the wind whistling through the long night. Ghosts of the dead wander hither and thither in the gloom : spirits from the nether world collect under the dark clouds. The sun rises and shines coldly over the trampled grass, while the fading moon still twinkles upon the frost flakes scattered around. What sight more horrible than this ! " The havoc wrought by the dreaded Tartars is indeed the theme of many a poem in prose as well as in verse. The following lines by CH*feN Tag, of about this date, record a patriotic oath of indignant volunteers and the mournful issue of fruitless valour : — " T/tey swore the Huns should perish : they would die if needs they must . . . And now Jive thouscmd^ sable^clad^ have bit the Tartar dust. Along the river-dank their bones lie scattered where they ntay^ But still their forms in dreams arise to fair ones far away,'* MEN OF TANG 205 Among their other glories, the Tangs may be said to have witnessed the birth of popular literature, soon to receive, in common with classical scholarship, an impetus the like of which had never yet been felt. But we must now take leave of this dynasty, the name of which has survived in common parlance to this day. For just as the northerners are proud to call them- selves "sons of Han," so do the Chinese of the more southern provinces still delight to be known as the " men of Tang." BOOK THE FIFTH THE SUNG DYNASTY (a.d. 900-1 aoo) BOOK THE FIFTH THE SUNG DYNASTY (a.d. 900-1200) CHAPTER I THE INVENTION OF BLOCK-PRINTING The Tang dynasty was brought to an end in 907, and during the succeeding fifty years the empire experienced no fewer than five separate dynastic changes. It was not a time favourable to literary effort ; still production was not absolutely at a standstill, and some minor names have come down to us. Of Chang Pi, for instance, of the later Chou dynasty, little is known, except that he once presented a volumi- nous memorial to his sovereign in the hope of staving off political collapse. The memorial, we are told, was much admired, but the advice contained in it was not acted upon. These few lines of his occur in many a poetical garland : — " After partings dreams possessed tne^ and I wandered you know wkere^ And we sat in the verandah^ and you sang the sweet old air, aog 2IO CHINESE LITERATURE Then I woke^ with no one near me save the moon^ still sMinin^ on^ And lifting up dead petals which like you have passed and goneJ* There is, however, at least one name of absorbing interest to the foreign student. FfeNG Tao (881-954) is best known to the Chinese as a versatile politician who served first and last under no less than ten Em- perors of four different Houses, and gave himself a sobriquet which finds its best English equivalent in "The Vicar of Bray." He presented himself at the Court of the second Emperor of the Liao dynasty and positively asked for a post. He said he had no home, no money, and very little brains; a statement which appears to have appealed forcibly to the Tartar monarch, who at once appointed him grand tutor to the heir- apparent. By foreigners, on the other hand, he will be chiefly remembered as the inventor of the art of block- printing. It seems probable, indeed, that some crude form of this invention had been already known early in the Tang dynasty, but until the date of F^ng Tao it was certainly not applied to the production of books. Six years after his death the "fire-led" House of Sung was finally established upon the throne, and thence- forward the printing of books from blocks became a familiar handicraft with the Chinese people. With the advent of this new line, we pass, as the Chinese fairy-stories say, to " another heaven and earth." The various departments of history, classical scholarship, general literature, lexicography, and poetry were again filled with enthusiastic workers, eagerly encouraged by a succession of enlightened rulers. And although there was a falling-off consequent upon the irruption of the GOLDEN TARTARS 211 Golden Tartars in ii 25-1 127, when tRe ex-Emperor and his newly appointed successor were carried captive to the north, nevertheless the Sungs managed to create a great epoch, and are justly placed in the very first rank among the builders of Chinese literature. CHAPTER II HISTORY— CLASSICAL AND GENERAL LITERATURE The first move made in the department of history was nothing less than to re-write the whole of the chro- nicles of the T*ang dynasty. The usual scheme had already been carried out by Liu Hsii (897-946), a learned scholar of the later Chin dynasty, but on many grounds the result was pronounced unsatisfactory, and steps were taken to supersede it. The execution of this pro- ject was entrusted to Ou-yang Hsiu and Sung C*hi, both of whom were leading men in the world of letters. Ou-YANG Hsiu (1007-1072) had been brought up in poverty, his mother teaching him to write with a reed. By the time he was fifteen his great abilities began to attract attention, and later on he came out first on the list of candidates for the third or highest degree. His public life was a chequered one, owing to the bold positions he took up in defence of what he believed to be right, regardless of personal interest. Besides the dynastic history, he wrote on all kinds of subjects, grave and gay, including an exposition of the Book of Poetry, a work on ancient inscriptions, anecdotes of the men of his day, an elaborate treatise on the peony, poetry and essays without end. The following is a specimen of his lighter work, greatly admired for the beauty of its style, ata OU-YANG HSIU 213 and diligently read by all students of composition. The theme, as the reader will perceive, is the historian him- self : — "The district of Ch'u is entirely surrounded by hills, and the peaks to the south-west are clothed with a dense and beautiful growth of trees, over which the eye wanders in rapture away to the confines of Shantung. A walk of two or three miles on those hills brings one within earshot of the sound of falling water, which gushes forth from a ravine known as the Wine-Foun- tain ; while hard by in a nook at a bend of the road stands a kiosque, commonly spoken of as the^ Old Drunk- ard's Arbour. It was built by a Buddhist priest, called Deathless Wisdom, who lived among these hills, and who received the above name from the Governor. The latter used to bring his friends hither to take wine ; and as he personally was incapacitated by a very few cups, and was, moreover, well stricken in years, he gave himself the sobriquet of the Old Drunkard. But it was not w4ne that attracted him to this spot. It was the charming scenery, which wine enabled hinl to enjoy. " The sun's rays peeping at dawn through the trees, by and by to be obscured behind gathering clouds, leaving naught but gloom around, give to this spot the alternations of morning and night. The wild-Bowers exhaling their perfume from the darkness of some shady dell, the luxuriant foliage of the dense forest of beautiful trees, the clear frosty wind, and the naked boulders of the lessening torrent, — these are the indications of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Morning is the time to go thither, returning with the shades of night,' and although the place presents a different aspect with the changes of the seasons, its charms are subject to no 214 CHINESE LITERATURE interruption, but continue alway. Burden-carriers sing their way along the road, travellers rest awhile under the trees, shouts from one, responses from another, old people hobbling along, children in arms, children dragged along by hand, backwards and forwards all day long without a break, — these are the people of Ch'u. A cast in the stream and a fine fish taken from some spot where the eddying pools begin to deepen ; a draught of cool wine from the fountain, and a few such dishes of meats and fruits as the hills are able to provide, — these, nicely spread out beforehand, constitute the Governor's feast. And in the revelry of the banquet-hour there is no thought of toil or trouble. Every archer hits his mark, and every player wins his partie ; goblets flash from hand to hand, and a buzz of conversation is heard as the guests move unconstrainedly about. Among them is an old man with white hair, bald at the top of his head. This is the drunken Governor, who, when the evening sun kisses the tips of the hills and the falling shadows are drawn out and blurred, bends his steps homewards in company with his friends. Then in the growing darkness are heard sounds above and sounds below ; the beasts of the field and the birds of the air are rejoicing at the departure of man. They, too, can rejoice in hills and in trees, but they cannot rejoice as man rejoices. So also the Governor's friends. They rejoice with him, though they know not at what it is that he rejoices. Drunk, he can rejoice with them, sober, he can discourse with them, — such is the Governor. And should you ask who is the Governor, I reply, ' Ou-yang Hsiu of Lu-ling/ " Besides dwelling upon the beauty of this piece as vividly portraying the spirit of the age in which it was written, the commentator proudly points out that in it OU-YANG HSIU 215 the particle yeh^ with influences as subtle as those of the Greek 7^, occurs no fewer than twenty times. The next piece is entitled "An Autumn Dirge," and refers to the sudden collapse of summer, so common a phenomenon in the East : — "One night I had just sat down to my books, when suddenly I heard a sound far away towards the south- west Listening intently, I wondered what it could be. On it came, at first like the sighing of a gentle zephyr • . • gradually deepening into the plash of waves upon a surf-beat shore ... the roaring of huge breakers in the startled night, amid howling storm-gusts of wind and rain. It burst upon the hanging bell, and set every one of its pendants tinkling into tune. It seemed like the muffled march of soldiers, hurriedly advancing, bit in mouth, to the attack, when no shouted orders rend the air, but only the tramp of men and horses meet the ear. " 'Boy,' said I, ' what noise is that ? Go forth and see.' ' Sir,' replied the boy on his return, ' the moon and stars are brightly shining : the Silver River spans the sky. No sound of man is heard without : 'tis but the whisper- ing of the trees.' "'Alas !' I cried, 'autumn is upon us. And is it thus, O boy, that autumn comes ? — autumn, the cruel and the cold ; autumn, the season of rack and mist ; autumn, the season of cloudless skies ; autumn, the season of piercing blasts ; autumn, the season of desolation and blight ! Chill is the sound that heralds its approach, and then it leaps upon us with a shout. All the rich luxuriance of green is changed, all the proud foliage of the forest swept down to earth, withered beneath the icy breath of the destroyer. For autumn is nature's chief execu- tioner, and its symbol is darkness. It has the temper of 15 2i6 CHINESE LITERATURE steel, and its symbol is a sharp sword. It is the avenging angel, riding upon an atmosphere of death. As spring is the epoch of growth, so autumn is the epoch of maturity. And sad is the hour when maturity is passed, for that which passes its prime must die. " ' Still, what is this to plants and trees, which fade away in their due season ? • • • But stay ; there is man, man the divinest of all things. A hundred cares wreck his heart, countless anxieties trace their wrinkles on his brow, until his inmost self is bowed beneath the burden of life. And swifter still he hurries to decay when vainly striving to attain the unattainable, or grieving over his ignorance of that which can never be known. Then comes the whitening hair — and why not ? Has man an adamantine frame, that he should outlast the trees of the field ? Yet, after all, who is it, save himself, that steals his strength away ? Tell me, O boy, what right has man to accuse his autumn blast ? ' " My boy made no answer. He was fast asleep. No sound reached me save that of the cricket chirping its response to my dirge." The other leading historian of this period was Sung Ch'i (998-1061), who began his career by beating his elder brother at the graduates' examination. He was, however, placed tenth, instead of first, by Imperial command, and in accordance with the precedence of brothers. He rose to high office, and was also a volu- minous writer. A great favourite at Court, it is related that he was once at some Imperial festivity when he began to feel cold. The Emperor bade one of the ladies of the seraglio lend him a tippet, whereupon about a dozen of the girls each offered hers. But SSO-MA KUANG 217 Sung Ch*i did not like to seem to favour any one, and rather than offend the rest, continued to sit and shiver. The so-called New History of the T'ang Dynasty, which he produced in co-operation with Ou-yang Hsiu, is generally regarded as a distinct improvement upon the work of Liu Hsu. It has not, however, actually superseded the latter work, which is still included among the recognised dynastic histories, and stands side by side with its rival. Meanwhile another star had risen, in magnitude to be compared only with the effulgent genius of Ssii-ma CKien. SstJ-MA KUANG (1019-1086) entered upon an official career and rose to be Minister of State. But he opposed the great reformer, Wang An-shih, and in 1070 was compelled to resign. He devoted the rest of his life to the completion of his famous work known as the T^ungChien or Mirror of History, a title bestowed upon it in 1084 by the Emperor, because "to view anti- quity as it were in a mirror is an aid in the administra- tion of government." The Mirror of History covers a period from the fifth century B.C. down to the beginning of the Sung dynasty, a.d. 960, and was supplemented by several important works from the author's own hand, all bearing upon the subject. In his youth the latter had been a devoted student, and used to rest his arm upon a kind of round wooden pillow, which roused him to ^wakefulness by its movement every time he began to doze over his work. On one occasion, in childhood, a small companion fell into a water-kong, and would have been drowned but for the presence of mind of Ssu-ma Kuang. He seized a huge stone, and with it cracked the jar so that the water poured out. As a scholar he had a large library, and was so particular in the hand- 2i8 CHINESE LITERATURE ling of his books that even after many years' use they were still as good as new. He would not allow his disciples to turn over leaves by scratching them up with the nails, but made them use the forefinger and second finger of the right hand. In 1085 he determined to return to public life, but he had not been many months in the capital, labouring as usual for his country's good, before he succumbed to an illness and died, uni- versally honoured and regretted by his countrymen, to whom he was affectionately known as the Living Buddha. The following extract from his writings refers to a new and dangerous development in the Censorate, an insti- tution which still plays a singular part in the adminis- tration of China : — "Of old there was no such office as that of Censor. From the highest statesman down to the artisan and trader, every man was free to admonish the Throne. From the time of the Han dynasty onwards, this prerogative was vested in an office, with the weighty responsibility of discussing the government of the empire, the people within the Four Seas, successes, failures, advantages, and disadvantages, in order of im- portance and of urgency. The sole object in this arrangement was the benefit of the State, not that of the Censor, from whom all ideas of fame or gain were indeed far removed. In 1017 an edict was issued appointing six officers to undertake these Censorial duties, and in 1045 their names were for the first time written out on boards ; and then, in 1062, apparently for better preservation, the names were cut on stone. Thus posterity can point to such an one and say, ' There was a loyal man ; ' to another, ' There was a traitor ; ' to a third, ' There was an upright man ; ' to CHOU TUN-I 219 a fourth, ' There was a scoundrel.' Does not this give cause for fear ? " Contemporaneously with Ssu-ma Kuang lived Chou TUN-I (1017-1073), who combined the duties of a small military command with prolonged and arduous study. He made himself ill by overwork and strict attention to the interests of the people at all hazards to himself. His chief works were written to elucidate the mysteries of the Book of Changes, and were published after his death by his disciples, with commentaries by Chu Hsi. The following short satire, veiled under the symbolism of flowers, being in a style which the educated Chinaman most appreciates, is very widely known : — "Lovers of flowering plants and shrubs we have had by scores, but T*ao CKien alone devoted himself to the chrysanthemum. Since the opening days of the T'ang dynasty, it has been fashionable to admire the peony ; but my favourite is the water-lily. How stain- less it rises from its slimy bed! How modestly it re- poses on the clear pool — an emblem of purity and truth ! Symmetrically perfect, its subtle perfume is wafted far and wide, while there it rests in spotless state, something to be regarded reverently from a dis- tance, and not to be profaned by familiar approach. " In my opinion the chrysanthemum is the flower of retirement and culture ; the peony the flower of rank and wealth ; the water-lily, the Lady Virtue sans pareille. "Alas! few have loved the chrysanthemum since T*ao Ch'ien, and none now love the water-lily like myself, whereas the peony is a general favourite with all mankind." 220 CHINESE LITERATURE CrffeNG Hao (1032-1085) and CrffeNG I (1033-1107) were two brothers famed for their scholarship, especially the younger of the two, who published a valuable com- mentary upon the Book of Changes. The elder attracted some attention by boldly suppressing a stone image in a Buddhist temple which was said to emit rays from its head, and had been the cause of disorderly gatherings of men and women. A specimen of his verse will be given in the next chapter. Ch'^ng I wrote some interest- ing chapters on the art of poetry. In one of these he says, ''Asked if a man can make himself a poet by taking pains, I reply that only by taking pains can any one hope to be ranked as such, though on the other hand the very fact of taking pains is likely to be inimical to success. The old couplet reminds us^ — * E^er one pentameter be spoken How many a human heart is broken /* There is also another old couplet — ' ^*Twere sad to take this heart of mine And break it der afive-foot line^ Both of these are very much to the point Confucius himself did not make verses, but he did not advise others to abstain from doing so." The great reformer and political economist Wang An-shih (1021-1086), who lived to see all his policy reversed, was a hard worker as a youth, and in com- position his pen was said to "fly over the paper." As a man he was distinguished by his frugality and his obstinacy. He wore dirty clothes and did not even wash his face, for which Su Hsiin denounced him as a beast. He was so cocksure of all his own views that WANG AN-SHIH 221 he would never admit the possibility of being wrong, which gained for him the sobriquet of the Obstinate Minister. He attempted to reform the examination system, requiring from the candidate not so much graces of style as a wide acquaintance with practical subjects. " Accordingly/' says one Chinese writer, " even the pupils at village schools threw away their text-books of rhetoric, and began to study primers of history, geography, and political economy." He was the author of a work on the written characters, with special reference to those which are formed by the combination of two or more, the meanings of which, taken together, determine the meaning of the compound character. The following is a letter which he wrote to a friend on the study of false doctrines : — " I have been debarred by illness from writing to you now for some time, though my thoughts have been with you all the while. " In reply to my last letter, wherein I expressed a fear that you were not progressing with your study of the Canon, I have received several from you, in all of which you seem to think I meant the Canon of Buddha, and you are astonished at my recommendation of such per- nicious works. But how could I possibly have intended any other than the Canon of the sages of China ? And for you to have thus missed the point of my letter is a good illustration of what I meant when I said I feared you were not progressing with your study of the Canon. "Now a thorough knowledge of our Canon has not been attained by any one for a very long period. Study of the Canon alone does not suffice for a thorough knowledge of the Canon. Consequently, I have been myself an omnivorous reader of books 1 222 CHINESE LITERATURE of all kinds, even, for example, of ancient medical and botanical works, I have, moreover, dipped into treatises on agriculture and on needlework, all of which I have found very profitable in aiding me to seize the great scheme of the Canon itself. For learning in these days is a totally different pursuit from what it was in the olden times ; and it is now impossible otherwise to get at the real meaning of our ancient sages. " There was Yang Hsiung. He hated all books that were not orthodox. Yet he made a wide study of hetero- dox writers. By force of education he was enabled to take what of good and to reject what of bad he found in each. Their pernicious influence was altogether lost on him ; while on the other hand he was prepared the more effectively to elucidate what we know to be the truth. Now, do you consider that I have been corrupted by these pernicious influences ? If so, you know me not. " No ! the pernicious influences of the age are not to be sought for in the Canon of Buddha. They are to be found in the corruption and vice of those in high places ; in the false and shameless conduct which is now rife among us. Do you not agree with me ? " Su Shih ( 1 036-1 1 01 ), better known by his fancy name as Su Tung-p'o, whose early education was superin- tended by his mother, produced such excellent com- positions at the examination for his final degree that the examiner, Ou-yang Hsiu, suspected them to be the work of a qualified substitute. Ultimately he came out first on the list. He rose to be a statesman, who made more enemies than friends, and was per- petually struggling against the machinations of un- scrupulous opponents, which on one occasion resulted SU SHIH 223 in his banishment to the island of Hainan, then a barbarous and almost unknown region. He was also a brilliant essayist and poet, and his writings are still the delight of the Chinese. The following is an account of a midnight picnic to a spot on the banks of a river at which a great battle had taken place nearly nine hundred years before, and where one of the opposing fleets was burnt to the water's edge, reddening a wall, probably the cliff alongside : — "In the year 1081, the seventh moon just on the wane, I went with a friend on a boat excursion to the Red Wall. A clear breeze was gently blowing, scarce enough to ruffle the river, as I filled my friend's cup and bade him troll a lay to the bright moon, singing the song of the ' Modest Maid/ ^ "By and by up rose the moon over the eastern hills, wandering between the Wain and the Goat, shed- ding forth her silver beams, and linking the water with the sky. On a skiff we took our seats, and shot over the liquid plain, lightly as though travelling through space, riding on the wind without knowing whither we were bound. We seemed to be moving in another sphere, sailing through air like the gods. So I poured out a bumper for joy, and, beating time on the skiff's side, sang the following verse : — • With laughing oar 5^ our joyous prow Shoots swiftly through the glittering wave — My heart within grows sadly grave — Great heroes deady where are ye now?* "My friend accompanied these words upon his fla- geolet, delicately adjusting its notes to express the varied emotions of pity and regret, without the slightest break in the thread of sound which seemed to wind around 224 CHINESE LITERATURE us like a silken skein. The very monsters of the deep yielded to the influence of his strains, while the boat- woman, who had lost her husband, burst into a flood of tears. Overpowered by my own feelings, I settled my- self into a serious mood, and asked my friend for some explanation of his art To this he replied, *Did not Ts*ao Ts'ao say — ^ The stars arefewy the moon is bright ^ The raven southward wings his flight ? ' "'Westwards to Hsia-k*ou, eastwards to Wu-ch'ang, where hill and stream in wild luxuriance blend, — was it not there that Ts ao Ts'ao was routed by Chou Yii ? Ching-chou was at his feet : he was pushing down stream towards the east. His war-vessels stretched stem to stern for a thousand //; his banners darkened the sky. He poured out a libation as he neared Chiang- ling ; and, sitting in the saddle armed cap^d-pie^ he yttered those words, did that hero of his age. Yet where is he to-day ? "'Now you and I have fished and gathered fuel to- gether on the river eyots. We have fraternised with the crayfish ; we have made friends with the deer. We have embarked together in our frail canoe; we have drawn inspiration together from the wine-flask — a couple of ephemerides launched on the ocean in a rice-husk ! Alas ! life is but an instant of Time. I long to be like the Great River which rolls on its way without end. Ah, that I might cling to some angel's wing and roam with him for ever ! Ah, that I might clasp the bright moon in my arms and dwell with her for aye ! Alas ! it only remains to me to enwrap these regrets in the tender melody of sound.' SU SHIH 22$ "'But do you forsooth comprehend/ I inquired, 'the mystery of this river and of this moon? The water passes by but is never gone : the moon wanes only to wax once more. Relatively speaking, Time itself is but an instant of time ; absolutely speaking, you and I, in common with all matter, shall exist to all eternity. Wherefore, then, the longing of which you speak ? "'The objects we see around us are one and all the property of individuals. If a thing does not belong to me, not a particle of it may be enjoyed by me. But the clear breeze blowing across this stream, the bright moon streaming over yon hills, — these are sounds and sights to be enjoyed without let or hindrance by all. They are the eternal gifts of God to all mankind, and their enjoy- ment is inexhaustible. Hence it is that you and I are enjoying them now.' " My friend smiled as he threw away the dregs from his wine-cup and filled it once more to the brim. And then, when our feast was over, amid the litter of cups and plates, we lay down to rest in the boat : for streaks of light from the east had stolen upon us unawares." The completion of a pavilion which Su Shih had been building, "as a refuge from the business of life," coinciding with a fall of rain which put an end to a severe drought, elicited a grateful record of this divine manifestation towards a suffering people. " The pavilion was named after rain, to commemorate joy." His record concludes with these lines : — " Should Heaven rain pearls^ the cold cannot wear them as clothes; Should Heaven rainjadCy the hungry cannot use it as food* It has rained without cease for three days — Whose was the influence at work ? Should you say it wcls that of your Governor^ The Governor himself refers it to the Son of Heaven, 226 CHINESE LITERATURE But the Son of Heaven says ^No I it was God: And Cod says * No / // was Nature* And as Nature lies beyond the ken ofman^ I christen this arbour instead^ Another piece refers to a recluse who — " Kept a couple of cranes, which he had carefully trained ; and every morning he would release them west- wards through the gap, to fly away and alight in the marsh below or soar aloft among the clouds as the birds' own fancy might direct. At nightfall they would return with the utmost regularity." This piece is also finished off with a few poetical lines : — ^Awayf away/ my birds ^ fly westwards now^ To wheel on hi^h andgase on ail below; To swoop together^ pinions closed^ to earth; To soar aloft once more among the clouds; To wander all day long in sedgy vale; To gather duckweed in the stony marsh. Come back / come back / benecUh the lengthening shades^ Your serge-clad master stands, guitar in hand. *Tis he that feeds you from his slender store: Come back I come back / nor linger in the west^* His account of Sleep-Land is based upon the Drunk- Land of Wang Chi : — "A pure administration and admirable morals pre- vail there, the whole being one vast level tract, with no north, south, east, or west. The inhabitants are quiet and affable ; they suffer from no diseases of any kind, neither are they subject to the influences of the seven passions. They have no concern with the ordinary affairs of life ; they do not distinguish heaven, earth, the sun, and the moon ; they toil not, neither do they spin ; but simply lie down and enjoy themselves. They HUANG riNG-CHIEN 227 have no ships and no carriages ; their wanderings, how- ever, are the boundless flights of the imagination." His younger brother, Su Cut (1039-1112), poet and official, is chiefly known for his devotion to Taoism. He published an edition, With commentary, of the Too- Ti-Ching. One of the Four Scholars of his century is Huang T'iNG-CHiEN (1050-1110), who was distinguished as a poet and a calligraphist. He has also been placed among the twenty-four examples of filial piety, for when his mother was ill he watched by her bedside for a whole year without ever taking off his clothes. The following is a specimen of his epistolary style : — " Hsi K*ang's verses are at once vigorous and purely beautiful, without a vestige of commonplace about them. Every student of the poetic art should know them thoroughly, and thus bring the author into his mind's eye. ''Those who are sunk in the cares and anxieties of this world's strife, even by a passing glance would gain therefrom enough to clear away some pecks of the cob- webs of mortality. How much more they who penetrate further and seize each hidden meaning and enjoy its flavour to the full ? Therefore, my nephew, I send you these poems for family reading, that you may cleanse your heart and solace a weary hour by their perusal. •' As I recently observed to my own young people, the true hero should be many-sided, but he must not be commonplace. It is impossible to cure that. Upon which one of them asked by what characteristics this absence of the commonplace was distinguished. ' It is hard to say,' I replied. 'A man who is not common- 228 CHINESE LITERATURE place is, under ordinary circumstances, much like other people. But he who at moments of great trial does not flinch, he is not commonplace.' " Ch£ng Ch'iao (1108-1166) began his literary career in studious seclusion, cut off from all human inter- course. Then he spent some time in visiting various places of interest, devoting himself to searching out marvels, investigating antiquities, and reading (and re- membering) every book that came in his way. In 1 149 he was summoned to an audience, and received an honorary post. He was then sent home to copy out his History of China, which covered a period from about B.C. 2800 to A.D. 600. A fine edition of this work, in forty-six large volumes, was published in 1749 by Imperial command, with a preface by the Emperor Ch'ieh Lung. He also wrote essays and poetry, besides a treatise in which he showed that the inscriptions on the Stone Drums, now in Peking, belong rather to the latter half of the third century B.C. than to the tenth or eleventh century B.C., as usually accepted. The name of Chu Hsi (1130-1200) is a household word throughout the length and breadth of literary China. He graduated at nineteen, and entered upon a highly successful official career. He apparently had a strong leaning towards Buddhism — some say that he actually became a Buddhist priest ; at any rate, he soon saw the error of his ways, and gave himself up com- pletely to a study of the orthodox doctrine. He was a most voluminous writer. In addition to his revision of the history of Ssu-ma Kuang, which, under the title of Vung Chien Kang Mu, is still regarded as the CHU HSI 229 standard history of China, he placed himself first in the first rank of all commentators on the Confucian Canon. He introduced interpretations either wholly or "partly at variance with those which had been put forth by the scholars of the Han dynasty and hitherto received as infallible, thus modifying to a certain extent the pre- vailing standard of political and social morality. His principle was simply one of consistency. He refused to interpret words in a given passage in one sense, and the same words occurring elsewhere in another sense. The result, as a whole, was undoubtedly to quicken with intelligibility many paragraphs the meaning of which had been obscured rather than elucidated by the earlier scholars of the Han dynasty. Occasionally, however, the great commentator o'erleapt himself. Here are two versions of one passage in the Analects, as inter- preted by the rival schools, of which the older seems unquestionably to be preferred : — Han. MSng Wu asked Confucius concerning filial piety. The Master said, *Mt consists in giving your parents no cause for anxiety save from your natural ailments." Chu Hsi, Mdng Wu asked Confucius concerning filial piety. The Master said, ''Parents have the sorrow of thinking anxiously about their children's ailments." The latter of these interpretations being obviously incomplete, Chu Hsi adds a gloss to the effect that children are therefore in duty bound to take great care of themselves. In the preface to his work on the Four Books as explained by Chu Hsi, published in 1745, Wang Pu- ch'ing (born 1671) has the following passage: — "Shao Yung tried to explain the Canon of Changes by num- CHU HSI 231 upon his paper a flat wash of colour to match the com- plexion of his sitter, and upon this draws a mere map of the features, making no attempt to obtain roundness or relief by depicting light and shadows, and never by any chance conveying the slightest suggestion of animation or expression." Chu Hsi gave the artist a glowing testimonial, in which he states that the latter not merely portrays the features, but "catches the very expression, and reproduces, as it were, the inmost mind of his model." He then adds the following personal tit-bit : — " I myself sat for two portraits, one large and the other small ; and it was quite a joke to see how ac- curately he reproduced my coarse ugly face and my vulgar rustic turn of mind, so that even those who had only heard of, but had never seen me, knew at once for whom the portraits were intended." It would be inter- esting to know if either of these pictures still survives among the Chu family heirlooms. At the death of Chu Hsi, his coffin is said to have taken up a position, suspended in the air, about three feet from the ground. Whereupon his son-in-law, falling on his knees beside the bier, reminded the departed spirit of the great principles of which he had been such a brilliant exponent in life, — and the coffin descended gently to the ground. z6 CHAPTER III POETRY The poetry of the Sungs has not attracted so much attention as that of the Tangs. This is chiefly due to the fact that although all the literary men of the Sung dynasty may roughly be said to have contributed their quota of verse, still there were few, if any, who could be ranked as professional poets, that is, as writers of verse and of nothing else, like Li Po, Tu Fu, and many others under the Tang dynasty. Poetry now began to be, what it has remained in a marked degree until the pre- sent day, a department of polite education, i rrespectivej :>l. the par ticle of the divine,,gale> More regard was paid form, and the license which had been accorded to earlier masters was sacrificed to conventionality. The Odes collected by Confucius are, as we have seen, rude ballads of love, and war, and tilth, borne by their very simplicity direct to the human heart* The poetry of the T'ang dynasty shows a masterly combination, in which art, unseen, is employed to enhance, not to fetter and degrade, thoughts drawn from a veritable communion with nature. With the fall of the T'ang dynasty the poetic art suffered a lapse from which it has never recovered ; and now, in modern times, although every student " can turn a verse " because he has been " duly CH'feN TUAN 233 taught/' the poems produced disclose a naked artifi- ciality which leaves the reader disappointed and cold. The poet Ch'jIn T*uan {d. a.d. 989) began tife under favourable auspices. He was suckled by a mysterious lady in a green robe, who found him playing as a tiny child on the bank of a river. He became, in consequence of this supernatural nourishment, exceedingly clever and possessed of a prodigious memory, with a happy knack for verse. Yet he failed to get a degree, and gave him- self up "to the joys of hill and stream." While on the mountains some spiritual beings are said to have taught him the art of hibernating like an animal, so that he would go off to sleep for a hundred days at a time. He wrote a treatise on the elixir of life, and was generally inclined to Taoist notions. At death his body remained warm for seven days, and for a whole month a " glory " played around his tomb. He was summoned several times to Court, but to judge by the following poem, officialdom seems to have had few charms for him : — " For ten long years I plodded through the vale of lust and strife^ Then through my dreams there gashed a ray of the old sweet peaceful life, . . • No scarlet'tasselled hat of state can vie with soft repose; Grand mansions do not taste the joys that the poor maris cabin knows, IhaU the threatening clash of arms when fierce retainers throngs I loathe the drunkards revels and the sound of fife and song; But 1 love to seek a quiet nook^ and some old volume bring Where I can see the wild flowers bloom and hear the birds in spring? WANG AN-SHIH 235 from which I infer that the magnetic current is flowing from south to north, and that some southerner is coming into power, with manifold consequences to the State." The subsequent appearance of Wang An-shih was re- garded as a verification of his skill. The great reformer here mentioned found time, amid the cares of his economic revolution, to indulge in poetical composition. Here is his account of a nuit blanche f an excellent example of the difficult ''stop- short : "— " The ituens€'sHck is burnt to ash, the water-clock is stilled^ The midnight breeze blows sharply by^ and all around is chilled ** Yet I am kept from slumber by the beauty of the spring . . . Sweet shapes of flowers across the blind the quivering moonbeams fling I " Here, too, is a short poem by the classical scholar, Huang Ting-chien, written on the annual visit for wor- ship at the tombs of ancestors, in full view of the hillside cemetery : — " The peach and plum trees smile with flowers this famous day of spring, A nd country graveyards round about with lamentations ring. Thunder has startled insect life and roused the gnats and bees, A gentle rain has urged the crops and soothed the flowers and trees, . . • . Perhaps on this side lie the bones of a wretch whom no one knows; On that, ilte sacred ashes of a patriot repose. 236 CHINESE LITERATURE But who across the centuries can hope to mark eeich spot Where fool and hero^ joined in deaths beneath the brambles rotf^ The grave student Ch'fing Hao wrote verses like the rest* Sometimes he even condescended to jest : — ** I wander norths J w€mder souths I rest me where Iple€Lse. • . . See how the river-banks are nipped beneath the autumn breeze i Yet what care I if autumn blasts the river-banks lay bare t The loss of hue to river-banks is the river-bank^ affair,^ In the eleventh and twelfth centuries HUNG ChCeh- FAN made a name for himself as a poet and calligraphist, but he finally yielded to the fascination of Buddhism and took orders as a priest. This is no trifling ordeal. From three to nine pastilles are placed upon the shaven scalp of the candidate, and are allowed to burn down into the flesh, leaving an indelible scar. Here is a poem by him, written probably before monasticism had damped his natural ardour : — •* Two green silk ropes ^ with painted stand^ from heights aMal swing. And there outside the house a maid disports herself in spring. Along the ground her blood-red skirts all swiftly swishing fly ^ As though to bear her off to be an angel in the sky. Strewed thick with fluttering almond-blooms the painted stand is seen; The embroidered ropes flit to and fro amid the willow green. 1 YEH SHIH— KAO CHO-NIEN 237 Then when she stops and out she springs to stand with downcast eyes^ You think she is some angel just now banished from the skies J* Better known as a statesman than as a poet is Yeh Shih (II50-I223), The following "stop-short," how- ever, referring to the entrance-gate to a beautiful park, is ranked among the best of its kind : — " ' Tis closed f — lest trampling footsteps mar the glory of the green. Time after time we knock and knock; n^jcmitor is seen. Yet bolts and bars catft quite shut in the spring-tim^s beauteous pall : A pink-flowered almond-spray peeps out athwart the envious wtUlf " Of Kao Ch(J-nien nothing seems to be known. His poem on the annual spring worship at the tombs of ancestors is to be found in all collections : — ^ The northern and the southern hills are one large burying^ground^ And all is life and bustle there when the sacred day comes round. Burnt paper cash, like butterflies^ fly fluttering far and wide^ While mourner^ robes with tears of blood a crimson hue are dyed. The sun sets, and the red fox crouches down beside the tomb; Night comes, and youths and maidens laugh where lamps light up the gloom. Let him whose fortune brings him wine^ get tipsy while he may^ For no man, when the long night comes^ can take one drop away I " CHAPTER IV DICTIONARIES— ENCYCLOPEDIAS— MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE Several dictionaries of importance were issued by various scholars during the Sung dynasty, not to mention many philological works of more or less value. The Chinese have always been students of their own language, partly, no doubt, because they have so far never condescended to look at any other. They delight in going back to days when correspon- dence was carried on by pictures pure and simple ; and the fact that there is little evidence forthcoming that such a system ever prevailed has only resulted in stimulating invention and forgery. A clever courtier, popularly known as " the nine-tailed fox," was CrffeN P'feNG-NlEN (a.D. 961-1017), who rose to be a Minister of State. He was employed to revise the Kuang Yun^ a phonetic dictionary by some unknown author, which contained over 26,000 separate characters. This work was to a great extent superseded by the Chi YUity on a similar plan, but containing over 53,000 characters. The latter was produced by Sung Ch*i, mentioned in chap, iii., in conjunction with several eminent scholars. Tai Tung graduated in 1237 ^"^ ^^^^ *^ ^^ Governor of Tai-chou in Chehkiang. Then the Mongols pre- 238 WU SHU— LI FANG 239 vailed^ and-Tai Tung, unwilling to serve them, pleaded ill-health, and in 1275 retired into private life. There he occupied himself with the composition of the Liu Shu Ku or Six Scripts, an examination into the origin and development of writing, which, according to some, was published about a.d. 1250, but according to others, not until so late as the year 1319. From the rise of the Sung dynasty may be dated the first appearance of the encyclopaedia, destined to occupy later so much space in Chinese literature. Wu Shu (a.d. 947-1002), whose life was a good instance of " worth by poverty depressed," may fairly be credited with the production of the earliest work of the kind. His Shik Lei Fu dealt with celestial and terrestrial phenomena, mineralogy, botany, and natural history, arranged, for want of an alphabet, under categories. It is curiously written in the poetical-prose style, and forms the foun- dation of a similar book of reference in use at the present day. Wu Shu was placed upon the commission which produced a much more extensive work known as the Tai P'ing Yu Lan. At the head of that commission was Li Fang (a.d. 924-995), a Minister of State and a great favourite with the Emperor. In the last year of his life he was invited to witness the Feast of Lanterns from the palace. On that occasion the Emperor placed Li beside him, and after pouring out for him a goblet of wine and supplying him with various delicacies, he turned to his courtiers and said, ''Li Fang has twice served us as Minister of State, yet has he never in any way injured a single fellow-creature. Truly this must be a virtuous man." The T*ai P*tng Yii Lan was reprinted in 1812, and is bound up in thirty-two large volumes. It was so 240 CHINESE LITERATURE named because the Emperor himself went through all the manuscript, a task which occupied him nearly a year* A list of about eight hundred authorities is given, and the Index fills four hundred pages. As a pendant to this work Li Fang designed the Tat P^ing Kuang Chi, an encyclopaedia of biographical and other information drawn from general literature. A list of about three hundred and sixty authorities is given, and the Index fills two hundred and eighty pages. The edition of 1566 — a rare work — bound up in twelve thick volumes, stands upon the shelves of the Cambridge University Library. Another encyclopaedist was Ma Tuan-lin, the son of a high official, in whose steps he prepared to follow. The dates of his birth and death are not known, but he flourished in the thirteenth century. Upon the collapse of the Sung dynasty he disappeared from public life, and taking refuge in his native place, he gave himself up to teaching, attracting many disciples from far and near, and fascinating all by his untiring dialectic skill. He left behind him the Win Hsien 'Pung K*ao^ a large encyclopaedia based upon the T*ung Tien of Tu Yu, but much enlarged and supplemented by five additional sections, namely. Bibliography, Imperial Lineage, Ap- pointments, Uranography, and Natural Phenomena. This work, which cost its author twenty years of unre- mitting labour, has long been known to Europeans, who have drawn largely upon its ample stores of anti- quarian research. At the close of the Sung dynasty there was published a curious book on Medical Jurisprudence, which is THE HSI YCAN LU 241 interesting, in spite of its manifold absurdities, as being the recognised handbook for official use at the present day. No magistrate ever thinks of proceeding to dis- charge the duties of coroner without taking a copy of these instructions along with him. The present work was compiled by a judge named Sung Tz'ti, from pre- existing works of a similar kind, and we are told in the preface of a fine edition, dated 1842, that ** being sub- jected for many generations to practical tests by the officers of the Board of Punishments, it became daily more and more exact." A few extracts will be sufficient to determine its real value : — (i.) " Man has three hundred and sixty-five bones, cor- responding to the number of days it takes the heavens to revolve. ** The skull of a male, from the nape of the neck to the top of the head, consists of eight pieces-^of a Ts'ai-chou man, nine. There is a horizontal suture across the back of the skull, and a perpendicular one down the middle. Female skulls are of six pieces, and l^ve the horizontal but not the perpendicular suture. "Teeth are twenty-four, twenty-eight, thirty-two, or thirty-six in number. There are three long-shaped breast* bones. "There is one bone belonging to the heart of the shape and size of a cask. "There is one ^shoulder-well' bone and one 'rice- spoon ' bone on each side. " Males have twelve ribs on each side, eight long and four short. Females have fourteen on each side." (2.) " Wounds inflicted on the bone leave a red mark and a slight appearance of saturation, and where the bone is broken there will be at each end a halo-like trace of 242 CHINESE LITERATURE blood. Take a bone on which there are marks of a wound, and hold it up to the light ; if these are of a fresh-looking red, the wound was inflicted before death and penetrated to the bone ; but if there is no trace of saturation from blood, although there is a wound, it was inflicted after death." (3.) " The bones of parents may be identified by their children in the following manner. Let the experimenter cut himself or herself with a knife, and cause the blood to drip on to the bones ; then if the relationship is an actual fact, the blood will sink into the bone, otherwise it will not. N.B. — Should the bones have been washed with salt water, even though the relationship exists, yet the blood will not soak in. This is a trick to be guarded against beforehand. '' It is also said that if parent and child, or husband and wife, each cut themselves and let the blood drip into a basin of water, the two bloods will mix, whereas that of two people not thus related will not mix. " Where two brothers, who may have been separated since childhood, are desirous of establishing their identity as such, but are unable to do so by ordinary means, bid each one cut himself and let the blood drip into a basin. If they are really brothers, the two bloods will coagu- late into one ; otherwise not. But because fresh blood will always coagulate with the aid of a little salt or vinegar, people often smear the basin over with these to attain their own ends and deceive others; therefore always wash out the basin you are going to use, or buy a new one from a shop. Thus the trick will be defeated." (4.) "There are some atrocious villains who, when they have murdered any one, burn the body and throw the ashes away, so that there are no bones to examine. THE HSI YUAN LU 243 In such cases you must carefully find out at what time the murder was committed, and where the body was burnt. Then, when you know the place, all witnesses agreeing on this point, you may proceed without further delay to examine the wounds. The mode of procedure is this. Put up your shed near where the body was burnt, and make the accused and witnesses point out themselves the exact spot. Then cut down the grass and weeds growing on this spot, and burn large quantities of fuel till the place is extremely hot, throwing on several pecks of hemp-seed. By and by brush the place clean ; then, if the body was actually burnt on this spot, the oil from the seed will be found to have sunk into the ground in the form of a human figure, and wherever there were wounds on the dead man, there on this figure the oil will be found to have collected together, large or small, square, round, long, short, oblique, or straight, exactly as they were inflicted. The parts where there were no wounds will be free from any such appearances." BOOK THE SIXTH THE MONGOL DYNASTY (a.d. iaoo-1368) ' BOOK THE SIXTH THE MONGOL DYNASTY (a.d. iaoo-1368) CHAPTER I MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE— POETRY The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries witnessed a remarkable political revolution. China was conquered by the Mongols, and for the first time in history the empire passed under the rule of an alien sovereign. No exact . date can be assigned for the transference of the Imperial power. In 1264 Kublai Khan fixed his capital at Peking, and in 1271 he adopted Yuan as his dynastic style. It was not, however, until 1279 that the patriot statesman, Chao Ping, had his retreat cut off, and de- spairing of his country, took upon his back the boy- Emperor, the last of the Sungs, and jumped from his doomed vessel into the river, thus bringing the great fire- led dynasty to an end. Kublai Khan, who was a confirmed Buddhist, paid great honour to Confucius, and was a steady patron of literature. In 1269 he caused Bashpa, a Tibetan priest, to construct an alphabet for the Mongol language ; in 1280 the calendar was revised; and in 1287 the Impe- 17 «47 i 248 CHINESE LITERATURE rial Academy was opened. But he could not forgive WfeN TiEN-HSlANG (1236-1283), the renowned patriot and scholar, who had fought so bravely but unsuccessfully against him. In 1279 the latter was conveyed to Peking, on which journey he passed eight days without eating. Every effort was made to induce him to own allegiance to the Mongol Emperor, but without success. He was kept in prison for three years. At length he was sum- moned into the presence of Kublai Khan, who said to him, " What is it you want ? " " By the grace of the Sung Emperor," W^n Tien-hsiang replied, " I became his Majesty's Minister, I cannot serve two masters. I only ask to die." Accordingly he was executed, meeting his death with composure, and making a final obeisance southwards, as though his own sovereign was still reign- ing in his own capital. The following poem was written by Wfin T*ien-hsiang while in captivity : — '* There is in the universe an Aura which permeates all things and makes them what they are. Below, it shapes forth land and water ; above, the sun and the stars. In. man it is called spirit ; and there is nowhere where it is* not. / " In times of national tranquillity this spirit liesfien/u iiS the harmony which prevails ; only at some great crisi s is it manifested widely abroad." [Here follow ten historical instances of devotion ar id heroism.] " Such is this grand and glorious spirit which endure eth for all generations, and which, linked with the sun y ^nd the moon, knows neither beginning nor end. The fc ,un- dation of all that is great and good in heaven and er nth, it is itself born from the everlasting obligations v ^.jjich are due by man to man. WfiN riEN-HSIANG 249 '' Alas ! the fates were against me. I was without resource. Bound with fetters, hurried away towards the north, death would have been sweet indeed; but that boon was refused. " My dungeon is lighted by the will-o'-the-wisp alone ; no breath of spring cheers the murky solitude in which I dwell. The ox and the barb herd together in one stall, the rooster and the phoenix feed together from one dish. Exposed to mist and dew, I had many times thought to die ; and yet, through the seasons of two revolving years, disease hovered round me in vain. The dank, unhealthy soil to me became paradise itself. For there was that within me which misfortune could not steal away. And so I remained firm, gazing at the white clouds floating over my head, and bearing in my heart a sorrow boundless as the sky. ''The sun of those dead heroes has long since set, but their record is before me still. And, while the wind whistles under the eaves, I open my books and read ; and lo 1 in their presence my heart glows with a bor- rowed fire." " I myself," adds the famous commentator, Lin Hsi- chung, of the seventeenth century, " in consequence of the rebellion in Fuhkien, lay in prison for two years, while deadly disease raged around. Daily I recited this poem several times over, and happily escaped ; from which it is clear that the supremest efforts in literature move even the gods,* and that it is not the verses of Tu Fu alone which can prevail against malarial fever." I At the final examination for his degree in 1256, Wdn ^ T ien-hsiang had been placed seventh on the list. How- ever, the then Emperor, on looking over the papers of the candidates before the result was announced, was 2 so CHINESE LITERATURE immensely struck by his work, and sent for the grand examiner to reconsider the order of merit, "This essay," said his Majesty, " shows us the moral code of the ancients as in a mirror ; it betokens a loyalty en- during as iron and stone." The grand examiner readily admitted the justice of the Emperor's criticism, and when the list was published, the name of W6n T'ien- hsiang stood first. The fame of that examiner, Wang YlNG-LiN (i 223-1 296), is likely to last for a long time to come. Not because of his association with one of China's greatest patriots, nor because of his voluminous contributions to classical literature, including an exten- sive encyclopaedia, a rare copy of which is to be seen in the University of Leyden, but because of a small primer for schoolboys, which, by almost universal consent, is attributed to his pen. For six hundred years this primer has been, and is still at this moment, the first book put into the hand of every child throughout the empire. It is an epitome of all knowledge, dealing with philosophy, classical literature, history, biography, and common objects. It has been called a sleeve edition of the Mirror of History, Written in lines of three characters to each, and being in doggerel rhyme, it is easily committed to memory, and is known by heart by every Chinaman who has learnt to read. This Three Character Classic, as it is called, has been imi- tated by Christian missionaries, Protestant and Catholic ; and even the T'ai-p'ing rebels, alive to its far-reaching in- fluence, published an imitation of their own. Here are a few specimen lines, rhymed to match the original : — " Men^ one and all^ in infancy Are virtuous at heart; Their moral tendencies the same^ Their practice wide apart,. LIU YIN 251 Without instrucHotis kindly aid Maris nature grows less fair; Jn teachings thoroughness should be A never-ceasing care!^ It may be added that the meaning of the Three Character Classic is not explained to the child at the time. All that the latter has to do is to learn the sounds and formation of the 560 different characters of which the book is composed. A clever boy, who attracted much attention by the filial piety which he displayed towards his step- father, was Liu Yin (1241-1293). He obtained office, but resigned in order to tend his sick mother ; and when again appointed, his health broke down and he went into seclusion. The following extract is from his pen : — " When God made man, He gave him powers to cope with the exigencies of his environment, and resources within himself, so that he need not be dependent upon external circumstances; "Thus, in districts where poisons abound, antidotes abound also ; and in others, where malaria prevails, we find such correctives as ginger, nutmegs, and dogwood. Again, fish, terrapins, and clams are the most whole- some articles of diet in excessively damp climates, though themselves denizens of the water ; and musk and deer-horns are excellent prophylactics in earthy climates, where in fact they are produced. For if these things were unable to prevail against their surroundings, they could not possibly thrive where they do, while the fact that they do so thrive is proof positive that they were ordained as specifics against those surroundings. 252 CHINESE LITERATURE " Chu Hsi said, * When God is about to send down calamities upon us, He first raises up the hero whose genius shall finally prevail against those calamities.' From this point of view there can be no living man without his appointed use, nor any state of society which man should be unable to put right." The theory that every man plays his allotted part in the cosmos is a favourite one with the Chinese ; and the process by which the tares are separated from the wheat, exemplifying the use of adversity, has been curiously stated by a Buddhist priest of this date : — '' If one is a man, the mills of heaven and earth grind him to perfection ; if not, to destruction." A considerable amount of poetry was produced under the Mongol sway, though not so much proportionately, nor of such a high order, as under the great native dynasties. The Emperor Ch'ien Lung published in 1787 a collection of specimens of the poetry of this Yiian dynasty. They fill eight large volumes, but are not much read. One of the best known poets of this period is Liu Chi (a.d. I3ii-I375)> who was also deeply read in the Classics and also a student of astrology. He lived into the Ming dynasty, which he helped to establish, and was for some years the trusted adviser of its first ruler. He lost favour, however, and was poisoned by a rival, it is said, with the Emperor's connivance. The following lines, referring to an early visit to a mountain monastery, reveal a certain sympathy with Buddhism : — " / mounted when ike cock had just begun^ And reached the convent ere the bells were dotiej A gentle zephyr whispered o'er the lawn ; Behind the wood the moon gave way to dawn. LIU CHI 253 And in this pure sweet solitude I lay^ Stretching my limbs out to await the day^ No sound along the willow pathway dim Save the soft echo of the bonze^ hymnJ* Here too is an oft-quoted stanza, to be found in any poetry primer : — " A centenarian ^mongst men Is rare; and if one comesy w/iat then f The mightiest heroes of the past upon the hillside sleep at last^ The prose writings of Liu Chi are much admired for their pure style, which has been said to "smell of antiquity." One piece tells how a certain noble who had lost all by the fall of the Ch'in dynasty, B.C. 206, and was forced to grow melons for a living, had recourse to divination, and went to consult a famous augur on his prospects. " Alas 1 " cried the augur, " what is there that Heaven can bestow save that which virtue can obtain ? Where is the efficacy of spiritual beings beyond that with which man has endowed them ? The divining plant is but a dead stalk ; the tortoise-shell a dry bone. They are but matter like ourselves. And man, the divinest of all things, why does he not seek wisdom from within, rather than from these grosser stuffs ? " Besides, sir, why not reflect upon the past — that past which gave birth to this present ? Your cracked roof and crumbling walls of to-day are but the complement of yesterday's lofty towers and spacious halls. The straggling bramble is but the complement of the shapely garden tree. The grasshopper and the cicada are but the complement of organs and flutes ; the will-o'-the- wisp and firefly, of gilded lamps and painted candles. 254 CHINESE LITERATURE Your endive and watercresses are but the complement of the elephant-sinews and camel's hump of days by- gone; the maple-leaf and the rush, of your once rich robes and fine attire. Do not repine that those who had not such luxuries then enjoy them now. Do not be dissatisfied that you, who enjoyed them then, have them now no more. In the space of a day and night the flower blooms and dies. Between spring and autumn things perish and are renewed. Beneath the roaring cascade a deep pool is found ; dark valleys lie at the foot of high hills. These things you know ; what more can divination teach you ? " Another piece is entitled "Outsides," and is a light satire on the corruption of his day : — " At Hangchow there lived a costermonger who understood how to keep oranges a whole year without letting them spoil. His fruit was always fresh-looking, firm as jade, and of a beautiful golden hue ; but inside — dry as an old cocoon. " One day I asked him, saying, ' Are your oranges for altar or sacrificial purposes, or for show at banquets ? Or do you make this outside display merely to cheat the foolish ? as cheat them you most outrageously do.' 'Sir,' replied the orangeman, M have carried on thh. trade now for many years. It is my source of livelihood. I sell ; the world buys. And I have yet to learn that you are the only honest man about, and that I am the only cheat. Perhaps it never struck you in this light. The b^on-bearers of to-day, seated on their tiger skins, pose as the martial guardians of the State ; but what are they compared with the captains of old ? The broad - brimmed, long-robed Ministers of to-day pose as pilla* of the constitution ; but have they the wisdom of r 4 LIU CHI 255 ancient counsellors ? Evil-doers arise, and none can subdae them. The people are in misery, and none can relieve them. Clerks are corrupt, and none can restrain them. Laws decay, and none can renew them. Our officials eat the bread of the State and know no shame. They sit in lofty halls, ride fine steeds, drink themselves drunk with wine, and batten on the richest fare. Which of them but puts on an awe-inspiring look, a dignified mien ? — ^all gold and gems without, but dry cocoons within. You pay, sir, no heed to these things, while you are very particular about my oranges.* " I had no answer to make. Was he really out of conceit with the age, or only quizzing me in defence of his fruit?" WL CHAPTER II THE DRAMA If the Mongol dynasty added little of permanent value to the already vast masses oi poetry, of general literature, and of classical exegesis, it will ever be remembered in connection with two important departures in the literary history of the nation. Within the century covered by Mongol rule the Drama and the Novel may be said to have come into existence. Going back to pre-Confucian or legendary days, we find that from time immemorial the Chinese have danced set dances in time to music on solemn or festive occasions of sacrifice or ceremony. Thus we read in the Odes : — " Lightly, sprightly^ To the dance Igo^ The sun shining brightly In the court below^ The movements of the dancers were methodical, slow, and dignified. Long feathers and flutes were held in the hand and were waved to and fro as the performers moved right or left. Words to be sung were added, and then gradually the music and singing prevailed over the dance, gesture being substituted. The result was rather an operatic than a dramatic performance, and the words sung were more of the nature of songs than of musical plays. In the Tso Chuan^ under B.C. 545, we read 356 THE DRAMA 257 of an amateur attempt of the kind, organised by stable- boys, which frightened their horses and caused a stam- pede. Confucius, too, mentions the arrogance of a noble who emplpyed in his ancestral temple the number of singers reserved for the Son of Heaven alone. It is hardly necessary to allude to the exorcism of evil spirits, carried out three times a year by officials dressed up in bearskins and armed with spear and shield, who made a house to house visitation surrounded by a shouting and excited populace. It is only mentioned here because some writers have associated this practice with the origin of the drama in China. All we really know is that in very early ages music and song and dance formed an ordinary accompaniment to religious and other cere* monies, and that this continued for many centuries. Towards the middle of the eighth century, A.D., the Emperor Ming Huang of the Tang dynasty, being exceedingly fond of music, established a College, known as the Pear-Garden, for training some three hundred young people of both sexes. There is a legend that this College was the outcome of a visit paid by his Majesty to the moon, where he was much im- pressed by a troup of skilled performers attached to the vPalace of Jade which he found there. It was apparently an institution to provide instrumentalists, vocalists, and possibly dancers, for Court entertainments, although some have held that the "youths of the Pear-Garden" were really actors, and the term is still applied to the dramatic fraternity. Nothing, however, which can be truly identified with the actor's art seems to have been known until the thirteenth century, when suddenly the Drama, as seen in the modern Chinese stage-play, sprang into being. In the present limited state of our know- 258 CHINESE LITERATURE ledge on the subject, it is impossible to say how or why this came about. We cannot trace step by step the development of the drama in China from a purely choral performance, as in Greece. We are simply confronted with the accomplished fact. At the same time we hear of dramatic performances among the Tartars at a somewhat earlier date. In 103 1 K'ung Tao-fu, a descendant of Confucius in the forty- fifth degree, was sent as envoy to the Kitans, and was received at a banquet with much honour. But at a theatrical entertainment which followed, a piece was played in which his sacred ancestor, Confucius, was introduced as the low-comedy man ; and this so dis- gusted him that he got up and withdrew, the Kitans being forced to apologise. Altogether, it would seem that the drama is not indigenous to China, hut may well have been introduced from Tartar sources. However this may be, it is certain that the drama as known under the Mongols is to all intents and purposes the drama of to-day, and a few general remarks may not be out of place. Plays are acted in the large cities of China at public theatres all the year round, except during one month at the New Year, and during the period of mourning for a deceased Emperor. There is no charge for admission, but all visitors must take some refreshment. The various Trade-Guilds have raised stages upon their premises, and give periodical performances free to all who will stand in an open-air courtyard to watch them. Man- darins and wealthy persons often engage actors to perform in their private houses, generally while a dinner-party is going on. In the country, performances are provided by public subscription, and take place at temples or on temporary stages put up in the roadway. THE DRAMA 259 These stages are always essentially the same. There is no curtain, there are no wings, and no flies. At the back of the stage are two doors, one for entrance and one for exit. The actors who are to perform the first piece come in by the entrance door all together. When the piece is over, and as they are filing out through the exit door, those who are cast for the second piece pass in through the other door. There is no interval, and the musicians, who sit on the stage, make no pause ; hence many persons have stated that Chinese plays are ridicu« lously long, the fact being that half-an-hour to an hour would be about an average length for the plays usually performed, though much longer specimens, such as would last from three to five hours, are to be found in books. Eight or ten plays are often performed at an ordinary dinner-party, a list of perhaps forty being handed round for the chief guests to choose from. The actors undergo a very severe physical training, usually between the ages of nine and fourteen. They have to learn all kinds of acrobatic feats, these being introduced freely into ** military " plays. They also have to practise walking on feet bound up in imitation of women's feet, no woman having been allowed on the stage since the days of the Emperor Ch*ien Lung (a.d. 1 736- 1 796), whose mother had been an actress. They have further to walk about in the open air for an hour or so every day, the head thrown back and the mouth wide open in order to strengthen the voice ; and finally, their diet is carefully regulated according to a fixed system of training. Fifty-six actors make up a full company, each of whom must know perfectly from 100 to 200 plays, there being no prompter. These do not include the four- or five-act plays as found in books. 26o CHINESE LITERATURE but either acting editions of these, cut down to suit the requirements of the stage, or short farces specially written. The actors are ranged under five classes according to their capabilities, and consequently every one knows what part he is expected to take in any given play. Far from being an important personage, as in ancient Greece, the actor is under a social ban ; and for three generations his descendants may not compete at the public examinations. Yet he must possess con- siderable ability in a certain line ; for inasmuch as there are no properties and no realism, he is wholly dependent for success upon his own powers of idealisation. There he is indeed supreme. He will gallop across the stage on horseback, dismount, and pass his horse on to a groom. He will wander down a street, and stop at an open shop-window to flirt with a pretty girl. He will hide in a forest, or fight from behind a battlemented wall. He conjures up by histrionic skill the whole paraphernalia of a scene which in Western countries is grossly laid out by supers before the curtain goes up. The general absence of properties is made up to some extent by the dresses of the actors, which are of the most gorgeous character, robes for Emperors and grandees running into figures which would stagger even a West-end manager. It is obvious that the actor must be a good contor- tionist, and excel in gesture. He must have a good voice, his part consisting of song and " spoken " in about equal proportions. To show how utterly the Chinese disregard realism, it need only be stated that dead men get up and walk off the stage ; sometimes they will even act the part of bearers and make movements as though carrying themselves away. Or a servant will THE DRAMA 261 step across to a leading performer and hand him a cup of tea to clear his voice. The merit of the plays performed is not on a level with the skill of the performer. A.Chinese audience does not go to hear the play, but to see the actor. In 1678, at a certain market-town, there was a play performed which represented the execution of the patriot, General Yo Fei (A.D. 1 141), brought about by the treachery of a rival, Ch*in Kuei, who forged an order for that purpose. The actor who played Ch*in Kuei (a term since used contemp- tuously for a spittoon) produced a profound sensation ; so much so, that one of the spectators, losing all self- control, leapt upon the stage and stabbed the unfortunate man to death. Most Chinese plays are simple in construction and weak in plot. They are divided into "military" and "civil," which terms have often been wrongly taken in the senses of tragedy and comedy, tragedy proper being quite unknown in China. The former usually deal with historical episodes and heroic or filial acts by historic cal characters ; and Emperors and Generals and small armies rush wildly about the stage, sometimes engaged in single combat, sometimes in turning head over heels.. Battles are fought and rivals or traitors executed before the very eyes of the audience. The "civil" plays are concerned with the entanglements of every-day life, and are usually of a farcical character. As they stand in classical collections or in acting editions, Chinese plays are as unobjectionable as Chinese poetry and general literature. On the stage, however, actors are allowed great license in gagging, and the direction which their gag takes is chiefly the reason which keeps respectable women away from the public play-house. 262 CHINESE LITERATURE It must therefore always be remembered that there is the play as it can be read in the library, and again as it appears in the acting edition to be learnt, and finally as it is interpreted by the actor. These three are often very different one from the other. The following abstract will give a fair idea of the pieces to be found on the play-bill of any Chinese theatre : — The Three Suspicions. At the close of the Ming dynasty, a certain well-known General was occupied day 2:nd night in camp with pre- parations for resisting the advance of the rebel army which ultimately captured Peking. While thus tempor- arily absent from home, the tutor engaged for his son fell ill with severe shivering fits, and the boy, anxious to do something to relieve the sufferer, went to his mother's room and borrowed a thick quilt. Late that night, the General unexpectedly returned home, and heard from a slave-girl in attendance of the tutor's illness and of the loan of the quilt. Thereupon, he proceeded straight to the sick-room, to see how the tutor was getting on, but found him fast asleep* As he was about to retire, he espied on the ground a pair of women's slippers, which had been accidentally brought in with the quilt, and at once recognised to whom they belonged. Hastily quit- ting the still sleeping tutor, and arming himself with a sharp scimitar, he burst into his wife's apartment He seized the terrified woman by the hair, and told her that she must die ; producing, in reply to her protestations, the fatal pair of slippers. He yielded, however, to the entreaties of the assembled slave-girls, and deferred his vengeance until he had put the following test. He sent THE DRAMA 263 a slave-girl to the tutor's room, himself following close behind with his naked weapon ready for use, bearing a message from her mistress to say she was awaiting him in her own room ; in response to which invitation the voice of the tutor was heard from within, saying, ** What ! at this hour of the night ? Go away, you bad girl, or I will tell the master when he comes back I " Still uncon- vinced, the jealous General bade his trembling wife go herself and summon her paramour ; resolving that if the latter but put foot over the threshold, his life should pay the penalty. But there was no occasion for murderous violence. Th« tutor again answered from within the bolted door, " Madam, I may not be a saint, but I would at least seek to emulate the virtuous Chao W^n-hua (the Joseph of China). Go, and leave me in peace." The General now changes his tone ; and the injured wife, she too changes hers. She attempts to commit suicide, and is only dissuaded by an abject apology on the part of her husband ; in the middle of which, as the latter is on his knees, a slave-girl creates roars of laughter by bringing her master, in mistake for wine, a brimming goblet of vinegar, the Chinese emblem of connubial jealousy. The following is a translation of the acting edition of a short play, as commonly performed, illustrating, but not to exaggeration, the slender and insufHcient literary art which satisfies the Chinese public, the verses of the original being quite as much doggerel as those of the English version :— iS 264 CHINESE LITERATURE THE FLOWERY BALL. Dramatis PERSONiC : Su Tai-ch*in, Hu Mao-yiian, P'ing Kuei, P'u-sa, Lady Wang, Gatekeeper. a Suitor, a Suitor. a Beggar, the Beggof^s Guardian Angel, daughter of a high Mandarin, SuitorSy Servants^ &*c. Scene — Outside the city of CHang-an. Su Tai-ch'in. At CKang-an city I reside: My father is a Mandarin; Oh / if I get the Flowery Ball^ My cup of joy will overflow. My humble name is Su Tai-cHin. To-day the Lady Wang will throw A Flowery Ball to get a spouse; And if perchance this ball strikes me^ I am a lucky man indeed But now I must go on my way, [Walks on towards the city Enter Hu Mao-yiian. Hu Mao-yiian. My father is a nobleman^ And Pm a jolly roving blade; To'day the Lady Wang will throw A Flowery Ball to get a spouse. It cdl depends on destiny Whether or not this Ball strikes me. My humble name is Hu Mao-yuan; But as the Ball is thrown today J must be moving on my way. Why, that looks very like friend Su ! Fit call: " Friend Su, doritgo sofast,"* Su. Jfs Hu Mao-yuan : now where go you t Hu. To the Governor's palace to get me a wife, Su. To the Flowery Ball t Well, Pm going too, [Sings.] The Lady Wang the Flowery Ball will throw. THE DRAMA 265 That oil the world her chosen spouse might see^ Among the noble suitors down below — But who knows who the lucky man will be f Hu [sings.] / think your luck is sure to take you through. Su [sings.] Your handsome face should bring the Ball to you. Hu [sings.] Atony rate it lies between us two, Su [sings.] There^s hardly anybody else whc^d {lo. Hu [sings.] Then come let us go^ let us make haste and run. Su [sings.] Away let nsgo^ but dotit be so slowy Or we shatit be in time for the fun, [Exeunt. Enter P'ing Kuei. Ping [sings.] Ah I that day within the garden When my Icuiy-love divine^ Daughter of a wealthy noble^ Promised thcU she would be mine. At t/ie garden gate she pledged me^ Bidding me come here to-day; From my miserable garret I have just now crept away. And as I pass the city gates I ope my eyes and see A crowd of noble youths as thick As leaves upon a tree. Forward they press^ but who knows which The lucky man will be f In vain I strain my eager eyes — Alas/ ^ twill break my heart — Among the well-dressed butterflies I find no counterpart. Let her be faithless or be true I lose the Bcdl as sure as fate; Though^ if she spoke me idle words^ Why trifle at the garden gate ? Nevertheless y Tm bound to go Whether I get the Ball or no : My bowl and my staff in my hands^ust so. Rank and fortune often come From matrimonial affairs ; ril think of it all as J walk along — And perhaps rd better say my prayers. 266 CHINESE LITERATURE JVhyf here I am at the very spot I nijust walk in. Gatekeeper. / say yot^ll not / Ping [sings.] Oh / dear^ h^s stopped me I why^ Heaven knows ! It must be my hat and tattered clothes, ni stay here and reuse an infernal din Until they consent to let me in. Gatekeeper. / liaven^t anything to spare^ So come again another day, P'ing. Oh / let me just go in to look. Gatekeeper. Among the sons of noblemen What can there be for you to see f Begone at once^ or Pll soon make you* P*ing. Alcu! alasl what can! dol If I doritget within the courts The Lady Wang will tire of waiting. Enter P*u-sa. Fu-sa [sings.] By heaveris supreme command 1 have flown Through the blue expanse of sky and air; For a suffering soul has cried out in woe^ And Heaven has heard his prayer. For the Lady Wangh^s nearly broken-hearted. But cruel fate still keeps the lovers parted. " Hebbery gibbery snobbery snay I ** On the wings of the wind Pll ride^ And make the old porter clear out of the way Till I get my poor beggar inside. The Lady Wang is still within the hall Waiting till the Emperor sends the Flowery Ball, [Raises the wind. Gatekeeper. Oh dear I how cold the wind is blowing, I do not see the lady comings And so I think Pll step inside. Enter Lady Wang. Lady Wang [sings.] /;/ gala dress I leave my boudoir^ Thinking all the titne of thee — O Heaven^ fulfil a mortaPs longings^ And link viy love to me. THE DRAMA 267 My gorgeous cap is broidered der With flocks of glittering birds : Here shine the seven stars^ and there A boy is muttering holy words. My bodice dazzles with its lustrous sheen : My skirts are worked with many a gaudy scene. [Showing BalL His Majesty on me bestowed this Ball^ And from a bcUcony he bid me let itfcUl^ Then take as husbcmd whomso^er it struck^ Prince^ merchant^ beggar^ as might be my luck. And having left my parents and my home^ Hither to the Painted Tower Pve come* As I slowly mount the stairs^ I ope my eyes and see A crowd of noble youths as thick As leaves upon a tree. But ah 1 amongst the many forms, Which meet my eager eye. The figure of my own true love I cannot yet descry. The pledge I gave him at the garden gate Can he forget? The hour is waxing late. And the crowds down below Bewilder me so That I am in a most desperate state. Oh I Ping Kuei, if you really love me^ Hasten quickly to my side : If the words you spoke were idle. Why ask me to be your bride t He perhaps his ease is taking While my foolish heart is brecddng. I ccait return till J have done This work in misery begun. And so J take the Flowery Ball And with a sigh I let it fall, [Throws down the ball. P'u-sa. '7/ J thus I seize the envied prize, A nd give it to my prot^gi; ril throw it in his earthen bowl. [Throws the ball to P'ing Kue'i. 268 CHINESE LITERATURE Lady Wang [sings.] Stay! I hear the people shouting — What^ the Ball some beggar struck t It must be my own true P'ing Kuei— J* II go home and tell my luck I Maidens I through the temple kindle Incense for my lucky fate; Now my true love will discover ThcU I can discriminate, [Exeunt omnes. Enter Hu Mao-yiian and Su Tai-ch'in. Hu. The second of the second moon The Dragon wakes to life and power; To-day the Lady IVanghas thrown The Ball from out the Fainted Tower, No well-born youth was singled outy It struck a dirty vagrant lout. Friend Suy Pm off: w^re donefor^ as you saw. Though for the little pcUtry wench I do not care a straw. [Exeunt Enter Gatekeeper and Beggar. Gatekeeper. Only one poor beggar now renusins within the hall^ Whc^d have thought that this poor vagrant would have got the Ball? [To P'ing Kuei.] Sir^yoiive come off well this morning: You must be a lucky man. Come with me to claim your bride^ and Make the greatest haste you can. [Exeunt. Even the longer and more elaborate plays are propor- tionately wanting in all that makes the drama piquant to a European, and are very seldom, if ever, produced as they stand in print. Many collections of these have been published, not to mention the acting editions of each play, which can be bought at any bookstall for some- thing like three a penny. One of the best of such collections is the Yiian cHu ksilan tsa chi^ or Miscel- laneous Selection of Mongol Plays, bound up in eight CHI CHON-HSIANG 269 thick volumes. It contains one hundred plays in all, with an illustration to each, according to the edition of 1615. A large proportion of these cannot be assigned to any author, and are therefore marked ^'anony- mous." Even when the authors' names are given, they represent men altogether unknown in what the Chinese call literature, from which the drama is rigorously excluded. The following is a brief outline of a very well known play in five acts by Chi ChOn-hsiang, entitled "The Orphan of the Chao family," and founded closely upon fact. It is the nearest approach which the Chinese have made to genuine tragedy : — A wicked Minister of the sixth century B.C. plotted the destruction of a rival named Chao Tun, and of all his family. He tells in the prologue how he had vainly trained a fierce dog to kill his rival, by keeping it for days without food and then setting it at a dummy, dressed to represent his intended victim, and stuffed with the heart and lights of a sheep. Ultimately, however, he had managed to get rid of all the male members of the family, to the number of three hundred, when he hears — and at this point the play proper begins — that the wife of the last representative has given birth to a son. He promptly sends to find the child, which had mean- while been carried away to a place of safety. Then a faithful servant of the family hid himself on the hills with another child, while an accomplice informed the Minister where the supposed orphan of the house of Chao was lying hidden. The child was accordingly slain, and by the hand of the Minister himself; the servant committed suicide. But the real heir escaped, and when he grew up he avenged the wrongs of his 270 CHINESE LITERATURE family by killing the cruel Minister and utterly exter- minating his race. From beginning to end of this and similar plays there is apparently no attempt whatever at passion or pathos in the language — at any rate, not in the sense in which those terms are understood by us. Nor are there even rhetorical flowers to disguise the expression of common- place thought. The Chinese actor can do a great deal with such a text ; the translator, nothing. There is much, too, of a primitive character in the setting of the play. Explanatory prologues are common, and actors usually begin by announcing their own names and further clearing the way for the benefit of the audience. The following story will give a faint idea of the license conceded to the play-actor. My attention was attracted on one occasion at Amoy by an unusually large crowd of Chinamen engaged in watch- ing the progress of an open-air theatrical performance. Roars of laughter resounded on all sides^ and on looking to see what was the moving cause of this extraordinary explosion of merriment, I beheld to my astonishment a couple of rather seedy-looking foreigners occupying the stage, and apparently acting with such spirit as to bring the house down at every other word. A moment more and it was clear that these men of the West were not foreigners at all, but Chinamen dressed up for the purposes of the piece. The get-up, nevertheless, was re- markably good, if somewhat exaggerated, though doubt- less the intention was to caricature or burlesque rather than to reproduce an exact imitation. There was the billy- cock hat, and below it a florid face well supplied with red moustaches and whiskers, the short cut-away coat and THE DRAMA 271 light trousers, a blue neck-tie, and last, but not least, the ever-characteristic walking-stick. Half the fun, in fact, was got out of this last accessory ; for with it each one of the two was continually threatening the other, and both united in violent gesticulations directed either against their brother-actors or sometimes against the audience at their feet. Before going any further it may be as well to give a short outline of the play itself, which happens to be not uninteresting and is widely known from one end of China to the other. It is called " Slaying a Son at the Yam^n Gate," and the plot, or rather story, runs as follows : — A certain general of the Sung dynasty named Yang, being in charge of one of the frontier passes, sent his son to obtain a certain wooden stafiF from an outlying barbarian tribe. In this expedition the son not only failed signally, but was further taken prisoner by a barbarian lady, who insisted upon his immediately leading her to the altar. Shortly after these nuptials he returns to his father's camp, and the latter, in a violent fit of anger, orders him to be taken outside the Yam^n gate and be there executed forthwith. As the soldiers are leading him away, the young man's mother comes and throws herself at the general's feet, and implores him to spare her son. This request the stern father steadily refuses to grant, even though his wife's prayers are backed up by those of his own mother, of a prince of the Imperial blood, and finally by the entreaties of the Emperor himself. At this juncture in rushes the barbarian wife of the general's condemned son, and as on a previous occasion the general himself had been taken prisoner by this very lady, and only ransomed on 272 CHINESE LITERATURE payment of a heavy sum of money, he is so alarmed that he sits motionless and unable to utter a word while with a dagger she severs the cords that bind her hus- band, sets him free before the assembled party, and dares any one to lay a hand on him at his peril. The Emperor now loses his temper, and is enraged to think that General Yang should have been awed into granting to a barbarian woman a life that he had just before refused to the entreaties of the Son of Heaven. His Majesty, therefore, at once deprives the father of his command and bestows it upon the son, and the play is brought to a conclusion with the departure of young General Yang and his barbarian wife to subdue the wild tribes that are then harassing the frontier of China. The two foreigners are the pages or attendants of the barbarian wife, and accompany her in that capacity when she follows her husband to his father's camp. The trick of dressing these pages up to caricature the foreigner of the nineteenth century, on the occasion when I saw the piece, was a mere piece of stage gag, but one which amused the people immensely, and elicited rounds of applause. But when the barbarian wife had succeeded in rescuing her husband from the jaws of death, there was considerable dissatisfaction in the minds of several of the personages on the stage. The Emperor was angry at the slight that had been passed upon his Imperial dignity, the wife and mother of the general, not to mention the prince of the blood, felt themselves similarly slighted, though in a lesser degree, and the enraged father was still more excited at having had his commands set aside, and seeing himself bearded in his own Yam^n by a mere barbarian woman. It was WANG SHIH-FU 273 consequently felt by all parties that something in the way of slaughter was wanting to relieve their own feelings, and to satisfy the unities of the drama and the cravings of the audience for a sensational finale ; and this desirable end was attained by an order from the Emperor that at any rate the two foreign attendants might be sacrificed for the benefit of all concerned. The two wretched foreigners were accordingly made to kneel on the stage, and their heads were promptly lopped off by the executioner amid the deafening plaudits of the surrounding spectators. In 1885 a play was performed in a Shanghai theatre which had for its special attraction a rude imitation of a paddle-steamer crowded with foreign men and women. It was wheeled across the back of the stage, and the foreigners and their women, who were supposed to have come with designs upon the Middle Kingdom, were all taken prisoners and executed. Of all plays of the Mongol dynasty, the one which will best repay reading is undoubtedly the Hsi Hsiang Chi^ or Story of the Western Pavilion, in sixteen scenes. It is by Wang Shih-fu, of whom nothing seems to be known except that he flourished in the thirteenth century, and wrote thirteen plays, all of which are included in the collection mentioned above. ''The dialogue of this play," says a Chinese critic, "deals largely with wind, flowers, snow, and moonlight," which is simply a euphe- mistic way of stating that the story is one of passion and intrigue. It is popular with the educated classes, by whom it is regarded more as a novel than as a play. A lady and her daughter are staying at a temple, where, in accordance with common custom, rooms are V 274 CHINESE LITERATURE let by the priests to ordinary travellers or to visitors who may wish to perform devotional exercises. A young and handsome student, who also happens to be living at the temple, is lucky enough to succeed in saving the two ladies from the clutches of brigands, for which service he has previously been promised the hand of the daughter in marriage. The mother, however, soon repents of her engagement, and the scholar is left disconsolate. At this juncture the lady's-maid of the daughter manages by a series of skilful manoeuvres to bring the story to a happy issue. Just as there have always been poetesses in China, so women are to be found in the ranks of Chinese play- wrights. A four-act drama, entitled " Joining the Shirt," was written by one Chang Kuopin, an educated cour- tesan of the day, the chief interest of which play lies perhaps in the sex of the writer. A father and mother, with son and daughter-in-law, are living happily together, when a poverty-stricken young stranger is first of all assisted by them, and then, without further inquiry, is actually adopted into the family. Soon afterwards the new son persuades the elder brother and his wife secretly to leave home, taking all the property they can lay their hands on, and to journey to a distant part of the country, where there is a potent god from whom the wife is to pray for and obtain a son after what has been already an eighteen months' gestation. On the way, the new brother pushes the husband overboard into the Yang-tsze and disap- pears with the wife, who shortly gives birth to a boy. Eighteen years pass. The old couple have sunk into poverty, and set out, begging their way, to seek for their CHANG KUO-PIN 275 lost son. Chance — playwright's chance — ^throws them into the company of their grandson, who has graduated as Senior Classic, and has also, prompted by his mother, been on the look-out for them. Recognition is effected by means of the two halves of a shirt, one of which had always been kept by the old man and the other by the missing son, and after his death by his wife. At this juncture the missing son reappears. He had been rescued from drowning by a boatman, and had become a Buddhist priest. He now reverts to lay life, and the play is brought to an end by the execution of the villain It is a* curious fact that all the best troupes of actors not only come from Peking, but perform in their own dialect, which is practically unintelligible to the masses in many parts of China. These actors are, of course, very well paid, in order to make it worth their while to travel so far from home and take the risks to life and property. CHAPTER III THE NOVEL Turning now to the second literary achievement of the Mongols, the introduction of the Novel, we find Qurselves face to face with the same mystery as that which shrouds the birth of the Drama. The origin of the Chinese novel is unknown. It probably came from Central Asia, the paradise of story-tellers, in the wake of the Mongol conquest. Three centuries had then to elapse before the highest point of development was reached. Fables, anec- dotes, and even short stories had already been familiar to the Chinese for many centuries, but between these and the novel proper there is a wide gulf which so far had not been satisfactorily bridged. Some, indeed, have maintained that the novel was developed from the play, pointing in corroboration of their theory to the Hsi Hsiang Chi^ or Story of the Western Pavilion, described in the preceding chapter. This, however, simply means that the Hsi Hsiang Chi is more suited for private read- ing than for public representation, as is the case with many Western plays. The Chinese range their novels under four heads, as dealing (i) with usurpation and plotting, (2) with love and intrigue, (3) with superstition, and (4) with brigand- age or lawless characters generally. Examples of each class will be given. 976 LO KUAN-CHUNG 277 The San kuo chih yen /, attributed to one Lo KUAN- CHUNG, is an historical novel based upon the wars of the Three Kingdoms which fought for supremacy at the beginning of the third century A.D. It consists mainly of stirring scenes of warfare, of cunning plans by skilful generals, and of doughty deeds by blood-stained warriors. Armies and fleets of countless myriads are from time to time annihilated by one side or another, — all this in an easy and fascinating style, which makes the book an endless joy to old and young alike. If a vote were taken among the people of China as to the greatest among their countless novels, the Story of the Three Kingdoms would indubitably come out first. This is how the great commander Chu-ko Liang is said to have replenished his failing stock of arrows. He sent a force of some twenty or more ships to feign an attack on the fleet of his powerful rival, T^ao Ts*ao. The decks of the ships were apparently covered with large numbers of fighting men, but these were in reality nothing more than straw figures dressed up in soldiers' clothes. On each ship there were only a few sailors and some real soldiers with gongs and other noisy instru- ments. Reaching their destination, as had been care- fully calculated beforehand, in the middle of a dense fog, the soldiers at once began to beat on their gongs as if about to go into action ; whereupon Ts*ao Ts*ao, who could just make out the outlines of vessels densely packed with fighting men bearing down upon him, gave orders to his archers to begin shooting. The latter did so, and kept on for an hour and more, until Chu-ko Liang was satisfied with what he had got, and passed the order to retreat. Elsewhere we read of an archery competition which 278 CHINESE LITERATURE recalls the Homeric games. A target is set up, and the prize, a robe, is hung upon a twig just above. From a distance of one hundred paces the heroes begin to shoot. Of course each competitor hits the bull's-eye, one, Parthian-like, with his back to the target, another shoot- ing over his own head ; and equally of course the favoured hero shoots at the twig, severs it, and carries off the robe. The following extract will perhaps be interesting, deal- ing as it does with the use of anaesthetics long before they were dreamt of in this country. Ts'ao Ts'ao had been struck on the head with a sword by the spirit of a pear-tree which he had attempted to cut down. He suffered such agony that one of his staff recommended a certain doctor who was then very much in vogue : — " ' Dr. Hua,' explained the officer, ' is a mighty skilful physician, and such a one as is not often to be found. His administration of drugs, and his use of acupuncture and counter-irritants are always followed by the speedy recovery of the patient. If the sick man is suffering from some internal complaint and medicines produce no satisfactory result, then Dr. Hua will administer a dose of hashish, under the influence of which the patient becomes as it were intoxicated with wine. He now^ takes a sharp knife and opens the abdomen, proceeding to wash the patient's viscera with medicinal liquids, but without causing him the slightest pain. The washing finished, he sews up the wound with medicated thread and puts over it a plaster, and by the end of a month or twenty days the place has healed up. Such is his extra- ordinary skill. One day, for instance, as he was walking along a road, he heard some one groaning deeply, and at once declared that the cause was indigestion. On inquiry, LO KUAN-CHUNG 279 this turned out to be the case ; and accordingly, Dr. Hua ordered the sufferer to drink three pints of a decoction of garlic and leeks, which he did, and vomited forth a snake between two and three feet in length, after which he could digest food as before. On another occasion, the Governor of Kuang-ling was very much depressed in his mind, besides being troubled with a flushing of the face and total loss of appetite. He consulted Dr. Hua, and the effect of some medicine administered by him was to cause the invalid to throw up a quantity of red-headed wriggling tadpoles, which the doctor told him had been generated in his system by too great indulgence in fish, and' which, although temporarily expelled, would re- appear after an interval of three years, when nothing could save him. And sure enough, he died three years afterwards. In a further instance, a man had a tumour growing between his eyebrows, the itching of which was insupportable. When Dr. Hua saw it, he said, 'There is a bird inside,' at which everybody laughed. However, he took a knife and opened the tumour, and out flew a canary, the patient beginning to recover from that hour. Again, another man had had his toes bitten by a dog, the consequence being that two lumps of flesh grew up from the wound, one of which was very painful while the other itched unbearably. 'There are ten needles,' said Dr. Hua, 'in the sore lump, and two black and white wei-ch^i pips in the other.' No one believed this until Dr. Hua opened them with a knife and showed that it was so. Truly he is of the same strain as Pien Ch*iao and Ts*ang Kung of old ; and as he is now living not very far from this, I wonder your Highness does not summon him.' " At this, Ts'ao Ts*ao sent away messengers who were 19 28o CHINESE LITERATURE to travel day and night until they had brought Dr. Hua before him ; and when he arrived, Ts ao Ts*ao held out his pulse and desired him to diagnose his case. "'The pain in your Highness's head/ said Dr. Hua, 'arises from wind, and the seat of the disease is the brain, where the wind is collected, unable to get out. Drugs are of no avail in your present condition, for which there is but one remedy. You must first swallow a dose of hashish, and then with a sharp axe I will split open the back of your head and let the wind out. Thus the disease will be exterminated.' "Ts'ao Ts*ao here flew into a great rage, and declared that it was a plot aimed at his life ; to which Dr. Hua replied, • Has not your Highness heard of Kuan Yii's wound in the right shoulder ? I scraped the bone and removed the poison for him without a single sign of fear on his part. Your Highness's disease is but a trifling affair ; why, then, so much suspicion ? ' "'You may scrape a sore shoulder-bone,' said Ts*ao Ts'ao, ' without much risk ; but to split open my skull is quite another matter. It strikes me now that you are here simply to avenge your friend Kuan Yii upon this opportunity.' He thereupon gave orders that the doctor should be seized and cast into prison." There the unfortunate doctor soon afterwards died, and before very long Ts*ao Ts*ao himself succumbed. The Shut Hu Chuan is said to have been written by Shih Nai-AN of the thirteenth century ; but this name does not appear in any biographical collection, and no* thing seems to be known either of the man or of his authorship. The story is based upon the doings of an historical band of brigands, who had actually terrorised SHIH NAI-AN 281 a coupl* of provinces, until they were finally put down, early in »;the twelfth century. Some of it is very laugh- able, ancU all of it valuable for the insight given into Chinese ^manners and customs. There is a ludicrous episode ct)f a huge swashbuckler who took refuge in a Buddhist\ temple and became a priest. After a while he reverted to less ascetic habits of life, and returned one day to thle temple, in Chinese phraseology, as drunk as a clod; mWking a great riot and causing much scandal. He did tHis on a second occasion ; and when shut out by the gattekeeper, he tried to burst in, and in his drunken fury knocked to pieces a huge idol at the entrance for not steppirig down to his assistance. Then, when he succeeded iW a threat of fire in getting the monks to open the gatte, "through which no wine or meat may pass," he felr down in the courtyard, and out of his robe tumbled a h^lf- eaten dog's leg, which he had carried away with him from the restaurant where he had drunk himself tipsy.) This he amused himself by tearing to pieces and for^^ing into the mouth of one of his fellow- priests, 't The graphic and picturesque style in which this book is written, though approaching the colloquial, has secured for it a position rather beyond its real merits. The Hsi Yu Cht[ or Record of Travels in the West, is a favourite novel written in a popular and easy style. It is based upon the journey of Hsiian Tsang to India in search of books, images, and relics to illustrate the Buddhist religion ; but beyond the fact that the chief personage is called by Hsiian Tsang's posthumous title, and that he travels in search of Buddhist books, the journey and the novel have positively nothing in 282 CHINESE LITERATURE lountain ig of the iearch of step is to ian, after that is, *hrowing b. is f^y generals it, only re- the Great at his old common. The latter is a good sample of the fiwtion in which the Chinese people delight, and may be fallowed to detain us awhile. A stone monkey is born on a mysterious from a stone egg, and is soon elected to be kii monkeys. He then determines to travel in wisdom, and accordingly sets forth. His first gain a knowledge of the black art from a magic] which he becomes Master of the Horse to G< to the supreme deity in the Taoist Pantheon, up his post in disgust, he carries on a series cftf disturb^ ances in the world generally, until at lengAh God obliged to interfere, and sends various heavei to coerce him. These he easily puts to flij turning to his allegiance on being appointe] Holy One of All the Heavens. He is so< tricks again, stealing the peaches of immortality from a legendary being known as the Royal ^Uother in the West, and also some elixir of life, both /of which he consumes. All the minor deities now complain tjb God of his many misdeeds, and heavenly armies dtre despatched against him, but in vain. Even God's /nephew cannot prevail against him until Lao Tzu thro;^s a magic ring at him and knocks him down. He is tb^n carried captive to heaven, but as he is immortal, no h|irm can be inflicted on him. At this juncture God places the jiiatter in the hands of Buddha, who is presently inforined by the monkey that God must be deposed and jthat he, the monkey must for the future reign in his stead. The text now runs as follows : — " When Buddha heard these words, he smiled scorn- THE HSI YU CHI 283 > fully and said, ' What ! a devil-monkey like you to seize the throne of God, who from his earliest years has been trained to rule, and has lived 1750 aeons, each of 129,600 years' duration 1 Think what ages of apprenticeship he had to serve before he could reach this state of perfect wisdom. You are only a brute beast ; what mean these boastful words ? Be off, and utter no more such, lest evil befall, and your very existence be imperilled.' " ' Although he is older than I am,' cried the monkey, ' that is no reason why he should always have the post. Tell him to get out and give up his place to me, or I will know the reason why.' "'What abilities have you,' asked Buddha, 'that you should claim the divine palace ? ' '"Plenty,' replied the monkey. 'I can change myself into seventy-two shapes ; I am immortal ; and I can turn a somersault to a distance of 18,000 li (=6000 miles). Am I not fit to occupy the throne of heaven ? ' " ' Well,' aswered Buddha, ' I will make a wager with you. If you can jump out of my hand, I will request God to depart to the West and leave heaven to you ; but if you fail, you will go down again to earth and be a devil for another few aeons to come.' " The monkey readily agreed to this, pointing out that he could easily jump 18,000 //, and that Buddha's hand was not even a foot long. So after making Buddha pro- mise to carry out the agreement, he grasped his sceptre and diminished in size until he could stand in the hand, which was stretched out for him like a lotus-leaf, ' I'm oflF ! ' he cried, and in a moment he was gone. But Buddha's enlightened gaze was ever upon him, though he turned with the speed of a whirligig. " In a brief space the monkey had reached a place 284 CHINESE LITERATURE where there were five red pillars, and there he decided to stop. Reflecting, however, that he had better leave some trace as a proof of his visit, he plucked out a hair, and changing it into a pencil, wrote with it on the middle pillar in large characters, The Great Holy One of All the Heavens reached this point. The next moment he was back again in Buddha's hand, describing his jump, and claiming his reward. " ' Ah ! ' said Buddha, ' I knew you couldn't do it/ " < Why,' said the monkey, ' I have been to the very confines of the universe, and have left a mark there which I challenge you to inspect/ " ' There is no need to go so far,' replied Buddha. ' Just bend your head and look here/ "The monkey bent down his head, and there, on Buddha's middle finger, he read the following inscrip- tion : The Great Holy One of All the Heavens reached this point:' Ultimately, the monkey is converted to the true faith, and undertakes to escort Hsuan Tsang on his journey to the West. In his turn he helps to convert a pig-bogey, whom he first vanquishes by changing himself into a pill, which the pig-bogey unwittingly swallows, thereby giving its adversary a chance of attacking it from inside. These two are joined by a colourless individual, said to represent the passive side of man's nature, as the monkey and pig represent the active and animal sides respec« tively. The three of them conduct Hstian Tsang through manifold dangers and hairbreadth escapes safe, until at length they receive final directions from an Immortal as to the position of the palace of Buddha, from which they hope to obtain the coveted books. The scene which follows almost recalls The Pilgrims Progress : — THE HSI YU CHI 285 " Hsiian Tsang accordingly bade him farewell and proceeded on his way. But he had not gone more than a mile or two before he came to a stream of rushing water about a league in breadth, with not a trace of any living being in sight. At this he was somewhat startled, and turning to Wu-lcung (the name of the monkey) said, * Our guide must surely have misdirected us. Look at that broad and boiling river ; how shall we ever get across without a boat ? ' * There is a bridge over there,' cried Wu-k*ung, 'which you must cross over in order to complete your salvation.' At this Hsiian Tsang and the others advanced in the direction indicated, and saw by the side of the bridge a notice-board on which was written, 'The Heavenly Ford.' Now the bridge itself consisted of a simple plank; on which Hsiian Tsang remarked, * I am not going to trust myself to that frail and slippery plank to cross that wide and rapid stream. Let us try somewhere else.' 'But this is the true path,' said Wu-k*ung ; ' just wait a moment and see me go across.' Thereupon he jumped on to the bridge, and ran along the shaky vibrating plank until he reached the other side, where he stood shouting out to the rest to come on. But Hsiian Tsang waved his hand in the negative, while his companions stood by biting their fingers and crying out, ' We can't ! we can't ! we can't ! ' So Wu-k*ung ran back, and seizing Pa-chieh (the pig) by the arm, began dragging him to the bridge, all the time calling him a fool for his pains. Pa-chieh then threw himself on the ground, roaring out, 'It's too slippery — it's too slippery. I can't do it. Spare me ! spare me ! ' ' You must cross by this bridge,' replied Wu-k*ung, 'if you want to become a Buddha;' at which Pa*chieh said, 'Then I can't be a Buddha, sir. 286 CHINESE LITERATURE I have done with it : I shall never get across that bridge.' " While these two were in the middle of their dispute, lo and behold a boat appeared in sight, with a man punting it along, and calling out, ' The ferry I the ferry ! ' At this Hsiian Tsang was overjoyed, and shouted to his disciples that they would now be able to get across. By his fiery pupil and golden iris, Wu-k'ung knew that the ferryman was no other than Namo Pao-chang- kuang-wang Buddha; but he kept his knowledge to himself, and hailed the boat to take them on board. In a moment it was alongside the bank, when, to his un- utterable horror, Hsiian Tsang discovered that the boat had no bottom, and at once asked the ferryman how he proposed to take them across. ' My boat,' replied the ferryman, ' has been famed since the resolution of chaos into order, and under my charge has known no change. Steady though storms may rage and seas may roll, there is no fear so long as the passenger is light. Free from the dust of mortality, the passage is easy enough. Ten thousand kalpas of human beings pass over in peace. A bottomless ship can hardly cross the great ocean ; yet for ages past I have ferried over countless hosts of passengers.' "When he heard these words Wu-k*ung cried out, ' Master, make haste on board. This boat, although bottomless, is safe enough, and no wind or sea could overset it.' And while Hsiian Tsang was still hesitating, Wu-k'ung pushed him forwards on to the bridge; but the former could not keep his feet, and fell head over heels into the water, from which he was immediately rescued by the ferryman, who dragged him on board the boat. The rest also managed, with the aid of Wu- THE HSI YU CHI 287 k*ungy to scramble on board ; and then, as the ferryman shoved off, lo ! they beheld a dead body floating away down the stream. Hsiian Tsang was greatly alarmed at this ; but Wu-k'ung laughed and said, ' Fear not, Master ; that dead body is your old self ! ' And all the others joined in the chorus of * It is you, sir, it is you ; ' and even the ferryman said, ' Yes, it is you ; accept my best congratulations.' " A few moments more and the stream was crossed, when they all jumped on shore ; but before they could look round the boat and ferryman had disappeared." The story ends with a list of the Buddhist sii^ras and liturgies which the travellers were allowed to carry back with them to their own country. BOOK THE SEVENTH THE MING DYNASTY (a.d. 1368-1644) BOOK THE SEVENTH THE MING DYNASTY (a.d. 1368-1644) CHAPTER I MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE— MATERIA MEDICA— ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF AGRICULTURE The first Emperor of the Ming dynasty, popularly known us the Beggar King, in allusion to the poverty of his early days, so soon as he had extinguished the last hopes of the Mongols and had consolidated his power, turned his attention to literature and education. He organised the great system of competitive examinations which pre- vails at the present day. He also published a Penal Code, abolishing such punishments as mutilation, and drew up a kind of Domesday Book, under which taxation was regulated. In 1369 he appointed Sung Lien (a.d. 1310-1381), in conjunction with other scholars, to pro- duce the History of the Mongol Dynasty. Sung Lien had previously been tutor to the heir apparent. He had declined ofHce, and was leading the life of a simple student He rose to be President of the Han-lin College, and for many years enjoyed his master's confidence. A grandson, however, became mixed up in a conspiracy, and agz 292 CHINESE LITERATURE only the Empress's entreaties saved the old man's life. His sentence was commuted to banishment, and he died on the journey. Apart from the history above men- tioned, and a pronouncing dictionary on which he was employed, his literary remains fill only three volumes. The following piece is a satire on the neglect of men of ability, which, according to him, was a marked feature of the administration of the Mongols : — " T^ng Pi, whose cognomen was Po-i, was a man of Ch*in. He was seven feet high. Both his eyes had crimson corners, and they blinked like lightning flashes. In feats of strength he was cock of the walk ; and once when his neighbour's bulls were locked in fight, with a blow of his fist he broke the back of one of them and sent it rolling on the ground. The stone drums of the town, which ten men could not lift, he could carry about in his two hands. He was, however, very fond of liquor, and given to quarrelling in his cups ; so that when peotple saw him in this mood, they would keep out of his w y, saying that it was safer to be at a distance from sue . a wild fellow. " One day he was drinking by himself in a tea-house when two literati happened to pass by. T^ng Pi tried to make them join him ; but they, having rather a low opinion of the giant, would not accept his invitation. ' Gentlemen,' cried he in a rage, ' if you do not see fit to do as I ask, I will make an end of the pair of you, and then seek safety in flight. I could not brook this treat- ment at your hands.' " So the two had no alternative but to walk in. T6ng Pi took the place of honour himself, and put his guests on each side of him. He called for more liquor, and began to sing and make a noise. And at last, when he was well SUNG LIEN 293 tipsy, he threw off his clothes and began to attitudinise. He drew a knife, and flung it down with a bang on the table ; at which the two literati, who were aware of his weakness, rose to take leave. ** ' Stop ! ' shouted T^ng Pi, detaining them. ' I too know something about your books. What do you mean by treating me as the spittle of your mouth ? If you don't hurry up and drink, I fear my temper will get the better of me. Meanwhile, you shall ask me anything you like in the whole range of classical literature, and if I can't answer, I will imbrue this blade in my blood." " To this the two literati agreed, and forthwith gave him a number of the most difficult allusions they could think of, taken from the Classics ; but T^ng Pi was equal to the occasion, and repeated the full quotation in each case without missing a word. Then they tried him on history, covering a period of three thousand years ; but here again his answers were distinguished by accuracy and precision. '" Ha 1 ha r laughed T^ng Pi, ' do you give in now ? ' At which his guests looked blankly at each other, and hadn't a word to say. So T^ng Pi shouted for wine, and loosed his hair, and jumped about, crying, ' I have floored you, gentlemen, to-day ! Of old, learning made a man of you ; but to-day, all you have to do is to don a scholar's dress and look consumptive. You care only to excel with pen and ink, and despise the real heroes of the a!ge. Shall this be so indeed ? ' " Now these two literati were men of some reputation, and on hearing T^ng Pi's words they were greatly shamed, and left the tea*house, hardly knowing how to put one foot before the other. On arriving home they made further inquiries, but no one had ever seen T^ng Pi at any time with a book in his band." 294 CHINESE LITERATURE Fang Hsiao-ju (a,d. 1357-1402) is another scholar, co- worker with Sung Lien, who adorned this same period. As a child he was precocious, and by his skill in composition earned for himself the nickname of Little Han Yii. He became tutor to one of the Imperial princes, and was loaded with honours by the second Emperor, who through the death of his father suc- ceeded in 1398 to his grandfather. Then came the rebellion of the fourth son of the first Emperor • and when Nanking opened its gates to the conqueror, the defeated nephew vanished. It is supposed that he fled to Yunnan, in the garb of a monk, left to him, so the story runs, with full directions by his grandfather. After nearly forty years' wandering, he is said to have gone to Peking, and lived in seclusion in the palace until his death. He was recognised by a eunuch from a mole on his left foot, but the eunuch was afraid to reveal his identity. . Fang Hsiao-ju absolutely refused to place his services at the disposal of the new Emperor, who ruled under the year-title of Yung Lo. For this refusal he was cut to pieces in the market-place, his family being as far as possible exterminated and his philosophical writings burned. A small collection of his miscellanies was pre- served by a faithful disciple, and afterwards republished. The following is an extract from an essay on taking too much thought for the morrow : — "Statesmen who forecast the destinies of an empire ofttimes concentrate their genius upon the difficult and neglect the easy. They provide against likely evils, and disregard combinations which yield no ground for sus- picion. Yet calamity often issues from neglected quarters, and sedition springs out of circumstances which have been set aside as trivial. Must this be regarded as due FANG HSIAO-JU 295 to an absence of care ? — No. It results because the things that man can provide against are human, while those that elude his vigilance and overpower his strength are divine." After giving several striking examples from history, the writer continues : — ''AH the instances above cited include gifted men whose wisdom and genius overshadowed their genera- tion. They took counsel and provided against disruption of the empire with the utmost possible care. Yet mis- fortune fell upon every one of them, always issuing from some source where its existence was least suspected. This, because human wisdom reaches only to human affairs and cannot touch the divine. Thus, too, will sickness carry off the children even of the best doctors, and devils play their pranks in the family of an exorcist. How is it that these professors, who succeed in grappling with the cases of others, yet fail in treating their own ? It is because in those they confine themselves to the human ; in these they would meddle with the divine. "The men of old knew that it was impossible to provide infallibly against the convulsions of ages to come. There was no plan, no device, by which they could hope to prevail, and they refrained accordingly from vain scheming. They simply strove by the force of Truth and Virtue to win for themselves the approba- tion of God; that He, in reward for their virtuous conduct, might watch over them, as a fond mother watches over her babes, for ever. Thus, although fools were not wanting to their posterity — fools able to drag an empire to the dust — ^still, the evil day was deferred. This was indeed foresight of a far-reaching kind. "But he who, regardless of the favour of Heaven, 2Q 296 CHINESE LITERATURE may hope by the light of his own petty understanding to establish that which shall endure through all time — he shall be confounded indeed." The third Emperor of this dynasty, whose nephew, the reigning Emperor, disappeared so mysteriously, mounted the throne in 1403. A worthy son of his father as regarded his military and political abilities, he was a still more enthusiastic patron of literature. He caused to be compiled what is probably the most gigantic encyclopaedia ever known, the Yung Lo Ta Tien, to produce which 2169 scholars laboured for about three years under the guidance of five chief directors and twenty sub-directors. Judging from the account pub- lished in 1795, it must have run to over 500,000 pages. It was never printed because of the cost of the block- cutting ; but under a subsequent reign two extra copies were taken, and one of these, imperfect to the extent of about 20,000 pages, is still in the Han-lin College at Peking.^ The others perished by fire at the fall of the Ming dynasty. Not only did this encyclopaedia embrace and illustrate the whole range of Chinese literature, but it included many complete works which would otherwise have been lost. Of these, no fewer than 66 on the Con- fucian Canon, 41 on history, 103 on philosophy, and 175 on poetry were copied out and inserted in the Imperial Library. Many names of illustrious scholars must here, as ^ On the 23rd June 1900, almost while these words were being written, the Han-lin College was burnt to the ground. The writer's youngest son, Mr. Lancelot Giles, who went through the siege of Peking, writes as follows : — ** An attempt was made to save the famous Yung Lo Ta Tien, but heaps of volumes had been destroyed, so the attempt was given up. I secured vol. 13.345 for myself." x_ YANG CHI-SHfeNG 297 indeed throughout this volume, be passed over in silence. Such writers are more than compensated by the honour they receive from their own country- men, who place classical scholarship at the very summit of human ambitions, and rank the playwright and the novelist as mere parasites of literature. Between these two extremes there is always to be found a great deal of general writing, which, while it satisfies the fastidious claim of the Chinese critic for form in pre- ference even to matter, is also of sufficient interest for the European reader. Yang CHi-SHfeNG (1515-1556) was a statesman and a patriot, who had been a cowherd in his youth. He first got himself into trouble by opposing, the establishment of a horse-market on the frontier, betwe'en China and Tartary, as menacing the safety of his country. Restored to favour after temporary degradation, he impeached a colleague, now known as the worst of the Six Traitorous Ministers of the Ming dynasty. His adversary was too strong for him. Yang was sent to prison, and three years later his head fell. His name has no place in literature ; nor would it be mentioned here except as an introduction to an impassioned memorial which his wife addressed to the Emperor on her husband's behalf : — "May it please your Majesty, — My husband was chief Minister in the Cavalry Department of the Board of War. Because he advised your Majesty against the establish^- ment of a tradal mart, hoping to prevent CKou Luan from carrying out his design, he was condemned only to a mild punishment ; and then, when the latter suf- fered defeat, he was restored to favour and to his former honours. 298 CHINESE LITERATURE ft "Thereafter, my husband was for ever seeking to make some return for the Imperial clemency. He would deprive himself of sleep. He would abstain from food. All this I saw with my own eyes. By and by, however, he gave ear to some idle rumour of the market-place, and the old habit came strong upon him. He lost his mental balance. He uttered wild statements, and again incurred the displeasure of the Throne. Yet he was not slain forthwith. His punishment was referred to the Board. He was beaten ; he was thrown into prison. Several times he nearly died. His flesh was hollowed out be- neath the scourge; the sinews of his legs were severed. Blood flowed from him in bowlfuls, splashing him from head to foot. Confined day and night in a cage, he endured the utmost misery. " Then our trops failed, and daily food was wanting in our poverty-stricken home. I strove to earn money by spinning, and worked hard for the space of three years, during which period the Board twice addressed the Throne, receiving on each occasion an Imperial rescript that my husband was to await his fate in gaol. But now I hear your Majesty has determined that my husband shall die, in accordance with the statutes of the Empire. Die as he may, his eyes will close in peace with your Majesty, while his soul seeks the realms below. "Yet I know that your Majesty has a humane and kindly heart ; and when the creeping things of the earth, — nay, the very trees and shrubs, — share in the national tranquillity, it is hard to think that your Majesty would grudge a pitying glance upon our fallen estate. And should we be fortunate enough to attract the Imperial favour to our lowly affairs, that would be joy indeed. But if my husband's crime is of too deep a dye, I SHfeN SU 299 humbly beg that my head may pay the penalty, and that I be permitted to die for him. Then, from the far-off land of spirits, myself brandishing spear and shield, I will lead forth an army of fierce hobgoblins to do battle in your Majesty's behalf, and thus make some return for this act of Imperial grace." ''The force of language," says the commentator, "can no farther go." Yet this memorial, " the plaintive tones of which," he adds, "appeal direct to the heart," was never allowed to reach the Emperor. Twelve years later, the Minister impeached by Yang Chi-sh^ng was dismissed for scandalous abuse of power, and had all his property confiscated. Being reduced to beggary, he received from the Emperor a handsome silver bowl in which to collect alms ; but so universally hated was he that no one would either give him anything or venture to buy the bowl, and he died of starvation while still in the possession of wealth. A curiously similar case, with a happier ending, was that of SH&N Su, who, in the discharge of his duties as Censor, also denounced the same Minister, before whose name the word "traitorous" is now always inserted. Sh6n Su was thrown into prison, and remained there for fifteen years. He was released in consequence of the following memorial by his wife, of which the commentator says, "for every drop of ink a drop of blood " :— " May it please your Majesty, — My husband was a Censor attached to the Board of Rites. For his folly in recklessly advising your Majesty, he deserved indeed a thousand deaths ; yet under the Imperial clemency he Avas doomed only to await his sentence in prison. 300 CHINESE LITERATURE ''Since then fourteen years have passed away. His aged parents are still alive, but there are no children in his hall, and the wretched man l}as none on whom he can rely. I alone remain — a lodger at an inn, working day and night at my needle to provide the necessaries of life ; encompassed on all sides by difficulties ; to whom every day seems a year. "My father-in-law is eighty-seven years of age. He trembles on the brink of the grave. He is like a candle in the wind. I have naught wherewith to nourish him alive or to honour him when dead. I am a lone woman. If I tend the one, I lose the other. If I return to my father-in-law, my husband will die of starvation. If I remain to feed him, my father-in-law may die at any hour. My husband is a criminal bound in gaol. He dares give no thought to his home. Yet can it be that when all living things are rejoicing in life under the wise and generous rule of to-day, we alone should taste the cup of poverty and distress, and find ourselves beyond the pale of universal peace ? " Oft, as I think of these things, the desire to die comes upon me ; but I swallow my grief and live on, trusting in Providence for some happy termination, some moisten- ing with the dew of Imperial grace. And now that my father-in-law is face to face with death ; now that my husband can hardly expect to live — I venture to offer this body as a hostage, to be bound in prison, while my husband returns to watch over the last hours of his father. Then, when all is over, he will resume his place and await your Majesty's pleasure. Thus my husband will greet his father once again, and the feelings of father and child will be in some measure relieved. Thus I shall give to my father-in-law the comfort of his TSUNG CH'feN 301 son, and the duty of a wife towards her husband will be fulfilled^ TsUNG AurffeN gained some distinction during this six- teenth century ; in youth, by his great beauty, and especi- ally by his eyes, which were said to flash fire even at the sides ; uater on, by subscribing to the funeral expenses of the /above-mentioned Yang Chi-sh^ng ; and finally, by his sii/ccessful defence of Foochow against the Japanese, w*ho3|b forces he enticed into the city by a feint of surrender, and then annihilated from the walls. The foUoiving piece, which, in the opinion of the com- mentator, "verges upon trifling," is from his corre- spondence. Several sentences of it have quite a Juvetlalian ring: — " I was very glad at this distance to receive your letter, which quite set my mind at rest, together with the present you were so kind as to add. I thank you very much for your good wishes, and especially for your thoughtful allusion to my father. "As to what you are pleased to say in reference to official popularity and fitness for office, I am much obliged by your remarks. Of my unfitness I am only too well aware ; while as to popularity with my supe- riors, I am utterly unqualified to secure that boon. " How indeed does an official find favour in the present day with his chief ? Morning and evening he must whip up his horse and go dance attendance at the great man's door. If the porter refuses to admit him, then honeyed words, a coaxing air, and money drawn from the sleeve, may prevail. The porter takes in his card ; but the great man does not come out. So he waits in the stable among grooms, until his clothes are 302 CHINESE LITERATURE^ charged with the smell, in spite of hunger,V in spite of cold, in spite of a blazing heat. At nightfallJL the porter who has pocketed the money comes forth arid says his master is tired and begs to be excused, and \will he call again next day. So he is forced to come onc^ more as requested. He sits all night in his clothes. At cock- crow he jumps up, performs his toilette, and gallops off arid knocks at the entrance gate. ' Who's twre ? * shouts the porter angrily ; and when he explairs, the porter gets still more angry and begins to abuse- him, saying, *You are in a fine hurry, you are ! Dc you think my master sees people at this hour ? ' Th m is the visitor shamed, but has to swallow his wrath anl try ^o persuade the porter to let him in. And the p>rter, another fee to the good, gets up and lets him in; and then he waits again in the stable as before, until t^rhaps the great man comes out and summons Aim to an audience. " Now, with many an obeisance, he cringes timidly towards the foot of the dais steps ; and when the great man says *Come!' he prostrates himself twice and remains long without rising. At length he goes up to offer his present, which the great man refuses. He entreats acceptance ; but in vain. He implores, with many instances ; whereupon the great man bids a servant take it. Then two more prostrations, long drawn out ; after which he arises, and with five or six salutations he takes his leave. " On going forth, he bows to the porter, saying, * It's all right with your master. Next time I come you need make no delay.' The porter returns the bow, well pleased with his share in the business. Meanwhile, our friend springs on his horse, and when he meets an WANG TAO-K'UN 303 acquaintance flourishes his whip and cries out, 'I have just been with His Excellency. He treated me very kindly, very kindly indeed.' And then he goes into detail, upon which his friends begin to be more respect- ful to him as a protigi of His Excellency. The great man himself says, ^ So-and-iso is a good fellow, a very good fellow indeed;' upon which the bystanders of course declare that they think so too. " Such is popularity with one's superiors in the pre- sent day. Do you think that I could be as one of these ? No 1 Beyond sending in a complimentary card at the summer and winter festivals, I do not go near the great from one year's end to another. Even when I pass their doors I stuff my ears and cover my eyes, and gallop quickly by, as if some one was after me. In conse.- quence of this want of breadth, I am of course no favourite with the authorities ; but what care I ? There is a destiny that shapes our ends, and it has shaped mine towards the path of duty alone. For which, no doubt, you think me an ass." Wang Tao-k'un took his third degree in 1547. His instincts seemed to be all for a soldier's life, and he rose to be a successful commander. He found ample time, however, for books, and came to occupy an honourable place among contemporary writers. His works, which, according to one critic, are " polished in style and lofty in tone," have been published in a uniform edition, and are still read. The following is a cynical skit upon the corruption of his day : — *' A retainer was complaining to Po Tzti that no one in the district knew how to get on. " * You gentlemen/ said he, ' are like square handles 304 CHINESE LITERATURE which you would thrust into the round sockets of your generation. Consequently, there is not one of you which fits.' " ' You speak truth/ replied Po Tzu ; ' kindly explain how this is so.' " ' There are five reasons/ said the retainer, ' why you are at loggerheads with the age, as follows : — " ' (i) The path to popularity lies straight before you, but you will not follow it. " ' (2) Other men's tongues reach the soft places in the hearts of their superiors, but your tongues are. too short. " ' (3) Others eschew fur robes, and approach with bent backs as if their very clothes were too heavy for them ; but you remain as stiff-necked as planks. " ' (4) Others respond even before they are called, and seek to anticipate the wishes of their superiors ; whose enemies, were they the saints above, would not escape abuse ; whose friends, were they highwaymen and thieves, would be larded over with praise. But you — you stick at facts and express opinions adverse to those of your superiors, whom it is your special interest to conciliate. " ' (5) Others make for gain as though bent upon shooting a pheasant, watching in secret and letting fly with care, so that nothing escapes their aim. But you — you hardly bend your bow, or bend it only to miss the quarry that lies within your reach. " ' One of these five failings is like a tumour hanging to you and impeding your progress in life. How much more all of them !' " ' It is indeed as you state/ answered Po TzQ. 'But would you bid me cut these tumours away ? A man HSC HSIEH 30s may have a tumour and live. To cut it oflf is to die, And life with a tumour is better than death without. Besides, beauty is a natural gift ; and the woman who tried to look like'Hsi Shih only succeeded in frightening people out of their wits by her ugliness. Now it is my misfortune to have these tumours, which make me more loathsome even than that woman. Still, I can always, so to speak, stick to my needle and •my cooking-pots, and strive to make my good man happy. There is no occasion for me to proclaim my ugliness in the market- place/ " ' Ah, sir,' said the retainer, ' now I know why there are so many ugly people about, and so little beauty in the land.' " HsO HsiEH graduated as Senior Classic in 1601, and received an appointment in the Han-lin College, where all kinds of State documents are prepared under the superintendence of eminent scholars. Dying young, he left behind him the reputation of a cross-grained man, with whom it was difficult to get along, ardently devoted to study. He swore that if it were granted to him to acquire a brilliant style, he would jump into the sea to circulate his writings. The following piece is much admired. " It is completed," says a commentator, "with the breath of a yawn (with a single effort), and is like a heavenly robe, without seam. The reader looks in vain for paragraphing in this truly inspired piece " : — " For some years I had possessed an old inkstand, left at my house by a friend. It came into ordinary use as such, I being unaware that it was an antique. However, one day a connoisseur told me it was at least a thousand years old, and urged me to preserve it carefully as a 3o6 CHINESE LITERATURE valuable relic. This I did, but never took any further trouble to ascertain whether such was actually the case or not. For supposing that this inkstand really dated from the period assigned, its then owner must have regarded it simply as an inkstand. He could not have known that it was destined to survive the wreck of time and to come to be cherished as an antique. And while we prize it now, because it has descended to us from a distant past, we forget that then, when antiques were relics of a still earlier period, it could not have been of any value to antiquarians, themselves the moderns of what is antiquity to us ! The surging crowd around us thinks of naught but the acquisition of wealth and mate- rial enjoyment, occupied only with the struggle for place and power. Men lift their skirts and hurry through the mire ; they suffer indignity and feel no sense of shame. And if from out this mass there arises one spirit purer and simpler than the rest, striving to tread a nobler path than they, and amusing his leisure, for his own gratifica- tion, with guitars, and books, and pictures, and other relics of olden times, — such a man is indeed a genuine lover of the antique. He can never be one of the common herd, though the common herd always affect to admire whatever is admittedly admirable. In the same way, persons who aim at advancement in their career will spare no endeavour to collect the choicest rarities, in order, by such gifts, to curry favour with their superiors, who in their turn will take pleasure in osten- tatious display of their collections of antiquities. Such is but a specious hankering after antiques, arising simply from a desire to eclipse one's neighbours. Such men are not genuine lovers of the antique. Their tastes are those of the common herd after all, though they make ^ i' LI SHIH-CHfeN 307 great show and filch the reputation of true antiquarians, in the hope of thus distinguishing themselves from their fellows, ignorant as they are that what they secure is the name alone without the reality. The man whom I call a genuine antiquarian is he who studies the writings of the ancients, and strives to form himself upon their model, though unable to greet them in the flesh ; who ever and anon, in his wanderings up and down the long avenue of the past, lights upon some choice fragment which brings him in an instant face to face with the immortal dead. Of such enjoyment there is no satiety. Those who truly love antiquity, love not the things, but the men of old, since a relic in the present is much what it was in the past, — a mere thing. And so if it is not to things, but rather to men, that devotion is due, then even I may aspire to be some day an antique. Who shall say that centuries hence an antiquarian of the day may not look up to me as I have looked up to my predecessors ? Should I then neglect myself, and foolishly devote my energies to trifling with things ? "Such is popular enthusiasm in these matters. It is shadow without substance. But the theme is end- less, and I shall therefore content myself with a passing record of my old inkstand." This chapter may close with the names of two remark- able men. Ll SHiH-CHfeN completed in 1578, after twenty- six years of unremitting labour, his great Materia Medica. In 1596 the manuscript was laid before the Emperor, who ordered it to be printed forthwith. It deals (i) with Inanimate substances; (2) with Plants; and (3) with Animals, and is illustrated by over iioo woodcuts. The introductory chapter passes in review forty-two previous 3o8 CHINESE LITERATURE works of importance on the same subject, enumerating no fewer than 950 miscellaneous publications on a variety of subjects. The famous " doctrine of signatures," which supposes that the uses of plants and substances are indi- cated to man by certain appearances peculiar to them, figures largely in this work. Hst) KUANG-CH'i (1562-1634) is generally regarded as the only influential member of the mandarinate who has ever become a convert to Christianity. After graduating first among the candidates for the second degree in 1597 and taking his final degree in 1604, he enrolled him- self as a pupil of Matteo Ricci, and studied under his guidance to such purpose that he was able to produce works on the new system of astronomy as introduced by the Jesuit Fathers, besides various treatises on mathe- matical science. He was also author of an encyclopaedia of agriculture of considerable value, first published in 1640. This work is illustrated with numerous woodcuts, and treats of the processes and implements of husbandry, of rearing silkworms, of breeding animals, of the manu- facture of food, and even of precautions to be taken against famine. The Jesuit Fathers themselves scattered broadcast over China a large number of propagandist publications, written in polished book-style, some few of which are still occasionally to be found in old book- shops. CHAPTER II NOVELS AND PLAYS Novels were produced in considerable numbers under the Ming dynasty, but the names of their writers, except in a very few cases, have not been handed down. The marvellous work known as the CHin PHng Mei^ from the names of three of the chief female characters, has been attributed to the grave scholar and statesman, Wang Shih-chtog (1526-1593); but this is more a guess than anything else. So also is the opinion that it was pro- duced in the seventeenth century, as a covert satire upon the morals of the Court of the great Emperor K'ang Hsi. The story itself refers to the early part of the twelfth century, and is written in a simple, easy style, closely approaching the Peking colloquial. It possesses one extraordinary characteristic. Many words and phrases are capable of two interpretations, one of which is of a class which renders such passages unfit for ears polite. Altogether the book is objectionable, and would require a translator with the nerve of a Burton. The Yu Chiao Lz is a tale of the fifteenth century which has found much favour in the eyes of foreigners, partly because it is of an unusually moderate length. The ordinary Chinaman likes his novels long, and does not mind plenty of repetitions after the style of Homer, 309 3IO CHINESE LITERATURE which latter feature seems to point in the direction of stories told by word of mouth and written down later on, and may be taken in connection with the opinion already expressed, that the Chinese novel came origin- ally from Central Asia. Here, however, in four small volumes, we have a charming story of a young graduate who falls in love first with a beautiful and accomplished poetess, and then with the fascinating sister of a fasci- nating friend whose acquaintance — the brother's — he makes casually by the roadside. The friend and the sister turn out to be one and the same person, a very lively girl, who appears in male or female dress as occasion may require ; and what is more, the latter young lady turns out to be the much-loved orphan cousin of the first and still cherished young lady, and also her intellectual equal. The graduate is madly in love with the two girls, and they are irrevocably in love with him. This is a far simpler matter than it would be in Western countries. The hero marries both, and all three live happily ever afterwards. The Lieh Kuo Chuan^ anonymous as usual, is a historical novel dealing with the exciting times of the Feudal States, and covering the period between the eighth century B.C. and the union of China under the First Emperor. It is introduced to the reader in these words : — "The Lieh Kuo is not like an ordinary novel, which consists mainly of what is not true. Tims the Fing Shin (a tale of the twelfth century B.C.), the Shui Hu, the Hsi Yu Chi^ and others, are pure fabrications. Even the San Kuo Chih, which is veiy near to >truth, contains much that is without foundation. Notyso the THE LIEH KUO CHUAN 311 Lieh Kuo. There every incident is a real incident, every speech a real speech. Besides, as there is far more to tell than could possibly be told, it is not likely that the writer would go out of his way to invent. Wherefore the reader must look upon the Lieh Kuo as a genuine history, and not as a mere novel." The following extract refers to a bogus exhibition, planned by the scheming State of Ch*in, nominally to make a collection of valuables and hand them over as respectful tribute to the sovereign House of Chou, but really with a view to a general massacre of the rival nobles who stood in the way between the Ch*ins and their treasonable designs : — " Duke Ai of Ch*in now proceeded with his various officers of State to prepare a place for the proposed exhibition, at the same time setting a number of armed men in ambuscade, with a view to carry out his ambitious designs ; and when he heard that the other nobles had arrived, he went out and invited them to come in. The usual ceremonies over, and the nobles' having taken their seats according to precedence, Duke Ai addressed the meeting as follows : — " ' I, having reverently received the commission of the Son of Heaven, do hereby open this assembly for the exhibition of such valuables as may be brought together from all parts of the empire, the same to be subsequently packed together, and forwarded as tribute to our Imperial master. And since you nobles are now all collected here in this place, it is fitting that our several exhibits be forthwith produced and submitted for adjudication.' "Sounds of , assent from the nobles were heard at the conclusion of this speech, but the Prime Minister of the Ch*i State, conscious that the atmosphere was heavily 21 312 CHINESE LITERATURE laden with the vapour of death, as if from treacherous ambush, stepped forward and said : — " ' Of old, when the hobles were wont to assemble, it was customary to appoint one just and upright member to act as arbiter or judge of the meeting ; and now that we have thus met for the purposes of this exhibition, I propose, in the interest of public harmony, that some one of us be nominated arbiter in a similar way/ " Duke Ai readily agreed to the above proposition, and immediately demanded of the assembled nobles who among them would venture to accept the office indicated. These words were scarcely out of his mouth when up rose Pien Chuang, generalissimo of the forces of Chdng, and declared that he was ready to undertake the post. Duke Ai then asked him upon what grounds, as to personal ability, he based his claim ; to which Pien Chuang replied, 'Of ability I have little indeed, but I have slain a tiger with one blow of my fist, and in martial prowess I am second to none. Upon this I base my claim/ " Accordingly, Duke Ai called for a golden tablet, and was on the point of investing him as arbiter of the exhibition, when a voice was heard from among the retainers of the Wu State, loudly urging, ' The slayer of a tiger need be possessed only of physical courage ; but how is that a sufficient recommendation for this office ? Delay awhile, I pray, until I come and take the tablet myself/ " By this time Duke Ai had seen that the speaker was K'uai Hui, son of the Duke of Wei, and forthwith inquired of him what his particular claim to the post might be. ' I cut the head off a deadly dragon, and for that feat I claim this post/ Duke Ai thereupon ordered Pien Chuang to THE LIEH KUO CHUAN 313 transfer to him the golden tablet ; but this he refused to do, arguing that the slaughter of a dragon was simply a magician's trick, and not at all to the present purpose. He added that if the tablet was to be taken from him, it would necessitate an appeal to force between himself and his rival. The contest continued thus for some time, until at length the Prime Minister of Ch'i rose again, and solved the difficulty in the following terms : — " ' The slaughter of a tiger involves physical courage, and the slaughter of a dragon is a magician's trick ; hence, neither of these acts embraces that combination of mental and physical power which we desire in the arbiter of this meeting. Now, in front of the palace there stands a sacrificial vessel which weighs about a thousand pounds. Let Duke Ai give out a theme ; and then let him who replies thereto with most clearness and accuracy, and who can, moreover, seize the aforesaid vessel, and carry it round the platform on which the eighteen representative nobles are seated, be nominated to the post of arbiter and receive the golden tablet/ " To this plan Duke Ai assented ; and writing down a theme, bade his attendants exhibit it among the heroes of the assembled States. The theme was in rhyme, and contained these eight lines : — * Say what supports the skyj say what supports the earth; What is the mystic number which to the universe gave birth ? Whence come the eddying waves of the river's rolling might ? Where shall we seek the primal germ of the mounted f^s towering height ? By which of the elements five is the work of Nature done 1 And of all the ten thousand things that are^ say which is the wondrous one ? Such are the questions seven which I now propound to you; And lie who can answer t/iem straight and well is the trusty man and true* 314 CHINESE LITERATURE "The theme had hardly been uttered, when up started Chi Nien, generalissimo of the Ch*in State, and cried out, * This is but a question of natural philosophy ; what difficulty is there in it?' He thereupon advanced to the front, and, having obtained permission to compete, seized a stylus and wrote down the following reply : — * Nothing supports the sky ; nothing supports the earth; How can we guess at the number which to the universe gave birth 1 From the reaches above come the eddying waves of the river's rolling might: I low can we tell where to look for the germ of the mount as f^s towering height ? By every one of the elements five is the work of Nature done; Atid of all the ten thousand things that are there is no particular one. There you have my replies to the questions set by you; And the arbiter's post I hereby claim as the trusty man and true J '*Chi Nien, having delivered this answer, proceeded to tuck up his robe, and, passing to the front of the palace, seized with both hands the sacrificial vessel, and raised it some two feet from the ground, his whole face becoming suffused with colour under the effort. At the same time there arose a great noise of drums and horns, and all the assembled nobles applauded loudly ; whereupon Duke Ai personally invested him with the golden tablet and proclaimed him arbiter of the exhibition, for which Chi Nien was just about to return thanks, when suddenly up jumped Wu Yiian, generalissimo of the Ch'u State, and coming forward, declared in an angry tone that Chi Nien's answer did not dispose of the theme in a proper and final manner ; that he had not removed the sacri- ficial vessel from its place, and that consequently he had not earned the appointment which Wu Yiian now contended should be bestowed upon himself. Duke Ai, THE LIEH KUO CHUAN 31 S in view of his scheme for seizing the persons of the various nobles, was naturally anxious that the post of arbiter should fall to one of his own officers, and was much displeased at this attempt on the part of Wu Yiian ; however, he replied that if the latter could dispose of the theme and carry round the sacrificial vessel, the office of arbiter would be his, Wu Yuan thereupon took a stylus and indited the following lines : — * The earth supports the sfyj the sky supports the earth. Five is the mystic number which to the universe gave birth, Down from the sky come the eddying waves of the river's roiling might. In the ICun-lun range we must seek the germ of the mountcdi^s towering height. By truth, of the elements five^ can mast good work be done; And of ail the ten thousand things that are^ man is the wondrous one. There you hceue my replies to the questions set this day; 'J he answers are clear and straight to the pointy and given with- out delay ^ "As soon as he had finished writing, he handed his reply to Duke Ai, who at once saw that he had in every way disposed of the theme with far greater skill than Chi Nien, and accordingly now bade him show his strength upon the sacrificial vessel. Wu Yiian imme- diately stepped forward, and, holding up his robe with his left hand, seized the vessel with his right, raising it up and bearing it round the platform before the assembled nobles, and finally depositing it in its original place, without so much as changing colour. The nobles gazed at each other in astonishment at this feat, and with one accord declared him to be the hero of the day ; so that Duke Ai had no alternative but to invest him with the golden tablet and announce his appointment to the post of arbiter." 3i6 CHINESE LITERATURE The Ching Him Yuan is a less pretentious work than the preceding, but of an infinitely more interesting char- acter. Dealing with the reign of the Empress Wu, who in A.D. 684 set aside the rightful heir and placed herself upon the throne, which she occupied for twenty years, this work describes how a young graduate, named T*ang, disgusted with the establishment of exaniinations and degrees for women, set out with a small party on a voyage of exploration. Among all the strange places which they visited, the most curious was the Country of Gentlemen, where they landed and proceeded at once to the capital city. "There, over the city gate, T'ang and his companions read the following legend : — * Virtue is man^s only jewel /* ''They then entered the city, which they found to be a busy and prosperous mart, the inhabitants all talking the Chinese language. Accordingly, Tang accosted one of the passers-by, and asked him how it was his nation had become so famous for politeness and consideration of others ; but, to his great astonishment, the man did not understand the meaning of his question. T*ang then asked him why this land was called the ' Country of Gentlemen,' to which he likewise replied that he did not know. Several other persons of whom they inquired giving similar answers, the venerable To remarked that the term had . undoubtedly been adopted by the in- habitants of adjacent countries, in consequence of the polite manners and considerate behaviour of these people. ' For,' said he, ' the very labourers in the fields and foot-passengers in the streets step aside to make room for one another. High and low, rich and poor, THE CHING HUA YUAN 317 mutually respect each other's feelings without reference to the wealth or social status of either ; and this is, after all, the essence of what constitutes the true gentleman/ *' ' In that case/ cried Tang, ' let us not hurry on, but rather improve ourselves by observing the ways and customs of this people/ " By and by they arrived at the market-place, where they saw an official runner standing at a stall engaged in making purchases. He was holding in his hand the articles he wished to buy, and was saying to the owner of the stall, ' Just reflect a moment, sir, how impossible it would be for me to take these excellent goods at the absurdly low price you are asking. If you will oblige me by doubling the amount, I shall do myself the honour of accepting them ; otherwise, I cannot but feel that you are unwilling to do business with me to-day.' "'How very funny !' whispered T'ang to his friends. ' Here, now, is quite a different custom from ours, where the buyer invariably tries to beat down the seller, and the seller to run up the price of his goods as high as possible. This certainly looks like the 'consideration for others' of which we spoke just now/ " The man at the stall here replied, ' Your wish, sir, should be law to me, I know; but the fact is, I am already overwhelmed with shame at the high price I have ventured to name. Besides, I do not profess to adhere rigidly to ' marked prices,' which is a mere trick of the trade, and consequently it should be the aim of every purchaser to make me lower my terms to the very smallest figure ; you, on the contrary, are trying to raise the price to an exorbitant figure ; and although I fully appreciate your kindness in that respect, I must really 31 8 CHINESE LITERATURE ask you to seek what you require at some other estab- lishment. It is quite impossible for me to execute your commands.' "Tarigwas again expressing his astonishment at this extraordinary reversal of the platitudes of trade, when the would-be purchaser replied, ' For you, sir, to ask such a low sum for these first-class goods, and then to turn round and accuse me of over-considering your interests, is indeed a sad breach of etiquette. Trade could not be carried on at all if all the advantages were on one side and the losses on the other ; neither am I more devoid of brains than the ordinary run of people that I should fail to understand this principle and let you catch me in a trap.' ''So they went on wrangling and jangling, the stall- keeper refusing to charge any more and the runner insisting on paying his own price, until the latter made a show of yielding and put down the full sum demanded on the counter, but took only half the amount of goods. Of course the stall-keeper would not consent to this, and they would both have fallen back upon their original positions had not two old gentlemen who happened to be passing stepped aside and arranged the matter for them, by deciding that the runner was to pay the full price but to receive only four-fifths of the goods. "T'ang and his companions walked on in silence, meditating upon the strange scene they had just wit- nessed ; but they had not gone many steps when they came across a soldier similarly engaged in buying things at an open shop- window. He was saying, 'When I asked the price of these goods, you, sir, begged me to take them at my own valuation ; but now that I am willing to do so, you complain of the large sum I oflFer, THE CHING HUA YCAN 319 whereas the truth is that it is actually very much below their real value. Do not treat me thus unfairly/ '' ' It is not for me, sir/ replied the shopkeeper, ' to demand a price for my own goods ; my duty is to leave tha[t entirely to you. But the fact is, that these goods are old stock, and are not even the best of their kind ; you would do much better at another shop. However, let us say half what you are good enough to offer ; even then I feel I shall be taking a great deal too much. I could not think, sir, of parting with my goods at your price.' " ' What is that you are saying, sir ? ' cried the soldier. * Although not in the trade myself, I can tell superior from inferior articles, and am not likely to mistake one for the other. And to pay a low price for a good article is simply another way of taking money out of a man's pocket.' " ' Sir,' retorted the shopkeeper, ' if you are such a stickler for justice as all that, let us say half the price you first mentioned, and the goods are yours. If you object to that, I must ask you to take your custom else- where. You will then find that I am not imposing on you.' " The soldier at first stuck to his text, but seeing that the shopkeeper was not inclined to give way, he laid down the sum named and began to take his goods, picking out the very worst he could find. Here, how- ever, the' shopkeeper interposed, saying, ' Excuse me, sir, but you are taking all the bad ones. It is doubtless very kind of you to leave the best for me, but if all men were like you there would be a general collapse of trade.' "' Sir,' replied the soldier, 'as you insist on accepting only half the value of the goods, there is no course open to me but to choose inferior articles. Besides, as a 320 CHINESE LITERATURE matter of fact, the best kind will not answer my purpose so well as the second or third best ; and although I fully recognise your good intentions, I must really ask to be allowed to please myself.' " ' There is no objection, sir/ said the shopkeeper, ' to your pleasing yourself, but low-class goods are sold at a low price, and do not command the same rates as superior articles.' " Thus they went on bandying arguments for a long time without coming to any definite agreement, until at last the soldier picked up the things he had chosen and tried to make off with them. The bystanders, however, all cried shame upon him and said he was a downright cheat, so that he was ultimately obliged to take some of the best kind and some of the inferior kind and put an end to the altercation. " A little farther on our travellers saw a countryman who had just paid the price of some purchases he had succeeded in making, and was hurrying away with them, when the shopkeeper called after him, ' Sir ! sir ! you have paid me by mistake in finer silver than we are accustomed to use here, and I have to allow you a con- siderable discount in consequence. Of course this is a mere trifle to a gentleman of your rank and position, but still for my own sake I must ask leave to make it all right with you.' "'Pray don't mention such a small matter,' replied the countryman, * but oblige me by putting the amount to my credit for use at a future date when I come again to buy some more of your excellent wares.' " ' No, no,' answered the shopkeeper, ' you don't catch old birds with chaff. That trick was played upon me last year by another gentleman, and to this day I have THE CHING HUA YUAN 321 never set eyes upon him again, though I have made every endeavour to find out his whereabouts. As it is, I can now only look forward to repaying him in the next life ; but if I let you take me in in the same way, why, when the next life comes and I am changed, maybe into a horse or a donkey, I shall have quite enough to do to find him, and your debt will go dragging on till the life after that. No, no, there is no time like the present ; hereafter I might very likely forget what was the exact sum I owed you.' " They continued to argue the point until the country- man consented to accept a trifle as a set-off against the fineness of his silver, and went away with his goods, the shopkeeper bawling after him as long as he was in sight that he had sold him inferior articles at a high rate, and was positively defrauding him of his money. The countryman, however, got clear away, and the shop- keeper returned to his grumbling at the iniquity of the age. Just then a beggar happened to pass, and so in anger at having been compelled to take more than his due he handed him the difference. ' Who knows,' said he, ' but that the present misery of this poor fellow may be retribution for overcharging people in a former life?' " ' Ah,' said Tang, when he had witnessed the finale of this little drama, ' truly this is the behaviour of gentle- men 1' "Our travellers then fell into conversation with two respectable - looking old men who said they were brothers, and accepted their invitation to go and take a cup of tea together. Their hosts talked eagerly about China, and wished to hear many particulars of ' the first nation in the world.' Yet, while expressing their ad- 322 CHINESE LITERATURE miration for the high literary culture of its inhabitants and their unqualified successes in the arts and sciences, they did not hesitate to stigmatise as unworthy a great people certain usages which appeared to them deserving of the utmost censure. They laughed at the superstitions of F^ng-Shui, and wondered how intelligent men could be imposed upon year after year by the mountebank professors of such baseless nonsense. 'If it is true/ said one of them, 'that the selection of an auspicious day and a fitting spot for the burial of one's father or mother is certain to bring prosperity to the survivors, how can you account for the fact that the geomancers themselves are always a low, poverty-stricken lot ? Surely they would begin by appropriating the very best positions them- selves, and so secure whatever good fortune might hap- pen to be in want of an owner.' " Then again with regard to bandaging women's feet in order to reduce their size. ' We can see no beauty/ said they, 'in such monstrosities as the feet of your ladies. Small noses are usually considered more attrac- tive than large ones ; but what would be said of a man who sliced a piece off his own nose in order to reduce it within proper limits ? ' "And thus the hours slipped pleasantly away until it was time to bid adieu to their new friends and regain their ship." The Chin Ku Chi Ktian^ or Marvellous Tales, Ancient and Modern, is a great favourite with the romance-reading Chinaman. It is a collection of forty stories said to have been written towards the close of the Ming dynasty by the members of a society who held meetings for that purpose. Translations of many, if not P'ING SHAN l£NG YEN 323 all, of these have been published. The style is easy, very unlike that of the P'ing Shan Ling Yen, a well- known novel in what would be called a high-class literary style, being largely made up of stilted dialogue and over-elaborated verse composed at the slightest provocation by the various characters in the story. These were P*ing and Yen, two young students in love with Shan and L^ng, two young poetesses who charmed even more by their literary talent than by their fascinat- ing beauty. On one occasion a pretended poet, named Sung, who was a suitor for the hand of Miss L^ng, had been entertained by her uncle, and after dinner the party wandered about in the garden. Miss L^ng was summoned, and when writing materials had been pro- duced, as usual on such occasions, Mr. Sung was asked to favour the company with a sonniet. " Excuse me," he replied, " but I have taken rather too much wine for verse-making just now." "Why," rejoined Miss L^ng, " it was after a gallon of wine that Li Po dashed off a hundred sonnets, and so gained a name which will live for a thousand generations." " Of course I could compose," said Mr. Sung, "even after drinking, but I might become coarse. It is better to be fasting, and to feel quite clear in the head. Then the style is more finished, and the verse more pleasing." "Ts*aoChih," retorted Miss L^ng, "composed a sonnet while taking only seven steps, and his fame will be remembered for ever. Surely occasion has nothing to do with the matter." In the midst of Mr. Sung's confusion, the uncle proposed that the former should set a theme for Miss L^ng instead, to which he consented, and on looking about him caught sight through the open window of a paper kite, which he forthwith suggested, hoping in his heart to completely 324 CHINESE LITERATURE puzzle the sarcastic young lady. However, in the time that it takes to drink a cup of tea, she had thrown off the following lines : — " Cunningly made to look like a birdj It cheats fools and little children. It has a body of bamboo^ light and thiUy And flowers painted on it^ as though something wonderfuL Blown by the wind it swaggers in the sky^ Bound by a string it is unable to move. Do not laugh at its shamfeet^ Jf it fell ^ you would see only a dry and empty frame!* All this was intended in ridicule of Mr. Sung himself and of his personal appearance, and is a fair sample of what the reader may expect throughout. The Erh Tou Meiy or " Twice Flowering Plum-trees," belongs to the sixteenth or seventeenth century, and is by an unknown author. It is a npvel with a purpose, being apparently designed to illustrate the beauty of filial piety, the claims of friendship, and duty to one's neigh- bour in general. Written in a simple style, with no wealth of classical allusion to soothe the feelings of the pedant, it contains several dramatic scenes, and altogether forms a good panorama of Chinese everyday life. Two heroes are each in love with two heroines, and just as in the YU Chiao Li\ each hero marries both. There is a slender thread of fact running through the tale, the action of which is placed in the eighth century, and several of the characters are actually historical. One of the four lovely heroines, in order to keep peace be- tween China and the Tartar tribes which are continually harrying the borders, decides to sacrifice herself on the altar of patriotism and become the bride of the Khan. KAO TS£-CH'£NG 325 The parting at the frontier is touchingly described ; but the climax is reached when, on arrival at her destina- tion, she flings herself headlong over a frightful precipice, rather than pass into the power of the hated barbarian, a waiting-maid being dressed up in her clothes and handed over to the unsuspecting Khan. She herself does not die. Caught upon a purple cloud, she is escorted back to her own country by a bevy of admiring angels. There is also an effective scene, from which the title of the book is derived, when the plum trees, whose flowers had been scattered by a storm of wind and rain, gave themselves up to fervent prayer. "The Garden Spirit heard their earnest supplications, and announced them to the Guardian Angel of the town, who straightway flew up to heaven and laid them at the feet of God." The trees were then suffered to put forth new buds, and soon bloomed again, more beautiful than ever. The production of plays was well sustained through the Ming dynasty, for the simple reason that the Drama, whether an exotic or a development within the bound- aries of the Middle Kingdom, had emphatically come to stay. It had caught on, and henceforth forms the ideal pastime of the cultured, reflective scholar, and of the laughter-loving masses of the Chinese people. The Fi Pa Chi, or " Story of the Guitar," stands easily at the head of the list, being ranked by some admirers as the very finest of all Chinese plays. It is variously arranged in various editions under twenty-four or forty- two scenes ; and many liberties have been taken with the text, long passages having been interpolated and many other changes made. It was first performed in 1704, and was regarded as a great advance in the dramatic art 326 CHINESE LITERATURE upon the early plays of the Mongols. The author's name was Kao Tsfe-CH*feNG, and his hero is said to have been taken from real life in the person of a friend who actually rose from poverty to rank and affluence. The following is an outline of the plot. A brilliant young graduate and his beautiful wife are living, as is customary, with the husband's parents. The father urges the son to go to the capital and take his final degree. " At fifteen," says the old man, " study ; at thirty, act." The mother, however, is opposed to this plan, and declares that they cannot get along without their son. She tells a pitiful tale of another youth who went to the capital, and after infinite suffering was ap- pointed Master of a Workhouse, only to find that his parents had already preceded him thither in the capacity of paupers. The young man finally decides to do his duty to the Son of Heaven, and forthwith sets off, leaving the family to the kind care of a benevolent friend. He undergoes the examination, which in the play is turned into ridicule, and comes out in the coveted position of Senior Classic. The Emperor then instructs one of his Ministers to take the Senior Classic as a son-in-law ; but our hero refuses, on the ground, so it is whispered, that the lady's feet are too large. The Minister is then compelled to put on pressure, and the marriage is solemnised, this part of the play concluding with an effective scene, in which on being asked by his new wife to sing, our hero suggests such songs as " Far from his True Love," and others in a similar style. Even when he agrees to sing ''The Wind through the Pines," he drops unwittingly into " Oh for my home once more ; " and then when recalled to his senses, he relapses again into a song about a deserted wife. KAO TS£-CH*:feNG 327 Meanwhile misfortunes have overtaken the family left behind. There has been a famine, the public granaries have been discovered to be empty instead of full, and the parents and wife have been reduced to starvation. The wife exerts herself to the utmost, selling all her jewels to buy food ; and when at length, after her mother-in-law's death, her father-in-law dies too, she cuts off her hair and tries to sell it in order to buy a coffin, being prevented only by the old friend who has throughout lent what assistance he could. The next thing is to raise a tumulus over the grave. This she tries to do with her own hands, but falls asleep from fatigue. The Genius of the Hills sees her in this state, and touched by her filial devotion, summons the white monkey of the south and the black tiger of the north, spirits who, with the aid of their subordinates, complete the tumulus in less than no time. On awaking, she re- cognises supernatural intervention, and then determines to start for the capital in search of her husband, against whom she entertains very bitter feelings. She first sets to work to paint the portraits of his deceased parents, and then with these for exhibition as a means of obtain- ing alms, and with her guitar, she takes her departure. Before her arrival the husband has heard by a letter, forged in order to get a reward, that his father and mother are both well, and on their way to rejoin him. He therefore goes to a temple to pray Buddha for a safe conduct, and there picks up the roUed-up pictures of his father and mother which have been dropped by his wife, who has also visited the temple to ask for alms. The picture is sent unopened to his study. And now the wife, in continuing her search, accidentally gains admis- sion to her husband's house, and is kindly received by 23 328 CHINESE LITERATURE the second wife. After a few misunderstandings the truth comes out, and the second wife, who is in full sympathy with the first, recommends her to step into the study and leave a note for the husband. This note, in the shape of some uncomplimentary verses, is found by the latter together with the pictures which have been hung up against the wall; the second wife introduces the first; there is an explanation; and the curtain, if there was such a thing in a Chinese theatre, would fall upon the final happiness of the husband and his two wives. Of course, in the above sketch of a play, which is about as long as one of Shakespeare's, a good many side- touches have been left out. Its chief beauties, according to Chinese critics, are to be found in the glorification of duty to the sovereign, of filial piety to a husband's parents, and of accommodating behaviour on the part of the second wife tending so directly to the preservation of peace under complicated circumstances. The forged letter is looked upon as a weak spot, as the hero would know his father's handwriting, and so with other points which it has been suggested should be cut out. "But because a stork's neck is too long," says an editor, " you can't very well remedy the defect by taking a piece off," On the other hand, the pathetic character of the play gives it a high value with the Chinese ; for, as we are told in the prologue, " it is much easier to make people laugh than cry." And if we can believe all that is said on this score, every successive generation has duly paid its tribute of tears to the Fi Pa Chi. CHAPTER III POETRY Though the poetry of the Ming dynasty shows Httle falling off, in point of mere volume, there are far fewer great poets to be found than under the famous Houses of T'ang and Sung. The name, however, which stands first in point of chronological sequence, is one which is widely known. Hsieh Chin (1369-1415) was born when the dynasty was but a year old, and took his final degree before he had passed the age of twenty. His precocity had already gained for him the reputation of being an Inspired Boy, and, later on, the Emperor took such a fancy to him, that while Hsieh Chin was engaged in writing, his Majesty would often deign to hold the ink- slab. He was President of the Commission which produced the huge encyclopaedia already described, but he is now chiefly known as the author of what appears to be a didactic poem of about 150 lines, which may be picked up at any bookstall. It is ne- cessary to say "about 150 lines," since no two editions give identically the same number of lines, or even the same text to each line. It is also very doubtful if Hsieh Chin actually wrote such a poem. In many editions, lines are boldly stolen from the early Han poetry and pitchforked in without rhyme or reason, thus making the transitions even more awkward than 339 330 CHINESE LITERATURE they otherwise would be. All editors seem to be agreed upon the four opening lines, which state that the Son of Heaven holds heroes in high esteem, that his Majesty urges all to study diligently, and that everything in this world is second-class, with the sole exception of book- learning. It is in fact the old story that *• Learning is better than house or land; For when house and land are gone and spent y Then learning is most excellent!* Farther on we come to four lines often quoted as enume- rating the four greatest happinesses in life, to wit, ** A gentle rain after long drought,^ Meeting an old friend in a foreign clime^ 1 he joys of the wedding-day^ On^s name on the list of successful candidates!* The above lines occur d propos of nothing in particular, and are closely followed in some editions by more precepts on the subject of earnest application. Then after reading that the Classics are the best fields to cultivate, we come upon four lines with a dash of real poetry in them : — ^^ Man in his youth-time s rosy glow ^ The pink peach flowering in the glade .... IVhy^ yearly, when spring breezes blow^ Does each one flush a deeper shade f^ More injunctions to burn the midnight oil are again strangely followed by a suggestion that three cups of wine induce serenity of mind, and that if a man is but dead drunk, all his cares disappear, which is only another way of saying that " The best of life is but intoxication!* HSIEH CHIN 331 Altogether, this poem is clearly a patchwork, of which some parts may have come from Hsieh Chin's pen. Here is a short poem of his in defence of official venality, about which there is no doubt : — ^ In vain hands bent on sacrifice or clasped in prayer we see; The ways of God are not exactly what those ways should be. The swindler and the ruffian lecui pleasant lives enough^ While judgments overtake the good 4 and many a sharp rebuff. The swaggering bully stalks along as blithely as you please^ While those who never miss their prayers are martyrs to disease, A nd if great God Almighty fails to keep the balance true^ What can we hope that paltry mortal tnagistrates will dof^ The writer came to a tragic end. By supporting the claim of the eldest prince to be named heir apparent, he made a lasting enemy of another son, who succeeded in getting him banished on one charge, and then im- prisoned on a further charge. After four years' con- finement he was made drunk, probably without much difficulty, and was buried under a heap of snow. The Emperor who reigned between 1522 and 1566 as the eleventh of his line was not a very estimable person- age, especially in the latter years of his life, when he spent vas^t sums over palaces and temples, and wasted most of his time in seeking after the elixir of life. In 1539 he despatched General Mao to put down a rising in Annam, and gave him an autograph poem as a send-off. 332 CHINESE LITERATURE The verses are considered spirited by Chinese critics, and are frequently given in collections, which certainly would not be the case if Imperial authorship was their only claim : — '* Southwtird^ in eUl thepemoply of cruel war arrayed^ SeCy our heroic general points and waves his glittering blade f Across the hills and streams the lizard-drums terrific roll^ IVhile glint of myriad banners flashes high from pole to pole, . . # Go, scion of the Unicorn^ and prove thy heavenly birth^ And crush to all eternity these insects of the earth; And when thou com^st, a conqueror^ from those wild barbarian lands^ WE will unhitch thy war-cloak with our own Imperial hands I ^ The courtesans of ancient and mediaeval China formed a class which now seems no longer to exist. Like the hetaircB of Greece, they were often highly educated, and exercised considerable influence. Bio- graphies of the most famous of these ladies are in existence, extending back to the seventh century a.d. The following is an extract from that of Hsieh Su-su, who flourished in the fourteenth century, and "with whom but few of the beauties of old could compare " : — "Su-su's beauty was of a most refined style, with a captivating sweetness of voice and grace of movement. She was a skilful artist, sweeping the paper with a few rapid touches, which produced such speaking effects that few, even of the first rank, could hope to excel her work. She was a fine horsewoman, and could shoot CHAO TS'AI-CHI— CHAO LI-HUA 333 from horseback with a cross-bow. She would fire one pellet, and then a second, which would catch up the first and smash it to atoms in mid-air. Or she would throw a pellet on to the ground, and then grasping the cross- bow in her left hand, with her right hand passed behind her back, she would let fiy and hit it, not missing once in a hundred times. She was also very particular about her friends, receiving no one unless by his talents he had made some mark in the world." The poetical effusions, and even plays, of many of these ladies have been carefully preserved, and are usually published as a supplement to any dynastic col- lection. Here is a specimen by Chad Ts'ai-chi (fifteenth century), of whom no biography is extant : — " The tide in the river beginning to rise^ Near the sad hour of partings brings tears to our eyes; Alas ! that these furlongs of willow-strings gay Cannot holdfast the boat that will soon be away /" Another specimen, by a lady named Chad Li-hua (sixteenth century), contains an attempt at a pun, which is rather lamely brought out in the translation : — " Your notes on paper ^ rare to see^ Two flying joy-birds bear; * Be like the birds and fly to me^ Not like the paper ^ rareP^ These examples sufficiently illustrate this small depart- ment of literature, which, if deficient in work of real merit, at any rate contains nothing of an indelicate character. A wild harum-scarum young man was Fang Shu-shao, ^ Chinese note-paper is ornamented with all kinds of pictures, which some- times cover the whole sheet. 334 CHINESE LITERATURE who, like many other Chinese poets, often took more wine than was good for him. He was famed for his poetry, and also for his calligraphy, specimens of his art being highly prized by collectors. In 1642, we are told, "he was ill with his teeth;" and at length got into his coffin, which all Chinese like to keep handy, and wrote a farewell to the world, resting his paper on the edge of the coffin as he wrote. On completion of the piece he laid himself down and died. Here are the lines : — " An eternal home awaits me; shall I hesitate to go ? Or struggle /or a few more hours of fleeting life below ? A heme wherein the clash of arms I can never hear again I And shall I strive to linger in this thorny world of pain t The breeze will soon blow cool der me^ and the bright moon shine derhead^ When blended with the gems of earth I lie in my last bed. My pen and ink shall go with me inside my funeral hearse^ So that if Pve leisure * over there * / may soothe my soul with verse!' BOOK THE EIGHTH THE MANCHU DYNASTY (a.d. 1644-1900) BOOK THE EIGHTH THE MANCHU DYNASTY (a.d. i 644-1 900) CHAPTER I THE "LIAO CHAI"— THE "HUNG LOU M^NG" By 1644 the glories of the great Ming dynasty had departed. Misgovernment, referred by Chinese writers to the ascendency of eunuchs, had resulted in rebellion, and the rebel chief with a large army was pressing upon the capital. On the 9th April Peking fell. During the previous night the Emperor, who had refused to flee, slew the eldest Princess, commanded the Empress to commit suicide, and sent his three sons into hiding. At dawn the bell was struck for the Court to assemble ; but no one came. His Majesty then ascended the Wan Sui Hill in the palace grounds, and wrote on the lapel of his robe a last decree : — " We, poor in virtue and of contemptible personality, have incurred the wrath of God on high. My Ministers have deceived me. I am ashamed to meet my ancestors ; and therefore I myself take off my crown, and, with my hair covering my face, await dismemberment at the hands of the rebels. Do not hurt a single one of my people ! " He then hanged 337 338 CHINESE LITERATURE himself, as did one faithful eunuch. At this juncture the Chinese commander-in-chief made overtures to the Manchu Tartars, who had long been consolidating their forces, and were already a serious menace to China. An agreement was hurriedly entered into, and Peking was retaken. The Manchus took possession definitively of the throne, which they had openly claimed since 1635, ^"d imposed the "pigtail" upon the Chinese people. Here then was the great empire of China, bounded by the Four Seas, and stretching to the confines of the habitable earth, except for a few barbarian islands scat- tered on its fringe, with its refined and scholarly people, heirs to a glorious literature more than twenty centuries old, in the power of a wild race of herdsmen, whose title had been established by skill in archery and horse- manship. Not much was to be expected on behalf of the "humanities" from a people whose own written language had been composed to order so late as 1599, and whose literary instincts had still to be developed. Yet it may be said without fear of contradiction that no age ever witnessed anything like the extensive encourage- ment of literature and patronage of literary men ex- hibited under the reigns of two Emperors of this dynasty. Of this, however, in the next chapter. The literature of this dynasty may be said to begin i with a writer who was after all but a mere storyteller. ' It has already been stated that novels and plays are not ' included by the Chinese in the domain of pure literature. Such is the rule, to which there is in practice, if not in theory, one very notable exception. P'u SUNG-LANG, author of the Liao Chai Chih /, which may be conveniently rendered by "Strange §tories," P'U SUNG-LING 339 was born in 1622, and took his first degree in 1641. Though an excellent scholar and a most polished writer, he failed, as many other good men have done, to take the higher degrees by which he had hoped to enter upon an official career. It is generally understood that this failure was due to neglect of the beaten track of academic study. At any rate, his disappointment was overwhelming. All else that we have on record of P*u Sung-ling, besides the fact that he lived in close com- panionship with several eminent scholars of the day, is gathered from his own words, written when, in 1679, he laid down his pen upon the completion of a task which was to raise him within a short period to a foremost rank in the Chinese world of letters. The following are extracts from this record : — " Clad in wislaria, girdled with ivy,* — thus sang Ch'u Yiian in his Li Sao, Of ox-headed devils and serpent gods, he of the long nails ^ never wearied to tell. Each interprets in his own way the music of heaven ; and whether it be discord or not, depends upon ante- cedent causes. As for me, I cannot, with my poor autumn firefly's light, match myself against the hob- goblins of the age.* I am but the dust in the sunbeam, ^ Said of the bogies of the hills, in allusion to their clothes. Here quoted with reference to the official classes, in ridicule of the title under which they hold posts which, from a literary point of view, they are totally unfit to occupy. * A poet of the T'ang dynasty, whose eyebrows met, whose nails were very long, and who could write very fast. ' This is another hit at the ruling classes. Hsi K'ang, the celebrated poet, musician, and alchemist (a.d. 223-262), was sitting one night alone, playing upon his lute, when suddenly a man with a tiny face walked in, and began to stare hard at him, the stranger's fece enlarging all the time. '* Tm not going to match myself against a devil I " cried the musician after a few moments, and instantly blew out the light. 340 CHINESE LITERATURE a fit laughing-stock for devils.^ For my talents are not those of Yii Pao,* elegant explorer of the records of the gods ; I am rather animated by the spirit of Su Tung-p'o, who loved to hear men speak of the supernatural. I get people to commit what they tell me to writing, and sub- sequently I dress it up in the form of a story ; and thus in the lapse of time my friends from all quarters have supplied me with quantities of material, which, from my habit of collecting, has grown into a vast pile. "When the bow* was hung at my father's door, he dreamed that a sickly-looking Buddhist priest, but half- covered by his stole, entered the chamber. On one of his breasts was a round piece of plaster like a cash; and my father, waking from sleep, found that I, just born, had a similar black patch on my body. As a child, I was thin and constantly ailing, and unable to hold my own in the battle of life. Our home was chill and desolate as a monastery ; and working there for my livelihood with my pen, I was as poor as a priest with his alms-bowl. Often and often I put my hand to my head and exclaimed, ' Surely he who sat with his face to the wall * was myself 1 When Liu Chiian, Governor of Wu-ling, determined to relieve his poverty by trade, he saw a devil standing by his side, laughing and rubbing its hands for glee. " Poverty and wealth are matters of destiny/' said Liu Chttan, ''but to be laughed at by a devil — ," and accordingly he desisted from his intention. ' A writer who flourished in the early part of the fourth century, and com- posed a work in thirty books, entitled " Supernatural Researches." " The birth of a boy was formerly signalled by hanging a bow at the door ; that of a girl, by displaying a small towel — indicative of the parts that each wuuld hereafter play in the drama of life. r ^ Alluding to the priest Dharma-nandi, who came from India to China, and tried to convert the Emperor Wu Ting of the Liang dynasty ; but failing in his attempt, he retired full of mortification to a temple at Sung-shan, where he sat for nine years before a rock, until his own image was imprinted thereon. ru SUNG-LING 341 in a previous state of existence ; ' and thus I referred my non-success in this life to the influence of a destiny sur- viving from the last. I have been tossed hither and thither in the direction of the ruling wind, like a flower falling in filthy places ; but the six paths ^ of transmigra- tion are inscrutable indeed, and I have no right to com- plain. As it is, midnight finds me with an expiring lamp, while the wind whistles mournfully without; and over my cheerless table I piece together my tales, vainly hoping to produce a sequel to the Infernal Regions?' With a bumper I stimulate my pen, yet I only succeed thereby in *' venting my excited feelings,' and as I thus commit my thoughts to writing, truly I am an object worthy of commiseration. Alas ! I am but the bird that, dreading the winter frost, finds no shelter in the tree, the autumn insect that chirps to the moon and hugs the door for warmth. For where are they who know me ? They are ' in the bosky grove and at the frontier pass ' * — ^wrapped in an impenetrable gloom ! " For many years these "Strange Stories" circulated only in manuscript. P'u Sung-ling, as we are told in a colophon by his grandson to the first edition, was too poor to meet the heavy expense of block-cutting ; and it was not until so late as 1740, when the author must have been already for some time a denizen of the dark land 1 The six g&ti or conditions of existence, viz., angels, men, demons, hungry devils, brute beasts, and tortured sinners. ' The work of a well-known writer, named Lin I-ch'ing, who flourished during the Sung dynasty. ' The great poet Tu Fu dreamt that his greater predecessor, Li Tai-po, . appeared to him, *' coming when the maple-grove. was in darkness, and returning while the frontier pass was still obscured,'* — that is, at night, when no one could see him ; the meaning being that he never came at all, and that those " who know me (Fu Sung-ling) '' are equally non-existent. 342 CHINESE LITERATURE he so much loved to describe, that his aforesaid grandson printed and pubh'shed the collection now so universally famous. Since then many editions have been laid before the Chinese public, the best of which is that by Tan Ming-lun, a Salt Commissioner, who flourished during the reign of Tao Kuang, and who in 1842 produced, at his own expense, an excellent edition in sixteen small octavo volumes of about 160 pages each. Any reader of these stories as transferred into another language might fairly turn round and ask the why and the wherefore of the profound admiration — to use a mild term — ^which is universally accorded to them by the literati of China. The answer is to be found in the incomparable style in which even the meanest of them is arrayed. All the elements of form which make for beauty in Chinese composition are there in overwhelming force. Terseness is pushed to its extreme limits ; each particle that can be safely dispensed with is scrupulously eliminated, and every here and there some new and original combination invests perhaps a single word with a force it could never have possessed except under the hands of a perfect master of his art. Add to the above copious allusions and adaptations from a course of read- ing which would seem to have been co-extensive with the whole range of Chinese literature, a wealth of meta- phor and an artistic use of figures generally, to which only the writings of Carlyle form an adequate parallel, and the result is a work which for purity and beauty of style is now universally accepted in China as among the best and most perfect models. Sometimes the story runs plainly and smoothly enough, but the next moment we may be plunged into pages of abstruse text, the meaning of which is so involved in quotations from and allusions FU SUNG-LING 343 to the poetry or history of the past three thousand years as to be recoverable only after diligent perusal of the commentary, and much searching in other works of reference. Premising that, according to one editor, the intention of most of these stories is to " glorify virtue and to censure vice," the following story, entitled " The Talking Pupils," may be taken as a fair illustration of the extent to which this pledge is redeemed : — "At Ch*ang-an there lived a scholar named Fang Tung, who, though by no means destitute of ability, was a very unprincipled rake, and in the habit of following and speaking to any woman he might chance to meet. The day^before the spring festival of Clear Weather he was strolling about outside the city when he saw a small carriage with red curtains and an embroidered awning, followed by a crowd of waiting-maids on horseback, one of whom was exceedingly pretty and riding on a small palfrey. Going closer to get a better view, Mr. Fang noticed that the carriage curtain was partly open, and inside he beheld a beautifully dressed girl of about six- teen, lovely beyond anything he had ever seen. Dazzled by the sight, he could not take his eyes off her, and now before, now behind, he followed the carriage for many a mile. By and by he heard the young lady call out to her maid, and, when the latter came alongside, say to her, ' Let down the screen for me. Who is this rude fellow that keeps on staring so ? ' The maid accordingly let down the screen, and looking angrily at Mr. Fang, said to him, 'This is the bride of the Seventh Prince in the City of Immortals going home to see her parents, and no village girl that you should stare at her thus.' Then taking a handful of dust she 23 V 344 CHINESE LITERATURE threw it at him and blinded him. He rubbed his eyes and looked round, but the carriage and horses were gone. This frightened him, and he went off home, feel- ing very uncomfortable about the eyes. He sent for a doctor to examine them, and on the pupils was found a small film, which had increased by next morning, the eyes watering incessantly all the time. The film went on growing, and in a few days was as thick as a cash. On the right pupil there came a kind of spiral, and as no medicine was of any avail, the sufferer gave himself up to grief and wished for death. He then bethought himself of repenting of his misdeeds, and hearing that the Kuang'tning sUtra could relieve misery, he got a copy and hired a man to teach it to him. At first it was very tedious work, but by degrees he became more composed, and spent every evening in a posture of devotion, telling his beads. At the end of a year he had arrived at a state of perfect calm, when one day he heard a small voice, about as loud as a fly's, calling out from his left eye, * It's horridly dark in here.' To this he heard a reply from the right eye, saying, 'Let us go out for a stroll, and cheer ourselves up a bit.' Then he felt a wTiggling in his nose which made it itch, just as if something was going out of each of his nostrils, and after a while he felt it again as if going the other way. Afterwards he heard a voice from one eye say, M hadn't seen the garden for a long timej the epidendrums are all withered and dead.' Now Mr. Fang was very fond of these epidendrums, of which he had planted a great number, and had been accustomed to water them himself, but since the loss of his sight he had never even alluded to them. Hearing, however, these words, he at once asked his wife why she had let the P'U SUNG-LING 345 epidendrums die. She inquired how he knew they were dead) and when he told her, she went out to see, and found them actually withered away. They were both very much astonished at this, and his wife proceeded to conceal herself in the room. She then observed two tiny people, no bigger than a bean, come down from her husband's nose and run out of the door, where she lost sight of them. In a little while they came back and flew up to his face, like bees or beetles seeking their nests. This went on for some days until Mr. Fang heard from the left eye, 'This roundabout road is not at all convenient. It would be as well for us to make a door.* To this the right eye answered, * My wall is too thick ; it wouldn't be at all an easy job.' ' I'll try and open mine,' said the left eye, 'and then it will do for both of us.' Whereupon Mr. Fang felt a pain in his left eye as if something was being split, and in a moment he found he could see the tables and chairs in the room. He was delighted at this, and told his wife, who exam- ined his eye and discovered an opening in the film, through which she could see the black pupil shining out beneath, the eyeball itself looking like a cracked ' peppercorn. By next morning the film had disappeared, and when his eye was closely examined it was observed to contain two pupils. The spiral on the right eye remained as before, and then they knew that the two pupils had taken up their abode in one eye. Further, although Mr. Fang was still blind of one eye, the sight of the other was better than that of the two together. From this time he was more careful of his behaviour, and acquired in his part of the country the reputation of a virtuous man." To take another specimen, this time with a dash of 346 CHINESE LITERATURE humour in it. A certain man, named Wang (anglid Smith), decided to study Tao — in other words, the black art — at a temple of the Taoist persuasion. The priest, who seems to have had a touch of Squeers in his com- position, warned Wang that he would probably not be able to stand the training ; but on the latter insisting, the priest allowed him to join the other novices, and then sent him to chop wood. He was kept at this task so long that, although he managed to witness several extraordinary feats of magical skill performed by the priest, he scarcely felt that he was making progress himself. " After a time he could not stand it any longer ; and as the priest taught him no magical arts, he determined not to wait, but went to him and said, ' Sir, I travelled many long miles for the benefit of your instruction. If you will not teach me the secret of immortality, let me, at any rate, learn some trifling trick, and thus soothe my cravings for a knowledge of your art. I have now been here two or three months, doing nothing but chop fire- wood, out in the morning and back at night, work to which I was never accustomed in my own home.' 'Did .1 not tell you,' replied the priest, 'that you would never support the fatigue ? To-morrow I will start you on your way home.' ' Sir,' said Wang, ' I have worked for you a long time. Teach me some small art, that my coming here may not have been wholly in vain.' ' What art ? ' asked the priest. ' Well,' answered Wang, ' I have noticed that whenever you walk about anywhere, walls and so on are no obstacle to you. Teach me this, and Til be satisfied.' The priest laughingly assented, and taught Wang a formula which he bade him recite. When he had done so he told him to walk P'U SUNG-LING 347 through the wall ; but Wang, seeing the wall in front of him, didn't like to walk at it. As, however, the priest bade him try, he walked quietly up to it and was there stopped. The priest here called out, ' Don't go so slowly. Put your head down and rush at it.' So Wang stepped back a few paces and went at it full speed ; and the wall yielding to him as he passed, in a moment he found himself outside. Delighted at this, he went in to thank the priest, who told him to be careful in the use of his power, or otherwise there would be no response, handing him at the same time some money for his expenses on the way. When Wang got home, he went about bragging of his Taoist friends and his contempt for walls in general; but as his wife disbelieved his story, he set about going through the performance as before. Stepping back from the wall, he rushed at it full speed with his head down ; but coming in contact with the hard bricks, finished up in a heap on the floor. His wife picked him up and found he had a bump on his forehead as big as a large egg, at which she roared with laughter ; but Wang was overwhelmed with rage and shame, and cursed the old priest for his base ingratitude." Episodes with a familiar ring about them are often to be found embedded in this collection. For instance : — ^' She then became a dense column of smoke curling up from the ground, when the priest took an uncorked gourd and threw it right into the midst of the smoke. A sucking noise was heard, and the whole column was drawn into the gourd ; after which the priest corked it up closely and put it in his pouch." Of such points the following story contains another good example : — 348 CHINESE LITERATURE " A countryman was one day selling his pears in the market. They were unusually sweet and fine flavoured, and the price he asked was high. A Taoist priest in rags and tatters stopped at the barrow and begged one of them. The countryman told him to go away, but as he did not do so, he began to curse and swear at him. The priest said, ' You have several hundred pears on your barrow ; I ask for a single one, the loss of which, sir, you would not feel. Why then get angry ? ' The lookers-on told the countryman to give him an inferior one and let him go; but this he obstinately refused to do. Thereupon the beadle of the place, finding the commotion too great, purchased a pear and handed it to the priest. The latter received it with a bow, and turning to the crowd said, 'We who have left our homes and given up all that is dear to us, are at a loss to understand selfish, niggardly conduct in others. Now I have some exquisite pears which I shall do myself the honour to put before you.' Here somebody asked, 'Since you have pears yourself why don't you eat those ? ' ' Because,' replied the priest, 'I wanted one of these pips to grow them from.' So saying he munched up the pear ; and when he had finished took a pip in his hand, unstrapped a pick from his back, and proceeded to make a hole in the ground several inches deep, wherein he deposited the pip, filling in the earth as before. He then asked the bystanders for a little hot water to water it with, and one among them who loved a joke fetched him some boiling water from a neighbouring shop. The priest poured this over the place where he had made the hole, and every eye was fixed upon him when sprouts were seen shooting up, and gradually growing larger, and larger. By and by there was a tree with branches P'U SUNG-LING 349 sparsely covered with leaves ; then flowers, and last of all fine, large, sweet-smelling pears hanging in great profusion. These the priest picked and handed round to the assembled crowd until all were gone, when he took his pick and hacked away for a long time at the tree, finally cutting it down. This he shouldered, leaves and all, and sauntered quietly away. Now from the very beginning our friend the countryman had been amongst the crowd, straining his neck to see what was going on, and forgetting all about his business. At the departure of the priest he turned round and discovered that every one of his pears was gone. He then knew that those the old fellow had been giving away so freely were really his own pears. Looking more closely at the barrow, he also found that one of the handles was missing, evidently having been newly cut off. Boiling with rage, he set out in pursuit of the priest, and just as he turned the corner he saw the lost barrow-handle lying under the wall, being, in fact, the very pear-tree that the priest had cut down. But there were no traces of the priest, much to the amusement of the crowd in the market-place." Here again is a scene, the latter part of which would almost justify the belief that Mr. W. S. Gilbert was a student of Chinese, and had borrowed some of his best points in " Sweethearts " from the author of the Liao Chat : — *' Next day Wang strolled into the garden, which was of moderate size, with a well-kept lawn and plenty of trees and flowers. There was also an arbour consisting of three posts with a thatched roof, quite shut in on all sides by the luxuriant vegetation. Pushing his way 350 CHINESE LITERATURE among the flowers, Wang heard a noise from one of the trees, and looking up saw Ying-ning, who at once burst out laughing and nearly fell down. ' Don't ! don't!' cried Wang, 'you'll fall!' Then Ying-ning came down, giggling ail the time, until, when she was near the ground, she missed her hold and tumbled down with a run. This stopped her merriment, and Wang picked her up, gently squeezing her hand as he did so. Ying-ning began laughing again, and was obliged to lean against a tree for support, it being some time before she was able to stop. Wang waited till she had finished, and then drew the flower out of his sleeve and handed it to her. ' It's dead,' said she ; ' why do you keep it ? ' ' You dropped it, cousin, at the Feast of Lanterns,' replied Wang, 'and so I kept it.' She then asked him what was his object in keeping it, to which he answered, ' To show my love, and that I have not for- gotten you. Since that day when we met I have been very ill from thinking so much of you, and am quite changed from what I was. But now that it is my unexpected good fortune to meet you, I pray you have pity on me.' 'You needn't make such a fuss about a trifle,' replied she, ' and with your own relatives too. I'll give orders to supply you with a whole basketful of flowers when you go away.' Wang told her she did not understand, and when she asked what it was she didn't understand, he said, ' I didn't care for the flower itself ; it was the person who picked the flower.' ' Of course,' answered she, ' everybody cares for their relations ; you needn't have told me that.' ' I wasn't talking about ordinary relations,' said Wang, ' but about husbands and wives.' ' What's the difference ? ' asked Ying-ning. 'Why,' replied Wang, 'husband and wife ru SUNG-LING 351 are always together.' ' Just what I shouldn't like/ cried she, 'to be always with anybody.' " The pair were ultimately united, and lived happily ever afterwards, in spite of the fact that the young lady subsequently confessed that she was the daughter of a fox, and exhibited supernatural powers. On one occa- sion these powers stood her in good stead. Being very fond of flowers, she went so far as to pick from a neigh- bour's tree. " One day the owner saw her, and gazed at her some time in rapt astonishment; however, she didn't move, deigning only to laugh. The gentleman was much smitten with her ; and when she smilingly descended the wall on her own side, pointing all the time with her finger to a spot hard by, he thought she was making an assignation. So he presented himself at nightfall at the same place, and sure enough Ying-ning was there. Seizing her hand to tell his passion, he found that he was grasping only a log of wood which stood against the wall ; and the next thing he knew was that a scorpion had stung him violently on the finger. There was an end of his romance, except that he died of the wound during the night." In one of the stories a visitor at a temple is much struck by a fresco painting containing the picture of a lovely girl picking flowers, and stands in rapt admiration before it. Then he feels himself borne gently into the painted wall, d la "Alice through the Looking-glass," and in the region beyond plays a part in a domestic drama, finally marrying the heroine of the picture. But the presence of a mortal being suspected by ''a man in golden armour with a face as black as jet," 352 CHINESE LITERATURE he was glad to make bis way back again ; and when he rejoined a friend who had been waiting for him, they noticed that th'e girl in the picture now wore her hair done up as a married woman. There is a Rip van Winkle story, with the pathetic return of the hero to find, as the Chinese poet says — " City and suburb as o/o/d, Bui hearts that loved us long since cold^ There is a sea-serpent story, and a story of a big bird or rukh ; also a story about a Jonah, who, in obedience to an order flashed by lightning on the sky when their junk was about to be swamped in a storm, was trans- ferred by his fellow-passengers to a small boat and cut adrift. So soon as the unfortunate victim had collected his senses and could look about him, he found that the junk had capsized and that every soul had been drowned. The following is an extract from a story in which a young student named Liu falls in love with a girl named Fdng-hsien, who was the daughter of a fox, and therefore possessed of the miraculous powers which the Chinese associate with that animal : — " ' But if you would really like to have something that has belonged to me,' said she, ' you shall.' Whereupon she took out a mirror and gave it to him, saying, ' When- ever you want to see me, you must look for me in your books ; otherwise I shall not be visible ; ' and in a moment she had vanished. Liu went home very melan- choly at heart ; but when he looked in the mirror, there was F^ng-hsien standing with her back to him, gazing, as it were, at some one who was going away, and about P'U SUNG-LING 353 a hundred paces from her. He then bethought himself of her injunctions, and settled down to his studies, refus- ing to receive any visitors ; and a feW days subsequently, when he happened to look in the mirror, there was F^ng-hsien, with her face turned towards him, and smiling in every feature. After this, he was always taking out the mirror to look at her. . However, in about a month his good resolutions began to disappear, and he once more went out to enjoy himself and waste his time as before. When he returned home and looked in the n»irror, F6ng-hsien seemed to be crying bitterly ; and the day after, when he looked at her again, she had her fcack turned towards him as on the day he received the mirror. He now knew that it was because he had neglected his studies, and forthwith set to work again 9<ith all diligence, until in a month's time she had turned round once again. Henceforward, whenever anything interrupted his progress, F^ng-hsien'*s counte- nance became sad; but whenever he was getting on well her sadness was changed to smiles. Night and morning Liu would look at the mirror, regarding it quite in the light of a revered preceptor, and in three years' time he took his degree in triumph. ' Now,' cried he, ' I shall be able to look Feng-hsien in the face.' And there sure enough she was, with her delicately-pencilled arched eyebrows, and her teeth just showing between her lips, as happy-looking as she could be, when, all of a sudden, she seemed to speak, and Liu heard her say, ^ A pretty pair we make, I must allow,' and the next moment F^ng-hsien stood by his side." Here is a story of the nether world, a favourite theme with Fu Sung-ling. It illustrates the popular belief that 354 CHINESE LITERATURE at death a man's soul is summoned to Purgatory by spiritual lictors, who are even liable to make mistakes. Cataleptic fits or trances give rise to many similar tales about persons visiting the realms below and being after- wards restored to life. " A man named Chang died suddenly, and was escorted at once by devil-lictprs into the presence of the King of Purgatory. His Majesty turned to Chang's record of good and evil, and then, in great anger, told the lictors they had brought the wrong man, and bade them take him back again. As they left the judgment-hall, Chang persuaded his escort to let him have a look at Purgatory, and accordingly the devils conducted him through the nine sections, pointing out to him the Knife Hill, the Sword Tree, and other objects of interest. By and by they reached a place where there was a Buddhist priest hanging suspended in the air, head downwards, by a rope through a hole in his leg. He was shrieking with pain and longing for death ; and when Chang approached, lo 1 he saw that it was his own brother. In great distress, he asked his guides the reason of this punishment, and they informed him that the priest was suffering thus for collecting subscriptions on behalf of his order, and then privately squandering the proceeds in gambling and debauchery. ' Nor,' added they, ' will he escape this torment unless he repents him of his misdeeds.' When Chang came round, he thought his brother was already dead, and hurried off to the Hsing-fu monastery, to which the latter belonged. As he went in at the door he heard a loud shrieking, and on proceeding to his brother's room, he found him laid up with a very bad abscess in his leg, the leg itself being tied up above him to the wall, this being, as his brother informed him, the THE HUNG LOU MfeNG 355 only bearable position in which he could lie. Chang now told him what he had seen in Purgatory, at which the priest was so terrified that he at once gave up taking wine and meat, and devoted himself entirely to religious exercises. In a fortnight he was well, and was known ever afterwards as a most exemplary priest." Snatches of verse are to be found scattered about the pages of these stories, enough to give a taste of the writer's quality without too much boring the reader. These lines are much admired : — " IVi/A wine arid flowers we chase the hours In one eternal spring; No moon^ no lights to cheer the night — Thyself that ray must bring!* But we have seen perhaps enough of Pu Sung-ling. "If," as Han Yii exclaimed, "there is knowledge after death," the profound and widespread esteem in which this work is held by the literati of China must indeed prove a soothing balm to the wounded spirit of the Last of the Immortals. The Hung Lou MSng, conveniently but erroneously known as "The Dream of the Red Chamber," is the work referred to already as touching the highest point of development reached by the Chinese novel. It was probably composed during the latter half of the seven- teenth century. The name of its author is unknown. It is usually published in 24 vols, octavo, containing 120 chapters, which average at the least 30 pages each, making a grand total of about 4000 pages. No fewer than 400 personages of more or less importance are in- troduced first and last into the story, the plot of which is worked out with a completeness worthy of Fielding, 356 CHINESE LITERATURE while the delineation of character — of so many characters — recalls the best efforts of the greatest novelists of the West. As a panorama of Chinese social life, in which almost every imaginable feature is submitted in turn to the reader, the Hung Lou Ming is altogether without a rival. Reduced to its simplest terms, it is an original and effective love story, written for the most part in an easy, almost colloquial, style, full of humorous and pathetic episodes of everyday human life, and interspersed with short poems of high literary finish. The opening chapters, which are intended to form a link between the world of spirits and the world of mortals, belong to the supernatural ; after that the story runs smoothly along upon earthly lines, always, however, overshadowed by the near presence of spiritual influences. Some idea of the novel as a whole may perhaps be gathered from the following abstract. Four thousand six hundred and twenty-three years ago the heavens were out of repair. So the Goddess of Works set to and prepared 36,501 blocks of precious jade, each 240 feet square by 120 feet in depth. Of these, however, she only used 36,500, and cast aside the single remaining block upon one of the celestial peaks. This stone, under the process of preparation, had become as it were spiritualised. It could expand or contract. It could move. It was conscious of the existence of an external world, and it was hurt at not having been called upon to accomplish its divine mission. One day a Buddhist and a Taoist priest, who happened to be passing that way, sat down for a while to rest, and forthwith noticed the disconsolate stone which lay there, no bigger than the pendant of a lady's fan. " Indeed^ THE HUNG LOU M6NG 357 my friend, you are not wanting in spirituality/' said the Buddhist priest to the stone, as he picked it up and laughingly held it forth upon the palm of his hand. " But we cannot be certain that you will ever prove to be of any real use ; and, moreover, you lack an inscrip- tion, without which your destiny must necessarily remain unfulfilled." Thereupon he put the stone in his sleeve and rose to proceed on his journey. "And what, if I may ask," inquired his companion, "do you intend to do with the stone you are thus carrying away ? " "I mean," replied the other, "to send it down to earth, to play its allotted part in the fortunes of a certain family now anxiously expecting its arrival. You see, when the Goddess of .Works rejected this stone, it used to fill up its time by roaming about the heavens, until chance brought it alongside of a lovely crimson flower. Being struck with the great beauty of this flower, the stone remained there for some time, tending WsproUgie with the most loving care, and daily moistening its roots with the choicest nectar of the sky, until at length, yielding to the influence of disinterested love, the flower changed its form and became a most beautiful girl. " ' Dear stone,' cried the girl, in her new-found ecstasy of life, ' the moisture thou hast bestowed upon me here I will repay thee in our future state with my tears ! ' " Ages afterwards, another priest, in search of light, saw this self-same stone lying in its old place, but with a record inscribed upon it — a record of how it had not been used to repair the heavens, and how it subsequently went down into the world of mortals, with a full descrip- tion of aU it did, and saw, and heard while in that state. "Brother Stone," said the priest, "your record is not 358 CHINESE LITERATURE one that deals with the deeds of heroes among men. It does not stir us with stories either of virtuous states- men or of deathless patriots. It seems to be but a simple tale of the loves of maidens and youths, hardly important enough to attract the attention of the great busy world." " Sir Priest," replied the stone, " what you say is in- deed true ; and what is more, my poor story is adorned by no rhetorical flourish nor literary art. Still, the world of mortals being what it is, and its complexion so far determined by the play of human passion, I cannot but think that the tale here inscribed may be of some use, if only to throw a further charm around the banquet hour, or to aid in dispelling those morning clouds which gather over last night's excess." Thereupon the priest looked once more at the stone, and saw that it bore a plain unvarnished tale of — " Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand The downward slope to death^ telling how a woman's artless love had developed into deep, destroying passion ; and how from the thrall of a lost love one soul had been raised to a sublimer, if not a purer conception of man's mission upon earth. He therefore copied it out from beginning to end. Here it is : — Under a dynasty which the author leaves unnamed, two brothers had greatly distinguished themselves by efficient service to the State. In return, they had been loaded with marks of Imperial favour. They had been created nobles of the highest rank. They had amassed wealth. The palaces assigned to them were near to- gether in Peking, and there their immediate descendants THE HUNG LOU MfeNG 359 were enjoying the fruits of ancestral success when this story opens. The brothers had each a son and heir; but at the date at which we are now, fathers and sons had all four passed away. The wife of one of the sons only was still alive, a hale and hearty old lady of about eighty years of age. Of her children, one was a daughter. She had married and gone away south, and her daughter, Tai-yii, is the heroine of this tale. The son of the old lady's second son and first cousin to Tai-yii is the hero, living with his grandmother. His name is Pao-yii. The two noble families were now at the very zenith of wealth and power. Their palatial establishments were replete with every luxury. Feasting and theatricals were the order of the day, and, to crown all, Pao-yU's sister had been chosen to be one of the seventy-two wives allotted to the Emperor of China. No one stopped to think that human events are governed by an inevitable law of change. He who is mighty to-day shall be lowly to- morrow : the rich shall be made poor, and the poor rich. Or if any one, more thoughtful than the rest, did pause awhile in knowledge of the appointments of Heaven, he was fain to hope that the crash would not come, at any rate, in his own day. Things were in this state when Tai-yii's mother died, and her father decided to place his motherless daughter under the care of her grandmother at Peking. Accom- panied by her governess, the young lady set out at once for the capital, and reached her destination in safety. It is not necessary to dwell upon her beauty nor upon her genius, though both are minutely described in the original text. Suffice it to say that during the years which have elapsed since she first became known to the public, many 34 36o CHINESE LITERATURE brave men are said to have died for love of this entranc- ing heroine of fiction. Tai-yii was received most kindly by all. Especially so by her grandmother, who shed bitter tears of sorrow over the premature death of Tai-yii's mother, her lost and favourite child. She was introduced to her aunts and cousins, and cousins and aunts, in such numbers that the poor girl must have wondered how ever she should remember all their names. Then they sat down and talked. They asked her all about her mother, and how she fell ill, and what medicine she took, and how she died and was buried, until ihe old grandmother wept again. " And what medicine do you take, my dear ? " asked the old lady, seeing that Tai-yii herself seemed very delicate, and carried on her clear cheek a suspicious- looking flush. "Oh, I have done nothing ever since I could eat," replied Tai-yii, "but take medicine of some kind or other. I have also seen all the best doctors, but they have not done me any particular good. When I was only three years of age, a nasty old priest came and wanted my parents to let me be a nun. He said it was the only way to save me." **Oh, we will soon cure you here," said her grand- mother, smiling. " We will make you well in no time." Tai-yii was then taken to see more of her relatives, including her aunt, the mother of Pao-yii, who warned her against his peculiar temper, which she said was very uncertain and variable. " What ! the one with the jade ?" asked Tai-yii. "But we shall not be together," she immediately added, somewhat surprised at this rather unusual warning. "Oh yes, you will," said her aunt. " He is dreadfully spoilt by his grandmother, who THE HUNG LOU MflNG 361 allows him to have his own way in everything. Instead of being hard at work, as he ought to be by now, he idles away his time with the girls, thinking only how he can enjoy himself, without any idea of making a career or adding fresh lustre to the family name. Beware of him, I tell you." The dinner-hour had now arrived, and after the meal Tai-yii was questioned as to the progress she had made in her studies. She was already deep in the mysteries of the Four Books, and it was agreed on all sides that she was far ahead of her cousins, when suddenly a noise was heard outside, and in came a most elegantly dressed youth about a year older than Tai-yii, wearing a cap lavishly adorned with pearls. His face was like the full autumn moon. His complexion like morning flowers in spring. Pencilled eyebrows, a well -cut shapely nose, and eyes like rippling waves were among the details which went to make up an unquestionably handsome exterior. Around his neck hung a curious piece of jade ; and as soon as Tai-yii became fully conscious of his presence, a thrill passed through her delicate frame. She felt that somewhere or other she had looked upon that face before. Pao-yii — for it was he — saluted his grandmother with great respect, and then went off to see his mother ; and while he is absent it may be as well to say a few words about the young gentleman's early days. Pao-yii, a name which means Precious Jade, was so called because he was born, to the great astonishment of everybody, with a small tablet of jade in his mouth — a beautifully bright mirror-like tablet, bearing a legend inscribed in the quaint old style of several thousand years ago. A family consultation resulted in a decision 362 CHINESE LITERATURE that this stone was some divine talisman, the puq^ose of which was not for the moment clear, but was doubtless to be revealed by and by. One thing was certain. As this tablet had come into the world with the child, so it should accompany him through life ; and accordingly Pao-yii was accustomed to wear it suspended around his neck. The news ot this singular phenomenon spread far and wide. Even Tai-yii had heard of it long before she came to take up her abode with the family. And so Pao-yii grew up, a wilful, wayward boy. He was a bright, clever fellow and full of fun, but very averse to books. He declared, in fact, that he could not read at all unless he had as fellow-students a young lady on each side of him, to keep his brain clear ! And when his father beat him, as was frequently the case, he would cry out, " Dear girl ! dear girl ! " all the time, in order, as he afterwards explained to his cousins, to take away the pain. Women, he argued, are made of water, with pellucid mobile minds, while men are mostly made of mud, mere lumps of uninformed clay. By this time he had returned from seeing his mother and was formally introduced to Tai-yii. " Ha ! " cried he, " I have seen her before somewhere. What makes her eyes so red ? Indeed, cousin Tai-yii, we shall have to call you Cry-baby if you cry so much." Here some reference was made to his jade tablet, and this put him into an angry mood at once. None of his cousins had any, he said, and he was not going to wear his any more. A family scene ensued, during which Tai-yii went off to bed and cried herself to sleep. Shortly after this, Pao-yii's mother's sister was com- pelled by circumstances to seek a residence in the capital. She brought with her a daughter,. Pao-chai, THE HUNG LOU M6NG 363 another cousin to Pao-yii, but about a year older than he was ; and besides receiving a warm welcome, the two were invited to settle themselves comfortably down in the capacious family mansion of their relatives. Thus, it was that destiny brought Pao-yii and his two cousins together under the same roof. The three soon became fast friends. Pao-ch*ai had been carefully educated by her'father, and was able to hold her own even against the accomplished Tai-yii. Pao-yii loved the soctety of either or both. He was always happy so long as he had a pretty girl by his side, and was, moreover, fascinated by the wit of these two young ladies in particular. He had, however, occasional fits of moody depression, varied by discontent with his superfluous worldly sur- roundings. " In what am I better," he would say, " than a wallowing hog ? Why was I born and bred amid this splendid magnificence of wealth, instead of in some coldly furnished household where I could have enjoyed the pure communion of friends ? These silks and satins, these rich meats and choice wines, of what avail are they to this perishable body of mine ? O wealth 1 O power ! I curse you both, ye cankerworms of my earthly career." All these morbid thoughts, however, were speedily dispelled by the presence of his fair cousins, with whom, in fact, Pao-yii spent most of the time he ought to have devoted to his books. He was always running across to see either one or other of these young ladies, or meeting both of them in general assembly at his grandmother's. It was at a tite-d-tSte with Pao-ch*ai that she made him show her his marvellous piece of jade, with the inscription, which she read as follows : — 364 CHINESE LITERATURE " Lose me not^ forget me not^ Eternal life shall be thy lot,"* The indiscretion of a slave-girl here let Pao-yii become «iware that Pao-ch*ai herself possessed a wonderful gold amulet, upon which also were certain words inscribed ; and of course Pao-yii insisted on seeing it at once. On it was written — " Let not this token wander from thy side^ And youth perennial shall with thee abide P In the middle of this interesting scene, Tai-yii walks in, and seeing how intimately the two are engaged, "hopes she doesn't intrude." But even in those early days the ring of her voice betrayed symptoms of that jealousy to which later on she succumbed. Meanwhile she almost monopolises the society of Pao-yii, and he, on his side, finds himself daily more and more attracted by the sprightly mischievous humour of the beautiful Tai-yii, as compared with the quieter and more orthodox loveliness of Pao-ch'ai. Pao-ch*ai does not know what jealousy means. She too loves to bandy words, ex- change verses, or puzzle over conundrums with her mercurial cousin ; but she never allows her thoughts to wander towards him otherwise than is consistent with the strictest maidenly reserve. Not so Tai-yii. She had been already for some time Pao-yii's chief companion when they were joined by Pao-ch*ai. She had come to regard the handsome boy almost as a part of herself, though not conscious of the fact until called upon to share his society with another. And so it was that although Pao-yii showed an open preference for herself, she still grudged the lesser atten- tions he paid to Pao-clVai. As often as not these same THE HUNG LOU M^NG 365 attentions originated in an irresistible impulse to tease. Pao-yii and Tai-yii were already lovers in so far that they were always quarrelling ; the more so, that their quarrels invariably ended, as they should end, in the renewal of love. As a rule, Tai-yii fell back upon the ultima ratio of all women — tears ; and of course Pao-yii, who was not by any means wanting in chivalry, had no alternative but to wipe them away. On one particular occasion, Tai-yii declared that she would die ; upon which Pao-yii said that in that case he would become a monk and devote his life to Buddha ; but in this instance it was he who shed the tears and she who had to wipe them away. All this time Tai-yii and Pao-ch'ai were on terms of scrupulous courtesy. Tai-yii's father had recently died, and her fortunes now seemed to be bound up more closely than ever with those of the family in which she lived. She had a handsome gold ornament given her to match Pao-ch'ai's amulet, and the three young people spent their days together, thinking only how to get most enjoyment out of every passing hour. Sometimes, how- ever, a shade of serious thought would darken Tai-yu's moments of enforced solitude ; and one day Pao-yii surprised her in a secluded part of the garden, engaged in burying flowers which had been blown down by the wind, while singing the following lines : — " Flcywersfade and fly y and flying fill the sky ; Their bloom departs^ their perfume gone^ yet who stands pitying by f And wandering threads of gossamer on the summer-house are seen^ And falling catkins lightly dew-steeped strike the embroidered screen* 366 CHINESE LITERATURE A girl within the inner rooms^ I mourn that spring is done^ A skein of sorrow binds my hearty and solace there is none. I pass into the garden^ and I turn to use my hoe^ Treading der fallen glories as I lightly come and go. There are willow-sprays and powers of elm. and these have $cent enow^ I care not if the peach and plum are stripped from every bough. The peach-tree and the plum-tree too next year may bloom againy But nextyeary in the inner roomSj tell mcy shall I remcUn f By the third moon new fragrant nests shall see the light of day ^ New swallows flit among the beams, each on its thoughtless way. Next year once more they II seek their food among the painted flowers , But I may go, and beams may go, and with them swallow bowers. Three hundred days and sixty make ayeary and therein lurk Daggers of wind and swords of frost to do their cruel work. Now long will last the fair fresh flower which bright and brighter glows t One mom its petals float away, but whither no one knows. Gay blooming buds attract the eye^ faded the/ re lost to sight; Ohy let me sadly bury them beside these steps to-night! Alone, unseen, I seize my hoe, with many a bitter tear; They fail upon the naked stem andstcuns of blood appear. THE HUNG LOU MfiNG 367 The night-jar now has ceased to moum^ the dawn comes on apace^ I seize my hoe and close the gates ^ leaving the burying-place ; Bui not till sunbeams fleck the wall does slumber soothe my care^ The cold rain pattering on the pane as I lie shivering there. You wonder that with flowing tears my youthful cheek is wet; They partly rise from angry thoughts^ and partly from regret* Regret — that spring comes suddenly; anger — // cannot last^ No sound to herald its approach^ or warn us that ^Hspast, Last night within the garden sad songs were faintly heard^ Sung^ as I knew y by spirits^ spirits of flower and bird. We cannot keep them here with us^ these much-loved birds and flowers^ They sing but for a seasoffs space^ and bloom a few short hours. Ah I would that I on feathered wing might soar aloft and fly ^ With flower spirits I would seek the confines of the sky. But high in air What grave is there f ^ No^ give me an embroidered bag wherein to lay their charms^ And Mo/her Earthy pure Mother Earthy shall hide them in her arms. Thus those sweet forms which spotless came shall spotless go again^ Nor pass besmirched with mud and filth along some noisome drain. These two lines are short in the originaL 368 CHINESE LITERATURE Farewell, dear flowers, for ever now^ thus buried as ^twas besty I have not yet divined when I with you shall sink to rest, I who can bury flowers like this a laughing-stock shall be; I cannot say in days to come what hands shall bury me. See how when spring begins to fail each opening flort/ ret fades; So too there is a time of age and death for beauteous maids; And when the fleeting spring is gone^ and days of beauty der. Flowers fall, and lovely maidens die, and both are known no more" Meanwhile, Pao-yii's father had received an appoint- ment which took him away to a distance, the consequence being that life went on at home in a giddier round than usual. Nothing the old grandmother liked better than a picnic or a banquet — feasting, in fact, of some kind, with plenty of wine and mirth. But now, somehow or other, little things were always going wrong. In every pot of ointment the traditional fly was sure to make its appear- ance ; in every sparkling goblet a bitter something would always bubble up. Money was not so plentiful as it had been, and there seemed to be always occurring some un- foreseen drain upon the family resources. Various mem- bers of one or other of the two grand establishments get into serious trouble with the authorities. Murder, suicide, and robbery happen upon the premises. The climax of prosperity had been reached and the hour of decadence had arrived. Still all went merry as a marriage-bell, and Pao-yii and Tai-yii continued the agreeable pastime of love-making. In this they were further favoured by circumstances. Pao-ch*ai's mother gave up the apart- THE HUNG LOU M^NG 369 ments which had been assigned to her, and went to live in lodgings in the city, of course taking Pao-ch*ai with her. Some time previous to this, a slave-girl had casually remarked to Pao-yii that her young mistress, Tai-yii, was about to leave and go back again to the south. Pao-yii fainted on the spot, and was straightway carried off and put to bed. He bore the departure of Pao-ch'ai with composure. He could not even hear of separation from his beloved Tai-yii. And she was already deeply in love with him. Long, long ago her faithful slave-girl had whispered into her ear the soft possibility of union with her cousin. Day and night she thought about Pao-yii, and bitterly re- gretted that she had now neither father nor mother on whom she could rely to effect the object that lay nearest to her heart. One evening, tired out under the ravages of the great passion, she flung herself down, without undressing, upon a couch to sleep. But she had hardly closed her eyes ere her grandmother and a whole bevy of aunts and cousins walked in to offer, as they said, their hearty congratulations. Tai-yii was astonished, and asked what on earth their congratulations meant; upon which it was explained to her that her father had married again, and that her stepmother had arranged for her a most eligible match, in consequence of which she was to leave for home immediately. With floods of tears Tai-yii entreated her grandmother not to send her away. She did not want to marry, and she would rather become a slave-girl at her grandmother's feet than fall in with the scheme proposed. She ex- hausted every argument, and even invoked the spirit of her dead mother to plead her cause ; but the old lady was obdurate, and finally went away, saying that 370 CHINESE LITERATURE the arrangement would have to be carried out. Then Tai-yii saw no escape but the one last resource of ail ; when at that moment Pao-yii entered, and with a smile on his face began to offer her his congratulations too. "Thank you, cousin," cried she, starting up and seizing him rudely by the arm. " Now I know you for the false, fickle creature you are ! " "What is the matter, dear girl?" inquired Pao-yii in amazement. " I was only glad for your sake that you had found a lover at last." "And what lover do you think I could ever care to find now ? " rejoined Tai-yii. " Well," replied Pao-yii, " I should of course wish it to be myself. I consider you indeed mine already ; and if you think of the way I have always behaved towards you . . ." " What ! " said Tai-yii, partly misunderstanding his words, "can it be you after all ? and do you really wish me to remain with you ? " " You shall see with your own eyes," answered Pao-yii, " even into the inmost recesses of my heart, and then perhaps you will believe." Thereupon he drew a knife, and plunging it into his body, ripped himself open so as to expose his heart to view. With a shriek Tai-yii tried to stay his hand, and felt herself drenched with the flow of fresh warm blood ; when suddenly Pao-yii uttered a loud groan, and crying out, "Great heaven, my heart is gone!" fell senseless to the ground. " Help ! help ! " screamed Tai-yii ; " he is dying ! he is dying I " " Wake up ! wake up !" said Tai-yii's maid ; " whatever has given you nightmare like this ? " So Tai-yii waked up and found that she had had a THE HUNG LOU M^NG 371 bad dream. But she had something worse than that. She had a bad illness to follow; and strange to say, Pao-yii was laid up at the same time. The doctor came and felt her pulse — both pulses, in fact — and shook his head, and drank a cup of tea, and said that Tai-yu's vital principle wanted nourishment, which it would get out of a prescription he then and there wrote down. As to Pao-yii, he was simply suffering from a fit of temporary indigestion. So Tai-yii got better, and Pao-yii recovered his spirits. His father had returned home, and he was once more obliged to make some show of work, and consequently had fewer hours to spend in the society of his cousin. He was now a young man, and the question of his marriage began to occupy a foremost place in the minds of his parents and grandmother. Several names were proposed, one especially by his father ; but it was finally agreed that it was unnecessary to go far afield to secure a fitting bride. It was merely a choice between the two charming young ladies who had already shared so much in his daily life. But the difficulty lay precisely there. Where each was perfection it became invidious to choose. In another famous Chinese novel, already described, a similar difficulty is got over in this way — the hero marries both. Here, however, the family elders were distracted by rival claims. By their gentle, winning manners, Pao-ch'ai and Tai-yii had made themselves equally be- loved by all the inmates of these two noble houses, from the venerable grandmother down to the meanest slave-girl. Their beauty was of different styles, but at the bar of man's opinion each would probably have gained an equal number of votes. Tai-yii was un- doubtedly the cleverer of the two, but Pao-ch'ai had 372 CHINESE LITERATURE better health ; and in the judgment of those with whom the decision rested, health carried the day. It was arranged that Pao-yu was to marry Pao-ch'ai. This momentous arrangement was naturally made in secret. Various preliminaries would have to be gone through before a verbal promise could give place to formal betrothal. And it is a well-ascertained fact that secrets can only be kept by men, while this one was confided to at least a dozen women. Consequently, one night when Tai-yii was ill and alone in her room, yearning for the love that had already been contracted away to another, she heard two slave-girls outside whispering confidences, and fancied she caught Pao- yii's name. She listened again, and this time without doubt, for she heard them say that Pao-yii was engaged to marry a lady of good family and many accomplish- ments. Just then a parrot called out, " Here's your mistress : pour out the tea ! " which frightened the slave- girls horribly ; and they forthwith separated, one of them running inside to attend upon Tai-yii herself. She finds her young mistress in a very agitated state, but Tai-yii is always ailing now. This time she was seriously ill. She ate nothing. She was racked by a dreadful cough. Even a Chinese doctor could now hardly fail to sec that she was far advanced in a decline. But none knew that the sick- ness of her body had originated in sickness of the heart. One night she grew rapidly worse and worse, and lay to all appearances dying. A slave-girl ran to summon her grandmother, while several others remained in the room talking about Pao-yii and his intended marriage. " It was all off," said one of them. " His grandmother would not agree to the young lady chosen by his father. THE HUNG LOU MfeNG 373 She had already made her own choice — of another young lady who lives in the family, and of whom we are all very fond" The dying girl heard these words, and it then flashed across her that after all she must herself be the bride intended for Pao-yii. " For if not I," argued she, ''who can it possibly be?" Thereupon she rallied as it were by a supreme effort of will, and, to the great astonishment of all, called for a drink of tea. Those who had come expecting to see her die were now glad to think that her youth might ultimately prevail. So Tai-yii got better once more ; but only better, not well. For the sickness of the soul is not to be cured by drugs. Meanwhile, an event occurred which for the time being threw everything else into the shade. Poo- yu lost his jade tablet After changing his clothes, he had forgotten to put it on, and had left it lying upon his table. But when he sent to fetch it, it was gone. A search was instituted high and low, without success. The precious talisman was missing. No one dared tell his grandmother and face the old lady's wrath. As to Pao-yii himself, he treated the matter lightly. Gradu- ally, however, a change came over his demeanour. He was often absent-minded. At other times his tongue would run away with him, and he talked nonsense. At length he got so bad that it became imperative to do something. So his grandmother had to be told. Of course she was dreadfully upset, but she made a move in the right direction, and offered an enormous reward for its recovery. The result was that within a few days the reward was claimed. But in the interval the tablet seemed to have lost much of its striking brilliancy ; and a closer inspection showed it to be in reality nothing more than a clever imitation. This was a crushing 374 CHINESE LITERATURE disappointment to all. Pao-yii's illness was increasing day by day. His father had received another appoint- ment in the provinces, and it was eminently desirable that Pao-yii's marriage should take place previous to his departure. The great objection to hurrying on the ceremony was that the family were in mourning. Among other calamities which had befallen of late, the young lady in the palace had died, and her influence at Court was gone. Still, everything considered, it was deemed advisable to solemnise the wedding without delay. Pao-yii's father, little as he cared for the charac- ter of his only son, had been greatly shocked at the change which he now saw. A worn, haggard face, with sunken, lack-lustre eyes ; rambling, inconsequent talk — this was the heir in whom the family hopes were centred. The old grandmother, finding that doctors were of little avail, had even called in a fortune-teller, who said pretty much what he was wanted to say, viz., that Pao-yii should marry some one with a golden destiny to help him on. So the chief actors in the tragedy about to be enacted had to be consulted at last. They began with Pao-ch*ai, for various reasons ; and she, like a modest, well-bred maiden, received her mother's commands in submissive silence. Further, from that day she ceased to mention Pao-yii's name. With Pao-yii, however, it was a diffe- rent thing altogether. His love for Tai-yii was a matter of some notoriety, especially with the slave-girls, one of whom even went so far as to tell his mother that his heart was set upon marrying her whom the family had felt obliged to reject. It was therefore hardly doubtful how he would receive the news of his betrothal to Pao-ch*ai ; and as in his present state of health the THE HUNG LOU Ml^NG 375 consequences could not be ignored, it was resolved to have recourse to stratagem. So the altar was prepared, and naught remained but to draw the bright death across the victim's throat In the short time which intervened, the news was broken to Tai-yii in an exceptionally cruel manner. She heard by accident in conversation with a slave-girl in the garden that Pao-yii was to marry Pao-ch'ai. The poor girl felt as if a thunderbolt had pierced her brain. Her whole frame quivered beneath the shock. She turned to go back to her rodm, but half unconsciously followed the path that led to Pao-yii's apartments. Hardly noticing the servants in attendance, she almost forced her way in, and stood in the presence of her cousin. He was sitting down, and he looked up and laughed a foolish laugh when he saw her enter; but he did not rise, and he did not invite her to be seated Tai-yii sat down without being asked, and without a word spoken on either side. And the two sat there, and stared and leered at each other, until they both broke out into wild delirious laughter, the senseless crazy laughter of the madhouse. " What makes you ill, cousin ? " asked Tai-yii, when the first burst of their dreadful merriment had subsided. " I am in love with Tai-yii," he replied ; and then they both went off into louder screams of laughter than before. At this point the slave-girls thought it high time to interfere, and, after much more laughing and nodding of heads, Tai-yii was persuaded to go away. She set off to run back to her own room, and sped along with a newly acquired strength. But just as she was nearing the door, she was seen to fall, and the terrified slave-girl who rushed to pick her up found her with her mouth full of blood. 25 376 CHINESE LITERATURE By this time all formalities have been gone through and the wedding day is fixed. It is not to be a grand wedding, but of course there must be a trousseau. Pao- ch'ai sometimes weeps, she scarcely knows why ; but preparations for the great event of her life leave her, fortunately, very little leisure for reflection. Tai-yii is in bed, and, but for a faithful slave-girl, alone. Nobody thinks much about her at this juncture ; when the wed- ding is over she is to receive a double share of attention. One morning she makes the slave-girl bring her all her poems and various other relics of the happy days gone by. She turns them over and over between her thin and wasted fingers until finally she commits them all to the flames. The effort is too much for her, and the slave- girl in despair hurries across to the grandmother's for assistance. She finds the whole place deserted, but a moment's thought reminds her that the old lady is doubtless with Pao-yii. So thither she makes her way as fast as her feet can carry her, only, however, to be still further amazed at finding the rooms shut up, and no one there. Utterly confused, and not knowing what to make of these unlooked-for circumstances, she is about to run back to Tai-yii's room, when to her great relief she espies a fellow-servant in the distance, who straight^^^ay informs her that it is Pao-yii's wedding-day, and that he had moved into another suite of apartments. And so it was. Pao-yii had joyfully agreed to the proposition that he should marry his cousin, for he had been skilfully given to understand that the cousin in question was Tai-yii. And now the much wished-for hour had arrived. The veiled bride, accompanied by the very slave-girl who had long ago escorted her from the south, alighted from her sedan-chair at Pao-yii's door. The wedding march was THE HUNG LOU M6NG 377 played, and the young couple proceeded to the final ceremony of worship, which made them irrevocably man and wife. Then, as is customary upon such occa- sions, Pao-yii raised his bride's veil. For a moment he seemed as though suddenly turned into stone, as he stood there speechless and motionless, with fixed eyes gazing upon a face he had little expected to behold. Meanwhile, Pao«ch'ai retired into an inner apartment ; and then, for the first time, Pao-yii found his voice. ** Am I dreaming ? " cried he, looking round upon his assembled relatives and friends. " No, you are married," replied several of those nearest to him. ** Take care ; your father is outside. He arranged it all." ** Who was that ? " said Pao-yii, with averted head, pointing in the direction of the door through which Pao-ch'ai had disappeared. " It was Pao-ch'ai, your wife ..." '* Tai-yii, you . mean ; Tai-yii is my wife," shrieked he, interrupting them ; " I want Tai-yii ! I want Tai-yii ! Oh, bring us together, and save us both ! " Here he broke down altogether. Thick sobs choked his further utter- ance, until relief came in a surging flood of tears. All this time Tai-yii was dying, dying beyond hope of recall. She knew that the hour of release was at hand, and she lay there quietly waiting for death. Every now and again she swallowed a teaspoonful of broth, but gradually the light faded out of her eyes, and the slave- girl, faithful to the last, felt that her young mistress's fingers were rapidly growing cold. At that moment, Tai-yii's lips were seen to move, and she was distinctly heard to say, "O Pao-yii, Pao-yii . . ." Those words were her last [ 378 CHINESE LITERATURE Just then, breaking in upon the hushed moioients which succeed dissolution, sounds of far-off music .were borne along upon the breeze. The slave-girl crept stealthily to the door, and strained her ear to listen ; but she could hear nothing save the soughing of the wind as it moaned fitfully through the trees. But the bridegroom himself had already entered the valley of the dark shadow. Pao-yii was very ill. He raved and raved about Tai-yu, until at length Pao-ch'ai, who had heard the news, took upon herself the painful task of telling him she was already dead. " Dead ? " cried Pao-yii, " dead ? " and with a loud groan he fell back upon the bed insensible. A darkness came before his eyes, and he seemed to be transported into a region which was unfamiliar to him. Looking about, he saw some one advancing towards him, and immediately called out to the stranger to be kind enough to tell him where he was. " You are on the road to the next world," replied the man ; " but your span of life is not yet com- plete, and you have no business here." Pao-yii ex- plained that he had come in search of Tai-yii, who had lately died ; to which the man replied that Tai-yii's soul had already gone back to its home in the pure serene. "And if you would see her again," added the man, " return to your duties upon earth. Fulfil your destiny there, chasten your understanding, nourish the divinity that is within you, and you may yet hope to meet her once more." The man then flung a stone at him and struck him over the heart, which so frightened Pao-yu that he turned to retrace his steps. At that moment he heard himself loudly called by name ; and opening his eyes, saw his mother and grandmother standing by the side of his bed THE HUNG LOU M£NG 379 They had thought that he was gone, and were over- joyed at seeing him return to life, even though it was the same life as before, clouded with the great sorrow of unreason. For now they could always hope ; and when they saw him daily grow stronger and stronger in bodily health, it seemed that ere long even his mental equi- librium might be restored. The more so that he had ceased to mention Tai-yii's name, and treated Pao-ch*ai with marked kindness and respect. All this time the fortunes of the two grand families are sinking from bad to worse. Pao-yii's uncle is mixed up in an act of disgraceful oppression ; while his father, at his new post, makes the foolish endeavour to be an honest incorrupt official. He tries to put his foot down upon the system of bribery which prevails, but succeeds only in getting himself recalled and impeached for mal- administration of affairs. The upshot of all this is that an Imperial decree is issued confiscating the property and depriving the families of their hereditary rank. Besides this, the lineal representatives are to be banished ; and within the walls which have been so long sacred to mirth and merrymaking, consternation now reigns supreme. " O high Heaven," cries Pao-yii's father, as his brother and nephew start for their place of banishment, " that the fortunes of our family should fall like this ! " Of all, perhaps the old grandmother felt the blow most severely. She had lived for eighty-three years in affluence, accustomed to the devotion of her children and the adulation of friends. But now money was scarce, and the voice of flattery unheard. The courtiers of prosperous days forgot to call, and even the servants deserted at their posts. And so it came about that the old lady fell ill, and within a few days was lying upon 38o CHINESE LITERATURE her death-bed. She spoke a kind word to all, except to Pao-ch'ai. For her she had only a sigh, that fate had linked her with a husband whose heart was buried in the grave. So she died, and there was a splendid funeral, paid for out of funds raised at the pawnshop. Pao- ch*ai appeared in white ; and among the flowers which were gathered around the bier, she was unanimously pronounced to be the fairest blossom of all. Then other members of the family die, and Pao-yii relapses into a condition as critical as ever. He is in fact at the point of death, when a startling announce- ment restores him again to consciousness. A Buddhist priest is at the outer gate, and he has brought back Pao-yii's lost tablet of jade. There was, of course, great excitement on all sides ; but the priest refused to part with the jade until he had got the promised reward. And where now was it possible to raise such a sum as that, and at a moment's notice ? Still it was felt that the tablet must be recovered at all costs. Pao-ytl's life depended on it, and he was the sole hope of the family. So the priest was promised his reward, and the jade was conveyed into the sick-room. But when Pao-yU clutched it in his eager hand, he dropped it with a loud cry and fell back gasping upon the bed. In a few minutes Pao-yii's breathing became more and more distressed, and a servant ran out to call in the priest, in the hope that something might yet be done. The priest, however, had disappeared, and by this time Pao- yii had ceased to breathe. Immediately upon the disunion of body and soul which mortals call death, the spirit of Pao-yii set off on its journey to the Infinite, led by a Buddhist priest. Just then a voice called out and said that Tai-yii was THE HUNG LOU m6NG 381 awaiting him, and at that moment manj. familiar faces crowded round him, but as he gazed ^them in recogni- tion, they changed into grinning gofenns. At length he reached a spot where there was a beautiful crimson flower in an enclosure, so carefijUy tended that neither bees nor butterflies were 2l\(}i^ed to settle upon it. It was a flower, he was tgid, which had been to fulfil a mission upon e^j^^^ and had recently returned to the Infinite, He wjg now taken to see Tai-yu. A bamboo screen whiclj'hung before the entrance to a room was raised, and there before him stood his heart's idol, his lost Tai-VQ, Stretching forth his hands, he was about to spe^^ to her, when suddenly the screen was hastily dropjped. The priest gave him a shove, and he fell l^^^kwards, awaking as though from a dream. Once more he had regained a new hold upon life; o/ice more he had emerged from the very jaws of death. ,3*his time he was a changed man. He devoted himself to reading for the great public examination, in the hope of securing the much coveted degree of Master of Arts. Nevertheless, he talks little, and seems to care less, about the honours and glory of this world; and what is stranger than all, he appears to have very much lost his taste for the once fascinating society of women. For a time he seems to be under the spell of a religious craze, and is always arguing with Pao-ch'ai upon the advantages of devoting one's life to the service of Buddha. But shortly before the examination he burned all the books he had collected which treated of immortality and a future state, and concentrated every thought upon the great object before him. At length the day comes, and Pao-yii, accompanied by la nephew who is also a candidate, prepares to enter the 382 CHINESE LITERATURE arena. His lv.|her was away from home. He had gone southwards to taK^s^hg remains of the grandmother and of Tai-yu back to theiw ancestral burying-ground. So Pao- yu first goes to take le^ye of his mother, and she addresses to him a few parting wx>rds, full of encouragement and hope. Then Pao-yu falls N^pon his knees, and implores her pardon for all the trouble hV^Jias caused her. " I can only trust," he added, " that I shaTriujow be successful, and that you, dear mother, will be ha^upy." And then amid tears and good wishes, the two young ra||en set out for the examination-hall, where, with several thousand other candidates, they are to remain for some time ifltomured. The hours and days speed apace, full of arduoul^^efFort to those within, of anxiety to those without. At laa^the great gates are thrown wide open, and the vast croW^ of worn-out, weary students bursts forth, to meet tiibe equally vast crowd of eager, expectant friends. In th»e crush that ensues, Pao-yii and his nephew lose sight oS each other, and the nephew reaches home first. There the feast of welcome is already' spread, and the wine- kettles are put to the fire. So every now and again some- body runs out to see if Pao-yii is not yet in sight But the time passes and he comes not. Fears as to his personal safety begin to be aroused, and messengers are sent out in all directions. Pao-yii is nowhere to be found. The night comes and goes. The next day and the next day, and still no Pao-yii. He has disappeared without leaving behind him the faintest clue to his whereabouts. Mean- while, the list of successful candidates is published, and Pao-yii's name stands seventh on the list. His nephew has the 130th place. What a triumph for the family, and what rapture would have been theirs, but for the mysterious absence of Pao-yii. , THE HUNG LOU M^NG 383 Thus their joy was shaded by sorrow, until hope, springing eternal, was unexpectedly revived. Pao-yii's winning essay had attracted the attention of the Emperor, and his Majesty issued an order for the writer to appear at Court. An Imperial order may not be lightly dis- regarded ; and it was fervently hoped by the family that by these means Pao-yii might be restored to them. This, in fact, was all that was wanting now to secure the renewed prosperity of the two ancient houses. The tide of events had set favourably at last. Those who had been banished to the frontier had greatly distinguished themselves against the banditti who ravaged the country round about. There was Pao-yii's success and his nephew's ; and above all, the gracious clemency of the Son of Heaven. Free pardons were granted, confiscated estates were returned. The two families basked again in the glow of Imperial favour. Pao-ch*ai was about to become a mother ; the ancestral line might be continued after all. But Pao-yii, where was he ? That remained a mystery still, against which even the Emperor's mandate proved to be of no avail. It was on his return journey that Pao-yii's father heard of the success and disappearance of his son. Torn by conflicting emotions he hurried on, in his haste to reach home and aid in unravelling the secret of Pao-yii's hiding- place. One moonlight night, his boat lay anchored alongside the shore, which a storm of the previous day had wrapped in a mantle of snow. He was sitting writing at a table, when suddenly, through the half-open door, advancing towards him over the bow of the boat, his silhouette sharply defined against the surrounding snow, he saw the figure of a shaven-headed Buddhist priest. The priest knelt down, and struck his head four 384 CHINESE LITERATURE times upon the ground, and then, without a word, turned back to join two other priests who were awaiting him. The three vanished as imperceptibly as they had come ; before, indeed, the astonished father was able to realise that he had been, for the last time, face to face with Pao-yu I CHAPTER II THE EMPERORS K*ANG HSI AND CH'IEN LUNG The second Emperor of the Manchu dynasty, known to the world by his year-title K*ang Hsi, succeeded to the throne in 1662 when he was only eight years of age, and six years later he took up the reins of government. Fairly tall and well-proportioned, he loved all manly exercises and devoted three months annually to hunting. Large bright eyes lighted up his face, which was pitted with small-pox. Contemporary observers vie in praising his wit, understanding, and liberality of mind. Indefatigable in government, he kept a careful watch on his Ministers, his love for the people leading hihi to prefer economy to taxation. He was personally frugal, yet on public works he would lavish large sums. He patronised the Jesuits, whom he employed in surveying the empire, in astronomy, and in casting cannon ; though latterly he found it necessary to impose restrictions on their pro- pagandism. In spite of war and rebellion, which must have encroached seriously upon his time, he found leisure to initiate and carry out, with the aid of the leading scholars of the day, several of the greatest literary enter- prises the world has ever seen. The chief of these are (i)ihe K^ang Hsi TzU Tien^ the great standard dictionary of the Chinese language ; (2) the P^ei Win Yiin Fu^ a huge concordance to all literature, bound up in forty- 38s 386 CHINESE LITERATURE four large closely-printed volumes ; (3) the P^ien TzU Lei Pien^ a similar work, with a different arrangement, bound up in thirty-six large volumes ; (4) the Yiian Chien Lei Han, an encyclopaedia, bound up in forty-four volumes ; and (5) the T*u Shu Chi Ch'^ing^ a profusely illustrated encyclopaedia, in 1628 volumes of about 200 pages to each. To the above must be added a considerable collection of literary remains, in prose and verse, which, of course, were actually the Emperor's own work. It cannot be said that any of these remains are of a high order, or are familiar to the public at large, with a single and trifling exception. The so-called Sacred Edict is known from one end of China to the other. It originally consisted of sixteen moral maxims delivered in 1670 under the form of an edict by the Emperor K'ang Hsi. His Majesty himself had just reached the mature age of sixteen. He had then probably discovered that men's morals were no longer what they had been in the days of " ancient kings," and with boyish earnestness he made a kindly effort to do somethin{f for the people whose welfare was destined to be for so many years to come his chief and most absorbing care. The maxims are commonplace enough, but for the sake of the great Emperor who loved his " children " more than himself they have been exalted into utterances almost divine. Here are the first, seventh, and eleventh maxims, as specimens : — " Pay great attention to filial piety and to brotherly obedience, in order to give due weight to human relationships." " Discard strange doctrines, in order to glorify the orthodox teaching." ** Educate your sons and younger brothers, in order to hinder them from doing what is wrong." CH'IEN LUNG 387 K*ang Hsi died in 1722, after completing a full cycle of sixty years as occupant of the Dragon Throne. His son and successor, Yung Ch^ng, caused one hundred picked scholars to submit essays enlarging upon the maxims of his father, and of these the sixteen best were chosen, and in 1724 it was enacted that they should Jt>e publicly read to the people on the ist and 15th of each month in every city and town in the empire. This law is still in force. Subsequently, the sixteen essays were paraphrased into easy colloquial ; and now the maxims, the essays, and the paraphrase, together make up a volume which may be roughly said to contain the whole duty of man. In 1735 the Emperor Yung Ch^ng died, and was succeeded by his fourth son, who reigned as Ch*ien Lung. An able ruler, with an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and an indefatigable administrator, he rivals his grandfather's fame as a sovereign and a patron of letters. New editions of important historical works and of encyclopaedias were issued by Imperial order, and under the superintendence of the Emperor himself. In 1772 there was a general search for all literary works worthy of preservation, and ten years later a voluminous collection of these was published, embracing many rare books taken from the great encyclopaedia of the Emperor Yung Lo. A descriptive catalogue of the Imperial Library, containing 3460 works arranged under the four heads of Classics, History, Philosophy, and General Literature, was drawn up in 1772-1790. It gives the history of each work, which is also criticised. The vastness of this catalogue led to the publication of an abridgment, which omits all works not actually preserved in the Library. The personal writings of 388 CHINESE LITERATURE this Emperor are very voluminous. They consist of a general collection containing a variety of notes on cur- rent or ancient topics, prefaces to books, and the like, and also of a collection of poems. Of these last, those produced between 1736 and 1783 were published, and reached the almost incredible total of 33,950 separate pieces. It need hardly be added that nearly all are very short* Even thus the output must be considered a record, apart from the fact that during the reign there was a plentiful supply both of war and rebellion. Burmah and Nepaul were forced to pay tribute ; Chinese supremacy was established in Tibet; and Kuldja and Kashgaria were added to the empire. In 1795, on completing a cycle of sixty years of power, the Emperor abdicated in favour of his son, and three years later he died. His Majesty's poetry, though artificially correct, was mediocre enough. The following stanza, " On Hearing the Cicada," is a good example, conforming as it does to all the rules of versification, but wanting in that one feature which makes the "stop-short" what it is, viz., that " although the words end, the sense still goes on " : — '* The season is a month behind in this land of northern breeze^ When first I hear the harsh cicada shrieking through the trees, I looky but cannot mark its form amid the foliage fair^ — Naught but a flash of shadow which goes flittivg here and thereP Here, instead of being carried away into some suggested train of thought, the reader is fairly entitled to ask " What then ? " CH'IEN LUNG 389 The following is a somewhat more spirited production. It is a song written by Ch*ien Lung, to be inserted and sung in a play entitled " Picking up Gold," by a beggar who is fortunate enough to stumble across a large nugget : — " A brimless cap of felt stuck on my head; No coat, — a myriad-patchwork quilt instead; In my hand a bamboo staff; Hempen sandals on my feet; As I slouch along the street, * Pity the poor beggar^ to the passers-by I call. Hoping to obtain broken food and dregs of wine. Then when nighfs dark shadows fall. Oh merrily, Oh merrily I laugh. Drinking myself to sleep, sheltered in some old shrine. Black, black, the clouds close round on every side; White, white, the gossamer flakes fly far and wide. Ai-yah I i^tjade that sudden decks the eaves ? With silver tiles meseems the streets are laid. Oh, in what glorious garb Natures arrayed. Displaying fairy features on a lovely face I But stay I the night is drawing on apace ; Nothing remains my homeward track to guide; See how the feathered snow weighs down the palm-tree leaves I I wag my head and clap my hands, ha! ha! I clap my hands and wag my head, ha! ha! There in the drift a lump half -sunken lies; The beggar^ s luck has turned up trumps at last ! O gold!— for thee dear relatives will part. Dear friends forget their hours of friendship past. Husband and wife tear at each other^s heart. Father and son sever lifers closest ties; For thee, the ignoble thief all rule and law defies. What men of this world most adore is gold; 'J he devils deep in hell the dross adore; Where gold is there the gods are in its wake. Now shall I never more produce the snake ; 390 CHINESE LITERATURE Stand begging where the cross-roads meet no more; Or shiver me to sleep in the rush hut^ dank and cold; Or lean against the rich or poor maris door. Away my yellow bowl, my earthen jar ! See, thus I rend my pouch and hurl my gourd afar! An official hat and girdle I shall wear. And this shrunk shank in boots with pipeclayed soles encase; On file and holiday how jovial I shall be. Joining my friends in the tavern or the tea-shop der their tea ; Swagger, swagger, swagger, with such an air and grace. Sometimes a sleek steed my ^Excellences will bear; Or in a sedan I shall ride at ease, Otie servant with my hat-box close behind the chair^ While another on his shoulders carries my vcUiseP CHAPTER III CLASSICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE —POETRY Foremost among the scholars of the present dynasty stands the name of Ku Chiang (1612-1681). Remaining faithful to the Mings after their final downfall, he changed his name to Ku Yen-wu, and for a long time wandered about the country in disguise. He declined to serve under the Manchus, and supported himself by farming. A profound student, it is recorded that in his wanderings he always carried about with him several horse-loads of books to consult whenever his memory might be at fault. His writings on the Classics, history, topography, and poetry are still highly esteemed. To foreigners he is best known as the author of the Jih Chih Luy which contains his notes, chiefly on the Classics and history, gathered during a course of reading which extended over thirty years. He also wrote many works upon the ancient sounds and rhymes. Chu Yung-shun (1617-1689) was delicate as a child, and his mother made him practise the Taoist art of pro- longing life indefinitely, which seems to be nothing more than a system of regular breathing with deep inspira- tions. He was a native of a town in Kiangsu, at the sack of which, by the conquering Tartars, his father perished 36 39X 392 CHINESE LITERATURE rather than submit to the new dynasty. In consequence of his father's death he steadily declined to enter upon a public career, and gave up his lifq to study and teach- ing. He was the author of commentaries upon the Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean, and of other works; but none of these is so famous as his Family Maxims, a little book which, on account of the author's name, has often been attributed to the great commentator Chu Hsi. The piquancy of these maxims disappears in translation, owing as they do much more to literary form than to subject-matter. Here are two specimens : — " Forget the good deeds you have done ; remember the kindnesses you have received." " Mind your own business, follow out your destiny, live in accord with the age, and leave the rest to God. He who can do this is near indeed." His own favourite saying was — "To know what ought to be known, and to do what ought to be done, that is enough. There is no time for anything else." Three days before his death he struggled into the an- cestral hall, and there before the family tablets called the spirits of his forefathers to witness that he had never injured them by word or deed. LAN Ting-yOan (1680-1733), belter known as Lan Lu- chou, devoted himself as a youth to poetry, literature, and political economy. He accompanied his brother to Formosa as military secretary, and his account of the expedition attracted public attention. Recommended to the Emperor, he became magistrate of P'u-lin, and dis- tinguished himself as much by his just and incorrupt administration as by his literary abilities. He managed, LAN TING-YOAN 393 however, to make enemies among his superior officers, and within three years he was impeached for insubordi- nation and thrown into prison. His case was subse- quently laid before the Emperor, who not only set him free, but appointed him to be Prefect at Canton, bestow- ing upon him at the same time some valuable medicine, an autograph copy of verses, a sable robe, some joss- stick, and other coveted marks of Imperial favour. But all was in vain. He died of a broken heart one month after taking up his post. His complete works have been published in twenty small octavo volumes, of which works perhaps the best known of all is a treatise on the^ proper training of women, which fills two of the above volumes. This is divided under four heads, namely. Virtue, Speech, Personal Appearance, and Duty, an extended education in the intellectual sense not coming within the writer's purview. The chapters are short, and many of them are introduced by some ancient aphorism, forming a convenient peg upon which to hang a moral lesson, copious extracts being made from the work of the Lady Pan of the Han dynasty. A few lines from his preface may be interesting : — "Good government of the empire depends upon morals; correctness of morals depends upon right or- dering of the family ; and right ordering of the family depends upon the wife. ... If the curtain which divides the men from the women is too thin to keep them apart, misfortune will come to the family and to the State. Purification of morals, from the time of the creation until now, has always come from women. Women are not all alike; some are good and some are bad. For bringing them to a proper uniformity there is nothing like education. In old days both boys 394 CHINESE LITERATURE and girls were educated . . . but now the books used no longer exist, and we know not the details of the system. . . . The education of a woman is not like that of her husband, which may be said to continue daily all through life. For he can always take up a classic or a history, or familiarise himself with the works of miscellaneous writers ; whereas a woman's education does not extend beyond ten years, after which she takes upon herself the manifold responsibilities of a house- hold. She is then no longer able to give her undivided attention to books, and cannot investigate thoroughly, the result being that her learning is not sufficiently ex- tensive to enable her to grasp principles. She is, as it were, carried away upon a flood, without hope of return, and it is difficult for her to make any use of the know- ledge she has acquired. Surely then a work on the education of women is much to be desired." This is how one phase of female virtue is illustrated by anecdote : — *' A man having been killed in a brawl, two brothers were arrested for the murder and brought to trial. Each one swore that he personally was the murderer, and that the other was innocent. The judge was thus unable to decide the case, and referred it to the Prince. The Prince bade him summon their mother, and ask which of them had done the deed. ' Punish the younger,' she replied through a flood of tears. 'People are usually more fond of the younger/ observed the judge; 'how is it you wish me to punish him?' 'He is my own child,' answered the woman; 'the elder is the son of my husband's first wife. When my husband died he begged me to take care of the boy, and I promised I would. If now I were to let the elder be punished while LAN TING-YCAN 395 the younger escaped, I should be only gratifying my private feelings and wronging the dead. I have no alternative.' And she wept on until her clothes were drenched with tears. Meanwhile the judge reported to the Prince, and the latter, astonished at her magnanimity, pardoned both the accused." Two more of the above twenty volumes are devoted to the most remarkable of the criminal cases tried by him during his short magisterial career. An extract from the preface (1729) to his complete works, penned by an ardent admirer, will give an idea of the estimation in which these are held : — " My master's judicial capacity was of a remarkably high order, as though the mantle of Pao Hsiao-su^ had descended upon him. In very difficult cases he would investigate dispassionately and calmly, appearing to possess some unusual method for worming out the truth ; so that the most crafty lawyers and the most experienced scoundrels, whom no logic could entangle and no pains intimidate, upon being brought before him, found themselves deserted by their former cunning, and confessed readily without waiting for the applica- tion of torture. I, indeed, have often wondered how it is that torture is brought into requisition so much in judicial investigations. For, under the influence of the ' three wooden instruments,' what evidence is there which cannot be elicited ? — to say nothing of the danger of a mistake and the unutterable injury thus inflicted upon the departed spirits in the realms below. Now, my master, in investigating and deciding cases, was fearful only lest his people should not obtain a full and fair hearing ; he, therefore, argued each point with them ^ A Solomonic judge under the Sung dynasty. 396 CHINESE LITERATURE quietly and kindly until they were thoroughly committed to a certain position, with no possibility of backing out, and then he decided the case upon its merits as thus set forth. By such means, those who were bambooed had no cause for complaint, while those who were con- demned to die died without resenting their sentence ; the people were unable to deceive him, and they did not even venture to make the attempt. Thus did he carry out the Confucian doctrine of respecting popular feeling ; ^ and were all judicial officers to decide cases in the same careful and impartial manner, there would not be a single injured suitor under the canopy of heaven." The following is a specimen case dealing with the evil effects of superstitious doctrines : — "The people of the Ch*ao-yang district are great on bogies, and love to talk of spirits and Buddhas. The gentry and their wives devote themselves to Ta Tien, but the women generally of the neighbourhood flock in crowds to the temples to burn incense and adore Buddha, forming an unbroken string along the road. Hence, much ghostly and supernatural nonsense gets spread about ; and hence it was that the Hou-t*ien sect came to flourish. I know nothing of the origin of this sect. It was started amongst the Ch*ao-yang people by two men, named Yen and Chou respectively, who said that they had been instructed by a white-bearded Immortal, and who, when an attempt to arrest them was made by a predecessor in office, absconded with their families and remained in concealment. By and by, however, they came back, calling themselves the White Lily or the White Aspen sect. I imagine that White ^ *' In hearing litigations, I am like any other body. What is necessary is to cause the people to have no litigations " (Legge). LAN TING- YUAN 397 Lily was the real designation, the alteration in name being simply made to deceive. Their ^goddess' was Yen's own wife, and she pretended to be able to summon wind and bring down rain, enslave bogies and exorcise spirits, being assisted in her performances by her para- mour, a man named Hu, who called himself the Immortal of Pencil Peak. He used to aid in writing out charms, spirting water, curing diseases, and praying for heirs ; and he could enable widows to hold converse with their departed husbands. The whole district was taken in by these people, and went quite mad about them, people travelling from afar to worship them as spiritual guides, and, with many offerings of money, meats, and wines, enrolling themselves as their humble disciples, until one would have said it was market-day in the neighbour- hood. I heard of their doings one day as I was returning from the prefectural city. They had already established themselves in a large building to the north of the dis- trict; they had opened a preaching-hall, collected several hundred persons together, and for the two previous days had been availing themselves of the services of some play-actors to sing and perform at their banquets. I immediately sent off constables to arrest them ; but the constables were afraid of incurring the displeasure of the spirits and being seized by the soldiers of the infernal regions, while so much protection was afforded by various families of wealth and position that the guilty parties succeeded in preventing the arrest of a single one of their number. Therefore I proceeded in person to their establishment, knocked at the door, and seized the goddess, whom I subjected to a searching examination as to the whereabouts of her accomplices; but the interior of the place being, as it was, a perfect maze of 398 CHINESE LITERATURE passages ramifying in every direction, when I seized a torch and made my way along, even if I did stumble up against any one, they were gone in a moment before I had time to see where. It was a veritable nest of secret villany, and one which I felt ought to be searched to the last corner. Accordingly, from the goddess's bed in a dark and out-of-the-way chamber I dragged forth some ten or a dozen men ; while out of the Immortal's bed- room I brought a wooden seal of office belonging to the Lady of the Moon, also a copy of their magic ritual, a quantity of soporifics, wigs, clothes, and ornaments, of the uses of which I was then totally ignorant. I further made a great effort to secure the person of the Immortal himself; and when his friends and rich sup- porters saw the game was up, they surrendered him over to justice. At his examination he comported himself in a very singular manner, such being indeed the chief means upon which he relied, besides the soporifics and fine dresses, to deceive the eyes and ears of the public. As to his credulous dupes, male and female, when they heard the name of the Lady of the Moon they would be at first somewhat scared ; but by and by, seeing that the goddess was certainly a woman, they would begin to regain courage, while the Immortal himself, with his hair dressed out and his face powdered and his skirts fluttering about, hovered round the goddess, and assum- ing all the airs and graces of a supernatural beauty, soon convinced the spectators that he was really the Lady of the Moon, and quite put them off the scent as to his real sex. Adjourning now to one of the more remote apartments, there would follow worship of Maitreya Buddha, accompanied by the recital of some sUtra ; after which soporific incense would be lighted, LAN TING-YUAN 399 and the victims be thrown into a deep sleep. This soporific, or 'soul confuser/. as it is otherwise called, makes people feel tired and sleepy ; they are recovered by means of a charm and a draught of cold water. The promised heirs and the interviews with deceased hus- bands are all supposed to be brought about during the period of trance — for which scandalous impostures the heads of these villains hung up in the streets were scarcely a sufficient punishment. However, reflecting that it would be a great grievance to the people were any of them to find themselves mixed up in such a case just after a bad harvest, and also that among the large number who had become affiliated to this society there would be found many old and respectable families, I determined on a plan which would put an end to the aifair without any troublesome esclandre, I burnt all the depositions in which names were given, and took no further steps against the persons named. I ordered the goddess and her paramour to receive their full complement of blows (viz., one hundred), and to be punished with the heavy cangue ; and, placing them at the yamen gate, I let the people rail and curse at them, tear their flesh and break their heads, until they passed together into their boasted Paradise. The husband and some ten others of the gang were placed in the cangue^ bambooed, or punished in some way ; and as for the rest, they were allowed to escape with this one more chance to turn over a new leaf. I confiscated the build- ing, destroyed its disgraceful hiding-places, changed the whole appearance of the place, and made it into a literary institution to be dedicated to five famous heroes of literature. I cleansed and purified it from all taint, and on the ist and 15th of each moon I would, when at 400 CHINESE LITERATURE leisure, indulge with the scholars of the district in literary recreations. I formed, in fact, a literary club; and, leasing a plot of ground for cultivation, devoted the returns therefrom to the annual Confucian demonstra- tions and to the payment of a regular professor. Thus the true doctrine was caused to flourish, and these supernatural doings to disappear from the scene ; the public tone was elevated, and the morality of the place vastly improved. "When the Brigadier-General and the Lieutenant- Governor heard what had been done, they very much commended my action, saying : ' Had this sect not been rooted out, the evil results would have been dire indeed ; and had you reported the case in the usual way, praying for the execution of these criminals, your merit would undoubtedly have been great ; but now, without selfish regard to your own interests, you have shown yourself unwilling to hunt down more victims than necessary, or to expose those doings in such a manner as to lead to the suicide of the persons implicated. Such care for the fair fame of so many people is deserving of all praise.'" Although not yet of the same national importance as at the present day, it was still impossible that the foreign question should have escaped the notice of such an observant man as Lan Ting-yuan. He flourished at a time when the spread of the Roman Catholic religion was giving just grounds for apprehension to thoughtful Chinese statesmen. Accordingly, we find amongst his collected works two short notices devoted to a considera- tion of trade and general intercourse with the various nations of barbarians. They are interesting as the un- trammelled views of the greatest living Chinese scholar LAN TING-YtJAN 401 of the date at which they were written, namely, in 1732. The following is one of these notices : — " To allow the barbarians to settle at Canton was a mistake. Ever since Macao was given over, in the reign of Chia Ching (1522-1567) of the Ming dynasty, to the red-haired barbarians, all manner of nations have con- tinued without ceasing to flock thither. They build forts and fortifications and dense settlements of houses. Their descendants will overshadow the land, and all the country beyond Hsiang-shan will become a kingdom of devils. * Red-haired ' is a general term for the bar- barians of the western islands. Amongst them there are the Dutch, French, Spaniards, Portuguese, English, and Yii-su-la [? Islam], all of which nations are horribly fierce. Wherever they go they spy around with a view to seize on other people's territory. There was Singa- pore, which was originally a Malay country ; the red- haired barbarians went there to trade, and by and by seized it for an emporium of their own. So with the Philippines, which were colonised by the Malays ; because the Roman Catholic religion was practised there, the Western foreigners appropriated it in like manner for their own. The Catholic religion is now spreading over China. In Hupeh, Hunan, Honan, Kiangsi, Fuhkien, and Kuangsi, there are very few places whither it has not reached. In the first year of the Emperor Yung Ch^ng [1736J, the Viceroy of Fuhkien, Man Pao, complained that the Western foreigners were preaching their religion and tamper- ing with the people, to the great detriment of the localities in question ; and he petitioned that the Roman Catholic chapels in the various provinces might be turned into lecture-rooms and schools, and 402 CHINESE LITERATURE that all Western foreigners might be sent to Macao, to wait until an opportunity should present itself of send- ing them back to their own countries. However, the Viceroy of Kuangtung, out of mistaken kindness, memo- rialised the Throne that such of the barbarians as were old or sick and unwilling to go away might be per- mitted to remain in the Roman Catholic establishment at Canton, on the condition that if they proselytised, spread their creed, or chaunted their sacred books, they were at once to be punished and sent away. The scheme was an excellent one, but what were the results of it ? At present more than 10,000 men have joined the Catholic chapel at Canton, and there is also a department for women, where they have similarly got together about 2000. This is a great insult to China, and seriously injures our national traditions, enough to make every man of feeling grind his teeth with rage. The case by no means admits of 'teaching before punishing/ " Now these traders come this immense distance with the object of making money. What then is their idea in paying away vast sums in order to attract people to their faith ? Thousands upon thousands they get to join them, not being satisfied until they have bought up the whole province. Is it possible to shut one's eyes and stop one's ears, pretending to know nothing about it and making no inquiries whatever ? There is an old saying among the people — 'Take things in time. A little stream, if not stopped, may become a great river.' How much more precaution is needed, then, when there is a general inundation and men's hearts are restless and disturbed ? In Canton the converts to Catholicism are very numerous ; those in Macao are in an inexpugnable LAN TING-YOAN 403 fortress. There is a constant interchange of arms between the two, and if any trouble like that of the Philippines or Singapore should arise, I cannot say how we should meet it. At the present moment, with a pattern of Imperial virtue on the Throne, whose power and majesty have penetrated into the most distant regions, this foolish design of the barbarians should on no account be tolerated. Wise men will do well to be prepared against the day when it may be necessary for us to retire before them, clearing the country as we go." The following extract from a letter to a friend was written by Lan Ting-yiian in 1724, and proves that if he objected to Christianity, he was not one whit more inclined to tolerate Buddhism : — *'Of all the eighteen provinces, Chehkiang is the one where Buddhist priests and nuns most abound. In the three prefectures of Hangchow, Chia-hsing, and Huchow there cannot be fewer than several tens of thousands of them, of whom, by the way, not more than one-tenth have willingly taken the vows. The others have been given to the priests when quite little, either because their parents were too poor to keep them, or in return for some act of kindness ; and when the children grow up, they are unable to get free. Buddhist nuns are also in most cases bought up when children as a means of making a more extensive show of religion, and are care- fully prevented from running away. They are not given in marriage — the desire for which is more or less im- planted in every human breast, and exists even amongst prophets and sages. And thus to condemn thousands and ten thousands of human beings to the dull mono- tony of the cloister, granting that they strictly keep their 404 CHINESE LITERATURE religious vows, is more than sufficient to seriously in- terfere with the equilibrium of the universe. Hence floods, famines, and the like catastrophes; to say nothing of the misdeeds of the nuns in question. • •••••• "When I passed through Soochow and Hangchow I saw many disgraceful advertisements that quite took my breath away with their barefaced depravity ; and the people there told me that these atrocities were much practised by the denizens of the cloister, which term is simply another name for houses of ill-fame. These cloister folk do a great deal of mischief amongst the populace, wasting the substance of some, and robbing others of their good name." The Ming Chi Kaug Mu, or History of the Ming Dynasty, which had been begun in 1689 by a commission of fifty-eight scholars, was laid before the Emperor only in 1742 by Chang Ting-yu (1670-1756), a Minister of State and a most learned writer, joint editor of the Book of Rites, Ritual of the Chou Dynasty, the Thir- teen Classics, the Twenty-four Histories, Thesaurus of Phraseology, Encyclopaedia of Quotations, the Con- cordance to Literature, &c. This work, however, did not meet with the Imperial approval, and for it was substituted the 'Pung Chien Kang Mu San Pien, first published in 1775. Among the chief collaborators of Chang T'ing-yii should be mentioned 0-feRH-T*Ai, the Mongol {d. 1745), and Chu Shih (1666-1736), both of whom were also voluminous contributors to classical literature. These were followed by Ch*£n Hung-mou (1695-1771), who, besides being the author of brilliant State papers, YUAN MEI 40s was a commentator on the Classics, dealing especially with the Four Books, a writer on miscellaneous topics, and a most successful administrator. He rose to high office, and was noted for always having his room hung round with maps of the province in which he was serving, so that he might become thoroughly familiar with its geography. He was dismissed, however, from the important post of Viceroy of the Two Kuang for alleged incapacity in dealing with a plague of locusts. YCan Mei (1715-1797) is beyond all question the most popular writer of modern times. At the early age of nine he was inspired with a deep love for poetry, and soon became an adept at the art. Graduating in 1739, he was shortly afterwards sent to Kiangnan, and presently became magistrate at Nanking, where he greatly distinguished himself by the vigour and justice of his administration. A serious illness kept him for some time unemployed ; and when on recovery he was sent into Shansi, he managed to quarrel with the Viceroy. At the early age of forty he retired from the official arena and led a life of lettered ease in his beautiful garden at Nanking. His letters, which have been published under the title of Hsiao Tsang Shan Fang CKih Tuy are extremely witty and amusing, and at the same time are models of style. Many of the best are a trifle coarse, sufficiently so to rank them with some of the eighteenth-century literature on this side of the globe ; the salt of all loses its savour in translation. The following are specimens : — " I have received your letter congratulating me on my present prosperity, and am very much obliged for the same. J 4o6 CHINESE LITERATURE " At the end of the letter, however, you mention that you have a tobacco-pouch for me, which shall be sent on as soon as I forward you a stanza. Surely this reminds one of the evil days of the Chous and the Changs, when each State took pledges from the other. It certainly is not in keeping with the teaching of the sages, viz., that friends should be the first to give. Why then do you neglect that teaching for the custom of a degraded age ? " If for a tobacco-pouch you insist upon having a stanza, for a hat or a pair of boots you would want at least a poem ; while your brother might send me a cloak or a coat, and expect to get a whole epic in return ! In this way, the prosperity on which you congratulate me would not count for much. "Shun Yii-fan of old sacrificed a bowl of rice and a perch to get a hundred waggons full of grain ; he offered little and he wanted much. And have you not heard how a thousand pieces of silk were given for a single word ? two beautiful girls for a stanza ? — compared with which your tobacco-pouch seems small indeed. It is probably because you are a military man, accustomed to drill soldiers and to reward them with a silver medal when they hit the mark, that you have at last come to regard this as the proper treatment of an old friend. "Did not Mencius forbid us to presume upon any- thing adventitious ? And if friends may not presume upon their worth or position, how much less upon a tobacco-pouch ? For a tobacco-pouch, pretty as it may be, is but the handiwork of a waiting-maid ; while my verses, poor as they may be, are the outcome of my intellectual powers. So that to exchange the work of a waiting-maid's fingers for the work of my brain, is a great compliment to the waiting-maid, but a small one to YUAN MEI 407 me. Not so if you yourself had cast away spear and sword, and grasping the needle and silk, had turned me out a tobacco-pouch of your own working. Then, had you asked me even for ten stanzas, I would freely have given them. But a great general knows his own strength as well as the enemy's, and it would hardly be proper for me to lure you from men's to women's work, and place on your head a ribboned cap. How then do you ven- ture to treat me as Ts'ao Ts ao [on his death-bed treated his concubines], by bestowing on me an insignificant tobacco-pouch ? "Having nothing better to do, I have amused myself with these few lines at your expense. If you take them ill, of course I shall never get the pouch. But if you can mend your evil ways, then hurry up with the tobacco-pouch and trust to your luck for the verse." A friend had sent Yiian Mei a letter with the very un- Chinese present of a crab and a duck. Two ducks and a crab would have been more conventional, or even two crabs and a duck. And by some mistake or other, the crab arrived by itself. Hence the following banter in reply : — "To convey a man to a crab is very pleasant for the man, but to convey a crab to a man is pleasant for his whole family. And I know that this night my two sons will often bend their arms like crabs' claws [t\e. in the form of the Chinese salute], wishing you an early success in life. ** In rhyme no duplicates [that is, don't rhyme again the same sound], and don't use two sentences where one will do [in composition]. Besides which, the fact that the duck has not yet turned up shows that you understand well how to ' do one thing at a time.' Not 27 408 CHINESE LITERATURE to mention that you cause an old gobbler like myself to stretch out his neck in anticipation of something else to come. "You remember how the poet Sh^n beat his rival, all because of that one verse — * Sigh twt fo^tke sinking moon, The jewel lamp will follow soon^ Well, your crab is like the sinking moon, while the duck reminds me of the jewel lamp ; from which we may infer that you will meet with the same good luck as Sh^n. '* Again, a crab, even in the presence of the King of the Ocean, has to travel aslant ; by which same token I trust that by and by your fame will travel aslant the habitable globe." Yiian Mei's poetry is much admired and widely read. He is one of the few, very few, poets who have flourished under Manchu rule. Here are some sarcastic lines by him : — " Pve ever thought it passing odd How all men reverence some Gody And wear their lives out for his sake And bow their heads until they ache. ' lis clear to me the Gods are made Of the same stuff as wind or shade, . . . Ah / if they came to every caller, Pd be the very loudest bawler /" He could be pathetic enough at times, as he showed in his elegy on a little five-year-old daughter, recalling her baby efforts with the paint-brush, and telling how she cut out clothes from paper, or sat and watched her father engaged in composition. He was also, like all Chinese poets, an ardent lover of nature, and a winter plum-tree in flower, or a gust of wind scattering dead YOAN MEI 409 leaves, would set all his poetic fibres thrilling again. It sounds like an anti-climax to add that this brilliant essayist, letter-writer, and composer of finished verse owes perhaps the chief part of his fame to a cookery- book. Yet such is actually the case. Yuan Mei was the Brillat-Savarin of China, and in the art of cooking China stands next to France. His cookery-book is a gossipy little work, written, as only such a scholar could write it, in a style which at once invests the subject with dignity and interest. " Everything," says Yiian Mei, in hjs opening chapter, ''has its own original constitution, just as each man has certain natural characteristics. If a man's natural abilities are of a low order, Confucius and Mencius themselves would teach him to no purpose. And if an article of food is in itself bad, not even I-ya [the Soyer of China] could cook a flavour into it. " A ham is a ham ; but in point of goodness two hams will be as widely separated as sky and sea. A mackerel is a mackerel ; but in point of excellence two mackerel will differ as much as ice and live coals. And other things in the same way. So that the credit of a good dinner should be divided between the cook and the steward— forty per cent, to the steward, and sixty per cent, to the cook. " Cookery is like matrimony. Two things served to- gether should match. Clear should go with clear, thick with thick, hard with hard, and soft with soft. I have known people mix grated lobster with birds'-nests, and mint with chicken or pork ! " The cooks of to-day think nothing of mixing in one soup the meat of chicken, duck, pig, and goose. But these chickens, ducks, pigs, and geese have doubtless 4IO CHINESE LITERATURE souls. And these souls will most certainly file plaints in the next world on the way they have been treated in this. A good cook will use plenty of diflferent dishes. Each article of food will be made to exhibit its own characteristics, while each made dish will be character- ised by one dominant flavour. Then the palate of the gourmand will respond without fail, and the flowers of the soul blossom forth. " Let salt fish come first, and afterwards food of more negative flavour. Let the heavy precede the light. Let dry dishes precede those with gravy. No flavour must dominate. If a guest eats his fill of savouries, his stomach will be fatigued. Salt flavours must be relieved by bitter or hot tasting foods, in order to restore the palate. Too much wine will make the stomach dulL Sour or sweet food will be required to rouse it again into vigour. "In winter we should eat beef and mutton. In sum- mer, dried and preserved meats. As for condiments, mustard belongs specially to summer, pepper to winter. " Don't cut bamboo-shoots [the Chinese ec^uivalent of asparagus] with an oniony knife. ... A good cook fre- quently wipes his knife, frequently changes his cloth, frequently scrapes his board, and frequently washes his hands. If smoke or ashes from his pipe, perspiration- drops from his head, insects from the wall, or smuts from the saucepan get mixed up with the food, though he were a very chef among chefs^ yet would men hold their noses and decline. " Don't make your thick sauces greasy nor your clear ones tasteless. Those who want grease can eat fat pork, while a drink of water is better than something which tastes of nothing at all. . . . Don't over-salt your YtJAN MEI 411 soups ; for salt can be added to taste^ but can never be taken away. " DofCt eat with your ears ; by which I mean do not aim at having extraordinary out-of-the-way foods, just to astonish your guests ; for that is to eat with your ears, not with the mouth. Bean-curd, if good, is actually nicer than birds'-nest ; and better than sea-slugs, which are not first-rate, is a dish of bamboo shoots. • • • *'The chicken, the pig, the fish, and the duck, these are the four heroes of the table. Sea-slugs and birds'- nests have no characteristic flavours of their own. They are but usurpers in the house. I once dined with a friend who gave us birds'-nest in bowls more like vats, holding each about four ounces of the plain-boiled article. The other guests applauded vigorously ; but I smiled and said, ^ 1 cante here to eat birds^-nesty not to take delivery of it wholesaled ^^ Dotit eat with your eyes ; by which I mean do not cover the table with innumerable dishes and multiply courses indefinitely. For this is to eat with the eyes, and not with the mouth. "Just as a calligraphist should not overtire his hand nor a poet his brain, so a good cook cannot possibly turn out in one day more than four or five distinct plats. I used to dine with a merchant friend who would put on no less than three removes [sets of eight dishes served separately], and sixteen kinds of sweets, so that by the time we had finished we had got through a total of some forty courses. My host gloried in all this, but when I got home I used to have a bowl of rice-gruel. I felt so hungry. " To know right from wrong, a man must be sober. And only a sober man can distinguish good flavours from 412 CHINESE LITERATURE bad. It has been well said that words are inadequate to describe the nuances of taste. How much less then must a stuttering sot be able to appreciate them ! " I have often seen votaries of guess-fingers swallow choice food as though so much sawdust, their minds being preoccupied with their game. Now I say eat first and drink afterwards. By these means the result will be successful in each direction." Yiian Mei also protests against the troublesome custom of pressing guests to eat, and against the more foolish one of piling up choice pieces on the little saucers used as plates, and even putting them into the guests' mouths, as if they were children or brides, too shy to help themselves. There was a man in Ch*ang-an, he tells us, who was very fond of giving dinners ; but the food was atrocious. One day a guest threw himself on his knees in front of this gentleman and said, " Am I not a friend of yours ? " " You are indeed," replied his host. "Then I must ask of you a favour," said the guest, " and you must grant it before I rise from my knees." " Well, what is it ? " inquired his host in astonishment. '* Never to invite me to dinner any more ! " cried the guest ; at which the whole party burst into a loud roar of laughter. "Into no department of life," says Yiian Mei, "should indifference be allowed to creep ; into none less than into the domain of cookery. Cooks are but mean fellows ; and if a day is passed without either reward- ing or punishing them, that day is surely marked by negligence or carelessness on their part. If badly cooked food is swallowed in silence, such neglect will speedily become a habit. Still, mere rewards and CH'feN HAO-TZO 413 punishments are of no use. If a dish is good, attention should be called to the why and the wherefore. If bad, an effort should be made to discover the cause of the failure. "I am not much of a wine-drinker, . but this makes me all the more particular. Wine is like scholarship : it ripens with age ; and it is best from a fresh-opened jar. The top of the wine-jar, the bottom of the teapot, as the saying has it." In 1783 CH'feN Hao-tzO, who lived beside the Western Lake at Hangchow, and called himself the Flower Hermit, published a gossipy little work on gardening and country pursuits, under the title of "The Mirror of Flowers." It is the type of a class often to be seen in the hands of Chinese readers. The preface was written by himself : — " From my youth upwards I have cared for nothing save books and flowers. Twenty-eight thousand days have passed over my head, the greater part of which has been spent in poring over old records, and the re- mainder in enjoying myself in my garden among plants and birds." The Chinese excel in horticulture, and the passionate love of flowers which prevails among all classes is quite a national characteristic. A Chinaman, however, has his own particular standpoint. The vulgar nosegay or the plutocratic bouquet would have no charms for him. He can see, with satisfaction, only one flower at a time. His best vases are made to hold a single spray, and large vases usually have covers perforated so as to isolate each specimen. A primrose by the river's brim would be to him a complete poem. If condemned to a 414 CHINESE LITERATURE sedentary life, he likes to have a flower by his side on the table. He draws enjoyment, even inspiration, from its petals. He will take a flower out for a walk, and stop every now and again to consider the loveliness of its growth. So with birds. It is a common thing on a pleasant evening to meet a Chinaman carrying his bird- cage suspended from the end of a short stick. He will stop at some pleasant corner outside the town, and listen with rapture to the bird's song. But to the preface. Our author goes on to say that in his hollow bamboo pillow he always keeps some work on his favourite subject. " People laugh at me, and say that I am cracked on flowers and a bibliomaniac ; but surely study is the proper occupation of a literary man, and as for garden- ing, that is simply a rest for my brain and a relaxation in my declining years. What does T'ao Ch'ien say? — * Riches and rank I do not love, I have no hopes of heaven above,^ . . . Besides, it is only in hours of leisure that I devote myself to the cultivation of flowers." Ch*^n Hao-tzQ then runs through the four seasons, showing how each has its especial charm, contributing to the sum of those pure pleasures which are the best antidote against the ills of old age. He then proceeds to deal with times and seasons, showing what to do under each month, precisely as our own garden-books do. After that come short chapters on all the chief trees, shrubs, and plants of China, with hints how to treat them under diverse circumstances, the whole concluding with a separate section devoted to birds, animals, fishes, and insects. Among these are to be found the crane, CHAO I 415 peacock; parrot, thrush, kite, quail, mainah, swallow, deer, hare, monkey, dog, cat, squirrel, goldfish — first mentioned by Su Shih, " upon the bridge the livelong day I stafid and watch the goldfish play ** — bee, butterfly, glowworm, &c. Altogether there is much to be learnt from this Chinese White of Selborne, and the reader lays down the book feeling that the writer is not far astray when he says, " If a home has not a garden and an old tree, I see not whence the everyday joys of life are to come." Chao I (1727-1814) is said to have known several tens of characters when only three years old, — the age at which John Stuart Mill believed that he began Greek. It was not, however, until 1761 that he took his final degree, appearing second on the list. He was really first, but the Emperor put Wang Chieh over his head, in order to encourage men from Shensi, to which province the latter belonged. That Wang Chieh is remembered at all must be set down to the above episode, and not to the two volumes of essays which he left behind him. Chao I wrote a history of the wars of the present dynasty, a collection of notes on the current topics of his day, historical critiques, and other works. He was also a poet, contributing a large volume of verse, from which the following sample of his art is taken : — ^*' Man is indeed 0/ heavenly birthy Though seeming earthy of the earth j The sky is but a denser pall Of the thin air that covers alL Just as this air^ so is that sky; Why call this low, and call that high 1 4i6 CHINESE LITERATURE ** The dtwdrop sparkles in the cup — Note how the eager flowers spring up; Confine and crib them in a roonty They fade and find an early doom. So Uis that at our very feet The earth and the empyrean meet. " The babe at birth points heavenward tooy Enveloped by the eternal blue; As fishes in the water bide^ So heaven surrounds on every side; Yet men sin on^ because they say Great God in heaven is far away/* The "stop short" was a great favourite with him. His level may be gauged by the following specimen, written as he was setting put to a distant post in the north : — " See where y like specks of spring-cloud in the sky^ On their long northern route the wild geese fly; Together der the River we will roam, . . . Ah I they go towards^ and I away from home!^ Here is another in a more humorous vein : — " The rain had been raining the whole of the day^ And I had been straining and working away, , . . Whafs the trouble^ O cook ? Votive no millet in store ? Welly Pve written a book which will buy us some more/* Taken altogether, the poetry of the present dynasty, especially that of the nineteenth century, must be written down as nothing more than artificial verse, with the art not even concealed, but grossly patent to the dullest observer. A collection of extracts from about 2000 representative poets was published in 1857, but it is very dull reading, any thoughts, save the most commonplace, being few and far between. As in every similar collec- FANG WEM 417 tion, a place is assigned to poetesses, of whom Fang Wei-i would perhaps be a favourable example. She came from a good family, and was but newly married to a promis- ing young ofHcial when the latter died, and left her a sorrowing and childless widow. Light came to her in the darkness, and disregarding the entreaties of her father and mother, she decided to become a nun, and devote the remainder of her life to the service of Buddha. These are her farewell lines : — " ^Tis common talk kow partings sadden life : There are no partings for us after death. But let that pass; /, now no more a wife^ Will face fat^s issues to my latest breath, ** The north wind whistles thrd the mulberry grove^ Daily and nightly making moan for me; I look up to the shifting sky above ^ No little prattler smiling on my knee. " Life's sweetest boon is after all to die, . . . My weeping parents still are loth to yield; Yet east and west the callow fledglings fly ^ And autumn^ s herbage wanders far afield, " WhcU will life bring to me an I should stay f What will death bring to me an I should go f These thoughts surge through me in the light of day ^ And make me conscious that at last I know,^* One of the greatest of the scholars of the present dynasty was YOan YtJAN (1764-1849). He took his third degree in 1789, and at the final examination the aged Emperor Ch'ien Lung was so struck with his talents that he exclaimed, " Who would have thought that, after pass- ing my eightieth year, I should find another such man as this one ?" He then held many high offices in succes- sion, including the post of Governor of Chehkiang, in 4i8 CHINESE LITERATURE which he operated vigorously against the Annamese pirates and Ts'ai Ch ien, established the tithing system, colleges, schools, and soup-kitchens, besides devoting himself to the preservation of ancient monuments. As Viceroy of the Two Kuang, he frequently came into collision with British interests, and did his best to keep a tight hand over the barbarian merchants. He was a voluminous writer on the Classics, astronomy, archaeo- logy, &c., and various important collections were pro- duced under his patronage. Among these may 'be men- tioned the Huang Cfiing CAing CAte/i, containing upwards of 1 80 separate works, and the C/iou Jen Chuan, a bio- graphical dictionary of famous mathematicians of all ages, including Euclid, Newton, and Ricci, the Jesuit Father. He also published a Topography of Kuangtung, specimens of the compositions of more than 5000 poets of Kiangsi, and a large collection of inscriptions on bells and vases. He also edited the Catalogue of the Imperial Library, the large encyclopaedia known as the Tai Ping Yii Lan^ and other important works. Two religious works, associated with the Taoism of modern days, which have long been popular throughout China, may fitly be mentioned here. They are not to be bought in shops, but can always be obtained at temples, where large numbers are placed by philanthropists for distribution gratis. The first is the Kan Ying P^ien^ or Book of Rewards and Punishments, attributed by the foolish to Lao Tzu himself. Its real date is quite un- known ; moderate writers place it in the Sung dynasty, but even that seems far too early. Although nominally of Taoist origin, this work is usually edited in a very pronounced Buddhist setting, the fact being that Taoism THE KAN YING FlEN 419 and Buddhism are now so mixed up that it is impossible to draw any sharp line of demarcation between the two. As Chu Hsi says, "Buddhism stole the best features of Taoism, and Taoism stole the worst features of Bud- dhism ; it is as though the one stole a jewel from the other, and the loser recouped the loss with a stone." Prefixed to the Kan Ying P'ien will be found Buddhist formulae for cleansing the mouth and body before beginning to read the text, and appeals to Maitr^ya Buddha and Avaldkit^svara, Married women and girls are advised not to frequent temples to be a spectacle for men. " If you must worship Buddha, worship the two living Buddhas (parents) you have at home ; and if you must burn incense, burn it at the family altar." We are further told that there is no time at which this book may not be read ; no place in which it may not be read ; and no person by whom it may not be read with profit. We are advised to study it when fasting, and not necessarily to shout it aloud, so as to be heard of men, but rather to ponder over it in the heart. The text consists of a com- mination said to have been uttered by Lao Tzu, and directed against evil-doers of all kinds. In the opening paragraphs attention is drawn to various spiritual beings who note down the good deeds and crimes of men, and lengthen or shorten their lives accordingly. Then follows a long list of wicked acts which will inevitably bring retribution in their train. These include the ordi- nary offences recognised by moral codes all over the world, every form of injustice and oppression, falsehood, and theft, together with not a few others of a more venial character to Western minds. Among the latter are birds'-nesting, stepping across food or human beings, cooking with dirty firewood, spitting at shooting stars 420 CHINESE LITERATURE and pointing at the rainbow, or even at the sun, moon, and stars. In all these cases, periods will be cut off from the life of the oflfender, and if his life is exhausted while any guilt still remains unexpiated, the punishment due will be carried on to the account of his descendants. The second of the two works under consideration is the Yii Li Cfiao Chuan^ a description of the Ten Courts of Purgatory in the nether world, through some or all of which every erring soul must pass before being allowed to be born again into this world under another form, or to be permanently transferred to the eternal bliss reserved for the righteous alone. In the Fifth Court, for instance, the sinners are hurried away by bull- headed, horse-faced demons to a famous terrace, where their physical punishments are aggravated by a view of their old homes : — "This terrace is curved in front like a bow; it looks east, west, and south. It is eighty-one // from one extreme to the other. The back part is like the string of a bow; it is enclosed by a wall of sharp swords. It is 490 feet high ; its sides are knife-blades ; and the whole is in sixty-three storeys. No good shade comes to this terrace ; neither do those whose balance of good and evil is exact Wicked souls alone behold their homes close by, and can see and hear what is going on. They hear old and young talking together ; they see their last wishes disregarded and their instructions dis- obeyed. Everything seems to have undergone a change. The property they scraped together with so much trouble is dissipated and gone. The husband thinks of taking another wife ; the widow meditates second nup- tials. Strangers are in possession of the old estate ; there is nothing to divide amongst the children. Debts long THE YU LI CH'AO CHUAN 421 since paid are brought again for settlement, and the survivors are called upon to acknowledge claims upon the departed. Debts owed are lost for want of evidence, with endless recriminations, abuse, and general con- fusion, all of which falls upon the three families of the deceased. They in their anger speak ill of him that is gone. He sees his children become corrupt and his friends fall away. Some, perhaps, for the sake of bygone times, may stroke the coffin and let fall a tear, departing quickly with a cold smile. Worse than that, the wife sees her husband tortured in the yam^n ; the husband sees his wife victim to some horrible disease, lands gone, houses destroyed by flood or fire, and everything in unutterable confusion — the reward of former sins." The Sixth Court "is a vast, noisy Gehenna, many leagues in extent, and around it are sixteen wards. "In the first, the souls are made to kneel for long periods on iron shot. In the second, they are placed up to their necks iri filth. In the third, they are pounded till the blood runs out. In the fourth, their mouths are opened with iron pincers and filled full of needles. In the fifth, they are bitten by rats. In the sixth, they are enclosed in a net of thorns and nipped by locusts. In the seventh, they are crushed to a jelly. In the eighth, their skin is lacerated and they are beaten on the raw. In the ninth, their mouths are filled with lire. In the tenth, they are licked by flames. In the eleventh, they are subjected to noisome smells. In the twelfth, they are butted by oxen and trampled on by horses. In the thir- teenth, their hearts are scratched. In the fourteenth, their heads are rubbed till their skulls come off. In the fifteenth, they are chopped in two at the waist. In the sixteenth, their skin is taken off and rolled up into spills. 422 CHINESE LITERATURE "Those discontented ones who rail against heaven and revile earth, who are always finding fault either with the wind, thunder, heat, cold, fine weather, or rain ; those who let their tears fall towards the north ; who steal the gold from the inside or scrape the gilding from the outside of images; those who take holy names in vain, who show no respect for written paper, who throw down dirt and rubbish near pagodas or temples, who use dirty cook-houses and stoves for preparing the sacri- ficial meats, who do not abstain from eating beef and dog-flesh ; those who have in their possession blas- phemous or obscene books and do not destroy them, who obliterate or tear books which teach man to be good, who carve on common articles of household use the symbol of the origin of all things, the Sun and Moon and Seven Stars, the Royal Mother and the God of Longevity on the same article, or representations of any of the Immortals; those who embroider the Svastika on fancy-work, or mark characters on silk, satin, or cloth, on banners, beds, chairs, tables, or any kind of utensil ; those who secretly wear clothes adorned with the dragon and the phoenix only to be trampled under foot, who buy up grain and hold until the price is exorbitantly high — all these shall be thrust into the great and noisy Gehenna, there to be examined as to their misdeeds and passed accordingly into one of the sixteen wards, whence, at the expiration of their time, they will be sent for fur- ther questioning on to the Seventh Court." The Tenth Court deals with the final stage of trans- migration previous to rebirth in the world. It appears that in primeval ages men could remember their former lives on earth even after having passed through Purga- tory, and that wicked persons often took advantage of V THE YO LI CH'AO CHUAN 4^^ such knowledge. To remedy this, a Terrace of Oblivion was built, and all shades are now sent thither, and are forced to drink the cup of forgetfulness before they can be born again. " Whether they swallow much or little it matters not ; but sometimes there are perverse devils who altogether refuse to drink. Then beneath their feet sharp blades start up, and a copper tube is forced down their throats, by which means they are compelled to swallow some. When they have drunk, they are raised by the attendants and escorted back by the same path. They are next pushed on to the Bitter Bamboo floating bridge, with torrents of rushing red water on either side. Half-way across they perceive written in large characters on a red cliff on the opposite side the following lines : — " To be a man is easy, but to act up to on^s responsibilities as such is hard; Yet to be a man once again is perJiaps harder still, " For those who would be bom again in some happy state there is no great difficulty; It is only necessary to keep mouth and heart in harmony, ^ " When the shades have read these words, they try to jump on shore, but are beaten back into the water by two huge devils. One has on a black official hat and embroidered clothes ; in his hand he holds a paper pencil, and over his shoulder he carries a sharp sword. Instruments of torture hang at his waist; fiercely he glares out of his large round eyes and laughs a horrid laugh. His name is Short- Life. The other has a dirty face smeared with blood; he has on a white coat, an abacus in his hand, and a rice-sack over his shoulder. Around his neck hangs a string of paper money; his brow contracts hideously and he utters long sighs. His 2S / / 424 CHINESE LITERATURE name is They-have-their-Reward, and his duty is to push the shades into the red water. The wicked and foolish rejoice at the prospect of being born once more as human beings, but the better shades weep and mourn that in life they did not lay up a store of virtuous acts, and thus pass away from the state of mortals for ever. Yet they all rush on to birth like an infatuated or drunken crowd, and again, in their new childhood, hanker after forbidden flavours. Then, regardless of consequences, they begin to destroy life, and thus forfeit all claims to the mercy and compassion of God. They take no thought as to the end that must overtake them ; and, finally, they bring themselves once more to the same horrid plight" CHAPTER IV WALL LITERATURE-JOURNALISM— WIT AND HUMOUR— PROVERBS AND MAXIMS The death of Yiian Yiian in 1849 brings us down Ho the period when China began to find herself for the first time face to face with ^he foreigner. The opening of five ports in 1842 to comparatively unrestricted trade, followed by more ports and right of residence in Peking from i860, created points of contact and brought about foreign complications to which the governors of China had hitherto been unused. A Chinese Horace might well complain that the audacious brood of England have by wicked fraud introduced journalism into the Empire, and that evils worse than consumption and fevers have followed in its train. From time immemorial wall-literature has been a feature in the life of a Chinese city surpassing in extent and variety that of any other nation, and often playing a part fraught with much danger to the community at large. Generally speaking, the literature of the walls covers pretty much the same ground as an ordinary English newspaper, from the "agony" column down- wards. For, mixed up with notices of lost property, consisting sometimes of human beings, and advertise- ments of all kinds of articles of trade, such as one would naturally look for in the handbill literature of any city, 425 426 CHINESE LITERATURE there are to be found announcements of new and startling remedies for various diseases or of infallible pills for the cure of depraved opium-smokers, long lists of the names of subscribers to some coming festival or to the pious restoration of a local temple, sermons without end directed agj).Wst the abuse of written paper, and now and then againc^^ female infanticide, or Cumming-like warnings of an approaching millennium, at which the wicked will receive the reward of their crimes according to the horrible arrangements of the Buddhist-Taoist pur- gatory» Occasionally an objectionable person will be advn;ed through an anonymous placard to desist from a course viA.'.^h is pointed o\\^ as oflFensive, and simi- larly, but more rarely, the action of an oJBBcial will be sometimes severely criticised or condemned. Official proclamations on public business can hardly be classed as wall literature, except perhaps when, as is not un- common, they are written in doggerel verse, with a view to appealing more directly to the illiterate reader. The following proclamation establishing a registry office for boats at Tientsin will give an idea of these queer docu- ments, the only parallel to which in the West might be found in the famous lines issued by the Board of Trade for the use of sea-captains : — " Green to green^ and red to redy Perfect safety ^ go a/iead^^ &*c. The object of this registry office was ostensibly to save the poor boatman from being unfairly dealt with when impressed at nominal wages for Government ser- vice, but really to enable the officials to know exactly where to lay their hands on boats when required: — PROCLAMATIONS 427 ** A busy town is Tientsin^ A land and water thoroughfare ; Traders^ as thick €u clouds^ flock in; Masts rise in forests everywhere, " The officiaTs chair^ the runner's cap^ Flit^ast like falling rain or snow^ And^ musing on the bocUmaris hap^ His doubtful shares of weal and woe^ •* / note the vagabonds who live On squeezes from his hard-earned due; And^ boatmen^ for your sakes I give A public register to you. " Go straightway there ^ your names inscribe And on the books a record raise; None then dare claim the wicked bribe^ Or waste your time in long delays, " The services your country claims Shall be performed in turn by all The muster of the boatmeris names Be published on the YaminwalL " Once your official business done^ Work for yourselves as best you can; Let out your boats to any one; r II give a pass to every man, •* And lest your lot be hard to bear Official pay shall ample be; Let all who notice aught unfair Report the case at once to me, " The culprit shall be well deterred In future, if his guilt is clear; For times are hard, as I have heard. And food and clothing getting dear, " Thus, in compassion for your woe. The scales offustice in my hand, I save you from the Yaminfoc, The barrack-soldier^ threatening band. 428 CHINESE LITERATURE " No longer will they dare to play Their shameful tricks y of late revealed; The office only sends away Boats^and on orders duly seeded, ** One rule will thus be made for ally And things may not go much amiss; Ye boatmen^ Wis on you I call To show your gratitude for this. " But lest there be who ignoraiue plead^ I issue this in hope to awe Such fools as think they will succeed By trying to evade the law, " For if I catch them^ no light fate Awaits them that unlucky day; So from this proclamatiotis date Let all in fear and dread obey J* • It is scarcely necessary to add that wall literature has often been directed against foreigners, and especially against missionaries. The penalties, however, for post- ing anonymous placards are very severe, and of late years the same end has been more effectually attained by the circulation of abusive fly-sheets, often pictorial and always disgusting. Journalism has proved to be a terrible thorn in the official side. It was first introduced into China under the aegis of an Englishman who was the nominal editor of the Shin Poo or Shanghai News^ still a very influential newspaper. For a long time the authorities fought to get rid of this objectionable daily, which now and again told some awkward truths, and contained many ably written articles by first-class native scholars. Eventually an official organ was started in opposition, and other papers have since appeared. An illustrated Chinese weekly made a good beginning in Shanghai, but un- TRANSLATIONS 429 fortunately it soon drifted into superstition, intolerance, and vulgarity. Attempts have been made to provide the Chinese with translations of noted European works, and among those -which have been produced may be mentioned "The Pilgrim's Progress," with illustrations, the various char- acters being in Chinese dress; Mr. Herbert Spencer's *' Education," the very first sentence in which is painfully misrendered; the "Adventures of Baron Munchausen," and others. In every case save one these efforts have been rejected by the Chinese on the ground of inferior style. The exception was a translation of -^sop's Fables, pub- lished in 1840 by Robert Thom as rendered into Chinese by an eminent native scholar. This work attracted much attention among the people generally ; so much so, that the officials took alarm and made strenuous efforts to suppress it. Recent years have witnessed the publica- tion in Chinese of "Vathek," in reference to which a literate of standing offered the following criticism : — ''The style in which this work is written is not so bad, but the subject-matter is of no account." The fact is, that to satisfy the taste of the educated Chinese reader the very first requisite is style. As has been seen in the case of the Liao Chai^ the Chinese will read almost anything, provided it is set in a faultless frame. They will not look at anything emanating from foreign sources in which this greatest desideratum has been neglected. The present age has seen the birth of no great original writer in any department of literature, nor the production of any great original work worthy to be smeared with cedar-oil for the delectation of posterity. It is customary after the death, sometimes during the 430 CHINESE LITERATURE life, of any leading statesman to publish a collection of his memorials to the throne, with possibly a few essays and some poems. Such have a brief siucis destime^ and are then used by binders for thickening the folded leaves of some masterpiece of antiquity. Successful candidates for the final degree usually print their winning essays, and sometimes their poems, chiefly for distribution among friends. Several diaries of Ministers to foreign countries and similar books have appeared in recent years, recording the astonishment of the writers at the extraordinary social customs which prevail among the barbarians. But nowadays a Chinaman who wishes to read a book does not sit down and write one. He is too much oppressed by the vast dimensions of his existing literature, and by the hopelessness of rivalling, and still more by the hopelessness of surpassing, those immortals who have gone before. It would be obviously unfair to describe the Chinese people as wanting in humour simply because they are tickled by jests which leave us comparatively unmoved. Few of our own most amusing stories will stand con- version into Chinese terms. The following are speci- mens of classical humour, being such as might be introduced into any serious biographical notice of the individuals concerned. Ch'un-yii K'un (4th cent. B.C.) was the wit already mentioned, who tried to entangle Mencius in his talk. On one occasion, when the Ch'u State was about to attack the Chi State, he was ordered by the Prince of Ch*i, who was his father-in-law, to proceed to the Chao State and ask that an army might be sent to their assistance ; to which end the Prince supplied him with 100 lbs. of silver and ten chariots as oflFerings WIT AND HUMOUR 431 to the ruler of Chao. At this Ch'un-yii laughed so immoderately that he snapped the lash of his cap ; and when the Prince asked him what was the joke, he said, "As I was coming along this morning, I saw a husband- man sacrificing a pig's foot and a single cup of wine ; after which he prayed, saying, ' O God, make my upper terraces fill baskets and my lower terraces fill carts; make my fields bloom with crops and my barns burst with grain ! ' And I could not help laughing at a man who offered so little and wanted so much." The Prince took the hint, and obtained the assistance he required. T'ao Ku (a.d. 902-970) was an eminent official whose name is popularly known in connection with the follow- ing repartee. Having ordered a newly-purchased wait- ing-maid to get some snow and make tea in honour of the Feast of Lanterns, he asked her, somewhat pom- pously, " Was that the custom in your former home ? " "Oh, no," the girl replied; "they were a rough lot. They just put up a gold-splashed awning, and had a little music and some old wine." Li Chia-ming (loth cent, a.d.) was a wit at the Court of the last ruler of the Pang dynasty. On one occasion the latter drew attention to some gathering clouds which appeared about to bring rain. " They may come," said Li Chia-ming, "but they will not venture to enter the city." "Why not?" asked the Prince. "Because," replied the wit, "the octroi is so high." Orders were thereupon issued that the duties should be reduced by one-half. On another occasion the Ppince was fishing with some of his courtiers, all of whom managed to catch something, whereas he himself, to his great chagrin, had not a single bite. Thereupon Li Chia-ming took a pen and wrote the following lines : — 432 CHINESE LITERATURE "'7» rapture in the warm spring' days to drop the tempting fly In the green pool where deep and still the darkling waters lie ; And ifthefisJus dare not touch the bait your Highness flings^ They know thai only dragons are a fitting sport for kings^ Liu Chi (nth cent, a.d.) was a youth who had gained some notoriety by his fondness for strange phraseology, which was much reprobated by the great Ou-yang Hsiu. When the latter was Grand Examiner, one of the candi- dates sent in a doggerel triplet as follows ; — " The universe is in labour^ A II things are produced^ And among them the Sage J' "This must be Liu Chi/' cried Ou-yang, and ran a red-ink pen through the composition, adding these two lines : — " The undergraduate jokes^ TJie examiner ploughs ^^ Later on, about the year 1060, Ou-yang was very much struck by the essay of a certain candidate, and placed him first on the list. When the names were read out, he found that the first man was Liu Chi, who had changed his name to Liu Yiin. Chang Hsiian-tsu was a wit of the Han dynasty. When he was only eight years old, some one laughed at him for having lost several teeth, and said, "What are those dog-holes in your mouth for ? " "They are there, replied Chang, " to let puppies like you run in and out Collections of wit and humour of the Joe Miller type are often to be seen in the hands of Chinese readers, and may be bought at any bookstall. Like many novels of the cheap and worthless class, not to be mentioned with the masterpieces of fiction described in this volume. THE HSIAO LIN KUANG CHI 433 these collections are largely unfit for translation. All literature in China is pure. Novels and stories are not classed as literature ; the authors have no desire to attach their names to such works, and the consequence is a great falling off from what may be regarded as the national standard. Even the Hung Lou Ming contains episodes which mar to a considerable extent the beauty of the whole. One excuse is that it is a novel of real life, and to omit, therefore, the ordinary frailties of mortals would be to produce an incomplete and inade- quate picture. The following are a few specimens of humorous anec- dotes taken from the Hsiao Lin Kuang Chi, a modern work in four small volumes, in which the stories are classified under twelve heads, such as Arts, Women, Priests : — A bridegroom noticing deep wrinkles on the face of his bride, asked her how old she was, to which she replied, "About forty-five or forty-six." "Your age is stated on the marriage contract," he rejoined, " as thirty- eight ; but I am sure you are older than that, and you may as well tell me the truth." " I am really fifty- four," answered the bride. The bridegroom, however, was not satisfied, and determined to set a trap for her. Accordingly he said, "Oh, by. the by, I must just go and cover up the salt jar, or the rats will eat every scrap of it." "Well, I never !" cried the bride, taken off her guard. " Here I've lived sixty-eight years, and I never before heard of rats stealing salt." A woman who was entertaining a paramour during the absence of her husband, was startled by hearing the latter knock at the house-door. She hurriedly bundled the man into a rice-sack, which she concealed in a 434 CHINESE LITERATURE corner of the room; but when her husband came in he caught sight of it, and asked in a stern voice, " What have you got in that sack ? " His wife was too terrified to answer ; and after an awkward pause a voice from the sack was heard to say, " Only rice." A scoundrel who had a deep grudge against a wealthy man, sought out a famous magician and asked for his help. "I can send demon soldiers and secretly cut him off," said the magician. "Yes, but his sons and grandsons would inherit," replied the other; "that won't do." " I can draw down fire from heaven," said the magician, "and burn his house and valuables." " Even then," answered the man, " his landed property would remain ; so that won't do." " Oh," cried the magician, "if your hate is so deep as all that, I have something precious here which, if you can persuade him to avail himself of it, will bring him and his to utter smash." He thereupon gave to his delighted client a tightly closed package, which, on being opened, was seen to contain a pen. "What spiritual power is there in this ? " asked the man. " Ah ! " sighed the magician, "you evidently do not know how many have been brought to ruin by the use of this little thing." A doctor who had mismanaged a case was seized by the family and tied up. In the night he managed to free himself, and escaped by swimming across a river. When he got home, he found his son, who had just begun to study medicine, and said to him, "Don't be in a hurry with your books ; the first and most im- portant thing is to learn to swim." The King of Purgatory sent his lictors to earth to bring back some skilful physician. "You must look THE HSIAO UN KUANG CHI 435 for one," said the King, '' at whose door there are no aggrieved spirits of disembodied patients." The lictors went off, but at the house of every doctor they visited there were crowds of wailing ghosts hanging about. At last they found a doctor at whose door there was only a single shade, and cried out, "This man is evidently the skilful one we are in search of." On inquiry, how- ever, they discovered that he had only started practice the day before. A general was hard pressed in battle and on the point of giving way, when suddenly a spirit soldier came to his rescue and enabled him to win a great victory. Prostrating himself on the ground, he asked the spirit's name. " I am the God of the Target," re- plied the spirit. " And how have I merited your god- ship's kind assistance ? " inquired the general. " I am grateful to you," answered the spirit, " because in your days of practice you never once hit me." A portrait-painter, who was doing very little business, was advised by a friend to paint a picture of himself and his wife, and to hang it out in the street as an advertise- ment. This he did, and shortly afterwards his father-in- law came along. Gazing at the picture for some time, the latter at length asked, " Who is that woman ? " " Why, that is your daughter," replied the artist. " What- ever is she doing," again inquired her father, "sitting there with that stranger ? " A man who had been condemned to wear the cangue^ or wooden collar, was seen by some of his friends. "What have you been doing," they asked, "to deserve this?" "Oh, nothing," he replied; "I only picked up an old piece of rope." "And are you to be punished thus severely," they said, "for merely picking up an 436 CHINESE LITERATURE end of rope?" "Well," answered the man, "the fact is that there was a bullock tied to the other end." . A man asked a friend to stay and have tea. Un- fortunately there was no tea in • the house, so a servant was sent to borrow some. Before the latter had re- turned the water was already boiling, and it became necessary to pour in more cold water. This happened several times, and at length the boiler was overflowing but no tea had come. Then the man's wife said to her husband, "As we don't seem likely to get any tea, you bad better oflFer your friend a bath ! " A monkey, brought after death before the King of Purgatory, begged to be reborn on earth as a man. " In that case," said the King, " all the hairs must be plucked out of your body," and he ordered the attendant demons to pull them out forthwith. At the very first hair, however, the monkey screeched out, and said he could not bear the pain. " You brute!" roared the King; " how are you to become a man if you cannot even part with a single hair ? " A braggart chess-player played three games with a stranger and lost them all. Next day a friend asked him how he had come off. " Oh," said he, " I didn't win the first game, and my opponent didn't lose the second. As for the third, I wanted to draw it, but he wouldn't agree." The barest sketch of Chinese literature would hardly be complete without some allusion to its proverbs and maxims. These are not only to be found largely scat- tered throughout every branch of writing, classical and popular, but may also be studied in collections, generally under a metrical form. Thus the Ming Hsien Chi, to PROVERBS 437 take one example, which can be purchased anywhere for about a penny, consists of thirty pages of proverbs and the hke, arranged in antithetical couplets of five, six, and seven characters to each line. Children are made to learn these by heart, and ordinary grown-up China- men may be almost said to think in proverbs. There can be no doubt that to the foreigner a large store of proverbs, committed to memory and judiciously intro- duced, are a great aid to successful conversation. These are a few taken from an inexhaustible supply, omitting to a great extent such as find a ready equivalent in English : — Deal with the faults of others as gently as with your own. By many words wit is exhausted. If you bow at all, bow low. If you take an ox, you must give a horse. A man thinks he knows, but a woman knows better. Words whispered on earth sound like thunder in heaven. If fortune smiles — who doesn't ? If fortune doesn't — who does ? Moneyed men are always listened to. Nature is better than a middling doctor. Stay at home and reverence your parents ; why travel afar to worship the gods ? A bottle-nosed man may be a teetotaller, but no one will think so. It is easier to catch a tiger than to ask a favour. With money you can move the gods ; without it, you can't move a man. Bend your head if the eaves are low. Oblige, and you will be obliged. 438 CHINESE LITERATURE Don't put two saddles on one horse. Armies are maintained for years, to be used on a single day. In misfortune, gold is dull ; in happiness, iron is bright. More trees are upright than men. If you fear that people will know, don't do it. Long visits bring short compliments. If you are upright and without guile, what god need you pray to for pardon ? Some study shows the need for more. One kind word will keep you warm for three winters. The highest towers begin from the ground. No needle is sharp at both ends. Straight trees are felled first. No image-maker worships the gods. He knows what stuff they are made of. Half an orange tastes as sweet as a whole one. We love our own compositions, but other men's wives. Free sitters at the play always grumble most. It is not the wine which makes a man drunk ; it is the man himself. Better a dog in peace than a man in war. Every one gives a shove to the tumbling wall. Sweep the snow from your own doorstep. He who rides a tiger cannot dismount. Politeness before force. One dog barks at something, and the rest bark at him. You can't clap hands with one palm. Draw your bow, but don't shoot. One more good man on earth is better than an extra angel in heaven. Gold is tested by fire ; man, by gold. PROVERBS 439 Those who have not tasted the bitterest of life's bitters can never appreciate the sweetest of life's sweets. Money makes a blind man see. Man is God upon a small scale. God is man upon a large scale. A near neighbour is better than a distant relation. Without error there could be no such thing as truth. .• 29 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE What foreign students have achieved in the department of Chinese literature from the sixteenth century down to quite recent times is well exhibited in the three large volumes which form the Bibliotheca Sifttatj or Dictionnatre BibHographique des Outrages r^latifs d P Em- pire chinois, by Henri Cordier: Paris, Ernest Leroux, 1878; with Supplement, 1895. '^^>s work is carried out with a fulness and accu- racy which leave nothing to be desired, and is essential to all syste- matic workers in the Chinese field. By far the most important of all books mentioned in the above collection is a complete translation of the Confucian Canon by the late Dr. James Legge of Aberdeen, under the general title of The Chinese Classics, The publication of this work, which forms the greatest existing monument of Anglo-Chinese scholarship, extended from 1 86 1 to 1885. The Cursus Uteratura Sinicce^ by P. Zottoli, S.J., Shanghai, 1879- 1882, is an extensive series of translations into Latin from all branches of Chinese literature, and is designed especially for the use of Roman Catholic missionaries {nethmissionariis accommod^Uus), Another very important work, now rapidly approaching completion, is a translation by Professor £. Chavannes, College de France, of the famous history described in Book II. chap, iii., under the title oi Les Mimoires Hisioriques de Se-ma T^ien^ the first volume of which is dated Paris, 1895. Notes on Chinese Uteraiure^ by A. Wylie, Shanghai, 1867, contains descriptive notices of about 2000 separate Chinese works, arranged imder Classics, History, Philosophy, and Belles Lettres, as in the Imperial Catalogue (see p. 387). Considering the date at which it was written, this book is entitled to rank among the highest efforts of the kind. It is still of the utmost value to the student, though in need of careful revision. 441 442 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE The following Catalogues of Chinese libraries in Europe have been published in recent years : — Catalogue of Chinese Printed Books^ Manuscripts^ and Drawings in the Library of the British Museum, By R. K. Douglas, 1877. Catalogue of the Chinese Translation of the Buddhist Tripifaka. By Bunyio Nanjio, 1883. Catalogue of the Chinese Books and Manuscripts in the Library of Lord Crawford^ Haigh Hall^ Wigan, By J. P. Edmond, 1895. Catalogue of the Chinese and Manchu Books in the Library of the University of Cambridge, By H. A. Giles, 1898. Catalogue des Livres Chinois, Coriens^ faponais^ etc,^ in the Biblio- th^que Nationale. By Maurice Courant, Paris, 1900. (Fasc. i. pp. vii., 148, has already appeared.) The chief periodicals especially devoted to studies in Chinese litera- ture are as follows : — The Chinese Repository^ published monthly at Canton from May 1832 to December 185 1. The Journal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society^ published annually at Shanghai from 1858 to 1884, and since that date issued in fascicules at irregular intervals during each year. The China Review^ published every two months at Hong-Kong from June 1872 to the present date. There is also the Chinese Recorder^ which has existed since 1868, and is now published every two months at Shanghai. This is, strictly speaking, a missionary journal, but it often contains valuable papers on Chinese literature and cognate subjects. VaridUs Sinologiques is the title of a series of monographs on various Chinese topics, written and published at irregular intervals by the Jesuit Fathers at Shanghai since 1892, and distinguished by the erudition and accuracy of all its contributors. INDEX ANiCSTHBTICS, 278 Analects, 33-35 Art of War, 43, 44 Bamboo Annals, 137 Barbarians, 400, 418^ 428 Bashpa, 247 Beggar King, 291 Bibliography, 441 Biographies of Eminent Women, 92 B6dhidharma, 115 Book of Changes, 9, 21-23 Book of History, 7, 9, 10, 12 Book of Odes, 12-21, 256 Book of Rewards and Punishments, 418 Book of Rites, 23, 24, 41 Buddhism, 110-116, 403, 419 Catalogue of the Imperial Library, 387, 418 Chan Kuo Tsf^ 92 Chang Chi, 175, 176 Chang Chih-ho, 191 Chang HsUan-tsu, 432 Chang Kuo- pin, 274 Chang Pi, 209 Chang T*ing>yO, 404 Chang Ch'ien, 158 Chao Ch'i, 36 Chao I, 415 Chao Lt-hua, 333 Chao Pin<^, 247 Chao Ts*ai.chi, 333 CrfAO Ts*o, 80 CrfftN Hao-tzC, 413 Ch'^n Hung-mou, 404 Ch £n Lin, 122 Cn'feN P'£ng-nien, 238 CHftN T'ao, 204 Cn'feN TuAN, 233 Ch' fiN TzO-ANG, 147, 148 Ch^ng Ch'iao, 228 Ch£ng Hsu an, 23, 95 Ch*£ng Hao, 220, 236 Ch'^ng I, 220 Chi Hsi, 127 Chi Chun-hsiang, 269 Chi Yun, 238 Chia I, 54, 97 Chia Yu, 48 Ch*ien Lung, 14, 228, 252, 387, 417 Chin Ku Cfii Kuan, 322 Ch'in Kuei, 261 CKin F^ing Mei, 309 thing Hua Yuan, 316-322 Chcu Li, 24 Chou Tun-i, 219 Cfioujen Chuan, 418 Chu Hsi, 228-231 Chu-ko Liang, 277 Chu Shih, 404 Chu Yung-shun, 391 Ch Yuan, 50-53 Chuang TzO, 60-68 CKun CKiu, 25 Ch'un-yli K'un, 430 443 444 INDEX Chung' Vun^f 41 Classic of Filial Piety, 48 Gympleie collection of the poetiy of the Tang dynasty, 143 G>ncordances, 585, 386 CoHFUCius, 7, 12, 13, 22, 24, 25, 28, 32-35. 41. 48 Cookery-book, 409 Criminal cases of Lan Ting-yflan, 395 DiCTIOMARIBS, 109, 238, 385 Doctrine of the Mean, 41 Drama, 256-262, 325 Dream of the Red Chamber, 355 ENCYCLOPiCDIAS, 239, 24O, 386, 4I JSrA Tou Meif 324 Erk Yay 44, 137 European works in Chinese, 429 Fa Hsien, 111-114 Fa Yen^ 93 Family maxims, 392 Family sayings of Confucius, 48 Fan Yeh, 138 Fang Hsiao-ju, 294-296 Fang Shu-shao, 333, 334 Fang Wem, 417 Faig Yen, 94 FhtgShhty 310 F£ng Tao, 210 First Emperor, 48, 77-79, 107, 108 Five Classics, 7-31 Flowery Ball, The, 264-268 Foreigners. See Barbarians Four Books, 32-42 Fu Hsi, 21 ^^ I, 134 Fu Ml, 128 Gardening, 413 Gobharana, no Great Learning, 41 Han Fei TzC, 70-72 Han Wen-Kong, 160 Han Yu, 160-163, 196-203, 355 Historical Record, 102 History, 102 History of the Ming Dynasty, 404 .History of the Mongol Dynasty, 291 Ho Shang Knng, 95 Hsi Hsiang Chi^ 273, 276 Hsi Kang, 126 Hsi Yu Cki, 281-287, 310 Hsi Yuan Lu^ 241-243 Hsiang Hsiu, 61, 127 Hsiao Cking, 48 Hsiao Lin Kuang Chi, 433-43^ Hsiao Tsang Shan Fang CXih Tu, 405 Hsiao Tung, 139 Hsiao Yen, 133 Hsiao Ytt, 134 HsiBH Chin, 329-331 Hsieh Su-su, 332 Hsi EH TAO-HftNG, 133 Hsi) AN-CHfiN, 178 PIsO HsiBH, 305-307 Hsu Kan, i 19 Hsu Kuang-ch'i, 308 HsO SHftN, 109 HsUan Tsang, 115, 281, 284-287 HsOn Hsu, 137 HsuN TzO, 47 Hua, Dr., 278-280 HuAi-NAN T2O, 72-74 HuANG-ru Mi, 137 Huang Ch'ing Ching Chieh, 418 Huang T'ing-chibn, 227, 228, 235, 236 Humour, Classical, 430 Hung Chueh-fan, 236 J/tingLou Mhtg, 355, 433 Hung Mai, 83, 94 / Ching, 21 /Zi,2S INDEX 445 Jesuit Fathers, 308 Jih Chik Lu, 391 Joining the Shirt, 274 Joarnalism, 428 Kan Yittg J^ien, Al% K'ang Hsi, 385 iCangHsi TzU Tien, 385 Kao Chij-nien, 237 Kao Tsft-CH'ftNG, 326 Kao Tzfi, 37-39 Kashiapmadanga, no Ku Chiang, 391 Ku-LiANG, 29, 30 Ku Yen-wu, 391 Kuan Tzu, 44 Kuang Yufh 238 Kublai Khan, 247> 248 Kumarajiva, 114 KuNG-YANG, 29-31 K*UNG An-kuo, 80 K'uNO Chi, 36, 41 K'uNO Jung, 120 Kung Tao-fu, 258 K'uNO YiNG-TA, 190 KUO HSIANG, 61, 137 Kuo Fo, 45» »38 ^tut Yu, 26 LAN Ting-yOan, 392 Lao Tan, 24 Lao TzO, 56-60' Lexicography, 190 Li Chi, 23. 2$ Li Chia-ming, 431 1. 1 Fang, 239, 240 Li Ho, 175 Li Hua, 203, 204 JLi Ling, 81-89 £1 Po, 1 51- 1 56 (Li Po-yao, 190 U* Sao, 51 Li ShA, 177 Li Shih-chAn, 307 Li Ss<J, 78, 79 Li Yang-ping, 190, 191 Li Ying, 120 Liofi Ckai Chik /, 33^355 Luh Kuo Ckuan, 3x0-315 LiEH TztJ, 68-70 Lin Hsi-chung, 60, 83, 165 Little Learning, 230 Liu An, 72 Liu Crfft, 99-101 Liu CHftNG, 122 Liu Chi, 252, 432 Liu HfiNG, 98 Liu Hsiang, 92, 97 Liu Hsin, 92 Liu Hstt, 212, 217 Liu Ling, 125, 126 Liu Shu Ku, 239 Liu Tsung-yuan, 160, 191-196 Liu Yin, 251, 252 Liu Yun, 432 LO KUAN-CHUNG, 277 LU WftN-SHU, 89-92 LU YiJAN-LANG, 189 LO Pu-WEi, 48 Lu Shih CHun CXiu, 48 Lun Hing, 94 Lun Yu, 32-35 Ma Jung, 23, 94 Ma Tuan-lin, 240 Ma TzO-jan, 177 Materia Medica, 307 Mathematicians, Biographies of, \i% Matteo Ricci, 308, 418 Medical Jurisprudence, 240-243 Mbi SHfiNG, 97 Mencius, 25, 35-40 MfeNO Hao-jan, 149 M^g Tien, 80 Ming Chi Kang Mu, 404 1 446 INDEX MingHsien Chit 436 Ming Huang, Emperor, 257 " Mirror of Flowers," 413 Mirror of History, 217 Mongol Plays, 268 Mo Ti, 37, 40, 41 Afu Tien Tsa Chuan^ 49 Nbaring the Standard, 44, 45 New History of the Tang Dynasty, 217 Nine Old Gentlemen of Hsiang-shan, 164 Novel, The Chinese, 276 0-£rh-t*ai, 404 Odes. See Book of Odes Orphan of the Chao Family, 269 Ou-YANG Hsiu, 212-216, 217, 222, 43a Pan, the Lady, loi, 393 Pan Chao, loS Pan Ku, 108 Pan Piao, 108 Pao Chao, 132 Pear-Garden, The, 257 rti PPM Yiin Fu, 385 Fi Pa Chi, 325-328 "Picking up Gold," 389 Fien TsU LH Fitn, 386 Ping Fa, Al Fing Shan Lhtg Yen, 323, 324 Po Chu-i, 163-175 Poetesses, loi, 332, 333 Poetry, 143-U6 Printing, Invention of, 209 Proverbs and Maxims, 437-439 FU SUNG-LING, 338-355 Record of the Buddhistic Kingdoms, 111-114 Record of Travels in the West, 281- 287 Rites of the Chou dynasty, 24 Roman Catholic missionaries, 401 Sacred Edict, 386 San Kuo Chih Yen /, 277-280, 3x0 San TmH Ching, 89, 250, 251 Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, 61, 125 Seven Scholars of the Chien-An Period, 119] Shan T'ao, 128 Shanghai A'ews, 428 Shao Yung, 234 Sh/n Pao, 428 Shen Su, 299 ShAn Yo, 138 Shih Chitig, 12 Shih Lei Fu, 239 Shu Ching, 7 Shih Nai-an, 280 Shin Hu Chuan, 280, 281, 310 Shun, Emperor, 7, 8 Shtw fVM, 109 Six Idlers of the Bamboo Grove, 152 Six Scripts, 239 Six Traitorous Ministers of the Ming dynasty, 297, 299 Slaying a Son at the Yamen Gate, 271-273 Spring and Autumn Annak, 25-31 SsO-k'ungT'u, 179-188 SsO-MA Ch*ien, 57, 102-108 Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju, 97 SsO-MA KUANG, 217-219 Story of the Guitar, 325 Story of the Three Kingdoms, 27>- 280 Story of the Western Pavilion, 273 ''Strange Stories," 33^355 Su Cut, 227 Su Shih, 83, 222-227 INDEX 447 Su Tai, 77 Su Tung-po, i6i, 222 Su Wu, 82, 83 Sun Shu-jan, 137 Sun TzO, 43, 44 Sung Ch'i, 212, 2i6» 238 Sung Chih-w£n, 148, 149 Sung Lien, 291-293 Sung Tz Q, 241 Sung Yi), 53 SuDgYun, 115 Ta Hsueh^ 4I Tax, the Elder, 23 — Ihe Younger, 23 Tai Tung, 238, 239 Tax Hsuan Ching, 93 Tat Fing Kuang Chi, 240 Tai J^ing Yii Lan^ 239, 418 Tan Ming-lun, 342 T*AN KuNG, 45-47 T*ang the Completer, 9 Taoism, 56-74, 4x9 Too Ti Ching, 56-i50b 227 T*AO Ch'ibn, 128-132 T ao Ku, 431 T ao Yuan-ming, 128 Ten Courts of Purgatory, 420 Three Character Classic, 250, 251 Three Suspicions, The, 262, 263 Topography of Kuangtung, 418 Tsai Ch'ien, 418 Ts*Ai Yung, 95 Ts ang Chieh, 6 Ts'ao Chih, 123, 124 Ts'ao Ts ao, 120, 123, 277, 278-280 TsiN Ts an, 159 Tseng Ts'an, 41, 48 Tso Chuarty 8, 26-29, 256 Ts*ui Hao, 150^ 151 TSUNG CH'iN, 301-303 Tu Ch'in-niang, 178 Tu Fu, 156-158 Tu Yu, 191, 240 Tu Shu Chi CXhtg 386 Tung-fang So, 54, 97 Tung Chien, 217 Tung Chien Kang Mu, 228 Tung Chien KangMu San Pien, 404 Tung Tien, 191, 240 Twenty-four Dynastic Histories, 103 Twice Flowering Plum-trees, 324 Wall Literature, 425, 426 Wang An-shih, 217, 220-222, 235 Wang Chi, 135 Wang Chieh, 415 Wang Chien, 159 Wang CrfuNG, 94 Wang Jung, 128 Wang Po, 146, 147 Wang Pu-ch'ing, 229 Wang Shih-cheng, 309 Wang Shih-fu, 273 Wang Su, 48 Wang Tao-K'un, 303-305 Wang Ts*an, 121 Wang Tzu>ch*iao, 151 Wang Wei, 149, 150 Wang Ying-lin, 250 Wei Ch^ng, 189 Win Hsien Tung ITao, 240 IVht Hsuan, 140 WfeN T'ikn-hsiang, 248-250 wan Tzu, 44 wan Wang, 9, 21 Wit and Humour, 432 Women, Biographies of, 92 Women as Writers, 417 Women, Proper Training of, 393 Women's Degrees, 316 Wu Shu, 239 Wu Tzii, 44 Wu Wang, 10, 21 Yang Chi-sh^ng, 297, 301 Yang Chu, 37, 40 Yang Hsiung, 93 448 INDEX Yang I, 234 Yang Kuei-fei, 168-175 Yang Ti, 136 Yao, Emperor, 7, 8 Yeh Shxh, 237 Yen Shih-ku, 190 YiNG Yang, 122 Yo Fei, 261 Yii, The Great, 8, 12, 26 Yii Chiao Li, 309 Yu Li CHao Chuan, 420 YOan Chi, 127 Yiian Ckien Lei Han, 386 Yuan CKu Hsuan Tsa Chi, 268 YiJAN Hsxbn, 127 Yuan Mbx, 405 YUan Shao, 95 Yuan YO, 122 Yuan YCan, 417 Yung Chang, 387 Yung Lo, 296 YungLo Ta Tien, 296 THE END OCT ? 5 l^^*' SPENCER'S SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY. l2inor dotiv $2,00 per volume. NEW EDITION OF First Principles. By Herbert Spencer. New and revised (sixth) edition of the first volume of the author's Synthetic Philosophy. This fundamental and most important work has been changed in substance and in form to a considerable extent, and largely rewritten and wholly reset It is now forty years since the author b^an the " First Principles/' and its presentation in this definitive form, with the author's last revisions, is an event of peculiar interest and conse- quence. While escperience has not caused him to recede from the gen- eral principles set forth, he has made some important changes in the sub- stance and form. His amendments of matter and manner are now finaL The contents of the several volumes of the series are as follows : z. First Principles. I. The Unknowable. II. The Knowable. a. The Principles of Biology. Vol. i. I. The Data of Biology. II. The Inductions of Biology. III. The Evolution of Life. 3. The Principles of Biology. Vol. 2. IV. Morphological Devel- opment. V. Physiological Development. VI. Laws of Mul- tiplication. 4. The Principles of Psychology. Vol. i. I. The Data of Psychology. II. The Inductions of Psychology. III. General Synthesis. IV. Special Synthesis. V. Physical Synthesis. 5. The Principles of Psychology. Vol. 2. VI. Special Analysis. VII. General Analysis. VIII. Congruities. Ix. Corollanes. 6. The Principles of Sociology. Vol. i. I. The Data of Soci- ology. II. The Inductions of Sociology. III. The Domestic Relations. 7. The Principles of Sociology. Vol. 2. IV. Ceremonial Insti- tutions. V. Political Institutions. 8. The Principles of Sociology. Vol. 3. VI. Ecclesiastical In- stitutions. VII. Professional Institutions. VIII. Industrial Institutions. 9. The Principles of Ethics. Vol. i. I. The Data of Ethics. II. The Inductions of Ethics. III. The Ethics of Individual Life. xa The Principles of Ethics. Vol. 2. IV. The Ethics of Social Life : Justice. V. The Ethics of Social Life : Negative Benefi- cence. VI. The Ethics of Social Life : Positive Beneficence. D. APPLE TON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. ^THE BOOK OF THE YEAR^ and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley. By his Son, Leonard Huxley. In two volumes. Illustrated. 8vo. Cloth, I5.CX) net. "This very complete revelation of the character and work of a man who miut be regarded as one of the forces which gave character to the nineteenth century will be welcomed by a fzr wider circle of readers than that which is interested in Huxley's strictly scientific researches. . . . These two richly interesting volumes are sure to be widely read." — London Times, **\t * goes without saying ' what precious freight was carried by Huxley's letters. . . . These two delightful volumes." — London Chronicle. ** Huxley's Ufe was so full, so active, so many-sided, in touch with such a number of interesting people, that thb work appeals to all sorts and conditions of men. ... An admirably written biography . ' ' — London Standard, ** His letters are a self-revelation of the man, his work, his ambitions, his trials, his views of religion, his philosophy, his public activity and domestic happiness. . . . Whoso reads these volumes will feel that he knows better a man worth knowing, and the number who will read them will be great." — London Telegraph, ** Huxley's career makes a wonderfiil story." — London Mail. ** Mr. Leonard Huxley has given the world many extremely valuable and interesting letters, all characteristic, and he has con- nected them by a well-written consecutive narrative which is sufficient to weave them together." — London News, D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. New Edition op Pbopessor Huxley*s Essays. Collected Essays. By Thomas H. Huxley. New complete edition, with revisions, the Essays being grouped according to general subject. In nine volumes, a new Introduction accom- panying each volume. i2mo. Cloth, ^1.25 I per volume. I Vol. I. Methods and Results. II. Darwiniana. III. Science and Education. IV. Science and Hebrew Tradition. V. Science and Christian Tradition. I VI. Hume. VII. Man's Place in Nature. VIII. piscourses, Biological and Geolos:ical. IX. Evolution and Ethics, and Other Essays. ** Mr. Huxley has covered a vast variety of topics during the last quarter of a century. It gives one an agreeable surprise to look over the tables of contents and note the immense territory which he has explored. To read these books carefully and studiously b to become thoroughly acquainted with the most advanced thought on a large number of topics." — New T^rk Herald. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. »%M DR EGGLESTOPre GREAT HISTORY* .The Transit of CiTilization From England to America in the Seventeenth Century. By Edward Egglestoit. Uniform with *'The Beginners of a Nation." Small 8vo» gilt top, uncut, cloth, f 1.50. All who have read ** The Beginners of a Nation " will wel- come this new volume by Mr. Eggleston. Though it is an independent work, it is also the second in the series upon which the author has long been engaged. Its aim is to reveal to the reader the mind of the seventeenth century man — ^to show where he stood in the intellectual development of the race ; what he knew of science, and how his character was determined by his limi- tations ; his bondage to tradidon, his credulity, and the unreality of the world in which he lived, with its witches, its omnipresent devil, its signaturism in plants and animals to guide medical practice, its belief in the virtue of sympathedc powder, weapon ointment, and the fabulous bezoar stone. The standards of con- duct of the age are shown, the educadonal aims and the evolu- don of a school system unthought of then. The scope of the work may best be explained by the ddes of the chapters, which are : 1 . Medical Outfit of the Early Colonists. 2. Medical Nodons at the Period of Settlement. 3. Folk Speech and Mother English. 4. Weights and Measures of Conduct. 5. The Tradidon of Education. 6. Landholding in the Early Colonies. This is no ordinary historical work, but a startling view of life before science. No such account has ever been given of the colonists, and no such view exists of England in the seventeenth century. It may be read in entire independence of any other volume of the series. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. A STANDARD REFERENCE WORK. The Universal Cyclopaedia. This is really a new Cyclopsedia with an old and an honored reputation. Every possible care has been taken in its preparation to secure full- ness, accuracy of statement, and freedom from typographical error, as well as first-class workman- ship in the mechanical make-up of the volumes. A conscientious effort has been made by both edi- tors and contributors to turn to good account the ripest scholarship of the country and the results of the latest discovery and research, and thus to produce a really standard Cyclopaedia of general knowledge. Every article was specially prepared for this edition, and the publishers believe that the many gratifying words of commendation which have come to them fi-om prominent educators and scholars will be fully confirmed by the general public on a careful, critical examination. Complete in 12 extra royal octavo volumes, averaging 625 pages each. FuUy illustrated with Maps, Plans, Engravings, and handsomely executed colored Plates. Sold only by subscription. Prospectus, with pamphlet of Specimen Pages, Maps, and Illustrations, as well as full informa- tion respecting special terms of credit, mailed free on request. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
Freedom Vol:42 #17
Freedom
1981-01-01T00:00:00Z
lao,tao,tzu,anarchist,libertarian,ching,anarchists,confucius,waley,taoism,lao tzu,letters letters,working class,northern ireland,chuang tzu,whitechapel high,text tao,peace movement,libertarian workers,ideas expressed
From the collections of the Sparrows' Nest Library and Archive. Freedom Vol:42 #17 Published 22 Aug 1981. Published by Freedom. Magazine/Journal/Paper/etc Section Public Archive F/Freedom English See also 6080 for information on Volume 42. Originally at http://www.thesparrowsnest.org.uk/collections/public_archive/6868.pdf
Full text of "Freedom Vol:42 #17" Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "Freedom Vol:42 #17" See other formats TRHH5ERHAPPY r*lr> DOODLE BEFORE we are accused of racism, or nationalism or any such non-anarchist attitude, may we ask readers to read the following paragraph from last Sunday’s Observer: •ven the ^ eW rvvever, e t u 0Ug ht there ^ Times t0 be said btbesomethmS #ye t0 ‘giving » d presi- onel Oadbaft, % hadn0 lt Reagan cadent Support for U among bis tntr?s elector. e He Thursday when he ittve on Thntsa^ mander .in- >ntied his , ^ the air* net's cap »^Station 60 ■aft earner Cons ^ C aUfor-, viles off ‘a demonstration ia to watch l4 jets. Tie »f fire-power hyheer in g cru « atertold th kee Doodle l it had bee ke t friend and too) . display witn sent <0 ed the enenies of ya and tn sdoin. . to «o ahead ■he decision to J■ h the naV , a J t 4as taken hv ^Libyan coat . el{ at a President » v Connell itional been J m iate The ‘message’ sent to Libya by the United States Airforce was the shooting down of two Libyan planes in the Medi¬ terranean Gulf of Sirte, under circum¬ stances which look very like provo¬ cation — by the Americans, carrying out naval manoeuvres in the Gulf. For eight years now, Libya’s national¬ ist, pan-Islamic leader, Colonel Qadhafi, has been trying to establish Libyan sovereignty over territorial waters ex¬ tending right across the Gulf of Sirte and exceeding by far the normal boun¬ daries of agreed ‘territorial sea’ and ‘exclusive economic zone’. Qadhafi, incidentally, is expansionist on land as well as sea, seeking to estab¬ lish a pan-Islamic bloc, if not empire, in the extensive but impoverished lands to the south of Libya — an ambition viewed with some concern by the central African states whose boundaries he would then reach (although he was very friendly with President Amin of Uganda). Nor is he popular among his fellow Arab leaders, among whom Sadat has referred to him as a ‘madman’. One reason for this could be that he is given to policies like defending the Gulf, ‘even if it meant war with the United States or a Third World War’! So much for the little madman. What about the big one? While President Reagan wants to show off his muscles bashing little Libya (for there seems to be evidence that the Gulf incident was planned at the highest level), could it be that he really wants to stir up conflict around the periphery of Europe in order to bring more pressure on those European leaders reluctant to take up the US offer of neutron bombs? These weapons, with their ‘limited’ use as ‘tactical’ weapons in the ‘theatres of war’ — oh, what a lovely drama — not only threaten total destruction in those theatres — European, USA for the use of — but also make the idea of nuclear war more acceptable because of their so- called ‘limited’ use, on military targets. It does not seem to occur to bold Ronnie and his advisers that, were the terrible Russians defeated in the theatres of war chosen by Reagan, they would not hesitate to launch the big ones against the USA itself, at whatever cost in retaliation. Someone should tell Reagan that in real life the good guys don’t always win. Can’t some kindly producer in Hollywood offer him a last role as an aging gunslinger, so that he can live out his fantasies — harmlessly? FREEDOM FOR the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall hundreds of journalists are sending back reports about the ‘divided city’. But the division that matters now is less be¬ tween East and West than between an au¬ thoritarian state, its money, its police, its violence, and a generation which has re¬ jected its values and is fighting against in¬ justices to create a better alternative for themselves. The Berlin squatters number over 2,000 living in about 160 houses concen¬ trated in the Kreuzberg area; Berlin’s East End, strung out along the wall. A double front line, where the police work together with US Army. The housing policies of the City Senate have done more to wreck Kreuzberg socially and physically than all the bombing, street¬ fighting and wall-building it had exper¬ ienced. Houses are modernised so the landlords can triple the rent, are razed to be replaced by tower blocks where people live like battery hens, are left standing empty when it suits the specu¬ lators while 10,000 people in Berlin are still looking for decent accomodation at a reasonable price. The Berliners have had enough. Only a minority is prepared to squat, to live a political gesture, because the risks are big. Unlike in England, there is no law at all against the abuse of property; entering an empty house is a criminal act, and living as a group in one is ‘forming a criminal organisation’ in the courts’ hard-line read¬ ing of paragraph 129 of the German con¬ stitution. But it is hard to find a Berliner on the streets who does not sympathise with that minority. Which is why promi¬ nent individuals — professors at the Free University, priests etc — and organisations like the unions, the Church, Young Democrats, the Students’ Union and others support the movement; by staging sleep-ins in threatened houses, by helping with publicity, by giving money for court expenses and the day-to-day costs of re¬ novating and running the houses. Some houses are ‘sponsored’ by outside groups. But the movement is, obviously, not just about housing policy; it attacks the whole social and political and economic system. The State and the right-wing press, which in Germany is much more powerful than here (80% of the circula¬ tion is in the hands of one man, Axel Springer) are attempting to isolate the movement and deprive it of popular support by calling the demos and other actions ‘terrorism’, by labelling the pro¬ testors hooligans, terrorists, even fascists. The police use agents provacateurs to create conflicts and incite violent action. So when the squatters called an emer¬ gency meeting to discuss the Senate’s announcement that 9 or 10 houses were to be emptied in the 4 weeks from the 20th August, it was clear that a new tac¬ tic was necessary. Previously the only announcement of such a measure was the arrival of 500-1000 officers of law breaking their way into the house at 4 in the morning. Some wanted terrorist action along Rote Armee Fraktion lines, but for most it was clear that the way forward lies not in being reduced to a few out-and-out activists, but in mobil¬ ising protestors in their thousands. Pre¬ vious demos in Berlin have had up to 15,000 people, but the only reaction was in the form of truncheons and tear-gas. It was decided to hold a festival ;‘TUWAT’, in English; ‘Do something’. The TUWAT leaflet has been translated into every European language and must reach every organisation, political and cultural, every group and every individual who is engaged in protest of any sort against the system, who is fighting for an alternative or simply dissatisfied with what is. Regardless of what they are pro¬ testing for , because all are protesting against the same set-up. The German au¬ thorities have over-reacted as usual and banned it totally. But it can’t be stopped now by confiscating leaflets, arresting people, banning demos, concerts, etc, because it is not a programme of events, it is a call which has gone out to all pro¬ testors. You go to Kreuzberg and meet the other tens of thousands, and after that no-one knows. The only certainty is that it won’t be a quiet Autumn in Berlin. TO GET TO BERLIN: The cheapest flights if you’re rich enough are with Laker (Gatwick). Prins Ferries sail to Hamburg from Harwich for about £25 (less for ISIC holders), hitching from Hamburg’s good and takes 4-5 hours max. There’s Transalpine too, and hitching all the way will be relatively easy because thousands of people — the kind who give lifts — will be heading that way. You don’t need any special visas or anything but I advise you not to try smuggling any¬ thing, especially now! FREEDOM 3 Peace March 1981 ON Hiroshima day — and just after Mitterand held another nuclear weapons test — Peace March 81 entered Paris. The march, whose main call was for a nuclear- free Europe, was originated by the Nor¬ wegian women’s peace movement and had left Copenhagen on Midsummer’s day. With a core of about 120, who had marched the whole way, and several thousand supporters — mainly from Scandinavia — we swept joyously through Paris, led by Japanese Buddhist monks and carried along by the raucous Fall Out Marching Band’s music. People waved and shouted support from the streets and bars and for the first time in my life someone came up to me on a demo and gave me money to buy food with — about £3.00! The police kept out of sight (but were ready in coaches in the side streets) and the march itself directed traffic. Despite the march’s clear popularity with Parisians, there was no support from any of the left parties or unions, or from French peace groups. In part this was due to poor organisation — there had never really been a French support group, so there was no publicity around Paris — and partly for political reasons. With the Socialists and Commu¬ nists both committed to an expansion of French nuclear weaponry, disarmament is a touchy issue for the left. A comrade from the Paris anarchist ‘Radio Gulliver’ free radio station, who was reporting on the march, said that the anarchists were ignoring the event because the demands were too wishy-washy and did not con¬ front militarism as such. Throughout the march, it seems that the organisers had been very defensive about the politics of disarmament. In Brussels they had tried to stop partici¬ pants joining an anti-Nato demonstra¬ tion, and had banned all political slogans and banners. Whilst there was a genuine concern that in Germany the local Communist party — the DKP — might try to swamp the march with their own partisan views, this led to considerable stifling of various dissident viewpoints on politics or on organisation. The pre¬ appointed March Council dominated all decision-making and saw the meetings of all marchers as ‘advisory’. For many of the long-distance marchers therefore, the arrival in Paris couldn’t have come soon enough! After brilliant sunshine the march ended in pouring rain. I heard only one speaker — E P Thompson, who roundly condemned Mitterand’s resumption of nuclear testing and said he hoped future peace marches would be able to take place across the Iron Curtain as a start in building a European-wide peace move¬ ment. An East-West peace movement would be difficult as ultimately or immediately it would have to challenge the Soviet ruling bureaucracy. At the moment the old men of the Kremlin are reacting to the Western peace movement with sympathy — Brezhnev had sent a message of support to the peace march, for example. Fortunately the END group released a statement condemning Soviet militarism. The last thing we need is the hand of friendship/kiss of death (call it what you will) from the SS20 bunch. With CND signs being seen on Polish marches, the Soviets may well back off themselves, of course. Maggie snub OWEN CARRON, the victorious Anti-H- Block candidate in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by election, has made a request to see Mrs Thatcher urgently to discuss the hunger strikers’ demands — although he is refusing to take up his seat in the Commons. Maggie has refused to meet him, but may offer him an underling from the Northern Ireland Office. Seems to us that if Maggie doesn’t encourage full use of constitutional methods, she can hardly complain if Irish Nationalists continue on the way they are going. From talking to the long-distance marchers it seems that the march was effective in encouraging isolated peace workers and did have an effect on the communities it passed through; and of course the personal friendships built up over the weeks were important. In my few days in Paris I made useful contact with other peace workers (as well as meeting some Swedish syndicalists and Spanish CNTers who came to join the — previously banned — anarchist flag). After the march there were three days of festivity. An informal peace festival in the ‘Eco-Vie’, an ecological centre, a more organised festival in the Paris Hippodrome and a formal session or two (which last I skipped). Many of the marchers fasted from Hiroshima day to the time of the Nagasaki bombing. The more organised parts of the festivals were a little dull — and the scene of march paraphenalia — tee shirts, badges, etc, doubling and trebling in price! The Fall Out Marching Band stole the show — in the streets outside ‘Eco-Vie’ with an im¬ promptu dance which local Vietnamese and Turkish residents joined in. That, to me, is what peace campaigning is all about! ROSS BRADSHAW Role Models THE survey industry continues remorse¬ lessly to cast light on aspects of our society. A team of market consultants has asked 2,000 people aged between 16 and 20 ‘who would you most like to swap lives with?’ Favoured role models are, in order, by sex, the Princess of Wales, Princess Caroline of Monaco, Elizabeth Taylor, Miss World, Kate Bush, Debbie Harry, Margaret Thatcher and Joan Collins or, alternatively, John Travolta, Mick Jagger, Roger Moore, Prince Charles, Shakin’ Stevens, Kevin Keegan, Adam Ant and Bryan Ferry. Wildcat\ Ica „> tt hi n kofjn insult that isn’t either* sexist, or speciest, or denigrating ^^ the unfortunate. *%i Manchester s A NDERTONfff/f 4 FREEDOM Bir mingham Anarchist Centre THERE is a sizeable libertarian presence in and around Birmingham, but until now there has been no focus for anarchist activity here; nowhere that libertarians could meet regularly, or find support in an emergency. The Syndicalist movement that grew up in the period 1910 - 1920 in Britain was based firmly upon the labour halls and workers’ clubs. During the Spanish Revo¬ lution of 1936 the libertarian workers rushed to their union halls when they heard of the fascist’s revolt, thus forming a recognisable force. We seek to gather all those who understand and sympathise with our views into one force, not necess¬ arily one organisation, but with one aim. Drawing on the experience of the old International Libertarian Centre/Centro Iberico — which demonstrated the great advantages of having a ‘walk-in’ centre — and the new Autonomy Centre in Lon¬ don, a group of us have launched a simi¬ lar project. Some of us have experience of the old Centro Iberico, and are in regular contact with the comrades of the Auto¬ nomy Centre. By establishing an anarchist centre in Birmingham we hope to en¬ courage the growth of a network of anarchist clubs around the country which would put the libertarian movement on a firm bedrock, cutting across the sectarian divide of paper organisations, and mark¬ ing a return to the traditional libertarian idea of a decentralised club movement, based firmly in the local community. In order to establish a sense of historical continuity and local identity we have adopted the name X)f the Christopher Davis Appreciation Society. WHAT’S HAPPENING. As a stepping stone to obtaining our own premises we are organising a series of socials, meetings, benefit concerts, and other fund-raising events. In order to put the project on a practi¬ cal footing, we have decided to organise ourselves as a political club. Annual mem¬ bership x (l October 1981 — 1 October 1982) is open to all who agree with our aims, and costs £10 waged, £5 unwaged (easy terms are available for anyone on the dole who can’t afford to pay £5 in one lump sum). We are in the process of opening a bank account into which sub¬ scriptions, donations and other money raised can be paid (details of this will be circulated later). The fund-raising events are intended not only to raise money for the centre, but to serve as a means of sustaining interest and keeping people in regular contact until we actually have premises. The London Autonomy Centre received Poison Pen on Ireland RECENTLY Ireland has been very much in the news because of the hunger strike. It has also been much discussed within the anarchist movement — in FREEDOM, the papers and pamphlets from the Bel¬ fast group, in Canterbury’s Alternative Communication and within the pages of Poison Pen. We have also discussed it at length within the group. Some anarchists recently have been saying that since we are opposed to the British state, its armed forces and its policy of imperialism in Ireland, we must therefore support the IRA. There have always been some anarchists who have supported the republican cause; however, they always used to be a very small minority of the movement. This, however, now seems to have changed and I think there are probably two reasons for this. Firstly there is the immense emotional support for the hunger strike. Whatever one may think of the demands themselves (and I personally am against ever demand¬ ing political status — all prisoners are political), one cannot help admiring the courage and determination of the strikers. There are people who have been arrested by the RUC (probably one of the most vicious police forces in Europe) backed by an army which they consider to be one of occupation; they have been tried in courts without juries, where the only evidence needed for a conviction is a signed confession and where the judges despise and hate the community from which the prisoners come. In prison they have been treated bru¬ tally by guards who have nothing but contempt for them and their politics. And now they are prepared to die pain¬ ful and lonely deaths in a last protest. I can well understand why some people’s gut reaction is to give support to the IRA. The second reason that more anarchists are now expressing support for the IRA is that they have stopped some of their worst excesses such as pub bombing. But it is not that long ago the IRA were carry¬ ing out atrocities like the Birmingham pub bombs. Such attacks on ordinary working class people can never be de¬ fended and are normally only used by fascists. At the time the anarchist move¬ ment expressed complete and utter out¬ rage. Rising Free bookshop refused to stock Republican News and later both Socialist Worker and Socialist Challenge when they continued to give support to the IRA. I think they were quite right to do so. a lot of support from such bands as CRASS, POISON GIRLS and UB 40. We already have offers of help from some bands and are in the process of approaching others (these will cater for more than one musical taste: folk, new- wave, pop, etc). Meetings will try to stimulate both interest in the centre and also serve as a springboard to local ac¬ tivity. Besides guest speakers, we can also promise videos (THE ANGRY BRIGADE, PERSONS UNKNOWN,etc) and films (THE WOBBLIES, etc). Once we have permanent premises we want to use them not only as a place for liber¬ tarian activists to meet and socialise, but also as a focal point for activity in the local community. All this project needs to succeed is your support and participation. Join the Anarchy Club now! Send money, ideas for raising money, or just more money! Come to our meetings (every Friday, 7.30, upstairs in the White Lion, Horse Fair, Bl). The Anarchy Club needs you! The Christopher Davis Appreciation Society, c/o The Peace Centre, 18, Moor Street, Ringway, BIRMINGHAM, B4. Events which occurred in Northern Ireland last week show quite clearly why I think that anarchists should not support the IRA. Three men in west Belfast were shot through the kneecaps by the IRA. Their crime? In a statement the IRA said that they had been punished ‘because they were involved in anti-social ac¬ tivities’. It went on to say ‘In the course of their actions they abused the name of the Irish Republican Army and brought the Republican movement into disrepute. Such activities will not be tolerated.’ They sound just like fascists, don’t they? How can anarchists talk of supporting such people, such acts? FREEDOM 5 Contempt for the Law One of the things that anarchists are most strongly opposed to is militarism. Not necessarily violence as such: people have a right to defend themselves, and we support the people of Brixton, Tox- teth and Bogside who have acted so well in defending themselves against state aggression. But militarism is something different: it is organising people into hierarchic groups on a permanent pro¬ fessional basis for the sole reason of committing acts of violence. It is also always linked to nationalsim and pat¬ riotism and quite often religion as well — none of which anarchists can support. Surely no-one can believe that the IRA is any less militaristic than the British army — they have their own chains of command, their order-givers and order- takers, the generals and privates. They are certainly just as nationalistic as the British army and see themselves as good patriots. They claim that they are fighting a war. And so they are. In wars the workers kill each other and each others’ families because they do not see that they are being used as tools by the state. The reason they do not see it is that the state blinds them with shit like nationalism and religion. In Northern Ireland there are two working-class communities who see them¬ selves as being at war with each other. Both communities are oppressed and ex¬ ploited by British capitalism. While the Protestants are better off than the Catho¬ lics, they are also considerably worse off than any working class community on mainland Britain. Many Catholics, being heartily fed up with the discrimination and harassment they have received ever since the creation of Northern Ireland would like to join the Republic. But that too is a repressive capitalist country — would they really be that much better off? The working class of the whole of Ire¬ land have a common interest in uniting to overthrow both the capitalisms which exploit and rape that unhappy island. But they are blinded by the lies of the jingoistic purveyors of hate on both sides of this war. And to those who say that the IRA are fighting for a socialist transformation of the whole of Ireland, all I can say is that I do not trust people who call them¬ selves socialists yet use tactics such as sectarian killing, torture and indiscrimin¬ ate bomb attacks to achieve their aims. As anarchists we are opposed to British militarism and imperialism, so what we ought to do is build a militant liber¬ tarian campaign against them in our local areas, not glorify an authoritarian nationalist movement like the IRA. Anarchists who disagree should remem¬ ber the stance the movement took up during the Vietnam war — ‘we support neither Washington nor Hanoi, but the oppressed people of S E Asia.’ STEVE BY the time you read this, the new law on Contempt will apply. It is, in the words of MPs ‘draconian, illiberal and un¬ necessary..’ Clause 8, which bars any dis¬ cussion of what is discussed by a jury ‘in the course of their deliberations in any legal proceedings’, has been described by no less a person than the Attorney General as a ‘bastard clause’. Juries are unpopular with the legal es¬ tablishment. They have been known to bring in verdicts which upset judges or the police. In 1975, Robert Mark, (then Metropolitan Police Commissioner and now well known tyre salesman) said that jurors ‘know little of the law, are occa¬ sionally stupid, prejudiced, barely literate and often incapable of applying the law as public opinion is led to suppose.’ We are partly to blame for this mistrust. Jurors during the ‘Persons Unknown’ trial of 1979 had the impudence to resent being screened and vetted. They gave a not-guilty verdict (after up to eighteen ‘Riots’ Pamphlet THE latest developments on the streets of Britain have shown firstly that the work¬ ing class has not forgotten its ancient and most trusted mode of protest and secondly that the class struggle has enter¬ ed a more intense and vicious stage. The riots have posed questions few revolution¬ aries have tried to confront. What we are suggesting is that a pamph¬ let is produced covering three main areas: 1. Eye witness accounts and discussion of riots from individual areas. Local anar¬ chist groups could get this information. 2. Discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the riots; the fears of those who are not committed to violence, or of those into violence too. Possi¬ bilities: no-go areas? Riot tactics and strategy, can they be improved? 3. Riots and revolution. Where do we go from here? How to beat state re¬ pression. How do we avoid isolation of rioters from the rest of the working class — can wel Why is it so quiet in the workplaces? This is an appeal to all revolutionaries to do a bit of thinking and research to help unify the struggles. Please send con¬ tributions to the following address: LAP Box RV 59 Cookridge St. Leeds LS2 3AN Anonymity is highly recommended, pseudonyms essential, but concrete material most necessary. months maximum security imprisonment on ‘remand’ for the defendants). For their pains they were held back and harangued by the judge, who said that the evidence ‘would not have confused a child’. Many judicial figures have expressed displeasure at the wilfulness of juries. Many offences have been removed to magistrates’ courts for ‘summary’ trial. The enshrined influence of the jury has steadily been eroded, from majority verdicts to vetting. No doubt the process would be more efficient without this lay interference. Anyone who has observed such ‘summary’ justice will appreciate this. It would be inappropriate for anarchists to support any part of the judicial pro¬ cess. But given a choice between trial by an established, legal functionary or by a more or less random, occasionally stupid, childish set of people, I know which I’d prefer. THE British government is still being embarrassed by the Commission of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The latest incident is over the practice of tapping telephones. All governments do it, but most have laws to regulate it. Commentators have proved un¬ reassured by government statements that a spirit of fair play suffuses the enterprise abd that very little tapping goes on anyway. The presence of a building in Chelsea, with a staff bud¬ get of £1.3 million reinforced the doubts. Even Lord Diplock’s report was not sufficient. Now a legal team, under the Attorney-General, has gone to Strasbourg to persuade the commission that Britain is meeting its requirement of ‘adequate and effective guarantees against abuse.’ Home Secretary, William Whitelaw, comments; ‘The public should trust the secret decisions made by Ministers and civil servants.’ COMMITTEES are beginning to estimate costs for the Pope’s visit to Britain next year. The five hour visit to Manchester has been costed at £700,000, most of it for police wages. About half of this will be met locally, the rest by a government grant. A MEMBER of the FREEDOM collective has received a follow-up letter noting that he has failed to complete his census form. The letter carries a reminder about the possible fine (up to £50) and asks if he could ‘see his way clear’ (sic) to filling in a form. Has anyone else had a follow-up? 6 freedom _ LETTERS LETTERS LETTERS LETTERS LETi JENSEN & IQ 1. Dear FREEDOM, Pace Alice Scriue, Jensen's work is sloppy: he equated IQ with intelligence; failed to define it; confused structure with function; claimed to have used Burt's studies of twins and when asked to reproduce that evidence in 1972, stated, 'alas, nothing remained of Burt 's possessions ... unfortunately, the original data are lost and all that remains are the results of statistical analyses' — and we know now just how valid they were. No one would waste time on the non¬ question of whether 'intelligence' is supposed to be determined by heredi¬ tary or environmental factors, were it not that Piaget has been ousted in most of the colleges I visited during the last twelve years. Such a move suits those who have fostered the educational retreat we know so well, and now fast becoming a rout. 'There are intelligence genes, which are found in populations in different proportions, somewhat like the distri¬ bution of blood groups. The number of intelligence genes seems lower, overall, in the black population than in the white' (Jensen 1969). Blacks not dimmer, Ms Scrive ? What a revolutionary discovery! How odd that noone else seems able to con¬ firm it! MICHAEL DUANE London JENSEN & IQ 2. Dear comrades, Pat Isiorho (15.8.81) makes the same error as I did in my review of Tony Gibson's book on Eysenck (6.6.81, corrected by Tony Gibson 20.6.81), when he says Eysenck and Jensen base their research on the classic data of Sir Cyril Burt. Our error is explicable if not excusable; we judge by first impressions. In his famous 1969 paper, Jensen clearly sees Burt as the most important single source of empirical findings on the heritability of intelligence. He says 'The most satisfactory attempt to estimate the separate variance com¬ ponents is the work of Sir Cyril Burt, based on large samples of many kinships drawn mostly from the school populations of London.' and a little further on 'The conceptually simplest estimate of heritability is, of course, the correla¬ tion between identical twins reared apart ....The Burt study is the most interesting for four reasons: (a)..the largest sample; (b) IQ distribution., very close to the general population; (c) ah iwin pairs were separated within the first 6 months; (d) most important, the separated twins were spread over the entire range of socio¬ economic levels.' But there is a table of 51 estimates of heritability, at least 33 of which are inde¬ pendent of Burt. Jensen uses the average of these estimates, 0.80. If the Burt studies were excluded the remaining average would be about 0.76, making no difference to the conclusion. There is, by the way, a well tried formula for deciding the heritability within a population of organisms, of any characteristic which can be quantified; it was worked out at Rothamsted Agri¬ cultural Experimental Station in 1918. As Anne Scrive points out, the distribu¬ tion of IQ in a human population can be consistently and elegantly explained as a heritable characteristic, while any explanation in terms of environment alone is contradictory. Differences between populations, on the other hand, are difficult to attribute to genetics. If the heritability of height in wheat, for example, is 0.95, and if the average height of wheat in a plot at Rothamsted is twice that in another plot, then to conclude that the genes for height were different in the different plots would be a laughable mistake. Heritability of a genetically complex feature only appertains in a defined, randomly distributed population. As plausible effectors of intelligence differences between populations, one might advance all sorts of systematic differences in their environments; diet, emotional stress in babies, maternal smoking, atmospheric lead. But the exercise is unnecessary; there are differ¬ ences in the environments of hill dwellers and lowland dwellers. Catholic and Pro¬ testant, rich and poor, and it is reasonable to hold the environment responsible for observed phenotype differences, without identifying a particular aspect of the en¬ vironment. Of course, if some particular feature of the environment is alleged to be effective, the allegation should be investigated. Jensen investigated the link between IQ and lack of opportunity, and says the discrepancy between blacks and whites 'cannot be completely or directly attri¬ buted to discrimination or inequalities in education'. He cannot extrapolate from this that the discrepancy is not attribu¬ table to some other environmental differ¬ ence, nor does he. His concern is that the possibility of a genetic difference should not be overlooked. 'It seems not unreasonable, in view of the fact that intelligence variation has a large genetic component, to hypo¬ thesize that genetic factors may play a part in this picture. But such an hypo¬ thesis is anathema to many social scientists!' Whether one concurs depends on how one interprets the phrase 'not unreason¬ able'. Plausible? Yes, the hypothesis is plausible. Scientifically useful? No, it is untestable. Politic? Certainly not — unless of course one actually intends to help make racism seem scientifically respect¬ able. DONALD ROOUM RIOTING IN SCOTLAND Dear FREEDOM, There has I believe been some comment on the absence of rioting in Scotland. There were in fact a few incidents in the so-called deprived areas of Edinburgh; Pilton and Craigmillar for instance. These involved mainly young children who attempted to set up barricades and threw stones at passing cars and taxis. Scotland has a bad reputation for urban violence involving young gangs and vicious stab- bings, particularly in Glasgow. Jimmy Boyle's autobiography, A Sense of Freedom, will give some idea of what is involved. In these deprived areas shops and pubs have for many tears been pro¬ tected with metal shutters. The causes of urban violence are no doubt to be found mainly in poverty, ignorance and brutal¬ ised childhood, the products of capitalist social exploitation in most cases. Some of the 'rioters'involved in the recent dis¬ turbances in England may be muggers and petty thieves who would be quite happy to take on the life-style of the rich if this were possible. However it is also highly likely that percentage of the 'rioters' were social revolutionaries not neces¬ sarily interested in obtaining material possessions from shop windows but demonstrating their anger at the ex¬ ploitation and brutality of the British Military Police State. The somewhat incoherent violence that has existed on the streets for many years cannot be a blueprint for any social revolution and the IRA and Trotskyite red armies cannot be held up as examples of genu¬ ine social change either. Libertarians must bear in mind the goal of our revo¬ lution — a peaceful society of mutual co-operation based on the absence of violence and co-ercion. Organised mili¬ tary training involving marching drills, orders, officers etc is totally incom¬ patible with anarchism. The police and the army cannot how¬ ever be fully blamed for what is happen¬ ing. Like skin-heads and the Hitler youth they are prey to propaganda. Amongst the socially deprived the NF can recruit as easily, if not more so, than an anarchist utopian. It's ieasy to hate a foreign cul¬ ture. So easy in fact that governments can obtain the money for nuclear wea¬ pons without any difficulty. In Britain today there are plenty of psychologically damaged and demented people quite happy to see Moscow obliterated by a FREEDOM 1 LETTERS LETTERS LETTERS LETTERS LE7 nuclear bomb. Though we cannot con¬ done the horrors of clockwork orange street violence we can see only too clearly that the biggest potential mass murderers are still the members of political parties and governments, military scientists, "royal' families and industrial monopol¬ ists. Peace and freedom, AM ANDERSON Edinburgh WELL FED PRISONERS Dear FREEDOM, We Oral Abortions read Dave Morris ' article on Technology in Vol. 42 , No. 14 of FREEDOM, and we agreed with what was written, and that if the ideas were put into practice then a free society would follow. However we then stopped dreaming, as we suggest he does. There is no way that there will ever be ‘an anarchist society throughout the world \ as there are too many people in the world who are vio¬ lent, power greedy, sexist and other dis¬ gusting things. Even the average person would not want his/her life pattern changed, as s/he is quite content to let the government rule his/her life and just to exist as a "well-fed prisoner '. Only the anarchists and other intelli¬ gent people, who realise the danger of living as most people do today, and the possibility of an anarchist society exist¬ ing, would not be against his ideas. But because the world cannot be one big anarchist society it does not mean that we cannot make lots of little ones, all over the world, which can grow and grow until they are large enough to be able to put as many of these ideas as possible into practice. Of course, it would be easy for us all ("us ' being us anarchists) to live in an anarchy separate from the rest of the society, but that would not stop the ruin of the world. We must therefore act now by growing large enough to have sufficient public support to dispose of all forms of government, and undesirable technology. We must stop dreaming and act before it is too late. Grow, Act and Survive, ®RAL ABORTIONS UNCHOKED ALF REPLY Dear FREEDOM, A belated, but nevertheless necessary, reply to Philip Sansom ("Don Y choke, ALF'FREEDOM, 20th June). 1. The Animal Liberation Front does not equate ordinary animal husbandry with factory farming. There are ethical arguments against the rearing and killing of animals for food even when this is not done in factory farm conditions — but factory farming is far worse (and receives greater priority in ALF activi¬ ties) because of the much greater suffer¬ ing and deprivation that it involves. 2. The fact that some animals kill and eat other animals is not a justification for the killing of other animals for food by human beings any more than the fact that some animals have very hierarchical structures in their societies (egpecking orders) is a justification for hierarchies in ours. Although we human beings are quite definitely animals ourselves (and the ALF does not seek in any way to deny this) we differ from other animals in the sense that, in general, we have the ability to choose whether or not to slaughter other animals to fill our bellies. Seeing as we can choose a way of life which does not involve the killing of other animals for food it seems only right that we should make that choice. 3. Even if it could be proved that animal experimentation has contributed to the curing of certain diseases in hu¬ mans this would still not provide justifi¬ cation for such tests. To cause suffering to one group of creatures because there is a chance that perhaps this might lead to the alleviation of suffering in another group at some time in the future can never be justifiable. It has been said that useful medical discoveries were made by the Nazi's experiments on the Jews, but this surely does not justify such experi¬ ments. Animals used in laboratories differ from human beings in many ways (and some of these differences make most animal experiments scientifically in¬ valid anyway) but there is one area in which there is important similarity — the fact that such animals can and do suffer. We have no more right to carry out experiments on other sentient ani¬ mals than an alien race of vastly superior intellect would have to experiment on us. Yours sincerely , RONNIE LEE London SPIRITUAL NOT MATERIAL FREEDOM , No Radical rebellion, whether it be to the left or the right, or even to an anar¬ chist society, could be realised at this present time. Events will have to take their course. With the downfall of democratic Socialism showing in this and many other countries, a new form of society will be sought and achieved by the popu¬ lation. The revolution outlined by Malatesta could not come to pass. It would rely on equality and lack of oppression. The society we live in today has corrupted too many to allow this form of equality and freedom to exist. The only form of Anarchy that can exist today is the individual form, ie not attained through a revolution, anarchy in its simplest form. This is the formation of one's own society — completely detached and self sufficient. Progress can be main¬ tained spiritually and mentally rather tLan materialistically. This can be the only way Anarchists can find true freedom, true equality and true peace today. The revolution that many of us hope for can only be attained if the whole population want to live in peace and liberty. Only until the masses can see their own downfall will our Anarchist revolution take place. So in that sense the ideals of Anarchists all over the country should be expressed to the very full. People will really have to know that liberty, equality, peace and progress really can exist. MATTHEW STEVEN IVES Hatfield "I wish the Holy Father would empty his bladder before giving the blessing. ' Subscribe FREEDOMCONTACTS FREEDOM PRESS in Angel Alley 84b WHITECHAPEL HIGH STREET ■LONDON Ei Phone 01-247 9 2 49 NATIONAL ABERDEEN Libertarian Group, c/o 163 King St. ABERYSTWITH David Fletcher, 59 Cambrian St. BARRY Terry Philips, 16 Robert St, Barry, South Glamorgan. BELFAST Anarchist Collective, Just Books, 7 Winetavern St, Belfast 1. BRIGHTON Libertarian Socialist group, c/o Students Union, Falmer House, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton. BRISTOL L Bedminster, 110 Grenville Rd, Bristol 3. CAMBRIDGE Anarchists, Box A, 41 Fitzroy St. CANTERBURY Alternative Research Group, Students Union, University of Kent, Canterbury. CARDIFF Write c/o One-O-Eight Bookshop, 1 08 Salisbury Rd. COVENTRY John England, Students Union, University of Warwick, Coventry. CUMBRIA 12 Bath Terrace, Drovers Lane, Penrith. DUBLIN Love v Power, Whelan’s Dance Studio, 51 South King St, Dublin 2. EAST ANGLIA DAM, Martyn Everett, 11 Gibson Gardens, Saffron Walden, Essex. ESSEX Oral Abortions, The Catskills, Maldon Rd, Gay Bowers, Danbury. EXETER Anarchist Collective, c/o Commu¬ nity Association, Devonshire House, Stocker Rd. GLASGOW Books Collective, c/o 128 Byres Rd, Hillhead. HASTINGS Anarchists, 1 8a Markwick Terrace, Saint Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex. (0424) 434102. HULL Libertarian Collective, 70 Perth St, Hu«l HU5 3NZ. KEELE Anarchist Group, c/o Students Union, The University, Keele, Staffordshi re. KEIGHLEY Anarchists, c/o Simon Saxton, 1 Selbourne Grove, Keighley, West Yorkshire BD21 2SL. LAMPETER Anarchist Group, c/o Adian James, SDUC, Lampeter, Dyfed SA48 7ED, Wales. LIVERPOOL Anarchist Group, c/o Hywel Ellis, Students Union, Liverpool Uni¬ versity. LEAMINGTON and Warwick, c/o 42 Bath St, Leamington Spa. LEICESTER Blackthorn Books, 74 Highcross St, (tel 21 896), and Libertarian Education, 6 Beacons- field Rd, (tel 552085). LONDON Anarchy Collective, 37a Grosve- nor Avenue N5 (01-359 4794 before 7 pm) Meets each Thurs¬ day at Little @ Press, Cl Metro¬ politan Wharf, Wapping Wall, Wapping El. (22a bus or Wapping tube). Anarcha United Mystics meet each Thursday at 8 pm. Halfway House Pub, opposite Camden Town tube. Autonomy Centre, 01 Warehouse, Metropolitan Wharf, Wapping Wall, El. Freedom Collective, Angel Alley, 84b Whitechapel High St, El. (01-247 9249). Aldgate East tube, near Whitechapel Art Gallery. Greenpeace, 6 Endsleigh St, WC1. Meet Thursdays 7 pm. Kingston Anarchists, 13 Denmark St, Kingston upon Thames, (01-549 2564). London Workers Group, meets Tuesdays 8 pm at Metropolitan Pub, 75 Farringdon Rd,EC1. Middlesex Poly Anarchists, Students Union, Trent Park Site, Cockfosters Rd, Barnet, Herts. 121 Bookshop and meeting place, 121 Railton Rd, Herne Hill,SE24. Xtra! Structureless Tyranny, 182 Upper St, N1. MALVERN and Worcester area, Jock Spence, Birchwood Hall, Storridge, Malvern, Worcestershire. NORWICH Anarchists, Student group and town group and Freewheel Community Bookshop Collective, all c/o Freewheel, 56 St Benedicts St, Norwich, Norfolk. NOTTINGHAM c/o Mushroom, 10 Heathcote St, (tel 582506), or 15 Scotholme Ave, Hyson Green (tel 708 302) OLDHAM Nigel Broadbent, 14 Westminster Rd, Failsworth. OXFORD Anarchist Group and Solidarity, c/o 34 Cowley Rd. PAISLEY Anarchist Group are unfortunate¬ ly contactable through the Students Union, Hunter St, Paisley, Renfrewshire. PLYMOUTH Anarchists, 115 St Pancras Ave, Pennycross. PORTSMOUTH area anarchist group, c/o Garry Richardson, 25 Beresford Close, Waterlooviile, Hants, or Duncan Lamb, Nirvana, Chichester Yacht Basin, Birsham, West Sussex. RHONDDA and MidGI amorgan, Henning Andersen, ‘Smiths Arms’, Treher- bert, MidGlamorgan. SHEFFIELD Anarchists, c/o 4 Havelock Square, Sheffield S10 2FQ. Libertarian Society, Post Office Box 168, Sheffield SI 1 8SE. SOUTH WALES DAM, c/o Smiths Arms, Baglan Rd, Treherbert, MidGlamorgan, South Wales. Write for anarcho- syndicalist contacts in Treherbert, Rhondda, Pontypridd, Penarth, Barry and Cardiff areas. SWANSEA Black Dragon, Box 5, c/o Neges Bookshop, 31 Alexandra Rd, Swansea SA1 5DQ. Meet 8 pm Mondays at the Mountain Dew Inn, Swansea. Baby-sitting can be arranged. SUSSEX anarchist group, c/o Students Union, Falmer House, Univer¬ sity of Sussex, Brighton. SUNDERLAND anarchists/DAM, c/o 183 Durham Rd, Sunderland SR3 4BX. SWINDON area, Mike, Groundswell Farm, Upper Stratton, Swindon. TAYSIDE Anarchist Group, 3L 188 Strath- martine Rd, Dundee. TORBAY Anarchist Federation, This Hedown, Milton St, Brixham, Devon TQ5 9NQ. WAKEFIELD Anarchist and Peace Group, c/o E Fazackerley, 36 Bowan St, Agbrigg, Wakefield, West York¬ shire. MEETINGS MEETING in Sheffield, Sat/Sun, 4th/5th September to compile a composite ‘Anarchists against Nukes (Power/Bombs)' as a follow-up to Oxford Conference (see FREEDOM No 14). Suggest¬ ions; leaflets; information and accomodation — contact Anar¬ chist Commune, 4 Havelock Square, Sheffield S10 2FQ. DESIRES WILL Geoff Minshull contact Andrew Huckerby again. I don’t have your address. IRISH Comrade seeking relief from ‘the troubles’* requires temporary accomodation in the London area while establishing himself over here. Contact via Jim at Freedom Bookshop. I AM trying to publish some information on repression in Cuba and was wondering if any readers could supply me with information. I understand that before the Revolution there was a tremendously strong, indeed dominant Libertarian element in the Cuban Labour movement and hoped that there might be some one who knows of an exile group here or perhaps in the US who have published something recently. A few months ago Black Flag ran an appeal from the Cuban Libertarian Movement. Unfortunately I did not buy it and would be grateful to anyone who could supply me with a copy for which I will pay ( a photocopy of the appeal alone would be fine ). If anyone can help me I would be very grate¬ ful, will acknowledge all letters and return any material on request. — Edmund McArthur, 13 Wellington, Ealing, London W5 4UJ. AT a recent exploratory anarcho- syndicalist conference held in New York City and sponsored by the Libertarian Workers Group, a decision was made to initiate Libertarian Aid to Latin America (LALA). The project is envisaged as an attempt to mobilize support for the struggles of anarcho- syndicalist and other libertarian currents in Latin America, material and otherwise. The prin¬ cipal medium for this objective will be a newsletter reporting developments of interest to liber¬ tarian revolutionaries internation¬ ally. We are seeking to draw upon all information sources available, however we are particularly looking towards the libertarian press to provide relevant news. This letter is an appeal to you to do what you can to help us in this respect. We would also welcome any other forms of support in¬ cluding publicity. It is our hope to have the first issue of the newsletter available by early autumn. The Libertarian Workers Group will undertake the tasks of publication. Their address is P O Box 692, Old Chelsea Station, New York, N Y 10113, USA. We hope to hear from you soon. AUTONOMY CENTRE EVENTS EVENTS FOR SEPTEMBER Thursday 3rd: A Distribution (all help welcome) Friday 4th: Film ‘The War Game' 50p members, £1 non-members Saturday 5th: ‘Drop in’ Day Thursday 10th: A Distribution Friday 11th: Gareth Pierce (solicitor) speaks on McMahon case (all you wanted to know about supergrasses) Saturday 12th: Film ‘Pleasure at Her Majesties' John Clees etc Members £1, non-members £1.50 QUOTE OF THE WEEK *My political opinions lean more and more to anarchy... The most improper job of any man , even saints , is bossing other men. There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dyna¬ miting factories and power stations. I hope that , en¬ couraged now as patriotism , may remain a habit... ’ JRR Tolkien (In a letter to his son ) SUBSCRIBE Inland.£8.00 Overseas Surface.£8.00 Overseas Airmail Europe ..£9.00 The Americas. .US dollars 25.00 Canada . .C dollars 28.00 Australasia.£10.50 Prisoners free. Printed and typeset by Aldgate Press, in Angel Alley, 84b White¬ chapel High St, London El. Tel 247 3015 Distributed in Britain by A Dis¬ tribution, 01 Warehouse, Metro¬ politan Wharf, Wapping Wall, London El. VV Anarchist ■ Review Freedom THERE can be little doubt that anarchism, as a social and political movement was primarily a radical response to ind¬ ustrial or monopoly capitalism. It thus developed towards the latter part of the nineteenth century. In harmony with the liberals, the anarchists spoke out against the growing centralization; and came to articulate a coherent philoso¬ phy which rejected the institutions of coercive government. But along with the socialists, anarchist writers and political activists also came to express an opposition to capitalism. Recently there has been a profusion of academics — posing as anarchists — who advocate a kind of laissez-faire capital¬ ism; but as David Wieck has argued (1978) such theories lie outside the mainstream of anarchism and represent a var¬ iant of bourgeois ideology. But anarchism is not simply a mixture of liberalism and socialism (this finds its embodi¬ ment in social democracy or state capitalism); rather it articulates a programme that strives for the realization of both freedom and equality. As Bakunin put it; ’Liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality’ (Dolgoff 1973). aoTzn and Anarchism But anarchism as a social perspective is deemed to have a much longer history, for it has been suggested that ever since the rise of state systems various kinds of dissenting movements have implicitly or indirectly implied an anar¬ chist doctrine. Rexroth’s (1975) study of ‘communalism’, for instance, traces the history and development of comm¬ unal living, and the various attempts to establish an organic community with non-coercive relationships. The study inc¬ ludes brief accounts of the Essenes, Eckhart, the peasant revolt, Winstanley and the early communes in America, and although Euro-centric, certainly implies that through¬ out the post-neolithic period there has been an ever-present libertarian tradition. And there are, of course, numerous studies of millenial cults and utopian writings suggestive that anarchism has indeed a long history. What has always intrigued me, in this context, is the frequency with which the name of Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher, is encountered in general accounts of anarchism. Herbert Read’s discussion of mutual aid and power makes several references to Lao Tzu, and Russ¬ ell’s popular account ‘Roads to Freedom ’ has the quota¬ tion; ‘Production without possession Action without self-assertion Development without domination’ on its title page. George Woodcock, in his introduction to the ‘Anarchist Reader ’, mentions that thirty years ago anar¬ chists were fond of quoting this Taoist sage. But it is not only anarchist writers who have made this connection: stu¬ dents of comparative religion have also done so. Ninian Smart, for instance, in his important survey (1971) of reli¬ gion, suggests that Taoism was a form of anarchism. Is this interpretation valid? And why has Lao Tzu always been viewed as a mystic (which he indeed was) rather than as a naturalistic philosopher whose precepts implied a rejection of all coercive institutions? It has always struck me as rather strange that humanists have tended to salute and pay homage to Confucius rather than Lao Tzu. There are many people who, seeing themselves primarily as political activists, eschew theoretical debates, and see little relevance in discussions of past events and institutions. They see such activities as academic trivia, little help in our present struggles for a better world. This view, I feel is mistaken, and unhelpful for various reasons. Firstly, rather than divorcing theory from praxis, it denies any relevance to intellectual thought in informing practice. It thus leaves the field open to bourgeois idealists, and confirms the myth put out by Marxist scholars, that the libertarian tradition has no intellectual thinkers of any worth or substance. Yet in surveying the anarchist literature it is not only evident that many anarchist writers are significant theorists in their own right, but even the writings of those anarchists who are thought primarily to be revolutionary agitators and pro¬ pagandists — Bakunin, Goldman, Malatesta — are informed and infused with philosophical and historical knowledge. Godwin’s ‘Enquiry Concerning Political Justice ’, Kropot¬ kin’s ‘Mutual Aid' and Rocker’s ‘Nationalism and Culture ' are all examples of writings which take a critical and world- historical perspective — and which aim to counter, in theo¬ ry , the dominant statist ethos. Secondly, and allied to this, such theoretical writings are necessary as a counterbalance and a critique of both a) the ‘managerial radicalism’ of which Bookchin writes (1980) — and this has involved not only the attempt to in¬ corporate libertarian texts into academia, but the defusing of radical tenets by a Marxism that is obscurantist and ec¬ lectic, and b) the pervasive capitalist ideology which has us believe that the present socio-economic order is the only possible social reality. Theoretical discussions and historical trea¬ tises, whether on Plato or utopian cults, are therefore sig¬ nificant for both informing and motivating radical practice. So I make no apologies for addressing myself to the seem¬ ingly obscure issue; was Lao Tzu an anarchist? Who then was Lao Tzu? Well, according to modem schol¬ arship, it is rather doubtful if such a person (whose name means ‘old philosopher’), (Legge 1962; 35) ever existed. Rather it is thought that the classic text Tao Te Ching (attributed to Lao Tzu) may have been compiled by var¬ ious authors, and that it assumed its present form around the third century BC. Tradition however has it that Lao Tzu was a retired archivist, and was an older contempora¬ ry of Confucius (551 — 479 BC). The book thus represents in essence a mode of thought that was in evidence during a critical period in Chinese history. Referred to by historians as the age of the ‘warring states’ (circa 506 — 221 BC) it was a period of great socio-economic change. The develop¬ ment of iron smelting, the digging of canals (by forced labour) and the intensification of agriculture through irri¬ gation and the ox-drawn plough were all instrumental in leading to the establishment of an hydraulic society (cf Wittfogel 1957). Such changes were associated with the development of a market economy, and the promotion of artisan production, increased trade, metallic coinage, and the alienation of land — thus creating a landless proletar¬ iat (Toynbee 1976; 214). A concomitant of these funda¬ mental changes, in this kind of feudal society, was in¬ creasing political instability and social unrest, instability that was aggravated by frequent incursions of nomadic pastoralists from the steppe. It was a time according to the Chinese scholar Arthur Waley (1977; 70-72) when there was a ‘state of chaos’ and ‘profound disillusionment’ among the populace, particularly amongst the ruling in¬ telligentsia. The literature of the time is full of references to hermits and religious recluses, and to ‘wandering’ phil¬ osophers who ‘infested’ every court, offering advice to the rulers on how best to combat the general disorder and malaise. Thus the period of the ‘warring states’ was also the age of the ‘hundred schools’ of philosophy, a period of intense intellectual turmoil and creativity. One of the most important of these schools was that founded by Lao Tzu — Taoism. A distinction initially has to be made between the kind of philosophy expounded in the text Tao Te Ching and the Taoist religion that developed during the first and second century AD. As Lao Tzu’s philosophy emerged as the only radical alternative to the ‘state religion’ of the Han dynasty, Confucianism, so it tended to fuse with the cult-rituals and tenets of peasantry — particularly as these were expressed in magical beliefs and spirit cults. Thus when Taoism be¬ came a popular religion, the mystical ideas of Lao Tzu be¬ came overlaid and infused with a considerable amount of popular ritual and belief, and the sage himself even came to be deified. As Weber rather crudely put it: Taoism ‘emerged when the escapist doctirne of intellectuals was fused with the primeval, this-worldly trade of the magic¬ ians’ (1964; 192). The underlying premises of such pop¬ ular cults, however, are completely alien to the kind of doctrine enunciated in Tao Te Ching . The central concept in this text is that of Tao — which has been interpreted in various ways. A famous verse (25) in Tao Te Ching , as translated by Waley, states the follow¬ ing: ‘There was something formless yet complete, That existed before heaven and earth; Without sound, without substance. Dependent on nothing, unchanging, all pervading, unfailing. One may think of it as the mother of all things under heaven. Its true name we do not know; Way is the by-name that we give it. Were I forced to say to what class of things it belongs I should call it great’. The ideas expressed in this extract are complex. Max Weber suggested that Tao meant ‘the eternal order of the cosmos and at the same time its course’, for at that period, he writes, these two aspects of reality were conflated, ancient metaphysics lacking a truly ‘dialectical structure’. And he goes on to indicate or imply that Tao is the 6 divine all-one’ of which one can partake by rendering oneself absolutely void of worldly interests until release from all activity is attained (wu wei) (1964; 182). Lao Tzu is thus seen as a thorough-going mystic in search of ‘salvation’, and Taoism is equated with other mystical religions. The catholic writer and Trappist monk Thomas Merton (1975) also tended to understand Tao as something ‘beyond all existent things’ and to suggest that Taoism — specifically that of Chuang Tzu — was essentially religious and mystical and akin to Christian mysticism. John Blofeld likewise sees Tao as a ‘nameless truth’, the ‘ultimate’ which is the goal of all mystics, and he writes that the ‘one who, living in accord with nature's rhythms , may be drawn at last to seek union with the Sublime Tao (known to other mystics as the God¬ head, Sunyata or Nirvana)’ (1973; 14) - is a Taoist. In this kind of interpretation Tao is viewed in essen¬ tially religious terms, and is equated with the Christian ‘god’ and the Buddhist notion of the ‘mysterious void’. In a sense, as Cooper remarks, whereas other religions have their mystical aspect or adherents, Taoism is mysticism (1972; 9). I would not wish to dispute the suggestion that Lao Tzu was a mystical writer (he undoubtedly was). What worries me about the kind of interpretation offered by Weber and Blofeld is that it misleadingly conflates the ‘ul¬ timate’ realities of quite distinct religious systems, and thus obscures the naturalistic bent of Lao Tzu’s thought. The nirvana of Buddhism, the Christian concept of deity and notion of Tao can in no sense be equated (other than the fact that they are perceived as distinct from phenomenal reality). Take the various phrases that have been used to indicate the nature of Tao: — Blofeld himself uses the term ‘nature’s rhythms’ to ex¬ press the reality with which a person should seek accord¬ ance. — Legge, although unhappy about Balfour’s translation of Tao as ‘natura naturans’, ‘the way of nature’, and though, interestingly, also of the opinion that Lao Tzu may have been ‘groping after god’, nonetheless feels that a suit¬ able rendering of the concept Tao may be ‘the spontan¬ eously operating cause of all movement in the phenomena of the universe’ (1962,15) — Waley renders its meaning as the ‘unchanging unity un¬ derlying shifting plurality, and at the same time the impetus giving rise to every form of life and motion’ (1977; 51) — Day summarizes it a ‘a great unseen reality working with¬ in the material universe’ and suggests that the idea is not incompatible with the ideas of modem science (1962; 27) It is therefore perfectly possible to interpret the concept of Tao in naturalistic terms. Indeed many writers have done so. Smart notes that the Taoism expressed in Lao Tzu’s book has often been viewed as ‘naturalistic quietism’ (1971; 211), but, given his own interests, opts for the alternative mode of interpretation, focussing only on those elements of Tao Te Ching which appeal to those religiously inclined. One writer of particular interest in this context is the late Alan Watts. In an earlier work on Zen Buddhism (1957) he argues against a naturalistic interpretation of Tao, other than in terms of natura naturans (nature creating), and as with the writers quoted above, equates Taoism with Ve¬ danta and Buddhism as a ‘way of liberation’. Yet in a later study (1975) he suggests that Tao is ‘the course, the flow... or the process of nature’, and hence subtitles his study Tao as ‘the watercourse way’. And he goes on to write that in the Taoist world-view ‘The principle is that if everything is allowed to go its own way the harmony of the universe will be established, since every process in the world can ‘do its own thing’ only in relation to all others. The political analogy is Kropotkin’s anarchism’ (1975; 43) If Tao is interpreted as an organic totality, ‘the order and course of nature’ (as Watts puts it), (44), then Lao Tzu is a kind of nature mystic in the tradition of Spinoza and Jefferies rather than in the religious tradition of Eck- hart, St. John of the Cross, Sankara, Buddha or the Sufi mystics. And there are various reasons for thinking this Firstly, the doctrines of Lao Tzu are fundamentally anti¬ thetical to all general conceptions of ‘religion’. In no sense can Tao be interpreted as ‘god’ in the sense of the creator of the world. Tao, moreover, as Cooper and others have ob¬ served, is totally impersonal. Indeed, as many scholars have stressed, there is hardly a Chinese word that can be trans¬ lated as ‘god’ for even the concept T’ien is impersonal, and is best understood as heaven or the ‘abode of ancestors’. As with Buddhism and Confucianism the text Tao Te Ching implies a strictly non-theistic cosmology. But more than this, it lacks any reference to a divinity or to a spiritual realm, or to a set of rules to follow, or to rituals to perform Taoism, as Cooper writes, is primarily a cosmic religion, en¬ tailing the ‘study of the universe and the place and function of man and all creatures and phenomena in it’ (1972; 10). Lao Tzu’s philosophy therefore is not a religion but a kind of ‘nature mysticism’. Howard Smith put it succintly when he said that Taoists ‘took refuge in an extreme form of nat¬ uralism. Yet in their search for the perfect harmony with the Tao they entered.... what was (in) the nature of a reli¬ gious quest’ (1968. 73). Watts reiterates this when he sugg¬ ests that if we try to place the ideas of Taoism into the categories of Western thought, then what we have is a ‘naturalistic pantheism’ (1975; 54). Secondly, in no sense can LaoTsu’s thoughts be seen as an ‘escape’, as an ‘ascetic quest for salvation’ (Weber 1964; 177), or as a ‘way of liberation’, as these ideas are normally understood in discussions of mysticism. Tao Te Ching is not concerned with renunciation, and to view the concept wu-wei as ‘doing nothing’ or ‘non-action’ is highly mis¬ leading. Lao Tzu’s whole philosophy is one of life-affirma¬ tion, and indeed one writer has translated Tao as the ‘stream of life consciousness’ (Mears 1922; 6). Nothing could be further from the Buddhist notion of the void. There is an interesting legend about the founders of the ‘three religions’ of China (as recorded by Cooper) which suggests that they stood one day around a jar of vinegar, the symbol of life itself. In turn they each tasted the sub¬ stance. Confucius, it is said, pronounced it sour, Buddha found it bitter, while Lao Tzu considered it sweet (1972; 16). The interest that Taoists had in herbalism and alchemy and in the quest for physical immortality — the search for the elixir of life (longevity) — suggests that Lao Tzu was concerned with fhzs-worldly activities and aspirations. The concept of wu-wei is important to understand in this con¬ text. It did not suggest immortality or life after death, nor did it demand withdrawal from normal activity or that one should empty oneself of all desires. Even less did it suggest inertia, laissez faire, laziness or mere passivity — as Watts (75) rightly argues. Quietism, it seems to me, is inappro¬ priate as a term for Lao Tzu’s philosophy. Rather the atti¬ tude of mind and the activity that Taoism implies is one of life-affirmation and the seeking of harmony with Tao — the ordering principle of the cosmos. As Waley writes; To be in harmony with, not in rebellion against the fundamental laws of the universe is the first step, then, on the way to Tao’ (55). In essence, then, wu-wei consists of ‘leaving all men, creatures and things to order themselves spontaneous¬ ly in accordance with natural harmony, and of not per¬ turbing the order of the Tao’ — as Kaltenmark aptly puts it (1965; 60). Thus for Lao Tzu the ‘way’ does not involve resignation, nor the renunciation of the world (as with Christian or Hindu mystics) but the attempt to spontan¬ eously order one’s life according to the natural processes of the world. As we shall see, many important radical, social attitudes stem from this principle. Thirdly, although Lao Tzu had a cyclic and static concep¬ tion of the ‘ultimate reality’ Tao, the text is also suggestive of a dialectical approach to reality, as Weber perceptively noted, and as some of the quotations above indicate. Tao is the way, the process of nature, and is expressed in the imagery of spontaneity and growth. It is something that exists by and through itself, as a self-generating entity or principle. There is no dualism here between god and nature or between a world of flux and an underlying, unchanging world of ‘forms’ or ‘spirit’. But rather between the natural 11 world as manifested, and its principle of ‘impetus’ or move¬ ment. There is undoubtedly a great affinity between the ideas expressed in Tao Te Ching and Spinoza’s philosophy, particularly his distinction between natura naturata (nature as found) and natura naturans (nature creating). The latter concept, as Watts implied, has a meaning very similar to that of Tao. Equally interesting, the associated concept Te, usually translated (without, it may be noted, any moral or religious connotations) as ‘power’ or Virtue’ means in ess¬ ence that aspect of Tao that is manifested in natural pheno¬ mena. As Watts defines it ‘Te is the realisation or expression of the Tao in actual living’ (1975; 107). Cooper is more exact; ‘it is the inward quality in man and all creatures, a potentiality and latent natural power arising from and de¬ pendent on Tao’ (1972; 20). Tlie English term ‘nature’ in fact reflects.a similar double meaning, referring both to the totality of the natural world as well as to the ‘internal source’ of some entity’s behaviour (cf Collingwood 1945; 43-48). Te (virtue) is therefore a naturalistic concept, and there are no hints in Tao Te Ching of any animistic or sha- manistic connotations. Fourthly, the recent researches of Joseph Needham have stressed that Taoism, as a kind of naturalistic approach that emphasized the unity and spontaneity of the oper¬ ations of nature, was instrumental in the development of science in China. It was the ‘only system of mysticism the world has ever seen that was not profoundly anti-scientific’ (Ronan 1978; 85). At a time when phenomena were most frequently explained in terms of spirits, the naturalism ex¬ pressed by the Taoists, Needham suggests, was distinctly unusual, and he even remarks on the dialectical quality of the Taoist writings, for in seeing change as eternal and real¬ ity as a process, they had much in common with Hegel. And as indicated above, Needham interprets wu-wei not as implying inaction, but as ‘action contrary to nature’. It implies that plants grow best without interference from wo/man, and that people thrive best without interference from the state. Wu-wei is not inactivity or quietism but the idea that one acts in ‘harmony with nature’ (op cit 98). Coupled with an acceptance of manual labour, a disin¬ clination to make ethical judgements of a humanistic kind, and the adoption of an empirical outlook towards the natural world — all these lead Needham to suggest that Taoist philosophy, though certainly religious and poetic, was also proto-scientific. » What were the implications of this kind of nature mys¬ ticism in terms of social and political attitudes? For it is only after considering these that we can make a valid ass¬ essment as to whether Lao Tzu can be rightly adjudged an anarchist. I will discuss such attitudes under three headings. 1: MORALITY AND KNOWLEDGE The central concern of Confucius (who apparently was an itinerant teacher anxious to find employment from any state-ruler) was to re-establish a state of harmony by advo¬ cating the pre-existing ‘way of heaven’ (T’ien). To counter the prevailing political disintegration he propounded what was essentially a social and ethical doctrine. As with Tao¬ ism it was profoundly practical and ‘this-worldly’. Whereas many mystics from Buddha and Plato to the Hare Krishna cult have seen salvation as entailing a separation of the individual from a ‘matter-corrupted world’ the Confucian tendency was one of life-affirmation. The ‘spirit’ of Chi¬ nese philosophy as Fung Yu-Lan rightly suggested was at the same time extremely spiritual or mystical and extreme¬ ly realistic (1962; 3). Both Lao Tzu and Confucius shared this ‘spirit’. But this is about the only thing that they did have in common. Confucian thought is aristocratic and feudal, and focusses around a number of central and inter-related virtues which 12 he stressed should be cultivated by the noble man (chun tzu). There is the notion of jen, human kindness or bene¬ volence. This is the emphasis that human action should be sympathetic, and that all transactions should be unselfish and unconditional, and beneficial to social well-being. This ruled out profit seeking. There is thus a strong humanistic tendency in the writings of Confucius. An allied virtue was that of yi, righteousness - ‘doing a thing because it was right regardless of consequences’ (Day 1962; 35). Again this virtue is set within a social context and ruled out ac¬ tion for purely personal utilitarian ends. But what was righteous’ was defined in relation to two other virtues. The first is hsiao or piety; it implied the acceptance and the respect for five hierarchical relationships; subject/ruler, child/parent, younger/older sibling, wife/husband, younger/ older friend. The second was the observance of traditional ritual li, particularly the ceremonies focussed around the ancestral cults, which were of fundamental importance to Confucius. Although it is fair to say that the teachings of Confucius are primarily ethical, he was by no means a secular human¬ ist. There is evidence to suggest that he thought himself di¬ vinely inspired (Blakney 1955; 17) - although he was cer¬ tainly a scholar rather than a prophet — and looked upon heaven as a kind of quasi-deity. But more important, the cult of ancestors was intrinsic to his philosophy, and was indeed ‘the only form of religion encouraged by Confucius’. There is the famous epigram ‘Respect the heavenly and earthly spirits and keep them at a distance’ — by means of course of proper ritual observances and moral propriety (cf Day 1962; 36-46). By the correct performance of ritual, and the cultivation of righteousness, human feeling and piety, wisdom (chih) could be attained, and social and spiritual harmony re¬ stored, the latter being identified with a past golden — but feudal — age. This was the Confucian answer to the political crisis. It can be seen that although Confucianism was a ration¬ alism of order and peace (as Weber noted) (1964; 169) it advocated a society along feudal lines, and saw religion as having an important function in maintaining social order. Its morality was defined in terms of this order, and it lacked any scientific attitude or focus on the natural world. Lao Tzu’s nature mysticism was the exact antithesis to Confucian philosophy; it implied a different focus, a differ¬ ent ethic and a different social ideal. All the main tenets of Confucian philosophy and morality were condemned by Lao Tzu. The performance of ritual and the observance of piety were viewed simply as a means of maintaining social divisions and hierarchy (Kaltenmark 1965; 52). The appeal to righteousness, social justice and human kindness is treated with scepticism, for social values are seen as relative and prejudiced. There is indeed in Tao Te Ching a fundamental stress on the relativity of all attri¬ butes and values. For Lao Tzu, ethical values cannot be derived from social knowledge, nor by following human¬ istic criteria; and in this context, he takes, like Spinoza, a wholly naturalistic standpoint. If all things are relative, on what foundation can we base our ethical norms? The ans¬ wer to this follows logically from Lao Tzu’s philosophy, and is beautifully illustrated in the verbal confrontation between the two ‘sages’, as recorded by Chuang Tzu. Legend has it that Confucius went one day to visit Lao Tzu at his library (no less), taking along some of his own writings. Confucius started to expound to Lao Tzu his ab¬ stract on the ‘classical’ writings, but Lao Tzu interrupted and asked him to give the substance of his ideas more brief¬ ly. Confucius replied that they were about goodness and duty. ‘Do you consider these virtues to constitute the na¬ ture of man?’ asked Lao Tzu. ‘Yes’, replied Confucius, ‘if a gentleman is not good he will not thrive; if he is not righteous he may as well not have been born.’ ‘But what do you mean by these?’ Lao Tzu insisted. ‘To be in one’s inmost heart in kindly sympathy with all things; to love all men; and to allow no selfish thoughts — this is the nature of goodness and duty,’ said Confucius. ‘Ah!’ exclaimed Lao Tzu, ‘to love all men. Is this not vague and exaggerated? To seek to allow no selfish thoughts — isn’t that selfishness? If you wish men to follow their natural ways why not think of heaven and earth; which certainly pursue their invariant course; think of the sun and moon, and the stars, and the birds and beasts, and trees. You can guide your steps more adequately by following the way of nature’, continued Lao Tzu ‘instead of vehemently putting forward your goodness and duty as if you were beating a drum.’ (Waley 1939; 13- 14, Legge 1962, 339-340). The contrast between these two philosophers is striking, and somewhat paradoxical. Confucius is described as an ethical humanist, yet his whole way of thinking is religious and spiritual, Lao Tzu, in contrast, is thought of as a mys¬ tic, whereas, as I have indicated above, he is a thorough¬ going naturalistic philosopher. Confucius is considered a practical thinker whose undialectical reflections are fo¬ cussed only on social and moral issues — indeed he has been described as ‘no intellectual’ and as lacking any originality. (Blakney 1955; 19) Yet, ironically, he placed a high value on traditional learning. Lao Tzu, on the other hand, whose writings express some profundity and a complex meta¬ physics, condemns not only the presumptions of moralists, but virtually all literacy and book-learning. Confucius is the custodian of a feudal tradition; Lao Tzu as a nature-mystic comes close to dismissing all discursive knowledge as a fut¬ ile, if not a harmful, pre-occupation. ‘Those who know do not speak Those who speak do not know’ (56) ‘Banish wisdom, discard knowledge And the people will be benefitted a hundredfold’ (19) are but two epigrams that reflect this attitude. But as with the concept wu-wei and his ethical theory, Lao Tzu’s atti¬ tude towards learning must be seen within the context of Tao; it is knowledge that is not in harmony with the work¬ ings of nature that is to be depreciated, not all thought. Nevertheless, Lao Tzu is about the only philosopher who has ever lived who did not see a virtue in knowledge. His attitude towards human desires and passions follows a similar pattern; it is neither one of renunciation nor of egoistic striving, but having in oneself ‘no contraries’. The essence of Lao Tzu’s moral theory therefore is contained in the famous verse (67) which reads: ‘I have three precious things which I prize and hold fast: the first is gentleness; the second is frugality; and the third is the refusal to be foremost of all things under heaven. For with gentleness I can be brave; with frugality I can give freely, in refusing to be foremost I become the vessel of highest honour.’ Waley, who clearly sees Tao Te Ching for what it is - a political tract — interprets these rules as, a) the abstention from aggressive war and capital punishment, b) the abso¬ lute simplicity of living, and c) refusal to assert active au¬ thority (Waley 1977; 225) — attitudes consonant with cer¬ tain kinds of anarchism. 2: A TTITUDE TO WAR AND NA TURE There can be no doubt that Taoist philosophy, as Blofeld suggests (1973; 15) implied an opposition to every sort of threat, coercion, punishment or violence. Mears described Lao Tzu as a ‘Prophet of peace’ (1922; 15). Yet, as Waley points out, although there is no specific condemnation of war in the Taoist writings as a whole, as it is assumed that violence of any kind is contrary to the spirit of Tao, Tao Te Ching takes a determined stand against war and militar¬ ism. An often quoted verse (30) reads: ‘Those who would help the ruler of men By means of Tao Will oppose all conquest by force of arms For this tactic is likely to recoil. For where armies have marched There do thorns and brambles grow In the aftermath of great armies Years of hunger and evil ensue.’ And the following verse (31) is along the same lines: ‘Weapons, however beautiful, are instruments of evil omens, hateful, it may be said, to all creatures... A man of peace will not possess them, nor use them, except under compulsion. Calm and repose are what he values. For to consider force desirable is to delight in the slaughter of men. And he who delights in the slaughter of men cannot succeed in ruling his kingdom.’ Again, it is important to observe that this stress on non¬ violence is entirely consistent with Lao Tzu’s philosophi¬ cal premises and the ideal of wu-wei. Thus the imagery ex¬ pressed in Tao Te Ching is focussed around such ideas as femininity, the granary, the valley, water and the uncarved block. A significant verse (28) reads: ‘Know masculinity, yet prefer femininity; you will be the ravine of the world. Know fame, yet prefer ignominy; you will be the valley of the world. And being such a valley You will have all the power to get contentment, And be able to return to the simplicity of the uncarved block. Once the uncarved block is carved it forms utensils.... The greatest craftsman does the least chiselling.’ This exaltation of feminine qualities, as Kaltenmark stresses (59) went against all conventional Chinese thinking, for in the hierarchy of feudal values, masculine values (Yang) tended to have primacy. There is the suggestion that this symbolism may have been derived from an earlier mat- rilineal system, but it seems more consistent with the gener¬ al attitude implied by wu-wei; simplicity, harmony, tran¬ quillity, non-violence, intuition, and conformity through yielding to natural processes. Such an attitude implied and even stressed an ecological and reverential attitude towards the natural world. This is brought out lucidly by Seyyed Hossein Nasr in his study Man and Nature (1976; 83-87), although as a religious philosopher Nasr makes similar as¬ sumptions to those of Blofeld, and interprets Tao as a trans¬ cendental realm ethically superior to ‘Being’, thus denying the pantheistic or naturalistic dimension to Lao Tzuls thought. But the epigram quoted by Nasr ‘All things under heaven are the products of Being, but Being itself is the product of non-Being’ (40) hardly makes sense in theistic or Buddhist terms, especially when set against verses like ‘Being and non-Being grow out of one another’ (2) and ‘the ways of men are conditioned by those of earth, the ways of earth by those of heaven, the ways of heaven by those of Tao, and the ways of Tao conforms to its own nature’. Tao, the nameless, is best understood, as I have stressed above, in terms of an imminent power within and behind the natural world, not as god or the void. Nasr virtually says that Tao is the order of nature, but as an Islamic scholar recoils from such an admission! Nevertheless he cogently outlines the essence of Taoist thought which insists that to be at one with nature means accepting its norms and its rhythms rather than seeking to dominate or overcome it. Although Lao Tzu has a cosmological attitude towards nature (cf my essay 1981) he is much closer to contemporary ecological thought than perhaps any other mystic or philosopher. Al¬ though Black Elk (and tribal cults generally) may have ex¬ pressed a feeljng of oneness towards nature, and in their ritual symbolism implied an ecological attitude, neverthe¬ less this harmony was expressed in spiritual concepts. Lao Tzu, in contrast, is a nature mystic not an animist. But be¬ cause he articulates tribal values, he differs fundamentally from all other mystics — whether Hindu, Christian, Islamic or Buddhist — whose thoughts imply hierarchy, a devalu¬ ation of the phenomenal world (in favour of a transcenden¬ tal realm beyond the natural cosmos) (cf Bellah 1964), and essentially unecological attitudes. When St. John of the Cross — a typical mystic — suggested that we should ‘strive to enter into complete detachment and emptiness and po¬ verty, with respect to everything that is in the world’ he shows affinities to Buddhist thought, but it is quite differ¬ ent from the naturalism of Lao Tzu, whose philosophy ad¬ vocates living in harmony with the natural world. Lao Tzu’s essential thoughts express neither an opposition nor a re¬ jection of empirical reality. The belief in the goodness of human nature (taken as self evident by Lao Tzu) and the lack of active antagonism to the world is seen by Weber as central to Taoist thought (187); making it an inappropriate ethic for capitalist development in China. 3: GOVERNMENT As a naturalistic philosopher, and in terms of his ethical theory and attitude towards war and nature, Lao Tzu can certainly be considered to hold views that are consonant with anarchism. It comes, then, as no surprise that when one examines the politics of Tao Te Ching the overall im¬ pression that one comes away with is that Lao Tzu was an anarchist. This is the impression of one oriental scholar: ‘The philosophy of the Tao Te Ching is perhaps one of the most revolutionary that has ever been formulated. Interpreted literally ... it represents an attack upon everything that has gone to make up what is called civilisation. Lao Tzu tells us to ‘let things alone’. He tells governments in particular to let things alone; in short, he sees nothing but evil in the idea of govern¬ ment.’ (Tomlin 1968; 254) What is tiie basis for such an assessment? Before addressing ourselves to this question however it is perhaps important to note the perspective from which Tao Te Ching is written. It is indeed a political tract first and foremost, rather than a philosophical treatise, or a work of mysticism — even though expressed in mystical aphorisms. But what political scientist has ever faced directly the issues that Lao Tzu poses? But it is not written as a radical pole¬ mic. Quite the contrary. Tao Te Ching is essentially a text by a scholar giving advice to a ruler on how best to govern and keep order within the kingdom. Lao Tzu is addressing himself to the same ‘problematic’ as Confucius: how best to cope with the general disorder, the conflict, and the ‘state of chaos’ that existed at the time of the ‘warring states’. And as Weber noted (op cit 185), as an archivist he belongs to the same stratum as Confucius — the literati — and thus took certain things for granted. One of these was the posi¬ tive value of government. But the logic of his philosophy leads him ironically to conclusions that are fundamentally anti-statist. Waley informatively puts the doctrines of Tao Te Ching in the context of the other main schools of thought of the period. As we have noted already, Lao Tzu is highly critical of the central tenets of Confucianism, and there is a sus¬ tained polemic running through Tao Te Ching against the notions of morality and piety. But the text is equally criti¬ cal of hedonistic doctrines which stressed that the ‘art of ruling’ was to give free play to the processes of ‘life-nur¬ turing’ (Yang Sheng), namely the promotion of individual happiness and sensual pleasure. It was the doctrinal count¬ erpart to Confucianism: the individual, not society, is given primacy; the satisfaction of desires and not the following of a moral code is esteemed; the superiority of life over death (ancestors) is advocated. According to the Hedonists it was the duty of the ruler to create the conditions conducive to individual well-being in the above sense. Lao Tzu in a way completely bypasses these alternatives; but with regard to the last opposition — the rival claims of life (hedonism) and death (Confucianism) — Waley interestingly quotes the clas¬ sic story of Chuang Tzu (Chapter 18) who mourned little at the death of his beloved wife. As Waley notes (1977; 53-54) for the Taoists such debates and oppositions were meaning¬ less. But as Waley also argues, Lao Tzu echoes the doctrines of the realists in condemning both the school of Confucius and of Yang Chu — from whom the Hedonists derived their essential ideas. Tao Te Ching in its early chapters condemns book learning, sentimentality, morality — both social and in terms of individual conscience and desires, and appears to follow the realists in its general trend of thought. The real¬ ists, or Legalists, saw no need for such abstract principles ‘as morality and benevolence, nor for the consecration of particular emotions such as pity or love’ (71), and they were equally distrustful of emotions and tradition. Their answer to the ‘problematic’ was to draw up a code of state laws, applicable to all citizens from the king to the peasant, and to have these laws rigidly enforced under the dire threat of heavy penalties for violations (Day 1962; 75-79). Seemingly the Legalists were even more repressive and pro¬ state than either the Hedonists or the Confucianists. Under¬ standably, Lao Tzu was even more critical of realism: to such an extent that, as Waley remarks, he did not seem to his contemporaries either safe or sane. Passages in Tao Te Ching with its doctrine of non-violence, undermine the very cornerstone of realistic domestic policies by declaring war, capital punishment and imprisonment as untenable. But more than this; it denied any relevance to the state. The majority of the aphorisms in the second half of Tao Te Ching are formulas for good government; but the only kind of government or order that Lao Tzu seems to consider valid is simply no government. Here are some typical state¬ ments. ‘Without law or compulsion, men would dwell in har¬ mony’ (32) ‘A state can be governed only if rules are enforced, Battles can be won only with craftiness. But the adherence of all under heaven can only be gained by letting-alone How do I know this is so? By these facts. The more prohibitions there are The more poverty there is among the people The more implements that are used The more benighted will the whole land become The more cunning craftsmen there are The more pernicious contrivances will be invented The more laws are promulgated the more thieves and bandits there will be. Therefore the sage has said So long as I ‘do nothing’ the people will themselves be transformed So long as I love quietitude, the people will of thems- selves go straight So long as I act only by inactivity the people will them¬ selves become prosperous, So long as I have no wants the people will return them¬ selves to the state of the ‘uncarved block’ (57) In essence Lao Tzu is saying that left to themselves, with¬ out state interference, the people will live in harmony. This ‘state’ implies one of simplicity, and there are several aphor¬ isms critical of unnecessary wealth and acquisitiveness. ‘To be content with what one has is to be rich’ (33) ‘Be content with what you have and are, and no one can despoil you’ (44) ‘If we stop looking for ‘persons of superior morality’ to put in power, there will be no more jealousies among the people. If we cease to set store by products that are hard to get, there will be no more thieves.’ Thus Lao Tzu’s political philosophy can be summed up as a consistent critique of the state — ‘The people suffer from famine because those above them eat too much tax-grain. That is the only reason why they starve. The people are difficult to govern be¬ cause those above them interfere. It is only through this that they are difficult to keep in order.’ (75) — and the advocacy of a tribal pattern of living. This has been stressed by numerous writers, and is further evidence a- gainst the idea that Lao Tzu was a religious mystic — for there is no special pleading for monasticism or a hermit-like existence. Throughout Tao Te Ching it is assumed, as Waley notes (92) that an ideal state of society once existed, before the ‘great Way declined’, and that what was needed was the restoration of this kind of society. Unlike Confucius the ideal envisaged was tribal; not a feudal aristocracy. As Toynbee puts it; ‘The Taoists’ prescription for healing the wounds of the Age of the Warring States was to repudiate civilization and to revert to the way of human life that had been followed in a self-contained neolithic-age community.’ (1976; 220) Needham’s studies make the same emphasis: ‘The Taoists aim for society was a kind of agrarian coll¬ ectivism, without feudalism and without merchants; they advocated what was virtually a return to a simpler way of life.’ (Ronan 1978; 104) As with Ovid, what Tao Te Ching conveys is not a myth¬ ical image of a past Golden Age — although this is the way the writings tend to be interpreted; rather it articulates a theory based on a social reality — that of tribal society. The writings of Chuang Tzu 'Legge 1962; 287-89) beauti¬ fully express the nature of this ‘age of perfect virtue’. It conveys a period when there was no coercive authority, no food shortages, no books or literati; a time when people had no use for any form of record other than knotted ropes. The writings express a distrust of techno¬ logy and knowledge; and an affirmation of a classless so¬ ciety when people were ‘left to their natural tendencies’ (op cit 227). Many would see this kind of focus, in its primitivism, as retrogressive, even reactionary. But this I feel would be mis¬ leading, and for a number of reasons. Firstly, as Needham points out, Taoism was closely linked with political anti¬ feudalism and various ‘rebel’ movements in the third and fourth centuries BC. Even the concept phu (uncarved block) essentially referred to ‘social solidarity’ and had, it is suggested, a strong political content. Secondly, again as Needham stresses, Taoism, unlike the primitivism in Eu¬ rope, was naturalistic, and initiated a scientific movement that had no equivalent or counterpart elsewhere. Even the distrust for technology must not be overstated: ‘What the Taoists were objecting to was the misuse of technology, not technology itself; to its use as a means of enslavement of men by the feudal lords’ (Ronan 1978; 105-7). Waley in fact suggests that Lao Tzu’s ideas on technology were very similar to those of Gandhi (1939; 69). And finally, it is worth noting that Lao Tzu repudiates the hierarchical relationships implicit in kinship and marriage structures of that period, for as Nisbet remarks, Lao Tzu (along with other religious philosophers of the sixth century BC) es¬ poused a kind of universalism that transcended the narrow confines of kinship and race (1973; 178). The ideal ex¬ pressed seems to be that of a decentralized community, and one verse in particular (5) is instructive in this context, for it suggests that impartiality rather than kin ties should have salience for the sage. The ideas expressed in Tao Te Ching have often been compared with the modem anarchism of writers like Kro¬ potkin. And the contrast seems justified. For Lao Tzu, the ‘gentle sage’ (as Rudolf Rocker describes him), was essen¬ tially a political philosopher whose ideas were encapsulated in a mystical poetry of a naturalistic kind. I contend that he was not a religious mystic, and it is of interest that two im¬ portant studies of mysticism (Underhill 1930, Bharatl 1976) make no mention of him. But was he an ana chist? The answer to this must I think be affirmative; he was in¬ deed the first writer to express the libertarian socialist ideal, and I can do no better than conclude this essay by quoting yet another verse (8) from his classic work. ‘The highest good is like that of water... And if men think the ground the best place for building a house upon If among thoughts they value those that are profound If in friendship they value gentleness in words, truth; in government, good order; in deeds, effectiveness; in actions, timeliness — In each case it is because they prefer what does not lead to strife, And therefore does not go amiss. BRIAN MORRIS References are overleaf on page 16 Illustrations: Front page: 4 Bamboo linocut by Henry Evans. Page 11: ‘La Perspective amoureuse ’ by Rene Magritte Page 13: Forest 1 by Max Ernst. Page 15: Section of shell Nautilus pompilius 1 . 15 REFERENCES AGEHANANDA BHARATI R B BLARNEY JOHN BLOFELD ROBERT N BELLAH MURRAY BOOKCHIN J C COOPER CLARENCE B DAY SAM DOLGOFF R G COLLINGWOOD JAMES LEGGE MAX KALTENMARK ISABELLA MEARS THOMAS MERTON BRIAN MORRIS SEYYED HOSSEIN NASR ROBERT NISBET KENNETH REXROTH COLIN A RONAN NINIAN SMART D HOWARD SMITH E W F TOMLIN ARNOLD TOYNBEE EVELYN UNDERHILL ARTHUR WALEY ALAN W WATTS MAX WEBER DAVID WIECK KARL A WITTFOGEL FUNG YU-LAN 1976 The Light at the Center Ross Erikson, Santa Barbara 1955 (trans) Lao Tzu. The Way of Life Mentor, New York 1973 The Secret and the Sublime: Taoist Mysteries and Magic Allen & Unwin 1964 Religious Evolution AMER. SOCIOL. REV. 29; 358-74 1980 Toward an Ecological Society Black Rose Books, Montreal 1972 Taoism: The way of the Mystic Aquarian Press, Welingborough 1962 The Philosophers of China P. Owen, London 1973 Bakunin on Anarchy Allen & Unwin 1945 The Idea of Nature Oxford Univ. Press 1962 The Texts of Taoism Dover Publ., New York 1965 Lao Tzu and Taoism Stanford Univ. Press 1922 Tao Teh King Theosophical Publ. House 1975 The way of Chuang Tzu Unwin 1981 Changing Views of Nature ECOLOGIST 11; 130-7 1976 Man and Nature Unwin 1973 The Social Philosophers Granada Publ. 1975 Communalism P. Owen, London 1978 The Shorter Science and Civilization in China (J NEEDHAM) Cambridge Univ. Press 1971 The Religious Experience of Mankind Fontana 1968 Chinese Religions Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1968 The Eastern Philosophers Hutchinson 1976 Mankind and Mother Earth Granada, New York 1930 Mysticism Unwin 1939 Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China Doubleday, New York 1957 The Way of Zen Thames & Hudson 1964 The Religion of China Free Press, Glencoe 1978 Anarchist Justice in J R PENNOCK and J W CHAPMAN Anarchism New York UP pp215-38 1957 Oriental Despotism Yale Univ. Press 1962 The Spirit of Chinese Philosophy Routledge Kegan Paul T cannot believe that the study of the past has any object save to throw light upon the present’ WALEY 1977; 14 Books from FREEDOM BOOKSHOP In Angel Alley, 84b Whitechapel High St., London El. Please add postage as in brackets. Items marked * are pub¬ lished in the USA. Transatlantic purchasers please convert £1.00 @ 1.90 dollars (US) or 2.25 dollars (Canada). Deficit Fund July 30th - Aug. 11th Incl. Contributions Received In Shop. Anon. £0.95; London SW10. P W C £2.00; Los Angeles. USA S S £11.00; Wolverhampton. J L £1.50; J K W £0.50; Crewe. G P £1.00; London Wl. M P £6.00; Wolverhampton. J L £1.50; J K W £0.50. TOTAL = £24.95 Previously acknowledged = £844.91 TOTAL TO DATE = £869.86 TARGET FOR 1981 = £2,000 Premises Fund Jul y 30th • Au §- llth Incl - Contributions Received f- In Shop R A £4.25; Solna. Sweden. K P £5.00; Wolver¬ hampton. J L £2.00; J S B £5.00; London Wl. M P £6.00; Wolverhampton. J L £2.00. TOTAL = £24.25 Previously acknowledged = £274.08 TOTAL TO DATE = £298.33 TARGET FOR 1981 = £1,000 *George and Louise Crowley: Beyond Automation (15pp. ppr.) £0.30 (12p) *Research Group One: Anarchism and Formal Organisation (17pp. ppr.) £0.50 >p) S. London Anarchist Group: Anarchist Songbook (59pp. ppr.) £0.80 (22p) Ivan Illich: Shadow Work (152pp. ppr.) £2.95 (32p) Nicola Sacco: Letter to Dante Sacco (2pp. ppr. in Slip Case) (limited edition available only through Freedom Bookshop) £1.00 (22p) Global Tapestry No. 10 (68pp. ppr.) £0.50 (22p) Thomas Campanella: The City of the Sun (64pp. ppr.) £1.75 (22p) Review of Libertarian Politics and Alternative Lifestyles (from Australia) (52pp. ppr.) £1.50 (27p) Robert Polet: The Polish Summer (44p. ppr.) £0.75 (17p) *Sidney Lens: Unrepentant Radical: An American Acti¬ vist’s Account of Five Turbulent Decades (438pp. cloth) £11.50 (87p) *Murray Bookchin: The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Anarchists: The Heroic Years. 1868 -1936 (344pp. ppr.) £3.95 (48p) * Philip Pomper: Sergei Nechaev (273pp. cloth) £13.50 (87p) *Harvey O’Connor: Revolution in Seattle (300pp. ppr.) £4.50 (87p) This is distributed in the UK exclusively by Freedom Bookshop and we can give full trade terms on this title. Harvey O’Connor (born 1897) has been involved in radical agitation and organisation all his life and this is the story of the workers Fight in the state of Washing¬ ton in the twentieth century. Vernon Richards: Protest without Illusions (168pp. ppr.) £1.95 (42p) A History and Critique of the Nuclear Disarmament Movement in the 50’s and 60’s with implicitly some pointers as to progress in the 80’s. (published by Freedom Press)
One-step shell polymerization of inorganic nanoparticles and their applications in SERS/nonlinear optical imaging, drug delivery, and catalysis.
Liu, Tzu-Ming,Yu, Jiashing,Chang, C. Allen,Chiou, Arthur,Chiang, Huihua Kenny,Chuang, Yu-Chun,Wu, Cheng-Han,Hsu, Che-Hao,Chen, Po-An,Huang, Chih-Chia
2014-07-07T00:00:00Z
null
This article is from Scientific Reports , volume 4 . Abstract Surface functionalized nanoparticles have found their applications in several fields including biophotonics, nanobiomedicine, biosensing, drug delivery, and catalysis. Quite often, the nanoparticle surfaces must be post-coated with organic or inorganic layers during the synthesis before use. This work reports a generally one-pot synthesis method for the preparation of various inorganic-organic core-shell nanostructures (Au@polymer, Ag@polymer, Cu@polymer, Fe3O4@polymer, and TiO2@polymer), which led to new optical, magnetic, and catalytic applications. This green synthesis involved reacting inorganic precursors and poly(styrene-alt-maleic acid). The polystyrene blocks separated from the external aqueous environment acting as a hydrophobic depot for aromatic drugs and thus illustrated the integration of functional nanoobjects for drug delivery. Among these nanocomposites, the Au@polymer nanoparticles with good biocompatibility exhibited shell-dependent signal enhancement in the surface plasmon resonance shift, nonlinear fluorescence, and surface-enhanced Raman scattering properties. These unique optical properties were used for dual-modality imaging on the delivery of the aromatic photosensitizer for photodynamic therapy to HeLa cells.
Full text of "One-step shell polymerization of inorganic nanoparticles and their applications in SERS/nonlinear optical imaging, drug delivery, and catalysis." Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "One-step shell polymerization of inorganic nanoparticles and their applications in SERS/nonlinear optical imaging, drug delivery, and catalysis." See other formats SCIENTIFIC REPORTS OPEN SUBJECT AREAS: COLLOIDS NANOPARTICLES ORGANIC-INORGANIC NANOSTRUCTURES Received 26 March 2014 Accepted 18 June 2014 Published 7 July 2014 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to C.C.H. (cchuang-ym@ ym.edu. tw; huang. [email protected]) * These authors contributed equally to this work. One-step shell polymerization of inorganic nanoparticles and their applications in SERS/nonlinear optica imaging, drug delivery, and catalysis Tzu-Ming Liu'*, Jiashing Yu^*, C. Allen Chang-^'''^, Arthur Chiou'''^, Huihua Kenny Chiang'''^*, Yu-Chun Chuang^, Cheng-Han Wu', Che-Hao Hsu^, Po-An Chen^ & Chih-Chia Huang^'^'^ 'institute of Biomedical Engineering and Molecular Imaging Center, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 1 06, Taiwan, ^Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 1 06, Taiwan, ''Department of Biomedical Imaging and Radiological Sciences National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, 1 1 2, Taiwan, ''Institute of Biophotonics, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, 1 1 2, Taiwan, ^Biophotonics and Molecular Imaging Research Center (BMIRC), National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, 1 1 2, Taiwan, ^Institute of Biomedical Engineering, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, 1 1 2, Taiwan, ''National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center, Hsinchu, 300, Taiwan, ^Department of Applied Chemistry, National University of Kaohsiung, Kaohsiung, 811, Taiwan. Surface functionalized nanoparticles have found their applications in several fields including biophotonics, nanobiomedicine, biosensing, drug delivery, and catalysis. Quite often, the nanoparticle surfaces must be post-coated with organic or inorganic layers during the synthesis before use. This work reports a generally one-pot synthesis method for the preparation of various inorganic-organic core-shell nanostructures (Au@ polymer, Ag@polymer, Cu@polymer, Fe304@polymer, and Ti02@polymer), which led to new optical, magnetic, and catalytic applications. This green synthesis involved reacting inorganic precursors and poly(styrene-a/^maleic acid). The polystyrene blocks separated from the external aqueous environment acting as a hydrophobic depot for aromatic drugs and thus illustrated the integration of functional nanoobjects for drug delivery. Among these nanocomposites, the Au@polymer nanoparticles with good biocompatibility exhibited shell- dependent signal enhancement in the surface plasmon resonance shift, nonlinear fluorescence, and surface-enhanced Raman scattering properties. These unique optical properties were used for dual-modality imaging on the delivery of the aromatic photosensitizer for photodynamic therapy to HeLa cells. Over the past few decades, nanomaterials have been shown to exhibit various optical and magnetic properties and have been integrated with drug carriers for multifunctional applications in biophotonics and nanobiomedicine'"^. Although there are many known strategies to fabricate nanoparticles, the challenge still remains in developing one general method for synthesizing the different types of inorganic nanoparticles while controlling particle size, shape, and composition. The current synthesis reaction keeps complex procedures and undesired toxic reagents at minimum. Specifically, the shape- and size-control characteristics of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) of Au inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) have been extensively utilized in bio-tracking, chemical sensors, electronic devices, medical therapies, and imaging agents' When the wavelength of incident light coincides with the SPR wavelengths of Au NPs, the efficiency of the local field enhancement effects of the photon-to-thermal conversion' *, Raman scattering'" and nonlinear optical (NLO)" '^ processes can be greatly improved for theranostics. By consider- ing scattering loss and pigment attenuation in photomedicines, recent efforts indicated that the red to NIR wavelength would be a better choice for deep tissue treatment"" '^. However, red-NIR-IR excitation wavelengths for these optical applications were still difficult to obtain despite the manipulation of isotropic Au NPs' '''"~'^. Various strategies"*"^' for the preparation of shape- and size-controUed Au nanomaterials have been developed. These procedures require complex experimental conditions, toxic reagents (i.e., CTAB, organic solvent, and initiator compounds), and multiple synthesis steps to obtain plasmonic Au NPs with the desired SPR band and surface functionality. Packing Au NPs into amphipathic co-polymers might prevent their aggregation under the SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:5593 | DOI: 1 0. 1 038/srep05593 1 previously mentioned physiological conditions by sterically protect- ing their surfaces and allowing specific functional groups to be exposed to their subsequent conjugations. The intrinsic amphipathic features of the polymer in the inorganic-polymer hybrid can act as additional absorption sites for drug delivery. Although several reports have successfully employ amphipathic co-polymers to coat and encapsulate the nanoparticles via a step-by-step strategy through the ligand exchange and micelle formation surface strategies^" these methods are still difficult to control synthesis of the nanocrystal core sizes and types accompanying with synchronous self-assembly of co-polymer on the particle surface. In this study, we first focused on devising a novel green method (water system) which enables us to synthesize size-tunable Au NPs and form Au@polymer nanostructures via a spontaneous redox reac- tion between a HAUCI4 precursor and the amphiphUic block copoly- mer poly(styrene-aZt-maleic acid) (PSMA) (Figure la). Only two reagents were employed and controlling the reaction time enabled the analogical layer-by-layer growth of the PSMA polymer on the Au NPs (Au@PSMA polymer, abbreviated as Au@polymer) through polymer self-assembly and esterification. Intriguingly, the attached polymer layer was degradable by adding esterase or adjusting to basic conditions. We established a red-shifted SPR absorption of the Au@ polymer structure by an increase in the polymer thickness thereby enhancing the NLO multiphoton fluorescence by excitation at 1250 nm infrared light. The surface of the Au@polymer NPs con- sisted of hydrophobic polystyrene blocks that could adsorb a large amount of aromatic drugs (i.e., doxorubicin (DOX), methylene blue (MB), and chlorin e6 (Ce6)) via n-n stacking interactions. We demonstrated that the Au@polymer NP carrier of the MB photo- sensitizer exhibited shell-dependent, surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) properties. Putting these properties together (Figure lb), the MB-loaded Au@polymer exhibited SERS and an intrinsic NLO fluorescence, allowing the observation of the distri- bution of MB molecules delivered to the cell. PSMA is an inexpensive, commercially available copolymer that has been employed in the synthesis of hydrophobic nanocrystals with carboxylate functional groups in aqueous solutions'"' Recent stud- ies showed that PSMA micelle composites can serve as nanocarriers due to hydrophobic interactions between the styrene moiety and the anticancer drug'^ '"'. Thus, the use of PSMA polymer is suitable for the development of different nanoobjects. In addition to preparin Au@polymer NPs, we further demonstrated that the polymer- assisted synthesis strategy provides a general, one-pot reaction to prepare other inorganic-organic NPs (Figure Ic), such as metal@ polymer and metal oxide@polymer NPs. Results In a typical Au NP synthesis, 10 mL of the PSMA polymer (6 mg/ mL) was reacted with 0.25, 0.5, and 1 mL of an HAUCI4 (5 mM) solution at 200"C for 1 h to produce NPs with diameters of ~ 1 5 nm, — 19 nm, and —22 nm, respectively (Figure 2a-c). The particle size was analyzed with transmission electron microscopy (TEM). With the increase of particle size from — 15 nm to —22 nm, the absorption band of Au NPs shows little red-shift (Figure 2d). The changes of particle diameters and absorption peaks as a function of HAuCU concentrations were summarized in Table SI. Notably, in a high-magnification TEM image (Figure 3a), a thin coating (with low contrast) was observed on the Au NPs (1 h), sug- gesting that a condensed polymer nanolayer was generated. Au NPs with a diameter of 22 nm were used to study the effect of the reaction time on the polymer deposition because their larger particle size facilitated their observation. Time-dependent TEM images (Figure 3a-c) determined that the polymer shell coating became thicker and the diameter of the Au NPs was almost constant (22- 23 nm) yet as the reaction time increased. At 13 h, the structure is similar to stuffed tapioca nanoball. Accordingly, along with an increase in the polymer thickness, the local SPR extinction signal showed the expected bathochromic shift (Figure 3d). It would be ascribed to a change in the proximal environment affecting the dielectric constant of the surrounding media'" ". At the same time, a broader absorption tail extending into the visible region accom- panied by a shoulder at 260-300 nm appeared after reaction for 10 h and 13 h. The evolution of the new absorption feature could be associated with the generation of carbonyl groups and/or an increase in the number of conjugated double bonds in the condensed polymer structure'^'"*. These results are summarized in Table S2 and Figure 3e. We further employed a Raman spectrometer (Figure 3g) to char- acterize the Au@polymer nanocomposite structure. Although most of the peaks in Au@polymer NPs are inconsistent with these in free PSMA polymer, the vibration signals appeared for samples at 1-6 h of reaction time indicated the organic materials has been deposited on the Au NPs because only HAUCI4, H2O, and PSMA polymer were reacted. The Raman spectra of the Au(a)polymer NPs at 13 h showed two broaden bands at 1584 cm"' and 1330 cm"'. This observation has suggested that for the PSMA polymer converting to more con- densed carbon structures''^ (e-g-> amorphous graphite or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons). However, the products at 13 h was sub- jected to analysis by using the synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction pattern (Figure 3f) to prove the formation of the Au@polymer nanos- tructure. The sharp peaks of the face-centered-cubic structure of Au ment. PSMA polymer ^ nftlvtnpr polymer PSMA polymer Ag, Cu, Fe, and Ti precursors b) visual drug delivery system HAuCI. aromatic drugs Ag@polymer Ti02@polymer Cu@polymer Fe304@polymer SERS tag photodynamic therapy nonlinear fluorescence Figure 1 | Schemes illustrated the polymer-assisted reduction of the HAUCI4 precursor to prepare Au@polymer NPs a), which exhibited polymer sheU-dependent SERS and nonlinear optical enhancements for the observation of microscopic drug delivery in system b). c) The synthesis strategy using the different metal salt precursors to prepare Ag@polymer, Cu@polymer, Ti02@polymer, and Fe304@polymer NPs. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:5593 | DDI: 1 0. 1 038/srep05593 2 Figure 2 | TEM images of the Au NPs prepared by the reaction of 0.25-mL a), 0.5-mL b), and 1-mL c) ]-[AuCl4 (5 mM) with 10 mL of PSMA polymer (0.78 mg/mL) at 200"C for 1 h. d) UV-visible spectra for these corresponding Au NPs. (JCPDS No. 89-3697) appeared. Additionally, it exhibited a broad- ening band at ~ 14° that could be ascribed to the generation of con- densed organic composites. To validate the growth of the PSMA polymer on the Au NPs, we recorded the FT-IR spectra to monitor the changes in the surface structure during the reaction (Figure SI). Note that among these IR peaks, the bands at 1720-1760 cm"' were owing to the overlapping of C = O groups in carboxylic acids, carbonyl moieties, and ester bonds which became to rise in the intensity for the resultant Au@ polymer NPs after 10-13 h. To verify the formation of the ester bonds in the inorganic-organic nanocomposites, TEM images observed that the reaction with the esterase caused the dissociation of the polymer shell structures, suggesting that the polymer sheath could be biodegradable (Figure S2). The zeta potentials measured for the as-prepared Au@polymer NPs (at pH = 6.4) at 1 h and 13 h were — 18.6 mV and —42.1 mV, respectively, whose magnitude is increased as the polymer shell getting thicker. Indeed, the presence of electrostatic potential on the particle surface was also verified by attracting inorganic Fe304@CTAB and amine-functionalized QDs onto the negatively charged Au@polymer NPs (Figure S3). These results confirmed the numerous carboxylate groups exposed to the outmost surface of Au NPs. Previous reports indicated that the thermal reaction of a HAuCU solution with a carboxylate ligand (e.g., citrate molecule) yielded Au 200 1 h 2h — 3h 6h lOh 13 h 400 600 800 Wavelength / nm 1000 13 h -6h 1 h free PSMA 4 6 8 10 12 Reaction time / h 1200 1300 1400 1500 Wavenumber / cm"' 1600 1700 Figure 3 | Time-dependent examinations of the a-c) TEM images from 1 h to 6 h to 13 h and d) UV-visible absorption spectra for the as-prepared Au@polymer NPs (—22 nm in core size), e) Au core size/polymer shell thickness plots f) Synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction pattern of the 13 h sample of the Au(3>polymer NPs. g) Raman spectra of the 1,6, and 1 3 h samples of the Au@polymer NPs, where the * symbol shows the styrene portion of PSMA and the D/G bands refer to the sp'/sp^ hybridized carbon atoms of the graphite structure. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:5593 | DOI: 1 0. 1 038/srep05593 3 colloids because of the electron donation from the oxidizing COOH groups and the release of CO2 molecules'*". To study the reducing ability of the PMSA polymer, we reacted different concentrations of the PSMA polymer (60-300 ng/mL) with 1 mL of 5 mM HAuCU (Figure S4). A peak at approximately 303 nm appeared during the 1 h thermal reaction with 60-150 mg/mL of PSMA, which is con- sistent with the UV-visible results. This band originated from the formation of a complex with Au(III) ions'". The complete reduction of 5 mM HAUCI4 required at least 300 Hg/mL of the PSMA polymer. Additional experiments in which the PSMA polymer was replaced with malic acid and succinic acid as Au'^ reducing agents were performed (Figure S5). Micron-sized Au particles were produced from the reduction of the Au'* ions. As the same reaction with the PSMA polymer analogues (i.e., poly(4-styrenesulfonic acid- co-maleic acid) sodium salt and poly(maleic anhydrate-alt-1- octadence)), the formation of a colloidal Au solution was detected with TEM and UV-visible spectroscopy (Figure S6). These results indicated that the PSMA carboxylate groups contributed to the Au reduction, while the polymer structure controlled the particle size through steric interactions. We deduced that the continuous polymer self-assembly on the Au NPs due to the increase in the internal hydrophobicity via Tt-n stacking interaction between polystyrene blocks of PSMA structure^'-'^ Then we demonstrated the optical enhancements in the NLO and Raman scattering signals of this new Au-polymer nanostructures. We measured the multiphoton spectra of all single-domain Au@ polymer NPs (2-13 h) with a 30 s integration time by exciting them with a 1250 nm femtosecond laser (—100 fs) (Figure 4a). Narrow peaks at 625 nm and 416 nm was assigned to the generation of second harmonic generation (SHG) and third harmonic generation (THG) signals, respectively, because of their triple and double fre- quency of the fundamental excitation at 1250 nm". The origin of the two-photon excitation and three-photon excitation processes was verified according to the pump-power dependence examinations (Figure S7), which gave the slopes of 2.05 for the SHG signal and 2.9 for the THG signal. It could be the system noise that deviate the results a little bit from ideal dependency. Note that a broad emission band at —685 nm was raised with the increase of polymer thickness on the Au NPs. It displayed a near squared dependence ( — 1.7) of yields on the excitation power (Figure S7), suggesting that the broad fluorescence might be coming from the two-photon fluorescence (TPF). The TPF intensity of the Au@polymer NPs at 13 h was approximately 37 times greater than that of the product at 2 h. Since the Au@polyme NPs at 13 h have increased absorption intens- ity at 600-650 nm, we attribute the enhancement of TPF to the two- photon resonant excitation by 1250 nm laser pulses. As a double check, we added NaOH solution in it (Figure S8). The corresponding TPF intensity of the 13 h sample was remarkably suppressed and accompanied by a blue shift of SPR absorption (Figure S8c). Notably, the TEM image (Figure S8b) revealed the dissociation of the surface- condensed organic coating from the structures, which might be caused by the deprotonation of residual COOH groups and the strong breaking of ester bonds. Although the detailed mechanism involved in the increased TPF intensity of Au@polymer NPs is not clear, it could be the aggregation of Au NPs that resulted in inter- particle coupling, red-shift of SPR band, and enhancement of 'pppl.^, 14,42,43 To investigate the Raman scattering performance, the SERS signal of MB molecules on the single-domain Au@polymer NPs was mea- sured (with a 633 nm laser excitation at 17 mW for 1 s) (Figure 4b). The MB photosensitizer was chosen as a model drug for the SERS tag because of its good resonance action by exciting at 633-660 nm. The absorptive amount of MB molecules on the Au@polymer NPs was estimated to be 0.078 mg/mgf^yj for the 1 h sample and 0.12 mg/ mg[Au] for the 13 h sample on the basis of the UV-visible measure- ments. Compared with pure MB, the enhancement factors of the 1623 cm"' peak were approximately 3.7 X 10" (1 h), 1.3 X 10" (2 h), and 2.5 X 10' (6 h). The 13 h sample did not exhibit the characteristic Raman peaks of MB molecules. A similar trend in the shell-dependent Raman signal enhancement was observed (Figure S9) by using a 785 nm NIR laser (80 mW and 5 s). Because thinner polymer coatings resulted in smaller gaps between the spatially isolated Au nanoparticles, we proposed two possible mechanisms for the shell-dependent SERS signals of the Au@poly- mer NPs substrate. The first involved the SERS signal from the ensemble average of each isolated Au@polymer-MB NP. The MB molecules in the polymer sheath were very close to the outermost edge of each Au core (—2.46 nm or less), which is similar to the isolate particle-based enhanced Raman effecf". Second, only the MB molecules were in close proximity to the discrete Au NPs, which would increase the resonance associated with the strong Raman vibration"^. In addition to encapsulating positively charged MB dye, we found that the Au@polymer NPs (6 h-sample as example) could success- fully encapsulate negatively charged Ce6 and positively charged DOX molecules (Figure 5). The absorption of MB, Ce6, and DOX in the Au@polyme NPs was saturated at 0.10 mg[MB]/iTig[Au]i 0.34 mg[ce6i/mg[Au]. and 0.73 mg[Doxi/mg[Au], respectively. TEM images revealed that the polymer sheath contrast on the Au NPs increased and became dark gray after the absorption of these aro- Wave length / nm Wavenmber / cm Figure 4 | a) Nonlinear optical spectra of the as-prepared Au@polymer NPs at different reaction times and b) Raman shift detection of MB-tagged Au@polymer NPs (prepared over 1-13 h) at an excitation of 632.8 nm. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:5593 | DDI: 1 0. 1 038/srep05593 4 matic molecules (Figure SIO). The change in the images strongly suggested that the aromatic drugs were absorbed within the Au@ polymer nanocarriers. The peaks of each molecule appeared in the UV-visible and fluorescence spectra of the Au@polymer nanocar- riers (Figure 5). The emission intensities of the molecules in the Au@ polymer-dye nanocomposites were smaUer than those of the indi- vidual molecules at the same concentration, suggesting a quenching effect of the Au core interior. Especially, the Ce6-loaded particles had a good fluorescence signal (I VIS® Spectrum), which was suitable for fluorescent imaging in vivo (Figure 811). Our result showed that the payload of the aromatic drugs in the Au@polymer NPs is independ- ent of the charge on the molecule. However, it is worth to note that the 1 h sample of MB-tagged Au@polymer NPs exhibited strong SERS signals (black curve in Figure 4b). MB molecule is known that 660 nm NIR light is able to induce'02 photogenerated source —0.5 of quantum yield, and it therefore has potential for application in photodynamic therapy'"" ''^. The delivery of Au@polymer-MB NPs to HeLa cervical cancer cells was therefore examined using the 1 h sample. As shown in Figure 6a, the MTT assay showed that the Au@polymer-MB NPs did not have significant cell toxicity up to 20 \xM of MB molecules. Free MB molecules (0-20 [iM) were also used for comparison and had toxic effects (dark toxicity) on the cells between 10 and 20 \xM. We per- formed a parallel experiment to monitor the release of MB from the Au@polymer-MB NPs in a PBS solution at 37°C (Figure S12). The UV-visible optical record shows that their release (<8%) into solu- tion at pH = 7.4 was limited. The release only obtained under a base condition. In vitro test supports that the Tt-Tt interactions between the MB molecules and the polymer sheath of the Au@polymer NPs might inhibit the release of MB via a diffusion pathway. The MB molecules did not leak significantly from the Au@polymer NPs, which would prevent the formation of lesions on the mitochondria and nuclei''^. For the particle-treated cells at 24 h, the accumulation of MB- loaded carriers in the cell body of the HeLa cells was easily confirmed by a SERS microscopy. With a bright-field microscopy (Figure 6b), two individual cells were randomly selected in the rectangle (Figure 6b, red rectangle) for SERS analysis of the signal intensity at 1623 cm"'. The reconstructed SERS imaging with the magenta color contrasts showed that the signal was absent in the nuclei region, in agreement with the keep of MB on the Au@polymer nanocarriers. By using nonlinear optical microscopy, we could directly observe the delivery of the Au@polymer nanocarriers into the cell by monitoring the SHG and THG emissions with high contrast and low background autofluorescence (Figure S 1 3 ) . Nuclei of cells can be clearly identified with negative contrast in the image. Because cells wouldn't have strong SHG signals or two-photon autofluorescence excited at 1250 nm, these NLO signals certainly came from nanocarriers taken up by cells. The NLO images also indicated that the internalized Au@ polymer-MB NPs were located in the cytoplasm of the cells rather than in the nuclei, which is consistent with the SERS imaging results. Next, we utilized fluorogenic substrate 2',7'-dichlorodihydro- fluorescein diacetate (DCFH-DA), a ceU-permeable dye, for detec- tion of singlet oxygen in ceUs. In this method, colorless DCFH-DA molecules crosses cell membranes react with reactive oxygen species to produce green fluorescent DCF. AU DCFH-DA stained cells were incubated with samples and illuminate with 660 nm light. Brighter green fluorescence was detected in Au@polymer-MB NPs treatment group more than that by free MB under same drug concentration (Figure 6c and 6d). The level of intracellular ROS presented as an types of drugs kinds of molecules photosensitizer photosensitizer chemotherapy methylene blue ■ CH S ^ N C|- CH3 chlorin e6 O'^OH OH doxorubicin UV-visible measurements OH 0 a 0 a T'OH & 1 OH NH2 MB-loadcd Au@polynicr NPs Aij@polyincF NPs free MB 200 400 600 800 1000 Wavelength / nm Ce6-loaded Au@polynier NPs Au@polymer NPs Free Ce6 200 400 600 800 1000 Wavelength / nm JX)X-loaded Au@polymer NPs Au@po1yincr NPs frceDOX 200 400 600 800 1000 Wavelength / nm fluorescence measurements "2 2 MB-loadcd ALi@polyiiicr NPs Aii@polymcr NPs free MB 600 650 700 750 800 Wavelength / nm Cc6-loadcd Au@polyincr NPs \ Au@polynicr NPs \ free Cc6 / / 650 700 750 Wavelength / nm DOX-loadcd Au@polyiner NPs A\i@polyincr NPs FreeDOX 600 700 Wavelength / nm Figure 5 | UV-visible and fluorescence spectra of different aromatic drugs encapsulated in the Au@polymer NPs (6 h-sample). SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:5593 | DO!: 1 0. 1 038/srep05593 5 Figure 6 | a) MTT assay of HeLa cells with free MB molecules and MB-Ioaded Au@polymer NPs at 24 h. b) Bright-field image of the HeLa cells with MB-loaded Au@polymer NPs and two SERS mapping images (based on the 1623 cm"' vibration of MB) collected for the rectangle shown in the bright field of a HeLa cell. N indicates the nucleus, c) Fluorescence images of DCFH-DA staining in HeLa cells incubated with MB-loaded Au@polymer NPs and free MB for 4 h. The sample-treated cells were exposed to LED light at 660 nm (30 mW/cm^) for 4 min before imaging detection, d) Fluorescence intensity of MB-loaded Au@polymer NPs and free MB in HeLa cells. important indicator for PDT. Our preliminary results showed that the Au@polymer-MB NPs could promote intracellular generation of reactive oxygen species in photodynamic therapy. Finally, we demonstrated that this polymer-assisted synthesis method is generic allows ones to develop new conceptually designed inorganic-organic nanocomposites (Figure 1), i.e., polymer-coated Ag, Cu, Fe304, and Ti02 NPs. In these preparations, the synthesis of these metal and metal oxide NPs required the appropriate reaction modifications through addition of N2H4 as a reductant and HQ in optimizing the experimental parameters to prepare highly uniform and stable NPs (Figure 7a-d). XRD measurements (Figure 7e) revealed that the samples in Figure 7a-d were face-centered cubic (fee) Ag, fee Cu, fee Fe304, and anatase Ti02. UV-visible spectra showed the SPR appearance of Ag@polymer and Cu@polymer NPs (Figure 7f). The DLS analysis of various samples in Figure 7a- d was performed and listed in Table S4. Most of the particle hydrodynamic diameters are slightly larger to their corresponded solid forms estimated based on the TEM measurements of Ag@poly- mer (—262 nm), Cu@polymer (—49 nm), and Fe304@polymer (—38 nm). The hydrodynamic diameter of Ti02@polymer NPs is larger than the single particle estimation of Ti02@polymer NPs (—84 nm) determined by TEM image, indicating the aggregates in the solution. These core-shell NPs all present negatively charged surface over —20 mV. The comparative experiments for details and explanation can be found in Supporting Information and Figure S14-S19. As PSMA polymer alone react with AgN03, CUCI2, FeCl2, and titanium(IV) isopropoxide precursors, the reducing ability of PSMA polymer could only react with Ag and form Ag@polymer single-particle. We found that the reduction reaction with N2H4 promoted the formation of plasmonic Cu NPs (Figure S16a) as well as the assist- ance in the crystallization of Fe304 (Figure 7e and SI 7) and Ti02 (Figure S19) particles under base condition. These reactions are done in acid- free conditions. The hydrolyzed N22H4 known as a reductant donates electrons accompanied with the release of OH- ions into water to precipitate metal oxides via the base-catalyzed reaction'"'. However, the interesting morphologies of multicore@polymer struc- ture were observed for the Ag (—22 nm for each domain) after a reaction including 12 |J,L HCl and 100 \xL N2H4, as shown in Figure 7a. The formation of the multicore Ag@polymer NPs resulted in a red-shift of the SPR bands at 448 nm and 545 nm. The coupling of several Ag NPs in a polymer sphere resulted in a red-shift of the SPR bands relative to those of the single Ag NPs (20 nm at 400 nm to 60 nm at 455 nm)*'. Intriguingly, we found that the multicore Ag@ polymer NPs could be dissociated by reacting with the esterase to break the ester bond linkage (Figure S2c). As the reaction of CUCI2, PSMA, and N2H4 added with 18 |xL HCl, a single sharp SPR band appeared for the Cu@polymer NPs at 590 nm (Figure 7f) in contrast to the broad band from the acid-free condition (Figure S16d). We performed a time-dependent TEM images to monitor the growth process of multi-core Ag@polymer NPs (Figure S15). We observed a homogenous particle growth through a progressive aggregation of Ag embryos at the polymer shell as the reaction time goes. The step-by-step self-assembly of Ag NPs and polymer shell was proposed. In addition, we observed that by adding more acid favored the growth of bigger size polymer particle which resulted in more Ag/AgCl NPs encapsulated in large amount in N2H4-free (Figure S14b,c) method. Similarly, several Ti02 sub-NPs aggregated into rice- and rod-shape (with 18 |iL HCl and 100 |iL N2H4) within a thick polymer matrix (Figure 7d), while the large particle size coated with thin polymer layer appeared after acid-free synthesis (Figure S19a). The adjustment of acid concentration readily played a vital role to grow bigger polymer size and include large amount of NPs. Note that the interior of Fe304@polymer (with 100 \xL N2H4) SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:5593 | DDI: 1 0. 1 038/srep05593 6 100 nm 400 600 800 Wavelength / nm Figure 7 | TEM images of a) Ag@polymer (witii 12 HCl and 100 [iL N2H4), b) Cu@poIymer (witii 18 \iL HCl and 100 N2H4), c) Fe304@polymer (with 100 |iL N2H4), and d) Ti02@poIymer (with 18 nL HCl and 100 \iL N2H4) NPs. e) XRD measurements for these inorganic-polymer nanocomposites going from a) the bottom to d) the top. The peaks for a), b), c), and d) were assigned based on the standard patterns of Ag (JCPDS 04-0783), Cu (JCPDS 85-1326), Fe304 (JCPDS 19-629), andTi02 (JCPDS 89-4921), respectively, f) UV-visible spectra of Ag@polymer and Cu@polymer NPs. contained several nanoparticles with ~8 nm for each domain size (Figure 7c). Time-dependent TEM images (Figure S18) gave evid- ence of Fe304 core consisted of many small nanocrystals after 2 h of reaction time, indicating that the growth of multi-core Fe304 NP possibly followed by a clustering interaction through magnetic dipole attractions and forms a single Fe304 NP. Subsequently, the polymer shell started to grow thicker as the reaction time increase. The multicore Fe304@polymer NPs exhibited a superparamag- netic behavior (Figure S20a), most likely due to the small domain size. We demonstrated a typical Fenton reaction toward H2O2 decomposition using Fe304@polymer NPs which gave great perox- idase-like catalytic activity than that by using commercial Fe304 NPs (Figure S20b). The detection in the decomposition of H2O2 molecule is accessible by eyes below 6 min. Also, we suggested that the highly dispersed, biocompatible, and magnetic behaviors make these Fe304 nano-clusters promising for safe use of MR contrast agent^". On the other hand, the multicore Ti02@polymer NP performed good photo-catalytic degradation of MB (as an organic pollutant test) with a 0.053 min"' of reaction rate constant, following with first-order reaction kinetics, under ultraviolet irradiation (8 W) at 302 nm (Figure S21). The reaction rate constant is greater than those in the literature"'". Several Ti02 NPs together in the polymer sphere might enhance the photodegradation. Discussion Au@polymer nanocomposites with a tunable Au core size and organic shell thickness were successfully synthesized via a one-pot reaction of HAuCU and PSMA precursors. The formation mech- anism was based on the crystallization of the Au NPs followed by the subsequent self-assembly and condensation of the PSMA poly- mer on the surface after the redox reaction. The coating polymer corona could be degraded by reaction with esterase or under basic conditions. Altering the Au-polymer core-shell structures affected the optical properties of the Au NPs. Thicker polymer coatings resulted in a red-shift in the absorption band and thus resonantly enhanced the two-photon emission at an excitation of 1250 nm. A large SERS signal resulted from a thin coating on the Au@polymer NPs because of the close proximity of the molecule to the Au surface. We demonstrated that amphipathic PSMA-coated Au NPs were very SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:5593 | DOI: 1 0. 1 038/srep05593 7 stable under physiological conditions and therefore could deliver a high dosage of aromatic drugs and be used as an optically enhanced SERS/NLO contrast in cells. The MB-loaded Au@polymer NPs read- ily promoted reactive oxygen species generation into cancerous cells to execute efficiency photodynamic therapy. The self-assembly of PSMA in this synthesis strategy could be employed to prepare other inorganic@polymer NPs with appropriate addition of N2H4 and HCl reagents to prepare uniform and stable NPs. They showed promise for applying for new drug delivery systems in future with magnet- ically guided function and as an aromatic absorber following by catalytic decomposition. Citrate ligand-assisted synthesis is a well-established method to generate Au nanoparticles with spherical shape, but it suffers from less colloidal stability under physiological conditions necessary for good biocompatibility and enhanced drug loading. Compared to the popular Turkevich's method'" '" ''" based on the thermal reduction of aurate ions (AuCU") with citrate molecules, the hydrodynamic dia- meter of as-synthesized Au@polymer NPs were very stable against aggregation in the PBS solution by using the dynamic light scattering measurements, while the citrate-capped Au NPs were not (Figure S22). This may be ascribed to the complete surface protection and strong electrostatic repulsion as Au@silica NPs. In a comparison with most popular Au@silic NPs''''^^, both of the soft polymer- and hard silica-shell composites increased the suspension stability of the Au NPs as well as chemically and physically inert surface available. To operate optical changes, we observed that PSMA polymer coat- ings readily modulate the red-shifting position of the surface plas- mon absorbance with an increase in the polymer thickness, which is simOar to that by a solid silica coating^'. In order to conjugate bio- molecules, PSMA polymer-coated inorganic NPs were facile for a directly surface modification treatment to conjugate amine terminal group of the targeting objects, using an EDC/NHS coupling reaction. However, a further modification of the silica coating layer with amino-silane coupled reaction to form Au@silica@amino-silane NPs was necessary to execute the same carbodiimide chemistry with the biological molecule at carboxylate end^^. This is the first report of a facile PSMA-assisted synthesis strategy that incorporates amphipathic functionality on the surfaces of sev- eral inorganic NPs (Figure 1). In the case of Au@polymer NPs syn- thesis, we demonstrated that the polymer shell thickness is easy controlled at different reaction time. This typical synthesis method showed a direct, one-pot preparation of stable polymer-encapsulated Au, Ag, Cu, Fe304, and Ti02 NPs without resorting to complicated surface engineering designs and synthesis parameters. Previous study of polyelectrolyte modification appeared the shortcoming of time-consuming and reagent-wasting because a repeat treatment via oppositely charged polymer attachment and purification required at each coating step"". In addition, the generation of thick polymer coating with the evaporation of organic solvent for polymeric micell formation^" and cross-linked block copolymers after ligand exchange process^' can be neglected in our one-pot synthesis reaction. Decrease usage of toxic agents involve also means more envir- onmental green. The aforementioned reaction at the particle surface may also cause particle aggregation and was difficult to control poly- mer shell thickness. Our ongoing work is investigating the new concept of PSMA polymer-based reaction to develop shape-control synthesis of Au nanoplate@polymer and Au nano-octahedron@polymer NPs for tuning the SPR band from visible to NIR wavelength. This will enable investigators to exploit in situ synthesis of shape-control Au@poly- mer NPs in new ways. The aforementioned surface coating strategies by post-synthetic strategies merely kept particle size and shape of the original ones. The same polymer-assisted synthesis also presented a facile manner to combine optical and magnetic properties by incorp- orating the Au NPs and Fe304 NPs together into the polymer sphere, being for a multimodal imaging agent for MRI, CT, and NOL. Methods Materials. Poly{styrene-fl/i-maleic acid)sodium salt, 13 wt. % solution in water (PSMA, M„ = 350000) (Sigma-Aldrich), poIy(4-styrene sulfonic acid-co-maleic acid) sodium salt (M^^ — 20000) (Aldrich), poIy{maleic anhydrate-alt-l-octadence) (M„ = 30000-50000) (Aldrich), succinic acid (Sigma), maleic acid (99.5%) (Chem Service), quantum dot (Life), hydrogen tetrachloroaurate(III) trihydrate (HAuCU, 99.99%) (Alfa Aesar), Silver nitrate (AgNOj) (Fisher), Copper(II) chloride dihydrate (CuClj-aHjO) (Riedel-de Haen), Iron(II) chloride tetradhydrate (FeCl2-4H20) (J. T. Baker), Hydrazine monohydrate (N2H4-H20, 98%) (Alfa Aesar), titanium(IV) isopropoxide (97%) (Sigma-Aldrich), tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS, 98%) (Sigma- Aldrich), sodium hydroxide (NaOH, min 99%) (FuUin), methylene blue (MB, high purity) (Alfa Aesar), Chlorin e6 (Ce6) (Frontier), doxorubicin hydrochloride (DOX) (Sigma-Aldrich), esterase (Sigma), 3,3',5,5'-Tetramethylbenzidine (TMB, ^99%) (Sigma-Aldrich) were purchased for use without purification. Preparation of Au@polymer nanoparticles (NPs). 1 mL of a HAUCI4 solution (5 mM) was mixed with 10 mL of a PSMA solution (6 mg/mL) under stirring, and then the mixture solution was immediately transferred to a 23 mL Teflon-lined stainless steel autoclave and heated at 200 'C. After different reaction times (1-13 h), the as-prepared Au@polymer NPs were collected by centrifugation and washed with distilled deionized water. To prepare the Au@polymer NPs with core size tunable, 0.25-1.0 mL of an HAUCI4CI solution (5 mM) was added to the PSMA solution (6 mg/mL) before the hydrothermal reaction. Once these reagents were mixed, the resulting solution was transferred to a 23 mL Teflon-lined stainless steel autoclave and heated at 200 "C for 1 h. These Au@polymer NPs were purified using the aforementioned method of centrifugation and redispersion in water. 10 mM of an NaOH solution or 2 ppm of esterase was utilized to degrade the polymer structure of the Au@polymer NPs by a direct mixture reaction after 24 h. Preparation of Ag@polymer, Cu@polymer, Fe304@polymer, and Ti02@polymer NPs. To prepare Ag@polymer, Cu@polymer, and Ti02@polymer NPs, a store aqueous solution including AgNOs (5 mM), CUCI2 aqueous solution (5 mM), and titanium isopropoxide (10 wt% in ethnaol) were respective preparation before reaction. 1 mL of the metal chloride solution precursors and 5 iiL of titanium isopropoxide solution was subsequent reaction with 10 mL of a PSMA solution (6 mg/mL), 0.1 mL of N2H4, and 12-18 |iL of HCl (2 M) under hydrothermal treatment at 200°C for 13 h. In the absence of HCl, a mixture of an FeCl2 aqueous solution (1 mL at 5 mM), 10 mL of a PSMA solution (6 mg/mL), and 0.1 mL of N2H4 was employed for preparing Fe304@polymer NPs after hydrothermal reaction at 200 "C for 13 h. These inorganic-polymer nanocomposites were purified using the aforementioned method of centrifugation (5000 rpm) and redispersion in water. Absorption of Fe304 and quantum dot NPs on the Au@polymer NPs. Fe304@CTAB NPs were prepared by the thermal decomposition synthesis following by phase transformation reaction according to the literatures'*^. Qdot® 655 ITK^^ amino (PEG) quantum dot (QD-655 nm) was purchase from Invitrogen for use without purification. 40 iiL of Fe304 (100 ppm) and 40 nL of QD-655 nm (8 nM) were mixed with 200 |iL of 30 ppm Au@polymer NPs (13-h sample) for 24 h to prepare Au@polymer-Fe304 and Au@polymer-QD NPs, respectively. The NPs were purified using the aforementioned method of centrifugation and redispersion in water before TEM measurements. Encapsulation of methylene blue molecules in the Au@polymer NPs. A mixture of 1 mL of an Au@polymer NP (65 ppm[Au]) solution and 10 (iM of methylene blue (5 mM) was rotated for 18 h for MB absorption on the NPs. Afterward, the excess methylene blue was removed by centrifugation. The supernatant was examined with UV- Visible spectroscopy to record the absorbance of the solution and estimate the amount of MB absorbed on the Au@polymer NPs. The MB-loaded Au@polymer NPs were purified by a centrifugation-washing process three times and finally stored in pure H2O before use. Determination of the Raman Enhancement Factor of MB-loaded Au@polymer NPs. For aU of the SERS measurement, an 8 [iL of MB-loaded Au@polymer sample solution (—100 ppm) was deposited on the respective Si substrate by using a dip- coating method and then slowly dried under a digital controlled dry cabinet under 30-35%RH. The dry sample resulted in a sphere-shaped area of around 5.3 mm^. Subsequently, the sample substrates were subjected to Raman spectrometer analysis. The Raman enhancement factor of the Au@polymer-MB NPs-containing sub- strates was determined using the following expression, — {jsERS / ^rtic Mb) ^ {^frce MB on Ihe Si wafer /^MB on the Auiipolynier NPs on the Si wafer) where Isers ^I'ld ^free mb indicate the vibration scattering intensities in the SERS and normal Raman spectra, respectively. Iseks ^f-ee mb were calculated for the strongest peak at —1623 cm '. NmB on the AutS>pofymer NPs on the Si wafer ^nd Nfr^e MB on the Si wafer represent the number of MB molecules on the surface of a single Au@polymer NP and the free MB molecules deposited on the Si substrate, which excited by laser beam. The diameter of sample coating area is around 0.3 cm. The MB molecules on the Au@ polymer NPs was estimated on the basis of the UV-visible measurements (e.g., 0.078 mg[MBi/mg[Aui for 1 h-sample and 0.12 mg[MB]/rngfAu] for 13 h-sample. In the EF estimation, we assume the deposition of the Au@polymer-MB NPs and free MB molecules was homogeneous on the Si wafer. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:5593 | DOI: 1 0. 1 038/srep05593 8 Cytotoxicity analysis. For the MTT assay, the cell treatments and preparation parameters were based on the previous Uterature**. Hela cell (5000 per well) in the 96- well plate was cultured in Dulbecco's modification of Eagle's medium plus 10% fetal bovine serum at 37"C under 5% of CO2 in air. MB-loaded Au@polymer NPs was dispersed in the fresh medium solution. After 1 day of culture time, the culture medium in each well was then removed, and the seeding cells we separately treated with 0.1 mL of MB-loaded Au@polymer NPs medium solutions in a series of MB concentration at 0, 1, 10, and 20 [iM. Through 24 h incubation, the culture medium was then removed and replaced with 100 ]iL of the new culture medium containing 10% MTT reagent. The cells were then incubated for 4 h at 37' C to allow the formazan dye to form. The culture medium in each well was then removed, and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) (200 |jL/well) was added for an additional 10 min of incubation. After the cells were centrifuged, the resulting formazan in each well was transferred to an ELISA plate. The quantification determining cell viability was performed using optical absorbance (540/650 nm) and an ELISA plate reader. In dark toxicity, the culture experiment was carefully worked under dark condition to prevent from the light exposure. Free MB molecule was also following the aforementioned processes to be the control experiment. SERS microscopic imaging. Before cells for SERS spectral analysis, Hela cells were pre-cultured in an 8 wells of Lab-Tek™ chamber slide™ (10000 cells per well) for 2 days. After incubation, the original medium was removed and 0.3 mL of MB-loaded Au@polymer NPs (10 ppm) in the medium was added to treat with cells. Through 24 h of incubation time, the supernatant solution was carefully discarded and then the particle-treated cells on the slide are washed with PBS. Subsequently, these cells fixed using 4% paraformaldehyde/PBS for 30 min at 37 C. The cell -containing chamber slide™ was transferred to a Renishaw inVia Raman microscope to obtain cellular images. A 68X objective lens with a working distance of 7.0 mm to collect point to point signals with computer-controlled x, y-stage in 4.0 ]im that all were set up under the Raman microscope measurement. Each data point was at a Is acquisition time. All spectral controls, manipulations, and data analysis were performed using WIRE software from Renishaw. Nonlinear microscopic imaging. To evaluate the two-photon fluorescence contrast, the Au@polymer NPs-treated cells were studied. The imaging system is a femtosecond laser based multiphoton nonlinear optical microscope with sub-micron 3D spatial resolution'^. The laser wavelength operates at approximately 1250 nm, which falls in the NIR penetration window (1200-1300 nm) of most biological tissues. Compared with the commonly used Ti:sapphire laser (700-1000 nm), this wavelength does not two-photon resonantly excite the soret band of many endogenous fluorophores in cells and tissues and thus, causes the least on-focus damage. Give its advantages for in vivo imaging in deep tissues, it has been widely applied in studies of developmental biology and in human clinical use. Because most autofluorescence is suppressed, the optical contrast agents that can efficiently excite at approximately 625 nm have high contrast and benefit deep tissue imaging. The laser beam was XY-scanned by a scanning unit (FV300, Olympus) cascaded with an inverted microscope (1X71, Olympus). The laser beam transmitted a multiphoton dichroic beam splitter (edged at 665 nm) and was focused using a water immersion objective (NA — 1.2, 60X, Olympus). The generated second harmonic generation (SHG) and third harmonic generation (THG) were epi-coUected by the same objective. The SHG and THG signals were reflected and then separated by another dichroic beam splitter edged at 490 nm. They were detected separately by two other PMTs. All three signal channels were reconstructed to 512 X 512 images with software in computer with a 2 Hz frame rate. To image the live cells, a micro- incubator on a microscope was used to create an environment with a temperature of 37 C in an environment that was 5% C02/95% air. The temperature of the thermostat (LAUDA Ecoline Staredition RE 204) was set to 50X to achieve 37"C at the distal ends of objective, but the vapor reaching the micro -incubator through the duct maintained the micro -incubator at approximately 37^C. The gas controller (OkO Lab) continuously supplied 5% CO2, and maintained the outlet absolute pressure at 1 atm. The water immersion objective with 1.2 NA was heated by a dual temperature controller (TC- 144, WARNER instrument). This made the temperature at the bottom of the dish that contacted the objective approximately 37''C. Intracellular Reactive Oxygen Species Detection. The detection of intracellular reactive oxygen species was measured using fluorogenic substrate 2',7'- Dichlorodihydrofluorescein diacetate (DCFH-DA). Fifty thousands of Hela cells were stained with 1 mL of DCFH-DA solution (20 ]iM in PBS) for 30 min in darkness. Thereafter, the cells were incubated with MB-loaded Au@polymer NPs and free MB at the same MB concentration (5 [iM) in the DMEM for 2 h. To wash away the free materials, the culture plate was rinsed with PBS buffer two times, and then fresh PBS was added to each well. After 660 nm NIR light illumination (30 mW/cm^) for 4 min, a fluorescence microscope (Nikon, Eclipse 80i) was employed to observe the green fluorescence image of cells. We used imagej software to quantify the fluorescence intensity. Characterization. Transmission electron microscopy (JEM-2000EX II at 80 KV) was employed to obtain a more accurate of the solid particle size estimate. The dark and gray areas of the core-shell structure in electron micrographs was calculated based on 150 particles and analyzed by using SigmaScan Pro software. 5.0. The absorption and fluorescence spectra of MB-, Ce6-, and DOX-loaded Au@polymer NPs were measured by using a UV-Vis spectrophotometer (8452A; Hewlett-Packard Company, Palo Alto, CA) and a FSP 920 fluorescence spectrophotometer (Edinburgh. Instruments, UK), respectively. IR spectra were measured using a Fourier transformation infrared spectrometer (200E; JASCO International Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan) by KBr plate. The Au ion concentration was quantified using an inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometer (ICP-AES, JY138 Spectroanalyzer; Horiba Jobin Yvon, Inc., Edison, NJ). The zeta- potential and hydrodynamic diameter of the Au@polymer NPs dispersing in an aqueous solution and a PBS buffer solution were measured using a Zetasizer analyzer (Malvern, UK). Home-built Raman spectra of Au@polymer NPs (at an exposure time of 10 s), MB- loaded Au@polymer NPs (at an exposure time of 1 s), and free MB molecules (at an exposure time of 1 s) were obtained with a 50X objective lens using Raman microscopes equipped with a 632.8-nm air-cooled He-Ne laser (17 mW) as the exciting source. The detailed structure of the imaging system has been described elsewhere^^. For 785-nm excitation (80 mW), a Renishaw inVia Raman microscope with a 68X objective lens was applied to analyze MB-loaded Au@polymer NPs under an integrated time of 10 s. Si was utilized as a substrate for Raman examination. Thin film X-ray Diffractometer ((Bruker AXS Gmbh, Karlsruhe, Germany) was utilized to analyze the crystallization of Ag@polymer, Cu@polyme, Fe304@polymer, and Ti02@ polymer NPs. The powder X-ray diffraction patterns of Au@polymer nanoparticles were mea- sured at the BL01C2 beamline of the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center (NSRRC) in Taiwan. The ring energy of NSRRC was operated at 1.5 GeV with a typical current of 360 mA. The wavelength of the incident X-rays was 0.6889 A (18 keV), delivered from the superconducting wavelength -shifting magnet and a Si(l 1 1) double -crystal monochromator. The diffraction pattern was recorded with a Mar345 imaging plate detector located 332.10 mm from the sample position and an exposure duration of 5 min. The pixel size of Mar345 was 100 |j.m. The one- dimensional powder diffraction profile was converted using the FIT2D program with cake-type integration. The diffraction angles were calibrated based on the Bragg positions of Ag-Benhenate and Si powder (NBS640b) standards. The powder sample in solution was sealed in a glass capillary with 1.0 mm diameter. To reduce the background signal from solution, a blank experiment with pure solution in capillary was repeated at the same experimental condition. The integrated intensity was obtained after subtracting the background noise. 1. Huschka, R., Neumann, O., Barhoumi, A. & Halas, N. J. Visualizing light- triggered release of molecules inside living cells. Nano Lett. 10, 41 17-4122 (2010). 2. Kang, H. et al. Near-infrared light -responsive core-shell nanogels for targeted drug delivery. ACS Nano 5, 5094-5099 (2011). 3. Doane, T. L. & Burda, C. The unique role of nanoparticles in nanomedicine: imaging, drug delivery and therapy. Chem. Soc. Rev. 41, 2885-2911 (2012). 4. Jin, Y. Engineering plasmonic gold nanostructures and metamaterials for biosensing and nanomedicine. Adv. Mater. 24, 5153-5165 (2012). 5. Yong, K. T. Quantum dots for biophotonics. Theranostics 2, 629-630 (2012). 6. Lee, J. S., Han, M. S. & Mirkin, C. A. Colorimetric detection of mercuric ion (Hg^"^) in aqueous media using DNA-functionalized gold nanoparticles. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 46, 4093-4096 (2007). 7. Nam, J. M., Thaxton, C. S. & Mirkin, C. A. Nanop article -based bio-bar codes for the ultrasensitive detection of proteins. Science 301, 1884-1886 (2003). 8. Lim, S. et al. Enhancing nanoparticle-based visible detection by controlling the extent of aggregation. Sci. Rep. 2, 456/1-6 (2012). 9. Storhoff, J. J. et al. Homogeneous detection of unamplified genomic DNA sequences based on colorimetric scatter of gold nanoparticle probes. Nat. Biotech. 22, 883-887 (2004). 10. Chen, G. et al. Measuring ensemble -averaged surface-enhanced Raman scattering in the hotspots of colloidal nanoparticle dimers and trimers. /. Am. Chem. Soc. 132, 3644-3645 (2010). 11. Chen, T. et al. Hotspot-induced transformation of surface -enhanced Raman scattering fingerprints. ACS Nano 4, 3087-3094 (2010). 12. Lu, W. et al. Gold nano-popcorn-based targeted diagnosis, nanotherapy treatment, and in situ monitoring of photothermal therapy response of prostate cancer cells using surface -enhanced Raman spectroscopy. /. Am. Chem. Soc. 132, 18103-18114 (2010). 13. Han, F., Guan, Z., Tan, T. S. & Xu, Q. H. Size-dependent two-photon excitation photoluminescence enhancement in coupled noble-metal nanoparticles. ACS Appl Mater. Interfaces 4, 4746-4751 (2012). 14. Guan, Z., Polavarapu, L. & Xu, Q. H. Enhanced two-photon emission in coupled metal nanoparticles induced by conjugated polymers. Langmuir 26, 18020-18023 (2010). 15. Tong, L., Cobley, C. M., Chen, J., Xia, Y. & Cheng, J. X. Bright three-photon luminescence from gold/silver alloyed nanostructures for bioimaging with negligible photothermal toxicity. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 49, 3485-3488 (2010). 16. Liao, M. Y. et al. Innovative ligand-assisted synthesis of NIR- activated iron oxide for cancer theranostics. Chem. Commun. 48, 5319-5321 (2012). 17. Liao, M. Y. et al. Surface state mediated NIR two-photon fluorescence of iron oxides for nonlinear optical microscopy. Adv. Funct. Mater. 23, 2044-2051 (2013). 18. Daniel, M. C. & Astruc, D. Gold nanoparticles: assembly, supramolecular chemistry, quantum- size -related properties, and applications toward biology, catalysis, and nanotechnology. Chem. Rev. 104, 293-346 (2004). SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 4:5593 | DO!: 1 0. 1 038/srep05593 9 19. Enusten, B. V. & Turkevich, J. Coagulation of colloidal gold. /. Am. Chem. Soc. 85, 3317-3328 (1963). 20. Brust, M., Walker, M., Bethell, D., Schiffrin, D. J. & Whyman, R. J. Synthesis of thiol- derivatised gold nanoparticles in a two-phase hquid-liquid system. /. Chem. Soc. Chem. Commun. 7, 801-802 (1994). 21. Sau, T. K. & Murphy, C. J. Room temperature, high-yield synthesis of multiple shapes of gold nanoparticles in aqueous solution. /. Am. Chem. Soc. 126, 8648-8649 (2004). 22. Sun, Y., Mayers, B. T. 8t Xia, Y. Template -engaged replacement reaction: a one- step approach to the large-scale synthesis of metal nanostructures with hollow Interiors. Nana Lett. 2, 481-485 (2002). 23. Metraux, G. S., Jin, R. & Mirkin, C. A. Photoinduced phase separation of gold in two-component nanoparticles. Small 2, 1335-1339 (2006). 24. Chien, Y. H., Huang, C. C, Wang, S. W. & Yeh, C. S. Synthesis of nanoparticles: sunlight formation of gold nanodecahedra for ultra- sensitive lead-ion detection. Green Chem. 13, 1162-1166 (2011). 25. Kim, J. et al. Designed fabrication of multifunctional magnetic gold nanoshells and theirapplication to magnetic resonance imaging and photothermal therapy. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 45, 7754-7758 (2006). 26. Wang, C. & Sun, S. Facile synthesis of ultrathin and single-crystaUine Au nanowires. Chem. Asian J. 4, 1028-1034 (2009). 27. Pang, X., Zhao, L., Han, W., Xin, X. & Lin, Z. A. General and robust strategy for the synthesis of nearly monodisperse colloidal nanocrystals. Nat. Nanotech. 8, 426-431 (2013). 28. Nasongkla, N. et al. Multifunctional polymeric micelles as cancer -targeted, MRI- ultrasensitive drug delivery systems. Nano Lett. 6 (11), 2427-2430 (2006). 29. Kim, B. S., Qiu, J. M., Wang, J. P. & Taton, T. A. Magnetomicelles: composite nanostructures from magnetic nanoparticles and cross-linked amphiphilic block copolymers. Nano Lett. 5, 1987-1991 (2005). 30. Sanchez-Iglesias, A. et al. Hydrophobic interactions modulate self-assembly of nanoparticles. ACS Nano 6, 11059-11065 (2012). 31. Gittins, D. I. 8t Caruso, F. Tailoring the poly electrolyte coating of metal nanoparticles. /. Phys. Chem. B 105, 6846-6852 (2001). 32. Wang, D., Li, Z. C. & Chen L. Templated synthesis of single-walled carbon nanotube and metal nanoparticle assemblies in solution. /. Am. Chem. Soc. 128, 15078-15079 (2006). 33. Huang, C. C. et al. Size-control synthesis of structure deficient truncated octahedral Fe3 _ ^^04 nanoparticles: high magnetization magnetites as effective hepatic contrast agents. /. Mater. Chem. 21, 7472-7479 (2011). 34. Huang, C. C. et al. Bifunctional Gd203/C nanoshells for MR imaging and NIR therapeutic applications. Adv. Funct. Mater. 19, 249-258 (2009). 35. Greisha, K., Sawab, T., Fangc, J., Akaikea, T. & Maeda, H. SMA-doxorubicin, a new polymeric miceUar drug for effective targeting to solid tumours. /. Control Release 97, 219-230 (2004). 36. Larson, N., Greish, K., Bauer, H., Maeda, H. & Ghandehari, H. Synthesis and evaluation of poly(styrene-i:o-maleic acid) micellar nanocarriers for the delivery of tanespimycin. Inter. J. Pharm. 420, 111-117 (2011). 37. Gwuskens, G. et al. Photo-oxidation of polymers — I: a quantitative study of the chemical reactions resulting from irradiation of polystyrene at 253.7 nm in the presence of oxygen. Eur. Poly. J. 14, 291-297 (1978). 38. Li, T., Zhou, C. & Jiang, M. UV absorption spectra of polystyrene. Poly. Bui. 25, 211-216 (1991). 39. Xu, Z., Gao, H. 8t Guoxin, H. Solution-based synthesis and characterization of a silver nanoparticle-graphene hybrid fUm. Carbon 49, 4731-4738 (2011). 40. Ojea-Jimenez, I., Romero, F. M., Bastiis, N. G. & Puntes, V. Small gold nanoparticles synthesized with sodium citrate and heavy water: insights into the reaction mechanism. /. Phys. Chem. C 114, 1800-1804 (2010). 41. Vogler, A. & Kunkely, H. Photoreactivity of gold complexes. Coord. Chem. Rev. 219-221,489-507 (2001). 42. Guan, Z. et al. Band -selective coupling- induced enhancement of two-photon photoluminescence in gold nanocubes and its application as turn on fluorescent probes for cysteine and glutathione. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 4, 5711-5716 (2012). 43. Liu, X.-L. et al. Solution- dispersible Au nanocube dimers with greatly enhanced two-photon luminescence and SERS. Nanoscale 5, 5368-5374 (2013). 44. Li, J. F. et al. Shell-isolated nnanoparticle-enhanced Raman spectroscopy. Nature 464, 392-395 (2010). 45. Kneipp, K., Kneipp, H., Itzkan, I., Dasari, R. R. & Feld, M. S. Ultrasensitive chemical analysis by Raman spectroscopy. Chem. Rev. 99, 2957-2976 (1999). 46. Tardivoa, J. P. et al. Methylene blue in photodynamic therapy: from basic mechanisms to clinical applications. Photodiagn. Photodyn. Ther. 2, 175-191 (2005). 47. Lu, Y. et al. Methylene blue-mediated photodynamic therapy induces mitochondria-dependent apoptosis in HeLa cell. /. Cel. Biochem. 105, 1451-1460 (2008). 48. Wiogo,H., Lim, M., Munroe, P., Amal R. Understanding the formation of iron oxide nanoparticles with acicular structure from iron(III) chloride and hydrazine monohydrate. Cryst. Growth Des. 11, 1689-1696 (2011). 49. Cheng, D., Zhou, X., Xia, H. & Chan, H. S. O. Novel method for the preparation of polymeric hollow nanospheres containing sUver cores with different sizes. Chem. Mater. 17, 3578-3581 (2005). 50. Peng, X. & Ichinose, I. Manganese oxyhydroxide and oxide nanofibers for high efficiency degradation of organic pollutants. Nanotechnology 22, 015701(l)-(7) (2011). 51. Schulzendorf, M., Cavelius, C., Born, P., Murray, E. & Kraus, T. Biphasic synthesis of Au@Si02 core-shell particles with stepwise ligand exchange Langmuir 27, 727-732 (2011). 52. Jana, N., Earhart, C. & Ying. J. Synthesis of water-soluble and functionalized nanoparticles by silica coating. Chem. Mater. 19, 5074-5082 (2007). 53. Chiu, Y. et al. Quantitative and multicomponent analysis of prevalent urinary calculi using Raman spectroscopy. /. Raman Spectrosc. 43, 992-997 (2012). Acknowledgments This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (NSC 101-2113-M-010-002-MY2, NSC 101-2627-E-OlO-OOl, NSC 102-2221-E-OlO -006 -MY3, NSC 102-2221-E-002-195-MY3) and a grant from Ministry of Education, Aiming for the Top University Plan. We gratefully thank Mr. Cheng- Wei Lin for sample preparations. Author contributions T.M.L., J.Y. and C.C.H. proposed and designed the experiments. T.M.L., J.Y. and C.C.H. wrote the manuscript. T.M.L. and C.C.H. interpreted the results. C.C.H. carried out the synthetic experiments. C.A.C., A.C., H.K.C., C.H.W., P.A.C. performed the optical experiments and analyzed the data. Y.C.C. performed the synchrotron X-ray experiments and analyzed the data. C.H.H. performed the cell culture. All authors reviewed the manuscript. Additional information Supplementary information accompanies this paper at http://www.nature.com/ scientificreports Competing financial interests: The authors declare no competing financial interests. How to cite this article: Liu, T.-M. et al. One-step shell polymerization of inorganic nanoparticles and their applications in SERS/nonlinear optical imaging, drug delivery, and catalysis. Sci. Rep. 4, 5593; DOl:10.1038/srep05593 (2014). I This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike 4.0 Intemational License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users wiU need to obtain permission from the license holder in order to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http:// creativecommons.0rg/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.O/ SCIENTIFICREPORTS | 4:5593 | DOI: 1 0. 1 038/srep05593 10
Readings in philosophy : Eastern & Western sources
null
2004-01-01T00:00:00Z
Philosophy,Philosophie,philosophy
iv, 520 pages : 28 cm,"Confucius, Lao Tzu, Upanishads, Buddhist texts, Plato, Aristotle, Chuang Tzu, Mencius, Epicurus, Bhagavad-Gita, Epictetus, Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, Shankara, Ramanuja, Anselm, Aquinas, Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Mill, Marx, Nietzsche, James, Russell, Radhakrisnan, Ryle, Sartre, Quine, Smullyan, & Searle."
The Empty Boat
OSHO
null
tao,osho,empty boat,spiritual
Talks on the Stories of Chuang Tzu. OSHO revitalizes the 300-year-old Taoist message of self-realization through the stories of the Chinese mystic, Chuang Tzu. He speaks about the state of egolessness, "the empty boat"; spontaneity, dreams and wholeness; living life choicelessly and meeting death with the same equanimity . Available in a beautiful new edition, this series overflows with the wisdom of one who has realized the state of egolessness himself.
Full text of "The Empty Boat" Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "The Empty Boat" See other formats The Empty Boat Talks given from 10/07/74 am to 20/07/74 am English Discourse series CHAPTER 1 The Toast Is Burned 10 July 1974 am in Buddha Hall HE WHO RULES MEN, LIVES IN CONFUSION; HE WHO IS RULED BY MEN LIVES IN SORROW. TAO THEREFORE DESIRED NEITHER TO INFLUENCE OTHERS NOR BE INFLUENCED BY THEM. THE WAY TO GET CLEAR OF CONFUSION AND FREE OF SORROW IS TO LIVE WITH TAO IN THE LAND OF THE VOID. IF A MAN IS CROSSING A RIVER AND AN EMPTY BOAT COLLIDES WITH HIS OWN SKIFF, EVEN THOUGH HE BE A BAD-TEMPERED MAN HE WILL NOT BECOME VERY ANGRY. BUT IF HE SEES A MAN IN THE BOAT, CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED HE WILL SHOUT TO HIM TO STEER CLEAR. AND IF THE SHOUT IS NOT HEARD HE WILL SHOUT AGAIN AND YET AGAIN, AND BEGIN CURSING — AND ALL BECAUSE THERE IS SOMEBODY IN THAT BOAT. YET IF THE BOAT WERE EMPTY, HE WOULD NOT BE SHOUTING, AND HE WOULD NOT BE ANGRY. IF YOU CAN EMPTY YOUR OWN BOAT CROSSING THE RIVER OF THE WORLD, NO ONE WILL OPPOSE YOU, NO ONE WILL SEEK TO HARM YOU. THE STRAIGHT TREE IS THE FIRST TO BE CUT DOWN, THE SPRING OF CLEAR WATER IS THE FIRST TO BE DRAINED DRY. IF YOU WISH TO IMPROVE YOUR WISDOM AND SHAME THE IGNORANT, TO CULTIVATE YOUR CHARACTER AND OUTSHINE OTHERS, A LIGHT WILL SHINE AROUND YOU AS IF YOU HAD SWALLOWED THE SUN AND THE MOON — AND YOU WILL NOT AVOID CALAMITY. A WISE MAN HAS SAID: "HE WHO IS CONTENT WITH HIMSELF HAS DONE WORTHLESS WORK. ACHIEVEMENT IS THE BEGINNING OF FAILURE, FAME IS THE BEGINNING OF DISGRACE.” WHO CAN FREE HIMSELF OF ACHIEVEMENT AND FAME The Empty Boat 3 Osho CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED THEN DESCEND AND BE LOST AMID THE MASSES OF MEN? HE WILL FLOW LIKE TAO, UNSEEN, HE WILL GO ABOUT LIKE LIFE ITSELF WITH NO NAME AND NO HOME. SIMPLE IS HE, WITHOUT DISTINCTION. TO ALL APPEARANCES HE IS A FOOL. HIS STEPS LEAVE NO TRACE. HE HAS NO POWER. HE ACHIEVES NOTHING, HE HAS NO REPUTATION. SINCE HE JUDGES NO ONE, NO ONE JUDGES HIM. SUCH IS THE PERFECT MAN — HIS BOAT IS EMPTY. You have come to me. You have taken a dangerous step. It is a risk because near me you can be lost forever. To come closer will mean death and cannot mean anything else. | am just like an abyss. Come closer to me and you will fall into me. For this, the invitation has been given to you. You have heard it and you have come. Be aware that through me you are not going to gain anything. Through me you can only lose all — because unless you are lost, the divine cannot happen; unless you disappear totally, the real cannot arise. You are the barrier. And you are so much, so stubbornly much, you are so filled with yourself that nothing can penetrate you. Your doors are closed. When you disappear, when you are not, the doors open. Then you become just like the vast, infinite sky. And that is your nature. That is Tao. Before | enter into Chuang Tzu’s beautiful parable of The Empty Boat, | would like to tell you one other story, because that will set the trend for this meditation camp which you are entering. | have heard that it happened once, in some ancient time, in some unknown country, that a prince suddenly went mad. The king was desperate — the prince was the only son, the only heir to the kingdom. All the magicians were called, miracle makers, medical men were summoned, every effort was made, but in vain. Nobody could help the young prince, he remained mad. The Empty Boat 4 Osho CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED The day he went crazy he threw off his clothes, became naked, and started to live under a big table. He thought that he had become a rooster. Ultimately the king had to accept the fact that the prince could not be reclaimed. He had gone insane permanently; all the experts had failed. But one day again hope dawned. A sage — a Sufi, a mystic — knocked on the palace door, and said, ”Give me one opportunity to cure the prince.” But the king felt suspicious, because this man looked crazy himself, more crazy than the prince. But the mystic said, "Only | can cure him. To cure a madman a greater madman is needed. And your somebodies, your miracle makers, your medical experts, all have failed because they don’t know the abc of madness. They have never traveled the path.” It seemed logical, and the king thought, ’There is no harm in it, why not try?” So the opportunity was given to him. The moment the king said, "Okay, you try,” this mystic threw off his clothes, jumped under the table and crowed like a rooster. The prince became suspicious, and he said, "Who are you? And what do you think you are doing?” The old man said, "| am a rooster, more experienced than you. You are nothing, you are just a newcomer, at the most an apprentice.” The prince said, "Then it is okay if you are also a rooster, but you look like a human being.” The old man said, ’Don’t go on appearances, look at my spirit, at my soul. | am a rooster like you.” They became friends. They promised each other that they would always live together and that this whole world was against them. A few days passed. One day the old man suddenly started dressing. He put on his shirt. The prince said, "What are you doing, have you gone crazy, a rooster trying to put on human dress?” The old man said, ”! am just trying to deceive these fools, these human beings. And remember that even if | am dressed, nothing is changed. My roosterness remains, nobody can change it. Just by dressing like a human being do you think | am changed?” The prince had to concede. A few days afterwards the old man persuaded the prince to dress because winter was approaching and it was becoming so cold. Then one day suddenly he ordered food from the palace. The prince became very alert and said, *Wretch, what are you doing? Are you going to eat like those human beings, like them? We are roosters and we have to eat like roosters.” The old man said, Nothing makes any difference as far as this roos-ter is concerned. You can eat anything and you can enjoy everything. You can live like a human being and remain true to your roosterness.” The Empty Boat 5 Osho CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED By and by the old man persuaded the prince to come back to the world of humanity. He became absolutely normal. The same is the case with you and me. And remember you are just initiates, beginners. You may think that you are a rooster but you are just learning the alphabet. | am an old hand, and only | can help you. All the experts have failed, that’s why you are here. You have knocked on many doors, for many lives you have been in search — nothing has been of help to you. But | say | can help you because | am not an expert, | am not an outsider. | have traveled the same path, the same insanity, the same madness. | have passed through the same — the same misery, the anguish, the same nightmares. And whatsoever | do is nothing but to persuade — to persuade you to come out of your madness. To think oneself a rooster is crazy; to think oneself a body is also crazy, even crazier. To think oneself a rooster is madness; to think oneself a human being is a greater madness, because you don’t belong to any form. Whether the form is that of a rooster or of a human being is irrelevant — you belong to the formless, you belong to the total, the whole. So whatsoever form you think you are, you are mad. You are formless. You don’t belong to any body, you don’t belong to any caste, religion, creed; you don’t belong to any name. And unless you become formless, nameless, you will never be sane. Sanity means coming to that which is natural, coming to that which is ultimate in you, coming to that which is hidden behind you. Much effort is needed because to cut form, to drop, eliminate form, is very difficult. You have become so attached and identified with it. This Samadhi Sadhana Shibir, this meditation camp, is nothing but to persuade you towards the formless — how not to be in the form. Every form means the ego: even a rooster has its ego, and man has his own. Every form is centered in the ego. The formless means egolessness; then you are not centered in the ego, then your center is everywhere or nowhere. This is possible, this which looks almost impossible is possible, because this has happened to me. And when | speak, | speak through experience. Wherever you are, | was, and wherever | am, you can be. Look at me as deeply as possible and feel me as deeply as possible, because | am your future, | am your possibility. Whenever | say surrender to me, | mean surrender to this possibility. You can be cured, because your illness is just a thought. The prince went mad because he became identified with the thought that he was a rooster. Everybody is mad unless he comes to understand that he is not identified with any form — only then, sanity. So a sane person will not be anybody in particular. He cannot be. Only an insane person can be somebody in particular — whether a rooster or a man, a prime minister or a president, or anybody whatsoever. A sane person comes to feel the nobodiness. This is the danger... You have come to me as somebody, and if you allow me, if you give me the opportunity, this somebodiness can disappear and you can become a nobody. This is the whole effort — to make you a nobody. But why? Why this effort to become a nobody? Because unless you become nobody The Empty Boat 6 Osho CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED you cannot be blissful; unless you become nobody you cannot be ecstatic; unless you become nobody the benediction is not for you — you go on missing life. Really you are not alive, you simply drag, you simply carry yourself like a burden. Much anguish happens, much despair, much sorrow, but not a single ray of bliss — it cannot. If you are somebody, you are like a solid block of stone, nothing can penetrate you. When you are nobody you start to become porous. When you are nobody, really you are an emptiness, transparent, everything can pass through you. There is no hindrance, there is no barrier, no resistance. You become a passivity, a door. Right now you are like a wall; a wall means somebody. When you become a door you become nobody. A door is just an emptiness, anybody can pass, there is no resistance, no barrier. Somebody...you are mad; nobody...you will become sane for the first time. But the whole society, education, civilization, culture, all cultivate you and help you to become somebodies. That is why | say: religion is against civilization, religion is against education, religion is against culture — because religion is for nature, for Tao. All civilizations are against nature, because they want to make you somebody in particular. And the more you are crystallized as somebody, the less and less the divine can penetrate into you. You go to the temples, to the churches, to the priests, but there too you are searching for a way to become somebody in the other world, for a way to attain something, for a way to succeed. The achieving mind follows you like a shadow. Wherever you go, you go with the idea of profit, achievement, success, attainment. If somebody has come here with this idea he should leave as soon as possible, run as fast as possible from me, because | cannot help you to become somebody. | am not your enemy. | can only help you to be nobody. | can only push you into the abyss...bottomless. You will never reach anywhere; you will simply dissolve. You will fall and fall and fall and dissolve, and the moment you dissolve the whole existence feels ecstatic. The whole existence celebrates this happening. Buddha attained this. Because of language | say attained; otherwise the word is ugly, there is no attainment — but you will understand. Buddha attained this emptiness, this nothingness. For two weeks, for fourteen days continuously, he sat in silence, not moving, not saying, not doing anything. It is said that the deities in heaven became disturbed — rarely it happens that someone becomes such total emptiness. The whole of existence felt a celebration, so deities came. They bowed down before Buddha and they said, "You must say something, you must say what you have attained. Buddha is reported to have laughed and said, ”! have not attained anything; rather, because of this mind, which always wants to attain something, | was missing everything. | have not achieved anything, this is not an achievement; rather, on the contrary, the achiever has disappeared. | am no more, and, see the beauty of it — when | was, | was miserable, and when | am no more, everything is blissful, the bliss is showering and showering continuously on me, everywhere. Now there is no misery.” Buddha had said before: Life is misery, birth is misery, death is misery — everything is miserable. It was miserable because the ego was there. The boat had not been empty. Now the boat was empty; The Empty Boat 7 Osho CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED now there was no misery, no sorrow, no sadness. Existence had become a celebration and it would remain a celebration to eternity, for ever and forever. That’s why | say that it is dangerous that you have come to me. You have taken a risky step. If you are courageous, then be ready for the jump. The whole effort is how to kill you, the whole effort is how to destroy you. Once you are destroyed, the indestructible will come up — it is there, hidden. Once all that which is nonessential is eliminated, the essential will be like a flame — aliveness, total glory. This parable of Chuang Tzu is beautiful. He says that a wise man is like an empty boat. SUCH IS THE PERFECT MAN — HIS BOAT IS EMPTY. There is nobody inside. If you meet a Chuang Tzu, or a Lao Tzu, or me, the boat is there, but it is empty, nobody is in it. If you simply look at the surface, then somebody is there, because the boat is there. But if you penetrate deeper, if you really become intimate with me, if you forget the body, the boat, then you come to encounter a nothingness. Chuang Tzu is a rare flowering, because to become nobody is the most difficult, almost impossible, most extraordinary thing in the world. The ordinary mind hankers to be extraordinary, that is part of ordinariness; the ordinary mind desires to be somebody in particular, that is part of ordinariness. You may become an Alexander, but you remain ordinary — then who is the extraordinary one? The extraordinariness starts only when you don’t hanker after extraordinariness. Then the journey has started, then a new seed has sprouted. This is what Chuang Tzu means when he says: A perfect man is like an empty boat. Many things are implied in it. First, an empty boat is not going anywhere because there is nobody to direct it, nobody to manipulate it, nobody to drive it somewhere. An empty boat is just there, it is not going anywhere. Even if it is moving it is not going anywhere. When the mind is not there life will remain a movement, but it will not be directed. You will move, you will change, you will be a riverlike flow, but not going anywhere, with no goal in view. A perfect man lives without any purpose; a perfect man moves but without any motive. If you ask a perfect man, ”What are you doing?” he will say, ”! don’t know, but this is what is happening.” If you ask me why | am talking to you, | will say, “Ask the flower why the flower is flowering.” This is happening, this is not manipulated. There is no one to manipulate it, the boat is empty. When there is purpose you will always be in misery. Why? Once a man asked a miser, a great miser, "How did you succeed in accumulating so much wealth?” The miser said, "This is my motto: whatsoever is to be done tomorrow should be done today, and whatsoever is to be enjoyed today should be enjoyed tomorrow. This has been my motto.” He The Empty Boat 8 Osho CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED succeeded in accumulating wealth — and this is how people succeed in accumulating nonsense also! That miser was also miserable. On one hand he had succeeded in accumulating wealth, on the other hand he had succeeded in accumulating misery. And the motto is the same for accumulating money as it is for accumulating misery: whatsoever is to be done tomorrow do it today, right now, don’t postpone it. And whatsoever can be enjoyed right now, never enjoy it right now, postpone it for tomorrow. This is the way to enter hell. It always succeeds, it has never been a failure. Try it and you will succeed — or, you may have already succeeded. You may have been trying it without knowing. Postpone all that which can be enjoyed, just think of the tomorrow. Jesus was crucified by the Jews for this reason, not for any other reason. Not that they were against Jesus — Jesus was a perfect man, a beautiful man, why should the Jews have been against him? Rather, on the contrary, they had been waiting for this man. For centuries they had been hoping and waiting: When will the messiah come? And then suddenly this Jesus declared, "| am the messiah for whom you have been waiting, and | have come now. Now look at me.” They were disturbed — because the mind can wait, it always enjoys waiting, but the mind cannot face the fact, the mind cannot encounter this moment. It can always postpone, it was easy to postpone: The messiah is to come, soon he will be coming.... For centuries the Jews had been thinking and postponing and then suddenly this man destroyed all hope, because he said, ”| am here.” The mind was disturbed. They had to kill this man, otherwise they would not have been able to live with the hope of the tomorrow. And not only Jesus, many others have declared since then, ”!| am here, | am the messiah!” And Jews always deny, because if they don’t deny, then how will they be able to hope and how will they be able to postpone? They have lived with this hope with such fervor, with such deep intensity, you can hardly believe it. There have been Jews who would go to bed at night hoping that this would be the last night, that in the morning the messiah would be there.... | have heard about one rabbi who used to say to his wife, ’If he comes in the night, don’t waste a single minute, wake me up immediately.” The messiah is coming and coming, he may come at any moment. | have heard of another rabbi whose son was going to be married, so he sent invitations to the marriage to friends and he wrote on the invitation, My son is going to be married in Jerusalem on such-and-such a date, but if the messiah hasn’t come by then, my son will be married in this village of Korz.” Who knows, by the time the day of the marriage comes, the messiah may have come. Then | will not be here, | will be in Jerusalem, celebrating. So if he has not come by the date of the marriage, only then will it be held here in this village; otherwise, it will be in Jerusalem. They have been waiting and waiting, dreaming. The whole Jewish mind has been obsessed with the coming messiah. But whenever the messiah comes, they immediately deny him. This has to be The Empty Boat 9 Osho CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED understood. This is how the mind functions: you wait for the bliss, for the ecstasy, and whenever it comes you deny it, you just turn your back towards it. Mind can live in the future, but cannot live in the present. In the present you can simply hope and desire. And that’s how you create misery. If you start living this very moment, here and now, misery disappears. But how is it related to the ego? Ego is the past accumulated. Whatsoever you have known, experienced, read, whatsoever has happened to you in the past, the whole is accumulated there. That whole past is the ego, it is you. The past can project into the future — the future is nothing but the past extended — but the past cannot face the present. The present is totally different, it has a quality of being here and now. The past is always dead, the present is life, the very source of all aliveness. The past cannot face the present so it moves into the future — but both are dead, both are nonexistential. The present is life; the future cannot encounter the present, nor can the past encounter the present. And your ego, your somebodiness, is your past. Unless you are empty you cannot be here, and unless you are here you cannot be alive. How can you know the bliss of life? Every moment it is showering on you and you are bypassing it. Says Chuang Tzu: SUCH IS THE PERFECT MAN — HIS BOAT IS EMPTY. Empty of what? Empty of the I, empty of the ego, empty of somebody there inside. HE WHO RULES MEN, LIVES IN CONFUSION; HE WHO IS RULED BY MEN LIVES IN SORROW. HE WHO RULES MEN, LIVES IN CONFUSION. Why? The desire to rule comes from the ego; the desire to possess, to be powerful, the desire to dominate, comes from the ego. The greater the kingdom you can dominate, the greater the ego you can achieve. With your possessions your inner somebody goes on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. Sometimes the boat becomes very small because the ego becomes so big.... This is what is happening to politicians, to people obsessed with wealth, prestige, power. Their egos become so big that their boats cannot contain them. Every moment they are on the point of drowning, on the verge, afraid, scared to death. And the more afraid you are the more possessive you become, because you think that through possessions somehow security is achieved. The more afraid you are, the more you think that if your kingdom could be a little greater, you would be more secure. HE WHO RULES MEN, LIVES IN CONFUSION... The Empty Boat 10 Osho CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED Really, the desire to rule comes out of your confusion; the desire to be leaders of men comes out of your confusion. When you start leading others you forget your confusion — this is a sort of escape, a trick. You are ill, but if somebody is ill and you become interested in curing that man, you forget your illness. | have heard that once George Bernard Shaw phoned his doctor and said, ”| am in much trouble and | feel that my heart is going to fail. Come immediately!” The doctor came running. He had to run up three staircases and was perspiring heavily. He came in and without saying anything, just fell down on a chair and closed his eyes. Bernard Shaw jumped out of his bed and asked, ”What is happening?” The doctor said, Don’t say anything. It seems | am dying. It is a heart attack.” Bernard Shaw started helping him; he brought a cup of tea, some aspirin, he did whatsoever he could. Within half an hour the doctor had recovered. And then he said, "Now | must leave, give me my fee.” George Bernard Shaw said, "This is really something. You should pay me! | have been running around for half an hour doing things for you and you haven't even asked anything about me.” But the doctor said, ”| have cured you. This is a treatment and you have to pay me the fee.” When you become interested in somebody else’s illness you forget your own, hence so many leaders, SO many gurus, sO many masters. It gives you an occupation. If you are concerned with other people, if you are a servant of people, a social worker, helping others, you will forget your own confusion, your inner turmoil, because you are so occupied. Psychiatrists never go mad — not because they are immune to it, but they are so much concerned with other people’s madness, curing, helping, that they forget completely that they also can go mad. | have come to know many social workers, leaders, politicians, gurus, and they stay healthy just because they are concerned with others. But if you lead others, dominate others, out of your confusion you will create confusion in their lives. It may be a treatment for yourself, it may be a good escape for you, but it is spreading the disease. HE WHO RULES MEN, LIVES IN CONFUSION... And not only does he live in confusion, he also goes on spreading confusion in others. Out of confusion only confusion is born. So if you are confused, please remember — don’t help anybody, because your help is going to be poisonous. If you are confused don’t be occupied with others, because you are simply creating trouble, your disease will become infectious. Don’t give advice to anyone, and if you have a little clarity of thought, don’t take advice from someone who is confused. Remain alert, because confused people always like to give advice. And they give it free of charge, they give it very generously! The Empty Boat 11 Osho CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED Remain alert! Out of confusion only confusion is born. ... HE WHO IS RULED BY MEN LIVES IN SORROW. If you dominate men, you live in confusion; if you allow others to dominate you, you will live in sorrow, because a slave cannot be blissful. TAO THEREFORE DESIRED NEITHER TO INFLUENCE OTHERS NOR BE INFLUENCED BY THEM. You should not try to influence anybody, and you should be alert that you are not influenced by others. The ego can do both but it cannot remain in the middle. The ego can try to influence, then it feels good, dominating, but remember that the ego also feels good being dominated. The masters feel good because so many slaves are dominated, and the slaves also feel good being dominated. There are two types of mind in the world: the mind of those who dominate — the male mind, and the mind of those who like to be dominated — the female mind. By female | don’t mean women, or by male, men. There are women who have masculine minds and there are men who have feminine minds. They are not always the same. These are the two types of mind: one which likes to dominate and one which likes to be dominated. In both ways ego is fulfilled because whether you dominate or are dominated YOU are important. If someone dominates you, then too you are important, because his domination depends on you. Without you, where will he be? Without you, where will his kingdom be, his domination, his possession? Without you, he will be nobody. Ego is fulfilled at both the extremes, only in the middle does ego die. Don’t be dominated and don’t try to dominate. Just think what will happen to you. You are not important in any way, not significant in any way, neither as a master nor as a slave. Masters cannot live without slaves and slaves cannot live without masters — they need each other, they are complementary. Just like men and women, they are complementary. The other is required for their fulfillment. Don’t be either. Then who are you? Suddenly you disappear because then you are not significant at all, nobody depends on you, you are not needed. There is a great need to be needed. Remember, you feel good whenever you are needed. Sometimes, even if it brings misery to you, even then you love to be needed. A crippled child is confined to bed and its mother is constantly worried about what to do: | have to serve this child and my whole life is being wasted. But still, if this child dies, the mother will feel lost, because at least this child needs her so totally that she has become important. The Empty Boat 12 Osho CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED If there is nobody who needs you, who are you? You create the need to be needed. Even slaves are needed. TAO THEREFORE DESIRED NEITHER TO INFLUENCE OTHERS NOR BE INFLUENCED BY THEM. THE WAY TO GET CLEAR OF CONFUSION AND FREE OF SORROW IS TO LIVE WITH TAO IN THE LAND OF THE VOID. This middle point is the land of the void, or the door to the land of the void — as if you are not, as if nobody needs you, and you don’t need anybody. You exist as if you are not. If you are not significant the ego cannot persist. That is why you go on trying to become significant in some way or other. Whenever you feel that you are needed, you feel good. But this is your misery and confusion, and this is the base of your hell. How can you be free? Look at these two extremes. Buddha called his religion the middle path, MAJJHIM NIKAYA. He called it the middle path because he said that mind lives in extremes. Once you remain in the middle the mind disappears. In the middle there is no mind. Have you seen a tightrope walker? Next time you see one, observe. Whenever the tightrope walker leans towards the left, he immediately has to move towards the right to balance; and whenever he feels he is leaning too much to the right, he has to lean towards the left. You have to go to the opposite to create balance. So it happens that masters become slaves, slaves become masters; possessors become possessed, the possessed becomes the possessor. It goes on, it is a continuous balance. Have you observed it in your relationships? If you are a husband, are you really a husband for twenty-four hours? You have not observed. In twenty-four hours the change happens at least twenty-four times — sometimes the wife is the husband and the husband is the wife, sometimes the husband is again the husband and the wife is again the wife. And this goes on changing from left to right. It is a tightrope walk. You have to balance. You cannot dominate for twenty-four hours, because then the balance will be lost and the relationship will be destroyed. Whenever the tightrope walker comes to the middle, neither leaning to the right nor leaning to the left, it is difficult for you to observe unless you yourself are the tightrope walker. Tightrope walking has been used in Tibet as a meditation, because in the middle the mind disappears. The mind The Empty Boat 13 Osho CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED comes into existence again when you lean towards the right, then the mind comes again into being and says: ’Balance it, lean towards the left.” When a problem arises, the mind arises. When there is no problem, how can the mind arise? When you are just in the middle, balanced totally, there is no mind. The equilibrium means no mind. One mother, | have heard, was very worried about her son. He was ten years old and he had not yet spoken a single word. Every effort was made to find the cause but the doctors said, ’Nothing is wrong, the brain is absolutely okay. The body is fit, the child is healthy, and nothing can be done. If something had been wrong, then something could have been done.” But still he would not speak. Then suddenly, one day in the morning, the son spoke and he said, *This toast is too burned.” The mother couldn't believe it. She looked, she got scared and said, "What! You have spoken? And spoken so well! Then why were you always silent? We persuaded and tried and you never spoke.” The child said, "There was never anything wrong. For the first time the toast is burned.” If there is nothing wrong why should you speak? People come to me and they say, "You go on speaking every day....’ | say, "Yes, because so many wrong people go on coming here and listening. There is so much wrong that | have to speak. If nothing is wrong then there is no need to speak. | speak because of you, because the toast is burned.” Whenever it is in the middle, between any extreme or polarity, the mind disappears. Try it. Rope walking is a beautiful exercise, and one of the very subtle methods of meditation. Nothing else is needed. You can observe the rope walker yourself, how it happens. And remember, on a rope thinking stops because you are in such danger. You cannot think. The moment you think, you will fall. A rope walker cannot think, he has to be alert every moment. The balance has to be maintained continuously. He cannot feel safe, he is not safe: he cannot feel secure, he is not secure. The danger is always there — any moment, a slight change of balance and he will fall.... And death awaits. If you walk on a tightrope you will come to feel two things: thinking stops because there is danger, and whenever you really come to the middle, neither left nor right, just the mid-point, a great silence descends on you such as you have not known before. And this happens in every way. The whole of life is a tightrope walk. Tao therefore desired to remain in the middle — neither be dominated nor be dominating, neither be a husband nor be a wife, neither be a master nor be a slave. THE WAY TO GET CLEAR OF CONFUSION AND FREE OF SORROW The Empty Boat 14 Osho CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED IS TO LIVE WITH TAO IN THE LAND OF THE VOID. In the middle the door opens — the land of the void. When you are not, the whole world disappears, because the world hangs on you. The whole world that you have created around you hangs on you. If you are not there the whole world disappears. Not that existence goes into nonexistence, no. But the world disappears and existence appears. The world is a mind-creation; existence is the truth. This house will be there, but then this house will not be yours. The flower will be there but the flower will become nameless. It will be neither beautiful nor ugly. It will be there, but no concept will arise in your mind. All conceptual framework disappears. Existence, bare, naked, innocent, remains there in its pure, mirrorlike beingness. And all the concepts, all the imaginations, all the dreams, disappear in the land of the void. IF A MAN IS CROSSING A RIVER AND AN EMPTY BOAT COLLIDES WITH HIS OWN SKIFF, EVEN THOUGH HE BE A BAD-TEMPERED MAN HE WILL NOT BECOME VERY ANGRY. BUT IF HE SEES A MAN IN THE BOAT, HE WILL SHOUT TO HIM TO STEER CLEAR. AND IF THE SHOUT IS NOT HEARD HE WILL SHOUT AGAIN, AND YET AGAIN, AND BEGIN CURSING — AND ALL BECAUSE THERE IS SOMEBODY IN THAT BOAT. YET IF THE BOAT WERE EMPTY, HE WOULD NOT BE SHOUTING, AND HE WOULD NOT BE ANGRY. If people go on colliding with you and if people go on being angry with you, remember, they are not at fault. Your boat is not empty. They are angry because you are there. If the boat is empty they will look foolish, if they are angry they will look foolish. Those who are very intimate with me sometimes get angry with me and they look very foolish! If the boat is empty you can even enjoy the anger of others, because there is nobody to be angry with, they have not looked at you. So remember, if people go on colliding with you, you are too much of a solid wall. Be a door, become empty, let them pass. Even then sometimes people will be angry — they are even angry with a buddha. Because there are foolish people who, if their boat collides with an empty boat, they will not look to see whether The Empty Boat 15 Osho CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED someone is in it or not. They will start shouting; they will get so messed up within themselves that they will not be able to see whether someone is in it or not. But even then the empty boat can enjoy it because then the anger never hits you; you are not there, so whom can it hit? This symbol of the empty boat is really beautiful. People are angry because you are too much there, because you are too heavy there — so solid they cannot pass. And life is intertwined with everybody. If you are too much, then everywhere there will be collision, anger, depression, aggression, violence — the conflict continues. Whenever you feel that someone is angry or someone has collided with you, you always think that he is responsible. This is how ignorance concludes, interprets. Ignorance always says, ”The other is responsible.” Wisdom always says, "If somebody is responsible, then | am responsible, and the only way not to collide is not to be.” *l am responsible” doesn’t mean, ”| am doing something, that is why they are angry.” That is not the question. You may not be doing anything, but just your being there is enough for people to get angry. The question is not whether you are doing good or bad. The question is that you are there. This is the difference between Tao and other religions. Other religions say: Be good, behave in such a way that no one gets angry with you. Tao says: Don’t be. It is not a question of whether you behave or misbehave. This is not the question. Even a good man, even a very saintly man, creates anger, because he is there. Sometimes a good man creates more anger than a bad man, because a good man means a very subtle egoist. A bad man feels guilty — his boat may be filled, but he feels guilty. He is not really so spread out on the boat, his guilt helps him to shrink. A good man feels himself to be so good that he fills the boat completely, overfills it. So whenever you come near a good man, you will always feel tortured — not that he is torturing you, it is just his presence. With so-called good men you will always feel sad, and you would like to avoid them. So-called good men are really very heavy. Whenever you come into contact with them they make you sad, they depress you, and you would like to leave them as soon as possible. The moralists, the puritans, the virtuous, they are all heavy, and they carry a burden around with them, and dark shadows. Nobody likes them. They cannot be good companions, they cannot be good friends. Friendship is impossible with a good man — almost impossible, because his eyes are always condemning. The moment you come near him, he is good and you are bad. Not that he is doing anything in particular — just his very being creates something, and you will feel angry. Tao is totally different. Tao has a different quality, and to me Tao is the deepest religion that has existed on this earth. There is no comparison to it. There have been glimpses, there are glimpses in the sayings of Jesus, in Buddha, in Krishna — but only glimpses. Lao Tzu or Chuang Tzu’s message is the purest — it is absolutely pure, nothing has contaminated it. And this is the message: it is all because there is somebody in the boat. This whole hell is all because there is somebody in the boat. The Empty Boat 16 Osho CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED YET IF THE BOAT WERE EMPTY, HE WOULD NOT BE SHOUTING, AND HE WOULD NOT BE ANGRY. IF YOU CAN EMPTY YOUR OWN BOAT CROSSING THE RIVER OF THE WORLD, NO ONE WILL OPPOSE YOU, NO ONE WILL SEEK TO HARM YOU. THE STRAIGHT TREE IS THE FIRST TO BE CUT DOWN, THE SPRING OF CLEAR WATER IS THE FIRST TO BE DRAINED DRY. IF YOU WISH TO IMPROVE YOUR WISDOM AND SHAME THE IGNORANT, TO CULTIVATE YOUR CHARACTER AND OUTSHINE OTHERS, A LIGHT WILL SHINE AROUND YOU AS IF YOU HAD SWALLOWED THE SUN AND THE MOON — AND YOU WILL NOT AVOID CALAMITY. This is unique. Chuang Tzu is saying that the halo of saintliness around you shows that you are still there. The halo that you are good is sure to create calamity for you, and calamity for others also. Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu — master and disciple — have never been painted in pictures with halos, auras, around them. Unlike Jesus, Zarathustra, Krishna, Buddha, Mahavira, they have never been painted with an aura around their head, "because,” they say, if you are really good no aura appears around your head; rather on the contrary, the head disappears.” Where to draw the aura? The head disappears. All auras are somehow related to the ego. It is not Krishna who has made a self-portrait, it is the disciples. They cannot think of him without drawing an aura around his head — then he looks extraordinary. And Chuang Tzu says: To be ordinary is to be the sage. Nobody recognizes you, nobody feels that you are somebody extraordinary. Chuang Tzu says: You go in the crowd and you mix, but no one knows that a buddha has entered the crowd. No one comes to feel that somebody is different, because if someone feels it then there is bound to be anger and calamity. Whenever someone feels that you are somebody, his own anger, his own ego is hurt. He starts reacting, he starts attacking you. So Chuang Tzu says: Character is not to be cultivated because that too is a sort of wealth. And so-called religious people go on teaching: Cultivate character, cultivate morality, be virtuous. The Empty Boat 17 Osho CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED But why? Why be virtuous? Why be against the sinners? But your mind is a doer, you are still ambitious. And if you reach paradise and there you see sinners sitting around God, you will feel very hurt — your whole life has been wasted. You cultivated virtue, you cultivated character, while these people were enjoying themselves and doing all sorts of things which are condemned, and here they are sitting around God. If you see saints and sinners together in paradise you will be very hurt, you will become very sad and miserable — because your virtue is also part of your ego. You cultivate saintliness to be superior, but the mind stays the same. How to be superior in some way or other, how to make others inferior, is the motive. If you can gather much wealth, then they are poor and you are rich. If you can become an Alexander, then you have a great kingdom and they are beggars. If you can become a great scholar, then you are knowledgeable and they are ignorant, illiterate. If you can become virtuous, religious, respectable, moral, then they are condemned, they are sinners. But the duality continues. You are fighting against others and you are trying to be superior. Chuang Tzu says: If you cultivate your character and outshine others, you will not avoid calamity. Don’t try to outshine others, and don’t try to cultivate character for this egoistic purpose. So for Chuang Tzu there is only one character worth mentioning, and that is egolessness. All else follows it. Without it, nothing has worth. You may become godlike in your character, but if the ego is there inside, all your godliness is in the service of the devil; all your virtue is nothing but a face and the sinner is hidden behind. And the sinner cannot be transformed through virtue or through any type of cultivation. It is only when you are not there that it disappears. A WISE MAN HAS SAID: "HE WHO IS CONTENT WITH HIMSELF HAS DONE WORTHLESS WORK. ACHIEVEMENT IS THE BEGINNING OF FAILURE, FAME IS THE BEGINNING OF DISGRACE.” These are very paradoxical sayings, and you will have to be very alert to understand them; otherwise they can be misunderstood. A WISE MAN HAS SAID: "HE WHO IS CONTENT WITH HIMSELF HAS DONE WORTHLESS WORK.” Religious people go on teaching: Be content with yourself. But yourself remains there to be content with. Chuang Tzu says: Don't be there, then there is no question of contentment or discontentment. This is real contentment, when you are not there. But if you feel that you are content, it is false — because you are there, and it is just an ego fulfillment. You feel that you have achieved, you feel that you have reached. The Empty Boat 18 Osho CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED Tao says that one who feels that he has achieved has missed already. One who feels that he has reached has lost, because success is the beginning of failure. Success and failure are two parts of one circle, of one wheel. Whenever success reaches its climax the failure has already started, the wheel is already turning downwards. Whenever the moon has become full there is no further progress. Now there is no further movement. Then next day the downward journey starts and now every day the moon will be less and less and less. Life moves in circles. The moment you feel that you have achieved, the wheel has moved, you are already losing. It may take time for you to recognize this, because mind is dull. Much intelligence is needed, clarity is needed, to see things when they happen. Things happen to you and you take many days to recognize it, sometimes many months or years. Sometimes you even take many lives to recognize what has happened. But just think about your past. Whenever you had a feeling that you had succeeded, immediately things changed, you started falling — because the ego is part of the wheel. It succeeds because it can fail: if it cannot fail then there is no possibility of success. Success and failure are two aspects of the same coin. Chuang Tzu says: A WISE MAN HAS SAID: "HE WHO IS CONTENT WITH HIMSELF HAS DONE WORTHLESS WORK.” ...Because he is still there, the empty boat has not come into being yet, the boat is still filled. The ego is sitting there, the ego is still enthroned. "ACHIEVEMENT IS THE BEGINNING OF FAILURE, FAME IS THE BEGINNING OF DISGRACE.” He has nothing to lose. Hence, Buddha’s beggars — nameless, homeless, nothing to protect, nothing to preserve. They could move anywhere, just like clouds in the sky, homeless, with no roots anywhere, floating, with no goal, no purpose, no ego. HE WILL FLOW LIKE TAO, UNSEEN, HE WILL GO ABOUT LIKE LIFE ITSELF WITH NO NAME AND NO HOME. This is what a sannyasin means to me. When | initiate you into sannyas, | initiate you into this death of namelessness, of homelessness. | am not giving you any secret key of success, | am not giving you any secret formula of how to succeed. The Empty Boat 19 Osho CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED If 1am giving you anything, it is a key of how not to succeed, of how to be a failure and unworried, how to move nameless, homeless, without any goal, how to be a beggar — what Jesus calls poor in spirit. A man who is poor in spirit is egoless — he is the empty boat. SIMPLE IS HE, WITHOUT DISTINCTION. Whom do you call simple? Can you cultivate simplicity? You see a man who eats only once a day, who wears only a few clothes or remains naked, who doesn’t live in a palace, who lives under a tree — and you say this man is simple. Is this simplicity? You can live under a tree and your living may be just a cultivation. You have cultivated it to be simple, you have calculated it to be simple. You may eat once a day, but you have calculated it, this is mind-manipulated. You may remain naked, but that cannot make you simple. Simplicity can only happen. SIMPLE IS HE, WITHOUT DISTINCTION. But you feel that you are a saint because you live under a tree, and you eat once a day, and you are a vegetarian, and you live naked, you don’t possess any money — you are a saint. And then when a man passes who possesses money, condemnation arises in you, and you think, ”*What will happen to this sinner? He will be condemned to hell. And you feel compassion for this sinner. Then you are not simple. Because distinctions have entered, you are distinct. It makes no difference how the distinction has been created. A king lives in a palace — he is distinct from those who live in huts. A king wears clothes which you cannot wear — they are so valuable that he is distinct. A man lives naked on the street and you cannot live naked in the street — so he is distinct. Wherever distinction is, ego exists. When there is no distinction, ego disappears; and non-ego is simplicity. SIMPLE IS HE, WITHOUT DISTINCTION. TO ALL APPEARANCES HE IS A FOOL. This is the deepest saying that Chuang Tzu has uttered. It is difficult to understand because we always think that an enlightened person, a perfect man, is a man of wisdom. And he says: TO ALL APPEARANCES HE IS A FOOL... But this is how it should be. Amongst so many fools, how can a wise man be otherwise? To all appearances he will be a fool and that is the only way. How can he change this foolish world and so many fools, to sanity? He will have to be naked, and go under the table and crow like a rooster. Only then can he change you. He must become crazy like you, he must be a fool, he must allow you to laugh at him. Then you will not feel jealous, then you will not feel hurt, then you will not be angry with him, then you can tolerate him, then you can forget him and forgive him, then you can leave him alone to himself. Many great mystics have behaved like fools and their contemporaries were at a loss about what to make out of their lives — and the greatest wisdom existed in them. To be wise amongst you is really The Empty Boat 20 Osho CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED foolish. It won’t do; you will create much trouble. Socrates was poisoned because he didn’t know Chuang Tzu. Had he known Chuang Tzu, there would have been no need for him to be poisoned. He tried to behave like a wise man; amongst fools he tried to be wise. Chuang Tzu says: To all appearances the wise man will be like a fool. Chuang Tzu himself lived like a fool, laughing, singing and dancing, talking in jokes and anecdotes. Nobody thought him to be serious. And you could not find a more sincere or serious man than Chuang Tzu. But nobody thought him to be serious. People enjoyed him, people loved him, and through this love he was sowing seeds of his wisdom. He changed many, he transformed many. But to change a madman you have to learn his language, you have to use his language. You have to be like him, you have to come down. If you go on standing on your pedestal then there can be no communion. This is what happened to Socrates, and it had to happen there because the Greek mind is the most rational mind in the world, and a rational mind always tries not to be foolish. Socrates angered everybody. People had to kill him really, because he would ask awkward questions and he would make everybody feel foolish. He put everybody in a corner — because one cannot answer even ordinary questions if somebody insists. If you believe in God, Socrates will ask something about God; you cannot answer, you have not yet seen. What is the proof? God is a far off thing. You cannot prove even ordinary things. You have left your wife at home — how can you prove, really, that you have left your wife at home, or that you have even got a wife? It may be just in your memory. You may have seen a dream, and when you go back there is neither house nor wife. Socrates asked questions, penetrating, analyzing everything, and everyone in Athens became angry. This man was trying to prove that they were all fools. They killed him. Had he met Chuang Tzu — and at that time Chuang Tzu was alive in China, they were contemporaries — then Chuang Tzu would have told him the secret: Don’t try to prove that anybody is foolish because fools don’t like it. Don’t try to prove to a madman that he is mad, because no madman likes it. He will get angry, arrogant, aggressive. He will kill you if you prove too much. If you come to the point where it can be proved, he will take revenge. Chuang Tzu would have said: It is better to be foolish yourself, then people enjoy you, and then by avery subtle methodology you can help them change. Then they are not against you. That is why in the East, particularly in India, in China and in Japan, such an ugly phenomenon never happened as happened in Greece where Socrates was poisoned and killed. It happened in Jerusalem — Jesus was killed, crucified. It happened in Iran, in Egypt, in other countries — many wise men were killed, murdered. It never happened in India, in China, in Japan, because in these three countries people came to realize that to behave as a wise man is to invite calamity. Behave like a fool, like a madman, just be mad. That is the first step of the wise man — to make you at ease so you are not afraid of him. The Empty Boat 21 Osho CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED This is why | told you that story. The prince became friendly with the man. He was afraid of other doctors, learned experts, because they were trying to change him, cure him, and he was not mad. He did not think that he was mad, no madman ever thinks that he is mad. If a madman ever comes to realize that he is mad, madness has disappeared. He is mad no more. So all those wise men who were trying to cure the prince were foolish, and only this old sage was wise. He behaved foolishly. The court laughed, the king laughed, the queen laughed and said, "What? How is this man going to change the prince? He himself is crazy and seems to be deeper in madness than the prince. Even the prince was shocked. He said, "What are you doing? What do you mean?” But this man must have been an enlightened sage. Chuang Tzu is talking about this type of phenomenon, this phenomenal man. TO ALL APPEARENCES HE IS A FOOL. HIS STEPS LEAVE NO TRACE. You cannot follow him. You cannot follow an enlightened man — no, never — because he leaves no trace, there are no footprints. He is like a bird in the sky: he moves and no trace is left. Why does a wise man not leave traces? So that you should not be able to follow. No wise man likes you to follow him because when you follow you become imitators. He is always moving in such a zig-zag way that you cannot follow. If you try to follow him, you will miss. Can you follow me? It is impossible, because you don’t know what | am going to be tomorrow. You cannot predict. If you can predict, you can plan. Then you know where | am going, then you know the direction, then you know my steps. You know my past, you can infer my future. But | am illogical. If | am logical you can conclude what | am going to say tomorrow. Just by looking at what | have said in my yesterdays you can conclude logically what | am going to say tomorrow. But that is not possible. | may contradict myself completely. My every tomorrow will contradict my every yesterday, so how are you going to follow me? You will go crazy if you try to follow. Sooner or later you will have to realize that you have to be yourself, you cannot imitate. HIS STEPS LEAVE NO TRACE. He is not consistent. He is not logical. He is illogical. He is like a madman. HE HAS NO POWER. This will be very difficult to follow because we think that the sage has power, that he is the most powerful of men. He will touch your blind eyes and they will open and you will be able to see; you are dead and he will touch you and you will be resurrected. To us a sage is a miracle-worker. But Chuang Tzu says: He has no power, because to use power is always part of the ego. The ego wants to be powerful. You cannot persuade a wise man to use his power, it is impossible. If you can, The Empty Boat 22 Osho CHAPTER 1. THE TOAST IS BURNED it means some ego was left to be persuaded. He will never use his power because there is no one to use and manipulate it. The ego, the manipulator, is there no more, the boat is empty. Who will direct this boat? There is nobody. A sage is power, but he has no power; a sage is powerful, but he has no power — because the controller is there no more. He is energy — overflowing, unaddressed, undirected — but there is no one who can direct it. You may be cured in his presence, your eyes may open, but he has not opened them, he has not touched them, he has not cured you. If he thinks that he has cured you, he himself has become ill. This ’l’ feeling — | have cured — is a greater illness, it is a greater blindness. HE HAS NO POWER. HE ACHIEVES NOTHING, HE HAS NO REPUTATION. AND SINCE HE JUDGES NO ONE, NO ONE JUDGES HIM. SUCH IS THE PERFECT MAN — HIS BOAT IS EMPTY. And this is going to be your path. Empty your boat. Go on throwing out whatever you find in the boat until everything is thrown out and nothing is left, even YOU are thrown out, nothing is left, your being has become just empty. The last thing and the first thing is to be empty: once you are empty you will be filled. The all will descend on you when you are empty — only emptiness can receive the all, nothing less will do, because to receive all you have to be empty, boundlessly empty. Only then can the all be received. Your minds are so small they cannot receive the divine. Your rooms are so small you cannot invite the divine. Destroy this house completely because only the sky, space, total space, can receive. Emptiness is going to be the path, the goal, everything. From tomorrow morning try to empty yourself of all that you find within: your misery, your anger, your ego, jealousies, sufferings, your pain, your pleasures — whatever you find, just throw it out. Without any distinction, without any choice, empty yourself. And the moment you are totally empty, suddenly you will see that you are the whole, the all. Through voidness, the whole is achieved. Meditation is nothing but emptying, becoming nobody. In this camp move as a nobody. And if you create anger in somebody and you collide, remember, you must be there in the boat, that’s why it is happening. Soon, when your boat is empty, you will not collide, there will be no conflict, no anger, no violence — nothing. And this nothing is the benediction, this nothing is the blessing. For this nothing you have been searching and searching. Enough for today. The Empty Boat 23 Osho CHAPTER 2 The Man of Tao 11 July 1974 am in Buddha Hall THE MAN OF TAO ACTS WITHOUT IMPEDIMENT, HARMS NO OTHER BEING BY HIS ACTIONS, YET HE DOES NOT KNOW HIMSELF TO BE KIND AND GENTLE. HE DOES NOT STRUGGLE TO MAKE MONEY, AND HE DOES NOT MAKE A VIRTUE OF POVERTY. HE GOES HIS WAY WITHOUT RELYING ON OTHERS, AND DOES NOT PRIDE HIMSELF ON WALKING ALONE. THE MAN OF TAO REMAINS UNKNOWN. PERFECT VIRTUE PRODUCES NOTHING. NO SELF IS TRUE SELF. AND THE GREATEST MAN IS NOBODY. The most difficult thing, the almost impossible thing for the mind, is to remain in the middle, is to remain balanced. And to move from one thing to its opposite is the easiest. To move from one 24 CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO polarity to the opposite polarity is the nature of the mind. This has to be understood very deeply, because unless you understand this, nothing can lead you to meditation. Mind’s nature is to move from one extreme to another. It depends on imbalance. If you are balanced, mind disappears. Mind is like a disease: when you are imbalanced it is there, when you are balanced, it is not there. That is why it is easy for a person who overeats to go on a fast. It looks illogical, because we think that a person who is obsessed with food cannot go on a fast. But you are wrong. Only a person who is obsessed with food can fast, because fasting is the same obsession in the opposite direction. It is not really changing yourself. You are still obsessed with food. Before you were overeating; now you are hungry — but the mind remains focused on food from the opposite extreme. A man who has been overindulging in sex can become a celibate very easily. There is no problem. But it is difficult for the mind to come to the right diet, difficult for the mind to stay in the middle. Why is it difficult to stay in the middle? It is just like the pendulum of a clock. The pendulum goes to the right, then it moves to the left, then again to the right, then again to the left; the whole clock depends on this movement. If the pendulum stays in the middle, the clock stops. And when the pendulum moves to the right, you think it is only going to the right, but at the same time it is gathering momentum to go to the left. The more it moves to the right, the more energy it gathers to move to the left, to the opposite. When it is moving to the left it is again gathering momentum to move to the right. Whenever you overeat, you are gathering momentum to go on a fast. Whenever you overindulge in sex, sooner or later, BRAHMACHARYA, celibacy, will appeal to you. And the same is happening from the opposite pole. Go and ask your so-called SADHUS, your BHIKKUS, sannyasins. They have made it a point to remain celibate, now their minds are gathering momentum to move into sex. They have made a point of being hungry and starving, and their minds are constantly thinking about food. When you are thinking about food too much it shows that you are gathering momentum for it. Thinking means momentum. The mind starts arranging for the opposite. One thing: whenever you move, you are also moving to the opposite. The opposite is hidden, it is not apparent. When you love a person you are gathering momentum to hate him. That’s why only friends can become enemies. You cannot suddenly become an enemy unless you have first become a friend. Lovers quarrel, fight. Only lovers can quarrel and fight, because unless you love, how can you hate? Unless you have moved far to the extreme left, how can you move to the right? Modern research says that so-called love is a relationship of intimate enmity. Your wife is your intimate enemy, your husband is your intimate enemy — both intimate and inimical. They appear opposites, illogical, because we wonder how one who is intimate can be the enemy; one who is a friend, how can he also be the foe? Logic is superficial, life goes deeper, and in life all opposites are joined together, they exist together. Remember this, because then meditation becomes balancing. The Empty Boat 25 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO Buddha taught eight disciplines, and with each discipline he used the word right. He said: Right effort, because it is very easy to move from action to inaction, from waking to sleep, but to remain in the middle is difficult. When Buddha used the word right he was saying: Don’t move to the opposite, just stay in the middle. Right food — he never said to fast. Don’t indulge in too much eating and don’t indulge in fasting. He said: Right food. Right food means standing in the middle. When you are standing in the middle you are not gathering any momentum. And this is the beauty of it-— a man who is not gathering any momentum to move anywhere, can be at ease with himself, can be at home. You can never be at home, because whatsoever you do you will immediately have to do the opposite to balance. And the opposite never balances, it simply gives you the impression that you are becoming balanced, but you will have to move to the opposite again. A buddha is neither a friend to anyone nor an enemy. He has simply stopped in the middle — the clock is not functioning. It is said about one Hassid mystic, Muzheed, that when he attained enlightenment suddenly the clock on his wall stopped. It may or may not have happened, because it is possible, but the symbolism is clear: when your mind stops, time stops; when the pendulum stops, the clock stops. From then on the clock never moved, from then on it always showed the same time. Time is created by the movement of the mind, just like the movement of the pendulum. Mind moves, you feel time. When mind is nonmoving, how can you feel time? When there is no movement, time cannot be felt. Scientists and mystics agree on this point: that movement creates the phenomenon of time. If you are not moving, if you are still, time disappears, eternity comes into existence. Your clock is moving fast, and its mechanism is movement from one extreme to another. The second thing to be understood about mind is that the mind always longs for the distant, never for the near. The near gives you boredom, you are fed up with it; the distant gives you dreams, hopes, possibility of pleasure. So the mind always thinks of the distant. It is always somebody else’s wife who is attractive, beautiful; it is always somebody else’s house which obsesses you; it is always somebody else’s car which fascinates you. It is always the distant. You are blind to the near. The mind cannot see that which is very near. It can only see that which is very far. And what is the furthest, the most distant? The opposite is the most distant. You love a person — now hatred is the most distant phenomenon; you are overeating — now fasting is the most distant phenomenon; you are celibate — now sex is the most distant phenomenon; you are a king — now to be a monk is the most distant phenomenon. The most distant is the most dreamy. It attracts, it obsesses, it goes on calling, inviting you, and then when you have reached the other pole, this place from where you have traveled will become beautiful again. Divorce your wife, and after a few years the wife has again gained beauty. A film actress came to me. She had divorced her husband fifteen years ago. Now she is old, less beautiful than she was when she and her husband were separated. Their son was married last year, The Empty Boat 26 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO so at the marriage she met her husband again, and they had to travel together. The husband fell in love with her again, so she came to me and asked, ”What should | do? Now he is proposing again, he wants to get married to me again.” She was also fascinated. She was just waiting for me to say yes. | said, But you lived together, there was always conflict and nothing else. | know the whole story — how you were fighting, quarreling, how you created hell and misery for each other. Now again...?” For the mind the opposite is magnetic, and unless through understanding you transcend this, the mind will go on moving from left to right, from right to left, and the clock will continue. It has continued for many lives, and this is how you have been deceiving yourself — because you don’t understand the mechanism. Again the distant becomes appealing, again you start traveling. The moment you reach your goal that which you used to know is now distant, now has appeal, now becomes a star, something worthwhile. | was reading about a pilot who was flying over California with a friend. He told the friend, "Look down at that beautiful lake. | was born near it, that is my village.” He pointed to a small village just perched in the hills near the lake, and he said, ”| was born there. When | was a child | used to sit near the lake and fish; fishing was my hobby. But at that time, when | was a child fishing near the lake, always airplanes used to fly in the sky, passing overhead, and | would dream of the day when | would become a pilot myself, | would be piloting an airplane. That was my only dream. Now it is fulfilled, and what misery! Now | am continuously looking down at the lake and thinking about when | will retire and go fishing again. That lake is so beautiful...” This is how things are happening. This is how things are happening to you. In childhood, you long to grow up fast because older people are more powerful. A child longs to grow up immediately. Old people are wise, and the child feels that whatsoever he does, it is always wrong. And then ask the old man — he always thinks that when childhood was lost, everything was lost; paradise was there in childhood. And all the old men die thinking of childhood, the innocence, the beauty, the dreamland. Whatsoever you have looks useless, whatsoever you don’t have looks useful. Remember this, otherwise meditation cannot happen, because meditation means this understanding of the mind, the working of the mind, the very process of the mind. The mind is dialectical, it makes you move again and again towards the opposite. And this is an infinite process, it never ends unless you suddenly drop out of it, unless you suddenly become aware of the game, unless you suddenly become aware of the trick of the mind, and you stop in the middle. Stopping in the middle is meditation. Thirdly, because mind consists of polarities, you are never whole. The mind cannot be whole; it is always half. When you love someone have you observed that you are suppressing your hatred? The love is not total, it is not whole; just behind it all the dark forces are hidden and they may erupt any moment. You are sitting on a volcano. The Empty Boat 27 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO When you love someone, you simply forget that you have anger, you have hate, you have jealousy. You simply drop them as if they never existed. But how can you drop them? You can simply hide them in the unconscious. Just on the surface you can become loving, deep down the turmoil is hidden. Sooner or later you will be fed up, the beloved will become familiar. They say that familiarity breeds contempt, but it is not that familiarity breeds contempt — familiarity makes you bored, contempt has always been there, hidden. It comes up, it was waiting for the right moment; the seed was there. The mind always has the opposite within it, and that opposite goes into the unconscious and waits for its moment to come up. If you observe minutely, you will feel it every moment. When you say to someone, | love you, close your eyes, be meditative, and feel —is there any hatred hidden? You will feel it. But because you want to deceive yourself, because the truth is so ugly — the truth that you hate a person that you love — you don’t want to face it. You want to escape from real-ity, so you hide it. But hiding won’t help, because it is not deceiving somebody else, it is deceiving yourself. So whenever you feel something, just close the eyes and go into yourself to find the opposite somewhere. It is there. And if you can see the opposite, that will give you a balance, then you will not say, ”Il love you.” If you are truthful you will say, "My relationship with you is of love and hate.” All relationships are love/hate relationships. No relationship is of pure love, and no relationship is of pure hate. It is both love and hate. If you are truthful you will be in difficulty. If you say to a girl, ”My relationship with you is of both love and hate. | love you as | have never loved anybody and | hate you as | have never hated anybody,” it will be difficult for you to get married unless you find a meditative girl who can understand the reality; unless you can find a friend who can understand the complexity of the mind. Mind is not a simple mechanism, it is very complex, and through mind you can never become simple because mind goes on creating deceptions. To be meditative means to be aware of the fact that mind is hiding something from you, you are closing your eyes to some facts which are disturbing. Sooner or later those disturbing facts will erupt, overpower you, and you will move to the opposite. And the opposite is not there in a distant faraway place, in some star; the opposite is hidden behind you, in you, in your mind, in the very functioning of the mind. If you can understand this, you will stop in the middle. If you can see | love and | hate, suddenly both will disappear, because both cannot exist together in the consciousness. You have to create a barrier: one has to exist in the unconscious and one in the conscious. Both cannot exist in the conscious, they will negate each other. The love will destroy hate, the hate will destroy love; they will balance each other, and they will simply disappear. The same amount of hate and the same amount of love will negate each other. Suddenly they will evaporate — you will be there, but no love and no hate. Then you are balanced. When you are balanced, mind is not there — then you are whole. When you are whole, you are holy, but mind is not there. So meditation is a state of no-mind. Through mind it is not achieved. Through mind, whatever you do, it can never be achieved. Then what are you doing when you are meditating? The Empty Boat 28 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO Because you have created so much tension in your life, you are now meditating. But this is the opposite of tension, not real meditation. You are so tense that meditation has become attractive. That is why in the West meditation appeals more than in the East, because more tension exists there than in the East. The East is still relaxed, people are not so tense, they don’t go mad so easily, they don’t commit suicide so easily. They are not so violent, not so aggressive, not so scared, not so fearful — no, they are not so tense. They are not living at such a mad speed where nothing but tension is accumulated. So if Mahesh Yogi comes to India, nobody listens. But in America, people are mad about him. When there is much tension, meditation will appeal. But this appeal is again falling into the same trap. This is not real meditation, this is again a trick. You meditate for a few days, you become relaxed; when you become relaxed, again the need for activity arises, and the mind starts thinking of doing something, of moving. You get bored with it. People come to me and say, ”We meditated for a few years, then it became boring, then there was no more fun.” Just the other day a girl came to me and said, "Now meditation is not fun anymore, what should | do?” Now the mind is seeking something else, now it has had enough of meditation. Now that she is at ease, the mind is asking for more tensions — something to get disturbed about. When she says that now meditation is no more fun, she means that now the tension is not there, so how can the meditation be fun? She will have to move into tension again, then meditation will again become something worthwhile. Look at the absurdity of the mind: you have to go away to come near, you have to become tense to be meditative. But then this is not meditation, then again this is a trick of the same mind; on a new level the same game continues. When | say meditation, | mean going beyond the game of the polar opposites; dropping out of the whole game, looking at the absurdity of it and transcending it. The very understanding becomes transcendence. The mind will force you to move to the opposite — don’t move to the opposite. Stop in the middle and see that this has always been the trick of the mind. This is how mind has dominated you — through the opposite. Have you felt it? After making love to a woman you suddenly start thinking of brahmacharya, and brahmacharya has such an alluring fascination at that moment that you feel as if there is nothing else to achieve. You feel frustrated, deceived, you feel that there was nothing in this sex, only brahmacharya has the bliss. But after twenty-four hours, sex again becomes important, significant, and again you have to move into it. What is the mind doing? After the sex act it started thinking about the opposite, which again creates the taste for sex. The Empty Boat 29 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO A violent man starts thinking about nonviolence, then he can be violent again easily. A man who gets angry again and again always thinks of non-anger, always decides not to be angry again. This decision helps him to be angry again. If you really want not to be angry again don’t decide against anger. Just look into the anger and just look at the shadow of the anger which you think is non-anger. Look into sex, and at the shadow of sex, which you think is brahmacharya, celibacy. It is just negativity, absence. Look at overeating, and the shadow of it — fasting. Fasting always follows overeating; overindulgence is always followed by vows of celibacy; tension is always followed by some techniques of meditation. Look at them together, feel how they are related; they are part of one process. If you can understand this, meditation will happen to you. Really, it is not something to be done, it is a point of understanding. It is not an effort, it is nothing to be cultivated. It is something to be deeply understood. Understanding gives freedom. Knowledge of the whole mechanism of the mind is transformation. Then suddenly the clock stops, time disappears: and with the stopping of the clock, there is no mind. With the stopping of time, where are you? The boat is empty. Now we will enter this sutra of Chuang Tzu: THE MAN OF TAO ACTS WITHOUT IMPEDIMENT, HARMS NO OTHER BEING BY HIS ACTIONS, YET HE DOES NOT KNOW HIMSELF TO BE KIND AND GENTLE. THE MAN OF TAO ACTS WITHOUT IMPEDIMENT.... You act always with impediment, the opposite is always there creating the impediment; you are not a flow. If you love, the hate is always there as an impediment. If you move, something is holding you back; you never move totally, something is always left, the movement is not total. You move with one leg but the other leg is not moving. How can you move? The impediment is there. And this impediment, this continuous moving of the half and nonmoving of the other half, is your anguish, your anxiety. Why are you in so much anguish? What creates so much anxiety in you? Whatsoever you do, why is bliss not happening through it? Bliss can happen only to the whole, never to the part. When the whole moves without any impediment the very movement is bliss. Bliss is not something that comes from outside — it is the feeling that comes when your whole being moves, the very movement of the whole is bliss. It is not something happening to you, it arises out of you, it is a harmony in your being. If you are divided — and you are always divided: half-moving, half-withholding, half saying yes, half saying no, half in love, half in hate, you are a divided kingdom — there is constant conflict in you. You say something but you never mean it, because the opposite is there impeding, creating a hindrance. The Empty Boat 30 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO Baal Shem’s disciples used to write down whatsoever he said, and Baal Shem used to say: | know that whatsoever you are writing is not what has been said by me. You have heard one thing, | have said something else, and you are writing still something else. And if you look at the meaning, the meaning is something else again. You will never do what you have written, you will do something else — fragments, not an integrated being. Why are these fragments there? Have you heard the story about the centipede? A centipede was walking along on his one hundred legs — that is why he is called a centipede. It is a miracle to walk with a hundred feet, even to manage two is so difficult! To manage one hundred legs is really almost impossible. But the centipede has been managing to do it! A fox became curious — and foxes are always curious. The fox is the symbol in folklore of the mind, of the intellect, of logic. Foxes are great logicians. The fox looked, she observed, she analyzed, she couldn’t believe it. She said, "Wait! | have a question. How do you manage, and how do you know which foot has to follow which? One hundred legs! You walk so smoothly. How does this harmony happen?” The centipede said, ”| have been walking all my life but | have never thought about it. Give me a little time.” So he closed his eyes and for the first time he became divided: the mind as observer, and himself as the observed. For the first time the centipede became two. He had always been living and walking, and his life was one whole; there was no observer standing looking at himself, he was never divided, he had been an integrated being. Now, for the first time, division arose. He was looking at his own self, thinking. He had become subject and object, he had become two, and then he started walking. It was difficult, almost impossible. He fell down — because how do you manage one hundred legs? The fox laughed and he said, ”! knew it must be difficult, | knew it beforehand.” The centipede started crying and weeping. With tears in his eyes he said, "It has never been difficult before, but you have created the problem. Now | will never be able to walk again.” The mind has come into being; it comes into being when you are divided. The mind feeds on division. That is why Krishnamurti keeps saying that when the observer has become the observed you are in meditation. The opposite happened to the centipede. The wholeness was lost, he became two: the observer and the observed, divided; the subject and the object, the thinker and the thought. Then everything was disturbed, then bliss was lost and the flow stopped. Then he got frozen. Whenever the mind comes in, it comes as a controlling force, a manager. It is not the master, it is the manager. And you cannot get to the master unless this manager is put aside. The manager won't allow you to reach the master, the manager will always be standing in the doorway managing. And all managers only mismanage — mind has done such a great job of mismanaging. The Empty Boat 31 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO Poor centipede. He had always been happy. He had no problems at all. He lived, moved, loved, everything, no problems at all, because there was no mind. Mind came in with the problem, with the question, with the inquiry. And there are many foxes around you. Beware of them — philosophers, theologians, logicians, professors all around you — foxes. They ask you questions and they create a disturbance. Chuang Tzu’s master, Lao Tzu, said: When there was not a single philosopher, everything was solved, there were no questions, and all answers were available. When philosophers arose, questions came and answers disappeared. Whenever there is a question the answer is very far away. Whenever you ask, you will never get the answer, but when you stop asking, you will find that the answer has always been there. | do not know what happened to this centipede. If he was as foolish as human beings, he would be somewhere in a hospital, crippled, paralyzed forever. But | don’t think that centipedes are so foolish. He must have thrown the question out. He must have told the fox, Keep your questions to yourself, and let me walk.” He must have come to know that division wouldn’t allow him to live, because division creates death. Undivided you are life, divided you become dead — the more divided, the more dead. What is bliss? Bliss is the feeling that comes to you when the obser-ver has become the observed. Bliss is the feeling that comes to you when you are in harmony, not fragmented; one, not disintegrated, not divided. Feeling is not something that happens from the outside. It is the melody that arises out of your inner harmoniousness. Says Chuang Tzu: THE MAN OF TAO ACTS WITHOUT IMPEDIMENT... He is not divided so who is there to impede? What is there to function as an impediment? He is alone, he moves with his wholeness. This movement in wholeness is the greatest beauty that can happen, that is possible. Sometimes you have glimpses of it. Sometimes when you are suddenly whole, when the mind is not functioning, it happens. The sun is rising...suddenly you look, and the observer is not there. The sun is not there and you are not there, there is no observer and no observed. Simply the sun is rising and your mind is not there to manage. You don’t see it and say, "The sun is beautiful.” The moment you say it the bliss is lost. Then there is no bliss, it has already become the past, it is already gone. Suddenly you see the sun rising, and the seer is not there; the seer has not yet come into being, it has not become a thought. You have not looked, you have not analyzed, you have not observed. The sun is rising and there is no one, the boat is empty; there is bliss, a glimpse. But the mind immediately comes in, and says, ”The sun is beautiful, this sunrise is so beautiful.” The comparison has come in and the beauty is lost. Those who know say that whenever you say ”! love you” to a person, the love is lost. The love has already gone because the lover has come in. How can love exist when the division, the manager, has come in? It is the mind which says ”! love you,” because, really, in love there is no | and no thou. In love there are no individuals. Love is a melting, a merging, they are not two. The Empty Boat 32 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO Love exists, not the lovers. In love, love exists not the lovers, but the mind comes in and says, ”| am in love, | love you.” When ’I’ comes, doubt enters; division comes in and love is there no more. You will come many times to such glimpses in your meditation. Remember, whenever you feel such a glimpse, don’t say, "How beautiful!” don’t say, "How lovely!” because this is how you will lose it. Whenever the glimpse comes, let the glimpse be there. Don’t do what the centipede did — don’t raise any question, don’t make any observation, don’t analyze, don’t allow the mind to come in. Walk with a hundred legs, but don’t think about how you are walking. When in meditation you have the glimpse of some ecstasy, let it happen, let it go deep. Don’t divide yourself. Don’t make any statement, otherwise the contact is lost. Sometimes you have glimpses, but you have become so efficient at losing your contact with those glimpses that you cannot understand how they come and how you lose them again. They come when you are not, you lose them when you come again. When you are, they are not. When the boat is empty, bliss is always happening. It is not an accident, it is the very nature of existence. It doesn’t depend on anything — it is a showering, it is the very breath of life. It is really a miracle how you have managed to be so miserable, so thirsty, when it is raining everywhere. You have really done the impossible! Light is everywhere and you live in darkness; death is nowhere and you are constantly dying; life is a benediction and you are in hell. How have you managed it? Through division, through thinking..... Thinking depends on division, analysis; meditation is when there is no analysis, no division, when everything has become synthesized, when everything has become one. Says Chuang Tzu: THE MAN OF TAO ACTS WITHOUT IMPEDIMENT, HARMS NO OTHER BEING BY HIS ACTIONS. How can he do harm? You can harm others only when you have already harmed yourself. Remember this; this is the secret. If you harm yourself, you will harm others. And you will harm even when you think you are doing good to others. Nothing can happen through you but harm, because one who lives with wounds, one who lives in anguish and misery, whatsoever he does he will create more misery and anguish for others. You can give only that which you have got. | have heard that once a beggar came to a synagogue and he told the rabbi, ”| am a great musician, and | have heard that the musician who belonged to this synagogue is dead, and you are looking for another. So | offer myself.” The rabbi and the congregation were happy because they were really missing their music. Then the man played — it was horrible! It was more musical without his music. He created a hell. It was impossible to feel any silence in that synagogue that morning. He had to be stopped, because most of the congregation started to leave. People escaped as fast as they could because his music was just anarchic, it was like madness, and it started to affect people. The Empty Boat 33 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO When the rabbi heard that everybody was leaving, he went to the man and stopped him. The man said, "If you don’t want me, you can pay for this morning and then | will go.” The rabbi said, "It is impossible to pay you, we have never experienced such a horrible thing.” Then the musician said, "Okay, then keep it as a contribution from me.” The rabbi said, But how can you contribute what you don’t possess? You don’t have any music at all— how can you contribute? You can contribute something only when you have got it. This is no music; rather, on the contrary, it is something like antimusic. So please take it away with you, don’t contribute it to us or it will go on haunting us.” You give only that which you have. You always give your being. If you are dead within, you cannot help life; wherever you go you will kill. Knowingly, unknowingly, that is not the point — you may think that you are helping others to live, but still you will kill. A great psychoanalyst, Wilhelm Reich, who was studying children and their problems, was asked once, "What is the most basic problem with children? What do you find at the root of all their miseries, problems, abnormalities?” He said, The mothers.” No mother can agree with this, because every mother feels that she is just helping her children without any selfishness on her part. She is living and dying for the child. And psychoanalysts say mothers are the problem. Unknowingly they are killing, crippling; Knowingly they think they are loving. If you are crippled within, you will cripple your children. You cannot do anything else, you can’t help it, because you give out of your being — there is no other way to give. Says Chuang Tzu: THE MAN OF TAO...HARMS NO OTHER BEING BY HIS ACTIONS. Not that he cultivates nonviolence, not that he cultivates compassion, not that he lives a good life, not that he behaves in a saintly way — no. He cannot harm because he has stopped harming himself. He has no wounds. He is so blissful that from his actions or inactions only bliss flows. Even though it may appear sometimes that he is doing something wrong, he cannot. It is just the opposite with you. Sometimes it appears that you are doing something good. You cannot. The man of Tao cannot do harm, it is impossible. There is no way to do it, it is inconceivable — because he is without divisions, fragments. He is not a crowd, he is not polypsychic. He is a universe now and nothing other than melody is happening inside. Only this music goes on spreading. The man of Tao is not one of much action — he is not a man of action, the least possible action happens through him. He is really a man of inaction, he is not much occupied with activity. But you are occupied with activity just to escape from yourself. You cannot tolerate yourself, you cannot tolerate the company of yourself. You keep looking for somebody as an escape, some occupation in which you can forget yourself, in which you can get involved. You are so bored with yourself. The Empty Boat 34 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO A man of Tao, a man who has attained the inner nature, a man who is really religious, is not a man of much activity. Only the necessary will happen. The unnecessary is cut out completely, because he can be at ease without activity, he can be at home without doing anything, he can relax, he can be company for himself, he can be with his self. You cannot be with yourself, hence the constant urge to seek company. Go to a club, go to a meeting, go to a party, move into the crowd, where you are not alone. You are so afraid of yourself that if you are left alone you will go mad. In just three weeks if you are left absolutely alone without any activity, you will go mad. And this is not something said by religious people, now psychologists agree to it. For only three weeks, if all activity, if all company, is taken from you, if you are left alone in a room, within three weeks you will be mad — because all your activity is just to throw out your madness, it is a catharsis. What will you do when you are alone? For the first three or four days you will dream and talk within, an inner chattering. Then this will become boring. After the first week you will start talking aloud because at least you will hear the sound of your own voice. When you walk along a dark street at night you start whistling. Why? How is this whistling going to give you courage? How is this whistling going to help you? Just listening to it you feel that you are not alone, somebody is whistling. The illusion of two is created! After the first week you will start talking aloud because then you can also listen. You are not alone, you are talking and you are listening as if somebody else is talking to you. After the second week you will start answering yourself. You will not only talk, you will answer — you are divided. Now you are two; one who questions, one who answers. Now there is a dialogue — you have gone completely crazy. A man asked his psychiatrist, ”| am very worried, | talk to myself. What should | do? Can you help me?” The psychiatrist said, "This is nothing to be worried about. Everybody talks to himself, this is not a big problem. Only when you start answering, then come to me, then | can be of help.” But the difference is only of degree; it is not of kind, it is only of quantity. If you start talking to yourself, sooner or later you will start answering also, because how can one go on simply talking? The answer is needed, otherwise you will feel foolish. By the third week you start answering — you have gone crazy. This world, the world of activity, business and occupation, saves you from the madhouse. If you are occupied, energy moves out; then you need not care about the inward, the inner world, you can forget it. A man of Tao is not a man of much activity — only the essential activity. It is said of Chuang Tzu that if he could stand, he would not walk, if he could sit, he would not stand, if he could fall asleep, he would not sit. The essential, the most essential, only the must would he do, because there is no madness in it. You do the nonessential, you keep on doing the nonessential. Look at your activities: ninety-nine percent are nonessential. You can drop them, you can save much energy, you can save much time. The Empty Boat 35 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO But you cannot drop them because you are afraid, you are scared of yourself. If there is no radio, no television, no newspaper, nobody to talk to, what will you do? | have heard about a priest who died. Of course, he expected to go to paradise, to heaven. He arrived there and everything was beautiful. The house he entered was one of the most wonderful ever dreamed of, palatial. And the moment a desire came, immediately a servant appeared. If he was hungry, a servant was there with the food, the most delicious he had ever tasted. If he was thirsty, even before the desire had become a thought, while it was just the feeling, a man would appear with drinks. So it continued and he was very happy for two or three days, and then he began to feel uneasy because a man has to do something, you cannot just sit in a chair. Only a man of Tao can just sit in a chair and go on sitting and sitting and sitting. You cannot. The priest became uneasy. For two or three days it is okay as a holiday, as a rest. He had been so active — so much public service, mission, church, delivering sermons; he had been so involved with society and the community, so he rested. But how much can you rest? Unless your being is at rest, sooner or later the holiday ends, and you have to come back to the world. Uneasiness arose; he started feeling discomfort. Suddenly the servant appeared and asked, "What do you want? This feeling of yours is not a want, you are neither thirsty nor hungry, just uneasy. So what should | do?” The priest said, ”| cannot sit here forever and forever, for eternity, | want some activity.” The servant said, ’That is impossible. All your desires will be fulfilled here by us, so what need is there for activity? There is no need, that is why it is not provided here.” The priest became very uneasy and he said, ”What type of heaven is this?” The servant replied, "Who said this is heaven? This is hell. Who told you this is heaven?” And this really was hell. Now he understood: without activity, this was hell. He must have gone mad sooner or later. No communication or talk, no social service to be done, no pagans to be converted to Christianity, no foolish people to be made wise — what could he do? Only a man of Tao could have changed that hell into a heaven. A man of Tao, wherever he is, is at peace, at ease. Only the essential is done, and if you can do the essential for him, he is happy. The nonessential is dropped. You cannot drop the nonessential. Really, ninety-nine percent of your energy is wasted on the nonessential. The essential is not enough, and the mind always hankers for the nonessential, because the essential is so little, so small, it can be fulfilled easily. Then what will you do? People are not very interested in having good food. They are more interested in having a big car because good food can be attained very easily. Then what? People are not interested in having good healthy bodies. That can be attained very easily. They are interested in something which The Empty Boat 36 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO cannot be attained so easily, something impossible, and the nonessential is always the impossible. There are always bigger houses, bigger cars, they go on getting bigger and bigger and you are never allowed to rest. The whole world is trying to fulfill the nonessential. Ninety percent of industry is involved with the nonessential. Fifty percent of human labor is wasted on that which is not useful in any way. Fifty percent of industry is devoted to the feminine mind, rather, feminine body: designing new dresses every three months, designing new houses, clothes, powders, soaps, creams; fifty percent of industry is devoted to such nonsense. And humanity is starving, people are dying without food, and half of humanity is interested in the absolutely nonessential. To reach the moon is absolutely nonessential. If we were a little wiser we would not even think about it. It is absolutely foolish wasting as much money as could feed the whole earth. Wars are nonessential, but humanity is mad, and it needs wars more than food. It needs to go to the moon more than food, more than clothes, more than the essential, because the essential is not enough. And now science has created the greatest horror, and that horror is that now the essential can be fulfilled very easily. Within ten years, all humanity’s needs can be fulfilled, this whole earth can be satisfied as far as the necessities are concerned. Then what? Then what will you do? You will feel in the same position as the priest. He thought that he was in heaven, and then he found that it was hell. Within ten years the whole earth can become a hell. The nonessential is needed for your madness to remain engaged. So moons are not enough, we will have to go further, we will have to go on creating the useless. It is needed. People need it to be occupied. A man of Tao is not a man of much activity. His actions are the most essential — those which cannot be avoided. That which can be avoided, he avoids. He is so happy with himself there is no need to move in actions. His activity is like inactivity; he does without there being anybody doing. He is an empty boat, moving on the sea, not going anywhere. YET HE DOES NOT KNOW HIMSELF TO BE KIND AND GENTLE. Allow this point to penetrate deep into your heart. YET HE DOES NOT KNOW HIMSELF TO BE KIND AND GENTLE - because if you know, you have missed the point; if you know that you are a simple man, you are not. This knowledge makes it complex. If you know that you are a man of religion, you are not, because this cunning mind which knows is still there. When you are gentle, and you don’t know, when you are simple, and you are not aware of it, it has become your nature. When something is really natural you are not aware of it, but when something is imposed, you are aware of it. When somebody becomes rich, newly rich, he is aware of his house, of his swimming pool, of his riches, and you can see that he is not an aristocrat, because he is so concerned with show. A newly rich man ordered three swimming pools for his garden. They were made and he was showing them to a friend. The friend was a little puzzled. He said, "Three swimming pools? For what? One will do.” The Empty Boat 37 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO The newly rich man said, ”No, how can one do? One for hot baths, one for cold baths.” His friend asked, ”And the third?” He answered, ”For those who cannot swim. So the third swimming pool is going to stay empty.” You can see if a man has newly acquired wealth — he will be showing it. A real aristocrat is one who has forgotten that he is rich. A man of Tao is the aristocrat of the inner world. If a person shows his religion he is not yet really religious. The religion is still like a thorn, it is not natural, it hurts, he is eager to show it. If you want to show your simplicity what type of simplicity is this? If you exhibit your gentleness, then it is simply cunning, nothing gentle exists in it. A man of Tao is an aristocrat of the inner world. He is so attuned to it, there is no exhibition — not only to you, he himself is not aware of it. He does not know that he is wise, he does not know that he is innocent — how can you know if you are innocent? Your knowledge will disturb the innocence. A follower of Hazrat Mohammed went with him to the mosque for early morning prayer. It was summer, and on the way back they saw many people still asleep in their houses or just on the street. It was early morning, a summer morning, and many people were still asleep. The man very arrogantly said to Hazrat Mohammed, "What will happen to these sinners? They have not been to the morning prayer.” Today was the first time he himself had gone to prayer. Yesterday he was also asleep like these sinners. The newly rich man wanted to exhi-bit, to show off to Mohammed: "Mohammed Hazrat, what will happen to these sinners? They have not been to the morning prayer, they are still lazy and asleep.” Mohammed stopped and said, "You go home, | will have to go back to the mosque again.” The man said, "Why?” He replied, My morning prayer is wasted because of you; keeping company with you has destroyed everything. | will have to do my prayer again. And as for you, remember please never to come again. It was better for you to be asleep like the others; at least they were not sinners then. Your prayer has done only one thing — it has given you the key to condemn others.” The so-called religious person is religious only to look at you with a condemning eye so he can say that you are sinners. Go to your saints, so-called saints, and look into their eyes. You will not find the innocence that should be there. You will find a calculating mind looking at you and thinking about hell: You will be thrown in hell and | will be in heaven, because | have been praying so much, five times a day, and | have been fasting so much. As if you can purchase heaven...! These are the coins — fasting, prayer — these are the coins one is trying to bargain with. If you see condemnation in the eyes of a saint, know well that he is a newly rich man; he is not yet an aristocrat of the inner world, he has not yet become one with it. He may know it — but you know something only when it is separate from you. The Empty Boat 38 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO One thing has to be remembered here: because of this, self-knowledge is impossible. You cannot know the self, because whenever you know it, it is not the self, it is something else, something separate from you. The self is always the knower, never the known, so how can you know it? You cannot reduce it to an object. I can see you. How can | see myself? Then who will be the seer and who will be the seen? No, the self cannot be known in the same way that other things are known. Self-knowledge is not possible in the ordinary sense, because the knower always transcends, always goes beyond. Whatsoever it knows, it is not that. The Upanishads say: NET! NETI — not this, not that. Whatsoever you know, you are not this; whatsoever you don’t Know, you are not that either. You are the one who knows, and this knower cannot be reduced to a known object. Self-knowledge is not possible. If your innocence comes out of your inner source you cannot know it. If you have imposed it from the outside you can know it; if it is just like a dress you have put on you know it, but it is not the very breath of your life. That innocence is cultivated, and a cultivated innocence is an ugly thing. A man of Tao does not know himself to be kind and gentle. He IS gentle, but he doesn’t know; he is kind, but he doesn’t know; he is love, but he doesn’t Know — because the lover and the knower are not two, the gentleness, the kindness, the compassion and the knower, are not two. No, they cannot be divided into the known and the knower. This is the inner aristocracy: when you have become so rich you are not aware of it. When you are that rich, there is no need to exhibit it. | have heard: It happened once that Henry Ford came to England. At the airport inquiry office he asked for the cheapest hotel in town. The clerk in the office looked — the face was famous. Henry Ford was known all over the world. Just the day before there were big pictures of him in the newspapers saying that he was coming. And here he was, asking for the cheapest hotel, wearing a coat that looked as old as he himself. So the clerk said, "If | am not mistaken, you are Mr. Henry Ford. | remember well, | have seen your picture.” The man said, ”Yes.” This puzzled the clerk very much, and he said, ”You are asking for the cheapest hotel, wearing a coat that looks as old as you yourself. | have also seen your son coming here, and he always inquires about the best hotel, and he comes in the best of clothes.” Henry Ford is reported to have said, ”Yes, my son’s behavior is exhibitionist, he is not yet attuned. There is no need for me to stay in a costly hotel; wherever | stay | am Henry Ford. Even in the cheapest hotel | am Henry Ford, it makes no difference. My son is still new, afraid of what people will think if he stays in a cheap hotel. And this coat, yes, this belonged to my father — but it makes no difference, | don’t need new clothes. | am Henry Ford, whatsoever the dress; even if | am standing naked, | am Henry Ford. It makes no difference at all.” The Empty Boat 39 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO When you are really attuned, really rich in the inner world, you are not concerned with exhibition. When you first go to a temple, your prayer is a little louder than others. It has to be. You want to show off. The showmanship is part of the ego, what you show is not the problem. You show, you exhibit. Then the ego is there, the boat is not empty — and a man of Tao is an empty boat. He is gentle, not aware; he is innocent, not knowing; he is wise, that’s why he can move as a fool, not worried. Whatsoever he does makes no difference, his wisdom is intact, he can afford to be foolish. You cannot. You are always afraid that somebody may think you a fool. You are afraid that if others think you to be a fool, you will start suspecting it. If so many people think you a fool your self-confidence will be lost. And if everybody goes on repeating that you are a fool, sooner or later you will come to believe it. Only a wise man cannot be deceived, he can appear as a fool. | have heard about one wise man who was known as The Madman. Nobody knew anything else about him, his name or anything, he was just known as The Madman. He was a Jew, and Jews have created a few really wise men, they have something of the inner source. That is why Jesus could be born amongst them. This madman behaved in such a foolish way that the whole community became disturbed because nobody knew what he was going to do next. On the religious days, Yom Kippur or other festivals, the whole community was afraid, because it could not be predicted what this rabbi would do, how he would appear there, how he would behave. His prayers were also mad. Once he called the court, the Jewish court, all the ten judges of the court. The court came, because the rabbi called, and he said, ”| have a case against God, so decide how to punish this fellow God. | will present all the arguments to prove that God is unjust and a criminal.” The judges became very much afraid but they had to listen because he was the rabbi, the head of the temple. And he made out his case like a lawyer in court. He said, "God, you created the world, and now you send messengers telling us how to renounce it. What foolishness! You gave us desires and now all your teachers keep coming and saying: Be desireless. So what do you think you are doing? And if we have committed any sins it is really YOU who are the culprit, because why did you create desire?” What should the court decide? He was right, but the court decided that this man had gone completely mad and should be expelled from the temple. But this man is really telling the truth. He loves God so much that it is an I/thou relationship, so intimate. He asks, ”What are you doing? Enough, now stop, no more fooling.” He must have loved the divine so much that he could behave in that way. And it is said that God immediately stopped when he called. He had to listen to this man. And the angels asked, "Suddenly you stopped, what happened?” The Empty Boat 40 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO He said, "That madman is praying. | have to listen, because whatsoever he says is true, and he loves me so much that there is no need for formality...” In love, in hate, everything is permitted, everything is allowed. This madman was passing and a woman came to him. She asked, ”| have been longing and longing for a child for forty years now. And if within three or four years a child does not come, then it will not be possible. So help me.” The madman said, ”! can help, because my mother had the same trouble. She waited and waited for forty years and no child came. Then she went to Baal Shem, a mystic; she told him, and he intervened. My mother gave him a beautiful cap. Baal Shem put the cap on his head, looked up and said to God, ’What are you doing? This is unjust. There is nothing wrong in the demand of this woman, so give her a child’ And after nine months, | was born.” So the woman said, beaming and happy, ”! will go home and | will bring you a more beautiful cap than you have ever seen. Then will the child be born to me?” Said the madman, ”You have missed the point. My mother never knew the story. Your cap won’t do, you have missed. You cannot imitate religion, you cannot imitate prayer. Once you imitate you have missed.” So whenever people came to this madman, he would say, ”Don’t imitate, throw away all the scriptures.” When this madman died he had all the books that had been written about him burned. And the last thing he did was to say to his disciples, "Go around the house and search, and tell me that nothing is left, so that | can die at ease. Not even a single letter written by me should be left; otherwise after | die people will start following, and when you follow, you miss.” So everything was gathered and burned. Then he said, "Now | can die easily, | am not leaving any traces behind.” This type of wise man is not afraid. How can a wise man be afraid of anybody? He can to all appearances be a fool, he need not exhibit his wisdom. Have you observed yourself? You are always trying to exhibit your wisdom, always in search of a victim to whom you can show your knowledge, just searching, hunting for somebody weaker than you — then you will jump in and you will show your wisdom. A wise man need not be an exhibitionist. Whatsoever is, is. He is not aware of it, he is not in any hurry to show it. If you want to find it, you will have to make efforts. If you have to know whether he is gentle or not, that is going to be your discovery. HE DOES NOT STRUGGLE TO MAKE MONEY, AND HE DOES NOT MAKE A VIRTUE OUT OF POVERTY. Remember this. It is very easy to make money and it is also very easy to make a virtue of poverty. But these two types are not different. A man keeps on making money, and then suddenly he gets frustrated. He has achieved, and nothing is gained — so he renounces. Then poverty becomes the virtue, then he lives the life of a poor man and then he says: This is the only real life, this is religious The Empty Boat 41 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO life. This man is the same, nothing has changed. The pendulum moved to the left but now has gone to the other extreme. HE DOES NOT STRUGGLE TO MAKE MONEY.... This you will understand; the other part is more difficult. ...HE DOES NOT MAKE A VIRTUE OUT OF POVERTY. He is neither poor nor rich. He is not making any effort to make money, he is not making any effort to be poor — whatever happens he allows it to happen. If a palace happens, he will be in the palace; if the palace disappears, he will not look for it. Whatever is happening, he will be with it, his bliss cannot be disturbed. He is not struggling for money, he is not struggling for poverty. HE GOES HIS WAY WITHOUT RELYING ON OTHERS.... This you can understand easily. HE GOES HIS WAY WITHOUT RELYING ON OTHERS, AND DOES NOT PRIDE HIMSELF ON WALKING ALONE. You depend on others, your wife, your children, your father, mother, friends, society; then suddenly you drop everything and escape to the Himalayas. Then you start priding yourself: | live alone, | don’t need anybody, | am free of that world. Even then you are still not alone because your aloneness still depends on the world. How could you be alone if there was not a world to leave? How could you be alone if there was not a society to renounce? How could you be alone if there was not wife, children, family to leave behind? Your aloneness depends on them. How could you be poor if there was no money to be left? Your poverty depends on your riches. No, a perfect man, a man who is really a sage, the man of Tao, goes his way without relying on others. If you rely on others you will suffer, if you rely on others, you will always be in bondage, you will become dependent and weak. But that doesn’t mean that you should pride yourself that you walk alone. Walk alone, but don’t take pride in it. Then you can move in the world without being a part of it. Then you can be a husband without being a husband. Then you can possess without being possessed by your possessions. Then the world is there outside, but not within. Then you are there, but not corrupted by it. This is true loneliness — moving in the world without being touched by it. But if you are proud, you have missed. If you think, ”] have become somebody,’ the boat is not empty, and again you have fallen victim of the ego. THE MAN OF TAO REMAINS UNKNOWN. PERFECT VIRTUE PRODUCES NOTHING. The Empty Boat 42 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO NO SELF IS TRUE SELF. AND THE GREATEST MAN IS NOBODY. Listen.... The man of Tao remains unknown. Not that nobody will Know him, but it is up to you to discover him. He is not making any effort to be known. Effort to be known comes from the ego, because ego cannot exist when you are unknown, it exists only when you are known. It exists, feeds, when people look at you, when they pay attention to you, when you are somebody important, significant. But how can you be significant if nobody knows you? When the whole world knows you, then you are significant. That is why people are after fame so much, and if fame cannot be achieved then they will settle for being notorious — but not for being unknown! If people cannot praise you then you will settle for being condemned, but you cannot bear that they should be indifferent to you. | have heard about a politician who once had a great following. Many people appreciated him — until he became powerful... When you are not in power you look very innocent, because when there is no power what can you do, how can you hide? So your real nature comes to be known only when you get power. Look at the Gandhians in India before Independence — so saintly. And now everything has gone to the opposite extreme. Now they are the most corrupt. What happened? A simple law: when they were not in power they were like doves, innocent; when power came they became like serpents, cunning, corrupted, exploiting. Your real nature is known only when you have power. When you CAN harm, then it is known whether you will harm or not. Lord Acton said: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. No, that is not right. Power never corrupts, it only brings corruption out. How can power corrupt? You were already corrupt but there was no outlet for it. You were already ugly but you were standing in darkness. Now you are standing in light, so will you say that light makes you ugly? No, light only reveals. ... This politician was very much appreciated and loved, he had a charismatic personality. Then he came to power and everybody was against him. He was thrown out, his name became notorious, he was condemned everywhere, so he had to leave his town because the people would not allow him to live there, he had done such harm. So with his wife he was looking for a new residence in a new town. He traveled to many towns just to look and feel where to stay. And then in one town people started throwing stones at him. He said, *This will be the right place, we should choose this town.” The wife said, "Are you mad? Have you gone crazy? The people are throwing stones.” The politician said, "At least they are not indifferent.” Indifference hurts you most because the ego cannot exist in indifference. With either for me or against me the ego can exist, but don’t be indifferent to me because then how can | exist, how can The Empty Boat 43 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO the ego exist? The man of Tao remains unknown. That means that he is not seeking people to know him. If they want to know, they should seek him. PERFECT VIRTUE PRODUCES NOTHING. This is one of the basics of Taoist life. Perfect virtue produces nothing, because when you are perfectly virtuous nothing is needed. When you are perfectly virtuous there is no desire, there is no motivation. You are perfect. How can perfection move? Only imperfection moves. Only imperfection desires to produce something. So a perfect artist never paints a picture, and a perfect musician throws away his sitar. A perfect archer breaks his bow and throws it away, and a perfect man like Buddha is absolutely useless. What has Buddha produced — poetry, a sculpture, a painting, a society? He seems to be absolutely unproductive, he has done nothing. PERFECT VIRTUE PRODUCES NOTHING, because it needs nothing. Production comes out of desire, production comes because you are imperfect. You create something as a substitute because you feel unfulfilled. When you are absolutely fulfilled, why should you create, how can you create? Then you yourself have become the glory of creation, then the inner being itself is so perfect, nothing is needed. PERFECT VIRTUE PRODUCES NOTHING. If the world is virtuous, all utilitarian goals will be lost. If the world is really virtuous there will be play and no production. Then the whole thing will just become a game. You enjoy it, but you don’t need it. A perfect sage is absolutely useless. NO SELF IS TRUE SELF. When you feel that you are not, for the first time you are, because the self is nothing but a synonym for the ego. That is why Buddha, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, they all say there is no self, no ATMAN. Not that there is not — they say there is no atman, there is no self, because your ego is so cunning it can hide behind it. You can say, AHAM BRAHMASMI, | am Brahman...ANA’L HAQ, | am God, and the ego can hide behind it. Buddha says there is nobody to claim, there is no self within you. Buddha says you are like the onion: you peel, you go on peeling the layers, and finally nothing remains. Your mind is like an onion, go on peeling. This is what meditation is — go on peeling, go on peeling, and a moment comes when nothing is left. That nothingness is your true self. NO SELF IS TRUE SELF. When the boat is empty then only for the first time you are in the boat. AND THE GREATEST MAN IS NOBODY. It happened that Buddha renounced the kingdom. Then he went searching from one forest to another, from one ashram to another, from one master to another, walking. He had never walked before without shoes but now he was just a beggar. He was passing along the bank of a river, walking on the sand, and his footprints were left. While resting in the shade of a tree an astrologer saw him. The astrologer was returning from Kashi, from the seat of learning. He had become proficient in astrology, had become perfect, and now that The Empty Boat 44 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO he had become a great doctor of astrology he was coming back to his home town to practice. He looked at the footprint on the wet sand and he became disturbed: These footprints could not belong to an ordinary man walking on the sand without shoes during such a hot summer, at noontime! These feet belong to a great emperor, a CHAKRAVARTIN. A chakravartin is the emperor who rules the whole world. All the symbols were there showing that this man was a chakravartin, an emperor of the whole world of the six continents. And why should a chakravartin walk barefoot on the sand on such a hot summer afternoon? It was impossible! The astrologer was carrying his most valuable books. He thought, If this is possible | should throw these books in the river and forget astrology forever, because this is absurd. It is very, very difficult to find a man who has the feet of a chakravartin. Once in millions of years a man becomes a chakravartin, and what is this chakravartin doing here?” So he followed the footprints to their source and he looked at Buddha who was sitting resting under a tree with closed eyes, and he became more disturbed. This astrologer became absolutely disturbed because the face was also the face of a chakravartin. But the man looked like a beggar, with his begging bowl just there by his side, with torn clothes. But the face looked like that of a chakravartin, so what should he do? He said, ”| am very disturbed, put me at ease. There is only one question | have to ask. | have seen and studied your footprints. They should belong to a chakravartin, to a great emperor who rules over all the world, the whole earth is his kingdom — and you are a beggar. So what should | do? Should | throw away all my astrology books? My twelve years of effort in Kashi have been wasted and those people there are fools. | have wasted the most important part of my life, so put me at ease. Tell me, what should | do?” Buddha said, ’You need not worry. This will not happen again. You take your books, go to the town, start your practice and don’t bother about me. | was born to be a chakravartin. These footprints carry my past.” All footprints carry your past — the lines on your hand, your palm, carry your past. That is why astrology, palmistry, is always true about the past, never so true about the future, and absolutely untrue about a buddha, because one who throws off his whole past moves into the unknown — you cannot predict his future. Buddha said, ”You will not come to such a troublesome man again. Don’t you worry, this will not happen again, take it as an exception.” But the astrologer said, "A few more questions. | would like to know who you are: am | really seeing a dream? A chakravartin sitting like a beggar? Who are you? Are you an emperor in disguise?” Buddha said, ”No.” Then the astrologer asked, ”But your face looks so beautiful, so calm, so filled with inner silence. Who are you? Are you an angel from paradise?” Buddha said, ”No.” The Empty Boat 45 Osho CHAPTER 2. THE MAN OF TAO The astrologer asked one more question, saying, "It seems impolite to ask, but you have created the desire and the urge. Are you a human being? If you are not an emperor, a chakravartin, if you are not a DEVA from paradise, are you a human being?” And Buddha said, No, | am nobody. | don’t belong to any form, to any name.” The astrologer said, "You have disturbed me even more now. What do you mean?” This is what Buddha meant: AND THE GREATEST MAN IS NOBODY. You can be somebody, but you cannot be the greatest. There is always someone greater somewhere in the world. And who is somebody? You are the measure. You say that this man is great — but who is the measure? You. The spoon is the measure of the ocean. You say, *This man is great.” You say, and many like you say, ’This man is great” — and he becomes great because of you! No. In this world, whoever is somebody cannot be the greatest, because the ocean cannot be measured by spoons. And you are all teaspoons measuring the ocean. No, it is not possible. So the really greatest will be nobody amongst you. What does it mean when Chuang Tzu says, "The greatest will be nobody”? It means: it will be immeasurable. You cannot measure, you cannot label, you cannot categorize, you cannot say, "Who is this?” He simply escapes measurement. He simply goes beyond and beyond and beyond and the teaspoon falls to the ground. Enough for today. The Empty Boat 46 Osho CHAPTER 3 The Owl and the Phoenix 12 July 1974 am in Buddha Hall HUI TZU WAS PRIME MINISTER OF LIANG. HE HAD WHAT HE BELIEVED TO BE INSIDE INFORMATION THAT CHUANG TZU COVETED HIS POST, AND WAS PLOTTING TO SUPPLANT HIM. WHEN CHUANG TZU CAME TO VISIT LIANG THE PRIME MINISTER SENT OUT POLICE TO ARREST HIM, BUT ALTHOUGH THEY SEARCHED FOR THREE DAYS AND NIGHTS THEY COULD NOT FIND HIM. MEANWHILE, CHUANG TZU PRESENTED HIMSELF TO HUI TZU OF HIS OWN ACCORD, AND SAID: "HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THE BIRD THAT LIVES IN THE SOUTH — 47 CHAPTER 3. THE OWL AND THE PHOENIX THE PHOENIX THAT NEVER GROWS OLD? "THIS UNDYING PHOENIX RISES OUT OF THE SOUTH SEA AND FLIES TO THE SEA OF THE NORTH, NEVER ALIGHTING EXCEPT ON CERTAIN SACRED TREES. HE WILL TOUCH NO FOOD BUT THE MOST EXQUISITE RARE FRUIT, AND HE DRINKS ONLY FROM THE CLEAREST SPRINGS. "ONCE AN OWL CHEWING AN ALREADY HALF-DECAYED DEAD RAT SAW THE PHOENIX FLY OVER. ”LOOKING UP HE SCREECHED WITH ALARM AND CLUTCHED THE DEAD RAT TO HIMSELF IN FEAR AND DISMAY. PRIME MINISTER, WHY ARE YOU SO FRANTIC, CLINGING TO YOUR MINISTRY AND SCREECHING AT ME IN DISMAY?” The religious mind is basically nonambitious. If there is any sort of ambition, then to be religious is impossible, because only a superior man can become religious. Ambition implies inferiority. Try to understand this because it is one of the basic laws. Without under-standing it you can go to temples, you can go to the Himalayas, you can pray and you can meditate, but everything will be in vain. You will be simply wasting your life if you have not understood whether the nature of your mind is ambitious or nonambitious. Your whole search will be futile, because ambition can never lead to the divine. Only non-ambition can become the door. Modern psychology also agrees with Chuang Tzu, with Lao Tzu, with Buddha, with all those who have known, that inferiority creates ambition. Hence politicians come from the worst stuff in humanity. All politicians are SUDRAS, untouchables. It cannot be otherwise, because whenever the mind feels the inferiority complex it tries to become superior — the opposite is born. When you feel ugly, you try to be beautiful. If you are beautiful, then it is no effort. So look at ugly women and you will come to know the nature of the politician. An ugly woman always tries to hide the ugliness, always tries to be beautiful. At least the face, the painted face, the clothes, The Empty Boat 48 Osho CHAPTER 3. THE OWL AND THE PHOENIX the ornaments, all belong to the ugly. The ugliness has somehow to be overcome and you have to create the opposite to hide it, to escape from it. A really beautiful woman will not worry, she will not even be conscious of her beauty. And only an unconscious beauty is beautiful. When you become conscious, the ugliness has entered. When you feel that you are inferior, when you compare yourself with others and see that they are superior to you, what will you do? The ego feels hurt — you are inferior. You just cannot accept it, so you have to deceive yourself and others. How do you deceive? There are two ways. One is to go mad. Then you can declare that you are Alexander, Hitler, Nixon. Then it comes easily because then you are not bothered by what others say. Go to the madhouses all over the world and there you will find all the great characters of history, still living! While Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was alive, at least one dozen people in India believed that they were Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Once he went to a madhouse to inaugurate a new department. And the madhouse authorities had arranged for a few people to be released by him, because now they had become healthy and normal. The first person was brought to him and introduced, so Nehru introduced himself to the madman who had become more normal and said, ”| am Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, prime minister of India. ” The madman laughed and said, "Don’t worry. Be here for three years and you will become as normal as | have become. Three years ago when | first came to this madhouse that is who | believed | was — Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, prime minister of India. But they have cured me completely, so don’t worry.” This has happened in many ways. Lloyd George was prime minister of England. In the war days, at six o’clock in the evening there used to be a blackout and nobody could leave their homes. All traffic stopped, lights were not allowed, and everyone had to be in a shelter of some kind. Lloyd George was taking his usual evening walk, and he forgot. Suddenly the siren went off. It was six o’clock and his house was at least a mile’s walk away. So he knocked on the nearest door and said to the man who opened it, "Let me rest here for the night; otherwise the police will catch me. | am Lloyd George, the prime minister. ” The man suddenly grabbed him and said, "Come in. This is the right place for you. We have three Lloyd Georges already!” It was a madhouse. Lloyd George tried to convince the man that he was the real one. But the man said, ”They all argue, so don’t bother to try, just come in or | will beat you.” So Lloyd George had to keep quiet all night or he really would have been beaten. How could he convince them? There were already three Lloyd Georges and they had all tried to prove it. One way is to go mad — you suddenly declare that you are superior, the most superior. Another way is to go politician. Either go mad or go politician. Through politics you cannot suddenly declare — you have to prove that you really are the prime minister or the president. So it is the long way around. Madness is a shortcut to importance; politics is the long way. But they reach the same goal. The Empty Boat 49 Osho CHAPTER 3. THE OWL AND THE PHOENIX And if the world is to become a sane, normal world, then two types of persons have to be cured: madmen and politicians. Both are ill. One has gone the long route round, one has taken the shortcut. And remember well that the madman is less harmful than the politician, because he simply declares his superiority, he doesn’t bother to prove it; the politician bothers to prove it — and the proof is very costly. What was Hitler trying to prove? That he was the most superior, the suprememost Aryan. It would have been better for the world if he had gone mad, used the shortcut; then there would have been no second world war. Politicians are more dangerous because they are madmen with proofs. They are madmen working, reaching, achieving a goal, just to hide the inferiority in them. Whenever somebody feels inferior, he has to prove or simply hypnotize himself into believing that he is not inferior. You cannot be religious if you are mad. Not mad in the way a Saint Francis is mad — that madness comes through ecstasy, this madness comes through inferiority. The madness of a Saint Francis or a Chuang Tzu comes out of superiority, comes out of the heart, comes out of the original source. This other madness comes out of the ego. The soul is always superior and the ego is always inferior. So an egotist has to become a politician somehow or other — whichever profession he chooses, through it he will be a politician. What do | mean when | say politics? | mean the conflict between egos, the struggle to survive. When your ego and my ego are in conflict then we are politicians. When | am not in conflict with anybody's ego, | am a religious man. When | don’t try to be superior, | am superior. But this superiority is not in opposition to inferiority, it is absence of the feeling of inferiority. This distinction has to be remembered. There are two types of superiority. In one you have just hidden the inferiority, covered it, you are using a mask — behind the mask the inferiority is there. Your superiority is just superficial, deep down you remain inferior, and because you go on feeling it you have to carry this mask of superiority, of beauty. Because you are aware that you are ugly you have to contrive to be beautiful, you have to exhibit, you have to show a false face. This is one type of superiority; it is not real. There is another type of superiority, and that superiority is the absence of inferiority, not the opposite to it. You simply don’t compare. When you don’t compare, how can you be inferior? Look: if you are the only one on earth and there is nobody else, will you be inferior? With whom will you compare yourself? Relative to what? If you are alone what will you be, inferior or superior? You will be neither. You cannot be inferior because no one is above you; you cannot declare yourself superior because there is no one beneath you. You will be neither superior nor inferior — and | say to you that this is the superiority of the soul. It never compares. Compare, and the inferiority arises. Don’t compare, and you simply are — unique. A religious man is superior in the sense that the inferiority has disappeared. A politician is superior in the sense that he has overcome his inferiority. It is hidden there, it is still inside. He is just using the garb, the face, the mask of a superior man. When you compare, you miss; then you will always be looking at others. And no two persons are the same, they cannot be. Every individual is unique and every individual is superior, but this superiority The Empty Boat 50 Osho CHAPTER 3. THE OWL AND THE PHOENIX is not comparable. You are superior because you cannot be anything else. Superiority is just your nature. That tree is superior, that rock is also superior. The whole of existence is divine, so how can anything here be inferior? It is God, overflowing in millions of ways. Somewhere God has become a tree, somewhere God has become a rock, somewhere God has become a bird, somewhere God has become you. And only God exists, so there can be no comparison. God is superior, but not to anything — because only God is, and there cannot be any inferiority. A religious man comes to experience his uniqueness, comes to experience his divineness, and through his experience of divineness comes to realize the divineness of all. This is nonpolitical because now there is no ambition, you have nothing to prove, you are already proved; you have nothing to declare, you are already declared. Your very being is the proof. You are...it is enough. Nothing else is needed. Hence, remember this as the basic law. If in religion also you go on comparing, you are in politics, not in religion. That is why all religions have become political. They use religious terminology, but hidden behind is politics. What is Islam? What is Hinduism? What is Christian-ity? They are all political groups, political organizations, doing politics in the name of religion. When you go to the temple to pray, do you simply pray or do you compare? If someone else is praying there, does comparison arise in your mind? Do you wonder if he is doing better than you, or if you are doing better than him? Then the temple is there no more. The temple has disappeared, it has become politics. In religion comparison is not possible; you simply pray, and prayer becomes your inner being. It is not something outward to be compared. This incomparable prayer, incomparable meditation, will lead you to the intrinsic superiority of all existence. Buddha says: Don’t be ambitious, because through ambition you will remain inferior always. Be nonambitious and attain to your intrinsic superiority. It is intrinsic. It doesn’t have to be proved, or achieved, you already have it, you have got it. It is already there — it has always been with you and it will always remain with you. Your very being is sup-erior but you don’t know what being is there. You don’t know who you are. Hence so much effort in seeking your identity, in searching, in proving that you are superior to others. You don’t know who you are. Once you know, then there is no problem. You are already superior. And it is not only you that is superior — everything is superior. The whole of existence is superior without anything being inferior, because God is one, existence is one. Neither the inferior nor the superior can exist. The nonambitious mind comes to realize this. Now let us take Chuang Tzu’s sentences. This beautiful incident really happened. Chuang Tzu was on his way to the capital and the prime minister became afraid. He must have heard the news that Chuang Tzu was coming through the secret police, the cid. And politicians are always afraid, because everybody is their enemy, even friends are enemies, and one has to protect oneself from friends because they too are trying to pull you down. Remember, nobody is a friend. In politics, everybody is an enemy. Friendship is just a facade. In religion there is no one who is an enemy. In religion there cannot be any enemy; in politics there cannot be any friend. The Empty Boat 51 Osho CHAPTER 3. THE OWL AND THE PHOENIX The prime minister became afraid because Chuang Tzu was coming. Chuang Tzu’s superiority was such that the prime minister thought that he might try to become prime minister. It was an uneasy situation. And of course Chuang Tzu WAS superior; not superior in comparison to anybody else, he was simply superior. It was intrinsic. When a man like Chuang Tzu moves, he is king; whether he is living like a beggar or not, it makes no difference. He is a king wherever he moves. Kingship is not something external to him, it is something internal. A begging monk from India went to America at the beginning of this century; his name was Ramateertha. He used to call himself The Emperor. The president of America came to see him, and looked astonished. He was just a beggar! The president asked, ”| cannot understand: why do you call yourself The Emperor? You look like a beggar. You have even written a book called Six Orders of Emperor Ram. Why?” Ramateertha laughed and said, ’Look within me, my kingdom belongs to the inner world. Look in me. | AM an emperor. My kingdom is not of this world.” Because of this, Jesus was crucified. He was always saying, ”| am the king.” He was misunderstood. The man who was the king, Herod, became alert. The viceroy, Pontius Pilate, thought that Jesus was dangerous, because he talked about the kingdom and the king, and he had declared, ”! am the king of the Jews.” He was misunderstood. He was talking of a different type of kingdom which is not of this world. When he was being crucified the soldiers poked fun at him, threw stones and shoes at him, and just to mock him, put a crown of thorns on his head with the words: king of the Jews. And when they were throwing stones and shoes at him they were saying, "Now, tell us something about the kingdom, say something, you king of the Jews!” He was talking of some other kingdom, not of this world; that kingdom is not without, that kingdom is within. But whenever a man like Jesus walks, he is the emperor. He cannot help it. He is not in competition with anybody, he is not hankering for any crown of this world, but wherever he goes ambitious people become afraid, politicians become afraid. This man is dangerous, because the very face, the eyes, the way he walks, show that he is an emperor. He need not prove it, he is the proof. He need not utter it, need not say it. So when the prime minister heard through the secret police that Chuang Tzu was coming, he thought he must be coming to the capital to supplant him; otherwise, why come? People only came to the capital for that. One never goes to Delhi for anything else. People come to the capitals because of ambition, in search of ego, identity. Why should he come — a fakir, a beggar? What is the need for him to come to the capital? He must be coming to take my seat, my chair. He must be coming to the king to say, ”| am the right man. Make me prime minister and | will put every wrong right. | will solve all your problems.” And the man had a glory around him, a charisma. The prime minister became afraid. Prime ministers are always inferior. Deep down the inferiority complex is there, like a disease, like a worm eating the heart, always afraid of the superior. The Empty Boat 52 Osho CHAPTER 3. THE OWL AND THE PHOENIX HUI TZU WAS PRIME MINISTER OF LIANG. HE HAD WHAT HE BELIEVED TO BE INSIDE INFORMATION THAT CHUANG TZU COVETED HIS POST, AND WAS PLOTTING TO SUPPLANT HIM. Politicians cannot think otherwise. The first thing to be understood is that what you are is what you think of others. Your desires, your own ambitions give you the pattern. If you are after money you think that everyone is after money. If you are a thief you keep checking your pocket: that is how you show that you are a thief. Your inner desire is the language of your understanding. Politicians always think in terms of plots, conspiracies: Somebody is going to supplant me, somebody wants to get rid of me.... Because that is what they have done, that is what they have been doing all their lives, plotting. Politicians are conspirators. That is their language. And you look at others through your mind, you project onto others things which are hidden deep within you. Hui Tzu thought, ”This Chuang Tzu is plotting to supplant me. ” When Chuang Tzu came to visit him, the prime minister sent out police to arrest him. But although they searched for three days and nights, they could not find him. This is beautiful! The police can only find thieves — they understand each other. The mind of the policeman and the mind of a thief are not different — thieves in the service of the government are the police. Their mind, their way of thinking is the same, only their masters are different. A thief is in his own service, a policeman is in the service of the state — but both are thieves. That is why policemen can catch thieves. If you send a sadhu to find a thief, he won't find him, because he will look at others through his mind. A rabbi was walking past a young man during a religious festival. The young man was smoking, and smoking was forbidden on that day. So the rabbi stopped and asked him, "Don’t you know, young man, that this is a religious day, and you should not be smoking?” The young man said, ”Yes, | know that this is a religious day.” Still he continued smoking — not only that, he blew smoke into the rabbi’s face. The rabbi asked, ”And don’t you know that smoking is forbidden?” The young man said arrogantly, ’Yes, | know it is forbidden.” And he continued. The rabbi looked at the sky and said, ’Father, this young man is beautiful. He may be breaking the law, but nobody can force him to lie. He is a truthful man. He says: Yes, | know this is a religious day, and yes, | know it is forbidden. Remember on the day of judgment, that this young man could not be forced to lie.” This is a beautiful rabbi. This is the mind of a sadhu. He cannot see wrong, he always sees right. The police could not find Chuang Tzu, it was impossible. They could have found him if he had been an ambitious man, if he had been plotting, if he were thinking in terms of politics — then he could The Empty Boat 53 Osho CHAPTER 3. THE OWL AND THE PHOENIX have been caught. The police must have looked in places where he was not, and their paths must have crossed many times. But he was a beggar, a nonambitious man. He was not plotting. He had no mind for plots, he was like the breeze. The police searched and searched for many days and couldn’t find him. You can find only that which you are. You always find yourself in others, because others are just mirrors. To catch Chuang Tzu, a Lao Tzu was needed. Nobody else could catch him, for who could understand him? A Buddha was needed; Buddha would have guessed where he was. But a policeman? — impossible! Only if he were a thief would it be possible. Look at the policeman, the way he is, the way he talks, the dirty language he uses; it is even more vulgar than thieves’ language. The policeman has to be more vulgar than the thief, otherwise thieves would win. Once a man was caught by the police and the magistrate asked, Tell me, when you were caught, what did the policeman say to you?” The man said, "Can | repeat the same vulgar language that he used here in court? Will you not feel offended? It might shock you.” The magistrate said, Leave out the vulgar language but tell us what he said.” The man thought and said, ’Then...the policeman said nothing.” The police came back to Hui Tzu and reported that they couldn’t find Chuang Tzu. There was no such man. They must have had a picture, some way of identifying him, some idea of how to find him, catch him, his type. But Chuang Tzu has no identity, he has no face. Moment to moment he is a flow, a liquidity. Moment to moment he reflects, responds to existence. He has no fixed abode, he is homeless, faceless. He has no name. He is not a past, he is always a present, and all photographs belong to the past. It is beautiful and meaningful. Although it looks absurd, it is said that you cannot photograph a man like Buddha. Not that you cannot photograph him — but the moment the photograph is there, Buddha has moved. So a photograph is always of the past and never of the present. You cannot catch Buddha’s present face. The moment you catch it, it has passed. The moment you understand, itis already gone. One of the names of Buddha is Tathagata. This word is really wonderful; it means, just like the wind he came and he is gone. Thus came like the wind and thus gone. You cannot photograph a wind, a breeze. Before you have caught it, it has already gone, it is there no longer. Chuang Tzu could not be found because the police were searching for his past and he lived in the present. He was a being, not a mind. Mind can be caught but being cannot be caught. There are no nets. Mind can be caught very easily, and you are all caught in some way or other. Because you have a mind, a wife, a husband will catch you; a shop, a treasure, a post, anything will catch you. There are nets, millions of nets. And you cannot be free unless you are free of the mind. You will be caught again and again. If you leave this wife, another woman will catch you immediately. You The Empty Boat 54 Osho CHAPTER 3. THE OWL AND THE PHOENIX cannot escape. You can escape this woman, but you cannot escape women. You can escape this man but where will you go? No sooner have you left one than another has come into your life. You can leave this town, but where will you go? Another town will catch you. You can leave this desire but another will become the bondage. Mind is always in bondage, it is already caught. When you drop the mind then the police cannot catch you. This Chuang Tzu was without mind. He was a mindless beggar, or an emperor. It means the same. He could not be caught. WHEN CHUANG TZU CAME TO VISIT LIANG THE PRIME MINISTER SENT THE POLICE OUT TO ARREST HIM, BUT ALTHOUGH THEY SEARCHED FOR THREE DAYS AND NIGHTS, THEY COULD NOT FIND HIM. Meanwhile, on the third or fourth day Chuang Tzu of his own accord appeared before Hui Tzu and said, The type of man that |, Chuang Tzu, am, cannot be caught. He always appears of his own accord. It is his freedom. You cannot catch him, you can only invite him. It is his freedom to appear or not.” When there is mind, you are always caught. The mind forces you, you are its prisoner. When there is no-mind you are free: you can appear, you can disappear of your own accord. It is your own freedom. If 1am speaking to you it is not because you have asked a question, it is of my own accord. If | am working with you it is not because of you, but of my own accord. When there is no-mind there is freedom. Mind is the basis of all slavery. Chuang Tzu appeared of his own accord and told a beautiful parable. Listen from the very deepest core of your heart. "HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THE BIRD THAT LIVES IN THE SOUTH — THE PHOENIX — a mythical bird — THAT NEVER GROWS OLD?” A Chinese myth, it is beautiful and carries much meaning. Myth is not truth, but it is truer than any truth. Myth is a parable, it indicates something which cannot be indicated otherwise. Only through a par-able, through poetry, can it be said. Myth is poetry, it is not a description. It indicates the truth, not an event in the outer world; it belongs to the inner. "HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THE BIRD The Empty Boat 55 Osho CHAPTER 3. THE OWL AND THE PHOENIX THAT LIVES IN THE SOUTH?” To China, India is the south, and that bird lives here. It is said that wnen Lao Tzu disappeared, he disappeared into the south. They don’t know when he died...he never died. Such people never die, they simply go to the south — they disappear into India. It is said that Bodhidharma came from the south. He left India, and searched for the disciple to whom he was to transmit the treasure of Buddha. After nine years waiting, he was able to transmit it and it is said that then he disappeared again into the south. India is the south for China. Really, India is the source of all myth; not a single myth exists in the whole world which has not arisen here. Science arose out of the Greek mind, myth out of the Indian mind. And there are only two ways of looking at the world: one is science, the other is religion. If you look at the world through science, it is looking through analysis, mathematics, logic. Athens, the Greek mind, gave science to the world, the Socratic method of analysis, logic and doubt. Religion is a totally different pattern of looking at the world. It looks at the world through poetry, through myth, through love. Of course, it is romantic. It cannot give you facts, it will only give you fictions. But | say fictions are more factual than any fact, because they give you the innermost core, they are not concerned with the outer event. Hence, India has no history. It has only myth, Puranas, no Itihas, no history. Rama is not an historical person. He may or may not have been, it cannot be proved. Krishna is a myth, not an historical fact. Maybe he was, maybe he was not. But India is not bothered whether Krishna and Rama are historical. They are meaningful, they are great epic poems. And history is meaningless for India because history contains only bare facts, it never reveals the innermost core. We are concerned with the innermost core, the center of the wheel. The wheel keeps on moving, that is history, but the center of the wheel, which never moves, is the myth. Said Chuang Tzu: "HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THE BIRD THAT LIVES IN THE SOUTH — THE PHOENIX THAT NEVER GROWS OLD?” All that is born grows old. History cannot believe in this bird, because history means the beginning and the end, history means the span between birth and death. And the span between the birthless and the deathless is myth. Rama is never born and never dies. Krishna is never born and never dies. They are always there. Myth is not concerned with time, it is concerned with eternity. History changes with the times, myth is always relevant. No, myth can never be out of date. Newspaper is history, and yesterday’s newspaper is already out of date. Rama is not part of the newspaper, he is not news, and he will never be out of date. He is always in the present, always meaningful, relevant. History keeps changing; Rama remains in the center of the wheel, unmoving. The Empty Boat 56 Osho CHAPTER 3. THE OWL AND THE PHOENIX Says Chuang Tzu: ”... THAT LIVES IN THE SOUTH — THE PHOENIX THAT NEVER GROWS OLD?” Have you ever seen a picture of Rama or Krishna which belongs to their old age? They are always young, without even a beard or mustache. Have you ever seen a picture of Rama bearded? Unless he had some hormonal defect it must have grown; if he was really a man — and he was — then the beard must have grown. If Rama was historical, then the beard would have been there; but we have pictured him beardless, because the moment the beard grows you have started becoming old. Sooner or later it will turn white. Death is coming near and we cannot bear to think of Rama dead, so we have washed his face completely clean of any sign of death. And this is not only so with Rama; the twenty-four TIRTHANKARAS of the Jainas are all beardless, no mustaches. Buddha and all the AVATARS of the Hindus had no beards, no mustaches. It is just to indicate their eternal youth, the eternity, the timelessness, the far-awayness. ”... THE PHOENIX THAT NEVER GROWS OLD.” There is time — in time everything changes — and there is eternity. In eternity nothing changes. History belongs to time, myth belongs to eternity. Science belongs to time, religion belongs to the nontemporal, the eternal. In you also, both exist — time and eternity. On your surface the wheel, time: you were born, you will die, but this is only on the surface. You are young, you will become old. You are healthy, you will be ill. Now you are full of life, sooner or later everything will ebb, death will penetrate you. But this is only on the surface, the wheel of history. Deep down right now in you the eternity exists, the timeless exists. There nothing grows old — the phoenix, the south, the India, the eternal. Nothing grows old, nothing changes, everything is unmoving. That south is within you. That is why | keep saying that India is not part of geography, it is not part of history, it is part of an inner map. It doesn’t exist in Delhi, it never existed there. Politicians don’t belong to it; it doesn’t belong to politics. It is the inner. It exists everywhere. Wherever a man comes deep down into himself he reaches India. That is the reason for the eternal attraction, the magnetism, of India. Whenever a person becomes uneasy with his life, he moves towards India. This is just symbolic. Through physical movement you will not find India. A different movement is needed, where you start moving from the outer to the inner, to the south, to the land of myth, and the deathless, ageless phoenix —- THE PHOENIX THAT NEVER GROWS OLD. "THIS UNDYING PHOENIX RISES OUT OF THE SOUTH SEA AND FLIES TO THE SEAS OF THE NORTH, NEVER ALIGHTING EXCEPT ON CERTAIN SACRED TREES. HE WILL TOUCH NO FOOD The Empty Boat 57 Osho CHAPTER 3. THE OWL AND THE PHOENIX BUT THE MOST EXQUISITE RARE FRUIT, AND HE DRINKS ONLY FROM THE CLEAREST SPRINGS.” This soul, this innermost core of your being, never alighting except on certain sacred trees, this inner bird, this is your being. It alights only on certain sacred trees. "HE WILL TOUCH NO FOOD BUT THE MOST EXQUISITE RARE FRUIT, AND HE DRINKS ONLY FROM THE CLEAREST SPRINGS. "ONCE AN OWL CHEWING AN ALREADY HALF-DECAYED DEAD RAT SAW THE PHOENIX FLY OVER. LOOKING UP HE SCREECHED WITH ALARM AND CLUTCHED THE DEAD RAT TO HIMSELF IN FEAR AND DISMAY” Chuang Tzu is saying: | am the phoenix, and you are just an owl with an already dead rat, chewing it. And you are alarmed that | am coming to supplant you. Your position, your power is nothing to me but a dead rat. This is no food for me. Ambition is not a way for life, it is only for those who are already dead. | have looked into ambition, and | have found it useless. Once a woman came wailing and weeping to a rabbi, but the rabbi was at prayer. So she said to the secretary, "Go in, and even if his prayer has to be interrupted, interrupt. My husband has left me. | want the rabbi to pray for my husband to come back.” The secretary went in and interrupted the prayer. The rabbi said, ’Tell her, don’t worry, her husband will be back soon.” The secretary went back to the woman and said, ”Don’t worry, don’t be sad. The rabbi says that your husband will come back soon. Go home and be at ease.” Happy, the woman left, saying, ”God will reward your rabbi a million times over, he is so kind.” But once the woman had left, the secretary became sad, and told someone who was standing there that this was not going to help. Her husband cannot come back, poor woman, and she left here so happy. The bystander said, "But why? Don’t you believe in your rabbi and his prayer?” The Empty Boat 58 Osho CHAPTER 3. THE OWL AND THE PHOENIX The secretary said, ’Of course | believe in my rabbi and | believe in his prayer. But he has only seen the woman’s petition, | have seen her face. Her husband cannot EVER come back.” One who has seen the face of ambition, one who has seen the face of desire, one who has seen the face of lust, will never come back to them. It is impossible, the face is so ugly. Chuang Tzu has seen the face of ambition. That is why he says: Your power, your position, your prime-ministership, is just a dead rat to me. Don’t screech, and don’t get dismayed. "THIS UNDYING PHOENIX ARISES OUT OF THE SOUTH SEA AND FLIES TO THE SEAS OF THE NORTH, NEVER ALIGHTING EXCEPT ON CERTAIN SACRED TREES. HE WILL TOUCH NO FOOD BUT THE MOST EXQUISITE RARE FRUIT, AND HE DRINKS ONLY FROM THE CLEAREST SPRINGS. "ONCE AN OWL CHEWING AN ALREADY HALF-DECAYED DEAD RAT SAW THE PHOENIX FLY OVER. LOOKING UP HE SCREECHED WITH ALARM AND CLUTCHED THE DEAD RAT TO HIMSELF IN FEAR AND DISMAY. "PRIME MINISTER, WHY ARE YOU SO FRANTIC, CLINGING TO YOUR MINISTRY AND SCREECHING AT ME IN DISMAY?” This is the fact, but only once you know it...only then can you understand. Listening to a Buddha, or to a Jesus, or to a Zarathustra, you have always been told: Drop desiring and bliss will be yours. But you cannot drop it, you cannot understand how bliss can happen when you drop desire, because you have tasted only desire. It may be poisonous, but it has been your only food. You have been drinking from poisoned sources, and when someone says, ”Drop it,” you are afraid that you will die thirsty. You don’t know that there are pure, clear springs and you don’t know that there are trees with rare fruit. You look only through your desire, so you cannot see those fruits and those trees. The Empty Boat 59 Osho CHAPTER 3. THE OWL AND THE PHOENIX When your eyes are filled with desire they only see the dead rats. Ramakrishna used to say: There are people who cannot see anything else than the objects of their lust. This owl can sit at the top of a tall tree, but he is only looking for dead rats. Whenever a dead rat is seen on the street the owl becomes excited. He won’t get excited, he won’t even see if you throw him a beautiful fruit. He will not become aware of it. The information never reaches him because the desires work as a screen. All the time, continuously, only that enters you which your desires allow. Your desires are just like a watchman standing at the door of your being. They allow in only that which appeals to them. Change this watchman; otherwise you will live always on dead rats. You will remain an owl, and that is the misery, because deep within you the phoenix is hidden and you are behaving like an owl. That is the discontent. That is why you can never feel at ease, that is why you can never feel blissful. How can a phoenix feel blissful with a dead rat? He is always a stranger, and this is not the right food for him. And this you have felt many times. Making love to a woman or to a man, you have felt many times that this is not for you. The phoenix asserts itself but the owl is much more noisy. The phoenix cannot be heard, its voice is very subtle and silent, not aggressive. In moments of peace and meditation the phoenix says, ’What are you doing? This is not for you. What are you eating? This is not for you. What are you drinking? This is not for you. ” But the owl is very noisy and you have believed in the owl for so long that you go on following it just like a habit. It has become a dead habit. You simply follow it, because it is the line of least resistance. The rut is there. You don’t have to do anything. You simply run on the track, you go on running in a circle — the same desires, the same lusts, the same ambitions. No wonder you live in anguish, you live in a nightmare. Let the inner Chuang Tzu assert himself, let the inner phoenix assert itself. Listen to it, it is a still, small voice. You will have to calm down, you will have to put this owl to sleep; only then will you be able to listen. This owl is the ego, the mind, the phoenix is the soul. It is born in the south, out of the sea, it is not a part of the land. Not out of the mud, out of the vast sea it is born. It never grows old, it never dies. It alights only on rare, holy, sacred trees, eats only exquisite rare fruit, drinks only from the clearest of springs. Those springs are there, those holy trees are there. You have been missing them because of the owl, and the owl has become the leader. All meditation is nothing but an effort to silence this owl so that the still small voice can be heard. Then you will see what you have been doing — chewing a dead rat. Chuang Tzu is right. The prime minister was unnecessarily dismayed. When you, your inner phoenix, comes to live its life, the owl, the prime minister, will in the beginning be very much dismayed. Your mind will create every type of objection to meditation because the mind is afraid, the prime minister is afraid — this Chuang Tzu, this meditativeness, is coming to supplant him. Your mind will catch hold of the dead rat, and will scream, scared, as if somebody is going to take that food away from it. In the beginning it will happen — and you have to be alert and aware of it. Only your awareness will help by and by. Whenever one starts meditating, the mind becomes rebellious. It starts up all types of arguments: What are you doing, why are you wasting time? Use this time! You can achieve so much in the The Empty Boat 60 Osho CHAPTER 3. THE OWL AND THE PHOENIX time. That desire has been waiting for so long unfulfilled, and now you are wasting time meditating. Forget it. Those who say that meditation is possible are deceiving you. These Buddhas, these Chuang Tzus, don’t believe them. Believe in the mind, mind says. It creates all kinds of doubts about everybody, but it never creates any doubt about itself. | have heard: A man was talking to his small child. The child had written a letter as part of his homework and was showing it to his father. There were as many spelling mistakes in it as there were words, even more. So the father said, ”Your spelling is awful. Why don’t you look in the dictionary? When you feel in doubt, look in the dictionary.” The child said, "But, Dad, | never feel in doubt.” This is what your mind does. It says to Buddha, "But Dad, | never feel in doubt.” Mind never doubts itself, that is the problem. It doubts everybody — it will doubt even a Buddha. Even if Krishna knocks at your door it will doubt; if Jesus comes it will doubt. It has always been so, you have been doing it continuously. You doubt me but you never doubt yourself, because once the mind starts doubting itself it is already going out of existence. Once self-doubt arises the base is broken, the mind has lost its confidence. Once you start doubting the mind, sooner or later you will fall into the abyss of meditation. Baal Shem, a mystic, was dying. His son, whose name was Hertz, was a very sleepy, unconscious person. Before he died, Baal Shem told him that this night would be his last. But Hertz said, "Nobody can know when death will come.” He doubted. Baal Shem was his father, and thousands believed that he was the messiah, the man who would lead millions to salvation. But the son doubted, and that night he fell asleep. He was awakened at midnight. His father was dead. Then he started crying, weeping. He had missed a great opportunity, and now there would be no possibility of seeing his father alive again. But he never doubted his mind, he doubted Baal Shem. In his dismay and despair, he started crying. He closed his eyes and for the first time in his life, now that his father was dead, he started talking to him. His father used to call him many times: ’Hertz, come to me.” And he would say, ”Yes, | will come, but first | have other more important things to do.” This is what your mind is saying. | go on calling you: "Come to me.” You say, ”There are other more important things right now. | will come later on; wait.” But death had broken the bridge. So Hertz cried and started talking to his father, and he said, ”What should | do now? | am lost. | am in darkness. Now how can | drop this mind which has deceived me? | never doubted it, and | doubted you. Now it makes me very sad.” Baal Shem appeared inside Hertz and said, "Look at me. Do the same as | do.” Hertz saw, as ina dream, a vision, that Baal Shem went to the top of a hill and dropped himself into the abyss. And he said, "Do the same.” Said Hertz, ”| cannot understand.” Really, doubt arose again: What is this man saying? This will be suicide. The Empty Boat 61 Osho CHAPTER 3. THE OWL AND THE PHOENIX Baal Shem laughed, and said, ”You are still doubting me, not doubting yourself. Then do this.” In his vision Hertz saw a big mountain, all aflame, like a volcano, fire all over, rocks splitting, and the whole mountain breaking into fragments. Said Baal Shem, ”Or do this. Let the mind be thrown into an abyss, let the mind be burnt up completely.” And the story goes that Hertz said, ”! will think it over.” Whenever you say, ”! will think it over,” you have started doubting. Doubt thinks, not you. And when there is no doubt, faith acts, not you. Doubt thinks, faith acts. Through doubt you can become a great philosopher; through faith you will become a Chuang Tzu, a phoenix which never grows old, which is undying. Through doubt you can penetrate the mysteries of time; through faith you will enter the door of eternity. | have heard about two men who were once lost in a forest on a very dark night. It was a very dangerous forest, full of wild animals, very dense, with darkness all around. One man was a philosopher and the other was a mystic — one a man of doubt, the other a man of faith. Suddenly, there was a storm, a crashing of the clouds, and great lightning. The philosopher looked at the sky, the mystic looked at the path. In that moment of lightning, the path was before him, illuminated. The philosopher looked at the lightning, and started wondering, *What is happening?” and missed the path. You are lost in a forest denser than that of the story. The night is more dark. Sometimes a flash of lightning comes. Look at the path. A Chuang Tzu is lightning, a Buddha is lightning, | am lightning. Don’t look at me, look at the path. If you look at me, you have already missed, because lightning will not continue. It lasts only for a moment, and the moment is rare when eternity penetrates time; it is just like lightning. If you look at the lightning, if you look at a buddha — and a buddha is beautiful, the face fascinates, the eyes are magnetic — if you look at the buddha, you have missed the path. Look at the path, forget the buddha. Look at the path. But that look happens only when there is no doubt, when there is faith; no thinking, no mind. Chuang Tzu has not to be thought about. Don’t think about him. Just let this story penetrate you and forget it. Through this story the path is illuminated. Look at the path, and do something. Follow the path, act. Thinking will not lead you, only action, because thinking goes on in the head. It can never become total; only when you act, it is total. Enough for today. The Empty Boat 62 Osho CHAPTER 4 Apologies 13 July 1974 am in Buddha Hall IF AMAN STEPS ON A STRANGER’S FOOT IN THE MARKETPLACE, HE MAKES A POLITE APOLOGY AND OFFERS AN EXPLANATION: "THIS PLACE IS SO CROWDED.” IF AN ELDER BROTHER STEPS ON HIS YOUNGER BROTHER’S FOOT HE SAYS, “SORRY,” AND THAT IS THAT. IF A PARENT TREADS ON HIS CHILD’S FOOT NOTHING IS SAID AT ALL. 63 CHAPTER 4. APOLOGIES THE GREATEST POLITENESS IS FREE OF ALL FORMALITY. PERFECT CONDUCT IS FREE OF CONCERN. PERFECT WISDOM IS UNPLANNED. PERFECT LOVE IS WITHOUT DEMONSTRATIONS. PERFECT SINCERITY OFFERS NO GUARANTEE. All that is great, all that is beautiful, all that is true and real, is always spontaneous. You cannot plan it. The moment you plan it, everything goes wrong. The moment planning enters, everything becomes unreal. But this has happened to humanity. Your love, your sincerity, your truth, everything, has gone wrong because you have planned it, be-cause you have been taught not to be spontaneous. You have been taught to manipulate yourself, to control, to manage, and not to be a natural flow. You have become rigid, frozen, dead. Life knows no planning. It is itself enough. Do the trees plan how to grow, how to mature, how to come to flower? They simply grow without even being conscious of the growth. There is no self-consciousness, there is no separation. Whenever you start planning you have divided yourself, you have become two; the one who is controlling and the one who is controlled. A conflict has arisen, now you will never be at peace. You may succeed in controlling but there will be no peace; you may not succeed in controlling, then too there will be no peace. Whether you succeed or fail, ultimately you will come to realize that you have failed. Your failure will be a failure, your success will also be a failure. Whatsoever you do, your life will be miserable. This division creates ugliness, you are not one, and beauty belongs to oneness, beauty belongs to a harmonious whole. All culture, all civilization, all societies, make you ugly. All morality makes you ugly because it is based on division, on control. | have heard that once Baal Shem was traveling in a beautiful coach with three horses. But he was wondering continuously, because for three days he had been traveling and not even once had any of the horses neighed. What had happened to the horses? Then suddenly on the fourth day, a passing peasant shouted at him to relax control of the reins. He relaxed control and suddenly all the three horses started neighing, they came alive. For three days continuously they were dead, dying. This has happened to you all, to the whole of humanity. You cannot neigh, and unless a horse neighs, the horse is dead, because neighing means he is enjoying, there is an overflowing. But you cannot neigh, you are dead. Your life has not in any way an overflowing song, a dance that happens when the energy is too much. The Empty Boat 64 Osho CHAPTER 4. APOLOGIES Flowering is always a luxury, it is not a necessity. No tree needs flowers as a necessity, roots are enough. Flowering is always luxurious. Flowers come only when the tree has too much, it needs to give, it needs to share. Whenever you have too much, life becomes a dance, a celebration. But society doesn’t allow you to dance, to celebrate, so society has to see that you never have more energy than necessary. You are only allowed to live at starvation level. You are not allowed to be too much, because once you are too much you cannot be controlled, and society wants to control you. It is a domination, very subtle. Every child is born overflowing. Then we have to cut the energy source, we have to prune the child from here and there so that he becomes controllable. And the basis of all control is to divide the child in two. Then you need not bother, he himself will do the controlling. Then you need not bother, he himself will be the enemy of his own self. So they tell the child: This is wrong. Don’t do this. Suddenly the child is divided, now he knows what is wrong, now he knows what part of his being is wrong, and his head becomes the controller. Through division intellect has become the controller, the master. If you are undivided, you will not have any head. Not that the head will disappear or the head will fall off, but you will not be head- oriented — your total being will be you. Right now you are only the head, the rest of the body is just to sustain the head. The head has become the exploiter, the dictator. And this has come through conflict, the creation of conflict in you. You have been taught that this is good and that is bad. The intellect learns it and then the intellect keeps on condemning you. Remember, if you condemn yourself you will condemn everybody — you will condemn the whole. And a person who condemns himself cannot love. A person who condemns himself cannot pray. A person who condemns himself, for him there is no God, there cannot be. A condemning mind can never enter the divine temple. Only when you dance, only when you are ecstatic, not condemning, only when you are overflowing with nobody sitting in control, nobody managing, does life become a let-go; it is not formal, it is natural. Then you enter, then everywhere is the door. Then you can reach the temple from anywhere. But right now, as you are, you are schizophrenic. You are not only schizophrenic when a psychoanalyst says that you are. There is no need for any psychoanalyst to analyze you. Society creates schizophrenics; division is schizophrenia. You are not one. You are born one but immediately society starts working on you, major surgery is to be done, you are continuously operated upon to be divided. Then society is at ease because you are fighting with yourself, your energy is dissipated in the inner fight, it is never an overflowing. Then you are not dangerous. Overflowing energy becomes rebellion. Overflowing energy is always rebellious, overflowing energy is always in revolution. It is just like a river in flood — it doesn’t believe in the banks, in the rules, in the laws, it simply goes on overflowing towards the sea. It knows only one goal — how to become the sea, how to become the infinite. Overflowing energy is always moving towards God. God is missing in our world, not because of science, not because of atheists, but because of the so-called religious. They have divided you so The Empty Boat 65 Osho CHAPTER 4. APOLOGIES much that the river keeps fighting with itself. Nothing is left to move, no energy is left; you are so tired fighting with yourself, how can you move towards the sea? One of the basic laws of Tao, of Lao Tzu, of Chuang Tzu, is that if you are spontaneous it is the highest prayer; you cannot miss God, whatsoever you do you will reach him. So Chuang Tzu never talks about God; talk is irrelevant, it isn’t needed. He talks only of how to bring out the wholeness in you. The holy is irrelevant. When you become whole, you become holy. When your fragments dissolve into one, your life has become a prayer. They never talk about prayer, it is not needed. Spontaneity, living as a whole.... If you want to live as a whole, you cannot plan. Who will plan? You cannot decide for tomorrow, you can live only here and now. Who will decide? If you decide, division has entered, then you will have to manipulate. Who will plan? The future is unknown, and how can you plan for the unknown? If you plan for the unknown the planning will come from the past. That means that the dead will control the living. The past is dead, and the past goes on controlling the future, hence you are so bored. It is natural, it has to happen. Boredom comes from the past, because the past is dead and the past is trying to control the future. The future is always an adventure, but you don’t allow it to be an adventure. You plan it. Once planned, your life is running on a track. It is not a river. When you run on a track you know where you are going, what is happening. Everything is just a repetition. Who will plan? If mind plans, mind is always of the past. Life cannot be planned, because through planning you are committing suicide. Life can only be unplanned, moving moment to moment into the unknown. But what is your fear? You will be there to respond; whatsoever the situation you will be there to respond. What is your fear? Why plan it? The fear comes because you are not certain of whether you will be there or not. You are so unconscious, that is the uncertainty. You are not alert. You are going to have an interview for a job, so you keep planning in your mind what to answer, how to answer, how to enter the office, how to stand, how to sit. But why? You will be there, you can respond. But you are not certain about yourself, you are so unalert, you are so unconscious, you don’t know — if you don’t plan, something may go wrong. If you are alert, then there is no problem. You will be there, so whatever the situation demands, you will respond. And remember, this planning is not going to help, because if you cannot be conscious, cannot be aware in a situation when you are planning, then that planning is also being done in sleep. But you can repeat it so many times it becomes mechanical, then when the question is asked you can answer. The answer is readymade, you are not needed. It is a fixed pattern, you simply repeat it; you become a mechanical device, you need not be there at all. The answer can be given, it comes from the memory; if you have repeated it many times you know you can rely on it. Through planning life becomes more and more unconscious, and the more unconscious you are, the more you need planning. Before really dying, you are dead. Alive means responding, sensitive. The Empty Boat 66 Osho CHAPTER 4. APOLOGIES Alive means: whatsoever comes, | will be there to respond, and the response will come from me, not from the memory. | will not prepare it. See the difference when a Christian missionary or a Christian minister, a priest, prepares his sermon. | once visited a theological college. There they prepare their ministers, their priests — five years’ training. So | asked them where Jesus was prepared and trained, who taught him how to speak. Of course these Christian priests are dead, everything about them is planned. When you say this, a certain gesture is to be made; even the gesture is not allowed to be spontaneous. When you say that, you have to have a certain look; even the eyes are not allowed to be spontaneous. How you have to stand, when you have to shout, and when you have to whisper, when you have to hammer the table and when not — everything is planned. | asked them where Jesus was trained. He was not a minister at all, he was not a priest. He never went to any theological college, he was the son of a carpenter. For two thousand years Christian priests have been trained but they have not produced a single Jesus, and they will never produce one again because Jesus cannot be produced. You cannot produce Jesus in a factory. And these are factories, these theological colleges. There you produce priests, and if these priests are just boring, dead, a burden, it is obvious that it is going to be so. There are two types of religion. One is of the mind — it is dead. That religion is known as theology. Then there is the other type of religion, the real, the spontaneous. It is not theological, it is mystical. And remember, Hindus have one theology, Mohammedans another, Christ-ians again another, but religion, the mystic religion, is the same; it cannot be different. Buddha and Jesus and Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu, they are the same because they are not theologians. They are not talking from the head, they are simply pouring from their heart. They are not logicians, they are poets. They are not saying something from the scriptures, they are not trained for it, they are simply responding to a necessity in you. Their words are not readymade, their manners not fixed, their behavior not planned. Now we will enter Chuang Tzu’s sutra. IF A MAN STEPS ON A STRANGER’S FOOT IN THE MARKETPLACE, HE MAKES A POLITE APOLOGY AND OFFERS AN EXPLANATION: "THIS PLACE IS SO CROWDED.” Apology is needed because there is no relationship, the other is a stranger. Explanation is needed because there is no love. If there is love then there is no need for an explanation, the other will The Empty Boat 67 Osho CHAPTER 4. APOLOGIES understand. If there is love, there is no need for apology, the other will understand — love always understands. So there is no higher morality than love, there cannot be. Love is the highest law, but if it is not there then substitutes are needed. Stepping on a stranger’s foot in the marketplace an apology is needed, and an explanation also: "THIS PLACE IS SO CROWDED.” With reference to this, one thing has to be understood. In the West even a husband will offer an apology, a wife will offer an explanation. It means that love has disappeared. It means that everybody has become a stranger, that there is no home, that every place has become a marketplace. In the East it is impossible to conceive of this, but Westerners think that Easterners are rude. A husband will never give an explanation — no need, because we are not strangers and the other can understand. When the other cannot understand, only then apology is needed. And if love cannot understand, what good is apology going to do? If the world becomes a home, all apologies will disappear, all ex-planations will disappear. You give explanations because you are not certain about the other. Explanation is a trick to avoid conflict, apology is a device to avoid conflict. But the conflict is there, and you are afraid of it. This is a civilized way to get out of the conflict! You have stepped on a stranger’s foot, you see the violence in his eyes — he has become aggressive, he will hit you. Apology is needed, apology will calm his anger — it is a trick. You need not be authentic in your apology, it is just a social device, it works as a lubricant. You give an explanation just to say: | am not responsible, the place is so crowded, it is a marketplace, nothing can be done, it had to happen. Explanation says: | am not responsible. Love is always responsible, whether the place is crowded or not, because love is always aware and alert. You cannot shift the responsibility to the situation, YOU are responsible. Look at the phenomenon.... Apology is a device, just like a lubricant, to avoid conflict; and explanation is shifting the responsibility onto something else. You don’t say, ”| was unconscious, unaware, that is why | stepped on your foot.” You say, ’The place is so crowded!” A religious person cannot do this, and if you go on doing this you will never become religious, because religion means taking all the responsibility that is there, not avoiding, not escaping. The more responsible you are, the more awareness will arise out of it; the less you feel responsible, the more and more unconscious you will become. Whenever you feel that you are not responsible you will go to sleep. And this has happened — not only in individual relationships but on all levels of society. Marxism says that society is responsible for everything. If a man is poor, society is responsible, if a man is a thief, society is responsible. You are not responsible, no individual is responsible. That is why communism is anti-religious — not because it denies God, not because it says there is no soul, but because of this: it shifts the whole responsibility onto society, you are not responsible. The Empty Boat 68 Osho CHAPTER 4. APOLOGIES Look at the religious attitude which is totally different, qualitatively different. A religious man thinks himself responsible: If someone is begging, | am responsible. The beggar may be at the other end of the earth, | may not know him, | may not come across his path, but if there is a beggar, | am responsible. If a war goes on anywhere, in Israel, in Vietnam, anywhere, | am not participating in it in any visible way, but | am responsible. | am here. | cannot shift the responsibility onto society. And what do you mean when you say society? Where is this society? This is one of the greatest evasions. Only individuals exist — you will never come across society. You will never be able to pinpoint it: This is society. Everywhere the individual is in existence, and society is just a word. Where is society? Ancient civilizations played a trick. They said: God is responsible, fate is responsible. Now communism plays the same game saying that society is responsible. But where is society? God may be somewhere, society is nowhere; there are only individuals. Religion says: You are...rather, | am, responsible. No explanation is needed to avoid this. And remember one thing more: whenever you feel that you are responsible for all the ugliness, for all the mess, anarchy, war, violence, aggression, suddenly you become alert. Responsibility penetrates your heart and makes you aware. When you say, "This place is much too crowded,” you can go on walking sleepily. Really, you step on the stranger’s foot not because the place is crowded, but because you are unconscious. You are walking like a somnambulist, a man walking in his sleep. When you step on his foot, you suddenly become aware, because now the situation is dangerous. You make the apology, you fall asleep, and again you say, "The place is crowded!” You resume your walk, then you start moving again. | have heard of a simple villager who had come to the city for the first time. On the platform at the station someone stepped on his foot and said, ’Sorry.” Then he went into a hotel, someone again clashed with him and said, ’Sorry!” Then he went into a theater and someone almost knocked him down, and he said, ’Sorry.” Then the villager said, ’This is beautiful, we never knew this trick. Do whatever you want to do to anybody and say sorry!” So he punched a man who was passing and said, ’Sorry!” What are you really doing when you say sorry? Your sleep is broken, you were walking in a dream — you must have been dreaming, imagining, something was on your mind — and then you stepped on someone. Not that the place was crowded — you would have stumbled even if no one had been there, even then you would have stepped on someone. It is you, your unconsciousness, your unconscious behavior. A buddha cannot stumble even if it is a marketplace, because he moves with full consciousness. Whatsoever he does, he does knowingly. And if he steps on your foot it means he has stepped knowingly; there must be some reason for it. It may be just to help you awake, he may have stepped on your foot just to wake you up, but he will not say that the place is crowded, he will not give any explanation. Explanations are always deceptive. They look logical, but they are false. You give explanations only when you have to hide something. You can watch and observe this in your own life. This is not a theory, this is a simple fact of everybody’s experience — you give explanations only when you want to hide something. The Empty Boat 69 Osho CHAPTER 4. APOLOGIES Truth needs no explanation. The more you lie, the more explanations are needed. There are so many scriptures because man has lied so much, then explanations are needed to hide the lie. You have to give an explanation, then this explanation will need further explanation, and it goes on and on. It is an infinite regression. And even with the last explanation nothing is explained, the basic lie remains a lie — you cannot convert a lie into a truth just by explaining it. Nothing is explained by explanations. You may think so, but it is not the case. Once it happened that Mulla Nasruddin went on his first air trip, and he was afraid but he didn’t want anybody to know. It happens to everybody on their first flight: nobody wants this to be their first. He wanted to behave nonchalantly so he walked very bravely. That bravery was an explanation: | always travel by air. Then he sat down in his seat and he wanted to say something just to put himself at ease, because whenever you start talking, you become brave; through talk, you feel less fear. So Nasruddin spoke to the passenger next to him. He looked out of the window and said, ”Look, what terrific height! People look like ants.” The other man said, ’Sir, we have not taken off yet. Those ARE ants.” Explanations cannot hide anything. Rather, on the contrary, they reveal. If you can look, if you have eyes, every explanation is transparent. It would have been better if he had kept quiet. But don’t try silence as an explanation. As an explanation it is of no use. Your silence will be revealing, and your words will reveal — it is better not to be a liar! Then you need not give any explanations. It is better to be truthful — the easiest thing is to be true and authentic. If you are afraid, it is better to say, ”] am afraid,’ and accepting the fact your fear will disappear. Acceptance is such a miracle. When you accept that you are afraid and say, "This is my first trip,” suddenly you will feel a change coming over you. The basic fear is not fear, the basic fear is the fear of the fear: | don’t want anyone to know that | am afraid, | don’t want anyone to know that | am a coward. But everybody is a coward in a new situation, and in a new situation to be brave is foolish. To be cowardly only means that the situation is so new that your mind cannot supply any answers, the past cannot give the answers, so you are trembling. But this is good! Why try to supply an answer from the mind? Tremble, and let the answer come from your present consciousness. You are sensitive, that is all; don’t kill this sensitivity through explanation. Next time you try to give an explanation, be aware of what you are doing. Are you trying to hide something, trying to explain away something? Nothing like this will be of any help. A man who had become newly rich went to a beach, the most expensive, the most exclusive, and he spent madly just to influence the people around him. The next day, while swimming, his wife drowned. She was carried to the shore and a crowd gathered, so he asked, ”What are you doing now?” A man said, We are going to give your wife artificial respiration.” The rich man said, ’Artificial respiration? Nothing doing, give her the real thing. I'll pay for it.” Whatsoever you do, whatsoever you don’t do, whatsoever you say, whatsoever you don’t say, reveals you. Everywhere mirrors are all around you. Every other person is a mirror, every situation is a mirror The Empty Boat 70 Osho CHAPTER 4. APOLOGIES — and whom do you think you are deceiving? If deception becomes a habit, ultimately you will have deceived yourself and no one else. It is your life you are wasting in deceptions. Chuang Tzu says: Explanations show that you are not true, you are not authentic. IF AN ELDER BROTHER STEPS ON HIS YOUNGER BROTHER’S FOOT HE SAYS, ”"SORRY,.” AND THAT IS THAT. Two brothers...when the relationship is more intimate, when you are close, the other is not a stranger. Then no explanation is needed, the brother simply says sorry. He accepts the blame. He says, ”! have been unconscious.” He is not shifting the responsibility onto somebody else, he accepts it and that is that. The relationship is closer. IF A PARENT TREADS ON HIS CHILD’S FOOT NOTHING IS SAID AT ALL. There is no need, the relationship is even more intimate, closer. There is love, and that love will do. No substitute is needed, no explanation, no apology. THE GREATEST POLITENESS IS FREE OF ALL FORMALITY. PERFECT CONDUCT IS FREE OF CONCERN. PERFECT WISDOM IS UNPLANNED. PERFECT LOVE IS WITHOUT DEMONSTRATIONS. PERFECT SINCERITY OFFERS NO GUARANTEE. But all these perfections need one thing — and that is spontaneous awareness; otherwise you will always have false coins, you will always have false faces. You can be sincere, but if you have to make any effort then that sincerity is just formal. You can be loving, but if your love needs effort, if your love is of that type which Dale Carnegie talks about in How to Win Friends and Influence People, if that type of love is there, it cannot be real. You have been manipulating it. Then even friendship is a business. The Empty Boat 71 Osho CHAPTER 4. APOLOGIES Beware of Dale Carnegies; these are dangerous people, they destroy all that is real and authentic. They show you how to win friends, they teach you tricks, techniques, they make you efficient, they give you the knowhow. But love has no knowhow, it cannot. Love needs no training, and friendship is not something which you have to learn. A learned friendship will not be a friendship, it will just be an exploitation — you are exploiting the other and deceiving him. You are not true, this is a business relationship. But in America everything has become business, both friendship and love. Dale Carnegie’s books have sold millions of copies, hundreds of editions, next in popularity only to The Bible. Now nobody knows how to be a friend, it has to be learned. Sooner or later there will be colleges for love, training courses, even by post, lessons you can learn and apply. And the problem is that if you succeed then you are lost forever, because the real will never happen to you, the door is completely closed. Once you become efficient in a certain thing, the mind resists. The mind says: This is the short cut, and you know it well, so why choose another path? Mind is always for the line of least resistance. That is why clever people are never able to love. They are so clever they start manipulating. They will not say what is in their heart, they will say what will appeal. They will look at the other person and see what he wants to be said. They will not say their heart, they will just create a situation in which the other is deceived. Husbands deceiving wives, wives deceiving husbands, friends deceiving friends.... The whole world has become just a crowd of enemies. There are only two types of enemies: those you have not been able to deceive and those you have been able to deceive. This is the only difference. Then how can ecstasy be in your life? So this is not a learning process. Authenticity cannot come through schooling, authenticity comes through awareness — if you are aware, if you live in a conscious way. Look at the difference: to live consciously means to live openly, not to hide, not to play games. To be alert means to be vulnerable, and whatever happens, happens. You accept it, but you never compromise, you never purchase anything by giving up your consciousness. Even if it means that you are left totally alone, you will accept being alone, but you will be consciously alert, aware. Only with this alertness does real religion start happening. | will tell you a story. It happened once, in ancient times, that there was a king who was also an astrologer. He had a very deep interest in studying the stars. Suddenly he felt panic in his heart because he became aware that it was going to be dangerous to eat the coming year’s harvest. Whoever ate it would go mad. So he called his prime minister, his adviser and counsellor, and told him that this was certain to happen. The stars are clear, and because of the combination of cosmic rays, this year’s harvest would be poisonous. It happens rarely, once in thousands of years, but it was going to happen this year, and anyone who ate of this year’s harvest would go mad. So he asked his adviser, "What should we do?” The prime minister said, "It is impossible to provide for everybody from last year’s harvest, but one thing can be done. You and | can both live on last year’s harvest. The remainder of last year’s harvest can be gathered, requisitioned. There is no problem, it will be enough for you and I.” The Empty Boat fe Osho CHAPTER 4. APOLOGIES The king said, This doesn’t appeal to me. If all my devoted people go mad, women, saints and sages, devoted servants, all my subjects, even children, it doesn’t appeal to me to be an outsider. It would not be worth saving myself and you; that won’t do. | would rather be mad with everybody else. But | have another suggestion. | will mark your head with the seal of madness and you will mark my head with the seal of madness.” The prime minister asked, How is this going to help anybody?” The king said, ”| have heard that it is one of the ancient keys of wisdom, so let us try it. After everyone has gone mad, after we have gone mad, whenever | look at your forehead | will remember that |am mad. And whenever you look at my forehead, remember that you are mad.” The prime minister was still puzzled; he said, But what will it do?” The king said, ”I have heard from wise men that if you can remember that you are mad, you are mad no more.” A madman cannot remember that he is mad. An ignorant man cannot remember that he is ignorant. A man who is in a dream cannot remember that he is dreaming. If, in your dream, you become alert and know that you are dreaming, the dream has stopped, you are fully awake. If you can understand that you are ignorant, ignorance drops. Ignorant people always believe that they are wise, and mad people think that they are the only really sane ones. When someone becomes really wise, he becomes so by recognizing his ignorance. So the king said, ’This we are going to do.” | don’t know what happened, the story ends here, but the story is meaningful. Only alertness can help when the whole world is mad, nothing else. Keeping yourself outside, going to the Himalayas, will not be of much help. When everyone is mad, you are going to be mad, because you are part and parcel of everybody; it is a totality, an organic totality. How can you separate yourself? How can you go to the Himalayas? Deep down you still remain part of the whole. Even living in the Himalayas you will remember your friends. They will knock in your dreams, you will think of them, you will wonder what they are thinking of you — you go on being linked. You cannot go outside the world. There is nowhere outside the world, the world is one continent. Nobody can be an island — islands are joined deep down with the continent. You can just think superficially that you are separate, but nobody can be separate. The king was really wise. He said, "It is not going to help. | am not going to be an outsider, | will be an insider, and this is what | will do. | will try to remember that | am mad, because when you forget that you are mad, then you are really mad. This is what is to be done.” Wherever you are, remember yourself, that you are; this consciousness that you are should become a continuity. Not your name, your caste, your nationality, those are futile things, absolutely useless. Just remember that: | am. This must not be forgotten. This is what Hindus call self-remembrance, what the Buddha called right-mindfulness, what Gurdjieff used to call self-remembering, what Krishnamurti calls awareness. The Empty Boat 73 Osho CHAPTER 4. APOLOGIES This is the most substantial part of meditation, to remember that: | am. Walking, sitting, eating, talking, remember that: | am. Never forget this. It will be difficult, very arduous. In the beginning you will keep forgetting; there will be only single moments when you will feel illuminated, then it is lost. But don’t get miserable; even single moments are much. Go on, whenever you can remember again, again catch hold of the thread. When you forget, don’t worry — remember again, again catch hold of the thread, and by and by the gaps will lessen, the intervals will start dropping, a continuity will arise. And whenever your consciousness becomes continuous, you need not use the mind. Then there is no planning, then you act out of your consciousness, not out of your mind. Then there is no need for any apology, no need to give any explanation. Then you are whatsoever you are, there is nothing to hide. Whatsoever you are, you are. You cannot do anything else. You can only be in a state of continuous remembrance. Through this remembrance, this mindfulness, comes the authentic religion, comes the authentic morality. THE GREATEST POLITENESS IS FREE OF ALL FORMALITY. If you are not formal, then nobody is a stranger. Whether you move in the marketplace or in a crowded street, nobody is a stranger, everybody is a friend. Not only a friend, really, everybody is just an extension of you. Then formality is not needed. If | step on my own foot — which is difficult — | will not say sorry, and | will not say to myself, ”The place is very crowded!” When | step on your foot, | am stepping on my foot. A mind which is fully alert knows that consciousness is one, life is one, being is one, existence is one, it is not fragmented. The tree flowering there is me in a different form, the rock lying there on the ground is me in a different form. The whole of existence becomes an organic unity — organic, life flowing through it, not mechanical. A mechanical unity is a different thing — it is dead. Acar is a mechanical unity, there is no life in it, and that is why you can replace one part by another. Every part is replaceable. But can you replace a man? Impossible. When a man dies, a unique phenomenon disappears; disappears completely, you cannot replace it. When your wife or your husband dies, now how can you replace them? You may get another wife, but this will be another wife, not a replacement. And the shadow of the first will always be there; the first cannot be forgotten, it will always be there. It may become a shadow, but even shadows of love are very substantial. You cannot replace a person, there is no way. If it is a mechanical unity then wives are replaceable parts, you can even have spare wives. You can keep them in your storeroom and whenever your wife dies, you replace her! This is what is happening in the West. They have started to think in terms of mechanism. So now they say nothing is a problem — if one wife dies you get another, if one husband is no more you get another.... So marriage in the West is a mechanical unity, which is why divorce is possible. The East denies divorce because marriage is an organic unity. How can you replace a live person? It will never happen again, that person has simply disappeared into the ultimate mystery. The Empty Boat 74 Osho CHAPTER 4. APOLOGIES Life is an organic unity. You cannot replace a plant because every plant is unique, you cannot find another, the same cannot be found. Life has a quality of uniqueness. Even a small rock is unique — you can go all over the world to find a similar rock and you will not be able to. How can you replace it? This is the difference between organic unity and mechanical unity. Mechanical unity depends on the parts; the parts are replaceable, they are not unique. Organic unity depends on the whole, not on the parts. Parts are not really parts, they are not separate from the whole — they are one, they cannot be replaced. When you become alert to the inner flame of your inner being, suddenly you become alert that you are not an island, it is a vast continent, an infinite continent. There are no boundaries separating you from it. All boundaries are false, make-believe. All boundaries are in the mind; in existence there are no boundaries. Then who can be a stranger? When you step on somebody, it is you; you have stepped on your own foot. No apology is needed, no explanation is needed. There is no one else, there is only one. Then your life becomes real, authentic, spontaneous; then it is not formal, then you do not follow any rules. You have come to know the ultimate law. Now no rules are needed. You have become the law — there is no need to remember the rules now. THE GREATEST POLITENESS IS FREE OF ALL FORMALITY. Have you looked at people who are polite? You will not find more egoistic people than them. Look at a polite person, the very way he stands, the way he talks, the way he looks, walks; he has managed to make everything look polite, but inside the ego is manipulating. Look at the so-called humble people. They say they are nobodies, but when they say it, look into their eyes, at the ego asserting. This is a very cunning ego, because if you say, ”| am somebody,” everybody will be against you, and everybody will try to put you in your place. If you say, ”Il am nobody,” everybody is for you, nobody is against you. Polite people are very cunning, clever. They know what to say, what to do, so that they can exploit you. If they say, ”l am somebody,” everybody is against them. Then conflict arises because everybody thinks that he is an egoist. It will be difficult then to exploit people because everybody is closed against you. If you say, ”| am nobody, | am just dust on your feet,” then the doors are open and you can exploit. All etiquette, culture, is a type of sophisticated cunningness, and you are exploiting. THE GREATEST POLITENESS IS FREE OF ALL FORMALITY. It happened that Confucius came to see Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu’s master. And Confucius was the image of formal politeness. He was the greatest formalist in the world, the world has never known such a great formalist. He was simply manners, formality, culture and etiquette. He came to see Lao Tzu, the polar opposite. The Empty Boat 75 Osho CHAPTER 4. APOLOGIES Confucius was very old, Lao Tzu was not so old. The formality was that when Confucius came in, Lao Tzu should stand up to receive him. But he remained sitting. It was impossible for Confucius to believe that such a great master, known all over the country for his humbleness, should be so impolite. He had to mention it. Immediately he said, ”This is not good. | am older than you.” Lao Tzu laughed loudly and said, "Nobody is older than me. | existed before everything came into existence. Confucius, we are of the same age, everything is of the same age. From eternity we have been in existence, so don’t carry this burden of old age, sit down.” Confucius had come to ask some questions. He said, "How should a religious man behave?” Lao Tzu said, "When the how comes, there is no religion. How is not a question for a religious man. The how shows that you are not religious but that you want to behave like a religious man — that is why you ask how. *Does a lover ask how one should love? He loves! Really, it is only later on that one becomes aware that he has been in love. It may be that only when love has gone does he become aware that he has been in love. He simply loves. It happens. It is a happening, not a doing.” Whatsoever Confucius asked, Lao Tzu replied in such a way that Confucius became very much disturbed: This man is dangerous!” When he returned, his disciples asked, "What happened, what manner of man is this Lao Tzu?” Confucius said, "Don’t go near him. You may have seen dangerous snakes, but nothing can compare with this man. You may have heard about ferocious lions, they are nothing before this man. This man is like a dragon which walks on the earth, can swim in the sea, can go to the very end of the sky — very dangerous. He is not for us little people, we are too small. He is dangerous, vast like an abyss. Don’t go near him, otherwise you will feel dizzy and you may fall. Even | felt dizzy. And | couldn’t understand what he said, he is beyond understanding.” Lao Tzu is bound to be beyond understanding if you try to understand him through formality; otherwise he is simple. But for Confucius he is difficult, almost impossible to understand, because he sees through forms and Lao Tzu has no form and no formality. Nameless, without any form, he lives in the infinite. THE GREATEST POLITENESS IS FREE OF ALL FORMALITY. Lao Tzu is sitting, Confucius is waiting for him to stand up. Who was really polite? Confucius waiting for Lao Tzu to stand up and welcome him and receive him because he is older, is just egotistical. Now the ego has taken the form of age, seniority. But Confucius could not look directly into the eyes of Lao Tzu, because Lao Tzu was right. He was saying: We are of the same age. Really, we are the same. The same life flows in you that flows in The Empty Boat 76 Osho CHAPTER 4. APOLOGIES me. You are not superior to me, | am not superior to you. There is no question of superiority and inferiority, and there is no question of seniority and juniority. There is no question, we are one. If Confucius could have looked into the eyes of Lao Tzu he would have seen that those eyes were divine. Buta man whose own eyes are filled with laws, rules, regulations, formalities, is almost blind, he cannot see. PERFECT CONDUCT IS FREE OF CONCERN. You conduct yourself well because you are concerned. You behave well because you are concerned. Just the other day a man came to me. He said, ”! would like to take the jump, | would like to become a sannyasin, but | have my family, my children are studying at college and | have a great responsibility to them.” He is concerned. He has a duty to fulfill, but no love. Duty is concern; it thinks in terms of something that has to be done because it is expected, because "What will people say if | leave?” Who thinks about what people will say? The ego. So: "What will people say? First let me fulfill my duties.” | never tell anybody to leave, | never tell anybody to renounce, but | insist that one should not be in some relationship because of duty — because then the whole relationship is ugly. One should be in a relationship because of love. Then this man would not say, ”| have a duty to fulfill.” He would say, ”| cannot come right now. My children are growing, and | love them, and | am happy working for them.” Then this will be a happiness. Now it is not a happiness, it is a burden. When you carry a burden, when you even turn your love into a burden, you cannot be happy. And if you have turned your love into a burden, your prayer will also become a burden, your meditation will also become a burden. Then you will say, Because of this guru, this master, | am caught, and now | have to do this.” It will not come out of you, your totality; it will not be overflowing. Why be worried? If there is love, wherever you are, there is no burden. And if you love your children, even if you leave them, they will understand. And if you don’t love your children, and you go on serving them, they will understand, and they will know that these are just false things. This is happening. People come to see me and they say, ”| have worked my whole life and nobody even feels thankful towards me.” How can anybody feel thankful towards you? You were carrying them like a burden. Even small children understand well when love is there, and they understand well when you are just doing your duty. Duty is ugly, duty is violent; it shows your concern but doesn’t show your spontaneity. Says Chuang Tzu: PERFECT CONDUCT IS FREE OF CONCERN. Whatsoever is done, is done out of love — then you are not honest because honesty pays, you are honest because honesty is lovely. The Empty Boat re 4 Osho CHAPTER 4. APOLOGIES Businessmen are honest if honesty pays. They say: Honesty is the best policy. How can you destroy a beautiful thing like honesty and turn it into a best policy? Policy is politics, honesty is religion. An old man was on his deathbed. He called his son and said, ’Now | must tell you the secret, now | am dying. Always remember two things — this is how | succeeded. First, whenever you give a promise, fulfill it. Whatsoever the cost, be honest and fulfill it. This has been my basis, this is why | succeeded. And the second thing, never make any promises.” For a businessman even religion is a policy, for a politician even religion is a policy — everything is a policy, even love is a policy. Kings, queens, never marry ordinary, common people. Why? It is part of politics. Kings marry other princesses, queens, and the concern is about which relationship will be the most profitable for the kingdom. Two kingdoms will become related so that they will become friends and will not be antagonistic. So with whom should the marriage be made? In India, in the olden days, a king would marry many women, hundreds, even thousands. It was part of politics: he would marry the daughter of anyone who had some power, so that he could create a network of power relationships. Thus the person whose daughter you have married will become your friend, he will help you. In Buddha’s time India had two thousand kingdoms, so the most successful king was the one who had two thousand wives, one wife from every kingdom. Then he could live in peace because now he had no enemies. Now the whole country became like a family. But how can love exist in such a concern? Love never thinks of consequences, never hankers for results. It is sufficient unto itself. PERFECT CONDUCT IS FREE OF CONCERN. PERFECT WISDOM IS UNPLANNED. A wise man lives moment to moment, never planning. Only ignorant people plan, and when ignorant people plan, what can they plan? They plan out of their ignorance. Unplanned they would have been better, because out of ignorance only ignorance arises; out of confusion, only greater confusion is born. A wise man lives moment to moment, he has no planning. His life is just free like a cloud floating in the sky, not going to some goal, not determined. He has no map for the future, he lives without a map, he moves without a map; because the real thing is not the goal, the real thing is the beauty of the movement. The real thing is not reaching, the real thing is the journey. Remember, the real thing is the journey, the very traveling. It is so beautiful, why bother about the goal? And if you are too bothered about the goal, you will miss the journey, and the journey is life — the goal can only be death. The journey is life and it is an infinite journey. You have been on the move from the very beginning — if there was any beginning. Those who know Say there was no beginning, so from no beginning you have been on the move, to the no end you will be on the move — and if you are goal-oriented, you will miss. The whole is the journey, the path, the endless path, never beginning, never ending. There is really no goal — goal is created by the cunning mind. Where is this whole existence moving? Where? It is not going anywhere. It is simply going, and the going is so beautiful, that is why existence is The Empty Boat 78 Osho CHAPTER 4. APOLOGIES unburdened. There is no plan, no goal, no purpose. It is not a business, it is a play, a LEELA. Every moment is the goal. PERFECT WISDOM IS UNPLANNED. PERFECT LOVE IS WITHOUT DEMONSTRATIONS. Demonstration is needed because love is not there. And the less love there is, the more you demonstrate — when it is there, you don’t demonstrate. Whenever a husband comes home with a present for his wife she will know that something is wrong. He must have stepped out of line, he must have met another woman. Now this is the explanation, this is a substitute; otherwise love is such a present that no other present is needed. Not that love will not give presents, but love itself is such a present. What else can you give? What else is possible? But whenever the husband feels that something is wrong, he has to put it right. Everything has to be rearranged, balanced. And this is the problem — women are so intuitive that they know immediately, your present cannot deceive them. It is impossible, because women still live with their intuition, with their illogical mind. They immediately jump. And they will understand that something has gone wrong, otherwise why this present? Whenever you demonstrate, you demonstrate your inner poverty. If your sannyas becomes a demonstration you are not a sannyasin. If your meditation becomes a demonstration you are not meditative, because whenever the real exists, it is such a light that there is no need to demonstrate it. When your house is lighted, when there is a flame, you need not go to the neighbors and tell them, "Look, our house has got a lamp.” It is there. But when your house is in darkness you try to convince your neighbors that light is there. Convincing them, you try to convince yourself. This is the reason why you want to demonstrate. If the other is convinced, his conviction, her conviction, will help you to be convinced. | have heard that once Mulla Nasruddin had a beautiful house, but he got bored, as everybody gets bored. Whether it was beautiful or not made no difference; living in the same house every day, he got bored. The house was beautiful, with a big garden, acres of green land, swimming pool, everything. But he got bored, so he called a real estate agent and told him, ”! want to sell it. | am fed up, this house has become a hell.” The next day an advertisement appeared in the morning papers; the real estate agent had inserted a beautiful advertisement. Mulla Nasruddin read it again and again and he was so convinced that he phoned the agent: ’Wait, | don’t want to sell it. Your advertisement has convinced me so deeply that now | know that for my whole life | have been wanting this house, looking for this very house.” When you can convince others of your love, you yourself become convinced. But if you have love, there is no need, you know! When you have wisdom, there is no need to demonstrate it. But when you have only knowledge, you demonstrate, you convince others, and when they are convinced, you are convinced that you are a man of knowledge. When you have wisdom, there is no need. Even if not one person is convinced, you are still certain that you alone are enough proof. The Empty Boat 79 Osho CHAPTER 4. APOLOGIES PERFECT SINCERITY OFFERS NO GUARANTEE. All guarantees are because of insincerity. You guarantee, you promise, you say: This is the guarantee, | will do this. While you are giving the guarantee, at that very moment the insincerity is there. Perfect sincerity offers no guarantee because perfect sincerity is so aware, aware of many things. First, the future is unknown. How can you make a guarantee? Life changes every moment, how can you promise? All guarantee, all promising, can be only for this moment, not for the next. For the next moment nothing can be done. You will have to wait. If you are really sincere and love a woman you cannot say, ”! will love you for my whole life.” If you say this, you are a liar. This guarantee is false. But if you love, this moment is enough. The woman will not ask for your whole life. This moment, if love is there, it is so fulfilling that one moment is enough for many lives. A single moment of love is eternity; she will not ask. But now she is asking because this moment there is no love. So she asks, ’What is the guarantee? Will you love me always?” This moment there is no love and she is asking for a guarantee. This moment there is no love and you guarantee for the future — because only through that guarantee can you deceive at this moment. You can create a beautiful picture of the future and you can hide the ugly picture of the present. You say, ”Yes, | will love you forever and forever. Even death will not part us.” What nonsense! What insincerity! How can you do this? You can do this and you do it so easily because you are not aware of what you are saying. The next moment is unknown; where it will lead, no one knows, what will happen, no one knows, no one can know it. Unknowability is part of the future game. How can you guarantee? At the most you can say, ”! love you this moment and this moment | feel — this is a feeling of this moment — that even death cannot part us. But this is a feeling of this moment. This is not a guarantee. This moment | feel like saying that | will always and always love you, but this is a feeling of this moment, this is no guarantee. What will happen in the future nobody knows. We never knew about this moment so how can we know about other moments? We will have to wait. We will have to be prayerful that it happens, that | love you for ever and ever, but this is not a guarantee.” Perfect sincerity cannot give any guarantee. Perfect sincerity is so sincere that it cannot promise: it gives whatsoever it can give here and now. Perfect sincerity lives in the present, it has no idea of the future. Mind moves in the future, being lives here and now. And perfect sincerity belongs to the being, not to the mind. Love, truth, meditation, sincerity, simplicity, innocence, all belong to the being. The opposites belong to the mind and to hide the opposites the mind creates false coins: false sincerity, which guarantees, promises; false love, which is just a name for duty; false beauty, which is just a face for inner ugliness. Mind creates false coins, and nobody is deceived, remember, except yourself. Enough for today. The Empty Boat 80 Osho CHAPTER 5 Three in the Morning 14 July 1974 am in Buddha Hall WHAT IS THIS THREE IN THE MORNING? IT IS ABOUT A MONKEY TRAINER WHO WENT TO HIS MONKEYS AND TOLD THEM: "AS REGARDS YOUR CHESTNUTS, YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE THREE MEASURES IN THE MORNING, AND FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON.” ON HEARING THIS ALL THE MONKEYS BECAME ANGRY. SO THE KEEPER SAID: "ALL RIGHT THEN, | WILL CHANGE IT TO FOUR MEASURES IN THE MORNING, AND THREE IN THE AFTERNOON.” 81 CHAPTER 5. THREE IN THE MORNING THE ANIMALS WERE SATISFIED WITH THIS ARRANGEMENT. THE TWO ARRANGEMENTS WERE THE SAME — THE NUMBER OF CHESTNUTS DID NOT CHANGE, BUT IN ONE CASE THE MONKEYS WERE DISPLEASED, AND IN THE OTHER CASE THEY WERE SATISFIED. THE KEEPER WAS WILLING TO CHANGE HIS PERSONAL ARRANGEMENT IN ORDER TO MEET OBJECTIVE CONDITIONS. HE LOST NOTHING BY IT. THE TRULY WISE MAN, CONSIDERING BOTH SIDES OF THE QUESTION WITHOUT PARTIALITY, SEES THEM BOTH IN THE LIGHT OF TAO. THIS IS CALLED FOLLOWING TWO COURSES AT ONCE. The law of the three in the morning. Chuang Tzu loved this story very much. He often repeated it. It is beautiful, with many layers of meaning. Obviously very simple but still very deeply indicative of the human mind. The first thing to be understood is that the human mind is monkeyish. It was not Darwin who discovered that man comes from monkeys. It has been a long-standing observation that the human mind behaves in the same patterns as the mind of the monkey. Only rarely does it happen that you transcend your monkeyishness. When mind becomes still, when mind becomes silent, when there is really no mind at all, you transcend the monkeyish pattern. What is the monkeyish pattern? For one thing, the mind is never still. And unless you are still, you cannot see the truth. You are wavering, trembling so much that nothing can be seen. Clear perception is impossible. While meditating what are you doing? You are putting the monkey in a position of stillness, hence all the difficulties of meditation. The more you try to make the mind still, the more it revolts, the more it starts getting into turmoil, the more restless it becomes. Have you ever seen a monkey sitting silently and still? Impossible! The monkey is always eating something, doing something, swinging, chattering. This is what you are doing. Man has invented many things. If there is nothing to do he will chew gum; if there is nothing to do he will smoke! These The Empty Boat 82 Osho CHAPTER 5. THREE IN THE MORNING are just foolish occupations, monkeyish occupations. Something has to be done continuously so that you remain occupied. You are so restless that your restlessness needs to be busy somehow or other. That is why, whatsoever is said against smoking, it cannot be stopped. Only in a meditative world can smoking stop — otherwise not. Even if there is danger of death, of cancer, of tuberculosis, it cannot be stopped, because it is not a question of just smoking, it is a question of how to release the restlessness. People who chant mantras can stop smoking because they have found a substitute. You can keep chanting Ram, Ram, Ram, and this becomes a sort of smoking. Your lips are working, your mouth is moving, your restlessness is being released. So JAPA can become a sort of smoking, a better sort, with less harm to the health. But basically it is the same thing — your mind cannot be left at rest. Your mind has to do something, not only while you are awake but even when you are asleep. One day watch your wife or your husband sleeping, just sit for two or three hours silently and watch the face. You will see the monkey not the man. Even in sleep much goes on. The person is occupied. This sleep cannot be deep, it cannot be really relaxing, because work is going on. The day is continued, there is no discontinuity; the mind keeps functioning in the same way. There is constant inner chatter, an inner monologue, and it is no wonder you get bored. You are boring yourself. Everybody looks bored. Mulla Nasruddin was telling a story to his disciples, and suddenly the rain started — it must have been a day like this. So a passer-by, just to protect himself, came under the shelter of the shed where Nasruddin was talking to his disciples. He was just waiting for the rain to stop but he couldn't help listening. Nasruddin was telling tall stories. Many times the man found it almost impossible to resist interrupting, because he was saying such absurd things. But he thought again and again and said to himself, ’It is none of my business. | am only here because of the rain, as soon as it stops | will go. | need not interfere.” But at a point the man couldn’t help it, he couldn’t contain himself any longer. He interrupted saying, "Enough is enough. Excuse me, this is none of my business, but now you have overdone it!” | must first tell you the story and the point where the man could not contain himself... Nasruddin was saying, "Once in my young days | was traveling in the forests of Africa, the dark continent. Suddenly one day a lion jumped out just fifteen feet away from me. | was without any arms or protection, alone in the forest. The lion stared at me and started walking towards me.” The disciples became very excited. Nasruddin stopped for a moment and looked at their faces. One disciple said, "Don’t keep us waiting, what happened?” Nasruddin said, ’The lion came nearer and nearer until it was just five feet away.” Another disciple said, “No more waiting. Tell us what happened.” The Empty Boat 83 Osho CHAPTER 5. THREE IN THE MORNING Nasruddin said, "It is so simple, so logical, work it out for yourself. The lion jumped, killed me and ate me!” At this point it was too much for the stranger! He said, "Are you saying that the lion killed and ate you, and you are sitting here alive?” Nasruddin looked straight at the man and said, ”Ha ha, do you call this being alive?” Look at people’s faces and you will understand what he meant. Do you call this being alive? So bored to death, dragging? Once a man said to Nasruddin,’| am very poor. Survival is impossible now, should we commit suicide? | have six children and a wife, my widowed sister and old father and mother. And it is getting more and more difficult. Can you suggest something?” Nasruddin said, ”You can do two things and both will be helpful. One, start baking bread, because people have to live and they have to eat, you will always have business.” The man asked, ”And the other?” Nasruddin said, ’Start making shrouds for the dead, because when people are alive, they will die. And this is also a good business. These two businesses are good — bread, and shrouds for the dead.” After a month the man came back. He looked even more desperate, very sad, and he said, "Nothing seems to work. | have put everything | have got into the business, as you suggested, but everything seems to be against me.” Nasruddin said, "How can that happen? People have to eat bread while they are alive, and when they die their relatives have to buy shrouds.” The man said, "But you don’t understand. In this village no one is alive and no one ever dies. They are simply dragging along.” People are just dragging. You don’t need to look at others’ faces, just look in the mirror and you will find out what dragging means — neither alive nor dead. Life is so beautiful, death is also beautiful — dragging is ugly. But why do you look so burdened? The constant chattering of the mind dissipates energy. Constant chattering of the mind is a constant leakage in your being. Energy is dissipated. You never have enough energy to make you feel alive, young, fresh, and if you are not young and fresh and alive your death is also going to be a very dull affair. One who lives intensely, dies intensely, and when death is intense, it has a beauty of its own. One who lives totally, dies totally, and wherever totality is there is beauty. Death is ugly, not because of death but because you have never lived rightly. If you have never been alive, you have not earned a beautiful death. It has to be earned. One has to live in such a way, so total and so whole, that he The Empty Boat 84 Osho CHAPTER 5. THREE IN THE MORNING can die totally, not in fragments. You live in fragments, so you die in fragments. One part dies, then another, then another, and you take many years to die. Then the whole thing becomes ugly. Death would be beautiful if people were alive. This inner monkey doesn’t allow you to be alive, and this inner monkey will not allow you to die beautifully either. This constant chattering has to be stopped. And what is the chattering, what is the subject matter? The subject matter is the three in the morning that goes on in the mind. What are you doing inside the mind? Continuously making arrangements: to do this, not to do that, to build this house, to destroy that house; to move from this business to another because there will be more profit; to change this wife, this husband. What are you doing? Just changing arrangements. Chuang Tzu says that finally, ultimately, if you can look at the total, the total is always the same. It is seven. Whether you are given three measures of chestnuts in the morning and four measures in the evening, or the other way around — four measures in the morning and three measures in the evening — the total is seven. This is one of the most secret laws — the total is always the same. You may not be able to comprehend it, but when a beggar or an emperor dies, their total is the same. The beggar lived on the streets, the emperor lived in the palaces, but the total is the same. A rich man, a poor man, a successful man and a failure, the total is the same. If you can look at the total of life, then you will come to know what Chuang Tzu means by the three in the morning. What happens? Life is not impartial, life is not partial, life is absolutely indifferent to your arrangements — it doesn’t bother about the arrangements you make. Life is a gift. If you change the arrangement, the total is not changed. A rich man has found better food, but the hunger is lost; he cannot really feel the intensity of being hungry. The proportion is always the same. He has found a beautiful bed, but with the bed comes insomnia. He has made better arrangements for sleeping. He should be falling asleep into SUSHUPTI — what Hindus call unconscious samadhi — but that is not happening. He cannot fall asleep. He has just changed the arrangement. A beggar is asleep just outside there in the street. Traffic is passing and the beggar is asleep. He has no bed. The place where he is sleeping is uneven, hard and uncomfortable, but he is asleep. The beggar cannot get good food, it is impossible, because he has to beg. But he has a good appetite. The total result is the same. The total result is seven. A successful man is not only successful, for with success comes all sorts of calamities. A failure is not just a failure, for with failure comes many sorts of blessings. The total is always the same, but the total has to be penetrated and looked at, a clear perspective is needed. Eyes are needed to look at the total because mind can look only at the fragment. If the mind looks at the morning, it cannot look at the evening; if it looks at the evening, the morning is forgotten. Mind cannot look at the total day, mind is fragmentary. Only a meditative consciousness can look at the whole, from birth to death — and then the total is always seven. That is why wise men never try to change the arrangement. That is why in the East no revolution has ever happened — because revolution means changing the arrangement. The Empty Boat 85 Osho CHAPTER 5. THREE IN THE MORNING Look what happened in Soviet Russia. In 1917 the greatest revolution happened on earth. The arrangement was changed. | don’t think Lenin, Stalin or Trotsky ever heard the story of three in the morning. They could have learned much from Chuang Tzu. But then there would have been no revolution. What happened? The capitalists disappeared, now nobody was rich, nobody was poor. The old classes were no more. But only names changed. New classes came into being. Before, it was the rich man and the poor man, the capitalist and the proletariat — now it was the manager and the managed. But the distinction, the gap, remains the same. Nothing has changed. Only now you call the capitalist the manager! Those who have studied the Russian revolution say that this is not a socialist revolution, it is a managerial revolution. The same gap, the same distance, remains between the two classes, and a classless society has not come into being. Chuang Tzu would have laughed. He would have told this story. What have you done? The manager has become powerful, the managed have remained powerless. Hindus say that some people will always be managers and some people will always be managed. There are SUDRAS and KSHATRIYAS; and these are not just labels, these are types of people. Hindus have divided society into four classes and they say that society can never be classless. It is not a question of social arrangement — four types of people exist. Unless you change the type, no revolution is of much help. They say there is a type which is a laborer, sudra, who will always be managed. If nobody manages him, he will be at a loss, he will not be happy. He needs somebody to order him, he needs somebody whom he can obey, he needs somebody who can take all the responsibility. He is not ready to take the responsibility on his own. That is a type. If the manager is around only then will that type of person work. If the manager is not there, he will simply sit. The manager can be a subtle phenomenon, even invisible. For example, in a capitalist society the profit motive manages. A sudra works not because he loves working, not because work is his hobby, not because he is creative, but because he has to feed himself and his family. If he does not work, who will feed him? It is the profit motive, hunger, body, the stomach, that manages. In a communist country this motive is not the manager. There they have to put visible managers. It is said that in Stalin’s Russia there was one policeman for each citizen; otherwise it is difficult to manage because the profit motive is not there any longer. One has to force, one has to order, one has to nag constantly, only then will the sudra work. There is always a businessman type who enjoys money, wealth, accumulation. He will do that — it makes no difference how he does it. If money is available, he will collect money; if money is not available, then he will collect postage stamps. But he will do it, he will collect. If postage stamps are not available he will collect followers — but he will collect! He has to do something with numbers. He will have ten thousand, twenty thousand followers, one million followers. That is just the same as saying that he has got one million rupees! Go to your sadhus — the greater the number of followers, the greater they are. So followers are just nothing but bank balances. If nobody follows you, you are nobody — then you are a poor guru. If The Empty Boat 86 Osho CHAPTER 5. THREE IN THE MORNING many people follow you then you are a rich guru. Whatsoever happens, the businessman will collect. He will count. The material is immaterial. There is a warrior who will fight — any excuse will do. He will fight, fighting is in his blood, in his bones. Because of his type the world cannot live in peace. It is impossible. Once every ten years there is bound to be a big war. And if you want to avoid big wars, then have many small wars, but the total will remain the same. Because of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, now a great war has become almost impossible. That is why there are so many small wars all over the world: in Vietnam, Kashmir, Bangladesh, Israel, many small wars, but the total will be the same. In five thousand years man has fought fifteen thousand wars, three wars per year. A type exists who has to fight. You can change this type, but the change will be superficial. If this warrior is not allowed to fight in war, he will fight in other ways. He will fight an election, or he may be-come a sportsman — he may fight in cricket or football. But he will fight, he will compete, he needs somebody to challenge. Somewhere or other fighting has to be done to satisfy him. That is why, as civilization develops, people have to be supplied with more and more games. If games are not given to the warrior type, what will he do? Go and watch when a cricket, football, or hockey match is on — people go mad, as if something very serious is going on, as if areal war is happening! The players are serious, and the fans around them go mad. Fights break out, riots happen. The playing field is always dangerous, because the type that gathers there is the warrior type. Any moment anything can go wrong. There is a brahmin type, who always lives in words, in scriptures. In the West there is no such type as the brahmin; the name is not important, but the brahmin exists everywhere. Your scientists, your professors, the universities are filled with them. They keep on working with words, symbols, creating theories, defending, arguing. They keep on doing it sometimes in the name of science, sometimes in the name of religion, sometimes in the name of literature. The names change, but the brahmin goes on. There are these four types. You cannot create a classless society. These four will persist and the total arrangement will be the same. Fragments can change. In the morning you can do one thing, in the evening something different, but the total day will remain the same. | have heard about a young scientist whose father was against his scientific research. The father always thought it useless. He told his son, "Don’t waste your time. It is better to become a doctor, that will be more practical and helpful to people. Just theories, abstract theories of physics, are of no help.” Finally he persuaded his son and he became a doctor. The first man who came to him was suffering from severe pneumonia. The doctor consulted his books — because he was an abstract thinker, a brahmin. He tried and tried. The patient became more impatient, he said, "How long do | have to wait?” The scientist who was now a doctor said, ”! don’t think that there is any hope. You will have to die. There is no treatment for this illness, it has gone beyond cure.” The patient was a tailor, he went home. The Empty Boat 87 Osho CHAPTER 5. THREE IN THE MORNING Two weeks later the doctor was passing and he saw the tailor working, healthy and full of energy. So he said, "What, are you still alive? You should have been dead long ago. | have consulted the books and this is impossible. How do you manage to be alive?” The tailor said, ”You told me that within a week | would have to die, so | thought: Then why not live? Just a week left.... And potato pancakes are my weakness, so | left your surgery, went straight to the cafe, ate thirty-two potato pancakes and immediately | felt a great surge of energy. And now | am absolutely okay!” Right away the doctor noted down in his diary that thirty-two potato pancakes is a sure cure for severe cases of pneumonia. The next patient by chance also had pneumonia. He was a shoemaker. The doctor said, ”Don’t worry. Now the cure has been discovered. Immediately go and eat thirty-two potato pancakes, not less than thirty-two, and you will be okay; otherwise, you will die within a week.” After a week, the doctor knocked at the shoemaker’s door. It was locked. The neighbor said, "He is dead. Your potato pancakes killed him.” Immediately he noted in his diary: Thirty-two potato pancakes help tailors, kill shoemakers. This is the abstract mind. He cannot be practical, the brahmin. You can change surfaces, you can paint faces, but the inner type remains the same. Hence the East has not troubled itself with revolutions. The East is waiting; and those in the East who are wise, they look at the West, and they know that you are playing with toys. All your revolutions are toys. Sooner or later you will come to realize the law of three in the morning. What is this three in the morning? A disciple must have asked Chuang Tzu, because whenever somebody mentioned revolution or change, Chuang Tzu would laugh and say, ”The law of the three in the morning.” So a disciple must have asked, ”What is this three in the morning you are always talking about?” Said Chuang Tzu: IT IS ABOUT A MONKEY TRAINER WHO WENT TO HIS MONKEYS AND TOLD THEM: "AS REGARDS YOUR CHESTNUTS, YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE THREE MEASURES IN THE MORNING, AND FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON.” ON HEARING THIS ALL THE MONKEYS BECAME ANGRY....” Because in the past they had been getting four measures in the morning and three in the evening. Obviously they got angry! "What do you mean? We always used to get four measures of chestnuts in the morning and now you say three. We cannot tolerate this.” The Empty Boat 88 Osho CHAPTER 5. THREE IN THE MORNING SO THE KEEPER SAID: "ALL RIGHT THEN, | WILL CHANGE IT TO FOUR MEASURES IN THE MORNING, AND THREE IN THE AFTERNOON.” THE ANIMALS WERE SATISFIED WITH THIS ARRANGEMENT. The total remained the same...but monkeys cannot look at the total. It was morning, so they could only see the morning. Every morning it was routine to get four measures and they expected four measures, and now this man says, "Three measures in the morning.” He is cutting down by one measure. It cannot be tolerated. They became angry, they revolted. But this monkey trainer must have been a wise man. If you are not, it is difficult to become a monkey trainer. | know it from my own experience. | am a monkey trainer. The monkey trainer said, "Okay, then don’t get disturbed. | will follow the old pattern. You will get four measures in the morning and three in the evening.” The monkeys were happy. Poor monkeys! — they can be happy or unhappy without any reason for either. But this man had a bigger perspective. He could see, he could add four plus three. It was still the same — seven measures were to be given to them. How they had it and in what arrangement didn’t matter. The two arrangements were the same, the number of chestnuts didn’t change, but in one case the monkeys were displeased and in the other case they were satisfied. This is how your mind works: you just keep changing the arrangement. With one arrangement you feel satisfied, with another you feel dissatisfied — and the total remains the same. But you never look at the total. The mind cannot see the total. Only meditation can see the total. Mind looks at the fragment, it is near-sighted, very near-sighted. That is why whenever you feel pleasure, you immediately jump into it, you never look at the evening. Whenever there is pleasure there is pain hidden in it. This has been your experience but you have not become aware of it. The pain will come in the evening but the pleasure is here in the morning. You never look into that which is hidden, into that which is invisible, into that which is latent. You just look at the surface and you go mad. You do this all your life. A fragment catches you. Many people come to me and say, "In the beginning when | married this woman, everything was very beautiful. But within days everything was lost. Now it has all become ugly, now it is misery.” Once there was a car accident. The car overturned in a ditch by the side of the road. The man was lying on the ground completely crippled, almost unconscious. A policeman came along and started to fill in his notebook. He asked the man, ”Are you married?” The man said, ”| am not married. This is the biggest mess | have ever been in.” The Empty Boat 89 Osho CHAPTER 5. THREE IN THE MORNING It is said that those who know will never marry. But how can you know what happens in marriage without getting married? You look at a person, at the fragment, and sometimes the fragment will look very foolish when you think about it in the end. The color of the eyes — what foolishness! How can your life depend on the color of your or somebody else’s eyes? How can your life be beautiful just because of the color of the eyes? — a small pigment, three or four pennies’ worth. But you get romantic: Oh, the eyes, the color of the eyes. Then you go mad and you think, "If | am not married to this woman life is lost, | will commit suicide.” But you don’t see what you are doing. One cannot live by the color of the eyes forever. Within two days you will become acquainted with those eyes and you will forget them. Then there is the whole of life in front of you, the totality of it. Then starts misery. Before the honeymoon is finished, misery begins; the total person was never taken into account — the mind cannot see the total. It just looks at the surface, at the figure, the face, the hair, the color of the eyes, the way the woman walks, the way she talks, the sound of her voice. These are the parts, but where is the total person? The mind cannot see the total. The mind looks at fragments, and with fragments it gets hooked. Once it is hooked, the total comes in — the total is not far away. Eyes don’t exist as separate phenomena, they are part of a whole person. If you are hooked by the eyes, you are hooked with the whole person. And when this whole emerges, everything becomes ugly. So who is responsible? You should have taken account of the whole. But when it is morning the mind looks at the morning and forgets the evening completely. Remember well — in every morning the evening is hidden. The morning is constantly turning into evening and nothing can be done about it, you cannot stop it. Says Chuang Tzu: THE TWO ARRANGEMENTS WERE THE SAME — THE NUMBER OF CHESTNUTS DID NOT CHANGE, BUT IN ONE CASE THE MONKEYS WERE DISPLEASED, AND IN THE OTHER CASE THEY WERE SATISFIED. Monkeys are your minds; they cannot penetrate the whole. This is the misery. You always miss, you always miss because of the fragment. If you can see the whole and then act, your life will never be a hell. And then you will not be bothered about superficial arrangements, about morning and evening, because then you can count — and it is always seven. Whether you get four or three in the morning makes no difference — the total is seven. | have heard that a small boy came home from school very puzzled. His mother asked, "Why do you look so puzzled?” The boy said, "| am in a muddle. | think my teacher has gone crazy. Yesterday she said that four plus one make five and today she told me three plus two make five. She must have gone mad, because when four plus one is already five, how can three plus two be five?” The Empty Boat 90 Osho CHAPTER 5. THREE IN THE MORNING The child cannot see that five can come out of many arrangements — there is not only one arrangement which will total five. There can be millions of arrangements in which the total will be five. Howsoever you arrange your life the religious man will always look to the total and the worldly man will always look to the fragment. That is the difference. The worldly will look to whatever is near, and not see the far hidden there. The distant is not really very far away, it will become the near, it will happen soon. The evening is coming. Can you have a perspective in which the total life is seen? It is believed, and | think it is true also, that if a man is drowning, suddenly his whole life, the total, is remembered. You are dying, drowning ina river, with no time left, and suddenly in your mind’s eye your whole life is revealed from beginning to end. It is as if the whole film passes across the screen of the mind. But what use is it now that you are dying? A religious man looks at the total every moment. The whole of life is there, and then he acts out of that perspective of the whole. He will never regret as you always do. It is inevitable that whatsoever you do, you will regret it. One day the king went to visit a madhouse. The superintendent of the madhouse escorted him to every cell. The king was very interested in the phenomenon of madness, he was studying it. Everybody should be interested because it is everybody’s problem. And you need not go to a madhouse: go anywhere and study people’s faces. You are studying in a madhouse! One man was weeping and crying, hitting his head against the bars. His anguish was so deep, his suffering so penetrating, that the king asked to be told the whole story of how this man went mad. The superintendent said, "This man loved a woman and couldn't get her, so he went mad.” Then they passed to another cell. In it there was a man spitting on a picture of a woman. The king asked, ”And what is the story of this man? He also seems to be involved with a woman.” The superintendent said, "It is the same woman. This man fell in love with her too, and he got her. That is why he went mad.” If you get what you want you go mad; if you don’t get what you want you go mad. The total remains the same. Whatsoever you do, you will regret it. A fragment can never be fulfilling. The whole is so big and the fragment is so small that you cannot deduce the whole from the fragment. And if you depend on the fragment and decide your life accordingly, you will always miss. Your whole life will be wasted. So what should we do? What does Chuang Tzu want us to do? He wants us not to be fragmentary — he wants us to be total. But remember, you can look at the total only when YOU are total, because only the similar can know the similar. If you are fragmentary, you cannot know the total. How can you know the total if you are fragmentary? If you are divided in parts the total cannot be reflected in you. When | speak of meditation | mean a mind which is no longer divided, in which all fragments have disappeared. The mind is undivided, whole, one. The Empty Boat 91 Osho CHAPTER 5. THREE IN THE MORNING This one mind looks deeply to the very end. It looks from death to birth, it looks from birth to death. Both the polarities are before it. And out of this look, out of this penetrating vision, the action is born. If you ask me what sin is, | will say: Action out of the fragmentary mind is sin. If you ask me what virtue is, | will tell you: Action out of the total mind is virtue. That is why a sinner always has to repent. Remember your own life, observe it. Whatsoever you do, whatsoever you choose, this or that, everything goes wrong. Whether you get the woman or lose her, in either case you go mad. Whatsoever you choose, you choose misery. Hence Krishnamurti constantly insists on choicelessness. Try to understand this. You are here listening to me. This is a choice, because you must have left some job undone, some work incomplete. You have to go to the office, to the shop, to the family, to the market and you are here listening to me. This morning you must have decided what to do. Whether to go and listen to this man or go to your work, to the office, to the market. Then you made the choice to come here. You made the choice to come here. You will regret your choice... because even while here, you cannot be totally here: half of the mind is there, and you are simply waiting until | finish so you can go. But do you think that if you had chosen otherwise, gone to the shop or to the office, would you have been totally there? No, because that again was a choice. So you will be there and your mind will be here. And you will regret: What am | missing? Who knows what is being done there, what is being talked about? Who knows what secret key is to be transferred this morning? So whatsoever you choose, whether you come or whether you decide not to come, if it is a choice it means half of the heart, or a little more, has chosen. It is a democratic decision, parliamentary. With the majority of the mind you have decided, but the minority is still there. And no minority is a fixed thing, no majority is a fixed thing. Nobody knows its size, party members keep changing sides. When you came here you decided. Fifty-one percent of your mind wanted to come and forty-nine wanted to go to the office. But by the time you arrive here the arrangement has changed. The very decision to come and listen creates a disturbance. The minority may have become the majority by the time you arrive here. If it has not yet become a majority, by the time you leave it will have, and you will think, Two hours wasted? Now, how will | make them up? It would have been better not to come — spiritual things can be postponed, but this world cannot be postponed. Life is long enough, we can meditate later on.” In India people say that meditation is only for the old. Once they are on the verge of death then they can meditate, it is not for young people. Meditation is the last thing on the list; do it when you have done everything else. But remember that the time never comes when you have done everything, when you are too old to do anything else, when all your energy has been wasted, when it is time to meditate. When you are incapable of doing anything how can you meditate? Meditation needs energy, the purest, most vital — meditation needs energy overflowing. A child can meditate but how can an old man meditate? A child is easily meditative, an old man — no, he is wasted. There is no movement of energy in him, his river cannot flow, he is frozen. Many parts of his life are already dead. The Empty Boat 92 Osho CHAPTER 5. THREE IN THE MORNING If you choose to come to the temple, you suffer, you regret. If you go to the office or the market, you suffer and regret. It happened once that a monk died. He was a very famous monk, known all over the country. Many people worshipped him and thought he was enlightened. And on the same day a prostitute died. She lived just in front of the monk’s temple. She was also a very famous prostitute, as famous as the monk. They were two polarities living next to each other and they died on the same day. The angel of death came and took the monk to heaven; other angels of death came and took the prostitute to hell. When the angels reached heaven the doors were closed and the man in charge said, "You have confused them. This monk has to go to hell and the prostitute has to come to heaven.” The angels said, "What do you mean? This man was a very famous ascetic, continuously meditating and praying. That is why we never inquired, we simply went and fetched him. And the prostitute must already be in hell because the other group of angels took her there. We never thought of asking, it seemed so obvious.” Said the man who was in charge at the gate: "You are confused because you have looked only at the surface. This monk used to meditate for the benefit of others, but for himself he was always thinking, ‘| am missing life. What a beautiful woman that prostitute is, and available. Any moment | cross the street, she is available. What | am doing is a lot of nonsense — praying, sitting in a buddha posture and attaining nothing. But because of his reputation he didn’t dare do it.” Many people are virtuous because they are cowards like him. He was virtuous because he was a coward — he could not cross the street. So many people knew him, how could he go to the prostitute? What would people say? Cowards are always afraid of the opinion of others. So he remained an ascetic, fasting, but his mind was always with the prostitute. When there was singing and dancing, he would listen. He sat before the statue of Buddha, but Buddha was not there. He was not worshipping; he would dream he was listening to the sounds of festivities, and in his fantasy he would make love to the prostitute. And what about the prostitute? She was always repenting, repenting and repenting, She knew she had wasted her life, she had wasted a golden opportunity. And for what? Just for money, selling her body and soul. She always used to look towards the monk’s temple, so jealous of the silent life there. What meditative phenomenon was happening there? She longed for God to give her one chance to go inside the temple. But she thought, ”| am a prostitute, unholy, and | should not enter the temple.” So she used to walk around the temple from the outside, just to look at it from the street. What beauty, what silence, what blessing inside! And when there was KIRTAN and BHAJAN, singing and dancing, she used to wail and cry and scream, imagining what she was missing. So the man in charge of the gates said, "Bring the prostitute to heaven and take this monk to hell. Their outer life was different and their inner life was different, but like everybody else they both had regrets.” The Empty Boat 93 Osho CHAPTER 5. THREE IN THE MORNING We in India have invented a word which does not exist in any other language in the world. Heaven and hell are found everywhere; all languages everywhere have words for heaven and hell. We have a different word: it is MOKSHA or nirvana or KAIVALYA — the absolute freedom which is neither hell nor heaven. If your outer life is hell and you repent of it, you will reach heaven, like the prostitute who constantly desired the world of meditation and prayer. And if your outer life is heaven and your inner life is hell, like the monk who desired the prostitute, you will go to hell. But if you make no choice, have no regrets, if you are choiceless, then you will reach moksha. Choiceless awareness is moksha, absolute freedom. Hell is a bondage, heaven is also a bondage. Heaven may be a beautiful prison, hell may be an ugly prison — but both are prisons. Neither Christians nor Mohammedans can follow this point, because to them heaven is the ultimate. If you ask them where Jesus is, their answer is wrong. They say: In heaven with God. This is absolutely wrong. If Jesus is in heaven, then he is not enlightened. Heaven may be golden, but it is still a prison. It may be good, it may be pleasant, but it is still a choice, the choice against hell. The virtue which has been chosen against sin is a decision of the majority, but the minority is just behind waiting for its chance to decide. Jesus is in moksha, that is what | say. He is not in heaven, he is not in hell. He is totally free of all imprisonments: good/bad, sin/virtue, morality/immorality. He did not choose. He lived a choiceless life. And that is what | keep on telling you: Live a choiceless life. But how is a choiceless life possible? It is possible only if you can see the total, the seven; otherwise, you will choose. You will say this should happen in the morning, that in the evening, and you think that just by changing the arrangement you are changing the total. The total cannot be changed. The total remains the same — everybody’s total remains the same. Hence | say there is no difference between a beggar and an emperor. In the morning you are an emperor, in the evening you will be a beggar; in the morning you are a beggar, in the evening you will be an emperor. And the total remains the same. Look at the total, BE total, and then all choice drops. That monkey trainer simply looked at the total and said, ’Okay, you foolish monkeys, if you are happy with it, let this arrangement be as it is.” But if he had also been a monkey, like the others, then there would have been a fight. Then he would have insisted, ’This is going to be the arrangement. Who gives the orders, who makes the decisions? Who do you think is the master? You or me?” Ego always chooses, decides and forces. The monkeys were rebelling, and if this man had also been a monkey they would have driven him mad. He would have had to put them in their place, back where they belonged. He would have insisted, No more four in the morning. | decide.” It was the sixtieth birthday of aman. He came home that night after a long married life of almost forty years, full of quarrels and conflict. But he was surprised when he came home to find his wife waiting for him with two beautiful ties as a present. He never expected it from his wife. It was almost impossible that she would wait for him with two ties as a present. He felt so happy, he said, "Don’t cook the dinner, | will get ready in a couple of minutes and we will go to the best restaurant in town.” The Empty Boat 94 Osho CHAPTER 5. THREE IN THE MORNING He had a bath, got ready, and put on one of the ties she had given him. His wife stared and said, *"What? Do you mean you don’t like the other tie? So isn’t the other tie good enough?” A man can only wear one tie at one time but whichever tie he had chosen, the same would have happened: ”So what do you mean? The other one isn’t good enough?” It is the old habit of quarreling, fighting. It was said about the same woman that every day she would find something to fight about. And she would always succeed, because when you search, you will find. Remember this: whatsoever you are looking for you will find. The world is so vast, and existence is so rich, that if you are really keen to find something, you will find it. Sometimes she found hair on her husband’s coat, and then she would fight about him going with some other woman. But once it happened that for seven days she could not find anything wrong. She tried and tried and there was no excuse to pick a fight. So on the seventh day, when her husband came home, she started screaming and beating her chest. He said, "Now what are you doing? What is the matter, what happened?” So she said, ’You rascal, you have finished with other women and now you are going around with bald women!” The mind is always looking for trouble. And don’t laugh, because this is about YOUR mind. By laughing you may be simply deceiving yourself. You may think it is about somebody else — it is about you. And whatsoever | say, it is always about you. Mind chooses and always chooses trouble, because with choice comes trouble. You cannot choose God. If you choose, there will be trouble. You cannot choose sannyas. If you choose, there will be trouble. You cannot choose freedom. If you choose, it will not be freedom. Then how does it happen? How does God happen, sannyas happen, freedom happen, moksha happen? It happens when you understand the foolishness of choice. It is not a new choice, it is simply the dropping of all choosing. Just looking at the whole thing you start laughing. There is nothing to choose. The total remains the same. In the end, by the evening, the total will be the same. Then you won't be bothered whether in the morning you are an emperor or a beggar. You are happy, because by evening everything has come to the same, everything has been leveled. Death equalizes. In death nobody is an emperor and nobody is a beggar. Death reveals the total; it is always seven. The two arrangements were the same. Remember, the amount of chestnuts didn’t change. But in one case the monkeys were displeased and in the other case they were satisfied. THE KEEPER WAS WILLING TO CHANGE HIS PERSONAL ARRANGEMENT IN ORDER TO MEET OBJECTIVE CONDITIONS. HE LOST NOTHING BY IT. The Empty Boat 95 Osho CHAPTER 5. THREE IN THE MORNING A man of understanding always looks at objective conditions, never at his subjective feelings. When the monkeys said no, if you had been the monkey trainer you would have felt offended. These monkeys were trying to rebel, they were being disobedient, this could not be toler-ated. It would have hurt you inside. You get angry even at dead things. If you are trying to open the door and it resists, you get mad. If you are trying to write a letter and the pen is not functioning well, smoothly, you get angry. You feel hurt, as if the pen is doing it knowingly, as if there is someone in the boat. You even feel somebody is there in the pen trying to disturb you. And this is not only the logic of small children, this is your logic also. If a child bumps into a table, he will hit it just to right the wrong, and he will always be an enemy of that table. But you are the same — with dead things, with objects, you also get angry, you get mad! This is subjective, and a wise man is never subjective. A wise man always looks at the objective conditions. He will look at the door, and if it is not open, then he will try to open it. But he cannot get angry with it because the boat is empty. There is nobody there trying to shut the door, resisting your efforts. In order to meet objective conditions the trainer changed his personal arrangement. He looked at the monkeys and their minds, he didn’t feel offended — he was a monkey trainer, not a monkey. He looked and he must have laughed within, because he knew the total. And he yielded. Only a wise man yields. A foolish man always resists. Foolish people say it is better to die than to bend, better to break than to bend. Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu always say: When there is a strong wind the foolish egoistic trees resist and die, and the wise grass bends. The storm goes by and again the grass stands straight, laughing and enjoying. The grass is objective, the big tree is subjective. The big tree thinks so much of himself: ”| am somebody, who can bend me? Who can force me to yield?” The big tree will fight with a storm. It is foolish to fight with the storm, because the storm has not come for you. It is nothing special, the storm is simply passing and you are there, it is coincidental. Monkeys are animals and think themselves very superior animals! They are not offending the monkey trainer. Monkeys are just monkeys. That is the way they are. They cannot look at the total, they cannot add up. They can look only at the near, not at the far — the far is too far for them. It is impossible for them to conceive of the evening, they only know about the morning. So monkeys are monkeys, storms are storms. Why get offended? They are not fighting you. They are only following their own ways, their own habits. So the monkey trainer was not offended. He was a wise man, he yielded, he was just like the grass. Remember this when-ever you start feeling subjective. If somebody says something, immediately you feel hurt, as if it has been said to you. You are in the boat too much. It may not have been said to you at all. The other may be expressing his or her subjectivity. When somebody says, ”You have insulted me,” what is really meant is something else. If he had been a little more intelligent he would have said it the other way around. He would be saying, "| feel insulted. You may not have insulted me, but whatsoever you have said, | feel insul-ted.” This is a subjective feeling. The Empty Boat 96 Osho CHAPTER 5. THREE IN THE MORNING But nobody realizes their subjectivity and everyone goes on projecting subjectivity onto objective conditions. The other always says, ”You have insulted me.” And when you hear it you are also subjective. Both boats are filled, much too crowded. There is bound to be a clash, enmity, violence. If you are wise, when the other says, ”You have insulted me,” you will look at the matter objectively and you will think, "Why is the other feeling insulted?” You will try to understand the other's feelings, and if you can put things right you will yield. Monkeys are monkeys. Why get angry, why feel offended? It is said of Mulla Nasruddin that when he was old he was made an honorary magistrate. The first case to come before him was a man who had been robbed. Nasruddin heard his story and said, ”Yes, you are in the right.” But he hadn’t yet heard the other story! The clerk of the court whispered in his ear, ”You are new, Nasruddin. You don’t know what you are doing. You have to listen to the other side before you give judgment.” So Nasruddin said, Okay.” The other man, the robber, told his story. Nasruddin listened and said, You are right.” The clerk of the court felt confused: "This new magistrate is not only inexperienced, he is crazy.” Again he whispered in his ear, "What are you doing? Both cannot be right.” Nasruddin said, ”Yes, you are right.” This is the wise man who looks at the objective conditions. He will yield. He is always yielding, he is always saying yes — because if you say no, then your boat is not empty. No always comes from the ego. So if a wise man has to say no, he will still use the terminology of yes. He will not say no outright, he will use the terminology of yes. If a foolish man wants to say yes, he will feel the difficulty of not saying no. He will use the terminology of no, and if he has to yield, he will yield grudgingly. He will yield offended, resisting. The monkey trainer yielded. THE KEEPER WAS WILLING TO CHANGE HIS PERSONAL ARRANGEMENTS IN ORDER TO MEET OBJECTIVE CONDITIONS. HE LOST NOTHING BY IT. No wise man has ever lost anything by saying yes to foolish people. No wise man can ever lose anything by yielding. He gains everything. There is no ego, so there cannot be any loss. The loss is always felt by the ego: | am losing. Why do you feel you are losing? — because you never wanted to lose. Why do you feel you are a failure? — because you always wanted to be a success. Why do you feel you are a beggar? — because you always desired to be an emperor. A wise man simply takes whatever is. He accepts the total. He knows — beggar in the morning, emperor in the evening; and emperor in the morning, beggar in the evening. Which is the better arrangement? The Empty Boat 97 Osho CHAPTER 5. THREE IN THE MORNING If a wise man is forced to arrange he would like to be beggar in the morning and emperor in the evening. A wise man never chooses, but if you insist, he will say that it is better to be beggar in the morning and emperor in the evening. Why? — because to be emperor first, in the morning, then to be beggar in the evening, will be very difficult. But this is the choice. A wise man will choose pain in the beginning and pleasure in the end, because pain in the beginning will give you the background, and against it the pleasure will be more pleasing than ever. Pleasure in the beginning will give you a soft background and then the pain will be too much, unbearable. East and West have made different arrangements. In the East, for the first twenty-five years of life every child had to go through hardship. That was the principle followed for thousands of years until the West came and began dominating the East. A child had to go to the master’s house in the jungle, he had to live through every possible hardship. Like a beggar he would sleep on a mat on the floor — there were no comforts. He would eat like a beggar; he would have to go to town and beg for the master, chop wood, take the animals to the river to drink, to the forest to feed. For twenty-five years he led the most simple, austere life whether he was born a king or a beggar — there was no difference. Even the emperor's son had to follow the same routine, there was no distinction. And then when he came to know life in the world, life was so blissful. If the East was so content, this was the trick, the arrangement, because whatsoever life gives it is always more than you started with. The child comes to live in a hut. To him it is a palace compared with lying on the ground without any shelter, crowded. He has an ordinary bed, and it is heavenly. Ordinary food, bread, butter and salt is paradise enough, because there was no butter at the master’s house. He is happy with whatsoever life gives. Now, the Western pattern is the opposite. When you are a student every comfort is given to you. Hostels, beautiful universities, beautiful rooms, classrooms, teachers — every arrangement is made for your medical facilities, food, hygiene, everything is taken care of. And after twenty-five years of this you are thrown into the struggle of life. You have become a hot-house plant! — you don’t know what struggle is. Then you become a clerk in an office, a master in a primary school: life is hell. Then all your life you will be grunting, your whole life will be a long grump, complaining, complaining, everything is wrong. It is going to be so. The monkey trainer said, "Three helpings in the morning and four in the evening.” But the monkeys insisted: ”Four in the morning and three in the evening.” Four in the morning and three in the evening...then the evening is going to be cloudy. You will compare it with the past, with the morning. Emperor in the morning and a beggar in the evening...then the evening is going to be miserable. The evening should be the climax, not miserable. The monkeys are not choosing a wise arrangement. In the first place a wise man never chooses, he lives choicelessly because he knows that whatever happens the total is going to be the same. In the The Empty Boat 98 Osho CHAPTER 5. THREE IN THE MORNING second place, if he has to choose because of objective conditions, he will choose three courses in the morning and four in the evening. But the monkeys said, No. We will choose. We will have four in the morning.” That trainer, the keeper, was willing to comply in order to meet objective conditions. He lost nothing by it. But what happened to the monkeys? They lost something. So whenever you are near a wise man let him make the arrangements, don’t insist on your own. To choose in the first place is wrong, and in the second place, whatsoever choice you monkeys make, it will be wrong. The monkey mind only looks for immediate, instant happiness. The monkey is not worried about what happens later on. He doesn’t know, he has no perspective of the whole. So let the wise man choose. But the whole arrangement has changed. In the East the wise men decided. In the West there is democracy: the monkeys vote and choose. And now they have converted the whole East to democracy — democracy means that the monkeys vote and choose. Aristocracy means that the wise men will choose the arrangement and the monkeys will yield and follow. Nothing can work like aristocracy if aristocracy is run properly. Democracy is bound to be a chaos. The monkeys feel very happy because they are choosing the arrangement, but the world was happier when the choice was with wise men. Remember, kings always used to go to ask the wise men to make the final decision on important matters. The wise men were not kings because they couldn’t be bothered with it, they were beggars, living in their huts in the forest. Whenever there was a problem the king did not run to the constituency to ask the people, "What is to be done?” He ran to the forest to ask those who had renounced all — because they have a perspective of the whole, no attachment, no obsessions, nothing, by their own choice. They are choiceless; they see the whole and decide. THE TRULY WISE MAN, CONSIDERING BOTH SIDES OF THE QUESTION WITHOUT PARTIALITY, SEES THEM BOTH IN THE LIGHT OF TAO. THIS IS CALLED FOLLOWING TWO COURSES AT ONCE. To look at the total means to follow two courses at once. Then it is not a question of four in the morning, three in the evening. It is a question of seven in the whole life. Arrangement is immaterial. Arrangements can be made according to objective conditions, but there will be seven in all, two courses together. The wise man looks at the whole of everything. Sex gives you pleasure, but he looks also at the pain that comes out of it. Wealth gives you pleasure, but he looks at the nightmare that comes with it. Success makes you happy, but he knows the abyss that follows the peak, the failure that will become intense, unbearable pain. The wise man looks at the whole. And when you look at the whole you have no choice. Then you are having two courses at the same time. Morning and evening are together now — four plus three The Empty Boat 99 Osho CHAPTER 5. THREE IN THE MORNING are together now. Now nothing is in fragments, everything has become a whole. And to follow this whole is Tao. To follow this whole is to be religious. To follow this whole is Yoga. Enough for today. The Empty Boat 100 Osho CHAPTER 6 The Need to Win 15 July 1974 am in Buddha Hall WHEN AN ARCHER IS SHOOTING FOR FUN HE HAS ALL HIS SKILL. IF HE SHOOTS FOR A BRASS BUCKLE HE IS ALREADY NERVOUS. IF HE SHOOTS FOR A PRIZE OF GOLD HE GOES BLIND OR SEES TWO TARGETS — HE IS OUT OF HIS MIND. HIS SKILL HAS NOT CHANGED, BUT THE PRIZE DIVIDES HIM. HE CARES. HE THINKS MORE OF WINNING 101 CHAPTER 6. THE NEED TO WIN THAN OF SHOOTING — AND THE NEED TO WIN DRAINS HIM OF POWER. If the mind is filled with dreams you cannot see rightly. If the heart is filled with desires you cannot feel rightly. Desires, dreams and hopes -— the future disturbs you and divides you. But whatsoever is, is in the present. Desire leads you into the future, and life is here and now. Reality is here and now, and desire leads you into the future. Then you are not here. You see, but still you don’t see; you hear, but still you miss; you feel, but the feeling is dim, it cannot go deep, it cannot be penetrating. That is how truth is missed. People keep on asking: Where is the divine, where is the truth? It is not a question of finding the divine or the truth. It is always here, it has never been anywhere else, it cannot be. It is there where you are, but you are not there, your mind is somewhere else. Your eyes are filled with dreams, your heart is filled with desires. You move into the future, and what is the future but illusion? Or, you move into the past, and the past is already dead. The past is no more and the future has yet to be. Between these two is the present moment. That moment is very short, it is atomic, you cannot divide it, it is indivisible. That moment passes in the flicker of an eye. If a desire enters, you have missed it; if a dream is there, you are missing it. The whole of religion consists of not leading you somewhere, but bringing you to the here and now, bringing you back to the whole, back where you have always been. But the head has gone away, very far away. This head has to be brought back. So God is not to be sought somewhere — because you are searching somewhere, that is why you are missing him. He has been here all the time waiting for you. Once it happened that Mulla Nasruddin came staggering home totally drunk, and knocked many times at his own door. It was already half past midnight. The wife answered and he asked her, Can you tell me, madam, where Mulla Nasruddin lives?” The wife said, "This is too much. You are Mulla Nasruddin.” He said, ’That’s right, that | know, but it doesn’t answer my question. Where does he live?” This is the situation. Drunk with desires, staggering along, you knock at your own door and ask where your home is. Really, you ask who you are. This is home, and you have never left it, it is impossible to leave it. It is not something outside you which you can go away and leave; it is your within, it is your very being. Asking where God is, is foolish, because you cannot lose God. It is your within, your innermost being, your very core. It is your existence: you breathe in him, you live in him, and it cannot be otherwise. What has happened is that you have become so drunk that you cannot recognize your own face. And unless you come back and get sober you will go on searching and seeking and you will go on missing. The Empty Boat 102 Osho CHAPTER 6. THE NEED TO WIN Tao, Zen, Yoga, Sufism, Hassidism, these are all methods for bringing you back, to make you sober again, to destroy your drunkenness. Why are you so drunk? What makes you so drunk? Why are your eyes so sleepy? Why aren’t you alert? What is the root cause of it all? The root cause is that you desire. Try to understand the nature of desire. Desire is alcoholic, desire is the greatest drug possible. Marijuana is nothing, Isd is nothing. Desire is the greatest Isd possible — the ultimate in drugs. What is the nature of desire? When you desire, what happens? When you desire, you are creating an illusion in the mind; when you desire, you have already moved from here. Now you are not here, you are absent from here, because the mind is creating a dream. This absentness is your drunkenness. Be present! This very moment the doors of heaven are open. There is no need even to knock because you are not outside heaven, you are already inside. Just be alert and look around without eyes filled with desire, and you will have a belly laugh. You will laugh at the whole joke, at what has been happening. It is just like a man dreaming at night. It happened once that a man was very much disturbed — his nights were simply prolonged nightmares. His whole night was a struggle. It was so painful that he was always scared to go to sleep and he was always happy to get up. And the nature of the dreams was that the moment he fell asleep, under his bed he would start seeing millions of lions, dragons, tigers, crocodiles, all sitting under his small bed. So he dreamed that he couldn’t sleep — at any moment they would attack. His whole night was just a long disturbance, a torture, a hell. He was treated medically, but nothing would help. Everything failed. He was analyzed by psychologists, psychiatrists, but nothing worked. Then one day he walked out of his house laughing. Nobody had seen him laughing for many years. His face had become hellish, always sad, afraid, scared. So the neighbors asked, "What is the matter? You are laughing? We have not seen you laugh for such a long time, we have completely forgotten that you ever used to laugh. What happened to your nightmares?” The man said, ”! told my brother-in-law, and he cured me.” The neighbors asked, "Is your brother-in-law some great psycho-analyst? How did he cure you?” The man said, He is a carpenter, and he simply sawed off the legs of my bed. Now there’s no more space underneath, so | slept for the first time!” You create a space — and desire is the way to create the space. The greater the desire, the more space is created. A desire may be fulfilled in one year, then you have one year’s space. You can move in it, and you will have to encounter many reptiles, many dragons. This space which is created by desire, you call time. If there is no desire, there is no need for time. The Empty Boat 103 Osho CHAPTER 6. THE NEED TO WIN A single moment exists — not even two moments, because the second is needed only by desire, it is not needed by your existence. Existence is completely fulfilled, total, in one moment. If you think that time is something outside you, remember that you are mistaken. Time is not something outside you. If man disappears from the earth will there be time? Trees will grow, rivers will flow, clouds will still float in the sky, but | ask, will there be time? There will not. There will be moments, rather, there will be one moment — and when one moment disappears another comes into existence, and so on. But there is no time as such. Only the atomic moment exists. Trees don’t desire anything, They don’t desire to flower, flowers will come automatically. It is part of the nature of the tree that flowers will come. But the tree is not dreaming, the tree is not moving, it is not thinking, it is not desiring. There will be no time, only eternal moments, if man is not there. You create time by desire. The greater the desire, the more time is needed. But for materialistic desires much time is not needed. That is why in the West they say that there is only one life. In the East, we have desired moksha. That is the greatest desire possible — no other desire can be greater than that. How can you get moksha in one life? One life is not enough. You may get a palace, you may organize a kingdom, you may become very rich and powerful, a Hitler, a Ford, you may become something of this world, but moksha is such a great desire that one life is not enough. So in the East we believe in many lives, in rebirth, because more time, many lives, will be needed to fulfill the desire for moksha. Only then is there hope that the desire will be fulfilled. The point is not whether there are many lives, or only one, but that in the East people believe in many lives because they desire moksha. If you have only one life then how can you attain moksha? Only material things can be attained in one lifetime, spiritual transformation as well is not possible. The desire is so huge that millions of lifetimes are needed. That is why in the East people live so lazily. There is no hurry because there is no shortage of time. You will be born again and again and again so why be in a hurry? You have got infinite time. So if the East is lazy and seems so absolutely unaware of time, if things move with such a slow flow, it is because of the concept of many lives. If the West is so time-conscious, it is because there is only one life, and everything has to be attained in it. If you miss, you miss forever — no second opportunity is possible! Because of this shortage of time, the West has become very tense. So many things to do and so little time left in which to do them. There is never enough time and there are SO many desires. People are always in a hurry, running fast. Nobody moves around slowly. Everyone is running, and more speed is needed. So the West keeps inventing faster vehicles and there is never any satisfaction with them. The West goes on lengthening human life just to give you a little more time to fulfill your desires. The Empty Boat 104 Osho CHAPTER 6. THE NEED TO WIN But why is time needed? Can’t you be here and now without time? Is it not enough, this moment, just sitting near me, no past, no future — this moment in-between, which is atomic, which is really as if nonexistential? It is so small that you cannot catch hold of it. If you catch it, it is already past. If you think, it is in the future. You can be IN it, but you cannot catch hold of it. When you catch hold of it, it is gone; when you think about it, it is not there. When it is there, only one thing can be done — you can live it, that is all. It is so small that you can only live in it, but it is so vital that it gives life to you. Remember, it is just like the atom, so small it cannot be seen. Nobody, not even the scientists, have seen it yet. You can only see the consequences. They have been able to explode it: Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the consequences. We have seen Hiroshima burning, over one hundred thousand people dead — this is the consequence. But no one has seen what happened in the atomic explosion. Nobody has seen the atom with their own eyes. There are no instruments yet which can see it. Time is atomic, this moment is also atomic. Nobody can see it, because the moment you see it, it has already gone. In the time that is taken in seeing, it has gone — the river has flowed on, the arrow has moved, and nobody has ever seen time. You go on using the word time, but if someone insists on a definition you will be at a loss. Somebody asked Saint Augustine, "Define God. What do you mean when you use the word god?” And Augustine said, "It is just like time. | can talk about it, but if you insist on the definition, |am ata loss.” You keep asking people, "What is the time?” And they will look at their watches and reply. But if you really ask, "What is time?” If you ask for the definition, then watches won't help. Can you define time? Nobody has ever seen it, there is no way of seeing it. If you look, it is gone; if you think, it is not there. When you don’t think, when you don’t look, when you simply are, it is there. You live it. And Saint Augustine is right: God can be lived, but cannot be seen. Time also can be lived, but cannot be seen. Time is not a philosophical problem, it is existential. God is also not philosophical, he is existential. People have lived him, but if you insist on a definition they will remain silent, they cannot answer. And if you can be in this moment, the doors of all the mysteries are open. So throw off all desires, remove all the dust from your eyes, be at ease within, not longing for something, not even for God. Every longing is the same, whether for a big car, or God, or a big house, makes no difference. Longing is the same. Don’t long — just be. Don’t even look — just be! Don’t think! Let this moment be there, and you in it, and suddenly you have everything — because life is there. Suddenly everything starts showering on you, and then this moment becomes eternal and then there is no time. It is always the now. It never ends, never begins. But then you are in it, not an outsider. You have entered the whole, you have recognized who you are. Now try to understand Chuang Tzu’s sutra about the need to win. From where does this need arise — the need to win? Everybody is seeking victory, seeking to win, but why does this need to win arise? The Empty Boat 105 Osho CHAPTER 6. THE NEED TO WIN You are not in any way aware that you are already victorious, that life has happened to you. You are already a winner and nothing more is possible, all that could happen has happened to you. You are already an emperor, and there is no other kingdom to be won. But you have not recognized it, you have not known the beauty of the life that has already happened to you. You have not known the silence, the peace, the bliss that is already there. And because you are not aware of the inner kingdom, you always feel that something more is needed, some victory, to prove that you are not a beggar. Once, Alexander the Great came to India — to win, of course. If you don’t need to win you will not go anywhere. Why bother? Athens was so beautiful, there was no need to bother to go on such a long journey. On the way he heard that on a river bank lived a mystic, Diogenes. He had heard many stories about him. In those days, in Athens particularly, only two names were spoken about — one was Alexander, the other was Diogenes. They were two opposites, two polarities. Alexander was an emperor, trying to create a kingdom which stretched from one end of the earth to the other. He wanted to possess the whole world; he was the conqueror, the man in search of victory. And Diogenes was exactly the opposite. He lived naked, not a single thing did he possess. In the beginning he had a begging bowl for drinking water, or sometimes to beg food. Then one day he saw a dog drinking water from the river and immediately he threw away his bowl. He said, "If dogs do without, why not |? Dogs are so intelligent that they can do without a bowl. | must be very stupid to carry this bowl with me, it is a burden.” He took that dog for his master, and invited the dog to be with him because he was so intelligent. The dog had shown him that his bowl was an unnecessary burden — he was not aware. And from then on that dog remained with him. They used to sleep together, to take their food together. The dog was his only companion. Someone asked Diogenes, "Why do you keep company with a dog?” He said, ’He is more intelligent than so-called human beings. | was not so intelligent before | met him. Looking at him, watching him, has made me more alert. He lives in the here and now, not bothered by anything, not possessing anything. And he is so happy that having nothing he has everything. | am not yet so content, some uneasiness remains inside me. When | have become just like him, then | will have reached the goal.” Alexander had heard about Diogenes, his ecstatic bliss, his silent, mirrorlike eyes, just like the blue sky without any clouds. And this man lived naked, he did not even need clothes. Then somebody said, ’He lives nearby on the river bank, and we are passing, we are not very far away....” Alexander wanted to see him, so he went. It was morning, a winter morning, and Diogenes was taking his sunbath, lying on the sand naked, enjoying the morning, the sun showering on him, everything so beautiful, silent, the river flowing by... The Empty Boat 106 Osho CHAPTER 6. THE NEED TO WIN Alexander wondered what to say. A man like Alexander cannot think except about things and possessions. So he looked at Diogenes, and said, ”| am Alexander the Great. If you need something, tell me. | can be of much help and | would like to help you.” Diogenes laughed, and said, ”!| don’t need anything. Just stand a little to the side, you are blocking my sun. That's all you can do for me. Remember, don’t block anybody’s sun, that is all you can do. Don’t stand in my way, and you need do nothing else.” Alexander looked at this man. He must have felt like a beggar before him: He needs nothing, and | need the whole world, and even then | will not be satisfied, even this world is not enough. Said Alexander, ’It makes me happy to see you, | have never seen such a contented man.” Diogenes said, "There is no problem! If you want to be as contented as |, come and lie down by my side, have a sunbath. Forget the future, and drop the past. Nobody is hindering you.” Alexander laughed, a superficial laugh of course, and said, ”You are right — but the time is not yet ripe. One day | would like to relax like you.” Diogenes replied, "Then that one day will never come. What else do you need to relax? If I, a beggar, can relax, what else is needed? Why this struggle, this effort, these wars, this conquering, why this need to win?” Said Alexander, "When | have become victorious, when | have conquered the whole world, | will come and learn from you and sit by your side here on this bank.” Diogenes said, ’But if | can lie here and relax right now, why wait for the future? And why go around the whole world creating misery for yourself and others? Why wait until the end of your life to come to me and relax here? | am already relaxing.” What is the need to win? You have to prove yourself. You feel so inferior within, you feel so vacant and empty, you feel such a nobodiness inside, that the need to prove arises. You have to prove that you are somebody, and unless you have proved it, how can you be at ease? There are two ways, and try to understand that these are the only ways. One way is to go out and prove that you are somebody; the other way is to go in and realize that you are nobody. If you go outwards you will never be able to prove that you are somebody. The need will remain; rather, it may increase. The more you prove, the more of a beggar you will feel, like Alexander standing before Diogenes. Proving to others that you are somebody does not make you become somebody. Deep down the nobodiness remains. It bites at the heart, and there you know that you are nobody. Kingdoms won’t help, because kingdoms will not go in and fill the gap inside you. Nothing can go in. The without will remain without; the within will remain within. There is no meeting. You may have all the wealth in the world but how can you bring it in and fill the emptiness? No, even when you have all the wealth you will still feel empty — more empty, because now the contrast will be there. That is why a Buddha leaves his palace: seeing all the wealth yet feeling the inner emptiness, he feels that all is useless. The Empty Boat 107 Osho CHAPTER 6. THE NEED TO WIN Another way is to go within — not to try to get rid of this nobodiness, but to realize it. This is what Chuang Tzu is saying: Become an empty boat, just go in and realize that you are nobody. The moment you realize that you are nobody you explode into a new dimension, because when one person realizes he is nobody he is also realizing that he is all. You are not somebody, because you are all. How can the all be somebody? Somebody is always a part. God cannot be somebody because he is all, he cannot possess anything because he is the whole. Only beggars possess, because possessions have limitations, they cannot become unlimited. Somebodiness has a boundary, somebodiness cannot be without boundaries, it cannot be infinite. Nobodiness is infinite, just like allness. Really, both ways are the same. If you are moving without you will feel your inner being as nobody. If you are moving within you will feel the same nobodiness as all. That is why Buddha says that SHUNYA, the absolute void, is Brahman. To be nobody is to realize that you are all. To realize that you are somebody is to realize that you are not all. And nothing less will do. So the other way is to move within, not to fight with this nobodiness, not to try to fill this emptiness, but to realize it and become one with it. Be the empty boat and then all the seas are yours. Then you can move into the uncharted, then there is no hindrance for this boat, nobody can block its path. No maps are needed. This boat will move into the infinite and now everywhere is the goal. But one has to move within. The need to win is to prove that you are somebody, and the only way we know how to prove is to prove in the eyes of others, because their eyes become reflections. Looking in others’ eyes Alexander could see that he was somebody; standing near Diogenes, he felt he was nobody. Diogenes would not recognize external greatness. Before him, Alexander must have felt foolish. It is said that he told Diogenes that if God would grant him another birth he would like to be Diogenes rather than Alexander — next time! The mind always moves to the future! This very time he could become Diogenes, there was no barrier, nobody was preventing him. There will be millions of barriers to becoming Alexander the Great because everybody will try to prevent you. When you want to prove that you are somebody you hurt everyone’s ego, and they will all try to prove that you are nothing. What, who, do you think you are? You have to prove it, and it is a very hard way, very violent, very destructive. There is no barrier to being a Diogenes. Alexander felt the beauty, the grace of this man. He said, "If God gives me another birth | would like to be Diogenes — but next time.” Diogenes laughed and said, "If | am asked, only one thing is certain: | would not like ever to be Alexander the Great!” In the eye of Diogenes, Alexander could have seen no recognition of his victories. Suddenly he must have felt the sinking sensation, the deathlike sensation that he was nobody. He must have escaped, run from Diogenes as soon as possible. He was a dangerous man. It is said that Diogenes haunted Alexander his whole life. Wherever he went, Diogenes was with him like a shadow. At night, in dreams, Diogenes was there laughing. And a beautiful story tells that they died on the same day. The Empty Boat 108 Osho CHAPTER 6. THE NEED TO WIN They died on the same day, but Diogenes must have waited a little so that he could follow Alexander. While crossing the river which divides this world from that, Alexander met Diogenes again, and this second encounter was more dangerous than before. Alexander was in front because he had died a few minutes earlier — Diogenes had been waiting to follow him. Alexander, hearing the sound of someone behind him in the river, looked back and saw Diogenes there laughing. He must have become quite dumbstruck, because this time things were absolutely different. He was also naked like Diogenes, because you cannot take your clothes to the other world. This time he was absolutely nobody, no emperor. But Diogenes was the same. All that death can take away he had already renounced, so death couldn’t take anything from him. He was just the same as on that river bank; here he was in this river, just the same as before. So to be nonchalant, to give himself courage and confidence, Alexander also laughed and said, *Great, wonderful! Again the meeting of the greatest emperor and the greatest beggar.” Diogenes replied, ”You are absolutely right, only you are a little confused about who is the emperor and who is the beggar. This is a meeting of the greatest emperor and the greatest beggar, but the emperor is behind and the beggar is in front. And | tell you, Alexander, it was the same at our first meeting. You were the beggar, but you thought | was. Now look at yourself! What have you gained by winning the whole world?” What is the need to win? What do you want to prove? In your own eyes you know that you are a nonentity, you are nothing, and this nothingness becomes a pain in the heart. You suffer because you are nothing — so you have to prove yourself in the eyes of others. You have to create an opinion in others’ minds that you are somebody, that you are not a nothing. And looking in their eyes you will gather opinions, public opinion, and through public opinion you will create an image. This image is the ego, it is not your real self. It is a reflected glory, not your own — it is collected from others’ eyes. A man like Alexander will always be afraid of others because they can take back whatsoever they have given. A politician is always afraid of the public because they can take back whatsoever they have given. His self is just a borrowed self. If you are afraid of others, you are a slave, you are nota master. A Diogenes is not afraid of others. You cannot take anything from him because he has not borrowed anything. He has the self, you have only the ego. This is the difference between the self and the ego — the ego is a borrowed self. Ego depends on others, on public opinion; self is your authentic being. It is not borrowed, it is yours. Nobody can take it back. Look, Chuang Tzu has beautiful lines to say: WHEN AN ARCHER IS SHOOTING FOR FUN HE HAS ALL HIS SKILL — FOR FUN! WHEN AN ARCHER IS SHOOTING FOR FUN The Empty Boat 109 Osho CHAPTER 6. THE NEED TO WIN HE HAS ALL HIS SKILL. When you are playing, you are not trying to prove that you are somebody. You are at ease, at home. While playing, just for fun, you are not worried what others think about you. Have you seen a father in a mock fight with his child? He will be defeated. He will lie down and the child will sit on his chest and laugh, and say, ”! am the winner!” — and the father will be happy. It is just fun. In fun you can be defeated and be happy. Fun isn’t serious, it is not related to the ego. Ego is always serious. So remember, if you are serious, you will always be in turmoil, inner turmoil. A saint is always in play, as if shooting for the fun of it. He is not interested in shooting at a particular target, he is just enjoying himself. A German philosopher, Eugene Herrigel, went to Japan to learn meditation. And in Japan they use all types of excuses to teach meditation — archery is one of them. Herrigel was a perfect archer; he was one hundred percent accurate, he never missed the mark. So he went to a master to learn meditation through archery, because he was already skilled in it. Three years of study passed and Herrigel started feeling that it was a waste of time. The master went on insisting that HE should not shoot. He told Herrigel, "Let the arrow leave by itself. You should not be there when you aim, let the arrow aim itself.” This was absurd. For a Western man particularly, it was absolutely absurd: What do you mean, let the arrow shoot itself? How can the arrow shoot itself? | have to do something. And he continued shooting, never missing the target. But the master said, "The target is not the target at all. YOU are the target. | am not looking at whether you hit the target or not. That is a mechanical skill. | am looking at you, to see whether you are there or not. Shoot for fun! Enjoy it, don’t try to prove that you never miss the target. Don’t try to prove the ego. It is already there, you are there, there is no need to prove it. Be at ease and allow the arrow to shoot itself.” Herrigel could not understand. He tried and tried and said again and again, "If my aim is a hundred percent accurate, why don’t you give me the certificate?” The Western mind is always interested in the end result and the East is always interested in the beginning, not in the end. To the Eastern mind the end is useless; the importance is in the beginning, in the archer, not in the target. So the master said, ”No!” Then, completely disappointed, Herrigel asked permission to leave. He said, ’Then | will have to go. Three years is so long and nothing has been gained. You go on saying no...that | am still the same.” The day he was to leave he went to say goodbye to the master and found him teaching other disciples. This morning Herrigel was not interested; he was leaving, he had dropped the whole project. So he was just waiting there for the master to finish so that he could say his goodbye and leave. The Empty Boat 110 Osho CHAPTER 6. THE NEED TO WIN Sitting on a bench he looked at the master for the first time. For the first time in three years he looked at the master. Really, he was not doing anything; it was as if the arrow was shooting itself. The master was not serious, he was playing, he was in fun. There was nobody who was interested in hitting the target. Ego is always target-oriented. Fun has no target to reach, fun is in the beginning when the arrow leaves the bow. If it shoots that is accidental, if it reaches the target that is not relevant; whether it reaches or misses is not the point. But when the arrow leaves the bow, the archer should be in fun, enjoying, not serious. When you are serious you are tense, when you are not serious you are relaxed, and when you are relaxed you are. When you are tense, the ego is; YOU are clouded. For the first time Herrigel looked...because now he was not interested. It was none of his business now, he had dropped the whole thing. He was leaving so there was no question of seriousness. He had accepted his failure, there was nothing to be proved. He looked, and for the first time his eyes were not obsessed with the target. He looked at the master and it was as if the arrow was shooting itself from the bow. The master was only giving it energy, he was not shooting. He was not doing anything, the whole thing was effortless. Herrigel looked, and for the first time he understood. As if enchanted he approached the master, took the bow in his hand and drew back the arrow. The master said, ”You have reached. This is what | have been telling you to do for three years.” The arrow had not yet left the bow and the master said, "Finished. The target is attained.” Now he was having fun, he was not serious, he was not goaloriented. This is the difference. Fun is not goal-oriented; it has no goal. Fun itself is the goal, the intrinsic value, nothing exists outside it. You enjoy it, that is all. There is no purpose to it, you play with it, that is all. WHEN AN ARCHER IS SHOOTING FOR FUN HE HAS ALL HIS SKILL. When you are shooting for fun, you are not in conflict. There are not two, there is no tension; your mind is not going anywhere. Your mind is not going at all — so you are whole. Then the skill is there. A story is told about a Zen master, a painter, who was designing a new temple, a pagoda. It was his habit to have his chief disciple by his side. He used to draw the design, look at the disciple and ask, ”*What do you think?” And the disciple would say, ’Not worthy of you.” So he would discard it. This happened ninety-nine times. Three months passed and the king kept asking when the design would be completed so the building could start. And then one day it happened that while the master was drawing the design the ink ran dry, so he told the disciple to go out and prepare more ink. The disciple went out, and when he returned he looked and said, "What? You have done it! But why couldn’t you do it in these three months?” The Empty Boat 111 Osho CHAPTER 6. THE NEED TO WIN The master said, "It is because of you. You were sitting by my side and | was divided. You were looking at me and | was target-oriented, it was not fun. When you were not there, | relaxed. | felt that nobody was looking and | became whole. This design | have not done, it has come by itself. For three months it would not come because | was the doer.” WHEN AN ARCHER IS SHOOTING FOR FUN HE HAS ALL HIS SKILL. ...Because his whole being is available. And when the whole being is available, you have a beauty, a grace, a totally different quality of being. When you are divided, serious, tense, you are ugly. You may succeed, but your success will be ugly. You may prove that you are somebody but you are not proving anything, you are simply creating a false image. But when you are total, relaxed, whole, nobody may know about you, but you are. And this wholeness is the benediction, the beatitude, the blessing, that happens to a meditative mind, that happens in meditation. Meditation means wholeness. So remember, meditation should be fun, it should not be like work. You should not do it like a religious man, you should do it like a gambler. Play, do it for fun, like a sportsman not a businessman! It should be fun, and then all the skill will be available, then it will flower by itself. You will not be needed. No effort is needed. Simply your whole being has to be available, your whole energy has to be available. Then the flower comes by itself. IF HE SHOOTS FOR A BRASS BUCKLE HE IS ALREADY NERVOUS. If he is in a competition just for a brass buckle, if something is to be achieved, some result, he is already nervous, afraid. Fear comes in: Will | succeed or not?” He is divided. One part of the mind says, "Maybe you will succeed”; another part says, "Maybe you will fail.” Now the whole of his skill is not available, now he is half and half. And whenever you are divided your whole being becomes ugly and ill. You are diseased. IF HE SHOOTS FOR A PRIZE OF GOLD HE GOES BLIND OR SEES TWO TARGETS — HE IS OUT OF HIS MIND. Go to the market and see people who are after gold. They are blind. Gold blinds men as nothing else does, gold covers the eyes completely. When you are too anxious for success, too anxious for the result, too ambitious, when you are too anxious for the gold medal, then you are blind and you start seeing two targets. You are so drunk you start seeing double. The Empty Boat 112 Osho CHAPTER 6. THE NEED TO WIN Nasruddin was talking to his son in a bar. He said, "Always remember when to stop drinking. Alcohol is good, but one needs to know when to stop. And I’m telling you through my experience. Look over at that corner — when those four people sitting at the table start looking like eight, stop.” The boy said, ”But father, | see only two people sitting there.” When the mind is drunken, vision becomes double. And gold makes you unconscious, drunk. Now there are two targets and you are in such a hurry to reach them that you are nervous, trembling inside. This is the state Chuang Tzu means when he says: ... HE IS OUT OF HIS MIND. Everybody is out of his mind. It is not only mad people who are out of their minds, you are also out of your mind. The difference is only of degree, not of quality, a little more and any moment you can cross the boundary. It is as if you are at ninety-nine degrees. One hundred degrees and you boil, you have crossed over. The difference between those who are in madhouses and those who are outside is only of quantity, not of quality. Everyone is out of his mind, because everyone is after results, goals, purposes. Something has to be achieved. Then comes nervousness, inner trembling, then you cannot be still within. And when you tremble inside, the target becomes two, or even four or eight — and then it is impossible to become an archer. A perfect archer is always the archer who is having fun. A perfect man lives life as fun, as play. Look at Krishna’s life. Had Chuang Tzu known about him, it would have been beautiful. Krishna’s life is fun. Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus, somehow or other look a little serious, as if something has to be achieved — the moksha, the nirvana, the desirelessness. But Krishna is absolutely purposeless: the flute player just living for fun, dancing with girls and enjoying, singing. For him there is nowhere to go. Everything is here, so why bother about the result? Everything is available right now, why not enjoy it? Krishna is the perfect man if fun is the sign of a perfect man. In India we never call Krishna’s life CHARITRA, his character, we call it Krishna’s LEELA, his play. It is not a character, it is not purposeful; it is absolutely purposeless. It is just like a small child. You cannot ask, ’What are you doing?” You cannot ask, "What is the meaning of it?” He is enjoying himself just running after butterflies. What will he achieve just jumping in the sun? Where will this effort lead him? Nowhere! He is not going anywhere. We call him childish and we think ourselves mature, but | tell you that when you are really mature, you will again become childlike. Then your life will again become fun. You will enjoy it, every bit of it, you will not be serious. A deep laughter will spread all over your life. It will be more like a dance and less like a business; it will be more like singing, humming in the bathroom, less like calculating in the office. It will not be mathematics, it will just be enjoyment. HIS SKILL HAS NOT CHANGED, The Empty Boat 113 Osho CHAPTER 6. THE NEED TO WIN BUT THE PRIZE DIVIDES HIM. HE CARES. HE THINKS MORE OF WINNING THAN OF SHOOTING — AND THE NEED TO WIN DRAINS HIM OF POWER. If you feel so impotent, so powerless, helpless, it is because of YOU. Nobody else is draining you of your power. You have infinite sources of power, never ending, but you look drained, as if any moment you are going to fall with no energy left. Where is all the energy going? You are creating a conflict within yourself although your skill is the same. HIS SKILL HAS NOT CHANGED, BUT THE PRIZE DIVIDES HIM. HE CARES. | have heard a story. It happened in a village that a poor boy, the son of a beggar, was young and healthy. He was so young and so healthy that when the king’s elephant passed through the village, he would just catch hold of the elephant’s tail and it would not be able to move! Sometimes it became very embarrassing to the king because he would be sitting on the elephant and the whole market would gather and people would laugh. And all because of the son of a beggar! The king called his prime minister, "Something has to be done. This is insulting. | have become afraid to go through that village, and the boy sometimes comes to other villages also! Anywhere, anytime, he can catch hold of the elephant’s tail and it will not move. That boy is powerful, so do something to drain his energy.” The prime minister said, ”! will have to go and consult a wise man because | don’t know how to drain his energy. He is just a beggar. If he had a shop, that would drain his energy. If he was working as a clerk in an office, that would drain his energy. If he was a master in a primary school, then his energy could be drained. But he has nothing to do. He lives for fun, and people love him and feed him so he is never short of food. He is happy, he eats and sleeps. So it is difficult, but | will go.” So he went to a wise old man. The wise old man said, ”Do one thing. Go and tell the boy that you will give him one golden rupee every day if he will do a small job — and the job is really small. He has to go to the village temple and put the lamp on. He has just to light the lamp at dusk, that is all. And you will give him one golden rupee every day.” The Empty Boat 114 Osho CHAPTER 6. THE NEED TO WIN The prime minister said, *But how will this help? This may make him even more energetic. He will get one rupee and he will eat more. He will not even bother to beg.” The wise man said, "Don’t worry, simply do as | say.” This was done, and the next week, when again the king passed, the boy tried to stop the elephant but he failed. He was dragged along by it. What happened? Care entered, anxiety entered. He had to remember, for twenty-four hours a day he had to remember that he had to go to the temple every evening and put the light on. That became an anxiety that divided his whole being. Even in his sleep he started to dream that it was evening: What are you doing? Go and switch on the light and get your one rupee. And then he started to collect those golden rupees. He had seven, now eight, and then he started to calculate that within so much time he would have one hundred golden rupees — and then they would grow to two hundred. Mathematics came in and the fun was lost. And it was only a small thing that he had to do, to put the light on. Just the work of a single minute, not even that, just a momentary thing. But it became a worry. It drained him of all his energy. And if you are drained it is no wonder your life is not fun. You have so many temples and so many lamps to put on and off, so many calculations to make in your life, it cannot be a fun. The archer’s skill has not changed, the skill is the same, but the archer, when he is shooting for fun, has all his skill available. Now although his skill has not changed, the prize divides him. He cares, anxiety enters, nervousness comes in. He thinks more of winning, now he is not concerned with shooting. Now the question is how to win, not how to shoot. He has moved from the beginning to the end. Now the means is not important, the end is important, and whenever the end is important your energy is divided, because all that can be done is to be done with the means, not the end. Ends are not in your hands. Says Krishna in the Gita to Arjuna: "Don’t be concerned with the end, with the result. Simply do whatsoever is to be done here and now and leave the result to me, to God. Don’t ask what will happen, nobody knows. Be concerned with the means and don’t think of the end. Don’t be result- oriented.” This situation is beautiful and worth linking with Chuang Tzu’s sentences, because Arjuna was an archer, the greatest India has produced. He was the perfect archer. But the end entered his mind. He had never worried, it had never happened before. His archery was perfect, his skill was total, absolute, but looking at the battlefield of Kurukshetra, at the two armies confronting each other, he became worried. What was his worry? It was that he had friends on both sides. It was a family affair, a war between cousins, so everybody was interlinked, on both sides were relatives. All the families were divided — it was a rare war, a family war. Krishna and Arjuna were on one side and Krishna’s army was fighting on the other side. Krishna had said, ’You both love me so you will have to divide half and half. One side can have me, and the other side can have my armies.” The Empty Boat 115 Osho CHAPTER 6. THE NEED TO WIN Duryodhana, the leader of the other side, was foolish. He thought, "What will | do with Krishna on his own? But he has a big army....” And he chose Krishna’s army. So Krishna was with Arjuna and Arjuna was happy, because one Krishna is more than all the world. What can armies do — unconscious, sleepy people? One awakened man is worth all. Krishna became the real help when Arjuna was confused and his mind divided. In the Gita it is said that looking at these two armies he became puzzled. And these are the words he used to Krishna: ”My energy is drained. | feel nervous, | feel impotent, my power has left me.” And he was a man of perfect skill, a perfect archer. His bow was called a GANDIVA. He said, "The gandiva feels too heavy for me. | have become so powerless, my body is numb, and | cannot think and cannot see. Everything has become confused, because these are all relatives and | will have to kill them. What will be the result? Murder, so many people killed, what will | gain out of it? A worthless kingdom? So | am not interested in fighting, it seems too high a price to pay. | would like to escape and become a sannyasin, to go to the forest and meditate. This is not for me. My energy is drained.” Krishna told him, ”Don’t think of the result. It is not in your hands. And don’t think of yourself as the doer, because if you are the doer then the end is in your hands. The doer is always the divine, and you are just an instrument. Be concerned with the here and now, the means, and leave the end to me. | tell you, Arjuna, that these people are already dead, they are fated to die. You are not going to murder them. You are just the instrument which will reveal to them the fact that they have already been murdered. As far as | can see, | see them dead. They have reached the point where death happens — you are just an instrument.” Sanskrit has a beautiful word, there is no equivalent to it in English: it is NIMITTA. Nimitta means you are not the doer, you are not the cause, not even one of the causes, you are just the nimitta. It means the cause is in the hands of the divine. The divine is the doer, you are just a vehicle of it. You are just like a postman — the postman is the nimitta. He comes and delivers a letter to you. If the letter insults you, you don’t get angry with him. You don’t say, ’Why did you bring me this letter?” The postman is not concerned, he is the nimitta. He has not written the letter, he has not caused it, he is not concerned at all. He has just fulfilled his duty. You will not be angry with him. You will not say, "Why did you bring this letter to me?” Krishna said to Arjuna, ”You are just like a postman, you have to deliver death to them. You are not the killer; death is from the divine. They have earned it already, so don’t you worry. If you do not kill them then somebody else will deliver the letter. If this postman will not do it then someone else will. If you are away or on holiday or are ill it doesn’t mean that the letter will not be delivered. A substitute postman will do. But the letter has to be delivered. So don’t you be bothered, don’t get worried unnecessarily; you are just a nimitta, neither the cause of it nor the doer of it, just an instrument. Be concerned with the means, don’t think about the ends, because once you think about the ends your skill is lost. ”You are divided and that is why you are feeling drained, Arjuna. Your energy has not gone anywhere, it has become a conflict — within, you are divided. You are fighting with yourself. One part says go ahead, another part says this is not good. Your wholeness is lost. And whenever the wholeness is lost, one feels impotent.” The Empty Boat 116 Osho CHAPTER 6. THE NEED TO WIN Such a powerful man as Arjuna can say, ”! cannot carry this gandiva, this bow is too heavy for me. | have become nervous. | feel a deep fear, an anxiety arising in me. | cannot fight.” The skill is the same, nothing has changed, but the mind is divided. Whenever you are divided you are powerless; when you are undivided you are powerful. Desires divide you, meditation undivides you: desires lead you to the future, meditation brings you to the present. Remember this as a conclusion: don’t move to the future. Whenever you feel your mind moving to the future jump back to the present immediately. Don’t try to complete it. Immediately, the moment you think, the moment you become aware that the mind has moved into the future, into the desire, jump back to the present. Be at home. You will lose the present. Again and again you will miss it because it has become a long habit; but sooner or later, more and more, you can be at home. Then life is fun, it is a play. And then you are so full of energy that you overflow, a flood of vitality. And that flood is bliss. Impotent, drained, you cannot be ecstatic. How can you dance? For dancing you will need infinite energy. Drained, how can you sing? Singing is always an overflowing. Dead as you are, how can you pray? Only when you are totally alive, a thankfulness arises from the heart, a gratitude. That gratitude is prayer. Enough for today. The Empty Boat AT Osho CHAPTER / Three Friends 16 July 1974 am in Buddha Hall THERE WERE THREE FRIENDS DISCUSSING LIFE. ONE SAID: ”CAN MEN LIVE TOGETHER AND KNOW NOTHING OF IT, WORK TOGETHER AND PRODUCE NOTHING? CAN THEY FLY AROUND IN SPACE AND FORGET TO EXIST, WORLD WITHOUT END?” THE THREE FRIENDS LOOKED AT EACH OTHER AND BURST OUT LAUGHING. THEY HAD NO EXPLANATION, THUS THEY WERE BETTER FRIENDS THAN BEFORE. THEN ONE FRIEND DIED. CONFUCIUS SENT A DISCIPLE TO HELP THE OTHER TWO CHANT HIS OBSEQUIES. 118 CHAPTER 7. THREE FRIENDS THE DISCIPLE FOUND THAT ONE FRIEND HAD COMPOSED A SONG WHILE THE OTHER PLAYED THE LUTE. THEY SANG: "HEY, SUNG HU, WHERE’D YOU GO? HEY, SUNG HU, WHERE’D YOU GO? YOU HAVE GONE WHERE YOU REALLY WERE, AND WE ARE HERE — DAMN IT, WE ARE HERE!” THEN THE DISCIPLE OF CONFUCIUS BURST IN ON THEM AND EXCLAIMED: "MAY | INQUIRE WHERE YOU FOUND THIS IN THE RUBRICS FOR OBSEQUIES, THIS FRIVOLOUS CAROLING IN THE PRESENCE OF THE DEPARTED?” THE TWO FRIENDS LOOKED AT EACH OTHER AND LAUGHED: "POOR FELLOW, HE DOESN’T KNOW THE NEW LITURGY!” The first thing about life is that it has no explanation. It is there in its absolute glory, but it has no explanation. It is there as a mystery and if you try to explain it you will miss it. It will not be explained, but you will become blind through your explanations. Philosophy is the enemy of life. The most inimical thing that can happen to a man is to get fixed and obsessed with explanations. The moment you think you have the explanation life has left you, you are already dead. This seems to be a paradox. Death may be explained, but life cannot be explained — because death is something finished, complete, and life is always an ongoing affair; life is always on the journey, death has arrived already. When something has reached and is finished, you can explain it, you can define it. When something is still ongoing, it means that the unknown is still to be traveled. The Empty Boat 119 Osho CHAPTER 7. THREE FRIENDS You can know the past but you cannot know the future. You can put the past into a theory, but how can you put the future into a theory? The future is always an opening, an infinite opening, and it goes on opening and opening. So when you explain, the explanation always indicates that which is dead. Philosophy has explanations so it cannot be very alive, and you cannot find people who are more dead than philosophers. Life has ebbed out, life has oozed out of them. They are shrunken heads, like dead stones. They make much noise but there is no music of life. They have many explanations, but they have completely forgotten that they have only explanations in their hands, Explanation is like a closed fist. Life is like an open hand. They are totally different. And when the fist is completely closed there is no sky in it, no air in it, no space to breathe. You cannot grab the sky in your closed fist. The fist will miss it. The sky is there, the hand is open, it is available. Explanation is grabbing, closing, defining — life oozes out. Even a laugh is greater than any philosophy, and when someone laughs about life he understands it. So all those who have really known have laughed. And their laughter can be heard even after centuries. Seeing Buddha holding a flower in his hand, Mahakashyapa laughed. His laughter can be heard even now. Those who have ears to hear, they will hear his laughter, just like a river flowing down through the centuries continuously. In Zen monasteries in Japan, disciples still ask the master, ”Tell us, Master, why did Mahakashyapa laugh?” And those who are more alert say, "Tell us, Master, why is Mahakashyapa still laughing?” They use the present, not the past tense. And it is said that the master will reply only when he feels that you can hear the laughter of Mahakashyapa. If you cannot hear it, nothing can be said to you about it. Buddhas have always been laughing. You may not have heard them because your doors are closed. You may have looked at a buddha and you may have felt that he is serious, but this seriousness is projected. It is your own seriousness — you have used the buddha as a screen. Hence, Christians say Jesus never laughed. This seems absolutely foolish. Jesus must have laughed and he must have laughed so totally that his whole being must have become laughter — but the disciples couldn’t hear it, that is true. They must have remained closed, their own seriousness projected. They could see Jesus on the cross because you all live in such suffering that you can only see suffering. If they had heard Jesus laughing, they would have omitted it. It is so contradictory to their life, it doesn’t fit in. A Jesus laughing doesn’t fit in with you, he becomes a stranger. But in the East it has been different, and in Zen, in Tao, the laughter reached its peak. It became the polar opposite of philosophy. A philosopher is serious because he thinks life is a riddle and a solution can be found. He works on life with his mind, and he gets more and more serious. The more he misses life, the more he gets serious and dead. Taoists, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, say that if you can laugh, if you can feel belly laughter that comes from the very core of your being, that is not just painted on the surface, if you can feel laughter that The Empty Boat 120 Osho CHAPTER 7. THREE FRIENDS comes from the deepest center of your being, spreads all over you, overflows to the universe, that laughter will give you the first glimpse of what life is. It is a mystery. In Chuang Tzu such laughter is prayerful, because now you accept life, you don’t hanker for the explanation. How can one find the explanation? We are part of it. How can the part find the explanation for the whole? How can the part look at the whole? How can the part dissect, divide the whole? How can the part go before the whole? Explanation means that you must transcend that which you are trying to explain — you must be there before it existed, you must be there when it has ceased to exist. You must move around it so you can define it, and you must dissect so you can reach the heart. A surgeon can find the explanation, not for life, but for a dead body. All medical definitions of life are foolish because the surgeon dissects, and when he makes a conclusion life is there no longer, it is only a corpse. All explanations are postmortems, life is not there. Now even scientists have become aware of the phenomenon that when you examine human blood, the blood cannot be the same as it was when it was moving in the veins of the living person. Then it was alive, it had a different quality; now when it is in the test tube, it is dead. It is not the same blood, because the basic quality — life — is no longer in it. All explanations are of that type. A flower on the tree is different because life, the shape of life, is flowing in it. When you cut it from the tree, take it to the lab, examine it, it is a different flower. Don’t be deceived by the appearance of it. Now life is no longer flowing in it. You may come to know the chemical composition of the flower, but that is not the explanation. A poet has a different approach, not through dissection, but through love, not through uprooting the flower from the tree but rather through merging with the flower, being with it in deep love, ina participation mystique. He participates with it, then he comes to know something, and that is not an explanation. Poetry cannot be an explanation, but it has a glimpse of the truth. It is truer than any science. Watch: when you are in love with someone your heart beats differently. Your lover, your beloved, will listen to your heart: it beats differently. Your lover will take your hand...the warmth is different. The blood moves in a different dance, it pulsates differently. When the doctor takes your hand in his hand, the pulsation is not the same. He can hear the heart beating but this beat is different. When the heart was beating for a lover it had a song of its own, but only a lover can know the beat, only the lover can know the pulsation, the blood, the warmth of life. The doctor cannot know. What has changed? The doctor has become the observer and you are the observed — you are not one. The doctor treats you like an object. He looks at you as if he is looking at a thing — that makes the difference. A lover doesn’t look at you as an object — he becomes one with you, he merges and melts. He comes to know the deeper core of your being, but he has no explanation. He feels it, but feeling is different. He cannot think about it. Anything that can be thought will not be alive. Thought deals with death, it always deals with dead objects; that is why in science there is no place for feeling. Feeling gives a different dimension to existence, the dimension of the alive. The Empty Boat 121 Osho CHAPTER 7. THREE FRIENDS This beautiful story has many things to say to you. Move step by step into it, and if you reach a conclusion, then understand that you have missed it. If you reach laughter, then you have understood. THERE WERE THREE FRIENDS DISCUSSING LIFE. Chuang Tzu is very telegraphic. As always, those who know will not utter a single word unnecessarily. They live with the essential. THERE WERE THREE FRIENDS DISCUSSING LIFE. The first thing to be understood is that only friends can discuss life. Whenever a discussion becomes antagonistic, whenever a discussion becomes a debate, the dialogue is broken. Life cannot be discussed that way. Only friends can discuss, because then discussion is not a debate, it is a dialogue. And what is the difference between a debate and a dialogue? In debate you are not ready to listen to the other; even if you are listening, your listening is false. You are not really listening, you are simply preparing your argument. While the other is speaking you are getting ready to contradict. While the other is talking, you are simply waiting for your opportunity to argue back. You have a prejudice already there in you, you have a theory. You are not in search, you are not ignorant, you are not innocent; you are already filled, your boat is not empty. You carry certain theories with you and you are trying to prove them true. A seeker of truth carries no theories with him. He is always open, vulnerable. He can listen. A Hindu cannot listen, a Mohammedan cannot listen. How can a Hindu listen? He already knows the truth, there is no need to listen. You try to make him listen but he cannot; his mind is already so filled that nothing can penetrate. A Christian cannot listen, he already knows the truth. He has closed his doors to new breezes, he has closed his eyes for the new sun to rise, he has reached, he has arrived. All those who feel that they have arrived can debate, but they cannot move in a dialogue. They can only clash. Then conflict arises and they oppose each other. In such a discussion you may prove something, but nothing is proved. You may silence the other, but the other is never converted. You cannot convince, because this is a sort of war, a civilized war — you are not fighting with weapons, you are fighting with words. Chuang Tzu says: Three friends were discussing life — that is why they could reach laughter; otherwise there would have been a conclusion. One theory might have defeated other theories, one philosophy might have silenced other philosophies, then there would have been a conclusion — and conclusion is dead. Life has no conclusion. Life has no foolish thought to it. It goes on and on endlessly; it is always, eternally, an onward affair. How can you conclude anything about it? The moment you conclude you have stepped out of it. Life goes on and you have stepped out of the way. You may cling to your conclusion but life will not wait for you. The Empty Boat 122 Osho CHAPTER 7. THREE FRIENDS Friends can discuss. Why? You can love a person, you cannot love a philosophy. Philosophers cannot be friends. You can be either their disciple or their enemy but you cannot be their friend. Either you are convinced by them or not convinced, either you follow them or don’t follow them, but you cannot be friends. A friendship is possible only between two empty boats. Then you are open to the other, inviting to the other, then you are constantly an invitation, come to me, enter me, be with me. You can throw away theories and philosophies but you cannot throw away friendship. And when you are in friendship a dialogue becomes possible. In dialogue you listen, and if you have to speak, you speak not to contradict the other, you speak just to seek, to inquire. You speak, not with a conclusion already reached, but with an inquiry, an ongoing inquiry. You are not trying to prove something: you speak from innocence, not from philosophy. Philosophy is never innocent, it is always cunning, it is a device of the mind. Three friends were discussing life — because between friends a dialogue is possible. So in the East it has been the tradition that unless you find friendship, love, reverence, trust, no inquiry is possible. If you go to a master and your boat is filled with your ideas, there can be no contact, there can be no dialogue. First you have to be empty so that friendship becomes possible, so that you can look without any ideas floating across your eyes, so that you can look without conclusions. And whenever you can look without conclusions, your perspective is vast, it is not confined. A Hindu can read The Bible, but he never understands it. Really, he never reads it, he cannot listen to it. A Christian can read the Gita, but he remains the outsider. He never penetrates its innermost being, he never reaches the inner realm, he moves round and round it. He already knows that only Christ is true, he already knows that only through Christ is salvation; he already knows that only Christ is the son of God. How can he listen to Krishna? Only Christ is truth. Krishna is bound to be untrue, at the most, a beautiful untruth, but never true. Or if he concedes much, then he will say, approximately true. But what do you mean when you say approximately true? It is untrue! Truth is either there or not. Nothing can be approximately true. Truth is, or truth is not. It is always total. You cannot divide it. You cannot say it is true to some degree. No, truth knows no degree. Either it is or it is not. So when the mind contains the conclusion that Christ is the only truth, then it is impossible to listen to Krishna. Even if you come across him on the path you will not be able to listen to him. Even if you meet Buddha you will not meet him. And the whole world is filled with conclusions. Someone is a Chris-tian, someone is a Hindu, someone is a Jaina, someone is a Buddhist — that is why truth is missing! A religious person cannot be a Christian, a Hindu, or a Buddhist, a religious person can only be a sincere inquirer. He inquires and he remains open without any conclusions. His boat is empty. Three friends discussing life.... Only friends can discuss because then it becomes a dialogue, then the relationship is of | and thou. When you are debating, the relationship is of | and it. The other is a thing to be converted, convinced, the other is not a thou; the other has no significance, the other is just a number. The Empty Boat 123 Osho CHAPTER 7. THREE FRIENDS In friendship the other is significant, the other has intrinsic value, the other is an end in himself, you are not trying to convert him. How can you convert a person? What foolishness! The very effort to convert a person is foolish. A person is not a thing. A person is so big and so vast that no theory can be more important than a person. No Bible is more important than a person, no Gita is more important than a person. A person means the very glory of life. You can love a person but you can never convert a person. If you try to convert, you are trying to manipulate. Then the person has become a means and you are exploiting. Dialogue is possible when your | says thou, when the other is loved, when there is no ideology behind it. The other is simply loved, and whether he is a Christian or Hindu doesn’t matter. This is what friendship means — and friends can discuss life because dialogue is possible. ONE SAID: ”CAN MEN LIVE TOGETHER AND KNOW NOTHING OF IT, WORK TOGETHER AND PRODUCE NOTHING? CAN THEY FLY AROUND IN SPACE AND FORGET TO EXIST, WORLD WITHOUT END?” He is not proposing a theory, he is simply raising a question. And remember, you can raise a question in two ways. Sometimes you raise a question only because you have to supply an answer and the answer is already there — you raise the question just to answer it. Then the question is not real, it is false. The answer is already there. The question is just a trick, rhetorical; it is not real, authentic. The question is authentic when there is no answer in you, when you question but you don’t question from an answer, when you question simply to look; the question leaves you empty, just open, inviting, inquiring. ONE SAID: "CAN MEN LIVE TOGETHER AND KNOW NOTHING OF IT...?” We live together and we never know anything of what togetherness is. You can live together for years without knowing what togetherness is. Look all over the world — people are living together, nobody lives alone: husbands with wives, wives with husbands, children with parents, parents with friends; everybody is living together. Life exists in togetherness, but do you know what togetherness is? Living with a wife for forty years, you may not have lived with her for a single moment. Even while making love to her you may have been thinking of other things. Then you were not there, the lovemaking was just mechanical. | have heard that once Mulla Nasruddin went to a film with his wife. They had been married for at least twenty years. The film was one of those torrid foreign films! As they were leaving the cinema his wife said, ’Nasruddin, you never love me like those actors were doing in the film. Why?” The Empty Boat 124 Osho CHAPTER 7. THREE FRIENDS Nasruddin said, ’Are you crazy? Do you know how much they are paid for doing such things?” People go on living with each other without any love because you love only when it pays. And how can you love if you love only when it pays? Then love has also become a commodity in the market: then it is not a relationship, it is not a togetherness, it is not a celebration. You are not happy being with the other, at the most you just tolerate the other. Mulla Nasruddin’s wife was on her deathbed and the doctor said, ’Nasruddin, | must be frank with you; in such moments it is better to be truthful. Your wife cannot be saved. The disease has gone beyond us, and you must prepare yourself. Don’t allow yourself to suffer, accept it, it is your fate. Your wife is going to die.” Nasruddin said, Don’t worry. If | could suffer with her for so many years, | can suffer for a few hours more!” At the most we tolerate. And whenever you think in terms of toleration, you are suffering, your togetherness is suffering. That is why Jean-Paul Sartre says, ”The other is hell’...because with the other you simply suffer, the other becomes the bondage, the other becomes the domination. The other starts creating trouble, and your freedom is lost, your happiness is lost. Then it becomes a routine, a tolerance. If you are tolerating the other how can you know the beauty of togetherness? Really, it has never happened. Marriage almost always never happens, because marriage means the celebration of togetherness. It is not a license. No registry office can give you marriage; no priest can give it to you as a gift. It is a tremendous revolution in the being, it is a great transformation in your very style of life, and it can happen only when you celebrate togetherness, when the other is no longer felt as the other, when you no longer feel yourself as |. When the two are not really two, a bridge has happened, they have become one in a certain sense. Physically they remain two, but as far as the innermost being is concerned, they have become one. They may be two poles of one existence but they are not two. A bridge exists. That bridge gives you glimpses of togetherness. It is one of the rarest things to come across a marriage. People live together because they cannot live alone. Remember this: because they cannot live alone, that is why they live together. To live alone is uncomfortable, to live alone is uneconomical, to live alone is difficult, that is why they live together. The reasons are negative. Aman was going to get married and somebody asked him, ”You have always been against marriage, why have you suddenly changed your mind?” He said, "Winter is coming on and people say that it is going to be very cold. Central heating is beyond me and a wife is cheaper!” This is the logic. You live with someone because it is comfortable, convenient, economical, cheaper. To live alone is really difficult: a wife is so many things, the housekeeper, the cook, the servant, the nurse — so many things. She is the cheapest labor in the world, doing so many things without being paid at all. It is an exploitation. The Empty Boat 125 Osho CHAPTER 7. THREE FRIENDS Marriage exists as an institution of exploitation, it is not togetherness. That is why no happiness comes out of it as a flowering. It cannot. Out of the roots of exploitation how can ecstasy be born? There are your so-called saints who keep saying that you are miserable because you live in a family, because you live in the world. They say, "Leave everything, renounce!” And their logic appears to be right, not because it IS right, but because you have missed togetherness. Otherwise, all those saints would seem absolutely wrong. One who has known togetherness has known the divine; one who is really married has known the divine, because love is the greatest door. But togetherness is not there and you live together without knowing what togetherness is; you live that way for seventy, eighty years without knowing what life is. You drift without any roots in life. You just move from one moment to another without tasting what life gives you. And it is not given to you at birth. It is not hereditary to know life. Life comes through birth but the wisdom, the experience, the ecs-tasy, has to be learnt. Hence the meaning of meditation. You have to earn it, you have to grow towards it, you have to attain a certain maturity; only then will you be able to know it. Life can open to you only in a certain moment of maturity. But people live and die childishly. They never really grow, they never attain to maturity. What is maturity? Just becoming sexually mature does not mean you are mature. Ask the psychologists: they say that the average adult mental age remains nearabout thirteen or fourteen. Your physical body goes on growing but your mind stops at about the age of thirteen. It is no wonder you behave so foolishly, why your life becomes a continuous foolishness! A mind which has not grown up is bound to do something wrong every moment. And the immature mind always throws responsibility onto the other. You feel unhappy and think that it is because everybody else is creating hell for you. ’The other is hell.” | say this assertion of Sartre is very immature. If you are mature, the other can also become heaven. The other is whatsoever you are because the other is just a mirror, he reflects you. When | say maturity, | mean an inner integrity. And this inner integrity comes only when you stop making others responsible, when you stop saying that the other is creating your suffering, when you start realizing that you are the creator of your suffering. This is the first step towards maturity: | am responsible. Whatsoever is happening, it is my doing. You feel sad. Is this your doing? You will feel very much disturbed, but if you can remain with this feeling, sooner or later you will be able to stop doing many things. This is what the theory of karma is all about. You are responsible. Don’t say society is responsible, don’t say that parents are responsible, don’t say the economic conditions are responsible, don’t throw the responsibility onto anybody. YOU are responsible. In the beginning, this will look like a burden because now you cannot throw the responsibility on anyone else. But take it... Someone asked Mulla Nasruddin, "Why do you look so sad?” The Empty Boat 126 Osho CHAPTER 7. THREE FRIENDS He said, ’My wife has insisted that | stop gambling, smoking, drinking, playing cards. | have stopped all of them.” So the man said, ”Your wife must be very happy now.” Nasruddin said, ’That is the problem. Now she cannot find anything to complain about, so she is very unhappy. She starts talking, but she cannot find anything to complain about. Now she cannot make me responsible for anything and | have never seen her so unhappy. | thought that when | gave up all these things she would cheer up, but she has become more unhappy than ever.” If you go on throwing responsibility onto others and they all do whatsoever you tell them to do, you will end up committing suicide. Eventually there will be nowhere left to throw your responsibilities. So it is good to have a few faults; it helps others to be happy. If there is a really perfect husband, the wife will leave him. How can you dominate a perfect man? So even if you don’t want to, go on doing something wrong so the wife can dominate you and feel happy! Where there is a perfect husband there is bound to be divorce. Find a perfect man and you will all be against him, because you cannot condemn, you cannot say anything wrong about him. Our minds love to throw responsibility onto somebody else. Our minds want to com-plain. It makes us feel good, because then we are not responsible, we are unburdened. But this unburdening is very costly. You are not really unburdened, you are getting more and more burdened. Only you are not alert. People have lived for seventy years, and for many many lives, without knowing what life is. They were not mature, they were not integrated, they were not centered. They lived on the periphery. If your periphery meets the other's periphery a clash happens, and if you go on being concerned that the other person is wrong, you remain on the periphery. Once you realize, ”| am responsible for my being; whatsoever has happened, | am the cause, | have done it,’ suddenly your consciousness shifts from the periphery to the center. Now you become, for the first time, the center of your world. Now much can be done...because whatsoever you don’t like, you can drop; whatsoever you like, you can adopt; whatsoever you feel is true, you can follow, and whatsoever you feel is untrue, you need not follow, because you are now centered and rooted in yourself. One friend asked: "CAN MEN LIVE TOGETHER AND KNOW NOTHING OF IT, WORK TOGETHER AND PRODUCE NOTHING? CAN THEY FLY AROUND IN SPACE AND FORGET TO EXIST, WORLD WITHOUT END?” THE THREE FRIENDS LOOKED AT EACH OTHER..... The Empty Boat 127 Osho CHAPTER 7. THREE FRIENDS Only friends look at each other. When there is someone to whom you feel antagonistic, you never look at him. You avoid his eyes. Even if you have to look at him, your look is vacant, you don’t allow your eyes to absorb him; he is something foreign, rejected. The eyes are the doors. You need only look towards a person and you can absorb him, let him melt in you. THE THREE FRIENDS LOOKED AT EACH OTHER..... One friend made the inquiry, the other two were not in any hurry to answer. They waited, they were patient. If there had been any conclusion in their mind, they would have spoken immediately. But they looked at each other. They felt the situation, the inquiry, the heart of the inquiry, the meaning of the question, the depth of the question. Remember, if you can feel the depth of a question, the answer is almost found. But nobody has the patience, nobody is ready to go deep into a question. You ask, but you never really go into the inquiry. You ask for the answer immediately. THE THREE FRIENDS LOOKED AT EACH OTHER AND BURST OUT LAUGHING. The fact, the question, the penetration of it, the depth, the reality, the fact of it, showed plainly that no answer was needed. Any answer would have been foolish, any answer would have been superficial. It is said about Buddha that millions of times people used to ask him questions and he would not answer. If the question demanded a superficial answer, he would not answer; if somebody asked, "Is there a God?” he remained silent. And people are foolish. They began to think that he didn’t believe in God, otherwise he would say yes; or they thought he was ignorant, he didn’t know, otherwise he would say either yes or no! When you ask a question such as, "Does God exist?” you don’t know what you are asking. Do you think this is a question to be answered? Then you are stupid. Can such vital questions be answered? Then you don’t know the depth of it; then this is curiosity, not inquiry. If the man who was asking Buddha was an authentic seeker, then he would have remained with Buddha's silence — because the silence was the answer. In that silence he would have felt the question, in that silence the question would have asserted itself strongly. Against the background of the silence it would have become clearer. A clarity would have come to him. Whenever you ask a deep question, no answer is required. All that is required is to remain with the question. Don’t move here and there, remain with the question and wait. The very question will become the answer. The question, if you go deep into it, will lead to the very source from where the answer also flows. It is in you. Buddha has not answered any real question — and remember that about me also. | go on answering your questions, but | also cannot answer your real questions — and you have not asked yet. Whenever you ask the real question, | am not going to answer, because no real question can be answered, it is not an intellectual thing. Only from heart to heart the transmission happens, not from head to head. The Empty Boat 128 Osho CHAPTER 7. THREE FRIENDS THE THREE FRIENDS LOOKED AT EACH OTHER..... What happened in that look? They were not heads in that look, they became hearts. They looked at each other, they felt, they tasted the question — and it was so real that there was no answer to it. Yes, we live without knowing what life is. Yes, we live together without knowing what togetherness is. Yes, we live, forgetting completely that we exist. We have been flying round and round in the sky without knowing where we are going or why. The question was so real that if any answer had been given, that answer would be foolish. Only a fool would answer such a question. They looked at each other, they really looked into each other, and burst out laughing. Why burst out laughing? The whole situation is so absurd. Really, we live without knowing what life is; we exist without becoming aware of existence, we journey and journey without knowing from where or to what or why. Life is a mystery. Whenever you confront a mystery laughter will arise, for how can you answer a mystery? What is the most mysterious thing in you? Laughter is the most mysterious thing in you. No animal can laugh, only man. It is the suprememost glory of man. No animal laughs, no trees laugh — only man laughs. Laughter is the most mysterious element in man. Aristotle defined man as the rational being. It is not a good definition because reason exists in other animals also. The difference is only of degree, and it is not much. Man can only be defined as the laughing and weeping animal, no other definition will do, because no other animal can weep, no other animal can laugh. This polarity exists only in humanity. This is something mysterious, most mysterious, in man. Anger exists all over, it is nothing. Sex exists all over, it is nothing, it is not so mysterious. If you want to understand sex, you can understand animal sex, and all that is applicable to animal sex will be applicable to man. In that way man is nothing more. Anger, violence, aggression, possessiveness, jealousy, everything exists and exists more purely and simply in animals than in you. Everything is confused in you. That is why psychologists have to study rats just to study man. They are simple, clear, less confused, and whatsoever they conclude about rats is also true of you. All the psychology laboratories are filled with rats. It has become the most important animal for psychologists because it is like the human in so many ways. The rat is the only animal which follows humanity wherever it goes. It is universal. If you find a man in Siberia, there will be a rat somewhere nearby. Wherever he goes, the rat follows — | suspect that rats have already reached the moon. No other animal can exist everywhere like the rat. And its behavior is absolutely human. Understand the behavior of the rat and you have understood humanity. But the rat cannot laugh, the rat cannot weep. Laughter and weeping are two aspects of something which exists only in man. If you want to understand laughter and weeping you have to study humanity; there is no other way it can be studied. That is why | call it the most distinctive quality of the human mind. The Empty Boat 129 Osho CHAPTER 7. THREE FRIENDS Whenever you feel mystery you have two alternatives: either you weep or you laugh. It depends on your personality, your type. It is possible, if they had been different types of personality, that the three friends would have wept. When such a mystery surrounds you, when you encounter such an unknowable mystery that no explanation is possible, what can you do? How can you respond? But laughter is better than weeping because weeping comes when the mystery of death surrounds you. Then you weep. And the question was about life so it was relevant to laugh. Whenever you encounter the mystery of death you weep, you feel the relevance whenever death is there. The question was about life, not about death. So it seems relevant that they should look into each other, into the life that was in each — the life pulsating, the life dancing all around and with no explanation, with no secret book to reveal the keys; life in its total mystery, in its total unknowability. What was there to do? They were not philosophers, they were truthful men, mystics. They laughed, they had no explanation. THUS THEY WERE BETTER FRIENDS THAN BEFORE. This is beautiful! Whenever there is an explanation enmity arises, whenever you believe in something you are divided. Belief creates conflict. The whole world is divided because of belief. You are a Hindu and someone is a Mohammedan, and you are enemies. Why are you enemies? — because of your belief. Belief creates the conflict; foolish explanations, ideologies, create conflict, war. Look at this: if there is no explanation, who is a Hindu and who is a Mohammedan? And how can you fight? For what? Men have always been fighting over philosophies, shedding blood, murdering each other, just for foolish beliefs. And if you DO look into beliefs, you can see the foolishness — not of your beliefs, but of others’ beliefs! Your belief is something sacred, but everyone else’s belief looks foolish! All beliefs are foolish. You cannot see your own because it is so near. Really, explanations are foolish, stupid. | have heard that a flock of birds was flying south for the winter. One bird at the rear asked another, *"How come we always follow this idiot leader?” The other said, In the first place, all leaders are idiots...” otherwise who wants to lead? Only the foolish are always ready to lead. A wise man hesitates. Life is so mysterious — it is not a readymade path. How can you lead? A wise man hesitates and an idiot is always ready to lead. ”...And in the second place, he has got the map, so every year we have to follow him.” Life has no map and there is no possibility of making a map. It is a pathless path. Without explanations how can you be divided? If there is no explanation, the world will be one. But there are millions of explanations, millions of fragments. Chuang Tzu says a really very penetrating thing: The Empty Boat 130 Osho CHAPTER 7. THREE FRIENDS THEY HAD NO EXPLANATION, THUS THEY WERE BETTER FRIENDS THAN BEFORE. Now there was nothing to be enemies about, nothing to fight over. They laughed, and the laughter made them one. They laughed, and the laughter led them into a togetherness. Explain and you are divided, become philosophical and you are separated from others, become a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Buddhist, then all others are enemies. Look at the mystery and laugh, and humanity is one. And then there is no need to say that Christians are brothers of Hindus, Hindus are brothers of Mohammedans. First divide them, make them ill with be-liefs, and then supply this medicine: you are all brothers. And have you seen brothers? They fight more than enemies! So what is the use of making them brothers? Man fights for his explanations. All fights are foolish. Man fights for his flags, and look at the flags! What type of foolishness, what type of madness exists in the world? For flags, for symbols, for beliefs, for ideologies? Says Chuang Tzu: THEY HAD NO EXPLANATION...they laughed. In that mysterious moment they became one, better friends than before. If you really want to be a friend, have no explanations and no conclusions, don’t believe in anything. And then you are not divided, then humanity is one, then there is no barrier. And love exists not through mind, it exists through feeling. They laughed. Laughter comes from the heart, laughter comes from the belly, laughter comes from the total being. When three people laugh, they become friends. When three people weep, they become friends. When three people debate, they become enemies. THEN ONE FRIEND DIED. CONFUCIUS SENT A DISCIPLE TO HELP THE OTHER TWO CHANT HIS OBSEQUIES. Confucius is the man of manners par excellence. Nobody can transcend him. So he is always the butt of Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu. They bring Confucius into their stories just to laugh at his foolishness. What was his foolishness? He lived by a system, he lived by a form-ula, by theories and beliefs. He was the perfectly civilized man, the most perfect gentleman the world has ever known. He moves, and he moves according to the rule. He looks, and he looks according to the rule. He laughs, and he laughs according to the rule. He never moves beyond the boundary, he lives in a constant bondage of his own making. So he is the butt of their laughter, and Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu very much enjoy bringing him into their stories. THEN ONE FRIEND DIED. The Empty Boat 131 Osho CHAPTER 7. THREE FRIENDS CONFUCIUS SENT A DISCIPLE TO HELP THE OTHER TWO CHANT HIS OBSEQUIES. Neither life nor death is a mystery to him. It is something with a place in a system, and some formality had to be followed. So he sent his disciples to see whether the dead man had been disposed of according to the rules, with the right prayer, the right chanting — as written in the books. The dead should be respected. This is the difference. A man who lives through manners is always thinking of respect, never of love. And what is respect in comparison to love? Love is something alive; respect is absolutely dead. THE DISCIPLE FOUND THAT ONE FRIEND HAD COMPOSED A SONG WHILE THE OTHER PLAYED THE LUTE. This was unbelievable! This was disrespectful to a person who is dead! The dead body was lying there, and one friend had composed a song. They loved the other man, and when you love a man you want to give him the last farewell through your love, not through books, not through a readymade song which so many have chanted, so many have used, something already rotten and rubbish. They made up a song of their own, fresh, young. Of course, it was homemade, not produced in a factory, not mass-produced. Just homemade, not very polished of course, because they were not poets, they were friends, and they didn’t know how poetry was created. The meter may have been wrong and the grammar incorrect, but love doesn’t care about grammar, love doesn’t care about meter, love doesn’t care about rhythm, because love has such a vital rhythm of its own, it need not care. When there is no love, everything has to be taken care of because you have to substitute care for love. One was playing the lute — and | know that he was not a lute player either. But how do you say goodbye to a friend? It must come from your heart, it must be spontaneous, it cannot be readymade. That is the point. THEY SANG: "HEY SUNG HU, WHERE’D YOU GO?” The mystery! They did not say, "You are going to heaven.” They don’t know. Otherwise, when someone dies you say, "He has gone to heaven.” Then who will go to hell? No one seems to go to hell. In India, the word for a dead person is SWARGIYA. It means, one who has gone to heaven. Then who is going to hell? They didn’t know, so what was the point of uttering a falsehood? Who knows where this man had gone, this Sung Hu — to hell or heaven? Who knows whether hell and heaven exist? Nobody knows; it is a mystery, and one should not defile a mystery, one should not make it profane, one should not assert falsehoods. It is such a sacred thing, one should not say anything which is not known directly. The Empty Boat 132 Osho CHAPTER 7. THREE FRIENDS "HEY, SUNG HU, WHERE’D YOU GO?” — it was a question mark. "HEY, SUNG HU, WHERE’D YOU GO? YOU HAVE GONE WHERE YOU REALLY WERE, AND WE ARE HERE — DAMN IT, WE ARE HERE!” They say, "You have gone to the place from where you came.” This is a secret law: the ultimate can only be the beginning. The circle goes round and becomes perfect, complete, and it reaches the same point it started from. The end cannot be anything else but the beginning, the death cannot be anything else but the birth. The final should be the source, the original. One is born out of nothingness and then one dies and moves into nothingness. The boat was empty when you were born and when you die the boat will be empty again. Just a flash of lightning. For a few moments you are in the body and then you disappear. Nobody knows from where you came and where you go. They don’t claim any knowledge. They say, "This much we feel: Sung Hu, you have gone to the place from where you came, and damn it, we are still here.” So they are not sorry for Hu, they are sorry for themselves, that they are hanging in the middle and his circle is perfect. Whenever somebody dies, have you felt this? Are you sorry for the person who is dead or sorry for yourself? Really, when someone dies, are you sad for him or her, or for yourself? Everybody is sorry for himself because every death brings the news that you are going to die. But a person who can laugh at the mystery of life knows what it is, because only knowledge, real wisdom, can laugh. Where you really were you have gone... "AND WE ARE HERE — DAMN IT, WE ARE HERE!” And we are still in the middle. Our journey is incomplete, but your circle has become perfect. So they are sorry for themselves, and if they weep, they are weeping for themselves. For the friend who has departed they have nothing but a song, nothing but a celebration of the heart. If they are sorry, they are sorry for themselves. This is something to be understood very deeply. If you understand life, if you can laugh at it, then death is the completion, then it is not the end. Remember, death is not the end of life, it is the completion, it is the climax, the crescendo, the peak from where the wave returns to the original source. They are sorry for themselves, that their wave is hanging in the middle. They have not reached the crescendo, the peak, and their friend has reached where he was before. He has reached home. Those who understand life, only they can understand death, because life and death are not two. Death is the peak, the ultimate, the final flowering, the fragrance of life. The Empty Boat 133 Osho CHAPTER 7. THREE FRIENDS Death looks ugly to you because you have never known life, and death creates fear in you because you are afraid of life. Remember, whatsoever your attitude towards life, your attitude towards death will be the same. If you are scared of death you are scared of life; if you love life, you will love death, because death is nothing but the highest peak, the completion. The song reaches its end, the river falls into the ocean. The river came from the ocean in the first place. Now the circle is complete, the river has arrived at the whole. THEN THE DISCIPLE OF CONFUCIUS BURST IN ON THEM AND EXCLAIMED: "MAY | INQUIRE WHERE YOU FOUND THIS IN THE RUBRICS FOR OBSEQUIES, THIS FRIVOLOUS CAROLING IN THE PRESENCE OF THE DEPARTED?” The disciple of Confucius cannot understand them. To him they look frivolous, disrespectful. What type of song is this? Where did you get it? It is not authorized, it is not from the Vedas. MAY | INQUIRE WHERE YOU FOUND THIS...? Everything should be done according to the books, according to The Bible, to the Vedas. But life cannot be according to the books — life always transcends books, it always goes beyond; life always throws books aside, moves ahead. Where have you found this, this frivolous caroling in the presence of the departed? You should be respectful. Someone has departed, someone is dead and what are you doing? This is profane! THE TWO FRIENDS LOOKED AT EACH OTHER AND LAUGHED: "POOR FELLOW, HE DOESN’T KNOW THE NEW LITURGY!” He doesn’t know the new scripture, he doesn’t know the new religion. And that is what is happening here every day — the new liturgy. A man was here just a few days ago, a professor of history, and he asked me, ”To what tradition do you belong?” | said, To no tradition.” He had come here from America to make a film of the meditation techniques, of the camp, of what | say, of what is happening here. The moment he heard that | don’t belong to any tradition, he simply disappeared. Then | don’t belong to history, it is obvious. The Empty Boat 134 Osho CHAPTER 7. THREE FRIENDS Poor fellow, he does not know the new liturgy! Enough for today. The Empty Boat 135 Osho CHAPTER 8 The Useless 17 July 1974 am in Buddha Hall HUI TZU SAID TO CHUANG TZU: "ALL YOUR TEACHING IS CENTERED ON WHAT HAS NO USE.” CHUANG TZU REPLIED: "IF YOU HAVE NO APPRECIATION FOR WHAT HAS NO USE YOU CANNOT BEGIN TO TALK ABOUT WHAT CAN BE USED. THE EARTH, FOR EXAMPLE, IS BROAD AND VAST, BUT OF ALL THIS EXPANSE A MAN USES ONLY A FEW INCHES UPON WHICH HE HAPPENS TO BE STANDING AT THE TIME. "NOW SUPPOSE YOU SUDDENLY TAKE AWAY ALL THAT HE IS NOT ACTUALLY USING, SO THAT ALL AROUND HIS FEET A GULF YAWNS, AND HE STANDS IN THE VOID 136 CHAPTER 8. THE USELESS WITH NOWHERE SOLID EXCEPT UNDER EACH FOOT, HOW LONG WILL HE BE ABLE TO USE WHAT HE IS USING?” HUI TZU SAID: "IT WOULD CEASE TO SERVE ANY PURPOSE.” CHUANG TZU CONCLUDED: "THIS SHOWS THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITY OF WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE NO USE.” Life is dialectical, that is why it is not logical. Logic means that the opposite is really opposite, and life always implies the opposite in itself. In life the opposite is not really the opposite, it is the complementary. Without it nothing is possible. For example, life exists because of death. If there is no death there cannot be any life. Death is not the end and death is not the enemy — rather, on the contrary, because of death life becomes possible. So death is not somewhere in the end, it is involved here and now. Each moment has its life and its death; otherwise existence is impossible. There is light, there is darkness. For logic they are opposites, and logic will say: If it is light, there cannot be any darkness, if it is dark, then there cannot be any light. But life says quite the contrary. Life says: If there is darkness it is because of light; if there is light it is because of darkness. We may not be able to see the other when it is hidden just around the corner. There is silence because of sound. If there is no sound at all, can you be silent? How can you be silent? The opposite is needed as a background. Those who follow logic always go wrong because their life becomes lopsided. They think of light, then they start denying darkness; they think of life, then they start fighting death. That is why there exists no tradition in the world which says that God is both light and darkness. There is one tradition which says that God is light, he is not darkness. There is no darkness in God for the people who believe God is light. There is another tradition that says that God is darkness — but for them there is no light. Both are wrong, because both are logical, they deny the opposite. And life is so vast, it carries the opposite in itself. It is not denied, it is embraced. Once somebody said to Walt Whitman, one of the greatest poets ever born, "Whitman, you go on contradicting yourself. One day you say one thing, another day you say just the opposite.” Walt Whitman laughed and said, ”| am vast. | contain all the contradictions.” Only small minds are consistent, and the narrower the mind, the more consistent. When the mind is vast, everything is involved: light is there, darkness is there, God is there and the devil too, in his total glory. The Empty Boat 137 Osho CHAPTER 8. THE USELESS If you understand this mysterious process of life which moves through the opposites, which is dialectical, where the opposite helps, gives balance, gives tone, makes the background, then only can you understand Chuang Tzu — because the whole Taoist vision is based on the complementariness of the opposites. They use two words, yin and yang. They are opposites, male and female. Just think of a world which is totally male or a world which is totally female. It will be dead. The moment it is born it will be dead. There cannot be any life in it. If it is a female world - women, women and women, and no men — women will commit suicide. The opposite is needed because the opposite is attractive. The opposite becomes the magnet, it pulls you; the opposite brings you out of yourself, the opposite breaks your prison, the opposite makes you vast. Whenever the opposite is denied there will be trouble. And that is what we have been doing, hence so much trouble in the world. Man has tried to create a society which is basically male, that is why there is so much trouble — the woman has been denied, she has been thrown out. In past centuries the woman was never to be seen anywhere. She was hidden in the back chambers of the house, and she was not even allowed in the drawing room. You couldn’t meet her on the streets, you couldn't see her in the shops. She was not part of life. The world went ugly, because how can you deny the opposite? The world became lopsided, all balance was lost. The world went mad. The woman is still not allowed to move in life; she is really not yet a part, a vital part of life. Men move in men-oriented groups — the exclusively male club where boys meet, the market, politics, the scientific group. Everywhere it is lopsided. Man dominates, that is why there is so much misery. And when one of the polar opposites dominates, there will be misery, because the other feels hurt and takes revenge. So every woman takes her revenge in the house. Of course, she cannot go out and move in the world and take revenge on humanity, on mankind. She takes revenge on her husband. There is constant conflict. | have heard that Mulla Nasruddin was saying to his son, "It is none of your business, don’t ask such things. Who are you to ask me how | met your mother? But | will tell you one thing: she sure cured me of whistling.” Then he said, ”And this is the moral of the story: if you don’t want to be unhappy like me, never whistle at a girl!” Why is the wife always in conflict? It is not the person, it is not a personal thing. It is the revenge of the woman, of the female, of the denied opposite. And this man in the house, the husband, is the representative of the whole male world, the male-oriented world. She is fighting. Family life is so miserable because we have not heard what Chuang Tzu says. There are so many wars because we have not heard that the opposite has to be merged. By negating it you invite trouble, and on every path, on every level, in every dimension, it is the same thing. Chuang Tzu says that if you deny the useless, then there will be no use in the world. If you deny the useless, the playful, the fun, there cannot be any work, any duty. This is very difficult because our whole emphasis is on the useful. The Empty Boat 138 Osho CHAPTER 8. THE USELESS If somebody asks you what a house consists of, you will say, walls. And Chuang Tzu would say, just like his master Lao Tzu, that a house consists not of walls but of doors and windows. Their emphasis is on the other part. They say that walls are useful, but their use depends on the useless space behind. A room is space, not walls. Of course, space is free but walls have to be purchased. When you purchase a house, what do you purchase? The walls, the material, the visible. But can you live in the material? Can you live in the walls? You have to live in the room, in the vacant space. You purchase the boat, but you have to live in the emptiness. So really, what is a house? Emptiness surrounded by walls. And what is a door? There is nothing. ‘Door means there is nothing, no wall, emptiness. But you cannot enter the house if there is no door; if there is no window then no sun will enter, no breeze will blow. You will be dead, and your house will become a tomb. Chuang Tzu says: Remember that the house consists of two things: the walls, the material — the marketable, the utilitarian — and the emp-tiness surrounded by the walls, the non-utilitarian which cannot be purchased, which cannot be sold, which has no economic value. How can you sell emptiness? But you have to live in the emptiness — if a man lives only in the walls he will go mad. It is impossible to do that — but we try to do the impossible. In life, we have chosen the utilitarian. For example, if a child is playing you say, "Stop! What are you doing? This is useless. Do something useful. Learn, read, at least do your homework, something useful. Don’t wander around, don’t be a vaga-bond.” And if you go on insisting on this to a child, by and by you will kill the useless. Then the child will become just useful, and when a person is simply useful, he is dead. You can use him, he is a mechanical thing now, a means, not an end unto himself. You are really yourself when you are doing something useless — painting, not to sell, just enjoying; gardening, just to enjoy; lying down on the beach, not doing anything, just to enjoy, useless, fun; sitting silently at the side of a friend. Much could be done in these moments. You could go to the shop, to the market, you could earn something. You could change time into money. You could get a bigger bank balance because these moments will not come back. And foolish people say that time is money. They know only one use for time: how to convert it into more money and more money and more money. In the end you die with a big bank balance but inside totally poor, because the inner richness arises only when you can enjoy the useless. What is meditation? People come to me and say, "What is the use of it? What will we gain out of it? What is the benefit of it?” Meditation...and you ask about the benefit? You cannot understand it because meditation is just useless. The moment | say useless, you feel uncomfortable because the whole mind has become so utilitarian, so commodity-oriented that you ask for a result. You cannot concede that something can be a pleasure unto itself. The Empty Boat 139 Osho CHAPTER 8. THE USELESS Useless means you enjoy it, but there is no benefit from it; you are deeply merged in it and it gives you bliss. But when you are deeply in it, you cannot accumulate that bliss, you cannot make a treasure out of it. In the world two types of people have existed: the utilitarians — they become scientists, engineers, doctors; and the other branch, the complementary — poets, the vagabonds, the sannyasins — useless, not doing anything useful. But they give the balance, they give grace to the world. Think of a world full of scientists and not a single poet — it would be absolutely ugly, not worth living in. Think of a world with everyone in the shops, in the offices, not a single vagabond. It would be hell. The vagabond gives beauty. Two vagabonds were arrested once.... Magistrates and police are the custodians of the utilitarians. They protect, because this useless part is dangerous — it can spread! So nowhere are vagabonds, useless people, allowed. If you are just standing on the street and somebody asks you what you are doing, and you reply, Nothing,” the police will immediately take you to court — because nothing is not allowed! You must do something. Why are you standing there? If you say simply, ”| am standing and enjoying it,” you are a dangerous man, a hippy. You may be arrested. So the two vagabonds were arrested. The magistrate asked the first one, "Where do you live?” The man said, ”The whole world is my home, the sky is my shelter; | go everywhere, there is no barrier. |am a free man.” Then he asked the other, ”And where do you live?” He said, "Next door to him.” These people give beauty to the world, they are a perfume. A Buddha is a vagabond, a Mahavira is a vagabond. This man, this vagabond, answered that the sky was his only shelter. That is what is meant by the word DIGAMBER. Mahavira, the last TIRTHANKARA of the Jainas, is known as digamber. Digamber means naked, only the sky for clothing, nothing else. The sky is the shelter, the home. Whenever the world becomes too utilitarian you create many things, you possess many things, you become obsessed with things — but the inner is lost, because the inner can flower only when there are no outer tensions, when you are not going anywhere, just resting. Then the inner flowers. Religion is absolutely useless. What use is the temple? What use is the mosque? What use is the church? In Russia they have converted all the temples, mosques, churches into hospitals and into schools, something useful. Why is this temple standing without any use? Communists are utilitarians. That is why they are against religion. They have to be, because religion gives way to the useless, to that which cannot be in any way exploited, to that which cannot be made a means to anything else. You can have it, you can be blissful in it, you can feel the highest ecstasy possible, but you cannot manipulate it. It is a happening. When you are not doing anything, it happens. And the greatest has always happened when you are not doing anything. Only the trivial happens when you are doing something. The Empty Boat 140 Osho CHAPTER 8. THE USELESS Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher, has written something very penetrating. He said, "When | started praying, | would go to the church and talk to God....’ That is what Christians are doing all over the world. They talk to God in a loud voice as if God is dead. And as if God is just a foolish entity they advise him what to do and what not to do. Or, as if God is just a foolish monarch they persuade him, bribe him, to fulfill the desires that are in them. But Kierkegaard said, ”! started talking, then suddenly | realized that this was useless. How can you talk before God? One has to be silent. What is there to be said? And what can | say which will help God to know more? He is omnipotent, he is omniscient, knows all, so what is the purpose of my telling him?” And Kierkegaard said, ”! talked to him for many years, then suddenly | realized that this was foolish. So | stopped talking, | became silent. Then after many years | realized that even silence wouldn’t do. Then the third step was taken, and that was listening. First | was talking, then | was not talking, and then | was listening.” Listening is different to just being silent, because just being silent is a negative thing — listening is a positive thing. Just being silent is passive, listening is an alert passiveness, waiting for something, not saying anything, but waiting with the whole being. It has an intensity. And Kierkegaard said, "When this listening happened, then for the first time prayer happened.” But it seems listening is absolutely useless, especially listening to the unknown; you don’t know where he is. Silence is useless, talking seems to be useful. Something can be done through talking; with it you do many things in the world. So you think that if you want to become religious you will also have to do something. But Chuang Tzu said: Religion begins only when you have understood the futility of all doing, and you have moved to the polar opposite of nondoing, inactivity, of becoming passive, becoming useless. Now we shall enter the sutra, The Useless. HUI TZU SAID TO CHUANG TZU: "ALL YOUR TEACHING IS CENTERED ON WHAT HAS NO USE.” This teaching doesn’t seem to be worth much, but Chuang Tzu and his master were always talking about the useless, they even praised men who were useless. Chuang Tzu talks about a man, a hunchback. All the young people of the town were forcibly entered into the military, into the army, because they were useful. Only one man, a hunchback, who was useless, was left behind. Chuang Tzu said: Be like the hunchback, so useless that you are not slaughtered in the war. They go on praising the useless because they say that the useful will always be in difficulty. The world will use you, everybody is ready to use you, to manipulate you, to control you. If you are useless nobody will look at you, people will forget you, they will leave you in silence, they will not bother about you. They will simply become unaware that you are. The Empty Boat 141 Osho CHAPTER 8. THE USELESS It happened to me. | am a useless man. In my childhood days | would be sitting down just next to my mother. She would look around her and say, ”! would like to send someone to fetch vegetables from the market, but | cannot see anyone to send” — and | would be sitting there just next to her! She would say, ”!| can’t see anyone here!” And | would laugh inside myself — she couldn’t send me to the market, | was so useless that she was not aware that | was there. Once, my aunt came to stay, and she was not aware of my uselessness. My mother was saying, ”Nobody is in to go to the market. All the children have gone out and the servant is ill, so what can | do? Some-one has to be sent.” So my aunt said, "Why not send Raja? He is sitting there, not doing anything.” So | was sent. | asked the market vendor there, "Give me the best vegetables you have got, the best bananas, the best mangoes.” Looking at me and the way | was talking he must have thought | was a fool, because nobody ever asks for the best. So he charged me double and gave me all the rotten things he had, and | came home very happy. My mother threw them away and said, "Look! This is why | say nobody is here.” Chuang TZu insists very much: Be alert and don’t be very useful; otherwise people will exploit you. Then they will start managing you and then you will be in trouble. And if you can produce things, they will force you to produce all your life. If you can do a certain thing, if you are skillful, then you cannot be wasted. He says that uselessness has its own intrinsic utility. If you can be useful for others, then you have to live for others. Useless, nobody looks at you, nobody pays any attention to you, nobody is bothered by your being. You are left alone. In the marketplace you live as if you are living in the Himalayas. In that solitude you grow. Your whole energy moves inwards. HUI TZU SAID TO CHUANG TZU: "ALL YOUR TEACHING IS CENTERED ON WHAT HAS NO USE.” CHUANG TZU REPLIED: "IF YOU HAVE NO APPRECIATION FOR WHAT HAS NO USE YOU CANNOT BEGIN TO TALK ABOUT WHAT CAN BE USED.” He said that the useless is the other aspect of the useful. You can talk about the useful only because of the useless. It is a vital part. If you drop it completely, then nothing will be useful. Things are useful because there are things which are useless. But this has happened to the world. We have cut out all playful activities thinking that then the whole of our energy will move towards work. But now work has become a bore. One has to move to the opposite pole — only then one is rejuvenated. The Empty Boat 142 Osho CHAPTER 8. THE USELESS The whole day you are awake, at night you fall asleep. What is the use of sleep? It is wasting time — and no little time. If you live to ninety, for thirty years of your life you will be asleep, one-third, eight hours every day. What is the use of it? Scientists in Russia have been thinking that this is a wastage of labor, of energy. This is very uneconomical, so something must be done about it: some chemical changes or some hormonal changes are nee-ded. Or, even if something has to be changed in the very genes, the very cell, it must be done. We have to make a man who is aware, alert, awake for twenty-four hours. Just think...if they succeed, they will kill! Then they will make you an automaton, just a mechanical device, which goes on working and working, no day, no night, no rest, no work. There is no opposite to which you can move and forget! And they have started many things. They have started sleep teaching for small children. Now thousands of children in Soviet Russia sleep with tape recorders plugged to their ears. While they are sleeping, the tape recorder is teaching them. Throughout the whole night the tape recorder is repeating something or other. They go on listening to it and it becomes part of their memory — sleep teaching, hypno-pedia. And they say that sooner or later all that we do in schools can be done while the child is asleep, and then the day can be used in some other way. Even sleep has to be exploited. You cannot be allowed to be yourself even in your sleep. You cannot even be allowed the freedom to dream. Then what are you? Then you become a cog in the wheel. Then you are just an efficient part of the wheel, of the mechanism. If you are efficient it is okay; otherwise you can be discarded, thrown to the junkyard, and somebody else who is more efficient will replace you. What happens after the whole day’s work? You fall asleep. What happens? You move from the useful to the useless. And that is why in the morning you feel so fresh, so alive, so unburdened. Your legs have a dancing quality, your mind can sing, your heart can again feel — all the dust of work is thrown off, the mirror is again clear. You have a clarity in the morning. How does it come? It comes through the useless. That is why meditation can give you the greatest glimpses, because it is the most useless thing in the world. You simply don’t do anything, you simply move into silence. It is greater than sleep because in sleep you are unconscious; whatsoever happens, happens unconsciously. You may be in paradise, but you don’t know it. In meditation you move knowingly. Then you become aware of the path: how to move from the useful world of the without to the useless world within. And once you know the path, any moment you can simply move inwards. Sitting in a bus you are not needed to do anything, you are simply sitting; traveling in a car or train or an airplane, you are not doing anything, everything is being done by others; you can close your eyes and move into the useless, the inner. And suddenly everything becomes silent, and suddenly everything is cool, and suddenly you are at the source of all life. But it has no value on the market. You cannot go and sell it, you cannot say, ”| have great meditation. Is anybody ready to buy it?” Nobody will be ready to buy it. It is not a commodity, it is useless. CHUANG TZU REPLIED: The Empty Boat 143 Osho CHAPTER 8. THE USELESS "IF YOU HAVE NO APPRECIATION FOR WHAT HAS NO USE YOU CANNOT BEGIN TO TALK ABOUT WHAT CAN BE USED. THE EARTH, FOR EXAMPLE, IS BROAD AND VAST, BUT OF ALL THIS EXPANSE A MAN USES ONLY A FEW INCHES UPON WHICH HE HAPPENS TO BE STANDING AT THE TIME. "NOW SUPPOSE YOU SUDDENLY TAKE AWAY ALL THAT HE IS NOT ACTUALLY USING, SO THAT ALL AROUND HIS FEET A GULF YAWNS, AND HE STANDS IN THE VOID WITH NOWHERE SOLID EXCEPT UNDER EACH FOOT, HOW LONG WILL HE BE ABLE TO USE WHAT HE IS USING?” This is a beautiful simile. He has got the point. You are sitting here, and you are using only a small space, two by two. You are not using the whole earth, the whole earth is useless; you are using only a small portion, two by two. Says Chuang Tzu: Suppose the whole earth is taken away, only two by two is left for you; you are standing with each foot using a few inches of earth. Suppose only that is left and the whole earth is taken away — how long will you be able to use this small part that you are using? A gulf, an infinite abyss, yawns around you — you will get dizzy immediately, you will fall into the abyss. The useless earth supports the useful, and the useless is vast, the useful is very small. And this is true on all levels of being: the useless is vast, the useful is very small. If you try to save the useful and forget the useless, sooner or later you will get dizzy. And this has happened, you are already dizzy and falling into the abyss. All over the world thinking people have a problem: life has no meaning, life seems to be meaningless. Ask Sartre, Marcel, Jaspers, Heidegger — they say life is meaningless. Why has life become so meaningless? It never used to be so. Buddha never said it; Krishna could dance, sing, enjoy himself; Mohammed could pray and thank God for the blessing that he showered upon him as life. Chuang Tzu is happy, as happy as possible, as happy as a man can be. They never said that life is meaningless. What has happened to the modern mind? Why does life seem so meaningless? The whole earth has been taken away and you are left only on the part on which you are sitting or standing. You are getting dizzy. All around you see the abyss and the danger; and you cannot use the earth on which you are standing now, because you can use it only when the useless is joined with it. The useless must be there. What does it mean? Your life has become only work and no play. The play is the useless, the vast; the work is the useful, the trivial, the small. You have made your The Empty Boat 144 Osho CHAPTER 8. THE USELESS life completely filled with work. Whenever you start doing something the first thing that comes to the mind is, what is the use of it? If there is some use, you do it. Sartre sets one of his stories in the coming century, the twenty-first. A very rich man says, "Love is not for me, it is only for poor people. As far as | am concerned my servants can do it.” Of course, why should a Ford go and waste time loving a woman? A cheap servant can do that. Ford’s time is more valuable. He should put it to some greater use. It is possible! Looking at the human mind as it is, it is possible that in the future only servants will make love. When you can depute a servant, why bother yourself? When everything is thought of in terms of economics, when a Ford, a Rockefeller can make so much better use of their time, why should they go and waste their time with a woman? They can send a servant, that will be less trouble. It looks absurd to us hearing this but it has already happened in many dimensions of life. You never play, your servants do that. You are never an active participant in any fun, others do it for you. You go to see a football match: others are doing it and you are just watching — you are a passive spectator, not involved. You go to a movie to see a film, and others are making love, creating war, violence — everything; you are just a spectator in the seat. It is so useless you need not bother to do it. Anyone else can do it, you can just watch. Work YOU do, fun others do for you. Then why not love? Using the same logic, somebody else will do it. Life seems meaningless because the meaning consists of a balance between the useful and the useless. You have denied the useless completely. You have closed the door. Now only the useful is there and you are burdened too much by it. It is a sign of success that if by the age of forty you get ulcers, it shows that you are successful. If you have passed forty and are now fifty and still the ulcers have not appeared, you are a failure. What have you been doing all your life? You must have been wasting time. By fifty you really ought to have your first heart attack. Now scientists have calculated that by forty a successful man must have ulcers, by fifty the first heart attack. By sixty he is gone — and he never lived. There was no time to live. He had so many more important things to do, there was no time to live. Look all around you, look at successful people; politicians, rich men, big industrialists — what is happening to them? Don’t look at the things they possess, look at them directly, because if you look at the things you will be deceived. Things don’t have ulcers, cars don’t have heart attacks, houses are not hospitalized. Don’t look at things, otherwise you will be deceived. Look at the person bereft of all his possessions, look directly at him and then you will feel the poverty. Then even a beggar may be a rich man. Then even a poor man may be richer as far as life is concerned. Success fails, and nothing fails like success, because the man who succeeds is losing his grip on life — on everything. The man who succeeds is really bargaining, throwing away the real for the unreal, throwing away inner diamonds for colored pebbles on the shore; collecting the pebbles, losing the diamonds. The Empty Boat 145 Osho CHAPTER 8. THE USELESS A rich man is a loser, a successful man is a failure. But because you look with the eyes of ambition you look at the possessions. You never look at the politician, you look at the post, the prime ministership. You look at the power. You never look at the person who is sitting there absolutely powerless, missing everything, not even having a glimpse of what bliss is. He has purchased power, but in purchasing it he has lost himself. And it is all a bargain. | have heard that once, after a mass rally, a political leader was screaming at his manager. The manager couldn’t understand it. The leader said, ”| have been cheated!” The manager said, ”! don’t understand, the rally was so successful. Many thousands of people came, and look at your garlands. They have covered you with flowers, count them.” The leader said, There are only eleven and | paid for twelve.” In the end, every successful man will feel that he has been cheated. That has to happen, it is bound to happen, it is inevitable, because what are you giving, and what are you receiving? The inner self is being lost for futile possessions. You can deceive others, but how will you be able to deceive yourself? In the end you will look at your life and you will see that you have missed it because of the useful. The useless must be there. The useful is like a garden, neat, clean; the useless is like a vast forest, natural, it cannot be so neat and clean. Nature has its own beauty and when everything is neat and clean, it is already dead. A garden cannot be very alive, because you go on pruning it, cutting it, managing it. A vast forest has a vitality, a very powerful soul. Go into a forest and you will feel the impact; get lost in a forest and then you will see the power of it. In a garden you cannot feel the power; it is not there, it is manmade. You can look at it, it is beautiful, but it is cultivated, it is managed, manipulated. Really, a garden is a false thing — the real thing is the forest. The useless is like a vast forest and the useful is just like a garden you have created around your house. Don’t go on cutting into the forest. It is okay, your garden is okay, but let it be a part of the vast forest that is not your garden, but God’s garden. And can you think of anything more useless than God? Can you use him in any way? That is the trouble; that is why we cannot find any meaning in God. And those who are very meaning-oriented become atheists. They say there is no God, there cannot be. How can there be a God when God seems so useless? It is better to leave him out, then the world is left for us to manage and control. Then we can make the whole world a market, we can change temples into hospitals, into primary schools. But the uselessness of God is the very basis of all the utility that goes on. If you can play, your work will become pleasure. If you can enjoy simple fun, if you can become like children playing, your work will not be a burden to you. But it is difficult. Your mind keeps thinking in terms of money. | have heard that once Mulla Nasruddin came home and he found his wife in bed with his best friend. The friend was very embarrassed and scared. He said, "Listen, | cannot do anything about it. | am in love with your wife and she is in love with me. And you being a rational man, we should come to some arrangement. It is no use fighting about it.” The Empty Boat 146 Osho CHAPTER 8. THE USELESS So Nasruddin said, "What arrangement do you suggest?” His friend said, "We should play a game of cards, and let the wife be the stake. If | win, you simply leave; if you win, | will never see your wife again.” Nasruddin said, "All right, it’s settled.” But then he said, "Let's have some cash stakes, one rupee for each point, otherwise the whole thing is useless. Just for a wife the whole thing is useless. Don’t waste my time, have some money stakes too.” Then the thing becomes useful. Money seems to be the only useful thing. All those who are utilitarians will be money-mad, because money can purchase. Money is the essence of all utility. So if Buddha and people like Buddha renounced, it was not because they were against money, it was because they were against utility, against the useful. So they said: Keep all your money. | am moving into the forest. This garden is no more for me. | will move in the vast, in the uncharted, where one can be lost. This neat, clean pebbled path, everything known, mapped out, is not for me. When you move into the vastness of uselessness your soul becomes vast. When you go into the sea with no map you become like the ocean. Then the very challenge of the unknown creates your soul. When you are secure, when there is no problem, when everything is mathematically planned, settled, your soul shrinks. There is no challenge for it. The useless gives the challenge. "NOW SUPPOSE YOU SUDDENLY TAKE AWAY ALL THAT HE IS NOT ACTUALLY USING, SO THAT ALL AROUND HIS FEET A GULF YAWNS, AND HE STANDS IN THE VOID WITH NOWHERE SOLID EXCEPT UNDER EACH FOOT, HOW LONG WILL HE BE ABLE TO USE WHAT HE IS USING?” Without God the world cannot continue any more. Nietzsche declared just a hundred years ago that God was dead. He did not realize it, but at the same time he was declaring that we also cannot live any more. He never thought about that, he thought just the contrary. He said: God is dead and man is now free to live. But | say to you: If God is dead, man is dead already. The news may not have reached him yet, but he is dead — because God is the vast uselessness. Man’s world is the utilitarian world, the useful; without the useless the useful cannot exist. God is the play and man is the work; without God, work will become meaningless, a burden to be carried somehow. God is the fun, man is serious; without the fun the seriousness will be too much, it will be like a disease. Don’t destroy the temples, don’t destroy the mosques, don’t transform them into hospitals; you can build other hospitals, you can create other buildings for schools, but let the useless remain there at the very center of life. That is why the temple has been placed in the very The Empty Boat 147 Osho CHAPTER 8. THE USELESS marketplace, in the very center of the town, just to show that the useless must remain at the very center, otherwise all utility is lost. The opposite must be taken into account, and the opposite is greater. What is the purpose of life? People keep coming and asking me this. There is no purpose. There cannot be any. It is purposeless, fun. You have to enjoy it, you can only enjoy it, you cannot do anything else about it. It is not marketable. And if you miss a moment you have missed; you cannot go back. Religion is just a symbol. One man came to me and said, "In India there are five hundred thousand sannyasins. This is very uneconomical. And what are these people doing? They live on others’ labor. They should not be allowed to exist.” In Russia they are not allowed to exist, not a single sannyasin. The whole land has become like a prison. You are not allowed to be useless. In China they are killing Buddhist monks and BHIKKUS, they have killed thousands of them, and they are destroying all the monasteries. They are turning the whole country into a factory, as if man is just the stomach, as if man can live by bread alone. But man has a heart, and man has a being which is not in any way purpose-oriented. Man wants to enjoy without cause and without reason. Man wants to be blissful just for nothing. That man asked, ”When are you going to stop these sannyasins in India?” And he was very much against me. He said, ”You are increasing the number of them. Stop it. What use are these sannyasins?” And his question seems relevant. If he had gone somewhere else, if he had asked some other religious head, he would have been given the answer that they have a use. But he was very disturbed when | said that they have no use at all. But life itself is without use. What is the purpose of it? Where are you going? What is the result? No purpose, no result, no goal. Life is a constant ecstasy, moment to moment you can enjoy it but if you start thinking of results you miss enjoying it, your roots are uprooted, you are no longer in it, you have become an outsider. And then you will ask for the meaning, for the purpose. Have you observed that when you are happy you never ask, "What is the purpose of happiness?” When you are in love, have you ever asked, ’What is the purpose of all this?” When in the morning you see the sun rising and a flock of birds like an arrow in the sky, have you asked, ’What is the purpose of it?” A flower blooms alone in the night, filling the whole night with its fragrance; have you asked, ”What is the purpose of it?” There is no purpose. Purpose is part of the mind, and life exists mindlessly; hence the insistence on the useless. If you are looking too hard for use, you cannot drop the mind. How can you drop the mind if you are looking for some use, some result? You can drop the mind only when you have come to realize that there is no purpose and mind is not needed. You can put it aside. It is an unnecessary thing. Of course, when you go to the market, take it with you. When you sit in the shop, use it: it is a mechanical device, just like a computer. The Empty Boat 148 Osho CHAPTER 8. THE USELESS Now scientists say that sooner or later we will supply each child with a computer which he can carry in his pocket. He need not carry much mathematics in his mind, he can just push the button and the computer will do it. Your mind is a natural computer. Why be burdened constantly by it? When it is not needed, put it aside. But you think it is needed because you have to do something useful. Who will tell you what is useful and what is useless? The mind is constantly sorting out: This is useful, do this; and that is useless, don’t do it. Mind is your manager. The mind represents use. Meditation represents the useless. Move from the useful to the useless, and make this movement so spontaneous and natural that there is no struggle, no conflict. Make it as natural as moving in and out of your house. When the mind is needed, use it as a mechanical device; when it is not in use, put it aside and forget it. Then be useless and do something useless and your life will be enriched, your life will become a balance between use and no use. And that balance transcends both. That is transcendental — neither use nor non-use. "HOW LONG WILL HE BE ABLE TO USE THAT WHICH HE IS USING?” HUI TZU SAID: "IT WOULD CEASE TO SERVE ANY PURPOSE.” CHUANG TZU CONCLUDED: "THIS SHOWS THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITY OF WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE NO USE.” Even the useful cannot exist without the useless. The useless is the base. | say to you, your mind cannot exist without meditation, and if you try to do the impossible you will go mad. That is what is happening to many people. They go mad. What is madness? Madness is an effort to do without meditation, to live only with the mind, without any meditation. Meditation is the base, even the mind cannot exist without it. And if you try, then the mind goes mad, goes crazy. It is too much. It is unbearable. A madman is a man who is a perfect utilitarian. He has tried the impossible, he has tried to live without meditation, and that is why he goes mad. Psychologists say that if you are not allowed to sleep for three weeks you will go mad. Why? Sleep is useless. Why will you go mad if you are not allowed to sleep for three weeks? A man can live without food for three months but a man cannot live without sleep for three weeks. And three weeks is the ultimate limit. It is not for you — you will go mad within three days if you are not allowed to sleep. If the useless is thrown out, you will go mad. Madness is growing every day because meditation is not thought to be valuable. Do you think that whatsoever can be priced, only that is valuable? whatsoever can be purchased and sold, only that is valuable? whatsoever is a market commodity, only that is valuable? Then you are wrong. That which has no price is also valuable. That which cannot be sold and purchased is far more valuable than all that can be purchased and sold. The Empty Boat 149 Osho CHAPTER 8. THE USELESS Love is the basis of sex. If you deprive people of love completely, sex becomes perverted. Meditation is the basis of mind. If you deny meditation, the mind goes mad. Fun, play, is the basis of work. If you deny fun and play, work becomes a burden, a dead weight. Look at the useless sky. Your house may be useful but it exists in this vast sky of uselessness. If you can feel both, and if you become able to move from one to the other without any trouble, then for the first time the perfect human being is born in you. The perfect human being does not know what is inside and what is out — both are his. The perfect human being does not bother about what is useful and what is useless — both are his wings. The perfect human being flies in the sky with both the wings of mind and meditation, of matter and consciousness, of this world and that, of God, of no God. He is a higher harmony of the opposites. Chuang Tzu emphasized no-use so much, uselessness so much, because you have emphasized the useful too much. Otherwise that emphasis is not needed. It is just to give you balance. You have gone too much to the left, you have to be pulled to the right. But remember, because of this over-emphasis you can again move to the other extreme. And that happened to many followers of Chuang Tzu. They became addicted to the useless, they became mad with the useless. They moved too much towards the useless and that was not the point — they missed it. Chuang Tzu emphasized this only because you have become so extremely addicted to use. That is why he emphasized the useless. But | must remind you — because mind can move to the opposite and remain the same — that the real thing is transcendence. You have to come to a point where you can use the useful and the non-useful, the purposeful and the purposeless. Then you are beyond both, they both serve you. There are persons who cannot get rid of their mind and there are persons who cannot get rid of their meditation. And remember, it is the same disease: you cannot get rid of something. First you were unable to get rid of the mind, then somehow you managed it; now you cannot get rid of the meditation. Again you move from one prison to another. A real, a perfect man, a man of Tao, has no addictions. He can move easily from one extreme to another because he remains in the middle. He uses both wings. Chuang Tzu should not be misunderstood, that is why | say this. He can be misunderstood. People like Chuang Tzu are dangerous because you can misunderstand them. And there is more possibility for misunderstanding than understanding. The mind says, "Okay, so enough of this shop, enough of this family; now | will become a vagabond.” That is misunderstanding. You will carry the same mind, you will become addicted to your vagabondness. Then you will not be able to come back to the shop, to the market, to the family. Then you will be afraid of it. In the same way, medicine can become a new disease if you get addicted to it. So the doctor has to see that you get rid of the disease but don’t become addicted to the medicine — otherwise he is not a good doctor. First you have to get rid of the disease, and immediately after you have to get rid of the medicine; otherwise the medicine will take the place of the disease and you will cling to it always. The Empty Boat 150 Osho CHAPTER 8. THE USELESS Mulla Nasruddin was teaching his small son, who was seven years old, how to approach a girl, how to ask her to dance, what to say and what not to say, how to persuade her. The boy went away and half an hour later came back and said, ’Now teach me how to get rid of her!” That has to be learned too, and that is the difficult part. To invite is very easy but to get rid of is very difficult. And you know well through your own experience: to invite a girl is always easy, to persuade a girl is always easy, but how to get rid of her? Then it becomes a problem. Then you don’t go out anywhere, then you forget whistling completely. Remember, the useless has its own attraction. If you are so very troubled by the useful, you may move to the other extreme too much. You may lose your balance. To me, a sannyasin is a deep balance, standing in the middle, free from all the opposites. He can use the useful and he can use the non-useful, he can use the purposeful and the nonpurposeful, and still remain beyond both. He is not used by them. He has become the master. Enough for today. The Empty Boat 151 Osho CHAPTER 9 Means and Ends 18 July 1974 am in Buddha Hall THE PURPOSE OF A FISH TRAP IS TO CATCH FISH, AND WHEN THE FISH ARE CAUGHT THE TRAP IS FORGOTTEN. THE PURPOSE OF WORDS IS TO CONVEY IDEAS. WHEN THE IDEAS ARE GRASPED THE WORDS ARE FORGOTTEN. WHERE CAN | FIND A MAN WHO HAS FORGOTTEN WORDS? HE IS THE ONE | WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO. 152 CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS It is difficult to forget words. They cling to the mind. It is difficult to throw away the net because not only are fish caught in it, the fisher is also caught. This is one of the greatest problems. Working with words is playing with fire, because words become so important that the meaning loses meaning. The symbol becomes so heavy that the content is completely lost; the surface hypnotizes you and you forget the center. This has happened all over the world. Christ is the content, Christianity is just a word; Buddha is the content, DHAMMAPADA is just a word; Krishna is the content, the Gita is nothing but a trap. But the Gita is remembered and Krishna is forgotten — or if you remember Krishna, you remember him only because of the Gita. If you talk about Christ it is because of the churches, the theology, The Bible, the words. People carry the net for many lives without realizing that it is just a net, a trap. Buddha used to tell a story: A few men were crossing a river. The river was dangerous, in flood — it must have been the rainy season — and the boat saved their lives. They must have been very, very intelligent because they thought, "This boat saved us, how can we leave it now? This is our savior and it will be ungrateful to leave it!” So they carried the boat on their heads into the town. Somebody asked them, "What are you doing? We have never seen anybody carrying a boat.” They said, "Now we will have to carry this boat for the rest of our lives, because this boat saved us and we cannot be ungrateful.” Those intelligent-looking people must have been stupid. Thank the boat but leave it there. Don’t carry it. You have been carrying many types of boats in your head — maybe not on your head, but in your head. Look within. Ladders, boats, paths, words — this is the content of your head, of your mind. The container becomes much too important, the vehicle becomes much too important, the body becomes much too important — and then you become a blind man. The vehicle was just to give you the message — receive the message and forget the vehicle. The messenger was just to give you the message — receive the message and forget the messenger. Thank him, but don’t carry him in your head. Mohammed insisted again and again, almost every day of his life, "| am just a messenger, a PAIGAMBER. Don’t worship me, | have only carried a message from the divine. Don’t look at me, look at the divine who has sent the message to you.” But Mohammedans have forgotten the source. Mohammed has become important, the vehicle. Says Chuang Tzu: WHERE CAN | FIND A MAN WHO HAS FORGOTTEN WORDS? HE IS THE ONE The Empty Boat 153 Osho CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS | WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO. A man who has forgotten words, he is worth talking to, because he has the innermost reality, the center of being within him. He has the message. His silence is pregnant. Your talking is impotent. What are you doing when you talk? You are not saying anything in particular. You have got no message, nothing is to be delivered. Your words are empty, they don’t contain anything, they don’t carry anything. They are just symbols. And when you are talking you are simply throwing out your rubbish. It may be a good catharsis for you, but it can be dangerous for the other. And how can you talk with a person who is filled with words? Impossible. The words don’t leave room. The words don’t give a door, an opening. The words are too much, you cannot penetrate. To talk with a man who is filled with words is almost impossible. He cannot listen, because for listening one should be silent, for listening one should be receptive. Words don’t allow that — words are aggressive, they are never receptive. You can talk but you cannot listen, and if you cannot listen, your talk is the talk of a madman. You are talking not knowing why, you are talking not knowing what. You go on talking because it gives you a sort of release. You feel good after having a good chitchat. You feel good because you are relieved: your talking is part of your tensions. It is not coming from you, it is just a disturbance; it is not a song, it has no beauty of its own. That is why whenever you talk you simply bore the other. But why is he listening? He is not listening, he is just waiting to bore you, just waiting for the right moment when he can take the reins in his hands. | have heard, it happened once that a great politician, a leader, was speaking, and he spoke and spoke and it was getting near midnight. By and by the audience left until only one person was left in the hall. The leader thanked him and said, ’You seem to be the only lover of truth, the only authentic follower. | feel grateful. When everyone else has left, you are still here.” The man said, Don’t be deceived, | am the next speaker.” When you listen, you are listening because you are the next speaker. You can tolerate the man — this is a bargain. If you want to bore others you have to allow them to bore you. Really, when you say that a certain person is a bore, you mean that the person will not give you any opportunity to be the next speaker. He goes on and on and you cannot find a gap from where you can enter to start boring. That person looks like a bore to you, but every mind filled with words is a bore. When will you realize this? Why is a person bored? — because there are only words, no fish in them, only traps...useless, meaningless, there is no content. It is like a rattling of something, a noise; no meaning is carried. Whenever there is meaning it is beautiful; whenever there is meaning you grow through it; whenever there is meaning, when you encounter a man who has meaning, it gives you a new upsurge of energy. It is not a wastage, it is a learning, it is an experience. Rare and difficult it is to find a man who is silent. If you can find a man who is silent and persuade him to talk to you, you will gain much — because when the mind is not filled with words, the heart speaks to the heart. When everything comes out of silence, when a word is born out of silence, it is beautiful, it is alive, it shares something with you. When a word comes only out of the crowd of words, it is mad, it can madden you. The Empty Boat 154 Osho CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS A small boy of five was asked by his teacher, "Has your younger sister learned to talk yet?” The boy said, ”Yes, she has learned to talk — and now we are teaching her to be quiet.” This is the misery. You have to teach words, it is part of life, and then you have to learn how to be silent, and how to be wordless. Universities, parents, teachers, they teach you words, and then you have to find a master who can teach you how to keep quiet. A German scholar came to Ramana Maharshi and said, ”| have come from very far away to learn something from you.” Ramana laughed and said, "Then you have come to the wrong place. Go to some university, some scholar, some great pundit; there you will be able to learn. If you come to me then be aware that learning is not possible here, we teach only unlearning. | can teach you how to unlearn, how to throw words away, to create space within you. And that space is divine, that space is God.” Where are you seeking? In words, in scriptures? Then one day or other you will become an atheist. A pundit, a scholar, cannot remain a theist for long. Remember, howsoever he knows, whatsoever he knows about The Bible and the Gita and the Koran, a scholar is bound to become an atheist one day because that is the logical consequence of gathering words. Sooner or later he will ask: Where is God? No Bible can reply, no Gita can supply the answer. Rather, Bibles and Gitas and Korans, when they are too much on your mind, will make you miss the divine because the whole of your mind space is filled...there is too much furniture in you. God cannot move. God may not be able to make any contact with you if the mind is too wordy. Then it is impossible to listen, and if you cannot listen, how can you pray? It is impossible to wait, words are too impatient, they are knocking from within to get out. | have heard: Once it happened that at three o’clock one morning Mulla Nasruddin phoned the bartender and said, *What time is the bar going to open?” The bartender said, ”This is no time to inquire such a thing. You are a regular customer, Nasruddin, and you know that we don’t open before nine in the morning. Go back to sleep and wait until nine.” But ten minutes later he phoned again and said, ’This is urgent. Tell me when the bar is going to open.” Now the bartender felt annoyed. He said, ’What do you think you are doing? | told you not a single minute before nine. And don’t keep phoning me.” But ten minutes later he phoned again. The bartender said, "Have you gone mad? You will have to wait until nine. Nasruddin said, ”You don’t understand. | am locked in the saloon and | want to get out!” If your mind is too burdened with words, theories, scriptures, they will keep knocking: Give way, we want to get out! And when the mind wants to get out, God cannot enter in you. When the mind The Empty Boat 155 Osho CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS wants to get out, it is not open for anything that is incoming. It is closed, it is a one-way traffic — double traffic is not possible. When you are aggressive through words going out, nothing can penetrate you, neither love, nor meditation, nor God. And all that is beautiful happens as an ingoing process. When you are silent, no words knocking within to get out, when you are waiting — in that moment of waiting beauty happens, love happens, prayer happens, God happens. But if a man is too addicted to words, he will miss it all. In the end he will have a long collection of words and theories, logic, everything — but nothing is worthwhile because the content is missing. You have the net, the trap, but no fish are there. If you had really caught the fish you would have thrown away the net immediately. Who bothers? If you have really used the ladder, you forget it. Who thinks about it? You have transcended it, it has been used. So whenever a man really comes to know, knowledge is forgotten. That is what we call wisdom. A wise man is one who has been able to unlearn the knowledge. He simply drops all that is nonessential. Says Chuang Tzu: WHERE CAN | FIND A MAN WHO HAS FORGOTTEN WORDS? HE IS THE ONE | WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO. He is worth talking to. It may not be so easy to persuade him to talk, but just to be near him, just to sit by his side will be a communion, will be a communication, the deepest that is possible. Two hearts will melt into each other. But why this addiction to words? — because the symbol appears to be the real. And if it is repeated again and again, through repetition you become autohypnotized. Repeat anything, and by and by you will forget that you don’t know. The repetition will give you the feeling that you know. If you go to the temple for the first time, you go in ignorance. It is hypothetical whether this temple really contains anything, whether God is there or not. But go every day, again and again, and go on repeating the ritual, the prayers; and whatsoever the priest says, go on doing it day after day, year after year. You will forget the hypothetical state of mind that was there in the beginning. With continuous repetitions the thing goes into the mind and you start feeling that this is the temple, God lives here, this is the abode of God. Now you have moved into the world of appearance. That is why every religion insists on teaching children as young as possible, because once you miss childhood it is very difficult to convert people to foolish things, very difficult. Psychologists say that everybody should be caught before the age of seven. The child can be conditioned to be a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian or anything, a communist, theist or atheist, it doesn’t make any difference — but grab the child before seven. Up to the age of seven the child learns almost fifty percent of all he will ever learn in his whole life. The Empty Boat 156 Osho CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS And this fifty percent is very meaningful because it becomes the base. He will learn many things, he will create a great structure of knowledge, but all that structure will be based on the knowledge that he received when he was a child. And at this time, before the age of seven, the child has got no logic, no argumentativeness. He is trusting, exploring; he is believing. He cannot disbelieve, because he does not know what belief, what disbelief, is. When the child is born, he has no mind to argue. He does not know what argument is. Whatsoever you say appears true to him, and if you repeat it the child is hypnotized. That is how all the religions have exploited humanity. The child has to be forced to conform to a pattern, and once the pattern is deeply rooted, nothing can be done. Even if later on the child changes his religion, nothing much will change. On the contrary, his Christianity will be just like Hinduism, because of the base. It happened, there was once a tribe of cannibals near the Amazon. By and by, they killed most of their own members until only two hundred or so remained. They had killed and eaten each other. A missionary went there to work. The chief of the tribe spoke to him in perfect English. The missionary was surprised and said, "What! You speak such perfect English, and with a perfect Oxford accent, but you are still a cannibal?” The man said, ”Yes, | have been to Oxford, and | have learned much. Yes, we are still cannibals, but now | use a knife and fork. | have learned that at Oxford.” This much change happens — nothing much. Convert a Hindu to Christianity and his Christianity will be just like Hinduism. Convert a Christian to Hinduism; he will remain a Christian deep down, because you cannot change the base. You cannot make him a child again, you cannot make him innocent. That moment is lost. If this earth is ever going to be really religious then we will not teach Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism: that is one of the greatest crimes committed. We will teach prayer, we will teach meditation, but not sects. We will not teach words and beliefs, we will teach a way of life, we will teach happiness, we will teach ecstasy. We will teach how to look at the trees, how to dance with the trees, how to be more sensitive, how to be more alive and how to enjoy the blessings that God has given...but not words, not beliefs, not philosophies, not theologies. No, we will not lead them to a church or to a temple or to a mosque, because these places are the sources of corruption. They have corrupted the mind. We will leave the children to nature; that is the temple, the real church. We will teach children to look at the floating clouds, at the rising sun, at the moon at night. We will teach them how to love, and we will teach them not to create barriers against love, meditation, prayer; we will teach them to be open and vulnerable, we will not close their minds. And we will of course teach words but simultaneously we will teach silence, because once words get into the base, silence becomes difficult. You come to me, your problem is this: at the base there are words and now you are trying to meditate and be silent — and the base is always there. Whenever you are silent the base starts functioning. So you become aware of too much thinking when you meditate — even more than you feel ordinarily. Why? What is happening? When you are silent you go inwards and you become more sensitive to the inner nonsense that goes on and on. When you are not in meditation you are outward-going, The Empty Boat 157 Osho CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS extrovert; you are involved with the world and you cannot listen to the inner noise that goes on. Your mind is not there. The noise is continuously there but you cannot hear it, you are occupied. But whenever you close your eyes and look within, the madhouse opens. You can see and feel and hear, and then you become afraid and scared. What is happening? And you thought that through meditation you would become more silent! And this is happening — just the opposite! In the beginning it is bound to happen because a wrong base has been given to you. The whole society, your parents, your teachers, your universities, your culture, have given you a wrong base. You have already been corrupted, your source is poisoned. That is the problem — how to depoison you. It takes time, and one of the most difficult things is to get rid of all that you have known, to unlearn. Says Chuang Tzu: WHERE CAN | FIND A MAN WHO HAS FORGOTTEN WORDS? HE IS THE ONE | WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO. Only a sage is worth talking to. Only a sage is worth listening to. Only a sage is worth living with. What is a sage? An empty boat — no words inside, the empty sky without the clouds. No sound, no noise, nobody mad, no chaos within, a continuous harmony, equilibrium, balance. He lives as if he is not. He is as if he is absent. He moves, but nothing moves within him. He talks, but the inner silence is there. It is never disturbed; he uses words, but those words are only vehicles — through those words he is sending you something which is beyond words. And if you catch and grab the words, you will miss. When you listen to a sage, don’t listen to his words; they are secondary, they are superficial, they are only peripheral. Listen to him, don’t listen to his words. When the words reach you, just put them aside, as the traveler will do who has crossed the sea — he leaves the boat there and goes on. Leave the boat there and go on. If you carry the boat, you are mad. Then your whole life will become a burden, you are burdened by the boat. A boat is not to be carried on the head. Feel grateful, that is okay, but carrying the boat on your head is too much. How many boats are you carrying on your head? Your whole life has become static because of the weight. You cannot fly, you cannot float, because you are carrying such a dead burden, not only from one life, this life, but from many lives. You go on collecting all that is useless, futile. Why does this happen? There must be some deep reason, otherwise everybody would not be doing it. Why does it happen? In the first place, you think the word is the reality — the word god is God, the word love is love — the word is real. The word is NOT the real. You have to make a distinction, a The Empty Boat 158 Osho CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS clear-cut distinction, that the word is not the real. The word only symbolizes, indicates; it is not the real. Once you are trapped into believing that the word is the real, then when someone says, ”! love you,” you will be frustrated. Because he says he loves you, you believe he loves you — for you the word is the real. If you cannot see the wordless reality you will be frustrated in all your paths in life, everywhere you will be frustrated because you will take the word for reality. Many people come to me and say, "This girl loved me, she said it herself.” "This man loved me and now the love has disappeared.” They were both deceived by words. Dale Carnegie suggests that even if you have been married for twenty years, don’t forget to keep using the same words you used when you were courting your wife — continue. Every morning say the same as you did when you were courting. Don’t drop those words. Every day say, "Nobody exists like you. You are the most beautiful person in the world, and | will die without you.” Dale Carnegie says that even if you don’t feel it, go on saying it, because words are realities. And the wife will be deceived and the husband will be deceived, because we live by words alone. You don’t know anything else, you don’t know anything real. How can you be in contact with reality? When someone says, ”! love you” — finished! When someone says, ”! hate you” — finished! Put aside the words and look at the person. When someone says, ”! love you,” don’t get entangled with the words, put them aside. Look at the person, at his or her totality. Then nobody can deceive you. Love is such a fire you will be able to see it, you will be able to touch it, you will be able to know whether it is there or not. Love cannot be hidden. If it is there, really, words are not needed. When somebody really loves you, he will not say, ”I love you.” It is not needed. Love is enough unto itself — it needs no salesmanship. It doesn’t need anybody to persuade, to convince; it is enough, it is a fire. Nothing is more fiery than love, it is a flame. And when there is a flame in the dark you need not say anything about it. It is there. No advertisement is needed, no propaganda is needed. Try to separate words from reality. In your day-to-day life when someone says, ”! hate you,” don’t believe the word. This may be just a momentary thing, it may be just a phase. Don’t go for the word, otherwise you will make an enemy for life. As you have made friends because of words so you have made enemies because of words. Don’t go for the words, look into the person, look into the eyes, feel the whole — it may be just a momentary reaction. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it will be just a momentary thing. He feels hurt by something, he reacts and says, ”! hate you.” Wait, don’t decide, don’t say, "This is an enemy.” If you say that, you are not only deceived by others’ words, you are also deceived by your own. If you say, ”This is an enemy,’ now this word will cling. And even if he changes tomorrow, you will not be so ready or so willing to change, you will carry it within you. And then through your insistence you will create an enemy. Your enemies are false, your friends are false, because words are not reality. Words can do only one thing: if you go on repeating them they give you the appearance of reality. Says Adolf Hitler in his autobiography, Mein Kampf: | know only one difference between the truth and the lie — that is, a lie repeated many times becomes true. And he knows by experience, he says that he did it — he continuously repeated lies, and went on and on repeating them. The Empty Boat 159 Osho CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS In the beginning they looked foolish. He started saying that it was because of the Jews that Germany was defeated in the first world war. It was absolutely absurd. Once he was speaking at a meeting and he asked, ”Who is responsible for the defeat of Germany?” One man stood up and said, ”The bicycle riders.” Hitler was surprised. He said, "What? Why?” The man said, "Then why the Jews?” He was a Jew. Why Jews? Even when Hitler was dying and again Germany had been defeated and completely destroyed, he didn’t believe that it was because of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt. He didn’t believe that he was defeated because his enemies were superior, more powerful than him. His last verdict was still the same: that it was a Jewish conspiracy, that the Jews were in the background working and because of them the Germans had been defeated. And the whole of Germany believed him — one of the most intelligent peoples on the earth! But intelligent people can be stupid because intelligent people always believe in words. That is the problem. The Germans, highly intelligent, highly scholarly people, have produced the greatest professors, philosophers; the whole country is intelligent. How could such a stupid man as Adolf Hitler persuade them that his arguments were logical? But this COULD happen there because a land of professors, intelligentsia, so-called intellectuals, is always word-addicted. If you go on repeating a word again and again and again, hammering and hammering, people listening again and again start feeling that this is true. Truth can be created out of lies if you go on repeating them. Repeti-tion is the method to convert a lie into a truth. But can you convert a lie into a truth? Just in appearance you can. Try it. Go on repeating something and you will start believing it. It may be that you are not as miserable as you look. Because you have been repeating, ”| am in misery, | am in misery, | am in misery,” and you have repeated it so often, now you look miserable. Just look into your misery. Are you really miserable? Are you really in such hell as you show by your face? Have a second thought. Immed-iately you will not feel so miserable because nobody can be as miserable as you look. It is impossible. God doesn’t allow it! It is repetition, it is autohypnosis. A French psychologist, Emile Coue, used to treat people. His method was simply repetition, suggestion, autohypnosis. You could go to him and say, ”| have a headache, a constant headache, and no medicine helps. | have tried all the ‘pathies, even naturopathy, and nothing helps.” He would say that there was no need of treatment because there was no headache. You have simply believed in it. And in going to this doctor and that, all have helped you to believe that yes, a headache is there — because if they don’t believe in your headache they cannot live. Doctors cannot say that you don’t have a headache. When you go to a doctor, even if you have nothing wrong he will find something. A doctor exists by it. Talking with Coue would help you immediately, almost fifty percent of the headache would disappear just by talking to him — without any medicine. And he would feel the relaxation coming over your face The Empty Boat 160 Osho CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS and then he would know that the trick had worked. Then he would give you a formula that you had to repeat continuously day and night, whenever you remembered — that there was no headache. Every morning when you got up you had to repeat: ”! am getting better and better every day.” And within two or three weeks the headache would disappear. A real headache cannot disappear that way. In the first place the headache was created by words; in the first place, you hypnotized yourself that you had a headache, and then you dehypnotized yourself. A real illness cannot disappear. But your illnesses — ninety percent of them — are unreal. Through words you have created them. Coue helped thousands, Mesmer helped thousands, just by creating the feeling that you are not ill. It doesn’t show that autohypnosis cures illness; it only shows that you are such great autohypnotists already that you CREATE illnesses! You believe in them. And doctors cannot say that your diseases are mental. You don’t feel good if someone says that your disease is mental, you feel very bad, and you immediately change your doctor. Whenever a doctor says that you have a very great disease, very serious, you feel very good — because a man like you, So great, a Somebody, he MUST have a big disease! Small diseases are for small people, ordinary diseases for ordinary people. When you have cancer, tb, or something dangerous, you feel superior, you are somebody. At least as far as illness is concerned you are not ordinary. A doctor who had just graduated from college, returned to his home. His father was also a doctor — very tired from working and working, so he went on a holiday. He said, ”! need at least three weeks’ rest and | am going to the hills, so you can take over my work.” When the father came back three weeks later the son said, ”I have a surprise for you. The lady you have been treating for years and couldn’t cure, | cured her in three days.” The father beat him on the head and said, ”You fool, that lady was paying for your education and | was hoping that through her all my children would get through college. Her stomachache was not real. And | was worried when | was in the hills because | forgot to tell you not to touch her. She is rich and she needs a stomachache, and | have been helping her. For years she has been the source of our income.” Ninety percent of all diseases are psychological. They can be cured by mantra, they can be cured by suggestion, they can be cured by Satya Sai Baba, because in the first place you have already performed the real miracle in creating them. Now anyone can cure them. Continuously repeating a word creates the reality, but this reality is hallucinatory. It is illusion, and you cannot come to reality until all words have disappeared from the mind. Even a single word may create illusion. Words are great forces. If even a single word is in the mind, your mind is not empty. Whatsoever you are seeing, feeling, is through the word, and that word will change the reality. You have to be completely wordless, thoughtless. You have to be just consciousness. When you are just consciousness then the boat is empty and reality is revealed to you. Because you are not repeating anything or you are not imagining anything, you are not autohypnotizing yourself. Only then the real appears, revealed. Chuang Tzu is right. He says: The Empty Boat 161 Osho CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS WHERE CAN | FIND THE MAN WHO HAS FORGOTTEN WORDS? HE IS THE ONE | WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO. THE PURPOSE OF A FISH TRAP IS TO CATCH FISH... You have forgotten the purpose completely. You have gathered so many fish traps and are so constantly worried about them — that somebody might steal them, that they might get broken or go rotten — that you have completely forgotten the fish! THE PURPOSE OF A FISH TRAP IS TO CATCH FISH, AND WHEN THE FISH ARE CAUGHT THE TRAP IS FORGOTTEN. If you cannot forget the trap it means that the fish is not yet caught. Remember, if you are continuously obsessed with the trap, it shows that the fishes are not yet caught. You have forgotten completely about them and become so entangled with the fish traps that you have fallen in love with them! Once | had a neighbor, a professor, a man of words. He purchased a car. Every morning he worked on cleaning it. It always stayed in showroom condition, and he never took it on the road. For years | watched. Every morning he would take much trouble, cleaning, polishing it. Once we were traveling in the same railway compartment, so | asked, ”Is something wrong with the car? You never bring it out. It is always in your drive.” He said, ”No, | have fallen in love with it. | love it so much that | am always afraid that if | take it out something may go wrong — an accident, a scratch, anything can go wrong. And it is unbearable even to think of it.” A car, a word, a trap, they are means not ends. You can fall in love with them and then you never use them. | used to stay in a house. The lady of the house had three hundred sarees but she always used two — she was preserving the others for some special occasion. When will that special occasion come? As far as | know, and | have known her for fifteen years, that special occasion has not come yet. It is not going to come, because she is growing older every day; sooner or later she will die and those three hundred sarees will live on. The Empty Boat 162 Osho CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS What happened? Fallen in love with sarees? You CAN fall in love with things. It is difficult to fall in love with persons, it is very easy to fall in love with things because things are dead, you can manipulate them. Sarees will never say, "Wear us! We would like to go out and have a look around.” The car will never say, "Drive me, | am getting bored.” With persons it is difficult. They will demand, they will ask, they would like to go out, they have their own desires to be fulfilled. When you fall in love with a person there is always conflict, so those who are clever never fall in love with persons, they always fall in love with things: a house, a car, clothes. They are always easy, manageable, and you always remain the master and the other never creates trouble. Or, if you fall in love with a person, you immediately try to convert him into a thing, a dead thing. A wife is a dead thing, a husband is a dead thing, and they torture each other. Why do they torture each other? What is the point of it? Through torture they make the other dead so the other becomes a thing, manipulatable. Then they are not worried. Two matrons were looking at a bookshop window. One said to the other, "Look, there is a book entitled How to Torture Your Husband.” But the other was not interested. She didn’t even look at the book — she said, ”| don’t need it, | have a system of my own.” Everybody has his own system of torturing the other, because only through torture and destruction can a person be changed into a thing. It happened once that Mulla Nasruddin walked into the coffee house looking very angry, very aggressive and dangerous, and he said, ”| hear that someone has called my wife an ugly old hag. Who is this guy?” A man stood up, a very tall, strong, giantlike man. He said, ”| said that about your wife, and what about it?” Looking at the person, Nasruddin immediately calmed down; he was dangerous. He went up to him and said, ’Thank you, this is my feeling too, but | couldn’t gather the courage to say so. You have done it, you are a brave man.” What happens in a relationship? Why does it always turn ugly? Why is it so impossible to love? Why does everything become poisoned? ...Because the mind is always happy to manipulate things, because things never rebel: they are always obedient, they never disobey. A person is alive, you cannot predict what he is going to do. And you cannot manipulate...the other's freedom becomes the problem. Love is such a problem because you cannot allow the other the freedom to be. And remember this: if you really love, real love is possible only when you allow the other total freedom to be himself or herself. But then you cannot possess, then you cannot predict, then you cannot be secure, then everything has to move moment to moment. And mind wants to plan, to be secure and safe. Mind wants life to run along a track because mind is the most dead thing in you. It is as if you are a river and a part of the river is an iceberg. Your mind is just like the iceberg, it is the frozen part of The Empty Boat 163 Osho CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS you, and it wants to make you completely frozen so that then there will be no fear. Whenever there is the new, there is fear — with the old there is no fear. Mind is always happy with the old. That is why mind is always orthodox, never revolutionary. There has never been a mind which can be called revolutionary. Mind cannot be revolutionary. Buddha is revolutionary, Chuang Tzu is revolutionary — because they have no minds. Lenin is not revolutionary, Stalin absolutely not. They cannot be. With minds, how can you be revolutionary? Mind is always orthodox, mind is always conforming, because mind is the dead part in you. This has to be understood. There are many dead parts in you for the body to throw out. Your hair is dead, that is why you can cut it easily and there is no pain. Your nails are dead, that is why you can cut them easily and there is no pain, no hurt. The body goes on throwing them off. Consciousness also has to throw off many things, otherwise they will accumulate. Mind is the dead part like the hair. And this is symbolic. Buddha told his disciples to shave their heads just as a symbol: as you shave your hair completely, so you shave the inner consciousness also, you shave it completely of the mind. Both hair and mind are dead, don’t carry them. It is beautiful! Don’t allow the dead part to accumulate. What is mind? Your past experiences, your learning, all that has been. Mind is never present — how can it be? Here and now, mind cannot be. If you simply look at me, where is the mind? If you simply sit here and listen to me, where is the mind? If you start arguing, the mind comes in; if you start judging, the mind comes in. But how do you judge? You bring the past to the present, the past becomes the judge of the present. How do you argue? You bring up the past as an argument, and when you bring up the past, the mind comes in. Mind is the dead part of you, it is the excreta. And just as there are constipated people who suffer very much, so there is mind constipation, accumulated excreta. You never throw it out. In your mind, things only go in; you never throw out. Meditation is throwing the mind out, unburdening yourself. The excreta must not be carried, otherwise you will become duller and duller. That is why a child has a fresh mind — because it has no accumulation. So sometimes children can say things that your philosophers cannot say. Sometimes they look and penetrate into realities that your man of knowledge misses. Children are very, very penetrating. They have a clarity, their look is fresh, their eyes are not filled. A sage is again a child. He has emptied his boat, he has emptied himself of all the cargo. The excreta has been thrown out, he is not constipated. His consciousness is a flow, it has no frozen parts. THE PURPOSE OF A FISH TRAP IS TO CATCH FISH, AND WHEN THE FISH ARE CAUGHT THE TRAP IS FORGOTTEN. THE PURPOSE OF WORDS The Empty Boat 164 Osho CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS IS TO CONVEY IDEAS. WHEN THE IDEAS ARE GRASPED THE WORDS ARE FORGOTTEN. If you really understand me, you will not be able to remember what | said. You will catch the fish but you will drop the trap. You will be what | said but you will not remember what | said. You will be transformed through it but you will not become a more learned man through it. You will be more empty through it, less filled; you will go away from me refreshed, not burdened. Don’t try to gather what | say because whatsoever you gather will be wrong. Gathering is wrong: don’t accumulate, don’t fill your treasure chest from my words. Words are excreta, they are not worth anything. Throw them out, then the meaning will be there, and meaning does not have to be remembered; it never becomes part of the memory, it becomes part of your wholeness. You have to remember a thing only when it is part of the memory, just of the intellect. You never need to remember a real thing that has happened to you. If it happens to you, it is there — what is the need to remember? Don’t repeat, because repetition will give you a false notion. Listen, but not to the words — just by the side of the words the wordless is being given to you. Don’t be too focused on the words, just look a little sideways also because the real thing is being given there. Don’t listen to what | say, listen to me! | am also here, not only the words. And once you listen to me, then all words will be forgotten. Buddha died, and the bhikkhus, the disciples, were very disturbed because none of his sayings had been collected while he was alive. They completely forgot to record his words and did not think that he would die so soon, so suddenly. Disciples never think of that — that the master may disappear suddenly. Then suddenly one day Buddha said, ”| am going.” There was no time left and he had been speaking for forty years. When he was dead, how could his words be collected? A treasure would be lost, but what was there to do? And it is beautiful that Mahakashyapa could not repeat Buddha’s words. He said, ”! heard him, but | don’t remember what he said. | was so much in it, it never became part of my memory, | don’t know.” And he had become enlightened! Sariputta, Moggalyan, all these who had become enlightened, shrugged their shoulders and said, “It is difficult, he has said so much, but we do not remember it.” And these were the disciples who had reached. Then Ananda was approached. He had not become enlightened while Buddha was alive; when Buddha died, then he became enlightened. He had remembered everything. He dictated word by word the contents of the forty years he was with Buddha. He dictated word by word — a man who was not enlightened! It looks like a paradox. Those who had reached should have remembered, not this man who had not yet reached the other shore. But when the other shore is reached, this shore is forgotten, and when one has oneself become a buddha, who cares to remember what Buddha said? The Empty Boat 165 Osho CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS THE PURPOSE OF A FISH TRAP IS TO CATCH FISH, AND WHEN THE FISH ARE CAUGHT THE TRAP IS FORGOTTEN. The words of the Buddha were traps, Mahakashyapa caught the fish. Who bothers about the trap now? Where the boat has gone, who bothers? He has crossed the stream. Mahakashyapa said, "| don’t know what this fellow said. And you cannot rely on me, because with me it is difficult to separate what he said and what | say.” Of course it will be so. When Mahakashyapa has become a buddha himself, how can they be separate? The two are not two. But Ananda said, ”! will relate his words,” and very authentically he related. Humanity is in great debt to this fellow Ananda who was still ignorant. He had not caught the fish so he remembered the trap. He was still thinking about catching the fish so he had to carry the trap. THE PURPOSE OF WORDS IS TO CONVEY IDEAS. WHEN THE IDEAS ARE GRASPED THE WORDS ARE FORGOTTEN. Remember this as a basic law of life — that the useless, the meaningless, the peripheral, looks so significant because you are not aware of the center. This world looks so significant because you are not aware of God. When the God is known, the world is forgotten. And it is never otherwise. People have tried to forget the world so that they can know God - it has never happened and it will never happen. You can go on trying and trying to forget the world, but you cannot. Your every effort to forget will become a continuous remembering. Only when God is known is the world forgotten. You can go on struggling to drop thinking, but you cannot drop thinking unless consciousness is achieved. Thinking is a substitute. How can you drop the trap when the fish is not yet caught? The mind will say, ’Don’t be foolish. Where is the fish?” How can you drop the words when you have not realized the meaning? Don’t fight with the words, try to reach to the meaning. Don’t try to fight with thoughts. That is why | insist again and again that if thoughts disturb you, don’t create any struggle with them, don’t wrestle with them. If they come, let them come. If they go, let them go. Don’t do anything, just be indifferent, just be a watcher, an onlooker, not concerned. That is all that you can do right now — not be concerned. Don’t say, "Don’t come.” Don't invite, don’t reject, don’t condemn and don’t appreciate. Simply remain indifferent. Look at them, they come as clouds float in the sky — then they go, as clouds disappear. Let them come and go, don’t come in their way, don’t pay attention to them. If you are against them The Empty Boat 166 Osho CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS then you start paying them attention, and then immediately you are disturbed: "My meditation is lost.” Nothing is lost. Meditation is your intrinsic nature. Nothing is lost. Is the sky lost when clouds come? Nothing is lost. Be indifferent, don’t be bothered by thoughts, this way or that. And sooner or later you will feel and you will realize that their coming and going has become slower. Sooner or later you will come to see that now they come, but not so much; sometimes the traffic stops, the road is vacant. One thought has passed, another has not come yet; there is an interval. In that interval you will Know your inner sky in its absolute glory. But if a thought enters, let it enter; don’t get disturbed. You can do this much, and only this much can be done; nothing else is possible. Be inattentive, indifferent, not caring. Just remain a witness, watching, not interfering, and the mind will go, because nothing can be retained inside if you are indifferent. Indifference is cutting the roots, the very roots. Don’t feel antagonistic because that is again feeding. If you have to remember friends, you have to remember enemies even more so. Friends you can forget, how can you forget enemies? You have to constantly remember them because you are afraid. People are disturbed by thoughts, ordinary people. Religious people are disturbed more because they are constantly fighting. But through fighting you pay attention — and attention is food. Everything grows if you pay attention, grows fast, becomes more vital. You just be indifferent. Buddha used the word UPEKSHA,; it means absolute indifference, neither this nor that — just in the middle — neither friendly nor inimical, neither for nor against, just in the middle, looking as if you are not concerned, as if these thoughts don’t belong to you, as if they are part of the great world. Let them be there. Then one day suddenly, when the indifference is total, the consciousness shifts from the periphery to the center. But it cannot be predicted and cannot be planned: one has to go on working and waiting. Whenever it happens, you can laugh: those thoughts were there because you wanted them to be there, those thoughts were there because you were feeding them continuously, and those thoughts were there because the fish was not yet caught. How could you throw away the trap? You had to carry it. | remember that once it happened in Mulla Nasruddin’s country that the king was in search of a wise man. His old wise man had died saying, "When you replace me, find the man who is the most humble in the kingdom, because ego is anti-wisdom. Humility is wisdom, so find the most humble man. Secret agents were sent all over the kingdom to spy out the most humble man. Finally they reached Nasruddin’s village. He had heard the news that the wise man was dead, so he thought hard about what might be the indication of a wise man. He had read, and he knew the ancient lore that the humblest is the most wise. So he logically inferred, concluded, that the old man must have said to find the humblest man. Then came the king’s men in search. Mulla Nasruddin was very rich, but when they saw him, the richest man in the town, he was carrying a fishing net, coming from the river. Fishing was the humblest job in the town. So they thought, ’This man seems to be very humble,” and they asked Nasruddin, ’Why do you carry this fishing net? You are so rich, you need not go on fishing.” The Empty Boat 167 Osho CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS Nasruddin said, ”| became this rich through fishing. | started my life as a fisherman. | have become rich, but just to pay respect to the original profession that gave me so much, | always carry this net on my shoulder.” A really humble man. Generally, if a poor man becomes rich he starts wiping his whole past clean so that nobody knows that he was ever a poor man. He drops all contacts which show that once he was a poor man. He doesn’t want to see his relatives, he doesn’t want to be reminded of the past. He simply drops the past completely. He creates a new past as if he is a born aristocrat. But this man was humble. So the messengers informed the king that Mulla Nasruddin was the humblest man they had ever seen and he was appointed the wise man. The day he was appointed, he threw away the net. The men who had recommended him asked, ”Nasruddin, where is your net now?” He said, "When the fish is caught, the net is thrown away.” But you cannot throw it away before — it is impossible, you have to carry it. But carry it indifferently. Don’t get attached, don’t fall in love with it, because one day it has to be thrown away. If you fall in love with it then you may never catch the fish, you will be just afraid that if you catch the fish you will have to throw away the net. Don’t fall in love with the mind. It has to be used and it is there because you don’t know the no-mind yet, you don’t know the innermost core of your being. The periphery is there and you have to carry it but carry it indifferently. Don’t become a victim of it. One story more: There was a man who used to go to the race course every year on his birthday. The whole year he accumulated the money just for one stake on his birthday. And he lost and lost for many years. But hope always revives again and again! Each time he went he decided never to go again...but one year is such a long time! For a few days he would remember and then again hope returned. He thought, "Who knows, this year | may become rich so why not one more try?” By the time his birthday came round he was again ready to go to the race course. And it was his fiftieth birthday, so he thought, ”! should try wholeheartedly.” So he sold all his possessions, gathered a small fortune, all that he had earned in his whole life, all that he had, and he said, "Now | have to decide this way or that. Either | am to become a beggar or an emperor; no more in the middle, enough!” He went there, to the windows, and looked at the names of the horses and saw a horse named Adolf Hitler. He thought, "It will do well. Such a great man, such a victorious man, he threatened the whole world. This horse must be ferocious and strong.” So he staked all, and he lost — as all those who stake on Hitlers will lose. Now he had nowhere to go, even his house was lost. So there was nothing left to do but commit suicide. So he went to a cliff, just to jump and finish it all. When he was about to jump he suddenly heard a voice, and he couldn't tell whether it came from the outside or from the inside. It said, "Stop! Next time | will give you the name of the winner — one more try. Don’t kill yourself.” The Empty Boat 168 Osho CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS Hope revived, he came back. He worked hard that year, because it was going to be the victory for which he had been waiting all his life. The dream had to be fulfilled. He worked hard day and night, he earned much. Then with a trembling heart he reached the window and waited. The voice said, "Okay, choose this horse Churchill.” Without any argument, without thinking about it, without his mind coming in, he staked all and won. Churchill came first. He went back to the window, and waited. The voice said, "Now back Stalin.” He staked all. Stalin came in first. Now he had a big treasure. The third time he waited, and the voice said, "No more.” But he said, "Keep quiet, | am winning, my stars are high and nobody can defeat me now.” So he chose Nixon and Nixon came last. All his treasure lost, he was again a beggar. Standing there, he muttered to himself, Now what shall | do?” Said the inner voice, Now you can go to the cliff and jump!” In moments when you are going to die, the mind stops because there is nothing for it to work on. The mind is part of life, it is not part of death. When there is no more life ahead, mind stops; there is no work, it is unemployed immediately. And when mind stops, the inner voice comes in. It is always there, but the mind is creating so much noise that a still small voice cannot be heard. The voice had not come from beyond, there is nobody beyond, everything is within. The God is not in the skies, it is in you. He was going to die — the last decision taken by the mind. But when the mind retired, because there was now no more work, suddenly he heard the voice. This voice came from his innermost core, and the voice that comes from the innermost core is always right. Then what happened? Twice the voice worked, but then the mind entered again and the mind said, ”Don’t listen to such nonsense, the stars are high and we are winning.” Remember this: whenever you win, you win because of the inner voice. But the mind always comes in and takes charge. Whenever you feel happiness it is always from the inner. Then mind immediately jumps in and takes control and says, "It is because of me.” When you are in love, love becomes like death, you feel blissful. Then immediately mind comes in and says, ’Okay, this is me, this is because of me.” Whenever you meditate, there are glimpses. Then the mind comes in and says, "Be happy! Look, | have done it.” And immediately the contact is lost. Remember this: with mind you will always be a loser. Even if you are victorious, your victories will be just defeats. With mind there is no victory; with no-mind there is no defeat. You have to shift your whole consciousness from mind to no-mind. Once no-mind is there, everything is victorious. Once the no-mind is there, nothing goes wrong, nothing CAN go wrong. With no-mind everything is absolutely as it should be. One is content, not a single fragment of discontent remains, one is absolutely at home. You are an outsider because of the mind. The Empty Boat 169 Osho CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS This shift is possible only if you become indifferent; otherwise this shift will never be possible. Even if you have glimpses, those glimpses will be lost. You have had glimpses before — it is not only in prayer and meditation that glimpses happen. Glimpses happen in ordinary life too. Making love to a woman, the mind stops. That is why sex is so appealing: it is a natural ecstasy. For a single moment suddenly mind is not there, you feel blissful and content — but only for a single moment. Immediately the mind comes in and starts working on how to get more, how to stay longer. Planning, controlling, manipulating comes in, and you have missed. Sometimes, without any reason or rhyme, you are walking down the street under the trees and suddenly a sunray comes and falls on you, a breeze touches your face. Suddenly it is as if the whole world has changed and for a single moment you are ecstatic. What was happening? You were walking, unworried, not going somewhere, just having a walk, a morning or evening walk. In that relaxed moment, suddenly, without your knowing, consciousness shifted from the mind to the no-mind. Immediately there is beatitude. But the mind comes in and says, ”| must get more and more moments like this.” Then you can stand there for years, for lives, but it will never happen again. It never happened because of the mind. In ordinary day-to-day life, not only in temples, in shops and offices also, the moments come — the consciousness shifts from the periphery to the center. But the mind controls again immediately. Mind is the great controller. You may be the master but he is the manager, and the manager has absorbed so much control and power that the manager thinks he is the master. And the master is completely forgotten. Be indifferent to mind. Whenever moments come which are wordless, silent, if the mind comes in, don’t help and don’t cooperate with it. Just look. Let it say whatsoever it says, don’t pay much attention. It will withdraw. In meditation, moments happen every day to you. Many come to me and Say, "It happened on the first day but since then it has not been happening.” Why did it happen on the first day? You are more prepared now, on the first day you were not so prepared. Why did it happen on the first day? It happened on the first day because the manager was unaware of what was going to happen. He couldn’t plan. The next day the manager knows well what is to be done: breathing fast, then crying, screaming, then Hoo, Hoo. Now the manager knows, and the manager does it. Then the moment will not happen, the manager has taken charge. Remember this: whenever a blissful moment happens, don’t ask for it again. Don’t ask for it to be repeated, because all repetition is of mind. Don’t ask for it again. If you ask, then the mind will say, ”| know the trick. | will do it for you.” When it happens, feel happy and grateful and forget. The fish is caught, forget the trap. The meaning is caught, forget the word. And the last thing: whenever meditation is complete, you will forget meditation. And only then, when you forget meditation, will it have come to a fulfillment, will the climax have been reached. Now you are meditative for twenty-four hours a day. It is nothing to be done; it is there, it is you, it is your being. The Empty Boat 170 Osho CHAPTER 9. MEANS AND ENDS If you can do this, then meditation becomes a continuous flow, not an effort on your part — because all effort is of the mind. If meditation becomes your natural life, your spontaneous life, your Tao, then | tell you, some day Chuang Tzu will catch hold of you. Because he asks: WHERE CAN | FIND A MAN WHO HAS FORGOTTEN WORDS? HE IS THE ONE | WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO. He is searching. | have seen him here many times wandering around you, just waiting, waiting. If you forget the words he will talk to you. And not only Chuang Tzu — Krishna, Christ, Lao Tzu, Buddha, they are all in search of you; all the enlightened people are in search of the ignorant. But they cannot talk because they know a language which is of silence, and you know a language which is of madness. They cannot lead anywhere. They are in search. All the buddhas that have ever existed are in search. Whenever you are silent you will feel that they have always been all around you. It is said that whenever the disciple is ready the master appears. Whenever you are ready the truth will be delivered to you. There is not even a single moment’s gap. Whenever you are ready, it happens immediately. There is no time gap. Remember Chuang Tzu. Any moment he may start talking to you, but before he starts talking, your talking must go. Enough for today. The Empty Boat 171 Osho CHAPTER 10 Wholeness 19 July 1974 am in Buddha Hall HOW DOES THE TRUE MAN OF TAO WALK THROUGH WALLS WITHOUT OBSTRUCTION AND STAND IN FIRE WITHOUT BEING BURNT? NOT BECAUSE OF CUNNING OR DARING, NOT BECAUSE HE HAS LEARNED — BUT BECAUSE HE HAS UNLEARNED. HIS NATURE SINKS TO ITS ROOT IN THE ONE. HIS VITALITY, HIS POWER, HIDE IN SECRET TAO. WHEN HE IS ALL ONE, THERE IS NO FLAW IN HIM BY WHICH A WEDGE CAN ENTER. 172 CHAPTER 10. WHOLENESS SO A DRUNKEN MAN WHO FALLS OUT OF A WAGON IS BRUISED, BUT NOT DESTROYED. HIS BONES ARE LIKE THE BONES OF OTHER MEN, BUT HIS FALL IS DIFFERENT. HIS SPIRIT IS ENTIRE. HE IS NOT AWARE OF GETTING INTO A WAGON, OR FALLING OUT OF ONE. LIFE AND DEATH ARE NOTHING TO HIM. HE KNOWS NO ALARM, HE MEETS OBSTACLES WITHOUT THOUGHT, WITHOUT CARE, AND TAKES THEM WITHOUT KNOWING THEY ARE THERE. IF THERE IS SUCH SECURITY IN WINE, HOW MUCH MORE IN TAO? THE WISE MAN IS HIDDEN IN TAO, NOTHING CAN TOUCH HIM. HOW DOES THE TRUE MAN OF TAO — WALK THROUGH WALLS WITHOUT OBSTRUCTION — AND STAND IN FIRE WITHOUT BEING BURNT? This is one of the most basic and secret teachings. Ordinarily we live through cunningness, cleverness and strategy; we don’t live like small children, innocent. We plan, we protect, we make all the safeguards possible — but what is the result? Ultimately, what happens? All the safeguards are broken, all cunningness proves foolishness — ultimately death takes us away. Tao says that your cunningness will not help you, because what is it but a fight against the whole? With whom are you cunning — with nature, with Tao, with God? Whom do you think you are deceiving — the source from where you are born and the source to which you will finally go? Is the wave trying to deceive the ocean, is the leaf trying to deceive the tree, is a cloud trying to deceive the sky? Whom do you think you are trying to deceive? With whom are you playing? Once it is understood, a man becomes innocent, drops his cunningness, all strategies, and simply accepts. There is no other way than to accept nature as it is and to flow with it. Then there is no resistance, then he is just like a child who is going with his father, in deep trust. The Empty Boat 173 Osho CHAPTER 10. WHOLENESS Once, Mulla Nasruddin’s son came home and said that he had trusted a friend and had given him his toy to play with, but now the friend refused to return it. "What should | do?” he asked. Mulla Nasruddin looked at him and said, Go up this ladder.’ The boy did so, he trusted his father. When he was ten feet high, Nasruddin said, "Now jump into my arms.” The boy hesitated a little, and said, "If | fall, | will get hurt.” Nasruddin said, "When | am here, you need not worry. Take a jump.” The boy jumped, and Nasruddin stood aside. The boy fell down, and started crying and weeping. Then Nasruddin said, "Now you know. Never believe anybody, not even what your father says: don’t even believe your father.” Don’t believe in anybody, otherwise you will be deceived all your life. This is what every father, every parent, every school, every teacher, teaches you. This is your learning. Don’t believe in anybody, don’t trust, otherwise you will be deceived. You become cunning. In the name of cleverness you become cunning, untrusting. And once a man is untrusting he has lost contact with the source. Trust is the only bridge, otherwise your whole life is wasted; you fight an impossible fight in which defeat is bound to happen, it is absolutely certain. It is better to realize it now, because at the moment of death everybody realizes that it has been a defeat. But then nothing can be done. Real intelligence is not cunningness, it is totally different. Real intelligence is to look into things... And whenever you look into things deeply, you will come to know that you are just a wave, that this whole is the ocean and there is no need to worry. The whole has produced you, it will take care of you. You have come out of the whole, it is no enemy to you. You need not worry, you need not plan. And when you are not worried, not planning, for the first time life starts. For the first time you feel free of worries, and life happens to you. This intelligence is religion. This intelligence gives you more trust, and finally, total trust. This intelligence leads you to the ultimate nature, acceptance — what Buddha called TATHATA. Buddha said: What-soever happens, happens. Nothing else can happen, nothing else is possible. Don’t ask for it to be otherwise; be in a letgo, and allow the whole to function. And when you allow the whole to function and you are not a barrier, a resistance, then you cannot be defeated. In Japan, through Buddha, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, a particular art has been developed called ZENDO. Zendo means the Zen of the sword, the art of the warrior — and nobody knows it like they do. The way they have developed it is supreme. It takes years, even a whole lifetime, to learn zendo because the learning consists in acceptance. You cannot accept in ordinary life — how can you accept when a warrior is standing before you, waiting to kill you? How can you accept when the sword is raised against you and every moment, any moment, death is near? The art of zendo says that if you can accept the sword, the enemy, the one who is going to kill you, and there is no distrust; if even the enemy is the friend, and you are not afraid, not trembling, then you become a pillar of energy, unbreakable. The sword will break on you, but you cannot be broken. There will not even be any possibility that you could be destroyed. The Empty Boat 174 Osho CHAPTER 10. WHOLENESS Once there was a great zendo master. He was eighty, and tradition-ally, the disciple who could defeat him would succeed him. So all the disciples hoped that someday he would accept their challenge, because now he was getting old. There was one disciple who was the cleverest, the best strategist, very powerful, but not a master of zendo, just skilled in the art. Although he was a good warrior and he knew everything about swordsmanship, he was not yet a pillar of energy, he was still afraid while fighting. The tathata had not yet happened to him. He went to the master again and again saying, "Now the time has come, and you are getting old. Soon you will be too old to challenge at all. | challenge you now. Accept my challenge, Master, and give me a chance to show what | have learned from you.” The master laughed and avoided him. The disciple started thinking that the master had become so weak and old that he was afraid, just trying to evade the challenge. So one night he insisted and insisted and got angry and said, "I will not leave until you accept my challenge. Tomorrow morning you have to accept. You are getting old and soon there will be no chance for me to show what | have learned from you. This has been a tradition always.” The master said, "If you insist, your very insistence shows that you are not ready or prepared. There is too much excitement in you, your ego wants to challenge, you have not yet become capable; but if you insist, okay. Do one thing. Go to the nearby monastery where there is a monk who was my disciple ten years ago. He became so efficient in zendo that he threw away his sword and became a sannyasin. He was my rightful successor. He never challenged me, and he was the only one who could have challenged and even defeated me. So first go and challenge that monk. If you can defeat him, then come to me. If you cannot defeat him, then just drop the idea.” The disciple immediately started out for the monastery. By morning he was there. He challenged the monk. He couldn’t believe that this monk could be a zendo master — lean and thin, continuously meditating, eating only once a day. The monk listened and laughed, and he said, "You have come to give me a challenge? Even your master cannot challenge me, even he is afraid.” Listening to this, the disciple got completely mad! He said, "Stand up immediately! Here is a sword | have brought for you Knowing well that you are a monk and might not have one. Come out in the garden. This is insulting, and | will not listen.” The monk looked absolutely undisturbed. He said, ’You are just a child, you are not a warrior. You will be killed immediately. Why are you asking for death unnecessarily?” That made him still more angry so they both went out. The monk said, ”! will not need the sword, because a real master never needs it. | am not going to attack you, | am only going to give you a chance to attack me so your sword is broken. You are not a match for me. You are a child, and people will laugh at me if | take up the sword against you.” It was too much! The young man jumped up — but then he saw that the monk was standing. Up until now the monk had been sitting; now he stood up, closed his eyes, and started swaying from side to side — and suddenly the young man saw that the monk had disappeared. There was only a pillar of The Empty Boat 175 Osho CHAPTER 10. WHOLENESS energy — no face, just a solid pillar of energy, swaying. He became afraid and started retreating, and the pillar of energy started moving towards him, swaying. He threw away his sword and screamed at the top of his voice, "Save me!” The monk sat down again and started laughing. His face came back, the energy disappeared, and he said, ”| told you before: even your master is no match for me. Go and tell him.” Perspiring, trembling, nervous, the disciple went back to his master and said, ’How grateful | am for your compassion towards me. | am no match for you. Even that monk destroyed me completely. But one thing | couldn't tolerate, that is why | got involved in it. He said, Even your master is not a match for me.’ ” The master started laughing and he said, ”So that rascal played the trick on you too? You got angry? Then he could see through you, because anger is a hole in the being. And that has become his basic trick. Whenever | send somebody to him, he starts talking against me, and my disciples of course become angry. When they are angry, he finds out that they have loopholes, and when you have holes you cannot fight.” Whenever you are angry, your being has leakages. Whenever you desire, your being has holes in it. Whenever you are jealous, filled with hatred, sexuality, you are not a pillar of energy. Hence buddhas have been teaching us to be desireless, because whenever you are desireless energy does not move outwards, energy moves within. It becomes an inner circle, it becomes an electric field, a bioelectric field. When that field is there, without any leakage, you are a pillar; you cannot be defeated. But you are not thinking of victory, remember, because if you are thinking of victory you cannot be a pillar of energy. Then that desire becomes a leakage. You are weak, not because others are strong, you are weak because you are filled with so many desires. You are defeated, not because others are more cunning and clever — you are defeated because you have so many leakages. Tathata — acceptance, total acceptance, means no desire. Desire arises out of nonacceptance. You cannot accept a certain situation, so desire arises. You live in a hut and you cannot accept it; this is too much for the ego, you want a palace — then you are a poor man, but not because you live in a hut, no. In huts, emperors have lived. Buddha has lived under a tree, and he was not a poor man. You cannot find a richer man anywhere. No, your hut doesn’t make you poor. The moment you desire the palace you are a poor man. And you are not poor because others are living in palaces, you are poor because the desire to live in the palace creates a comparison with the hut. You become envious. You are poor. Whenever there is discontent, there is poverty; whenever there is no discontent, you are rich. And you have such riches that no thief can steal them; you have such riches, no government can take them by taxation; you have riches which cannot be taken away from you in any way. You have a fort for your being, unbreakable, impenetrable. Once a desire moves and your energy starts falling you become weak through desire, you become weak through longing. Whenever you are not longing and are content, whenever nothing is moving, The Empty Boat 176 Osho CHAPTER 10. WHOLENESS when your whole being is still, then, says Chuang Tzu, you are an impenetrable fort. Fire cannot burn you, death is impossible. That is the meaning of: Fire cannot burn you; death is impossible, you cannot die. You have got the secret key of eternal life. And sometimes this happens in ordinary circumstances too. A house is on fire — everybody dies but a small child survives. There is an accident — the old people die and the small children survive. People say that this is a miracle, God’s grace. No, it is nothing of the sort, it is because the child accepted that situation too. Those who were cunning started running and trying to save themselves; they got themselves into trouble. The child rested. He was not even aware that anything was happening, that he was going to die. The child is saved through his innocence. It happens every day. Go and observe at night near a bar, a wine shop, drunkards falling down in the street, lying in the gutter, absolutely happy. In the morning they will get up. They may be bruised a little but no harm has happened to their bodies. Their bones are intact. They have got no fractures. You try to fall like a drunkard on the street — immediately you will have fractures. And he falls like this every day, every night, many times, but nothing happens to him. What is the matter, what is the secret? When he is drunk there is no desire. He is absolutely at ease, here and now. When he is drunk he is not afraid, there is no fear, and when there is no fear, there is no cunningness. Cunningness comes out of fear. So the more fearful a person, the more cunningness you will find in him. A brave man is not cunning, he can depend on his bravery; but a man who is afraid, who is a coward, can depend only on cunningness. The more inferior a person, the more cunning. The more superior a person, the more innocent. Cunningness is a substitute. When one is drunk, absolutely drunk, future disappears and past disappears. | have heard: Once it happened that Mulla Nasruddin was walking along with his wife, absolutely drunk. She had found him lying in the street and was bringing him home. Of course, as usual, she was arguing, and winning all the arguments, because she was alone. Mulla Nasrud-din was not there; he was simply coming along with her. Then suddenly she saw a mad bull approaching. There was no time to warn Nasruddin, so she jumped into a bush. The bull came up and spun Nasruddin almost fifty feet in the air. He fell into a ditch, and as he crawled out of it he looked at his wife and said, "If you do this to me again, | shall really lose my temper. This is too much!” Ordinary wine gives so much power when one is drunk, what about Tao, the absolute drunkenness? What about Krishna or Buddha, the greatest drunkards — so drunk with the divine that not even a trace of the ego is left? You cannot hurt them because they are not there, you cannot insult them because there is no one who will resist the insult and create a wound. Your insult will pass through them, as if passing through an empty house. Their boats are empty. A breeze comes in and passes with no barrier. When the breeze has gone the house is not even aware that the breeze has been there. The appeal of wine is really because you are so egoistic. You are too burdened by it and sometimes you want to forget it. So the world will have to follow alcohol or Tao — these are the alternatives. Only a religious man, a really religious man, can be beyond alcohol, marijuana, Isd — any type of drug. The Empty Boat res Osho CHAPTER 10. WHOLENESS Only a religious man can be beyond them; otherwise how can you be beyond them? The ego is too much, the burden is too much, it is constantly on your head. You HAVE to forget yourselves. But if wine can do so much, you cannot conceive of what the divine wine can do. What is the wine doing? For certain moments, through chemical changes in the brain, in the body, you forget yourself. But this is momentary. Deep down you are there, and after a few hours the chemical effect is gone, your body has thrown the wine out and the ego asserts itself again. But there is a wine, | tell you — God is that wine, Tao, or whatsoever name you like to call it. Once you taste it, the ego is gone forever. Nobody ever comes back from that drunkenness. That is why Sufis always talk of wine, Sufis always talk of women. Their woman is not the woman you know — God is the woman. And their wine is not the wine that you know — God is the wine. Omar Khayyam has been misunderstood, tremendously misunderstood; because of Fitzgerald he has been misunderstood all over the world. Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat appears to be written in praise of wine and women, but it is not at all. Omar Khayyam is a Sufi, a mystic. He talks of the wine which comes through Tao; he talks of the wine in which you are lost forever and forever. This intoxicant, this divine intoxicant, is not temporary, it is nontemporal, not momentary — it is eternal. And Sufis talk of God as the woman. That embrace is eternal, it is ultimate; then there is no separation. If you can understand this then you are intelligent, but not through your strategies, cunningness, arithmetic, your logic. If you can, look deep into existence. From where have you come? Where are you going? With whom are you fighting, and why? These same moments that you are losing in fighting can become ecstatic. Now look at the sutra: Wholeness. You think of yourself as the individual. You are wrong. Only the whole exists. This is false — this appearance that: | think | am. This is the most false thing in the world. And because of this ”] am,” fight arises. If | am, then this whole seems inimical; then everything seems to be against me. It is not that anything is against you — it cannot be! These trees have helped you, this sky has helped you, this water has helped you, this earth created you. Then nature is your mother. How can the mother be against you? You have come out of her. But you think | am as an individual, and then the fight arises. It is one-sided. You start the fight, and nature goes on laughing, God goes on enjoying. Even in a small child, the moment he starts feeling |, the fight arises. In a supermarket, a small child was insisting on a toy. The mother said positively, ’No, | am not going to buy it. You have got enough.” The child got angry and said, ’Mum, | have never seen a meaner girl than you, you are the meanest. The mother looked at the child, at his face, the anger on it, and she said, "Just wait, you will certainly meet a really mean girl. Just wait!” In one house, the mother was insisting that the child do his homework. He was not listening and went on playing with his toys, so she said, "Are you listening to me or not?” The Empty Boat 178 Osho CHAPTER 10. WHOLENESS The child looked up and said, "Who do you think | am — Daddy?” Only a small child, and the fighting starts — the ego has arisen. He knows Daddy can be silenced, but not him. The moment the child feels he is separate the natural unity is broken, and then his whole life becomes a struggle and fight. Western psychology insists that the ego should be strengthened. That is the difference between the Eastern attitude and the Western. Western psychology insists that the ego should be strengthened; the child must have a strong ego, he must fight, struggle, only then will he be mature. The child is in the mother’s womb, one with the mother, not even aware that he is — he is, without any consciousness. In a deep sense all consciousness is illness. Not that he is unconscious — he IS aware. His being is there, but without any self-consciousness. The am is there, but the | has not been born yet. The child feels, lives, is fully alive, but never feels that he is separate. The mother and the child are one. Then the child is born. The first separation happens, and the first cry. Now he is moving, the wave is moving away from the ocean. Western psychologists say: We will train the child to be independent, to be individual. Jung’s psychology is known as the way of individu-ation. He must become an individual, absolutely separate. He must fight. That is why, in the West, there is so much rebellion in the younger generation. This rebellion was not created by the younger generation, this rebellion was created by Freud, Jung, Adler and company. They have given the basis. Fight will give you a stronger ego. It will shape you. So fight the mother, fight the father, fight the teacher, fight the society. Life is struggle. And Darwin started the whole trend when he said only the fittest survive; life means survival of the fittest. So the stronger you are in your ego, the more chance you will have of surviving. The West lives through politics, the East has a totally different attitude...and Tao is the core, the very essence of the Eastern consciousness. It says: No individuality, no ego, no fight; become one with the mother; there is no enemy, the question is not of conquering. Even a man, a very knowledgeable man, a very penetrating, logical man like Bertrand Russell, thinks in terms of conquest — conquering nature, the conquest of nature. Science seems to be a struggle, a fight with nature: how to break the lock, how to open the secrets, how to grab the secrets from nature. Eastern consciousness is totally different. Eastern consciousness says: Ego is the problem, don’t make it stronger, don’t create any fight. And not the fittest but the humblest survive. That is why | insist again and again that Jesus is from the East; that is why he could not be understood in the West. The West has misunderstood him. The East could have understood him because the East knows Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Buddha, and Jesus belongs to them. He says: Those who are last will be the first in my kingdom of God. The humblest, the meekest, will possess the kingdom of God. The poor in spirit is the goal. Who is poor in spirit? The empty boat, he who is not at all — no claim on anything, no possession of anything, no self. He lives as an absence. The Empty Boat 179 Osho CHAPTER 10. WHOLENESS Nature gives her secrets. There is no need to grab, there is no need to kill, there is no need to break the lock. Love nature, and nature gives you her secrets. Love is the key. Conquering is absurd. So what has happened in the West? This conquering has destroyed the whole of nature. So now there is a cry for ecology, how to restore the balance. We have destroyed nature completely, because we have broken all the locks and we have destroyed the whole balance. And now through that imbalance humanity will die sooner or later. Chuang Tzu can be understood now, because he says: Don’t fight with nature. Be in such deep love, become so one that through love, from heart to heart, the secret is given. And the secret is that you are not the individual, you are the whole. And why be satisfied with just being a part? Why not be the whole? Why not possess the whole universe? Why possess small things? Ramateertha used to say, "When | close my eyes | see stars moving within me, sun rising within me, moon rising within me. | see oceans and skies. | am the vast, | am the whole universe.” When for the first time he went to the West and started saying these things, people thought he had gone crazy. Somebody asked him, "Who created the world?” He said, ”I, it is within me.” This | is not the ego, not the individual; this | is the universe, God. He looks crazy. This claim looks too much. But look in his eyes: there is no ego. He is not asserting anything, he is simply stating a fact. You are the world! Why be a part, a tiny part, and why unnecessarily create trouble when you can be the whole? This sutra is concerned with wholeness. Don’t be the individual, be the whole. Don’t be the ego. When you can become the divine, why be satisfied with such a small, tiny, ugly thing? HOW DOES THE TRUE MAN OF TAO WALK THROUGH WALLS WITHOUT OBSTRUCTION AND STAND IN FIRE WITHOUT BEING BURNT? Someone asked Chuang Tzu, "We have heard that a man of Tao can walk through walls without obstruction. Why?” If you don’t have any obstruction within you, no obstruction can obstruct you. This is the rule. If you have no resistance within you, in your heart, the whole world is open for you. There is no resistance. The world is just a reflection, it is a big mirror; if you have resistance, then the whole world has resistance. It happened once that a king built a great palace, a palace of millions of mirrors — all the walls were covered with mirrors. A dog entered the palace and he saw millions of dogs all around him. So, being a very intelligent dog, he started barking to protect himself from the millions of dogs all around him. His life was in danger. He must have become tense, he started barking. And when he started barking, those millions of dogs started barking too. The Empty Boat 180 Osho CHAPTER 10. WHOLENESS In the morning the dog was found dead. And he was there alone, there were only mirrors. Nobody was fighting with him, nobody was there to fight, but he looked at himself in the mirror and became afraid. And when he started fighting, the mirror reflection also started fighting. He was alone, with millions and millions of dogs around him. Can you imagine the hell he lived through that night? You are living in that hell right now; millions and millions of dogs are barking around you. In every mirror, in every relationship, you see the enemy. A man of Tao can walk through the walls because he has no wall in his heart. A man of Tao finds nowhere the enemy because he is not the enemy inside. A man of Tao finds all mirrors vacant, all boats empty, because his own boat is empty. He is mirrored, he has no face of his own, so how can you mirror, how can you reflect a man of Tao? All mirrors keep silent. A man of Tao passes — no footprints are left behind, no trace. All mirrors remain silent. Nothing reflects him, because he is not there, he is absent. When the ego disappears you are absent, and then you are whole. When the ego is there you are present, and you are just a tiny part, a very tiny part, and very ugly at that. The part will always be ugly. That is why we have to try to make it beautiful in so many ways. But a man with ego cannot be beautiful. Beauty happens only to those who are without egos. Then the beauty has something of the unknown in it, something immeasurable. Remember this: ugliness can be measured. It has limits. Beauty, the so-called beauty, can be measured. It has limits. But the real beauty cannot be measured — it has no limits. It is mysterious — it goes on and on and on. You cannot be finished with a buddha. You can enter him, and you will never come out. Endless! His beauty is never finished. But the ego goes on trying to be beautiful. Somehow you remember the beauty of the whole; somehow you remember the silence of the womb; somehow deep down you know the bliss of being one, the union, the unity with existence. Because of that, many desires arise. You know the beauty of being a god and you have to live like a beggar. So what do you do? You create faces, you paint yourself. But deep down the ugliness remains, because all paints are just paints. It happened once that a woman was walking on the seashore. She found a bottle, opened it, and a genie came out. And, like all true genies, this genie said, "You have broken my prison, you have set me free. So now you can ask anything, and | will fulfill your fondest desire or wish.” Genies are not found every day, on every shore, in every bottle. It rarely happens, and only in stories. But the woman didn’t think even for a single moment. She said, ”| want to become a beautiful person — hair like Elizabeth Taylor, eyes like Brigitte Bardot, body like Sophia Loren.” The genie looked again, and said, "Honey, put me back in the bottle!” And this is what you are all asking for — everybody is asking for this — this is why genies have disappeared from the world. They are so afraid of you, you are asking the impossible. It cannot happen because the part can never be beautiful. Just think: my hand can be cut off — can that hand be beautiful? It will grow more and more ugly, it will deteriorate, it will start smelling. How can my hand be beautiful, separate from me? The separation brings death; unison brings life. In the whole you are alive; alone, separate, you are already dead or dying. The Empty Boat 181 Osho CHAPTER 10. WHOLENESS My eyes, take them out, then what are they? Even stones, colored stones, will be more beautiful than they because they are still with the whole. Pluck a flower; then it is not beautiful, the glory is gone. It was beautiful just a moment ago when it was joined with the roots, with the earth. Uprooted, you float like egos. You are ill, and you will remain ill, and nothing can be of any help. All your efforts, however clever, are going to fail. Only in the whole are you beautiful. Only in the whole are you lovely. Only in the whole is grace possible. It is not because of cunningness that the man of Tao walks through walls without obstruction, and stands in fire without being burnt. It is: NOT BECAUSE OF CUNNING OR DARING, AND NOT BECAUSE HE HAS LEARNED — BUT BECAUSE HE HAS UNLEARNED. Learning goes into the ego; learning strengthens the ego. That is why pundits, brahmins, scholars, have the subtlest egos. Learning gives them scope, learning gives them space. They become tumors, egos. Their whole being is then exploited by the ego. The more learned a man, the more difficult he is to live with, the more difficult he is to relate to, the more difficult it is for him to reach the temple. It is almost impossible for him to know God because he himself now lives like a tumor, and the tumor has its own life — now it is the ego tumor. And it exploits. The more you know, the less possibility there is for prayer to happen. So, says Chuang Tzu, it is not because of cunningness; he is not calculating, he is not cunning or daring, because daring, cunning, calculating, are all part of the ego. A man of Tao is neither a coward nor a brave man. He does not know what bravery is, what cowardice is. He lives. He is not self-conscious, not because he has learned but because he has unlearned. The whole of religion is a process of unlearning. Learning is the process of the ego, unlearning is the process of the non-ego. Learned, your boat is full, filled with yourself. It happened that Mulla Nasruddin used to have a ferryboat, and when times were not good he would carry passengers from one bank to the other. One day a great scholar, a grammarian, a pundit, was crossing in his ferryboat to the other shore. The pundit asked Nasruddin, ’Do you know the Koran? Have you learned the scriptures?” Nasruddin said, ”No, no time.” The scholar said, ’Half your life has been wasted.” The Empty Boat 182 Osho CHAPTER 10. WHOLENESS Then suddenly there arose a storm and the small boat was far from the shore. At any moment it would sink. Asked Nasruddin, "Schoolmaster, do you know how to swim?” The man was very afraid, perspiring. He said, ”No.” Said Nasruddin, "Then your WHOLE life has been wasted. | am going!” Now, this boat cannot go to the other shore. But people think learning can become a boat, or learning can become a substitute for swimming. No! Can scriptures become boats? No, they are too heavy. You can drown with them but you cannot cross the river. Unlearning will make you weightless; unlearning will make you innocent again. When you don’t know, in that not knowing what happens? The most beautiful phenomenon.... The greatest ecstasy happens when you don’t know — there is a silence when you don’t know. Someone asks a question and you don’t know. Life is a riddle, and you don’t know. Everywhere is mystery and you are standing there not knowing, wondering. When you don’t know there is wonder, and wonder is the most religious quality. The deepest religious quality is wonder. Only a child can wonder. A man who knows cannot wonder, and without wonder no one has ever reached the divine. It is the wondering heart to which everything is a mystery...a butterfly is a mystery, a seed sprouting is a mystery. And remember, nothing has been solved: all your science has done nothing. The seed sprouting is stilla mystery and it is going to remain a mystery. Even if science can create the seed, the sprouting will remain a mystery. A child is born; it is a mystery that is born. Even if the child can be produced in a test-tube, it makes no difference. The mystery remains the same. You are here. It is such a mystery. You have not earned it, you cannot say to the universe, ”| am here because | have earned it.” It is a sheer gift, you are here for no reason at all. If you were not here, what difference would it make? If you were not here, to what court could you appeal? This sheer existence, this breathing that goes in and out, this moment that you are here, listening to me, to the breeze, to the birds, this moment that you are alive, is such a mystery. If you can face it without any knowledge you will enter into it. If you face it with knowledge and you say, ”! know, | know the answer,” the doors are closed — not because of the mystery, the doors are closed because of your knowledge, your theories, your philosophy, your theology, your Christianity, your Hin-duism — they close the door. A man who thinks he knows does not know. The Upanishads go on saying that a man who thinks that he does not know, knows. Says Socrates: When a man really knows, he knows only one thing, that he does not know. Chuang Tzu says: It is because he has unlearned. Whatsoever the world taught him, whatsoever society taught him, whatsoever parents and the utilitarians taught him, he has dropped. He has again become a child, a small child. His eyes are again filled with wonder. He looks all around and everywhere is mystery. Ego kills the mystery. Whether it is the ego of a scientist or whether it is the ego of a scholar or of a philosopher, makes no difference. The ego says, ”! know.” And the ego says, "If | don’t know now, then sooner or later | will come to know.” The ego says that there is nothing un-knowable. The Empty Boat 183 Osho CHAPTER 10. WHOLENESS There are two categories for the ego: the known and the unknown. The known is that part which the ego has already traveled, and the unknown is that part which the ego will travel: the ego feels that it is possible to travel, but there is nothing unknowable. The ego leaves no mystery in the world. And when there is no mystery around you, there cannot be any mystery within. When mystery disappears, all songs disappear; when mystery disappears, poetry is dead; when mystery disappears, God is not in the temple, there is nothing but a dead statue; when mystery disappears there is no possibility of love, because only two mysteries fall in love with each other. If you know, then there is no possibility of love — knowledge is against love. And love is always for unlearning. But because he has unlearned: HIS NATURE SINKS TO ITS ROOT IN THE ONE. HIS VITALITY, HIS POWER, HIDE IN SECRET TAO. HIS NATURE SINKS TO ITS ROOT.... The ego exists in the head, remember, and you carry your head very high. The root is just at the other pole of your being. Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu used to say: Concentrate on the toe. Close your eyes and move into the toe and remain there. That will give you a balance. The head has given you much imbalance. The toe...? It looks as if they are joking. They mean it, they are not joking. They are right. Move from the head because the head is not the root, and we are in the head too much. HIS NATURE SINKS TO ITS ROOT, to the very source. The wave goes deeper into the ocean, into the one. And remember, the source is one. The waves may be many, millions, but the ocean is one. You are separate there, | am separate here, but just look a little deeper at the roots and we are one; we are like branches of the same tree. Look at the bran-ches and they are separate, but deep down they are one. The deeper you go, you will find less and less multiplicity, more and more unity. At the deepest it is one. That is why Hindus talk of the nondual, the one, ADVAIT. HIS VITALITY, HIS POWER, HIDE IN SECRET TAO. And whatsoever vitality comes to the man of Tao is not manipulated, is not created by him, it is given by the roots. He is vital because he is rooted; he is vital because he has rejoined the ocean, the one. He is back at the source, he has come to the mother. WHEN HE IS ALL ONE, THERE IS NO FLAW IN HIM BY WHICH A WEDGE CAN ENTER. The Empty Boat 184 Osho CHAPTER 10. WHOLENESS And whenever one is rooted in the deepest core of his being, which is one, then there is no flaw. You cannot penetrate such a man. Swords cannot go into him, fire cannot burn him. How can you destroy the ultimate? You can destroy the momentary, how can you destroy the ultimate? You can destroy the wave, how can you destroy the ocean? You can destroy the individual, but you cannot destroy the soul. The form can be killed, but the formless...? How will you kill the formless? Where will you find the sword that can kill the formless? Krishna said in the Gita, "NAINAM CHHEDANTI SASHTRANI — no sword can kill it, no fire can burn it.” Not that if you go and kill Chuang Tzu you will not be able to kill him. You will be able to kill the form, but the form is not Chuang Tzu — and he will laugh. It happened that Alexander was returning from India when suddenly he remembered Aristotle, his teacher, one of the greatest logicians. Aristotle is the original source of all Western stupidity, he is the father. He created the logical mind. He created analysis, he created the method of dissection, he created the ego and the individual, and he was the teacher of Alexander. He had told Alexander to bring a Hindu mystic, a sannyasin, when he came back, because polar opposites are always interesting. He must have been deeply interested to know what this Hindu mystic is. What type of man can he be who lives beyond logic, who says there is only one not two, who joins all the contradictions and paradoxes, whose whole attitude is of synthesis, not of analysis? A man who never believes in the part, who always believes in the whole, what type of man can he be? So he told Alexander, "When you come back, bring with you a Hindu mystic, a sannyasin. | would like to see one. A man who lives beyond mind and says that there is something beyond mind, is a rare phenomenon.” And Aristotle never believed that there could be anything beyond mind; for him mind was all. When Alexander was returning, he suddenly remembered. So he asked his soldiers to go and find a great Hindu mystic, a great sannyasin, a saint, a sage. They inquired in the town and were told, ”Yes. On the bank of the river a naked man stands. For years he has been standing there, and we think he is a mystic. We cannot be certain be-cause he never speaks much, and we cannot be certain because we don’t understand him much. What he says seems to be very illogical. Maybe it is true, maybe it is not true.” Alexander said, "This is the right man. My master, who has created logic, would like to see this illogical man. Go and tell him that Alex-ander invites him.” The soldiers went and they told this naked man that Alexander the Great invites him; he would be a royal guest, every comfort and convenience would be given to him, so he shouldn't worry. The man started laughing and said, "The man who calls himself The Great, is a fool. Go and tell him | don’t keep company with fools. That is why | have been standing here alone for many years. If | want to keep company with fools, do you think that India has less than his country? The town is full of them.” The Empty Boat 185 Osho CHAPTER 10. WHOLENESS They were very disturbed, those soldiers, but they had to report back. Alexander asked what the man had said — Dandami was the name of this man. Alexander in his reports has used the name Dandamas. When he heard Alexander felt annoyed, but this was the last village on the border and soon he would be out of India, so he said, "It is best that | go and see what type of man this is.” He may have remembered Diogenes — maybe this man was the same type, standing naked near a river. The same thing happened with Diogenes. He also laughed and thought Alexander a fool. So Alexander approached Dandami with a naked sword and said, ’Follow me, or | will cut your head off immediately. | don’t believe in discussion, | believe in orders.” The man laughed and said, ”Cut it off — don’t wait! The head that you will be cutting off, | have cut it off long ago. This is nothing new, | am already headless. Cut it off, and | tell you, that when the head falls down onto the earth you will see it fall and | will also see it fall, because | am not the head. The man of Tao can be burnt, but still the man of Tao cannot be burnt. The form is always on fire. It is burning already. But the formless...the formless is never touched by any fire. From where comes the power, from where comes this vitality? They hide in secret Tao. Tao means the great nature, Tao means the great ocean, Tao means the great source. SO A DRUNKEN MAN WHO FALLS OUT OF A WAGON IS BRUISED, BUT NOT DESTROYED. HIS BONES ARE LIKE THE BONES OF OTHER MEN, BUT HIS FALL IS DIFFERENT. The ego is not there... HIS SPIRIT IS ENTIRE. HE IS NOT AWARE OF GETTING INTO A WAGON, OR FALLING OUT OF ONE. LIFE AND DEATH ARE NOTHING TO HIM. HE KNOWS NO ALARM, HE MEETS OBSTACLES WITHOUT THOUGHT, WITHOUT CARE AND TAKES THEM WITHOUT KNOWING THEY ARE THERE. IF THERE IS SUCH SECURITY IN WINE, HOW MUCH MORE IN TAO? The Empty Boat 186 Osho CHAPTER 10. WHOLENESS THE WISE MAN IS HIDDEN IN TAO, NOTHING CAN TOUCH HIM. Watch a drunkard, because the man of Tao is in many ways similar to him. He walks, but there is no walker; that is why he looks unbalanced, wobbling. He walks, but there is no direction, he is not going anywhere. He walks, but the boat is empty, only momentarily, but it is empty. Watch a drunkard. Follow him and see what is happening to him. If somebody hits him he is not annoyed. If he falls down he accepts the falling, he doesn’t resist, he falls down as if dead. If people laugh and joke about him he is not worried. He may even joke with them, he may start laughing with them, he may start laughing at himself. What has happened? Momentarily, through chemicals, his ego is not there. The ego is a construction: you can drop it through chemicals too. It is just a construction; it is not a reality, it is not substantial in you. It is through society that you have learned it. Alcohol simply drops you out of society. That is why society is always against alcohol, the government is always against alcohol, the university is always against alcohol, all the moralists are always against alcohol — because alcohol is dangerous, it gives you a glimpse of the outside of society. That is why there is So much propaganda in America and in the West against drugs. The governments, the politicians, the church, the pope, they have all become scared because the new generation is too involved in drugs. They are very dangerous for society, because once you have glimpses beyond society you can never become a really adjusted part of it. You will always remain an outsider. Once you have a glimpse of the non-ego then society cannot dominate you easily. And if one goes too deep into drugs then it is possible for the ego to be shattered completely. Then you will become as if mad. Once or twice a drug will give you a glimpse; it is just as if a window opens and closes. If you persist and you become addicted to it, the ego may suddenly drop. But this is the problem: the ego will drop, but the non-ego will not arise. You will go mad, schizophrenic, split. Religion works from the other corner, from the other end: it tries to bring up the non-ego first. And the more the non-ego comes up, the more the whole asserts, the more the ego will drop automatically, by and by. Before the ego drops, the whole has taken possession. You will not go mad, you will not become abnormal, you will simply be natural. You will fall outside society into nature. Through drugs you can also fall out of society, but into madness. That is why religions are also against drugs. Society has given you a working arrangement for the ego: through it you manage somehow, you steer your life somehow. But if the whole takes possession then there is no problem — you become a man of Tao. Then there is no need for this ego, you can throw it to the dogs. But you can do otherwise also. You can simply destroy this ego through chemicals. This can be done. Then there WILL be a problem because you will simply become abnormal. You will feel a certain power, but that power will be false, because the whole has not taken possession of you. Many cases of this have been reported. One girl in New York, under Isd, just jumped out of a window on the thirtieth floor because she thought she could fly. And when you are under a drug, if The Empty Boat 187 Osho CHAPTER 10. WHOLENESS the thought comes that you can fly, there is no doubt. You believe in it totally, because the doubter, the ego, is not there. Who is there to doubt? You believe it. But the whole has not asserted itself. Chuang Tzu might have flown. Chuang Tzu might have gone out of the window like a bird on wings, but under Isd you cannot. The ego is not there so you cannot doubt, but the whole has not taken possession so you are not powerful. The power is not there, only the illusion of power. That creates trouble. Under alcohol you can do certain things... A circus was traveling in a special train from one town to another and a cage was damaged and the lion escaped. So the manager gathered all his strong men and said, "Before you go into the night, into the jungle to find the lion, | will give you some wine. It will give you courage.” All twenty of them took big shots. The night was cold and dangerous and courage was needed — but Mulla Nasruddin refused. He said, ”I will only have soda.” The manager protested, ”But you will need courage!” Nasruddin replied, ”In such moments | don’t need courage. These moments are dangerous — night time and the lion, and courage can be dangerous. | would rather be a coward and alert.” When you don’t have power and a drug can give you courage, it is dangerous. You can move madly on a certain path — this is the danger of drugs. But society is not afraid because of this. Society is afraid that if you have a glimpse beyond society then you will never be adjusted to it. And society is such a madhouse - to be adjusted to it you must not be allowed any glimpse outside. Religions are also against drugs and alcohol, but for a different reason. They say: Be a drunkard, a drunkard of the divine wine, because then you are rooted, centered. Then you are powerful. IF THERE IS SUCH SECURITY IN WINE, HOW MUCH MORE IN TAO? THE WISE MAN IS HIDDEN IN TAO, NOTHING CAN TOUCH HIM. Absolutely nothing can touch him. Why? If you follow me rightly, only the ego can be touched. It is very touchy. If somebody just looks at you in a certain way, it is touched. He has not done anything. If somebody smiles a little, it is touched; if somebody just turns his head and does not look at you, it is touched. It is very touchy. It is like a wound, always open, green. You touch it and the pain arises. A single word, a single gesture — the other may not even be aware of what he has done to you, but he has touched it. The Empty Boat 188 Osho CHAPTER 10. WHOLENESS And you always think the other is responsible, that he has wounded you. No, you carry your wound. With the ego your whole being is a wound. And you carry it around. Nobody is interested in hurting you, nobody is positively waiting to hurt you; everybody is engaged in safeguarding his own wound. Who has got the energy? But still it happens, because you are so ready to be wounded, so ready, just waiting on the brink for anything. You cannot touch a man of Tao. Why? — because there is no one to be touched. There is no wound. He is healthy, healed, whole. This word whole is beautiful. The word heal comes from the whole, and the word holy also comes from the whole. He is whole, healed, holy. Be aware of your wound. Don’t help it to grow, let it be healed; and it will be healed only when you move to the roots. The less the head, the more the wound will heal — with no head there is no wound. Live a headless life. Move as a total being, and accept things. Just for twenty-four hours, try it -— total acceptance, whatsoever happens. Someone insults you, accept it, don’t react, and see what happens. Suddenly you will feel an energy flowing in you that you have not felt before. Somebody insults you: you feel weak, you feel disturbed, you start thinking of how to get your revenge. That man has hooked you, and now you will move round and round. For days, nights, months, even years, you will not be able to sleep, you will have bad dreams. People can waste their whole life over a small thing, just because someone insulted them. Just look back into your past and you will remember a few things. You were a small child and the teacher in the class called you an idiot, and you still remember it and you feel resentment. Your father said something. Your parents have forgotten, and even if you remind them, they will not be able to remember it. Your mother looked at you in a certain way and since then the wound has been there. And it is still open, fresh; if anybody touches it, you will explode. Don’t help this wound to grow. Don’t make this wound your soul. Go to the roots, be with the whole. For twenty-four hours, just twenty-four hours, try not to react, not to reject, whatsoever happens. If someone pushes you and you fall to the ground — fall! Then get up and go home. Don’t do anything about it. If somebody hits you, bow down your head, accept it with gratitude. Go home, don’t do anything, just for twenty-four hours, and you will know a new upsurge of energy that you have never known before, a new vitality arising from the roots. And once you know it, once you have tasted it, yout life will be different. Then you will laugh at all the foolish things you have been doing, at all the resentments, reactions, revenges, with which you have been destroying yourself. Nobody else can destroy you except you; nobody else can save you except you. You are the Judas and you are the Jesus. Enough for today. The Empty Boat 189 Osho CHAPTER 1 1 Chuang Tzu’s Funeral 20 July 1974 am in Buddha Hall 190
Taoism: An Essential Guide
Eva Wong
null
Taoism,Eva Wong,Daoism,Tao,Dao,Lao-tzu,Laozi,Lieh-tzu,Liezi,Chuang-tzu,Zhuang Zhou,Chinese Religion,Chinese Philosophy,Chinese Spirituality,Quanzhen,Complete Reality,Yin-Yang,Religion,Spirituality,Mysticism,Qigong,Meditation,Taoist Practice,Educational Texts
This is the ebook version of Taoism: An Essential Guide by Eva Wong, available in EPUB, AZW3, and PDF formats. Description: For the first time, the great depth and diversity of Taoist spirituality is introduced in a single, accessible manual. Taoism, known widely today through the teachings of the classic Tao Te Ching and the practices of t'ai chi and feng-shui, is less known for its unique traditions of meditation, physical training, magical practice, and internal alchemy. Covering all of the most important texts, figures, and events, this essential guide illuminates Taoism's extraordinarily rich history and remarkable variety of practice. A comprehensive bibliography for further study completes this valuable reference work.
Full text of "Taoism: An Essential Guide" Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "Taoism: An Essential Guide" See other formats '*5 it '£• >K. ^ pi as “This book enables the reader to examine the seemingly disparate elements of Taoism as well as the thread that unifies this living tradition, through the eyes and heart of a scholar-practitioner.” —Gary D. DeAngelis, PhD, editor of Teaching the Daode Jing ABOUTTHE BOOK For the first time, the great depth and diversity of Taoist spirituality is introduced in a single, accessible manual. Taoism, known widely today through the teachings of the classic Tao Te Ching and the practices of t’ai chi and feng-shui, is less known for its unique traditions of meditation, physical training, magical practice and internal alchemy. Covering all of the most important texts, figures, and events, this essential guide illuminates Taoism’s extraordinarily rich history and remarkable variety of practice. A comprehensive bibliography for further study completes this valuable reference work. EVA WONG is an independent scholar and a practitioner of the Taoist arts of the Pre-Celestial Way and Complete Reality lineages. She has written and translated many books on Taoism and related topics, including Seven Taoist Masters, Lieh-tzu, and A Master Course in Feng-Shui. TAOISM An Essential Guide Eva Wong SHAM BH ALA Boston & London 2011 Shambhala Publications, Inc. Horticultural Hall 300 Massachusetts Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02115 www.shambhala.com © 1997 by Eva Wong Cover art: Detail of “Spring Dawn Over the Elixir Terrace,” by Lu Guang. China, ca. 1369. Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY This book was previously published as The Shambhala Guide to Taoism. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wong Eva, 1951— Taoism: an essential guide/Eva Wong, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. elSBN 978-0-8348-2738-7 ISBN 978-1-59030-882-0 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Taoism. 2. Tao. I. Title. BL1920.W66 2011 299.5' 14—dc22 2010049929 FRONT COVER: “Spring Dawn Over the Elixir Terrace.” China, Yuan dynasty, ca. 1369. Hanging scroll; ink on paper. Image: 24% x 10% in. (61.6 x 26 cm). Overall with mounting: 87% x 17% in. (222.3 x 44.8 cm). Overall with knobs: 87% x 20 5 /s in. (222.3 x 52.4 cm). Photographed by Malcolm Varon. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY. Contents List of Illustrations and Tables Introduction Part One: H istory of Taoism L Shamanic Origins (3000-800 bce ! The Legendary Yii Shamanism in Literate China Duties of Shamans in Chou Society The Shamanic Tradition of Southern China The Legacy of Shamanism in Later Developments of Taoism Further Readings 2. The Classical Period (700-220 bce ! The Political and Historical Background of the Spring and Autumn Period Classical Taoism in the Spring and Autumn Period: Lao-tzu and the Tao-te chins The Teachings of the Tao-te chins The Political and Historical Background of the Warring States Period Classical Taoism in the Warring States Period Further Readings 3. The Transformation of Taoism from Philosophy into Organized Religion (20 bce-600 ce) Hie Beginnings of Religious Taoism Taoism Becomes an Organized Religion The Golden Age of Taoist Religion Further Readings 4. The Rise of Mystical Taoism (300-600 ce) Mysticism and Shang-ch’ing Taoism The Predecessors of Shang-ch’ing Taoism Shang-ch’ing Taoism in the Chin Dynasty Shang-ch’ing Taoism in the Southern Dynasties The Teachings of Shang-ch’ing Taoism The Legacy of Shang-ch’ing Taoism Further Readings 5. The Development of Alchemical Taoism 1200- 1200 ce ! The Beginnings of Alchemy The Teachings of the Tsan-tung-chi (Triplex Unity! The Teachings of Ko Hung’s P ’ao-p ’u-tzii (Hie Sage Who Embraces Simplicity! Hie Separation of Internal and External Alchemy Hie Height of Development of Internal Alchemy Further Readings 6. Hie Synthesis of Taoism. Buddhism, and Confucianism (1000 CE -present) Hie Philosophical Synthesis Hie Religious Synthesis Variations of the Synthesis and the Rise of Sects in Taoism ANew Synthesis of Confucianism. Zen Buddhism, and Taoist Internal Alchemy Further Readings Part Two: S ystems of Taoism 7. Magical Taoism: Hie Way of Power Basic Beliefs of Magical Taoism Principal Practices of Magical Taoism Sects in Magical Taoism Further Words on Magical Taoism Further Readings 8. Divinational Taoism: Hie Way of Seeing ABrief History of Divinational Taoism Principal Ideas of Divinational Taoism Forms of Divination Celestial Divination: Tzu-wei Tu-su Terrestrial Divination: Feng-shui Other Forms of Divination Further Words on Divinational Taoism Further Readings 9. Ceremonial Taoism: The Way of Devotion Hie Main Features of Ceremonial Taoism Hie Taoist Deities Hie Administrative Structure of the Taoist Celestial Realm Taoist Festivals and Ceremonies Sects in Ceremonial Taoism Further Words on Ceremonial Taoism Further Readings 10. Internal-Alchemical Taoism: Hie Wav of Transformation Basic Ideas of Internal Alchemy Major Symbols in the Language of Internal Alchemy Steps in the Alchemical Process Approaches to Internal Alchemy Further Words on Internal-Alchemical Taoism Further Readings 11. Action and Karma Taoism: The Wav of Right Action Historical Predecessors of Action and Karma Taoism Principal Beliefs in Action and Karma Taoism The Significance of Action and Karma Taoism in Taoist Spirituality Further Readings Part Three: Taoist P ractices 12. Meditation Forms of Taoist Meditation Further Words on Taoist Meditation Further Readings 13. Techniques for Cultivating the Body Techniques of External Strengthening Techniques of Internal Strengthening Techniques that Work on Both External and Internal Strengthening Hie Use of Herbs and Foods Further Readings 14. Rites of Purification. Ceremony, and Talismanic Magic Rites of Purification Ceremony Hie Taoist Altar Talismans Further Readings A ppendixes 1. Dynasties of China 2. Map of China 3. Bibliography of Further Readings Index E-mail Sign-Up List of Illustrations and Tables Figure 1.1. The Pace ofYii Figure 3.1. Ling-pao talisman of healing Figure 4.1. The three monsters in the body Figure 4.2. Shang-ch’ing adept visualizing a star pattern Figure 4.3. Dances of flight Figure 5.1. Wei Po-vang Figure 5.2. Alchemical furnace and cauldrons Figure 5.3. The furnace and cauldron in the body Figure 6.1. Ch’iu Ch’ang-ch’un of the Complete Reality School Figure 6.2. Chang San-feng Figure 7.1. Kun-lun talismans of protection Figure 7.2. Celestial Teachers talisman invoking warrior deities Figure 7.3. Talisman used to endow a sword with power Figure 7.4. Ling-pao talismans and dances of power for fighting evil spirits and malevolent ghosts Figure 7.5. Mudras used to destroy evil spirits Figure 7.6. Mudras used to destroy evil spirits Figure 7.7. Kun-lun talisman of exorcism Figure 7.8. Kun-lun talismans of healing Figure 8.1. Fu I Isi. patron of the divinational arts Figure 8.2. Hie Wu-chi Diagram Table 8.1. Hie creation of the pa-k’ua Figure 8.3. Hie Earlier Heaven and Later Heaven pa- k’ua Figure 8.4. Derivation of the sixty-four hexagrams Table 8.2. Hie Ten Celestial Stems and Twelve Terrestrial Branches Figure 8.5. Sample astrological chart Figure 8.6. Geomantic compass Figure 8.7. Sample geomantic chart Figure 9.1. T’ai-shang Lao-chun. the highest deity in the Taoist pantheon Figure 9.2. Hie Three Pure Ones Figure 9.3. Hie Jade Emperor Figure 9.4. Tire Mother Empress of the West Figure 9.5. Hie Mother of the Bushel of Stars Figure 9.6. Hie Celestial Lord of the Great Beginning Figure 9.7. Immortal Lii Tung-pin Figure 9.8. Hie spirits of rain, wind, and thunder Figure 9.9. Ceremony sending a petition to the deities Table 9.1. Taoist Sacred Festivals Figure 13.1. Taoist calisthenics Figure 13.2. The bear posture Figure 14.1. A Taoist altar Figure 14.2. Ling-pao talisman of protection Figure 14.3. Kun-lun talisman of healing Figure 14.4. Three Kun-lun talismans Map of China Introduction Many people will experience, at least once in their lifetime, the urge to venture beyond the everyday world of the mundane into the world of the spirit. These journeys into the spiritual world often take us into a universe we normally do not encounter in our daily lives, and allow us to explore regions of our consciousness that we have not before known. This book is a guide to the spiritual landscape of Taoism. In it you will encounter events in the history of Taoism, meet the sages who wrote the Taoist texts, be introduced to the various schools of Taoist thinking, and get a feel for what it means to practice Taoism today. The spiritual landscape of Taoism is a kaleidoscope of colors and sounds. It is also a land of silence and stillness. It can be friendly and attractive, and at the same time challenging and dangerous. In this book, you will be traveling through the spiritual terrain of Taoism. On your journey, you will see shamans dressed in animal skins dancing the patterns of the stars as they fly to the sky and tunnel beneath the earth; you will see talismans displaying symbols of power that are designed to heal, protect, and ward off malevolent spirits; you will see people sitting, standing, or sleeping in unusual postures, cultivating the breath of life and longevity; you will see colorful tapestries, images of deities and immortals, huge brass cauldrons, altars with sticks of incense, and oil lamps burning eternal flames. On this journey, you will see, etched on bamboo sticks, hexagrams, the symbols of change, used by diviners to interpret the pattern of events in the universe; you will also see ordinary people tending the aged and the sick, teaching the young, and helping others who are less fortunate than themselves; you will hear the loud clang of cymbals and drums, the shrill and melodious sound of flutes, and slow, rhythmic voices chanting to the beat of a wooden block. You will hear the silence of a meditation hall, the soft gait of feet walking on the flagstones of monastic cloisters, and the occasional sound of a bell amid the rustle of leaves. All these are features in the spiritual landscape of Taoism—a tradition of wisdom accumulated over thousands of years that has changed human consciousness, and yet been changed by it. This book is a guide, and a guide differs from a textbook or an anthology of translated texts. First, a true guide is based on the personal experience of someone who has traveled the terrain; one cannot write a guide about places one has not been to. Information contained in a guide is not based on book knowledge alone but on experience. Second, a true guide has a perspective and does not pretend to be objective. What is seen is never independent of the observer. As a guide to the spiritual landscape of Taoism, this book shows things that I have experienced and enjoyed. Third, a true guide does not pretend to be complete. Any landscape, physical or spiritual, is rich beyond imagination. This book is meant to give you enough information to get started. It is a map and field guide to a territory; it is not the territory itself. Finally, a guide alerts travelers to possible dangers. The spiritual landscape is both attractive and forbidding, and travelers need to be aware of hazards along the way. Therefore, throughout the book, I shall point out which are the safest paths and which are the hazardous routes in the spiritual terrain of Taoism. This book is divided into three parts: History of Taoism, Systems of Taoism, and Taoist Practices. History of Taoism It is important to know the history of a wisdom tradition and be connected to its origins. Part One presents a brief history of Taoism. We begin by looking at how the shamans of ancient China laid down the foundations of Taoism. Several thousand years ago, before there was the idea of the Tao and before a philosophy was built around it, tribal leaders made offerings to the sky, earth, mountains, valleys, and rivers to renew the bond between humanity and the sacred powers. Urey danced movements of power that took them to distant realms to gain knowledge and wisdom. We can still see some of these practices today in Taoist religious ceremonies and in the “movi ng meditation” and exercises of internal health. Next we turn to the Classical Period—that span of Chinese history between the eighth and third centuries bce. During this time lived some of the greatest philosophers of China: Lao-tzu, Confucius, Han-fei-tzu, Chuang-tzu, Sun- tzu, and Mo-tzu. This era gave us the Tao-te ching and its philosophy of nonaction ( wu-wei ) and harmonious living. Tire Tao-te ching is still the most widely translated Chinese book, and for many Westerners the book that gave them their first glimpse of Taoism. The history of Taoism took an interesting turn between the first and seventh centuries ce: a form of Taoism that combined magic and devotion emerged. Under the influence of a charismatic spiritual leader, Chang Tao-ling, Taoism became a religion. Chang’s descendants completed the transformation of Taoism from a philosophy to an organized religion, creating a system of rituals, liturgies, and a priesthood. Others, inspired by Chang’s form of Taoism and impressed by Buddhism’s growing collection of scriptures, compiled a large number of “sacred” texts and claimed that these writings were transmitted by the deities. These scriptures are some of the oldest texts in the Taoist canon. While the peasants followed the popular religious leaders and entrusted their welfare to talismans and amulets, the middle class and nobility were attracted to another kind of Taoism. Around the end of the third century ce, a noblewoman by the name of Wei Huats’un founded the Shang-ch’ing (High Pure) school of Taoism. The Shang- ch’ing practitioners visualized images of deities, invoked the deities’ names, drew talismans, and entered into a mystical union with the sacred powers. Although this form of Taoism is now rarely practiced, its influence can be seen in today’s Taoist sacred ceremonies and health arts. Parallel to the rise of Taoist mysticism was the development of Taoist alchemy. Alchemical Taoism is concerned with cultivating health, longevity, and immortality, and is divided into external and internal alchemy. Tire School of External Alchemy believed that immortality could be attained by ingesting the appropriate minerals and herbs. It emerged in the third century ce and rose to the height of its development in the seventh and eighth centuries ce. Tire School of Internal Alchemy did not believe in ingesting external substances and held that longevity and immortality could be attained by transforming body and mind from within. The beginnings of internal alchemy could be traced to the third century ce. However, the movement did not come into its own until external alchemy declined, around the tenth century ce. Alchemical Taoism introduced the idea of ch’i, or internal energy, and was responsible for giving Taoism its reputation as an art of health and longevity. Finally we look at the synthesis of classical Taoist philosophy, internal alchemy, Buddhism, and Confucianism. By the eleventh century ce, alchemical Taoism had sunk into a quagmire of esoteric terminology and abused practices. Tired of the empty jargon and realizing that spiritual development required a balance of physical health and mental clarity, sages like Wang Ch’ung-yang, Chen Hsiyi and Lii Tung-pin began to teach a form of Taoism that advocated the cultivation of both body and mind. Inspired by the Confucian philosophy of the original nature of goodness and the Zen techniques of stilling the mind, a synthesis of the three philosophies—Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism—was reached. This form of Taoism is found in the teachings of two major Taoist sects today: the Complete Reality School (Ch’iian-chen) and the Earlier Heaven Way (Hsien-t’ien Tao). Systems of Taoism Part Two discusses different paths within Taoism. Although these paths are sometimes called schools, their teachings are not mutually exclusive. Magical Taoism, the Way of Power, is the oldest form of Taoism practiced today. In Magical Taoism, power from the natural elements and from the spirits, immortals, and deities is invoked and channeled by the practitioner. Talismans are an important part of Magical Taoism: power can be channeled into objects for protection and healing. This path of Taoism is the least known to Westerners, and is often shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding. It is also the most demanding and difficult path to follow. Divinational Taoism, the Way of Seeing, is based on understanding the workings of the universe and seeing the patterns of change. Celestial divination is based on skylore and the observation of the sun, moon, and stars; terrestrial divination is based on earth science and the observation of the features of landforms. Divinational Taoism believes that seeing and understanding the patterns of the universe will help us live in harmony with change, and to live in harmony with change is to live according to the principles of the Tao. Ceremonial Taoism, the Way of Devotion, believes that the destiny of humanity is governed by sacred powers. By performing the correct ceremonies, humanity enters into a bond with the sacred powers and receives blessings and protection from them. Liturgies and rituals are integral to this form of Taoism. There is a clear distinction between practitioner and believer. In Ceremonial Taoism, the practitioner is a person trained to perform the ceremonies; the believer is the individual who trusts the leader of the ceremony to represent him or her before the sacred powers. Internal-Alchemical Taoism, the Way of Transformation, advocates changing mind and body to attain health, longevity, and immortality. Central to its beliefs is the idea that internal energy, or ch’i, in the body is the foundation of health. Thus, Internal-Alchemical Taoism advocates cultivating, gathering, and circulating energy. Of all the paths of Taoism, this one is the most dangerous. Action and Karma Taoism, the Way of Right Action, focuses on accumulating merit by doing charitable works. Its origin lies in the traditional Chinese belief that good deeds bring reward and unethical deeds invite retribution. After Buddhism was introduced into China, the belief in karmic retribution was incorporated into this form of Taoism. Action and Karma Taoism became a sophisticated system of ethics in which the rewards of an ethical life are health and well-being. Taoist Practices In Part Three we look at four kinds of practices: meditation, cultivation of the body, sacred ceremony, and the magical arts. There are many forms of Taoist meditation, different sects practicing different styles. Sometimes, even within the same sect, the form of meditation changes as the practitioner advances spiritually. For example, Shang- ch’ing meditation uses visualizations to help the practitioner achieve a mystical union with the deities. Insight meditation, or internal observation, another style of Taoist meditation, is very similar to Buddhist vipassana meditation. A form of quiet sitting, like Zen meditation, is used by Taoists of the Complete Reality School to still the mind and tame the emotions. There are also forms of Taoist meditation for gathering, cultivating, and circulating internal energy. These types of meditation are most similar to kundalini yoga. Taoism’s preoccupation with physical health has inspired the development of techniques that cultivate the body. Tire best-known of these techniques is ch ’i-kung, or the work of energy. Some ch’i-kung techniques are breathing exercises; others involve massaging various areas of the body; some are static postures, not unlike those of hatha yoga; and some incorporate methods of circulating energy into natural activities such as sitting, standing, walking, and sleeping. Another method of cultivating the body is known as tendon-changing. This technique is said to have been introduced by Bodhidharma, the Buddhist, to the Shaolin Temple in the fourth century ce. Designed to strengthen and relax the muscles, tendons, and ligaments, these exercises were originally used by Buddhist monks to prepare themselves for long sessions of zazen, or sitting meditation. Tire techniques were adopted by the Taoists, who saw their value in strengthening the muscular and skeletal system. Internal martial arts, such as t’ai-chi ch’uan and pa-k’ua chang, are also methods of cultivating the body. These systems of movement are designed to correct unhealthy body postures and facilitate the natural flow of energy. Ceremony is an important part of Taoist practice. All Taoist ceremonies are preceded by rituals of purification designed to cleanse the bodies and minds of the participants. Ceremonies are performed to honor the deities and renew the bond between humanity and the sacred powers. Typically, a ceremony involves chanting, invocation, and other ritualistic performances, such as dancing and drawing talismans. The final category of Taoist practices is the magical arts. The most popular form practiced today is talismanic magic. Using symbols and words of power written on a strip of paper, this magic invokes the deities and spirits to heal and protect, warding off malevolent forces. Tire preparation and use of talismanic magic require not only skill but also trust in the known and unknown powers of the universe. Each chapter in this guide is divided into two sections: the first presents an introductory survey of the subject matter; the closing section contains a list of recommended readings to help you in your exploration of Taoism. This guide will have been successful if it stimulates your interest. It will also have been successful if it tells you that an investigation of Taoism is not what you want—and in that case, you can stop immediately and save your resources. Most of all, this guide will be successful if you enjoy what you see in your travels. As with visiting unknown regions of the world, when you journey through a spiritual landscape, you must let go of expectations. Be prepared to be rattled, enticed, excited, awed, and dumbfounded. There is no set way on how you should react to what you see. The richness of a spiritual tradition is best experienced when you let your thoughts, feelings, and senses participate fully. The information in this guide is not the final word: it is impossible to document every detail in a spiritual landscape; moreover, as more people connect with the spiritual terrain, better guides will be written. Meanwhile, I hope you will enjoy this spiritual armchair journey. May this guide serve you well! PART ONE HISTORY OF TAOISM 1 Shamanic Origins ( 3000-800 BCR) Five thousand years ago, a tribal people settled along the shores of the Yellow River in northern China. These people had not developed a national identity, nor did they venture far from the banks of the river that carved its path through the dusty plateau. Their daily activities consisted of hunting, fishing, tending their herds, and planting small plots of wheat and millet. At night they gathered by their fires and looked up into the mysterious dome of faint, twinkling lights. Sometimes the howling of wild animals in the dark would remind them of having lost their herds to powerful beasts; at other times they would recall fleeing from the raging river that overflowed its banks and wiped out their crops. But they would also talk about how their chiefs pursued the wild animals and fought back the floods. These chieftains possessed unusual powers: they had mastery over the elements, the rivers bent to their will, plants and animals yielded their secrets to them, they talked with invisible powers, and they traveled across the sky and beneath the earth to gather knowledge that would help the tribe. The greatest of these chiefs was Yu. The Legendary Yu Legends tell us that Yu was no ordinary mortal. He had no mother and he came directly from the body of his father, Kun. Kun was selected by the tribal leader, Shun, to battle the floods. When Kun failed, he was punished by the powers, and his dead body was left abandoned on a mountain side. For three years, Yu lay inside his father’s dead body. When Kun was revived, he was transformed into a brown bear, and he opened up his own belly and brought out his son, Yu. Immediately, Yu also changed himself into a bear, and we are told that, throughout his life, Yii shape- shifted between man and bear, and always walked with a shuffle that was known as bear’s gait. In the Chou dynasty, a thousand years after the legendary times of Yii, priests still dressed in bearskins and grunted and shuffled as they danced the gait of power to honor Yii the Great. We are told that, when Yii grew up, he carried on the work of his father. Yii was able to succeed where his father had failed because the sacred powers gave him the mythical book Shui-ching (The Book of Power over Waters). Yii also journeyed frequently to the stars to learn from the celestial spirits. The Pace of Yii ( fig, 1,1 1. a dance of power that carried Yii to the sky, is preserved in the Taoist texts. These movements were danced by generations of Taoist priests, mystics, and sorcerers, and by the practitioners of the internal martial arts today. Yii was able not only to assume the shape of animals, he also trusted and understood them, and in return they yielded him their secrets. When the flood waters receded, Yii saw a tortoise emerge from the river. On its shell was the pattern of the Lo-shu pa-k’ua that described the nature of flux and change in the universe. This pattern was to become the basis of the divination arts of China. Everything that legend has attributed to Yii characterizes him as a shaman. Mircea Eliade, in Iris classic study on shamanism, described the following features as part of the shamanic experience: flight to the sky, the journey underground, the dance of power, ecstasy and sudden revelation, the power to converse with animals, power over the elements, healing, and knowledge and use of plants. In fact, in ancient Chinese society, there was a class of people, called the wu, whose abilities resembled those typically attributed to shamans. This has led Eliade to identify the wu of ancient China as shamans. FIGURE 1.1. The Pace of Yu. Also called the Steps of Yii. From the T’aishang chu-kuo chiu-min tsung-chen pi-yao (The Great One’s True Secret Essentials of Helping the Nation and Saving the People). The pattern on the right—called the *p> gD fcpp Steps of the Celestial Ladder—is used to lift the dancer up to the sky. The pattern at the foot of the illustration traces the configuration of the Northern Bushel (the Big Dipper)—a pattern used to take the dancer to the Northern Bushel stars. In the pattern at top left—the spiral—the dancer starts at the outermost part of the circle and spirals progressively toward the center—traveling to the North Pole Star and the Northern Bushel stars. The inscription (center) reads, Method of Walking the Earth’s Pattern and Flying Through the Celestial Net. Yii was a wu, or shaman, and he lived in a society where shamans were important members of the tribal community. His father, too, was a shaman capable of shape-shifting into a bear. Shun, the tribal king who rewarded Yu’s success in taming the flood with a kingship, was also a shaman. It was said that Shun was the first person to journey to the sky, and he was taught by the daughter of his predecessor, Yao. Shamanism in Literate China Shamanism entered a new phase in ancient China with the development of literacy and a sedentary society. By the twelfth century bce, in the early part of the Chou dynasty, kings and nobles employed shamans as advisers, diviners, and healers. Shamanism became an institution, and shamans were expected to exercise their ability as a duty. Shamans employed by the state or by individuals were expected to fulfill certain functions, and failure in an assignment was often punishable by death. Tire historical records of the Chou dynasty document many failures of shamans, suggesting that many so-called shamans did not have the powers of Yii. Although they dressed in bearskins and danced the Pace of Yii, these ceremonial shamans did not acquire the power of the animal spirit in the dance. Duties of Shamans in Chou Society During the Chou dynasty, the duties of the shamans were inviting the spirits, interpreting dreams, reading omens, rainmaking, healing, and celestial divination. 1. Inviting the spirits. A major task of the shamans of the Chou dynasty was to invite the spirits to visit the mortal realm and offer themselves as a place for the spirit to stay temporarily. The visitation of the spirit generally began with a dance, which put the shaman in a trance and allowed the spirit to enter the shaman’s body. This is different from possession, in which the spirit enters the body of the possessed, which then causes the trance. Tire shaman’s trance is the state of consciousness necessary for the visitation, rather than the result of the visitation. As Eliade asserts, this is the hallmark of a shamanic experience, making shamans different from psychic mediums and sorcerers whose magic is based on possession. 2. Interpreting dreams. Dreams are considered to be carriers of omens, and one of the shaman’s tasks is to interpret these messages from the spirits. In ancient China, the dream was also linked to the shaman’s journey to the other realms. The ceremony of summoning the soul of the dead was conducted by a shaman called “the dream master.” This suggests that although dreams of nonshamans were messages from the spirits, they were not under the dreamer’s control, whereas the dreams of the shamans were journeys to other realms of existence in which the shamans were in full control of the dreamjourney. 3. Reading omens. Another task of the shaman was to observe the changes in nature, predict the course of events, and decide whether it was auspicious or not to engage in a certain activity. Thus, shamans in the Chou dynasty were adept in the knowledge of the I-ching (the classic work of divination from ancient China known as the Book of Change) and were the forerunners of diviners. 4. Rainmaking. It was also the task of the shaman to pray for rain. The rainmaking ceremony involved dancing and singing. The Chinese word for spirit (ling) consists of three radicals: one meaning rain, another (showing three mouths), chanting, and the third, shaman. Often, the shaman would be exposed to the sun, using his or her suffering to “persuade” the sacred powers to send rain. Although the specifics of the ceremony have changed down the years, praying for rain has continued to be an integral part of Chinese religious ritual, and today the ceremony is performed by Taoist priests. 5. Healing. Healing was another major task of the shaman. In the earliest times, this was primarily the responsibility of the shamaness. We are told that, in the healing ceremony, the shamaness grasped a green snake in her right hand and a red snake in her left hand and climbed into the mountains to gather the herbs that would restore life and health to a sick or dying person. Tire ancient Chinese believed that illness was the result of malevolent spirits invading the body; it was therefore logical that the task of healing should fall on the shoulders of the shaman, who had the ability to deal with both good and malevolent spirits. 6. Celestial divination. During the latter part of the Chou dynasty, celestial divination was very popular. It was believed that, given harmony in the skies, there would be peace, prosperity, and harmony on earth. Tire key to peace and prosperity lay in following the Celestial Way, or will of heaven, and for the Celestial Way to be followed, the meaning of celestial phenomena must be interpreted; thus, shamans were employed in the court to observe the skies and interpret celestial events. The Shamanic Tradition of Southern China When shamanism declined in the mainstream society of the Chou dynasty, pockets of shamanic culture remained in regions around the river valley of the Yang-tze and China’s southeastern coast (for a map of China, see appendix 2 1. These areas were occupied by three feudal kingdoms: Ch’u, Wu, and Yiieh. The land of Ch’u was situated along the Yang-tze valley— a region considered barbaric and primitive by the sophisticated northerners of the ruling dynasties. Vast cultural differences existed between the north (Yellow River valley) and the south (Yang-tze valley): the people of Ch’u were passionate; the northerners were reserved; when the northern people abandoned their beliefs in the spirits of the land after they had developed literacy, the southern people continued to believe in the powers of nature. The lands of Wu and Yiieh, farther to the east, were even more removed from the mainstream of Chou civilization. The shamans of Yiieh used incantations and mantras to ward off malevolent spirits, restrain wild animals, and battle other humans. Moreover, it was in Wu and Yiieh that talismans were used as objects of power. These talismanic scripts later became an integral part of Taoist magic and sorcery. Throughout China’s history, even after the the kingdoms of Ch’u, Wu, and Yiieh disappeared as political entities, their regional cultures continued to influence the wider culture’s philosophy, religion, and spiritual practices. The Legacy of Shamanism in Later Developmen ts of Taoism Hie most obvious incorporation of shamanic practices into Taoism was found in the religious and magical aspects of Taoism that emerged in the Han dynasty (206 bce-219 ce). Like the Yiieh shamans, Taoist magicians used incantations and talismans to ward off malevolent spirits and heal the sick. Indeed, the use of water and mirrors to combat malevolent and destructive forces, which can be traced back to the Yiieh shamans, is seen in the practice of Taoist magic today. Another legacy of shamanism is the Pace of Yii and the flight to the stars. This aspect of shamanism found its way into a form of Taoist mysticism known as Shang-ch’ing Taoism in the fourth century ce and inspired writings that would become a major part of the Taoist canon. Hie shamanic journey underground would also become central to Taoist magic and mysticism in the hands of Tung- fang Shuo, a Han dynasty Taoist, who wrote a guide to journeying through the roots of China’s five sacred mountains. Today, we find elements of these underground journeys in Taoist ceremonies: priests still enter the underworld to rescue dead souls who have been abducted by malevolent spirits. An even greater influence on Taoism came through shamanism’s impact on the philosophy of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. This influence is often unrecognized, because many scholars consider the Taochia (philosophical Taoism) and the Tao-chiao (religious Taoism) as opposing branches of Taoist thinking. A little-known entry in Ssuma Ch’ien’s monumental work of history titled Shi-chi (Historical Records) in the biography of Lao-tzu, reads, “Lao-tzu was a native of Ch’u, of the county of Fu, of the village of Li.” Lao-tzu, the founder of the philosophy of Taoism, lived in a society that had a strong shamanic culture. Moreover, several prominent Chinese scholars have also recently noted similarities in language construction between the Tao-te ching and the literature of the Ch’u culture. Similarly with Chuang-tzu: the Lii-shih eh ’un-ch ’iu (Lii’s Spring and Autumn Annals), a history of the Spring and Autumn Period of the Chou dynasty (770-476 bce) written during the Warring States (475-221 bce), tells us that Chuang-tzu came from the township of Mong, in Sung, a vassal state of Ch’u. Ssu-ma Ch’ien, the Grand Historian, concurred; Chuang-tzu, he wrote, was a native of Sung, a small kingdom that got amalgamated into the state of Ch’u. In the next chapter we shall see how Lao-tzu’s and Chuang- tzu’s philosophy grew out of the shamanic culture that prevailed in regions south of the Yang-tze. Further Readings Michael Hamer’s book The Way of the Shaman is probably the best introduction to the theory and practice of shamanism. Harner, who received his training from South American shamans, presents shamanism in a way that is very accessible to people who have no previous knowledge of the discipline. For more detail about shamanic practices of various cultures, Mircea Eliade’s classic work, Shamanism, is still the most authoritative source around. However, unlike Harner’s work, which focuses on the practice of shamanism, Eliade’s research is purely scholastic. Of all the Chinese sources, the Ch 'u-tz'u (Songs of the Land of the South) is the most colorful and fascinating. Four poems in the collection have a strong shamanic flavor: “Tire Nine Songs,” “Summoning the Soul,” ‘Tar-off Journeys,” and “Questions to Heaven.” Tire tales of Yu the shaman are found in the poem “Questions to Heaven.” Hrere is a full translation of the Ch ’u-tz ’u, titled The Songs of the South, by David Hawkes. Another translation of one of the poems, titled ‘Tar-off Journey,” can be found in Livia Kolm’s Taoist anthology The Taoist Experience. I prefer Kolm’s translation over that of Hawkes: Kohn conveys abetter feel of the original. 2 The Classical Period (700- 220 BCE) We now move to historical time. A thousand years have passed since Yii the Great danced his gait of power, traveled among the stars, and journeyed beneath the earth. By now, the tribes who lived along the banks of the Yellow River have built cities and have become citizens of a large and prospering empire. Families who had helped the king secure his power were given lands and titles. Hie kings were no longer shamans; the duties of performing the sacred rites have been delegated to professionals— shamans employed by the court. Hie king was involved in only two ceremonies—the most important, those of Spring Planting and Autumn Hianksgiving. As long as the emperor was powerful and assertive, the feudal system worked well. Tire nobles helped with local administration and defended the nation against border tribes. These tribespeople were becoming envious of the wealth of the Chou empire. But not all the emperors were conscientious and virtuous, and after three hundred years of strong and centralized rule, things fell apart for the ruling house. In 770 bce, the political and social structures of the Chou empire were disintegrating. For the next five hundred years, the people of China would live through political chaos and civil war. This era of internal war began with the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 bce), when powerful feudal lords expanded their territory through military conquest and political intrique, to be followed by the Warring States Period (475-221 bce), when the large number of feudal states was reduced to seven superpowers. Tire period ended when one of the seven, Ch’in, defeated its rivals and reunited China. Within this period of five hundred years lived the greatest philosophers that China, and the world, had ever known: Confucius and Mencius, the upholders of social order and virtue; Mo-tzu, the philosopher of universal love and self-sacrifice; Han-fei-tzu, the legalist; Kung-sun Lung, the sophist; Sun-tzu, the military strategist; and the giants of Taoist thinking, Lao-tzu, Chuang-tzu, andLieh-tzu. Tliis part of the history of Taoism is known as the Classical Period, so named because the three classics of Taoism— Lao-tzu (also known as Tao-te ching), Chuang- tzu, and Lieh-tzu —all came from this time. Tire Classical Period can be divided into two parts—one earlier, in the Spring and Autumn Period, and the other later, coinciding with the Warring States Period. The Political and Historical Background of the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 bce ^) Tire distinguishing feature of the Spring and Autumn Period is the rise of semiautonomous feudal states. By about 800 bce, the nobles who had been given titles and land for helping the Chou establish its dynasty had become so powerful that they lived like petty kings. Five great noble houses emerged: Ch’i, Ch’in, Sung, Chin, and Ch’u. Urey were known as the Five Warlords of the Spring and Autumn Period. During the Spring and Autumn Period, the great feudal lords used their resources to build military strength and expand their territory, subjugating the smaller fiefs. In the beginning of the Spring and Autumn Period, there were some one hundred and forty feudal states; three hundred years later, when that period ended, only forty-four were left. These warlords were fully aware that a strong state was not built by military power alone. Diplomacy and statesmanship were equally important. How and where would they find qualified political advisers? Tire demand for political and military advisers produced a new social class that was unique to the latter part of the Chou dynasty. These were the mercenary statesmen and itinerant advisers who traveled from one state to another, offering their skills. Fame, wealth, and power that had been limited to the hereditary nobility were now accessible to common citizens. Of course, politics was a risky business, for intrigues were rampant and competition was fierce. An adviser could be in favor one day and out of favor the next. While many were attracted by fame and power, some truly had the vision of building a better society, and tried to counsel the rulers to be virtuous and benevolent. Confucius was one of them; Lao-tzu was another. Classical Taoism in the Spring and Autumn Period: Lao-tzu and the Tao- te ching Lao-tzu is generally acknowledged as the founder of the philosophy of Taoism. We know little more about Lao-tzu the person than what has already been mentioned: he was named Li Erh and was a native of the southern feudal state of Ch’u; he was born into the educated upper class and held a minor government post, serving as a librarian in the imperial archives. We do not know his reasons for retirement from the civil service, but we could guess that, like Confucius, he became disillusioned with the political intrigues and the ruthlessness of the feudal lords. The next thing we hear about Lao-tzu is more legendary than historical: it was said that he came to some kind of enlightenment, traveled to the western frontier, and disappeared (or became immortal). Before his departure, he dictated a treatise of five thousand words to a frontier guardsman (called a gatekeeper). The treatise is now known as the Tao-te ching, or Laotzu, and the gatekeeper was Wen-shih (also known as Wen-tzu), who became the first disciple of Lao-tzu. The Tao-te ching is the first text of Taoism, and it is certain that the book was written by more than one person. Most historians and scholars now agree that the Tao-te ching was a product of the Spring and Autumn Period. Like its contemporaries, the text discussed statecraft and offered political alternatives. It was only in the Taoism of the Chuang-tzu and the Lieh-tzu that noninvolvement was advocated. The Taoists of the Tao-te ching were not social dropouts. For them, the sage was an individual who understood the natural way of things (the Tao) and lived in harmony with it; therefore, changes in society must come from changes within individuals, and changes in individuals could come only from following the principles of the Tao. It is this feature that distinguished the Taoism of the Tao-te ching from the teachings of Confucius. For Confucius, a peaceful and harmonious society was one in which people observed and followed the correct rituals and codes of interpersonal behavior; it did not matter what the nature of the universe was. For the Taoist philosophers, understanding the natural order of things was paramount, because only by knowing the principles of the Tao could people live in harmony. The Teachings of the Tao-te ching ON THE TAO Tire Tao is the source of life of all things. It is nameless, invisible, and ungraspable by normal modes of perception. It is boundless and cannot be exhausted, although all things depend on it for existence. Hidden beneath transition and change, the Tao is the permanent underlying reality. These ideas will become the center of all future Taoist thinking. Although the Tao is the source of all life, it is not a deity or spirit. Hris is quite different from the shaman’s animistic view of the universe. In the Tao-te ching, the sky, the earth, rivers, and mountains are part of a larger and unified power, known as Tao, which is an impersonal and unnamed force behind the workings of the universe. However, in the Tao-te ching, this unnamed and unnameable power is not entirely neutral; it is benevolent: “Tire Celestial Way is to benefit others and not to cause harm” (chapter 81, Tao-te ching ); and since the ‘Celestial Way follows the Way of the Tao” (chapter 25, Tao-te ching), we can assume that in the Tao-te ching, the Tao is a benevolent force. ON SAGEHOOD Some parts of the Tao-te ching show strong influence from the shamanic culture of Ch’u; they are to be found in the discussions on sagehood and on cultivating life. Recall that Lao-tzu was a native of Ch’u. Tire students who recorded his teachings were most likely natives of the same region. Philosopher-teachers of the Spring and Autumn Period rarely established schools outside their native states: most of their students came from the local or neighboring towns. That is why the students of Confucius, who was a native of the state of Lu, and lived and taught there, were called the “gentlemen of Lu.” Similarly, the students of Lao-tzu were most likely people from his native state of Ch’u. This has led many Chinese scholars to assert that Taoism was rooted in the culture of the south, because Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu were natives of Ch’u and their followers came from the same cultural background. The Taoist sage had abilities similar to those of the shaman of Yu’s times. He or she was immune to poison, talked to the animals, and had a body that was as soft as an infant. Sexual energy was strong, and the sage practiced methods of prolonging life. These shamanic qualities of the sage remain a permanent feature of Taoism up to this day. Tire Taoist sage was also a very involved member of the community; in fact, Taoist sages made ideal rulers. One of the most famous ideas of Taoism, and also the source of a lot of misunderstanding, is wu-wei. This word, used in describing the sage and often translated as nonaction, gives the impression that the Taoist sages “did nothing.” This is inaccurate, and could not be used to describe all Taoists. Wu-wei had different meanings for different Taoist philosophers. The wu-wei of the Tao-te ching is different from the wu-wei of Chuang-tzu, which is different again from the wu-wei of Lieh-tzu. Wu-wei in the Tao-te ching is “going with the principles of the Tao,” and the path of the Tao is a benevolent one. Thus, wu-wei in the Tao-te ching is not “doing nothing”; it is not even the noninterference advocated in the Chuang- tzu. In the Tao-te ching, wu-wei means not using force. The sagely ruler who cares for his subjects in a nonintrusive way also practices wu-wei. Far from doing nothing, the Taoist sage of the Tao-te ching is an active member of society and is fit to be a king. ON CULTIVATING LIFE In the Tao-te ching, the sage is one who cultivates life. Hie Tao-te ching describes two methods of cultivating life: physical techniques and attitude. Hie physical techniques included regulation of breath, physical postures that are the precursors of calisthenics, and possibly techniques of retaining and cultivating sexual energy for the return to youth and vitality. On the matter of lifestyle and attitude, the Tao-te ching states that desire, attachment to material things, and activities that excite the mind, rouse the emotions, tire the body, and stimulate the senses, are all detrimental to health. In the early form of Classical Taoism, it was possible to be active in politics and not sacrifice physical and mental health. Hie problem arises only when one gets attached to fame and fortune and does not know when to stop. Hie message in the Tao-te ching is: Cultivate the physical and mental qualities of the sage; get involved and help in a nonintrusive way; retire when the work is done. The Tao-te ching values shamanic qualities and personal power, but it does not share the animistic worldview of the shamans. Instead of accepting a world of diverse spirits, it sees the Tao, a unified and unnameable force, as the underlying reality of all things. The philosophy of the Tao-te ching grew out of the Spring and Autumn Period; however, it was also a cultural product from the region of Ch’u. In shedding the shamanic world of diverse spirits and retaining the personal power of the shaman, the Tao-te ching represents a transition from shamanic beliefs to a philosophical system with a unified view of the nature of reality (the Tao), the sage, and the cultivation of life. The Political and Historical Background of the Warring States Period (475-221 bce) As the Spring and Autumn Period was drawing to a close, in 475 bce, there were forty-four feudal states. In 390 bce, this number was reduced to seven large states and three small ones. With fewer small states to act as buffers between the large and powerful ones, territorial expansion came to a halt, because military conquest would henceforth involve a major confrontation between superpowers. However, with the Chou imperial lands reduced to the size of a small county, the possibility for another entity to conquer the rival powers and establish a unified rule became a possibility; thus, the demand for quality statesmen, diplomats, and military advisers in the Warring States Period surpassed even that of the Spring and Autumn Period. In fact, many of China’s most famous philosophers lived during the Warring States Period. Urey included Mencius, the successor to Confucius, Mo-tzu who taught self-sacrifice and universal love, Kung-sun Lung, the legendary Kuei-ku Tzu, from whose school came some of the best military strategists and diplomats, and Chuang-tzu and Lieh-tzu, the Taoists. By the time of the Warring States Period there had been more than three hundred years of war and political conflict, and some people were beginning to be convinced that any reform within the government was hopeless. Everywhere they looked they saw power-hungry nobles and unscrupulous ministers waiting for the chance to conquer their rivals. These people did not want to be involved in politics; in fact, they believed that the pursuit of fame and fortune was inherently opposed to the cultivation of health and longevity. Chuang-tzu was one of them, and he was open in his critique of all those who served the interests of the feudal lords. Lieh-tzu, another Taoist philosopher, also advocated noninvolvement, and both men regarded social conventions as the greatest enemy of personal freedom and integrity. Classical Taoism in the Warring States Period With Chuang-tzu and Lieh-tzu, Classical Taoism entered a new phase. Several features distinguished the Classical Taoism of the Warring States from the philosophy of the Tao-te ching: First, the talk of sagely rulers and ideal governments is gone. Politics were dirty and dangerous; fame and fortune were not worth the sacrifice of freedom and longevity. Even the ''fellow Emperor, a most respected figure in Chinese history, was called a meddler of people’s minds. In fact, all the Confucian models of a benevolent ruler, like Yao and Shun, were mocked. This was very different from the Classical Taoism of the Spring and Autumn Period. Second, the sage was no longer interested in ruling a country, or even offering his skills to one. In the Tao-te ching, the sage minimized his desires, lived simply, and attained longevity, while functioning as the head of the state. In the Warring States, the Taoists of the Chuang-tzu and Lieh-tzu believed that political involvement and longevity were inherently incompatible. With this change in the image of sagehood, the meaning of wu-wei also changed. Wu-wei now meant noninvolvement, or letting things be. The sage was no longer involved with or concerned about the matters of the world. While other people trapped themselves in fame, fortune, and socially accepted behavior, the sage ignored them, and was completely free. Third, the Taoism of the Warring States came up with a different conception of the Tao. In the Tao-te ching, although the Tao was not a deity or a spirit-being, it had a benevolent nature. This quality disappeared in the Chuang- tzu and the Lieh-tzu. Tire Taoist philosophers of the Warring States saw the Tao as a neutral force. It was still the underlying reality of all things, but it was no longer a benevolent force. Moreover, the Tao had no control over the course of events: what would happen would happen, and nothing could be done to facilitate it or prevent it. However, despite the differences, the Taoism of the Warring States Period and of the Tao-te ching had much in common. Tire Tao was still that nameless, formless source that was the foundation of all existence. It could not be perceived through normal sensory channels nor understood by rational thinking. Tire individual who understood the nature of the Tao and its workings was an enlightened being, or sage. In the Tao-te ching, the Tao was regarded as the origin of all things; thus, everything shared a common ancestry. This thinking was developed further in the Taoism of the Warring States Period to imply that all things had equal standing in the universe. No one thing was more valuable than another, and no one species of animal (including humans) was more privileged than another. This famous “principle of the equality of all things” was introduced in the Chuang-tzu. Like the Tao-te ching, the Chuang-tzu and Lieh-tzu contained descriptions of the sage that were unmistakably shamanic. Tire sage had power over the elements, communicated with animals, could soar through the skies, and perform incredible feats of power. Tire authors of the Chuang-tzu and Lieh-tzu, however, were not sympathetic to the “institutional” form of shamanism. Their views of shamans and sorcerers as charlatans are often taken to mean that Classical Taoism was hostile to shamans, but this is quite contrary to the truth: it was only the superficial form of shamanism that they had no patience for. In the Chuang-tzu and Lieh-tzu, we continue to see the emphasis on caring for the body. Like the Taoists of the Tao-te ching, the Taoists of the Warring States Period advocated living a simple lifestyle with minimal desire, believing that too much excitement and satisfaction of the senses could harm body and mind. However, in the Chuang-tzu and Lieh-tzu, social and cultural norms were also condemned. Rules and regulations were obstacles to the freedom of expression and thinking and living in harmony with the Tao, or the natural way. By the end of the Warring States Period, Classical Taoism became a voice speaking out against hypocrisy. Since society was corrupt, the only way not to be entangled in the web of truths and lies was to stay out. Thus, an alternative lifestyle, that of the hermit or recluse, emerged. Later, this lifestyle would be adopted not only by Taoists but by some of the greatest poets and artists of China. Far from being seen as escaping responsibility, hermits became the symbol of personal integrity, and their lifestyle an expression of individual freedom. We have looked at more than five hundred years of Classical Taoist philosophy and seen how, in its early phase of development, Taoism was a voice that advocated reform with the hope of building a better society; and how, during the Warring States, Taoism lost some of its early ideals and began to take a negative view of politics, culture, and social rules, and simultaneously increased its emphasis on individual freedom and the cultivation of life. By the late Han (circa third century ce) and the Wei and Chin dynasties (in the fourth and fifth centuries ce), its distrust of the establishment—political, social, and cultural—was complete. However, whether it was optimistic or pessimistic, idealistic or disillusioned, active or escapist, Taoism was always a voice that spoke for the preservation of the natural way of the Tao. Further Readings There are many translations of the Tao-te ching. I find Wing-tsit Chan’s classic translation still one of the best, because it retains the simplicity and clarity of the original text. Chan’s translation is to be found in his collection of Chinese philosophical texts, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. For those interested in Chinese philosophy in general, this is a good book to have. Recently, archaeologists in China have discovered another version of the Tao-te ching —the Ma-wang-tui text, titled Te-tao ching. There are some differences between this version and the standard one of the Taoist canon. Tire differences are interesting, but overall each version gives the same feel for the teachings of Lao-tzu’s Taoism. Tire translation by Robert Henricks, titled Lao-tzu te-tao ching, is the best rendition in English of the Ma-wang-tui text. Burton Watson’s The Complete Works of Chuang-tzu is still the best translation of the Chuang-tzu. Not only is it readable, it is also scholarly, without being scholastic. I also like Watson’s approach to reading the Chuang-tzu —an approach he discusses in the introduction to his Complete Works. Tire Lieh-tzu is one of my favorite Taoist texts. Its down- to-earth approach and its literary style make it one of the best presentations of Taoist teachings. In my Lieh-tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living, I have tried to present the voice of Lieh-tzu—to let him speak as he would to us in our times. This is a book to enjoy, and it can help you through the ups and downs of everyday life. Another Taoist book that belongs to this period is the Wen-tzu. A translation of this text by Thomas Cleary is titled Further Teachings of Lao-tzu: Understanding the Mysteries. The Wen-tzu appears to be a continuation of the legacy of the Tao-te ching. Like the Tao-te ching, it has a dual focus—on government and statecraft, and on sagehood and the cultivation of life. Read the Tao-te ching before the Wen-tzu. You may also want to have both texts available so that you can compare them. Cleary’s translation of the Wen-tzu reads well and introduces a great classic of Taoism that until recently escaped the attention of the Western public. 3 The Transformation of Taoism from Philosophy into Organized Religion (20 BCR-600 CE) If the periods known as Spring and Autumn and the Warring States were the golden age of Taoist philosophy, then the era between the beginning of the Eastern Han dynasty (25- 219 ce) and the end of the Southern and Northern dynasties (304-589 ce) was the golden age of Taoist religion. During this era, Taoism became an organized religion, instituted a priesthood, developed a set of sacred ceremonies and scriptures, and acquired a large number of followers. The Beginnings of Religious Taoism in the Western Han (206-8 bce) Although it is often said that Chang Tao-ling singlehandedly changed Taoism from philosophy to religion in the Eastern Han dynasty (25-219 ce), this statement is exaggerated. Had the historical conditions that facilitated the transformation of Taoism from philosophy to religion not been in place, Chang Tao-ling’s efforts would not have succeeded. Several factors facilitated the transformation of Taoism from philosophy to religion, and these foundations were laid during the late Warring States and the early (or Western) Han. The unification of China by the Ch’in dynasty brought an end to the demand for mercenary statesmen and itinerant political advisers. Tire Han dynasty that followed the Ch’in also ruled a unified China. Moreover, the early Han emperors were determined not to repeat the mistakes of the Chou dynasty: they centralized the government and stripped the nobility of their power; thus, mercenary statesmen could no longer make their living by offering advice to the feudal lords. Many itinerant political advisers were trained in the arts of longevity, healing, and divination, and when military and political advice was no longer in demand, the wandering philosophers offered their other skills: divination, healing, and the arts of longevity. Thus was born in the Ch’in and early Han dynasties a unique social class. This class of people were the fang-shih, or ‘fnasters of the formulae.” In the early Han, the fang-shih could be divided roughly into two groups: those who specialized in magic, divination, and healing, and those who specialized in the arts of longevity and immortality. Tire middle and upper classes were preoccupied with longevity, but the peasants and other less fortunate social classes had no use for that kind of luxury. For them, life was so miserable that longevity meant only prolonged suffering; what they wanted was assurance that storms and drought would not destroy their harvest, and that they would have a large and healthy family to work the fields. Tire fangshih who answered their needs were the workers of magic. Hreir magic was called talismanic magic because it used symbols and words of power to invoke the spirits to heal and to protect. Another factor that facilitated the transformation of Taoism from philosophy to religion was a belief in a hierarchy of spirits and the practice of honoring them with offerings. This primitive form of organized religion was advocated by Mo-tzu, who generally is better known for his teachings of universal love and self-sacrifice. During the late Warring States, the followers of Mo-tzu (the Mohists) had developed systematic procedures for making offerings to the sacred powers. Throughout the Warring States, there were shrines devoted to honoring the guardian spirits of a location, such as a mountain pass or a valley. Tire Mohists, moreover, trained people to tend them. Tire Mohists lost their influence in the Han dynasty, but the shrines remained. Thus, when Taoism began to have its shrines and religious leaders, it was only continuing an already established tradition. Another condition that facilitated the transformation of Taoism into a religion was the decline of state-organized ceremonies. During the Chou dynasty, the state ceremonies were performed by shamans employed at the court. When the shamans lost the personal power they had held in prehistoric times, they could no longer fulfill the spiritual needs of the people. As time went on, the real meaning of the ceremonies was forgotten: the festivals became celebrations without spiritual value. Tire final blow to the state-organized ceremonies came from the early Han emperors, who decided to promote Taoism. Tire state- employed shamans ceased to exist and their positions in the imperial court and with aristocratic families were replaced by the fang-shih. Tire disappearance of the court shamans and traditional ceremonies in the Han dynasty allowed religious Taoism, as a form of organized religion, with ceremonies, to develop and take hold. Religious Taoism made its appearance in the Eastern Han (25-219 ce) and reached the height of its development in the Wei (220-265 ce), Chin (265-420 ce), and the Southern and Northern dynasties (304-589 ce). Taoism Becomes an Organized Religion: Eastern Han (25-219 ce) In 150 ce, the Han emperor set up a shrine for Lao-tzu and conducted official ceremonies for honoring him. Tlrere are two kinds of shrines in Chinese culture: those that honor ancestors and those that honor the sacred powers. Since Lao-tzu was not an ancestor of the Han emperor, we must conclude that it was as a sacred power that he was honored. Tlrus, Lao-tzu had been transformed from a historical figure to a deity, or sacred power. Tlris does not mean, however, that Lao-tzu was worshiped in the way that worship is understood in Judeo-Christian religions. In Chinese culture, the making of offerings to sacred powers or ancestors is not equivalent to worshiping them. Ceremonial offerings at shrines have led many Westerners to believe that the Chinese worship their ancestors. Hris is a misunderstanding. Ancestors are remembered and honored with offerings; they are not worshiped. Similarly, making offerings to the sacred powers is a way of honoring and thanking them for protection and help. An understanding of this relationship that the Chinese people have with the sacred powers is central to understanding the beliefs and practices of religious Taoism. Although religious Taoism introduced new deities and spirits, the cultural meaning of ceremony and offering remained unchanged throughout Chinese history. The appearance of imperial shrines dedicated to Lao-tzu made it natural to invest Lao-tzu with a title and identify him as the chief deity of a religion. This was what Chang Tao-ling did toward the end of the Eastern Han dynasty. Chang Tao-ling came from the southern part of China, a region where, as we have noted, shamanism and the belief in magic had always been strong. Historical records tell us that Chang was trained in the Confucian classics, but toward his middle years became interested in the teachings of Lao- tzu and the arts of longevity. It was said that he traveled and lived in Shu, the western part of China, to learn the secrets of immortality. The region of Shu occupies modern-day Szechuan and parts of Yunnan province. This area is isolated from the rest of China. Szechuan is a river basin surrounded by mountains; its only access is through the gorge where the river flows out. Szechuan has a culture of its own, and during the time of Chang Tao-ling was populated by tribes who still practiced shamanism in the ancient way. Yunnan is even more remote and mountainous. To its people who lived in its isolated villages, spirits were real, and magic was a central part of their lives. Chang Tao-ling claimed that the teachings were revealed to him by Lao-tzu, who also gave him the power to heal the sick and ward off malevolent spirits. We can never know the truth of this claim, but it is likely that Chang apprenticed himself to the master shamans of Shu and acquired their skills. As a native of the south, Chang was probably also familiar with the talismanic magic that came from the old Wu and Yiieh cultures that had survived even after these kingdoms met their end in the late Spring and Autumn Period. Using talismanic water to heal the sick, Chang Tao-ling won a large following in Szechuan and the southern regions of China. Talismanic water is water that contains the ashes of a talisman that was burned ceremonially. Tire talisman is a strip of yellow paper with a special script written on it in red ( fig. 3.1 1. Most of the scripts are incantations or invocations of spirits and deities. This is how the power of the deity is channeled into the talisman. When a sick person drinks talismanic water or is sprinkled with it, the power of the deity will enter the patient and fight off the malevolent spirits that cause the illness. Chang Tao-ling organized a religion around himself, invested Laotzu with the title T’ai-shang Lao-chiin (the Great Lord on High), and he and his descendants became the cult’s leaders. This religious movement was named the Way of the Five Bushels of Rice, because initiation into the organization required a donation of five bushels of rice. KH -V 4 »' ♦ «r * i A >. k FIGURE 3.1. An example of a Ling-pao talisman of healing, from the T’aishang tung-hsiian ling-pao su-ling chen-fu (The Great One’s True Basic Spirit Talismans of the Mysterious Cavern). The group of talismans on the right is for curing children’s intestinal problems and constipation; the middle group is for curing gonorrhea; the group on the left is for curing fevers. Used by the Celestial Teachers. In the hands of Chang Tao-ling, Taoism became a religion. It had a founder, Lao-tzu, who as T’ai-shang Lao- chiin was also its chief deity. It had the beginnings of a priestly leadership, Chang Tao-ling and his sons calling themselves the Celestial Teachers and becoming the mediators between the deities and the believers. And, most important of all, this religion served the spiritual needs of the common people. Chang Tao-ling’s movement would have remained a regional cult if his grandson, Chang Lu, had not developed political ambitions and pushed his influence into the central part of China. Moreover, several events cleared the way for the descendants of Chang Taoling to establish a fully organized religion complete with papal-like leadership, priesthood, scriptures and liturgy, rituals and ceremony, and magic. The first event was the appearance of a book, the T’ai- p 'ing ching (Tire Book of Peace and Balance), the first known “revealed” scripture in Taoism. While the Taoist classics such as the Tao-te ching and Chuang-tzu were philosophical treatises written by mortals, the authority of the T’ai-p ’ing ching was attributed to the deities, known as Guardians of the Tao. T’ai-p ’ing ching not only described a utopian ideal, it had all the features of a Taoist religious text. It invested deities with titles that had obvious Taoist references, such as Great Mystery, Primal Beginning, and so on; it had a theory of the creation of the universe; it emphasized the importance of ceremony and discipline; it described a system of reward and punishment; and, most importantly, it associated health and longevity with religious observances. Tire second event that contributed to the success of Chang Taoling’s descendants was the popularity of talismanic magic among nearly all the social classes. For a long time, historians had thought that only the poor and illiterate peasants believed in talismanic magic. In the next chapter, we shall see that talismans and invocations form a major part of Shang-ch’ing Taoism, a movement of religious Taoism among the aristocracy in the Wei and Chin dynasties (220-420 ce). The third factor that helped the fortunes of the followers of the Celestial Teachers was a series of episodes in the dynastic history of China. This happened in the Chin dynasty. We shall look at these events in the following section. The Golden Age of Taoist Religion : Wei (220-265 ce), Chin (265-420 ce), and Southern and Northern Dynasties (304-589 ce) This was the golden age of Taoist religion. It was also the age of great chaos. During this period, China was broken into many small kingdoms, and—in the context of Chinese history—dynasties came and went in little more than the wink of an eye. Within a span of four hundred years, no less than twenty-five dynasties rose and fell, most of them with a life span of only twenty to fifty years. That Chinese historians were able to sort out and record what went on in this period is to be commended. When the Han dynasty ended in 219 ce, China was divided into three warring kingdoms—Wei, Shu, and Wu— who fought each other for more than forty years. Tire Shu having been conquered by the Wei, the Wei dynasty took over (220-265 ce), and during the Wei, Chang Lu, the grandson of Chang Tao-ling, increased the influence of the Celestial Teachers movement. Chang Lu’s religious organization was officially recognized by the state of Wei as the Cheng-i Meng-wei (Central Orthodox) school of Taoism. It was also during the Wei dynasty that a book titled T’ai-shang ling-pcio wu-fu ching (Tire Highest Revelation of the Five Talismans of the Sacred Spirit) appeared. It is the earliest known Ling-pao (Sacred Spirit) text and the first of many Ling-pao texts that would be collected in the Taoist canon. Tire Wu-fu ching had the features of a religious scripture: talismans of protection, incantations, invocations of deities, a description of the administrative structure of the celestial realm, techniques of meditating and visualizing the deities, and various recipes for ingesting herbs and minerals for immortality. Moreover, many talismans of protection were attributed to Yii the Great. Whether or not Yii was actually the author of these talismans is not important; the fact that the authority of Yii was invoked is significant, however, because it connected religious Taoism to the shamanism of the ancient times. The Wei dynasty was toppled by the Ssu-ma clan who established the Chin dynasty (265-420 ce) and united China by wiping out the kingdom of Wu. The founder of the Chin dynasty came to power by killing off his opponents, and his descendants continued to use force and brutality even after unification and peace. The Chin emperors also gave the Ssu-ma clan members favored treatment. This angered the nobles who although not belonging to the Ssu- ma clan had helped the Chin rulers gain power. Thus, even in the beginning of the Chin dynasty, the ruling house had lost the support of many powerful nobles. When the border tribes invaded Chin, the capital city fell, and the lands north of the Yang-tze came under the rule of tribal kingdoms. This ended what is now called the Western Chin dynasty (265-316 ce). It lasted only fifty-two years. The Chin imperial house fled south with those followers who had remained loyal and founded the Eastern Chin (317 ce). Among its supporters were Sun Yin and Lu Tun, two practitioners of Chang Tao-ling’s form of Taoism, which was now called the Way of the Celestial Teachers (T’ien- shih Tao). Although neither man belonged to the Ssu-ma clan, each received high honors for helping the Chin royal house establish its new rule. The religious organization that they belonged to, the Celestial Teachers Way, also received imperial patronage, and the social status and influence of the Celestial Teachers thence increased rapidly. A body of sacred texts appeared, formed around the Wu-j'u ching and called the Ling-pao scriptures. These texts, mentioned above, were said to have been revealed by the Taoist deities to leaders of Celestial Teachers Taoism, and they contained invocations, talismans, and descriptions of ceremonies. Many Ling-pao scriptures are still used today in the practices of the Celestial Teachers, or the Central Orthodox (Cheng-i Meng-wei) School. After the Chin royal house fled south, the lands north of the Yangtze were divided into small tribal kingdoms, which fought each other. Some of the stronger kingdoms attempted to cross the river and invade Eastern Chin; they failed, however, because in its early years Eastern Chin was strong and prosperous. Tire dynasties of the northern kingdoms were short lived, and only two of them managed to unite the tribes under a single rule. One of them was the Northern Wei (386-534 ce). Tire kings of Northern Wei conquered the rival kingdoms, and, for that time in China’s history, held on to their rule for an unusually long time. This was because they adopted the language, culture, and customs of central China. Tlrus, the conquered peoples did not feel that they were under a foreign yoke. Moreover, Northern Wei had a prosperous trade relationship with distant nations via the silk route, and for a while it was a center of cultural exchange and learning. Buddhism flourished: monasteries were built and Sanskrit scriptures were translated into Chinese. And it was in Northern Wei that the liturgies of religious Taoism were systematized. k’ou ch’ien-chih K’ou Ch’ien-chih was a Taoist scholar and priest who lived in Northern Wei at the height of its prosperity and power. Originally trained in Celestial Teachers (or Central Orthodox) Taoism, K’ou was adept at that school’s liturgies and magical practices, and Taoist historians today still marvel at his accomplishments. K’ou Ch’ien-chih established the northern branch of the Celestial Teachers school, became the spiritual adviser to the Northern Wei emperor, and wrote and compiled liturgies that are still widely used in Taoist religious ceremonies. His branch of Celestial Teachers Taoism emphasized ceremonies and liturgies—a sharp contrast to the original Celestial Teachers, whose major focus was talismanic magic. Inspired by the Buddhist disciplines of abstinence, K’ou came up with a list of dos and don’ts for practitioners of the Taoist religion. These included what foods to abstain from and when to abstain from them, what kinds of offerings were legitimate, and what types of behavior were demanded by Taoist practice. He attacked the popular cults for using alcohol, meats, hallucinogens, and sexual orgies in the ceremonies, using the slogan, “purifying the spiritual practices and reestablishing morality.” He designated festival days for the major Taoist deities, prescribed the ceremonies that should be performed on those days, and wrote the music and liturgies for them. It is not too far-fetched to say that K’ou Ch’ieh- chih is the father of Taoist ceremonies. Tire Northern Wei emperor was so impressed with K’ou that he gave him the title of Celestial Teacher and appointed him spiritual adviser. In 420 ce, the emperor took the title True King of the T’aip’ing Way and made K’ou Ch’ieh- chih’s form of Central Orthodox Taoism the state religion. LU HSIU-CHING Although 420 ce was a great year for the northern branch of the Celestial Teacher Taoism, it was fateful for the Eastern Chin dynasty, in the south. Barely one hundred years after the Chin royal house had crossed the river to reestablish its rule, the dynasty fell. In 420 ce, the Eastern Chin dynasty ended and was replaced by the Sung (not to be confused with the Sung dynasty that later ruled over a united China). This Sung dynasty was the first of what Chinese historians call the Southern dynasties, as opposed to the Northern dynasties. The Southern dynasties were kingdoms that occupied lands south of the Yang-tze; the Northern dynasties (like Northern Wei) occupied China north of the river. Between 420 and 589 ce, six dynasties came and went in the south, most of them the result of military coups, with the commanding general of the imperial army or the royal bodyguard killing the emperor and replacing him as ruler. During this period, southern China was plunged into political chaos. The period of the Southern and Northern dynasties would be remembered only as a time of political and social disorder if all that had happened was the rapid succession of dynasties; however, this was also the period of the flowering of the Taoist religion. In the Sung of the Southern dynasties lived one of the most important figures of religious Taoism—Lu Hsiu-ching. Lu is credited with compiling the first collection of Taoist scriptures that would become the core of today’s Taoist canon. Lu Hsiu-ching was trained in the Central Orthodox School of Taoism. A scholar and an adept in talismanic magic, he came from an established family in southeast China. Moreover, he had the combination of his regional culture’s belief in talismanic magic and an aristocrat’s attraction toward ceremonial details. We are told that Lu received a classical education and was knowledgeable in the Confucian classics, the I-ching, the Taoist classics, and the Ling-pao scriptures. He gained the respect and favor of the Sung court, revised the rituals and magical practices of the Celestial Teachers, and became known as the founder of the southern branch of Celestial Teachers Taoism. During Lu’s time, the number of Taoist books had multiplied. There were the old classics like the Tao-te ching, Chuang-tzu, and Lieh-tzw, there were books on alchemy and techniques of immortality passed down by the fang-shih; there were the Ling-pao scriptures, which in Lu’s time numbered about fifty volumes; there was a new crop of texts called the Shang-ch’ing scriptures, which contained the teachings of the mystical form of Taoism (which will be dealt with in more detail in the next chapter); and there was also the T’ai-p 'ing ching, which was more voluminous than the one we have now. Inspired by the compilation of the Buddhist scriptures into a canon, Lu Hsiu-ching set out to collect and catalog the Taoist texts. In 471 ce, he published the first Taoist canon. It was divided into seven sections. Tire three major sections were the Cavern of the Realized (Tung-chen), the Cavern of the Mysteries (Tung-hsuan), and the Cavern of the Spirit (Tung-shen). The four minor sections were Great Mystery (T’ai-hsiian), Great Balance (T’ai-p’ing), Great Pure (T’ai-ch’ing), and Orthodox Classics (Cheng-i). Lu’s contribution was not limited to compiling the Taoist scriptures; like K’ou Ch’ieh-chih, in the north, he also wrote liturgies, set down the correct procedures for performing the sacred ceremonies, and systematized the liturgies. When Lu Hsiu-ching died in 477 ce, Taoism had become a formidable influence in southern China. Due to his efforts, the Central Orthodox form of Taoism (the Celestial Teachers Way) became a respected and organized religion accepted by all strata of society. Moreover, Lu had brought together into the one canon teachings of the three major forms of Taoism of his time: the arts of longevity of the alchemists, the magic and ceremonies of the Celestial Teachers, and the mysticism of the Shang-ch’ing school. In chapter 4, we will examine the important Shang-ch’ing school. Further Readings Henri Maspero’s work Taoism and Chinese Religion is still the most complete and authoritative work on the history of the Taoist religion. It looks at the mythology of China and its influence on Taoist religious beliefs, covers the development of Taoist organized religion, and examines the spiritual techniques of cultivating life and longevity. It is truly a great book. Maspero’s work is not the kind of book that you will want to read in one sitting; it is good to have around so that you can refer to it from time to time. A scholarly work, it nevertheless does not get bogged down in details. One does not have to be a specialist or researcher in the field to enjoy it. Book 1, “Chinese Religion in Its Historical Development,” and book 5, ‘Taoism in Chinese Religious Beliefs of the Six Dynasties Period,” are the most relevant to topics covered in this chapter. Kristofer Schipper’s delightful The Taoist Body presents a clear and concise approach to Taoist religion and religious practices. Schipper’s chapter 1, which is a brief introduction to the nature of Taoist religious beliefs, and chapter 7, which discusses how Lao-tzu became the embodiment of the nature of the Tao, give further information on the topics discussed in this chapter. Later in the Guide, I will direct readers to other chapters of Schipper’s. Chapter 2 of Michael Saso’s book Blue Dragon, White Tiger gives a list of events (with dates) in the history of Taoism. Tire list begins with the Spring and Autumn Period and brings readers all the way into the twentieth century, covering up to 1979. It is a good quick-reference resource, but you need to be familiar with the events before you can fully make use of this information. Readers desiring more light on this period of Taoist history, and curious about other Taoist religious or revealed texts, can find a selection in Livia Kohn’s The Taoist Experience. This anthology contains, in translation, the following texts related to the transformation of Taoism from philosophy to religion: Scriptures Create the Universe: Scripture of How the Highest Venerable Lord Opens the Cosmos (reading #5) Numinous Treasure—Wondrous History: A Short Record of the Numinous Treasure (#6) Tire Three Caverns: Tire Ancestral Origin of the Three Caverns of Taoist Teaching (#9) Tire Transformations of Lao-tzu: On the Conversion of the Barbarians (#10) 4 The Rise of Mystical Taoism (300-600 CE) The world of Shang-ch’ing Taoism: a world where guardian spirits live inside the human body; a world where mystics fly to the sky and journey among the stars; a world where people absorb the essence of the sun and moon to cultivate immortality; a world where the highest attainment in life is to merge with the Tao in bliss and ecstasy ... Mysticism and Shang-ch ’ing Taoism Shang-ch’ing Taoism is often called Mystical Taoism. Mysticism has been defined in many ways. The Oxford English Dictionary once called it a “self-delusion or dreamy confusion of thought” and “a religious belief to which these evil qualities are imputed.” Modern views now recognize that, to understand mysticism, we need to understand the nature of mystical experience. Although most studies of mysticism are based on mystical experiences found in Christianity (Catholicism and Protestantism), with a few from Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism, they can still help us to understand the form of Taoism that has been called “mystical” However, to equate the beliefs and practices of the mysticism found in the Judeo-Christian religions (or even in the ancient Greek religions) with Taoist mysticism is misleading. Chinese history and cultural background have created a form of mysticism that is unique among the world’s spiritual traditions. Contemporary scholars of religion have identified several features of mysticism: 1. The cognitive component: the belief system and worldview of mysticism. There are several beliefs that form the core of mysticism. First, mystics believe there is an underlying unity behind all things. This is commonly called the One and it is the true reality. Second, this One, or the underlying reality, cannot be perceived or known by ordinary experience. Third, this One is present in us, and by realizing it internally we can be united with everything around us. Finally, the goal of human life is to achieve unity with this One. 2. The emotional component: feelings that accompany the mystical experience. Bliss, joy, ecstasy, sexual excitement, and intoxication have all been used to describe the feelings of mystical experience. 3. The perceptive component: any visual, auditory, or other sensations that accompany the mystical experience. A heightened awareness of the surroundings and of auditory and visual images is experienced when the underlying reality of the One is directly perceived without the intrusion of rational thinking. 4. The behavioral component: actions that induce the mystical experience or are the result of it. Tire mystical experience involves action. Some actions function to induce the experience (such as, Dervish dancing in Sufism, or Islamic mysticism; body postures in yoga; and the rituals of Shang-ch’ing Taoism); other actions result from the mystical experience (such as, walking through fire; speaking in special languages). There are many similarities between mysticism and shamanism. Each involves an ecstatic experience, transformed perception, feats of power, and a union with a force that takes the individual to a more complete existence than the mundane self. But mysticism and shamanism are not identical. For a long time, it was believed that the difference between the shamanic and mystical experience was that the former required disciplined training and was induced by systematic procedures, whereas the latter was spontaneous. When it became known that Sufism and yoga both employ systematic techniques to induce mystical experience, this criterion no longer held. In fact, Shang-ch’ing Taoism is another case where the mystical experience is induced by systematic procedures that can be practiced only after rigorous training. I believe that what distinguishes mysticism from shamanism is the nature of the union between the practitioner and the sacred powers. In mysticism, the union is between two parts of ourselves—the cosmic and the mundane. Tire greater, or cosmic, power is a part of us. Whether we are separated from it because of cultural and social influence or because of the dominance of analytical thinking, it is still inside us. Therefore, one function of mysticism is that of undoing the conditions that separate ourselves from ourselves. Shamanism, on the other hand, sees the greater or cosmic power as part of the external world. Thus, “it” has to be invited to enter the shaman before a union can be achieved. Sometimes the power comes to visit the shaman; for example, when the awen visits the Celtic bard, or when the nature spirits come to “court” with the Ch’u shaman. At other times, the shaman goes to the spirits by flying to their dwellings in the stars or journeying into their homes in the depth of the earth. In each case, the sacred power that the shamans wish to be united with is outside, not within. Shang-ch’ing Taoism, with its belief that the deities, or the cosmic powers, are resident in the human body, identifies it as a mystical practice. However, the shamanic influence in Taoism had always been strong, and its imprint on Shang-ch’ing Taoism is unmistakable. In fact, this unique form of Taoism has both the features of mysticism and shamanism—the belief in the deities within and the journey to the other worlds. The Predecessors of Shang-ch ’ing Taoism Shang-ch’ing Taoism was reputed to have been founded by Lady Wei Hua-ts’un during the early part of the Chin dynasty. Lady Wei received a revelation from the Guardians of the Tao (the deities) and recorded their teachings in a book titled Shang-ch 'ing huang-t 'ing nei-ching yii-ching (Tire Yellow Court Jade Classic of Internal Images of the High Pure Realm) in 288 ce. However, the two most important ideas of Shang-ch’ing Taoism—the notion of Keeping the One and the belief that there are guardian spirits in the body—were known as early as the Eastern Han dynasty. Urey can be found in parts of the T’ai-p 'ing ching that are preserved in the T'ai-p 'ing ching ch 'ao: “If the body is still and the spirit is held within, then illness will not multiply. You will have a long life because the bright spirits protect you.” A commentary on the Tao-te ching by Ho-shang Kung (the River Sage), believed to have been written in the Han dynasty, also refers to Keeping the One: “If people can cultivate the spirit [i.e., the One], they will not die. By ‘spirit’ I mean the spirits of the five viscera. In the liver is the human spirit, in the lungs is the soul, in the heart is the seed of the immortal spirit, in the spleen is the intention, and in the kidneys is the generative energy. If the five viscera are injured, then the five spirits will leave.” (Ho- shang Kung’s Commentary on the Tao-te ching). That this idea of Keeping the One appeared in a commentary on a text of classical or philosophical Taoism is significant. It provides a continuity between classical Taoist philosophy and Taoist mysticism. If the principal ideas of Shang-ch’ing Taoism were present well before the Chin dynasty, why did it have to wait until the Chin and the Southern dynasties to become a major movement in Taoism? To understand this, we must look at the lineage of Shang-ch’ing Taoism and the transmission of its scriptures in the Chin and Southern dynasties. Shang-ch ’ing Taoism in the Chin Dynasty (265-420 ce) Lady Wei is reputed to have been the founder of Shang- ch’ing Taoism, but it was Yang Hsi who was responsible for spreading its teachings. The Shang-ch’ing texts tell us that Yang Hsi received a vision from Lady Wei (who had become an immortal) and then “wrote” the scriptures under the influence of a cannabis-induced trance. The scriptures were then transmitted to Hsu Hui and Hsii Mi (a father and son). Hie early Shang-ch’ing scriptures, in addition to the Huang-t’ing nei-ching yii-ching, are the T’ai-shang pao- wen (Hie Sacred Writ of the Most High), Ta-tung dren¬ ching (Hie True Scripture of the Great Cavern), and the Pa- suyin-shu (Hie Hidden Book of the Eight Simplicities). Hie early proponents of Shang-ch’ing Taoism were related to each other by clan or marriage; all were members of established families in southeast China. Many of them were descendants of the fallen aristocracy of the state of Wu of the Hiree Kingdoms. Lady Wei was the daughter of a high-ranking priest of Celestial Teachers Taoism and was herself initiated into the priestly order. Yang Hsi and Lady Wei came from the same county, and their families, Yang and Wei, had a long-standing friendship. As for Hsii Hui and Hsii Mi, the father and son, they were related by marriage to the famous Ko family, whose members were known for their alchemical experiments and expertise in the arts of longevity. Two of the best-known members of the Ko family were Ko Hung, who wrote the P’ao-p’u-tzu (The Sage Who Embraces Simplicity), a Taoist encyclopedia, and Ko Hsiian, who was instrumental in collating the Ling- pao scriptures. Hrese two families, Ko and Hsii, were also linked through marriage to another established family of the region, the T’ao family. Later, in the Southern dynasties, a descendant of the T’ao family, T’ao Hung-ching, would become one of the greatest scholars and practitioners of Shang-ch’ing Taoism. Thus, the founders of Shang-ch’ing Taoism came from the aristocracy of the county of Wu, near the capital of the Eastern Chin dynasty, and the supporters of Shang-ch’ing Taoism were members of the nobility and the artistic community of the capital. One of the most famous followers of Shang-ch’ing Taoism was the calligrapher Wang Hsi-che, who penned a copy of the Huang-t’ing wai- ching ching (Tire Yellow Court Classic of External Images). Tire early form of Shang-ch’ing Taoism incorporated many beliefs and practices of Celestial Teachers Taoism. It used talismans and adopted the Yuan-shih T’ien-tsun (Celestial Lord of the Great Beginning), another name for Lao-tzu, as its highest deity. It incorporated the T’ai-p ’ing ching, the Cheng-i fa-wen (The Principles and Scripts of the Central Orthodox), the T’ai-shang ling-pao wu-fu ching (The Highest Revelation of the Five Talismans of the Sacred Spirit), and other Ling-pao texts into its corpus of sacred scriptures. Tire scriptures that were distinctly labeled as Shang-ch’ing texts numbered around fifty during the Eastern Chin. However, two features of Shang-ch’ing Taoism distinguished it from Celestial Teachers Taoism. Tire first was the belief that Keeping the One and holding the guardian deities would lead to health and longevity: orthodox members of the Celestial Teachers Way were not sympathetic to the notion of Keeping the One as a method of attaining health; they maintained that talismans and incantations were the way to cure illness. Tire second feature separating Shang-ch’ing Taoism from Central Orthodox Taoism was the use of talismans: the Celestial Teachers used talismans for curing illness, exorcism, and for protection against malevolent spirits, whereas the Shang-ch’ing Taoists used them primarily for invoking and visualizing the deities inside the body and for journeying to other realms of existence. As time went on, these differences between the two forms of Taoism overshadowed their similarities, and Shang-ch’ing Taoism began to pull away from Celestial Teachers Taoism and became a unique and distinct lineage. However, the separation of Shang-ch’ing Taoism from Central Orthodox did not invite hostility from the organized branch of religious Taoism. Unlike what happened in other cultures, where the mystics’ worldview and experience of union with the sacred powers often made them heretics in the eyes of organized religion, especially in Christianity and Islam, in China, this was not so. I think there are several reasons for this. First, the Chinese culture had always tolerated diversity in religious and spiritual practices. In the history of China, most emperors were content to leave religious groups alone as long as they did not have political ambitions. The emperors who favored one religion over others appointed personal spiritual advisers, but did not attempt to integrate state and religion. The zealous emperors who ordered religious persecution did not rule for long. Second, there is a saying among Taoists, “In Taoism there are no heretics; there are only sects.” Throughout the history of Taoism, differences in beliefs and practices have produced a diversity of sects that respected and tolerated each other. Third, because of a specific historical circumstance, during the Chin dynasty, Shang-ch’ing Taoism found a receptive following among the artistic community and the upper class. When the Chin dynasty fled south, the capital was built in a region where several powerful and established families controlled the finance and commerce of the region; thus, although the empire was ruled by the Chin, members of the royal family and their entourage from the north were more like foreigners and refugees than established kings. The Ssu-ma clan was no longer strong enough to use force to subdue the powerful families of the south. But, most importantly, the Chin ruling house realized that destroying these families would destroy the economy of the empire, and an unusual relationship was therefore formed between the imperial house and the upper class: the established families of the southeast, although allowed to retain their lands and commercial enterprises, were not given high-level positions in the government; thus, families like the Wei, Yang, Hsu, and Ko were rich but politically powerless. Denied the road to high politics, many of them turned toward the arcane arts and dabbled in spiritual practices. Being wealthy, they had both the time and resources for such pursuits. Fourth, the belief in spirits and talismanic magic had always been strong in southeast China. Tire region also had the heritage of the shamanic culture of Ch’u, Wu, and Yiieh, dating back to the sixth century bce. Many founders of the Shang-ch’ing movement were already familiar with the talismanic magic and arcane arts of the Celestial Teachers; therefore, the shift from using talismans for healing to using them for achieving ecstatic union with the deities did not require a lot of retraining. Finally, the regions south of the Yang-tze had always been the hotbed of new ideas and creative thinking. Tire northern Chinese are typically more conservative and traditional; the southerners are bolder in experimenting with new ideas and adopting them. It was in the south that Chang Tao-ling’s religion of Taoism was first accepted, and, even before that, the philosophy of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu was more popular in the south than in the north. Shangch’ing Taoism, with its conception of guardian spirits inhabiting the human body, its vivid visualizations of images of deities, and its ecstatic flight to the celestial realm, could only have come from southern China. Moreover, only the people of the south could have taken it seriously and not dismissed it as wild fantasy. By the end of the Eastern Chin dynasty, Shang-ch’ing Taoism had developed a sizable body of scriptures and a large following among the upper class. Its sacred scriptures were first kept by the Hsu family: toward the end of the Eastern Chin, they were under the custodianship of Hsii Mi’s son Hsii Huang-wen, whose wife was the greatgreat- granddaughter of Ko Hung. Thus, the Ling-pao scriptures, the Shang-ch’ing scriptures, and the T’ai-ch’ing scriptures of the alchemists all came into the possession of the Hsii family. This circumstance would have provided an excellent opportunity for the three traditions of Taoism—Ling-pao, Shang-ch’ing and T’aiching (alchemist)—to be unified, but the political situation did not allow this to happen. In 404 ce, the Hsu family was involved in an uprising and had to flee the capital. Then, in the political chaos that surrounded the fall of the Eastern Chin in 420 ce, many Shangch’ing scriptures were lost, and after the death of Hsu Huang-wen in 429 ce, the Shang-ch’ing scriptures were no longer under a single custodianship. Scattered among a number of followers, the scriptures were edited and revised. Some texts were hoarded by individuals and these texts perished when that person died; others were revised to suit the religious orientation of those who claimed possession and authority to transmit them. Many texts were written during those times and put forward as works revealed by the deities. During the Southern dynasties, there were more than one hundred volumes of texts that claimed Shang-ch’ing lineage. However, these texts and those of the Ling-pao and the T’ai-ch’ing scriptures were scattered, and only the effort of one of the greatest scholars and Taoist adepts of the Southern dynasties, T’ao Hung-ching, brought them together again. T’ao Hung-ch’ing collated the Shang-ch’ing scriptures and began a revival and reformation of Shang- ch’ing Taoism that would forever change the Taoist spiritial tradition. Shang-ch ’ing Taoism in the Southern Dynasties (420-589 ce) T’ao Hung-ching was born in the Sung of the Southern dynasties, in 456 ce, and died in 536 ce, in the Liang dynasty. T’ao came from one of the great families of southeast China; his grandfather held a respectable position in the Sung government. When the Sung dynasty fell and was replaced by Ch’i, the T’ao family lost its fortunes; however, an emphasis on education and learning was an important part of the family tradition, and T’ao Hung-ching was brought up in an atmosphere that encouraged mastering a wide range of knowledge. During the Southern Ch’i dynasty (479-502 ce), T’ao served as a secretary and librarian in the imperial court. His abilities were not recognized by the Ch’i court and he was never promoted. Disillusioned, he resigned his post in 492 ce and decided to pursue the Tao. It is ironic that when T’ao Hung-ching aspired to rise in politics, success never came, but when he became a Taoist hermit, his fame spread and his advice was sought by kings and nobles. When T’ao Hung-ching settled on Mao-shan, a mountain range in today’s Kiang-su Province in southeast China, he set about collecting and collating the Shang-ch’ing scriptures. He wrote down the lineage of Shang-ch’ing Taoism, recorded the authority of its transmission, set up a hierarchy of deities, and documented the structure of administration within the celestial realm. In the hands of T’ao Hung-ching, the Taoist pantheon became orderly. Deities and immortals were classified into ranks according to their levels of enlightenment. Their appearances were described in detail, all the way down to the kind of robes they wore and the symbols of authority they carried. T’ao Hung-ching’s knowledge and learning were vast and deep. In addition to his study of Shang-ch’ing teachings, he was interested in physical alchemy and had a laboratory on Mao-shan devoted to the research and making of the elixirs of immortality. lire first emperor of the Liang dynasty (following the Ch’i dynasty) was both a friend and patron of T’ao’s. T’ao Hung-ching’s laboratory was supported by imperial funds, as were his trips to other mountains in search of minerals for making the immortal pill. T’ao Hung-ching was knowledgeable not only in the Taoist arts: he also edited and wrote treatises on herbal medicine, was adept at divination, military strategy, astronomy, geology, and metallurgy, and his forges on Mao-shan were famous for crafting some of the best swords of the time. T’ao was also a classical scholar, learned in both the Confucian classics and Buddhist scriptures. In literary endeavors, T’ao was prolific: he wrote some eighty treatises on scientific and literary subjects. His works on Taoism, including alchemy and divination, numbered about fifty. And in addition to having expertise in science and scholarship, T’ao Hung-ching was a poet and a skilled practitioner of the martial arts. Given these wide interests, it is natural that T’ao Hung- ching’s breadth was incorporated into his practice of Shang-ch’ing Taoism. In T’ao Hung-ching, Shang-ch’ing Taoism took on new dimensions. His interest in alchemy, medicine, and herbs introduced the use of herbs and minerals into the Shang-ch’ing methods of cultivating health and longevity. Moreover, he incorporated his knowledge of the I-ching and the divination arts into the Shang-ch’ing understanding of the human body and the circulation of energy. Internal transformations now followed the rules of transformations laid out in the principles of change, and the circulation of energy and the nourishment of the guardian spirits of the body followed the patterns of celestial movement and changes through the seasons. By the time of T’ao Hung-ching’s death, Shang-ch’ing Taoism had become a spiritual tradition with a sophisticated theory of the human body and the external universe, a developed pantheon of deities and their administrative duties, techniques of longevity with a scientific basis in herbal medicine and mineralogy, a meditation technique based on visualization and internal transformation, and a documentation of spiritual experiences. His form of Shang-ch’ing Taoism became known as the Mao-shan Shang-ch’ing school (a school not to be confused with the Mao-shan sect of sorcery that emerged in the Ming dynasty) and it was taught in learning centers throughout Mao-shan, both during Iris lifetime and after his death. The Taoist centers on Mao-shan were the first of their kind, and they became a model for the Taoist retreats and monasteries that were to flourish during the Sung, Yuan, Ming, and Ch’ing dynasties. The Teachings of Shang-ch ’ing Taoism The teachings of Shang-ch’ing Taoism can be grouped under three topics: the internal universe (the human body); the external universe (celestial and terrestrial realms); and unifying the external and internal universe. THE INTERNAL UNIVERSE In Shang-ch’ing Taoism, the human body is a universe filled with deities, spirits, and monsters. The Chinese words for deity and spirit are the same (shen). For the sake of clarity, I shall use the word deity to refer to the greater spirits and spirit to refer to the lesser spirits. Shang-ch’ing Taoism believes that there are spirits and deities who guard the body and protect it from illness; when these guardians leave, the body will weaken and die. Therefore, the practices of Shang-ch’ing Taoism are primarily concerned with keeping these guardians within and not letting them weaken or wander off. The One. In the Shang-ch’ing internal universe, the highest and most important deity is called the One. It is the Tao inside us; the undifferentiated primordial vapor that keeps us alive. Sometimes it is called the sacred fetus of immortality. Keeping the One inside is holding onto the Tao. Embracing the One is holding and nourishing the sacred fetus, as a mother holds and nourishes an infant. The Three Ones. Tire Three Ones are the next highest guardian deities in the body. They are called the San-yiian, or the Three Primal Ones. Tire San-yiian are the emanations of the undifferentiated oneness of the Tao. In the human body, they are the generative, vital, and spirit energies. These three energies and their guardians reside in the three tan-t’iem (fields of elixir). Spiritual energy is the highest manifestation of the One. It rules all the activities of the mind, including the potentials of the enlightened mind. It and its guardian reside in the upper tan-t’ien in the region between the eyes in a part of the body that is called the Celestial Realm. Vital energy is energy associated with the breath. It and its guardian reside in the middle tan-t’ien located in the region of the heart in a part of the body called the Terrestrial Realm. Generative energy is responsible for procreation. It and its guardian reside in the lower tan-t’ien just below the navel. This part of the body is called the Water Realm. If the levels of the energies are high, the guardians will appear bright, and health and longevity are assured; if the energies are low, the guardians will appear dull, and the body is weak or ill. In Shangch’ing practice, keeping the Three Ones in the body corresponds to preserving generative, vital, and spirit energy. However, only the One can be “embraced.” The Five. Next in importance are the spirits that protect the five viscera: the heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys. If these spirits leave or become weak, the internal organs will not function effectively and bodily functions will not be regulated. Each spirit protecting the organ is associated with a color. When the viscera are strong and healthy, the colors of the guardian spirits will be bright and vivid. When the organs are weak, the colors will lose their brightness and saturation. Tire appearance of the guardian deities and spirits in the body is an integral part of visualization in Shang-ch’ing meditation. On the one hand, visualizing the images of the guardians helps to keep them within the body; on the other hand, the visualizations serve as feedback, because their appearances are indicators of the state of health. If the images are not radiant, vivid, and colorful, it means that the body is weak and ill. Many lesser spirits protect each part of the body down to each joint and pore. Health and longevity require all the deities and spirits to be bright and clear. Monsters also reside in the body. They live in the cavities near the three gates along the spine. Each gate is associated with a tan-t’ien and controls activity in it: the upper gate controls access to the upper tan-t’ien, the middle gate to the middle tan-t’ien, and the lower gate to the lower tan t’ien ( Tig. 4. 1 ~1. If the gate is locked, energy will not be gathered in that tan-t’ien. Hie monsters have the ability to close the gates and affect the level of energy in the tan-t’iens. According to Shang-ch’ing belief, the monsters thrive on our desires and the grains we eat. Therefore, to eradicate the monsters, the Shang-ch’ing Taoists practiced fasting and abstinence from grains. Another way to eradicate the monsters is to still the mind and eliminate craving. & # * P ± ft * if r t i» * /> r FIGURE 4.1. The three monsters in the body, from Yi-men ch’ang-sheng pi-shu (Chen Hsi-yi’s Secret Methods of Longevity). These pictures are based on descriptions of the three monsters described in the Shang-ch’ing texts. Left to right: The monster of the upper cavity, of the middle cavity, and of the lower cavity. The cavities are situated at the three gates along the spinal column. In the Shang-ch’ing scriptures, the monsters are sometimes depicted as attractive and good-looking, sometimes as misshapen and ugly. When an individual does not realize that the monsters are harmful, worldly things and even unethical deeds can appear attractive; however, when the individual realizes that the monsters can shorten life, the entities will become repulsive and ugly. In visualizing the internal universe, the first step to eradicating the monsters is to see them in their undesirable shape, or what is called their “true form.” When Shang- ch’ing Taoists speak of “seeing the True Forms,” they are referring to the brilliant and radiant form of the guardians and the ugly and repulsive form of the monsters. There are also pathways in the internal universe that connect various parts of the body. These are the conduits of energy. Major junctions in the pathway are given names and their locations are specified so that the flow of energy can be directed through them. The pathway begins on the top of the head and descends through the forehead into the upper tan-t’ien between the eyes. It continues down the throat into the middle tan-t’ien. From there energy flows into the lower tan-t’ien to nourish the sacred fetus (the seed of immortality). When the fetus is completely formed, the practitioner will attain immortality. The body will become light; it will float up to the sky to join the sun, moon, and stars in the High Pure (Shang-ch’ing) Realm. THE EXTERNAL UNIVERSE The Shang-ch’ing external universe is inhabited by many spirits and deities. Hie most important live in the sun, moon, and stars. To the Shang-ch’ing Taoists, the celestial bodies are the manifestations of the primordial vapor of the Tao, and the essence of the Tao is carried in their light. Thus, to absorb the essence of the sun, moon, and stars is to swallow the energy of the Tao. According to Shang-ch’ing Taoism, the sun contains the essence of yang energy and the moon is the vessel of yin energy. Absorption of the essences of the sun and moon can help nourish the immortal fetus and strengthen the guardians of the body. To absorb the energy of the sun, the Shang-ch’ing adept visualizes the sun traveling from the mouth to the heart, merging with the internal light in the tant’iens, at specific times of the year. When a warmth is felt in the heart, the practitioner recites a short invocation asking the deities to hasten this unity so that the immortal pill can be completed. Another method of absorbing the essence of the sun is to face east three times a day and visualize the large disk of the sun and its rays rising from the heart, up the throat, through the teeth, and then back into the stomach. To absorb the yin essence of the moon, at midnight the adept visualizes the moon in the top of the head and channels the moonbeams into the stomach; alternatively, the practitioner visualizes the moon in the upper tan-t’ien and directs the strands of white light to enter the throat, and thence to the stomach. The North Star and the Northern Bushel (Big Dipper) constellation are important celestial bodies. Urey are home to the deities who control longevity and destiny, and Shang- ch’ing practitioners developed ceremonies, talismans, invocations, and mantras to ask them for protection. Mist, clouds, and dew also contain the essence of the primordial vapor of the Tao, and Shang-ch’ing adepts are instructed to absorb them by inhaling in a specific manner at dawn when these vapors are present. The Shang-ch’ing practices of absorbing the yin and yang essences from nature involve elaborate rituals. First, talismans that protect the practitioner and facilitate the practice are drawn. Because these practices are performed in the middle of the night, and often in remote regions, the practitioner must be protected from wild animals and malevolent spirits that may steal the essence that the adept had gathered. Next, the adept performs the rituals of visualization, invoking the deities whose celestial energy he or she will absorb; sometimes this is accompanied by incantations and recitation of petitions. Finally, the body of the practitioner is readied: saliva is swallowed, the teeth are knocked together, and inhaling and exhaling of the breath is done in a specific manner. Absorption of the essence of the sun, moon, stars, and vapors involves uniting the microcosms of the body and macrocosms of the universe. Once the division between the Tao inside and the Tao outside is dissolved, the practitioner can merge with the underlying origin of all things, draw nourishment from the source of life itself, and attain immortality. UNIFYING THE EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL UNIVERSES Ascension, flight, and travel in the celestial realm are ways in which the Shang-ch’ing Taoist achieves a union with the Tao in the external universe. Ascension represents final union, when the practitioner leaves the mortal realm forever to become an immortal in the High Pure Realm. Immortals of the highest caliber ascend to the sky in the physical body and in broad daylight, often in the presence of witnesses. It was said that both Lao-tzu and the Yellow Emperor ascended to immortality in this manner, as did Sun Pu-erh, one of the Seven Taoist Masters of the Complete Reality School of Taoism. (For an account of Sun Pu-erh’s ascension, see my Seven Taoist Masters .) In the case of immortals of secondary caliber, only the spirit ascends: at death, the immortal spirit within rises to the celestial realm. This is called “shedding the shell.” Often, the shell, or body, disappears after the spirit has ascended. Hao T’ai- ku of the Seven Taoist Masters and the famous alchemist Wei Po-yang were reputed to have attained immortality in this manner. In contrast to ascension, the practitioner’s journey to the celestial realm is only a temporary departure from the world of ordinary experience. There are two stages to the celestial journey: rising to the sky, and traveling in the celestial domain. In the first stage, the practitioner leaves the earth and steps up to the celestial entity. The body becomes light and loses its form, allowing the adept to rise to the celestial entity on the wind and clouds. This process is called fei- t’ien, or rising to the sky. The second, traveling stage involves journeying from constellation to constellation. This is called fei-hsing, or flying in the sky. In this stage, the adept is said to be walking the patterns of the stars. In the Shang-ch’ing practice of celestial travel ( Tigs. 4.2 . 4.3 1. these two stages are not necessarily both performed: sometimes the adept simply steps up to the stars, sun, or moon and stays there to absorb the celestial energy before returning to earth; at other times, the ascent is the beginning of a journey through the constellations. The two parts of the celestial journey are distinct, requiring different incantations, petitions, talismans, and preparatory actions. The preparations for the celestial journey are elaborate. First, there are certain days of the year when the journey should be taken. Most of them coincide with major seasonal markers such as the equinoxes and the solstices and with the new and full moon. Second, the adept must perform rites of purification before taking the journey; this includes abstaining from meat, grains, and sexual activity. Third, an altar is built and offerings are made to the celestial deities. This is followed by the ritualistic drawing of talismans, and eating them. Fourth, in a secluded and quiet place, the practitioner draws talismans on the ground to protect the area where he or she will leave the body when the spirit flies to the sky. If the body is left unguarded, animals or malevolent spirits may harm it and the spirit will have no shell to enter when it returns from its celestial journey. Finally, there is a series of visualizations ( Tig. 4,2 1 of the celestial deities, petitions, incantations, and dancing, followed by specific patterns of inhalation and exhalation, swallowing of saliva, and the knocking of teeth. When the procedures are completed, the adept rises to the celestial realm. m+ *S *■ + a f A. i*.* Jt*. FIGURE 4.2. Shang-ch’ing adept visualizing the pattern of the Northern Bushel stars, from the Wu-shang hsiian-yuan san-t’ien yii-t’ang ta-fa (The Incomparable Mysterious, Original Great Methods of the Jade Hall of the Three Celestial Realms). Right: Visualizing the Northern Bushel enveloping the body. Center: Keeping the Northern Bushel inside the mouth. Left: Climbing the Celestial Ladder to the Northern Bushel constellation. FIGURE 4.3. Dances of flight, from the Wu-shang Hsiian-yuan san-t’ien yii-t’ang ta-fa (The Incomparable Mysterious, Original Methods of the Jade Hall of the Three Celestial Realms). Left: Audience with the celestial spirits, going beyond the world of spirits and celestial guards. Center: The subtle gait for journeying in the three realms (Jade Pure, Great Pure, and High Pure). Right: Walking on the wind. Leaving the earth and stepping up to the celestial bodies is the more elementary form of the two stages of the celestial journey. Tire spirit needs only to leave the body of the practitioner to be received by the guardian deities of the celestial entity that it is going to. After it has reached its destination, the spirit stays in the embrace and protection of the deity. The journey from one constellation to another, however, is a more difficult task ( fig. 4.3 i. Not only are more steps involved, the journey takes the adept farther and farther away from earth (and the body). This part of the celestial journey is called wandering in the skies. Needless to say, the journey through the celestial realm is a more advanced practice than the initial ascent. Later, the practitioners of internal alchemy would liken similar experiences to a child leaving its mother, first to play near the house, and then leaving its home to travel far and wide. The Legacy of Shang-ch ’ing Taoism Shang-ch’ing Taoism, especially the form that was associated with T’ao Hung-ching, continued to flourish after the end of the Southern dynasties. Mao-shan became the center of Taoist learning, and generations of Shang- ch’ing adepts were trained in its mountain retreats. Mao- shan’s tradition continued to be enriched by some of the most prominent leaders of Taoist thinking, such as Ssu-ma Ch’engchen (T’ang dynasty, 618-906 ce). Tire Mao-shan Shang-ch’ing school of Taoism remained a distinct lineage well into the Sung dynasty (960-1279 ce); thereafter, its beliefs and practices were absorbed into schools of Taoism that emerged in the Ming (1368-1644 ce) and Ch’ing (1644-1911 ce) dynasties. Today, the beliefs and practices of Shang-ch’ing Taoism can be found in several major systems of Taoism. For example, the notions of the guardian deities within the body and the journey of the spirit to the celestial realm have been adopted and developed by the internal-alchemical sects. Moreover, the Huang-t’ing thing’s descriptions of the pathways of internal energy have helped generations of Taoists practice the ch 'i-kung (work of energy) techniques of the Microcosmic and Macrocosmic Circulation. Tire Shang-ch’ing maps of the internal universe have also become valuable tools for internal alchemists seeking to transform body and mind for health, longevity, and immortality. Tire Shang-ch’ing techniques of absorbing the essence of the celestial bodies are practiced today by high- level initiates of some internal-alchemical sects. Tire celestial pantheon and the administration of the celestial realm delineated by Shang-ch’ing Taoism are still accepted by many practitioners of a system of Taoism called Ceremonial or Devotional Taoism. In the Ming and Ch’ing dynasties, Shang-ch’ing rituals were adopted by internal-alchemical sects and incorporated into their ceremonies. Today, we can identify many Shang-ch’ing rituals in ceremonies of the Complete Reality School and other sects that emerged after the philosophical synthesis of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. Hie belief that monsters in the body can cause illness was adopted by the Action and Karma School that emerged in the latter part of the Sung dynasty (twelfth century ce) and became integral to that school’s belief in reward, retribution, and the need to do good deeds. Hie notions of Keeping the One, Embracing the One, and Guarding the One have influenced the development of techniques of meditation that focus on stilling the mind, cultivating inner nature, and dissolving desire. And finally, the techniques of swallowing, inhaling and exhaling, and directing the flow of internal circulation, have been incorporated into many forms of ch’i-kung, the art of circulating energy, and Taoist calisthenics that are practiced today. Further Readings Chapter 8 of Kristofer Schipper’s The Taoist Body offers a brief but lucid introduction to the Shang-ch’ing idea of Keeping the One. Hie same chapter contains a translation of a small section of the Huang-t 'ing nei-ching yu-ching and a discussion of that scripture. Isabelle Robinet’s book Taoist Meditation is probably the definitive work on Mao-shan Shang-ch’ing Taoism. In this book are detailed discussions of the Mao-shan form of Shang-ch’ing Taoism, an interesting interpretation of ching, or scripture, and a handy list of the dates of major events in the history of Shang-ch’ing Taoism. Although titled Taoist Meditation, it is not a manual on Taoist meditation, not even of the Shang-ch’ing kind. You will not find instructions on how to meditate. Robinet’s book is an insightful and scholarly study of Shang-ch’ing practices. For a clear presentation of the mysticism of Shang- ch’ing Taoism, its philosophical and historical background, and the influence of Buddhism on Taoism, see Early Chinese Mysticism, by Livia Kohn. An account of Lao-tzu’s ascension to immortality is given in Livia Kohn’s Taoist Mystical Philosophy, which is a translation and discussion of the Hsi-hsing ching (Tire Scripture of Western Ascension). Although the text talks about Lao-tzu leaving the central lands to teach in India, ascension as the final act in the attainment of immortality is implied. In addition to translating the text, Kohn also presents an interesting study of the Taoist ideas of ascension, sagehood, and the physical universe. Kohn’s anthology, The Taoist Experience, is interesting for those wanting to read more about the Shang-ch’ing practices of flying to the stars and visualizing the guardian deities. See the following sections: Tire Gods Within: Tire Outer Radiance Scripture of the ''fellow Court (reading #24, a translation of the Huang-t’ing wai-ching yu-ching) Lights in the Body: Secret Instructions of the Holy Lord on the Scripture of Great Peace (#25) Tire True One: Book of the Master Who Embraces Simplicity, Inner Chapters, Chapter Eighteen (#26) Tire Three Ones: Scripture of the Three Primordial Realized Ones by the Lord of the Golden Tower (#27) One in All: Mysterious Pearly Mirror of the Mind (#28) Trips through the Stars: Three Ways to Go Beyond the Heavenly Pass (#34) Michael Saso, too, has translated the Huang-t’ing wai- ching yu-ching. In a book titled The Golden Pavilion: Taoist Ways to Peace, Healing, and Long Life, he includes a translation of a popular com mentary on the Huang-t ’ing ching and his own understanding of the meaning of Shang- ch’ing meditation. In the midst of the ethnocentric views of older studies and the dry, detached approach of many contemporary scholars, Schipper’s, Robinet’s, Kolm’s, and Saso’s approaches to Taoism are refreshing. I hope that the recent appearance of the works of these authors is a sign that the Western scholastic community is beginning not merely to look at Taoism as an object for intellectual dissection but also to recognize it as a meaningful spiritual experience for practitioners. 5 The Development of Alchemical Taoism 1200- 1200 CE) In the alchemist’s crucible, ordinary metals are transformed into gold when their impurities are purged by the fire of the furnace. In Taoist alchemy, it is not metals that are refined, but the body and mind of the alchemist. Renewed by the harmonious vapors of yin and yang and transformed by fire and water, the alchemist emerges from the cauldron reconnected to the primordial life-energy of the Tao. Taoist alchemy is sometimes called physiological alchemy, because its goal is to transform the physiological structure and functions of the body. There are two forms of physiological alchemy: external alchemy and internal alchemy. In external alchemy, minerals and herbs are used to concoct a pill or elixir that, when ingested, can make the alchemist immortal; the methods of external alchemy are therefore concerned with such practices as building a furnace, gathering minerals and herbs, and compounding substances. In internal alchemy, all the ingredients of immortality are found inside the body, and it is these substances that are refined and transformed; the methods of internal alchemy are therefore concerned with cultivating the energy of life in the body without the aid of external substances. Although the methods of external and internal alchemy are different, the early alchemists saw no conflict between the two. Most of the early alchemists practiced calisthenics, meditation, and sexual yoga while they were engaged in the research and manufacturing of elixirs. Because the term nei-tan (internal pill) began to appear only in the Taoist writings of the T’ang dynasty (618-906 ce), many people are misled into believing that before the seventh century ce, Taoist alchemists were preoccupied with ingesting minerals. This was not so. The early alchemists, seeing no conflict between the methods of ingesting of minerals and transforming the body and mind from within, had no need to distinguish between external and internal techniques. It was only when the two methods were regarded as incompatible (especially after the Tang dynasty) that it became necessary to distinguish between them. Today, the term internal alchemy is used to describe any Taoist practice whose goal is to transform mind and body for health and longevity. Many modern practitioners of internal alchemy use herbs and special foods to supplement their practice of ch’i-kung and meditation. Thus, internal alchemy as practiced today is actually closer in spirit to the early form of physiological alchemy in the third century ce. It incorporates both external and internal methods. The Beginnings of Alchemy: The Age of Wei Po-yang and Ko Hung (Eastern Han, Wei, and Chin Dynasties 200- 589 ce) Taoism’s concern with health and longevity dates back to the writings of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. Throughout the Warring States Period, Taoism’s emphasis on health and caring for the body increased, and by the end of that period (in 221 bce) there was a class of people who claimed to be experts in the arts of longevity and immortality. They were the fang-shih (the masters of the formulae, discussed in chapter 3). One group of fang-shih specialized in the use of talismanic magic for healing and became the predecessors of the Celestial Teachers or Central Orthodox Taoism. Another group of fang-shih, who specialized in the techniques of prolonging life, ingested minerals, practiced calisthenics, sexual alchemy, and yoga-like methods of internal hygiene, and became the pioneers of both external and internal alchemy. The belief in immortality was very strong during the Han dynasty, and the fang-shih’s search for the elixirs, or pills, of immortality was supported by the emperors and the nobility. While the fang-shih themselves were adepts in both external and internal methods of alchemy, including both “sudden” and “gradual” techniques, the emperors and the upper class were most interested in fast-acting formulas. As a result, experimentation with minerals and herbs was favored over the disciplined practice of calisthenics and meditation. Not all alchemists had rich patrons: some were hermits who worked in their own laboratories. Wei Po-yang, of the Eastern Han (25-220 ce) was such a person, having a laboratory in the mountains. Legend tells us that Wei Po- yang experimented with making the elixir of immortality and, when he was confident that he had succeeded, gave one of the pills to his dog. Tire dog fell over and appeared dead. Wei Po-yang himself swallowed a pill and fell over, unconscious. One of Wei Po-yang’s apprentices, an untrusting one, left, but a faithful apprentice swallowed the last pill; he, too, fell unconscious. Not too long afterward, Wei Po-yang got up, felt a lightness in Iris body, and floated up to the sky. The faithful apprentice and the dog also recovered and flew up behind their master. Wei Po-yang t fig. 5.0 not only attained immortality but left an alchemical treatise titled the Tsan-tung-chi (Hie Triplex Unity), which is considered by Taoists as the ancestor of all the texts of alchemy, external and internal. The Teachings of the Tsan-tung-chi (The Triplex Unity) The Tsan-tung-chi ’s view of the universe is similar to that of classical Taoism. It regards the Tao as the origin of all things and the primordial energy of the Tao as the source of life. As nature renews itself by following the principles of the Tao, mortals, too, can renew themselves and attain immortality by living in accordance with these principles. FIGURE 5.1. Wei Po-yang with apprentice, alchemical cauldron, and dog. The most important principle in the process of creation and renewal is the copulation of yin and yang. Tire concrete manifestation of yin and yang is water and fire; thus, knowing how to use fire and water and when to apply heat and when to cool are crucial to cultivating energy and renewing life. Life is renewed when impurities in the body are purged. Similarly, a pill or elixir of immortality is created when the appropriate substances are refined and compounded. Tempered by heat and purified by the rising vapor of water exposed to fire, the alchemist is said to be reborn in the cauldron and embraced by the Breath of the Tao. Success in the alchemical endeavor depends on the quality of the furnace, the bellows, and the cauldron (fig, 5.2 1. A good furnace is needed to provide fires that are hot enough for tempering the ingredients; efficient bellows are required to produce accurate temperatures at different stages of refining; and a leak-proof cauldron is needed to contain the substances after they have been purified. In external alchemy, these items refer to laboratory equipment, but in internal alchemy, furnace, bellows, and cauldron have physiological equivalents. miao-t’u (The Subtle Illustrations of Experiences on Cultivating the Real). At top is a furnace with a cauldron and sword on top. The two animals, a phoenix and a dragon, are copulating From their union, the Golden Elixir emerges. The lower sketch shows examples of two furnaces. Between the furnaces are three alchemical substances (left to right): mercury, the elixir, and lead. The furnace generates yang fire, or vital energy, and it is driven by the yin power of water or generative energy. (See chapter 8 for a discussion of yin and yang.) Using the bellows is applying the breath to fan the inner fire to produce the heat necessary for transforming vital energy into vapor (ch ’i). Tire cauldron is the location in the body where energy is refined and collected. When the impurities are burned off, the golden pill, or the elixir of immortality, emerges. In Taoist alchemy, the elixir is also called the sacred fetus, because, like a fetus in a womb, to mature it has to be incubated for a period of time. Thus, when the Tsan-tung-chi speaks of water and fire, heating and cooling, building the furnace, positioning the cauldron, and applying the bellows, it is simultaneously describing the processes of external and internal alchemy. The early alchemists did not neglect the importance of stilling the mind and dissolving desire. Parts of the Tsan- tung-chi describe meditation-like techniques. For example, it states, “Nourish yourself internally. In peace, stillness, and complete emptiness, the hidden light of the origin will glow to illuminate the entire body.” Tire Tsan-tung-chi also contains references suggesting that sexual techniques might have been used, together with nonsexual methods, in the gathering and transformation of internal energy. Consider the following statements: “When ch’ien [sky, or male] moves, it becomes erect. The vapor spreads as the generative energy flows. When k’un [earth, or female] is still, it contracts, becoming the furnace in the lodge of the Tao. Apply firmness, then withdraw. Transform it into softness to provide stimulation.” It is therefore not surprising that the Tsan-tung-chi is considered by Taoists to be the ancestor of all alchemical texts. Internal and external alchemy, sexual and nonsexual techniques, are all presented together in this alchemical classic, suggesting that the early alchemists saw no conflict in these methods of seeking immortality. The Teachings ofKo Hungs P’ao-p’u- tzu (The Sage Who Embraces Simplicity) Another great figure of early Taoist alchemy was Ko Hung. Ko lived in the latter part of the Chin dynasty, around the end of the fourth century ce, and was a member of a powerful and established family of southeast China. Members of the Ko family played important parts in the development of Taoism in the fourth and fifth centuries ce: one of them, Ko Hsiian, was the custodian of the Ling-pao scriptures of the Celestial Teachers. The Ko family also had marital ties with the Hsii family of the Shang-ch’ing lineage. These relationships probably accounted for the eclectic nature of Ko Hung’s own practice and beliefs. Ko Hung’s writings are collected in a book titled the P’ao-p’utzu (Tire Sage Who Embraces Simplicity). Tire P’ao-p’u-tzu is very different from Wei Po-yang’s Tsali¬ ning-chi. Whereas the Tsan-tungchi is entirely concerned with alchemy, the P’ao-p’u-tzu is almost like an encyclopedia. In it are formulas, lists of ingredients, procedures for making the external pill, advice on stilling the mind and minimizing desire, methods of calisthenics and breath control, and ideas about holding the One. P'ao- p ’u-tzu also describes methods for getting rid of internal monsters that are characteristic of Shang-ch’ing Taoism, the use of talismans and other protective measures for traveling in the mountains to look for herbs and minerals, stories of immortals, discussions of ethical action, reward, and retribution, and miscellaneous advice on Taoist practice. Tire amazing thing is that Ko Hung did not see these practices as inconsistent or conflicting. Although an eclectic, Ko Hung still regarded external alchemy as the royal road to immortality. For him, the key to making the pill of immortality was in collecting the right ingredients and preparing them in the correct way. Ingredients should be collected only on specific days and in designated areas in the mountains. Moreover, collectors need to protect themselves by taking talismans with them, chanting the appropriate incantations, and dancing the steps of Yii. Despite the emphasis on ingesting minerals, the P’ao- p ’u-tzu is very clear about the role of ethics in the arts of immortality. Physical techniques, external and internal, must be accompanied by the correct mental attitude to be effective in prolonging life. Tlrus, for Ko Hung, stilling the mind, minimizing desire, regulating the emotions, and doing good deeds are all integral to cultivating longevity. In his practice of alchemy, Ko Hung may not be a purist like Wei Po-yang, but he is still an alchemist, because he experimented with minerals and herbs, advocated the cultivation of mind, and used physical techniques to transform the body. Like Wei Po-yang before him, he saw no conflict between ingesting external substances and using internal techniques to transform body and mind. The Separation of Internal and External Alchemy (T’ang Dynasty, 618-960 ce ) Toward the end of the Southern dynasties (circa 580 ce), the Taoist alchemists were having doubts about ingesting compounds made from lead, mercury, cinnabar, and sulphates. Many alchemists and their patrons died eating elixirs concocted from poisonous materials. Tire lack of confidence in producing an immortal pill was seen in the use of prisoners on death row as guinea pigs in the alchemical experiments. Tire failure to produce a pill of immortality called for a reexamination of the techniques of external alchemy and a reevaluation of the theoretical foundations of the entire endeavor. All this was to affect the development of alchemy in the T’ang dynasty. With the T’ang dynasty, China entered an era of political stability and prosperity. Some of the greatest poetry, art, and calligraphy of China came from this era. Trade routes and diplomatic relations were opened, east to Japan and west to Central Asia, India, and Europe. Tire T’ang emperors were strong believers in the pills of immortality. More emperors died of poisoning from ingesting minerals in the T’ang than in any other dynasty. In the early T’ang, all the conditions were ripe for external alchemy to make a comeback after its decline toward the end of the Southern dynasties. Tire emperors and the nobility longed for immortality; the Taoist alchemists were ready to reevaluate their research and theories; and Taoism was embraced by all social classes. Elixirs of immortality became an integral part of the social life of the Tang dynasty. Poets like Li Po and Po Chu-i celebrated the arts of immortality, and the research and practice of external alchemy reached new heights of development. The imperial patronage of external alchemy created a new group of Taoist alchemists: those who worked solely in the research and fabrication of the elixir of immortality. Before the T’ang dynasty, Taoists who experimented with the external pill also practiced other techniques of longevity. Some (like Ko Hung), were eclectics who practiced external alchemy, herbal medicine, talismanic magic, calisthenics, breath control, and meditation; others (like T’ao Hungching) were adepts at Shang-ch’ing methods of longevity, using minerals and herbs as supplements. Some (like the legendary Wei Po-vang ). practiced a mixture of external alchemy, internal alchemy, and sexual yoga. It was only in the T’ang dynasty that we begin to see an increasing number of Taoists who were solely involved with external alchemy. The renewed enthusiasm for external alchemy produced several new ideas. In the T’ang dynasty, alchemists acknowledged that there are two kinds of elixirs. The first kind occurs naturally and is found in minerals and stones that have absorbed the yin and yang vapors of the universe. When correct amounts of sunshine and moonlight have been absorbed over a period of four thousand three hundred and twenty years, substances like lead and mercury will be transformed into cinnabar, and will eventually crystallize into a pill with a golden color. Tire person who ingests this pill will become immortal. Needless to say, pills that occur under these natural conditions are very rare; thus, alchemists were forced to find ways to manufacture the pills under artificial conditions. Tire rationale was that if the yang heat and yin cooling could be simulated in laboratory conditions, it might be possible to create the immortal elixir under controlled conditions. Much of the research of external alchemy of the T’ang dynasty was therefore concerned with building a furnace and cauldron that was patterned after the natural furnace and cauldron of sky and earth. In fabricating the immortal pill, increasing and reducing the heat of the furnace must follow the movement of the sun, moon, and stars. If the alchemical process is to succeed, the firing process should also follow the sequence of the waxing and waning of the yang fire of the sun and the yin essence of the moon. Tire furnace must therefore be lighted in the eleventh month and its heat must be regulated at critical times throughout the year. When these details are observed, the alchemist will succeed in creating laboratory conditions that simulate the natural conditions. Finally, ingredients must be selected and mixed with the same precision as herbal medicine. Twenty-seven substances are listed in an authoritative text of the time. These substances include lead, mercury, zinc, nickel, sodium sulphate, rock salt, mercuric sulphide, silver, cinnabar, various forms of malachite, and arsenious oxides. Even a glance will reveal that most of these substances are poisonous; indeed, alchemists admitted that if incorrect quantities were taken, death could result. Many poisonings did occur. People who swallowed the pills of immortality suffered slow poisoning that led to the failure of the liver and spleen. Other fatal effects included breakdown of the nervous system and various forms of mental disorder. After three hundred years of failure in research and experimentation, external alchemy declined. Toward the latter part of the T’ang dynasty, the Taoists began to question whether immortality was indeed possible. This led to a rethinking of the meaning of immortality. One definition of immortality was influenced by Buddhism: immortality was the liberation from the endless cycles of reincarnation. Another definition equated immortality with living a long and healthy life. Tire practitioners of the arts of immortality gradually turned to meditation, massage, calisthenics, and yoga-like postures for cultivating life. By the end of the T’ang dynasty, the heyday of external alchemy was over. During the final decades of its rule, the T’ang dynasty was beset with court intrigues, peasant uprisings, insubordinate provincial governors, and the constant threat of invasion from neighboring tribes. Eventually, a powerful provincial governor led an army into the capital, dethroned the emperor, and established a new dynasty—his own. For the next fifty years, China was again plunged into political chaos. Five dynasties came and went as one military government replaced another. The violence that surrounded the rise and fall of these short-lived dynasties surpassed even that of the Southern and Northern dynasties. Moreover, these dynasties controlled only a small portion of what was formerly held by the T’ang empire. Many areas were annexed by powerful provincial governors who ruled like petty kings. These semiautonomous regions were called the Ten Kingdoms. During the political chaos of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, many intellectuals abandoned politics and became recluses. Most of them were trained in the Confucian tradition. Tire most famous of these Confucian- trained Taoists were Fii Tung-pin, Chen Tuan (Chen Hsi-yi), and Wang Ch’ung-yang. These scholars retained Confucian values even as they embraced Taoism. The kind of Taoism that interested them was not the talismanic magic of the Celestial Teachers or the external alchemists’ obsession with a pill of immortality, but a form of Taoism that focused on cultivating virtue, health, quietude, and living a simple and harmonious life. The Height of Development of Internal Alchemy: The Age of Chang Po-tuan (Northern and Southern Sung Dynasties 960-1368 cm) Hie Sung dynasty (960-1279 ce) was the golden era of internal alchemy. During this period, the theory and practice of internal alchemy reached a sophistication unmatched in any other period of Chinese history. Lii Tung-pin is generally acknowledged as the grand patriarch of internal alchemy. Born toward the end of the T’ang dynasty and living through the era of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms into the early Sung, Lii was disillusioned by the political conditions of his time. He abandoned his political aspirations and followed an immortal named Chung-li Ch’uan into the mountains to learn the arts of internal alchemy. Lii Tung-pin transmitted his teachings to several students who in turn became founders of their own schools of the arts of longevity. One of them was Chen Hsi-yi, who was most famous for his innovative techniques of ch’i-kung. Chen Hsi-yi’s form of internal alchemy integrated the cosmology of the I-ching, the Confucian ideas of cultivating virtue, and physical techniques of circulating energy. Another student of Lii Tung-pin was Wang Ch’ung-yang, who founded the Complete Reality School and was one of the first Taoists to integrate Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism explicitly. We shall look at the Complete Reality School in more detail in chapter 6, when we examine the philosophical synthesis of these three schools of thought. But if anyone is to be recognized as foremost theorist and practitioner of internal alchemy in the Sung dynasty, it is Chang Po-tuan. Chang (987-1082 ce) lived in the early part of the Sung dynasty and received the teachings of Lii Tung-pin through Liu Hai-ch’an. Chang’s writings are filled with metaphors of alchemy: he spoke of the furnace and cauldron, the firing process, the copulation of yin and yang, and the crystallization of the golden pill by compounding lead and mercury. When his book the Wu-jen p ’ien (Understanding Reality) was published, Chang Po-tuan was hailed as the successor to Wei Po-yang. However, there is a difference between these two alchemists: for Wei Po-yang, there was the possibility of making an elixir from substances external to the body; for Chang Po-tuan, all the ingredients and equipment necessary for the alchemical processes are inside the body. In the internal alchemy of Chang Po-tuan, lead and mercury are the essence of yin and yang energies in the body, the furnace is the heat generated in the lower tan- t’ien ( fig. 5.3 ). the cauldron is where the internal energy is refined, pumping the bellows refers to regulating the breath and controlling the heat of the lower tan-t’ien, the immortal fetus is the bundle of refined energy that is the seed of longevity and immortality, and the ten-month incubation of the fetus in the womb refers to the length of time required for the internal pill to mature. Chang Po-tuan’s internal alchemy was part of a revolution in Taoist thinking that occurred in the Sung dynasty. Out of this revolution emerged a form of Taoism that was influenced by Zen Buddhism and Confucianism. It advocated the dual cultivation of body and mind and combined methods of emptying the mind with physical techniques for circulating internal energy. m ft* FIGURE 5.3. The furnace and cauldron in the body of the internal alchemist, from Nei-wai-kung t’ushuo (Illustrations of Internal and External Methods of Cultivation), collected by Hsiao T’ien-shih. The drawing is titled “Picture of Light Radiating in All Directions.” The three-legged cauldron symbolizes both the furnace and cauldron of the lower tan-t’ien; the crescent moon is the middle tan-t’ien; and the disk on the head is the ni-wan (mud ball) cavity. The practitioner is holding the orbs of the Red Raven and the Jade Rabbit, which are the essence of yang and yin, respectively. The writing (top), translated, reads, “Cavities: the openings of the three cavities; inside the cavities are subtleties; when the subtle cavities are visible, this is called light radiating in all directions.” Of the internal alchemists of the Sung dynasty, Wang Ch’ungyang was the one most influenced by Confucianism. Virtue, honor, and other Confucian values formed an important part of his teachings. Chang Po-tuan, by contrast, was less influenced by Confucian codes of behavior. More pragmatic in his approach to the techniques of longevity, he considered sexual techniques viable in the early stages of cultivating the body. Wang Ch’ung-yang, to the contrary, did not consider sexual alchemy to be a legitimate technique. After Chang Po-tuan’s death, his students founded the southern branch of the Complete Reality School. An opposing northern branch was founded by Wang Ch’ung¬ yang’s student Ch’iu Ch’angch’un. Toward the end of the Sung dynasty, internal alchemists like Chang San-feng, the originator of t’ai-chi ch’uan, began to incorporate the practice of internal martial arts into internal alchemy. Other practitioners combined meditation and calisthenics, and some even incorporated the Shang-ch’ing methods of absorbing the essence of the sun, moon, and stars in their practice of cultivating health and longevity. Others reintroduced the use of herbs (but not minerals) to supplement the internal methods. These internal alchemists, however, had one thing in common: they all acknowledged that internal alchemy involved both physical and psychological transformation. In this respect, all were proponents of the dual cultivation of body and mind. Further Readings Those interested in the history of external alchemy, the ingestion of minerals, and the manufacturing of the pills of immortality, will find material in vol. 5, part 3, of Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilization in China. That volume also contains a good discussion of the contributions of Wei Po-yang and Ko Hung to the development of the science of physical alchemy. For a history of internal alchemy, see Needham’s Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, part 5. Needham is interested more in the scientific ramifications of internal alchemy than in its practice as a spiritual discipline. It is interesting to compare his approach to the Taoist arts of health and longevity with those of Maspero, Robinet, Kohn, and others who focus more on the spiritual value of internal alchemy. To get a feel for the early writings of alchemy, look at James Ware’s selected translation of Ko Hung’s P'ao-p ’u- tzu Nei-p ’ien (Inner Chapters of the Sage Who Embraces Simplicity). Although Ware uses antiquated words that may sometimes mislead the reader (he equates shen with God where it would be better understood as spirit), it is still a good source of information on the early alchemical literature. There is a complete translation of Chang Po-tuan’s Wu- jen p 'ien in Thomas Cleary’s Understanding Reality. Cleary has also included the Outer Chapters that Chang wrote later for nonadepts. There is less technical terminology in the Outer Chapters: the discussions are concerned more with the mental than the physical side of internal alchemy. Cleary has also included a commentary by Ch’ing dynasty author Liu I-ming. Liu’s commentary should not be taken as the definitive interpretation of Chang’s original work; in fact, Liu I-ming tends to psychologize the physical phenomena described by Chang Po-tuan. Liu I-ming’s form of Taoism represents an approach that considers internal alchemy as primarily mental phenomena. (More about this form of Taoism in chapter 6). Liu’s view of internal alchemy is very different from Chang Po-tuan’s, and his commentary on the Wu-jen p ’ien is more like a reworking or “demythologizing” of Chang’s text than an effort to clarify it. Cleary separates Chang’s original text from Liu’s commentary by setting the original text in boldface type and the commentary in roman. Another famous work of Chang Po-tuan is a short treatise titled Chin-tan ssu-po tzu. This is translated by Thomas Cleary in The Inner Teachings of Taoism as “Four Hundred Words on the Golden Elixir.” Again a commentary by Liu I-ming is included. Isabelle Robinet has a short chapter titled ‘Original Contributions of Nei-tan to Taoism and Chinese Thought” in a book edited by Livia Kohn, Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques. Robinet’s work is a brief but good account of the development of internal alchemy in the T’ang and early Sung dynasties. Good summaries of the history of Taoism that we have looked at in chapters 3, 4, and 5 can be found in books 5 and 7 ofMaspero’s Taoism and Chinese Religion. 6 The Synthesis of Taoism. Buddhism, and Confucianism HOOP CE - presentf By the end of the tenth century ce, the dream of discovering a pill of immortality by compounding minerals seemed to be over. Three hundred years of reevaluating the theory and practice of external alchemy had not produced positive results, and the numerous poisonings and deaths had convinced the Taoist community that it was time to find another way to attain longevity. The political chaos of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (907- 960 ce) made hermits out of many Confucian scholars. Urey embraced the quintessence of Taoism and admired the mental discipline of Zen Buddhism, but they did not want to abandon Confucian values. These scholars initiated a synthesis of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism that focused on the dual cultivation of body and mind. This synthesis would characterize much of the Taoist arts of longevity that are practiced today. The Philosophical Synthesis (Northern Sung Dynasty 960-1126 ce) Hie first synthesis of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism was primarily philosophical: it integrated a form of Taoism that was already sympathetic to cultivating inner peace and stillness with Zen Buddhism’s theory of original mind and Confucianism’s idea of the original nature of goodness. Its foremost proponent was Wang Ch’ung-yang. WANG CH’UNG-YANG’S COMPLETE REALITY SCHOOL OF TAOISM Wang Ch’ung-yang (Wang Che) had a classical Confucian education, but the violent and militaristic rule of the emperors of the Five Dynasties had no use for Confucian values and benevolent politics. At age forty, Wang Che gave up Ms hopes for a career in the civil service, apprenticed himself to the Taoist immortals Lii Tung-pin and Chung-li Ch’uan to learn the arts of longevity, and adopted the Taoist name of Wang Ch’ung-yang. History and legend tell us that Wang Ch’ung-yang explored various forms of Buddhism, including Zen and T’ien-tai, before he became a student of the Taoist arts. Even after he had completed his training in Taoism, he continued to have a high regard for both Zen Buddhism and Confucianism. He believed that the integration of the Zen experience of emptiness, the ethics of Confucianism, and the Taoist techniques of health and longevity could offer a complete understanding of the ultimate reality of things. Thus, he named his form of Taoism the Complete Reality (Ch’iian-chen) School. Wang Ch’ung-yang’s school adopted Confucianism’s K’ao-ching (Classic of Filial Piety) and Buddhism’s Heart Sutra into its repertoire of scriptures. Of the Taoist texts, the Tao-te ching and the Ch 'ing-ching ching (Cultivating Stillness) were especially important. Complete Reality Taoism is not an eclectic system of thought. Its integration of Taoism, Zen Buddhism, and Confucianism initiated a unique approach to Taoism that is characterized by the dual cultivation of body and mind. Taoism formed the foundation of the synthesis: Confucianism and Zen Buddhism were integrated to complement it; however, of all the forms of Taoism that emerged during the Sung dynasty, Wang Ch’ung-yang’s had the most Confucian and Zen Buddhist flavor. In Wang Ch’ung-yang’s system of thought, the Tao, the formless and undifferentiated energy, is the underlying reality of all things. To merge with the Tao is to draw energy from this source of life. This is longevity. However, the ultimate reality of the Tao can be experienced only by original mind, which is empty of thoughts, attachments, and desire. In Complete Reality Taoism, original mind is also the original spirit (yiian-shen), or immortal fetus. According to Wang Ch’ung-yang, everyone has the spark of the Tao inside them, but craving and mindless thinking have prevented this spark from developing. Tire goal of Taoist practice is to return to the original mind by removing the barriers that have kept us from it. As in Zen Buddhism, spiritual training in the Complete Reality School begins with the eradication of desire and emptying the mind of thoughts. This allows us to cultivate stillness and experience the Tao. Tire Confucian influence on Wang Ch’ung-yang’s thinking is strong. In addition to incorporating values such as virtue, benevolence, and honor into spiritual training, Wang Ch’ung-yang equates original mind with the Confucian notion of the original nature of goodness. For him, the original mind is not only empty of desire but also has a tendency toward goodness; thus, doing charitable deeds is an important part of Complete Reality Taoism. Despite the Confucian and Buddhist influences, however, Wang Ch’ung-yang’s Complete Reality School is essentially Taoist: it recognizes that spiritual training involves the transformation of both body and mind and that this transformation is alchemical. DIVISION OF THE COMPLETE REALITY SCHOOL Not all of Wang Ch’ung-yang’s students agreed with his approach to cultivating body and mind; moreover, variations in interpretation of the master’s thought, even by his closest students, the Seven Taoist Masters, gave rise to different sects within the Complete Reality School. The most famous division within the school was the formation of the southern branch, by Chang Po-tuan, and the northern branch, by Wang Ch’ung-yang’s closest student, Ch’iu Ch’ang-ch’un t fig. 6. I T Chang Po-tuan did not study directly under Wang, but his teacher, Liu Hai- ch’an, was a student of Lii Tung-pin; thus, Chang’s teacher was a fellow student of Wang Ch’ung-yang’s. FIGURE 6.1. Ch’iu Ch’ang-ch’un, one of the Seven Masters of the Complete Reality School. Picture courtesy of the White Cloud Monastery in Beijing. Differences already existed between Wang Ch’ung- yang’s form of Taoism and that of Liu Hai-ch’an. Tims, the division of the Complete Reality School actually occurred in the generation before Chang Po-tuan. These divergent forms of Complete Reality Taoism were formed right from the beginning, when Liu Hai-ch’an and Wang Ch’ung-yang both learned from Lii Tung-pin. When the two systems of teachings were transmitted to Chang Po-tuan and Ch’iu Ch’ang-ch’un, the two branches of Complete Reality Taoism were officially recognized. Taoist historians now identify Ch’iu Ch’angch’un’s northern branch as the Lung- men (Dragon Gate) sect and Chang Po-tuan’s southern branch as the Tzu-yang (Purple Yang) sect. Several major differences exist between the two branches of Complete Reality Taoism. First, Wang Ch’ung- yang placed more importance on cultivating the mind and taught that mind must be cultivated before body. Chang Po- tuan, on the other hand, advocated cultivating the body before mind and placed more emphasis on strengthening the body. Wang Ch’ung-yang’s Complete Reality Taoism used Zen-like meditation methods to build the foundation of spiritual development: emptying the mind of thoughts, minimizing desire, and becoming nonattached to external situations are all part of cultivating the mind. Chang Po- tuan’s southern branch, by contrast, focused on techniques of gathering, refining, and circulating internal energy to cultivate health and longevity. For Wang Ch’ung-yang, the physical techniques introduced in the latter part of the training functioned to teach the practitioner how to apply the physical transformations that were brought about by cultivating the mind; whereas, for Chang Po-tuan, refining the body was a prerequisite for the forms of meditation practiced in the advanced stages of training. Moreover, where Wang Chung- yang’s form of Complete Reality Taoism would not use sexual techniques for gathering energy, Chang Po-tuan’s sect considered sexual yoga a viable method of replenishing energy in the early stages of training, especially for older people. By the end of the Northern Sung (circa 1100 ce), the Complete Reality School, especially the Lung-men sect, had become a powerful religious organization. Monastic and highly disciplined, it had an efficient administration, owned land, and had a network of monasteries. Tire invasion of the Chin tribe and the Sung dynasty’s loss of its northern lands did not hinder the momentum of the Lung-men sect. In fact, when the Sung ruling family fled south from the northern invaders, the Lung-men sect won the respect and patronage of the new rulers and flourished in the Chin kingdom. It continued to be favored by the Mongols after Kublai Khan conquered the Chin tribe. In the south, where the Sung dynasty clung to its dwindling territory, the picture was very different. Tire southern branch of Complete Reality Taoism began to decline, and political and social conditions favored a form of Taoism that synthesized the popular beliefs of devotional Buddhism, religious Taoism, and the ethics of Confucianism. This synthesis gave rise to the Action and Karma School of Taoism, and in the south made ethics and devotion the focus of Taoist practice. The Religious Synthesis: Southern Sung Dynasty (1127-1279 ce) and Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 ce) The fall of the Northern Sung in 1126 ce brought a flood of refugees to the regions of China south of the Yang-tze. Not only did these refugees lose their lands and fortune, they also lost their faith in the imperial government’s ability to protect them from the invaders. The Southern Sung dynasty was always threatened with invasion from the north; its emperors were weak, and the officials corrupt. An attempt to regain its lost territory after the Mongol conquest of the Chin tribe brought the Southern Sung in direct conflict with Kublai Khan’s expanding empire. Tire days of the Southern Sung were spent retreating from the invasion of the Mongols and in 1279 it was finally conquered by Kublai. Throughout the last hundred years of the Southern Sung, as people fled from invading armies, food was scarce and relief from the central government, appropriated by corrupt officials, was sold at enormous prices. When the common citizens of the Southern Sung could not find protection from their government, they turned to the deities for guidance. What fulfilled their spiritual needs was not the individual enlightenment of Zen Buddhism, nor the arts of longevity of the Taoist internal alchemists, nor even the religious ceremonies of the Celestial Teachers: it was a popular religion that integrated religious Taoism, devotional Buddhism, and commonsense Confucian ethics. This was Action and Karma Taoism—a movement that taught that ethical action was rewarded and unethical action invited karmic retribution. Its patron deities included Taoist immortals, Buddhist bodhisattvas, and Confucian sages. This popular religious movement was inspired by the teachings of the T’ai-shang kan-ying p 'ien (Lao-tzu’s Treatise on the Response of the Tao), a book written by a Taoist scholar named Li Ying-chang. The synthesis of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism in popular religion was not so much a conscious intent on the part of Li Yingchang when he wrote the T’ai-shang kan- ying p’ien\ rather, this treatise provided the impetus and sparked a movement that created its own momentum. Between the end of the Sung dynasty and the late Ming dynasty, moral tales were developed around the Kan-ying p ’ien, and it was in these stories that traditional Confucian values, Buddhist ideas of reincarnation and karma, and the Taoist deities’ power over health and longevity were woven together. The Southern Sung fell in 1279 ce and was replaced by the Yuan dynasty of the Mongols. Although it was the Lung-men branch of the Complete Reality School that was favored by the Yuan emperors, Action and Karma Taoism, the popular movement, was firmly established among the common people. POPULAR RELIGION IN THE MING Mongol rule over a unified China was brief. Ninety years after their conquest of the Southern Sung, Kublai Khan’s Yuan dynasty ended. A popular uprising drove the Mongols out of central China and ushered in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644 ce). The Ming dynasty emperors were sympathetic to popular religion. Urey participated in state-sponsored ceremonies, appointed the Celestial Teachers to preside over the rituals, and were strong believers in Taoist magic and sorcery. The rise of popular religion changed not only the face of Taoism but also affected Buddhism. Zen Buddhism’s focus on individual enlightenment and disciplined practice lost its appeal, to be replaced by a form of devotional Buddhism that emphasized chanting the names of the buddhas, praying to the bodhisattvas, and believing in reincarnation and karmic retribution. Enlightenment, or becoming immortalized as a buddha, became equated with the acquisition of magical abilities, rather than attaining stillness and experiencing the reality of the Tao. Thus, in the Ming dynasty, an enlightened person was considered to be an individual with power. Popular religion in the Ming dynasty was facilitated by the development of the novel. Some of the literature, like Seven Taoist Masters, combined philosophy and spiritual teachings with the legends of Taoist sages. Other writings, like the Feng-shen yen-yi (Investiture of the Gods) and Hsi-yu chi (Journey to the West), blended Taoist and Buddhist spiritual values with fantasy. By the end of the Ming dynasty, there was a collection of stories built around Li Ying-chang’s teachings in the T’ai-shang kan-ying p ’ien, which incorporated the Buddhist ideas of reincarnation, Taoist beliefs in immortals, and the Confucian values of dedication, filial piety, and honor. Tire religious synthesis of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism was so thorough that by the time of the Ch’ing dynasty (1644-1911 ce), the popular religion of the Chinese had a pantheon of deities consisting of Taoist immortals, Buddhist bodhisattvas, and Confucian sages. Taoist immortals were given Buddhist names and bodhisattvas became incarnations of Taoist immortals. Today, in popular Taoism, Lii Tung-pin, the Taoist immortal, is regarded as an incarnation of Manjushri Buddha, and Lao-tzu is sometimes identified as the Tathagata (Suchness) Buddha. Variations of the Synthesis and the Rise of Sects in Taoism (Ming Dynasty 1368-1644 ce) Hie flowering of popular religion in the Ming dynasty encouraged the development of sects in Taoism. Official religious ceremonies were conducted by the Celestial Teachers, but there was no state-sponsored religion. The Ming emperors admired individuals who had magical or supernatural powers; thus, in the Ming we see the investiture of many Taoists as chen-jen, or realized beings. Some were distinguished Taoist thinkers (e.g., Wang Ch’ung-yang and Chang Potuan), some were leaders of Taoist sects (e.g., the seven disciples of Wang Ch’ung- yang), and some were hermits (e.g., Chang San-feng). More Taoist sects were formed in the Ming dynasty than in any other period of Chinese history. Disagreement over theory and practice might have motivated the formation of sects, but it was the social and political climate that encouraged their existence. Hie Ming emperors and the common citizens were probably not interested in how Chang San-feng’s methods of cultivating body and mind differed from those of the Lung-men sect: what mattered to them was that these individuals had magical abilities and power. Sects were therefore free to develop, and their rise and fall were tied to the power and charisma of their leaders. The most famous of the chen-jen of the Ming dynasty was Chang San-feng ( Tig. 6. 2 1. Most people know him as the originator of t’aichi ch’uan, the set of slow-moving exercises for cultivating health and circulating internal energy, but Chang San-feng was also an expert in herbal medicine and wrote treatises on internal alchemy. His form of internal alchemy emphasized cultivating the body and favored techniques of moving over nonmoving meditation. Chang San-feng was respected and honored by several Ming emperors, and the Wu-tang-shan sect established by his students even today has wide influence in Hupei and Shensi Provinces in central China. In the late Ming, a division within the Lung-men sect created the Wu-Liu sect, named after Wu Chung-hsu and Liu Hua-yang. Originally a high-level initiate of the Lung- men sect, Wu Chunghsu left the sect because he disagreed with the mainstream Lung-men doctrines. Wu’s form of internal alchemy integrated Zen Buddhism, Hua-yen Buddhism, and the Taoist arts of longevity, but excluded the Confucian elements and ceremonial rituals of the Complete Reality School, hi the Ch’ing dynasty, Wu Chung-hsii’s successor, Liu Hua-yang, took Wu’s teachings, combined them with the Shang-ch’ing ideas of spirit travel, and wrote the Hui-ming ching (The Treatise on Cultivating Life). FIGURE 6.2. Chang San-feng, patriarch of the Wu-tang-shan sect and originator of t’ai-chi ch’uan. The caption reads, “Chang the Immortal, who understands the subtleties and reveals the mysteries.” The popularity of magic and sorcery in the Ming dynasty gave rise to several sects that combined talismanic magic with cultivating body and mind. Out of this strange union emerged the Mao-shan sect (not to be confused with the Shang-ch’ing Mao-shan Taoism of T’ao Hung- chine ). which used a combination of sorcery, talismanic magic, and ch’i- kung techniques to cultivate an “indestructible body.” This sect became extremely powerful and influential in the Ch’ing dynasty, and even today Mao-shan sorcerers are still feared and respected. There was also the Eastern sect—so called because it flourished in southeast China—which used a combination of sexual alchemy, calisthenics, breath control, and quiet sitting to cultivate health and longevity. Proponents of this sect claimed to be influenced by the form of Complete Reality Taoism taught by Chang Po-tuan. The Ming dynasty was indeed the era of sectarian Taoism. Since there is no such thing as heresy in Chinese religion, disagreements led to division, and division led to the formation of a new sect. Some sects (for example, the Lung-men sect) were monastic and celibate; there were also sects (for example, the Celestial Teachers) with a priestly clergy that was allowed to marry. The Wu-Liu sect, which separated from the Lung-men sect, did not allow the use of sexual yoga but was opposed to enforced celibacy and monastic life. For the Mao-shan sorcerers, who were neither monks nor priests, celibacy was recommended to help in training in the magical arts. Then there was Action and Karma Taoism, which emerged from the synthesis of Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucian popular beliefs. This movement became a form of lay Taoism, its leaders coming from all walks of life. By the end of the Ming dynasty, there were so many Taoist sects that it was difficult to keep track of all of them. Some sects lasted for only one generation, disappearing when their founders died; others continued for several generations. When the Ming was replaced by the Ch’ing dynasty in 1644, another form of Taoism emerged. This kind of Taoism is sometimes called contemplative Taoism, for it revived the practice of cultivating the mind and considered internal alchemy to be a purely psychological phenomenon. A New Syn thesis of Confucianism, Zen Buddhism, and Taoist Internal Alchemy (Ch ’ing Dynasty 1644-1911 ce) During the last fifty years of the Ming dynasty, the emperors frequently relied on magic, prayers, and petitions to solve the problems of the country. Priests replaced ministers as confidants of the emperors, and the advice of many skilled administrators was dismissed. Some Taoists and Buddhists took advantage of the emperors’ trust in them and became extremely powerful. Court politics were dominated by antagonism between the civil servants and the religious advisers. Factions conspired against each other and the administration of the country was neglected. Other problems also contributed to the end of the Ming dynasty. By 1600 ce, the Manchu tribe was emerging as a powerful force in northeast China. Tire Manchu conquered the smaller tribes in the region between Korea and Russia and were poised to invade central China. Internally, within the Ming empire, the nobility was divided, and the eunuchs rose to power by allying themselves with ambitious and worldly Taoist and Buddhist priests. Corruption in the provincial government brought discontent, and discontent led to peasant uprisings. When the Ming government turned down a trade treaty with the Portuguese, its fate was sealed. Trade goods, muskets, and cannons from the Western nations went to the Manchus. With superiority in firepower, the Manchu conquest of the already crumbling Ming empire was sure and swift. The Ch’ing dynasty (1644-1911 ce) ushered in an era of “critical reflection” of everything from the past. The “past” was the Ming dynasty, and most of Ch’ing intellectual activity consisted of criticizing the literary, artistic, and spiritual trends of the Ming dynasty. Magical practices in Taoism were especially under attack, for several reasons: the intellectual atmosphere encouraged criticism of the popular and religious Taoism of the Ming dynasty; the prevailing intellectual trend was suspicious of anything that was nonrational (magic, sorcery, belief in deities and spirits, and even aspects of internal alchemy were all targets of criticism); and many intellectuals blamed religious Taoism and the belief in magic for the fall of the Ming dynasty and the humiliation of being conquered by ‘foreign” invaders. This intellectual atmosphere produced two kinds of Taoism: the intellectual and contemplative Taoism represented by Liu I-ming, and a new synthesis of Buddhism and internal alchemy found in the Wu-Liu sect led by Liu Hua-yang. LIU I-MING Liu I-ming (1734-1821 ce) was a Confucian scholar who turned to Taoism in middle life. Originally initiated into the Lung-men sect of the Complete Reality School, Liu soon found that he disagreed with that sect’s monasticism and its increasing emphasis on liturgy and ritual. Leaving the Lung-men sect, he apprenticed himself to an internal alchemist in Kansu Province, learned the arts of longevity, and became a hermit. Liu I-ming was adept at many branches of Taoist knowledge. He wrote treatises on medicine and internal alchemy as well as commentaries on the I-ching. Tire most famous of his writings included commentaries on Chang Po-tuan’s Wu-jen p 'ien, the Tsan-tung-chi, and several treatises on advice on cultivating mind and body. Liu I-ming’s form of Taoism could be described as contemplative Taoism. It emphasized stilling the mind, understanding original nature, and living a life of harmony and simplicity. Tire most important features of Liu I-ming’s ideas were their distinct Confucian influence and Liu’s unique approach to internal alchemy. Tire Confucian influence probably came from Liu’s own experience: he started his career as a Confucian scholar and civil administrator and became a Taoist recluse only after retirement. Liu’s form of internal alchemy is unique in its interpretation of the alchemical process. For Liu I-ming, internal alchemy is psychological, and much of the alchemical work is concerned with transforming the mind. To realize the Tao is to recover original nature, and the recovery of original nature involves developing true knowledge. Since true knowledge is often silenced by conscious knowledge, stilling the mind becomes central in allowing true knowledge to develop. Terminology such as fire, water, sweet nectar, yellow sprouts, lead, mercury, dragon, tiger, furnace, and cauldron all refers to psychological, not physical phenomena. Thus, in Liu’s form of internal alchemy, the male tiger represents innate knowledge of goodness in the original mind; the female dragon is the clear consciousness of an uncluttered mind; sweet nectar becomes purity of mind, and yellow sprouts symbolize the stillness of mind. Tire furnace symbolizes the flexibility of earth, and the cauldron, the firmness of sky. Tire term building the furnace and positioning the cauldron refers to stabilizing and balancing firmness and flexibility, rather than refining the internal energies in the three tan-t’iens. With the psychologizing of internal alchemy, the dual cultivation of body and mind becomes the cultivation of original nature, and physical health and longevity are the by-products of a tranquil mind. This form of internal alchemy is very different from that of Chang Po-tuan and Wei Po-yang, for whom the alchemical processes are both physical and mental. While Liu I-ming’s form of Taoism was integrating Taoist internal alchemy with the Confucian ideas of cultivating original nature, moderation, and balance, another form of Taoism was emerging from the synthesis of Taoist internal alchemy and Buddhism. This was Liu Hua-yang’s Wu-Liu sect, and his ideas are presented in his famous book, the Hui-ming ching. LIU HUA-YANG Liu Hua-yang (1736-1846? ce) learned the arts of longevity from a student of Wu Chung-hsu. Wu Chung-hsii was sympathetic to methods of Zen meditation and incorporated them into his theory and practice of internal alchemy. Liu Hua-yang took Wu Chunghsii’s approach to cultivating body and mind and developed a form of Taoism that combined what he thought was the best of Taoist internal alchemy and Buddhism. In Liu Hua-yang’s system of internal alchemy, immortality and attainment of Buddhahood are different names for the same spiritual experience. A Buddhist who embraced Taoism in his middle years, Liu Hua-yang claimed that Taoist alchemy alone could cultivate life but not original mind, and Buddhism alone could cultivate original mind but not health and longevity. Thus, his approach used both Taoist internal alchemical techniques and Zen and Hua-yen Buddhist meditation to attain the highest level of spiritual experience. According to Liu Hua-yang, everyone possesses the essence of life, which is the energy of the Tao inside the body. Desire, negative attitude, and emotional attachment cause this life force to leak from the body, resulting in the loss of health and immortality. If the mind is still and if craving is curbed, the leakage will be stopped, and the life force will circulate through the body. With continued cultivation, the spiritual fetus, or original spirit, which is the seed of immortality, will grow within. This fetus is the consciousness of the original mind, as well as the energy that nourishes the body. After a period of incubation, the spiritual fetus emerges from the body to create a spirit- body that can travel to other realms of existence. Eventually, the spirit is mature enough to be independent of the shell that bore it. When the shell dies, the spirit, in the form of energy, is liberated, to merge with the energy of the universe. During the Ch’ing dynasty and the republican years (1911-1949 ce), many sects came and went. Some sects had small followings and did not survive beyond the lifetime of their founders. But some survived the social chaos, the wars, and the political changes to form the five major systems of Taoism that are practiced today. These “schools” of Taoism are Magical Taoism, Divinational Taoism, Ceremonial Taoism, Internal-Alchemical Taoism, and Action and Karma Taoism, and we shall look at the teachings of each of these schools in Part Two. Further Readings My Seven Taoist Masters tells the story of Wang Ch’ung-yang and his seven disciples and the founding of the northern school of Complete Reality Taoism. This provides a good introduction to the teachings of that school of Taoism: the stories are delightful, and the book presents valuable insights into what it means to pursue spiritual training in Taoism. For a further exploration of the synthesis of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, and to see how this synthesis influenced internal alchemy in the more recent history of Taoism, read my translation of Cultivating Stillness. Chung-ho chi, translated by Thomas Cleary as The Book of Balance and Harmony, is an internal-alchemical classic. Influenced by the synthesis of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, it was written by Li Tao-shun, a master of the Complete Reality School. Although influenced by Buddhism and Confucianism, Li’s form of internal alchemy places equal emphasis on cultivating body and mind. It is clear that the phenomena described by Li in his book are both physical and mental. Cleary’s lucid and readable translation unfortunately does not include the illustrations that accompany the original text collected in the Taoist canon. The contemplative form of Taoism is best illustrated in Thomas Cleary’s translations Awakening to the Tao and Back to Beginnings. To get a feeling for how a classic of internal alchemy is “psychologized,” read Liu I-ming’s commentary on Chang Po-tuan’s Wu-jen p 'ien. Both Chang’s original text and Liu’s commentary can be found in Thomas Cleary’s Understanding Reality. Hie synthesis of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism in the Action and Karma School of Taoism and in popular religion is discussed in detail in my translation of the T’ai- shang kan-ying p'ien, titled Lao-tzu’s Treatise on the Response of the Tao. This book includes both a translation of this representative text of Action and Karma Taoism and stories inspired by it. An anthology of readings translated by Thomas Cleary as Vitality, Energy, Spirit contains representative writings of Taoists influenced by the philosophical synthesis of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Relevant sections are “Ancestor Lii,” “The Founding of the Southern and Northern Schools,” “Extracts From Contemplative Literature,” “Chang San-feng,” and “Liu 1-ming.” PART TWO SYSTEMS OF TAOISM 7 Magical Taoism The Way of Power Of all the systems of Taoism, Magical Taoism is probably the oldest. Its beliefs have not changed much since prehistoric times, and its practitioners today perform the same tasks as the shamans and sorcerers did of old. These tasks include calling for rain, fending off disasters, offering protection, divining, healing, driving off malevolent spirits, exorcism, traveling to the underworld to help dead souls, and acting as mediums for deities, spirits, and the dead. Magical Taoism is the Way of Power. It believes that there are forces in the universe, natural and supernatural, that can be harnessed and used. Two kinds of power are recognized by the practitioners of Magical Taoism: those that come from nature, and those that come from spirits and deities. Typically, an individual who draws power from nature is a magician, whereas a person who draws power from deities and spirits (including animals and plants) is a sorcerer. In some cultures, the arts of magic and sorcery are exclusive, but in Magical Taoism, the practitioners are usually both magicians and sorcerers. Basic Beliefs of Magical Taoism 1. The world is filled with power. Spirits, deities, elements (wind, rain, thunder, lightning, and so on), animals, plants, rocks ... all these have power in them. 2. With the correct methods, power can be manipulated, channeled, directed, and used by the practitioner. However, the personal power of the magician or sorcerer is required to summon and control the powers in the universe. 3. Tire power in the natural elements is neutral and the practitioner can manipulate and control it without entering into a personal relationship with it. A Taoist magician can call down thunder, rain, or snow if he or she has knowledge of the correct methods and enough personal power. However, the extent to which the magician can control the elements will depend on the amount of personal power. 4. Power from deities and spirits is not neutral. Some spirits are benevolent and some are malevolent. Moreover, the power often takes on the personality of the deity or spirit. This kind of power is difficult to control because it has a will of its own. For example, if a deity with a stubborn nature is invoked, the sorcerer will have an especially difficult task in getting it to come and asking it to leave. Like controlling the natural forces, the extent to which the sorcerer can direct the deity or spirit will depend on the strength of the sorcerer’s personal power. 5. There are several ways in which sorcerers can obtain power from a deity or spirit. First, they can draw on the power of the deity or spirit to enhance their own power. This is the safest form of sorcery, since power is under the sorcerer’s conscious control. Second, the sorcerer can petition the deity or spirit to appear as a helper. In this condition, the sorcerer may cooperate with the summoned spirit or allow the spirit or deity to unleash its power. The sorcerer has less control in this situation, because once the spirit or deity has been summoned, it controls its own power. However, the sorcerer can still cast spells to dismiss the spirit. Finally, the sorcerer can offer himself as a medium for the deity or spirit to enter, thus providing a body in which the spirit can manifest its power. This is the most dangerous form of sorcery; it is also the most powerful. The personal power of the sorcerer is bonded with the power of the spirit or deity to form a single force, but if the spirit gets out of control and overwhelms the sorcerer, the sorcerer will not be able to dismiss or contain it. 6. Objects can carry power. Objects can be endowed with the personal power of the magician or sorcerer, or they can carry the power of a deity or spirit. Not all objects can be empowered, and some are better carriers of power than others. Mirrors, bells, swords, gourds, fans, umbrellas, and lanterns are the best carriers of power. Some objects, like talismans (scripts of power) and amulets, embody power in themselves, because of the presence of the magical script; however, the magic needs to be activated by the appropriate methods. Some objects will carry power once they have been endowed and activated. An example is a talisman of protection posted on a door. Other objects require direction and control and are useless if the magician or sorcerer is absent. Principal Practices of Magical Taoism RAINMAKING The magic of rainmaking can be traced to the shamans of prehistoric times, and it is still practiced by many religious and spiritual traditions. When I was about eight or nine years old, in Hong Kong, there was a drought, and all the religious groups held rainmaking ceremonies. Not only the Taoists, but the Buddhists, Catholics, and Mormons—all were praying or petitioning for rain. There are two approaches to rainmaking in Magical Taoism. In the first approach, elements like clouds and rain are summoned. A magician with strong personal power can create clouds and rain out of a clear sky, whereas an individual with less power may be able only to call in the clouds and rain that are already in the area. In the second approach, a petition is made to a deity or spirit, asking for rain. Tire preparations and ceremonial procedures for rainmaking are similar regardless of whether an element is summoned or a deity is petitioned. I shall describe a typical procedure used in many Taoist rainmaking rituals. Before the ceremony is conducted, preparations are made. First, the leader of the rainmaking ceremony and seven helpers must purify themselves. Tire purification rite consists of abstaining from meat, wine, sex, and stimulants for three days before the ceremony. During these days of purification, the Taoist magician writes the talismans that summon the elements or the petitions that are to be sent to the deities. An individual who is in mourning or a woman who is in her menstruation cycle may not participate in a rainmaking ceremony. While the leader of the ceremony is purifying himself— the leader can be either male or female—an altar is built on a mound, or platform. The front of the altar must face south, and sandalwood incense is burned in the four corners of the mound to purify the ceremonial ground. Only individuals who have been through the purification rites may build and arrange the altar. On the altar is placed a tortoise shell, a piece of marble, a bowl of chicken’s blood (to serve as red ink), a new brush-pen, five sheets of clean, yellow paper, and a needle that has not been used. A large bucket and five branches are placed in front of the altar. Tire five branches are used to gather water from the five directions of the universe (north, south, east, west, and center) and direct it into the bucket. On the appointed day, the leader of the ceremony and the helpers take a ritual bath. Tire ceremony begins at the hour of few (11:00 pm). The leader ascends the mound, followed by the seven helpers. Two helpers represent the female and male spirits of the dragon, and the five represent the spirits of thunder from the five directions. The leader begins the ceremony by cleansing the ground. He or she takes a talisman designed for purification purposes, burns it, and collects the ashes in the water. Sometimes, the leader scatters the water while walking around the mound, covering the four directions and then returning to the altar in the center. At other times, he puts the water in his mouth and spits it out as he walks around the mound. After the cleansing, the attendants take their places. Tire representative of the female dragon stands to the left of the leader and the representative of the male dragon stands to the right. Four of the five thunder spirits are positioned in the four directions, the fifth, in the center, standing behind the leader. When everyone is in position, the ceremony continues. If the magician is summoning natural elements, incantations will be uttered; if a deity is to be petitioned, invocations will be chanted. Tire nature of the invocation will differ depending on the sect conducting the ceremony; for example, the Celestial Teachers sect will send a petition to the founder of their sect, Chang Tao-ling. Some sects may include Yu’s dance of power and walk the pattern of the seven stars of the Northern Bushel. Tire leader of the ceremony then takes the brush, dips it into the chicken’s blood, and draws talismans designed to call down rain. He then takes the talismans, burns them, and collects the ashes in seven cups of water. Tire cups are given to the seven attendants to drink. Tire talismanic water allows the rainspirits to enter the bodies of the seven helpers. Next, the leader takes the needle, dips it in chicken’s blood, and goes to each helper to “open their eyes.” Opening the eyes means activating the rain-spirits that have entered the seven helpers. Then incantations or invocations are made by the leader of the ceremony, by which the rain-spirits are directed from the five directions to the ceremonial grounds. The leader ends the ceremony by thanking the deities and the elements. The ceremony may be repeated for three, five, or seven days, if necessary. During the days of the ceremony, the leader and the seven helpers observe the same rules of purification as those during preparation for the ceremony. PROTECTION Protecting people from disasters, illness, and malevolent spirits forms a large part of the practices of Magical Taoism. A person can be protected by the wearing of amulets, by having talismans of protection drawn on one’s body, and by placing talimsmans over the doorway or window of one’s bedroom. Talismans of protection painted on the body are the most powerful, because they protect the person wherever he or she goes. Amulets can protect the individual from everyday mishaps, and they are worn by many Chinese children. When I was a child, I wore one all the time. Talismans placed over a window or on a bedroom door will protect only when the person is in that room. Houses can be protected by placing the appropriate talisman of protection on the front door or over the doorway of the house. If there is a shrine in the house, the talismans are framed in a glass case and placed beside the deity who is enshrined. Some talismans are powerful enough to protect not only the household but also the household’s livestock. Other objects that can protect a household are mirrors and miniature weapons. A mirror hung over a doorway is designed to reflect away anything that is harmful. Any round mirror can be used, but a mirror with a pa-k’ua pattern on its rim is preferred (Tig. 7.1 1. because the pa- k’ua on the object increases its power. Sometimes, miniature weapons (for example, a pair of swords or a spear) are hung over the doorway to fight off malevolent or mischievous spirits that are trying to enter the house. These weapons have enhanced power if they are wielded by warrior deities. A picture of a warrior deity wielding a weapon is a very powerful protection object (Tig. 7.2 1. A ft n * 1 ** n?M FIGURE 7.1. Kun-lun talismans of protection. These talismans are called pa-k’ua talismans. They invoke the power of the pa-k’ua—the trigrams surrounding the t’ai-chi (the yin-yang symbol) in the two talismans. The talisman on the right is the kind used to protect a house, and the one on the left is used to ward off destructive forces. All talismans and objects of protection must be activated by a magician or sorcerer with the appropriate ceremony. One can get already activated talismans and objects in temples or one can invite a Taoist magician to draw and activate them in one’s house. BLESSING Hie most popular kind of blessing is a petition for health and longevity. Hiese petitions are generally made to the North Pole Star and the celestial deities of the Northern Bushel. Petitions for blessings are usually accompanied by a ritual and chanting. Hie Taoist sorcerer can send petitions for herself, or for another person. In each case, an altar is specially built, and the carrier of the petition must undergo the rituals of purification similar to those of rainmaking. Hie first and fifteenth days of the lunar month are the best for this ceremony, because those are the days when the celestial deities of the Northern Bushel make a brief visit to the mortal realm. «**--*. il*. S-J.A-.JL*. FIGURE 7.2. Celestial Teachers talisman invoking warrior deities, from the T’ai-shang san-wu cheng-i meng-wei lu (The Central Orthodox Register of Talismans of the Great One, the Three (Primal Ones), and the Five (Emperors). The warriors are described as commanding thirty million celestial soldiers. The talisman invokes them to enter the body of the individual to protect him. Hie altar is usually built on a mound or a platform facing the north. It is preferable to perform the ceremony on a cloudless night when the Northern Bushel is visible. On the altar are an oil lamp, two candlesticks, a special lantern, called the Seven Star Lantern, and small cauldrons for offering incense. Flags of power with the pattern and names of the deities of the Northern Bushel drawn on them are positioned in a circular design surrounding the altar. Tire most important object on the altar is the Seven Star Lantern. Tire Seven Star Lantern (also called the Lantern of Longevity) is shaped like a tree, and seven cups of oil are mounted on the branches. Sometimes the lantern consists of seven cups arranged in the pattern of the Northern Bushel. The ceremony begins at the hour of tzu (11:00 pm). At the appointed time, the carrier of the petition purifies the ceremonial ground and the altar and lights the seven lamps of the Seven Star Lantern. During the ceremony, it is important that the seven lamps do not go out; otherwise, misfortune can result. In some ceremonies, the leader dances Yu’s Steps of the Seven Stars; in others, the carrier of the petition traces the talismanic pattern of the seven stars with a wooden sword. The main part of the ceremony consists of reading the petition, which is written on yellow paper. The petition typically begins with invoking the Northern Bushel deities by their sacred names. This is followed by the petition itself and the name and date of birth of the person asking for health and longevity. Then the petition is burned, the rising smoke carrying the message to the deities. SANDWRITING DIVINATION A kind of divination unique to Magical Taoism is sandwriting. It involves asking deities and spirits to send their messages or reveal the future through the sorcerer. Acting as a medium, the sorcerer enters a trance and writes the messages in sand. Sorcerers must be specially empowered before they can act as a medium in sandwriting divination. An authorized medium—male or female—petitions the deities to allow the initiate to perform the divination. A talisman that endows the initiate with this power is burned and its ashes are collected in a cup of water. After the initiate drinks the talismanic water, she is authorized to do sandwriting divination. The equipment of sandwriting divination consists of a box measuring approximately four feet square that is filled with fine, white sand. Tire sand is carefully smoothed before divination takes place. Most mediums hold a stick that acts as a pen, but I have also seen quite elaborate sandboxes that have one end of the writing stick suspended over the box and the other end mechanically attached to a handle. Tire diviner grasps the handle to move the stick and write the words. Tire divination begins with the medium chanting incantations and drawing talismans to ask the deity to descend into her body. Tire medium then falls into a trance and moves the stick through the sand to write the words. Helpers stand by to record what is written and smooth out the sand so that the writing will not be disrupted. Practitioners of sandwriting divination tell me that while they are in a trance they have no control over the writing stick: the stick seems to take on a power of its own and all they can do is to hang onto it; moreover, the mediums do not remember what was written during the trance. Having attended several sandwriting divination sessions, I have to admit that something out of the ordinary happens in these situations. On each occasion, the diviner closed his eyes and the stick moved rapidly over the sand. Beads of sweat poured from the medium; helpers smoothed out the sand with wooden blocks as soon as the words were recorded. Sometimes the writing appears in archaic script— something that the diviners do not know how to write in their normal mode of consciousness. I am told that, traditionally, illiteracy was one of the requirements for being a sandwriting diviner. This ensures that the messages from the deities are genuine. Tire message delivered in sandwriting divination is sometimes cryptic, and an interpreter is often needed to decipher the message. Generally, the interpreter is someone other than the diviner, because the two tasks require different skill and disposition. One might say that the interpreter needs to have knowledge and intuition, and the medium needs to have power to hold the deity or the spirit within. GUIDING, SEARCHING, AND RESCUING THE SOULS OF THE DEAD A common practice of Magical Taoism is guiding the soul of a dead person to the underworld. This practice is built around the belief that, when a person dies, the soul is left to wander if it is not guided to the appropriate destination in the underworld. Between the realm of the living and the dead is a boundary region inhabited by ghouls, zombies, and malevolent spirits, who prey on the dead souls. If a dead soul loses its way in this region and does not reach the underworld within forty-nine days, it may turn into a ghoul, zombie, or an undead creature and prey on other dead souls passing through the boundary realm. To locate the lost soul, the sorcerer uses a lantern, named the Kung-ming Lantern, after a famous Taoist magician and sorcerer of the Three Kingdoms. Tire Kung- ming Lantern is essentially a hot-air balloon with talismans written on it. After the sorcerer has made the appropriate incantations and activated the talismans, the balloon is released. The balloon’s landing place is the location where the sorcerer should enter the boundary realm: sometimes, the sorcerer enters a trance to track the flight of the balloon; in other cases, the sorcerer and the attendants physically follow the balloon to its landing place, and there conduct the rituals for entering the underworld. Before entering the boundary region between the mortal realm and the underworld, the Taoist sorcerer must first protect himself. Talismans of protection are drawn on his body and clothing. In case of an encounter with malevolent spirits or undead, the sorcerer must be prepared to fight them, so a sword with scripts of power written on the blade is carried. The sorcerer then conducts a ritual that takes his spirit to the realm between the living and the dead. Flags of power and protection surround the spot where the sorcerer will leave the body, to ensure that malevolent spirits will not attack it while the spirit is away. There are various ways of entering into the boundary realm and the underworld. The most colorful one that I have seen involves the use of an umbrella: the sorcerer first utters incantations and draws talismans of protection; then he takes the umbrella, opens it, and jumps off a ledge. Landing, he sits in the trance that will take his spirit to the underworld. If a soul is attacked or captured by malevolent spirits, the sorcerer will need to fight the spirits to rescue the soul. An arsenal of techniques is available to the sorcerer. These techniques will be described in the next section. FIGHTING MALEVOLENT SPIRITS Sorcerers sometimes need to fight malevolent spirits when they rescue a dead soul or when the malevolent spirits are harming innocent people. There are four strategies in fighting malevolent spirits: driving them away, containing them, binding them, and dissolving them. Driving a malevolent spirit away is a temporary solution, because the spirit may return. This strategy is generally used by the sorcerer to buy time, so that he can work out a more effective solution. Malevolent spirits can be driven off by talismans of warding, mirrors, talismanic flags of power, talismanic swords, and fire. A more effective way of overcoming a malevolent spirit is to contain it or bind it, but the spirit must first be captured. Several power objects can be used to capture the spirit. Sometimes, the object that captures the spirit can be used to contain it; for example, a gourd, or a jar with a lid, or even a bag can be used by the sorcerer to both capture and contain the malevolent spirit. At other times, the spirit is captured first and then transported to another location to be contained; in this case, the technique of binding is used. Tire equipment used to bind the spirit is usually a net made of vine, jute, or hemp. Materials are not as important as the power of the sorcerer. In the hands of a powerful sorcerer, a net made of any material can be effective. I have seen sorcerers use nylon ropes, fishing nets, and chains. After the malevolent spirit is bound, it is transported to a cave, or a hollow, where it is contained. Sometimes, the entrance of the cave or the hollow will be sealed with rocks; at other times, talismans of containment are written around the cave entrance or the hollow to contain the spirit. The most powerful strategy for fighting a malevolent spirit is to dissolve it. Dissolution obliterates the spirit in such a way that it will never again materialize. There are three commonly used methods. In the first method, a sword is used to pierce the spirit, and the sword must be enchanted with talismans ( fig. 7.3 1. Before the sword is used, the sorcerer must smear his or her blood on the blade to endow it with personal power. The second method involves drawing talismans of dissolution and dancing a gait of power. Hie talismanic pattern is traced in the air with the tip of a sword while the sorcerer is performing the dance of power. (See fig. 7.4. 1 The third method—Tibetan in origin—is a series of mudras, gestures made with the hands. Figures 7.5 and 7.6 show the mudras used for dissolving malevolent spirits. In this technique, the sorcerer first makes nine hand-signs in sequence, accompanying each with a word of power. The words, translated, are “come,” “warriors,” ‘fighting,” “ones,” “ready,” ‘formation,” “line-up,” “take position,” and “in front” ( fig. 7.5 1. A final command, “destroy,” accompanied by a sword mudra, ( fig. 7.6 1 is then given. Power from the deities, all the good spirits, and the sorcerer are concentrated and directed at the malevolent spirit to wipe it out of existence. i* FIGURE 7.3. Talisman used to endow a sword with the power to pierce and ward off evil spirits, from the T’ai-shang hsuan-t’ien chen-wu wu-shang chang-chiinlu (The Register of Talismans of the Great One of the Mysterious Heaven, the Incomparable General). The talismanic script is depicted in the center of the illustration. The patterns at top and bottom are symbols of the constellations, used to invoke the power of the celestial armies. If the malevolent spirits are powerful, the sorcerer will be forced to engage in a series of battles before the spirit can be dissolved, captured, or even driven away. In such a case, elements are summoned, and deities and spirits are invoked. Warrior deities are generally preferred, but sometimes when the malevolent spirits are cunning, deities and spirits with superior cunning are called. EXORCISM Exorcism is another form of combat against supernatural forces, but it differs from fighting malevolent spirits because in exorcism the sorcerer’s opponent is not necessarily malevolent. The goal of exorcism in Magical Taoism is not to destroy the ghost but to prevent it from doing mischief in the future. This can take the form of educating, placating, or rehabilitation. o FIGURE 7.4. Ling-pao talismans and dances of power for fighting evil spirits and malevolent ghosts, from Ling-pao wu-liang tu-jen shang-ching ta-fa (The Limitless Highest Scripture and Great Method of Deliverance). The talisman and pattern of steps to the right of center are used to destroy malevolent spirits and ghosts; the set to the left of center is used to capture and bind them. In both dances of power, the practitioner begins the steps of the dance from the bottom of the star pattern. Many ghosts are mischievous or disgruntled because their former manifestation was killed wrongfully or mistreated. Ghosts of murdered people and soldiers who died in war are especially discontented. They may haunt a place or possess a person to vent their anger. In exorcising a ghost from a location, the sorcerer prepares an altar at the haunted site. On the altar are talismans of exorcism ( Tig. 1 . 1 ). a sword made of copper coins, and a bowl of chicken’s blood. Sometimes, dog urine is also used. Hie sorcerer begins the incantations that will draw the ghost or spirit out from its hiding place. Next, the sorcerer captures the ghost by throwing the coin-sword, flaming talismans, chicken’s blood, or dog urine at it— actions that freeze the ghost while the sorcerer speaks words telling it never to haunt the realm of the living. Sometimes, offerings are made to placate the ghost. The offerings typically consist of “banknotes for the dead”— paper printed with silver and gold ink and folded into the shape of ingots. Sometimes, colorful papers folded into the shape of clothing are also offered. The offerings are then burnt and sent to the underworld. If a ghost is especially recalcitrant, the sorcerer may have to fight it, capture it, and then guide it down to the underworld. come warriors 1 2 lighting 3 ones ready 4 5 formation 6 line up take position 7 8 2b sword mudra (left hand) in front 9 FIGURES 7.5. and 7.6. Mudras (hand gestures) used to destroy evil spirits . FIGURE 7.7. Kun-lun talisman of exorcism. The talisman invokes the power of the thunder spirit and the patron deity of exorcism. The triangular symbol with a horizontal line at its apex {bottom right ) is used to enhance the power of the talisman. In exorcising a ghost from a person, the sorcerer prepares a talisman of exorcism and places it on the head of the individual who is possessed. Appropriate incantations are chanted to lure the ghost out of the individual. Tire ghost is then captured, rehabilitated, and sent to the underworld. FIGHTING OTHER SORCERERS AND MAGICIANS Black sorcerers and magicians can harm people by inflicting them with illness, or even killing them. To combat such unethical practitioners, the Taoist magician or sorcerer will fight an opponent by using similar skills and power. In duels of sorcery and magic, practitioners of Magical Taoism call on everything they can muster: elements, animals, plants, spirits, and deities. Urey also use all available objects of power in the same manner as they would fight malevolent spirits. One of the strategies is effective against a human opponent but not against spirits: illusion or mind control. However, illusions are only effective when the opponent is susceptible; therefore, mind control is not effective against powerful sorcerers and magicians. HEALING Taoist magicians and sorcerers are also healers, and talismanic magic is the most commonly used method of healing. A talisman that invokes the power of the deities to heal a certain ailment is burned and the ashes are mixed with water. The talismanic water is either swallowed by the patient or sprinkled on the body. Figure 7.8 shows examples of talismans used to counter different kinds of illness. Sects in Magical Taoism There are three major sects in Magical Taoism: the Mao- shan sect, the Celestial Teachers sect, and the Kun-lun sect. The members of the Mao-shan sect are sorcerers par excellence. As mentioned in Part One, this sect is not to be confused with the Shang-ch’ing Mao-shan Taoists, who are mystics. Mao-shan sorcerers prefer to draw power from spirits and lesser deities, and are especially skilled in exorcism, fighting malevolent spirits and other sorcerers, offering protection, warding off disasters, and guiding, searching, and rescuing dead souls. Mao-shan sorcerers use talismans and objects of power such as mirrors, bells, and coin-swords. They are especially adept at calling deities and spirits to enter their bodies to enhance their personal power. Practitioners from other sects will invoke only certain deities, but Mao-shan sorcerers are pragmatic, and will muster anything that will help them. Today, the practitioners of the Maoshan sect are found in Taiwan, Hong Kong, remote regions of southern China, and Chinese communities in southeast Asia. Of all the sects of Magical Taoism, the Mao-shan sect is the most secretive. Admittance to the sect is extremely selective. Apprentices are accepted only on the recommendation of trusted friends of the master. # aft *. iA it -ft, ft it A. A. rj» « X £ Jb ft ft A. ife # *R. -ft fi-Jim. # ib 7 ft ■ft I * FIGURE 7.8. Kun-lun talismans of healing. From left to right: talisman for curing headaches, talisman for curing constipation and bladder problems, talisman for curing eye infections, talisman for curing pain in the eyes. The Celestial Teachers sect was founded by Chang Tao- ling, the popularizer of the use of talismanic magic. Today, the Celestial Teachers sect still uses talismans to call for rain, to ward off disaster, drive away malevolent spirits, offer blessings and protection, heal the sick, and guide dead souls into the underworld. However, unlike the Mao-shan sorcerers, the priests of Celestial Teachers Taoism invoke only deities and their founder Chang Tao-ling in their incantations. Their talismans are said to be revealed by the deities to Chang Taoling himself. There are certain deities or spirits that the Celestial Teachers will not invoke. Hiese include the spirits of the underworld, animal spirits, and plant spirits. The Kun-lun sect, the third major sect of Magical Taoism, originated in western China in the region of the Kun-lun Mountains and is strongly influenced by Tantric magic from Tibet. Several features distinguish the Kun-lun sect from the other sects of Magical Taoism. First, their practitioners invoke both Taoist and Buddhist deities in their talismans. Second, they use mudras (as shown in figures 7.5 and 7.6 ; Tibetan in origin, the mudras are adopted not only by the Kun-lun sect but also by Buddhist sects who practice magic). Third, the Kun-lun practitioners are called fa-shih (masters of the laws), after the manner of Buddhism, and not Tao-shih (masters of the Tao). Today, the Kun-lun sect is popular in southern China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and southeast Asia. Hie Kun-lun fa-shih are especially in demand for bestowing blessings, giving protection, and warding off malevolent spirits. Further Words on Magical Taoism Magical Taoism is the Way of Power. It manipulates, controls, and channels power from the natural elements, the spirits, and deities. Power is not something to trifle with. This chapter is designed to introduce the reader to the basic beliefs and practices of Magical Taoism. I have deliberately left details out of the procedures so that this chapter cannot be used as a manual for the practices described. If you wish to learn Magical Taoism, you need to talk to someone who is familiar with this system of Taoism before committing yourself to any sect or program of training. Magical Taoism is not a path that you can dabble with and then abandon. Further Readings Livia Kohn has translated two Taoist treatises on magical talismans. Both can be found in reading #14 of her book The Taoist Experience, titled “Protective Measures.” 8 Divinational Taoism The Way of Seeing Divination is a way of seeing the patterns of change in the universe. Change is a part of the Tao, and to see change is to see the movement of the Tao in all tilings. In Taoist thinking, divination is not simply predicting the future and relying on these predictions to live. Rather, it is a way of appreciating the flux and the permanence of the Tao and directly perceiving the interdependency of all things. A Brief History of Divinational Taoism All practitioners of divination claim Fu Hsi t fig. 8.1 1 as the patriarch and patron of their art. Fu Hsi was a legendary shaman-king in the prehistoric times of China and was reputed to have discovered the Ho-t’u (the pattern of the River Ho), one of the most important building blocks of the divinational arts. Hie Ho-t’u is a prototype of the Earlier Heaven pa-k'ua (trigram) and it describes the underlying structure of the nature of things. Another shaman-king, Yii (the man we met in chapter 1, who danced the steps of the Northern Bushel), discovered the pattern of the Later Heaven pa-k’ua. After turning back the floodwaters, Yii saw a giant tortoise emerge from the River Lo, and on its back was the pattern of the Later Heaven pa-k’ua. Hie Later Heaven pa-k’ua is called the Lo- shu, and it describes the nature of change in the universe. FIGURE 8.1. Fu Hsi, patron of the divmational arts of China. At the end of the Shang dynasty (1766-1121 bce), the Ho-t’u and Lo-shu were revised by King Wen, who defeated the corrupt tyrant of Shang and founded the Chou dynasty. It was said that King Wen used his system of divination based on the Ho-t’u and Lo-shu to predict not only the death of his son but his own capture and eventual triumph over the last emperor of Shang. King Wen’s efforts in systematizing the Ho-t’u and Lo-shuresulted in the Chou-i (The I-ching of the Chou Dynasty). In this system of divination, the Ho- t’u and Lo-shu were expanded from the eight trigrams to sixty-four hexagrams. Tire I-ching that we have today consists of fragments of the Chou-i collected by Confucius in the sixth century bce. Two other I-chings, one called the Lin-shan i, written by Yu’s descendants, and the Kuei-chuang i, written by the first emperor of the Shang dynasty and his shaman advisor I Wen, are lost. We know of their existence only from references made by the historians of the Han dynasty. Between the end of the Chou dynasty and the end of the Han dynasty, the arts of divination gradually took shape and became what they are today. Tire most important factor in making the divinational arts into a branch of knowledge is the emergence of a group of people called the fang-shih (previously described in chapter 3). Tire fang-shih were divided into those who healed the sick with talismanic magic and those who specialized in divination and the arts of longevity. One of the most colorful predecessors of the fangshih was named Kuei-ku Tzu, or Master of Ghost Valley. Kuei-ku Tzu was not only adept at divination, but also a master of military strategy and diplomacy. Most of the advisers of the Warring States feudal lords were students of Kuei-ku Tzu. However, in the history of China, and Taoism, Kuei-ku Tzu was best known as a theorist of the yin-yang school of thought. The theorists of the Yin-yang School emphasized the cosmology of the I-ching and the notion of change as the underlying factor behind the nature of events. Tire close association between the yin-yang theorists and the divinational arts is shown by the inclusion of the treatises of k’an-yu (or feng-shui, a form of terrestrial divination) and celestial divination in the section on the Five Elements and the Ym-yang School of Thought in the Han dynasty histories. Another group of fang-shih, whose patron was Liu An, the lord of Huai-nan, contributed their learning to a book now known as the Huai-nan-tzu. In the Huai-nan-tzu we find the teachings of the fangshih on government and politics, military strategy and technology, the arts of longevity and immortality, cosmology, and the theory of change. Tire divinational arts reached their height of development in the T’ang and Sung dynasties. During the T’ang, feng- shui, or geomancy, a form of terrestrial divination based on observing landforms and the flow of energy in them, became a systematic science. Tire foremost theorist and practitioner of feng-shui in the T’ang dynasty was Yang K’un-sun—acknowledged today by feng-shui practitioners as the father of geomancy. Hie divination arts today would not be where they are without the contribution of Chen Hsi-yi and Shao K’ang- chieh of the Sung dynasty. Both men were Taoist hermits; both shunned imperial gifts and positions of power. CHEN HSI-YI AND SHAO K’ANG-CHIEH Chen Hsi-yi is credited with being the author of the Wu- chi Diagram. Hiis diagram is one of the most important intellectual developments in the history of ideas in China; it not only revolutionized the understanding of change for the divinational arts but made the I-ching and the study of change a focus in Taoist thinking. Hie Wuchi Diagram describes how the universe came into being and how it changes. A discussion of the Wu-chi Diagram can be found later in this chapter, in the subsection ‘Taoist Cosmology.” According to the Hua-shan chi (Chronicles of Hua- shan), the Wuchi Diagram was carved on the face of a cliff on Hua-shan (the Grand Mountains) in Shensi Province. Hiis diagram has inspired both Taoists and Neo- Confucianists. Taoist legends say that the Wu-chi Diagram was first revealed to Ho-shang Kung, the Sage of the River. Inspired by it, Wei Po-yang wrote the Tsan-tung-chi. Hie teachings of the Wu-chi Diagram were then revealed to Chung-li Ch’uan, one of the Eight Immortals, who taught them to Lii Tung-pin. When Lii lived as a hermit on Hua- shan, he transmitted the teachings to Chen Hsi-yi; Chen Hsi-yi taught Wu-hsiu; and Wu-hsiu had two students—one of them, the father of Neo-Confucianism, Chou Tun-i, and the other, Li T’ing-chi. Shao K’ang-chieh was Li T’ingchi’s student. The Wu-chi Diagram and its cosmology were not the only contributions that Chen Hsi-yi made to Divinational Taoism: Chen was also the originator of a system of celestial divination known as Tzuwei Tu-su (System of the Ruling Star Tzu-wei and the Numerics of the Bushel Stars). This is one of the most popular and sophisticated systems of celestial divination practiced today. Shao K’ang-chieh, or Shao Yung, is considered to be the successor of Chen Hsi-yi. Shao took the theory of change to new limits and combined it with a mathematics of transformation based on numbers. Tire study of the pa-k’ua and the five elements became a science: cycles and changes could be “calculated,” and the numerical principles could be “seen” by observing things in the universe. Shao K’ang-chieh is best known for his book Wang-chi ching (Treatise on the Supreme Limitless Principle), a monumental work on the structure of the universe, the nature of change, the interpretation of the historical events in China, and a record of observations of celestial events. Like Chen Hsi-yi, Shao K’ang-chieh was not only a theoretician: he practiced the arts of divination and was adept at celestial and terrestrial divination and the reading of omens. It was said that he predicted several disasters that beset the Sung dynasty, including some drastic political changes instituted by the minister Wang An-shih. DIVINATION IN THE MING AND TODAY When the Sung dynasty fell, in 1279 ce, it was replaced by the Yuan dynasty of the Mongols. Less than a hundred years later, the Yuan was replaced by the Ming dynasty. It was said that in overthrowing the Mongols, the founder of the Ming dynasty, Chu Yuanchang, had the assistance of a Taoist magician and diviner, Liu Pohun, who was an expert in not only magic and divination but also military strategy and logistics. He could predict the movement of enemy forces and anticipate their maneuvers, allowing Chu Yiianchang’s peasant army to win decisive battles. When Chu began to murder his former associates and advisers, Liu’s divinational skills saved him. Today, the practitioners of the divinational arts include both Taoists and non-Taoists. Although some practitioners work in temples and monasteries, the practice of Divinational Taoism does not conflict with sect affiliation. Divinational Taoism is practiced by the Celestial Teachers sect, the Mao-shan sorcerers, and the internal-alchemists of the Lung-men and the Wu-tang-shan sects. However, many practitioners of the divinational arts are not affiliated with any Taoist sect. These are the “kui-shih,” lay people who embrace Taoist beliefs and practice divination as a Taoist art. There are also professional diviners who are neither associated with a Taoist sect nor embrace Taoist beliefs. However, divination is a Taoist art, whether its Taoist origins are acknowledged or not. Principal Ideas of Divinational Taoism TAOIST cosmology: wu-chi and t’ai-chi In the Taoist view of the universe, all things originate from the Tao and return to the Tao. Change is that which sets in motion the coming and going of things, and divination is away of seeing the patterns of change. The Wu-chi Diagram describes the process—this coming into existence and the return to the Tao. Creation and dissolution occur all the time. If we understand the underlying nature of the change, we will know what has occurred in the past and what will come in the future. In the Wu-chi Diagram ( Tig. 8.2 ). the circle at the top is the symbol of wu-chi (the Limitless), or the Tao. It is the state of stillness in which things are undifferentiated from the origin and the source of life. The idea of wu-chi can be traced back to chapter 28 of the Taote ching, where “the return to the wu-chi” is first mentioned. Hie Chuang-tzu also mentions “enter the Nameless Gate” and “wander in the expanse of wu-chi.” Thus, wu-chi is the Taoist conception of the origin or source of all things. The symbol below the wu-chi is the t’ai-chi, or the Great Ultimate. Today we are more familiar with the t’ai-chi as a swirling pattern (also shown in figure 8.2 . for comparison). The form that appears in the Wu-chi Diagram is an older symbol, and I think it tells us more about the nature of t’ai- chi than its newer representation. Where wu-chi is stillness, t’ai-chi is change. Tire concentric circles are half yin and half yang. Each circle describes a “moment” of change, and each moment of change is the transition from yin to yang (creation) and yang to yin (dissolution and return). Tire three concentric circles describe the interplay of yin and yang in their three manifestations. The innermost circle is ancient yang and ancient yin; the next circle is greater yang and greater yin; the outermost circle is lesser yang and lesser yin. Taoists describe the t’ai-chi as “yang embracing yin.” Run your eye across the older t’ai-chi from left to right and you will notice that, in the left half of the picture, you get an overall pattern of white-black-white (yang-yin-yang); in the right half, you get black-white-black (yin-yang-yin). This is the same in the modern t’ai-chi symbol, if your eye moves top to bottom on a line through the white and black dots. For Taoists like Chen Hsi-yi and Shao K’ang-chieh, wu-chi, or stillness, is the origin of things, and t’ai-chi is change, or movement, which initiates creation. Wu-chi Tai-chi F fire W water E earth Wo wood M metal From ch'icn emerges male. From k'un emerges female. all myriad things F . ..iW) Q \ / fe ( modern form of t'ai-chi symbol FIGURE 8.2. The Wu-chi Diagram. A modem rendition of the t’ai-chi symbol is shown at the bottom for comparison with the older form—the circle next to the top of the diagram. See Taoist Cosmology: Wu-chi and T’ai-chi for further explanation. To move on from the t’ai-chi to the next layers of symbols in the Wu-chi Diagram, we must understand how ancient yang and ancient yin, greater yang and greater yin, and lesser yang and lesser yin interact to generate the eight pa-k’ua or trigrams. This process is described in the adjacent table. From the father and mother trigrams of the pa-k’ua, ch’ien and k’un, all the myriad things of the universe are created. (See table 8.1. 1 THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE! YIN AND TANG, PA-K’UA, NINE PALACES, AND FIVE ELEMENTS Yin and yang, the pa-k’ua, and the five elements are the building blocks of all things. Yin and yang translated literally mean shade and light. Originally used to describe the absence and presence of sunlight on mountain slopes, it was adopted by the I-ching to refer to female and male and other pairs of complementary opposites. Thus, yin became associated with stillness, tranquility, softness, flexibility, female, and receptivity; and yang became associated with movement, activity, hardness, strength, male, and initiative. The pa-k’ua, or eight trigrams, are ch’ien (sky), k’un (earth), k ’an (water), li (fire), chen (thunder), sun (wind), ken (mountain), and tui (lake). The five elements—metal, wood, water, fire, and earth—are associated with the four cardinal directions—west, east, north, and south—and the center respectively. (See fig. 8.3. ) The eight trigrams themselves can be subdivided into sixty-four hexagrams. Figure 8.4 shows how the sixty-four hexagrams are generated from the eight trigrams. Today, many divination techniques, especially those that utilize the I-ching, are based on the interpretation of the meaning of the hexagrams. The pa-k’ua has two forms: Earlier Heaven and Later Heaven. The Earlier Heaven pa-k’ua describes the nature of things and the Later Heaven pa-kua describes the nature of transformation. Earlier Heaven literally means “before the existence of the celestial realm”; Later Heaven means “after the existence of the celestial realm.” In Taoist cosmology, before the celestial realm refers to the state of undifferentiation, before sky and earth were separated; after the existence of the celestial realm refers to the state of existence when sky and earth have become separate entities. In figure 8.3 you will notice that in the Later Heaven pa-k’ua, the locations of the trigrams are different from those of the Earlier Heaven pa-k’ua. Li (fire), not ch’ien (sky), occupies the position of south in the Later Heaven pa-k’ua, and k’an (water), not k’un (earth), occupies the position of north. To understand how the Later Heaven pa-k’ua is used to describe changes, we must turn to another idea that is central to Divinational Taoism: the Nine Palaces. TABLE 8.1. The creation of the pa-k’ua from the interaction of yang and yin. In Taoism, the process by which movement and stillness, yang and yin, interact to create the pa-k’ua from wu-chi (the Tao) is called the Sacred Path. Wu-chi Wang-chi T’ai-chi Ancient yang Ancient yin Ancient yang Ancient yin Greater yang Greater yin Greater yang Greater yin Lesser yang Lesser yin I ,esscr yang Lesser yin in movement generates yang in wang-chi in stillness generates yin in wang-chi in movement generates yang in t’ai-chi in stillness generates yin in t’ai-chi in movement generates the ancient yang in stillness generates the ancient yin in movement generates the greater yang in stillness generates the greater yin in stillness generates the lesser vin in movement generates the lesser yang in movement generates ch’ien in stillness generates k’un in stillness generates tui in movement generates ken in stillness generates k’an in movement generates li in movement generates chcn in stillness generates sun south, ch'ien heaven, father southeast — southwest tui = lake sun = wind northeast -■ , northwest chen = thunder II ken = mountain north, K'un earth, mother The Earlier Heaven Pa-k'ua II ■■ south li = fire southeast ™ southwest, k'un k'an = water FIGURE 8.3. The Earlier Heaven and Later Heaven pa-k’ua compared. A I B FIGURE 8.4. Derivation of the sixty-four hexagrams from the t’ai-chi. White bars indicate yang components and dark bars indicate yin components. Each yin and yang component divides to give another pair of yin and yang. Thus, the yin and yang in t’ai-chi (the innermost ring) divide to give the four directions (second ring from center). M oving outward, the next ring is formed by the result of eight from each of the four directions dividing into two parts, and so on from eight to sixteen, from sixteen to thirtytwo, and from thirty-two to sixty-four. The six rings form the six components of the hexagrams. To find out the composition of a hexagram, trace a line from a component in the outermost ring toward the center. For example, the hexagram ch’ien (heaven) is made of six yang components. You can identify the ch’ien hexagram by tracing the line from position A to the center. You will see that this line connects all the yang components. Similarly, try this with the hexagram k’un (earth), which is made of six yin components at position B. Notice that k’un is directly opposite to ch’ien. The hexagram li (fire), which is yang/y in/yang/yang/y in/yang, can be found at position C, and k’an (water), which is y in/y ang/y in/y in/y ang/y in, can be found at Position D. The Nine Palaces is the pa-k’ua set in motion. With the Nine Palaces, the trigrams of the pa-k’ua are no longer tied to a direction. Their positions will move according to the cycles of the year, month, day, and season. The Nine Palaces are the eight directions and the center. Each palace is designated by a pair of number and color. Urey are one-white, two-black, three-jade, four-green, five- yellow, six-white, seven-red, eight-white, and nine-purple. Each number-color combination is called a star, and each star is associated with a trigram in the pa-k’ua. Tlrus, one- white is k’an (water), two-black is k’un (earth), three-jade is chen (thunder), four-green is sun (wind), five-yellow is the center (chung-kung), six-white is ch ’ien (sky), seven- red is tui (lake), eight-white is ken (mountain), and nine- purple is li (fire). Tire numbers in the following grid illustrate the ‘foot structure” of the Nine Palaces: 4 9 2 3 5 7 8 1 6 Hie root arrangement is also known as the Magic Circle, because the numbers are so arranged that the rows, columns, and diagonals all add up to fifteen. In the root structure of the Nine Palaces, five is always located in the center. Hie root structure of the Nine Palaces is also the Later Heaven pa-k’ua. Hie Nine Palaces represent the pattern of energy moving in the universe. Some energies are destructive and some are beneficial. Many systems of divination rely extensively on the principles of the Nine Palaces to find out where and when the beneficial and destructive energies will occur. Hie five elements are related to each other in a cycle of creation and a cycle of destruction. An understanding of these cycles is important in seeing and predicting changes in the universe. In the cycle of creation, metal in the veins of the earth nourishes the underground waters; water gives life to vegetation and creates wood; wood feeds fire and fire creates ashes forming earth. Hie cycle is completed when metals are formed in the veins of the earth. Hie cycle of destruction begins with metal cutting and destroying wood; wood dominates earth as the roots of the trees dig into the ground; earth has mastery over water and prevents the flow of rivers and seas; water destroys fire and finally fire melts metals. In Divinational Taoism, the cycles of creation and destruction describe the nature of change. Urey occur naturally, and are neither good nor bad. Only when human activity interferes with the natural process of change will there be disasters. When disasters are imminent, it is up to human effort to change the conditions so that the disasters can be averted. THE NOTION OF TIME: THE CHINESE CALENDAR The Chinese calendar plays an important part in the divinational arts. Tire notion of time in the Chinese calendar is cyclical. Events and change follow cycles, and to know the order of the cycles is to understand how changes occur. There are four major cycles in the Chinese calendar: the Sexagenary Cycle of sixty years; the Three Eras, with sixty years to an era; the Nine Cycles, with twenty years to a cycle; and the twenty-four seasonal markers, with two markers for each of the twelve months of the year. Tire sixty years of the Sexagenary Cycle are obtained by pairing the Ten Celestial Stems and the Twelve Terrestrial Branches. The Celestial Stems are chia, i, ping, ting, wu, chi, keng, hsin,jen, kuei. Tire Twelve Terrestrial Branches are: tzu, ch 'ou, yin, mao, ch ’en, ssu, wu, wei, shen, yu. hsii, hai. Each year in the Chinese calendar is identified by the combination of a stem and a branch. Lining up the Ten Celestial Stems and Twelve Terrestrial Branches until the first pair is repeated will result in sixty pairs, making the sixty years of the Sexagenary Cycle (see table 8.2 1. The Sexagenary Cycle is used in all the divinational arts of China. It is also the basis of the Chinese calendar. The twelve animals, attached each to a year in a twelve- year cycle, are more of a popular amusement than serious divination. The twelve-animal system’s reckoning of time is less accurate than the sixty-year cycle. By way of illustration, let us consider the year 1997 in the Western calendar. In the animal scheme, 1997 is the year of the bull, and in the Sexagenary Cycle it is ting-ch ’ou. The year 2009 will be the year of the bull again, but in the sixty-year cycle it will be chi-ch ’ou. Since the flow of energy in ting-ch’ou and chi-ch’ou is different, to use the animal scheme in divination would be to lose this difference. Each Sexagenary Cycle is called an era. Each era begins with the year chia-tzu and ends with kuei-hai. There are three eras: upper, middle, and lower, and again, different patterns of energy accompany each era. Hie three eras are subdivided into nine twenty-year segments; thus, in one hundred and eighty years there are three sixty-year periods (the Three Eras) and nine twenty-year segments (the Nine Cycles). TABLE 8.2. The Ten Celestial Stems and Twelve Terrestrial Branches paired to yield the sixty years of the Sexagenary Cycle. Stem-Branch Stem-Branch Stem-Branch Stem-Branch Stem-Branch chia-tzu ping-tzu wu-tzu keng-tzu jen-tzu i-ch’ou ting-ch’ou chi-ch’ou hsin-ch’ou kuei-ch’ou ping-yin wu-yin keng-vin jen-vin chia-yin ting-mao chi-mao hsin-mao kuei-mao i-rnao wu-ch’en keng-ch’en jen-ch’en chia-ch’en ping-ch’en chi-ssu hsin-ssu kuei-ssu i-ssu ting-ssu kcng-wu jen-wu chia-wu ping-wu wu-vvu hsin-wei kuei-wei i-wci ting-vvei chi-wei jen-shen chia-shen ping-shen wu-shen kcng-shen kuei-yu i-yu ting-yu chi-yu hsin-yu chia-hsii ping-hsu tvu-hsu kcng-hsii jen-hsii i-hai ting-hai chi-hai hsin-hai kuei-hai THE NOTION OF CHANGE All things are subject to change. Because everything is interrelated, change in one thing will lead to change in others. Moreover, change is not predetermined. At every point in time, a number of possible events can occur depending on what happened before. Divinational Taoism does not see a person locked into a destiny that cannot be changed. If we understand the nature of change, we can alter the possibilities by our own actions. Destiny may be revealed in omens, in celestial and terrestrial phenomena, and in facial features, but it is not guaranteed that what is predicted will happen. In fact, Divinational Taoism does not teach that people should resign themselves to fate; rather, knowing the possibilities of what may happen, we can take action to avert disaster. Taoists call this “changing Earlier Heaven destiny (what is given) by Later Heaven efforts (what we do).” Divination is a sophisticated art. It is not simply casting sticks and looking up the interpretation in a book. Divination is a way of seeing changes in the universe that is deeply rooted in Taoist philosophy and cosmology. To understand the notion of change is not only to see the patterns of nature, but also to know how our actions can affect the course of events. Seeing the changes and living in harmony with them are the essence of Divinational Taoism. Forms of Divination Tire arts of divination consist of celestial divination, terrestrial divination, event divination, the divination of human destiny, and the interpretation of omens. Celestial divination is based on observing and interpreting the position of stars—being, in this respect, similar to Western astrology; terrestrial divination is based on observing and interpreting features in the landscape; event divination is based on observing seasonal, daily, and hourly movements of energy in nature; divination of human destiny is based on observing human features and traits and includes the arts of physiognomy and palmistry; and the reading of omens is based on observing phenomena in nature. Of all the forms of divination practiced today, celestial divination and terrestrial divination are the ones most clearly influenced by Taoist thought. In this exploration of Divinational Taoism we shall focus on these two forms of divination. Celestial Divination: Tzu-wei Tu-su Celestial divination is based on the assumption that phenomena in the macrocosm of the sky have their parallels in the microcosm of humanity. This comes from the fundamental principle in Taoism that sky, earth, humanity, and all things follow similar laws of existence and change. There are several systems of celestial divination and it is beyond the scope of this book to discuss all of them. I have therefore chosen Tzu-wei Tu-su, a system of divination originated by the Taoist sage Chen Hsi-yi, to illustrate some aspects of celestial divination. Tzu-wei Tu-su translated means System of the Ruling Star Tzuwei and the Numerics of the Bushel Stars. It uses the pattern of the stars occurring at an individual’s moment of birth to predict personal destiny. Tzu-wei is the name of the star of destiny, and tu-su means “numerics of the Bushel Stars.” Hie Bushel Stars are the stars that make up the Northern Bushel (Big Dipper) and another constellation in Chinese astronomy called the Southern Bushel. Briefly, this is how Tzu-wei Tu-su works. Hie positions of the stars are mapped into twelve celestial palaces named after the Twelve Terrestrial Branches. Hie arrangement of the celestial palaces is determined by the lunar month in which the individual was born. I Fig. 8.5. 1 personality parents luck home and personal Workings of Heaven Principal Stan Destructor of property Enemies hsin ssu wu 1 wei sibling profession and relationship career sun ch'en yu marital relationship subordinates mao hsii children wealth illness and movement *— health and mobility Warrior « - - Star yin ch'ou tzu hai ♦ factor of destiny star name of celestial palace FIGURE 8.5. Celestial palaces, factors of destiny, and principal stars in a sample astrological chart of Tzu-wei Tu-su celestial divination. More than one star can occupy a celestial palace. In the example, both the Principal Star and a star named Destructor of Enemies are in the celestial palace wei. Twelve factors of destiny are then mapped onto the celestial palaces. Hie positions of the factors of destiny are determined by the individual’s hour of birth. The factors of destiny, in their order, are personality, sibling relationship, marital relationship, children, wealth, illness and health, movement and mobility, subordinates, profession and career, home and personal property, luck, and parents. Next, the positions of the stars in the celestial palaces are determined. Tliese stars include Tzu-wei (the Ruling Star of Destiny), the seven stars of the Northern Bushel, the stars of the Southern Bushel, the Left and Right Guardian Stars, and various stars of importance and brightness identified in traditional Chinese astronomy. In Tzuwei Tu-su, the positions of more than fifty stars are used to predict an individual’s destiny, but because this book is not about Tzu-wei Tu-su, I shall not go into the details. Once the positions of the stars are determined, the meaning of their positions and interactions can be interpreted. I shall briefly describe some examples of how the positions of the stars in the celestial palaces affect the twelve factors of destiny. Let us work with the sample chart in figure 8.5. The most important star is Tzu-wei, the Ruling or Principal Star. It has the power to ward off disaster, protect the individual from illness, and enhance the beneficial effects of any factor of destiny that it is positioned with. In the example, Tzu-wei is in the palace of wei, where the factor of luck is located. This means that the individual will always have luck in whatever he or she does. Unexpected benefits will occur and the person will have a knack of avoiding disasters. Another important star is the Workings of the Celestial Realm, or Heaven; it belongs to the Southern Bushel constellation and is the star that governs harmony. An individual with this star situated with the factor of personality (as in the example) will be kind, gentle, and harmonious. It is also star of wisdom and spiritual development. Tlrus, if this star were to be positioned with the factor of profession or career, the individual would have deep spiritual interests and develop his or her potential best in spiritual matters. Tire sun is also an important star in Tzu-wei Tu-su divination; it governs prosperity, power, and fame. Situated (as in the example) with the factor of profession and career, the star will grant the individual fame, honor, and respect in the chosen career. Another important star is the Warrior Star; it is a star of the Northern Bushel constellation and it governs wealth. Were it to have been situated with the factor of personality, the individual would be enterprising and would accumulate great wealth from success in business. Situated (as in the example) with the factor of movement and mobility, the individual will be promoted rapidly or rise from poverty to wealth within a brief period of time. Some stars have negative effects; for example, the star named Destructor of Enemies. If this star is positioned with a benevolent star like Tzu-wei (as in the example), the beneficial effects of the Tzuwei will be diminished. (In this case, the individual’s luck will be diminished severely. If the Destructor of Enemies were to be positioned with the wealth factor, the individual would always be poor or would lose money in investments.) Not only do the stars interact with each other when they are in the same palace, but they can also affect the stars in the palace directly opposite them. Because Tzu-wei Tu-su involves the interpretation of at least fifty stars and their interactions, it is said to be the most complete system of celestial divination. Simpler systems of celestial divination use only the five planets and the sun and moon, but diviners today agree that Tzu-wei Tu- su produces the most accurate reading of an individual’s destiny. Terrestrial Divination: Feng-shui Unlike celestial divination, which is based on reading the pattern of stars, terrestrial divination interprets the pattern of the land. In Taoism, terrestrial divination is synonymous with feng-shui, which is translated as “wind and water.” As a system of divination, feng-shui has a longer history than celestial divination, and what is practiced today is the product of centuries of development of the art. In the center of the philosophy and practice of feng-shui is the idea that the land is alive and filled with energy. Depending on the forms taken by the land, energy in a region can be beneficial or destructive. Energy in a region affects people who live there. Beneficial energy can enhance health, longevity, harmony, wealth, and success; destructive energy can bring ill-health and disaster. Energy in a region also changes with the year and seasons. The movement of energy in a particular year or month can be calculated, using the principles of the pa-k’ua, five elements, and the Nine Palaces. When a dwelling or a grave is built on a particular site, the energy of the site is gathered into the edifice. Energy gathered in a dwelling will affect not only the inhabitants of the dwelling but immediate family members who live elsewhere. Energy gathered in a grave will affect the descendants of the individual who is buried there. Tire practice of feng-shui is therefore concerned with the selection of locations. In the case of building a dwelling, this is called yang-domain fengshui; in the case of a grave, it is known as yin-domain feng-shui. Hie most important factor in selecting an appropriate site, whether for living or for burial, is protection. A site is said to be protected if the ground behind it is higher than the ground in front. Another important factor in selecting a site is the presence of beneficial landforms and the absence of destructive landforms. Smooth, round shapes carry beneficial energy; rough, sharp objects carry destructive energy. Thus, a house opposite a craggy cliff or across from irregularly-shaped skyscrapers will be buffeted by destructive energy. Roads, rivers, and valleys are pathways along which energy flows. Energy that flows down steep roads, gorges, or slopes is destructive; energy that meanders is beneficial. Hie most undesirable places to build a house or erect a grave are the end of a T-junction and in the fork of a Y- junction in a road. At a T-junction, energy rushes straight at the house, as waves crash against the shore. In a Y-junction, the dwelling is squeezed between two roads. Not only is the surrounding environment important: the flow of energy within a house also affects the fortunes and well-being of the inhabitants. Several factors—for example, the floor plan and other architectural details— contribute to whether energy flowing in the dwelling is positive or negative. To work out the positions and movement of benevolent and destructive energy, the practitioner of feng-shui uses a geomantic compass ( 11 u. 8.6 ). Hiis device is a twenty-four point compass with markings that describe the kind of energy, yin or yang, flowing in that direction. The geomantic compass is used to determine the direction a building is to face, or how it faces. This information, together with the year when the dwelling is being built, or was built, is used to construct a geomantic chart that shows the positions of benevolent and malevolent energies in the house. The arrangement of the geomantic chart is based on the principle of the Nine Palaces. Hie chart is a grid with nine squares and a sample is shown in figure 8.7 . at A. Each square has three numbers: the large number in each square is called the Earth Base. These are the numbers of the Nine Palaces. Their positions in the grid are based on the year of construction. Tlie smaller numbers on the upper right-hand corner of each square are called the Facing Stars and ones on the upper left-hand corner are called the Mountain Stars. These two sets of numbers are obtained from the geomantic compass. FIGURE 8.6. Geomantic compass used by feng-shui practitioners. Wu Facing t 1 2 1 6 6 8 4 5 i 3 M F 9 3 2 1 4 8 4 6 8 5 7 7 5 3 9 9 2 7 Tzu Mountain A from door m bedroom n living bedroom r*. bath c storage t bedroom dining kitchen a -... backdoor B Wu Facing t front door bedroom living bedroom 1 2 6 6 8 4 5 .a 1 n 3 bath storage 9 3 2 1 4 8 4 £ 6 !j 8 bedroom r dining kitchen 5 7 7 5 3 9 9 2 7 back door Tzu Mountain c FIGURE 8.7. Sample geomantic chart superimposed on the floor plan of a building. See text for exp lanation. When superimposed onto the floor plan of a house (fig. 8.7. at C ), the geomantic chart provides a map of the flow of energy in the building. The numbers one, six, and eight— whether large or small—are associated with beneficial energy, whereas the numbers two and five are associated with malevolent energy. Three, four, and seven can be neutral, destructive, or beneficial depending on other factors. Nine is associated with a powerful energy that can be malevolent or benevolent but not neutral. Needless to say, it is not desirable to have a bedroom located in an area occupied by a two or a five, especially if these numbers are the Earth Base or the Facing Star, or even more especially, both. The interpretation of a geomantic chart is a complex process that involves evaluating the effects of the combination of the numbers in each square given the usage of the space. For example, some combinations are bad for bedrooms but are all right for storage; others are especially good for a study or office but neutral for a kitchen. The goal of feng-shui, or terrestrial divination, is to discover how energy flows in the land and to live in harmony with it. The oldest form of divination in Taoist practice, it cultivates a sensitivity to the land and advocates a philosophy of living with nature, rather than against it. Other Forms of Divination This section will deal with several other systems of divination. One is event divination, based on understanding the movement of beneficial and malevolent forces through each day, month, year, and season; another is the reading of omens—a form of divination, steeped in both shamanic and Taoist beliefs, in which patterns of cloud, mist, lightning, thunder, flight of birds, and natural phenomena are signs that can tell us what will happen. Unlike Tzu-wei Tusu and feng-shui, this form of divination relies more on intuition than calculation. The Taoist sage and scholar Shao K’ang- chieh was said to have been an expert in reading omens. Today, only a handful of diviners are knowledgeable in this art. A third system is the reading of human features to predict the destiny of individuals. One branch of this is physiognomy, the reading of facial features. It involves seeing the pattern of “clouds” or colorations on an individual’s face and interpreting features in the eyes, nose, ears, mouth, lips, forehead, cheeks, and chin. Another branch, palmistry, examines the destiny of an individual by looking at the pattern of lines on the palm. These two systems of divination are less influenced by Taoist beliefs and are not as old as Tzu-wei Tusu and feng-shui. Most likely they entered China from India and were absorbed into Chinese culture in more recent times. A further system of divination is the casting of joss sticks with hexagrams written on them. Focusing on an inquiry or question, the petitioner shakes a jar containing the joss sticks until one stick falls out. The meaning of the hexagram on the stick is interpreted by looking up its reference in a book. The most popular reference books used by people in Hong Kong and other Asian communities are the Chou-i, or I-ching, Lii-tsu chien-chieh (Immortal Lii Tung-pin’s Book of Divination), and Kuan-yin chien- chieh (Bodhisattva Kuan-yin’s Book of Divination). Although popular with the Chinese people and Westerners who use the I-ching to interpret patterns of coins, tea leaves, and so on, this kind of divination is not recognized by the Taoist community as part of Divinational Taoism. Further Words on Divinational Taoism There are no sects in Divinational Taoism. As mentioned earlier, divination is practiced by individuals who may or may not belong to a Taoist sect (see Divination in the Ming and Today ). Training in Divinational Taoism is a serious endeavor that requires discipline and commitment. Many teachers accept only apprentices who are willing to commit to several years of tutelage. Some master practitioners specialize in one system of divination, such as celestial divination or feng-shui. Others may practice a combination of physiognomy, palmistry, and celestial, terrestrial, and event divination. Training is usually restricted to learning one method at a time, and the period of apprenticeship can vary from three to ten years. Knowledge of Chinese is required, because most classics and manuals of divination are still untranslated. The most important reference, the Wan-nien li (Cross-reference of the Chinese and Western Calendar), is available only in Chinese. However, it is now possible to learn the basics of feng-shui from a book (see the “Further Readings” section, where I recommend my Feng-shui: The Ancient Wisdom of Harmonious Living for Modern Times). If you would like to study the Taoist divinational arts, first select the system you want to learn and then find a teacher who is willing to accept you as an apprentice. Whichever system you choose, your early attempts will be difficult: it is necessary to become grounded in the general principles that underlie all forms of divination. In some cases, like feng-shui, you can get an introduction to the subject matter from a book or a weekend course; however, if you wish to study the divinational arts seriously, you need to obtain personal instruction. Having learned three systems of divination and written a book on one, I find that apprenticeship is still the only way to learn Divinational Taoism. Further Readings An account of the fang-shih and their activities between the third century bce (the Han dynasty) and the sixth century ce (the Six Dynasties) can be found in Doctors, Diviners, and Magicians of Ancient China: Biographies of Fang-shih, edited and translated by Kenneth DeWoskin. This is a collection of stories of fang-shih from the histories of the Eastern Han, the Three Kingdoms, and the Chin dynasties. For selected translations of Shao K’ang-chieh’s Wang- chi ching, see chapter 29 of A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, edited by Wing-tsit Chan. A more detailed rendering of the theory of numbers embodied in the cosmology of the I-ching can be found in 1 Ching Mandalas, translated by Thomas Cleary. The Taoist I Ching, a collection of interpretations of the hexagrams by Taoist and Taoist-influenced Confucians, is a translation by Thomas Cleary. This book is not an instruction manual on divination: it is necessary to know how to cast the hexagrams before you can use this book to interpret your results. However, this is also a good reference on how Taoists interpret the meaning of the hexagrams. If you wish to compare approaches, you might also want to look at The Buddhist I Ching, which is a Buddhist interpretation of the hexagrams, and I Ching: The Tao of Organization , a Neo-Confucianist interpretation of the hexagrams. Both books are edited and translated by Thomas Cleary. A collection of essays on the philosophy of the I-ching and the meaning of hexagrams can be found in Helmut Wilhelm’s Heaven, Earth, and Man in the Book oj Changes. Tire history, theory, and practice of feng-shui can be found in my book Feng-shui: The Ancient Wisdom oj Harmonious Living for Modern Tunes. This presents more details on the history and theory of feng-shui and is also an instruction manual. 9 Ceremonial Taoism The Way of Devotion Ceremonial Taoism is the Way of Devotion. By honoring the sacred powers with ceremonies, humanity renews and strengthens its bonds with the deities, and in return for the devotion given to them, the sacred powers grant protection and blessings, and deliver the people from suffering and disaster. The Main Features of Ceremonial Taoism The principal features of the Way of Devotion, or Ceremonial Taoism, are: 1. At the core, the belief that there are sacred powers, in the form of deities and spirits, that direct human destiny. 2. Deities will grant blessings, protection, and deliverance if they are respected and honored; therefore, devotion and dedication are central to the practice of Ceremonial Taoism. 3. Devotion is expressed in the performance of ceremonies and celebrations of the sacred festivals, and ceremonies consist of rituals, offerings, chanting of liturgies, and the reading of sacred scriptures. 4. Tire belief that a two-way interaction exists between the devotee and the sacred powers. Ceremonies are performed to renew and strengthen the bond between humanity and deities so that a cooperative effort can be made to bring harmony to all realms of existence. 5. Because ceremonies are sacred to the deities, they are performed by people who have dedicated their lives to this purpose—people who are the masters of rituals and who intercede on behalf of the common believer. Thus, in Ceremonial Taoism, the believers are not necessarily the practitioners: the lay person who believes in the deities is not trained or authorized to perform the rituals. The Taoist Deities Taoist religion is pantheistic and pluralistic. Deities, spirits, and immortals are ranked according to their power and level of enlightenment. Usually, the ranks are identified by titles given to the deities; thus, the highest deities are called T’ien-tsun, or Celestial Lords, followed by Ti (Emperor) and Hou (Empress), then Wang (King), Hsien (Immortal), and finally Shen (spirit). Because Taoist religion has incorporated folk beliefs and local cults, its deities also include the nature spirits of prehistoric times, sages and folk heroes, deities of other religions, and founders of sects who have been invested with immortality. Tire deities of Taoism are a large and varied group. Some have been embellished with colorful personalities as legends have grown around them. Although some deities and spirits are portrayed as mischievous and playful in folktales and drama (for example, the Eight Immortals and the Monkey King), Taoist ceremonies are themselves serious affairs. There is a vast difference between the world of legend and the world of ritual. Play and humor are appropriate only under certain circumstances. When the deities are presented in religious festivals, they are stately and serious. The vast Taoist pantheon is divided into Earlier Heaven deities and Later Heaven deities. Earlier Heaven deities are deities who have existed since the beginning of time (before the separation of sky and earth, or creation of the celestial and terrestrial domains); Later Heaven deities are mortals who have become immortal. However, it is not correct to assume that all the greater deities are Earlier Heaven deities, because some formerly-mortal immortals, like Lii Tung-pin and the Kuan Emperor, occupy the highest levels of the pantheon. Since religious Taoism has incorporated both shamanism and folk beliefs, some nature spirits of the prehistoric times are also included in the hierarchy. Most notable are the spirits of the wind, rain, and thunder, who, although they are Earlier Heaven deities, are not as powerful as the Later Heaven deities like Lii Tung- pin. THE GREAT DEITIES The following Great Deities are listed in the order of importance recognized by Taoist religious communities. First come the Earlier Heaven deities: T’ai-shang Lao-chun t fig. 9.1 1 is Lao-tzu deified. He is recognized by all Taoists as the patriarch of the Taoist religion. The name T’ai-shang Lao-chiin was first used in the Ling-pao scriptures of the third century ce and was quickly adopted by orthodox religious Taoism. T’ai-shang Lao-chiin, the highest deity in the Taoist pantheon, is the embodiment of the Tao and the incarnation of the primordial origin, the undifferentiated vapor, and the source of life. Thus, he is sometimes called the Emperor of the Undifferentiated Realm (Hun-yiian Huang-ti). FIGURE 9.1. T’ai-shangLao-chiin, the highest deity in the Taoist religion. The Three Pure Ones (San-ch’ing) are the three emanations of the T’ai-shang Lao-chiin. They are the Celestial Lords of the Three Pure Realms: Jade Pure (Yii- ch’ing), Great Pure (T’ai-ch’ing), and High Pure (Shang- ch’ing). The Jade Pure Realm is the domain of the Celestial Lord of the Limitless (Wu-chi T’ien-tsun) or Celestial Lord of the Ancient Beginning (Yiian-shih T’ien-tsun); the Great Pure Realm is the domain of the Celestial Lord of the Sacred Spirit (Lingpao T’ien-tsun); the High Pure Realm is the domain of the Celestial Lord of Virtue (Tao-te T’ien-tsun). In the hierarchy of Taoist deities, the Three Pure Ones ( Tig. 9.2 1 are the deities next highest to T’aishang Lao-chun. The Three Pure Realms represent three levels of Taoist immortality and enlightenment. Tire Jade Pure Realm is the Realm of Wuchi. It is the highest level of immortality, and to rise to this realm is to attain complete union with the Tao. The Great Pure Realm is the next level of immortality. It is the Realm of T’ai-chi, and to rise to this realm is to exist in a state where subject and object are differentiated but are integral parts of the Tao. Hie third realm, the High Pure, is the Realm of Pa-k’ua, and to attain this level of immortality is to live a long life on earth in harmony with nature and humanity. The Three Pure Ones have a special meaning for practitioners of internal alchemy. They represent the pristine and original pure state of the three internal energies. All people are endowed with these energies in their mother’s womb. Hie Jade Pure is original spiritual energy (shen); the Great Pure is original vital or breath energy (ch’i); and the High Pure is original generative energy (ching). Tire three pristine energies emerge when the yin and yang energies of the female and male copulate. Hie goal of internal alchemy is to refine and transform internal energies into the pristine form given to us when we were conceived. FIGURE 9.2. The Three Pure Ones on an altar of a temple affiliated with the Hsien- t’ien Tao sect. In the center is the Jade Pure (Yu-ch’ing). To the right is Great Pure (T’ai-ch’ing), and to the left is the High Pure (Shangch’ing). The Jade Emperor (Yii-ti) is the ruler of the celestial realm. Some Taoist sects identify the Jade Emperor (fig. 9.3 1 as an incarnation of the Celestial Lord of the Great Pure Realm (Ling-pao T’ien-tsun), giving him the titles Great Celestial Lord Jade Emperor (Yii-huang Ta-t’ien- tsun) and High Emperor of the Mysterious Realm of the Sacred Spirit (Hsuan-ling K’ao-shang Ti). The Jade Emperor is the governor of human destiny. His celestial abode is the star Tzu-wei and he sits there to judge humanity. He grants health, longevity, and prosperity to those who have accumulated good deeds and punishes those who have done unethical deeds by taking away health and longevity. FIGURE 9.3. The Jade Emperor (Yii-ti). On his right is his subordinate, Wen-chang Ti-chiin. The Mother Empress of the West (Hsi-wang Mu) is the Celestial Empress of the Western Realms of Paradise. She is said to reside in a palace in the peaks of the Kun-lun Mountains, a range of mountains in western China. Tire keeper of the doorway to the celestial realm and the bestower of longevity and immortality, the Mother Empress of the West keeps a garden where the tree of the immortal peaches is grown ( Tig. 9.4 T Men and women alike must meet her standards before they are granted the status of immortal. It is said that she alone has the power to open and close the gates of life to mortals. Thus, the Mother Empress of the West is revered especially by practitioners of internal alchemy and the arts of immortality. The Mother of the Bushel of Stars (Tou-mu)—a very interesting deity—is Hindu in origin. The Chinese romanization of her Sanskrit name is Mo-li-chih. She is the healer and giver of the Great Medicine (the elixir of immortality) and is the patron of healers and practitioners of the arts of immortality. She is usually depicted as having eight arms ( Tig. 9.5 1. holding the orbs of the sun and moon, a bow and a spear, a bell and a seal, and, clasped as a mudra, the gesture of compassion. The sun and moon symbolize Tou-mu as the mother of all the celestial bodies; the bow and spear symbolize her power over illness; the bell symbolizes her compassion and the seal her power over death. The mudra of compassion symbolizes her power to heal the sick. FIGURE 9.4. The Mother Empress of the West (Hsi Wang-mu). Her attendant is holding a tray of immortal peaches. Internal alchemists invoke Tou-mu to help them in completing the Great Medicine, or the Golden Elixir, for she is the director of the movement of the stars and the mover of internal energy in the body. The Celestial Lord of the Great Beginning (T’ai-i T’ien- tsun) is a subordinate of the Jade Emperor. He presides over the realm of the dead. T’ai-i T’ien-tsun t fig. 9.6 1 is recognized as the deity who taught humanity the ceremonies of the Festival of Chung-yiian (Middle Season, or Festival of the Officer of the Terrestrial Realm). He is the symbol of compassion and his compassion extends to all souls, both living and dead. Thus, Iris festival is also known as the Festival of All Souls. FIGURE 9.5. Statue of the Mother of the Bushel of Stars (Tou-mu) at the White Cloud Monastery, Beijing. The Seven Star Lords of the Northern Bushel are deities who live in the seven stars of the Northern Bushel (Big Dipper) constellation. Urey are subordinates of the Jade Emperor and they carry messages of his verdicts regarding an individual’s destiny. In Taoist belief, each individual is born under the guardianship of one of the seven stars. This guardian, or birth star, is responsible for the individual’s health and longevity. If a person’s health is good, the guardian star will be bright; if the health is poor, the guardian star will be dim. On the first and fifteenth days of each lunar month and on the first seven days of the ninth lunar month, the deities of the Northern Bushel descend to the mortal realm to proclaim the judgment of the Jade Emperor to humankind. Tire Seven Star Lords also report to the Jade Emperor the good and bad deeds of those in their charge. Based on the reports, the Jade Emperor will reward or punish, according to individual merit. Because human health and longevity depend on their reports to the Jade Emperor, the Seven Star Lords of the Northern Bushel are considered to be the masters of health and longevity. FIGURE 9.6. The Celestial Lord of the Great Beginning (T’ai-i T’ientsun). Painting from the Hsiian Yuan Hsiieh Institute of Hong Kong. Hie Seven Star Lords are attended by the Left and Right Guardians. Hiese stars, which are themselves celestial deities, reside in constellations to the left and right of the Northern Bushel. Tire Seven Star Lords and the Two Guardians are sometimes called the Nine Kings of the Northern Bushel. For internal alchemists, the stars of the Northern Bushel have a special meaning. In a cosmology in which the North Pole Star represents the unmoving and permanent underlying reality of the Tao, the seven stars of the Northern Bushel represent the moving and changing aspect of the Tao. The Northern Bushel constellation is associated with the element water, and it symbolizes the generative energy in the body. The direction north and the element water being associated with yin, the Northern Bushel constellation therefore also symbolizes the essence of yin energy. The Southern Bushel Stars, on the other hand, are associated with prosperity. There are six stars in this group and each is accompanied by a young attendant. It is said that the lords of the Southern Bushel are fiery and quick¬ tempered, and their actions are swift and uncompromising. For internal alchemists, the Southern Bushel is associated with the element fire and the essence of yang energy. Tire Southern Bushel constellation represents the fire of vital or breath energy of the middle t’an-tien in the region of the solar plexus. The Officers of the Celestial, Terrestrial, and Water Realms (Sankuan) are agents who carry out the verdicts of the Jade Emperor. When rewards are given, the Officer of the Celestial Realm grants prosperity, the Officer of the Terrestrial Realm forgives wrongdoings, and the Officer of Water delivers humanity from disaster. When punishment is enforced, the Three Officers withdraw their gifts and create disasters in the three realms of sky, earth, and water. Thus, the Officer of the Celestial Realm causes droughts, the Office of the Terrestrial Realm creates earthquakes, and the Officer of Water causes floods. In addition to carrying out the verdicts of the Jade Emperor, the Three Officers are also lords of three feasts that mark the beginning, the middle, and the end of the year. Tire Officer of the Celestial Realm presides over the Beginning Season (shang-yiian), the Officer of the Terrestrial presides over the Middle Season (chung-yuan), and the Officer of Water presides over the Last Season (hsia-yiian). These feasts are held on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, the fifteenth of the seventh lunar month, and the fifteenth of the tenth lunar month, respectively. The Patron of the Arts and Literature (Wen-chang Ti- chiin) is the immediate subordinate of the Jade Emperor. In the celestial domain, he resides in a group of stars adjacent to the Northern Bushel. Originally charged by the Jade Emperor with rewarding honorable scholars and punishing unscrupulous ones, Wen-chang Ti-chiin’s duties have been expanded, and he is now also the announcer of the Jade Emperor’s judgments. The Lords of the Five Mountains (Wu-yiieh Ti-chiin) are the guardians of the five sacred mountains of China: Hua- shan in the west, T’ai-shan in the east, Heng-shan, in Hunan, in the south, Heng-shan, in Shansi, in the north, and Sung- shan, in the center. Each lord is also the guardian of the direction that he is associated with and the keeper of the element of that direction. Thus, the lord of the west wears a white robe and is the keeper of the element metal; the lord of the east wears a green or blue robe and is the keeper of the element wood; the lord of the south wears a red robe and is the keeper of the element fire; the lord of the north wears a black robe and is the keeper of the element water; the lord of the center wears a yellow robe and is the keeper of the element earth. Tire Lords of the Five Mountains are also the keepers of the gates to the underworld, located in the depths of the mountains. Thus, these deities are often invoked in ceremonies that involve ajourney to the underworld. The next deities to be listed are Later Heaven deities. Typically, they are sages and heroes who have been granted the status of Immortal or Celestial Emperor or Empress because of their deeds in both the mortal and immortal realms. Immortal Lii Tung-pin is probably the most popular immortal in Chinese culture. Regarded as the patriarch of many Taoist sects, he symbol izes the wisdom that cuts through the illusion of the material world. Lii Tung-pin was a historical figure. He lived in the T’ang dynasty. Legends tell us that when he was on Iris way to the capital to take the qualifying examinations for service in the government, he met the immortal Chung-li Ch’uan, who gave him a pillow to sleep on. Tlrat night, Lii had dreams that showed him the futility of politics, fame, and power. He dreamed that after a brief success in court politics, he was drawn into intrigues that brought him exile and death far from his home. The next day, Lii realized the illusions of fame, fortune, and temporal power, and followed Chung-li Ch’uan into the mountains to learn the arts of immortality. In icons, Immortal Lii is often shown with a whisk or a sword ( fig. 9.7 ). The sword cuts through the illusion of impermanence and the whisk sweeps away the dust that covers the reality of the Tao. There are many legends of Immortal Lii returning to the mortal realm to heal the sick, deliver people from suffering, and help others to attain immortality. Immortal Lii is especially honored by internal- alchemical sects. Many founders of internal-alchemical sects, such as Wang Ch’ungyang, Liu Hai-ch’an, and Chen Hsi-yi, were taught by Lit Tung-pin. FIGURE 9.7. Immortal Lii Tung-pin. Emperor Kuan (Kuan-ti) is another historical figure who was elevated to the status of deity. A general of Shu of the Three Kingdoms, Kuan Yii was skilled in the military arts and was uncompromising in his integrity and sense of honor. Killed in the war against Ts’ao-ts’ao the unscrupulous minister, Kuan Yii stood for everything that was virtuous, honest, and honorable in the eyes of the Chinese people. Initially a folk hero, he was elevated to the status of deity when he was made the patron of the military arts, and given the name Kuanti, or Emperor Kuan. In his role as General of the Celestial Armies, Emperor Kuan accumulated many heroic deeds fighting demons and monsters. His accomplishments were acknowledged by the Great Deities, and in a series of promotions he was given the titles Kuan the Sacred Emperor (Kuan Hsing-ti) and Emperor of the Golden Tower (Chin-ch’ueh Ti-chiin). Some sects believe that he eventually became the Jade Emperor. Today, the Emperor Kuan is revered as the patron of the military arts, the keeper of virtue, and the embodiment of all that is upright and honorable. THE LESSER DEITIES The Kitchen Lord (Tsao-chiin) is the keeper of the fires of the kitchen and the watcher of the household. Usually enshrined in a home, the Kitchen Lord is responsible for keeping the cooking fires going (in Chinese custom, a saying meaning having enough food to feed the family). Originally a spirit from the popular cults, the Kitchen Lord was accepted into the Taoist pantheon and given the duty of reporting the deeds of each household member to the Jade Emperor. This he does at the end of the year, when he ascends to the Celestial Palace to present a list of the good and bad deeds of each member of the household; thus, it is a common practice for many Chinese to make offerings to the Kitchen Lord, asking him to put in a good word for them. The Rain, Wind, and Thunder Spirits t fig. 9.8 L Yii-shih, Feng-po, and Lei-mu, are ancient deities that date back to prehistoric times. Their formal names are Master of Rain, Count of the Wind, and Mother of Thunder. Usually invoked in rainmaking ceremonies, they also appear in high ceremonies in the company of greater deities such as T’ai-i T’ien-tsun, the Emperor Kuan, and hnmortal Lii. FIGURE 9.8. The spirits of rain, wind, and thunder. The Mother of Thunder is to the left, the Rain Lord in the center, and the Count of the Wind to the right. The Earth Father (Tu-t’i) is the guardian of a locality. A spirit from the ancient times, he was absorbed into the Taoist pantheon. Today he is revered as the protector of sacred grounds, especially temples and shrines, and a messenger of the deities. At the close of many Taoist ceremonies, the Earth Father is asked to carry the petitions to the deities and he is thanked for keeping mischief out of the ceremonial grounds. OTHER DEITIES There are many other deities in the Taoist pantheon and it is beyond the scope of this book to discuss all of them. I have described only the deities who have major festivals and ceremonies devoted to them and whose ceremonies are performed by major Taoist sects. Some deities, especially immortals, are special to certain sects. For example, the Celestial Teachers sect considers their founder Chang Tao- ling a great immortal and has major ceremonies dedicated to him; the Lung-men sect enshrines its founders, Wang Ch’ung-yang and Ch’iu Ch’ang-ch’un, in its temples. Many local heroes, sages, and miracle workers have large followings in specific geographical regions. One example is a miracle worker named Huang Ta-hsien (Huang, the Great Immortal) who is extremely popular in Hong Kong and the southern regions of Kwantung Province. Some Taoist sects have incorporated incarnations of the Buddha and the bodhisattvas into their hierarchy of deities. Tire most popular of these figures are Kuan-yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, the Tathagata Buddha, Amitabha Buddha, and Manjushri Buddha. However, when Buddhist deities are enshrined in Taoist temples, they are given Taoist names and are considered to be incarnations of Taoist deities. Tire Tathagata Buddha, for example, is considered to be the incarnation of the T’ai-shang Lao- chiin; Manjushri is recognized by some Taoist sects as the incarnation of Immortal Lii Tungpin; Amitabha Buddha has been named Wu-liang-shuo Fo (the Enlightened One of Unending Longevity); and Kuan-yin is sometimes considered to be an incarnation of the Mother Empress of the West. The Administrative Structure of the Taoist Celestial Realm In the Taoist Celestial Realm, every deity, immortal, and spirit has a specific duty In the Taoist pantheon are administrators, warriors, and teachers. Within the category of administrators are judges, heralds, officers, bureaucrats, clerks, and messengers; in the category of warriors are generals, captains, soldiers of different ranks, and guards; in the category of teachers are avatars, patrons, and instructors. Specific dress, regalia, and titles identify each type of deity. Taoist deities are divided into ranks. As mentioned earlier, T’aishang Lao-chiin is the highest deity of all, but the T’ai-shang Laochiin is not an administrator; rather, he is the source of wisdom, knowledge, and life. He is the creator and mover of events in celestial and terrestrial realms, and the underworld. Tlrus, the deities are under his rule. Immediately below him are the Three Pure Ones, who oversee the three realms of existence, but they, too, are not really administrators: their tasks are not concerned with the daily operations of keeping records and managing the three realms. As the T’ai-shang Lao-chiin is the power behind creation and dissolution, the Three Pure Ones are the agents that make them happen. Tire highest level of administration is headed by the Jade Emperor and the Mother Empress of the West. These two are about the same rank in the Taoist pantheon. As the Director of Destiny, the Jade Emperor passes judgment on mortals and decides their fate. As the keeper of the doorway to immortality, the Mother Empress of the West decides who attains immortality. Below the Jade Emperor is a large group of administrators and bureaucrats. Tire Wen-chang Ti-chiin, the patron of the arts and literature, announces the verdicts of the Jade Emperor. As we have already seen, the messages are then carried to humanity by the Star Lords of the Northern Bushel, and rewards and punishment are effected by the Three Officers of the Celestial, Terrestrial, and Water Realms. In addition, the Wen-chang Ti-chiin also keeps a record of the deeds of each individual, filing reports sent by the Seven Star Lords and the Kitchen Lord. Tire Jade Emperor and his subordinate administrators also attend to the petitions of mortals. Requests for blessings and protection, pleas for forgiveness, and messages of repentance are sent to the Jade Emperor via the Three Officers. Tire clerks of the celestial realm keep records of shrines, temples, and monasteries. When a new shrine, temple, or monastery is opened, messages are sent by the abbot to the celestial realm, informing the deities that a new sacred space has been inaugurated. Tire message is addressed to the patron deities of the temple or shrine and delivered via celestial messengers. Tire names of ordained priests are also entered into registers and kept by the celestial clerks. When a priest is ordained or a monk is initiated into an order, the name of the individual is written in a formal message and sent to the celestial realm. In this way, the deities keep track of who is authorized to perform ceremonies and who is worthy of receiving the transmission of the sacred scriptures. Tire realm of the underworld is administered by celestial beings. This is quite different from the system in Buddhism, whereby the underworld is administered by beings who dwell there. In some sects of Taoism, the T’ai-i T’ien-tsun is the chief administrator of all matters in the underworld. These include keeping the records of those who have died, those who are destined to be reincarnated, and those who need to be rehabilitated before reincarnation. Tire Taoist notion of the underworld, despite the influence of popular devotional Buddhism, is not a hell. It is not a place of punishment but a place of learning and rehabilitation. Dead souls who begrudge their fate and still cling to the mortal world are taught to accept the cycle of life and death and cease haunting the mortal realm. The duty of the T’ai-i T’ien-tsun is to educate dead souls so that they may receive a speedy reincarnation. Other celestial deities who are responsible for affairs of the underworld are the Lords of the Five Mountains. Tire gates to the underworld are said to be located deep inside these sacred mountains and the Five Lords are the keepers of the gates. When a priest needs to enter the underworld to teach dead souls or to rescue them, petitions must be sent to the Five Lords to open the gates of the underworld so that the Taoist priest can pass through. Moreover, when an individual dies, he or she must pass through the same gates to the underworld; thus, the Five Lords are petitioned to open the gates to let the dead souls pass to the underworld. The most important administrators have personal messengers. These messengers and attendants are typically depicted as children. Tire Lords of the Five Mountains each have an attendant, each dressed in the same color as the lord; the Star Lords of the Northern and Southern Bushels have personal attendants; the Mother Empress of the West is attended by a group of young women; and the T’ai-i T’ien-tsun is often accompanied by a boy who carries his banner. The warriors of the celestial realm are led by captains, who are commanded by generals. Tire Emperor Kuan, the Celestial King Li Ch’ing who holds the Celestial Tower, and Yiieh Fei, a Sung dynasty general who was deified, are three of the highest commanders. Tire spirits of thunder, rain, and wind are captains of celestial warriors, as are many star lords. There are also the rank and file fighters and guards who defend the gateways to the celestial realm. At the top of the Taoist pantheon of teachers are the avatars—beings who choose to mingle among humanity and take on the appearance of mortals to inspire, instruct, and advise. They are the embodiment of wisdom, instructors of techniques, and transmitters of knowledge. Immortal Lri Tung-pin is such a teacher. Tire next level of teachers is that of the patrons of the various branches of spiritual knowledge and practice. Tou-mu, the patron deity of healers and internal alchemists, and Fu Hsi, the patron of the divinational arts, are examples of this kind of teacher. Then there are the instructors of specific techniques, whose responsibility it is to impart knowledge and expertise. Tire immortals Chung-li Ch’uan and Chang Tzu- yang (Po-tuan) are instructors of internal alchemy and techniques of immortality; the immortal Huang-shih Kung is an instructor of terrestrial divination. Tire hierarchy of deities in the Taoist pantheon is not rigid: there are promotions and demotions, because the accomplishments of the deities are evaluated constantly. Popularity in the mortal realm is an indicator of a deity’s achievement. If a temple or shrine dedicated to a certain deity is frequented by many people asking for a blessing, protection, advice, or forgiveness, the deity is said to have gained the trust of mortals and be worthy of promotion. Taoist Festivals and Ceremonies Devotion is expressed in the observance of the sacred festivals and in the performance of ceremony. There are several kinds of festivals in Ceremonial Taoism. The highest festivals are called chai-chiao, or Great Services. Great Services typically last for many days. They can be occasions of celebration, mourning, sending petitions, or repenting. For example, the Festival of the Officer of the Terrestrial Realm is a service that focuses on repentance; the Festival of the Northern Bushel Stars is a combination of celebration and repentance; and major rainmaking ceremonies are services of petitioning (fig. 9JL) The Ritual Gathering (fa-hui) is another kind of Taoist festival. The Ritual Gathering is not as elaborate as the Great Service, but it is a major festival and can last for several days. The festivals of the Officer of the Celestial Realm and the Officer of the Water Realm are often celebrated as Ritual Gatherings. Depending on their scope, ceremonies of rainmaking or disaster-averting can be performed either as a Great Service or as a Ritual Gathering. FIGURE 9.9. Photograph taken at a ceremony sending a petition to the deities. Taken at White Cloud Monastery, Beijing. Another type of Taoist festival is the feast day of a deity, called a tan. Hie rituals performed on these days are entirely devoted to the deity honored in the feast. All the Great Deities have feast days (see table 9.1 1. and in some temples and shrines, the feast day of the patron deity of the temple is celebrated with as much fanfare as those of the Great Deities. Almost all Taoist religious communities celebrate feast days that honor the T’ai-shang Lao-chiin (with the Three Pure Ones), the Jade Emperor, the Mother Empress of the West, and Immortal Lii Tung-pin. The festival for Tou-mu, the Mother of the Stars, is part of the Great Service of the Northern Bushel Stars. Yet another kind of Taoist festival is the Service Day, when a liturgy is chanted. Typically, on the first and fifteenth day of each lunar month, a liturgy dedicated to a deity or a group of deities is chanted. The most popular liturgies are the scriptures of the Northern Bushel Stars and Southern Bushel Stars. Some temples chant liturgies dedicated to their patron deity. Other services are performed for private individuals. These include funeral rites and birthday blessings. Funeral rites are usually performed on the day of burial, but the more elaborate ones include rituals and chanting performed on the seventh, twenty-first, and forty-ninth day after a death. These rituals are designed to guide the deceased into the underworld. People wishing to be blessed on their birthdays are typically given a blessing that involves a petition to the Northern or Southern Bushel Star Lords for health, longevity, and prosperity. Sects in Ceremonial Taoism The most prominent sect of Ceremonial Taoism is the Celestial Teachers’ Way (T’ien-shih Tao), or the Cheng-i Meng-wei (Central Orthodox) sect. Founded by Chang Tao- ling in the Eastern Han and developed by the great liturgists Liu Hsiu-ching and K’ou Ch’ienchih of the fifth century ce, this sect has the most elaborate and colorful ceremonies. Today in Taiwan, where the sixty-fourth generation of the patriarch of the Celestial Teachers resides, the sect performs many ceremonies that are cosponsored by the government. TABLE 9.1. The twelve-month cycle of festivals of Taoist deities, which are celebrated by most temples. Some of the festivals also honor Chinese cultural figures; these are listed where appropriate. 1st Lunar Month 1st day. T’ai-shangLao-chiin (Lao-tzu, the Ancient One). The Patriarch of Taoism and the embodiment of the Tao; the source and origin of all things. 8th day. Yuan-shih T’ien-tsun, or Wu-chi T’ien-tsun (Yii-ch’ing, or Jade Pure One). The first of the three embodiments of Lao-tzu incarnated from the One Primordial Breath of the Origin. Also known as the Jade Pure One. He is the Lord of the Beginning, a state of existence when everything was part of the undifferentiated wholeness of the Tao and the symbol of spirit energy. 9th day. Yii-ti (the Jade Emperor). The Jade Emperor is one of the highest deities in the Taoist Pantheon. The Jade Emperor has power over the destiny of all living beings and gives reward and punishment to individuals. 15th day. T’ien-kuan (the Officer of the Celestial Realm). The Officer of the Celestial Realm grants prosperity and happiness. He is a subordinate officer of the Jade Emperor. He is also known as the Lord of the Beginning Season (shang-yiian). The Festival of Lanterns is also part of this celebration. 2nd Lunar Month 2nd day. Tu-t’i (the Earth Father). The Earth Father guards a locality from mischievous spirits and acts as messenger for the deities. 3rd day. Wen-chang Ti-chiin. Patron of the arts and literature and subordinate of the Jade Emperor. Keeps a register of achievements of scholars and announces the verdicts of the Jade Emperor. 6th day. Tung-yiieh Ti-chiin (the Emperor of the Eastern Mountain). A chief administrator of the Jade Emperor. He performs scribal duties and records the birth and death of mortals. His element is wood and his color is green (or blue). He is also the guardian of the gate to the underworld in T’ai-shan, the Eastern Mountain. 15th day. Tao-te T’ien-tsun (Shang-ch’ing or High Pure One). Third Embodiment of Lao-tzu. The ruler of the realm of pa-k’ua. 3rd Lunar Month 15th day. Chiu-t’ien Hsiian-nii (the Mysterious Lady of the Nine Celestial Domains). She controls the catalogs of the Nine Celestial Domains, assembles the lists of the gods, and directs the registers of human destiny. Also one of the patrons of the divinational arts. 18th day. Chung-yueh Ti-chiin (the Emperor of the Central Mountain). Same duties as Emperor of Eastern Mountain except that he guards the central gate to the underworld, located in Sung-shan, the Central Mountain. His element is earth and his color is yellow. 4th Lunar Month 14th day. Immortal Lii Tung-pin. Also known as the Lord of Pure Yang. The patriarch of all internal-alchemical sects, and deliverer of humanity from illusion and suffering. 18th day. Tzu-wei Shing-chim (Star Lord of the Star of Purple Light). The Lord of the North Star, ruler of all stars. 5th Lunar Month 5th day. Ch’ii-Yuan. Sage, poet, and patriot of the Ch’u of the Spring and Autumn Period. Author of the Ch’u-tzu (Songs from the Land of Ch’u). The life and death of Ch’u Yuan are remembered by Dragon Boat races and this feast day is known as the Dragon Boat Festival. 6th Lunar Month 1st day. Wen-ku and Wu-ku Stars (the Lords of the Scholar and Warrior Stars of the Northern Bushel). Rulers of destiny and the patron of scholars and warriors. 23rd day. Ling-pao T’ien-tsun (T’ai-ch’ingor Great Pure One). The second of the embodiments of Lao-tzu and ruler of the domain of T’aichi. 7th Lunar Month 7th day. Hsi Wang-mu (Mother Empress of the West). Keeper of the gateway to immortality. Recommends and confers immortality. 15th day. T’i-kuan (Officer of Earth). Also known as the Ruler of the Middle Season (chung-yiian). Subordinate of the Jade Emperor, he is responsible for pardoning wrongdoings. 8th Lunar Month 3rd day. Tsao-chiin (the Kitchen Lord). The Kitchen Lord is responsible for watching and recording the deeds of people in their homes. He is the keeper and guardian of the stove and the flame. The Kitchen Lord ascends to the celestial realm to report to the Jade Emperor twice a year. Length of life of individuals is evaluated each time a report is made. 10th day. Pei-yiieh Ti-chiin (the Emperor of the Northern Mountain). Same duties as the Emperor of the East, except that he is guardian of the gate to the underworld in the Heng-shan (Shansi), the Northern Mountain. His color is black and his element is water. 9th Lunar Month 1st through 9th day. Descent of the Northern Bushel Star Lords to Earth. On each of these days, a star from the Northern Bushel Constellation visits the mortal realm to grant happiness, longevity, and prosperity to persons bom under their guardianship. Each person is said to be born under one of the Star Lords. If a person has accumulated good deeds, the guardian star will grant life and prosperity. 1st. Descent of the North Star Lord. The North Star rules over the Seven Stars and grants reward and retribution. An incarnation of the Jade Emperor. 9th day. Tou-mu (the Mother of the Bushel of Stars). She is the origin of the stars. Her two eldest children are the North and South Pole Stars. The patron of medicine, internal alchemy, and all healing arts. 10th Lunar Month 14th day. Fu Hsi. Patron of all the divinational arts. 15th day. Shui-kuan (the Officer of Water). Also known as the Lord of the Last Season (hsia-yiian). He is responsible for protecting people from misfortune. 11th Lunar Month 6th day. Hsi-yiieh Ti-chun (the Emperor of the Western Mountain). Same duties as the other Emperors of the Mountains as keeper of the gate to the underworld in Hua-shan, the Western Mountain. His color is white and his element is metal. 11th day. T’ai-i T’ien-tsun (Celestial Lord T’ai-i). He is responsible for delivering both living and dead from suffering and has the power to summon the dead souls and spirits of the underworld. He is said to have transmitted the liturgical Festival of Chung-yiian (All Souls Festival) to humanity. 12th Lunar Month 16th day. Nan-yiieh Ti-chiin (the Emperor of the Southern Mountain). Same duties as the other Emperors of the Mountains as guardian of the gate to the underworld located in Heng-shan (in Hunan) in the south. His color is red and his element is fire. 24th day. Kitchen Lord ascends to the celestial realm. At the end of the year, the Kitchen Lord reports our deeds to the Jade Emperor. Training in the Celestial Teachers primarily involves learning the rites, rituals, and liturgies of ceremonies. Tire student begins training by being initiated into the sect, and when training is completed, the initiate is ordained into the priesthood. The sect is not a monastic order, however: its priests are allowed to marry and lead a family life. I had the chance to watch Celestial Teachers festivals in Taiwan. The ceremonies are extremely complex and a single ritual can last hours. The leaders, musicians, and chanters perform the rituals from memory, which, even for one ceremony, entails memorizing long lists of names of deities, procedures, and hundreds of pages of liturgy. Tire performance of the ceremonies must be flawless because any mistake will break the bond between humanity and the sacred powers. Many internal-alchemical sects incorporate ceremony into their practice. These include the Lung-men (Dragon Gate) sect of the Complete Reality School, and the Hsien- t’ien Tao (Earlier Heaven Way) sect, which claims its lineage through the Patriarch Celestial Dragon of Hua- shan. However, these sects are not really devotional sects: they follow the path of Internal Alchemy, the Way of Transformation. For internal alchemists, ceremony is a method of cultivating internal energy and transforming body and mind. Chanting opens up blockages in the throat, where two important pathways of energy meet. It also moves internal energy through the jaws and up the face to the head. The sounds of the chant are designed to resonate with each internal organ, and the speed of chanting affects the movement of the diaphragm and breathing patterns. For example, fast chanting is designed to fan the rapid fires of the lower tan-t’ien; slow chanting is designed to draw the heat of the lower tan-t’ien slowly through the body. Ritual, too, is incorporated into the techniques of internal transformation. The prostrations, bows, and walking patterns are designed to open blockages in the spinal column and move energy from the base of the spine to the top of the head. In addition, the alternation of kneeling, standing, prostrating, and bowing is an excellent way to strengthen tendons and bones, maintain flexibility and mobility, and keep the energy flowing. Further Words on Ceremonial Taoism Ceremonial Taoism is the Way of Devotion. Through devotion, a bond is formed between humanity and the sacred. The performance of a ceremony is a sacred act that seals a promise between humanity and the powers. The welfare of an individual, a community, and even a nation depends on the impeccability of the performance of a ceremony. The rituals are rites of renewal, and the ceremony is a sacred occasion in which humanity and deities come together to ensure that peace and harmony are maintained in all the realms of existence. Further Readings Book 2 of Henri Maspero’s Taoism and Chinese Religion presents an account of the major and minor Taoist deities and contains brief descriptions of rituals associated with ceremonies for the major ones. However, some of Maspero’s accounts of the status of some deities are questionable; for example, he states that nowadays the T’ai- i Tati is a “petty god” and is not considered as an important deity presiding over the realm of the dead. Tlris is incorrect. One has only to attend the Festival of All Souls (Chung-yuan) in any region of China, Taiwan, or Hong Kong to find that T’ai-i Ta-ti is given the title of T’ai-i T’ien-tsun and is the most important deity honored in that festival. There are good descriptions of Taoist festivals in two of Michael Saso’s books—in chapter 1 of Taoism and the Rite of Cosmic Renewal and chapter 7 of Blue Dragon, White Tiger. For material about Chinese cultural rites, see chapters 4, 5, and 6 in Blue Dragon, White Tiger. Several chapters in Kristofer Schipper’s The Taoist Body are especially pertinent in understanding Ceremonial Taoism. In chapter 2 he discusses the everyday beliefs of popular religion; in chapter 3 he discusses the notion of divinity and deity in Taoist beliefs; in chapter 4 he describes practices of local cults and the nature of priesthood in the Celestial Teachers sect and the nature of sacred scripture; and in chapter 5 he discusses the nature of Celestial Teachers rituals. Note that Schipper’s account of Ceremonial Taoism is based on his experience with the Celestial Teachers tradition and should not be taken to represent the practices of all Taoist sects. Ceremonies differ widely among sects. Further accounts of Taoist deities can be found in Livia Kohn’s The Taoist Experience. See reading #8, “Gods and Goddesses”; #45, ‘Celestial Garb”; and #46, “Tire Administration of Heaven.” 10 Internal-Alchemical Taoism The Way of Transformation Internal-Alchemical Taoism is the Way of Transformation. Reborn in the union of the yin and yang energies, purified by the rising vapor, and tempered by the fires of the furnace, the internal alchemist emerges from the cauldron to be reunited with the primordial Breath of the Tao, the source of life. Basic Ideas of Internal Alchemy 1. Before we were born, we were a part of the Tao. Formless and undifferentiated from the Tao, we were not subject to birth and death, and growth and decay. In this state, there is no form, no mind, no body, no sense, and no feeling. 2. When the generative energies of father and mother come together, energy from the Tao is drawn into the womb of the mother to form a fetus. The fetus represents a break, or separation, from the Tao: it has taken a form and is no longer undifferentiated from the Tao. However, enclosed in the mother’s womb, the fetus has not made contact with the mortal world. Its energy is thus still pristine. 3. As the fetus grows in the mother’s womb, it continues to differentiate and develop. When its form is complete, it exits the mother’s body to become a separate entity. In its first contact with the world, its internal energy is separated into three components: generative (ching), vital (ch’i) and spirit energy (shen). Simultaneously, mind and body begin to move away from each other. 4. As the infant grows from childhood to youth and adulthood, the three energies are dissipated. Generative energy leaks out with sexual desire; vital energy is lost with the development of emotions; and spirit energy is weakened with increased activity in the mind. 5. The ordinary person does not know that the leakage of the energies is the cause of ill-health, old age, and death. 6. The practice of internal alchemy begins with realizing that the leakage of energy is the cause of many physical and mental problems in life. Through internal transformations, energy that we were endowed with before birth can be recovered. We can attain health and longevity and return to the original undifferentiated state to be reunited with the Tao. 7. Longevity is recovering health and slowing down the aging process, and immortality is releasing the spirit to be reunited with the Tao when the body-shell dies. 8. Thus, longevity is a means to immortality, and prolonging life in the mortal realm gives us time to prepare to leave it in the proper way. Major Symbols in the Language of Internal Alchemy Taoist internal alchemy uses symbols and metaphors to describe internal transformations. Although some variations exist in the interpretation of the alchemical terminology, there is general agreement among contemporary practitioners on the meaning of the key symbols. Below is a list of the most commonly used alchemical terms and a brief explanation. The Three Treasures are also known as the Three Flowers and the Three Herbs. Urey are the three internal energies in the body. When we emerge from the womb, the undifferentiated energy of the Tao is split into three components, ching, ch’i, and shen (see above). These energies are described as treasures because they are the foundations of health and longevity. Lose these energies and we lose health and life; gather and circulate them and we live a long and healthy life. The Furnace, the Cauldrons, and the Tan-t’iens (Elixir Fields) are fields of energy in the body. Tire furnace, or stove, is in the lower tan-t’ien, or the lower elixir field. In the body, the lower tan-t’ien is in the region of the navel. There the fires needed for refining the internal energies are ignited. This is wiry this area of the body is called the furnace. There are three cauldrons—lower, middle, and upper— and each is associated with one of the three tan-t’iens. Tire lower cauldron, or lower tan-t’ien, is where generative energy is gathered, stored, tempered, refined, and transmuted into vital, or breath, energy. Tire middle cauldron, or middle tan-t’ien, is where vital energy is gathered, stored, tempered, refined, and transmuted into spirit energy. In the body, the middle tan-t’ien is in the region of the heart and the solar plexus. Tire upper cauldron, or upper tan-t’ien, is where the spirit energy is gathered, stored, tempered, refined, and merged with the primordial vapor of the Tao. In the body, the upper tan-t’ien is situated between the eyebrows. Although the tan-t’iens have physical locations in the body, they emerge only when certain stages of the alchemical process are reached. Each tan-t’ien is controlled by a gate. Tire gates are located along the spinal column. In the physical body, the lower gate is located in the spinal column between the kidneys, the middle gate is in the area of the spine between the shoulder blades, and the upper gate is in the area where the spine enters the skull. Tire gates are closed if there are blockages in the channel (the tu meridian) that runs up the spinal column. Thus, the gates control access to the tan- t’iens. Opening the gates allows the tan-t’iens to emerge and the three energies to be gathered, refined, and transmuted. Tire Golden Pill or Golden Elixir is the Great Medicine. Tire Golden Pill is the product of compounding the generative, vital, and spirit energies after they have been refined. It is the primordial vapor of the Tao inside the body, as well as our connection to the energy of the outside cosmos. It is the energy that gives us health and life, and it is the key to the return to the Tao. Tire emergence of the Golden Pill or Golden Elixir is sometimes called “the Three Flowers gathering at the top of the head.” Tire Firing Process refers to the adjustment of the fires in the lower tan-t’ien for refining and tempering the internal energies gathered in the three cauldrons. Yang fire refers to fast breathing and it is used to direct the fire to the middle and upper tan-t’iens. Yin fire refers to soft, slow breathing and it is used to incubate the internal energy. Knowing when to apply fast and slow fires is crucial in internal alchemy. As in cooking and in preparing herbs, the substances will be burned if too much heat is applied, or will be undercooked if the heat is insufficient. The Immersion of Fire in Water is also described as “using k’an to complete li.” K’an is water and li is fire in the scheme of the pak’ua. The trigram for k’an is EE and for li is EE. Using k’an to complete li means taking the solid line (yang component) in the k’an trigram and exchanging it with the broken line (yin component) in the li trigram to make the trigrams of ch’ien (sky) = and k’un (earth) == which are, respectively, solid yang and solid yin. In the internal-alchemical process, the immersion of fire in water refers to the vital energy sinking from the middle tan-t’ien and the vapor of heated water (generative energy) rising from the lower tan-t’ien. It is in this interaction of fire and water that the generative energy is refined and vital energy is transmuted. Tire result is the emergence of a new substance, called vapor (ch’i, not ch’i, breath ). Tire Copulation of the Dragon and Tiger refers to the union of the yin and yang energies in the body. Tire dragon is yin energy and the tiger is yang energy. Tire union of yin and yang occurs at many levels. Tire back of the body is yang and the front is yin; the left side of the body is yang and the right side is yin; the upper part of the body is yang and the lower part is yin. Unification of yin and yang energies therefore entails dissolving all blockages and barriers that separate the front and back, left and right, and upper and lower parts of the body. When the blockages in the body are dissolved, the yin and yang energies will meet in the three cauldrons. Their union in the lower tan-t’ien is called the “dragon and tiger swirling in the winding river”; in the middle tan-t’ien it is called “the sun and moon reflecting on each other in the Yellow Palace”; in the upper tan-t’ien it is called the “the union of husband and wife in the bedchamber.” The Golden Raven and the Jade Rabbit are also symbols of the essence of yang and yin. Tire Golden Raven is the vapor of the sky and the Jade Rabbit is the vapor of the earth. When the Raven descends and the Rabbit leaps up, it signifies that a channel is open and the vapors in the crown of the head and in the abdomen can circulate. This is sometimes called the meeting of the Golden Boy and the Jade Maiden. It is a sign that the Microcosmic Orbit is open. Tire Microcosmic Orbit is also known as the Waterwheel. Tire waterwheel moves the internal energy, or the waters of life. On one level, it refers to directing the flow of generative energy from the abdomen to the head; on another level, it is the flow of energy within the Microcosmic Orbit—a circuit that runs from the base of the spine to the top of the head, down the front of the body, and back to the tailbone of the spine. Two meridians make up the Microcosmic Orbit. Tire tu meridian begins at the base of the spine in a cavity called the wei-lu, ascends the spinal column, and ends at the palate, in the mouth. Tire jen meridian begins where the tu meridian ends and descends the front of the body to form a circular pathway, joining the tu meridian at the wei-lu. Circulation of energy in the Microcosmic Orbit is called the Microcosmic Circulation or the Lesser Celestial Movement. There are three possible directions of flow of energy in the Microcosmic Orbit. One direction is clockwise: the flow is up the tu meridian at the back and down the jen meridian in front. Here, the generative energy is refined for the transmutation of vital energy and the vital energy is refined for the transmutation of spirit energy. This returns the generative energy to the head. A second direction of flow is counterclockwise: the flow is up the jen meridian and down the tu meridian. Here, the vital energy is created and nourished by spirit energy and the generative energy is created and nourished by vital energy. In the higher levels of cultivation, the flow of internal energy in both directions is simultaneous. A third possible direction is letting the energy flow out of the body. This is leakage. Leakage occurs through the orifices of the body (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, genitals, and anus). Tire causes of leakage are a weak constitution, injury, and craving. Hie Macrocosmic Orbit is a circuit that consists of the Microcosmic Orbit plus the pathways that flow down the legs to the soles of the feet. Circulation of energy through this pathway is called the Macrocosmic Circulation or the Greater Celestial Movement. Hie circuit of energy begins at the base of the spine, goes up to the Point of All Gatherings (chung-hui) at the top of the head, down the front of the body, through the legs, and enters the soles of the feet at the Bubbling Spring Cavity (yung-ch ’iian). From there, the energy goes up the legs to return to the base of the spine. Hie Nine Circulations of the Golden Pill refers to the circular and spiral motion of the internal energy in the body. Hie Golden Pill is the culmination of the transmutation of the generative, vital, and spirit energies. Hie Golden Pill is also the Immortal Fetus, the seed of the original spirit (yiian-shen). Hiis bundle of undifferentiated primordial energy tumbles in the tan-t’iens and spirals around the body. Nine is the number of completion, and nine also describes the cycle and the period of time required for the energy to complete one circuit. Hie minor cycle takes three hours plus three quarter-hours to complete and the major cycle takes nine hours plus nine quarter-hours. Hius, the Nine Circulations of the Golden Pill describe the movement of the primordial energy of the Tao in the body. Hie Immortal Fetus is the undifferentiated primordial vapor of the Tao that is produced when the transmutations of the three energies are complete. Initially a seed, it grows and develops in the lower tan-t’ien as a fetus grows in a womb. As it matures, it ascends the body and emerges from the top of the head, as energy is liberated from the body. Hiis energy will eventually become reunited with the energy of the cosmos when the human shell dies. Steps in the Alchemical Process Practitioners of internal alchemy divide the process of transformation into stages, and the alchemical work performed at each stage serves as the foundation for the next stage. Sects differ on the emphasis of training in each stage, but in general they agree on what is accomplished in each step of the alchemical process. THE LOWER STAGES! BUILDING THE FOUNDATIONS External strengthening, or wai-chuang, works on the external structure of the physical body. In this stage, muscles, ligaments, and tendons are softened, joints are articulated, the spinal column is aligned, and bones are strengthened. Alchemical transformations are both physical and mental, and without the changes in the skeletal structure, changes in consciousness, energy, and spirit cannot occur. External strengthening therefore prepares the student for later stages of training. External strengthening is the first step of training in internal-alchemical sects that focus on cultivating body before mind. Techniques of external strengthening include tendon-changing (i-chun), massage (an-mo), yoga-like ch 7- kung postures, calisthenics, and internal martial arts such as t’ai-chi ch’uan (see chapter 13 for a discussion of these techniques). Tire goal of this part of training is to revitalize the skeletal system and attain external health. Internal strengthening, or nei-chuang, works on the internal structure and functions of the physical body. Once the skeletal system is sufficiently strong, work on the internals begins. This means massaging the internal organs, enhancing the circulation of blood, and stimulating the nervous system. Massaging the internal organs and stimulating the nervous system are accomplished by moving the spine. Since the spine is attached to the internal organs by a series of muscles deep within the body, gentle movement of the spine will shake the organs and massage them. Some forms of internal martial arts and calisthenics have been designed specifically for this purpose (see chapter 13). Hie goal of this part of the training is to revitalize the internal functions of the body and attain internal health. This is normally the second stage of training for sects that focus on cultivating body before mind. Refining the mind , or lien-hsin, includes stilling the mind, cultivating quietude, minimizing desire, living in simplicity, and becoming uninterested in excitement and sensual stimulation. Meditation is the typical technique used in this stage of training. Meditation can take the form of quiet sitting or standing, or involve physical movement like t’ai-chi ch’uan and walking meditation (see chapter 12 for a discussion of different methods of Taoist meditation). Changes in lifestyle and attitude are important in this stage of training: the student is required to minimize activity and lead a life of quietude and stillness. For sects that focus on cultivating mind before body, this is the first step of training. Once the mind is stilled and attitude and lifestyle have changed, the body is cultivated with techniques of external and internal strengthening. For sects that focus on cultivating body before mind, this is the last step in building the lower foundations of the alchemical work. THE MIDDLE STAGES: TRANSFORMING INTERNAL ENERGY From here on, training in all sects of internal alchemy follows the same sequence. Refining generative energy for the transmutation oj vital energy. This stage of internal alchemy, lien-ching- hua-ch 7, focuses on gathering, refining, and transforming generative energy. In the physical body, the work is concentrated in the abdominal area around the lower tan- t’ien and the lower gate. In the mental domain, the work involves regulating and minimizing sexual desire. Generative energy, or ching, is produced and stored in the lower tan-t’ien. Generative energy is drained from the body when it is used in procreation or when sexual pleasure is aroused. When generative energy exits the body, it is transformed from its pristine state into its mundane or contaminated state. The first step in this stage of the alchemical work is to stop the leakage of generative energy by regulating sexual activity and desire. This allows the ching to be gathered and refined. External and internal health also facilitate the cultivation of generative energy. Tire production of generative energy is typically faster for people who are young and strong, slower for those who are old and weak; thus, some schools of internal alchemy have turned to methods of sexual yoga to enhance the collection of generative energy. Such methods are recommended for people who have problems producing this energy themselves. Sexual alchemy is not without its risks. When generative energy is gathered from a partner, no desire or pleasure must be present, or the energy will be dissipated rather than collected. Once sufficient generative energy is gathered, it must be refined. This is the next step, and involves starting the fires of the furnace in the lower tan-t’ien. The furnace, or stove, is powered by water or generative energy. When the generator starts, heat is produced in the lower tan-t’ien. In internal alchemy, the term for this is the birth of yang. With the furnace in place, the next step is to set up the cauldron in the lower tan-t’ien. Tire cauldron is the container where the generative energy is collected, refined, tempered, and stored. Access to the lower cauldron is controlled by the lower gate, located in the spinal column between the kidneys. When the lower gate is open, the lower cauldron emerges and the generative energy can be refined. In traditional alchemical language, the term for the process described in this paragraph is positioning the furnace and setting up the cauldron. Regulation of the fires of the furnace is the key to refining generative energy. As mentioned earlier, refining energy is like working in the kitchen. If the fire is too hot, the food will burn; if there is insufficient heat, the food will be undercooked. Moreover, applying the right amount of heat at the right time is critical. If hot fires are applied when warm fires are required, or vice versa, food and herbs will suffer. Tire heat of the furnace is adjusted by regulating the breath. Tire movement of the diaphragm controls the depth of breathing and the capacity of the lungs determines the volume of breath. Thus, the entire respiratory system is called into play in the firing process. This is wiry it is important to develop and transform the structure and function of the body in the early stages of internal alchemy. While refining is in progress, the cauldron must be sealed so that the energy will not leak out. This means that openings where the energy can dissipate must be closed. Any arousal of sexual desire will drain the energy from the body. Thus, while the internal herbs are gathered and refined, the senses must be still and sexual desire must be minimal. Tire refinement of generative energy culminates with the transmutation of the ching into vapor. When the vapor rises to the middle tant’ien, the phenomenon is called the blossoming of the Lead Flower. Refining the vital energy for the transmutation oj spirit energy. This stage of internal alchemy, lien-ch 7- hua-shen, focuses on gathering, refining, and tempering vital energy. In the physical body, the alchemical work is concentrated in the middle tan-t’ien, or heart region. In the mental domain, this stage involves regulating emotions and moods, because vital energy is drained by emotional fluctuations. Vital energy in the form of vapor, or ch’i, rises to the middle tan-t’ien after it has been transmuted from refined generative energy. There it is collected, refined, and tempered. Access to the middle tan-t’ien is controlled by the middle gate. When this gate is open, the middle cauldron emerges, and refinement of ch’i can begin. When alchemical work is focused on the middle tan-t’ien, the fires of the furnace in the lower tan-t’ien must be pumped to higher levels. This requires an even more effective respiratory system, because the breath has to be drawn to higher regions of the body. Once the ch’i is refined, it must be stored. This requires sealing the cauldron of the middle tan-t’ien. At this point, the practitioner must be free from mood swings and emotional changes. Negative emotions such as anger, fear, sadness, and frustration are especially detrimental to the cultivation of vital energy. Tire transmutation of vital energy culminates in the emergence of refined ch’i. When the refined ch’i rises to the upper tan-t’ien, the phenomenon is termed the blossoming of the Silver Flower. At this time, the pathways of energy between the lower and upper parts of the body are connected, and refined ch’i can move up and down the body in the Microcosmic and Macrocosmic Orbits. THE FINAL STAGES: COMPLETING THE ALCHEMICAL WORK Refining the spirit energy for the return to the Void. In this stage, lien-shen-huan-hsu , the refined ch’i rises to the upper tan-t’ien and is transmuted into spirit energy. In the physical body, this part of internal alchemy focuses on the upper tan-t’ien, which is located between the eyes. In the mental domain, it involves emptying the mind of thoughts, dissolving the duality of subject and object, and being in a state of total emptiness. The completion of the refinement of spirit energy is termed the blossoming of the Golden Flower. At this time, all three energies in their purified form rise to the top of the head and merge to become one undifferentiated energy. This alchemical achievement is termed the Three Flowers gathering at the top of the head. Tire return of the three energies—generative, vital, and spirit—to their original undifferentiated state is the emergence of the seed of the Tao. This undifferentiated vapor descends to the abdomen to form the immortal fetus. As with a physical fetus, the immortal fetus needs to be incubated in the body. As the immortal fetus develops, it churns, moves, tumbles, and grows big in the belly of the internal alchemist. Tire incubation period is termed the ten months of pregnancy, because it resembles the development of a fetus in a mother’s womb. At this stage of training, the practitioner must be secluded in a quiet place and not be distracted. If a wrong step is taken, the immortal fetus will be lost. During the ten months of incubating the immortal fetus, the practitioner continues to gather, refine, and circulate internal energy to nourish the fetus. Hie physical and mental health of the internal alchemist are of utmost importance, and great care must be taken to ensure that both the immortal fetus and the body that carries it are given proper nourishment. Cultivating the Void to merge with the Tao. In this stage, lien-hsiiho-Tao, when the period of incubation is complete, the immortal fetus emerges from the womb. It is now called the original spirit (yiian-shen). The maturation of the yiian-shen is likened to the growth of an infant to childhood, youth, and adulthood. As it matures, the yiian- shen leaves the lower abdominal area and enters the chest where it is fed by internal energy and bathed in vapor. Internal alchemy calls this stage the Three Years of Breast¬ feeding. Eventually, the yiian-shen rises to the head and exits the body at the top of the head. Hie yiian-shen begins to travel, leaving the body that had sheltered and nourished it. Initially the journeys are short; like a youth, it frequently returns to the shelter of home after its travels. However, with time, the yiian-shen will make longer and longer journeys, traveling to different realms to learn how to make its way back to the Origin. Hiis is the education of the yiian-shen, as it prepares itself for the moment when it will leave the shell permanently. When the physical body dies, the yiian-shen is liberated and is once again merged with the undifferentiated energy of the Tao. This is the final stage of internal alchemy—returning to where we were before we were born. Approaches to Internal Alchemy While internal alchemists agree on general principles and the stages of transformation, they differ in the use of techniques. These differences have led to the rise of sects and programs of training that are sometimes conflicting. There are two major approaches to internal alchemy: the Singular Path and the Paired Path. THE SINGULAR PATH Tire Singular Path is so named because the practitioners achieve their alchemical transformations without taking energy from a sexual partner. At the core of the Singular Path is the belief that internal energy, especially generative energy, is gathered and cultivated by regulating sexual activity and minimizing sexual desire. Practitioners of the Singular Path believe that the ingredients of immortality as well as the equipment for alchemical transformation are entirely contained within one’s own body. Therefore, it is not necessary to use a sexual partner’s body as a source of energy or a vehicle for alchemical transformation. Celibacy is not required by the Singular Path (except in some sects, such as the Lung-men sect of the Complete Reality School), but it is recommended that advanced practitioners refrain from sexual activity to conserve internal energy. Of the sects that follow the Singular Path, some focus equally on cultivating body and mind (for example, the Hsien-tien Tao and the Wu-Liu sects); some emphasize cultivating the body (for example, the Wu-tang-shan sect), and some emphasize cultivating the mind (for example, the Lung-men sect). Today, one can learn the basic techniques of the Singular Path (such as meditation, calisthenics, and ch’i-kung) without being initiated into a sect. However, the highest level of internal alchemy is taught only to those who have made a lifetime commitment to a program of spiritual training within a particular sect. THE PAIRED PATH (SEXUAL ALCHEMY) In the Paired Path, sexual techniques are used to accomplish alchemical transformations. Tire practice of Taoist sexual alchemy, rarely understood, has been sensationalized and abused. Sexual alchemy has been a part of Taoist internal alchemy since the times of Wei Po-yang in the second century ce. It is different from the “bedchamber techniques” that advise the correct management of one’s sexual and energetic resources. While the bedchamber techniques are methods for making the best use of sexual energy, sexual alchemy is designed to gather generative energy for the transmutation of ching into ch’i. Taoist sexual alchemy is a technique for cultivating health and longevity It is not a pursuit of pleasure. Pragmatics, not ethics or pleasure, govern its practice. Even in the seventh century bce, it was known that the decay of health was associated with the loss of ching, or generative energy. Thus, medical treatises such as the Huang-ti nei-ching (Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine) counsels that the conservation of ching is the key to health and longevity. Herein lies the paradox of the role of sexual techniques in cultivating longevity. If sexual activity leads to the loss of generative energy and health, how can health be gained by using techniques that involve sex? Tire answer to this paradox lies in the act of sex itself. If sex is used to satisfy the desire for pleasure, it drains generative energy and is detrimental to health. On the other hand, if sex is used to gather energy from a partner to replenish one’s own generative energy, it can enhance longevity. How can one use sex to gather generative energy? Tire Taoist texts of sexual alchemy state that generative energy is produced in sexual arousal. However, if the arousal ends in ejaculation or orgasm, generative energy is dissipated from the body and lost. Thus, to conserve generative energy, one must be sexually aroused but not emit the procreative substance. In fact, in sexual alchemy, tremendous self-control needs to be exercised to turn the energy back into the body just before an ejaculation or an orgasm is about to occur. Moreover, sexual alchemy can be used to absorb generative energy from a partner. In this procedure, the practitioner is instructed to find partners who are strong, healthy, and youthful. This ensures that the generative energy gathered will be of high quality. Generative energy can be absorbed by withdrawing one’s energy when the partner reaches the climax. This timely act will absorb the partner’s energy and direct one’s own energy back into the body. Needless to say, in this procedure one gains energy at the expense of the partner. The practice is not limited to men who use women to gain generative energy; women can also use the male seminal fluid to replenish ching by withholding the orgasm at the appropriate time. Clearly, there is nothing romantic about Taoist sexual alchemy. Tire texts of sexual alchemy repeatedly warn practitioners not to be emotionally involved in the sexual act and to view the partner simply as a useful source of energy. Tire optimal way to gather energy from a partner is to have as many different sexual partners as possible. And, the healthier the partner, the more energy one can absorb. In the sexual act, there is no love, no pleasure, and no desire. This view is quite different from some contemporary views of Taoist sexual yoga that present the Paired Path as a way of strengthening the bond of love between two people. In the classics of sexual alchemy, this illusion is dissolved quickly. Although labeled as a “crooked path” by internal alchemists of the Singular Path, sexual alchemy had always been a part of the Taoist arts of longevity. Practiced by the early alchemists, it was seen as one of the many techniques of longevity. It was practiced by the Shang-ch’ing Taoists in their religious rituals and by internal alchemists of the Sung dynasty (for example, by Chang Po-tuan), who regarded it as a pragmatic way of gathering generative energy, especially for those who are no longer young and healthy. In Taoist internal alchemy, sexual yoga is a means only for gathering generative energy for the transmutation of vital energy. Sexual yoga will help the practitioner in the intermediate stage of internal alchemy, in which ching is gathered, refined, and transmuted. It will not take the practitioner to the advanced stages. In fact, internal alchemists acknowledge that ching gathered from a partner is mundane ching and must be refined before it can be transmuted into vapor, or ch’i. For the serious practitioner of sexual alchemy, the timing of the gathering is extremely important. Gather too much and too often, and the mundane ching will become stale or even turn toxic in the body. In closing, it must be said that the practice of sexual alchemy is not without its risks. To do it properly, one needs the guidance of a teacher, and because traditionally these techniques have been practiced in secret, it is difficult to find a bona fide teacher. Moreover, to practice sexual alchemy, one must be totally free from sexual desire. Otherwise, the efforts of gathering energy will result in the loss of one’s own energy. Further Words on Internal-Alchemical Taoism Internal-Alchemical Taoism is one the most rigorous paths of spiritual training. If the practice of Magical Taoism is likened to playing with fire, the practice of Internal- Alchemical Taoism is like climbing a cliff. The guidance of a teacher is needed for this path of spiritual training. Books, video, and audio tapes cannot replace a teacher. Without constant feedback and a systematic program of training, the practice of internal alchemy can be dangerous. Asingle wrong step can result in internal injuries. Hie process of alchemical transformation can be long. Building the lower foundations is extremely important, and a student may spend many years working on external and internal strengthening. One cannot expect to circulate energy if blockages exist in the body, or if the mind is active and excitable, or if the senses are stimulated. Even within Chinese society, the practice of internal alchemy has been guarded; around it, there has often been an air of secrecy. Teachers do not accept students lightly, and an attempt to find an appropriate teacher cannot be rushed. Although it is viable to have several teachers, this is not advised in the early stages of training. It is easier to follow one program of training while building the lower foundations. Also, at the lower and the middle stages of internal alchemy, some techniques are mutually exclusive, or even conflicting. For example, choosing the Singular Path will exclude you from using sexual alchemy, and vice versa. To repeat an earlier warning: the practice of internal alchemy requires a lifetime of commitment. It is not simply a matter of taking some lessons in ch’i-kung or meditation. Practicing meditation, ch’ikung, or calisthenics will no doubt enhance your health, give you inner peace, and help you cope with problems in your everyday life; it is not, however, synonymous with training in internal alchemy. The goal of internal alchemy is more than attaining physical health and mental well-being. It is a way of preparing the body and mind to return to the Tao when your time in the mortal realm is over. Further Readings Selections of internal-alchemical writings from the Taoist canon can be found in Livia Kohn’s book The Taoist Experience: Energies and Elixirs (reading no. 30) Alchemical Transformation (no. 41) The Inner Elixir (no. 42) Gradual Dissolution (no. 43) Lu Kuan Yu has translated a modern classic of internal alchemy, Hsin-ming fa-chueh ming-chih (Tire Secrets of Cultivating Essential Nature and Eternal Life) lire author of the original text, Chao Pi-ch’en, was a member of the Lung-men sect. Although Lu Kuan Yu’s translation, titled Taoist Yoga, is a manual of internal alchemy, it is suggested that you do not use it as such. It is dangerous to practice internal alchemy without guidance. There are some inaccuracies in the glossary of this book: in the description of the Eight Meridians (p. 194), for example, yang-yu and yin-yu are not arm channels but leg channels. Lu seems to have confused the Twelve Vessels with the Eight Meridians, lire Heart and Lung Vessels run down the yin side of the arm, and the Large Intestine, Small Intestine, and Triple Heater Vessels run down the yang side of the arm. For an overview of the Eight Meridians and Twelve Vessels, see any textbook or manual of traditional Chinese Medicine. A short treatise on internal alchemy titled Yii-huang hsin-yin miaoching (Tire Jade Emperor’s Profound Mind- Seal Classic) has been translated by Stuart Olson, who also provides a commentary and explanation of the concepts of internal alchemy. Do not assume that the commentary is the definitive explanation of the text. Olson’s title is The Jade Emperor s Mind Seal Classic. An internal-alchemical interpretation of the Ch ’ing- ching ching (Cultivating Stillness), by an anonymous nineteenth-century commentator who is influenced by the teachings of the Hsien-t’ien Tao sect, can be found in my book Cultivating Stillness. There are two translations of the controversial T'ai-i chin-hua tsung-chih (The Secret of the Golden Flower). One is by Richard Wilhelm, who rendered the text into German, which was then translated into English by Cary F. Baynes. Tire other is a more recent translation by Tiro mas Cleary, The Secret of the Golden Flower. Tire text is controversial even among practitioners of Taoist internal alchemy. Generally considered to be a text influenced by the Complete Reality School, its authorship has been linked to Immortal Lii Tung-pin, anonymous Lung-men practitioners, and even the followers of Wu Chung-hsii, of the Wu-Liu sect. I agree with Cleary that Wilhelm’s translation is inaccurate and is based on an incomplete Chinese text. Moreover, I find the Wilhelm-Baynes version too biased by Jungian psychology. Cleary’s translation is from the complete text of the T'ai-i chin-hua tsung-chih, but he presents it as a text that interprets internal alchemy as the transformation of mind, similar to the contemplative type of internal alchemy taught by Liu I-ming. How should these teachings be interpreted? Herein lies the controversy of the text and its power. It is a text with multiple levels of meaning, and depending on the orientation of an individual’s Taoist training and understanding of internal alchemy, it can be read in different ways. Tire best way to clear up some of the misunderstandings about the branch of internal alchemy that uses sexual yoga is to look at original texts of sexual yoga and not rely on secondary sources or modern interpretations. This topic is frequently misunderstood and the practices are abused. You can find these texts translated by Douglas Wile in a book titled Art of the Bedchamber: The Chinese Sexual Yoga Classics Including Solo Meditation Texts. At certain stages of development, the practice of internal alchemy is different for men and women. Wile’s translation includes some texts describing techniques of internal alchemy for women. 11 Action and Karma Taoism The Way of Right Action The sacred powers reward those who do good deeds and punish those who do unethical deeds. This belief forms the core of Action and Karma Taoism. Of all the systems of Taoism, the teachings of the Action and Karma School are the least esoteric. They are concerned with issues in everyday life and the ethics of right action, without which higher levels of spiritual development would not be possible. Historical Predecessors of Action and Karma Taoism Historians credit the founding of the Action and Karma School to a book written by Li Ying-chang titled T’ai- shang kan-yingp ’ien (Lao-tzu’s Treatise on the Response of the Tao). The book was published during the Sung dynasty and its popularity inspired a movement in Taoism that brought the practice of Taoist spirituality out of hermitages, temples, and monasteries to the ordinary person who lives and works in society. Although the Action and Karma School dates back only to the twelfth century ce, its teachings are rooted in traditional Chinese beliefs. Tire origins of the teachings lie in the notion that acts of goodness are in harmony with the Celestial Way (the Will of Heaven) and that acts of malevolence are opposed to the Celestial Way. Thus, committing an unethical act is a transgression against the Celestial Way as well as against humanity. With the emergence of Taoism as a philosophy, the Tao, or the Way, which is the law of the universe, became equated with the traditional idea of the Celestial Way. When Taoism was then developed into an organized religion, deities became the judges of human actions, giving rewards and meting out punishment according to the amount of merits and demerits accumulated. Ideas of reward and retribution were present in Taoist thought as early as the Eastern Han dynasty. The T’ai-p 'ing ching states, “Accumulate good deeds, and prosperity will come to you from the Tao.” These ideas are further developed by Ko Hung, the great alchemist of the fourth and fifth centuries ce. In his P’ao-p’u-tzu (Tire Master Who Embraces Simplicity), Ko Hung writes: Those who wish to live the fullness of life must accumulate good deeds, be kind to others, practice charity and have compassion even for the creatures that crawl. They must help the poor, harm no living thing, rejoice in the good fortune of others and share in the suffering of others. They must utter no curses, look on the failure and success of others as their own, harbor no jealousy of their betters and conceal no unethical intentions behind good speech. In this way, they embody virtue and receive rewards from the deities. (From chap. 6, P’ao-p’u- tzu) These words would be echoed eight hundred years later in the T’ai-shang kan-ying p 'ien, the book that launched Action and Karma Taoism: If you are in harmony with the Tao you will advance.... Be kind and compassionate to all things. Be dedicated in whatever you do. . . . Help orphans and widows. Respect the old and care for the young. Do not hurt trees, grass, and insects. Share in the suffering of others. Delight in the joys of others. Help people in desperate need. Save people from harm. View the good fortune of others as your good fortune. View the losses of others as your own loss. (From chap. 4, T’ai-shang kan-yingp ’ien) Of retribution, Ko Hung says: When you interfere with another person’s property, your wife, children, and other members of your household may suffer the consequences. Their lives may even be shortened. And if your wrongdoing does not bring death upon your family, they may suffer from floods, fires, burglaries, and other disasters. Therefore, the Taoists say that whenever a person has been killed wrongfully, vengeful killings will follow. Wealth gotten through unethical actions will lead to resentment. (From chap. 6, P’ao-p’u-tzu) Ko Hung took the ideas of reward and retribution further by drawing a relationship between health and longevity and ethical behavior. Good actions can “starve out” monsters in the body that cause illness, whereas wrongdoings will encourage their development. In this way, an individual’s thoughts and actions can affect health and longevity. The Chi-sun-tzu chung-chieh ching (Master Red Pine’s Book of Discipline), believed to have been written between the third and fourth centuries ce, has in it a sophisticated system of thinking on reward and retribution. It presents a logic and explanation for the occurrence of fortune and misfortune and describes the role of deities and spirits in rewarding and punishing humanity. It also mentions the Spirit of the Hearth, or Kitchen Lord, who ascends to the celestial domain to report the good and bad deeds of humanity, and it links the destiny of individuals to the Celestial Lord of the North Pole Star, a belief that is central to Action and Karma Taoism. By the time of the Sung dynasty, the ideas of reward and retribution were firmly established in Taoist thinking. In the Yun-chi ch ’ich 'ien (Seven Bamboo Strips of the Cloud- Hidden Satchel), a collection of Taoist knowledge compiled in early Sung, health and longevity, fortune and misfortune, were clearly the consequence of an individual’s actions. Not long after the publication of this compendium of Taoist knowledge, Li Ying-chang’s T’ai-shang kan-ying p 'ien appeared and inspired a school of Taoist thought that is still widely practiced today. Principal Beliefs in Action and Karma Taoism 1. Good deeds bring reward and wrongdoings bring retribution. For every action, there is a response from the Tao. Thus, the T’aishang kan-ying p ’ien says that ‘Yeward and retribution follow us like shadows.” 2. Reward can come as wealth, prosperity, fame, success, achievement, and having filial descendants. Punishment can come as poverty, failure, disgrace, and having unfilial children. However, what makes the Action and Karma School different from Buddhism or even the traditional Chinese beliefs is that rewards can be health and longevity as well as wealth and prosperity, and retribution can be illness or shortening of the life span as well as poverty and misfortune. 3. There are deities and spirits whose job it is to monitor the deeds of each person. As noted in the chapter on Ceremonial Taoism, the Kitchen Lord is one of them. This guardian of the hearth reports the deeds of each member of the household to the Jade Emperor at the end of each year. Moreover, each person is born under the guardianship of one of the seven stars of the Northern Bushel (Big Dipper). On the first and fifteenth days of each lunar month, the first nine days of the ninth lunar month, and on the individual’s birthday, the guardian star deity will report the deeds of the individual to the Jade Emperor. Finally, there are the three monsters who reside in the body who also report an individual’s wrongdoings to the Jade Emperor. 4. lire good and bad deeds of each individual are tallied, and the Jade Emperor, who is the Director of Destiny, rewards or punishes each person accordingly. Those who have done more good deeds than bad ones will be rewarded with prosperity, good health, and a long life; those who have done more bad deeds than good will have their life span shortened or have misfortunes given to them. 5. Reward and retribution can carry over to family and descendants; therefore, the actions of one generation affect the destinies of future generations. 6. Thoughts have as much leverage in determining reward and retribution as actions. Thinking an unethical thought is equivalent to doing an unethical deed. 7. Repentance can redress the wrongs that have been done, if the individual keeps the promise of refraining from doing unethical deeds in the future. The Significance of Action and Karma Taoism in Taoist Spirituality Action and Karma Taoism is nonmonastic, nonpriestly, and nonsectarian, but its teachings are adopted by many Taoist sects. For example, the T’ai-shang kan-ying p 'ien, the foremost scripture of Action and Karma Taoism, is studied by initiates of the Complete Reality School, the Hsien-t’ien Tao sect, and the Wu-Liu sect. All the schools of Taoism—Magical, Ceremonial, Divinational, and Alchemical, as well as modern practitioners of internal alchemy—view ethics and right action as the foundation of spiritual development. To those who do not wish to be affiliated with any sect, Action and Karma Taoism offers a moral code and a method of cultivating health and fulfilling spiritual needs. Since this school does not require a temple or monastic environment for the transmission of its teachings, it is the most accessible form of Taoism practiced today. Most importantly, Action and Karma Taoism brings the teachings of the Tao to daily living and defines what it means to walk the path of the Tao while we are in the mortal realm. Further Readings Hie T’ai-shang kan-ying p 'ien is generally regarded as the text that launched Action and Karma Taoism. You can find a translation of this text and stories that were inspired by the Kan-ying p 'ien in my Lao-tzu s Treatise on the Response ofTao, which also contains a detailed discussion of the history of the Action and Karma School and the influence of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Chinese folk religion on its teachings. PART THREE TAOTST PRACTICES 12 Meditation Taoists use meditation to cultivate health and longevity and to attain the highest level of spiritual development, the union with the Tao. In the early stages of spiritual development, meditation is used to clear the mind, minimize desire, balance the emotions, and circulate internal energy. In the later stages, it is used to help the practitioner to be united with the Tao, the undifferentiated origin of all things. Forms of Taoist Meditation For many people, all forms of meditation are alike. Practice one and you’ve practiced them all. However, different spiritual traditions have different approaches to meditation, and not only are Buddhist and Hindu forms of meditation different from the Taoist, but even within Taoism there are different kinds of meditation. Different sects practice different styles of meditation, and within the same sect the form of meditation changes as one progresses in practice. There are twelve kinds of Taoist meditation practiced today. Urey are summarized briefly below in twelve subsections. THE METHOD OF INTERNAL OBSERVATION Tire Internal Observation method originated in the T’ang dynasty. It is influenced by T’ien-tai Buddhism and is very similar to vipassana meditation. Tire practitioner initially watches and attends to the rise and fall of thoughts, emotions, and sensations. As the practitioner becomes mindful of these phenomena, he will realize that their existence and the problems they generate are caused by the activity of the mind. Were the mind to be still, there would be no problems. The next step is to stop the thoughts, emotions, and sensations before they occur. Once the practitioner becomes adept at watching the rise and fall of mental activities, he becomes familiar with their patterns of occurrence and can anticipate and stop them before they arise. When thoughts, emotions, and sensations are stopped, the mind becomes still. In stillness, it becomes clear. In clarity, it becomes bright—and this brightness is the radiance of the Tao within. The method of Internal Observation does not require the practitioner to focus on anything during meditation; nor are there mantras or visualizations. In fact, the distinct feature of this style of meditation can be described as “the mind is used to defeat the mind.” Through mindfulness and attention to the activity of the mind, the mind becomes empty. There are no specific physical postures associated with this style of meditation, although most practitioners prefer to sit with legs crossed. It is possible to meditate sitting on a chair, or while walking or standing. Since there is very little physical demand, this form of meditation is suitable for people of all physical conditions. Moreover, because the procedures are simple and straightforward, Internal Observation can be practiced with minimal supervision, once you have learned it from a master. Today, this style of meditation is practiced by many people, both Taoist and non-Taoist, who do not have the time or inclination to commit to the more demanding forms of Taoist meditation. THE METHOD OF FOCUSING ON THE CENTER Hie method of Focusing on the Center is sometimes called centering. In this form of meditation, attention to the outside world is gradually withdrawn until the practitioner no longer has attachment to the sights, sounds, and events of the outside world. When the causes of thoughts, emotions, and sensations cease to stir the mind, the mind becomes still, and centering can begin. There are several definitions of the center. Some practitioners regard the Yellow Palace in the middle tan- t’ien, the area around the solar plexus, as the center; others say that the center is intangible and cannot be localized in the body, and that it is the state of mind that intuits the balance or the center of the nature of things, and this balance is the Tao. Unlike the method of Internal Observation, this style of Taoist meditation requires the practitioner to focus on something, although practitioners disagree on what is the focus. It does not require the practitioner to adopt specific physical postures during meditation, however, and thus, like the Internal Observation method, is suitable for people of all physical conditions. THE METHOD OF HOLDING THE ONE Also known as Guarding the One, Holding the One originated in Shang-ch’ing Taoism, where Holding the One refers to keeping the Oneness of the Tao within. In the original Shang-ch’ing practice, Holding the One involved visualizing the various manifestations of Lao-tzu or other deities, which are images of the Tao. These visualizations serve to keep the deities or the guardian spirits within. In modern practice, however, the method of Holding the One no longer requires visualization. Tire key to this meditation lies in dissolving the duality between the self and the world so that oneness can be attained. In the early stages, the practitioner first stills the mind and body so that no thoughts, emotions, or sensations arise. Once the stillness is attained, the “mind of the Tao” will emerge. Tire mind of the Tao is consciousness that is rooted in the Tao and sees all things as one. With continued practice, the experience of oneness will take hold, and the union with the Tao is achieved. Hris form of meditation is favored by sects that focus specifically on cultivating the mind. It does not require the practitioner to adopt specific body postures, but during the practice, the body and mind must remain still, for any movement will destroy the experience of oneness. Because this requirement is central to the practice, the physical demands are more rigorous than those of Internal Observation or Focusing on the Center. To maintain physical stillness, the body must be relaxed and the skeletal structure must be strong. Hris style will be difficult for people who do not have the skeletal strength, especially in the spine, to hold the body in one position over a period of time that can sometimes last for several hours. THE METHOD OF STOPPING THOUGHTS AND EMPTYING THE MIND Stopping Thoughts and Emptying the Mind is similar to Zen meditation. Hie practitioner sits in silence and empties the mind of thoughts, desire, and emotions. Unlike Internal Observation, where the mind watches the rise and fall of mental activity, the goal here is to extinguish the mind altogether, without using aids such as visualization, mantra, or even passive observation. To the practitioners of this style of meditation, any activity of the mind, passive or active, is the work of mischief by tricksters and monsters. Therefore, to attain complete emptiness of the mind, the practitioner must cut off all attachments cleanly and abruptly. This form of meditation is used by both the northern branch of the Complete Reality School and the Hsien-t’ien Tao sect in the early stages of spiritual training. Once the practitioner has attained the stillness of mind, other forms of meditation are used to take the practitioner through the intermediate and advanced stages of internal alchemy. THE METHOD OF RECOVERING THE REALMIND In Recovering the Real Mind, the original or real mind is cultivated. Hie real mind is the Tao mind, the consciousness capable of directly intuiting the nature of the Tao. It is sometimes called Original Mind. This method originated in the Complete Reality School. Tire practitioner enters this stage of training after the mind is emptied of thoughts. Freed from the domination of analytic thinking and idle internal chatter, the practitioner can now develop another kind of stillness. In this stillness, not only are thoughts extinguished, but the mind and body begin to develop a natural tendency toward stillness. This development is reflected in everyday life, as the practitioner, unexcited by events, has no desire to stimulate the senses or arouse the mind. Although this method originated in the Complete Reality School, today it is practiced by people who wish to cultivate physical health and mental clarity but do not have the time or inclination to commit to the long and arduous training demanded by internal alchemy. No specific physical posture is required, although many practitioners prefer to sit cross-legged or in the half-lotus yoga posture. It is also possible to do this kind of meditation sitting in a chair. Therefore, this method can be practiced by people of all physical conditions. THE METHOD OF FOCUSING ON THE CAVITIES Focusing on the Cavities requires the practitioner to draw attention away from things external and focus on a certain cavity in the body. Tire main difference between this method and the method of Focusing on the Center is that there is no reference to centering and balance. There are two kinds of focusing. Tire first involves awareness and directing attention to a particular cavity in the body. This kind of focusing is used to calm the emotions, stop stray thoughts, and minimize sensations. In the advanced stages, another kind of focusing, which involves directing internal energy to an area, is practiced. Concentration of energy in an area of the body can be used to break a blockage or gather energy in a tan-t’ien to be refined and transformed. Depending on the stage of spiritual development and the practitioner’s health needs, different cavities are focused on. For example, in the early stages, the focus is directed to the cavity known as the Life Gate (ming-men). As the internal alchemical process advances, the lower, middle, and upper tan-t’iens become, in turn, the point of focus. Sometimes, if a practitioner has a particular problem, more obscure cavities are focused on. Focusing on the Cavities is practiced by sects that use meditation to facilitate internal alchemy. It is favored by the members of the Wu-Liu sect, who view the Life Gate as the key to initiating the process of internal alchemy. Because this method is used to facilitate alchemical transformations, frequent instruction and supervision are required. Also, because this method involves moving internal energy, the proper physical and mental foundations must be built before it can be practiced. Typically, a relaxed body, a strong spine, articulated joints, softened tendons, and a mind emptied of thoughts and desire are prerequisites. The postures are demanding, and the practitioner is required to maintain them for a considerable period of time, so that certain alchemical processes can be completed. This form of meditation is generally not taught to novice practitioners. THE METHOD OF VISUALIZING THE VALLEY SPIRIT In Visualizing the Valley Spirit, the practitioner visualizes an image and then slowly merges with it. This technique is most similar to the original Shang-ch’ing methods of visualizing the images of guardian deities and spirits. It differs, however, from classical Shangch’ing practice in that here the visualizations are not of deities. In this form of meditation, the visualized images include the Kun-lun Mountains (used to channel energy through the spinal column); the Yellow Palace (to gather and transform vital energy in the middle tan-t’ien); the Sea of Energy, or ch ’i-hai (to light the fires of the internal stove and gather and transform generative energy in the lower tan-t’ien); and, ultimately, the Valley Spirit (to gather and transform spirit energy in the upper tan-t’ien). Visualizing the Valley Spirit is the highest stage in this type of meditation. This style of meditation is rarely practiced. I know of no major Taoist sect that practices this form of meditation. THE METHOD OF EMPTYING THE MIND AND FILLING THE BELLY Emptying the Mind and Filling the Belly is another method used in facilitating internal alchemy. Emptying the mind is letting the fires of desire sink, and filling the belly is letting the abdomen be filled with energy. Taken together, the dual process is called immersion of fire in water. Sinking the fires of desire is minimizing attachment to objects, be they material things, thoughts, or emotions. Filling the belly is cultivating and storing energy in the lower tan-t’ien. Tire latter can be accomplished by controlling the breath, by taking energy from a partner in sexual alchemy, or by absorbing the essences of the sun, moon, and mist. This form of meditation is usually practiced in combination with other techniques. It requires formal instruction and supervision, and should be attempted only if the practitioner is ready to make a long-term commitment to Taoist internal alchemy. THE METHOD OF UNITING INTENTION WITH BREATH Of all the forms of Taoist meditation, Uniting Intention with Breath is the one most linked to patterns of breathing. In the early stages, the practitioner focuses on the movement of the breath, sometimes counting breaths and sometimes just paying attention to inhalation and exhalation. Initially, the breathing follows a normal pattern, and the practitioner simply uses it to focus the mind. Once the mind is focused and detached from the outside world, the pattern of breathing will begin to change. This change is not under the conscious control of the practitioner; rather, it is a function of the state of mind. When the mind is still, breathing will slow down and become soft and deep. This is called fetal breathing because it resembles the breath of the fetus inside the womb. When yin reaches the height of its development, yang emerges. Thus, when the mind has attained complete stillness, it will be set in motion. This movement is not ordinary mental activity directed toward objects in the world, but an intention with a purpose. Called true intention (chen-i), this intention is capable of moving internal energy. When intention moves, energy is circulated; when it is still, energy is gathered and stored. In even more advanced levels of development, the duality between the practitioner and the universal energy of the Tao is dissolved. When there is no separation between inside and outside, there will be only one breath, and this breath is the Breath of the Tao, the source of life. The practitioner is breathing not just with nostrils, lungs, diaphragm, or even with the tan-t’iens; the entire body is one breath, rising and falling with each inhalation and exhalation as the practitioner becomes the Breath of the Tao. Sometimes this method of Taoist meditation is mistakenly equated with ch’i-kung breathing exercises. Ch’i-kung works with tangibles and manipulates substances that have form, such as breath and internal energy. The method of Uniting Intention and Breath works with the formless, for the Breath of the Tao is intangible. There is no active manipulation or direct control of the movement of breath; rather, different patterns of breathing emerge as a result of changes in an individual’s state of mind. Therefore, we can say that Uniting the Mention and Breath is a method that uses meditation to transform breath and internal energy. This form of meditation is difficult to practice, because it is hard to tell whether one is trying to control the breathing or letting it happen. Therefore, this method should be practiced only under constant supervision, making it suitable only in a monastic type of situation. THE METHOD OF GATHERING AND CIRCULATING THE LIGHT OF THE SPIRIT Gathering and Circulating the Light is described in the controversial T’ai-i chin-hua tsune-chih text . It is divided into two stages: gathering the light of the spirit and circulating the light. Before the light of the spirit can be gathered and circulated, it must be born and developed. Spirit is the original spirit (yiian-shen), or the immortal fetus; thus, this method is used only in advanced stages of internal alchemy. To let the original spirit emerge, the knowledge spirit (shih-shen) must be tamed. Tire knowledge spirit is the mischievous, analytical, scheming mind. It is attached to worldly things and is responsible for violent mood swings, and thus prevents us from seeing the Tao. To cultivate the original spirit, one must first overcome the knowledge spirit and then use it to help the original spirit to develop. Simultaneously the practitioner must prepare her body for conception of the immortal fetus. This involves strengthening and softening the skeletal system, regulating all the functions of the body, and gathering, conserving, and transforming generative, vital, and spirit energy. In other words, the lower and intermediate stages of internal alchemy must have been completed (see chapter 10) before the original spirit can emerge. When the immortal fetus is conceived, original spirit is born. Initially, the light of the original spirit is dim, and the practitioner has only a vague experience of its presence. As the original spirit is nurtured by internal energy, it becomes strong and its light brightens. When the original spirit is fully developed, the practitioner is bathed in a golden light. Light emanating from the body is then gathered and drawn within. With time, the light becomes less dazzling and takes on a soft but radiant glow. This is the time for circulating the light. At first, the circulation follows set pathways: inside, it follows the meridians; outside, it hovers around the practitioner. In the advanced state, the circulation does not follow any pathway but is diffused throughout the body, spreading like smoke. This also happens outside the body, as the practitioner feels that he or she is enveloped by a diffused golden light. This form of meditation is typically practiced by sects affiliated with the Complete Reality School. Since the method of Gathering and Circulating the Light is practiced in the highest levels of spiritual training, it is not possible to learn it without building the proper foundations of internal alchemy. In Complete Reality training, this form of meditation is taught only to the highest initiates. THE METHOD OF DRAWING THE LIGHT INWARD Drawing the Light Inward is another form of meditation practiced in advanced stages of spiritual development. After the foundations of internal alchemy are complete and the original spirit is developed, the practitioner uses this method to nurture it. During meditation, the practitioner gathers the light into three spots when he or she experiences a light hovering around. The spot on the top is drawn into the area between the eyes. This region is also known as the third eye, the upper tan-t’ien, or the Mysterious Cavity. Tire spot in the lower left is drawn into the left eye, and the spot in the lower right is drawn into the right eye. In this way, the lights of the sun, moon, and stars are united with the light inside, and the barrier between the internal universe of the practitioner and the external universe of the cosmos is dissolved. As the light enters the practitioner, the body becomes weightless and the mind becomes clear and empty. When filled with the light, the bones, muscles, tendons, and internal organs are nourished by the primordial energy of the Tao. Body and mind are renewed, and in a state of bliss and ecstasy, the practitioner is merged with the timeless and undifferentiated state of the Tao. Tire method of Drawing the Light Inward is used by internal alchemical sects that have synthesized Complete Reality and Shangch’ing practices. Since this method is practiced in advanced stages of spiritual training, it is not available to novice practitioners. Moreover, as a technique of internal alchemy, it requires formal instruction, frequent supervision, and a lifetime of commitment and discipline. THE METHOD OF RETURNING TO EARLIER HEAVEN Tliis method is exclusive to the Hsien-t’ien Tao sect. It consists of seven stages. In each stage, a specific area of the body is focused on and transformed. The seven cavities, in their order of focus, are: 1. The lower cavity. This is the center of the lower tan- t’ien. Specifically, the focus is on a spot three Chinese inches (about two and a half inches) below the navel. 2. The front cavity. This is the Sea of Ch’i, or ch’i-hai. Hie cavity is one and one-half Chinese inches below the navel. 3. Hie back cavity. Hiis is the Life Gate, or ming-men. It is a position on the spinal column between the kidneys and is an important junction in the tu meridian. 4. Hie middle cavity. Hiis is the center of the middle tan-t’ien. It is also known as the Central Palace (chung-t’ing), or ''fellow Palace, and is at the solar plexus. 5. Hie upper cavity. Hiis is the center of the upper tan- t’ien, between the eyes, called the Bright Hall (ming- t’ang). Hie sequence 1 through 5 is used to open the Microcosmic Orbit. 6. Hie lowest cavity. Hiis is the Bubbling Spring, or yung-ch’iian, a cavity located in the sole of the foot. When the practitioner has completed this stage in the training, the Macrocosmic Orbit is opened. 7. Hie Mysterious Gate. This is also called the Earlier Heaven Gate, the Gate of the Limitless, or wu-chi, and the Original Cavity. It has no form and does not exist if the practitioner has not reached this stage. This cavity materializes only when the original spirit is conceived, and it is the gate to the union with the Tao. In Hsien-t’ien Tao meditation, stages 1 through 6 are involved with form and action. Hie cavities are areas in the body that can be localized and focused on. Stages 1 through 6 are called Later Heaven (kou-tien) Meditation, after the separation of sky and earth, because they work on a body and mind that are separated from the Tao. In stage 7, the practice is not tied to form or action. Hie cavity cannot be localized and there is no focus. Stage 7 is called Earlier Heaven (hsien-t’ien) Meditation, before the separation of sky and earth, because it works on a mind and body that are connected with the Tao. Other than focusing on the cavities, the Hsien-t’ien Tao method of meditation also requires the practitioner to adopt specific body postures. Hiese include sitting cross- legged, in single (half) lotus, and in double (full) lotus. Hiere are also hand positions, including putting the palms on the knees or holding them together to form a t’ai-chi pattern. One of the most difficult positions in this form of meditation involves supporting the body with the knuckles of both hands while the body is in full lotus and elevated above the ground. All in all, the postures of Hsien-t’ien Tao meditation are the most rigorous, because the sect places equal importance on the cultivation of body and the cultivation of mind. Further Words on Taoist Meditation Many people practice meditation for mental relaxation and the reduction of stress. Some practice it to cultivate spiritual sensitivity, enhance physical health, and prolong life. However, Taoist meditation is not only a technique of health and longevity; it is a tool for attaining a union with the Tao, of which health and longevity are the by-products. Today, one can learn Taoist meditation for health and relaxation without being initiated into a Taoist sect or having to commit to a lifetime of training in internal alchemy. Twelve methods of Taoist meditation have been described in this chapter. Instruction in the first five is often given in weekend courses or at seven-day retreats. These methods are relatively safe to practice on your own, once you have been given formal instructions. However, it is advisable to attend follow-up courses, to receive feedback. Hie final seven methods described are used to take the practitioner to the highest levels of development in Taoist spirituality. These forms of meditation are usually practiced together with techniques that strengthen the skeletal system and regulate the internal physiology. Only those who are ready to commit to a rigorous and disciplined program of training should consider learning these forms of meditation. Initiation into a sect is usually required, and constant supervision from a teacher is necessary. Hie practice of Taoist meditation requires commitment, patience, and discipline. Hie physical, mental, and spiritual benefits of meditation can occur only when the practitioner accompanies practice with the appropriate lifestyle and attitude. Further Readings Although some of the following readings on Taoist meditation are written as instruction manuals, do not use them as such without the guidance of a teacher. Two chapters in Lu Kuan Yu’s The Secrets of Chinese Meditation discuss two forms of Taoist meditation. Chapter 5 describes a style of meditation attributed to Yin- shih Tzu, a twentieth-century Taoist practitioner. Chapter 7 describes a form of Taoist meditation that uses quiet sitting together with breathing exercises to accomplish the Microcosmic Circulation. Lu’s book is useful in comparing Buddhist and Taoist forms of meditation, as he discusses Zen and T’ientai meditation in other chapters. Livia Kohn has two chapters on Taoist meditation in her Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques. “Guarding the One: Concentrative Meditation in Taoism” contains a thorough discussion of the meaning of Holding the One in Shang-ch’ing Taoism; ‘Taoist Insight Meditation” gives a good introduction to the nei-kuan (inner observation) or ting-kuan (concentrative observation) type of meditation. Hie chapter on insight meditation also contains a translation of a nei-kuan classic T’ai-shang lao-chun nei- kuan ching (Lao-tzu’s Treatise on Internal Observation). Another classic treatise on nei-kuan, Ssu-ma Ch’eng- cheng’s Tsowang lun (Sitting in Oblivion), is translated in Kolin’s The Taoist Experience (reading 31, “Observing Life”). 13 Techniques for Cultivating the Body In Taoist practice, cultivating the body is integral to spiritual development. Union with the Tao is not possible without physical health. Urere are also practical considerations for cultivating the body. Strength and flexibility in the muscular and skeletal systems and a healthy internal physiology are required for advancing into the higher levels of Taoist spiritual training. The procedures used for cultivating the muscular and skeletal systems are known as techniques of external strengthening; those used for cultivating the internal physiology are called techniques of internal strengthening. Below is a brief discussion of the most commonly used Taoist methods of external and internal strengthening. Be advised that it is not safe to practice these techniques or similar ones without formal instruction from a qualified teacher. Techniques of External Strengthening TENDON-CHANGING The most effective method of strengthening the muscular system is tendon-changing (i-chin). Translated literally, i-chin means transforming or changing the tendons. In traditional Chinese physiology, chin include ligaments, muscles, fascia, nerve fibers, and the soft tissues in the body. Tendon-changing therefore means transforming both the surface and deep structures of the muscular system. The goal of tendon-changing is to recover dynamic movement in the muscles, ligaments, and tendons. A soft tendon is a strong tendon; a relaxed muscle with a good supply of blood is a healthy muscle. A soft and relaxed muscular system can respond faster than one that is hard and tense. Tendon-changing methods typically involve alternating stretching with letting go. With repeated practice, the tendons, ligaments, muscles, and tissues will regain their dynamic buoyancy. Moreover, techniques of tendon- changing are also designed to rotate the joints and introduce movement to muscle groups not used in normal everyday activity With time and practice, the muscles, tendons, ligaments, and fascia will become soft and bouncy, and the skin will be shiny and rosy. Circulation of blood in the muscular system will be enhanced, and the healing of cuts and bruises will be facilitated. M ARROW-WASHING The premier method of strengthening the bones is marrow-washing (hsi-sui). Marrow-washing refers to three processes: cleansing the marrow, regulating marrow content in the bones, and changing the shape and structure of the bone. Cleansing the marrow is replacing unhealthy marrow with healthy marrow. The result is like that in a marrow-transplant, but in marrow-cleansing the replacement is the result of processes occurring within the body. Regulating marrow content in the bones is balancing the calcium content so that calcium is neither concentrated nor deficient. Changing the structure of the bone involves changing the shape of the bone to optimize its load-bearing capacity and softening the bone to protect it from fracture. All marrow-washing exercises begin with applying the correct amount of pressure to the bones and joints. Specific movements are used to control the pressure exerted on the bones. Tire movements are typically slow and smooth and require relaxation and control. To do the exercises of marrow-washing, the muscle groups, tendons and ligaments must be strong, and the joints must be articulated. A seldom-known technique of changing bone structure involves grinding and hitting the bones. Here the joints and bones are rubbed and knocked against surfaces so that they are pushed into the desired position and shape. Needless to say, these movements require precise execution, or injuries can occur. When marrow-washing is complete, the bones will be soft, and when pressure is applied to them, they will give way like a sponge. Tire amount of calcium in the bones will be regulated, and the bones will get bigger and heavier. Techniques of Internal Strengthening Tire goal of internal strengthening is to improve the health of the internal organs, increase the efficiency of the physiological systems, and enhance the circulation of internal energy. REGULATING BREATH Breath sustains life, and proper breathing can enhance health and prolong life. In general, regulating the breath refers to breathing without conscious control or awareness, and directing the breath refers to conscious control over the movement of the breath and the rate of breathing. In the Taoist arts of cultivating the body, there are nine patterns of breathing: nostril breathing, mouth and nostril breathing, mouth breathing, natural abdominal breathing, reverse abdominal breathing, perineal breathing, tortoise breathing, fetal breathing, and breathing with the entire body. In nostril breathing, the mouth is closed and the nose is used for both inhalation and exhalation. This kind of breathing generally occurs during meditation in which stilling the mind is the object of the practice. It is a soft and slow kind of breathing. In mouth and nostril breathing, the mouth is closed during inhalation and air is let in through the nose. In exhalation air is let out through the mouth. This kind of breathing generally occurs in meditation associated with lighting the fires of the lower tan-t’ien. In mouth breathing, the mouth is used during both inhalation and exhalation. This kind of breathing occurs when breathing through the nose is difficult or not possible. In general, it is recommended only for individuals who have respiratory problems that prevent use of the nostrils. Abdominal breathing is deep breathing. The air is channeled into the abdominal area and the entire trunk of the body is involved in the breathing. This kind of breathing requires much diaphragmatic action. Moreover, the internal organs must be pliable enough to move out of the way when the diaphragm presses down to let the air sink into the belly. Deep abdominal breathing should occur naturally and without effort. If forced, abdominal breathing can cause injuries. Natural abdominal breathing, reverse abdominal breathing, tortoise breathing, and fetal breathing are all types of abdominal breathing. In natural abdominal breathing, the belly expands during inhalation and presses in during exhalation. In reverse abdominal breathing, the belly presses in during inhalation and expands during exhalation. Tlrese two kinds of breathing occur at intermediate stages of internal alchemy and are usually associated with fanning the fires of the lower tan-t’ien and tempering the internal energies in the upper, middle, and lower tan-t’iens. In perineal breathing, the area around the perineum rises up during exhalation and drops down during inhalation. Ilris kind of breathing is associated with the Microcosmic and Macrocosmic Circulations, and acts to pump the internal energy through the two circuits. In tortoise breathing, the breath is so light that it is almost nonexistent. Called tortoise breathing because it resembles a tortoise’s way of breathing when the animal is inside its shell, such breathing occurs naturally at advanced stages of internal alchemy. It is said that the tortoise lives a long life because of this form of breathing. Fetal breathing is the combination of tortoise breathing and abdominal movement synchronized with inhalation and exhalation. It is named after the manner in which a fetus breathes inside the womb. This kind of breathing also occurs at advanced stages of internal alchemy and is typically associated with the conception and nourishment of the original spirit, or immortal fetus. Finally, there is breathing with the entire body. This is the most advanced form of breathing and it occurs when the practitioner is at the highest stage of spiritual development, in union with the Tao. When the entire body is involved in breathing, the number of inhalations and exhalations is minimal. The duration of each cycle is long: initially, there will be sixteen to twenty cycles per minute; in the most advanced levels, there will be only three to four cycles per minute. DIRECTING BREATH In directing the breath, the practitioner guides the flow of breath in the body, initiates fast or slow breathing, and concentrates on the act of inhaling and exhaling. However, the control is never forced: it is the intention that initiates and directs the movement of breath. Once such control sets in, breathing becomes natural. The most elementary method of directing the breath is to become aware of the breath by counting the number of inhalations and exhalations while breathing. This technique is generally used to stop stray thoughts or draw the mind away from what is happening outside; however, this method should be abandoned once the mind is focused, or the practitioner can become too dependent on an active process in quieting the mind and will never attain the true stillness of nonaction. An intermediate form of directing the breath involves holding the breath for a period of time before expelling or inhaling it. This method is similar to some forms of breath control found in yoga. This technique is used to allow the breath to reach every part of the body and be absorbed into the deep tissues, internal organs, and bones before the dead air is expelled. Needless to say, this kind of breath control requires a strong diaphragm and an efficient respiratory system. Without such strengths, there will be insufficient oxygen intake during inhalation, and holding the breath will produce more harm than benefit. The most advanced form of directing the breath is to let the intention guide the breath—a method known as tao-yin (literally, guiding and directing). When the mind is empty of thoughts, true intention emerges. In Taoism, true intention originates from the original spirit and has a direction and purpose. In this method, the practitioner initiates the intention and lets it guide the movement of the breath. Once the intention is initiated, there is no conscious control. The movement of the breath follows opened pathways in the circulatory system and flows naturally in the body. For this technique to work properly, the mind must be clear and emptied of thoughts, and the body must be relaxed and positioned in an appropriate posture. Tire elementary stages of this method require the practitioner to sit cross-legged. Tire more advanced techniques call for half-lotus and full-lotus positions. Tire intention and the breath can be directed to several locations in the body, the destination depending on the stage of training. Tire three gates along the spine, the three tan-t’iens, or energy fields, the Bubbling Spring at the sole of the feet, the Golden Gate (an acupuncture point at the ankles), and the Point of a Hundred Gatherings (po-hui) on the head are typical locations to which the breath can be channeled. Typically, when blockages in the gates must be opened, breath and intention are directed to those areas. When the internal fires of the stove are lit and generative energy is collected and refined, intention and breath are directed to the lower tan-t’ien. Similarly, intention and breath are directed, as required, to the middle and upper tan-t’iens when alchemical work is performed on the vital and spirit energies. ch’i-kung postures Ch’i-kung postures are designed to facilitate the circulation of internal energy (translated literally, eh 7- kung means the work of internal energy). Although many people consider breathing exercises, stretching exercises, and meditation as forms of ch’i-kung, traditional Taoist practice understands ch’i-kung as the natural flow of internal energy in the body when certain physical and mental conditions are present. Quieting the mind and moving the diaphragm do not necessarily imply circulation of energy, although they can help the practitioner build the foundations for it. Internal energy (ch’i) can circulate only when certain physical and mental conditions are met. These prerequisites are built by external and internal strengthening and are developed over a period of years. In the Taoist arts of cultivating the body, certain physical postures can be used to kick-start the circulation of energy or to facilitate and maintain the flow. These are called ch’i- kung postures. However, if the foundations of external and internal strengthening are not built, the kick-start and the maintaining mechanisms will not work. There are many ch’i-kung postures; the most basic and important are those that are incorporated into the daily activities of sitting, standing, walking, and sleeping. Thus, cultivating the body can occur in every facet of life. Sitting postures. Tire sitting posture is the most common ch’ikung posture. There are several forms. Tire practitioner can sit upright on a chair, with the upper body straight and relaxed. Tire eyes are open but not focused. Tire legs are placed in front and the palms are relaxed and resting on the lap. In natural cross-legged sitting, the practitioner sits on a flat surface or on a cushion folding the legs in a natural way. The body is upright and straight and the hands are placed on the knees or are clasped together near the navel. In half-lotus sitting, the practitioner sits cross-legged with one leg in lotus position (that is, the leg is brought up to the opposite thigh in such a way that the sole of the foot is turned up). In full-lotus sitting, both legs are in the lotus posture. The palms of the hands are placed on the soles of the feet. Standing postures. In the free-standing posture, the practitioner stands balanced, with equal weight on both legs. The feet are parallel and the legs are straight, but the knees are not locked. The body is straight; the eyes are open but not focused; and the arms dangle along the side of the body. There are several arm positions in the standing posture. In the hands-pressing-down posture, the practitioner stands as in the freestanding posture except that the arms are positioned in front. Common arm positions are holding the circle (that is, the arms curl in); bending at the elbow, as if holding a large ball; straightening the arms in front of the body and pressing down with the palms; and positioning the hands as if they are holding a small round object in front of the body. The walking posture. In the walking posture, the body is straight and upright and the shoulders are relaxed. In walking, one foot is placed forward, heel first. The foot is rolled down, allowing the weight to shift from the heel to the middle of the foot. When the weight is spread equally across the sole, the foot rolls again to shift the weight to the toes. Simultaneously, the heel of the other foot contacts the ground and the weight is rolled from the heel to the rest of the foot. The first foot is then lifted off the ground to begin the next step. Hie cycle is repeated. Hie most important thing about the walking posture is that the walk should be as natural as possible. Sleeping postures. Hiere are several kinds of sleeping ch’i-kung postures. Most of them originate from Chen Hsi- yi. Hie most common ones are lying on the back, lying on the side, and lying semiinclined. When lying on the back, in bed, the practitioner lies flat, with arms and legs relaxed and spread out. Hie eyes can gaze upward or be closed. When lying on the side, the upper part of the body is straight and the arm under the body is hooked upwards. Hie hand of this arm can be placed on the pillow with the palm resting against the face. Hie other arms rests gently on the upper side of the body. Hie leg lying underneath is straight and the other leg is slightly bent. In the semiinclined posture, the practitioner is half-sitting, half inclined on the bed. The upper part of the body rests gently against the head of the bed. Both legs are stretched out and the arms rest gently on the legs. All these ch’i-kung postures affect the circulation of internal energy. If the tendons and muscles are soft and the circulatory pathways are open, these postures will facilitate the flow of energy; if the tendons are contracted and the pathways blocked, the postures can injure the muscular and skeletal systems or the internal organs. Therefore ch’i- kung postures should be learned and practiced only under the supervision of a teacher qualified to prescribe the correct posture for the student’s stage of development. ABSORBING ENERGY FROM NATURE Hie primordial energy of the Tao is present in all of nature. Of all the things in nature, it is said that the sun, moon, stars, mist, rocks, and earth have the highest concentration of energy. A person who can absorb energy from these sources will attain health and longevity. The Shang-ch’ing Taoists were the first to describe and experiment with the techniques of absorbing energy from nature. They visualized the images of the sun and moon and directed the rays of the images through the mouth into the body. In Shang-ch’ing practice, this was called ingesting the essence of the sun and moon. Today, people who practice absorbing energy from nature no longer visualize the images of the sun and moon. Instead, they gaze directly at the sun, moon, and stars to absorb the essence of these celestial bodies. In this method, it is assumed that the practitioner has undergone the required alchemical transformation in the sensory organs so that sustained viewing of the sun will not damage the eyes. Gazing at the sun to absorb its essence is very different from watching an eclipse. The very use of glasses, goggles, and the like, prevents the energy of the sun from entering the body through the eyes. Thus, the precautions are different from those for viewing an eclipse; the practitioner must have built the necessary foundations and attained the physiological transformations in the sensory organs if this method is to be practical. Absorbing light from the celestial bodies can replenish spirit energy. This is because when earth and sky were separated in creation, spirit energy, being light, ascended skyward and was collected in the celestial bodies. When absorbing energy from the sun, the practitioner begins by gazing at the sun at sunrise or sunset, when the disk of the sun is just above the horizon. At these times, the rays of the sun are less strong and will not overwhelm the gazer. The advanced practitioner absorbs the essence of the sun when it is strongest, at the zenith. The optimal time for absorbing the essence of the moon is when it is full, and the best time for absorbing the essence of the stars is when the sky is clear and there is no moon. Mist floats between earth and sky and is the vapor of the Tao. It can replenish ch’i if it is absorbed into the body. The Shang-ch’ing Taoists called this eating vapor. Not all mists, however, should be absorbed. There are mists that carry vital energy and mists that carry destructive energy; absorb the wrong kind and one could become ill, or even die. Mist that envelops the land so that the sky is invisible carries positive energy because it connects sky and earth. On the other hand, mist that forms a low bank above the ground is poisonous. This is stagnant mist and it should never be absorbed. Rocks and soil also have high concentrations of energy. When earth and sky were separated in creation, generative energy, being heavy, descended and sank into the ground. Therefore, it is said that absorbing the essence of the earth will replenish generative energy. When absorbing earth energy, the practitioner presses the soles of both feet against the ground, or lies down with the back flat against the ground. Practitioners usually start by absorbing energy from ground covered with grass. The grass acts as a cushion so that the earth energy will not overwhelm the beginning practitioner. With time and experience, the practitioner can absorb energy from bare earth. Eventually the practitioner can absorb energy directly from rocks and stone—the most powerful source of earth energy. Absorbing energy from nature is a method of internal strengthening for advanced practitioners of internal alchemy The barriers between the internal universe of the individual and the external universe of the cosmos must be dissolved before the body can absorb energy from the environment and use it to replenish the energy within. This means dissolving the duality of subject and object and refining the internal energy so that it is as pristine as the energy of the Tao in nature. The sense organs, especially the eyes, must have undergone transformation before they can gaze at the sun and not be damaged. Moreover, the bones must be changed through marrow-washing before they can absorb energy from an external source. In other words, this method is viable only when the lower and intermediate foundations of internal alchemy have been built. If these techniques are practiced prematurely, severe internal injuries can result. Never practice absorbing energy from nature without the guidance of a qualified teacher. Techniques that Work on Both External and Internal Strengthening MASSAGE AND KNEADING In the Taoist arts of health and longevity, massage and kneading are called an-mo (an means pressure and mo means stroking). Today, massage generally refers to pressure being moved around an area; kneading refers to applying pressure to one spot. Pressure can be applied continuously or discontinuously; thus, the techniques include hitting and knocking. Massage and kneading can work on external or internal strengthening, depending on how they are applied. Urey can also be performed by one individual on another or by the individual on herself. When massage and kneading are used for external strengthening, they can relax tight muscles, expand contracted tendons, and soften hardened tissues. They can also be used to align skeletal structure and direct the flow of blood into areas of the body that lack circulation. Although massage and kneading can provide temporary relief from stiffness, they are not effective in producing permanent changes in the muscular and skeletal system; in the Taoist methods of cultivating the body, massage and kneading of the muscular system are therefore always accompanied by techniques such as tendon-changing, marrow-washing, or the internal martial arts. When massage and kneading are used to work on internal strengthening, the results are more permanent. Internal organs can be strengthened by massaging and kneading the surface and deep tissues. Typical areas of the body where moving pressure is applied are the areas around the kidneys and the lower abdomen. Massaging and kneading the three gates along the spinal column can help to open blockages in these areas. One massages the Life Gate between the kidneys to open the lower gate, the area of the spine between the shoulder blades to open the middle gate, and the area where the spine enters the skull to open the upper gate. Other areas commonly massaged to allow energy to flow to the head are the temples, the jaw, and the back of the skull. Sometimes an area of the body is hit or knocked so that circulation can get through. Performed correctly, hitting and knocking send vibrations deep into parts of the body that are not easily accessible. Probably the most famous example of this technique is knocking the teeth together. This is used to loosen the jaw, open the cavities in that area, and send bursts of energy into the head. TAOIST CALISTHENICS Taoist calisthenics are movements that combine stretching, controlled breathing, massage, and kneading. Modern writers have labeled them calisthenics since no technical name had been given to this method by the traditional Taoist practitioners; however, these movements should not be equated with modern calisthenics. Western calisthenics are primarily exercises of stretching, but these traditional Taoist exercises combine stretching and massage with the circulation of energy. To avoid confusion, in the discussion below I shall use the term Taoist calisthenics to refer to exercises that have been developed by Taoists to work on both external and internal strengthening. Tire earliest form of Taoist calisthenics is probably the Five Animal Exercises. Tire five animals—tiger, leopard, dragon, snake, and crane—have external and internal qualities that, if developed in humans, can enhance health and longevity. Tire tiger is valued for its strong bones, the leopard for its dynamic tendons, the dragon for its ability in stretching the spine, the snake for its flexibility in moving the spine, and the crane for its capacity to store internal energy. Tire original set of the Five Animal Exercises was designed by Flua-tuo, the father of Chinese medicine, but was lost when the physician burned his books in the prison of the tyrant Ts’ao Ts’ao in the third century bce. Other forms of the animal exercises were developed by the fang- shih of the Han dynasty. By the time of the Sung dynasty (eleventh century ce), there were Taoist calisthenics based on animal movements, yogic postures from India, and exercises attributed to the immortals. (These can be found in the Chi-feng sui [Red Phoenix Calisthenics], a collection of Taoist exercises originated by Chen Hsi-yi.) Some of these movements are designed to facilitate the circulation of energy; some are used to deal with specific health problems; and others are meant to be practiced at different times of the year to prevent illnesses associated with the change of seasons t figs. 13.1 and 13.21. The body must be flexible and agile for the practice of Taoist calisthenics to be effective. Some movements and postures are quite demanding, and injuries can occur if the body is forced into these positions prematurely. Do not try to learn Taoist calisthenics without the guidance of a teacher. FIGURE 13.1. Taoist calisthenics: “Stretch the arms outward and grab both feet. Count to twelve, then draw the legs in, and stand up—from the Chi-feng Sui (Red Phoenix Calisthenics), a text of the Hsi-yi sect (Yi-men), founded by the followers of Chen Hsi-yi. -fc i/r A 4r ffc it #! f}\ -r- ;w iltL \\ Jk ^ i H i i #. A *0 *t %V 5L & A M 4 jL M> ft « ti.: £ -^r fit JE ^ fi* 8< FIGURE 13.2. Taoist calisthenics: “Stop the breath and hold the fists like a bear. Rotate left and right, keeping the feet steady. Straighten the chest to let the breath move both ways. Hold on tightly and you will hear the joints and bones crack. Repeat this three or five times. This technique exercises the bones and tendons, quiets the spirit, and cultivates energy in the blood”—from the Chi-feng Sui (Red Phoenix Calisthenics), the Bear Posture of Keng-sang. Today, Taoist calisthenics are practiced for general health and to cultivate the body for higher levels of spiritual development. Whatever the application, Taoist calisthenics are most effective techniques for cultivating the body, combining physical conditioning with the circulation of internal energy. INTERNAL MARTIAL ARTS In Taoist spiritual training, the internal martial arts are tools for external strengthening, internal strengthening, and the cultivation of mental focus and stillness. Tire movements in the internal martial arts are usually slow and controlled (hsing-i ch’uan is an exception). Initially, the movements stretch the tendons, articulate the joints, soften the muscles, and improve general circulation. In the intermediate stages, the movements can be used to exercise the spine by rotation and alternating stretching with letting go. When the movement of the spine is articulated and the abdominal muscles and deep tissues are softened, the movement of the spine will massage the internal organs, moving them gently as the spine rotates, expands, and contracts. In the advanced stages, the movements can be tuned to set the tan-t’iens in motion to refine the internal energy. Eventually, the internal energy will circulate in synchroneity with the movements, as the practitioner attains a sense of stillness in movement and movement in stillness. There are four styles of internal martial arts. Tire best known and most widely practiced is t’ai-chi ch’uan (the Ultimate Fist). Less known are pa-k’ua chang (Eight Trigrams Palm) and hsing-i ch’uan (Form and Intention Fist). Hie least known is a system called liu-he pa-fa (Six Harmonies and Eight Methods). Of all these forms, liu-he pa-fa is said to be the most internal because its movements are designed to penetrate the superficial layers of the body and exercise the internal organs. Its movements are rigorous and demanding, and of all the forms of internal martial arts, it is probably the most difficult to learn and practice. Founded by Chen Hsi-yi, the Taoist sage of the Northern Sung dynasty, the liuhe pa-fa system consists of sixty-six movements divided into two halves. The first half focuses on stretching the tendons and articulating spinal movement; the second half uses the movement of the spine to massage the internal organs. The most popular form of the internal martial arts is t’ai- chi ch’uan. Reputed to have been founded by Chang San- feng, the Taoist internal alchemist of the Yuan and Ming dynasties, this set of movements is physically less demanding and does not have the power of liu-he pa-fa in massaging the internal organs. There are many styles of t’ai-chi ch’uan. Some styles focus more on the martial applications; others are more oriented toward health. Be aware of this difference when looking for instruction in this internal martial art. Pa-k’ua chang is a series of movements in which the practitioner walks in patterns of circles. While walking, the spine is straight, the pelvis is sunk slightly into the hip joints, and the knees are slightly bent. Chang means palm: in pa-k’ua chang, the hands are never rolled into a fist. Pa- k’ua chang is an excellent technique for rolling and rotating the spine and exercising the lower spine and the tailbone. Moreover, the circular movements help to develop agility and strength in the lower part of the body, thus allowing the upper part of the body to be relaxed and the internal energy to flow. However, these benefits can occur only when the legs are strong, the pelvic joints are open, and the spine has reached a certain level of articulation. Hsing-i ch’uan is the probably the most martial of the internal martial arts. Involving pounding, thrusting, and hitting with bursts of movement, hsing-i ch’uan often gives the impression that it is nothing but fighting with fists and knuckles. However, the movements of hsing-i ch’uan can train the spine to move in the most intricate ways and the tendons to respond to the slightest change in intention; it thus offers a kind of training not available in the other forms of internal martial arts. The Use of Herbs and Foods Many practitioners of the Taoist arts of health use foods and herbs to supplement their training. The use of herbs and special foods must go hand in hand with the practitioner’s condition of health and stage of spiritual development. If foods and herbs are used inappropriately, internal injuries can occur. In Chinese herbology, herbs can be divided into three main groups: those that have curative properties, those that are used as preventive medicine, and those that facilitate the gathering and circulation of internal energy. Herbs with curative properties are prescribed to counter illness or strengthen the constitution. Urey include herbs that women take to replenish blood and energy lost during childbirth. Herbs that act as preventive medicine can help to maintain general health and strengthen the body’s immune system. As a child I took such herbs regularly. The third group, those that affect the circulation and collection of internal energy, are usually taken in conjunction with a program of spiritual training. These herbs have powerful effects, and should be taken only under the guidance of a teacher or doctor. Some herbs are only suitable when the practitioner has attained both internal and external strength, and others are effective only if the blockages in circulatory pathways are opened. At best, taking the wrong herbs will be a waste of resources, as the body will reject what it cannot absorb. However, some herbs can be harmful if they are ingested inappropriately. Tire best approach to the use of herbs is to consult with the teacher of the program you are studying. Many people are curious about the role of foods in Taoist spirituality. The general rule of thumb is to let the body decide what foods it can take, rather than trying to control diet with preconceived ideas. One of the aims of Taoist training is to cultivate an intelligent body. Once the body has attained an awareness of its health, it will naturally reject foods that are unhealthy for it. Techniques of cultivating the body often require the practitioner initially to expend a lot of energy. It is not uncommon for appetites to increase in the early stages of external and internal strengthening. A practitioner locked into the social conventions about dieting and keeping calories down may not reach the higher stages of spiritual development. With time, however, as the internal physiology becomes more efficient, the body will not need as much food to maintain a healthy level of internal energy. Also, as the body is cleansed and the energies are refined, there is a natural inclination to stay away from meat and fatty foods. Contrary to popular belief, vegetarianism is not required in Taoist practice. The Lung-men sect of the northern branch of the Complete Reality School is one of the few monastic groups to abstain from meat. Almost all of the internal-alchemical sects agree that abstinence from meat should be natural, not forced. On certain feast days, especially during the major festivals of the deities, it is customary to abstain from meat for purposes of purification. The observance of these dietary rules is especially important for practitioners of Ceremonial Taoism. Tire role and meaning of vegetarianism on the feast days will be discussed more fully in the next chapter. Further Readings Some books in this list are manuals on ch’i-kung, Taoist calisthenics, and other types of physical and mental exercise. I recommend them to offer more information on methods of cultivating the body. But if you wish to learn the techniques described in these books, or in this chapter, first get formal instruction from a reliable source. Neither the author nor the publisher of this book is responsible if injury should result from practicing the techniques described. Book 11 in Henri Maspero’s Taoism and Chinese Religion, titled “Methods of Nourishing the Vital in Ancient Taoist Religion,” gives a good historical perspective of the techniques of breath control and regulation, yoga-like ch’i-kung postures, Taoist calisthenics, massage, and assorted methods of internal alchemy. Ch’i-kung as a technique of longevity is discussed in two chapters of Kohn’s collection Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques: “Gymnastics: Tire Ancient Tradition,” by Catherine Despeux, and “Qi For Life: Longevity in the Tang,” by Ute Engelhardt. In the same collection, “Tire Revival of Qi: Qigong in Contemporary China,” by Kunio Miura, gives a brief and clear discussion of modern ch’i-kung practice. Kolm’s collection of translations, The Taoist Experience, has several sections on ch’i-kung postures, regulating the breath, and the use of foods and herbs: Breathing for Life (reading #17) Gymnastics (#18) Drugs and Diets (#19) Translations of some texts of the Taoist canon on breath control and circulation of energy are in the two volumes of The Primordial Breath, by Jane Huang and Michael Wurmbrand. The Essence of T'ai-chi Ch 'nan: The Literary Tradition is a collection of classical and modern treatises on t’ai-chi ch’uan translated by Benjamin Lo. Tire collection includes Chang San-feng’s classic T'aichi ch ’uan ching (Treatise on T’ai-chi Ch’uan) and other short discussions on t’ai-chi ch’uan by anonymous writers and modern t’aichi ch’uan masters. To get a feel for some of the many teclmiques of Taoist calisthenics and yoga-like ch’i-kung postures, see William Berk’s Chinese Healing Arts: Internal Kung-fu. Berk’s book describes each of the forms, including the Seasonal Ch’i-kung Postures, the Five Animal Forms, and the Twelve Devas, and includes a list of herbs and a brief discussion of the theory of Chinese medicine. A description of the basic forms of i-ch’uan is in Y P. Dong’s Still as a Mountain, Powerful as Thunder. I- ch’uan, a form of standing ch’i-kung, is a practice to cultivate body and mind simultaneously; it is also used to enhance the practice of two internal martial arts, liu-he pa- fa and hsing-i ch’uan—thus combining elements of meditation, ch’i-kung, Taoist calisthenics, and internal martial arts. The Taoist arts of longevity being intimately tied to the theories of health and human physiology found in traditional Chinese medicine, I include a recommendation for reading on the topic. Tire best exposition on Chinese medicine is in two ancient treatises; one is translated by Ilza Veith as The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine ; the other is translated by Wu Jing-Nuan as Ling Shu, or The Spiritual Pivot. 14 Rites of Purification. Ceremony, and Talismanic Magic Taoist rites of purification, ceremony, and talismanic magic involve highly ritualistic behaviors. The rituals ensure that the practitioners are in a proper state of mind and body when they encounter the sacred powers. Rites of Purification (Chai) In ancient times, people purified themselves before participating in sacred ceremonies. Purification cleanses body and mind, and makes us worthy to communicate with the powers of the universe. In Taoism, the process of purification is called chai, and the rites of purification became known as the rules of chai in Taoist practice. Today, in the West, many people equate chai with vegetarianism, because the word is now associated with the Buddhist dietary rule of abstaining from meat and with foods served in vegetarian restaurants. In Taoism, however, chai does not simply refer to a diet of vegetarian foods: chai is a set of purification rites that must be performed before the sacred ceremonies are conducted. Some of these rites are older than Taoism, and can be traced back to the days when the shaman-kings of ancient China honored the powers of sky and earth and gave thanks to them at spring planting and autumn harvest. Tire Taoist rites of purification are divided into two categories: those that prepare the participants for the ceremonies and those that purify the ceremonial grounds. Rites in the first category prepare participants in sacred ceremonies by clearing the mind, cleansing the body, and making the spirit ready to merge with the Tao. Purifying the mind includes the practices of seclusion, quieting the mind, and minimizing activity. Tire chai of purifying the body consists of abstinence from sexual activity and observing dietary regulations. Tire most common diet observed in the purification rites is abstinence from meat and dairy products. This form of vegetarianism is only one part of the chai of cleansing the body; other dietary regulations include fasting, inhaling mist and vapor, swallowing the light of the sun, moon, and stars, and feeding on the Breath of the Tao. For the Great Services, or chiao, purification usually begins three days before the ceremonies and continues throughout the festival; for the Ritual Gatherings (fa-hui), purification begins one full day before the ceremonies; for the Feast Day (tan), purification is observed on that day alone. (See chapter 9 for listings of the Taoist festivals.) Some Taoist practitioners, especially the higher-level initiates, observe the rites of purification not only during the major and minor festivals but for several months of the year as well. Taoist practices of purification are never ascetic and practitioners are not forced to commit to long periods of purification in preparation for a ceremony. Tire lay practitioner who wishes to participate in a Feast Day ceremony need only observe the rules of purification for that day, although the more serious participants will begin at sunset the previous day. Participants in the Ritual Gatherings and Great Services—typically higher-level initiates of a priestly or monastic order—are usually prepared to observe the more demanding rites of purification. Even so, only the individuals of highest spiritual attainment, normally those who lead the ceremonies, are committed to the most rigorous forms of purification (the aforementioned fasting, or swallowing the light of the celestial bodies). The chai of purifying the ceremonial grounds involves clearing the negative elements from the area by chanting, lighting lamps, and offering incense and special foods. All ceremonies are preceded by a ritual that purifies everything in the ceremonial area—the altar, the ground, the air, and the people. Rituals of purifying the ceremonial grounds differ among Taoist sects, but the rationale behind them is the same: all are designed to make the environment a suitable place for human beings to meet the sacred powers. Ceremony (Chiaoj Taoist ceremonies are traditionally called chiao. In the early Chou dynasty, the chiao were ceremonies in which the emperor made offerings to the spirits of the sky and earth. Tire two oldest ceremonies were associated with spring planting and autumn harvest. Tire Spring Planting Ceremony was performed in early spring before the fields were plowed. In this ceremony, petitions were sent to the spirits of the sun, rain, clouds, winds, and earth, asking them to bring gifts of sunshine, rain, and fertility. Tire Autumn Harvest Ceremony was performed in the early fall and was a ceremony of thanksgiving. As Taoism became an organized religion, the rituals of these two ancient ceremonies were modified and incorporated into Taoist ceremonies that honored the visits of the deities to the earthly realm. Hie earliest Taoist ceremonies were recorded by the Celestial Teachers in the San-yuan chai (Purification Rites for the Festivals of the Three Seasons). During the Northern Wei dynasty (circa fifth century ce), K’ou Ch’ien-chih, the founder of the northern sect of the Celestial Teachers, revised the old liturgies and added musical notation to them. Around the same time, Liu Hsiu-ching, the patriarch of the southern sect, wrote the San -p 'ien chai-fa (Three Treatises on the Purification Rites), laying down standards of chai and chiao that are still followed today. By the time of the T’ang dynasty, different rites of purification were associated with different types of ceremonies, and each ceremony had its own set of rituals and liturgies. This large collection of chai and chiao was edited by Tao Kuang-t’ing, a liturgist of the Era of the Five and Ten Kingdoms (907-960 ce), into the Hsiian-men k 'o-fan ta-ch ’iian (Complete Collection of the Taoist Ceremonies). Hiis authoritative work became the foundation of all Taoist ceremonies for centuries to come. From the T’ang dynasty onward, chai (purification) and chiao (ceremony) were inseparable. Although the word chiao is now used to refer only to the Great Services, the spirit of the chai and chiao of ancient China is found in all Taoist ceremonies. Three kinds of sacred ceremonies are practiced by Taoists today: the Golden Ceremony, the Jade Ceremony, and the Yellow Register Ceremony Tire Golden Ceremony consists of silent meditation, announcement of the names of the participants, renewal of the bond with the sacred powers, the three prostrations and audience with the deities, the nine prostrations and audience with the deities, an altar dedication ritual, petitioning for forgiveness, and thanksgiving. Tire Jade Ceremony consists of the nine prostrations and audience with the deities, silent meditation, announcement of the names of the participants, three prostrations and audience with the deities, chanting of scriptures, asking the powers for merciful judgment, and comforting the dead. Tire Golden and Jade Ceremonies were patterned after the most ancient rituals, and in them we find the remnants of the Chou dynasty sacred ceremonies. Tire Tbllow Register Ceremony consists of rituals that were developed after Taoism had become an organized religion. This is the most complex ceremony, and the rituals were revised throughout the Wei, Chin, Sui, T’ang, Sung, Yuan, and Ming dynasties. In the Yellow Register Ceremony, special rituals honor the deities and spirits, teach the living, comfort the dead, and make peace with the ghosts. There are also liturgies of repentance on behalf of the living and the dead, liturgies that have the power to liberate the dead from suffering in the underworld, and liturgies that deliver humanity from calamity and disaster. During the reign of the Ch’ing dynasty emperor Ch’ien- lung (1736-1795 ce), the rituals of the Yellow Register Ceremony were collected and published. Included in this collection are instructions for building altars for special occasions, protocols for announcing the names of participants and presenting the list of petitions, procedures for conducting morning and noon services, and rituals for setting up and closing the altar. There are also rituals for inviting to the ceremonial grounds the celestial deities, the guardians of the underworld, and the dead. Finally, there are instructions on how to write talismans and use mudras (hand gestures), and how to circumambulate the altars and dance the gait of power for the flight to the stars. The Taoist Altar At the center of Taoist ceremony is the altar. The altar is an image of the Tao and the spiritual center of a sacred space. Although the arrangement of the altar varies among Taoist sects, and different rituals call for special arrangements of ceremonial objects, the significance and symbolism of the objects on the altar are the same. An example of the basic arrangement of an altar of the Hsient’ien Tao sect is shown in figure 14.1 . The principal objects on the altar, along with a brief explanation of their symbolism, are described below. A sacred lamp: This is the light of wisdom. It is also the Golden Pill or Elixir of Immortality. The lamp is usually placed in the center of the altar in front of the patron deity of the temple or the deity being honored in the ceremony. The lamp symbolizes the original spirit, which is the light of the Tao within. It is never extinguished. Two candles: To the left and right of the sacred lamp are two tall candles. Urey represent the light of the sun and the moon in nature and the two eyes in the human body. The sun and moon are emanations of the light of the Tao, and the eyes are windows to the mind. If the mind is not tainted by dust, original nature will be bright; the light of the Tao will shine within, and the eyes will not be covered by the dust of the mundane world. Tea, rice, and water: Directly in front of the sacred lamp are three cups. lire cup in the center holds grains of uncooked rice; the cup to the left contains water; the cup to the right contains tea. Tea symbolizes yin, or female generative, energy; water symbolizes yang, or male generative, energy. Rice symbolizes the union of these two energies, because it receives the yang energy of the sun and absorbs the yin energy of earth. five plates of fruits FIGURE 14.1. A Taoist Altar. Basic arrangement of a typical Taoist altar of the Hsien-t’ien Tao and affiliated sects. The five fruits represent the five elements. Five plates of fruit: Hie five fruits represent the five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. Each element is associated with a color. Wood is green, fire is red, earth is yellow, metal is white, and water is black. In the creative cycle, wood gives rise to fire, fire burns to create earth (ashes), earth nourishes metal, and, where metal is found, there is water. In the destructive cycle, metal cuts wood, wood (in the form of tree roots) chokes earth, earth restricts the flow of water, water extinguishes fire, and fire melts metal. In the body, wood is the liver, fire is the heart, earth is the spleen, metal is the lungs, and water is the kidneys. When the five elements are in a creative cycle, the internal organs nourish each other and the body is in good health. An incense burner: Hie incense burner is typically placed in the center of the altar in front of the five plates of fruit. Hiis is the stove, or the lower tan-t’ien, where internal heat is generated to purify and refine the generative, vital, and spirit energy. Hie three energies are symbolized by three sticks of incense. Hie burning of the incense symbolizes the refinement and purification of the internal energies. Hie rising smoke and falling ash also symbolize the separation of pure energy from mundane energy. On another level, the sticks of incense represent the human body. As the smoke rises and the ashes fall, we reconnect ourselves with the sky and earth and become a channel for the flow of energy between the realms above and below. On the altar, the sacred lamp, which is the symbol of original nature, is closest to the deity. Arranged progressively away from the deity are the two candles, the tea, rice, and water, the fruit, and finally the incense burner. This arrangement shows that the entrance to the Tao begins with purifying the three internal energies, reconnecting the body with sky and earth; when the energies are refined, they are gathered in the five viscera to nourish the body, a process represented by the five plates of fruit; as spiritual development continues, the yin and yang energies copulate —represented by the cups of tea, rice, and water; when the original spirit emerges, the Tao shines within and a golden light hovers around the eyes—represented by the two candles. Finally, the original spirit, symbolized by the sacred lamp, is cultivated to return to the void and merge with the Tao—the deity in the icon. Talismans Talismans are scripts of power, and the use of talismanic magic in Taoism dates back to the Eastern Han (circa second century ce), when Celestial Teacher Chang Tao-ling (see History of Taoism - ) used talismans to heal the sick and ward off evil spirits. By the time of the Six Dynasties, talismans were used by the Celestial Teachers for exorcism and protection against malevolent spirits. The Shang-ch’ing Taoists used talismans to help them fly to the celestial realm, and the alchemists hastened the production of the elixir of immortality with them. Today, talismans are also used to purify ceremonial grounds for ceremonies. To draw a talisman, one has to have skill and power, and not all Taoists are trained in this practice. Only practitioners of Magical Taoism and leaders of ceremonies are adept at this art; in fact, practitioners of Ceremonial Taoism who are not involved in the magical arts can draw only those talismans specific to the rituals used in the ceremonies. The drawing of talismans in ceremonies is taught to an initiate only when he or she is ready to lead a ritual. The following passage is included in the book only to show the reader what is involved in drawing a talisman. Please do not copy the talismans or try to use them. Preparing or placing talismans incorrectly can incur wrath from the sacred powers. Tire only way to learn talismanic magic is to be apprenticed into a sect of Magical Taoism or to become a leader of rituals in a sect of Ceremonial Taoism. A talisman consists of a string of words embellished with special symbols. Tire typical talisman is a strip of yellow paper with words and symbols written in red ink. In some talismans, the deities are invoked by the writing of their names on the talismans; in others, the script contains words or symbols of command or power. There are two major styles of talismanic writing: ancient seal script and common script. The ancient seal script, which is a form of archaic Chinese writing, is found in the Shang-ch’ing, Ling-pao, and Celestial Teachers talismans. The common script talisman is preferred by the modern Mao-shan sorcerers and the Kun-lun sect. Figures 14.2 and 14.3 show the two kinds of talismanic scripts. The Ling- pao and Celestial Teachers talismans date back to the Eastern Han and the Chin dynasties; the Kun-lun talismans are from the turn of the century—i.e., about a hundred years ago. For ease of describing talismanic writing, I shall use the Kun-lun talismans as examples. They are written in modern Chinese and are the easiest type of talisman to comprehend. Kun-lun talismans that invoke the power of the high deities have three V-shaped marks at the top f fia. 14.4 1. In writing the talisman, these marks are drawn first. When the first mark, the one top center, is drawn, the writer utters, silently, ‘Tire first mark moves sky and earth.” The second mark, the one on the left, is accompanied by the silent incantation, ‘The second mark unleashes the power of the patriarch’s sword.” The third mark, the one on the right, is accompanied by, “With the third mark, may all malevolent spirits and destructive powers be banished a thousand miles away.” At the bottom of the talismanic strip are words and symbols of power. The symbols at the bottom of the talismanic strip shown in figure 14.4 (see talisman at left) are said to have the power to open the celestial gates, block the passage of malevolent spirits, open the gates of the underworld, and defeat the armies of evil. A symbol that is said to enhance the power of the talisman consists of wiggly lines or lines with loops that run down the length of the strip. These lines are usually drawn surrounding the words of command to focus and gather power ( figure 14.3 V Special preparations and procedures must be followed in drawing a talisman. First, the writer of the talisman must undergo purification rites. These include abstaining from meat, sex, and all forms of intoxicants and stimulants for at least a day before the talisman is prepared. This is why the Mao-shan sorcerers, who need to prepare and use talismans frequently, abstain from alcohol and lead a celibate life. It is also why many practitioners of Kun-lun magic are vegetarians. In addition to the abstinences, incantations are chanted to purify body and mind. Sometimes, an altar is erected, and incense, fruit, and wine are offered to the powers before the writing begins. Moreover, the talismans should be written only during certain hours of the day. The hour of tzu (11:00 pm to 1:00 am) is the best time for preparing talismans, followed by the hour of wu (11:00 am to 1:00 pm). On four days of the year it is not suitable to prepare talismans: the ninth day of the third lunar month, the second day of the sixth lunar month, the sixth day of the ninth lunar month, and the second day of the twelfth lunar month. FIGURE 14.2. Ling-pao talisman of protection used by the Celestial Teachers sect, from the T’ai-shang ling-pao wu-fu ching (The Highest Revelation of the Five Talismans of the Sacred Spirit). The talisman in the upper right protects the user from malevolent spirits from the south; the one lower right, from the west; the one upper left, from the center; and the one lower left, from the north. FIGURE 14.3. Kun-lun talisman of healing. This talisman invokes the power of the Jade Emperor. The triangle with horizontal line that appears at the bottom of the talisman is a symbol used to enhance the talisman’s power. Not all talismans are written on paper. Some, especially those used in ceremonies, are symbols traced in the air with a stick of incense or the tip of a wooden sword. Because there is no visible trace of writing, these talismans are called formless talismans. Many details of talismanic writing and magic are beyond the scope of this book. Even today, the preparation and use of Taoist talismans is accessible only to those who are initiated into the practice of Taoist magic and sorcery and those authorized to conduct ceremonies. However, this section will enhance readers’ appreciation of talismanic writing and introduce them to a Taoist practice that is generally not accessible to Westerners. FIGURE 14.4. Kun-lun talismans. The talisman on the right invokes the Celestial Lord of the Lunar Yin for protection. The talisman at center invokes a legendary sorcerer and magician of the Shang dynasty, Kiang Tzu-ya, to transform malevolent forces into benevolent ones. The talisman at left invokes the T’ai-shang Lao-chiin, the patriarch of Taoism, to chase away a baleful star named the Dog Star. In Chinese astronomy, a solar eclipse is referred to as “the Sky Dog eating the sun” and this talisman also invokes protection from evil spirits during an eclipse. Tliis chapter completes our armchair journey through the Taoist spiritual landscape. Some readers may wish to seek spiritual guidance in the Taoist path; others may feel that a curiosity has been satisfied. To those who want to learn more about Taoism and its practices, I would say: Tbur next step is to seek formal instruction. To experience the fullness of Taoist spirituality, one must leave the security of intellectual speculation and venture into practice. Reading a book can inspire you to take a spiritual journey, but book knowledge cannot replace spiritual experience. My hope is that this book has opened up the Taoist spiritual terrain and given you a direction and the initiative to explore it. Further Readings For a brief review of the chai-chiao services, see section q in chapter 7 of Michael Saso’s Blue Dragon, White Tiger. Saso describes the purpose and meaning of the chiao, with special regard to the people of southern China. A more detailed presentation of the chiao performed by the Celestial Teachers sect can be found in Saso’s other book on Taoist ceremonies, Taoism and the Rite of Cosmic Renewal. Translations of Taoist precepts and monastic vows are in reading #13, “Precepts and Prescriptions,” of Livia Kohn’s The Taoist Experience. APPENDIXES APPENDIX 1 The Dynasties of China Dates for the Chinese dynasties are those adopted by textbooks of Chinese history published in Hong Kong. Note that the dynasties of China did not always occupy the same geographical regions. Some dynasties overlap in time, and there were periods of political chaos where no ruling house was in control. Hsia Shang Chou Western Chou Eastern Chou Spring and Autumn Period Warring States Period Ch’in Han 2205-1765 BCE 1766-1121 BCE 1122-225 BCE 1122-770 BCE 770-221 BCE 770-476 BCE 475-221 BCE 221-207 BCE 206 BCE-219 CE 206 BCE-8 CE Western Han Eastern Elan 25 CE-220 CE Three Kingdoms 220-265 CE Wei 220-265 CE Shu 221-263 CE Wu 222-280 CE Chin 265-420 CE Western Chin 265-316 CE Eastern Chin 317-420 CE Six Dynasties 420-589 CE Sui 589-618 CE T’ang 618-906 CE Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms 907-960 CE Sung 960-1279 CE Northern Sung 960-1126 CE Southern Sung 1127-1279 CE Yuan 1271-1368 CE Ming 1368-1644 CE Ch’ing 1644-1911 CE The Dynastic Era Ends Republic of China 1911-1949 CE People’s Republic of China 1949- APPENDIX 2 Map of China The Yang-tze, one of China’s two great rivers, divides China into two regions— north and south. From the eighteenth century BCE (Shang dynasty) to the third century CE (Eastern Han), the mainstream of Chinese civilization lay in the central and lower regions of the Yellow River valley. Notice that the Spring and Autumn states of Ch’i and Lu (where Confucius and Mencius lived and taught) are located in the northern region of China, near the mouth of the Yellow River. The state of Ch’u, home of the Ch’u shamans Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, is located in the central part of the Yang-tze valley, and Wu and Yiieh are situated along the southeastern coast. The modem cities of Beijing and Shanghai are shown to give an idea of distance. Notice also that Szechuan (the Land of Shu) and Yunnan (where Chang Tao-ling first acquired a following) are even farther from the mainstream of Chinese civilization. A third point to notice is that the Eastern Chin dynasty, where the Shang-ch’ing Taoists and the southern branch of the Celestial Teachers cult flourished, occupied a region where the Spring and Autumn states, Ch’u, Wu, and Yiieh, were located. The areas where the Shang-ch’ing Taoists were most active coincided with the old lands of Wu and Yiieh. Yellow Rim APPENDIX 3 Bibliography of Further Readings Berk, William. Chinese Healing Arts: Internal Kung-fu. Culver City, Calif.: Peace Press, 1979. Chang, Wing-tsit, trans. and comp. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963. Cleary, Thomas, trans. The Inner Teachings of Taoism. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1986. _. The Taoist I-ching. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1986. _. Understanding Reality. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987. _. The Buddhist I Ching. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1987. _. Awakening to the Tao. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1988. _. I Ching: The Tao of Organization. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1988. _. I Ching Mandalas. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1989. _. The Book of Balance and Harmony. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1989. _. Back to Beginnings. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1990. _. Vitality, Energy, Spirit: A Taoist Sourcebook. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1991. _. Further Teachings of Lao-tzu: Understanding the Mysteries. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1991. _. The Secret of the Golden Flower. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991. DeWoksin, Kenneth. Doctors, Diviners, and Magicians of Ancient China: Biographies ofFang-shih. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. Dong, Y P. Still as a Mountain, Powerful as Thunder. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1993. Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964. Hamer, Michael. The Way of the Shaman. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1990. Hawkes, David. The Songs of the South. New York: Penguin, 1985. Henricks, Robert G. Lao-tzu Te-tao-ching. New York: Ballantine, 1989. Huang, Jane, and Michael Wurmbrand. The Primordial Breath, vol. 1. Torrance, Calif.: Original Books, 1987. _. The Primordial Breath, vol. 2. Torrance, Calif.: Original Books, 1990. Kohn, Livia, ed. Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989. _. Taoist Mystical Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991. _. Early Chinese Mysticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1992. _, ed. The Taoist Experience. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. Lo, Benjamin. The Essence of T’ai-chi Ch’uan: The Literary Tradition. Richmond, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1979. Lu, Kuan Yu. The Secrets of Chinese Meditation. New York: Samuel Weiser, 1964. _. Taoist Yoga. New York: Samuel Weiser, 1970. Maspero, Henri. Taoism and Chinese Religion. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981. Needham, Joseph. Science and Civilization in China, \bl. 5:3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. _. Science and Civilization in China, Vol. 5:5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Olson, Stuart. The Jade Emperor s Mind Seal Classic. St. Paul, Minn.: Dragon Door Press, 1992. Robinet, Isabelle. Taoist Meditation. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. Saso, M ichael. Blue Dragon, White Tiger: Taoist Rites of Passage. Washington, D.C.: Taoist Center, 1990. _. Taoism and the Rite of Cosmic Renewal. Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1989. _. The Gold Pavilion: Taoist Ways to Peace, Healing, and Long Life. Boston: Tuttle, 1995. Schipper, Kristofer. The Taoist Body. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993. \feith, Ilza. The Yellow Emperor s Classic of Internal Medicine. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972. Ware, James R. Alchemy, Medicine, and Religion: The Nei P’ien ofKo Hung. New York: Dover, 1966. Watson, Burton. The Complete Works of Chuang-tzu. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968. Wile, Douglas. Art of the Bedchamber: The Chinese Sexual Yoga Classics Including Solo Meditation Texts. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. Wilhelm, Helmut. Heaven, Earth, and Man in the Book of Changes. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977. Wong Eva. Seven Taoist Masters. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1990. _. Cultivating Stillness. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1992. _. Lao-tzu’s Treatise on the Response of the Tao. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993. _. Lieh-tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1995. _. Feng-shui: The Ancient Wisdom of Harmonious Living for Modern Times. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1996. Wu, Jing-nuan. Ling Shu, or The Spiritual Pivot. Washington, D.C.: Taoist Center, 1993. Index Note: Index entries from the print edition of this book have been included for use as search terms. They can be located by using the search feature of your e-book reader. Abdominal breathing technique Absorbing energy from nature strengthening technique Action and Karma Taoism beliefs of further readings on predecessors of significance of Alchemical Taoism beginnings of external alchemy and further readings on internal alchemy and Ko Hung’s P ’ao-p ’u-tzu process of Tsan-tung-chi and Altar Ancient seal talismanic writing script Autumn Harvest Ceremony Blossoming of the Golden Flower Body cultivation techniques of external and internal strengthening herbs and food use internal martial arts massage and kneading Taoist calisthenics of external strengthening marrow-washing tendon-changing further readings on of internal strengthening absorbing energy from nature ch’i-kung postures directing breath regulating breath Breathing techniques Breath of the Tao Bright Hall cavity Bubbling Spring cavity Buddhism Action and Karma Taoism and ceremonial Taoism and Liu Hua-y ang and Lu Hsiu-ching and M agical Taoism and synthesis of Taoism with Calendar. See Chinese calendar Celestial divination Celestial Lord of the Great Beginning Celestial Lord of the Lunar Yin Celestial Lords of the Three Pure Realms Celestial Teachers sect of Ceremonial Taoism ceremonies of talismanic magic of divinational Taoism history and of M agical Taoism synthesis of Taoism and Centering. See Focusing on the Center meditation method Central Palace cavity Ceremonial rites historical perspective on talismanic magic on Taoist altar of types of Ceremonial Taoism (The Way of Devotion) celestial realm administrative structure of deities of Great Deities Lesser Deities other deities ranks of features of festivals and ceremonies of further readings on sacredness sects in talismanic magic of Chai purification rites of ceremonial grounds of participants Chang Lu Chang Po-tuan alchemical Taoism and Complete Reality School’s branch of Liu I-ming and sexual alchemy of Chang San-feng alchemical Taoism and martial arts style of synthesis of Taoism and Chang Tao-ling Ceremonial Taoism and deities of sects in M agical Taoism and religious Taoism and Shang-ch’ing Taoism and talismanic magic of transformation from philosophy and Chen Hsi-yi alchemical Taoism and Ceremonial Taoism deities and of Divinational Taoism celestial divination and exp lanation of history of exercises of martial arts style of sleeping postures from Chiao ceremonial rites Ch’i-kung breathing exercises China dynasties of. See also specific dynasty map of shamanic origins in Yii legend and Chin dynasty alchemical Taoism and golden age of religion and Shang-ch’ing Taoism in Chinese calendar Ch’ing-ching ching Ch’ing dynasty Liu Hua-y ang and synthesis of Taoism and Yellow Register Ceremony of Chi-sun-tzu chung-chieh ching Ch’iu Ch’ang-ch’un alchemical Taoism and Ceremonial Taoism deities and Complete Reality School sect of Chou dynasty ceremonies of decline of divinational Taoism history and Spring and Autumn Period of Warring States Period of Yii legend and Chou-i Chou Tun-i Chuang-tzu alchemical Taoism and further readings on philosophy of shamanic origins and Shang-ch’ing Taoism and Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period and Chuang-tzu Divinational Taoism ideas and in golden age of religion transformation from philosophy and Ch’u kingdom Chung-li Ch’uan alchemical Taoism and deity of Divinational Taoism history and synthesis of Taoism and Chu Yiian-chang Classical period further readings on overview of Spring and Autumn Period of Chou dynasty and classical Taoism in Lao-tzu and political and historical background Tao-te ching and Warring States Period of alchemical Taoism and classical Taoism in political and historical background Common script of talismanic writing Complete Collection of the Taoist Ceremonies Complete Reality School of Taoism Action and Karma Taoism and alchemical Taoism and divisions of differences among Liu I-ming and meditation methods of Drawing the Light Inward Gathering and Circulating the Light Recovering the Real M ind Stopping Thoughts and Emptying the Mind philosophical synthesis of Taoism and varied synthesis of Taoism and Confucius Classical Period and Divinational Taoism history and Liu I-ming and Lu Hsiu-ching and synthesis of Taoism and Copulation of the Dragon and the Tiger Deities of the Northern Bushel blessing Directing breath strengthening technique Divinational Taoism (The Way of Seeing) cautions regarding exp lanation of cosmology and nature of universe and notion of change and notion of time and forms of casting of joss sticks celestial divination event divination reading of human features reading of omens terrestrial divination further readings on history of Chen Hsi-yi and Ming dynasty and modern Shao K’ang-chieh and Drawing the Light Inward meditation method Earlier Heaven deities Earlier Heaven Gate Earlier Heaven pa-k’ua explanation of history of Earth Father deity Eastern Han. See Han dynasty Eating vapor concept Eight Trigrams Palm martial arts style Eliade, M ircea Emperor Kuan deity Emperor of the Undifferentiated Realm Emptying the Mind and Filling the Belly meditation method Entire body breathing technique Era of the Five and Ten Kingdoms External strengthening techniques herbs and food use internal martial arts marrow-washing massage and kneading Taoist calisthenics tendon-changing Fang-shih alchemical Taoism and animal exercises of Divinational Taoism history and golden age of religion and transformation from philosophy and Feast Day festival Feng-po Feng-s hen yen-yi Fengshui (k ’an-yu) Feng-shui (terrestrial divination) Festivals Fetal breathing technique Firing Process symbol Five Animal Exercises Five Elements, of Divinational Taoism exp lanation of history of terrestrial divination and Focusing on the Cavities meditation method Focusing on the Center meditation method Food use Form and Intention Fist martial arts style Fu Hsi patron Gate of the Limitless Gathering and Circulating the Light meditation method Golden age of religion in Chin dynasty K’ou Ch’ien-ching and Lu Hsiu-ching and Golden Ceremony Golden Gate cavity Golden Pill Nine Circulations of Sacred Lamp of Golden Raven symbol Greater Celestial Movement Great Pure Realm Great Services festivals Guarding the One meditation method Han dynasty alchemical Taoism and Divinational Taoism and Eastern Han Taoism and religious Taosim and Shamanism and Western Han Taoism and See also Fang-shih Herb use Highest Revelation of the Five Talismans of the Sacred Spirit High Pure Realm History of Taoism. See Alchemical Taoism Classical period; Shamanic origins; Shang-ch’ingTaoism; Synthesis of Taoism; Transformation from philosophy Holding the One meditation method Ho-shang Kung Ho-t’u Hour of tzu Hsien-t’ien Tao sect altar of meditation methods of Returning to Earlier Heaven Stopping Thoughts and Emptying the Mind Singular Path followed by Hsing-i ch’uan martial arts style Hsi-wang mu. See Mother Empress of the West Hsi-yu chi Huai-nan Huai-nan-tzu Huang-ti nei-ching medical treatise Huo-shan chi Hua-tuo Hui-ming ching (Liu Hua-yang) I-ching alchemical Taoism and of Divinational Taoism exp lanation of history of Liu I-ming and Lu Hsiu-ching and shamans and Immersion of Fire in Water process meditation method of symbols of Immortal Fetus Immortal Lii Tung-pin, festivals of Immortal Lii Tung-pin deity administrative structure of deities of description of Internal-alchemical Taoism approaches to Paired Path and Singular Path and cautions regarding exp lanation of further readings on major symbols in steps in finals stages and lower stages and middle stages and See also Alchemical Taoism; Internal alchemy Internal Alchemy Ceremonial Taoism and Divinational Taoism and Liu Hua-y ang and Liu I-ming and synthesis of Taoism and Internal martial arts Internal Observation meditation method Internal strengthening techniques absorbing energy from nature directing breath herbs and food use internal martial arts massage and kneading regulating breath Taoist calisthenics Jade Ceremony Jade Emperor (Yii-ti) Action and Karma Taoism and Ceremonial Taoism and administrative structure of talismanic magic and festivals of Jade Pure Realm Jade Rabbit symbol Kan-ying p ’ien K’an-yu (feng-shui) K’ao-ching Karma Taoism. See Action and Karma Taoism Kiang Tzu-ya King Wen Kitchen lord deity Ko Hung Action and Karma Taoism and alchemical Taoism and K’ou Ch’ien-chih of Ceremonial Taoism golden age of religion and Kuan-ti. See Emperor Kuan Kuan Yii. See Emperor Kuan Kuei-chuang i Kuei-ku Tzu Kui-shih Kung-ming Lantern Kung-sun Lung exorcism talisman of Kun-lun sect, of Magical Taoism magic of Lady Wei Hua-t’sun Lao-tzu alchemical Taoism and Ceremonial Taoism and Classical Period and shamanic origins and Shang-ch’ing Taoism and systhesis of Taoism and transformation from philosophy and Later Heaven deities Later Heaven Meditation Later Heaven pa-k’ua (Lo-shu) deities of of Divinational Taoism exp lanation of history and Lei-mu Lesser Celestial Movement. See Microcosmic Circulation Lieh-tzu Lieh-tzu further readings on Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period and Lien-ch’i-hua-shen alchemical process step Lien-ching-hua-ch’i alchemical process step Lien-hsin alchemical process step Lien-hsii-ho-Tao alchemical process step Lien shen huan-hsu alchemical process step Life Gate cavity Ling-pao talismanic magic Ling-pao scriptures alchemical Taoism and golden age of religion and Lu Hsiu-ching and Shang-ch’ing Taoism and T’ai-shangLao-chii in talismanic magic of Lin-shan i Li T’ing-chi Liu An Liu Hai-ch’an alchemical Taoism and Ceremonial Taoism deities and synthesis of Taoism and Liu-he-pa-fa martial arts style Liu Hsiu-ching Liu Hua-yang ( Hui-ming ching) Liu I-ming Liu Po-hun Li Ying-chang Action and Karma Taoism and synthesis of Taoism and Lords of the Five Mountains Lo-shu (Later Heaven pa-k’ua) Lu Hsiu-ching Liu Hua-yang Lung-men sect (Ch’iu Ch’ang-ch’un’s northern branch) alchemical process and Complete Reality School sect of deities and ceremonies of Divinational Taoism and doctrines of vegetarianism of Lii Tung-pin alchemical Taoism and Divinational Taoism history and synthesis of Taoism and See also Immortal Lii Tung-p in Macrocosmic Circulation symbol Macrocosmic Orbit symbol Magical Taoism (The Way to Power) basic beliefs of further readings on omissions regarding practices of aiding souls of the dead blessing exorcism fighting malevolent spirits fighting sorcerers and magicians healing protection rainmaking sandwriting divination talismanic magic sects in Magic Circle, of Divinational Taoism M ao-shan sect of M agical Taoism sorcerers of talismanic magic of M arrow-washing strengthening technique M assage techniques Meditation methods cautions regarding of Drawing the Light Inward of Emptying the Mind and Fillingthe Belly of Focusing on the Cavities of Focusing on the Center further readings on of Gathering and Circulating the Light of Holding the One of Internal Observation of Recovering the Real M ind of Returning to Earlier Heaven of Stopping Thoughts and Emptying the M ind of Uniting Intention with Breath of Visualizing the \hlley Spirit M encius Microcosmic Circulation symbol M icrocosmic Orbit Ming dynasty Divinational Taoism in martial arts style of synthesis of Taoism and Mohists M other of the Bushel of Stars Mother Empress of the West Mo-tzu M outh and nostril breathing technique Mudras Mysterious Cavity Mystical Taoism. See Shang-ch’ing Taoism Nei-chuang alchemical process step Nine Circulations of the Golden Pill Nine Palaces, of Divinational Taoism explanation of terrestrial divination and Northern Bushel blessing Nostril breathing technique Officers of the Celestial, Terrestrial, and Water Realms The One alchemical Taoism and Ho-Shang Kung and Shang-ch’ing Taoism and Original Cavity Pa-k’ua changmartial arts style Pa-k’ua, of Divinational Taoism exp lanation of history of terrestrial divination and P ’ao-p ’u-tzu Patron of the Arts and Literature Perineal breathing technique Physiological alchemy. See alchemical Taoism Point of All Gatherings Point of a Hundred Gatherinings Purification rites Purification Rites for the Festivals of the Three Seasons Rainmaking Rain, Wind, and Thunder Spirits Recovering the Real Mind meditation method Refining generative energy Refining the mind Refining the spirit energy Refining vital energy Regulating breath strengthening technique Returning to Earlier Heaven meditation method Ritual Gathering festival Sacred Lamp San-ch’ing. See Three Pure Ones Sand writing divination San-kuan. See Officers of the Celestial, Terrestrial, and Water Realms Sea of Ch’i cavity Service Day festival Seven Star Lords of the Northern Bushel Seven Taoist Masters Sexagenary Cycle, of Chinese calendar Sexual alchemy Shamanic origins in Chou dynasty further readings on mysticism and Shamans’ duties and celestial divination healing int erp ret ing dreams inviting spirits rainmaking reading omens in Southern China in Taoism Yii legend and animals and origin of The Pace of Yii and Wus and Shang-ch’ing Taoism absorbing energy from nature by alchemical Taoism and Central Orthodox Taoism and in Chin dynasty components of further readings on internal-alchemical Taoism and legacy of meditation methods of Holding the One Visualizing the Wley Spirit predecessors of scriptures of sexual alchemy practiced by in Southern Dynasties talismanic magic of teachings of external universe and internal and external universe unification and internal universe and Shang dynasty Shao K’ang-chieh (Shao Yung) omen reading Shao Ying (Shao K’ang-chieh) Shi-chi (Ssu-ma Ch’ien) Shui-ching Sitting postures Six Harmonies and Eight Methods martial arts style Sky Dog eating the sun (solar eclipse) Sleep ing p ostures Southern Bushel of Stars Spring and Autumn Period. See Classical period Spring Planting Ceremony Ssu-ma Ch’eng-chen Standing postures Stopping Thoughts and Empty ing the Mind meditation method Sung dynasty alchemical Taoism and animal exercises of Divinational Taoism and synthesis of Taoism and Sun-tzu Synthesis of Taoism Complete Reality School and further readings on impact of other religions on Liu I-ming and Liu Hua-y ang and philosophical synthesis of religious synthesis of rise of sects and variations of T’ai-chi ch’uan martial arts style T’ai-ch’ing scriptures T’ai-chi symbol sixty-four hexagrams derivation from T’ai-i chin-hua tsung-chih text T’ai-i T’ien-tsun. See Celestial Lord of the Great Beginning T’ai-p ’ing ching Action and Karma Taoism and golden age of religion and Shang-ch’ing Taoism and transformation from philosophy and T’ai-shang kan-ying p ’ien Action and Karma Taoism and synthesis of Taoism and T ’ai-shang Lao-chim Ceremonial Taoism and administrative structure of deities of talismanic magic and festivals honoring Three Pure Ones emanations of Talismanic magic of ceremonial rites cautions regarding of Celestial Teachers sect description of to fight evil spirits of Kun-lun sect of Ling-pao of M ao-shan sect preparations and procedures of styles of T’ang dynasty alchemical Taoism and celestial Taoism deities and ceremonies of Divinational Taoism history and Internal Observation meditation method in Tan-t’ien alchemical Taoism and centering and Ceremonial Taoism sects and Internal-Alchemical Taoism and process of symbol of Shang-ch’ing Taoism teachings and Tao ( wu-chi ) Action and Karma Taoism and alchemical Taoism and Ceremonial Taoism and Divinational Taoism and Internal-Alchemical Taoism and alchemical process and symbol of Liu Hua-y ang and Liu I-ming and Shang-ch’ing Taoism and synthesis of Taoism and Tao-te ching and T’ao Hung-ching Taoist altar Taoist calisthenics Taoist practices. See Body cultivation techniques; Ceremonial rites; Meditation; Purification rites; Talismanic magic; Taoist altar Tao Kuang-t’ing Tao-te ching on cultivating life Divinational Taoism ideas and further readings on in golden age of religion of Lao-tzu on sagehood synthesis of Taoism and on the Tao transformation from philosophy and in Warring States Period Tendon-changing strengthening technique Three Flowers. See Three Treasures Three Flowers gathering at the top of the head Three Herbs. See Three Treasures Three Pure Ones (San-ch’ing) administrative structure of Ceremonial Taoism and festivals of Three Treasures Three Treatises on the Purification Rites Tortoise breathing technique Tou-mu. See Mother of the Empress of the Bushel of Stars Transformation of Taoism from philosophy in Eastern Han further readings on golden age of religion and K’ou Ch’ien-chih and Lu Hsiu-ching and in Western Han True intention movement Tsan-tung-chi alchemical Taoism and Divinational Taoism history and Liu I-ming and Tsao-chiin. See Kitchen Lord Tung-fang Shuo Tzu-wei Tu-su (celestial divination) Tzu-yangsect of Complete Reality School Ultimate First martial arts style Uniting Intention with Breath meditation method Visualizing the Valley Spirit meditation method Wai-chuang alchemical process step Walking p ostures Wang An-shih Wang-chi ching Wang Ch ’ ung-y ang alchemical Taoism and Ceremonial Taoism deities and Complete Reality School of Warring States Period. See Classical period Waterwheel symbol Way of Devotion. See Ceremonial Taoism Way of Right Action. See Action and Karma Taoism Way of Seeing. See Divinational Taoism Way of Transformation. See Internal-Alchemical Taoism Wei dynasty Wei Po-yang alchemical Taoism and Divinational Taoism and Liu I-ming and sexual alchemy and Wen-chang Ti-chiin. See Patron of the Arts and Literature Western Han. See Han dynasty Wu-chi Diagram, of Divinational Taoism Wu-chi. See Tao Wu Chung-hsii Wu-fu ching Wu-hsiu Wu-jen p ’ien (Chang Po-tuan) Wu kingdom Wu-Liu sect Action and Karma Taoism and Focusing on the Cavities meditation method of Singular Path followed by synthesis of Taoism Wu-tang-shan sect Wu-yueh Ti-chim. See Lords of the Five Mountains Yang Hsi Yang K’un-sun Yang. See Ym and Yang Yellow Palace cavity Yellow Register Ceremony Ym and Yang alchemical Taoism and Ceremonial Taoism and of Divinational Taoism exp lanation of history of pa-k’ua creation process and terrestrial divination and Internal-Alchemical symbol of protection talismans of Shang-ch’ing Taoism and true intention movement and Yiieh kingdom Yii legend blessing of Divinational Taoism and golden age of religion and M agical Taoism and Yun-chi ch ’i ch ’ien Yii-shih Yii-ti. See Jade Emperor Zen meditation BOOKS BY EVA WONG Cultivating Stillness Cultivating the Energy of Life Feng-shui Harmonizing Yin and Yang Holding Yin, Embracing Yang Lieh-tzu A Master Course in Feng-shui Nourishing the Essence of Life The Pocket Tao Reader Seven Taoist Masters Tales of the Dancing Dragon: Stories of the Tao Tales of the Taoist Immortals Taoism: An Essential Guide Teachings of the Tao For more information please visit www.shambhala.com .
SLCO3A1, a Novel Crohn's Disease-Associated Gene, Regulates NF-?B Activity and Associates with Intestinal Perforation.
Wei, Shu-Chen,Tan, Yan-Yin,Weng, Meng-Tzu,Lai, Liang-Chuan,Hsiao, Jen-Hao,Chuang, Eric Y.,Shun, Chia-Tung,Wu, Deng-Cheng,Kao, Ai-Wen,Chuang, Chiao-Shung,Ni, Yen-Hsuan,Shieh, Ming-Jium,Tung, Chien-Chih,Chen, Yun,Wang, Cheng-Yi,Xavier, Ramnik J.,Podolsky, Daniel K.,Wong, Jau-Min
2014-06-19T00:00:00Z
null
This article is from PLoS ONE , volume 9 . Abstract Background & Aims: To date, only one gene (TNFSF15) has been identified and validated as a Crohn’s disease (CD)-associated gene in non-Caucasian populations. This study was designed to identify novel CD-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)/genes and to validate candidate genes using a functional assay. Methods: SNPs from 16 CD patients and 16 age- and sex-matched control patients were analyzed using Illumina platform analysis. Subsequently, we expanded the study and followed 53 CD patients and 41 control patients by Sequenom MassArray analysis. Quantitative PCR and immunohistochemical staining were performed to assess mRNA and protein expression of the candidate gene on tissue isolated from CD patients. Genotype was correlated with CD phenotypes. Finally, the candidate gene was cloned and its effect on NF-κB activity assessed using a reporter luciferase assay. Results: SLCO3A1 (rs207959) reached statistical significance in the first-stage analysis (P = 2.3E-02) and was further validated in the second-stage analysis (P = 1.0E-03). Genotype and phenotype analysis showed that the rs207959 (T) allele is a risk allele that alters SLCO3A1 mRNA expression and is associated with intestinal perforation in CD patients. Higher levels of mRNA and protein expression of SLCO3A1 were seen in CD patients compared with the control group. Overexpression of SLCO3A1 induced increased NF-κB activity and increased phosphorylation of P65, ERK, and JNK. Nicotine augmented the activation of NF-κB in the presence of SLCO3A1. Conclusions: SLCO3A1, a novel CD-associated gene, mediates inflammatory processes in intestinal epithelial cells through NF-κB transcription activation, resulting in a higher incidence of bowel perforation in CD patients.
Full text of "SLCO3A1, a Novel Crohn's Disease-Associated Gene, Regulates NF-?B Activity and Associates with Intestinal Perforation." Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "SLCO3A1, a Novel Crohn's Disease-Associated Gene, Regulates NF-?B Activity and Associates with Intestinal Perforation." See other formats OPEN Q ACCESS Freely available online •0-PLOS I ONE SLC03A 1, a Novel Crohn's Disease-Associated Gene, (S\ Regulates NF-kB Activity and Associates with Intestinal &SL Perforation Shu-Chen Wei 1 , Yan-Yin Tan 2 , Meng-Tzu Weng 1 ' 3 , Liang-Chuan Lai 4 ' 5 , Jen-Hao Hsiao 5 , Eric Y. Chuang 5,6 , Chia-Tung Shun 7 , Deng-Cheng Wu 8 , Ai-Wen Kao 9 , Chiao-Shung Chuang 9 , Yen-Hsuan Ni 10 , Ming- Jium Shieh 2,11 , Chien-Chih Tung 12 , Yun Chen 13 , Cheng-Yi Wang 1 , Ramnik J. Xavier 14 , Daniel K. Podolsky 15 , Jau-Min Wong 1 ' 2 * 1 Department of Internal Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, 2 Graduate Institute of Medical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, 3 Departments of Internal Medicine, Far Eastern Memorial Hospital, New Taipei, Taiwan, 4 Graduate Institute of Physiology, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, 5 Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Core, Center of Genomic Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, 6 Graduate Institute of Biomedical Electronics and Bioinformatics, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, 7 Department of Pathology and Forensic Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, 8 Department of Internal Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 9 Department of Internal Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan, 10 Department of Pediatrics, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, 11 Deparment of Oncology, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, 12 Department of Integrated Diagnostics and Therapeutics, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, 13 Pediatric Surgery, Far Eastern Memorial Hospital, New Taipei, Taiwan, 14 Gastrointestinal Unit and Center for the Study of Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, 15UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, United States of America Abstract Background & Aims: To date, only one gene (TNFSF15) has been identified and validated as a Crohn's disease (CD)- associated gene in non-Caucasian populations. This study was designed to identify novel CD-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)/genes and to validate candidate genes using a functional assay. Methods: SNPs from 16 CD patients and 16 age- and sex-matched control patients were analyzed using lllumina platform analysis. Subsequently, we expanded the study and followed 53 CD patients and 41 control patients by Sequenom MassArray analysis. Quantitative PCR and immunohistochemical staining were performed to assess mRNA and protein expression of the candidate gene on tissue isolated from CD patients. Genotype was correlated with CD phenotypes. Finally, the candidate gene was cloned and its effect on NF-kB activity assessed using a reporter luciferase assay. Results: SLC03A1 (rs207959) reached statistical significance in the first-stage analysis (P = 2.3E-02) and was further validated in the second-stage analysis (P=1.0E-03). Genotype and phenotype analysis showed that the rs207959 (T) allele is a risk allele that alters SLC03A1 mRNA expression and is associated with intestinal perforation in CD patients. Higher levels of mRNA and protein expression of SLC03A1 were seen in CD patients compared with the control group. Overexpression of SLC03A1 induced increased NF-kB activity and increased phosphorylation of P65, ERK, and JNK. Nicotine augmented the activation of NF-kB in the presence of SLC03A1. Conclusions: SLC03A1 , a novel CD-associated gene, mediates inflammatory processes in intestinal epithelial cells through NF-kB transcription activation, resulting in a higher incidence of bowel perforation in CD patients. Citation: Wei S-C, Tan Y-Y, Weng M-T, Lai L-C, Hsiao J-H, et al. (201 4) SLC03A 1, a Novel Crohn's Disease-Associated Gene, Regulates NF-kB Activity and Associates with Intestinal Perforation. PLoS ONE 9(6): e100515. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0100515 Editor: Klaus Roemer, University of Saarland Medical School, Germany Received March 27, 2014; Accepted May 28, 2014; Published June 19, 2014 Copyright: © 2014 Wei et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability: The authors confirm that all data underlying the findings are fully available without restriction. In the manuscript. Funding: This work was supported by National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC-98-2314-B-002-139-) (99-2314-B-002-124-MY3); Liver Disease Prevention & Treatment Research Foundation, Taiwan. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: [email protected] Introduction Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), known collectively as inflammatory bowel diseases, are common chronic gastrointestinal diseases in the developed world. The diseases are particularly common in young people and have a major impact on their quality of life [1]. The pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease is complex, with both genetic and environmental factors contributing [1,2]. The first susceptibility gene for CD was identified in 2001 [3,4], initially named NOD2 and later renamed CARD15. Although mutations in CARD15 are strongly associated with CD in populations of European descent [3,4], disease- PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 1 June 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 6 | e100515 SLC03A1 Regulates NF-kB Activity in CD Patients associated NOD2/ CARD15 mutations are absent in Asian (Japa- nese, Korean, Chinese, Singaporean, and Taiwanese) CD populations and healthy controls [5-9] . Since the advent of human haplotypes by the International HapMap projects and the commercial availability of platforms that allow the testing of thousands of single nucleotide polymor- phisms (SNPs) in a single genotyping reaction, the genome-wide association study (GWAS) has become a powerful and unbiased tool for detecting genetic risk factors by probing the whole genome and incorporating the statistical power of an association study [10]. Using this approach, the TH17 pathway gene IL23R, as well as the autophagy genes ATG16L1 and IRGM, have been identified as CD susceptibility genes in patients residing in Western countries [11,12]. Based on studies performed in populations from North America and Europe, meta-analyses and deep sequencing have led to the discovery of additional susceptibility genes/loci contributing to the risk of CD and/or UC [13,14]. However, to date, only one gene, TMFSF15, initially reported from Japan [15], has been identified by GWAS in a non-Caucasian population. This gene was later confirmed to be associated with CD in other Asian countries [8,16]. In parallel with the reported CD-associated genes identified in Western countries, we hypothesized that additional CD-associated genes exist in Asian populations. This study was therefore designed to identify novel Asian CD-associated genes using Illumina platform-based analysis. Since GWAS traditionally requires a large sample population to attain acceptable statistical power, one obstacle in performing GWAS in Asian countries is the comparatively low prevalence of CD. Though gradually increasing in recent years, the prevalence of CD was estimated to be 2 per 100,000 persons in Taiwan in 2008, approximately 1 1/100,000 in Korea, and approximately 21/100,000 in Japan, all much lower than the incidence in Western countries (approximately 200/ 100,000) [17]. To use a limited sample size without losing statistical power, we used independent samples in a two-stage experimental design, simultaneously decreasing the SNP number and increasing sample size at each stage. In the first stage, one group of patients was examined by genomic SNP genotyping microarrays (Illumina SNP genotyping Infmium II assay) to screen potential SNP candidates. In the second stage, an independent group of patients was examined by mass spectroscopy (Sequenom MassArray technol- ogy) to validate potential SNPs. Using this two-stage approach we identified SLC03A1 as a novel CD-associated gene and validated this finding through functional studies. Over the years, several studies have shown that smoking is a risk factor for CD, but likely a protective factor for UC [18,19]. A recent meta-analysis of GWAS showed that SLC03A1 is associated with nicotine dependence [20]. In our study, we provide evidence that nicotine induction leads to increased NF-kB activation in the presence of SLC03A1, which might partially explain why smoking is an aggravating factor for CD. Materials and Methods This study and the informed consent were approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Ethics Committee of the National Taiwan University Hospital (200906043R, 2012 121 32RINB). Informed consent was obtained in all cases. For those under 18 years of age, the informed consent was obtained from the guardians on behalf of the children. The consent procedure was approved by the Ethics Committee of the National Taiwan University Hospital. The records of participants' consent were locked and kept by the principal investigators following the guidelines set up by the Ethics Committee of the National Taiwan University Hospital. After obtaining written informed consent, DNA was extracted from whole venous blood. For CD patients receiving endoscopy or surgery, tissue sampling was performed on the endoscopically identified ulcers (inflamed [I]) and endoscopically identified normal (non-inflamed [N]) tissue. Active disease was defined as active ulcers under endoscopy, while remission was defined as scar formation endoscopically. Mucosal samples were also collected from colorectal cancer as well as the colon from macroscopically and microscopically unaffected colonic areas of patients undergo- ing colectomy for colon cancer for normal colon control (control). A group of small intestinal tissue samples were collected from patients undergoing small bowel transplantation. Healthy donor intestinal tissue (normal) and grafts after at least three hours of reperfusion (reperfusion), made up the comparative samples for CD in the small intestine. All tissues were freshly frozen or immersed in optimal cutting temperature (OCT) compound (Ames Company, Elkhart, IN) and kept at— 80°C until use. DNA Extraction and Hybridization for GWAS Array Genomic DNA from 16 CD patients and 16 age- and sex- matched controls was extracted from blood by adding proteinase K-phenol-chloroform followed by 0.5% SDS and 200 ug/ml proteinase K. Illumina Human Omnil-Quad_vl-0_B SNP GeneChips (Illumina, San Diego, CA) containing 1,016,423 SNPs were used for the genome-wide assay according to the manufac- turer's instructions. To identify candidate SNPs for second-stage validation, quality control criteria were adopted. SNPs were excluded if (1) genotyping call rates were less than 90%, (2) minor Table 1. Demographic data of populations in Illumina (stage 1) and Sequenom (stage 2). Characteristic 1 st stage* (n = 32) 2 nd stage** (n = 94) CD Patient Normal control CD Patient Normal control (n = 16) (n = 16) (n = 53) (n = 41) Sex Male 10 10 32 24 Female 6 6 21 17 Age Mean (Range) 29.1 (21-42) 29.1 (21-42) 34.5 (10-75) 39.6 (17-76) •Illumina HumanOmni1-Quad_v1-0_B containing 1,016,423 SNPs. **Sequenom MassARRAY system examining 38 SNPs. doi:1 0.1 371 /joumal.pone.01 0051 5.t001 PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 2 June 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 6 | e100515 SLC03A1 Regulates NF-kB Activity in CD Patients Table 2. Clinical characteristics of CD Patients. Clinical features Total N = 53 (%) Sex Female 21 (40%) Male 32 (60%) Age at Diagnosis A1: <16 yr 1 2 (23%) A2: 1 7-40 yr 31 (58%) A3: >40 yr 10 (19%) Disease Location LI: Ileum: 1 7 (32%) L2: Colon 11 (21%) L3: lleocolonic 25 (47%) Disease Behavior B1: Inflammation 27 (50%) B2: Stenosis 13 (25%) B3: Perforation 1 3 (25%) Surgery No 32 (60%) Yes 21 (40%) doi:1 0.1 371 /journal.pone.01 0051 5.t002 Plasmids, Small Interfering RNA, and Transfection FLAG-tagged human SLC03A1 expression vector pcDNA4- TAG-SLC03A1 (FLAG-SLC03A1) was generated by PCR amplification of SLC03A1 cDNA, digestion with BamHI and Xhol, and insertion into the multiple cloning site of the pcDNA4- TAG vector (Invitrogen). HEK293T cells were transfected using Lipofectamine 2000 (Invitrogen) according to the manufacturer's protocol. NF-kB Reporter Luciferase Assay For NF-kB activity determination, cells were transfected with 20 ng pIV luciferase reporter plasmid and 0.05 ng Renilla plasmid. Activity was measured using the Dual-Luciferase Reporter Assay System (Promega, Madison, WI) in a BD Monolight 3010 luminometer (BD Biosciences, San Diego, CA) in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions and normalized to Renilla activity. RNA Extraction and Real-Time RT-PCR Total RNA from cell lines and tissue was isolated using an RNA extraction kit (Qiagen, Valencia, CA) according to the manufac- turer's instructions. For reverse transcription, 2 Hg total RNA were transcribed using the iScript cDNA Synthesis Kit (Bio-Rad, Hercules, CA). Real-time (RT)-PCR was performed by a DNA Engine Opticon 2 (Bio-Rad) using iO_ SYBR Green Supermix (Bio-Rad). Western Blot Analysis Cells were lysed in NP-40 lysis buffer (50 mM Tris pH 7.5, 150 mM NaCl, 2 mM EDTA, 1% NP-40, 50 mM NaF, 1 mM Na 3 V0 4 , 10 mM Na 2 P 2 0 4 , Roche Complete Mini protease inhibitor) and centrifuged at 15,000 rpm for 20 minutes at 4°C. The supernatant was assayed for protein concentration (Bradford). Equal amounts of protein were solubilized in Tris-glycine SDS sample buffer (Invitrogen) and separated on 4— 1 2 % gradient Tris- allele frequencies (MAF) were less than 0.05, and (3) P values from the Hardy- Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE) test were greater than 0.05. Validation and Characterization of SNPs In the second stage, 94 individuals (53 cases and 41 controls) were selected from the same Taiwanese cohort from multiple medical centers. The CD-associated SNP rs4263839 (TNFSF15) was used as a positive control in the second-stage validation. SNP genotypes were determined using the MassARRAY system from Sequenom (San Diego, CA) using the iPLEX protocol. PCR primers and extension primers were designed using SeqTool Document vl.O (IBMS, Taiwan). The classification of SNPs was manually determined by MassARRAY Typer- Analyzer v3.3 software (Sequenom, San Diego, CA). Cell Culture HEK293T cells and the human colon cancer cell line HCT1 16 were obtained from the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC, Manassas, VA). Cells were cultured in DMEM with 10% fetal bovine serum and 1% penicillin/streptomycin. Cells were grown at 37°C in a 5% C0 2 atmosphere within a humidified incubator. Reagents and Antibodies Polyclonal rabbit antibodies against phospho-p65, phospho- JNK, phospho-ERK 1/2, phospho-p38, phospho-AKT, total p65, JNK, ERK1/2, p38, and AKT were purchased from Cell Signaling Technology (Danvers, MA). Anti-SLC03A1 was purchased from Abeam (Cambridge, UK). Other antibodies used were mouse monoclonal antibodies to FLAG and actin (Sigma, St Louis, MO) and nicotine was purchased from Sigma (St Louis, MO). PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 3 June 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 6 | e100515 SLC03A1 Regulates NF-kB Activity in CD Patients glycine gels (Invitrogen). Following electrophoresis, proteins were transferred to polyvinylidene difluoride membranes and blocked with 5% bovine serum albumin in TBST (10 mil Tris, 150 mM NaCl, 0.1% Tween 20, pH 7.5). For MAP kinase antibody staining, membranes were blocked with 4% milk in TBST. Membranes were incubated with the specific primary antibody overnight, washed, incubated with appropriate secondary anti- body conjugated to horseradish peroxidase, and developed using ECL (PerkinElmer Life Sciences). Membranes were stripped and re-probed with anti-total MAPK or anti-actin to confirm equal protein loading. Immunohistochemistry Frozen sections (8 |J.m thick) were stained with the NoVo Link Polymer Detection System (Leica, Biosystems Newcasde Ltd, UK), followed by the AEC substrate kit (Vector Laboratories, Burlingame, CA), according to the manufacturer's protocol. Tissues were counterstained with Mayer's haematoxylin. An isotype antibody was used as negative control for staining. A pathologist, who was blinded to the genetic results, performed the reading of the immunohistochemical staining results. Statistical Analysis Statistical analysis was performed with the R 2.15.1 package. Fisher's exact test and logistic regression were used to investigate the association between individual SNPs and CD. Fisher's exact test was used to determine the statistical significance of differences between case and control groups. Associations with risk of CD were estimated by odds ratios (ORs) and their 95% confidence intervals (CIs) using logistic regression with four different models including additive, recessive, dominant, and co-dominant models. Statistical differences between experimental groups were analyzed by Student's t test. Data are expressed as means ± standard errors (SE). All experiments were repeated at least three times. P values less than 0.05 were considered to indicate statistically significant differences. Results Study Population The first-stage Illumina platform analysis was composed of 16 CD patients and 16 age- and sex-matched controls. The second- stage Sequenom analysis was performed on 94 subjects, made up of 53 CD patients and 41 controls (Table 1). Clinical character- istics of CD patients are summarized in Table 2. rs207959 (T) Allele is Significantly Associated with Susceptibility to CD The SNP rs207959, located in the intron of SLC03A1, was a significant finding in the first-stage analysis (P= 2.3E-02) and was subsequently validated in the second-stage analysis (P= 1.0E-03). The positive internal control TMFSF15 (rs4263839) had a P value of 1.5E-02 in the first-stage analysis and 3.1E-02 in the second- stage analysis by Fisher's exact test. We further compared the allelic frequency and calculated the ORs of three different genotypes (TT, TC, and CC). The rs207959 (T) aUele demon- strated significant susceptibility to CD (T vs C, OR = 3.46, P=4.0E-4; TT+TC vs CC, OR = 3.8, P= 3.4E-3) (Table 3). rs207959 (TT) Genotype is Associated with Intestinal Perforation in CD Genotype and phenotype analysis of the rs207959 allele showed significant differences between gastrointestinal tract perforating 4 June 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 6 | e100515 SLC03A1 Regulates NF-kB Activity in CD Patients Nenul R |inhi|lB CD Figure 1. rs207959 T/C elevates SLC03A1 mRNA and protein expression levels in colon and small intestine tissue of normal, non- CD diseases, and CD patients. (A) Expression of SLC03A1 in colon tissue of normal (non-tumor portion of colorectal cancer patients) and CD patient by immunohistochemical staining (400X). (B) Expression of SLC03A1 in colon tissue of different CD patient genotypes (n = 3 for TT/CC group and n = 1 0 for TC group) determined by quantitative PCR. (C) Expression of SLC03A1 mRNA in colonic tissue (n = 30 for normal and colorectal cancer tumor; n = 24 for active CD patients; n = 6 for remission CD patients) determined by quantitative PCR. (D) Expression of SLC03A1 mRNA in small intestine tissue (n = 3 for normal; n = 5 for reperfusion inflammation; n = 6 for active CD patients) determined by quantitative PCR (*P<0.05). doi:1 0.1 371 /journal.pone.01 0051 5.g001 (B3) and inflammatory phenotypes (Bl) in patients with the T allele, which achieved a trend test P value of 0.0078 (TT OR= 1; CT OR = 0.03; CC OR = 0.04) (Table 4). However, there were no significant differences in other features, such as age of onset or disease location. These results suggested that the rs207959 (T) allele is a risk allele for causing intestinal perforation. rs207959 Genotype Affects SLC03A1 Expression in CD Patients and CD Patients have Increased SLC03A1 Expression Compared with Controls Increased SLC03A1 expression was observed in intestinal epithelial cells of CD patients compared to normal controls based on IHG staining (Figure 1A). To further evaluate the relationship between the rs207959 (T) allele and CD, we investigated SLC03A1 mRNA expression in colonic tissue of CD patients. As shown in Figure IB, patients with genotype TT had approximately 2-fold higher SLC03A1 mRNA expression than genotypes TC and CC, as determined by quantitative PCR. Next, we compared SLC03A1 mRNA expression in normal and non- CD diseases (colorectal cancer for colonic expression and reperfusion inflammation for small intestine expression) with CD patients (Figure 1C and ID). We found that in both colon and small intestine, CD patients had significandy increased mRNA expression of SLC03A1 compared with the non-CD diseases and normal controls. Furthermore, active CD had significandy increased expression of SLC03A1 compared with remission CD (Figure 1C), suggesting that SLC03A1 plays a role in CD. Overexpression of SLC03A1 Increases NF-kB Activation and Enhances Phosphorylation of ERK and JNK but not P38 and AKT Since increased expression of SLC03A1 was observed in CD patients compared with the control group, we examined the role of SLC03A1 in the inflammatory process by overexpressing SLC03A1 in HEK293T cells. Overexpressing SLC03A1 led to an increase in NF-kB activation, approximately 6-fold higher compared to the vector control, as seen by a NF-kB reporter luciferase assay (Figure 2A). Western blot analysis also revealed increased phosphorylation of the NF-kB p65 subunit in cells overexpressing SLC03A1 (Figure 2B). In addition to the NF-kB pathway, we assessed phosphorylation of components of the MAPK and AKT pathways, which also play a role in inflamma- tion. Overexpression of SLC03A1 increased phosphorylation of ERK and JNK, while phosphorylation of p38 and AKT were unchanged (Figure 2C). Nicotine Augments the Activation of NF-kB Activity in Cells Overexpressing SLC03A1 Since smoking is known to be an aggravating factor for CD and SLC03A1 was reported to be associated with nicotine depen- dence [18-21], we evaluated the effect of nicotine on NF-kB activation in cells overexpressing SLC03A1. Addition of nicotine (0.8 |J.M) to cells overexpressing SLC03A1 resulted in a further significant increase in NF-kB activation compared to addition of DMSO as control (Figure 3). This finding suggests that nicotine may augment the NF-kB activity /inflammatory process in CD patients. PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 5 June 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 6 | e100515 SLC03A1 Regulates NF-kB Activity in CD Patients IA -a = c a £ ? I— Q. o £ O 2. o Si O o « m S Z -S PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 6 June 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 6 | e100515 SLC03A1 Regulates NF-kB Activity in CD Patients (A) (C) ll Figure 2. Overexpression of SLC03A1 induces NF-kB activation, enhances the phosphorylation of two classes of MAPKs (ERK and JNK), and augments NF-kB activity. (A) Overexpression of SLC03A1 induced approximately 6-fold higher NF-kB activation (**P<0.01). (B) Overexpression of SLC03A1 in HEK293T cells resulted in increased p65 expression (*P<0.05). (C) ERK and JNK expression increased with overexpression of SLC03A1, while expression of p38 and AKT showed no difference (*P<0.05). All experiments were performed at least 3 times. doi:1 0.1 371 /journal.pone.01 0051 5.g002 Discussion Using a two-stage approach of Illumina platform-based and Sequenom MassArray analyses, along with functional studies, we identified a new CD-associated gene in Taiwanese patients. The SNP rs207959, located in an intron of SLC03A1 (also known as OATPD, OATP-D, OATP3A1, FLJ40478, and SLC21A11) at 15q26, showed a significant association with CD in the two-stage analysis. Our study showed that rs207959 allelic differences correlate with altered SLC03A1 mRNA expression. Patients with genotype TT exhibit greater expression than patients with genotype TC or CC, demonstrating that the rs207959 T/C change affects the mRNA expression of SLC03A1. In other systems it has been shown that transcriptional regulatory elements in introns and the intronic elements may determine alternative splicing patterns and thereby regulate biological functions [22-24]. Solute carrier organic anion transporters (SLCOs/ OATPs) are multispecific transport proteins that are widely expressed in many tissues in the body. They mediate the Na + -independent uptake of large amphipathic organic anions [25]. The solute carrier organic anion transporter family member 3A1 (SLC03A1) is one of the uptake transporters that belongs to the solute carrier family [26]. SLC03A1 protein was recently detected in the epithelial tissues of lactiferous ducts in normal breast tissue [27]. We have shown that SLC03A1 is also expressed in the intestinal epithelium, where both mRNA and protein expression are significantly increased in CD patients compared with normals and individuals with non-CD disease. However, it is still unclear how SLC03A1 influences cell functions. By comparing the allelic frequency and calculating the OR of three different genotypes in CD patients, we also found that patients with genotype TT were more susceptible to CD compared to patients with genotype TC or CC. More specifically, patients with genotype TT have a greater risk of gastrointestinal tract perforation than patients with genotype TC or CC. From our results, we also observed that active lesions showed increased expression of SLC03A1 compared to scar tissue, supporting the hypothesis that SLC03A1 expression correlates with disease activity and outcomes for CD patients. PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 7 June 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 6 | e100515 SLC03A1 Regulates NF-kB Activity in CD Patients (A) B c - > a D Vector D V'cctor+0.8u.M Nicotine ■SLC03A1 'SLCO3A1+0.8UM Nicotine (B) Vector SLC03A1 Figure 3. Activation of NF-kB by nicotine in SLC03A1 overexpressing cells. (A) HEK293T cells were transfected with the NF-kB reporter plasmids, together with an empty vector or SLC03A1 constructs. Addition of 0.8 u,M nicotine for 24 hours resulted in increased NF-kB activity in cells overexpressing SLC03A1 (*P<0.05). (B) Western blot analysis from cell lysates demonstrates equal transfection efficiencies. doi:1 0.1 371 /journal.pone.01 0051 5.g003 NF-kB is a key pro-inflammatory transcription factor and controls many genes involved in the inflammatory process [28]; activation of NF-kB is pivotal in pro-inflammatory signal transduction [29]. Previous studies have shown that NF-kB regulates the IBD inflammatory process and is activated in mononuclear cells of the intestinal lamina propria in CD patients [29]. In our study, we found that SLC03A1 mediates inflamma- tion by activating NF-kB transcriptional activity. Moreover, SLC03A1 induces stronger activation of ERK and JNK phosphorylation, leading to a more intense and protracted NF- kB activation. Smoking has long been considered a risk factor for CD. CD patients who smoke suffer more clinical relapses and undergo more operations than nonsmoking CD patients [18,19]. One study has shown a correlation between the SNP of SLC03A1 and QT prolongation in schizophrenic patients treated with iloperidone [30]. Schizophrenia is known to be associated with a high prevalence of smoking [20]. Meta-analyses of GWAS have also shown that SLC03A1 is associated with nicotine dependence [21]. As shown in a previous study, nicotine increases oxidative stress, activates NF-kB, and induces apoptosis [31]. In our study, we have provided evidence that nicotine induction leads to enhanced NF-kB activation in the presence of SLC03A1. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that smoking exacer- bates the course of CD due to allelic change of SLC03A1. We are aware of limitations associated with this study due to the small sample size. As emphasized in the introduction, CD is still a low incidence/prevalence disease in Taiwan. Therefore, despite our best efforts to enroll patients, the sample size was small. We would like to see further validation of these results from other countries in the future. Secondly, the tissues used for control were not ideal. Theoretically, age-and sex-matched healthy individuals and subjects with non-IBD inflammation (e.g., diverticulitis or gastroenteritis) would be more appropriate for the control group. However, in clinical practice, these conditions are not appropriate or indicated for endoscopy or surgery. Therefore, we were not able to obtain this tissue for use as control. Instead, we used colorectal cancer and intestine transplantation tissue since these are obtainable in clinical practice. The gender ratio of colorectal cancer is similar to that of IBD in Taiwan [32]. With respect to age, we performed a correlation analysis of the expression of SLC03A1 and age, and found no correlation between them (data not shown). Therefore, we concluded that it would be acceptable to use the current control for interpreting the results. In conclusion, SLC03A1 is a novel CD-associated gene based on our Ulumina platform analysis and functional study results. Expression of SLC03A1 activates the NF-kB transcription factor mediating inflammatory processes, consequently inducing in- creased activation of ERK and JNK phosphorylation and leading to a more intense and protracted NF-kB activation in intestinal epithelial cells. Active disease CD tissue expressed higher levels of SLC03A1 compared with tissue analyzed from patients in remission. Stronger inflammation is associated with a greater chance of a perforated CD phenotype. Nicotine enhances the NF- kB activation in the presence of SLC03A1, which can partially explain smoking's influence as an aggravating factor for CD. Acknowledgments We thank all the patients and control volunteers who participated in this study. We thank the second Gore Laboratory of the Department of Medical Research of the National Taiwan University Hospital for technical assistance. Author Contributions Conceived and designed the experiments: SCW YYT MTW LCL JMW. Performed the experiments: SCW YYT MTW CTS. Analyzed the data: SCW YYT LCL JHH EYC. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 8 June 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 6 | e100515 SLC03A1 Regulates NF-kB Activity in CD Patients tools: SCW DCW AWK CSC YHN CCT YC MJS CYW. Contributed to the writing of the manuscript: SCW YYT RJX DKPJMW. References 1. Podolsky DK (2002) Inflammatory bowel disease. N EnglJ Med 347: 417-429. 2. Khor B, Gardet A, Xavier RJ (201 1) Genetics and pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease. Nature 474: 307-317. 3. Hugot JP, Chamaillard M, Zouali H, Lesage S, Cezard JP, et al. (2001) Association of NOD2 lcucinc-rich repeat variants with susceptibility to Crohn's disease. Nature 411: 599-603. 4. Ogura Y, Boncn DK, Inohara N, Nicolae UL, Chen FF, et al. (2001) A frameshift mutation in NOD2 associated with susceptibility to Crohn's disease. Nature 411: 603-606. 5. Hsiao CH, Wei SC, WongJM, Lai HS, Chang MH, et al. (2007) Pediatric Crohn disease: clinical and genetic characteristics in Taiwan. J Pediatr Gastroenterol Nutr 44: 342-346. 6. Lee GH, Kim CG, Kim JS, Jung HC, Song IS (2005) [Frequency analysis of NOD2 gene mutations in Korean patients with Crohn's disease]. Korean J Gastroenterol 45: 162—168. 7. Li M, Gao X, Guo CC, Wu KC, Zhang X, et al. (2008) OCTN and CARD 15 gene polymorphism in Chinese patients with inflammatory bowel disease. WorldJ Gastroenterol 14: 4923-4927. 8. Wei SC, Ni YH, Yang HI, Su YN, Chang MC, et al. (201 1) A hospital-based study of clinical and genetic features of Crohn's disease. J Formos Med Assoc 110: 600-606. 9. Yamazaki K, Takazoe M, Tanaka T, Kazumori T, Nakamura Y (2002) Absence of mutation in the NOD2/CARD15 gene among 483 Japanese patients with Crohn's disease. J Hum Genet 47: 469—472. 10. Xavier RJ, Rioux JD (2008) Genome-wide association studies: a new window into immune-mediated diseases. Nat Rev Immunol 8: 631-643. 11. Wellcome Trust Case Control C (2007) Genome-wide association study of 14,000 cases of seven common diseases and 3,000 shared controls. Nature 447: 661-678. 12. Rioux JD, Xavier RJ, Taylor KD, Silverberg MS, Goyette P, et al. (2007) Genome-wide association study identifies new susceptibility loci for Crohn disease and implicates autophagy in disease pathogenesis. Nat Genet 39: 596— 604. 13. Barrett JC, Hansoul S, Nicolae DL, Cho JH, Duerr RH, et al. (2008) Genome- wide association defines more than 30 distinct susceptibility loci for Crohn's disease. Nat Genet 40: 955-962. 14. Rivas MA, Beaudoin M, Gardet A, Stevens C, Sharma Y, et al. (2011) Deep resequencing of GWAS loci identifies independent rare variants associated with inflammatory bowel disease. Nat Genet 43: 1066-1073. 15. Yamazaki K, McGovern D, Ragoussis J, Paolucci M, Butler H, et al. (2005) Single nucleotide polymorphisms in TNFSF15 confer susceptibility to Crohn's disease. Hum Mol Genet 14: 3499-3506. 16. Yang SK, LimJ, Chang HS, Lee I, Li Y, et al. (2008) Association of TNFSF15 with Crohn's disease in Koreans. AmJ Gastroenterol 103: 1437-1442. 17. Asakura K, Nishiwaki Y, Inoue N, Hibi T, Watanabe M, et al. (2009) Prevalence of ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease in Japan. J Gastroenterol 44: 659-665. 18. CosnesJ, Beaugerie L, Carbonnel F, Gendre JP (2001) Smoking cessation and the course of Crohn's disease: an intervention study. Gastroenterology 120: 1093-1099. 19. Carbonnel F, Jantehou P, Monnet E, CosnesJ (2009) Environmental risk factors in Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis: an update. Gastroenterol Clin Biol 33 Suppl 3: S145-157. 20. Zhang XY, Xiu MH, Chen da C, Yang FD, Wu GY, et al. (2010) Nicotine dependence and serum BDNF levels in male patients with schizophrenia. Psychopharmacology (Berl) 212: 301-307. 21. Wang KS, Liu X, Zhang Q, Zeng M (2012) ANAPC1 and SLC03A1 are associated with nicotine dependence: meta-analysis of genome -wide association studies. Drug Alcohol Depend 124: 325-332. 22. HuiJ, Hung LH, Heiner M, Schreiner S, Ncumullcr N, et al. (2005) Intronic CA-repeat and CA-rich elements: a new class of regulators of mammalian alternative splicing. EMBOJ 24: 1988-1998. 23. Beohar N, Kawamoto S (1998) Transcriptional regulation of the human nonmuscle myosin II heavy chain-A gene. Identification of three clustered cis- clcmcnts in intron-1 which modulate transcription in a cell type- and differentiation state-dependent manner. J Biol Chem 273: 9168-9178. 24. Stamm S, Ben-Ari S, Rafalska I, Tang Y, Zhang Z, et al. (2005) Function of alternative splicing. Gene 344: 1—20. 25. Obaidat A, Roth M, Hagenbuch B (2012) The expression and function of organic anion transporting polypeptides in normal tissues and in cancer. Annu Rev Pharmacol Toxicol 52: 135-151. 26. Adachi H, Suzuki T, Abe M, Asano N, Mizutamari H, et al. (2003) Molecular characterization of human and rat organic anion transporter OATP-D. AmJ Physiol Renal Physiol 285: F1188-1197. 27. Kindla J, Rau TT, Jung R, Fasching PA, Strick R, et al. (201 1) Expression and localization of the uptake transporters OATP2B1, OATP3A1 and OATP5A1 in non-malignant and malignant breast tissue. Cancer Biol Thcr 11: 584—591. 28. Monaco C, Andreakos E, Kiriakidis S, Mauri C, Bickncll C, et al. (2004) Canonical pathway of nuclear factor kappa B activation selectively regulates proinflammatory and prothrombotic responses in human atherosclerosis. Proc Nad Acad Sci U S A 101: 5634-5639. 29. Schreiber S, Nikolaus S, Hampe J (1998) Activation of nuclear factor kappa B inflammatory bowel disease. Gut 42: 477—484. 30. Volpi S, Heaton C, Mack K, Hamilton JB, Lannan R, et al. (2009) Whole genome association study identifies polymorphisms associated with QT prolongation during iloperidone treatment of schizophrenia. Mol Psychiatry 14: 1024-1031. 31. Crowley-Weber CL, Dvorakova K, Crowley C, Bernstein H, Bernstein C, et al. (2003) Nicotine increases oxidative stress, activates NF-kappaB and GRP78, induces apoptosis and sensitizes cells to genotoxic/xenobiotic stresses by a multiple stress inducer, deoxycholate: relevance to colon carcinogenesis. Chem Biol Interact 145: 53-66. 32. Jian ZH, Lung CC, HuangJY, Su SY, Ho CC, et al. (2013) Sex disparities in the association of lung adenocarcinoma with colorectal cancer. J Cancer 4: 691-696. PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 9 June 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 6 | e100515
Studies in classical Chinese thought : papers presented at the Workshop on Classical Chinese Thought held at Harvard University, August 1976
null
1980-01-01T00:00:00Z
Chinese classics -- Congresses,Philosophy, Chinese -- Congresses,Chinese classics,Philosophy, Chinese
pages 364-617 ; 23 cm,Includes bibliographical references and index,Introduction / Henry Rosemont and Benjamin I. Schwartz -- Following the "One Thread" of the "Analects" / Herbert Fingarette -- Discussion of Professor Fingarette on Confucius / Herrlee G. Creel -- Mencius and motivation / David Sheperd Nivison -- Reflections on an unmoved mind : an analysis of "Mencius" 2A2 / Jeffrey Riegel -- How much of "Chuang Tzu" did Chuang Tzu write? / A.C. Graham -- The metamorphosis of Han Fei's thought in the Han / Leo S. Chang -- The Mohists on warfare : technology, technique, and justification / Robin R.E. Yates
SNP rs10248565 in HDAC9 as a novel genomic aberration biomarker of lung adenocarcinoma in non-smoking women.
Lai, Liang-Chuan,Tsai, Mong-Hsun,Chen, Pei-Chun,Chen, Lee H,Hsiao, Jen-Hao,Chen, Shin-Kuang,Lu, Tzu-Pin,Lee, Jang-Ming,Hsu, Chung-Ping,Hsiao, Chuhsing K,Chuang, Eric Y
2014-03-21T00:00:00Z
null
This article is from Journal of Biomedical Science , volume 21 . Abstract Background: Numerous efforts have been made to elucidate the etiology and improve the treatment of lung cancer, but the overall five-year survival rate is still only 15%. Although cigarette smoking is the primary risk factor for lung cancer, only 7% of female lung cancer patients in Taiwan have a history of smoking. Since cancer results from progressive accumulation of genetic aberrations, genomic rearrangements may be early events in carcinogenesis. Results: In order to identify biomarkers of early-stage adenocarcinoma, the genome-wide DNA aberrations of 60 pairs of lung adenocarcinoma and adjacent normal lung tissue in non-smoking women were examined using Affymetrix Genome-Wide Human SNP 6.0 arrays. Common copy number variation (CNV) regions were identified by ≥30% of patients with copy number beyond 2 ± 0.5 of copy numbers for each single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and at least 100 continuous SNP variant loci. SNPs associated with lung adenocarcinoma were identified by McNemar’s test. Loss of heterozygosity (LOH) SNPs were identified in ≥18% of patients with LOH in the locus. Aberration of SNP rs10248565 at HDAC9 in chromosome 7p21.1 was identified from concurrent analyses of CNVs, SNPs, and LOH. Conclusion: The results elucidate the genetic etiology of lung adenocarcinoma by demonstrating that SNP rs10248565 may be a potential biomarker of cancer susceptibility.
Full text of "SNP rs10248565 in HDAC9 as a novel genomic aberration biomarker of lung adenocarcinoma in non-smoking women." Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "SNP rs10248565 in HDAC9 as a novel genomic aberration biomarker of lung adenocarcinoma in non-smoking women." See other formats Lai et al. Journal of Biomedical Science 2014, 21:24 http://www.jbionnedsci.conn/content/21 /I /24 Ministry of Science and Technology The cost of publication in journal of Bioi Technology, Taiwan. RESEARCH le by the Ministry of Sciei JOURNAL OF BIOMEDICAL SCIENCE Open Access SNP rsl 0248565 in HDAC9 as a novel genomic aberration biomarker of lung adenocarcinoma in non-smoking women Liang-Chuan Lai^'^", Mong-Hsun Tsai^'^ Pei-Chun Chen^, Lee H Chen^, Jen-Hao Hsiao^ Shin-Kuang Chen^, Tzu-Pin Lu"^, Jang-Ming Lee^, Chung-Ping Hsu^, Chuhsing K Hsiao^'^ and Eric Y Chuang^'"^'^" Abstract Background: Numerous efforts liave been made to elucidate tine etiology and improve the treatment of lung cancer, but the overall five-year survival rate is still only 1 5%. Although cigarette smoking is the primary risk factor for lung cancer, only 7% of female lung cancer patients in Taiwan have a history of smoking. Since cancer results from progressive accumulation of genetic aberrations, genomic rearrangements may be early events in carcinogenesis. Results: In order to identify biomarkers of early-stage adenocarcinoma, the genome-wide DNA aberrations of 60 pairs of lung adenocarcinoma and adjacent normal lung tissue in non-smoking women were examined using Aff/metrix Genome-Wide Human SNP 6.0 arrays. Common copy number variation (CNV) regions were identified by >30% of patients with copy number beyond 2 ±0.5 of copy numbers for each single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and at least 100 continuous SNP variant loci. SNPs associated with lung adenocarcinoma were identified by McNemar's test. Loss of heterozygosity (LOH) SNPs were identified in >18% of patients with LOH in the locus. Aberration of SNP rsl 0248565 at HDAC9 in chromosome 7p21.1 was identified from concurrent analyses of CNVs, SNPs, and LOH. Conclusion: The results elucidate the genetic etiology of lung adenocarcinoma by demonstrating that SNP rsl 0248565 may be a potential biomarker of cancer susceptibility. Keywords: Lung cancer, Microarray, rsl 0248565, HDAC9, Adenocarcinoma, Non-smoking Background One of most commonly diagnosed cancers is lung cancer, which accounts for nearly 18% of all cancer-related deaths worldwide [1]. In the United States and other Western countries, the 5 -year survival rate of lung cancer is only 15% and has not improved over several decades. In Taiwan, lung cancer mortality rates have become the high- est in the world [2,3]. Even though numerous research ef- forts have been devoted to the development of lung cancer treatment over the past few decades, the overall 5- year survival rate is still as low as 15% [4]. Smoking is the primary risk factor for lung cancer [5]. In Western countries, 70-90% of lung cancers are attrib- utable to cigarette smoking, whereas in Taiwan, only 7% * Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected] ^Graduate Institute of Physiology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan ^Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Core, Center of Genomic Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan Full list of author information is available at the end of the article of female lung cancer cases are associated with smoking [6,7]. Most non-smoking female patients with lung can- cer have adenocarcinoma. However, the molecular mechanisms of lung adenocarcinoma in non-smoking women remain unclear. Cancer appears to result from the progressive accumula- tion of genetic aberrations ranging from large, visible chromosome events to single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Genomic rearrangements that affect DNA se- quences are called structural variants and include such things as insertions, deletions, duplications and inversions [8]. When the length of a structural variant is 1 kb or lon- ger, it is defined as a copy number variation (CNV). CNVs have played important roles in recent cancer studies. Du- plicated chromosomal regions may contain dominant on- cogenes (e.g., MYC and ERBB2 [9-11]), whereas deleted regions may harbor tumor suppressor genes (e.g., RBI, CDKN2A, and PTEN [9-15]). These genes play critical o © 2014 Lai et a!.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative BIoIVIGCI CGntrsI commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.Org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.0rg/publicdomain/zero/l.O/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Lai et al. Journal of Biomedical Science 2014, 21:24 http://www.jbionnedsci.conn/content/21 /I /24 Page 2 of 9 roles in multiple processes including cell growth, prolifer- ation, apoptosis, and metastasis. For example, genomic imbalances and losses at 16q were shown to be associated with more poorly differentiated subtypes of prostate cancer [16]. DNA CNVs explained about 12% of the gene expression variations in breast cancer [17]. Concord- ant changes between mRNA expression levels and CNVs were observed in several genes located in copy number variable regions in lung cancer [18,19]. Furthermore, gene CNVs have been shown to be useful in predicting patient survival outcomes in lung cancer [20,21]. For example, the amplification and overexpression of epidermal growth fac- tor receptor {EGFR) and the under-expression of dual spe- cificity phosphates 4 {DUSP4) served as effective prognostic biomarkers in lung cancer [19,22]. Therefore, it is import- ant to characterize DNA copy number changes for both the basic understanding of cancer and its diagnosis. In this study, the genomic aberrations of lung adenocar- cinoma in non-smoking women were examined using genome-wide human SNP arrays. The primary advantage of SNP arrays for our purposes was that the probe inten- sity of both alleles at each SNP allows the detection of CNV breakpoints and the estimation of the associated number of copies. In addition, loss of heterozygosity (LOH), used for surveying segments of allelic losses, can be examined by analyzing the genotype of both normal and lung tissues [23,24]. Although SNP genotyping is often used for examining the associations between cancer and normal tissues, the main focus of this study was not to identify the association of SNPs with lung adenocarcinoma in non-smoking women. Instead, we took advantage of the ability of whole- genome SNP arrays to concurrently analyze CNVs, SNPs, and LOH in order to identify the novel focal loci of lung adenocarcinoma. All results indicated that the SNP rs 10248565 in HDAC9, the gene encoding histone deacety- lase, was related to lung carcinogenesis. In this study, we demonstrated that SNP rsl0248565 in HDAC9 may be a potential biomarker for identifying important genetic de- terminants of cancer susceptibility and elucidating the gen- etic etiology of lung cancer in non-smoking females. Methods Sample collection The study protocol was approved by the institutional re- view boards of National Taiwan University Hospital and Taichung Veterans General Hospital. The written con- sent form was approved by ethics committees, and all participants agreed with their written consents to participate in this study. In total, 120 pairs of cancer and normal lung tissue specimens were collected from non-smoking females. The selection criteria of clinical specimens depended on the pathology report, physical examination and cigarette smok- ing history. Surgical lung tissue specimens were immediately snap-frozen in liquid N2 and stored at -80°C until be- ing further processed for DNA extraction. Only those paired samples passing quality checks (n = 61 pairs) were processed for SNP arrays. Isolation of genomic DNA, DNA amplification, labeling and hybridization of SNP arrays Genomic DNA was isolated by phenol/chloroform extrac- tion following standard protocols with 0.5% SDS and 200 (ig/ml proteinase K. Total genomic DNA (250 ng) was digested with a restriction enzyme {Nspl or Styl) and ligated to adaptors that recognize the cohesive four bp overhangs. All fragments resulting from restriction en- zyme digestion were substrates for adaptor ligation. A generic primer that recognizes the adaptor sequence was used to amplify adaptor-ligated DNA fragments. PCR con- ditions had been optimized to preferentially amplify frag- ments in the 200 to 1,100 bp size range. The amplified DNA was then fragmented, labeled, and hybridized to Genome- Wide Human SNP 6.0 arrays (Affymetrix, Inc., Santa Clara, CA). After 16 hours of hybridization at 49°C, the arrays were washed by Fluidics Station 450 and scanned by GeneChip Scanner 3000. Microarray data of this study are MIAME compliant, and have been submit- ted to the MIAME compliant Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database (accession number GSE33355). Copy number variation analysis After scanning, the intensity data were analyzed by Partek® software (Partek®, St. Louis, MO, USA). Since both tumor and adjacent normal tissues were from the same individ- ual, the reference baseline for each tumor tissue was its corresponding normal tissue. The criteria for searching for CNV regions in the whole genome were as follows: 1) copy number intensity ratio of tumor to normal tissue for each SNP was >2.5 or <1.5; 2) each individual had >100 continuous SNP variant loci; 3) the CNV regions existed in >30% of the study population. The overlapping genes located within the detected CNV regions were annotated using the documentation file version 30 provided by Affymetrix. TaqMan® copy number assays TaqMan® assays were used to validate the total copy number of CNV regions. Total genomic DNA (20 ng; 5 ng/(il) was used for TaqMan® Copy Number assays (Life Technologies, Carlsbad, CA, USA). All reactions were performed in duplicate, including the FAM™ dye label-based assay for the target of interest and the VIC® dye label-based TaqMan® Copy Number Reference Assay. The TaqMan® probes for the target of interest were labeled with FAM at the 5' end and linked by a non-fluorescent quencher at the 3' end. RNase P labeled with VIC dye (Life Technologies) was utilized as the reference gene. Lai et al. Journal of Biomedical Science 2014, 21:24 http://www.jbionnedsci.conn/content/21 /I /24 Page 3 of 9 which is known to exist in two copies in a diploid genome. All TaqMan® assays were performed following manufac- turers instructions and copy number calculation was con- ducted by the delta-delta threshold cycle (AACt) method. PGR was performed with an Applied Biosystems 7900HT Fast Real-Time PGR System (Applied Biosystems, Garls- bad, GA, USA). Results were analyzed by GopyGaller™ ver- sion 1.0. Tumor samples with a delta Gt value between target and reference sequences were measured, and then compared to their paired normal samples. Single nucleotide polymorphism analysis For SNP analysis, SNPs were obtained using Affymetrix® SNP Array 6.0 (each has more than 906,600 SNPs). After excluding SNPs with allele frequency <1% (157,703 SNPs) or call rate <90% (123 SNPs), 748,774 SNPs were further analyzed by McNemar-Bowker s test to examine the difference of genotypes between normal and tumor tissues from the same subject. SNPs were coded according to the number of minor alleles, i.e., AA, Aa and aa, deno ted as 0, 1, 2, respectively. The nonparametric McNemar- Bowker s test was applied to examine the association between SNPs and tissues. The analyses were done in R version 2.9.0. Loss of heterozygosity analysis Loss of heterozygosity (LOH) was defined as heterozygos- ity in normal tissue and homozygosity in tumor tissue. The genotypes between tumor tissue and its normal coun- terpart from the same subject were compared using Genome- Wide Human SNP 6.0 arrays (Affymetrix, Inc., Santa Glara, GA). LOH SNPs were identified in >18% of patients with LOH in the locus. Results DNA genetic aberration analysis In this study, pairs of adenocarcinoma and adjacent nor- mal lung tissue specimens were collected from 61 non- smoking women for the purpose of examining genome- wide DNA aberrations. The majority (72%; n = 44) of women were in early stages (I + II) and the mean (SD) age was 59.4 (11). Their clinical characteristics are listed in Table 1. GNV, SNP, and LOH were concurrently analyzed Table 1 Characteristics of 61 non-smoking female lung adenocarcinoma patients Characteristics Sample size Age Female 61 59.4 ± 1 1 Tumor types Adenocarcinoma 61 59.4 ± 1 1 Tumor stage l + ll 44 60±11 111 + IV 17 58± 11 using Affymetrix Genome- Wide Human SNP 6.0 arrays. All chips' call rates were greater than 99%. Copy number variation analysis We first identified common CNV regions among these lung adenocarcinoma samples. The criteria for searching the CNV regions in whole genome were stated in the Methods section. In total, there were 424 CNV regions. Figure lA shows the distribution of CNV for each chromosome among 61 paired samples. Each grey bar in- dicates the amplification or deletion regions in tumor tis- sue. Black bars indicate where >30% of patients (n > 18) had CNV. An expanded view of these results showed that one third or more of these patients had a genetic amplifi- cation at 7p21.3-7p21.1 and 7pll.2 (Figure IB). In con- trast, no common deletion regions were identified. In order to validate the common amplification regions, four CNV regions in 7p21.1 were chosen for TaqMan® copy number assays. In the upper panel of Figure IC, the positions of 4 CNV regions (black blocks) identified by SNP arrays and those examined by TaqMan® copy number assays (grey blocks) are shown. The TaqMan as- says showed that the copy numbers in all 4 regions were greater than normal (lower panel of Figure IC), indicat- ing these regions are common amplification regions in non-smoking female lung cancer patients. In order to understand the function of genes in com- mon amplification regions, functional analysis was done using Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA). The results re- vealed that the common amplification regions contain 29 genes. Network analysis showed that these genes were mainly involved in cellular development, cellular growth and proliferation, and cancer. Among these 29 genes, EGFR (encoding epidermal growth factor receptor) and HDAC9 were previously reported to have an association with lung tumorigenesis. Single nucleotide polymorphism analysis Next, genotyping of SNPs was analyzed in normal and adenocarcinoma tissues from the same subject. SNPs with minor allele frequency <0.01 were excluded. After exclud- ing SNPs with low minor allele frequency (181,503 SNPs) or SNPs with departing Hardy- Weinberg Equilibrium (P-value <0.0001; 2,816 SNPs), the remaining 684,877 SNPs on autosomal chromosomes were further ana- lyzed by McNemar-Bowker s test to examine the differ- ences in genotypes. Since this study adopted a paired design, which pro- vides less variation than general case-control studies and can achieve a higher statistical power, a strict cri- terion of P-values, Bonferroni correction, was not per- formed. As shown in Figure 2, a Manhattan plot showed that there were four SNPs with P-values smaller than 0.01. Each dot represents a SNP. The Lai et al. Journal of Biomedical Science 2014, 21:24 http://www.jbionnedsci.conn/content/21 /I /24 Page 4 of 9 I i I I I 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 (x108bp) Position B Chromosome 7 r" ^ > "■^^■^ p21.3 p15.3 p14.1 q11.22 q21.11 p13 q11.23 7p21.3 - 7p21.1 7p11.2 2 .^^V" ^s^-^ <^\^ SNP array TaqMan assay 12 3 4 CNV regions in Chromosome 7p21.1 Figure 1 (See legend on next page.) Lai et al. Journal of Biomedical Science 2014, 21:24 http://www.jbionnedsci.conn/content/21 /I /24 Page 5 of 9 (See figure on previous page.) Figure 1 Copy number variation analysis in non-smolcing female lung adenocarcinoma patients. (A) Distribution of genome-wide CNV using Affymetrix GeneCliip® SNP 6.0 analysis. Tine criteria for tlie CNV regions were tliat SNPs must liave copy numbers >2.5 or < 1.5 and tliere must be at least 100 continuous SNP variant loci. Grey bars indicate regions with gains (above) or losses (below) in copy number. Black bars indicate that >30% of the patients had a particular CNV. (B) Common gain regions (>30% of patients) of CNVs (grey area) were identified in 7p21.3-7p21.1 and 7p1 1.2. Black lines of each row indicate regions with copy number amplifications at > 100 continuous SNP loci for each patient. (C) TaqMan assay validation of CNVs in chromosome 7p21.1. Four CNV regions (black block 1-4) identified by SNP arrays were examined using TaqMan® copy number assays (grey block). distribution of -log(P-value) of each SNP was plotted across chromosomes. Information on these four SNPs (rsl700874, rsl0248565, rsll761619, and rs9316119) is listed in Table 2. Only rs 1700874 was located in an intergenic region (between TGFB2 and LYPLALl); the rest of the SNPs were located in introns. Among them, the SNP with the lowest P-value, rsl0248565, is located in an intron of HDAC9. Loss of heterozygosity analysis Lastly, we examined the distribution of LOH in each chromosome (Figure 3). Because the proportion of LOH loci ranged from 10% to over 50%, LOH for a SNP was defined as at least 18% of patients (>11 patients) with LOH in the locus. As shown in Figure 3A, black bars in- dicate >18% of patients with the LOH SNP. In total, there were 30 SNPs indicating LOH. Most of these SNPs appeared in chromosome 7 (Figure 3B). Among these LOH SNPs, we noticed that SNP rsl0248565 was associated with lung adenocarcinoma and was located in the CNV region. Combining the results of CNV, SNP, and LOH analyses (Figure 4), we concluded that rs 10248 565 is a possible biomarker of lung adenocar- cinoma in non-smoking females. Discussion It is well-known that there are many causative elements in cancer progression and tumorigenesis, such as se- quence mutations, transcriptional alterations, and gen- omic changes. Among these complicated factors. structural variations of DNA sequences have been widely reported to serve as a key driver to dysregulate the transcriptome during tumorigenesis [17]. Further- more, since genes located within the variable regions are candidate oncogenes or tumor suppressors, an inte- grative analysis of CNV, SNP, and LOH may provide more information in dissecting the lung tumorigenic process. To help explain the relationship between copy number and gene expression, we performed an integra- tive analysis in paired lung adenocarcinoma tissue spec- imens to identify genomic alterations in tumor tissues. Our CNV results showed that at least 30% of the sam- ples had amplifications at chromosomes 7p21.3-7p21.1 and 7pll.2. However, no deletion regions were identified. This may due to the stringent selection criteria adopted here. Comparing with other studies, several aberrant re- gions have been detected using high resolution karyotyp- ing techniques to scan lung cancer genome, such as amplifications of 3p25-27 and 5pl3-14, and deletions of 3p21 and 9q21 [25]. Several studies reported that a dele- tion on chromosome 5q in small cell and squamous cell lung cancer subtypes may be associated with smoking his- tory [26-29]. Conversely, amplifications of 5q have been detected in adenocarcinoma [30,31]. We did not observe any amplification regions in chromosome 5 in this study, which may be explained by differences in experimental de- sign, selection criteria, and ethnicity of study populations. Further investigations of the 29 genes located within these CNV regions identified several key players in- volved in the tumorigenic process. For instance, loss of . rsl0248565 . rsl700874 . rsll761619 • rs9316119 ^alue) • ♦ «, • v« ^ . tirir » t izs. • zz^ 'w' tt? ss ^ ?• jrz ^ • t; • * o 0- 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 Chromosome Figure 2 Single nucleotide polymorphism analysis in non-smoking female lung adenocarcinoma patients. Each dot denotes a SNP. The distribution of -log(P-value) of each SNP was plotted across chromosomes. The four SNPs with P-values smaller than 10"^ are labeled. Lai et al. Journal of Biomedical Science 2014, 21:24 http://www.jbionnedsci.conn/content/21 /I /24 Page 6 of 9 Table 2 SNPs significantly associated with lung tumors in non-smoking female patients SNP Chromosome Position P-value Location rs 1700874 1 219,182,858 4x10"^ Intergenic TGFB2 &LYPLAU rs 10248565 7 18,974,723 3x10"^ HDAC9 intron rsll761619 7 33,549,392 8x10"^ BBS9 intron rs9316119 13 45,696,862 6x10"^ GTF2F2 intron docking protein 2 {D0K2) as well as expression of bacu- loviral lAP repeat-containing 2/3 {BIRC2/3) can facilitate lung cancer cell proliferation and contribute to lung tumor development [32,33]. EGFR is involved in the signal transduction pathways of cell proliferation, differentiation, adhesion, protection from apoptosis and survival Numer- ous reports have shown that EGFR gene mutations are frequently detected in lung cancer, especially in adenocar- cinoma, females, and non-smoking patients [34]. The gene encoding HDAC in chromosome 7p21.1 was identified in all CNV, SNP and LOH analyses and is worthy of mention here. HDAC is involved in deacetyla- tion of lysine residues in the N-terminal tails of nucleo- somal core histones [35], and it has also been implicated in the development of cancer [36]. The activity of several tumor suppressors is regulated in part by HDACs, such as p53 binding protein that regulates cell cycling in response to DNA damage [37]. HDAC inhibitors were developed as anti-cancer agents with a high degree of selectivity for kill- ing cancer cells. In one study, inhibition of HDAC induced DNA damage which only normal cells, but not cancer cells, can repair, and resulted in cancer cell death [38]. Inhibition of HDAC6 significantly enhanced cell death in- duced by the topoisomerase II inhibitors in transformed cells, but not in normal cells [21]. Inhibition of HDACl and HDAC2 enhanced the radiosensitivity of non-small cell lung cancer [39]. Unfortunately, the expression levels of HDAC9 did not differ significantly between tumor tis- sue and adjacent normal tissue in our study (data not shown). This may be due to the location of the SNP in an intron of HDAC9, and further investigation of the mech- anism of genomic aberration in HDAC9 is warranted. The hypothesis underlying our SNP analysis was that if SNPs were associated with cancer, the proportions of dif- ferent alleles would be different in cancer and normal groups. Previously, rs7086803 at 10q25.2, rs9387478 at 6q22.2 and rs2395185 at 6p21.32 were identified as lung cancer susceptibility loci in never-smoking women in Asia [40]. In this study, we identified another 4 SNPs (rsl70 0874, rsl0248565, rsl 1761619, and rs9316119) that were significantly {P <0.01) associated with lung cancer. SNP rsl700874 is located at an intergenic region in lq41 be- tween TGFB2 and LYPLALl, The transforming growth factor beta family plays an important role in cell cycling, cell growth, apoptosis, and protein synthesis, and is there- fore involved in many pathological processes [41,42]. A previous study showed that TGFB2 may correlate with heart disease and pulmonary function in mice [43]. The function oi LYPLALl is still unclear. SNP rsl0248565 is lo- cated in 7p21.1 within HDAC9, the significance of which was discussed above. SNP rsll761619 is in 7pl4.3 within BBS9. BBS9 is associated with kidney and ovarian diseases [44,45], and may be a tumor suppressor gene for Wilms' tumor [46]. SNP rs9316119 is in 13ql4.12 within GTF2F2, Position (x108 bp) B o c 0 0 h n n 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 Chromosome Figure 3 Loss of heterozygosity analysis in non-smoking female lung adenocarcinoma patients. (A) Distribution of LOH using Affymetrix GeneCliip® SNP 6.0 analysis. Grey bars indicate regions witli LOH SNPs. Blacl< bars indicate tliat >18% of total patients (n > 1 1) had a particular LOH SNP. (B) Frequency of LOH SNPs in each chromosome. Lai et al. Journal of Biomedical Science 2014, 21:24 http://www.jbionnedsci.conn/content/21 /I /24 Page 7 of 9 rsl0248565 B CD > O 1- X o 12 8 4 0 -i 18.6 18.8 Position 18.6 18.8 Position .1 ill 19.0 (xlO^bp) rsl0248565 1 . . 1 . i.iuljl ..ll ...IJ. l.Jkl.lJ.LilijI. J Jl lllll 1 19.0 (xlO^bp) rsl0248565 18.6 19.0 (xlO^bp) 18.8 Position Figure 4 Genomic aberration of SNP rs10248565 was identified using (A) CNV, (B) SNP, and (C) LOH analyses. In each panel, SNP rsl 0248565 is indicated by a black bar. which is known to affect the progression and survival of epithelial ovarian cancer [47]. In this study, we identified 30 SNPs with LOH. Most of these LOH SNPs were located in chromosome 7 (Figure 3B). LOH analysis has been used to identify genomic aberrations in previous studies. For instance, loss of heterozygosity at chromosomal regions 3p21.3 (site of RASSFIA, a member of the Ras association do- main family, and FUSl), 3pl4.2 {FHIT, a fragile histi- dine triad gene), 9p21 {pi 6), and 17pl3 {p53) was identified as an early event in the development of non- small cell lung cancer [48]. It may seem contradictory that the SNP rs 10248565 in HDAC9 was increased in copy number but also showed loss of heterozygosity. The observed LOH ac- companied by a gain in copy number may result from preferential amplification of one parental allele, because CNV analysis cannot identify situations in which the loss of one allele is followed by duplication of the remaining allele. Also, LOH cannot detect any amplifi- cation that might be involved in pathogenesis. There- fore, we conducted a concurrent LOH and CNV analysis with the expectation of more precisely defining the nature of genomic alternations observed in either analysis alone. Conclusion In conclusion, the high mortality of lung cancer world- wide is largely attributable to the difficulty of obtaining an early diagnosis and the lack of effective therapeutic methods. To improve survival rates in non-smoking lung cancer patients, a comprehensive analysis of the molecular signature of the carcinogenic processes in adenocarcinoma in non-smoking Taiwanese women was conducted to identify novel biomarkers for diagno- sis and new molecular targets for drug development. Although more studies are still needed, SNP rsl0248565 in HDAC9 may be one of the potential bio- markers for lung adenocarcinoma in non-smoking women. Microarray data from this study have been submitted to the Gene Expression Omnibus database (accession number GSE33355). Lai et al. Journal of Biomedical Science 2014, 21:24 http://www.jbionnedsci.conn/content/21 /I /24 Page 8 of 9 Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Authors' contributions LCL, MHT, CKH, and EYC provided conception and design. LCL, CKH, and EYC provided financial support. JML and CPH provided study materials and patients. PCC and SKC collected and assembled data. LCL, MHT, PCC, LHC, JHH, TPL, and EYC analyzed and interpreted data. LCL, MHT, PCC, and EYC wrote manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Aclcnowledgments This research was supported in part by grants from the Department of Health, Taiwan (Grant No. DOH98-TD-G-1 1 1-014 & 99-31 12-B-002-035), and the National Science Council, Taiwan (Grant No. 99-31 12-B-002-035 & 98-23 20-B-002-044- MY3). The sponsors had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, manuscript writing, and the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. We thank Melissa Stauffer for editorial assistance. Author details ^Graduate Institute of Physiology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. ^Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Core, Center of Genomic Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. ^Institute of Biotechnology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. \ongLin Biomedical Engineering Center, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. ^Graduate Institute of Biomedical Electronics and Bioinformatics, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. ^Department of Public Health, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. ^Department of Statistics and Informatics Science, Providence University, Taichung, Taiwan. ^Department of Surgery, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan. ^Division of Thoracic Surgery, Taichung Veterans General Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan. Received: 9 January 2014 Accepted: 18 March 2014 Published: 21 March 2014 References 1. Jemal A, Bray F, Center MM, Ferlay J, Ward E, Forman D: Global cancer statistics. CA Cancer J Clin 201 1, 61:69-90. 2. Chen CJ, Wu HY Chuang YC, Chang AS, Luh KT Chao HH, Chen KY Chen SG, Lai GM, Huang HH: Epidemiologic characteristics and multiple risk factors of lung cancer in Taiwan. Anticancer Res 1 990, 1 0:971 -976. 3. Yang SP, Luh KT, Kuo SH, Lin CC: Chronological observation of epidemiological characteristics of lung cancer in Taiwan with etiological consideration-a 30-year consecutive study. Jpn J Clin Oncol 1984, 14:7-19. 4. Jemal A, Siegel R, Ward E, Murray T Xu J, Thun MJ: Cancer statistics, 2007. CA Cancer J Clin 2007, 57:43-66. 5. Wood ME, Kelly K, Mullineaux LG, Bunn PAJ: The inherited nature of lung cancer: a pilot study. Lung Cancer 2000, 30:135-144. 6. Ger LP, Liou SH, Shen CY, Kao SJ, Chen KT: Risk factors of lung cancer. JFormos Med Assoc 1992, 91 (SuppI 3):S222-S231. 7. Hirayasu T, Iwamasa T, Kamada Y, Koyanagi Y, Usuda H, Genka K: Human papillomavirus DNA in squamous cell carcinoma of the lung. J Clin Pathol 1996, 49:810-817. 8. Alkan C, Coe BP, Eichler EE: Genome structural variation discovery and genotyping. Nat Rev Genet 201 1, 12:363-376. 9. Attiyeh EE, London WB, Mosse YP, Wang Q, Winter C, Khazi D, McGrady PW, Seeger RC, Look AT Shimada H, Brodeur GM, Cohn SL, Matthay KK, Maris JM: Chromosome 1p and 11q deletions and outcome in neuroblastoma. N Engl J Med 2005, 353:2243-2253. 10. Seeger RC, Brodeur GM, Sather H, Dalton A, Siegel SE, Wong KY Hammond D: Association of multiple copies of the N-myc oncogene with rapid progression of neuroblastomas. N Engl J Med 1985, 313:1111-1116. 1 1 . Little CD, Nau MM, Carney DN, Gazdar AF, Minna JD: Amplification and expression of the c-myc oncogene in human lung cancer cell lines. Nature 1983, 306:194-196. 12. Kamb A, Gruis NA, Weaver-Feldhaus J, Liu Q, Harshman K, Tavtigian SV, Stockert E, Day RS 3rd, Johnson BE, Skolnick MH: A cell cycle regulator potentially involved in genesis of many tumor types. Science 1994, 264:436-440. 13. Friend SH, Bernards R, Rogelj S, Weinberg RA, Rapaport JM, Albert DM, Dryja TP: A human DNA segment with properties of the gene that predisposes to retinoblastoma and osteosarcoma. Nature 1986, 323:643-646. 14. Mosse YP, Laudenslager M, Longo L, Cole KA, Wood A, Attiyeh EE, Laquaglia MJ, Sennett R, Lynch JE, Perri P, Laureys G, Speleman F, Kim C, Hou C, Hakonarson H, Torkamani A, Schork NJ, Brodeur GM, Tonini GP, Rappaport E, Devoto M, Maris JM: Identification of ALK as a major familial neuroblastoma predisposition gene. Nature 2008, 455:930-935. 15. Li J, Yen C, Liaw D, Podsypanina K, Bose S, Wang SI, Puc J, Miliaresis C, Rodgers L, McCombie R, Bigner SH, Giovanella BC, Ittmann M, Tycko B, Hibshoosh H, Wigler MH, Parsons R: PTEN, a putative protein tyrosine phosphatase gene mutated in human brain, breast, and prostate cancer. Science 1997, 275:1943-1947. 16. Teixeira MR, Ribeiro FR, Eknaes M, Waehre H, Stenwig AE, Giercksky KE, Helm S, Lothe RA: Genomic analysis of prostate carcinoma specimens obtained via ultrasound-guided needle biopsy may be of use in pre- operative decision-making. Cancer 2004, 101:1786-1793. 1 7. Pollack JR, Sorlie T Perou CM, Rees CA, Jeffrey SS, Lonning PE, Tibshirani R, Botstein D, Borresen-Dale AL, Brown PO: Microarray analysis reveals a major direct role of DNA copy number alteration in the transcriptional program of human breast tumors. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2002, 99:12963-12968. 18. Hirsch FR, Varella-Garcia M, Cappuzzo F: Predictive value of EGFR and HER2 overexpression in advanced non-small-cell lung cancer. Oncogene 2009, 28(Suppl 1):S32-S37. 19. Chitale D, Gong Y, Taylor BS, Broderick S, Brennan C, Somwar R, Golas B, Wang L, Motoi N, Szoke J, Reinersman JM, Major J, Sander C, Seshan VE, Zakowski MF, Rusch V, Pao W, Gerald W, Ladanyi M: An integrated genomic analysis of lung cancer reveals loss of DUSP4 in EGFR-mutant tumors. Oncogene 2009, 28:2773-2783. 20. Kawano 0, Sasaki H, Okuda K, Yukiue H, Yokoyama T, Yano M, Fujii Y: PIK3CA gene amplification in Japanese non-small cell lung cancer. Lung Cancer 2007, 58:159-160. 21. Namdar M, Perez G, Ngo L, Marks PA: Selective inhibition of histone deacetylase 6 (HDAC6) induces DNA damage and sensitizes transformed cells to anticancer agents. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2010, 107:20003-20008. 22. Li AR, Chitale D, Riely GJ, Pao W, Miller VA, Zakowski MF, Rusch V, Kris MG, Ladanyi M: EGFR mutations in lung adenocarcinomas: clinical testing experience and relationship to EGFR gene copy number and immunohistochemical expression. J Mol Diagn 2008, 10:242-248. 23. Huang J, Wei W, Zhang J, Liu G, Bignell GR, Stratton MR, Futreal PA, Wooster R, Jones KW, Shapero MH: Whole genome DNA copy number changes identified by high density oligonucleotide arrays, t^um Genomics 2004, 1 :287-299. 24. Nannya Y, Sanada M, Nakazaki K, Hosoya N, Wang L, Hangaishi A, Kurokawa M, Chiba S, Bailey DK, Kennedy GC, Ogawa S: A robust algorithm for copy number detection using high-density oligonucleotide single nucleotide polymorphism genotyping arrays. Cancer Res 2005, 65:6071-6079. 25. Balsara BR, Testa JR: Chromosomal imbalances in human lung cancer. Oncogene 2002, 21:6877-6883. 26. Boelens MC, Gustafson AM, Postma DS, Kok K, van der Vries G, van der Vlies P, Spira A, Lenburg ME, Geerlings M, Sietsma H, Timens W, van den Berg A, Groen HJ: A chronic obstructive pulmonary disease related signature in squamous cell lung cancer. Lung Cancer 2011, 72:177-183. 27. Boelens MC, Kok K, van der Vlies P, van der Vries G, Sietsma H, Timens W, Postma DS, Groen HJ, van den Berg A: Genomic aberrations in squamous cell lung carcinoma related to lymph node or distant metastasis. Lung Cancer 2009, 66:372-378. 28. Miura I, Graziano SL, Cheng JQ, Doyle LA, Testa JR: Chromosome alterations in human small cell lung cancer: frequent involvement of 5q. Cancer Res 1992, 52:1322-1328. 29. Hartel PH, Shackelford AL, Hartel JV, Wenger SL: Del(5q) is associated with clinical and histological parameters in small cell neuroendocrine lung carcinoma. Int J Surg Pathol 2008, 16:419-423. 30. Yen CC, Liang SC, Jong YJ, Chen YJ, Lin CH, Chen YM, Wu YC, Su WC, Huang CY, Tseng SW, Whang-Peng J: Chromosomal aberrations of malignant pleural effusions of lung adenocarcinoma: different cytogenetic changes are correlated with genders and smoking habits. Lung Cancer 2007, 57:292-301. 31 . Shen H, Gao W, Wu YJ, Qiu HR, Shu YQ: Multicolor fluorescence in situ hybridization and comparative genomic hybridization reveal molecular events in lung adenocarcinomas and squamous cell lung carcinomas. Biomed Pharmacother 2009, 63:396-403. 32. Dai Z, Zhu WG, Morrison CD, Brena RM, Smiraglia DJ, Raval A, Wu YZ, Rush LJ, Ross P, Molina JR, Otterson GA, Plass C: A comprehensive search for Lai et al. Journal of Biomedical Science 2014, 21:24 http://www.jbionnedsci.conn/content/21 /I /24 Page 9 of 9 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. DNA amplification in lung cancer identifies inhibitors of apoptosis clAPI and CIAP2 as candidate oncogenes. Hum Mol Genet 2003, 12:791-801. Berger AH, Niki M, Morotti A, Taylor BS, Socci ND, Viale A, Brennan C, Szoke J, Motoi N, Rothman PB, Teruya-Feldstein J, Gerald WL, Ladanyi M, Pandolfi PR: Identification of DOK genes as lung tumor suppressors. Not Genet 2010, 42:216-223. Shigematsu H, Lin L, Takahashi T, Nomura M, Suzuki M, Wistuba II, Fong KM, Lee H, Toyooka S, Shimizu N, Fujisawa T, Feng Z, Roth JA, Herz J, Minna JD, Gazdar AF: Clinical and biological features associated with epidermal growth factor receptor gene mutations in lung cancers. J Natl Cancer Inst 2005, 97:339-346. Gray SG, Ekstrom TJ: The human histone deacetylase family. Exp Cell Res 2001,262:75-83. Wade PA: Transcriptional control at regulatory checkpoints by histone deacetylases: molecular connections between cancer and chromatin. Hum Mol Genet 2001, 10:693-698. Yang XJ, Gregoire S: Class II histone deacetylases: from sequence to function, regulation, and clinical implication. Mol Cell Biol 2005, 25:2873-2884. Lee JH, Choy ML, Ngo L, Foster SS, Marks PA: Histone deacetylase inhibitor induces DNA damage, which normal but not transformed cells can repair. Proc Natl Acad Sci U5A20]0, 107:14639-14644. Han Y, Zhang Y, Yang LH, Mi XY, Dai SD, Li QC, Xu HT, Yu JH, Li G, Zhao J, Han C, Yuan XM, Wang EH: X-radiation inhibits histone deacetylase 1 and 2, upregulates Axin expression and induces apoptosis in non-small cell lung cancer. Radiat Oncol 2012, 7:183. Lan Q, Hsiung CA, Matsuo K, Hong YC, Seow A, Wang Z, Hosgood HD 3rd, Chen K, Wang JC, Chatterjee N, Hu W, Wong MP, Zheng W, Caporaso N, Park JY, Chen CJ, Kim YH, Kim YT, Landi MT, Shen H, Lawrence C, Burdett L, Yeager M, Yuenger J, Jacobs KB, Chang IS, Mitsudomi T, Kim HN, Chang GC, Bassig BA, et al: Genome-wide association analysis identifies new lung cancer susceptibility loci in never-smoking women in Asia. Nat Genet 2012, 44:1330-1335. Jenkins G: The role of proteases in transforming growth factor-beta activation. Int J Biochem Cell Biol 2008, 40:1068-1078. Bonsi L, Marchionni C, Alviano F, Lanzoni G, Franchina M, Costa R, Grossi A, Bagnara GP: Thrombocytopenia with absent radii (TAR) syndrome: from hemopoietic progenitor to mesenchymal stromal cell disease? Exp Hematol 2009, 37:1-7. Sanford LP, Ormsby I, Gittenberger-de Groot AC, Sariola H, Friedman R, Boivin GP, Cardell EL, Doetschman T: TGFbeta2 knockout mice have multiple developmental defects that are non-overlapping with other TGFbeta knockout phenotypes. Development 1997, 124:2659-2670. Kang H, Lee SK, Kim MH, Song J, Bae SJ, Kim NK, Lee SH, Kwack K: Parathyroid hormone-responsive B1 gene is associated with premature ovarian failure. Hum Reprod 2008, 23:1457-1465. Swolin-Eide D, Hansson S, Larsson L, Magnusson P: The novel bone alkaline phosphatase Blx isoform in children with kidney disease. Pediatr Nephrol 2006, 21:1723-1729. Vernon EG, Malik K, Reynolds P, Powlesland R, Dallosso AR, Jackson S, Henthorn K, Green ED, Brown KW: The parathyroid hormone-responsive B1 gene is interrupted by a t(1;7)(q42;p15) breakpoint associated with Wilms' tumour. Oncogene 2003, 22:1371-1380. Le Page C, Ouellet V, Quinn MC, Tonin PN, Provencher DM, Mes-Masson AM: BTF4/BTNA3.2 and GCS as candidate mRNA prognostic markers in epithelial ovarian cancer. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2008, 1 7:91 3-920. Wistuba II, Mao L, Gazdar AF: Smoking molecular damage in bronchial epithelium. Oncogene 2002, 21:7298-7306. doi:1 0.1 186/1423-0127-21-24 Cite this article as: Lai et al.: SNP rsl 0248565 in HDAC9 as a novel genomic aberration biomarker of lung adenocarcinoma in non-smoking women. Journal of Biomedical Science 2014 21:24. Submit your next manuscript to BioMed Central and take full advantage of: • Convenient online submission • Thorough peer review • No space constraints or color figure charges • Immediate publication on acceptance • Inclusion in PubMed, CAS, Scopus and Google Scholar • Research which is freely available for redistribution Submit your manuscript at www.biomedcentral.com/submit o BioMed Central
The way of liberation : essays and lectures on the transformation of the self
Watts, Alan, 1915-1973
1983-01-01T00:00:00Z
Philosophy, Asian,Salvation,Meditation
xvii, 98 pages ; 21 cm,The way of liberation in Zen Buddhism -- Play and survival -- The relevance of Oriental philosophy -- Suspension of judgment -- Chuang-tzu, wisdom of the ridiculous -- The practice of meditation,Includes bibliographical references
The texts of Taoism
null
1959-01-01T00:00:00Z
Taoism -- Sacred books
790 p. 24 cm,The Tâo teh king (The Tao te ching)--The writings of Kwang-tsze (Chuang-tzu)--The Tʻai shang tractate of actions and their retributions.--Appendixes.--Notes on sources (p. [767]-778)
The Taoist classics : the collected translations of Thomas Cleary
Cleary, Thomas F., 1949-
2003-01-01T00:00:00Z
Oriental & Indian philosophy,Taoism,Religion - World Religions,Religion,Religion / Taoism
Cover title,v. 1. Tao te Ching. Chuang-tzu. Wen-tzu. The book of leadership & strategy. Sex, health, and long life -- v. 2. Understanding reality. The inner teaching of Taoism. The book of balance and harmony. Practical Taoism -- v. 3. Vitality, energy, spirit. The secret of the golden flower. Immortal sister. Awakening to the Tao -- v. 4. The Taoist I Ching, I Ching mandalas,Includes bibliographical references
Feathering Custer
Penn, W. S., 1949-
2001-01-01T00:00:00Z
Custer, George A. (George Armstrong), 1839-1876 -- In literature,American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc,Indians in literature,American literature -- Indian authors -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc,Indians of North America -- Intellectual life,Indians of North America -- Historiography
240 p. ; 24 cm,Includes bibliographical references (p. 227-240),Acknowledgments -- Tonto meets Chuang Tzu -- Paving with good intentions -- Tradition and the individual imitation -- Leaving the parlor -- Donne talkin' -- Killing ourselves with language as such -- In the gazebo -- In the garden of the gods -- Feathering Custer -- Critical arts
Teachings of the Tao (Taoist Scriptures)
Eva Wong
null
Teachings of the Tao,Taoism,Daoism,Eva Wong,Taoist,Daoist,Tao,Dao,Chinese Philosophy,Chinese Spirituality,Chinese Religion,Chinese Ethics,Taoist Thought,Taoist Practice,Lao-tzu,Laozi,Lieh-tzu,Liezi,Chuang-tzu,Zhuangzi,Taoist Scriptures,Meditation,Sacred,Gods,Immortals,Divinity,Qigong,Yin-Yang,Mysticism,Spirituality,Religion,Educational Texts
The ebook version of Teachings of the Tao - a compilation of selections from a variety of major Chinese Taoist texts, edited and translated by Eva Wong - is available here in EPUB, AZW3, and PDF formats. Book Description: "The Tao that can be spoken of is not the real Way," reads a famous line from the Tao-te-ching. But although the Tao cannot be described by words, words can allow us to catch a fleeting glimpse of that mysterious energy of the universe which is the source of life. The readings in this book are a beginner's entrée into the vast treasury of writings from the sacred Chinese tradition, consisting of original translations of excerpts from the Taoist canon. Brief introductions and notes on the translation accompany the selections from the classics; books of devotional and mystical Taoism; texts of internal alchemy; stories of Taoist immortals, magicians, and sorcerers; ethical tracts; chants and rituals; and teachings on meditation and methods of longevity.
Full text of "Teachings of the Tao (Taoist Scriptures)" Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "Teachings of the Tao (Taoist Scriptures)" See other formats Teachings of the Tao Selected and translated by Eva Wong _[ S H A M B H A LA I_ ABOUTTHE BOOK “The Tao that can be spoken of is not the real Way,” reads a famous line from the Tao-te ching. But although the Tao cannot be described by words, words can allow us to catch a fleeting glimpse of that mysterious energy of the universe which is the source of life. The readings in this book are a beginner’s entree into the vast treasury of writings from the sacred Chinese tradition, consisting of original translations of excerpts from the Taoist canon. Brief introductions and notes on the translation accompany the selections from the classics; books of devotional and mystical Taoism; texts of internal alchemy; stories of Taoist immortals, magicians, and sorcerers; ethical tracts; chants and rituals; and teachings on meditation and methods of longevity. EVA WONG is an independent scholar and a practitioner of the Taoist arts of the Pre-Celestial Way and Complete Reality lineages. She has written and translated many books on Taoism and related topics, including A Master Course in Feng-Shui; Tales oj the Taoist Immortals; and Taoism: An Essential Guide. Sign up to learn more about our books and receive special offers from Shambhala Publications. Sign Up Or visit us online to sign up at shambhala.com/eshambhala . Teachings OF THE TAO Readings from the Taoist Spiritual Tradition SELECTED AND TRANSLATED BY Eva Wong SHAM BH ALA Boston & London 2013 SHAMBHALA PUBLICATIONS, INC. Horticultural Hall 300 Massachusetts Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02115 ©1997 by Eva Wong All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Teachings of the Tao: readings from the Taoist spiritual tradition / selected and translated by Eva Wong, p. cm. elSBN 978-0-8348-2887-2 ISBN 1-57062-245-0 (alk. paper) I. Tao. 2. Taoism. 3. Spiritual life—Taoism. I. Wong, Eva, 1951- B127.T3T43 1997 96-9728 299'.5144—dc20 CIP BVG01 Contents Introduction 1. The Ways of the Earth and Sky: The Shamanic Origins of Taoism Ch 'u-t ’zn ( Songs from the Land of C'lru) 2. The Path of Wu-wei: The Classics of Taoism Tao-te chins Chuang-tzu Lieh-tzu 3. Honoring the Sacred: Devotional Taoism T’ai-p ’ing chine ch 'ao (Essentials of the Classic of Peace and Balance) Pei-tou ven-sheng ching (The North Star Scripture of Longevity! 4. Tire Tao Within: Mystical Taoism Shang-ch ’ing huang-t 'ing nei-ching vii-ching (The Yellow Court Jade Classic of the Internal Images of the High Pure Realm! Shang-ch 'ing chin-ch 'iieh ti-chiin wu-tou san-viian t ’u-chtieh (Tire Lord of the Golden Tower of the High Pure Realm’s Instructions on [Visualizing! the Five Bushels and the Three Ones) 5. In Search of Immortality: Taoist Internal Alchemy Tsan-tung-chi (The Triplex Unity! Wu-ien p ’ien (Understanding Reality! 6. In the Playing Fields of Power: Taoist Magic and Sorcery Stories of Taoist Immortals. Magicians, and Sorcerers Feng-shen yen-yi flnvestiture of the Gods') 7. The Tap in Everyday Life: Taoist Ethics Chih-sun-tzu chung-ch ’ieh ching (Master Red Pine’s Book of Discipline! 8. Encountering the Sacred: The Taoist Ceremonies The Fa-lu (Lighting the Stove! Chants Chai-chieh-lu (Correct Procedures of Purification and Preparation for Festival Services! 9. Tire Arts of Longevity: Cultivating the Mind Shang-ch 'ing t’ai-shang ti-chiin chiu-chen chtine- chine ( Scripture of the High Pure Realm’s Highest Celestial Lord’s Nine True Forms) Tung-hsikm ling-pao ting-kuan chins (The Mysterious Grotto Sacred Spirit Scripture on Concentrated Observation! Seven Taoist Masters 10. Hie Arts of Longevity: Cultivating the Body Yi-men ch ’ang-sengpi-shu tChen Hsi-vi’s Secret Methods of Longevity) Chang San-feng t’ai-chi lien-tan pi-chiieh (Chang San-feng’s Secret T’ai-chi Method for Cultivating the Elixir) E-mail Sign-Up Introduction “The TAO THAT CAN BE SPOKEN OF IS not the real way. That which can be named is only transient. Run straight into it and you will not see its head. Follow it from behind and you will not see its back.” Anyone who writes about Taoism is challenged by these statements from the Tao-te ching. However, although the Tao cannot be described by words, words can allow us to catch a fleeting glimpse of that mysterious energy of the universe which is the source of life. The Taoist spiritual tradition is a vast ocean. Flowing into it are the indigenous beliefs of the early Chinese, the personal vision of the sages, the theories and findings of the natural and medical sciences, and influences from Buddhism and Hinduism. However, despite influences from India and Central Asia, Taoism is deeply rooted in the history and culture of China. It is a tradition that goes back several thousand years to the beginnings of Chinese civilization. When I was growing up in Hong Kong, I received a Western education at school and a traditional Chinese education at home. I was told by my elders that it was important to know the history and the traditions of my people, and that persons who are not in touch with their tradition are like weeds blown by the wind. To me, it has always been an honor and a privilege to be taught the wisdom of my ancestors. As my understanding of Chinese history and philosophy deepened, I realized that it was in Taoism, not Buddhism or Confucianism, that the sacred and spiritual traditions of China are preserved. Confucianism may have shaped Chinese cultural behavior, but Taoism has shaped the soul and the spirit of the Chinese people. Before I moved to the United States, I assumed naively that most Chinese were brought up with a sense of their history and their ancestral traditions. But after I settled in the U.S., I found that for many Chinese Americans, tradition only went as far as their grandparents who left China to emigrate to the New World. Now, after several generations of assimilation, many Chinese Americans want to be reconnected with the roots of their culture, especially the sacred and spiritual traditions. As they are unable to read classical Chinese, their only access to the wisdom of their ancestors is through translations. I dedicate this book to them and hope that it will help them in the journey back to their origins. While living in the U.S., I met many Westerners who wish to experience the Taoist spiritual tradition as participants rather than study it as detached observers. I also dedicate this book to them and hope that it will help them explore and understand the spiritual tradition of a culture which is so different from their own. Tire readings in this book are chosen to represent a wide range of Taoist knowledge and wisdom. Urey are selected from the Taoist canon and post-canon collections unless otherwise stated. The Texts of Taoism and the Taoist Canon The Taoist canon is the official collection of the scriptures of Taoism. The current edition of the canon consists of 1,473 volumes of texts. The earliest attempt at categorizing the Taoist texts occurred in the fifth century ce. Lu Hsiu- ching, a Taoist scholar and priest, divided the Taoist texts into seven groups. He named the three major groups of the Taoist scriptures Tung-chen (Cavern of the Realized), Tung- hsiian (Cavern of the Mysterious), and Tung-shen (Cavern of the Spirit), and the four minor sections T’ai-hsiian (Great Mystery), T’ai-p’ing (Great Balance), T’ai-ch’ing (Great Pure), and Cheng-i (Orthodox Classics). In Lu’s system, the Tung-chen section contained the books of the Shang-ch’ing (High Pure) School. These texts first appeared in the Eastern Chin dynasty (317-420 ce). Legend says that the earliest Shang-ch’ing texts were revealed to Yang Hsi by Lady Wei, a Taoist mystic and founder of the Shang-ch’ing movement. The Tung-hsiian section contained the Ling-pao (Sacred Spirit) scriptures. These were collected by Ko Hsiian, a relative of Ko Hung, the distinguished alchemist of the fourth century ce. Hre Ling-pao texts are a collection of rituals, liturgies, and talismans. Tire third group, the Tung-shen section, contained the books known as the San-huang ching (Scriptures of the Three Lords). Urey are primarily magical formulae and invocations, and were reputed to have come from the Era of the Three Kingdoms (220-265 ce). During the early T’ang dynasty (ca. seventh century ce), the books of the San-huang ching were burned. In later compilations of the canon, their place was taken by Tao-te ching and its commentaries. Tire T’ai-hsiian texts were reputed to have been transmitted by Lao-tzu to Wen-tzu. They include the Tao-te ching, the Chuang-tzu, the Lieh-tzu, and the Hsi-hsing ching (Scripture of Western Ascension). Most of the texts in this section are treatises on stilling the mind, cultivating longevity, and living a simple and unencumbered life. However, a twist of fate in the T’ang dynasty took these books away from the T’ai-hsiian section and placed them in the Tung-chen group, lire T’ai-p’ing texts consist of the volumes of a monumental work called the T'ai-p ’ing ching (Classic of Peace and Balance). When Lu Hsiu-ching compiled his catalog of Taoist books in the fifth century ce, the T’ai-p ’ing ching was more voluminous than it is now The question of its authorship is still debated, but it is most likely a text of the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 ce). It discusses the ideals of a utopian kingdom and contains talismans of healing and deliverance from disasters. Tire T’ai-ch’ing texts formed the earliest collection of treatises on ingesting minerals and herbs to attain immortality. The movement associated with these techniques of attaining longevity is called the External Pill ( wai-tan ) or External Alchemy school because it advocates the use of external substances in rejuvenating the body. Hre last entry in Lu Hsiu-ching’s catalog of Taoist texts is the Cheng-i meng- wei lu (Protocols of the Classic Orthodox Practice). These are the texts of the Celestial Masters sect ( t'ien-shih tao) founded by Chang Tao-ling in the third century ce. Tire next compilation of the books of Taoism occurred during the T’ang dynasty (618-906 ce). Tire first official edition of the Taoist canon was completed and printed in 748 ce and was named K'ai-yuan pao-tsang (Tire Precious Scriptures Collected in the Reign of Emperor K’ai-yiian). Unfortunately, this edition of the Taoist canon perished in the chaos that surrounded the fall of the T’ang dynasty. During the Northern Sung dynasty (960-1126 ce), a distinguished Taoist scholar and practitioner named Chang Chiin-fang gathered the remnants of the Taoist canon of the T’ang dynasty and collated the texts into the categories first named by Lu Hsiu-ching. Moreover, he selected the best of the Taoist texts and edited them into a Taoist encyclopedia called the Yun-chi ch ’i-ch 'ien (Tire Seven Bamboo Strips of the Cloud-Hidden Satchel). Not interested in the liturgical form of Taoism, Chang Chiin-fang omitted the rituals and ceremonies of the Cheng-i men-wei scriptures from his encyclopedia. Tire Taoist canon of the Sung dynasty did not survive the violent end of that dynasty. What was left of a vast collection was rescued by the students of Ch’iu Ch’ang- ch’un, one of the Seven Masters of the Complete Reality school, during the Chin dynasty of the Manchus (1115— 1234 ce). Urey edited the texts into the Yiian-tu tao-tsang (Tire Taoist Canon Collected in the Reign of Emperor Yiian-tu). Unfortunately, this canon was destroyed during the Yiian dynasty (1271-1368 ce) in a burning of Taoist texts by militant Buddhists. It was not until the reign of Emperor Cheng T’ung (1436-1449 ce) in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644 ce) that an edict was issued to compile all the existing Taoist books of the time into a canon. This was the C heng-t'ung tao- tsang, the Taoist canon that we have today. Tire Cheng-t’ung Taoist Canon was organized around the structure of Lu Hsiu-ching’s fifth-century collection. In the Tung-chen section are the scriptures of Shang-ch’ing Taoism and some Ling-pao talismans and ceremonies. Interestingly, Chang Po-tuan’s classic of internal alchemy, the Wu-jen p 'ien (Understanding Reality) and its commentaries are included in this section, as is the Huang-ti yin-fu ching (Tire Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Yin Convergence). The Tung-hsiian section consists of mostly Ling-pao scriptures and some Shang-ch’ing texts. However, the Shang-ch’ing classic, Huang-l ’ing nei-ching yii-ching (Tire Yellow Court Jade Classic of Internal Images) is placed in this section. We do not know why this important Shang-ch’ing text was placed in a section that contains predominantly Ling-pao texts. Tire Tung-shen section contains some Ling-pao texts, the most famous of them being the Pei-tou yen-sheng ching (North Star Scripture of Longevity). Tire Tao-te ching, the Chuang-tzu, and their commentaries are also placed in the Tung-shen section, as are various texts attributed to or were inspired by Lao-tzu. Ure T’ai-lrsiian section mostly consists of texts of internal alchemy, including the classic Tsan-tung-chi (Ure Triplex Unity). Ure Huang-ti nei-ching (Ure Yellow Emperor’s Classic of the Internals) is also included here. In this section is also the great encyclopedia of Taoist knowledge, the Yun-chi ch 'i-ch ’ien (Seven Bamboo Strips of the Cloud-Hidden Satchel) as well as Shao K’ang-chieh’s classic work on divination, the Wang-chi ching (Treatise on the Celestial Pathways). Many formulae of the External Pill school, or external alchemy, are also collected here. Hie T’ai-p’ing section contains primarily the T’ai-p 'ing ching (Classic of Peace and Balance) and some Ling-pao talismans and ceremonies. Interestingly, the poetry of Wang Ch’ung-yang, one of the greatest proponents of the Complete Reality school of Taoism, is collected here, as are the writings of his disciples, Sun Pu-erh and Ch’iu Ch’ang-ch’un, two of the Seven Taoist Masters. In the T’ai- ch’ing section are writings of philosophers who are generally not classified as Taoists. In this section are the works of Mo-tzu the philosopher of universal love, Sun-tzu the military strategist, Han-fei-tzu the legalist, and Kung- sun Lung the sophist. Hie classic text of Taoist ethics, the T’ai-shang kan-ying p 'ien (Lao-tzu’s Treatise on the Response of the Tao), is also collected here, as is the encyclopedic work of Ko Hung titled Pao-p ’u-tzu (Hie Sage Who Embraces Simplicity). Cheng-i, the last section of the Cheng-t ’ung Taoist Canon, consists of mostly the scriptures, ceremonies, and talismans of the Cheng-i Meng-wei, or Celestial Teachers’ Way of Taoism. For reasons unknown, some Shang-ch’ing scriptures are also included in this section. A hundred years or so after the Cheng-t ’ung Taoist Canon was printed, a supplement was added during the reign of the Ming emperor Wan Li (1573-1619 ce). This supplement is known as the Wan-li Taoist Canon. Both canons have been preserved to this day. Most of the Taoist books written after the compilation of the Taoist canon in the Ming dynasty have been collected by Hsiao T’ien-shih, a Taoist scholar in Taiwan, and are published in a series of books titled Tao-tsang ching-hua (Tire Essential Texts of Taoism). Needless to say, Hsiao T’ien-shih’s collection is not exhaustive, and there are many Taoist texts that are not included in any canon, old or new. Tire Taoist canon is distinct from the sacred scriptures of other spiritual traditions in that it is an “open” canon. New texts are being added to it continuously. Perhaps the Taoist canon is open-ended because Taoists are practical people who, being more concerned with the workability of practices than with orthodoxy of theology or philosophy, never entertained the idea of a closed system of knowledge. Or maybe it is because they acknowledged that the Tao cannot be understood by words and conceptual thinking, and therefore human attempts at understanding the Tao would never be complete. Tire readings in this book represent approaches to the Tao as well as expressions of Taoist spirituality. In preparing this book, I have tried to let the texts speak for themselves. Other than a brief introduction to each text and occasional translator’s notes, there are no commentaries or discussions of the texts. Readers who want more information on the various aspects of Taoism can refer to my book The Shambhala Guide to Taoism, where the history, theories, and practices of Taoism are presented in detail. 1 The Ways of the Earth and AOISM 1 HE TAOIST SPIRITUAL TRADITION IS rooted in the shamanic beliefs of early China. The giants of Taoist thinking, Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, were natives of the feudal state of Ch’u in the Eastern Chou dynasty (770-1221 bce), where shamanism had a strong influence on the beliefs and cultural practices of the people. The shamanic culture of Ch’u is best illustrated by a collection of poetry titled the Ch ’u-tz’u (Songs of the Land of Ch’u). The sacredness of nature, the ecstatic union of the shaman and the nature spirits, and the flight to the celestial realm are the themes of these poems. Now, three thousand years later, these themes are still apart of the spiritual tradition of Taoism. The Ch’u-tz’u (Sonus of the Land of Ch’u) The poems of the Ch ’u-tz’u were either shamanic songs or were inspired by shamanic experiences. Most of the poems were written by Ch’ii Yuan, a native of Ch’u and one of the greatest poets of early China. In Ch’u culture, nature was sacred. The people’s connection with nature was not one of distant respect but of passionate love. The Ch’u shaman’s relationship with the spirits of nature was like that of a lover, and the dances and ceremonies were humanity’s attempts to “seduce” the sacred powers. The section in the Ch ’u-tz’u titled “Nine Songs” best illustrates the shamanic tradition of Ch’u. These songs were sung in the sacred ceremonies that honor the spirits of nature. In the ceremony, one shaman, called the spirit- shaman ( shen-wu ), usually took on the persona of the spirit, and another shaman, who was the leader of the ceremony, played the part of the mortal. Unfortunately, the original text of “Nine Songs” does not indicate which stanzas were sung by which shaman, and this has caused much confusion in understanding the songs and translating them. However, if we listen to the mood and style of the text, it is possible to identify the verses sung by the spirit- shaman and those sung by the leader of the ceremony. In the translation that follows, I have delineated the parts performed by the singers. I think this brings out the feel of the “Nine Songs” as they were originally performed. As you read these selections, note the usage of plants and herbs in the ceremonies, and the power of music and song in renewing the bond between humanity and the sacred powers. The Nine Songs 1. Song to The Great Unity, Lord of the East Sung by the shaman leading the ceremony. It is a beautiful day. It is an auspicious hour. We stand silently in awe before the altar of the Great Lord on high. Long swords of jade are in our hands; Pendants of jade hang from our belts; Our ornaments jingle as they clash against each other. Look, the sacred altar is laden with jade and jeweled bowls, And on it are fragrant flowers and grasses. We offer meats wrapped in leaves, And serve them on mats of orchids. We offer cinnamon wine and sauces of hot peppers. Together we lift our drumsticks And begin to beat a rhythm. Slowly and solemnly we start our singing; Then, as we hear the pipes and zithers, Everyone joins in a loud and shrill song. Hie sacred shamaness is in her colorful robe; She begins to dance. Hie air is filled with sweet fragrance. Now the strings play faster; The five notes are sounding in harmony. Great One, enjoy and be merry with us. 2. Song to the Lord-within-the-Clouds Sung by the shaman leading the ceremony. We bathe and wash our hair in water scented with orchid leaves; We put on our robes, decked out like flowers of many colors. Hie Lord-within-the-Clouds comes down to us, His sacred light shining with eternal brilliance. Now he rests in his palace, Shining together with the sun and moon. Now he flies his dragon-chariot, Dressed in majestic splendor. Now he stays for awhile; Now he flies swiftly and wanders in the sky. Bright One, you have come to us. But suddenly you are off again in the clouds. You look at our lands from high; Your travels take you over many places. Where will you go now? I sigh when I think of you, And my heart grieves that you cannot be with me. 3. Song to the Lord of the River Sung by the shamaness leading the ceremony. You hesitate and do not come to me; What is it that keeps you from leaving your island? Sung by the Lord of the River (spirit-shaman)'. I am attractive and beautiful; I come to you in my cinnamon bark canoe. I glide softly on the waters without a ripple, For I have asked the waves of the river to be still. Sung by the shamaness leading the ceremony. I long for you and yet you do not come. Sadly I play my flute. Whom do I think of but you? Sung by the Lord of the River (spirit-shaman): I fly north on my dragon; Then I turn toward the Tung-t’ing Lake. My boat is decorated with care: The hull is lined with sweet clover; Hie sails are made of fig leaves; The oars are made of iris stems; And I have orchids for my banners. Gazing at the sea strand in the distance, I step across the great river and display my magical powers. Sung by the shamaness leading the ceremony : You have shown your power and yet you do not come; My attendants are crying for my sake. Tears run freely down my cheeks, And I am sick with longing for you. With my oars of cinnamon bark and orchid leaves, I plow my way through ice and snow. My efforts are like gathering figs in the water, And plucking lotuses from treetops. When feelings of love are not deep, You will easily be separated from me. Fast as waters running through stony shallows, You fly away on your dragon. Faithless love and untrusting friendship Only cause pain and sorrow You broke your promise to me, And made the excuse that you did not have time. I race along the banks of the river in the morning; In the evening I stop to rest at the island in the north. Birds roost on the roof of the hut; Water laps on the shores. I throw my jade ring into the river; I abandon my jade pendant to the flowing waters; I gather sweet grass on the fragrant island And think of giving them to your attendants. Lost opportunities are hard to recover, And I can only stay and play a little longer. 4. Song to the Lady of the River Sung by the shaman leading the ceremony. The Lady descends to the northern banks. When I strain my eyes and cannot see her, My heart breaks with sorrow. Tire gentle autumn wind is blowing; Waves ripple through the waters of Tung-t’ing Lake, And leaves on the trees are falling. I climb onto the white tops of the marsh grass And gaze longingly. My love and I have agreed to meet here, And I wait eagerly as the evening light falls. But why are the birds resting on the duckweeds? And wiry are the fishing nets hanging from the trees? The Yuan River has angelicas of flavoring oil; Hie Li River has orchids. I think of you all the time, But I am afraid to say it. Trembling with anticipation, I gaze toward the distance And listen to the murmur of the waters. Why are the deer feeding in the courtyards? Why are dragons lying in shallow water? In the morning I drive my horses by the river, In the evening I cross to the western bank. I hear my love calling my name; I will follow her chariot to the farthest places. I have built a hut in the waters And covered the roof with lotus leaves. I have decorated the walls with iris; I have put purple shells in the courtyard And adorned the hall with fragrant pepper. The beams are made of cinnamon wood, And the rafters are made of orchids. I have hung lintels over the doorway And decorated our bedchamber with peonies. I have used sweet clover to make window screens And have woven together fig leaves for hangings. I have used white jade to hold down our sleeping mats; I have scattered stone-orchids to scent the floor; I have placed white flags over the lotus thatch And bound them with stalks. I have planted many fragrant herbs in the courtyard; And I have scented the gateway with exquisite perfumes. Even the spirits of Doubting Mountain will come to welcome you. Rushing here like a host of windborne clouds. I have torn the sleeves off my robe and thrown them into the river; I have taken off my tunic and abandoned it by the swells. I have plucked sweet grass from the island To send them to you, who are far away. Opportunities are hard to come by, And I can only stay and play a little longer. 5. Song to the Great Lord of Destiny Sung by the Great Lord of Destiny (spirit-shaman): Open wide the gates of the sky. I come riding on the black clouds. I order the whirlwind to be my herald And call the rainstorm to wash away the dust. Sung by the shaman who is leading the ceremony: Great One, you hover and descend to me; I will climb and follow you Over the heights of Kong-sang Mountain. Sung by the Great Lord of Destiny (spirit-shaman): Tlris world and all its people; Their lives, long or short, are in my hands. Sung by the shaman leading the ceremony: Serenely and majestically you soar in the sky; You ride on the clear vapor of the sky and earth, And on the breath of yin and yang. Speedily I will go with you to far-off places, Leading the lord of the sky to the great mountains. Sung by the Great Lord of Destiny ( spirit-shaman): My long robes flutter in the wind; My jade pendants, in brilliant color, dazzle in the light. Air, the changes of yin and yang in the universe; None of the mortals know what I can do. Sung by the shaman leading the ceremony. I have plucked the jadelike flower of the hemp To give to the one who is far away. I am getting old, and if we do not stay together, I am afraid that we will become strangers. Driving your dragon-chariot with thundering wheels, You fly high in the sky. But here I stand on the ground, holding a stick of cinnamon; My longing for you causing me pain. What can I do with my sorrow? I only hope that we will be together forever. But each life has its destiny. Meetings or partings, who can decide what will happen? 6. Song to the Protector of the Young Ones Sung by the Protector of the Young Ones (.spirit-shaman): Autumn orchid and parsley flowers Grow in rows below my hall. Green leaves and white flowers Send their fragrance strongly to me. People have always wanted children and grandchildren; Why do you fuss over them? Sung by the shamaness leading the ceremony. Tire autumn orchids bloom luxuriantly, Their leaves green and flowers purple. The hall is filled with beautiful ladies; You suddenly turned your seductive gaze to me. You came without a word, And you left without goodbye. Riding on the whirlwind, with clouds as your banners, You are gone. No pain is greater than parting with life, And no greater happiness is there than finding a friend. Wearing a robe of lotus and a belt of sweet clover, Swiftly you came, and swiftly you left. At night you rest near the kingdom of the sky. Are you waiting for someone at the edge of the clouds? I long to bathe with you in the celestial pool And watch you dry your hair in the rising sun. I keep looking and looking, but you do not come. What can I do but turn to face the wind And break into a loud song. Riding on a chariot covered with peacock feathers, With banners of brilliant green, You climb into the nine realms of the sky to touch the stars. You lift your long sword high to protect your beautiful children. Only you are the true judge of all the people. 7. Song to the Lord of the East Sung by the Lord of the East (spirit-shaman)'. Slowly I rise from the east, My light shining on the wooden gate of my house. Driving my horses slowly forward, Night gives way to the pale light of dawn. Sung by a group of shamans'. Die Sacred One drives his dragon-chariot, Borne on the breath of thunder; His banners of clouds fluttering in the wind. I sigh as I rise to the sky above; My heart is hesitant, and I do not wish to leave my home below. Your colors at dawn are so enticing. All who see you are intoxicated and forget to return home. We tighten the strings of our zithers And beat our drums together; We strike the bells and shake the bell-stand; And we play our pipes and flutes. We are beautiful and virtuous; We whirl around, sometimes slow and sometimes fast. As we sing, everyone breaks into a dance To the notes of the music and the beat of the rhythm. The Sacred One has come. Your many spirit attendants will darken your light. Sung by the Lord of the East (spirit-shaman): I dress myself in a shirt of blue and a skirt of white And soar into the sky. I aim my long arrow and shoot at the Sky Wolf. Grasping my bow, I descend back to earth. I lift the handle of the Dipper to ladle cinnamon wine; Holding the reins of my horses, I urge them across the sky; And in the darkness of night I make my journey back to the east. 8. Song to the Earl of the River Sung by shaman leading the ceremony. I travel with you to play in the nine rivers. The gusty winds whip up the breakers. We ride on a water-chariot with lotus leaves as canopy. Two dragons draw the chariot, And two serpents accompany us at our side. We climb to the top of the Kun-lun Mountains, And look in the four directions. My heart flutters and leaps in ecstasy. Tire sky will darken soon; But wanting to stay longer, I forget about going home. I gaze at the distant shores, And my heart is filled with longing. Your chamber is made of fish scales and your hall of dragon skin; You have filled your palace with pearls and purple shells. Why do you have to live in the water, And travel on the backs of great turtles to catch brightly striped fish? Come with me instead to play on the sandy islands. We’ll roll around with the floods that come our way. You and I shake hands goodbye as you continue east. Let me accompany you as far as the southern bank. The waves swell up to welcome you, While shoals of fishes accompany me back home. 9. Song to the Mountain Spirit Sung by a group of shamans'. There appears to be someone deep in the mountains. Wearing a cloak of fig leaves and a belt of rabbit fur. You look at me with penetrating eyes and a friendly smile. Lady, I know you desire my good looks. You are driving two leopards and leading two striped lynxes. Your chariot is made of magnolia, And your banners are woven with cinnamon sticks. You are dressed in a cloak of stone-orchids; Hie folds are gathered neatly with a belt of stalks. You pluck sweet grass to give to the one you love. Here I am in the dense bamboo forest; Hie trees are so thick that I can’t even see the sky. Hie mountain trails are dangerous; Hiat is why I am late. Alone, I stand on top of the mountain; Hie dense clouds floating down below. The east wind comes in; Hie rains will be here soon. I am so happy to be with you that I forget about going home. I am getting old; What chances will be left for me to feel the goodness of life? Alone, I gather mushrooms in the mountains. I can only see the scattered rocks And arrowroots creeping through them. Are you thinking of me although you do not have the time to come? I long for you, and in sorrow I forget that I have to go. Wanderer in the mountains, you are like the sweet grass; You drink from the rock spring And rest beneath the pine and fir. Are you really thinking of me? I cannot be certain. Hie thunder rumbles; Hie rain darkens the sky; Monkeys and apes scream mournful cries; Hie wind moans loudly and the leaves whistle. I think of you, and my heart is filled with sadness. NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION I have titled song number 3 “Song to the Lord of the River” and number 4 “Song to the Lady of the River.” I disagree with David Hawkes’s interpretation (in the Ch’u-tz’u: Songs of the South) that song number 3 is addressed to a goddess. The deity in question here is the Shang-chiin. Chun is traditionally a respected title for a male. It can be translated as “gentleman” or “husband,” and it is typically not used to address a female. Songs number 3 and 4 also form a pair. Tire chief singer of the Song to the Lord of the River is a shamaness; it is she who longs for her beloved, the male river spirit. On the other hand, the chief singer of the Song to the Lady of the River is a shaman, and he is longing for his lover, the female river spirit. I have titled song number 6 “Song to the Protector of the Young Ones.” I also disagree with Hawkes’s interpretation that this song addresses a “lesser” lord of destiny and that some lines do not belong here. Tire word hsiao can mean “young” or “less.” Tire other two words, ssu-ming, can either mean “giver of life” or “controller of destiny.” When interpreted as “giver of life to the young ones,” the spirit invoked in the song is not a controller of destiny who has lesser powers than the one in song number 5, but is a totally different kind of power: one who grants life to the young ones. Read this way, the entire poem forms a cohesive unit and no lines are out of place. Personally, I think this rendering is more consistent with Ch’u culture. Children were a blessing, and fertility was much desired among the southern tribes. Unlike the desolate north, the southern lands could support its population, and a family with many children was considered a “rich” family. Thus, I feel that the Song to the Protector of the Young Ones is better understood as a song asking the sacred power to grant fertility. Many songs describe various species of plants used in the shamanic dance. In the translation I have reduced the use of botanical names and have used common plant names that the general reader is more familiar with. 2 The Path ofWu-wei The C lassics OF Taoism T HE LAO-TZU ( TAO-TE CHING), Chuang-tzu, and Lieh- tzu are called the Three Classics of Taoism. Although they were written over two thousand years ago, their wisdom is timeless, and their teachings are remarkably relevant to our times. I have chosen sections from these three books to highlight three major themes in the teachings of Taoism: the nature of the Tao, sagehood, and cultivating life. All three books address similar issues, but they speak differently, as if each has a character and life of its own. The Lao-tzu, or Tao-te ching, is poetic in style and serious in its approach. The Chuang-tzu is prose and is wild and idiosyncratic. The Lieh-tzu tells stories and is humorous. Serious wisdom, crazy wisdom, and humorous wisdom, these books contain some of the best philosophy and literature that the Chinese culture has ever produced. Tao-te ching The Tao-te clung was originally titled Lao-tzu. Although it was named Tao-te clung by Taoist scholar Wang Pi (226- 249 ce), who felt that the book dealt with the nature of the Tao and the matter of virtue ( te ), the Lao-tzu did not receive that official title until the reign of Emperor Hsiian Tsung (739-782 ce) in the T’ang dynasty. Who wrote the Tao-te chingl There are several theories. Some scholars maintain that the book was written by several people, one of whom was indeed a historical person named Li Erh, now known as Lao-tzu. Other parts of the book were written either by students of Lao-tzu or by thinkers who were sympathetic to his teachings. Others say that Lao-tzu the person was a fictitious character and that the book represents the teachings of a loosely knit group of thinkers who held similar ideas. When the book was put together, it was titled Lao-tzu because it contained the “teachings of the old wise ones” ( lao means “old,” and tzu means “wise one”). There is, however, a general agreement that the book was the work of more than one person. Most people agree that the Tao-te ching was written over a period of time, but there is no consensus as to when. Some date it to the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 bce) of the Eastern Chou dynasty (770-221 bce), placing the historical Lao-tzu as a contemporary of Confucius. Others argue that because its style differs from the Confucian classics like the Analects, it could not have been written during the time of Confucius. Personally, I agree with the earlier dating for several reasons. First, Ssu-ma Ch’ien, the Grand Flistorian, noted that Lao-tzu was a native of Ch’u who lived in the time of Confucius and that the two men had met and discussed matters of ceremonies and rituals. I find this believable since Confucius was interested in the ancient rituals and collected them in the Li-chi (Book of Rites), and Lao-tzu was a librarian of the imperial archives. Thus, it is likely that Confucius could have approached Lao-tzu and consulted him on matters of rituals and rites. Second, just because the Tao-te ching and the Confucian classics differ in style does not mean that the two works could not be contemporary, especially if we consider the Tao-te ching to be a work of a southern culture of Ch’u and the Analects to be a work from the northern states of Ch’i and Lu. (Ch’u, Ch’i, and Lu were feudal states of the Eastern Chou dynasty.) In fact, recent Chinese scholars have pointed to the similarity of style between the Tao-te ching and the Ch’u-tz’u. Thus, it is reasonable that some parts of the Tao-te ching could have been written as early as the sixth century bce, with subsequent additions dating as late as the fourth century bce. But regardless of who wrote it and when it was written, the Tao-te ching is one of the most important classics of Taoism. Its teachings are timeless, and its wisdom transcends culture and history. The translations that follow are made from the Standard Text found in the Taoist canon. From the Tao-te Ching On the Tao 1 The Tao that can be spoken of is not the real way. That which can be named is only transient. The nameless was there before the sky and the earth were born. The named is the mother of the ten thousand things. In nothingness you will see its wonders; In things you will see its boundaries. These two come from the same origin, although they have different names. Urey emerged from somewhere deep and mysterious. This deep and mysterious place Is the gateway to all wonders. 4 The Tao is empty. However, if you use it, it can never be exhausted. Deep and bottomless, It may be the ancestor of all things. It blunts what is sharp, Unties what is tangled, Softens what is dazzling, And merges with the dust. Deep and hidden, It appears to last forever. I do not know whose son it is; Looks like it was here before the rulers of the sky existed. 14 Try to look at it and you will not see it; Therefore we call it “unfathomable.” Try to listen to it and you will not hear it; Therefore we call it ‘fare.” Try to touch it and you will not feel it; Therefore we call it “ungraspable.” These three cannot be penetrated further, For they cannot be separated. Up high it is not bright; Down below it is not dark. Infinite and limitless, we cannot name it, Because it always reverts to nothingness. A shape without a shape, Aform without an object, It is elusive and fleeting. Run straight into it and you will not see its head; Follow it from behind and you will not see its back. Use the way of the ancients to master the situations of the present. To know the origin of the universe Is to understand the structure of the Tao. 25 There was something undifferentiated but complete. Born before sky and earth, Soundless and formless, It stands on its own ground and is unchanging. It moves like a circle and never stops. It can be the mother of the universe. I do not know its name, So I call it the Tao. If forced to name it, I’ll call it Great. It is great because it moves through everything. It reaches far, yet it returns to where it started. Therefore the Tao is great; Hie sky is great; Earth is great; And the ruler of humanity is also great. Hiere are four great things in world, and the ruler of humanity is one of them. Humanity follows the way of earth; Earth follows the way of the sky; Hie sky follows the way of the Tao; And the Tao follows its own natural way. 34 Hie Great Tao flows everywhere. Its course can go left or right. Hie ten thousand things depend on it for growth, And it does not refuse them. It accomplishes its work and does not claim credit. It clothes and feeds all things but does not control them. Always without desire, it can be called small. The ten thousand things come under its embrace, But it does not dominate them. Therefore it can be called great. Because it does not consider itself as great, It can accomplish that which is great. On Sagehood and Cultivating Life 10 Can you unite your spirit with the One and not let it leave? In concentrating on your breath, can you make it soft like an infant’s? Can you purify your thoughts and clarify your mind So that they are spotless? Can you love your country and people without effort? In opening and closing the celestial gate, Can you become the female? In understanding everything in the universe, Can you do it without using knowledge? Give birth to them and nourish them, But do not possess them. Help them know that they are not dependent on you. Guide them but do not control them This is the most profound virtue. 12 Tire five colors can confuse your sight. Hie five sounds can dull your hearing. Hie five flavors can injure your sense of taste. Racing and hunting can drive you mad. Material goods that are hard to get will hinder your movement. Therefore enlightened people care about their stomach and not their senses. They discard one and take the other. 44 Fame or your body, which do you want more? Your body or your wealth, which do you value more? Gain or loss, which do you want more? If you have a lot of desire, you will probably be extravagant. Hie more you hoard, the more you will lose. Know contentment and you will not be disgraced; Know when to stop, and you will not meet with danger. In this way, you will be around for a long time. 52 Hiere was a beginning of the world Hiat may be regarded as the mother of the world. Attain the mother, and you will know her children. Hold on to the mother, and you will not meet with harm all your life. Block the openings; Close the doors; And all your life you won’t have to toil. Open the holes, Meddle in the worldly affairs, And all your life you will not be saved. To be able to discern the small is clarity; To be able to hold on to the soft is strength. Use the light To return to brightness. In this way, you will not invite harm. This is called practicing that which is permanent. One who embraces virtue fully Is like an infant. Poisonous snakes and insects will not sting him; Fierce beasts will not claw him; Birds of prey will not strike him. His bones are weak, his tendons are soft, But his grasp is strong. He does not know the union of male and female, And yet his organ is aroused. This is because his procreative energy is at its height. He can cry all day without getting hoarse. This is because he is in perfect harmony. To know harmony is to be at one with the permanent; To know the permanent is to be clear. To be greedy of life is a sign of misfortune. If you direct your breath with your mind you will be forcing things. When things reach their prime, they will begin to get old. This is not the Tao. What is not the Tao will meet with an early end. Chuang-tzu The Chuang-tzu is a collection of essays in thirty-three chapters divided into three sections: the Inner Chapters ( nei-p ’ien), the Outer Chapters ( wai-p ’ien), and the Miscellaneous Chapters ( tsa-p’ien ). Like many ancient texts, the Chuang-tzu that we have today is incomplete. The current Chuang-tzu was probably put together in the early fourth century ce. During the T’ang dynasty, the Chuang-tzu' s status was elevated when it became one of the three Classics of Taoism, together with the Tao-te ching and the Lieh-tzu. The writings in the Chuang-tzu span over four hundred years of thought, from the fourth century bce in the Warring States Period (475-221 bce) of Eastern Chou to the third century ce in the Eastern Han. It is now believed that the Inner Chapters, written between 250 and 300 bce, are the oldest sections of the book. These chapters were probably written by one person, most likely Chuang-tzu himself. Parts of the Outer Chapters and Miscellaneous Chapters are essays written by various authors sometime between 221 and 25 bce, during the Ch’in and Han dynasties. Other parts could have been written as late as the Wei and Chin dynasties (between 220-420 ce). Some of the authors were students of Chuang-tzu, while others were Taoist philosophers who lived several hundred years after his time. Tire first excerpt is from chapter 2 of the Inner Chapters. Hie second excerpt, chapter 15, is from the Outer Chapters. On the Tao From the Chuang-tzu, chapter 2: Discussion on All Tilings Being Equal Tzu-ch’i of the southern suburb sat leaning on a table and looked up at the sky. His breathing was slow, as if his mind had wandered off somewhere. Yen-ch’eng Tzu-yu, who was standing by his side, asked, “What’s going on? Can the body become like a withering tree and the wind be like dead ashes? Can the man who sits leaning on the table today be different from the one who sat in the same place yesterday?” Tzu-ch’i replied, ‘Yen, you’ve asked a good question. Today my spirit left my body. Do you understand that? You’ve heard voices of people, but you haven’t heard the voices of the earth. And if you’ve heard the voices of the earth, you haven’t heard the voices of the sky!” Tzu-yu said, “What does this mean?” Tzu-ch’i then said, “Tire Great Earth blows out a vapor and it is called wind. If it doesn’t blow, nothing happens. However, when it does, the ten thousand hollows and holes will howl wildly. Haven’t you heard their persistent cries? In the high mountains and low hills are deep forests. In these forests are trees whose trunks are so wide that a hundred men can circle them. These trees have openings like noses, mouths, ears, jugs, cups, grain mortars, deep pools, and shallow ponds. When the wind blows, they roar like waves and whistle like arrows shot from bows. Some scream, some make sounds like heavy breathing, some cry, some wail, some laugh, and some sigh. Those in the lead lightly let out an “eeee” and those following behind echo loudly with “yuu.” If the wind is gentle, the harmony is faint, but in a strong gale the chorus is deafening. When the wind stops, all the hollows are empty and silent again. Haven’t you seen that kind of tossing and swaying going on in the forests?” Tzu-yu said, “Oh, so the voices of earth are the sounds from the hollows, and the sounds of people are those coming from flutes and pipes. Then, may I ask, what are the voices of the sky?” Tzu-ch’i replied, “Blowing into the hollows of the ten thousand myriad things in different ways, so that each of them can make its own sound and takes what it needs—this is voice of the sky. But who is directing them to make these sounds?” Great understanding is broad, and lesser understanding is picky. Great words carry strength and little words are petty and quarrelsome. When people go to sleep, their spirits wander off. When they awake, their bodies are uncomfortable. This is because they get tangled up with everything they contact. Every day they use their minds to scheme. Some brag about themselves, some set up traps for others, and some hide their malicious intentions. Their small fears make them edgy and suspicious. Their big fears make them lose their minds. Some shoot off their arguments like arrows and delight in bickering over right and wrong. Others hold on to their opinions tightly, certain that they are correct. Thus, they fade and die like autumn and winter, decaying day by day. Urey are so stuck in their condition that it will be hard to get them to turn back. Urey are so blocked up that not even one whiff of air can come out. Old and withering, their minds are near death, and nothing can restore them to life. Rapture, anger, sadness, happiness, worry, regret, rashness, stubbornness, modesty, carelessness, bluntness, and pretense are music from empty hollows, bursting out like mushrooms from the damp ground. Day and night they replace each other, springing up in front of us, and we don’t even know where they come from! Let them be, let them be! They’re with us morning and evening. We can’t exist without them, and they have nothing to latch on to without us. It is the way things are. I don’t know how they came about. If they have a true master, then I have not seen it. I can see the actions, but I cannot discern the form. This is because it exists and yet it has no form. Tire hundred joints, the nine openings, the six organs all come with my body. Which part do I value most? You say that I should favor all of them. Or is there one that I should like most? Are they all merely servants? If so, then why do they behave in so orderly a fashion? Do they take turns playing ruler and subject? Is there a true lord among them? But whether I know who it is or not, it should not affect the truth of the matter. On Sagehood and Cultivating Life From the Chuang-tzu, Chapter 15: Constraining the Will So it is said, the life of the sage follows the celestial way, and in death he dissolves and merges with all things. In stillness he is at one with the virtue of yin; in movement he flows with yang. He does not bring fortune and does not cause misfortune. He only responds when external circumstances call for it. He only acts when pushed. He only rises up when there is no other alternative. He throws away the whys and wherefores, and follows the celestial way. Therefore, he does not meet with disaster. Nor is he burdened by material things. He is not slandered by people nor punished by the spirits. He floats with life and rests with death. He does not worry and does not scheme. He is like light that does not dazzle. Completely trustworthy, he does not need to make promises. His sleep is dreamless and his waking hours are free from worry. His spirit is pure and his soul is not tired. In emptiness, nothingness, and simplicity, he is in harmony with the celestial way. Therefore, it is said that grief and happiness pervert virtue, joy and anger obstruct the Tao, and delight and repulsion work against virtue. When the mind is without worry or joy, virtue is complete. When it is at one and unchanging, stillness is complete. When it does not oppose anything, emptiness is complete. When it does not interact with things, simplicity is complete. When it does not resent things, purity is complete. Hrus, it is said that if the body works too hard and does not rest, it will weaken. If the generative energy is used without restraint, it will be exhausted. If it is exhausted, you will be tired. It is the nature of water that if it is not mixed with other things, it will remain clear. If it is not stirred, it will remain still. Dam it and it will not flow. If it stops flowing, it will no longer be clear. Such is the nature of the celestial way. So it is said, be pure and simple and do not be mixed up. To be still, unified, and unchanging, to be simple and nonintrusive, moving with the celestial path—this is the way of cultivating the spirit. NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION Although Burton Watson’s translation of the Chuang-tzu is considered the standard reference, I have translated some words and phrases differently. My choice of words is based on suggestions made by commentators of the Chuang-tzu. In ‘Discussion on All Things Being Equal,” I have used the phrase ‘fny spirit left my body” instead of “I lost myself’ (Watson’s version) to translate the three Chinese words that are literally “I,” “lost,” and ‘fne.” In the language of Taoism of the time, ‘T’ and ‘fne” in the phrase do not refer to the same subject. ‘T’ refers to mind or spirit, and ‘fne” refers to the body. Thus, I think that the entire phrase may be better rendered as ‘fny spirit left my body.” This is more consistent with some Chinese commentaries that suggest that Tzu-ch’i was describing a meditative or trancelike state. I have also translated the word yang as “life” instead of “light.” In a Taoist text, yang is better rendered as “life,” especially in a context where Chuang-tzu was talking about caring for health and sanity in troubled times. Lieh-tzu: ATaoist Guide to Practical Living The Lieh-tzu is a collection of stories and philosophical musings. It contains materials written over a period of six hundred years (between 300 bce and 300 ce). There were twenty sections in the original collection, and these were condensed into the eight sections we have today. During the hundred years or so after it was compiled, the Lieh-tzu did not receive the kind of attention that was given to the Tao-te ching and the Chuang-tzu. Most scholars believed that its teachings were similar to those of the Chuang-tzu, which was sufficient for gaining an understanding of Taoism of the Warring States and early Han periods. If not for the efforts of a scholar of the Eastern Chin (317-420 ce) who edited and wrote a commentary on it, the Lieh-tzu probably would have disappeared into oblivion. Although the Lieh-tzu was written by more than one person and the text that we have today is incomplete, it contains some of the best presentations of the teachings of Taoism. Its down-to-earth, humorous, and amusing discussion of the Tao, human nature, and issues that are remarkably relevant to our times make it one of the most accessible Taoist texts ever written. The following excerpts are from my book Lieh-tzu : A Taoist Guide to Practical Living. In this book I attempted to present the teachings of the Lieh-tzu by bringing out the “intention” or “voice” of the text. While books are meant to be read, voices are meant to be listened to. In the Lieh-tzu I tried to let the text speak as if the philosopher were talking directly to the reader. It is not a translation in the strict sense because I have elaborated on some parts and amalgamated others. Some hard-to-pronounce Chinese names have been omitted to facilitate the continuity of listening to the text. I hope that this method of presenting the Lieh-tzu conveys the feel of listening to one of the greatest teachers of Taoism. On the Tao From the Lieh-tzu, Part One: The Gifts of Heaven That which is not born gives birth to everything Lieh-tzu was a humble and sincere person. His thoughts and actions tell us he was “uncommonly common.” He was unassuming and never displayed his learning. He lived a simple and quiet life and did not compete with others for recognition. Therefore, although he had lived in the kingdom of Cheng for forty years, people in positions of power saw him only as a common citizen. Throughout his life, Lieh-tzu never made a name for himself. Without the burdens and problems associated with fame and fortune, Lieh-tzu could live leisurely and be free to do what he liked and go where he wanted. To Lieh-tzu, being an unknown citizen was better than being a person of power and responsibility. In a time when politicians played games of intrigue, Lieh-tzu felt it was better to remain silent and be truthful to oneself. Of course, there are certain things that even a wise sage cannot escape. But, not being bound by custom and social convention, Lieh-tzu was able to deal with adversity much better than anyone else. One year, a famine occurred in Cheng, and Lieh-tzu decided to move to the kingdom of Wei to see if he could make a living there. Moreover, he thought this would give him an opportunity to travel to an unknown country and broaden his learning. While Lieh-tzu was preparing to leave, a group of his students came to him. Urey were worried that their teacher might leave them for a long time. Urey knew Lieh-tzu did not follow any routine, and, if the mood suited him, he might wander for months or years before returning. Therefore, they wanted their teacher to give them some words of wisdom before he departed. Lieh-tzu was not a person given to casual chatting. After his students begged him tirelessly for half a day, he finally said, “Think about this. Old man sky never says a word, but we can see that everything has its place in the universe. Nature has a lot to teach us. All you need is to open your eyes and look. Tire changes you see in nature follow a course. The four seasons behave in a regulated way. In truth, all human matters follow the same principles as the workings of the sky and earth. What more is there for me to say?” His students were not satisfied and continued to pester him with questions. One student said, “Sir, even if you feel there is nothing for you to say, you can at least tell us what your teacher Hu-tzu taught you.” Lieh-tzu was silent for a while. Then he smiled and said, “Actually, my teacher Hu-tzu did not say much. He told us to let everything go according to its natural way. However, I did remember a few things he mentioned to some of my fellow students. I’ll share them with you now.” Here is what Master Hu-tzu taught: There are many things in the universe that we don’t understand. For example, some plants and animals require help from others to grow and survive, while others don’t. We humans rely on plants and animals for food. We also need some of our community to farm the land and raise the livestock to sustain the rest of us. On the other hand, cacti can grow in the most hostile conditions and they do not need much support to survive. In general, those that are less dependent on the external environment for support will find it easier to survive than those that do. Urey will not die when their supporting environment disappears. However, we should not look down on those who need to depend on others for survival. We should let them grow naturally in their own way, for their mode of living has its place in maintaining the balance of the universe. If we tried to change their way of life, we would upset the balance of things, and the order of the universe would be disturbed. All things have their place in the universe, whether it is active or passive, moving or not moving. Urey fulfill their function in the world simply by being what they are. Everything plays a part in the process of creating, nourishing, transforming, and destroying. The creation of one thing is the destruction of another, and the destruction of one thing is the creation of another. In this way, life carries on in the universe. In every moment there is birth and death and there is coming and going. This process never stops.... If we understand that birth and death are part of the natural order of things, we will know that our lives cannot be controlled by our own efforts, and coming and going are not our own doing. At birth, we take a shape and form; in growth, we undergo development and change; and when our course has run out, we dissolve and return to where we were before we were born. If we know the order of things, we will understand that when intelligence and wisdom have reached their zenith, they will begin to fade and decay. The rise and fall of shapes, colors, thoughts, and feelings are not subject to control. Because we don’t know whence they come or where they go, we can only say that everything that is born comes from the not-born. From Lieh-tzu, Part Six: Effort and Destiny Effort argues with Destiny One day Effort said to Destiny, “My achievements are greater than yours.” Destiny did not agree. He challenged Effort immediately. “What have you done to make your achievements surpass mine?” Effort said, “Whether someone lives long or dies young, is rich or poor, will succeed or fail depends on me.” Destiny said at once, “Old P’eng’s intelligence did not match the emperors Yao’s and Shun’s, but he lived a long and healthy life. On the other hand, Yen-hui, Confucius’s best student, died when he was eighteen. Confucius’s virtue far surpassed the feudal lords’, but compared to them he was destitute and poor. Tire emperor Shang-t’sou was cruel and immoral but lived a prosperous and long life. On the other hand, his ministers who were virtuous met with violent deaths. There was a man who sacrificed his own fortune to allow his brother a chance to be employed by the lord of Cheng. He remained poor and unknown for the rest of his life. Then there was another man who had neither virtue nor ability who became the lord of Ch’i. How about Po-yi and Shu-ch’i, who starved to death in the mountains because they would not compromise their integrity and honor to serve an enemy lord? What can you say about corrupt officials who are rich, or honest, hard-working people who are poor?” Effort had not expected this barrage of evidence against his assertion. He frowned, but Destiny continued, “If you are as effective as you say, then wiry don’t you make the hard-working people rich? Why don’t you give virtuous people a long and prosperous life? Why are the intelligent and able people not employed, and why do stupid people occupy important places in government?” Effort had no more to say in the face of these challenges, so sheepishly he said to Destiny, “\bu are right. I do not have much effect after all. But I daresay a lot of things happen the way they do because you’ve been up to mischief, twisting people’s destiny around and enjoying it!” Destiny then said, “I cannot force the directions of things. I merely open doors for them to go through. If something is going straight, I let it follow the straight path; if something takes a turn I do not hinder it. No one, not you or I, can direct the path of things. Long life or short, rich or poor, success or failure, fortune or misfortune, all come about by themselves. How can I direct events or even know where things would end up?” On Sagehood and Cultivating Life From Lieh-tzu, Part Two: The Yellow Emperor Riding on the wind, FLOATING WITH THE CLOUDS Lieh-tzu had the immortal Old Shang for a teacher and the sage Pai-kao-tzu as a friend. After he had finished his training, he came home riding on the wind and floating on the clouds. A man named Ym-sheng heard about Lieh-tzu’s feat and wanted to learn this skill of riding on the wind. So he went to Lieh-tzu and asked to be his student. So intent was Ym-sheng on learning this skill that he stayed at Lieh-tzu’s home and kept pestering the teacher with questions. This went on for several months, but Lieh-tzu only ignored him. Yin-sheng began to get impatient and then angry that Lieh-tzu was not teaching him. One day, he left in a huff. When Yin-sheng got home, he calmed down and realized he had been stupid and impulsive, so he went to Lieh-tzu and asked to be his student again. Lieh-tzu simply said, “Why did you come and then leave and then return?” Yin-sheng said, “When I first came to ask you to teach me, you ignored me. So I got annoyed and left. Then I realized I was too impatient and reckless, so I came back to ask you to accept me as a student again.” Lieh-tzu said, “I had thought you were intelligent, but now I can see you are quite stupid. Listen to what I went through when I learned from my teachers.” Lieh-tzu said: “When I asked Old Shang to be my master and Pai- kao-tzu to be my friend, I decided to work hard to discipline my body and mind. After three years, I was afraid to have notions of right and wrong and I did not dare to speak words that might offend or please. It was only then that my master glanced at me and acknowledged my presence. Five years later, I thought freely of right and wrong, and spoke freely of approval or disapproval. My master gave me a smile. Seven years later, my thoughts came naturally without any conceptions of right and wrong, and words came naturally without any intention of pleasing or offending. For the first time, my master invited me to sit by his side. Nine years later, no matter what came to my mind or what came out of my mouth, there was nothing that was right or wrong, pleasing or offending. I did not even entertain the idea that Old Shang was my master and Pai- kao-tzu was my friend. “It was then I became aware that there was no barrier between what was inside and what was outside. My body was illuminated by a bright light. I heard with my eyes and saw with my ears. I used my nose as mouth and my mouth as nose. I experienced the world with the totality of my senses as my spirit gathered and my form dissolved. There was no distinction between muscles and bones. My body stopped being heavy and I felt like a floating leaf. Without knowing it, I was being carried by the wind. Drifting here and there, I did not know whether I rode on the wind or the wind rode on me.” He then looked at Yin-sheng and said, “You had only been here for less than an hour and you got dissatisfied that you were not taught. Look at your condition. Tire parts of your body do not cooperate; the vapors of the sky and earth do not enter your body; your joints and bones are so heavy that you can’t even move. And you want to learn how to ride on the wind?” When Yin-sheng heard these words he was ashamed and did not ask again about riding on the wind. From Lieh-tzu, Part Seven: Yang-chu Life—TEMPORARILY STAYING IN THE WORLD; DEATH—TEMPORARILYLEAVING Yang-chu said: “If you live to be a hundred, it is considered a long life. However, only one in a thousand persons is that lucky. But if we take a person who has lived a hundred years and look at the time he has spent in his life, we will realize that a hundred years is not a long life. Out of these years, childhood and old age take up at least half the time. In addition, half the day he is asleep. Not to mention the hours during the day that he has idled away. What does that leave him? Moreover, if you take out the times when he is ill, sad, confused, suffering, and not feeling good, there isn’t much time left that he can enjoy or be free. “Some people think they can find satisfaction in good food, fine clothes, lively music, and sexual pleasure. However, when they have all these things, they are not satisfied. Urey realize happiness is not simply having their material needs met. Thus, society has set up a system of rewards that go beyond material goods. These include titles, social recognition, status, and political power, all wrapped up in a package called self-fulfillment. Attracted by these prizes and goaded on by social pressure, people spend their short lives tiring body and mind to chase after these goals. Perhaps this gives them the feeling that they have achieved something in their lives, but in reality they have sacrificed a lot in life. Urey can no longer see, hear, act, feel, or think from their hearts. Everything they do is dictated by whether it can get them social gains. In the end, they’ve spent their lives following other people’s demands and never lived a life of their own. How different is this from the life of a slave or a prisoner? “Tire ancients understood that life is only a temporary sojourn in this world, and death is a temporary leave. In our short time here, we should listen to our own voices and follow our own hearts. Why not be free and live your own life? Wiry follow other people’s rules and live to please others? When something enjoyable comes your way, you should enjoy it fully. Don’t be imprisoned by name or title, for social conventions can lead you away from the natural order of things. It doesn’t matter whether you will be remembered in generations ahead, because you will not be there to see it. “Why spend your life letting other people manipulate you just to get a name and reputation? Why not let your life be guided by your own heart and live without the burdens of fame and recognition?” 3 Honoring the Sacred Powers Devotional Taoism T HE TAO IS THE SOURCE OF LIFE OF ALL things, and this sacred power is sometimes manifested as deities and spirits. In the Taoist spiritual tradition, devotion is a way of honoring the sacred power that gave us life and nourished us. Also, through devotion, a bond is created between humanity and the sacred, and as long as this bond is maintained, there will be peace and harmony in the universe. The readings in this chapter are from two of the most famous texts of Taoist devotional literature: the T’ai-p’ing ching ch ’ao (Essentials of the Classic of Peace and Balance) and the Pei-tou yen-sheng ching (The North Star Scripture of Longevity). The excerpt from the T’ai-p’ing ching ch ’ao gives us a glimpse of how Lao-tzu is portrayed as the chief deity of the Taoist religion. The Pei-tou yen- sheng ching is a liturgy that honors the celestial deities of the Northern Bushel Stars (the Big Dipper), who are the rulers of health, longevity, and human destiny T’ai-p’ing ching ch’ao (Essentials of the Classic of Peace and Balance 1 The T’ai-p ’ing ching ch ’ao consists of excerpts from the T’ai-p 'ing ching, the book from the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 ce) that launched the movement of devotional Taoism. Much of the original T’ai-p ’ing ching is lost, and the version collected in the Taoist canon today is only a small fraction of the original work. The T’ai-p’ing ching ch 'ao was compiled by a Taoist of the T’ang dynasty. The editor took what he thought were the best parts of the T’ai- p ’ing ching and compiled them into one book. It is in the T’ai-p 'ing ching ch ’ao that several missing sections of the T’ai-p 'ing ching are preserved. Hie story of the birth of Lao-tzu and his deification (translated below) would have been lost if the editor of the T’ai-p 'ing ching ch ’ao had not included it in his book. The Birth of Lao-tzu From T'ai-p ’ing ching ch 'ao, Chapter 1 Hie Great Lord of Longevity is named the Great Balance of the One True Wonderful Vapor, the Latter Sacred Lord of the Nine Mysteries of the High Pure Golden Tower of Heaven. His name is Li and he is descended from the Great High One. He is the fetus of the Great \bid of the Jade Emperor. During the time of the Lord of the Great Mystery and Completeness, in the fifteenth year of the reign of the Great Emperor, when ping-tzu was the Ruling Star of the year, his vapor was conceived. In the first year, named chia-shen, of the reign of the Emperor of Peace, his shape took form. During the seventh year of the High Harmony, named keng-yin, on the third day, named chia-tzu, at the hour of mao, when virtue and body were in union and the stars were aligned, he was conceived in the Jade Kingdom of the Mysterious North, in the spirit realm of the celestial bodies, on the mountain of Peng-lai that was shaped part human and part bird, in the valley of the li trees. There was a virgin who was the mother of the High Mysteries who lived in the Chamber of the Nine Mysteries, deep within the shady (yin) valley. When the Mysterious Virgin conceived, she saw in a dream the infant’s body wrapped in the clouds, the sun, and the moon. The six breaths resonated with his spirit. She felt the movement of yang and knew that she carried within her womb an enlightened being. On the morning of his birthday, three suns rose from the east. After he suckled, magic water came out of the mouths of nine dragons. That is wiry the people of that spirit valley gave it the name “bright landscape.” By the beginning of his third year, his body had attained the true form, and his speech radiated a golden splendor. At five, he frequently gazed at the sun and smiled, and looked at the moon and sighed. Up above he observed the growth of the breath of yang. Down below he saw the way of yin and waning. Therefore he cared for his spirit and harmonized his soul. He held on to the fetus to keep his spirit sacred. He gathered generative energy to fill his blood. He strengthened his marrow to build his tendons. At seven he learned to swallow the rays of light, eat the mist, and chew the tendrils of the sun. At the age of twenty-seven, his complexion radiated a golden glow. Leaving the mundane world and distancing himself from desire, he pledged to save the world. His spirit moved the Lords of the Great Primal Beginning and he was given the teachings of the Three Completenesses. He practiced the teachings of the Three Caverns and his deeds were seen in the nine directions. At thirty-seven, he could use his humility and simplicity to file down sharpness. At forty- seven, he could use his throat to gather the harmonious light. At fifty-seven, his saliva became the mysterious nectar and his works of merit traveled everywhere unhindered. At sixty-seven, he gave a treatise to the Latter Sacred Lord, who was also the Lord who had received the Tao before sky and earth were created. He is named the Latter Sacred Lord because that was how it was recorded. Hie Earlier Sacred and Latter Sacred are really the same [sic]. He then ascended to the Palace of the High Pure and wandered in the Houses of T’ai-chi. He rules the skies and the ten realms below. He is given jurisdiction over the millions of mortal beings. He watches over the sky, rivers, seas, plains, valleys, mountains, and woods. Hiere is none that will not obey him. He is the judge of the nine levels and ten layers. Therefore he is called the Nine Mysteries. At seventy, his longevity became limitless. He could hide and appear with ease. He has mastered the arts of immortality and compiled the methods and formulae of longevity. NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION Taoist religious terms can be intimidating to people who are not familiar with them, so some of the terminology from the selection is explained below. The One True Wonderful Vapor is also known as the Breath of the Tao, the Primordial Vapor, and the Undifferentiated Vapor. These are all names of the Tao, the origin and underlying reality of all things. In the T’ai-p 'ing ching the term also refers to the ideal state of existence, when everything was in the embrace of the Tao. Taoist celestial space is divided into nine layers, called the Nine Mysteries. Tire Ninth Mystery is the highest layer of the celestial realm. In the T’ai-p 'ing ching, the High Pure Golden Tower of Sky is the entrance to Shang-ch’ing, the domain of the highest deities. Tire Golden Tower is sometimes called the Mysterious Gate. Later, the High Pure (Shang-ch’ing) Realm was replaced by the Jade Pure (Yuch’ing) Realm as the highest level of the celestial domain. Tire passage of time in the Chinese calendar is reckoned by a system called the Ten Celestial Stems and Twelve Terrestrial Branches. Tire Ten Celestial Stems are chia, i, ping, ting, wu, chi, keng, hsin, jen, and kuei. Tire Twelve Terrestrial Branches are tzu, ch ’ou, yin, mao, ch ’en, ssu, wu, wei, shen, yu, hsii, and hai. Each year, month, and day can be designated by a pair of stem and branch. Thus, in the text ,ping-tzu and keng-yin identify the year, and chia-tzu identifies the day. Tire Ruling Star of a year is also named after the stem-branch combination. Tire Ruling Star of the year is a controller of events of that year. It is also the Guardian Star of all persons born in that year. Tire day is divided into twelve two-hour units, and each unit is named after a Terrestrial Branch. The Jade Kingdom of the Mysterious North is the realm of the North Pole Star and the Constellation of the Northern Bushel (the Big Dipper). The highest deities are said to reside in these stars. The fetus of the Great Void refers to the spirit or seed of immortality. It also means the “son of the Mother (the Tao).” In the text, it is taken to mean that Lao-tzu’s mother is the Tao itself. Finally, the nine levels and ten layers refer to the nine steps of the celestial realm and the ten levels of the underworld. Tlie Taoist underworld, at least in the period when the T’ai-p ’ing ching was written, was not a hell. It resembles a shaman’s otherworld where the Taoist journeyed in spirit to rescue a sick person’s soul or obtain power from the Guardians of the Tao. Pei-tou ven-sheng ching ( The North Star Scripture of Longevity } The full title of this scripture is T’ai-shang hsiian-ling pei-tou pen-ming yen-sheng chen-ching. Translated, it means “the True Scripture of the North Star, the Governor of Longevity and Destiny, as revealed by the Sacred Spirit of the Great One.” Although the text says that the scripture was revealed by Lao-tzu to the Celestial Teacher Chang Tao-ling, it is now generally agreed that the book was written sometime during the end of the Tang and the beginning of the Sung dynasty. lire Pei-tou yen-sheng ching is a liturgy. It is meant to be chanted in a service accompanied by rituals or read aloud at home by devotees. Tire Pei-tou yen-sheng ching is also one of the most popular liturgies of Taoism. This liturgy is typically chanted on the first and fifteenth day of the lunar month and on the Festival of the Northern Bushel Stars, which falls on the first nine days of the ninth lunar month. Because the North Star and the Northern Bushel Stars are associated with longevity, the Pei-tou yen-sheng ching is also chanted as a birthday blessing. From the Pei-tou yen-sheng ching Prologue On the seventh day of the first month in the first year of the Realm of Everlasting Life, the Patriarch Lao-tzu was in the Palace of T’ai-chi in the Realm of T’ai-ch’ing (Great Purity). He looked at sentient beings and saw that for millennia they had been sunk into the depths of suffering, doomed to repeat countless cycles of rebirth. Whether born human, whether born on Chinese soil, in foreign lands, or in underdeveloped countries, whether born rich or poor, everyone lived on borrowed time. Many souls had fallen into the underworld, wandering without peace, their destruction brought about by their evil deeds. Urey were imprisoned in the world of the dead and suffered greater torment than they could bear. Urey would never find human existence again and would be reborn as beasts, birds, and insects. Having left the path of humanity, it would be difficult for them to return to it. However, despite all this, they still did not awaken. They were locked into the cycles of rebirth because they had been ignorant in their previous lifetimes. Lao-tzu, out of great compassion, took on human form and descended to the mortal realm to teach humanity. In the capital city of the Kingdom of Shu, the guardian of the earth rose from the ground and built a jade platform. Tire Patriarch Lao-tzu ascended the platform and transmitted the Scripture of the North Star to the Celestial Master, telling him to let this scripture be known far and wide, so that people might be delivered from their sufferings. The Main Section Tire Patriarch Lao-tzu said to the Celestial Master: “It is difficult to be born in human form. It is even more difficult to be born in the central lands. Even if you have that opportunity, to encounter the true teaching is rare. Many are lost in delusion. Many stray into evil paths. Many are deeply rooted in their unethical ways. Many are dishonest and dishonorable. Many kill and rape. Many delight in casual pleasures. Many are greedy and jealous. Many souls are lost in the underworld. Many have lost their chance to exist in human form. Humanity does not understand karma. Urey do not know the true way. Urey are confused and lost. Seeing the suffering of humanity, I am moved by compassion to give them these teachings. I will let them know that all life comes from the Tao. If they understand this, then they will attain longevity. Their seed will not die. Tlrey will continue to exist in human form. Urey will not be born in lands where the teachings of the Tao are unknown. Urey will not lose the essence of being human. Moreover, they will cultivate the Tao in themselves and gradually enter the path of immortality. Urey will be liberated from the cycles of rebirth. Urey will transcend earthly existence and merge with the Tao. This is why I want to give you this great and wonderful vehicle, so that you can deliver humanity, and let them return to their true nature. “On their birthday, they should abstain from meat, conduct a ceremony, and make offerings to the Northern Bushel deities, the Three Lords and Five Emperors, the Nine Officers and the Four Magistrates. At this time they can ask for blessings and deliverance from catastrophes. Urey can present petitions and sincerely ask for forgiveness. Tlrey should offer fragrant flowers and five kinds of fresh fruits. Following the ways of the sky and earth, they should make the offerings seriously and formally, purifying the environment where the ceremony is held. Whether the ceremony is conducted in a temple or at home, the effects of their actions will be felt. If they perform the ceremony they will receive merit. Remember, do not forget this and do not be tardy. “Chanting the names of the Northern Bushel deities can deliver you from disaster. It can ward off evil and give you prosperity and longevity. It can help you accumulate good deeds. If you feel that a disaster is imminent, light incense and chant the North Star Mantra, and it will give you peace of mind. I shall now transmit this chant to you: The seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can deliver us from the three disasters; The seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can deliver us from the four destructive forces; The seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can deliver us from catastrophes of the five elements; The seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can deliver us from the six harms; The seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can deliver us from the seven injuries; The seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can deliver us from the eight obstacles; Hie seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can deliver us from the nine baleful stars; The seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can dissolve the disharmony between husband and wife; The seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can dissolve the conflicts between men and women; Hie seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can protect you from problems in pregnancy and birth; The seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can deliver you from the cycles of rebirth; Hie seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can ward off the disaster of epidemics; Hie seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can ward off the disaster of illness; The seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can ward off evil spirits; Hie seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can ward off the attacks of tigers and wolves; Hie seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can ward off the attacks of poisonous insects and snakes; Hie seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can ward off the attacks of thieves and robbers; Tire seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can protect you from accidental punishment; Tire seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can protect you from accidental death; Tire seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can protect you from misfortune coming from curses Tire seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can protect you from disasters coming from the skies; Tire seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can protect you from disasters on the ground; The seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can protect you from disasters coming from wars; Tire seven sacred deities of the Northern Bushel Can protect you from disasters of fire and water. The lords of the seven stars Are compassionate and understanding. They deliver us from all disasters And liberate us from suffering. If you are beset with problems, Chant these lines and it will give you peace. Tbu will be filled with great fortune And will be in harmony with the five elements. Tbur three souls will be healthy and stable, And evil will stay away forever. Tire true breath will descend from the five directions, And many great fortunes will come to you. “Tire names of the true lords of the stars are seldom uttered or heard. If you chant them, the Tao will grow strong and deep in you. It is good karma that led you to know them. If you chant their names, you will accumulate merits beyond measure. When honest men and women chant this scripture, their wisdom and original nature will develop. Tire heart of Tao will be opened. Urey will leave the path of delusion and enter the Gate of the Rare Mystery. Urey will return to the true way and enter the immortal realm. “Therefore, during the festivals of the Lords of the Three Realms and the eight celebrations, your birthday, and the days in which the deities of the Seven Stars descend to earth, you should prepare an altar, chant this scripture, perform the ceremony, and abstain from meat. Follow the procedures carefully and your prosperity will know no measure. In every lifetime the sacred truth will not abandon you. Tbu will not enter paths of evil. Those who possess this scripture can also regularly chant the names of the Lords of the Seven Stars. In this way, they will accumulate merit and fortune will descend on them. “This is the sacred mantra: Tire North Star group has nine luminous bodies. In the center of the sky is the great sacred star: Upward it points toward the golden gate, Downward it envelops the Kun-lun mountains. It regulates the movement of all things And rules the universe. Tire Great Pivot, Tire Star Craving Wolf, Tire Great Gate Star, Tire Star of Prosperity, Tire Scholar Star, Tire Star of Virtue, Tire Warrior Star, Tire Destroyer of Enemies, Tire Jade Emperor’s star on high, Which is the purple throne of the great lord. Tire celestial circle of the macrocosm Is present in the microcosm of a grain of dust. Is there any disaster that it cannot avert? Is there any prosperity that it cannot grant? Let the true vapor of the ancient emperor Come to protect my body. All the constellations rotate around the Celestial Pivot, Day and night without stopping. We, the unworthy, who live in the mortal realm, Are drawn toward the Tao and ask for enlightenment. We are willing to abide by the solemnity of the ritual So that we may attain immortality. The Three Altar Stars: Energy of the Void, Hie Scholar and Warrior Stars that give me balance— From them I am born; From them I receive nourishment; They protect my human form.” NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION Hie three disasters are catastrophes that come from the sky, the earth, and water. Hie four destructive forces are the sha (mischievous and harmful spirits) coming from the four directions: north, south, east, and west. Hie catastrophes of the five elements are accidents involving metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. Hie six harms come from the six senses: eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. Because of desire, the six senses are attached to objects. Attachment to objects of desire drains internal energy, leading to the loss of health and longevity. Tire seven injuries come from excessive responses of the seven emotions: happiness, anger, sorrow, fear, elatedness, likes, and dislikes. Tire seven emotions are linked to the seven souls, or p ’o. Indulgence in these emotions will lead to the loss of the seven p ’o. This affects mental stability since insanity is often described as the dissolution of the seven p ’o. It also affects physical health because emotional outbursts and fluctuation of moods are harmful to the internal organs and the circulation of internal energy. When the three disasters are mentioned with the nine catastrophes, they refer to the three blockages in the cavities along the spinal column. Tire three disasters are sometimes called “the three poisons” because the three blockages can hinder the circulation of energy and cause illness. Tire nine catastrophes are the nine closures in the cavities along the spinal column. Tire closures can drain energy away from an individual, block the flow of energy in the body, and cause illness. 4 The Tao Within Mystical Taoism T HE GOAL OF THE MYSTIC IS TO BE united with the greater or cosmic part of the self. Shang-ch’ing Taoism, which emerged in China in the third and fourth centuries ce, is a form of mystical Taoism where the cosmic part of the self is the Tao. The primordial energy of the Tao is present in both the macrocosm of nature and the microcosm of the human body. By visualizing the images of the deities and journeying to their realms in the sun, moon, and stars, the Shang-ch’ing mystics achieved an ecstatic union with the greater power that is resident in the universe and within themselves. These two aspects of the Taoist mystical experience are illustrated by the two most important texts of Shang-ch’ing Taoism: the Shang-ch’ing Huang-t’ing nei-ching yii-ching (The Yellow Court Jade Classic of the Internal Images of the High Pure Realm), and the Shang- ch'ing chin-Ch’iieh ti-chun wu-tou san-yiian t’u-chueh (Hie Lord of the Golden Tower of the High Pure Realm’s Illustrated Instructions on [Visualizing] the Five Bushels and the Three Ones). Shang-ch’ing huang-t’ing nei-ching yii-ching ( The Yellow Court Jade Classic of the Internal Images of the High Pure Realm 1 The Shang-ch’ing huang-t’ing nei-ching yii-ching is regarded as the representative scripture of Shang-ch’ing Taoism. Reputed to have been revealed by the deities to Lady Wei Hua-ts’un in 288 ce, the scripture was passed on to Yang Hsi, who transmitted it to Hsri Hui and Hsu Mi. When Lu Hsiu-ching compiled the Taoist books into the Three Caverns in 471 ce, the Huang-t’ing nei-ching yii- ching became apart of the Taoist canon. This scripture is a revealed text. Revealed texts are meant to carry an authority greater than texts written by mortals. One can tell whether a scripture is a revealed text by looking at its preface or the first few lines. Revealed texts always name the deity who transmitted the text to the writer. This is typically followed by statements of why the text is important. There are two Huang-t’ing citings', the Huang-t’ing nei-ching yii-ching (The Yellow Court Jade Classic of Internal Images) and the Huang-t’ing wai-ching yu-ching (The Yellow Court Jade Classic of External Images). Tire former is an esoteric text and the latter is an exoteric text. In spiritual literature, esoteric texts are written for initiates and exoteric texts are written for the general public. Tlrat the contents of the Wai-ching are almost entirely contained in the Nei-ching suggests that the former is probably an introductory text while the latter contains secret teachings available only to the initiated. Personally, I find the Nei-ching very much like an instruction manual and the Wai-ching more like a description of the internal universe of the human body. My own training in internal alchemy has helped me to decode much of the information contained in the Nei-ching. Tire phrases of the Nei-ching text are stylistically similar to instruction mnemonics ( k'ou-chueh ) that my Taoist teachers have given me. The Origin and Transmission of the Huang-t’ing nei-ching yu-ching Preface Tire Great Lord of Fu-sang ordered the immortal King of the Yang Valley to transmit to Lady Wei the Huang-t ’ing nei-ching yu-ching. It is called the Great High’s Harmonious Writ of the Heart. It is called the Golden Book of the Great Lord. It is called the Jade Scroll of the Lord of the East. After purifying yourself for ninety days, recite it ten thousand times. It will harmonize the three human spirits (him), refine the seven souls (p'o ), eradicate the three monsters, and sooth and harmonize the five viscera. Your complexion will glow with color; you will be like an infant; the hundred illnesses cannot harm you, and disasters cannot overwhelm you. After you have recited it ten thousand times, you will naturally see the spirits and deities in the cavern, and will be able to look internally at the intestines and stomach and see the five viscera. At that time, an enlightened being of the Yellow Court, the Jade Lady of the Center, will teach you how to live forever. These are the teachings of immortality. Ytu who have the mark of an immortal, receive my text. Tlris text displays the one true form of the immortal spirit’s abode where the sacred fetus dwells. To those who recite this text, the immortal spirit’s dwelling place will be bright and strong, the true fetus will be safe and still, the sacred nectar will flow smoothly, the hundred gates will be bright and clear, the blood and marrow will be plentiful, the intestines and stomach will be empty yet full, there will be luster in the five viscera, the ears and eyes will be intelligent, broken teeth will become new, and the white hair will become black. Because I can eradicate evil and confusion, this is wiry I have been given the true names of the spirits of the six orbs. When form is full and the spirit is strong, you will not die even if you want to. This is why the Inner Chapters of the Huang-ting ching contains the teachings of immortality. Chapter i: The High Pure (Shang-chtng) Realm Before the Purple Cloud of the Emperor of the Void in the High Pure Realm, the Lord of the Jade Dawn of the Great Way secluded himself in the Chamber of the Pearl Medicine and wrote these seven-word phrases: Spreading the five forms and transforming them into the ten thousand spirits: This is described in the Inner Chapters of the Huang- ting ching. The harmonious music in the center is played in the three registers to accompany the dance of the immortal fetus. Nine vapors shine brightly from the highest places. From the child’s spirit brow a purple haze is born. This Jade Text is extraordinary and exquisite. Recite it ten thousand times and you will rise to the three celestial realms. A thousand disasters will go away and a hundred illnesses will be cured. You will not be afraid of fierce tigers and brutal wolves; Old age will be taken away and you will live forever. The Guardian Spirits of the Body Chapter t. Attaining the Tao Attaining the Tao is not difficult if you are sincere. The Mud Ball cavity and the hundred joints all have spirits. Black and white, the spirit of hairs is called Great Beginning; Root of vitality, the spirit of the brain is called Mud Ball; High up and bright, the spirit of the eyes is called Mysterious Infant; Protruding like apiece of jade, the spirit of the nose is called Hard Numinous Spirit; Empty yet closed, the spirit of the eye is called Quiet Field; Connected to life itself, the spirit of the tongue is called Judge of Principles; Tough and sharp, the spirit of teeth is called a Thousand Varieties. The spirit of the face is governed by the Mud Ball. The Nine Cavities of the Mud Ball all have chambers. Tire circle with the one-inch square is located here. Swallow the Purple Robe and fly to the Palace of Multiplicities. Contemplate this once and your longevity will have no end. Everything is inside the brain. All the spirits are seated, facing outward. Keep them in your mind and they will naturally respond. Chapters: Spirit of the Heart Tire spirit of the heart, the Beginning of the elixir, is called Holding the Numinous Spirit; Tire spirit of the lungs, a grand cover, is called Complete Emptiness; Tire spirit of the liver, with the dragon’s vapor, is called Containing Brightness; Like burning wood, it directs the smoke to separate the muddy from the clear. Tire spirit of the kidneys, mysterious and dark, is called Nourishing the Infant; Tire spirit of the spleen, which is always present, is called Restrainer of the human spirits; The spirit of the gallbladder, like a shining dragon, is called Strong Brilliance. The spirits of six bowels and five viscera are integral to vitality. Follow their path of celestial movements in your mind. Keep them inside day and night and you will naturally live a long life. NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION There is a lot of symbolism in the text. To explain and interpret each term would be beyond the scope of this book. However, some Chinese words have no simple English equivalents and need some clarification on how they are translated. I have translated the Chinese word shen as spirit, ling as numinous spirit, and him as human spirit. Some writers have rendered all three Chinese words as spirit. If these words do not appear together in the same segment of text, it is viable to translate any one of them as spirit. However, in the Huang-t’ing ching, all three words — shen, ling, and him —often appear together, and it would be confusing if all of them were translated the same. I chose to translate shen as spirit because traditionally the Chinese meaning for shen is a spirit that is an entity. I feel that the shen in the Taoist scriptures have this nature. They are immortal, though they are guardian spirits inside us. I have translated ling as “numinous spirit” because ling has the connotation of “brightness and intelligence”. For hun, I have used the term “human spirit” to distinguish it from the immortal spirit, for the hun is intimately tied to a mortal being. It resides in the human body when the individual is alive; it leaves the body at death, and depending on one’s religious belief, it may wander in the underworld or enter another body to be reborn. In Taoism, the shen are spirits that protect and judge us, the ling are spirits that teach us, and the hun are spirits that are wayward and mischievous. I hope that translating the three words in this manner will clarify their Taoist meanings. The Shang-ch’ing chin-ch’iieh ti-chiin wu-tou san-viian t’u-chiieh ( The Lord of the Golden Tower of the High Pure Realm’s Illustrated Instructions on IVisualizinel the Five Bushels and the Three Ones) This is one of the many Shang-ch’ing scriptures collected in the Taoist canon said to be transmitted by the deity Lord Chou, whose full title is Tzu-yang Chen-jen Chou-chiin (Tire Immortal Lord Chou of the Purple Light). Hie text contains instructions for visualizing the deities and merging with them in their celestial palaces. Hie excerpt below describes the procedure for visualizations performed at the spring equinox. Hie complete text in the Taoist canon contains procedures for the summer solstice, autumn equinox, and winter solstice, as well as various days of the month. Flying to the Stars At the beginning of midnight at spring equinox, sit with your eyes closed and face east. Keep me within your body along with the Hiree Palaces, the Hiree Ones, and the Hiree Officials. Together with the Seven, and me in the center, ride the smoke of the purple vapor and step up to the Northern Bushel’s (Big Dipper’s) Bright Star. Hie Bright Daylight Star is the Eastern Deity of the Bushel. In this way, you will be transported to the center of the stars. Sit and inhale the purple vapor thirty times. Soon you will see the Eastern High Palace of the Bright Daylight Star. Inside the Palace is the Child of the Green Mystery who will give you the True Light. First, keep the big web of purple vapor below the North Star in front of me. Hien hold on to the Hiree Ones. Hiese are the oral instructions from the deities. Hie Deity Lord Chou said: Hold on to the seven figures and the mantle of the Bushel or the Seven Stars and rise with them to the Brilliant Daylight. Traveling with my lord in the center on the star mantle, turn the head of the handle so that the First Star is pointing forward. Inhale the purple vapor thirty times, keeping me in the purple haze while you are inhaling. Now visualize the Three Ones and the Three Officials. When you have finished inhaling, you should see seven figures revolving around in the purple haze as they descend into the Three Palaces. After a period of time, recite this petition in your mind: The Thrice Honored Truly Highest Lord Above of the Great Mystery, Brilliant Daylight; Ruler of spring when the thousand children open the gates to complete the elixir; Ruler of the summer’s pearly vapor mixed with the smoke of the feminine generative energy; Ruler of the autumn’s celestial splendor, the six constellations and the North Pole; Ruler of the winter when the ten thousand evils block and rape the five earths— keng,jen, wu, chi. Let the Celestial Barriers crumble and dissolve when I turn to face them; Refine my seven souls and my three human spirits; Give life to my five viscera; Let me attain the real, fly to the High Pure Realm’s floating images of the Seven Beginnings, live long, and follow my nature. After my long cry to the thousand spirits, Let me rest and keep within me the four seasons. This is my sole wish. NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION Again there is quite a bit of esoteric symbolism here, and to explain each symbol would be beyond the scope of this book. To be consistent with the Huang-t 'ing nei-ching yii- ching, I have translated him as human spirit although it is the only “spirit” mentioned in this text. I have also translated the words yin ching as ‘feminine generative energy” because in the text it is paired with the “pearly vapor,” which is male generative energy. From the text Shang-ch’ing chin-Ch’iiehti-chiinwu-tou san-yuan t’u-chiieh (The Lord of the Golden Tower of the High Pure Realm’s Illustrated Instructions on [Visualizing] the Five Bushels and the Three Ones). The Shang-ch 'ing adept sits at the right, and the seven celestial lords of the Northern Bushel are in the center. The figure on the left is the young attendant who brings messages from the celestial lords to the practitioner. The pronoun “me” in the expression “keeping me within” refers to the guardian deity, the numinous spirit, and the energy of life inside us. The text consists of words spoken by the deity to the practitioner. Thus, ‘you,” the practitioner, need to keep “me,” the deity, within. If “you” lose “me,” you will lose the connection to life. Keng, jen, wu, chi, are lour Celestial Stems. For a discussion of the Celestial Stems, please refer to the Notes on the Translation in chapter 3 . Hie text here mentions five and lists four because the first stem, chia, is “hidden” (tun). This is common knowledge to Taoist practitioners, although it is somewhat confusing to people unfamiliar with divinational arcana in Taoism. The scope of this book does not allow me to explain the meaning “hiding the chia stem” in detail. Briefly, there are two accepted meanings. One is that chia, as a Celestial Stem and stellar body, is hidden because it can take on many possible positions. Its location cannot be determined when the rest of the Stems are fitted into the pa-k’ua (eight trigrams). The second meaning is that chia refers to a dark or invisible star, which embodies the primal darkness or the essence of yin energy. Like the dark side of the moon, it is hidden and cannot be seen. 5 In Search of Immortality Taoist Internal Alchemy Sky AND EARTH ARE AGELESS BECAUSE they are constantly renewed by the breath of the Tao, the source of life. If humans can cultivate the breath of the Tao and circulate it in the body, they too can become immortal and be at one with the sky and earth. Cultivating and circulating the energy of the Tao require transforming body and mind so that the energy within is as pristine as that of the primordial vapor of the Tao. This process of transformation is likened to refining metals, and the methods of purifying body and mind are known as “alchemy.” The selections in this chapter are from two classics of Taoist alchemy: the Tsan-tung-chi (Triplex Unity), and the Wu-jen p ’ien (Understanding Reality). Tsan-tung-chi (Triplex Unity) The Tsan-tung-chi is regarded by Taoists as the ancestor of all alchemical literature and is reputed to have been written by Wei Po-yang, the father of Taoist alchemy. Tire oldest sections of the book have been dated to 142 ce. Tire phrase tsan-tung-chi can be interpreted in several ways. Briefly, tsan means combining, tung means similar, and chi means bringing together. Literally, the phrase means “to compound together three similar substances.” Some commentators of the Tsan-tung-chi have interpreted the three substances to be the three internal energies: ching (generative energy), ch 7 (vital or breath), and shen (spirit). Others have chosen to describe them as lead, mercury, and cinnabar. Yet others have described them as the Three Ones, who are the guardians of the three energy fields (called tan-t’iens) in the body. Tire Three have also been referred to as the three realms of existence: sky, earth, and humanity (or heaven, earth, and man). Tire diverse interpretations of the title of the book suggest that the Tsan-tung-chi has many levels of meaning. It is simultaneously a theory of the human body, a set of guidelines for spiritual transformation, and a manual for cultivating health. Historians and scholars now agree that the Tsan-tung- chi in the Taoist canon is probably the work of several authors. Some parts of the Tsan-tung-chi are written in the poetic style of four beats to the line and some with five beats. Other parts are written in prose. It is now generally accepted that the middle section of the book was written by Wei Po-yang himself in the second century ce. Some parts were added by his students, and some sections were probably written by practitioners of Taoist alchemy as late as the sixth century ce. My translation of the Tsan-tung-chi is from the version collected in the Cheng-t’ung Taoist canon (ca. 1440s). I have kept the partitions used by the major commentators. Richard Bertschinger’s The Secret oj Everlasting Life presents the Tsan-tung-chi in a different order. Bertschinger’s translation is from the Ku-wen tsan- tung-chi (Tire Old Text of the Triplex Unity). Although the Ku-wen text was once regarded as a secret version that is older than the Tsan-tung-chi of the Taoist canon, scholars have now determined that the Ku-wen text was actually written during the reign of Emperor Chang Te (1506-1521 ce) of the Ming dynasty. This means the Kun-wen text actually postdates the one collected in the Taoist Canon. Regardless of when it was written and who contributed to its authorship, the Tsan-tung-chi is a remarkable work. Today, fifteen hundred years after Wei Po-yang first set down his theory and practice of transforming body and mind, the Tsan-tung-chi is still acknowledged by Taoists as the definitive manual of spiritual transformation. Cultivating Mind From Part One Nourish yourself internally. In peace, stillness, and complete emptiness, The hidden light of the origin will glow To illuminate the entire body. Close and block the mouth To strengthen the numinous pearl. Let the three lights sink below To incubate the young pearl. Look for it and you cannot see it. Yet it is close by and easy to get. As the Yellow Center gradually penetrates everything, Luster and glow will spread to the muscles and skin. Start your cultivation correctly and you will be able to see it to completion. The trunk will stand firm and the branches will take hold. Hie One is concealed and hidden; The people of the world have never known it. Great virtue does not act; It does not seek or want. Lesser virtue acts; And it is used endlessly. Great obstruction is called ‘Laving”; No obstruction is called ‘Nothingness.” Nothingness can carry you up To where the sacred virtue resides. This is the method of the “dual-entrance cavity” In which gold and energy (ch’i) work together. Cultivating Body From Part Two The mirror of yang makes fire, But if there is no sun, it will not give light. If not for the moon and the stars, How can the watery fluid be collected? If two energies that are distant from each other Can respond and communicate, How much more can those that are close, inside your body, And held within your chest? Match yin and yang to the sun and moon, And use fire and water to activate each other. The three treasures—ears, eyes, and mouth— Close and block them and let nothing through. The enlightened being is immersed in the depths, Floating and wandering, keeping the direction within. Sight and hearing are devious and crooked. Opening and closing must be synchronized. In the pivot and axle of the self. Movement and stillness must never be exhausted. Guard the energy of li (fire) within. Do not tax the intelligent energy of k ’an (water). Close the mouth and stop talking; To speak rarely is to flow with the undifferentiated whole. These are the three important principles: Relax your body and situate yourself in an empty room; Abandon the will, and return to the void and nothingness. When there are no thoughts, you will find the constant. Let difficulties prod you forward. Focus the mind and do not let it wander. Embrace the spirit when you sleep. Attend to its care and beware of its neglect. Your complexion will be moistened until it is shining; The bones and joints will grow firm and strong. When all the toxins are discharged, Tire true yang will stand up alone. Cultivate without stopping, And the mass of energy will move like cloud and rain. Flowing like spring showers, Dripping like melting ice, From the head falling down to the feet, And from there rising up again, Coming and going, swirling the limitless, And stirring everything throughout. Tlrose on the path of the return know the Tao. Weakness is the handle of virtue. Plow and pull out the weeds of impurity. Do it meticulously and you will attain harmony. For in the mud lies a clear path, And in the long darkness a light will finally shine through. People of the world love little tricks. Tliey do not probe the depths of the Tao. They abandon the correct way and follow the devious paths. They want the quick way but they do not get through. Like the blind leaning on a staff, Like the deaf who hear ringing in the ears, Tliey go under the water to hunt for birds and rabbits; Tliey climb the mountains to look for fish and dragon; They plant wheat and hope to harvest millet; Tliey swing a compass to draw a square; Tliey exhaust their strength and weary the spirit, And at the end of their lives there is no attainment. If you want to know how to feed on internal energy, The procedure is not really that complicated. The Alchemical Process From Part Two Strive to nourish your inner nature; Lengthen your life and turn back time. Consider the final outcome; And think about what came before. We are endowed with a body Whose form is fundamentally empty. The primordial generative energy spreads like a cloud, Held up by vapor in the Beginning. Yin and yang are the bases of things, Coming to reside within as him (human spirit) and p 'o (soul). The yang spirit of the sun is the human spirit, The yin spirit of the moon is the soul. Joining together, the human spirit and the soul Live with each other in the same home. The inner nature rules within, Setting up its position in the castle. Feelings rule the camp outside, Building and strengthening the city wall. When the city and its walls are complete, Tire people will be secure. At the appointed time, Feelings are united with ch ’ien (sky) and k’un (earth). When ch ’ien moves, it becomes erect; Tire vapor spreads as the generative energy flows. When k’un is still, it contracts; Becoming the furnace in the lodge of the Tao. Apply firmness, then withdraw; Transform it into softness to provide stimulation. The Nine is circulated, the Seven is cycled in reverse; Tire Eight returns, and the Six stays within. Male is white, female is red. Gold and water embrace each other. Water stabilizes fire, And the cycle of the five elements is started. The highest good is like water; It is clear without a blemish. The true form of the Tao And its Oneness is hard to describe. It changes and spreads, The parts settling by themselves. It resembles a chicken’s egg, Where black and white are bound together. It is about one inch wide When it first begins. Then the four limbs and five viscera, The tendons and bones become complete. After ten months, It slips out of the womb. Hie bones are soft and curled, And its flesh is slippery like polished lead. Immortality From Part Three Hie sages and wise ones Carried the mystery and embraced the ultimate reality. Hiey refined the Nine Cauldrons, Covered their traces, and hid from the world. Hiey conserved their generative energy, nourished the spirit, And understood the value of the Three Primal Ones. Tire sweet nectar moistened their skin and flesh. Their tendons and bones were soft and strong. Urey expelled all the toxins from the body, And constantly preserved their true energy. Having accumulated these effects over a long time, Their bodies were transformed, and they became immortals. NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION There are many symbols in the Tsan-tung-chi. This kind of symbolic reference is quite common in the texts of internal alchemy. To explain the meaning of each line in the text is beyond the scope of this book. Readers who want to know more about the language of Taoist alchemy can refer to my books The Shambhala Guide to Taoism and Harmonizing Yin and Yang: The Dragon-Tiger Classic (forthcoming). I have retained the Chinese words of ch’ien, k’un, k ’an, and li in the translation instead of substituting them with the English sky, earth, water, and fire because these Chinese terms have unique meanings. Thus, for example, k'an is not simply water, but water of the pa-k ’ua, which is different from water of the five elements. Although the Tsan-tung-chi was written as a manual, it is not to be taken casually as a “how to” book. Even if you are familiar with Taoist alchemy, you should not use it as a manual without supervision and guidance from a teacher. The Wu-jen p’ien (Understanding Reality ) The Wu-jen p ’ien was written by Chang Po-tuan, who was one of the greatest theorists and adepts of Taoist alchemy in the Northern Sung dynasty (960-1126 ce). The alchemical procedures described in the Wu-jen p’ien are similar to those outlined in the Tsan-tung-chi, except for one major difference. For Wei Po-yang and the alchemists of his time, the ingestion of minerals (external alchemy) was perfectly compatible with using internal methods to transform body and mind (internal alchemy). On the other hand, Chang Po-tuan believed that all the ingredients of alchemical transformation are found in the body and that there is no need to ingest minerals and herbs. The Process of Internal Alchemy From Part One 3 If you want to attain immortality, make sure it is celestial immortality. Only the Golden Elixir (Pill) is the best. When the two come together, feelings and inner nature merge. Where the five elements gather, the dragon and tiger copulate. With earth yang (wit) and earth yin {chi) as go-betweens, Husband and wife happily join together. Wait for the work to complete and then present yourself before the jade tower, Borne on the flying phoenix in the light of the nine mists. 4 This wonderful method is the most real of the real. It solely depends on oneself and not on others. Know the inversion of li (fire) and k ’an (water) within. Who knows if it is floating or sinking, or who is host or guest? If you want to hold the mercury within the cinnabar and keep both of them inside the golden cauldron, First put into the jade pond the silver within the water. In the spiritual work, it does not take a whole day to pump the fires, Before the disk of the sun appears in the jade pool. 6 Everyone originally has the medicine of longevity within. However, they have lost their understanding and thrown it away. When the sweet dew descends, sky and earth will be joined. The place where the yellow sprouts grow is where k 'an and li interact. A frog in a well will say there is no dragon’s cave. How can a quail know about a phoenix’s nest? When the elixir is mature, gold will naturally fill the room. Why need to look for plants or burn reeds? 9 The essence of yin generative energy in the yang is not strong. Cultivate only one aspect and it will get increasingly weak. Tiring the body with massage and breath control is not the way; Swallowing vapor and ingesting mist are crazy; Everyone idly seeks the lead and mercury; When will they ever see the tiger and dragon subdued? I advise you to find the place where your body was born. Going back to the origin and returning to the source is the great medicine. 13 If you do not know how to invert the mysterious, How can you plant the lotus in the fire? Lead the white tiger home and nurture it To produce a bright pearl as round as the moon. Relax beside the medicine furnace and watch the fires. Let the spiritual breath follow its natural way. When all the toxins are expelled, the elixir will be complete; Leaping out of the cage, you will live for ten thousand years. From Part Two 1 First use ch 'ien (sky) and k ’un (earth) as your cauldron; Then take the medicine of the raven and rabbit and cook them. When these two things return to the Yellow Way, How can the golden elixir not be liberated? 2 Position the furnace and set up the cauldron according to ch ’ien and k ’un. Refine the essence of the sun and moon to stabilize the human spirit and soul. Gathering and dispersing, the heated vapor is transformed. I do not dare to talk about these mysterious wonders casually. 3 Stop wasting your effort at the alchemical stove. To refine the medicine, you need to find the crescent moon furnace. In there the natural true fire is born. Who needs purple coal and bellows? 16 Take the solid center of k ’an (water) To change the yin in the belly of li (fire). From there it is transformed into the perfect body of ch ’ien. To remain hidden or to fly and leap, it is all up to the mind. 17 Hie mercuric dragon of chen (thunder) comes from its home in li', Hie lead tiger of tui (lake) is born in the position of k ’an. Hie two things come from the child giving birth to the mother. Most important of all, the five elements need to enter the center. 39 If you want the valley spirit to never die, You must rely on the mysterious female to build the foundation. When the true generative energy has returned to the yellow golden room, Hie bright pearl will never leave. 43 Hie black within the white is the mother of the elixir. Hie female enclosed inside the male is the sacred fetus. When the Great One is in the furnace, you need to guard it with care. Hie jewels gathered in the three tan-t ’iens (fields of energy) are the reflections of the three Altar Stars. 47 If you want to know how to refine, nourish, and circulate the elixir, You need to plant the seed in your own garden. No need to huff and puff with force and effort, Because when the elixir is complete, it will naturally leave its spiritual womb. 54 When the medicine meets the energy, its form emerges. Imperceptible and inaudible, the Tao merges with nature. When the numinous pill is swallowed into the belly, This is the first time you’ll know that your destiny is not determined in the celestial realm. From Part Three 2 The internal medicine is the same as the external medicine. When you understand the internal, you will understand the external. In balancing and compounding the elixir, the substances are the same. Incubation functions in two ways: Inside there is the natural real fire And the bright red flame in the furnace; Outside, increasing and decreasing the heat of the external furnace require diligence. Nothing is more wonderful than the true seed. 7 Hie seven reverse cycles return the cinnabar to the origin; Hie nine circulations return the golden nectar to the true reality. Stop counting the hours from three to nine and one to nine. However, the five elements need to be in accurate order. Everything is dependent on the silver mercury Flowing everywhere at all times. When the numerics of yin and yang are met, it will naturally join with the spirit. Hie going out and coming in are not separated from the mysterious female. 12 Cultivate more than eight hundred virtuous deeds; Accumulate fully three thousand hidden merits. Equally helping all things, friend or foe; Only then can you do what the immortals originally did. Tigers, rhinos, swords, and soldiers will not harm you. You will not be drawn into the mundane mortal realm. When the sacred writ descends, you will be ready to present yourself before the celestial realm, Riding calmly on a chariot pulled by a phoenix. NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION Again, there is much symbolic language here and they are similar to those in the Tsan-tung-chi. As in the translation of the Tsan-tung-chi, I have retained the Chinese names ch ’ien, k ’un, k ’an, and li for the same reasons. Again, if you wish to know more about Taoist alchemy, you can refer to my books The Shambhala Guide to Taoism and Harmonizing Yin and Yang: The Dragon-Tiger Classic (forthcoming). 6 In the Playing Fields of Power Taoist Magic and Sorcery TAOIST MAGICIANS AND SORCERERS ARE “artists of power.” They are individuals who have penetrated the mysteries of the Tao and have entered into an intimate relationship with both the natural and supernatural forces. Standing between ordinary reality and the subtle world of spirits, deities, and the natural elements, they give us a glimpse of the power of the Tao that we are normally unaware of in our everyday lives. Stories of Taoist Immortals. Magicians, and Sorcerers Stories of Taoist immortals, magicians, and sorcerers are very much a part of Chinese culture. When I was growing up in Hong Kong, my grandmother and my aunt told me many such stories. Tire story of Tung-fang Shuo (Tire Seeker in the East) is based on the Shen-hsien chuan (Biographies of the Immortals) and the legends of Emperor Wu-ti of the Western Han dynasty (206 bce-8 ce). Tire story of Chang Tao-ling, the founder of the Celestial Teachers sect and the father of devotional Taoism, is reconstructed from the Shen-hsien chuan, popular stories, and a Chinese opera script. As you read the stories, you will notice that Taoist immortals are individuals who are endowed with both wisdom and power. Many Taoist immortals were magicians, diviners, and sorcerers, and possessed the same skills as the shamans did in the prehistoric times. Tung-fang Shuo (Seeker in the East) When Tung-fang Shuo was a boy, he once left home and did not return until a year later. His family was worried, and when he came home, his brother said, “Where have you been? You were away for almost a year.” Tung-fang Shuo replied, ‘1 was playing on the beach and got sprayed by the salt water. So I went to the Deep Spring to wash the salt off my clothes. I left home early in the morning, and it’s only lunchtime now. Why do you say that I’ve been away for a year?” His brother exclaimed, “Tire Deep Spring is ten thousand miles from here! It would take a normal person more than a year to get there and back. You must be joking!” When Tung-fang Shuo was twenty-two years old, he wrote a letter to Wu-ti, the Han emperor. In the letter he said, “I was orphaned at an early age and was brought up by my brother. I mastered the classics when I was twelve. At fifteen I became an expert in the martial arts. At sixteen I became a master poet and memorized twenty thousand lines of song. At nineteen I mastered the science of warfare and the art of diplomacy. Now, at twenty-two, I stand head and shoulders above everyone. My body is strong and graceful. My mind is agile and cunning. I am honest and trustworthy, brave and honorable. I am someone whom your majesty should have in your service!” Tung-fang Shuo washing in the Deep Spring. Many people would have been offended by Tung-fang Shuo’s manner of presenting himself, but the emperor saw that Tung-fang Shuo was no ordinary person. He not only employed the young man in his service but made Tung-fang Shuo his personal advisor. The emperor valued Tung-fang Shuo’s friendship and lavished him with gifts. He even sent Tung-fang Shuo a beautiful woman to be his wife. However, every time the emperor sent gifts of silks and gold to his friend, Tung-fang Shuo turned all the gifts over to his wife. People made fun of his strange behavior and joked, “Either he really loves his wife or he is afraid of her!” But Tung-fang Shuo was not offended. He only laughed and said, “I am a hermit who escapes worldly matters by hiding in the palace!” Often Tung-fang Shuo would get drunk and sing in a loud voice: Tire world is too muddy, Therefore I hide behind the gates of the Palace. Tire Palace is a place where I can cultivate my life, Why do I need to be a hermit in the deep mountains? Before Tung-fang Shuo was about to leave the mortal realm, he made a remark to the emperor, “No one knows where I came from and where I will go. Only the astronomer who keeps a record of the stars knows about my true identity.” One day, Tung-fang Shuo was nowhere to be seen. Tire emperor was worried about his friend. Suddenly, remembering what Tung-fang Shuo had said a few days previously, he summoned the court astronomer and asked about Tung-fang Shuo. Tire court astronomer was bewildered. He said, ‘Your majesty, I honestly do not know Tung-fang Shuo’s true identity.” Tire emperor was a very clever man. He sensed that Tung-fang Shuo’s identity must be related to the patterns of stars in the sky. Otherwise, he would not have mentioned that only the keeper of the record of the stars would know his identity. Turning to the astronomer, the emperor asked, “In your observation of the stars in the last forty years, did you notice anything out of the ordinary?” Tire astronomer replied, “My lord, I did notice that forty years ago a star mysteriously disappeared and then a few days ago reappeared again.” The emperor finally understood. He sighed and said, “In the eighteen years that Tung-fang Shuo was with me, I did not even know that he was a sky immortal. What a pity!” Chang Tao-ling (The Celestial Teacher ) Chang Tao-ling stood over seven feet tall and had bushy eyebrows, a large round forehead, and a hawk-beak nose. On the sole of his right foot were seven black dots arranged in the pattern of the seven stars of the Northern Bushel (Big Dipper). He had long, powerful arms that came down to his knees, and he walked with a gait that had the strength of the tiger and the speed of the dragon. Just before Chang Tao-ling was conceived, his mother dreamed that she saw a giant descending from the North Pole Star. Tire lord of the North Star came toward her and gave her a flower. When she awoke the next morning, she smelled wisps of fragrance in her room and discovered that she had conceived a child. Tire fragrance lasted throughout the ten months while she carried the baby in her womb. On the day Chang Tao-ling was born, a yellow cloud covered the house and purple mist hovered about his mother’s bedchamber. When he came out of his mother’s womb, music and fragrance filled the air, and the room was flooded with light that matched the brilliance of the sun and moon. Chang Tao-ling was exceptionally intelligent. At seven he understood the teachings of Lao-tzu’s Tao-te ching. By twelve he had mastered the I-ching and the classics of divination. As a young man, Chang Tao-ling served his community as a provincial administrator but he continued to study the arts of the Tao. One day, while he was meditating in his retreat, a white tiger came to his side. In its mouth was a scroll of sacred scripture. Chang Tao-ling knew that it was time for him to leave the world of politics to pursue the Tao. He resigned his position of civil administrator and became a hermit in the mountains. When the emperor heard about Chang Tao-ling’s retirement, he offered him the title Imperial Teacher and begged him to return to the service of the government. Three times the emperor invited him, and each time Chang Tao-ling refused. When Chang Tao-ling realized that he would not be left in peace, he moved to the remote and mountainous region of Szechuan. Hrere where the streams ran deep and the waterfalls cascaded down precipitous cliffs, Chang Tao- ling selected a cave where he could meditate, learn the arts of immortality, and attain the Tao. Chang Tao-ling stayed in his cave for many years until one day he heard the cry of a white crane. He knew it was a sign that he would attain enlightenment soon. A year later, when Chang Tao-ling was stoking the fires of the furnace to incubate the Dragon-Tiger Elixir, a red shaft of light appeared and illuminated the cavern. Another year later, a white tiger and a green dragon came into the cave and sat by the side of the cauldron to protect the elixir. Finally, three years after Chang Tao-ling had heard the call of the white crane, the elixir was completed and Chang Tao-ling became an immortal. Chang Tao-ling left his cave and traveled throughout the river valleys and mountains of Szechuan. On one of his journeys he met Lao-tzu, who taught him how to fly to the stars and tunnel under the earth. When Lao-tzu departed, he gave Chang Tao-ling a scroll of talismans that had the power to heal the sick and a magic sword that could drive away malevolent spirits. As time went on, Chang Tao-ling’s skill in the arts of sorcery matured. Soon he could make himself invisible or change himself into any shape he wished. He could hear and see over great distances and could call down rain and snow. He could heal the sick and drive away evil spirits. His fame spread far and wide, and people called him the Celestial Teacher, for they believed that he was an immortal from the celestial realm. One time, six evil spirits were wreaking havoc in Szechuan. Lao-tzu appeared to Chang Tao-ling and told him to return to Szechuan to capture the spirits and bring them to judgment. Chang Tao-ling secluded himself for one thousand days to prepare for this encounter. When the six lords of evil heard that Chang Tao-ling was preparing to fight them, they gathered a large army of ghosts, ghouls, zombies, and other evil creatures. Meanwhile, Chang Tao-ling also made his preparations. He selected a green mound outside the city of Cheng-tu and built a tower with an altar in the middle. On the altar he placed objects of power, such as magical mirrors, bells, and talismans. At the hour of tzu (11:00 p.m.) Chang Tao-ling ascended the tower and invoked the wind, rain, and thunder to beat upon the army of the evil spirits. Chang Tao-ling also drew talismans of power and called on the celestial deities to fight the evil forces. Tire lords of evil sent flaming spears and arrows to hit Chang Tao-ling, but none of them could harm him. As the spears and arrows came toward him, Chang Tao-ling waved his sword of power, and the weapons were transformed into lotus flowers. Tire lords of evil then sent an army of hungry ghosts to attack Chang Tao-ling, but when they reached the altar, Chang Tao-ling drew a talisman, and all the ghosts fell on their knees and begged for compassion. Then the lords of evil sent an army of ghouls, vampires, and zombies to attack Chang Tao-ling. When these creatures came near the altar, Chang Tao-ling rang his magical bells, and the undead clutched their ears and fell to the ground, never to rise again. Seeing that their minions had failed, the six lords of evil came forward themselves to attack Chang Tao-ling. Chang Tao-ling grasped his sword and drew the Great Seal of Power. Tire sword emitted a stream of bright light, which was transformed into a net. The net descended onto the six evil spirits and formed a cage around them. When the six lords of evil saw Chang Tao-ling striding toward them with his sword of power, they begged for mercy and forgiveness. Chang Tao-ling said to them, “You have brought illness and suffering to many people, and for these evil deeds you must be punished. But, as the Celestial Way is compassionate, I shall not kill you. I shall, however, punish you by keeping you locked inside the depths of a mountain. In this way you will not harm people again.” When the people saw that the six lords of evil were captured by Chang Tao-ling, they came to thank him and asked him to teach them his magic. Chang Tao-ling did not want to turn them away, so he told them to organize themselves into groups to help people who were in need. He also told the people that the most effective way to fight evil was to do good deeds. If everyone did only what was good, evil could not take hold. To his close followers, Chang Tao-ling taught the magic of talismans and told them to always use the power of sorcery for good and never for evil. On the day he ascended to the celestial realm, he left the sword of power and the Great Seal to his son and entrusted him to teach and lead the followers of the Celestial Teachers’ Way. F eng-shen Yen-vi (Investiture of the Gods) The Feng-shen yen-yi was written in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644 ce) by novelist and Taoist practitioner Lu Hsihsing. The book is a fantasy novel set against the background of the fall of the Shang dynasty (1766-1121 bce) and the founding of the Chou dynasty (1122-221 bce) . Like its more famous contemporary works Journey to the West and Heroes of the Marsh , it depicts the classic struggle of good against evil and the triumph of the good at the end. The cast of characters in the Feng-shen yen-yi includes folk deities, Taoist immortals, Buddhist arhats, nature spirits, animal spirits, shamans, sorcerers, superheroes, kings, princes, ministers, and commoners. As the novel says, “Everyone in the world was involved in this gigantic struggle; few did not take sides.” The following excerpt describes how Kiang Tzu-ya, a Taoist sorcerer and chief advisor to the duke of Chou (later King Wen, the first emperor of the Chou dynasty), used his magical powers to summon the elements to defeat the army of the evil king of Shang. Kiang Tzu-ya Summons the Elements Tzu-ya instructed his assistant to build a mound about three feet high. When it was completed, Tzu-ya climbed to the top of the mound and undid the knot in his hair. With a sword in his hand, he faced east toward the direction of the Kun-lun Mountains, and prostrated. Then he walked the steps of the Big Dipper and began his magic ritual, uttering incantations and scattering talismanic water. Soon, a strong wind blew and whistled through the forest. Dust churned up from the ground and nothing could be seen. Tire sky darkened and the earth rumbled. In the distance, the waves crashed onto the shore and the mountains shook. Bells and chimes on the prayer flags clanged against each other. All who stood nearby were unable to open their eyes. Far away, in the enemy camp, the weather was warm and there were only small gusts of wind. Tire commanding generals said among themselves, “This is a good sign. Even the weather is on our side. Our emperor has the favor of the celestial lords, for they have sent this refreshing wind to cool us on our march.” However, as the armies of the evil emperor approached Tzu-ya’s camp, the situation changed. Tzu-ya summoned a cold wind, and for three days it blew continuously. Tire imperial soldiers began to whisper to each other, “We are living in unfortunate times. It is said that the weather will become unpredictable when there are problems in the country.” An hour later, a few snowflakes fluttered around. The imperial soldiers began to complain, “We are dressed in summer uniforms. How can we survive in this cold?” Not long after that, the snow became heavy, and the soldiers could hardly see what was in front of them. Now and then, they could hear avalanches crashing down the mountain slopes. Tire land became a wall of pure white. Wolves howled, their cries coming out of nowhere. Tire snow soon became ankle-deep, then knee-deep. Tire progress of the imperial army came to a halt. Tire commanding general looked at his lieutenants and said, “I have never seen snow this heavy in the middle of summer.” Tire general, an old man, was having a hard time enduring the cold. All the soldiers were huddled in heaps, stricken with cold. There was nothing that their commanders could do to keep them moving. Meanwhile, in Tzu-ya’s camp, everyone was prepared for the snow. Tire soldiers stood in their ranks, grateful that they were wearing padded jackets and straw hats. Everyone was awed by Tzu-ya’s power. Tzu-ya then asked his assistant, ‘How deep is the snow?” Tire young man replied, ‘Tn the higher places it is about two feet, but in the valleys the drifts must be at least four or five feet.” Tzu-ya returned to the mound, undid the topknot from his hair, drew talismans in the air with his sword, and chanted. At once, the snow clouds disappeared and a bright sun shone. The ice and snow melted and a torrent of water rushed down the mountain sides into the valley. Just when the water has formed a lake in the valley, Tzu-ya changed his incantations. He drew another talisman and whipped up a cold wind. Tire sun disappeared behind ominous black clouds and the water froze immediately. When Tzu-ya looked at the direction where the imperial army was stranded, he saw broken flags and banners. Turning to his assistant he said, “Lead twenty strong men into the enemy camp and capture the commanders.” 7 The Tao in Everyday Life Taoist Ethics Although ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE attainment of immortality are the highest goals of Taoism, the importance of everyday living in the mortal world is not neglected in Taoist practice. After all, it is in our mortal lifetime that we prepare ourselves for the return to the Tao. Taoist ethics are intimately tied to traditional Chinese views of right action. Walking in the “ways of goodness” will ensure that we will live a peaceful, prosperous, healthy, and long life. It is also a responsibility that every human being should have during his or her lifetime in the mortal realm. Chih-sun-tzu chung-chieh chine ( Master Red Pine’s Book of Discipline ) Hie Chih-sun tzu chung-chieh ching was written during the Six Dynasties (between the fifth and sixth centuries ce). Hie text uses a conversation between the Yellow Emperor and the sage Master Red Pine to present the ethics of right thinking and right action. In Taoist legend, Master Red Pine was a shaman and rainmaker during the time of the Ye I low Emperor. A teacher of humanity, Master Red Pine has appeared from time to time to teach mortals. From the Chih-sun tzu chung-chieh ching Hie Yellow Emperor bowed and addressed Chih-sun Tzu, “I see tens of thousands of people born, each person having a different destiny. Some are rich and some are poor; some live a long life and some die young. Some spend their lives in prison locked up in chains; some are plagued with illness; some die suddenly without becoming ill; and some enjoy longevity and prosperity. Please explain to me why there is such inequality in people’s fortunes?” Chih-sun Tzu said, “Everyone is born under the guardianship of stars. Some stars have great influence over our lives and some have less influence. Hiese stars determine whether someone will be born as a human or animal, whether the individual will live long or die young, whether he or she will rise or fall in fortune, be rich or poor, and live or die. Those who do charitable deeds will be blessed with the spirit of goodness. Fortune and virtue will follow them. Evil will not come near them. Tire spirits will protect them. People will respect them. Disaster will not befall them. Those who do bad deeds will be visited by the spirit of evil. Misfortune will follow them. Blessings will leave them. Tire baleful stars will shine on them. People will hate them. Disasters will gather around them. “In our everyday life, if we think and act against the sky and the earth, punishment will not come lightly. If we do bad deeds, the spirit in us will report to the stars and our longevity will be decreased. Tire celestial vapor will leave and the terrestrial vapor will suffocate us. This is what it means to meet with misfortune.” Tire Yellow Emperor then asked, ‘Tfow long can humans live?” Chih-sun Tzu replied, “When we tumble out of our mother’s womb onto the ground, the celestial lords gave us a life span of forty-three thousand and eight hundred days. This comes to one hundred and twenty years. There is one birthday each year. Thus, humans are given a chance to experience one hundred and twenty birthdays. Those who have broken the laws of the sky and the earth will have birthdays taken from them or will have their lives terminated.” Tire Yellow Emperor asked again, ‘Tfow about those who return to the celestial realm in their mother’s womb, or those who die in infancy? These people did not have the chance to commit wrongdoings. How could they have offended the sky and earth?” Chih-sun Tzu said, “When ancestors have done bad deeds, retribution will be carried over to their descendants. This is why the ancient sages have left their teachings in the sacred scriptures to advise people to do good deeds and know what is evil. In this way their children and grandchildren will reap the benefits of fortune. “Humanity is born in the midst of the sky and earth and is the product of the vapor of yin and yang. Tire sky is high but it responds to what happens below. Tire earth is humble but it elicits responses from the sky. Without a word, the sky moves the four seasons. Without a word, the earth creates the ten thousand things and humanity. When our emotions and desires are stirred, the powers in the sky and the earth will know it. Therefore it is said that the celestial realm knows four things. It knows who complains and who is ungrateful to the earth and the sky. When the sky gave us life, ch ’ien and k ’un are in our father and mother, the sun and moon are in our eyes, and the stars are in our cavities. Movement of wind and the strength of fire give us the warm vapor of life. When we die, we return to the earth. “In the sky the Three Altars Stars, the Northern Bushel, and the Pole Star govern longevity and prosperity. Hie T’ai-i star is situated on top of the head. It monitors our actions and takes away our longevity if we do bad deeds. If one year of life is taken, the star on top of the head will become dim. Hie individual will feel weak and be plagued with small illnesses. If ten years are taken away, parts of the star will gradually disappear, and the individual will always be ill. If twenty years are taken away, the light of the star will be damaged beyond repair, and the individual will be bedridden permanently or be imprisoned. If thirty years are taken away, the star will disintegrate and fall from the sky like a shooting star. Not only will the individual die before his or her time, but the punishment will carry over to the descendants until the family line is extinguished. ‘Teople do not know that they have committed wrongdoings. Hrey only say that their lives are short. Hre sky does not deceive. It shows us omens day and night—in the moon and sun, in thunder and lightning, in snow and in rainbows, in the eclipses of the sun and moon, and in the shooting stars. Hrese phenomena all carry messages from the celestial realm. Earth does not deceive us either. Its response affects all things. Floods, landslides, earthquakes, ferocious winds, tornadoes, locusts, drought, famine, and poisonous gas are all messages from earth. Hie spirits do not deceive. Fortune and misfortune, disaster and blessing, are their messages. Hie ruler of the country cannot deceive us. Signs from the stars, disasters and destruction in the world, the people’s loyalty—all these events tell us about the ruler. ‘Teople’s action, speech, and intention elicit responses from the sky and the earth. The sages tell us that the great sky follows virtue and does not favor anyone. Therefore we should heed its warnings and those of the great ones and the sages. Tire celestial lords know who has done good deeds and who has done bad ones. People cannot hide acts of murder, for the spirits of the underworld can see into their hearts and intention. When people have committed a hundred wrongs, the spirits of the underworld will drink their essence. If they have committed a thousand wrongs, earth will take away their human form and bind them with chains. This is retribution from both the yin and yang domains. Tire celestial realm has established a set of rules and ethics. If people break these rules, the deities, the spirits of the underworld, and the powers of the sky and earth will punish them.” Tire Yellow Emperor then asked, “Can you tell me more about how the immortals view good and evil, and how fortune and blessings are given?” Chih-sun-tzu replied, “Practice daily the methods of cultivating your body, your life, and your inner nature. Do good deeds, and always think and act in kindness. If you stay away from three acts of evil every day, then within three years, the celestial lords will send the stars of fortune to visit you, and you will be rewarded with fortune. If you do bad deeds, think evil things, and teach others evil ways, within three years, disaster will come to you. You will lose your health, your wealth, and you will die. “When harmful vapor spreads on earth, things will go badly for people. The appearance of ugly, evil things in the sky is the result of the nine wrongs on earth. Thus, it is said that the cure for evil is goodness, and evil is the bane of the good. Those who are kind should be the teachers of those who are evil. The presence of evil in the world tells us that we need more people who are good. The existence of blessing means that retribution is thwarted by acts of goodness. On the other hand, retribution is what remains of evil after goodness has been accounted for. “Sometimes good people meet with disaster. This is because retribution was handed down to them by their ancestors. Those who do good deeds do not need to pick auspicious days for special events. Whenever good deeds are done, there will be blessings even in the midst of disaster. The hundred spirits and guardian deities will make sure that misfortune does not occur. However, for those who do evil deeds all their lives, even if they pick auspicious days for special events, there will be disaster on the days of blessing. The evil spirits will harm them. Tire spirits who give blessings will avoid them. If people do charitable deeds frequently, the celestial lords will naturally reward them with prosperity and longevity Tire relationship between good deeds and rewards is like the effect of a thing on its shadow Therefore, if you do not want to meet with misfortune or harm, you must not offend the sky and the earth. Yo u must know how to cultivate yourself and affect your destiny.” 8 Encountering the Sacred The In SPIRITUAL TRADITIONS, CEREMONIES create a sacred time and space for humanity to meet the powers of the universe. Many Taoist ceremonies are rooted in ancient Chinese rites that predate the emergence of Taoism as a philosophy and a spiritual tradition. However, they are also enriched by two thousand years of Taoist spiritual practice. All Taoist ceremonies are preceded by purification rituals that prepare the ceremonial grounds and the participants for the event. The first selections in this chapter, the Fa-lu Chants, are recited by participants before the main part of a ceremony is performed. The second selection, from the Chai-chieh hi (Correct Procedures of Purification and Preparation for Festival Services), describes the kinds of purification rites that accompany the Taoist C: EREMONIES Taoist ceremonies. The Fa-lu (Lighting the Stove) Chants The Fa-lu Chants are invocations recited at the beginning of a liturgy. They are used to induce the participants into the appropriate state of mind and remind them of the purpose and meaning of the ceremony—to bring humanity closer to the Tao. Before the main body of a liturgy is chanted or a ceremony is performed, the ceremonial grounds (temple, shrine, and altar) and the hearts, minds, and bodies of the participants must be purified. Tire purification rituals and the chanting are a covenant made between humanity and the celestial deities, who are guardians of the Tao. As people make a solemn promise to purify themselves and to embrace the principles of the Tao, the deities renew their promise to protect, guide, and teach. Together, the sacred powers and humanity ensure that the universe is forever filled with the life-giving breath of the Tao. Lighting the Stove The smoke rises from the stove. The breath of the Tao lingers. With dedication I offer this fragrant incense. Let its scent surround the universe. Let it spread to the ten directions. Let all the spirits reveal their golden light. Dedication of Incense The Tao is approached from the heart. As the smoke rises, let my heart ascend to the Tao. Before the fragrant incense andjade pure stove, I stand single-minded before the celestial lords. Let the true spirit descend. Let the immortals come. This I sincerely petition. Let my vision reach the nine celestial realms. Purification of the Mind The stars of the Great Altar constellation Are forever rotating and changing. They save us from evil and disaster; Urey protect us and guard our bodies. Let my thoughts be intelligent and pure. Let my heart’s spirit be peaceful and calm. Let my three souls live forever. Let the spirit-soul never stray from me. Purification of the Mouth May the guardian jewel of speech Expel the impure air in us. May the guardian of our tongue Direct us to say what is upright. Let our health be enhanced, And let the spirit be cultivated. May the guardian of our teeth Help us to retain the good and reject the evil. May the guardian of the throat let out the tiger’s roar. May the guardian of vital energy nourish the sweet nectar. May the guardian of the mind hasten the completion of the golden elixir. And help us to understand the mystery of the origin. May the guardian of thought cultivate the sweet saliva, So that the breath of the Tao will stay with me forever. Purification of the Body Every day I cleanse my body. Watching the moon I cultivate my form. Hie immortals lift me up. Hie fair lady hovers over my being. Hie twenty-eight constellations Are united with me. Hie Celestial Lord Ling-pao Protects my soul. He guards the spirit and soul of sentient beings, And ensures that the internal organs are bright and whole. Let the Green Dragon and the White Tiger Array their power around me. Let the Red Raven and the Black Tortoise Protect my true spirit. Purification of the Sky and the Earth When sky and earth follow the natural way, Hie impure breath will disappear. Hie mysterious emptiness of the cavern Will illuminate the great oneness. May the powerful spirits of the eight directions Guide me to follow the natural course. May the Celestial Lord Ling-pao protect my life. Let my petitions reach the nine levels of the sky. Let the guardians of the celestial realms And the ancient mystery of the great cavern Smite the evil spirits, bind the unlawful beings, And destroy the ten thousand monsters. The sacred writ of the central mountain, Is the jade word from the great beginning. Chant this once, And the monsters will flee and life will be preserved. Do this systematically in the five mountains. Let it be heard across the eight seas. Tire demon lord will be unable to move, And the internal domain will be guarded, lire forces of destruction will be dispersed, And the Breath of the Tao will exist forever. Revealing the Golden Light The great mysterious origin of the sky and earth, Is the root of the ten thousand breaths. It gives me life, saves me from a million retributions, And instructs me in the ways of the spirit. Inside and outside the three realms Only the Tao is supreme. Its essence emanates a golden light. It covers my body; It cannot be seen; It cannot be heard; It embodies the sky and the earth; And nourishes and teaches all sentient beings. Chant it ten thousand times, And the body will glow with light. The guardians of the three realms will watch over me; The five emperors will welcome me; The ten thousand spirits will prostrate before me; And the thunder lord will bend to my will. Ghosts and evil spirits will lose their courage; Evil nymphs and creatures will lose their shape. Rumblings are heard within, As voice of the spirit of thunder resonates. As copulation occurs in the cavern, The five vapors fill the air. Let the golden light quickly appear To protect the enlightened being. Chai-chieh lu ! Correct Procedures of Purification and Preparation for Festival Services ) The Chai-chieh lu is a collection of purification rites (chai) and proper codes (chieh) of behavior required of Taoists participating in sacred ceremonies. Its anonymous author was most likely a Taoist priest of the T’ang dynasty (618-906 ce). The excerpts below are taken from four sections in the Chai-chieh lu. The Introductory section discusses the nature of purification and the meaning of chat. In Taoist practice, chai is the rite of purification that cleanses the ceremonial grounds and prepares the participants for the sacred festivals. The excerpt from the section “Tire Six Tung-hsuan Ling-pao Purifications and Ten Vows” describes ten Taoist vows of discipline and six types of purification rites. It is interesting that in addition to ethical behaviors such as compassion for others and abstinence from killing and stealing, one of the ten vows calls for conserving water and planting trees. This ecological ethic is quite remarkable. It shows that in Taoist spirituality, the respect for nature is never far away. The excerpt from “Tire Six Kinds of Chai” describes six purification rites associated with six kinds of sacred ceremonies. Note that the Shang-ch’ing Purification mentioned here is not associated with specific rituals or ceremonies of Shang-ch’ing Taoism, the mystical sect that emerged in the third and fourth centuries. Rather, they refer to general purification rites observed in the preparation of all sacred ceremonies. In the last excerpt, “Tire Nine Diets of Purification,” the reader is given a feel for what the Taoist dietary regulations are like. They range from a diet of millet and grains to feeding on the Breath of the Tao. Each diet is associated with a level of spiritual development, and practitioners are advised to follow a certain diet only when they are ready. Even so, only the few who have reached the highest levels of spiritual attainment observe the rites of purification every day. From the Chai-chieh lu From the Introduction There are three kinds of chai, or purifications. In the first kind of purification, offerings are made to atone for wrongdoings and to accumulate merits, lire second kind of purification is fasting or abstaining from rich foods. It clears the mind, cleanses the body, and prepares the participants for the sacred ceremonies. This rite can be performed by individuals who take the Middle Path [the path of performing the sacred ceremonies]. Tire third kind of purification is emptying the mind of desire. It purifies the spirit and dissolves negative attitudes. It cultivates wisdom and curbs anxiety. When there are no thoughts, one will turn to the Tao. When there is no desire or craving, one will be content. When there are no negative attitudes and no scheming, the mind is centered and is at one with the Tao. The Six Tung-hsuan Ling-pao (Precious Jewels of the Mysterious Cavern) Purifications and Ten Vows There are five abstinences in the Taoist religion. First, do not kill. Second, do not get intoxicated. Urird, do not speak falsely. Fourth, do not steal. Fifth, do not indulge in sensual pleasure. There are ten ways of goodness. First, honor your parents. Second, be dedicated in everything you do. Urird, be kind and compassionate to all things. Fourth, be tolerant and forgiving. Fifth, speak out against things that are wrong. Sixth, be selfless and help others. Seventh, value the life of all sentient beings and respect nature. Eighth, help conserve water, plant trees, and build bridges. Ninth, always think of the welfare of others. Tenth, recite the scriptures of the Uiree Treasures, keep the vows, and make offerings of incense and flowers. An individual who observes the five abstinences and follows the ten good ways will be protected by the celestial spirits. Remember, good things are planted by your actions. The Six Kinds of Chai (Purifications for Ceremonies) Hie Ti-yi tao-men ta-lun (Hie Great Book of the Practices of Taoism) states that there are three rites of Shang-ch’ing purification. First, the participants must spend time in solitude, eat without company, reduce activity to slow the breath, and cleanse the body. Second, the altars must be purified in a solemn manner. Hiird, the participants must calm their emotions and clear the mind of desire and negative thoughts. Hiere are six rites of Ling-pao purifications. Hie first, the Golden Register Purification rites, are used for petitions made on behalf of the nation. Hie second, the Yellow Register Purification rites, are for petitions asking for deliverance from suffering. Hie third set of Ling-pao purification rites, called Understanding the Truth, is for ceremonies of repentance made on behalf of the dead. Hie fourth is the Hiree Agents Purification rite, and it is used to petition the Lords of the Hiree Realms (Sky, Earth, and Water) for forgiveness. Hie fifth is the Eight Festival Purification rite, and it is used to ask for forgiveness of past wrongdoings. Hie sixth is the Common Purification rite, and it is used for ceremonies of intercession on behalf of the common citizen. Hie Tung-shen (Cavern Spirit) Purification rite is a short ritual used to cleanse the ceremonial ground of worldly dust and prepare it for visits from the spirits. Hie T’ai-i (Ancient Beginning) Purification rite is used for solemn and stately occasions. There is also a purification rite that prepares individuals for receiving instruction. These rites emphasize simplicity and humility. Tire rite of purification through suffering emphasizes hard work and service to others. The Nine Diets of Purification Tire Hsiian-men ta-lun (Great Discourse on Taoist Practices) states that there are nine diets of purification. Tire first is a diet of grain, the second vegetarianism, the third fasting, the fourth eating the essence of energy, the fifth eating yellow sprouts, the sixth swallowing light, the seventh ingesting vapor and mist, the eighth absorbing the primordial vapor, and the ninth feeding like a fetus in the womb. A diet of grain consists of millet and wheat. Vegetarianism is a diet of leafy vegetables and fungus. Fasting is abstaining from eating. Eating the essence of energy is drinking talismanic water and ingesting minerals. Eating yellow sprouts means absorbing the essence of the clouds. Swallowing light is swallowing the light of the sun, moon, and Northern Bushel (Big Dipper) stars. Eating vapor and mist is absorbing the vapor of the Great Harmony from the four directions. Eating the primordial vapor is absorbing the vapor of the three celestial realms and the essence of the Great Harmony from the Great Void. To feed like a fetus is to be nourished by the original essence that was present at conception and be nurtured by the pristine energy that envelops the fetus in the womb. 9 The Arts of Longevity Cultivating the Mind Practitioners of taoist spirituality use meditation as the primary method to cultivate the mind for health, longevity, and spiritual transformation. The translations in this section are chosen to give the reader a feel for the different kinds of Taoist meditation. Please do not use them as meditation manuals. The practice of Taoist meditation requires formal instruction and supervision from a qualified teacher. Unguided practice can lead to injuries, and the author and publisher are not responsible for any complications that result from using these texts as manuals. Shang-ch’ing t’ai-shang ti-chiin chiu-chen chung-ching ( Scripture of the High Pure Realm’s Highest Celestial Lord’s Nine True Forms ) This text describes a form of meditation that was practiced by the Shang-ch’ing mystics. According to Shang-ch’ing Taoism, this meditation manual was transmitted by the Immortal Chih-sun-tzu (Master Red Pine) to the Shang- ch’ing patriarch and immortal Chou-chiin (the Lord Chou). The text describes the procedures for visualizing the nine true forms of the Lord of the High Pure Realm. The goal of Shang-ch’ing meditation is to keep the guardian deities within by visualizing them and holding onto their images. If the guardians stay within the body, health and longevity are assured. If the guardians leave, the practitioner will become ill or even die. From Shang-ch’ing t’ai-shang ti-chiin chiu-chen chung-ching From “Method of the First True Form” Slow the breath, close the eyes, and visualize the image of the Lord of Celestial Essence sitting in your heart. He is called the Great Spirit. Next, visualize a purple vapor coming from the mouth of the Great Spirit spreading outward from the heart. Hie vapor ascends like a straight pole to the ni-wan (Mud Ball) cavity in the head. From “Method of the Second True Form” In your mind visualize the image of the Lord of the Jade Stone sending a pearl into your throat down to the stomach. The pearl is transformed into a white vapor that spreads to the hundred joints. Next, visualize a white vapor coming out of the mouth of the Great Spirit to hover around your bones. Tire vapor floats around the nine external and internal levels like clouds, mist, and smoke. From “Method of the Third True Form” Go into your room, clasp your hands together, and put them on your crossed legs. Slow the breath, close your eyes, and visualize the Lord of the Original Beginning floating around in the bloodstream and the generative fluids in the body. Next, visualize a yellow vapor coming out his mouth to wrap around all the openings in the nine levels, so that there is no separation between the internal and external environment. From “Method of the Fourth True Form” Go into your room, clasp your hands together, and put them on your crossed legs. Slow down the breath, close your eyes, and visualize the Bright and Clear Great Lord entering to sit inside the liver. Next, visualize a blue vapor coming out of his mouth to fill the liver and the nine levels. From “Method of the Fifth True Form” Go into your room, clasp your hands together, and put them on your crossed legs. Slow down the breath, close your eyes, and visualize, keeping in your mind the image of the Bright Lord entering the spleen. Next, visualize a green vapor coming out of his mouth to fill the spleen. Let the vapor rise up the nine levels into the ni-wan cavity, where it hovers and vibrates inside and outside the grotto. From “Method of the Sixth True Form” Go into your room, clasp your hands together, and put them on your legs. Slow down the breath, close your eyes, and visualize the Lord of the Upper Realm, named Primal Jade, entering to sit in the lungs. Next, visualize a vapor of five colors coming from his mouth, to fill the lungs and ascending the nine levels to the ni-wan cavity where it hovers around inside and outside. From “Method of the Seventh True Form” Go into your room, clasp your hands together, and put them on your legs. Slow down the breath, close your eyes, and visualize the image of the Lord of the Mysterious Yang entering the two kidneys. Next, visualize a red vapor coming out of his mouth filling the kidneys and rising up the nine levels into the ni-wan cavity, where it hovers around inside and outside. From “Method of the Eighth True Form” Go into your room, clasp your hands together, and put them on your legs. Slow down the breath, close your eyes, and visualize the Lord of the Internal Environment entering to sit in the gallbladder. Next, visualize a vapor of five colors coming out of his mouth to fill the gallbladder and rising up the nine levels into the ni-wan cavity, where it hovers inside and outside like clouds and mist. From ‘Method of the Ninth True Form” Go into your room, clasp your hands together, and put them on your legs. Slow down the breath, close your eyes, and visualize the Lord High Emperor inside the purple chamber of the ni-wan cavity. Next, visualize a purple vapor filling the mouth and rising through the nine levels. Then visualize the purple vapor coming out of his mouth to hover around your teeth before rising through the nine levels. This vapor circulates in the body thirty-six times, floating and vibrating as if the sun were inside. NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION The ni-wan cavity is in the forehead and is the meeting point of many energy pathways. It is also the point where the spirit is gathered, nurtured, and liberated. In Shang- ch’ing practice, the ni-wan is the location where the spirit leaves and reenters the body after its journey to the other realms. The nine levels are technically known as the Nine Levels of the Celestial Domain. They are the nine chambers inside the head that the vapor or internal energy must penetrate before it can reach the ni-wan cavity. Tung-hsiian ling-pao ting-kuan ching (The Mysterious Grotto Sacred Spirit Scripture on Concentrated Observation ) This is a treatise on the form of Taoist meditation known as Concentrated Observation ( ting-kuan ) or Internal Observation ( nei-kuan ). The method calls for stilling the mind, eradicating thoughts, and becoming nonattached to the outside world. Written in the Sung dynasty, this text shows the influence of T’ien-tai Buddhism, especially the meditation practiced by this Buddhist sect. According to the theory of Concentrated Observation, all things originate from the activity of the mind. Therefore, by stopping thinking, the practitioners will come to realize that all things are empty. In emptiness, illusions are dissolved and the underlying reality of the Tao is experienced. Despite the Buddhist influence, Taoist ting-kuan meditation is not identical to Buddhist insight meditation. When you read the text below, you will notice that this form of Taoist meditation goes beyond stilling the mind. It uses vi-passana (insight) and T’ien-tai techniques to build the initial foundations, but in the higher levels, the practitioner undergoes transformations in body and mind that are alchemical in nature. The realization that all things are empty is only the first step in the transformation of the body to vapor, the vapor to spirit, and the union of the spirit with the Tao. The Tung-hsuan ling-pao ting-kuan ching is translated in full below. When you read the text, notice the absence of visualization and mantras and the emphasis on emptying the mind. The practitioner does not focus on any part of the body, nor is he or she required to adopt specific body postures while meditating. Tung-hsuan ling-pao ting-kuan ching Hie Celestial Lord said to Immortal Tso-hsiian: If you want to cultivate the Tao, you must let go of worldly things. Disconnect yourself from everything in the outside world so that nothing will disturb your mind. Hien you can practice meditation in peace. Quiet observation begins in the mind. If a thought arises, you must immediately stop it so that you can keep your stillness. Hien get rid of all illusions, desires, and wandering thoughts. Needless to say, you must maintain this stillness day and night. Extinguish the active mind but keep the reflective mind. Focus the empty mind but do not let it become static. Do not get stuck in one routine but always keep the mind still. It is difficult for beginning practitioners to stop thinking. If you cannot extinguish your thoughts, you should stop meditating before you make mistakes. Otherwise, thoughts rising and falling will battle each other and send ripples of repercussion through your body. With time, your practice will stabilize. When not one thought arises, you will erase the karma of a thousand lifetimes. When you attain stillness in your meditation, you should carry this state of mind to everyday activities such as walking, standing, sitting, and sleeping. In the midst of events and excitement, be relaxed and composed. Whether things are happening or not, your mind should be empty. It should be as if it does not exist. You should hold on to stillness and softness and not let the inner direction be distracted from oneness. If you are impatient and want to rush things along, you will eventually become ill. Your temper will explode and you will be crazy. This is why you should be patient. Your mind should be still but relaxed. Do not hurry. Let everything go according to its pace. If you can control your thoughts so that nothing will arise, if you can let go and not let the mind wander, and if you can be relaxed and not be bothered by things in the world, you will have no worries. This is true stillness. If things work against you, you will not be frustrated. If you are buffeted by great forces, you will remain relaxed. Use nonaction as the true dwelling and action as response. All forms should be like reflections on the surface of a polished mirror. Let compassion guide your ways, and you will enter stillness. It is not up to human effort to determine whether enlightenment will come soon or late. Keep your stillness and do not be impatient for enlightenment. Impatience injures original nature, and when you are injured, enlightenment cannot occur. When you are still and do not force things to happen, enlightenment will come naturally. This is true enlightenment. It is folly if you attain enlightenment and do not make use of it. If you can keep your stillness in enlightenment, this is doubly wonderful. If in stillness thoughts arise and monsters come to tempt you, let your mind deal with them naturally. If you see a host of celestial lords and immortals, you are seeing the images of your true form. Let no thoughts arise from the beginning. This is called being open and not looking back. Let no thoughts arise at the end. This is called not having a past. Let the old habits diminish and do not accumulate new ones. Let nothing contaminate or obstruct you. Shed the dust and throw off the cage. Practice this long enough, and you will naturally attain the Tao. Those who attain the Tao go through seven stages. First, the mind will become still easily and the dust of the world will not cling to the senses. Second, the hundred illnesses are kept at bay and mind and body are light and fresh. Third, depleted energy is restored and lost years are recovered. Fourth, the life span is increased and the practitioner becomes an immortal. Fifth, the body is transformed into vapor and the individual becomes a completely realized being. Sixth, vapor is transformed into spirit and the individual becomes a spirit being. Seventh, the spirit merges with the Tao and the practitioner becomes a being above all beings. With continued practice, inner strength develops, and the light within will become bright. When the Tao is fully realized, original nature will be round and complete. If you practice this for a long time, the body will be at one with itself, all impurities will be purged, all forms will become nothingness, and original nature will emerge. This is called realizing the Tao. Tire principle of seeking the Tao is nothing but this. Thoughts arise from the stirring of images. Fire emerges from attachment. These all disturb original nature. When this happens, we lose our connection with the Origin, the Tao. Know that stopping the mind stops desire. Understand that stirrings in the mind create worries. If you know that the mind is originally empty, you will know the gate to all mysteries. Seven Taoist Masters This excerpt illustrates the style of meditation practiced by the northern branch of the Complete Reality school, specifically the Lung-men sect. This branch of the Complete Reality school focuses on cultivating mind before body. It is said that of all the Taoist sects, the northern branch of the Complete Reality school is most similar to Zen Buddhism. In the following excerpt, you will notice that like Zen meditation, Northern Complete Reality meditation requires the practitioner to empty the mind of thoughts. Furthermore, like Zen meditation, there are no visual or auditory aids. However, the form of meditation practiced by the Complete Reality school is not identical to Zen meditation. Compete Reality Taoism is an internal-alchemical school, and its practice is designed to cultivate both body and mind. When you read the following excerpt, notice the details of posture and the use of ch ’i-kung techniques, such as knocking the teeth together and swallowing saliva, in this form of meditation. From Seven Taoist Masters, Chapter 8 Ma Tan-yang and Sun Pu-erh asked about meditation. Wang Ch’ung-yang said, “In meditation all thoughts must cease. When the ego is dead, the spirit emerges. When you sit, sit on a cushion. Loosen your clothing. At the hour of tzu (11:00 p.m.), cross your legs gently and sit facing east. Clasp your hands together and place them in front of your body. Your back should be straight. Strike your teeth together and swallow your saliva. Place the tongue against the palate of your mouth. Yru should be alert in listening, but do not be attached to sounds. Let your eyes drop, but do not close them. Focus on the light that you see in front of you and concentrate on the lower tan-t ’ien. In meditation it is very important to stop thinking. If thoughts arise, the spirit will not be pure, and your efforts of cultivation will come to nothing. In addition, you should drop all feelings. Once feelings arise, the heart will not be still, and the attainment of the Tao is impossible.” Wang Ch’ung-yang continued, “Sit on a cushion and you will be able to sit long and not feel tired. Loosen your clothing so the movement of internal energy will not be constricted. The hour of tzu is when the first ray of yang appears. Face east because the breath of life flows in from the east at the hour of the first yang. Clasp your hands in the t'ai-chi symbol, because it symbolizes emptiness of form. Sit with your back straight, because only with a vertical spine can the energy rise to the head. Close your mouth and place the tongue against the palate so that the internal energy cannot dissipate. The ear is associated with generative energy. Being attached to sound will dissipate this energy. Do not close your eyes, for they let the light in to shine on your spirit. If you close your eyes, the spirit will be dimmed. If you open them too wide, the spirit will escape. Therefore you should lower the lids but not close them. Concentrate on the lower tan-t ’ien as if to reflect the light of your eyes onto it because here is the mystery of all things. Minimize speech, as this conserves vital energy. Rest your ears, as this conserves generative energy. Dissolve thoughts to conserve spirit energy. When all these energies are not dissipated, then you will attain immortality.” 10 The Arts of Longevity Cultivating the Body Cultivating the body is an important part of Taoist spirituality. Without a healthy body, enlightenment, or union with the Tao, is not possible. Moreover, a long and healthy life gives us time to prepare ourselves to return to the Tao when we leave the mortal realm. The readings in this chapter present some prominent Taoist techniques of cultivating the body and improving physical health. Please do not use them as manuals. Unguided practice of these techniques can be harmful, and the author and publisher are not responsible for any complications that result from using these readings as manuals. M-men ch"ang-seng pi-shu ( Chen Hsi-vi’s Secret Methods of Longevity ) The Yi-men ch ’ang-seng pi-shu is a collection of techniques practiced by the Taoist sects of Hua-shan. These sects all claim the Sung-dynasty (960-1279 ce) hermit Chen Hsi-yi as their patriarch. Yi-men means the “School of Hsi-yi.” Compiled during the Wan-li (1573-1619 ce) years of the Ming dynasty by a Taoist hermit named Chou Fu-ching, the book postdated both the Cheng-t’ung and Wan-li Taoist canons. However, it is included in Hsiao T’ien-shih’s Tao-tscing ching-hua (The Essential Works of the Taoist Canon), a contemporary collection of canonical andpostcanonical Taoist scriptures. In the Yi-men ch 'ang-seng pi-shu are descriptions of ch’i-kung postures, Taoist calisthenics, massage, breath- control techniques, and meditation. Of all the texts collected in the book, the Chih-feng sui (Red Phoenix Calisthenics) is the most famous. Reputed to be transmitted by Chen Hsi-yi himself, the book is profusely illustrated. It describes sitting, standing, and sleeping ch’i- kung postures, calisthenics, and techniques for control and regulation of the breath. The illustrations that follow are from the Chih-feng sui. Urey depict techniques of massage, Taoist calisthenics, breath control and regulation, and sleeping ch’i-kung. Accompanying each picture is a description of the method and the health benefits. Massage and kneading techniques from the Chi-feng sui (Red Phoenix Calisthenics). ‘Roll the knuckles over the areas left and right of the gate [Life Gate] thirty-six times. Massage and kneading techniques from the Chi-feng sui. “Using both hands, rub and apply pressure to the area around the kidneys thirty-six times. The more this is repeated, the better the effect. ” '■> 0 M 0 ® U 4<L h “P it 4- -a ^ ■=- ** ** + & * Z- Massage and kneading techniques from the Chi-feng sui. “Knock the teeth together thirty-six times to gather the spirit. Take both hands and hold the kun-lun [spine). Hit the Heavenly Drum twenty four times. ’’ The Heavenly Drum is the flat part of the skull on two sides of the Jade Pillow cavity, where the spine enters the skull. & Taoist calisthenics from the Chi-feng sui. “Position both arms in front of the chest. Expel air five times. Then stretch the arms upward above the head. Repeat this cycle nine times. ” ft $£ ^ /VI ‘K ^ *4? & ft $ £ rs? -M n A <£ -M- -f- *3 jfc r^J *•£ ^ -4n 4$- =f£* ** a & w m. *$ '& <: A- Ar £p % x- x m a & #7 & 4& in Techniques of regulating and directing breath from the Chi-feng sui: the Tiger Posture ofHsin-men. ‘‘Stop the breath, lower the head, and hold the fists like a tiger ready to strike. The arms should be powerful as if they are lifting a thousand catties [a Chinese measurement of weight]. Gradually straighten up. Do not let the breath out but swallow it back when you have straightened. The breath enters the belly to let the energy of the spirit rise. The belly should feel like thunder rumbling. Do this five or seven times. The energy in the meridians will be regulated, the spirit will be clear, and a hundred illnesses will leave. ” t*. it *1 & Jfc - JRl ♦ ^ H /£ 1 -*p A f\z $ 'i£ + & )% '’& £ ■*" -f- # if }* ** # & *■)» — *2$ #i * & & — Techniques of regulating and directing breath from the Chi-feng sui: the Ape Posture ofFei Ch 'ang-fang. “Stop the breath and hold your hands like an ape hanging from a tree. Then close the fingers of one hand to imitate an ape picking a fruit. Shift the weight completely off one leg. Turn the body around and gather the energy of the spirit. Swallow deep into the belly until perspiration appears. ” & &. n & n & n t JL* ^ & m-i i ^ j* * 3 it Sleeping ch ’i-kung postures from the Chi-feng sui: Mao Hsuanhan s Posture of Subduing and Overcoming the Dragon and Tiger. “The original vapor in the heart is known as the body of the dragon. The generative energy in the circle of the middle is called the original nature of the tiger. When the dragon returns to the water, emotions are dissolved, and the tiger hides in the mountain. The two families are in harmony, and your name will be listed among the immortals. ” £. fa tt £ ^ fa fi T* JL & •§i ^ /v #? #) f 3 fl ^ i i g) & ‘O JL ** A * Sleeping ch ’i-kung postures from the Chi-feng sui: Enlightened Being Mah-i s Method of Regulating the True Vapor. ‘Regulate the true vapor and the five breaths will return to the origin. The mind is at rest and thoughts are not wayward. The two substances [mind and life] dwell forever in the positions of wu and ssu [the yin and yang in the center of the heart]. The tiger and the dragon copulate to produce the great round pill. ” Chang San-feng fai-chi lien-tan pi-chiieh ( Chang San-feng’s Secret T’ai-chi Method for Cultivating the Elixir ) Chang San-feng is best known as the patriarch of the Wu- tang-shan sect and the originator of t’ai-chi ch’uan, an exercise for cultivating health and longevity. T’ai-chi ch’uan is also considered to be an internal martial art, because while cultivating body and mind, practitioners can also develop self-defense skills. It is said that Chang San-feng originally devised a set of thirteen movements, which was later expanded to one hundred and eight by his students. Therefore, in the literature of t’ai-chi ch’uan we find many references to the Thirteen Postures, although the complete t’ai-chi set today consists of one hundred and eight moves. For Chang San-feng, t’ai-chi ch’uan is not to be confused with t’ai-chi. While the ch ’uan is a set of movements, t’ai-chi is a state of spiritual development. Thus, the movements of t’ai-chi ch’uan are a means to attain the state of t’ai-chi, which is the balance of the yin and yang energies in the body. Chang San-feng wrote several treatises on t’ai-chi ch’uan, ch’i-kung, and meditation. These texts and his students’ commentaries are collected in a book titled Chang San-feng t'ai-chi lien-tan pi-chueh (Chang San- feng’s Secret T’ai-chi Method for Cultivating the Elixir). This text is not listed in the Ming dynasty Taoist canons, but it is published in the series of Taoist texts edited by Taoist scholar Hsiao T’ien-shih of Taiwan. It appears as volume 5, part 2, in the Tao-tsang ching-hua (Tire Essential Works of the Taoist Canon). Tire following excerpts are chosen to illustrate how t’ai-chi ch’uan, an internal martial art, can be used to cultivate physical health and mental clarity. Understanding the Work of the Thirteen Postures Use the mind to move the ch’i to let it sink. Then the ch’i can be absorbed into the bones. Use ch’i to move the body, letting it happen naturally. Then ch’i will follow the mind with ease. Let the spirit be directed upward, and nothing will feel cumbersome. What is meant by being suspended by the top of the head? It means that intention and ch’i should be lively and movement should be agile, rounded, and light. What is meant by alternating the substantial and insubstantial? It means that each movement should be grounded in relaxation and stillness and fully directed toward one point. When you stand, the body should be balanced and comfortable. The feet and arms should be ready to respond to the eight directions. Move the ch’i like a pearl circulating nine times. Tire energy should flow in the body without obstruction. Tire movement should be as strong as steel tempered a hundred times. Tire foundation should be impregnable. Move with the stealth of a ghost. Be focused like a cat stalking a mouse. Be still like a great mountain. Move like a flowing river. Hold your force like a pulled bow. Let the force out like a speeding arrow. In its indirect path maintain straightness. Hold your force and only let it out after the opponent has made his move. Force should come from the spine. Tire feet should move according to the body’s movement. Let go and then hold on. Coming and going should be like a cascade. Alternate advance and retreat. Only in softness can you be firm. Only when you can breathe can your movement be agile. Cultivate the ch’i and let it rise. Then there will be no problems. Let the force be indirect and hidden, and there will be plenty to spare. Let the mind be the commander. Let the ch’i be the herald. Let the spine be the pivot. In the beginning, aim to expand. Later, aim to contract. Then you can hide your action. Hrus, it is said, “Start first with the mind. Then follow with the body.” Relax the abdomen. Draw the ch’i into the bones. Calm the spirit and still the body. Let this be planted in your mind. In every movement there is stillness, and in every stillness there is movement. Moving forward and backward, let the ch’i run along your back, drawing it into the spinal column. Internally, the spirit is stable. Externally, the composure is leisurely. Walk like a cat. Move like pulling silk. Focus and attention are in the spirit, not in the breath. If it is in the breath, there will be problems. If there is effortful breathing there is no strength. However, when there is no breathing, the breath is pure and strong. Then the ch’i will be like a wheel and the spine will be like the axle. Ten Important Things to Do in Your Practice 1. Clean the face regularly. 2. Rub the eyes regularly. 3. Flick the ears regularly. 4. Knock the teeth together regularly. 5. Always keep the back warm. 6. Always protect the chest. 7. Massage the abdomen regularly. 8. Rub the feet together regularly. 9. Swallow the saliva regularly. 10. Always maintain flexibility in the waist and spine. Ten Things to Avoid in Your Practice 1. Getting up too early. 2. Getting chilled in a shady room. 3. Sitting on wet ground. 4. Getting chilled in wet clothes. 5. Becoming too hot. 6. Perspiring in a breeze. 7. Sleeping with lights on. 8. Having sexual intercourse at the hour of tzu (11:00 p.m to 1:00 A.M.). 9. Immersing muscles and tendons in cold water. 10. Putting hot food in the stomach. Eighteen Injuries to Be Avoided 1. Watch too long and the generative energy will be damaged. 2. Listen too long and the spirit will be damaged. 3. Lie down too long and the vital energy (ch’i) will be damaged. 4. Sit too long and the meridians will be harmed. 5. Stand too long and the bones will be damaged. 6. Walk too much and the tendons will be damaged. 7. Anger harms the liver. 8. Scheming harms the spleen. 9. Worrying harms the heart. 10. Excessive sadness harms the lungs. 11. Overeating harms the stomach. 12. Excessive fear harms the kidneys. 13. Too much laughter harms the abdomen. 14. Too much talking harms the spinal fluid. 15. Sleep too much and the saliva will be damaged. 16. Perspire too much and the yang energy will be harmed. 17. Cry too often and the blood will be harmed. 18. Too much sex will harm the marrow.
Classic philosophy for the modern man
Lynn, Andrew (Lawyer), author
2017-01-01T00:00:00Z
Philosophy -- Introductions,Philosophie -- Introductions,Philosophy
222 pages ; 20 cm,"Classic Philosophy for the Modern Man is unlike any other philosophy book you may have read. It is inspired by a single concept: that, to thrive in the world, we need ready access to the practical wisdom of our forebears. Classic Philosophy for the Modern Man answers that need by introducing for the general reader the most powerful and enduringly relevant works of great thinkers from around the world"--Page 4 of cover,Includes bibliographical references (pages 219-220),Introduction -- Plato, The republic -- Aristotle, Nicomachean ethics -- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations -- Chuang-tzu, The writings of Chuang-tzu -- Niccolò Machiavelli, The prince -- Baldassare Castiglione, The courtier -- Baltasar Gracián, The art of worldly wisdom -- William Hazlitt, On success -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond good and evil -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Spiritual laws -- Conclusion
Predictors and outcomes of shunt-dependent hydrocephalus in patients with aneurysmal sub-arachnoid hemorrhage.
Wang, Yi-Min,Lin, Yu-Jun,Chuang, Ming-Jung,Lee, Tsung-Han,Tsai, Nai-Wen,Cheng, Ben-Chung,Lin, Wei-Che,Su, Ben Yu-Jih,Yang, Tzu-Ming,Chang, Wen-Neng,Huang, Chih-Cheng,Kung, Chia-Te,Lee, Lian-Hui,Wang, Hung-Chen,Lu, Cheng-Hsien
2012-07-05T00:00:00Z
null
This article is from BMC Surgery , volume 12 . Abstract Background: Hydrocephalus following spontaneous aneurysmal sub-arachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) is often associated with unfavorable outcome. This study aimed to determine the potential risk factors and outcomes of shunt-dependent hydrocephalus in aneurysmal SAH patients but without hydrocephalus upon arrival at the hospital. Methods: One hundred and sixty-eight aneurysmal SAH patients were evaluated. Using functional scores, those without hydrocephalus upon arrival at the hospital were compared to those already with hydrocephalus on admission, those who developed it during hospitalization, and those who did not develop it throughout their hospital stay. The Glasgow Coma Score, modified Fisher SAH grade, and World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies grade were determined at the emergency room. Therapeutic outcomes immediately after discharge and 18 months after were assessed using the Glasgow Outcome Score. Results: Hydrocephalus accounted for 61.9% (104/168) of all episodes, including 82 with initial hydrocephalus on admission and 22 with subsequent hydrocephalus. Both the presence of intra-ventricular hemorrhage on admission and post-operative intra-cerebral hemorrhage were independently associated with shunt-dependent hydrocephalus in patients without hydrocephalus on admission. After a minimum 1.5 years of follow-up, the mean Glasgow outcome score was 3.33 ± 1.40 for patients with shunt-dependent hydrocephalus and 4.21 ± 1.19 for those without. Conclusions: The presence of intra-ventricular hemorrhage, lower mean Glasgow Coma Scale score, and higher mean scores of the modified Fisher SAH and World Federation of Neurosurgical grading on admission imply risk of shunt-dependent hydrocephalus in patients without initial hydrocephalus. These patients have worse short- and long-term outcomes and longer hospitalization.
Full text of "Predictors and outcomes of shunt-dependent hydrocephalus in patients with aneurysmal sub-arachnoid hemorrhage." Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "Predictors and outcomes of shunt-dependent hydrocephalus in patients with aneurysmal sub-arachnoid hemorrhage." See other formats Wang et al. BMC Surgery 2012, 12:12 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2482/12/12 RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access Predictors and outcomes of shunt-dependent hydrocephalus in patients with aneurysmal sub-arachnoid hemorrhage Yi-Min Wang 1+ , Yu-Jun Lin 2,3+ , Ming-Jung Chuang 2 , Tsung-Han Lee 2 , Nai-Wen Tsai 4 , Ben-Chung Cheng 3,5 , Wei-Che Lin 6 , Ben Yu-Jih Su 5 , Tzu-Ming Yang 1 , Wen-Neng Chang 4 , Chih-Cheng Huang 4 , Chia-Te Kung 7 , Lian-Hui Lee 4 , Hung-Chen Wang 2 * + and Cheng-Hsien lu 2A ' f Abstract Background: Hydrocephalus following spontaneous aneurysmal sub-arachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) is often associated with unfavorable outcome. This study aimed to determine the potential risk factors and outcomes of shunt-dependent hydrocephalus in aneurysmal SAH patients but without hydrocephalus upon arrival at the hospital. Methods: One hundred and sixty-eight aneurysmal SAH patients were evaluated. Using functional scores, those without hydrocephalus upon arrival at the hospital were compared to those already with hydrocephalus on admission, those who developed it during hospitalization, and those who did not develop it throughout their hospital stay. The Glasgow Coma Score, modified Fisher SAH grade, and World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies grade were determined at the emergency room. Therapeutic outcomes immediately after discharge and 18 months after were assessed using the Glasgow Outcome Score. Results: Hydrocephalus accounted for 61.9% (104/168) of all episodes, including 82 with initial hydrocephalus on admission and 22 with subsequent hydrocephalus. Both the presence of intra-ventricular hemorrhage on admission and post-operative intra-cerebral hemorrhage were independently associated with shunt-dependent hydrocephalus in patients without hydrocephalus on admission. After a minimum 1.5 years of follow-up, the mean Glasgow outcome score was 3.33 ± 1 .40 for patients with shunt-dependent hydrocephalus and 4.21 ±1.19 for those without. Conclusions: The presence of intra-ventricular hemorrhage, lower mean Glasgow Coma Scale score, and higher mean scores of the modified Fisher SAH and World Federation of Neurosurgical grading on admission imply risk of shunt-dependent hydrocephalus in patients without initial hydrocephalus. These patients have worse short- and long-term outcomes and longer hospitalization. Keywords: Outcome, Risk factors, Hydrocephalus after spontaneous aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage Surgery * Correspondence: m82whaayahoo.com.tw; [email protected] t Equal contributors department of Neurosurgery, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chang Gung University College of Medicine, Kaohsiung, Taiwan department of Neurology, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chang Gung University College of Medicine, 1 23, Ta Pei Road, Niao Sung district, Kaohsiung 83304, Taiwan Full list of author information is available at the end of the article O© 2012 Wang et al.; licensee BioMed Central ttd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative BlOlVlGCl C^ntrBl Commons Attribution ticense (httpy/creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which perm :;, unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Wang et al. BMC Surgery 2012, 12:12 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2482/12/12 Page 2 of 8 Background Aneurysmal sub-arachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) still has high mortality and morbidity rates despite modern neurosurgical techniques, new powerful imaging moda- lities, and care of such patients [1]. An important neuro- logic complication is hydrocephalus [2-5], which can be either acute-onset on admission or progressive during the hospital stay [2-5]. The overall risk of hydrocephalus after aneurysmal SAH varies between 6% to 67% in dif- ferent series [6,7] although only 10-20% of them will require permanent CSF diversion [6,7]. To date, no clin- ical study has focused specifically on predicting shunt dependency in patients with aneurysmal SAH but with- out hydrocephalus upon arriving at the hospital, or the outcome of these specific patients for a longer follow-up period. Because of possible benefits of therapeutic inter- vention, there is a need for better delineation of the po- tential risk factors and clinical features in this specific sub-group. This study aimed to analyze the clinical features, neuro- imaging findings, and clinical scores and measurements to determine the potential risk factors predictive of shunt- dependent hydrocephalus in patients with aneurysmal SAH but without hydrocephalus upon arriving at the hos- pital. The study also compared these patients to those with hydrocephalus at the time of admission, those who deve- loped it during hospitalization, and those who did not develop it after 1.5 years of follow-up. Methods Study design From January 2003 to December 2005, 168 SAH patients admitted to the Department of Neurosurgery at the Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Kaohsiung were en- rolled. Chang Gung Memorial Hospital-Kaohsiung is a 2482-bed acute-care teaching hospital, which is the lar- gest medical center in the southern part of Taiwan pro- viding both primary and tertiary referral care to patients. All patients received complete medical and neurologic examinations, and brain computed tomography (CT) with cerebral angiography. The Chang Gung Memorial Hospital hospital's Institutional Review Committee on Human Research approved the study (Institutional Re- view Board numbers: 96-1575B). Neurosurgeons and neuro-radiologists integrated the clinical manifestations and neuro-imaging findings. Diagnostic criteria of spontaneous aneurysmal sub-arachnoid hemorrhage All of the patients received brain CT scans soon after ar- rival at the emergency room, and follow-up brain CT post-surgery. Emergency brain CT scans were done if there was clinical deterioration, including acute-onset focal neurologic deficits, seizures or status epilepticus, or progressively disturbed consciousness and post- neurosurgical procedures. In the study hospital, it was routine practice to arrange cerebral angiograms immediately after hospitalization. A ruptured, angiographically verified aneurysm was the cause of the SAH in all patients. Patients initially treated in other hospitals but subsequently transferred for fur- ther therapy were also included in the study and their initial clinical and laboratory data at the previous hos- pital were used for analysis. Patients were excluded if: 1) the initial angiogram was negative for SAH; 2) they suf- fered from non-aneurysmal SAH, such as traumatic SAH; 3) they were comatose or were considered unlikely to survive for more than one week; and 4) there were pre-existing neurologic deficits. Clinical assessment Hydrocephalus was judged retrospectively by a dilated temporal horn of the ventricle without obvious brain at- rophy and/or an Evan's ratio >0.3 on initial CT scan. The Evan's ratio was the ratio of the ventricular width of the bilateral frontal horn to the maximum bi-parietal diameter [8]. Furthermore, shunt-dependent hydroceph- alus was defined as clinical symptoms of hydrocephalus (i.e., decreased mental status, axial rigidity, and incontin- ence) with radiographic evidence of enlarged ventricles or high opening pressure on repeated lumbar punctures requiring the insertion of a ventriculo-peritoneal (VP) shunt [2,3]. The characteristics and circumstances, and complica- tions following underlying SAH or treatment were documented. The diagnosis of acute symptomatic cere- bral infarction following aneurysmal SAH was based on both new-onset cerebral infarctions (on follow-up brain CT) and the presence of acute neurologic defi- cits causally related to the cerebral infarction. Patients were considered to have multiple infarctions if at least two locations with infarctions were found. Re-bleeding was defined as sudden deterioration of the clinical state accompanied by new or increased blood on brain CT scan [9]. Symptomatic vasospasm was defined as both the development of focal neurologic signs or de- terioration in conscious state and evidence of vaso- spasm or presence of stenotic flow velocity shown by trans-cranial color-coded sonography through cerebral angiogram, CT angiography, or magnetic resonance angiography [10,11]. All diagnoses of hydrocephalus, re-bleeding, and vasospasm were based on brain CT evidence. The Glasgow Coma Score (GCS) [12], modified Fisher SAH grade [13], and World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies (WFNS) grade [14] were determined by neuro- surgeons upon the patient's arrival at the emergency Wang et al. BMC Surgery 2012, 12:12 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2482/12/12 Page 3 of 8 room. Evaluation of therapeutic outcome both immedi- ately after discharge and 18 months after used Glasgow Outcome Score (GOS). The follow-up period was ter- minated by death or by the end of the study (June 2007). The outpatient department followed-up most patients after discharge as part of standard care, while others were interviewed by telephone to identify neuro- logic outcome. Statistical analysis Three separate series of statistical analyses were per- formed. First, to compare demographic data among patients who already had hydrocephalus at the time of admission, those who developed it during hospitalization and those who did not have it during the hospital stay, categorical variables were assessed by Chi-square test, and continuous variables were logarithmically trans- formed to improve normality and compared using one- way ANOVA for parametric data, followed by Scheffe's multiple comparison for post-hoc test for significant pairwise differences. Second, risk factors of shunt-dependent hydrocephalus in patients with aneurysmal SAH but without hydro- cephalus upon arrival were analyzed. Baseline clinical data, including gender, clinical manifestations, and neuro-imaging findings between those with and those without shunt-dependent hydrocephalus were analyzed by Chi-square test or Fisher's exact test, where appropri- ate. The mean ages, mean systolic and diastolic pressure, and mean hospitalization days between the two patient groups were analyzed by Student's t-test The GCS at the time of admission, GOS at the time of discharge and 18 months after discharge, mean modified Fisher SAH grade, and mean WFNS grade between the two patient groups were analyzed by the Wilcoxon rank sum test. Lastly, stepwise logistic regression was used to evaluate the relationships between clinical factors and the presence of shunt-dependent hydrocephalus, with adjustments for other potential confounding factors. All of the statistical analyses was conducted using the SAS software package, version 9.1 (2002, SAS Statistical Institute, Cary, North Carolina). Results Baseline characteristics of the study patients Of the 168 aneurysmal SAH patients (52 males and 116 females), 104 had complications with hydrocephalus during the acute phase, including initial hydrocephalus in 82 and subsequent hydrocephalus in 22. Their charac- teristics in terms of hydrocephalus and location and seize of aneurysms were listed in Tables 1 and 2. Hyper- tension, diabetes mellitus (DM), and coronary artery dis- eases were the three most common underlying diseases. The proportions of nosocomial pneumonia in patients with initial hydrocephalus and subsequent hydroceph- alus were 39% (32/82) and 50% (11/22), respectively. The mean GCS on presentation were 10.88 ±4.07, 11.64 ±3.65, and 13.16 ±2.96 for patients with initial hydrocephalus, subsequent hydrocephalus, and no hydrocephalus, respectively (p = 0.001). The mean modi- fied Fisher SAH grade on presentation were 3.17 ±0.86, 2.82 ±0.96, and 2.42 ±0.79, respectively (p< 0.0001), while the mean WFNS grade on presentation were 2.95 ±1.41, 2.86 ±1.46, and 2.01 ± 1.20, respectively (p < 0.0001). The median time (interquartile range) of ventriculostomy insertion relative to the date of presen- tation were 1 (0, 2) and 1.5 (0.25-6.25) days for patients with initial hydrocephalus and subsequent hydroceph- alus, respectively (p = 0.138, Mann- Whitney U test). Complications following aneurysmal SAH Complications following underlying aneurysmal SAH among the three patient groups were listed in Table 3. The proportions of intra-ventricular hemorrhage were 51.2% (42/82), 27.2% (6/22), and 7.8% (5/64) in patients with initial hydrocephalus, subsequent hydrocephalus, and no hydrocephalus, respectively (p < 0.0001). The proportions of hyponatremia were 12.2% (10/82), 22.7% (5/22), and 3.1% (2/64), respectively (p = 0.022), while the proportions of diabetes inspidus were 1.2% (1/82), 9% (2/22), and 0% (0/64), respectively (p = 0.018). Other complications following the aneurysmal SAH included cerebral infarctions, aneurysmal re-bleeding, vasospasm, intra-cerebral hemorrhage, and arrhythmia (Table 2). Complications following the treatment of aneurysmal SAH were listed in Table 2. The proportions of nosoco- mial pneumonia were 25.6% (21/82), 40.9% (9/22), and 6.3% (4/64) in patients with initial hydrocephalus, subse- quent hydrocephalus, and no hydrocephalus, respectively (p = 0.001), while the proportions of post-operative intra- cerebral hemorrhage following surgical interventions were 6.1% (5/82), 27.3% (6/22), and 6.3% (4/64), respect- ively (p = 0.005). Complications related to ventriculo- peritoneal (VP) shunt procedures included shunt infec- tions, over-shunting and shunt obstructions (Table 2). The mean lengths of hospitalization among the three groups were 30.40 ±21.97, 44.45 ± 24.34, and 20.03 ± 16.80 (p < 0.0001). Therapeutic outcomes among the 168 patients after discharge as determined by GOS were 36 normal (21.4%, 36/168), 64 moderate disability (38.1%, 64/168), 24 severe disabilities (14.2%, 24/168), 24 persistent vegetative states (14.2%, 24/168), and 20 mor- talities (11.9%, 20/168). The mean GOS score among the three groups were 3.18 ± 1.34, 2.86 ± 0.91, and 3.97 ± 1.14 in patients with initial hydrocephalus, subsequent hydro- cephalus, and no hydrocephalus, respectively (p < 0.0001). After a 1.5-year follow-up, the mean GOS score among Wang et al. BMC Surgery 2012, 12:12 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2482/12/12 Page 4 of 8 Table 1 Characteristics of patients with aneurysmal SAH in terms of hydrocephalus (n = 168) With Hydrocephalus Without Hydrocephalus P value Initial hydrocephalus Subsequent hydrocephalus N = 82 N = 22 N = 64 Mean age, years 57.79 ±14.79 57.32 ± 11.59 52.59 ±12.08 0.06 Sex (male/female) 29/53 7/15 16/48 0.403 Mean blood pressure on presentation Systolic Blood pressure (mmHg) 148.07 ±23.62 143.68 ±24.29 145.73 ±22.90 0.687 Diastolic Blood pressure (mmHg) 81. 27 ±13.93 79.13 ±16.24 81.89+1 1.87 0.712 Mean GCS on presentation 10.88 + 4.07 11. 64 ±3.65 13.1 6 ±2.96 0.001° Mean modified Fisher SAH grade on presentation 3.1 7 ±0.86 2.82 ± 0.96 2.42 ±0.79 <0.0001 p Mean WFNS grade on presentation 2.95 ±1.41 2.86 ±1.46 2.01 ±1.20 <0.0001 v Mean Hospitalization days 30.40 ±2 1.97 44.45 ± 24.34 20.03 ±16.80 <0.0001 c Underlying diseases Atrial fibrillation 2 0 1 Coronary artery diseases 3 3 3 0.174 Diabetes mellitus 8 3 4 06540 End-stage renal diseases 3 0 2 0.666 Hypertension 38 12 21 0.119 Treatment 9 Clipping of aneurysm only 35 17 35 Transarterial embolization only 29 3 24 Both transarterial embolization and clipping 8 1 1 External ventral drainage 52 16 Ventriculoperitoneal shunt' 32 15 Mean GOS at discharge 3.1 8 ±1.34 2.86 ±0.91 3.97 ±1.14 <0.0001 n Good recovery 12 0 24 Moderate disability 32 6 26 Severe disability 7 6 Vegetative state 13 7 4 Death 14 2 4 Mean GOS after more than 18 months of follow-up 3.70 ±1.69 3.1 8 ±1.26 4.36 ±1.13 0.002 s Abbreviations: SAH, sub-arachnoid hemorrhage; GCS, Glasgow Coma Scale; GOS, Glasgow Outcome Scale; WFNS, World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies; 9, Not all patients have every treatment; -, not done; i, Shunt-dependent hydrocephalus; IH, Initial hydrocephalus; SH, Subsequent hydrocephalus; WH, Without Hydrocephalus. Post-hoc test: ct = IH vs. WH, p = 0.001 ; (3 = IH vs. WH, p < 0.0001 ; y = IH vs. WH, p < 0.0001 ; SH vs. WH, p = 0.041 ; e = IH vs. SH, p = 0.01 9; IH vs. WH, p = 0.01 1 ; SH vs. WH, p < 0.001 ; p = IH vs. WH, p = 0.001 ; SH vs. WH, p = 0.002; 6 = IH vs. WH, p = 0.025; SH vs. WH, p = 0.005. the three groups were 3.70 ±1.69, 3.18 ±1.26 and 4.36 ± 1.13, respectively (p = 0.002). Risk factors of shunt-dependent hydrocephalus Risk factors of shunt-dependent hydrocephalus in patients with aneurysmal SAH but without hydroceph- alus upon arrival at the hospital were listed in Table 4. Statistical analysis revealed significant mean GCS on presentation (p = 0.01), mean modified Fisher SAH grade on presentation (p = 0.039), mean WFNS grade on presentation (p = 0.012), presence of intra-ventricular hemorrhage on admission (p < 0.003), and post- operative intra-cerebral hemorrhage (p = 0.013). These variables were then used in the stepwise logistic re- gression model. After analysis, only the presence of intra-ventricular hemorrhage on admission (p = 0.003, OR = 9.608, 95% CI: 2.207-41.822) and post-operative intra-cerebral hemorrhage (p = 0.011, OR = 7.354, 95% CI: 1.576-34.313) were independently associated with the presence of shunt-dependent hydrocephalus. Discussion To date, this is the first study to determine the potential risk factors that are predictive of shunt-dependent hydro- cephalus in patients with aneurysmal SAH but without hydrocephalus upon arriving at the hospital. Differences in Wang et al. BMC Surgery 2012, 12:12 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2482/12/12 Page 5 of 8 Table 2 Location and seize of aneurysms in patients in terms of hydrocephalus (n = 168) With Hydrocephalus Without Hydrocephalus Total Initial hydrocephalus Subsequent hydrocephalus N = 82 N = 22 N = 64 N = 168 Location of aneurysm Single (n = 156) Anterior communicating artery aneurysm 19 8 24 51 Posterior communicating artery aneurysm 21 3 7 31 Middle cerebral artery aneurysm 8 3 10 21 nternal carotid artery aneurysm 8 3 8 19 Vertebral artery 4 1 3 8 Others' 1 16 3 7 26 Multiple sites (N = 12) 6 1 5 12 Diameter of aneurysm (mmf 0.75 ±0.20 0.71 ±0.25 0.67 ±0.32 0.1 58 ±0.31 Shape of aneurysm 6 Pouch 54 17 52 133 Lobulation 13 3 8 24 Fusiform 9 2 1 12 dissection 4 0 2 6 Wide neck 2 0 1 3 q = The other locations of aneurysms included the superior cerebellar artery aneurysm in four,, posterior inferior cerebellar artery aneurysm in four, anterior cerebral artery aneurysm in four, pericallosal artery aneurysm in three, posterior cerebral artery aneurysm in four, ophthalmic artery in one, basilar artery aneurysm in five, and anterior inferior cerebellar artery aneurysm in one. 0 = Indicates the maximum diameter of the aneurysm if at least two aneurysms are found. £ = Indicates the largest aneurysm if at least two aneurysms are found. the relative prevalence of hydrocephalus following aneurysmal SAH vary with case ascertainment and inclu- sion criteria, timing and methods of neuro-imaging stud- ies, serial follow-up neuro-imaging studies, surgical procedure, and presence of complications [1-7]. In the current study, hydrocephalus accounts for 61.9% (104/ 168) of all episodes, including 82 with initial hydroceph- alus on admission and 22 with subsequent hydrocephalus. Table 3 Complications following treatment or underlying SAH With Hydrocephalus Without Hydrocephalus P-value Initial hydrocephalus Subsequent hydrocephalus N = 82 N = 22 N = 64 Complications following underlying SAH Cerebral infarctions 18 7 13 0.528 Vasospasm 16 4 8 0.518 Rebleeding during hospitalization 10 3 3 0.241 Seizure 11 5 9 0.537 Diabetes inspidus 1 2 0 0.018 Hyponatremia 10 5 0.022 Arrhythmia 1 1 0.570 Intracerebral hemorrhage 14 4 11 0.992 Intraventricular hemorrhage 42 6 5 <0.0001 Complications following treatment Pneumonia 21 9 4 0.001 Postoperative intracerebral hemorrhage 5 6 4 0.005 Shunt infections 5 2 Over-shunting 1 2 Shunt obstruction 12 6 Abbreviations: SAH, sub-arachnoid hemorrhage;-, not done. Wang et al. BMC Surgery 2012, 12:12 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2482/12/12 Page 6 of 8 Table 4 Risk factors of shunt-dependent hydrocephalus in aneurysmal SAH patients without hydrocephalus upon arrival at the hospital Without shunt-dependent hydrocephalus N = 71 With shunt-dependent hydrocephalus N = 15 P value OR 95% CI Sex (male/female) 20/51 3/12 0.384 0.638 0.163-2.501 Mean age at onset 52.92 ±11.85 57.93 ±12.66 0.146 Mean blood pressure on presentation Mean Systolic Blood pressure (mmHg) 144.59 ±22.92 148.1 3 ±24.77 0.593 Mean diastolic Blood pressure (mmHg) 8 1.84 ±12.734 78.07 ±14.67 0.312 Mean GCS on presentation 13.1 7 ±2.82 10.87 ±4.1 7 0.01 Mean modified Fisher SAH grade on presentation 2.44 ±0.80 2.93 + 0.96 0.039 Mean WFNS grade on presentation 2.07 ±1.20 3.00 ± 1 .60 0.012 Mean Hospitalization days 24.1 3 ±21. 50 36.46 ± 20.24 0.0.045 Neuroimaging findings Rebleeding of aneurysm 4 2 0.280 2.577 0.427-15.563 Intraventricular hemorrhage on admission 5 6 0.003 8.8 2.223-34.842 Intracerebral hemorrhage on admission 12 3 0.72 1.229 0.3-5.301 Underlying diseases Hypertension 27 6 1.0 1.086 0.348-3.393 Atrial fibrillation 1 0 1.0 0.824 0.746-0.909 Coronary artery diseases 5 1 1.0 0.943 0.102-8.708 Diabetes mellitus 4 3 0.098 4.188 0.83-21.12 End stage renal diseases 2 0 1.0 0.821 0.743-0.908 Other complications following aneurysmal SAH Cerebral infarction Symptomatic vasospasm 10 2 1.0 0.938 0.184-4.799 Seizure 9 5 0.063 3.444 0.957-12.40 Diabetes inspidus 0 2 0.029 0.155 0.094-0.255 Hyponatremia 5 2 0.60 2.031 0.355-11.62 Shunt infection 1 1 0.32 5.0 0.295-84.776 Postoperative intracerebral hemorrhage 5 5 0.013 6.6 1.617-26.945 Arrhythmia 1 1 0.320 5.0 0.295-84.776 Outcome Mean Hospitalization days 24.1 3 ±21. 50 36.47 ± 20.24 0.0452 Mean COS at discharge 3.86 ±1.16 2.93 ± 1 .03 0.014 Mean GOS after more than 18 months of follow-up 4.21 ±1.19 3.33 ± 1 .40 0.211 Abbreviations: N, number of cases; OR, odds ratio; CI, confidence interval; SAH, sub-arachnoid hemorrhage; GCS, Glasgow Outcome Scale; GOS, Glasgow Outcome Scale; WFNS, World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies. Such figures are higher than those of two recent studies [3,6] and the largest study [5]. The present study examined the risk factors and out- come of shunt-dependent hydrocephalus in aneurysmal SAH patients and produced two major findings. First, the presence of intra-ventricular hemorrhage, lower mean score of Glasgow Coma Scale, higher mean scores of both the modified Fisher SAH grade and the World Federation of Neurosurgical grade on admission, and complications with post-operative intra-cerebral hemorrhage are signifi- cant risk factors for shunt-dependent hydrocephalus in patients without hydrocephalus on admission. Second, shunt-dependent hydrocephalus patients have worse short- and long-term outcomes and longer duration of hospitalization. For research on the risk factors and outcomes of shunt- dependent hydrocephalus, most large studies have focused on acute or chronic hydrocephalus together, [2,3,6]. Very few have examined both clinical features and outcomes for acute and subsequent hydrocephalus, respectively [4]. The pathogenesis of acute hydrocephalus is thought to re- sult from blockage of CSF flow, producing a pressure Wang ef al. BMC Surgery 2012, 12:12 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2482/12/12 Page 7 of 8 gradient, and ultimately leading to enlarged ventricles, whereas the pathogenesis of chronic hydrocephalus involves arachnoid adhesions formed as a result of menin- geal reaction to blood products, impairing CSF absorption at the basal cisterns [15,16]. The presence of hydrocephalus does not always lead to the development of shunt dependency although it is a strong predictor of such, as noted in previous studies [17,18] and in the current study. The data here demon- strates that 39% of patients with acute hydrocephalus on admission and 50% of those with subsequent hydroceph- alus have undergone permanent shunting procedures. Furthermore, there is evidence in literature suggesting that aggressive external ventricular drainage significantly reduces the need for permanent shunting among these patients [19]. Although the effect of temporary ventricu- lostomy placement on the development of hydroceph- alus is not studied, its effects on the outcome of hydrocephalus may also be considered in future studies. Several studies demonstrate a strong relationship be- tween poor levels of consciousness on admission and hydrocephalus [5,7]. Both acute and subsequent hydro- cephalus cases also have similar results. Some studies show that the amount of blood in the sub-arachnoid space has special significance [5,7] while the current study demonstrates higher mean modified Fisher SAH grade on presentation in patients who have shunt- dependent hydrocephalus. The effect of intra-ventricular hemorrhage on the development of hydrocephalus is also well established [5,7]. Some authors suggest that the presence of blood clots and high CSF viscosity can lead to an obstructive form of hydrocephalus and early CSF circulation disturbances [20,21]. In the current series, intra-ventricular hemorrhage is a significant risk factor for the development of shunt-dependent hydrocephalus in patients with aneurysmal SAH but without hydro- cephalus on admission. The outcomes of hydrocephalus have been extensively studied. Hydrocephalus can result in long-term cognitive decline and the development of psycho-organic disor- ders [22,23]. This study demonstrates the worst short- term outcome and longest duration of hospitalization in patients with subsequent hydrocephalus, and the prog- nosis is also worst after 1.5 years of follow-up. Worse short- and long-term outcomes and longer duration of hospitalization are also noted in shunt-dependent hydro- cephalus patients. The current study has several limitations. First, it is a retrospective analysis and therefore subject to bias of unmeasured factors. Second, patients who were coma- tose or considered unlikely to survive for more than one week and had pre-existing neurologic deficits have been excluded. Third, hydrocephalus can occur in both the acute stage and later stages during treatment. The findings may underestimate the "true" frequency of hydrocephalus in asymptomatic patients. Thus, there is continued uncertainty in assessing the incidence of hydrocephalus after aneurysmal SAH in non-selected patients. Conclusions The presence of intra-ventricular hemorrhage, lower mean score of Glasgow Coma Scale, and higher mean scores of the modified Fisher SAH and World Feder- ation of Neurosurgical grading on admission imply risks of shunt-dependent hydrocephalus in patients without hydrocephalus on admission. These patients also have worse short- and long-term outcomes and longer hospitalization. More prospective multi-center investiga- tions evaluating the role of hydrocephalus on outcome of aneurysmal SAH and timing of surgical intervention on this specific group of patients are warranted. Despite the high proportion of disability during the acute stage, adequate treatment of neurologic complications is essen- tial for improving therapeutic outcomes. Competing interests All authors declare that they have no competing interests. Authors' contributions All authors have read and approved the final manuscript. YMW and YJL had substantial contributions to conception and design, data acquisition and analysis, drafting the manuscript and revising the manuscript. THL, NTW, BCC, WCL, YJS, CCH, TMY, MJC, WNC, LHL had substantial contributions to conception and design, clinical data analysis. CHL and HCW had substantial contributions to conception and design, data analysis, critical revision and final approval of the revision. Acknowledgements The authors also want to express their gratitude to the patients and their families for participating in this study. Author details 1 Division of Neurosurgery, Department of Surgery, Yuan's General Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, department of Neurosurgery, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chang Gung University College of Medicine, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. 3 Department of Biological Science, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, department of Neurology, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chang Gung University College of Medicine, 1 23, Ta Pei Road, Niao Sung district, Kaohsiung 83304, Taiwan, department of Medicine, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chang Gung University College of Medicine, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, department of Radiology, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chang Gung University College of Medicine, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, department of Emergency Medicine, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chang Gung University College of Medicine, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Received: 6 June 201 1 Accepted: 26 June 2012 Published: 5 July 2012 References 1. Rosengart AJ, Schultheiss KE, Tolentino J, Macdonald RL: Prognostic factors for outcome in patients with aneurysmal sub-arachnoid hemorrhage. Stroke 2007, 38:2315-2321. 2. Tapaninaho A, Hernesniemi J, Vapalahti M, et ah Shunt-dependent hydrocephalus after sub-arachnoid haemorrhage and aneurysm surgery: timing of surgery is not a risk factor. Acta Neurochir (Wien) 1993, 123:118-124. Wang et al. BMC Surgery 2012, 12:12 Page 8 of 8 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2482/12/12 3. Rincon F, Gordon E, Starke RM, et al: Predictors of long-term shunt- dependent hydrocephalus after aneurysmal sub-arachnoid hemorrhage. J Neurosurg 201 0, 1 1 3:774-780. 4. Lin CL, Kwan AL, Howng SL: Acute hydrocephalus and chronic hydrocephalus with the need of post-operative shunting after aneurysmal sub-arachnoid hemorrhage. Kaohsiung J Med Sci 1999, 15:137-145. 5. Graff-Radford NR, Torner J, Adams HP Jr, Kassell NF: Factors associated with hydrocephalus after sub-arachnoid hemorrhage. A report of the Cooperative Aneurysm Study. Arch Neurol 1989, 46:744-752. 6. Dorai Z, Hynan LS, KopitnikTA, Samson D: Factors related to hydrocephalus after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage. Neurosurgery 2003, 52:763-771. 7. Vale FL, Bradley EL, Fisher WS 3rd: The relationship of sub-arachnoid hemorrhage and the need for post-operative shunting. J Neurosurg 1997, 86:462-466. 8. Greenberg MS: Hydrocephalus. In Greenberg MS. Handbook of Neurosurgery. 4th edition. Lakeland, Florida: Greenberg Graphics, Inc; 1997:571-600. 9. Haley EC Jr, Kassell NF, Torner JC: A randomized controlled trial of high-dose intravenous nicardipine in aneurysmal sub-arachnoid hemorrhage. A report of the Cooperative Aneurysm Study. J Neurosurg 1993, 78:537-547. 1 0. Lee JY, Lee MS, Whang K, Lee JM, Kim SH, Lee SS: Accuracy of trans-cranial Doppler sonography for predicting cerebral infarction in aneurysmal sub-arachnoid hemorrhage. J Clin Ultrasound 2006, 34:380-384. 1 1. Rabinstein AA, Pichelmann MA, Friedman JA, ef al: Symptomatic vasospasm and outcomes following aneurysmal sub-arachnoid hemorrhage: a comparison between surgical repair and endovascular coil occlusion. J Neurosurg 2003, 98:319-325. 1 2. Teasdale G, Jennett B: Assessment of coma and impaired consciousness. A practical scale. Lancet 1974, 2:81-84. 13. Fisher CM, Roberson GH, Ojemann RG: Cerebral vasospasm with ruptured saccular aneurysm - the clinical manifestations. Neurosurgery 1977, 1:245-248. 14. Teasdale GM, Drake CG, Hunt W, et al: A universal sub-arachnoid hemorrhage scale: report of a committee of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 1988, 51:1457. 1 5. Blasberg R, Johnson D, Fenstermacher J: Absorption resistance of cerebrospinal fluid after sub-arachnoid hemorrhage in the monkey: Effects of heparin. Neurosurgery 1981, 9:686-691. 16. Ellington E, Margolis G: Block of arachnoid villus by sub-arachnoid hemorrhage. J Neurosurg 1969, 30:651-657. 1 7. Rajshekhar V, Harbaugh RE: Results of routine ventriculostomy with external ventricular drainage for acute hydrocephalus following sub- arachnoid hemorrhage. Acta Neurochir (Wien) 1992, 115:8-14. 18. Sheehan JP, Polin RS, Sheenan JM, Baskaya MK, Kassell NF: Factors associated with hydrocephalus after aneurysmal sub-arachnoid hemorrhage. Neurosurgery 1999, 45:1 12-1 18. 1 9. Milhorat TH: Acute hydrocephalus after aneurysmal sub-arachnoid hemorrhage. Neurosurgery 1987, 20:15-20. 20. Heinsoo M, Eelmae J, Kuklane M, Tomberg T, Tikk A, Asser T: The possible role of CSF hydrodynamic parameters following in management of SAH patients. Acta Neurochir Suppl (Wien) 1998, 71:13-15. 21. Kibler RF, Couch RSC, Crompton MR: Hydrocephalus in the adult following spontaneous subarachnoid hemorrhage. Brain 1961, 84:45-61. 22. Saveland H, Hillman J, Brandt L, Edner G, Jakobson KE, Algers G: Overall outcome in aneurysmal sub-arachnoid hemorrhage. J Neurosurg 1992, 76:729-734. 23. Yas argil MG, Yonekawa Y, Zumstein B, Stahl H: Hydrocephalus following spontaneous sub-arachnoid hemorrhage. J Neurosurg 1973, 39:474-479. doi:10.1 186/1471-2482-12-12 Cite this article as: Wang et al.: Predictors and outcomes of shunt- dependent hydrocephalus in patients with aneurysmal sub-arachnoid hemorrhage. BMC Surgery 2012 12:12. Submit your next manuscript to BioMed Central and take full advantage of: • Convenient online submission • Thorough peer review • No space constraints or color figure charges • Immediate publication on acceptance • Inclusion in PubMed, CAS, Scopus and Google Scholar • Research which is freely available for redistribution Submit your manuscript at www. biomedcentra I .com/su bmit o BioMed Central
A short history of Chinese philosophy
Feng, Youlan, 1895-1990
1997-01-01T00:00:00Z
Philosophy, Chinese,Philosophie chinoise,Geschichte,Philosophie,China
xx, 368 pages ; 21 cm,Includes bibliographical references (pages 343-350) and index,The spirit of Chinese philosophy -- The background of Chinese philosophy -- The origin of the schools -- Confucius, the first teacher -- Mo Tzu, the first opponent of confucius -- The first phase of Taoism: Yang Chu -- The idealistic wing of Confucianism: Mencius -- The school of names -- The second phase of Taoism: Lao Tzu -- The third phase of Taoism: Chuang Tzu -- The later Mohists -- The Yin-Yang school and early Chinese cosmogony -- The realistic wing of Confucianism: Hu?un Tzu -- Han Fei Tzu and the legalist school -- Confuciansit metaphysics -- World politics and world philosophy -- Theorizer of the Han empire: Tung Chung-Shu -- The ascendancy of Confucianism and revival of Taoism -- Neo-Taoism: the rationalists -- Neo-Taoism: the sentimentalists -- The foundation of Chinese Buddhism -- Ch'anism, the philosopher of silence -- Neo-Confucianism: the cosmologists -- Neo-Confuciansim: the beginning of the two schools -- Neo-Confucianism: the school of platonic ideas -- Neo-Confucianism: the school of universal mind -- The introduction of western philosophy -- Chinese philosophy in the modern world
Direct Evidence of Interaction-Induced Dirac Cones in Monolayer Silicene/Ag(111) System
Ya Feng,Defa Liu,Baojie Feng,Xu Liu,Lin Zhao,Zhuojin Xie,Yan Liu,Aiji Liang,Cheng Hu,Yong Hu,Shaolong He,Guodong Liu,Jun Zhang,Chuangtian Chen,Zuyan Xu,Lan Chen,Kehui Wu,Yu-Tzu Liu,Hsin Lin,Zhi-Quan Huang,Chia-Hsiu Hsu,Feng-Chuan Chuang,Arun Bansil,X. J. Zhou
2015-03-21T00:00:00Z
Condensed Matter,Materials Science
Silicene, analogous to graphene, is a one-atom-thick two-dimensional crystal of silicon which is expected to share many of the remarkable properties of graphene. The buckled honeycomb structure of silicene, along with its enhanced spin-orbit coupling, endows silicene with considerable advantages over graphene in that the spin-split states in silicene are tunable with external fields. Although the low-energy Dirac cone states lie at the heart of all novel quantum phenomena in a pristine sheet of silicene, the question of whether or not these key states can survive when silicene is grown or supported on a substrate remains hotly debated. Here we report our direct observation of Dirac cones in monolayer silicene grown on a Ag(111) substrate. By performing angle-resolved photoemission measurements on silicene(3x3)/Ag(111), we reveal the presence of six pairs of Dirac cones on the edges of the first Brillouin zone of Ag(111), other than expected six Dirac cones at the K points of the primary silicene(1x1) Brillouin zone. Our result shows clearly that the unusual Dirac cone structure originates not from the pristine silicene alone but from the combined effect of silicene(3x3) and the Ag(111) substrate. This study identifies the first case of a new type of Dirac Fermion generated through the interaction of two different constituents. Our observation of Dirac cones in silicene/Ag(111) opens a new materials platform for investigating unusual quantum phenomena and novel applications based on two-dimensional silicon systems.
Full text of "Direct Evidence of Interaction-Induced Dirac Cones in Monolayer Silicene/Ag(111) System" Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "Direct Evidence of Interaction-Induced Dirac Cones in Monolayer Silicene/Ag(111) System" See other formats arXiv: 1503.06278vl [cond-mat.mtrl-sci] 21 Mar 2015 Direct Evidence of Interaction-Induced Dirac Cones in Monolayer Silicene/Ag(lll) System Ya Feng^’**, Defa Liu^’**, Baojie Feng^’**, Xu Liu^’**, Lin Zhao^, Zhuojin Xie^, Yan Liu^, Aiji Liang^ Cheng Hu^, Yong Hu^, Shaolong He^, Guodong Liu^, Jun Zhang^ Chuangtian Chen^, Zuyan Xu^, Lan Chen^, Kehui Wu^’^, Yu-Tzu Liu^’^, Hsin Lin"^’^, Zhi-Quan Huang®, Chia-Hsiu Hsu®, Feng-Chuan Chuang®, Arun BansiL and X. J. Zhou^’^’* ^Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physies, Institute of Physies, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China ^ Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China ^Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing 100871, China Centre for Advanced 2D Materials and Craphene Research Centre, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117546 ^Department of Physics, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117542 ^Department of Physics, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung 804, Taiwan "^Department of Physics, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA (Dated: March 21, 2015) 1 Silicene, analogous to graphene, is a one-atom-thick two-dimensional crys¬ tal of silicon which is expected to share many of the remarkable properties of graphene. The buckled honeycomb structure of silicene, along with its enhanced spin-orbit coupling, endows silicene with considerable advantages over graphene in that the spin-split states in silicene are tunable with external fields. Al¬ though the low-energy Dirac cone states lie at the heart of all novel quantum phenomena in a pristine sheet of silicene, the question of whether or not these key states can survive when silicene is grown or supported on a substrate re¬ mains hotly debated. Here we report our direct observation of Dirac cones in monolayer silicene grown on a Ag(lll) substrate. By performing angle-resolved photoemission measurements on silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll), we reveal the presence of six pairs of Dirac cones on the edges of the first Brillouin zone of Ag(lll), other than expected six Dirac cones at the K points of the primary silicene(lxl) Brillouin zone. Our result shows clearly that the unusual Dirac cone structure originates not from the pristine silicene alone but from the combined effect of silicene(3x3) and the Ag(lll) substrate. This study identifies the first case of a new type of Dirac Fermion generated through the interaction of two dif¬ ferent constituents. Our observation of Dirac cones in silicene/Ag(lll) opens a new materials platform for investigating unusual quantum phenomena and novel applications based on two-dimensional silicon systems. Silicene is theoretically predicted to be stable in the honeycomb lattice and, similar to graphene, it exhibits the characteristic low-energy Dirac cone state HHa. Silicene can thus be expected to share most of the remarkable quantum properties of graphene |6H9]. Distinct from graphene, however, which is essentially flat dominated by sp^ bonding, the crystal structure of silicene is buckled with mixed sp^/sp^ bondingP-0]. The much stronger spin- orbit coupling in silicene [ini [H] leads to a larger energy gap at the Dirac points and makes it possible to realize the quantum spin Hall effect in an experimentally accessible temperature regime [Tnl ITT] . The buckled honeycomb structure drives a number of new phenomena and properties in silicene. In particular, the gap at the Dirac point can be tuned by applying external electric and magnetic fields to realize a variety of different phases and topological phase transitions [T^HTB] . The unique advantages of silicene and its compatibility with the traditional silicon industry make it an attractive materials platform for next generation 2 nanoelectronics applications [nH22]. Single-layer and multilayer silicenes have been grown on various supporting materi¬ als, with the Ag(lll) surface being the most common substrate [23H5n|. The buckled structure of silicene naturally leads to the formation of a variety of conhgurations be¬ yond the primary (1x1) structure under different preparation conditions, such as the (3x3)/Ag(lll) and (\/3 x ■\/3)R30°/Ag(lll) structures [231 - 130] . Although experimental sig¬ natures of Dirac fermions have been reported in silicene, these results are highly controversial and inconclusive |2H lOTHOO] - Extensive theoretical work indicates that the interaction be¬ tween silicene and the Ag(lll) substrate will destroy the Dirac cones in silicene [5BH13]. Here we report our direct observation of Dirac cones in monolayer silicene grown on a Ag(lll) substrate. By performing in-depth angle-resolved photoemission measurements on silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll), we reveal the presence of six pairs of Dirac cones on the edges of the Erst Brillouin zone of Ag(lll), not on the K points of the primary silicene(lxl) Brillouin zone. This result shows clearly that the observed Dirac cones originate not from the pristine silicene him alone but from the combined system of silicene(3x3) and the Ag(lll) substrate. Our study thus identifies the hrst case of a new type of Dirac Fermion generated through the interaction of two different constituents. Our demonstration that silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll) can harbor Dirac cones provide a new pathway for exploiting two-dimensional silicon system as material platforms for investigating quantum phenomena and potential applications. The silicene/Ag(lll) sample was grown in situ in an ultra-high vacuum chamber con¬ nected directly with an angle-resolved photoemission (ARPES) system. The Ag(lll) single crystal was hrst cleaned by many cycles of Argon ion sputtering and annealing at ~800 K. Quality of the Ag(lll) surface was checked by low energy electron dihraction (FEED) and ARPES measurements on the surface state around the P point. Band structure of the Ag(lll) surface was measured by ARPES for later comparison with supported silicene surface. Silicene was grown by heating a piece of silicon wafer to directly deposit Si atoms on the pre-heated clean Ag(lll) surface following the same procedure as described in Ref. EH The single-layer sihcene(3x3)/Ag(lll) sample was prepared at the Ag(lll) substrate temperature of 470 K. Monolayer silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll) was found to cover most of the surface area while other minor phases can be neglected as determined from the FEED pat¬ terns. Moreover, such a silicene(3x3) structure can only exist as the hrst layer on Ag(lll); subsequent layers result in the formation of the (\/3 x \/3)R30° phase (see Fig. SI in Sup- 3 plementary Materials). We have repeated the growth process, followed by characterization of the him by LEED and scanning tunneling microscope (STM), many times to make sure that the grown sample has a single-layer silicene(3x3) structure. The ARPES results on silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll) presented in this study are highly reproducible. ARPES measure¬ ments were carried out in our lab system with a Scienta R4000 electron energy analyzer and a helium discharge lamp which provides a photon energy of 21.218 eVjH]. The base pressure of the ARPES system is better than 5x10“^^ Torr. The angular resolution is ~0.3 degree and the energy resolution was set at 20 meV for increasing the measurement efficiency. The Fermi edge of a clean polycrystalline gold specimen connected to the sample was taken as the reference Fermi level. The deposition of potassium on the silicene/Ag(lll) surface was realized by depositing potassium in situ for different times while keeping the sample at a low temperature of ~20 K. Figure la shows a typical STM image of the monolayer sihcene(3x3)/Ag(lll) phase in which the 3x3 superstructure can be seen clearly [57]. For convenient reference. Fig. lb shows the hrst Brillouin zones of the Ag(lll) surface and primary sihcene(lx 1), along with the folded Brillouin zone of silicene(3x3). Interestingly, sihcene(3x3) lattice has a good match with the Ag(lll) surface because the hrst Brillouin zone of Ag(lll) accommodates precisely 16 folded Brillouin zones of the silicene(3x3) phase. Fig. Ic gives the constant energy contours of the clean Ag(lll) surface at different binding energies. The Fermi surface (Fig. Id) is seen to consist of a clear electron pocket around the P point due to the well-known Shockley surface state[lS|, and a large hexagonal Fermi surface sheet along the Ag(lll) Brillouin zone edge. As the binding energy increases to 300 meV (Fig. Ic2) and 600 meV (Fig. Ic3), the central surface state disappears while the bulk hexagonal contour keeps its basic shape but shows a slight decrease in area. The Fermi surface of silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll) (Fig. Id) shows interesting features that clearly set it apart from that of Ag(lll) (Fig. Ic). With monolayer silicene coverage, the signal of the Ag(lll) surface state pocket around P completely disappears and that of the Ag(lll) bulk states is strongly suppressed although the residual signal is still discernable. These results are consistent with the single-layer growth mode of sihcene(3x3) that can fully cover the Ag(lll) surface. The Fermi surface topology of silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll) exhibits twelve spot structures along the six edges of the Ag(lll) hrst Brillouin zone (Fig. Idl). With increasing binding energy, these spots grow into approximately triangle-shaped pockets 4 (Fig. Id2 and ld3). At high binding energies, the two pockets on the Ag(lll) Brillouin zone edge touch and merge with each other (Fig. Id3). Direct comparison of Fig. Id with that for the Ag(lll) surface (Fig. Ic), as well as the comparison of the measured band structures (see Fig. S2 in Supplementary Materials), indicates unambiguously that the observed Fermi pockets along the Ag(lll) Brillouin zone edges must be associated with the sihcene(3x3) structure grown on the Ag(lll) surface. As we will show below (Figs. 2, 3 and 4), each strong spot here represents a Dirac cone structure in sihcene(3x3)/Ag(lll). Figure 2 clarihes details of how the observed Dirac cones evolve with increasing binding energy. Two independent high-resolution ARPES measurements were carried out to simul¬ taneously cover the two Dirac cones around the M point (Fig. 2a) and the K point (Fig. 2b). Similar to Fig. Id, with increasing binding energy, the constant energy contours for the two Dirac cones grow from spots at the Fermi level to triangle-shaped pockets with increasing area at higher binding energy. At the binding energy of ~0.4 eV, the two Dirac cones touch each other near the M point and start to merge at higher binding energies. On the other hand, the two Dirac cones around the K point (Fig. 2b) experience a similar trend of increasing area with increasing binding energy. However, these two Dirac cones do not touch each other even at 0.6 eV binding energy. The constant energy contour lines at different binding energies are quantitatively shown in Fig. Ic for one Dirac cone; the results for the four Dirac cones in Fig. 2a and 2b are consistent. These results indicate that the twelve Dirac cones observed around the Ag(lll) Brillouin zone edges can be divided into six pairs, each of which is centered at the M point of the Ag(lll) Brillouin zone edge, as shown schematically in Fig. 2d. Figure 3 shows the detailed band structure of sihcene(3x3)/Ag(lll) measured along different momentum cuts. For all the momentum cuts across one Dirac cone (cuts A, B, C and D), one can see two nearly linear bands extending over an energy range of 1 eV, consistent with our picture of the Dirac cones. For cut A, the two pairs of Dirac bands do not cross up to 1.4 eV, while for cut B along one Ag(lll) Brillouin zone edge, the two pairs of Dirac cones intersect at ~0.4 eV binding energy, consistent with the six-pair picture of Fig. 2d. In particular. Fig. 3b indicates that the observed signal is not simply an addition of two individual Dirac cones, ruling out the possibility that one pair of Dirac cones on an edge comes from two domains with different orientations. This is consistent with our FEED results where there is only a 3x3 superstructure along a single orientation (see Fig. 5 SI in Supplementary Materials). For a given Dirac cone, different cuts give similar linear bands but with different dispersions (Fig. 3c and 3d). Fig. 3g plots the Fermi velocity of one Dirac cone along different orientations; the values are obtained by fitting the bands near the Fermi level along different momentum cuts (Fig. 2(a-c) and Fig. 3(a-d))). It is clear that the Dirac cone in silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll) is actually not cone-like in that its cross section at various binding energies is more like a triangle than a circle (Fig. 2 and Fig. 3g). The resulting Fermi velocity is quite anisotropic with an approximate three-fold symmetry, varying from 2 to 4 eV-A (corresponding to 3 to 6xlO®m/s)(Fig. 3g). Notably, no Fermi crossing is seen on the measured band in cut E, consistent with the Dirac cone picture of Fig. 2d. The observed bands in cuts B and E are consistent with previous ARPES measurements on silicene(3x3) /Ag(lll)[3^ l33] although Dirac cones were not identified in these earlier studies. We emphasize that greatly suppressed signal of pure Ag(lll) surface in our sihcene(3x3)/Ag(lll) sample played a crucial role in allowing us to reveal the presence of Dirac cones in our samples. It is clear that the Dirac points of our silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll) sample lie above the Fermi level, and therefore cannot be seen at low temperatures because of the Fermi-Dirac cutoff of the photoemission process. In order to observe the upper Dirac branch and thus the whole Dirac cone, we have employed two different approaches. The first is to warm up the sample to make use of thermal excitation of electrons above the Fermi level (Fig. 4a-d). Dividing out the corresponding Fermi-Dirac distribution function makes it possible to observe a portion of the band structure above the Fermi level at high temperature. As seen in Fig. 4d, the Dirac bands are stable up to 450 K. Also the Dirac cone is observable at 450 K which is about 170 meV above the Fermi level (Fig. 4d). These results indicate that our silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll) sample is hole-doped. An alternative way to reveal the Dirac point and the upper Dirac branch is to deposit potassium onto the silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll) surface which is expected to provide electron-doping. As seen in Fig. 4(e-h), with increasing potassium deposition, indeed the Dirac cone shifts downwards as expected. When the potassium doping is high enough (Fig. 4h), the Dirac cone is shifted to nearly 200 meV below the Fermi level and the upper Dirac bands become visible. In this case, the sample has become electron-doped. These results further establish the Dirac cone structure in silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll) sample and demonstrate the possibility of transforming the sample from being hole-doped to an electron-doped case. 6 Our observation of six-pairs of Dirac cones in silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll) is unusual for many reasons. Firstly, there can be no doubt that the Ag(lll) surface alone does not support such Dirac cones; these Dirac cones come into existence only after sihcene(3x3) is grown on Ag(lll). Secondly, the observed six pairs of Dirac cones are fundamentally different from those for a free-standing honeycomb lattice which would have six Dirac cones at the K points of its own Brillouin zone. Thirdly, the present six pairs of Dirac cones lie on the edges of the hrst Brillouin zone of Ag(lll) without an obvious connection with the hrst Brillouin zone of the primary silicene(lxl). Fourthly, the (3x3) superstructure of silicene is expected to induce band-folding and duplicate features in the reduced Brillouin zones (Fig. lb), but we do not observe indications of such band folding due to the superstructure. The preceding observations imply clearly that the six pair Dirac cone structure we have observed in silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll) does not exist in either free-standing silicene(3x3) alone or in the Ag(lll) surface alone; it must be an effect generated through the interaction between the pristine silicene him and the Ag(lll) substrate when the two systems are combined. In particular, the low energy electronic states of silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll) come from the hybridization of silicene and Ag(lll) sp states with their periodicity being dictated essentially by the Ag(lll) lattice. This is consistent with theoretical predictions [381 - H3] and experimental measurements [321133] which indicate that Ag(lll) substrate interacts strongly with silicene and destroys the Dirac cones at K points of free-standing silicene 11 x 1) |38fH3] . However, even though the sihcene/Ag(lll) systems have been extensively investigated |38F 03] , there are no band structure calculations so far, including our own extensive computations (see Fig. S4 in Supplementary Materials), which can explain the unusual six pair Dirac cone structure we have reported here in a silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll) sample. In summary, we have provided direct evidence for the existence of six pairs of Dirac cones in the monolayer silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll) system. We have demonstrated that this unusual Dirac-cone structure only comes into existence when the silicene film is grown on the Ag(lll) substrate. Our study thus identihes a new type of Dirac cone structure which is obtained through the interaction of silicene with the substrate to generate a novel state that is distinct from that of their individual constituents. The observed six-pair Dirac cone structure in silicene/Ag(lll) system cannot be understood in terms of existing band structure calculations, and we hope that our study will stimulate further related theoretical work. Our observation of a novel Dirac cone structure in silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll), and the 7 possibility of hole or electron doping of these Dirac cones, open a new materials pathway for fundamental science investigations and applications based on two-dimensional silicon systems. •*These people contributed equally to the present work. * Corresponding authors: [email protected] [1] K. Takeda and K. Shiraishi, Theoretical Possibility of Stage Corrugation in Si and Ge Analogs of Graphite. Phys. Rev. B 50, 14916 (1994). [2] G. G. Guzman-Verri and L. G. Lew Yan Voon, Electronic Structure of Silicon-Based Nanos¬ tructures. Phys. Rev. B 76, 075131 (2007). [3] S. Cahangirov et ah. Two- and One-Dimensional Honeycomb Structures of Silicon and Ger¬ manium. Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 236804 (2009). [4] S. Lebegue and O. Eriksson, Electronic Structure of Two-Dimensional Grystals from ab initio Theory. Phys. Rev. B 79, 115409 (2009). [5] L. C. Lew Yan Voon et ah. Hydrogen Gompounds of Group-IV Nanosheets. Apph Phys. Lett. 97, 163114 (2010). [6] K. S. Novoselov et ah. Electric Eield Effect in Atomically Thin Carbon Films. Science 306, 666 (2004). [7] K. S. Novoselov et ah, Two-Dimensional Gas of Massless Dirac Fermions in Graphene. Nature 438, 197 (2005). [8] Y. Zhang et ah, Experimental Observation of the Quantum Hall Effect and Berry^s Phase in Graphene. Nature 438, 201 (2005). [9] A. H. Gastro Neto et ah, The Electronic Properties of Graphene. Rev. Mod. Phys. 81, 109 (2009). [10] G. C. Liu et ah, Quantum Spin Hall Effect in Silicene and Two-Dimensional Germanium. Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 076802 (2011). [11] G. C. Liu,, H. Jiang and Y. Yao, Low-Energy Effective Hamiltonian Involving Spin-Orbit Goupling in Silicene and Two-Dimensional Germanium and Tin. Phys. Rev. B 84, 195430 ( 2011 ). [12] Z. Ni et ah, Tunable Bandgap in Silicene and Germanene. Nano Lett. 12, 113 (2012). [13] N. D. Drummond et al., Electrically Tunable Band Gap in Silicene. Phys. Rev. B 85, 075423 ( 2012 ). [14] M. Ezawa, A Topological Insulator and Helical Zero Mode in Silicene under an Inhomogeneous Electric Eield, New J. Phys. 14, 033003 (2012). [15] M. Ezawa, Valley-Polarized Metals and Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect in Silicene, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 055502 (2012). [16] L. Stille et ah. Optical Signatures of the Tunable Band Gap and Valley-Spin Goupling in Silicene. Phys. Rev. B 86, 195405 (2012). [17] A. Kara et ah, A Review on Silicene — New Gandidate for Electronics. Surf. Sci. Rep. 67, 1 ( 2012 ). [18] W. F. Tsai et ah. Gated Silicene as a Tunable Source of Nearly 100% Spin-Polarized Electrons. Nat. Commu. 4, 1500 (2013). [19] X.-T. An, Spin-Polarized Current Induced by a Local Exchange Field in a Silicene Nanoribbon. New J. Phys. 14, 083039 (2012). [20] F. Liu et ah, d -|- id^ Chiral Superconductivity in Bilayer Silicene. Phys. Rev. Lett. Ill, 066804 (2013). [21] K. Kikutake et ah, Edge States in Silicene Nanodisks. Phys. Rev. B 88, 115432 (2013). [22] J. Linder and T. Yokoyama, Superconducting Proximity Effect in Silicene: Spin-Valley- Polarized Andreev Reflection, Nonlocal Transport, and Supercurrent. Phys. Rev. B 89, 020504(R) (2014). [23] B. Lalmi et ah. Epitaxial Growth of a Silicene Sheet. Apph Phys. Lett. 97, 223109 (2010). [24] P. Vogt et ah, Silicene: Compelling Experimental Evidence for Graphenelike Two-Dimensional Silicon. Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 155501 (2012). [25] C.-L. Lin et ah, Structure of Silicene Grown on Ag(lll). Apph Phys. Express 5, 045802 (2012). [26] A. Fleurence et ah, Experimental Evidence for Epitaxial Silicene on Diboride Thin Films. Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 245501 (2012). [27] B. Feng et ah. Evidence of Silicene in Honeycomb Structures of Silicon on Ag(lll). Nano. Lett. 12, 3507 (2012). [28] H. Jamgotchian et ah. Growth of Silicene Layers on Ag(lll): Unexpected Effect of the Sub¬ strate Temperature. J. Phys.: Condens. Matter. 24, 172001 (2012). [29] L. Meng et ah. Buckled Silicene Formation on Ir(lll). Nano Lett. 13, 685 (2013). 9 [30] H. Jamgotchian et al., A Comprehensive Study of the (2-v/3x2-v/3)R30° Structure of Silicene on Ag(lll). arXiv: 1412.4902 (2014). [31] J. Avila et ah, Presence of Gapped Silicene-Derived Band in the Prototypical (3x3) Silicene Phase on Silver (111) Surfaces. J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 25, 262001 (2013). [32] D. Tsoutsou et ah, Evidence for Hybrid Surface Metallic Band in (4x4) Silicene on Ag(lll). Appl. Phys. Lett. 103, 231604 (2013). [33] S. K. Mahatha et ah, Silicene on Ag(lll): A Honeycomb Lattice without Dirac Bands. Phys. Rev. B 89, 201416(R) (2014). [34] P. De. Padova et ah. Evidence of Dirac Eermions in Multilayer Silicene. Appl. Phys. Lett. 102, 163106 (2013). [35] P. De Padova et ah. The Quasiparticle Band Dispersion in Epitaxial Multilayer Silicene. J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 25, 382202 (2013). [36] L. Chen et ah. Evidence for Dirac Eermions in a Honeycomb Lattice Based on Silicon. Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 056804 (2012). [37] B. Peng et ah. Observation of Dirac Cone Warping and Chirality Effects in Silicene, ACS Nano 7, 9049 (2013). [38] C.-L. Lin et ah, Substrate-Induced Symmetry Breaking in Silicene. Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 076801 (2013). [39] Z.-X. Guo et ah, Absence and Presence of Dirac Electrons in Silicene on Substrates. Phys. Rev. B 87, 235435 (2013). [40] S. Cahangirov et ah. Electronic Structure of Silicene on Ag(lll): Strong Hybridization Effects. Phys. Rev. B 88, 035432 (2013). [41] Y.-P. Wang and H.-P. Cheng, Absence of a Dirac Cone in Silicene on Ag(lll): Eirst-Principles Density Punctional Calculations with a Modified Effective Band Structure Technique. Phys. Rev. B 87, 245430 (2013). [42] R. Quhe et ah, Does the Dirac Cone Exist in Silicene on Metal Substrates? Scientific Reports 4, 5476 (2014). [43] M. X. Chen and M. Weinert, Revealing the Substrate Origin of the Linear Dispersion of Silicene/Ag(lll). arXiv: 1408.3188 (2014). [44] G. D. Liu et ah, Development of a Vacuum Ultraviolet Laser-Based Angle-Resolved Pho¬ toemission System with a Superhigh Energy Resolution Better Than 1 meV. Rev. Scientific 10 Instruments 79, 023105 (2008). [45] F. Reinert et al., Direct Measurements of the L-Gap Surface States on the (111) Surface of Noble Metals by Photoelectron Spectroscopy. Phys. Rev. B 63, 115415 (2001). Acknowledgement XJZ thanks financial snpport from the NSFC (91021006, 11334010, 11334011 and 11474336), the MOST of China (973 program No: 2011CB921703, 2011CBA00110, 2012CB821402, 2013CB921700 and 2013CB921904), and the Strategic Pri¬ ority Research Program (B) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB07020300). The work at Northeastern University was snpported by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences grant nnmber DE-FG02-07ER46352 (core research), and benefited from Northeastern University’s Advanced Scientific Compntation Center (ASCC), the NERSC supercompnting center throngh DOE grant number DE-AC02- 05CH11231, and support (applications to layered materials) from the DOE EFRC: Center for the Computational Design of Functional Layered Materials (CCDM) under de-sc0012575. H.L. acknowledges the Singapore National Research Foundation for support under NRF Award No. NRF-NRFF2013-03. FCC acknowledges support from the National Center for Theoretical Sciences and the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology under Grant Nos. MOST-101-2112-M-110-002-MY3 and MOST-101-2218-E-110-003-MY3, and the sup¬ port the National Center for High Performance Computing for computer time and facilities. Author Contributions Y.F., D.F.L, B.J.F. and X.L. contribute equally to this work. X.J.Z., Y.F., D.F.L., B.J.F., X.L., L.Z, Z.J.X. and K.H.W. proposed and designed the research. Y.F., D.F.L., B.J.F., X.L., L.Z, Z.J.X. L.C. and K.H.W. contributed in sample preparation. Y.F., D.F.L., X.L., L.Z., Z.J.X., Y.L., A.J.L., C.H., Y.H., S.L.H., G.D.L., J.Z., C.T.C., Z.Y.X. and X.J.Z. contributed to the development and maintenance of Laser-ARPES system. Y.F., D.F.L., X.L., L.Z. and Z.J.X. carried out the ARPES experiment. Y.F., D.F.L., B.J.F., X.L., L.Z, Z.J.X. and X.J.Z. analyzed the data. Y.T.L., H.L., Z.Q.H., C.H.H., F.C.C. and A.B. performed band structure calculations. X.J.Z., Y.F. and A.B. wrote the paper with D.F.L, B.J.F., X.L. and L.Z., and all authors participated in discussion and comment on the paper. 11 High Low FIG. 1: Constant energy contours of silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll) showing the existence of six pairs of Dirac cones, (a) STM image of silicene(3x3) grown on the Ag(lll) surface, (b) First Brillouin zone of Ag(lll) (thick gray solid line), and the corresponding Brillouin zones of silicene(lxl) (green line) and (3x3) supercell (thin blue line). Here silicene(3x3) is named with respect to the primary silicene(lxl) structure (it is named silicene (4x4) with reference to the Ag(lll) surface). (cl-c3) Constant energy contours of Ag(lll) surface measured at 20 K obtained by integrating the photoemission spectral weight over a small energy window (±10 meV) with respect to the binding energy of 0 (cl), 300 meV (c2) and 600 meV (c3). (dl-d3) Constant energy contours of silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll) measured at 20 K at three different binding energies of 0 (dl), 300 meV (d2) and 600 meV (d3). Some residual signal of the Ag(lll) surface can be discerned which is relatively stronger in the second Brillouin zone. In (c) and (d), the grey line represents the first Brillouin zone of Ag(lll) surface. The images are obtained by symmetrizing the original data assuming three-fold symmetry. 12 Eb= OeV 0.2eV 0.3eV 0.4eV 0.5eV 0.6eV FIG. 2: Evolution of the Dirac cones in silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll) with binding energy, (a) Con¬ stant energy contours of one pair of Dirac cones around the M point obtained by integrating the photoemission spectral weight over a small energy window (±10 meV) for binding energies of 0, 200 meV, 300 meV, 400 meV, 500meV and 600 meV (from the top to the bottom panels), (b) Constant energy contours of two Dirac cones around the K point at different binding energies, (c) Constant energy contours of a single Dirac cone obtained by the contour lines at different binding energies of 0, 200 meV, 300 meV, 400 meV, 500meV and 600 meV (dashed orange lines in (a) and (b)). (d) Schematic three-dimensional diagram showing the existence of twelve Dirac cones in silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll) forming six pairs along the first Brillouin zone edges of the Ag(lll) surface (thick blue line). 13 FIG. 3: Band structures of silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll) along different momentum cuts, (a-e) Band structures measured along five typical momentum cuts. Location of the five momentum cuts is shown in (f). To highlight the measured bands, the images shown are second-derivative images of the original data with respect to the momentum, (g) Fermi velocity of the Dirac cone along different directions plotted as blue asterisks in a polar coordinate. The triangle-shaped brown line represents the corresponding constant energy contour line of the Dirac cone at a binding energy of 0.5 eV (see Fig. 2c). 14 a T= 30 K b looK c 300 K d 450 K e f g h FIG. 4: Revelation of the Dirac cone and the upper Dirac branch in silicene(3x3)/Ag(lll). (a-d) Band structures measured along the cut A in Fig. 3f at a temperature of 30 K (a), 100 K (b), 300 K (c) and 450 K (d). The images have been divided by the corresponding Fermi-Dirac distribution functions in order to observe band structures above the Fermi level, (e-h) Band structures measured along the cut A in Fig. 3f after depositing potassium on the surface. When an increasing amount of potassium is deposited on the sample surface, the overall band structure shifts to higher binding energy because of electron-doping. The red dashed lines in (d) and (h) are guides to the eye through the observed bands. 15
The three religions of China; lectures delivered at Oxford
Soothill, William Edward, 1861-1935
1913-01-01T00:00:00Z
World Christianity Old Day Collection -- 1913,Confucianism,Taoism,Buddhism -- China,Cults -- China,Buddhism,Cults,Religion,China -- Religion,China
xii, 324 pages 21 cm,"These lectures were delivered during the long vacation of 1912, in Queen's college, Oxford, under the auspices of the Board for the training of missionaries."--Preface,Introductory: the three religions.--Confucius and his school.--Taoism: Laotzŭ, Chuang-Tzŭ, and their school.--Buddha and Buddhism.--The idea of God.--Man's relationship and approach to the divine.--Cosmological ideas.--The soul, ancestor worship, eschatology.--Moral ideas.--Sin and its consequences.--The official cult, or public religion.--Private religion.--Index
Full text of "The three religions of China; lectures delivered at Oxford" Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "The three religions of China; lectures delivered at Oxford" See other formats School of Theo] I iii Withera wh Tem Crverary Libras. The Library SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY AT-CLAREMONT WEST FOOTHILL AT COLLEGE AVENUE ‘ CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA THE THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA [asards1Uuoug ‘NUAVEH JO UVLIV ‘AOVUNAL AIaavn Ve gi sate >A THE ots ; 4 THREE RELIGIONS. OF. CHINA ° ° BOG e oo 3 LECTURES DELIVERED AT OXFORD BY THE REV. WE: SOOTHILL, M.A., F.R.GSS. (Late Principal of the Shansit Imperial University, President designate of the United Universities’ troposed Central-China University) TRANSLATOR OF ‘“‘THE WENCHOW NEW TESTAMENT” AND oF ‘“‘THE “ANALECTS OF CONFUCIUS”; COMPILER OF “‘ THE STUDENT'S POCKET DICTIONARY” AND OF BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF CONFUCIANISM, TAOISM, AND BUDDHISM; AUTHOR OF ‘a MISSION IN CHINA,” ETC. HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO LO. Theology Library SCHOOL OF TH : EOLOGCY AT CLAREM ©} SS Ronee. Printed in 1913 TO THE MEMORY OF THE REVEREND JAMES LEGGE, D.D., LL.D. FIRST PROFESSOR OF CHINESE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD A GREAT SCHOLAR AND A DEVOTED MISSIONARY Qf) O £ Crone tier PREFACE Turse Lectures were delivered during the Long Vacation of 1912, in Queen’s College, Oxford, under the auspices of the Board for the Training of Mission- aries, a Board established by the Continuation Committee of the Edinburgh Missionary Conference heldin 1910. The Lectures were prepared for students designated for work in China, and are, therefore, _ meant as an introduction to the three recognised religions of that country. While an endeavour has been made to give a reasonably full and accurate description, neither the time allotted nor the pre- requisite knowledge of the subject on the part of most of the students justified an exhaustive treatment. Nevertheless, a certain amount of original research has been necessary. Our gradually increasing store of knowledge has been tapped, modern views and criticism considered, and a new method of presenta- tion adopted. The Lectures are, therefore, published in the hope that they may be of value, not only as an introduction for beginners, but as a guide to those further advanced, and especially as an incentive to a fuller inquiry than has hitherto been possible. The Lectures have been prepared away from the vil viii PREFACE field, entailing a reliance on memory, as well as an inability to step from the study into the temple with a Chinese scholar, so excellent a check to hasty generalisation. It is humiliating to find how little definite knowledge of detail one may possess, even after thirty years of life amongst the people. The truth is, that the fascination and exhilaration of creating a new and more highly oxygenated atmo- sphere is more attractive to the missionary than breathing the musty air of the Chinese pantheon, or studying the imanities of their religious practices. Yet his office is to persuade men, and he will do this with greater zest and effect if he can, through inti- mate knowledge, prove to them that the old air is unhealthy, thereby inducing them to open the windows of their souls in order to let in the diviner air. I am indebted to the Rev. G. W. Sheppard of Ningpo for valuable assistance rendered. My daughter delivered two lectures on Family Obser- vances in connection with this series, which are not included in the present issue. W. E. Soorat.tu. OxrForRD, CONTENTS LECTURE I PAGE InrRopucTORY: THE THREE RELIGIONS LECTURE If CoNFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL : ; ‘ 20 LECTURE III Taoism: Laotzv, CHUANG-TZU, AND THEIR ScHOOL ? 6 ; : : . 44 LECTURE IV BuppHA AND BUDDHISM ‘ f ‘ 85 ix we x CONTENTS LECTURE V Tue IprEa or Gop LECTURE VI Man’s RELATIONSHIP AND APPROACH TO THE DIVINE . Z LECTURE VII CosMOLOGICAL IDEAS LECTURE VIII THE SouL, ANCESTOR Worsuip, EscHaToLocy LECTURE IX Mora IpEats : LECTURE X SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES . PAGE 125 171 196 219 247 CONTENTS LECTURE XI Tue OFFICIAL CULT, OR PuBLIC RELIGION LECTURE XII PRIVATE RELIGION INDEX PAGE 271 297 317 ‘* A FIRE mist and a planet, A erystal and a cell, A jellyfish and a Saurian, And caves where cave men dwell ; Then a sense of love and duty And a face turned from the clod : Some call it Evolution, And others call it God. 3 ‘‘The echo of ancient chanting, The gleam of altar-flames ; The stones of a hundred temples Graven with sacred names ; Man’s patient quest for the secret In soul, in star, in sod: Some deem it superstition, And others believe it is God. ‘‘A picket frozen on duty, A mother starved for her brood, Socrates drinking the hemlock, And Jesus on the rood; The millions who, humble and nameless, The straight, hard path have trod ; Some call it consecration, And others feel it is God.” PROFESSOR CARRUTH, Quoted from Dr, R. F. Horton’s Great Issues. xii LECTURE I INTRODUCTORY : THE THREE RELIGIONS THERE are three recognised religions in China. Amongst Europeans these are commonly known as Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Two of them, the first and the last, are indigenous. The other, Buddhism, while known in China before the Christian era, was not formally introduced until the first century A.D. Each of the three religions has been the recipient of Imperial recognition and favour, and the three may be considered as three aspects of the established religion of the country. Such, at any rate, was the case until the recent revolution. From time to time each has had its period of ascendancy. The Buddh- ists have had their periods of power; so have the Taoists ; but for the most part Confucianism has been the dominant factor at Court, and indeed is generally considered to be the State religion. Toleration has been the prevailing attitude of Buddhism and Taoism towards Confucianism, even during their periods of ascendancy, but the Con- fucianists have ever been jealous of their rivals, and even persecuted them. Such persecution, however, 1 2 INTRODUCTORY : THE THREE RELIGIONS has never attained to the severity exhibited in Europe, for its direction has rather been against temples and monastic establishments than against the persons of the occupants thereof. For Confucianism is as much a philosophy as a religion, and philosophy seldom generates sufficient heat to persecute with undue warmth. Or perhaps, more correctly, it is too wise and sees the folly of persecution. At any rate, whilst wars of extermination have been prosecuted by the State against the Moslems in China, as also ‘against the Taoists—chiefly on political grounds— religious wars between the three religions, or the horrors of the Inquisition on account of religion, have been unknown, for intensity of religious feeling has never been sufficiently strong to produce ex- tremities of so virulent a character. A very astute Chinese pastor once said to me as I approached his abode, ‘“‘I recognised you across the river.” *“ At such a distance how could you distinguish me from my Chinese companions ?”’ I asked. ** You are in white clothes,” was the reply. ‘* But so are the others,” I remarked. “Ah,” he replied with covert meaning; “‘ but your foreign whites are very white, and your foreign blacks are very black.” Whether this be true of our character in general I will not stay to discuss. It is certainly true of our religious persecutions, and though many of these have also been dictated by policy, that policy has INTRODUCTORY: THE THREE RELIGIONS 3 been backed by an intensity of religious bigotry which for the most part is absent in China, where policy alone, and not love of religion and the gods, has hitherto been the predominant factor in perse- cution. This leads me to remind you of that of which you are probably all aware, that amongst the people at large the three religions are not mutually exclusive. The deficiency of Confucianism in making little or no provision, beyond a calm stoicism, for the spiritual demands of human nature has been supplied by the more spiritual provision of Buddhism, and the in- definiteness of Confucius as to a continued existence after death has been met by the more definite Taoist dogma of immortality. The three are complementary rather than antagonistic to each other, and together they make a fuller provision for human needs than any one of them does separately. Consequently no clear line of demarcation popularly exists between them. For general purposes we may say that the shrines of each are open to all and availed of by all. It is impossible, therefore, to divide the Chinese into three separate mutually exclusive churches or religious communities, as is the case, say, with Roman Catholics, Greek Catholics, and the Reformed branch of the Christian Church. Those writers, therefore, who speak of so many hundred millions of Chinese Buddhists have as much right to the claim as others would have who claimed the same hundreds of millions for Confucianism or Taoism. 4 INTRODUCTORY: THE THREE RELIGIONS There are, it is true, a certain number of the educated who are strictly Confucianist, and who heartily de- spise both Buddhism and Taoism. Their number, however, is quite limited, for there are few among them who do not summon Buddhist or Taoist monks, or indeed both, to perform the rites for the dead, | or consult their divinities in case of sickness or dis- tress. The Buddhist and Taoist clergy, an unlettered class, for the most part confine themselves to their respective cults, and while a few of the laity devote themselves, some solely to Buddhism, some solely to Taoism, the great mass of the people have no pre- judices and make no embarrassing distinctions ; they belong to none of the three religions, or, more cor- rectly, they belong to all three. In other words, they are eclectic, and use whichever form best responds to the requirement of the moment, or for which on any occasion they use religion. There is much truth, then, in the Chinese saying that the three religions are one, and this view enables the people, as a whole, to frequent whatever shrine they individually please. No sense of antagonism or inappropriateness exists in the mind of a man who on the same day, and for the same purpose, visits the shrines of each of the three cults, any more than a sense of antagonism or inappropriateness would occur to him in consulting three different doctors, say, by way of illustration, an allopathist, a homceopathist, and a herbalist, one immediately after the other, for the same complaint, and— INTRODUCTORY : THE THREE RELIGIONS 5 perhaps wisely—using his own judgment as to whose medicine he swallowed. _ Let us now turn te a consideration of the terms used by the Chinese for their “religions.” I have told you that there are three recognised religions or isms. These are known in their own language as the San Chiao, and are commonly spoken of as the Ju, Shih, Tao, San Chiao. I give them in their usual Chinese order. The first of these is the Ju Chiao, usually styled by Europeans Confucianism, so called after its founder, K‘ung Fu-tzu, latinised by the early Roman missionaries as Confucius. The word Ju means cultured or learned. Hence, Ju Chiao means the cult of the learned. The second is the Shih Chiao. The word Shih is an abbreviation for Shih-chia-mu-ni, the Chinese form of Sakyamuni, one of the names of the Buddha. Shih Chiao, there- fore, stands for Buddhism. The third term is Tao Chiao. The word Tao we shall discuss later. At present suffice it that it means The Way. The founda- tion of the Tao Chiao, that is to say, Taoism, is attributed to Lao Tzu, or Laocius, about whom more will be said later. Chiao is a word which requires a somewhat closer consideration, as it is well you should have a clearer conception of its meaning. For, seeing it applied to each of the three cults, it would not be unreasonable for you, through your lifelong association with the idea of religion and the Church, to apply the same terminology to the San Chiao which you apply to 6 INTRODUCTORY: THE THREE RELIGIONS your own, and to consider them as three religions, or as three churches. Now the word Chiao does not mean either religion or a church in our sense of those terms. Etymo-- logically considered, its construction in ancient times consisted of three parts, namely, “to beat,” “a child,” and “‘ to imitate.” From this we may infer that “to beat a child into imitation ”—of parental example—was its meaning. The later form of the character consists of “‘to beat,” and “filial,” sug- gesting the idea of rigorously bringing the child into a filial condition. At any rate we may observe that “Spare the rod and spoil the child” has ancient authority in China, The significance of the word Chiao to-day is “‘to teach,” and its meaning as a substantive is sufficiently covered by school, or cult, or ism. In our sense of the term it does not con- note the word church, and only indifferently does it connote our idea of religion. The Chinese, recognis- ing this deficiency and feeling the need of a term meaning a religion, have recently adopted the term Tsung-Chiao from the Japanese, who had adapted it to suit their own need for a term to cover the Western idea of religion. We need not stay to dis- cuss the origin or meaning of the term ; suffice it that Tsung-Chiao is the term now adopted for religion, or rather, a religion. There is still another term to which I have already referred, and to which we may advisedly pay some preliminary attention, namely, the word Tao. We INTRODUCTORY: THE THREE RELIGIONS 7 shall have to deal with it more in detail later, but a few words now may somewhat ciear our way. The Taoists have claimed the word as their own and called their cult Taoism; but Tao is a word common to all three schools, for each of them devotes itself to the theory and practice of Tao. One might therefore naturally infer that by Tao religion is meant. This, however, is only one of its meanings, for Tao is one of those delightfully fugitive words which eludes the grasp of any single equivalent. Take the opening words of the sole work of Laocius, the brief Tao Té Ching: “Tao k‘o tao feich‘ang Tao.” Here we have Tao thrice repeated, twice as a sub- stantive, once as a verb: “[The] Tao [that] can be tao’d is not [the] eternal Tao”’; or it may be trans- lated, “‘The Via that is not viable is not the eternal Via.” The word religion would not translate Tao in this passage. lLaocius in this very first phrase pre- sents the same difficulty to the translator that he himself is struggling to interpret-—What is Tao? In this passage it has been variously translated by God, by Nature, by Reason, by the Logos, by Law, by Principle, and perhaps wisest of all, by Tao. The composition of the character itself does not give us all the help we should like. It consists of a ‘head ” and “‘ to proceed,” and its ordinary meaning is a way, a path or road. In the philosophic sense it may be defined as the eternal order of the uni- verse. Considered in the absolute it might almost be called Nature with a capital, in the relative as nature. 8 INTRODUCTORY: THE THREE RELIGIONS We shall discuss its definition still further when we consider Taoism. In the meantime perhaps we cannot do better than accept Dr. Williams’ definition as it relates to our present subject. He describes it as “‘ the unknown factor or principle of nature,” and ~ ““the way it acts in matter and mind.” Tao, then, may be considered as the eternal and ubiquitous im- personal principle by which the universe has been produced and is supported and governed. Both Confucius and Laocius, and all sages and seers before and after them, are the exponents of Tao as it mani- fests itself in creation, and especially in its relation- ship with men. We have now, I hope, obtained an idea, sufficient for working purposes, of the words Ju, Shih, Tao, San Chiao.! The word San, I may say, means “three.” I would now like to explain a little more in detail the chief differences between the three schools. In the first place it must be remembered that religion did not begin in China with Confucius or Laccius, any more than it did in India with Sakyamuni, or amongst the Israelites with Moses. Confucius, Laocius, Buddha adopted and modified religious systems already ancient. They were reformers of religion, and each of them stands for one side, and one side only, of those religions. In each case they only partially succeeded in bringing about the re- forms they desired, for the old native beliefs and practices refused to be shaken off, and while the fin A 3 = RK INTRODUCTORY: THE THREE RELIGIONS 9 people adopted the name of the reformer and many of his ideas became common property, in reality these were superimposed upon the old beliefs and practices rather than substituted for them. For instance, though Buddhism was the chief religion of India for a thousand years, India was never really Buddhist, and in the end the old tree over which it had grown reasserted itself, outgrew its parasite, and thrust it aside. A similar process of the overgrowing of pagan beliefs and practices is observable in the case of Christianity, though the vitality of Christianity in its more advanced forms has killed the old tree, while leaving its shape still visible. To change the meta- phor, Christianity has been able to dissolve out of the old material its pagan principle by the infiltration of a spiritual principle of higher potency. In discussing the two indigenous religions we may say that they did not begin to exist as separate cults until the sixth century B.c. under the influence of the contemporaneous sages Laocius and Confucius, the latter being the later of the two. The ideas pro- mulgated by these two men represent two different strata of the old religion, the politico-religious side being emphasised by Confucius, and the ascetico- mystical side by Laocius. There was a third and prior stratum which neither of them propagated, indeed out of which they-sought to rise, namely, the old magical and spiritualistic animism which was the principal religion of the common people. This third form has maintained itself in spite of the scepticism of Con- 10 INTRODUCTORY : THE THREE RELIGIONS fucius, and it has taken entire possession of the cult founded by Laocius, though without a word of encouragement in his Tao Te Ching. This third, or magical form, which, strictly speaking, is neither Con- fucian nor Laocian, but which has an admixture of ; both, together with a later intermixture of Buddhist ideas, is the prevalent religion of the common people. Nor is it limited to the common folk, for even the average Confucian scholar is steeped in its super- stitions, and as to the Taoist, he is altogether given over to them. I must, however, make it clear to you that both Laocius and Confucius and the elect of their two ~ schools have advanced a philosophy and a religion far surpassing this lower form. So, also, did the great men of China who preceded them, in whose footsteps they professed to follow, and whose lives and teaching represented to them the pristine golden age of antiquity which they idealised and idolised. Referring, now, to the original schools of these two philosophers, we may say that the main difference between them was that Laocius considered that “being”? is “doing,” while Confucius harnessed “doing ” to “ being.” It is the old question of faith and works, of quietism and action, which is found in all the more advanced religions of the world. The attitude of Laocius is that of the quietist—let Tao work within the emptied heart, and without human effort it will work through the surrendered and unstriving life upon all other men. In other words, INTRODUCTORY: THE THREE RELIGIONS 11 let a man become the unconscious, or rather the subconscious, medium of Tao, and Tao will tranquilly flow through him to others. We find similar ideas propounded also by Confucius, but with him effort is as necessary as quiescence; the will must be developed, virtue must be cultivated, “‘ doing” is as requisite to “being” as “being” to ‘‘ doing.” Laocius would let Tao have free course, run, and be glorified. Confucius would deepen and broaden the channel, and improve its gradient. The Taoist founders say to the Confucianists, ‘‘ All your religion and virtue and knowledge are useless, nay, worse than useless, for all is forced and unnatural. It is only the spontaneous, the natural, that is of value, all else thwarts Tao; hence, with all your assisting of Nature, what advance have you made in bettering humanity ? The world is infinitely worse now than it was in the primeval days of innocence, and this all arises from your religious ceremonies, your so-called virtues, and your learning. Let be—let Nature, let Tao have its free course, and pristine happiness will return.”’ Both philosophers looked backward, not forward, to the golden age, as their followers still continue to do. There is much that is truly admirable in the teach- ings of the founders of both these systems of faith and practice, and the missionary to China may well rejoice and be glad that God has given such pure- minded, such noble-spirited seers to that great land. The ideals of a people are its greatest asset. The 12 INTRODUCTORY : THE THREE RELIGIONS nation whose ideals are the best rises highest. And while defective views of God, and man’s relationship to Him, have hampered the upward progress of the Chinese, their sages have been men worthy of all _ honour, whose faces have been set towards the sun, and away from the abomination of darkness in which some of the other nations of the earth have weltered. I like to ponder over that wonderful thousand years which culminated in the advent of Jesus Christ, and to picture the adolescence of the human race, its discovery and discussion of the problems that faced its rapidly forming communities, with their in- creasingly complex internal and external relation- ships, of the discovery of systems and apparata of writing, the elevation above his fellows of the man who could inscribe his thoughts, and above all the — grand discovery that Nature is a unity, and not a heterogeneous conglomeration of uncontrolled and antagonistic forces. The human mind was never more alert, the powers of observation never more keen, and it was during this period that the same or similar ideas found expression in the East which found utterance also in the West, in China as well as in Greece. It is my realisation of the profundity of the pro- blems—some of them still unsolved—which these philosophers of China had to face, with few, if any, treatises to help them, as well as my unfeigned reverence for the greatness of their souls and the sincerity of their purpose, which leads me to urge INTRODUCTORY : THE THREE RELIGIONS 13 you, both in your thought and speech, to treat them with all honour. Confucius “ sacrificed to the dead as if they were present.” We, too, who believe in immortality, and who—at any rate some of us— hope some day to come into the presence of the world’s great seers, would like to do so with a clear con- science that we have upheld their honour in their absence. This need not prevent fair-minded criti- cism, or even contradiction of their views—‘ as if they were present ’—but at least in such a spirit we shall not father on them children of superstition for whom they are not directly responsible. There are two ways of approach to the religions of a people. One is to seek directly the fountain from which they sprang. The other is to examine the channel through which runs the living river into which the spring has swelled, or perhaps the wide and stagnant marsh into which it has drained and dissipated its erstwhile energy. The former, a study of the historic sources, was the method adopted in his Religions of China, by the great Sinologist, Dr. James Legge, at one time a Professor in this University. Dr. John Ross has followed in Dr. Legge’s footsteps in his recent book The Ancient Religion of China. The other method, an examination of present-day conditions, is the mode adopted by Dr. J. J. M..de Groot, who has already published six large and valuable volumes. These are the result of a long and careful study of 14 INTRODUCTORY: THE THREE RELIGIONS the religious practices of the present-day Chinese, especially of those residing in the neighbourhood of Amoy, in the south of China. Dr. de Groot has summarised his observations in a series of lectures, delivered at the Hartford School of Missions in ~ America, and published under the title of The Re- ligtons of the Chinese. Both methods carry with them a certain danger. A study of a religion which limits itself to the teach- ings of the early founders, and which ignores the present condition of its development, will give a very imperfect presentation of the religion as a whole. On the other hand, a study which is limited to its expres- sion in practice, without doing justice to the ideals of the founders, equally fails to do justice to the religion as a whole; for the religious ideals of a people, while. they may be written on the tables of their hearts and consciences, often find very imperfect expression in their lives. Mere observation of external conduct is not the best guide to the secret aspirations of the soul. It seems to me, therefore, a duty, while urging you to read, mark, and inwardly digest the lectures of Dr. de Groot, at the same time to express my opinion that in his presentation of the religions of the Chinese he has emphasised only one side of the evidence, and painted the stream as ‘“‘ dank and foul in its marshy cowl,’’ while failing to show that neverthe- less there is a living current there all the time, ‘cleansing its stream as it hurries along ’’—for the flowing stream set free by good men of yore still INTRODUCTORY : THE THREE RELIGIONS 15 runs, often laden with the offscourings of human ignorance, but all the while a purifying stream. In these lectures, therefore, while recognising to the full the mass of superstition held in solution in the waters, I propose to exhibit to you rather that there is water there; moreover, that it has done, and is doing, good service in opening and keeping open the channel of religion, ready for the nobler stream of Living Water which, in its onward flow, is now beginning to pour itself into the channel of the religious life of China. Nevertheless, while endeavouring on the one hand to exhibit to you whatsoever things are beau- tiful and true, and therefore what material we, as missionaries, have at hand of value, I shall feel it my duty on the other hand to indicate wherein the three religions are defective in certain ideas and forces which we in the West have been happy enough to inherit, believe to be vital, and know we are able to supply. There may be times when con- demnation, or even ridicule and scorn are justifiable as a means of arousing attention to and destroying the foolish excesses of religious superstition; but I think you will agree with me that a more effective method for establishing and advancing the cause of right religion is to lay hold of the excellent material which the sages and scholars of China have through generations of faithful toil so arduously gathered together. Let it always be remembered that, just as with ourselves, so in China, it has only 16 INTRODUCTORY : THE THREE RELIGIONS been ‘‘ through much tribulation ” that men of high purpose have attained to the knowledge they possessed. Their store of knowledge, which they valued above their lives, has come down as a priceless bequest to _ their own people. Nor has it been bequeathed to them alone, but to us, who, in these late days, are pressing upon the Chinese, not always as graci- ously as we might, a religion which could find no adequate medium of expression were it not for the variety and accuracy of their observations, and the admirable terminology, so far as it goes, which has given those observations their separate and well- defined distinctions. Now, I think we may take it that the religion handed down by Confucius has its roots in a primi- tive animism. His religion undoubtedly inculcates — the worship of the forces of nature, or perhaps the spirits which govern natural phenomena. These spirits, however, are all subject to a personal Supreme Ruler, who governs all creation. As Shang Ti, He is sacrificed to by the Emperor. As T‘ien, or Heaven, in the impersonal, or less personal, sense, all men are of His generation and may cry to Him. Filial piety demands also that the departed ancestors shall not be forgotten, but be worshipped in sacrifice. At a later date, partly as the result of Buddhist idolatry and Taoist hero-worship, and partly as the outcome of the idea which lies behind the worship of Confucius himself, the State adopted the principle of canonising eminent deceased statesmen and heroes, INTRODUCTORY : THE THREE RELIGIONS 17 appointing them as tutelary deities over the various divisions of the country, and even recognising their authority in the realms beyond the present life. The temples of these tutelary deities are now found everywhere, and though often in the charge of a Taoist, or a Buddhist priest, none of the three religions lays claim to these temples for its own. For purposes of convenience, however, I shall include this cult under that of Confucianism, for theoretically Confucianism is the real State religion, and these tutelary deities are as much the outcome of degenera- tion, or development, in that cult as they are of Taoist origin. The Ju Chiao, which consists chiefly of the officials and literati, has, in addition to the above-named degenerate, or at least greatly modified form, the rites and practices laid down by Confucius, and also the worship of Confucius and his immediate dis- ciples. The Taoist has the divinities and practices of his school, a school which has degenerated from a search after the absolute and the immortal into the pursuit of thaumaturgy and demonolatry and the practice in general of the magical side of pre- Confucian and pre-Laocian religion. The Buddhist also has his own objects of worship, and especially his offices for the dead. Some five to ten millions of Moslems and ‘two millions of Christians have, of course, their own category. To sum up, then, there are three recognised re- ligions in China. Of these Confucianism is generally 2 18 INTRODUCTORY : THE THREE RELIGIONS counted as the State religion, but Taoism and Buddh- ism are also recognised.. Buddhism was imported from India, but Confucianism and Taoism are native religions which have grown out of a common primi- tive stock, This primitive religion originated in a prehistoric animism, but, before the separation of Confucianism and Taoism, it had already reached a higher stage, while still retaining its animistic and magical elements. The spiritual character of neither Confucianism nor Taoism was highly developed, and the introduction of Mahayana Buddhism stimulated spiritual inquiry and practice, influencing both the other cults, and being in turn influenced by both. The three cults may not be considered as mutually exclusive. All three claim to teach Tao, or the order of the universe as it relates to mankind, but they possess no satisfactory term for religion. Partly through inherent forces, and partly as the result of Buddhist influence, a great development oc- curred during the Christian era in the national religion. This consisted of the canonisation and worship of ; deceased worthies, statesmen, warriors, and officials, who have become the tutelary deities of the country, and are now, together with the ancestor, prominent objects of worship. This cult being part of the State religion, I have included it in Confucianism, though none of the three religions recognises it as its own. To generalise is as unsatisfactory as it is easy, and it is perhaps, therefore, indiscreet to do so in regard to the three religions, but, taking a broad INTRODUCTORY : THE THREE RELIGIONS 19 survey, we may say that Confucianism represents the politico-religious and moral side of Chinese life, the community and the State ranking foremost in the mind of its founder. Taoism may be considered as standing for the individual, for the ascetico- spiritualistic and magical side of the national life. Buddhism also may be reckoned as individualistic, and in especial as representing eschatology and soteriology and the vanitas vanitatum of mundane existence. LECTURE II CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL You will have observed from the syllabus that I have arranged this course of lectures subjectively, rather than historically. In order, however that you may have some idea of the authoritative founda- tions on which the three religions rest, I have con- sidered it well at the outset to devote the next three © lectures to a brief discussion of their great founders and transmitters. For just as any discussion of Christianity loses much of its value when it ignores the person of Our Lord and the Bible, so do the religions of the Far East when their Founders and original doctrines are ignored. As in the case of the other races of humanity, so with China, the men who first discovered and propa- gated religious ideas are unknown to us. The first name which appears when Chinese mythology enters upon the legendary period is that of Fu-hsi, the re- puted first ruler of the Chinese, and the date of his reign is generally reckoned as from 2852 to 2788 B.c. The only references I need make to him are, first, that he is credited with the invention of the famous pa- kua in its original form, that is, an octagonal figure containing eight series of whole and broken lines, 20 CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL 21 which has played an important part in divination and natural philosophy; second, that he offered sacri- fice on T‘ai Shan in the province of Shantung, one of the sacred mountain peaks of the country. While the written authority for this act of worship is 2,000 years after the event, it is interesting as being the first statement we possess of the earliest recorded act of religious worship in China. The sacrifice thus offered was one which in succeeding ages has been the prerogative of the Son of Heaven, to the Power above him. Passing over Shén Nung, the reputed father of agriculture and medicine, we come to Huang Ti, 2704-2595 B.c., during which period further religious observances are mentioned, and to him is also attri- buted the erection of “‘ the first temple for the offering of sacrifices,’’ + probably for the worship of ancestors. In the days of his successor, Shao Hao, the latter and his officers gave themselves up to heretical doc- trines, probably of a magical or spiritualistic order, to the neglect and violation of the worship of Shang Ti. Chiian Hsii, who followed him, suppressed these heretical teachings and restored the orthodox sacri- fices. Little or nothing else is known of this ruler, but in this one act it is not unlikely that he prevented his people from retrogressing into a gross animism from which they were slowly emerging. His grandson, the famous emperor, Yao (23857- 2258 B.c.); Yao’s equally famous successor, Shun 1 Hirth’s Ancient History of China, p. 21, 22 CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL (2258-2206 3.c.); the great hydraulic engineer and emperor, Yti (2205-2198 B.c.), who founded the first dynasty, known as the Hsia dynasty; T‘ang (1766— 1754 B.c.), who overthrew the last licentious sovereign of the Hsia and founded the second or Shang dynasty ; and Wu (1122-1116), who overthrew the last wicked sovereign of the Shang, and founded the famous Chou dynasty, together with his able brother, Wén, whom he appointed regent at his death,—these are some of the most noteworthy of “ divine rulers ” to whom both Confucianists and Taoists ascribe the development of civilisation and of religion. While, however, other sages are mentioned in addition to these, and though Confucius calls him- self “a transmitter and not a creator,” it is to him, ‘‘the uncrowned king of China,” that are owing most of the records we possess of the ancient religion of the Chinese. He it was who edited the ancient records, and handed them down in the Five Canons, namely, the Book of History, the ancient Odes, the Book of Changes (or Divination), the Annals of the State of Lu, and the Book of Rites, though at least the last has since undergone considerable re- vision. As Confucianism is so closely associated with the great sage and his teachings, which he based on what he considered to be the doctrines of the best of his predecessors, I propose now to give you a brief account of his life and work. For this purpose, I cannot do better than repeat what I wrote three or CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL 23 four years ago, while translating the Analects of Confucius into English.! CoNnFUCIUS When China’s great philosopher was born in 551 B.c., the third historic dynasty, that of Chou, was wearing to its close. The blood which had coursed so vigorously in the veins of the martial Wu was running thin in the arteries of his degenerate descendants. The feudal system, founded to strengthen the Empire, had in the hands of weak monarchs reduced it to a congeries of warring States, awaiting the advent of China’s Napoleon, Ch‘in Shih Huang. He it was who built the famous Great Wall of China, and who, after the days of Confucius, was destined to break the power of the barons, and unite their mutually antagonistic territories into one great empire, an empire which, under different dynasties, has continued and increased to our own age. Confucius, then, was born into a troubled period. The barons, more powerful than their nominal sovereign, encroached and made war upon each other, at the instigation of ministers even more crafty and ambitious than themselves. The suffering people were ground under the iron heel of the impost- gatherer, dragged from their fields and set to forced labour at and for the pleasure of their rulers, and 1 Analects of Confucius, by W. B. Soothill (Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier, 1910, 15s,). 24 CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL driven to battles and raids in which they had no interest, and from which they derived no benefit. That this statement is not exaggerated is borne witness to by incidents in the life of the sage. Once, for instance, when he was passing by Mount Tai, he is said to have heard the mournful wailing of a woman on the hillside. Sending a disciple to inquire why she sat wailing in so lonely a spot, he was an- swered, ‘‘ My husband’s father was killed here by a tiger, my husband also, and now my son has met the same fate.” ‘‘Then why,” asked Confucius, “‘ did she dwell in so dreadful a place?” ‘“‘ Because,” answered she, “‘ here there is no oppressive ruler.”’ “‘ Scholars,” said he to his disciples, ‘“‘ remember this : oppressive rule is more cruel than a tiger.” Power amongst these barons bred luxury, luxury lust, and lust unrelenting destruction. Princes there were who set all morality at defiance and lived lives of open shame, as witness the acceptance by the sage’s own prince, the Duke of Lu, of a present of eighty singing girls, an act which drove our sage to throw up his office, shake the dust of his beloved native State off his feet, and depart to the life of a wanderer and an exile. Men of virtuous character, despairing of reformation, left their portfolios and withdrew from the world, becoming recluses amongst the mountains, or, far from the busy haunts of men, tilling a hard living from an earth kinder and sweeter than the hearts of princes. Some of these recluses, embittered by their sorrows, even poured scorn on CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL 25 Confucius for his futile attempts to stay the “ dis- order which, like a swelling flood,” rolled in resistless torrent through the land. It must be remembered that the China of that period did not cover anything like half the territory included in the China of to-day. It was limited to half a dozen of the northern provinces, and on the south barely crossed the Yangtse. The remainder of the country was thinly peopled with tribes of abori- gines, who in later ages were gradually driven across the present borders, or survive in the mountains of the south and west to our own day. Such then was the China into which our sage was born. His ancestry by some is traced back to the great founder of the first dynasty, Huang Ti, and at least there seems reason to believe that he was of noble descent. It would be gratifying to have no legendary phenomena to record connected with the sage’s birth. They need not, however, be discussed here. Nor need we dwell on his youth and up- bringing, save to note that during childhood he gave indications of his future tastes in a love for playing with sacrificial articles and in imitating the temple services. His later career, hampered by conscience, was scarcely even moderately successful, death being necessary to appreciation. Though he lived to a ripe old age, travelled in many States, maintained his course in all honour, and won the reverence and love of his disciples, the princes of his day saw in him 26 CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL little but a pedantic philosopher with Arcadian notions impossible of realisation. Only after his decease, in 479 B.c., did any of them recognise that the ‘“ mountain” had indeed fallen, a mountain that the princes of the land from that day to this have been, with more or less failure, endeavouring with much acclamation to rebuild. : The habits of the sage may be learned from the tenth book of the Analects, where he is described by his disciples in all formality, his and theirs. His public bearing was punctilious to a degree, and in private he permitted himself no undue freedom, not even as to his mode of lying in bed. He was gracious and kindly, but never relaxed himself even to his son, to whom it is incredible to imagine him as ever amusing. His habits, and perhaps his character, may be summed up in one sentence from Book x. 9: “If his mat were not straight he would not sit on it.” He was a punctilious gentleman of the old school, to whom our modern laxity, not to say flippancy of manner, would have amounted to immorality. As to his mental and moral attitude, we find him, as may be surmised from his habits just referred to, first and foremost a formalist. This word sublimates his character. His power of self-control was admir- able, and duty was ever his lodestone. Of religious instincts from his childhood, religious he remained . throughout his days. With too evenly balanced a mind to sympathise with the fantasies of the super- stitious, he maintained a mental attitude towards CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL 27 the unseen world which was respectful but never familiar, reverent but never fervent. Knowing God only as a Majesty and never as a Father, the spring of his affections could not bubble joyously forth, indeed such joy would have seemed to him frivolity, and while he was not without true affection, yet expression of affection he deemed it the part of a philosopher rigorously to confine. To a rigid and estimable code of honour he united an urbanity and courtesy which made a profound impression upon his followers, and which failed not to influence men in more exalted station; but his honour ever prevented his courtesy from degenerating into sycophancy, even for the sake of advancing his public principles, much less his private welfare. His moral life remained untainted in the midst of a corrupt generation, in which vice flaunted itself in the open, and virtue shrank abashed and in despair. As to his doctrines, though they chiefly relate to the relationships between man and man, they are far from destitute of an element higher than mere humanity. The powers of the unseen world have their acknowledged part in controlling the spirit of man in his duty to his fellows. God, the Supreme Ruler, is recognised as a Being to be revered and worshipped. He it is who has produced the order of the universe, and decreed the various classes of mankind. Associated with Him are a multitude of spirits, who have their distinctive spheres in the direction of affairs celestial and terrestrial, and by 28 CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL these the good are guided and protected. The spirits of a man’s forefathers are also and especially to be worshipped, as if they were present, a worship upon which the well-being of society is dependent. There — is room in such a system for unlimited multiplication of gods and spirits, with the natural consequence that the national, and therefore in a sense Confucian, deities of China, altogether apart from the Taoist and Buddhist cults, have become legion. Sacrifices, propitiatory rather than expiatory, are ordained for approaching the object of worship, for with empty hands it were unseemly to come. Virile sentiments are given utterance to in connection with such offerings, and it is recognised that the spirit in which the worshipper presents them is of higher value than the gifts themselves. That Jesus Christ — will ultimately stay the rivers of blood annually shed in sacrifice throughout the Empire, and there- with the idolatry and superstition of China, is merely a question of time and faithful service; but may we not admit that the sacrifices retained and handed down by Confucius have kept open the way of approach to the abode of the Divine until the great Day of Atonement ? Sin and its punishment are acknowledged, the punishment being looked for in the present rather than in a future state of existence. Reformation from wrong-doing is required, rather than penitence and appeal for remission. Prayer is recognised as a duty, and as acceptable and efficacious; but it is CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL 29 not daily prayer, or a sanctifying communion with the Divine. It is rather an attitude of mind, or a formal sacrifice, which should be preceded by fasting and bathing. No priesthood or mediator is required, the worshipper being his own priest, and the sacrifice his medium of acceptance; yet, in a sense, the Emperor is the high-priest for his people, the officer for his district, and the father for his household. But the regulations for ceremonial sacrifices are many, and therefore, on great occasions, a director, or master of ceremonies, is needful for order. Only the Emperor may offer the State sacrifices to Shang Ti, the Over-King, but the ear of Heaven is open to the cry of all, even of the repentant evil-doer. A future life is not denied, though Confucius avoided the discussion of it; in a measure he confirmed it by his insistent demand for sacrificial remembrance of the ancestor, and his command to worship the ancestral spirits, as if they were present. As to his ethical code it is excellent and practical, but by no means heroic. Prosaic and not poetie, it commands respect rather than admiration; indeed, both in its religious and moral aspects, the whole code of Confucius resembles the wintry silver of the moon rather than the golden glow and warmth of the sun. Nothing is left to the imagination, nothing stirs it, for to him the romantic would have been repugnant, and to turn the other cheek pusillanimity. He did not even rise to the height of Laotzu in advocating beneficence to enemies, for if he returned good for x 30 CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL evil, what had he left to return for good? On the contrary he proclaimed the sacred duty of the ven- detta, that a man ought not to live under the same heaven with the murderer of his father, ever need : to seek a sword for the murderer of his brother, or live in the same State with the murderer of his friend. : The term “‘ to lie ”’ does not occur, but he advocated earnestly the value of sincerity. His five cardinal virtues were kindness, rectitude, decorum, wisdom, and sincerity, and the prince was to be the exemplar of these virtues to his people. Indeed, in his teaching, the prince was the virtuoso for whom the song was | written, and to which the people were the chorus, for it must always be remembered that Confucius was a courtier; hence, in his system, the gracious in- fluences of virtue were to stream down from the lofty height of the Court to the lower level of the people. Morality and religious ceremonies were his panacea for all the many ills of his age. Alas! that the princes should have despised his panacea. The highest point in his moral teaching was the golden rule negatively stated: ‘‘ What you do not like yourself do not extend to others.” Asked to sum up his code in one word, he chose the term “shu,” which Dr. Legge translates reciprocity, but which seems to mean more than this, for reciprocity means, Do as you are done by, whereas ‘ shu ” suggests the idea of following one’s better nature, that is, Be generous—a nobler sentiment, though CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL 31 lacking the life-blood of the crowning word of Chris- tianity. Duty to parents, continued after death to a degree that is an unjust tax on the life of the living, a tax impossible of redemption save to the very few, takes the leading place in the religion and ethics of the sage. Respect for elders follows in its train. Adul- tery is described somewhere as the chief of sins, though Mencius considers that for a man to die leaving no,son to serve the family altar is the chief sin. Loyalty both to prince and friend is inculcated, as also conscientiousness in all one’s doings. Recti- tude and self-control, courtesy and moderation, find also a notable place. Neither riches nor culture compare with moral character, which takes precedence in value of all mundane honours, and what con- stitutes the excellence of a neighbourhood is not its wealth, but its virtue. Virtue and religious ob- servances are a greater renovating power than punish- ments. Character will out; it cannot be concealed. Prejudice is to be avoided, and an unbiased judgment to be cultivated. Only the truly virtuous can be trusted to love and to hate. The ready of tongue are unreliable. In conclusion, neither pleasure, nor honours, nor wealth are the summum bonum, but virtue, for it is the foundation of true happiness; and virtue is to be attained through the energy of the individual will. But the aim of Confucius was not so much the renovation of the individual as the renovation of 32 CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL the State; his mind and object were ethico-political, his desire the renaissance of the golden age of an- tiquity through a return to the virtue of primitive times. Therefore, as already remarked, the prince ~ as father of his people, must take the lead, and as the rivers that make fruitful the land take their rise on the mountain-tops, so moral renovation. must begin at the summit of the State. Alas! the mountain- tops were waterless, and what our Sage was able to pour upon them rapidly distilled in so rare a moral atmosphere; for if the rich shall hardly enter into the realm of moral nobility, how much less shall princes, degenerating generation by generation through the allurements of luxury and lust, be able to filter the vitalising waters of moral chastity to the shrivelled souls of their people? On these arid heights Confucius failed, for even in his own State, when the indications were most hopeful for success, the eighty singing girls sent to entice the prince proved more potent than the lofty virtue of the Sage, and in the end it was in the hearts of his poorer disciples that his doctrines found their early and more hardy growth, rather than in the Courts of the great. Though failure dogged his wandering footsteps while with men, his philosophy was not allowed to die, and notwithstanding that it has never satisfied the people at large, as witness the success of Taoism and Buddhism, it appeals to the conservative and educated element, and has become both the base and summit of Chinese religion and morals. A man CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL 33 who has lived so long in the esteem and affections of a huge nation cannot but be classed amongst the mightiest forces of the past. Nevertheless, his inferiority to Moses, who lived a thousand years before him, either as legislator, administrator, moral philosopher, or religious seer, is manifest to those who are willing to study the Pentateuch, and his own writings, as well as those of his disciples, lack that throbbing pulse of divinity which has made the history, poetry, and soul-inspiring prophecy of the Old Testament live with perennial vitality. Despite a limited vision and an inelastic nature, Confucius nobly did his best to benefit humanity with what inferior material in history, poetry, and ritual he had to his hand; and the missionary and the student may well be profoundly grateful to him for rescuing so much of varied interest and value from the rapa- cious maw of destructive Time, and the more bar- barous hands of ignorant men. In addition to the five canonical records edited by Confucius, the Chinese now count amongst their sacred writings the Sst Shu, or Four Books—namely, the Great Learning, of which the brief text is by Confucius, and the commentary by one of his dis- ciples ; the Doctrine of the Mean, being the Sage’s teaching on the golden mean, compiled by a disciple ; the Analects, or Sayings of Confucius, compiled by his disciples, or their disciples ; and the Book of Mencius, said to have been compiled by Mencius himself. In 212 3.c. Ch‘in Shih Huang, the Napoleon of 3 34 CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL China, an enemy of the Confucian type of philosophy, sought out and destroyed all the books of this class that he could find. In 195 3.c. Kao Ti overthrew the shortlived Ch‘in dynasty, visited the tomb of Confucius, and offered an ox. In a.p. 1 the Sage was canonised as “ Duke Ni, the all complete and illustrious.” In a.D. 57 sacrifices were ordered to be offered to him in conjunction with Duke Wén, until then the beau idéal of the Chou dynasty. In 492 he was styled “‘the venerable Ni, the accomplished Sage.” In 609 his shrine was separated from that of Duke Wen, and a temple was erected to him at every centre of learning. In 657 he was styled “ K‘ung, the ancient Teacher, the perfect Sage,” at which his title has remained to this day. All through the centuries his sacrifices were of the second grade, until 1907, the year of the Centenary of Protestant Missions in China, when the late Empress-Dowager raised him to the first grade, thus ranking him with Shang Ti. This was her reply to the Western deifica- tion of Jesus Christ. During the past five years there has been more open and severe criticism of the Sage than ever in history. The present Republican Govern- ment is strongly opposed to many of his political sentiments, and in at least one important centre an order has been issued, in the interests of religious liberty, for the removal of his shrine from schools supported out of public funds. Despite his best endeavours, Confucius failed to fill the office of a great religious leader, for he ’ CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL 35 failed to guide his people out of an animism or polytheism doomed to end in limitless superstition, up to the unity he sought—the One True Infinite God, the Creator, the Adorner, the Father. The day is already dawning when the soul of this race will demand its rightful share in the nobler truth which the mind of Confucius but dimly apprehended, and which will relegate him to the honourable position no Christian will gainsay, of chief classical master and great moral philosopher of this potentially great nation. MENCcIUsS The disciples of Confucius are said to have num- bered three thousand. If there be any truth in this figure, it would probably include all who attended his school in the various States he visited during his sixty years of teaching. Of these disciples, seventy- two are said to have been his more immediate followers, Only thirty-six of these are named in the Analects, of whom some half a dozen hold positions of especial prominence. These last, or their disciples, were re- sponsible for the compilation of the Analects, or the Sayings of Confucius, and to two of them we are in- debted for the Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean, two of the four books which form the immediate classics of the school of Confucius, as distinguished from the five ancient classics which he himself edited. We need not stay to discuss these 36 CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL disciples; but pass on to Mencius, whose work is the fourth of the Four Books. Mencius is the latinised form of Méng Tzu, the philosopher Méng. Little is known of him beyond what appears in his book. His birth is placed in 872 B.c., a hundred years after the death of Confucius. He is said to have attained the age of eighty-four years, dying in the year 289 B.c. As Dr. Legge says, ‘“‘ The first twenty-three years of his life thus synchronised with the last twenty-three of Plato’s. Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, Demonsthenes, and other great men of the West, were also his contemporaries. When we place Mencius among them, he can look them in the face. He does not need to hide a diminished head.” He was born in the north-east of China, in the State of Tsou, the immediate neighbour of the Lu State, his early life thus being spent near to the birthplace of his great master, Confucius. His father died while he was young, but he was brought up by his mother, one of the admirable women of China. Every schoolboy knows that the mother of Mencius “thrice ” removed her dwelling for the sake of her son. Living at first near a cemetery, the child amused himself by imitating the mourners. ‘‘ This is no place for my son,”’ said his mother, and so she removed to a house in the market-place. Here he took to playing the shopkeeper, “vaunting his wares, and chaffering with customers.” Dissatisfied with the influence these surroundings were having on her son’s character, she CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL 37 again removed, this time close to a school. Here the observant, imitative child took to copying the deportment taught to the scholars. ‘ This is the proper place for my son,” said the mother, and there they remained. One day the butchers were killing some pigs close at hand, when the inquisitive boy asked why they were killing them. ‘For food for you,” was the hasty answer. Realising immediately that this was not true, and fearing to teach him to be untruthful, she went out and bought some of the pork. But the most famous of her lessons is the cutting of the web she was weaving. One day when he returned from school, to which he had been sent after he was grown, she asked him how he had progressed. In an indifferent manner he replied, ‘‘ Oh, well enough.” Taking a knife she instantly slit her warp in two. Alarmed by such an extraordinary act, he ventured to ask what it meant, whereupon she showed him that she had only done to the piece she was weaving what he was doing to his life—and the lesson stood in need of no repetition. It is said that he was the pupil of disciples of Tzt Ssti, the grandson of Confucius. All that we know for certain is what he himself says: ‘ Although I could not be a disciple of Confucius himself, I have endeavoured to cultivate my character and knowledge by means of others [who were].” Like his great master he spent his days in the Courts of kings and rulers, whose government he sought to rectify by 38 CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL the inculcation of moral and political ideals based on those of Confucius. In old age he is said to have given himself over to the compilation of his book, being assisted in the task by disciples of his school. _ His mind and teaching were ethico-political, or even politico-religious. His book reveals an outspoken- ness creditable to his courage, and an insight indicative of outstanding ability. Between the days of Confucius and those of Mencius, who represent the conservative school, the indepen- dent thinkers classed by them as heterodox, and whose characteristics almost justify their classifi- cation with the Taoist school, had indulged in specu- | lations of a varied order. Amongst others, Yang Tzii had advocated a species of anarchy in the shape of individualism, or every man a law to himself. Moh Tzu had preached a form of communism in which love was to be the solvent of all human distresses. Hsiin Tzti and his school had declared the nature of man to be evil, as against the accepted theory that man is by nature good, a doctrine arising out of the theory that Heaven, which is itself good, had bestowed upon man his nature, and could not, there- fore, have bestowed a bad nature upon him. It was into an age philosophically more advanced than that in which Confucius had lived that Mencius was born, and in consequence philosophical ideas are introduced into his discussions with greater freedom than his master had allowed to himself, by whom speculation had been regarded as unprofitable and even dangerous, CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL 39 To summarise the teachings of Mencius is to spoil them of their charm, but briefly, and in so far as they concern our present subject, they are as follows. Like Confucius he recognises a Supreme Power above men, and again like Confucius he employs the impersonal term Heaven to indicate this Power. Only three times does he use the personal term, Shang Ti, and in two of the cases as a quotation from the classics. Heaven is the Cause of causes, the First Cause. Man’s nature is of Heaven’s conferring. It is therefore good in essence, but this goodness requires constant cultivation in order to its maintenance and development. To some, by natural capacity, such cultivation is easier than to others, but all men are called to and capable of virtue. Men, it is true, are evil in practice, but they recognise their evil deeds as contrary to their Heaven-bestowed instincts. Even the evil man, if he mourn and purify himself, may serve God (Shang Ti). Thus repentance towards God and the cultivation of virtue are clearly de-: manded. Heaven has also subordinated the people under princes and leaders, who should assist God, that is, not only in governing the people, but in lead- ing them in the right way. When they cease to do so, they may be deposed, for the people are chief, the tutelary deities secondary, and the prince least of all. Mencius follows Confucius in maintaining the State sacrifices to Heaven, and to the Nature spirits or tutelary deities, and of course also to the ancestors, 40 CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL But he concerns himself less with sacrifices than with the inculcation of morals, which are those of his master. In like manner he concerns himself little with the future destiny of man, for while not denying a future life—indeed, tacitly recognising it in the ; offices for the dead—he limits his attention to the duties of the present rather than the possibilities of the future life. With this all too brief a consideration of the teaching of one who is counted only secondary to his great master, I must leave him, and close with a reference to another epoch-making follower of this school. Cuu Tzu Since the days immediately following the Con-. fucian period three great schools of commentators have arisen. The first of these was during the Han dynasty (206 B.c., to a.D. 220); the second and greatest was during the Sung dynasty (A.D. 960-— 1278); and the third during the late Ts‘ing, or Manchu dynasty (A.D. 1644-1912). Chu Hsi, that is, Chu Tzi, or the philosopher Chu, lived during the Sung dynasty, from 1180-1200. An omnivorous reader, in his early days he studied both Taoist and Buddhist books, and it is also probable that he may have become acquainted with Mohammedan and Nestorian ideas. The greater part of his life, how- ever, was devoted to a study of the ancient classics and of the works of the Confucian school. Certain CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL 41 it is that his voluminous commentaries on these works and his philosophical treatises have been the orthodoxy of China for seven hundred years. For, while eminent writers of the late dynasty have severely criticised his views, they have remained the authoritative standard for the nation. He maintained the doctrine of Confucius and Mencius in regard to the innate goodness of man, and supported the Confucian code of State sacrifices. Indeed, he faithfully endeavoured to maintain all the standards laid down by his master. The accusa- tion has been laid against him that he denied the existence of God, and the immortality of the soul. For instance, he describes Heaven as Law, and this definition, together with his prevailing agnosticism, has undoubtedly influenced the minds of many of his fellow countrymen. Nevertheless, in other places he is by no means either atheistic or agnostic, as may be seen in his commentaries. Perhaps his position will be made more clear by the following quotation from Dr. Giles : ‘“‘ In one passage Chu Hsi uses language which will not bear misconstruction : ““«The blue empyrean, which we call Tien, and which revolves unceasingly, is that and nothing more. To declare, as people do, that it contains a Being who awards punishments for crimes is impossible ; such statements are without authority, and there is no evidence to that effect.’ “Tt is, however, a mistake—and one which I have 42 CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL made myself—to think that Chu Hsi denied altogether the existence of an unseen Power. When speaking of the occurrence of the term T‘ien in the Confucian Canon, he says that— ‘«<¢Tt must be interpreted as the sky, sometimes as a Chu-tsai (a Ruler, or Governor), and sometimes as a principle.’ : ‘* And in another place he says that all unseen powers or influences may be gathered under the heading T‘ien. To one who asked him if there was any return after death, he replied categorically : *** When we go, that is all; how can matter which has once been dissipated ever be brought together again ?’ ”? In this clause Chu Tzii may have been referring rather to apparitions and ghosts than to the continued existence of the disembodied spirit. Extremely little of his work has been translated into English, nor has it ever been thoroughly studied by Europeans. In the meantime, therefore, it is well to reserve one’s judgment, but there seems justification for saying that he added nothing to the religious life of his nation, but rather encouraged that kind of agnosti- cism which is the enemy of research and knowledge. The question has been much discussed of late, especially amongst the Chinese, whether Confucianism is a religion, or merely a philosophy. So far as Confucius is concerned, no one will maintain that he 1 Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of Religions, vol. i. p. 109 (Clarendon Press). CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL 43 was a religious founder such as Moses or Mohammed, but that he was eminently ‘a religious leader seems evident ; for he found in existence a decadent re- ligion, restored it as far as he could according to earlier models, himself observed it, devotedly advo- cated its observance, and based the whole of his system on such observance. His recognition of an invisible Power or powers, originating and controlling man’s destiny, and of man’s relationship and duty thereto, his strenuous advocacy of sacrifice and obedience to those powers, his insistence upon the worship of the departed “as if they were present,” and the ritual which he at least edited, all single him out as something more than a mere philo- sopher, and give him a place as a religious leader. As a spiritual force Confucianism is not, and never has been, vital, for it is spiritually pulseless and un- emotional, and its tendency towards agnosticism is a fatal barrier to true philosophy, whose very life- breath is research and inquiry, even into that which seems unknowable. LECTURE III TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU, AND THEIR SCHOOL I HAVE now to introduce you to the founders of a cult very different from that which was founded by Confucius. In Confucius there appears none of the abandon which lends attraction to Laocius and his immediate followers. From the unbroken plain of human duty and formal observance we soar at once to the mountain peak and gaze into an unplumbed abyss of mystery and speculation. Here are wonder and enchantment. There the daily round, the common task. Here are also the slippery path, the precipice, the fearful fall, the mocking sprite, the jeering demon; and while the followers of Confucius have walked with safer feet, those of Laocius have slipped and slid, and the sprite and the demon have seized upon and bewildered them, so that no longer do they thrill at the splendour of the height or the majesty of the deep, but dwell in fear of the demons which have enmeshed them. Laocius Little is known of Laocius. His very existence 44 TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU 45 has been disputed. One Sinologue denies the authen- ticity of his only book, the Tao Té Ching; another declares that its contents were formulated under Buddhist influence, and that the names of its puta- tive author show that, by Laocius, Buddha is meant. The historic personality of Laocius is, however, generally accepted, the date of his birth being placed in 604 B.c. Into the numerous legends concerning his birth we need not enter. It is recorded that Confucius, his junior by fifty years, had an inter- view with him in his extreme old age. The old philosopher is reported to have treated his youthful visitor with a certain amount of austerity, bidding him, ‘‘ Put away, sir, your proud air and many desires, your plausibility and ungoverned will. These are of no advantage to you.” The account of the interview is not enlightening, but Confucius is said to have remarked afterwards: ‘I know how birds fly, fishes swim, and animals run. Yet the runner may be snared, the swimmer hooked, and the flier shot. But there is the dragon. I cannot tell how he mounts on the wind through the clouds, and rises to heaven. ‘To-day I have seen Laotzi, and can only compare him to the dragon.” Whether this interview is authentic is matter of doubt. Laocius is said to have been a keeper of the Archives, or of the Treasury at the Imperial Court, and in old age to have withdrawn therefrom and set out for the West. On reaching the frontier, the 1 Harly Chinese History, by H. J. Allen (S.P.C.K.). 46 TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU warden of the pass besought him, before his with- drawal from the world, to commit his principles to writing for the benefit of humanity, and the Tao Té Ching is said to have been the result. While its authenticity is disputed, its doctrines are the re- cognised basis of the primitive Taoist cult, and one may therefore believe that they represent views advocated by him, and, if not of his own compilation, yet that the book was handed down, with various additions, until it took the shape in which we now possess it. At least we have the work, and know that it is a very old one, for its existence was known a century before our era. I will now endeavour to give you some idea of its contents. Ture Tao TE CHING One fascinating word puzzles the student at the very outset—the word Tao. As Ihave already shown, it is from this one word that the followers of the cult obtain their name of Taoist, and their cult of Taoism. Now the word itself was no new word in China, for it is quite clear that there were thoughtful men before Laocius who were searchers into and followers of Tao. Its meaning in brief is Way—Tur Way. In sound and meaning it bears so close a resemblance to the great word of Buddhism, Dharma, or Law, that the surmise of early Hindu in- fluence in Taoism is worthy of respect. But Tao was used before the days of Laocius to describe the opera- TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU A7 tions of Nature, and may be interpreted as meaning the Course or Way of Nature, or Natural Law. One author translates it by ‘“‘God”; others by. “ The Universal Supreme Reason ”’ (“‘ Raison supréme universelle”?); ‘‘ The Great Way of the World” (‘* Grande Voie du Monde’”’);”’ Logos”; ‘“‘ The Way ”’ ; and by “‘ Nature.”? Some leave it untranslated. It seems, indeed, impossible to find its exact equivalent in Western languages. Before meeting with Mr. Watters’ term “‘ Nature,” I had endeavoured to apply it to the varying uses of Tao, and as I have stated, if it be used with a capital letter for Tao in its abso- lute conception, and with a small letter for tao in its relative or concrete expressions, ‘‘ Nature”? and ‘nature’ approach to the meaning. Ifyou can also conceive of the idea, in the pantheistic sense, of a Power, ‘‘a Power that makes for righteousness,” immaterial, indefinable, eternal, ubiquitous, which finds differential expression in multitudinous forms, or powers, then you will have some conception of the idea which Laocius seems to be striving to exhibit. In this sense, translating freely by using the word Power instead of Way, we might interpret the opening phrase of the Tao Té Ching thus : ‘¢ The Power which can be defined is not the eternal Power; the name by which it can be named is not its eternal name. When nameless, it is the origin of the universe (literally the heavens and the earth) ; when it has a name, it is the genetrix (mother) of all 48 TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU things. Therefore (only he who is) ever passionless may behold its mystery. (He who is) ever subject to his passions may (only) see its external manifesta- tions. These two things (ic. the mysterious or immaterial, and the manifestation, or material) differ in name, but are the same in origin. Their unity is a deep, a deep of ae it is the portal of all mystery.” He speaks of Tao as invisible, inaudible,. and intangible; as without substance, yet containing within it all substance; as all-producing, all-pervad- ing, all-nourishing, and all-perfecting. It is formless, yet comprehends all possible forms. He tells us that man follows the laws of earth, earth of Heaven, Heaven of Tao, and Tao of spontaneity. Tao there- fore is a law to itself. While the Tao considered as immutable or eternal has no name, when it has produced order, or phenomena, it becomes nameable. In its nature it is calm, void, solitary, and unchang- ing; in operation it revolves through the universe of being, acting everywhere, but acting mysteriously, spontaneously, and without effort. It is the primal cause of the universe, and is the model or rule for all creatures, but chiefly for man. It represents also that ideal state of pristine perfection in which all things acted harmoniously and spontaneously, and when good and evil were unknown; the return to that condition constitutes the suwmmum bonum of the philosophy of Laocius. Tao enters therefore into human life as a moral TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU 49 principle in the form of Té or virtue—hence the name Tao Té Ching, or Classic of Tao and Té. The virtuous man always seeks to conform in all things to Tao, but, like Tao, he does so without striving. Like water he is always humble, seeking the lowest place, yet water, the softest thing in the world, can dissolve its hardest things. Since Tao is opposed to strife, Laocius advocates the policy of inaction, that is non- interference or quietism. It naturally follows from this quietist spirit that the doctrine of requiting injury with kindness, for which Confucius had no use, finds clear expression, and that war is abhorrent. The general who has slain a multitude ought to weep and wail, and wear sackcloth. Such are some of the ideas found in the brief treatise attributed to Laocius. The terseness of its style renders it extremely difficult not only to trans- late, but to understand. He often seems to be struggling to express thoughts too deep for his vocabulary. For the nobility of his contribution to the missionary purpose of revealing to men their spiritual possibilities, we may well pay him our homage of gratitude. Despite its excesses and de- ficiencies the Tao Té Ching is deserving of a more prominent place in a missionary’s curriculum than it has hitherto been granted. To sum up then, Laocius presents us with an impersonal Tao, that is to say, an impersonal Principle or Power, which, viewed in the absolute sense, is inscrutable, indefinable, and impossible to name. 4 50 TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU Viewed in the relative sense it appears under many guises and in every part of the universe. It cannot be correctly translated as God. Indeed in one obscure passage he says, “‘ It appears to have been before God.” Tao is, however, the source and sup- port of all things. Calmly, without effort, and unceasingly, it works for good; and man by yielding himself to it, unresisting, unstriving, may reach his highest well-being. Suffering is the result of man’s departure from the Tao state of pristine innocence and simplicity. It would be well to give up all study and the pursuit of knowledge, and return to the absolutely simple life of Tao. War, striving, suffer- ing, would then all cease, and, floating along the placid river of time, the individual in due course would be absorbed in the ocean of Tao. Pope’s lines, as Watters has pointed out, are very similar in their sentiment to the teaching of the Chinese sage who lived more than two thousand years before him : “All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is, nature the soul ; That, changed through all, and yet in all the same, Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame, Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, Lives through all life, extends through all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent, Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart, To Ir no high, no low, no great, no small, It fills, Ir bounds, connects, and equals all,” TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU 51 CHUANG-TZU As Socrates had his Plato, Confucius his Mencius, Buddha his Ashvagosha, and our Lord his Paul, so Laocius had his Chuang-tzti. Mencius and Chuang- tzu, who were contemporaries, are the two most brilliant writers of antiquity, perhaps of all Chinese history, and Chuang-tzii (so little read), in imaginative power the greater of the two. There is a depth of sincerity wedded to a paradoxical quaintness, a spirit of humour allied to an incisiveness of argument, which in both of them continually remind one of Plato’s Dialogues. The two best versions of Chuang-tzti are those of Dr. Giles and Dr. Legge. Both should be read—that of Professor Giles first, for the pleasure it will give; that of Professor Legge afterwards or alongside, as an advisable corrective, especially in regard to terms which are fundamental. In Dr. Giles’ version there is a valuable introductory chapter by Canon Aubrey Moore, in which the philosophy of Chuang-tzti is compared with that of Greece, especially with the teachings of Heracleitus.' Just as the pages of Mencius are less laconic and 1 Chuang Tzi, Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer, by H. A. Giles (Quaritch, 1889, 10s.). Sacred Books of the East: The Texts of Taoism, by James Legge (Clarendon Press, 1891, 21s). I am indebted to the above works for the translations which follow. Lacking the time to provide a new version, I took the liberty of making certain alterations for the benefit of my audience. 52 TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU more brilliant than those of his master, so is it with Chuang-tzt. The well-nigh incomprehensible terse- ness and abstruseness of Laocius are amplified in the pages of Chuang-tzii with a wealth of interesting and amusing incident which add to their fascination. ‘ What, then, are the teachings of Chuang-tzii? His first chapter is given up to an exposure of the uselessness of mere sense knowledge, and the re- lativity of time and space. “* This doctrine of relativity, which is commonplace in Greek as it is in modern philosophy, is made the basis, both in ancient and modern times, of two opposite conclusions. Hither it is argued that all sense knowledge is relative, and sense is the only organ of knowledge, therefore real knowledge is im- possible; or else the relativity of sense knowledge leads men to draw a sharp contrast between sense ~ and reason and to turn away from the outward in order to listen to the inward voice. The one alterna- tive is scepticism, the other idealism. In Greek thought the earliest representatives of the former are the Sophists, of the latter Heracleitus. ** There is no doubt to which side of the antithesis Chuang-tzti belongs. His exposure of false and superficial thinking looks at first like the destruction of knowledge. Even Socrates was called a Sophist because of his destructive criticism and his restless challenging of popular views. But Chuang-tzii has nothing of the sceptic in him.” ! 1 Aubrey Moore in Giles, p. xix. TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU 53 In the second chapter, on the identity of con- traries, he maintains with Heracleitus that all things are one, for Taoism—Confucianism also—is essenti- ally monistic. All is “‘ embraced in the obliterating unity of Tao,” and the wise man, “ passing into the realm of the Infinite, finds rest therein.”’? The un- initiated, “‘ guided by the criteria of their own mind, see only the contradiction, the manifoldness, the difference ; the sage sees the many disappearing in the one, in which subjective and objective, positive and negative, here and there, somewhere and nowhere, meet and blend.” In order that you may be able to form an opinion for yourselves of his view of Tao, and that you may make the acquaintance of this great Chinese mystic, I will give you a number of quotations. He says: “Tao, though possessed of feeling and power of expression, is passive (or effortless) and formless. It can be transmitted yet not received, apprehended yet not seen. Its root is in itself (i.e. it is self-ex- istent), having continued from of old before heaven and earth existed. It is Tao which makes the spirits spirits, and which makes God a spirit ; it produced heaven and produced earth. It was above the T<ai- chi (i.e. the primordial mass, or ovum mundi, out of which the universe was formed), yet may not be deemed high; it was below the T‘ai-chi, yet may not be deemed deep; it was before the production of heaven and earth, and yet may not be deemed of long duration; it is older than the highest antiquity, 54 TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU yet may not be so considered (i.e. it is independent of the relations of time and space). Hsi Wei ob- tained it, and arranged (perhaps in the sense of discovered and described) the order of the universe. | Fu Hsi got it, and so came into possession of the principles of the ether (ch‘i mu, air mother, possibly the seasons). The Pole-star got it, and from of old has never wandered from its place. The sun and moon got it, and have never remitted (their shining). K‘an P‘i got it (the god of the K‘un-lun range, who has a man’s face and an animal’s body), and so ac- quired possession of the K‘un-lun mountains. Féng I (the Water god) got it, and so rambles over the great streams. Chien Wu (the god of Mount Tai) got it, and so dwells on Mount T‘ai. Huang Ti (founder of the first dynasty) got it, and so ascended the clouds of heaven. Chiian Hsii (a legendary ruler) got it, and so dwells in the Dark Palace. Yu Ch‘iang (the god of the north) got it, and was placed over the north. Hsi Wang Mu (the goddess of the west) got it, and has her throne over the western wild ; (of which) none knows its beginning, none its end. P‘éng Tsu got it, and lived from the days of Shun to those of the Five Chiefs (800 years). Fu Yiieh got it, and so became Minister to the Emperor Wu Ting, in a trice became master of the Empire, and now, charioted on the Milky Way, with Sagittarius and Scorpio for steeds, he takes his place among the stars.” Again : ‘** What there was before the universe, was Tao, TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU 55 Tao makes things what they are, but is not itself a thing. Nothing can produce Tao; yet everything has Tao within it, and continues to produce it without end. 7 In places Tao seems to be confused or interchanged with T‘ien, Heaven, as in the following instance : ““'The feet of a man on the earth tread but on a small space, but, going on to where he has not trod before, he traverses a great distance easily; so, man’s knowledge is but small, but, going on to what he does not already know, he comes to know what is meant by Heaven. He knows it as The Great Unity ; The Great Mystery ; The Great Illuminator ; The Great Framer; The Great Infinite; The Great Truth; The Great Determiner. This makes his knowledge complete. As The Great Unity, he com- prehends it; as The Great Mystery, he unfolds it ; as The Great Illuminator, he contemplates it ; as The Great Framer, it is to him the Cause of all; as the Great Infinite, all is to him its embodiment ; as The Great Truth, he examines it; as The Great Determiner, he holds it fast. ‘¢Thus Heaven is to him all; accordance with it is the brightest intelligence. Mystery has in this its pivot ; in this is the beginning, Such being the case, the explanation of it is as if it were no explanation ; the knowledge of it is as if it were no knowledge. (At first) he does not know it, but afterwards he comes to know it. In his inquiries he must not set to 1 Legge, Pt, II, p, 72; Giles, p, 291. 56 TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU himself any limits, and yet he cannot be without a limit. Now ascending, now descending, then slipping from the grasp (the Tao) is yet a reality, unchanged now, as in antiquity, and always without defect : may it not be called that which is always capable of the greatest display and expansion? Why should we not inquire into it? Why should we be perplexed about it ? With what does not perplex let us explain what perplexes, till we cease to be perplexed. So may we arrive at a great freedom from all perplexity.”’? The question of a First Cause is raised and dis- cussed in the following manner : «Chi Chén,’ said Shao Chih (or Little Wit), ‘taught CHancE;?* Chieh Tzti taught CausaTION. In the speculations of these two schools, on which > side did right lie ?’ ‘“**The cock crows,’ replied T‘ai Kung Tiao, ‘ and the dog barks. So much we know. But the wisest of us could not say why one crows and the other barks, nor guess why they crow and bark at all. ““* Let me explain. The infinitely small is incom- prehensible; the infinitely great is immeasurable. Chance and Causation are limited to the con- ditioned. Consequently, both are wrong. Causation involves a real existence. Chance implies an absolute absence of any principle. To have a 1 Legge, Pt. II. p. 112; Giles, p. 333. 2 Chance, or, moh wei, means none did or caused, that is, no first cause; Causation, or, huo shih, some one caused, that is, a first cause, TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU 57 name and the embodiment thereof—this is to have a material existence. To have no name and no em- bodiment—of this one can speak and think, but the more one speaks the farther off one gets. ““¢The unborn creature cannot be kept from life. The dead cannot be tracked. From birth to death is but a span; yet the secret cannot be known. Chance and Causation are but a priori solutions. When I seek for a beginning, I find only time infinite. When I look for an end, I see only time infinite. Infinity of time past and to come implies no begin- ning, and is in accordance with the laws of material existences. Causation and Chance give us a be- ginning, but one which is compatible only with the existence of matter. Tao cannot be existent. Tf it were existent, it could not be non-existent. The very name of Tao is only adopted for convenience’ sake. (Legge translates this by, ‘“‘The name Tao is a metaphor, used for the purpose of description,” and he rightly designates it a most important statement.) Causation and Chance are limited to material existences. How can they bear upon the infinite? Were language adequate, it would take but a day to fully set forth Tao. Not being adequate, we may talk all day and only explain material exis- tences. It cannot be conveyed either by words or by silence. In that state which is neither speech nor silence (absorbed thought), its transcendental nature may be apprehended. ’”’? 1 Legge, Pt, II. pp. 129-130; Giles, pp, 350-351, 58 TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU The impossibility of possessing Tao as one possesses a thing is discussed in the following paragraph : ‘Shun asked (his tutor) Ch‘éng, ‘Can one get Tao so as to have it for one’s own?’ ‘ Your very body,’ replied Ch‘éng, ‘is not your own. How should Tao be?’ ‘If my body,’ said Shun, ‘is not my own, pray whose is it?’ ‘It is the bodily form en- trusted to you by Heaven and Earth (or the Uni- verse). Your life is not your own. It is a blended harmony, entrusted to you by Heaven and Earth. Your nature, constituted as it is, is not yours to hold. It is entrusted to you by Heaven and Earth to act in accordance with it. Your posterity is not your own. It is the exuviae entrusted to you by Heaven and Earth. You move, but know not how. You are at rest, but know not why. You taste, but know not the cause. These are the operations of the laws of Heaven and Earth. How then should you get Tao so as to have it for your own ?’’’? Chuang-tzti frequently amuses himself by showing up Confucius at a disadvantage, often representing him as, in his ignorance, seeking enlightenment from Laocius or some other Taoist worthy. Here is one of several fictitious interviews in which Con- fucius is depicted as asking wisdom from Laocius : ““« To-day you are at leisure,’ says Confucius. ‘Pray tell me about perfect Tao.’ ‘Purge your heart by fasting and discipline,’ answers Lao Tzi. ‘Wash your soul as white as snow. Discard your 1 Legge, Pt. II. p. 62; Giles, pp, 281-282. TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU 59 knowledge. Tao is abstruse and difficult of dis- cussion. .. . Man passes through this sublunary life as a white horse passes a crack. Here one mo- ment, gone the next. Neither are there any not equally subject to the ingress and egress of mortality. One modification brings life; then another, and it is death. Living creatures cry out; human beings sorrow; the bow-sheath is slipped off; the clothes- bag is dropped; and in the confusion the soul wings its flight, and the body follows, on the great journey home. ‘**¢ The reality of the formless, the unreality of that which has form—this is known to all. Those who are on the road to attainment care not for these things, but the people at large discuss them. Attain- ment implies non-discussion ; discussion implies non- attainment. Manifested, Tao has no objective value ; hence silence is better than argument. It cannot be translated into speech ; better, then, say nothing at all. This is called the great attainment.’ ’’? To one who wished to localise Tao, as others have sought to localise the Kingdom of Heaven, Chuang- tzii replied in the following extreme fashion : “Tung Kuo Tztiasked Chuang-tzii, ‘ What you call Tao—where is it?’ ‘There is nowhere where it is not,’ replied Chuang-tzi. ‘Tell me one place at any rate where it is,’ said Tung Kuo Tzt. ‘It is in the ant,’ replied Chuang-tzi. ‘Why go so low down?’ asked Tung Kuo Tzi. ‘It is in a 1 Legge, Pt, IL. p. 63; Giles, p. 282, 60 TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU tare,’ said Chuang-tzti. ‘Still lower,’ objected Tung Kuo Tzi. ‘It is in a potsherd,’ said Chuang- tzi. ‘Worse still,’ cried Tung Kuo Tzt. ‘It is in ordure,’ said Chuang-tzi. And Tung Kuo Tzt made no reply. ‘Sir,’ continued Chuang-tzi, ‘your question does not touch the essential. When Huo, inspector of markets, asked the managing director about the fatness of pigs, the test was always made in parts least likely to be fat. Do not therefore insist in any particular direction ; for there is nothing which escapes. Such is perfect Tao; and such also is ideal speech. Whole, entire, all, are three words which sound differently but mean the same. Their _ purport is ONE. ‘*«¢'Try with me to reach the palace of Nowhere, and there, amidst the identity of all things, carry your discussions into the infinite. Try to practise with me inaction (i.e. absence of effort, passiveness, allowing Tao to work its will within us), wherein you may rest motionless, without care, and be happy. For thus the mind becomes an abstraction. It wanders not, and yet is not conscious of being at rest. It goes and comes, and is not conscious of barriers. Backwards and forwards without being conscious of any goal. Up and down the realms of Infinity, wherein even the greatest intellect would fail to find an end. ““* That which makes things the things they are, is not limited to such things. The limits of things are their own limits in so far as they are things. TAOISM : LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU 61 The limits of the limitless, the limitlessness of the limited—these are called fulness and emptiness, renovation and decay. Tao causes fulness and empti- ness, but it is not either. It causes renovation and decay, but it is not either. It causes beginning and end, but it is not either. It causes accumulatio and dispersion, but it is not either.’ ”’! Again, Chuang-tzti depicts the manner in which an old Tao-imbued man taught another man, Pu- liang E, to enter Tao. The characters are probably fictitious. The novice is represented as a man of great ability and high character. The old Taoist is represented as of great age, yet with the complexion of a child, which he attributes to the influence of Tao, for the Taoist believes it possible to avoid both old age and death. “* Pu-liang E had the abilities of a sage,’ says the old Taoist, ‘ but not the Tao, while I had the Tao, but not his abilities. I wished, however, to teach him, if, peradventure, he might become a veritable sage. . . . Accordingly, I proceeded to do so, but by degrees. After three days, he was able to banish from his mind all worldly (matters). This accom- plished, I continued my intercourse with him in the same way ; and in seven days he was able to banish from his mind all thought of men and things. This accomplished and my instructions continued, after nine days he was able to account his life as foreign to himself. This accomplished, his mind was after- 1 Legge, Pt, II. pp. 66-7; Giles, pp. 285-7. 62 TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU wards clear as the morning; and after this he was able to see his own individuality. That individuality apprehended, he was able to banish all thought of Past and Present (i.e. Time). Freed from this, he was able to penetrate to (the truth that there is no difference between) life and death; (how) the destruction of life is not dying, and the communi- cation of another life is not living. (The Tao) is a thing which accompanies all other things and meets them, which is present when they are overthrown, and when they obtain their completion. Its name is Tranquillity amid all disturbances, meaning that such disturbances lead to its Perfection.’ ’’* Like Laocius Chuang-tzii also taught that man had fallen from a primitive state of innocence, and that he could only regain his lost condition by discard- ing his so-called wisdom and artificial civilisation. Thus in chapter ix. he raises his protest against the artificiality of civilisation and government, and asserts the superiority of primitive naturalness, illustrating his view by showing how much happier the horse is in its native condition, and how even the potter destroys the character of the clay, and the carpenter the tree by his interference with their original nature. Poh Loh dragged horses from their native wilds, branded and clipped them, pared their hoofs, haltered and shackled them, kept them confined in stables, and a third of them died. Then he kept them hungry and thirsty, trotted, galloped, 1 Legge, Pt. IL. pp. 245-246; Giles, p. 79. TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU 63 groomed, and trimmed them, with the misery of bit and bridle in front, and the fear of the whip behind, and more than half of them died. In like manner, trees and even clay suffer at the hands of interfering “skill.” Those who govern the Empire make the same mistake. For the people have certain Heaven- sent instincts, and interference with these is the cause of human misery. “In the days when natural instincts prevailed, men moved quietly and gazed steadily. At that time there were no roads over mountains, nor boats, nor bridges over water. All things were produced each for its own proper sphere. Birds and beasts multiplied ; trees and shrubs grew up. The former might be led by the hand; you could climb up and peep into the raven’s nest. For then man dwelt with birds and beasts, and all creation was one. There were no distinctions of good and bad men. Being all equally without knowledge, their virtue could not go astray. Being all equally without evil desires, they were in a state of natural integrity, the perfection of human existence. ‘* But when sages appeared, tripping people over with charity, and fettering with duty to one’s neigh- bour, doubt found its way into the world. And then with their gushing over (religious) music and fussing over ceremonies, the Empire became divided against itself, ‘“‘ Had the natural integrity of things been left un- harmed, who could have made sacrificial vessels ? 64 TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU Had the natural jade been left unbroken, who could have made libation-cups ? Had Tao not been aban- doned, who could have introduced charity and duty to one’s neighbour ? Were man’s natural instincts his guide, what need would there be for (religious) music and ceremonies? ... Destruction of the natural integrity of things, in order to produce articles of various kinds—this is the fault of the artisan. Annihilation of Tao in order to practise charity and duty to one’s neighbour—this is the error of the Sage. ‘“* Horses live on dry land, eat grass, and drink water. When pleased, they rub their necks together. When angry, they turn round and kick up their heels at each other. Thus far only do their natural dis- positions carry them. But bridled and bitted, with a plate of metal on their foreheads, they learn to cast vicious looks, to turn the head to bite, to resist, to get the bit out of mouth, or bridle into it. And thus their natures become depraved-—the fault of Poh Loh.’ ? In like manner the people were innocent, until “sages came to worry them with ceremonies and music in order to rectify them, and dangled charity and duty to one’s neighbour before them in order to satisfy their hearts—then the people began to stump and limp about in their love of knowledge, and to struggle with each other in their desire for gain. This was the error of the sages.” 1 Legge, Pt, I, pp. 276-7; Giles, pp. 107-8. TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU 65 In that Golden Age of innocence the people “ were upright and correct, without knowing that to be so was righteousness ; they loved one another, without knowing that to do so was benevolence; they were honest and leal-hearted, without knowing that it was loyalty ; they fulfilled their engagements, with- out knowing that to do so was good faith; in their simple doings they employed the services of one another, without thinking that they were conferring or receiving any gift.”’! Consequently : “The command of armies is the lowest form of virtue. Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education. Ceremonies and laws are the lowest form of government. Music and fine clothes are the lowest form of happiness. Wailing and mourning are the lowest form of grief. These five should follow the movements of the mind.” * “* Perfect politeness is not artificial; perfect duty to one’s neighbour is not a matter of calculation ; perfect wisdom takes no thought; perfect charity recognises no ties ; perfect trust requires no pledges.” Therefore, “‘ Discard the stimuli of purpose. Free the mind from disturbances. Get rid of entangle- ments to virtue. Pierce the obstructions to Tao.”* Again an old Taoist is represented as instructing Confucius. Of course the case is fictitious, but any 1 Legge, Pt. I., p. 325; Giles, p. 152, 4 Legge, Pt. I., pp. 334-5; Giles, p. 162. 3 Legge, Pt. II., p. 87; Giles, p. 307. 66 TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU one who compares the Analects and other Confucian books with the Tao Té Ching and Chuang-tzt: cannot fail to be struck with many features, best described as Taoistic, in both systems. The instruction in this case is supposed to be given by an old fisherman to Confucius, but the chapter is generally considered as of later composition. The old fisherman rebukes Confucius for running after the shadows of external rites and forms, when happiness can only be found in the substance of Tao. He says: ‘“‘'There was once a man who was so afraid of his shadow and so disliked his own footsteps that he determined to run away from them. But the oftener he raised his feet the more footsteps he made, and though he ran very hard, his shadow never left him. From this he inferred that he went too slowly, and ran as hard as he could without resting, the conse- quence being that his strength broke down and he died. He was not aware that by going into the shade he would have got rid of his shadow, and that by keeping still he would have put an end to his footsteps. Fool that he was. “Now you (i.e. Confucius) occupy yourself with the details of charity and duty to one’s neighbour. You examine into the distinction of like and unlike, the changes of motion and rest, the canons of giving and receiving, the emotions of love and hate, and the restraint of joy and anger. Yet you cannot avoid the calamities you speak of.” Later he adds : TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU 67 “Ceremonial is the invention of man. Our original purity is given to us by Heaven. It is as it is, and cannot be changed. Wherefore the true sage models himself upon Heaven, and holds his original purity in esteem. He is independent of human exigencies. Fools, however, reverse this. They cannot model themselves upon Heaven, and have to fall back on man. They do not hold original purity in esteem. Consequently they are ever suffering the vicissitudes of mortality, and never reaching the goal. Alas! you, sir, were early steeped in deceit, and are late in hearing the great doctrine. He has so little admiration for sages and their interfering ways that he even accuses them of being the cause of robbers : ‘““Tt was the appearance of sages,” he says, ‘‘ which caused the appearance of robbers. Drive out the sages and leave the robbers alone—then only will the Empire be governed. As when the stream ceases the gully dries up, and when the hill is levelled the chasm is filled ; so when sages are extinct, there will be no more robbers, but the Empire will rest in peace. On the other hand, unless sages disappear, neither will great robbers disappear; nor if you double the number of sages wherewithal to govern the Empire will you do more than double the profits of Robber Ché.” In illustration of this he goes on to say: “Tf pecks and bushels are used for measurement, 1 Legge, Pt, IL. p. 197-9; Giles, p. 418-20. 291 68 TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU they will also be stolen. If scales and steelyards are used for weighing, they will also be stolen. If tallies and signets are used for good faith, they will also be stolen. If charity and duty to one’s neighbour are used for rectification, they will also be stolen. In this respect also he attacks the revered founders of the Empire, Yao and Shun, the “ divine rulers ” whom Confucius considered to be the model rulers for all time. He Says : ‘““As to Yao and Shun, what claim have they to praise ? Their fine distinctions simply amounted to knocking a hole in the wall in order to stop it up with brambles ; to combing each individuai hair ; to counting the grains for a rice-pudding. How in the name of goodness did they profit their generation ? ... The struggle for wealth is so severe. Sons murder their fathers ; ministers their princes; men rob in broad daylight, and bore through walls at high noon. I tell you that the root of this great evil is from Yao and Shun, and that its branches will ex- tend into a thousand ages to come. A thousand ages hence, man will be feeding upon man.’’? The man possessed by Tao is declared by him to rise above the fascination of wealth or possessions. ** He lets the gold lie hid in the hill, and the pearls in the deep; he considers not property or money to be any gain; he keeps aloof from riches and honours ; he rejoices not in long life, and grieves not desea hi 1 Legge, Pt. I. pp. 284-5; Giles, pp. 113-4. 2 Legge, Pt. II. pp. 76-7; Giles, p. 296. TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU 69 for early death; he does not account prosperity a glory, nor is ashamed of indigence; he would not | grasp at the gain of the whole world as his own private distinction. His distinction is in under- standing that all things belong to the one treasury, and that death and life should be viewed in the same oa hae “He sees where there is the deepest obscurity ; he hears where there is no sound. In the midst of _the deepest obscurity, he alone sees and can dis- tinguish ; in the midst of a soundless (abyss), he alone can hear harmonies. Therefore, where one deep is succeeded by a greater, he can people all with things; where one mysterious range is followed by another that is more so, he can lay hold of the subtlest character of each. In this way, in his inter- course with all things, while he is farthest from having anything, he can yet give to them what they seek; while he is always hurrying forth, he yet remains in his resting-place.”’? Again Confucius is represented as bemoaning his failure, rejected by princes, forsaken by disciples and friends, and asking a Taoistic philosopher why this should be. The reply he received was: ‘“‘ Have you not heard how when the men of Kuo fled for their lives, one of them, named Lin Hui, cast aside most valuable regalia and carried away his child upon his back ? Some one suggested that he was influenced by the value of the child; but the 1 Legge, Pt. I. pp. 309, 311; Giles, pp, 137, 139, 70 TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU child’s value was small. Or by the inconvenience of the regalia ; but the inconvenience of the child would be much greater. Why then did he leave the (price- less) regalia and carry off the child ? Lin Hui him- self said, ‘The regalia involved a mere matter of money. The child was from Heaven.’ And so it is that in trouble and calamity mere money questions are neglected, while we ever cling to that which is from Heaven.”’? The principle of inaction, or quietism, does not exclude action. This we have clearly set out in the following statement : ‘* Therefore the true Sage looked up to Heaven, but did not (meddle with its course by) assisting it ; perfected himself in virtue without its embarrassing him; proceeded according to Tao without planning (and scheming); allied himself with virtue without trusting to it; pursued righteousness without laying it up; responded to ceremonies without tabooing them ; undertook and did not withdraw from human affairs ; adjusted their laws so as to be without con- fusion ; trusted the people and did not slight them; made use of (men and) things and did not discard them; (while recognising his own, or the things’) insufficiency for doing, yet that there could be no not doing. For he who is not Heaven-enlightened will not be pure in character, he who is not Tao-. imbued will not succeed, and he who is not Tao- enlightened—alas for him ! 1 Legge, Pt, II, pp. 34-5; Giles, p. 253, TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU 71 “What then is Tao? There is the celestial (or divine) Tao, and there is the human Tao. Inaction (i.e. effortlessness) with honour, that is the Tao of Heaven. Action (i.e. effort, striving) with (conse- quent) embarrassment, that ishuman Tao. (Of these) the celestial Tao means lordship, human Tao bond- age (i.e. the condition of a servant, or slave). How far removed are the celestial Tao and the human Tao from each other. Let us clearly differentiate them.”’} As illustrating the foolishness of interfering with Tao, or Nature, the following piquant fancy is given : “The ruler of the southern sea was called Shu (that is, Heedless). The ruler of the northern sea was called Hu (or Hasty). The ruler of the central zone was called Hun Tun (i.e. Chaos, that is not yet formed, or Formless). Heedless and Hasty often met on Hun Tun’s territory, and being always well treated by him, determined to repay his kindness. They said, ‘ All men have seven orifices—for seeing, hear- ing, eating, and breathing. Hun Tun alone has none. We will bore some for him.’ So every day they bored one hole ; but on the seventh day Hun Tun died.’’? In the following remarkable saying regarding Tao, he seems to be describing it as creator, preserver, and destroyer, and he goes on to speak of the con- fidence of a man who knows and trusts in Tao, differentiating his (divine) joy from all others as of the highest. He says: 1 Legge, Pt. I. pp. 305-6; Giles, p. 134; Legge, Pt, I. p. 267, * Giles, p. 98, 72 TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU ““My master! My master! (or, Teacher!) thou dost (or he does) break in pieces all things, and dost not account it cruelty ; thou sprinklest favour on all generations without accounting it beneficent ; thou art older than the highest antiquity, and accountest | it not age ; thou coverest and containest the universe, shaping all its forms, and countest it not for skill ; this is the joy of Heaven (or divine joy). ‘“‘ Therefore it has been said: ‘ He who knows the joy of Heaven during his life proceeds (in accord) with Heaven, and his death is a transformation ; quiescent, his character accords with Yin (the negative, or still element); active, he accords with the Yang (the positive, or active element), rising like the waves. Therefore, he who knows the joy of Heaven has no grievance against Heaven and no grudge against men; he is unembarrassed by things, and unrebuked by the spirits of the departed.’ Hence it has been said: ‘His doings (accord with) Heaven, his quiescence (accords with) earth, with a heart un- disturbed he rules the world. Undismayed by the spirits of the departed, unharassed by their souls, with his heart undisturbed, all creation serves him.’ Which means that by his emptiness (lowliness) and quiescence he reaches through the universe, and communicates with all creation: this is the joy of Heaven. And this joy of Heaven is the heart (soul) of the sage, by which he nourishes (pastors) all under heaven (all the nation).”’} 1 Legge, Pt. I. pp. 332-8; Giles, pp. 159-60, TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU 73 Here is an example of his mode of discussing the reality of knowledge and the perfect man : **¢Can then nothing be known ?’ asked a follower of Tao of his master. ““* How can I know ?’ was the reply. ‘ Neverthe- less I will try to tell you. How can it be known that what I call knowing is not really not knowing, and that what I call not knowing is not really knowing ? Now I would ask you this. If a man sleeps in a damp place, he gets lumbago and dies; but how about an eel? And living up in a tree is precarious and trying to the nerves; but how about monkeys ? Of the man, the eel, and the monkey, whose habitat is the right one, in the absolute? Human beings feed on flesh, deer on grass, centipedes on snakes, owls and crows on mice. Of these four, whose is the right taste, in the absolute ? Monkey mates with monkey, the buck with the doe, eels consort with fishes, while as to Mao Ch‘iang and Li Chi (two famous beauties), at the sight of them, fishes plunge deep down in the water, birds soar high in the air, and deer hurry away. Yet who shall say which is the correct standard of beauty ? In my opinion, the standard of human virtue, and of positive and nega- tive, is so obscured that it is impossible actually to know it as such.’ ““*Tf you, then,’ asked the disciple, “do not know what is good or bad, is the perfect man equally with- out this knowledge ?’ ‘* His master replied, ‘ The perfect man (i.e. the man 74 TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU who has reached the highest development) is a spirit. The wide waters might boil and he would not feel hot. The great rivers might freeze and he would not be cold. MHurrying thunderbolts might split the mountains, and storms throw up the ocean without making him afraid. In such case he (or such a one) would chariot himself upon the wind, driving the sun and moon, and roam beyond this earthly sphere, where death and life do not affect him, how much less such considerations as good and evil?’ ’’! Concerning the illusion of death he asks himself the following question : ** How do I know that the love of life is not a de- lusion ? and that the dislike of death is not like a child that is lost and does not know the way home ? ” Then he gives an instance of the bride of a prince, who saturated her dress with tears on leaving her home in the wilds, but after she had enjoyed the delights of the palace regretted that she had wept. And he asks, ‘‘ How do I know that the dead do not repent of their craving for (this) life ? “Those who dream of the banquet may wake to lamentation and sorrow ; those who dream of lamen- tation and sorrow may wake to join the hunt. While they dream, they do not know that they dream. Some will even interpret the dream while they are dreaming ; but only when they awake do they know it wasa dream. By and by comes the Great Awaken- ing, and then we shall find out that this life is really 1 Legge, Pt. I. p. 192; Giles, pp. 27-8, TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU 75 a great dream. Fools think they are awake now, and flatter themselves they know if they are really princes or peasants. Confucius and you are both dreams; and I who say you are dreams—I am but a dream myself.” Then follows his famous illustration of the butterfly dream : *“Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, a veritable butterfly, enjoying itself to the full of its bent, and not knowing it was Chuang Chou. Sud- denly I awoke, and came to myself, the veritable Chuang Chou. Now I do not know whether it was then I dreamt I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming Iam aman. Between me and the butterfly there must be a difference. This is an instance of transformation.”’? One of three friends, followers of Tao, died. Con- fucius is represented as sending a disciple, Tzi Kung, to see if he could render any assistance. On reaching there Tzi Kung found the survivors pathetically strumming a lute and singing: “Ah! eome back, Sang Hu. Ah! come back, Sang Hu. Thou hast returned to thy true self again, While we, as men, still here remain. Ah!” The disciple returned and asked Confucius the mean- ing of their conduct, to which he replied, “ These men seek their enjoyment outside this (worldly) sphere, while I seek mine within it... . They make 1 Legge, Pt. I. p. 194; Giles, p. 29, 76 TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU man to be the fellow of the Creator, and seek their enjoyment in the ethereal universe, counting life as an appendage or a tumour, and death as an excision of the tumour. That being so, what do they know of what preceded life or follows death? ... They occupy themselves ignorantly and vaguely with what (they think) lies outside the dust and dirt of the world in the business of inaction (quiescence),”’ etc. The disciple is represented as asking Confucius, ** Yes, but why do you, sir, follow (the ways of) this (mundane) sphere ? ” Into the mouth of Confucius is put the strange reply, “‘I am (here) under the condemning sentence of Heaven.” } A follower of Tao lay gasping at the point of death, with his wife and children wailing about him. One of his friends went to see him and said to them, “Hush! Get out of the way. Do not disturb him as he is passing through his change.’ Then, leaning against the door, he said to the dying man, ‘‘ Great indeed is the Creator. What will He (or It) now make you become ? Where will He (or It) take you to? Will He (It) now make you the liver of a rat, or a worm’s arm (i.e. something non-existent) ?” The dying man replied, ‘‘ Wherever his parents tell a son to go he goes. Nature is more to a man even than his parents. When It hastens my death, if I do not obey, I shall be unfilial. What wrong can It do? The Great Cosmos has sustained me in this 1 Legge, Pt. I. p. 251; Giles, p. 83, TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU 77 form, given me (useful) toil in life, ease in old age, and rest in death, and surely what has made my life a good will make my death a good... .. When we once understand that the universe is a great smelting- pot, and the Creator a great founder, where can we go that will not be right ?”! In the chapter on “ Perfect Happiness ”’—which opens with the question, “‘ Is perfect happiness to be found on earth or not? Are there any who really live? If so, what do they do, what maintain, what flee from, what cleave to, what resort to, what avoid, what love, and what hate ?’’—we find the two follow- ing incidents. “When Chuang-tzt’s wife died, Hui Tzti went to condole with him. Finding him squatted on the ground, drumming on a bowl and singing, he said, ‘When a wife has lived with a man, brought up his children, grown old and died, not to weep over her is bad enough—but to drum on a bowl and sing, surely this is beyond everything ?’ *** Not so,’ replied Chuang-tzt. ‘Immediately on her death could I alone be different from others ? But I reflected on her beginning before she had life. Not only had she then no life, but no form ; not only no form, but no ether (spirit), but was mingled with the vast expanse. Then came a change, and she had ethereal existence (spirit); another change, and she had form; another change, and she was born, Now she has changed again and is dead. It is like the 1 Legge, Pt. I. p. 249; Giles, p. 82. 78 TAOISM : LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU procession of the seasons. Here she lies, face up- wards, asleep in the Great Chamber (the Universe), and were I to go about wailing and weeping her, it would be as if I did not put myself in line with my lot. Therefore I refrain.’ ” ** When Chuang-tzti was in the State of Ch‘u he saw an empty skull, bleached, but still retaining its shape. Tapping it with his riding-whip, he asked it, ‘ Did you, sir, in your greed of life, fail in (the lessons of) reason and come to this ? Or did you do so in the service of some perishing State, slain by an axe ? Or was it through your evil conduct bequeathing disgrace to your parents, your wife, and your chil- — dren? Or was it through the miseries of cold and hunger ? Or was it that you had completed your years of life ?’ “* Having thus spoken, he took up the skull, made a pillow of it, and went to sleep. In the night the skull appeared to him in a dream, and said, ‘ Your talk, sir, was like that of a philosopher, but all that you said had reference to the entanglements of mortal life. In death there are none of these. Would you like, sir, to hear me tell about death?’ ‘I should,’ said Chuang-tzt, whereupon the skull resumed, ‘In death there is no difference between prince and subject, and none of the duties of the four seasons. Flowing along, our years are those of the universe. No king on his throne has greater happiness than we have.’ Chuang-tzii did not believe it, and said, ‘If I were to get the Ruler of TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU 79 Life to restore your mortal shape, give you bones and flesh and skin, and restore you to your parents, your wife and children, and the acquaintances of your old home, would you like it?’ At this the skull opened its eyes wide, knitted its brows, and said, ‘Would I give up the happiness of a throned king and undergo again the toils of mortality!’’’? When Chuang-tzii was dying, his disciples pro- posed to give him a sumptuous funeral, but he said, * With heaven and earth for my coffin and catafalque, with the sun, the moon, and all the stars for my regalia, and with all creation to escort me, is not everything ready to hand? What could you add ?” Dr. Giles beautifully quotes from ‘The Burial of Moses ”’: “And had he not high honour ?— The hillside for his pall ; To lie in state while angels wait With stars for tapers tall ; And the dark rock pines like nodding plumes Above his bier to wave, And God’s own hand in that lonely land To lay him in the grave.” His disciples, however, argued, “ We fear the crows and kites will eat you, sir.”” To which Chuang- tzti replied, ‘“‘ Above, I shall be food for crows and kites; below, I shall be food for mole-crickets and ants. To rob one is to feed the other. Why this partiality ?”’? 1 Legge, Pt. II. pp. 4-6; Giles, pp. 223-5, 2 Legge, Pt. Il. p. 212; Giles, p. 4384, 80 Time fails to tell in detail of the downfall of Taoism. Instead of limiting itself to the mysticism of its master, and pursuing his reasonable speculations, it gave itself up, at an early date, to the magical side of Chinese philosophy and practice. origin of these magical arts back to Huang Ti, a famous legendary emperor, whose date is generally placed from 2697 to 2597 B.c. consider him to be the real founder of the magical TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU “And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking beings, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am IJ sTILL... ” “that blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world Is lightened :—that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on, Until, the breath of this corporeal frame, And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul While with an eye made quiet by the power Of Harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.’ 1 Tur DEBACLE OF TAOISM 1 Wordsworth, ‘“‘ Tintern Abbey.” It traces the Indeed, the Taoists TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU 81 side of their religion. But whether or not magic be the stock from which all religion and science have sprung, as Dr. Frazer has endeavoured to show, it may be taken for certain that Huang Ti (the Yellow Emperor) was not its founder in China, though he may have been a powerful wizard. A charge of wizardry or magic cannot be laid at the door of Laocius, and it is a pity that the lofty moral and spiritual teachings of Laocius and Chuang- tzu, teachings equal if not superior to those of the Buddha, proved to be beyond the capacity of their suc- cessors. Even in Chuang-tzt, and still moreso in his supposed predecessor, Lieh Tzii, we find elements of the bizarre, men who could walk through the solid rock, leap down terrifying precipices unharmed, walk through fire unsinged, travel thousands of miles through the air absenting themselves for many days, men who did not die, but were translated, and so on. Whether they intended these statements to be ac- cepted literally, or metaphorically, we know not. At least we know that subsequent generations took them literally, and for hundreds of years, nay, even to the present day, men have sought the elixir of immor- tality and the philosopher’s stone. Taoist devotees to-day walk up ladders of swords, pass through blazing fire, push long needles through their cheeks, and impose on the. people with their numerous fantasies. They are in demand for all the magic and sorcery in which the ignorant people put their trust. It is they who are called upon to clear the haunted house, to 6 82 TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU expel the demons which possess such multitudes, to rid a town of the cholera spirits, to pour magical curses on the thief, and to undertake the incantations for rain. From the days of Chang Tao Ling, whose descendant still rules as Taoist Pope in China, the principal occupation of the Taoist priest has been that of wonder-working. This man, more than any other, was the cause of the debacle of Taoism. He is said to have been born in A.D. 34, during the Han dynasty, and to have been the descendant of Chang Liang, one of three heroes who helped to establish that dynasty, and who, after the enthronement of its first emperor, is said to have refused all reward and given himself up to the search after the elixir of immortality. His descendant, Chang Tao Ling, is reputed to have possessed marvellous powers, finally to have dis- covered the elixir, become an immortal, and joined the genii. He bequeathed his secret to his son, and his descendant is by imperial appointment still Patriarch or Pope of Taoism. It is either Chang Tao Ling or one of his descendants who was imperially apotheosised in A.D. 1116 as Yt Huang Shang Ti, commonly known as the Pearly Emperor, who is confused by the people with the true Shang Ti, or God. From the days of Chang Tao Ling onwards, the progress of Taoism has been downwards. The Pope is imperially consulted as year by year fresh saints or gods are added to the Pantheon, and there can be little doubt that the retention of the people in TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU 83 the slavery of superstition is attributable chiefly to the influence of Taoism in general and its Pope in particular. For convenience’ sake I have included what we might almost calli the fourth religion of China, namely, the deification of national worthies and their appoint- ment as tutelary divinities, under the heading of Confucianism. In reality we may consider the origin and development of this cult as largely due to Taoist influence, even though Taoists, equally with Con- fucianists, lay no claim to those divinities as their own. The chief divinities of Taoism at the present day are the Trinity of the Three Pure Ones, namely, Laocius, P‘an-ku- (Chaos, or the Demiurge), and the above-named Yii Huang Shang Ti. The numerous secret societies which have honey- combed the nation for the most part have been associated with Taoism. The Boxer madness was the latest instance of this. Thousands and hundreds of thousands believed that, possessed of Taoist charms, weapons could not harm them, and that the horse- hair whip blessed by the priest could turn back upon the marksman the bullet he fired. The history of Taoist influence on Chinese history has yet to be written. It has been greater than is generally realised. Emperors have been its devotees. It may have been the cause of the burning of the ancient books by China’s Napoleon, Ch‘in Shih Huang. For hundreds of years it influenced the Court of China, and affected both politics and the national religion. 84 TAOISM: LAOTZU, CHUANG-TZU It has adopted all that it possibly could from Bud- dhism, except the higher elements, established its heaven, modelled in clay its lurid hell, filled it with all the horrid torments which the barbarous mind can invent, and deified Laocius and a multitude of others, as well as the various forces of Nature. There are, however, still some purer souls who seek in Taoism those truths which inspired its founders, and the writings of Laocius and Chuang-tzti are read by thoughtful men outside the Taoist cult. Indeed, more or less unconsciously, many of those truths find a permanent home in the thoughts of the people, and thus prepare the way for the Greater Tao. For ‘* In the beginning was the Tao, and the Tao was with God, and the Tao was God. And the Tao became flesh, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” Laocius and Chuang-tzii have prepared His Way for Him. LECTURE IV BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM Tue BuppuaA, which being interpreted means the One who knows, or the Enlightened, the Sage, was born, as is now generally agreed, in or about the year 543 B.c. Whilst the teachings of the ancients were chiefly preserved, until a comparatively late period, in the memories of men, there seems little reason to doubt that the development of the art and apparata for writing played no indifferent part in preparing the way throughout the civilised world _for its first great renaissance. During this period, the middle section of the first millennium before the Christian era, China saw the rise of Confucius, Laocius, Mencius, Chuang - tzii, and other philosophers; India gave to the world Buddha, her greatest moral and religious leader and reformer; Persia, Zoroaster; Greece, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and many others; and Judea, Ezra, Isaiah, and all the prophets of Israel. Of all these the one who has influenced the greatest mass of humanity is the Buddha. Not only has he powerfully affected the untold millions of the Far East, but his power has also been felt in the West, 85 86 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM and if there be any foundation for the idea that at least one of the schools of Gnosticism, which word in meaning is the same as Buddhism, was a Western form of Buddha’s doctrine, then at one time even Christianity was threatened with his dominance.' The life and work of a man wielding such a mighty influence on humanity cannot be fully told in one brief lecture. I can but give you a sketch of his life, his doctrines, their development and spread, the change which was induced by the Mahayana im- portation, and the condition of Buddhism to-day in China. A religion which has transformed savage nations, given a form of civilisation to some who had none, humanised nations already partly culti- | vated, and given a hope of salvation to millions for the life to come, is well worthy of a careful study on the part of missionaries to the Far East. And this is advisable in order that they may realise what are the forces at work there for righteousness, learn to discriminate the effective elements from the im- potent or harmful, and understand how best to sym- pathise with the sincere searcher after light, in order to utilise the material at hand in illuminating the pathway of men, especially those men who refuse to allow the precious lamp to be ruthlessly blown out which has shed its rays, however dimly, upon their path, or to hear it disparagingly misrepresented. The Buddha, we may take it, then, was born in the sixth century B.c. It will thus be seen that he 1 Primitive Christianity, By Pfledeirer. Vol. III. p, 139, BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM 87 was contemporary with Confucius and Laocius. His father, Suddhodana, was chieftain of a princi- pality, of which Kapilavastu was the capital, situated in what is now the State of Nepal. His family name was Sakya, from which the name by which he is so well known is obtained, Sakyamuni, the Sage, or Saint of the Sakyas. His personal name was Sid- dartha, and as Siddartha he spent his early years in his father’s Court, receiving such education in religion, letters, and physical exercises as would fit him for the life and duties he was expected to follow, but from which he later withdrew. Another name given to him, possibly his adult name, was Gotama, and by this name he is more commonly known than by the name of Siddartha. Multitudinous legends surround his conception, birth, and later life. Amongst the rest, “that he was not born.as ordinary men are; that he had no earthly father ; that he descended of his own accord into his mother’s womb from his throne in heaven ; and that he gave unmistakable signs, immediately after his birth, of his high character and of his future greatness. Earth and heaven at his birth united to pay him homage; the very trees bent of their own accord over his mother, and the angels and archangels were present with their help. His mother was the best.and the purest of the daughters of men, his father was of royal lineage, and a prince of wealth and power. It was a pious task to make his abnega- tion and his condescension greater by the comparison 88 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM between the splendour of the position he was to abandon, and the poverty in which he afterwards lived ; and in countries distant from Kapilavastu the inconsistencies between such glowing accounts and the very names they contain passed unnoticed by credulous hearers. “‘ After seven days of fasting and seclusion the pure and holy Maya dreams that she is carried by archangels to heaven, and that there the future Buddha enters her right side in the form of a superb white elephant. On her relating her dream to her husband he calls together sixty-four chief brahmins to interpret it. Their reply is that the child will be a son who will be a chakravarti, a universal monarch ; or, if he becomes a recluse, will be a buddha, ‘ who will remove the veils of ignorance and sin’ from the world.” ? M. Senart has pointed out how close is the re- semblance between many of the legends of the Buddha’s birth and the sun-myth, “the white ele- phant, for instance, like the white horse, being an emblem of the sun, the universal monarch of the sky.” ‘“ At the conception of the Buddha, thirty-two signs take place; the ten thousand worlds are filled with light, the blind receive their sight, the deaf hear, the dumb speak, the crooked are made straight, the lame walk, the imprisoned are set free, and so on, all nature blooming, and all beings in earth and heaven being filled with joy; while, by a bold figure 1 Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 182 (S.P.C.K.). BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM 89 of speech, even the fires of hell are extinguished, and the tortures of the damned are mitigated. During the ten months of his life in the womb the child is distinctly visible, sitting cross-legged, unsoiled and dignified ; and he preaches to the angels who guard him, stretching out his hand to do so without wound- ing his mother. ““As a dagaba holding sacred relics cannot be used to guard any less sacred object, so his mother can bear no other child, and on the seventh day after his birth she dies. When the child is born it takes seven steps forward, and exclaims with lion’s voice, ‘I am the chief of the world; this is my last birth,’ and again the thirty-two signs of joy appear in the earth and heaven. ** An aged saint ... seeing these signs is guided to Kapilavastu, and the child is brought in to do him reverence; but instead of doing so, its feet were miraculously placed on the matted locks of the ascetic,” who “ prophesies that the child will become a buddha, and weeps that he himself will not live to see the day. On the day of his name-choosing, learned brahmins, after examining the marks on his body, again prophesy that he will become either a chakravarti, or a buddha. Another account states that the infant was pre- sented in the temple, when “all the gods of the then Hindoo Pantheon rose up and did obeisance to him.” At seven years of age, on being placed under the 1 Rhys Davids, p. 184. 4 90 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM tuition of the ablest teachers, they find that he knows more than they can teach him, and retire dumbfounded. As a young man his physical develop- ment becomes such that, excelling all others, he throws a large elephant to a considerable distance, and shoots an arrow so deep into the earth that it lays bare a fountain of water. These stories are an evident invention of a later age, and may be classed with the fictions of his later wonder-working per- formances, mere marvels, graceless of good, and therefore incompatible with the character of this great and good man. Dismissing, then, the mythical part of these stories we may find truth in the more sober statement that his mother, Maya, who had been brought from the northern mountains, desired that her period of con- finement should be in her native, shall we say maternal, home at Devadaha. On the way thither, in the grove of Lumbini, the toils of the journey hastened the birth of her child. Hundreds of years later, King Asoka, the Constantine of Buddhism, erected a tablet on the spot, which was discovered in Decem- ber, 1896. Seven days after her travail Maya paid for the birth of her great son with her own life, and the child was brought up by her sister, who was also one of his father’s wives. In due course he married and had a son, Rahula, That his great mind was weighed down with the eternal problem of the pains and griefs of existence here and hereafter, and that he pondered over the BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM 91. why and wherefore of existence, we know, and if the story of the experiences which drove him forth to fathom the mystery be not true, it ought to be. It is said that one day, while on a solitary walk, he met a decrepit old man, another day he met with a man writhing in the agonies of disease, on another day he met with a corpse, and, still later, by way of contrast, a serene-looking hermit. Burdened with the mystery of misery, “ hearing ofttimes the still sad music of humanity,” he determined to search amongst the hermits for the serenity possessed by the one he had just seen, and, leaving his home, his wife, and his child, he wandered to the mountains. The story of his departure is a very human one, how, stealing away by night, he first went to the door of his wife’s room, hesitant and longing to take his child again to his breast, yet compelled to deny himself this last jey lest he should disturb the mother in her sleep. Even more pathetic is the story of his return, many years later, a shaven ascetic, in far from princely garb, when his faithful wife, who had never ceased to love him, prostrated herself weeping as she laid her hands upon his feet, then, sadly rising, stood aside, sorrowfully recognising that her husband could be her husband no longer. It is interesting to note that during this period the ascetic life was common both in India and China, and it is far from improbable that there was in- tellectual as well as mercantile intercourse between the two countries, an intercourse which may possibly 92 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM . account for ideas that we find in Laocius and Chuang- tzu. The methods of the ascetics, with whom he took counsel and associated himself, failed to bring the solution of his difficulty. He practised all the fast- ings, bodily distresses, and penances by which they brought their bodies and minds into subjection. Indeed he carried these practices so far beyond the others, that one day he fell in utter exhaustion and lay unconscious. On reviving, he partook of food, to the sore distress of his ascetic companions, who had looked for some revelation from him as the result of his extreme asceticism, and who now left him in disappointment. While recovering, and meditating under a Bo-tree (Ficus religiosa), there came to him, as to Luther in a later age, a realisation of the folly of asceticism and of external ceremonial; and in addition there came the full conception—no new idea in India—of the impermanency and unreality of all beings and things, gods and men alike, and that all existence meant suffering. But the conception which made of him the Enlightened One was that there was a remedy, and that this remedy for suffering lay in the extinc- tion of the ego, the self, through love to all beings, men and things alike. From that sacred tree he went forth to preach and to practise his doctrine, and from thence it spread all over the Eastern world. On two occasions we are told that he was tempted by Mara, the devil. The first of these was imme- BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM 93 diately after he left his home. ‘‘ Mara, the spirit of Evil, appears in the sky, and urges Gautama to stop, promising him in seven days a universal kingdom over the four great continents, if he will give up his enterprise. When his words fail to have the desired effect, the tempter consoles himself with the hope that he will still overcome his enemy, saying, ‘ Sooner or later some hurtful or malicious or angry thought must arise in his mind; in that moment I shall be his master.’ ‘ And from that hour,’ says the Jataka chronicler, ‘he followed him, on the watch for any failing, cleaving to him like a shadow, which follows the object from which it falls.’ ” } The second occasion was when, on giving up his penance, he was deserted by his friends. ‘* There now ensued a second struggle in Gautama’s mind, described in both the Pali and the Sanskrit accounts with all the wealth of poetic imagery of which the Indian mind is master. The crisis culminated on a day each event of which is surrounded in the Buddhist lives of their revered Teacher with the wildest legends, in which the very thoughts passing through the mind of Gautama appear in gorgeous descriptions as angels of darkness or of light. Unable to express the struggles of his soul in any other way, they represent him as sitting sublime, calm, and serene during violent attacks made. upon him by a visible Tempter and his wicked angels, armed with all kinds of weapons ; the greatness of the temptation being shadowed forth 1 Rhys Davids, p. 32. OA BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM by the horrors of the convulsion of the powers of Nature. ‘When the conflict began between the Saviour of the World and the Prince of Evil a thousand appalling meteors fell; clouds and darkness pre- vailed. Even this earth, with the oceans and moun- tains it contains, though it is unconscious, quaked like a conscious being—like a fond bride when forcibly torn from her bridegroom; like the festoons of a vine shaking under the blast of a whirlwind. The ocean rose under the vibration of this earth- quake; rivers flowed back towards their sources ; peaks of lofty mountains, where countless trees had grown for ages, rolled crumbling to the earth ; a fierce storm howled all around ; the roar of the concussion | became terrific ; the very sun enveloped itself in awful darkness, and a host of headless spirits filled the air.’ *““ It may be questioned how far the later Buddhists have been able to realise the spiritual truth hidden under these material images; most of them have doubtless believed in a real material combat, and a real material earthquake. But it is not in India alone that the attempt to compress ideas about the immaterial into words drawn from tangible things has failed, and has produced expressions which have hardened into false and inconsistent creeds.” ! We may take it as beyond reasonable doubt that the Buddha spent the remaining years of his long life in consistent self-denial, propagating his doc- trines, gathering and teaching disciples, and founding 1 Rhys Davids, p. 36. BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM 95 his church, a church which, with Christianity and Mohammedanism, forms the only trinity of religions possessing a world-wide horizon, and aiming at world-wide dissemination. “He, the son of a king,’ associated daily with the lowest and the outcast, went about in rags, begging his food from door to door, and proclaiming every- where, in the face of that powerful caste-spirit of India, that his religion was a religion of mercy for all. As a teacher he displayed great liberality and toler- ance, adopting for instance all those deities which were decidedly pepular, though he indeed assigned them a signally inferior position in his system, for the holy man, he used to say, is above the gods.” Later conceptions tell us that, “ not satisfied with spreading his religion on earth, he is also said to have ascended up into the heavens, and to have gone down to hell, to preach everywhere the way of salvation.”? It must be remembered that the gods themselves were not considered by him as in a stage of finality, but as still subject to the law of metem- psychosis. Towards the end of his life, legend con- tinues that, while on a mountain in Ceylon, dis- coursing to his disciples, he was glorified, or baptized with fire, a sudden flame of light descending upon him, and encircling his head with a halo of light. As his end drew near, which really occurred in the north-west of Patna, “ heaven and earth began 1 Witel. Three Lectures on Buddhism. This is an exaggeration, for his father was but a petty chieftain. It is, however, the idea prevalent in Buddhist countries, 96 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM to tremble and loud voices were heard, all living beings groaning together and bewailing his departure. When he was passing through Kashinagara, a poor workman offered him his last meal, and though he had just refused the offerings of the highest and richest, he accepted this offer, to show his humility, as he said, ‘for the sake of humanity.’”’ After his death “‘his disciples put his remains into a golden coffin, which immediately grew so heavy that no power could move it. But suddenly his long-deceased mother, Maya, appeared from above, bewailing her son, when the coffin lifted itself up, the lid sprang open, and Shakyamuni appeared with folded hands, saluting his mother. At his cremation his body was - found to be ‘incombustible by ordinary fire, but suddenly a jet of flame burst out of the mystic character inscribed on Buddha’s breast and reduced his body to ashes. The latter were eagerly collected and received thenceforth almost divine worship, being carried to all Buddhist countries, and for safe keeping deposited in pagodas expressly built for this pur- pose.’”? Hence the origin of the many pagodas seen in China, though the original idea has long since been modified. I need hardly tell you that much of the preceding description is of comparatively late date. I have, however, thought it right you should be made acquainted with these legends, as they form a very manifest part of Buddhist belief in China, and the Far East generally. On the fine marble dagoba in BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM 97 a temple outside Peking, for instance, the tempta- tions of Buddha are clearly depicted. The resem- blance that certain incidents bear to those related of our Lord is self-evident, especially the Temptation. Dr. Timothy Richard has shown me copies of painted scrolls obtained from a monastery in Japan, repre- senting the Buddha and three disciples just across a stream, with eight other disciples on this side, sug- gesting in a remarkable manner the brook Kedron, and the agony of our Lord in Gethesame. Buddhism has always been remarkable for its eclecticism as also for its imitativeness, and there is good reason to suppose that many of its more modern presentations have had their origin in Christianity. I say this while fully recognising that the influence of Buddhism on Christianity may also have been far greater than is generally recognised. To sum up in more prosaic form, we may assume that Gotama was of noble birth, born possibly while his mother was travelling to her maternal home ; that he was brought up in the luxury of his times ; that he married and had a son; that the problem of life here, as well as heretofore, and the unending series of transmigrations hereafter, oppressed his sensitive soul; that he left his ancestral home secretly, against what he knew was the will of his father, and joined himself to ascetics, who’ sought the solution of the problem at least of their own existence away from the busy haunts of men; that, dissatisfied with their egoistic existence (as was Confucius about * 98 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM the same time with the recluses of his own land), the error of ascetic self-absorption and the great truth of self-suppression were borne in upon him as the remedy for the ills of existence, a truth which in his hands led not only to the suppression of selfish- ness, but to the ultimate suppression even of sentient existence ; that he set forth to teach this doctrine, and succeeded in effectively impressing it upon a multitude of his fellow countrymen in and near to his native State; that he lived a consistently self- denying life, filled with a sense of the equal rights of men to the privileges of his religion and the conse- quent injustice of the caste system; that he died in old age, was cremated and buried, his ashes re- - maining undisturbed until fourteen years ago, when they were discovered and removed to Burma; and, finally, that he left an organised community, dis- ciplined and equipped with a few simple doctrines to teach to mankind, as well as doctrines more complex for the more philosophical of his followers. The next point to which I wish to draw your attention is the very interesting and remarkable manner in which Buddhism grew into a powerful organ- isation and propagated itself, not only in the country of its origin, but far beyond the pale. So mightily was Buddha impressed with the light which had been revealed to him, and so convinced was he of its saving power for humanity, that, as I have already stated, immediately after his enlightenment: he set out to spread his good news to his fellow ascetics, BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM 99 to his family, and thenceforward to his fellow countrymen at large. Just as our Lord knew that, whilst what He taught would fulfil the law and the prophets in a very real sense, yet also saw clearly that He would be brought into antagonism with all the vested interests, professionalism, and fixed ideas of the people, so Buddha knew that what he taught would bring him into a measure of opposition with the powerful forces of his day. For his religion wrought to the breaking down of the caste system, which, however valuable it may have been in the past, is a formidable barrier against the equal rights of man and his essential brotherhood. Nevertheless, having forsaken all things, and having nothing else to lose, save his life, which he counted not dear to himself, he set forth on his mission, with the result that even during his lifetime he obtained a large following, and at his death passed on to his immediate disciples a well- organised samgha, or order, charged with the maintenance and propagation of his doctrines. ‘“‘ He appointed his successor, handing over to him his almsbowl and mantle, together with some pithy sayings, embodying the essence and substance of Buddhist doctrine. This one appointed his successor in the same way, and thus we have a series of patri- archs,” who acted for a long period each as “ tem- porary head of the church of his time, and who transmitted from generation to generation the re- puted teaching of Shakyamuni Buddha.” 100 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM The tenets of the Buddha are not supposed to have been immediately committed to writing, but there seems no reason to doubt that they were so com- mitted within 150 years of his decease. Commen- taries were added by different writers, resulting in diversity of explanation, and ecumenical councils were called as time went on, for purposes of restating and rectifying the doctrines which were to be con- sidered orthodox. One of the later, but most famous of these councils, was held in Kashmir under Kanishka, of the Mongol dynasty, who reigned during the first cen- tury of our era. The complete canon is said not to have taken final form until “between the years 412 and 413 of our present Christian era,’’ namely, that: found in the Pali text of Ceylon. Just as the New Testament was a growth, so was the Buddhist canon, only much more so, and so long a time elapsed be- tween the death of the Buddha and the compilation as it now exists, that fact and fiction became almost hopelessly intermingled. . The stories of the wide travels of Buddha, carry- ing his message as far as Ceylon, need not be accepted as genuine. Indeed, it is doubtful if he ever went beyond the countries bordering on the Ganges. It was only after the growth of his community that extensive propaganda became possible. This was greatly assisted by the political condi- tions which existed after the invasion of India by Alexander the Great, when the adoption of Buddhism by powerful rulers, who succeeded him, greatly aided BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM 101 the propaganda. “ Out of the political anarchy into which the whole conglomeration of Indian kingdoms was thrown (i.e. after the death of Alexander) arose an empire which soon swallowed up all the others. It was founded by an adventurer of low birth called Tchandragupta by the Buddhists, and Sandrakottos by the Greek historians.” His low birth could not be acceptable to the brahmins, with whom, however, he was on friendly terms, as also was his son. * His grandson, Ashoka (third century B.c.), whose cognomen Piyadasi (or Priyadarsin) has been handed down to the present day by innumerable stone in- scriptions scattered all over India, united nearly the whole of India under his sceptre. Embracing the Buddhist faith . .. he strengthened and extended the Buddhist Church with all the means at his com- mand, and became the Constantine of Indian Buddhism. “* Ashoka, formally acknowledged to hold his power and possessions only as a fief from the Church, convoked an ecumenic council (in 252 B.c.), for the establishing of orthodox teaching, tightened the reigns of church discipline by the introduction of quin- quennial assemblies to be held in each diocese, erected pagodas, and endowed monasteries with great profusion in all parts of India. But the greatest work Ashoka did was the establishing of a board for foreign missions (Dharma-Mahamatra), which sent forth to all surrounding countries enthusiastic preachers, who went out in self-chosen poverty, clad 102 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM in rags, with the almsbowl in their hands, but sup- ported by the whole weight of Ashoka’s political and diplomatic influence. His own son, Mahéndra, went out as a missionary to Ceylon, and the whole island forthwith embraced the faith of Buddha. “* At the same time Cabulistan, Gandhara, Cash- mere, and Nepaul were brought under the influence of Buddhism, and thenceforth every caravan of traders that left India for Central Asia was accom- panied by Buddhist missionaries. ““ In this way it happened that, as early as 250 B.c., a number of eighteen Buddhist emissaries reached China, where they are held in remembrance to the present day, their images occupying a conspicuous place in every larger temple.”’ ! Asoka was a man of lofty moral character, but it cannot be doubted that during this period the popularisation of Buddhism greatly changed it from the simplicity of Buddha, through the recognition of the superstitious beliefs and practices which were in vogue amongst the people. All sorts of pious rites, _ pilgrimages, offerings, mythological notions, and speculations found an easy entrance, and belief in a succession of Buddhas before Sakyamuni added to the already sufficiently confusing number of objects of worship. ‘‘ Gautama had consciously and resolutely turned away from speculative thought, except such as was inseparably connected with the question of salvation ; but in the intellectual atmo- 1 Hitel, p. 21, BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM 103 sphere of India vague phantasies unconsciously sprang up which developed into universal history in the grand style. They played with measureless expanse of space and time; they created limitless worlds, to each of which they assigned their tale of fictitious Buddhas. The historical Gautama, Suddhodana’s son, is foreshadowed by them in the whole limitless past. This sort of idea was already prevalent in Asoka’s day.” ? With the death of Asoka his empire speedily fell to pieces. The Greco-Bactrian States pressed forward into north-western India, producing a blend of Greek and Indian culture which is still noticeable in Buddhist art. King Menander, whose Indian equivalent is Milinda, and who flourished in the second century B.c., was the greatest sovereign of this dynasty, and he became the patron of Buddhism. The Greco-Bactrian rule soon felt the pressure of the Mongolian hordes which, first in bodies of Scy- thians, and later in bodies of Yiieh-Chi, forced their way into India, where in the north-west the Indo- Scythian, or Kushan, empire was soon established. The most noted ruler of this empire was Kanishka, who flourished during the early part of the first century of our era, and became, like Asoka, a powerful patron of Buddhism. It was during his reign that “a new type of this religion came into existence,” and that the division into the two schools of Mahayan- ism and Hinayanism occurred. He called a famous 1 Hackmann’s Buddhism, p. 48, 104 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM council at Kashmir, at which the new Buddhism be- came recognised, and “three great commentaries to the sacred canon were sanctioned ” and written in Sanskrit, supporting the Mahayana doctrine. For that reason, the Hinaya school to the present day refuses to recognise this council. It is to Ashvagosha, who lived during the reign of Kanishka, that the development of the Mayahana school is due. His tractate, known as The Awaken- ing of Faith, which exists in a Chinese translation, is the gospel of Mahayanism. He also published a Life of Buddha of a legendary character. ‘“‘ Despite the great cleft which from this time forward ran through Buddhism, it is nevertheless in the first cen- turies of the Christian era that Buddhism grew and flourished in India.’’ So influential did it become, and so little did it disturb the popular superstitions, that Brahminism sank into comparative insignifi- cance. By the fourth century a.p., Buddhism had grown into ‘‘ the main and ruling religion in India for the bulk of the population.” It was towards the end of this period that the famous Chinese traveller, Fa Hsien, made his impor- tant journey from China through India, where he found Buddhism still “‘in its strength and pomp.” The account he has left is of no small value to the student as showing the power, yet degeneracy, of the religion which he found, and which he returned to further propagate in his own country. Another noted pilgrim, Hsiian (or Ytian) Chuang, travelled BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM 105 through India in the seventh century, and his account of the “ relic worship, manifold legends, insipid stories of miracles, belief in the power of magical formule, arts of exorcism, fragments of Indian nature worship,” and so on, unconsciously reveal how far Buddhism had degraded from its founder’s ideals, in this respect resembling Christianity in its medieval period of decay. During this century Brahminism began to reassert itself over a decadent priesthood and a debased faith ; persecution is said to have followed in the eighth century, slow destruction until the eleventh century, as much from internal decay as external oppression, and total extinction when “ the fanaticism of the iconoclastic Moslem” swept over the land in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. “‘ Since that time the religion of the Buddha Gautama no longer exists in its own native land. Only the ruins of the old Buddhism preserve to the countries on the banks of the Ganges and of the Indus, down to the present day, the interest of all those who are concerned with this remarkable religion.’ ? Having thus briefly sketched the rise and fall of Buddhism in the country of its birth, let us return to consider its introduction into China. Buddhism was formally introducced into China during the reign of Ming Ti (i.e. Yung P‘ing) a.p. 58-76. It is clear, however, that a previous acquain- tance with the religion had existed for a considerable 1 Hackmann’s Buddhism, p. 63, 106 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM period. I have already referred to the eighteen missionaries who reached China in the third century B.c., suffering imprisonment, it is said, at the hands of the emperor. The intercourse which existed be- tween the two countries, probably direct as well as through Mongol tribes, would convey to China know- ledge, however imperfect, of ‘the ideas of Buddhism, which were then actively influencing not only Hindus, but also the northern tribes which pressed upon them. Images and other objects of adoration, of which we have no previous record in the religion of the Chinese, may have found their way into the country. At any rate, we are told that it was through a dream, in which he saw a golden image, that the Emperor | Ming Ti sent an embassy to India to bring him news of the great teacher who had arisen in the West. The very fact of this embassy being sent shows that the way was open between the two countries. How often have Chinese Christians wondered if some glint of the Light of the World had shone into the palace of distant China to cause the king to send messengers to the West, and how often have they speculated what might have happened had the messengers pursued their journey still further West. There is, however, no reason to suppose that the dream was anything but the natural sequence of Buddhist expansion. Kighteen messengers left the Imperial Court at Lo-yang, now Honanfu, in A.p. 65, and returned in 67, bringing with them images of Buddha, Buddhist BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM 107 scriptures, and two Indian monks. In this way was Buddhism installed in China, but for two and a half centuries no Chinese were permitted to become monks, so that during this period all the monks were foreigners. It is also worthy of note that during this period Buddhism made but little progress in China. It was not, indeed, until an order of Chinese clergy was instituted and a church under native con- trol had been formed, that the religion obtained a wide extension. From this the Christian missionary may well take a hint. A foreign controlled and sub- sidised church cannot expect to take possession of the Chinese Empire. Not until the Christian Church is in the hands of the Chinese themselves can we hope to see it direct the moral and spiritual destiny of the nation. Thus we find that, when Buddhism had been fortified by and come under the control of a body of Chinese clergy, long and arduous pilgrimages were undertaken by Chinese devotees to India. These were made by Fa Hsien, Hsiian (or Ytian) Chuang, and I Tsin, in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries respectively. The result of their pilgrim- ages is recorded in works they have left behind them. In a.v. 526 ‘the Patriarch of Indian Buddhism, Boddhidharma, the twenty-eighth in the list of Buddha’s successors, left his native land and migrated to China, which thenceforward became the seat of the patriarchate,” 108 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM Confucianism was all along opposed to the progress of Buddha. Its “unnatural loosening of family and patriotic ties,” as well as ‘“‘ numerous abuses in the monasteries,” aroused the Confucianists to action. It was during the eighth century that Han Wén Kung composed his famous memorial against Buddhism. And already, in the beginning of the same century, ‘an official persecution had broken out,” in which 12,000 monks and nuns are said to have been compelled to return to the secular state, and Buddhism was prohibited for a long time. An- other persecution took place in the middle of the ninth century. Chinese records relate that 4,600 monasteries were then destroyed. All the property of the monastic communities was confiscated. More than 260,000 monks and nuns were compelled to return to the secular life. Then again, in the first half of the tenth century there was a period of severe suppression of the religion. Thirty thousand temples were then closed. None of these, or subsequent suppressions—most of them of a local character—sufficed to extinguish Buddhism, for it satisfied to some extent a spiritual craving for which neither Confucianism nor Taoism made provision, closely though the latter imitated its foreign rival. I have already mentioned that the Patriarch of Buddhism finally took up his abode in China, and it is also worthy of note that it was China which be- came the centre from which the religion, chiefly in its BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM 109 Mahayanistic school, was disseminated over eastern, and even over central and north-eastern Asia. In the seventh century it became the accepted creed of Tibet, under the influence of the ruler, Srong Tsan Gampo, who had united the country under his sway. One of his wives was of the royal house of China, the other was Nepaulese, and it was under their influence that Buddhism was adopted. In the fifteenth century, when Christianity had already been known in China for centuries through Nestorian and Western agencies, a great reform took place in Tibetan Buddhism, a reform which has made itself felt throughout the East, and especially throughout Lamaism in Tibet and Mongolia. It was from Tibet that Mongolia had been converted to Buddhism, under the influence of the great Mongolian conqueror, Kublai Khan, the patron of Marco Polo. This was - during the thirteenth century. Korea received its importation directly from China in the fourth cen- tury A.D., and Japan from Korea in the sixth and seventh centuries. In all these countries differing forms of the religion exist, in many and varying schools, both of Mahayanism and Hinayanism. It is time, however, that I put before you some of the main tenets of the Buddha, and explain briefly how the Mahayana school has modified his teachings, which are now more accurately represented by the Hinayana cult, undoubtedly the more ortho- dox of the two. Needless to say, in neither do we find Buddhism as it was originally taught, but the 110 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM changes made by Mahayanism are almost revolu- tionary in their character. Tue Doctrines oF BUDDHA If there is one word that will act as a master-key _to the doctrines of the Buddha, that word seems to be Impermanence. The idea that was borne into the Buddha’s mind, and from which all his other teachings seem to have sprung, was that ALL is transient, fleeting, impermanent. We are in the habit of speaking in similar terms, but the immutable and eternal God is, or until lately has been, excepted from our thoughts in this respect. Not so with the Buddha. While he denied neither Brahma nor any of the other gods, they were all included under the same law of impermanence. The gods may enjoy the delights of the gods for thousands and hundreds of thousands of years, but that state is as imper- manent in its quality as is ours. Thus it will be seen that while, theoretically, Buddha was by no means an atheist, his idea of the mutability of the gods reduces them in the eyes of Christian orthodoxy to something less than gods. Whether Christian ortho- doxy is right or not in its definition of the divine immutability, at least we may say that the poly- theism of Buddha is atheism according to our idea, for his “ gods ”’ were impermanent and subject to change, even as we are. This change is indicated by the word Karma. BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM 111 Now Karma does not mean Fate in our sense of the word. It means the sum total of the deeds done in previous existences, in other words the resultant of the forces brought into action, for there seems to be one permanent fact in Buddhism, and that is the law of cause and effect. All beings, gods, men, and all living things are what they are as the result of deeds done during their previous existences, and they are now duly receiving their deserts. The law ““ Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap,” is thrown a stage farther back in Buddhism, for whatsoever gods, men, and things are now reaping is the result of what they have sown in a previous existence of which they may be utterly ignorant. The karma always continues and must be satisfied, for even the gods may have to expiate the unsatisfied portion of previous wrong-doing by entering into other forms of lower existence. ‘‘ Each individual in the long chain of life inherits all, of good or evil, which all its predecessors,” that is in a sense its previous selves, ‘‘ have done or been; and takes up the struggle towards enlightenment precisely there, where they have left it.” ? This brings us to the Buddha’s ideas of the soul, or, to be more correct, of no soul. Buddha was born into that wonderful period of man’s philosophical awakening when the riddle of the universe and of existence pressed for solution. Speculation filled the air of India with its conceptions of the divine, 1 Rhys David, p. 104. 112 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM of cosmogony, of the soul and metempsychosis, and of salvation. Psychology rather than theology or cos- mology was the chief theoretical subject of the Buddha. His long process of asceticism had fostered a spirit of introspection, with the result that he found nothing within himself but a bundle of ever- varying sensations, which led him to propound the doctrine that no such thing as a permanent soul exists, not even a permanent nucleus which on the death of the body migrates into another body. I cannot show you more effectively how the Buddha denies ‘“‘that there is any soul—any entity of any kind, which continues to exist, in any manner, after death ’—than by quoting what Gautama himself says : “* After showing how the unfounded belief in the eternal existence of God or gods arose, Gautama goes on to discuss the question of the soul; and points out thirty-two beliefs concerning it, which he declares to be wrong. These are, shortly, as fol- lows: ‘ Upon what principle, or on what account, do those mendicants and brahmins hold the doctrine of future existence? They teach that the soul is material, or is immaterial, or is both, or neither ; that it is finite, or infinite, or both, or neither; that it will have one, or many modes of consciousness ; that its perceptions will be few, or boundless; that it will be in a state of joy, or misery, or of neither, (or both). These are the sixteen heresies teaching a conscious existence after death. Then there are BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM 113 eight heresies teaching that the soul, material or immaterial, or both, or neither, finite or infinite, or both, or neither, has an unconscious existence after death. And, finally, eight others, which teach that the soul, in the same eight ways, exists after death in a state of being, neither conscious nor unconscious.’ *Mendicants,’ concludes the sermon, ‘that which binds the teacher to existence (viz. tanha, thirst) is cut off; but his body still remains. While his body: shall remain he will be seen by gods and men, but after the termination of life, upon the dissolution of the body, neither gods nor men will see him.’ ”’!” Now, there is nothing in Christianity to prevent a man from thinking that the changes which will have come over him, say a millennium hence, will be such that it will be even more difficult to realise him- self as having been the man he now is, as it is at present for him to throw himself back into his days of infancy and associate himself with the child that then was. But he has no difficulty in maintaining that it will be, as it has been, the same individual or person who exists throughout. This the Buddha denies so far as the connection between pre-existence, present existence, and future existence are concerned, and he takes as his nexus not a permanent nucleus soul, but his mysterious notion of karma, for, though the individual ceases to exist, his deeds live on in another bodily form, into which as consequences they enter. Into what state those deserts will enter 1 David, p. 98. 114 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM entirely depends on their quality. There is a state of temporary happiness, possibly extending to hun- dreds of thousands of years in a heaven, as there is a similar state of misery in hell, and in addition there is reincarnation into this life, or transmigra- tion into the many forms which life takes upon it in this world. It will thus be seen that Buddha recog- nises both heaven and hell, but they, too, are devoid of permanency, and rebirth will sooner or later occur, always involving suffering. It is this pessimistically exaggerated doctrine of suffering which looms so large in Buddha’s system. We find it stated clearly in the Three Characteristics : ‘* Whether Buddhas arise, O priests, or whether Buddhas do not arise, it remains a fact, and the fixed © and necessary constitution of being, that all its constituents are transitory. This fact a Buddha dis- covers and masters, and when he has discovered and mastered it, he announces, teaches, publishes, pro- claims, discloses, minutely explains, and makes it clear, that all the constituents of being are transitory. *“* Whether Buddhas arise, O priests, etc. (as above), it remains a fact, and the fixed and necessary constitu- tion of being, that all its constituents are misery. This fact a Buddha discovers, etc., and makes clear, that all the constituents of being are misery. ‘“* Whether Buddhas arise, O priests, etc., it re- mains a fact, and the fixed and necessary constitu- tion of being, that all its elements are lacking in an Ego. This fact a Buddha discovers, ete., and makes BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM 115 clear, that all the elements of being are lacking in an Ego.” ! On these three propositions, indeed, we are justified in declaring the Buddhist religion to be founded. Nothing being permanent, all being transitory, there is nothing worth clinging to, therefore all may be left, even as the Buddha left all things. Existence meaning suffering, the bliss to be aimed at is the bliss of non-existence, of perfect rest, of parinirvana. There being no real ego, no real self, let the seeming self be set aside through love to all, both men and things, and, in the perfection of this, nirvana may be attained in this life, and parinirvana in the here- after. That which binds to existence is the thirst for, the craving after, the clinging to life, to the things of life, to the ego or self. The attainment of nirvana can only be obtained by the extinction of this ego, this self, this thirst or craving to exist. There is in this doctrine of self-suppression much that reminds us of the teaching of our Lord, but when we come to look at the motive and the object, there all likeness ends, for they are poles asunder. In the one we have a doctrine of the profoundest pessimism ; in the other a doctrine of the sublimest hope con- ceivable to men in our present dimension. There is one other word on which I must dwell for a few moments before bringing this very imperfect and all too brief description of a complex and pro- found subject to a close, and that is the word 1 Warren’s Buddhism in Translations, p. xiv. 116 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM Nirvana. It will scarcely be necessary for me, in these days, to lay emphasis on the established fact that nirvana does not necessarily mean the annihi- lation of existence. While it does mean annihilation, it does not necessarily mean the extinction of life. The notion underlying it in the Buddhist canon is the extinction of that thirst for, craving after, grasp- ing of, or clinging to, life and to the ego which neces- sarily result in suffering, and the extinction of which brings rest. In this state of rest, undisturbed alike by passion, by evil, or even by pleasure, lies the highest good for the life that now is. He who attains to it, but who has not yet attained to the perfect enlightenment of Buddhahood, may anticipate con- tinuation as an Arhat in his next metempsychosis, — and he who attains to perfect enlightenment may anticipate the perfect nirvana, the parinirvana of the Buddha, when “neither gods nor men will see him,” extinguished like a lamp, and his karma no longer capable of individualisation. Two features of importance I must place before you. One of these is the lofty moral teaching of the Buddha. The other is that while Buddhahood and Arhatship could only be obtained by joining his order of mendicant monks and nuns—for Buddha, after much hesitation and fully recognising the atten- dant dangers, established an order of nuns—pro- vision was made for lay adherents, who were unable fully to join his order. It must be borne in mind that he held salvation to be independent of time, BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM 117 state, or place. Hence, although it was vastly more difficult for a man immersed in the business of this life to attain to nirvana, it was by no means im- possible. And even if so high an attainment proved impossible to the laity, yet, by living lives of self- suppression and love to all beings, their karma would result in a reincarnation in higher form, and in this they might even have the lofty privilege of becoming mendicant monks or nuns and ultimately attaining to the bliss of Buddhahood. “ The king- dom of heaven is within you,” said our Lord; and in somewhat similar fashion the Buddha taught that salvation lay within the man himself, independent of forms and ceremonies, independent even of fast- ings or abstinence from any class of food, though he advocated temperance in food and insisted upon abstinence from wine. As to his moral code there were five command- ments laid down by Buddha for all his followers : Not to destroy life. Not to steal. Not to commit adultery. Not to tell lies. Not to drink intoxicants. Three commands permissive to laymen, but binding on clerics, were added : Not to eat unauthorised food at nights. Not to wear garlands or use perfumes. To sleep on a mat spread on the ground. 118 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM On clerics two others were also binding: To abstain from dancing, singing, music, and stage plays. Not to receive gold or silver. These are the ten commandments of the Buddhist Order. When the present-day monk takes his vows he repeats three times the ten commandments, in sub- stance the same, in form somewhat different from the above, and also the following well-known formula : “I go for refuge to the Buddha. I go for refuge to the Law (Dharma). I go for refuge to the Order (Sangha).” Needless to say, the Buddhist canon treats in minute fashion on the philosophical questions raised by Buddha’s doctrines, and also on the moral and conventional duties both of laymen and clerics. The duties of parents to children and children to parents, of pupils and teachers, of husband and wife, of friends and companions, of masters and servants, of laymen to clerics and clerics to laymen, are all admirably set forth. Sacrifice, prayer, adoration are, of course, absent from original Buddhism. Their place is taken by meditation, a meditation in its advanced form leading to a condition of trance. Rules are laid down, and excellent subjects delineated for these meditations, and in the mystic trance six kinds of transcendental wisdom and ten transcendental powers were believed to be acquired. In this trancelike BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM 119 condition the subject passes from joy to ecstasy, and from ecstasy to perfect tranquillity. But “the most ancient Buddhism despises dreams and visions,” and holds that this mystic trance is “‘ of small prac- tical importance compared with the doctrine of the Noble Eightfold Path, namely : 1. Right Belief. 5. Right Means of Livelihood. 2. Right Aims. 6. Right Endeavour. 3. Right Speech. 7. Right Mindfulness. 4, Right Actions. 8. Right Meditation.” Despite the beauty and purity of the Buddha’s life and teaching, the absence of a Divine Helper, and the human distaste for extinction ultimately brought revolutionary changes into the cult which bore his name. Whence these changes came is still a subject for scientific research. That ideas origi- nating in the Christian Church have influenced the Buddhist community I think there is no reason to doubt, but whether Christianity or Messianism had anything to do with the creation of the Mahayana school is another question. The creation of this powerful school which has dominated northern and eastern Buddhism is placed to the credit of Ashva- gosha, during the reign of Kanishka, who began his reign in or about A.D. 10. Whatever the origin, the ideas introduced were of so important a character that the new cult received the name of Mahayana, the Great Vehicle, as contrasted with Hinayana, the 120 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM Small Vehicle, signifying the relative narrowness of the latter both in regard to doctrine and saving power. Both schools flourished in India, and Hinayanism is still found in China, though Mahayanism is there the prevailing cult. The distinguishing doctrines of the Mahayana cult are the following : 1. The Conception of a Supreme and Eternal Being.— While the early supporters of the Mahayana school profess to found their belief in an inscrutable Supreme Being, in whom all things exist and from whom they proceed, upon a recondite saying of Buddha, the rejection of this view by the orthodox, or Hinayana, school strengthens the view of the impartial scholar _ that the introduction of this doctrine is of a revo- lutionary character. The idea of the Mahayanist is that this Absolute Being has manifested Himself in multitudinous ways, especially through the Buddhas, of whom Gautama was one. The corollary of this doctrine is that the Mahayanist need find no diffi- culty in recognising the great Sages of the world as Buddhas also, and therefore Jesus Christ as such. 2. The Bodhisattvas.—While Buddha himself is a common object of worship, in a manner glaringly opposed to his own teaching, Bodhisattvas are much more frequently appealed to, and this for the simple reason that, like the Buddha before his incarnation, they have denied themselves the privilege of entering into the final stage of nirvana, in order to devote them- selves to the saving of humanity. They are perfectly BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM 121 _ fitted to enter upon the final stage of Buddhahood, but their love for living beings is such that they are willing to forgo for countless ages the perfect state, in order to minister to the needs and save from woe the suffering world, and are ever ready to respond to the cries of the distressed. Two of the most popular of these Bodhisattvas are Amitabha, and Kuan-Yin the “‘ Goddess of Mercy,” and the invoca- tion of these is never-ceasing. With these two doc- trines of an All-conserving Soul of the Universe manifesting Himself in human form, and a host of Saviours of the world, it is easy to see how Buddhism is able to recognise the deities of the lands into which it has entered as manifestations of the Supreme and saviours of the race. 8. The Paradise of the West.—While nirvana in its ultimate meaning is philosophically recognised, in practice the paradise of the Bodhisattvas is now the final goal of the devout Buddhist of this school. Hell and transmigration are of course the other stages of continued existence, but transmigration has never gripped the Chinese mind as it did the Hindu. 4. Prayer and Invocation—The natural conse- quence of the recognition of divine beings, sym- pathetic with the woes of humanity, and yearning to help, is that prayer, or at least invocation, an idea foreign to early Buddhism, is everywhere made. This is very much in evidence in those parts of northern China where Lamaism prevails, in the 122 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM shape of praying-wheels, a grotesque form of Buddha’s loftier conception of the Wheel of the Law rolling forward like the sun and enlightening the world. But throughout China temples are found well supplied with devas, bodhisattvas, and arhats, sometimes hundreds of them in a temple, to whom incense is lighted and invocation made. 5. The Clerical Order.—Just as it was in the Chris- tian Church, when the apostleship degenerated into a professionally clerical, or priestly class, so has it been with the simple mendicant order founded by Buddha. A debased and ignorant body of monks and nuns only roll along the Wheel of the Law by twirling their beads as they drone their wearisome invocations, and only keep aglow the effulgence of the Enlightened One by keeping the lamp before his shrine ever lighted. Souls of the living are now saved, more assuredly by invocation and ceremonial than by meditation and self-suppression, and souls of the departed. can only be released from the agonies of hell by the well-paid power of the priest. There are good and sincere, and surely there must occa- sionally be even learned men amongst them, but the mass are illiterate, often immoral, and almost restful enough to need no further nirvana. In conclusion, then, we may say that original Buddhism is founded upon the permanent imper- manency of all things, an exaggerated estimate of suffering, and the extinction of self as the only way of escape. Neo-Buddhism, or Mahayanism, recog- BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM 123 nises a Being who transcends the impermanent, and its objective is salvation to a permanent heaven through faith in, and invocation of, saviours. As a philosophy, Buddhism has probably affected Western thought far more than is generally recognised, and as a religion it has profoundly influenced both life and thought throughout the Far East. I hold that in its Mahayana form it is not an enemy to the Christian missionary, but a friend, for it has familiarised the Chinese mind with ideas essential to the right appreciation of Christianity, and Chris- tianity is a religion which carries with it a higher and a saner potentiality, whether of faith or practice, than exists outside it, for the realisation of the best ideals of the best thinkers the East has given to the world. I cannot close this lecture better than by quoting from an article recently published by a non-Christian Chinese writer : ** Christianity,” he says, “‘ teaches the littleness of death by its stress on a higher life. For instance, it shows that suffering, loss, trials, and poverty, are most excellent discipline for a higher life, and there- fore is calm and confident in distress by the feeling of dependence on a higher Power. Not only so, but it looks upon all trials as a noble test of faith sent by a loving God. Therefore, a true Christian is strong in suffering. His desire at all times is to cultivate the spiritual side of his nature. Buddhism is not so. ‘The Buddhist aims to sever himself from the 124 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM world. He views distresses as hardships. He wants, therefore, to get rid of the body and become spirit. Thus you see there is a great difference between this and the Christian’s point of view, which regards suffering as a stepping-stone to higher things. Chris- tianity, too, aims at renovating the world and making all men good, and in this way change even this material world into a heaven. God, too, has revealed this definite purpose. We see that thus Buddhism, by scurrying from the world, is diametri- cally opposed to Christianity. Being then opposed to God’s will, how can a Buddhist hope thus to attain to a higher heaven, running contrary to God’s will here ? Buddhism abandons the world. Chris- tianity would redeem it. A great contrast!” ! 1 Translated by Rev. Evan Morgan in Chinese Recorder, July, 1912. LECTURE V THE IDEA OF GOD THEORIES of various kinds have been advanced as to the origin of the idea of God. It has been placed to the credit of the departed ancestor, as an outgrowth of that primeval respect and provision for the dead, which, not limited to China, has been found amongst all classes of primitive men. With no desire to con- trovert the idea, I fail to find sufficient evidence to support it in the records of China, the country where ancestor-worship is universal. The idea has also been accredited to dreams, the ghost theory, in which the departed have reappeared to the living in all the vivid reality of a savage’s dream. No trace of this to justify any such conclusion is to be found in the ancient records, though dreams play no unimpor- tant part in Chinese life. Dr. de Groot, in his lectures at the Hartford School of Missions, definitely declares that “the primeval form of the religion of the Chinese, and its very core to this day, is. animism . . . the same element which is also found to be the root, the central nerve, of many primeval religions, the same even which 125 126 THE IDEA OF GOD eminent thinkers of our time, as Herbert Spencer, have put in the foreground of their systems as the beginning of all human religion of whatever kind. In China it is based on an implicit belief in the animation of the universe, and of every being or thing which exists in it.” On the other hand, the Rev. Dr. Ross, using the language of Dr. Legge, no less dogmatically declares, in his recent book, that the original religion of the Chinese was “‘ monotheistic, though not henotheistic ”’ —that is, that they “ believed in and worshipped a plurality of inferior deities of various grades sub- ordinate to the Supreme God.” He says further : ‘““The endeavour to trace the original religion of China to the worship of ancestors or a belief in ghosts, is to rely on a theory which is without a particle of foundation, and in direct contrariety to all known facts. For we are ushered at one step into the presence of a religion in which there is One God supreme over all in heaven and earth, all other spirits being subordinate to Him.” And further : ‘““ The name bursts suddenly upon us from the first page of history without a note of warning. At this point, the very threshold of what the Chinese critics accept as the beginning of their authentic history, the name of God and other religious matters present themselves with the completeness of a Minerva. We are driven to infer that the name, as in the case of THE IDEA OF GOD 127 Israel at a later age, and the religious observances associated with it, are coeval with the existence of the people of China.” Here, then, we have four theories in regard to the origin of the idea of God—the ancestral, the dream or ghost, the animistic, and the innate monotheistic theories. In regard to China we may now reduce these to two opposite schools of thought, the older one, of which Dr. Ross is the most recent exponent, and the modern one, of which Dr. de Groot is the protagonist. On the one hand, Dr. Ross definitely asserts that monotheism was “the original religion of the Chinese,’’ and on the other, Dr. de Groot un- equivocably declares that ‘“‘ the primeval form of the religion of the Chinese, and its very core to this day, is animistic.” The same discussion still continues in regard to our own religion, indeed of religion in general, and you are sufficiently familiar with the arguments ad- vanced on both sides. What then are we to say about the origin of theistic ideas in China? Dr. Ross assumes that because we find in the oldest records a belief in a Supreme Ruler, this belief must have been innate in, or co-existent with, the Chinese race. But to hold that the beliefs of a people as found expressed after they have made the tremendous step forward, of founding a system of writing, and manifestly made great advances in civilisation, are identical with the beliefs they held while in an undeveloped conditicn,—surely, this postulates more 128 THE IDEA OF GOD than our knowledge, or the probabilities of the case, can justify. Is it not much more reasonable to agree with Dr. de Groot in at least part of his statement, that religion in China has developed from a primitive animism. And may we not go on to say that the Chinese were led, before the period of recorded his- tory, to the marvellous discovery of the unity of Nature, the heavens and the earth as a universe, and to the recognition of one Supreme God of gods ? Whether this knowledge was bestowed by a special revelation, or was the logical outcome of a process of reasoning, either consequent upon the observance of natural law, or the development of society with — its chieftain, or sovereign, we need not stay to dis- cuss. At least Christian men in both schools will agree in what is, after all, the main point—that the Divine Magnet has been drawing the human spirit everywhere out of the dross of the material and transient upwards towards Himself, the Spiritual and Eternal. As to the theory held by Dr. de Groot, whose views were advanced in China forty years ago by the Rev. Canon MacClatchie and severely combated, a theory upon which Dr. de Groot has founded his book, far be it from me to deny an original animistic basis to the native religion of China. For if the modern theory be correct, that all religion took its rise in a primitive animism, then logically whatever religion there may be in China must also have arisen by a like process. a pe | THE IDEA OF GOD 129 Nor do I wish to deny that a kind of animism is its “very core to this day.” After all, much depends on the definition of animism. If the word be defined in the terms of Dr. Murray’s Dictionary, “the attri- bution of a living soul to inanimate objects and natural phenomena,” and if by this be meant the possession by what we call a material object—a stone, a block—of a soul, linked together as soul and body are considered to be linked and localised in the human being, then I am of opinion that such a notion is absent from present-day development in China. Whether there is evidence of its existence in historic times is a question of interpretation. But if by animism be meant that that which both we and the Chinese call a material object may become the lodging-place of a spirit, free to come and go, and that all natural phenomena are caused by spiritual beings, not necessarily indwelling in, or part of, the pheno- mena, then I see no difficulty in agreeing with him, although the older term, polytheism, seems to me to suit the condition better. The attitude of the modern Chinese mind differs little, so far as I have been able to fathom it, from the attitude of that of the Roman, or Greek Catholic, towards his image or ikon. What does seem to me important, however, is not to allow one’s mind to be biased by a name—even though it be the name “ animism’’—but to find how high the Chinese have risen from what may have been a low animistic condition originally. And, while recognising as clearly as dces Dr. de Groot 9 130 THE IDEA OF GOD the low and superstitious condition of religion in China, I do see in the mind of the great thinkers of that country a magnificent rise above mere animism into realms that are purely spiritual. What, then, are the theistic conceptions of the Chinese ? Briefly stated, what we know is, that the national religion recognises a Supreme Being, im- personally denoted by T‘ien, or Heaven; personally denoted by Shang Ti, or the Ruler above, the Over Ruler, or, in other words, the Supreme Sovereign. In the invisible world He is aided by a multitude of spirits, or divine beings; in the visible world by sages and rulers, of whom the chief is the Emperor of China, who, as pontifex maximus and vicar of God, has sole right to sacrifice to Him as Shang Ti, though as impersonal Heaven, and even as Shang Ti, all men may approach Him. As to how these conceptions arose it is beyond our knowledge to assert. Surmise we may, but of proof there is none in China, any more than there is here. Whether we shall ever be in a position to prove what were the origins of religion anywhere in the world, who shall declare ? At least we may say that China presents a well-nigh unexplored field for research. Fifteen hundred years ago the ‘“‘ Bamboo Books ”’ were recovered from the disturbed grave of an ancient king. There are graves, believed to be still intact, which date back five thousand years, those of the pre-dynastic Yao and Shun, for instance, in Shansi. Dr. Stein has recently exhumed, from a sand-buried THE IDEA OF GOD 131 garrison on the north-west frontier, tablets of wood, in excellent preservation, which were indited in the middle of the first century B.c., and has thus ex- hibited for our inspection writings the like of which no living Chinese had ever before gazed upon. A collection of the shoulder-blades of sheep, inscribed with ancient characters, probably written in the second millennium before Christ, has recently been acquired by the British Museum. What else there may be in store when the Chinese have outgrown their superstitions and undertaken scientific archeo- logical research it is impossible to say. It does not follow, however, that even what may be unearthed in China will tell us what was the original religion of the race, for the original home of the Chinese is still matter of dispute. Whether they are an indigenous race, or whether they migrated, as seems more probable, from central or western Asia, struck the banks of the Yellow River, settled along its valley in Shansi, Shensi, and Honan, where we find them at the dawn of history, driving a wedge into the numerous aboriginal tribes which we know -existed—this is a question still undetermined. If they are not indigenous, but immigrants, then their early notions must be sought elsewhere. Whatever their original habitat, and over whatsoever road they may have travelled, there their history has been written, and might still be evident to us had we a more highly developed vision. As humanity does not yet possess such vision, we are compelled to 182 THE IDEA OF GOD limit our research to the beliefs and practices of the people, on the one hand as they are exhibited at the present day, complicated by the admixture of Buddhistic and other foreign elements, and, on the other, as they are exhibited nearer to the source, though still far from it, in the ancient books of the country. It is to the latter, the Sacred Books, that I wish to make special appeal, for they are the earliest record we possess of the religion and civilisation of the nation. They may not tell us what the original religion was, any more than the ancient writings of any other people do, for the origin of belief is still hidden from our eyes through our inability to pierce the gloom of the long ages before man learned to form into pictures his simple thoughts. We know, however, from the earliest records of China, that they were a religious people. The God-given instinct and intellect of man have everywhere, and not least in China, demanded satisfaction in an invisible Power outside himself in whatever form. conceived, or by whatever name denominated, but always a Power that shall make for righteousness. The awakening intellect amidst the wonder and the awe of the masterful forces of Nature compelled him in very early times to think in terms of the immaterial. Nor has increasing wisdom and sincere research into mighty truth dulled this sense of wonder and awe, either amongst her servants there or here, of old or now. The wonder is no less despite all our know- THE IDEA OF GOD 188 ‘ledge; the awe knows no decrease. We may thank God for both, for the wonder which still keeps us children, for the awe which is not terror. Fear repels; awe attracts. It may be well, at this point, to indicate to you what are the authentic sources of our information as to the ancient notions held by the Chinese, many of which are at the foundation of the national religion still. The pre-Confucian ideas are to be found in the Five Canonical or Sacred Books, all edited by Con- fucius. The other sources of our information as to the ideas of Confucius and his immediate followers are found in the “‘ Four Books.’’ These Five Canons and Four Books I have already briefly referred to in my first lecture. In addition, we have the writers of the Taoist school, the Tao Té Ching, the Nan Hua Ching of Chuang-tzi, and others. We have also the History of Ssii-ma Ch‘ien, the Herodotus of China, and sundry other treatises and histories. As to the Five Canonical Classics, first of all is: Tue Suu Cuine, or The Record, commonly known as the Book, or the Book of History. This is the earliest historical work in our possession. Indeed, it can hardly be called a history, as it consists rather of speeches attributed to various early emperors, or dialogues between them and their ministers. Its range is between 2200 and 600 B.c. Tue Opgs-contains ballads and religious songs, some probably composed 2000 years B.c. Many of them reveal a state of primitive simplicity, before 134 THE IDEA OF GOD the conventionalities of civilisation had artificialised social life and brought about the seclusion of woman. THE Boox or Rites, or Li Chi, is a compilation to which many additions and alterations have been made since it left the hands of Confucius. Amongst other things it treats of ceremonial usages in private and public life, as well as in the temple, and un- doubtedly sheds light on early religious practices. THE Book oF CHANGES, or Metamorphoses, is a book of divination, said to have been composed during the twelfth century B.c. by King Wén while in prison. It was probably based on ideas of divina- tion already in use. His son, who became the Em- peror Wu, added to it a commentary, Confucius added another with especial reference to morals, and it is believed that additions have been made since. THe ANNALS OF Lu is a chronology of events in Lu, the native State of Confucius. To it is appended an important commentary, called the Tso Chiian, which is of ancient date, possibly composed by Confucius, throwing light, inter alia, upon religious ideas and practices. What, then, do these ancient books tell us of the idea of God? First of all let us consider the terms used. The oldest book we possess is the Shu, or Book of History, and it is interesting to note that the first term for God used therein is the term Shang Ti [| - The meaning of Shang is “ above,’’ or “‘ over”; the meaning of Ti is “ruler,” The derivation of Ti is 4 6 THE IDEA OF GOD 135 obscure, but there is no doubt as to its meaning. In the Classics, Ti is often used alone, without the Shang, and in places clearly refers to the Supreme Being, while in other places it refers to the Ruler, or Emperor, on earth. We may take it, then, that here we have a definitely personal God, known to and worshipped by the rulers of the nation long before the period to which we are introduced by the ancient Book of History. This is evident from the phrasing of the first passage in which the term is found. There we are told that the second historic ruler, Shun, 2317-2208 B.c., who succeeded Yao, took over his office on the first day of the first moon, and after arranging the calendar by the aid of astronomical instruments according to the sun, moon, and five planets, immediately offered the regulation sacrifice to Shang Ti. It is, at the same time, important to notice that, apparently in association with this sacrifice, he offered a different kind of sacrifice to six honoured ones, about whom nothing is known (possibly spirits controlling certain of the constellations), another kind of sacrifice to the hills and streams, and also extended his worship to the general host of spirits. At the very beginning of recorded history, therefore, we find the head of the nation supporting a kind of monotheism in the worship of a Supreme Being, an animistic worship of hills and rivers, and a polytheistic worship of a host of spirits. Moreover, the phraseology employed makes it quite clear that such worship as is here 136 THE IDEA OF GOD recorded was no new practice, but one of very ancient origin. What is equally clear, however, and what especially deserves attention, is that one personal God is recognised, supreme over all. The next term we have to notice is the word T‘ien, Fe, or Heaven. In the clause which imme- diately follows the record above referred to we are told that in the month following, namely, the second month of the year, Shun travelled eastwards to Shantung, and on China’s most famous mountain, T‘ai Shan, offered a burnt-offering, and sacrificed also to the hills and streams. It is not stated to whom the burnt-offering was made, but subsequent cere- monies of a similar nature throughout history indicate that it was made to impersonal Heaven. In the fifth, eighth, and eleventh months he visited in turn and sacrificed upon the great mountains of the south, west, and north respectively, and on his return to the capital he offered a bullock in sacrifice to the ** Cultivated ancestor ” (or “‘ ancestors ’’), possibly his predecessors in the kingly office, rather than his own progenitors. It is not until we reach the end of the Canon of Shun that we actually meet with the word T‘ien, and even then its interpretation need not necessarily imply divinity. The first occasion on which we find it definitely associated with the idea of divinity is in the Counsels of the Great Yii, successor to Shun, and founder of the first dynasty. The words are uttered by Shun when calling upon Yi to succeed him. THE IDEA OF GOD 137 He says: “ The lot of Heaven has fallen upon your person, and you must eventually ascend to the sovereignty.” Later he adds: “If the country suffer distress and poverty, the rewards (or grants) of Heaven (your divine blessings) will for ever end.” Here, then, is the first recorded instance of the use of Tien, evidently no new term, but one of ancient origin. While Shun was yet alive he commissioned his chief minister and successor Yii to bring the prince of the indigenous Miao tribes to submission. In the course of Yii’s address to his men, after reproaching the Miao prince with his insolent behaviour, and declaring him to be a rebel to the right and a destroyer of virtue, who exiles the good and promotes the unworthy, he goes on to say that “‘ Heaven is sending down doom upon him,” and bids his men with united heart and strength go forward. The prince of the Miao proved too strong for Yi, whereupon Yii’s chief minister advised him thus: “‘It is virtue which moves Heaven; there is no distance to which it does not reach. Pride brings loss, humility receives increase —this is the way of Heaven. In the early years of our emperor (i.e. Shun) when he lived on Mount Li, he went into the fields and daily cried with tears to compassionate Heaven and to his (unkind) parents, taking upon himself all guilt and wrong-doing. .. . Perfect sincerity moves the spirits (Shén, mH), how much more this prince of Miao.” Yu accepted the advice, withdrew his men, caused them to perform 138 THE IDEA OF GOD dances, probably religious, in the court or temple, and in seventy days the prince of Miao, influenced thereby, was led to tender his submission. Now in the above excerpts we find three important terms taken from the oldest part of the most ancient book in China, each of which has been claimed as the right term for God. The first in order is Shang Zi, the second is T‘ien, and the third is Shén. As to Shang Ti, He is definitely a personal | God, verily the King of kings, inasmuch as throughout Chinese history none but kings have offered sacrifice to Him, for the offering of sacrifice by any one else is equivalent to rebellion, the sacrificer by such act asserting his claim to the imperial office of pontifex maximus, and therefore to the throne. In the second place we have the term Tien, the impersonal Heaven, whom all may worship, and whose ear is open to the cry of all, from the king on his throne to the humblest in the land. The people of the south still hold to the impersonal term Tien, but the people of the north have personified Him under the title Lao Tien Yeh, which may be inter- preted either as His Honour Heaven, or The Honoured Progenitor Heaven. What the earliest form of the character for Heaven may have been, we do not know. Dr. Giles has shown that in certain ancient forms it was written in the shape of a man, and I may add that the Chinese have the common saying, ‘* Heaven is man (writ) large; man is heaven (writ) small.”? Dr. THE IDEA OF GOD 139 Giles points out that “there does not seem to have been any attempt to draw a picture of the sky. On the other hand, the character T‘ien is just such a representation of a human being as would be expected from the hand of a prehistoric artist ; and under this unmistakable shape the character appears on bells and tripods, as seen in collections of inscrip- tions, so late as the sixth and seventh centuries B.c., after which the head is flattened to a line, and the arms raised until they form another line parallel to the head RK.” 4 The character T‘ien also means the sky, a day, and the weather; and in his address at the Third International Congress for the History of Religions, Dr. Giles wisely adds, “‘ It is not suggested that the idea of an anthropomorphic God preceded the idea of the sky in which He was placed ; but merely that in the Chinese script the character for T‘ien empha- sises pictorially the sense of God rather than that of sky, the latter being nevertheless the original meaning of the spoken word T‘ien, and still the more common meaning of the two. . . . An earlier symbol for the visible heavens, belonging to the days of pictorial writing, but now no longer in use, is said to have been three horizontal lines =.’’? This view of the character has led Dr. Giles, wherever it occurs as representing Heaven, to trans- 1 Giles’ Religions of Ancient China (Constable, 1s.). 2 Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of Religions, p. 106, 140 THE IDEA OF GOD late it by the term God. Were one able to accept this view it would bring the Chinese into line with most of the other Asiatic and European peoples, to whom the word for the sky, or heaven, became the word used for deity, e.g. dyaus, dewa, deus, theos, divine. It would give me great pleasure to follow Dr. Giles in this view did I think it sufficiently estab- lished, for it is reasonable to suppose that the awaken- ing intelligence of primeval man, drawn by the Divine Spirit away from the perishing dust of his mortal surroundings, should have turned wondering eyes to the marvel of the sky, away from the familiar things with which he had previously satisfied his merely physical needs. The dawn of wonder is the dawn of religion, and the greatest of wonders is the sky. While not denying that there may be such, I am unacquainted with any Chinese writer who has ever interpreted the character Tien as does Dr. Giles. Parenthetically I may remark that, under the old régime, a schoolboy’s first writing lesson consisted of the three words — F< A, “a great man,” into which three characters FQ may be divided. For the time being, however, it seems to me safer to translate T‘ien in the sense of an impersonal Heaven rather than in the sense of a personal God. The “term question ” is a very old one, and has produced much disputation. When the Emperor K‘ang Hsi, in the seventeenth century A.D., would have settled the dispute between his friends the t) THE IDEA OF GOD 141 Jesuits on the one hand, and the Franciscans and Dominicans on the other, by the adoption of the word T’ien for God, the impersonality of the term was strenuously objected to by the Franciscans and Dominicans. The Pope, to whom an appeal was made over the Emperor, supported their view, with the result that a personal ‘‘ Tsien Chu,” or “‘ Lord of Heaven,” has been the Roman designation ever since. This claim of the Pope to override the decision of the Emperor was one of the causes which, by Roman Catholic writers, is said to have prevented the conversion of the Emperor, and through him of all China, which they think was then imminent. Still another term remains to which I will briefly draw your attention. It occurs in the passage I have quoted above, namely, the word Shén. At one time the conflict between the terms Shang Ti and Shén was keen amongst the Protestant missionaries. Even yet Bibles are printed, some with Shang Ti for God, and some with Shén. Now, it is sufficiently clear from the earliest extract in which Shén is used in the Book of History, that it there refers, not to one God but to many, indeed it never refers to a god in the singular without a qualifying word. After sacrificing to Shang Ti, to the six honoured ones, and to the hills and streams, Shun sacrificed to the host (literally, herd) of Shén. The character for Shén consists of two parts, one the radical, which indicates the meaning, representing “a divine indi- cation’’; the other of phonetic value, also meaning 142 THE IDEA OF GOD “to extend.” In general, Shén may be taken to connote our word spirit, referring especially to spirits worthy of honour, as compared with the kwei (origin- ally daimon, now demon). It is important, however, to note that Shén has become a popular name for a number of gods or spirits, especially nature gods, such as the god of wind, fire, etc. It is used also as a generic term for the whole host of divine beings. Limiting ourselves, then, for the present to the two terms, Shang Ti, the personal God, and T‘ien, or the impersonal Heaven, what do we find the ancient books to postulate as to the character of these two ? For purposes of comparison I have made a list of all the places where these terms are used in the History, © and also compared the meanings: in the Odes, and the following is what I find. The first thing that impresses itself upon the mind is that T‘ien is of much more frequent occurrence than is Shang Ti. A closer examination proves that the qualities which are attributed to Shang Ti are all equally attributed to T‘ien, and that, in addition, qualities are attributed to T‘ien which are not as- sociated with Shang Ti. It would seem as if Shang Ti were conceived of more as a sovereign ruling the world than in a paternal relationship to humanity, and as if Heaven were looked up to not only as a sovereign, though it is also styled Sovereign Heaven, but in a more intimate relationship with men. This view finds confirmation in the attitude of the Chinese at the present day, for while men worship, THE IDEA OF GOD 143 call upon, and cry and weep to Heaven, the very sovereignty of Shang Ti, the God, or Jehovah, of the Classics has seemed to bar the approach of the common people, leaving that approach to his vice-regent, the ruler on earth. We find in the History and the Odes that to God, whether considered as the personal Shang Ti, or the impersonal T‘ien, the following qualities are attri- buted : He hears and sees; He enjoys offerings; He has a heart, or mind; He is aided by men, and deputes His work, especially to kings and their ministers ; He can be honoured and served ; He is awe-inspiring, of dread majesty, and to be feared; He confers on men their moral sense, and makes retention of his favour dependent on moral character; His will is glorious, may be known, and must be complied with ; a virtuous king is after His own heart, but He will have no regard to the ill-doer; with such a one He is angry; the virtuous king He will reward with ease and dignity; the appointment to kingly office is in His hands, such appointment is contingent, and He cannot be relied upon not to reverse it, for His favour may be lost; He protects, but may withdraw His protection ; He warns, corrects, and punishes the evil king, even afflicts, ruins, and destroys him, and of this instances are clearly given. Such are the principal qualities attributed equally to Shang Tiand to T‘ien. In addition, other qualities are ascribed both by the History and the Odes to 144 THE IDEA OF GOD Tien. T‘ien gives birth to the people; It gives valour and wisdom to princes; It gives blessings to the good and woes to the evil; It ordains the social order, the religious and social ceremonies, and human virtues ; It sends down rain; It is gracious to men and helps them; Its will is unerring; It does not shorten men’s lives, they do that themselves; It is not bound to individuals by ties of biased human affections ; It commands men to rectify their charac- ter; It gives man his nature, compassionates him, and grants his desires; It is only moved by virtue, but men may cry and weep and pray to It, for It will hear. In addition to many of the above, the Odes ascribe to Shang Ti, that He is great; that He appoints grain for nourishment ; that He gives comfort, but also hates; that He smells a sweet savour; that He spoke to King Wén; that He is an example or pattern; and, in a doubtful passage, that He left a toe-print on the earth. In reference to T‘ien the Odes also speak of a visitant from Heaven; call T‘ien unpitying and unjust; say. that It can be offended; call It our parent; invoke It; say that King Wen is in Heaven; describe It as enlightening the people; as intelligent, and clear-seeing; as giving blessings and prosperity ; and speak of God (Ti) as being in the great Heaven. From the above it will be seen that great prepara- tion has been made in China for Christian enlighten- ment in the recognition of a Power above, great, THE IDEA OF GOD 145 beneficent, and just, who rewards virtue and punishes vice, and who can be approached in prayer. Add but the word Fu, or Father to T‘ien, as Christianity does, and the Heaven-Father becomes as approach- able as the earthly one. This comes as an easily apprehended idea to the people, for they have for ages spoken of Heaven as father and Earth as mother, and they have no difficulty in realising the father-motherhood or parental relationship of God when once the idea is placed before them. As time passed, the more general term ‘‘ Heaven”’ underwent a change by the addition of the word Earth. This may have been brought about by the adoption of what seems to have been the compara- tively late conception of a dual Power, or powers. I am aware that this statement somewhat traverses one of the fundamental principles of Dr. de Groot’s book. He says: “* The oldest and holiest books of the Empire teach that the universe consists of two souls or breaths, called Yang and Yin, the Yang representing light, warmth, productivity, and life, also the heavens from which all these good things emanate; and the Yin being associated with darkness, cold, death, and the earth. The Yang is subdivided into an indefinite number of good souls or spirits, called shén; the Yin into particles or evil spirits, called kwei, which animate every being and every thing. It is they also which constitute the soul of man. His shén, also called hwun, immaterial, ethereal, like heaven itself from 10 146 THE IDEA OF GOD which it emanates, constitutes his intellect and the finer parts of his character, his virtues ; while his kwei, or poh, is thought to represent his less refined qualities, his passions, vices, they being borrowed from material earth. Birth consists in an infusion of these souls; death in their departure, the shén returning to the Yang or heaven, the kwei to the Yin or earth. Thus man is an intrinsic part of the universe, a microcosmos, born from the macrocosmos spontaneously.” Now it is true that the words Yin and Yang do occur in the two oldest books of China, the History and the Odes. In no case, however, do they occur in the Odes in the sense referred to by Dr. de Groot, and they occur only once in the History, and that at quite a late period. This idea of duality finds its first expression only at the beginning of the Chou dynasty, that in which Confucius lived, dating from 1122 to 255 B.c. In the Great Declaration of King Wu, the virtual founder of the new dynasty, we find him opening his declaration with the new and re- markable statement: ‘“‘ Heaven and Earth are the father and mother of all creatures, and of all creatures man is the most highly endowed. The sincere, intelligent, and perspicacious (among men) becomes the great sovereign, and the great sovereign is the father and mother of the people.” Here, then, is an apparent descent from the earlier supreme monotheism, and yet it is worthy of note that the final clause makes the one earthly ruler both THE IDEA OF GOD 147 father and mother, or parent, of the people—that is, he is the vicar of God to them; and surely it is fair to infer therefrom a monotheism behind the heaven- earth. Nevertheless this inferior terminology and later dualistic conception have entered largely into the vocabulary both of books and of the common people, eclipsing to no small degree the simpler monotheistic idea, and now, save as it is retained in the imperial worship of Shang Ti, or in the popu- lar T‘ien, the Supreme Power is worshipped under the dual guise of T‘ien-ti, or Heaven and Earth, the Universe, Nature, from the Emperor down to the commonest of the people. I do not find any evidence of the worship of Shang Ti by the people. In all the records with which I am acquainted He is worshipped only by the Supreme Ruler on earth. It is only in the impersonal or more general form of Heaven, later of Heaven and Earth, that the people approach Him. He is through all recorded history assisted by a host of spirits or gods, and there can be little doubt that the number of these tended to increase from early times down to the period of Confucius, indeed not only until his days, but ever since. Not content with the worship of divine beings, fear of demons took possession of the people. When this began we do not know, but it is clear that kwei originally was daimon, not demon. No doubt the age-long worship of departed spirits, in the shape of ancestors, who were not only alive in another and circumambient realm, and able to bless 148 THE IDEA OF GOD and protect, but were also capable of bringing calamity on the evil-doer, caused a fear of the departed and of demons in general, a fear which grew, and to-day paralyses the people high and low. That such increase in the number of objects wor- shipped and feared had become a burden, even in the days of Confucius, may be inferred from the Four Books, and it also seems evident that Confucius may be looked upon as a reformer of these superstitions rather than as a sceptic in regard to religion. His attitude resembled that of Socrates, in that he was a thoroughly religious man, who sought after a moral God, and who found the increasing multitude of gods and demons, and the superstitions of the people dis- tasteful and baneful. We are told that he would not talk about the spirits, or about marvels, and he advised that, though the spirits should be respected, they should be avoided, by which he seems to mean that magic and spiritualism are undesirable subjects. While looking up to Heaven and reverently seeking to know and obey Its will, he apparently does not regard It as an object of formal worship, and it would seem as if, while recognising a just Power directing all men, he entirely limited the worship of the ordinary man to his own ancestors. In the Ritual of the Chou dynasty, edited by him, we find the following delimitation of sacrifice, or religious worship : ““The Son of Heaven sacrificed to heaven and earth; to the four quarters; to the hills and THE IDEA OF GOD 149 streams; and offered the five (domestic) sacrifices, all in the course of the year. “The feudal princes sacrificed to the four quarters (of their territories); to the hills and streams (in their territories); and offered the five (domestic) sacrifices ; all in the course of the year. “High officers offered the five (domestic) sacri- fices. “(All minor) officers sacrificed to their fore- fathers.” As Dr. Legge says, native scholars “all agree in maintaining that the sacrifices to forefathers were open to all, from the Son of Heaven down to the common people.’”’ And one might almost add that while all should reverence Heaven, and obey It, and respect the spirits in general, the ancestor was the principal object of worship left by Confucius to the people. In this respect there seems no room to doubt that he came as a purifier of the polyde- monistic times in which he lived. In one remark- able passage he says, “ To sacrifice to a spirit not one’s own (that is, outside one’s family circle) is sycophancy.”’ Nevertheless, the Puritanism of Confucius failed, beeause he failed, even worse than Laocius or Chuang-tzi, to bring the people into definite spiritual communion with the Righteous Power above, whom he reverenced and whose call he him- self answered. The worship of the dead and the introduction of GG 150 THE IDEA OF GOD Buddhism have resulted in the vast multiplication of temples to departed worthies, whom the people ignorantly worship, knowing nothing of their origin, or even of their names. And the earlier worship of nature gods, developed by the Taoist school, has brought into existence an innumerable host of divinities, in the heavens above, in the firmament, upon the earth, and underneath it, so that there is nothing which is not under the dominance of a spirit or divinity of some description or other, until, the Chinese feels himself to be “ surrounded by 4 host of foes,” whom he must appease if life is to be worth living. The air is full of spiritual beings, good and bad—mostly bad. Idolatry does not seem to have existed, at any rate, not to havebeen common, in pre-Confucian times. It seems probable that it was not in vogue until after the introduction of Buddhism. After this, the rivalry which occurred between Taoism and Buddhism worked for the increase of idols. One point must ever be placed to the credit of Confucianism, namely, that while it allowed images to be introduced into the popular temples, it never permitted an image to be made of Shang Ti, and has always been opposed to the multiplication of images of Confucius. Its institution of the wooden tablet, as the ancestral spirit-throne, has kept the ancestral temples largely free from idols, though pictures of the pair, male and female, who founded the clan or family which has erected the temple, are hung up on sacrificial occa- THE IDEA OF GOD 151 sions, or even permanently painted in the niche behind the tablet. Taoism has rendered little aid in the discovery of the Divine. A passage in the Tao Té Ching says that it would seem as if Tao were before God, thus making God inferior to Tao. Chuang-tziti speaks of a creator, but it is not clear to whom he refers. In default of God, the Taoists of a later age have deified Laocius, and a number of other ancient worthies, especially the mythical and even historical dis- coverers of the laws of Nature. It has gone farther, in the apotheosis of Chang, the Taoist patriarch, who is now Yi Huang Shang Ti, the Precious Imperial Shang Ti. Neither Taoism nor Buddhism has added any- thing of value to the ancient Chinese idea of God, but, contrariwise, brought about its degradation. They are mainly responsible for the immense multiplica- tion of “gods” or “saints”? whom the people ignorantly worship, and who have become a dark cloud obscuring God and hiding Him from their dulled vision. The heterogeneity of polytheism has destroyed a search after the material and spiritual homogeneity or unity of the universe, which both faith and experience reveal to the truly enlightened as expressed in the Godhead. LECTURE VI MAN’S RELATIONSHIP AND APPROACH TO THE DIVINE In this lecture I want to show you what are the Chinese ideas concerning man’s relationship to the unseen, and his mode of approach to the divine. However it may have arisen, whether through an animistic process or by direct revelation, the fact remains that through all known time the Chinese have possessed the instinct which led them to be- lieve in a spiritual world outside themselves. Com- mon to humanity all the world over, this instinct is at last being recognised by our leading philosophers, not only as a factor that has been undervalued, but as one of prime importance to philosophy, equal indeed with the importance of the intellect. Instinct leads the bee to form its marvellously mathematical cell, it gives the swallow its astonishing sense of orientation, in man it draws him out towards the unseen, and in its higher development of faith leads him upward to God, mingling his human nature with the divine. The splendour of the sun may dazzle his mortal eyes, and the air of the mountains may intoxicate him, but, far from satisfying, they only 152 MAN’S APPROACH TO THE DEVINE. 153 _ tender his immortal cravings thé keerer,: compelling, his inmost soul to cry, “ Break, diviner light,?° a. 2. 2 his immortal spirit strives to “‘ breathe diviner. airs. So has it been with the Chinese. Through’ all: “ages, from whatever humble origin it may have sprung, or however far astray it may have wandered in its purblind search, the Chinese instinct, or faith, if you like that word better, has been groping after the divine. ‘Thou hast made man for Thyself; nor can he find rest till he finds rest in Thee.” On the sublime hill-top and in the deep valley have the Chinese sought Him, and in many shapes and ways have thought that they have found Him, but their heart still cries unsatisfied. The T‘ien Tan, or Altar of Heaven, is in the centre of a glorious park, where it has stood through long ages without a cover to shut its upward gaze from Heaven. Buddhist and Taoist temples and monasteries are found in all the multitudinous beauty-spots of China, men seeking, far from the madding crowd, to escape from mortals to the company of the immortals. Nearly thirty years ago, my honoured senior, the Rev. Frederick Galpin, said to me: ‘“‘ Some of them tell me that they pray to their gods and their gods do answer their prayers. What do I reply? That they are mis- taken ? I tell them I believe their prayers are an- swered—by God, Who is a pitying Father and Who answers the sincere, even when they call Him by a wrong name. For the times of this ignorance God winked at.” 154. -MAN’ S APPROACH TO THE DIVINE : re my. last: lecture I endeavoured to show that from fe “the earliest known period the Chinese have recognised a Supreme Sovereign of the Universe. The unity of creation, ‘which’ they early came to discover, de- manded a Supreme Power, and this Power they ex- pressed on the one hand impersonally as T‘ien, or Heaven ; on the other hand, in personified form, as Shang Ti, the Supreme Ruler. While the latter term takes priority of occurrence in the oldest of the classics, I am by no means indisposed to agree with Dr. Giles that T‘ien may have been the older concep- tion. Of evidence we cannot really claim to possess any, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that the conception of Heaven as divine preceded that of Shang Ti, which latter title, with its definite idea of rulership, as I have already suggested, seems more naturally to be the outcome of an organised state of society. If there be any confirmation of this theory it rests chiefly on the ground that while all classes of the people, through all recorded time, have prayed to Heaven without let or hindrance, there is no record of any one but the earthly ruler worshipping Shang Ti. And although the Ritual of the Chou dynasty endeavours to limit the religion of the common people to a worship of their ancestors, the worship of public or territorial divinities to territorial authorities, and the worship of Shang Ti solely to the Emperor, yet passages which I have quoted show that the ear of “ Heaven,” and even of,Shang Ti, was open to MAN’S APPROACH TO THE DIVINE 15 \ the cry of the people. From all which we may infer that God considered as Sovereign, in the form of Shang Ti, could only be officially approached by His vice-regent, the sovereign on earth. On the other hand, considered in the sense of Providence, T‘ien or Heaven, a term which conveyed the divine idea in a more general sense, might be approached by all men. At this point it will be well to discriminate be- tween the recognised right of all human beings to call upon Heaven, and the limitations which accom- pany the idea of sacrifice. While the people at the present day make obeisance to, and call upon Heaven, as they probably have done throughout the past, there exists no authorisation for them in any way to offer it even the simplest sacrifice. They do offer sacrifices, and apparently to Heaven, but the only authorised sacrifice to Sovereign Heaven is that of the Emperor, even as he also is the one and only priest, or pontifex maximus, of Heaven. It is worthy of note that while T‘ien is often used, even in one and the same sentence, as a sub- stitute for, or connotation of, Shang Ti in the sove- reign aspect, Shang Ti is not used as an alternative for T‘ien. The close connection of the two terms, however, is manifest in that, down to the present day, the altar upon which the Emperor offers sacrifice to Shang Ti is styled T‘ien Tan, or Altar of Heaven. In short, as Dr. Legge has pointed out, the Chinese have used Shang Tisomewhat in the same manner as 156, ) man’s APPROACH TO THE DIVINE ie Israelites used the sovereign name of Jehovah, and, T‘ien in the wider sense of Elohim. Whoever he may be who approaches a deity, or whatever that deity may be, the recognised form of approach, in one sense, is universal—that is to say, the approach is seldom or never made with empty hands. From the Emperor, who, after his ceremonial fasting, presents his elaborate sacrifice to Shang Ti, down to the meanest in the land, whose only offering may be inexpensive sticks of incense, or a couple of small candles added thereto, approach is made with an offering of some sort. From the whole burnt- offering of a bullock made by the Emperor to God, down to the fowl which the poor man offers to his deity and then shares with his family, sacrifice is universal throughout the land. Such sacrifices are not looked upon as expiatory, but either purely and simply as propitiatory, or, as thankofferings for favours received. The pig is the most popular sacrificial animal, but all the other domestic animals are also offered, indeed almost every kind of human food, so that hundreds of thousands of animals, probably millions, are slain every year and offered as propitiatory oblations or thankofferings. They are offered, not only to the gods, but also to the ancestors, whose spirits continue to exert their parental rights and require to be made happy with the sweet savour of the good things of this life. From early times the flesh of sacrifice has been shared with friends after the ceremony, and MAN’S APPROACH TO THE DIVINE 457 | A the recipients are supposed to esteem the food which the spirits have enjoyed, not as an ordinary favour, but as possessed of some mystic benefit. I have introduced the subject of sacrifice at this point to show that it forms the principal method of approach to gods and spirits alike. Nor is sacri- fice confined to gods and good spirits, for “‘demon” or “ devil worship ” is exceedingly common, and sacri- fices, both private and public, are offered in order to placate them and thus induce them to with- draw their unwelcome attentions. But the character and mode of sacrifice, especially of imperial sacrifice, will be dealt with when we discuss Official Religion. What I now wish to direct attention to, as of more immediate importance, is the subject of Prayer. Judging from the few statements in regard thereto recorded in the Book of History, prayer, when offered in ancient times, was extempore, taking the form of a bare announcement. Some prayers even then were written, and the custom which generally obtains to-day is that the prayer is written, read before the altar, and then burnt, or posted upon or near to the shrine. In ancient times paper did not exist, so that prayers which were written had to be inscribed upon slips of bamboo or wood. One instance of such a prayer and its preservation is found in the History, in the chapter called ‘‘ The Metal-bound Coffer.”” King Wu being at the point of death, his affectionate brother, Duke Wén, took upon himself to sacrifice and pray to three of their 158 MAN’S APPROACH TO THE DIVINE common ancestors, generously offering his life in place of the king’s. The divination which followed indicated that the king would recover, but the prayer was preserved in the coffer. The king died two years later, and when, some time afterwards, the prayer, showing the generosity and loyalty of Duke Wén, was brought out, his nephew, the youthful emperor, was profoundly affected by the noble spirit of his uncle, who had been appointed as his guardian as well as regent of the Empire. While the prayer was offered not to God, but to the imperial ancestors, it reveals a manliness which calls for our admiration. Here is what it says: ““Your chief descendant (the king) is suffering from a severe and dangerous sickness ;—if you three kings have in heaven the charge (of watching over him, Heaven’s) great son, let me be a substitute for his person. I have been lovingly obedient to my father; I am possessed of many abilities and arts which fit me to serve spiritual beings. Your chief descendant, on the other hand, has not so many abili- ties and arts as I have, and is not so capable of serving spiritual beings. Moreover, he was appointed in the hall of God to extend his aid to the four quarters (of the Empire), so that he might establish your descendants in this lower world. The people of the four quarters stand in reverent awe of him. Oh! do not let that precious Heaven-conferred appointment fall to the ground, and (all) our former kings will also have a perpetual reliance and resort. I will MAN’S APPROACH TO THE DIVINE 159 now seek for your orders from the great tortoise. If you grant (what I request), I will take these symbols and this mace, and return and wait for the issue. If you do not grant it, I will put them by.” ! Prayer, however, is not a prominent characteristic in the ancient books, nor in our meaning of the term, embodying adoration, communion with God, or entreaty for spiritual exaltation and development, has it ever formed an enriching quality of Chinese worship. Of old and now its chief form has been an invocation for some special, and generally if not always, some merely temporal, blessing. In ancient times, as in the present day, prayers have been offered in case of sickness, and divination resorted to for knowledge of the answer. When Confucius was ill, his disciples proposed that prayers should be made for him, but he declined by saying enigmati- cally: “‘ My praying has been for long.” This is a saying we can effectively use in the present generation, when hysterical superstitions prevail. Confucius had a sublime faith that Heaven could do no wrong, that It had given him his mission as well as his life, and that he was immortal till his work for Heaven was done. On the only other occasion when prayer is men- tioned in the Analects, it is in an answer given to a certain high officer, who sought to gain over Con- fucius to his side, but of whom Confucius disapproved. In the form of a question this officer gave Confucius 1 Legge’s Religions of China. 160 MAN’S APPROACH TO THE DIVINE a broad hint that it would be advantageous to become his ally. ‘‘ What is the meaning,” he craftily in- quired, “‘of the saying, ‘It is better to pay court to the god of the hearth (i.e. the kitchen god, or spiritual major-domo, indicating himself), than to the god of the hall (i.e. the nominal spirit head of the household, indicating the prince)’?” “‘ Not so,” replied Confucius, in similar cryptic fashion ; “ he who sins against Heaven has nowhere left for prayer.” This is one of the best sayings of Confucius, and is of no small value as showing that Confucius recognised the supremacy of Heaven, that appeal to It was possible even for those not occupying the imperial throne, and that such appeal was final. While the various words used for sacrifice are of frequent occurrence, the rarity of the words used | for prayer throughout the Confucian classics is very noticeable. They occur only some half a dozen times throughout the whole, and throw but little light on the attitude of the ancients in this regard. Such instances as do occur, or are associated with them, all refer to merely temporal benefits. This is the Confucian attitude to this day. As a high Chinese official once expressed it, ‘““ You may inform Heaven what you wish, but you may not pray to It.” And when asked, ‘‘ But what do you do, then ?”’ he replied, ‘“‘Why, nothing; what can we do? We just await the will of Heaven.” Such is in theory the fatalistic or philosophical attitude of the Confucianist, but in practice other members of his family are not MAN’S APPROACH TO THE DIVINE 161 so stoical, nor is he himself when the troubles of life press hard upon him. Then other gods in the Pan- theon are resorted to with offerings and with written or spoken prayers. In sorrow and tribulation the Chinese are like the rest of mankind; they cry to the great Unknown and seek help and comfort wherever help and comfort may be found. Taoism, in its original form, was even less oaceied with prayer than was Confucianism. Its doctrine of passivity rendered petition unnecessary, even if it were of any use. Put yourself in line with Tao, float along the divine stream—there was nothing else to do but this—and such being the case, prayer was un- necessary. But the Taoist of to-day is the principal prayer-monger in the country. The “priest,” lay - or cleric, spends much of his time in petitioning the gods on behalf of his clients, and in divining for their will. Prayer for rain has been made from ancient times in China, and the Taoist “‘ priest ” now is the principal instigator and officiator in these annual acts of worship. One might almost style him the chief “rain-maker” of the country. In like manner he takes the leading part in the incan- tations by which evil spirits are expelled, whether they be from the person of a single individual or house, or from a village or town, as in the case of the terrible cholera demon. Taoist and Buddhist priests also intone the chants over the dead, and pray to the rulers of purgatory to release the de- parted and suffering soul. But this is not Chinese in 11 162 MAN’S APPROACH TO THE DIVINE origin, nor can we even say that it is really Buddhist. It may be an adaptation of ideas introduced from farther West, possibly of so-called Christian origin. In primitive Buddhism there is no provision for prayer, but in the Mahayana school, prayers are made to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and _ especially to Amitabha and the Buddhist Madonna the Goddess of Mercy, the worship of whom is of comparatively late date. The Buddhist of the Lamaistic school, which is common in the north, goes about with his ‘“‘ praying-wheel”? in his hand, or turns the great prayer-cylinder he finds so often at the roadside, and throughout China flags and streamers offer unceasing invocations as they wave to and fro in the fields. It is, therefore, impossible to consider China as a prayerless country, seeing that prayer in some form or another utters itself on every breeze. It is in Buddhism, perhaps, that the highest ground is found in prayer, possibly through the infiltration of Western and Christian notions. Multitudes, es- pecially of women, cry to the Goddess of Mercy, ** Oh, thou who hearest the cries of the world, and who savest those in bitterness and trouble’’; but for the most part even their prayer is mundane in its aims. The Buddhist monk or devotee spends much time in droning parts of his canon, the interpretation of which is utterly beyond him, or in unceasing repetition of the words, ‘‘ Namo, O-mi-to-fo,”’ ‘‘ Glory to Amitabha.”’ In seasons of real distress he, too, breaks away from his forms, and cries to the heavens, MAN’S APPROACH TO THE DIVINE 168 just as ages ago did the Taoist mentioned by Chuang- tzu, when he cried, ‘“‘Oh father, oh mother, oh heaven, oh man!” and as mankind does the world over. In regard to the relationship of sacrifice and prayer it may be pointed out that in the Li Chi, the Book of Rites, Confucius makes the important statement that *“ with sacrifice there should not be prayer, for this would imply a desire for personal advantage.” It will thus be seen that the sacrifice is considered as itself prayer. Indeed, there seems reason to believe that sacrifice, without the spoken word, was the earliest form of prayer not only in China, but amongst the Israelites, and indeed throughout the world. No doubt this idea has received full consideration and presentation by others, though I cannot recall having met with it in the course of my reading. In China, at any rate, sacrifice seems to have preceded, or included, prayer. There is another point to which the discussion of sacrifice naturally leads, and that is the office of priest. In Western countries the offering of sacrifices resulted, in most cases, in the separation of a special class, male and even female, to form the priesthood. So far as China is concerned, however, the line of Aaron finds no counterpart. In ancient times, though officers. were appointed to guard the temples and prepare the temple sacrifices, they did not form a separate class, nor were they a sacrificial priest- hood. The Emperor was the High Priest of Heaven 164 MAN’S APPROACH TO THE DIVINE for the whole nation, the Prince was Prince-priest in his domain, the chief was priest for the clan, and the father priest for his household. Such in general still remains the idea and practice of the priesthood in China. A certain amount of modification has of course taken place since the advent of Buddhism, and to-day Buddhist and Taoist so-called “ priests ’? and monks do form a separate body, performing duties which we associate with the idea of the priesthood, such, for instance, as the presentation of offerings, invocation and prayer, divination and the performance of funeral ceremonies. A separated priesthood of this kind is not found in Confucianism, consequently the State finds it convenient, at times, to employ both Buddhist and Taoist priests in certain ceremonials connected with the national religion, in a way which certainly would not meet with the approval of Confucius. In Buddhism and Taoism we find large numbers of priests, very few of whom are hampered by education. Buddhism also has large numbers of nunneries, which in places suffer occasional suppression, generally on the charge of immorality. Buddhist monks and nuns have the head completely shaven. Their monasteries and nunneries are often well-endowed. Where such is not the case they support themselves by begging from their clients. In education, morals, and religion Buddhism in China is at a very low ebb. The Taoists have a regular and a lay order. The regular priests are unshaven, wearing the beard, and MAN’S APPROACH TO THE DIVINE 165 also having the hair done up in a top-knot after the fashion of the ancient Chinese. The lay priests are generally married, and gain their livelihood by all kinds of performances associated with their super- stitious form of religion. They are the prime leaders of magic and sorcery, which, as in other nations, is of prehistoric origin. In a sense these men are also the self-constituted priests of the lower forms of the national religion, which for lack of a better term we place under Confucianism, though Confucius would disclaim the connection. They are open to any kind of engagement, whether exorcising devils, releasing souls from hell, seeking the advice of the gods through divination or through a spiritualistic medium, or- ganising public processions to escort away with great éclat the demons of plague, arranging theatrical performances to celebrate the “‘ birthdays” of the gods—indeed there is not a stroke of superstitious business in which they are not prepared to take a hand and turn a dishonest penny. It is a matter of complete indifference to such a priest what god or devil, Confucian, Taoist, or Buddhist, is to be propitiated, or what poverty-stricken pilferer of cabbages he is called upon to curse, in bed or board, by road or river, in every part of his anatomy, together with all his progenitors and descendants— all is grist to his mill, for he is the descendant of the primitive rain-maker and magician, and lives by the woes of his fellows. Did these woes not exist, he would have to create them, which in point of fact he 166 MAN’S APPROACH TO THE DIVINE does, for he has to live! The Buddhist priest may be low, ignorant, and superstitious, but for the most part, except among the semi-barbaric Lamas, he is comatose and harmless. The Taoist priest, and especially the lay priest, or exorciser, has a mind so utterly warped that it is almost beyond the possibility of being straightened. Even as a convert to Christi- anity he seems to see things asquint, and St. Paul’s rebuke to his Greek brother fits still in China—‘*‘ O full of all subtilty, thou child of the devil.” The lay priestesses, pythonesses, or exorcisers, are like unto their brethren. Often they are married women, whose husbands live on their earnings. They act chiefly as spiritualistic media, the goddess, or goddesses, upon whom they call, taking possession of them and speaking through them. One such, whose house and shrine were beneath my study win- dow, was consulted almost daily by her clients, and the two goddesses who were at her beck and call did not add to my comfort as they consulted aloud through the lips of the woman, one in a deep, the other in a shrill tone. This brings us to the subject of Divination. It is clear, throughout the history of the Chinese re- ligions, that the gods and spirits may not only be approached, but that their will may be made known. One important point, however, I should like to see more fully elucidated—namely, whether the will of God or Heaven has ever been directly sought by divination. I cannot recall such an instance. So MAN’S APPROACH TO THE DIVINE 167 far as I remember, in ancient times divination was limited almost solely, if not indeed entirely, to seeking the approval, or learning of the disapproval of the ancestors who, through the instruments of divination, were supposed to be able to communicate with their descendants on earth. They were credited with the power to express the divine will in this respect. It is true that the will of Heaven might be known to men, not so much for particular purposes as in a grander and more general sense. Men might—the Emperors, and even rulers who raised the standard of rebellion did—make announcements to Heaven, or to God, that they proposed to do certain things, believed that they had received the divine will to do them, and, on their successful completion, made further announcement of such completion. But divination originally seems to have been limited to the ancestral temple. With the apotheosis of other gods or spirits, especially the spirits of dead heroes or ministers, divination underwent a wider extension. To-day there are few temples wherein its instruments are not an important part of the paraphernalia. A remarkable exception is the temples to Confucius, and this may indicate that the higher thought of China is opposed to indis- criminate divination, and at any rate, so far as Confucius is concerned, that they will not have him contemned by turning him into an oracle. I will not say that my statement is correct as to all Confucian temples, but they are all on the same model, and not 168 MAN’S APPROACH TO THE DIVINE having observed the instruments in any temple which I have visited leads me to the conclusion that they are universally absent. The ancient instruments of divination were stalks of a certain kind of grass and tortoise-shells. The tortoise is the emblem of longevity or immortality, and, by way of parenthesis, I may add, is also the emblem of immorality. From the marks on its back the pa-kua is said to have been invented by Fu-Hsi. Just as the classics of China are clean, and can unhesitatingly be put into the hands of the young, so in divination the Chinese never seem to have in- dulged in the gross observance of the entrails of a sheep as with the Romans, nor do we find much evidence of phallic worship, or the religious prostitu- tion of men and women, or the unutterable orgies of Hellenic or Semitic degradation. The religions of China may distress by their superstition, but they seldom or never shock by their grossness. Nor is there any evidence that the Chinese ever divined by watching the flight of birds, as did the Roman augurs, though they have always looked upon certain birds and beasts as harbingers of good or ill omen, and disembodied spirits frequently take the shape of were-wolves, foxes, tigers, birds, and so on. In ancient times the phoenix was the principal bird of good omen, and when it appeared it was a divine messenger clearly indicating the rise of a sage or a sage sovereign. An unusual kind of deer was caught a little while before the death of Confucius, MAN’S APPROACH TO THE DIVINE 169 who is said to have recognised it as the deer which had appeared to his mother at his birth,-and which now came to announce that his work was done. Divination has changed and increased its instru- ments since the days of Confucius. The most common to-day is the kidney-shaped root of a bamboo, split down the middle so as to produce two halves, each with a convex and a flat side. After the offering has been made, and sometimes the object of the inquiry stated, the two pieces are thrown to the ground. If they fall, one face up, the other face down, the augury is favourable ; in any other position it is unfavour- able. Another method of discovering the will of the god is by the planchette. This is no modern innova- tion, as in Europe, but dates back to an early period. The stylus is attached to a framework slung from a beam, and the deity is then supposed to guide the hands of the manipulator in the writing of cabalistic signs impossible of interpretation save by the initiated ! Still another amongst other methods is to shake three from amongst a number of bamboo slips placed in a bamboo tube. The three slips tally with strips of paper kept by the priest, who hands to the worshipper copies on which are written certain verses. These are considered to indicate the charac- ter of the prognosis. A colleague of my own once induced a priest to give him the papers corresponding with the slips he shook out of the bamboo tube. 170. MAN’S APPROACH TO THE DIVINE They announced to him that he would have a son, and sure enough the son put in his appearance a short time after ! Dreams are also resorted to in order to obtain _divine direction. I knew a scholar, a Confucianist, who several times resorted to a temple, each time spending the night in comfortless sleep, awaiting the dream the god would give him by way of direction as to the course he should pursue. He was not enthusiastic over the result. In conclusion, then, it will, I think, be clear to you that the Chinese have no doubt as to the possibility of approach to the divine beings, or that they can make their will known to men. So material, how- ever, is their mind that such approach is for the most part made for mundane purposes, and seldom for moral or spiritual development. In none of the three religions do we find that communion with the divine in prayer, that intensity of adoration, that rapture of God, that splendour of entry into the Divine Presence, that yearning to partake of His moral and spiritual nature, and share in His holiness, which is to be found in the superb religion which Moses and the prophets, the Christ of God, His apostles and saints, have revealed to the world. “a. PA-KUA« LECTURE VII COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS As amongst the other races of humanity, so amongst the Chinese, there is little or nothing to show that the primitive race had obtained a sufficient purview of Nature, as a whole, to trouble itself about the riddle of the universe. The two oldest books, namely, the History and the Odes, leave us in ignorance of the ideas of the ancients in regard to the creation of the universe and of man. It is not until we reach ‘the Chou dynasty, the Augustan age of China, that we meet with the consideration of philosophical ideas. The book which forms the foundation for much of the subsequent speculation is the Yi Ching, one of the five canonical classics, and commonly called the Book of Changes—a very inadequate trans- lation of its title. Certain writers, Dr. de Groot amongst them, have fallen into the error of styling it the oldest book in China. Such is not the case. In its present form jt does not date earlier than the days of Confucius, probably much later. The whole book is founded on a symbol, peculiarly Chinese, known as the pa-kua IN £h. This symbol has had two forms, the original 171 172 COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS form being attributed to Fu Hsi, the first semi- historical ruler (2852 B.c.). In the twelfth century B.c. it was altered by King Wén. He wiled away the hours of his imprisonment at the hands of the Emperor Chou Hsin, the Nero of the Shang, or second, dynasty, by doubling its combinations, re- arranging them in a different order, and writing brief notes thereon. His son, King Wu, who ultimately overthrew Chou Hsin, and established the third, or Chou, dynasty, added another very brief dissertation. Two older explanations of the original symbol had previously existed, but of these we know nothing. Confucius became much interested in the pa-kua, and also in the brief explanations of Wén and Wu. He is said to have worn out the leathern thongs of his copy three times, and in the Analects we are told that he said, if his life could only be prolonged, he would devote fifty years to the study of the Yi, and then he would be free from great errors. The interpreta- tion of the passage is disputed, but there is no doubt that it expresses his high opinion of the symbol. His chief interest in its permutations and combinations was of an ethical order, for he sought to show their influence in the moral cosmos. Dr. Legge thinks that the “ trigrams were origin- ally devised simply as aids to divination.” That they became such is true, but that they were origin- ally devised for that purpose is improbable. It is far more likely that they are a relic of the ‘‘ knotted cord” or quipus period, indicating certain astro- COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS 173 nomical observations. The word Yi, the title of the Book of Changes, is composed of sun and moon, and in ordinary usage the unbroken (shall we say un- knotted ?) lines are styled Yang, which is also a com- mon name for the sun; the broken (shall we say knotted ?) lines are styled Yin, which is the common name for themoon. Confucius, or one of his disciples, definitely states in the Yi Ching that it is an endeavour to express the phenomena of Nature. He says: “The Sage (King Wén) was able to survey all the complex phenomena under the sky. He then con- sidered in his mind how they could be figured, and (by means of the diagrams) represented their material forms and characters. Hence these (diagrams) are denominated hsiang,’”’ or emblematic figures. Amongst numerous other explanations that have been suggested, Leibnitz offered a numerical solution of the meaning of the Yi, and seems to have founded his “‘ binary system ” upon it.' It is from this enigmatic work, the Yi Ching, that the famous dualistic theory is said to have taken its rise. Of this, I may say that the original notes of Wén and Wu give no evidence, nor is it until the appendices were added by Confucius, or his disciples, that the words Yin and Yang appear. Wén and Wu were almost certainly not the inventors of the Yin- 1 Ganon MacClatchie considers the octagon to be related to the ogdoad of Western mythologists, the father, mother, three sons and three daughters, who founded the human race, for these eight family relationships are also applied to the respective sides of the octagon, 174 COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS yang system. A dualistic terminology may have existed in their day, but, so far as I can find, it had not attained to the clear definition which it obtained later. This dualistic terminology has evidently been the outgrowth of later philosophical speculation, for Yin Ke and Yang , in their modern connotation, find little or no place in the Confucian classics, or in the Tao Té Ching of Laocius. The terms are used by Chuang-tzi, but it was not until the Sung dynasty, a thousand years ago, that the system took possession of the Chinese. Chu-tzt, the great Sung dynasty commentator and authority on the classics and philosophy, who lived in the twelfth century 4.D., dealt with the pa- kua, and wrote an elaborate treatise on natural philosophy. His ideas have been the orthodoxy of China until now. The forty-ninth section of his work was translated by Canon MacClatchie forty years ago, whose interpretation did not meet with acceptance amongst Sinologues. His translation needs revision ; indeed, the whole of the philosophy of the Sung period calls for examination and exposition at the hands of one who will clothe it in modern philosophi- cal terminology. We may never be able to decipher the original diagram, and even if we could, it is by no means certain that we should be much the wiser for our pains, but I think we may look upon it with interest, as being one of the most interesting symbols we possess of the rise of humanity, Chinese humanity COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS 175 at any rate, out of a primitive barbarism, into civilised conditions. As already mentioned, I hesi- tate to believe that it was invented merely for pur- poses of divination, and somewhat empirically find myself associating it with a primitive numerical system, or with some arrangement of the seasons in calendar form, or both. When we consider the im- portance of the discovery of a numerical system, in place of the separate naming of each article, as is still the method with some savage tribes, we can better realise what an immense advance the dis- covery of such a system would mean. The per- plexities of the modern science of numbers are as nothing to the distance which separated the man who could add together a few simple numerical symbols from the man who could not put two and two together. Again, the four seasons, the months, the rotation of the year, are taken for granted by us, and we think nothing of them. Such was not the case with man in his infancy. Our printed calendars tell us when it is the first day of the year, and of the month, when it is the vernal and autumnal equinox, when the moon will wax and wane, when the sun and moon will be eclipsed and to what extent. It was not so in primeval China. The calendar did not exist, the procession of the months and of the sea- sons, and the length of the solar years were undeter- mined. Even after the invention of the calendar it was constantly going wrong. For instance, in the Book of History we find that one of the first duties 176 COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS of every sovereign on his accession was to correct the calendar. That the determination of the solar year was a matter of great difficulty we can see from our Western history, for it is only since the days of Gregory that we have had a correct calendar ; and Russia still follows the pre-Gregorian method. When, therefore, the early Chinese added their simple science of numbers to the observation of the heavens, they could not fail to discover that all the complex movements of the heavenly bodies and the innumerable changes which took place on the earth were under the governance of law, and that in fact they lived in the midst of a universe. That is to say, that the course (Tao) or law of Nature was homogeneous, exhibiting itself in innumerable heterogeneous forms through a dualistic division, of an antinomial or mutually complementary charac- ter, which took the shape of light and darkness, positive and negative, male and female, good and evil, and soon. The dualistic part of this discovery, however, does not seem to have been fully made, or at any rate stated, until the middle or end of the Chou dynasty ; indeed, research may yet prove that the dualistic idea was an importation from Baby- lonian sources. So much, then, for the pa-kua. Now let us turn to other conceptions. The Confucian school, in its commendable distrust of the marvellous, has naturally preserved fewer of the myths and legends of the race than has the Taoist school, whose belief in the bizarre has led not only to COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS 177 the preservation of ancient myths, often in much adul- terated form, but to the addition of multitudes of later ones. The fertile imagination of Hinduism has also stimulated Chinese imitation, and now it is difficult to discriminate between many of the myths as they were held by the ancient Chinese, and the same and other myths as influenced by Buddhist importations. The popular conception of creation is that the cosmos originally took the form of a huge egg, a sort of ovwm mundi, in which was produced a being, or demiurge, known as P‘an-ku, who is also called “Chaos,” or “the Chaos man,” which probably means he who first brought order out of chaos. . He is represented in pictorial form as a giant busy with hammer and chisel carving out the rocks and shaping the universe. Another account is that it was his death which gave birth to the existing material universe. “His breath was transmuted into the wind and clouds, his voice into thunder, his left eye into the sun, and his right into the moon; his four limbs and five extremities into the four quarters of the globe and the five great mountains, his blood into the rivers, his muscles and veins into the strata of the earth, his flesh into the soil, his hair and beard into the constellations, his skin and the hair thereon into plants and trees, his teeth and bones into the metals, his marrow into pearls and precious stones, the sweat of his body into rain, and the parasites upon him, impregnated by the wind, into the human species.” 1 Mayers’ Chinese Readers’ Manual, No. 558, 12 178 COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS Dr. Carus points out that this is “‘ a Chinese version not only of the Norse myth of the Giant Ymir, but also of the Babylonian story of Tiamat.” Inasmuch, also, as ‘“P‘an’? means a bowl, basin, or other hollowed vessel, and “‘ ku” means ancient, or else, solid, firm, according as the character is written, he says, “ Ob- viously the name means ‘ aboriginal abyss,’ or in the terser German, Urgrund, and we have reason to believe it to be a translation of the Babylonian Tiamat, ‘the Deep.’” While not disputing the probable common origin of the myth, I would warn you that Dr. Carus’ method of interpretation is obviously unusual, and the meaning not as clear as he declares. As a matter of fact both the term and its origin are involved in obscurity. We do not know when it came into use in China. No mention is made of it in ancient literature, nor by Sz-ma Ch‘ien, China’s first great historian, though the lack of such reference would not disprove the antiquity of its origin. During the Han dynasty of nearly two thousand years ago, evidently under Hindu stimulus, we are told that from the creation to the capture of the lin, a rare kind of deer which Confucius believed to portend his death, 2,267,000 and odd years had elapsed, a period which a thousand years ago, during the Sung dynasty, was increased to 3,276,000 years. This period is divided into ten epochs, the founder of the first being the above-named P‘an-ku, the first created being. I need not enter into a discussion of these epochs, beyond saying that in the eighth of them we COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS 179 are told that the spinning of silk was invented, that one of the rulers is known as the Nest-possessor (suggesting that he was the first to make for himself a dwelling), and that he was followed by Sui Jen, the fire-producing man, that is, the Chinese Pro- metheus. The ninth of these epochs produced Fu-hsi, or Pao-hsi, who is generally accounted the first semi-historical sovereign of China, and the founder of civilisation. His period is placed from 2852 to 2738 B.c. Like others of China’s early sovereigns, he is said to have been miraculously conceived, his mother becoming pregnant by the inspiration of Heaven, and his gestation lasting twelve years. Before his day the people are declared to have lived like beasts, clothing themselves in leaves or skins, eating raw meat with its hair and blood, knowing their mothers but not their fathers, and pairing without decency. Fu-hsi taught them to cook their food, to sow and reap, and to make musical instruments with spun silk. He also dis- placed the use of knotted cords by his discovery of the art of writing, an art that is believed to have been divinely revealed to him on the back of a dragon- horse, which appeared to him from the Yellow River. To him is also attributed the establishment of the laws of marriage, the formation of the calendar, and the invention of the pa-kua in its original form. I have given the above to show you that the Chinese clearly recognise that civilisation has been progressive, and that man has risen to the position 180 COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS he now occupies from the stage which is not “ little lower than the angels,” but little higher than the beast. When we turn from these legends to inquire what the ancient philosophers have to tell us of the creation of the universe, we find little to guide us with regard to their cosmological conceptions. This is especially the case with Confucius and his disciples. The Con- fucian school was essentially of a politico-moral character, and to Confucius any speculation outside the realm of the merely practical made little appeal. Nor do we find any help from Laocius, whose system is, in a sense, equally politico-moral with that of his contemporary, though it is based on the apparently anarchical doctrine of inaction, or each man living according to natural law. In Chuang-tzii we discover a much greater ad- vance. In several places he speaks of Tao or the law of Heaven, as if it were a living entity, and the Creator and Transformer of all things. For instance, in Book VI. he says that Tao “ has its root and ground (of existence) in itself. Before there were heaven and earth, from of old, there it was, securely existing. From it came the mysterious existences of spirits, from it the mysterious existence of God. It pro- duced heaven; it produced earth. It was before the T‘ai Chi ’’—that is, the primordial ether, out of which all material things came into existence. In another place in the same chapter he puts into the mouth of a deformed man, a Taoist, the saying, ““ How great is the Creator! That he (or it) should COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS 181 have made me the deformed creature that I am!” Yet he would not complain. Further on he puts into the mouth of another the words, “‘O my Master! O my Master! He (or It) gives to all their blended qualities, and does not count it any righteousness ; His favours reach to all generations, and He does not count it any benevolence; He is more ancient than the highest antiquity, and does not count Himself old ; He overspreads heaven and supports the earth; He carves and fashions all bodily forms, and does not consider it any act of skill ;—this is He in whom I find my enjoyment.” Whom the He (or It) re- presents, whether Tao, or a living sentient Power within the Tao, is not clear. Again in Book XII. he says, “ In the Grand Begin- ning (of all things) there was nothing in all the vacancy of space; there was nothing that could be named. It was in this state that there arose the first existence,—the first existence, but still without form. From this, things could then be produced, with what we call their own characteristics. That which had no form (or Chaos) was divided; and then without intermission there was what we call the process of conferring. The two processes continuing in operation, things were produced. As things were completed, there were produced the distinguishing lines of each, which we call form. That form was the body pre- serving in it the spirit, and each had its special manifestation, which we call its nature.” Again in Book XIII. he says, “It was the way of 182 COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS the Emperors and Kings to regard Heaven and Earth as their Author, the Tao and its characteristics as their Lord, and Inaction as their constant rule.” And as a last instance, I will quote from Book XIV., where he says, “‘How (ceaselessly) heaven re- volves. How (constantly) earth abides at rest. And do the sun and moon contend about their (respective) places ? Who presides over and directs these (things)? Who binds and connects them together? Who is it that, without trouble and exertion on his part, causes and maintains them ? Is it perhaps that there is some secret spring, in con- sequence of which they cannot be but as they are? Or, is it, perhaps, that they move and turn as they do, and cannot stop of themselves ? (Then) how the clouds become rain! And how the rain again forms the clouds! Who diffuses them so abundantly ? Who is it that, without trouble and exertion on his part, produces this elemental enjoyment, and seems to stimulate it? The winds rise inthe north”; and so on. Here in Chuang-tzii, then, we have the inquiring mind, and he seems to answer the eternal question with the assertion that there is intelligence behind the phenomena of Nature, that all that exists has been created by mind, and that from a primordial ether all things were evolved into the myriad form in which he found them. The introduction of Buddhism with its Hindu specu- lations undoubtedly acted as a stimulus, nevertheless COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS 188 Chinese speculation has never really left the base on which early Chinese thought founded its philosophy. That base is the partially developed idea of a primi- tive monism, ultimately dividing to form a dualism, an idea which we find in both the Confucian and Taoist schools. Dr. Legge says, that “‘ it took more than a thousand years after the closing of the Yi (the Book of Changes) to fashion in the Confucian school the doctrine of a primary matter.” This may be correct of the Confucian school, but it is not correct of the Taoist, for we find it expressed in Chuang-tzi. The doctrine does not seem to have received accept- ance and exposition in the Confucian school until the beginning of the present millennium, under the in- fluence of the famous Confucian scholar, Chu Hsi, of the Sung dynasty. It is well known, however, that Chu Tzii was well versed in and influenced by Taoist and Buddhist speculations, as well as by the orthodox works of which he became the great exponent. Now during the present millennium the doctrine of Yin and Yang has entered so intimately into the philosophy, the religion, and the practices of the people, that in discussing the religions of China we cannot afford to ignore it. Dr. de Groot finds in animism the primeval form of the Chinese religion and its very core to this day, and clearly holds that this animism from primitive times has been recog- nised as of a dualistic Yin-yang character. As a working hypothesis I have no objection to animism being considered as the primeval form of the Chinese 184 COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS religion, equally with that of every other religion, our own included. But, however interesting it may be, in examining the origin of religion, to look at “the hole of the rock from which it was digged,” it is of far greater interest and value to look at that which has been dug out, see what work it has done, into what shape it has been chiselled, and what beauty of tracery has been carved upon it. Animism may have been the primeval form of the Chinese re- ligion, and in that early period, to their and our forefathers, the hill, the stream, may have had its immanent soul, its indwelling genius. But the Chinese, ages ago, arose from the idea of im- manence to that of transcendence, and, as I have already said, the images and trees and streams of China are now no more animated in the sense of immanence than are the images of the saints in a Roman or Greek church, and even less so than are the animated elements in the Mass. In brief, then, while animism may have been the primeeval form of the Chinese religion, I cannot find sufficient proof that the dualistic doctrine of Yin and Yang, which is such an integral part of Dr. de Groot’s theory, and which undoubtedly plays a powerful part in the religion, philosophy, and practice of modern times, is anything like as ancient as Dr. de Groot considers it to be. The history of this dualism still calls for careful study and elucidation, and I must speak, therefore, with a measure of hesitation; but in an examination of the ancient COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS 185 books which has been all too cursory, I have come to the conclusion that there is ‘nothing to show that the dualistic theory was one of the primitive ideas of the Chinese. We do not find it mentioned, in the modern sense, either in the Book of History or the Odes. It is referred to in the Book of Rites, which, however, in its present form is of much later date. As to the Yi Ching, or Book of Changes, to which Dr. de Groot specifically refers, 1 cannot find it in the old part, composed by King Wén and his son King Wu. Indeed it is not until the days of Confucius, late in the dynasty, that the Yin and the Yang are introduced, and even then not as a developed system. What the position of the Yin and Yang theory was during the first millennium of our era I do not know, but apparently not until the beginning of the present millennium, dating from the Sung period, and especially during the period of Chu Tzu, did this theory, with all its elaborations, take possession of Chinese life. That it has ruled life in modern times is very manifest, and I wish to place on record my agreement with Dr. de Groot in his description of its powerful influence in the present day. What, then, is this dualistic cosmological theory, this twin-flanged key, which opens the mystery of the universe? Briefly I may state it as follows. At the beginning there was nothing, all was empty and void. Then, whether spontaneously or by a Creator is not clear, matter came into existence as 186 COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS a formless ether. This chaotic ether is known as the T‘ai Chi, that is the Grand Ultimate, or Primal Matter. Gyrating through a long period, it divided into two parts, one of which, being gross and heavy, precipitated to form the earth; the other, being finer and lighter, remained in suspension to form the heavens. That part which precipitated is called the Yin, the other the Yang. I have already told you that the word Yi in Yi Ching, the Book of Changes, from which this dualism is said to have sprung, is composed of two parts, the upper half meaning the sun, the lower half the moon. And I would remind you that the word Yang has also come to mean the sun, and Yin the moon, but they also mean light and darkness, and in the course of time have come to connote a wide variety of antinomial ideas, such as positive and negative, male and female, and so on. Indeed they are often styled by European writers the “‘ male and female principle.” The two earlier terms for this dualistic idea were chien, which means heaven, hard, strong, etc., and k‘un, which means earth, soft, weak, and so on. Both the earlier terms chien and k‘un, and the later terms yang and yin may often be rendered by “the universe.” Whatever the origin, then, the fact remains that dualism has become the working theory of Chinese philosophy, and entered into the most intimate rela- tions of national and domestic life. Everything in nature is either yinor yang. Heaven, light, warmth, COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS 187 masculinity, paternity, strength, productivity, life, are all yang. The earth, darkness, cold, femininity, maternity, weakness, death, are all yin. The principle is also carried into the unseen realm, and it must be borne in mind that nowhere in the world does a people dwell in the midst of, and allow itself to be controlled by, a spirit world more than in China. The circumambient is less air than it is spirits, but far from being immanent they are conceived of as constantly coming and going. They come singly or in battalions. They swarm every- where, outnumbering the millions of China. And the unseen world is conceived of as an exact replica of the Middle Kingdom. Shang Ti is the Spirit Emperor, and he has his hosts of officers, with yamens, lictors, prisons, tortures, and innumerable spirit people. These spirits also accord with the dualistic idea, and, if we would, we cannot be unduly critical, seeing that a dualism is found in our own system, the dualism of good and bad spirits. So in the Chinese conception of the unseen world there are yang or good spirits, and yin or evil spirits. It is, however, doubtful whether this division was clearly made in ancient times. Two terms are now used to express the notion of these spirits—-namely, shén for benevo- lent spirits, and kuei for malevolent ones. But originally shén was used chiefly, if not entirely, for nature spirits and it only came into use for the em- bodied or disembodied human spirit during a later period. Shén now is yang and denotes benevolent 188 COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS spirits, whether nature gods, or the good disembodied human spirit. It is even used for the embodied human spirit. The other term, denoting yin or malevolent spirits, is kuei, a term originally meaning daimon in the sense of the disembodied human spirit. Time has limited its meaning amongst the Chinese, as with ourselves, to denote malevolent spirits of every kind. Kuei-shén are often spoken of together in the classics to cover the meaning of the spirits in general, but the daimon had not then become demon, and the term denoted the nature spirits and disembodied human spirits. For instance—and this bears also on the question of transcendence—Confucius says, ‘How richly do the spirits manifest their virtuous power! We look, but do not see them; we listen, but do not hear them; .. . they cause all under heaven to fast and become clear, and to array them- selves in their richest dresses, in order to attend to their sacrifices. Then in an overflowing stream they seem to be overhead and on every side.’ ! There is no evidence to show that the spirits were divided, even during the Confucian period, into yang and yin, in the sense of benevolent and male- volent. This division may have taken place under Buddhist influence at a considerably later period. It is quite certain, however, that malevolent influences made themselves felt during the more ancient period, for we are told in the Analects that when the people 1 Doctrine of the Mean, xvi. COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS 189 were driving out noxious influences, no doubt with as much noise as they do to-day, Confucius always placed himself on the steps of his ancestral temple to reassure the spirits of his ancestors, in order that the noise might not alarm them. This may have been merely a quixotic method of acting towards his progenitors as he would have done had they been alive. At least it shows that the magical expulsion of noxious influences was in vogue in his day, and no doubt throughout the ages before him. The vast number of the spirits that fill the Chinese Empire has led to the development of a science, which arose out of the yin and yang idea, called Féng-shui, that is, wind and water, or in other words natural philosophy. With the spirits controlling every part of the universe, and affected therefore by every act of man, it became necessary for humanity to do nothing which could disturb the unseen powers. Hence an elaborate system of geomancy and necro- mancy has come into existence, possibly an outgrowth of primitive magic. The Féng-shui elaboration, with its geomantic and necromantic additions, is of a late period, though, of course, it is attributed to that mystery book of the Chinese, the Yi Ching. Nothing of such a character is to be found in that book, though the pa-kua, on which it is supposed to be founded, has been credited with all the later developments of the yin-yang theory. This dualistic system of the yin and the yang has, then, grown to be something more than a merely 190 COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS speculative theory as to the order of the universe. It has been elaborated into an applied science. The very simplicity of the theory renders it easy of apprehension by the multitude, but when. it is brought into the realm of practice the multitudinous combinations which result demand the wisdom of the specialist. Consequently, an army of specialists exists in China whose living depends upon their interpretation of the forces of nature, one might almost say upon the operations of the ghost world in nature. These men are drawn from all schools of thought, and from all ranks of life. The lordly Confucian scholar has been as firm a believer in the doctrine, and its development in féng-shui or geomancy, as the most stupid Buddhist monk, or the Taoist spiritualistic medium. Seeing that spirits exist everywhere, and take up their abode in anything, it is of vital importance that every new line of action should be taken only after the assurance that the spirits will not be disturbed thereby. For the spirits have the power and the will to wreak vengeance on any disturber of their peace. Consequently, no man dares to dig up long- undisturbed ground to build a house, or even a pig- sty, until he has appealed to the geomancer to know whether the féng-shui will thereby be disturbed. No grave can be built until the site has been carefully chosen in a position where the féng-shui, or geo- mantic, conditions have been discussed, and shown to make for the repose of the soul of the deceased ; COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS 191 otherwise the yin part of the deceased, being un- able to find rest, might turn into a peculiarly trucu- lent form of demon and bring woe upon the family ; for the prosperity of a family is dependent not more upon the efforts of the living than upon the good- will of the dead. The result of this doctrine, therefore, is that myriads of coffins lie long unburied awaiting the choice of a suitable position for the grave. I once preached in a gentleman’s house with a coffin behind me, which I thought to beempty. Only after the ser- vice did I discover that it had already been occupied six months, as no lucky site had yet been found, despite, possibly because of, the endeavours of nu- merous able professors of the science of féng-shui. Wherever one goes in China, unburied coffins are seen, some because of the poverty of the living, many through the intricacies of féng-shui. Sometimes when a family has suffered the buffets of fortune for a long period of years, and the geomancers advise that their ill-luck is due to the bad position chosen for a parent’s grave, the bones of the deceased are exhumed, enclosed in an urn, and removed to a better site. This doctrine of yin and yang, of féng-shui, of good and evil spirits, chiefly evil, would make life intolerable were it not for the mild fatalism which has grown into the Chinese character. Some there are, both among the learned and the ignorant, who ignore the whole question and go their way unheed- 192 COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS ing. Others make life burdensome by their scrupu- lousness. There are men who will not take a journey until they have consulted one of the numerous fortune-tellers who sit in the open street ready to announce whether his yang is in the preponderance or his yin. For the professor of yin-yang decides the wisdom or unwisdom of every new procedure, whether it be a marriage engagement, the date of the wed- ding (in which the bride herself has no voice), the opening of a shop, the first shaving of a child’s head, the growing of a moustache—everything. Not only is the professor consulted, but before action is taken, offerings are often made to some divinity or other for protection. The dualistic doctrine is also carried into the moral world, for virtue is recognised as yang, while vice is yin. In consequence, the man who is full of virtue is also full of yang, and this yang influence going out from him is able to overcome every kind of yin, or evil, influence. There is so much of truth in the idea that dislike or dread of yin influences has been an aid to virtue in many. Moreover, the yang in- fluence which a good man exerts is valuable to others and to the neighbourhood in which he lives. Con- fucius once remarked, though not in connection with the idea of yin-yang, that it is not wealth which makes a neighbourhood, but virtue. His later followers believe that a veritable yang air of virtue goes out from the good man to drive away the yin, or evil influences, which might otherwise work evil. COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS 193 In this respect, then, the yin-yang theory of the cosmos has had a useful influence on Chinese life. Not that virtue has found its origin in any such theory. Virtue has come down through all ages in China from the noble-spirited men of old, who loved it for itself and for the greater beauty and power it added to this life as well as the promise it gave of that which is to come. But the doctrine, when removed from the philosopher’s study and brought into the daily life of the people as an applied science, has placed a burden upon their shoulder, which is beyond the strength of any people to bear. It has closed the avenues of national wealth. Mines should not be opened lest the spirits be disturbed and bring woe on the land. Railways should not be built for a like reason. Rivers and water-channels should not be straightened, nor new-fangled irriga- tion works started, though they would save whole populations from famine; nor should clock-towers or lofty buildings be erected, lest the féng-shui be disturbed. On the other hand, pagodas dot the country all over, erected for the most part by devotees of yin-yang, in order properly to conserve the féng- shui of the neighbourhood—an all too clear evidence that the yang element of virtue was not sufficiently active amongst the people to be trusted without the addition of the towering pagoda ! ‘When I first read the following sentences from Dr de Groot I marked them with approval. On further consideration, however, I find much to criticise. 13 194 COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS ‘If missionaries in China,”’ he says, ‘“‘ wish to con- quer idolatry, they will have to destroy the belief in demons first, together with the classical cosmo- logical dogma of the Yang and Yin, in which it is rooted, and which constitutes to this day Confucian truth and wisdom of the very highest kind. They will have to educate China in a correct knowledge of nature and its laws; China’s conversion will require no less than a complete revolution in her culture, knowledge, and mode of thought, which have been tutored throughout all time by antiquity, and the classical books through which antiquity speaks.” ! On the question of education, I find myself in agreement with him, for I am firmly of opinion that it is no unimportant part of the duty of missions “ to educate China in a correct knowledge of nature and its laws.”” But I do not hold that missionaries will have first to destroy the belief in demons. How a missionary is to go to the Chinese with the New Testament in his hand and explain that the demons which Christ cast out never existed is not very manifest. Demonolatry and demonology are two distinct things, and “the expulsive power of a new affection,” the love of Christ, is strong enough to put an end to demonolatry, and rid the Chinese mind of the slavish fear of demons. I say so un- hesitatingly, having seen its effect in thousands of cases. Nor does the cosmological dogma of the Yang and Yin constitute to this day Confucian truth and 1 The Religions of the Chinese, p. 20. COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS 195 wisdom of the very highest kind. That highest truth and wisdom are expressed in the opening words of the Great Learning, which treats on the aim and substance of education. Confucius there lays down that, “ The object and aim of education is to elucidate lucid virtue, to renovate the people, and to stop at nothing short of perfection.” Far from the Yin-yang combination being the highest truth and wisdom, it is not found once either in the Analects, the Great Learning, the Doctrine of the Mean, or Mencius. Nor, finally, do I think that China’s con- version will require so complete a revolution in her culture, knowledge, and mode of thought as Dr. de Groot demands. Christ came not to destroy but to fulfil, and there is a magnificent basis of divine truth upon which He can build in China. What is needed is builders, not destroyers. And the greatest of all offices and delights of the missionary is not to destroy the less beautiful, but to preach the more beautiful Christ, who satisfies the aspiration of the Chinese heart so fully that yin and yang and féng-shui, and ghosts and demons become as nothing, as if they did not exist. Moreover, the true yang influence of Jesus Christ goes through the Christian into the lives of others, and is stronger and more effective than many pagodas. LECTURE VIII THE SOUL, ANCESTOR-WORSHIP, ESCHATOLOGY In considering the question of the soul we must differentiate at the outset between the soul while in the body and the soul as disembodied. Some of the terms used apply to both, and are therefore of value as expressive of a belief in the continuance of the soul and its individuality. There is one term which has given the title to an important and extensive library of psychology, namely, the term Hsing HE, and its meaning is nature or character, the nature especially of man. Though Confucius mentioned it on occasion, his recognised métier was that of a moral, not a mental, philosopher, consequently we find one of his principal disciples remarking that while they heard their master dis- course on culture and refinement they did not hear him discuss the question of the hsing (the soul), or T‘ien Tao (the course, or laws of Heaven). That is, he declined to be drawn away from his vocation of moral and political philosopher into the specula- tive realms of psychology, or theology. Nevertheless, he has not left us without evidence of his views, though, unlike some of his followers, 196 THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY 197 especially those of the Sung period, who have written voluminous tomes on metaphysics, he has left us without any reasoned statement. We can, there- fore, only infer his ideas from scattered sayings which have come down to us, and from his general attitude in regard to things pertaining to the soul. In the Analects he only refers to the hsing once, when he utters a phrase which has become univer- sally known throughout the country, “ Hsing hsiang chin, hsi hsiang yiian,’—‘‘In nature approximate, by practice remote,” and by this he is understood to mean that at birth the natures of men nearly resemble each other, but in practice they grow wide apart. Another version makes him imply that men are born good, but in practice they drift away. This doc- trine of the innate goodness of man is definitely advo- cated by Mencius, in whose day a great discussion had arisen as to whether man is by nature good or evil, or neither, or both. It is, however, in the Doctrine of the Mean that we have the most definite statement from Confucius. There we find him stating,—‘‘That which has been ordained, or bestowed, by Heaven (upon man) is called his hsing (that is, his nature or soul) ; an accordance with this nature is called the Tao (or Right Way) ; and the regulation of this Way is called Chiao (that is, Instruction).”” We have here the recognition of the spirit, within man, of a Right Way which it should pursue, and the necessity of training it in that Way. He goes on to say, “ The Way may not be left for an 198 THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY instant. If it could be left it would not be the Way. Therefore, the wise man is cautious in regard to the invisible, and apprehensive in regard to the inaudible. For there is nothing more openly apparent than the secret, nor manifest than the microscopic. Hence, the wise man is watchful over himself, when in secret ’’—literally, ‘“‘ guards his aloneness.”’ Later, he says, “‘It is only he who possesses perfect sincerity who can fully develop his hsing, or nature. Able fully to develop his own nature, he can do the same to the nature of other men. Able fully to develop the nature of other men, he can then do the — same to other creatures. Able fully to develop the natures of other creatures, he can assist in Heaven’s transforming and nourishing work. Able to do this, he is able to form a trinity with Heaven and Earth.” Here we find stated that ternion of Powers, Heaven, Earth, and Man, which has become a leading article in the Chinese creed. It is not necessary to assume that Confucius means that man is equal to God, but that he forms one of the three great Powers through which divine operation takes place. Later he goes on to say, “It is sincerity whereby self-completion is effected. . .. Sincerity is the beginning and end of things, and without sincerity there would be nothing, therefore the wise man puts high value on sincerity. By sincerity he not only perfects himself, but others. Self-protection implies virtue; the perfecting of others, wisdom, These two, THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY 199 virtue and wisdom, are the moral qualities of his hsing, or nature, embodying the Tao, or Right Way, on _the one hand internally, and on the other externally.” And finally, “‘Only by perfect virtue can the perfect way be realised. Therefore the wise man does honour to his virtuous nature. He makes inquiry and study his pursuit, reaching out to the widest and greatest, as well as searching into the most ethereal and minute, striving after the heights and the light, yet pursuing the middle path.” It will be clear to you from the above quotations that Confucius definitely states that man has a hsing, or spirit which has been divinely bestowed, that there is a divinely ordained course which he ought to pursue, that men need to be taught what this course is, and that the wise among men must in all sincerity search out this course, personally follow it, and by this process influence the mass of men to do the same. This is all very excellent, but men not unnaturally wish to know whither this Tao, or Way leads. Does it only apply to this life, or does the hsing, or soul have a continued existence after its disembodiment ? Now Confucius gave no definite answer to such questions as these. When one of his disciples asked him about his duty to the kuei-shén, or spirits, he received the noted reply, ‘‘ While still unable to do your duty to the living, how can you do your duty to the dead?”’ When the disciple ventured to ask further about death, he received the reply, “‘ Not yet 200 THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY understanding life, how can you understand death ?”! And with this the disciple had to be content. Again, on another occasion, when he was asked whether the dead had knowledge of the services of their offspring, he replied that, were it categorically declared that they had such knowledge, he feared that filial sons would utterly impoverish themselves by their filial offerings; whereas on the other hand, if it were said they had no knowledge, he feared that unfilial sons would become utterly irreligious.* While, therefore, he refused to commit himself as to cognition by the dead of worship by the living, this by no means proves that he was even agnostic as to their continued existence. He was a most religious man, and both strictly conformed to and advocated stringent conformation to the services of the ancestral temple. There was nothing Machia- vellian about him; consequently I can find no evidence to show that he advocated such services for political purposes only. Indeed his whole conduct, as well as the sincerity in worship which he demanded, all indicate that though he made no dogmatic statement as to the continued existence of the human soul, he believed in it—indeed, one may say, took it for granted. To quote the Analects, he ‘sacrificed to the spirits as if they were present,” and he himself said, “‘ For me not personally to be present at a sacrifice is as if I did not sacrifice.” ; 1 Analects, XI. xi. 2 The Chia YU, or Family Sayings. THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY 201 We may, then, say that the attitude of Confucius, as of his orthodox followers, to this day, is that the soul must be regarded as continuing to exist after its disembodiment, and that it is the duty of the living to show their affectionate respect by offering those things which pleased the departed while here, even though there be no certainty that the departed are really cognisant of those offerings. There is clear evidence also that, from early times it was a tenet of the Chinese that the dead continued to take an interest in the affairs of the living. The ancient emperors always made formal announce- ments in sacrifice to their forefathers of any impor- tant step they proposed to take, and sought their approval, evidently believing that the departed heard and could show their approval or disapproval. This was the strength of divination, for in ancient times it seems to have been the will of the forefathers, or of Heaven through the forefathers, that was thus sought. Idolatry, the deification of heroes and worthies, the multiplication of the gods which has occurred since the introducticn of Buddhism, have carried divination away from the ancestral into temples devoted to these later objects of worship. I find two words, and two words only, used in the Confucian classics denoting the disembodied spirit. One of these is shén mi, the other is kuei J. Other words have been employed since, such as hwun Die ling ma, chi SA, poh Bi, and 202 THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY ming HA]. But these words have resulted from later philosophisings. Now, in the classics the word shén is employed to indicate both the nature-spirits and the disembodied spirit. In process of time it has also come to denote the embodied soul of man. As I have stated in a previous lecture, the word kuei, in the classics, indicates the daimon, or dis- embodied spirit, and in the Odes we find it also used once to denote an imp or sprite. In process of time it has come to mean a malevolent spirit. So that originally we find the two terms united into one expression, occasionally shén-kuei, but more often kuei-shén. I find no evidence to prove what Canon MacClatchie and now Dr. de Groot advocate, namely, that in ancient times philosophy had reached a sufficiently advanced stage to define each human soul as a dualism, consisting of both a kuei and a shén. Still less do I find that metaphysics had suffi- ciently advanced in the pre-Confucian period to lead to a division of the soul of man into the tri- partite and septempartite divisions into which later philosophical discussion divided it. I see nothing to lead us to assert that the ancient Chinese believed in anything but a unity of spirit in each man, which remained a unity after his departure from this life. Believing, as I shall continue to do until further evidence is produced to the contrary, that the yin- yang or dualistic theory, is not a primitive concep- tion, but dates from the Chou period, I am of opinion that it was only then that a simpler form of the dual- THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY — 203 istic theory was applied to the human soul, in that some souls became shén and others kuei. It is at a still later period that we begin to find the individual soul considered as a duality, its yin part being represented by the kuei or anima, and its yang part by the shén or animus. The kuei in this develop- ment represents the animal soul, the passions or lower part of the nature, and the shén represents the higher part of the organism. Two other terms were introduced during this later period to represent the kuei and shén divisions, or complements of the soul, namely, p‘oh or anima, and hwun or animus. So far as I ean find, it was not until well into our own era that the hwun was further subdivided into three and the p‘oh into seven parts. These may have been the crude psychological differ- entiation of functions in the one soul, rather than a distinctive separation of the soul into so many separate entities having independent existences, as some would imply. I am by no means inclined to belittle the attempts of the Chinese thinkers of the past to explain difficult psychological problems. Why should we slight their earnest, though often futile and even ludicrous, attempts to ko wu Ae Wy, that is to search into the nature of, or co-ordinate, things ? When we remember the history of our own European metaphysics it seems to me we shall find little justification for ridiculing the all too logical systems of Chinese thinkers. Moreover, what do we really know of Chinese philosophy ? It is a question 204 THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY if any European has ever really studied it. The works are voluminous, and the terminology difficult to translate with accuracy. Indeed Chinese philosophy and its history have still to be studied and written. To return to the three hwun and seven p‘oh, though they may have been nothing but a philosophical idea, the idea has filtered down amongst the people, and while it is unnecessary to assume that any intention to split the soul up into ten parts existed at the outset, it has so resulted in popular conception. In essence, however, a duality is maintained, namely, the hwun, the animus, or intelligent soul, and the p‘oh, the anima, or sensual part. As to the p‘oh, if the deceased be properly buried, it returns to the earth or grosser element from which it sprang, and apparently ceases to exist, but if the deceased be improperly buried, or his burial too long delayed, the p'oh becomes a very dangerous and malignant demon, capable of any crime. Such demons and the spirits of were-animals and were-birds and things, as for instance were-wolves, were-foxes, were-tigers, and so on, take possession of human beings and at times produce terrible epidemics of demon-possession, during which many people die. Modern pathologists would probably diagnose the epidemic as a form of hysteria, but the Chinese prefer ““to believe the evidence of their own eyes and ears,” and the demons are very real to them. If conversion to Christianity must await the destruction of the belief in demon-possession amongst the Chinese, it will have to wait a long time, THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY — 205 As to the shén part of the soul, that is, the animus, the intellectual, moral, and spiritual, this is now known by the name of the hwun, or ling-hwun. The word hwun is composed of “ yiin,” vapour, and *“ kuei,” a daimon, or disembodied spirit. Possibly the “yitin” part is merely phonetic, though more likely it has a relationship to the meaning of the word, implying the ethereal spirit. The word “ling” is composed of rain-drops and a wizard, and means clever, intelligent. It may have some original con- nection with rain-making. The two characters used together, ling-hwun, form the term now used by missionaries for the soul. There is still another term used by the Chinese to denote this animus, or higher part of the soul. It is the character ‘“‘ ming,” bright, implying that the part of the human soul which has been freed from the yin, or grosser nature, and be- come etherealised, has ascended into the region of the yang, or into the light. This term ‘ming ”’ is also employed along with shén, in shén-ming, to denote the divine spirits as distinguished from demons. Now, whatever superstitious or incorrect ideas the Chinese may have in regard to the three souls and the seven poh, I think you will see that we have much excellent material to our hand in this recognition that the man who gives himself up to his sensual nature develops his kuei part at the expense, even extinction, of his shén or better part; but that, on the other hand, the human soul may be freed from its grosser passions by the cultivation of the shén or higher >) 206 THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY nature, enter into a world of brightness here and be- come a “ bright spirit” in another sphere of existence. Those who wish to know in what depths of super- stition a people may wallow should read the valuable and voluminous collection of instances so laboriously gathered by Dr. de Groot. He has done a great service to missionaries and students of sociology, and while I cannot see my way to agree with him in some of his conclusions, and while I think he has allowed the gross darkness of superstition, which no one can minimise, to bedim his vision of the beauty that undoubtedly exists in the writings of the best men of China, as also in the lives of many of her living sons and daughters, I have nothing but admiration for the service he has rendered to us all. Summing up, then, the idea of the soul as found in the orthodox, or Confucian, school, we may say that, while there are some who are probably infected by Buddhist ideas of its extinction, there exists a general acceptance of the soul’s continued existence, but that a theoretical state of agnosticism prevails in regard to its cognisance after death of mundane affairs. Such agnosticism, or rather reticence, is encouraged by Confucius, who nevertheless did—as his followers do to this day,—make his offerings to his ancestors partly out of filial regard, and partly out of a feeling that the dead may have knowledge, and may bless and protect—or perhaps the opposite. This is the philosophical attitude. Needless to say, the mass of the people are untroubled by doubts. THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY 207 To turn now to the Taoist school. The very essence of the Taoistic cult, almest from its inception, is the search after immortality. It is a school which, after the palmy philosophical days of Chuang-tzii, has dwelt in a perfect fairy and imp land of un- hampered fancy. Its demons and genii are legion. The Taoist votary is the spiritualist of China. Witch- craft and wizardry, spirit-possession and demon- expulsion, are the very breath of life to him, his veritable living. The terrible Boxer outbreak saw him in his glory. What could the foreigners’ bullets do against the spiritualised switch of horsehair which he waved to and fro, as he faced modern rifles ? Chinese soldiers sent out against him dared not fire upon him, lest the spirits which aided him should turn back the bullets and slay the rash marksman. Not only do the Taoists believe that the soul may live after the death of the body, but from the earliest times they have believed in deathlessness or transla- tion, that both body and soul may be translated to the realms of the immortals. Like Enoch and Moses they may depart and never be seen again, or like Elijah they may be taken up in a chariot of light. Some of them seem to suggest that the soul will be absorbed in the ultimate ether, lost in the Absolute, like water returning to the ocean. But such is not the general conception, for we find the immortals clearly represented in pictorial form as alive, old, bearded men, and gentle-faced women, dressed in the ancient Chinese garb, perhaps playing a game of 208 THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY chess, or some other pleasant pursuit of the im- mortals. There is no need to pursue this subject at length. Suffice it that for two thousand and more years the Taoist has been searching for the elixir of immor- tality. Some are said to have found the magic herbs of which it is composed, and, after partaking, to have been translated to the regions of the blest. Whether the search is still going on, I know not. But the instinctive cry of the human heart, and I believe the divine cry, has never been absent from the Taoist heart. Such a craving we may rejoice in, for in communion with the living Christ the heart of the Taoist can find the same satisfaction which we find there. I refuse to think lightly even of the pitiable puerility of their ideas and methods. It is pitiable, let that suffice—the pitiable puerility of the child mind, still wondering and wandering amongst the uncleared forests of nature, with all the wonder, alarm, and yet delight of the umbrageous forest. As to the Buddhist school, it came to China in the Mahayana form, or at least it is that form which found acceptance in the country. Hinayana ideas of the cessation of the soul’s existence after untold periods of transmigration have found advocates in China, and the wonderful intricacies of transmigration into animals and other living entities have undoubtedly had an influence on Chinese life. But the Mahayana school of Buddhism has adopted the belief in a con- tinued personal existence, and that such continued THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY 209 existence is dependent, as to the form it takes, upon human conduct in this life. It is with the introduc- tion of Buddhism, or at any rate associated with it at an early period, that the next world becomes separated into the two states of heaven and hell. This division of the two states has seized upon the Chinese mind. What was its first source we have not sufficient evidence to decide. It may have come from farther west than India, and be associated with some branch of the Christian Church. At any rate the Chinese outside Buddhism have adopted the idea, and in most, if not every one, of the cities, in the temple to “the God of the Eastern Peak” we find representations of heaven and hell embodying an idea unknown in the country before its introduction from the West. These representations are of a very vivid type, especially those depicting hell; for neither Chinese nor European art has ever risen to the possibilities of heaven as it has descended to the horrors of hell. Few would be attracted by the banalities of the Chinese artist’s heaven, though they might be driven there from fear of the gruesome tortures of the nether regions as depicted by him. There, men represented by lifelike models are sawn asunder by horrible- looking devils, they are pounded to a jelly in mortars, women are plunged into lakes of blood, and—well, I will not drive you into heaven by harrowing your feelings. Each torment is suited to the victim’s crimes, and in some cases the particular organ guilty 14 210 THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY of the crime is vividly portrayed in process of ex- cruciating purgation. Perhaps it is a pity that our forefathers did not portray in marble, or, like the Chinese, in more perishable clay, the tortures they conjured up less forcefully with their lips. Had they done so, the sight might have melted their hearts and humanised their doctrines at an earlier period. This foreign importation of a heaven and a hell found itself at home in China through the dualistic doctrine of yin and yang, and therefore easily became a part of the national belief. I do not think that it was adopted for political purposes, but no doubt it has been considered of deterrent value by the official mind. Indeed, the bare idea of eschatological re- wards and punishments grew into a thoroughly developed system. A visit to the temple of a city god will show you that the next life is officially con- ceived of as centring around just such an official yamen as heretofore has administered its tainted justice in every city of China. There are the chief . judge, assistant judges, police, lictors, torturers, all complete—but of course the spiritual underlings are more horribly gruesome. The point I wish to emphasise, however, is this— that whilst we are told of one soul which accompanies the body to the grave, another for the ancestral tablet, and a third for the other world, in the temple representations of the continued life, all notion of three hwun and seven p‘oh are conspicuous by their absence. The individual soul is there, represented, THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY 211 it is true, with a body, but there he or she is, in one or the other supra- or subter-mundane localities. So that we have the official recognition of personal continuity of the unity of the soul, and of sin, righ- teousness, and a judgment to come. Consequently, whatever agnosticism we may find amongst the Confucianists, or whatever views of nirvana the philosophic Buddhist may hold, here is the ortho- dox official view of the Chinese as expressed in temples officially built. I have associated the above ideas with Buddhism, because in the absence of further research it is reasonable to believe that these eschatological ideas which are foreign to ancient Chinese notions were not the outgrowth of the yin-yang doctrine, but imported from the West during the period of Buddhist invasion. How they came into Buddhism yet awaits fuller proof. Certain it is that the Mahayana school, while preaching the doctrine of transmigration of souls into the animal world, a doctrine which with its natural corollary of abstention from the slaughter of animals, has influenced but never dominated the practical native mind,—the Mahayana school has definitely preached the continuity of the soul, either in heaven or in hell. As I have shown, it has also adopted as an important part of its practice the salvation of the soul to heaven by good practices and devotional observances, especially in connection with the cult of Kuanyin, the Buddhist form of Mariolatry, or the unwearying call upon Amitabha, 912 THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY And a very important part of the income of the Buddhist priest, cleric and lay, is derived from the magical release of souls from hell. In this greed for souls—and money—the Taoist and he are both rivals and comrades. Both claim to possess the keys of heaven and hell, if not in so many words, yet in effect, for both claim the power, if sufficiently paid, to open the door of hell and release the departed parent from the agonies which he is, may be de- servedly, undergoing. For the purposes of the missionary, then, we may say that when he preaches to the Chinese that the doctrine of cause and effect is not limited to. the present visible world, he will find the ground has been all too well prepared for him. What he will be able to do is to purify the gross imagination of the native mind, in the same way that we in this country have had, during the lifetime of some of us, to purify our own ideas by exchanging the material fires and the material worm, for something not less real or acute. We now come to a much more delicate part of our subject in the consideration of Ancestor Worship.§ If there is one non-Christian, and, as some assert, anti-Christian doctrine which demands sympathetic and generous treatment, this is the one. The cult of the ancestor is a very ancient cult, not only in China, but in Western countries. In China its roots are sunk deep down in the national soul and stretch away back, one might almost say, to the death of the first THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY 213 Chinese parent. May it not indeed be probable that the cult of the ancestor is the earliest form, if not of religion, at least of spiritual development ; in other words, that God brought men to life and Him- self through death, the death of the parent, the mother may be, to whom even the savage is united by the strange tie of body and soul, the mystic relationship of parent and child. The cult of the ancestor, then, is the essential re- ligion of China. Little sense of loss is experienced by the excision of all else. The real atheism of China is the refusal to worship at the ancestral shrine. Nearly everything else may be foregone and forgiven, but this never. You will see, then, how important it is to deal generously with a doctrine which, though it may often pass through a sordid stratum of selfishness, has its roots deeper down in filial affection. I have known a Chinese colporteur, trained in the old school, preach that all the ancestors of his congregation were in hell because they had not believed in Jesus Christ. Even if true, it was not the most tactful way of putting it. And the really filial son would not hesitate to go after his fathers and suffer with them. So no wonder a deputation of Christians waited on me to ask that I would use my influence to prevent this man from again visiting that district. Filial piety, extending beyond the grave, is the cord of four hundred million strands which binds the nation, the clan, and the family together. Is it 214. THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY necessary to sever this powerful bond? And if so, who is to do it? There are missionaries who will hear of no toleration of any kind. There are others who would tolerate it, with or without modification. After all, it is not the foreigner who will settle the matter. The Chinese will do that for themselves. In its original form it is already dead, for the needs of the living forbid the pre-Confucian and Confucian demand that the son should spend three years in ragged, half-starved dishevelment by the graveside of his parent, a custom probably the out- come of the days when the corpse was not buried, but exposed uncoffined on the hillside, and when a sorrowing son guarded the father or mother he had loved against wild animals. The severity of the three years’ mourning has for long been reduced to a suitable interment, to the wearing of mourning for ‘three years,’ and to the proper sacrifices. The ad- vancement of education will still further lighten the weight of the dead hand, at any rate, in the form in which it has pressed in the past. Already many Chinese of modern education, and Christian Chinese as a whole, are more opposed to the burden of the ancestor than are many missionaries, and we can afford to leave it to them to settle the question. What then is the origin of this, the real religion of China ? The answer to this question lies beyond the region of proof. All we do know is that it is introduced to our notice very early in the pages of recorded history. When the first historic emperor, THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY 215 Yao, decided to resign the throne to his successor Shun, he announced the succession to his deceased predecessors, i.e. either his own progenitors, or the previous occupants of the throne. After the accession of Shun, amongst those whom he appointed to various offices is the name of one whose duty was to arrange the tsung, or ancestral temple. This is the first instance of a temple being mentioned in the History. Other places of worship there were, but they seem to have been open altars to Shang Ti or to nature- spirits. It must be borne in mind that in those early days there was, as yet, neither hero worship, nor sage worship, nor the mass of idolatry with which China is now burdened. We may say, indeed, that the myriads of temples now found in China, devoted to all kinds of deities, originated almost as much in the ancestral temple as in Buddhism. I refer to the covered temples, not to the open altars, which there is no reason to doubt had precedence in time. In this connection I should like to refer to one character concerning which I have not had oppor- tunity for satisfactory inquiry. It is the character Ti, fig. Now this character is composed of two parts, one associated with divine indications and divine _ things in general, the other half being Ti or ruler, the same that is used in Shang Ti. The character denotes a sacrifice offered by the ancient emperors once in five years only, and, after the most careful preparation, to the primal ancestor, but whether of the reigning dynasty, or of the race, is not clear. 216 THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY Confucius considered the meaning of this sacrifice to be of the profoundest. With this I must leave the character, for whether primitive man first was drawn to worship through the spiritualised forces of nature or through the disembodied human spirit, or rather the disembodiment of the human spirit, we have nothing in China to prove. From the days of Shun onwards we find the an- cestral temple and worship increasingly referred to, that is, the imperial ancestral temple and worship. With it are associated music, dancing, or posturing, and divination. This has now entirely given way, amongst the people at any rate, to the simple and reverent offering of food by the chief of the clan, or the head of the household, the offerings being par- taken of afterwards by the members of the clan or household. Clan temples to ancestors are found wherever clans prevail. These are most common in villages, and a village often consists of members of one clan, all of the same surname. In such a village we find a principal temple, in which the chief place is given to the pair of ancestors who founded the clan in that locality. Other subsidiary temples are also erected by various prosperous branches of the clan to their respective founders. A careful register is kept of every member of the clan, so that each member can trace back his genealogy, not only to the first local founder, but to much earlier connections in an earlier settlement. In the presence of a coolie of the K‘ung, the Tséng, or the THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY 217 Chang clans, the puerile boast that one’s ancestors led their men to battle in the fourteenth century, or ? “came over with the Conqueror,” is made the more puerile by comparison. As to the tablets of the ordinary family, those of the three preceding genera- tions are generally kept in the house of the senior member, for the family limits its attentions to the three preceding generations. The clan temples, as arule, are generally sufficiently endowed with lands, which are cultivated in turn by each division, subdivision, or family. The proceeds are applied to the provision of the regulation sacrifices. Any surplus becomes the property of the member or members upon whoru has fallen the responsibility of making such provision. One interesting feature of these endowments is the encouragement they usually give to education, for to each member of the clan who obtains a degree a liberal annual bursary is given, either for a number of years, or for life. I have had the rare, if not unique, experience of renting many of these ancestral temples as places of Christian worship. It has been part of, my policy to impress upon the people that, while Christians cannot make material offerings to the dead, yet there is nothing in Christianity inimical to that reverence for and love towards the progenitors who have done so much for their offspring, which are the loftier, the more spiritual, characteristic of ancestral worship. Are not the forefathers the forefathers of Christian Chinese as well as of the non-Christian, 218 THE SOUL AND ESCHATOLOGY and do not the Christian Chinese recognise their in- debtedness to their progenitors, and possess as sincere a love for them as their non-Christian brethren ? But because the forefathers are now spirits it is the attitude of the heart that they will value, and not the perishing material food which is offered, and which they can no longer enjoy. Sympathy and persuasion are more powerful weapons for the mis- sionary than satire or pugnacity. There is much to deplore in the worship of the dead. It has generated no little superstition, which has become an oppressive burden upon the living, and has drawn the mind of the Chinese away from the search after and approach to the Great Parent of all men. But there is also much to admire and preserve. The mode will be changed. The spirit need not perish. LECTURE IX MORAL IDEALS Mora ideals and spiritual vision as exhibited in the aristocracy of character constitute the best standard for measuring the vitality of a people. They may be described as the sphygmomanometer of a nation’s life, registering the vital pressure in the body politic As with the physical organism, so with the political, when moral and spiritual conditions are low, the nerve force of a people suffers accordingly, and though the body politic may continue to exist, even for gener- ations, it is in a devitalised state, flaccid, torpid, semi-comatose. Such has been the case with China. For a mil- lennium she has had no moral and spiritual renas- cence, and has lived in the depressing atmosphere of a false and enervating natural philosophy. A torpor settled down upon her, and consequently there was neither effort to raise the moral standard, nor a pulse-stirring vision of the glory of life here and hereafter. The renascence has now occurred. It has been brought about by agencies either directly Christian or allied with Christian forces, for apart from Christ 219 220 - MORAL IDEALS none of the older nations is now ever stirred from its lethargy to newness of life. In Christ alone is the vital force of the new birth, both to men and nations. Fertilised by the vitality of Christian ideals, China is at present enduring the pangs of travail. The new life which is being born will bring a new con- tribution to the race. This contribution will not be altogether independent of the past, for a new birth is never a new creation. It takes its form and even its spirit from its progenitors. The renascence in China will consequently be Eurasian, neither entirely European nor wholly Asian, but a blend of both, with a distinctive quality of itsown. There is no reason for distrust consequent on the word Kurasian. The fault with the Eurasian is not in his blood, nor in his character by birth, but in his training. With a mother usually bought and brought up by a procuress, and a father who has no pleasure in the birth, or interest in the training of the child, what can one expect ? Let the sponsors of the new China be of the right type, and she will add to the world’s moral and spiritual wealth. Let the sponsor be badly chosen, and we shall again have the unwelcome Eurasian problem in the moral and spiritual world. It is not of the future, however, that I wish to speak, but of the past. Since the beginning of authentic Chinese history, morals have been con- spicuously recognised as the duty of man and the basis of well-being, both in the State, the family, and the individual. The universal value of moral MORAL IDEALS 221 character is admirably recognised by Confucius when he says that the truly virtuous man may dwell respected amongst savage tribes, and even transform them. It must not be thought, however, that morals sprang Minerva-like from the head of Jupiter. The pages of history clearly prove that there has been growth. The same processes which have produced advancement in moral conceptions and application in the West have also been at work in China. The increasing complexity of the relations brought about _ by the growth of society, and by the change from a nomad to an agricultural and settled life, involve growth in moral ideas. Morals which were con- ditioned by a state in which raw flesh was devoured, when promiscuity prevailed amongst the sexes, and when children knew their mothers but not their fathers, could not endure when people settled in communities, and as these communities grew, their complications demanded a growing adjustment. A state of morals existed long into historic times which was much lower than is prevalent to-day. Man’s in- humanity to man has not ceased even yet, but it is all too evident in ancient times. Living persons were buried with the dead, judicial punishments were of a barbarous character, and, as appears probable, human sacrifices were offered. The religious devotion of human lives ceased in China centuries before it ceased in this country. Straw dogs came to be used in funeral rites instead of human, or perhaps animal, lives. Personators of the dead at funeral ceremonies 222 MORAL IDEALS received the offerings to the dead, and continued to live, instead of being buried, as was probably the case in earlier times. Even down to the Confucian period, relics of the old barbaric code remained. For instance, when the brother of one of his disciples died, the widow and major-domo proposed that attendants should be buried to accompany him. The disciple agreed, by naively suggesting that of course the best attendants would be the widow and the major-domo, after which, needless to say, the matter was not pressed. As to judicial barbarity, while inhuman tortures and the mutilation of criminals undergoing the extreme penalty were in vogue until a couple of years since, the mutilation of ordinary criminals. ceased long before it ceased in Europe. It may hardly be necessary to do so, but I draw your atten- tion to these points in passing to show that morals have grown in China as elsewhere, and were not born full-fledged. It is to Fu-shi, the legendary founder of the Chinese nation, who is generally placed in the twenty-ninth century B.c., that the establishment of public morals is attributed. As already mentioned, the institution of marriage, the invention of writing, the creation of the first musical instruments (stringed instruments), and the introduction of cooking flesh are credited to him. Writing and cooking may be self-evident as conditions of moral progress, but that music should be so considered amongst a people generally, though wrongly, considered to be as unmusical as the Chinese, MORAL IDEALS 223 may not be clear; yet Confucius in a later age, like Plato, considered the right kind of music to be a powerful aid to morals, and long before his day there was the division into sacred and secular music. It is not until the age of Yao and Shun in the twenty-fourth and twenty-third centuries B.c. that we reach the historical period. In the meagre records of Yao we find it said of him that he was ‘reverent, wise, cultured, thoughtful ; always calm ; and withal sincerely courteous and modest. His light shone to the four corners of the empire, extending from the highest to the lowest.” ! A great flood, of long duration, overspread the empire and he sought for a man who could control it. His minister recom- mended that this important duty and honour be con- ferred on the emperor’s eldest son. “ Alas,” said the Emperor, “ he is untrustworthy and quarrelsome :— can he do?” So another man was appointed. Later, after he had reigned seventy years, he sought a successor, and asked his Court to recommend a man without consideration of station, whether high or low, rich or poor. All recommended a man called Shun, and on inquiring as to his character was told by his chief minister: “ He is the son of a blind man. His father was of a warped character, his stepmother not to be trusted, and (his half-brother) Hsiang over- bearing, but he was able to bring about a state of harmony by his filial conduct, and gradually to bring 1 This and most of the following quotations are from the Shu Ching, the ancient Book of History. 224 MORAL IDEALS them to order their lives so that they did not pursue their evil courses.”” The Emperor said: “I will try him. I will wive him, and watch his behaviour with (my) two daughters.” Thereupon he sent his two daughters to Shun’s abode, north of the river Kwei, instructing them to be respectful. Whether his two daughters were too difficult for the old ruler, and he thought that if Shun could control them he would find the empire as easy to control as a turn of the hand, the chronicle doth not declare. At any rate, Shun proved acceptable, and later he succeeded to the throne. The Canon of Shun opens with a description of his character, wherein he is depicted, like his predecessor, » as profound, discerning, cultured and wise, mild, re- spectful, and entirely sincere; his virtue shone out of his obscurity, ascended to and was heard by the king, who willed that he should occupy the throne. The first statement which is made about him after his accession is, that he devoted himself to setting forth in excellence the five cardinal duties of humanity, and that these five duties came to be universally observed. They are said to be the virtues be- longing to the five social relations of husband and wife, father and son, sovereign and subject, elder and younger brother, friend and friend. These five are to this day, or were till yesterday, the Wu Lun, or Five Human Relationships, just as kindness, justice, reverence, wisdom, and good faith came to be the Wu Ch‘ang, i.e. Five Constants, or fundamentals of Virtue. MORAL IDEALS 225 It is also recorded of him that he codified the laws, enacting banishment as a mitigation of the five mutila- tions. These five mutilations are supposed to be branding, cutting off the nose, cutting off the feet, castration, and execution in various forms. Never- theless, some if not all of them apparently still ex- isted in the days of Confucius, nearly two thousand years after. Be this as it may, Shun left an example of humanity, which became an ideal of the nation and which did not utterly fail of realisation. Shun further modified the harshness of the laws by substitu- ting the whip and the rod, and by the redemption of certain crimes by fines. Unintentional and accidental offences were to be pardoned, but crimes with in- tention were to be severely dealt with. ‘* Let me be regardful ; let me be regardful,”’ he is said to have remarked; “let punishment be compassionate.” Here again we have a great and humane principle laid down, which has had its value in Chinese life. Even we are only beginning to proceed a step farther and say, ‘‘ Let punishment be remedial.” Again, when he appointed the officer who was to attend to the three divisions of the sacrifices, those to the spirits of heaven, earth, and departed men, he impressed upon him the importance of reverence and of moral character, saying, ‘“‘ Morning and night be respectful. Be upright. Be pure.” And when he appointed the director of music, he did so “ to teach our sons, so that they may be straight and yet gentle, magnanimous yet dignified, strong yet not harsh, de- 15 926 MORAL IDEALS cided yet not overbearing. Poetry is the mind in words, song is the flowing of the words, the sounds accord with the flow, the pipes give harmony to the sounds, the eight notes (or instruments) are thus able to blend, none detracting from the other, and the spirits and men are brought into accord.” After appointing all his various officers he said to them, ‘* Ah, you twenty and two men, respect (my orders), and thus assist in the service of Heaven.” The next emperor was the great Yii, China’s first engineer, who dyked the rivers and restrained the famous flood of China. He it was who broke away from the tradition by which he had been raised to the throne, namely, that the best man in the country, without regard to descent, should be chosen as its occupant. By the appointment of his son as suc- cessor he established the principle of the hereditary monarchy, a principle of debatable value—in China. At any rate it has just been debated there at the sword-point, and the argument is against it. Before his accession he surveyed and arranged the divisions of the empire, and on the invitation of the Emperor Shun he gave expression to his views as follows: “If the sovereign can realise the arduous responsibility of his sovereignty, and each minister of his ministry, government will be well ordered, and the people be sedulous after virtue.” Herein is found that important principle which forms one of the main ideas in Confucian ethics, namely, that the ruler is the fons et origo of virtue. From him all virtue proceeds. MORAL IDEALS | 297 A highly virtuous ruler conditions a highly virtuous people. A degenerate ruler conditions a degenerate people. There ts a power for virtue or vice not only in the throne of China, but elsewhere. This was the doctrine of the Chinese from the earliest imperial times down to Confucius, who adopted, advocated, and temporarily failed by it. Yet it is only partially true, and if relied upon solely, becomes utterly untrue, or at least fails to stand the test. Nevertheless, no one can deny that a virtuous Court, a vicious one also, _has a far-reaching moral influence on the national life. Later, speaking of good and bad fortune, Yii says, ' ‘It is accordance with the path of right which brings good fortune; it is going against it which brings ill fortune—like the shadow or the echo.” And later, when Shun calls him to the throne, Shun speaks inter alia in these words: “‘ I see how great is your virtue, how admirable your vast achievements. The lot of Heaven falls on your person, and you must at length ascend to the imperial office. The heart of man is unstable, its affinity for the right way is small. Be discriminate. Be single-hearted, that you may sin- cerely hold to the golden mean.” As showing the value placed upon virtue I may once more quote the advice of Yi’s chief minister: ““It is virtue which moves Heaven. There is no - distance to which it will not reach. Pride brings loss. Humility receives increase. This is the Way of Heaven.” Goes @n another occasion one of his ministers spoke of 228 MORAL IDEALS nine virtues discoverable in conduct, explaining that when we say a man possesses virtue we mean that he does such and such things. The nine virtues are, ‘To be magnanimous yet inspiring respect, gentle yet firm, honestly outspoken yet respectful, commanding yet respectful, pacific yet bold, straight yet agreeable, generous yet discriminating, resolute yet guarded, valiant yet just.”” These are the virtues which make the good officer. It will be seen that while there is as yet no complete definition of what constitutes virtue during this early period, we do find that it is the office of the ruler to be its exemplar, and that virtue is considered the very base on which the throne rests. This is still further exemplified towards the end of the first dynasty when King Chieh, its last wicked representative, had turned the Court into a bacchanalian pandemonium. It is said of T’ang, who ultimately drove Chieh from the throne, that he had inscribed on his bath tub: “Daily renew thyself, daily renew thyself, day by day renew thyself.” If it was a real bath tub and not merely a washbowl it is pleasant to lay stress on the good example of cleanliness set by him. What is more to our point is the recognition in this early age of the value of a daily moral cleansing. It is a priceless heritage to a people that such an ideal should be placed before them, and handed down through all these four thousand years. When T‘ang, himself of royal descent, expressed a feeling of re- morse over his conduct in expelling the Hsia sovereign, MORAL IDEALS 229 Chieh, from the throne, and feared that future genera- tions would “ fill their mouths ” with him as a usurper and a destroyer of the divine line of Yii, his minister reminded him that “the sovereign of Hsia had fallen because his virtue had become all-obscured, and the people were as if they had fallen into mire and charcoal. Heaven thereupon gifted (you) the king with valour and wisdom, to serve as an exemplar and director to the myriad states and to continue the old ways of Yiu... . Our king’s virtues became a theme eagerly listened to. He did not approach to dissolute music and women. ... Order your affairs by righteousness, and your heart by religion—so shall you transmit a grand example to posterity.” T‘ang himself in his announcement says, ‘‘ The Imperial Ruler Above (Shang Ti) has conferred even the lower people a moral sense, so that they may maintain their proper nature.”’ At his death his chief minister placed T‘ang’s son on the throne, and in his address again laid stress on virtue as alone giving the divine right to its possession. ‘“‘ Now, your Majesty,” he said, ‘‘ is entering on the inheritance of your father’s virtue, and everything depends on how you commence your reign. To establish love, it is your place to love your elders; to set up respect, it is your place to respect your relatives. The commencement is in your family and State ; the consummation is in the empire at large.” In conclusion he says, “The way of God is not unchangeable—on the good-doer He sends down all blessings, and on the evil-doer He sends 280 MORAL IDEALS down all woes. Do you but be virtuous, and even though your achievements be small, the myriad re- gions will be in felicity. If you be not virtuous, though your achievements be great, you will ruin your ancestral temple.” Despite frequent admonitions, the young king fell into self-indulgence, whereupon the minister finally declared, ‘‘ This is real unrighteousness, and is becoming by practice his nature. I will not associate with one so disobedient.” Therefore, he removed him to his father’s grave for a period, which led him to become sincerely virtuous. Then he restored him, on which it is recorded that the young ruler bowed his face to the ground and said, “I, the little child, did not understand virtue, and was making myself one of | the unworthy. By my desires I was setting at nought all right rules, and by self-indulgence was violating religion, and speedy ruin must soon have fallen upon me. Calamities formed by Heaven may be avoided, but from calamities of one’s own making there is no escape.” In another place his minister says to him, “ If the king’s virtue be unfailing, he will preserve his throne ; if otherwise, the nine provinces will be lost tohim. The king of Hsia could not maintain virtue, but contemned the spirits and oppressed the people. Imperial Heaven withdrew its protection, and sur- veyed the myriad regions to find one who might receive its favour, fondly seeking a man of single, i.e. unalloyed virtue, whom it might make lord of the MORAL IDEALS 281 spirits (or spiritual lord). There were I-yin and T‘ang, both possessed of single virtue, and able to satisfy the mind of Heaven. T‘ang received the bright favour of Heaven, and became master of the multitudes of the nine provinces. . . . It was not that Heaven had any partiality for T‘’ang himself—Heaven simply gave its favour to single virtue. Nor was it that T'ang sought the allegiance of the people—the people simply turned to single virtue. Where virtue is single, every action is fortunate. Where virtue is double or treble (i.e. impure), every action is un- fortunate. Good and evil do not wrongly befall men, for Heaven sends down woe or weal according to their virtue.” Again: “ Virtue has no unchanging preceptor, a supreme regard for the good is the preceptor; nor has the good an unvarying master (? principle), it is associated with single-mindedness.” I will close my reference to this dynasty by quoting a clause from an address to one of its later rulers, where it is said : “In surveying men below, Heaven’s first considera- tion is of their righteousness, and it bestows on them accordingly. length of years or the contrary. It is not Heaven which cuts short men’s lives; they themselves bring them to an end in the midst.” T think you will see from the above that the ancient Chinese were a very religious people with a clear recognition of the value of virtue. We shall find the same spirit continued in the succeeding dynasty ; indeed in theory, and not a little in practice, virtue is 232 MORAL IDEALS the vital force in the veins of the Chinese nation which, however poor the circulation, has kept it alive. Turning, then, to the records of the Chou dynasty, the dynasty made famous by Confucius and his con- temporaries, we find that it stretched from 1122 to 2558B.c. Its predecessor, the Shang dynasty, had con- tinued for some 650 years after the Hsia, but like it came to an end through the profligacy of its last ruler, Chou, or Shou. Virtue is a hardy plant, which finds the humid atmosphere of a luxurious Court smother its growth. It was during the reign of Shou, the Nero of China, that Duke Wén was imprisoned, and to wile away the dull hours refashioned the pa-kua, on which the classical Book of Changes is founded. At last Duke Wén could no longer resist the cry of the people and raised the successful standard of revolt. His death threw the leadership upon his son, who became King Wu, and I cannot do better than quote a few lines from his Great Declaration. In that hesays: ‘““ Heaven and earth are the father-mother of all creatures, and of all creatures man is the most in- telligent. The sincere, wise, and understanding among them becomes the great sovereign, and the great sovereign is the father-mother of the people. But now, Shou, the king of Shang, does not reverence Heaven above, and inflicts calamities on the people below. He is abandoned to drunkenness, and reck- less inlust. He has dared to exercise cruel oppression. Along with transgressors he has punished all their relatives. He has put men into office on the heredi- MORAL IDEALS 233 tary principle. He has made it his pursuit to have palaces, towers, pavilions, terraces, lakes, and all other extravagances, to the most painful injury of you, the myriad people. He has burned and roasted the loyal and good, and ripped up pregnant women. Great Heaven was moved with indignation, and charged my deceased father Wén reverently to display Its majesty ; but he died before the work was accom- plished. . . . Shou has no repentant heart. He abides squatting on his heels, not serving God or the spirits of heaven and earth, neglecting also the temple of his ancestors, and not sacrificing in it... . Heaven, to protect the common people, made for them rulers, and made for them instructors, that they might be able to aid God, and secure the tranquillity of the empire. ... I nowlead the multitude of you to execute the punishment appointed by Heaven. Heaven com- passionates the people. What the people desire, Heaven will be found to give effect to. Do you aid me, the one man, to cleanse for ever all within the four seas. Now is the time—it may not be lost.” — There is much more of this description, showing clearly that religion and morals were considered the twin bond which held the social fabric together, and that the sovereign rules in virtue only of the divine right of his virtue. But I have only time to refer to one more of the great founders of this dynasty before proceeding to Confucius, the “ uncrowned king ” of China. King Wu had a brother Duke Wén, a man of noble mould, and the beau idéal of Confucius, who 284 MORAL IDEALS in old age felt that inspiration had been withdrawn from him, inasmuch as he had not dreamed of the Duke for a long while. King Wu reigned but seven years. You will re- member that once during that period he lay at the point of death, and that Duke Wen, his brother, nobly went to the ancestral temple, and begged his ancestors to bring influence to bear that he might be taken rather than his royal brother, representing that he himself had qualities which excellently adapted him for the service of the spirits, while his brother was better suited to occupy the throne. His request to die was not granted, his brother being permitted — to reign for some time longer. On the king’s death Duke Wén became regent, and nobly filled that office. He brought the empire into good order, and especially devoted himself to the moral development of the young king and of the people. A very interesting temperance address exists accre- dited to him, in which he shows that it is drink which ruined the two previous dynasties, and in which he lays down the death penalty in case of persistent and wilful drunkenness. I have quoted somewhat more extensively than I had intended from pre-Confucian records, but it seemed to me important that you should realise that, however great Confucius may have been, his own description of himself is correct, when he states that he is “‘ a transmitter and not a creator.” It would be easy to multiply quotations from the older classics MORAL IDEALS 235 to show that “virtue and righteousness—these are the great lessons,” and that the great work of Con- fucius was to pass the religious and moral ideas of his predecessors through the winnowing fan of his own mind, and only preserve such ideas as approved them- selves to him. That he himself created anything we may dismiss, except it be a new presentation of ideals already in existence. Nevertheless, this is no small work, and that it was necessary, that he simplified the religious ceremonies and made them the standard for the nation, that he stood as a barrier against increasing superstition, and that he has done more for the moral development than any other son of the Chinese nation, is so evident that none will dispute his greatness, or deny that he is China’s noblest son. Let us now, then, turn to the Four Books, in order to discern what are the moral and spiritual ideas to which Confucius and his immediate disciples gave expression, and which have been the standard for the whole nation ever since. There are three books from which we are able to obtain a clear insight into the character and teachings of Confucius. These are the Analects, a book com- piled after his death, containing his sayings or dia- logues; the Great Learning, the text of which is said to have been composed by Confucius himself to show the aim of education ; and the Doctrine of the Mean, being the teaching of Confucius as to the golden mean of character and conduct, committed to writing by one of his disciples. I cannot better 236 MORAL IDEALS exhibit the views of Confucius, and therefore of his school to this day, than by giving you an idea of the contents of these books in so far as they refer to our present subject; and I will begin with the Great Learning. The Great Learning opens with a noble phrase which I was delighted to find echoed in the recent Congress of British Universities, where it was clearly emphasised that the aim of education is not the mere imparting of knowledge, but the formation of charac- ter, the making of men. This idea was long ago recognised by the great Sage of China, whose opening phrase in the Great Learning I will again quote: “‘ The Way (or aim) of Education lies in elucidating lucid virtue, in the renovation of the people, and in stop- ping short of nothing but perfection.” He goes on to show that, the aim being known, the mind is made up, quiet and peace take the place of uncertainty, and intent thought leads on to attainment. But just as there is sequence in nature, root before branch, so is there sequence in the extension of virtue; it begins with the ruler and ends with the people. ‘‘ The ancients,” he says, ‘‘ who wished to cause shining virtue to shine forth throughout the empire first ordered well their own States. To do this they first regulated their own families. To do this they first cultivated their ex- ternal conduct. To do this they first rectified their hearts. To do this they first made their minds sincere. To do this they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of know- MORAL IDEALS 237 ledge lay in the investigation of things ” (or scientific research). _ We have here then the recognition that sincerity and wisdom lead to rectification of the heart, thence to personal conduct, thence to the family, and thence to the State. It must always be borne in mind that it is the ruler in especial to which this refers, for he is to be the exemplar of his people. But we find in other places that Confucius fully recognises the responsibility of every man, ruler or ruled, to live the noble life, and that the poorest subject can and should be a noble man, # ¥ Indeed in the next clause but one he declares, ‘‘ From the Son of Heaven down to the common man, it is all the same, all must consider personal cultivation as fundamental.” One of the immediate disciples added a com- mentary to the brief text, illustrating each of its phrases. I need not enter into this further than to quote one or two notable sayings: “ Profound was King Wén. As a sovereign, he rested in benevo- lence; as a minister, in reverence; as a son, in filial piety ; as a father, in kindness; in intercourse with his people, in good faith.” Again: “ Confucius once said, ‘In hearing law suits I am like (i.e. no better than) anybody else. What is necessary is to cause that there be no lawsuits.’’’ In other words, in the ideal State, virtue would be so developed that quarrel- ling and vice in general would not exist. In regard to sincerity in thought, the disciple says 1 Literally, ‘A prince’s son.” 238 MORAL IDEALS it means no self-deception, a state which he describes as one of self-enjoyment. “Therefore,” he says, “the wise man is watchful over himself when alone. There is no evil to which the base man when alone will not proceed; but when he sees the wise man he in- stantly tries to disguise himself, concealing his evil, and appearing to be good. Of what use is this, seeing that the wise man beholds him as clearly as if he saw his heart and reins? Hence the saying: ‘That which is really within shows itself without. Therefore the wise man is always watchful when alone.’”? And the next sentence implies that a man is least alone when alone: ‘‘ What ten eyes behold, what ten hands point at—how awe-inspiring! ” And he adds, “ Just as riches adorn a house, so virtue adorns the person, resulting in a mind at ease and a body in comfort. Therefore the wise man always keeps his mind sincere.” The principle of altruism finds substantial expres- sion in such clauses as the following, taken from the disciple’s commentary: ‘‘ When the ruler behaves to his aged as they should be behaved to, the people become filial; when to his elders as elders should be behaved to, the people learn their duty to their seniors ; when he treats compassionately the young and helpless, the people do the same. Thus he has a principle with which, as with a carpenter’s square, he may regulate his conduct. What a man dislikes in his superiors, let him not display in the treatment of his inferiors ; what he dislikes in the treatment of MORAL IDEALS 239 his inferiors, let him not display in the service of his superiors; ... what he hates to receive on the right let him not bestow on the left ;—this is the way of the measuring square.” Finally we have the remark twice repeated, ‘‘ Let not the nation count wealth as wealth; let it count righteousness as wealth.” Turning now to the Doctrine of the Mean, we find the text to consist of five brief paragraphs compiled by Tzt Sst, a disciple of Confucius, summing up the teaching of his master on the subject of the golden mean. It is followed by an exposition, in which Confucius is frequently quoted. Into the exposition I will not enter, but content myself with repeating the text: ‘That which Heaven has conferred is called the Nature, accordance with this (heaven-given) nature is called the Tao (Way, or Path), the regulation of this Way is called Instruction (or Education). The Way may not be left for an instant. If it could be left it would not be the Way. ‘Therefore the wise man is cautious about the invisible, and is apprehensive in regard to the inaudible. For there is nothing more open than the secret (or, than things done in secret), and nothing more manifest than the minute (or, than his most trifling deeds). Therefore the wise man is watchful over himself when alone. ““While there are no emotions of pleasure or anger, sorrow or joy, it is called the Mean or Equilib- rium. When these emotions act in their due degree, 240 MORAL IDEALS it is called a condition of Harmony. The Mean is the radical cosmic principle. Harmony is the pervading cosmic Tao, or Law. Let the states of the Mean and of Harmony exist perfectly, and universal order will result and all things be nourished.” In the exposition we are told that this middle path of harmony is not far from men, that common men, though ignorant, may walk in it, while there are degrees to which even the Sage cannot attain. We are told that ‘“‘ when one cultivates to the full the principles of his (divine) nature, and exercises them on the basis of sympathy, he is not far from the path.” And this is summed up in the form of the golden rule, ‘“‘ Do not do unto others what you would not like yourself.”” We are told also, that the wise man seeks his rectification from within and seeks nothing from others, so that he has no dissatisfactions. He does not murmur against Heaven above, nor grumble against men _ below. Consequently he is quiet and calm, attending on the will of Heaven, but the base man will venture on most dangerous ground trusting to his good luck. Finally there is a long and excellent disquisition on sincerity, for “it is only the man possessed of perfect sincerity who can perfect his (divinely-conferred) nature,” and through that go on to perfect men and things, thus aiding in the transforming and nourish- ing work of Heaven and earth. I think you will be able to gather from the above very brief synopsis that the Doctrine of the Mean MORAL IDEALS 241 places an admirable standard before the man who would live a pure moral life. Not cnly is the golden rule stated, but again emphasis is laid on the idea that a man is least alone when alone, for there is the higher “sanction”? of the spiritual world in that unseen powers are taking note of his life and character, even when he is in secret. And I maintain that we missionaries owe to Confucius a debt of deep gratitude for thus preparing our way, and that he has been a worthy schoolmaster leading men toward the Universal Christ whom we have the privilege of bringing “‘ not to destroy, but to fulfil.” Time will not permit me to summarise the teaching of the Analects, but I may briefly say that we find therein excellent moral teaching, with a total absence, as is the case with all the Chinese classics, of those indecencies which are found in the ancient writings of other nations. In the Analects we have the golden rule as given above twice stated. We also have the five virtues frequently mentioned—namely, kindness, justice, reverence, wisdom, and good faith. Needless to say, great emphasis is laid upon filial piety and respect to seniors. Filial piety and respect for seniors is spoken of as the root of all human duty. Confucius said, «When a youth is at home, let him be filial ; when abroad, respectful to his elders ; let him be circumspect and sincere, and while exhibiting a comprehensive love for all men, let him ally himself with the good. Having so acted, if he have energy 16 242 MORAL IDEALS to spare, let him employ it in study.” Filial piety consists not merely in making provision for the material needs of the parents, but in the sincerest affection. The utmost sympathy should prevail between them, so that the wants of the parents may even be anticipated before spoken. It is said of one of the disciples that such sympathy existed between him and his mother that once, when he was away on the hillside, and she was in great need of him, she bit her finger, the pain being transferred to him on the distant hill, from which he hastened home to her help. The equality of parents is fully recognised, the mother being considered as equal to the father in her children’s affections and treatment. Filial duty on the part of the son does not involve blind obedience, for it demands that the son should with all reverence repeatedly expostulate with a parent who would do wrong. Nor does filial duty end with the parent’s death. In the days of Con- fucius it was incumbent upon the eldest son to remain by the parent’s grave for the three years of mourning. Moreover, sons must regularly observe the sacrificial rites to their forefathers. I have already expressed the opinion that modern China will settle this question of ancestor worship for itself. In the meantime it becomes Christian missionaries to recog- nise the good there is behind the manifest super- stition which accompanies it, to remember that it has done more than all else to keep alive the belief in immortality and that sympathetic con- MORAL IDEALS | 243 , sideration will be more effective than rude an- tagonism. In addition to the virtues previously referred to, others find a mention in the Analects. Valour, of the right kind, is recognised, and one of the Sage’s principal disciples was noted for this characteristic, ultimately dying in defence of his prince. Loyalty to sovereign and prince is also highly praised. There are three for whom aman should be ready to die— his prince, his parent, and his teacher. Courtesy, earnestness or devotion, modesty, and humility are emphasised. Specious or ready talk is deprecated, as also are boasting and partisanship. Lust is con- demned. Sincerity and good faith are extolled, indeed Confucius says that he does not know how a man can get on without them. Humanity, or charity, and sympathy are the sum of the virtues. Indeed it is virtue, in the sense of humanity, and not wealth, which makes a neighbourhood worth living in, and without virtue Confucius does not consider a man fit to take part in religious worship. I can make but a passing reference to Mencius, the Plato of our Chinese Socrates. He expounded and emphasised the ethics of his master, without making any material addition. In his day a great discussion had arisen as to the nature of man, whether it was good or evil, whether man was born with a good or an evil nature. Mencius, following the implied lead of his master, maintained the innate goodness of human nature. This was a natural corollary of the doctrine 244 MORAL IDEALS that man’s nature was divinely conferred, for it was impossible to maintain that Heaven, being good, could have conferred an evil nature upon men. That men were evil was recognised, but this was due to their bad upbringing. By nature they were good; in practice they left their inborn goodness. Nor has Taoism added much to the moral principles enunciated by Confucius. Its emphasis is, or origin- ally was, on quiescence. A natural outcome of this doctrine finds admirable expression in the Tao Té Ching, where its author advocates the rendering of good for evil, a stage Confucius was unable to reach, any more than most of us are able to do in practice. That the idea was already known in the days of Confucius is evident from the question put to him by an inquirer, ‘‘What do you think about the principle of requiting enmity with kindness ?”’ He replied, “‘ With what, then, would you requite kind- ness? Reward enmity with just treatment, and kindness with kindness.” As to Buddhism its addition to the moral ideas of the Chinese has chiefly been the inculeation of a doubtful form of mercy towards animals. Snakes and vermin are set free; fat animals, birds, and fishes are fed in the Buddhist temples. The ox is taboo as food to many, partly out of gratitude for its services in ploughing the fields, but chiefly as the result of Hindu notions. It cannot be said that Buddhism has added much of value to the ethical ideas of the country, although its objection to taking life MORAL IDEALS 245 in any form has added weight to the quality of mercy already advocated by Confucius and the other sages. It is perhaps well to add that the anger and iras- cibility which are so often observed amongst Euro- peans are considered as evidence that foreigners have not attained to the self-control so strongly advocated by the great founders of the three religions. To the Chinese this is one of the four vices, wine, women, wealth (or covetousness), and wrath. In closing, let me expostulate against the injustice which the repetition of the words “‘ Chinese vice ” has done to the Chinese. No really vicious nation can live and grow, but China has lived long and grown great. Vice is unfortunately all too plentiful in China. Drunkenness does exist, but is not habitual. On the other hand, gambling and adultery are very prevalent. Infanticide, that is, of baby girls, is not uncommon, being almost entirely due to poverty. Filthy language pours in streams from the lips, even of young children. Anger, quarrelling, fighting, slaying, are of very frequent occurrence. Stealing, robbery, bribery and “ squeezing”? abound. Lying and cheating are prevalent, but are clearly recognised as wrong, especially when found out. Not infrequently acts of the grossest cruelty are per- petrated. Nevertheless, the best of the nation are, on the whole, of a virtue that commands respect, and the mass of the people live their simple lives, stupidly, ignorantly, and decently, often showing 246 MORAL IDEALS great kindness to each other. Honesty in trade is the best policy, and hitherto in his dealings with his own people, as well as with foreigners, a Chinese merchant’s word has been his trustworthy bond. We go, therefore, to a people who know the right, and what we can take them is a Power that makes for righteousness. LECTURE X SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES Ir has been said that the Chinese have no word which connotes our idea of sin, and there is much truth in the assertion. Now sin is a fundamental doctrine in Christian dogmatics ; whether rightly or wrongly it is not our province here to discuss, but the fact remains that a large part of our doctrine and the offices of the Church are built upon the basis of sin—the fall of man, atonement, sacrifice, conver- sion, faith, salvation, justification, sanctification, eschatology, and so on. It will be seen, therefore, that the preaching of these doctrines to the Chinese requires that they should have a clear idea of what we mean by sin. Equally important is it that the missionary should have some conception of the meaning which the people see in the terms used, as distinguished from the technical meaning which the missionary reads into them. Here I would like to utter a word of advice to those who may need it, and that is nct to count it waste time to inquire into the value. of every technical term we missionaries use in China, to master their original native mean- ing, and know for oneself what is the sense in which 247 248 SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES the non-Christian Chinese are understanding our terms. Remember, we have had to adopt existing terms, which already had acquired their own conno- tation, and just as Christianity, for instance, put a new meaning into the word love, so we to-day are using Chinese terms in a fuller sense than that in which they employ them. The consequence of this is, that frequently a missionary may use a term which has a meaning to himself which it does not convey to his hearer. The study of terminology is there- fore of real value. The “feel” of the term may partly be gained by reading, but it can only be perfected by mixing with the people and observing in what sense they themselves apply the terms. This alone gives a due appreciation of the shades of meaning, in consequence of which clear mutual understanding may be attained. The words we use for sin are instances of this. We have three principal terms: Jf tsui, sin; a O, evil; and 3fti kuo, transgression. These are often copulated to form a double word, as in tsui-o, or tsui-kuo. Other terms, such as AL fan, offence, Be nieh, ill, ills, 4 ch‘ien, error, are used, generally in combination with tsui, or kuo, but with these I need not deal. Now, not one of these terms, or any combination of them, exactly connotes our idea of sin. The word tsui, which comes nearest to it, also means crime, and while converts soon become used to it— perhaps too much so—and while we can show good SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 249 precedents for its employment in a sense approach- ing the Christian term, yet there are many Chinese sufficiently unsophisticated to resent being called tsui ren, or criminals. They are neither murderers, thieves, nor ruffians! What law of the empire have they broken ? If it be pointed out that men walk in the procession of a god in chains, with dishevelled locks, in prisoner’s garb, with the word tsui or fan, criminal or offender on their backs, captives as it were in the triumph of the god, even this does not throw the light on the objector’s mind which we desire. For those men walk as his prisoners or captives in consequence of some vow to do so if restored to health from sickness, or for some other benefit received. Now, tsui in its present form consists of two parts, a net, and wrong. It implies caught in the net of the law through wrong-doing, in other words criminal. The next word, “o,” is composed of heart and second, that is a secondary or unnatural heart, and means bad, vicious. It is sometimes wise to take a man’s measure before calling him bad or vicious. The third term is kuo, which consists of the curious formation of a wry mouth and to go. Its meaning is to go beyond, and in the moral sense means trans- gression. Having given you an idea of the formation and meaning of the three principal terms we have to use, and into which we have to import a fuller, pos- sibly even a somewhat different meaning, I propose to treat the subject somewhat historically, and explain 250 SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES what ideas the Chinese have had and have of the notion of sin, its consequences, and the way of escape. In my last lecture I showed that the Chinese possess an admirable moral code. Recognising, in no uncertain fashion, divine sanction for that code, and observing as they do the logical sequence of cause and effect, they must and do possess, and indeed, throughout recorded history always have possessed, a sense of sin and its consequences. Just, however, as is often the case in our own country, cause and effect, sin and its consequences, are often imperfectly discriminated, and any calamity such as sickness, death, misfortune in any way, is not differentiated from its cause, but is looked upon as punishment, probably for some unknown fault, or, may be, super- stitiously ascribed to something which has no real connection with the calamity. Bearing in mind that the word tsui, in its present form, means caught in the net of the law through wrong-doing, it is easy to see why Chinese often call themselves sinners when they mean sufferers, or suffermg punishment. This is indeed a very usual conception of the word, and very many native converts style themselves tsui ren, or sinners, when they only mean that they are under- going some buffet of fortune, some illness or other calamity. They are often unconscious of any cause, but consider they must have done something morally wrong, or neglected some religious duty, to bring upon themselves their misunderstood woe. SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 251 It is of value to find, however, that sin in the sense of moral and spiritual delinquency, as well as in the sense of punishment, has been recognised throughout past ages. The first mention we have of divine retribution is in the days of the second emperor, Shun, who, as you have seen, declares that Heaven is sending down judgment upon the prince of Miao. The judgment of Heaven was falling upon him, according to Shun, because of his ill-govern- ment and insolence, and because he was a rebel to the way of Heaven and to virtue. The real reason was probably because he resisted the aggression of the advancing foreign Chinese. It is noticeable, however, that it is because of moral delinquency that divine judgment is said to be coming upon him, and Shun is the instrument for punishing his tsui, or crimes. In the reign of Shun’s successor, Yti, we are told that ‘* Heaven bestows its will on the virtuous, who obtain the five kinds of robes and the five decorations ; but Heaven condemns the guilty (tsui), for whom there are the five punishments.” For “ Heaven hears and sees as our people hear and see; Heaven is glori- ously awe-inspiring, as my people stand in glorious awe :—such is the connection between the upper and lower worlds. How reverent ought the masters of earth to be!” From this it will be seen that divine rewards and punishments are clearly acknow- ledged, but that they are limited to this life. This need not surprise us. It is largely the view exhibited 252 SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES in the Old Testament, and we shall find it stretching throughout pre-Confucian, indeed, pre-Buddhist, times. Not that there is no implied recognition of reward hereafter. There is, even though the original religion of China knows nothing of the dualistic division of heaven and hell. The presence of the ancestors of King Wu and Duke Wen in heaven, and their influence with Heaven, which I have brought before your attention, give sufficient evidence that the reward of the virtuous was not considered to be limited to this life. As to the protection, favour, and gifts of Heaven in this life as the reward of virtue, these find frequent mention from the days of Yi downwards, especially in reference to the continued occupancy of the throne. The emperor occupies it on a moral and spiritual responsibility. If he maintain that trust, he will be blessed. If he fail in his trust, Heaven will send down woe, and even remove him and his line, entrusting the responsibility and honour to one more worthy. Therefore even the emperor may be a tsui ren, a sinner, just as much as, or more than a common man. This is exemplified so early as the beginning of the first dynasty, during the reign of the great Yii’s grandson, who lived a wild and reckless life. His five brothers, perceiving the impending ruin, each made a verse of poetry, in which they bemoan their brother’s lapse from virtue. Amongst other things the first says : SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 253 “When I look throughout the empire, Of the simple men and simple women, Any one may surpass me; But if the One Man repeatedly fail,’— how can anything but ruin befall? The second brother says : “* With the palace a wild for lust, And the country a wild for hunting, When wine is sweet, and music the delight, When lofty roofs and carved walls rise, .. . These are but the prelude to ruin,’’— and so on. Again, in a later reign the powerful officials who acted as Astronomers-Royal had neglected their duties, so that the calendar was all wrong. So a certain prince was authorised by the new king to “* execute the punishment appointed by Heaven,” and, when calling upon the army to aid him, he addressed them thus: ‘* Now here are these two official astrono- mers. They have entirely subverted their virtue, and are sunk and lost in wine.’ Therefore he set out as the commissioner of Heaven to punish them. But the two most vivid instances of royal lapse from virtue and the punishment of Heaven are those of the last emperor of the Hsia and the last of the Shang, or Yin dynasties. It may suffice to relate only the first of these, the other bearing a strong likeness to it. The emperor’s name was Chieh. He and the last sovereign of the succeeding dynasty are as notorious 254 SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES in Chinese as Nero is in Roman history. Both were monsters of cruelty, lust, and self-indulgence. When Prince T‘ang raised the standard against Chieh, he commenced his announcement by saying: “It is not I, this child, who dare undertake the setting up of rebellion, but for the many crimes (tsui) of the Hsia king, Heaven has willed his destruction... . The sovereign of Hsia is an offender (tsui) and as I fear God, I dare not but punish him... . Assist me, the One Man, I pray you (officers) to carry out the punishment of Heaven.” It is made clear later that the crimes of Chieh were sins against virtue and against Heaven. And it is evident that the use of sin, tsui, here closely approxi- mates to the idea embodied in our term sin. After T'ang had ascended the throne he himself says, * The king of Hsia extinguished his virtue and played the tyrant. . . . Suffering from his cruel injuries . . . you (people) protested with one accord your innocence to the spirits of heaven and earth. The way of Heaven is to bless the good and to punish the bad. It sent down calamities on Hsia, to make manifest its crimes (tsui). Therefore, I (its) child, receiving the will of Heaven with its effulgent awe, did not dare to forgive, but presuming to offer a sable bullock, and making clear announcement to the spiritual Sovereign of the high heavens, requested leave to deal with the ruler of Hsia as a criminal... . Let every one observe to keep the statutes, that we may receive the protection of Heaven. Whatever good is in you, I SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 255 will not dare to conceal. As for the evil (tsui) in myself, I will not dare to forgive myself, but will examine all things in harmony with the mind of God. If guilt (tsui) is to fall anywhere in your myriad regions, let it fall on me. If guilt (tsui) is found in me the One Man, it will not attach to you of the myriad regions. Oh, let us constantly be sincere and so attain a happy consummation.” I have given you this remarkable passage to show you that sin is recognised as an offence against virtue, and not only so, but as an offence against God, which He will punish. True, the punishment is given in this life and no mention is made as to its continuation hereafter, but as I have already pointed out, this was also the case in Old Testament times, for the time present was what mattered, and the time to come had not been sufficiently discussed to obtain definition. Similarly, when Shou, the Nero of the Yin dynasty, had become intolerable, King Wu arose to destroy him. He plainly does so as carrying out the will of God, stating that he does it because Shou did not reverence Heaven above, had abandoned himself to vice, and cruelly oppressed the people, so that Im- perial Heaven was moved to anger. Shou neither served God, nor the spirits of heaven and earth; he neglected also the temple of his ancestors, and did not offer sacrifices in it ; in addition he was dissolute, intemperate, reckless, and oppressive, so that the cry of the innocent went up to Heaven, and the evil 256 SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES odour of such a state was plainly perceived on high. So, as the instrument of Heaven, King Wu “ respect- fully executed the punishment of Heaven,” in “ rever- ent compliance with the will of God (Shang Ti).” I need not dwell any longer on this part of the subject, but will turn to the teachings of Confucius and. his school. One of our leading British educators recently remarked to me, that one feature of the Chinese people specially interesting to him was that there we have a great nation, whose ethics are independent of re- ligious sanction. My reply to him was that, far from this being the case, the ethics of the Chinese have always been subject to the sanction of religion, at the very least subject to the important sanction con- tained in the idea of ancestor worship. More than this, however, behind all is the conception that man’s moral nature is bestowed by Heaven, and that the social order, with the obligations attaching thereto, are of divine ordinance. All this is clearly evidenced not only in the pre-Confucian classics, but in the Four Books of the Confucian period. Nevertheless, the interesting fact remains that Confucius and his immediate disciples occupy them- selves rather with the inculcation of virtue, for its own sake as well as for the happiness and good fortune that it brings in this life, rather than with the character and consequences of sin. They seem to leave it as self-evident that evil is evil, and the mundane consequences at least must approximate. SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 257 The principal occasion on which Confucius refers to tsui, sin, is interesting, as showing that sin against Heaven leaves man in an utterly hopeless position. “Tf a man sin against Heaven,” he says, ‘“‘ he has no- where left for prayer.” Yet even in this case there is still the open and effectual door of reformation always left to every man. Mencius makes this very clear when he says: “ Even though a man be evil (0), if he fast and bathe, he, too, may serve God (Shang Ti).”* And it seems evident that by fasting and bathing, Mencius means something more than the mere physical act, for both he and Confucius lay great emphasis upon the spirit which lies behind formal sacrifice and worship. Transgression, or error (kuo), is not unfrequently mentioned, and reform is both advocated and deemed sufficient. ‘To err and yet not reform, this may indeed be called error,” says Confucius.? What is to happen to the sinful man, the evil man, or the unrepentant transgressor is not discussed. It is implied that he will come to a bad end, but in what way isnotclear. ‘* Man is born for uprightness,”’ says Confucius; ‘‘ without it he is lucky if he escapes with his life.”* And Mencius distinctly says‘ that weal and woe are of men’s own making, and quotes in confirmation the Ode which says: ‘“ Constantly strive to be in harmony with the (divine) will, and 1 Mencius, Book IV. part ii, sec. xxv. 2 Analects, xv. 29. 3 Analects, vi. 17. 4 Mencius, IT, i. iv. 5, 6, 17 258 SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES thereby get for yourself much happiness.” He also quotes the History : “‘ Woes of Heaven’s making may be avoided, but woes of one’s own making cannot be escaped.” He says elsewhere: “If you know that a mode of action is wrong, then use all despatch in putting an end to it. Why wait till next year ?”’? It is evident, then, the law of cause and effect was the recognised rule of the moral world, at least in so far as this life is concerned. As to the character of the life beyond the grave, Confucius and his dis- ciples are silent, as well with regard to the good as the bad. Practically the same may be said of Taoism in its unadulterated primitiveness, though here the more speculative minds of the Taoist founders anticipate a state of happiness outside the flesh, and one which will result from moral and spiritual development in this life. What the eschatological consequences of ‘an immoral or unspiritual life may be is left un- defined. It was not, indeed, until the importation of Bud- dhism that the future state began to receive definition. Even to this day the strict follower of Confucius, while recognising, through ancestor worship, the con- tinued existence of the departed, does not, in theory at least, consider any of his own ancestors as exist- ing in hell. Such an idea would be intolerable to a filialson. We may say, then, that the ancient Chinese resembled the men in Old Testament times in that 1 Mencius, IIT. ii. viii. 3. SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 259 rewards and punishments were looked for in this life, and as to their continuance beyond the portals of the grave, silence reigns. In China this need cause little surprise, certainly not so much as in the case of the Israelites, especially when the elaborate doc- trines held by the neighbouring Egyptians as to the state after death be taken into consideration. After the introduction of Buddhism a far-reaching change took place in Chinese notions regarding the future state. At the risk of repetition I will re- capitulate what I said in my lecture on the soul. I then explained that the subdivision into heaven and hell, together with the doctrine of transmigra- tion of the soul, of which there is no trace in early Chinese works, resulted in the extension of rewards and punishments into a life that was unending, in the inculcation of methods of avoiding punish- ment and of releasing those who, it was surmised, had not escaped. Following on this, as elsewhere, came increase in the influence and power of the priest. Subsequently the ideas of sin, retribution in a future life, means of release and escape, and soteriological theories entered into the Taoist, and even into the Confucian cult, so far as the official worship of tutelary deities can be called Confucian. In the present day, therefore, in the official religion we have representations of the Chinese Pluto and Hades in every official centre, that is in every city. The next world has come to be looked upon as a replica of this world. There is Shang Ti, the Celestial 260 SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES Emperor above, worshipped by the Son of Heaven, or terrestrial emperor below. Shang Ti has his host of ministers and subordinates, his palace, his yamens everywhere, his place for the good, and his very lurid hell for the evil. Subordinate to Shang Ti are other Ti’s, or divine rulers, and Wangs, or divine kings, all in the spirit world. There are numerous judges in the spirit yamens, with their secretaries, lictors, torturers, and prisoners undergoing examination for the things done in this life. Each spirit prisoner is taken before the judge ap- pointed to try the offences of which he has been guilty, whether for unfilialness, adultery, robbery, cruelty, and a myriad other offences moral and conventional. It is no use trying to hide the facts, for does not “‘ the reveal them in incontrovertible detail. The poor prisoner may have believed during life that by 39 book feasting the ever-observant kitchen god, whose paper face adorns the kitchen throughout the year, and by smearing his lips with sweetstuff, he would speak only honeyed words to the recorders of the spirit yamen, and gloss over or forget the ill-deeds inscribed upon his paper memory. But the opening of the books by the judge finds no trace of the feast or the honey. Perhaps the fire which sent up the kitchen god in smoke pained his righteous soul to the for- getting of honey and fat things. Any way, there is no gainsaying the records, and the poor prisoner must go to his agonies. And how can he complain ? Has he not all his life had the most vivid warning SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 261 before him of what would happen? Has he not been familiar with the saw, the pincers, the mill, the hammer, the boiling cil, the spit, the lake of blood, the whole round of human torture? Or is it that familiarity has bred a contempt now to be mightily cured ? Whatever the facts, there is no escape from a myriad-fold retribution for his sins. This dualistic division in the future state cannot be debited, or credited, to Confucianism pure and simple. In the State religion it owes its introduction to Mahayana Buddhism, through Taoist channels. Such a clear line of demarcation had not been reached by original Taoism. It was only arrived at as a consequence of the adoption of an imported idea which, true to the instincts of later Taoism and of the Chinese people, it proceeded to clothe in Chinese garb. Taoism is a Chinese cult and is typical of the national character. It is perfectly willing to adopt imported ideas, but it likes to nationalise them. So while Taoism has adopted the whole round of eschatological and _ soteriological doctrines of Mahayana Buddhism, it has refused to adopt the Buddhist terminology, but has influenced Chinese officialdom to build Chinese yamens in the shades, fit up Chinese punishments, and appoint Chinese judges. All must be Chinese, not foreign. It will thus be seen that Buddhism has had an almost revolutionary influence on Chinese religious thought. What the Chinese moral and philosophical systems lacked in definition of the unseen world was 262 SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES supplied, so far as it was supplied, by Buddhism, and no one can complain of lack of quantity. As already stated, Buddhism added nothing of value to the moral teachings of the purely national thinkers. In practice it may have stood for kindness and humanity, carrying these principles to excess in regard to animals and parasites—but it added nothing to the noble ideals of Confucius, Mencius, Laocius, and Chuang-tzt. Its influence lay in its doctrine of and relating to the last things. From these Taoism took the soul and forced it with scant con- sideration for its feelings into a Chinese body. The result has been that while the Taoist cult has its distinctive characteristics, especially as the custodian of the ancient mythical, magical, and even mystical ideas of the Chinese, it has so many features in common with Buddhism, although they are called by a different nomenclature, that Buddhists and Taoists fraternise over the feasts of the dead, and find enjoyment and profit therein. I need not dwell at length upon the future state as exhibited in Buddhism, beyond saying that in the Mahayana form in which, if not originally so introduced, it exists to-day, important ideas not found in original Buddhism are its most effective doctrines. Its ideas of retribution and salvation are not found in the original school, and are evidently of foreign importation. The influence of Buddhism on Western theology through Gnosticism, which is another word for Buddhism, has already been re- SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 263 ferred to, and there can be litile doubt that Western ideas of retribution and salvation, possibly Messianic, more probably Christian, are at the base of the teachings of the Mahayana system as found in China and Japan. When the Roman missionaries went first to China and found the Buddhist priests vested like themselves and performing offices all too closely resembling their own, they thought it was the work of the devil to defeat Mother Church. Any one acquainted with the Buddhist ceremonial who visits a Roman service will feel very much at home. Even the Buddhist chants are in a foreign tongue, transliterated Sanscrit, just as the offices in a Roman Church are in Latin. In regard then to eschatology the Buddhist doctrine in China is that the sinful soul is transported at death to the prison of Yama, whence, after under- going the punishments which it has deserved, and drinking the waters of Lethe, it comes forth to enter that shape for which its previous existence on this earth has fitted it, whether man, woman, beast, bird, fish, or parasite. This doctrine of metempsy- chosis, the germ, or travesty, of evolution, accounts for the Buddhist’s kindness to living things. And as I have already said, it is the doctrine of the future state which has given the priest his power and Buddhism its revolutionary influence on Chinese religious life. This brings us to the subject of soteriology. What are the views of the Chinese in regard to salvation ? I have explained enough of the Confucian attitude 264 SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES of mind to lead you to see that such a notion as salvation takes no prominence in that cult. The way of salvation is in living a virtuous life. Heaven blesses and accepts such a man. If he does wrong and lives an evil life let him reform, and God will accept him. If he die in his sins, well, Heaven has caused him to perish as he deserved. What of the afterwards is not discussed. The advent of Buddhism, with its intimation of a dualism of the future life and its suggestion of pains and penalties prolonged beyond the mortal, to- gether with possibilities of escape from the effects of this evil world, brought an intellectual and a spiritual stimulus. Questions began to be asked to which Confucianism had no answer to give, and Taoism an insufficient one. It is natural to infer that the fate of parent or of child became matter of anxiety to multitudes of sorrowing people. And while Bud- dhism brought the evils of hell with it, it also brought a light of salvation. A dim light it may have been, yet it not only intensified the gloom of the abyss, but revealed a way upwards for the living, and showed a glimmer even for those who had slipped away down into the gulf. The searchings of the human spirit in China down to the times of the great sages had discovered the moral and spiritual law of retribution, good and evil, but its definition was not made clear beyond the present life, nor even in this life did the law seem to be of universal application, As to escape from evil, SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 265 no help was offered to the mass of tempted ones but the arduous, the well-nigh impossible, road of vir- tuous reform. The doctrine was good so far as it went, but, unaided by the doctrine of prayer and communion with the divine, it left man a prey to his weakness and his fears. Buddhism came with a positive doctrine of reward for the good and punish- ment for the evil carried by natural law into the unseen world. But it did not leave matters there. It brought also a doctrine of salvation, a doctrine not its own, one which it had borrowed and made its own, and with its eschatological dualism and its soteriological confidence it charged the atmosphere with a new vitality, permeated the national thought and literature, took possession of Taoism, and even saturated the later schools of Confucian philosophy, so that the national religion was impelled to admit a debased presentation of its distinctive features into the temples of its public tutelary deities. It is perhaps in Taoistic literature, the best of which is from the pens of men trained in the Con- fucian school, that we find how it has influenced the Chinese mind. Take the Taoist. work, the Kan Ying P‘ien, or Tractate on actions and their consequences, which was composed nearly a thousand years ago, and which is one of the most popular religious works in China. Its opening words are: ‘* Woe and weal have no gates (i.e. are not pre- destined), men call them on themselves. The rewards of good and evil follow as shadow follows substance, 266 SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES For in heaven above and earth below there are the spirits who take account of men’s transgressions, and according to the gravity of their offences curtail their allotted span. Curtailment results in poverty and degradation, and the encountering of many sorrows and afflictions. They will be hated of men, doom and woe attend them, while luck and felicity shun them, and malignant stars bring disaster upon them. When their lot is fulfilled they die. ‘“‘ There are also the divinities over head in the northern constellation, which record men’s sins and evils, and take away from their allotted span. And there are the three body-divinities within each man, who on the cycle days ascend to the Court of Heaven to report men’s sins and transgressions. On the last day of the moon the kitchen god does the same. “All who transgress, for greater lose a chi (i.e. 12 years), for lesser they lose a suan (i.e. 100 days). Transgression great and small is seen in several hundred things. He who wishes for long life must first and foremost avoid these. In the way that is right, let him go forward. From the way that is wrong let him withdraw. Let him not walk in devious ways, nor wrong himself in secret. Let him lay up virtue and amass merit, be compassionate to (all) creatures, loyal, filial, faithful to friends, and respect- ful to elders. Let him correct himself and transform others. Let him pity the fatherless and show kind- ness to the widow, reverence the old, and cherish the young. Even creeping things, plants, and trees let SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 267 him not injure. Let him sorrow over men’s ills, and rejoice over their good, help them in their straits, and save them in their perils. Let him look upon the (blessings) received by others as if they were his own, and upon the losses of others as if they were his own losses. Let him not show up their shortcomings, nor make a display of his own longcomings (superiori- ties). Let him resist that which is evil and spread abroad that which is good. Let him yield much and take little, receive insult without resentment, and favour with (grateful) surprise, bestow kindness without seeking a return, and give to others without regret. Such a man is called a good man—all men reverence him, Heaven in its course protects him, blessing and prosperity attend him, all evil influences keep far from him, the spirits defend him, what- soever he doeth prospers, and he may aspire to im- mortality (literally, to become one of the spirit genil, in other words, an angel of light). He who seeks to become a heavenly angel (a genii, or superior immortal) should establish one thousand three hundred good works. He who seeks to become an earthly angel (i.e. an inferior immortal) should establish three hundred good works.”’ After this follows a long list of evil deeds, beginning with the statement that if a man’s doings be unjust, or his actions opposed to what is right, if he count his evil for ability, and so on, then his life will be cut short, and unrequited guilt will fall upon his posterity. Amongst the list of evil deeds mention is made of the 268 SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES use of sympathetic magic to injure another, such as burying the image of a man to destroy him, and towards the end, possibly by a later hand, a number of puerilities are found. It closes with the following sentiments : ‘““ Now when the heart rises to goodness, although the good be not yet done, the spirits of good fortune attend him. And when the heart rises to evil, al- though the evil be not yet done, the spirits of ill fortune attend him. Ifaman have already committed ill deeds, but afterwards alter his ways in remorse, doing no more evil, but respectfully doing all good, he will certainly in the long run obtain good fortune and felicity, and as it is said, ‘change woe to weal.’ Therefore the good man (or fortunate man) talks of the good, contemplates the good, and does what is good. Kach day maintaining these three good courses, in three years Heaven will assuredly send blessings upon him. The bad (or ill-starred) man talks of evil, contemplates evil, and does what is evil. Each day maintaining these evil courses, in three years Heaven will assuredly send woe upon him. Why will not men exert themselves and do what is good ?” This is a book which every missionary ought to read. It is the high-water mark of Chinese detailed description of good and evil, and is one of the most popular books in the country. There is another booklet to which I must make reference. It is called the Kung Kuo K‘o, or Diary of Merits and Demerits. SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 269 Lists of good and ill deeds are given and marks indicated whereby a man may keep account with himself of his deeds, setting off his bad actions against his good ones. Stopping a fight counts plus 3; inducing people to abstain from flesh for a year counts plus 20; gossiping with evil tongue minus 38 ; to return favours plus 20; to keep a promise seems to be considered as a mark of merit, for it counts plus 1; to abstain from taking a thing not one’s own counts also plus 1; sincerity counts plus 1 per day; betrayal of a neighbour’s secrets counts minus 50. It will be seen then from the above quotations that the Taoists believe in the evil consequences of moral delinquency, and that those consequences do not end with this life. This is even more evident in the ceremonies performed by the Taoist priests over the dead. As to salvation for the living that is to be obtained chiefly by repentance and reformation, while as to the salvation of the dead ceremonies are necessary. The Taoist trinity may be invoked, as also such goddesses as the Hsi Wang Mu (the Royal Mother of the Western Paradise), and T‘ien Fei (the Queen of Heaven), the latter much worshipped by sailors, andothers. But the salvation looked for from these is chiefly salvation from distress in this life. Buddhism, true to its nature, and to its Western accretions, devotes itself more definitely to objective preparation for and salvation in the continued life. Its Saviour is Amitabha, the Coming Buddha, and, 270 SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES in especial, for men as well as for women, the so-called Goddess of Mercy, Kuanyin, who is much addressed as ‘‘Saviour in sorrow and distress, Most compas- sionate and pitiful, Kuanyin P’usa.” Here again the salvation is mostly sought in affairs relating to this life, but it is not limited thereto, and as a matter of fact many devotees give themselves up to fasting from flesh for given periods, or even for life, and keep count on their beads of the multitudinous repetition of the name of Amitabha, or some other repetition, all in order to prepare themselves for the life beyond. Sometimes they make long and danger- ous journeys to distant and famous monasteries in order to lay up merit and obtain a passport to Heaven which may be laid in their coffins and ensure their acceptance in the spirit world because of their faith- fulness in this. We may say then that sin and its consequences, as well in this life as the next, are clearly recognised, and that the missionary by no means goes to an unpre- pared people. The notions they possess may be crude. So were those of our forefathers. So perhaps later generations will describe ours. At least we carry the doctrine of an All-gracious Father and an Almighty Saviour. LECTURE XI THE OFFICIAL CULT, OR PUBLIC RELIGION THE panorama of Chinese civilisation is passing over the curtain with such amazing rapidity, producing effects so kaleidoscopic, that it is almost impossible to say what is now the official religion of the nation, indeed whether it has one at all. When a nation suddenly drops all its courtesy titles it is likely therewith to drop its courtesy and reverence and its religion as well. The Chinese have just discarded all “ Your Excellencies,” ‘‘ Your Worships,” and “Your Honours,” so that everybody is plain Mister, from the highest to the lowest. Many temples have also been denuded of their gods. For instance, in the provincial capital of far Yunnan, the City Temple has been invaded, and Pluto and his hells all de- stroyed. The holes in the roads have been plugged up with the earcasses of the gods, and now the traffic passes over them. The process of idol demolition began in 1898, when many temples were turned into schoolrooms. .It met with a sudden check when the Empress-Dowager reascended the dragon throne. Now it has begun again, and no one knows where it 271 272 THE OFFICIAL RELIGION will end. Certain it is that the people will demand religion, and certain it also is that never was there such an opportunity as the present for Christian nations to exhibit Christianity in all its strength and beauty. In the important province of Shansi, over whose first University I have had the honour to be Principal, we now hear a doubtful rumour that there is a proposal to found an _ official Chinese Christian Church, and that all the high officials of the Province have signified their inten- tion to join it! How then am I to speak about the official religion of the country, seeing that the old official religion, happily, can never be what it was again ? Nevertheless, I am by no means assured that the past is wholly past. A nation does not in a sudden paroxysm for ever cast off all its hoary traditions, which are in the very bone and blood. Tradi- tions of this kind reassert themselves, and though they may ultimately evolve into other forms, they retain for long the old spirits While, therefore, the passing of the throne may mean the passing of the sacrifices on the one and only altar of Heaven, and while the passing of the sacrifices to Heaven may toll the knell of all official religion, some new form may yet spring out of the old, some last flickering glimmer of the dying lamp while the golden light of the Morning Star steals slowly o’er the Hills of Han. During this interregnum it may be of something more than mere archeological interest for the student THE OFFICIAL RELIGION 273 to know what the official religion of the present past, if I may be allowed so to call it, has been. Seeing that the three religions, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, were all imperially recognised religions, it follows that, from the emperor down to the smallest official, all worshipped at the shrines of all three. Emperor and officials contributed towards the support of, and made their acts of worship before, the shrines of deities, whether Confucian, Buddhist, or Taoist. They did this as part of their official duty in maintaining the religious life of the nation. Some- times it was a mere duty, an irksome official duty. Sometimes it was a sincere act of worship. Many officials have described their actions in this respect as a concession to the ignorance of the multitude, and expressed their superior disbelief in the whole thing, but in their heart of hearts most of them were as superstitious as the common multitude, and feared as much, or hoped as much from their act of worship as did the most ignorant plebeian. We are told that all this compulsory official worship is suddenly to end. Well, things are moving rapidly in China, but so long as the people need rain and snow, and so long as flood and pestilence bring destruction and woe in their train, so long will the ignorant and exigeant people bring a compulsion to bear on their officials which only the strong will be able to resist. The pangs of travail are not yet over. The new faith is not yet born. What, then, is, or was, the official religion of 18 274, THE OFFICIAL RELIGION China? Its superb centre is the worship of Shang Ti, the King over all, the Supreme Being. Its cir- cumference is the worship and control of demons. Between centre and circumference are concentric circles of nature deities, sages, ancestors, and deified men, Let me endeavour to describe to you, first of all, the imperial worship of Shang Ti. As I have already said, this supreme act of worship, with its accom- panying sacrifices, is the sign and symbol of the imperial office. Only the emperor, the High Priest of the world, the Son of Heaven, may perform this great sacrifice, which has existed from all historic antiquity. | The T‘ien Tan, or Altar of Heaven, stands in a huge park filled with cypress-trees. It is situated outside the old city of Peking, but has been enclosed by the wall of the more modern Chinese suburb or city. On one of the many brilliant days in which the capital rejoices, a visit to the T‘ien Tan is one of the most impressive that the world can offer. As seen from a distance, the white marble altar is an exquisite pearl set in an emerald ocean. The Hall of Fasting, built on a marble foundation and towering to a height of ninety-nine feet, in which the emperor prepares himself for his sacred duty, raises its superb triple-roofed circular dome to the sky in the near distance, scintillating like a jewel in the gorgeous sunshine. It is not thus, however, that the emperor beholds THE OFFICIAL RELIGION = 275 it; for it falls to his lot to pay his duties in the depth of winter and the dead of night. Then, the cold is so intense that, as one who has often officiated there told me, even high wadded boots and the thickest furs fail to keep strong men from chilling to the marrow, and in some cases going to their graves. It is at the winter solstice that the sovereign sheds the blood of sacrifice, when the dying sun has reached the lowest ebb of its vitality and is again to renew its youth. Whether the rite has any original connection with the myth of the dying god found in other lands, I am not in a position either to affirm or deny. However this may be, on the day before the sacrifice, the emperor leaves, or used to leave, his palace, ‘‘ drawn by an elephant in his state car and escorted by about two thousand grandees, princes, musicians, and attendants, down to the Temple of Heaven. The cortége passes out by the southern read, reaching the Ching Yang Gate, opened only for His Majesty’s use, and through it goes on two miles to the T‘ien Tan. He first repairs to the Chai Kung, or Palace of Fasting, where he prepares himself by lonely meditation for his duty ; ‘ for the idea is that if there be not pious thoughts in his mind the spirits of the unseen will not come to the sacrifice.’ To assist him he looks at a copper statue, arrayed like a Taoist priest, whose mouth is covered by three fingers, denoting silence, while the other hand bears a tablet inscribed with ‘ Fast three days.’ When the worship commences, and all the officiating 276 THE OFFICIAL RELIGION attendants are in their places, the animals are killed, and as the odour of their burning flesh ascends to convey the sacrifice to the gods, the Emperor begins the rite, and is directed at every step by the masters of ceremonies. The worship to Heaven is at mid- night, and the numerous poles around the great altar (the thousands of flares and lanterns), and the fires in the furnaces shedding their glare over the marble terraces and richly dressed assembly, render this solemnity most striking.” } The open altar where the actual worship has hitherto been offered is the most important of all Chinese structures. It is magnificent in its simplicity, and one cannot wonder that Dr. Legge, when he visited it, took off his shoes from off his feet, feeling that he was on holy ground. The following description is adapted from one given by Dr. Edkins.? The Altar consists of a triple circular terrace. The lowest terrace is 210 feet in diameter, the middle one is 150 feet, and the top one 90 feet. In these we may notice the multiples of 3: 3x3,=9, 3x5 =15, 38x7=21. The topmost terrace is laid with marble slabs, forming nine concentric circles. Ac- cording to Dr. Edkins, it is on the circular stone in the centre that the emperor kneels, in the centre of the universe. According to the laws of the Manchu dynasty, it is at the foot of the steps on the second terrace, which lead to the topmost terrace. Facing 1 Williams’ Middle Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 196, 2 Edkins’ Peking. THE OFFICIAL RELIGION 277 the north, and thereby assuming the position and attitude of a subordinate, he acknowledges that he is the subject of Heaven. Around this central stone is laid the first circle of nine stones, then follows another of eighteen, another of twenty-seven, and so on in successive multiples of nine till the square of nine, the favourite number of Chinese philosophy, is reached, in the outermost circle of eighty-one stones. Beyond this are the circles of the terraces and their enclosing walls, and beyond all the circle of the horizon. For the conception of the circular heaven is maintained in the Temple of Heaven, as the squareness of earth is maintained in the temple associated with its worship. Celestial blue is also the prevailing colour in the Temple of Heaven, as terrestrial yellow is the prevailing colour in the wor- ship of the earth. At the time of sacrificing, the tablet of Shang Ti is placed on the north of the topmost terrace. It will be seen that idolatry has never been allowed to enter into this sublime ceremony. The tablets of the five founders of the present dynasty, ancestors of the emperor, are then placed in line on either side, facing east and west. On the middle terrace are placed, on the east the tablet to the sun, with four others below it, one to the north star, another to the five planets, a third to the twenty-eight con- stellations, and:a fourth to the host of stars. On the western side are placed a tablet to the moon, with four others below it, to the clouds, the rain, 278 THE OFFICIAL RELIGION the wind, and the thunder.! From this it will be seen that not only God is worshipped, but the whole host of heaven. The great ancestors of the emperor, the former Ti’s upon earth, are associated with the Ti above, not as equals, but partly as bearing Shang Ti company in the feast, and partly as his chief associates in heaven, for the Chinese national religion is essentially geocentric in its character. The whole service is a thanksgiving to Shang Ti, to the great dynastic ancestors, and to the host of heaven for the blessings bestowed from above during the year, as the sacrifice to earth is a similar thanksgiving for the favours it has bestowed. Nevertheless, it must be borne in mind that neither Shang Ti nor the ancestors are conceived of as anything but spiritual and transcendent. They are not even localised as are the secondary deities, of the sun, moon, and stars, who, while localised, are really dis- crete from the material object, being spirits control- ling these objects, residing in them, yet transcendent of them. Moreover, the emperor does not himself worship these secondary deities in person. He only worships Shang Ti and the Ti’s who have preceded him as founders of his greatness. Nor does he offer sacri- fices to his ancestors equal with those offered to Shang Ti. True, in most respects these offerings are similar in character and number, consisting not of any modern inventions, but of the food and materials 1 Ross’ The Original Religion of China. THE OFFICIAL RELIGION 279 known in ancient times. But while only one piece of silk is offered to the ancestors, twelve pieces are offered to Shang Ti, and while the ancestors each have four lamps, Shang Ti has six. The most dis- tinguishing offering, however, is that of a sceptre of blue jade which is placed before the shrine of Shang Ti, as an emblem that all power belongs to Him, and one of equal or greater import is the sacrifice of a whole burnt-offering to Him. This must be a bullock of one colour and free from flaw or blemish. An interesting part of the ceremony is the reading of the invocation. While it is being read by the proper officer all music ceases, both emperor and officers reverently kneeling. When read it is placed before the shrine of Shang Ti, and the emperor pros- trates himself, kotowing the prescribed number of times to the ground. Later the prayer, the silks, and other of the offerings are placed in the fires of the furnaces. It may be mentioned that during the greater part of the ceremony, which lasts a long time, musicians and posturers are performing below the altar. As the character of the prayer indicates more clearly what meaning the sacrifice bears in the mind of the worshipper, the following series of prayers is given. They were offered towards the end of the Ming dynasty in the seventeenth century a.D.! Of course it ‘has to be remembered, that when these prayers were composed, not only Buddhist, 1 Legge’s Religions of China. 280 THE OFFICIAL RELIGION but Christian and Mohammedan influences had made themselves felt in the country. Nevertheless they are manifestly characteristic of Chinese thought. The prayers were made on a special occasion, when it had been determined to make a change in the name of the Supreme Being. Previously, that name had been Hao T‘ien Shang Ti, or Supreme Ruler in (or of) Bright Heaven. Now it was proposed to change this title to Supreme Ruler in (or of) Sovereign Heaven. You will notice that the whole host of celestial and terrestrial spirits is invoked, not only those associated with the solstitial worship of Shang Ti, but all the other nature spirits as well. From this we may learn that the supremity of Shang Ti is undoubted, not only over heaven, but over earth, indeed, that He is Lord of the Universe. What the One Man is on earth, so the One God is in heaven. All the host of nature divinities are but ministers that do His pleasure, angels that perform His will, but able to intercede on behalf of humanity. The first prayer then is to these deified phenomena or forces of nature: ““T, the emperor of the Great Illustrious dynasty, have respectfully prepared this paper to inform the spirit of the sun; the spirit of the moon; the spirits of the five planets, of the constellations of the zodiac, and of all the stars in all the sky ; the spirits of the clouds, the rain, wind, and thunder; the spirits which have duties assigned to them throughout the THE OFFICIAL RELIGION 281 whole heavens; the spirits of the five grand moun- tains; the spirits of the five guardian hills; the spirits of the five hills, Chi-ytin, Hsiang-shéng, Shén- lieh, T‘ien-shan, and Shun-téh; the spirits of the four seas; the spirits of the four great rivers; the intelligences which have duties assigned to them on the earth ; all the celestial spirits under heaven ; the terrestrial spirits under heaven; the spirit presiding over the present year; the spirit ruling over the tenth moon, and those of every day; and the spirit in charge of the ground about the border altar. ‘“* On the first day of the coming month, we shall reverently lead our officers and people to honour the great name of Shang Ti, dwelling in the sovereign heavens, looking up to the lofty nine-vaulted azure dome. Beforehand we inform you, all ye celestial and all ye terrestrial spirits, and will trouble you, on our behalf, to exert your spiritual power, and display your most earnest endeavours, communicat- ing our poor desire to Shang Ti, and praying Him graciously to grant us acceptance and regard, and to be pleased with the title which we shall reverently present. ‘For this purpose we have made this paper for your information. All ye spirits should be well aware ofour purpose. Ye are respectfully informed.” When the great day arrived, the emperor greeted the real though invisible approach of Shang Ti thus: “Of old, in the beginning, there was the great 282 THE OFFICIAL RELIGION chaos, without form and dark. The five elements had not begun to revolve, nor the sun and moon to shine. In the midst thereof there presented itself neither form nor sound. Thou, O Spiritual Sovereign, camest forth in Thy presidency, and first did divide the gross from the pure (ie. the ethereal from the material). Thou madest heaven; Thou madest earth; Thou madest man. All things got their — being, with their reproducing power.” The amended title was then presented with the following address : ‘‘O Ti, when Thou hadst opened the course for the inactive (Yin) and active (Yang) forces of matter to operate, Thy making work went on. Thou didst produce, O Spirit, the sun and moon, and five planets; and pure and beautiful was their light. The vault of heaven was spread out like a curtain, and the square earth supported all on it, and all creatures were happy. I, Thy servant, presume reverently to thank Thee, and, while I worship, present the notice to Thee, O Ti, calling Thee Sove- reign.” Silks and jade were then presented with the follow- ing address : ‘Thou hast vouchsafed, O Ti, to hear us, for Thou regardest us as our Father. I, Thy child, dull and unenlightened, am unable to show forth my feelings. I thank Thee that Thou hast accepted the intimation. Honourable is Thy great name. With reverence we spread out these precious stones and silk, and, THE OFFICIAL RELIGION 283 as swallows rejoicing in the spring, praise Thy abundant love.” Offerings of food were then made, with the follow- ing address : “The great feast has been set forth, and the sound of our joy is like thunder. The Sovereign Spirit vouchsafes to enjoy our offering, and his servant’s heart is within him like a particle of dust. The meat has been boiled in the large caldrons, and the fragrant provisions have been prepared. Enjoy the offering, O Ti, and then shall all the people have happiness. I, Thy servant, receiving Thy favours, am blessed indeed.” A drink-offermg was made with the following: “The great and lofty One sends down His favour and regard, which we, in our insignificance, are hardly sufficient to receive. I, His simple servant, while I worship, present this precious cup to Him, whose years have no end.” A thanksgiving followed in these words: ““When Ti, the Lord, had so decreed, He called into existence the three powers (heaven, earth, and man). Between heaven and earth He separately disposed men and things, all overspread by the heavens. I, His small servant, beg His (favouring) decree, to enlighten, me His vassal; so may I ever appear before Him in the empyrean.” At the second drink-offering it was said: “‘ All the numerous tribes of animated beings are indebted to Thy favour for their beginning. Men 284 THE OFFICIAL RELIGION and creatures are emparadised, O Ti, in Thy love. All living things are indebted to Thy goodness, but who knows whence his blessings come to him? It is Thou alone, O Lord, who art the true parent of all things.” Again, at the third and final drink-offering, it was said : “The precious feast is wide displayed; the gem-adorned tables are arranged; the pearly spirits are presented, with music and dancing. The spirit of harmony reigns; men and creatures are happy. The breast of His servant is troubled, that he can make no recompense (for such goodness).” When the offerings were removed it was further said : ““The service of song is completed, but our poor sincerity cannot be fully expressed. Thy sovereign goodness is infinite. As a potter hast Thou made all living things. Great and small are curtained round (by Thee from harm). As engraven on the heart of Thy poor servant is the sense of Thy good- ness, but my feelings cannot be fully displayed. With great kindness Thou dost bear with us, and notwith- standing our demerits dost grant us life and pros- perity.” As a valedictory the two following addresses were made : ““ With reverent ceremonies the record has been presented; and Thou, O Sovereign Spirit, hast deigned to accept our service. The dances have THE OFFICIAL RELIGION 285 been all performed, and nine times the music has resounded. Grant, O Ti, Thy great blessing to in- crease the happiness of my House. The instruments of metal and precious stones have given out their melody; the jewelled girdles of the officers have emitted their tinklings. Spirits and men rejoice together, praising Ti the Lord. What limit, what measure can there be, while we celebrate His great name? For ever He setteth fast the high heavens, and establisheth the solid earth. His government is everlasting. His poor servant, I bow my head, and lay it in the dust, bathed in His grace and glory.” Finally : ** We have worshipped and written the Great Name on this gem-like sheet. Now we display it before Ti, and place it in the fire. These valuable offerings of silks and fine meats we burn also, with these sincere prayers, that they may ascend in volumes of flames up to the distant azure. All the ends of the earth look up to Him. All human beings, all things on the earth, rejoice together in the Great Name.” Dr. Legge’s book is out of print, and I have taken the liberty of making this lengthy quotation as it is deserving of your attention. I think you will agree with me that whatever may have been the origin of religion in China, the highest forms of it, as represented by this series of prayers, have risen to a clear conception of spirit as transcendent of the material. Time will not permit of my attempting to describe the separate temples to and worship of 286 THE OFFICIAL RELIGION the many celestial and terrestrial divinities referred to above, and who were all supposed to assemble at the ceremony just referred to. On the north of the city is the Altar to Earth. M. de Harlez tells us that this altar was originally built alongside that to Heaven, but was later removed to the opposite end of the city, and the sacrifices to Heaven and earth separated. Now the altar to earth is placed outside the city on the north, as that to Heaven is situated on the south. The temple of the sun is outside the city on the east, as that of the moon is on the west, and the temple of the north star on the north. The altar to Shén Nung, the founder of agriculture, has its temple in close proximity to the altar to Heaven. Indeed, temples seem to exist for all the spirits celestial and terrestrial. The cult of the ancestor, along with the introduction of Buddhism, has had its natural development in the apotheosis of a multitude of departed worthies. Originally, a man, after his departure from life, was only worshipped by his own descendants and not by . others ; hence Confucius says, ““He who worships a spirit not belonging to him (i.e. not one of his own family) is asycophant.” In the imperial and princely ancestral temples, while there was a host of officers assisting, who were not descendants of the ancestor worshipped, they were not the real worshippers. But with an easy extension of the idea, benefactors of the nation came to receive worship not limited to their own descendants. THE OFFICIAL RELIGION 287 Thus, sacrifices were offered in the colleges to the great Duke Wén of the Chou dynasty before the Christianera. In A.p. 57 the greatness of Confucius as a national benefactor had come to be imperially re- cognised, for he was associated with Duke Wén in sacrifice from that time until a.p. 609, when their temples were separated. From that time to this it is Confucius who reigns “the ancient Teacher, the Perfect Sage.” To Confucius, then, sacrifices are offered through- out the empire twice a year, in the spring and autumn. I was present at the spring sacrifices of last year, when all the high officials of the province of Shansi attended at the temple of Confucius in the darkness of the night before the break of day. It was a most imposing sight. Have the sacrifices, I wonder, been offered since then ? Will they be offered again ? Time fails to tell in detail of the splendour and sordidness of the rites. Imagine them if you can— gloom of a huge temple dimly lit with many coloured lanterns, unpleasing carcasses of victims laid on the altars before the tablets to the great Sage and his canonised disciples, strmged instruments such as he knew when on earth, wooden frames hung with the stone chimes on which he loved to play, singers and dancers singing and posturing as the verses of “Great is K‘ung Tzu, philosopher, The primal Seer, the primal Sage,” are slowly chanted, half a dozen high mandarins clad in their gorgeous Court robes, now standing in the courtyard below the steps under 288 THE OFFICIAL RELIGION the open sky, now prostrating themselves with foreheads to the ground, again, at each offering, marching up the side steps to the hall, there again prostrating themselves, then back again to the court- yard, time after time, the motley crowd of literati and attendants all the time dully awaiting the con- clusion of the ceremonies and the sharing of the offerings. It is an impressive and a curious sight, leaving one with the feeling, in the weirdness of the dark night, as of one suddenly transported back through thousands of years of time to an age which is long past. Is it yet past ? If not, it is speedily passing, and I am glad to have been one of its last witnesses. For the dawn is breaking. Yet its brightness leaves a tinge of melancholy as it rudely drives away the fantasies of the darkness. Not only has Confucius been canonised, but multi- tudes of other worthies. I have already spoken of Shén Nung, the mythological emperor who taught the art of agriculture. As the food of the people is represented by him, so is the clothing by the patron of sericulture, fire by the red-faced god of fire, rain by the azure-coloured god of rain, and so on. Mars, the god of war, is represented by Kuan Ti, a celebrated general of the third century 4.D., who was canonised in the twelfth century and raised to the rank of Ti, or god, in the sixteenth century. To take you through the round of canonisation or apotheosis would require a lecture to itself. Suffice it, that right down to the present day the process of THE OFFICIAL RELIGION 289 canonisation has been going on. Even Li Hung Chang, whose reputation is still under discussion, has been canonised and has his temples. Every prefecture (or county) and every sub-prefecture (or township) has its guardian deity, who, as controller of the wall and moat and of all the spirit forces within it, ranks with the often too fleshly mandarin who presides as “‘ parent ” over the swarming people. I have already referred to the city temples in which these guardian deities have their abode. These deities were once officials in the flesh, and even now, in the spirit, have not lost their earthly relationships, for the harem is still in evidence in the residential quarters of the deity. To him the living official pays his respects twice a month. The religious duties of an official are neither few nor easy. What the emperor, as high priest of the nation, is to the higher powers, so is the head of a township, a county, a province, and so on, to the local divinities. It is his bounden duty to keep them all in good temper; he must harmonise not only the living, but the spirits with the living. Hence, in a sense, he, too, occupies the office of patriarch and priest. For the central idea of government being derived from patriarchal times, patriarchal it remains, or did until less than a year ago. When pestilence revels in the filthy canals of the south, or the poisonous atmosphere of ill-ventilated houses in the north, the magistrate’s duty it is, not’ 19 290 THE OFFICIAL RELIGION to see that the féng-shui, the air and water, are purified, but to persuade the spirits of pestilence to withdraw to some wealthier place. He is thus a sort of spiritual policeman, whose duty it is to move on the troublesome. ‘** One of the most impressive sights I have ever seen in my life was the escorting from Wenchow city three years ago of the cholera demons. It was estimated that twenty thousand people had died in the county from this terrible epidemic, and at last—when the epidemic was already dying down— a date was fixed for escorting away with great éclat the unwelcome visitors. For many nights before- hand processions wended their noisy, lantern-lit way through every street of the city and its suburbs, as well as along the great city wall. Torches flared and lanterns twinkled everywhere, the city being lit as if for a féte. The demons were fed and appeased in every lane while their boat was in course of preparation. The boat itself was made, not of stout timbers, but, for the most part, of paper; demons, however, are such fools that they cannot tell the difference between a seaworthy and a leaky paste- and-paper article. Day by day, the temple where the boat was lodged was thronged by a host of worshippers, who filled the boat with their silver offerings—mock silver, of course, for the Chinese are thrifty and demons are easily gulled. Such a tempting supply! Such an abundance! How could any decent devil refuse them? The great night THE OFFICIAL RELIGION 291 came, and here is what I saw, an account of which I published at the time: ““* All the influential deities of the neighbourhood were assembled, in great style, at the temple of the God of the Eastern Peak, and, after the reciting of many prayers—if such be not a prostituting of the word—and the blazing away of countless crackers, the whole pantheon set off late at night to escort the visiting demons and their boat to the river. ““Tt was a weird scene. The accompanying crowd of human escorts numbered between five and ten thousand, each man—they were all men, and nearly all of them young men—carrying either a lantern at the end of a long strip of bamboo, or a blazing torch. We have seen processions before, but never so elaborate as on this occasion. Instead of travelling at the usual slow processional pace, the whole mass ran as fast as our narrow streets permitted, every man shouting at the top of his voice. Any one who has had to face, or flee from, a howling crowd of this kind, knows the thrill it inspires. On reaching the river-bank the paper junk was speedily launched, a boatman with more pluck, or less love of life than his fellows, being in readiness to tow it down the river, where the spirits were soon sent somewhere else enwrapped in flames. Immediately the escort had passed out of the city the gate was closed, and no sooner was the paper junk launched than all lamps were hastily extin- guished and everybody sneaked quickly and quietly 292 THE OFFICIAL RELIGION home into the city by another gate, so that the spirits might lose their bearings, and not be able to find the way back again. How clever the Chinese are! And what fools the spirits! The Chinese very evidently think themselves cleverer than either the gods or devils whom they worship, which makes one wonder why they worship them. ‘“**In this particular district it is the custom to tell the demons that Wenchow is a very poor place, but that there is a city called Yangchow where the people are rich, the houses fine, the women beautiful, and everything much superior to what it is here. At the city of Ch‘uchow, up the Wenchow river, the demons, on occasions like the present, are always told that Wenchow is a better place than Ch‘uchow. Thus the people pass on the demons one to another—all which seems somewhat to differ from the teaching of “the Master,” “‘ What you do not want yourself, do not pass on to others.”’”! When the heavens withhold their rain it is the magistrate’s duty also to undergo no small hardship in inducing the rain divinity to discover the callous- ness of its indifference. Thus he becomes the rain- maker of his district, and an onerous duty it is. Kind heaven may send down copious rains year after year, which he allows to tear away the soil, and silt up the rivers. These, changing their unguarded course, sweep over the land and bring death and devasta- tion upon thousands and millions, as witness the 1 A Mission in China, by W. E. Soothill. THE OFFICIAL RELIGION 293 Yellow River; but it is not his part to conserve the copious rain fer seasons of drought. In his prodigality and ignorance he can only pray for more. For instance, instead of searching out the cause of the terrible Yellow River floods, which lies in the western provinces of Shensi and Shansi, he chiefly contents himself with a round of superstitious wor- ship. Not that he likes this, for in prolonged drought he may have to visit many temples, travel far, and suffer, not only inconvenience, but much exposure to the heat. When I once urged upon a powerful governor that praying for precious rain was like a prodigal who had wasted his father’s patrimony demanding more, and that it would be better to conserve the rain by building irrigation works than to pray for it, he replied, “If I don’t go and pray for it I shall have the people up in arms against me.” Thus it will be seen that the mandarin in his time plays many parts, and, moreover, has his many masters. It is also the duty of the officials in every county and township once a year to perform religious cere- monies and plough the land at the temple of the god of the corn, thus setting an example to their people. The emperor, either in person or by deputy, does the same in the capital. It is their duty, also, to go in precession four times a year, to meet the four seasons. The most interesting of these is the meeting of spring, when the officials go clad in costly furs to worship outside the east gate of the 294 THE OFFICIAL RELIGION city. Crowds of people line the streets to watch the gay procession, which is led off by a beggar carried in a chair—a mandarin for a day. A wooden figure is carried in another open chair, and at this the people aim blows with wands and sticks, under the notion that the better it is beaten, the better will be the year. Whether this and other doings and sayings connected with the rite will show that it is another instance that may be added to the many given in the Golden Bough of the common origin of ancient spring or Easter celebrations I must leave to anthro- pologists to inquire and determine. At the temple where the ceremony is held, outside the east gate, a large paper bullock is provided, with a paper cowboy in attendance. The bullock is painted in variegated patches to indicate what the character of the year is to be—whether there is to be much rain, or fire, and so on. After the ceremony the paper bullock and boy are attacked by the people with their decorated wands, and beaten to pieces, the people scrambling for bits of the paper to take home for luck. A singular observance occurs after a great fire, in the shape of a thanksgiving service, “to thank the grace of Heaven,” as it is called. Isuppose it is those who have not suffered who are thankful; at any rate, public plays are performed, as well as offerings made both on the spot and in the temple of the god of fire. It must be borne in mind that the stage in China is chiefly associated with the temples. Every temple THE OFFICIAL RELIGION 295 of any pretensions has a stage instead of a pulpit ; indeed, it is Christianity which introduces the pulpit wherever it goes. The plays are given for the delec- tation of both gods and men. It is less the character of the play than its association with pagan worship that hinders Chinese Christians from contributing the compulsory capitation levies demanded by local custom for these performances. In this respect the stage has hitherto been a barrier to the progress of Christianity of almost equal magnitude with ancestor worship, for men, who may be sympathetic with Christianity, dislike to offend their clansmen, friends, and neighbours by refusing to contribute a few paltry cash towards a play which is, perhaps, their one excitement of the year. When they see the houses of Christians broken into through their passive resistance, their goods carried off, their persons beaten and cruelly treated, and whole families driven out of house and home, all this deters many a man, who desires the strength and comfort of the Christian religion, from parting with the material comfort he already possesses. Desirous as I am of emphasising the helpful and healthy side of the Chinese religions, I am driven to confess that it is not in official religion that such is to be found. Indeed, taking the official religion as a whole, apart from the worship of Shang Ti, it is a mass of childish superstitions, often degrading to intelligent men, of meagre moral value, and possessed of little, indeed, almost devoid of, spiritual 296 THE OFFICIAL RELIGION inspiration. Even in its noblest form at the Temple of Heaven, as ordinarily conducted, there is well- nigh an absence of that nobility of sentiment, that dignified confidence, that chasteness of expression, that strength of spiritual aspiration which is found in the great public ceremonials of Christian lands. The official worship of the Chinese is almost, if not entirely, a material worship for material benefits, and while a personal God is recognised, a belief in the continued existence of the human soul evidenced, and moral retribution portrayed, yet spiritual value in the official religion is comparatively absent. LECTURE XII PRIVATE RELIGION AFTER all, it is neither public religion nor a philo- sophy of religion that is of primary importance to the missionary. With public religion he may have little to do. With the philosophy of religion he may have even less. But the soul of the private in- dividual, this will be the garden he must, above all things, study and cultivate. What is the character of its soil, what the weeds and flowers that flourish there, what the new seed it is capable of bearing, what the kind of fertiliser that it needs ?—these are the problems to which he must address himself and endeavour to find the solution. To some the solution comes by a sort of intuition. Others have almost as little capacity for discriminating the con- ditions as they have for thinking out a solution. They only know to plough up everything, good, bad, and indifferent, and sow on the surface of an arid soil a seed unsteeped in gracious sympathy, a seed which, like rice, needs the husk softened before it is sown, as well as warmth and moisture for its growth and full fruiting. There are some who have the insight to perceive the quality of the soil in which 297 298 PRIVATE RELIGION they are sowing, and what quality and quantity of seed it will for the time being support and evolve. There are others who have no such instinct. There are some who are so filled with the undoubted superiority of their message, that they think its superiority is best manifested in a manner sufficiently superior to impress upon their hearers an unnecessary and uncomfortable sense of humiliating inferiority. This is not usually a condition of high receptivity. It is not healthy to talk down at people. There is one rule, a very sane one, and that is not to under- rate the intelligence even of a rustic audience, but with simple manliness or womanliness to give of one’s best in terms which the audience understand, for the glory of Christianity is such that it can be easily apprehended and practised even by the illiterate. ~“ Preach unto others as you would have them preach unto you—under similar conditions *-—should be written on the tablets of every missionary’s heart. Project yourself into the other man’s body and see how you would like to be addressed and converted. What, then, is the private religion of the Chinese ? One might answer the question by saying: Con- fucianism, as Confucius saw it, limits private religion to the worship of the ancestors, a moral life which will satisfy them, and a recognition of a just om- niscient Heaven above, to whom every thought and action is revealed, and who is aided by a host of spiritual ministers. Taoism urges its followers to peace, or quietism, in the present life, and a search PRIVATE RELIGION 299 after the state of the immortals through a moral life and through superstitious practices associated with animistic notions, with magical rites, and with the worship of men who have attained to the rank of the immortals. Buddhism calls its devotees to escape hell and attain to heaven by the frequent in- vocation of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, together with fastings and pilgrimages and a moral and altruistic life. This would be a fair way of generalis- ing, but, like most generalisations, so far as the in- dividual is concerned, it would be incomplete ! I have already reminded you that the Chinese people are not divided into these three distinct and separate classes. They cannot be segregated into any such water-tight compartments. Not that there are no distinctions. There are; but they are princi- pally distinctions of mind and character, rather than divisions into separate schools. The fact is, that the outstanding doctrines and principles of the three religions have entered into so close a combination that they have precipitated, almost inseparably, in the mind and character of the people. This pre- cipitation has been brought about perhaps as much through maternal as through paternal influence. It is always a mistake to underestimate the power of woman in China, or indeed in any other Eastern land. She has charge of the children, both sons and daughters, during the impressionable age, and imprints upon them her own religious ideas, ideas which remain even after the sons are brought into 300 PRIVATE RELIGION contact with the world. As some one has sagely observed, Confucianism subordinated woman to an inferior position, and woman has had her revenge by adopting and establishing its rival, Buddhism. Now, private religion may be said to divide itself into two parts, namely, domestic religion and per- sonal religion. To any one who knows the Chinese there can be little doubt that private religion is more common in the sense of family observances than in that of personal religion. This is quite in keeping with the character, the history, and the philosophy of the people. The national religion, as well as the national government, is built on a patriarchal foun- dation. The emperor is not only the Son of Heaven, but the patriarch of his people, the legal and re- ligious father of the nation. In similar fashion, the governor of a province is the legal and religious patriarch of his province, as a taot‘ai is of his tao, a prefect of his prefecture, a sub-prefect of his sub-pre- fecture, a chieftain of his clan, a sub-chieftain of his sub-clan, and a father of a family, which includes sons and daughters-in-law, and all his grandchildren. The domestic side of private religion would seem to have been limited by the code of pre-Confucian China, and supported by him, to the worship of the more immediate progenitors of the family, to whom the family and its individual members had a moral and religious responsibility. But I think there is sufficient evidence to show that Confucius also recog- nised a relationship between the Divine, or Heaven, PRIVATE RELIGION 301 and the individual, a relationship which engendered reverence, imposed a trust, and, if it did not encourage direct approach in prayer, justified confidence in looking up to It, and obeying the inward sense of Its guidance. It is important, however, to bear in mind that the family, rather than the individual, is the unit in China. In family life all things go into the common stock, of which the father has the disposal; for patria potestas is the law. For this reason domestic religion, rather than personal religion, more correctly represents the general attitude. But it is only just to Confucius to say that he clearly recognises the rights, the responsibilities, and the individuality of sons, for he clearly asserts that a man may not allow father, teacher, or any one to undertake his moral duties for him. Taoism and Buddhism also, and even more so, stand for individual responsibility. Moreover, human nature asserts itself the world over, and so, even in the affairs of the family, patria potestas is generally a sort of birch rod kept in a dark corner or a closed cupboard, only to be brought out in flagrant cases. The family knows it is there, and this is usually a sufficient stimulant. Some fathers, of course, abuse it, others turn their eyes more frequently towards the cupboard than is wise, even as some do in this country, but the soul of the individual.is recognised as his own. Consequently, personal religion is left to the individual member of the family, so long as that religion is sufficiently 302 PRIVATE RELIGION orthodox, and the domestic rites duly observed. It is at this juncture that Christianity is disturbing, for it divides or discomposes the unit, the family, by its contravention of domestic rites of immemorial antiquity, rites on which the family believe that it depends for its well-being, indeed for its very exis- tence. Domestic religion to-day consists of much more than that laid down in the ancient Confucian code. The family ancestors of the three preceding genera- tions have been found insufficient. Perhaps their character has been too well known! Perhaps some of them were vindictive, the very sort that would be likely to cause trouble after they were dead. Be that as it may, the lares et penates of the house- hold are no longer limited to the ancestors’ shrines. Indeed it seems as if, even in the days of Confucius, the household gods were not limited to the shrines of the ancestors. He speaks somewhere of the five guardian spirits of the household, and to this day the household has its deities of an order resembling those mentioned by him. At the entrance to any house belonging to people able to afford a gateway are found the gate gods, two huge figures painted on its twin leaves, whose stern mien is warranted to scare away any of the demoniacal host who cast longing eyes on this tempting abode. There is also the very important “ kitchen god,’’ who ascends periodically to report on the family’s deeds and misdeeds. The irony of it is the family has to present it with offerings PRIVATE RELIGION 803 and release it in flames from the bondage of the paper on which it is painted. One cannot but think that the temptation must come at times not to release it at all. There is also the guardian spirit of the hall, of each bedroom, even of the bed, and of places very much less dignified. Before the shrines of each of these spirits, incense- sticks and candles are lit at least at the new and full moons, and offerings of food made at the proper seasons. Fortunately spirits are always contented with the volatile savour of the sacrifice, thus leaving the substance for the more substantial. If the family be engaged in a trade or craft, then the patron saint or divinity of the trade or craft, generally of Taoist origin, must be worshipped. This is the duty of the youngest apprentice— another serious difficulty in the way of Christian youths learning a trade. Mammon, or the god of riches, is the patron of tradesmen, and in places like Canton one cannot enter a shop without brushing against his shrine in the open doorway. If the family be engaged in agriculture, then the guardian spirits of the land, and of the crops, must be propitiated, and flags, possibly of Buddhist origin, but usually of Taoist preparation, must be placed over the seed that is sown, in order to protect it from evil spirits, even as the farmer must himself sleep in his fields when the crops are ripe to keep thieves from reaping his crops. If a member of the family be sick, then offerings 304 PRIVATE RELIGION | must be made in temple after temple until the sick one recovers—or otherwise. The gods must even be consulted about the prescription which the doctor has written out, or even asked for a prescription. Perhaps one of the souls of the sick one has strayed, his fevered talk or comatose condition suggesting the likelihood of this. If so, his wandering soul must be recovered from some Taoist temple, through the influence of the deity there. Women who have not been blessed with a son, and who yearn to purge away their shame, must worship at the shrine of the Taoist or Buddhist goddess who can answer their longing cry, and vows must be made and presents promised to the goddess. Her shrines- are often crowded with little images—of boys—pre- sented as thankofferings. Should a child be sick, petitions must be offered to this divinity for its recovery. There is an aged couple in certain Taoist temples whose plaster images are worshipped if the child be restless at night, and who are able to make it sleep. There is the goddess of smallpox and measles, and of infantile diseases generally. Time fails to tell of the thousand and one super- stitions which come within the purview of domestic religion. Its rites are simple and its object obvious. The rites consist in the use of candles and incense- sticks, presented with a given number of bows or genuflexions. When carried further, offerings of food are presented. The object is, not moral or spiritual development, but material welfare and family comfort, PRIVATE RELIGION 805 It is only with the introduction of Christianity that a new ideal for family life is begotten, the ideal of the family in its relationship to, dependence upon, and trust in, a Divine Father, and the development of the family life and character in the grace and truth, moral and spiritual, of a Divine Saviour. Chinese Christian parents accept this ideal, family worship of a spiritual character takes the place of ignoble superstition, and in the moral and spiritual tie the family finds a double-stranded unity capable of higher work than the older single-stranded unit of merely material well-being. It would be easy to pursue in detail the very numerous and superstitious phases of domestic re- ligion, but when we turn to the question of personal religion the course is not so simple. If by personal religion be meant fear of spiritual beings and an endeavour to propitiate them by offerings, or, trust in them, and an endeavour to avail of their help in the affairs of this life, then the Chinese, far from being without personal religion, are amongst the most religious people on the face of the earth. If, on the other hand, by personal religion we mean cultivation of the moral and spiritual faculties in the presence of the Divine and Eternal, then I fear that the great mass cannot be called religious. At the same time, I want to make it clear to you that there are men and women, here and there, who, through personal religion, are endeavouring to find 20 806 PRIVATE RELIGION satisfaction for their spiritual, and strength for their moral natures. They are not content to accept the things of the material or domestic life as the all in all for this life. The higher human nature in China resembles the higher human nature in the West. Cords seem to be vibrating in some other dimension which stir the heartstrings here ; voices to be singing afar off, whose separate notes cannot be discerned ; beings beneficent seem to be guarding and beckoning with invisible hands ; another, a strange and sweeter life, seems to surround this. At any rate there is a something somewhere which can only be attained to by moral and spiritual effort, and that effort, any effort, at whatever cost, they are willing to make. Of such there are some in China, and there are many millions with a sufficient preparation to respond to a clear call to this higher life. Such preparation is due to the aspirations of Taoism, to the undefined recognition of the unseen in Confucianism, and not least to the soteriological aspects of Mahayana Buddhism. Confucianism has stood for morals, reverence for the unseen, and public religion ; Taoism for mysticism and a form of private religion in which the state of the immortals is sought, often in grotesque fashion; but perhaps Buddhism has been the most effective spiritual factor in the religion of China, as of the Far East generally. I say this, while recognising and valuing the sense of responsibility not only to progenitors, but to Heaven, and also the sense of the continued PRIVATE RELIGION 307 life, which both Confucianism and Taoism have maintained throughout the ages, as well as the “sanction”? for morals they have recognised in religion. Nevertheless, as religions I can only rank Con- fucianism and Taoism as spiritually low; and with all its superstitions and stupor, it seems to me that Buddhism is entitled to take higher rank than either in the spiritual ‘sense. At the same time, I would not have you misunderstand me, for in my estimation all three together, as a spiritual agency, are of an inferior order, enmeshed in superstition, and inade- quate for the development of an enlightened spirit- uality. Their highest development stops short of that joy in God, and that exhilarating sense of freedom through communion with Him, which is the splendour of Christianity, and the high privilege of the Christian who has risen above the thraldom of forms and cere- monies. I have been looking around in thought amongst my Chinese friends of the educated class, and asking myself what is their religious condition. In many cases, despite the fact, perhaps because of it, that, being men of the official class, they have public worship to perform, they are more or less sceptical. Nevertheless, they have been brought up in a re- ligious atmosphere, and their scepticism is only one side of their nature, perhaps merely a veneer on the surface. There is another side in the sense of awe, or at least respect, for the invisible powers of the 808 PRIVATE RELIGION. universe. Actual atheism is exceedingly rare ; indeed, I might even say, totally absent. Again, there are some amongst them who, brought up as they have been in the atmosphere of the Confucian classics, possess the reverent mind of Confucius, and comfort themselves with the philo- sophic satisfaction that in doing their duty they are fulfilling their destiny in this life, and making themselves ready thereby for their destiny in a future life—if there be one. Many of them have studied Taoist and Buddhist books, and are well acquainted with the aims and practices of both cults. A few there are who do not find satisfaction in the two native religions, and who adopt Buddhist prac- tices, abstaining for a period from flesh and repeating Buddhist invocations. I have only personally known one or two such, though it is not uncommon for men of this character, who are in official life, to take the opportunity of visiting Buddhist or Taoist monas- teries in the course of their travels, and devoutly worshipping at their shrines. In past generations men of this class have oecasionally resigned their office in order in seek a retreat in monastic seclusion. Such instances are rare at the present day. There are men who devote themselves to a given period of religion, either Taoist or Buddhist. This period may last a few weeks, a few months, or a few years. It generally involves abstinence from certain kinds of food, and the daily repetition of certain invocations. With the more devout this some- PRIVATE RELIGION 309 times leads to the performance of a pilgrimage, usually to some famous Buddhist monastery, which often necessitates a toilsome travel and no small expense. Every year thousands, and tens of thousands, of men and women take long journeys to distant monas- teries, there to spend a given period in invocation and in the performance of religious rites. In return they receive a certificate from the resident abbot attesting their devotion and ensuring them relief in the life to come. For instance, on the island of P‘u-tu, south of the Yangtze, is a famous Buddhist monastery to which great numbers flock every year. The journey is a hazardous one, for it has to be made by sea, in junks which not only make no provision for comfort, but which sometimes have to face terrible weather, pos- sibly even be caught in one of the devastating typhoons so common in summer on the China coast. A certain old lady, who had made this arduous journey and obtained two passports into heaven, one to be placed in her coffin, the other to be burnt at her funeral, became a convert to Christianity. Some time after her conversion she sent to my wife her two precious passports, which had been her chief possession for many years. I have often thought of the extraordinary faith which led an old Chinese lady, who had only seen a foreigner twice or thrice, to part with the written promise of entry into eternal happiness, sealed by an abbot of a religion she had believed in all her life, in exchange for a verbal ~ 310 PRIVATE RELIGION promise froma stranger. Yet it was not the promise of a stranger for which she exchanged it, but the realisation of a communion with One whom she had long sought, and at last found. Many secret societies have existed and still do exist. Some of them have been formed purely and simply for political purposes, often anti-dynastic, though generally they have been politico-religious. Others have been formed for religious purposes only, the members pledging themselves to abstain from flesh, from intoxicants, and from tobacco. Nor has abstinence been the only rule of such a society, for the patron saint, or divinity of the society, has become also the patron saint of each member, and been especially worshipped by him. Some of these societies have undoubtedly assisted in the develop- ment of a kind of personal religion, independent of domestic religion. As a rule they are associated with the Taoist religion, and though proscribed by law, perhaps propier hoc, they have flourished from time to time over a wide area. Their tendency, in the long run, has been to degenerate into political organisations, which indeed is the real cause of pro- _seription. At times they have caused rebellions, and fostered a fanaticism, such as made itself so terribly felt during the Boxer outbreak of 1900. The personal religion of the average Chinese can only be described as of an inferior order. It consists of going the round of as many shrines as can be reached during the first day or two of the new year. He PRIVATE RELIGION 311 carries with him a basket well filled with tiny candles and sticks of incense. At each shrine he lights a couple of candles and three sticks of incense; makes his obeisance in acknowledgment of the protection he has received during the year which is past, and looks for a continuance—on a larger scale if the divinity be willing—during the year upon which he has just entered. He spends a busy day or two in this fashion, and then hopes he has done with religion for the rest of the year. For, remember, religion is not a delight, worship at other times of the year implying sickness, or trouble of one sort or another; so in a sense the less a man has to do with religion, the happier he is. A visit to the temples will show you abundant tokens of gratitude—but they are for recovery from sickness or for the granting of children, or some other mundane advantage arising out of a condition of anxiety or distress. He has, of course, certain other religious duties to perform at home, but they involve little effort or expense. He will see to it that incense is lighted before the shrines of his household gods, and at the right season have offerings of food made before his ancestors’ tablets, as well as to the lares et penates of his household. He may also every evening light a lantern before his door, partly as a deed of merit for the sake of pedestrians, partly as an act of worship to the three powers that rule above, below, and on the earth. At the same time he lights three sticks of incense, and bows with them towards the 312 PRIVATE RELIGION outside, apparently in the worship of the whole host of heaven as well as the three rulers, and ends by sticking the incense into a crevice in the doorpost. The great time for religion is when he falls ill or dies. Then the priests are called in to perform, in the one case, religious ceremonies to appease the god or devil who is causing the trouble, in the other case to perform the funeral rites. In both instances, the measure of the ceremonies is dependent upon the ability of the family to pay for them. He recognises morals as part of religion, for he realises that his actions are being observed by in- visible eyes, and duly reported upon. This often acts as a deterrent from ill deeds, as well as an in- centive to deeds of kindness. Such deeds of kind- ness may express themselves in the sparing of animal life, or in the releasing of vermin which would be better destroyed, but they do also take a more practical form in real acts of charity and humanity. There is, it is true, much callousness to suffering, the root of which lies partly in poverty, partly in fear of the evil spirits, as, for instance, in the case of rescuing the drowning, where it is feared that to baulk the spirit which has decoyed the unfortunate person into the water will result in its wreaking vengeance on the saviour. Life-saving in this country would be at a discount, also, had we the demons here that they have in China. Nevertheless, there is much sym- pathy and beneficence, the expression of a sentiment which is at the bottom religious. PRIVATE RELIGION 313 Notwithstanding this, and taking the Chinese as a whole, personal religion cannot be considered as of high standard. For the most part it is associated with temporal protection and benefit, and only amongst the comparative few is it practised for the sake of moral and spiritual attainment. You will readily see how difficult it is for this state of things to be otherwise, for unless we except the Goddess of Mercy, the Chinese have no God whom they can love and adore. The Pantheon is filled with depart- mental deities of a nature calculated to inspire fear or respect, but not to call forth either personal affection, or aspiration for spiritual communion. Indeed, while I have met with multitudes of in- stances where men have made their offerings and prayers for temporal benefits, it has not been my lot to meet with those who prayed to their gods for strength to live a holy life. The very nature of their gods renders the idea of personal communion, that communion which ‘the Christian seeks to enjoy with the Divine Father, or with the Living Holy Saviour, an unthinkable one. What “‘sweet communion ” can aman have, for in- stance, with the god of fire, or with the very numerous tutelary deities, or with the huge impassive Buddhas, or with Confucius or Laocius? Prayer he may offer to his gods in his need, and in his distress and fear, but communion and spiritual inspiration—where is he to go for these ? While desiring to do the fullest justice to the 814 PRIVATE RELIGION religious thinkers who have done so much for China, while protesting also against unnecessary and un- gracious misrepresentation, and while recognising the value of the three religions for public morals, for private morals, and in a measure also for domestic and personal welfare, I cannot find in them any approach to the spiritual communion, to the joy and delight in God and His works, or to the splendour of inspiration with which we are familiar not only in the Bible, but in the experience of so many beauti- ful souls in Christian countries. Philosophic calm- ness, and a dignified fulfilling of one’s present duty, together with the unruffled awaiting of one’s destiny, are worthy of high admiration. But these are not common, neither are they to be compared with the enriching sense which accompanies the fuller spiritual life in conscious and joyful association with the Divine. Until men know the Lord, it is not possible for them to enter into communion with, love, and rejoice in Him. This knowledge it is which raises personal religion from a low to a high state of efficiency and enjoyment. The very multiplicity of the Chinese objects of worship makes such a state impossible. And in con- sequence personal religion is for the most part deplorably low, and, in so far as my own observa- tion goes, I cannot say that it ever rises high. I say this while freely admitting that the spiritual side of a man’s life may be hidden from the outside observer, and while refusing to believe that there PRIVATE RELIGION 815 are none whose conceptions rise above the externals of idolatry and who enter into the holy of holies. I should like to meet such. I have never done so, except amongst men who have made the entry in company with Jesus Christ. In conclusion, let me say, you are going where you are greatly needed, your message is the crown of human life and glory, and your opportunity un- equalled. Some of us wish we were thirty years younger that we might see what your eyes will see. Go in the right spirit, always magnanimous, ever un- daunted, and may you carry in yourselves the grace, the love, and the fellowship which the Lord Jesus Christ, the Father, and the Holy Ghost, are ever willing to share with those who will to possess them. INDEX Aborigines, 25, 131 Absolute, the, 17, 52, 120, 207 Abstinence (see Fasting), 117, 310 Action (see Quietism), 70 Adoration (see Prayer), 159, 170, 313 Agnosticism, 40-2, 52, 110, 200, 206, 211, 307 Alexander the Great, 100 Alone, 238-9, 241 Altar (see Temples), 215 —of Heaven, 153, 155, 2'72-85, 296 Altruism (see Charity, Sym- pathy), 92, 98-9, 238, 299 Amitabha, 121, 162, 211, 270 Analects (see Four Books), 23, 26, 35, 66, 159-60, 188-9, 195, 197, 200, 235, 241-3 Ancestor worship, 16, 18, 28-9, 39, 125,°136, 147-50, 156-7, 189, 199-201, 206, 212-18, 242, 255, 258, 274, 277, 286, 295, 298, 300-2, 311 Angel, 267 Anima, animus (see Soul), 203-5 Animism (see Deities), 9, 16, 18, 21, 84, 125-30, 135-40, 142, 147-50, 152, 183-95, 214, 219, 274, 277, 280-1, 289-96, 299 Annihilation (see Nirvana), 205- Apotheosis. See Canonisation Arhat, 116-17 Artificiality (see Civilisation), 62-71 Asceticism, 9, 19, 91-2, 97-8, 112 Ashvagosha, 104, 119 Asoka, 90, 10i- Astronomy, 135, 172-6, 253 Atheism (see Agnosticism), 41, 213, 308 Attributes of God, 143-5 Awakening of Faith, 104 Awe, 132-3 Bamboo, 130, 157, 169 — books, 130 Barbarism, barbarity, 179, 221, 222, 225 Bath, bathe, 228, 257 Beads, 122, 270 Beauty, 73 Bible, the, 141, 194, 252, 255, 258, 259, 314 Binary system, 173 Bodhisattvas (see Goddess), 120, 299 174-5, Amitabha, Books. (See Four Books, Five Canons) Bo-tree, 92 Boxer outbreak, 83, 207, 310 Brahminism, Brahma, 104-5, 110 Buddha, 45, 85-124, 313 Buddhahood, 92, 116-17 Buddhism (see Mahayana), i-5, 9, 17, 19, 84-124, 150-1, 161- 5, 176-7, 188, 190, 206, 208— 12, 215, 244, 258-65, 269-70, 280, 286, 299-301, 303-10, 313 Buddhist influence on West. (see Intercourse), 86, 97, 123 Bullock, 156, 254, 279, 294 Burma, 98 Butterfly dream, 75 Calamity, 230-1, 250, 252-6, 258, 265-8 Calendar, 135, 175-6, 179, 253 Candles, 156, 304 Canon, Buddhist, 100 Canons, the Five (see History, Odes, Yi-ching), 22, 33, 133-5 - 141, 148, 185-9, 195, 202, 308, 224-34, 241, 256 Canonisation, 17, 18, 167, 286-9 Carus, Dr., 177-8, 265 317 318 Caste, 98-9 Cause, First. See Creator, God Ceremonies. See Rites Ceylon, 95, 100 Chance, 56-7 Chang Tao Ling, 82-3, 151 Chaos, 71, 83, 177-8, 181, 282 Charity (see Altruism), 30, 63- 70, 115, 117, 248-4, 262-3, 266-7, 312 Ch‘i (see Soul), 201 Chiao, 5, 197 Chieh, Emperor, 228, 253-5 Child, children, 69, 304, 311 Ch‘in Shih Huang, 23, 33, 83 Chinese Recorder, 124 Cholera (see Epidemics), 289-93 Chou dynasty, 22, 171-2, 176, 202, 232, 287 Chou Hsin, Emperer, 172, 232-3, 255-6 Christianity, Christians (see Jesus), 17, 109, 119, 122, 124, 217-20, 263, 272, 280, 295-6, 298, 302, 309, 314-15 Chu Tzu, 40-2, 174, 183, 185 Chiian Hsii, 21 Chuang-tzt, 51-84, 133, 149-51, 163, 174, 180-3, 207 Civilisation (see Barbarism), 22, 62-71, 174, 179, 271 Clans, 216-18, 295 Classics. See Canons, Four Books, Tao Té Ching, Chuang Tzt Clerics, See Priest Clothing, 179, 288 Coffins (see Geomancy), 270 Commandments, Buddhist, 11'7— 19 Communion (see Prayer, Adora- tion), 159, 170, 313-15 Communism, 38 Confucianism, 5, 17, 19, 43, 108, 161, 176, 180, 190, 194, 206, 261, 264-5, 298, 300-2, 306-8 Confucius and his doctrines, 22— 33, 43, 45, 58, 65, 75-6, 133, 147-50, 159-60, 167-9, 171, 173, 178, 185, 188, 192, 196— 201, 216, 232-44, 256-8, 286— 9, 300-2, 308, 313 161, INDEX Confucius, cult of, 17, 34, 287-8 — disciples of; 33, 35 Cooking, 179, 222 Cosmology (see Creation), 171- 195, 282 Creation. mology Creator (see Cosmology, God), 39, 47-9, 53-7, 71, 111-12, 120, 144, 146, 180-6, 282, 285 Crime, criminals (see Sin), 222, 249, 254 See Creator, Cos- Dances (see Music), 137 David, Rhys, 88 et seq. Dead, the (see Ancestor, Future state), 196-218, 222, 262, 269 Death, 59, 69, 74-9, 199-201, 213 Debacle of Taoism, 80-4 Debauchery, 232, 252-6 Deities (see Gods), 17, 18, 28, 39, 83, 95, 110, 112, 135, 141-2, 147-61, 166-7, 170, 201, 266- 71, 274, 286, 289-94, 302-5, 312-15 Demiurge, 83, 177-8 Demon, daimon (see Kuei, Shén, Spirits), 142, 147-50, 161, 165, 187-95, 204-12, 290— 2, 312 ss expulsion, See Demonolatry Demonolatry, 17, 157, 161, 165, 204-10, 274, 312 Destiny. See Fate, Immortality, Hell Devil, the (see Demon, Mara, Yama, Pluto), 93-4, 259, 263, 271 Diary of Merits, 268 Divination, 158-70, 172-5, 201 Divine right, 39, 226-33, 252 Domestic religion, 300 et seq. Dreams, 125, 170 Drowning, 312 Drunkenness (see Abstinence), 232, 234, 245, 253 Dualism (see Yin-yang), 145-8, 173-6, 183-95, 202-6, 219, 252, 261, 264 Earth (see Heaven, Dualism), 145-8, 232, 254-5, 277, 282, 285 Easter, 294 INDEX Eelecticism (see Gnosticism), 4, 18, 83-4, 97, 208-12, 259, 261-3, 299 Edkins, Dr., 276 Education, 164, 194-5, 214, 217, 225, 236-7 Eel, 73 Egg. See Ovum mundi ees eee in (see Personality), Egyptians, 259 Eighteen Buddhist missionaries, 102, 106 Eighteen messengers to India, 106 Eightfold path, 119 Eitel, Dr., 95 et seq. Elijah, 207 Elixir vitae, 81-2, 208 Elohim, 156 Emotions, the, 239-40 Emperor, 130, 135, 163, 226-33, 252, 260, 274-86, 289, 293, 300 Empress-Dowager, 34, 271 Enoch, 207 Epidemics, 161, 165, 204, 273, 289-92, 304 Epochs, 103, 178-9 Eschatology (see Soul, Immor- tality, Hell), 19, 196-218, 258- 70, 306, 308-10 Ether. See Primordial Ethics. See Morals Kurasian, 220 c Hivil (see Sin), 238, 243-4 Evolution, 12, 20-1, 124-54, 171-87, 212-13,1215-16, 219-35 Exorcism (see Magic, Demon- olatry), 165, 289-92 Expiation, 156 Fa Hsien, 104 Fairy. See Imp, Sprite, Spirit, Demon Faith, 10, 104, 118-21, 152-3, 159, 241 Fall, the, 11, 62-8 Family religion, 300 et seq. Fasting, 117, 257, 270, 274-5, 299, 308, 310 Fate (see Karma), 10-11, 27, 40, 56-9, 77-8, 160, 166-70, 191, 201, 230-1, 240, 308, 314 319 Féng-shui, 189-95, 290, 294 Filial piety (see Ancestor), 16, 31, 200-1, 206, 213-18, 241-2, 258, 264, 300-2, 305 Fire, 179, 288, 313 First Cause. See Creator, God Fisherman, 66 Five Cardinal Virtues, 30,224,241 Flags, praying, 162, 303 Flood, the, 223, 226 Food, 179, 288 Foreign control, 107 Forgiveness of enemies, 29-30, 49, 244 Formula, Buddhist, 118 Founders, 8, 14, 20 Four Books (see Canons, Ana- lects, Mean, Great Learning), 26-33, 35, 133, 148, 195, 197- 9, 235-44, 256-8, 308 Frazer, Dr., 81, 294 Fu-hsi, 20, 172, 179, 222 Future state. See Eschatology Gautama. See Buddha Genealogies, 216 General, a, 49 Genii (see Demon, Spirit), 267 Geomancy (see Dualism), 96, 189-95, 290 Gethsemane, 97 Ghosts, 125 Giles, Dr., 41, 51, 79, 154 Gnosticism, 86, 262 God (see Shang Ti, Heaven), 27, 50, 53, 120, 125-51, 180-2, 198, 255-60, 274-85, 296, 313 Goddess of Mercy, 121, 162, 211, 270, 312 Gods. See Deities Golden Age, 11, 32, 48, 65 Good for Evil, 29, 49, 244 Government (see Laws), 39, 226-37, 251-2, 285, 289, 300 Graeco-Bactrians, 103 Graves. See Geomancy Great Learning (see Four Books), 235-9 Greek Catholics, 3, 129, 184 Gregorian system, 176 Groot, Dr. de, 13, 14, 125-9, 183-5, 193-5, 202, 206 Guilt, See Sin 320 Hackmann, Pastor, 103 et seq. Han dynasty, 178 Han Wén Kung, 108 Happiness, 31, 48, 50, 72, 74, Wie UlOS ae TGS Alize be, 207-8, 227, 252, 256,- 258, 267-8, 307, 313-14. Harmony. See Mean Hasty, 71 Heaven (see Shang-ti, God), 16, 29, 39, 41-2, 55, 67, 70-2, 130, 134-51, 154-61, 163, 166, 167, 180, 198, 230-3, 240, et al. Heedless, 71 Hell, 84, 95, 114, 121, 161, 209- 12, 252, 258-65, 271 Henotheism, 126 Heracleitus, 51-2 Hereditary, 226 Heresy, 2, 21 Hero-worship, 16, 83, 167, 201, 215, 274, 286-9 Hinayana. See Mahayana Hinduism (see Buddhism), 176, 178, 244 Historical, 8, 12, 20-5, 34-7, 40, 80-3, 85-109, 130-46, 171-86, 196-204, 221-35, 251-6, 259 History, the, 133-48, 157-9, 171, 175, 185, 215-16, 226-34, 258 Honan, 131 Hope, 115 Horses, 62-4 Hsi Wang Mu, 54, 269 Hsia dynasty, 22, 228-32, 254 Hsing (see Soul), 197, 239 Hstian-Chuang, 104 Hsiin Tzu, 38 Huang Ti, 25, 80-1 Humility, 49, 227 Hun-tun, 71 Hwun (see Soul), 145, 201-18 Hysteria, 204 Iconoclasm, 271 Idealism, 52 Idols, idolatry. See Images Illusion. See Reality, Relativ- ity, Death Images, 106, 129, 150, 194, 201, 215, 268, 271, 277, 315 Immortality, 3, 29, 40-1, 74-9, INDEX 113, 199-218, 242, 255, 258, 267, 298, 306 : Immortals, 207-8 Imp, 202, 207 Impermanence, 110, 114 Inaction. See Quietism Incense, 122, 156, 304, 310-12 Individualism (see Personality), 19, 38 Innocence, primitive (see Golden Age), 48, 62-8, 221 Instinct, spiritual, 152-3 Intercession, 158, 280 Intercourse with West, 91, 106, 162, 209-11, 262 Inter-relation of the religions, 3, 273, 299 Invocation (see Prayer), 159, 162, 164, 279, 308-9 Israelites, 156, 163, 259 121, Jade, 279, 282, 284, 285 Japan, 109 Jehovah, 156 Jesuits, 141 Jesus Christ, 120, 170, 194-5, 208, 213, 241, 270, 305, 310, 313-15 Jews. See Israelites Joy (see Happiness), 66, 72, 112 Ju-chiao (see Confucianism), 5, 17 Judgment, Last (see Eschato- logy), 260 Kan Ying P‘ien, 265-8 K‘ang-hsi, Emperor, 140-1 Kanishka, 100, 103, 119 Karma, 110, 116-17 Kindness (see Charity, Forgive- ness), 49 Kingdom of Heaven, 117 Kitchen god (see Deities), 160, 260, 266, 302 Knotted cords, 172, 179 Knowledge, 30, 64, 738-6, 224, 241 Korea, 109 Kuan Ti, 289 Kuan-yin. See Goddess Kublai Khan, 109 Kung Kuo K‘o, 268 INDEX Laity, 116-17 Lamaism, 109, 121, 162, 166 Laocius, 44-84, 149-51, 180, 313 Laws, lawsuits (see Government), 40, 225, 237, 276 Lay priests, 164—6 Legends. See Myths Legge, Dr., 13, 51, 126, 172, 183, 276, 285 Leibnitz, 173 Li Hung Chang, 289 Lieh Tzu, 81 Life (see Death, Immortality), 59, 74-9, 199 Lin, the, 178 Ling (see Soul), 201-18 Longevity, 68, 231, 266 Love (see Charity), 27, 38, 65, 66, 115, 117, 121, 241, 313, 315 Lu, State and Duke, 24, 134 Luther, 92 174, MacClatchie, Canon, 128, 174, 202 Machiavelli, 200 Magic, 9, 21, 80-4, 148, 165-70, 189-95, 207, 212, 268, 299 Mahayana, 18, 86, 103-10, 119- 24, 162, 208-12, 261-4, 270, 306 Mammon, 303 Manchu laws, 276 Mara (see Devil), 93-4 Marco Polo, 109 Marriage, 179, 192, 221-2 Mars, 288 Materialism (see Spirituality), 170, 258, 269, 296, 304, 305, 311-14 Maya, 88-97 Mean, Doctrine of (see Four Books), 197-8, 227, 235, 239- 4} Meditation, 59-62, 69, 72, 92-3, 118-19, 122 Menander, King, 103 Mencius, 35-40, 51, 195, 197, 243, 257-8 Merit, 268, 270 Messianism, 119, 263 Metal-bound coffer, 157 21 | Metempsychosis, 321 114-17, 121, 207-8, 211, 263 Miao tribes, 137-8 Mines, 193 Ming (see Soul), 201-18 — dynasty, 279 — Ti, 105 Misery. See Suffering Missions, 107, 194 Moh Tzu, 38 Mongols, Mongolia, 100, 103, 109 Monism, 12, 53, 128, 154, 176, 183 Monkey, 73 Monks (see Priests, Nuns), 116- 17, 122, 164, 308 Monotheism, 126-30, 135 Moore, Canon, 51 Morals, 29-31, 116-19, 137, 172, 192-9, 219-70, 295, 306, 312, 314 Moses, 33, 170, 207 Mourning, 214, 242 Music, 63, 65, 179, 222-3, 225, 229, 279, 284-5, 287 Mysticism (see Taoism), 9, 49- 50, 53, 55-62, 65-80, 118-19, 157, 306 Myths, mythology, 176-9, 275 Nan hua Ching, 51-79, 133 Naturalness. See Artificiality, Innocence, Taoism Nature. See Animism, Monism, Dualism, Taoism Nature of man (see Soul, Morals), 38-9, 196-218, 239, 243-4 —a unity. See Monism —worship. See Animism Necromancy. See Geomancy. Neo-Buddhism. See Mahayana Nepaul, 109 Nero, 172, 232, 254-6 Nestorianism, 40, 109 Nest-possessor, 178 Nirvana, 115-17, 208, 210 Numbers, 175 Nuns, 116, 164-6 Odes, the (see Canons), 142-4, 171, 185, 202, 257 Offerings. See Sacrifice, In- eense, Bullock 322 Official. See State Oracle. See Divination Orders. See Priest, Monk, Nun, Laity Origin of Chinese, 131 Origins of religion, 12-16, 18, 20-3, 125-51 Ovum mundi, 53, 177-8 Pagodas, 96, 193, 195 Pa-kua, 20, 171-6, 179, 189, 232 P‘an-ku, 83, 177-8 Pao-hsi. See Fu-hsi Paper, 157 Paradise (see Heaven), 121, 309 Parinirvana, 115-16 Parthenogenesis, 87-9, 179 Passions (see Soul, Morals), 48, 116, 146, 203-4, 239, 268 Passport to Heaven, 270, 309 Patria potestas, 301 Patriarch, Buddhist, 99, 107-8 Patriarchal, 289, 300 Paul, St., 51, 166 People, the (see Government), 39 Perfection, 62, 73-4, 236, 240 Persecution, 1, 108, 295 Personal religion, 300 et seq. Personality, 19, 111-16, 154, 237, 300-1, 305-15 Personators of the dead, 222 Pessimism, 115 Pestilence (see Epidemics), 273, 289-92 Philosophy, 2, 7, 10-12, 32, 38, 41-4, 46-84, 110-24, 125-30, 145-51, 171-212, et al. Pilgrimages, 270, 299, 308-9 Pilgrims to India, 104, 107 Plague (see Epidemics), 165 Planchette, 169 Ploughing, 293 Pluto, 259, 271 P‘o (see Soul), 201-18 Poetry (see Odes), 225 Politico-religious, politico-moral, 9,19 Polytheism. See Deities, Ani- mism Pontifex Maximus. See Priest, Emperor, 116-19, INDEX Pope, Taoist, 82-3 Pope of Rome, 141 Pope’s lines, 50 Prayimg-wheel, 122, 162 Prayer, 28, 118, 121, 153-70, 257, 265, 279-85, 291, 293, 307, 313 Pre-existence, 113 Priest, 29, 130, 161—70, 212, 259.,, 263, 269-70, 274, 289-92, 312 Primitive religion. See Ani- mism Primordial matter, 53, 180, 183, 186 Prometheus, 179 Propitiation, 156—7, 307 Providence (see Heaven, Tao), 155 Psychology (see Soul), 111-16, 196-218 Pulpit, 293 Punishments (see Hell), 28, 65, 221, 225, 230-3, 250-70, 312 Purgatory (see Hell), 161 : P‘u-tu, 309 Queen of Heaven, 269 Quietism, 10, 48-50, 57, 59-79,, 116-19, 122, 236, 298 Railways, 193 Rain, rain-making, 161, 165,273, 288, 292-3 Reality, 52, 59, 62, 73-6 Rebellion (see Boxer), 39, 254-5, 310 Reciprocity, 30 Recluses, 24, 45-6, 91-2, 98, 308 Reform, See Repentance Reformed Church, 3 Reformers, 8, 85-6, 98-9, 148 Reincarnation. See Metempsy- chosis Regalia, 69 Relativity, 52, 73 Religion, religious (see Spiri- tual), 5-19, 34, 42-3, 83, 148, 170, 200, 219, 231, 233, 235, 243, 250, 272, 305-15 Renaissance, 219-20 Repentance, 28, 39, 228, 230, 233, 257-8, 264—5, 268-9 Responsibility. See Person %, INDEX Revelation, 128, 152 Revenge, 30, 165 Rewards. See Punishments Riches, 31-2, 68-9, 239 Righteousness (see Morals), 231, 235, 239, 257, 266 Rites, 30, 63-70, 92, 117, 235, 273-94, 300-15 Rites, Book of (see Canons), 148, 154, 163, 185 Rebbers, 67 Roman Catholics, 3, 129, 141, 184, 263 Ross, Dr., 13, 126-8, 279 Russia, 176 Sacred Books (see Canons, Four Books), 132-5 ~ Sacrifice, 16, 21, 28, 29, 39, 118, 135-51, 155-7, 163-4, 215-18, 254-5, 272-96, 303-4 Sacrifices, human, 221-2 Sages, 63, 70-2, 240, 274 Saints. See Sages, Deities Sakya, Sakyamuni, 87 Salvation. See Soteriology San chiao, 5 Sanction, 241, 250, 256, 307 Saviour. See Jesus, Buddhism, Soteriology cepticism. See Agnosticism cythians, 103 _ Seasons, the, 175-6, 293 Secret societies, 83, 310 Seli-support, 107 Shadow, 66 Shang dynasty, 22, 232 Shang Ti (see God), 16, 21, 29, 39, 82, 125-51, 187, 215, 229, 233, 256-60, 274-86 Shansi, 130-1, 272, 287-8, 293 Shao Hao, 21 Shén (see Deities, Spirits, Soul), 138-42, 187, 201-7 Shén Nung, 21, 286, 288 Shensi, 131, 293 Shib chiao. See Buddhism Shun, Emperor, 21, 68, 130, 135- 8, 215-16, 223, 226-7, 251 Sickness (see Epidemics), 159, 303-4, 311-12 Siddhartha, 87 Silk, 178, 279, 282, 285, 288 323 | Sin (see Evil, Vice), 28, 230-3, 247-70 Sincerity (see Morals), 30, 198 Skull, 78 Sociology, 206, 221 Socrates, 85, 148, 243 Son of Heaven (see Emperor), 148 Sophists, 52 Sorcery. See Magic Soteriology, 19, 92, 95, 116-24, 211-12, 250, 259, 261-70, 305, 309, 313-15 Soul (see Immortality), 39, 111- 14, 190-2, 196-218, 297, 304 Space. See Reiativity. Speculation (see Philosophy), 38, 44 Spirits, 16, 27, 53, 126, 130, 135, 137, 141-2, 147-51, 180, 187— 95, 200-18, 254, 266-9, 275, 278, 280-5, 289-93, 303-5 Spiritualism, 9, 19, 21, 148, 165— 6, 207 Spirituality, 3, 18, 108, 130, 152-3, 159, 170, 213, 219, 235, 251, 257-8, 264, 275, 278, 285, 295-6, 298, 304-15 Spring, meeting of, 293-4 Sprite, 202 Sst-ma Ch‘ien, 133, 178 Stage, the, 165, 168, 295 State religion, 1, 18, 31-2, 83, 164-5, 2771-94, 300 Stein, Dr., 130 Stoical (see Fate, Taoism), 161 Substitutionary, 158 Suddhodana, 88, 103 Suffering, 11, 23, 30, 66-7, 91-2, 97, 114-16, 121-4, 162-3, 264 Sui Jén, 179 Sun-myth, 88 Sung dynasty, 174, 178, 185, 197 Superstitions (see Demons, Spirits, Geomancy), 130, 159, 165, 206, 218, 235, 273, 289- 95, 299, 303-7, 310-12 Sympathy, 240 Tablet, ancestral, 150, 210, 217 T‘ai Chi, 53, 180, 186 T‘ai Shan, 21, 24 T‘ang, Emperor, 22, 228-32, 254-5 324 Tanha.. See Thirst Tao, 6, 18, 46-84, 151, 161, 176, 180- a6 196- 9, 240 Tao Té "Ching, 46-50, 66, .133, 151, 174, 244 Taoism, 6-11, 17, 19, 44, 133, 150-1, 161-70, 176, 180, 190- 5, 207-8, 244, 258, 261-2, 264-9, 275, 298-9, 301, 303- 10 Temperance Drunkenness), 117, 234 Temples (see Altar), 21, 150, 153, 209-11, 215-18, , 233, ” 265, 271, 285-95, 304, 309, 311 Temptation, Buddha’s, 92-4, 97 Term question, 141 Terms, 5-8, 247-50 Theatricals, 165, 168, 295 Theology, 112, 151 Thirst, 113, 115-16 Ti. See Shang Ti, Emperor Tiamat, 177-8 Tibet, 109 T‘ien (see Heaven), 138-49 T‘ien fei, 269 — Tan. See Altar Time. See Relativity Tobacco, 310 Toleration, 1 Tortoise, 159, 168 Trance, 118-19 Transcendence, 184, 188, 278, 285 Transgression. See Sin Transitory. See Impermanence Transmigration. See Metem- psychosis Trinity, a, 83, 198, 269, 283, 312 Tutelary deities. See Deities Unity. See Monism Universe, the, 128, 176-86 Universities, Congress of, 236 Urgrund, 178 1475. U94, Vanitas vanitatum, 19 Vendetta, 30 Vicarious, 158 Vice (see Virtue, Sin), 146, 237, 245, 249 (see Abstinence, : INDEX > Virtue (see Morals), 27, 30-2, 49, 65, 137, 143-4, 146, 192-5, 198-9, 224, 228-32, 235, 241- 3, 245, 251-6, 264 War, 49, 289 Warren’s Buddhism, 114 Water, 49 : Wealth, 31-2, 68-9, 239 Wén (father), 172-3, 185, 232-4, 237 Wén (son), 22, 157, 233-4, 287 Wenchow, 290 Were-animals, 204 West, Buddhist influence on. ’ See Intercourse Wheel of the Law, 122 Wicked. See Sin Will of Heaven (see Fate), 201 Williams, Dr., 276 Wine (see Drunkenness), 117 Wizardry. See Magic Woe. See Calamity, Suitoune: Epidemics Woman, 36-7, 76-8, 87-91, r16, 134, 166, 168, 179, 214, 242, 299-300, 304 Wordsworth, 80 Worship (see Sacrifice, Ancestor, Prayer, Divination), 28, 148, 154-70, 216, 273-94 Worthies. See Hero-worship Writing, 85, 127, 179, 222 Wu, King, 22, 157, 172-3, 185, 232-4, 255-6 Yama, 263 Yang Tzu, 38 Yao, Emperor, 21, 68, 130, 135, 215, 223 Yellow River, 131, 179, 293 Yi Ching (see Canons), 171-6, 183, 185-6, 189, 232 Yin-Yang (see Dualism), 72, 145-8, 173-6, 183-95, 219, 282 Ymir, Giant, 177 Yi, Emperor, 22, 229, 251 Yu Huang Shang Ti, 82, 151 Ytieh-chi, 103 Yiinnanfu, 271 136-8, 226, Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. THEOLOGY LIBRARY wert ce 3 CALIF. 2 ‘ wena rie ig as Paar het he A Soothill, William Edward, 1861-1935. The three religions of China; lectures delivered at Oxford, by the Rev. W. E. Soothill ... London, New York (etc.,; Hod- der and Stoughton ,1913, xii, 324 p. front. 204™. “Theses lectures were delivered during the long vacation of 1912, in Queen’s ‘college, Oxford, under the auspices of the Board for the training of missionaries.”—Pref. Contents. — Introductory: the three religions. — Confucius and his school. — Tacism: Laotzti, Chuang-Tzii, and their school. — Buddha and Buddhism.—The idea of God. —- Man’s relationship and approach to the divine.—Cosmological ideas.—The soul, ancestor worship, eschatology.— Moral ideas.—Sin and its consequences.—The official cult, or public re- ligion.—Private religion.—Index. 1. _ -- Con- fucianism. 2. Taoism. 3. Buddha and Buddhism—China. a ae ae Fisica. 5. Cultus, Chi- SC/jc nese. x. Title. Be uci of Congress 2 BLi801.86 1913 13—15921 {2b sea (a4lil, 299.51 eyelet eas erst bhi See ets Hee ede ey rece ets + aD pened ips teia ete o* toate Stat 4 33 aro Te ete te tt ESBS Es Perth Fylatats ui Ty TS SRE nat f save Cr 5 sis i Ha Tareas Saari eaiats 7
Death : philosophical soundings
Fingarette, Herbert
1996-01-01T00:00:00Z
Death & Dying,Metaphysics & ontology,Movements - Humanism,Philosophy,General,Death
Includes index,Death as mirror image of life -- Separation, sleep -- Immortality, selflessness -- The world as my life -- Life as story -- Life as a visit to earth -- The ceremony of life -- Living a future without end -- Living a present without bounds -- "Before, I had heard--now I see" -- Leo Tolstoy -- Blaise Pascal -- Miguel de Unamuno -- Bertrand Russell -- Chuang Tzu -- Eugène Ionesco -- Albert Camus -- Bhagavad Gita -- Arthur Schopenhauer -- Sigmund Freud -- Marcus Aurelius -- Michel de Montaigne -- David Hume,Mode of access: Internet
Classical and medieval literature criticism. [electronic resource]
Zott, Lynn M
2003-01-01T00:00:00Z
Literary studies: classical, early & medieval,Medieval,Literature - Classics / Criticism,Literary Criticism,Ancient and Classical,English literature,Literature,Poetry, Ancient,Poetry, Medieval,Drama, Medieval,Dramatists, Latin (Medieval and modern),Literature, Medieval,Epic literature,Epic literature, English,Epic literature, European,Literature and myth,Sagas,Latin literature,Greek literature,Literature, Ancient,Classical literature
Description based on print version record,Ibn Battuta, 1304-1369 -- Giovanni Boccaccio, 1313-1375 -- Chuang Tzu, c. 369 -- c. 286 B.C. -- William of Malmesbury c. 1090-95 -- c. 1140-43,Presents literary criticism on the works of classical and medieval philosophers, poets, playwrights, political leaders, scientists, mathematicians, and writers from other genres. Critical essays are selected from leading sources, including published journals, magazines, books, reviews, and scholarly papers. Criticism includes early views from the author's lifetime as well as later views, including extensive collections of contemporary analysis
The inner chapters
Zhuangzi
1997-01-01T00:00:00Z
Taoism
xix, 118 pages : 20 cm,Selected from a founding classic of Taoism, these chapters are the only portions believed to be the work of Chuang Tzu himself. "On their deepest level, the Inner Chapters are a meditation on the mysteries of knowledge iteself."--Jacket,I. Wandering boundless and free -- II. A little talk about evening things out -- III. To care for this life -- IV. The human realm -- V. The talisman of integrity replete -- VI. The great ancestral master -- VII. The way of emperors and kings
Chinese religions : beliefs & practices
Fowler, Jeaneane D
2008-01-01T00:00:00Z
China -- Religion
ix, 320 p. ; 22 cm,Includes bibliographical references (p. 306-308) and index,Ancient China : the three dynasties -- The Hsia/Xia dynasty -- The Shang dynasty -- The Chou/Zhou dynasty -- The age of the philosophers -- Rhythms of the universe -- The book of changes : the I Ching/Yijing -- Yin and Yang -- The five agents -- Confucianism -- The Ju/Ru tradition -- Confucius -- The analects -- Teachings -- The Confucian classics -- Confucian development -- Confucianism in formation -- Meng-tzu/Mengzi and Hsün-tzu/Xunzi -- Confucianism in adaptation -- Classical taoism -- What is taoism -- Lao-tzu/Laozi and the Tao te Ching/Daodejing -- Chuang-tzu/Zhuangzi -- Lieh-tzu/Liezi -- Tao -- Creation and reversal -- Te/De -- Wu-wei : non-action -- Tzu-jan/Ziran : naturalness and spontaneity -- Buddhism -- The advent of Buddhism in China -- The Tien-tai/Tiantai (Jap. Tendai) School -- Hua-yen/Huayan -- Devotional Buddhism -- Pure land Buddhism -- Religious Taoism -- Historical development -- Alchemy -- Life beyond earth -- Religious praxis -- Immortals -- Sages -- Neo-Confucianism -- The transforming face of Confucianism -- The place of women in Confucian culture -- The five masters -- The dissemination of Confucianism -- Modern new Confucianism -- Chan Buddhism -- Bodhidharma -- Hui-ko/Huike -- Hui-neng/Huineng -- The Zen movement after Hui-Neng -- The five houses -- Kuei-yang/Guiyang (Jap. Igyo) and the circular figures -- Lin-chi/Linji (Jap. Rinzai) and shouting and beating -- Koan practice -- The masterpupil relationship -- Tsao-tung (Jap. Soto) and the formula of the five ranks -- Yun-men/Yunmen (Jap. Ummon) and the pass of a single word -- Fa-yen/Fayan (Jap. Hogen) and the inner unity of the six marks of being -- The sung/song period -- Meditation -- Popular religion -- What is popular religion? -- Deities of popular religion -- The calendar -- Festivals -- Popular praxis -- Chinese religions today -- Communist China -- Confucianism -- Taoism -- Buddhism -- Popular religion -- Influences of Chinese religions in the West
Introduction To Animals And World Religions
lisa kemmerer
2012-01-01T00:00:00Z
compassion,religion and animals,animals and religion,ethics and religion,diet and ethics,saints,religious exemplars,Christ,Buddha,Muhammed,Lao Tzu,Chuang Tzu,Confucius,Indigenous religions,animal studies,religious studies,environmental ethics,Christianity,Judaism,Islam,Buddhism,Hinduism,Daoism,Confucianism,simplicity,service,animal rights,animal liberation,activism,Asian philosophy,Asian religions,Middle Eastern religions,myth,mythology,mythology and animals
Despite increasing public attention to animal suffering, little seems to have changed: Human beings continue to exploit billions of animals in factory farms, medical laboratories, and elsewhere. In this wide-ranging and perceptive study, Lisa Kemmerer shows how spiritual writings and teachings in seven major religious traditions can help people to consider their ethical obligations toward other creatures. Dr. Kemmerer examines the role of nonhuman animals in scripture and myth, in the lives of religious exemplars, and by drawing on foundational philosophical and moral teachings. She begins with a study of indigenous traditions around the world, then focuses on the religions of India (Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain) and China (Daoism and Confucianism), and finally, religions of the Middle East (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). At the end of each chapter, Kemmerer explores the inspiring lives and work of contemporary animal advocates who are motivated by a personal religious commitment. Animals and World Religions demonstrates that rethinking how we treat nonhuman animals is essential for anyone claiming one of the world's great religions.
Full text of "Introduction To Animals And World Religions" Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "Introduction To Animals And World Religions" See other formats / V n i rvt flv 15 ^ W t?A, d l \jjpyi s Introduction From the standpoint of religious traditions; what is our rightful role with regard to red-winged blackbirds and short-eared lizards? What do sacred teachings tell us about our responsibilities to bluefin tuna and Black Angus cattle? Humans often dominate and exploit other creatures. Contemporary factory farming; for example; causes acute suffering; prolonged misery and premature death to billions of nonhuman animals every year ; across continents; on behalf of those who choose to eat animal products. From factory farms to medical labora¬ tories; individuals from nonhuman species have become objects for our purposes; and means to human ends. Technology mass production; and the sheer number of flesh-eating humans crowded onto this planet have increased the volume and inten¬ sity of nonhuman animal exploitation exponentially. Most of us never see the crea¬ tures whom we dominate and exploit; their dark eyes and steamy breath; wavy hair or intricate feathers; swaying tails or shiny beaks. We do not have the chance to know them as individuals—their preferences and fears, affections and curiosities_ we see only a slab of flesh wrapped in cellophane, a bit of dairy in a plastic container, with an obscure label that fails to mention the truth: This that you eat is part of someone else s body. In the seventies and eighties, philosophers Tom Regan and Peter Singer exposed the horrors of the slaughterhouse and the cruelty of animal laboratories, noting that humans could get along quite well without these cruel animal exploiting institu¬ tions. Using carefully considered philosophical arguments, Regan and Singer dem¬ onstrated that our exploitation of other creatures is morally/ethically inadmissible. Forty years later, there is much greater awareness of nonhuman animal exploita¬ tion, but little has changed in the food, fur, and research industries. In fact, the number of factory-farmed creatures has increased exponentially—we are con¬ suming even more animal products. Why have people failed to respond to philosophical truths, to carefully consider moral imperatives presented by learned contemporary ethicists? Why have institutions of cruelty thrived in spite of increased exposure and consequently, a growing voice of moral condemnation? Unfortunately, human beings “have been slow to pick up on the logic-based arguments provided by philosophy” (Foltz, Animals , 1). Perhaps many people have not responded because they are motivated more by faith, spirituality, and/or 3 4 ANIMALS AND WORLD RELIGIONS religious convictions than by logic or moral philosophy. For people, who focus pri¬ marily on religions beliefs, “an argument based on the sources of religious tradition will be more convincing than one that is not” (Foltz, Animals , 3). As it turns out, the worlds great religious teachings concur with Regan and Singer—we ought not to be exploiting nonhumans as we do in our animal indus¬ tries. Unfortunately, “people are usually only partially aware of what is taught” by their inherited religious traditions, and we tend to be “highly selective” as to which aspects of our sacred teachings and writings we are familiar with—and those that we practice (Foltz, Animals, 4). Reading sacred literature, examining spiritual teach¬ ings, and pondering the lives of great religious adepts can remind people of time- honored spiritual principles and provide insights into the human being s proper place in the universe. Karl Jaspers referred to the great religious awakenings that took place in various places around the world in the first millennium BCE 1 as the Axial Age. At this time, the world s largest contemporary religions were formed, and morality—how we behave—was placed “at the heart of the spiritual life” in the religions that originated in India, China, and the Middle East (Armstrong, xii, xiv). The taproot of this reli¬ gious/moral framework is compassion; compassionate action became the essence of religious practice during the Axial Age (Armstrong, xiv). The great sages of that time, who formed each of today s major religions, placed compassion, generosity, kindness, charity, benevolence, inclusiveness—the empathic life—at the core of religious teachings and practice. These sages taught that respect for the lives of all beings was the essence of religion (Armstrong, xiv-xv). Scholar and author Kimberley Patton (Harvard Divinity), when asked in a recent interview, commented that “religious traditions contain extremely long and rich and ancient commentaries on the topic of animals. They are very interested in ani¬ mals as existential beings. And this goes back centuries, millennia even” (Patton, 30). She notes that every religious tradition provides followers with “very rich resources for seeing animals more as theological subjects than as objects,” and that contemporary mainstream responses, which ignore the desperate plight of non¬ human animals, 2 “are largely ignoring their own heritages” (Patton, 30). Author, ! BCE indicates “before the common era”; CE indicates “of the common era.” While this time ref¬ erence is synonymous with the Christian calendar, these terms are at least a small attempt to honor the world’s many religions, cultures, and calendars, while remaining intelligible to a largely English- speaking readership. 2 To understand the moral and spiritual importance of nonhuman animal exploitation, it is imper¬ ative that readers see what happens behind the scenes in animal industries. Such information can be found on many websites, including Vegan Outreach (http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan/ani- mals.html), Farm Sanctuary (http://www.farmsanctuary.org/mediacenter/videos.html), VIVA! USA (http://www.vivausa.org/visualmedia/index.html), VTVA! in the United Kingdom (http://www.viva. org.uk/), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (http://www.petatv.com/), the Humane Society (http://www.humanesociety.org/news/multimedia/, and Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (http://www.pcrm.org/resources/). Introduction 5 scholar, and activist Paul Waldau, when asked, “Which religions are the most ani¬ mal-friendly ?” replied without pause: “All the ones that are listening to their heart” (Waldau, “Animal,” 3l). Waldau notes that religions sometimes move in directions that prompt and moti¬ vate the masses toward a great “expansion of justice and ethics” (Waldau, “Guest,” 238). While religions have different worldviews, different prophets and saints, and different conceptions of the spiritual forces of the universe, religions tend to share core moral ideals—core conceptions of what is right and wrong, good and bad behavior. This is not surprising given that peoples around the world cannot live in community if they murder, steal, and lie—certain core moral ideals must be upheld in order to maintain social structures (Rachels, 26). Consequently, religions tend to foster moral principles that allow us to live comfortably and peacefully with one another. Whether termed ahimsa, metta , karuna, ci, or love, for example, the world s largest and oldest religious traditions teach people that we must protect the weak and needy from cruelty, exploitation, and indifference. Most of us are aware of these core spiritual teachings and their application with regard to human beings (though we often fail to put this knowledge into action), but few people seem to understand the application of such pervasive religious moral injunctions with regard to fishes and mice, hogs and horses, turkeys and elephants. Intent and Focus There is no one Buddhism, and there is no one Christianity. There are hundreds of Christian churches, each with its own particular creed, interpretations, traditions, practices, and leaders. First-century Indian Buddhism differs radically from twenty- first-century Japanese Buddhism. Neo-Confucian religious traditions, which began to take shape around 1000 CE, permanently altered the Confucian tradition; Buddhism permanently altered Daoism. Every religious tradition changes across time and place, and se^every great religious tradition is rich with diversity. Religions are notoriously complicated, necessarily so because they endure over vast time periods, travel expansive continents, are transplanted onto distant but well-developed cultures in varied climes, and endure through extensive cultural and political changes. In light of texts and teachings, in light of interpretations and com¬ mentaries accumulated over centuries, there is an overwhelming array of attitudes and responses surrounding any given topic among religious traditions. Paul Waldau notes that over the millennia of their existence, [religious] traditions have provided an astonishing array of views and materials, some of which are in significant tension with each other. Since such diversity leads to challenging problems on virtually any subject... it also affects significantly many issues that arise 6 ANIMALS AND WORLD RELIGIONS when one seeks to describe each traditions views of animals. (Waldau, Specter , 3) In light of this diversity, almost any religious practice or belief might be defended and/or sanctioned by a particular phrase, sentence, isolated story, or obscure docu¬ ment within a given religious tradition’s accumulated stories and literature. Given this, how can we reach any worthy conclusions concerning our rightful relations with nonhumans? In spite of this diversity of accumulated religious lore, it is possible to locate a preponder¬ ance of core teachings that point to a particular moral outlook, which can be discerned by examining textsthe lives of moral exemplars, and long-standing , deep-rooted , founda¬ tional religious ideals. Sometimes the sheer volume of teachings on a given viewpoint will seal the debate. Sometimes who offers the moral teachings, or where the teachings are recorded, will carry the weight of authority. For example, in the world of Islam, the Qur’an carries more weight than any other text, and words attributed to Muhammad carry more weight than words attributed to any other individual. Though a variety of contending views clutter the airways, some views inevitably prove obscure, or of little importance, because they are found in secondary texts, because they are credited to an individual who carries comparatively less esteem in the reli¬ gious tradition, or because such a view is an anomaly in a tradition that overwhelm¬ ingly supports an opposing point of view. If we are diligent in examining available information, we can reach dependable conclusions regarding core moral teachings. This book examines a host of indigenous religious traditions and seven of the world’s most prosperous and well-represented religions (the Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, Daoist, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions). (When I use the term religions in this book, I refer specifically to these religions.) This volume does not focus on the many differences among branches of a given religion, such as that of Mahayana and Theravada Buddhists, Sunni or Shi’a Muslims, Orthodox or Reform Judaism, or that of Protestant and Catholic Christians. Rather, this work focuses on core teachings within each religious tradition that reach across sectarian boundaries, like ahimsa in Buddhist traditions or love in Christian traditions. Each chapter of this book is divided into a series of sections. Section headings are not identical across chapters (for example, interpenetrability) because, despite remarkable similarities that lie at the core of religious traditions, each religion is distinct and unique. "Sacred Nature, Sacred Anymals” (the “y” will soon be explained), focuses on nature generally, exploring religious teachings that instruct people on rightful rela¬ tions with trees, mountains, soil, and water—ecosystems and the environment— which are essential habitats for nonhuman animals. "Philosophy and Morality explores specific, core religious teachings that establish rightful relations between humans and all other creatures. Subsequent sections focus on religiously sanctioned relationships between the divine and nonhumans, and relations that are outlined in sacred texts and teachings between humans and nonhumans. The latter topic is Introduction 7 further divided into two categories: nonhumans as individuals in their own right; and spiritual and physical kinship between humans and nonhuman animals. “Interpenetrability” is particularly important to religious traditions that offer a cyclical vision of life; such as reincarnation/transmigration. In traditions in which individuals might be reborn as an indigo bunting or the tiny, South American Robinsons mouse opossum; there is no definitive line between Italians; indigo bun¬ tings; and mouse opossums—there is no eternal or ultimate distinction between humans and the rest of the animate world. In contrast; religions that do not hold a cyclical vision of life do not generally include species interpenetrability. Consequently this section is included only in the first four chapters. “Anymal Powers” examines special abilities that are attributed to nonhumans in sacred stories and literature; including creative powers, spiritual devotion, and spe¬ cial knowledge, such as the ability to assist and teach human beings. The final section of each chapter focuses on animal activists who are motivated by religious belief. These activists are driven by religious commitments, by their spiritual understanding of what constitutes rightful relations between humans and other creatures, and by their knowledge of how contemporary flesh, entertainment, “lab” animal, and clothing industries violate religiously prescribed rightful relations between humans and nonhuman animals. Positive Presentation This book focuses on religious teachings that are relevant to animal advocacy. In keeping with the moral outlook established in the Axial Age, the time period during which the texts of todays great religions were formed, today’s major reli¬ gions continue to be, overall, radically friendly toward nonhuman animals. This book reflects this strong religious/moral tendency without presenting opposing arguments. I do not offer opposing arguments for three reasons. First, arguments against animal advocacy are easy to come by. Most of us grow up believing that human exploitation of other creatures is religiously sanctioned, and most religious people (whether Buddhist or Christian, Jew or Indigenous) will therefore readily defend their tendency to exploit nonhuman animals, as well as in their community and culture—especially dietary preferences. This tendency is also encouraged and perpetuated by religious leaders. Religious leaders generally share and defend the larger community’s exploitative habits. I do not offer arguments in favor of animal exploitation because others can and will do so; such arguments are easy to come by. This tendency should neither surprise us nor affect our point of view: As has happened so often in history when the religious imagination has been called upon to support racist, sexist, and other exclusivism that obviously harmed marginalized humans, religious themes can lend themselves to 8 ANIMALS AND WORLD RELIGIONS obscuring and justifying the marginalization of nonhuman lives. (Waldau, “Guest,” 237). People tend to defend the status quo—their way of life— whatever their way of life might be, even when their religion is rich with teachings that convey the importance of radical social change. Force of habit and personal investment in the status quo combine to encourage humanity to turn a blind eye to animal-friendly scriptures. Nonetheless, “religious traditions offer plenty of resources' for countering such trends” (Waldau, “Guest,” 237), Therefore, the abundant but often ignored resources that lie within each of the world s great religions, which have the power to transform our relations with nonhumans and the earth itself, are rightly the focus of this book. Second, religious arguments that are commonly posed in favor of exploiting nonhumans are unconvincing in light of a richer understanding of religious teach¬ ings, writings, ideals, and exemplars. Such arguments are, generally, both shallow and specific; they run counter to the deepest moral convictions of religious tradi¬ tions, as this book amply demonstrates. Thankfully, core religious teachings speak against factory farming, and cruel exploitation in general. I encourage readers to ponder what religious arguments might be posed to defend factory farming or animal experimentation in light of the information provided herein. I also encourage readers not to draw any conclusions until they have read the entire book, including the appendix. Third, to include even the most common religious justifications and rationaliza¬ tions for the exploitation of nonhuman animals in each religious tradition would expand this text considerably. This book is quite long enough—testimony to a rich diversity of animal-friendly teachings from each of the worlds most popular reli¬ gious traditions. Ideals, Not Actions This book presents religious ideals; this volume does not attempt to explain how people within each religious tradition actually behave, or what they actually believe. Compassion is a central teaching of every major religion, but, most people are unaware of how animal industries operate, of how our economic choices either do or do not contribute to intense suffering and uncounted premature deaths. Consequently, religious teachings too often fail to affect what people actually do— what they purchase or consume. Sacred teachings are no more effective than the knowledge and religious com¬ mitment of practitioners. Humans can have an endless supply of noble thoughts, but if they are not accompanied by a call to action, then the ideas themselves are of little value. As it turns out, many religious people proudly claim the idealistic spiritual teachings of their faith, yet simultaneously deny that these teachings apply to their personal choice of foods, clothing, entertainment, or pharmaceuticals. For Introduction 9 example, religious people are likely to agree that compassion is a central tenet of their religious ethics, but that there is nothing cruel about the production and con¬ sumption of milk or cottage cheese. Dairy products, they assert, do not require the taking of life, and are therefore neither cruel nor against core religious teachings. Of course it is possible to feed and tend a nursing cow and calf without cruelty and without taking life (by simply sharing a cows nursing milk with her calf), but this mere possibility has nothing to do with the actual production of cow s milk on dairy farms. Consequently, this possibility cannot justify the consumption of yogurt, cheese, or milk purchased from local grocery stores. Although most religious people confirm core animal-friendly teachings in their particular religious tradition, even grant that such teachings are foundational, they tend to simultaneously offer a host of reasons to explain why they need not live by these teachings—why they can continue to eat blueberry yogurt and poached cod yet remain consistent with core religious teachings. Dietary habits are the basis of most arguments posed in defense of animal exploi¬ tation. This means that religious arguments in favor of animal exploitation generally have nothing to do with religious convictions or the realities of animal exploitation. Such arguments are almost always rooted in a desire for meaty lasagna or shrimp salad, for example. Furthermore, those who pose such arguments have long believed, without actually looking into the matter, that their religion actually supports their consumption of vanilla yogurt and flounder fillets. This misconception is bolstered by common consensus: Pretty much everyone else in their religious community thinks and behaves similarly, consuming flesh, eggs, and dairy products, and believing that their diet is religiously sanctioned. In contrast, other some religious adherents openly admit that they are unwilling to honor core, animal-friendly religious teachings in their daily lives, usually with regard to diet. Such people admit that they are unwilling to implement religious ideals at the expense of treasured dietary preferences, and because the vast majority of theii/peers are doing the same, there is little incentive for change. Martin Luther King Jr. asked whether organized religion was “too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world” (King, 409). Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to offer any meaningful response to the ongoing, egregious exploitation of billions of nonhuman animals? As long as a significant majority continues to support animal exploitation regardless of core reli¬ gious ideals, most religious people are unlikely to change. As long as few people are willing to challenge common practices, the majority tends to feel free to continue in their habitual way, oblivious of the myriad, devastating affects of their actions. Not one major religion has thus far forcefully challenged any factory farming practice (Waldau, “Guest,” 234). If religious traditions cannot offer a meaningful response to contemporary moral issues such as that of animal exploitation, they risk being “dis¬ missed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century” (King, 409). In the words of Paul Waldau, “Mainline cultural and intellectual traditions have 10 ANIMALS AND WORLD RELIGIONS debased all other animals” and in the process, we have forsaken our religious obliga¬ tions and debased ourselves (Waldau, “Guest,” 238). One need only look to the writings of Christians during the Crusades, or to the practice of slavery, to witness the human tendency to justify cruelty in the name of faith—even while continuing to assert that religion is rooted in kindness and gener¬ osity (Regan, 106-38). Martin Luther King lamented, “I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists” (King, 408). It is highly likely that future generations will view factory farms and animal experimentation as we now view the Crusades and slavery—as cruel acts committed by those of faith, even in the name of faith, out of ignorance, selfishness, and indifference. Religions exist, and can only exist, within cultures, in a specific time and place. Racist, sexist, and speciesist tendencies and practices do not indicate a divine sanction of, or the karmic irrelevance of, racism, sexism, or speciesism. Although scriptures have been widely used to justify cruel practices across religious traditions, a preponderance of core teachings in every major religious tradition speak against exploitation and cruel domination of any kind. Though this book highlights animal- friendly teachings, it is important to note that the discrepancy between religious teachings and actual practice is often disappointing. Therefore, this hook can make no claim about actual behavior —about religious practice—but makes claims only about religious ideals. These chapters do not dem¬ onstrate that religious adherents, whether indigenous or Jew, actually live in ways that work toward the liberation of nonhuman animals, or even in ways that are sensitive to the lives of other living beings. Yet, ironically, almost all religious people, whether Buddhist or Daoist, Christian or Muslim, are likely to agree that the ani¬ mal-friendly teachings gathered in this book are central to their religion. How are we to understand this phenomenon of affirmation and denial, of granting the truth of religious ideals while shirking responsibility for implementation? This book is about what religions teach, not about how religious people live. In truth, there appears to be embarrassingly little correlation between the two. Tilings We Tend Not to Know Most of us believe that core teachings in our religion (and religions more generally) do not align with the agenda of animal activists, that religions do not require adherents to rethink their meaty diet. But in reality, religious traditions offer a wealth of moral teach¬ ings and spiritual ideals that surpass animal welfare to align with animal rights and animal liberation, that reach beyond a vegetarian diet and require adherents to adopt a vegan diet. Those who believe otherwise tend to lack information in three critical areas. First, such people often have no idea what goes on in breeding facilities, on factory farms, in feedlots, on transport trucks, or in slaughterhouses. (This is why Introduction 11 it is critical to read the appendix of this book before drawing any conclusions: Please see the appendix to explore factory farming and the fishing industry.) Most of us do not know what sorts of creatures are used in animal labs ; how many non¬ humans are used, in what ways, or to what end. Collectively, we do not know about the lives and deaths of fox, chinchilla, or mink on fur farms or in leghold traps. We have not seen how pet mills, zoos, or circuses cage, feed, or train nonhuman animals. To understand the extent of the problem—to understand the moral and spiritual importance of this subject—is it essential to view undercover footage of what hap¬ pens behind the scenes, of what happens behind the closed doors of factory farms. I encourage readers to explore undercover footage taken in all of these industries, which can be accessed online on many websites, including the following: • For U.S. footage, visit Mercy for Animals (http://www.mercyforanimals.org/) and Compassion Over Killing (http://www.cok.net/). • For Canadian footage, see Canadians for Ethical Treatment of Farm Animals (http ://www.cetfa.com). • For Australian footage, visit Animals Australia (http://www.animalsaustralia. org/). • For European footage, see Vief Pfoten (Four Paws) (http://www.vier-pfoten. org/website/output.php). • For footage from France, see Ethique Animaux (http://www.l214.com/), Eyes on Animals (http://eyesonanimals.com/) and Varkens in Nood (Pigs in Peril) (http://www.varkensinnood.nl/english_.htm). • For excellent footage from the Netherlands (and for an overall view), see Compassion in World Farming (http://www.ciwf.org.uk/). I also highly recommend these two short online videos: • Do They Know It's Christmas? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCX7f_s 1CA4) • Alec Baldwin Narrates Revised "Eat Your Meat" (http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/ Prefs.asp ?video=mym2002) For more general information about factory farming, also visit these sites: • Farm Sanctuary (http://www.farmsanctuary.org/mediacenter/videos.html) • HSUS (http://video.hsus.org/) • PCRM (http://www.pcrm.org/resources/) • PETA (http://www.petatv.com/) • Vegan Outreach (http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan/animals.html) • VIVA! USA (http://www.vivausa.org/visualmedia/index.html) or VIVA! UK ( http: / / www.viva.org.uk/ ) 12 ANIMALS AND WORLD RELIGIONS Sometimes when people view undercover footage they imagine that these cases are extreme that they are certainly not representative of the industry more gener¬ ally Nothing could be farther from the truth. For example, any time undercover investigators penetrated the locked doors of factory farming they have come away with similar footage. Only when animal industries are prepared for visitors does the footage look different. Even then, it is shocking to watch: Slaughter is inevitably and few industries will allow visitors to witness this process. Slaughter is always more drawn out and riddled with uncertainties than one likes to imagine. Second, people lack an understanding of—have often not even heard about— speciesism. To fail to notice structurally induced sufferings of Latinos and African- Americans is racist. To be indifferent to white male domination in the U.S. political system is both racist and sexist. Similarly, to turn a blind eye to factory farming is speciesist. Many societies have progressed in their understanding of how religions teach¬ ings inform and guide human relations across races, ages, and sexes, for example, because we understand that racism, ageism, and sexism are extremely hurtful and are therefore morally and spiritually objectionable. Unfortunately, few people understand how religious teachings inform and guide human relations with other species and speak against speciesism. In fact, few people are even aware of the cruel exploitation that stems from our domination of and indifference to other creatures. Third, we often fail to critically examine conventional spiritual teachings, which we tend to learn young and accept without challenge, even without examination. Those who believe that a particular religion supports the status quo with regard to nonhuman animals have often neglected to examine sacred texts, core teachings, and/or the practical application of religious ideals to assess our current treatment of nonhuman animals. Foundational religious teachings indicate that our relations with other creatures ought to be compassionate and nonexploitative. Is this overwhelmingly protective, compassionate religious outlook toward nonhumans surprising? Is there a religion that encourages painful and life-destroying exploitation of sentient beings for such paltry reasons as palate or publications, curiosity or convenience? No, and no. Yet people from almost every major religion lack an understanding of contemporary animal industries and animal exploitation; we know little or nothing of speciesism, and precious little about what sacred teachings actually say regarding rightful rela¬ tions between humans and nonhumans, and so we tend to cite passages from sacred texts, or refer to conventional religious teachings, to support contemporary animal exploitation. Understanding core religious teachings and contemporary animal exploitation is critical to grasping why this issue is spiritually important, and why we are compelled to change some of our most basic habits if we adhere to one of the world s most represented religions. This book specifically focuses on aspects of religious traditions that protect and value other animals because teachings of compassion are prevalent in all dominant religions, because Introduction 13 people tend to be ignorant of the implications of these prevalent teachings with regard to non¬ human animals , and because this spiritual ignorance causes egregious and ongoing suffering and billions of premature deaths. I hope that this book offers a deeper, richer under¬ standing of sacred writings and of core religious principles concerning our rightful rela¬ tions with other creatures. Ultimately, I hope that this book brings positive changes for nonhuman animals. But the reader must ultimately judge: Do the worlds most com¬ monly claimed religions support contemporary animal exploitation, or do they not? Acceptance, Reform, or Liberation? There are various ways one might react to ongoing, prevalent animal exploitation (see appendix). In fact, most people react in various ways, and our reactions tend to change as we collect more information, as the weight of new information penetrates and settles into our spiritual consciousness. One common reaction to new information on the topic of animal exploitation is to simply reaffirm the status quo, to believe—in spite of evidence to the contrary— that all is well on our farms and in our slaughterhouses. Such denial is becoming more difficult as information about factory farming reaches mainstream conscience, as undercover footage finds its way into mainstream media, exposing the horrible truths lurking behind closed doors. A second common reaction is to admit that there are moral problems inherent in contemporary animal industries, while asserting that exploiting animals is not itself irreligious. Such welfarists often emphasize the need for reform. They may seek larger farrowing crates or a ban on battery hen cages, more fishing regulations or improved fishing technology, and/or an end to particularly painful practices such as debealdng and dehorning. Welfarists look to updated laws and new technology to improve the lives and deaths of exploited animals; they seek to reform animal exploitation. Still others, on learning about animal exploitation, decide that other creatures do not exist for our purposes, that there is something inherently irreligious about exploiting other sentient beings—especially given that such exploitation is unnec¬ essary to our survival and has even proven to be harmful to our health (as our diet currently is, and as animal experimentation has proven to be) (Anderegg, 18). People who find animal exploitation unacceptable, and who consequently wish to end such practices, are “liberationists” (or “abolitionists”). Liberationists do not want larger farrowing crates, but empty farrowing crates. They do not want fewer trawlers pulling sea life from the seas, but no trawlers pulling sea life from the seas. They do not want an end to debeaking and dehorning, but an end to factory farming. Liberationists often argue that animals do not exist for our purposes, and that it is therefore morally and spiritually wrong for us to use them for our ends, as if they were tools, or a medium of exchange. If contemporary factory farming runs contrary to spiritual obligation, contrary to scriptures, and contrary to examples set by the world s most frequently claimed 14 ANIMALS AND WORLD RELIGIONS religions and their affiliated moral and spiritual exemplars, then people committed to any one of these religious traditions are obligated, at a minimum, to stop support¬ ing factory farming—to stop buying their products. Denial will not suffice; religious adherents must first and foremost cease to support these industries. Alternatively, reli¬ gious adherents can admit that they are not particularly religious—that they really don t care what their religion teaches, and that they therefore have no intention of changing their way of life based on core religious teachings. Atheists and Agnostics Even an atheist or agnostic is likely to be interested in discovering moral teachings that are remarkably consistent across religious traditions. Even someone who self- defines as entirely outside all religious traditions is likely to be fascinated by the prodigious power that lies behind such consistent moral convictions across time and place, and might therein find reason to ponder human obligations toward, and treatment of, nonhuman animals. When the worlds largest and oldest religions come together on a single point of morality, it is likely that we have struck upon something that human beings cannot afford to ignore, something to which we might all aspire, something that is central to who we all aspire to be more generally, whether or not we adhere to any of the world s many religions. Words and Social Change Words help to shape our understanding of the world. Language legitimizes and is made legitimate by those in power, and is therefore rife with "political and ideolog¬ ical investment” (Fairclough, Critical, 7). Consequently, language supports and contributes to domination, and is an important medium for social control and a viable method of bringing social change (Fairclough, Language, 2-3). Ludwig Wittgenstein, an influential Austrian philosopher who died in 1951, noted that language is a moral matter, "an activity, or a form of life,” the importance of which should not be overlooked (Wittgenstein, 23). Wittgenstein believed that the job of philosophy is to sort out conceptual confusions that arise when we use language carelessly, or without reflection. He considered the problems that arise from language to be "deep disquietudes,” and philosophy as "a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language” (Wittgenstein, 111, 109). He noted that communication, the use of language in a meaningful manner, is a "speech act”; language "is not simply a mirror of life, it is the doing of life itself” (Gergen, 35). Wittgenstein recognized language as a human creation. Wittgenstein therefore also recognized language as arbitrary, as an imperfect reflection of reality, not an inherent phenomenon of the universe. Introduction 15 A popular introductory text for linguistics includes "a cartoon in which two dis¬ gruntled cavemen are attempting to converse. One says to the other: ‘fw wnt tlkrlly gd, wTl hv t nvnt vwls’ ” (Cameron, l). This comic reminds readers that people do not just use language; “they comment on the language they use. Frequently they find it wanting and, like the cavemen, propose to improve it” (Cameron, 1). Language is not static; it is created and recreated by those who speak and write. New terms such as quark or black hole describe a more recent human understanding of the universe. Fifty years ago Internet and megabyte were not part of our vocabulary. Meanwhile, whither, nigh, and thee have become obsolete. Humans need never be stymied by a lack of words; we simply create what we need. But through our created words, language reflects culture and society, and simultaneously maintains a particular, established way of thinking. Our choice of words is an active process, and the words we choose make a statement beyond sur¬ face meanings. We produce language, we give it meaning, and we affirm or challenge each word by accepting or rejecting that word. Consequently, our use of language can either aid or hinder change. Because words carry more than surface meaning, choosing new words is an impor¬ tant tool in the process of changing thought (Fairclough, Critical, 3). Someone—or likely many people—were behind the purposeful selection of African American as a group indicator. Darkie, Pickinini, and colored are obsolete. Nigger has shifted from common use to either rare and extremely contentious, or friendly insider jargon, like queer. Feminists have also employed verbal activism. Most contemporary textbooks from Western nations no longer refer only to men, but use both feminine and mascu¬ line pronouns. Feminists continue to put pressure on those speaking in public to think about the meanings and affects of words. Sexist labels, like chick or broad, are more and more apt to turn heads, or to illicit a negative or questioning response. In many con¬ temporary social circles, sexist words bring on confrontation and/or alienation. Words are a form of activism. A speaker or writer who chooses words carefully can bring listeners and readers to ponder the words they read or hear. V By calling traditional usages into question, reformers effectively force everyone who uses a particular language to declare a position in respect of sexism, racism, speciesism, and so on. Language reformers provide a new array of word options: For example, a speaker can say, “Ms. A. is the chair (person)” and convey approval of language that is sex-inclusive, or a speaker can say “Miss A. is the chairman” and convey a more conservative attitude about language and sex. What a speaker can no longer do is to select either alternative and convey by it nothing more than “a certain woman holds a particular office.” Choices as to how we word such sentences have removed the option of political neutrality (Cameron, 119). One either conveys ignorance, indifference, or conservatism, or an acceptance of sex-inclusive language. When confronted with a new term, we are simultaneously confronted with the reason for that term, and we must decide whether or not we will accept or reject 16 ANIMALS AND WORLD RELIGIONS this new word. We must choose. And in the process, we are confronted with social justice issues. Consequently, the success of a new word is not measured by its fre¬ quency of use, but by its ability to bring people to question conventional language. A new word elicits dialogue whether or not it is widely accepted into a community’s vocabulary. The words we choose are morally important; careless use of words is therefore morally objectionable. Intellectual and moral progress can be aided by thoughtful, accurate word choices, and by challenging words and the way others use language (Rorty, 9). Consequently, I have chosen to alter a few common English language practices throughout this book. For example, I do not refer to nonhuman animals as “that” or “it” any more than I would do so in reference to a human being. Nor do I use the word “animal” as if it excluded Homo sapiens. Lexical Gaps v The “highest value to which language-users can aspire is accuracy” (Cameron, 135). Lexical gaps are concepts or concrete items in our world that do not have adequate (or any) verbal representation. Lexical gaps hinder effective communication: How will we talk about poodles if we do not have the word poodle? Linguistic accuracy is therefore dependent on word availability, on an accumulation of words that say what we mean. There is no word in the English language to describe the category “every animal outside of the speaker’s species.” For scholars and activists involved in animal rights, animal ethics, and animal liberation, this lexical gap is problematic. The use of ani¬ mals as if it referred only to nonhumans is inappropriate because humans are ani¬ mals—primates, mammals. As a result, several word combinations have emerged to fill this lexical gap, including nonhuman animal, other animals, other-than-human animals, and animals other than humans, but when writing or speaking specifically about nonhuman animals, such terms quickly become cumbersome. Nonetheless, authors and lecturers currently speaking and writing on subjects such as animal law or animal minds must use these cumbersome concoctions if they are to remain accurate in their speech and writing. Dualism Makeshift word combinations (like nonhuman animal ) are inadequate not only because they are cumbersome, but also because they are dualistic. Nonhuman, for example, artificially divides animals “into two seemingly opposed categories: humans and everyone else” (Adams, Pornography, 39-40). Dualism encourages people to assume that one category is the norm (white, male, human, or Christian, for example), while opposites (brown, female, animal, Introduction 17 non-Christian) are assumed to be inferior and less desirable (Adams, Pornography 50). Dualistic thinking stirs up division and competition, contention and malevo¬ lence, and is therefore proven to be problematic racially, sexually, environmentally, and religiously. Although this may not be a necessary outcome of dualism, it has been a very real outcome. Whichever sex, religion, race, or species has not been envisioned as the norm—at the top of the hierarchy—has too often been considered lesser, even exploitable, whether for free labor or scientific experimentation. Consequently, dualistic terms such as nonhuman animal, other-than-human animals, and other ani¬ mals are likely to perpetuate Western dualisms, hierarchies, and exploitation, and are therefore undesirable both morally and linguistically. ‘Anymal” As a means of simultaneously filling a lexical gap and avoiding cumbersome, dual¬ istic, or speciesist language, I use the word anymal throughout this text. Anymal (pronounced “ene-mal”) is a contraction of any and animal, and is pronounced just as the words any and mal (in animal ) are pronounced. Anymal refers to all animals, unique and diverse, marvelous and complex, col¬ orful and common, who do not happen to be the same species as the speaker— whatever species the speaker may be. Anymal is therefore a shortened version of “any animal that does not happen to be the species that I am” In this book, the speaker/author is a human being, so anymal refers to any animal who is not a human being. Similarly, if a chimp signs anymal, all human beings will be included in this term, but she and the rest of her species will not. Anymal is short and simple, easy to pronounce, easy to remember, and is neither speciesist (placing humans in a separate category from all other animals) nor dual¬ istic (employing the fundamentally dualistic terms non and other). Anymal provides an alternative referent that is consistent with biology; people are skiimals—mammals and primates. We have fallen into the speciesist habit of thinking that we are not animals, perhaps in part due to a prejudiced and ill-informed view of other creatures as savage beasts combined with an inflated sense of humans as uniquely civilized. This situation is, no doubt, made worse by our lack of a simple word to convey the category “all other animals.” We are in need of a word to talk about rabbits and rattlesnakes, gophers and grackles—ail species of the world excluding the speaker or author. As Wittgenstein noted, language effects actions. How we label other living beings affects our relationship with other creatures (Rorty, 192). In short, how “we speak about other animals is inseparable from the way we treat them” (Dunayer, 9). Using animal incorrectly—using animal to refer only to “other” species—-ignores shared similarities and falsely distances people from bald uakaris and Chinese crocodile lizards. By distancing ourselves, we allow ourselves to imagine that unnecessary 18 ANIMALS AND WORLD RELIGIONS suffering and forced premature death—though recognized as dreadful among human beings—is somehow just and right for Amazon River Salmon and krsko- polje pigs. In this way, linguistic dishonesty helps to enable human disregard for the suffering that we cause nonhuman animals (Adams, “Foreword/’ x), and has encour¬ aged us to treat other creatures as commodities, spare parts, Petri dishes—things expendable for human ends. Language ought to reflect the truth—humans are animals. Anymal does so while simultaneously opening dialogue, encouraging each of us to think about how we use animal, and why we often and unknowingly use this word as if it did not include humanity. Misusing animal in this way perpetuates exploitation and abuse of any- mals because it helps humanity to imagine that we are not animals who are similar to pigs and turkeys in morally relevant ways—most specifically in our ability to suf¬ fer and our desire to be left alone to live our own lives. When we speak honestly, when we use appropriate terms, when we speak in a way that reflects what i^ true biologically, we are more apt to see ourselves as individual animals, and we can then understand that the green acouchi, spot-crowned barbet, and metallic blue guppy are also individuals. Using language correctly—acknowledging that we are included in the scientific definition of what it is to be an animal—reminds us of morally relevant similarities across species and thereby helps us to maintain rightful relations with gorky geese, southern Viscachas, northern water snakes, and Azores cattle—the larger animal world. Anymal forces speakers to choose—or reveal their ignorance—regarding word choice and speciesism. In the process, dialogue is sparked on the subject of animal exploitation. This topic, in turn, will help us to rethink our religious commit¬ ments, our rightful place as animals among animals.
Happiness : a philosopher's guide
Lenoir, Frédéric
2015-01-01T00:00:00Z
Happiness
vi, 199 pages ; 22 cm,A huge bestseller in Europe, Frederic Lenoir's Happiness is an exciting journey that examines how history's greatest philosophers and religious figures have answered life's most fundamental question: What is happiness and how do I achieve it? From the ancient Greeks on--from Aristotle, Plato, and Chuang Tzu to the Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad; from Voltaire, Spinoza, and Schopenhauer to Kant, Freud, and even modern neuroscientists--Lenoir considers the idea that true and lasting happiness is indeed possible,Translation of: Du bonheur: un voyage philosophique,Includes bibliographical references,Loving the life you lead -- In the garden of pleasures, with Aristotle and Epicurus -- Giving meaning to life -- Voltaire and the happy idiot -- Does every human being wish to be happy? -- Happiness is not of this world: Socrates, Jesus, Kant -- On the art of being oneself -- Schopenhauer: happiness lies in our sensibility -- Does money make us happy? -- The emotional brain -- On the art of being attentive...and dreaming -- We are what we think -- The time of a life -- Can we be happy without other people? -- The contagiousness of happiness -- Individual happiness and collective happiness -- Can the quest for happiness make us unhappy? -- From desire to boredom: when happiness is impossible -- The smile of the Buddha and Epictetus -- The laughter of Montaigne and Chuang Tzu -- The joy of Spinoza and Ma Anandamayi
The Dao of rhetoric
Combs, Steven C., 1957-
2005-01-01T00:00:00Z
Rhetoric,Rhetoric -- China,Taoism,Motion pictures -- Moral and ethical aspects,Rhétorique,Rhétorique -- Chine,Taoïsme,Cinéma -- Aspect moral,Taoismus,Rhetorik,China,talen,languages,filosofie,philosophy,cinema,morele waarden,moral values,ethiek,ethics,bioscoop,china,redenering,reasoning,filosofische stelsels,philosophical systems,moraal,moral,Language Philosophy,Taalfilosofie
x, 167 pages ; 24 cm,In the first book to systematically deal with Daoism (Taoism) from a rhetorical perspective, author Steven C. Combs advances the idea that the works of Daoist (Taoist) sages Laozi (Loa Tzu), Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu), and Sunzi (Sun Tzu) can be fused into a coherent rhetorical genre, which can then form a methodology for rhetorical criticism. This notion of Daoist rhetoric enables critics to examine discourse from new vantage points with novel processes and concepts that honor the creativity and complexity of human communication. Combs also critically examines four contemporary films---The Tao of Steve, A Bug's Life, Antz, and Shrek---to amplify rhetorical Daoism, to indicate clear differences between Western and Daoist values, and to offer fresh perspectives on individuals and social action. The book argues that Daoism provides a lens for viewing limitations of current Western rhetorical theorizing, positioning Daoist rhetoric as a potent critical perspective in the contemporary, postmodern world. --Publisher's description,Includes bibliographical references (pages 155-161) and index,Introduction: Rhetoric East and West. -- Culture, text, and context. -- Laozi and the natural way of rhetoric. -- Zhuangzi and the rhetoric of evocation. -- Sunzi and the rhetoric of parsimony. -- Daoist rhetorical criticism. -- Is The Tao of Steve really "The way"? -- Values East and West in Antz and A bug's life. -- Shrek as the daoist hero. -- The future of the past
The Great Asian religions : an anthology
null
1969-01-01T00:00:00Z
Religion,Asia -- Religion,Asia
xvii, 412 pages ; 24 cm,This anthology offers essential materials for a beginning course on Asian, comparative or world religions. Although limited in quatity to what one volume will hold, the selections are indispensable for the understanding and evaluation of the religious systems of Asia,Includes glossary of words in Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic,Includes bibliographical references (pages 379-388) and index,Part one: Religions of India -- Introduction to Hinduism: a summary account -- Vedas: hymns and ritual texts -- Upanishads -- Bhagavad-Gita -- Ethical code of Manu -- Yoga of Patanjali -- Jainism -- Buddhism -- Later developments -- Recent tendencies. -- Part two: Religions of China -- Pre-Confucian elements -- Ancient Confucian philosophers -- Confucian institutional developments -- Neo-Confucianism -- Taoist philosophy: Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu -- Taoist occultism and popular beliefs -- Chinese response to early Buddhist teachings -- Mahayana ideal -- Culmination of Chinese Buddhism -- Harmony of religions -- Part three: Religions of Japan -- Myths and legends -- Early Japan: Shinto -- Early Japan: Buddhism -- Medieval Japan: Shinto and esoteric Buddhism -- Medieval Japan: Amida Pietism, Nichiren, and Zen -- Resurgence of Shinto -- Part four: Islam -- Knowledge -- Religion and religions -- Moment of Islam in the history of revelation -- God -- Man -- Society
The three-pound universe
Hooper, Judith, 1949-,Teresi, Dick
1987-01-01T00:00:00Z
Neuropsychology,Mind-brain identity theory,Mind and body
Includes bibliographical references (pages 397-402) and index,Cover title: The 3-pound universe,Foreword / by Isaac Asimov -- Looking for consciousness: a time line -- The three-pound universe -- The hardware of consciousness -- Crown of creation -- The chemical brain -- Madness ... and other windows on the brain -- Electrical heavens and hells -- Caligula's brain: the neurobiology of violence -- Memory: from sea slugs to Swann's Way -- The many-chambered self -- Altered states -- The hanged man: altered states of consciousness -- Anatomy of hallucination: prophets of the void -- Chuang-tzu and the butterfly: dreams and reality -- Border stations: the near-death experience -- God in the brain: cleansing the doors of perception -- The brain/mind connection -- Chaos, strange attractors, and the stream of consciousness -- Brainspeak: a traveler's lexicon
The Great Asian religions : an anthology
null
1969-01-01T00:00:00Z
Religion,Asia -- Religion,Asia
xvii, 412 pages ; 24 cm,This anthology offers essential materials for a beginning course on Asian, comparative or world religions. Although limited in quatity to what one volume will hold, the selections are indispensable for the understanding and evaluation of the religious systems of Asia,Includes glossary of words in Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic,Includes bibliographical references (pages 379-388) and index,Part one: Religions of India -- Introduction to Hinduism: a summary account -- Vedas: hymns and ritual texts -- Upanishads -- Bhagavad-Gita -- Ethical code of Manu -- Yoga of Patanjali -- Jainism -- Buddhism -- Later developments -- Recent tendencies. -- Part two: Religions of China -- Pre-Confucian elements -- Ancient Confucian philosophers -- Confucian institutional developments -- Neo-Confucianism -- Taoist philosophy: Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu -- Taoist occultism and popular beliefs -- Chinese response to early Buddhist teachings -- Mahayana ideal -- Culmination of Chinese Buddhism -- Harmony of religions -- Part three: Religions of Japan -- Myths and legends -- Early Japan: Shinto -- Early Japan: Buddhism -- Medieval Japan: Shinto and esoteric Buddhism -- Medieval Japan: Amida Pietism, Nichiren, and Zen -- Resurgence of Shinto -- Part four: Islam -- Knowledge -- Religion and religions -- Moment of Islam in the history of revelation -- God -- Man -- Society
The Tao of the West : Western transformations of Taoist thought
Clarke, J. J. (John James), 1937-
2000-01-01T00:00:00Z
Taoism -- Europe -- History,East and West,Taoïsme,Taoïsme -- Influence,Morale taoïste,Philosophie taoïste,Mysticisme -- Taoïsme,Taoism,Westerse wereld,Taoismus,Philosophie,Taoismus -- Rezeption,Taoismus -- Rezeption -- Westliche Welt -- Geschichte,Europe,Westliche Welt -- Taoismus -- Geschichte,Europa
xii, 270 pages ; 25 cm,"In this book, J.J. Clarke shows us how Taoist texts, ideas and practices have been assimilated within a whole range of Western interests and agendas. We see how Chinese thinkers such as Lao-tzu and Chuang tzu, along with practices such as feng-shui and tai chi, have been used as key Western inspirations in religion, philosophy, ethics, politics, ecology and health. The Tao of the West not only provides a fascinating introduction to Taoism, but it offers a timely insight into the history of the West's encounter with this ancient tradition and into the issues arising from inter-cultural dialogue. Anyone interested in understanding Taoism and the influence it has had on the West will welcome and embrace this book. Book jacket."--Jacket,Includes bibliographical references (pages 234-258) and indexes,Preface -- 1. 'The way that can be told': introduction -- 2. 'The meaning is not the meaning': on the nature of Daoism -- 3. 'Cramped scholars': Western interpretations of Daoism -- 4. 'The Great Clod': Daoist natural philosophy -- 5. 'Going rambling without destination': moral explorations -- 6. 'The transformation of things': the alchemy of life, sex and health -- 7. 'The Way is incommunicable': transcendence -- 8. 'The twitter of birds': philosophical themes -- 9. 'Journey to the West': by way of concluding -- Appendix I: Chinese dynastic chronology -- Appendix II. Wade-Giles/Pinyin conversion table -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Name index -- Subject index
Anagogic qualities of literature
Strelka, Joseph, 1927- editor
1971-01-01T00:00:00Z
Mysticism and literature,Mysticisme dans la littérature,Literatur,Mystik,Religion
Includes bibliographical references,Le cri de Merlin! Or interpretation and the metalogical -- The muse as a symbol of literary creativity -- Spirit, psyche, symbol, song -- The orphic vision of Nerval, Baudelaire, and Rimbaud -- Mysticism and modern West African writing -- The heavenly voice of the black American -- History, fable and myth in the Caribbean and the Guianas -- Symbolism and the changing climate in thought -- Enchained gods -- Aspects of Tristan esoterism -- The influence of Sufism on Indo-Muslim poetry,Zen Buddhism and the Japanese haiku -- Interpretations and reinterpretations of Hasidism in Hebrew literature -- Milarepa and the poetry of Tibetan yoga -- The archetypal image of chaos in Chuang Tzu: the problem of the mythopoeic level of discourse -- The paradox of light and darkness in the Garden of mystery of Shabastari -- Joy in this world and confidence in the next: on mysticism as speculation in the works of Daniel von Czepko
Masterpieces of the Orient
Anderson, G. L. (George Lincoln), 1920- ed
1961-01-01T00:00:00Z
Oriental literature,Literatura inglesa
The Near East. The golden odes (Muallaqat). The wandering king (Muallaqa of Imru-al-Qays) -- Whom the gods loved? (Muallaqa of Tarafa) -- The centenarian (Muallaqa of Labid) -- The black knight (Muallaqa of Antara) -- The book of kings (Sháhnáma) : the story of Bízhan and Manízha / Firdausí -- The stream of days / Taha Hussein -- India. The blessed Lord's song (Bhagavad gita) -- Shakuntala / Kalidasa -- The financial expert / R.K. Narayan -- China. Selections / Chuang-tzu -- Poems / Po Chü-i -- Monkey (Hsi yu chi) / Wu Ch'eng-en -- The travels of Lao Ts'an (Lao-ts'an yu-chi) / Liu T'ieh-yün -- Japan. Life in a ten-foot square hut (Hojoki) / Kamo-no Chomei -- Tales of the middle counselor of the embankment (Tsutsumi chunagon monogatari) : The lady who loved worms (Mushi mezuru himegimi) -- Tales of the Heike (Heike monogatari) -- Five no plays : Atsumori ; The dwarf trees (Hachi no ki) ; The heavenly robe of feathers (Hagoromo) ; Kagekiyo ; Tsunemasa / Seami Motokiyo -- Twenty-five haiku / Basho and others -- Rashomon / Akutagawa Ryunosuke -- In a grove (Yabu no naka) / Akutagawa Ryunosuke
Occasions in a world
Houston, Peyton, author
1969-01-01T00:00:00Z
null
85 pages ; 26 cm,The eye: the phoenix -- Eden poems -- Aspects -- Process of possible -- Dealing with diverse -- The box of chessman -- Burned houses -- The window -- The way of it -- Sky: clouds: birds: angels -- Shadow and object -- Infinite regress for Chuang Tzu -- The education of starlight -- Graveyard: Cape Cod -- Hilltop farm -- Variations upon a theme of Heraclitus -- Bear poem -- Ohio: 1919 -- Recollections of ocean -- In McKelvy's woods -- Daughter and father -- The children: the boat: you and I -- Evolutionary reference -- Two poems on one matter -- Compass iron -- Big bang -- The shell of mind -- A ring of changes for Jonathan Williams -- Woodpecker silence -- Alternative considerations in the same colors -- Comment on flood conditions -- Thinking of owls -- A matter of directness -- Beyond Bethlehem -- What April tells everybody -- All again you -- Warm wind in March -- The mirror -- Caught song -- The quietness -- The seeing -- The singleness -- A word for Erigena -- Crabapple on Cognewaugh -- Arrangements for a meeting -- The gardens -- A matter of unicorns: poem for my sons -- The answer of Pelops -- Meeting friends in autumn -- Venus considered as a planet -- Indian rock -- To Peter Yates: aetat fifty -- Noah
Communication and culture in ancient India and China
Oliver, Robert T. (Robert Tarbell), 1909-2000
1971-01-01T00:00:00Z
Communication -- India,Communication -- China,15.75 history of Asia,Communication,Oudheid,Communication -- Inde,Communication -- Chine,Culture -- Inde,Culture -- Chine,China,India
xii, 312 pages 24 cm,The author explores questions which are answerable only as oral communication is considered in relation to philosophy and social customs. An examination of the relationship between culture and rhetoric, East and West, opens the book. The rhetorical milieu of India, its philosophy, social system, and uses of speech, leads to a probing of the caste system and speech of the Brahmins, Hinduism and other pre-Buddhistic rhetorical theories, including a study of the Upanishads and forms of debate, are considered along with the influence of Gautama Buddha. The rhetorical milieu of China is examined, together with analysis of the earliest classic, an anthology of political speeches. Chinese rhetoric of etiquette is compared with Hindu caste rhetoric. The rhetorical systems of Confucius and Mencius are evaluated in detail, after which the motivational rhetorics of Mo-Tze and Hsüntze are examined. Han Fei-Tzu's totalitarian rhetoric is contrasted with the Taoist rhetorics of Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu. The book concludes with a chapter on characteristics of Asian rhetoric, where the author compares rhetorics of East and West.--From publishers' description,Includes bibliographical references (pages 291-304) and index,1. Culture and rhetoric -- 2. India: the rhetorical milieu -- 3. Caste as rhetoric in being -- 4. Hinduism and other pre-Buddhistic rhetorical theories -- 5. The rhetorical influence of Gautama Buddha -- 6. China: the rhetorical milieu -- 7. The book of history: an anthology of speeches -- 8. Confucius: the authority of tradition -- 9. The rhetoric of behavior: ceremony, etiquette, and methodology -- 10. Mencius: the bold prophet -- 11. Theories of human motivation -- 12. The legalistic rhetoricians -- 13. Rhetorical implications of Taoism -- 14. Characteristics of Asian rhetoric,commitment to retain 20151204
A source book in Chinese philosophy
Chan, Wing-tsit, 1901-1994, comp. and tr
1963-01-01T00:00:00Z
Philosophy -- China -- History -- Sources,Philosophy, Chinese,Philosophie -- Chine -- Histoire -- Sources,Philosophie chinoise -- Collections,Philosophy,Philosophie,Chinese filosofie,China,Quelle
xxv, 856 pages 25 cm,Anthology tracing the entire history of Chinese philosophy from Confucianism to contemporary Communism,Includes bibliographical references (pages 793-811),Part I -- Chronology of dynasties -- Chronology of philosophers -- 1. The growth of humanism -- Ancestors and the Lord on High -- The mandate of heaven, ancestors and virtue -- The "Great Norm" -- Spirits, the soul and immortality -- 2. The humanism of Confucius -- Selections from the Analects -- 3. Idealistic Confucianism: Mencius -- The Book of Mencius: Book 6, part 1 -- Additional selections -- 4. Moral and social programs: The Great Learning -- 5. Spiritual dimensions: The Doctrine of the Mean -- 6. Naturalistic Confucianism: Hsun Tzu -- "On Nature" -- "On the Rectification of Names" -- "The Nature of Man is Evil" -- 7. The natural way of Lao Tzu -- The Lao-Tzu (Tao-te ching) -- 8. The mystical way of Chuang Tzu -- "The Equality of Things" -- "The Great Teacher" -- Additional selections: (1) The nature and reality of Tao -- (2) Tao everywhere -- (3) Constant flux -- (4) Evolution -- (5) Tao as transformation and one -- (6) Nature vs. man -- (7) Calmness of mind -- (8) Sageliness and kingliness -- (9) The equality of life and death -- (10) Subjectivity -- (11) The inner spirit -- 9. Mo Tzu's doctrines of universal love, heaven and social welfare -- A. "Universal Love, pt. 2" -- "The Will of Heaven, pt. 1" -- "Attack on Fatalism, pt. 1" -- Additional selections: (1) Utilitarianism -- (2) The condemnation of war -- (3) Condemnation of wasteful musical activities -- (4) Condemnation of elaborate funerals -- (5) Elevating the worthy to government positions -- (6) Agreement with the Superior -- 10. Debates on metaphysical concepts: Logicians -- A. paradoxes of Hui Shih and the Debaters -- B. Kung-sun Lung Tzu (1) "On the White Horse" -- (2) "On Marks (chih) and Things" -- (3) "On the Explanation of Change" -- (4) "On Hardness and Whiteness" -- (5) "On Names and Actuality" -- 11. The Yin Yang School -- (1) Tsou Yen -- (2) Yin and Yang -- (3) The Five Agents -- 12. Legalism -- (1) Synthesis of legalistic doctrine -- (2) Interpretations of Tao -- 13. Philosophy of change -- (1) Selections from the commentaries -- (2) Selections from the "Appended Remarks," pt. 1 -- (3) Selections from the "Appended Remarks,",pt. 2 -- (4) Selections from "Remarks on Certain Tri-grams" -- 14. Yin Yang Confuciansim: Tung Chung-shu -- A.A profound examination o names and appellations -- B. Meaning of the Five Agents -- C. "The Correspondence of Man and the Numerical Categories of Heaven" -- D. "Things of the Same Kind Activate Each Other" -- E. Additional selections: (1) The Origin (Yuan) -- (2) Humanity and righteousness -- (3) Humanity and wisdom -- (4) Historical cycles -- 15. Taoistic Confucianism: Yang Hsiung -- 16. The Naturalism of Wang Ch'ung -- A. "On Original Nature" -- B. "On Spontaneity" -- C. "A Treatise on Death" -- D. Additional selections: (1) Accident vs. necessity -- (2) Strange phenomena -- (3) Fate -- (4) The equality of past and present -- 17. Taoism of Huai-nan Tzu -- A. The "Yang Chu Chapter" -- B. The Lieh Tzu: (1) Skepticism -- (2) Fatalism -- 19. Neo-Taoism -- (1) Wang Pi's Simple Exemplifications of the Principles of the Book of Changes -- (2) Wang Pi's Commentary on the Book of Changes -- (3) Wang Pi's Commentary on the Lao Tzu -- (4) Ho Yen's Treatise on Tao -- (5) Ho Yen's Treatise on the Nameless -- (6) Kui Hsaing's Commentary on the Chuang Tzu -- 20. Seven early Buddhist schools -- 21. Seng-chao's Doctrine of Reality -- (1) "Immutability of Things" -- (2) "Emptiness of the Unreal" -- 22. Philosophy of emptiness: Chi-tsang of the Three-Treatise School -- (1) Two levels of truth -- (2) Causes and effects -- (3) Four subsidiary causes -- (4) Existence, nonexistence, and emptiness -- (5) Substance and function -- 23. Buddhist idealism: Hsuan-tsang of the Consciousness-Only School -- (1) Nonexistence of the Self -- (2) nonexistence of Dharmas -- (3) First transformation of consciousness -- (4) Second transformation of consciousness -- (5) Third transformation of consciousness -- (6) Consciousness-only -- (7) Nine objections to the consciousness-only doctrine and their answers -- (8) Three natures of being, three natures of non-being and thusness -- 24. T'ien-t'ai philosophy of perfect harmony (1) Various aspects of the mind -- (2) Three ages as an instant; Substance and function -- (3) Functions of concentration and insight -- 25. One-and-all philosophy: Fa-tsang of the Hua-yen School -- A. Treatise on the Golden Lion -- B. Hundred Gates to the Sea of Ideas of the Flowery Splendor Scripture -- (1) "All that come into existence through causation end together in quiescence" -- (2) "Harmonious Combination and Spontaneity" -- 26. Zen (Ch'an) School of Sudden Enlightenment -- A. Platform Scripture -- B. Recorded Conversations of Shen-hui -- C. Recorded Conversations of Zen Master I-hsuan -- 27. Revival of Confucianism: Han Yu and Li Ao -- (1) An Inquiry on Human Nature -- (2) An Inquiry on the Way (Tao) -- (3) The Recovery of the Nature -- 28. The Neo-Confucian metaphysics and ethics in Chou Tun-I -- (1) An Explanation of the Diagram of the Great Ultimate -- (2) Penetrating the Book of Changes -- 29. Numerical and objective tendencies in Shao Yung -- Supreme Principles Governing the World,30. Chang Tsai's philosophy of material force -- A. The Western Inscription -- B. Correcting Youthful Ignorance: (1) "Great Harmony" -- (2) "Enlightenment Resulting from Sincerity" -- 31. The idealistic tendency in Ch'eng Hao -- (1) "On Understanding the Nature of Jen (Humanity)" -- (2) "Reply to Master Heng-ch'u's Letter on Calming Human Nature" -- (3) Selected sayings -- 32. The rationalistic tendency in Ch'eng I -- (1) "A Treatise on What Yen Tzu Loved to Learn" -- (2) "Letters in Reply to Yang Shih's Letter on the Western Inscription," -- Selected sayings -- 33. The unity of mind and principle in Lu Hsiang-shan -- 34. Great synthesis in Chu His -- A. Treatises: (1) "A Treatise on Jen," -- (2) "A Treatise on Che'eng Ming-tao's Discourse on the Nature," -- (3) "First Letter to the Gentlemen of Hunan on Equilibrium and Harmony," -- (4) "A Treatise on the Examination of the Mind," -- B. Complete Works: (1) Moral Cultivation -- (2) Relation between the Nature of Man and Things and Their Destiny -- (3) Nature of Man and Things -- (4) Nature of man and the Nature of Things Compared -- (5) Physical Nature -- (6) Destiny -- (7) Mind -- (8) T Mind, Nature and Feelings -- (9) Jen -- (10) Principle (Li) and Material Force (Ch'i) -- (11) Great Ultimate -- (12) Heaven and Earth -- (13) Spiritual Beings and Spiritual Forces -- (14) Buddhism -- 35. Dynamic idealism in Wang Yang-ming -- A. Inquiry on the Great Learning -- B. Instructions for Practical Living -- 36. The materialism of Wang Fu-chih -- (1) World of concrete things -- (2) Substance and function -- (3) Being and non-being -- (4) Principle and material force -- (5) Unceasing growth and man's nature and destiny -- (6) principle of nature and human desires -- (7) History and government -- 37. Practical Confucianism in Yen Yuan -- (1) In defense of physical nature -- (2) The identity of principle and material force -- (3) Learning through experience -- 38. Tai Chen's philosophy of principle as order -- (1) On principle (Li) -- (2) On nature -- (3) On capacity -- (4) On humanity, righteousness, propriety and wisdom -- (5) On the variety of circumstances -- 39. K'ang Yu-wei's philosophy of Great Unity -- (1) The Three Ages -- (2) Confuc
Masterpieces of the Orient
Anderson, G. L. (George Lincoln), 1920- editor
1961-01-01T00:00:00Z
Oriental literature -- Translations into English,Oriental literature
396 pages ; 22 cm,Selected readings from the poetry, prose, and drama of the Near and Far East, with background introductions,The Near East. The golden odes (Muʻallaqāt). The wandering king (Muʻallaqa of Imruʼ-al-Qays) -- Whom the gods loved? (Muʻallaqa of Tarafa) -- The centenarian (Muʻallaqa of Labīd) -- The black knight (Muʻallaqa of ʻAntara) -- The book of kings (Sháhnáma) : the story of Bízhan and Manízha / Firdausí -- The stream of days / Tāhā Hussein -- India. The blessed Lord's song (Bhagavad gītā) -- Shakuntalā / Kālidāsa -- The financial expert / R.K. Narayan -- China. Selections / Chuang-tzu -- Poems / Po Chü-i -- Monkey (Hsi yu chi) / Wu Ch'eng-en -- The travels of Lao Ts'an (Lao-ts'an yu-chi) / Liu T'ieh-yün -- Japan. Life in a ten-foot square hut (Hōjōki) / Kamo-no Chōmei -- Tales of the middle counselor of the embankment (Tsutsumi chūnagon monogatari) : The lady who loved worms (Mushi mezuru himegimi) -- Tales of the Heike (Heike monogatari) -- Five nō plays : Atsumori ; The dwarf trees (Hachi no ki) ; The heavenly robe of feathers (Hagoromo) ; Kagekiyo ; Tsunemasa / Seami Motokiyo -- Twenty-five haiku / Bashō and others -- Rashōmon / Akutagawa Ryūnosuke -- In a grove (Yabu no naka) / Akutagawa Ryūnosuke,"Bibliographical note": page 396
Toshihiko Izutsu Sufism And Taoism
Toshihiko Izutsu
1984-01-01T00:00:00Z
sufism,taoism
In this deeply learned work, Toshihiko Izutsu compares the metaphysical and mystical thought-systems of Sufism and Taoism and discovers that, although historically unrelated, the two share features and patterns which prove fruitful for a transhistorical dialogue. His original and suggestive approach opens new doors in the study of comparative philosophy and mysticism. Izutsu begins with Ibn 'Arabi, analyzing and isolating the major ontological concepts of this most challenging of Islamic thinkers. Then, in the second part of the book, Izutsu turns his attention to an analysis of parallel concepts of two great Taoist thinkers, Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. Only after laying bare the fundamental structure of each world view does Izutsu embark, in the final section of the book, upon a comparative analysis. Only thus, he argues, can he be sure to avoid easy and superficial comparisons. Izutsu maintains that both the Sufi and Taoist world views are based on two pivots—the Absolute Man and the Perfect Man—with a whole system of oncological thought being developed between these two pivots. Izutsu discusses similarities in these ontological systems and advances the hypothesis that certain patterns of mystical and metaphysical thought may be shared even by systems with no apparent historical connection. This second edition of Sufism and Taoism is the first published in the United States. The original edition, published in English and in Japan, was prized by the few English-speaking scholars who knew of it as a model in the field of comparative philosophy. Making available in English much new material on both sides of its comparison, Sufism and Taoism richly fulfills Izutsu's motivating desire "to open a new vista in the domain of comparative philosophy."
Full text of "Toshihiko Izutsu Sufism And Taoism" Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "Toshihiko Izutsu Sufism And Taoism" See other formats Jc l/U^.dtjcOls jAflC^jl' liPj U*3Uj A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts Toshihiko Izutsu -X0»\jLP )s>ja€. 0^dk«d«4 j Jb,jO [ £»»*• J Ij^ijj^lll^V ^l-bjJTy J^UJ^b>:ib J. v jl •Jb^f JU^l^j a : jdj^J : JI tfS-AXfk •aij'^;' J-biiVj ay^rju^j )J *+*)j+**j*Z.\\a+jL U»»L^UI1<j — *j \ 3 "Professor Izutsu's work is a pioneering attempt to bring into focus the shareable philosophical concerns of two seemingly unrelated landmarks in religious thought. His method is suggestive, interpretation new and bold, and material used important for further research. His book is useful to students of comparative religion, philosophy of religion, cul- tural anthropology, Asian thought and religion, and Islamic and Taoist studies." — Tu Wei-ming "[This book] carries out a comparison in depth between Islamic and Chinese thought for the first time in modern scholarship. . . .Since this book appeared it has influenced every work on Ibn Arab! and meta- physical Sufism . . . [and] any cursory study of Sufism during the last fifteen years will reveal the extent of Izutsu's influence. — Seyyed Hossein Nasr University of California Press Berkeley 94720 ISBN 0-S2D-CISabM-l ■1H SUFISM AND TAOISM A Comparative Study of y v 5 Key Philosophical Concepts . Toshihiko Izutsu UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley — Los Angeles — London 3 7001 01726025 0 SUFISM AND TAOISM: A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts by Toshihiko Izutsu University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England Copyright ©1983 by Toshihiko Izutsu First published 1983 by Iwanami Shoten, Publishers, Tokyo This edition is published by The University of California Press, 1984, by arrangement with Iwanami Shoten, Publishers Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Izutsu, Toshihiko, 1914— Sufism and Taoism. Rev. ed. of: A comparative study of the key philo- sophical concepts in Sufism and Taoism. 1966-67. 1 . Sufism. 2. Taoism. 3. Ibn al- Arabi, 1165-1240. 4. Lao-tzu. 5. Chuang-tzu. I. Title. BP 189.1% 1984 181 '.074 84-78 ISBN 0-520-05264-1 Printed in the United States of America 23456789 Contents Preface by T. Izutsu Introduction 1 Notes 4 Part I - Ibn ‘Arab! I Dream and Reality 7 Notes 21 II The Absolute in its Absoluteness 23 Notes 36 III The Self-knowledge of Man 39 Notes 46 IV Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion 48 Notes 65 V Metaphysical Perplexity 68 Notes 86 VI The Shadow of the Absolute 89 Notes 96 VII The Divine Names 99 Notes 107 VIII Allah and the Lord 110 Notes 115 IX Ontological Mercy 116 Notes 138 X The Water of Life 141 Notes 150 XI The Self-manifestation of the Absolute 152 Notes 157 XII Permanent Archetypes 159 Notes 192 XIII Creation 197 Notes 215 XIV Man as Microcosm 218 Notes 243 XV The Perfect Man as an Individual 247 Notes 261 XVI Apostle, Prophet, and Saint 263 Notes 272 XVII The Magical Power of the Perfect Man 275 Notes 282 Part II - Lao-Tzu & Chuang-Tzu I Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu 287 Notes 297 II From Mythopoiesis to Metaphysics 300 Notes 308 III Dream and Reality 310 Notes 317 IV Beyond This and That 319 Notes 329 V The Birth of a New Ego 332 Notes 350 VI Against Essentialism 354 Notes 373 VII The Way 375 Notes 393 VIII The Gateway of Myriad Wonders 398 Notes 413 IX Determinism and Freedom 418 Notes 427 X Absolute Reversal of Values 430 Notes 442 XI The Perfect Man 444 Notes 454 XII Homo Politicus 457 Notes 465 Part III - A Comparative Reflection I Methodological Preliminaries 469 Note 473 II The Inner Transformation of Man 474 Note 478 III The Multi stratified Structure of Reality 479 IV Essence and Existence 482 V The Self-evolvement of Existence 486 Preface This is originally a book which I wrote more than fifteen years ago, when I was teaching Islamic philosophy at the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. At that time I was becoming conscious of myself gradually getting into a new phase of my intellectual life, groping my way towards a new type of Oriental philosophy based on a series of rigorously philological, comparative studies of the key terms of various philosophical traditions in the Near, Middle, and Far East. The present work was the very first product of my endeavour in this direction. The book was subsequently published in Japan in two separate volumes in 1966—1967, under the title A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts in Sufism and Taoism (with the subtitle ‘Ibn ‘Arab! and Lao-tzu - Chuang-tzu’) as a publication of the Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, Keio University, Tokyo, under the directorship of the late Professor Nobuhiro Matsumoto. A growing demand for a new, revised edition made me decide to republish the book while I was in Iran. Printed in England, it had been scheduled to come out in Tehran towards the end of the year 1978, when the sudden outbreak of the Khomeini ‘revolution’ rendered its publication impossible. Thus it was that, by a strange working of fate, the book - completely revised, but still in the form of galley proofs - came back with its author once again to Japan, the place where it had first seen the light of day. In the process of revising the book in its entirety, I did my best to eliminate all the defects and imperfections that had come to my notice in the meantime. But, of course, there are natural limits to such work of correction and amendment. I only hope that this old book of mine in a new form, despite many mistakes and shortcomings that must still be there, might at least make a modest contribution towards the development of ‘meta- historical dialogues’ among representatives of the various 4m, philosophical traditions in the East and West, a special kind of philosophical dialogue of which the world today seems to be in urgent need. It is my pleasant duty to express my deep gratitude to the Iwanami Shoten, Publishers, for having undertaken the publication of this book. My thanks go in particular to Mr Atsushi Aiba (of the same publishing house) who has spared no effort in smoothing the way for the realization of this project. I take this occasion to thank also the authorities of my alma mater, Keio University, from whom, as I recall now, I derived inestimable encouragement while I was engaged in writing this book in its original form. T.Izutsu October 4, 1981 Kamakura, Japan Introduction As indicated by the title and the subtitle, the main purpose of the present work in its entirety is to attempt a structural comparison between the world-view of Sufism as represented by Ibn ‘ Arabi and the world-view of Taoism as represented by Lao-tzu and Chuang- tzu. I am aware of the fact that this kind of study has a number of pitfalls. A comparison made in a casual way between two thought- systems which have no historical connection may become superfi- cial observations of resemblances and differences lacking in scientific rigor. In order to avoid falling into this error, an effort will be made to lay bare the fundamental structure of each of the two world-views independently and as rigorously as possible before proceeding to any comparative considerations. With this in view, the First Part will be entirely devoted to an attempt at isolating and analyzing the major ontological concepts which underlie the philosophical world-view of Ibn ‘Arabi, while in the second part exactly the same kind of analytic study will be made concerning the world-view of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, in such a way that both parts may constitute two entirely independent studies, one of Ibn ‘Arabi and the other of ancient Taoism. Only in the third part will an attempt be made to compare, and co-ordinate, the key- concepts of these two world-views which have been previously analyzed without any regard to similarities and differences between them. However this may be, the dominant motive running through the entire work is the desire to open a new vista in the domain of comparative philosophy and mysticism. A good starting point for such a comparison is provided by the fact that both world-views are based on two pivots, the Absolute and the Perfect Man, 1 a whole system of ontological thought being developed in each case between these two poles. It is to be noted that as an ontological structure this is nothing peculiar to Sufism and Taoism. The opposition of the Absolute and the Perfect Man in various forms as the two pivots of a world-view is a basic pattern common to many types of mysticism that have 2 Sufism and Taoism developed in the world in widely different places and ages. And a comparative consideration of a number of systems sharing the same broad pattern and differing from each other in details both of origin and historical circumstance would seem to prove very fruitful in preparing the ground for that which Professor Henry Corbin has aptly called ‘un dialogue dans la metahistoire’ , meta-historical or transhistorical dialogue, and which is so urgently needed in the present situation of the world. Referring to the fact that Ibn ‘Arab! has evoked so much discus- sion and controversy, unprecedented in the history of Islamic thought, and attributing this fact to the nature of Islam itself which combines two Truths: haqiqah ‘the truth based on Intellection’ and shari'ah ‘the truth based on Revelation’, Dr Osman Yahya makes the following interesting remark 2 : le cas d’Ibn ‘ Arabi ne se poserait pas avec autant d’acuite dans une tradition de pure metaphysique comme le taoism ou le vedanta ou la personality du Maitre . . . eut pu s’epanouir librement, ni non plus dans une tradition de pure loi positive ou son cas n’eut meme pas pu etre pose puisqu’il eut ete refuse par la communaute tout entiere, irremediablement. Mais le destin a voulu placer Ibn ‘Arabi a la croisee des chemins pour degager, en sa personne, la veritable vocation de l’lslam. There can be no denying that Lao-tzu’s metaphysics of Tao presents in its abysmal depth of thought a number of striking similarities to Ibn ‘ArabFs conception of Being. This is the more interesting because, as I shall indicate in the Second Part, Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu represent a culmination point of a spiritual tradi- tion which is historically quite different from Sufism. We must, as I have remarked above, guard ourselves against making too easy comparisons, but we must also admit, I believe, that a comparative study of this kind, if conducted carefully, will at least furnish us with a common ground upon which an intercultural dialogue may fruitfully be opened. In accordance with the general plan above outlined, the first half of the present book will be concerned exclusively with an analytic study of the key-concepts which constitute the ontological basis of Ibn ‘ArabFs world-view. This world-view, as I have said, turns round two pivots, the Absolute and the Perfect Man, in the form of an ontological Descent and Ascent. In describing this cosmic pro- cess Ibn ‘Arabi develops at every stage a number of concepts of decisive importance. It is these concepts that the present work intends to analyze. It purports to analyze methodically the ontologi- cal aspect of Ibn ‘ArabFs mystical philosophy regarding it as a system of key-concepts that relate to ‘being’ and existence’. Ontology, we must admit, is but one aspect of the thought of this extraordinary man. It has other no less important aspects such as Introduction 3 psychology, epistemology, symbolism, etc., which, together, consti- tute an original and profound world-view. But the concept of Being, as we shall see, is the very basis of his philosophical thinking, and his theory of Being is doubtless of such originality and of such a far- reaching historical importance that it calls for separate treatment. At the very outset I would like to make it clear that this is not a philologically exhaustive study of Ibn ‘Arabi. On the contrary, the present study is based, as far as concerns Ibn ‘Arabi himself, almost exclusively on only one of his works: ‘The Bezels of Wisdom’ or Fu$ii$ al-Hikam. It is essentially an analysis of the major ontological concepts which Ibn ‘Arabi develops in this celebrated book that has often been described as his opus magnum, and has been studied and commented upon by so many people throughout the centuries. 3 So on the material side, the present work does not claim to offer anything new. From the beginning it was not my intention to be exhaustive. My intention was rather to penetrate the ‘life-breath’ itself, the vivify- ing spirit and the very existential source of the philosophizing drive of this great thinker, and to pursue from that depth the formation of the whole ontological system step by step as he himself develops it. In order to understand the thought of a man like Ibn ‘Arab!, one must grasp the very spirit which pervades and vivifies the whole structure; otherwise everything will be lost. All considerations from outside are sure to go wide of the mark. Even on an intellectual and philosophical level, one must try to understand the thought from inside and reconstruct it in one’s self by what might be called an existential empathy. For such a purpose, to be exhaustive, though of course desirable, is not the first requirement. Ibn ‘Arab! was not merely a profound thinker; he was an unusu- ally prolific writer, too. The authorities differ among themselves on the exact number. Al-Sha‘rani, to give an example, notes that the Master wrote about 400 works. 4 The repertoire general of the above-mentioned bibliographical work by Dr Osman Yahya lists as many as 856 works, although the number includes doubtful works and those that are evidently spurious. In a situation like this, and for purposes like ours, it is not only irrelevant but, even more, positively dangerous to try to note every- thing the author has said and written on each subject over a period of many years, For one might easily drown oneself in the vast ocean of concepts, images and symbols that are scattered about in utter disorder throughout the hundreds of his works, and lose sight of the main line or lines of thought and the guiding spirit that underlies the whole structure. For the purpose of isolating the latter from the disorderly (as it looks at first sight) mass of symbols and images, it 4 Sufism and Taoism will be more wise and perhaps, more profitable to concentrate on a work in which he presents his thought in its maturest form . 5 In any case, the present work consists exclusively of an analysis of the ‘Bezels of Wisdom’ except in a few places where I shall refer to one of his smaller works for elucidation of some of the important points . 6 As remarked above, Fu$us al-Hikam has been studied in the past by many people in many different forms. And yet I hope that my own analysis of the same book has something to contribute toward a better understanding of the great Master who has been considered by many people one of the profoundest, but at the same time, obscurest thinkers Islam has ever produced. Notes 1. In Ibn ‘ArabFs system, the Absolute is called haqq (Truth or Reality) and the Perfect Man is called insan kamil meaning literally ‘perfect man’. In Taoism, the Absolute is tao and the Perfect Man is sheng jen (Sacred Man or Saint), chert jen (True Man), etc. I have dealt with the relationship between the Absolute and the Perfect Man in Taoism in particular in my Eranos lecture for 1967: ‘The Absolute and the Perfect Man in Taoism’, Eranos- Jahrbuch , XXXVI, Zurich, 1968. 2. Histoire et classification de I’ceuvre d’Ibn ' Arab f, 2 vols. 1964, Damas, avant- propos, pp. 18-19. 3. Dr Osman Yahya lists more than 100 commentaries on Fkjzzj al-Hikam, cf. op. cit., I, p. 17, pp. 241-257. 4. al-Sha‘rani, al-Yawaqit wa-al-Jawahir, Cairo, 1305 A.H., vol. I., p. 10. 5. Ibn ‘Arabi (born in Spain in 1165 A.D.) died in Damascus in 1240/ Fujiis al-Hikam was written in 1229, ten years before his death. As regards his life anahis works the best introduction, to my knowledge, is found in Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s Three Muslim Sages, Cambridge, Mass., 1964, pp. 84-121. 6. As a concrete illustration of the oft-repeated attempt at bringing philosophical coherence and order into the world-view of the Master, I shall in most cases give al-QashanFs comments side by side with Ibn ‘ArabFs words. ‘Abd al-Razzaq al- Qashani (d. 1330) is one of the greatest figures in the school of Ibn ‘Arabi. The edition used in the present book is Sharh al-Qashani ‘ala Fu$u$ al-Hikam, Cairo, 1321 A.H. For the interpretation of difficult passages of the text I have also used Qayjari and Jami. I Dream and Reality So-called ‘reality’ , the sensible world which surrounds us and which we are accustomed to regard as ‘reality’, is, for Ibn ‘Arab!, but a dream. We perceive by the senses a large number of things, distin- guish them one from another, put them in order by our reason, and thus end up by establishing something solid around us. We call that construct ‘reality’ and do not doubt that it is real. According to Ibn ‘Arabi, however, that kind of ‘reality’ is not reality in the true sense of the word. In other terms, such a thing is not Being ( wujiid ) as it really is. Living as we do in this phenomenal world, Being in its metaphysical reality is no less imperceptible to us than phenomenal things are in their phenomenal reality to a man who is asleep and dreaming of them. Quoting the famous Tradition, ‘All men are asleep (in this world); only when they die, do they wake up,’ he remarks: The world is an illusion; it has no real existence. And this is what is meant by ‘imagination’ ( khayal ). For you just imagine that it (i.e ., the world) is an autonomous reality quite different from and indepen- dent of the absolute Reality, while in truth it is nothing of the sort 1 . . . . Know that you yourself are an imagination. And everything that you perceive and say to yourself, ‘this is not me’, is also an imagina- tion. So that the whole world of existence is imagination within imagination . 2 What, then, should we do, if what we have taken for ‘reality’ is but a dream, not the real form of Being, but something illusory? Should we abandon once for all this illusory world and go out of it in search of an entirely different world, a really real world? Ibn ‘Arab! does not take such a position, because, in his view, ‘dream’, ‘illusion’ or ‘imagination’ does not mean something valueless or false; it simply means ‘being a symbolic reflection of something truly real’. The so-called ‘reality’ certainly is not the true Reality, but this must not be taken to mean that it is merely a vain and groundless thing. The so-called ‘reality’, though it is not the Reality itself, vaguely and indistinctively reflects the latter on the level of imagina- tion. It is, in other words, a symbolic representation of the Reality. 8 Sufism and Taoism Dream and Reality 9 All it needs is that we should interpret it in a proper way just as we usually interpret our dreams in order to get to the real state of affairs beyond the dream-symbols. Referring to the above-quoted Tradition, ‘All men are asleep; only when they die, do they wake up’, Ibn ‘Arab! says that ‘the Prophet called attention by these words to the fact that whatever man perceives in this present world is to him as a dream is to a man who dreams, and that it must be interpreted’ . 3 What is seen in a dream is an ‘imaginal’ form of the Reality, not the Reality itself. All we have to do is take it back to its original and true status. This is what is meant by ‘interpretation’ ( ta’wil ). The expression: ‘to die and wake up’ appearing in the Tradition is for Ibn ‘ Arabi nothing other than a metaphorical reference to the act of interpretation understood in this sense. Thus ‘death’ does not mean here death as a biological event. It means a spiritual event consisting in a man’s throwing off the shackles of the sense and reason, stepping over the confines of the phenomenal, and seeing through the web of phenomenal things what lies beyond. It means, in short, the mystical experience of ‘self-annihilation’ (Jana). What does a man see when he wakes up from his phenomenal sleep, opens his real eyes, and looks around? What kind of world does he observe then - that is, in the self-illuminating state of ‘subsistence’ ( baqa’)l To describe that extraordinary world and elucidate its metaphysical-ontological make-up, that is the main task of Ibn ‘Arabi. The description of the world as he observes it in the light of his mystical experiences constitutes his philosophical world-view. What, then, is that Something which hides itself behind the veil of the phenomenal, making the so-called ‘reality’ a grand-scale net- work of symbols vaguely and obscurely pointing to that which lies beyond them? The answer is given immediately. It is the Absolute, the real or absolute Reality which Ibn ‘Arab! calls al-haqq . Thus the so-called/ reality’ is but a dream, but it is not a sheer illusion. It is a particular appearance of the absolute Reality, a particular form of its self-manifestation (tajalli). It is a dream having a metaphysical basis. ‘The world of being and becoming ( kawn ) is an imagination’ , he says, ‘but it is, in truth, Reality itself’. 4 Thus the world of being and becoming, the so-called ‘reality’, consisting of various forms, properties and states, is in itself a colorful fabric of fantasy and imagination, but it indicates at the same time nothing other than Reality - if only one knows how to take these forms and properties, not in themselves, but as so many manifestations of the Reality. One who can do this is a man who has attained the deepest mysteries of the Way (tariqah). Prophets are visionaries. By nature they tend to see strange visions which do not fall within the capacity of an ordinary man. These extraordinary visions are known as ‘veridical dreams’ ( ru’ya §adiqah ) and we readily recognize their symbolic nature. We ordi- narily admit without hesitation that a prophet perceives through and beyond his visions something ineffable, something of the true figure of the Absolute. In truth, however, not only such uncommon visions are symbolic ‘dreams’ for a prophet. To his mind everything he sees, everything with which he is in contact even in daily life is liable to assume a symbolic character. ‘Everything he perceives in the state of wakefulness is of such a nature, though there is, cer- tainly, a difference in the states’. 5 The formal difference between the state of sleep (in which he sees things by his faculty of imagina- tion) and the state of wakefulness (in which he perceives things by his senses) is kept intact, yet in both states the things perceived are equally symbols. 6 Thus, a prophet who lives his life in such an unusual spiritual state may be said to be in a dream within a dream all through his life. ‘The whole of his life is nothing but a dream within a dream’. 7 What Ibn ‘Arabi means by this proposition is this: since the phenomenal world itself is in truth a ‘dream’ 8 (although ordinary people are not aware of its being a ‘dream’), the prophet who perceives unusual symbols in the midst of that general ‘dream’ -context may be com- pared to a man who is dreaming in a dream. This, however, is the deepest understanding of the situation, to which most people have no access, for they are ordinarily convinced that the phenomenal world is something materially solid; they do not notice its symbolic nature. Not even prophets themselves - not all of them - have a clear understanding of this matter. It is a deep mystery of Being accessible only to a perfect prophet like Muhammad. Ibn ‘Arabi explains this point taking as an illus- tration the contrast between the prophet Yusuf (Joseph) and the Prophet Muhammad regarding their respective depth of understanding. It is related in the Qoran (XII, 4) that Joseph as a small boy once saw in a dream eleven stars, and the sun and the moon bowing down before him. This, Ibn ‘Arab! observes, was an event which occurred only in Joseph’s imagination {khayal). Joseph saw in his imagina- tion his brothers in the form of stars, his father in the form of the sun, and his mother in the form of the moon. Many years later, before Joseph, who was now a ‘mighty prince’ in Egypt, his brothers fell down prostrate At that moment Joseph said to himself, ‘This is the interpreted meaning ( ta’wil ) of my dream of long ago. My Lord has made it true!’ (XII, 99). The pivotal point, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, lies in the last phrase: 10 Sufism and Taoism ‘has made it true’. 9 It means: ‘God has made to appear in the sensible world what was in the past in the form of imagination’. 10 This implies that the realization or materialization in a sensible form of what he had seen in a dream was, in the understanding of Joseph, the final and ultimate realization. He thought that the things left the domain of ‘dream’ and came out to the level of ‘reality’. Against this Ibn ‘Arab! remarks that, as regards being sensible, there is fundamentally no difference at all between ‘dream’ and ‘reality’; what Joseph saw in his dream was from the beginning sensible, for ‘it is the function of imagination to produce sensible things ( mahsusat ), nothing else’. 11 The position of Muhammad goes deeper than this. Viewed from the standpoint of the prophet Muhammad, the following is the right interpretation of what happened to Joseph concerning his dream. One has to start from the recognition that life itself is a dream. In this big dream which is his life and of which Joseph himself is not conscious, he sees a particular dream (the eleven stars, etc.). From this particular dream he wakes up. That is to say, he dreams in his big dream that he wakes up. Then he interprets his own (particular) dream (the stars = his brothers, etc.). In truth, this is still a continua- tion of his big dream. He dreams himself interpreting his own dream. Then the event which he thus interprets comes true as a sensible fact. Thereupon Joseph thinks that his interpretation has materialized and that his dream has definitely come to an end. He thinks that he stands now completely outside of his dream, while, in reality, he is still dreaming. He is not aware of the fact that he is dreaming. 12 The contrast between Muhammad and Joseph is conclusively summed up by al-Qashani in the following way: The difference between Muhammad and Joseph in regard to the depth of understanding consists in this. Joseph regarded the sensible forms existing in the outer world as ‘reality’ whereas, in truth, all forms that exist in imagination are (also) sensible without exception, for imagination ( khayal ) is a treasury of the sensible things. Every- thing that exists in imagination is a sensible form although it actually is not perceived by the senses. As for Muhammad, he regarded the sensible forms existing in the outer world also as products of imagina- tion (khayaliyah), nay even as imagination within imagination. This because he regarded the present world of ours as a dream while the only ‘reality’ (in the true sense of the word) was, in his view, the Absolute revealing itself as it really is in the sensible forms which are nothing but so many different loci of its self-manifestation. This point is understood only when one wakes up from the present life - which is a sleep of forgetfulness - after one dies to this world through self- annihilation in God. Dream and Reality 11 The basic idea which, as we have just observed, constitutes the very starting-point of Ibn ‘Arabi’s ontological thinking, namely, that so-called ‘reality’ is but a dream, suggests on the one hand that the world as we experience it under normal conditions is not in itself Reality, that it is an illusion, an appearance, an unreality. But neither does it mean, on the other hand, that the world of sensible things and events is nothing but sheer fantasy, a purely subjective projection of the mind. In Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, if ‘reality’ is an illusion, it is not a subjective illusion, but an ‘objective’ illusion; that is, an unreality standing on a firm ontological basis. And this is tan- tamount to saying that it is not an illusion at all, at least in the sense in which the word is commonly taken. In order that this point become clear, reference must be made to the ontological conception peculiar to Ibn ‘Arab! and his school of the ‘five planes of Being’ . The structure of these ‘planes’ (/ hadarat ) 13 is succinctly explained by Al-Qashani as follows. 14 In the Sufi world-view, five ‘worlds’ fawalim) or five basic planes of Being are distinguished, each one of them representing a Presence or an ontological mode of the absolute Reality in its self-manifestation. (1) The plane of the Essence ( dhat ), the world of the absolute non-manifestation ( al-ghayb al-mutlaq) or the Mystery of Mysteries. 15 (2) The plane of the Attributes and the Names, the Presence of Divinity ( uliihiyah ). 16 (3) The plane of the Actions, the Presence of Lordship (rubiibiyah) . (4) The plane of Images (amthal) and Imagination (khayal). 11 (5) The plane of the senses and sensible experience (mushahadah) . These five planes constitute among themselves an organic whole, the things of a lower plane serving as symbols or images for the things of the higher planes. Thus, according to al-Qashani, what- ever exists in the plane of ordinary reality (which is the lowest of all Divine Presences) is a symbol-exemplification (mithal) for a thing existing in the plane of Images, and everything that exists in the world of Images is a form reflecting a state of affairs in the plane of the Divine Names and Divine Attributes, while every Attribute is an aspect of the Divine Essence in the act of self-manifestation. Details about the five planes will be given in the following chap- ters. Suffice it here to note that the whole world of Being, in Ibn ‘Arabf s view, consists basically of these five levels of Divine self- manifestation, and that there exists between the higher and lower levels such an organic relation as has just been mentioned. With this in mind, let us return to the problem of our immediate concern. 12 Sufism and Taoism Anything that is found at the lowest level of Being, i.e., the sensible world, or any event that occurs there, is a ‘phenomenon’ in the etymological meaning of the term; it is a form {§urah) in which a state of affairs in the higher plane of Images directly reveals itself, and indirectly and ultimately, the absolute Mystery itself. To look at things in the sensible world and not to stop there, but to see beyond them the ultimate ground of all Being, that precisely is what is called by Ibn ‘ArabTunveiling’ ( kashf ) or mystical intuition . 18 ‘Unveiling’ means, in short, taking each of the sensible things as a locus in which Reality discloses itself to us. And a man who does so encounters everywhere a ‘phenomenon’ of Reality, whatever he sees and hears in this world. Whatever he experiences is for him a form manifesting an aspect of Divine Existence, a symbol for an aspect of Divine Reality. And in this particular respect, his sensory experiences are of the same symbolic nature as visions he experiences in his sleep . 19 In the eyes of a man possessed of this kind of spiritual capacity, the whole world of ‘reality’ ceases to be something solidly self- sufficient and turns into a deep mysterious foret de symboles, a system of ontological correspondences. And dreams which arise in the ‘imaginal’ plane of Being turn out to be the same as the things and events of the world of sensory experience. Both the world of sensible things and the world of dreams are, in this view, the same domain of symbols. As al-Qashani says, ‘Everything which comes manifesting itself from the world of the Unseen into the world of sensible experience - whether it manifests itself in the senses or imagination, or again in an image-similitude - is a revelation, an instruction or communication from God’ . 20 The symbolic structure of the world here depicted, however, is accessible only to the consciousness of an extremely limited number of persons. The majority of people live attached and confined to the lowest level of Being, that of sensible things. That is the sole world of existence for their opaque consciousness. This lowest level of Being only, being tangible and graspable through the senses, is real for them. And even on this level, it never occurs to them to ‘inter- pret’ the forms of the things around them. They are asleep. But since, on the other hand, the common people, too, are possessed of the faculty of imagination, something unusual may - and does - occur in their minds on rare occasions. An invitation from above visits them and flashes across their consciousness like lightning when it is least expected. This happens when they have visions and dreams. Ordinarily, imagination or fantasy means the faculty of producing in the mind a deceptive impression of the presence of a thing which is not actually there in the external world or which is totally non- existent. With Ibn ‘Arab!, it has a different meaning. Of course in Dream and Reality 13 his theory, too, imagination is the faculty of evoking in the mind those things that are not externally present, i.e., things that are not immediately present in the plane of sensible experience. But it is not a wild fantasy or hallucination which induces the mind to see things that are nowhere existent. What it produces is not a groundless reverie. It makes visible, albeit in an obscure and veiled way, a state of affairs in the higher planes of Being. It is a function of the mind directly connected with the ‘world of Images’. The ‘world of Images’ (‘ alam al-mithal ) is ontologically an inter- mediate domain of contact between the purely sensible world and the purely spiritual, i.e., non-material world. It is, as Affifi defines it, ‘a really existent world in which are found the forms of the things in a manner that stands between “fineness” and “coarseness”, that is, between pure spirituality and pure materiality ’. 21 All things that exist on this level of Being have, on the one hand, something in common with things existing in the sensible world, and resemble, on the other, the abstract intelligibles existing in the world of pure intellect. They are special things half-sensible and half-intelligible. They are sensible, but of an extremely fine and rarefied sensible-ness. They are intelligible, too, but not of such a pure intelligibility as that of the Platonic Ideas. What is commonly called imagination is nothing but this world as it is reflected in the human consciousness, not in its proper forms, but obliquely, dimly, and utterly deformed. Images obtained in such a way naturally lack an ontological basis and are rightly to be disposed of as hallucinations. Sometimes, however, the ‘world of Images’ appears as it really is, without deformation, in the consciousness even of an ordinary man. The most conspicuous case of this is seen in the veridical dream. The ‘world of Images’ is eternally existent and it is at every moment acting upon human consciousness. But man, on his part, is not usually aware of it while he is awake, because his mind in that state is impeded and distracted by the material forces of the external world. Only when he is asleep, the physical faculties of his mind being in abeyance, can the faculty of imagination operate in the proper way. And veridical dreams are produced. However, even if a man sees in his sleep a veridical dream, it is always presented in a series of sensible images. And it remains devoid of significance unless it be ‘interpreted’. Ibn ‘Arabi sees a typical example of this in the Biblical- Qoranic anecdote of Abraham sacrificing his son. Abraham once saw in a dream a sacrificial ram appearing in the image of his son Isaac (Ishaq). In reality, this was a symbol. It was a symbol for the first institution of an important religious ritual; 14 Sufism and Taoism namely, that of immolation of a sacrificial animal on the altar. And since this ritual itself was ultimately a symbol of man’s offering up his own soul in sacrifice, Abraham’s vision was to be interpreted as a sensible phenomenal form of this spiritual event. But Abraham did not ‘interpret’ it. And he was going to sacrifice his son. Here is the explanation of this event by Ibn ‘Arabi . 22 Abraham, the Friend (of God), said to his son, ‘Lo, I have seen myself in my dream sacrificing thee’. (Qoran XXXVII, 102). Dream, in truth, is a matter, pertaining to the plane of Imagination. 23 He, however, did not interpret (his dream). What he saw in the dream was a ram assuming the form of the son of Abraham. And Abraham supposed his vision to be literally true (and was about to sacrifice Isaac). But the Lord redeemed him from the illusion of Abraham with the Great Sacrifice (i.e. the sacrifice of a ram). This was God’s ‘interpretation’ of the dream of Abraham, but the latter did not know it. He did not know it because all theophany in a sensible form in the plane of Imagination needs a different kind of knowledge which alone makes it possible for man to understand what is meant by God through that particular form. . . . Thus God said to Abraham, calling out to him, ‘O Abraham, thou hast taken the vision for truth’ (XXXVII, 104-105). Mark that God did not say, ‘Thou has grasped the truth in imagining that it is thy son’. (The mistake pointed out here) arose from the fact that Abraham did not ‘interpret’ the dream but took what he had seen as literally true, when all dreams must of necessity be ‘inter- preted’ ... If what he imagined had been true, he would have sacrificed his son. 24 He merely took his vision for truth and thought that (Isaac, whom he had seen in the dream) was literally his own son. In reality, God meant by the form of his son nothing more than the Great Sacrifice. Thus He ‘redeemed’ him (i.e., Isaac) simply because of what occurred in Abraham’s mind, whereas in itself and in the eye of God it was not at all a question of redeeming. 25 Thus (when Isuac was ‘redeemed’) his visual sense perceived a sacrificial animal (i.e., a ram) while his imagination evoked in his mind the image of his son . (Because of this symbolic correspondence) he would have interpreted his vision as signifying his son or some other thing if he had seen a ram in imagination (i.e., in his dream, instead of seeing his son as he actually did). Then says God, ‘Verily this is a manifest trial’ (XXXVII, 106), meaning thereby the trial (of Abraham by God) concerning his knowledge; namely, whether or not he knows that the very nature of a vision properly requires an ‘interpretation’. Of course Abraham did know that things of Im- agination properly require ‘interpretation’. But (in this particular case) he carelessly neglected to do that. Thus he did not fulfil what was properly required of him and simply assumed that his vision was a literal truth. Abraham was a prophet. And a man who stands in the high spiritual 15 Dream and Reality position of prophethood must know (theoretically) that a veridical dream is a symbol for an event belonging to the plane of higher realities. And yet Abraham actually forgot to ‘interpret’ his dream. If prophets are like that, how could it be expected that ordinary men ‘interpret’ rightly their dreams and visions? It is but natural, then, that an ordinary man cannot see that an event occurring in so-called ‘reality’ is a symbol for an event corresponding to it in the higher plane of the Images. How can man cultivate such an ability for seeing things symboli- cally? What should he do in order that the material veil covering things be removed to reveal the realities that lie beyond? Regarding this question, Ibn ‘ Arab! in a passage of the Fusu$ points to a very interesting method. It is a way of discipline, a way of practice for cultivating what he calls the ‘spiritual eyesight’ (‘ayn al-basirah). It is a way that renders possible the inner transformation of man. This inner transformation of man is explained by Ibn ‘Arab! in terms of transition from the ‘worldly state of being {al-nash’ah al-dunyawiyah) to the ‘otherworldly state of being’ {al-nash’ah al-ukhrawiyah ). 26 The ‘worldly state of being’ is the way the major- ity of men naturally are. It is characterized by the fact that man, in his natural state, is completely under the sway of his body, and the activity of his mind impeded by the physical constitution of the bodily organs. Under such conditions, even if he tries to understand something and grasp its reality, the object cannot appear to his mind except in utter deformation. It is a state in which man stands completely veiled from the essential realities of things. In order to escape from this state, Ibn ‘Arab! says, man must personally re-live the experiences of Elias-Enoch and re-enact in himself the spiritual drama of the inner transformation symbolized by these two names. Elias (Ilyas) and Enoch (Idris) were two names assumed by one and the same person. They were two names given to one person in two different states. Enoch was a prophet before the time of Noah. He was raised high by God and was placed in the sphere of the sun. His name was Enoch in that supreme position. Later he was sent down as an apostle to the Syrian town of Baalbek. In that second state he was named Elias . 27 Elias who was sent down in this manner to the earth from the high sphere of heaven did not stop halfway but became totally ‘earthly’. He pushed the ‘elemental if unhurt) state of being’ on the earth to its extreme limit. This symbolizes a man who, instead of exercising his human reason in a lukewarm way as most people do, abandons himself thoroughly and completely to the elemental life of nature to the degree of being less than human. 16 Sufism and Taoism While he was in that state, he had once a strange vision, in which he saw a mountain called Lubnan split up and a horse of fire coming out of it with a harness made entirely of fire. When the prophet noticed it, he immediately rode the horse, bodily desires fell from him and he turned into a pure intellect without desire. He was now completely free from all that was connected with the physical self . 28 And only in this purified state could Elias see Reality as it really is. However, Ibn ‘Arab! observes, even this supreme ‘knowledge of God’ ( ma'rifah bi-Allah) attained by Elias was not a perfect one. ‘For in this (knowledge). Reality was in pure transcendence (munazzah), and it was merely half of the (perfect) knowledge of God ’. 29 This means that the pure intellect that has freed itself completely from everything physical and material cannot by nature see God except in His transcendence ( tanzih ). But transcendence is only one of the two basic aspects of the Absolute. Its other half is immanence (tashbih). All knowledge of God is necessarily one- sided if it does not unite transcendence and immanence, because God is transcendent and immanent at the same time. Who, how- ever, can actually unite these two aspects in this knowledge of God? It is, as we shall see in Chapter III, the prophet Muhammad, no one else, not even Elias. Keeping what has just been said in mind, let us try to follow the footsteps of Enoch-Elias in more concrete, i.e., less mythopoeic, terms. As a necessary first step, one has to go down to the most elemen- tal level of existence in imitation of the heavenly Enoch who went down to the earth and began by living at the lowest level of earthly life. As suggested above, one must not stop halfway. Then abandon- ing all activity of Reason and not exercising any longer the thinking faculty, one fully realizes the ‘animality’ ( hayawaniyah ) which lies hidden at the bottom of every human being. One is, at this stage, a pure animal with no mixture of shallow humanity. Such a man ‘is freed from the sway of Reason and abandons himself to his natural desires. He is an animal pure and simple ’. 30 In this state of unmixed animality, the man is given a certain kind of mystical intuition, a particular sort of ‘unveiling’ ( kashf ). This ‘unveiling’ is the kind of ‘unveiling’ which is naturally possessed by wild animals. They experience this kind of ‘unveiling’ because, by nature, they do not exercise, and are therefore not bothered by, the faculty of Reason. In any case, the man who seriously intends to re-experience what was once experienced by Enoch-Elias must, as a first step, thoroughly actualize his animality; so thoroughly, indeed, that ‘in the end is “unveiled” to him what is (naturally) ’’unveiled” to all Dream and Reality 17 animals except mankind and jinn. Only then can he be sure that he has completely actualized his animality ’. 31 Whether a man has attained to this degree of animality may be known from outside by two symptoms: one is that he is actually experiencing the animal ‘unveiling’, and the other is that he is unable to speak. The explanation by Ibn ‘ Arabi of these two symp- toms, particularly of the first one, is quite unusual and bizarre, at least to our common sense. But it is difficult to deny the extraordi- nary weight of reality it evokes in our minds. It strikes as real because it is a description of his own personal experience as an unusual visionary. The first symptom, he says, of a man actually experiencing the animal kashf , is that ‘he sees those who are being chastised (by the angels) in the graves, and those who are enjoying a heavenly felicity, that he sees the dead living, the dumb speaking, and the crippled walking’. To the eye of such a man there appear strange scenes which our ‘sane and healthy’ Reason would unhesitatingly consider sheer insanity. Whether such a vision is rightly to be regarded as animal experience is a question about which the ordinary mind is not in a position to pass any judgment. For here Ibn ‘Arab! is talking out of his personal experience . 32 But we can easily see at least that, in the mind of a man who has completely liberated himself from the domination of natural Reason, all those petty distinctions and dif- ferentiations that have been established by the latter crumble away in utter confusion, and things and events take on entirely different and new forms. What Ibn ‘Arab! wants to say by all this is that all the seemingly watertight compartments into which Reality is divided by human Reason lose their ontological validity in such an ‘animal’ experience. The second symptom is that such a man becomes dumb and is unable to express himself ‘even if he wants and tries to describe in words what he sees. And this is a decisive sign that he has actualized his animality ’ 33 Here he gives an interesting description of his own experience concerning this point: Once I had a disciple who attained to this kind of ‘unveiling’. How- ever, he did not keep silent about his (experience). This shows that he did not realize his animality (in perfect manner.) When God made me stand at that stage, I realized my animality completely. I had visions and wanted to talk about what I witnessed, but I could not do so. There was no actual difference between me and those who were by nature speechless. A man who has thus gone all the way to the furthest limit of animality, if he still continues his spiritual exercise, may rise to the state of pure Intellect . 34 The Reason (‘ aql ) which has been abandoned 18 Sufism and Taoism before in order to go down to the lowest level of animality is an ‘aql attached to and fettered by his body. And now at this second stage, he acquires a new ‘aql, or rather recovers possession of his once-abandoned ‘aql in a totally different form . The new ‘aql , which Ibn ‘Arabi calls ‘pure Intellect’ (‘aql mujarrad ), 35 functions on a level where its activity cannot be impeded by anything bodily and physical. The pure Intellect has nothing at all to do with the body. And when a man acquires this kind of Intellect and sees things with the eye of the pure Intellect itself, even ordinary things around him begin to disclose to him their true ontological structure. This last statement means, in terms of Ibn ‘ArabFs world-view, that the things around us lose their independence in the eye of such a man and reveal their true nature as so many ‘phenomena’ of things belonging to the ontological stage above them. (Such a man) has transformed himself into a pure Intellect away from all natural material elements. He witnesses things that are the very sources of what appears in the natural forms. And he comes to know by a sort of intuitive knowledge why and how the things of nature are just as they are . 36 In still more concrete terms, such a man is already in the ontological stage above that of the things of nature. He is in the stage of the Divine Names and Attributes. In the language of ontology peculiar to Ibn ‘Arabi, he is in the stage of the ‘permanent archetypes’ (a‘yan thabitah ), 37 and is looking down from that height on the infinitely variegated things of the sensible world and understanding them in terms of the realities (haqaiq) that lie beyond them. He who has attained to this spiritual height is an ‘arif or ‘one who knows (the transcendental truth)’, and his cognition is rightly to be regarded as an authentic case oidhawq or ‘immediate tasting’. Such a man is already ‘complete’ (tamm). As we have remarked before, however, the cognition of Enoch was only ‘half’ of the cognition of the Absolute reality. A man of this kind is certainly tamm, but not yet ‘perfect’ (kamil). In order that he might be kamil, he has to go a step further and raise himself to a point where he sees that all, whether the ‘permanent archetypes’ or the things of nature or again he himself who is actually perceiving them, are after all, nothing but so many phenomenal forms of the Divine Essence on different levels of being; that through all the ontological planes, there runs an incessant and infinite flew of the Divine Being . 38 Only when a man is in such a position is he a ‘Perfect Man’ ( insan kamil). The above must be taken as an introduction to the major prob- lems of Ibn ‘Arabi and a summary exposition of the experiential basis on which he develops his philosophical thinking. It has, I think, Dream and Reality 19 made clear that Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s philosophy is, in brief, a theoretic description of the entire world of Being as it is reflected in the eye of the Perfect Man. It is, indeed, an extraordinary world-view because it is a product of the extraordinary experience of an extraordinary man. How, then, does the Perfect Man, that is, a man who has been completely awakened, see the world? That will be the main theme of the following chapters. Before we close this chapter, however, it will not be out of place to look back and re-examine the major concepts that have been touched upon, and consider the relations that are recognizable among them. In so doing we have to keep in mind that we are still at a preliminary stage of our research, and that all we have done is simply to adumbrate the structure of the whole system. First and foremost, I would like to draw attention to a fact of capital importance which has been suggested in the course of the present chapter but not explicitly stated; namely, that the philosophical thought of Ibn ‘Arabi, with all its perplexing complex- ity and profundity, is dominated by the concept of Being. In this sense, his thought is, in essence, through and through ontological. The concept of Being in the double meaning of ens and esse is the highest key-concept that dominates his entire thought. His philoso- phy is theological, but it is more ontological than theological. That is why even the concept of God (Allah) itself which in Islam generally maintains its uncontested position is given here only a secondary place . 39 As we shall see presently, God is a ‘phenomenal’, i.e., self-manifesting, form assumed by Something still more primordial, the Absolute Being. Indeed, the concept of Being is the very found- ation of this world-view. However, it is by no means a common-sense notion of Being. Unlike Aristotle for whom also Being had an overwhelming fascina- tion, Ibn ‘Arab! does not start his philosophizing from the concept of Being on the concrete level of ordinary reality. For him, the things of the physical world are but a dream. His ontology begins - and ends - with an existential grasp of Being at its abysmal depth, the absolute Being which infinitely transcends the level of common sense and which is an insoluble enigma to the minds of ordinary men. It is, in short, an ontology based on mysticism, motivated by what is disclosed only by the mystical experience of ‘unveiling’ (kashf). The absolute Being intuitively grasped in such an extraordinary experience reveals itself in an infinite number of degrees. These degrees or stages of Being are classified into five major ones which were introduced in this chapter as ‘five planes of Being’. Ibn ‘Arabi himself designates each of these planes of Being hadrah or ‘pres- ence’ . Each hadrah is a particular ontological dimension in which 20 Sufism and Taoism the absolute Being (al-wujud al-mufiaq) manifests itself. And the absolute Being in all the forms of self-manifestation is referred to by the term haqq The first of these five planes of Being, which is going to be our topic in the next chapter, is Reality in its first and primordial absoluteness or the absolute Being itself. It is the Absolute before 40 it begins to manifest itself, i.e., the Absolute in a state in which it does not yet show even the slightest foreboding of self- manifestation. The four remaining stages are the essential forms in which the Absolute ‘descends’ from its absoluteness and manifests itself on levels that are to us more real and concrete. This self- manifesting activity of the Absolute is called by Ibn ‘Arab! tajalli, a word which literally means disclosing something hidden behind a veil. the first hadrah (the Absolute in its absoluteness) the second hadrah (the Absolute mani- festing itself as God) the third hadrah (the Absolute mani- festing itself as Lord) the fourth hadrah (the Absolute mani- festing itself as half-spiritual and half-material things) the fifth hadrah (the Absolute mani- festing itself as the sensible world) As this diagram shows, everything in Ibn ‘ArabFs world-view, whether spiritual of material, invisible or visible, is a tajalli of the Absolute except the Absolute in its absoluteness, which is, needless to say, not a tajalli but the very source of all tajalliyat. Another point to note is that these five planes constitute an organic system of correspondences. Thus anything found in the second hadrah, for example, besides being itself a ‘phenomenon’ of some aspect of the first hadrah , finds its ontological repercussions in all the three remaining hadarat each in a form peculiar to each hadrah. It is also important to remember that the first three planes are purely spiritual in contrast with the fifth which is material, while the fourth represents a border-line between the two. With these preliminary notions in mind we shall turn immediately to the first hadrah. Dream and Reality Notes 21 1. Fujiis al-Hikam , p. 117/103. In quoting from the Fuju$ al-Hikam (. Fw> .), I shall always give two paginations: (1) that of the Cairo edition of 1321 A.H., containing al-Qashani’s commentary, and (2) that of Affifi’s critical edition, Cairo, 1946 (1365 A.H.). 2. Fus., p. 199/104. ‘Imagination within imagination’ here means that the world as we perceive it is a product of our personal faculty of imagination which is active within the larger domain of the ‘objective’ Imagination. For a lucid and most illuminating exposition of the concept of Imagination in this latter sense, see Henry Corbin L’ imagination creatrice dans le soufisme d’Ibn ‘Arabi, Paris, 1958. 3. Fus., p. 200/159. 4. Fu$., p. 200/159 5. Fuj., p. 110/99. 6. Fu$., p. 111/99. 7. ibid. 8. i.e., a system of symbols pointing to the Absolute. 9. ja'ala-ha haqqa. 10. Fuj., p. 112/101. 11. Fuj., p. 113/101. 12. Fus., pp. 112-113/101. The following words of al-Qashani are found in his commentary, p. 113. 13. literally, (Divine) Presences. They are the five fundamental modes or dimen- sions of the self-manifestation of the Absolute. 14. p. 110. It is to be remembered that this is not the only form in which the ‘planes of Being’ are presented. Al-Qashani himself gives in another place a slightly different explanation (see later, Chapter XI). 15. to be explained in the following chapter. 16. to be discussed in Chapter VII together with the next plane, the plane of the Actions. 17. This is an intermediary plane which lies between the properly Divine domain of Being (1,2, 3) and the material world of senses, the so-called ‘reality’ (5). It is a world sui generis of eternal Archetypes or Images, in which the originally formless Ideas assume ‘imaginal’ forms and in which the material things of our empirical world appear as ‘subtle ( latif ) bodies’ having been divested of their grossly material forms. 18. p. 111/99. 19. ibid. 22 Sufism and Taoism 20. p. 110. 21. Commentary on the Fu$u$, p. 74. This commentary is found in the above- mentioned Cairo edition by Affifi. Throughout the present work, this commentary will be referred to as Affifi, Fu$., Com. 22. Fu$., pp. 84-86/85-86. 23. i.e., it is a symbol, and needs ‘interpretation’. 24. i.e., God would not have stopped him. 25. The last sentence means: God redeemed Isaac with a sacrificial ram. But the truth is that the whole matter merely looked to Abraham as ‘redeeming’ . There was, in fact, no ‘redeeming’ because from the beginning it was not God’s intention to make Abraham sacrifice his son. Since, however, Abraham had misunderstood God’s intention, what God did to his son was in his eyes an act of redemption. 26. Fu$., pp. 234—235/186. 27. Fus., p. 227/181. 28. Fw>., p. 228/181. 29. ibid. 30. Fus., p. 235/186. 31. ibid. 32. Besides, all his statements are, in general, based on his personal experience, whether he explicitly says so or not. And this is one of the reasons why his description (of anything) is so powerful and persuasive. 33. These words, together with the following quotation, are from Fuj., p. 235/186- 187. 34. i.e., a spiritual state in which the intellect (‘ aql ) is free from all physical fetters (al-Qashanl). 35. The Arabic here is a bit confusing because the same word ‘aql is used for both forms: the ‘physical’ or ‘natural’ ‘aql which a mystic must abandon and the pure ‘spiritual’ ‘aql which he acquires afterwards. 36. Fu$., p. 236/187. 37. About the ‘permanent archetypes’ details will be given later. 38. Fuf., p. 236/187. 39. unless, of course, we use, as Ibn ‘Arab! himself often does, the word Allah in a non- technical sense as a synonym of the Absolute ( haqq ). 40. Strictly speaking, the word ‘before’ is improper here because the ‘absoluteness’ is beyond all temporal relations: there can be neither ‘before nor after in the temporal sense. II The Absolute in its Absoluteness In religious non-philosophical discourse the Absolute is normally indicated by the word God ox Allah. But in the technical terminol- ogy of Ibn ‘Arabi, the word Allah designates the Absolute not in its absoluteness but in a state of determination. The truly Absolute is Something which cannot be called even God. Since, however, one cannot talk about anything at all without linguistic designation, Ibn ‘Arabi uses the word haqq (which literally means Truth or Reality) in referring to the Absolute. The Absolute in such an absoluteness or, to use a peculiarly monotheistic expression, God per se is absolutely inconceivable and inapproachable. The Absolute in this sense is unknowable to us because it transcends all qualifications and relations that are humanly conceivable. Man can neither think of anything nor talk about anything without first giving it some qualification and thereby limiting it in some form or another. Therefore, the Absolute in its unconditional transcendence and essential isolation cannot be an object of human knowledge and cognition. In other words, as far as it remains in its absoluteness it is Something unknown and unknow- able. It is forever a mystery, the Mystery of mysteries. The Absolute in this sense is said to be ankar al-nakirat, i.e., ‘the most indeterminate of all indeterminates’, 1 because it has no qual- ities and bears no relation to anything beside itself. Since it is absolutely indeterminate and undetermined it is totally unknow- able. Thus the phrase ankar-nakirat means ‘the most unknown of all the unknown’. From the particular viewpoint of the Divine self-manifestation (tajalli) which will be one of our major topics in what follows, the Absolute in the state of unconditional transcendence is said to be at the level of ‘unity’ ( ahadiyah ). There is as yet no tajalli. Tajalli is only expected of it in the sense that it is to be the very source of tajalli which has not yet begun. And since there is actually no occurrence of tajalli , there is absolutely nothing recognizable here. In this respect the Absolute at this stage is the One ( al-ahad ). The L 24 Sufism and Taoism word ‘one’ in this particular context is not the ‘one which is a whole of ‘many’. Nor is it even ‘one’ in opposition to ‘many . It means the essential, primordial and absolutely unconditional sim- plicity of Being where the concept of opposition is meaningless. The stage of Unity is an eternal stillness. Not the slightest move- ment is there observable. The self- manifestation of the Absolute does not yet occur. Properly speaking we cannot speak even nega- tively of any self-manifestation of the Absolute except when we look back at this stage from the later stages of Being. The tajalli of the Absolute begins to occur only at the next stage, that of the ‘oneness’ ( wahidiyah ) which means the Unity of the Many. It is impossible that the Absolute manifest itself in its absolute- ness. ‘Those who know God in the true sense assert that there can never be self-manifestation in the state of Unity , 2 because, not only in the normal forms of cognitive experience in the phenomenal world but also even in the highest state of mystical experience, there is, according to Ibn ‘Arab!, kept intact the distinction between the one who sees ( nazir ) and the object seen ( manzur ). Mystics often speak of ‘becoming one with God’, which is the so-called unio mystica. In the view of Ibn ‘ Arabi, however, a complete unification is but a fallacy on their part or on the part of those who misconstrue their expressions. If a mystic, for example, describes his experience of unio mystica by saying, ‘I have seen God through Him’ ( Nazartu-hu bi-hi) meaning ‘I have transcended my own existence into God Himself and have seen Him there with his own eyes’, and supposing that the expression is true to what he has really experi- enced, yet there remains here a distinction between himself who sees and himself who is seen as an object. If, instead of saying ‘I have seen Him through Him , he said, I have seen Him through myself’, ( Nazartu-hu bi), does the expres- sion describe the experience of the Unity? No, by the very fact that there intervenes ‘I’ (ana) the absolute Unity is lost. What about, then, if he said ‘ I have seen Him through Him and myself’ ( Nazartu- hu bi-hi wa-bi )? Even in that case - supposing again that the expression is a faithful description of the mystic s experience — the pronominal suffix -tu (in nazartu ) meaning ‘I (did such-and-such a thing)’ suggests a split. That is to say, the original Unity is no longer there. Thus in every case ‘there is necessarily a certain relation which requires two elements: the subject and object of seeing. And this cannot but eliminate the Unity, even if (the mystic in such an experience) only sees himself through himself’. 3 Thus even in the highest degree of mystical experience, that of unio, the prime Unity must of necessity break up and turn into duality. The Absolute on the level of Unity, in other words, remains for ever unknowable. It is the inescapable destiny of the human act The Absolute in its Absoluteness 25 of cognition that, whenever man tries to know something, there comes in a particular relation, a particular condition which impedes an immediate grasp of the object. Man is unable to know anything without taking up some position, without looking at it from some definite point. The Absolute, in its absoluteness, however, is pre- cisely Something which transcends all such relations and aspects. Is it impossible, then, for man to say even a word about the Abso- ?■ lute? Can we not predicate anything at all of the absolute Absolute? | As is clear from what has just been said, strictly speaking no predi- cation is possible. Philosophically, however, there is one single thing which we predicate of the Absolute on this level. It is ‘being’. As long as it is a word with a meaning, it also delimits and specifies the Absolute. But within the boundaries of philosophical thinking, ‘being’ is the most colorless - and therefore the least specifying predication thinkable. It describes the Absolute with the highest degree of unconditionality. The Absolute viewed from this standpoint is called by Ibn ‘Arab! dhat 4 or ‘essence’. The world dhat in this context means absolute Being (wujud mu(laq), Being qua Being, or absolute Existence, that is, Existence viewed in its unconditional simplicity. As the epithet ‘absolute’ indicates, it should not be taken in the sense of a limited and determined existent or existence; it means Something beyond all existents that exist in a limited way, Something lying at the very source of all such existents existentiating them. It is Existence as the ultimate ground of everything. The ontological conception of the Absolute is a basic thesis that runs through the whole of the Fu$us. But Ibn ‘Arabi in this book does not deal with it as a specifically philosophic subject. On behalf of the Master, al-QashanT explains the concept of dhat scholastic- ally. He considers it one of the three major ideas that concern the very foundation of Ibn ‘ ArabF s thought. The whole passage which is reproduced here is entitled ‘an elucidation of the true nature of the Essence at the level of Unity’. 5 The Reality called the ‘Essence at the level of Unity’ ( al-dhat al- ahadiyah) in its true nature is nothing other than Being (wujud) pure and simple in so far as it is Being. It is conditioned neither by non-determination nor by determination, for in itself it is too sacred (muqaddas) to be qualified by any property and any name. It has no quality, no delimitation; there is not even a shadow of multiplicity in it. It is neither a substance nor an accident, for a substance must have a quiddity other than existence, a quiddity by which it is a substance as differentiated from all other existents, and so does an accident which, furthermore, needs a place (i.e., substratum) which exists and in which it inheres. 26 Sufism and Taoism And since everything other than the Necessary Being ( wajib ) is either a substance or an accident, the Being qua Being cannot be anything other than the Necessary Being. Every determined (i.e., non- necessary) being is existentiated by the Necessary Being. Nay, it is essentially [no other than the Necessary Being] 6 ; it is entitled to be regarded as ‘other’ than the Necessary Being only in respect of its determination. (Properly speaking) nothing can be ‘other’ than it in respect to its essence. Such being the case (it must be admitted that in the Necessary Being) existence is identical with essence itself, for anything which is not Being qua Being is sheer non-Being (‘ adam ). And since non-Being is ‘nothing’ pure and simple, we do not have to have recourse, in order to distinguish Being qua Being from non-Being, to a particular act of negation, namely, the negation of the possibility of both being com- prehended under a third term . 7 Nor does Being ever accept non- Being; otherwise it would, after accepting non-Being, be existence which is non-existent. Likewise, pure non-Being, on its part, does not accept Being. Besides, if either one of them (e.g., Being) accepted its contradictory (e.g., non-Being) it would turn into its own contradic- tory (i .e., non-Being) while being still actually itself (i.e., Being). But this is absurd. Moreover, in order that anything may ‘accept’ something else there must necessarily be multiplicity in it. Being qua Being, however, does not include any multiplicity at all. That which does accept Being and non-Being is (not Being qua Being but) the ‘archetypes’ ( a'yan ) and their permanent states in the intelligible world, becoming visible with Being and disappearing with non-Being. Now everything (in the concrete world of ‘reality’) is existent through Being. So in itself such an existent is not Being. Otherwise when it comes into existence, we would have to admit that its existence had already existence even before its own (factual) existence. But Being qua Being is from the beginning existent, and its existence is its own essence. Otherwise, its quiddity would be something different from existence, and it would not be Being. If it were not so, then (we would have to admit that) when it came into existence, its existence had an existence (i.e., as its own quiddity) even before its own existence. This is absurd. Thus Being itself must necessarily exist by its own essence, and not through existence of some other thing. Nay, it is that which makes every other existent exist. This because all other things exist only through Being, without which they would simply be nothing at all. It is important to notice that al-Qashani in this passage refers to three categories of Being; (1) Being qua Being, that is, absolute Being, (2) the archetypes, and (3) the concrete beings or existents of the sensible world. This triple division is a faithful reflection of the main conception of Ibn ‘Arabi himself. In the Fu$u$, he does not present a well-organized ontological discussion of this problem from this particular point of view. It is nonetheless one of the The Absolute in its Absoluteness 27 cardinal points of his philosophy. A concise systematic presentation is ound in his short treatise, Kitab Insha’ al-Dawa’ir . 8 There he mentions the three categories, or, as he calls them, three ‘degrees’ or ‘strata’ (maratib), of Being, and asserts that there can be no other ontological category. These three are: (1) the absolute Being (2) the limited and determined Being, and (3) something of which neither Being nor non-Being can be predicated. The second of the three is the world of the sensible things while the third, which he says can neither be said to exist nor not to exist, is the world of the archetypes. As for the ontological nature of the archetypes and the sensible things we shall have occasions to discuss it in detail later on. The first degree of Being alone is what interests us in the present context. Know that the things that exist constitute three degrees, there being no other degree of Being. Only these three can be the objects of our knowledge, for anything other than these is sheer non-Being which can neither be known nor be unknown and which has nothing at all to do with anything whatsoever. With this understanding I would assert that of these three (categories) of things the first is that which possesses existence by itself, i.e., that which is existent per se in its very essence. The existence of this thing cannot come from non-Being; on the contrary, it is the absolute Being having no other source than itself. Otherwise, that thing (i.e., the source) would have preceded it in existence’ Indeed, it is the very source of Being to all the things that exist; it is their Creator who determines them, divides them and disposes them. It is, in brief, the absolute Being with no limitations and conditions. Praise be to Him! He is Allah, the Living, the Everlasting, the Omniscient, the One, who wills whatever He likes, the Omnipotent . 9 It is remarkable that Ibn ‘Arabi, in the concluding sentence of the passage just quoted, explicitly identifies the absolute Being with Allah, the Living, Omniscient, Ominpotent God of the Qoran. It indicates that he has moved from the ontological level of discourse with which he began to the religious level of discourse peculiar to the living faith of the believer. As we have remarked before, the Reality in its absoluteness is, in Ibn ‘Arabi’s metaphysical-ontological system, an absolutely unknowable Mystery that lies far beyond the reach of human cogni- tion. Properly speaking, in the name of Allah we should see the self-manifestation ( tajalli ) of this Mystery already at work, although, to be sure, it is the very first beginning of the process and is, in comparison with the remaining levels of tajalli, the highest and the most perfect form assumed by the Mystery as it steps out of its abysmal darkness. However, from the viewpoint of a believer who talks about it on the level of discourse directly connected with his 28 Sufism and Taoism living faith, the absolute Being cannot but take the form of Allah. Existence per se cannot in itself be an object of religious belief. This fact makes it also clear that whatever we want to say about the absolute Being and however hard we try to describe it as it really is, we are willy-nilly forced to talk about it in one aspect or another of its self-manifestation, for the Absolute in the state of non- manifestation never comes into human language. The absolute Reality in itself remains for ever a ‘hidden treasure , hidden in its own divine isolation. It will be natural, then, that, from whatever point of view we may approach the problem, we see ourselves ultimately brought back to the very simple proposition from which we started*, namely , that the Absolute in its absoluteness is essentially unknown and unknow- able. In other words, the inward aspect of the Absolute defies every attempt at definition. One cannot, therefore, ask, What is the Absolute?’ And this is tantamount to saying that the Absolute has no ‘quiddity’ ( mahiyah ).'° This, however, does not exclude the possibility of a believer justifiably asking what is the mahiyah of God. But the right answer to this question can take only one form. And that sole answer is, according to Ibn ‘ Arabi, represented by the answer given by Moses in the Qoran. The reference is to XXVI (23-24) where Moses, asked by Pharaoh, ‘And what is the Lord of the worlds?’ ( Ma rabbu al- ‘alamina?), answers, ‘The Lord of the heavens and earth and what is between them’. Ibn ‘Arab! considers the question hurled at Moses by Pharaoh (‘ What is ...?’) as a philosophical one asking about the mahiyah of God, asking for a definition of God. And he gives the situation of this dialogue quite an original interpretation. He argues: this question was asked by Pharaoh not because he was ignorant, but simply because he wanted to try Moses. Knowing as he did to what degree a true apostle of God must know about God, Pharaoh wanted to try Moses as to whether the latter was truly an apostle as he claimed to be. Moreover, he was sly enough to attempt cheating those who were present, that is, he designed the question in such a way that, even if Moses were a genuine apostle, those present would get the impression of Moses being far inferior to Pharaoh, for it was to be expected from the very beginning that Moses - or anybody else for that matter - could not in any case give a satisfactory answer to the question. However, Ibn Arabi does not clarify the point. On his behalf, al-Qashani gives the following explanation. 12 By asking, ‘What is God?’, Pharaoh gave those who were there the impression that God had somehow a mahiyah in addition to His The Absolute in its Absoluteness 29 existence. The onlookers were thereby led to the idea that, since God had a mahiyah , a true apostle must know it and must, there- fore, be able to give a satisfactory answer to the question. Since, however, there can be no ‘definition’ ( hadd ) of God in the logical sense, a true apostle - if he is a true apostle, and not a fraud - can never give a ‘satisfactory’ answer in the form of a definition. But in the eyes of those who are not conversant with the real nature of the problem, a vague non-definitive answer is a sign indicating that the man who gives such an answer is not a real ‘knower’. Now the actual answer given by Moses runs: ‘the Lord of the heavens and earth and what is between them”. This is just the right answer and the only possible and the most perfect answer in this case. It is, as Ibn ‘Arabi puts it, ‘the answer of those who truly know the matter’. Thus Moses in his answer said what there was really to be said . And Pharaoh, too, knew perfectly well that the right answer could not be anything other than this. Superficially, however, the answer looks as if it were not a real answer. So Pharaoh achieved his aim of producing the impression in the minds of the onlookers that Moses was ignorant of God, while he, Pharaoh, knew the truth about God. Is it wrong, then, philosophically to ask, ‘What is God?’ as Pharaoh did? No, Ibn ‘Arabi says, 13 the question in this form is not at all wrong in itself. To ask about the mahiyah of something is nothing other than asking about its reality or real essence. And God does possess reality. Strictly speaking, asking about the mahiyah of something is not exactly the same as asking for its logical definition. To ask about the mahiyah of a thing, as understood by Ibn ‘Arabi, is to ask about the reality ( haqiqah ) of that object, which is unique and not shared by anything else. 14 ‘Definition’ in the logical sense is different from this. It consists of a combination of a genus and a specific difference, and such a combination is thinkable only in regard to things (i.e., universal) that allow of common participation. Anything, therefore, that has no logical genus in which to belong cannot be ‘defined’ , but this does not in any way prevent such a thing having its own unique reality which is not common to other things. More generally speaking, ‘there is nothing’, as al-Qashani observes, 15 ‘that has not its own reality ( haqiqah ) by which it is just as it is to the exclusion of all other things. Thus the question (what is God?) is a perfectly justifiable one in the view of those who know the truth. Only those who do not possess real knowledge assert that anything that does not admit of definition cannot be asked as to “what” (ma) it is’. Moses, in reply to the question: ‘What is God?’, says that He is ‘the Lord of the heavens and earth and what is between them, if you 30 Sufism and Taoism have a firm faith’. Ibn ‘Arabi sees here ‘a great secret’ ( sirr kabir) that is to say, a profound and precious truth hidden under a seem- ingly commonplace phrase. Here is a great secret. Observe that Moses, when asked to give an essential definition ( hadd dhatl ), answered by mentioning the ‘act’ (fi'l )' 6 of God. Moses, in other words, identified 17 the essential definition (of God) with the (essential) relation of God to the forms of the things by which He manifests Himself in the world or the forms of the things which make their appearance in Him. Thus it is as though he said, in reply to the question: ‘What is the Lord of the worlds?’, ‘It is He in whom appear all the forms of the worlds ranging from the highest - which is the heaven - to the lowest - which is the earth, or rather the forms in which He appears ’. 18 Pharaoh, as the Qoran relates, sets out to show that such an answer can come only from a man who is ignorant of God or who has but a superficial knowledge of God. He tries thereby to prove in the presence of his subjects his superiority over Moses. The latter, against this, emphasizes that God is ‘the Lord of the East and West and what is between them, if you but have understanding’ (XXVI, 28 ). This second statement of Moses is interpreted by Ibn ‘Arabi in such a way that it turns out to be a symbolic expression of his own ontology. The East, he says, is the place from which the sun makes its appearance. It symbolizes the visible and material aspect of theophany. The West is the place into which the sun goes down to conceal itself from our eyes. It symbolizes the invisible aspect (i.e., ghayb) of the self-manifestation of the Absolute. And these two forms of theophany, visible and invisible, correspond to the two great Names of God: the Outward (al-zahir) and the Inward ( al - batin). The visible theopany constitutes the world of concrete mat- erial things (‘ alam al-ajsam ), while the invisible theophany results in the rise of the non-material spiritual world (‘alam al-arwah). Natu- rally ‘what lies between the East and West’ would refer to those forms that are neither purely material nor purely spiritual, that is, what Ibn ‘Arabi calls amthal or Images on the level of Imagination . 19 Here Ibn ‘Arabi draws attention to a fact which seems to him to be of decisive importance; namely that, of the two answers given by Moses, the first is qualified by a conditional clause: ‘if you have a firm faith’ . 20 This indicates that the answer is addressed to those who have yaqin, i.e., the ‘people of unveiling’ (kashf) and immediate unitative knowledge ( wujud ). 21 Thus in the first answer Moses simply confirms what the true ‘knowers’ have yaqin about. What, then, is the content of this yaqin which Moses is said simply to be The Absolute in its Absoluteness 31 confirming here? The answer is given by al-Qashani in the following way . 22 The truth of the matter is that it is an impossibility to give a direct answer to the question about the reality of God without any refer- ence to any relation. Thus Moses, instead of anwering directly to the question asked concerning the mahlyah (of God), mentions the act (of theophany). He thereby indicates that the Absolute is above all limitation and definition, and that it does not come under any genus nor can it be distinguished by any specific difference because it comprehends the whole in itself. So (instead of trying to define the Absolute) Moses has recourse to an explication of the reality of the Lordship ( rububiyah ). In this way (instead of explaining God) he is content with explaining what is attributed to Him, namely with stating that He is the One to whom belongs the Lordship of the world of the higher spirits, the world of the lower objects and all the determinations, relations and attribu- tions that lie between the two worlds. He states that God is the Outward by his Lordship over all and the Inward by his inmost nature (huwiyah, lit. ‘He-ness’) which resides in all, because He is the very essence of everything that is perceived in any form of experience. Moses makes it clear that the definition of God is impossible except in this way, that is, except by putting Him in relation to all without limitation or to some (particular things). This latter case occurs when he says (for example): ‘(He is) your Lord and the Lord of your ancient ancestors' . In contrast to the first answer which is of such a nature, the second one is qualified by a different conditional clause: ‘if you have understanding’ , or more precisely ‘if you know how to exercise your reason ’. 23 This clause indicates that the second answer is addressed to those who understand everything by Reason (‘ aql ), those, in other words, who ‘bind and delimit’ things 24 in their understanding. These people are those whom Ibn ‘Arab! calls ‘the people of binding, limiting and restricting’ (ahl ‘aql wa-taqyid wa-hasr ). These are the people who grasp any truth only through arguments created by their own reason, i.e., the faculty of setting formal limitations. The gist of both the first and the second answer consists in identifying the object asked about (i.e., the Absolute) with the very essence of the world of Being. Moses, to put it in another way, tried to explain the Absolute in its self-revealing aspect, instead of mak- ing the futile effort to explain it in its absoluteness. Pharaoh who asked that question - apart from his bad intention - and Moses who replied as he did, were right each in his own way. When Pharaoh asked him ‘What is God?’ Moses knew that what Pharaoh was asking for was not a ‘definition’ of God in the philosophical or logical sense. Therefore he did give the above-mentioned answers. 32 Sufism and Taoism If he had thought that Pharaoh’s intention was to ask for a definition, he would not have answered at all to the question, but would have pointed out to Pharaoh the absurdity of such a question . 25 All this has, I think, made it clear that for Ibn ‘ ArabI the Absolute in its absoluteness is an ‘absolute mystery’ ( ghayb mutlaq), and that the only way to approach the Absolute is to look at it in its self- revealing aspect. Is it then possible for us to see the Absolute itself at least in this latter aspect? Will the Unknown-Unknowable trans- form itself into Something known and knowable? The answer, it would seem, must be in the affirmative. Since, according to a Tradi- tion, the ‘hidden treasure’ unveils itself because it ‘desires to be known’ , self- manifestation must mean nothing other than the Abso- lute becoming knowable and known. But, on the other hand, the Absolute in this aspect is no longer the Absolute in itself, for it is the Absolute in so far as it reveals itself. In Ibn ‘Arabi’s world-view, the world of Being consists of material objects ( ajsam , sg. jism) and non-material or spiritual beings ( arwah , sg. ruh). Both these categories are the forms of self- manifestation assumed by the Absolute. In this sense everything, whether material or spiritual, reveals and discloses the Absolute in its own way. However, there is a certain respect in which these things cover up the Absolute as thick impenetrable veils in such a way that the Absolute hides itself behind them and is invisible in itself. As a famous Tradition says: ‘God hides Himself behind seventy thousand veils of light and darkness. If He took away these veils, the fulgurating lights of His face would at once destroy the sight of any creature who dared to look at it.’ In referring to this Tradition, Ibn ‘Arabi makes the following remark : 26 Here God describes Himself (as being concealed) by veils of dark- ness, which are the physical things, and by (veils) of light, which are fine spiritual things, for the world consists of ‘coarse’ things and ‘fine’ things, so that the world in itself constitutes a veil over itself. Thus the world does not see the Absolute as directly as it sees its own self . 27 The world, in this way, is forever covered by a veil which is never removed. Besides (it is covered by) its knowledge (or consciousness) that it is something different and distinct from its Creator by the fact that it stands in need of the latter . 28 But (in spite of this inner need) it cannot participate in the essential necessity which is peculiar to the existence of the Absolute and can never attain it. Thus the Absolute remains for this reason forever unknowable by an intimate knowledge, because no contingent being has access to it (i.e., the essential necessity of the Absolute). The Absolute in its Absoluteness 33 Here again we come across the eternal paradox: the things of the world, both material and non-material, are, on the one hand, so many forms of the Divine self-manifestation, but on the other, they act exactly as veils hindering a (complete) self-manifestation of God. They cover up God and do not allow man to see Him directly. In this latter sense, the created world in relation to the absolute Absolute is referred to in the Qoran by the pronoun ‘they’ (hum). Hum is grammatically a ‘pronoun of absence’ . It is a word designat- ing something which is not actually present. The creatures, in other words, are not there in the presence of the Absolute. And this ‘absence’ precisely is the ‘curtain’. The recurring Qoranic phrase hum alladhina kafaru ‘they are those who cover up’ means, according to the interpretation of Ibn ‘Arabi, nothing other than this situation of ‘absence’. The verb kafara in the Qoran stands in opposition to amana ‘to believe in’, and signifies ‘infidelity’ or ‘disbelief’. But etymologically the verb means ‘to cover up’. And for Ibn ‘Arabi, who takes the word in this etymological meaning, alladhina kafaru does not mean ‘those who disbelieve (in God)’ but ‘those who cover and veil’. Thus it is an expression referring to people who, by their ‘absence’, conceal the Absolute behind the curtain of their own selves . 29 The whole world, in this view, turns out to be a ‘veil’ (hijab) concealing the Absolute behind it. So those who attribute Being to the world enclose the Absolute within the bounds of a number of determinate forms and thereby place it beyond a thick veil. When, for example, the Christians assert that ‘God is Messiah, Son of Mary’ (V, 72), they confine the Absolute in an individual form and lose sight of the absoluteness of the Absolute. This makes them absent from the Absolute, and they veil it by the personal form of Messiah. It is in the sense that such people are Kafirs, i.e., ‘those who cover up (-Hhose who disbelieve )’. 30 The same thing is also explained by Itj>n ‘Arabi in another interest- ing way. The key-concept here is the Divine self-manifestation (tajalli). And the key-symbol he uses is that of a mirror, which incidentally, is one of his most favorite images. The Absolute, ‘in order that it be known’, discloses itself in the world. But it discloses itself strictly in accordance with the require- ment of each individual thing, in the form appropriate to and required by the nature of ‘preparedness’ ( isti‘dad ) of each indi- vidual existent. There can absolutely be no other form of self- manifestation. And when the locus, i.e., the individual thing in which the Absolute discloses itself happens to be a human being endowed with consciousness, he sees by intuition the self-revealing 34 Sufism and Taoism Absolute in himself. Yet, since it is after all the Absolute in a particular form determined by his own ‘preparedness’ , what he sees in himself is nothing other than his own image or form (surah ) l as mirrored in the Absolute. He never sees the Absolute itself. His Reason may tell him that his own image is visible there reflected in the Divine mirror, but, in spite of this consciousness based on reasoning, he cannot actually see the mirror itself; he sees only himself. The Divine Essence (dhat) discloses itself only in a form required by the very ‘preparedness’ of the locus in which occurs the self- manifestation. There can be no other way. Thus the locus of the Divine self-manifestation does not see any- thing, other than its own form as reflected in the mirror of the Absolute It does not see the Absolute itself. Nor is it at all possible for it to do so, although it is fully aware of the fact that it sees its own form only in the Absolute. . This is similar to what happens to a man looking into a mirror in the empirical world. When you are looking at forms or your own form in a mirror you do not see the mirror itself, although you know well that you see these forms or your own form only in the mirror. Thus we are faced with a curious fact that the forms or images of things in a mirror, precisely because they are visible, intervene between our eyesight and the mirror and act as a veil concealing t e mirror from our eyes. This symbol (of mirror) has been put forward by God as a particularly appropriate one for His essential self-manifestation so that the per- son who happens to be the locus of this Divine self-manifestation might know what exactly is the thing he is seeing. Nor can there be a symbol closer than this to (the relation between) contemplation (on the part of man) and self-manifestation (on the part of God). (If you have some doubt of this) try to see the body of the mirror while looking at an image in it. You will not be able to do so, nevei. So much so that some people who have experienced this with regard to images reflected in the mirror maintain that the form seen in the mirror stands between the eyesight of the person who is looking and the mirror itself. This is the furthest limit which (an ordinary intel- lect) can reach . 31 Thus the view that the image in the mirror behaves as a ‘veil concealing the mirror itself is the highest knowledge attainable by ordinary people; that is, by those who understand things through their intellect. But Ibn ‘ Arabi does not forget to suggest in the same breath that for those who are above the common level of under- standing there is a view which goes one step further than this. The deepest truth of the matter, he says, is represented by a view which he already expounded in his al-Futuhdt al-Makkiyah. The Absolute in its Absoluteness 35 The ‘deepest truth’ here referred to is explained by al-Qashani as follows: 32 That which is seen in the mirror of the Absolute is the form of the man who is looking; it is not the form of the Absolute. To be sure, it is no other than the very Essence of the Absolute that discloses itself to his eye, but this self-manifestation is done in his (i.e., the man’s) form, not in its (i.e., the Essence’s) form. However, the form seen in (the mirror of) His Essence is far from constituting a veil between Him and the man who is looking. On the contrary, it is the Essence at the level of Unity ( ahadiyah ) disclosing itself to the man in his form. And shallow indeed is the view of those who assert in connection with the (symbol of the) mirror that the form (seen) works as a veil between it and the man who sees (the form therein). And al-Qashani adds that a deep understanding of this nature is only obtainable in the experience of immediate vision and ‘unveil- ing’. This may be explained somewhat more theoretically and briefly in the following manner. The image reflected in the mirror of the Absolute has two differ- ent aspects. It is, in the first place, a self-manifestation of the Absolute in a particular form in accordance with the demand of the ‘preparedness’ of the locus. But in the second place, it is the Form of the Divine self-manifestation, however much it may be particular- ized by the demand of the locus. The reflected image behaves as a concealing veil because the spiritual eye of an ordinary man is riveted to the first of these aspects. And as the second aspect looms in the consciousness of the man through the profound experience of ‘unveiling’ the reflected image ceases to be a veil, and the man begins to see not only his own image but the Form of the Absolute assuming the form of his own. This, Ibn ‘Arabi asserts, is the highest limit beyond which the human mind is never allowed to go. 33 Once you have tasted this, you have tasted the utmost limit beyond which there is no further stage as far as concerns the creatures. So do not covet more than this. Do not make yourself weary by trying to go up further than this stage, for there is no higher stage than this. Beyond this there is sheer nothing. We may remark that the ‘highest limit’ here spoken of is the stage peculiar to the Perfect Man. Even for the Perfect Man there can be no spiritual stage realizable at which he is able to know the Absolute as it really is, i.e., in its absoluteness. Yet, such a man is in a position to intuit the Absolute as it reveals itself in himself and in all other things. This is the final answer given to the question: To what extent and in what form can man know the Absolute? 36 Sufism and Taoism And this will be the only and necessary conclusion to be reached concerning the metaphysical capability of the Perfect Man if we are to start from the basic assumption that Divine Essence ( dhat ) and Unity ( ahadiyah ) are completely identical with each other in indi- cating one and the same thing, namely, the Absolute in its absolute- ness as the highest metaphysical stage of Reality. There is, however, another theoretical possibility. If, following some of the outstanding philosophers of the school of Ibn ‘ Arabi, we are to divide the highest level of Reality into two metaphysical strata and distinguish be- tween them as (1) dhat, the absolute Absolute and (2) ahadiyah which, although it is still the same absolute Absolute, is a stage lower than dhat in the sense that it represents the Absolute as it is turning toward self-manifestation - then, we should say that the Perfect Man in his ecstatic experience is capable of knowing the Absolute qua Absolute just before it reveals itself in eidetic and sensible forms, that is, the Absolute at the stage of ahadiyah, though to be sure the Absolute at the stage of dhat still remains unknown and unknowable. Notes 1. Fuj., p. 238/188. We may remark in this connection that in another passage (p. 188) Ibn ‘Arabi uses the same phrase, ankar al-nakirat , in reference to the word shay ’ ‘thing’. He means thereby that the concept of ‘thing’ is so indeterminate that it is comprehensive of anything whatsoever. 2. Fuy., p. 95/91. 3. ibid. 4. Here and elsewhere in this book in the conceptual analysis of the Absolute at the stage of absoluteness I follow the tradition of those who completely identify the metaphysical stage of dhat with that of ahadiyah, like Qashani and Qaysari. It is to be remarked that there are others (like Jill) who distinguish between dhat and ahadiyah . For them, dhat is the absolute Absolute while ahadiyah is the next metaphysical stage at which the Absolute discloses itself as the ultimate source of tajalti. 5. Fu$., Com., p. 3. 6. The printed text is here obviously defective. I read: bal huwa bi-i‘tibdr al-haqiqah [‘ aynu-hu , wa-ghayru-hu ] bi-itibar al-ta‘ayyun. 7. because there cannot be a wider concept that would comprehend within itself both Being and non-Being. 8. K.S., H.S. Nyberg, ed., Leiden, 1919, p. 15 et. sqq. 9. ibid. The Absolute in its Absoluteness 37 10. Mahiyah from Ma hiya? meaning ‘what is it?’ corresponding to the Greek expression to ti en einai. 11. Fuy., p. 259/207-208. 12. p. 259. 13. Fu$., pp. 259-260/208. 14. It is to be noted that in Islamic philosophy in general the mahiyah ‘what-is-it- ness’ is of two kinds: (1) mahiyah ‘in the particular sense’ and (2) mahiyah ‘in a general sense’ . The former means ‘quiddity’ to be designated by the definition, while the latter means ontological ‘reality’, that which makes a thing what it is. 15. p. 260. 16. i.e., the act of ‘Lordship’ which in the philosophy of Ibn ‘Arabi means the act of self-manifestation in the concrete phenomena of the world. 17. i.e., replaced the definition of God by the mentioning of the relation of God to His phenomenal forms. 18. Fuy., pp. 260/208. 19. Fuy., p. 260/208-209. Concerning ‘what lies between the East and West’, however, Ibn ‘ Arabi in this passage simply says that it is intended to mean that God is Omniscient (bi kull shay’ ‘alim). 20. in kuntum muqinin, the last word being a derivative of the same root YQN from which is derived the word yaqin. Yaqin means a firm conviction in its final form. 21. ahl al-kashfwa-al- wujud . The word wujud here does not mean ‘existence’, but a particular stage in myscal experience which follows that of wajd. In wajd, the mystic is in the spiritual state of ‘self-annihilation’ ( fana ), a state in which he has lost his individual consciousness of the self, while in wujud he is in the state of ‘subsistence’ (baqa’) in the Absolute. Only in this latter state does the mystic ‘finds’ ( wajada ) God in the true sense, cf. Affifi, Fuy., Com., p. 310. 22. p. 260. 23. in kuntum ta qilun ', the last word comes from the root from which is derived the word ‘aql ‘reason’. 24. The verb aqala meaning ‘to understand by reason or intellect’ etymologically means to bind the folded legs of a camel to his thighs (in order to prevent him from moving freely’. 25. Fuj., p. 260/208-209. 26. Fuy., p. 22/54-55. 27. i.e., the only possible way in which we can see the Absolute is through the things , yet, on the other hand, since what we actually and directly see are the ‘things’, they intervene between our sight and the Absolute. Thus indirectly we see the Absolute, but directly we see only the things which prevent our direct vision of the Absolute. 38 Sufism and Taoism 28. We feel at every moment that we are in need of our Creator for our existence. This very feeling produces in us the consciousness of separation or distinction between us and the Absolute. 29. Fus ., p. 188/148-149. 30. Cf. Qashani, p. 189. 31. Fus., p. 33/61-62. 32. p. 33. 33. Fu$., p. 33/62. Ill The Self-knowledge of Man It has been made clear by the preceding that the Absolute perse is unknowable and that it remains a dark mystery even in the mystical experience of ‘unveiling’ ( kashf ) and ‘immediate tasting’ ( dhawq ). Under normal conditions the Absolute is knowable solely in its forms of self-manifestation. The same thing may be expressed somewhat differently by saying that man is allowed to know the Absolute only when the latter descends to the stage of ‘God’. In what follows the structure of this cognition will be analyzed. The m central question will be: How and where does the absolutely I unknowable appear as ‘God’? i Answering this question Ibn ‘ Arabi emphatically asserts that the only right way of knowing the Absolute is for us to know ourselves. And he bases this view on the very famous Tradition which runs: ‘He who knows himself knows his Lord ’. 1 What is suggested is, for Ibn ‘Arabi, that we should abandon the futile effort to know the | Absolute per se in its absolute non-manifestation, that we must go f back into the depth of ourselves, and perceive the Absolute as it ■ manifests itself in particular forms. I In Ibn ‘ Arabi’s world-view, everything, not only ourselves but all l the things that surround us, are so many forms of the Divine self-manifestation. And in that capacity, there is objectively no essential difference between them. Subjectively, however, there is a remarkable difference. All the exterior things surrounding us are I for us ‘things’ which we look at only from outside. We cannot penetrate into their interior and experience from inside the Divine life pulsating within them . Only into the interior of ourselves are we able to penetrate by our self-consciousness and experience from inside the Divine activity of self-manifestation which is going on there. It is in this sense that to ‘know ourselves’ can be the first step toward our ‘knowing the Lord’ . Only he who had become conscious of himself as a form of the Divine self-manifestation is in a position to go further and delve deep into the very secret of the Divine life as it pulsates in every part of the universe. However, not all self-knowledge of man leads to the utmost limit 40 Sufism and Taoism of knowledge of the Absolute. Ibn ‘Arab! in this respect roughly divides into two types the way of knowing the Absolute through man’s self-knowledge. The first is ‘knowledge of the Absolute (obtainable) in so far as (“thou” art) “thou” ’ (ma‘rifah bi-hi min hayth anta ), while the second is ‘knowledge of the Absolute (obtainable) through “thee” in so far as (“thou” art) “He , and not in so far as (“thou” art) “thou” ’ (ma‘rifah bi-hi min hayth huwa la min hayth anta). n , The first type is the way of reasoning by which one inters uoa from ‘thee’, i.e., the creature. More concretely it consists in one s becoming first conscious of the properties peculiar to the creatural nature of ‘thou’ , and then attaining to knowledge of the Absolute by the reasoning process'of casting away all these imperfections from the image of the Absolute and attributing to it all the opposite properties. One sees, for example, ontological possibility in oneself, and attributes to the Absolute ontological necessity which is its opposite; one sees in oneself ‘poverty’ ( iftiqar ), i.e., the basic need in which one stands of things other than oneself, and attributes to the Absolute its opposite, that is, ‘richness’ (, ghina ) or absolute self-sufficiency; one sees in oneself incessant ‘change’, and attri- butes to the Absolute eternal constancy, etc. This type of know- ledge, Ibn ‘Arab! says, is characteristic of philosophers and theologians, and represents but an extremely low level of the know- ledge of God, though, to be sure, it is a kind of ‘knowing one s Lord by knowing oneself’ . . . , D . The second type, too, is knowledge of ‘Him’ through thee . But in this case the emphasis is not on ‘thee’ but definitely on Him . it consists in one’s knowing the Absolute - albeit in a particularize form - by knowing the ‘self’ as a form of the direct self- manifestation of the Absolute. It is the cognitive process by which one comes to know God by becoming conscious of oneself as God manifesting Himself in that particular form. Let us analyze this process in accordance with Ibn ‘Arabi’s own description. Three basic stages are distinguished here. The first is the stage at which man becomes conscious of the Abso- lute as his God. If from the Divine Essence were abstracted all the relations (i.e., the Names and Attributes), it would not be a God (ilah). But what actualizes these (possible) relations (which are recognizable in the Essence) are ourselves. In this sense it is we who, with our own inner dependence upon the Absolute as God, turn it into a ‘God .bo the Absolute cannot be known until we ourselves become known. To this refer the words of the Prophet: ‘He who knows himself knows his Lord’ . This is a saying of one who of all men knows best about God. The Self-knowledge of Man 41 What is meant by this passage is as follows. The nature of the Absolute perse being as it is, the Absolute would remain for ever an unknown and unknowable Something if there were no possibility of its manifesting itself in infinitely variegated forms. What are gener- ally known as ‘Names’ and ‘Attributes’ are nothing but theological expressions for this infinite variety of the possible forms of self- manifestation of the Absolute. The Names and Attributes are, in oth^r words, a classification of the unlimited number of relations in which the Absolute stands to the world. These relations, as long as they stay in the Absolute itself, remain in potential they are not in actu. Only when they are realized as concrete forms in us, creatures, do they become ‘actual’. The Names, however, do not become realized immediately in individual material things, but first within the Divine Consciousness itself in the form of permanent archetypes. Viewed from the reverse side, it would mean that it is our individual essences (i.e., archetypes) that actualize the Absolute. And the Absolute actualized in this way is God. So ‘we (i.e., our permanent archetypes), turn the Absolute into God’ by becoming the primal objects or loci of the Divine self-manifestation. This is the philosophical meaning of the dictum: ‘Unless we know ourselves, God never becomes known.’ Some of the sages - Abu Hamid 4 is one of them - claim that God can be known without any reference to the world. But this is a mistake. Surely, the eternal and everlasting Essence can (conceptually) be known (without reference to the world), but the same Essence can never be known as God unless the object to which it is God (i.e., the world) is known, for the latter is the indicator of the former . 5 The commentary of al-Qashani makes this point quite explicit. He says : 6 What is meant by Ibn ‘Arabi is that the essence in so far as it is qualified by the attribute of ‘divinity’ ( uluhiyah ) cannot be known except when there is the object to which it appears as God . . . Surely, our Reason can know (by inference) from the very idea of Being itself the existence of the Necessary Being which is an Essence eternal and everlasting, for God in His essence is absolutely self-sufficient. But not so when it is considered as the subject of the Names. In the latter case the object to which He is God is the only indicator of His being God. The knowledge that the whole created world is no other than a self-manifestation of the Absolute belongs to the second stage, which is described by Ibn ‘Arabi in the following terms : 7 After the first stage comes the second in which the experience of ‘unveiling’ makes you realize that it is the Absolute itself (and not the 42 Sufism and Taoism world) that is the indicator of itself and of its being God (to the world). (You realize also at this stage) that the world is nothing but a self-manifestation of the Absolute in the forms of the permanent archetypes of the things of the world. The existence of the archetypes would be impossible if it were not for the (constant) self- manifestation of the Absolute, while the Absolute, on its part, goes on assuming various forms in accordance with the realities of the archetypes and their states. This comes after (the first stage at which) we know that the Absolute is God. Already at the first stage the Absolute was no longer Something unknown and unknowable, but it was ‘our God . Yet, there was an essential breach between the Absolute as God and the world as the object to which it appeared as God. The only real tie between the two was the consciousness that we, the world, are not self-subsistent but essentially dependent upon God and that we, as correlatives of the Absolute qua God, are indicators of the Names and Attributes and are thereby indirectly indicators of the Absolute. At the second stage, such an essential breach between God and the world disappears. We are now aware of ourselves as self- manifestations of the Absolute itself. And looking back from this point we find that what was (as the first stage) thought to be an indicator-indicated relation between God and the object to which the Absolute appeared as God is nothing but an indicator-indicated relation between the Absolute in its self-manifesting aspect and the Absolute in its hidden aspect. Here I give a more philosophical formulation of this situation by al-Qashani. 8 When by Divine guidance Reason is led to the conclusion that there must exist the Necessary Being existing by itself away from all others, it may, if aided by good chance, attain the intuition that it is nothing but this real Necessary Being that is manifesting itself in the form of the essence of the world itself. Then it realizes that the very first appearance of this Necessary Being is its self-manifestation in the One Substance or the One Entity 9 in which are prefigured all the forms of the permanent archetypes in the Divine Consciousness, and that they (i.e., the archetypes) have no existence independently of the Necessary Being , 10 but have an eternal, everlasting existence in the latter. And to these archetypes are attributed all the Attributes of the Necessary Being as so many Names of the latter, or rather as so many particularizing determinations of it. Thus only through the archetypes do the Names become (actually) distinguishable and through their appearance does Divinity (i.e., the Necessary Being s being God) make its appearance. And all this occurs in the forms of the world. The Absolute in this way is the Outward (appearing explicitly) in the form of the world and the Inward (appearing invis- The Self-knowledge of Man 43 ibly) in the forms of the individual essences of the world. But it is always the same Entity making its appearance (in diverse forms). The Absolute here behaves as its own indicator. Thus after having known | (at the first stage) that the Absolute is our God, we now know (at the | second stage) that it diversifies into many kinds and takes on various I I forms according to the realities of the archetypes and their various I states, for, after all, all these things are nothing else than the Absolute I itself (in its diverse forms.) In this interesting passage al-Qashani uses the phrase ‘the first appearance’ (al-zuhur al-awwal), i.e., the first self-manifestation of the Absolute, and says that it means the Absolute being manifested in the ‘ One Substance’ . This, in fact, refers to a very important point in Ibn ‘Arabi’s metaphysics, namely, the basic distinction between two kinds of self-manifestation ( tajalliyyan ): (1) self-manifestation in the invisible (tajalli ghayb ) and (2) self-manifestation in the l visible (tajalli shahadah). 11 | The first of these two is the self-manifestation of the Essence within itself. Here the Absolute reveals itself to itself. It is, in other } words, the first appearance of the self-consciousness of the Abso- | lute. And the content of this consciousness is constituted by the I permanent archetypes of things before they are actualized in the outward world, the eternal forms of things as they exist in the Divine Consciousness. As we shall see later in detail, Ibn ‘ArabI calls this type of the self-manifestation of the Absolute ‘the most holy ema- nation’ ( al-fayd al-aqdas ), the term ‘emanation’ {fayd) being for Ibn ‘ArabI always synonymous with ‘self-manifestation’ ( tajalli ). 14 This is a (direct) self-manifestation of the Essence ( tajalli dhatiy ) of which invisibility is the reality. And through this self-manifestation I the ‘He-ness’ is actualized . 13 One is justified in attributing ‘He-ness’ to it on the ground that (in the Qoran) the Absolute designates itself by the pronoun ‘He’. The Absolute (at this stage) is eternally and everlastingly ‘He’ for itself . 14 : It is to be remarked that the word ‘He’ is, as Ibn ‘ArabI observes, a ; pronoun of ‘absence’. This naturally implies that, although there | has already been self-manifestation, the subject of this act still remains ‘absent’, i.e., invisible to others. It also implies that, since it is ‘He’, the third person, the Absolute here has already split itself ; into two and has established the second ‘itself’ as something other than the first ‘itself’. However, all this is occurring only within the Consciousness of the Absolute itself. It is, at this stage, ‘He’ only to ' itself; it is not ‘He’ to anybody or anything else. The Consciousness of the Absolute is still the world of the invisible ( ‘alam al-ghayb ). The second type of self-manifestation, the tajalli shahadah, is 44 Sufism and Taoism 45 different from this. It refers to the phenomenon of the permanent archetypes which form the content of the Divine Consciousness coming out of the stage of potentiality into the outward world of ‘reality’. It means the actualization of the archetypes in concrete forms. In distinction from the first type, this second type of self- manifestation is called by Ibn ‘Arab! ‘the holy emanation’ (al-fayd al-muqaddas ). And the world of Being thus realized constitutes the world of sensible experience (‘alam al-shahadah). So much for the second stage of man’s ‘knowing his Lord by knowing himself’ . Now we turn to the third and the last of the three stages distinguished above. Let us begin by quoting a short description of the third stage by Ibn ‘Arab! himself . 15 Following these two stages there comes the final ‘unveiling’. There our own forms will be seen in it (i.e., the Absolute) in such a way that all of us are disclosed to each other in the Absolute. All of us will recognize each other and at the same time be distinguished from one another. The meaning of this somewhat enigmatic statement may be rendered perfectly understandable in the following way. To the eye of a man who has attained this spiritual stage there arises a scene of extraordinary beauty. He sees all the existent things as they appear in the mirror of the Absolute and as they appear one in the other. All these things interflow and interpenetrate in such a way that they become transparent to one another while keeping at the same time each its own individuality. This is the experience of ‘unveiling’ (kashf). We may remark in this connection that al-Qashani divides the ‘unveiling’ into two stages . 16 The first ‘unveiling’ occurs in the state of ‘self-annihilation’ ( fana ’) in the Absolute. In this state, the man who sees and the object seen are nothing other than the Absolute alone. This is called unification’ {jam). The second ‘unveiling’ is ‘subsistence’ ( baqa ) after ‘self- annihilation’. In this spiritual state, the forms of the created world make their appearance; they make their appearance one to the other in the Absolute itself. Thus the Reality here plays the role of a mirror for the creatures. And the One Being diversifies itself into many through the innumerable forms of the things. The reality (of the mirror) is the Absolute and the forms (appearing in it) are creatures. The creatures in this experience know one another and yet each is distinguished from others. Al-QashanI goes on to say that of those whose eyes have been opened by the second- 4 unveiling’, some attain the state of perfec- The Self-knowledge of Man tion’ ( kamal ). These are men ‘who are not veiled by the sight of the creatures from the Absolute and who recognize the creaturely Many in the very bosom of the real Unity of the Absolute’. These are the ‘people of perfection’ (ahl al- kamal) whose eyes are not veiled by the Divine Majesty (i.e., the aspect of the phenomenal Many) from the Divine Beauty (i.e., the aspect of the metaphysical One), nor by the Divine Beauty from the Divine Majesty. The last point is mentioned with particular emphasis in view of the fact that, according to al-Qashani’s interpretation, the first ‘unveiling’ con- sists exclusively in an experience of Beauty ( jamal ), while the second is mainly an experience of Majesty ( jalal ), so that in either case there is a certain danger of mystics emphasizing exclusively either the one or the other. The first ‘unveiling’ brings out Beauty alone. The subject who experiences it does not witness except Beauty . . . Thus he is nat- urally veiled by Beauty and cannot see Majesty. But among those who experience the second ‘unveiling’ there are some who are veiled by Majesty and cannot see Beauty. They tend to imagine and represent the (state of affairs) on this level in terms of the creatures as distinguished from the Absolute, and thus they are veiled by the sight of the creatures from seeing the Absolute. The same situation is described in a different way by Ibn ‘Arabi himself by a terse expression as follows : 17 Some of us (i.e., the ‘people of perfection’) are aware that this (supreme) knowledge about us 18 (i.e., about the phenomenal Many) occurs in no other than the Absolute. But some of us (i.e., mystics who are not so perfect) are unaware of the (true nature of this) Presence (i.e., the ontological level which is disclosed in the baqa- experience) in which this knowledge about us (i.e., the phenomenal Many) occurs to us . 19 I take refuge in God from being one of the ignorant! By way of conclusion let us summarize at this point the interpreta- tion given by Ibn ‘Arabi to the Tradition: ‘He who knows himself knows his Lord’. He begins by emphasizing that the self-knowledge of man is the absolutely necessary premise for his knowing his Lord, that man’s knowledge of the Lord can only result from his knowledge of himself. What is important here is that the word ‘Lord’ ( rabb ) in Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s terminology means the Absolute as it manifests itself through some definite Name. It does not refer to the Essence which surpasses all determinations and transcends all relations. Thus the dictum: ‘He who knows himself knows his Lord’ does not in any way suggest that the self-knowledge of man will allow man to know the 46 Sufism and Taoism Absolute in its pure Essence. Whatever one may do, and however deep one’s experience of ‘unveiling’ may be, one is forced to stop at the stage of the ‘Lord’. Herein lies the limitation set to human cognition. . . In the opposite direction, however, the same human cognition is able to cover an amazingly wide field in its endeavor to know the Absolute. For, after all, the self-revealing Absolute is, at the last and ultimate stage of its activity, nothing but the world in which we live And ‘every part of the world’ is a pointer to its own ontologica ground, which is its Lord .’ 20 Moreover, man is the most perfect of all the parts of the world. If this most perfect part of the world comes to know itself through self-knowledge or self-consciousness, it wi naturally be able to know the Absolute to the utmost limit of possibility, in so far as the latter manifests itself in the world . 21 There still seems to remain a vital question: Is man really capable of knowing himself with such profundity? This, however, is a relative question. If one takes the phrase ‘know himself’ in the most rigor- ous sense, the answer will be in the negative, but if one takes it in a loose sense, one should answer in the affirmative. As Ibn ‘Arabi says, ‘You are right if you say Yes, and you are right if you say No. Notes 1. Man ‘arafa nafsa-hu ‘arafa rabba-hu. 2. i.e., all the attributes peculiar to the created things as ‘possible’ and ‘contingent existents. 3. Fus-, p. 73/81. 4. al-Ghazall. 5. Fu$., p. 74/81. 6. p. 74. 7. Fus-, p. 74/81—82. 8. p. 74. 9 This does not mean the absolute One at the level of primordial Unity which has already been explained above. The ‘One’ referred to here is the One containing in a unified form all the Names before they become actually differentiated. It is, in brief, the unity of Divine Consciousness in which exist all the archetypes of the things of the world in the form of the objects of Divine Knowledge. The Self-knowledge of Man 47 10. Since the archetypes are no other than the very content of the Divine Con- sciousness as prefigurations of the things of the world, they cannot exist outside the Divine Consciousness. 11. Fus., pp. 145-146/120-121. 12. That is to say, the term ‘emanation’ should not be taken in the usual neo- Platonic sense. 13. Asa result of the ‘most holy emanation’ the Absolute establishes itself as ‘He’. And as the Divine ‘He’ is established, the permanent archetypes of all things are also established as the invisible content of the ‘He’ -consciousness of God. 14. Fus., p. 146/120. 15. Fus., p. 74/82. 16. pp. 74-75. 17. Fus., P- 74/82. 18. The ‘(supreme) knowledge about us’ refers back to what has been mentioned above; namely, the extraordinary scene of all the existent things penetrating each other while each keeping its unique individuality. 19. This means that the phenomenal Many, being as it is Divine Majesty, is no less an aspect of the Absolute than the metaphysical One appearing as Divine Beauty. The knowledge of the phenomal Many through baqa’ is no less a knowledge of the Absolute than the knowledge of the metaphysical One through fana’. 20. Fus., p- 267/215. 21. Cf. Affifi, Fus., Com., p. 325. Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion 49 IV Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion What the preceding chapters have made clear may briefly be sum- marized by saying (1) that the Absolute has two aspects opposed to each other: the hidden and the self- revealing aspect; (2) that the Absolute in the former sense remains for ever a Mystery and Darkness whose secret cannot be unveiled even by the highest degree of fo*s/t/-experience; (3) that the Absolute comes fully into the sphere of ordinary human cognition only in its self-revealing aspect in the form of ‘God’ and ‘Lord’; and (4) that between these two is situated a particular region in which things ‘may rightly be said to exist and not to exist’, i.e., the world of the permanent archetypes, which is totally inaccessible to the mind of an ordinary man but perfectly accessible to the ecstatic mind of a mystic. This summary gives the most basic structure of Ibn ‘Arabi’s world-view from the ontological standpoint. Since the hidden aspect of the Absolute can neither be known nor described, the whole of the rest of the book will naturally be concerned with the self-revealing aspect and the intermediate re gion. But before we proceed to explore these two domains which are more or less accessible to human understanding, we must consider the radical opposition between the hidden and the self-revealing aspect of the Absolute from a new perspective. The analysis will disclose an important phase of Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought. From this new perspective Ibn ‘Arab! calls the hidden and the self-revealing aspect tanzih and tazhbih, respectively. These are two key-terms taken from the terminology of the traditional Islamic theology. Both terms played an exceedingly important role m theology from the earliest times of its historical formulation. Tanzih (from the verb nazzaha meaning literally ‘to keep something away from anything contaminating, anything impure ) is used in theology in the sense of ‘declaring or considering God absolutely free from all imperfections’. And by ‘imperfections’ is meant in this context all qualities that resemble those of creatures even in the slightest degree. Tanzih in this sense is an assertion of God’s essential and absolute incomparability with any created thing, His being above all crea- turely attributes. It is, in short, an assertion of Divine transcen- dence. And since the Absolute per se, as we have seen, is an Unknowable which rejects all human effort to approach it and frustrates all human understanding in any form whatsoever, the sound reason naturally inclines toward tanzih . It is a natural attitude of the Reason in the presence of the unknown and unknowable Absolute. In contrast to this, tashbih (from the verb shabbaha meaning ‘to make or consider something similar to some other thing’) means in theology ‘to liken God to created things’. More concretely, it is a theological assertion posited by those who, on the basis of the Qoranic expressions suggesting that ‘God has hands, feet, etc.’, attribute corporeal and human properties to God. Quite naturally it tends to turn toward crude anthropomorphism. In traditional theology, these two positions are, in their radical forms, diametrically opposed and cannot exist together in harmony. One is either a ‘transcendentalist’ ( munazzih , i.e., one who exer- cises tanzih) or an ‘anthropomorphist’ ( mushabbih , i.e., one who chooses the position of tashbih, and holds that God ‘sees with His eyes’, for example, and ‘hears with His ears’, ‘speaks with His tongue’ etc.). Ibn ‘Arabi understands these terms in quite an original manner, though of course there still remains a reminiscence of the meanings they have in theological contexts. Briefly, tanzih in his terminology indicates the aspect of ‘absoluteness’ ( iflaq ) in the Absolute, while tashbih refers to its aspect of ‘determination’ (taqayyud). 1 Both are in this sense compatible with each other and complementary, and the only right attitude is for us to assert both at the same time and with equal emphasis. Of all the prophets who preceded Muhammad in time, Ibn ‘Arabi mentions Noah as representative of the attitude of tanzih. Quite significantly, Ibn ‘Arabi entitles the chapter in his Fu$ii$ , in which he deals with Noah, ‘the transcendentalist wisdom ( hikmah sub- buhiyyah) as embodied in the prophet Noah’. 2 ) According to the Qoran, Noah in the midst of an age in which obstinate and unbridled idol-worship was in full sway, denied the value of the idols, openly exhorted the worship of the One God, and advocated monotheism. In other words, he emphasized throughout his life the principle of tanzih. This attitude of Noah, in the view of Ibn ‘Arabi, was an historical necessity and was therefore quite justifiable. For in his age, among his people, polytheism was so rampant that only a relentless exhortation to a pure and extreme 51 50 Sufism and Taoism Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion tanzih could have any chance of bringing the people back to the right form of religious belief. Apart from these historical considerations, however, tanzih as a human attitude toward God is definitely one-sided. Any religious belief based exclusively on tanzih is essentially imperfect and incomplete. For to ‘purify’ God to such an extent and to reduce Him to something having nothing at all to do with the creatures is another way of delimiting Divine Existence which is actually infinitely vast and infinitely profound. ‘Tanzih' , as Ibn ‘Arab! says , 3 ‘in the opinion of the people who know the truth, is nothing less than delimiting and restricting God’. This sentence is explained by al- Qashanl as follows : 4 Tanzih is distinguishing the Absolute from all contingent and physi- cal things, that is, from all material things that do not allow of tanzih. But everything that is distinguished from some other thing can only be distinguished from it through an attribute which is incompatible with the attribute of the latter. Thus such a thing (i.e., anything that is distinguished from others) must necessarily be determined by an attribute and delimited by a limitation. All tanzih is in this sense delimitation. The gist of what is asserted here is the following. He who ‘purifies’ God purifies Him from all bodily attributes, but by that very act he is (unconsciously) ‘assimilating’ ( tashbih ) Him with non-material, spiritual beings. What about, then, if one ‘purifies’ Him from ‘limit- ing’ ( taqyid ) itself? Even in that case he will be ‘limiting’ Him with ‘non-limitation’ ( i(laq ), while in truth God is ‘purified’ from (i.e., transcends) the fetters of both ‘limitation’ and ‘non-limitation’. He is absolutely absolute; He is not delimited by either of them, nor does He even exclude either of them. Ibn ‘ Arabi makes a challenging statement that ‘anybody who exer- cises and upholds tanzih in its extreme form is either an ignorant man or one who does not know how to behave properly toward God’. As regards the ‘ignorant’, Ibn ‘Arabi gives no concrete example. Some of the commentators, e.g., Bali Efendi , 5 are of the opinion that the word refers to the Muslim Philosophers and their blind followers. These are people, Bali Effendi says, who ‘do not believe in the Divine Law, and who dare to ‘purify’ God, in accordance with what is required by their theory, from all the attributes which God Himself has attributed to Himself’ . As to ‘those who do not know how to behave properly’, we have Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s own remark. They are ‘those of the people who believe in the Divine Law (i.e., Muslims) who “purify” God and do not go beyond tanzih ’ . They are said to be behaving improperly because ‘they give the lie to God and the apostles without being conscious of it’. Most probably this refers to the Mu‘tazilite theologians 6 who are notorious for denying the existence of Attributes in the Essence of God. They are believers, but they recklessly go to this extreme driven by the force of their own reasoning, and end by completely ignoring the aspect of tashbih which is so explicit in the Qoran and Traditions. Now to go back to the story of Noah which has been interrupted. The kind of tanzih symbolized by Noah is an attitude peculiar to, and characteristic of, Reason. Al-Qashani calls it ‘ tanzih by Reason’ (al- tanzih al-‘aqliy). Reason, by nature, refuses to admit that the Absolute appears in a sensible form. But by doing so it overlooks a very important point, namely, that ‘purifying’ the Absolute from all sensible forms is, as we have seen a few lines back, not only tan- tamount to delimiting it but is liable to fall into a kind of tashbih which it detests so violently. Commenting upon a verse by Ibn ‘Arab! which runs: ‘Every time (the Absolute) appears to the eye (in a sensible form), Reason expels (the image) by logical reasoning in applying which it is always so assiduous’, al-Qashanl makes the following remark : 7 The meaning of the verse is this: Whenever (the Absolute) manifests itself ( tajalli ) in a sensible form, Reason rejects it by logical reason- ing, although in truth it (i.e., the sensible phenomenon) is a reality (in its own way) on the level of the sensible world as well as in itself (i.e., not merely qua a sensible phenomenon but in its reality as an authen- tic form of the self-manifestation of the Absolute). Reason ‘purifies’ it from being a sensible object because otherwise (the Absolute) would be in a certain definite place and a certain definite direction. Reason judges (the Absolute) to be above such (determinations). And yet, the Absolute transcends what (Reason) ‘purifies’ it from, as it transcends such a ‘purifying’ itself. For to ‘purify’ it in this way is to assimilate it to spiritual beings and thereby delimit its absoluteness. It makes the Absolute something determinate. The truth of the matter is that the Absolute transcends both being in a direction and not being in a direction, having a position and not having a position; it transcends also all determinations originating from the senses, reason, imagination, representation and thinking. Besides this kind of tanzih symbolized by Noah, which is ‘ tanzih by Reason’ , Ibn ‘Arab! recognizes another type of tanzih. This latter is Tanzih of immediate tasting’ (al-tanzih al-dhawqiy), and is symbol- ized by the above-mentioned prophet Enoch. The two types of tanzih correspond to two Names: the one is subbuh which has been mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, and the other is quddus, the ‘Most Holy ’. 8 Both are tanzih , but the one symbolized by Noah is ‘purifying’ the Absolute from any partners 52 Sufism and Taoism and from all attributes implying imperfection, while the sec- ond, in addition to this kind of tanzih , removes from the Absolute all properties of the ‘possible’ beings (including even the highest per- fections attained by ‘possible’ things) and all connections with mat- eriality as well as any definite quality that may be imaginable and thinkable about the Absolute . 9 The second type of tanzih represents the furthest limit of ‘subtrac- tion’ ( tajrid ) which attributes to the Absolute the highest degree of transcendence. According to Ibn ‘Arabi, the prophet Enoch was literally an embodiment of such tanzih. Depicting the mythological figure of Enoch as a symbol of this kind of tanzih, al-Qashani says : 10 Enoch went to the extreme of ‘subtracting’ himself (i.e., not only did he ‘subtract’ everything possible and material from the Absolute, but he ‘subtracted’ all such elements from himself) and ‘spiritualization’ (tarawwuh), so much so that in the end he himself was turned into a pure spirit. Thus he cast off his body, mixed with the angels, became united with the spiritual beings of the heavenly spheres, and ascended to the world of Sanctity. Thereby he completely went beyond the ordinary course of nature. In contrast to this, al-Qashani goes on to say, Noah lived on the earth as a simple ordinary man with ordinary human desires, got married and had children. But Enoch became himself a pure spirit. All the desires fell off from him, his nature became spiritualized, the natural bodily properties were replaced by spiritual properties. The assiduous spiritual discipline completely changed his nature, and he was transformed into a pure unmixed Intellect {‘aql mujarrad). And thus he was raised to a high place in the fourth Heaven. In less mythological terminology this would seem to imply that the tanzih of Noah is that exercised by the Reason of an ordinary man living with all his bodily limitations, while that of Enoch is a tanzih exercised by the pure Intellect or mystical Awareness existing apart from bodily conditions. Intellect, being completely released from the bondage of body, works, not as the natural human faculty of logical thinking, but as a kind of mystical intuition. This is why its activity is called ‘ tanzih of immediate tasting’. In either of the two forms, however, tanzih, in Ibn ArabFs view, is one-sided and imperfect. Only when combined with tashbih does it become the right attitude of man toward the Absolute. The reason for this is, as has often been remarked above, that the Absolute itself is not only an absolute Transcendent but also Self-revealer to the world in the world. The Absolute has an aspect in which it appears in each creature. Thus it is the Outward making itself manifest in everything intelligible. 53 Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion while being, at the same time, an Inward concealing itself from every intelligence except in the mind of those who hold that the world is its Form and its He-ness as (a concrete manifestation of) the Name ‘the Outward’." This passage is reproduced by al-Qashani in a more explicitly articu- late form as follows : 12 The Absolute appears in every creature in accordance with the ‘preparedness’ (i.e., natural capacity) of that particular creature. It is in this sense the Outward appearing in everything intelligible in accordance with the ‘preparedness’ of the individual intelligence. And that (i.e., the particular ‘preparedness’) is the limit of each intelligence. . . . But (the Absolute) is also the Inward, (and in that capacity it is) never accessible to the intelligence beyond the limit set by the latter’s own ‘preparedness’. If the intelligence attempts to go beyond its natural limit through thinking, that is, (if it tries to understand) what is naturally concealed from its understanding, the heart goes off the track, except in the case of the real sages whose understanding has no limit. Those are they who understand the matter of God from God, not by means of thinking. Nothing is ‘inward’ (i.e., concealed) from their understanding. And they know that the world is the Form or He-ness of the Absolute, that is, its inward reality, manifesting itself outwardly under the Name ‘the Outward’. For the Divine Reality (haqiqah) in its absoluteness can never be ‘ He-ness’ except in view of a determination (or limitation), be it the determination of ‘absolute- ness’ itself, as is exemplified by the Qoranic words: ‘He is God, the One.’ As to the Divine Reality qua Divine Reality, it is completely free from any determination, though (potentially) it is limited by all the determinations of the Divine Names. Not only does the Absolute manifest itself in everything in the world in accordance with the ‘preparedness’ of each, but it is the ‘spirit’ (ruh) of everything, its ‘inward’ ( bafin ). This is the meaning of the Name ‘the Inward’ . And in the ontological system of Ibn ‘Arabi, the Absolute’s constituting the ‘spirit’ or ‘inward’ of anything means nothing other than that the Absolute manifests itself in the archetype (or the essence) of that thing. It is a kind of self- manifestation ( tajalli ) in no less a degree than the outward tajalli. Thus the Absolute, in this view, manifests itself both internally and externally. (The Absolute) is inwardly the ‘spirit’ of whatever appears outwardly (in the phenomenal world). In this sense, it is the Inward. For the relation it bears to the phenomenal forms of the world is like that of the soul (of man) to his body which it governs . 13 The Absolute in this aspect does manifest itself in all things, and the 54 Sufism and Taoism latter in this sense are but so many ‘determined (or limited)’ forms of the Absolute. But if we, dazzled by this, exclusively emphasize ‘assimilation’ ( tashbih ), we would commit exactly the same mistake of being one-sided as we would if we should resort to tanzih only. ‘He who “assimilates” the Absolute delimits and determines the Absolute in no less a degree than he who “purifies” it, and is ignorant of the Absolute’. 14 As al-Qashani says: 15 He who ‘assimilates’ the Absolute confines it in a determined form, and anything that is confined within a fixing limit is in that very respect a creature. From this we see that the whole of these fixing limits (i.e., concrete things), though it is nothing other than the Absolute, is not the Absolute itself. This because the One Reality that manifests itself in all the individual determinations is something different from these determinations put together. Only when one combines tanzih and tashbih in one’s attitude, can one be regarded as a ‘true knower’ (‘arif) of the Absolute. Ibn ‘Arabi, however, attaches to this statement a condition, namely, that one must not try to make this combination except in a general, unspecified way, because it is impossible to do otherwise. Thus even the ‘true knower’ knows the Absolute only in a general way, the concrete details of it being totally unknown to him. This may be easily understood if one reflects upon the way man knows himself. Even when he does have self-knowledge, he knows himself only in a general way; he cannot possibly have a comprehensive knowledge of himself in such a way that it would cover all the details of himself without leaving anything at all. Likewise no one can have a truly comprehensive knowledge of all the concrete details of the world, but it is precisely in all these forms that the self- manifestation of the Absolute is actualized. Thus tashbih must of necessity take on a broad general form; it can never occur in a concretely specified way. 16 As to the fact that the Absolute manifests itself in all, i.e., all that exists outside us and inside us, Ibn ‘Arab! adduces a Qoranic verse and adds the following remark: 17 God says (in the Qoran): ‘We will show them Our signs 18 in the horizon as well as within themselves so that it be made clear to them that it is Reality’ (XLI, 53). Here the expression ‘signs in the horizon’ refers to all that exists outside yourself, 19 while ‘within themselves’ refers to your inner essence. 20 And the phrase: ‘that it is Reality’ means that it is Reality in that you are its eternal form and it is your inner spirit. Thus you are to the Absolute as your bodily form is to yourself. The upshot of all this is the view mentioned above, namely, that the only right course for one to follow in this matter is to couple tanzih 9 Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion 55 and tashbih. To have recourse exclusively to tashbih in one’s con- ception of the Absolute is to fall into polytheism; to assert tanzih to the exclusion of tashbih is to sever the divine from the whole created world. The right attitude is to admit that, ‘thou art not He (i.e., the phenomenal world is different from the Absolute), nay thou art He, and thou seest Him in concretely existent things absolutely undetermined and yet determined’ . 21 And once you have attained this supreme intuitive knowledge, you have a complete freedom of taking up the position either of ‘unification’ ( jam" , lit, ‘gathering’) or of ‘dispersion’ ( farq , lit. ‘separating’), 22 Concerning these two terms, yam’, and farq, al-Qashani remarks: 23 Taking up the position of ‘unification’ means that you turn your attention exclusively to the Absolute without taking into considera- tion the creatures. This attitude is justified because Being belongs to the Absolute alone, and any being is the Absolute itself. (The position of ‘dispersion’ means that) you observe the creatures in the Absolute in the sense that you observe how the essentially One is diversified into the Many through its own Names and determinations. The position of ‘dispersion’ is justified in view of the creaturely determinations (of the Absolute) and the involvement of the ‘He- ness’ of the Absolute in the ‘This-ness’ (i.e., concrete determina- tions) of the created world. I? The distinction between ‘unification’ and ‘dispersion’, thus explained by al-Qashani, is an important one touching upon a cardinal point of Ibn ‘Arabi’s ontology. As we already know, the distinction is more usually expressed by tanzih and tashbih . We shall now examine the distinction and relation between the two in more H detail and from a somewhat different angle. Ibn ‘Arabi starts from a well-known and oft-quoted Qoranic verse: Laysa ka-mithli-hi shay’un, wa-huwa al-samiu al-bafir meaning ‘there is nothing like unto Him, and He is All-hearing, All-seeing’ (XLII, 11), which he interprets in an original way. The interpreta- tion makes it clear from every aspect that tanzih and tashbih should be combined if we are to take the right attitude toward God. Let us start by observing that the verse grammatically allows of two different interpretations, the pivotal point being the second term ka-mithli-hi, which literally is a complex of three words: ka ‘like’ mithli ‘similar to’, and hi ‘Him’. The first of these three words, ka ‘like’, can syntactically be interpreted as either (1) expletive, i.e., having no particular mean- ing of its own in the combination with mithli which itself connotes similarity or equality, or (2) non-expletive, i.e., keeping its own independent meaning even in such a combination. If we choose (1), the first half of the verse would mean, ‘there is 56 Sufism and Taoism nothing like Him’ with an additional emphasis on the non-existence of anything similar to Him. It is, in other words, the most emphatic declaration of tanzih. And in this case, the second half of the verse: ‘and He is All-hearing, All-seeing’ is to be understood as a state- ment of tashbih, because ‘hearing’ and ‘seeing’ are pre-eminently human properties. Thus the whole verse would amount to a combi- nation of tanzih and tashbih. If we choose the second alternative, the first half of the verse would mean the same thing as laysa mithla-mithli-hi shay’ meaning ‘there is nothing like anything similar to Him’. Here something ‘similar to Him’ is first mentally posited, then the existence of anything ‘similar’ to that (which is similar to Him) is categorically denied. Since something similar to Him is established at the outset, it is a declaration of tashbih. And in this case, the second half of the verse must be interpreted as a declaration of tanzih . This interpreta- tion is based on the observation that the sentence structure - with the pronominal subject, huwa ‘He, put at the head of the sentence, and the following epithets, samV (hearing) and basir (seeing) being determined by the article, al- (the) - implies that He is the only sami’ and the only basir in the whole world of Being . 24 Thus, here again we get a combination of tanzih and tashbih. The following elliptic expression of Ibn ‘ Arabi will be quite easily understood if we approach it with the preceding explanation in mind . 25 God Himself ‘purifies’ (i.e., tanzih) by saying: laysa ka-mithli-hi shay , and ‘assimilates’ (i.e., tashbih) by saying: wa-huwa al-samV al-ba$ir. God ‘assimilates’ or ‘declares Himself to be dual’ by saying: laysa ka-mithli-hi shay, while he ‘purifies’ or ‘declares Himself to be uni- que’ by saying: wa-huwa al-samV al-basir. What is very important to remember in this connection is that, in Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s conception, tanzih and tashbih are each a kind of ‘delimitation’ ( tahdid ). In both the Qoran and Tradition, he observes , 26 we often find God describing Himself with ‘delimita- tion’, whether the expression aims at tanzih or tashbih. Even God cannot describe himself in words without delimiting Himself. He describes Himself for example, as, ‘sitting firm on the throne’, ‘descending to the lowest heaven’, ‘being in heaven’, ‘being on the earth’, ‘being with men wherever they may be’, etc.; none of these expressions is free from delimiting and determining God. Even when He says of Himself that ‘there is nothing like unto Him’ in the sense of tanzih , 11 He is setting a limit to Himself, because that which is distinguished from everything determined is, by this very act of distinction, itself determined, i.e., as something totally different from everything determined. For ‘a complete non-determination is a kind of determination’. 57 Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion Thus tanzih is a ‘delimitation’ no less than tashbih. It is evident that neither of them alone can ever constitute a perfect description of the Absolute. Strictly speaking, however, even the combination of the two cannot be perfect in these respects, for delimitations will remain delimitations in whatever way one combines them. But by combining these two delimitations which of all the delimitations are the most fundamental and most comprehensive in regard to the Absolute, one approaches the latter to the utmost extent that is humanly possible. Of these two basic attitudes of man toward the Absolute, Noah, as remarked above, represents tanzih. In order to fight idolatry which was the prevalent tendency of the age, he exclusively emphasized tanzih. Naturally this did nothing but arouse discontent and anger among the idol- worshippers, and his appeal fell only upon unheed- ing ears. ‘If, however, Noah had combined the two attitudes in dealing with his people, they would have listened to his words’ . 28 On this point al-Qashani makes the following observation: In view of the fact that his people were indulging in an excessive tashbih, paying attention only to the diversity of the Names and being veiled by the Many from the One, Noah stressed tanzih exclusively. If, instead of brandishing to them the stringent unification and unmitigated tanzih, he had affirmed also the diversity of the Names and invited them to accept the Many that are One and the Multiplic- ity that is Unity, clothed the Unity with the form of Multiplicity, and combined between the attitude of tashbih and that of tanzih as did (our prophet) Muhammad, they would readily have responded to him in so far as their outward familiarity with idolatry was agreeable to tashbih and in so far as their inner nature was agreeable to tanzih. As is clearly suggested by this passage, the idols that were worship- ped by the people of Noah were, in Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s conception, prop- erly ‘the diversity of the Names’; that is, so many concrete forms assumed by the Divine Names. The idols in this sense are sacred in themselves. The sin of idolatry committed by the people of Noah consisted merely in the fact that they were not aware of the idols being concrete forms of the self-manifestation of the One, and that they worshipped them as independent divinities. The kind of absolute tanzih which was advocated by Noah is called by Ibn ‘Arabi furqan, a Qoranic term, to which he ascribes an original meaning , 29 and which is to play the role of a key-term in his system. The word furqan, in Ibn ‘ArabFs interpretation derives from the root FRQ meaning ‘separating’. One might expect him to use it to designate the aspect of ‘dispersion’ ( farq ) referred to a few para- 58 Sufism and Taoism graphs back, which is also derived from exactly the same root. Actually, however, he means by furqan the contrary of ‘dispersion’. ‘Separating’ here means ‘separating’ in a radical manner the aspect of Unity from that of the diversified self-manifestation of the Abso- lute. Furqan thus means an absolute and radical tanzih , an intrans- igent attitude of tanzih which does not allow even of a touch of tashbih . Noah exhorted his people to a radical tanzih, but they did not listen to him. Thereupon Noah, according to the Qoran, laid a bitter complaint before God against these faithless people saying, ‘I have called upon my people day and night, but my admonition has done nothing but increase their aversion’ (LXXI, 5-6). This verse, on the face of it, depicts Noah complaining of the stubborn faithlessness of his people and seriously accusing them of this sinful attitude. However much he exhorts them to pure mono- theism, he says, they only turn a deaf ear to his words. Such is the normal understanding of the verse. Ibn ‘ Arabi, however, gives it an extremely original interpretation, so original, indeed, that it will surely shock or even scandalize common sense. The following passage shows how he understands this verse. 30 What Noah means to say is that his people turned a deaf ear to him because they knew what would necessarily follow if they were to respond favorably to his exhortation. (Superficially Noah’s words might look like a bitter accusation) but the true ‘knowers of God’ are well aware that Noah here is simply giving high praise to his people in a language of accusation. As they (i.e. the true ‘knowers’ of God) understand, the people of Noah did not listen to him because his exhortation was ultimately an exhortation to furqan. More simply stated, this would amount to saying that (1) Noah reproaches his people outwardly but (2) in truth he is merely praising them. And their attitude is worthy of high praise because they know (by instinct) that that to which Noah was calling them was no other than a pure and radical tanzih, and that such a tanzih was not the right attitude of man toward God. Tanzih in its radical form and at its extreme limit would inevitably lead man to the Absolute per se, which is an absolutely Unknowable. How could man worship something which is absolutely unknown and unknow- able? If Noah had been more practical and really wished to guide his people to the right form of religious faith, he should have combined tanzih and tashbih . A harmonious combination of tanzih and tashbih is called by Ibn ‘Arab! qur’an . 31 The qur’an is the only right attitude of man toward God. Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion 59 The right (religious) way is qur’an not furqan. And (it is but natural) that he who stands in the position of qur’an should never listen to (an exhortation to) furqan, even though the latter itself is contained in the former. Qur’an implies furqan, but furqan does not imply qur’an . 32 Thus we see that the relation of Noah with his people, as Ibn ‘Arabi understands it, has a complex inner structure. On the one hand, Noah, as we have just observed, outwardly reproaches his people for their faithlessness, but inwardly he praises them because of the right attitude they have taken on this crucial question. On the other hand, the people, on their part, know, if not consciously, that pure monotheism in its true and deep sense is not to reduce God to one of his aspects such as is implied by the kind of tanzih advocated by Noah, but to worship the One God in all the concrete forms of the world as so many manifestations of God. Outwardly, however, they give the impression of committing an outrageous mistake by refus- ing to accept Noah’s admonition and exhorting each other to stick to the traditional form of idol- worship. Ibn Arabi terms this relation between Noah and his people ‘(reciprocal) makr , a word meaning ‘stratagem’, ‘artifice’ or ‘cun- ning deceit’. This is based on a Qoranic verse: ‘And they tried to deceive by a big artifice’ (LXXI, 22). This situation is explained by Affifi in a very lucid way. He writes: 33 When Noah called upon his people to worship God by way of tanzih he did try to deceive them. More generally speaking, whoever calls upon others to worship God in such a way, does nothing other than trying to exercise makr upon them to deceive them. This is a makr because those who are admonished, whatever their religion and whatever the object they worship, are in reality worshipping nothing other than God. (Even an idolater) is worshipping the Absolute in some of its forms of self-manifestation in the external world. To call upon the idolaters who are actually worshipping God in this form and tell them not to worship the idols but worship God alone, is liable to produce a false impression as if the idolaters were worship- ping (in the idols) something other than God, while in truth there is no ‘other’ thing than God in the whole world. The people of Noah, on their part, exercised makr when they, to fight against Noah s admonition, called upon one another saying, ‘ Do not abandon your gods! This is also a clear case of makr, because if they had abandoned the worship of their idols, their worship of God would have diminished by that amount. And this because the idols are nothing other than so many self-manifestations of God Affifi in this connection rightly calls attention to the fact that, for Ibn ‘Arabi, the Qoranic verse: ‘And thy Lord hath decreed that you should worship none other than Him’ (XVII, 23) does not mean, as 60 Sufism and Taoism it does normally, ‘that you should not worship anything other than God’, but rather ‘that whatever you worship, you are thereby not (actually) worshipping anything other than God ’. 34 In explaining why Noah’s call to the worship of God is to be understood as a makr, Ibn ‘Arabi uses the terms the ‘beginning’ (bidayah) and the ‘end’ (, ghayah ). 35 That is to say, he distinguishes between the ‘beginning’ stage and the ‘end’ stage in idol-worship, and asserts that these two stages are in this case exactly one and the same thing. The ‘beginning’ is the stage at which the people of Noah were indulging in idol-worship, and at which they were reproached by Noah for faithlessness. They were strongly urged by him to leave this stage and go over to the other end, i.e., the ‘end’ stage where they would be worshipping God as they should. However, already at the ‘beginning’ stage Noah’s people were worshipping none other than God albeit only through their idols. So, properly speaking, there was no meaning at all in Noah’s exhorting them to leave the first stage and go over to the last stage. Indeed, it was even more positively an act of makr on the part of Noah that he distinguished between the ‘beginning’ and the ‘end’ when there was nothing at all to be distinguished. As al-Qashani puts it, ‘how can a man be advised to go to God when he is already with God?’ To tell the idolaters to stop worship- ping God and to worship God alone amounts exactly to the same thing as telling those who are actually worshipping God to abandon the worship of God and to resort to the worship of God! It is absurd, or rather it is worse than absurd, because such an admonition is liable to make people blind to the self-revealing aspect of the Absolute. The secret of idol-worship which we have just seen may be understood in more theoretical terms as a problem of the compati- bility of the One and the Many in regard to the Absolute. There is no contradiction in the Absolute being the One and the Many at the same time. Al-Qashani offers a good explanation of this fact, com- paring it to the essential unity of a human being . 36 (Since there is nothing existent in the real sense of the word except the Absolute itself, a true ‘knower of God’) does not see in the form of the Many anything other than God’s face, for he knows that it is He that manifests Himself in all these forms. Thus (whatever he may worship) he worships only God. This may be understood in the following way. The divergent forms of the Many within the One are either spiritual, i.e., non-sensible, such as angels, or outwardly visible and sensible such as the heavens and earth and all the material things that exist between the two. The former are comparable to the spiritual faculties in the bodily frame of a man, while the latter are comparable to his bodily members. The Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion 61 existence of multiplicity in man in no way prevents him from having a unity. (Likewise, the existence of the Many in God does not deprive Him of His essential Unity.) The conclusion to be reached from all this is that there is nothing wrong with idolatry, for whatever one worships one is worshipping through it God Himself. Are all idol-worshippers, then, right in indulging in idolatry? That is another question. Idolatry, though in itself it has nothing blamable, is exposed to grave danger. Idolatry is right in so far as the worshipper is aware that the object of his worship is a manifested form of God and that, therefore, by wor- shipping the idol he is worshipping God. Once, however, he forgets this fundamental fact, he is liable to be deceived by his own imagina- tion and ascribe real divinity to the idol (a piece of wood or a stone, for example) and begin to worship it as a god existing independently of, and side by side with, God. If he reaches this point, his attitude is a pure tashbih which completely excludes tanzih. Thus in Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, there are two basic attitudes toward idolatry that are opposed to each other: the one is an attitude peculiar to the ‘higher’ (a‘la) people, while the other is characteris- tic of the ‘lower’ ( adna ). He says : 37 The ‘knower’ knows who (really) is the object of his worship; he knows also the particular form in which the object of his worship appears (to him). He is aware that the ‘dispersion’ and ‘multiplicity’ Y . are comparable to the corporeal members in the sensible form (of man’s body) and the non-corporeal faculties in the spiritual form (of man), so that in every object of worship what is worshipped is no f. other than God Himself. In contrast to this, the ‘lower’ people are those who imagine a divine nature in every object of their worship. If it were not for this (wrong) Y, imagination, nobody would worship stones and other similar things. This is why (God) said to men of this kind, ‘Name them (i.e., desig- nate each object of your worship by its name)!’ (XIII, 23). If they *!’ were really to name these objects they would have called them a stone, a tree, or a star, (because their idols were in fact stones, trees and stars). But if they had been asked, 1 Whom are you worshipping?’, “ they would have replied, ‘a god!’ They would never have said, ‘God’ or even ‘the god’. 38 Y; The ‘higher’ people, on the contrary, are not victims of this kind of deceitful imagination. (In the presence of each idol) they tell them- W selves, ‘This is a concrete form of theophany, and, as such, it deserves a veneration’. Thus they do not confine (theophany) to this single instance (i.e., they look upon everything as a particular form of theophany). If we are to judge the attitude of Noah’s people who refused to respond to his advice, we must say that it was right in one respect and it was wrong in another. They were right in that they upheld 62 Sufism and Taoism (though unconsciously) the truly divine nature of the outward forms of theophany. This they did by resolutely refusing to throw away their idols. But they were wrong in that they, deceived by their own imagination, regarded each idol as an independently existing god, and thus opposed in their minds ‘small goods ’ 39 to God as the ‘great God’. According to Ibn ‘Arabi, the ideal combination of tanzih and tashbih was achieved only in Islam. The real qur’an came into being for the first time in history in the belief of Muhammad and his community. On this point Ibn ‘Arabi says : 40 The principle of qur’an was upheld in its purity only by Muhammad and his community ‘which was the best of all communities that had ever appeared among mankind’. 41 (Only he and his community real- ized the two aspects of) the verse: laysa ka-mithli-hi shay ‘There is nothing like unto Him’, for (their position) gathered everything into a unity. 42 As we have seen above, the Qoran relates that Noah called upon his people ‘by night and day’. Over against this, Muhammad, Ibn ‘Arabi says, ‘called upon his people, not “by night and day” but “by night in the day and by day in the night” \ 43 Evidently, ‘day’ symbolizes tashbih and ‘night’ tanzih, because the daylight brings out the distinctive features of the individual things while the nocturnal darkness conceals these distinctions. The position of Muhammad, in this interpretation, would seem to sug- gest a complete fusion of tashbih and tanzih. Was Noah, then, completely wrong in his attitude? Ibn ‘Arab! answers to this question in both the affirmative and the negative. Certainly, Noah preached outwardly tanzih alone. Such a pure tanzih, if taken on the level of Reason, is, as we have already seen, liable to lead ultimately to assimilating the Absolute with pure spirits. And tanzih in this sense is a ‘ tanzih by Reason’, and is something to be rejected. With Noah himself, however, tanzih was not of this nature. Far from being a result of logical thinking, it was a tanzih based on a deep prophetic experience 44 Only, the people of Noah failed to notice that; for them the tanzih advocated by Noah was nothing but a tanzih to be reached by the ordinary process of reasoning. Real tanzih is something quite different from this kind of logical tanzih . And according to Ibn ‘ Arabi, the right kind of tanzih was first advocated consciously by Islam. It does not consist in recognizing the absolute Unknowable alone with a total rejection and denial of the phenomenal world of things. The real tanzih is established on the basis of the experience by which man becomes conscious of the unification of all the Divine Attributes, each Attribute being actual- 63 Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion ized in a concrete thing or event in the world. In more plain terms, the real tanzih consists in man’s peeping through the things and events of this world into the grand figure of the One God beyond them. It is ‘purifying’ {tanzih), no doubt, because it stands on the consciousness of the essential ‘oneness’ of God, but it is not a purely logical or intellectual ‘purifying’. It is a tanzih which comprises in itself tashbih. In Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, the tanzih practised by Muhammad was inviting men not to the absolute Absolute which bears no relation at all to the world, but to Allah the Merciful, that is, the Absolute as the ultimate ground of the world, the creative source of all Being. It is worthy of notice also that of all the Divine Names the ‘Merciful’ (al-Rahman) has been specially chosen in this context. The name ‘Merciful’ is for Ibn ‘Arabi the most comprehensive Name which comprises and unifies all the Divine Names. In this capacity the ‘Merciful’ is synonymous with Allah. Al-Qashani is quite explicit on this point . 45 It is remarkable that the ‘Merciful’ is a Name which comprises all the Divine Names, so that the whole world is comprised therein, there being no difference between this Name and the Name Allah. This is evidenced by the Qoranic verse: ‘Say: Call upon (Him by the Name) Allah or call upon (Him by the Name) Merciful. By whichever Name you call upon Him (it will be the same) for all the most beautiful Names are His’ (XVII, 110). Now each group of people in the world stands under the Lordship of one of His Names. And he who stands under the Lordship of a particular Name is a servant of that Name. Thus the apostle of God (Muhammad) called mankind from this state of divergence of the Names unto the unifying plane of the Name Merciful or the Name Allah. To this Bali Efendi 46 adds the remark that, unlike in the case of Noah, there is no relation of reciprocal ‘deceit’ ( makr ) between Muhammad and his people, for there is no motive, neither on the part of Muhammad nor on the part of the community, for having recourse to makr. Muhammad, he goes on to say, certainly invited men to the worship of the One God , 47 but he did not thereby call men to the Absolute in its aspect of He-ness. In other words, he did not unconditionally reject the idols which men had been worship- ping; he simply taught men to worship the idols (or, indeed, any other thing in the world) in the right way, that is, to worship them as so many self-manifestations of God. In the Islamic tanzih there is included the right form of tashbih. If a man wants to know the Absolute by the power of his Reason alone, he is inevitably led to the kind of tanzih which has no place for 64 Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion 65 Sufism and Taoism tashbih. If, on the contrary, he exercises his Imagination (i.e., the faculty of thinking through concrete imagery) alone, he falls into pure tashbih. Both tanzih and tashbih of this sort are by themselves imperfect and positively harmful. Only when man sees by the experience of ‘unveiling’ the true reality of the matter, can tanzih and tashbih assume a form of perfection. If Reason functions by itself quite independently of anything else so that it acquires knowledge by its own cognitive power, the knowledge it obtains of God will surely be of the nature of tanzih, not tashbih. But if God furnishes Reason with a (true) knowledge of the Divine self-manifestation (pertaining to the tashbih aspect of the Absolute), its knowledge of God attains perfection, and it will exercise tanzih where it should, and exercise tashbih where it should. Reason in such a state will witness the Absolute itself pervading all cognizable forms, natural and elemental. And there will remain no form but that Reason identifies its essence with the Absolute itself. Such is the perfect and complete knowledge (of God) that has been brought by the revealed religions. And the faculty of Imagination exercises its own judgment (upon every thing) in the light of this knowledge (i.e., Imagination collaborates with Reason by modifying the tanzih-\ iew of Reason with its own tashbih-view).™ The gist of what Ibn ‘Arab! says in this passage may be summarized as follows. Under normal conditions, tanzih is the product of Reason, and tashbih is the product of Imagination ( wahm ). But when the experience of ‘unveiling’ produces in the mind a perfect knowledge, Reason and Imagination are brought into complete harmony, and tanzih and tashbih become united in the perfect knowledge of God. Of Reason and Imagination in such a state, however, it is invariably the latter that holds regal sway {sultan). Concerning the proper activity of Reason in this process and the controlling function exercised by Imagination over Reason in such a way that a perfect combination of tanzih and tashbih may be obtained, Bali Efendi makes the following illuminating remark : 49 In just the same place where Reason passes the judgment of tanzih, Imagination passes the judgment of tashbih. Imagination does this because it witnesses how the Absolute pervades and permeates all the forms, whether mental or physical. Imagination in this state observes the Absolute in the (completely purified) form peculiar to tanzih as established in Reason, and it realizes that to affirm tanzih (exclusively, as is done by Reason) is nothing but delimiting the Absolute, and that the delimitation of the Absolute is nothing but (a kind of) tashbih (i.e., the completely purified Absolute is also a particular ‘form’ assumed by the Absolute). But Reason is not aware that the tanzih which it is exercising is precisely one of those forms which it thinks must be rejected from the Absolute by tanzih. These words of Bali Efendi makes the following argument of Ibn ‘Arab! easy to understand : 50 It is due to this situation that Imagination 51 has a greater sway in man than Reason for man, even when his Reason has reached the utmost limit of development, is not free from the control exercised over him by Imagination and cannot do without relying upon representation regarding what he has grasped by Reason. Thus Imagination is the supreme authority ( sultan ) in the most perfect form (of Being), namely, man. And this has been confirmed by all the revealed religions, which have exercised tanzih and tashbih at the same time; they have exercised tashbih by Imagination where (Reason has established) tanzih, and exercised tanzih by Reason where (Imagination has established) tashbih. Everything has in this way, been brought into a close organic whole, wherefanziTz cannot be separated from tashbih nor tashbih from tanzih . It is this situation that is referred to in the Qoranic verse: ‘There is nothing like unto Him, and He is All-hearing All-seeing’, in which God Himself describes Him with tanzih and tashbih . . . Then there is another verse in which He says, ‘exalted is thy Lord, the Lord of majestic power standing far above that with which they describe Him (XXXVII, 180). This is said because men tend to describe Him with what is given by their Reason. So He ‘purifies’ Himself here from their very tanzih, because they are doing nothing but delimit Him by their tanzih. All this is due to the fact that Reason is by nature deficient in understanding this kind of thing. Notes 1. Cf. Affifi, Fuy., Com., p. 33. 2. The epithet subbuhiyyah is a derivative of subbuh or sabbuh which is one of the Divine Names meaning roughly ‘One who is glorified’ ‘the All-Glorious’. The verb sabbaha {Allah) means to ‘glorify’ God by crying out Subhana Allah! (‘Far above stands God beyond all imperfections and impurities!’) 3. Fus., p. 45/68. 4. p. 45. 5. Fu$., Com., p. 47. (The commentary of Bali Efendi is given in the same Cairo edition of the Fuyizj which we are using in the present work.) 6. Cf. Affifi, Fuj., Com., p. 12. 7. p. 88. 8. Ibn ‘ Arab! calls the wisdom embodied by Noah ‘ wisdom of a subbuh nature’ , and calls the wisdom symbolized by Enoch ‘wisdom of a quddus nature’ ( hikmah qud- duslyah), Fus., p. 6 /75. 66 Sufism and Taoism 9. Cf. Qashani, p. 60. 10. ibid. 11. Fus., p. 46/68. 12. pp. 46-47. 13. Fus., P- 47/68. Ibn'Arabi takes this occasion to point out that the Absolute does not allow of definition not only in its absoluteness but also in its self-revealing aspect. The impossibility of defining the Absolute perse has already been fully explained in Chapter II. But even in its aspect of self-manifestation, the Absolute cannot be defined because, as we have just seen, the Absolute in this aspect is everything, external or internal, and if we are to define it, the definition must be formulated in such a way that it covers all the definitions of all the things in the world. But since the things are infinite in number, such a definition is never to be attained. 14. Fus., p. 47/69. 15. p. 47. 16. Fus., P- 47/69. 17. Fus -, p- 48/69. 18. ‘Our signs’, that is, ‘Our Attributes’ - al-Qashani. 19. ‘in so far as their determinations ( ta‘ayyunat , i.e., properties conceived as ‘determinations’ of the Absolute) are different from your determination’ - al- Qashani. This means that, although essentially it is not necessary to distinguish the things of the outer world and yourself, there is a certain respect in which ‘all that exist outside of yourself’, i.e., the modes of determination peculiar to the things of the outer world, are different from the mode of determination which is peculiar to ‘yourself’, i.e., the inner world. 20. ‘i.e., what is manifested in yourself by His Attributes. If it were not for this manifestation, you would not exist in the world’. - al-Qashani. 21. Fus -, P- 49/70. 22. Fus., p. 98-99/93. 23. p. 99. 24. that is to say, whenever anybody sees or hears something, it is not the man who really sees or hears, but God Himself who sees or hears in the form of that man. 25. Fus., P- 49/70. 26. Fus., P- 131/111. 27. taking ka as expletive. 28. Fus., P- 50/70. Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion 67 29. The word furqan, whatever its etymology, denotes in the Qoran the Qoran itself. For Ibn ‘Arab!, its meaning is totally different from this. 30. Fus., p. 51/70. 31. Qur’an as a technical term of Ibn ‘Arabi’s philosophy is not the name of the Sacred Book Qur’an (or Qoran). He derives this word from the root QR’ meaning ‘to gather together’ . 32. Fus ., p. 51/70. 33. Fus., Com., p. 39. 34. ibid. Cf. also Fus., p. 55/72. 35. Fus., p. 54/71-72. 36. p. 55. The problem of the One and the Many will form the specific topic of Chapter VII. 37. Fus„ p. 55/72. 38. This implies that for these people each idol is ‘a god’, i.e., an independent divinity; they are not aware that in the forms of the idols they are ultimately worshipping the One God. 39. Cf. Qashani, p. 55. 40. Fus., p. 51/71. 41. Reference to III, 110 of the Qoran. 42. i.e., it affirmed ‘separating’ ( farq ) in ‘gathering’ ( jam ‘), and affirmed ‘gathering’ in ‘separating’, asserting thereby that the One is Many from a relative point of view and that the Many are One in their reality - al-Qashani, p. 51. 43. Fus., p. 52/71. 44. Fus., P- 53/71. 45. p. 54. 46. ibid., footnote. 47. Outwardly this might be considered a pure tanzih. 48. Fus., P- 228/181. 49. p. 229, footnote. 50. Fus., P- 229/181-182. 51. The word Imagination ( wahm ) must be taken in this context in the sense of the mental faculty of thinking through concrete imagery based on representation {tasawwur). Metaphysical Perplexity 69 V Metaphysical Perplexity As the preceding chapter will have made clear, in Ibn ‘Arabi’s conception, the only right attitude of man toward God is a harmoni- ous unity composed of tanzih and tashbih , which is realizable solely on the basis of the mystical intuition of ‘unveiling’. If man follows the direction of Imagination which is not yet illumined by the experience of ‘unveiling’, he is sure to fall into the wrong type of idolatry in which each individual idol is worshipped as a really independent and self-sufficient god. Such a god is nothing but a groundless image produced in the mind of man. And the result is a crude type of tashbih which can never rise to the level of tanzih. If, on the other hand, man tries to approach God by following the direction of Reason unaided by Imagination, man will inevitably rush toward an exclusive tanzih, and lose sight of the Divine life pulsating in all the phenomena of the world including himself. The right attitude which combines in itself tanzih and tashbih is, in short, to see the One in the Many and the Many in the One, or rather to see the Many as One and the One as Many. The realization of this kind of coincidentia oppositorum is called by Ibn ‘Arab! ‘perplexity’ (hay rah). As such, this is a metaphysical perplexity because here man is impeded by the very nature of what he sees in the world from definitely deciding as to whether Being is One or Many. Ibn ‘Arabi explains the conception of ‘perplexity’ by an original interpretation of a Qoranic verse. The verse in question is: ‘And they (i.e., the idols) have caused many people to go astray’ (LXXI, 24). This is interpreted by Ibn ‘Arabi to mean that the existence of many idols has put men into perplexity at the strange sight of the absolute One being actually diversified into Many through its own activity. 1 The idols in this context represent the multiplicity of forms that are observable in the world. And, as al-Qashani remarks, anybody who looks at them ‘with the eye of unification (tawhidf , i.e., with the preconception of tanzih, is sure to become embarrassed and perplexed at the sight of the One being diversified according to the relations it bears to its loci of self-manifestation. The Qoranic verse just quoted ends with another sentence: ‘and (o God) increase Thou not the people of injustice (zalimin) except in going astray’, and the whole verse is put in the mouth of Noah. This second sentence, too, is interpreted by Ibn ‘Arabi in quite an original way. The interpretation is, in fact, more than original, for it squeezes out of the verse a conception of zalim which is exactly the opposite of what is meant by the Qoran. He begins by saying that the word zalim or ‘a man of injustice’ here is equivalent to a phrase which occurs repeatedly in the Qoran , zalim li-nafsi-hi, meaning ‘he who does injustice or wrong to himself’. Now according to the actual usage of the Qoran, ‘he who wrongs himself’ designates a stubborn unbeliever who disobeys God’s commands and by sticking obstinately to polytheism, drives himself on to perdition. But, as interpreted by Ibn ‘Arab! zalim li-nafsi-hi refers to a man who ‘does wrong to himself’ by refusing himself all the pleasures of the present world and devotes himself to seeking ‘self-annihilation’ ( fana ’) in God. 2 This interpretation is based on another Qoranic verse, namely XXXV, 32, which reads: ‘Some of them are doing injustice to themselves and some of them are moderate, while some others vie one with another in doing good works with the permission of God’ . And quite opposite to the usual ranking, Ibn ‘Arabi considers ‘those who do injustice to themselves’ the highest and best of all the three classes of men. They are, he says, ‘the best of all people, the specially chosen of God’. 3 Al-Qashani quotes, in this connection, a Tradition from al- Tirmidhi’s $ahih which reads: ‘These men are all in one and the same grade; all of them will be in the Garden’. He says that this Tradition refers to the three classes of men mentioned in the verse just quoted. These three classes are, as the Tradition explicitly states, in the same grade in the sense that they all are destined to go to the Garden, but al-Qashani thinks that this does not prevent them from forming a hierarchy, the highest being ‘those who do injustice to themselves’, the middle the ‘moderate’, and the lowest ‘those who vie with one another in the performance of good works’ . The theoretical explanation he gives of this hierarchy, however, does not seem to be convincing at all. It would seem to be better for us to take, as Affifi does, ‘the man who does injustice to himself’ as meaning a mystic who has had the experience of ‘unveiling’ in self-annihilation, and ‘the moderate man’ as meaning ‘a man who keeps to the middle course’. Then most naturally, ‘those who vie one another’ would mean those who are still in the earlier stage of the mystical training. However this may be, what is important for Ibn ‘Arabi is the conception that the ‘man who does injustice to himself’ occupies the 70 Sufism and Taoism highest rank precisely by being in metaphysical perplexity. As is easy to see, this has a weighty bearing on the interpretation of the latter half of the Qoranic verse, in which Noah implores God to increase more and more the ‘going astray’ of the ‘people of injustice . Noah, according to this understanding, implores God to increase even more the metaphysical ‘perplexity’ of the highest class of men, while the standard, i.e., common-sense, interpretation of the verse sees Noah calling down Divine curses upon the worst class of men, the stubborn idol-worshippers. In exactly the same spirit, Ibn ‘Arab! finds a very picturesque description of this ‘perplexity’ in a Qoranic verse (II, 20) which depicts how God trifles with wicked people who are trying in vain to beguile and delude Him and those who sincerely believe in Him. A dead darkness settles down upon these people. From time to time roars frightful thunder, and a flash of lightning ‘almost snatches away their sight’. And ‘as often as they are illuminated they walk in the light, but when it darkens again they stand still’ . This verse in Ibn ‘Arabl’s interpretation, yields a new meaning which is totally different from what we ordinarily understand. Although he merely quotes the verse without any comment, what he wants to convey thereby is evident from the very fact that he adduces it in support of his theory of ‘perplexity’ . On behalf of his Master, al-Qashani makes it explicit in the following way: 4 This verse describes the ‘perplexity’ of these people. Thus, when the light of the Unity ( ahadiyah ) is manifested they ‘walk’, that is, they move ahead with the very movement of God, while when it darkens against them as God becomes hidden behind the veil and the Multi- plicity appears instead (of Unity) obstructing their view, they just stand still in ‘perplexity’. This ‘perplexity’ necessarily assumes the form of a circular move- ment. ‘The man in “perplexity” draws a circle’, as Ibn ‘ Arab! says. 5 This is necessarily so, because the ‘walking’ of such a man reflects the very circle of the Divine self- manifestation. The Absolute itself draws a circle in the sense that it starts from the primordial state of Unity, ‘descends’ to the plane of concrete beings and diversifies itself in myriads of things and events, and finally ‘ascends’ back into the original non-differentiation. The man in ‘perplexity’ draws the same circle, for he ‘walks with God, from God, to God, his onward movement being identical with the movement of God Himself’. 6 This circular movement, Ibn ‘ Arab! observes, turns round a pivot (qu(b) or center ( markaz ), which is God. And since the man is merely going round and round the center, his distance from God remains exactly the same whether he happens to be in the state of Unity or in that of Multiplicity. Whether, in other words, he is Metaphysical Perplexity 71 looking at the Absolute in its primordial Unity or as it is diversified in an infinite number of concrete things, he stands at the same distance from the Absolute per se. On the contrary, a man who, his vision being veiled, is unable to see the truth, is a ‘man who walks along a straight road’. He imagines God to be far away from him, and looks for God afar off. He is deceived by his own imagination and strives in vain to reach his imagined God. In the case of such a man, there is a definite distinction between the ‘from’ {min, i.e., the starting-point) and the ‘to’ ( ila , i.e., the ultimate goal), and there is naturally an infinite distance between the two points. The starting-point is himself imagined to be far away from himself, and the distance between is an imaginary distance which he thinks separates him from God. Such a man, in spite of his desire to approach Him, goes even farther from God as he walks along the straight road stretching infinitely ahead. The thought itself, thus formulated and expressed with the image of a man walking in a circle and another going ahead along a straight line, is indeed of remarkable profundity. As an interpretation of the above-cited Qoranic verse, however, it certainly does not do justice to the meaning given directly by the actual context. The extraordi- nary freedom in the interpretation of the Qoran comes out even more conspicuously when Ibn ‘Arab! applies his exegesis to other verses which he quotes as a conclusive evidence for his thesis. 7 The first is LXXI, 25, which immediately follows the one relating to the ‘people who do injustice to themselves’. It reads: ‘Because of their mistakes ( khafi’at ) they (i.e., the people of injustice), were drowned, and then put into fire. And they found nobody to help them in place of God’. The word khafi’at meaning ‘mistakes’ or ‘sins’ comes from the root KH-T which means ‘to err’ ‘to commit a mistake’. It is a commonly used word with a definite meaning. Ibn ‘ Arabi, however, completely disregards this etymology, and derives it from the root KH-TT meaning ‘to draw lines’ ‘to mark out’. The phrase min khan.’ ati-him ‘from their mistakes’ is thus made to mean something like: ‘because of that which has been marked out for them as their personal possessions’. And this, for Ibn ‘Arab!, means nothing other than ‘their own individual determinations {ta ( ayyundt)' , that is, ‘the ego of each person’. ‘Because of their egos’ , i.e., since they had their own egos already established, they had to be ‘drowned’ once in the ocean before they could be raised into the spiritual state of ‘self-annihilation’ ( fana ’). This ocean in which they were drowned, he says, symbolizes ‘knowledge of God’, and that is no other than the ‘perplexity’. And al-Qashani: 8 72 Sufism and Taoism (This ‘ocean' -‘perplexity’) is the Unity pervading all and manifesting itself in multiple forms. It is ‘perplexing’ because of the Unity appear- ing in a determined form in every single thing and yet remaining non-determined in the whole. (It is ‘perplexing’) because of its (simultaneous) non-limitation and limitation. As regards the sentence in the verse: ‘then (they) were put into fire’ , Ibn ‘Arabi remarks simply that this holocaust occurred in the very water, that is, while they were in the ocean. The meaning is again explicated by al-Qashani: 9 This ‘fire’ is the fire of love (‘ ishq ) for the light of the splendor of His Face, which consumes all the determined forms and individual essences in thd very midst of the ocean of ‘knowledge of God’ and true Life. And this true Life is of such a nature that everything comes to life with it and yet is destroyed by it at the same time. There can be no perplexity greater than the ‘perplexity’ caused by the sight of ‘drowning’ and ‘burning’ with Life and Knowledge, that is, simul- taneous self-annihilation and self-subsistence. Thus ‘they found nobody to help them in place of God’, because when God manifested Himself to these sages in His Essence, they were all burned down, and there remained for them nothing else than God who was the sole ‘helper’ for them, i.e., the sole vivifier of them. God alone was there to ‘help’ them, and ‘they were destroyed (i.e., annihilated) in Him for ever’. Their annihilation in God was the very vivification of them in Him. And this is the meaning of ‘self-subsistence’ ( baqa ), of which fana\ ‘self-annihilation’, is but the reverse side. If God, instead of destroying them in the ocean, had rescued them from drowning and brought them back to the shore of Nature (i.e., brought them back to the world of limitations and determinations) they would not have attained to such a high grade (i.e., they would have lived in the natural world of ‘reality’ and would have remained veiled from God by their very individualities). Ibn ‘Arab! adds that all this is true from a certain point of view, 10 ‘although, to be more strict (there is no ‘drowning’, no ‘burning’, and no ‘helping’ because) everything belongs (from beginning to end) to God, and is with God; or rather, everything is God. In a Qoranic verse following the one which has just been discussed, Noah goes on to say to God: ‘Verily, if Thou shouldst leave them as they are, they would surely lead Thy slaves astray and would beget none but sinful disbelievers’. The words: ‘they would surely lead Thy slaves astray’ mean, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, 11 ‘they would put Thy slaves into perplexity and lead them out of the state of being slaves and bring them to their Metaphysical Perplexity 73 inner reality which is now hidden from their eyes, namely, the state of being the Lord. (If this happens,) then those who think them- selves to be slaves will regard themselves as Lords’ . The ‘perplexity’ here spoken of is considered by al-Qashani not the true metaphysi- cal perplexity but a ‘Satanic perplexity’ (hay rah shay(aniyah). But this is evidently an overstatement. Ibn ‘Arabi is still speaking of the same kind of metaphysical ‘perplexity’ as before. The point he makes here is that, if one permits those who know the Mystery of Being to lead and teach the people, the latter will in the end realize the paradoxical fact that they are not only slaves, as they have thought themselves to be, but at the same time Lords. The interpretation which Ibn ‘Arab! puts on the ending part of the verse: ‘and would beget none but sinful disbelievers’, is even more shocking to common sense than the preceding one. We must remember, however, that this interpretation is something quite natural and obvious to Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s mind. The Arabic word which I have translated as ‘sinful’ is fajir , a well-established Qoranic term which is derived from the root FJR meaning ‘to commit unlawful, i.e., sinful, acts’ . Ibn ‘Arabi derives it from another FJR meaning ‘to open and give an outlet for water’. And in this paticular context it is taken in the sense of ‘making manifest’ ( izh 'ar ). Thus the word fajir, instead of meaning ‘a man who commits sinful acts’, means ‘a man who manifests or unveils what is veiled’ . In a terminology which is more typical of Ibn ‘Arabi, a fajir is a man who manifests the Absolute in the sense that he is a locus of the Absolute’s self-manifestation. As for the second term translated here as ‘disbeliever’ , the Arabic is kaffar, an emphatic form of kafir meaning ‘one who is ungrateful to, i.e., disbelieves in, God’. But, as we have observed before, Ibn ‘Arabi takes this word in its etymological sense; namely, that of ‘covering up’. So kaffar in this context is not an ‘ingrate’ or ‘disbe- liever’, but a man who ‘covers up’ or hides the Absolute behind the veil of his own concrete, determined form. Moreover, it is important to remember, the fajir and kafir are not two different persons but one and the same person. So that the meaning of this part of the verse amounts to: ‘these people would do nothing but unveil what is veiled and veil what is manifest at the same time’. As a result, those who see this extraordinary view naturally fall into ‘perplexity’. But precisely the act of falling into this kind of ‘perplexity’ is the very first step to attaining ultimately the real ‘knowledge’. And the ‘perplexity’ here in question has a metaphysical basis. We shall consider in what follows this point in more theoretical terms, remaining faithful to Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s own description. * * * 74 Sufism and Taoism What we must emphasize before everything else is that, in Ibn ‘Arabi’s world-view, the whole world is the locus of theophany or the self-manifestation of the Absolute, and that, consequently, all the things and events of the world are self-determinations of the Absolute. Therefore, the world of Being cannot be grasped in its true form except as a synthesis of contraditions. Only by a simul- taneous affirmation of contradictories can we understand the real nature of the world. And the ‘perplexity’ is nothing other than the impression produced on our minds by the observation of the simul- taneous existence of contradictories. Ibn ‘ArabI describes in detail some of the basic forms of the ontological contradiction. And the explanation he gives of the coincidentia oppositorum is of great value and importance in that it clarifies several cardinal points of his world-view. Here we shall consider two most fundamental forms of contradiction. The first 12 is the contradictory nature of the things of the world as manifested in the relation between the ‘inward’ (bafin) and the ‘outward’ ( zahir ). When one wants to define ‘man’, for example, one must combine the ‘inward’ and the ‘outward’ of man in his definition. The commonly accepted definition - ‘man is a rational animal - is the result of the combination, for ‘animal’ represents the ‘outward’ of man, while ‘rational’ represents his ‘inward’, the former being body and the latter the spirit governing the body. Take away from a man his spirit, and he will no longer be a ‘man’ ; he will merely be a figure resembling a man, something like a stone or a piece of wood. Such a figure does not deserve the name ‘ man’ except in a metaphorical sense. Just as man is man only in so far as there is spirit within the body, so also the ‘world’ is ‘world’ only in so far as there is the Reality or Absolute within the exterior form of the world. It is utterly impossible that the various forms of the world (i.e., the things in the empirical world) should subsist apart from the Absolute. Thus the basic attribute of divinity ( uluhiyah ) must necessarily per- tain to the world in the real sense of the word, not metaphorically, just as it (i.e., the complex of spirit, the ‘inward’, and body, the ‘outward’) constitutes the definition of man, so long as we understand by ‘man’ a real, living man. Furthermore, not only is the ‘inward’ of the world the Reality itself but its ‘outward’ also is the Reality, because the ‘outward’ of the world is, as we have seen, essentially the forms of theophany. In this sense, both the ‘inward’ and ‘outward’ of the world must be defined in terms of divinity. Having established this point, Ibn ‘Arab! goes on to describe the strange nature of the praising ( thana ’) of the ‘inward’ by the ‘out- Metaphysical Perplexity 7 5 ward’ . ‘Just as’ , he says, ‘the outward form of man constantly praises with its own tongue the spirit within, so the various forms of the world praise, by a special disposal of God, the inward spirit of the world’. How does the bodily form of man ‘praise with its own tongue’ the spirit within? This is explained by al-Qashani in the following way: 13 The bodily form of man praises the spirit, i.e., the soul, by means of its movements and by manifestation of its peculiar properties and per- fections. (The reason why this is ‘praise’ is as follows.) The bodily members of man are in themselves but (lifeless) objects which, were it not for the spirit, would neither move nor perceive anything; besides, the bodily members as such have no virtue at all such as generosity, liberal giving, magnanimity, the sense of shame, courage, truthfulness, honesty, etc. And since ‘to praise’ means nothing other than mentioning the good points (of somebody or something), the bodily members (praise the spirit) by expressing (through actions) the virtues of the spirit. Exactly in the same way, the various forms of the world ‘praise’ the inner spirit of the universe (i.e., the Reality residing within the universe) through their own properties, perfections, indeed, through everything that comes out of them. Thus the world is praising its own ‘inward’ by its ‘outward’. We, however, usually do not notice this fact, because we do not have a comprehensive knowledge of all the forms of the world. The language of this universal ‘praise’ remains incomprehensible to us ‘just as a Turk cannot understand the language of a Hindi!’. 14 The contradictory nature of this phenomenon lies in the fact that if the ‘outward’ of the world praises its ‘inward’, properly speaking both the ‘outward’ and ‘inward’ are absolutely nothing other than the Absolute itself. Hence we reach the conclusion that the one who praises and the one who is praised are in this case ultimately the same. The phenomenon just described, of the Absolute praising itself in two forms opposed to each other, is merely a concrete case illustrat- ing the more profound and more general fact that the Absolute, from the point of view of man, cannot be grasped except in the form of coincidentia oppositorum. Ibn ‘ArabI quotes in support of his view a famous saying of Abu Said al-Kharraz, a great mystic of Bagdad of the ninth century: ‘God cannot be known except as a synthesis of opposites’. 15 Al-Kharraz, who was himself one of the many faces of the Absolute and one of its many tongues, said that God cannot be known except by attributing opposites to Him simultaneously. Thus the Absolute is the First and the Last, the Outward and the Inward. It is nothing 76 Metaphysical Perplexity 77 Sufism and Taoism other than what comes out outwardly (in concealing itself inwardly), whereas in the very moment of coming out outwardly it is what conceals itself inwardly. There is no one who sees the Absolute except the Absolute itself, and yet there is no one to whom the Absolute remains hidden. It is the Outward (i.e., self-manifesting) to itself, and yet it is the Inward (i.e., self-concealing) to itself. The absolute is the one who is called by the name of Abu SaTd al-Kharraz and by other names of other contin- gent beings. The Inward belies the Outward when the latter says ‘I’, and the Outward belies the Inward when the latter says T. And this applies to every other pair of opposites. (In every case) the one who says something is one, and yet he is the very same one who hears. This is based on the phrase said by the prophet (Muhammad): ‘and what their own souls tell them’, indicating clearly that the soul is the speaker and the hearer of what it says at the same time, the knower of what itself has said. In all this (phenomenon), the essence itself is one though it takes on different aspects. Nobody can ignore this, because everybody is aware of this in himself in so far as he is a form of the Absolute. Al-Qashani reminds us concerning this fundamental thesis of his Master that everything, in regard to its ontological source and ground, is the Absolute, and that all the things of the world are but different forms assumed by the same essence. The fact that the phenomenal world is so variegated is simply due to the diversity of the Divine Names, i.e., the basic or archetypal forms of the Divine self-manifestation . Nothing exists except the Absolute. Only it takes on divergent forms and different aspects according to whether the Names appear out- wardly or lie hidden inwardly as well as in accordance with the relative preponderance of the properties of Necessity ( wujuh ) over those of Possibility ( imkan ) or conversely: the preponderance of spirituality, for instance, in some and the preponderance of material- ity in others . 16 As regards Ibn ‘ArabFs words: ‘The Inward belies the Outward when the latter says “I”, etc.’, al-Qashanl gives the following explication: Each one of the Divine Names affirms its own meaning, but what it affirms is immediately negated by an opposite Name which affirms its own. Thus each single part of the world affirms its own I-ness by the very act of manifesting its property, but the opposite of that part immediately denies what the former has affirmed and brings to naught its self-assertion by manifesting in its turn a property which is the opposite of the one manifested by the first. Each of the two, in this way, declares what it has in its own nature, and the other responds (negatively) to it. But (in essence) the one which declares and the one which responds are one and the same thing. As an illustration of this, Ibn ‘ Arabi refers to a (famous) saying of the prophet (Muhammad) describing how God pardons the sins committed by the people of this community, namely , ‘both what their bodily members have done and what their souls have told them (to do) even if they do not actually do it.’ This is right because it often happens that the soul tells a man to do something (evil) and he intends to do it, but is detained from it by another motive. In such a case, the man himself is the hearer of what his own soul tells him, and he becomes conscious of the conflicting properties at work in himself when he hesitates to do the act. The man at such a moment is the speaker and the hearer at the same time, the commander and the forbidder at the same time. Morover, he is the knower of all this. And (he manifests and gathers in himself all these contradictory properties), notwithstanding his inner essence being one and the same, by dint of the diversity of his faculties and governing principles of his actions such as reason, imagination, repul- sion, desire etc. Such a man is an image of the Absolute (which is essentially one) in its divergent aspects and the properties coming from the Names. Close to the relation between the ‘inward’ and ‘outward’ is the contradictory relation between the One and the Many. The two kinds of contradictory relations are, at bottom, one and the same thing. For the dictum that the Absolute (or the world) is One and yet Many, Many and yet One, arises precisely from the fact that the infinitely various and divergent things of the world are but so many phenomenal forms of one unique Being which is the Absolute. The (apparent) difference is due to our taking a slightly different view- point in each case. Regarding the second relation which we will now consider, Ibn ‘Arab! offers two explanations, one mathematical and the other ontological. We begin with the ‘mathematical’ aspect of the problem. The structure of the metaphysical fact that the One appears in the multiplicity of things, and the things that are many are ultimately reducible to the One or the Absolute, is identical with the structure of the reciprocal relation between the mathematical ‘one’, which is the very source of all numbers, and the numbers. The numbers are produced in a serial form by the (repetition of) ‘one’. Thus the ‘one’ brings into existence the numbers, while the numbers divide the ‘one’, (the only essential difference between them being that) a ‘number’ subsists as a number by virtue of some- thing which is counted . 17 Ontologically, as we have seen, the diversification of the unique Essence by concrete delimitations and various degrees is the cause 78 Sufism and Taoism of things and events being observable related to one another in an infinitely complicated manner. The basic structure of this phenomenon, however, is quite simple. It is, Ibn ‘Arab! says, the same as the proceeding of the infinite series of numbers out of ‘one’ . In his view, the mathematical ‘one’ is the ultimate source of all numbers, and the numbers are nothing but various forms in which ‘one’ manifests itself. ‘One’ itself is not a number; it is the source or ground of all numbers. Every number is a phenomenal form of ‘one’ brought into being by the repetition of the latter (just as all the things in the world are products of the one Essence ‘repeating itself’, mutakarrir, in various forms of self-determination). 18 The important point is that a number thus constituted by repetition of ‘one’, is not a mere con- glomeration of the units, but an independent reality (haqiqah). For example, the number ‘two’ is explained by al-Qashani in the follow- ing way: 19 When ‘one’ manifests itself ( tajalla ) 20 in a different form it is called ‘two’. But ‘two’ is nothing other than ‘one’ and ‘one’ put together, while ‘one’ itself is not a number. It is to be remarked that the structure of this putting together (of two ‘one’s) is one, and the product of this putting together, which is called ‘two’, is also one number. So that the essential form here is one, the matter is one, and the two ‘one’s put together is also one, i.e., ‘one’ manifesting itself in a form of the Many. Thus ‘one’ produces the number (‘two’) by manifesting itself in two different forms. The same is true of ‘three’, for example, which is ‘one’ and ‘one’ and ‘one’, and the nature and structure of its one-ness is exactly the same as in the case of ‘two’. Thus, all the numbers are each a particular form in which ‘one’ manifests itself according to its peculiar determination and the rank it occupies in the numerical series. It is very important to note that the numbers brought into being in this way are all intelligibles ( haqaiq ma‘qulah, lit. ‘realities grasped by Reason’), and have no existence in the external world; they exist only in our mind. They exist in the external world merely in so far as they are recognizable in the objects that are countable. This must be what is meant by Ibn ‘Arab! when he says (in the above-quote passage) that a ‘number’ is actualized only by something which is counted. And this situation corresponds exactly to the ontological structure of the world of Being. ‘Something which is counted’ ( ma‘dud ), in al-Qashani’s interpre- tation, refers to the One Reality which manifests itself and diversifies itself in the Many. But this is clearly a misinterpretation. The ma‘dud in this context must denote a concrete object which exists in the external world and which manifests the transcendental ‘one’ in a concrete form. In terms of the correspondence between Metaphysical Perplexity 79 the mathematical and the ontological order of being, ‘one’ corres- ponds to the One Reality, i.e., the Absolute, and the numbers that are intelligibles correspond to permanent archetypes, and finally the ‘countable things’ correspond to the things of the empirical world. Bali Efendi brings out this system of correspondences with an admirable lucidity: 21 You must notice that ‘one’ corresponds symbolically to the one inner essence (‘ ayn ) which is the reality itself of the Absolute, while the numbers correspond to the multiplicity of the Names arising from the self-manifestation of that reality (i.e., of the Absolute) in various forms in accordance with the requirement of its own aspects and relations. (The multiplicity of the Names here spoken of) is the multiplicity of the permanent archetypes in the Knowledge (i.e., within the Divine Consciousness). Finally, the ‘things counted’ cor- respond to the concrete things of this world, that is, creaturely forms of theophany, without which neither the properties of the Names nor the states of the permanent archetypes can become manifest (in the external world in a concrete way). Only when we understand the word ‘things counted’ in this sense, are we in a position to see correctly what is meant by the following words of Ibn ‘Arabi: 22 The ‘thing counted’ partakes of both non-existence and existence, for one and the same thing can be non-existent on the level of the senses while being existent on the level of the intellect . 23 So there must be both the ‘number’ and the ‘thing counted’. But there must be, in addition, also ‘one’ which causes all this and is caused by it . 24 (And the relation between ‘one’ and the numbers is to be conceived as follows.) Every degree in the numerical series (i.e., every number) is in itself one reality. (Thus each number is a self- subsistent unity and) not a mere conglomeration, and yet, on the other hand, there certainly is a respect in which it must be regarded as ‘one’s put together. Thus ‘two’ is one reality (though it is a ‘gathering’ of ‘one’ and ‘one’), ‘three’ is also one reality (though it is a ‘gathering’ of ‘one’ and ‘one’ and ‘one’), and so on, however far we go up the numerical series. Since each number is in this way one (i.e., an independent reality), the essence of each number cannot be the same as the essences of other numbers. And yet, the fact of ‘gathering’ (of ‘one’s) is common to all of them (i.e., as a genus, as it were, which comprises all the species). Thus we admit the (existence of) various degrees (i.e., different numbers, each being unique as an indepen- dent number) in terms of the very essence of each one of them, recognizing at the same time that they are all one . 25 Thus we inevi- tably affirm the very thing which we think is to be negated in itself . 26 He who has understood what I have established regarding the nature of the numbers, namely, that the negation of them is at the same time the affirmation of them, must have thereby understood how the Absolute in tanzih is at the same time the creatures in tashbih. 80 Sufism and Taoism although there is a distinction between the Creator and the creatures. The truth of the matter is that we see here the Creator who is the creatures and the creatures who are the Creator. Moreover, all this arises from one unique Essence; nay, there is nothing but one unique Essence, and it is at the same time many essences. In the eye of a man who has understood by experience the ontologi- cal depth of this paradox the world appears in an extraordinary form which an ordinary mind can never believe to be true. Such an experience consists in penetrating into the ‘real situation’ ( amr ) beyond the veils of normal perception and thought. In illustration, Ibn ‘Arab! gives two concrete examples from the Qoran. 27 The first is the event of Abraham going to sacrifice his own son Isaac, and the second is the marriage of Adam with Eve. (Isaac said to his father Abraham): ‘My father, do what you have been commanded to do!’ (XXXVII, 102). The child (Isaac) is essen- tially the same as his father. So the father saw (when he saw himself in his vision sacrificing his son) nothing other than himself sacrificing himself. ‘And We ransomed him (i.e., Isaac) with a big sacrifice’ (XXXVII, 107). At that moment, the very thing which (earlier) had appeared in the form of a human being (i.e., Isaac) appeared in the form of a ram. And the very thing which was ‘father’ appeared in the form of ‘son’, or more exactly in the capacity of ‘son’. (As for Adam and Eve, it is said in the Qoran): ‘And (your Lord) created from it (i.e., the first soul which is Adam) its mate’ (IV, 1). This shows that Adam married no other than himself. Thus from him issued both his wife and his child. The reality is one but assumes many forms. Of this passage, al-Qashani gives an important philosophical expla- nation. 28 It is to be remarked in particular that, regarding the self-determination of the Absolute, he distinguishes between the ‘universal self-determination’ ( al-ta‘ayyun al-kulliy ), i.e., self- determination on the level of species, and the particular or ‘individual self-determination’ ( al-ta‘ayyun al-juz’iy). These two self-determinations correspond to the ontological plane of the archetypes and that of the concrete things. ‘The reality is one but assumes many forms’ means that what is in reality the one unique Essence multiplies itself into many essences through the multiplicity of self-determinations. These self-determinations are of two kinds: one is ‘universal’ by which the Reality in the state of Unity becomes ‘man’, for example, and the other is ‘individual’ by which ‘man’ becomes Abraham. Thus, in this case, (the one unique Essence) becomes ‘man’ through the universal self-determination: and then, through an individual self- determination, it becomes Abraham, and through another (indi- vidual self-determination) becomes Ishmael. 29 Metaphysical Perplexity 81 In the light of this, (Abraham, not as an individual named Abraham, but on the level of) ‘man’ before individuation, did not sacrifice anything other than himself by executing the ‘big sacrifice’ (i.e., by sacrificing the ram in place of his son). For (the ram he sacrificed) was hjmself in reality (i.e., if we consider it on the level of the Absolute before any self-determination). (It appeared in the form of the ram because) the Absolute determined itself by a different universal self-determination 30 (into ‘ram’) and then by an individual self- determination (into the particular ram which Abraham sacrificed.) Thus the same one Reality which had appeared in the form of a man appeared in the form of a ram by going through two different self- determinations, once on the level of species, then on the level of individuals. Since ‘ man’ remains preserved both in father and child on the level of the specific unity, (Ibn ‘Arabi) avoids affirming the difference of essence in father and child and affirms only the difference of ‘capa- city’ ( hukm ) saying ‘or more exactly, in the capacity of son’. This he does because there is no difference at all between the two in essence, that is, in so far as they are ‘man’; the difference arises only in regard to their ‘being father’ and ‘being son’ respectively. The same is true of Adam and Eve. Both of them and their children are one with respect to their ‘being man’. Thus the Absolute is one in itself, but it is multiple because of its various self-determinations, specific and individual. These self- determinations do not contradict the real Unity. In conclusion we say: (The Absolute) is One in the form of Many. It is remarkable that here al-Qashani presents the contradictory relation between the One and the Many in terms of the Aristotelian conception of genus-species-individual. There is no denying that the world-view of Ibn ‘Arab! has in fact a conspicuously philosophi- cal aspect which admits of this kind of interpretation. However, the problem of the One and the Many is for Ibn ‘Arab! primarily a matter of experience. No philosophical explanation can do justice to his thought unless it is backed by a personal experience of the Unity of Being ( wahdah al-wujud). The proposition: ‘Adam mar- ried himself’, for example, will never cease to be perplexing and perturbing to our Reason until it is transformed into a matter of experience. Philosophical interpretation is after all an afterthought applied to the naked content of mystical intuition. The naked content itself cannot be conveyed by philosophical language. Nor is there any linguistic means by which to convey immediately the content of mystical intuition. If, in spite of this basic fact, one forces oneself to express and describe it, one has to have recourse to a metaphorical or analogical language. And in fact, Ibn ‘Arabi introduces for this purpose a number of comparisons. Here I give two comparisons which particularly illumine the relation of the One and the Many. 82 Sufism and Taoism The first is the organic unity of the body and the diversity of the bodily members. 31 These forms (i.e., the infinite forms of the phenomenal world) are comparable to the bodily members of Zayd. A man, Zayd, is admit- tedly one personal reality, but his hand is neither his foot nor his head nor his eye nor his eyebrow. So he is Many which are One. He is Many in the forms and One in his person. In the same way, ‘man 1 is essentially One no doubt, and yet it is also clear that ‘Umar is not the same as Zayd, nor Khalid, nor Ja‘far. In spite of the essential one-ness of ‘man’, the individual exemplars of it are infinitely many. Thus man is One in essence, while he is Many both in regard to the forms (i.e., the bodily members of a particular man) and in regard to the individual exemplars. The second is a comparison of the luxuriant growth of grass after a rainfall. It is based on the Qoran, XXII, 5, which reads: ‘Thou seest the earth devoid of life. But when We send down upon it water, it thrills, swells up, and puts forth all magnificent pairs of vegetation’. He says: 32 Water 13 , is the source of life and movement for the earth, as is indicated by the expression: ‘it thrills’. ‘It swells up’ refers to the fact that the earth becomes pregnant through the activity of water. And ‘it puts forth all magnificent pairs of vegetation’ , that is, the earth gives birth only to things that resemble it, namely, ‘natural’ things like the earth . 34 And the earth obtains in this way the property of ‘double- ness’ by what is born out of it . 35 Likewise, the Absolute in its Being obtains the property of multiplic- ity and a variety of particular names by the world which appears from it. The world, because of its ontological nature, requires that the Divine Names be actualized. And as a result, the Divine Names become duplicated by the world (which has arisen in this way), and the unity of the Many (i.e., the essential unity of the Divine Names) comes to stand opposed to the world . 36 Thus (in the comparison of the earth and vegetation, the earth) is a unique substance which is one essence like (the Aristotelian) ‘matter’ (hayula). And this unique substance which is one in essence is many in its forms which appear in it and which it contains within itself. The same is true of the Absolute with all the forms of its self- manifestation that appear from it. So the Absolute plays the role of the locus in which the forms of the world are manifested, but even then it maintains intact the intelligible unity. See how wonderful is this Divine teaching, the secret of which God discloses to some only of His servants as He likes. The general ontological thesis that the Many of the phenomenal world are all particular forms of the absolute One in its self- manifestation is of extreme importance in Ibn ‘Arabi’s world-view not only because of the central and basic position it occupies in his Metaphysical Perplexity 83 thought but also because of the far-reaching influence it exercises on a number of problems in more particular fields. As an interesting example of the application of this idea to a special problem, I shall here discuss the view entertained by Ibn ‘Arabi concerning the historical religions and beliefs that have arisen among mankind. The starting-point is furnished by the factual observation that various peoples in the world have always worshipped and are wor- shipping various gods. If, however, all the things and events in the world are but so many self-manifestations of the Absolute, the different gods also must necessarily be considered various special forms in which the Absolute manifests itself. All gods are ultimately one and the same God, but each nation or each community believes in, and worships, Him in a special form. Ibn ‘Arab! names it ‘God as created in various religious beliefs’. And pushing this argument to its extreme, he holds that each man has his own god, and worships his own god, and naturally denies the gods of other people. God whom each man thus worships as his god is the Lord ( rabb ) of that particular man. In truth, everybody worships the same one God through different forms. Whatever a man worships, he is worshipping indirectly God Himself. This is the true meaning of polytheism or idolatry. And in this sense, idol-worship is, as we have seen above, nothing blam- able. In order to bring home this point, Ibn ‘Arab! refers to an article of belief which every Muslim is supposed to acknowledge; namely, that God on the day of Resurrection will appear in the presence of the believers in diverse forms. 37 You must know for sure, if you are a real believer, that God will appear on the day of Resurrection (in various forms successively): first in a certain form in which He will be recognized, next in a different form in which He will be denied, then He will transform Himself into another form in which He will be again recognized. Throughout this whole process, He will remain He; in whatever form He appears it is He and no one else. Yet, on the other hand, it is also certain that this particular form is not the same as that particular form. Thus, the situation may be described as the one unique Essence playing the role of a mirror. A man looks into it, and if he sees there the particular image of God peculiar to his religion he recognizes it and accepts it without question. If, however, he happens to see an image of God peculiar to some other religion than his, he denies it. This is comparable to the case in which a man sees in a mirror his own image, then the image of some one else. In either case, the mirror is one substance while the images reflected upon it are many in the eye of the man who looks at it. He cannot see in the mirror one unique image comprising the whole . 38 84 Sufism and Taoism Thus the truth itself is quite simple: in whatever form God appears in the mirror, it is always a particular phenomenal form of God, and in this sense every image (i.e., every object worshipped as a god) is ultimately no other than God Himself. This simple fact, however, is beyond the reach of Reason. Reason is utterly powerless in a matter of this nature, and the reasoning which is the activity of Reason is unable to grasp the real meaning of this phenomenon. 39 The only one who is able to do so is the real‘knower’ (‘arif). Ibn ‘ Arabi calls such a true ‘knower’ who, in this particular case, penetrates into the mystery of the paradoxical relation between the One and the Many, a ‘worshipper of the Instant’ (‘ abid al-waqt), 40 meaning thereby a man who worships every self-manifestation of God at every moment as a particular form of the One. Those who know the truth of the matter show a seemingly negative attitude toward the various forms which ordinary people worship as gods. (But this attitude of denial is merely a make-believe. In reality they do not deny such a form of worship for themselves) for the high degree of spiritual knowledge makes them behave according to the dictates of the Instant. In this sense they are ‘worshippers of the Instant .’ 41 In the consciousness of such men of high spirituality, each Instant is a glorious ‘time’ of theophany. The Absolute manifests itself at every moment with this or that of its Attributes. The Absolute, viewed from this angle, never ceases to make a new self- manifestation, and goes on changing its form from moment to moment. 42 And the true ‘knowers’, on their part, go on responding with flexibility to this ever changing process of Divine self- manifestation. Of course, in so doing they are not worshipping the changing forms themselves that come out outwardly on the surface; they are worshipping through the ever changing forms the One that remains eternally unchanging and unchangeable. These men know, further, that not only themselves but even the idol- worshippers are also (unconsciously) worshipping God beyond the idols. This they know because they discern in the idol- worshippers the majestic power of Divine self-manifestation ( sultan al-tajalli ) working actively quite independently of the conscious minds of the worshippers. 43 If, in spite of this knowledge, the ‘knowers’ hold outwardly an attitude of denial toward idolatry, it is because they want to follow the footsteps of the prophet Muhammad. The prophet forbad idol-worship because he knew that the understanding of the mass of people being shallow and superficial, they would surely begin to worship the ‘forms’ without going beyond them. He urged them, instead, to worship One God alone whom the people could know Metaphysical Perplexity 85 only in a broad general way but never witness (in any concrete form). The attitude of the ‘knowers’ toward idol- worship is pious imitation of this attitude of Muhammad. Let us go back to the point from which we started. We opened this chapter with a discussion of the problem of ‘perplexity’ ( hayrah ). We are now in a better position to understand the true nature of the ‘perplexity’ and to see to what extent the ontological structure of Being is really ‘perplexing’ . A brief consideration of the problem at this stage will make a suitable conclusion to the present chapter. An infinity of things which are clearly different from each other and some of which stand in marked opposition to one another are, with all the divergencies, one and the same thing. The moment man becomes aware of this fact, it cannot but throw his mind into bewildering confusion. This ‘perplexity’ is quite a natural state for those who have opened their eyes to the metaphysical depth of Being. But on reflection it will be realized that the human mind falls into this ‘perplexity’ because it has not yet penetrated deeply below the level of superficial understanding. In the mind of a sage who has experienced the Unity of Being in its real depth there can no longer be any place for any ‘perplexity’ . Here follows what Ibn ‘Arab! says on this point. 44 The ‘perplexity’ arises because the mind of man becomes polarized (i.e., toward two contradictory directions, one toward the One and the other toward the Many). But he who knows (by the experience of ‘unveiling’) what I have just explained is no longer in ‘perplexity’, no matter how many divergent things he may come to know. For (he knows that) the divergence is simply due to the nature of the locus, and that the locus in each case is the eternal archetype itself of the thing. The Absolute goes on assuming different forms in accordance with different eternal archetypes, i.e., different loci of self- manifestation, and the determinate aspects which man perceives of it go on changing correspondingly. In fact, the Absolute accepts every one of these aspects that are attributed to it. Nothing, however, is attributed to it except that in which it manifests itself (i.e., the particular forms of its self-manifestation). And there is nothing at all (in the whole world of Being) except this . 45 On the basis of this observation al-Qashani gives a final judgment concerning the metaphysical ‘perplexity’. It is, he says, merely a phenomenon observable in the earliest stage of spiritual development. 46 The ‘perplexity’ is a state which occurs only in the beginning when there still lingers the activity of Reason and the veil of thinking still 86 Sufism and Taoism remains. But when the ‘unveiling’ is completed and the immediate intuitive cognition becomes purified, the ‘perplexity’ is removed with a sudden increase of knowledge coming from the direct witnessing of the One manifesting itself in diverse forms of the archetypes in accordance with the essential requirement of the Name ‘All- knowing’ (‘alim).* 1 Notes 1. Fu$., p. 55/72. 2. Cf. Affifi, Fu$., Com., p. 40; Fuj., p. 56/72-73. 3. Reference to Qoran, XXXVIII, 47. 4. p. 56. 5. Fuj., p. 56/73. 6. Qashani, p. 56. 7. Fuj., p. 57/73. 8. p. 57. 9. ibid. 10. i.e., from the point of view of the Names, in whose plane alone there come into existence all these differences in degrees. 11. Fus-, p. 58/74. 12. Fuj., p. 48/69. 13. p. 48. 14. Qashani, ibid. 15. Fuj., p. 64/77. 16. p. 64. 17. Fus„ p. 64/77. 18. The words in parentheses belong to al-Qashani, p. 65. 19. ibid. 20. It is to be remarked that the multiplication of the mathematical ‘one’ is described in terms of ‘self-manifestation’ ( tajalh ) just in the same way as the Absolute is described as ‘manifesting itself’ in the Many. Metaphysical Perplexity 21. p. 65, footnote. 22. Fu$„ p. 65/77-78. 87 23. i.e., one and the same thing qua ‘number’ is non-existent on the level of the senses, existing only on the level of intellect, but it is, qua ‘a thing counted’, existent on the level of the senses. In other words, it is the ‘thing counted’ that makes a number exist in a concrete, sensible form. The same applies to the relation between an archetype and a thing which actualizes it in a sensible form. 24. i.e., besides the ‘number’ and the ‘thing counted’, there must necessarily be also ‘one’ which is the ultimate source of all numbers and things counted. But ‘one’ which thus causes and establishes the numbers is also caused and established by the latter in concrete forms. 25. That is to say: we admit the one-ness (i.e., uniqueness) of each number, while recognizing at the same time the one-ness (i.e., sameness) of all numbers. 26. You affirm of every number that which you negate of it when you consider it in itself. This may be explained in more concrete terms in the following way. You admit the inherence of ‘one’ in every number; ‘one’ is the common element of all the numbers and is, in this respect, a sort of genus. But, on the other hand, you know that ‘one’ is not inherent in every number in its original form but only in a particularized form in each case; ‘one’ may be considered a sort of species as distinguished from genus. Thus ‘one’ , although it does exist in every number, is no longer the ‘one’ perse in its absoluteness. And this precisely corresponds to the ontological situation in which the Absolute is manifested in everything, but not as the absolute Absolute. 27. Fu$., p. 67/78. 28. p. 67. 29. the Absolute /\ (universal self-determination) / \ . , A ( individual V self-determination , . / \ this ram that ram , N / individual \ \ self-determination / f \ Abraham Ishmael 30. i.e., by a specific self-determination different from the self-determination by which the Absolute became ‘man’. 31. Fu$„ pp. 231-232/183-184. 32. Fus., p. 253/200. 33. ‘Water’ for Ibn ‘Arabi is a symbol of cosmic Life. 34. The idea is that the earth produces only ‘earth-like’ things, i.e., its own ‘dupli- cates’ , the symbolic meaning of which is that the things of the world are ultimately of the same nature as the Absolute which is their ontological ground. 88 Sufism and Taoism 35. i.e., the luxuriant vegetation which grows forth from the earth, being of the same nature as the latter, ‘doubles’ so to speak the earth. 36. This is a difficult passage, and there is a remarkable divergence between the Cairo edition and that of Affifi. The Affifi text reads: fa-thabata bi-hi wa-khaliqi-hi ahadlyah al-kathrah ‘thus the unity of the Many becomes established by the world and its Creator’. The Cairo edition, which I follow here, reads: fa-thunniyat bi-hi wa-yukhalifu-hu ahadiyah al-kathrah. 37. Fuy., p. 232/184. 38. i.e., what he actually sees in the mirror is always the particular image of a particular object which happens to be there in front of the mirror; he can never see a universal image comprising all the particular images in unity. 39. Fuj., p. 233/185. 40. The word waqt ‘Time’ in this context means, as al-Qashani remarks, the present moment, or each successive moment as it is actualized (p. 247). 41. Fu. j., p. 247/196. 42. a view comparable with the atomistic metaphysics of Islamic theology. 43. Fus., p. 247/196. 44. Fu$., p. 68/78. 45. All the divergent aspects ( ahk 'am ) that are recognizable in the world of Being are so many actualizations of the eternal archetypes. And the eternal archetypes, in their turn, are nothing but so many self-manifestations of the Absolute. In this sense everything is ultimately the Absolute. And there is no place for ‘perplexity’. 46. p. 68. 47. The archetypes are, as we shall see later in more detail, the eternal essential forms of the things of the world as they exist in the Divine Consciousness. They are born in accordance with the requirement of the Attribute of Omniscience. VI The Shadow of the Absolute In the preceding chapter the special relation between the Absolute and the world has been discussed. We have seen how the Absolute and the world are contradictorily identical with one another. The two are ultimately the same; but this statement does not mean that the relation between them is one of simple identification: it means that the Absolute and the world are the same while being at the same time diametrically opposed to each other. The creatures are in essence nothing other than God, but in their determined forms they are far from being the same as God. Rather, they are infinitely distant from God. Ibn ‘ Arab!, as we have observed, tries to describe this contradic- tory situation by various images. ‘Shadow’ (zill) is one of them. Using this metaphor he presents his view in a basic proposition: ‘The world is the shadow of the Absolute’ . The world, as the shadow of the Absolute, is the latter’s form, but it is a degree lower than the latter. Know that what is generally said to be ‘other than the Absolute’ or the so-called ‘world’, is in relation to the Absolute comparable to shadow in relation to the person. The world in this sense is the ‘shadow’ of God . 1 It is to be remarked concerning the passage just quoted that in Ibn ‘ ArabFs thought, there is, strictly speaking, nothing ‘other than the Absolute’ . This last phrase is merely a popular expression. 2 But the popular expression is not entirely groundless, because philosophi- cally or theologically the world is a concrete phenomenal form of the Divine Names, and the Divine Names are in a certain sense opposed to the Divine Essence. In this respect the world is surely ‘other than the Absolute’. The argument of Ibn ‘Arab! contirlues: (To say that the world is the shadow of the Absolute) is the same as attributing existence (i.e., concrete, sensible existence) to the world. For shadow surely exists sensibly, except that it does so only when there is something 3 in which it makes its appearance. If there is nothing in which to appear, the shadow would remain merely 90 Sufism and Taoism intelligible without existing in a sensible form. In such a case, the shadow rather remains in potentia in the person to whom it is attributed. The structure of this phenomenon is made more explicit by al- Qashani in the following remark : 4 In order that there be shadow there must necessarily be three things: (1) a tall object which casts the shadow, (2) the place where it falls, and (3) light by which alone shadow becomes distinctively existent. The ‘object’ corresponds to the real Being or the Absolute. The ‘place’ in which shadow appears corresponds to the archetypal essences of the possible things. If there were no ‘place’, shadow would never be sensible, but would remain something intelligible like a tree in a seed. It would remain in the state of potentiality in the ‘object’ which would cast the shadow. The ‘light’ corresponds to the Divine Name the ‘Outward’. If the world had not come into contact with the Being of the Abso- lute, the ‘shadow’ would have never come to exist. It would have remained for ever in the primordial non-existence which is charac- teristic of the possible things considered in themselves without any relation to their Originator (who brings them into the state of real existence). For ‘shadow’, in order to exist, needs the ‘place’ as well as an actual contact with the thing that projects it. God, however, ‘ existed when there was nothing beside Him’ , and in that state He was completely self-sufficient having no need of the whole world. This interpretation by al-Qashani makes it clear that the ‘shadow’ is cast not on what we call the ‘world’ directly, but on the archetypes of the things. In other words, the ‘world’ begins to exist on a higher level than the one on which our common sense usually thinks it to exist. The moment the shadow of the Absolute is cast on the archetypes, the world is born, although, strictly speaking, the archetypes themselves are not the ‘world’ but rather the locus of the appearance of the world’. Shadow, however, does not appear except by the activity of light. This is the reason why we have the Divine Name ‘Light’ ( nur ). The locus of the appearance of this Divine ‘shadow’ called the ‘ world’ is the archetypal essences of the possible things. 5 It is on these archetypes that the shadow (first) spreads. And the shadow becomes perceivable in accordance with the amount actually spread of the Being of the One who projects it upon them. The perception of it, however, can take place only in virtue of the Name ‘Light’. 6 It is remarkable that the shadows of things projected on the earth are said to take on a dark, blackish color. This has a symbolic meaning. It symbolizes in the first place that, in the particular case which is our immediate concern, the source of the ‘shadow’ is a Mystery, an absolutely Unknown-Unknowable. The blackness of The Shadow of the Absolute 91 shadow indicates, in the second place, that there is a distance between it and its source. Here is what Ibn ‘Arab! says on this problem : 7 The ‘shadow’ spreading over the archetypal essences of the possible things, (becomes visible in the primal) manifestation-form of the unknown Mystery ( ghayb ). 8 Do you not see how all shadows appear blackish? This fact indicates the inherence of obscurity in the shadows due to an intervening distance in the relation between them and the objects which project them. Thus, even if the object be white, the shadow it casts takes on a blackish color. As usual al-Qashani reformulates what is implied by this passage in more ontological terms : 9 The archetypes are dark because of their distance from the light of Being. And when the light which is of a totally different nature from their own darkness spreads over them, their proper darkness of non-Being ( zulmah ‘ adamiyah ) affects the luminosity of Being, and the light-nature turns toward darkness. In other.words, the light of Being turns in this way toward obscurity, just as the shadow does in relation to the thing which casts it. The relation of the relative Being to the absolute Being is exactly like that, so that, if it were not for its being determined by the archetypal essences of the possible things, the absolute Being would shine forth with extreme incandescence and no one would be able to perceive it because of the intensity of the light. Thus it comes about that those who are veiled by the darkness of determination see the world but do not see the Absolute, for ‘being in utter darkness they do not see’ (Qoran, II, 17). But those who have come out of the veils of determinations witness the Absolute, for they have torn asunder the veil of darkness and veiled themselves with light against darkness, i.e., veiled themselves with the Essence against the ‘shadow’. Those, however, who are not veiled by either of the two against the other can witness the light of the Absolute in the midst of the blackness and darkness of the creaturely world. In the following passage Ibn ‘Arab! emphasizes the effect of the distance that separates the archetypes from the Absolute in produc- ing the darkish color of the former . 10 Do you not see how the mountains, if they happen to be far away from the sight of the man who looks at them, appear black, when in reality they may be quite different in color from what the sense perceives. And the distance is the only cause for this phenomenon. The same is true of the blue of the sky. In fact, anything which is not luminous produces the same kind of effect on the sense when there is a long distance between the object and sight. Exactly the same situation is found with regard to the archetypal 92 The Shadow of the Absolute 93 Sufism and Taoism essences of the possible things, for they, too, are not luminous by themselves. (They are not luminous) because they are non-existent (ma‘dum). True, they do possess an ontological status intermediary between sheer non-existence and pure existence but they do not possess Being by themselves, because Being is Light. Another important effect produced by distance on the sense of sight is that it makes every object look far smaller that it really is. For Ibn ‘Arabi this also has a deep symbolic meaning. Even the luminous objects, however, appear small to the sense by dint of distance. And this is another effect of distance on sense perception. Thus the sense does not perceive (distant luminous objects) except as very small things, while in reality they are far bigger and of greater quantities than they look. For example, it is a scientifically demonstrated fact that the sun is one hundred and sixty times bigger than the earth. Actually, however, it appears to the sense as small as a shield, for instance. This, again, is the effect produced by distance. The world is known just to the same degree as shadow is perceived, and the Absolute remains unknown to the same degree as the object which casts the shadow remains unknown. Thus, as long as the ‘shadow’ (which can be perceived and known) is the ‘shadow’ (of the Absolute), the Absolute also is known. But as long as we do not know the essential form of the object contained within the ‘shadow’, the Absolute remains unknown. This is why we assert that the Absolute is known to us in one sense, but is unknown to us in another. 11 The Absolute in this comparison is the source of the ‘shadow’. And the former is known to us to the very extent that ‘shadow’, i.e., the world, is known. This amounts to saying, if we continue to use the same metaphor, that the Absolute is known to us only as something ‘small and black’. And this ‘something small and black’ is what is generally understood as our God or our Lord. The real Something which projects this ‘shadow’ is never to be known. Ibn ‘Arabi bases his argument on a few Qoranic verses which he interprets as he always does, in his own way . 12 ‘Hast thou not seen how thy Lord spreads shadow? But if He so desired He could make them stand still’ (XXV, 45). The phrase ‘stand still’ means ‘remain within God in the state of potentiality.’ God means to say (in this verse): It is not in the nature of the Absolute to manifest itself to the possible things (i.e., the archetypes) unless there appears first (upon them) its ‘shadow’. Yet the ‘shadow’ (in this state and in itself) is no different from those of the possible things which have not yet been (actualized) by the appearance of the corresponding concrete things in the (phenomenal) world. When the Absolute ‘desires’ to manifest itself in the archetypes (and through them in the concrete things), there appears first a dark ‘shadow’ upon them. The Divine self-manifestation never occurs unless preceded by the appearance of the ‘shadow’. But if God so wishes at this stage, the ‘shadow’ would be made to ‘stand still’, i.e., it would remain forever in that state of potentiality and would not proceed further toward the level of concrete things. In such a case, the ‘shadow’ would simply be another possible thing just as the archetypes themselves which have no corresponding realities in the outer world. Ibn ‘Arabi goes on : 13 ‘Then We have made the sun its indicator’ (XXV, 45). The sun (which is thus made to be the indicator of the ‘shadow’) is the Divine Name ‘Light’ to which reference has already been made. And the sense bears witness to it (i.e., to the fact that the indicator of the ‘shadow’ is no other than the Light) because shadows have no real existence where there is no light. ‘Then We withdraw it toward us with an easy withdrawal’ (XXV, 46). God withdraws to Himself the ‘shadow’, because it is His ‘shadow’ which He Himself has projected. Thus everything appears from Him and goes back to Him, for it is He, no one else. Everything you perceive is the Being of the Absolute as it appears through the archetypal essences of the possible things. The same thing, as the He-ness of the Absolute, is its Being, and, as the divergence of forms, is the archetypal essences of the possible things. Just as the name ‘shadow’ does not cease to subsist in it with the divergence of forms, the name ‘world’ does not cease to subsist in it with the divergence of forms. Likewise the name ‘other than the Absolute’. In regard to its essential unity in being ‘shadow’ , it is the Absolute, for the latter is the Unique, the One. But in regard to the multiplicity of forms it is the world. Briefly, this means that the ‘shadow’, as it spreads over the archetypes, can be observed in two opposed aspects: the aspect of fundamental unity and the aspect of diversity. In fact, the ‘shadow’, as any physical shadow in this world is one; and in this aspect it turns toward its source. Or rather, it is nothing else than the Absolute itself, because it is a direct projection of the Divine Unity ( ahad - iyah). But in its second aspect, the same ‘shadow’ is already diversified, and is faced toward the world of concrete things; or rather, it is the world itself. Thus considered, the world in the sense in which we ordinarily understand it has no reality; it is but a product of imagination . 14 If the truth is what I have just pointed out to you, the world is an illusion having no real existence in itself. And this is the meaning of imagination. The world, in other words, looks as if it were something independent and subsisting by itself outside the Absolute. 94 Sufism and Taoism This, however, is not true. Do you not see how in your ordinary sensible experience shadow is so closely tied up with the thing which projects it that it is absolutely impossible for it to liberate itself from this tie? This is impossible because it is impossible for anything to be detached from itself. Since the world is in this way the ‘shadow’ of the Absolute, it is connected with the latter with an immediate tie which is never to be loosened. Every single part of the world is a particular aspect of the Absolute, and is the Absolute in a state of determination. Man, being himself a part of the world, and a very special part at that, because of his consciousness, is in a position to know intimately, within himself, the relation of the ‘shadow’ to the Absolute. The extent to which a man becomes conscious of this ontological rela- tion determines his degree of ‘knowledge’. There naturally result from this several degrees of ‘knowledge’. Know your own essence (‘ayn, i.e., your archetypal essence). Know who you are (in your concrete existence) and what your He-ness is. Know how you are related with the Absolute; know in what respect you are the Absolute and in what respect you are the ‘world’ , ‘other’ and something ‘different’ from the Absolute. This gives rise to a number of degrees among the ‘knowers’. Thus some are simply ‘ knowers’ , and some others are ‘ knowers’ in a higher degree . 15 These degrees of the ‘knower’ are described in a more concrete form by al-Qashani in his Commentary . 16 The lowest is represented by those who witness only the aspect of determination and diversification. They see the created world, and nothing beyond. The second rank is that of those who witness the Unity of Being which is manifested in these forms. They witness the Absolute (but forget about the created world). The third rank witness both aspects. They witness both the creatures and the Absolute as two aspects of one Reality. The fourth in degree are those who witness the whole as one Reality diversifying itself according to various aspects and relations, ‘one’ in Essence, ‘all’ with the Names. Those are the people of God who have the real knowledge of God. In terms of ‘self-annihilation’ ( fana ’) and ‘self-subsistence’ ( baqa ’), al-Qashani says that those who witness only the Absolute, lpsing sight of the creatures, are people who are dominated by ‘self- annihilation’ and ‘unification’, while those who witness the Abso- lute in the creatures and the creatures in the Absolute are described as people who have obtained a perfect vision in the state of ‘self- subsistence’ -after-‘self-annihilation’ and the view of ‘dispersion’ - after - 4 unification’. The Shadow of the Absolute 95 Ibn ‘Arab! himself compares these spiritual degrees to a naturally colorless light being tinged with various colours as it passes through coloured pieces of glass . 17 The relation of the Absolute to a particular ‘shadow’ , small, large, or pure in different degrees, may be compared to the relation of light to a piece of glass intervening between it and the eye of a man who looks at it. The light in such a case assumes the color of the glass, while in itself it is colorless. (The colorless light) appears to the sense of sight as colored - an appropriate comparison for the relation of your own reality with your Lord. If you say that the light has become green because of the green color of the glass, you are right. This is evidenced by your sense perception. But if you say that the light is not green nor, indeed, of any color at all, you are also right. You are, in this case, following what is given by your logical reasoning. And your judgment is based on the right activity of Reason. See how the light passes through a ‘shadow’ which is no other than the glass. The glass (is a ‘shadow’ , but it is) a ‘shadow’ which is of the nature of light because of its transparency . 18 In just the same way, when one of us has realized in himself the Absolute, the Form of the latter appears in him more than it does in others. (He who has realized in himself the Absolute is of two different degrees): the first degree is represented by a man whose hearing, sight, and all other faculties and bodily members are the Absolute itself in accordance with the teaching of the Revelation concerning the Absolute . 19 Even in such a case, however, the ‘shadow’ itself is still there (in the form of his enlightened ‘self’) because the personal pronoun in ‘his hearing’ , ‘his sight’ etc. refers to the man. He who represents the second (i.e., higher) degree is different from this. A man of this second degree is close to the Being of the Absolute than all others. As we see, Ibn ‘ ArabI does not give any detailed description of those of the second degree. He is content with stating that they are closer to the Absolute than others. Al-Qashani makes this point more explicit and precise . 20 The first is he who has ‘annihilated himself’ from his own attributes in the Attributes of the Absolute so that the Absolute has taken the place of his attributes. The second is he (who has ‘annihilated him- self’) from his own essence in the Essence of the Absolute so that the Absolute has taken the place of his essence. The first is the kind of man who is referred to when we say, ‘the Absolute is his hearing, his sight, etc.’ . . . Such a man is closer to the Absolute than other (ordinary) believers who act with their own attributes and who remain with their (natural) veils (i.e., the veils of human attributes). His attitude (toward God) is described as the ‘closeness of supererogatory works’ ( qurb al-nawafil). And yet, his ‘shadow’ itself, i.e., his relative existence, which is no other than his 96 Sufism and Taoism ego, still subsists in him. And the self-manifestation of the Absolute in such a man occurs and is witnessed in accordance with his own attributes, for the personal pronoun in 'his hearing’ etc. refers to the particularized existence which is the ‘shadow’. Closer still than this closeness is the ‘closeness of the obligatory works’ ( qurb al-fara’id) which is represented by the second degree. A man of this second category is one who has ‘annihilated himself’ totally with his essence and is ‘subsistent’ in the Absolute. This is the kind of man by whom the Absolute hears and sees. Thus such a man is the hearing of the Absolute itself and the sight of the Absolute. Nay, he is the Form of the Absolute. To him refer God’s words: ‘(when thou threwest,) thou wert not the one who threw, but God it was who really threw’ (VIII, 17). Thus it is clear that, although both categories are men who have realized themselves in the Absolute, the first is inferior to the second in that the ‘shadow’, that is, man’s existence, still remains in the first, and in the view of such men the Absolute and the world stand opposed to each other. This is the standpoint of the ‘exterior’ ( zahir ), while the second represents the standpoint of the ‘interior’ (ba(in). And this makes it also clear that the world, though it is a ‘perfect form’ in which the Absolute manifests itself with all its perfections, is necessarily a degree lower than the Absolute. Just as woman is a degree lower than man according to the Divine words: ‘men have a degree of superiority over them (i.e., women)’ (II, 228), that which has been created in the image (of God) is lower than He who has brought it out to existence in His image. Its being in the image of God (does not prevent it from being lower than its Originator). And by that very superiority by which He is disting- uished from the creatures He is completely independent of the whole world and is the Prime Agent. For the ‘image’ is only a secondary agent and does not possess the priority which belongs to the Absolute alone. 21 Notes 1. Fus., p. 113/101. 2. fi al-‘urf al-'amm as al-Qashani says, p. 113. 3. Ibn ‘Arab! actually uses a personal form, ‘somebody’, instead of ‘something’. 4. pp. 113-114. The Shadow of the Absolute 97 5. The expression a‘yan al-mumkinat is explained by Jam! as a'yan al-mumkinat al-thabitah fi al-hadrah al-‘ilmiyah ( Sharh al-Fusiis). 6. Fus., p. 114/102. 7. Fus., p. 114/102. 8. The primal manifestation-form of the Mystery’ is nothing other than the metaphysical level of Divine Consciousness which is in fact the first visible form assumed by the Mystery (Jami). 9. p. 114. 10. Fus., p. 114/102. 11. Fuy., p. 115/102. 12. ibid. 13. Fus., P- 116/103. Many of the leading commentators give quite a different interpretation to the latter part of the passage just quoted. The difference comes from the fact that they take the particle hand in the sense of kay or li-kay ‘in order that’, while I take it to mean ‘until.’ The passage, according to their interpretation, would read: ‘It is impossible, in view of the very nature of the Absolute, that it should manifest itself to possible things (i.e., archetypes) in order to produce its own shadow in such a way that the “shadow” (once produced) would remain the same as the rest of the possible things to which no reality has yet been actualized in the empirical world. Thus interpreted, the passage would mean that those archetypes upon which the ‘shadow’ has been projected immediately obtain an ontological status differentiating them from the other archetypes that have not yet attained any degree of reality. This meaning, however, does not seem to fit in the present context. 14. Fus., p. 117/103. 15. ibid. 16. p. 117. 17. Fus., p- 118/103-104. 18. Al-Qashani says (p. 103): When the Absolute manifests itself in the world of Command (i.e., in the spiritual world) to pure Spirits and non-corporeal Intellects, the self-manifestation is of the nature of light, because the forms in which the Absolute appears in this domain of pure spirituality are a ‘shadow’ made of light; it is transparent and has no darkness within. But the light passing through a colored glass is a symbol of the Absolute appearing in the form of a soul tinged with the coloring of the bodily constitution. The intellectual soul ( al-nafs al-na(iqah, i.e., the soul of man), although it is not bodily in itself, becomes turbid and colored by bodily elements. 98 Sufism and Taoism 19. The reference to a famous Tradition in which God Himself speaks in the first person ( hadith qudsiy): ‘The servant (i.e. believer) never ceases to strive for super- reogatory works until I love him. And when I do love him, I am his hearing with which he hears and I am his sight with which he sees, etc.' 20. p. 118. 21. p. 273/219. VII The Divine Names The philosophical world-view of Ibn ‘Arabi is, concisely stated, a world-view of Divine self-manifestation ( tajalti ), for, as we have seen, as long as the Absolute remains in its absoluteness there can be nothing in existence that may be called the ‘world’, and the word ‘world- view 5 itself would lose all meaning in the absence of the world. The principle of tajalli, on the world’s side, is the ‘preparedness’ (or ontological aptitude), and the same principle of tajalli from the standpoint of the Absolute is constituted by the Divine Names. The present chapter will deal thematically with the problem of tajalli in so far as it directly bears upon the Divine Names. Islamic theology discusses as one of the basic themes the question whether a Name (ism) is or is not the same as the ‘object named’ (musamm'a ) . Ibn ‘ Arabi gives his answer to this theological question by saying that a Name and its ‘object named’ are the same in one sense and different from each other in another sense. The reason why they are one and the same thing is that all the Divine Names, in so far as they invariably refer to the Absolute, are nothing but the ‘object named’ (i.e., the Essence [dhdt] of the Absolute) itself. Each name is a special aspect, or special form, of the Absolute in its self-manifestation. And in this sense, each Name is identical with the Essence. All the Divine Names, in other words, are ‘the realities of the relations’ (haqaiq al-nisab ),* i.e., the rela- tions which the One Reality bears to the world, and in this respect they are all the Divine Essence itself viewed from the standpoint of the various special relations which are caused by the phenomenon of Divine self-manifestation. The relations which the Absolute can possibly bear to the world are infinite, that is, to use Ibn ‘ArabFs peculiar terminology, the forms of the Divine self-manifestation are infinite in number. Con- sequently, the Divine Names are infinite. However, they can be classified and reduced to a certain number of basic Names. For example, it is generally recognized that the Qoran gives ninety-nine Names of God. 100 Sufism and Taoism These Names, whether infinite or finite in number, can also be considered by themselves independently of the Essence to which they refer. In other words, they can be regarded as so many inde- pendent Attributes. Considered in this way, each Name has its own ‘reality’ ( haqiqah ) by which it is distinguished from the rest of the Names. And in this respect, a Name is different from the ‘object named’. Ibn ‘Arab! explains this point by making reference to the famous Sufi of the West, Abu al-Qasim b. Qasi (d. 1151). 2 This is what is meant by Abu al-Qasim b. Qasi when he says in his book Taking Off The Sandals that every Divine Name carries in itself all the Divine Names and all their properties; this because every Name indicates both the Essence and the particular meaning of which it is the Name and which is especially required by the latter. Thus every single Name, in so far as it points to the Essence, contains all the Names, but in so far as it points to its own proper meaning, is different from all the rest, like ‘Lord’, ‘Creator’ or ‘Giver of the forms’ etc. The Name, in short, is the same as the ‘object named’ in regard to the Essence, but it is not the same as the ‘object named’ in regard to its own particular meaning. Thus the most conspicuous feature of the Divine Names is their double structure, that is, their having each two designations. Each Name designates, and points to, the unique Essence, while pointing to a meaning or reality which is not shared by any other Name. In the first aspect, every Name is one and the same as all other Names, because they all are indicative of the same Essence. In this respect, even such Names as appear to contradict each other (e.g., ‘All-Forgiving’ and ‘Revenger’, ‘Outward’ and ‘Inward’, ‘First’ and ‘Last’) are identical with each other. In the second aspect, on the contrary, each Name is something independent, something having its own peculiar reality. It definitely distinguishes itself from all others. The ‘Outward’ is not the same as the ‘Inward’ . And what a distance between the ‘First’ and the ‘Last’ ! It will have been made clear to you (by what precedes) in what sense each Name is the same as another and in what sense it is different from another. Each Name, in being the same as others, is the Abso- lute, and in being ‘other’ than others, is the ‘Absolute as it appears as a particular image’ ( al-haqq al-mutakhayyal ) . Glory be to Him who is not indicated by anything other than Himself and whose existence is established by nothing other than Himself and whose existence is established by nothing other than His own self ! 3 The ‘Absolute as it appears in particular images’, i.e., the world, is nothing but the whole sum of the Divine Names as concretely actualized. And since it is the sole indicator of the absolute Abso- The Divine Names 101 lute, the latter, after all, is not indicated by anything other than itself. The Absolute indicates itself by itself, and its concrete exist- ence is established by itself. Ibn ‘Arab! cannot withold his pro- found admiration for the beauty and the grandeur of this structure. We discussed in Chapter V the relation between the One and the Many. In terms of the main topic of the present chapter, the Many are the forms of the Absolute actualized in accordance with the requirements of the Names. The Many are the ‘Absolute as it appears in particular images’, i.e., the Absolute ‘imagined’ under the particular forms of the Names. And from this point of view, the One is the Essence {dhat) which is indicated by the Names and to which return all the Names. At this juncture Ibn ‘Arabi uses an interesting expression, ‘the names of the world’ ( asma ’ al-‘alam), as a counterpart to the Divine Names ( al-asma ’ al-ilahiyah). 4 Whatever really exists in the world of Being is solely what is indicated by (the word) ‘unity’ ( ahadiyah ), whereas whatever exists only in imagination is what is indicated by ‘multiplicity’ (kathrah). Therefore he who sticks to the multiplicity stands on the side of the world, the Divine Names and the names of the world, while he who takes the position of the Unity stands on the side of the Absolute. The Abso- lute here is the Absolute considered in the Essence which is com- pletely independent of the whole world, not in its aspect of Divinity (i.e., being God) and its phenomenal forms. In this passage Ibn ‘Arabi states that the Absolute in its Essence is completely ‘independent’, i.e., has absolutely no need of the world. It is to be remarked that having no need of the world is the same as having no need of the Divine Names. The Names are, as we have observed above, the relations in which the Absolute stands to the creatures. They are there because of, and in the interests of, the creatures. The Essence in itself is not something which cannot subsist apart from such centrifugal relations. What needs the Names is not the Absolute, but the created world. He says; 5 If the Essence is completely independent of the whole world, this independence must be the same independence by which the Essence transcends the Names to be attributed to it. For the Names indicate not only the Essence but particular ‘objects named ’ 6 which are differ- ent from the Essence. This is evidenced by the very effect of the Names . 7 Thus, the Divine Names, in their centrifugal side turning toward multiplicity-diversity, are definitely ‘other’ than the Absolute, and the Absolute maintains its ‘independence’ in regard to them. But in their centripetal side turning toward the Essence, all the Divine Names are ultimately one because they are reducible to the 102 Sufism and Taoism Absolute. And in this second aspect, the Absolute at the level of the Names is One as it is at the level of its absoluteness. The Absolute is in this way. One in two different senses . 8 The Unity of God on the level of the Divine Names which require (the existence of) us (i.e., the phenomenal world) is the Unity of multiplicity ( ahadiyah al-kathrah ). And the Unity of God in the sense of being completely ‘independent’ of us and even of the Names is the Unity of essence ( ahadiyah al-'ayn). Both aspects are called by the same name: ‘One’. The Unity of multiplicity here spoken of is also called the Unity of ‘unification’ ( ahadiyah al-jam‘). It plays an exceedingly important role in the world-view of Ibn ‘ Arabi, as we have already seen in what precedes and as we shall see in more detail in what follows. In brief, it is a position which recognizes multiplicity existing in potentia in the Absolute which is essentially One . 9 We have observed above that the Absolute, in so far as it is the Absolute, does not need the Names, and that it is the creatures that need them. The latter half of this statement, namely, that the world needs the Divine Names, may be formulated in more philosophical terms by saying that the Names have the property of causality (‘illiyah or sababiyah). From this point of view, the Divine Names are the ‘cause’ {‘illah or sabab) for the existence of the world. The world needs the Divine Names in the sense that nothing in the world can exist without them. There can be no doubt that the world stands in essential need of many causes. And the greatest of all the causes which it needs is the Absolute. But the Absolute can act as the cause needed by the world only through the Divine Names as its cause. By ‘Divine Names’ here is meant every Name that is needed by the world (as its cause), whether it be part of the world itself or the very Absolute. In either case it is God, nothing else . 10 This passage makes it clear that, in Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, if the world essentially needs as its cause the Absolute, it does not need the Absolute in its absoluteness but in its various aspects, such as ‘creativity’, ‘Lordship’, etc. In other words, the Absolute on the level of the Names is the ‘cause’ of the world’s existence. Regarding the latter half of the passage, nothing, I think, could make its meaning more lucid than the following explanation by al-Qashani . 11 The Divine Names are the very things which are needed by the world (as its causes). (Two cases are distinguished). The first is when the Name needed is something similar to the thing which needs it: e.g., ‘son’ needs ‘father’ in his existence, sustenance and maintenance. In such a case the things needed are nothing but concrete forms taken by The Divine Names 103 the Names of the Absolute, i.e., their concrete manifestations. The second case occurs when the thing needed is (directly) the Absolute itself: e.g., the ‘son’ is in need of the Absolute, the Former, the Creator, in having his own form, figure and character. This is differ- ent from (the first case in which) he needs something similar to himself (e.g., ‘father’). In either case, however, the Name needed is no other than the Name ‘Allah’. (This may not be clear) in the first case, (but that it is so will be known from the following consideration). The causality of ‘father’ does not lie in the permanent archetype of ‘father’, for the latter is (actually) non-existent. The causality of ‘father’ comes from ‘father’ in its real existence, his action, and his power. But the existence (of ‘father’) is essentially nothing but the Absolute as manifested in a locus of self-manifestation; and the action, the form, the ability, the power, the sustenance, and the maintenance - all these are but what naturally follows from existence: they are but Attributes of the Absolute and its Actions (in concrete forms). What properly pertains to ‘father’ is only being-receptive and being-a-locus-of-Divine- self-manifestation. As you already know, however, the one who merely receives has no positive activity; the positive activity belongs only to the One which manifests itself in (the receiver as) its locus of self-manifestation. (The causality of the Absolute) in the second case is too obvious to need explanation. The gist of the argument may conveniently be given in the following way: in the second case in which the world directly needs God, God is the ‘cause’ of the world; but in the first case, too, in which the things in the world need each other in the form of a cause-caused relation, it is again God who is the ultimate ‘cause’ of everything. When, for example, ‘son’ needs ‘father’, it is the causality of God that is working through the medium of ‘father’. We see in this way that everything in this world, every event which occurs in this world, is an actualization of a Divine Name, that is to say, a self-manifestation of the Absolute through a definite relative aspect called Divine Name. The conclusion to be drawn from this is that there are as many Divine Names as there are things and events in the world. The Divine Names in this sense are infinite in number. The Names of God are limitless because they become known by what comes out of them and what comes out of them is limitless . 12 However, they are reducible to a limited number of basic Names ( u$ul , lit. ‘roots’) which are the ‘Mothers’ of Names or, we might say, the ‘Presences’ (i.e., basic dimensions) of all the Names. The truth of the matter is that there is only one Reality ( haqiqah ) that receives all these relations and relative aspects which are called the Divine Names. And this same Reality requires that each of these Names that come into appearance limitlessly should have its own 104 Sufism and Taoism reality which distinguishes it from all other Names. The Name is this reality which distinguishes each individual Name, not that thing (i.e., the Reality) which is common to all. This situation is comparable to the fact that the Divine gifts are distinguished from each other by their individual natures, though they are all from one source. It is evident that this is different from that, and the reason for this difference lies in the individual distinction of each Name. Thus in the Divine world, however wide it is, nothing repeats itself. This is a truly fundamental fact . 13 Here again, as we see, we are brought back to the basic dictum: the One is the Many and the Many are the One. Only the dictum is here interpreted topically in terms of the Divine Names. The Many, i.e. the Divine Names, determine a point of view from which there is not even one thing that is the same as some other thing, because ‘nothing repeats itself’ in the world. Even ‘one and the same thing’ is not in reality the same in two successive moments . 14 In general, any two things that are normally considered the same are not in reality the ‘same’; they are merely ‘similar to each other’ ( shab - ihan). And of course, ‘similar to each other’ means ‘different from each other’ (ghayran ). 15 However, from the point of view of the Essence, not only similar things but things that are widely different from each other, are one and the same thing. The sage who knows the truth sees multiplicity in ‘one’; likewise, he knows that the Divine Names, even though their (individual) realities are different and many, all point to one single Entity. This (difference among the Names) is but a multiplicity of an intelligible nature (i.e., existent only in potentia ) in the reality of the One. And this (intelli- gible multiplicity) turns into sensible multiplicity to be witnessed in one single Reality, when (the One) manifests itself (in the world). The situation may be best understood by what happens to Prime Matter ( hayula ) as it enters the inner structure of every ‘form’. In spite of their multiplicity and diversity, all the ‘forms’ ultimately are reducible to one single substance which is their ‘ matter’ . And ‘he who knows himself’ in this way ‘knows his Lord’, because (the Lord) has created him in His own image, nay, He is the very He-ness of the man and his true reality . 16 All the Divine Names point to one single Reality, and in this sense they are, as we have just seen, all one. This, however, does not mean that all the Names stand on an equal level. On the contrary, a difference of degrees or ranks is observable among them. This difference of ranks corresponds to the difference of ranks among the things of the world. And this is natural because, in Ibn ‘ Arabi’s view, the Divine Names owe their very existence to the ontological requirements of the things. Ibn ‘Arab! explains this difference of ranks among the Names in the following terms : 17 The Divine Names 105 There is absolutely nothing except it (i.e., the Absolute ). 18 However, there must also be a certain respect in which we are obliged to use language of discrimination in order to account for the (observable) existence of ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ in the world, so that we might be able to talk about (for example) this man being ‘more’ learned than that, notwithstanding the essential unity (of ‘knowledge’) itself . 19 This implies (that there is a similar difference in rank between Attributes; that, for example,) the Will, in respect to the number of its objects, is inferior to Knowledge. Although Will and Knowledge are both Attributes of God and are one in this aspect, Will is lower than Knowledge. But that same Will is higher than Power. This because, generally speaking, ‘will’ begins to work only after one ‘knows’ something, and ‘will’ not only precedes ‘power’ but covers a wider field than the latter. Exactly the same kind of superior-inferior relation obtains among all the Divine Names. The thing to which they all point, that is, the Essence, stands on a transcendental height above all comparisons and relations, but the things other than the Divine Essence are different in ranks, some being ‘higher’ and others ‘lower’. Concerning the transcen- dental height of the Essence Ibn ‘Arab! says : 20 The Transcendent ( al - ‘ aliy ) in itself is that which possesses the (abso- lute) perfection ( kamal ) in which are engulfed all existent things as well as non-existent relations 21 in such a way that there can absolutely be no property that is not found therein, whether it be something which is considered ‘good’ according to convention, Reason, and the Divine Law, or something to be judged ‘bad’ by the same standards. And this is a state of affairs which is observable exclusively in what is designated by the Name Allah. This passage is explicated by al-Qashani as follows : 22 The Transcendent with a real and essential - not a relative - height, possesses an absolute perfection which comprises all the perfections pertaining to all things. The perfections comprised are (exhaustive), covering as they do both those that are positively existent and those that are in the nature of non-existence; some of them are ‘good’ in every possible aspect, and some of them are ‘bad’ in a certain respect. This last point may be understood if one remembers that some of the perfections are essentially of a relative nature and are ‘bad’ in rela- tion to some of the things; e.g., the valor of a lion in relation to his prey. But the absolute perfection must not lack even one property or ethical qualification or action. Otherwise, it would be imperfect in that particular aspect. Ibn ‘Arabi asserts that such an essential height and an absolute perfection can only belong to the One as determined by the primary self-determination on the level of the Onesness ( wahidiyah ) which gathers together all the Names. And this is the Greatest Name 106 Sufism and Taoism ( al-ism al-a‘zam) which is the very thing designated by the Name Allah or the Name Merciful (al-rahman) P In this state, all the Divine Names which have a positive effect (on the things of the world) are considered together as a unity; they are not considered in their aspect of multiplicity. Such is ‘God’ as the comprehensive whole unifying all the Names. As to ‘what is not the thing designated by the Name Allah’, i.e., all things that are not God, Ibn ‘Arab! distinguishes two kinds: (1) that which is a locus of theophany {mafia, i.e. the place of tajalli), and (2) that which is a form {$urah) in God, the word ‘form’ in this context meaning a particular Name by which the Divine Essence becomes determined. ‘What is not the thing designated by the Name Allah' is either a locus of the self-manifestation of it or a form subsisting in it. In the former case, it is quite natural that there should occur a difference of ranks between individual loci. In the second case, the ‘form’ in question is the very essential perfection (belonging, as we have seen, to the Transcendent) for the form is nothing other than what is mani- fested in it (i.e., the Transcendent itself), so that what belongs to that which is designated by the Name Allah must also belong to the form . 24 The meaning of this seemingly obscure passage may be made explicit in the following way. In case ‘other than God’ signifies a locus of theophany, the One Absolute is witnessed in the concrete things of the world as so many loci of theophany. In this case the Absolute assumes various different aspects in accordance with the natures of the individual things. And there naturally arise various ranks and degrees according to the more-or-less of the self- manifestation. 25 But in case ‘other than God’ signifies a ‘form’ in God, various forms are witnessed in the Absolute itself. And in this case, each one of the forms will possess the very same essential perfection which is possessed by the whole, i.e., God. If God pos- sesses perfection, the same perfection must necessarily be possessed by each ‘form’ because the latter appears in nothing other than God. The existents thus differ ontologically from each other in rank, but taken as a whole, they constitute among themselves a well- organized order. And this ontological order corresponds to the order formed by the Divine Names. Two things are worth remarking concerning this theologico- ontological hierarchy. (1) A higher Name implicitly contains all the Names that are lower than itself. And, correspondingly, a higher existent, as a locus of the self-manifestation of a higher Name, contains in itself all the lower existents. (2) Every single Name, The Divine Names 107 regardless of its rank in the hierarchy, contains in a certain sense all the other Names. And, correspondingly, every single part of the world contains all the other parts of the world. Ibn ‘Arab! says: 26 When you assign a higher rank to a Divine Name, you are thereby calling it (implicitly) by all the Names (that stand lower than it) and attributing to it all the properties (that belong to the Names of lower ranks). The same is true of the things of the world; every higher being possesses the capacity of comprehending all that is lower than itself. However, every particle of the world is (virtually) the whole of the world, that is, every single particle is capable of receiving into itself all the realities of all single particles of the world. So the observed fact, for instance, that Zayd is inferior to ‘ Amr in knowledge does not in any way prevent the same He-ness of the Absolute being the very essence of Zayd and ‘Amr; nor does it prevent the He-ness being more perfect, more conspicuous in ‘Amr than in Zayd. This situation corresponds to the fact that the Divine Names differ from each other in rank while being all no other than the Absolute. Thus, for example, God as ‘Knower’ is more comprehensive, regard- ing the domain covered, than God as ‘Wilier’ or ‘Powerful’, and yet God is God in every case. Of the numerous Divine Names, the greatest and most comprehen- sive, and the most powerful one is the ‘Merciful’ ( rahman ). It is a ‘comprehensive’ (shamil) Name in that it gathers all the Names together into a unity. And the Absolute on this level of unity is called Allah. In the following two chapters these two Names will be discussed in detail. Notes 1. Fw>., p. 193/153. 2. Fus., p. 70/79-80. 3. Fu$., p. 119/104. 4. fks., p. 120/104-105. 5. ibid. 6. i.e., particular Attributes which are, more concretely, various particular aspects of the world. 7. i.e., the fact that the Names indicate besides the Essence the special aspects of the world as something different from the Essence is clearly shown by the created world itself which is the very effect of the Names. 8. Fu$., p. 121/105. 108 Sufism and Taoism 9. Ibn ‘Arabi here distinguishes between two types of ahadiyah or ‘Unity’. In his technical terminology, the first kind of Unity, i.e., the Unity of multiplicity at the ontological stage of Divine Names and Attributes, is specifically called wahidlyah ‘Oneness (of Many)’ and is thereby strictly distinguished from the absolute, pure Unity (ahadiyah), the Unity of Divine Essence. It will be well to remember that there is in his system one more basic type of ahadiyah. It is the Unity of ‘actions and effects’ (, ahadlyah al-afal wa-al-athar) and is symbolized by the name of the prophet Hud. Al-Qashani (p. 123) refers to these three types of Unity as follows: ‘There are three degrees in the Unity. The first is the Unity of the Essence. (God is called at this stage ahad “One” or “Unique” in a non-numerical sense). The second is the Unity of the Names. This is the stage of Divinity, and God is called at this stage wahid “One” in a numerical sense). The third is the Unity of Lordship ( rububiyah ) or the Unity of actions and effects’. This last kind of Unity means that whatever we may do in this world, whatever may happen in this world, everything is ‘walking along the straight road’. Everything, every event, occurs in strict accordance with the law of Being (which is nothing other than the Absolute). All are ‘one’ in this sense. 10. Fu$.,p. 122/105-106. 11. p. 122. 1 2. ‘The Essence as the Unity is, in relation to each single thing that comes out of it, a particular Name. Thus whenever a determination comes into being there is a Name therein. And the relations (of the Essence with the things of the world) are limitless because the receptacles (i.e., the things that receive the self-manifestation of the Absolute) and their natural dispositions are limitless. Thus it comes about that the Names of God are limitless’ - al-Qashani, p. 38. 13. Fuy, pp. 38-39/65. 14. This is the concept of the ‘ever new creation’ ( khalq jadid), which will be discussed in detail later. 15. Fuy., p. 152/124-125. 16. ibid. 17. Fwj., p. 193/153. 18. He means to say: since everything is a self-manifestation of the Absolute through a particular Name, all that exist in the world are nothing but the Absolute. 19. This example properly concerns only the existence of degrees in one single attribute called ‘knowledge’. But the real intention of Ibn ‘Arabi is to maintain that there is also a difference of degrees between ‘knowledge’ itself and other attributes. 20. Fu$., p. 69/79. 21. As we have observed before, the relations ( nisab ) are in themselves essentially non-existent. 22. p. 69. 23. On Allah = the Merciful see the next two chapters which will be devoted specifically to this question. The Divine Names 109 24. Fw$., p. 69/79. 25. If, for example, all the Divine Names are actualized in a thing, it will be the Perfect Man, while if the most of the Names are manifested, it will be an ordinary (non-perfect) man, and if the number of the Names manifested happens to be far less than that, it will be an inanimate thing - al-Qashani, p. 69. 26. Fuy., pp. 193-194/153. ! Allah and the Lord 111 VIII Allah and the Lord One of the cardinal elements of Ibn ‘ Arabi’s thought on God is the theologico-ontological difference between Allah and the Lord ( rabb ). In the Chapter of Noah (Qoran, LXXI) to which reference was made before, Noah addressing himself to God uses the expres- sion ‘O my lord (rabb-i)' he does not say ‘O my God (ilah-iy . In this Ibn ‘Arabi find a special meaning. Noah said ‘ O my Lord’ , he did not say 1 O my God’ . This because the ‘ Lord’ has a rigid fixity (thubiit), while 'God' ( ilah ) is variable with the Names in such a way that ‘He is every day in a new state ’. 2 This short passage contains the gist of Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s thought on the difference and relation between Allah and the Lord. It may be explicated as follows. The Lord is the Absolute as manifested through a particular concrete Name, while Allah is the Absolute who never ceases to change and transform Himself from moment to moment according to the Names. The Lord has a rigid ‘fixity’ in the sense that it is the Absolute in one particular aspect being bound and determined by one particular Name or Attribute suitable for the occasion. Hence a very particular relation between the Lord and man; namely, that man, whenever he prays to God and makes petition or supplication to Him, he must necessarily address himself to his Lord. An ailing man prays to God not vaguely and generally but in the ‘fixed’ form of the ‘Healer’ (shaft). Likewise, a sinner asking for Divine forgive- ness supplicated the ‘All-forgiving’ ( ghajur ). And he who wants something prays to the ‘Giver’ (m«‘li), 3 etc. God under each of these and other similar Names is the Lord of the particular man who prays from a particular motive. Hence al-Qashani’s definition 4 of the Lord: the Lord is the Essence taken with a particular Attribute through which (the man who prays) obtains what he needs; thus it is, of all the Divine Names, the most suitable one for the occasion which motivates the man when he addresses himself to God. This is the reason why Noah, in the Qoranic verse in questions, says ‘my Lord’ . Lordship ( rububiyah ) in this sense means the truly personal relationship of each individual man with God. It is to be remarked that this individual relationship is also of an ontological nature. In the Qoran (XIX, 55) it is related that IsmaTl (Ishmael) ‘was approved by his Lord’, that is, his Lord was satisfied with Ishmael. But if we understand the phrase ‘his Lord’ in the particular sense in which Ibn ‘Arabi understands it, we must admit that not only Ishmael but every being is approved by his Lord. As Ibn ‘Arabi says: 5 Indeed, every being is approved by his Lord. From the fact, however, that every being is approved by his Lord it does not follow necessarily that every being is approved by the Lord of another creature. This is because every being has chosen a particular form of Lordship from among all (the possible types of Lordship contained in the absolute Lordship) and not from one single Lordship (commonly shared by all). Every being has been given out of the (infinitely variable) whole only what particularly fits it, and that precisely is its Lord. As al-Qashani says, 6 ‘the Lord (i.e., its Lord) demands of every being only that which (naturally) appears in it, while the being, in its turn, because of its ‘preparedness’, does not demand of its Lord except those attributes and actions that its Lord causes to appear in it (naturally)’ . In other words, when the Absolute manifests itself in each individual being, it is able to do so only through one particular Name because of the natural limitation set by the ‘preparedness’ of that particular being. But this is exactly what is willed by the Absolute and what is desired by the recipient, there being no discordance between the two parties. And this is what is meant by everything being approved by its own Lord. It must be noticed that Ibn ‘Arabi is no longer speaking of the personal relationship between a man and his Lord established by the act of prayer and supplication, but has clearly shifted his interest to the ontological aspect of the problem. And in fact, there is an ontological aspect to the personal relation between each individual being and his Lord. In the phenomenon of ‘prayer’, from which Ibn ‘Arab! has started, each single Name has been regarded as representing a particular aspect of the Absolute. But a Divine Name, in order to actualize, necessarily requires a particular being. A particular being in that capacity is a locus of the self-manifestation of that Name. And in this context, each individual being, as a locus in which a particular Name is manifested, maintains with the Absolute the same individual relationship as in the ‘prayer’ context. Only it maintains the same individual relationship, this time, on the ontological level. 112 113 Sufism and Taoism It follows from this that each individual being or thing, at each particular moment, picks up only one out of many Names, and the Name chosen behaves as his or its Lord. Looking at the situation from the reverse side, we can express the same thing by saying that it never happens that the Absolute should manifest itself as it is in its original Oneness, i.e., the comprehensive unity of the Names, in any being. Ibn ‘Arabi goes on to say: 7 No being can establish a particular Lord-servant relationship with the Absolute on the level of Unity. This is why the true sages have denied the possibility of Divine self-manifestation ( tajalli ) on the level of Unity. . . . 8 The Absolute on the level of Oneness is a synthesis of all Names, and as such, no one single being is able to contain it. Only the world as an integral whole can actualize the Oneness of the Names and offer an ontological counterpart to it. However, Ibn ‘Arabi seems to admit one exceptional case. As al-Qashani says, the exception arises in the case of the Perfect Man. Unlike ordinary men, the Perfect Man actualizes and manifests not one single particular Name but all the Names in their synthesis. An ordinary man is approved by his particular Lord. The latter is his Lord; not the Lord of other people. So that no ordinary man is in direct relation with the absolute Lord ( al-rabb al-mutlaq). The Perfect Man, on the contrary, actualizes in himself all the attributes and actions of the One who approves of him not as his Lord alone but as the absolute Lord. The expression, ‘the absolute Lord’, used by al-Qashani corres- ponds to the Qoranic expression, ‘the Lord of the worlds’ ( rabb al-‘alamin , and is equivalent to ‘the Lord of all Lords’ ( rabb al- arbab ) or Allah. Thus the statement that, in normal cases, the Names in their original synthesis can never be actualized in any single being, amounts to the same thing as saying that Allah as such cannot be the Lord of any particular individual. Know that the object designated by the Name Allah is unitary (i ahadiy ) in regard to the Essence, and a synthesis ( kull ) in regard to the Names. Every being is related to Allah only in the form of his particular Lord; it is impossible for any being to be related to Allah directly in the original form of synthesis. . . . And blessed indeed is he who is approved by his Lord! But, properly speaking, there is no one who is not approved by his Lord, because he (i.e., every individual) is just the thing by which the Lordship of the Lord subsists. Thus every individual being is approved by his Lord, and every individual being is happy and blessed. 9 In the latter half of this passage an intimate reciprocal relationship is affirmed between each individual being and his Lord. It goes with- Allah and the Lord out saying that every being depends essentially on his Lord for his existence. But the Lord also depends, in a certain sense, upon the receptive ability ( qabiliyah ) 10 of the individual being of whom He is the Lord. The Lord can never be a Lord without there being someone to be ‘lorded over’ ( marbub ). Ibn ‘Arabi refers at this point to the following dictum left by Sahl al-Tustari, a famous Sufi-theologian of the ninth century. 11 ‘The Lordship has a secret, and that (secret) is thyself’ - here (by saying thyself) Sahl is addressing himself to every individual being that exists in concrete reality - ‘if it were nullified, 12 the Lordship itself would come to naught’. Remark well that Sahl says if which implies an impossibility of the actual occurrence of the event in question. In other words, this (secret) will never be nullified, and, consequently, the Lordship will never come to naught. For there can be no existence for any being except by virtue of its Lord, but as a matter of fact every individual being is forever existent (if not in the physical world, at least in some of the non-physical dimensions of reality). Thus the Lordship will forever be existent. As has been suggested in the preceding more than once, the ‘Lord’, in Ibn ‘ArabFs thought, is considered on two different levels: (1) ‘absolute’ ( muflaq ) and (2) ‘relative’ (iddfiy). The Lord on the ‘absolute’ level is Allah , while on the second level the Lord is the Lord of one particular being and is an actualized form of one particular Name. From the viewpoint of the concept itself of ‘Lord’ (rabb), the ‘relative’ is the proper case, the Lord in the ‘absolute’ sense being only an extremely exceptional case. This fact is explained by al-Qashani in the following way: 13 Rabb is properly a relative term and necessarily requires its object (marbub, lit. ‘the one who is lorded over’). The word rabb in Arabic is used in three senses: (1) ‘possessor’ , e.g. rabb al-dar (the possessor of the house), rabb al-ghanam (the possessor of the cattle) etc., (2) ‘master’, e.g., rabb al-qawm (the master of the people), rabb al-‘abid (the master of the slaves) etc., (3) ‘one who brings up’, e.g., rabb al-sabi (the one who brings up the boy), rabb al-tifl (one who brings up the infant) etc. The word rabb is not applicable in the non-relative sense except to the Lord of the whole universe. In this case we say al-rabb with a definite article (without mentioning the ‘object’ of Lordship). Thereby is meant Allah alone. And to Him belongs in an essential way the Lordship in the three meanings distinguished above, while to anybody other than Allah the lordship belongs only accidentally. For ‘other than Allah' is but a locus in which it (i.e., the Lordship belonging properly to Allah) is manifested. Thus Lordship is an attribute properly belonging to one single thing (i.e., Allah) but appearing in many forms (as ‘relative’ lordships). Everybody in whom it is manifested possesses an accidental lordship 114 115 Sufism and Taoism in accordance with the degree to which he is given the power of free disposal which he may exercise over his possessions, slaves or children. Since the attribute of Lordship differs from locus to locus in its self-manifestation, there necessarily arise a number of degrees. Thus he who has been given a stronger control (over his possessions) than others has naturally a higher lordship. Thus we see that the ‘Lord’, whether ‘absolute’ or ‘relative’, essen- tially requires an object over which to exercise the Lordship. The rabb , in short, cannot subsist without marbiib. And this holds true even when the Lord in question happens to be no other than God. The only one who does not need anything other than himself is, as we know, the Absolute in its absoluteness, i.e., the Divine Essence. The Divine Names are essentially the same as the Named. And the Named is (ultimately) no other than God. (But a difference comes into being because) the Names (unlike the Essence) do not cease to require the realities which they themselves produce. And the realities which the Names require are nothing other than the world. Thus Divinity ( uluhiyah , i.e., the Absolute’s being God) requires the object to which it appears as God ( ma’luh , lit. an object which is ‘god-ed’), as Lordship requires its own object {marbub ‘lord-ed’). Otherwise, i.e., apart from the world, it (i.e., Divinity or Lordship) has no reality of its own. What is absolutely free from any need of the world is solely the Absolute qua Essence. The Lordship has no such property. Thus Reality is reducible to two aspects: what is required by the Lordship on the one hand, and, on the other, the complete indepen- dence from the world which is rightly claimed by the Essence. But (we may go a step further and reduce these two aspects to one, because) in reality and in truth the Lordship is nothing other than the Essence itself . 14 We come to know in this way that the ‘Lord’ is no other than the Essence ( dhat ) considered as carrying various relations ( nisab ). We must not forget, however, that these relations are no real entities subsisting in the Divine Essence. They are simply so many subjec- tive points of view peculiar to the human mind which cannot by nature approach the Divine Essence except through them. *■ Allah and the Lord ship is the ‘Presence of actions ( afaiy , i.e., the plane of those Names that are specifically concerned with Divine actions in administering, sustaining, and controlling the affairs of the creatures. Notes 1. LXXI, 5, 21, 26. 2. Fus., p. 57/73. 3. Cf. Affifi, Fus„ Com., p. 42. 4. p. 57. 5. Fus., p. 95/91. 6. p. 95. 7. Fus., p. 95/91-92. 8. In this passage Ibn ‘Arabi uses the term ‘Unity’ (ahadiyah) in the sense of wahidiyah. It goes without saying that there can be no exterior tajalli on the level of ahadiyah, because, as we have seen in the earlier contexts, ahadiyah is the absolute state of Essence (dhat) before it begins to split itself into the Names. The real intention of Ibn ‘Arab! in this passage, however, is to assert that even on the level of the Oneness ( wahidiyah ) where the Absolute is ‘God comprising and unifying all the Names into one’ no individual being is able to be a locus of the self-manifestation of the Oneness in its integrity. 9. Fus., PP- 93-94/90-91. 10. Qashani, p. 94. 11. Fus., P- 94/90-91. 12. As Affifi (Com., p. 87) says, the word zahara ‘appear’, ‘be disclosed’ here has a meaning diametrically opposed to the usual one; namely, that it must be understood in the meaning of zala ‘disappear’ or ‘cease to exist’ . Many examples of this usage of the word can be adduced from ancient poetry. 13. pp. 262-263. Incidentally, we have seen, in the above-quoted passage, Ibn ‘Arabi making a distinction between Divinity ( uluhiyah ) and Lordship (rububiyah). The Divinity represents, as al-Qashani says , 15 the ‘Presence’ or ontological plane of the Names, that is, of those Names that belong to the Absolute considered as God. In this plane, the Absolute ( qua God) is the object of veneration, praise, awe, fear, prayer, and obedience on the part of the creatures. The Lord- 14. Fus -, P- 143/119. 15. pp. 143-144. IX Ontological Mercy The two preceding chapters will have made it clear that there is a difference of ranks among the Divine Names, and that a higher Name virtually contains in itself all the Names of lower ranks. If such is the case, then it is natural for us to suppose that there must be in this hierarchy the highest, i.e., the most comprehensive, Name that contains all the rest of the Names. And in fact, according to Ibn ‘Arab!, there actually is such a Name: ‘Merciful’ (Rahman). The present chapter will be devoted to a detailed consideration of Ibn ‘ArabFs thought concerning this highest Name, its nature and its activity. From the very beginning, the concept of Divine Mercy was a dominant theme in Islamic thought. The Qoran emphasizes con- stantly and everywhere the boundless Mercy of God shown toward the creatures. The Mercy of God is indeed ‘wide’; it covers every- thing. Ibn ‘Arabi, too, greatly emphasizes the boundless width of Divine Mercy. ‘Know that the Mercy of God extends to everything, both in actual reality and possibility ’. 1 However, there is one important point at which his understanding of ‘mercy’ ( rahmah ) differs totally from the ordinary common- sense understanding of the term. In the ordinary understanding, rahmah denotes an essentially emotive attitude, the attitude of compassion, kindly forbearance, pity, benevolence, etc. But, for Ibn ‘Arabi, rahmah is rather an ontological fact. For him, rahmah is primarily the act of making things exist, giving existence to them. It is bestowal of existence, with, of course, an overtone of a subjective, emotive attitude on the part of the one who does so. God is by essence ‘overflowing with bounteousness’ (fay y ad bi-al-jud ), that is, God is giving out existence limitlessly and end- lessly to everything. As al-Qashani says, ‘existence ( wujud ) is the first overflowing of the Mercy which is said to extend to every- thing ’. 2 Such an understanding of rahmah gives a very particular coloring to the interpretation of the ethical nature of God which plays an Ontological Mercy 117 important role in the Qoran and in Islam in general. This is best illustrated by Ibn ‘ArabFs interpretation of the concept of Divine ‘wrath’. As is well known, the Qoran, while emphasizing that God is the Merciful, stresses at the same time that He is also a God of Wrath, a God of Vengeance. The God of the Qoran is God of justice. He shows unlimited love and compassion toward the good and pious, but that does not prevent Him from inflicting relentless punishment and chastisement upon those who do wrong, those who refuse to believe in Him and obey Him. Ibn ‘Arabi, too, admits God’s wrath’ (ghadab). For him, how- ever, ghadab is not an ordinary emotion of anger. It is, like its counterpart, rahmah , something of an ontological nature. Moreover, it is put in a subordinate position in relation to rahmah, for ghadab itself is but an object of the boundless rahmah of God. The very existence of Wrath originates from the Mercy of God for the Wrath. Thus His Mercy precedes His Wrath . 3 This statement would seem to need an explication. Here is what al-Qashani says about it : 4 Mercy pertains essentially to the Absolute because the latter is by essence ‘Bounteous’ (jawad) . . . Wrath, however, is not of the essence of the Absolute. On the contrary, it is simply a negative property that arises from the absence of receptivity on the part of some of the things for a perfect manifestation of the effects of existence and the various properties of existence. The absence of receptivity in some of the things for Mercy entails the non-appearance of Mercy (in those things), whether in this world or the Hereafter. And the fact that Divine Mercy is prevented from overflowing into a thing of this kind because of its non-receptivity is called Wrath in relation to that particular thing. . . . Thus it is patent that Mercy has precedence over Wrath with regard to the Absolute, for Wrath is nothing but the actual non-receptivity of the locus which is (supposed to receive) Mercy in a perfect form. We ordinarily imagine that what we call ‘evil’ (sharr) is something positive, something positively existent. But ‘evil’ is in itself a pure non-existence (‘adam). It exists only in the purely negative sense that a certain thing, when Divine Mercy works upon it, cannot by nature receive and accept it as it should. In other words, ‘evil’ is the negative situation of those things which cannot receive Mercy ( = existence) in its full and perfect form, and which, therefore, cannot fully realize existence. Apart from these things which constitute the objects of Divine Wrath, or, more philosophically speaking, the things that properly cannot have existence, all the remaining things which naturally have 118 Sufism and Taoism the proper receptivity for existence, demand of God existence. And the Divine activity which arises in response to this demand is Mercy. It is natural, then, that Mercy should cover all things that can possibly exist. Every essence (‘ ayn , i.e., everything in its archetypal state) asks for existence from God. Accordingly God’s Mercy extends to, and cov- ers, every essence. For God, by the very Mercy which He exercises upon it, accepts (i.e., recognizes approvingly) the thing’s (latent) desire to exist (even before the desire actually arises) and brings it (i.e., the desire) out to existence. This is why we assert that the Mercy of God extends to everything both in actual reality and possibility. 5 Everything, already in its archetypal state, cherishes latently a desire ( raghbah ) for actual existence. God’s Mercy extends even to this ontological desire while it is still in the state of mere possibility, and brings it out into existence. The desire thus actualized consti- tutes the ‘preparedness’ ( istVdad ) of the thing. The explication of the above passage by al-Qashanl is philosophically of great importance. 6 The permanent archetypes in their state of latency have only an intelligible existence (as objects of God’s Knowledge) ; by themselves they have no actual existence. They are desirous of actual existence, and are asking for it from God. When the archetypes are in such a state, God’s essential Mercy extends to every archetype by giving it a capacity to receive an ontological Divine self-manifestation. This receptivity, or the essential ‘preparedness’ f or receiving existence, is exactly the archetype’s desire for actual existence. Thus the very first effect of the essential Mercy upon an archetype appears in the form of its natural aptitude for receiving existence. This aptitude is called ‘preparedness’. God exercises Mercy upon an archetype, even before it has the ‘preparedness’ for existence, by existentiating the ‘preparedness’ itself through the ‘ most holy emana- tion’ ( al-fayd al-aqdas), i.e., the essential self-manifestation occur- ring in the Unseen. Thus the ‘preparedness’ of an archetype is itself (a result of) Divine Mercy upon it (i.e., the archetype), for previous to that, the archetype properly speaking has no existence if only to ask for its own ‘preparedness’. These words make it clear that the exercise of Divine Mercy is nothing other than the process of the self-manifestation of the Absolute, which has often been referred to in the preceding pages. For Mercy is bestowal of existence, and, in Ibn ‘ Arabi’s conception, the Absolute’s bestowing existence upon the things of the world is exactly the same as the Absolute’s manifesting itself in these things. In the passage just quoted, al-Qashanl states that the first stage in the appearance of Mercy is the giving of ‘preparedness’ for exist- ence to things not yet actually existent. And he says this stage 119 Ontological Mercy corresponds to the ‘most holy emanation’ in the theory of Divine self-manifestation. But this is somewhat misleading because it pre- sents the whole matter in an extremely simplified form. We shall have to reconsider in detail the process by which Divine Mercy is manifested, following closely what Ibn ‘Arab! himself says about it. Unfortunately, though, this is one of the most obscure parts of the Fusuy. Let us first quote the whole passage, and then split it into three parts representing, as I think, the three major stages in the gradual appearance of Mercy. 7 The Divine Names are ‘things’, and they all are ultimately reducible to one single Essence (1). The first object to which the Mercy is extended is the very thing-ness (i.e., the primary ontological reality by dint of which anything becomes cognizable as ‘something’) of that Essence (‘ayn) which produces the Mercy itself out of Mercy. Thus the first thing to which the Mercy is extended is the Mercy itself (2). Then (in the second stage, the object of the Mercy is) the thing-ness of (the Names) that has just been mentioned (3). Then (in the third stage, it is) the thing-ness of all existents that come into being without end, both of this world and of the Hereafter, whether substances or accidents, composite or simple (4). The first stage in the appearance of Divine Mercy is referred to in the second sentence (2) in this passage. The situation will be more understandable if we describe it analytically in the following terms. In the bosom of the absolute Absolute, or the abysmal Darkness, there appears first a faint foreboding, a presentment, so to speak, of the Mercy. Since, however, the Mercy, before it begins positively to manifest itself, is a non-existent (‘adam), it needs something which would bestow upon it ‘existence’, that is, another Mercy preceding it. But there can be no Mercy preceding the Divine Mercy. The only possibility then, is that the Divine Mercy is exercised upon itself. The self-Mercy of the Mercy constitutes the very first stage in the appearance of Mercy. Looking at the same situation from the point of view of the ontological Divine self-manifestation (tajalli) we might describe it as the first appearance of a foreboding of ‘existence’. And the appearance of a foreboding (or possibility) of ‘existence’ in the absolute Absolute means nothing else than the Absolute becoming conscious of itself as ‘existence’. It is the self-manifestation of the Absolute to itself. And in terms of ‘emanation’ to which reference has been made, this stage represents the beginning of the ‘most holy emanation’ of the Absolute. The sentence (2) in the above passage is intended to be a theoreti- cal formulation of this phenomenon. It means that ‘the first object of the Mercy is the thing-ness (shay’iyah) of that Essence (i.e., the 120 Sufism and Taoism absolute Divine Essence) which, with its own Mercy, brings Mercy into existence’. It implies that by the very first manifestation of its own Mercy, the absolutely Unknown-Unknowable turns into a ‘thing’ (shay’). And to say that the Absolute obtains ‘thing-ness’, i.e., an ontological status by which it presents itself as a ‘thing’ - which is the most general, the most undetermined of all determina- tions - is to say that a process of ‘self-objectification’ has already begun to take place within the Absolute itself. This is the appear- ance of self-consciousness on the part of the Absolute, and is, for the world, the appearance of a faint light just preceding the advent of the dawn of existence. In this state there exists as yet nothing at all except the Absolute, but the bestowal of existence which is, theo- logically, the ‘creation’, is already steadily operating. The second stage in the appearance of Mercy is the establishment of the thing-ness of the Names or the permanent archetypes, referred to by sentences (1) and (3) in the above-quoted passage. At this stage, the Mercy, which has turned the absolutely Unknown- Unknowable into a ‘thing’, now extends to all the Names and bestows upon them existence. The Names are thereby given ‘thing-ness’, and become ‘things’. On the side of tajalli, the second stage represents the completion of the ‘most holy emanation’ . Unlike the first stage, the second stage brings us closer to the external world of sensible experience, but even at this stage the tajalli is not an external tajalli ; it is still an event occurring inside the Unseen. Only the Unseen (ghayb) here is no longer a primordial state of total indiscrimination, for the essential forms of the things are already clearly discernible. These forms of the things (guwar al-mawjuddat ) in the darkness of the Unseen are the Divine Names. And the Absolute, as we have seen earlier, reveals itself to itself by being manifested in these essences. This is the final form in which Divine Consciousness makes its appearance, and thus is completed the ‘most holy emanation’. These essential forms constituting the content of Divine Con- sciousness are the first ‘determinations’ ( ta‘ayyunat ) that appear in the Essence in its relation with the creaturely world. And the ‘ thing-ness’ that arises at this stage is nothing other than the being of the permanent archetypes, and is, therefore, different from the thing-ness of the first stage. For all the existents at this stage, although they still maintain the essential unity peculiar to the first stage, have, at the same time, the meaning of being the totality of the essences which are in potentia divisible. And the Mercy which is at work at this stage is the Mercy of the Divine Names ( rahmah asma’iyah ), and is to be distinguished from the Mercy operating at the first stage, which is the Mercy of the Essence (rahmah dhatiyah). 121 Ontological Mercy The third stage in the appearance of the Mercy is described in sentence (4) of the above passage. After having brought into exist- ence the Divine Names (the second stage), the Mercy causes the individual things to arise as concrete actualizations of the Names. The ontological activity of the Mercy becomes thereby completed, and the tajalli, on its part, reaches its final stage. This is what Ibn ‘Arab! calls the ‘holy emanation’ (al-fayd al-muqaddas ) to be tech- nically distinguished from the above-mentioned ‘most holy emana- tion’ (al-fayd al-aqdas ). Thus, the Mercy, starting from the Divine Essence itself, ends by being extended over all the possible beings of phenomenal reality, and comes to cover the whole world. It is to be remarked that the activity of the Mercy covering the whole world of Being is absolutely impartial and indiscriminating. It extends literally over everything. In understanding the nature of its activity, we should not associate with it anything human with which the word ‘mercy’ (rahmah) is usually associated. There does not come into its activity any consideration of attaining an aim, or of a thing’s being or not being suitable for a purpose. Whether suitable or unsuitable, the Divine Mercy covers everything and any- thing with existence . 8 Such an indiscriminating and gratuitous Mercy is called by Ibn ‘Arab! the ‘Mercy of gratuitous gift’ (rahmah al-imtinan). 9 It is totally gratuitous; freely bestowed without any particular justification. The gift is given not in reward for something good done. As al-Qashani defines it, 10 the ‘Mercy of gratuitous gift’ is an essential Mercy which extends to all things without exception. It is extended to anything whatsoever because it is not a reward for some act. Thus anything that acquires thing-ness obtains this Mercy. The Mercy in this sense is synonymous with ‘existence’. And to exercise ‘mercy’ means to bestow ‘existence’ by way of a gratuitous gift. This is, for Ibn ‘Arabi, the meaning of the Qoranic verse: ‘My Mercy covers everything’ (VII, 156). It means that the Absolute bestows existence upon everything without any discrimination. In contrast, there is a kind of ‘mercy’ which is more human in nature, that is, the kind of ‘mercy’ which is exercised in reward for some act done. Ibn ‘Arabi calls this second type the ‘Mercy of obligation’ (rahmah al-wujub). The conception is based on another Qoranic verse: ‘Your Lord has written upon Himself Mercy’ (VI, 12). This is the kind of Mercy exercised with discrimination, i.e., in accordance with what each person actually has done. Ontologically speaking, it is Mercy exercised in accordance with the ‘prepared- ness’ of each individual being. There are, therefore, two different kinds of Mercy ( rahmatan ); 122 123 Sufism and Taoism and the ‘Merciful’ is, accordingly, given two meanings. These two senses are differentiated in Arabic by two different Names: the first is al- Rahman and the second is al-Rahim. The Rahman is the Merciful in the sense of the One who exercises the ‘Mercy of gratuitous gift’, while the Rahim is the Merciful in the sense of the One who exercises the ‘Mercy of obligation’." Since, however, the act of Mercy of the second category is but a special case of the first (which consists in bestowing existence on all beings), the Name Rahim is included in the Name Rahman. This point is explained by Ibn ‘Arab! in the following way : 12 (The Mercy is of two kinds:) the ‘Mercy of gratuitous gift’ and the 4 Mercy of obligation’ corresponding to (the Names) the Rahman and Rahim respectively. (God) exercises Mercy as a gratuitous act under the Name of the Rahman , while He obligates Himself to (requite with Mercy) under the Name of Rahim. This kind of ‘obligation’, however, is part of ‘gratuitous gift’, and so the Rahim is contained within the Rahman. God ‘has written upon Himself Mercy’ in such a way that Mercy of this kind may be extended to His servants in reward for the good acts done by them individually - those good works which are mentioned in the Qoran. This kind of Mercy is an obligation upon God with which He has bound Himself toward those servants, and the latter rightfully merit this kind of Mercy by their good works. Thus the ‘Mercy of obligation’ would seem to indicate that each person merits this kind of Mercy by whatever good work he has done. For Ibn ‘Arabi, this is merely a superficial understanding of the matter. In the eyes of those who know the truth, he who really does a good work is not man; the real agent is God Himself. He who is in this state (i.e., whoever is fully entitled to the ‘ Mercy of obligation’) knows within himself who is the real agent (of the good works which he does). Good works are distributed among the eight bodily members of man. And God has definitely declared that He is the He-ness (i.e., the inmost reality) of each of these bodily members. From this point of view, the real agent cannot be other than God; what belongs to man is only the outward form. (When we say that) the Divine He-ness itself is inherent in man, (what is meant thereby is that) it inheres in nothing other than one of His Names (i.e., man as a concrete form of one of the Divine Names, not in man as a physical being.) 13 As regards the ‘Mercy of gratuitous gift’, the most important point to remember is that it covers all without exception. Quite naturally, then, the Divine Names themselves are objects of this kind of Mercy. God has put the ‘Mercy of gratuitous gift’ above all restrictions when He has declared: ‘My Mercy covers everything’ (VII, 156). So it Ontological Mercy covers even the Divine Names, i.e., the realities of all relative deter- minations (of the Divine Essence). God has shown ‘Mercy of gratu- itous gift’ to the Names by (the very act of bestowing existence to) us (i.e., the world). Thus we (the world) are the result of the ‘Mercy of gratuitous gift’ exercised upon the Divine Names, i.e., the relations pertaining to the Lordship (i.e., the various relations which arise because of the Absolute being the ‘Lord’). 14 This universal, unconditional, and indiscriminating nature of the ‘Mercy of gratuitous gift’ cannot but affect gravely that part of Ibn ‘Arabi’s ontology which concerns the value of things. His position on this problem may succinctly be described by the phrase ‘Beyond Good and Evil’. As we have seen, the Mercy in this sense is nothing but bestowing upon everything existence qua existence. And this is done by the Absolute’s manifesting itself in the creaturely forms. This ontologi- cal act has in itself nothing to do with moral judgments. In other words, it does not matter essentially whether a thing as an object of the Mercy be good ( khayr ) or bad ( sharr ). Things assume these and other evaluational properties only after having been given existence by the act of the universal Mercy. The actual appearance of good- ness, badness, etc., is the result of the activity of the ‘Mercy of obligation’, for a thing’s assuming properties of this kind is due to the nature of the thing itself. The ‘ Mercy of gratuitous gift’ is bestowal of existence. It concerns existence qua existence; it does not concern existence being good or bad. This is one of the major theses of Ibn ‘Arabi. Briefly stated, everything is a self-manifestation of the Absolute; the Mercy extends in this sense to all, and all are on the ‘straight way’ ( sira( mustaqim ); and there is no distinction at this stage between good and evil. Verily God's is the straight Way; the Way is there, exposed to sight everywhere. Its reality is inherent in great things and small, in those who are ignorant of the truth as well as in those who know it well. This is why it is said that His Mercy covers everything, whether it be vile and contemptible or grand and stately. Thus (it is said in the Qoran:) ‘There is not even one single animal on earth but that He seizes its forelock. Verily my Lord is on the straight Way’. (XI, 56). It is clear, then, that everybody walking on the earth is on the straight Way of the Lord. From this point of view nobody is of ‘those upon whom is God’s wrath' (I, 7) nor of ‘those who go astray’ (ibid.). Both ‘wrath’ and ‘going astray’ come into being only secondarily. Everything goes ultimately back to the Mercy which is universal and which precedes (the appearance of all secondary distinctions). 15 124 Sufism and Taoism God himself seizes the forelock of every animal and leads it along the straight Way. This means that everything qua being is good as it is, and is, as we have seen earlier, actually approved by God. As all things go in this manner along the straight Way of God under His own guidance, each shows its own characteristic feature, i.e., each goes on doing individually various acts which are peculiar to it. These acts are each a concrete manifestation of the particular Name which acts as the personal Lord of each being. In other words, everything, after having been put on the straight Way by the ontological activity of the Mercy , begins to show secondarily its own characteristic traits in accordance with the individual peculiarity (khu$u$iyah) of the Name of which it happens to be an embodiment. Everything except the Absolute is (what is described by the Goran as) an animal walking on the earth. It is called ‘animal because it is possessed of a spirit ( ruh ). 16 But there is nothing that ‘walks around’ by itself. Everything that ‘walks around’ does so only secondarily, following the movement of (its own Lord) who is the one who really walks along the straight Way. But the Way, on its part, cannot be a way unless there be people who walk upon it. 17 Thus the statement is fundamentally right that everything is primar- ily, i.e., qua being, neither good nor bad. However, since existence is a direct manifestation of the essential Mercy of the Absolute, everything in that sense must be said to be essentially ‘good’ ( tayyib ). Anything whatsoever is good in its existence. Only when man, from his subjective and relative point of view, begins to like and dislike things, does the distinction between good and bad come into being. For Ibn ‘Arabi, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are a sheer matter of relative viewpoints. He explains this in the following way : 18 Concerning the ‘badness’ of garlic, the Prophet once observed: ‘It is a plant whose scent I dislike’ . He did not say, ‘I dislike garlic , because the thing itself is not to be disliked; what is liable to be disliked is only what appears from the thing. Thus displeasure arises either because of a habit, namely, because a thing does not suit one’s nature or purpose, or because of some regulation in the Law, or because of the thing falling short of the desired perfection. There can be no other cause than those which I have just enumerated. And as the things of the world are divided into categories: good (i.e., agreeable) and bad (i.e., disagreeable), the Prophet (Muhammad) was made to be of such a nature that he liked the good and disliked the bad. The Prophet also says in describing the angels that they are annoyed by the offensive odors, (which the human beings exhale) because of the natural putrefaction peculiar to the elemental constitution of 125 Ontological Mercy man. Man has been ‘created of clay of black mud wrought into shape’ (XV, 26), so he emits a repulsive odor. The angels dislike it by nature. The dung-beetle finds repulsive the scent of rose, which, in reality, is a sweet fragrance. For the dung-beetle, rose does not emit a sweet smell. Likewise, a man who is like a dung-beetle in his nature and inner constitution, finds truth repulsive and is pleased with falsehood. To this refer God’s words: ‘And those who believe in falsehood and disbelieve in God’ (XXIX, 52). And God describes them as people at a loss when He says: ‘they it is who are the losers’ (ibid.), meaning thereby that these are the people who lose themselves. For they do not discern good from bad, and, therefore, totally lack discernment. As to the Apostle of God (Muhammad), love was inspired into his heart for the good concerning everything. And, properly speaking, everything without exception is (essentially) good. However, is it at all imaginable that there be in the world (a man of) such an inner constitution that he would find in everything only the good and nothing bad? I should say, ‘No, that is impossible.’ Because we find the (opposition between good and bad) even in the very Ground from which the world arises, I mean, the Absolute. We know that the Absolute (as God) likes and dislikes. And the bad is nothing other than what one dislikes, while the good is nothing other than what one likes. And the world has been created in the image of the Absolute (i.e., having likes and dislikes), and man has been created in the image of these two (i.e., the Absolute and the world). Thus it is natural that no man should be (of such a) constitution that he would perceive exclusively one aspect (i.e., either the good or bad aspect) of everything. But there does not exist a (man of such a) constitution that he discerns a good element in anything bad, being well aware that what is bad is bad simply because of (the subjective impression caused by) the taste, and that it is (essentially) good if considered apart from the (subjective impression caused by the) taste. In the case of such a man, the perception of the good may be so overwhelming as to make him forget completely the perception of the bad. This is quite possible. But it is impossible to make the bad disappear completely from the world, i.e., from the realm of Being. The Mercy of God covers both good and bad. Anything bad consid- ers itself good, and what is good (for others) looks bad to it. There is nothing good in the world but that it turns into something bad from a certain point of view and for a certain constitution, and likewise, conversely. Viewed from such a height, even the good and bad in the religious sense, i.e., ‘obedience’ ( (a‘ah ) and ‘disobedience’ (ma‘$iyah), turn out ultimately to be two aspects of one and the same thing. Ibn ‘Arabi explains this by the symbolic meaning contained in the story of Moses throwing down his staff in the presence of Pharaoh . 19 ‘Then he threw down his staff (XXVI, 32). The staff (‘ asd ) symbol- izes something (i.e., the spirit or nature of Pharaoh) with which / 126 127 Sufism and Taoism Pharaoh disobeyed (‘asa) Moses in his haughtiness and refused to respond to the call of Moses. ‘And, lo, it turned into a serpent manifest’ (ibid.), that is, the staff was changed into an apparent snake (hayyah). Thus (the Qoranic verse here quoted means that) the disobedience, which was a bad thing, transformed itself into obedi- ence, which was a good thing. In competing with the magicians of the Egyptian court in the pres- ence of Pharaoh, Moses throws down on the floor the staff in his hand. The staff - in Arabic, ‘asa - is immediately associated in the mind of Ibn ‘Arabi with the verb ‘asa (meaning ‘to rebel’ ‘to dis- obey’) by phonetic association, and the staff becomes a symbol of ‘disobedience’. The staff becomes the symbol of the fact that Pharaoh disobeyed Moses, and did not respond to the latter’s call. The staff, thrown down, changes at once into a serpent. The Arabic word for ‘serpent’ or ‘snake’ , hayyah , arouses in Ibn ‘ Arabi’s mind, again by phonetic association, the word hayah, i.e., ‘life’. ‘Life’ in this particular context, is the spiritual life resulting from man’s getting into immediate touch with the depth structure of Reality. And, for Ibn ‘Arabi, it means ‘obedience’ to God. Thus the feat enacted by Moses depicts symbolically the naturally disobedient soul of Pharaoh being transformed into an obedient, docile soul. Not that there are two different souls: one obedient, another disobedient. As al-Qashanl remarks , 20 soul itself is ‘one and single reality’, except that it becomes good or bad according to contexts. One and the same reality shows two different aspects, and appears in two different modes. The staff of Moses per se remains the same, but it appears some- times as a staff, sometimes as a serpent according to particular situations, i.e., according to the point of view from which one looks at it. Likewise, whatever Pharaoh may do, the act itself is neither good nor bad. The only thing that changes are its properties. The same act of Pharaoh becomes sometimes obedience, sometimes disobedience. All this happens in accordance with God’s words: ‘God will change their evil deeds into good deeds’ (XXV, 70), that is to say, in so far as concerns their qualifications (and not the essences themselves of their deeds). Thus, in this case, different qualifications appeared as distinctive realities within one single substance. That is to say, one single substance appeared as a staff and as a snake or, (as the Qoran says) ‘a serpent manifest.’ As a snake, it swallowed up all the other snakes, while as a staff, it swallowed up all the staffs. 21 Ibn ‘Arabi develops the same thought from a properly theological point of view, as the problem of Divine Will ( mashVah ). All events that occur in this world, all actions that are done, are, Ontological Mercy without even a single exception, due to Divine Will. In this sense, there can be no distinction between good and bad, or right and wrong. Every phenomenon, as it actually is, is a direct effect of the Will of God. Every event occurs as it actually does because it is so willed by God. This standpoint is totally different from that of the Sacred Law which approves of this and disapproves of that. When a ‘bad’ man does something ‘evil’ , his act obviously goes against the Sacred Law, but, according to Ibn ‘Arabi it never goes against Divine Will. For it is absolutely impossible that something should occur against the Will of God. Here is what Ibn ‘Arabi, says about this problem : 22 Every decree which is carried out now in the world (i.e., anything that actually occurs in the world as a concrete phenomenon) is a decree of God, even if it violates the particular kind of decree which has been established under the name of a Sacred Law. For in reality only when a decree is truly God’s decree, is it actually carried out. Everything that occurs in the world occurs solely in accordance with what is decreed by the Will of God, not in accordance with the decree of an established Sacred Law, although, to be sure, the very establishment of a Sacred Law is itself due to Divine Will. Besides, precisely because it is willed by God, establishment of the Sacred Law is actualized. However, Divine Will in this case concerns only the establishment of the Law; it does not concern the practice of what is enjoined by the Law. Thus the Will has a supreme authority. And this is why Abu Talib (al-Makki) regarded it as the ‘Throne of the Divine Essence’, because the Will demands for itself that the decrees should be carried out. Such being the case, nothing occurs in this world apart from the Will, nor is anything removed from the sphere of Being except by the Will. And whenever the Divine Command 23 is violated in this world by what is called ‘disobedience’ (or ‘sin’), it is the matter of the ‘ mediate’ Command, not the ‘creational’ Command. Nobody, whatever he may do, can ever act against God in so far as the Command of the Will (i.e., the creational Command) is concerned. Disobedience occurs only in regard to the ‘mediate’ Command. The Will of God concerns only takwin , i.e., ‘bringing into existence’ , or ‘creation’ . Within the sphere of human acts, for instance, the Will concerns the coming into existence of a certain act. The Will is not directly concerned with the question as to who happens to be the individual person through whom the act occurs. All acts occur necessarily through individual persons. Every individual, in this sense, is a ‘responsible’ (mukallaf) person, that is, a person who bears a number of moral responsibilities within the boundaries of the system of a Sacred Law. And every human act becomes ‘good’ or ‘bad’ through this very process of personal ‘mediation’. 128 Sufism and Taoism In reality the Command of the Will is directed exclusively toward the bringing into existence of an act itself; it is not a matter of concern to the Will ‘who’ actually manifests the act. So it is absolutely impossible that the act should not occur. But in regard to the particular locus (in which it actually occurs), the (same) act is called sometimes ‘dis- obedience’ to the Divine Command (namely, when the particular person who does it happens to be prohibited to do it by the Sacred Law of his community), and sometimes ‘obedience’ (namely, when the person happens to belong to a community whose Sacred Law enjoins the act). And (the same act) is followed by blame or praise accordingly. The situation being just as we have shown, all creatures are destined ultimately to reach happiness in spite of the difference in kind that exists among them. God Himself expresses this fact when He states that His Mercy covers everything and that the Mercy forestalls Divine Wrath. ‘Forestall’ means to get ahead of something. Thus, as soon as a particular person who has already been given a (negative) judgment by that which (essentially) comes afterward (i.e., Wrath) overtakes that which goes ahead of it (i.e., Mercy), the latter pro- nounces a (new) judgment upon him, so that Mercy gets hold of him. Such a (miraculous) thing can actually occur because there is abso- lutely nothing that can ever forestall it (i.e., Mercy). This is what is meant by the dictum: ‘God’s Mercy forestalls His Wrath’, because of the decisive influence Mercy exercises upon whatever reaches it, for it stands at the ultimate goal (awaiting everything), and everything is running toward the goal. Everything necessarily attains to the ultimate goal. So everything necessarily obtains Mercy and leaves Wrath . 24 The preceding description of the Mercy clearly suggests that Ibn ‘ Arabi is considering the phenomenon of the universal Mercy from two different points of view at one time. The basic dictum: ‘the Mercy of God runs through all beings’ , 25 means ontologically that everything existent is existent by the Divine act of the bestowal of existence. The dictum also means that everything is under Divine Mercy, and that everything, therefore, is essentially blessed and is in felicity. Everything which is remembered by Mercy is happy and blessed. But there is nothing that has not been remembered by Mercy. And Mercy’s remembering things is exactly the same as its bringing them into existence. Thus everything existent is affected by Mercy. Do not, o my friend, lose sight of what I have told you under the influence of your vision of the people of misery and your belief in the torments of the Hereafter which are never to be slackened once men are put into them. Know before everything else that Mercy is primar- ily exercised in bringing everything into existence, so that even the torments of Hell themselves have been brought into existence by Mercy that has been directed toward them . 26 129 Ontological Mercy Then, in the passage which immediately follows what we have just quoted, Ibn ‘Arab! distinguishes two different kinds of effect pro- duced by the Mercy: (1) an ontological effect produced directly by its Essence, and (2) an effect produced in accordance with man’s asking. This distinction corresponds to what we have already discus- sed in terms of the distinction between the ‘Mercy of gratuitous gift’ and the ‘Mercy of obligation’. Only he considers it this time from a somewhat different perspective. Mercy in its effect has two different aspects. The first concerns an effect it produces in accordance with essential requirement of itself. It consists in that Mercy brings into existence every individual essence (‘ ayn , i.e., archetype). In doing this, it does not pay any attention to purpose or non-purpose, suitability or non-suitability, for the object of Mercy is the essence of every existent thing before the latter actually exists, that is, while it is still in the state of a permanent archetype. So (for instance,) Mercy discerns the Absolute as ‘created’ in the various religions, (even before its actual existence) as one of the permanent archetypes (i.e., as a potential existent), and spontane- ously shows Mercy upon it by bringing it into actual existence. This is the reason why I assert that the Absolute as ‘created’ in the various religions constitutes the first object of Mercy immediately after the Mercy has exercised Mercy upon itself by concerning itself with the existentiation of all existents. The second kind of effect is that induced by ‘asking’ (on the part of creatures). But (there are two kinds of ‘asking’). Those who are veiled (from the truth) ask the Absolute to show Mercy upon them, each representing the Absolute in (the particular form provided by) his own religion. The people of ‘unveiling’, on the contrary, ask the Mercy of God to reside in them. They ask for Mercy in the Name Allah, saying, "O Allah, show Mercy upon us!’ And (the Absolute, in response) shows Mercy upon them only by making Mercy reside in them. And Mercy (thus residing in these sages) produces its positive effect in them (i.e., they themselves become the possessors of the Mercy and begin to act as ‘merciful’ ones ). 27 We must try to grasp exactly what is meant by Ibn ‘Arabi in this important but obscure passage. The first of the two aspects of the effect of Mercy here described is not difficult to understand, because it concerns the ontological activity of Mercy which we have already discussed earlier in terms of the Mercy of the rahman type. It refers to one of the most fundamental theses of Ibn ‘Arabi, that beings obtain their existence by the Essence of the Absolute mani- festing itself in the particular form of each one of them in accord- ance with the capacity determined in eternity for each thing. Ibn ‘Arab! here leaves the plane of general theoretical considera- tions and narrows down his observation to a very particular case; 130 131 Sufism and Taoism namely, the problem of the relation between the believer and the object of his belief within the boundaries of the traditional religion of his community. The effect of Mercy, he argues, appears first in Mercy exercising an ontological (i.e., existentiating) Mercy upon its own self. Following this, Mercy bestows existence upon the Abso- lute as ‘created’ in various religions. It goes without saying that the believers themselves, in so far as they are ‘beings’, are originally permanent archetypes, and as such must necessarily be objects of the ontological Mercy. But the objects of belief of these believers, i.e., their gods, are also originally permanent archetypes which are included within the archetypes of the believers. So it is natural that they, too, should be affected by the ontological Mercy. In other words, the very same activity of the Mercy, which brings into existence the believers as so many objects of Mercy, brings into existence also the ‘created’ Absolute within the believers themselves. In contrast to this activity of the ontological Mercy, the second aspect concerns the effect of the Mercy which is produced in accor- dance with what an individual person asks from his Lord, each being motivated by a personal purpose. This aspect of Mercy varies in accordance with the nature of what is asked by individual ‘seekers’ . Ibn ‘Arab! divides the ‘seekers’ ( talibun ) of Mercy into two classes: (1) the ‘veiled’ people, and (2) the people of ‘unveiling’. Each one of the first class implores his Lord saying, ‘Have mercy upon me!’ ‘Give me this, or give me that!’ This, in Ibn ‘ Arabi’s view, is nothing but a silly act which arises from the ignorance of the truth. The Mercy of God does not produce any effect except on the basis of what has been eternally determined in the form of permanent archetypes. However much they may implore God, the permanent archetypes of himself and of others can never be altered. The people of the second class, on the contrary, ask for something extraordinary. First of all, they do not direct their supplication to any individual Lord. They address themselves to Allah as the point of comprehensive unification of all the Names. They cry out, ‘O Allah, have mercy upon us!’ This should not be taken literally as if they implored God to show mercy to them in the manner in which a ‘merciful’ man shows mercy to other human beings. What they are asking for is that God should make them subjectively conscious of the universal Mercy which is implied in the Name Allah. Their wish is to go beyond the passive state of being objects of the Mercy {marhum) and to put themselves in the position of the rahim , i.e., one who shows mercy, and thereby have the consciousness of all the Names being, so to speak, their own attributes. When this wish is really fulfilled, Mercy begins to show its positive effect within these people as their own personal attributes. And Ontological Mercy each one of them turns from the state of marhum to that of rahim. Mercy works in this way according to Ibn ‘Arabi because the real effect of a property begins to appear positively only when the non-material content ( ma‘na ) of it comes to reside in a particular locus. Thus it (i.e., the non-material essence of Mercy residing in a particu- lar locus) functions as the rahim in the real sense of the word. God shows Mercy to His servants about whom He is concerned only through Mercy, and when this Mercy becomes established in them (as their subjective state), they experience by ‘immediate tasting’ the positive effect of Mercy as their own property. For he whom Mercy remembers (in this sense) is himself a subject of Mercy. His state then (will be more properly expressed by) a name descriptive of an agent (rather than a name descriptive of the passive state, marhum), that is, the ‘merciful’ or rahim. 2 * Such a man, Ibn ‘Arab! says, is conscious within himself of Mercy being active as his own subjective state. He is no longer an ‘object’ of Mercy, one to whom Mercy is shown; he is rather a ‘subject’ of Mercy, one who exercises it toward other beings. He is now a man worthy to be called ‘merciful’. The grave consequence of this per- sonal transformation through the appropriation of Mercy will be studied later when we deal with the problem of the Perfect Man. In what precedes, we have been following Ibn ‘Arab! as he develops his thought on the Divine Name ‘Merciful’ ( rahman ), and we have tried to clarify the structure of Mercy (rahmah) which is the concep- tual core of this Name. The next problem to consider is: How does Mercy issue forth from the Absolute? Ibn ‘Arab! explains his view on this problem using a very bold and colorful image of ‘breathing out’. It is a matter of common experience that, when we hold our breath for some time, the air compressed in the chest makes us feel unbearable pain. And when the utmost limit is reached, and we cannot hold it any longer, the air that has been held inside bursts out all at once. It is a natural phenomenon that the breath compressed in the breast seeks forcibly for an outlet, and finally explodes and gushes forth with a violent outburst. Just as air bursts forth from the chest of man, the compressed existence within the depths of the Absolute, taking the form of Mercy, gushes forth from the Absolute. This he calls the ‘breath of the Merciful’ ( al-nafas al-rahmaniy ). 29 The state preceding the bursting forth of the breath of Mercy is described by Ibn ‘Arab! by an equally expressive word karb. The word is derived from a root meaning ‘to overload’ or ‘to fill up’ , and is used to designate the state in which the stomach, for instance, is 132 133 Sufism and Taoism surfeited. It is a state of extreme tension, just short of explosion, caused by an excessive amount of things accumulated inside. Because of this surfeit (i.e., in order to relieve itself from the excess of inner tension) the Absolute breathes out. The breath is attributed to the Merciful (and called the ‘breath of the Merciful’) because the (Absolute under the Name of) Merciful shows Mercy by means of this breath toward the Divine Relations (i.e., the Names) and responds to their demand that the forms of the world be brought into existence . 30 The Mercy, as we have seen above, means bestowal of existence. So the ‘breathing out’ of the breath of the Merciful is a symbolic expression for the manifestation of Being, or the Divine act of bringing into existence the things of the world. In the imagery peculiar to Ibn ‘Arab!, this phenomenon may also be described as the Divine Names bursting out into the real world of existence. The Divine Names, in this imagery, are originally in the state of intense compression within the Absolute. And at the extreme limit of interior compression, the Names ‘burst out’ from the bosom of the Absolute. Ibn ‘Arab! depicts in this vividly pictorial way the ontological process by which the Divine Names become actualized in the forms of the world. This is the birth of the world as the whole of outwardly existent beings. The process itself is explained in more plain terms by Bali Efendi in the following manner . 31 The Names, previous to their existence in the outer world, exist hidden in the Essence of the Absolute, all of them seeking an outlet toward the world of external existence. The state is comparable to the case in which a man holds his breath within himself. The breath, held within, seeks an outlet toward the outside, and this causes in the man a painful sensation of extreme compression. Only when he breathes out does this compression cease . . . Just as the man is tormented by the compression if he does not breathe out, so the Absolute would feel the pain of compression if it did not bring into existence the world in response to the demand of the Names. To this Bali Efendi adds the remark that this phenomenon of Divine ‘breathing’ ( tanaffus ) is the same as God’s uttering the word ‘Be!’ (kun) to the world. ‘He breathed out’ means ‘He sent out what was in His Interior to the Exterior by means of the word Be. Thus He Himself, after having been in the Interior, has come to exist in the Exterior 5 . What is important to observe is that, in Ibn ‘ArabFs world-view, this ‘breathing out’ of Mercy is not something that took place, once for all, sometime in the past. On the contrary, the process of the ‘compressed breath’, i.e., the Names contained in the Absolute, bursting out in virtue of its own pressure toward the outside, is going Ontological Mercy on continuously without intermission. And it is this continuous process that maintains the present world in subsistence. To use the Aristotelian terminology, things are constantly turning from the state of potentiality to that of actuality. It is a constant and everlast- ing process of a universal overflow of the Being of the Absolute into Being of the creatures. Thus the real and absolute Being ( al-wujud al-haqiqiy) goes on transforming itself without a moment’s rest into the relative Being {al-wujud al-idafiy). And this ontological trans- formation, which Ibn ‘Arab! sometimes calls ‘emanation’ ( fayd ), is, in his view, a natural and necessary movement of Being caused by the inner pressure of the ontological potentiality kept within the Absolute. Without this constant transformation, i.e., ‘breathing out’, the Being would be compressed within beyond its extreme limit, and the Essence of the Absolute would be in structurally the same situation as when we suffer an unbearable pain by holding our breath. The phenomenon of the ‘breath of the Merciful’ has been inter- preted in the preceding pages in terms of the Divine Names. It may also be understood in terms of the Lordship ( rububiyah ), for, as we have seen, ‘Lord’ is a particularized form of the Absolute on the level of the Divine Names. The Absolute in its absoluteness is completely ‘independent’; it does not need anything, it does not seek anything outside itself. But the Absolute qua Lord needs objects of its Lordship; it does not subsist without marbub. But marbub (‘one who is lorded over’) is nothing other than the world in existence. Thus the Lord must bring into existence the things of the world. The same thing can be expressed in religious terms by saying that to the Absolute qua Lord essentially belongs solicitude for his servants. In the plane of Being where it is split into various relations opposed to each other , 32 God describes Himself in a (famous) Tradition as having ‘solicitude {shafaqah) for His servants’. The very first thing which (the Absolute) breathed out by its ‘breath of Mercy’ was Lordship. And this was actualized by the bringing into existence of the world, because the world was what was essentially required by Lordship and all (the other) Divine Names. From this point of view it is evident that Mercy covers everything . 33 Thus the ‘breath of the Merciful’ is the principle of Being or the ground of Being extending over both the world of material things and the world of spiritual beings. In this ontological capacity, the ‘breath of the Merciful’ is regarded by Ibn ‘Arab! as Nature {( abVah ). Viewed from this perspective, the ‘breath’ is a Substance (jawhar , in the Aristotelian sense of Prime Matter) in which all the forms of 134 135 Sufism and Taoism Being, both material and spiritual, are manifested. In this sense, Nature necessarily precedes any form which becomes manifest in it. Nature precedes all that are born out of it with definite forms. But in reality, Nature is no other than the ‘breath of the Merciful’. All the forms of the world become manifest in the latter, ranging from the highest forms to the lowest, in virtue of the spreading of the ‘breath’ through the material substance in the world of physical bodies in particular. The ‘breath’ spreads also through the Being of the spirits of a luminous nature and the attributes. But that is another kind of the spreading of the ‘breath ’. 34 According to this passage, the Divine ‘breath’ pervades the material substance, i.e., the Prime Matter ( hayiila ), which is receptive of the physical forms, and it brings into existence the physical bodies in the material world. The ‘breath’ pervades, at the same time, the spiritual substances bringing into existence the spirits of the Light- nature, i.e., immaterial things by spreading through the spiritual Nature which is another kind of Prime Matter. It also spreads through the accidental Nature and thereby brings into being various accidents which exist as inherent attributes of substances. To consider bestowal of existence by the Absolute as the ‘breath’ of the Merciful is, for Ibn ‘Arab!, by no means a mere metaphor which has come to his mind haphazardly. It is an essential metaphor. The ontological phenomenon, in his view, coincides in every im- portant respect with the physiological phenomenon of breathing. All the basic attributes which characterize the human act of breath- ing apply analogically to the ‘breath’ of God. We shall in what follows consider this point, basing ourselves on Ibn ‘Arabfs own description . 35 The Absolute attributes to itself the ‘breath of the Merciful’. Now whenever anything is qualified by an attribute, all the qualities that naturally follow that attribute must necessarily be attributed to that thing. (In our particular case), you know well what qualities naturally follow the'attribute of breathing in an animal that breathes . 36 This is why the Divine breath receives the forms of the world. Thus the Divine breath acts as the Prime Matter in relation to the forms of the world. And (the Divine breath in this capacity) is precisely what we call Nature. Accordingly, the four elements, everything that has been generated from the elements, the higher spiritual beings, and the spirits of seven Heavens, all these are found to be ‘forms’ of Nature . 37 Thus the four elements are forms (i.e., specific determinations) of Nature. And those beings above the elements, namely, the ‘higher spirits’ that are (ranged in a hierarchical order down to a level just) above the seven Heavens - they are forms of Nature. And those Ontological Mercy being born of the elements are also forms of Nature. (By ‘those that are born of the elements’) I mean the spheres of the seven Heavens and the spirits (governing their movements) ; they are of an elemental nature, because they are made of, and born of, the vapor 38 of the elements. Each one of the angels born in any of the seven Heavens is likewise of the elements. Thus all the heavenly angels are elemental. Those (angels) above the heavenly spheres (are not elemental, but they nonetheless) belong to Nature. And this is the reason why God described the angels as mutually rivaling. This may be explained by the fact that Nature itself tends by essence to be split into opposed poles. And the essential opposition among the Divine Names, i.e., the Divine Relations, has been caused only by the ‘breath of the Merciful’ . Do you not see how even in the Divine Essence which is in itself completely free from such a property (i.e., polarization) there appears (at the level of the Divine Names) the definite property of essential independence ? 39 Thus the world has been produced in the image of its creator which is (not the Essence but) the ‘breath of the Merciful ’ 40 . . . He 41 who wants to know (the nature of) the Divine breath must try to know the world, for (as the Prophet said) ‘he who knows himself knows his Lord’ who manifests Himself in him. That is to say, the world makes its appearance in the ‘breath of the Merciful’ by which God breathes out from the Divine Names the inner com- pression that has been caused by the non-manifestation of their effects. (God relieves the Names of the pain of their inner compres- sion by letting them manifest their effects.) At the same time, God thereby shows Mercy toward Himself, that is, by what He brings into existence in the ‘breath ’. 42 Thus the first effect shown by the Divine ‘breath’ appears in God Himself (by the manifestation of His Names). Then, following that stage, the process goes on stage by stage by the ‘breathing out’ of all the Divine Names until it reaches the last stage of Being (i.e., the world). Ibn ‘Arabi concludes with a short poem, the first verse of which runs: ‘Thus everything is contained in the bosom of the Breath, just as the bright light of day is in the very darkness before dawn’. The whole world is still completely shrouded in darkness. But it is not the darkness of midnight, for the light of dawn is already potentially there, ready to appear at any moment. Commenting on this verse, Affifi writes : 43 The ‘breath’ symbolizes the material substance ( al - jawhar al-hayularii) in which the forms of all beings become mani- fested. In itself, it is utter darkness, i.e., utterly unknowable, but seen from the viewpoint of manifestation, all the forms of the universe are faintly observable in the midst of the darkness. Mercy ( rahmah ) is unquestionably one of the key-concepts which characterize in a definite way the structure of Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s thought. Probably a little less important than Mercy, but very close to it in 136 Sufism and Taoism content is another key-concept, Love (mahabbah). The Divine Love is, after all, the same thing as Mercy, but looked at from a somewhat different angle. It is, theologically speaking, the funda- mental motive of the creation of the world by God, and in terms of the ontology peculiar to Ibn ‘Arab!, it is the driving force of the self-manifestation of the Absolute. Before we close the present chapter, we shall analyze this concept and discuss the place it occupies in the philosophical system of Ibn ‘Arabl. There is a particular reason why the concept of Love plays such an important role in Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought. Its importance is due to the existence of an explicit statement put in the mouth of God Himself in a famous Tradition which may be considered the starting-point, the basis, and the very gist of his philosophy: ‘I was a hidden treasure, and I desired {ahbabtu, ‘loved’) to be known. Accordingly I created the creatures and thereby made Myself known to them. Any they did come to know Me’. As this Tradition tells us with utmost clarity, Love ( hubb ) is the principle which moved the Absolute toward the creation of the world. It is, in this sense, the ‘secret of creation’ (sirr al-khalq ) or ‘cause of creation’ {‘illah al-khalq). If we are to express the thought in terms more characteristic of Ibn ‘ Arabi, we might say that Love is something because of which the Absolute steps out of the state of abysmal Darkness and begins to manifest itself in the forms of all beings. For Ibn ‘Arabi, speaking more generally, ‘love’ is the principle of all movement ( harakah ). All movements that actually occur in the world (e.g., when a man does something) are due to the driving force of ‘love’. In explaining events that take place in and around ourselves, our attention tends to be drawn toward various causes 44 other than ‘love’. We usually say, for example, that the ‘cause’ of such-and-such an action we do is such-and-such a thing (e.g., fear, anger, joy, etc.). In doing so, we are overlooking the real cause, i.e., the most basic cause of all causes. In the eyes of those who know the truth, all phenomena of movement, on all levels of Being, are caused by ‘love’. If it were not for the activity of ‘love’, everything would remain in the state of eternal rest, i.e., non-movement. And non-movement ( sukun ) means nothing other than non-existence (‘ adam ). 45 From this point of view, the fact that the world has come out of the state of non-existence into the state of existence is a grand-scale ontological ‘ movement’ , and this movement has been caused by the Divine Love. Ibn ‘Arabi expresses this conception in the following way : 46 The most basic and primary movement was the movement of the world from the state of non-existence (i.e., the archetypal state), in Ontological Mercy 137 which it had been reposing, into the state of existence. This is the reason why it is said that the reality of existence is a movement from the state of repose. And the movement which is coming into exist- ence of the world is a movement of Love. This is clearly indicated by the Apostle when he says (conveying God’s own words): ‘I was a hidden treasure, and I loved to be known’. If it were not for this love, the world would never have appeared in this concrete existence. In this sense, the movement of the world toward existence was a move- ment of Love which brought it into existence. . . . And the world, on its part, loves to witness itself in the existence as it used to witness itself in the state of archetypal repose. Thus, from whichever side one considers it, the movement of the world from the state of the archetypal non-existence toward concrete existence was a movement of Love, both from the side of the Absolute and from the side of the world itself. And all this is ultimately due to the Love of the Absolute for being ‘perfect’ in both its Knowledge and Existence. If the Absolute remained in isolation in its own original absoluteness, neither its Knowledge nor its Existence would have attained perfection. Ibn ‘Arabi goes on to say : 47 Perfection ( kamal ) is loved for its own sake. But as for God’s Know- ledge of Himself, in so far as He was completely independent of the whole world (i.e., in so far as He remained in isolation before the creation of the world), it was there (from the beginning in absolute perfection). The degree of the Knowledge was to be made perfect only by a temporal Knowledge (‘ilm hadithy* which would concern the concrete individual objects of the world once these would be brought into existence. Thus the form of Perfection is realized (in God) by the two kinds of Knowledge, temporal and eternal, and the degree of His Knowledge is brought to perfection through these two aspects. Correspondingly, the degrees of Being are also perfected (by the creation of the world). For Being is of two kinds: eternal ( a parte ante) and non-eternal, that is temporal. The ‘eternal’ ( azaliy ) Exis- tence is the Existence of the Absolute for itself, while the ‘non- eternal’ is the Existence of the Absolute in the forms of the archetypal world. This latter kind of Being is called ‘becoming’ (huduth) because the Absolute in it (splits itself into multiplicity and) appears to one another. The Absolute in this way appears to itself in the forms of the world. And this brings Being to perfection. And so Ibn ‘Arab! comes to a conclusion in which he connects the concept of Love with that of the breath of Mercy. Thus you should understand that the movement of the world is born of Love for perfection. Do you not see how the Absolute breathed out and relieved the Divine Names of (the pain of compression) which they had been feeling because of the non-appearance of their effects, in an entity 138 Sufism and Taoism called the world? This happened because the Absolute loves relaxa- tion ( rahah ). And relaxation was only to be obtained through the existence of the forms high and low. Thus it is patent that movement is caused by Love, and that there can be no movement in the world but that it is motivated by Love. Notes 1. Fus., p. 222/177. 2. p. 222. 3. Fus., p. 222/177. 4. p. 222. 5. Fu<>., PP- 222-223/177. 6. p. 223. 7. Fus., p. 223/177. 8. Fus., P- 224/177 9. Fus -, P- 227/180. 10. p. 227 11. Accordingly, rahmah al-imtinan is sometimes called al-rahmah al-rahmaniyah, and rahmah al-wujiib is called al-rahmah al-rahimiyah. 12. Fus., p. 191/151. 13. Fus., p. 192/152. 14. Fus ., p- 193/153. 15. Fus., PP- 123-124/106. 16. Why does Ibn ‘Arabi specifically emphasize that everything other than the Absolute is ‘possessed of a spirit’ ( dhii ruh)2 Bali Efendi thinks (p. 124) that it is because, according to the Qoran, everything is ‘praising God’, and the act of ‘prais- ing comes only from a spirit. We may, I think, also understand the phrase ‘possessed of a spirit in the sense of ‘possessed of life’. As we shall see in the next chapter, everything, in Ibn ‘ArabFs world-view, is ‘alive’. 17. Fus., p. 124/106. 18. Fus., pp. 276-278/221. 19. Fus., pp. 261-262/210. 139 Ontological Mercy 20. p. 261. 21. Fus., P- 262/210. 22. Fus., pp- 206-207/165. 23. ‘Command’ ( amr ) is different from the Will ( mashi’ah ). The latter, as we have seen, is absolute, and its decree irrevocable. Disobedience is out of question here. The Command is of two kinds: (1) mediate (bi-al-wasi(ah) and (2) creational (takwiniy). The second concerns the coming into existence of anything, and is identical with the Will. The first, however, is identical with the Sacred Law ( shar ' ), and may be disobeyed. 24. Fus., PP- 207-208/165-166. 25. Rahmah Allah fi al-akwan sariyah, Fus., P- 225/177. 26. Fus., P- 225/178. 27. ibid. 28. Fus., p. 226/178. 29. Fus., P- 273/219. 30. Fus., p- 133/112. 31. p. 133. 32. The Divine Names, as we already know, are the relations which the Absolute bears toward the things of the world. And on this level, there occur in the Absolute oppositions in accordance with the Names, such as ‘Inward’ - ‘Outward’, ‘First’ - ‘Last’, etc. 33. Fus., p- 144/119. 34. Fus., P- 273/219. In the case of ‘spirits’ or non-material beings, the ‘breath’ spreads through ‘spiritual matter’ ( hayiil'a riihaniyah ), and in the case of ‘accidents’ through ‘accidental matter’. 35. Fus -, P- 182/143-144. 36. Man breathes, for example, and his breath ‘receives’ sounds and words, which are linguistic ‘forms' - al-Qashani, p. 182. 37. Fus., PP- 182-183/mrmf 38. ‘Vapor’ (dukhan), or ‘steam’, to be compared with the ch’i of the ancient Chinese. Of the ‘vapor’ of the elements, that which is ‘subtle’ becomes the governing spirits of the seven Heavens, whereas that which is ‘coarse’ becomes the seven Heavens themselves. 39. The Essence itself has nothing to do with the appearance of the world. But as soon as it comes down to the level of Names it becomes ‘independent’ . And as soon as it becomes ‘independent’ it becomes opposed to ‘dependent’, thus causing a primary polarization within the Absolute itself. 140 Sufism and Taoism 40. The world, thus produced, necessarily reflects the nature of its immediate creator, the ‘breath of the Merciful’. And since the ‘breath of the Merciful’ requires polarizations because of the self-polarizing nature of the Divine Names, the world also is split into oppositions. 41. Fus„ p. 185/145. 42. ‘God shows Mercy toward Himself’ because the Divine Names are ultimately no other than God Himself. 43. Fus., Com., pp. 197-198. 44. i.e., the so-called ‘proximate causes’ ( asbab qaribah). 45. Fus„ pp. 255-256/203. 46. Fus„ p. 256/203. 47. Fu$., p. 256/204. 48. Note that Ibn ‘ Arabi recognizes in God the temporally produced Knowledge in addition to the ‘eternal’ ( qadim ) Knowledge. He thereby stands definitely against the majority of the theologians. X The Water of Life In the preceding chapter we have seen that the Mercy of God pervades all beings on all levels of Being. We know also that this is another way of saying that the Being of the Absolute pervades all beings which are at all entitled to be described as ‘existent’ , and that the Form of the Absolute runs through the entire world of Being. This thesis, in this general form, is the same as that which was discussed in Chapter IV under the key-word tashbih. In the present chapter the same general problem will be reconsidered from a particular point of view. The key-word to be considered as the starting-point of discussion in this particular context is latif, meaning roughly ‘subtle’, ‘thin’ and ‘delicate’. Lap/stands opposite to kathif. This latter word connotes the quality of things ‘thick’, ‘dense’ and ‘coarse’ , that is, those things that are characterized by dense materiality. As the semantic oppo- site of this, /aft/means the quality of things, the materiality of which is in the extreme degree of rarefaction, and which, therefore, are capable of permeating the substances of other things, diffusing themselves in the latter and freely mixing with them. The fact that this word, lafif, is one of the Divine Names is, for Ibn ‘Arabi, extremely significant. The Name lafif or ‘Subtle’ with this particular connotation rep- resents the Absolute as a Substance ( jawhar ) which, immaterial and invisible, permeates and pervades the entire world of Being just as a color permeates substances. This Substance which is infinitely vari- able runs through everything and constitutes its reality. All indi- vidual things are called by their own particular names and are thereby distinguished one from the other as something ‘different’, but these differences are merely accidental. Seen from the view- point of the invisible Substance running through the whole world, all things are ultimately one and the same. Let us listen to Ibn ‘ Arabi himself as he explains this point in his peculiar way . 1 (God) says of Himself: ‘Verily God is la(if (XXXI, 16). It is indeed the effect of His lafafah (i.e.. His being la(if, in the above explained 142 Sufism and Taoism The Water of Life 143 sense of non-material flexibility) and His lu(f(i.e., His being la(if in the sense of graciousness ) 2 that He is (immanent) in every particular thing which is determined as such-and-such by a particular name, as the inner reality of that particular thing. He is immanent in every particular thing in such a way that He is, in each case, referred to by the conventional and customary meaning of the particular name of that thing. Thus, we say (usually), ‘This is Heaven’ , ‘This is the earth’ , ‘This is a tree’, ‘This is an animal’, ‘This is a king’, ‘This is food’ etc. But the essence itself that exists in every one of these things is simply one. The Ash’arites uphold a similar view when they assert that the world in its entirety is homogeneous in its Substance, because the world as a whole is one single Substance. This corresponds exactly to my thesis that the essence is one. The Ash‘arites go on to say that the world (in spite of the homogeneousness) differentiates itself (into different things) through accidents. This also is identical with my thesis that (the one single Essence) differentiates itself and becomes multiple through forms and relations so that (the things) become distinguish- able from one another. Thus in both of these theories, this is not that (i.e., the particular things are different from one another) in regard to the ‘form’ ($urah), or ‘accident’ (‘ arad ), or ‘natural disposition’ (mizaj) - you may call this (differentiating principle) by whatever name you like - but, on the other hand, this is the same as that in regard to their ‘substance’. And this is why the ‘substance’ itself (as ‘ matter’) must be explicitly mentioned in the definition of every thing (having a particular) ‘form’ or ‘natural disposition’. However (there is also a fundamental difference between my posi- tion and the Ash‘arites; namely), I assert that (the Substance here in question) is nothing other than the ‘Absolute’, while the (Ash'arite) theologians imagine that what is called Substance, although it is a ‘reality’ , is not the same absolute Reality as understood by the people who (uphold the theory of) ‘unveiling’ and ‘self-manifestation’. But this (i.e., what I teach) is the profound meaning of God’s being la(if. It is remarkable that in this passage Ibn ‘ArabI recognizes to a certain degree an identity between his thesis and the Ash‘arite ontology. The theologians of this school take the position that the world is essentially one single Substance and all the differences between individual things are due to accidental attributes. How- ever, Ibn ‘Arabi does not forget to emphasize the existence of a basic difference between the two schools. As al-Qashanl says, ‘the Ash‘arites, although they assert the unity of the Substance in all the forms of the world, assert also the essential duality, namely, that the essence of the Substance pervading the world is different from the Absolute’. 3 The Qoran, immediately after stating that ‘God is latif, declares that ‘ God is khabir ’ , that is, God has information about everything. This, too, has a very special significance for Ibn ‘Arabi. If the latif is a reference to the relation of the Absolute with the external things existing in the world, the khabir refers to the relation of the Abso- lute with the ‘interior’ i.e., consciousness, of all those beings that possess consciousness. The Absolute, in other words, not only pervades all things that exist outwardly in the world, but runs through the interior of all beings possessed of consciousness and constitutes the inner reality of the activity of consciousness. The Absolute is Omniscient, and His Knowledge is eternal. So, in this sense, all without exception are known to the Absolute from eternity. But in addition to this kind of eternal Knowledge, the Absolute also penetrates into the interior of each one of the beings endowed with consciousness and knows things through the organs of cognition peculiar to those things. If one looks at the matter from the opposite, i.e., human, side, one will find that all those things that man thinks he sees or hears are in reality things that the Absolute residing in his interior sees and hears through his sense organs. This latter kind of Knowledge is called by Ibn ‘ Arabi - in contrast to the ‘absolute’ Knowledge (77m mutlaq) - the ‘experiential’ Knowledge (77m dhawqiy or 7/m ‘an ikhtibar ). According to him, the Qoranic verse: ‘Surely We will try you in order to know’ (XL VII, 31) refers precisely to this kind of Knowledge. Otherwise, it would be completely meaningless for God to say ‘in order to know’, because God knows (by the ‘absolute’ Knowledge) every- thing from the beginning. The verse is meaningful because it con- cerns the ‘experiential’ Knowledge. It is characteristic of the ‘experiential’ Knowledge, which is evi- dently a temporal phenomenon (hadith), that it necessarily requires an organ of cognition through which it is obtained. Since, however, God has no organs, the cognition is operated through the organs of individual beings, 4 although, as we know by the principle of latafah, the things that outwardly appear as human organs are nothing other than various phenomenal forms assumed by the Absolute itself. God (in the Qoran) qualifies Himself by the word khabir, that is, one who knows something by personal experience. This applies to the Qoranic verse: ‘Surely We will try these people in order to know’. The words ‘to know’ here refer to the kind of Knowledge obtainable through personal experience. Thus God, despite the fact that He (eternally) knows everything as it really is, describes Himself as ‘obtaining Knowledge’ (in an non-absolute way) . . . And he distin- guishes thereby between ‘experiential’ Knowledge and ‘absolute’ Knowledge. The ‘experiential’ Knowledge is conditioned by the faculties of cogni- tion. God affirms this by saying of Himself that He is the very cognitive faculties of man. Thus He says (in a Tradition), ‘I am his 144 Sufism and Taoism hearing’, hearing being one of the faculties of man, ‘and his sight’, sight, being another of man’s faculties, ‘and his tongue’, tongue being a bodily member of man, ‘and his feet and hands’. And we see, He mentions in this explanation not only faculties of man, but even goes to the length of mentioning bodily members (and identifies Himself with them). And since man is after all no other than these members and faculties, the inner reality itself of that which is called man is (according to this Tradition) the Absolute. This, however, is not to say that the ‘servant’ (i.e., man) is the ‘master’ (i.e., God ). 5 All this is due to the fact that the relations in themselves are essen- tially distinguishable from each other, but the (Essence) to which they are attributed is not distinguishable (i.e., divisible). There is only one single Essence in all the relations. And that single Essence is possessed of various different relations and attributes . 6 The Absolute, in this sense, pervades and runs through all. The Absolute is in all beings of the world, according to what is required by the reality (i.e., the eternal ‘preparedness’) of each thing. If it were not for this permeation of the Form of the Absolute through the things, the world would have no existence . 7 For, as al-Qashani says , 8 ‘The fundamental ground of the possible things is non- existence. And existence is the Form of God. So if He did not appear in His Form, which is existence qua existence, the whole world would remain in pure non-existence’. All beings in the state of ontological possibility absolutely require the permeation of Existence in order to leave the original state of non-existence and to come into the state of existence. This state of affairs is considered by Ibn ‘ Arabi analogous to the notion that any attribute or quality shown by a concrete particular thing cannot exist in actu except as an individualization of a Universal . 9 Inciden- tally, there is in Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought-pattern a conspicuous ten- dency toward Platonizing, although we surely cannot call him offhand a Platonist. The present case is an example illustrating this phase of his thought. The following remark by al-Qashani makes this point very explicit . 10 (Ibn ‘Arabi here) compares the essential dependence of the existence of the world on the ‘form’ (i.e., the essential reality) of the Existence of God to the dependence of particular properties on universal realities, like ‘life’ in itself and ‘knowledge’ in itself. The existence, for example, of ‘knowledge’ in a particular person, Zayd, is dependent on the universal‘knowledge’ per se. If it were not for the latter, there would be no ‘knower’ in the world, and the property of ‘being a knower’ would rightly be attributed to nobody. In exactly the same manner, every determinate individual existent is dependent on the Existence of the Absolute, Existence being the Absolute’s ‘Face’ or Form. Apart from the Existence of the Abso- lute, nothing would be existent, nor would existence be predicated of anything. The Water of Life 145 Since, in this way, nothing can be called an ‘existent’ ( mawjud ), except when it is pervaded by the Form of the Absolute, all the existents essentially need the Absolute. This need resides deep in the very core of every existent. It is not one of those ordinary cases in which something needs externally something else. This inner essential dependence is called by Ibn ‘Arabi iftiqar 11 (lit. ‘poverty’, i.e., ‘essential need’). But the Absolute, on its part, cannot be actualized on the level of the Names and Attributes without the world. The Absolute, in this sense, needs the world. And thus the relation of iftiqar is reciprocal; the iftiqar of the world to the Absolute is in its existence, and the iftiqar of the Absolute to the world concerns the ‘appearance’ or self- manifestation of the former. This is expressed by Ibn ‘Arab! in verse : 12 We (i.e., the world) give Him that by which He appears in us, while He gives us (the existence by which we come into outward appear- ance). Thus the whole matter (i.e., Being) is divided into two, namely, our (giving) Him (appearance) and His (giving us existence.) Ibn ‘Arabi describes this particular relation that obtains between the Absolute and the creaturely world by a bold and vividly evoca- tive image of Food ( ghidha ’) which he ascribes to Sahl al-Tustari. As al-Qashani says : 13 The Absolute is the ‘food’ of the creatures in regard to existence, because the creatures exist, subsist, and are kept alive by the Abso- lute just in the same way as food keeps the man existent and alive who eats it and gets nourishment out of it. . . . The Absolute, on its part, eats, and is nourished by, the properties of the phenomenal world and the forms of the creatures ... in the sense that by virtue of the latter alone do the Names, Attributes, Properties and Relations make their actual appearance in the Absolute. The Names and attributes would not have existence if there were no world, no creatures. The creatures ‘nourish’ the Absolute as its ‘food’ by making manifest all the perfections of the Names and Attributes. You are God’s food through (your) particular properties. But He is also your food through the existence (which He confers upon you). In this respect He fulfils exactly the same function (toward you) as you do (toward Him). Thus the Command comes from Him to you, but it also goes from you to Him . 14 Certainly, you are called mukallaf in the passive form (i.e., you are in this world a morally responsible person who is ‘charged’ with the responsibilities imposed upon you by the Sacred Law) and yet God has ‘charged’ you only with what you yourself asked Him, saying ‘charge me (with such-and-such)!’, through your own state (i.e., permanent archetype) and through what you really are . 15 146 Sufism and Taoism The thesis that the Absolute qua Existence is the food and nourish- ment of all the creatures is relatively easy to understand even for common-sense. But less easily acceptable is the reverse of this thesis; namely, that the creatures are the food of the Absolute. Nourishing things nourish those who assimilate them. As nourish- ment penetrates the body of the living being in such a way that finally there does not remain a single part that has not been pervaded by it, so does the food go into all the parts of one who has assimilated it. The Absolute, however, has no parts. So there is no other way than the ‘food’ penetrating all the ontological stations ( maqamat ) of God which are usually called the Names. And the Divine Essence becomes actually manifest by means of those stations (when the latter become penetrated by the ‘food ’). 16 Food cannot act as food, that is, cannot nourish the body unless it penetrates all the parts of the body and is completely assimilated by the bodily organism. So the condition is that the body has parts. But the Absolute has no part, if we understand the word ‘part’ in a material sense. However, in a spiritual sense, the Absolute does have ‘parts’. The spiritual ‘parts’ of the Absolute are the Names. This conception has a grave implication, for it affirms that the Absolute on the level of the Names is thoroughly penetrated by the creatures, and that only by this penetration do all the possibilities contained in the Absolute come into concrete existence. Thus we see that the tajalli or Divine self-manifestation is not at all a unilateral phenomenon of the Absolute permeating everything in the world and making itself manifest in the forms of the world. The tajalli involves, at the same time, the permeation of the Abso- lute by the things of the world. Since, however, it is absurd even to imagine the things of the world qua substances penetrating the Absolute in such a way that they be assimilated by the latter, we must necessarily understand the process as something purely non- substantial. And the same is true of the other side of the process, I mean, the penetration of the world by the Absolute and the self- manifestation of the Absolute in the things of the world. The interpenetration of the two which takes place in the process of tajalli is not something that occurs between the Absolute as an Entity and things as entities. It is a phenomenon of pure Act on both sides. This point, I think, is of paramount importance for a right understanding of Ibn ‘Arabi’s conception of tajalli, for, unless we understand it in this way, we fall into a most coarse kind of materialism. We shall bring this section to an end by quoting with running commentary a few verses in which Ibn ‘ ArabI describes this process of reciprocal penetration : 17 ‘Thus we are to Him, as we are to ourselves. This has been proved by our proofs’. (Thus we, the world, are ‘food’ for God because it is we 147 The Water of Life who sustain Him in concrete existence, as we are ‘food’ to ourselves, i.e., we sustain ourselves in existence by being ourselves). ‘ He has no Being except my Being. And we owe Him our existence as we subsist by ourself’. (I, the world, am the only thing by which He manifests Himself in the world of Being. We, the world, exist only in the capacity of a locus for His self-manifestation, but, on the other hand, we are independent beings existing by ourselves as determi- nate things). ‘Thus I have two faces, He and I. But He does not have / through (my) /’. (I, as a concrete individual being, am possessed of two faces opposed to each other. One of them is the Absolute qua my inmost essence, i.e., my He-ness. The other face is turned toward the world, and is my outer I-ness by which I am a creature different from the Absolute. Thus every creature obtains through the Absolute both He-ness and I-ness, while the Absolute does not obtain I-ness from the world, because the I-ness of any individual creature does not constitute by itself the I of the Absolute). ‘ But He finds in me a locus in which to manifest Himself, and we are to Him like a vessel’. (By manifesting Himself in my I-ness, He establishes His I-ness in Himself.) With these preliminary remarks, we turn now to the proper subject of the present chapter, the permeation of the entire world by Divine Life. As we have seen, ‘existence’ ( wujud ), in the world-view of Ibn ‘ArabI, is primarily and essentially the Absolute itself in its dynamic aspect, i.e., as Actus. ‘Existence’ here does not simply mean that things are just there. The concept of ‘existence’ as the Absolute qua Actus is given special emphasis by Ibn ‘ArabI when he identifies it with Life. To say that the Absolute pervades and permeates all beings is to say that Divine Life pervades and permeates the world of Being in its entirety. The whole universe is pulsating with an eternal cosmic Life. But this pulsation is not perceptible to the majority of men. For them, only a small portion of the world, is alive, i.e., only some of the beings are ‘animals’ or living beings. In the eyes of those who see the truth, on the contrary, everything in the world is an ‘animal’ (hay a wan). There is nothing in the world but living beings, except that this fact is concealed in the present world from the perception of some men, while it becomes apparent to all men without exception in the Hereafter. This because the Hereafter is the abode of Life . 18 Existence-Life pervades all and flows through all. The Existence- aspect of this fact is easy to see for everybody because everybody understands without any difficulty that all ‘things’ are existent. But the Life-aspect is not so easily perceivable. This is the reason why i 148 Sufism and Taoism the majority of people do not see that everything in the world is alive. To see this, the special experience of ‘unveiling’ ( kashf ) is necessary. The Absolute in its self-manifestation does not, as we have already observed, possess uniformity; on the contrary, the self- manifestation is infinitely variable and multiple according to the loci of manifestation. Thus, although it is true that Existence or Life pervades all, it does not pervade all uniformly and homogeneously. The modes of this pervasion vary from case to case according to the degree of purity ($afa’) and turbidity ( kudurah ). The Philosophers understand the differences thus produced in terms of the degree of the right proportion (i‘ tidal) in the mixture of the ‘elements’ (‘ anasir ). 19 In those cases, they maintain, in which the elemental mixture is actualized in a well-proportioned form, the result is the birth of animals. And when the mixture occurs in such a way that the right proportion of the elements is no longer maintained, we get plants. And if the mixture is further away from the right proportion, we get minerals or ‘inanimate’ things. From the viewpoint of Ibn ‘ Arab! such a theory is characteristic of those who are blind to the basic fact that Divine Life is manifested in the things of the world in various degrees of ‘purity’ and ‘turbidity’. Ordinary people will see the real fact only in the Hereafter when the ‘veil’ over their sight will be removed. But the people of ‘unveiling’ know already in the present world that everything is alive with the all-pervading Life of the Absolute. For Ibn ‘Arab!, the most appropriate symbol of Life is afforded by ‘water’ . Water is the ground of all natural elements, and it flows and penetrates into even the narrowest corners of the world. ‘The secret of Life has diffused into water’ . 20 And everything in existence has a watery element in its very constitution, because water is the most basic of all elements. Everything is alive because of the ‘water’ it contains. And the ‘watery’ element contained in all things in varying degrees corresponds to the He-ness of the Absolute which, as Actus , runs through all. It is significant that Ibn ‘Arab! mentions ‘water’ in this sense at the outset of the chapter which deals with the ‘wisdom of the Unseen’ symbolized by Job. Affifi points out quite appropriately in this connection that Job is, for Ibn ‘Arab!, a symbol of a man who strives to obtain ‘certainty’ (yaqin ) about the world of the Unseen. The excruciating pain which Job undergoes is, therefore, not a physical pain, but the spiritual suffering of a man who strives for, but cannot attain to, ‘certainty’. And when Job implores God to remove from him this pain, God commands him to wash himself in the running water beneath his feet. Here ‘water 5 symbolizes Life that runs The Water of Life 149 through all the existents, and ‘washing oneself in water’ means to immerse oneself in the ‘water of existence’ and to know thereby the reality of existence. 21 Thus the Water of Life is eternally flowing through all. Each single thing is in itself a unique existent, and yet it is immersed in the limitless ocean of Life together with all the other existents. In the first aspect, everything is unique and single, but in the second aspect, everything loses its identity in the midst of the ‘water’ that flows through all. Everything in the world has, in this way, two distinct aspects: (1) the aspect in which it is its own self, and (2) the aspect in which it is Divine Life. The first aspect, which is the creaturely aspect of each individual existent, is called by Ibn ‘Arab \ nasut or the ‘human (or personal) aspect’ and the second, which is the aspect of the Abso- lute in each individual existent, is called lahut or the ‘divine aspect’ . According to Ibn ‘Arab!, ‘life’ is of a spiritual nature. For it is of the very essential nature of ‘spirit’ that it vivifies everything which it touches. As Bali Efendi remarks, 22 ‘life’ is the primary attribute of ‘spirit’, and ‘spirit’ strikes whatever it touches with this primary attribute. Know that all spirits have a peculiar property by which they bring to life everything that comes under their influence. As soon as a spirit touches a thing, there flows through it life . 23 And in the view of Ibn ‘ Arab!, the whole world of Being is under the direct influence of the Universal Spirit. So all the things that exist are without a single exception in touch with it, and are, therefore, alive. Only the way they are influenced by it actually varies from one individual to another in accordance with the particular ‘prepared- ness’ of each. In other words, things differ one from the other in the intensity of Life they manifest, but all are the same in that they maintain their ‘selves’ in the midst of the all-pervading Life. The (universal) Life which flows through all things is called the ‘divine aspect’ {lahut) of Being, while each individual locus in which that Spirit (i.e., Life) resides is called the ‘human aspect’ ( nasut ). The ‘human aspect’, too, may be called ‘spirit’, but only in virtue of that which resides in it . 24 The intimate relationship between nasut and lahut in man may be compared to the relationship that exists between ‘dough’ (‘ ajin ) and ‘leaven’ ( khamir ). 25 Every man has in himself something of the Divine ‘leaven’ . If he succeeds in letting it grow in a perfect form, his ‘dough’ will come completely under its influence and will finally be transformed into something of the same nature as the ‘leaven’ . This is what is called in the terminology of mysticism ‘self-annihilation’ ( fana ’). 150 Sufism and Taoism Notes 1. Fus., p. 239/188-189. 2. Lafif has two meanings: ( 1) 'subtle’ and (2) 'gracious’ . The property of being ( 1) is called latafah and the property of being (2) is called lu(f. 3. p. 239. 4. In truth, however, the things that are called the organs of cognition in man are nothing other than particular phenomenal forms assumed by the Absolute itself. We know this by the above-explained principle of latafah. 5. i.e., the He-ness (inmost essence) of ‘servant’, considered independently of the relation of servant-ness, is the Absolute as considered independently of the relation of its being God and Master. But, of course, the essence of 'servant’ qua ‘servant’, i.e., considered in his servant-ness, is not 'master’ qua ‘master’. -al-Qashani p. 240. 6. p. 240/189. 7. Fus., p. 24/55. 8. p. 24. 9. ‘If it were not for those universal, intelligible realities ( haqa'iq maqulah kulliyah, corresponding to the Ideas of Plato) , there would never appear anything in the world of concrete individual existents ( mawjiidat ‘ayniyyahf - Fus., p. 24/55. 10. p. 24. 11. Fus., P- 24/55. 12. Fus., p. 181/143. 13. pp. 180-181. 14. The Command is issued to Him by you in the sense that, in bestowing existence upon man, He never deviates from the way which has been eternally determined by the archetypes. 15. Fus., pp. 76-77/83. 16. Fus., p. 79/84. 17. ibid. 18. Fus., p. 194/154. 19. See, for instance, the explanation given by al-Ghazali in his Maqasid al- Falasifah, pp. 274-275, Cairo (Sa‘adah), 1331 A.H. The Water of Life 22. p. 172. 23. Fus ., p. 172/138. 24. Fus., p. 173/138. 25. Fus., P- 189/149. 151 20. Fus., 213/170. 21. Affifi, Fus., Com., p.245. The Self-manifestation of the Absolute 153 XI The Self-manifestation of the Absolute Reference has frequently been made in the preceding pages to the concept of ‘self-manifestation’ (tajalli). And in not a few places the concept has been discussed and analyzed in some detail. This is proper because tajalli is the pivotal point of Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought. Indeed, the concept of tajalli is the very basis of his world-view All his thinking about the ontological structure of the world turns round this axis, and by so doing develops into a grand-scale cosmic system No part of his world-view is understandable without reference to th ! s „ c . e ” tr ^ concept. His entire philosophy is, in short, a theory of tajalli. So by discussing various problems relating to his world-view we have been in fact doing nothing other than trying to elucidate some aspects of tajalli. In this sense, we know already quite a lot about the main topic of the present chapter. Tajalli is the process by which the Absolute, which is absolutely unknowable in itself, goes on manifesting itself in ever more con- crete forms. Since this self-manifestation of the Absolute cannot be actualized except through particular, determined forms the self- manifestation is nothing other than a self-determination or self- dehmmation of the Absolute. Self-determination (-delimination) in this sense is called \ ta‘ayyun (lit. ‘making oneself a particular, indi- vidual entity’). Ta‘ayyun (pi. ta‘ayyunat ) is one of the key-terms of Ibn ‘Arabi’s ontology. The self-determination, as it develops, forms a number of stages or levels. Properly and essentially, these stages are of a non- temporal structure, subsisting as they do beyond the boundaries of time . But at the same time they come also into the temporal order o things and give a particular ontological structure to it. At any rate, when we describe this process we are willy-nilly forced to follow the temporal order. And this is naturally what Ibn rabi himself does in his description of the phenomenon of tajalli. But it would be a mistake if we thought that this is merely a matter of necessity caused by the structure of our language, as it would be equally wrong to suppose that the self-manifestation of the Abso- lute is an exclusively temporal process. The self-manifestation of the Absolute is, in fact, possessed of a double structure. It is a trans-historical, trans-temporal phenom- enon, but it is also a temporal event. One might even say that this is precisely the greatest coincidentia oppositorum observable in the structure of Being. It is a temporal event because from eternity the same process of tajalli (the Absolute^the world) has been repeated and will go on being repeated indefinitely. Since, however, exactly the same ontological pattern repeats itself infinitely, and since, moreover, it is done in such a way that as the first wave is set in motion, there already begins to rise the second wave, the process in its totality comes to the same thing: an eternal, static structure. This dynamic-static self-manifestation of the Absolute is described in terms of the ‘strata’ (maratib,sg.martabah) . Let us first observe how al-Qashanl explains the ‘strata’. 1 He begins by saying that there is in Being nothing except one single Reality {‘ayn) which is the Absolute, and its ‘realization’ (haqiqah), which is Being in its phenomenal (mashhiid) aspect. But, he adds, this phenomenal aspect of Being is not a one-stratum structure, but it comprises six major strata. The first stratum: Being at this stage is still completely free from any limitation. This stratum represents ‘Reality’ in its non- determination (la-ta‘ayyun) and non-delimination (‘ adam inhisar). In other words, there is as yet absolutely no self-manifestation occurring; Being is still the absolute Essence itself rather than a part of phenomenal reality. And yet it is capable of being considered a part of phenomenal reality in the sense that it forms the starting- point of all the subsequent ontological stages. It is no longer the Essence per se in its metaphysical darkness. The second stratum: Being is here ‘determined’ in itself by a kind of all-comprehensive self-determination comprising all the active determinations pertaining to the Divine aspect of Being (i.e., the Divine Names) as well as all the passive determinations pertaining to the creaturely or phenomenal aspect of Being. The Absolute at this stage still remains One. The One is not yet actually split into multiplicity; yet there is observable a faint foreboding of self- articulation. The Absolute, in other words, is potentially articulated. The third stratum: this is the stage of Divine Unity (al-ahadiyah al-ilahlyah) or that of Allah, where all the active ( fa'iliy ) and effective ( mu’aththir ) self-determinations are realized as an integral whole. The fourth stratum: this is the stage at which the Divine Unity (3rd stage) is split into independent self-determinations, i.e., the Divine Names. The fifth stratum: this stage comprises in the form of unity all the self-determinations of a passive nature ( infi‘aliy ). It represents the 154 Sufism and Taoism unity of the creaturely and possible things of the world of becoming. The sixth stratum: here the unity of the preceding stage is dis- solved into actually existent things and properties. This is the stage of the ‘world’. All the genera, species, individuals, parts, accidents, relations, etc., become actualized at this stage. As we see, this description by al-Qashani of the Divine self- manifestation as a multi-strata structure presents the phenomenon of tajalli in its static, i.e., non-temporal, aspect. Ibn ‘Arabi himself prefers to present the same thing in a much more dynamic way. He distinguishes two major types of tajalli to which we have often referred in the preceding; namely, the ‘most holy emanation’ ( al - fayd al-aqdas ) and the ‘holy emanation’ ( al-fayd al-muqaddas) . It is to be remarked that Ibn ‘Arabi uses the Plotinian term ‘emanation’ (fayd) as a synonym of tajalli. But ‘emanation’ here does not mean, as it does in the world-view of Plotinus, one thing overflowing from the absolute One, then another from that first thing, etc. in the form of a chain. ‘Emanation’, for Ibn ‘Arabi, simply means that the Absolute itself appears in different, more or less concrete forms, with a different self-determination in each case. It means that one and the same Reality variously articulates and determines itself and appears immediately in the forms of different things. The first type of ‘emanation’, the ‘most holy emanation’, corres- ponds, as we have seen, to what is described by a famous Tradition in which the Absolute per se , i.e., the absolutely Unknown- Unknowable, desires to leave the state of being a ‘hidden treasure’ and desires to be known. Thus we see that the ‘most holy emana- tion’ is for the Absolute a natural and essential movement. The ‘most holy emanation’ represents the first decisive stage in the self-manifestation of the Absolute. It is the stage at which the Absolute manifests itself not to others but to itself. It is, in modern terminology, the rise of self-consciousness in the Absolute. It is important to remark, further, that this kind of self-manifestation has occurred from eternity. It is, as Nicholson says, ‘the eternal manifestation of the Essence to itself’. 2 The self-manifestation of the Absolute to itself consists in the forms of all the possible existents making their appearance in poten- tia in the Consciousness of the Absolute. Another way of expressing the same idea is to say that the Absolute becomes conscious of itself as potentially articulated into an infinity of existents. The important point here lies in the word ‘potentially’ or in potentia. It indicates that the Consciousness of the Absolute being split into plurality is an event occurring only in the state of possibility; that the Absolute is not yet actually split into many, and, therefore, still maintains its original Unity. It is, in other words, a state in which the potential The Self-manifestation of the Absolute 155 Many are still actually One. In contradistinction to the real Unity in which there is not even a shadow of the Many, i.e., the Unity of ahadlyah , this Unity which is potentially plurality is called wahidlyah or Oneness. Since the Many in the plane of Oneness are Many as the content of the Consciousness of the Absolute (Divine ‘Knowledge’ as the theologians call it), they are, philosophically, pure intelligibles, and not real concrete existents. They are nothing more than ‘recipients’ (< qawabil ) for existence. They are those that would be real existents if they receive existence. In this sense the Many in this plane are ‘possible existents’ (mawjudat mumkinah) or ‘existents in potentia' (mawjudat bi-al-quwwah ). 3 On this level, there is as yet nothing existent in actuality. The world itself is not existent. Yet there are dimly discernible the figures of the would-be things. I say ‘dimly discernible’; this is merely an imaginary picture of this ontological situation supposedly seen from outside. In reality and in themselves, these figures are the content of the Consciousness of the Absolute, and as such, nothing can possibly be more solidly definite and distinct. They are ‘realities’ (haqa’iq) in the full sense of the word. They are in themselves far more real than what we regard as ‘real’ in this world. They look dim and hazy from our point of view, because they belong to the world of the Unseen ( ghayb ). These realities as intelligibilia are called by Ibn ‘Arab! ‘permanent archetypes’ ( a'yan thabitah) of which details will be given in the next chapter. The word ‘emanation’ (fayd) is, as remarked above, completely synonymous for Ibn ‘Arabi with ‘self-manifestation’ (tajalli). And he calls the ‘ most holy emanation’ also ‘essential self-manifestation’ (tajalli dhatiy). This latter term is defined by al-Qashani as follows: 4 The essential self-manifestation is the appearance of the Absolute under the form of the permanent archetypes which are ready to receive existence and whose domain is the Presence (i.e., ontological level) of Knowledge and Names, i.e., the Presence of Oneness ( wahidlyah ). By this appearance the Absolute descends from the presence of Unity (ahadlyah) to the Presence of Oneness. And this is the ‘most holy emanation’ of the Absolute, which consists in that the pure Essence not yet accompanied by any Names manifests itself (in the plane of the Names). So there can be no plurality at all (in actuality) in this self-manifestation. It is called ‘most holy’ because it is holier than the self-manifestation which occurs in the visible world as actualization of the Names, which therefore occurs in accordance with the ‘preparedness’ of each locus. The second stage of the self-manifestation, the ‘holy emanation - also called ‘sensuous self-manifestation’ (tajalli shuhudiy) - means 156 Sufism and Taoism that the Absolute manifests itself in the infinitely various forms of the Many in the world of concrete Being. In common-sense lan- guage we might say that the ‘holy emanation’ refers to the coming into being of what we call ‘things’ , including not only substances, but attributes, actions, and events. From the particular point of view in Ibn ‘ Arabi, the ‘holy emana- tion’ means that the permanent archetypes, which have been brought into being by the ‘most holy emanation’ leave the state of being intelligibles, diffuse themselves in sensible things, and thus cause the sensible world to exist in actuality. In plain Aristotelian terminology, it means the ontological process of the transformation of things in potentia into corresponding things in actu. This is clearly a deterministic ontology, because, in this world-view, the actual form in which everything exists in the world is an ultimate result of what has been determined from eternity. As al-Qashani says: s The sensuous self-manifestation which occurs through the Names follows the ‘preparedness’ of the locus in each case. This kind of self-manifestation is dependent upon the ‘recipients’ which are no other than the loci in which the Names become manifested. In this respect it is completely different from the essential self- manifestation, because the latter is not dependent upon anything whatsoever. The relation between these two forms of self-manifestation is dis- cussed by Ibn ‘Arabi in an important passage of the Fusus. In this passage he happens to be talking about the coming into being of the ‘heart’ (qalb). But we are entitled to replace it by anything else and thus to understand it as a general theoretical explanation of the two forms of self-manifestation . 6 God has two forms of self-manifestation: one is self-manifestation in the Unseen and the other in the visible world. By the self-manifestation in the Unseen He gives the ‘preparedness’ which will determine the nature of the heart (in the visible world). This is the essential self-manifestation whose reality is the Unseen. And this self-manifestation in the Unseen is (that which constitutes) the He-ness which rightly belongs to Him (as the objectifying projec- tion of Himself toward the outside), as is witnessed by the fact that He designates Himself by (the pronoun of the third person) ‘He ’. 7 Thus God is ‘He’ eternally, everlastingly. Now when the ‘preparedness’ is actualized for the heart, there occurs correspondingly in the visible world the sensuous self-manifestation. The heart, on its part, perceives it, and assumes the form of that which has manifested itself to it. We may summarize all this in a general theoretical form as follows. The first self-manifestation of the Absolute brings into being the permanent archetypes which are the self-manifesting forms of the The Self-manifestation of the Absolute 157 Divine Names, i.e., the ontological possibilities contained in the Absolute. These archetypes are ‘recipients’ waiting for concrete existentiation. They provide loci for the second type of self- manifestation. And each locus ( mahall ) has a definite ‘prepared- ness’ which, as an immediate effect of the first self-manifestation of the Absolute, is eternal and unalterable. Even the Absolute cannot alter or modify it, because it is a form in which the Absolute manifests itself. Thus the Absolute, in making each ‘recipient’ a locus of its second (sensuous) self-manifestation, determines itself in strict accordance with the eternal ‘preparedness’ of the ‘reci- pient’. The Absolute in this way takes on indefinitely various forms in its sensuous self-manifestation. And the totality of all these forms constitute the phenomenal world. Such a description is liable to suggest that there is an interval of time between the first and the second self-manifestation. In reality, however, there is no relation of priority and posteriority between the two. Everything occurs at one and the same time. For, in the very moment in which ‘preparedness’ arises on the part of a thing (in truth, however, every ‘preparedness’ is already in existence from eternity because the first type of self-manifestation has been going on from eternity,) the Divine Spirit flows into it and makes it appear as a concretely existent thing. As we have remarked at the outset, the relation between the two kinds of self-manifestation is a tem- poral phenomenon, being at the same time a non-temporal or trans-temporal structure. In this latter sense, the self-manifestation in the Unseen and the self-manifestation in the visible world are nothing but two basic constituent elements of Being. The Divine procedure (concerning the self-manifestation) is such that God never prepares any locus but that it (i.e., that locus) receives of necessity the working of the Divine Spirit, a process which God describes as ‘breathing into’ it. And this refers to nothing else than the actualization, or the part of the locus thus formed, a particular ‘preparedness’ for receiving the emanation, that is, the perpetual self-manifestation that has been going on from eternity and that will be going on to eternity . 8 Notes 1. p. 239. Cf. Chapter I, where al-Qashani gives a slightly different explanation of the matter. 2. R.A. Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism, Cambridge, 1921, p. 155, N. 1. 3. Fuy., p. 10/49. 158 Sufism and Taoism 4. p. 10. 5. pp. 10-11. 6. Fu$., pp. 145-146/120. 7. In the Qoran God frequently speaks in the third person, referring to Himself as ‘He’ instead of T. 8. Fu$., p. 10/49. XII Permanent Archetypes The concept of ‘permanent archetype’ (‘ ayn thabitah, pi. a‘yan thabitah) has a number of important facets. So, in order that we might fully elucidate its essential structure, it must be considered analytically from different points of view. Although most of these different aspects of the ‘permanent archetype’ have been referred to in the course of the preceding chapters, some of them having been discussed at considerable length and others more or less incidentally touched upon, we shall deal with them all in the present chapter in a more systematic way. I The Intermediary Nature of the Archetypes That which we know best about the archetypes is their ontologically intermediate status. Briefly stated, the plane of the archetypes occupies a middle position between the Absolute in its absoluteness and the world of sensible things. As a result of this peculiar ontological position, the archetypes have the double nature of being active and passive, that is, passive in relation to what is higher and active in relation to things that stand lower than themselves. Their passivity is expressed by the word qabil (pi. qawabil ) which Ibn ‘ Arabi often uses in his description of the archetypes. They are ‘recipients’, receptive and passive in so far as they are nothing but potentialities in the Divine Essence. Their nature is passively determined by the very inner structure of the Essence. But considered in themselves, they are of a self- determining nature and exercise a determining power over the possible things of the world. They are each the eidetic reality {‘ayn) of a possible thing. And all the possible things become actualized in the phenomenal world each according to the requirement of its own permanent archetype. As we have remarked earlier , 1 the Absolute must ‘breathe out’ because of the intense inner compression of Being. It is in the very nature of the Absolute that it should externalize itself. The 160 Sufism and Taoism Absolute, in this respect, is not a static ‘One’, but a dynamic ‘One’ with a natural propensity for self-externalization and self- articulation. Outwardly and actually it is unquestionably ‘One’, but inwardly and potentially it is Many. It is important to note that this self-externalization of the Abso- lute is done according to certain fixed patterns at both the first and the second stage of tajalli. The Absolute, at the first stage of tajalli, articulates itself not haphazardly but through certain definite chan- nels. These channels have been fixed from eternity by the very inner structure of the Absolute. Theologically, they are the Divine Names. And the permanent archetypes are the essential forms (suwar) of the Divine Names. Since, moreover, all this is an occur- rence within the Divine consciousness, the archetypes are realities (haqa’iq) eternally subsistent in the world of the Unseen. And these realities definitely determine the form of the second stage of the self-manifestation, i.e., the self-manifestation of the Absolute in the concrete individual things in the external world. Here again the Absolute manifests itself in the phenomenal world not in haphazard forms; the forms in which it manifests itself are determined by the eternal realities that have been produced by the first tajalli. If we suppose, for example, that there were in the plane of the archetypes nothing but Horse and Man, there would be in our world only horses and men, nothing else. The archetypes are, in this sense, double-faced. On the one hand, they are essentially determined by the Absolute, because they owe their particular existence to the latter. But, on the other, they positively determine the way in which the Absolute actualizes itself in the phenomenal world. As to this determining force of the archetypes, details will be given presently. Here it is sufficient to note that the intermediary nature of the archetypes is clearly observable in the peculiarity which has just been mentioned. The second important point in which the intermediary nature of the archetypes stands out with utmost clarity is their ‘being non- existent’ ( ma‘dum ). The essences of the possible things (i.e., the permanent archetypes) are not luminous because they are non-existent. Certainly they do have permanent subsistence ( thubut ), but they are not qualified by existence, because existence is Light . 2 The fact that Ibn ‘Arab! designates the archetypes by calling them ‘the essences of the possible things’, though in itself an important statement, is not relevant to our present concern. 3 Rather, we should note here his judgment that the archetypes are ‘non- existent’. Similarly in another passage he says: 4 Permanent Archetypes 161 The archetypes are essentially characterized by non-existence (‘ adam ). Surely they are ‘permanently subsistent’ {thabitah), but they are permanently subsistent only in the state of non-existence. They have not even smelt the fragrance of existence. Thus they remain eternally in that state (i.e., non-existence) despite the multiplicity of the forms (which they manifest in the existent things). Ibn ‘ Arabi judges the archetypes to be ‘ non-existent’ because in this particular context he understands the word ‘existence’ ( wujud ) in the sense of ‘external existence’. Seen from the viewpoint of exter- nal or phenomenal existence, the archetypes are not existent, although they are ‘permanently subsistent’. The ‘permanent subsist- ence’ ( thubut ) is different from external existence. Symbolically, the archetypes are ‘dark’. They are dark because they are not yet illumined by the bright daylight of existence. Existence as Light belongs only to the individual things that exist concretely and externally. It is patent, then, that it is not Ibn ‘Arabi’ s intention to assert that the archetypes are non-existent in an absolute sense. We have already observed that the archetypes are permanent ‘realities’ that subsist in the Divine Consciousness. They do exist in the same sense in which concepts are said to exist in the human mind. He only means to say that the archetypes do not possess a temporally and spatially determined existence. And in this very particular sense, the Divine Names, too, must be said to be non-existent. ‘The Names in their multiplicity are but relations which are of a non-existent nature’. 5 Thus we see that it is not strictly exact to regard the archetypes as non-existent. More exact it is to say they are neither existent nor non-existent. And, in fact, Ibn ‘Arab! himself explicitly says so in a short, but exceedingly important article to which incidental refer- ence was made in an earlier place. 6 It is to be noted that in this passage he takes up a more philosophical position than in his Fusu$ in dealing with the problem of the archetypes. The third thing 7 is neither qualified by existence nor by non- existence, neither by temporality nor by eternity ( a parte ante). But it has always been with the Eternal from eternity. . . . It is neither existent nor non-existent. . . . But it is the root (i.e., the ontological ground) of the world. . . . For from this third thing has the world come into being. Thus it is the very essential reality of all the realities of the world. It is a universal and intelligible reality subsist- % ing in the Mind. It appears as eternal in the Eternal and as temporal in the temporal. So, if you say that this thing is the world, you are right, fl And if you say that it is the Absolute, the Eternal, you are equally right. But you are no less right if you say that it is neither the world nor the Absolute, but something different from both. All these statements are true of this thing. 162 Sufism and Taoism Thus it is the most general Universal comprising both temporality (huduth) and eternity (qidam). It multiplies itself with the multiplic- ity of the existent things. And yet it is not divided by the division of the existent things; it is divided by the division of the intelligibles. In short, it is neither existent nor non-existent. It is not the world, and yet it is the world. It is ‘other’, and yet it is not ‘other’. The main point of this argument is that this ‘third thing’ is the world in potentiality, but that, from the viewpoint of the world as a real and concrete existent, it is not the world, but rather non-Being and the Absolute. Then Ibn ‘Arabi proceeds to examine the problem from the standpoint of Aristotelian philosophy and identifies this third thing which can neither be said to exist nor not to exist with the hayula or Prime Matter , 8 The relation of this thing . . . with the world is comparable to the relation of wood with (various things fabricated out of wood, like) a chair, wooden case, pulpit, litter etc., or to the relation of silver with (silver) vessels and objects made of silver like collyrium-cases, ear- rings, and rings. The comparison makes the nature and essence of this (third) thing clear. Take, then, only the relation here suggested (between wood and pieces of furniture made of wood) without, however, picturing in your mind any diminishing in it (i.e., in the third thing) as you picture actual diminishing in the wood when a writing-desk is taken out of it. Know that wood itself is a particular form assumed by ‘wood-ness’. (Do not picture in your mind a piece of wood, but) concentrate your attention upon the intelligible universal reality which is ‘wood-ness’. Then you will see that ‘wood-ness’ itself neither diminishes nor is divided (by your actually fabricating real objects out of wood). On the contrary, ‘wood-ness’ always remains in its original perfection in all the chairs and desks without ever diminishing. Nor does it increase a bit in spite of the fact that in a wooden desk, for example, there are many realities gathered together besides the reality of ‘wood-ness’, like that of ‘oblong-ness’, that of ‘square-ness’, that of ‘quantity’ etc., all of them being therein in their respective perfection. The same is true of any chair or pulpit. And the ‘third thing’ is precisely all these ‘realities’ in their respective perfection. So call it, if you like, the reality of realities, or hayula (Greek hyle), or Prime Matter, or the genus of all genera. And call these realities that are comprised by this third thing the ‘primary realities’ or ‘high genera’. One special point is worthy of notice in this connection. Ibn ‘Arabi here observes the intermediary nature of the archetypes not only in their being neither existent nor non-existent, but also in their being neither ‘temporal’ nor ‘eternal’. So it is wrong, or at least an over- simplification, to say that Ibn ‘Arab! takes up the position that ‘the world is eternal ( qadim )’ 9 because the archetypes are eternal. Permanent Archetypes 163 M Surely the archetypes are ‘eternal’ in a certain sense precisely because they represent the intermediary stage between the Abso- lute and the phenomenal world. But they are ‘eternal’ only secon- darily and derivatively in the sense that they, as the content itself of the Divine Consciousness or Knowledge, have been connected (muqarin) with the Absolute from eternity. Their eternity is in this sense essentially different from the eternity of the Absolute. Generally speaking, and particularly in cases of this kind, the true nature of anything intermediary is impossible to describe ade- quately by language. Thus one is forced to resort, as Ibn ‘Arabi actually does, to a clumsy expression, like ‘it is neither eternal nor temporal, but it is, on the other hand, both eternal and temporal’ . If from the whole of this complex expression we pick up only the phrase, ‘(it is) eternal’ and draw from it the conclusion that Ibn ‘Arabi maintained the doctrine of the eternity of the world , 10 we would be doing him gross injustice. In a passage of the Fu$us, in connection with the problem of the absolute inalterability of the cause-caused relationship in this world, Ibn ‘Arab! discusses the ‘eternity’ -‘temporality’ of the archetypes in the following way . 11 There is absolutely no way of making the causes effectless because they are what is required by the permanent archetypes. And nothing is actualized except in the form established for it in the archetypal state. For ‘there is no altering for the words of God’ (X, 64). And the ‘words of God’ are nothing other than the archetypes of the things in existence. Thus ‘eternity’ is ascribed to the archetypes in regard to their permanent subsistence, and ‘temporality’ is ascribed to it in regard to their actual existence and appearance. These words clarify the intermediary state peculiar to the archetypes between ‘eternity’ and ‘temporality’. II The Archetypes as Universals As we have noticed in the preceding section, the archetypes in Ibn ‘ArabFs thought are, theologically, ‘realities’ in the Knowledge of God, i.e., intelligibles existing permanently and eternally in the Divine Consciousness alone. But from the point of view of scholas- tic philosophy, they are Universals standing over against Particu- lars. And the relation of the archetypes to the world is exactly the ontological relation of Universals to Particulars. The problem of how the Divine self-manifestation is actualized in the realm of external existence through the fixed channels of the archetypes is nothing other than the problem of the individuation of Universals. 164 Sufism and Taoism Permanent Archetypes 165 We must note that this aspect on Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s philosophy is to a considerable extent Platonic. In any event, the permanent archetypes, in this particular aspect , remind us of the Ideas of Plato. There is, in his Fu$u$, an important passage where he develops this problem scholastically . 12 There he deals with the philosophical aspect of Divine Attributes such as Knowledge, Life, etc . 13 It will be clear by what has preceded that his theory of Attributes is identical with the theory of archetypes. We assert that the universal things ( umur kulliyah, i.e., Universals corresponding to Platonic Ideas), although they have no actual exis- tence in themselves, are unquestionably (existent as) intelligibles and objects of knowledge, in the mind (i.e., primarily in the Divine Consciousness, and secondarily in the human minds). They remain ‘interior’ ( batinah ) and never leave the state of invisible existence 14 (i.e., the state of existence in the plane of the Unseen). The passage is paraphrased by al-Qashani as follows : 15 The ‘universal things’, that is, those things that are essentially non- material ( mutlaqah ) such as Life and Knowledge, have a concrete existence only in Reason, while in the outer world they have an invisible existence. This is because existence in the outer world is the very same non-material intelligibles as determined by concrete, indi- vidual conditions. But (even when it is actualized in the outer world) a non-material Universal still remains in the state of being an intellig- ible and still stands under the name ‘Interior’. A Universal never exists in the outer world in its universality, but only in a concretely determined form. And in this latter capacity only does a Universal come under the name ‘Exterior’. Ibn ‘Arabi goes on to argue : 16 But (i.e., although their existence is invisible) Universals have a powerful and positive effect on everything that has a concrete indi- vidual existence. Rather, the individualized existence - I mean, all individual existents are nothing other than Universals. And yet Uni- versals in themselves never cease to be pure intelligibles. Thus they are ‘exterior’ in respect to their being concrete existents, but they are ‘interior’ in respect to their being intelligibles. So every concrete thing that exists has its origin in the (realm of) these ‘universal matters’ which have the above-mentioned peculiarity, namely, that they are inseparably connected with Reason and that they can never come to exist in the plane of concrete existence in such a way as to cease to be pure intelligibles. This basic situation does not change whether a particular individual existent (in which a Universal is actualized) happens to be something temporally conditioned (e.g., ordinary material objects) or something beyond the limitations of time (e.g., higher Spirits). For a Universal bears one and the same relation to both temporal and non-temporal things. 1 The relation between Universals and Particulars is not as one-sided as this passage might suggest; it has also an aspect in which Particu- lars do exercise a determining force upon Universals. A Universal, as we have just seen, remains eternally the same as it appears in individual particulars, say, abed. But since each one of these particulars has its own peculiar ‘nature’ (f abVah ), the Universal must necessarily be affected by a b c d as it is actualized in them. The Universal, in other words, becomes tinged in each case with a particular coloring. The ‘universal matters’, on their part, are also positively affected by the concrete existents in accordance with what is required by the individual realities of the latter. Take for example the relation of ‘knowledge’ to ‘knower’, and ‘life’ to ‘living being’. ‘Life’ is an intelligible reality, and ‘knowledge’ is an intelligible reality, both being different and distinguishable from one another. Now we say concerning God that He has Life and Know- ledge, so He is Living and He is a Knower. Likewise, we say concern- ing an angel that he has ‘life’ and ‘knowledge’, so he is ‘living’ and he is a ‘knower’. Lastly, we say concerning man that he has ‘knowledge’ and ‘life’, so he is ‘living’ and a ‘knower’. (Throughout all these cases) the reality of ‘knowledge’ is one, and the reality of ‘life’ is one. The relation of ‘knowledge’ to ‘knower’ and of ‘life’ to ‘living’ is equally one. And yet we say concerning the Know- ledge of God that it is eternal, while concerning the ‘knowledge’ of man we say that it is temporal. See what a positive effect has been produced upon the intelligible reality (‘knowledge’) by the particular attribution. See how the intelligibles are connected with the concrete individual existents. Just as ‘knowledge’ affects the substrate in which it inheres to make it deserve the appellation ‘knower’, the particular substrate to which ‘knowledge’ is attributed affects the ‘knowledge’ in such a way that it becomes temporal in a temporal being and eternal in the eternal being. Thus both sides affect each other and are affected by each other . 17 As to the ontological status of Universals, Ibn ‘Arabi says that they are ‘non-existent’ , meaning thereby that they are not endowed with concrete individual existence in the material world. But, of course, as we know already, they are not sheer ‘nothing’; they do have a particular kind of existence, i.e., non-material, intelligible existence. A Universal becomes actualized in an individual thing and natur- ally becomes tinged with a special coloring peculiar to the locus. But since in such a case it is not individualized in itself, it does not become qualified by the properties of distinction and divisibility which are characteristic of individual things. While, therefore, the relation between a Particular and a Particular is a solid one, being based on the strong tie of concrete physical existence, the relation V' 166 Sufism and Taoism between a Universal and a Particular, although far more essential than the former relation, is weaker because it is an essentially ‘non-existentiaP, i.e., intelligible relation. It is patent that these ‘universal matters’, although they are intellig- ibles, are non-existent in terms of concrete physical existence, but are only existent as an invisible (but real) force (affecting the concrete individual things.) When, however, they enter into actual relation with individual existents, they also are affected by the latter. They do accept the positive effect (exercised by the individual existents) except that they do not thereby become physically distinct and divided. For this is absolutely impossible to occur (to a Universal). For it remains as it is in all individuals which are qualified by it - like, for example, ‘humanity’ ( insaniyah ‘being-a-man’) appearing in each single individual of the species of man - being itself never particular- ized, never becoming multiple despite the multiplicity of individuals, and never ceasing to be intelligible. Thus it is clear that there is a close reciprocal tie between things possessed of a concrete existence (i.e., Particulars) and things that are deprived of a concrete existence (i.e., Universal). And yet the Universal are in the nature of ‘non-existence’. So the reciprocal tie existing between concrete things and concrete things is more easily conceivable, because in this case there is always a third term which connects the both sides together: I mean, concrete existence. In the former case, on the contrary, there is no such connecting link, and the reciprocal tie subsists here without a connecting link. Naturally, the relation with such a link is stronger and more real . 18 Ill Necessity and Possibility As we have seen already, Ibn ‘Arab! often refers to the permanent archetypes as ‘essences of the possible things’ ( a‘yan al-mumkinat ) meaning thereby the essential realities of the possible things. The word mumkinat or ‘possible things’ points, on the face of it, to concrete individual existents in the world. This is justified in so far as the concrete existents of Particulars are essentially ‘possible’ because they do not have in themselves the principle of existence. On the other hand, however, they are not ‘possible’ but rather ‘necessary’ in so far as they exist in actuality in definitely fixed forms. From this point of view, what are essentially ‘possible” are the archetypes. For the archetypes, as has been made clear in the preceding section, remain in themselves ‘intelligible’ without being individualized. There are some among the thinkers, says Ibn ‘Arab!, who, ‘because of the weakness of their intellect’ deny the category of ‘possibility’ ( imkan ) and assert that there are only two ontological Permanent Archetypes 167 categories: ‘necessity by itself’ ( wujiib bi-al-dhat ) and ‘necessity by (something) other (than itself)’ ( wujub bi-al-ghayr ). However, he goes on to say, those who know the truth of the matter admit the category of ‘possibility’, and know that ‘possibility’, though it is after all a kind of ‘necessity by other’, does possess its own peculiar nature which makes it the third ontological category. 19 Explicating this idea of his Master, al-Qashani analyzes the con- cept of ‘possible’ ( mumkin ) as follows. 20 All existents are divisible into two major categories according to the relation which the reality of a thing bears to existence: (1) the thing whose reality by itself requires existence, and (2) those whose reality by itself does not require existence. The first is the ‘necessary by itself’ or the Necessary Existent. The second is further divided into two categories: (1) those whose very nature requires non-existence, and (2) those whose nature by itself requires neither existence nor non-existence. The first of these is the category of the ‘impossible’ , while the second is the ‘possible’ . Then he says: Thus the ‘possible’ is an ontological dimension ( hadrah , lit. ‘Pres- ence’) peculiar to the plane of Reason, a state before external exis- tence, considered in itself. Take, for example, ‘black’. In itself it is only in the plane of Reason, requiring neither existence nor non- existence. But in the outer world it cannot but be accompanied either by the existence of a cause or by the absence of cause, there being no third case between these two. And when the cause is present in its complete form, the existence of the thing (the ‘possible’) becomes ‘necessary’. Otherwise, its non- existence is ‘necessary’ due to non-existence of a complete cause. (In the first case, it is ‘necessary by other’, while in the second case) it is ‘impossible by other’. Thus we see that the ‘possible’ in the state of real existence is a ‘necessary by other’ . But in itself and in its essence, i.e., apart from its actual state of existence, it is (still) a ‘possible by itself’. The definition of the ‘possible’ by al-Qashani, namely, that it is an ontological state in which a thing finds itself previous to external existence, makes it patent that a Universal is essentially and in itself a ‘possible’ , for a Universal in itself is an ‘existent in Reason’ , that is, a pure intelligible, before it goes into the state of external existence. His explanation also makes it clear that a Universal, when it becomes particularized and enters into the domain of external existence in the form of an individual, obtains two features. In its essence, it is still a ‘possible’ even in the state of external existence, but it is a ‘necessary by other’ in so far as it is now existent externally and has thereby what we might call an ontic necessity. Such is the real nature of everything that is called ‘temporal’ ( hadith or 168 Sufism and Taoism muhdath ) , 21 And that which causes this ontological transformation, i.e., that which brings out an ‘essentially possible’ into the sphere of external existence and changes it into an ‘accidentally necessary’ can be nothing other than the ‘essentially necessary’, the Absolute. There can be no doubt that a temporally originated thing ( muhdath ) is definitely something brough into existence (by an agent), so it has an ontological need ( iftiqar , lit. ‘poverty’) towards an agent that has produced it. This is due to the fact that, such a thing being essentially ‘possible’, its existence must come from something other than itself. The tie which binds such a thing to its originator is a tie of ontological need. That (agent) to which a ‘possible’ owes its existence in such an essential way can be nothing other than something whose existence is necessary in itself, and which does not owe its existence to anything else and has, therefore, no need of anything else. It must be this thing that - by itself - gives existence to all temporal things so that the latter are essentially dependent upon it. Since, however, the coming into existence of the ‘possible’ is what is required essentially by the ‘necessary’, the former acquires (in this respect) a ‘necessity’ from the latter. And since, moreover, the dependence of the ‘possible’ on the (‘necessary’) from which it comes into existence is essential, the ‘possible’ must necessarily appear in the likeness of the ‘necessary’. And this likeness extends to every name and attribute possessed by the ‘possible’, except one single thing: the essential necessity ( wujub dhatiy), for this last thing can never come to a temporally produced thing. Thus it comes about that a temporal thing, although it is a ‘necessary’ existent, its ‘necessity’ is not its own but is due to something other than itself . 22 IV The Absolute Power of the Archetypes The archetypes are ‘permanent’ or ‘permanently subsistent’ (thabitah), i.e., they have been fixed once for all in the eternal past, and are, therefore, absolutely unalterable and immovable. ‘There is no altering for the words of God’ (X, 64). This absolute unalter- ableness of the archetypes restricts in a certain sense even the activity of the Absolute. This may sound blasphemous at first, but in reality it is not so. For, theologically speaking, it is the very Will of God that has given them this unalterableness, and in a terminology more characteristic of Ibn ‘Arabi, they are no other than inner determinations of the Absolute itself. It is not for the Divine Will to change what has been determined at the stage of the archetypes. And it is unthinkable that God should will such a thing. The Qoranic statement concerning the disbeliev- ers: ‘but if He so willed, He would have guided you aright all together’ (XVI, 91) might seem to imply that it is quite possible that Permanent Archetypes God should will just the contrary of what has actually happened, i.e., the contrary of what has been determined on the level of the archetypes. This, however, is due, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, to a very simple misunderstanding. The particle law meaning ‘if’ (in the clause ‘if He so willed’ fa-law shaa) is a grammatical device for expressing a supposition of something which is actually impossible. Thus the Qoranic verse suggests rather the absolute impossibility of God’s wishing to guide aright the disbelievers. 23 We established in the preceding section that the archetypes are ‘possibles’. But in the light of what we have just seen about the immovable fixity of the archetypes, we must admit also that their ‘possibility’ is of a very particular nature. A ‘possible’ is a thing which is capable of becoming either a or its contradictory, non -a. Thus, to take an example directly relevant to the Qoranic verse just mentioned, a man as a ‘possible’ is capable of becoming either a ‘believer’ or a ‘disbeliever’, that is, of receiving in actuality either the ‘guidance’ of God or ‘going astray from the Way’. In reality, however, it is determined from the very beginning whether the thing will be actualized as a or as non-a. If it happens to be determined in the direction of a, for instance, even God cannot change its course and actualize it as non-a. A ‘possible’ is in itself capable of receiving either something or its contradictory, on the level of rational reasoning. But as soon as it is actualized as either of the two logically possible things, (we come to know that) that was the thing for which the ‘possible’ was destined when it was in the archetypal state. ... Thus (it is clear in the case of those disbelievers referred to in the above-quoted Qoranic verse that) God actually did not ‘will’ that way, so that He did not guide aright all those people. Nor will He ever ‘will’ that way. ‘If-He-wills’ will be of no avail. For is it at all imagin- able that He should do so? No, such a thing will never come to pass. For His Will goes straight to its objects (in accordance with what has been determined from eternity) because His Will is a relation which strictly follows His Knowledge, and His Knowledge strictly follows the object of Knowledge. And the object of Knowledge is you and your states (i.e., the individual thing and its properties as they have been immovably fixed in the state of archetypal permanence). It is not the Knowledge that influences its object, but rather it is the object of Knowledge that influences the Knowledge, for the object confers what it is in its essence upon the Knowledge . 24 God knows each individual thing in its eternal essence, and exer- cises His Will on the basis of that Knowledge. But, as we already know, God’s exercising His Will is the same as His bestowing existence. So, since God’s bestowal of existence is done in this way on the basis of His Knowledge about the eternal essence of each 170 Sufism and Taoism . thing, the existence bestowed upon individual things must necessar- ily assume a different form in each case. But there is also another aspect to the matter. The existence itself which God bestows upon the things is, in so far as it is existence, always one and the same. Existence qua existence can never differ from one case to another. God bestows upon all things one and the same existence, but the individual ‘recipients’ receive it in different ways, each according to its own particular nature, and actualize it in different forms. Ibn ‘Arab! describes this aspect of the matter by saying: God does nothing more than bestowing existence; it is men who determine and delimit it individually, and give it particular coloring, each according to his archetype. ‘There is not even one among us but has his own determined position’ (XXXVII, 164). This (i.e., the ‘determined position’) refers to what you were in the state of archetypal subsistence according to which you have come into being. You can look at the matter in this way when you affirm that you do have existence. But even if you affirm that existence belongs to the Absolute, not to you, still you have unquestionably a determining power upon the existence coming from the Absolute. Of course, once you are a real existent, your determining power has undoubtedly a part to play in it, though properly speaking the ultimate Determiner is the Absolute. In this respect, then, to the Absolute belongs only the act of directing existence toward you, while the actual determination of it belongs to you. So do not praise except yourself, do not blame except yourself. There remains for the Absolute only the praise for having given (you) existence. For that definitely is the act of the Absolute, not yours. 25 This way of thinking cannot but raise a number of crucial problems within the framework of Islamic thought. Most noteworthy of them is the repercussion it produces in the field of moral ideas. All men are just as they are, according to Ibn ‘ Arabi, because they have been so determined by their own permanent archetypes from eternity. No one in the world, whether he be good or bad, a believer or a disbeliever, goes against the Will of God. Taking the example of one who disobeys the Apostle of God, ‘contender’ {munazV), Ibn ‘Arab! argues: 26 He who contends against him (i.e., the Apostle of God) is not thereby deviating from his own reality in which he was in the archetypal state when he was still in the state of non-existence. For nothing comes into being except that which he had in the state of non-existence, i.e., archetypal subsistence. So (by struggling in opposition to the Apostle of God) he is not stepping over the boundaries set by his reality, nor does he commit any fault on his (predetermined) road. Thus calling his behavior ‘contending’ (niza‘) is merely an accidental matter which is a product of the veils covering the eyes of ordinary Permanent Archetypes 171 people. As God says: ‘But the majority of men do not know. They know only the apparent surface of the present world, while being completely neglectful of the Hereafter’ (XXX, 6-7). Thus it is clear that it (i.e., regarding their behavior as ‘contending’) is nothing but an inversion (i.e., one of those things which the people whose eyes are veiled turn upside down). This argument on the ‘contender’ applies to every phenomenon in the world. Everything, whether good or bad from the human point of view, is what it is in accordance with what has been definitely and immovably determined from eternity. Everything, in this sense, goes the way prepared beforehand by the Divine Will, and nothing can deviate from it. If the distinction between good and bad is but an accidental matter, and if everything occurs as it has been determined by its own archetype, the doctrine of the reward for the good and the chastise- ment for the bad, which is one of the most basic articles of faith in Islam, must necessarily be gravely affected. Here follows the pecul- iar interpretation by Ibn ‘Arab! of the problem of ‘reward and punishment’ ( thawab-‘iqab ). 27 The rise of the distinction between good and bad (from the religious point of view) is a phenomenon which occurs only at the level upon which human beings live a social life in a religious community. He who, at this level, is regarded as morally responsible is called by the Law a mukallaf meaning ‘one who is charged with responsibilities’. Now when a mukallaf acts in the light of the Law, either he ‘obeys’ its injunctions or ‘disobeys’ and ‘rebels’ against it. It is a truism or even a tautology to say that in the former case the man is mufi‘, i.e., one who is obedient to God. But the important point is that, in Ibn ‘ ArabF s view, in the second case he is no less obedient to God than in the first. For even in the second case, the man acts as he does simply according to the dictates of his permanent archetype, which, as we know, is a direct manifestation of the Divine Will. Of course, when a man ‘disobeys’ God, there is no other way for Him than either forgiving him or punishing him. But the remarkable fact about this is that God, on His part, ‘obeys’ the man, and acts according to the dictates of his actions. The ‘obedience’ ( inqiyad ) occurs here, as Bali Effendi remarks, on both sides. And this, Ibn ‘Arab! says, is the meaning of ‘religion’ {din) in the sense of islam ( = inqiyad ‘obedience’) as well as in the sense of jaza ‘requital’. Religion, indeed, is ‘requital’, he says. When a man ‘obeys’ God, He requites him with ‘what pleases’ him, while when he ‘disobeys’, God requites him with ‘what displeases’ him. Requital with what is pleasing is called ‘reward’, and requital with what is displeasing or 172 Sufism and Taoism painful is called ‘punishment’. Subjectively, there is naturally a serious difference between ‘reward’ and ‘punishment’, and the dif- ference is keenly felt by the man who obtains ‘reward’ and ‘punish- ment’ respectively. Objectively, however, there is no fundamental difference between the two. For in both cases, God is just acting in ‘obedience’ to the requirement of the archetype. A certain archetype necessarily requires a certain action on the part of a man, and that action necessarily requires, on the part of God, either ‘reward’ or ‘punishment’. Thus when a man obtains something good (i.e., 'reward’), he himself is the one who gives it to him. And when he obtains something bad (i.e., 'punishment’), it is no other than himself that gives it to him. Nay, he is the one who is bountiful ( mun'im ) to him, and he is the one who is his own chastiser ( mu‘ adhdhib ) . So let him praise only himself, and let him blame only himself. ‘And God possesses the irrefutable argument’ (VI, 149) in His Knowledge about men, because Know- ledge follows its objects. There is, however, a still deeper understanding of the problems of this kind, which is as follows. All the ‘possible’ things, in effect, have their root in non-existence. (What is usually regarded as their ‘exis- tence’) is nothing but the existence of the Absolute appearing in various forms of the modes of being peculiar to the ‘ possible’ things in themselves and in their very essences. And this will make you under- stand who is the one who really enjoys and who is the one who really suffers. (That is to say, he who is really pleased by the reward and really pained by the punishment is not the man, but the Absolute which manifests itself in the particular form of the man according to his archetype, which, again, is no other than a state of the Absolute itself.) You will also understand thereby what really is the consequ- ence of every state (or action) of the man. (That is to say, the reward or punishment, as the consequence of every action of the man is in reality a self-manifestation of the Absolute in a particular form determined by that action.) Properly speaking, any consequence (of an action) is simply ‘iqab which is to be understood in the (etymologi- cal) sense of ‘what follows or results’ (‘ aqaba ). ‘Iqab in this sense comprises both a good consequence and a bad consequence, except that in the conventional usage of Arabic, only a bad consequence is called ‘iqab (in the sense of ‘punishment’), while a good consequence is called thawab ‘reward’. If the true meanings of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘reward’ and ‘punishment’ are what we have just seen, what, then, is the significance of God’s raising among men ‘apostles’ whose function is generally thought to be bidding people do good and avoid evil in order to attain happi- ness? It is to be expected that in the particular context of Ibn ‘Arabi’s theory, the conception of ‘apostle’ ( rasul ) should turn out to be radically different from the ordinary one. Permanent A rche types 173 Comparing the apostles to physicians, Ibn ‘Arab! explicates his idea about apostleship as follows: 28 Know that, just as a physician is said to be a ‘servant of Nature’ ( khadim al-(abi‘ah ), so the apostles and their successors are com- monly said to be the ‘servants of the Divine Command’, (i.e., It is generally held that the apostles are physicians of the souls, whose function it is to keep the souls in good health and, in case the souls happen to be ill, to bring them back to their normal state.) In reality, however, the apostles are servants of the ontological modes of the possible things (i.e., their real function is to ‘serve’, that is, to try to bring out exactly what is required by the essences of the possible things in their archetypal states). But this service of theirs is itself part of their own ontological modes ( ahwal ) which are peculiar to them in their state of archetypal subsistence. See how marvellous this is. Note, however, that the ‘servant’ to be sought after here, (whether a servant of Nature or a servant of an ontological mode of a possible thing) must remain within the boundaries which the object of his service (i.e., either a sick person or an ontological mode) determines, either by the actual state or by language, (i.e., A physician cures his patient either according to the observed bodily state of the patient or according to what the patient verbally asks for). A physician would be entitled to be called (unconditionally) a ‘ser- vant of Nature’ only if he consistently acted to help promote Nature, (but actually no physician is supposed to do such a thing, as will be evident from the following consideration). A physician (is usually called for in those cases in which) Nature has produced in the body of his patient a special state for which the patient is called ‘ill’ . Now if the physician in such a situation (unreservedly) ‘served’ Nature, the illness of the patient would thereby simply be increased. So (instead of helping it) he tries to repel and keep off Nature for the sake of health by producing in the patient another bodily state which is just the opposite of his present state, although, to be sure, ‘health’ itself belongs to Nature, too. Thus it is clear that the physician is not a ‘servant of Nature’ (i.e., he does not serve Nature consistently in all cases without distinction). He is only a ‘servant of Nature’ in the sense that he brings the body of his patient back to health by altering his present bodily state by means of Nature. He serves Nature in a very particular way, not in a general way. The physician must not serve and promote Nature in all circum- stances without discrimination. When, for example, Nature has pro- duced an unhealthy state like diarrhea, he must try to restrain the activity of Nature, and to produce a healthy state. But, since the healthy state thus produced is also part of Nature, he is, by produc- ing it, serving after all the same Nature. And this analogy elucidates the function of the apostle who is the physician of the souls. 174 I® Sufism and Taoism | Thus the physician serves Nature and does not serve Nature. Like- wise, the apostles and their successors serve and do not serve the Absolute (i.e., they serve the Divine Command not in all its aspects, but only in its beneficial aspect). $ This means that the apostle is a servant of the Divine Command only, and not a servant of the Divine Will. The Divine Command does not necessarily coincide with the Will. On the contrary, there often occurs discrepancy between the two. For the Command is | issued regardless of whether it will be obeyed or not, that is, whether what is commanded will actually occur or not, while the Will is absolute, what is willed being of such a nature that it necessarily % occurs. In those cases in which there is discrepancy between the Command and the Will, the apostle serves the Command, not the Will. If he served the Will, the apostle, instead of trying to curb evil, ^ would rather positively promote the evil-doers, and he would not advise them to stop doing evil. But strangely enough, if the occurr- ence of ‘evil’, when it does actually occur, is due to the Will, the admonishing act of the apostle against it is also due to the Divine t Will. In a similar way, the effect of a ‘miracle’ will also appear to be far less powerful than is commonly imagined. For no matter how many miracles may be performed, what is determined by the archetypes can never be altered. The apostles are possessed of a special spiritual power called himmah 29 which enables them to perform 5 miracles. But whether they do exercise this supernatural faculty or | not, the result will ultimately be the same, because the actual course of events will never deviate from what has already been determined by the archetypes. The apostles know very well that when a miracle is performed in the presence of the (disbelieving) people, some of them turn believers on S the spot, while some others recognize it but do not show any assent to it, acting unjustly, haughtily, and out of envy. There are even some who class it as magic and hypnotism. All the apostles are aware of this, and know that no one becomes a believer except when God has illumined his heart by the Light of belief, and that, if the person does not look at (a miracle performed) with this light which is called ‘belief’, the miracle is of no avail to him. This knowledge prevents them from exercising their himmah in search of miracles, because miracles do not have an effect uniformly on all the spectators and their hearts. To this refers the saying of God concerning the most perfect of the apostles and the most knowledgeable of all men: ‘Verily thou dost not guide aright whomever thou desirest to guide, but it is God who guides whomever He wishes.’ (XXVIII, 56) . . . In addition to this He says in the same place: ‘but He is best aware of those who are guided Permanent Archetypes 175 aright' (XXVIII, 56), that is to say, of those who have imparted to God - through their own permanent archetypes, while still in the state of non-existence - the knowledge that they would be guided aright. All this because God has so decreed that the Knowledge should follow its object in every case, and a man who was a believer in the archetypal permanence and in the state of non-existence should come into existence exactly according to that fixed form: God knows of every man that he will come into existence in such-and-such a form. And this is why He says: ‘but He is best aware of those who are guided aright’, 30 The gist of Ibn ‘ Arabi’s argument is given by al-Qashani in a more logical form, as follows : 31 A perfect knowledge (possessed by the apostles) of the reality of the things necessarily requires that they should behave with humble modesty in the presence of God and that they should not display the power of disposing things at will nor exercise their himmah upon anything. For he who really knows the truth knows that nothing at all comes into being except that which has been in the Eternal Know- ledge. Everything that has been known (by the Absolute) to occur cannot but occur, and anything that has been known not to occur can never occur. The whole matter is thus reduced ultimately to a relation between an Agent who knows what is in potentiality in the recipient, and a recipient which does not receive except that which is in its essential and natural ‘preparedness’. And if such is the case, upon what is an apostle to exercise his himmah ? What is the use of his exercising the himmah ? For anything whose actual occurrence or non-occurrence is known from the very beginning can in no way be altered by his himmah. The himmah cannot even advance or retard the exact point of time which is assigned to the thing from eternity. Thus the recipient does not receive except that which the Agent knows from the beginning that it will receive, while the Agent, on His part, does nothing except that which the recipient essentially is to receive. This because the archetypes strictly require by themselves from eternity to eternity what will actually happen to them when they come out into existence, while the Agent-Knower knows only that (i.e., that which is determined by the archetypes). V The Mystery of Predestination As we have repeatedly pointed out in the preceding, the way in which each thing receives existence from the Absolute is strictly determined by its own ‘preparedness’. The determining power of the ‘preparedness’ ( isti‘dad ) is supreme and even the Absolute must follow what it requires . 32 Now the thesis of the absoluteness of the determining power of 176 Sufism and Taoism § the ‘preparedness’ is naturally and essentially connected with the problem of predestination. The problem of predestination was raised and discussed as something of a vital importance from the earliest period of Islam under the key-terms qada and qadar. Ibn ‘Arab! takes up the same problem and discusses it from his particu- lar viewpoint in terms of the theory of the archetypes. Know that the ‘pre-determination’ (qada) is a decisive judgment (hukm, or decree) of God concerning the things. God’s decisive judgment concerning things is given in strict accordance with His Knowledge of the latter themselves and their properties. And God’s Knowledge about the things is based on what is given by the very essences of the things. And the ‘allotment’ (qadar) is the specification of the appointed time at which each of the things should actually occur in accordance with its archetypal state without any alteration. But the qada itself, when it decides upon the destiny of each thing, does so only in accordance with its archetype. And this is the mystery of the qadar. ... Thus, the Judge (hakim) who issues a decree turns out in reality to be | acting in obedience to the demand of the very thing upon which He makes the decision in accordance with the requirement of its essence. In this sense, the thing upon which the decision is made according to its essence determines the Judge so that He should decide upon it in strict accordance with what it requires. And, in fact, every ‘judge’ who makes a decision upon something becomes determined (lit.: decided) by the object on which he makes a decision as well as by the ground on which he makes the decision, be the ‘judge’ who he may (i.e., whether he be the Absolute or a human being ). 33 Everything, as we already know, has its essential constitution irrevocably determined in the archetypal state of non-existence. God knows it from eternity as it essentially is. And on the basis of the requirement of this perfect Knowledge God makes a decisive judgment concerning the thing. And this judgment is the qada d 4 The qadar specifies and determines further what has been decided by the qada . The specification is done in terms of time. In other words, every state to be actualized in a thing is determined by the qadar concretely as to the definite time at which it is to occur. The qada does not contain any time determinations. It is the qadar that assigns to every event its peculiar time. And once determined in this way, nothing can occur even a minute earlier or later than the assigned time. Al-Qashani makes an interesting remark on the relation between the qada and the qadar in reference to the Tradition. It is related that the Prophet once passed under a wall which was about to fall down. Somebody gave him warning against it and asked, ‘Do you flee from the qada ’ of God?’ To this the Prophet replied, ‘I flee from the qada’ to the qadarV The falling down of the wall may have been Permanent Archetypes 1 '' a matter already decided upon, i.e., qada . But, even if the falling down of the wall was in itself an absolutely inescapable thing, the question as to when it would actually occur was not part of the qada’ . So there was at least room for the Prophet to escape being crushed by the falling wall by having recourse to the qadar of the wall. The relation between the qada ’ and the qadar has been described here in such a way that it will naturally suggest to our mind that the former precedes the latter. This description should not be regarded as final and ultimate, for there is a deeper aspect to the whole matter. We have just said that the qadar is a ‘further’ specification of the qada ’ in terms of time. In reality, however, God determines the qada’ of a thing in accordance with His Knowledge, which, in its turn, follows in every detail the essential structure of the object of the Knowledge. And the object of the Knowledge is, as we have seen above, the permanent archetype of the thing. And most natur- ally, the specification of time - or, for that matter, all the possible specifications of the thing - is part of the archetype. 35 In this sense, the qadar itself is determined by the archetype. Or we might even say that the qadar is the permanent archetype. 36 There is, however, a subtle difference between the two. The permanent archetype in itself is a Universal transcending the level of time; it is an intelligible in the Divine Consciousness. When a Universal is about to go into the state of actual existence and is about to be particularized in the form of an individual thing, it becomes first connected with a particular point of time and thereby becomes temporally specialized. An archetype in such a state is called qadar. It is, in other words, an archetype in a state where all preparations have been completed for being actualized as a con- crete existent. Since God, on His part, knows all the conditions of the archetypes, He knows also that such-and-such an archetype is in a fully prepared state for being actualized. And, based on this Knowledge, He judges that this archetype will be actualized as such-and-such a particular thing. This judgment or decree is the qada’. Thus we see that there is a certain respect in which the qadar , instead of being preceded by the qada’ , does precede the qada and determines it. However this may be, it is certain that qadar is an extremely delicate state in which an archetype is about to actualize itself in the form of a concretely existent thing. To know qadar, therefore, is to peep into the ineffable mystery of Being, for the whole secret of Being extending from God to the world is disclosed therein. Ibn ‘Arab! remarks that ‘the mystery of qadar is one of the highest knowledges, which God grants only to (a small number of) men who 178 Sufism and Taoism are privileged with a perfect mystical intuition’ . If a man happens to obtain the true knowledge of qadar, the knowledge surely brings him a perfect peace of mind and an intolerable pain at the same time . 37 The unusual peace of mind arises from the consciousness that everything in the world occurs as it has been determined from eternity. And whatever may happen to himself or others, he will be perfectly content with it. Instead of struggling in vain for obtaining what is not in his capacity, he will be happy with anything that is given him. He must be tormented, on the other hand, by an intense pain at the sight of all the so-called ‘injustices’, ‘evils’, and ‘suffer- ings’ that reign rampant around him, being keenly conscious that it is not in his ‘preparedness’ to remove them from the world. Ibn ‘Arab! ends this passage by expressing a deep admiration for the supreme dominion of the qadar over the entire world of Being . 38 The reality of the qadar extends its sway over the Absolute Being (in the sense that the Absolute is decisively influenced by the ‘prepared- ness’ of each thing when the Absolute decides its qada’) as well as over the limited beings (in the sense that no being is given anything beyond what has been determined by its own archetype). Nothing can be more perfect than the qadar, nothing can be more powerful nor greater than it, because of the universality of its effect, sometimes extending to all things and sometimes limited to particular things. There is another passage in the Fusus, in which Ibn ‘Arab! pursues further the problem of the knowledge of the qadar. This time he attempts a classification of men into several degrees based on the extent to which they know about the qadar. As we have seen above, to know something about the qadar is nothing other than knowing something about the permanent archetypes. But how can man know the truth about the archetypes? The archetypes are a deep mystery, the true reality of which is known only to the Absolute, because it is the inner structure of the Divine Consciousness. Thus it comes about that the majority of people are simply ignorant of the archetypes, and consequently, of the qadar. These people constitute the lowest degree on the scale. They know nothing about the determining force of the archetypes, i.e., about the significance of the qada and qadar. Because of their ignorance, they ask and implore God to do for them this and that; they naively believe that by the power of prayer they can change the eternally fixed course of events. Higher than this degree is the degree of people who are aware of the unalterableness of the archetypal determinations. They do not ask for things against or beyond what they know is determined. Permanent Archetypes 179 These people are restrained from asking (God) by their knowledge that God has already unalterably decided their qada’. So they are content with having prepared their places for accepting whatever will come from Him. They have already abandoned their egos and all their selfish motives . 39 Among people of this kind there are some who know more in detail that the determining power of the qada’ and qadar is the determining power of the ‘preparedness’ of their own permanent archetypes. They know, so to speak, the inner structure of the qada ’ and qadar. These people constitute the third degree of men in terms of their knowledge about the mystery of Being. This kind of man knows that God’s Knowledge concerning every- thing about him completely coincides with what he was in the state of archetypal subsistence prior to his coming into existence. And he knows that God does not give him except the exact amount deter- mined by the Knowledge about himself with which his archetypal essence has furnished Him. Thus he knows the very origin of God’s Knowledge about him. There is no higher class among the people of God. They are the most ‘unveiled’ of all men, because they know the mystery of the qadar .* 0 But Ibn ‘Arab! divides this highest class further into two groups, higher and lower. The lower degree is represented by those who know the mystery of the qadar in a broad and general way. The higher degree is represented by those who know it in all its concrete details. In another place , 41 Ibn ‘Arab! explains the same distinction be- tween the higher and the lower degree of the highest class of ‘know- ers’ in terms of ‘preparedness’ and ‘receiving’ ( qabiil ). The higher people are those who come to know the ‘receiving’ by knowing first the ‘preparedness’ by the experience of ‘unveiling’ . Once you know your ‘preparedness’ itself in its integrity, you are in a position to look over from above the whole field of the ‘receiving’, and nothing of what you will be receiving (i.e., what will be happening to you) will be unknown to you any longer. You are, in other words, the master of your own destiny. In contrast to this, the lower people come to know their own ‘preparedness’ by experiencing first the ‘receiving’. Only after taking cognizance of what actually has hap- pened to them do they realize that they have such-and-such a ‘preparedness’ . So the knowledge they obtain of their destiny, being conditioned by what actually happens, is necessarily partial. Besides, as al-Qashani points out, the knowledge thus obtained is always liable to be mistaken because the process involves inference (istidlal) . Concerning this distinction within the higher degree Ibn ‘Arab! remarks : 42 180 Sufism and Taoism He who knows his own qadar in concrete details is higher and more complete than the one who knows his qadar only in a broad and general way. For the former knows what is in the Knowledge of God concerning him. He obtains his knowledge in one of the two possible ways: either (1) by God’s instructing him according to the very knowledge about him which his archetypal essence has first furnished Him with, or (2) by his permanent archetype being directly revealed to him together with all the infinite states that unfold themselves from it. This kind of man is higher because his position in regard to his knowledge about himself is the same as that of God’s Knowledge about him, for both derive from one and the same source (i.e., his permanent archetype). This important passage may be clarified if we interpret it as follows. Everything in the world is eternally and permanently determined by its own archetype. The inner structure or content of that archetype, however, is an impenetrable mystery because it is part of the Divine Consciousness. But there is only one small aperture, so to speak, through which man can have a peep into this unfathom- able mystery. That aperture is the self-consciousness of man. Very exceptionally, when the spiritual force of a man is unusually ele- vated in the experience of ‘unveiling’, he may be given a chance of witnessing directly the content of his own archetype. And in such a case, his knowledge about his own archetype is the same as God’s Knowledge about him, in the sense that both derive from one and the same source. And by knowing his own archetype, not externally but internally, he takes a peep at the great mystery of the qadar. However, this does not mean that the Knowledge of God and the knowledge of a highest ‘knower’ are exactly identical with each other in every respect. For the knowledge of a man about his own archetype is conditioned by the actual forms or states in which the archetype is manifested. Though he looks into the content of his archetype with an unusual penetration of insight through and beyond the actual forms it assumes, he has no access to the archetype as it was in the original state prior to existence. (It is true that there occurs in the experience of ‘unveiling’ identification of the human knowledge with God’s Knowledge), but if we consider this phenomenon from the side of the man, the whole matter turns out to be a special favor on the part of God who has prepared all this for him from eternity. And (the greatest wonder consists in the fact that) this special favor which God bestows upon him is itself part of the very content of his archetype. The man who experiences the ‘unveiling’ comes to know the whole content of his archetype when God lets him have a peep into it. But ‘God lets him have a peep into it’ means only that God allows him to observe (with unusual clarity and penetration) the states of his Permanent Archetypes 181 archetype (as actualized in existence). For it is not in the capacity of any creature at all - even in such a (privileged) state in which God allows him to have an insight into all the forms of his permanent archetype in the state in which it receives existence - to gain the same insight as God Himself into the archetypes in their state of non- existence, because the archetypes prior to existence are but essential relations having no definite form at all. 43 From this we must conclude that although there is a certain respect in which a man’s knowledge about his archetype becomes identical with God’s Knowledge about it in that both derive from one and the same source, there is also a fundamental difference between the two in that the human knowledge about an archetype concerns it only in the state of existence while God’s Knowledge concerns it both before and after its existence. Furthermore, even this partial identification of the human knowledge with the Divine Knowledge is due to a special 1 concern’ of God with the particular man in whom it realizes. The only way possible by which man can hope to get this kind of insight into the archetypes is, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, the experi- ence of ‘unveiling’ . Apart from ‘unveiling’ nothing, not even Divine Revelation to prophets, can give a knowledge of the inner structure of the archetypes. But this does not mean that the experience of ‘unveiling’ reveals the whole secret of this problem. Ibn ‘Arabi is very reserved concerning this point. He merely says that in extremely special cases, the people of ‘unveiling’ can come to know through their experience something of the mystery (ba‘d al-umur min dhalik ). 44 The true reality of the qadar in its entirety is the deepest of all secrets into which God alone can penetrate, because it concerns the very delicate ontological moments at which the Divine act of ‘creation’ comes into actual relation with its objects. And in this depth, ‘There can be no “immediate tasting” ( dhawq ), no self-manifestation, no “unveiling” except for God alone’. Compared with Ibn ‘Arabi, al-Qashani is extremely daring in that he admits straightforwardly that in the case of the mystics of the highest degree there is even the possibility of knowing the reality of the qadar in an absolute way. There is in these words of our Master a clear suggestion that it is not impossible nor forbidden for a man to try to have an insight (into the secret of the qadar) through the experience of ‘unveiling’ and ‘illumi- nation’ (tajalli) It is possible for God to let anybody He likes gain an insight into ‘something’ of the mystery in a partial way. Is it possible for a man to gain an unconditional insight into it? No, he can never do that in so far as he is a man. However, when a man becomes annihilated (i.e., in the mystical experience of 182 Sufism and Taoism ‘self-annihilation’ fana’) and loses his name and his personal identity to such a degree that there remains in him no trace of his I-ness and his own essence, thus losing himself completely, then it is possible that he gains an insight into the Reality through the Reality in so far as he himself is the Reality. Of course such a thing never happens except to a man of the most perfect ‘preparedness ’. 46 A man who is allowed to have an insight into the depth of the qadar through ‘immediate tasting’ and ‘unveiling’, whether the insight he gains be partial (as Ibn ‘Arabi suggests) or total and absolute (as al-Qashani states), is not an ordinary man. We are in the presence of a Perfect Man, a problem with which we shall be occupied in Chapter XV of the present work. VI The Mutual ‘Constraint’ between God and the World We have seen in the preceding that, in the world-view of Ibn ‘Arabi, the power of the ‘preparedness’ belonging to each of the archetypes is absolutely supreme, so supreme that no force, not even God Himself, can reduce it. Indeed, it is impossible for God even to desire to change its fixed form. Ibn ‘Arabi describes this fact in terms of the concept of reciprocal taskhir between the Absolute and the world. The word taskhir , or its verbal form sakhkhara, means in ordinary Arabic, in the field of human relations, that a person endowed with a strong power humbles and overwhelms another and constrains the latter to do whatever he wants him to do. Thus here again Ibn ‘Arab! uses an extremely daring expression which might look simply blasphemous to common sense, and states that as the Absolute ‘constrains’ the world, so the world, on its part, ‘constrains’ the Absolute. The idea that God governs the world, things and men, with His absolute power and ‘constrains’ everything to do whatever He wants it to do is something natural in Semitic monotheism and does not raise any difficulties; but its reverse, i.e., the idea that the world ‘constrains’ God, is beyond the comprehension of common sense. This idea is understandable and acceptable only to those who know thoroughly the basic structure of Ibn ‘ Arabi’s philosophy and who, therefore, are able to see what he really means by this apparently blasphemous expression. To put it in a nutshell, he means that each thing determines existence in a particular way as required by its own ‘preparedness’, or that the self-manifestation of the Absolute is actualized in each thing in a definite form in strict accordance with the requirement of the archetype. Thus formulated, the idea turns out to be one which is already quite familiar to us. But this does not mean that the idea of taskhir discloses nothing new to our eyes. In Permanent Archetypes 183 fact the ontological core itself of Ibn ‘Arabi’s entire philosophizing is surprisingly simple and solidly immovable; it is the different angles from which he considers it that constantly move and change, revealing at every step a new aspect of the core. Every new angle discloses some unexpected aspect of it. As he goes on changing his perspective, his philosophy becomes molded into a definite form. This process itself is, in short, his philosophy. The concept of taskhir is one of those crucial perspectives. As we have already observed, there are, in Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, a number of degrees distinguishable among the beings of the world. And the general rule is that a higher order exercises taskhir over a lower order. And this not only applies to the relation between genera and species, but the same phenomenon occurs even among members of one and the same species. A man, for example, subju- gates and subordinates another. This is made possible in the particular case of man by the fact that man has two different aspects: (1) ‘humanity’ (insaniyah) and (2) ‘animality’ (hayawaniyah) . In the first aspect, man is ‘perfect’ ( kamil ), and the Arabic word for man in this sense is insan. The second aspect represents the material and animal side of man, and the Arabic word for man in this sense is bashar. 41 And the attribute proper to this aspect of man is ‘imperfect’ or ‘defective’ ( naqi $ ). In the first aspect, all men are equal to each other; there is no difference of orders or degrees among them, and, therefore, taskhir cannot occur on this level. In the second aspect, on the contrary, there is actually the ‘higher’ -‘lower’ relation among men in terms of wealth, rank, dignity, intelligence, etc. Naturally, on this level, a ‘higher’ man subjugates a ‘lower’ man. 48 To this we must add that the ‘animality’ of man and the ‘animality’ of the animals, though both are the same qua ‘animality’, are different in rank, the former being superior to the latter. Thus the ‘animality’ of man subjugates and constrains the ‘animality’ of the animals. The animality of man maintains its control over the animality of the animals, because, for one thing, God has made the latter naturally subservient to the former, but mainly because animal in its ontologi- cal root (a$/) is non-animal. This is why animal surpasses man in the amount of taskhir it suffers. For a non-animal (i.e., inanimate, which happens to be the ontological root of animal) possesses no will; it is completely at the mercy of one who controls it at will . 49 Thus Ibn ‘Arabi shows at the outset the descending order of taskhir. man -» animal — »• non-animal. Animal vis-a-vis man dis- closes its ontological ‘root’ which is non-animal. Thus, although man himself is also an animal, his animality is superior to the 184 Sufism and Taoism animality of animal, because non-human animal in the presence of human animal stands naked, so to speak, in its non-animal root, and behaves toward the latter as a non-animal devoid of will-power. But an animal taken as a full-fledged animal, and not in its non-animal root, is quite different from this. But animal (not in its root but as an actual being) has will and acts in pursuit of aims. So it comes about that an animal displays obstinate refusal to obey in some cases when one tries to subjugate it. If the animal in question happens to possess the power to manifest this refusal, it does manifest it in the form of restiveness. But if it happens to lack that power or if what a man wants it to do happens to coincide with what it wants to do, then the animal obeys with docility the will of the man. Similarly a man standing in the same position (as animal vis-a-vis man) to another man acts in obedience to the will of the latter because of something - wealth, for instance - by which God has raised the rank of the latter over the former. He acts this way because he wishes to obtain (part of) the wealth, which in certain cases is called ‘wages’ . To this refers the Qoranic verse: ‘And We have raised some of the people above others by degrees so that they might force one another to servitude’ (XLIII, 32). If (of two men) one is subju- gated and constrained by the other who is his equal (as a member of the same species ‘man’), it is only because of his ‘animality’, not ‘humanity’, for two equals qua equals remain opposed to each other (and there can be no taskhir between them). Thus the higher of the two in terms of wealth or social status subjugates the lower, acting thereby on the basis of his ‘humanity’, while the lower is subjugated by the former either from fear or covetousness, acting on the basis of his ‘animality’, not ‘humanity’. For no one can subjugate anybody who is equal to him in every respect. Do you not see how the beasts (that are so docilely subjugated by men) show among themselves a fierce and determined opposition to each other because they are equal? This is why God says: ‘And We have raised some of the people above others by degrees’, . . . and taskhir occurs precisely because of these different degrees. 50 Ibn ‘ ArabI distinguishes between two kinds of taskhir. One of them is what has just been described. It is called ‘constraining by will’ (taskhir bi-al-iradah ). It refers to a descending order of taskhir, in which a higher being constrains a lower, and which is quite a natural phenomenon observable everywhere in the world of Being. In contrast to this, the second is an ascending order of taskhir, in which a lower being subjugates and constrains a higher being. In this phenomenon, ‘will’ ( iradah ) has no part to play. A lower being does not and can not constrain a higher one by exercising his will. Rather the higher being is constrained by the very natural state in which the lower being is found. It is therefore called ‘constraining by the state Permanent Archetypes 185 (or situation)’ (taskhir bi-al-hal ). Here the ‘constraining’ occurs by the mere fact that the lower and the higher happen to be in a certain relationship with each other. The difference between the two kinds of taskhir is explained by Ibn ‘Arabi in the following way : 51 The taskhir is of two kinds. The first is a taskhir which occurs by the will of the ‘constrained ( musakhkhir ) who subdues by force the ‘constrained’ (musakhkhar) . This is exemplified by the taskhir exer- cised by a master over his slave, though both are equal in ‘humanity’ . Likewise the taskhir exercised by a Sultan over his subjects in spite of the fact that the latter are equal to him as far as their ‘humanity’ is concerned. The Sultan constrains them by virtue of his rank. The second kind is the taskhir by the ‘state’ or ‘situation’, like the taskhir exercised by the subjects over their king who is charged with the task of taking care of them, e.g., defending and protecting them, fighting the enemies who attack them, and preserving their wealth and their lives, etc. In all these things, which are the taskhir by the ‘state’, the subjects do constrain their sovereign. 52 In reality, how- ever, this should be called taskhir of the ‘position’ (martabah ) , 53 because it is the ‘position’ that compels the king to act in that way. Some kings (just ignore this and) act only for their own selfish purposes. But there are some who are aware that they are being constrained by their subjects because of their ‘position’ . The kings of this latter kind know rightly how to estimate their subjects. And God requites them for this with the reward worthy to be given only to those who really know the truth of the matter. The reward which such people obtain is for God alone to give because of His being involved personally in the affairs of His servants. Thus, in this sense, the whole world acts by its very ‘state’ as a ‘constrained who constrains the One who is impossible (on the level of common sense) to be called ‘con- strained’. This is the meaning of God’s saying: ‘Every day He is in some affair’ (LV, 29). This makes clear that the proposition: ‘the Absolute is “con- strained” by the creatures’ - a proposition which is unimaginable on the level of common sense - has no other meaning for Ibn ‘ Arab! than that the Absolute perpetually manifests itself in the affairs (shu’un, i.e., various states and acts) of the creatures and confers upon them all kinds of properties in accordance with the require- ments of their ‘preparedness’. According to his interpretation, the Qoranic verse: ‘Every day He is in some affair’ refers to this fact, meaning as it does, ‘every day (i.e., perpetually) the Divine “He” (i.e., He-ness) is manifesting itself in this or that mode of being in the creatures, according to the requirement of the “preparedness” of each’. Thus, from whatever angle he may start, Ibn ‘Arabi ultimately comes back to the central concept of ‘self-manifestation’. And the 186 Sufism and Taoism problem of taskhir in this context is reduced to that of the self- manifestation of the Absolute being determined variously in accor- dance with the natural capacities of the individual existents. We may express the same thing, still within the framework of Ibn ‘Arabi’s world-view, by saying that the permanent archetypes, or the eternal potentialities, must obey the strictly necessary and unchangeable laws laid down by themselves, when they become actualized in individual things. Taskhir is after all the supreme power exercised by the ‘preparedness’ of each thing. God’s self-manifestation varies according to the ‘preparedness’ of each individual locus. Junayd 54 was asked once about the mystical knowledge ( ma'rifah ) of God and the ‘knower’ (‘ arif ). He replied. ‘The color of water is the color of its vessel’ . This is, indeed an answer which hits the mark, for it describes the matter as it really is. ss Water has no color of its own; it is rather colored by the color of the vessel which contains it. This metaphor implies that the Abso- lute has no particular form to which we might point as the Form of the Absolute. The truth of the matter is that the Absolute manifests itself in infinitely various forms according to the particularities of the recipients. And the receptive power of the latter plays a decisive role in ‘coloring’ the originally ‘colorless’ Absolute. The Divine Name, the ‘Last’ ( al-dkhir ) expresses this aspect of the Absolute. The ‘Last’, i.e., One whose place is behind all, refers to that particu- lar aspect of the Absolute in which it ‘follows’ the inborn capacity (or ‘preparedness’) of everything. Taken in this sense, the taskhir of God by the creatures is something quite natural, particularly in the philosophical system of Ibn ‘Arabl. But it is not for everybody to understand the problem in this way. A man who has but ‘a feeble intellect’, Ibn ‘Arabi says, cannot tolerate the dictum that God is ‘ constrained’ . Such a man misunder- stands the concept of the Omnipotence of God, and sets against this dictum another dictum that God can do everything, even impossible things. And by this he imagines that he has ‘purified’ ( tanzih ) God from weakness and disability. Some of the thinkers whose intellect is feeble, being misled by the conviction that God is able to do whatever He wants to do, have come to declare it possible for God to do even those things that flatly contradict Wisdom and the real state of things. 56 VII Gifts of God We know already that the self-manifestation of the Absolute means, among other things, bestowal of Being. Being or existence is Permanent Archetypes 187 in this sense a precious gift bestowed by God upon all beings. Ibn ‘Arab! discusses the nature of the archetypes from this particular point of view and emphasizes here again the decisive part played by them. In fact, the theory of the Divine gifts occupies a considerably important place in his philosophy, and he develops in the Fusus a very detailed analysis of this problem. He begins by classifying the gifts of the Absolute. 57 Know that the Divine gifts and favors, which appear in this world of Becoming through the medium of men or without their medium, are of two kinds: (1) ‘essential gifts’ (‘atdyd dhatiyah) and (2) 'gifts given through the Names f atdyd asmaiyah). The distinction be- tween these two kinds is clearly discerned by the people of ‘immedi- ate tasting’. There is also (another way of classifying the Divine gifts, according to which three kinds of gifts are distinguished:) (1) gifts that are given in response to an act of asking (on the part of the creatures) concerning some particular thing. This occurs when, for example, a man says, ‘O my Lord, give me such-and-such a thing!’ The man specifies a par- ticular thing which he desires; he does not think of anything else. (2) Gifts that are given in response to a non-specified asking. This occurs when a man says without any specification, ‘(My Lord,) give me what Thou knowest to be beneficial to any part of my being, whether spiritual or physical. (3) Gifts that are given independently of any act of asking (on the part of the creatures), whether the gifts in question be ‘essential’ or ‘through the Names’. The theory of the Divine gifts that underlies the first of these two classifications is nothing else than the theory of the self- manifestation of the Absolute considered from a somewhat new point of view. The Essence ( dhat ) of the Absolute, as we saw above in dealing with the concept of ontological ‘breathing’, pervades and runs through all beings. From the specific point of view of the present chapter, this means that the Absolute gives its own Essence, as it were, as a gift to all beings. Likewise, the Attributes (or Names) of the Absolute are manifested in the attributes of all beings. This would mean that the Absolute has given its Attributes as gifts to the creaturely world. It is to be remarked that both these gifts corres- pond to the (3) of the second classification mentioned above. These gratuitous gifts are given by God to all, regardless of whether they ask for them or not. In common-sense understanding, a gift is generally given by God when someone asks Him to give it to him. In the second classification given above, Ibn ‘Arab! divides the ‘asking’ into specified and non-specified. Whether in a specified form or in a non-specified form, however, when a man asks anything of God, he is completely under the sway 188 Sufism and Taoism of his own ‘preparedness’ . What he obtains as a result of his asking is determined by his ‘preparedness’. Even the fact itself that he asks for anything is determined by his ‘preparedness’. If everything is predetermined in this way, and if nothing at all can ever happen except that which has been predetermined, why do people ask anything of God? In answering this question, Ibn ‘ Arabi divides ‘those who ask’ ( sa’ilun ) into two categories, and says: 58 The first category is formed by those who are urged to ask by their natural impatience, for man is by nature ‘very impatient’ (XVII, 11). The second are those who feel urged to ask because they know that there are in the hands of God certain things which are predetermined in such a way that they shall not be obtained unless asked for. A man of this sort thinks, ‘It may be that the particular thing which we ask God to give happens to belong to this kind’ . His asking, in this case, is a kind of precaution taken for any possibility in the matter. (He takes such an attitude) because he knows neither what is in the Knowledge of God nor what the ‘preparedness’ (i.e., his own ‘preparedness’ and that of the thing he is asking for) will cause him to receive. For it is extremely difficult to know concerning every single moment what the ‘preparedness’ of an individual will give him in that very fraction of time. Besides, if the asking itself were not given by the ‘prepared- ness’, he would not even ask for anything. Those, of the people of the (constant) ‘presence’ (with God), 59 who cannot attain to such a (comprehensive) knowledge of their own ‘preparedness’, can at least attain to the point at which they obtain a knowledge of their ‘pre- paredness’ at every present moment. For due to their (constant) ‘presence’, they know what the Absolute has just given them at that moment, being well aware at the same time that they have received precisely what they have received because of their ‘preparedness’. These people are subdivided into two classes: 60 ( 1) those who obtain knowledge about their own ‘preparedness’ judging by what they have received, and (2) those who know on the basis of (their knowledge of) their own ‘preparedness’ what they are going to receive. And this last represents the most perfect knowledge conceivable of the ‘pre- paredness’ within this class of people. To this class also belong those who ask, not because of their natural impatience (the first category) nor because of the possibility (of the thing they want being dependent upon their asking (the second category), but who ask simply in obedience to God’s Command as expressed by His words: ‘Call upon Me, and I shall respond to you’ (XL, 60). Such a man is a typical ‘servant’. He who asks in this way has no personal intention toward anything, specified or non-specified. His sole concern is to act in obedience to whatever his Master commands him to do. So if the objective situation (coming from the archetype) demands asking, he does ask out of sheer piety, but if it demands him to leave everything to God’s care and to keep silence, he does keep silence. Thus, Job and others (like him) were made to endure bitter Permanent Archetypes 189 trials, but they did not ask God to remove the sufferings with which He tried them. But later, when the situation demanded them to ask, (they asked God,) and God did remove their sufferings from them. Thus there are recognizable three categories of ‘those who ask’, each category being characterized by a particular motive from which they ask and by a particular way of asking. But whatever the motive and whatever the way, there seems to be practically no open space for the act itself of asking to be effective. For as we observe at the outset, everything is determined from eternity and the act of asking cannot possibly produce even a slight change in the strictly predetermined course of events. Indeed, man’s asking for some ‘gift’ from God and God’s granting him his wish are also predeter- mined. As Ibn ‘Arabi says: 61 Whether the request is immediately complied with or put off depends upon the qadar which God Himself has decided from eternity. 62 If the asking occurs exactly at its determined time, God responds to it immediately, but in case its determined time is to come later, whether in this world or in the Hereafter, God’s compliance with the request is also deferred. Note that by compliance (or response) here I do not mean the verbal response consisting in God’s saying, ‘Here I am!’ 63 What we have just dealt with concerns the situation in which man positively asks of God something, in a specified or non-specified way. And we have noticed the supreme determining power exer- cised by the ‘preparedness’ and qadar in such cases. We turn now to the problem of gifts that are given independently of any positive act of asking on the part of man. Since this represents the self- manifestation of the Absolute in its typical form, it will be clear even without any further explanation that the nature of the particular thing that receives a gift of this kind (i.e., the nature of the locus of the self-manifestation) exercises a decisive influence upon the whole process. Our main concern will be, therefore, with an analysis of the way Ibn ‘Arabi deals with the problem on the level of theoretical thinking. He begins by pointing out that the word ‘asking’ in this particular case means specifically verbal asking. Otherwise, everything is ‘ask- ing’ in some form or another in a broad sense. So by the phrase: ‘gifts that are not due to asking’, he simply means, he says, those gifts that are given independently of verbal asking. Non-verbal ‘asking’ is divided into two kinds: (1) ‘asking by situation’ ( su’al bi-al-hal ), and (2) ‘asking by preparedness’ ( su’al bi-al-istV dad ). Of these two kinds Affifi gives the following explana- tion. 64 The ‘asking by situation’ is reducible to the second type of non-verbal asking, because the objective situation of a thing or a person asking for something depends ultimately on the nature of the 190 Sufism and Taoism ‘preparedness’ of that thing or person. When a man is ill, for example, his situation or state ‘asks for’ something (e.g., being cured), but the illness itself is due to the ‘preparedness’ of that particular man. The ‘asking by preparedness’ concerns this or that attribute pertaining to existence, which the very nature of each existent asks for. This is the only kind of ‘asking’ to which the Absolute responds in the real sense of the word. Thus if something has been predetermined from eternity that it should be such-and- such, and if the nature of that thing actually demands it as it has been predetermined, the demand is immediately satisfied. Everything that happens in this world of Being happens only in this way. To this Affifi adds the remark that this puts the determinist position of Ibn ‘ Arabi beyond all doubt. Only it is not a mechanical material determinism but is rather close, he says, to the Leibnizian concept of pre-established harmony. However this may be, Ibn ‘Arab! himself explains his position in his peculiar way. Here follows what he says about this problem. 65 As regards (gifts) that are not due to asking, it is to be remarked that I mean by ‘asking’ here only the verbal expression of a wish. For properly speaking, nothing can do without ‘asking’ in some form or other, whether by language or situation or ‘preparedness’. (The ‘asking by situation’ may be understood by the following analogy .) 66 An unconditioned praise of God is not possible except in a verbal form. As to its inner meaning, (praise of God) is necessarily con- ditioned by the situation which urges you to praise Him. And (the situation) is that which conditions you (and determines your praise) through a Name denoting an action or a Name denoting ‘puri- fication’. As to the ‘preparedness’, man is not (ordinarily) aware of it, he is only aware of the situation, for he is always conscious of the motive (from which he praises God), and that motive is precisely (what I mean by) ‘situation’. Thus ‘preparedness’ is the most con- cealed of all (grounds of) ‘asking’. Let us first elucidate what is exactly meant by the analogy of ‘praising’. Man praises God (in Arabic) by saying verbally al-hamd li-Allah (i.e., ‘praise be to God!’). 67 Everybody uses the same for- mula. The formula itself in its verbal form remains always uncon- ditioned. But if we go into the psychology of those who cry out al-hamd li-Allah! and analyze it in each particular case, the person A, for example, is thinking of his own bodily state of health and says al-hamd li-Allah as an effusion of his thankfulness for his health, 68 while the person B praises God by the same formula because he is keenly conscious of the greatness and eternity of 69 God. Thus the motive, or the concrete situation, which drives man to use the same formula differs from case to case. This particular motivating situa- tion is called hal, ‘situation’, or ‘state’. Permanent Archetypes 191 Now if we transpose this relation between the varying motives and the use of the same formula to the context of Divine gifts, we can easily grasp the basic structure of the latter. Everything in the world is always ‘asking’ of the Absolute an ontological ‘gift’ accord- ing to the requirement of its own ‘preparedness’ . This general form or pattern is everywhere the same. However, if we take each single unit of time and analyze minutely its content, we find that the ‘asking’ assumes at every moment a unique form according to the concrete situation peculiar to that particular moment. This is the requirement of the ‘situation’. The requirements of the ‘situations’, therefore, are concrete details within the ‘preparedness’ , and are ultimately reducible to the latter. Subjectively, however, i.e., from the standpoint of a particu- lar man, he is clearly conscious of his own ‘situation’, while he is ordinarily unconscious of his ‘preparedness’. A sick man, for instance, asks for health because he feels pain. He is conscious of the motive from which he is making urgent supplication for health. But he is not conscious of the ‘preparedness’ which concerns his very existence and which dominates everything about himself. The ‘preparedness’ for ordinary men is after all an insoluble mystery. So the ‘asking by preparedness’, although it is the most powerful of the above-mentioned three kinds of ‘asking’, turns out to be the ‘most concealed’ of all. Reference has been made to the close relation that exists between the theory of ‘gifts’ and the theory of self-manifestation. In fact both are, as we have observed above, but one thing considered from two different perspectives. I would like to bring the present section to a close by discussing a particular point which emerges when we put these two perspectives together in one place. At the outset of this section we saw Ibn ‘Arabi dividing the ‘gifts’ into two major classes: ( 1) essential gifts and (2) gifts given through the Names. As to the first of these two classes, the word ‘essential’ (dhatiyah) itself will be enough to suggest that it has something to do with the self-manifestation of the Essence ( dhat ). In effect, ‘the essential gifts’ are, from the viewpoint of tajalli , a self-manifestation of the Divine Essence. It is to be noticed, how- ever, that it is a particular kind of essential self-manifestation which is designated by the term ‘holy emanation’. It is not what is desig- nated by the term ‘the most holy emanation’. 70 Ibn ‘Arab! is evi- dently thinking of this distinction when he says: 71 Self-manifestation does not occur from the Essence except in the particular form determined by the locus in which it (the Essence) is manifested. No other way of (essential self-manifestation) is poss- ible. So the locus sees nothing else than its own form as reflected in 192 Sufism and Taoism the mirror of the Absolute. It never sees the Absolute itself. It is utterly impossible for it to see the Absolute although it is conscious that it is perceiving its own form in no other (place) than (the mirror of) the Absolute. The intended meaning of this passage is explicated by al-Qashani in the following way : 72 There can be no self-manifestation coming from the pure attribute- less Essence, because the Essence in its attributeless aspect does not manifest itself to anybody (or anything). Indeed, that which manif- ests itself is the Essence in its aspect of Mercifulness ( rahmaniyah ) 73 . . . , while the Essence qua Essence does not make self- manifestation except to itself. Toward the creatures, the self- manifestation is done exclusively according to the ‘p re P are dness’ of the locus in each case. And this kind of self-manifestation is, as Bali Efendi rightly remarks, nothing other than the ‘holy emanation’. It is the self- manifestation of the Absolute, the direct source of which is the Presence (i.e., ontological level) of the all-comprehensive Name (which comprises all the Names or Attributes gathered together into a unity). Bali Efendi, in the same place, explains with utmost lucidity the relation between this ‘holy emanation’ and the ‘essential gifts’ and ‘the gifts given through the Names’: The self-manifestation whose source is the Essence and which takes a particular form according to the form of its locus is the ‘holy emana- tion’. (This latter is divided into two kinds). (1) When the locus is of such a nature that it receives the self- manifestation of the Essence from the Presence of the comprehen- sive Name, the Essence manifests itself (in that locus) directly from the Presence of the comprehensive unity of all Names. This kind of self-manifestation is called ‘Divine 74 self-manifestation’, and the result of it are the ‘essential gifts’. (2) But when the (locus) is of such a nature that it receives the self-manifestation of the Essence from the particular Presence of one particular Name, the Essence manifests itself from that particular Presence. This is what is called the ‘self-manifestation through an Attribute or a Name’ , and there result from it the ‘gifts given through the Names’. Notes 1. See Chapter IX on Divine Mercy. 2. Fus., p. 114/102. 193 Permanent Archetypes 3. The point will be discussed later under III of the present chapter. 4. Fus., p. 63/76. 5. ibid. 6. Insha’ al-Dawa’ir, ed. Nyberg, pp. 16-17. 7. The first thing is the Absolute, the second is the world, and the third in the order of description is the archetype. 8. op. cit., p. 19. 9. The English word ‘eternal’ in this context must always be strictly understood in the sense of ‘eternal a parte ante' . The dictum: ‘the world is eternal’ means, therefore, that ‘the world has no temporal beginning’, which would seem flatly to contradict the Qoranic teaching of the ‘creation’ of the world. 10. ‘Ibn ‘ Arabi upheld the thesis of the eternity of the world ( qidam al-'alam) with no less definiteness than the Peripatetic Philosophers’ - Affifi, Fus., Com., p. 314- 11. Fus., p. 263/211. 12. Fus., p. 16/51. 13. The Attributes dealt with here are only those that are analogically common to the Absolute and the creatures. The Attributes like Eternity (a parte ante) and Eternity (a parte post) are naturally excluded from consideration, because they are never actualized in the creaturely world. 14. I rea d:fa-hiya bafinah la tazul ‘an al-wujud al-ghaybiy . The last word in the Affifi edition is al-‘ayniy, ‘individual and concrete’. What Ibn ‘Arabi means is clearly that the Universals, even when they are actualized in the concrete things, remain in their original state of being ‘interior’. 15. p. 16. 16. pp. 16-17/51-52. 17. pp. 16-17/51-52. 18. Fus., PP- 17-18/52-53. 19. Fus., 43/67. 20. p. 43. 21. The first term hadith, grammatically an active form, represents the thing as something ‘coming into temporal existence’, while the second, muhdath, which is a passive form, represents it as something ‘which has been brought into temporal existence’. 22. Fus., P- 18/53. 23. Fus., P- 18/53. 194 Sufism and Taoism 24. Fun., pp. 75-76/82. 25. Fay., pp. 76-77/83. 26. Fay., pp. 157-158/128. 27. Fay., pp. 104-105/95-96. 28. Fay., pp. 107-108/97-98. 29. For details about himmah see Chapter XVII. 30. Fay., pp. 159-160/130-1. 31. p. 160. 32. This conception which might strike common sense as blasphemous will be found to be not at all blasphemous if one but reflects that the ‘preparedness’ of a thing which is said to exercise such a tremendous power is after all nothing but a particular ontological mode of the Absolute. One must remember that, in Ibn ‘ Arabi’s thought, the whole thing is ultimately an inner drama which is eternally enacted within the Absolute itself. All the other seemingly ‘blasphemous’ expressions which we are going to encounter presently like ‘God obeys the creatures’, ‘The world forces God to compulsory service etc., must be understood in terms of this basic framework. 33. Fun., pp. 161-162/131-132. 34. So there is practically no positive part played by the Absolute in this process except that the archetypes themselves are the manifested forms of the ontological modes of the Absolute. 35. Fun., PP- 162-163/132. 36. In effect, al-Qashanl in a passage of his commentary simply identifies the qadar with the archetype, cf. p. 163. 37. Fun., P- 163/132. 38. Fun., p- 163/132-133. 39. Fun., P- 30/60. 40. Fun., pp. 30-31/60. 41. p. 42/67. 42. Fun., p. 31-32/60-61. 43. Fun., P- 32/61. 44. Fus . , pp. 165-166/133-134. 45. Here the word tajalli, which usually means the self-manifestation of the Abso- lute, is used to designate the reverse side of this phenomenon, i.e., the same tajalli as reflected in the individual consciousness of a mystic. L i Permanent Archetypes 46. p. 167. 47. usually translated as ‘mortal’. 48. For the explanation just given I am indebted to Affifi, Fun., Com., p. 286. 49. Fun., P- 243/192-193. 50. Fun., p. 244/193-194. 51. ibid. 52. In the same way, a child exercises taskhir with his ‘state’ over his parents. 53. because, properly speaking, what ‘constrains’ the king is not so much the ‘state’ of his subjects as the ‘position’ of kingship. 54. Junayd (d. 910 A.D.), one of the greatest names in the early phase of the historical development of Sufism. 55. Fun., P- 280/225. 56. Fun., P- 42/67. 57. Fun., P- 27/58. 58. Fun., P- 28/59. 59. The people of the presence ( ahl al-hudur), al-Qashani says, are ‘those who see whatever happens to them as coming from God, whether it (actually) occurs through others or through themselves, and who do not recognize anything other than God as the cause of any effect or anything existent.’ - p. 29. 60. This problem has been dealt with earlier in (V) of the present chapter. 61. Fun., P- 29/60. 62. This corresponds to the Qoranic conception that everything has a ‘clearly stated term’ ( ajal musamma). 63. Whenever a man calls upon God in supplication, God responds by saying, ‘Here I am!’ ( Labbayka ) This verbal response ( ijabah bi-al-qawl ) is always immediate. But not always so is His response by action ( ijabah bi-al-fil ) which is the actualization of what the man has asked for. 64. Fun., Com., p. 22. 65. Fun., P- 30/60. 66. The analogy which Ibn ‘Arabi offers, however, is not easy to understand due to his peculiar way of expressing himself. The meaning of the passage will be explicated in the paragraph immediately after the quotation. 67. Strictly speaking, al-hamd li- Allah is an exclamatory descriptive sentence mean- ing ‘all praise belongs to God (and to God alone)’. 196 Sufism and Taoism 68. This is expressed by Ibn ‘Arab! by saying that ‘the praise is done through a Name denoting an action’, e.g.. Guardian (hafiz), All-giving ( wahhab ) etc. 69. This corresponds to the case in which a man praises God ‘through a Name denoting purification (tanzih)' , Most Holy ( qaddiis ), Eternal-Everlasting ( alladhi lam yazal wa-la yazal) etc. 70. On this basic distinction see Chapter XI. 71. Fwy., p. 33/61. 72. pp. 32-33. 73. See Chapter IX. 74. ilahiy, i.e., the self-manifestation that occurs on the level of ‘God’. As we have seen earlier, ‘God’ or Allah is the all-comprehensive Name. XIII Creation I The Meaning of Creation ‘Creation’ ( khalq ) is unquestionably one of the concepts upon which stands the Islamic world-view. It plays a prominent role in all aspects of the religious thought of Islam. In theology, for example, it constitutes the very starting-point of all discussions in the form of the opposition between the ‘temporality’ ( hudiith ) and ‘eternity a parte ante ’ ( qidam ). The world is an ‘originated’ (or ‘temporally produced’) thing because it is the result of Divine creation. And this conception of the world’s being ‘originated’ ( muhdath ) forms the basis of the entire system of Islamic theology. In the world-view of Ibn ‘ ArabI, too, ‘creation’ plays an import- ant part as one of the key-concepts. The creative word of God, ‘Be!’ (kun) has a decisive meaning in the coming-into-being of all beings. As we have seen, however, the most basic concept of Ibn ‘Arabi’s ontology is self-manifestation, and the world of Being is after all nothing but the self-manifestation of the Absolute, and no event whatsoever occurs in the world except self-manifestation. In this sense, ‘creation’ which means the coming-into-being of the world is naturally identical with self-manifestation. But we would make a gross mistake if we imagine that since the ontology of Ibn ‘Arab! is based on self-manifestation and since there is nothing but self-manifestation, ‘creation’ is after all, for him, a metaphor. To think that Ibn ‘Arab! used the term ‘ creation’ making a concession to the established pattern of Islamic thought, and that he merely described self-manifestation in a more tradi- tional terminology, is to overlook the multilateral nature of his thought. One of the characteristic features of Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought is its manifoldness. In the presence of one important problem, he usually develops his thought in various directions and in various forms with the help of rich imagery. This, I think, is due largely to the unusual profundity and fecundity of his experience which always underlies his thinking. The depth and richness of mystical experience demands, in his case, multiplicity of expression. 198 Sufism and Taoism The theory of ‘creation’ which we are going to examine is not to be considered as a mere religious metaphor, or some esoteric teach- ing disguised in traditional theological terminology. ‘Creation’ is to him as real as ‘self-manifestation’ . Or we might say that one and the same fundamental fact existing in his consciousness has two differ- ent aspects, one ‘creation’, and the other ‘self-manifestation’. The first thing which attracts our attention about his theory of ‘creation’ is the important part played by the concept of ‘triad’ or ‘triplicity’, thalathiyah. This marks it off from the theory of ‘self- manifestation’ . The starting-point is as usual the Absolute. The ontological ground of existence is, as we already know, the One-Absolute. But the One, if considered in its phenomenal aspect, presents three different aspects. They are: (1) the Essence not qua Essence in its absoluteness, but in its self-revealing aspect), (2) the Will or iradah (here the Absolute is a ‘Wilier’, murid), and (3) the Command or amr 1 (here the Absolute is a ‘Commander’, amir). These three aspects in the order given here represent the whole process of ‘creation’. The process may be briefly described as fol- lows. First, there arises in the One- Absolute self-consciousness - or Knowledge (‘ ilm ) - and the permanent archetypes appear in the Divine Consciousness. This marks the birth of the possible Many. And thereby the Presence of the Essence (i.e., the ontological level of the Absolute qua Absolute) descends to the Presence of Divinity (ilahiyah, ‘being God’). Then, in the second place, there arises the Will based on this Knowledge to bring out the archetypes from the state of non- existence into the state of existence. Then, on the basis of this Will, the Command - ‘Be!’ (kun) - is issued, and thus the world is ‘created’. Having these preliminary remarks in mind, let us read the passage in which Ibn ‘Arabi describes the process. 2 Know - may God assist you in doing so! - that the whole matter (i.e., ‘creation’) in itself has its basis in the ‘singleness’ ( fardiyah ). But this ‘singleness’ has a triple structure ( tathlith ). For the ‘singleness’ starts to appear only from ‘three’. In fact ‘three’ is the first single (i.e., odd) number. What Ibn ‘Arab! wants to convey through these laconic expressions may be made clear if we explain it in the following way. He begins by saying that the very root of ‘creation’ is the ‘singleness’ of the Absolute. It is important to remark that he refers here to the Absolute as ‘single’ ( fard ), not as ‘One’. In other words, he is not speaking of the Absolute as Absolute in its essential absoluteness. Creation 199 We are here at a lower stage at which the Absolute has self- consciousness or Knowledge. According to Ibn ‘Arabi, ‘one’ is not a number at all; it is the principle and ‘birth-place’ of all numbers from ‘two’ onwards, but it is not itself a number. ‘One’ is absolutely above all relations; it is naturally above the concept itself of number. ‘Single’ is not like that. Outwardly it is ‘one’, but in its inner structure it is not ‘one’ , because the concept of singleness contains in itself the concept of ‘other’. It is ‘one’ in so far as it is other than others. In this sense, ‘single’ is internally divisible and divided, because we cannot represent it without at the same time represent- ing - negatively, to be sure - the idea of otherness. In this sense it is ‘one’ composed of more than one unit. And ‘three’ is the smallest, i.e., first, ‘single’ number in the infinitely extending series of num- bers - which makes it particularly appropriate for functioning as the starting-point of the Divine act of creation. And from this Presence of Divinity (i.e., the ontological plane where the Absolute is no longer One but Single endowed with an inner triplicity) the world has come into existence. To this God refers when He says: ‘ Whenever We decide (lit. ‘will’ the existence of) something, We only say to it, ‘Be!’, and it comes into existence’ (XVI, 40). Thus we see (the triplicity of) the Essence, the Will, and the Word. 3 Anything would not come into existence if it were not for (1) the Essence and (2) its Will - the Will which is the drive with which the Essence turns towards bringing something in particular into exis- tence-and then (3) the WordBe!’ uttered to that particular thing at the very moment when the Will turns the Essence in that direction. 4 The passage just quoted describes the structure of the triplicity on the side of the Agent, i.e., the Absolute. But the triplicity on the part of the Creator alone does not produce any effect. In order that the creative activity of the Absolute be really effective, there must be a corresponding triplicity also on the part of the ‘receiver’ (qabil), i.e., the thing to be created. Creation is actualized only when the active triplicity perfectly coincided with the passive triplicity. (The moment the creative Word of God is uttered) there arises in the thing to be created, too, a singleness having a triplicity. And by this triplicity alone does the thing, on its part, become capable of being produced and being qualified with existence. The triplicity in the object consists of (1) its thing-ness ( shay’iyyah ), (2) its hearing ( sama ‘ ), and (3) its obeying ( imtithal ) the Command of the Creator concerning its creation. So that the (creaturely) triad corresponds with the (Divine) triad. The first (1) is the permanent archetypal essence of the thing in the state of non-existence, which corresponds to the Essence of its Creator. The second (2) is the hearing of the Command by the thing, 200 Sufism and Taoism which corresponds to the Will of its Creator. And the third (3) is its obedient acceptance of what it has been commanded concerning its coming into existence, which corresponds to the (Creator’s) Word ‘Be!’ Upon this, the thing actually comes into being. Thus the ‘bringing-into-being’ ( takwin , or ‘production’) is to be attributed to the thing (created). For if the thing had not in itself the power of coming into being when the Word (‘Be!’) is uttered, it would never come into existence. In this sense it is the thing itself that brings it into existence from the state of non-existence. 5 It is remarkable that a special emphasis is laid here in the process of creation on the ‘power’ (quwwah) of the thing to be created. A thing is not created ih a purely passive way, that is, mechanically and powerlessly, but it participates positively in its own creation. This is another way of looking at the supreme power of the ‘preparedness’ , which we have discussed in the preceding chapter. When God decides to bring something into existence, He simply says to it ‘Be!’ And the thing, in response, comes into existence. In this process, the coming-into-being ( takawwun ) itself is an act of that thing, not an act of God. This conception is explained by al-Qashani in the following terms : 6 The coming-into-being, that is, the thing’s obeying the Command, pertains to nothing else than the thing itself, for it (i.e., coming-into- being) is (as Ibn ‘ Arabi says) in the power of the thing; that is to say, it is contained potentially in the thing, concealed. This is why God (in the above-quoted Qoranic verse) ascribes it (i.e., coming-into-being) to the thing, by saying, ‘and it comes into existence’. 7 This sentence means that the thing (upon hearing the Word) immediately obeys the order and comes into existence. And the thing is capable of doing so simply because it is already existent in the Unseen (i.e., potentially), for the archetypal subsistence is nothing other than a concealed inner mode of existence. Everything that is ‘inward’ has in itself the power to come out into ‘outward’ existence. This is due to the fact that the Essence (designated by the) Name ‘Inward’ ( ba(in ) is the same Essence (designated by the) Name ‘Outward’ ( zahir ), and because the ‘receiver’ ( qabil ) is (ultimately) the same as the ‘Agent’ ( fa‘il ). Such is the original theory of ‘creation’ put forward by Ibn ‘Arabi. He affirms very emphatically that the ‘production’ {takwin) is to be ascribed to the thing produced, not to be Absolute. Such a position will surely be criticized by ordinary believers as considering God powerless’ (‘ ajiz ). But, as I have repeatedly pointed out, this posi- tion is not at all blasphemous in the eyes of those who really know the structure of Ibn ‘Arab? s world-view. Surely, in this world-view, the things (creatures) are described as being so positively powerful that they leave but a limited space for the direct activity of the Absolute. On a deeper level, however, those things that are provi- Creation 201 sionally considered as independently existent are nothing but so many particularized, delimited forms of the Absolute, and all are involved in an ontological drama within the Absolute itself; all are a magnificent Divina Commedia. The idea of ‘production’ (the last stage of the ‘creation’) being ascribable to the things and not to the Absolute is further explained by Ibn ‘Arab! in the following way : 8 God states categorically that the ‘production’ pertains to the (cre- ated) thing itself, and not to God. What pertains to God in this matter is only His Command. He makes His part (in the creative process) clear by saying: ‘Whenever We decide (the existence of) something. We only say to it “Be!”, and it comes into existence’ (XVI, 40). Thus the ‘production’ is ascribed to the thing though, to be sure, the latter acts only in obedience to the Command of God. And (we must accept this statement as it is because) God is truthful in whatever He says. Besides, this (i.e., the ascription of the ‘production’ to the thing) is something quite reasonable, objectively speaking. (This may be illustrated by an example.) Suppose a master who is feared by everybody and whom nobody dares to disobey commands his slave to stand up by saying to him, ‘ Stand up!’ {qum)\ the slave will surely stand up in obedience to the command of the master. To the master pertains in the process of the slave’s standing up only his commanding him to do so, while the act of standing up itself pertains to the slave; it is not an act of the master. Thus it is clear that the ‘production’ stands on the basis of triplicity; in other words, three elements are involved on both sides, on the part of the Absolute as well as on the part of the creatures. It will be evident, then, that in Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s thought, the principle of creatio ex nihilo holds true. But what makes his thesis fundamen- tally different from the ordinary Islamic creatio ex nihilo is that the nihil, for Ibn Arabi, is not a total unconditional ‘non-existence’ , but non-existence in the particular sense of something being as yet non-existent as an empirical or phenomenal thing. What he regards as nihil is ‘existence’ on the level of the intelligibles, or - which comes to the same thing - in the Consciousness of God. Ontologi- cally, his nihil is the ‘possible’ ( mumkin),i.e ., something that has the power (or possibility) to exist. The ordinary view which makes creation a sort of Divine monodrama has its origin in the ignorance of the positive power to be attributed to the ‘possibles’ . All things, in Ibn ‘ Arabi’s view, have enough power to come out from the conce- alment into the field of existence in response to the ontological Command of God. Thus the creaturely world is possessed of ‘efficiency’ ( fa' illy ah ). And the things that constitute this would participate actively and positively in the creation of themselves. 202 Sufism and Taoism Looking at an artisan who is engaged in molding things out of clay, one might make a superficial observation that the clay has no positive ‘efficiency’ of its own, and that it lets itself molded into whatever form the artisan likes. In the view of such a man, the clay in the hands of an artisan is sheer passivity, sheer non-action. He overlooks the important fact that, in reality, the clay, on its part, positively determines the activity of the artisan. Surely, the artisan can make quite a considerable variety of things out of clay, but whatever he may do, he can not go beyond the narrow limits set by the very nature of the clay. Otherwise expressed, the nature of the clay itself determines the possible forms in which it may be actual- ized. Somewhat similar to this is the positive nature of a thing in the process of ‘creation’. The same observation, however, clearly shows that, although the things do possess ‘efficiency’, the latter is after all secondary, not primary. Herein lies the fundamental difference between God and the world. ‘As women are by nature a degree lower than men’, the creatures are a degree lower than the Absolute. The things, with all their positive powers and capacities, have no essential priority. As women are a degree lower than men according to God’s saying: ‘and men are a degree above them (i.e., women)’ (II, 228), the things that have been created in the image (of God) are naturally a degree lower than the One who has brought them into being in His image, in spite of the fact that their forms are God’s Form itself. And by that very degree which separates God from the world, God is completely independent (i.e., has absolutely no need) of the whole world, and is the primary Agent. As for the ‘form’, it is but a secondary agent and has no essential priority which pertains only to the Absolute. 9 II The Feminine Element in the Creation of the World In the last part of the preceding section reference has incidentally been made to the idea that women are by nature a degree lower than men. This, however, should not be taken to mean that Ibn ‘ArabI considers the role played by the feminine in the process of world creation quite secondary, let alone unimportant. On the contrary, the entire creative process, in his view, is governed by the principle of femininity. The starting-point of his thinking on this problem is furnished by a famous Tradition which runs: ‘Of all the things of your world, three things have been made particularly dear to me, women, perfumes, and the ritual prayer, this last being the “cooling of my eye” (i.e., a source of my highest joy)’ . In this Tradition, Ibn ‘ArabI Creation 203 observes, the number ‘three’ - triplicity again! - is put in the feminine form ( thalath ), in spite of the fact that one of the three things here enumerated ( tib ‘perfume’) is a masculine noun. Ordi- narily, in Arabic grammar, the rule is that, if there happens to be even one masculine noun among the things enumerated, one treats the whole as grammatically masculine, and uses the numeral in the masculine form ( thalathah , for example, instead of thalath , meaning ‘three’). Now in this Tradition, the Prophet intentionally - so thinks Ibn ‘ Arabi - uses the feminine form, thalath , and this, in his view, has a very deep symbolic meaning. It suggests that all the basic factors that participate in creation are feminine, and that the whole process of creation is governed by the principle of femininity ( ta’nith ). Ibn ‘Arab! draws attention to the process by which a man (male) comes into being : 10 The man finds himself situated between an essence (i.e., the Divine Essence) which is his (ontological) source and a woman (i.e., his own mother) who is his (physical) source. Thus he is placed between two feminine nouns, that is to say, between the femininity of essence and the real (i.e., physical) femininity. The Essence ( dhat ), which is the original ground of all Being, is a feminine noun. The immediate ontological ground of the forms of all beings, i.e., the Divine Attributes, sifat (sg. sifah), is a feminine noun. The creative power of God, qudrah is a feminine noun. Thus, from whatever aspect one approaches the process of creation, one runs into a feminine noun. The Philosophers ( falasifah ) who blindly follow Greek philosophy assert that God is the ‘cause’ (' illah ) of the existence of the world. This is a mistaken view, and yet it is significant, Ibn ‘Arabi adds, that even in this wrong opinion about creation, a feminine noun, ‘illah, is used to denote the ultimate ground of the creation of the world. The whole problem is dealt with by al-Qashani in a far more scholastic way as follows : 11 The ultimate ground (or origin) of everything is called Mother ( umm ), because the mother is the (stem) from which all branches go out. Do you not see how God describes the matter when He says: ‘And He created from it (i.e., the first soul, meaning Adam) its mate, and out of the two He spread innumerable men and women’ (IV, 1). As you see, the ‘wife’ (of Adam) was feminine. Moreover, the first unique ‘soul’ from which she was created was itself feminine. 12 Just in the same way, the Origin of all origins over which there is nothing is designated by a (feminine noun), haqiqah or ‘Reality’ . . . Likewise the words designating the Divine Essence, 'ayn and dhat, are feminine. 204 Sufism and Taoism * Thus his (i.e., Muhammad's) intention in making (the femininity) overcome (the masculinity) 13 is to draw attention to the special importance of the femininity which is the very origin and source of everything that spreads out from it. And this is true not merely of the world of Nature but even of Reality itself. In fact. Reality is the Father (ab) of everything in that it is the absolute Agent (i.e., the absolutely Active, /57/). But Reality is also the Mother (because of its passivity). It gathers together in itself both ‘activity’ ( fi‘l ) and ‘passivity’ ( infial ), for Reality is ‘passive’ ( munfa‘il ) in so far as it manifests itself in the form of a ‘passive’ thing, while in the form of the ‘active’ (Agent) it is ‘active’. The very nature of Reality requires this unification of the ‘determination’ ( ta‘ayyun ) and ‘non-determination’ ( lata‘ayyun ). 14 Thus Reality is ‘determined’ by all determinations, masculine and feminine, on the one hand. But on the other, it stands high above all determinations. And Reality, when it becomes determined by the first determina- tion, 15 is One Essence requiring a perfect balance and equilibrium between ‘activity’ and ‘passivity’, between the exterior self- manifestation (zuhiir) and the interior self-concealment ( butiin ). 16 And in so far as it is the ‘Inward’ (ba(in) residing in every form, it is ‘active’, but in so far as it is the ‘Outward’ ( zahir ), it is ‘passive’. . . . The first determination, which occurs by (the Absolute’s) manifest- ing itself to itself, attests to the fact that the Essence is absolute and non-determined, for its self-determination (taayyun bi-dhati-hi ) must necessarily be preceded by non-determination ( la-ta‘ayyun ). Likewise when Reality qua Reality is actualized in every determined (i.e., concretely delimited) existent, its determination (also) requires that it be preceded by non-determination. Nay, rather, every deter- mined existent, considered in its reality apart from all consideration of its actual delimitations, is an absolute (i.e., every determined existent is in its ontological core an absolute - which is nothing but the Absolute itself). A determined existent, in this sense, depends upon the Absolute (which is inherent in it) and is sustained by it. So everything is ‘passive’ in relation to that absolute (ontological) ground, and is a locus of self-manifestation for it, while that ground is ‘active’ and remains concealed in the thing. Thus everything is ‘passive’ considered from the point of view of its being determined, but ‘active’ in itself, 17 considered from the point of view of its being absolute. But the thing itself is essentially one. ... So Reality, wherever it goes and in whatever way it appears, has (two different aspects; namely), ‘activity’ and ‘passivity’, or ‘fatherhood’ ( ubuwwah ) and ‘motherhood’ ( umumah ). And this justifies the (Prophet’s having used) the feminine form. The Absolute, which is the ultimate and real origin of ‘creation’, has something feminine in it, as indicated by the feminine form of the word ‘Essence’ ( dhat ). Furthermore, if we consider analytically the ontological structure of the creative process, we find, even at its first stage, the ‘first determination’, a feminine principle, the Creation 205 ‘motherhood’, co-operating with a masculine principle, the ‘father- hood’. The Divine Essence, in brief, is the Mother of everything in the sense that it represents the ‘passive’ element which is inherent in all forms of Being. Ill Perpetual Creation We turn now to one of the most interesting features of the theory of creation peculiar to Ibn ‘ Arabl. This part of his theory is historically of primary importance because it is a critique of the atomistic philosophy of the Ash‘arite theologians. 18 We have already seen in connection with another problem that, in Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s world-view, the self-manifestation of the Absolute is a perpetual process whose major stages - (1) the ‘most holy emana- tion’, (2) the ‘holy emanation’, and then (3) the appearance of concrete individual things - go on being actualized one after another like successive, recurrent waves. This ontological process repeats itself indefinitely and endlessly. At every moment, and moment after moment, the same eternal process of annihilation and re-creation is repeated. At this very moment, an infinite number of things and properties come into being, and at the next moment they are annihilated to be replaced by another infinity of things and properties. Thus we cannot experience the same world twice at two different moments. The world we actually experience is in perpetual flow. It changes from moment to moment. But this continual and perpetual change occurs in such an orderly way according to such definite patterns that we, superficial observers, imagine that the same one world is there around us. Describing this perpetual flow of things in terms of the concept of ‘creation’ which is the central topic of the present chapter, Ibn ‘Arab! says that the world goes on being created anew at every single moment. This he calls ‘new creation’ ( al-khalq al-jadid ). The expression must not be taken in the sense of a ‘new’ creation to be contrasted with the ‘old’, i.e., the earlier, creation of the world. The word ‘new’ (jadid) in this context means ‘ever new’ or ‘which is renewed from moment to moment’. The ‘new creation’ means, in short, the process of everlasting and ever new act of creation. Man, being endowed with self-consciousness, can have a real living feel of this ‘new creation’ both inside and outside himself, i.e., both in his mind and in his body, by becoming conscious of ‘himself , which goes on changing from moment to moment without ever stopping as long as he lives. However, ordinary people are not 206 Sufism and Taoism aware of the process of ‘new creation’ even with regard to them- selves. Ibn ‘Arab! describes this process also as a ‘perpetual ascent’ (j taraqqi daim ). This is a very important point at which we can look into the very basis of his idea of the ‘new creation’. The wonder of all wonders is that man (and consequently, every- thing) is in a perpetual process of ascending. And yet (ordinarily) he is not aware of this because of the extreme thinness and fineness of the veil 19 or because of the extreme similarity between (the success- ive forms ). 20 That everything is involved in the process of the ever new crea- tion means primarily that the Absolute is continually manifesting itself in the infinity of ‘possible’ things. This is done by the ontologi- cal ‘descent’ ( nuzul ) of the Absolute towards the lower levels of Being, first to the archetypes and then to the ‘possible’. But the same process of perpetual ‘descent’ is, when it is looked at from the side of the ‘possible’ , turns out to be a perpetual process of ontologi- cal ‘ascent’. Everything, in this sense, is perpetually ‘ascending’ towards the Absolute by the very same ‘descending’ of the latter. The ‘ascent’ ( taraqqi ) of the things, in other words, is nothing but the reverse side of the ‘descent’ of the Absolute towards them. The things in the state of non-existence receiving the mercy of the Absolute and obtaining thereby existence, produces, from the standpoint of these things, the image of their ‘ascending’ toward the original source of existence. Al-Qashanl paraphrases the above- quoted passage in the following way: 21 One of the most miraculous things about man is that he is in a perpetual state of ascent with regard to the modes of the ‘prepared- ness’ of his own archetypal essence. For all the modes of the archetypes are things that have been known to God (from eternity), permanently fixed in potentiality, and God brings them out to actual- ity incessantly and perpetually. And so He goes on transforming the possibilities (isti‘ dadat , lit. ’preparednesses’) that have been there from the beginningless past and that are (therefore) essentially uncreated, into infinite possibilities that are actually created. Thus everything is in. the state of ascending at this very moment because it is perpetually receiving the endlessly renewed ontological (wujudiyah) Divine self-manifestations, and at every self- manifestation the thing goes on increasing in its receptivity for another (i.e., the next) self-manifestation. Man, however, may not be conscious of this because of his eyes being veiled, or rather because of the veil being extremely thin and fine. But he may also become conscious of it when the self-manifestations take on the forms of intellectual, intuitive, imaginative, or mystical experiences. Creation 207 The concept of ‘new creation’, thus comprising the ontological ‘descent’ and ‘ascent’, is a point which discloses most clearly the dynamic nature of the world-view of Ibn ‘ Arabi. In this world-view, nothing remains static; the world in its entirety is in fervent move- ment. The world transforms itself kaleidoscopically from moment to moment, and yet all these movements of self-development are the ‘ascending’ movements of the things toward the Absolute-One, precisely because they are the ‘descending’ self-expressions of the Absolute-One. In one of the preceding chapters dealing with the coincidentia oppositorum, we have already considered the same phenomenon from a different point of view. There we saw how the One is the Manifold and the Manifold is the One. In fact the ‘descent’ and ‘ascent’ describe exactly the same thing. (As a result of the ‘new creation’ , we are constantly faced with similar forms, but of any two similar forms) one is not the same thing as the other. For in the eyes of one who recognizes them to be two similar things, they are different from one another. Thus a truly perspicaci- ous man discerns Many in the One, while knowing at the same time that the Divine Names, in spite of their essential diversity and multi- plicity, point to one single Reality, for the Names are nothing but multiplicity posited by the reason in Something which is essentially and really one. Thus it comes about that in the process of self-manifestation the Many becomes discernible in one single Essence. This may be com- pared to the Prime Matter which is mentioned in the definition of every form. The forms are many and divergent, but they all go back in reality to one single substance which is their Prime Matter . 22 In this passage, Ibn ‘Arabi seems to be speaking of the horizontal similarity-relationship between the concrete beings. He emphasizes the particular aspect of the ‘new creation’ in which the concretely existent things in the phenomenal world are after all infinitely various forms of the Divine self-manifestation, and are ultimately reducible to the One. But the same applies also to the vertical, i.e., temporal, relation between the ever new creations. In what is seem- ingly one and the same thing, the ‘new creation’ is taking place at every moment, so that the ‘one and the same thing’, considered at two successive moments, is in reality not one and the same, but two ‘similar’ things. And yet, despite all this, the thing maintains and never loses its original unity and identity, because all the new and similar states that occur to it succesively are eternally determined by its own archetype. These two aspects of the ‘new creation’, horizontal and vertical, are brought to light by al-Qashani in his commentary on the passage just quoted. 23 208 Sufism and Taoism A truly perspicacious man discerns a multiplicity of self- determinations in the one single Essence which appears in an infinite number of ‘similar’ forms. All the Divine Names like the Omnipo- tent, the Omniscient, the Creator, the Sustainer, etc., point in reality to one single Essence, God, despite the fact that each of them has a different meaning from the rest. This shows that the divergence of the meanings of the Names is merely an intelligible and mental multiplic- ity existing in what is called the ‘essentially One’, that they are not a really and concretely existent multiplicity. Thus the self- manifestation in the forms of all the Names is but a multiplicity discernible within one single Essence. The same is true also of the events that take place successively (in ‘one and the same thing’). All the successive self-manifestations that are similar to each other are one in reality, but many if taken as individual self-determinations. (The Master) illustrates this with the example of the Prime Matter ( hayula ). You mention the Prime Matter in defining any substantial Form. You say, for example, ‘Body ( jism ) is a substance having quantity’, ‘Plant ( nabat ) is a body that grows up’, ‘Stone ( hajar ) is a body, inorganic, heavy, and voiceless’, ‘animal ( hayawan ) is a body that grows up, has sense perception, and moves with will’, ‘Man ( insan ) is a rational animal’. In this way, you mention ‘substance’ as the definition of ‘body’, and you mention ‘body’ - which is ‘substance’ (by definition) - in the definitions of all the rest. Thus all are traced back to the one single reality which is ‘substance’. This fact can be known only by mystical vision, and is never dis- closed to those who understand everything through rational think- ing. Thus it comes about that the majority of men, including the Philosophers, are not aware of the phenomenon of the ‘new crea- tion’. They do not see the infinitely beautiful scene of this kaleido- scopic transformation of things. How splendid are God’s words concerning the world and its per- petual renewal with each Divine breath which constitutes an ‘ever new creation’ in one single reality. (But this is not perceived except by a few), as He says in reference to a certain group of people - indeed, this applies to the majority of men - ‘Nay, they are in utter- confusion with regard to the new creation.’ (L, 15). 24 These people (are in confusion with regard to it) because they do not know the (perpetual) renewal of the things with each Divine breath. 25 Al-Qashani describes the scene of this perpetual renewal of the things as he sees it in his philosophico-mystical intuition in the following terms : 26 The world in its entirety is perpetually changing. And every thing (in the world) is changing in itself from moment to moment. Thus every thing becomes determined at every moment with a new determina- tion which is different from that with which it was determined a moment ago. And yet the one single reality which is attained by all Creation 209 these successive changes remains forever unchanged. This is due to the fact that the ‘one single reality’ is nothing but the reality itself of the Absolute as it has taken on the ‘first determination’, and all the | forms (i.e., the successive determinations) are accidents that occur to i it successively, changing and being renewed at every moment. t ; But (ordinary) people do not know the reality of this phenomenon || and are therefore ‘in utter confusion’ regarding this perpetual pro- cess of transformation which is going on in the universe. Thus the Absolute reveals itself perpetually in these successive self- manifestations, while the world is perpetually being lost due to its annihilation at every moment and its renewed birth at the next moment. Al-Qashani goes a step further and asserts that this perpetual ‘new creation’ not only governs the concrete existents of the world, but that even the permanent archetypes are under its sway. The archetypes in the Divine Consciousness appear and disappear and then appear again, repeating the same process endlessly as innum- erable lamp-lights that go on being turned on and put out in every successive moment. He says : 27 The ontological emanation ( al-fayd al-wujudiy ) and the Breath of the Merciful are perpetually flowing through the beings of the world as water running in a river, forever being renewed continuously. In a similar way, the determinations of the Absolute-Existence in the form of the permanent archetypes in the eternal Knowledge (i.e., Divine Consciousness) never cease to be renewed from moment to moment. (And this happens in the following way). Thus, as soon as the first ontological determination leaves an archetype in a place, at the next moment the next determination is attached to it in a different place. This is nothing other than the appearance of an archetype belonging in the sphere of Divine Knowledge in the second place following its disappearance in the first place, while that archetype itself remains forever the same in the Knowledge and in the world of the Unseen. It is as if you saw millions of lights flickering against the background of an unfathomable darkness. If you concentrate your sight on any one of these illumined spots, you will see its light disappearing in the very next moment and appearing again in a different spot in the following moment. And the Divine Consciousness is imagined as a complicated meshwork formed by all these spots in which light goes on being turned on and extinguished at every moment endlessly. This is indeed an exceedingly beautiful and impressive image. But Ibn ‘Arabi himself in his Fu$iis does not seem to describe the permanent archetypes in this way in terms of the ‘new creation’ . The ‘new creation’ he speaks of in this book concerns the concrete things of the sensible world. 210 Sufism and Taoism Let us return to Ibn ‘ Arab! and analyze his concept of ‘ new creation’ as he develops it in relation to his atomistic philosophy. He finds in the Qoranic account of the miracle of Bilqis, Queen of Sheba, an admirable illustration of this incessant annihilation and re-creation which is going on in the world of Being. The account is found in the Qoran, XXVII, 38-40. Once Solomon asked those who were there in his presence, jinn and human beings, whether any of them could bring him the throne of the Queen. Thereupon one of the jinn said ‘I will bring it to thee before thou risest from thy place!’ But a man ‘who had knowledge of the Scripture’ 28 said, ‘I will bring it to thee before thy gaze returns to thee (i.e., in the twinkling of an eye)’ . And he did bring the throne on the spot from the far-off country in South Arabia and set it in front of Solomon. How could he accomplish this miracle? Ibn ‘Arab! says that the man simply took advantage of the ‘new creation’ . The throne of the Queen was not transported locally from Sheba to the presence of Solomon. Nobody, in fact, can carry any material object from one place to a distant place in the twinkling of an eye. Nor did Solomon and his people see the throne in hallucination. Rather the throne which had been with Bilqis was annihilated and, instead of been re-created in the same place, was made to appear in the presence of Solomon. This is, indeed, a miraculous event, in the sense that a thing disappeared and in the next moment appeared in a different place. From the viewpoint of the ‘new creation’, however, such an event is not at all an impossibility. For, after all, it is nothing but a new throne being created in an entirely different place. The superiority of the human sage over the sage of the jinn consists in the (deeper knowledge possessed by the former concerning) the secrets of the free disposal of anything at will and the particular natures of things. And this superiority can be known by the amount of time needed. For the ‘return of the gaze’ towards the man who looks is faster than the standing up of a man who stands up from his seat. . . . For the time in which the gaze moves to an object is exactly the amount of time in which the gaze gets hold of the object however great the distance may be between the man who looks and the object looked. At the very moment the eye is opened, its gaze reaches the sphere of the fixed stars. And at the very moment the perception stops, the gaze returns to the man. The standing up of a man from his seat cannot be done so quickly. Thus Asaf b. Barakhiya was superior to the jinn in his action. For the moment Asaf spoke, he accomplished his work. And Solomon saw at the same moment the throne of Bilqis. The throne was actually placed in his presence in order that no one should imagine that Solomon perceived (from afar) the throne in its original place with- out its being transferred. Creation 211 In my opinion, however, there can be no local transference in one single moment. There occurred (in Solomon’s case) simply a simul- taneous annihilation and re-creation in such a manner that no one could perceive it, except those who had been given a true knowledge (of this kind of thing). This is what is meant by God’s saying: ‘Nay, they are in utter confusion with regard to the new creation’. And there never occurs even a moment in which they cease to see what they have seen (at the preceding moment). 29 Now if the truth of the matter is as I have just described, the moment of the disappearance of tire throne from its original place coincided with the moment of its appearance in the presence of Solomon as a result of the ‘new creation’ occurring with every Breath. Nobody, however, notices this discrepancy (between two moments of the ‘new creation’). Nay, the ordinary man is not aware of it (i.e., the ‘new creation’) even with regard to himself. Man does not know that he ceases to exist and then comes to existence again with every single breath. 30 As we see, Ibn ‘Arab! here writes that man ceases to exist at every moment and then ( thumma ) comes to existence again. But he immediately adds the remark that the particle thumma, meaning ‘then’ or ‘after that’ , should not be taken as implying a lapse of time. You must not think that by the word thumma I mean a temporal interval. This is not correct. The Arabs use this word in certain particular contexts to express the priority in causal relationship. 31 . . . In the process of ‘the new creation with each Breath’ , too, the time of the non-existence (i.e., annihilation) of a thing coincides with the time of the existence (i.e., re-creation) of a thing similar to it (i.e., the thing that has just been annihilated). This view resembles the Ash‘arite thesis of the perpetual renewal of the accidents ( tajdid al-a'rai ). In fact, the problem of the transportation of the throne of Bilqis is of the most recondite problems understandable only to those who know what I have explained above about the story. In brief, the merit of Asaf consisted only in the fact that (thanks to him) the ‘re-creation’ in question was actualized in the presence of Solomon. . . . When Bilqis (thereafter came to visit Solomon and) saw her own throne there, she said: ‘It is as though ( ka’anna-hu ) it were (my throne)’ (XXVII, 42). (She said ‘as though’) because she knew the existence of a long distance (between the two places) and because she was convinced of the absolute impossibility of the throne’s having been locally transported in such a (short) period of time. Her answer was quite correct in view of the above-mentioned idea of the ‘renewal of creation’ in similar forms. And in reality it was (i.e., it was the same throne of hers in terms of its permanent archetype, but not as a concrete individual thing). And all this is true, just as you remain what you were in the past moments through the process of the perpetual re-creation. 32 212 Sufism and Taoism Quite incidentally, Ibn ‘Arab! mentions in the passage just quoted the atomistic thesis of the Ash‘arite theologians and points out the existence of a certain resemblance between his and their atomism. But what is more important and more interesting for our purpose is rather the difference between them which Ibn ‘ Arabi does not state explicitly in this passage, but which he explains in considerable detail in another part of the Fu$us. The most salient feature of Ash‘arite atomism is the thesis of the perpetual renewal ( tajdid ) of accidents. According to this theory, of all the accidents of the things there is not even one that continues to exist for two units of time. Every accident comes into being at this moment and is annihilated at the very next moment to be replaced by another accident which is ‘similar’ to it being created anew in the same locus. This is evidently the thesis of ‘new creation’. Now if we examine Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s thought in relation to this Ash‘arite thesis, we find a striking similarity between them. Every- thing is, for Ibn ‘Arabi, a phenomenal form of the Absolute, having no basis for independent subsistence (qiwam) in itself. All are, in short, ‘accidents’ which appear and disappear in the one eternal- everlasting Substance (jawhar ). Otherwise expressed, the existence itself of the Absolute comes into appearance at every moment in milliards of new clothes. With every Breath of God, a new world is created. From the point of view of Ibn ‘Arabi, the atomism of the Ash‘arites, though it is not a perfect description of the real structure of Being, does grasp at least an important part of the reality. Mentioning together with the Ash‘arites a group of sophists known as Hisbaniyyah or Husbaniyyah, he begins to criticize them in the following manner : 33 The Ash‘arites have hit upon the truth concerning some of the existents, namely, accidents, while the Hisbanites have chanced to find the truth concerning the whole of the world. The Philosophers consider these people simply ignorant. But (they are not ignorant; the truth is rather that) they both (i.e., the Ash‘arites and the Hisba- nites) are mistaken. First, he criticizes the sophists of the Hisbanite school. The Hisba- nites maintain that nothing remains existent for two units of time, that everything in the world, whether it be substance or accident, is changing from moment to moment. From this they conclude that there is no Reality in the objective sense. Reality or Truth exists only subjectively, for it can be nothing other than the constant flux of things as you perceive it in a fixed form at this present moment . 34 Though the Hisbanites are right in maintaining that the world as a whole and in its entirety is in perpetual transformation, they are Creation 213 mistaken in that they fail to see the real oneness of the Substance which underlies all these (changing) forms. (They thereby overlook the fact that) the Substance could not exist (in the external world) if it were not for them (i.e., these changing forms) nor would the forms be conceivable if it were not for the Substance. If the Hisbanites could see this point too (in addition to the first point), their theory would be perfect with regard to this problem. 3S Thus, for Ibn ‘Arabi, the merit and demerit of the Hisbanite thesis are quite clear. They have hit upon a part of the truth in that they have seen the constant change of the world. But they overlook the most important part of the matter in that they do not know the true nature of the Reality which is the very substrate in which all these changes are happening, and consider it merely a subjective con- struct of each individual mind. Concerning the Ash‘arites, Ibn ‘Arabi says : 36 As for the Ash‘arites, they fail to see that the world in its entirety (including even the so-called ‘substances’) is a sum of ‘accidents’ , and that, consequently, the whole world is changing from moment to moment since no ‘accident’ (as they themselves hold) remains for two units of time. And al-Qashani : 37 The Ash‘arites do not know the reality of the world; namely, that the world is nothing other than the whole of all these ‘forms’ which they call ‘accidents’ . Thus they only assert the existence of substances (i.e., atoms) which are in truth nothing, having no existence (in the real sense of the word). And they are not aware of the one Entity (‘ayn) which manifests itself in these forms (‘accidents’ as they call them); nor do they know that this one Entity is the He-ness of the Absolute. This is why they assert (only) the (perpetual) change of the accidents. According to the basic thesis of the Ash‘arite ontology, the world is reduced to an infinite number of ‘indivisible parts’, i.e., atoms. These atoms are, in themselves, unknowable. They are knowable only in terms of the ‘accidents’ that occur to them, one accident appearing in a locus at one moment and disappearing in the next to be replaced by another. The point Ibn ‘Arabi makes against this thesis is that these ‘accidents’ that go on being born and annihilated in infinitely var- iegated forms are nothing but so many self-manifestations of the Absolute. And thus behind the kaleidoscopic scene of the perpetual changes and transformations there is always a Reality which is eternally ‘one’ . And it is this one Reality itself that goes on manifest- ing itself perpetually in ever new forms. The Ash‘arites who over- look the existence of this one Reality that underlies all ‘accidents’ are, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, driven into the self-contradictory 214 Sufism and Taoism Creation 215 thesis that a collection of a number of transitory ‘accidents’ that appear and disappear and never remain for two moments constitute ‘things’ that subsist by themselves and continue to exist for a long time. This (i.e., the mistake of the Ash'arites) comes out clearly in their definitions of things. In fact, when they define anything, their definition turns the thing into (a collection of) accidents. And it is clear that it is all these accidents enumerated in the definition that constitute the very ‘substance’ and its reality which (they consider to be) self-subsistent. However, even that substance (being a totality of the accidents) must ultimately be an accident, and as such it is not self-subsistent. Thus (in their theory) accidents which do not subsist by themselves, when put together, produce something that subsists by itself . 38 The passage is explicated by al-Qashani as follows. The Ash‘arites, whenever they define something, define it as a whole ( majmiC ) of accidents. Defining ‘man’ , for example, they say: ‘a rational animal’ . The word ‘rational’ ( natiq ) means ‘possessed of reason’ ( dhu nu(q). The concept of ‘being possessed of’ is a relation, and ‘relation’ is evidently an accident. ‘Reason’ ( nutq ), on the other hand, being something added to the essence of ‘animal’ , is also an accident. Thus to say that man is ‘a rational animal’ is to say that man is ‘an animal with two accidents’ . Then the Ash‘arites go on to define ‘animal’ by saying that it is a ‘physical body that grows, perceives, and moves by will’. The ‘animal’ turns in this way into a whole of accidents. And the same procedure is applied to the definition of the ‘(physical) body’ appearing in the definition of ‘animal’. As a result, ‘man’ ultimately turns out to be a bundle of accidents which are by definition momentary and transitory. And yet this bundle itself is considered to be something subsistent by itself, a substance. The Ash‘arites, Ibn ‘Arabi continues, are not aware of the fact that the very ‘substance’, which they consider a self-subsistent entity, is of exactly the same nature as ‘man’, ‘animal’, and other things; it is also a bundle of accidents. Thus, in their theory, something (i.e., a bundle of accidents ) which does not remain for two units of time remains (i.e., as a bundle of accidents) for two units of time, nay, for many units of time! And something which does not subsist by itself (must be said to) subsist by itself, according to the Ash‘arites! However, they do not know that they are contradicting themselves. So (I say that) these are people ‘who are in utter confusion with regard to the new creation ’. 39 Ibn ‘Arabi brings out the contrast between the ‘wrong’ view of the Ash‘arites and the ‘true’ thesis upheld by the people of ‘unveiling’ by saying : 40 I ; As to the people of ‘unveiling’, they see God manifesting Himself with every Breath, no single self-manifestation being repeated twice. They see also by an immediate vision that every single self- manifestation gives rise to a new creation and annihilates a creation (i.e., the ‘creation’ that has preceded), and that the disappearance of the latter at every (new) self-manifestation is ‘annihilation’ whereas ‘subsistence’ is caused by what is furnished (immediately) by the following self-manifestation. Thus in Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s thought, everything in the world (and therefore the world itself) is constantly changing, but underlying this universal flux of changing things there is Something eternally unchanging. Using scholastic terminology he calls this unchanging Something the ‘Substance’, the absolute substratum of all changes. In this particular perspective, all things - not only the ‘accidents’ so called but the ‘substances’ so called - are represented as ‘accidents’ appearing and disappearing at every moment. It is interesting to observe how the theory of Divine self-manifestation becomes trans- formed, when translated into the language of the scholastic philos- ophy of ‘substance’ and ‘accident’. Notes 1. It is also called Word ( qawl ). 2. Fus., pp. 139-140/115-116. 3. Reading: hadhihi dhat wa-iradah wa-qawl. 4. Fus., PP- 139-140/115-116. 5. Fus., p. 140/115-116. 6. p. 140. 7. The point is that God does not say in this verse fa-yukawwin (‘and He brings it into existence’) but says fa-yakun (‘and it comes into existence’), the subject of the sentence being the thing itself. 8. Fuy., P- 140/115-116. 9. Fus., P- 273/219. 10. Fus., P- 274/220. 11. pp. 274-275. 12. Although Adam is a man, he is, as a ‘soul’ ( nafs ), feminine. 13. The reference is to the above-quoted Tradition, in which the Prophet uses the 216 Sufism and Taoism feminine numeral thalath in spite of the presence of a masculine noun among the three things enumerated. 14. ‘Determination’ (or more strictly ‘being determined’) refers to the passive side of the Absolute, i.e., the Absolute as manifesting itself in a concrete (determined) thing. ‘Non-determination’ refers to the active side of the Absolute, i.e., the Abso- lute as the absolute Agent. 15. The ‘first determination’ ( al-ta‘ayyun al-awwal) means the self-manifestation of the Absolute to itself as a unifying point of all the Divine Names. The Absolute is here the ‘one’ ( wahid ), and the ontological stage the wahidiyah , ‘Oneness’. 1 6. The Absolute qua One is potentially all beings but it is in actuality still one. So it is neither in the state of pure exterior self-manifestation nor in that of pure interior concealment, but it keeps, so to speak, a perfect balance between these two terms. 17. I read: [wa-fa‘il\ min nafci-hi, etc. 18. The idea presents a very important and interesting problem from the viewpoint of comparative Oriental philosophy. See my ‘The Concept of Perpetual Creation in Islamic Mysticism and Zen Buddhism’ (in Melanges offerts a Henry Corbin', ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr Tehran, 1977, pp. 115-148. 19. When you look at something through an extremely fine and transparent fabric you do not become aware of the existence of the veil between you and the thing. The ‘veil’ here refers to the outward form shown by the act of ‘ascending’. 20. Fuy., p. 151-152/124. 21. p. 152. 22. Fuy., p. 152/124-125. 23. p. 152-153. 24. Ibn ‘Arab!, as he often does, is giving quite an arbitrary meaning to the Qoranic verse. The actual context makes it clear beyond any doubt that God is here speaking of Resurrection after death, which is conceived of as a ‘new creation’. The ‘new creation’ does not certainly mean in this verse the ever new process of creation which is Ibn ‘Arabfs thesis. 25. Fuy., p. 153/125. 26. p. 153. 27. pp. 195-196. 28. The Qoran does not give his name. Commentators assert that the man was a sage whose name was Asaf b. Barakhiya. 29. This annihilation/re-creation is done so quickly that man does not notice any discontinuum between the two units of time in his sense perception and imagines that everything continues to be as it has been. 30. Fu$., pp. 195-196/155. Creation 217 XIV Man as Microcosm As I remarked earlier, the world-view of Ibn ‘Arabi stands on two bases: one is the Absolute, and the other the Perfect Man. And all through the preceding pages, we have been analyzing his ontologi- cal world-view exclusively from the first angle. The remaining chap- ters will be concerned with the analysis of the same world-view looked at from the second point of view. I Microcosm and Macrocosm In setting out to discuss the concept of the Perfect Man ( al-insan al-kamil) it is, I think of special importance to observe that Ibn ‘Arab! considers ‘man’ on two different levels. It is important to keep this basic distinction in mind, because if we neglect to do so, we shall easily be led into confusion. The first is the cosmic level. Here ‘man’ is treated as a cosmic entity. In popular terminology we might say that what is at issue on this level is ‘mankind’ . In logical terminology, we might say that it is ‘man’ as a species. In any event, the question is not about ‘man’ as an individual person. ‘Man’ on this level is the most perfect of all beings of the world, for he is the Imago Dei. Here ‘man’ himself is perfect; ‘man’ is the Perfect Man. The Perfect Man in this sense is ‘man’ viewed as a perfect epitome of the universe, the very spirit of the whole world of Being, a being summing up and gathering together in himself all the elements that are manifested in the universe. ‘Man’ is, in short, the Microcosm. At the second level, on the contrary, ‘man’ means an individual. On this level, not all men are equally perfect. There are, from this point of view, a number of degrees among men. And only few of them deserve the appellation of the Perfect Man. The majority of men are far from being ‘perfect’. The present chapter will be concerned with the Perfect Man as understood in the first sense. Man as Microcosm 219 As has just been remarked ‘man’ on the first of the two levels is an epitome of the whole universe. He is, in this sense, called the ‘comprehensive being’ (al-kawn al-jami‘, lit. ‘a being that gathers 1 together’), that is, Microcosm. ; Concerning the birth of ‘ man’ as the ‘ comprehensive being’ , there is at the very outset of the Fusus, a very famous passage. The | passage is filled with technical terms peculiar to Ibn ‘Arabi, all of I which have already been analyzed in the preceding chapters. Here j> Ibn ‘Arabi describes the mysterious process by which the self- ;; manifestation of the Absolute is activated by the inner requirement of the Divine Names, leading toward the creation of the world, and in particular the creation of ‘man’ as the being who sums up in itself all the properties that are diffused in the whole universe. The passage begins with the following words: 1 i i When the Absolute God, at the level of his Beautilul Names that exceed enumeration, wished to see the (latent) realities of the Names - or if you like, say. His inner reality itself - as (actualized) in a ‘comprehensive being' which, because of its being qualified by ‘existence’, contains in itself the whole universe, and (wished) to make manifest to Himself His own secret through it (i.e., the ‘com- jfv prehensive being') . . . These opening words of the passage constitute a brief summary of the ontology of Ibn ‘Arabi which we have been studying in detail in the preceding. The argument may be explained as follows. Ibn ‘Arabi begins by stating that the Divine Wish {mashlah) for the creation of the world (and man in particular) did not arise from the Absolute qua Absolute. The creative Wish arose due to the essential inner drive of the Beautiful Names or Attributes. The Absolute qua Absolute characterized by an absolute ‘indepen- dence’ ( istighna ) does not require by itself and for itself any crea- | tive activity. It is the Divine Names that require the existence of the universe, the created world. It is in the very nature of the Divine l Names to require the world, because they are actualized only by the concrete existents, and without the latter they lose positive significance. Ibn ‘Arabi expresses this situation by saying: ‘The Absolute wished to see the realities (a‘yan) of the Divine Names’, or ‘The Absolute wished to see its own inner reality {‘ayn). The first formula corresponds to what we already know as ‘ the holy emanation’ , while the second corresponds to the ‘most holy emanation’. The distinc- I' tion does not make much difference in this particular context, f because ‘the holy emanation’ necessarily presupposes the ‘most holy emanation’ , and the latter necessarily entails the former. What Ibn ‘Arab! wants to say is that God had the mashVah to see Himself 220 221 Sufism and Taoism as reflected in the mirror of the world, that He wished to see Himself in the very manifestation-forms of His own Attributes. The phrase, ‘because of its being qualified by existence’, gives an answer to the question: How is it possible for the Absolute to see itself by the creation of the universe as epitomized by Man? The universe possesses ‘existence’. This ‘existence’ is not the absolute Existence itself, but is a ‘relative existence’ ( wujud idafiy), i.e., ‘existence’ as determined and delimited in various ways and forms. But, however determined and delimited, the relative existence is, after all, a direct reflection of the absolute Existence. It is the figure of the Absolute itself as the latter is manifested in ‘possible’ exist- ents, being determined and particularized by each of the loci of its self- manifestation. The relative existence is - to use a favorite metaphor of Ibn ‘Arab! - the absolute Existence as reflected in the mirror of relative determinations. An image in a mirror is not the object itself, but it does represent the object. In this sense, the universe discloses the ‘secret’ ( sirr ) of the Absolute. The word ‘secret’ in the above-quoted passage means the hidden (i.e., absolutely invisible) depths of Existence, and cor- responds to the phrase ‘the hidden treasure’ (kanz makhfiy ) in the famous Tradition which we discussed earlier. Ibn ‘Arab! sets out to develop his thought in terms of the metaphor of the mirror. He begins by distinguishing between two kinds of vision : 2 The vision which a being obtains of itself is different from the vision of itself which it obtains in something else serving as a mirror for it. The first of these two kinds of vision consists in a being seeing itself in itself. And it goes without saying that the Absolute has vision of itself in this sense. Here the Absolute needs no mirror. The Abso- lute is ‘All-seeing by itself from eternity’, and nothing of itself is concealed from its inner gaze. But the Absolute has also an aspect in which it is an Essence qualified by Attributes. And since the Attributes become real only when they are externalized, it becomes necessary for the Absolute to see itself in the ‘other’. Thus the ‘other’ is created in order that God might see Himself therein in externalized forms. The first thing which God created in order to see Himself therein was the world or universe. Ibn ‘ Arabi calls the world in this particu- lar context the Big Man {al-insan al-kabir ), i.e., Macrocosm . 3 The most salient feature of the Big Man is that every single existent in it Man as Microcosm represents one particular aspect (Name) of God, and one only, so that the whole thing lacks a clear delineation and a definite articula- tion, being as it is a loose conglomeration of discrete points. It is, so to speak, a clouded mirror. In contrast to this, the second thing which God created for the purpose of seeing Himself as reflected therein, namely, Man, is a well-polished spotless mirror reflecting any object as it really is. Rather, Man is the polishing itself of this mirror which is called the universe. Those discrete things and properties that have been dif- fused and scattered all over the immense universe become united and unified into a sharp focus in Man. The structure of the whole universe with all its complicated details is reflected in him in a clear and distinctly articulated miniature. This is the meaning of his being a Microcosm. Man is a Small Universe, while the universe is a Big Man, as al-Qashani says . 4 The contrast between the universe and Man in the capacity of a ‘mirror’ which God holds up to Himself is described by Ibn ‘Arabi in the following terms : 5 God makes Himself visible to Himself in a (particular) form that is provided by the locus (i.e., the mirror) in which He is seen. Some- thing in this way becomes visible to Him which would never be visible if it were not for this particular locus and His self-manifestation therein. (Before the creation of Man) God had already brought into being the whole universe with an existence like that of a vague and obscure image having a form but no soul within. It was like a mirror that was left unpolished. . . . This situation naturally demanded the polishing up of the mirror of the universe. And Man ( adam , i.e., the reality of Man) was (created to be) the very polishing of that mirror and the very spirit of that form. The ontological meaning of the metaphor of the ‘unpolished mirror’ is explained by al-Qashani as follows : 6 Before Man, the Microcosm, was created, the universe (the Macro- cosm) had already been existent due to the requirement of the Divine Names, because it is in the nature of each Name to require singly the actualization of its content, i.e., the Essence accompanied by an Attribute, or an existence particularized by an Attribute, while another Name asks for an existence particularized by another Attri- bute. No single Name, however, requires an existence which would unify all the Attributes together, for no Name has an essential unity comprising all the Attributes in itself. Thus the universe has no property of being a comprehensive locus for manifesting all the aspects of existence in its unity. 222 Sufism and Taoism This fact that the universe was an ‘unpolished mirror’ required the creation of Man who was meant to be the very polishing of the mirror. This is a very important statement for determining the cosmic significance of Man. We might interpret it in terms of modern philosophic thinking and say that what is symbolized by the ‘polish- ing’ - or rather ‘the state of having been polished’ ( jala ’) - of the mirror is the ‘consciousness’ of Man. All beings other than Man only reflect, each one of them, singly, one aspect of the Absolute. It is only when put together in the form of the universe that they consti- tute a big whole corresponding to the Consciousness itself of the Absolute. In this sense, the universe, certainly, is ‘one’, but, since the universe lacks consciousness, it does not constitute real unity. Man, on the contrary, not only synthesizes all the forms of the Divine self-manifestation which are scattered over the world of Being, but also is conscious of this whole. This is why a true com- prehensive unity is established by Man, corresponding to the Unity of the Absolute. Man is in this sense the Imago Dei. And because of this peculiarity, Man can be, as we shall see presently, the ‘viceger- ent’ of God on the earth. On the correspondence just mentioned between the human unity and the Divine Unity, al-Qashani makes the following remark : 7 The Presence (i.e., the ontological level) of 'God' gathers together all the Names without there being anything mediatory between them and the Divine Essence. The ontological level of Man gathers them together in a similar way. This can be understood from the following consideration. Existence comes down first from the comprehensive Unity of the Essence to the Presence of Divinity, and thence it overflows into all the degrees of the ‘possible 1 things spreading more and more in various forms until, when it reaches Man, it has already been tinged with all the colors of the (ontological) grades. Man becomes in this way an intermediate stage ( barzakh ) comprising the properties both of necessity and possibility, as the Presence of Divinity comprises both the Essence and all the Names. The above quoted passage from the Fu$u$, together with this explanatory remark by al-Qashani, makes it clear that the most important significance of Man lies in his ‘comprehensiveness’ ( jam‘iyah , lit. ‘gathering-ness’). Before we proceed with this prob- lem, we must analyze further in detail the metaphor of the mirror. A mirror reflects objects. Sometimes it reflects them as they really are. But in many cases an object is reflected in a mirror more or less changed or transformed. Man as Microcosm 223 The image of a person appearing on the polished (surface of a) body is nothing other than the person himself, except that the locus or the Presence, in which he perceives the reflection of his own image, gives back the image to him with a certain transformation 8 according to the constitution of that Presence. In the same way, a big thing appears small in a small mirror, oblong in an oblong mirror, and moving in a moving mirror (i.e., running water). Thus the mirror sometimes gives back the image of the person in inversion, the inversion being caused by the particular constitution of a particular Presence. But sometimes it gives back the very thing (i.e., the person who is looking) appearing in it, in such a way that the left side (for example) of the reflected image faces the left side of the person . 9 Sometimes, again, the right side (of the image in the mirror) faces the left side (of the person) as is typical of what customarily happens to (an image in) a mirror. Only by a ‘break of custom 1 does the right side (for example) face the right side . 10 On the transforming effect of mirrors, Ibn ‘ Arabi says as follows in another passage : 11 A mirror affects the images in a certain sense, but it does not affect them in another sense. It does affect in that it gives back the image of an object in a changed form as regards smallness, bigness, length, and shortness. Thus it has a positive effect upon the quantities, and that effect is properly due to it. On the other hand, however, (it has no positive effect of its own in the sense that) all these changes caused by the mirror are in the last resort due to the different sizes of the objects reflected. Even one and the same object is reflected in varying magnitudes in mirrors of various magnitudes. Here we see clearly suggested the idea that although each individual man, as a mirror of the Absolute, reflects the Absolute and nothing else, the reflected images vary from person to person according to the individual capacities of different men. There is, however, as Ibn ‘Arabi adds, a certain respect in which a man, the mirror, must be said to exercise no positive, transforming effect upon the image of the Absolute, for all transformations of the reflected image ultimately come from the internal modifications of the Absolute itself Man, unlike the rest of the creatures, actualizes in himself the whole of the Divine Names in miniature, and is, in this sense, a miraculous mirror which is able to reflect the original unity of the Names as it is. But, on the other hand, men considered individually, differ from each other in the ‘polishing’ of the cosmic mirror. Only in the case of the highest ‘knowers’ does the human consciousness reflect on its spotless surface the Absolute as it really is. But by making these observations, we are already encroaching upon the realm of the next chapter. We must turn our steps back and continue our discussion of the nature of Man as Microcosm. 224 Sufism and Taoism II Comprehensiveness of Man The ‘humanity’ (insaniyah) of Man on the cosmic level lies, as we have already seen, in his ‘comprehensiveness’ ( jam‘iyah ). Man, as Microcosm, contains in himself all the attributes that are found in the universe. The Absolute, in this sense, manifests itself in Man in the most perfect way. And Man is the Perfect Man because he is the most perfect self-manifestation of the Absolute. The following is a very important passage in which Ibn ‘Arab! explains to us his concept of the Perfect Man on the cosmic level. 12 He takes the prophet Moses as an illustration. Moses, when he was born, was put into a chest, and was thrown into the Nile. Ibn ‘ Arabi, by explicating the symbolic meaning of this story, develops it into a theory of the Perfect Man. As regards the wisdom of Moses’ being put into a chest and thrown into the great river, we must notice that the chest ( tabut ) symbolizes the ‘human aspect (of man)’ ( nasut , i.e., the body) while the ‘great river’ (yamm) symbolizes the knowledge which he acquires by means of this body . 13 This Knowledge is acquired by him through the power of thinking, and representation. These and similar powers of the human soul can only function when the physical body is in existence. So, as soon as the soul is actualized in the body and is commanded (by God) to use and govern the body freely, God produces in the soul all the above-mentioned powers as so many instruments by which the soul might achieve the purpose - according to the Will of God - of governing this ‘chest’ containing the invisible Presence (. sakinah ) 14 of the Lord. Thus (Moses) was thrown into the great river so that he might acquire by means of these powers all kinds of knowledge. (God) let him understand thereby the fact that although the spirit ( riih ) governing (the body) is the ‘king’ (i.e., the supreme commander of the human body), yet it cannot govern it at will save by means of the body. This is why God furnished the body with all these powers existing in the ‘human aspect’ which He called symbolically and esoterically the ‘chest’. The same holds true of the governing of the world by God. For He governs the world at will only by means of it (i.e., the world), or by means of its form . 15 God governs the world only by the world (by establishing certain necessary relations among the things of the world): for example, the child depends upon the generating act of the father, the generated depend upon their generators, the conditioned upon their con- ditions, the effects upon their causes, the conclusions upon their proofs, and the concrete existents upon their inner realities. All these belong to the world as a result of God’s disposal of the thing. Thus it is clear that He governs the world only by the world. I have said above: ‘or by means of its form’ , i.e., by means of the form Man as Microcosm 225 of the world. What I understand here under the word ‘form’ (surah) is the Most Beautiful Names by which He has named Himself and the highest Attributes by which He has qualified Himself. In fact, of every Name of God, which we have come to know, we find the meaning actualized in the world and its spirit being active in the world. So in this respect, too, God does not govern the world except by the form of the world. Thus Ibn ‘Arab! divides the governing (tadbir) of the world by the Absolute into two kinds: (1) ‘by the world’ and (2) ‘by the form of the world’ . The first has been illustrated by such necessary relations as exist between the child and the father, the caused and the causes, etc. Here God, so to speak, lets the world govern itself by putting the things of the world in certain necessary relations. The second kind is completely different from this. It consists in God’s making His Names and Attributes, i.e., the eternal forms, govern and regulate from inside the ever changing phenomenal forms of the world. 16 This point is brought out with admirable clarity by al- Qashani in his following remark on the just quoted passage of the Fusiis. 11 What is meant by the ‘form of the world’ here is not its sensible individual form. If it were so, it (i.e., the second type of governing) would simply be reduced to the first type. . . . What is really meant by it is the intelligible, specific form of the world, which is nothing but the Most beautiful Names and its realities, i.e., the highest Attributes. The (phenomenal) forms of the world are simply outwardly man- ifested forms of the Names and Attributes. These latter are the real inner forms of the world. All sensible things are but outward, indi- vidualized forms; they are ever changing imprints and external shapes, while the (inner forms) are permanent and everlasting, never changing. The former are transitory forms, surface phenomena, while the latter are the inner meanings and spirits of the former. All the Names by which God has named Himself, such as Living, Knowing, Willing, Powerful, are there in the world. All the Attri- butes with which He has qualified Himself, such as Life, Knowledge, Will, Power, are there in the world. Thus God governs the outside of the world by its inside. (So there are two types in God’s governing the world:) the first is the governing exercised by some of the phenomenal forms of the world over other phenomenal forms. The second is the governing of the phenomenal individual forms by the internal specific forms. Both types are the governing of the world by the world. Ibn ‘Arab! goes on to argue: This is why (the Prophet) said concerning the creation of Adam: ‘Verily God created Adam in His Form’, for Adam is an exemplar synthesizing all the constituent elements of the Presence of Divinity, 226 Sufism and Taoism namely, the Essence, the Attributes, and the Actions. The expression ‘His Form’ means nothing but the Presence of Divinity itself. Thus God has put into this noble epitome ( mukhtasar ), the Perfect Man (as symbolized by Adam), all the Divine Names and the realities of all things existing outside of him in the Macrocosm which (appar- ently) subsists independently of him. This passage explains the meaning of the ‘comprehensiveness’ of Man. As we have seen above, the Perfect Man synthesizes in himself all the things that exist in the universe, ranging from the four natural elements to minerals, plants, and animals. But the important point is that all these things do not exist in Man in their concrete indi- vidual forms. They exist in him only as ‘ realities’ ( haqaiq ) , that is, in their universality. Man gathers together in himself all the things of the universe in the sense that he is a synthesis of the non-material realities of the individual things. The Perfect Man is an epitome of the Macrocosm only in this particular sense. God in this way has made Man the Spirit ( ruh ) of the universe, and made everything, high and low, subservient to him because of the perfection of his (inner) form. Thus it comes about that, as ‘there is nothing’ in the whole universe ‘but gives praises unto God’ (XVII, 44), so there is nothing in the universe but is subservient to Man due to the essential merit of his inner form. To this refers God’s saying: ‘thus He has made all that is in the heavens and in the earth subservient unto you all together, from Him’ (XXII, 65). So everything in the universe is under the supreme dominion of Man. But this fact is known only to those who know it - such a man is the Perfect Man 18 - and those who do not know it do not know - such is the Animal Man. Outwardly considered, the fact that Moses was put into a chest, which was then thrown into the great river, meant death, but inwardly, it was for him deliverance from being killed. For, as a result, he gained life, just as the souls are enlivened by knowledge and are delivered from the death of ignorance. The long passage which we have quoted explains the real nature of the perfection of Man on the cosmic level. In the view of Ibn ‘ Arabi, the perfection of Man and the high position assigned to him 19 are due to his microcosmic nature, that is, his ‘comprehensiveness’. And his ‘comprehensiveness’ consists in his reflecting and realizing faithfully the Divine Comprehensiveness. All the Names that are contained in the Divine Form 20 have been manifested in the ontological dimension of Man. And the latter has obtained through this (kind of) existence the (highest) rank of integral comprehensiveness. 21 Man as Microcosm 227 As regards the Divine Comprehensiveness (al-jam‘iyah al-ilahiyah ) Ibn ‘Arabi gives the following explanation, dividing it into three constituents . 22 (We can distinguish) in the Divine Comprehensiveness: (1) that which must be attributed to God Himself (as represented by the supreme Name Allah or God, comprehending within itself all the Divine Names), (2) that which is ascribable to the Reality of realities, and (3) that which - in this constitution (i.e. the bodily constitution of Man which comprehends all the recipients of the world ranging from the highest to the lowest - is ascribable to what is required by the universal Nature. The first of these three elements is evidently the Divine aspect of Unity, i.e., the Divine Essence, not in its absoluteness but as qualified by the Divine Name ‘God’. The second is the ontological plane in which the permanent archetypes come into being, i.e., God conceived as the highest creative Principle regulating and unifying the archetypes. It is called the Reality of realities because through this Reality all the realities of the world become actualized. The third, the universal Nature (j tabVah kulliyah) is the ontological region of ‘reality’ occupying the intermediary position between the purely Divine and positively creative ‘reality’ of Divine Names and the purely creaturely and essentially passive ‘reality’ of the physical world, comprising within itself both these properties - positively creative on the one hand, and passively receptive on the other. From all this Ibn ‘Arabi comes to the following conclusion . 23 This being (i.e., the ‘comprehensive being’) is called Man and also a Vicegerent ( khalifah ). 24 His being (named) Man is due to the com- prehensiveness of his constitution, comprising as it does all the realities. Furthermore (he deserves to be named Man - insan because) he is to God as the pupil (insan) is to the eye as the instrument of vision, i.e., seeing. Thus he is called insan because God sees His creatures through man, and has Mercy upon them. Man on the cosmic level, or the Perfect Man, is endowed with a perfect ‘comprehensiveness’. And because of this ‘comprehensive- ness’ by which he synthesizes in himself all the existents of the universe not individually but in their universality, the Perfect Man shows two characteristic properties which are not shared by any- thing else. One is that he is the only being who is really and fully entitled to be a perfect ‘servant’ ( [‘abd ) of God. All other beings do not fully reflect God, because each actualizes only a single Divine Name; they cannot, therefore, be perfect ‘servants’. The second characteristic feature of the Perfect Man consists in his being in a certain sense the Absolute itself. In the case of beings other than human, we can say that the Absolute is the inner reality (‘ayn) of 228 229 Sufism and Taoism them, but we cannot surely reverse the relation and say that they are the inner reality of the Absolute, for they are but partial actualiza- tions of the Divine Self. The following two verses by Ibn ‘Arab! put these two characteristics of Man in a concise form . 25 Verily, we are real servants; verily, God is our Master. Verily, we are His Self, and all this is implied when I say ‘Man’. That is to say, we are ‘servants’ in the true sense of the word, because we serve Him with an essential service, i.e., with the most com- prehensive Unity which is realized on the ontological level of ‘God’, while God with the whole of His Names is our Master, governing us, administering our affairs. We are different in this respect from the rest of beings, for they are His servants merely in certain aspects, and God is their Master with some of His Names. The Perfect Man is the inner reality of the Absolute because he appears in the Form of the latter with its comprehensive unity. The rest of the things, on the contrary, though the Absolute is the inner reality of each one of them, are not the inner reality of the Absolute because they are but loci of manifestation for some of the Names so that the Absolute does not manifest itself in them in its essential Form. But when I say ‘Man’, meaning thereby the Perfect Man, i.e., Man perfect in ‘humanity’, what is meant is the being in which the Abso- lute manifests itself in its essential Form. Man, in this sense, is the very reality of the Absolute. Ibn ‘ ArabI considers, further, the ‘comprehensiveness’ of Man from the point of view of the Inward-Outward opposition. In exact correspondence to the distinction between the Divine Names Inward and Outward, there is in Man also a distinction between the ‘inward’ and the ‘outward’, and he covers thereby the whole of the universe. You must know, further, that God describes Himself as being the Inward and the Outward. He has correspondingly produced the world of the Unseen and the world of sensory experience so that we might perceive the Inward by our own ‘unseen’ element and the Outward by our ‘sensible’ element. 26 Thus God has created two worlds, the inner and the outer, corres- ponding to His own Inward and Outward, and has given Man, and Man only, the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’. In this respect, Man alone is the true Imago of the Absolute. You must have understood by now the real nature of Adam, i.e., his outward ‘form’, as well as the real nature of his spirit ( ruh ), i.e., his inward ‘form’ . Adam is the Absolute (in view of his inward form) and a creature (in view of his outward form). You know also the real Man as Microcosm nature of his (ontological) rank which, being a synthesis, makes him entitled to be the Vicegerent (of God). 27 The position of Adam, i.e., the Perfect Man as understood in this chapter, is ‘in the middle’ between the Absolute and the creatures. He essentially reflects both, represents both, and is a ‘synthesis’ (majmu‘) of the two ‘forms’ . His ‘outward’ discloses the form of the created world and its realities, while his ‘inward’ reveals the Form itself of the Absolute and its essential Names. And because of this ‘synthesis’ and perfect ‘comprehensiveness’, his rank is higher than that of angels. Thus all the Names that are contained in the Divine Form are manifested in the ontological dimension of Man. The latter has obtained through this (kind of) existence the rank of integral com- prehensiveness. And this precisely was the ground on which God the Exalted refuted the argument of the angels 28 . . . The angels were not aware of what was implied by the constitution of this ‘vicegerent’ (of God on the earth). Nor did they know the ‘essential service’ 29 required by the Presence of the Absolute. For nobody can know concerning the Absolute except that which his own essence allows him to know, and the angels did not possess the ‘comprehensiveness’ of Adam. They were not even aware of (the limitedness of) the Divine Names that were (manifested) in themselves. So they were praising the Absolute and sanctifying it simply through the (limited Names that they hap- pened to have in themselves). They were not aware of the fact that God has (other) Names about which no knowledge had been given them. Consequently the angels were not praising Him through these Names; nor were they sanctifying Him in the same way as Adam did. Thus they were completely under the sway of what I have just mentioned (i.e., their limited knowledge of the Names), and were dominated by this (deficient) state of theirs. Because of this (deficiency in their) constitution, the angels said (to God when He was about to create Adam): ‘Art Thou going to place on the earth one who will do harm therein?’ (II, 30). But ‘harm’ can be nothing other than ‘opening up an argument (against God, instead of accepting His words with docility and submission)’. It was exactly what they themselves did (when they dared to put the above- mentioned question to God). So what they said concerning Adam was what they themselves were actually doing toward God. It is evident, then, that, if their own nature had not been agreeable to this particular behavior, they would not have said about Adam what they said without being conscious (of the truth of the matter). Had they but known their own selves, (i.e., their own essential constitution), they would have known (the truth about Adam), and had they but known (the truth) they would never have committed such a mistake. In reality, however, they were not content with denigrating (Adam); they went even further and boastfully claimed that they were praising and sanctifying God. 30 230 Sufism and Taoism But Adam had in himself such Divine Names as were not represented by the angels. The latter naturally could not praise God with those Names, nor could they sanctify Him with them, as Adam did. 31 In the Qoran (II, 31) we read that ‘God taught Adam all the Names’. This means, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, that Man represents and actualizes all Divine Names. The angels, on the contrary, man- ifest only some of the Names. But they are not aware of it. The difference between the human and the angelic act of praising God which is discussed here by Ibn ‘Arab! is also based on the Qoranic verse which reads: ‘There is nothing (in the world) but praises Him in adoration, but you do not understand their praise’ (XVII, 44). The dictum that everything in the world is praising God has, for Ibn ‘Arabi, a very special meaning. God manifests Himself in all things, according to their peculiar capacities and within the limits determined by the latter. This fact, when considered from the side of the created things, is capable of being interpreted as the created things manifesting the Divine Perfection ( kamal ) in variously limited forms. This manifestation of the Divine Perfection by each thing in its peculiar form is what is understood by Ibn ‘Arabi under the word ‘praising’ ( tasbih ) or ‘sanctifying’ ( taqdis ). Otherwise expressed, all things ‘praise and sanctify’ God by the very fact that they exist in the world. But since each thing exists in its own peculiar way, each thing praises and sanctifies God in a differ- ent way from all the rest. And the higher the level of Being to which a thing belongs, the greater and stronger is its ‘praising and sanctify- ing’, because a higher being actualizes a greater number of Names than those which belong to lower levels. In this respect, Man occupies the highest position among all the beings of the world, because he is a locus in which all the Names, i.e., all the Perfections (kamalat) of God become manifested. We must recall at this juncture what we have observed in an earlier context about the essential indifference of Perfection (kamal) to the commonly accepted distinction between good and evil. In Ibn ‘Arabi’s world-view, the distinction which is ordinarily made in human societies between good and evil is of an entirely conventional, relative, and secondary nature. Primarily, existence itself is Perfection, and every ontological attribute is also a Perfec- tion. Just as ‘obedience’ (to God) is a Perfection, ‘disobedience’ is a Perfection, because the latter is in no less a degree than the former an ontological attribute, i.e., a form of Being. The fact that ‘obedi- ence’ is a Perfection has essentially nothing to do with its being ethically ‘good’; ‘obedience’ is a Perfection because it is a locus in which such Divine Names as the Merciful and the Bountiful are Man as Microcosm 231 manifested. And ‘disobedience’ is a Perfection because it is a locus in which suth Names as the Vindictive and the Chastiser are manifested. If we lose sight of this basic ontological fact, we cannot under- stand why Ibp ‘ Arab! considers the position of Man higher than that of angels. Fr^rn the standpoint of Ibn ‘Arabi, the nature (tabVah) of angels is solely ‘spiritual’ (ruhiyah), while the nature of Man is ‘spiritual-bodily’ (ruhiyah-badaniyah) and thus comprises all the attributes of Being, ranging from the highest to the lowest. And because of this particularly, Man is superior to angels. 32 Regarding the highest position of Man in the hierarchy of Being, Ibn ‘Arabi discerns a deep symbolic meaning in the Qoranic state- ment that God created Adam ‘with both His hands’. God jointed His two hands for (creating) Adam. This He did solely by way of conferring upon him a great honor. And this is why He said to Iblis (Satan): ‘What hinders thee from falling prostrate before that which I have created with both My hands?’ (XXXVIII, 76). The (joining of His two hands) symbolizes nothing other than the fact that Adam join$ j n him two ‘forms’ : the form of the world and the form of the Absolute. These two are the ‘hands’ of God. Iblis, on th^ contrary, is but a part of the world, and this ‘gathering’ has not be^n given him. 33 In a different passage of the Fwyfiy, Ibn ‘Arab! returns to the idea of God having created Adam with both His hands, and says: 34 God kneaded the clay of Man with both His hands, which are opposed to each other, though, (in a certain sense), each one of His two hands is a right hand (i.e., both are exactly equal to each other in being powerful and merciful). In any case, there can be no doubt that there is a difference between the two if only for the reason that they are ‘two’, i.e., two hands. Nature is not affected except by what is proportional to it, and Nature itself is divided into pairs of opposition. That is why (it is said that God created Adam) with both His hands. And since He created Adam with both His hands, He named him bashar, is because of His ‘touching’ ( mubasharah ) him directly with the two haftds that are attributed to Him, the word ‘touching’ being taken here in a special sense which is applicable to the Divine Presence. 36 He did so as an expression of His special concern with this human species. And He said to (Iblis) who refused to fall prostrate before Adqrn: ‘What hinders thee from falling prostrate before that which I have created with both My hands? Dost thou scornfully look down’ upop one who is equal to thee, i.e., in being made of natural elements, ‘or art thou of a higher order’ which, in reality, thou art not - than elemental (‘unfurl) beings? 37 God means by ‘those of a higher order’ (‘alfn) those (spiritual beings) who, due to their luminous 232 233 Sufism and Taoism Man as Microcosm constitution, transcend, by their own essence, being ‘elemental’, though they are ‘natural ’, 38 Man is superior to other beings of the ‘elemental’ species only by being a bashar of clay (i.e., clay kneaded directly by the two hands of God). Thus he is higher than all that have been created of elements without having been touched by his hands. So Man is in rank higher than all the angels, terrestrial and celestial, although, according to the sacred texts, the archangels are superior to the human species. As a concrete example showing in the most perfect form possible the ‘comprehensiveness’ of the Perfect Man, Ibn ‘Arab! discusses Abraham (Ibrahim). In Islam, Abraham is generally known as the ‘intimate friend of God’ ( khatil Allah). Ibn ‘Arab! finds this phrase quite symbolic. But we must remember also that he understands the word khalil in a very special sense which is typical of his way of thinking. The word khalil appearing in the phrase khalil Allah means in ordinary understanding an ‘intimate friend’. 39 Ibn ‘Arabi explains the word by a completely different etymology; he derives it from takhallul which means ‘penetration’, ‘permeation’. The Perfect Man is the one whom the Absolute penetrates and whose faculties and bodily members are all permeated by the Absolute in such a way that he thereby manifests all the Perfections of the Divine Attributes and Names. We have already discussed in an earlier context the problem of Being running through ( sarayan ) all beings. The important point, for our immediate purpose, is that this sarayan or ‘pervasion’, although it is universal, differs in intensity or density from one thing to another. The sarayan of Being reaches its highest degree in the Perfect Man. And Being, that is, all the Perfections of the Absolute, permeate Man and become manifested in him both inwardly and outwardly. The title of honor of Abraham, khalil , symbolizes this fact. Ibn ‘Arabi himself gives the following explanation on this point: 40 (Abraham) is called khalil for no other reason than that he ‘perme- ates’ , and comprises in himself, all (the qualities) by which the Divine Essence is qualified 41 . . . just as a color ‘permeates’ a colored object in such a way that the accident (i.e., the color) exists in all the parts of the substance. The relation is different from that between a place and an object occupying it. Or rather we should say that (Abraham is called khalil) because the Absolute ‘permeates’ the existence of the form of Abraham . 42 Here Ibn ‘Arabi distinguishes between two forms of ‘permeation’ {takhallul): (1) one in which Man (symbolized by Abraham) plays the active role, Abraham appearing in the Form of the Absolute, and (2) the other in which the Absolute plays the active role, the Absolute appearing in the form of Abraham. The distinction was explained in an earlier context from a somewhat different point of view, when we discussed the idea of the bestowal of Being. What is of particular importance in the present context is that in the second type of ‘permeation’ the Absolute manifests itself in an individual- ized form, determined by the latter in its Existence, so that in this case creaturely attributes are ascribed to God, including even attri- butes denoting ‘defects’. Both these statements are right according to what God Himself affirms, for each of these aspects has its own proper field in which it is valid and which it never oversteps. Do you not see that God appears assuming the attributes that are peculiar to the temporal beings ? 43 He affirms this about Himself. Thus He assumes even attributes of defects and attributes of a blamable nature. Do you not see (on the other hand ) 44 that the creatures appear assuming the Attributes of the Absolute from the first Attribute to the very last? Thus all of them (i.e., all the Attributes of the Absolute) are necessar- ily and rightly to be ascribed to the creatures just as the attributes of the temporal beings are necessarily and rightly to be ascribed to the Absolute. All the Attributes of the Absolute are to be affirmed of the crea- tures because the essential reality {haqiqah) of the latter is nothing other than the Absolute appearing with its own Reality in their forms, so that the Attributes of the Absolute are the attributes of the creatures. In the same way, all the attributes of the temporal beings are rightly to be affirmed of the Absolute, because these attributes are so many states and aspects of the Absolute. If the very existence of the temporal beings is the Existence of the Absolute as manifested in them, how much more should this be the case with the attributes of the temporal beings. 45 Regarding the structure of the phenomenon of ‘permeation’, Ibn ‘Arab! gives the following explanation: 46 Know that whenever something ‘permeates’ ( takhallala ) another, the first is necessarily contained in the second. The permeater becomes veiled by the permeated, so that the passive one (i.e., the permeated) is the ‘outward’ while the active one (i.e., the permeater) is the ‘inward’ which is invisible. Thus it (i.e., the permeater) is food for the other (i.e., the permeated), just as water permeates wool and makes the latter bigger and more voluminous. And when it is God that plays the part of the ‘outward’ , the creatures are hidden within Him, and they become all the Names of God, 234 Sufism and Taoism namely. His hearing, His sight, etc., and all His relations and all His modes of cognition. But when it is the creatures that play the role of the ‘outward’, God becomes hidden in them, being inside of them, and God (in this case) is the hearing of the creatures, their sight, their hands and feet, and all their faculties. Thus the ontological ‘permeation’ is completely reciprocal between the Absolute and the world, and the Perfect Man represents this reciprocal ‘permeation’ in its most perfect form. Abraham is a typical example of this phenomenon. Ill The Vicegerency of God The Perfect Man is the ‘vicegerent’ (khalifah) of God on the earth, or in the world of Being. Reference has been made earlier to this concept in an incidental way. The present section will be devoted to a more detailed and concentrated discussion of this problem. The Perfect Man is entitled to be the ‘vicegerent’ of God because of his ‘comprehensiveness’. This idea, which has been mentioned more than once in what precedes, will furnish us with a good starting-point for an analysis of the concept of vicegerency. After having stated that Man alone in the whole world possesses the unique property of ‘being comprehensive’ ( jam‘iyah ), Ibn ‘Arab! goes on to argue : 47 Iblis (Satan) was but a part of the world, having no such ‘comprehen- siveness’. But Adam was a ‘vicegerent’ because of this ‘comprehen- siveness’. If he had not appeared in the Form of God who appointed him as His ‘vicegerent’ to take care of the things (i.e., the world and everything in the world) in His stead, he would not have been His ‘vicegerent’. 48 If, on the other hand, he had not contained in himself all the things of the world and all that was demanded of him by those people over whom he had been commanded to exercise sovereign power, (he would not have been His ‘vicegerent’). For the people depended upon him, and he was naturally expected to take care of all the needs of the people. Otherwise, he would not have been a ‘vicegerent’ governing them (in the place of the King). Thus no one was entitled to be the ‘vicegerent’ except the Perfect Man, for God created his ‘outward’ form out of all the realities and forms of the world, 49 and his ‘inward’ form on the model of His own Form. 50 This is why God says (in a Tradition): ‘I am his hearing and his sight’ . It is to be remarked that God does not say: 1 1 am his eye and his ear’. God distinguishes here between the two forms (i.e., the outward form and the inward form). The same holds true of everything existent in the world (i.e., just as God appears in Adam in his form, so He appears in everything in its peculiar form) in accordance with the requirement of the reality of Man as Microcosm 235 each thing. However, nothing in the world possesses the ‘comprehen- siveness’ which is possessed by the ‘vicegerent’. In fact he has obtained (his vicegerency) only because of his ‘comprehensiveness’. In another passage Ibn ‘ Arabi considers again the same problem of ‘vicegerency’ of Man based on the ‘comprehensiveness’ of his con- stitution. This time he approaches the problem from a somewhat different angle . 51 (The Perfect Man) is Man, temporally produced (in his body), but eternal (i.e., having no temporal origin, with regard to his spirit), something that grows up forever, the Word that distinguishes (bet- ween possibility and necessity) and gathers (them) together. The universe reached completion when he came into existence. He is to the universe what the bezel is to the seal. He is (comparable to) the place (of the seal) where there is engraved the device with which the king seals his treasuries. This is the reason why God has called him a ‘vicegerent’ , 52 because he acts as the guardian of His creatures just as the treasuries (of the king) are guarded by a seal. For as long as the royal seal is upon them, no one dares to open them unless the king gives permission. Thus God has appointed him as the ‘vicegerent’ in the guarding of the universe. The universe will remain guarded as long as there is in the universe the Perfect Man. Do you not see that when he departs (from the present world) and the seal of the treasuries is broken, there will not remain in the world that which God has stored there, and all that are therein will come out and will become confused one with another and everything will be trans- ported to the Hereafter? And there (in the next world) he (i.e., the Perfect Man) will again become a seal on the treasury of the Here- after to remain there as the seal for ever and ever. The whole world of Being, or the universe, is the ‘treasury’ of God, and of God alone. And Man is a custodian and curator ( wakil ) whom God Himself has put in charge of the guardianship of the treasury. This idea, which is the only right one concerning the position of Man in the cosmic order, is according to Ibn ‘Arabi, an idea peculiar to the ‘people of Muhammad’. Unlike Noah who had called his people exclusively to tanzih , Muhammad called his people to both tanzih and tashbih . 53 He called them to tanzih because the whole universe is a possession of God, and of God alone. He called them to tashbih , emphasizing thereby the human element in the created world, because God Himself has put the administration of His own possession in the hands of Man as His ‘vicegerent’. Man is not the real owner of the ‘treasury’, but he has the status of its ‘ curator’ . 54 And Man owes this high status to the fact that he is the only existent in the whole world of Being in whom all the Attributes and Names of the Absolute are manifested. 236 237 Sufism and Taoism IV The Reality of Muhammad The ‘Reality of Muhammad’ ( haqiqah Muhammad or al-haqiqah al-muhammadiyah) , is one of the most important concepts in the philosophy of Ibn ‘ Arabi. But since it has been dealt with in detail by Affifi, as Ibn ‘ArabFs doctrine of the logos, in his Philosophy , 55 I shall be content here with discussing it only as an aspect of the problem of the Perfect Man. All prophets, in Ibn ‘Arabi's view, are embodiments of the idea of the Perfect Man. But the Islamic Prophet, Muhammad, occupies among them a very special place. What is particularly important about Muhammad is that he had been a cosmic being before he was raised as an individual prophet at a certain moment of human history in the Capacity of God’s Messenger to the Arabs. Ibn ‘Arabi bases this conception on a well-known Tradition in which Muham- mad describes himself as a being of a cosmic nature by saying: ‘I was a prophet even while Adam was between clay and water’ , 56 Ontologically, Muhammad as a cosmic being who existed from eternity corresponds to, or represents, the level of the permanent archetypes; that is, the level of Being ‘which is neither existent nor non-existent’, the intermediary stage ( barzakh ) between the abso- lute Absolute and the world which is the outer self-manifestation of the Absolute. This intermediary stage is divine in so far as it is identified with the Divine Consciousness, but it is, at the same time, essentially creaturely or human in that it has significance only as it is related to the created world. The intermediary stage in this latter aspect, i.e., considered in its human aspect, is the Reality of Muhammad. And it is also the Perfect Man on the cosmic level. Thus understood, the Reality of Muhammad is not exactly the permanent archetypes themselves. Rather, it is the unifying princi- ple of all archetypes, the active principle on which depends the very existence of the archetypes. Considered from the side of the Abso- lute, the Reality of Muhammad is the creative activity itself of the Absolute, or God ‘conceived as the self-revealing Principle of the universe’ . 57 It is the Absolute in the first stage of its eternal self- manifestation, i.e., the Absolute as the universal Consciousness. It is also called ontologically, the ‘Reality of realities’ ( haqiqah al-haqa’iq ). The ‘Reality of realities’ is ultimately nothing but the Absolute, but it is not the Absolute in its primordial absoluteness; it is the very first form in which the Absolute begins to manifest itself. And this Divine Consciousness is reflected most faithfully by the self-consciousness of the Perfect Man. The Perfect Man, in this sense, is the outwardly manifested Consciousness of God. Thus the Man as Microcosm Prophet Muhammad on the cosmic level corresponds almost exactly to the Plotinian First Intellect. Muhammad, as the Perfect Man on the cosmic level, is the first of all self-determinations ( ta‘ayyundt ) of the Absolute. Theologically, it is the first ‘creature’ of God. Basing himself on a Tradition: ‘the first thing which God created was my Light’, Ibn ‘Arab! calls the Reality of Muhammad also the ‘Light of Muhammad’ ( al-niir al-muhammadiy). This Light had been existent even before all the creatures came into existence. It is, in this sense, ‘eternal (a parte ante)' ( qadim ), and ‘non-temporal ( ghayr hadith ). And this eternal Light went on being manifested in successive prophets: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus etc., until it reached its final historical manifestation, the Prophet Muhammad. Since the Light was that which God created before anything else and that from which he created everything else, it was the very basis of the creation of the world. And it was ‘Light’ because it was nothing else than the First Intellect, i.e., the Divine Consciousness, by which God manifested Himself to Himself in the state of the Absolute Unity. And the Light is in its personal aspect the Reality of Muhammad. Regarding Muhammad’s being the first self-determination of the Absolute and his being, therefore, the most comprehensive and the highest, al-Qashani writes : 58 (Muhammad was) the first self-determination with which the Essence at the level of Unity determined itself before any other forms of self-determination. So all the infinite self-determinations became actualized through him. As we have seen above, all the self- determinations (of the Absolute) are arranged in a hierarchy of genera, species, kinds, and individuals, all being disposed in a vertical order. So (Muhammad) comprises in himself all these self- determinations without leaving anything. He is, in this sense, unique in the whole world of Being; nothing can compete with him, because nothing is found equal to him in the hierarchy. In fact, there is above him only the Essence at the level of its absolute Unity, which trans- cends all self-determinations, whether that of an attribute, name, description, definition, or qualification. Such being the case, it will be evident that Muhammad, as the Logos, is the most perfect being within the species of man. He was the most perfect being of the human species. This is why the whole process of creation was commenced and finished through him. 4 He was a prophet even while Adam was between water and clay’ (as the cosmic Logos), but later (i.e., in historical time) he was born compounded of elements (i.e., in a bodily form) and proved to be the 238 Sufism and Taoism final seal of the prophets . . . (As an individual), Muhammad was the most powerful proof of his Lord, because he had been given all the ‘words’ ( kalim ) which were the very contents of the names 59 (of all the things of the world) which (the Lord taught) Adam. 60 As has been touched upon earlier in this section, Muhammad as the first creature of the Absolute clearly corresponds to the First Intel- lect of Plotinus, which is the ‘first emanation’ from the absolute One. And in this aspect Muhammad is called by Ibn ‘Arab! the ‘Muhammadan Spirit’ (al-riih al-muhammadiy) . In the world-view of Plotinus, the Nus, the first emanation from the One, has two aspects: (1) it is ‘passive’ in relation to that from which it has emanated, and (2) ‘active’ in relation to that which emanates from itself. It is ‘passive’ toward the higher level of Being and ‘active’ toward the lower level of Being. In the particular context of Ibn ‘ Arabi’s philosophy, this Plotinian ‘passivity’ ( inftal ) changes into ‘servant-ness’ (‘ ubiidiyah ) and the ‘activity’ (fi‘l) becomes ‘Lordship’ ( rubublyah ). Thus the ‘Muhammadan Spirit’ stands in the position of ‘passivity’, i.e., ‘servant-ness’, in relation to the Creator, i.e., the source of its own appearance and manifestation, while in relation to the world it shows a thoroughgoing ‘activity’, acting as it does as the first prin- ciple of creation. Ibn ‘ Arab! explains this as follows in a mythopoe- tic form: 61 Muhammad (i.e., the ‘ Muhammadan Spirit’) was created basically as a ‘servant’. So he never dared raise his head seeking to be a master. Nay, he kept humbly prostrating and never transgressing the state of being ‘passive’, until, when God had produced from him all that He produced, He conferred upon him the rank of ‘activity’ over the world of (Divine) breaths. Muhammad, in this respect, shows perfectly his ‘intermediary nature’ (barzakhiyah) . He is a ‘servant’ and is ‘passive’ vis-a-vis the Absolute, but he is a ‘lord’ and is ‘active’ vis-a-vis the world. V The Perfect Man and God The Absolute, in its self-revealing aspect, reaches perfection in the Perfect Man. In the latter the Absolute manifests itself in the most perfect form, and there can be no self-manifestation more perfect than this. The Perfect Man, in this respect, is the Absolute, while being at the same time a creature. We know already what Ibn ‘ Arabi means when he says that Man is the Absolute. Man is the Absolute because of his essential ‘comprehensiveness’, or because, as Ibn ‘Arab! says, God put into Adam, the human species, all of its Man as Microcosm 239 Attributes, whether active of passive. After stating that God joined both His hands ‘to knead the clay of Adam’ and created him in this particular way, Ibn ‘Arab! goes on to say: 62 Then (i.e-., after having created Adam) God made him behold all that He had put into him, and grasped the whole in His two hands: in the one, He held the universe, and in the other, Adam and his offspring. This passage is explicated by al-Qashanl in the following terms: 63 This means that God let the Real Man ( al-insan al-haqiqiy ) observe all the Divine secrets (i.e., invisible realities which are actualized at the ontological level of the all-comprehensive Name Allah) which He had placed in him, then put together the whole of what He had created and the whole of what He had placed in Adam, grasping them with his both hands. He placed in His right hand, which is His stronger hand, the reality of Adam and his descendants, i.e., all His active Attributes and His (active) Names belonging to the higher spiritual world, and in the left hand, which is the weaker hand, the forms of the world, i.e., His passive (lit. receiving) Attributes and His (passive) Names belonging properly to the physical world. (This distinction between the right and the left hand as the stronger and the weaker is not an essential one, for) each of the two hands of the Merciful is in truth a right hand. (And, consequently, there is no real distinction in terms of rank between the two kinds of the Attri- butes) because the ‘receptivity’ ( qabiliyah ) with regard to the power of ‘receiving’ is perfectly equal to the ‘positive activity’ (Ja‘iliyah ) with regard to the power of ‘acting’, the former being in no way inferior to the latter. Since Man in whom God has thus placed everything is His perfect image, whatever can be predicated of Man can also be predicated, at least in a certain sense, of God, And this is what is meant by the dictum: Man is the Absolute. Is there, then, no essential difference between Man as the Micro- cosm, i.e., the Perfect Man and the Absolute? Of course, there is, and a very essential one. The difference lies in the ‘necessity ( wujub ) of existence. You must know that since, as we have said every temporal thing appears in His Form, clearly God has so arranged that we should, in trying to know Him, resort to studying carefully the temporal things. Thus He Himself tells us (in the Qoran, XLI, 53) that He shows us His signs in the temporal things, 64 so that we might infer from our own states the state of God. And by whatever quality we may describe Him, we ourselves are that very quality. The only exception from this is the ‘essential necessity’ ( wujub dhatiy ) which is peculiar to God alone. Since we come to know God, in this way, by ourselves, it is natural that we should attribute to Him whatever we attribute to ourselves. 240 Sufism and Taoism This is confirmed by that of which God Himself has informed through the tongues of the interpreters (i.e., the prophets). In fact He has described Himself to us through us. Thus, whenever we observe Him (through some attribute) we are observing (through the same attri- bute) our own selves. And whenever He observes us, He is observing Himself. No one will doubt that we are many as individuals and species. Certainly, all of us have in common one and the same ‘reality’ (or ‘essence’) which unites us, but we know definitely that there is also a distinction by which are distinguished all the individuals one from another. If it were not for this distinction there would not be multi- plicity within the unity. Likewise, though God describes us precisely with what He describes Himself with, there must be a distinction (between us and God). And that distinction can consist only in our essential need (for Him) regarding our existence, and the depen- dence of our existence upon Him because of our ‘possibility’, and in His being absolutely free from all such need. 65 Thus the Absolute and the creatures are the same in a certain respect, but a fundamental distinction separates the one from the other: the ‘necessity of existence’ ( wujub al-wujiid) which is pecul- iar to the Absolute alone. And due to this ‘necessity’, the Absolute has certain Attributes which are not shared by anything else, like quidam (‘eternity a parte ante ’ and ‘eternity a parte post'). It is to be remarked that, though this is philosophically the only real difference between God and the creatures, it is an essential and fundamental difference. And being a fundamental difference, it determines the position of Man in a decisive way vis-a-vis God. Man is certainly the highest of all in the world of Being. To him is ascribed an ontological ‘height’ (‘uluw). The ‘height’, however, is not the ‘height’ of the Absolute. Unlike the latter, Man’s ‘height’ is only ‘consequential’ ( bi-al-tab‘iyah ) or ‘secondary’; it is not an ‘essential ( dhatiy ) height’. In the Qoran (XL VII, 35) God says to the followers of Muham- mad: ‘You are the highest and so is God, too, with you’ , 66 This verse, Ibn ‘Arab! says, might suggest that God and Man share the same ‘height’. But such an understanding is completely wrong. For God definitely denies such an equality in ‘height’ between Himself and Man. Although Man is the ‘highest’ in a particular sense and partici- pates with God in the ‘height’ in the general connotation of the word, the real content of the ‘height’ is different when the word is applied to God from when it is applied to Man. A Peripatetic philosopher would simplify the matter by saying that the same word a‘la (‘highest’) is here used secundum prius et posterius. This is clearly what is meant by al-Qashani when he says: 67 Man as Microcosm 241 The participation (of Man) in ‘being the highest’ , which God affirms of him is liable to produce the wrong view that Man does participate (with God) in the same height of rank. So He says: ‘Praise the Name of thy Lord, the Highest’ (LXXXVII, 1) in order to deny categori- cally the possibility of such participation. In fact, the absolute and essential ‘height’ belongs to God, and to God alone. He is the highest by His Essence, in an absolute sense, not in relation to anything other than Himself. Thus all ‘height’ belongs properly to Him alone, and everything to which His ‘height’ is attributed (i.e., everything that is said to be ‘high’) is ‘high’ according to the degree in which God manifests himself under the Name ‘High’ {‘aliy). Nothing really participates with Him in the very source of the ‘height’ . God has no ‘height’ in a relative sense, while all other things become ‘high’ through His Name ‘High’. Ibn ‘Arab! further stresses the non-essential nature of the ‘height’ of Man by pointing out that although Man, i.e., the Perfect Man, is the highest of all beings, his ‘height’ does not properly belong to him- self, but rather to the ‘place’ 68 that has been assigned to him. What is high is not so much Man himself as his ‘place’ . This is why God says: ‘And We raised him to a high place’ (XIX, 57). It is worthy of remark that the adjective (‘aliy) in this verse qualifies ‘place’ ( makan ), not Man. Likewise, Man’s being the ‘vicegerent’ of God on the earth is simply the ‘height’ of place or position; it is not his essential ‘height’. The preceding pages have clarified Ibn ‘Arabi’s thesis that the ‘ height’ of man is not of an essential nature . But whatever the nature of his ‘height’, it is true that Man is ‘high’ or even the ‘highest’ of all beings. Here Ibn ‘Arab! points out a very paradoxical fact about Man. Certainly, Man is the highest of all beings as long as we consider him ideally. But once we open our eyes to the real situation of human existence, we find the strange fact that, far from being ‘high’ or ‘highest’, Man is the ‘lowest’ of all in the whole world of Being. Of course, in doing so we are taking a very particular point of view. But at least from this particular point of view, the hierarchy of values becomes completely reversed. For in this new system, the inanimate beings occupy the highest rank, then the plants, then the animals, and the human beings are found in the lowest position. Usually, Man is considered the highest of all beings because of his Reason (‘ aql ). But, in truth, this very Reason which is peculiar to Man weaves around him an opaque veil which develops into an ‘ego’. And the ‘ego’ thus produced hinders Man from knowing the Absolute as it really is. Precisely because of his Reason, Man cannot but be a ‘mirror which reflects the Absolute only with inversion’. 242 243 Sufism and Taoism There is no creature higher than minerals; then come the plants with their various degree and ranks. The plants are followed by those possessed of the senses (i.e. , animals). Each of these (three classes of beings) knows its own Creator through natural intuition or through an immediate evidential knowledge. But what is called Adam (i.e., Man) is shackled by Reason and thinking or is in the pillory of belief. 69 The inanimate things, or ‘minerals’, have no ego. So they are obedient to God’s commandments absolutely and unconditionally. Their ‘servant-ness’ (‘ ubudiyah ) is perfect in this sense. They are exposed naked to God’s activity upon them, there being no veil at all between them. In this respect, they occupy the highest place in the hierarchy of Being. The second position is given to the plants. They grow, assimilate nourishment, and generate. To that extent they act positively on their own accord. And to that extent they are farther removed from the Absolute than the minerals. The third position is occupied by the animals. They are possessed of senses, and they show the activity of will. The sense perception and will disclose a certain amount of ego. But the animal ego is not as strong as that of Man. These three, the minerals, plants, and animals, having no Reason, know God by a natural ‘unveiling’ or immediate evidential know- ledge. Man, on the contrary, possesses Reason, and the Reason develops his ego to a full extent, and he becomes veiled by his own ego. Thus from the viewpoint of the ideal state of ‘servant-ness’, Man is situated on the lowest level on the scale of Being. In order to climb the scale upward, he must first of all dispel from himself Reason - which is, paradoxically, exactly the thing that makes him a Man - and bring to naught all the properties that derive from Reason. Only when he succeeds in doing so, does he ascend to the rank of animals. He must then go on to ascend to the rank of plants, and thence finally to the rank of minerals. Then only does he find himself in the highest position on the whole scale of Being. There will no longer remain in him even a shadow of Reason, and the Light of the Absolute will illumine him undimmed, unhindered, in its original splendor. These considerations make us aware of the fact that Man as an Idea is per se ‘perfect’ and occupies the highest position, but that in his actual situation he is far from being a perfect realization of his own ideal. We can maintain that Man is the highest being in the world Man as Microcosm only when we take the viewpoint of a philosophical anthropology standing on the supposition that the ideal of Man is perfectly real- ized in the actual Man. The actual Man, however, is a being in full possession of Reason, a being dependent upon his Reason and brandishing it everywhere in his understanding of everything. He who brandishes his Reason is not capable of penetrating the mys- tery of Being. But while making this observation, we realize that we are already far removed from the sphere in which we began our discussion of Man. We started from the basic assumption that Man can be consi- dered on two entirely different levels: cosmic and individual. And the purpose of the present chapter has been to elucidate the concept of Man on the cosmic level, as Microcosm. And on this level, Man is certainly the highest of all beings. However, in the last section of this chapter, we have been moving down to the concept of Man on the individual level. We have learnt that on this latter level, Man is, in a certain sense, even lower than animals, plants and minerals. On this level, not all men, but only a small number of special men are worthy to be called ‘perfect men’. They are ‘perfect’ because, hav- ing already died to their own ego through the mystical experience of self-annihilation and subsistence, they are no longer veiled by Reason. The next chapter will be devoted to a more detailed con- sideration of the idea of the Perfect Man on the individual level. Notes 1. Fu$., p. 8/48. 2. Fu$., p. 9/48. 3. Fuj., p. 11/49; p. 132/115. 4. p. 11. 5. Fu$., p. 9/48-49. 6. p. 10. 7. p. 11. 8. I read with Qaygari: tulqi ilay-hi bi-taqallub min wajh. 9. Al- Qashani says that this is the case when the Absolute manifests itself in the very form of a Perfect Man - p. 42. 10. Fu$., pp. 41—42/66-67. 11. Fw>., p. 232/184. 245 244 Sufism and Taoism 12. Fw>., pp. 251-253/198-199. 13. The ‘great river’ Nile symbolizes an ocean of Knowledge into which Moses’ body was thrown in order that he might acquire all the possible perfections by which Man is distinguished from all other beings - cf. Affifi, Fuy., Com., p. 293. 14. sakinah from the Hebrew shekina meaning the Divine Presence. Here it means the ‘Divine aspect’ ( lahut ) of man to be correlated with the above-mentioned nasut. 15. ‘its form (surah)' , that is, the form of the world. The meaning of this expression will be clarified by al-Qashani’ s explanatory remark which will immediately follow the present passage. 16. This is tantamount to saying that God governs all the things in the world by means of their permanent archetypes. 17. p. 252. 18. Here, be it noticed, Ibn ‘Arabi understands Man not on the cosmic, but on the individual level. 19. As we shall see presently, Man occupies a higher position than angels in the world-view of Ibn ‘Arabi. 20. The ‘Divine Form’ ( al-surah al-ilahlyah ) itself means nothing else than the whole of the Divine Names. 21. Fu$., p. 14/50. 22. Fuy., p. 12/49. 23. Fwj., 13/49-50. 24. On this concept see later, III. 25. Fuy., p. 180/143. The explanatory words that follow the verses are by al- Qashani. 26. Fuy., p. 21/54. 27. Fuy., pp. 25-26/56. 28. Reference to the Qoran, II, 30-33. 29. ‘ibadah dhatlyah ‘essential service’ means, as we have seen above, the perfect and complete adoration of God which consists in that an existent actualizes in itself all the Names. 30. ‘Art Thou going to place on the earth one who will do harm therein and shed blood, when we are praising and sanctifying Thee?’ (II, 30). 31. Fas., pp. 14-15/50-51. 32. Although, to be sure, he is not superior to all the angels, as we shall see. Man as Microcosm 33. Fu!>., pp. 22-23/55. 34. Fu$., p. 184/144-145. 35. Reference to the Qoran, XV, 28: inni khaliqun basharan, etc. Bashar means ‘ man’ considered from the point of view of his being ‘ mortal’ . But Ibn ‘ Arabi in this passage understands the word in terms of the verb bdshara (inf. mubasharah) meaning ‘to touch something directly with one’s own hands’. 36. That is to say, in a non-material, non-anthropomorphic, sense. 37. Qoran, XXXVIII, 76. 38. They stand above the sphere of elements, though they are of the domain of Nature. 39. From khullah , meaning ‘sincere friendship’. 40. pp. 71-72/80-81. 41. According to al-Qashani, this means the appearance of Abraham in the Form of the Absolute in such a way that the Absolute is his hearing, his sight, and all his other faculties - p. 72. 42. This means that the Absolute, by being ‘determined’ by the ‘determination’ of Abraham, becomes qualified by the attributes of Abraham and his form, so that all the attributes that are ascribed to Abraham are ascribed to the Absolute, too. The result of this process is that God does whatever He does through Abraham, hears by his hearing, and sees with his eyes - al-Qashani, p. 71. 43. Here Ibn ‘Arabi takes up the second type of ‘permeation’ first. 44. This refers to the first type of ‘permeation’. 45. Qashani, p. 72. 46. Fuy., p. 73/81. 47. Fuy., pp. 23-24/55. 48. ‘because a vicegerent should know the will of the man who has appointed him as his representative, so that he might carry out his command. Thus if the vicegerent of God does not know Him with all His Attributes, he would not be able to carry out His Command’ - al-Qashani, p. 23. 49. so that everything that exists in the world is reflected in Man by a corresponding element. 50. so that his inner form is modeled on the Name and Attributes of God. Thus he is ‘hearing’, ‘seeing’, ‘knowing’ etc., as God Himself is, i.e., he is qualified by all the Divine Attributes. 51. Fuy., pp. 13-14/50. 246 Sufism and Taoism 52. ‘The engraved seal is the Greatest of all the Divine Names, namely, the Divine Essence with all the Names. This seal is engraved on the ‘heart’ of the Perfect Man, which is symbolized here by the bezel of the royal seal. Thus the Perfect Man guards the treasury of the universe with all that is contained therein, and keeps them in the established order’ - al-Qashani, p. 13. 53. Cf. Chapter IV 54. Cf. Fuy., p. 53/71. 55. Chapter V, pp. 66-101. For a discussion of the historical relation between this Islamic /og<w-doctrine and the /ogo^-Christology see Arthur Jeffery: Ibn aI-‘Arabi’s Shajarat al-Kawn (Studia Islamica, X, Paris, 1959, pp. 45-62). 56. Kantu nabiy wa-Adam bayna al-ma’ wa-al-fin. 57. Affifi, Philosophy , p. 69. 58. p. 266. 59. Reference to the Qoran, II, 31. 60. Fuy., p. 267/214. 61. Fu$., p. 275/220. 62. Fu$., p. 26/56. 63. p. 26. 64. ‘We shall show them Our signs on the horizons and in themselves’. 65. Fuy., p. 19/53-54. 66. Wa-antum al-a‘lawna wa-Allahu ma‘a-kum. Ibn ‘Arabi’s interpretation of this verse (‘you are the highest and God, too, is the highest with you’) is quite an original one. Contextually, the verse simply means: ‘you, believers, will surely win (in your struggle with the disbelievers) for God is with you (i.e., on your side)’. 67. p. 62. 68. either in the sense of makan, i.e., physical place, or makanah, i.e., non-material place, position or rank. 69. Fuy., pp. 82-83/85. The original is a part of a poem. XV The Perfect Man as an Individual At the outset of the preceding chapter I pointed out that Man, in the thought of Ibn ‘Arabi, is conceived on two different levels, cosmic and individual. The present chapter will be concerned with the second of these two levels. Man on the first level, or - logically - Man as a species, is in the intermediary stage between the Absolute and the world, and, as an intermediary, occupies the highest position in the hierarchy of the created beings. As soon as we begin to consider Man on the indi- vidual level, however, we cannot help noticing the existence of many degrees ( maratib ). Otherwise expressed, on the cosmic level Man himself is the Perfect Man, but on the individual level not all men are ‘perfect’ ; on the contrary, only a few deserve the title of the Perfect Man. How is it possible that a such a fundamental difference should occur between the two levels? Any man, as long as he is a ‘man’, is expected to have the ‘comprehensiveness’ actualized in him, because the ontological ‘comprehensiveness’ belongs to the very nature of the human species. There can be no possible exception in this respect. Ontologically, there can be no difference in this respect between one individual and another. All this is certainly true. But individual differences arise in accordance with the degrees of lucid- ity in the mind of those who become conscious of this very fact. All men are naturally endowed with the same ontological ‘comprehen- siveness’ but not all men are equally conscious of the ‘comprehen- siveness’ in themselves. They are variously conscious of it, ranging from the highest degree of lucidity which comes very close to that of the Divine Consciousness of the Names and Attributes, down to the lowest which is practically the same as complete opaqueness. And only at the highest degree of lucidity can the human mind play the role of a ‘polished mirror’. Only at the highest degree of lucidity can Man be the Perfect Man. This is the gist of the whole problem. In a passage of the Fu$us, Ibn ‘Arab! writes: ‘God has brought to light their various degrees in him (i.e., Adam)’. 1 Here the pronoun 248 Sufism and Taoism ‘their’ refers to the sons of Adam. Thus the meaning of this short sentence may be paraphrased as: ‘God has made clear the existence of various degrees among men within Adam, i.e., the same one species of Man’ . The cause which brings into being such degrees among individual men is explained by Ibn ‘Arabi through the metaphor of colored glass, a metaphor which we have met in an earlier context. Just as one and the same light is variously colored as it passes through pieces of glass of various colors, the same Form of the Absolute is differently manifested in different men with different capacities . 2 A man who has ‘actualized in himself the Absolute’ (al- mutahaqqiq bi-al-haqq ) is completely permeated by the Absolute, so much so that each of his bodily members is a self-manifestation of the Absolute. And yet, when such men - the people of God (ahl Allah) - obtain knowledge by ‘immediate tasting’ , one and the same knowledge becomes variously inflected according to the capacities of individual organs. Know that all mystical knowledges which, originating from the ontological level of the Name Allah, are actualized in the people of God, differ from each other according to the differences in the cognitive faculties through which they are actualized, although all these knowledges are derived ultimately from one source. This last point is proved by the fact that God Himself declares (in a well- known Tradition): ‘I am his hearing with which he hears, his sight with which he sees, his hand with which he seizes, his foot with which he walks’, God declares in this way that His He- ness ( huwiyah ) is the very bodily members, which, in their turn, are the man himself. The He-ness is one, and the bodily members (of the man in whom the He-ness is actualized) are diverse. And each of his bodily members has a special knowledge by ‘immediate tasting’ which is peculiar to it and which is derived from the unique source (from which all the other bodily members obtain their peculiar knowledges). Thus (the same knowledge coming from one source) becomes differentiated by the different bodily members . 3 In the passage just quoted, Ibn ‘Arabi is speaking of the inflection of one and the same intuitive cognition in one and the same man through his different bodily members. He is not talking about differences in intuition among different ‘men of God’. He describes here simply how one knowledge coming from one source becomes differently modulated in one man according to which of his faculties is used. But if in one and the same man the situation is like that, it is naturally to be expected that even greater differences should arise in different individuals. In his commentary on this passage, al- Qashanl understands it in this sense and says : 4 The Perfect Man as an Individual 249 Knowledges by ‘immediate tasting’ are differentiated by the differ- ence of natural capacities (lit. ‘preparedness’), because the ‘people of God’ do not all stand on one level. And this causes a difference in their ‘tasting’ experiences and (the resulting) knowledges . . . just as one and the same person obtains different knowledges through dif- ferent faculties. Differences arise (in both cases) in spite of the fact that all these knowledges go back to one single source, which is the He-ness of the Absolute. Ibn ‘Arabi himself explains this phenomenon by comparing it to water which may have different tastes despite the oneness of its reality. This may be understood by the example of water. Water is every- where one single reality, but it has different tastes according to places. Here it is sweet, there it is salty and bitter. And yet water is water in all the states; its reality does not become different however different its tastes may be . 5 The above explanation gives the ontological cause from which all differences and degrees occur among men. In addition to this, Ibn ‘Arabi gives another, theological cause for the same phenomenon: the ‘jealousy’ ( ghayrah ) of God. The idea of God being ‘jealous’ ( ghayur ) goes back historically to a very old Semitic conception of God. And it plays also a consider- ably important part in Sufism. Now ‘jealousy’ in reference to God is capable of being under- stood in various meanings. God is ‘jealous’, for example, because He does not like the secret between Him and His servants be disclosed to others. Or God is ‘jealous’ in the sense that He forbids that anything other than Himself be adored and worshipped. Ibn ‘Arabi understands the idea of Divine ‘jealousy’ in terms of the concept of ‘self-manifestation’ {tajalli). The Absolute, he says, manifests itself endlessly; it freely dis- closes and reveals its inner mysteries. And yet the Absolute is, paradoxically enough, ‘jealous’ of its mysteries, in the sense that it conceals them from the eyes of ordinary men. From this particular point of view, Ibn ‘Arabi goes even to the extent of calling the Divine self-manifestations fawahish (sg. fahishah meaning literally ‘shameful thing’ ‘something scandalous or disgraceful’). Here he is looking at the whole matter from, so to speak, the subjective view- point of the Absolute itself. God’s feeling, Ibn ‘Arabi surmises, would be that He should not have disclosed his secrets, that He should rather have kept them forever hidden in Himself. On the human level, it is always an act of shamelessness for man to disclose to the eyes of the public what he should keep concealed. Furthermore, Ibn ‘Arabi exercises here again his favorite method 250 Sufism and Taoism of thinking by phonetic associations, and connects the word ghayrah (jealously) with ghayr (‘other’). God admits that He has the Attribute of ‘jealousy’ (ghayrah). It is out of ‘jealousy’ that He ‘has forbidden the shameful things (fawahish )’ (V, 33). But ‘shameful’ is only that which has been made openly manifest (while in truth it should have been kept concealed.) As to what is kept within, it is ‘shameful’ only to those who can see it. 6 The last sentence would seem to need a few explanatory words. Here Ibn ‘Arabi divides the ‘shameful things’, i.e., the self- manifestations of God, into two kinds. The first consists of those things that are openly manifest to our senses, in the world of concrete reality. The second refers to the ‘inner’ (ba(in) self- manifestations of the Divine Essence in the form of the permanent archetypes. These are not manifest to the eyes of ordinary people, and in this respect they are not ‘shameful’. And yet they are nonetheless manifested forms, and as such are clearly visible to those who have the proper eyes with which to perceive them. They are, to that extent, equally ‘shameful’. 7 Thus God ‘has forbidden the shameful things’, that is, God has forbidden the reality to be known openly; namely, the fact that He is nothing other than the (created) things. So He has concealed the reality with the veil of ‘jealousy’ -‘other-ness’ (ghayrah ). 8 And (the ‘other’) is yourself (i.e., your ego which is conscious of being some- thing independent and different from the Absolute). (This connec- tion between ‘jealousy’ and ‘other-ness’ is natural) because ghayrah comes from ghayr. As a result of this, the ‘other’ judges that this (particular act of) hearing, for instance, is the hearing of such-and-such an individual person, while the ‘knower’ of the truth judges that the hearing (i.e., all particular acts of hearing) is the very (act of) the Absolute. And the same is true of all human faculties and bodily organs. Thus not everyone knows the Absolute (in the same degree). There are superior men and inferior men, and a number of ranks are clearly discernible among them. 9 The highest rank, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, belongs to a man who throws himself wholly into the act of ‘remembrance’ (dhikr) - that is, not only with his tongue and heart alone - and becomes internally unified with the Absolute. It must be kept in mind that ‘remembrance’ (dhikr), for Ibn ‘Arabi, does not simply mean the act of remembering God with one’s tongue and heart; the word is rather synonymous with mysti- cal ‘self-annihilation’ in God. The dhikr in this meaning is a spiritual state in which a mystic concentrates all his bodily and spiritual powers on God in such a way that his whole existence is united with 251 The Perfect Man as an Individual God completely, without any residue. When a mystic attains to this state, the distinction between the subject (who exercises the con- centration of the mind) and the object (upon which his mind is concentrated) naturally disappears, and he experiences the immed- iate tasting’ of the essential unity with the Absolute. The ordinary kind of dhikr which consists in merely ‘remembering’ the Absolute with tongue or mind without a total existential involve- ment of the person represents a lower degree of dhikr-ex perience. When a dhikr of the highest rank actually occurs in a mystic, the natural perfection of Man is completely realized, and he occupies a position in the world higher than that of other creatures, including even angels. Of course all creatures manifest the glory of God each according to its degree of dhikr, but it is only in Man that this experience can be heightened to that of the essential unity with God. The real value of the human existence which is ours is known only to those who ‘remember’ Godin the proper way of ‘remembering’. For God is the intimate Companion ( jalis ) of those who ‘remember’ Him, and those who ‘remember’ Him do witness the Companion. As long as a man who ‘remembers’ does not witness God who is his Compan- ion, he is not ‘remembering’ (in the proper way). The ‘remembrance’ of God (when it is real) runs through all the parts of a man, unlike the case in which a man ‘remembers’ only with his tongue. For in the latter case, God happens to be only momentarily the Companion of the tongue exclusively, so that the tongue alone sees God while the man himself does not see Him by means of the sight by which he is properly supposed to see. You must understand (in the light of this explanation) the following mystery concerning the ‘remembrance’ of those who are not serious enough. Even in a man who is not serious enough, the (particular bodily organ) which happens to be ‘remembering’ Him is doubtless in the presence of God, and the object of ‘remembrance’ (i.e., God) is its Companion and it does witness Him. But the man himself, as long as he lacks seriousness, is not exercising ‘remembrance’ (as he should), and consequently God is not his Companion (in the real sense). All this comes from the fact that man is ‘many’ (i.e., composed of many parts); he is not one single (non-composite) reality. The Abso- lute, on the contrary, is One in its essential reality although it is Many in its Divine Names. But man is ‘many’ with his parts, so that, even if one of his parts is engaged in ‘remembrance’, it does not necessarily follow that other parts, too, are ‘remembering’. The Absolute hap- pens to be the Companion of that particular part of his which is actually engaged in ‘remembrance’, but his other parts are being negligent of ‘remembrance’. 10 Such being the case, it is naturally to be expected that there should arise many degrees among men regarding the capacity for knowing God and the mystery of Being. On the basis of this fact Ibn ‘Arabi 252 253 Sufism and Taoism classifies men in several different ways, each classification having its peculiar standard. I have already introduced some of them. Here I shall give three typical classifications. The first classification divides men into two categories: (1) those whose minds have an otherworldly structure and (2) those whose minds are of a worldly structure. The first category is represented by a man who, pure of mind and heart, free from all bodily desires, can see through things and grasp immediately the realities underlying them. A man like this knows God by ‘unveiling’ and ‘immediate tasting’, not by Reason. Of course, he, too, exercises his Reason within its proper domain, but never pushes it beyond its natural limits. Rather, he readily goes beyond the realm of Reason, and follows the judgments given by mystical intuition. Such a man is a ‘knower’ (‘arif) and a ‘servant of the Lord’ (‘ abd rabb ). The second category, on the contrary, is represented by a man whose mind is deeply involved in bodily attachments, who is com- pletely under the sway of desires, and who, consequently, cannot see the reality of things. In trying to know God, such a man depends exclusively upon Reason. He cannot step over the boundaries of logical thinking. Even such a man may taste, on rare occasions, something of the experience of ‘unveiling’ . In such cases, his Reason recognizes the fact that he is experiencing something unusual. But this he knows only by Reason. So as soon as the experience ends, he falls into confusion, and ends up by submitting himself to the judgment of Reason. Such a man is not a ‘servant of the Lord’ ; he is rather a ‘servant of reasoning’ (‘abd naiar). It must be noticed that Ibn ‘ Arabi does not simply disparage and deprecate Reason. It has its own field in which to work prop- erly. But it has its limitations. A real ‘knower’ is one who assigns to Reason a proper place and restrains it from overstepping its domain. The prophets and apostles are not people devoid of Reason. On the contrary, they are pre-eminently men of Reason. But they have a wider field at their command which lies beyond the reach of Reason. In fact, no one is more reasonable than the apostles. But (in addition to Reason) they are (endowed with another capacity by which) they bring informations directly from God. Thus the apostles admit the authority of Reason (within its proper domain), but add to it something which Reason cannot grasp by its own power, and which Reason rejects it at first; it is only in the Divine self-manifestation (i.e., during the time in which the mind happens to be actually experiencing it by ‘unveiling’) that it admits that it is true. However, as soon as the experience of the Divine self-manifestation leaves the mind, the latter falls into confusion concerning what it has The Perfect Man as an Individual just seen. If the man in such a case happens to be a ‘servant of the Lord’, he immediately subjugates his Reason to Him, but if the man happens to be a ‘servant of reasoning’, he subjugates the truth to the judgment of Reason. This state or affairs, however, occurs only as long as the man remains in the worldly dimension of existence, being veiled from the other worldly dimensions (which is realized) in the very midst of the present world. Even the ‘knowers’ of the truth look in this world as if they were in a form peculiar to the present world because of the earthly properties appearing in them. In their ‘interior’, however, they have already been transported by God to the state of being which is peculiar to the Hereafter. There can be no doubt about it. So they are not recogniz- able outwardly except to those whose spiritual eyes have been opened by God to see through things. In reality, every true ‘knower’ of God, (who knows God) through the experience of (His direct) self-manifestation in himself, is actually living in a mode of being peculiar to the Hereafter. Such a man has, already in the present world, been resurrected from the dead and brought to life from his tomb. So he sees what others cannot see and witnesses what others cannot witness. This is a result of a special favor which God grants to some of His servants." The second classification which Ibn ‘Arab! proposes consists in dividing men into three type: (1) ‘knower’ (‘arif), (2) ‘non-knower’ (ghayr ‘arif) and (3) ‘ignorant’ ( jahil ). He defines 12 the first type as ‘a man who sees the Absolute from the Absolute, in the Absolute, and by the Absolute itself’. The second, the ‘non-knower’, is ‘a man who sees the Absolute from the Absolute, in the Absolute, and by his own self’ . The ‘ignorant’ is ‘a man who sees the Absolute neither from the Absolute nor in the Absolute, and who expects to see the Absolute (in the Hereafter) by his own self’. The ‘knower’ is a man who completely identifies himself with God in very possible respect and sees God with God’s own eyes from the very viewpoint of God. Since he sees God with God’s eyes, all the self-manifestations of God are within his sight. He actually witnesses the whole world of Being as it pulsates with Divine Life. As to the ‘non-knower’, though he sees the Absolute in the Absolute and from the viewpoint of the Absolute, the eye with which he sees is his own. So the reality cannot but be deformed by his sight. The ‘ignorant’ is by no means in a position to see the Absolute as it really is. His mind is naturally restricted in an extreme degree. Each ‘ignorant’ adores and worships God only in a form peculiar tc a particular religion which he happens to hold, and denies all othe forms of worshipping God. 254 Sufism and Taoism Generally speaking each man (i.e., of the class of the ‘ignorant’) necessarily sticks to a particular religion (‘ aqidah , i.e., religion as a system of dogmas) concerning his Lord. He always goes back to his Lord through his particular religious belief and seeks God therein. Such a man positively recognizes God only when He manifests Him- self to him in the form recognized by his traditional religion. But when He manifests Himself in other religions, he flatly refuses to accept Him and runs away from Him. In so doing, he simply behaves in an improper way towards God, while imagining that he is practis- ing good manners toward Him. Thus a man who sticks to the belief of his particular religion believes in a god according to what he has subjectively posited in his mind. God in all particular religions (i'tiqadat) is dependent upon the subjective act of positing ( ja‘l ) on the part of the believers. Thus a man of this kind sees (in the form of God) only his own self and what he has posited in his mind. 13 The last paragraph of the passage just quoted discloses in a daring and outspoken way Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s fundamental position regarding the eternal Religion and various historical religions. As we have observed in an earlier context, 14 it is his unshakeable conviction that all religions are ultimately one because every religion worships the Absolute in a very particular and limited way. Whatever one wor- ships as God, one is worshipping through that particular form the Absolute itself, nothing else, because there is nothing in the whole world but particular self-manifestations of the Absolute. In this connection, Ibn ‘Arabi draws our attention to a famous Tradition that depicts one of the occurrences of the day or Resur- rection. It reads: ‘On the day of Resurrection, God will appear to the creatures in a strange form and say, “I am your Lord, the Highest”. The people will say, “No, we take refuge with God from thee!” Then He will make Himself manifest in a form familiar to them in their religions. Thereupon the people will cry out, “Glory be to Thee, o God” ’. Ibn ‘Arab! observes that this is not only a matter of the day of Resurrection, for exactly the same thing is actually happening in the present world. ‘Behold how the degrees of men concerning their knowledge of God correspond exactly to their degrees concerning the seeing of God on the day of Resurrection’ . And he closes the passage by giving us the following warning and advice: Beware of being bound up by a particular religion and rejecting all others as unbelief! If you do that, you will fail to obtain a great benefit. Nay, you will fail to obtain the true knowledge of the reality. Try to make yourself a (kind of) Prime Matter for all forms of religious belief. God is wider and greater than to be confined to one particular religion to the exclusion of others. For He says: ‘To whichever direction you turn, there surely is the Face of God’ (II, 115). God does not specify (in this verse) a particular place in which r The Perfect Man as an Individual 255 the Face of God is to be found. He only said: ‘ There is the Face of God.’ The ‘face’ of a thing means its real essence. So God has admonished by this verse the hearts of the ‘knowers’ so that they might not be distracted by non-essential matters in the present world from being constantly conscious of this kind of thing. For no human being ever knows at which moment he will die. If a man happens to die at a moment when he is forgetful of this, his position will certainly be not equal to another who dies in the state of clear awareness. 15 The third classification of men which Ibn ‘Arab! proposes is also a tripartite division. According to this classification, the lowest degree is represented by a man who relies upon Reason and who, there- fore, is content with understanding both God and the world by exercising his thinking power. The middle position is occupied by men of ‘imagination’ ( khayal), \.Q ., those who understand the Abso- lute according to the authentic imagery based on visions of prophets. And the highest degree is of those who know the reality of the things through the experience of ‘unveiling’ and ‘immediate tasting’. Let us begin with the lowest class, that is, men of Reason. These people blindly believe in Reason, do not recognize anything as truth unless it is acceptable to Reason, and refuse to admit anything which happens to be in conflict with Reason. They do not know that Reason, in matters concerning the Absolute, is utterly powerless, and that it can never go deep into the reality of Being. In various passages of the Fu$u$, Ibn ‘ Arabi emphasizes the narrow limitations and the essential powerlessness of Reason in contrast to the ‘unveil- ing’ ( kashf) which is for him the highest form of human cognition. He sees in the Theologians (mutakallimun) a typical example of the men of Reason. As an illustration, he adduces a Qoranic verse: ‘thou (Muham- mad) wert not the one who threw when thou threwest, but God it was who really threw’ 16 (VIII, 17). This verse, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, is a most concise symbolic description of the essential rela- tion between the Absolute and the world. The verse begins by negating that Muhammad ‘threw’ . Then it affirms that he did throw -‘when thou threwest’ - and finally Muhammad’s having thrown is again negated, and the verse ends by establishing that the real thrower was God Himself. All this is reducible to the proposition: ‘the real thrower is God, but it is God in the phenomenal form of Muhammad’. The verse, thus understood, expresses nothing other than the truth about the self-manifestation of the Absolute. However, only a real ‘knower’ is capable of interpreting the verse in this sense. As for the Theologians, its true meaning is completely out of their reach. In confusion they interpret it arbitrarily k 256 Sufism and Taoism according to the dictates of their Reason. As a result, their conclu- sion clashes with that of 'immediate tasting’ . And in most cases they go to the extreme of declaring impossible and absurd what mystical intuition recognizes as true. This and similar verses can be rightly understood only by those who are possessed of an infinitely flexible mind. On the basis of this single verse one can say, ‘it was Muhammad who threw’ , just as one can say, ‘it was not Muhammad who threw’. Likewise, one can say, ‘it was God who threw’ , just as one can say, ‘it was Muhammad who threw, not God’. The verse, in this way, is liable to produce various statements that seemingly contradict each other. For, after all, the question is one of different relations and viewpoints. One and the same event can be looked at variously according to various possible viewpoints. And yet all this variation takes place within the infinitely wide Reality which comprises everything and every poss- ible viewpoint. All are ultimately the activity of the Absolute. But Reason which by nature is one-sided, rigid, and inflexible, cannot accept such a view. As another good example aptly illustrating the natural and essen- tial deficiency of Reason, Ibn ‘Arabi considers the problem of the relation between ‘cause’ and ‘caused’. The Theologians and Philosophers, who try to understand everything in the light of what Reason tells them, often discuss the concept of ‘cause’ (‘ illah ). The reality of ‘cause’, however, can never be revealed to their minds as long as they remain so utterly dependent upon logical thinking. As an illustration disclosing the natural weakness of Reason in its reasoning activity we may mention the judgment given by Reason concerning ‘cause’: that a ‘cause’ cannot be the ‘caused’ of that of which it is the ‘cause’. This is evidently what Reason judges. But in the light of knowledge obtained by mystical illumination, we must assert precisely this proposition (which is rejected by Reason); namely, that a ‘cause’ does become the ‘caused’ of that of which it is the ‘cause ’. 17 The judgment given by Reason can be made (more) correct through theoretical elaboration within the boundaries of logical thinking. But, even so, the ultimate limit to which Reason can go, when it is actually faced with a state of affairs which contradicts the evidence furnished by logical proof, is to think that - admitting the essential unity of Reality through all the multifarious forms of things in the world - (this unique Reality), in so far as it actually and positively acts as a ‘cause’ in the form of some concrete thing (A, for example) and causes some other concrete thing ( B ), it can never be the ‘caused’ of that very thing ( B ) which it (A) has caused as long as it is the ‘cause’. The truth of the matter, Reason will think, is rather that, as the Reality changes its form (from A to C, for example, and enters into a different relationship with B ), its capacity may also change in such a The Perfect Man as an Individual 257 way that it (now in the form of C) could very well be the ‘caused’ of what ( B ) it has caused (in the capacity of A), so that, as a result, the ‘caused’ may become the ‘cause’ of its own ‘cause’. This, I say, is the furthest limit to which Reason can go even when it perceives the reality (of Being, by perceiving one single Essence underlying all the things and events that stand in ‘cause’ - ‘caused’ relations), and steps beyond the proper domain of logical reasoning . 18 The latter half of this passage may be explicated as follows. Properly speaking, Reason has a very narrowly limited domain of its own. As long as it remains within the strict limits of this domain, Reason cannot even see that everything is but a different self-manifestation of one single Reality, the Absolute. But if Reason does stretch itself forcibly to the furthest possible limit and goes beyond the domain of its natural capacity, it will be able to see that the Many in the possible world are ultimately so many different forms of one and the same Reality. Of course, such a cognition itself goes against the judgment of Reason in its normal activity. But at least this much may be conceded by it if it succeeds in extending its capacity in the way just described. Reason, once it has admitted that the Many, i.e., all things and events in the world of concrete reality, are ultimately One and are but so many phenomenal forms assumed by one single Reality, must necessarily admit also that the distinction usually made between ‘cause’ and ‘caused’ is merely a relative matter, because both are two different forms assumed by one and the same thing. And in this particular sense, Reason will have to admit that a ‘cause’ can be a ‘caused’. However, even at this stage, Reason is limited by its own logic. It will still assert that so long as a certain concrete thing (A) actually is the ‘cause’ of another concrete thing ( B),A remains a ‘cause’, and will never be a ‘caused’ of B. A, in the capacity of B's ‘cause’, can never be a ‘caused’ of B. A can rightly be a ‘caused’ of B only when it is considered from a different angle in a different capacity, i.e., no longer exactly as A but rather as something different, C. Thus it is the final judgment of Reason, even at its unusually extended limit, that a ‘cause’, unless it be considered in terms of a different relationship, cannot be caused by its own ‘caused’. This is the self-evident and primary truth of reason which it can never abandon as long as Reason remains Reason. However, if we look at the matter in the light of the intuition gained by the experience of ‘immediate tasting’, we find immedi- ately that a ‘cause’ can possibly be a ‘caused’, just as a ‘caused’ can possibly be a ‘cause’. It is worthy of notice that the thought pattern that underlies this conception is very characteristic of Ibn ‘Arab!; we have already met 258 259 Sufism and Taoism with it in the preceding in various forms. The idea, for example, that the creatures are ‘food’ of God, just as God is ‘food’ of the crea- tures, or the idea of the mutual taskhir between God and the creatures, namely, that the creatures make God ‘subservient’ to themselves, just as God makes the creatures ‘subservient’ to Him - these and similar ‘daring’ ideas are structurally of the same category as that of the mutual causal relationship between God and the creatures. How, then, can a ‘caused’ act positively upon its own ‘cause’ in such a way that it makes the latter its own ‘caused’ ? The answer runs as follows. ‘The ‘cause-ness’ (‘ illiyah ) of a ‘cause’ (‘illah ) is incon- ceivable without the ‘caused-ness’ ( ma‘luliyah ) of the ‘caused’ (ma‘lul), nor can the first actually exist without the latter. The ‘cause-ness’ completely depends upon the ‘caused-ness’ of the ‘caused’. ‘Cause’, in this sense, contains in itself ‘caused-ness’, just as ‘caused’ contains ‘cause-ness’. Moreover, all things, in Ibn ‘ArabFs view, are but different phenomenal forms of one single Existence. So everything is in one aspect ‘cause’, and in another ‘caused’. Representing the people of ‘immediate tasting’, al-Qashani for- mulates the right answer in the following terms : 19 The one single Reality appearing in two different forms (i.e., ‘cause’ and ‘caused’) is apt to receive the two qualifications according to (our subjective) points of view. That is to say, it has, when it is in the state of being a ‘cause’, the aptitude to be a ‘caused’, and when it is in the state of being a ‘caused’, it has the aptitude to be a ‘cause’. For the one Reality comprehends in itself both ‘cause-ness’ and ‘caused- ness’ with all the properties peculiar to both. Thus one and the same thing is a ‘cause’ in its ‘cause-ness’ , and a ‘caused’ in its ‘caused-ness’ . It has in itself all these and similar aspects (which it manifests) according to particular circumstances. Exactly the same holds true of the phenomenon of the self- manifestation. For (such distinctions as) the ‘self-manifester’, the locus of self-manifestation, the act of self-manifestation, the being of the self-manifester a self-manifester and the being of the locus a locus, etc. ( - all these are simply [reflections of our] subjective viewpoints.) In reality they are nothing other than the Absolute which is essentially One and which appears in these various capacities according to our subjective perspectives. These are all notions con- ceived by our discriminating Reason, the distinctions existing only in our Reason. They are all matters of relative forms, supposed rela- tions secondarily derived from the one single Reality. This Reality is God, the One and the Unique. There is nothing in Being except God! If we have gone into a considerably long digression on the problem of the ‘cause’ - ‘caused’ relationship, it is partly because of its intrinsic value as a theory of causality typical of Ibn ‘Arab!. The The Perfect Man as an Individual main purpose, however, has been to give an illustration showing the natural incapability of Reason to reach any deep truth about the Absolute and the world of Being. ‘He who knows himself (lit. ‘his soul’) knows his Lord’ - this famous Tradition is one of Ibn ‘ArabFs favorite adages. Here again he refers to it and declares that there has not been even a single person, among the Philosophers and Theologians, who has grasped his own ‘self’ (soul) in its real depth. Of all the men of knowledge no one has obtained a real insight into the ‘soul’ and its reality except the divinely inspired Apostles and great Sufis. As to the men of reasoning and logical thinking, whether the ancient Philosophers or the Theologians in Islam, not even one of them has hit upon the truth in their discussions on ‘soul’ and its quiddity. (This is but natural because) logical thinking can never arrive at the truth in this matter. Therefore, he who seeks the true knowledge of ‘soul’ by means of thinking is like a person who, looking at a man with a tumor, thinks him to be fat, or like a person who blows upon something which is not fuel. People of this kind are precisely ‘ those whose effort goes astray in the present world, being convinced that they are doing good work’ (XVIII, 14). For he who seeks anything by a wrong method is sure to fail in achieving his aim. 20 Between the real ‘knowers’ and the men of Reason are situated the people of Imagination ( khayal ). These are men who try with sincer- ity to approach the Absolute by the aid of the images given by their Prophet and Apostle. Concerning the above-quoted Qoranic verse about the ‘one who threw’ , for example, the men of this kind believe firmly that the true ‘thrower’ is God Himself, although the deep meaning of the verse escapes their understanding. They readily accept as true whatever their Prophet teaches them, and do not dare to be critical of anything which they think contradicts Reason. Ibn ‘Arabi calls these men ‘people of Belief (or Faith)’ ( ahl al-iman). The ‘people of Belief are those who accept unquestioningly what- ever the Prophets and Apostles convey from the Absolute. They should not be confused with those who accept unquestioningly the teaching of the (Philosophers and Theologians) who think by Reason and who are not content unless they interpret any message (i.e., Qoranic verse or prophetic Tradition) that is transmitted to them in the light of logical evidences. To these people (of Belief) refers the Qoranic expression: ‘or he who lends his ear’ (L, 37) to the Divine messages as they are conveyed through the tongues of the Prophets. And such a man, i.e., a man who lends his ear in this way, ‘is a witness’ (L, 37). God here refers to the ontological dimension of Imagination and the proper use of the faculty of Imagination. And this corresponds to the saying of the Prophet (Muhammad) on the ‘perfection of Belief’ 260 261 Sufism and Taoism (ihsan):‘ 2i . . .that you worship God as if you saw Him’. God is always in the direction toward which man prays. This is why such a man is a witness. 22 ‘Being a witness {shahid)' in this passage means, in Ibn Arabi’s interpretation, the spiritual state in which a man ‘witnesses’, i.e., is present by his heart to the ontological plane of Imagination. It is a state at which the heart of a ‘knower’ perceives in sensible imagery some of the things that properly belong to the world of the Unseen. The heart of a ‘ knower’ , when he reaches this stage, finds itself in the world of Imagination and begins to witness in images various states of affairs of the invisible world. It is worthy of notice that toward the end of the passage just quoted, Ibn ‘Arabi, referring to the famous Tradition about ihsan, draws attention to the expression: ‘. . . that you worship Him as if you saw Him’. In Ibn ‘Arabi’s interpretation, this describes the lowest and weakest degree of the ‘witnessing’ here in question. It is the lowest degree of the mental presence in the ontological plane of Imagination, for it is said: ‘as if you saw Him’ . As the very wording of this phrase indicates, man is not as yet actually seeing God. There is as yet no actual vision. Man only acts as if he had a real vision. But when the heart of the ‘knower’ becomes strengthened and mounts a step higher, the object of the ‘witnessing’ becomes visible to the internal, spiritual eye (ba$irah), though as yet no vision occurs to his physical eye . 23 As the ‘knower’ goes up to the next degree, the object becomes visible to both his physical eye and his spiritual eye. And if he still goes up and reaches finally the ultimate and highest stage, the one who ‘witnesses’ and the object ‘witnessed’ become completely unified. At this stage it is no longer the human heart that ‘witnesses’ its object; but it is the Absolute itself ‘witnessing’ itself in itself. And this is the stage of the ‘saint’ ( waliy ). Thus when a man ‘wakes up’, and rises to the highest degree of ‘saintship’, he begins to witness an extraordinary phenomenon, for his spiritual eye is now open to the reality of what we have described earlier under the title of ‘new creation’. In the eye of a real ‘knower’, the Absolute (in whatever form it may appear) remains always the ‘recognized’ one which is never denied. 24 The people who recognized the same Absolute under all phenomenal forms in the present world will do exactly the same in the Hereafter, too. This is why God (speaking of a man of this kind) says ‘for whomever has a heart ( qalb )’ (L, 37). For (such a man) knows the constant changing of the Absolute in various forms; he knows this judging by The Perfect Man as an Individual the fact that his ‘heart’ is constantly changing from one form to another. 25 Thus such a man comes to know his own ‘self’ through (the know- ledge of the constant transformation of) himself. (And from this he obtains the real knowledge about the Absolute, for) his own ‘self’ is nothing other than the He-ness of the Absolute, (and his knowledge thus obtained is easily extended to everything because) everything in the world of Being, whether present or future, is nothing other than the He-ness of the Absolute; indeed, everything is the He-ness itself. 26 A real ‘knower’ who knows his ‘heart’ {qalb) sees with his own inner eye how it changes constantly and transforms itself {qalb or taqal- lub) at every moment in a myriad of modes and states. He knows at the same time that his ‘heart’ is but a self-manifestion of the Abso- lute, and that it is nothing other than the He-ness of the Absolute. Of course his ‘ heart’ is the only thing in the whole world whose inner structure he can know through introspection. But he is well aware also that all other things must be exactly of the same structure as his ‘heart’. Thus a man who knows his own ‘heart’ from inside knows also the Absolute as it goes on transforming itself moment after moment in all the possible forms of the world. The category to which such a ‘knower’ belongs constitutes the highest degree on the scale of humanity. The subject of the next chapter will be this highest category of men. Notes 1. Fuy., p. 26/56. 2. Fuy., p. 118/114. The whole passage has been given in translation in Chapter IV. 3. Fus., pp. 125-126/107. 4. p. 126. 5. Fus., p. 126/107. 6. Fus., p. 130/109-110. 7. Cf. Affifi, Fuy., Com., p. 126. 8. As I have remarked above, the word ghayrah meaning ‘jealousy’ is, in the linguistic consciousness of Ibn ‘ Arabi, directly connected with ghayr meaning ‘ other’ . So the sentence: ‘God covered or concealed the reality with ghayrah' not only means that He concealed it with ‘jealousy’, but at the same time that He has concealed the reality by an infinite number of particular ‘determinations’ , all of which are regarded as ‘other’ than God Himself, so that in this view everything appears as something 262 Sufism and Taoism ‘other’ than the rest of the things as well as ‘other’ than the Absolute. And the view of ‘other-ness’ covers the reality of Being and hinders it from being perceived by the eyes of ordinary people. 9. Fus ., p. 130/110. 10. Fus., p. 211/168-169. 11. Fus., PP- 234-235/185-186. 12. Fus., pp. 135-136/113. 13. ibid. 14. Cf. Chapter V, where the same idea is dealt with in connection with a different problem, that of ‘metaphysical perplexity’. 15. Fus., P- 136/1 13. 16. Wa-ma ramayta idh ramayta wa-lakinna Allaha rama. 17. Suppose A is the ‘cause’ of B, for instance. B is of course the ‘caused’ of A. But there is also a certain respect in which B must be regarded as the ‘cause’ of A . In this latter respect, A would be the ‘caused’ of B. 18. Fus., p. 233/185. 19. p. 234. 20. Fus ■, P- 153/125. 21. On the exact meaning of the word ihsan see my The Concept of Belief in Islamic Theology, Tokyo, 1965, pp. 58-60. 22. Fus., p. 149/123. 23. Qashani, p. 150. 24 The reference is to the Tradition, which has been quoted and explained earlier in the present chapter, concerning what will happen on the day of Resurrection. 25. By the ‘etymological’ way of thinking which, as we have observed several times, is so typical of Ibn ‘Arab!, he brings together the ‘heart’ ( qalb ) and ‘change’ or ‘transformation’ {qalb). 26. Fus., P- 149/122. XVI Apostle, Prophet, and Saint The preceding chapter has revealed that the moment we begin to consider Man on the individual level, we are faced with the exist- ence of several degrees among men. We have seen also that the highest of all human degrees is ‘saintship’ ( walayah ). The Saint ( waliy ) is the highest ‘knower’ of God, and consequently (in terms of the world-view of Ibn ‘ Arabi) of the essential structure of Being. Otherwise expressed, the Saint is the Perfect Man par excellence. The central topic of this chapter will be the concept of ‘saintship’ .* We may begin by remarking that, in Ibn ‘ Arabi’s understanding, the concept of Saint comprises both Prophet ( nabiy ) and Apostle ( rasul ). Briefly stated, the Saint is the widest concept comprising Prophet and Apostle; next is the concept of Prophet which com- prises that of Apostle; and the Apostle is the narrowest of all. As al-Qashani says, ‘every Apostle is a Prophet, and every Prophet is a Saint’, but not vice versa. On the relation between the three concepts, there is a consider- ably long passage in the Fusus 2 in which Ibn ‘Arabi develops his thought. The argument is very entangled and somewhat confusing, but the gist of it may be clarified in the following way. The first point to note concerning the concept of Saint is that waliy is properly a Divine Name. The fact that waliy is one of the Names of God implies that it is an aspect of the Absolute. In this respect, the Saint is radically different from the Prophet and the Apostle because the words nabiy and rasul are not Divine Names; they are peculiar to human beings. ‘ Waliy is a Name of God’, as Ibn ‘Arabi says, ‘but God has neither called Himself nabiy nor rasul, while He has named Himself waliy and has made it one of His own Names ’. 3 Thus waliy is a Divine Name. But even a man, when his know- ledge of God attains to its highest point, becomes entitled to be called by the same name; he is a waliy. However, the human waliy himself, being so keenly conscious of his ‘servant-ness’ (‘ubud- iyah) does not like to make the name publicly his own . For he knows 264 Apostle, Prophet, and Saint 265 Sufism and Taoism that the word waliy properly belongs to God alone, and that when a human being becomes a waliy he is supposed to have transcended his position of ‘servant-ness’ and have put himself in the position of Lordship ( rububiyah ). But, whether he likes it or not, it does sometimes happen that a mystic transcends his position of ‘servant-ness’. This occurs by a mystic being completely drowned in the Absolute and losing the consciousness of his own ‘servant-ness’ . 4 It is to be remarked that, since waliy is a name common to God and Man, the walayah never ceases to exist. As God exists everlast- ingly, the saintship will exist forever. As long as there remains in the world even a single man of the highest spiritual power who attains to the rank of ‘saintship’ - and, in fact, such a man will certainly exist in every age - the ‘saintship’ itself will be kept intact. In contrast to this, the prophethood and apostleship are histori- cally conditioned, and can, therefore, be intermittent or even disap- pear completely. 5 As a matter of fact, we know that the chain of prophethood has historically come to an end at Muhammad, the last of all authentic Prophets. After Muhammad, there does not exist any longer a Prophet, who is at the same time a Law-giver v musharri ). After Muhammad we have only what Ibn ‘Arabi calls general prophethood’ ( nubuwwah ‘ ammah ), i.e., prophethood without institution of Law, which is nothing other than ‘saintship’. Only this name (i.e., waliy ) remains forever among mankind, not only in the present world but also in the Hereafter. As for the names which are peculiar to Man to the exclusion of God (i.e., Prophet and Apostle), they cease to exist with the cessation of prophethood and apostleship. God, however, has shown special mercy upon his ser- vants and has allowed to subsist among them ‘general prophethood’ which is not accompanied by institution of Law . 6 This passage makes it clear that, in the conception of Ibn ‘Arabi, institution of Law ( tashri ‘) constitutes one of the characteristics of the Prophet. From this particular point of view, he divides the Prophets into two kinds: (1) those who institute Law ( nabiy musharri ‘) and (2) those whose prophetic activity is done within a given Law ( nabiy musharra‘ la-hu). The first category is represented by men like Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, each one of whom instituted a particular Law by a Divine Command. The second category is exemplified by those who, like the successive Prophets in Israel, live and fulfil their prophetic mission within the boundaries of a given Law instituted by Moses. Since, as we have seen, the Saint is the widest concept in terms of extension and is the most basic one at that, there can be no Prophet, no Apostle unless the ‘saintship’ is first established. The Prophet is a Saint who adds to his ‘saintship’ one more distinguishing mark; namely, a particular knowledge of things unknown and unseen. And the Apostle is a Saint who adds to his ‘saintship’ and ‘prophet- hood’ one more characteristic; namely being conscious of the mis- sion and capacity of conveying Divine messages to the people who follow him. From this we learn that the first requirement for a man to be a Perfect Man is to be in the rank of a waliy, and that walayah is the most fundamental and most general attribute of all types of Perfect Man. What, then, does walayah mean? Walayah implies, first and foremost, a perfect knowledge of the ultimate truth concerning the Absolute, the world, and the relation between the Absolute and the world. 7 A man who has attained to the rank of ‘saintship’ has a clear consciousness that he is a self- manifestation of the Absolute, and that, as such, he is essentially one with the Absolute, and, indeed, ultimately is the Absolute itself. He is also conscious of the fact that, on the analogy of the inner structure of himself, all the phenomenal Many are self- manifestations of the Absolute and are, in the sense, one with the Absolute. This precisely is the consciousness of the ultimate and essential ‘oneness of Being’ (wahdah al-wujud ). This consciousness of the ‘oneness of Being’ he obtains only by being ‘annihilated’ and completely immersed in the Absolute. Through the experience of ‘self-annihilation’ he transforms himself, so to speak, into the ‘inside’ of the Absolute, and from there sees the reality of all things by ‘immediate tasting’. The concept of ‘self- annihilation’ ( Jana ) in this sense plays an exceedingly important role in the theory of walayah. The ‘self-annihilation’ is, in fact, the first item in the essential attributes of the Saint. Ibn ‘Arabi distinguishes three stages in ‘self-annihilation’. 8 The first is the annihilation of the attributes. This stage is called by Ibn ‘Arabi takhalluq. It means that the mystic has all his human attri- butes ‘annihilated’ and in their place ‘assumes as his own’ ( takhal- luq ) the Divine Attributes. It is, as Bali Efendi tersely describes it, 9 ‘annihilating his attributes in the Attributes of the Absolute’. The second stage is called tahaqquq. It means that the mystic has his essence ( dhat ) ‘annihilated’ and realizes ( tahaqquq ) in himself his being one with the Absolute. Bali Efendi 10 describes it as ‘annihilat- ing his essence in the Essence of the Absolute’ . The third and the last stage is called ta‘alluq. The wordta‘alluq, meaning literally ‘firm adherence’, indicates that the man in this state remains firmly attached to the essential property of walayah so that he is never separated from it no matter what he may do in the world of empiri- cal existence. The state of ta‘alluq corresponds to what is more 266 Sufism and Taoism usually known as the state of ‘self-subsistence’ ( baqa ’) which comes after the state of fana’. In this spiritual state, the mystic regains his self which he has once annihilated, but he regains it not in himself but in the very midst of the Divine Essence. In his fully illumined consciousness, there is no longer any trace of his old personal ego. He is only conscious that after having lost his life he now subsists in the Divine Essence, and that, therefore, it is, in reality, not he who exists but the Absolute itself. Whatever he does, it is not he but God who does it. Bali Efendi describes it as ‘annihilating his actions in the actions of the Absolute ’. 11 ‘Saintship’ comes into existence only on the basis of the experi- ence of ‘self-annihilation’ here depicted. And wide indeed is the consciousness of the Saint who has passed through such an experi- ence. For he witnesses the astonishing scene of all things merging into the limitless ocean of Divine Life, and he is conscious that all this is actually taking place in himself. At the very height of this spiritual state, the consciousness of the Saint is identical with the Divine Consciousness which has not yet begun to become split into an infinity of ‘determinations’ ( ta‘ayynnat ). 12 Such a man is the highest ‘knower’. And such a man naturally falls into deep silence (sukut), li because the content of the deepest knowledge is ineffable. Such is the existential ground on which stands ‘saintship’. And on this basis stands ‘prophethood’ with an additional property, and on ‘prophethood’ stands ‘apostleship’ with a further addition. The Prophet and the Apostle are closely tied to the present world; their functions concern the life in this world, for institution of Law always aims at regulating the worldly life with a view to letting people obtain the everlasting happiness in the next world. ‘Saintship’, on the contrary, has no such essential relation to the present world. Thus ‘prophethood’ and ‘apostleship’ can disappear from their subjects, but the quality or title of ‘saintship’ never leaves its sub- ject. Those from whom the titles of ‘prophethood’ and ‘apostleship’ disappear become immediately Saints without any qualifications. And since, in the Hereafter, there can be no institution of Law, everybody who is in the present world a Prophet or Apostle will continue to exist in the next world in the rank of ‘saintship ’. 14 As we have just remarked, the Prophet is a Saint with the addition of a different qualification (i.e., the rank of ‘saintship’ plus the rank of ‘prophethood’), and the Apostle is a Prophet with the addition of a further qualification (i.e., the rank of ‘saintship’ plus the rank of ‘prophethood’ plus the rank of ‘apostleship’). So the Prophet unites in one person two ranks, and the Apostle unites in himself three different ranks. There are thus three different ranks recognized: ‘saintship’, ‘prophethood’ and ‘apostleship’. The question is natur- Apostle, Prophet, and Saint 267 ally raised as to which of them is higher than which. With regard to this question, the most problematic point, according to Ibn ‘ Arab!, concerns the position of ‘saintship’. Against those sufis who regard ‘saintship’ qua ‘saintship’ as higher than ‘prophethood’ and ‘apostleship’, he emphatically states that it is only when these two or three ranks co-exist in one person that we can rightly regard his ‘saintship’ as higher than his ‘prophethood’ and ‘apostleship’. (When one and the same person unites in him these two or three qualifications) the man in the capacity of a ‘knower’ or Saint is more complete and more perfect than himself in the capacity of an Apostle or in that of a man who has instituted a Divine Law (i.e., Prophet). So whenever you hear a man belonging to the ‘people of God’ saying - or whenever such a saying is conveyed to you through somebody else - that ‘saintship’ is higher than ‘prophethood’, you must under- stand him to mean what I have just remarked. Likewise, when such a man declares that the Saint stands above the Prophet and the Apostle, he is simply talking about one and the same person. In fact, the Apostle qua Saint is more complete (and perfect) than himself qua Prophet and Apostle. It is not the case, however, that a Saint (i.e., a different person who happens to be a Saint) who follows (another person who happens to be a Prophet or Apostle in the community) is higher than the Prophet or Apostle . 15 The last sentence of this passage points out the fact that in case the three qualifications (Saint, Prophet, and Apostle) do not concern one and the same person but three different persons, there is a respect in which the Saint must necessarily follow and be subordi- nate to the Prophet or Apostle. And this because the Apostle possesses a knowledge of the particular Law (i.e., ‘exterior know- ledge’ l ilm zahir ) with which he has been sent to his community, while the Saint has no such knowledge. In what concerns the regula- tions of the Law, the latter must follow the Apostle of his age. But there is also a certain respect in which the Saint is superior to the Apostle. For the Saint not only possesses a complete knowledge about God and the reality of things (‘interior knowledge’, ‘ilm bafin ) but also is conscious of the fact that he has that knowledge. But neither the Apostle nor the Prophet is conscious of it, although they, too, do possess the same knowledge. From the fact that ‘apostleship’ is based on three different con- stituents there naturally follows that there are differences among the Apostles regarding their degrees. This is the conception of the ‘difference in degrees among the Apostles’ ( tafadul al-rusul ). All Apostles, in terms of their ‘saintship’, are equal and stand on the same level, but in actuality they must necessarily differ one from the other because of their intimate relations with the concrete 268 Sufism and Taoism situations of the age and country in which they live. And the same is true of the Prophet. The nature and rank of an Apostle is decisively affected by the conditions, material and spiritual, determining the situation of the nation of which he happens to be the Apostle. Likewise, the rank of a Prophet is gravely affected by the amount of knowledge he actually has. Know that the Apostles qua Apostles - not qua Saints or ‘knowers’ - stand in different degrees, each according to the state of his commun- ity. For the amount of his knowledge concerning his own apostolic mission is exactly measured to what his community needs, no more, no less. And since communities differ from each other in terms of relative superiority, the Apostles also are higher and lower in terms of the knowledge of their mission in exact accordance with the difference that exists among the nations. And to this refers the saying of God: ‘Those Apostles, We have made some of them superior to others’. (II, 253) Likewise, (the Prophets) differ in rank among themselves in accor- dance with their individual capacities with regard to their personal knowledges and judgments. ‘And to this refers the saying of God: And We have made some of the Prophets superior to others’ . (XVII, 55) 16 In the preceding chapter we have seen that the Perfect Man on the cosmic level is the ‘vicegerent’ of God. The same is true also of the Perfect Man on the individual level. Here on the level of individual persons, the idea of the Perfect Man is embodied by Saint, Prophet, and Apostle. These three are the ‘vicegerents’ ( khulafa ’) of God because they are the most perfect and most complete loci of theophany on the earth. 17 They are concrete manifestations of the ‘Reality of Muhammad’ ( al-haqiqah al-muhammadiyah) which we have discussed in the previous chapter. 18 The term khalifah meaning ‘vicegerent’ is a little ambiguous, because we ordinarily use it to designate the political head of the Muslim community, the Caliph. 19 In view of this fact, Ibn ‘Arab! strictly distinguishes between two kinds of khalifah : (1) the ‘vice- gerent of God’ ( khalifah Allah, or khalifah ‘ an Allah) and (2) the ‘vicegerent (or successor) of the Apostle’ ( khalifah al-rasul, or khalifah ‘an al-rasul ). The ‘vicegerent’ in the sense of the Perfect Man (1) is totally different from the Caliph, the historical and political head of the Muslim community, who assumes the same name khalifah (2). God has His ‘vicegerents’ on the earth; they are the Apostles. As for the Caliphs we know today, they are (‘vicegerents’ or ‘successors’) of the Apostles, not of God, because a Caliph governs (the community) strictly according to the dictates of the Law of an apostolic origin, and never goes beyond it. 20 269 Apostle, Prophet, and Saint There are, however, exceptional cases in which a Caliph, i.e., a ‘vicegerent’ succeeding the Apostle, is in touch with the very source from which the latter has drawn his knowledge, and governs the community according to the inner Law which he receives direct from God. Such a man is outwardly a khalifah of the Apostle, but inwardly is a khalifah of God. Such a man is outwardly a follower ( muttabi ‘ , namely, of the Apostle) in the sense that he conforms himself (to the Law) in governing the community: Jesus, for example, when he will come down to the earth and govern the world. 21 Another example is the Prophet Muham- mad. And to this refers the saying of God: ‘These are the men whom God has given guidance. So follow their guidance’ (VI, 90). A man of this sort is, in virtue of the way in which he derives (his knowledge) and of which he is conscious, both ‘specially privileged’ ( mukhtass ) and ‘conforming’ ( muwafiq ). 22 In this respect he is somewhat in the same position as the Prophet (Muhammad) who, confirming as he did the Law of the Apostles who had preceded him, confirmed it in his own name, so that we, his followers, actually follow him (accepting the Law) as his own, and not as a Law established by some of his predecessors. In like manner, the ‘vicegerent of God’ obtains (his knowledge) from exactly the same source as the Apostle. Such a man is called, in mystic terminology, ‘the vicegerent of God’, but, in ordinary (non-mystic) terminology, ‘the vicegerent of the Apostle of God’. This is the reason why the Apostle of God (Muhammad) died with- out explicitly designating anyone as his khalifah. He acted in this way because he knew that among the believers there would appear some- one who would receive ‘vicegerency’ directly from his Lord and thereby become a ‘vicegerent of God’, while conforming himself perfectly to the given Law (established by the Apostle). One of the key-terms of Ibn ‘ Arabi’s theory of walayah is the ‘Seal’ ( khatam ), meaning the ultimate and final unit of a series. I should like to close this chapter by a brief consideration of this concept, although the problems it raises mostly go far beyond the scope of the present book which aims at elucidating the ontological structure of Ibn ‘Arabi’s world-view. The term khatam appears in two phrases: (1) the Seal of the Prophets ( khatam al-anbiya ’) or Seal of the Apostles ( khatam al- rusut), and (2) the Seal of the Saints {khatam al-awliya’). In conformity with the commonly-accepted usage in Islam, the first phrase ‘Seal of the Prophets’ designates the Prophet Muhammad himself. The phrase in itself has nothing original about it; it is an expression often used in accordance with the common belief in Islam that the Prophet Muhammad represents historically the last ring of a long chain of Prophets, there being absolutely no possibility of an authentic Prophet appearing after him. 270 Sufism and Taoism By the second phrase: ‘the seal of the Saints’ , which is naturally more problematic, Ibn ‘ ArabI means most probably himself, at least as long as the present world lasts, 23 although he does not say so explicitly in the Fusus. As Affifi points out, 24 Ibn ‘ArabI, besides hinting at the idea in many places of his writings by ambiguous expressions as, for example, ‘the Seal of the Muhammadan saintship ( walayah muhammadiyah ) is a man of noble Arab birth, living in our own time’ etc., declares in one passage of the Futuhat al-Makkiyyah : ‘ I am the Seal of the saintship, no doubt, (the Seal of) the heritage of the Hashimite (Muhammad) and the Messiah’. But whether or not Ibn ‘Arab! really means by the Seal himself, the problem is merely of a peripheral significance to us. For the specific purposes of the present work, what is important is the concept of Seal itself. The problem turns round the ultimate source of the highest know- ledge peculiar to the class of the highest ‘knowers’. This (highest) knowledge properly belongs only to the Seal of the Apostles and the Seal of the Saints. No one of the Prophets and Apostles obtains this knowledge except from the sacred niche of the Last Apostle , 25 and no one of the Saints obtains it except from the niche of the Last Saint . 26 The last sentence might suggest the wrong idea that Ibn ‘ArabI is speaking here of two different ‘niches’. In truth, however, there is only one ultimate ‘niche’ from which all obtain the highest know- ledge. For, as al-Qashani says, 27 if all the Apostles obtain it from the Seal of the Apostles, the latter obtains it from his own innermost ‘niche’ , in the very capacity of the Seal of the Saints, 28 so that all the Apostles and the Saints ultimately obtain their Light from the Seal of the Saints. As to the relative superiority between the Seal of the Apostles and the Seal of the Saints, Ibn ‘ArabI gives his view as follows: 29 It is true that the Seal of the Saints follows externally what the Seal of the Apostles has established, namely, the Sacred Law. This, how- ever, does not minimize in any way the spiritual rank of the Seal of the Saints. Nor does this contradict what I have said above (concern- ing all Apostles obtaining their esoteric knowledge from the ‘niche’ of the Seal of the Saints). For (it simply means that) the Seal of the Saints is in a certain respect lower in rank (than the Seal of the Apostles) but is higher in another respect. This interpretation is confirmed by what actually took place in our religion, namely, by the fact, (for instance) that ‘Umar proved to be superior (to Muhammad) in his decision about the right treatment of the prisoners of Badr and also regarding the fertilization of the date-palm. A ‘perfect’ man need not be superior to others in every 271 Apostle , Prophet, and Saint matter and in every respect. What the (spiritual persons) consider important is superiority in terms of knowledge about God. That only is the central point. As for worldly affairs, they are of no importance at all in the minds (of spiritual persons). In connection with the problem of the relation between the Seal of the Saints and the Seal of the Apostles, Ibn ‘ArabI refers to a famous Tradition in which Muhammad compares himself to the one last brick that finishes and completes an entire wall. Then he corre- lates this Tradition with a vision he had at Mecca in the year 599 A.H. In this vision Ibn ‘Arab! saw the Ka‘bah, the House of God. The Ka‘bah was built of gold and silver brick (‘silver brick’ being a symbol of the Prophet, and ‘gold brick’ of the Saint). The wall of the Ka‘ bah as he saw it still lacked two final pieces of brick , one gold and another silver. Ibn ‘ArabI, in the dream, keenly felt that the two missing bricks were no other than himself. And the construction of the Ka‘bah was brought to completion when he filled the place of these two bricks. The Prophet (Muhammad) once compared the ‘prophethood’ to a wall made of brick which was complete except in one place which was to be filled by a piece of brick. Muhammad himself was that brick. The important point is that he saw, as he says (in this Tradition), only one single piece of brick still missing. As for the Seal of the Saints, he would surely have visions of a similar nature; he would surely see what the Prophet symbolized by a wall. (The only difference would, however, be that) he would see in the wall two bricks still missing, the entire wall being built of gold and silver bricks. And he would notice that the two bricks that were lacking in the wall were one gold and the other silver. Further, he would surely see in the vision himself just fit to be put into the place of these two bricks. Thus he would see that what was meant by the two bricks completing the wall was no other than the Seal of the Saints. The reason why he must necessarily see himself as two bricks is as follows. He is, externally, a follower of the Law established by the Seal of the Apostles. This fact was (symbolized in the vision by) the place for the silver brick. But this is only the ‘external’ side of the Seal of the Saints, concerning as it does only the legal regulations about which he simply follows the Seal of the Apostles. But, on the other hand, in his innermost heart, he obtains directly from God that very thing in which externally he is a simple follower (of the Seal of the Apostles). All this because he sees the state of affairs as it really is. So he cannot but see the matter in this way. And in this capacity he corresponds, internally, to the place for the gold brick, for he obtains his know- ledge from the same source from which the angel (Gabriel) obtains that which he conveys to the Apostle. 272 Sufism and Taoism If you have understood what I have here indicated metaphorically you have obtained an extremely valuable knowledge about everything. Thus every Prophet, (in the long historical chain of ‘prophethood’) beginning with Adam and ending with the last Prophet, invariably obtained his (prophetic Light) from the ‘niche’ of the Seal of the Prophets, although the corporeal existence of the latter was posterior to others. This because Muhammad, in his Reality , 30 was existent (from eternity). To this refer his words (in a Tradition): ‘I was a Prophet even while Adam was still between water and clay ’. 31 On the implication of this passage al-Qashani makes an interesting remark . 32 Ibn ‘Arabi’s description might be taken to imply the superiority of the Seal of the Saints to the Prophet Muhammad, because the position of the latter is symbolized only by one brick, whereas that of the Seal of the Saints is symbolized by two bricks, one of silver as the sign of his ‘external’ subordination to Muham- mad, and the other of brilliant gold as the sign of his own Light. Against this understanding al-Qashani warns the reader and points out that, according to the Tradition in question, the Ka‘bah had lacked one single piece of brick, and that when Muhammad filled the place the building was completed. This means, he says, that Muhammad was de facto the Seal of the Saints. Except that Muhammad himself appeared only as a Prophet- Apostle, and did what he did only in that capacity, not in the capacity of a Saint. He did not, in other words, manifest the form of walayah. The vision which Ibn ‘Arabi saw in Mecca was formed in the world of Imagination on the basis of this historical fact. Muhammad was de facto the Seal of the Saints, but since he did not manifest himself as such, there still remained the necessity for another person to appear as a historical phenomenon in the capacity of the Seal of the Saints. Otherwise expressed, the ‘saintships’, with Muhammad, remained to the last ‘interior’ . This ‘interior’ , i.e., hidden, ‘saintship’ has come to light only with the appearance of the Seal of the Saints. Regarding the difference between the Seal of the Saints and the rest of the Saints, Ibn ‘Arabi remarks that in the former the ‘saint- ship’ is something essential while in the latter it is something that must be ‘acquired’ first. And this is the reason why (according to al-Qashani ) 33 the ‘saintship’ of the former is called ‘solar saintship’ {walayah shamsiyah) while that of the latter is called ‘lunar saint- ship’ {walayah qamariyah). Notes 1. In this book I use provisionally the words ‘saint’ and ‘saintship’ as the English equivalents of waliy and walayah respectively. Whether the meaning of the Arabic word waliy is covered by the English word ‘saint’ is another question. 273 Apostle, Prophet, and Saint 2. Fu$., pp. 160-169/135-136. 3. Fuy., p. 168/135. See for example the Qoran (II, 257) where we read: ‘God is the waliy (close, protecting Friend) of those who believe’. 4. Fu$., p. 167/135. 5. Cf. also Fus., p. 34/62. 6. Fus., p. 167/135. 7. The concrete content of such a knowledge is precisely what we have analytically discussed throughout the preceding pages. 8. Fus., pp. 168-169/136. 9. p. 168. 10. ibid. 11. p. 169. 12. Fus., p. 89/88. 13. Fus., p. 34/62. 14. Fus., p. 169/136. 15. Fu$., p. 168/135-136. 16. Fus., p. 162/132. 17. Fus., p.259/207. 18. Cf. Chapter XIV, (IV). 19. The English word Caliph is itself nothing but an Anglicized form of khalifah. 20. Fus., p. 204/162-163. 21. The reference is to the eschatological figure of Jesus. According to the Muslim belief, Jesus will descend from Heaven once again at the end of the present world, and will govern the world by the Sacred Law of Islam. In that state, Jesus will be formally a ‘vicegerent’ of Muhammad, while deriving his knowledge from the same source from which Muhammad received his Law. Jesus will be, in that state, the Seal of the Saints. 22. ‘Specially privileged’, because he is conscious of the fact that he has received directly from God an inner Law by which he governs the community, but ‘conform- ing’, at the same time, because outwardly he owes his Law to his predecessors. 23. I say ‘at least as long as the present world lasts’ because, as we saw above (cf. note 21), at the very end of the present world, in the eschatological situation, Jesus will come down to the earth and assume the function of the Seal of the Saints. This latter is called the ‘general saintship’ ( walayah ‘ammah) as distinguished from the 274 Sufism and Taoism ‘ Muhammadan saintship’ ( walayah muhammadiyah). Regarding this distinction, see the relevant passages quoted from the Futuhat by Dr Osman Yahya in his edition of al-Tirmidhi: Khatm al-Awliya, Beyrouth, 1965, p. 161, Footnote 53. 24. Philosophy, pp. 100-101. 25. ‘Niche’ ( miskhat ) symbolizes the Divine Light in the deepest core of the saintly heart; the Divine Light is nothing other than the ‘Reality of Muhammad’. 26. Fus., p. 34/62. 27. p. 34. 28. We have observed above that by the ‘Seal of the Saints’ Ibn ‘Arabi means himself. But here al-Qashani seems to be saying that the Seal of the Apostles, i.e., Muhammad, was also the Seal of the Saints. This, however, is not a contradiction. As we noticed before in discussing the ‘Reality of Muhammad’, in the consciousness of Ibn ‘Arabi, ‘Muhammad’ is not only a historical individual person but a cosmic principle of creation, and the two aspects seem to be constantly present in his mind when he speaks about ‘Muhammad’. 29. Fus., pp. 34-35/62-63. 30. Reference to the above-mentioned ‘Reality of Muhammad’. 31. Fuy., p. 35/63. 32. p. 36. 33. ibid. XVI I The Magical Power of the Perfect Man Ibn ‘Arabi recognizes in the Perfect Man a particular kind of magi- cal power. This is hardly to be wondered at, because the Perfect Man, as a ‘knower’ (‘arif), is by definition a man with an unusually developed spiritual power. His mind naturally shows an extraordi- nary activity. This extraordinary power is known as himmah, meaning a con- centrated spiritual energy. According to Ibn ‘Arabi, a ‘knower’ can, if he likes, affect any object by merely concentrating all his spiritual energy upon it; he can even bring into existence a thing which is not actually existent. In brief, a ‘knower’ is able to subjugate anything to his will. He is endowed with the power of taskhir . 1 The word taskhir reminds us of King Solomon. It is widely known and accepted in Islam that Solomon was in possession of a super- natural power by which he could dominate Nature and move it at will. He could, for instance, cause winds to blow in whatever direc- tion he wished. He is said to have been able to control at will invisible beings. According to Ibn ‘Arabi, however, Solomon did not exercise his control over Nature by his himmah. In this respect, Solomon occupies a very special place. It was a special favor of God granted to him in a peculiar way. For, in order to work miracles, he did not have to have recourse to the particular concentration of mind known as himmah . He had only to ‘ command’ ( amr ) . Whatever was commanded by him to do anything, moved immediately as it was commanded. This kind of taskhir is, in the judgment of Ibn ‘Arabi, a degree higher than the taskhir by himmah , because the former is a direct working upon the object. The taskhir which was peculiar to Solomon, which made him superior to others, and which God had given him as (an essential) part of the kingship never to be given to anybody after him - this taskhir was characterized by its being exercised by his ‘command’. God says: ‘Thus have We subjugated to him (i.e., Solomon) the wind so that it might blow by his command (XXI, 81) (That which is really 276 Sufism and Taoism characteristic of Solomon’s case) is not the simple fact that he could exercise taskhlr. For God says concerning all of us without any discrimination: ‘And We have subjugated to you all that are in heaven and in earth' (XXXI, 20). Thus He speaks of having put under our control winds, stars, and others. But (in our case) the taskhir occurs not by our command, but by the Command of God. So you will find by reflection that what was peculiar to Solomon was (not the taskhlr itself) but in fact that (the taskhlr) could be exercised by his own command. In order to do that, he did not need any mental concentration or himmah', all he had to do was to ‘command’. I mention this point specifically because we all know that the things of the world can be affected and influenced by a particular kind of mental force when the latter happens to be in a heightened state of concentration. I have witnessed this phenomenon in my own (mysti- cal) life. Solomon, however, had only to pronounce the word of command to anything he wanted to control, without there being any need for himmah and concentration. 2 What kind of thing, then, is this spiritual concentration called him- mahl It may be most easily understood if we try to conceive it on the analogy of our ordinary experience of imagination. We can produce in imagination anything we like, even things that are not existent in the outside world. Such an imagined object exists only within our minds. In a somewhat similar way, a true ‘knower’ who has attained to the stage of walayah is able to produce by his concentrated spiritual power things that are not actually there, with this differ- ence, however, that he produces the object in the outer world of reality. This is obviously a kind of ‘creation’ ( khalq ). But it should not be identified or confused with the Divine act of creation. Anybody can create within his mind by means of his faculty of imagination things that have no existence except in imagination itself. This is a matter of common experience. But the ‘knower’ creates by himmah things that do have existence outside the place of the himmah (i.e., outside the mind). (However, the object thus created by himmah continues to exist) only as long as the himmah maintains it without being weakened by the keeping of what it has created. As soon as the concentration slackens and the mind of the ‘knower’ becomes distracted from the keeping of what it has created, the object created disappears. This, however, does not apply to those special cases in which a ‘knower’ has obtained a firm control over all the Presences (ontological levels of Being) so that his mind never loses sight of them all at the same time. In fact, the mind of such a man (even if it loses sight of the Presences, does not lose sight of all together); there surely remains at least one Presence present to his mind. 3 We must recall at this juncture the five Presences of Being to which reference was made in the first chapter. The Presences are classified variously. One of the classifications, to give an example of 277 The Magical Power of the Perfect Man classification which is a little different from the one explained in the first chapter, makes the whole world of Being consist of (1) the Presence of the senses (i.e., the plane of the sensible experience), (2) the Presence of Images-Exemplars, (3) the Presence of the Spirits (arwah), (4) the Presence of the Intellects (‘uqul), and the Presence of the Essence. But the way in which the Presences are classified is not very important in the present context. What is of primary importance is to know that the world of Being is structured in terms of levels or planes and that these planes are related to each other in an organic way. This means that anything that exists in the plane of sensible experience, for instance, has a corresponding existence also in the higher planes in a particular form peculiar to each plane, so that ultimately it goes back to the very Essence of the Absolute as its ontological ground. Because of this particular structure of Being, the ‘knower’ can, by concentrating his entire spiritual energy upon an object on one of the suprasensible levels, produce the object in a sensible form on the level of concrete reality. Also by maintaining spiritually the form of an object on a higher level he can maintain the forms of the same object on the lower levels of Being. But this spiritual ‘creation’ is essentially different from the Divine Creation in one vital point. When, for example, the ‘knower’ has produced by himmah an object in a sensible form, the object thus ‘created’ on the level of sensible experience continues to subsist on that level only during the time in which he continues to maintain his spiritual concentration. The moment his attention becomes less keen by the effect of drowsiness or by a different idea occurring to his mind, the object ceases to exist on the level of the senses. However, Ibn ‘Arabi adds, in the case of the highest ‘knower’, his spiritual power dominating all the basic five planes of Being, there is always at least one level on which the spiritual concentration is maintained even if his attention becomes less keen and less intense on other levels. In such a case, the object ‘created’ may be preserved for a long period of time. By saying this, I have disclosed a secret which the people of God (i.e., mystics) have always jealously guarded themselves from revealing for fear that something might come to light which would contradict their claim to the effect that they are the Absolute. (Against this claim I have disclosed the fact that) the Absolute never becomes forgetful of anything, while man must necessarily be always forgetful of this particular thing or that. Only as long as a man spiritually maintains what he has ‘ created’ , is he in a position to say, ‘I am the Creator!’ ( ana al-haqq). However, his maintaining the ‘created’ object is entirely different from God s maintaining. I have just explained the difference. 278 Sufism and Taoism As long as he becomes forgetful of even one form and its ontological level, man is to be distinguished from the Absolute. He is naturally to be distinguished from the Absolute even if he maintains all the forms (of an object on different levels) by maintaining one of the forms on its proper level of which he happens to be unforgetful, because this is after all a kind of ‘implicit’ ( tadammun ) maintaining. God's maintain- ing what He has created is not like this; He maintains every form ‘explicitly’ (i.e., He maintains all forms of the thing, each on its proper level individually). This is a question which no one, as far as I know, has even written in any book, neither myself nor others. This is the only and the first book in which (the secret has been disclosed). The present work is in this sense a unique pearl of the age. Keep this well in mind! The particular level of Being 4 to which the mind of the ‘knower’ is kept present, being concentrated on the form (of an object which he has created on that ontological level) , may be compared to the ‘ Book’ of which God says: ‘We have not neglected anything in the Book (of Decrees)’ (VI, 38), so that it comprehends both what has been actualized and what has not yet been actualized. But what I say here will never be understood except by those who are themselves the ‘gathering’ principle ( qur’an ). 5 Thus it has been clarified that a man who can gather his himmah in such a comprehensive way is able to do so because he ‘gathers’ together in his consciousness all the levels of Being into a com- prehensive unity. Such a man stands closest to God, with the only difference which has just been explained. The difference, in short, results from the furqan. And precisely because of the furqan he is essentially distinguished from God. The important point, however, is that this ‘separating’ is not an ordinary furqan. It is the highest furqan (ar fa furqan) 1 because it is a furqan after the ‘gathering’. In the case of an ordinary man, the ‘separating’ which he exercises is a pr e-fana phenomenon; he has not yet had any experience of ‘self-annihilation’, that is, he has not yet ‘tasted’ his essential oneness with the Absolute. The ‘separating’ he exercises in such a state is an absolute, unconditional ‘separa- tion’. He is absolutely and unconditionally ‘separated’ and distin- guished’ from the Absolute. The ‘knower’, on the contrary, is a man who has already passed through the experience of ‘self-annihilation’ and, consequently, knows through personal experience his essential oneness with the Absolute. He knows it, and yet distinguishes in himself between the ‘Divine aspect’ ( lahut ) and the ‘human aspect’ (nasut), i.e., between the Absolute and the creature. This ‘separating’ is not a mere ‘separating’; it is a ‘separating’ of a higher order. And this corres- ponds to what is generally known in Sufi terminology as ‘self- subsistence’ ( baqa ’). 279 The Magical Power of the Perfect Man Now, if we consider in the light of this conception the idea of himmah, we are led to the following understanding of it. The highest ‘knower’, while he is actually exercising his himmah, is in a certain sense a ‘creator’ ( khaliq ); all the traces of his ‘servant-ness’ disap- pear from his consciousness, and he feels ‘Lordship’ living and acting in himself. He feels himself to be a ‘Lord’, and has the clear consciousness that everything in the whole world is under his con- trol. This is the stage of ‘gathering’ (qur’an). However, this state is but a temporary and unstable one, because if his mind slackens and loses its highest intensity of concentration even for a moment, he becomes immediately conscious of his ‘impotence’ (‘ajz) and is necessarily faced with his own ‘servantness’ . And this is the stage of ‘separating’ (furqan)} We must observe also that himmah is, in its practical aspect, a free disposal of things (taskhir al-ashya’), while in its cognitive aspect it is an extraordinary power to penetrate the secret of Being which lies beyond the grasp of Reason. It is significant in this respect that Ibn ‘Arabi in a passage of the Fusus 9 declares that the true reality (haqiqah) of Being can only be known by a ‘servant endowed with himmah' . Himmah consists essentially in that a ‘knower’ concen- trates all his spiritual powers upon one single point and projects his concentrated heart (qalb) toward a certain definite direction. This act works in two different, but closely related, ways: (1) producing something or some state of affairs in a place where such a thing or state of affairs does not sensibly exist, and (2) tearing apart the veil of Reason and bringing to light the reality lying behind it. The supernatural power of himmah being as described, the next question that naturally arises is: Does the ‘knower’, i.e., the Perfect Man, work ‘miracles’ (karamat) as he likes? According to the usual theory among Sufis, a ‘knower’ who has reached the stage of ‘saintship’ is in a position to perform ‘things that go against the customs’ (khawariq-al-‘adat), i.e., ‘miracles’. Such a man is usually represented as a kind of superman who, projecting his spiritual power to anything and anybody, affects and changes the object at will. Ibn ‘Arabi does not accept this view. In the Qoran, he argues, 10 we find the Divine words: ‘God is He who creates you of weakness’ (XXX, 54). The very root of man’s creation is ‘weakness’ (da‘f). Man is essentially and naturally ‘weak’ (da‘if) and ‘powerless’ (‘ajiz). He begins with the weakness of the infant and ends with the weakness of the old man. Of course, as the Qoran verse itself admits, 11 the child, as he grows into a man, acquires ‘strength’ (quwwah) and becomes conscious of his own strength. But this, after all, is a transitory state. Soon he grows old and falls into 280 Sufism and Taoism decrepitude. Besides, the ‘strength’ which he obtains in the inter- mediary stage is but an ‘accidental strength’ ( quwwah ‘aradiyah). Moreover, this accidental strength is not something which he pro- duces in himself, but is a result of God’s ‘putting’. In reality, he shows strength only because he happens to be at that stage a locus of theophany in which God manifests Himself under the Name ‘Powerful’ (i qawiy ). What is by essence strong is the Absolute alone; man is strong only by accident. Ordinary men do not know this. Only the true ‘knower’ knows that the strength (including himmah) which he feels in himself is not his own but God’s. And since he is conscious of this, the ‘knower’ knows also that it is not right for him to try to exercise at will the power of himmah . Thus he confides its exercise to the real owner of that power, and puts himself in the original state of the ‘absolute powerlessness’ (‘ ajz muflaq). Someone may say: ‘What prevents (the highest ‘knower’) from exer- cising his himmah that has a positive power to affect things? Since such a power does exist even in those mystics who merely follow the Apostles, the Apostles must be more appropriate to possess it’ . To this I will answer: ‘You are certainly right. But you do not know another important point. A true “knowledge” does not allow him- mah to be freely exercised. And the higher the knowledge, the less possibility there is for a free exercise of himmah' . And this for two reasons. One is that such a man fully realizes his state of ‘servant-ness’ and that he is always conscious of the original ground of his own creation (which is the above-mentioned ‘weak- ness’). The other is the oneness of the subject who exercises himmah and the object upon which it is exercised (for both are essentially and ultimately the Absolute, nothing else), so that he does not know upon whom to project his himmah. This prevents him from exercising himmah .' 2 Then Ibn ‘Arab! says 13 that another reason for which the ‘knower’ refrains from working ‘miracles’ in the world is the knowledge about the absolute determining power of the permanent archetypes, which we have discussed in detail in an earlier chapter. Suppose there is in the presence of the ‘knower’ a man who disobeys the commands of the Apostle and thereby disobeys God. Why does the ‘knower’ not exercise his himmah upon this man so that he might be brought back to the right road? It is because everything, every event in the world is in accordance with what has been eternally determined in the form of an archetype or archetypes. The ‘knower’ knows that this ontological determination can never be changed. In the eyes of a man who has penetrated into the depth of the structure of Being, everything follows the track 281 The Magical Power of the Perfect Man fixed by the very nature of Being, and nothing can deviate from it. In the light of this knowledge, even a man disobedient to God is walking along the God-determined way. And it is not in the power of an Apostle to bring such a man back to the ‘right road’, because the man is already on the ‘right road’. A certain Sufi of the highest rank once said to Master ‘Abd al- Razzaq: Go and ask Master Abu Madyan, after salutations, ‘O Abu Madyan, why is it that nothing is impossible to us, while everything is impossible to you? And yet here we are, aspiring to your spiritual stage, while you do not care for our spiritual stage. Why ?’ 14 In fact, the situation was exactly like that (i.e., Abu Madyan really showed signs of ‘powerlessness’) in spite of the fact that Abu Madyan had, beside this state (i.e. the state of ‘powerlessness’), the other state (i.e., that of free disposal of things by means of himmah). We (i.e., Ibn ‘ Arabi himself) are even more complete as regards the state of ‘weakness’ and ‘powerlessness’. But (even though Abu Madyan did not show so much of ‘weakness’ as we do) the afore- mentioned Sufi of the highest rank said to him what he said. (How much more should we be worthy of such a remark, if the same Sufi were to criticize us.) In any event, however, Abu Madyan’ s case clearly exemplifies that kind of thing (i.e., the showing of ‘weakness’ because of a deep knowledge of the truth ). 15 Ibn ‘Arabi goes on to argue that even this state of ‘weakness’ or refraining from exercising himmah should not properly be taken as a willful act on the part of the ‘knower’. The true ‘knower’ puts himself entirely in the hands of God; if He commands him to exercise his himmah he does, if He forbids him to do so he refrains from it, and if God Himself gives him a choice between the two he chooses refraining from the exercise of himmah. Abu al-Su‘ud (Ibn al-Shibl) once said to his followers: Verily God gave me the power of the free disposal of things fifteen years ago. But I have refrained from exercising that power for the sake of courtesy (tazarrufan) toward God. This saying implies too much bold familiarity (toward God). I myself do not refrain from exercising himmah for the sake of courtesy, because such an attitude would imply a willful choice on my part. No. I refrain from it because of the perfection of knowledge. The true knowledge of the matter does not require refraining from the exer- cise of himmah by way of willful choice. Whenever a ‘knower’ does exercise his himmah in this world, he does so in obedience to a Divine Command; that is to say, he does so because he is constrained to do so, not by way of willful choice . 16 The position of an Apostle regarding this problem of ‘refraining’ is somewhat more delicate than that of a Saint . 17 Properly speaking the function itself of ‘apostleship’ requires his exercising himmah in 282 Sufism and Taoism order that his being an Apostle be made clear to the people. For only when he is accepted as such by the community, is he able to spread the true religion of God. The Saint per se has nothing to do with such a mission. And yet, even the Apostle (Muhammad) did not try to show prophetic ‘miracles’ ( mufizat ). For one thing, he refrained from exercising his himmah because of his compassion for the people. He did not go to extremes in manifesting the conclusive evidence of his ‘apostleship’ because it would have brought destruction to them. He spared them by not showing them too strong evidences of his ‘apostleship’. Besides this, Muhammad had another reason shared by all true Saints for refraining from working miracles; namely, his knowledge that a ‘miracle’ can never change the eternally fixed course of events. Whether a man becomes a Muslim or not is determined by his archetype; it is not something which can easily be changed by the Apostle accomplishing before his eyes a ‘miracle’. Thus even the most perfect of all Apostles (akmal al-rusul), Muhammad, did not exercise himmah. There was actually a practi- cal need for showing ‘miracles’, and he was unquestionably endowed with such a power. And yet he did not exercise his spiritual power in that way. For, being the highest ‘knower’, he knew better than anybody else that ‘miracles’ were, in truth, ineffective. The most ideal state of the Perfect Man is a spiritual tranquility and quietude of an unfathomable depth. He is a quiet man content with a passivity in which he confides himself and every thing else to God’s disposal. The Perfect Man is a man who, having in himself a tre- mendous spiritual power and being adorned with the highest know- ledge of Being, gives the impression of a deep calm ocean. He is such because he is the most perfect image, in a concrete individual form, of the cosmic Perfect Man who comprehends and actualizes all the Names and Attributes of the Absolute. Notes 1. Taskhir literally means ‘forcing somebody to compulsory service, controlling something at will’. In discussing the problem of the ‘compulsory’ force of the permanent archetypes we have already come across the word taskhir in the form of a ‘mutual taskhir between the Absolute and the world. 2. Fuj., p. 199/158. 3. Fu$., p. 90/88-89. 4. Again Ibn ‘Arab! goes back to the case in which the ‘knower’ maintains spiritually all the forms of an object on all the levels of Being by actually concentrating on one of the levels. The Magical Power of the Perfect Man 5. Fu$„ p. 91/89-90. 283 6. On the difference between ‘gathering’ ( qur’an ) and ‘separating’ ( furqan ) see above, Chapter II. 7. Fwj., p. 91/90. 8. Cf. Fuj., p. 92/90. 9. Fu$„ p. 148/121. 10. Fu^., p. 156/127. 1 1 . The verse reads: ‘ God is He who creates you of weakness , then puts ( ja'ala ) after weakness strength ( quwwah ), then again puts weakness after strength.’ 12. Fu$., p. 157/127-128. 13. Fuj., pp. 157-158/128. 14. It means: We can freely accomplish ‘miracles’, but you apparently cannot. And yet we want to attain to your spiritual stage, while you do not show any sign of being desirous of attaining to our spiritual stage. 15. Fus„ p. 158/129. 16. Fus ., p. 159/129-130. 17. ibid. I I S I Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu The book called Tao Te Ching is now world-famous, and is being widely read in the West in various translations as one of the most important basic texts of Oriental Wisdom. It is generally - or popularly, we should say - thought to be a philosophico-mystical treatise written by an ancient Chinese sage called Lao-tzu, a senior contemporary of Confucius. In more scholarly circles no one today takes such a view. In fact, since the Ch’ing Dynasty when the question of the author- ship of the book was first raised in China , 1 it has been discussed by so many people, it has provoked such an animated controversy not only in China but in Japan, and even in the West, and so divergent are the hypotheses which have been put forward, that we are left in utter darkness as to whether the Tao Te Ching is a work of an individual thinker, or even whether a man called Lao-tzu ever existed in reality. We are no longer in a position to assign a proper chronological place to the book with full confidence. For our particular purposes, the problem of authorship and the authenticity of the work is merely of peripheral importance. Whether or not there once existed as a historical person a sage called Lao-tzu in the state of Ch’u, who lived more than one hundred and sixty years , 2 whether or not this sage really wrote the Tao Te Ching - these and similar questions, whether answered affirmatively or negatively, do not affect at all the main contention of the present work. What is of fundamental importance is the fact that the thought is there, and that it has a very peculiar inner structure which, if analyzed and understood in a proper way, will provide an exceedingly interesting Chinese counterpart to the ‘Unity of Existence’ ( wahdah al-wujud) type of philosophy as rep- resented by Ibn ‘Arab! in Islam. Lao-tzu is a legendary, or at the very most, semi-legendary figure, of whom it is an obvious understatement to say that nothing certain is known to us. For, even on the assumption that there is an historical core in his so-called biography, we must admit that the popular 288 Sufism and Taoism imagination has woven round it such a fantastic tapestry of imposs- ible events and unbelievable incidents that no one can ever hope to disentangle the intricate web of legends, myths and facts. Even the most sober and most dependable of all Chinese his- torians in ancient times, and the earliest to attempt a description of Lao-tzu’s life and adventures in his Book of History, 3 Ssu Ma Ch’ien of the Han Dynasty (the beginning of the 1st century B.C.), had to be content with giving a very inconsistent and unsystematic narra- tive made up of a number of stories stemming from heterogeneous origins. According to one of those legends, Lao-tzu was a native of the state of Ch’u. 4 He was an official of the royal Treasury of Chou, when Confucius came to visit him. After the interview, Confucius is related to have made the following remark to his disciples about Lao-tzu. ‘Birds fly, fishes swim, and animals run - this much I know for certain. Moreover, the runner can be snared, the swimmer can be hooked, and the flyer can be shot down by the arrow. But what can we do with a dragon? We cannot even see how he mounts on winds and clouds and rises to heaven. That Lao-tzu whom I met to-day may probably be compared only to a dragon!’ The story makes Lao-tzu a senior contemporary of Confucius (551-479 B.C.). This would naturally mean that Lao-tzu was a man who lived in the 6th century B.C., which cannot possibly be a historical fact. Many arguments have been brought forward against the histori- city of the narrative which we have just quoted. One of them is of particular importance to us; it is concerned with examining this and similar narratives philologically and in terms of the historical development of philosophical thinking in ancient China. I shall give here a typical example of this kind of philological argument. Sokichi Tsuda in his well-known work, The Thought of the Taoist School and its Development , 5 subjects to a careful philological examination the peculiar usage of some of the key technical terms in the Tao Te Ching, and arrives at the conclusion that the book must be a product of a period after Mencius (372-289 B.C.). This would imply of course that Lao-tzu - supposing that he did exist as a historical person - was a man who came after Mencius. Tsuda chooses as the yardstick of his judgment the expression jen-i which is found in Chap. XVIII of the Tao Te Ching, 6 and which is a compound of two words jen and i. These two words, jen (‘humaneness’ with particular emphasis on ‘benevolence’) and i (‘righteousness’), properly speaking, do not belong to the vocabul- ary of Lao-tzu; they are key-terms of Confucianism. As represent- ing two of the most basic human virtues, they play an exceedingly important role in the ethical thought of Confucius himself. But in 289 Lao-Tzu and Chuang Tzu the mouth of Confucius, they remain two independent words; they are not compounded into a semantic unit in the form of jen-i corresponding almost to a single complex concept. The latter phenomenon is observed only in post-Confucian times. Tsuda points out that the thinker who first emphasized the con- cept of jen-i is Mencius. This fact, together with the fact that in the above-mentioned passage Lao-tzu uses the terms jen and i in this compound form, would seem to suggest that the Tao Te Ching , is a product of a period in which the Confucian key-term jen-i has already been firmly established, for the passage in question is most evidently intended to be a conscious criticism of Confucian ethics. Lao-tzu, in other words, could use the expression with such an intention only because he had before his eyes Mencius and his ethical theory. Moreover, Tsuda goes on to remark, Mencius vehemently attacks and denounces everything incompatible with Confucianism, but nowhere does he show any conscious endeavour to criticize Lao-tzu or Tao Te Ching in spite of the fact that the teaching of the latter is diametrically opposed to his own doctrine; he does not even men- tion the name Lao-Tzu. This is irrefutable evidence for the thesis that the Tao Te Ching belongs to a period posterior to Mencius. Since, on the other hand, its doctrines are explicitly criticized by Hsiin-tzu (c. 315-236 B.C.), it cannot be posterior to the latter. Thus, in conclusion, Tsuda assigns to the Tao Te Ching a period between Mencius and Hsiin-tzu. Although there are some problematic points in Tsuda’ s argu- ment, he is, I think, on the whole right. In fact, there are a number of passages in the Tao Te Ching which cannot be properly understood unless we place them against the background of a Confucian philosophy standing already on a very firm basis. And this, indeed, is the crux of the whole problem, at least for those to whom the thought itself of Lao-tzu is the major concern. The very famous opening lines of the Tao Te Ching, for instance, in which the real Way and the real Name are mentioned in sharp contrast to an ordinary ‘way’ and ordinary ‘names’, 7 do not yield their true mean- ing except when we realize that what is meant by this ordinary ‘way’ is nothing but the proper ethical way of living as understood and taught by the school of Confucius, and that what is referred to by these ordinary ‘names’ are but the Confucian ‘names’, i.e., the highest ethical categories stabilized by means of definite ‘names’, i.e., key-terms. The Tao Te Ching contains, furthermore, a number of words and phrases that are - seemingly at least - derived from various other sources, like Mo-tzu, Yang Chu, Shang Yang, and even Chuang- tzu, Shen Tao, and others. And there are some scholars who, basing 290 Sufism and Taoism themselves on this observation, go farther than Tsuda and assert that the Tao Te Ching belongs to a period after Chuang-tzu and Shen Tao. Yang Jung Kuo, a contemporary scholar of Peking, to give one example, takes such a position in his History of Thought in Ancient China. 6 Some of these alleged ‘references’ to thinkers who have tradi- tionally been considered later than Lao-tzu may very well be explained as due to the influence exercised by the Tao Te Ching itself upon those thinkers who, in writing their books, may have ‘borrowed’ ideas and expressions from this book. Besides, we have to remember that the text of this book as we have it to-day has evidently passed through a repeated process of editing, re-editing, and re-arranging in the Han Dynasty. Many of the ‘references’ may simply be later additions and interpolations. Be this as it may, it has to be admitted that the Tao Te Ching is a controversial work. And at least it is definitely certain that the formation of its thought presupposes the existence of the Confucian school of thought. Turning now to another aspect of Lao-tzu, which is more important for the purposes of the present work than chronology, we may begin by observing that the Biography of Lao-tzu as given by Ssu Ma Ch’ien in his Book of History makes Lao-tzu a man of Ch’u . 9 Thus he writes in one passage, ‘Lao-tzu was a native of the village Ch’ii Jen, in Li Hsiang, in the province of K’u, in the state of Ch’u’. In another passage he states that according to a different tradition, there was a man called Lao Lai Tzu in the time of Confucius; that he was a man of Ch’u, and produced fifteen books in which he talked about the Way. Ssu Ma Ch’ien adds that this man may have been the same as Lao-tzu. All this may very well be a mere legend. And yet it is, in my view, highly significant that the ‘legend’ connects the author of the Tao Te Ching with the state of Ch’u. This connection of Lao-tzu with the southern state of Ch’u cannot be a mere coincidence. For there is something of the spirit of Ch’u running through the entire book. By the ‘spirit of Ch’u’ I mean what may properly be called the shamanic tendency of the mind or shamanic mode of thinking. Ch’u was a large state lying on the southern periphery of the civilized Middle Kingdom, a land of wild marches, rivers, forests and mountains, rich in terms of nature but poor in terms of culture, inhabited by many people of a non-Chinese origin with variegated, strange customs. There all kinds of superstitious beliefs in supernatural beings and spirits were rampant, and shamanic practices thrived. But this apparently primitive and ‘uncivilized’ atmosphere could provide an ideal fostering ground for an extraordinary visionary 291 Lao-Tzu and Chuang Tzu power of poetic imagination, as amply attested by the elegies writ- ten by the greatest shaman-poet the state of Ch’u has ever pro- duced, Ch’ii Yuan . 10 The same atmosphere could also produce a very peculiar kind of metaphysical thinking. This is very probable because the shamanic experience of reality is of such a nature that it can be refined and elaborated into a high level of metaphysical experience. In any case, the metaphysical depth of Lao-tzu’s thought can, I believe, be accounted for to a great extent by relating it to the shamanic mentality of the ancient Chinese which can be traced back to the oldest historic times and even beyond, and which has flourished particularly in the southern part of China throughout the long history of Chinese culture. In this respect Henri Maspero 11 is, I think, basically right when he takes exception to the traditional view that Taoism abruptly started in the beginning of the fourth century B.C. as a mystical metaphys- ics with Lao-tzu, was very much developed philosophically by Chuang-tzu toward the end of that century and vulgarized to a considerable degree by Lieh-tzu and thenceforward went on the way of corruption and degeneration until in the Later Han Dynasty it was completely transformed into a jumble of superstition, anim- ism, magic and sorcery. Against such a view, Maspero takes the position that Taoism was a ‘personal’ religion - as contrasted with the agricultural communal type of State religion which has nothing to do with personal salvation - going back to immemorial antiquity. The school of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, he maintains, was a particu- lar branch or section within this wide religious movement, a particu- lar branch characterized by a marked mystical-philosophical ten- dency. These observations would seem to lead us back once again to the problem of the authorship of Tao Te Ching and the historicity of Lao-tzu. Is it at all imaginable that such a metaphysical refinement of crude mysticism should have been achieved as a result of a process of natural development, without active participation of an individual thinker endowed with an unusual philosophical genius? I do not think so. Primitive shamanism in ancient China would have remained in its original crudity as a phenomenon of popular religion characterized by ecstatic orgy and frantic ‘posses- sion’ , if it were not for a tremendous work of elaboration done in the course of its history by men of unusual genius. Thus, in order to produce the Elegies of Ch’u the primitive shamanic vision of the world had to pass through the mind of a Ch’u Yuan. Likewise, the same shamanic world-vision could be elevated into the profound metaphysics of the Way only by an individual philosophical genius. When we read the Tao Te Ching with the preceding observation 292 Sufism and Taoism in mind, we cannot but feel the breath, so to speak, of an extraordi- nary man pervading the whole volume, the spirit of an unusual philosopher pulsating throughout the book. With all the possible later additions and interpolations, which I readily admit, I cannot agree with the view that the Tao Te Ching is a work of compilation consisting of fragments of thought taken from various heterogene- ous sources. For there is a certain fundamental unity which strikes us everywhere in the book. And the unity is a personal one. In fact, the Tao Te Ching as a whole is a unique piece of work distinctly colored by the personality of one unusual man, a shaman- philosopher. Does he not give us a self-portrait in part XX of the book? The multitude of men are blithe and cheerful as though they were invited to a luxurious banquet, or as though they were going up a high tower to enjoy the spring scenery. I alone remain silent and still, showing no sign of activity. Like a new-born baby I am, that has not yet learnt to smile. Forlorn and aimless I look, as if I had no place to return. All men have more than enough. I alone seem to be vacant and blank. Mine indeed is the mind of a stupid man! Dull and confused it is! The vulgar people are all clever and bright, I alone am dark and obtuse. The vulgar people are all quick and alert, I alone am blunt and tardy. Like a deep ocean that undulates constantly I am, like a wind that blows never to rest. All others have some work to do, while I alone remain impractical / and boorish. I alone am different from all others because I value being fed by the Mother . 12 Similarly in another passage (LXVII), he says of himself: Everybody under Heaven says that I 13 am big, but look stupid. Yea, I look stupid because I am big. If I were clever I would have diminished long ago. And again in LXX, we read: My words are very easy to understand and very easy to practise. Yet no one under Heaven understands them; no one puts them into practice. My words come out of a profound source, and my actions come out of a high principle. But people do not understand it. Therefore they do not understand me. Those who understand me are rare. That precisely is the proof that I am precious. The sage, indeed, wears clothes of coarse cloth, but carries within precious jade. The passages just quoted give a picture of a very original mind, an image of a man who looks gloomy, stupid and clumsy, standing aloof from the ‘clever’ people who spend their time in the petty Lao-Tzu and Chuang Tzu 293 pleasures of life. He takes such an attitude because he is conscious of himself as utterly different from ordinary men. The important question we have to raise about this is: Whence does this difference come? The Tao Te Ching itself and the Chuang-tzu seem to give a definite answer to this question. The man feels himself different from others because he is conscious that he alone knows the real meaning of existence. And this he knows due to his metaphysical insight which is based on what Chuang-tzu calls tso wang ‘sitting in oblivion’ , that is, the experience of ecstatic union with the Absolute, the Way. The man who stands behind the utterances which we have quoted above is a philosopher-mystic, or a visionary shaman turned into a philosopher. It is highly significant for our specific purpose to note that the spirit of a philosophically developed shamanism pervades the whole of the Tao Te Ching. It is, so to speak, a living personal ‘center’ round which are co-ordinated all the basic ideas that we find in the book, whether the thought concerns the metaphysical structure of the universe, the nature of man, the art of governing people, or the practical ideal of life. And such an organic unity cannot be explained except on the assumption that the book, far from being a compilation made of fragmentary and disparate pieces of thought picked up at random from here and there, is in the main the work of a single author. In studying a book like the Tao Te Ching it is more important than anything else to grasp this personal unity underlying it as a whole, and to pinpoint it as the center of co-ordination for all its basic ideas. For, otherwise, we would not be in a position to penetrate the subtle structure of the symbolism of the Tao Te Ching and analyze with precision the basic ideas of its metaphysics. Turning from Lao-tzu to Chuang-tzu, we feel ourselves standing on a far more solid ground. For, although we are no better informed about his real life and identity, at least we know that we are dealing with an historical person, who did exist in about the middle of the fourth century B.C., as a contemporary of Mencius, the great shaman-poet Ch’ii Yuan of Ch’u to whom reference has been made, and the brilliant dialectician Hui Shih or Hui-tzu 14 with whom he himself was a good match in the mastery of the art of manipulating logical concepts. According to the account given by Ssu Ma Ch’ien in the above- mentioned Book of History, Chuang-tzu or Chuang Chou 15 was a native of Meng; 16 he was once an official at Ch’i-Yiian in Meng; he had tremendous erudition, but his doctrine was essentially based on the teachings of Lao-tzu; and his writing, which counted more than 100,000 words, was for the most part symbolic or allegorical. 294 Sufism and Taoism It is significant that Meng, which is mentioned by Ssu Ma Ch’ien as Chuang-tzu’s birthplace, is in present-day Ho Nan and was a place in the ancient state of Sung. 17 I regard this as significant because Sung was a country where the descendants of the ancient Yin 18 people were allowed to live after having been conquered by the Chou people. 19 There these descendants of the once-illustrious people, despised by the conquerors as the ‘conquered’ and con- stantly threatened and invaded by their neighbors, succeeded in preserving the religious beliefs and legends of their ancestors. The significance of this fact with regard to the thesis of the present study will at once be realized if one but remembers the animistic- shamanic spirit of Yin culture as manifested in its sacrificial cere- monies and rites of divination as well as in the myths connected with this dynasty. The people of Yin were traditionally famous for their cult of spirits and worship of the ‘God-above’. From of old the distinction between Yin and Chou was made by such a dictum as: ‘Yin worships spirits while Chou places the highest value on human culture.’ 20 Quite independently of the observation of this historical relation between the Yin Dynasty and the Sung people, Fung Yu Lang in his History of Chinese Philosophy 21 points out - quite rightly, to my mind - that the form of Chuang-tzu’s thought is close to that of the Ch’u people. ‘We should keep in mind’, he writes, ‘the fact that the state of Sung bordered Ch’u, making it quite possible that Chuang- tzu was influenced on the one hand by Ch’u, and at the same time was under the influence of the ideas of the Dialecticians. (Hui Shih, it will be remembered, was a native of Sung.) Thus by using the dialectics of the latter, he was able to put his soaring thoughts into order, and formulate a unified philosophical system.’ Of the ‘spirit of Ch’u’ we have talked in an earlier passage in connection with the basic structure of Lao-tzu’s thought. Fung Yu Lang compares the Elegies of Ch’u ( Ch’u Tz’u ) 22 with the Chuang- tzu and observes a remarkable resemblance between the two in the display of ‘a richness of imagination and freeness of spirit’. But he neglects to trace this resemblance down to its shamanic origin, so that the ‘richness of imagination and freeness of spirit’ is left unex- plained. However it may be, we shall refrain from going any further into the details of this problem at this point, for much more will be said in the following chapter. The problem of the relationship between Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu has been discussed at length by philologists. As we have already observed the major doctrines of Chuang-tzu have traditionally been regarded as being based upon the teachings of Lao-tzu. On this view, Lao-tzu of course was a predecessor of Chuang-tzu in Taoist Lao-Tzu and Chuang Tzu 295 philosophy; the main lines of thought had been laid down by the former, and the latter simply took them over from him and developed them in his own way into a grand-scale allegorical system according to the dictates of his philosophical and literary ability. This view seems to be a natural conclusion drawn from the observa- tion of the following two facts: (1) the existence of an undeniable inner connection between the two in the very structure of their world-view and their mystical way of thinking; (2) Chuang-tzu himself often mentioning Lao-tzu as one of the earlier Taoist sages, and the expressions used being in some places almost the same. The matter, however, is not as simple as it looks at the first glance. In fact serious questions have been raised in modern times about this problem. The Tao Te Ching itself, to begin with, is nowhere referred to in the Chuang-tzu, although Lao-tzu, as a legendary figure, appears in its pages, and his ideas are mentioned. But this latter fact proves almost nothing conclusively, for we know that many of the persons who are made to play important roles in the Chuang-tzu are simply fictitious. Similarities in language may easily be explained away as the result either of later interpolations in the Tao Te Ching itself, or as going back to common sources. / Yang Jung Kuo, to whom reference has been made earlier, may be mentioned as a representative present-day scholar who not only doubts Lao-tzu’s having been a predecessor of Chuang-tzu, but goes a step further and completely reverses the chronological order. In an interesting chapter of his above-mentioned book, History of Thought in Ancient China 22 he decidedly takes the position that Chuang-tzu was not a disciple of Lao-tzu; that, on the contrary, the latter - or, to be more exact, the Tao Te Ching - was nothing other than a continuation and further development of the Chuang-tzu. And the way he defends his position is strictly philological; he tries to prove his position through an examination of some of the key- concepts common to Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. And he concludes that the Tao Te Ching presupposes the prior existence of the Chuang-tzu. For instance, the most important of all key-concepts of Taoism, tao (Wag) as the cosmic principle of natural growth, or Nature, is in the Chuang-tzu not yet fully developed in its inner structure. The concept is already there, he says, but it is as yet a mere beginning. The Tao Te Ching takes over this concept at this precise point and elaborates it into an absolute principle, the abso- lutely unknowable Source, which is pre-eternal 24 and from which emanate all things. 25 And Yang Jung Kuo thinks that this historical relation between the two - Chuang-tzu being the initial point and Lao-tzu representing the culmination - is observable throughout the whole structure of Taoist philosophy. This argument, highly interesting though it is, is not conclusive. 296 297 Sufism and Taoism For the key-concepts in question allow of an equally justifiable explanation in terms of a process of development running from Lao-tzu to Chuang-tzu. As regards the metaphysics of tao, for instance, we have to keep in mind that Lao-tzu gives only the result, a definitely established monistic system of archetypal ima- gery whose center is constituted by the absolute Absolute, tao, which develops stage after stage by its own ‘natural’ creative activity down to the world of multiplicity. This ontology, as I have pointed out before, is understandable only on the assumption that it stands on the basis of an ecstatic or mystical experience of Existence. Lao-tzu, however, does not disclose this experiential aspect of his world-view except through vague, symbolic hints and suggestions. This is the reason why the Tao Te Ching tends to produce an impression of being a philosophical elaboration of something which precedes it. That ‘something which precedes it’, however, may not necessarily be something taken over from others. Chuang-tzu, on the other hand, is interested precisely in this experiential aspect of Taoist mysticism which Lao-tzu leaves untouched. He is not mainly concerned with constructing a metaphysics of a cosmic scale ranging from the ultimate Unknow- able down to the concrete world of variegated colors and forms. His chief concern is with the peculiar kind of ‘experience’ itself by which one penetrates the mystery of Existence. He tries to depict in detail, sometimes allegorically, sometimes theoretically, the very psychological or spiritual process through which one becomes more and more ‘illumined’ and goes on approaching the real structure of reality hidden behind the veil of sensible experience. His attitude is, in comparison with Lao-tzu, epistemological, rather than metaphysical. And this difference separates these two thinkers most fundamentally, although they share a common inter- est in the practical effects that come out of the supra-sensible experience of the Way. The same difference may also be formulated in terms of upward movement and downward movement. Lao-tzu tries to describe metaphysically how the absolute Absolute develops naturally into One, and how the One develops into Two, and the Two into Three, and the Three into ‘ten thousand things’ , 26 It is mainly a description of an ontological - or emanational - movement downward, though he emphasizes also the importance of the concept of Return, i.e., the returning process of all things back to their origin. Chuang-tzu is interested in describing epistemologi- cally the rising movement of the human mind from the world of multiplicity and diversity up to the ontological plane where all distinctions become merged into One. Because of this particular emphasis on the epistemological aspect of the experience of the tao, Chuang-tzu does not take the trouble of Lao-Tzu and Chuang Tzu developing the concept itself of tao as a philosophical system. This is why his metaphysics of tao appears imperfect, or imperfectly developed. This, however, does not necessarily mean that he rep- resents chronologically an earlier stage than Lao-tzu. For, as we have just seen, the difference between them may very well be only the difference of emphasis. I shall now bring this chapter to a close by giving a brief explanation of the book itself known by the name Chuang-tzu. The important Bibliography contained in the Chronicle of the Han Dynasty 27 notes that the Chuang-tzu consists of fifty-two chap- ters. But the basic text of the book which we actually have in our hands has only thirty-three chapters. This is the result of editorial work done by Kuo Hsiang . 28 In fact all the later editions of the Chuang-tzu ultimately go back to this Kuo Hsiang recension. This eminent thinker of the Taoist school critically examined the tradi- tional text, left out a number of passages which he regarded as definitely spurious and worthless, and divided what survived this examination into three main groups. The first group is called Interior Chapters ( nei p’ien ) consisting of seven chapters. The sec- ond is called Exterior Chapters ( wai p’ien ) and consists of fifteen chapters. And the third is called Miscellaneous Chapters ( tza pi’en ) and contains eleven chapters. Setting aside the problem of possible additions and interpolations we might say generally that the Interior Chapters represent Chuang-tzu’s own thought and ideas, and are probably from his own pen. As to the two other groups, scholars are agreed to-day that they are mostly later developments, interpretations and elucida- tions added to the main text by followers of Chuang-tzu. Whether the Interior Chapters come from Chuang-tzu’s own pen or not, it is definite that they represent the oldest layer of the book and are philosophically as well as literarily the most essential part, while the Exterior and Miscellaneous Chapters are of but secondary impor- tance. In the present study, I shall depend exclusively on the Interior Chapters. This I shall do for the reason just mentioned and also out of a desire to give consistency to my analytic description of Chuang-tzu’s thought . 29 Notes 1. Ts’ui Shu (^a£in his r#:$g%tSlfuI) may here be mentioned as one of the most eminent writers of the Ch’ing Dynasty who raised serious doubts about the reliability of the so-called biography of Lao-tzu. Of the Tao Te Ching he says: ‘As for the 298 Sufism and Taoism five-thousand-words-about-the-Tao-and-Virtue, no one knows who wrote it. There is no doubt, in any case, that it is a forgery by some of the followers of Yang Chu.' 2. The name Lao-tzu, incidentally, simply means Old Master, the word ‘old’ in this context meaning almost the same as ‘immortal’. 3. -Wa8 : Shih Chih, ntfiU, LXIII,ngj{£*tt?iJ#j , III. 4. For my reason for translating r , as 4 an official of the royal Treasury of Chou’, see Shigeta Koyanagi: The Thought of Lao-tzu, Chuang-tzu and Taoism , Tokyo, 1942, pp. 26-27. 5. -EoSIMj , Complete Works of S. Tsuda, XIII, Tokyo, 1964. The work was published earlier in 1927 as a volume of the series of publica- tions of Toyo Bunko. 6. > ‘Only when the great Way declines, does the virtue of benevolence-righteousness arise.’ 7. This passage will be translated and explained later. 8. Peking, 1954, 3rd ed. 1955, Chap. VII, 4, pp. 245- 247. At the outset (p. 245), the author states: The Book of Lao-tzu is, in my opinion, a product of an age subsequent to the flourishing of the school of Chuang-tzu in the Warring States period. 9. «. 10. Hit . We may note as quite a significant fact that this great poet of Ch’u was a contemporary of Chuang-tzu. According to a very detailed and excellent study done by Kuo Mo Jo nSSCSf^j), Ch’u Yuan was born in 340 B.C. and died in 278 B.C., at the age of sixty-two. As for Chuang-tzu, an equally excellent study by Ma Hsu Lun (.lUOra has established that he lived c. 370 B.C.-300 B.C. 1 1 . Henri Maspero: Le Taoism ( melanges posthumes sur les religions et Thistoire de la Chine, II) Paris, 1950, III. 12. 4 Mother’ here symbolizes the Way ( tao ). Just as a child in the womb feeds on the mother without its doing anything active on its part, the Taoist sage lives in the bosom of the Way, free and careless, away from all artificial activity on his part. 13. The text usually reads; • • ■ making ‘my Way’ the subject of the sentence. 14. MW , M.T, known as one of the representatives of the 4 school of dialecticians ( pien chef, or ‘sophists’, in the Warring States period. The Chuang-tzu records several anecdotes in which Chuang-tzu is challenged by this logician, disputes with him, and scores a victory over him. The anecdotes may very well be fictitious -as almost all the anecdotes of the Chuang-tzu are - but they are very interesting in that they disclose the basic characteristics of the one as well as of the other. 15. Chou being his personal name. 16 . *. Lao-Tzu and Chuang Tzii 17 . 5 ^ ■ 18. ®. 299 19. 20. nSffi*JHfirS:J(Cf. Hong Kong, 1957, pp. 1-2). 21. Trans, by D. Bodde, 2 vols., Princeton, 1952-53; vol. I, pp. 221-222. 22. r@^j, some of which are by the poet Ch’ii Yuan himself, Li Sao rflgSij being his representative work, while some others are by his followers. But, whether by Ch’u Yuan or by others, all the Elegies are through and through shamanic. Some of them describe in a typical way the spiritual, visionary journeys of a shaman in an ecstatic state. 23. pp. 252-257. 24. lit. ‘The Tao precedes Heaven and Earth’. The concept of tao in this respect may rightly be compared with the Islamic concept qadim. 25. rig£3S#!J, lit. ‘The Tao produces, or makes grow, the ten thousand things’. 26. See, Tao Te Ching, XLII. The process of ‘emanation’ will be dealt with later in full detail. 27. TSIHj which was compiled in the 1st century B.C. 28. $p$s, a scholar of the 4th century A.D. 29. In quoting from the Chuang-tzu I shall give page numbers according to the Peking edition of Chuang-tzu Chi Shih by Kuo Ch’ing Fan ?£R?S, Peking, 1 961 , vol. 1 . The editor was one of the outstanding philologists of the Ch’ ing dynasty, and his edition is a very useful one, because it gives the commentary by Kuo Hsiang himself (r&T&j) and two other equally famous glosses by Ch’eng Hsiiang Ying and Lu Te Ming rgT#J£), supplemented by some of the results of modern scholarship. As for Lao-tzu, I shall quote from the edition of Kao Heng: Lao-tzu Cheng KuW$- r^TiE^SJ, Shanghai, 1943, giving, as is usually done, chapter numbers instead of page numbers. II From Mythopoiesis to Metaphysics In the preceding chapter I indicated in a preliminary way the possi- bility of there being a very strong connection between Taoist philosophy and shamanism. I suggested that the thought or world- view of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu may perhaps be best studied against the background of the age-old tradition of the shamanic spirit in ancient China. The present chapter will be devoted to a more detailed discussion of this problem, namely, the shamanic background of Taoist philosophy as represented by the Tao Te Ching and Chuang-tzu. In fact, throughout the long history of Chinese thought there runs what might properly be called a ‘shamanic mode of thinking’. We observe this specific mode of thinking manifesting itself in diverse forms and on various levels in accordance with the particular cir- cumstances of time and place, sometimes in a popular, fantastic form, often going to the limit of superstition and obscenity, and sometimes in an intellectually refined and logically elaborated form. We observe also that this mode of thinking stands in sharp contrast to the realistic and rationalistic mode of thinking as represented by the austere ethical world-view of Confucius and his followers. Briefly stated, I consider the Taoist world-view of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu as a philosophical elaboration or culmination of this shamanic mode of thinking; as, in other words, a particular form of philosophy which grew out of the personal existential experience peculiar to persons endowed with the capacity of seeing things on a supra-sensible plane of consciousness through an ecstatic encounter with the Absolute and through the archetypal images emerging out of it. The Taoist philosophers who produced works like the Tao Te Ching and Chuang-tzu were ‘shamans’ on the one hand, as far as concerns the experiential basis of their world-vision, but they were on the other, intellectual thinkers who, not content to remain on the primitive level of popular shamanism, exercised their intellect in order to elevate and elaborate their original vision into a system of metaphysical concepts designed to explain the very structure of Being. From Mythopoiesis to Metaphysics 301 Lao-tzu talks about sheng-jen 1 or the ‘sacred man’ . It is one of the key-concepts of his philosophical world-view, and as such plays an exceedingly important role in his thought. The ‘sacred man’ is a man who has attained to the highest stage of the intuition of the Way, to the extent of being completely unified with it, and who behaves accordingly in this world following the dictates of the Way that he feels active in himself. He is, in brief, a human embodiment of the Way. In exactly the same sense, Chuang-tzu speaks of chen-jen 2 or the ‘true man’, chih-jen 3 or the ‘ultimate man’, shen-jen 4 or the ‘divine (or super-human) man’. The man designated by these vari- ous words is in reality nothing other than a philosophical shaman, or a shaman whose visionary intuition of the world has been refined and elaborated into a philosophical vision of Being. That the underlying concept has historically a close connection with shamanism is revealed by the etymological meaning of the word sheng here translated as ‘sacred’. The Shuo Wen Chieh Tzu, the oldest etymological dictionary (compiled in 100 A.D.), in its explanation of the etymological structure of this word states: 1 Sheng designates a man whose orifices of the ears are extraordinarily receptive’. 5 In other words, the term designates a man, endowed with an unusually keen ear, who is capable of hearing the voice of a super-natural being, god or spirit, and understands directly the will or intention of the latter. In the concrete historical circumstances of the ancient Yin Dynasty, such a man can be no other than a divine priest professionally engaged in divination. It is interesting to remark in this connection that in the Tao Te Ching the ‘sacred man’ is spoken of as the supreme ruler of a state, or ‘ king’ , and that this equation (Saint = King) is made as if it were a matter of common sense, something to be taken for granted. We must keep in mind that in the Yin Dynasty 6 shamanism was deeply related to politics. In that dynasty, the civil officials of the higher ranks who possessed and exercised a tremendous power over the administration of the state were all originally shamans. And in the earliest periods of the same dynasty, the Grand Shaman was the high priest-vizier, or even the king himself. 7 This would seem to indicate that behind the ‘sacred man’ as the Taoist ideal of the Perfect Man there is hidden the image of a shaman, and that under the surface of the metaphysical world-view of Taoism there is perceivable a shamanic cosmology going back to the most ancient times of Chinese history. For the immediate purposes of the present study, we do not have to go into a detailed theoretical discussion of the concept of shaman- ism. 8 We may be content with defining it in a provisional way by saying that it is a phenomenon in which an inspired seer in a state of 302 Sufism and Taoism ecstasy communes with supernatural beings, gods or spirits. As is well known, a man who has a natural capacity of this kind tends to serve in a primitive society as an intermediary between his tribes- men and the unseen world. As one of the most typical features of the shamanic mentality we shall consider first of all the phenomenon of mythopoiesis . Shamans are by definition men who, in their ecstatic-archetypal visions per- ceive things which are totally different from what ordinary people see in their normal states through their sensible experiences, and this naturally tends to induce the shamans to interpret and struc- turalize the world itself quite differently from ordinary people. That which characterizes their reality experience in the most remarkable way is that things appear to their ‘imaginal’ consciousness in sym- bolic and mythical forms. The world which a shaman sees in the state of trance is a world of ‘creative imagination’ , as Henry Corbin has aptly named it, however crude it may still be. On this level of consciousness, the things we perceive around us leave their natural, common-sense mode of existence and transform themselves into images and symbols. And those images, when they become sys- tematized and ordered according to the patterns of development which are inherent in them, tend to produce a mythical cosmology. The shamanic tradition in ancient China did produce such a cosmology. In the Elegies ofCh’u to which reference was made in the preceding chapter, we can trace almost step by step and in a very concrete form the actual process by which the shamanic experience of reality produces a peculiar, ‘imaginal’ cosmology. And by com- paring, further, the Elegies ofCh’u with a book like Huai Nan Tzu , 9 we can observe the most intimate relationship that exists between the shamanic cosmology and Taoist metaphysics. There one sees sur le vif how the mythical world-view represented by the former develops and is transformed into the ontology of the Way. Another fact which seems to confirm the existence of a close relationship, both essential and historical, between the Taoist metaphysics and the shamanic vision of the world is found in the history of Taoism after the Warring States period. In fact, the development of Taoism, after having reached its philosophical zenith with Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, goes on steadily describing a curve of ‘degeneration’ - as it is generally called - even under a strong influence of the Tao Te Ching and Chuang-tzu, and returns to its original mythopoeic form, revealing thereby its shamanic basis, until it reaches in the Later Han Dynasty a stage at which Taoism becomes almost synonymous with superstition, magic and witch- craft. The outward structure of Taoist metaphysics itself discloses almost no palpable trace of its shamanic background, but in the From Mythopoiesis to Metaphysics 303 philosophical description of the tao by Lao-tzu, for instance, there is undeniably something uncanny and uncouth that would seem to be indicative of its original connection with shamanism. Lao-tzu depicts, as we shall see later in more detail, the Way {tao) as Something shadowy and dark, prior to the existence of Heaven and Earth, unknown and unknowable, impenetrable and intangible to the degree of only being properly described as Non-Being, and yet pregnant with forms, images and things, which lie latent in the midst of its primordial obscurity. The metaphysical Way thus depicted has an interesting counterpart in the popular mythopoeic imagination as represented by Shan Hai Ching , 10 in which it appears in a fantas- tic form. Three hundred and fifty miles further to the West there is a mountain called Heaven Mountain. The mountain produces much gold and jade. It produces also blue sulphide. And the River Ying takes its rise therefrom and wanders southwestward until it runs into the Valley of Boiling Water. Now in this mountain there lives a Divine Bird whose body is like a yellow sack, red as burning fire, who has six legs and four wings. It is strangely amorphous, having no face, no eyes, but it is very good at singing and dancing. In reality, this Bird is no other than the god Chiang. In the passage here quoted, two things attract our attention. One is the fact that the monster-bird is described as being good at singing and dancing. The relevance of this point to the particular problem we are now discussing will immediately be understood if one remembers that ‘singing and dancing’, i.e., ritual dance, invariably accompanies the phenomenon of shamanism. Dancing in ancient China was a powerful means of seeking for the divine Will, of inducing the state of ecstasy in men, and of ‘calling down’ spirits from the invisible world. The above-mentioned dictionary, Shuo Wen, defines the word wu (shaman) as ‘a woman who is naturally fit for serving the formless (i.e., invisible beings) and who, by means of dancing call down spirits ’ . 11 It is interesting that the same dictionary explains the character itself which represents this word, M , by saying that it pictures a woman dancing with two long sleeves hanging down on the right and the left. In the still earlier stage of its development , 12 it represents the figure of a shaman holding up jade with two hands in front of a spirit or god. It is also significant that the monster is said to be a bird, which is most probably an indication that the shamanic dancing here in question was some kind of feather-dance in which the shaman was ritually ornamented with a feathered headdress. The second point to be noticed in the above-given passage from the Shan Hai Ching - and this point is of far greater relevance to the 304 Sufism and Taoism present study than the first - is the particular expression used in the description of the monster’s visage, hun tun, 13 which I have provi- sionally translated above as ‘strangely amorphous’. It means a chaotic state of things, an amorphous state where nothing is clearly delineated, nothing is clearly distinguishable, but which is far from being sheer non-being; it is, on the contrary, an extremely obscure ‘presence’ in which the existence of something - or some things, still undifferentiated - is vaguely and dimly sensed. The relation between this word as used in this passage and Chuang-tzu’s allegory of the divine Emperor Hun Tun has been noticed long ago by philologists of the Ch’ing dynasty. The com- mentator of the Shan Hai Ching, Pi Yuan, for instance, explicitly connects this description of the monster with the featureless face of the Emperor Hun Tun. The allegory given by Chuang-tzu reads as follows: 14 The Emperor of the South Sea was called Shu, the Emperor of the North Sea was called Hu , 15 and the Emperor of the central domain was called Hun Tun . 16 Once, Shu and Hu met in the domain of Hun Tun, who treated both of them very well. Thereupon, Shu and Hu deliberated together over the way in which they might possibly repay his goodness. 'All men’, they said, ‘are possessed of seven orifices for seeing, hearing, eating, and breathing. But this one (i.e., Hun Tun) alone does not possess any (orifice). Come, let us bore some for him.’ They went on boring one orifice every day, until on the seventh day Hun Tun died. This story describes in symbolic terms the destructive effect exer- cised by the essentialist type of philosophy on the Reality. It is a merciless denunciation of this type of philosophy on behalf of a peculiar form of existentialist philosophy which, as we shall see later, Chuang-tzu was eager to uphold. Shu and Hu, symbolizing the precariousness of human existence, met in the central domain of Hun Tun; they were very kindly treated and they became happy for a brief period of time as their names themselves indicate. This event would seem to symbolize the human intellect stepping into the domain of the supra-sensible world of ‘un-differentiation’, the Absolute, and finding a momentary felicity there - the ecstasy of a mystical intuition of Being, which, regrettably, lasts but for a short time. Encouraged by this experience, the human intellect, or Reason, tries to bore holes in the Absolute, that is to say, tries to mark distinctions and bring out to actuality all the forms that have remained latent in the original undifferentiation. The result of ‘boring’ is nothing but the philosophy of Names ( ming ) as rep- resented by Confucius and his school, an essentialist philosophy, where all things are clearly marked, delineated, and sharply disting- From Mythopoiesis to Metaphysics 305 uished from one another on the ontological level of essences. But the moment orifices were bored in Hun Tun’s face, he died. This means that the Absolute can be brought into the grasp of Reason by ‘essential’ distinctions being made in the reality of the Absolute, and becomes thereby something understandable; but the moment it becomes understandable to Reason, the Absolute dies. It is not time yet for us to go into the details of the existentialist position taken by Chuang-tzu. I simply wanted to show by this example how closely the shamanic mythopoeic imagination was originally related with the birth of Taoist philosophy, and yet, at the same time, how far removed the latter was in its philosophical import from the former. This sense of distance between shamanism and philosophy may be alleviated to a considerable extent if we place between the two terms of the relation the cosmogonical story - a product of the same mythopoeic mentality - which purports to explain how Heaven and Earth came into being. It is not exactly a ‘story’ ; it is a ‘theory’ and is meant to be one. It is a result of a serious attempt to describe and explain theoretically the very origin of the world of Being and the process by which all things in the world have come to acquire the forms with which we are now familiar. The cosmogony constitutes in this sense the middle term - structurally, if not historically - between the crude shamanic myth and the highly developed metaphysics of the Way. Here we give in translation the cosmogony as formulated in the above-mentioned Huai Nan Tzu : 17 Heaven and Earth had no form yet. It was a state of formless fluidity; nothing stable, nothing definite. This state is called the Great Begin- ning. The Great Beginning produced 18 a spotless void. The spotless void produced the Cosmos. The Cosmos produced (the all- pervading) vital energy. 11 ' The vital energy had in itself distinctions. That which was limpid and light went up hovering in thin layers to form Heaven, while that which was heavy and turbid coagulated and became Earth. The coming together of limpid and fine elements is naturally easy, while the coagulation of heavy and turbid elements is difficult to occur. For this reason, Heaven was the first to be formed, then Earth became established. Heaven and Earth gathered together the finer elements of their vital energy to form the principles of Negative (Yin) and Positive (Yang), and the Negative and Positive gathered together the finer elements of their vital energy to constitute the four seasons. The four seasons scattered their vital energy to bring into being the ten thousand things. The caloric energy of the Positive principle, having been accumulated, gave birth to fire, and the essence of the energy of fire became the sun. The energy of coldness peculiar to the Negative principle, having been accumulated became water, and the essence of 306 Sufism and Taoism the energy of water became the moon. The overflow of the sun and the moon, having become refined, turned into stars and planets. Heaven received the sun, moon, stars, and planets. Earth received water, puddles, dust, and soil. In the passage her quoted we encounter again that undifferen- tiated, featureless Something, the primordial Chaos, this time as a cosmogonic principle or the Great Beginning, representing the state of affairs before the creation of the world. The Great Beginning is certainly different from the mythical monster of the Shan Hai Ching and the metaphysical principle of the Tao Te Ching. But it is evident at the same time that these three are but different ‘phenomena’ of one and the same thing. Similarly in a different passage 20 in the same book we read: Long long ago, when Heaven and Earth were still non-existent, there were no definite figures, no definite forms. Mysteriously profound, opaque and dark: nothing was distinguishable, nothing was fathom- able; limitlessly remote, vast and void; nobody would have discerned its gate. Then there were born together two divinities, and they began to rule Heaven and to govern Earth. Infinitely deep (was Heaven), and no one knew where it came to a limit. Vastly extensive (was Earth), and no one knew where it ceased. Thereupon (Being) divided itself into the Negative and the Positive, which, then, separated into the eight cardinal directions. The hard and the soft complemented each other, and as a result the ten thousand things acquired their definite forms. The gross and confused elements of the vital energy produced animals (including beasts, birds, reptiles and fish). The finer vital energy produced man. This is the reason why the spiritual properly belongs to Heaven, while the bodily belongs to Earth. Historically speaking, this and similar cosmogonical theories seem to have been considerably influenced by Taoism and its metaphys- ics. Structurally, however, they furnish a connecting link between myth and philosophy, pertaining as they do to both of them and yet differing from them in spirit and structure. The cosmogony discloses to our eyes in this sense the mythopoeic background of the metaphysics of the Way as formulated by Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. In a similar fashion, we can bring to light the subjective - i.e., epistemological - aspect of the relationship between shamanism and Taoist philosophy by comparing the above-mentioned Elegies ofCh’u and the books of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. The possibility of obtaining an interesting result from a comparative study of Ch’u Yuan, the great shaman-poet of the state of Ch’u, and the From Mythopoiesis to Metaphysics 307 philosophers of Taoism was noted long ago by Henri Maspero , 21 although death prevented him from fully developing his idea. In the Li Sao 22 and the Yuan Yu 23 the shaman-poet describes in detail the process of visionary states through which a soul in an ecstatic state, helped and assisted by various gods and spirits, ascends to the heavenly city where the ‘eternal beings’ live. This is in reality nothing but a description of a shamanic unio mystica. And the shamanic ascension is paralleled by a visionary ascension of a similar structure in the Chuang-tzu , the only essential difference between the two being that in the latter case the experience of the spiritual journey is refined and elaborated into the form of a metaphysical contemplation. Just as the shaman-poet experiences in his ecstatic oblivion of the ego a kind of immortality and eternity, so the Taoist philosopher experiences immortality and ‘long life’ in the midst of the eternal Way, by being unified with it. It is interesting to notice in this respect that the poet says in the final stage of his spiritual experience that he ‘transcends the Non-Doing , 24 reaches the primordial Purity, and stands side by side with the Great Begin- ning ’. 25 In Taoist terminology, we would say that the poet at this stage ‘stands side by side with the Way’, that is, ‘is completely unified with the Way’, there being no discrepancy between them. In the Li Sao the poet does not ascend to such a height. Standing on the basic assumption that both the Li Sao and Yuan Yu are authentic works of Ch’u Yuan, Maspero remarks that the Li Sao represents an earlier stage in the spiritual development of the poet, at which he, as a shaman, has not yet attained to the final goal, whereas the Yuan Yu represents a later stage at which the poet ‘has already reached the extremity of mysticism’. Such an interpretation is of course untenable if we know for certain that the Yuan Yu is a work composed by a later poet and surreptitiously attributed to Ch’u Yuan. In any case, the poem in its actual form is markedly Taoistic, and some of the ideas are undeni- ably borrowings from Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. Here again, however, the problem of authenticity is by no means a matter of primary importance to us. For even if we admit that the poem - or some parts of - it is a Han Dynasty forgery, it remains true that the very fact that Taoist metaphysics could be so naturally transformed - or brought back - into a shamanic world-vision is itself a proof of a real congeniality that existed between shamanism and Taoism. A detailed analytic comparison between the Elegies ofCh’u and the books of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu is sure to make an extremely fruitful and rewarding work. But to do so will take us too far afield beyond the main topic of the present study. Besides, we are going to describe in detail in the first chapters of this book the philosophical 308 Sufism and Taoism version of the spiritual journey which has just been mentioned. And this must suffice us for our present purposes. Let us now leave the problem of the shamanic origin of Taoism, and turn to the purely philosophical aspects of the latter. Our main concern will henceforward be exclusively with the actual structure of Taoist metaphysics and its key-concepts. Notes 1. fiA- 2. *A- 3. $A, i.e., a man who has attained to the furthest limit (of perfection). 4. #A. We may note that this and the preceding words all refer to one and the same concept which is the Taoist counterpart of the concept of insan kamil or the Perfect Man, which we discussed in the first part of this study. 5. rmxmzy. ruinii, 6. Reference has been made in the preceding chapter to the possible historical connection between the Yin dynasty and the spirit of the state of Ch’u. 7. For more details about the problem of the shaman ((iwu) representing the highest administrative power in the non-secularized state in ancient China, see for example Liang Ch’i Ch’ao: A History of Political Thought in the Periods Prior to the Ch’in Dynasty %%% rftggt&S.If.ltj , 1923, Shanghai, Ch. II. 8. I would refer the reader to Mircea Eliade’s basic work: Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, English tr., London, 1964. 9. rjtii f j, an eclectic work compiled by thinkers of various schools who were gathered by the king of Huai Nan, Liu AniiJ^, at his court, in the second century B.C. The book is of an eclectic nature, but its basic thought is that of the Taoist school. 10. r one of the most important source-books for Chinese mythology, giving a detailed description of all kinds of mythological monsters living in mountains and seas. The following quotation is taken from a new edition of the book, with a commentary by Pi Yuan of the Ch’ing dynasty, Tai Pei, 1945, p. 57. 11. hi. 12. The character /gas it appears in the oracle-bones is: ® or/fi. 13. The word is written in the Chuang-tzu f-Pti. 14. Chapter VII entitled ‘Fit to be Emperors and Kings’, p. 309. 15. Both shu (fJ5) and hu (£?.) literally mean a brief span of time, symbolizing in this allegory the precariousness of existence. From Mythopoiesis to Metaphysics 309 16. Important to note is the fact that hun tun , the ‘ undifferentiation’ is placed in the center. It means that hun tun represents the true ‘ reality’ of Being, bordering on both sides on ‘precariousness’. The philosophical implication of all this will be elucidated in a later chapter. 17. rjftiffTj, III, T’ien Wen A£ll. 18. The received text as it stands is apparently unintelligible. Following the emenda- tion suggested by Wang Yin Chih (T'j|2 ) I read: r&B Af^ig^TjSl I ■ 19. The ‘all-pervading vital energy’ is a clumsy translation of the Chinese wordc/i7 Si , which plays an exceedingly important role in the history of Chinese thought. It is a ‘reality’, proto-material and formless, which cannot be grasped by the senses. It is a kind of vital force, a creative principle of all things; it pervades the whole world, and being immanent in everything, molds it and makes it grow into what it really is. Everything that has a ‘form’, whether animate or inanimate, has a share in the ch’i. The concept of ch’i has been studied by many scholars. As one of the most detailed analytic studies of it we may mention Teikichi Hiraoka: A Study of Ch’i in Huai Nan Tzu,^mm Tokyo 1969. 20. ibid., VII, $}Wn)||. 21. ibid., III. 22. rgSj. 23. TiilSj. Many scholars entertain serious doubts - with reason, I think - as to the authenticity of this important and interesting work. Most probably it is a product of the Han Dynasty (see composed in the very atmosphere of a fully developed philosophy of Taoism. 24. wu-wei , one of the key-terms of Taoist philosophy, which we shall analyze in a later passage. ‘Non-Doing’ means, in short, man’s abandoning all artificial, unnatural effort to do something, and identifying himself completely with the activity of Nature which is nothing other than the spontaneous self-manifestation of the Way itself. Here the poet claims that at the final stage of his spiritual development he goes even beyond the level of ‘non-activity’ and of being one with Nature, and steps further into the very core of the Way. In his consciousness - or in his ‘non- consciousness’, we should rather say - his is no longer a human being; he is deified. 25. Ill Dream and Reality In the foregoing chapter we talked about the myth of Chaos, the primordial undifferentiation which preceded the beginning of the cosmos. In its original shamanic form, the figure of Chaos as a featureless monster looks very bizarre, primitive and grotesque. Symbolically, however, it is of profound importance, for the philosophical idea symbolized by it directly touches the core of the reality of Being. In the view of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, the reality of Being is Chaos. And therein lies the very gist of their ontology. But this proposition does not mean that the world we live in is simply chaotic and disorderly as an empirical fact. For the empirical world, as we daily observe it, is far from being as ‘featureless’ and ‘amorphous’ as the face of the bird-monster of the Shan Hai Ching. On the con- trary, it is a world where we observe many things that are clearly distinguishable from one another, each having its peculiar ‘name’, and each being definitely delineated and determined. Everything therein has its own place; the things are neatly ordered in a hier- archy. We live in such a world, and do perceive our world in such a light. According to the Taoist philosophers, that precisely is the malady of our Reason. And it is difficult for an ordinary mind not to see the distinctions in the world. The world, in brief, is not chaotic. It will be the first task of a Chuang-tzu to shatter to pieces these seemingly watertight compartments of Being, allowing us to have a glimpse into the fathomless depth of primeval Chaos. But this is not in any way an easy task. Chuang-tzu actually tries many different approaches. Probably the easiest of them all for us to understand is his attempt at the ‘chaotification’ - if we are allowed to coin such a word - of ‘dream’ and ‘reality’. By a seemingly very simple descrip- tive and narrative language, he tries to raise us immediately to an ontological level where ‘dream’ and ‘reality’ cease to be distinguish- able from each other , 1 and merge together into something ‘amorphous’. The following is a very famous passage in the Chuang-tzu, in Dream and Reality 311 which the sage tries to give us a glimpse of the ‘chaotification of things : 2 Once I Chuang Chou, 3 dreamt that 1 was a butterfly. Flitting about at ease and to my heart’s content, I was indeed a butterfly. Happy and cheerful, I had no consciousness of being Chou. All of a sudden I awoke, and lo, I was Chou. Did Chou dream that he was a butterfly? Or did the butterfly dream that it was Chou? How do I know? There is, however, undeniably a difference between Chou and a butterfly. This situation is what I would call the Transmutation of things. The latter half of this passage touches upon the central theme of Chuang-tzu. In the kind of situation here described, he himself and the butterfly have become undistinguishable, each having lost his or its essentia] self-identity. And yet, he says, ‘there is undeniably a difference between Chou and a butterfly’ . This last statement refers to the situation of things in the phenomenal world, which man ordinarily calls ‘reality’ . On this level of existence, ‘man’ cannot be ‘butterfly’ , and ‘butterfly’ cannot be ‘man’ . These two things which are thus definitely different and distinguishable from each other do lose their distinction on a certain level of human consciousness, and go into the state of undifferentiation - Chaos. This ontological situation is called by Chuang-tzu the Transmu - tion of things, wu hua . 4 The wu hua is one of the most importan key-terms of Chuang-tzu’ s philosophy. It will be dealt with in detail presently. Here I shall give in translation another passage in which the same concept is explained through similar images . 5 A man drinks wine in a dream, and weeps and wails in the morning ( when he awakes) . A man weeps in a (sad) dream, but in the morning he goes joyously hunting. While he is dreaming he is not aware that he is dreaming; he even tries (in his dream) to interpret his dream. Only after he awakes from sleep does he realize that it was a dream. Likewise, only when one experiences a Great Awakening does one realize that all this 6 is but a Big Dream. But the stupid imagine that they are actually awake. Deceived by their petty intelligence they consider themselves smart enough to differentiate between what is noble and what is ignoble. How deep-rooted and irremediable their stupidity is! , In reality, however, both I and you are a dream. Nay, the very fact that I am telling you that you are dreaming is itself a dream This kind of statement is liable to be labeled bizarre sophistry. (But it looks so precisely because it reveals the Truth), and a great sage capable of penetrating its mystery is barely to be expected to appear in the world in ten thousand years. The same idea is repeated in the following passage : 8 312 Sufism and Taoism 313 Suppose you dream that you are a bird. (In that state) you do soar up into the sky. Suppose you dream that you are a fish. You do go down deep into the pool. (While you are experiencing all this in your dream, what you experience is your ‘reality’.) Judging by this, nobody can be sure whether we -you and I, who are actually engaged in conversation in this way - are awake or just dreaming . 9 Such a view reduces the distinction between Me and Thee to a mere semblance, or at least it renders the distinction very doubtful and groundless. Each one of us is convinced that ‘this’ is I (and consequently ‘other than this’ is You or He). On reflexion, however, how do I know for sure that this ‘I’ which I consider as ‘I’ is really my ‘I ’? 10 Thus even my own ‘ego’ which I regard as the most solid and reliable core of existence, - and the only absolutely indubitable entity even when I doubt the existence of everything else, in the Cartesian sense - becomes transformed all of a sudden into something dreamlike and unreal. Thus by what might seem ‘bizarre sophistry’ Chuang-tzu reduces everything to a Big Dream. This abrupt negation of ‘reality’ is but a first step into his philosophy, for his philosophy does have a positive side. But before disclosing the positive side - which our ‘petty intelligence’ can never hope to understand - he deals a mortal blow to this ‘intelligence’ and Reason by depriving them of the very ground on which they stand. The world is a dream; that which we ordinarily consider solid ‘reality’ is a dream. Furthermore, the man who tells others that everything is a dream, and those who are listening to his teaching, are all part of a dream. What does Chuang-tzu want to suggest by this? He wants to suggest that Reality in the real sense of the word is something totally different from what Reason regards as ‘ reality’ . In order to grasp the true meaning of this, our normal consciousness must first lose its self-identity. And together with the ‘ego’, all the objects of its perception and intellection must also lose their self-identities and be brought into a state of confusion which we called above the primordial Chaos. This latter is an ontological level at which ‘dream’ and ‘reality’ lose the essential distinction between them, at which the significance itself of such distinctions is lost. On its subjec- tive side, it is a state of consciousness in which nothing any longer remains ‘itself’, and anything can be anything else. It is an entirely new order of Being, where all beings, liberated from the shackles of their semantic determinations freely transform themselves into one another. This is what Chuang-tzu calls the Transmutation of things. The Transmutation of things, as conceived by Chuang-tzu, must Dream and Reality be understood in terms of two different points of reference. On the one hand, it designates a metaphysical situation in which all things are found to be ‘transmutable’ to one another, so much so that ultimately they become merged together into an absolute Unity. In this sense it transcends ‘time’ ; it is a supra-temporal order of things. In the eye of one who has experienced the Great Awakening, all things are One; all things are the Reality itself. At the same time, however, this unique Reality discloses to his eye a kaleidoscopic view of infinitely various and variegated things which are ‘essen- tially’ different one from another, and the world of Being, in this aspect, is manifold and multiple. Those two aspects are to be recon- ciled with each other by our considering these ‘things’ as so many phenomenal forms of the absolute One. The ‘unity of existence’, thus understood, constitutes the very core of the philosophy of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. The same Transmutation can, on the other hand, be understood as a temporal process. And this is also actually done by Chuang-tzu. A thing, a , continues to subsist as a for some time; then, when the limit which has been naturally assigned to it comes, 1 1 it ceases to be a and becomes transmuted or transformed into another thing, b. From the viewpoint of supra-temporality, a and b are metaphysi- cally one and the same thing, the difference between them being merely a matter of phenomenon. In this sense, even before a ceases to be a - that is, from the beginning -a is b, and b is a. There is, then, no question of a ‘becoming’ b, because a, by the very fact that it is a, is already b. From the second viewpoint, however, a is a and nothing else. And this a ‘becomes’, in a temporal process, something else, b. The former ‘changes’ into the latter. But here again we run into the same metaphysical Unity, by, so to speak, a roundabout way. For a, by ‘becoming’ and ‘changing into’ b, refers itself back to its own origin and source. The whole process constitutes an ontological circle, because through the very act of becoming b , a simply ‘becomes’ itself - only in a different form. Applied to the concepts of ‘life’ and ‘death’, such an idea natur- ally produces a peculiar Philosophy of Life, a basically optimistic view of human existence. It is ‘optimisic’ because it completely obliterates the very distinction between Life and Death. Viewed in this light, the so-called problem of Death turns out to be but a pseudo-problem. Although it is thus a pseudo-problem from the point of view of those who have seen the Truth, Chuang-tzu often takes up this theme and develops his thought around it. Indeed, it is one of his most favorite topics. This is so because actually it is a problem, or the problem. Death, in particular, happens to be the most disquieting 314 Sufism and Taoism problem for the ordinary mind. And a man’s having overcome the existential angoisse of being faced constantly and at every moment with the horror of his own annihilation is the sign of his being at the stage of a ‘true man’. Besides, since it happens to be such a vital problem, its solution is sure to bring home to the mind the significance of the concept of Transmutation. Otherwise, every- thing else is exactly in the same ontological situation as Life and Death. Now to go back to the point at which Chuang-tzu has reduced everything to a dreamlike mode of existence. Nothing in the world of Being is solidly self-subsistent. In scholastic terminology we might describe the situation by saying that nothing has - except in semblance and appearance - an unchangeable ‘quiddity’ or ‘essence’. And in this fluid state of things, we are no longer sure of the self-identity of anything whatsoever. We never know whether a is really a itself. And this essential dreamlike uncertainty of indetermination naturally holds true of Life and Death. The conceptual structure of this statement will easily be seen if one replaces the terms Life and Death by a and b, and tries to represent the whole situation in terms of the a-b pattern which has been given above. Speaking of a ‘true man’ from the state of Lu, Chuang-tzu says: He does not care to know why he lives. Nor does he care to know why he dies. He does not even know which comes first and which comes last, (i.e., Life and Death are in his mind undifferentiated from each other, the distinction between them being insignificant). Following the natural course of Transmutation he has become a certain thing; now he is simply awaiting further Transmutation. ]j Besides, when a man is undergoing Transmutation, how can he be sure that he is (in reality) not being transmuted? And when he is not undergoing Transmutation, how can he be sure that he has (in reality) not already been transmuted ? 12 In a similar passage concerned with the problem of Death and the proper attitude of ‘true men’ toward it, Chuang-tzu lets Confucius make the following statement . 13 Confucius here, needless to say, is a fictitious figure having nothing to do with the historical person, but there is of course a touch of irony in the very fact that Confucius is made to make such a remark. They (i.e., the ‘true men’) are those who freely wander beyond the boundaries (i.e., the ordinary norms of proper behavior), while men like myself are those who wander freely only within the boundaries. ‘ Beyond the boundaries’ and ‘within the boundaries’ are poles asun- der from one another. Dream and Reality 315 They are those who, being completely unified with the Creator Himself, take delight in being in the realm of the original Unity of the vital energy 14 before it is divided into Heaven and Earth. To their minds Life (or Birth) is just the growth of an excrescence, a wart, and Death is the breaking of a boil, the bursting of a tumor. Such being the case, how should we expect them to care about the question as to which is better and which is worse - Life or Death? They simply borrow different elements, and put them together in the common form of a body . 15 Hence they are conscious neither of their liver nor of their gall, and they leave aside their ears and eyes . 16 Abandoning themselves to infinitely recurrent waves of Ending and Beginning, they go on revolving in a circle, of which they know neither the beginning-point nor the ending-point. For Chuang-tzu Death is nothing but one of the endlessly varieg- ated phenomenal forms of one eternal Reality. To our mind’s eye this metaphysical Reality actualizes itself and develops itself as a process evolving in time. But even when conceived in such a tem- poral form, the process depicts only an eternally revolving circle, of which no one knows the real beginning and the real end. Death is but a stage in this circle. When it occurs, one particular phenomenal form is effaced from the circle and disappears only to reappear as an entirely different phenomenal form. Nature continuously makes and unmakes. But the circle itself, that is, Reality itself is always there unchanged and unperturbed. Being one with Reality, the mind of a ‘true man’ never becomes perturbed. A ‘true man’, Chuang-tzu related , 17 saw his own body hideously deformed in the last days of his life. He hobbled to a well, looked at his image reflected in the water and said, ‘Alas! That the Creator has made me so crooked and deformed!’ Thereupon a friend of his asked him, ‘Do you resent your condition?’ Here is the answer that the dying ‘true man’ gave to this question: No, why should I resent it? It may be that the process of Transmuta- tion will change my left arm into a rooster. I would, then, simply use it to crow to tell the coming of the morning. It may be that the process goes on and might change my right arm into a crossbow. I would, then, simply use it to shoot down a bird for roasting. It may be that the process will change my buttocks into a wheel and my spirit into a horse. I would, then, simply ride in the carriage. I would not have even to put another horse to it. Whatever we obtain (i.e., being born into this world in a particular form) is due to the coming of the time. Whatever we lose (i.e., death) is also due to the arrival of the turn. We must be content with the ‘time’ and accept the ‘turn’. Then neither sorrow nor joy will ever creep in. Such an attitude used to be called among the Ancients ‘loosing the tie ’. 18 If man cannot loose himself from the tie, it is because ‘things’ bind him fast. 316 Sufism and Taoism Dream and Reality 317 Another ‘true man’ had a visit in his last moments from one of his friends, who was also a ‘true man’. The conversation between them as related by Chuang-tzu 19 is interesting. The visitor seeing the wife and children who stood around the man on the deathbed weeping and wailing, said to them, ‘Hush! Get away! Do not disturb him as he is passing through the process of Transmutation!’ Then turning to the dying man, he said: How great the Creator is! What is he going to make of you now? Whither is he going to take you? Is he going to make of you a rat’s liver? Or is he going to make of you an insect’s arm?’ To this the dying man replies: (No matter what the Creator makes of me, I accept the situation and follow his command.) Don’t you see? In the relationship between a son and his parents, the son goes wherever they command him to go, east, west, south, or north. But the relation between the Yin-Yang (i.e., the Law regulating the cosmic process of Becoming) and a man is incomparably closer than the relation between him and his parents. Now they (the Yin and Yang) have brought me to the verge of death. Should I refuse to submit to them, it would simply be an act of obstinacy on my part . . . Suppose here is a great master smith, casting metal. If the metal should jump up and begin to shout, ‘I must be made into a sword like Mo Yeh , 20 nothing else!’ The smith would surely regard the metal as something very evil. (The same would be true of) a man who, on the ground that he has by chance assumed a human form, should insist and say: ‘I want to be a man, only man! Nothing else!’ The Creator would surely regard him as of a very evil nature. Just imagine the whole world as a big furnace, and the Creator as a master smith. Wherever we may go, everything will be all right. Calmly we will go to sleep (i.e., die), and suddenly we will find ourselves awake (in a new form of existence). The concept of the Transmutation of things as conceived by Chuang-tzu. might seem to resemble the doctrine of ‘transmigra- tion’. But the resemblance is only superficial. Chuang-tzu does not say that the soul goes on transmigrating from one body to another. The gist of his thought on this point is that everything is a pheno- menal form of one unique Reality which goes on assuming succes- sively different forms of self-manifestation. Besides, as we have seen before, this temporal process itself is but a phenomenon. Properly speaking, all this is something taking place on an eternal, a-temporal level of Being. All things are one eternally, beyond Time and Space. Notes 1. We may do well to recall at this stage a chapter in the first part of the present study, where we took the undifferentiation or indistinction between ‘dream’ and ‘reality’ as our starting-point for going into the metaphysical world of Ibn ‘Arabi. There Ibn ‘Arabi speaks of the ontological level of ‘images’ and ‘similitudes’. Chuang-tzu, as we shall see presently, uses a different set of concepts for interpreting his basic vision. But the visions themselves of these two thinkers are surprisingly similar to each other. 2. II, p. 1 12. The heading itself of this Chapter, ch’i wu is quite significant in this respect, meaning as it does ‘equalization of things’. 3. mini, the real name of Chuang-tzu. 4. %{t, meaning literally: ‘things-transform’. 5. II., pp. 104-105. 6. i.e., everything that one experiences in this world of so-called ‘reality’. ‘Great Awakening’: ta chiieh 7. i.e., being unaware of the fact that ‘life’ itself, the ‘reality’ itself is but a dream. 8. VI., p. 275. 9. i.e., it may very well be that somebody - or something - is dreaming that he (or it) is a man, and thinks in the dream that he is talking with somebody else. 10. ibid. 11. This problem will be dealt with in detail in a later chapter which will be devoted to the problem of determinism and freedom in the world-view of Taoism. 1 2. The meaning of this sentence can, I think, be paraphrazed as follows. It may well be that ‘being transmuted’ (for example, from Life to Death, i.e., ‘to die’) is in reality ‘not to be transmuted’ (i.e., ‘not to die’). Likewise nobody knows for sure whether by ‘not being transmuted’ (i.e., remaining alive without dying) he has already been transmuted (i.e., is already dead). The original sentence runs: TJltffTTbSitoBft:. Kuo Hsiang in his commentary - which happens to be the oldest commentary now in existence - explains it by saying: Bfbiff)£, Ssto^i^WfsL ^fbrfnTE, SitoB?E2:ff (P- 276), meaning; ‘Once transmuted into a living being, how can a man know the state of affairs which preceded his birth? And while he is not yet transmuted and is not yet dead, how can he know the state of affairs that will come after death?’ I mention this point because many people follow Kuo Hsiang’s interpretation in understanding the present passage. (VI, p. 274). 13. VI, pp. 267-268. 14. i.e., the primordial cosmic energy which, as we saw in the last chapter, is thought to have existed before the creation of the world. It refers to the cosmogonic state in which neither Heaven and Earth nor the Negative and the Positive were yet divided. Philosophically it means the metaphysical One in its pure state of Unity. 15. According to their view, human existence is nothing but a provisional pheno- 318 Sufism and Taoism menal form composed by different elements (i.e., four basic elements: earth, air, water and fire) which by chance have been united in the physical form of a body. 16. They do not pay any attention to their physical existence. 17. VI, pp. 259-260. 18. Hsien chiehf&fff, ‘loosing the tie’, i.e., an absolute freedom. 19. ibid., p. 261-262. 20. A noted sword made in the state of Wu (K) in the sixth century B.C. IV Beyond This and That We have seen in the last pages of the preceding chapter how Chuang-tzu obliterates the distinction or opposition between Life and Death and brings them back to the original state of ‘undifferen- tiation’ . We have spent some time on the subject because it is one of Chuang-tzu’ s favorite topics, and also because it discloses to our eyes an important aspect of his philosophy. Properly speaking, however, and from an ontological point of view, Life and Death should not occupy such a privileged place. For all so-called ‘opposites’ are not, in Chuang-tzu’ s philosophy, really opposed to each other. In fact, nothing, in his view, is opposed to anything else, because nothing has a firmly established ‘essence’ in its ontological core. In the eye of a man who has ever experienced the ‘chaotification’ of things, everything loses its solid contour, being deprived of its ‘essential’ foundation. All ontological distinc- tions between things become dim, obscure, and confused, if not completely destroyed. The distinctions are certainly still there, but they are no longer significant, ‘essential’. And ‘opposites’ are no longer ‘opposites’ except conceptually. ‘Beautiful’ and ‘ugly’, ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘pious’ and ‘impious’ -all these and other conceptual pairs which are sharply distinguished, at the level of Reason, and which actually play a leading role in human life, are found to be far from being absolute. This attitude of Chuang-tzu toward the ‘opposites’ and ‘distinc- tions’ which are generally accepted as cultural, esthetic, or ethical ‘values’, would appear to be neither more nor less than so-called relativism. The same is true of Lao-tzu’s attitude. And, in fact, it is a relativist view of values. It is of the utmost importance, however, to keep in mind that it is not an ordinary sort of relativism as under- stood on the empirical or pragmatic level of social life. It is a peculiar kind of relativism based on a very peculiar kind of mystical intuition: a mystical intuition of the Unity and Multiplicity of exist- ence. It is a philosophy of ‘undifferentiation’ which is a natural product of a metaphysical experience of Reality, an experience in 320 Sufism and Taoism which Reality is directly witnessed as it unfolds and diversifies itself into myriads of things and then goes back again to the original Unity. This ‘metaphysical 7 basis of Taoist relativism will be dealt with in detail in the following chapter. Here we shall confine ourselves to the ‘relativist’ side of this philosophy, and try to pursue Chuang-tzu and Lao-tzu as closely as possible as they go on developing their ideas on this particular aspect of the problem. As I have just pointed out, the attitude of both Chuang-tzu and Lao-tzu toward the so-called cultural values would on its surface appear to be nothing other than ‘relativism’ in the commonly accepted sense of the term. Let us first examine this point hy quoting a few appropriate passages from the two books. Even at this pre- liminary stage of analysis, we shall clearly observe that this relativ- ism is directed against the ‘essentialist’ position of the school of Confucius. In the last sentence of the following passage 1 there is an explicit reference to the Confucian standpoint. If a human being sleeps in a damp place, he will begin to suffer from backache, and finally will become half paralyzed. But is this true of a mudfish? If (a human being) lives in a tree, he will have to be constantly trembling from fear and be frightened. But is this true of a monkey? Now which of these three (i.e., man, mudfish and monkey) knows the (absolutely) right place to live ? 2 Men eat beef and pork; deer eat grass; centipedes find snakes delici- ous; kites and crows enjoy mice. Of these four which one knows the (absolutely) good taste? A monkey finds its mate in a monkey; a deer mates with a deer. And mudfishes enjoy living with other fishes. Mao Ch’iang and Li Chi 3 are regarded as ideally beautiful women by all men. And yet, if fish happen to see a beauty like them, they will dive deep in the water; birds will fly aloft; and deer will run away in all directions. Of these four, which one knows the (absolute) ideal of beauty? These considerations lead me to conclude that the boundaries be- tween ‘benevolence’ ( jen ) and ‘righteousness’ (i ), 4 and the limits between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are (also) extremely uncertain and con- fused, so utterly and inextricably confused that we can never know how to discriminate (between what is absolutely right and what is absolutely wrong, etc.). This kind of relativism is also found in the book of Lao-tzu. The underlying conception is exactly the same as in the book of Chuang-tzu; so also the reason for which he upholds such a view. As we shall see later, Lao-tzu, too, looks at the apparent distinctions, oppositions and contradictions from the point of view of the metaphysical One in which all things lose their sharp edges of conceptual discrimination and become blended and harmonized. 321 Beyond This and That The only difference between Chuang-tzu and Lao-tzu in this respect is that the latter expresses himself in a very terse, concise, and apothegmatic form, while the former likes to develop his thought in exuberant imagery. Otherwise, the idea itself is common to both of them. In the first of the following quotations from the Tao Te Ching, for instance, Lao-tzu implicitly criticizes the cultural essentialism of the Confucian school . 5 Cast off Learning , 6 and there will be no worries. How much in fact, difference is there between ‘yes, sir’ and ‘hum!’? Between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ what distinction is there? ‘Whatever others respect I also must respect’, (they say). Oh, how far away I am from the common people (who adhere to such an idea). For (on such a principle) there will be absolutely no limit to the vast field (of petty distinctions). People tend to imagine, Lao-tzu says, that things are essentially distinguishable from one another, and the Confucians have built up an elaborate system of moral values precisely on the notion that everything is marked off from others by its own ‘essence’. They seem to be convinced that these ‘distinctions’ are all permanent and unalterable. In reality, however, they are simply being deceived by the external and phenomenal aspects of Being. A man whose eyes are not veiled by this kind of deception sees the world of Being as a vast and limitless space where things merge into one another. This ontological state of things is nothing other than what Chuang-tzu calls Chaos. On the cultural level, such a view naturally leads to relativism. Lao-tzu describes the latter in the following way : 7 By the very fact that everybody in the world recognizes ‘beautiful’ as ‘beautiful’, the idea of ‘ugly’ comes into being. By the very fact that all men recognize ‘good’ as‘good’, the idea of ‘bad’ comes into being. Exactly in the same way ‘existence’ and ‘non-existence’ give birth to one another; ‘difficult’ and ‘easy’ complement one another; ‘long’ and ‘short’ appear in contrast to one another; ‘high’ and ‘low’ incline toward each other; ‘tone’ and ‘voice’ keep harmony with one another; ‘before’ and ‘behind’ follow one another. Everything, in short, is relative; nothing is absolute. We live in a world of relative distinctions and relative antitheses. But the major- ity of men do not realize that these are relative. They tend to think that a thing which they - or social convention - regard as ‘beautiful’ is by essence ‘beautiful’, thus regarding all those things that do not conform to a certain norm as ‘ugly’ by essence. By taking such an attitude they simply ignore the fact that the distinction between the two is merely a matter of viewpoint. As I remarked earlier, such equalization of opposites surely is ‘relativism’ , but it is a relativism based on, or stemming from, a very 323 322 Sufism and Taoism remarkable intuition of the ontological structure of the world. The original intuition is common both to Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. But with the latter, it leads to the ‘chaotic’ view of things, the essential ‘undifferentiation’ of things, which in its dynamic aspect is con- ceived as the Transmutation of things. In the case of Lao-tzu, the same intuition leads, in its dynamic aspect, to an ontology of evolvement and in-volvement, the static aspect of which is the relativism we have just discussed. As Transmutation ( hua ) is the key- word of Chuang-tzu in this section of his philosophy, Return (fan 8 or fu 9 ) is the key-term which Lao-tzu chooses as an appropriate expression for his idea. On the cosmic significance of the Return as understood by Lao- tzu we shall have occasion to talk in a later context. Here we shall confine ourselves to considering this concept in so far as it has direct relevance to the problem of relativism. The Return is a dynamic concept. It refers, in other words, to the dynamic aspect of the above-mentioned relativism of Lao-tzu, or the dynamic ontological basis on which it stands. He explicates this concept in a terse form in the following passage, which may in fact be considered an epitome of the whole of his ontology . 10 Returning is how the Way moves, and being weak is how the Way works. The ten thousand things under heaven are born from Being, and Being is born from Non-Being. It is to be remarked that there is in this passage a covert reference to two different meanings or aspects of ‘returning’ which Lao-tzu seems to recognize in the ontological structure of all things. The first meaning (or aspect) is suggested by the first sentence and the second meaning by the second sentence. The first sentence means that everything (a) that exists contains in itself a possibility or natural tendency to ‘return’, i.e., to be transformed into its opposite ( b ), which, of course, again contains the same possibility of ‘returning’ to its opposite, namely the original state from which it has come (a). Thus all things are constantly in the process of a circular movement, from a to b , and then from bio a. This is, Lao-tzu says, the rule of the ontological ‘movement’ ( tung), u or the dynamic aspect of Reality. And he adds that ‘weakness’ is the way this movement is made by Reality. The next sentence considers the dynamic structure of Reality as a vertical, metaphysical movement from the phenomenal Many to the pre-phenomenal One. Starting from the state of multiplicity in which all things are actualized and realized, it traces them back to their ultimate origin. The ‘ten thousand things under heaven’, i.e., all things in the world, come into actual being from the Way at its stage of ‘existence’. But the stage of ‘existence’, which is nothing Beyond This and That other than a stage in the process of self-manifestation of the Way, comes into being from the stage of ‘non-existence’, which is the abysmal depth of the absolutely unknown-unknowable Way itself. It is to be observed that this ‘tracing-back’ of the myriad things to ‘existence’ and then to ‘non-existence’ is not only a conceptual process; it is, for Lao-tzu, primarily a cosmic process. All things ontologically ‘return’ to their ultimate source, undergoing on their way ‘circular’ transformations among themselves such as have been suggested by the first sentence. This cosmic return of all things to the ultimate origin will be a subject of discussion in a later chapter. Here we are concerned with the ‘horizontal’ Return of things as referred to in the first sentence, i.e., the process of reciprocal ‘returning’ between a and b. Lao-tzu has a peculiar way of expressing this idea as exemplified by the two following passages. Misfortune is what good fortune rests upon and good fortune is what misfortune lurks in. (The two thus turn into one another indefinitely, so that) nobody knows the point where the process comes to an end. There seems to be no absolute norm. For what is (considered) just ‘re-turns’ to unjust, and what is (considered) good ‘re-turns’ to evil. Indeed man has long been in perplexity about this . 12 The nature of things is such that he who goes in front ends by falling behind, and he who follows others ultimately finds himself in front of others. He who blows upon a thing to make it warm ends by making it cold, and he who blows upon a thing to make it cold finally makes it warm. He who tries to become strong becomes weak, and he who wants to remain weak turns strong. He who is safe falls into danger, while he who is in danger ends by becoming safe . 13 Thus in the view of both Chuang-tzu and Lao-tzu, everything in the world is relative; nothing is absolutely reliable or stable in this sense. As I have indicated before, this ‘relativism’, in the case of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, must be understood in a peculiar sense, namely, in the sense that nothing has what is called ‘essence’ or ‘quiddity’. All things, on the deeper level of Reality, are ‘essence-less’. The world itself is ‘chaotic’ . This is not only true of the external world in which we exist, but is equally true of the world within us, the internal world of concepts and judgments. This is not hard to understand, because whatever judgment we may make on whatever thing we choose to talk about in this ‘chaotic’ world, our judgment is bound to be relative, one-sided, ambiguous, and unreliable, for the object of the judgment is itself ontologically relative. The argument which Chuang-tzu puts forward on this point is logically very interesting and important. The Warring States period 324 Sufism and Taoism witnessed a remarkable development of logico-semantical theories in China In the days of Chuang-tzu, Confucians and Mohists stood sharply opposed to each other, and these two schools were together opposed to the Dialecticians 15 (or Sophists) otherwise known as the school of Names 16 . Heated debates were being held among them about the foundation of human culture, its various phenomena, the basis of ethics, the logical structure of thought, etc., etc And it was a fashion to conduct discussions of this kind in a dialectical form. ‘This is right’ -‘this is wrong’ or ‘this is good’ -‘this is bad’, was the general formula by which these people discussed their problems. Such a situation is simply ridiculous and all these discussions are futile from the point of view of a Chuang-tzu for whom Reality itself is ‘chaotic’. The objects themselves about which these people exchange heated words are essentially unstable and ambiguous. The Dialecticians ‘are talking about the distinction between hard and “white”, for example, as if these could be hung on different pegs’ Not only that. Those who like to discuss in this way usually commit a fatal mistake by confusing ‘having the best of an argu- ment’ with ‘being objectively right’, and ‘being cornered in an argument’ with ‘being objectively wrong’. In reality, however, vic- tory and defeat in a logical dispute in no way determines the right and ‘wrong’ of an objective fact. Suppose you and I enter into discussion. And suppose you beat me, and I cannot beat you. Does this mean that you are ‘right’ and that I am ‘wrong’? Suppose I beat you, instead, and you cannot beat me. Does this mean that I am ‘right’ and you are ‘wrong’? Is it the case that when I am ‘right’ you are ‘wrong’, and when you are ‘right lam wrong ? Or are we both ‘right’ or both ‘wrong’? It is not for me and you to decide. (What about asking some other person to judge?) But other people are in the same darkness. Whom shall we ask to give a fair judgment? Suppose we let someone who agrees with you judge. How could such a man give a fair judgment seeing that he shared from the beginning the same opinion with you? Suppose we let someone who agrees with me judge. How could he give a fair judgment, seeing that he shares from the beginning the same opinion with me? What if we let someone judge who differs from both you and me . But he is from the beginning at variance with both of us. How could such a man give a fair judgment? (He would simply give a third opinion.) What if we let someone judge who agrees with both of us? But from the beginning he shares the same opinion with both of us. How could such a man give a fair judgment? (He would simply say that I am ‘right’, but you also are ‘right’.) From these considerations we must conclude that neither you nor 1 j Beyond This and That 325 nor the third person can know (where the truth lies). Shall we expect a fourth person to appear? 18 How is this situation to be accounted for? Chuang-tzu answers that all this confusion originates in the natural tendency of the Reason to think everything in terms of the opposition of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. And this natural tendency of our Reason is based on, or a product of, an essentialist view of Being. The natural Reason is liable to think that a thing which is conventionally or subjectively ‘right’ is ‘right’ essentially, and that a thing which is ‘wrong’ is ‘wrong’ essentially. In truth, however, nothing is essentially ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. So-called ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are all relative matters. In accordance with this non-essentialist position, Chuang-tzu asserts that the only justifiable attitude for us to take is to know, first of all, the relativity of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, and then to transcend this relativism itself into the stage of the ‘equalization’ of all things, a stage at which all things are essentially undifferentiated from one another, although they are, at a lower stage of reality, relatively different and distinct from each other. Such an attitude which is peculiar to the ‘true man’ is called by Chuang-tzu t’ien ni 19 (Heavenly Levelling), t’ien chun 20 (Heavenly Equalization), or man yen 21 (No-Limits). ‘Right’ is not ‘right’, and ‘so’ is not ‘so’. If (what someone considers) ‘right’ were (absolutely) ‘right’, it would be (absolutely) different from what is not ‘right’ and there could be no place for discussion. And if ‘so’ were (absolutely) ‘so’, it would be (absolutely) different from ‘not-so’ and there could be no place for discussion. Thus (in the endless chain of ‘shifting theses’ 22 (i.e., ‘right’ -» ‘not- right’ — ► ‘right’ -*■ ‘not-right’ . . . ), (theses and antitheses) depend upon one another. And (since this dependence makes the whole chain of mutually opposing theses and antitheses relative), we might as well regard them as not mutually opposing each other. (In the presence of such a situation, the only attitude we can reason- ably take) is to harmonize all these (theses and antitheses) in the Heavenly Levelling, and to bring (the endless oppositions among the existents) back to the state of No-Limits. 23 ‘To bring back the myriad oppositions of things to the state of No- Limits’ means to reduce all things that are ‘essentially’ distinguish- able from each other to the original state of ‘chaotic’ Unity where there are no definite ‘limits’ or boundaries set among the things. On its subjective side, it is the position of abandoning all discriminatory judgments that one can make on the level of everyday Reason. Forgetting about passing judgments, whether implicit or explicit, on any thing, one should, Chuang-tzu emphasizes, put oneself in a mental state prior to all judgments, prior to all activity of Reason, in 327 326 Sufism and Taoism which one would see things in their original - or ‘Heavenly’ as he says - ‘essence-less’ state. But to achieve this is by no means an easy task. It requires the active functioning of a particular kind of metaphysical intuition, which Chuang-tzu calls ming , 24 ‘illumination’. And this kind of illuminative intuition is not for everybody to enjoy. For just as there are men who are physically blind and deaf, so there are also men who are spiritually blind and deaf. And unfortunately, in the world of Spirit the number of blind and deaf is far greater than that of those who are capable of seeing and hearing. The blind cannot enjoy the sight of beautiful colors and patterns. The deaf cannot enjoy the sound of bells and drums. But do you think that blindness and deafness are confined to the bodily organs? No, they are found also in the domain of knowing. 25 The structure of the ming, ‘intuition’ , will be studied more closely in due course. Before we proceed to this problem, we shall quote one more passage in which Chuang-tzu develops his idea regarding the relative and conventional nature of ontological ‘distinctions . The passage will help to prepare the way for our discussion of the ‘existentialist’ position Chuang-tzu takes against the ‘essentialist’ view of Being . 26 The nature of the things is such that nothing is unable to be ‘that’ (i.e., everything can be- ‘that’) and nothing is unable to be ‘this’ (i.e., everything can be ‘this’). We usually distinguish between ‘this’ and ‘that’ and think and talk about the things around us in terms of this basic opposition. What is ‘this’ is not ‘that’, and what is ‘that’ is not ‘this’. The relation is basically that of ‘I’ and ‘others’, for the term ‘this’ refers to the former and the term ‘that’ is used in reference to the latter. From the viewpoint of ‘I’, ‘I’ am ‘this’, and everything other than ‘ f is ‘ that’ . But from the viewpoint of ‘ others’ , the ‘ others’ are ‘ this’ , and ‘I’ am ‘that’. In this sense, everything can be said to be both ‘this’ and ‘that’ . Otherwise expressed, the distinction between ‘this’ and ‘that’ is purely relative. From the standpoint of ‘that’ (alone) ‘that’ cannot appear (as ‘that ). It is only when 1 (i.e., ‘this’) know myself (as ‘this’) that it (i.e., ‘that’) comes to be known (as ‘that’). ‘That’ establishes itself as ‘that’ only when ‘this’ establishes itself and looks upon the former as its object, or as something other than ‘this’. Only when we realize the fundamental relativity of ‘this’ and ‘that’ can we hope to have a real understanding of the structure of things. Beyond This and That Of course the most important point is that this relativity should be understood through ‘illumination’. The understanding of this ontological relativity by Reason - which is by no means a difficult thing to achieve - is useless except as a preparatory stage for an ‘illuminative’ grasp of the matter. It will be made clear in the following chapter that ‘relativity’ does not exhaust the whole of the ontological structure of things. ‘Relativity’ is but one aspect of it. For, in the view of Chuang-tzu, the ontological structure of things in its reality is that ‘chaotic undifferentiation’ to which reference has often been made in the foregoing. The ‘chaotic undifferentiation’ is something which stands far beyond the grasp of Reason. If, in spite of that, Reason persists in trying to understand it in its own way, the ‘undifferentiation’ comes into its grasp only in the form of ‘relativ- ity’ . The ‘relativity’ of things represents, in other words, the original ontological ‘undifferentiation’ as brought down to the level of logi- cal thinking. In the present chapter we are still on that level. Hence it is held: 27 ‘that’ comes out of ‘this’, and ‘this’ depends upon ‘that’. This doctrine is called the Fang Sheng theory, 28 the theory of ‘mutual dependence’. However (this reciprocal relation between ‘this’ and ‘that’ must be understood as a basic principle applicable to all things). Thus, since there is ‘birth’ there is ‘death’, and since there is ‘death’ there is ‘birth’. Likewise, since there is ‘good’ there is ‘not-good’, and since there is ‘not-good’ there is ‘good’. Chuang-tzu means to say that the real Reality is the One which comprehends all these opposites in itself ; that the division of this original One into ‘life’ and ‘death’, ‘good’ and ‘bad’, or ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ etc., is due to various points of view taken by men. In truth, everything in the world is ‘good’ from the point of view of a man who takes such a position. And there is nothing that cannot be regarded as ‘not-good’ from the point of view of a man who chooses to take such a position. The real Reality is something prior to this and similar divisions. It is something which is ‘good’ and ‘not-good’ , and which is neither ‘good’ nor ‘not-good’. Thus it comes about that the ‘sacred man’ 29 does not base himself (upon any of these oppositions), but illuminates (everything) in the light of Heaven. 30 Certainly, this (attitude of the ‘sacred man') is also an attitude of a man who bases himself upon (what he considers) ‘right’ . But (since it is not the kind of ‘right’ which is opposed to ‘wrong’, but is an absolute, transcendental Right which comprises in itself all opposi- tions and contradictions as they are), ‘this’ is here the same as ‘that’, and ‘that’ is the same as ‘this’. (It is a position which comprehends and transcends both ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, so that here) ‘that’ unifies ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, but ‘this’ also unifies ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. 328 Sufism and Taoism (Viewed from such a standpoint) is there still a distinction between •that’ and ‘this’? Or is there neither ‘that’ nor ‘this’ any longer ? 31 This stage at which each ‘that’ and ‘this’ has lost its companion to stand opposed to - this stage is to be considered the Hinge of the Way. ... . . .. . The hinge of a door can begin to function infinitely only when it is fitted into the middle of the socket. (In the same way, the Hinge of the Way can respond infinitely and freely to endlessly changing situations of the phenomenal world only when it is placed properly in the middle of the absolute One which transcends all phenomenal opposi- tions.) (In such a state) the ‘right’ is one uniform endlessness; the ‘wrong’ too is one uniform endlessness. This is why I assert that nothing can be better than ‘illumination . The absolute One is of course the Way which pervades the whole world of Being; rather it is the whole world of Being. As such it transcends all distinctions and oppositions. Thus from the point of view of the Way, there can be no distinction between ‘true’ and ‘false’. But can human language properly cope with such a situa- tion? No, at least not as long as language is used in the way it is actually used. ‘Language’, Chuang-tzu says, ‘is different from the blowing of wind, for he who speaks is supposed to have a meaning to convey .’ 32 However, language as it is actually used does not seem to convey any real meaning, for those people, particularly the Dialec- ticians, who are engaged in discussing ‘this being right and that being wrong, or ‘this’ being good and ‘that being bad etc., are ‘simply talking about objects which have no definitely fixed contents’ . Are they really saying something (meaningful)? Are they rather saying nothing ? 33 They think that their speech is different from the chirpings of fledglings. But is there any difference? Or is there not any difference at all? . , 4 , Where indeed, is the Way hidden (for those people) that there should be ‘true’ and ‘false’? Where is Language (in the true sense) hidden that there should be ‘right’ and ‘wrong’? (The fact is that) the Way is concealed by petty virtues , 34 and Lan- guage is concealed by vainglories . 35 This is why we have the right ‘wrong’ discussions of the Confucians and the Mohists, the one party regarding as ‘right’ what the other party regards as ‘wrong’, and the one regarding as ‘wrong’ what the other regards as right . If we want to affirm (on a higher level) what both parties regard as ‘wrong’, and to deny what they regard as ‘right’, we have no better means than ‘illumination ’. 36 Thus we see ourselves brought back again to the problem of illumi- nation’ . The passages here quoted have made it already clear that the ‘illumination’ represents an ‘absolute’ standpoint which tran- scends all ‘relative’ standpoints. It is a state of mind which is above 329 Beyond This and That and beyond the distinctions between ‘this’ and ‘that’, ‘I’ and ‘you’. But how can one attain to such a spiritual height, if in fact it really exists? What is the content and structure of this experience? These are the main problems that will occupy us in the following two chapters. Notes 1. Chuang-tzu , II, p. 93. 2. i.e., there is no absolutely’ proper place; for each being, the place in which it lives customarily is the right place, but the latter is ‘right’ only in a relative sense. 3. Two women famous for their supreme beauty. 4. That these concepts, {z jen and M i, represented two of the most typical moral values for Confucius and his school was pointed out in Chap. I. 5. Tao Te Ching, XX. 6. By Learning ( hsiieh ^) is meant the study of the meticulous rules of conduct and behavior - concerning, for instance, on what occasions and to whom one should use the formal and polite expression ‘yes, sir' and when and to whom one should use the informal expression ‘hum!’ - the kind of learning which was so strongly advocated by the Confucian school under the name of Ceremonies (li «§). 7. op. cit., II. 8. K. 9. ® (tt) fu(-kuei), lit. ‘returning’ - ‘going-back’. 10. op. cit., XL. 11 . ». 12. op. cit., LVIII. 13. ibid., XXIX. This part of Chap. XXIX is regarded by Kao Heng (op. cit.) as an independent chapter. He remarks in addition that the passage is typical of ‘Lao-tzu’s relativism’ (gTifflffl&til), P- 69. The last sentence of the passage quoted in its original form is 1 , which may be translated as ‘a thing which one wants to crush (is not crushed), and a thing which one wants to destroy (is not destroyed).’ But in the Ho Shang edition we find ft instead of ® (MTS 3b§/ti!j), which, as Yii Yiieh (^fB r^T^j) remarks, is probably the right reading. 14. The followers of Mo-tzu (3rT). 15. pien che 16. ming chia %M.. 330 Sufism and Taoism Beyond This and That 32. II, p. 63. 33. See above, Note (31). 331 17. Chuang-tzu , XII, p. 427, quote by Fung Yu Lang, op. cit., I, p. 192. The reference is to the famous thesis put forward by the Dialectician Kung Sung Lung (&&8ST), that a ‘hard white stone’ is in reality two things: a hard stone and a white stone, because ‘hard’ and ‘white’ are two entirely different attributes. The quoted sentence may also be translated: The distinction between ‘hard’ and' white’ is clearly visible as if they were hung on the celestial sphere. 18. II, p. 107. 19. IS, Mi, means usually ‘boundary’, ‘limit’, ‘division’. But here I follow the interpretation of Lu Shu Chih (fit 1~F1S '■ TOO, s S?cf§iii-l) and Pan KuSffi(quoted by Lu Te Ming in ) who makes it synonymous with 20. Aft. 2 1 . gffr . The lexical meaning of this expression is difficult to ascertain . In translating it as ‘without limits’ I am simply following an old commentator (m,H quoted by IstSM in his r£T^S§j) who says rftffi, fcffitii j, (p. 109). The same word is used in Bk. XXVII. And in Bk. XVII it appears in the form of RKfanyen which obviously is the same asgftf(a commentator spells itSffi) because the passage reads: ‘From the point of view of the Way, what should we consider “precious” and what should we consider “despicable”?’ 22. ItS Cf. Kuo Hsiang’s Commentary (p. 109): r , fRTfEWffllE, SStlrTfSfTftilj; and Chia Shih Fu (^i£3£): 23. Chuang-tzu, II, p. 108. 24. . The term literally means ‘bright’ or ‘luminous’ . We may compare it with the Islamic notion of ma'rifah ‘gnosis’ as opposed to, and technically distinguished from, ‘ilm ‘(rational) knowledge’. 25. I, p. 30. 26. The passage is taken from II, p. 66. I shall divide it into a number of smaller sections and quote them one by one, each followed by a brief examination. 27. by the Dialectician Hui Shih. 28. more exactly the ‘theory of fang sheng fang ssu (A£7j 5E2.IS:)> held by Hui Shih, meaning literally: the theory of ‘life’ giving birth to ‘death’ and ‘death giving birth to ‘life’. See Chuang-tzu, XXXIII. For this particular meaning of the word fang 7i , see the Shuo Wen (»£): T H, fang means (originally) two ships placed side by side with each other’ . 29. sheng jen 5?A, which is synonymous with ‘true man’ or ‘divine man’, i.e., the Perfect Man. The real meaning of the important word sheng has been elucidated earlier in its shamanic context; see Chapter II. The expression sheng jen is more often used by Lao-tzu than by Chuang-tzu. 30. t’ien X, meaning the great Way of Nature, the absolute standpoint of Being itself, which is, so to speak, a viewpoint transcending all viewpoints. 34. The ‘petty virtues’/]^ -or more literally, ‘small acquirements’ -refer to the five cardinal virtues of the Confucians - Ch’eng Hsiian Ying (fig;£A fjfETifeiKLl )• 35. i.e., the natural tendency of the human mind toward showing-off, which mani- fests itself typically in the form of discussions and debates. 36. op. cit., II, p. 63. 3 1 . This is a peculiar expression which Chuang-tzu uses very often when he wants to deny something emphatically. The Birth of a New Ego 333 V The Birth of a New Ego We have seen in what precedes how futile and absurd, in the view of Chuang-tzu, is the ordinary pattern of thinking typified by the this-is-‘ right’ -and-that-is-‘ wrong’ kind of discussion. What is the source of all these futile verbalizations? Chuang-tzu thinks that it is to be found in the mistaken conviction of man about himself, namely, that he himself has (or is) an ‘ego’, a self-subsistent entity endowed with an absolute ontological independence. Man tends to forget that the ‘ego’ which he believes to be so independent and absolute is in reality something essentially relative and dependent. Relative to what? Relative to ‘you’ and ‘them’ and all other things that exist around himself. Dependent upon what? Dependent upon Something absolutely superior to himself, Something which Chuang-tzu calls the Creator, or more literally, the Maker-of- things . 1 Chuang-tzu describes this situation through a parable of ‘Shadow and Penumbra ’. 2 Penumbra 1 once said to Shadow: ‘I notice you sometimes walking, but next moment you are standing still. Sometimes I notice you sitting, but next moment you are standing up. Why are you so fickle and unstable? Shadow replied: It seems to me that (in acting like this) I am simply dependent upon something (i.e., the body). But that upon which I depend seems to be acting as it does in dependency upon something else (i.e., the Creator). So all my activities in their dependency seem to be the same as the movements of the scales of a snake or the wings of a cicada . 4 How should I know, then, why I act in this way, and why I do not act in that way? Chuang-tzu deprives the ‘ego’ at a stroke of its seeming self- subsistence and self-sufficiency. But such a view goes naturally against the everyday belief and conviction of man about himself. For according to the everyday view of things the ‘ego’ is the very basis and the core of man’s existence, without which he would lose his personality, his personal unity, and be nothing. The ‘ego is the point of co-ordination, the point of synthesis, at which all the disparate elements of his personality, whether physical or mental, become united. The ‘ego’ thus understood is called by Chuang-tzu the ‘mind ’. 5 if;-' I think it proper to introduce at this point a pair of key terms which seem to have played a decisive role in the formation of the main I lines of thought of Chuang-tzu concerning the nature of the mind: V tso ch’ih 6 lit. ‘sitting-galloping’ and tso wang 1 lit. ‘sitting-forgetting’ . The first of them, tso ch’ih, refers to the situation in which the mind of an ordinary person finds itself, in constant movement, going this way at this moment and that way at the next, in response to myriad impressions coming from outside to attract its attention and to rouse its curiosity, never ceasing, to stop and rest for a moment, even when the body is quietly seated. The body may be sitting still but the mind is running around. It is the human mind in such a state that the word hsin (Mind) designates in this context. It is the exact opposite of the mind in a state of calm peaceful concentration. It is easy to understand conceptually this opposition of the two states of the mind, one ‘galloping around’ and the other ‘sitting still and void’. But it is extremely difficult for ordinary men to free themselves actually from the dominance of the former and to realize in themselves the latter. But in truth, Chuang-tzu teaches, man himself is responsible for allowing the Mind to exercise such a tyrannical sway over him, for the tyranny of the Mind is nothing else than the tyranny of the ‘ego’ - that false ‘ego’ which, as we have seen above, he creates for himself as the ontological center of his person- ality. Chuang-tzu uses a characteristic expression for this basic situation of man: shih hsin or ‘making the Mind one’s own teacher’ . 8 The ‘ego’, thus understood, is man’s own creation. But man clings to it, as if it were something objective, even absolute. He can never imagine himself existing without it, and so he cannot abandon it for a moment; thus he makes out of his Mind his venerated ‘teacher’. This Mind, on a more intellectual level, appears as Reason, the faculty of discursive thinking and reasoning. Sometimes Chuang- tzu calls itch’ eng hsin or ‘finished mind ’. 9 The ‘finished mind’ means the mind which has taken on a definitely fixed form, the mind in a state of coagulation, so to speak. It is the Reason by whose guidance - here again we come across the expression: ‘making the Mind the teacher’ - man discriminates between things and passes judgments on them, saying ‘this is right’ and ‘that is wrong’, etc., and goes on falling ever deeper into the limitless swamp of absurdities. Everybody follows his own ‘finished mind’ and venerates it as his own teacher. In this respect we might say no one lacks a teacher. Those who know the reality of the unceasingly changing phenomena and accept (this cosmic law of Transmutation) as their standard (of 334 335 Sufism and Taoism judgment) are not the only people who have their teachers. (In the above-mentioned sense) even an idiot has his own teacher. It is impossible for a man to insist on the distinction between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ without having a ‘finished mind’. This is as impossible as a man departing (from a northern country) to-day and arriving in the country of Yiieh (in the southern limit of China) yesterday ! 10 Thus we see that all the pseudo-problems concerning the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ or ‘good’ and ‘bad’, whose real nature was disclosed in the preceding chapter, arise from man’s exercising his own ‘finished mind’. The Mind, according to Chuang-tzu, is the source and origin of all human follies. This idea of the Mind is shared by Lao-tzu, although his approach is a little different from Chuang-tzu’ s. That the idea itself is basically the same will immediately be perceived if one reads carefully, for example, Ch. XLIX of the Tao Te Ching. Interestingly enough, Lao-tzu in this passage uses the term ch’ang hsin ," i.e., ‘constant or unchangeable mind’. The term reminds us of Chaung-tzu s ch eng hsin ‘finished mind’. By ch’ang hsin Lao-tzu designates a rigidly fixed state of mind deprived of all natural flexibility, or as he likes to say, the state of the mind that has lost the natural ‘softness’ of an infant. As the passage quoted shows, this unnatural rigidity of the mind is typically manifested in the distinguishing and discriminating activity of the mind which perceives everywhere ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and regards these categories as something objec- tive and absolute. For Lao-tzu, it is not simply a matter of one’s becoming partial, prejudiced, and bigoted. In his view the exercise of this function of the mind affects the very core of human existence. It is a question of the existential crisis of man. Man stands in a woeful predicament because he is - almost by nature, one would say - so made that he directs the activity of his mind toward distinguishing and dis- criminating things from one another. The ‘sacred man’ has no rigidly fixed mind of his own. He makes the minds of all people his mind . 12 (His principle is represented by the dictum): ‘Those who are good I treat as good. But even those who are not good I also treat as good. (Such an attitude I take) because the original nature of man is goodness. Those who are faithful I treat as faithful. But even those who are not faithful I also treat as faithful. (Such an attitude I take) because the original nature of man is faithfulness.’ Thus the ‘sacred man’, while he lives in this world, keeps his mind wide open and ‘chaotifies ’ 13 his own mind toward all. The ordinary men strain their eyes and ears (in order to distinguish between things). The ‘sacred man’, on the contrary, keeps his eyes and ears (free) like an infant . 14 The Birth of a New Ego Lao-tzu sometimes uses the word chih 1S , ‘knowing’ , to designate the discriminating activity of the mind here in question. But caution is needed in understanding this word, because for Lao-tzu it is not the act of ‘knowing’ itself that is blameful; its blamefulness is con- ditioned by the particular way in which ‘knowing’ is exercised and by the particular objects toward which it is directed. The kind of ‘knowing’ which is wrong in the eyes of Lao-tzu is the same distinguishing and discriminating activity of intelligence as the one which we have seen is so bitterly denounced by Chuang-tzu. Unlike Chuang-tzu, however, who develops this idea on a logical level as a problem of dialectics, taking his examples from the discus- sions on ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ as he observes them among the Dialecti- cians of his day, Lao-tzu is prone to consider the disastrous effects of this type of ‘knowing’ on a more practical level. He draws attention to the evaluational attitude which is the most immediate result of the ‘distinguishing’ activity of the mind. Here the this-is-‘ right’ - and- that-is-‘ wrong’ is not a logical problem. It is a matter of practi- cal evaluation. And as such it is directly connected with the concrete facts of life. ‘Knowing’ understood in this sense, is denounced because it disturbs the minds of the people in an unnecessary and wrong way. And the disturbance of the mind by the perception of values, positive and negative, is regarded by Lao-tzu as wrong and detrimental to human existence because it tempts it away from its real nature, and ultimately from the Way itself. In the following passage , 16 the word chih, ‘knowing’, is evidently used in this sense. If (the ruler) does not hold the (so-called) wise men in high esteem, the people will (naturally) be kept away from vain emulation. If (the ruler) does not value goods that are hard to obtain, the people will be kept away from committing theft. If (the ruler) does not display things which are liable to excite desires, the minds of the people will be kept undisturbed. Therefore, the ‘sacred man’ in governing the people empties their minds , 17 while making their bellies full; weakens their ambitions 18 while rendering their bones strong. In this way, he keeps his people always in the state of no-knowledge 19 and no-desire, so that the so-called ‘knowers ’ 20 might find no occa- sion to interfere. The baneful influence of the discriminating activity of the Mind is so powerful that even a modicum of it is liable at any moment to make man deviate from the Way. If I happen to have even a modicum of ‘knowing’, I would be in grave danger of going astray even if I am actually walking on the main road (i.e., the Way). The main road is level and safe, but men tend to choose narrow by-ways . 21 336 Sufism and Taoism However, it is not ‘knowing’ itself that is so baneful; the quality of ‘knowing’ depends upon the particular objects on which it is exer- cised. The ‘knowing’ , when its usual tendency of turning toward the outside and seeking after external objects is curbed and brought back toward the inside, transforms itself into the highest form of intuition, ‘illumination’ ( ming ). He who knows others (i.e., external objects) is a ‘clever’ man, but he who knows himself is an ‘illumined’ man . 22 It is significant that here we come across exactly the same word, ming ‘illumination’, which we encountered in the Chuang-tzu. It is also very significant that in the passage just quoted the ‘illumina- tion’ is directly connected with man’s knowledge of himself . 23 It evidently refers to the immediate and intuitive knowledge of the Way. It is described as man’s ‘self-knowledge’ or ‘self-knowing’, because the immediate intuitive grasp of the Way is only obtainable through man’s ‘turning into himself’. Certainly, according to the view of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, the Way is all pervading. It is everywhere in the world; the world itself is a self- manifestation of the Way. In this sense, even ‘external’ things are actually manifesting the Way, each in its own way and own form. But man alone in the whole world of Being is self-conscious. That is to say, man alone is in a position to grasp the Way from inside. He can be conscious of himself as a manifestation of the Way. He can feel and touch within himself the palpitating life of the Absolute as it is actively working there. He can /n-tuit the Way. But he is unable to m-tuit it in external objects, because he cannot go into the ‘inside’ of the things and experience their manifestation of the Way as his own subjective state. At least the first subjective personal encounter with the Way must be made within himself. For this purpose the centrifugal tendency of the mind must be checked and turned to the opposite direction; it must be made centripetal. This drastic turning of direction is described by Lao-tzu as ‘closing’ up all the openings and doors’ of the body. By obstruct- ing all the possible outlets for the centrifugal activity of the mind, man goes down deep into his own mind until he reaches the very existential core of himself. This existential core of himself which he finds in the depth of his mind may not be the Way perse, because after all it is an individual- ized form of the Way. But, on the other hand, there is no real distinction or discrepancy between the two. Lao-tzu expresses this state of affairs symbolically by calling the Way per se the Mother, and the Way in its individualized form the Child. He who knows the Child, knows by that very knowledge the Mother herself. In the passage which I am going to quote , 24 the importance of the 337 The Birth of a New Ego ‘closing up of all the openings and doors’ is emphasized as the sole means by which man can come to know the Child, and through the Child, the Mother. And the ultimate state thus attained is referred to by the term ‘illumination’. It may be pointed out that the Child ( tzu ) 25 which in this understanding represents an individualized duplicate of the Mother (mu ), 26 is nothing other than what Lao-tzu calls elsewhere Virtue (te) - or perhaps more strictly, an individual embodiment of the Way having as its existential core the creative and vital force, which is the Way itself as distributed among the ‘ten thousand things’ . As we shall see later, this creative and vital force of each individual, existent as an individual determination of the Way, is called by Lao-tzu ‘Virtue ’. 27 All things under Heaven have a Beginning which is to be regarded as the Mother of all things . 28 If you know the ‘ mother’ , you thereby know her ‘ child’ . And if, after having known the ‘child’ , you go back to the Mother and hold fast to Her, you will never fall into a mistake till the very end of your life. Block the openings, shut the doors (i.e., stop the normal functioning of the sense organs and the usual centrifugal activity of the Mind), and all through your life you (i.e., your spiritual energy) will not be exhausted. If, on the contrary, you keep the openings wide open, and go on in- creasing their activities till the end of your life, you will not be saved. To be able to perceive the minutest thing (i.e., the supra-sensible thing, which is the Child of the Way within yourself) is properly to be called Illumination. To hold on to what is soft and flexible (i.e., abandoning the rigidity of the Mind enslaved by the ‘essential’ dis- tinctions among things and accepting ‘softly’ all things in their real state of mutual transformations) is properly to be called strength. If, using your external light, you go back to your internal Illumina- tion, you will never bring misfortune upon yourself. Such an (ulti- mate) state is what is to be called ‘stepping into the eternally real’ 29 The ‘closing up all openings and doors’ means, as I have indicated above, stopping the functioning of all the organs of sense perception in the first place, and then purifying the Mind of physical and material desires. This is made clear by our comparing the passage just quoted with XII which reads: The five colors (i.e., the primary colors: white, black, blue, red and yellow) make man’s eyes blind. The five musical notes make man’s ears deaf. The five flavors (i.e., sweet, salty, sour, pungent, bitter) make man’s taste dull. (Games like) racing and hunting make man’s mind run mad. Goods that are hard to obtain impede man’s right conduct. Therefore the ‘sacred man' concentrates on the belly (i.e., endeavors to develop his inner core of existence) and does not care for the eye 338 339 Sufism and Taoism (i.e., does not follow the dictates of his senses). Verily he abandons the latter and chooses the former. The ‘sacred man’ cares for the belly and does not care for the eye, because he is aware that the centrifugal activity of the Mind does nothing other than lead him away from the Way. The Way is there in his own ‘inside’ in the most concrete and palpable form. The further one goes toward ‘outside’ , the less he is in touch with the Absolute. What one should try to do is to ‘stay at home’ and not to go outdoors. Without going out of the door, one can know everything under Heaven (i.e., the reality of all things). Even without peeping out of the window, one can see the working of Heaven. The further one goes out, the less one knows. Therefore the ‘sacred man’ knows without going out. He has a clear view of everything 30 without looking. He accomplishes everything without acting . 31 The passages which have now been quoted from the Tao Te Ching concern the epistemological aspect of the problem of the Way; the problem, namely, of how and in what way man can ‘intuit’ the Absolute. The answer given by Lao-tzu is, as we have seen, that the only possible way for man to take in order to achieve this aim is to obstruct totally the centrifugal tendency of his own mind and to replace it by a centripetal activity leading ultimately to ‘illumination’. Lao-tzu, however, is not so much concerned with the epis- temological process itself by which man cultivates such an ‘inner eye’ as with the result and effect of this kind of intuition. Indeed, he usually starts his argument precisely from the point at which such a process reached completion. Two things are his main concern. One is the practical and visible effect produced by the illuminative intuition on the basic attitude and behavior of man. How does the ‘sacred man’ act in the ordinary situations of social life? That is one of his primary problems. This problem will be dealt with in a later chapter devoted to a discussion of the concept of the Perfect Man. The second of Lao-tzu’s main problems is the metaphysical struc- ture of the world of Being, with the Way as the very source and basis of all things. Here again the epistemological aspect of the problem is either almost totally discarded or simply hinted at in an extremely vague way. Lao-tzu is more interested to describe the ontological process by which the Way as the absolutely Unknown-Unknowable goes on making itself gradually visible and determined until finally it reaches the stage of the infinite Multiplicity of the phenomenal world. He also refers to the backward movement of all things, by which they ‘return’ to the original state of absolute Unity. The Birth of a New Ego What is remarkable about this is that all this description of the ontological process is made from the standpoint of a man who has already experienced ‘illumination’, with the eye of a man who knows perfectly the secret of Being. Chuang-tzu is different from Lao-tzu in this respect. He is vitally interested in the process which itself precedes the final stage of ‘illumination’ and by which the latter is reached. Chuang-tzu even tries to describe, or at least to indicate by means of symbolic descriptions, the experiential content of ‘illumination’ which he knows is by its very nature ineffable. The rest of the present chapter and the next will be concerned specifically with this aspect of the problem, which we might call the epistemological or subjective side of the Way-experience. At the outset of this chapter, I drew attention to two cardinal concepts relating to the subjective side of the Way-experience, which stand diametrically opposed to each other: tso ch’ih ‘sitting- galloping’ and tso wang ‘sitting-forgetting’. In the preceding pages we have been examining mainly the structure of the former concept. Now it is time we turned to the latter concept. A man in the state of ‘sitting-forgetting’ looks so strange and so different from ordinary men that he is easily recognizable as such by an outsider-observer. In Bk II of his Book, Chuang-tzu gives a typical description of such a man. The man here described is Nan Kuo Tzu Ch’i, or Tzu Ch’i of the Southern Quarter. He is said to have been a great Sage of Ch’u , 32 living in hermitic seclusion in the ‘southern quarter’. For Chuang-tzu he was surely a personification of the very concept of the Perfect Man. Once Tzu Ch’i of the Southern Quarter sat leaning against a tabouret. Gazing upward at the sky, he was breathing deeply and gently. Completely oblivious of his bodily existence, he seemed to have lost all consciousness of ‘associates’ (i.e., oppositions of ‘I’ and ‘things’, or ‘ego’ and the ‘others’). Yen Ch’eng Tzu Yu (one of his disciples), who was standing in his presence in attendance, asked him, ‘What has happened to you, Master? Is it at all possible that the body should be made like a withered tree and the mind should be made like dead ashes? The Master who is now leaning against the tabouret is no longer the Master whom I used to see leaning against the tabouret in the past!’ Tzu Ch’i replied, ‘It is good indeed that you ask that question , 33 Yen! (I look different from what I have been) because I have now lost myself . 34 But are you able to understand (the real meaning of) this? Following this introductory remark, the great Master goes on to describe for the bewildered disciple the state of ‘having lost the ego’ , telling him what is actually experienced in that state. As a result, we have the very famous vision of the Cosmic Wind, one of the most 340 Sufism and Taoism beautiful and forceful passages in the whole book of Chuang-tzu. The passage will be given in translation in the following chapter. Here we have only to note that the Master’s words: ‘I have now lost myself’, refer to nothing other than the state of ‘sitting-forgetting’ or ‘sitting in oblivion’ as opposed to the ‘sitting-galloping’. But what exactly is ‘sitting in oblivion’? How can one experience it at all? This is something extremely difficult - or more properly we should say, almost absolutely impossible - to explain in words. Chuang-tzu, however, tries to do so. In Bk VI he gives his own definition of ‘sitting in oblivion’. The passage reads as follows. What is the meaning of ‘sitting in oblivion’? It means that all the members of the body become dissolved, and the activities of the ears and eyes (i.e., the activities of all the sense organs) become abolished, so that the ifian makes himself free from both form and mind (i.e., both bodily and mental ‘self-identity’), and becomes united and unified with the All-Pervader (i.e., the Way which ‘pervades’ all). This is what I call ‘sitting in oblivion ’. 35 Externally, or physically, all the parts of the body become ‘dissol- ved’ and forgotten. That is to say, the consciousness of the bodily ‘ego’ is made to disappear. Internally, all mental activities are ‘abolished’. That is to say, there no longer remains the conscious- ness of the inner ‘ego’ as the center and all-unifying principle of man’s mental activity. The result of this total ‘forgetting’ of the inside and outside of the ‘I’ is called by Chuang-tzu hsu , 36 the Void, or a spiritual-metaphysical state in which there is nothing what- soever to obstruct the all-pervading activity of the Way. The word ‘Void’ must not be understood in this context in a purely negative sense. It does have a positive meaning. And in its positive aspect, the Void must be connected with the concept of the All-Pervader which appears in the passage just quoted. I have translated the Chinese expressions t’ung, lit. ‘great perva- sion’, as the All-Pervader following the interpretation given by Ch’eng Hsiian Ying, who identifies ta t’ung with ta tao, the ‘great Way’, and says: ‘to t’ung is the same as ta tao; since the Way pervades all things and enlivens them, it is in this sense entitled to be called All-Pervader’. 37 This interpretation seems to be right, but it must be supplemented by an understanding of another aspect of the matter, namely, that in the experience of the spiritual state here in question, all things in their infinite multiplicity interpenetrate each 3ther freely, without any obstruction, and that the man who has lost his ‘ego’ rediscovers in this experience his ‘ego’ in a totally different form, reborn as what we might call the Universal, Cosmic, or Transcendental Ego which transforms itself freely into all things that are transforming themselves into each other. 341 The Birth of a New Ego Such must be the real implication of the use of the particular expression ta t’ung in place of the more usual word tao, the Way. The point is brought to light very clearly by Kuo Hsiang who explains this passage by saying: ‘in the “inside” the man has no consciousness of his own bodily existence; in the “outside” he has no awareness of the existence of Heaven and Earth. It is only in such a state that he becomes completely identified with the (cosmic) process of Change (i.e., “transformations”) itself without there being any obstruction at all. Once in such a state, there can be nothing he does not freely pervade.’ 38 Chuang-tzu himself expresses the same idea in a far more laconic way: Being unified, you have no liking. Being transmuted, you have no fixity . 39 In the light of the explanation that has been given in the preceding, the meaning of this laconic expression can easily be clarified as follows. Being completely unified and identified with the Way itself, the man can have no likes and dislikes. The man in such a spiritual state transcends the ordinary distinctions between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘good’ and ‘bad’. And since he is now identical with the Way, and since the Way is constantly manifesting itself in myriad forms of Being, the man himself is ‘being transmuted’ from one thing to another, without there being any obstruction, as if he were moving around in the great Void. He is not actually in the ‘void’, because there are things throbbing with all-pervading Life, appear- ing and disappearing in infinitely variegated forms. The point is, however, that in this metaphysical Void these things no longer present any obstacles to his absolute freedom. For he himself is, in this state, completely identical with every one of these things, participating from within in the cosmic flux of Transmutation; or rather he is the cosmic Transmutation itself. This is what is meant by the expression: ‘you have no fixity’ 40 ‘No fixity’ means boundless flexibility and absolute freedom. It will be clear from what has preceded that the hsu is both the metaphysical Void and the spiritual Void. In truth, this very distinc- tion between ‘metaphysical’ and ‘spiritual’ is in this context some- thing artificial, because the state in question refers to a total and complete identification of man with the All-Pervader. Theoreti- cally, however, there is some point in making such a distinction. For when the question is raised on a more practical level as to what concretely one should do in order to become so completely identified with the Way, we have to have recourse to the idea of making the mind ‘void’. Only when one has succeeded in making 342 Sufism and Taoism the mind completely ‘void’, does one find oneself in the very midst of the metaphysical Void. This part of Chuang-tzu’s teaching takes on the form of practical instruction regarding the proper method by which man can hope to attain to such a state. This method is called by him ‘fasting’ or the purification of the Mind. The purification of the Mind constitutes the pivotal point in the development of man from the state of an ‘ordinary’ man to that of the Perfect Man. An ‘ordinary’ man can never become a Perfect Man unless he passes through this turning point. The significance of this experience will be clear if one remembers what we have seen above concerning Chuang-tzu’s characteristic expression: ‘making the Mind one’s own teacher ’. 41 Man naturally tends to cling to his Mind - and Reason - and thinks and acts according to its dictates. Whatever the Mind tells him to believe is absolutely true, and whatever it commands him to do is absolutely good. In other words, man venerates his own ‘ego’ as his ‘teacher’. In the light of this observation, the ‘purification of the Mind’ means precisely that man should abolish this habit of the ‘venera- tion’ of the Mind, that he should cast away his own ‘ego’. And that will mark the first step toward his being transformed into a Perfect Man. In an imaginary conversation which Chuang-tzu fabricates with a view to endorsing his thesis, Confucius - who is here ironically made into a Taoist sage - teaches his disciple Yen Hui how to proceed in order to succeed in purifying the Mind. In this dialogue, Yen Hui is represented as a zealous disciple who has desperately struggled to know the right way to become a Perfect Man, but in vain. As the final resort, he turns to Confucius and humbly asks for instruction. The following is the passage . 42 Yen Hui: I cannot proceed any further. May I venture to ask you to tell me the proper way? Confucius: Fast, first. Then I will teach you. Do you think it easy (to see the Truth) while maintaining your Mind? If anybody does think it easy, the vast and bright Heaven will not approve of him. The word translated here as ‘fast’, chai, 43 means the act of ‘fasting’ which man practises in the period immediately preceding sacrificial ceremonies in order to put himself into the state of religious ‘purity’ . In the present context, Confucius uses the word not in this original religious sense, but figuratively in the sense of the ‘fasting of the Mind’, that is, the ‘purification of the Mind’. Yen Hui, however, does not understand this, and takes the word in its usual sense. He imagines that Confucius means by the word the observance of the The Birth of a New Ego 343 ritual fasting which concerns eating and drinking. Hence the follow- ing ridiculous reply he gives to the Master: Yen Hui: My family is poor, so much so that I have neither drunk liquor nor eaten garlic and onions for the past several months. Cannot this be considered fasting? Confucius: What you are talking about is the fasting as a ritual proceeding. That is not the fasting of the Mind. Yen Hui: May I ask what you mean by the fasting of the Mind? Confucius: Bring all the activity of the Mind to a point of union. Do not listen with your ears, but listen with the Mind (thus concentrated). (Then proceed further and) stop listening with the Mind; listen with the Spirit (c/z’f). 44 The ear (or more generally, sense perception) is confined to listening 45 (i.e., each sense grasps only its proper objects in a physical way). The Mind is confined to (forming concepts) corres- ponding to their external objects. 46 The Spirit, how- ever, is itself ‘void’ (having no definite proper objects of its own), and goes on transforming limitlessly in accordance with the (Transmutation of) things (as they come and go). The Way in its entirety comes only into the ‘void’ (i.e., the ‘ego-less’ Mind). Making the Mind ‘void’ (in this way) is what 1 mean by the ‘fasting of the Mind’. As I pointed out before, hsii, ‘void’, is a key term of the philosophy of Chuang-tzu. It represents in this context the subjective attitude of man corresponding to the very structure of the Way which is itself a Void. This latter point is very much emphasized by Lao-tzu, as we shall see in detail in a later chapter which will be devoted to a discussion of the metaphysics of the Way. Here we are still mainly concerned with the subjective aspect of the matter. The main idea is that when a man ‘sits in oblivion’ with his mind completely ‘void’, into this ego-less ‘void’ all things come exactly as they are, as they come and go in the cosmic process of Transmutation. In such a state, his mind is comparable to a clear mirror which reflects everything without the slightest distortion or disfigurement. All this is of course a matter which must be directly experienced; a mere conceptual understanding is of little help. Yen Hui whose mind has already been fully ripened - in the anecdote we are now reading - for this kind of personal transformation, becomes sud- denly ‘illumined’ by the teaching of his Master, and makes the following observation about himself. Yen Hui: Before Hui (i.e., I) received this instruction, Hui was really nothing but Hui (i.e., ‘I’ have been my small ‘ego’, nothing else). However, now that I have 344 Sufism and Taoism received this instruction, I have realized that from the very beginning there never was (an ‘ego’ called) Hui. Is this state worthy to be considered the ‘void’ (which you have just spoken of)? Confucius: So it is, indeed! Then Confucius contrasts this state with the state of ‘sitting- galloping’, and goes on to describe the former by comparing it to a firmly closed empty room which mysteriously and calmly illumines itself with a white light of its own. 47 Look into that closed room and see how its empty ‘interior’ produces bright whiteness. All blessings of the world come in to reside in that stillness . 48 If, on the contrary, (your Mind) does not stand still, you are in the state of what I would call ‘sitting-galloping’. But if a man turns his ears and eyes toward the ‘interior’, and puts his Mind and Reason in the ‘exterior’ (i.e., nullifies the normal function- ing of the Mind and Reason), even gods and spirits come to reside freely (in his ego-less ‘interior’) not to speak of men. This is the Transmutation of ten thousand things . 49 The last sentence represents one of the cardinal points of Chuang- tzu’s metaphysics. The peculiar meaning of the key term hua has been explained above. What is important here to note is that in the passage just quoted, the hua , Transmutation, is evidently described as a subjective state of man, as something that occurs in his ‘interior’. Rather, his ‘interior’ is the Transmutation of the ten thousand things, that is, of all the phenomenal things and events of the world. The man in the state of perfect ‘sitting in oblivion’ does experience subjectively, as his personal experience, the Transmuta- tion of all things. The whole matter may be reformulated more theoretically in terms of the process of the spiritual development of man toward illumination. In ordinary human experience, the constant flux and reflux of ) infinitely changing phenomena are in the position of the Lord. They positively act upon man, influence him, push him around, and bind f him up. In such a situation man is a servant or slave. His mind becomes torn asunder and runs in all directions in pursuit of 4 chameleonic forms of things and events. Once man frees himself from this bondage and transcends the common pattern of experience, the scene before his eyes takes on a I completely different appearance. The kaleidoscopic view is still § there. The things and events still continue their changes and trans- $ formations as before. The only essential difference between the two The Birth of a New Ego 345 stages is that in the second all these things and events that go on appearing and disappearing are calmly reflected in the polished mirror of the man’s ‘interior’ . The man himself is no longer involved in the hustle and bustle of incessantly changing phenomena. The man at this stage is a calm observer of things, and his mind is like a polished mirror. He accepts everything as it comes into his ‘interior’, and sees it off, unperturbed, as it goes out of sight. There is for him nothing to be rejected, but there is nothing wilfully to be pursued either. He is, in short, beyond ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. A step further, and he reaches the stage of ‘undifferentiation’, where, as we saw earlier, all things become ‘chaotified’ . On this level there still are things. But these things show no limits and borderlines separating them ‘essentially’ from one another. This is the stage of the cosmic Transmutation. It goes without saying that in its subjec- tive aspect, the Transmutation represents a spiritual stage of the man himself. As a result of the ‘fasting of the Mind’ , the man is now completely ‘ego-less’ . And since he is ‘ego-less’ he is one with the ‘ten thousand things’; he becomes the ‘ten thousand things’. And he himself goes on changing with the infinite change of all things. He is no longer a calm ‘observer’ of the changing things. He is the subject of the Transmutation. A complete and perfect harmony is here realized beween the ‘interior’ and the ‘exterior’; there is no distinction between them. Borrowing the terminology of Ibn ‘Arab! we might say that the man on this high level of spiritual development is subjectively placed in the position of the Unity of Existence ( wahdah al-wujud), and personally experiences the whole world of Being in that posi- tion. The situation is described by Chuang-tzu in the following way: 51 Dying and being alive, being subsistent and perishing, getting into a predicament and being in the ascendant, being poor and being rich, being clever and being incompetent, being disgraced and being hon- ored, being hungry and thirsty, suffering from cold and heat - all these are but constant changes of (phenomenal) things, and results of the incessant working of Fate. All these things go on replacing one another before our own eyes, but no one by his Intellect can trace them back to their real origin. However, these changes are not powerful enough to disturb (the man who ‘sits in oblivion’ because he is completely one with the Transmu- tation itself), nor can they intrude into the ‘innermost treasury ’ 52 (of such a man). On the contrary, he maintains (his ‘innermost treasury’) in a peaceful harmony with (all these changes) so that he becomes one with them without obstruction, and never loses his spiritual delight. 346 347 Sufism and Taoism Day and night, without ceasing, he enjoys being in spring-tide with all things. Mingling with (the infinitely changing things on a supra- sensible level of existence) he goes on producing within his ‘interior’ the ‘time ’ 53 (of the world). Such a state I would call the perfection (i.e., perfect actualization) of the human potentiality . 54 When a man attains to this height of spiritual development, he fully deserves the title of Perfect Man. This, however, is not the last and ultimate stage of ‘sitting in oblivion’. There is a still higher stage beyond. That is the stage of ‘no more Death, no more Life’. Chuang-tzu sometimes calls it the ‘extreme limit ( chihf 55 of know- ledge ( chih ). 56 At this last stage, the man is completely unified not with the ever changing ‘ten thousand things’ - as was the case when he was in the previous stage - but with the ‘Mystery of Mysteries ’, 57 the ultimate metaphysical state of the Absolute, at which the latter has not yet come down to the sphere of universal Transmutation. The man is here so completely one with the Way that he has not even the consciousness of being one with the Way. The Way at this stage is not present as the Way in the consciousness of the man. And this is the case because there is no ‘consciousness’ at all anywhere, not even a trace of it. The ‘oblivion’ is complete. And the actualiza- tion of such a perfect ‘oblivion’ is to be accounted for in reference to the metaphysical fact that the ultimate Absolute, the Way, is in its absolute absoluteness Something which one cannot call even ‘some- thing’ . Hence the usual custom in oriental philosophies of referring to the Absolute as Nothing. The stages of the above-described spiritual development of ‘sitting in oblivion’ are variously discussed by Chuang-tzu in several places of his book. Sometimes he takes an ascending course, and some- times a descending course. The former corresponds to the real process by which the mind of a man gradually proceeds toward spiritual perfection. A typical example of this type of description is found in a passage 58 which claims to reproduce a conversation between a certain Nan Po Tzu K’uei and a Perfect Man (or Woman?) called Nii Yii. In this passage, Chuang-tzu gives a description of the stages which are traversed by a man who is born with a special potentiality to be a Perfect Man until he really reaches the last stage. The description is very interesting when it is considered as a Taoist counterpart to the Islamic fana' or self-annihilation’. The conversation starts from Nan Po Tzu K’uei’ s astonishment at the complexion of old Nii Yii, which, as he observes, is like that of a child. The Birth of a New Ego Nan Po Tzu You are old in years, Master, and yet your com- K’ u ei: plexion is like that of a child. Why? Nii Yii: (This is because) I have come to know the Way. Nan Po: Is it possible for me to learn the Way? Nii Yii: No. How could it be possible? You are not the right kind of man to do so. You know Pu Liang I. He had (from the beginning) the natural potentiality to be a ‘sacred man’, but he had not yet acquired the Way, whereas I had the Way but lacked the ‘potentiality ’. 59 I wanted to give him guidance to see if, by any chance, he could become a ‘sacred man’ . Even if I should fail to achieve my goal, it was, (I thought), easy for a man in possession of the Way to communicate it to a man in possession of the potentiality of a ‘sacred man’. Thus I persistently taught him. After three days, he learnt how to put the world outside his Mind. The ‘putting the world outside the Mind’ i.e., forgetting the exist- ence of the world, marks the first stage. The ‘world’ being some- thing objective - and therefore relatively far from the Mind - is the easiest thing for man to erase from his consciousness. After he had put the world outside himself, I con- tinued persistently to instruct him. And in seven days he learnt how to put the things outside his Mind. The ‘putting the things outside the Mind’ represents the second stage. Forgetting the existence of the world was not so difficult, but ‘things’ which are more intimately related with man resist being erased from the consciousness. As Kuo Hsiang remarks: ‘The things are needed in daily life. So they are extremely close to the ego. This is why they are so difficult to put outside the Mind ’. 60 And Ch’eng Hsiian Ying : 61 ‘The states of the whole world are foreign and far removed from us; so it is easy for us to forget them. The things and utensils that actually serve us in our everyday life are familiar to us; so it is difficult for us to forget them’ . By forgetting the familiar things that surround us and are con- nected with us in various ways in daily life, the external world completely disappears from our consciousness. After he had put things outside his Mind, I still con- tinued to instruct him. And in nine days he learnt how to put Life outside the Mind. This is the third stage. It consists in the man’s forgetting Life, that is to say, erasing from his consciousness the fact of his own Life, i.e., his own personal existence. This is the stage of dropping the ‘ego’. As a result, the world, both in its external and internal aspects. 348 349 Sufism and Taoism disappears from the consciousness. This stage is immediately fol- lowed by the next which is the sudden coming of the dawn of ‘illumination’. After he had put Life outside his Mind, (his inner eye was opened just as) the first light of dawn breaks through (the darkness of night). Once this ‘illumination’ is achieved, there are no more stages to come. Or should we say, there are stages to come, but they do not come successively; all of them become actualized simultaneously. If they are to be considered ‘stages’, they must be described as hori- zontal stages which occur at once and all together the moment the inner eye is opened by the penetrating ray of spiritual daybreak. The first of such stages is ‘perceiving the absolute Oneness’. The moment the day dawned, he saw the Oneness. This is the moment when all things and T become absolutely one. There is no more opposition of subject and object - the subject that ‘sees’ and the object ‘seen’ being completely unified - nor is there any distinction between ‘this’ and ‘that’, ‘existence’ and ‘non- existence’. ‘I’ and the world are brought back to their absolute original unity. And after having seen the Oneness, there was (in his consciousness) neither past nor present. At the stage of the absolute Oneness, there is no more conscious- ness of the distinction between ‘past’ and ‘present’. There is no more consciousness of ‘time’. We may describe this situation in a different way by saying that the man is now in the Eternal Now. And since there is no more consciousness of ever-flowing ‘time’ , the man is in the state of ‘no Death and no Life’. After having nullified past and present, he was able to enter the state of ‘no Death and no Life’. The state of ‘no Death and no Life’ can be nothing other than the state of the Absolute itself. The man at this stage is situated in the very midst of the Way, being identified and unified with it. He is beyond Life and Death, because the Way with which he is one is beyond Life and Death. The state of the Way or the Absolute, however, is not simply being beyond Life and Death. As is clearly shown by the very epistemological process by which man finally attains to it, this state is not sheer ‘nothing-ness’ in the purely negative sense. It is rather the ultimate metaphysical state, the absolute Unity, to which the dispersion of the ontological Multiplicity is brought back. It is a The Birth of a New Ego Unity formed by the unification of ‘ten thousand things’, a Unity in which all the things are existent, reduced to the state of Nothing-ness. There is ‘no Death and no Life’ here. That is to say, it is a state of complete Tranquillity and Stillness. There is no more even a trace of the noise and fuss of the world of sensible existence. And yet the Stillness is not the stillness of Death. There is no more movement observable. But it is not a state of non-movement in a purely negative sense. It is rather a dynamic non-movement, full of inter- nal ontological tensions, and concealing within itself infinite pos- sibilities of movement and action. Thus it is, in both of the aspects just mentioned, a coincidentia oppositorum. The Absolute, in this view, is Something which goes on realizing and actualizing ‘ten thousand things’ in their myriad forms and transforming them in a limitless process of Transmuta- tion, and yet at the same time keeping all these things in their supra-temporal and supra-spatial Unity. It is a Unity which is itself a Multiplicity. It is Stillness which is itself Ebullition. In the end of the passage Chuang-tzu refers to this aspect of the Way in the following words. That which kills Life does not die . 62 That which brings to Life every- thing that lives does not live . 63 By its very nature it sends off every- thing, and welcomes everything. There is nothing that it does not destroy. There is nothing that it does not perfect. It is, in this aspect, called Commotion-Tranquillity . 64 The name Commotion- Tranquillity refers to the fact that it (i.e., the Way) sets (all things) in turmoil and agitation and then leads them to Tranquillity. We must keep in mind that at this highest stage of spirituality, the man is completely unified and identified with the Way. Since, how- ever, the Way is nothing other than Commotion-Tranquillity, the man who is in complete union with the Way, goes through this cosmic process of the absolute Unity being diversified in turmoil and agitation into ‘ten thousand things’, and the latter going back again to the original state of Tranquillity . The ontology of Taoism is an ontology which is based upon such an experience. It would be natural for us to imagine that the view of Being in the spiritual eyes of a Taoist sage will be of an essentially different nature and struc- ture from that of an Aristotle, for example, who founds his philosophical edifice upon the ordinary ontological experience of an average man looking at the world around him at the level of sound and solid common sense. The most natural standpoint of philosophers of the latter kind is essentialism. In ancient China, the essentialist standpoint is represented by Confucius and his school. Both Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu take a determined position against it. 351 350 Sufism and Taoism The Birth of a New Ego The next chapter will be devoted to an elucidation of this particular 15 point. K 16. Tao Te Ching, III. Notes 1. tsao wuche see VII, p. 280). The name designates the Way in its ‘personal’ aspect. This aspect of the Way is referred to also by the name Great Lord, ta shih The word Heaven, t’ien ^ is also sometimes used with the same meaning. More details will be given later when we discuss the concept of ‘determinism’ (Chap. IX). 2. II, pp. 110-111. 3. is explained by Kuo Hsiang as r , ‘faint darkness surrounding the shadow’ . 4. The scales of a snake and the wings of a cicada have no independence in their movements. On the contrary all their movements are dictated by the snake and the cicada respectively. 5. hsin <{j. 6. The word appears in an important passage (IV, p. 150) which will be given in translation presently. 7. 8. mb , IV, p. 145. 9. J&'L , II, p. 56. My interpretation of this word is based on that given by Kuo Hsiang and Ch’eng Hsiian Ying. The latter says: , mzunmmmm, (P- 61). Some commen- tators (like Lin Hsi I , for instance, in his famous sfET p $ ) interpret the word in the opposite sense, as the inborn, naturally given mind, which is the mind in its celestial purity. But this latter interpretation does not, I think, do justice to the basic thought of Chuang-tzu on this problem. 10. ibid. 11. The word ch'ang is an ambiguous term in the Tao Te Ching, because Lao-tzu uses it in two diametrically opposed meanings. Sometimes - as is the case with the usage of the word in this passage - it means ‘unflexible’, ‘rigidly fixed’, which is the worst possible state of things in the philosophy of Lao-tzu. Sometimes - particularly in many of the passages of primary importance, as we shall see later - it is used in the sense of ‘never-changing’, ‘eternal’, and ‘absolute’. 12. Having no ‘fixed mind’ of his own, he accepts everything, whether ‘good’ or ‘bad’; rather, he does not distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’. 13. hun fflt, a characteristic word, whose meaning has been explained in an earlier passage in connection with Chuang-tzu’ s concept of the ‘chaotification’ of things. 17. hsin ijj, the discriminating activity of the intellect, the natural tendency of the Mind toward gaining ‘knowledge’. 18. chih ^ , that aspect of the Mind, which manifests itself in insatiably desiring more and more. 19. wu chih fata. 20. chih che, ill£ lit. ‘knowing men’, those men who claim to know the reality of things; who, therefore, are convinced that they are capable of giving the best advice on every important matter of human life. 21. LIII. 22. XXXIII. 23. We are reminded of the Islamic adage: Man ‘arafa najsa-hu ‘arafa rabba-hu'He who knows himself knows his Lord’, which, as we saw in the first Part of this study, plays an important role in the philosophy of Ibn ‘Arabi. 24. LII. 25. T. 26. m. 27. That the word te gSj, here translated as Virtue, is one of the most important of all the key terms of Lao-tzu, will be seen from the very fact that the Book itself is known by the title Tao Te Ching, i.e., the ‘Canonical Book of the Way and the Virtue’. 28. ‘All things under Heaven’ represent the Multiplicity of the phenomenal world, while the Beginning is the Unity as their ultimate ontological origin and source. 29. hsich’angQI?;. For the meaning of the word ch ’ang , see above, note (1 1). The word hsi means‘step into’, ‘enter’, here in the mystical sense of the ‘inner’ grasp of a thing, m-tuition. The word is used in XXVII in a very characteristic combination: hsi ming, ‘stepping into illumination’. 30. £. The word is here the same as both having the same pronunciation. As quoted by Han Fei Tsii ( ) we see actually used in this passage ( )• 31. XLVII. 32. Jg . On the relevance of his being a man of Ch’u to the whole topic of the present study, see above, Chap. I. 33. i.e., I am glad that you are keen enough to notice the difference. 34. i.e., I have lost my ‘ego’ and have stepped into the state in which there is no more distinction between ‘ego’ and ‘things’ . Lin Hsi I (fa#j®) says in his commentary: As 14. XLIX. 352 353 Sufism and Taoism long as there is'ego’ there are'things’. But when I lose my ‘ego’, there is no I’. And since there is no ‘I’, there are no ‘objects’. (BrTnJS; ad loc.) 35. VI, p. 284. 36. dt; cf. Ch’eng Hsuan Ying: [ftfe-mtu J, p. 285. 37. r*a»*aiib. p- 285 - 38. p. 285. 39. ibid. 40. The word used here for ‘fixity’ is ch’ang 'ft; , whose double meaning has been explained above; see notes 11 and 29. 41. See above, Chap. IV. 42. IV, pp. 146-148. 43. IS. 44. ^C. The word has already been explained before, Ch. II, Note 19. It is a proto-material and formless cosmic ‘reality’ which pervades the whole world of Being and which constitutes the ontological core of every single thing, whether animate or in-animate. Man is, of course, no exception to this. Thus man, on the level of the ch’i is homogeneous with all things as well as with the universe itself. Man cannot ‘listen with the ch’i,’ unless he has been completely unified with the universe. The ‘ego’ which listens, i.e., perceives, with the ch’i is no longer an ordinary epis- temological ‘subject’; it is the Cosmic Ego. 45. The text reads: rigikS^J, ‘listening stops with the ears’, which gives but a poor meaning. Following Yu Yiieh (fifcHi) I read r^ihRi8£ (cf.£5fe* adloc.). 46. i.e., the Mind is confined to elaborating the images received from the sense organs and fabricating out of them concepts that correspond to external objects which are fixed once for all in terms of ‘essences’ . It cannot identify itself, with infinite flexibility, with each of the infinitely varying phenomenal forms of ‘reality’. 47. IV, p. 150. 48. The repetition of the word ikinr^jj&ihikjis a little difficult to account for. Y u Yiieh simply disposes of the second as a scribal error on the ground that the sentence as quoted in other books does not have it. ( riLikiS;#!, However, the second lb can very well be understood also in the sense of ‘stillness’ or ‘no-motion’ as I have done following Ch’eng Hsuan Ying who says: P-151. 49. ‘The hua of ten thousand things’. 50. In doing this, I shall strictly follow Chuang-tzu’ s own description which he gives in Bk. II, p. 74. The passage itself will be given in translation at the outset of the following chapter. The Birth of a New Ego 51. V, p. 212. 52. ling /M,gjfrthe most secret part of the heart which is the central locus of all spiritual activity. 53. i.e. he goes on experiencing within himself, without being perturbed, the alter- nation of the four seasons, which is the ‘time’ of all phenomenal things. That is to say he is completely one with all things which are in the incessant process of transformation. 54. ts’ai ch’iian one of the key terms of Chuang-tzu. It means the natural human ability brought to the highest degree of perfection. 55 . m. 56. to II, p. 74, r&toi3f#Sj. 57. Hsuan chih yu hsuan r£;£X£ j, the expression is from the Tao Te Ching. It denotes the Way, but with a peculiar connotation which will be explained in the chapter concerning the concept of Way. 58. VI, pp. 252-253. 59. i.e., I had not the ‘ability’ or ‘potentiality’ to become a Perfect Man; I had ‘actually’ the Way from the very beginning. 60. rfci-, WBJiJgJ, p. 253. 61. mzvoms., p- 254 . 62. The Way brings everything existent to naught. But if it brings everything to naught and death, it must itself be something beyond Death. 63. Since the Way brings into existence everything that exists, it must itself be something that transcends Life, i.e., Becoming. 64. Ying ning }f It is one of the key terms of Chuang-tzu. According to Ch’eng Hsiian Ying, ying means ‘commotion’, ‘agitation’, and ning ‘tranquillity’, ‘stillness’ (rasw&m, p. 255). VI Against Essentialism Toward the end of the preceding chapter I pointed out the fact that in the Chuang-tzu, the stages of the ‘sitting in oblivion’ are traced in two opposite directions: ascending and descending. The first con- sists in starting from the lowest stage and going up stage by stage toward the ultimate and highest one. A typical example of this kind of description has just been given. The second, the descending course, is the reverse of the first. It starts from the highest stage and comes down to the lowest. As a proper introduction to the main topic of the present chapter, we shall begin by giving in translation a passage 1 from the Chuang-tzu in which the stages are described in this way. In this passage, Chuang-tzu, instead of speaking of ‘sitting in oblivion’, divides human knowledge of Reality into four classes which constitute among themselves a chain of successive degrees. These degrees are the epistemological stages corresponding to the ontological stages which Lao-tzu in his Tao Te Ching distinguishes in the process by which all things in the world of Being issue forth continuously from the absolute Unity of the Way. What is the ultimate limit of Knowledge? It is the stage represented by the view that nothing has ever existed from the very beginning. This is the furthest limit (of Knowledge), to which nothing more can be added. As we saw in the previous chapter, this is the ultimate stage to which man attains at the end of ‘sitting in oblivion’. Here the man is so completely unified with the Way and so perfectly identified with the absolute Reality, that the Way or the Reality is not even felt to be such. This is the stage of Void and Nothing-ness in the sense that has been explained above. About this stage Kuo Hsiang says: 2 ‘The man at this stage has completely forgotten Heaven and Earth, has put all existent things out of his mind. In the outside, he does not perceive the existence of the whole universe; in the inside, he has lost all consciousness of his own existence. Being limitlessly “void” , he is obstructed by nothing. Against Essentialism 355 He goes on changing as the things themselves go on changing, and there is nothing to which he does not correspond.’ Next is the stage at which there is the consciousness of ‘things’ being existent. But (in this consciousness) ‘boundaries’ between them have never existed from the very beginning. At this second stage, the man becomes conscious of the Way which contains all things in a state of pure potentiality. The Way will diversify itself at the following stage into ‘ten thousand things’. But here there are no ‘boundaries’ yet between them. The ‘things’ are still an undivided Whole composed of a limitless number of poten- tially heterogeneous elements. They are still an even plane, a Chaos, where things have not yet received ‘essential’ distinctions. Next (i.e., the third) is the stage at which ‘boundaries’ are recognized (among the things). However, there is as yet absolutely no distinction made between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Here the Chaos begins to disclose the definite forms of the things which it contains within itself. All things show their own demarca- tions, and each thing clearly marks its own ‘boundary’ by which it distinguishes itself from others. This is the stage of pure ‘essences’. The original Unity divides itself, and is diversified into Multiplicity, and the Absolute manifests itself as numberless ‘relative’ existents. As a result, the Reality which has previously been beyond the ken of human cognition comes for the first time into the limits of its grasp. And yet, even at this stage, the distinction is not made between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ . This indicates that at this third stage we are still in touch with the Way in its original integrity, although, to be sure, the contact with the Way is already indirect, because it is made through the veil of the ‘essences’. We may recall the myth of the Emperor Chaos (Hun Tun), which we read in Chapter II, who died as soon as his friends bored holes in his ‘featureless’ visage. In the light of the present passage, there is in this myth an oversim- plification. For Chaos does not ‘die’ simply by ‘holes’ (i.e., ‘essen- tial’ distinctions) being made in it. The true death of the Chaos occurs at the next stage. As soon as, however, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ make their clear appear- ance, the Way becomes damaged. And as soon as the Way is thus damaged, Love is born. With the appearance of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, Chaos loses its natural vitality and becomes fossilized as ‘essential forms’ stiff and inflex- ible as corpses. As Wang Hsien Ch’ien says: ‘When “right” and “wrong” are recognized, the “chaotic” integrity of the Way is immediately injured’. 3 356 Sufism and Taoism And no sooner this happens than Love is born. The birth of Love symbolizes the activity of such human emotions as love and hate, like and dislike. This is the last and lowest stage of Knowledge. Of course there is another aspect to the problem. The Way is here said to die with the appearance of human emotions like love and hate. But this is so only when one considers the situation in refence to the original ‘chaotic’ integrity, i.e., the original ‘undifferentiation’ of the Absolute. Otherwise, everything is a particular manifestation of the Way itself. And as such even a fossilized ‘essence’ is nothing other than a ‘self-determination’ of the Absolute. This aspect of the matter, however, is irrelevant to our present topic. As I remarked before several times - and it is particularly important to recall it once again for the right understanding of the philosophi- cal position Chuang-tzu takes against ‘essentialism’ - the descrip- tion just given of the four stages is not an abstract theory; it is a description of an experiential fact. It is a phenomenological descrip- tion of the experience of ekstasis. In the passage which has just been quoted, the process of ekstasis is described in a descending order. That is to say, Chuang-tzu describes the ‘return’ of consciousness. He starts from the highest stage of contemplation at which the ‘oblivion’ has been completed, and goes down step by step until he reaches the stage of normal consciousness. What is to be kept in mind in connection with this problem is that the whole process of ekstasis , whether considered in a descending or ascending order, is composed of two aspects which exactly corres- pond to each other. One is the subjective aspect, which we might call ‘epistemological’, and the other is the objective, or ‘metaphysi- cal’ aspect. Take, for example, the highest stage. On its subjective side, it is, as I have just said, a stage at which the contemplative in actual contemplation has consummated the ekstasis. He is now in com- plete ‘oblivion’ of everything, the world and himself included. This would naturally mean that he is in the state of Nothing-ness, because he is conscious of nothing, because there is no ‘conscious- ness’. And this subjective Nothing-ness corresponds to the objec- tive Nothing-ness of the Way. For the Way, too, is in its original absolute purity Nothing-ness, a state ‘where nothing has ever existed from the very beginning’ , that is, a metaphysical state where nothing whatsoever is distinguishable as^n existent. From such a state of perfect Void, subjective and objective, the contemplative starts coming back toward the daily state of mind. There begins to stir something in himself. Consciousness awakes in him to find ‘things’ existent. The consciousness, however, is still at this stage a dim and subdued light. It is not yet the glaring brilliance Against Essentialism 357 of full daylight. It is the crepuscule of consciousness, a twilight in which all things are only indistinctly and confusedly observable. Such a description of the situation might strike one as a negative evaluation. The state of consciousness at this stage is described as being a dim light merely because the description is made from the point of view of the ‘ normal’ consciousness of an ordinary mind. For the latter, the light of the ecstatic consciousness looks dim and indistinct because it does not distinguish and discriminate things from each other. In reality, however, such indistinctiveness is, for a Chuang-tzu, Reality as it really is. And since the real state of Reality is itself ‘dim’ and ‘indistinct’, the consciousness must of necessity be correspondingly ‘dim’, and ‘indistinct’. Only with such a dim light can Reality in its integrity be illumined. The glaring and dazzling light of normal consciousness does cast a strong spotlight on this or that particular object. But by concentrating the light on the particular object, it makes all the rest of the world sink into darkness. Referring to this point Chuang-tzu remarks: 4 Therefore, the diffused and indistinct Light is what is aimed at by the ‘sacred man’. He does not, however, use this Light (in order to illumine particular things), but lends it to all things universally. This is what is called ‘illumination’. The phrase here translated as ‘diffused and indistinct Light’ 5 means a kind of light of which one cannot be certain as to whether it exists or not; a light which, instead of being concentrated upon this or that particular object, is ‘diffused’ and pervades all. It is not a glaring, dazzling light. It is a dim, indistinct light, neither bright nor dark. In reality, however, it is the Universal Light which illumines every- thing as it really is. Chuang-tzu calls this kind of spiritual Light also the ‘shaded Light’ (pao kuang). 6 The word pao means ‘to cover’, ‘to conceal within’. As Ch’eng Hsiian Ying explains: ‘(The mind of the “sacred man”) forgets (to distinguish between things) and yet illumines all. And as it illumines them, it forgets them. That is why it shades and obscures its light, yet becomes ever more brilliant.’ The corresponding ‘objective’ side of this stage is ontologically the most important of all stages for Chuang-tzu. For this precisely is the stage of ‘chaotification’. In the subdued and diffused Light of the consciousness of the contemplative, the ‘ten thousand things’ loom up as if through the mist. They appear dim and indistinct because there are no ‘boundaries’, i.e., definite ‘essences’ or ‘quiddities’, to differentiate them one from the other. I say that this is ontologically the most important stage for 358 Sufism and Taoism Chuang-tzu, because the higher stage, that of the Absolute in its absoluteness, is properly speaking beyond all thinking and reason- ing, 7 while the lower one is the stage of ‘essences’ or ‘quiddities’, where all things appear to the consciousness distinctly separated from each other through their ‘boundaries’ . And Chuang-tzu fights against the view that this latter stage does represent Reality as it really is. Thus we see that the stage of ‘chaotification’, at which all things are observed in their original 4 undifferentiation’ , that is, beyond and apart from their ‘essences’, constitutes the pivotal point of Chuang- tzu’ s metaphysics. We might call this metaphysics ‘existentialism’, taking the word ‘existence’ ( existentia ) in the same sense as wujud in the metaphysical system of Ibn ‘Arabi. From the very outset I have been emphasizing implicitly as well as explicitly the ‘existentialist’ attitude of Chuang-tzu. I think I have made it sufficiently clear by now that its real meaning becomes understandable only when we relate it to the second stage (from above) of the ‘sitting in oblivion’ . It is a philosophical position based on the vision of Chaos. In this respect it stands opposed to the position taken by ‘essentialism’ which is based on a vision of Reality peculiar to, and typical of the epistemological-ontological stage where the ‘ten thousand things’ appear, each with a clearly marked ‘boundary’ of its own. In terms of the process of ‘sitting in oblivion’ - the Return process from the complete ekstasis back toward the ‘normal’ world of common sense -the ‘essentialist’ position belongs to the third stage explained above. Thus in the framework of such an experience, ‘existentialism’ represents a vision of Reality which is a stage higher than ‘essential- ism’. It is important to note that the latter is regarded as the third stage in the Return process of the ecstatic contemplation only as long as it is considered within this particular framework. In reality, however, the contemplative, when he comes down to this stage and becomes conscious of the things with clear ‘boundaries’, he is actu- ally already on a par with any ordinary man who knows nothing about the experience of ekstasis. His view of Being at this particular level is nothing unusual from the standpoint of common sense. On the contrary, it is a view of Being common to, and shared by, all men who are at all endowed with a ‘sound’ and ‘normal’ mind. ‘Essential- ism’, in other words, is the typical ontology of common sense. This statement, however, should not be understood as implying that, for a Chuang-tzu or a Lao-tzu, ‘essentialism’ is a wrong and mistaken view of Being, and that it distorts and disfigures the real structure of things. For ‘essentialism’ does represent and corres- pond to a certain definite stage in the evolving process of the Against Essentialism 359 Absolute itself. Besides, on its subjective side, ‘essentialism’ consti- tutes, as we have just seen, the third stage of the ‘sitting in oblivion’ in the Return process of the contemplation. And as such, there is nothing wrong about it. The serious problem arises only when the common sense refuses to see any difference in terms of ontological ‘levels’ between ‘exis- tentialism’ and ‘essentialism’ and begins to assert that the latter is the right view of Being. It is only then that a Chuang-tzu rises in an open revolt against ‘essentialism’. Since, however, it is of the very nature of common sense to view the things in an ‘essentialist’ way, Chuang-tzu and Lao-tzu constantly find themselves forced to mani- fest the attitude of revolt against such a view. Their philosophy, in this respect, may properly be characterized as a revolt against the ‘tyranny’ of Reason. Chuang-tzu sees a typical exemplification of the ‘essentialist’ position in the moral philosophy of Confucius. Confucian philos- ophy is, in Chuang-tzu’ s view, nothing but an ethical elaboration of ontological ‘essentialism’. The so-called cardinal virtues of Con- fucius like ‘humaneness’, ‘justice’, etc., are but so many products of the normal activity of the Mind which naturally tends to see every- where things rigidly determined by their own ‘essences’. The Real- ity in its absoluteness has no such ‘boundaries’. But a Confucius establishes distinctions where there are none, and fabricates out of them rigid, inflexible ethical categories by which he intends to regulate human behavior. Stop! Stop approaching men with (your teaching of) virtues! Dangerous, dangerous, indeed, is (what you are doing), marking off the ground and running within the boundaries ! 8 Ontological ‘essentialism’ is dangerous because as soon as we take up such an attitude, we are doomed to lose our natural flexibility of mind and consequently lose sight of the absolute ‘undifferentiation’ which is the real source and basis of all existent things. ‘Essential- ism’ will not remain in the sphere of ontology; it naturally grows into a categorization of values which, once established, begins to domi- nate our entire behavioral system. Chuang-tzu in the following passage 9 gives with keen sarcasm a symbolic picture of those people who are vainly engaged in ani- mated discussions over the ‘values’ of things, considering them as something absolute, something unalterably determined. The spring has dried up, and the fish are all on the ground. (In the agonies of death) they are spewing each other with moist breath and trying to moisten each other with froth and foam. It would be far better for them if they could forget each other in a wide river or sea. Likewide, the people praise a ‘great man’ and condemn a ‘bad man’. 360 Sufism and Taoism But it would be much better if they could forget both (‘good’ and ‘bad’) together and be freely ‘transmuted’ with the Way itself. ‘Essentialism’ would seem to be a philosophical position which is most suitable to the human mind. At any rate the Reason and the common sense which is but a vulgarized form of Reason naturally tend to take an ‘essentialist’ position. And the latter is that upon which our ordinary thinking depends. The gist of the ‘essentialist’ view may be concisely presented as a thesis that all things are endowed with ‘essences’ or ‘quiddities’, each thing being clearly marked off by its ‘essence’ from all others. A table is a table, for example, and it can never be a chair. The book which is upon the table is ‘essentially’ a book, and it is ‘essentially’ different from, or other than the table. There are ‘ten thousand’, i.e., innumerable, things in the world. But there is no confusion among them, for they are separated from one another by clear-cut lines of demarcation or ‘boundaries’ which are supplied by their ‘essences’. As I have said before, this ‘essentialist’ ontology in itself is nothing to be rejected. It gives a true picture of things, if it is put in the right place, that is to say, as long as one understands it to be the picture of things at a certain ontological level. Chuang-tzu takes no exception to this. The point he wants to make is that ‘essentialism’ should not be regarded as the one and ultimate view of things. And he does rise in revolt against it the moment one begins to make such a claim . For he is convinced that it is not the ultimate view of things. From the standpoint of a man who has seen things in a different light in his ecstatic vision, there is ontologically a stage at which the ‘essences’ become annihilated. This would simply mean for a Chuang-tzu that there are ‘from the very beginning’ - as he says - no such things as ‘essences’ in the sense of hard and solid ontological cores of things. In any event, the so-called ‘essences’ lose, in this view, their solidity, and become liquefied. ‘Dream’ and ‘reality’ become confused in the vast, limitless world of ‘undifferentiation’. There is no longer here any marked distinction to be drawn between a table and a chair, between a table and a book. Everything is itself, and yet, at the same time, all other things. There being no ‘essences’ , all things interpenetrate each other and transform themselves into one another endlessly. All things are ‘one’ - in a dynamic way. We might properly compare this view with Ibn ‘ ArabFs concept of the Unity of Existence, waljdah al-wujud. And we know already that this is what Chuang-tzu calls Chaos. Ibn ‘Arabi could speak of the Unity of Existence because he looked at the world of Multiplicity, the illimitable existents, as so many self-determinations or self- manifestations of the Absolute § Against Essentialism 361 § which is itself the absolute Unity. In a similar way, Chuang-tzu came to the idea of the ‘chaotification’ of things because he looked at them from the point of view of the Way, which is also the absolute metaphysical Unity. In contemporary Western philosophy, special emphasis has often been laid upon the ‘tyrannical’ power of language, the great forma- tive influence exercised by linguistic patterns on the molding of our thought. The influence of language is particularly visible in the formation of the ‘essentialist’ view of things. From the point of view of an absolute ‘existentialism’, there are no watertight compartments in the world of Being. Man, however, I ‘articulates’, that is, cuts up - arbitrarily, in most cases - this origi- j nally undivided whole into a number of segments. Then he gives a f particular name to each of these segments. A segment of Reality, I thus given a name, becomes crystallized into a ‘thing’. The name f gives it an ‘essential’ fixity, and thus ensures it from disintegration. I For better or for worse, such is in fact the power of language. I Language, in other words, positively supports ‘essentialism’. I Once a ‘thing’ is established with a definite name, man is easily led I into thinking that the thing is essentially that and nothing else. If a l thing is named A , it acquires A -ness, that is, the ‘essence’ of being A . i And since it is A ‘by essence’, it can never be other than A. One I could hardly imagine under such conditions the thing’s being B, C or D. The thing thus becomes something unalterably fixed and determined. This fundamental relation between ‘essentialism’ and language is noticed by Chuang-tzu. He notices it because he looks at the matter from the point of view of the absolute Way in which, as we have repeatedly pointed out, there is not even a trace of ‘essential’ determinations. The Way has absolutely no ‘boundaries’. Nor has language (which produces and expresses such ‘boundaries’) absolutely any perma- nency . 10 But (when the correspondence becomes established between the two) there arise real (essential) ‘boundaries ’. 11 Referring to the sophistic logic of the school of Kung Sun Lung, Chuang-tzu points out that this kind of logic is a product of linguistic ‘essentialism’. 12 Rather than trying to prove by means of ‘finger’ that a ‘finger’ is not a ‘finger’, why not prove by means of ‘non-finger’ that a ‘finger’ is not a ‘finger’? The meaning of this passage will become clear only when we under- stand it against the background of the sophistic logic which was 362 Sufism and Taoism prevalent in Chuang-tzu’ s time. The argument of the Sophists of the school of Kung Sun Lung may be summarized as follows. The concept of ‘finger’ comprises within itself the concepts of the thumb, the index, the middle, the third, and the little fingers. Actually there is no ‘finger’ other than these five. That is to say, the ‘finger’ must necessarily be one of these five. And yet, if we take up any one of them, the ‘index finger’ for example, we find it negating and exclud- ing all the rest, because the ‘index finger’ is not any of the other four fingers. Thus it comes about that the ‘index finger’ which is a real ‘finger’, is not a ‘finger’, because its concept applies exclusively to itself, not to the others. Against this Chuang-tzu remarks that such an argument is simply a shallow and superficial piece of sophistry. We do not gain anything even if we prove in this manner that a ‘finger’ is not a ‘finger’. However, there is a certain respect in which a ‘finger’ is properly to be considered a ‘non-finger’. And this latter view - although superficially it gives the same conclusion; namely, that a ‘finger’ is not a ‘finger’ - is not a piece of sophistry. It is a view standing on the ‘chaotification’ of things, and it goes to the very heart of the struc- ture of Reality. The term ‘non-finger’ which appears in the second half of the above-quoted statement is not intended to be the logical contradic- tory of ‘finger’. It means something like a ‘super-finger’, or an ontological state in which a ‘finger’ is no longer a ‘finger’. ‘Why not prove by means of “non-finger”?’, Chuang-tzu asks. He means to say: instead of wasting time in trying to prove by logical tricks - as Kung Sun Lung and his followers are doing - that ‘a finger is not a finger’ on the very level of ‘a finger is a finger’, we had better transcend at a stroke the ontological level of ‘essential’ distinctions and see with the eye of ‘illumination’ the reality of the situation. For, in fact, on the level of ‘chaotification’, a ‘finger’ is no longer necessarily a ‘finger’, it is no longer so solidly fixed that it can never be anything other than itself. All things are one, and we have no reason to stick obstinately to the idea that since A is A, it cannot be anything other than A. Thus the statement: ‘a “finger” is not a “finger” ’ is found to be true; but, this time, on a higher level than the one on which the Sophists are trying hard to establish the same statement. Chuang-tzu gives one more example, that of a ‘horse’ not being a ‘horse’, which was also a notorious topic of the Sophists of his time. Rather than trying to prove by means of ‘horse’ that a ‘horse’ is not a ‘horse’ , why not prove by means of ‘non-horse’ that a ‘horse is not a ‘horse’? Against Essentialism 363 The structure of the argument is exactly the same as the previous one. The Sophists claim that a ‘horse’ is not a ‘horse’ on the basis of the following observation. The concept of ‘horse’, they say, must be applicable to horses of different colors like ‘white horse’, ‘yellow horse’, ‘black horse’ etc., and no ‘horse’ which is actually existent is colorless. Every actually existent horse is either white, or black, or yellow, etc. And there can be no exception. Let us take a ‘white horse’ as an example. The ‘white horse’, being white, naturally excludes all horses of other colors. The concept cannot apply to a ‘black horse’, for instance, or a ‘yellow horse’. And the same is true of any horse of any color. Since, however, the concept of ‘horse’ must be such that it applies to all horses of all colors, we must conclude that no actually existent horse is a ‘horse’. The Sophists in this way establish, or claim to establish, that a ‘horse’ is not a ‘horse’. Against this, Chuang-tzu takes the position that, even admitting that they are right in this argument, the conclu- sion which they reach thereby is devoid of real significance. As in the case of the preceding argument about ‘finger’, Chuang-tzu points out that there is a respect in which exactly the same conclu- sion can be maintained, but with an entirely new meaning. Here again the term ‘non-horse’ refers to the metaphysical level at which all ‘essential’ distinctions are eliminated through ‘chaotification’. Once we put ourselves on such a level, we perceive that a ‘finger’ is a ‘finger’ and yet, at the same time, is not a ‘finger’ , that a ‘horse’ is a ‘horse’ and yet is not a ‘horse’. And the same holds true of everything else. We can even go to the extreme of asserting that the whole world is a ‘finger’, and the whole world is a ‘horse’. Heaven and Earth (i.e., the whole universe) are a ‘finger’. All things }; are a ‘horse’. | Heaven and Earth with ‘ten thousand things’ that exist therein are l; but an ‘undifferentiated’ whole, in which all things ontologically interpenetrate one another. In such a state, a ‘horse’ is not unalter- ably a ‘horse’; it can be anything else. Looking at this particular situation from the reverse side we could say that all things are entitled to be regarded as a ‘horse’ or ‘finger’, or indeed, anything else. From such a standpoint, Chuang-tzu goes on to criticize the ‘essentialist’ position in the following manner . 13 (Instead of looking at the matter from the viewpoint of ‘non-finger’ and ‘non-horse’, people divide up the originally undifferentiated whole of Being into various categories which, again, they classify into ‘right’ and ‘not-right’) and insist on the ‘right’ being unalterably ‘right’ and the ‘not-right’ being unalterably ‘not-right’. (The distinc- tion, however, between ‘right’ and ‘not-right’, far from being 364 Sufism and Taoism something 'essential', i.e., something based on the very nature of Being, is but a matter of custom and habit, just as) a road is formed (where there was none before) merely by people walking constantly upon it. Likewise, the ‘things’ are formed by their being designated by this or that particular name (simply by virtue of a social custom or convention ). 14 (And once the ‘things' are thus crystallized, they are considered as either ‘right’ or ‘not-right’, ‘so’ or ‘not-so’). On what ground does man judge a thing to be ‘so?’ He judges to be ‘so’ whatever (other people or ‘society’ by custom) judge to be ‘so’. On what ground does man judge a thing to be ‘not-so’? He is merely judging it to be ‘not-so’ because (other people) judge it (by custom) to be ‘not-so’. (However, from the viewpoint of ‘illumination’, the reality of things can only be grasped when one puts oneself on a higher level of non-discriminating acceptance which transcends all such relative distinctions. And viewed from such a place) there is a certain respect in which everything without exception is to be regarded as being ‘so’ (i.e., affirmable and acceptable), and everything without exception is to be regarded as ‘right’. There is nothing that is not ‘so’. There is nothing that is not ‘right’. Whether a stalk of grain or a great pillar, whether a leper or a (beautiful lady like) Hsi Shih, however strange , bizarre, ugly and grotesque things may be, the Way makes them all one. The Reality perceived on such a level is called by Chuang-tzu Heavenly-Equalization , 15 or Walking-Two- Ways (at the same time ). 16 The former term means a ‘natural’ metaphysical state in which all things, without being disturbed by the distinctions be- tween ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, etc., repose in their original harmony or equality. And since, as Ch’eng Hsiian Ying observes, the ‘sacred man’ always sees things in such a state of Equality, his mind too reposes in an eternal peace, being never disturbed by the distinctions and differences among things. The second term, literally meaning ‘going both ways’, refers to the same metaphysical state in which ‘good’ and ‘bad’ , or ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ , are both equally acceptable; a state, in other words, in which all opposites and contradictories become acceptable in the ultimate Unity of coincidentia oppositorum. It is highly significant that the second chapter of the Chuang-tzu is entitled Ch’i Wu Lun, 11 i.e., ‘Discourse on Equalizing (All) Things’. The chapter is so entitled because it is mainly concerned with the view according to which all things are ‘equal’, that is, ultimately One. And since, according to this view, such ‘equalization’ of things is justifiable only at the level of ‘existence’ , not at that of ‘ essences’ , I consider this theory rightly comparable with Ibn ‘Arabi’s Unity of Existence. Against Essentialism 365 ‘ Essentialism’ , if it is to be a philosophical view of existents, must be able to explain the whole of the world of Being. And it does intend - and does claim, implicitly at least - to be comprehensive enough to cover all things. But how, in actual fact, could it be so when its very nature consists in isolating single ontological units, making them ‘essentially’ independent of one another? If one makes such an approach to things, and yet wants to comprehend all of them, one is forced to have recourse to the method of enumeration and addition. But, however far one may go in this direction, one will never reach the ultimate end. For no matter how many independent units one may pile up one upon another, one will be left with an infinite number of things still untouched and uncomprehended. Thus essentialism’ is by its very nature utterly incapable of grasping the reality of the world of Being in its infinite complexity and in its limitless development and transformation. In order to comprehend the whole of the world of Being as it really is and as it really works, we must, Chuang-tzu maintains, abandon the level of essential’ distinctions, and, by unifying ourselves with ‘existence’ itself which pervades all things, look at all things in their original state of ‘chaotification’ and ‘undifferentiation’. Instead of formulat- ing this thesis in such a theoretical form, Chuang-tzu explains his point through the concrete example of Chao Wen, a famous lute player. That a thing can become ‘perfect’ and ‘defective’ (at the same time) may aptly be exemplified by what happens when Chao Wen plays the lute. That a thing can remain ‘not-perfect’ and ‘not-defective’ may aptly be exemplified by what happens when Chao Wen does not plav the lute . 18 The meaning of the passage may be explicated as follows. Chao Wen is a musician of genius. When he plays the lute, the particular piece of music which he plays becomes actualized in a perfect form. This is what is referred to by the expression: ‘that a thing can become perfect’. However , by the very fact that Chao Wen plays a particular piece of music and actualizes it in a perfect form, the infinite number of other pieces which are left behind become darkened and nullified. This is what is meant by the thing being ‘defective’ at the same time. Thus a perfect actualization of one single piece of music is at the same time the negation and nullification of all other possibilities. Only when Chao Wen does not actually play, are we in a position to enjoy all the pieces of music which he is capable of actualizing. And only in such a form is his music ‘perfect’ in an absolute sense, that is, in a sense in which it transcends the very distinction between ‘per- fection’ and ‘imperfection’ (or ‘defectiveness’). 366 Sufism and Taoism The ‘equalization’ of all things thus brings us into the very core of the reality of Being. If, however, one sticks to this idea and discards completely the phenomenal aspect of things, one falls into an equally inexcusable error. For, after all, the infinitely various and variegated phenomena are also an aspect of Reality. Certainly, the music of Chao Wen is ‘perfect’ in an absolute sense, only when he does not play his lute. But it is also true that the possibilities that lie hidden in his ability are destined to be ‘perfected’ in a relative sense and will never cease to work up their way from possibility to actuality even to the detriment of one another. Both forms of ‘perfection’, absolute and relative, fundamental and phenomenal, are essential to the reality of his music. Likewise, in the ontological structure of things, both the original ‘undifferentiation’ and the phenomenal ‘differentiation’, or Unity and Multiplicity, are real. If Chuang-tzu emphasizes so much the former aspect, it is chiefly because at the common sense level of human experience the phenomenal aspect is so prominent and so dominant that it is commonly considered the reality. The root of Being is absolutely one. But it does not repose forever in its original Unity. On the contrary, it belongs to the very nature of Being that it never ceases to manifest itself in infinite forms. It goes on diversifying itself into ‘ten thousand things’ which, again, go on endlessly transforming themselves into one another. This is the phenomenal aspect of Being. But by going through this very process of ontological ‘diversification’ and ‘differentiation’ all things are returning to their ultimate metaphysical source. The process of ‘descent’ and the process of ‘ascent’ are paradoxically one and the same thing. The relation between Unity and Multiplicity must be understood in this way. Just as Unity is not a static ‘oneness’ of death and rigidity, but is a never-ceasing dynamic process of a coincidentia oppositorum , Multiplicity is not a static ‘differentia- tion’ of things that are rigidly fixed once for all, but is a constant life process which contains within itself the ontological tension of Unity in Multiplicity. If looked at from the viewpoint of ‘differentiation’, (nothing is the same as anything else), and even liver and gall (a typical example of two things closely resembling each other), are as different and as far apart as the country of Ch’u and the country of Yiieh. However, looked at from the viewpoint of ‘sameness’, all things are one and the same . 19 Unfortunately, the eyes of ordinary men are dazzled by the pheno- menal scintillations of Multiplicity and cannot perceive the pro- found Unity that underlies the whole. They cannot, as Chuang-tzu says, ‘unify the objects of their knowledge’. 20 Against Essentialism 367 The only right attitude we can take in such a situation is to ‘let our minds be at ease in the harmony of spiritual perfection’ . 21 The word ‘harmony’ {ho) here refers, as Ch’eng Hsiian Ying remarks, to the fact that when we ‘unify the objects of our knowledge’ and ‘chaotify’ all things, our mind enjoys a perfect peace, being no longer dis- turbed by ‘what our ears and eyes approve’ ; it refers also to the fact that all things at this level are peacefully together, there being no ‘essential’ oppositions between them. We must not be blind to the phenomenal aspect of Being, Chuang-tzu says; but it is wrong for us to remain confined in the same phenomenal world and observe the Multiplicity of things exclusively from the phenomenal point of view. We must transcend such a stage, go up to a higher level, and looking down from that height observe the kaleidoscope of the ever-shifting Multiplicity of things. Only when we do this, are we in a position to know the reality of Being. The dynamic relation between the original absolute Unity and the phenomenal Multiplicity, that is to say, the process by which the Absolute, stepping out of its metaphysical darkness, diversifies itself into a myriad of things of the phenomenal world is something which, as I have repeatedly pointed out discloses its reality only to a mind in the state of ekstasis, or as Chuang-tzu calls it, ‘sitting in oblivion’. Particularly difficult to understand for a non-ecstatic mind is the ontological status of ‘essences’. As the Absolute divides itself through a process of ontological evolvement into ‘ten thousand things’, each one of the latter does seem to acquire a particular ‘essence’. For, after all, what is the meaning of talking about ‘ten thousand things’, if they are not distinguishable from each other? How could they be distinguishable from each other if they were devoid of ‘essences’? When we recog- nize A as being different and distinguishable from B, are we not at the same time recognizing A as being endowed with an ‘essence’ which is different from that of B1 From the viewpoint of Chuang-tzu, however, the things being endowed with ‘essences’ and their being ‘essentially’ distinguish- able from one another is simply a matter of appearance. Each of the ‘ten thousand things’ appears to have its own ‘essence’ unalterably fixed once for all. In fact, it merely appears or seems to have such an ‘essence’. But our picture inevitably becomes complicated by the fact that those seeming ‘essences’ are not sheer nothing, either. They are not mere products of hallucination. They do have an ontological status peculiar to them. They are not ontologically groundless. The abso- lute all-pervading ‘existence’ can take on an infinite variety of forms because there is a kind of ontological basis for them. We cannot 368 Sufism and Taoism certainly say that the ‘essences’ exist in the ordinary sense of the world. But we cannot say either that they are absolutely non- existent. It is at this point that Ibn ‘Arab!, as we remember, introduced the concept of ‘permanent archetypes’ ( a‘yan thabitah ) into his metaphysical system. And the concept did work admirably well. For Ibn ‘Arab! succeeded thereby in philosophically settling the difficulty raised by this paradoxical situation. The ‘permanent archetypes’ are those metaphysical principles which can ‘be said neither to exist nor not to exist’, and through which the all- pervading divine Existence becomes inflected into a myriad of ‘things’. But for him, too, it was not basically a philosophical ques- tion; it was rather a matter of an ecstatic vision. Chuang-tzu has no such philosophical device. Instead, he resorts directly, as he often does, to a symbolic presentation of the content of his metaphysical vision. As a result, we now have what is unanim- ously acknowledged to be one of the most masterly descriptions of Wind in Chinese literature. It is not, of course, a mere literary piece of work. It is a philosophical symbol which Chuang-tzu uses for the purpose of expressing verbally what is verbally inexpressible. Furthermore, the whole passage is philosophically of supreme importance, because, as we shall see immediately, it constitutes what we might call a Taoist ‘proof of the existence of God’. The beginning part of the passage is purely symbolic. Its real philosophical meaning may best be understood if, in reading it, one keeps in mind that the Cosmic Wind symbolizes ‘existence’, or the Absolute in its all-pervading actus, and that the hollow ‘ openings’ of the trees symbolize ‘essences’. The Great Earth eructates; and the eructation is called Wind . 22 As long as the eructation does not actually occur, nothing is observable. But once it does occur, all the hollows of the trees raise ringing shouts. Listen! Do you not hear the trailing sound of the wind as it comes blowing from afar? The trees in the mountain forests begin to rustle, stir, and sway, and then all the hollows and holes of huge trees measuring a hundred arms’ lengths around begin to give forth differ- ent sounds. There are holes like noses, like mouths, like ears; some are (square) like crosspieces upon pillars; some are (round) as cups, some are like mortars. Some are like deep ponds; some are like shallow basins. (The sounds they emit are accordingly various): some roar like torrents dashing against the rocks; some hiss like flying arrows; some growl, some gasp, some shout, some moan. Some sounds are deep and muffled, some sounds are sad and mournful. As the first wind goes away with the light trailing sound, there comes the following one with a deep rumbling sound. To a gentle wind the Against Essentialism 369 hollows answer with faint sounds. To a stormy wind they answer with loud sounds. However, once the raging gale has passed on, all these hollows and holes are empty and soundless. You see only the boughs swaying silently, and the tender twigs gently moving . 23 As I said before, this is not intended to be a mere literary description of wind. Chuang-tzu’s real intention is disclosed by what follows this passage. The philosophical intention of Chuang-tzu may be formu- lated in the following way. The ‘hollows’ and ‘holes’ of the trees imagine that they are independently existent, that they emit these sounds. They fail to notice that they emit these sounds only by the active working of the Wind upon them. It is, in reality, the Wind that makes the ‘hollows’ resound. Not that the ‘hollows’ do not exist at all. They are surely there. But they are actualized only by the positive activity of the Wind. As is evident, this is a very apt description of the ontological status of ‘essences’, which was mentioned earlier. It is also evident that the Wind here is not an ordinary physical wind. It is the Cosmic Wind corresponding exactly to Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of sarayan al-wujud, lit. the ‘spreading of Existence’. It is interesting and, indeed, extremely significant, that both Ibn ‘Arab! and Chuang-tzu conceive of ‘existence’ as something moving - ‘blowing’, ‘flowing’, or ‘spreading’. For both of them, ‘existence’ is actus. (One and the same Wind) blows on ten thousand things in different ways, and makes each hollow produce its own peculiar sound, so that each imagines that its own self produces that particular sound. But who, in reality, is the one who makes (the hollows) produce various sounds ? 24 Who is it? In order to give the right answer to this crucial question, we must remark first of all that the Cosmic Wind has no sound of its own. The ‘sound of Heaven’ ( t’ien lai) is soundless. What is audible to our physical ears are only the ten thousand sounds produced by the hollows of the trees. They are not the sound of Heaven; they are but the ‘sound of Earth’ (ti lai). But, Chuang-tzu insists, we must hear the soundless sound of Heaven behind each of the ten thousand sounds of Earth. Rather, we must realize that in hearing the sound of Earth we are really hearing nothing other than the sound of Heaven. The infinitely various sounds which the hollows emit are no other than the one, absolute sound of Heaven. It is to be remarked that exactly the same question: ‘Who is it?’ can and must be asked of what actually is observable in the ‘interior’ region of our own being. Just as the ‘hollows’ of the trees emit all 370 Sufism and Taoism kinds of sounds as the Wind blows upon them, the ‘interior’ of man is in a state of constant turmoil. Who causes all this commotion? That is the central question. Are the minds of men themselves responsible for it? Or are the stimuli coming from external things its causes? No, Chuang-tzu answers. But let us first see how he describes the inner ‘hollows’ interminably producing noises and sounds. Even while asleep, the souls of men are (tormented) by coming into touch with various things (in dreams). When they wake up, the bodily functions begin to be active; they get entangled with external things, and all kinds of thoughts and emotions are aroused in them. And this induces them to use their mind every day in quarreling with others. Some minds are idle and vacant. Some minds are abstruse. Some are scrupulous. Those who have petty fears are nervous; those who are assailed by great fears are simply stupefied. The way they argue about the rightness and wrongness of matters reminds us of those who shoot arrows and missiles (i.e., they are extremely quick and active). They endeavor to secure a victory (in disputes) as if they had sworn before the gods. The way they go on consuming (their mental energy) day by day reminds us of (the leaves of trees) fading away in autumn and winter. They have gone so far into delusion and perlexity that it is no longer possible for them to be brought back. The way they fall deeper and deeper into infatuation as they grow older reminds us of minds firmly sealed with seals (of cupidity). Thus, when their minds draw near to death, there is no means of bringing them back to youthful bright- ness. Indeed (the movements of human minds are infinitely various as are the sounds produced by the hollows of the trees): joy, anger, sadness, and delight! Sometimes they worry about the future; sometimes they vainly bewail the irretrievable past. Sometimes fickle, sometimes obstinate. Sometimes flattering, sometimes self-conceited. Some- times candid, sometimes affected. They remind us of all kinds of sounds emerging from the empty holes (of a flute), or mushrooms coming up out of warm dampness. Day and night, these changes never cease to replace one another before our eyes. Where do these (incessant changes) sprout from? No one knows their origin. It is impossible to know, absolutely impossible! It is an unde- niable fact, however, that morning and evening these things are actually happening (in ourselves). Yea, precisely the fact that they are happening (in ourselves) means that we are alive ! 25 After describing in this way the endless psychological events which are actually taking place in our minds day and night, Chuang-tzu proceeds to an interpretation of this bewildering phenomenon. What is the real and ultimate cause of all this? He asks himself whether the ultimate cause of this psychological turmoil is our ‘ego’ . Against Essentialism 371 To say that the ‘ego’ is the cause of all this is nothing other than recognizing - indirectly - that the stimuli coming from the external world are the causes of our psychological movement. He describes this relation between the external stimuli and the changing states of our minds in terms of a relation between ‘that’ (i.e., the objects) and ‘ego’. Without ‘that’, there would be no ‘ego’. Without ‘ego’, ‘that’ would have nothing to lay hold of. (Thus our ‘ego’, i.e., the whole of our psychological phenomena, would seem to owe its existence to exter- nal stimuli). This view appears to come close to the truth. And yet it still leaves the question unanswered as to what really does make (our minds) move as they do . 26 Chuang-tzu admits that external stimuli do excite commotions in our minds. Such a view, however, does not reach the very core of the matter. Those who imagine that this view is capable of fully account- ing for the psychological changes that are taking place in ourselves are comparable to the ‘holes’ and ‘hollows’ of the trees that naively imagine that they themselves are producing the sounds they pro- duce, without paying attention to the activity of the Wind. Beyond the stimuli coming from the external objects, there is Something which is the ultimate cause, Something which induces external objects to act upon our minds and thereby cause the latter to become agitated. Beyond and behind all these phenomena there seems to be a real Agent who moves and controls all movements and all events in our minds, just as there is a Wind behind all the sounds produced by the ‘holes’. However, just as the Wind is invisible and impalpable, so is this Agent unknowable and unseen. But just as we can feel the existence of the Wind - although it is invisible - through its activity, we can feel the existence of the Agent through His actus. It would seem that there is some real Ruler . 27 It is impossible for us to see Him in a concrete form. He is acting - there can be no doubt about it; but we cannot see His form. He does show His activity, but He has no sensible form . 28 It is philosophically very important that Chuang-tzu asserts that the Absolute in its personal aspect, i.e., as the absolute Agent, is only accessible to our understanding as actus. The Absolute in this aspect is actus \ it is not a ‘thing’. Without having any sensible form, that is, without being a ‘thing’, it never ceases to manifest its activity. We can only follow its trace, everywhere, in everything. But we can never see its form because it has no form and because it is not a ‘thing’ . However, the human mind is by its own nature an ‘essential- ist’. It finds it extremely difficult, if not absolutely impossible to represent anything except in the form of a ‘thing’. It cannot, except 372 Sufism and Taoism in very rare cases, conceive of anything as Nothing. The conception of the Absolute as Something which is Nothing is to an ordinary mind simply an intolerable paradox, if not sheer nonsense. In order to render this metaphysical paradox a bit more accept- able, Chuang-tzu compares the situation with the complicated functioning of the members and organs of the body, the whole mechanism of which is governed and controlled by an invisible ‘something’: the soul. One hundred joints, nine openings, six entrails - these constitute a human body. Now of all these, which one should we respect most (i.e., which should we regard as the Ruler of the body)? Do you say that you respect (as the Rulers) all of them equally? (No, that is impossible). Then, do you favor one of them as particularly your own? (No, that again is impossible). But, if not (i.e., if neither all of them nor any particular one of them is in a position to rule over the body), is it the case that all of them are mere servants and maids? (However, if they were all servants and maids), how could the country (i.e., the body) be kept in order? Or is it the case that they rule and are ruled, occupying the positions of the Ruler and the subjects by turns? No, there does exist a real Ruler (who governs them all). And whether or not man knows the concrete form of this Ruler, his reality is never affected thereby; it neither increases nor decreases thereby . 29 The true Ruler in this case is the soul whose concrete form is known to nobody. But of course this is here put forward as an image which would clarify the relation between the Absolute and all events and all phenomena in the world of Being. Just as the bodily organs and members are under the domination of the invisible soul, all that exists and happens in the world is under the dominion of the unknown-unknowable Ruler. As I pointed out earlier, it is highly significant that Chuang-tzu here presents the ‘true Ruler’ of the world as actus. No one can see the Absolute itself as ‘something’ existent, but no one can deny, either, the presence of its actus. And that actus is philosophically nothing other than Existence. We have to notice also that the actus of the Absolute which, in the earlier passage, was described as the Cosmic Wind, i.e., a cosmic force, is here presented as something personal - God. In the world- view of Chuang-tzu, the Absolute or the Way has two different aspects, cosmic and personal. In its cosmic aspect the Absolute is Nature, a vital energy of Being which pervades all and makes them exist, grow, decay, and ultimately brings them back to the original source, while in its personal aspect it is God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the Lord of all things and events. As conceptions and Against Essentialism 373 representations, the two are totally different from one another, but in reality both point to exactly one and the same thing. The differ- ence between Nature and God is merely a matter of points of view, or the ways in which the human mind conceives of the Absolute which is in itself wholly unknown and unknowable. To this ultimate metaphysical mystery we shall try to come closer in the following chapter. >; Notes I' 1. II, p. 74. n 2 - ibid -i P- 75: nitrite, ft, 'j 3. [Jim, T 4. II, p. 75. i\ 5. rmmzmj. 0 6. SI*,II,p.83*S*:r«icife. II,p. 89. 7. Lao-tzu, however, does think and talk about this ‘ineffable’ Something. We shall come to this point in the following chapter. 8. Chuang-tzu IV, p. 183. 9. VI, p. 242. 10. i.e., the words which correspond to these ‘boundaries’ have no unalterable semantic fixity. 11. II, p. 83. 12. II, p. 66. 13. II, pp. 69-70. 14. Note again how Chuang-tzu attributes ‘essence’ -forming power to language. A thing which in its original state, is ‘nameless’, turns into something rigidly fixed and unchangeable, once it is given a definite name. 15. t’lenchun p. 70. Ch’eng Hsuan Ying:r^jtj(=^) p. 74. 16. Hang hang Wit, p. 70. 17. This can also be understood as meaning ‘Equalization of Various Views on Being , i.e., the nullification of the opposition among various views on Being on the level of absolute transcendence. 374 Sufism and Taoism 18. II, p. 74. 19. V, p. 190. 20. V, p. 193. r-*o£f?r£oj, lit. ‘to unify what is known by the knowledge’. 21. V, p. 191 Commenting upon this phrase Ch’eng Hsiian Ying says: P- 192. 22. The issuing forth of the phenomenal things from the absolute One is here compared to the great Earth belching forth the Wind. Note the remarkable similarity of this mythopoeic image to that used by Ibn ‘ Arabi when the latter tries to describe the ontological inner tension of the Divine Names within the Absolute, which is so acute that it cannot but be relieved by the Names ‘bursting out’; see Pa*rt I, pp. 125-126. 23. pp. 45-46. 24. II, p. 50. 25. II, p. 51. 26. II, p. 55. 27. chentsai , . 28. II, p. 55. 29. II, pp. 55-56. VII The Way Up to this point we have been following the footprints of Chuang- tzu as he tries to describe analytically the process by which a vision of the Absolute is revealed to the Taoist Perfect Man, opening up in his mind a new vista of the whole world of Being which is totally different from, and radically opposed to, that shared by ordinary men on the level of common sense. In so doing we have discarded Lao-tzu except in a few places. Nor have we analyzed in a systematic manner the philosophical thought expressed in the Tao Te Ching. We have adopted this course for several reasons, the most impor- tant of them being that Chuang-tzu, as I have pointed out a number of times, is vitally interested in describing the epistemological aspect of the problem of the Tao, while Lao-tzu is almost exclu- sively interested in giving the result of the experience of the Abso- lute, i.e., what comes after, and out of, that experience. We have seen in the preceding chapter how Chuang-tzu submits to an elaborate theoretical analysis the process of the gradual development of the human mind toward a Taoist perfection. He attempts to give an accurate description of the Taoist variety of metaphysical or spiritual experience by which man ‘ascends’ toward the Absolute until he becomes completely unified with it. Certainly, Chuang-tzu is equally interested in the ‘descending’ movement of the mind, from the state of ekstasis back to the level of daily consciousness, that is, from the stage of the absolute Unity back to that of ‘essential’ Multiplicity. But even then, his description of the Descent is epistemological as well as ontological. That is to say, his description is made so that to each objective stage of Being there corresponds a subjective stage of spiritual experience, so that the ontological system, in the case of Chuang-tzu, is at the same time a complete epistemological system, and vice versa. Moreover, it is typical of Chuang-tzu that these two aspects are so completely fused together that it is at times difficult for us to decide whether a given passage is intended to be a description of the subjective side of the matter or of the objective, ontological structure of things. The ‘sitting in oblivion’ is an example in point. 376 377 Sufism and Taoism Lao-tzu, on the contrary, does not seem to be very much interested in the experiential stages which precede the ultimate vision of the Absolute. He does not take the trouble to explain how and by what process we can obtain the vision of the Absolute. He seems to be more interested in the questions: (1) What is the Absolute, i.e., the Way?; and (2) How is the ‘sacred man expected to behave in ordinary circumstances of social life on the basis of his vision of the Way? From the very outset he utters his words in the name of the Absolute, as a representative of those who have already attained to the highest stage of Taoist perfection. Behind the pages of the Tao Te Ching we feel the presence of a man who has experienced the most intimate union with the Absolute, who, consequently knows what the Absolute is. Quite abruptly Lao-tzu sets out to talk about the Way. He tries to impart to us his personal knowledge of the Absolute, and his strange - so it seems to common sense understanding - vision of the world. If it were not for Chuang-tzu, we would hardly be able to know for sure what kind of experiential background this extraordinary vision of the world has as its unstated ‘prehistory’ . This is why we have up till now intentionally refrained from turning systematically toward an analysis of Lao-tzu’s thought, and confined ourselves to the task of clarifying this ‘prehistory’ in the light of what Chuang-tzu says about it. But the particular situation which we have just mentioned con- cerning Lao-tzu’s basic attitude would seem to suggest that the Tao Te Ching is the best possible thing for us to have recourse to, if we want to obtain a clear understanding of the Taoist conception of the Absolute, its reality and its working. As we shall realize immedi- ately, the Absolute as conceived by Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu is by its very nature beyond all verbal description. Despite that, Lao-tzu does endeavor to describe, at least symbolically, this ineffable Something. And he succeeds marvellously. In point of fact, the Tao Te Ching is a remarkable work in that it attempts to delineate to the utmost limit of possibility the Absolute which is essentially inde- scribable. This is why we shall be greatly dependent in the present chapter upon this book for elucidating the metaphysical structure of the Absolute. We must remark, however, that here again, Lao-tzu does not explain how and why it is ineffable, and indescribable. He simply states that the Way is ‘nameless’, ‘formless’, ‘imageless , invisible , ‘inaudible’ , etc., that it is ‘nothing’ (wu wu) x or Nothing (wu) 2 . As to the psychological or logical process by which one reaches this conclusion, he says nothing positive. This process is clarified in an interesting way by Chuang-tzu in a passage which The Way bears ample witness to his being an excellent dialectician. Let us begin by reading the passage in question as an illuminating theoretical introduction to Lao-tzu’s conception of the Absolute. Chuang-tzu is keenly conscious of the fact that the Way, or the Absolute in its absoluteness, defies all verbalization and reasoning; that, if brought down to the level of language, the Way will immedi- ately and inevitably turn into a concept. As a concept, even the Absolute is exactly in the same rank as any other concept. He makes this observation the starting-point of his argument. People, he says, distinguish between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in all matters and thus take the position of there being a fundamental distinction between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Chuang-tzu, on his part, puts forward the thesis that there is no distinction between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. 3 Ordinary people and Chuang-tzu are in this respect diametrically opposed to each other. And yet, he goes on to say, as a logical proposition, ‘there-is-no-distinction-between-right-and-wrong’ is no less a logos 4 than the opposite proposition: ‘there-is-a-distinction- between-right-and-wrong’. In this respect, both belong to one and the same category. 5 In reality, the two propositions refer to two completely different levels of discourse. The difference, as we already know, comes out only when one realizes that the positive statement is a statement typical of the empirical level of discourse, while the negative one is orginally intended to represent the ontological ‘chaotification’ which is experienced by the Perfect Man in the moments of his ecstatic union with the Absolute. As an expression of this original experience, the statement is not a logical proposition except in its outward form. But as long as it does have a logical form, it is a logical proposition; and as such, it does not properly represent the unique experience of ‘chaotification’, being as it is nothing but the con- tradictory of the proposition: ‘there-is-a-distinction-between- right-and-wrong’. If such is the case, could there be any other attitude for us to take than maintaining a complete silence? ‘Despite this’, he says, ‘I would dare to discuss the problem (on the logical or conceptual level).’ With these preliminary remarks, he sets out to develop an extremely interesting argument in the following way. The argument, in brief, establishes that the Absolute in its original absoluteness is conceptually the negation-of-negation-of-negation, that is, the negation of the Absolute’s being Nothing which, again, is the negation of Being. And that is the furthest limit to which our logical thinking can go in its venturesome attempt at grasping the Absolute on the level of concepts. We have seen in the preceding chapter how Chuang-tzu, in describing the stages of the spiritual development of ‘sitting in 378 379 Sufism and Taoism oblivion’, mentions as the ultimate limit of ecstatic cognition the view that ‘nothing has ever existed from the very beginning’. What is the ultimate limit of Knowledge? It is the stage represented by the view that nothing has ever existed from the very beginning. This is the furthest limit (of Knowledge), to which nothing more can be added . 6 ‘Nothing has ever existed from the very beginning’ appearing in this quotation is the key-phrase for the right understanding of the passage we are going to read . 7 It is important to keep in mind, however, that in this latter passage we are no longer concerned with the epistemological question of the utmost limit of human cogni- tion. Our problem here is essentially of a metaphysical nature. For it concerns the ultimate origin of Being, or of the Universe. The ‘beginning’ here in question means the beginning point of the world of Being. Whenever we think logically of the formation of the world of Being, we have to posit a ‘beginning’. Our Reason cannot con- ceive of the world of Being without imagining a point at which it ‘began’ to exist. So we posit Beginning. (But the moment we posit Beginning, our Reason cannot help going further back and) admit the idea of there having been no Beginning. (Thus the concept of No-Beginning is necessarily established. But the moment we posit No-Beginning, our logical thinking goes further back by negating the very idea which it has just established, and) admits the idea of there having been no ‘there-having-been-no-Beginning’. (The concept of ‘No-No- Beginning’ is thus established.) The concept of Beginning, i.e., the initial point of the whole world of Being, is but a relative concept. It can be conceptually pushed further and further back. But no matter how far we may push it back, this conceptual process does not reach an end. In order to put a definite end to this process we have to transcend it at one stroke by negating the Beginning itself. As a result, the concept of No- Beginning is obtained. However, the concept of No-Beginning is, again, a relative one, being as it is a concept that subsists only by being opposed to that of Beginning. In order to remove this relativity and attain to the absolute No-Beginning, we have to transcend the No-Beginning itself by negating it and establishing No-No-Beginning. The No-No-Beginning - which must be articulated as No- [No- Beginning] - is, however, a concept whose real significance is dis- closed only to those who are able to understand it as signifying a metaphysical state of affairs which is to be grasped by a kind of metaphysical intuition. And this would seem to indicate that The Way No-No-Beginning, although it is something that has been posited by Reason, lies beyond the grasp of all logical reasoning. In the same manner, (we begin by taking notice of the fact that) there is Being. (But the moment we recognize Being, our Reason goes further back and admits that) there is Non-Being (or Nothing). (But the moment we posit Non-Being we cannot but go further back and admit that) there has not been from the very beginning Non-Being. (The concept of No-[Non-Being] once established in this way, the Reason goes further back and admits that) there has been no ‘there- having-been-no-Non-Being’ (i.e., the negation of the negation of Non-Being, or No-[No Non-Being]). This concept of No- [No Non-Being] or No-No-Nothing represents the ultimate logical stage which is reached by our negating - i.e., transcending - the negation itself of the opposition of Being and Non-Being. This is the logical and conceptual counterpart of the Way or the metaphysical Nothing which is not a simple ‘nothing’, but a transcendent Nothing that lies beyond both ‘being’ and ‘non- being’ as ordinarily understood. We have thus seemingly succeeded in conceptualizing the Way as an absolutely transcendent Nothing. However, does the Absolute thus conceptualized mirror faithfully the reality of the Absolute? To this question, we can say neither Yes nor No. As in the case of the concept of No-No-Beginning, we must remark that the concept of No-No-Nothing does justice to the reality of the Absolute only when we transcend, in understanding it, the sphere of logical think- ing itself into that of ecstatic or mystic intuition. But when we do so, the concept of No-No-Nothing will immediately cease to be a concept. And we shall end up by realizing that all the logical reasoning that has preceded has in reality been futile and of no use. If, on the contrary, we refuse to transcend the level of reasoning, the concept of No-No-Nothing will remain for ever an empty concept devoid of all positive meaning and, therefore, in no position to do justice to the reality of the Absolute. Thus, either way, the concep- tualizing activity of the mind proves powerless in grasping the Absolute as it really is. (When Reason begins to be active), all of a sudden we find ourselves confronted with ‘being’ and ‘non-being’. (Since, however, these are relative concepts in the sense that ‘being’ at this stage turns into ‘non-being’ at the next stage, and so on and so forth), we can never know for sure which is really ‘being’ and which is really ‘non-being’. Now I have just established something (that looks) meaningful, (i.e., I have established the Absolute as No-No-Nothing). But I do not know whether I have truly established something meaningful or whether what I have established is, after all, nothing meaningful. 380 381 Sufism and Taoism At this point, Chuang-tzu suddenly changes the direction of his thinking and tries another approach . This time he turns to the aspect of Unity which, as we have seen earlier, is one of the most salient features of the Absolute. But before discussing the problem on the level of logical reasoning, he reminds us by way of caution of what is to be understood by the statement that the Absolute is ‘one’. The Absolute, he says, is ‘one’ as a coincidentia oppositorum. We have already examined in Chapter IV Chuang-tzu’ s position concerning this problem. The key-term is ‘equalization’ of all things in the Absolute. The Way or the Absolute, according to Chuang-tzu, is the metaphysical state of Heavenly Equalization, that is, the absolute One which ‘equalizes’ all oppositions and contradictions. At this stage, the smallest is at the same time the biggest, and a moment is eternity. (The state of Heavenly Equalization defies common sense and reason, for we admit at this stage that) there is in the world nothing bigger than the tip of a hair of an animal in autumn, while Mount Tai (which is usually mentioned as an example of a very big thing) is considered extremely small. No one lives longer than a child who dies before coming of age, while P’eng Tsu (who is related to have lived 800 years) is considered to have died young. Heaven and Earth endure for the same length of time as I do (i.e., the eternal duration of Heaven and Earth is equivalent to the momentary duration of my individual existence in this world). And the ten thousand things are exactly the same as my own self. Thus, from the viewpoint of Heavenly Equalization, all things become reduced to a single unity in terms of both time and space. How does logical reasoning grasp such an absolute Oneness? That is the question we are faced with now. All things (at this stage) are absolutely ‘one’. But if so, how is it possible for us to say something? (i.e., Since all things are absolutely ‘one’, there is no longer anything whatsoever opposed to anything else whatsoever. And since there is no opposition, it is meaningless even to say: ‘one’). (But in order to reason, I have to posit something). So I have said: ‘one’. But how could I judge that (it is, or they are) ‘one’ without explicitly positing the term (i.e., word or concept: ‘one’)? However, (the moment I posit the term ‘one’), the (original) ‘one’ (i.e., the absolute One which is a coincidentia oppositorum) and the term (or concept of) ‘one’ necessarily make ‘two’. (This would mean that the least amount of reasoning makes the original One split itself into Two and thus produces dualism.) Then, these ‘two’ (i.e., the two-term judgment: ‘The Way is One’) together with the ‘one’ (i.e., the absolute One which is prior to any judgment) make ‘three’. The Way And from this point on the process extends endlessly, so much so that even a talented mathematician will not be able to count out the number, much less ordinary people. If, in this way, moving from Non-Being to Being leads us inevitably to (at least) ‘three’, where shall we get if we move from Being to Being (i.e., if, instead of starting from the absolute One, we take a relativist point of view and begin to pursue the individual things which go on being endlessly diversified)? Better not to make any move (i.e., better not to exercise reasoning concerning the Absolute and the things). Let us content ourselves with abiding by the (great) Yes (which transcends all oppositions and contradictions, and leaves everything as it is)! Thus after developing an elaborate reasoning on the nature of the Absolute, Chuang-tzu, ironically enough, ends by asserting the futility of reasoning. He advises us to abandon all logical thinking about the Absolute and to remain immersed ecstatically in the absolute intuitive Knowledge. For only by doing so can we hope to be in direct contact with the absolute One. Thus the highest stage of Knowledge is remaining motionless in what cannot absolutely be known (by reasoning). Is there anyone who knows the Word which is no longer a ‘word’? Is there anyone who knows the Way which is not even a ‘way’ ? If there is a man who knows such a thing, he deserves to be named the ‘Treasury of Heaven’ (i.e., he who is in possession of the key to the limitless treasure house of Being. Nay, he is the same as the ‘treasury’ itself). (The Treasury of Heaven with which such a man is completely identical and unified is like an unbounded ocean); no matter how much you pour water into it, it will never become full; and no matter how much you dip up water therefrom, it will never run dry. And nobody knows how and from where all these (limitless) things come into being. It is the Knowledge of such a man that is properly to be called the ‘shaded Light’. Thus by following step by step Chuang-tzu’s argument we have been led to the conclusion that the Way or the Absolute in its ultimate reality transcends all reasoning and conceptualization. This conclusion forms the starting-point for the metaphysical think- ing of Lao-tzu. As I remarked at the outset of this chapter, Lao-tzu does not take the trouble of explaining the logical or epistemologi- cal process which underlies his metaphysical system. But we are now in a position to understand the background against which this metaphysics must be set. Quite naturally, the metaphysics of Lao-tzu begins by mentioning negative attributes of the Way. The Way, to begin with, is ‘nameless ’. 8 382 383 Sufism and Taoism The Way in its absolute reality ( ch’ang ) has no name . 9 Interminably continuous like a thread, no name can be given to it . 10 The Way is hidden and nameless." That the Way is ‘nameless’ implies that the very name ‘Way’ ( tao ) is nothing other than a makeshift. Lao-tzu forcibly calls it ‘Way’ because without naming it he cannot even refer to it. This fact is clearly indicated by the very famous opening sentence of the Tao Te Ching. The ‘way’ which can be designated by the word ‘way’ is not the real 12 Way. The ‘name’ which can be designated by the word ‘name’ is not the real 12 Name . 13 It is interesting and important to remark that this passage, besides being a clear statement to the effect that the Absolute is ‘nameless’, is designed to be an implicit criticism of Confucian realism. The ‘way’ which is here said to be not the real Way is the human (or ethical) ‘way’ as understood in the Confucian school. And the ‘name’ which is said to be not the real Name refers to the so-called ‘names’ of the Confucianists, such as ‘benevolence’ , ‘righteousness’ , ‘wisdom’, etc., which the Confucianists consider cardinal virtues. As to the meaning of the word ‘way’ (tao) as it was originally used by Confucius himself and his circle, authentic information is fur- nished by the Lun Yu (‘The Analects’). Entering into the fine details of the problem would lead us too far beyond the scope of the present study. Here I shall confine myself to giving a few examples just to clarify the most essential characteristics of the Confucian concept of tao. Master Yu (one of the disciples of Confucius) once remarked: Those who are by nature filial and fraternal (i.e., those who behave with an inborn goodwill toward their parents and elder brothers) at home are seldom inclined (in public life) toward comporting themselves against the will of their superiors. And (of those who do not comport themselves against the will of their superiors) none, indeed, has ever wanted to stir up confusion (in society). (The observation of this fact makes us realize that) the ‘princely man’ should strive (to establish) the root, for the root once established, the ‘way’ (tao) will naturally grow up. The right attitude toward parents and elder brothers may, in this respect, be considered the root of ‘benevolence’ (or ‘human love ’). 14 It is contextually clear that the ‘way’ in this passage means the proper ethical attitude of man toward his brethren in society. The argument is typical of Confucianists. It recognizes man’s inborn goodwill toward those closest in blood as the ‘root’ or ‘origin’ of y The Way human morals. This inborn goodwill, when expanded into a univer- sal goodwill toward all fellow-members of society, turns into the § highest principle of ethical conduct, the ‘way’, as exemplified by the | virtue of ‘benevolence’. I Clearly, the conceptual structure of the argument is based on the *. terms ‘filial piety’, ‘fraternal respect’, and ‘benevolence’. The word ‘way’ is mentioned almost in a casual way. It is not even a key term p in the real sense of the word. The Master (Confucius) said: O Shen , 15 my ‘way’ is a unity running through (all forms of my behavior). Master Tseng respectfully | replied: Yes! When the Master left the place, the other disciples asked (Master Tseng) saying: What did he mean? Master Tseng said: Our Master’s ‘way’ consists in ‘loyalty’ (i.e., being loyal or faithful to one’s own conscience) and, ‘kindness’ (i.e., being ■. thoughtful for others, as if their problems were one’s own ). 16 In this passage, the ‘way’ means again the leading principle of ethical conduct. By the statement: ‘my way is a unity running through Confucius means to say that although his behavior appears Y concretely in various forms, there underlies them all a unique ethical principle. The ‘way , in other words, is here the unifying principle of all forms of moral conduct. '■ The Master said: In case the ‘way’ prevails in a state, you may be fj daring in both speech and action. But in case the ‘way’ does not prevail, you may be daring in action, but you should be reserved in speech . 17 Ip Confucius often speaks of the ‘way’ prevailing in a state — or more literally ‘a state’s possessing the way ’. 18 What is meant by the word in such contexts is too clear to need elucidation. " | The Master said: The ‘way’ of the ‘princely man’ is (manifested) in &, three (forms). But I myself am equal to none of them. He who is really virtuous does not worry. He who is really wise is never per- </ plexed. He who is really bold does not fear. Master K'ung (one of the disciples of Confucius) said: Master, these •}' precisely are your own ‘way ’! 19 Vt ft The interpretation of the word tao may vary more or less in accor- i dance with contexts, but the fundamental meaning is observable in : all the uses of the word. It means the right or proper ‘way’ of acting in social life. The ‘way’ for Confucius is the highest principle of P ethical conduct. , It would be going too far to assert that this Confucian concept of p the ‘ way’ is exclusively human. For, although it is essentially human and ethical in its concrete manifestation, the concept would seem to | have in the moral consciousness of Confucius something cosmic as 384 Sufism and Taoism its metaphysical core. The ‘way’ in its original metaphysical form is the all-pervading supreme law of Being. The supreme law govern- ing the working of the universe in general, and governing man as a part of the whole universe in particular, is called ‘way’ when it is comprehended by, or reflected in, the consciousness of man. The highest principle of ethical conduct is, in this sense, nothing other than a particular manifestation of the universal law of Being in the form of the supreme law governing the right forms of human life. The principle of ethical conduct is, for Confucius, by no means a man-made rule, or set of rules, regulating from outside the behavior of man. It is a reflection in the human consciousness of the highest law of the universe. And as such, it is the ‘internalized’ cosmic law regulating human behavior from within. Thus to know the ‘way’ does not consist merely in learning the formal rules of good manners and correct behavior. It consists in man’s coming into contact with the all-pervading metaphysical law of the Cosmos through becoming conscious of it. The following very forceful and passionate statement would sound absurd or even ridiculous if the Confucian ‘way’ were merely a matter of etiquette and correct behavior. The Master said: If a man hears (i.e., understands the profound meaning of) the ‘way’ in the morning, he may die contented in the evening . 20 In this ‘cosmic’ aspect, the Confucian conception of the ‘way’ might be said to have something in common with the Taoist counterpart. The difference between the two, however, is far more conspicuous and essential than the point of contact, as we shall see presently. There is, in any case, a conscious attitude noticeable on the part of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu to reject the ‘way’ as understood by Con- fucius and his followers. The ‘way’, Lao-tzu says, which can be recognized as the ‘way’ by ordinary people - Confucius and his followers being their representatives - is not the real Way. The real Way, or the Absolute in its absoluteness, is not something which an ordinary mind can become conscious of. How could one ‘know’ it? How could one ‘hear’ it? It is by nature something unknown, unknowable and inaudible. Being essentially unknown and unkowable, the Way is ‘name- less’. Here agin we encounter Lao-tzu consciously taking up a position against the Confucian attitude toward the ‘names . Certainly, Lao-tzu too speaks of ‘names’. The ‘nameless’ Way, he says, goes on assuming various ‘names’ in its process of self-determinations. The Way in its absolute reality has no ‘name’. It is (comparable to) uncarved wood . 21 . . . Only when it is cut out are there ‘names ’. 22 The Way 385 But there is a basic difference between Lao-tzu and Confucius with regard to ‘names’ in that Lao-tzu does not regard these ‘names’ as absolutely established. As we have learnt from the explanation given by Chuang-tzu of ‘chaotification’ as well as from Lao-tzu’s thesis that everything in this world is ‘relative’, all ‘names’ - and ultimately the ‘things’ designated by the ‘names’ - are but of a relative nature. Confucian ‘realism’ on the contrary, takes the posi- tion that behind every ‘name’ there is a corresponding objective and permanent reality. And to the highest Names there correspond the highest realities. These Names represent the cardinal virtues: ‘benevolence’ , ‘righteousness’ , ‘decorum’ , ‘wisdom’ , ‘truthfulness’ . Against this, Lao-tzu puts forward the view that Ihese ‘names which may be mentioned as names’ are not real ‘names’. In his mind, the Names, or the cardinal virtues, which are so highly valued by the Confucians are but so many symptoms of degeneration and corrup- tion, that is, symptoms of men’s having alienated themselves from the Absolute. Only when the great Way declines, do ‘benevolence’ and ‘righteous- ness’ arise. Only when cleverness and sagacity make their appear- ance do wiles and intrigues arise. Only when the six basic kinship relations (i.e., the relationships between father and son, elder and younger brothers, husband and wife) are out of harmony do filial sons make their appearance. Only when the state falls into confusion and disorder, do loyal subjects make their appearance . 23 It is only after Virtue is lost that ‘benevolence’ becomes prominent. It is only after ‘benevolence’ is lost that ‘righteousness’ becomes prom- inent. And it is only after ‘righteousness’ is lost that ‘decorum’ becomes prominent. Indeed, ‘decorum’ emerges in an age in which ‘loyalty’ and ‘faithful- ness’ have become scarce. It marks the beginning of disorder (in society ). 24 Far from being real values as the Confucians assert, all these so- called Names are but signs of man’s alienation from Reality. In the very establishment of these Names as absolute and permanent values there is an unmistakable indication that the Absolute has been lost sight of. Speaking more generally, no ‘name’ is absolute. For, as Lao-tzu says, a ‘name which can be designated by the word “name” ’ is not the real Name. The only ‘real Name’ (ch’ang ming) which is absolute is the Name assumed by the Absolute. However, that absolute Name is, paradoxically, ‘Nameless’, or as we shall see presently, the ‘Mystery of Mysteries’, the ‘Gate of all Wonders’. I have just used the phrase: ‘the Name assumed by the Absolute’ . And in fact, as Lao-tzu himself explicitly admits, the ‘nameless’ Way does assume a more positive ‘name’ at its very first stage of 386 387 Sufism and Taoism self- manifestation or self-determination. That first ‘name’ assumed by the Absolute in its creative activity is Existence (yu). 2s Lao-tzu, making a concession to popular parlance, sometimes calls the latter Heaven and Earth ( t’ien ti ). 26 Strictly speaking, the Way at this stage is not yet actually Heaven and Earth. It is Heaven and Earth only in potentia. It is that face of the Absolute by which it turns, so to speak, toward the world of Being which is to appear therefrom. It refers to the Absolute as the principle of eternal and endless creativity. The Nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth. The Named is the Mother of the ten thousand things . 27 But before we go into the details of the problem of the Named, we must pursue further the ‘nameless’ aspect of the Way. With a view to making a fresh start in the consideration of this aspect of the Way, we may conveniently begin by recalling the opening words of the Tao Te Ching, which has been quoted above 28 and which has led us into a sort of long digression on the fundamen- tal difference between Confucianism and Taoism regarding the understanding of ‘way’ (tao) and ‘name’ ( ming ). The passage reads: The ‘way’ which can be designated by the word ‘way’ is not the real Way. The ‘name’ which can be designated by the word ‘name’ is not the real Name. The same conception of the Way is expressed by Chuang-tzu in a somewhat different way as follows. If the Way is made clear, it is no longer the Way . 29 He means to say by this that a thing which can be pointed to as the Way is not the real Way. And again, Is there anyone who knows the Way which is not a ‘way ’? 30 This, of course, means that the real Way has no visible form by which one could designate it by the word ‘way’. To say that the Way or the Absolute in its absoluteness is ‘name- less’ , that it refuses to be designated by any ‘name’ whatsoever, is to say that it transcends all linguistic comprehension. And this is the same as to say that the Way is beyond the grasp of both thought and sense perception. The Way is of such a nature that Reason cannot conceive of it nor the senses perceive it. The Way, in other words, is an absolute Transcendent. Even if we try to see it, it cannot be seen. In this respect it is called ‘figureless ’. 31 Even if we try to hear it, it cannot be heard. In this respect it is called ‘inaudibly faint’. Even if we try to grasp it, it cannot be touched. In this respect it is called ‘extremely minute’. The Way In these three aspects, it is totally unfathomable. They merge into One . 32 (Ordinarily, the upper part of a thing is brightly visible, while the lower part is dark and obscure. But this is not the case with the Way.) Upward, it is not bright. Downward, it is not dark. It continues interminably like a thread, but no name can be given to it. And (this interminable creative activity) ultimately returns to the original Nothingness. Shall we describe it as a shapeless Shape, or imageless Image? Shall we describe it as something vague and undeterminable? Standing in front of it, we do not see its head. Following behind it, we do not see its rear . 33 Thus the ‘namelessness’ of the Way is the same as its being Non- Being. For whatever is absolutely imperceptible and inconceivable, whatever has no ‘image’ at all, is, for man, the same as ‘non- existent’. It is ‘Nothing’ (wu ). i4 It is important to notice that the Way appears as ‘Nothing’ only when looked at from our point of view. It is Nothing for us because it transcends human cognition. It is, as Islamic philosophers would say, a matter oiitibar or (human) ‘viewpoint’. Otherwise, the Way in itself is - far from being ‘nothing’ - Existence in the fullest sense of the term. For it is the ultimate origin and source of all Being. For ordinary human consciousness the Way is Nothing. But it is not ‘nothing’ in a purely negative sense. It is not a passive ‘nothing’ . It is a positive Nothing in the sense that it is Non-Being pregnant with Existence. It goes without saying that this positive aspect of the Way is far more difficult to explain than its negative side. Properly speaking it is absolutely impossible to explain it verbally. As we have just seen, the reality of the Way is indescribable and ineffable. And yet Lao-tzu does try to describe it, or at least to give some hints as to how we should ‘feel’ its presence in the midst of the world of Being. Quite naturally, the hints are extremely dim and obscure. They are of necessity of a symbolic nature. The Way in its reality is utterly vague, utterly indistinct . 35 Utterly indistinct, utterly vague, yet there is within it an Image. Utterly vague, utterly indistinct, yet there is within it Something. Utterly profound, utterly dark, yet there is within it the purest Essence. The purest Essence is extremely real. (Eternally and unchangingly its creativeness is at work, so that) from of old till now its Name 36 has never left it. Through this Name it governs the principles of all things. How do we know that it is so with the principles of all things? From what I have just said . 37 388 Sufism and Taoism Thus the Way in its purely negative aspect which is absolutely beyond human cognition is Nothing and Non-Being. In this aspect the Way has no ‘name’ whatsoever. Even the word ‘way’ ( tao ) is properly inapplicable to it. It is ‘nameless’. This absolutely intangible and impenetrable Mystery steps out of its own darkness and comes a stage closer to having a ‘name’ . It is, at this stage of self- manifestation, a faint and shadowy ‘Image’. In the Image we feel vaguely the presence of Something awful and mys- terious. But we do not yet know what it is. It is felt as Something but it has still no ‘name’. In the first part of the present study we saw how, in the metaphys- ical system of Ibn ‘ Arab!, the Absolute in its absoluteness is ‘name- less’ . We saw how the Absolute in such a state is even beyond the stage at which it is properly to be designated by the name Allah. Likewise in Lao-tzu, this Something is made to be antecedent even to God (lit. the heavenly Emperor). Unfathomably deep it is like the ancestor of the ten thousand things Like a deep mass of water it is (and nothing is visible on the surface), yet Something seems to be there. I know not whose son it is . 38 It would seem to be antecedent even to the Emperor (i.e., God . 39 This ‘nameless’ Something, in its positive aspect, i.e., in its eternal and everlasting creativeness, may be ‘named’ provisionally the ‘way’. Lao-tzu himself admits that it is a provisional ‘name’. But of all the possible provisional ‘names’, the ‘way’ is the representative one. Actually, Lao-tzu proposes several other ‘names’ for the Way, and points out several typical ‘attributes’, each one of which refers to this or that particular aspect of the Way . 40 There is Something, formless but complete , 41 born before Heaven and Earth. Silent and void, it stands alone , 42 never changing. It goes round everywhere, never stopping . 43 It may be considered the Mother of the whole world . 44 I know not its ‘name’. Forging a pseudonym, I call it the ‘Way’. Being forced to name it (further), I call it ‘Great’. Being ‘Great’ would imply ‘Moving-forward ’. 45 ‘Moving-forward’ would imply ‘Going-far ’. 46 And ‘Going-far’ would imply ‘Turning- back’ . 47 In the passage just quoted Lao-tzu suggests the possibility of the Absolute being named in various ways. At the same time, however, he makes it clear that all these ‘Names’ or ‘attributes’ are provi- sional, relative, and partial. For instance, he proposes to call the Absolute the ‘Great’. He is justified in doing so because the Abso- 389 The Way lute or the Way is ‘great’. But it is, we have to remember, ‘great’ only in a certain sense, from a particular standpoint. To look upon the Way as something ‘great’ represents but one particular point of view which we human beings take with regard to the Absolute. This naturally implies that there is also a certain respect in which the Way should be called ‘small’. It can be considered ‘great’; it can be considered ‘small’. Both ‘names’ are right, but neither of them can do full justice to its reality. In this respect, the Way is comparable to a water plant adrift, turning this way or that. It has no fixity. Having no fixity, it accepts any ‘name’, but no ‘name’ can represent it perfectly. The great Way is like a thing drifting on the water. It goes every- where, left and right. The ten thousand things owe their existence to it. And yet it does not boast (of its own creative activity). It accomplishes its work, yet makes no claim. It clothes and nourishes the ten thousand things, yet never domineers over them. Being absolutely free of desire, it may be called ‘Small’. The ten thousand things go back to it, yet it makes no claim to being their Master. In this respect, it may also be called ‘Great ’. 48 This difficulty which we inevitably encounter in attempting to give a proper ‘name’ to the Absolute is due not only to the fact that it is essentially ‘nameless’ but also to the fact that the Absolute is not a ‘thing’ in the sense in which we usually understand the term ‘thing’. The descriptive power of human language is tragically limited. The moment we linguistically designate a state of affairs, whether metaphysical or empirical, by a noun, it becomes reified, that is, it turns into a ‘substance’ in our representation. We have earlier referred to the Absolute as Something; but ‘Something’ is in our imagination some substance, however mysterious it may be. And exactly the same is true of such ‘names’ as ‘Mother’, ‘Way’, etc., or even ‘Nothing’. The Absolute which we designate by these ‘names’, however, is not a ‘substance’. And it should not be understood as a ‘substance’. This is the reason - or at least one of the main reasons - why Lao-tzu emphasizes so much that all the ‘names’ he proposes are nothing but makeshifts. Whatever ‘name’ he may use in referring to the Absolute, we should try not to ‘reify’ it in understanding what he says about it. For as a ‘thing’ in the sense of a ‘substance’, the Absolute is ‘nothing’. How can a thing be a ‘substance’ when it is absolutely ‘formless’ , ‘invisible’ , ‘inaudible’ , ‘intangible’ , and ‘taste- less ’? 49 The Absolute is ‘Something’ only in the sense of an Act, or the act of Existence itself. Scholastically we may express the concep- tion by saying that the Absolute is Actus Purus. It is Actus Purus in 390 391 Sufism and Taoism the sense that it is pre-eminently ‘actual’ , and also in the sense that it exists as the very act of existing and making ‘things’ exist. The following words of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu makes this point clear. Lao-tzu says: He who goes through the world, holding in hand the great Image , 50 wherever he may go will meet with no harm . 51 Safe, tranquil and calm he will always remain. Beautiful music and delicious food will make wayfarers stop. The Way, on the contrary, uttered in words is insipid and flavorless. One looks at it, and finds it unworthy to be seen. One listens to it, and finds it unworthy to be heard. Yet when one uses it, one finds it inexhaustible . 52 The loudest sound is hardly audible. The greatest Image has no form. The Way is hidden and has no name. And yet it is the Way alone that really excels in bestowing help and bringing things to completion . 53 And Chuang-tzu: The Way does have a reality and its evidence . 54 But (this does not imply that it) does something intentionally. Nor does it possess any (tangible) form. So it may be transmitted (from heart to heart among the ‘true men’), but cannot be received (as in the case of a thing having an external form). It may be intuited, but cannot be seen. It is self-sufficient. It has its own root in itself. It existed even before Heaven and Earth existed. It has unmistakably existed from ancient times . 55 It is the thing that confers spirituality upon the Spirits. And it is the thing that makes the Heavenly Emperor (i.e., God) divine. It produces Heaven. It produces Earth. It exists even above the highest point of the sky. And yet it is not ‘high ’. 56 It exists even beneath the six directions . 57 And yet it is not ‘deep’. It was born before Heaven and Earth. And yet it is not ‘ancient’. It is older than the oldest (historical) time. And yet it is not ‘old ’. 58 Thus Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu agree with each other in asserting that the Way is actus. It goes without saying that actus exists. But it does not exist as a ‘substance’ . It should not be ‘reified’ . In order not to reify it, we have to intuit it. For we cannot possibly imagine, represent, or conceive the Absolute without turning it into a kind of ‘substance’. Metaphysical or ecstatic intuition is the only possible means by which we can approach it without doing serious harm to its image. But an intuition of this sort is open only to those who have experienced to the utmost limit what Chuang-tzu calls ‘sitting in oblivion’. The Way However this may be, the preceding explanation has at least made it clear that the Way has two opposite aspects, one positive and the other negative. The negative side is comparable with the metaphys- ical Darkness of Ibn ‘Arab!. In the world-view of the latter too, the Absolute (haqq) in itself, i.e., in its absoluteness, is absolutely invisible, inaudible and ungraspable as any ‘form’ whatsoever. It is an absolute Transcendent, and as such it is ‘Nothing’ in relation to human cognition. But, as we remember, the Absolute in the metaphysical intuition of the Arab sage is ‘Nothing’, not because it is ‘nothing’ in the purely negative sense, but rather because it is too fully existent - rather, it is Existence itself. Likewise, it is Darkness not because it is deprived of light, but rather because it is too full of light, too luminous - rather, it is the Light itself. Exactly the same holds true of the Way as Lao-tzu intuits it. The Way is not dark, but it seems dark because it is too luminous and bright. He says: A ‘way’ which is (too) bright seems dark . 59 The Way in itself, that is, from the point of view of the Way itself, is bright. But since ‘it is too profound to be known by man ’ 60 it is, from the point of view of man, dark. The Way is ‘Nothing’ in this sense. This negative aspect, however, does not exhaust the reality of the Absolute. If it did, there would be no world, no creatures. In the thought of Ibn ‘Arab!, the Absolute by its own unfathomable Will comes down from the stage of abysmal Darkness or ‘nothingness’ to that of self-manifestation. The Absolute, although it is in itself a Mystery having nothing to do with any other thing, and a completely self-sufficient Reality — has another, positive aspect in which it is turned toward the world. And in this positive aspect, the Absolute contains all things in the form of Names and Attributes. In the same way, the Way of Lao-tzu too, although it is in itself Something ‘nameless’, a Darkness which transcends all things, is the ‘Named’ and the ‘Mother of the ten thousand things’. Far from being Non- Being, it is, in this respect, Being in the fullest sense. The Nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth. The Named is the Mother of ten thousand things . 61 This passage can be translated also as follows: The term ‘Non-Being’ could be applied to the beginning of Heaven and Earth. The term ‘Being’ could be applied to the Mother of ten thousand things. Whichever translation we may choose, the result comes to exactly the same thing. For in the metaphysical system of Lao-tzu, the 392 I i i Sufism and Taoism ‘Nameless’ is, as we have already seen, synonymous with ‘Non- Being’, while the ‘Named’ is the same as ‘Being’. What is more important to notice is that metaphysically the Nameless or Non-Being represents a higher - or more fundamental - stage than the Named or Being within the structure of the Abso- lute itself. Just as in Ibn ‘Arab! even the highest ‘self-manifestion’ (tajalli) is a stage lower than the absolute Essence ( dhat ) of the Absolute, so in Lao-tzu Being represents a secondary metaphysical stage with regard to the absoluteness of the Absolute. The ten thousand things under Heaven are born out of Being (yu ), and Being is born out of Non-Being (wu). 62 If we put these two passages side by side with each other, we understand that in Lao-tzu’s conception the Absolute in its ultimate metaphysical stage is the Nameless and Non-Being, while at the first stage of the emergence of the world it becomes the Named and Being. The expression: ‘the beginning of Heaven and Earth’ , which Lao-tzu uses in reference to the Nameless, would seem to suggest that he is here considering the Absolute in terms of a temporal order. And we must admit that only from such a point of view can we properly talk about the ‘creation’ or ‘production’ of the world. The temporal expression, however, does not do full justice to the reality of the matter. For, as in the case of the successive stages of Divine self-manifestation in Ibn ‘Arabl’s metaphysics, the ‘begin- ning’ here in question is not properly speaking a temporal concept. It simply refers to that aspect of the Absolute in which it embraces in itself ‘the myriad things under Heaven’ in the state of potentia. Otherwise expressed, the Absolute qua the myriad things in the state of metaphysical concealment is the Beginning. The Beginning in this sense is the same as Non-Being. We would make the meaning of the word ‘Beginning’ more understandable if we translate it as the ‘first principle’ or the Urgrund of Being. The concept of ‘production’, or ‘coming-into-being’ of all exist- ent things, is also non-temporal. In our temporal representation, the ‘coming-into-being’ is a process , the initial stage of which is Non-Being and the last stage of which is Being. Metaphysically, however, there can be no temporal development in the Absolute. The Absolute, for Lao-tzu, is both Non-Being and Being, the Nameless and the Named at the same time. Lao-tzu describes the relationship between Non-Being and Being in the following way. In its state of eternal (or absolute) Non-Being one would see the mysterious reality of the Way. In its state of eternal Being one would see the determinations of the Way. These two are ultimately one and the same. But once externalized, 393 The Way they assume different names (i.e., ‘Non-Being’ and ‘Being’). In (the original state of) ‘sameness’, (the Way) is called the Mystery. The Mystery of Mysteries it really is! And it is the Gateway of myriad Wonders. 63 The Non-Being (or Nameless) in which the mysterious Reality {miao) M is to be observed would correspond to the state of the Absolute ( haqq ), in the conception of Ibn ‘ Arabi, before it actually begins to work in a creative way. And the Being (or Named) in which the Way manifests itself in infinite ‘determinations’ ( chiao ) 65 would find its counterpart, in Ibn ‘ Arabi’s thought, in the state of the Absolute when its creative activity spreads itself, as the Breath of the Merciful, being ‘determined’ in an infinite number of things. It is remarkable that in this passage Lao-tzu goes beyond even the distinction between Being and Non-Being. Non-Being is surely the ultimate metaphysical principle, the most fundamental source of Being. It is the Way, just as Being also/5 the Way. And yet, since it is here conceptually opposed to ‘Being’, it cannot be the last thing. The basic opposition itself must be transcended. And Lao-tzu sees beyond the opposition of Being and Non-Being Something abso- lutely ineffable which he symbolically calls hsiian . 66 The word origi- nally means ‘black’ with a mixture of redness, a very appropriate term for something absolutely ‘invisible’ , an unfathomable Mystery (‘black’), but revealing itself, at a certain stage, as being pregnant with the ten thousand things (‘red’) in their state of potentiality. In this Mystery of Mysteries Lao-tzu sees the Absolute in a state in which even Being and Non-Being are not yet distinguished from each other, an ultimate metaphysical state in which ‘these two are one and the same thing’. The Absolute or the Way, in so far as it is the Mystery of Mysteries, would seem to have nothing to do with the phenomenal world. But, as we have just observed, in the utter darkness of this great Mystery (‘black’), we already notice a faint foreboding (‘red’) of the appearance of phenomenal things. And the Mystery of Mys- teries is at the same time said to be the ‘Gateway of myriad Won- ders’. In the following chapter we shall be concerned with the process by which the ten thousand things stream forth out of this Gateway. Notes 1 . m®, xiv. 2. m, XL. 394 Sufism and Taoism 3. See Chapter IV. 4. yen, = . 5. lei, m. 6. See above, Chapter VI. 7. II, p. 79. 8 . . 9. Tao Te Ching, XXXII. The word ch’ang here is synonymous with ig ( chen ) meaning ‘true’ or ‘real’. Fora similar use of the word, see XVI, XXVIII, LII, LV. The original meaning of the word ch’ang is ‘constant’ or ‘(eternally) unalterable’. Han Fei Tzu in his chapter on the Interpretation of Lao-tzu says: ‘Those things that flourish first but later decay cannot be called ch’ang. Those things only deserve to be called ch’ang which came into being together with the separation of Heaven and Earth and which will neither die nor decay even when Heaven and Earth will be dispersed into nothing. That which is really ch’ang never changes.’ The ch’ang is, in brief, the true reality which remains for ever unalterable. 10. XIV. 11. XLI. 12. Note again the use of the word ch’ang in the sense of ‘real’, ‘eternal’, ‘unalter- able’ or ‘absolute’. 13. I. 14. Confucian Analects, I, 2. 15. Confucius addresses himself to his disciple Master Tseng. 16. Analects, IV, 15. 17. ibid., XIV, 4. 18. See VIII, 13; XIV, 1. 19. ibid., XIV, 30. 20. ibid., IV, 8. 21. p’u , meaning ‘uncarved block’. The uncarved block from which all kinds of vessels are made is still ‘nameless’. Only when it is carved into vessels does it acquire various ‘names’. 22. Tao Te Ching, XXXII. ‘Being cut out’ (chih $J ) is a symbolic expression for the ‘nameless’ Way becoming ‘determined’ into myriad things. 23. ibid., XVIII. 24. ibid., XXXVIII. 5 . 25. *. 26. 27. op. cit., I. 28. See p. 99. 29. Chuang-tzu, II, p. 83. 30. ibid., II, p. 83. 31. % meaning ‘dim and figureless’. 32. The three aspects represent sense perception in general. The Way is beyond the reach of sense perception so that at the ultimate limit of the latter the Way only appears as an unfathomable and imperceptible One. Everything supposedly percept- ible is ‘merged into’ it; that is to say, it has absolutely no articulation. 33. Tao Te Ching, XIV. 34. ibid., XL. 35. i.e., a metaphysical state in which Being and Non-Being are indistinguishable from each other. 36. In this passage Lao-tzu is trying to describe the absolute One which is both Non-Being and Being at the same time. The two aspects are in fact indistinguishable from one another. But if we concentrate our attention upon the positive side, the Way appears first as a vague and obscure Image of Something, then as a pure Reality which is eternally creative. In this aspect and at this stage the Way has an eternal Name: yu or Existence. 37. op. cit., XXL 38. ‘Nobody knows who is the father of the Absolute.’ That is to say, the Way has no ‘cause’ for its existence; it is its own cause. 39. op. cit., IV. 40. op. cit., XXV. 41. hun ch’eng Mlfc. 42. tu li 354, ‘standing alone’ , that is ‘self-sufficient’ , an expression corresponding to the Arabic term ghani. 43. See SiSg 1921 ,adloc:Mh\m%%Lm. eLiUfflanf# KSfllfl Pb&ffJ, & TT&J IgTit, f? rjHfjj #«)£_]. 44. 55T,‘ all-under- Heaven’. Ma Hsu Lun proposes to read: ‘Heaven and Earth’, which is most probably right. The reading is based on an old edition (7g®x; r of the Sung Dynasty. It accords with the expres- sion: ‘born before Heaven and Earth’ which is found in the first sentence of the present passage. I 396 Sufism and Taoism 45. ‘ Moving-forward’ means that the working of the ‘ Great’ permeates Heaven and Earth without being obstructed. 46. i.e., the working of the ‘forward-mover’ goes to the extremity of the world of Being. 47. ‘Turning-back’ means returning to the original point of departure, so that the metaphysical movement of the Way forms a big universal circle. And being circular, it never comes to an end. 48. op. cit., XXXIV. 49. ibid., XXXV. 50. ta hsiang (r$j=r|g<j)- For the expression ta hsiang in the sense of ‘great Image’, see the next quotation from the Tao Te Ching. Compare also XXI which has been quoted above (p. 106), where Lao-tzu uses the word hsiang ‘(a faint and shadowy) Image (of Something beyond)’ in reference to the first self-manifestation of the Absolute. 51. See Chuang-tzu, I, pp. 30-31: ‘Nothing can harm this man. Even if flood waters reach the sky, he will never be drowned. Even if in a burning heat metals and stones begin to flow and the earth and mountains are burned down, he alone will never feel hot.’ 52. Tao Te Ching, XXXV. 53. ibid., XLI. 54. , The Way possesses a reality as actus, and it presents unmistak- able evidence of its existence in the effects it produces. 55. We have already seen above how Chuang-tzu solves the problem of the Begin- ning of the Way. The statement: ‘It has unmistakably existed from ancient times’ should not tempt us into imagining that Chuang-tzu recognizes a ‘ beginning-point’ in ‘ancient times’ or ‘eternity’. It is merely a figure of speech. It is significant in this connection that Chuang-tzu, a few paragraphs down in the same chapter, calls the Way i shih (gft/f) meaning literally ‘likening to a beginning’. The Way is so called because it is something to be ‘ likened to a thing having a beginning’ , or more exactly, something which looks as if it had a beginning, though in reality it has none. 56. ‘High’ is, as we have seen, a relative concept which cannot be applied to the Absolute. 57. The ‘six directions’ means the whole universe. 58. Chuang-tzu, VI, p. 247. 59. Tao Te Ching, XLI. 60. ibid., XV. 61. ibid., I. I 1 i' | n The Way 397 62. ibid., XL. See also XLI quoted above, which reads: The Way in its absolute reality has no ‘name’. It is (comparable to) uncarved wood. Only when it is cut out are there ‘names’. 63. ibid., I. 64. fcl>, meaning something unfathomably profound and mysterious. 65. (*, literally meaning a ‘fortress in a frontier district’; and by extension a ‘border’ or ‘limit’. 66 . X. VIII The Gateway of Myriad Wonders We have learnt in the preceding chapter that the name ‘Way’ is, after all, but a makeshift, a forced expression for what is properly not to be named. The word ‘Way’ is a symbol conveniently chosen for referring to Something which is, strictly speaking, beyond even symbolic indication. With this basic understanding, however, we may use - as Lao-tzu himself does - the term in describing the metaphysical world-view of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. It will be clear that, of the three primary aspects of the Absolute, which Lao-tzu distinguishes: the Mystery ( hsuan ), Non-Being {wu), and Being (yw), the first alone is the one to which the word ‘Way’ properly and directly applies. The rest, that is, Non-Being, Being, and even the ‘ten thousand things’ that effuse from the latter, are, all of them without exception, the Way, but not primarily. They are the Way in the sense that they represent various stages of the Mystery of Mysteries as it goes on determining itself. In other words, each one of them is the Way in a secondary, derivative, and limited sense, although in the- case of Non-Being, which is nothing but pure Negativity, ‘limitation’ or ‘determination’ is so weak and slight that it is almost the same as ‘non-limitation’. It is true, however, that even the stage of Non-Being is not the ultimate and absolute stage of the Way, as long as the concept of ‘Non-Being’ is understood in opposition to, and in contradistinction from, that of ‘Being’. In order to reach the ultimate and absolute stage of the Way in this direction, we have to negate, as Chuang-tzu does, the concept itself of Non-Being and the very distinction between Non-Being and Being, and conceptually posit No- [Non- Being], more exactly, No-[No Non-Being]. This we have learnt in the first part of the preceding chapter. In the present chapter we shall no longer be primarily concerned with this absolute aspect of the Way, but rather with that aspect in which it turns toward the empirical or phenomenal world. Our major concern will be with the problem of the creative activity of the Way. This being the case, our description here will begin with the The Gateway of Myriad Wonders 399 stage which stands slightly lower, so to speak, than that of the Mystery of Mysteries. I have just used the phrase: ‘the stage which stands slightly lower than that of the Mystery of Mysteries’ . But it is the last and ultimate stage which we can hope to reach if we, starting from the world of phenomenal things, go up stage after stage in search of the Abso- lute. For, as we have seen above, the Mystery per se has nothing to do with the phenomenal world. And this makes us understand immediately that when Lao-tzu says: The Way is the Granary 1 of the ten thousand things , 2 he refers by the word Way to the ‘stage which is slightly lower’ than the Mystery of Mysteries. It is precisely at this stage that the Way is to be considered the Granary of the ten thousand things. It is at this stage that it begins to manifest its creativity. The word ‘granary’ clearly gives the image of the Absolute as the very ontological source of all things in the sense that all things are contained therein in the state of potentiality. Lao-tzu refers to this aspect of the Absolute as ‘the eternal (or absolute) Non-Being’ or the ‘Name- less’ . It is to be noted that the ‘ Nameless’ is said to be the ‘ Beginning of Heaven and Earth’. 3 The Absolute at the stage of ‘Nameless’ or ‘Non-Being’ is actually not yet Heaven and Earth. But it is destined to be Heaven and Earth. That is to say, it is potentially already Heaven and Earth. And the expression: ‘Heaven and Earth’ is here clearly synonymous with the more philosophical term, ‘Being’. At this juncture, Lao-tzu introduces into his system another impor- tant term, ‘ One’ . In the first part of the present study we saw how the concept of ‘one’ in the forms of ahadiyah and wahidiyah plays a decisive role in the thought of Ibn ‘Arabi concerning the ‘self- manifestations’ ( tajalliyat ) of the Absolute. No less an important role does the concept of ‘one’ play in the thought of Lao-tzu. For Lao-tzu, the One is something closest to the Way; it is almost the Way in the sense of the Mystery of Mysteries. But it is not exactly the Way as the Mystery. Rather, it is an aspect of the latter. It represents the stage at which the Way has already begun to move positively toward Being. A very interesting explanation of the whole situation is found in a passage of the Chuang-tzu , in a chapter entitled ‘On Heaven and Earth’. The chapter is one of the ‘Exterior Chapters’ (wai p’ien), 4 and may not be from the pen of Chuang-tzu himself. But this does not detract from the importance of the idea itself expressed in the passage. It reads as follows: Before the creation of the world , 5 there is only No- [Non-Being ] 6 400 Sufism and Taoism (Then) there appears the Nameless. The latter is that from which the One arises. Now the One is there, but there is no form yet (i.e., none of the existential forms is manifest at this stage). But each (of the ten thousand things) comes into existence by acquiring it (i.e., the One, by participation). In this particular respect, the One is called Virtue . 7 Thus (the One at the stage of being itself) does not manifest any form whatsoever. And yet it contains already (the potentiality of) being divided (into the ten thousand things). Notwithstanding that, (since it is not yet actually divided) it has no break. This (potentiality of being divided and diversified into myriad things) is called the Command . 8 This important passage makes it definitely clear that the One is not exactly the same as the Way qua the Mystery. For in the former there is observable a sort of existential potentiality, whereas the latter allows of no potentiality, not even a shadow of possibility. It is the absolute Absolute. At the stage of One, the Way is found to be already somehow ‘ determined’ , though it is not yet fully ‘ determined’ or ‘limited’ . It is, according to the explanation given by Chuang-tzu, a metaphysical stage that comes after the Nameless (or Non-Being) which, again, comes after the original No- [Non-Being]. And as such, it is a half- way stage between pure Non-Being and pure Being. It stands at the end of Non-Being and at the initial point of Being. The One is, thus, not yet actually Being, but it is potentially Being. It is a metaphysically homogeneous single plane which is not yet externally articulated; it is a unity which is going to diversify itself, and in which the creative activity of the Way will be fully manifested. The whole process by which this creative activity of the Way is manifested in the production of the world and the ten thousand things is described by Lao-tzu in the following way. The Way begets ‘one’; ‘one’ begets ‘two’; ‘two’ begets ‘three’; and ‘three’ begets the ten thousand things. The ten thousand things carry on their backs the Yin energy 9 and embrace in their arms the Yang energy 10 and the two (i.e., Yin and Yang) are kept in harmonious unity by the (third) energy emerging out of (the blending and interaction of) them . 11 From the Way as the metaphysical Absolute - or more strictly, from the metaphysical Absolute at the stage of Non-Being - there emerges the One. The One is, as we have just seen, the metaphysical Unity of all things, the primordial Unity in which all things lie hidden in a state of ‘chaos’ without being as yet actualized as the ten thousand things. From this Unity there emerges ‘two’, that is, the cosmic duality of 401 The Gateway of Myriad Wonders Heaven and Earth. The former symbolizes the principle of Yang, the latter that of Yin. At this stage , the Way manifests itself as Being and the Named. The Named, as we have learnt from a passage quoted earlier, 12 ‘is the Mother of the ten thousand things’. Before the ‘two’ can begin to work as the ‘Mother of ten thousand things’, however, they have to beget the third principle, the ‘vital force of harmony’ formed by the interaction and mixture of the Yin and the Yang energy. The expression: ‘two begets three’ refers to this phase of the creation of the world. The combination of these three principles results in the produc- tion of the ten thousand things. Thus it comes about that everything existent, without exception, has three constituent elements: (1) the Yin which it ‘carries on its back’ - a symbolic expression for the Yin being negative, passive ‘shadowy’ and ‘dark’ - (2) the Yang which it ‘embraces in its arms’ - a symbolic expression for the Yang being positive, bright and ‘sunny’ — and (3) the vital force which harmon- izes these two elements into an existential unity. It is to be remarked that Heaven and Earth, that is, the Way at the stage of Being, or the Named, is considered the ‘Mother of the ten thousand things’. There is a firm natural tie between the ‘Mother’ and her ‘children’. This would seem to suggest that the ‘ten thousand things’ are most intimately related with Heaven and Earth. The former as the ‘children’ of the latter provide the most exact image of the Way qua the Named. All things under Heaven have a Beginning, which is to be regarded as the Mother of all things. If one knows the ‘mother’, one knows the ‘child’. And if, after having known the ‘child’ one goes back to the ‘mother’ and holds fast to her, one will never fall into a mistake until the very end of one’s life . 13 These words describe in a symbolic way the intimate ontological relationship between the Way at the stage of the Named, or Being, and the phenomenal world. The phenomenal things are to be regarded as the ‘children’ of the Named. That is to say, they are not to be regarded as mere objective products of the latter; they are its own flesh and blood. There is a relationship of consanguinity be- tween them. And since the Named, or ‘ Heaven and Earth’ , is nothing else than a stage in the self-evolvement of the Way itself, the same relation- ship must be said to hold between the Way and the phenomenal things. After all, the phenomenal things themselves are also a stage in the self-evolvement of the Way. I have just used the expression: ‘the self-evolvement of the Way’ . But we know only too well that any movement on the part of the Way toward the world of phenomena begins at the stage of the One. 402 Sufism and Taoism The One represents the initial point of the self-evolvement of the Way. All things in the phenomenal world partake of the One. By being partaken of in this way, the One forms the ontological core of everything. The Way per se, that is, qua the Mystery, is beyond that stage. Thus Lao-tzu often mentions the One when he speaks about the phenomenal things partaking of the Way. In a looser sense, the word ‘Way’ may also be used in that sense, and Lao-tzu does use it in reference to that particular aspect of the Way. But in the most rigorous usage, the ‘One’ is the most appropriate term in contexts of this sort. Heaven, by acquiring the One, is serene. Earth, by acquiring the One, is solid. The Spirit, by acquiring the One, exercise mysterious powers. The valleys, by acquiring the One, are full. The ten thousand things, by acquiring the One, are alive. The lords and kings, by acquiring the One, are the standard of the world. It is the One that makes these things what they are. If Heaven were not serene by the One, it would break apart. If Earth were not solid by the One, it would collapse . 14 If the Spirits were not able to exercise mysterious powers by the One, they would cease to be active . 15 If the valleys were not full by the One, they would run dry. If the ten thousand things were not kept alive by the One, they would perish. If the lords and kings were not noble and lofty by the One, they would be overthrown . 16 The first half of the passage expresses the idea that everything in the, world is what it is by virtue of the One which ‘it acquires’, i.e., partakes of. Viewed from the side of the phenomenal things, what actually happens is the ‘acquisition’ of the One, while from the side of the Way, it is the creative activity of the Way as the One. The second half of the passage develops this idea and emphasizes the actual presence of the Way in the form of the One in each of the things that exist in the world, ranging from the highest to the lowest. The One is present in everything as its ontological ground. It acts in everything as its ontological energy. It develops its activity in every- thing in accordance with the latter’s particular ontological struc- ture; thus, the sky is limpid and clear, the earth solidly settled, the valley full of water, etc. If it were not for this activity of the One, nothing in the world would keep its existence as it should. The Way in this sense is an indwelling principle of all things. It pervades the whole phenomenal world and its ontological activity The Gateway of Myriad Wonders 403 affects everything. Nothing lies outside the reach of this universal immanence of the Way. The Net of Heaven has only wide meshes. They are wide, yet nothing slips through them . 17 The ‘immanence’ of the Way in the phenomenal world must not be taken in the sense that something completely alien comes from outside into the phenomenal world and alights on the things. To put it in a different way, the phenomenal things are not moved by force by something which is not of their own. On the contrary, the Way is ‘immanent’ in the sense that the things of the phenomenal world are so many different forms assumed by the Way itself. And this must be what Lao-tzu really means when he says that the Way is the Mother of the ten thousand things’. There is, in this respect, no ontological discrepancy between the Way and the things that exist in the world. Thus, to say that the phenomenal things are as they actually are by virtue of the activity of the Way is to say that they are what they are by virtue of their own natures. Lao-tzu speaks in this sense of ‘the natures - or Nature - of the ten thousand things’. 18 It is significant that the original word here translated as ‘nature’, tzu jan, 19 means literally ‘of-itself it-is-so’. Nothing is forced by any- thing to be what it is. Everything ‘is-so of-itself’ . And this is possible only because there is, as I have just said, no ontological discrepancy between the immanent Way and the things of which it is the vital principle. The very driving force by which a thing is born, grows up, flourishes, and then goes back to its own origin - this existential force which everything possesses as its own ‘nature’ - is in reality nothing other than the Way as it actualizes itself in a limited way in everything. The Way, in acting in this manner, does not force anything. This is th,e very basis on which stands the celebrated Taoist principle of ‘Non-Doing’ ( wu wei) 20 . And since it does not force anything, each of the ten thousand things ‘is-so of-itself’. Accordingly the ‘sacred man’ who, as we shall see later, is the most perfect image of the Way, does not force anything. Thus the ‘sacred man’ . . . only helps the ‘being-so-of-itself’ (i.e., spontaneous being) of the ten thousand things. He refrains from interfering with it by his own action . 21 To be calm and soundless - that is the ‘natural’ (or ‘being-so-of- itself’). This is why a hurricane does not last all morning, and a rainstorm does not last all day. Who is it that causes wind and rain? Heaven and Earth. Thus, if even Heaven and Earth cannot perpetu- ate (excessive states of affairs), much less can man (hope to succeed in maintaining an ‘unnatural’ state )! 22 404 Sufism and Taoism This idea of the ‘nature’ or ‘being-so-of-itself’ of the existent things leads us immediately to another major concept: Virtue (te). 22 In fact the te is nothing other than the ‘nature’ of a thing viewed as some- thing the thing has ‘acquired’ . The te is the Way as it ‘naturally’ acts in a thing in the form of its immanent ontological core. Thus a Virtue is exactly the same as Nature, the only difference between them being that in the case of the former concept, the Way is considered as an ‘acquisition’ of the thing, whereas in the case of the latter the Way is considered in terms of its being a vital force which makes the thing ‘be-so of-itself’. Everything, as we saw above, partakes of the Way (at the stage of the One). And by partaking of the Way, it ‘acquires’ its own existen- tial core. As Wang Pi says; 24 ‘The Way is the ultimate source of all things, whereas the Virtue is what all things acquire (of the Way)’ . And whatever a thing is, whatever a thing becomes, is due to the ‘natural’ activity of its own Virtue. It is characteristic of the metaphysical system of Lao-tzu that what is here considered the ‘natural’ activity or Virtue of a thing is nothing other than the very activity of the Way. The Way exercises its creative activity within the thing in the capacity of the latter’s own existential principle, so that the activity of the Way is in itself the activity of the thing. We encounter here something comparable with Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of the ‘Breath or the Merciful’ ( al-nafas al-rahmani), or more generally, the concept of Divine Mercy ( rahmah ), 25 which, issuing forth from the unfathomable depth of the Absolute, spreads itself over the whole extent of possible Being and brings into actual existence all the phenomenal things of the world. It is interesting to note in this connection that in the Book of Kuan-tzu - spuriously attributed to Kuan Chung, the famous statesman of the 7th century B.C. - we find this significant state- ment: ‘Virtue (te) is the Way’s act of giving in charity’, 26 that is, Virtue is the act of Mercy manifested by the Way toward all things. And this act of Mercy is concretely observable, as Kuo Mo Jo says, in the form of the ‘bringing up, or fostering, the ten thousand things’ . This conception completely squares with what Lao-tzu remarks about the activity of Virtue in the following passage. The Way gives birth to (the ten thousand things), the Virtue fosters them, things furnish them with definite forms , 27 and the natural impetus completes their development. This is why none of the ten thousand things does not venerate the Way and honor the Virtue. The Way is venerated and its Virtue honored not because this is commanded by somebody, but they are naturally so . 28 Thus the Way gives them birth. The Virtue fosters them, makes them The Gateway of Myriad Wonders 405 grow, feeds them, perfects them, solidifies 29 them, stabilizes them , 30 rears them, and shelters them. In this way, the Way gives birth (to the ten thousand things), and claims no possession. It does great things, yet does not boast of it. It makes (things) grow, and yet exercises no authority upon them. This is what I would call the Mysterious Virtue . 31 We saw earlier how Lao-tzu ‘provisionally’ and ‘by force’ gives names to the Way, that is, describes it by various attributes. In a similar way, he distinguishes in Virtue several attributes or qual- ities. And, accordingly, he refers to Virtue by different ‘names’ , as if he recognized the existence of various kinds of Virtue. The ‘Mys- terious Virtue’ (hsuan te) which we have just come across is one of them. Other ‘names’ are found in the following passage. The high Virtue (shang te) looks like a valley , 32 as the purest white seems spoiled. The ‘wide’ Virtue ( kuang te) looks insufficient. The ‘firm’ Virtue (chien te) looks feeble. The ‘simple’ Virtue (chih te ) 33 looks deteriorated. All these ‘names’, however, do not designate different ‘kinds’ of Virtue, no less than the different ‘names’ of the Way indicate the existence of different kinds of Way. They simply refer to different aspects which we can forcibly’ distinguish in that which is properly and in itself indeterminable. In this sense, and only in this sense, is Virtue ‘high’, ‘wide’, ‘firmly-established’, ‘simple’, etc. There is one point, however, which deserves special mention. That is the distinction made in the Tao Te Ching between ‘high’ Virtue and ‘low’ Virtue. The distinction arises from the fact that Virtue, representing as it does concrete forms assumed by the Way as it actualizes itself in the phenomenal world, is liable to be affected by ‘unnatural’, i.e., intentional, activity on the part of phenomenal beings. Quite ironically, Man, who is by nature so made as to be able to become the most perfect embodiment of Virtue - and hence of the Way - is the sole creature that is capable of obstructing the full activity of Virtue. For nothing other than Man acts ‘with intention’. Things are naturally as they are, and each of them works in accord- ance with its own ‘nature’. Whatever they do is done without the slightest intention on their part to do it. Man, on the contrary, may lower his naturally given Virtue by his very intention to be a perfect embodiment of the Way and to make his Virtue ‘high’. 35 A man of ‘high’ Virtue is not conscious of his Virtue. That is why he has Virtue. A man of ‘low’ Virtue tries hard not to lose his Virtue. That is why he is deprived of Virtue . 36 406 Sufism and Taoism The ‘high’ Virtue consists in Virtue being actualized completely and perfectly in man when the latter is not even conscious of his Virtue. Consciousness obstructs the natural actualization of the Way. And in such a case, Virtue, which is nothing but the concrete actualiza- tion of the Way, becomes imperfect and ‘low’. For when a man is conscious of Virtue, he naturally strives hard ‘never to abandon’ it. And this very conscious effort hinders the free self-manifestation of the Way in the form of Virtue. Virtue in such a case is considered ‘low’, i.e., degenerate and imperfect, because, instead of being perfectly united with the Way as it should, it is somehow kept away from the Way, so that there is observable a kind of discrepancy between the two. A man of Great Virtue in his behavior follows exclusively (the Command) of the Way . 37 The ‘low’ Virtue, following as it does the command of human intention as well as the Command of the Way, and not exclusively the latter, is no longer Virtue as the most direct actualization of the Way. The foregoing discussion most naturally leads us to the problem of Non-Doing (wu wei). The Way is eternally active. Its activity consists in creating the ten thousand things and then - in the particular form of Virtue - in fostering them and bringing them up to the limit of their inner possibility. This creative activity of the Way is really great. How- ever, the Way does not achieve this great work with the ‘intention’ of doing it. Heaven is long lasting and Earth is long enduring. The reason why Heaven and Earth are long lasting and long enduring is that they do not strive to go on living. Therefore they are able to be everlasting . 38 In his passage the Way is referred to as ‘Heaven and Earth’, that is, the Way at the stage of Heaven and Earth. We already know the metaphysical implication of this expression. The expression is here in the proper place because it is precisely at this stage that the creative activity of the Way is manifested. In the following passage, Lao-tzu refers ‘Heaven and Earth’ back to their ultimate metaphys- ical origin. The Valley-Spirit is immortal. It is called the Mysterious Female . 39 The gateway of the Mysterious Female is called the Root of Heaven and Earth. (The Way in these various forms) is barely visible, yet it never ceases to exist. Unceasingly it works, yet never becomes exhausted . 40 The Gateway of Myriad Wonders 407 The Mysterious Female, Lao-tzu says, is unceasingly creative, yet it never becomes exhausted because it ‘does not do anything’, i.e., consciously or intentionally. When we try hard to do something with the definite intention of doing it, we may achieve that very thing which we expect to achieve, but nothing else. The field of human action is, therefore, always limited and determined in varying degrees by consciousness and intention . The activity of the Way is of a totally different nature from human action. For the Way acts only by ‘not acting’. The Way is permanently inactive, yet it leaves nothing undone . 41 Since, thus, the Way is not conscious of its own creative activity, it is not conscious of the results of its activity either. The concept of the Mysterious Virtue, to which reference was made a few pages back, is based on this very idea. The Way, in this particular aspect, is infinitely gracious to all things. Its activity is extremely beneficial to them. And yet it does not count the benefits and favors which it never ceases to confer upon the things. Everything is done so ‘naturally’ - that is, without any intention on the part of the Way of doing good to the things - that what is received by the things as benefits and favors does not in any way constitute, from the point of view of the Way itself, benefits and favors. (The Way) gives birth (to the ten thousand things) and brings them up. It gives them birth, and yet does not claim them to be its own possession. It works, yet does not boast of it. It makes (things) grow, and yet exercises no authority upon them. This is what I would call the Mysterious Virtue . 42 The principle of Non-Doing - the principle of leaving everything to its ‘nature’, and of doing nothing consciously and intentionally - assumes special importance in the world-view of Lao-tzu in connec- tion with the problem of the ideal way of life in this world. We shall come back to this concept in a later chapter. Here I shall be content with quoting one more passage from the Tao Te Ching , in which Lao-tzu talks about Non-Doing in reference to both the Way and the ‘sacred man’ at one and the same time. In this particular passage the ‘sacred man’ is represented as having made himself so com- pletely identical with the Way that whatever applies to the latter applies to the former. Therefore the ‘sacred man’ keeps to the principle of Non-Doing, and practises the teaching of No- Words. The ten thousand things arise (through its, or his, activity), and yet he (or it) does not talk about it boastfully. He (or it) gives life (to the 408 Sufism and Taoism things), and yet he (or it) does not claim them to be his (or its) own. He (or it) works, and yet he (or it) does not boast of his (or its) own work. He (or it) accomplishes his (or its) task, and yet he (or it) does not stick to his (or its) own merit. He (or it) does not stick to his (or its) own merit; therefore it never deserts him (or it ). 43 Thus the Way never makes a boast of its own activity. Whatever it does, it does ‘naturally’, without the slightest intention of ‘doing’ it. One may express the same idea by saying that the Way is totally indifferent to both its creative activity and the concrete results it produces. The Way does not care about the world it has created In one sense this might be understood as the Way giving complete freedom to all things. But in another we might also say that the Way lacks affection for its own creatures. They are simply left uncared- for and neglected. With a touch of sarcasm Lao-tzu speaks of the Way having no benevolence’ (or ‘humaneness’, jen). The jen, as I have pointed out earlier, was for Confucius and his disciples the highest of all for ethical values. Heaven and Earth lack ‘benevolence’ . They treat ten thousand things as straw dogs . 44 6 Likewise, the ‘sacred man’ lacks ‘benevolence’. He treats the people as straw dogs . 45 F F What Lao-tzu wants to assert by this paradoxical expression is that the Great Way, because it is great, does not resort, as Confucians do, to the virtue of jen in its activity. For the jen, in his eye, implies an artificial, unnatural effort on the part of the agent. The Way does not interfere with the natural course of things. Nor does it need to interfere with it, because the natural course of things is the activity or the Way itself. Lao-tzu would seem to be suggesting here that the on ucian jen is not the real jen ; and that the real jen consists rather in the agent’s being seemingly ruthless and yen-less. There is another important point which Lao-tzu emphasizes very much in describing the creative activity of the Way. That is the ‘emptiness’ or ‘voidness’ of the Way. W f. ^ aVC ° ften referred to the conception of the Way as Nothing’ . There ‘Nothing’ meant the absolute transcendence of the Way. The Way is considered ‘Nothing’ because it is beyond human cognition. Just as a light far too brilliant for human eyes is the same as darkness or lack of light, the Way is ‘Nothing’ or ‘Non-Being’ precisely because it is plenitude of Being. The concept of ‘Nothing’ which is m question in the present context is of a different nature It concerns the ‘infinite’ creativity of the Way. The Way, Lao-tzu says, can be infinitely and endlessly creative because it contains within The Gateway of Myriad Wonders 409 itself nothing substantial. It can produce all things because it has nothing definite and determined inside it. The Kuan-tzu clearly reflects this idea when it says; ‘Empty and formless - that is what is called the Way’ , 46 and ‘The Heavenly Way is empty and formless’ , 47 For this idea Lao-tzu finds in the daily experience of the people several interesting symbols. An empty vessel, for example: The Way is an empty vessel . 48 No matter how often you may use it, you can never 49 fill it up . 50 It is a sort of magical vessel which, being forever empty, can never be filled up, and which, therefore, can contain an infinity of things. Looked at from the opposite side, this would mean that the ‘vessel’ is infinitely full because it is apparently empty. Thus we come back exactly to the same situation which we encountered above in the first of the two meanings of ‘Nothing’ with regard to the nature of the Way. The Way, we saw there, is Nothing because it is too full of Being - rather, it is Being itself - and because, as such, it is abso- lutely beyond the reach of human cognition. Here again we find ourselves in the presence of something which looks ‘empty’ because it is too full. The Way, in other words, is ‘empty’ ; but it is not empty in the ordinary sense of a thing being purely negatively and pas- sively void. It is a positive metaphysical emptiness which is plenitude itself. Great fullness seems empty. But (its being, in reality, fullness is proved by the fact that) when actually used, it will never be exhausted . 51 The Way, in this particular aspect, is also compared to a bellows. It is a great Cosmic Bellows whose productive activity is never exhausted. The space between Heaven and Earth is indeed like a bellows. It is empty, but it is inexhaustible. The more it works the more comes out . 52 Lao-tzu in the following passage has recourse to more concrete and homely illustrations to show the supreme productivity of ‘emptiness’. (Take for example the structure of a wheel) . Thirty spokes share one hub (i.e., thirty spokes are joined together round the center of the wheel). But precisely in the empty space (in the axle-hole) is the utility of the wheel. One kneads clay to make a vessel. But precisely in the empty space within is the utility of the vessel. One cuts out doors and windows to make a room. But precisely in the empty space within is the utility of the house. Thus it is clear that if Being benefits us, it is due to the working of Non-Being . 53 410 Sufism and Taoism It is, I think, for this reason that the symbol of ‘valley’ plays such a prominent part in the Tao Te Ching. The valley is by nature hollow and empty. And precisely because it is hollow and empty, can it be full. Add to this the fact that the valley always occupies a ‘low’ place - another important trait of anything which is really high, whether human or non-human. The valley is thus an appropriate symbol for the Way understood as the absolute principle of eternal creative- ness, which is the plenitude of Being because it is ‘empty’, or ‘Nothing’. We have already quoted two passages in which Lao-tzu uses this symbol in talking about the inexhaustible creative activity of the Way. The Valley-Spirit is immortal . 54 The ‘high’ Virtue looks like a valley . 55 The underlying idea is made more explicitly clear in another place where Lao-tzu discusses the problem of anything being capable of becoming truly perfect because it is (apparently) imperfect. It is what is hollow that is (really) full . 56 Being ‘hollow’ and ‘low’ suggests the idea of ‘female’. This idea too has already been met with in the foregoing pages. In fact, the emphasis on the feminine element in the creative aspect of the Way may be pointed out as one of the characteristic features of Lao-tzu. It goes without saying that, in addition to the idea of ‘hollowness’ and ‘lowliness’, the ‘female’ is the most appropriate symbol of fecundity. The Way, for instance, is the Mother of the ten thousand things. The Nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth. The Named is the Mother of the ten thousand things . 57 All things under heaven have a Beginning which is to be regarded as the Mother of the world. If one knows the ‘mother’, one thereby knows the ‘child’. If, after having known the ‘child’, one holds fast to the ‘mother’, one will escape error, even to the end of one’s life . 58 The metaphysical implication of the Way being the Mother of all things and the things being her ‘ children’ has been elucidated earlier in the present chapter. We have also quoted in this chapter in connection with another problem a passage where mention is made of the ‘Mysterious Female’. The Valley-Spirit is immortal. It is called the Mysterious Female. The gateway of the Mysterious Female is called the Root of Heaven and Earth . 59 411 The Gateway of Myriad Wonders In the expression: Mysterious Female ( hsuan p’in), we encounter again the word hsuan 60 which, as we sae above, is used by Lao-tzu in reference to the Way as the unknown-unknowable metaphysical Absolute, that is, the Way as it lies even beyond Being and Non- Being. The Mystery of Mysteries it really is! And it is the Gateway of myriad Wonders . 61 It is remarkable, further, that in both passages the endless and inexhaustible creativeness of the Way is symbolized by the ‘gate- way’ (men ). 62 And this clearly indicates that the ‘gateway of the Mysterious Female’ is exactly the same thing as the ‘gateway of myriad Wonders’ . The Absolute in its active aspect is symbolically imaged as having a ‘gateway’, or an opening, from which the ten thousand things are sent out to the world of Being. The image of the ‘female’ animal makes the symbol the more appropriate to the idea because of its natural suggestion of fecundity and motherhood. As I pointed out earlier, the image of the ‘female’ in the world- view of Lao-tzu is suggestive, furthermore, of weakness, humble- ness, meekness, stillness, and the like. But, by the paradoxical way of thinking which is peculiar to Lao-tzu, to say that the ‘female’ is weak, meek, low, etc. is precisely another way of saying that she is infinitely strong, powerful, and superior. The female always overcomes the male by being quiet. Being quiet, she (always) takes the lower position. (And by taking the lower position, she ends by obtaining the higher position ) 63 As is clear from these words, the weakness of the ‘female’ here spoken of is not the purely negative weakness of a weakling. It is a very peculiar kind of weakness which is obtained only by overcom- ing powerfulness. It is a weakness which contains in itself an infinite possibility of power and strength. This point is brought into the focus of our attention by what Lao-tzu says in the following passage, in which he talks about the basic attitude of the ‘sacred man’ . Since, as we know, the ‘sacred man’ is for Lao-tzu the perfect per- sonification of the Way itself, what is said of the former is wholly applicable to the latter. It is to be noticed that here again the image of the ‘female’ is directly associated with that of the ‘valley’. He who knows the ‘male’, yet keeps to the role of the ‘female’, will become the ‘valley’ of the whole world. Once he has become the ‘valley’ of the whole world, the eternal Virtue 64 will never desert him 65 And it is evidently in this sense that the following statement is to be understood: 412 Sufism and Taoism ‘Being weak' is how the Way works. 66 We have been in what precedes trying to describe the ontological process - as conceived by Lao-tzu - of the ten thousand things coming out of the ‘gateway’ of the ‘Absolute. ‘The Way begets One; One begets Two; Two begets Three. And Three begets the ten thousand things’. 67 The ten thousand things, that is, the world and all the things that exist therein, represent the extreme limit of the ontological evolution of the Way. Phenomenal things, in other words, make their appearance at the last stage of the Descent of the Way. From the point of view of phenomenal things, their very emergence is the perfection of their own individual natures. For it is here that the Way manifests itself - in the original sense of the Greek verb phainesthai - in the most concrete forms. This, however, is not the end of the ontological process of Being. As in the case of the world-view of Ibn ‘Arabi’ the Descent is followed by the reversal of the creative movement, that'is, Ascent. The ten thousand things, upon reaching the last stage of the descending course, flourish for a while in an exuberance of colors and forms, and then begin to take an ascending course back toward their original pre-phenomenal form, that is, the formless Form of the One, and thence further to ‘Nothing’ , and finally they disappear into the darkness of the Mystery of Mysteries. Lao-tzu expresses this idea by the key term: JFu 6S or Return. The ten thousand things all arise together. But as I watch them, they ‘return’ again (to their Origin). All things 69 grow up exuberantly, but (when the time comes) every one of them ‘returns’ to its ‘root’. The Return to the Root is what is called Stillness. It means returning to the (Heavenly) Command (or the original ontological allotment of each). 70 The Return to the Heavenly Command is what is called the Unchang- ing. 71 And to know the Unchanging is what is called Illumination. 72 The plants grow in spring and summer in full exuberance and luxuriance. This is due to the fact that the vital energy that lies in potentia in their roots becomes activated, goes upward through the stems, and at the stage of perfection becomes completely actualized in the form of leaves, flowers, and fruits. But with the advent of the cold season, the same vital energy goes down toward the roots and ends by hiding itself in its origin. 73 Lao-tzu calls this final state Stillness 74 or Tranquillity. We have noticed above that ‘ stillness’ is one of his favorite concepts. And it is easy to see that this concept in its structure conforms to the general pattern of thinking which is typical of Lao-tzu. For the ‘stillness’ as The Gateway of Myriad Wonders 413 understood in terms of the present context is not the stillness of death or complete lifelessness. The vital energy hidden in the dark- ness of the root is actually motionless, but the root is by no means dead. It is, rather, a stillness pregnant with infinite vitality. Exter- nally no movement is perceptible, yet internally the incessant movement of eternal Life is carried on in preparation for the coming spring. Thus the creative activity of the Way forms a cyclic process. And being a cyclic process, it has no end. It is an eternal activity having neither an initial point nor a final point. We have also to keep in mind in understanding this idea another typical pattern of Lao-tzu’s thinking, which we have encountered several times. I am referring to the fact that Lao-tzu often describes a metaphysical truth in a temporal form. That is to say, his descrip- tion of a metaphysical truth in terms of time (and space) does not necessarily indicate that it is, in his view, a temporal process. The emanation of the ten thousand things out of the womb of the Way and their Return to their original source is described in the Tao Te Ching in a temporal form. And what is thus described is in fact a temporal process. Returning is how the Way moves. Being weak is how the Way works. The ten thousand things under Heaven are born out of Being. And Being is born out of Non-Being. 75 But in giving a description of the process in such a form, Lao-tzu is trying to describe at the same time an eternal, supra-temporal fact that lies over and above the temporal process. And looked at from this second point of view, the Return of the phenomenal things back to their origin is not something that happens in time and space. Lao-tzu is making a metaphysical statement, referring simply to the ‘immanence’ of the Way. All the phenomenal things, from this point of view, are but so many forms in which the Way manifests itself concretely -phainesthai. The things are literally phainomena. And since it is the Way itself that ‘uncovers itself’ or ‘reveals itself’ in these things, it is ‘immanent’ in each of them as its metaphysical ground. And each of the things contains in itself its own source of existence. This is the metaphysical meaning of the Return. As we have seen above, the Way in this particular form is called by Lao-tzu te or Virtue. Notes 1. ao H (See rn, j»*j rn, ftfe. mUMtoZM, fcflrTgtilj). 414 Sufism and Taoism 2. Tao Te Ching, LXII. 3. ibid., I, quoted and explained toward the end of the preceding chapter. 4. For the significance of this classification, see Chapter I. 5. Here again Chuang-tzu describes the situation in chronological order, in the form of historical development. But what he really intends to describe thereby is clearly a metaphysical fact having nothing to do with the ‘history’ of things. The situation referred to by the expression: ‘before the creation of the world’, accordingly, does not belong to the past; it directly concerns the present, as it did concern the past and as it will continue to concern the future forever. 6. In interpreting this opening sentence of the passage I follow Lin Yiin Ming (of the Ch’ing Dynasty, , ad loc.. who punctuates it: — • The ordinary reading represented by Kuo Hsiang articulates the sentence in a different way: r ,ftt£jetc. which may be translated as: ‘Before the creation of the world there was Non-Being. There was (then) no Being, no Name’. 7. te, Mi. This is, as we shall see, one of the key terms of Lao-tzu. The word te literally means ‘acquisition’ or ‘what is acquired’, that is, the One as ‘acquired’ by each of the existent things. This part of the semantic structure of the word is admirably clarified by the explanation which Chuang-tzu has just given in this passage. 8. ming, ifr , ‘command’ or ‘order’ ; to be compared with the Islamic concept of amr ‘(Divine) Command’. The corresponding concept in Chinese is often expressed by the compound t’ien ming, meaning ‘ Heavenly Command’ . The underlying idea is that everything in the world of Being is what it actually is in accordance with the Command of the One. All things participate in the One and ‘acquire it’, but each of them ‘acquires it in its own peculiar way. And this is the reason why nothing is exactly the same in the whole world, although all uniformly owe their existence to the One. All this would naturally lead to the problem of ‘predestination’, which will be elucidated in a later context. 9. i.e., the Cosmic element which is ‘shadowy’, dark, negative, and passive. 10. i.e., the ‘sunny’, light, positive element. 11. Tao Te Ching, XLII. 12. Tao Te Ching, I. 13. ibid., LII. 14. a , which is the same as a ( fj®g : rfiStglg. mX ■ K. MBfcj)- 15. which, according to the Shuo Wen, means to ‘take a rest’ (Tift, ,S.tkj). 16. Tao te Ching, XXXIX. 17. op. cit., LXXIII. 18. ibid., LXIV. The Gateway of Myriad Wonders 415 19. B&. 20. feU. The concept will be explained in more detail presently. 21. op. cit., LXIV. 22. ibid., XXIII. 23. See above, note 7. 24. 3ES8 (3rd. century A.D.); ad LI: See also his words: rfgSflHfc. fcfcURBSBj, ad XXXVIII. ( 25. See Part One, Chapter IX. \ 26. j T ). For the interpretation of the last word, ■S(she), see ■ Kuo Mo Jo’s remark in the Peking edition of the Kuan-tzu (ITf-ftK), 1965, vol. I, t pp. 642-644. He says: natfeff, **Jl*«j(‘The ( Way acts, but its figure is invisible. It gives in charity, but its Virtue is invisible’) I I?* i 27. i.e., being fostered by Virtue, they grow up and become ‘things’ each having a f. definite form. 28. 29. (f#3£) or (r$£j), meaning to ‘crystallize’ into a definite form. 30. !§, (§=;£ (according to rgfjgj). 31. op. cit., LI. 32. ‘Valley’ (£) is a favorite symbol of Lao-tzu, which he uses in describing the nature of the Way and the nature of the ‘sacred man’. 33. The standard Wang Pi edition reads: Following Liu Shih P’ei S>J®£ who argues: RS&flF*. I read: 34. op. cit., XLI. 35. The idea here described is comparable with what Ibn ‘ Arab! observes about Man being situated in a certain sense on the lowest level on the scale of Being. Inanimate things have no ‘ego’ . That makes them obedient to God’s commandments uncondi- tionally; that is to say, they are exposed naked to God’s activity upon them, there being no hindrance between them. The second position is given to the plants, and the third to the animals. Man, because of his Reasoi), occupies in this respect the lowest place in the whole hierarchy of Being. 36. op. cit., XXXVIII. 37. ibid., XXL 38. ibid., VII. 416 Sufism and Taoism 39. The symbol, meaning of the ‘Valley’ and ‘Female’ will be elucidated presently. 40. op. cit., VI. 41. op. cit., XXXVII. 42. ibid., X. The same sentences are found as part of LI which I have already quoted. 43. ibid., II. 44. Straw dogs specially prepared as offerings at religious ceremonies. Before the ceremonies, they were treated with utmost reverence. But once the occasion was over, they were thrown away as waste material and trampled upon by the passers-by. The Gateway of Myriad Wonders 417 62. H. 63. op. cit., LXI. 64. Note again the use of the word ch’ang whose meaning in this context has been explained earlier; see Chapter VII, Note 9. The ch’ang te, in accordance with what we have established above is synonymous with ‘high’ Virtue. See in particular Tao Te Ching, XLI, in which the ‘high’ Virtue is associated with the image of a ‘valley’: ‘The high Virtue looks like a valley’. 65. op. cit., XXVIII. 66. ibid., XL. 45. op. cit., V. 46. J. The second word of this sentence according to the commonly accepted reading is fa (r j etc.) . That this is wrong has been established by the editors of the Peking edition (See above, Note, 26), vol. II, pp. 635-636. 47. ibid. 48. itity. As Yii Yueh rightly observes, the character stands for £ which, accord- ing to the Shuo Wen, means the emptiness of a vessel, (i^ rUT^jVIII: rift# jffigii, £dtHL igTS: nt&ffiifflij &BHA, USEfflfL M+tlSTt fc fW^fFSj)- 49. must be emended to X- meaning ‘for an extremely long time’, i.e., ‘forever’ - on the basis of the reading of a T ang inscription (jgfJifUft: fXTfij); see again Yii Yueh, ibid. 50. op. cit., IV. 51. ibid. , XLV, r^cag^J. Concerning the character ity, see above, Note 49. 52. ibid., V. 53. ibid., XI. 54. op. cit., VI. 55. ibid., XLI. 56. ibid., XXII. 57. ibid., I, quoted above. 58. ibid., LII, quoted above. 59. ibid., VI. 60. X. 61. op. cit., I. See above, p. 113. 67. ibid., XLII. 68 . m. 69. Here the ten thousand things that grow up with an amazing vitality are compared to plants that vie with one another in manifesting their vital energy in spring and summer. 70. ming, fa (=^_fa). For a provisional explanation of t’ien ming (Heavenly Com- mand), see above, Note 8. 71. ch’ang, $ . 72. ming BJ. The epistemological structure of the experience of Illumination has been fully elucidated in Chapters VI and V in accordance with what is said concern- ing it in the Book of Chuang-tzu. The passage here quoted is from the Tao Te Ching, 73. This part of my explanation is an almost literal translation of the comment upon the passage by Wu Ch’eng Kig (of the Yuan Dynasty, rg« , ffnTSTffi ■ &0 Mj. 74. ching, iff . 75. op. cit., XL. Determinism and Freedom 419 IX Determinism and Freedom In the previous chapter we came across the concept of the Heavenly Command ( t’ien ming). The concept is philosophically of basic importance because it leads directly to the idea of determinism which, in Western thought, is known as the problem of ‘predestina- tion’, and in the intellectual tradition of Islam as that of qada and qadar} The most interesting part of the whole problem is admittedly its profound theological implication within the context of monotheistic religions like Christianity and Islam. The problem as a theological one might, at first sight, seem to be quite foreign to the world-view of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. That such is not the case, however, will become clear if we but remember that Taoism too has its own theological aspect. In the foregoing chapters the Way or the Absolute has been approached almost exclusively from the metaphysical point of view. We have been, in other words, trying to analyze the metaphysical aspect of the Way. And with reason. For that, after all, is the most fundamental theme upon which is based the whole system of Taoist philosophy. But the Way as conceived by the Taoist philosophers is not simply and exclusively the metaphysical Ground of all beings. It is also God -the Creator (lit. the Maker-of-things , tsao wu che ), Heaven (t’ien), or the Heavenly Emperor ( t’ien ti ), as He is traditionally called in Chinese. The ‘personal’ image of the Absolute in ancient China had a long history prior to the rise of the philosophical branch of Taoism which we are considering in this book. It was quite a vigorous living tradition, and exercised a tremendous influence on the historical molding of Chinese^ culture and Chinese mentality. And we would make a fatal mistake if we imagined that the Way as conceived - or ‘encountered’, we should rather say - by the Taoist sages were a purely metaphysical Absolute. For them too the Way was a metaphysical Absolute as well as a personal God. The image of the Maker-of-things must not be taken as a metaphorical or figurative expression for the metaphysical Principle. The Chuang-tzu has a chapter entitled ‘The Great Lordly Master ’. 2 The title refers to this ‘personal’ aspect of the Way. If we are to analyze this ‘personal’ concept of the Absolute in terms of the metaphysical structure of the Way, we should perhaps say that it correspbnds to the stage of ‘Being’ at which the creative activity of the Way becomes fully manifested. For, strictly speaking, the Way at the stage of the Mystery, or even at the stage of Nothing, is absolutely beyond common human cognition. Just as in the world-view of Ibn ‘Arabi the word ‘Lord’ (rabb) refers to the ontological stage at which the Absolute manifests itself through some definite Name - like Producer, for instance - and not to the absolute Essence which transcends all determinations and relations, so is the Taoist concept of ‘Maker-of-things’ properly to be taken as referring to the self-manifesting, or creative, aspect of the Way, and not to its self-concealing aspect. All this, however, is but a theoreti- cal implication of the metaphysical doctrine of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. They themselves do not elaborate this point in this particular form. Besides, the concept of the Absolute as the highest Lord of Heaven belongs to a particular domain of religious experi- ence which is of quite a different nature from that of the ecstatic intuition of the Absolute as the One, then as ‘Nothing’, then as the Mystery of Mysteries, although it is also true that the two types of religious experience seem to have greatly influenced each other in the historical process of the formation of Taoist philosophy, so much so that the Taoist concept of the Absolute as it actually stands can justifiably be said to contain two different aspects: metaphysical and personal. However this may be, the description given by Chuang-tzu of the activity of the Great Lordly Master in the administration of the affairs of the creaturely world is exactly the same as what he and Lao-tzu say about the working of Nature or the Absolute. The following is one of a number of passages which could be cited as evidence in support of this statement. Oh my Master, my (sole) Master - He cuts the ten thousand things into minute pieces . 3 And yet He has no consciousness of doing ‘justice’. His bounty extends to the ten thousand generations. And yet He has no consciousness of doing any particular act of ‘benevol- ence’ . 4 He is older than the oldest time (of history). And yet he has no consciousness of being aged. He covers Heaven (which covers every- thing) and sustains Earth (which sustains everything). He carves and models all kinds of forms. And yet he has no consciousness of being skilful . 5 The point I am making will become clear if one compares this passage with the words of Lao-tzu about the activity of the Way in the form of Virtue, which were quoted in the previous chapter. 420 Sufism and Taoism The Way gives birth (to the ten thousand things), yet claims no possession. It does great things, yet does not boast of it. It makes things grow, yet exercises no authority upon them. This is what I would call the Mysterious Virtue . 6 With this general theological background in mind we may rightly approach the problem of necessity or ‘predestination’ in Taoism. In discussing this idea, we shall be mainly dependent upon Chuang- tzu, because he seems to have been particularly interested in the problem of Necessity and human Freedom within the particular context of Taoist philosophy. We have pointed out earlier in this book the central importance observed of the concept of Chaos in the philosophical system of Chuang-tzu. We have observed there that, according to Chuang- tzu, Being which surrounds us from all sides and in which we live as part of it, reveals itself as a Chaos when we intuit its reality in the experience of ‘sitting-in-oblivion’. In the ecstatic vision peculiar to this experience, all things appear ‘chaotified’ . Nothing remains solid and stable. We witness the amazing scene of all things being freely and unobstructedly transmuted into one another. This image of Being must not mislead us into thinking only that Reality is literally chaotic and nothing but chaotic. Chaos is a metaphysical reality. But it represents only one aspect of Reality. In the very midst of this seeming disorder and confusion, there is observable a supreme order governing all things and events in the phenomenal world. In spite of their apparent utter confusion, all things that exist and all events that occur in the world exist and occur in accordance with the natural articulations of Reality. In this respect, the world we live in is a world determined by a rigorous Necessity. And how could it be otherwise? For the ten thousand things are nothing but forms in which the Absolute appears as it goes on determining itself; they are so many forms of the self- revelation of God. This concept of the ontological Necessity is expressed by Chuang-tzu by various terms, such as t’ien (Heaven), t’ien li (the natural course of things determined by Heaven), ming (Command), and pu te i (‘that which cannot be evaded’). Chuang-tzu regards ‘living in accordance with the t’ien li ’ as the ideal way of living in this world for the ‘true man’. The expression means ‘to accept whatever is given by nature and not to struggle against it’ . It suggests that there is for everybody and everything a natural course to take, which has been determined from the very beginning by Heaven. The world of Being, in this view, is naturally articulated, and nothing can happen against or outside of the fixed course. All things, whether inanimate or living, seem to exist or live Determinism and Freedom 421 : ;C- in docile obedience to their own destinies. They seem to be happy and contented with existing in absolute conformity with the inevit- •• able Law of Nature. They are, in this respect, naturally ‘living in accordance with the t’ien li ' . Only Man, of all existents, can and does revolt against the t’ien li. And that because of his self-consciousness. It is extremely difficult for him to remain resigned to his destiny. He tends to struggle hard to evade it or to change it. And he thereby brings discordance into the universal harmony of Being. But of course all his violent struggles are vain and useless, for everything is determined eter- J nally . Herein lies the very source of the tragedy of human existence. ( Is there, then, absolutely no freedom for man? Should he acquiesce without murmuring in his naturally given situation how- ever miserable it may be? Does Chuang-tzu uphold the principle of I negative passivity or nihilism? Not in the least. But how could he, § then, reconcile the concept of Necessity with that of human free- dom? This is the question which will occupy us in the following § pages. § The first step one has to take in attempting to solve this question consists in one’s gaining a lucid and deep consciousness that what- ever occurs in this world occurs through the activity of Heaven - Heaven here being understood in a ‘personal’ sense. Chuang-tzu gives a number of examples in the form of anecdotes. Here is one of them. A certain man saw a man who had one foot amputated as a punishment for some crime. Greatly surprised at seeing the deformity of the man, he cried out: ‘What a man! How has he come to have his foot cut off? Is it due to Heaven? Or is it due to man?’ The man replied: ‘It is Heaven, not man! At the very moment when Heaven gave me life, it destined me to become one-footed. (Nor- mally) the human form is provided with a pair , 7 (i.e., normally man is born with two feet) . From this I know that my being one-footed is due to Heaven. It cannot be ascribed to man !’ 8 Not only this and similar individual cases of misery and misfortune - and also happiness and good fortune - but the very beginning and end of human existence, Life and Death, are due to the Heavenly Command. In Chapter III we discussed the basic attitude of Chuang-tzu on the question of Life and Death, but from an entirely different angle. There we discussed it in terms of the concept of Transmutation. The same problem comes up in the present context in connection with the problem of destiny or Heaven. 422 Sufism and Taoism When Lao-tzu died, (one of his close friends) Ch’in Shih went to the ceremony of mourning for his death. (Quite perfunctorily) he wailed over the dead three times, and came out of the room. Thereupon the disciples (of Lao-tzu) (reproved him for his conduct) saying, ‘Were you not a freind of our Master?’ ‘Yes, indeed,’ he replied. ‘Well, then, is it permissible that you should mourn over his death in such a (perfunctory) way?’ ‘Yes. (This is about what he deserves.) Formerly I used to think that he was a (‘true’) man. But now I have realized that he was not. (The reason for this change of my opinion upon him is as follows.) Just now I went in to mourn him; I saw there old people weeping for him as if they were weeping for their own child, and young folk weeping for him as if they were weeping for their own mother. Judging by the fact that he could arouse the sympathy of his people in such a form, he must have (during his lifetime) cunningly induced them somehow to utter words (of sorrow and sadness) for his death, without explicitly asking them to do so, and to weep for him, without explicitly asking them to do so . 9 This , 10 however, is nothing but ‘escaping Heaven’ (i.e., escaping the natural course of things as determined by Heaven), and going against the reality of human nature. These people have completely forgotten (from where) they received what they received (i.e., the fact that they have received their life and existence from Heaven, by the Heavenly Command). In days of old, people who behaved thus were consi- dered liable for punishment for (the crime of) ‘escaping Heaven’. Your Master came (i.e., was born into this world) quite naturally, because it was his (destined) time (to come). Now he has (departed) quite naturally, because it was his turn (to go). If we remain content with the ‘time’ and accept the ‘turn’, neither sorrow nor joy can ever creep in. Such an attitude used to be called among the Ancients ‘loosing the tie of the (Heavenly) Emperor ’. 11 The last paragraph of this passage is found almost verbatim in another passage which was quoted earlier in Chapter III , 12 where the particular expression: ‘loosing the tie’ appears with the same meaning; namely, that of complete freedom. And this idea would seem to indicate in which direction one should turn in order to solve the problem of the conflict between Necessity and human freedom on the basis of a lucid consciousness that everything is due to the Will of Heaven. The next step one should take consists, according to what Chuang-tzu observes about ‘loosing the tie of the Heavenly Emperor’, in one’s becoming indifferent to, or transcending, the effects caused by the turns of fortune. In the latter half of the anecdote about the one-footed man, the man himself describes the kind of freedom he enjoys by wholly submitting himself to whatever has been destined for him by Heaven. Other people - so the man Determinism and Freedom 423 observes - might imagine that, being one-footed, he must find his life unbearable. But, he says, such is not actually the case. And he explains his situation by the image of a swamp pheasant. Look at the pheasant living in the swamp. (In order to feed itself) the bird has to bear the trouble of walking ten paces for one peck, and walking a hundred paces for one drink. (The onlookers might think that the pheasant must find such a life miserable.) However it will never desire to be kept and fed in a cage. For (in a cage the bird would be able to eat and drink to satiety and) it would be full of vitality, and yet it would not find itself happy . 13 To be deprived of one foot is to be deprived of one’s so-called ‘freedom’. The one-footed man has to endure inconvenience in daily life like the swamp pheasant which has to walk so many paces just for the sake of one peck and one drink. A man of normal bodily structure is ‘free’ to walk with his two feet. But the ‘freedom’ here spoken of is a physical, external freedom. What really matters is whether or not the man has a spiritual, inner freedom. If the man with two feet does not happen to have inner freedom, his situation will be similar to that of a pheasant in a cage; he can eat and drink without having to put up with any physical inconvenience, but, in spite of that, he cannot enjoy being in the world. The real misery of such a man lies in the fact that he struggles helplessly to change what can never be changed, that he has to fret away his life. Chuang-tzu’ s thought, however, does not stop at this stage. The inner ‘freedom’ which is based on a passive acceptance of whatever is given, or the tranquillity of the mind based on mere resignation in the presence of Necessity, does not for him represent the final stage of human freedom. In order to reach the last and ultimate stage of inner freedom, man must go a step further and obliterate the very distinction - or opposition - between his own existence and Neces- sity. But how can this be achieved? Chuang-tzu often speaks of ‘what cannot be evaded’ or ‘that which cannot be made otherwise’. Everything is necessarily fixed and determined by a kind of Cosmic Will which is called the Com- mand or Heaven. As long as there is even the minutest discrepancy in the consciousness of a man between this Cosmic Will and his own personal will, Necessity is felt to be something forced upon him, something which he has to accept even against his will. If, under such conditions, through resignation he gains ‘freedom’ to some extent, it cannot be a complete freedom. Complete freedom is obtained only when man identifies himself with Necessity itself, that is, the natural course of things and events, and goes on transforming himself as the natural course of things turns this way or that. 424 Sufism and Taoism Go with things wherever they go, and let your mind wander about (in the realm of absolute freedom). Leave yourself wholly to ‘that which cannot be made otherwise’ , and nourish and foster the (unperturbed) balance of the mind. 14 That, surely, is the highest mode of human existence. 15 To take such an attitude toward the inexorable Necessity of Being is, needless to say, possible only for the ‘true man’. But even the ordinary man, Chuang-tzu says, should not abandon all hope of coming closer to this highest ideal. And for this purpose, all that ordinary people are asked to do is positively accept their destiny instead of committing themselves passively and sullenly to fatalistic resignation. Chuang-tzu offers them an easily understandable reason why they should take the attitude of positive and willing acceptance. Quite naturally Necessity is represented at this level by the concrete fact of Life and Death. Life and Death are a matter of the (Heavenly) Command. (They succeed one another) just as Night and Day regularly go on alternat- ing with each other. This strict regularity is due to Heaven. There are things in this world (like Life and Death, Night and Day, and count- less others) which stand beyond the reach of human intervention. This is due to the natural structure of things. Man usually respects his own father as if the latter were Heaven itself, 16 and loves him (i.e., his father) with sincere devotion. If such is the case, how much more should he (respect and love) the (Father) who is far greater than his own! Man usually regards the ruler whom he serves as superior to himself. He is willing to die for him. If such is the case, how much more should he (regard as superior to himself) the true (Ruler)! 17 The expression ‘what cannot be evaded’ {pu te i) is liable to suggest the idea of man’s being under unnatural constraint. Such an impres- sion is produced only because our attention is focused - usually - on individual particular things and events. If, instead, we direct our attention to the whole of ‘that which cannot be evaded’, which is no other than the Way itself as it manifests its creative activity in the forms of the world of Being, we are sure to receive quite a different impression of the matter. And if, further, we identify ourselves with the working of the Way itself and become completely united and unified with it , 18 what has been an inexorable Necessity and ‘non- freedom’ will immediately turn into an absolute freedom. This is Freedom, because, such a spiritual state once achieved, man suffers nothing from outside. Everything is experienced as something com- ing from inside, as his own. The kaleidoscopic changes that charac- terize the phenomenal world are his own changes. As Kuo Hsiang says: ‘Having forgotten (the distinction between) Good and Evil, and having left aside Life and Death, he is now completely one with Determinism and Freedom 425 the universal Transmutation. Without encountering any obstruc- tion, he goes wherever he goes ’. 19 And since everything is his own - or we should say, since every- thing is himself as he goes on transforming himself with the cosmic Transmutation - he accepts willingly and lovingly whatever hap- pens to him or whatever he observes. As Lao-tzu says: The ‘sacred man’ has no rigidly fixed mind of his own. 20 He makes the minds of all people his mind. ‘Those who are good, (he says), 1 treat as good. But even those who are not good also I treat as good. (Such an attitude I take) because the original nature of man is goodness. Those who are faithful I treat as faithful. But even those who are not faithful I treat as faithful. (Such an attitude I take) because the original nature of man is faithfulness. Thus the ‘sacred man’, while he lives in the world, keeps his mind wide open. He ‘chaotifies’ his own mind toward all. Ordinary men strain their eyes and ears (in order to distinguish between things). The ‘sacred man’, on the contrary, keeps his eyes and ears (free) like an infant. 21 Here the attitude of the ‘sacred man’ toward things is sharply contrasted with that of ordinary people. The former is characterized by not-having-a-rigidly-fixed-mind, that is, by an endless flexibility of the mind. This flexibility is the result of his having completely unified himself with the Transmutation of the ten thousand things. The ‘sacred man’ is also said to have ‘chaotified’ his mind. This simply means that his mind is beyond and above all relative distinc- tions - between ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘truthful’ and ‘untruthful’, etc. Being one with the Way as it manifests itself, how could he make such distinctions? Is everything not a particular form of Virtue which is itself the activity of the Way? And is it not also the case that every particular form of Virtue is his own form? Chuang-tzu sees in such a situation the manifestation of the absolute freedom of man. The great clod (i.e., the earth - Heaven and Earth, or Nature) has placed me in a definite form (i.e., has furnished me with a definite bodily form). It has placed upon me the burden of life. It will make my life easier by making me old. And (finally) it will make me restful by letting me die. (All these four stages are nothing but four different forms of my own existence, which, again, are four of the infinitely variegated forms of Nature.) If I am glad to have my Life, I must be glad also to obtain my Death. What Chuang-tzu is concerned with in this particular context is not the problem of transcending Life and Death. The question at issue is that of Necessity, of which Life and Death are but two concrete 426 Sufism and Taoism conspicuous examples. The gist of his argument is that the Necessity of Being will no longer be ‘necessity’ when man becomes com- pletely one with Necessity itself. Wherever he may go, and into whatever form he may be changed, he will always be with the Necessity which has ceased to be ‘necessity’. If, on the contrary, the union is not complete, and if there is even one part of the whole left alien to himself, that particular part may at any moment damage his freedom. (A fisherman) hides his boat in the ravine, and hides his fishing-net 22 in the swamp, thinking that the boat and net are thereby ensured (against thieves). In the middle of the night, however, a powerful man (i.e., a thief) may (come and) carry them off on his back, without the stupid (fisherman) noticing it. Hiding, in this way, a small thing in a large place will certainly serve your purpose to some extent. But (that will guarantee no absolute security, for) there will still be ample possibility (for the small thing) to escape and disappear. If, on the contrary, you hide the whole world in the whole world itself , 23 nothing will find any place through which it might escape. This is the greatest truth common to all things. It is quite by chance that you have acquired the form of a man. Even such a thing is enough to make you glad. But (remember that) a thing like the human form is nothing but one of the infinitely variegated (phenomenal) forms of the universal Transmutation. (If only one phenomenal form is sufficient to make you so glad) incalculable indeed will be your joy (if you could experience with the Way all the transformations it manifests). Therefore the ‘sacred man’ wanders to his hearts content in the realm of ‘that from which there is no escape and in which all things have their existence’. And (being in such a spiritual state) he finds everything good - early death is good, old age is good, the beginning is good, the end is good. (The ‘sacred man’ is, after all, a human being). And yet he serves as a model for the people in this respect. All the more so, then, should (the Way itself be taken as the model for all men - the Way) upon which depend the ten thousand things and which is the very ground of the universal Transmutation . 24 In Chapter III we read a story of a ‘sacred man’ whose body was made hideously deformed by some serious illness and who made the following remark upon his own situation . 25 Whatever we obtain (i.e., Life) is due to the coming of the time. Whatever we lose (i.e., Death) is also due to the arrival of the turn. We must be content with the ‘time’ and accept the ‘turn’. Then neither sorrow nor joy will creep in. Such an attitude used to be called among the Ancients ‘loosing the tie (of Heaven)’. If man cannot loose himself from the tie, it is because ‘things’ bind him fast. And to this he adds: 427 I i Determinism and Freedom From of old, nothing has ever won against Heaven. How could I resent (what has happened to me)? Instead of ‘loosing the tie of Heaven’, people ordinarily remain bound up by all things. This is to say, instead of ‘hiding the whole world in the world’, they are simply trying to ‘hide smaller things in larger things’ . In the minds of such people, there can be no room for real freedom. They are, at every moment of their existence, made conscious of the absolute Necessity of the Will of Heaven or - which is the same thing - the Law of Nature, oppressing them, constrain- ing them against their will, and making them feel that they are in a narrow cage. This understanding of the Will of Heaven is by no means mistaken. For, ontologically, the course of things is abso- lutely and ‘necessarily’ fixed by the very activity of the Way, and no one can ever escape from it. And ‘nothing has ever won against Heaven’. On the other hand, however, there is spiritually a certain point at which this ontological Necessity becomes metamorphosed into an absolute Freedom. When this crucial turning point is actu- ally experienced by a man, he is a ‘sacred man’ or Perfect Man as understood in Taoist philosophy. In the following chapters we shall be concerned with the structure of the concept of the Perfect Man in Taoism. Notes 1. In the first Part of the present book Ibn ‘Arabl’s interpretation of the qada’ and qadar has been given in detail. 2. (TftlS I r**g5. him±. XS, U l). shih means a teacher or leader who is obediently followed by his followers. Here the Absolute or God who ‘instructs’ all existent things as to how they should exist is compared to an aged venerable Master instructing his students in the Truth. The idea is comparable with the Western concept of ‘Lord’ as applied to God. 3. IL The word here is usually interpreted as meaning ‘to crush’. Ch’eng Hsiian Ying (fifciH rgTjffiJp. 282), for example explicates the sentence as follows: (This may be visualized by the fact that) when autumn comes, frost falls and crushes the ten thousand things (and destroys them). Frost does not cut them down and crush them with any special intention to do so. How could it have the feeling of administering ‘justice’? (r£#tH. SfrflBrf'iJffnSHSL)- Ch’eng Hsiian Ying’s idea is that the ‘justice’ of the Way corresponds to the relentless destructive activity of the cold season, while the aspect of ‘benevolence’ corresponds to the ‘fostering’ activity of spring. Concerning this latter aspect he says: ‘The mild warmth of spring fosters the ten thousand things. But how is it imaginable that spring should have the emotion of love and affection and thereby do the work of ‘benevol- ence’? It would seem, however, better to understand the word ‘cutting to pieces’ as referring to the fact that the creative activity brings into actual existence an infinite number of individual things. 428 Sufism and Taoism 4. Note again the sarcastic tone in which the Confucian virtue is spoken of. 5. VI, 281. 6. Tao te Ching. LI. 7. Kuo Hsiang says: ‘Having a pair here means man’s walking (usually) with two feet. Nobody would ever doubt that the human form being provided with two feet is due to the Heavenly Command (or destiny)’. (rpg^^tfrFa^f^. To this Ch’eng Hsiian Ying adds: Since being biped is due to the Heavenly Command, it is evident that being one-footed also is not due to man. (rttfriMhfrife,, 8. Chuang-tzu, III, p. 124. 9. Since he himself was not a ‘ true man’ , he could not teach his people how to behave properly. 10. ‘This’ refers to the behavior of the people who were weeping so bitterly for him. 11. op. cit.. Ill, pp. 127v-128. 12. ibid., VI, p. 260. 13. ibid.. Ill, p. 126. 14. cAiibs + (££»: r+, S-CPRfti+J ). 15. op. cit., IV, p. 160. 16. Reading instead of rj^gSCj. 17. op. cit., VI, p. 241. 18. To express the idea Chuang-tzu uses the phrase: r ftKilJ meaning ‘to be trans- muted into the Way’ (Cf. VI, p. 242). 19. rig#®, fflt*., VI, P . 243. 20. In this combination, the word ch’ang (■$•) - whose original meaning is, as we saw earlier, ‘eternal’, ‘unalterable’ - means ‘stiff’ and ‘inflexible’. 21. Tao Te Ching, XLIX. 22. The text has r sBEtLi^^ j which is meaningless. Following the suggestion by Yii Yiieh m ( riST^ilJ: I'm# "!«»» , Ujg&SSitljJ ) I read Ml instead of flj. 23. This refers to the spiritual stage of complete unification with the Way which comprises everything. ‘Hiding the whole world in the whole world’ is contrasted to hiding, as we usually do, smaller things in larger things. In the latter case, there are always possibilities for the smaller things to go somewhere else, while in the former, there is absolutely no such possibility. Thus ‘hiding the whole world in the whole world’ is paradoxically tantamount to ‘hiding nothing’ or ‘leaving everything as it naturally is’. Determinism and Freedom 429 24. Chuang-tzu, VI, pp. 243-244. 25. ibid., VI, p. 260. X Absolute Reversal of Values Throughout the Tao Te Ching the term sheng jen ("sacred man’) 1 is consistently used in such a way that it might justifiably be consi- dered the closest equivalent for the Islamic insan kamil ("perfect man’). This word seems to go back to remote antiquity. In any case, judging by the way it is used by Confucius in the Analects, the word must have been widely prevalent in his age. The Master said: A ‘sacred man’ is not for me to meet. 1 would be quite satisfied if I could ever meet a man of princely virtue. 2 The Master said: How dare I claim for myself being a ‘sacred man’ or even a man of (perfect) ‘benevolence’? 1 It is not philologically easy to determine the precise meaning attached by Confucius to this word. But from the general contexts in which it is actually used as well as from the dominant features of his teaching, we can, I think, judge fairly safely that he meant by the term sheng jen a man with a sort of superhuman ethical perfection. Confucius did not dare even to hope to meet in his life a man of this kind, not to speak of claiming that he himself was one. This, however, is not the problem at which we must labor in the present context. The point I would like to make here is the fact that the word sheng jen itself represented a concept which was appar- ently quite understandable to the intellectuals of the age of Con- fucius, and that Lao-tzu wrought a drastic change in the connotation of this word. This semantic change was effected by Lao-tzu through his metaphysical standpoint, which was of a shamanic origin. We have already seen in the first chapters of this book how Lao-tzu - and Chuang-tzu - came out of a shamanic milieu. The Perfect Man for Lao-tzu was originally a ‘perfect’ shaman. This fact is concealed from our eyes by the fact that his world-view is not nakedly shamanic, but is presented with an extremely sophisticated metaphysical elaboration. But the shamanic origin of the Taoist concept of the ‘sacred man’ will be disclosed if we correlate the Absolute Reversal of Values 431 following passage, for example, from the Tao Te Ching with what Chuang-tzu remarks concerning the ecstatic experience of ‘sitting in oblivion’. Block all your openings (i.e., eyes, ears, mouth, etc.), and shut all your doors (i.e., the activity of Reason), and all your life you (i.e., your spiritual energy) will not be exhausted. If, on the contrary, you keep your openings wide open, and go on increasing their activities, you will never be saved till the end. To be able to perceive the minutest thing 4 is properly to be called Illumination ( ming ). To hold on to what is soft and flexible 5 is properly to be called strength. If, using your external light, you go back to your internal illumina- tion, you will never bring misfortune upon yourself. Such an (ulti- mate) state is what is to be called ‘stepping into 6 the eternally real’. 7 The ‘eternal real’ (< ch’ang ), as we have often noticed, refers to the Way as the eternally changeless Reality. Thus the concept of the ‘sacred man’ as we understand it from this passage, namely, the concept of the man who ‘has returned to Illumination’ and has thereby ‘stepped into’, that is, unified himself with, the Way, is exactly the same as that of the man who is completely one with ‘that which cannot be made otherwise’ , which we have discussed in the previous chapter in connection with the problem of Necessity and Freedom. The ‘sacred man’, for both Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, is a man whose mind is ‘wandering about in the realm of absolute Freedom’ , away from the bustle of the common people. It is quite natural, then, that such a man, when judged by the yardstick of common sense, should appear as outrageously ‘abnormal’. If worldly- minded people represent the ‘normal’, the ‘sacred man’ is surely to be considered a strange, bizarre creature. An ‘abnormal’ 8 man - what kind of man is he, if I may ask? The answer: An ‘abnormal’ man is one who is totally different from other men, while being in perfect conformity with Heaven. Hence the saying: a petty man from the viewpoint of Heaven is, from the viewpoint of ordinary men, a man of princely virtue; 9 while a man of princely virtue from the viewpoint of Heaven is, from the viewpoint of ordinary men, a petty man. Thus the Perfect Man, by the very fact that he is in perfect confor- mity with Heaven, is in every respect in discordance with ordinary men. His behavior pattern is so totally different from the commonly accepted one that it excludes him from ‘normal’ human society. The latter necessarily regards him as ‘abnormal’. He is ‘abnormal’ because the Way itself with which he is in perfect conformity is, 432 Sufism and Taoism from the standpoint of the common people, something strange and abnormal’, so ‘abnormal’ indeed that they treat it as funny and ridiculous. As Lao-tsu says: When a man of low grade hears about the Way, he bursts into laughter. If it is not laughed at, it would not be worthy to be the Way . 10 If the Way is of such a nature that it looks not only strange and obscure but even funny and ridiculous, it is but natural that the Perfect Man who is a living image of the Way should also look ridiculous or sometimes vexatious and unbearably irritating. Chuang-tsu often describes in his Book the ‘strange’ behavior of the abnormal’. Once a disciple of Confucius - this is of course a fictitious story - saw two ‘abnormal’ men merrily and playfully singing in unison in the presence of the corpse of their friend, another ‘abnormal’ man instead of duly performing the funeral service. Vexed and indig- nant, he hastened back and reported to his Master what he had just seen. ‘What sort of men are they?’ he asked Confucius. ‘What sort of men are they? They do not observe the rules of proper behavior. They do not care at all about external forms. In the pres- ence of the corpse they sing a song, without even changing their countenances. Their conduct (is so abnormal that) I am completely at a loss to characterize them. What kind of men are they?’ Quite ironically, Chuang-tzu makes Confucius perspicacious enough to understand the real situation in terms of Taoist philos- ophy and explain the nature of their conduct to his perplexed disciple. Here is what Confucius says about it. They are those who freely wander beyond the boundaries (i.e the ordinary norms of proper behavior), while men like myself are those who wander freely only within the boundaries. ‘Beyond the bound- aries and ‘within the boundaries’ are poles asunder from one another. ... They are those who, being completely unified with the Creator Himself, take delight in the realm (i.e., spiritual state) of the original Unity of the vital energy before it is divided into Heaven and Earth, o t eir minds Life is just the growth of an excrescence, a wart, and eath is the breaking of a boil, the bursting of a tumor. . . . They simply borrow different elements, and put them together in the common form of body (i.e., in their view a human being is a compo- site made of different elements which by chance are placed together mto a bodily unit). Hence they are conscious neither of their liver nor of their gall, and they leave aside their ears and eyes. Abandoning hemselves to infinitely recurrent waves of Ending and Beginning they go on revolving in a circle, of which they know neither the beginning-point nor the ending-point. Absolute Reversal of Values 433 Thus, without being conscious (of their personal existence), they roam beyond the realm of dust and dirt, and enjoy wandering to their heart’s content in the work of Non-Doing. How should such men bother themselves with meticulously observ- ing the rules of conduct peculiar to the vulgar world, so that they might attract (i.e., satisfy) the ears and eyes of the common people ? 11 Thus the behavior pattern of these men necessarily brings about a complete overturn of the commonly accepted order of values. Of course it is not their intention to turn upside down the ordinary system of values. But as these men live and behave in this world, their conduct naturally reflects a very peculiar standard of values, which could never square with that accepted by common sense and Reason. Chuang-tzu expresses this idea in a number of ways. As one of the most interesting expressions he uses for this purpose we may men- tion the paradoxical-sounding phrase: ‘deforming, or crippling the virtues’ . 12 After relating how a man of hideous deformity - Shu the Crippled - because of his deformity , completes his term of life safely and pleasantly, Chuang-tzu makes the following observation: If even a man with such a crippled body was able to support himself and complete the span of life that had been assigned to him by Heaven, how much more should this be the case with those who have ‘crippled the virtues ’! 13 To ‘cripple’ or ‘deform’ the virtues is a forceful expression meaning: to damage and overturn the common hierarchy of values. And since the system of values on which is based the mode of living or principle of existence peculiar to these ‘cripples’ is thus radically opposed to that of the common people, their real greatness cannot be recognized by the latter. Even the most sophisticated man of I Reason - Reason being, after all, an elaboration of common sense - # fails to understand the significance of the ‘abnormal’ way of living, I although he may at least vaguely sense that he is in the presence of something great. Hui Shih (Hui-tzu), a famous dialectician of Chuang-tzu’s time, of whom mention was made earlier, 14 criticizes Chuang-tzu - in one of the anecdotes about this ‘sophist’ recorded in the Book of Chuang-tzu - and remarks that Chuang-tzu’s thought is certainly ‘big’ , but it is too big to be of any use in the world of reality. It is ‘big but crippled’. Against this Chuang-tzu points out that the eyes of those who are tied down to a stereotyped and fossilized system of traditional values cannot see the greatness of the really great. Besides, he says, things that are ‘useful’ in the real sense of the term are those things that transcend the common notion of ‘usefulness’. 434 Sufism and Taoism The ‘usefulness’ of the ‘useless’, the greatness of the ‘abnormal’, in short, an absolute reversal of the order of values - this is what characterizes the world-view of the Perfect Man. Let us, first, see how Hui-tzu describes the ‘uselessness’ of things that are ‘abnormally big’. The king of Wei once gave me the seeds of a huge gourd. I sowed them, and finally they bore fruit. Each gourd was big enough to contain as much as five piculs. I used one of them to contain water and other liquids; but I found that it was so heavy that I could not lift it by myself. So I cut it into two pieces and tried to use them as ladles. But they were too flat and shallow to hold any liquid. Not that it was not big enough. Big it surely was, to the degree of monstrosity! But it was utterly useless. So I ended up by smashing them all to pieces . 15 It is interesting to notice that Hui-tzu does recognize the gourds as big, very big indeed. But their excessive bigness renders them unsuitable for any practical use. Through this symbol he wants to indicate that the spiritual size of the Perfect Man may be very large, but that when his spiritual size exceeds a certain limit, it turns him practically into a stupid fellow. This, however, only provokes a sharp retort from Chuang-tzu, who points out that Hui-tzu has found the gourd to be of no use ‘simply because he does not know how to use big things properly’. And he adds: Now that you had a gourd big enough to contain as much as five piculs, why did it not occur to you that you might use it as a large barrel? You could have enjoyed floating over rivers and lakes, instead of worrying about its being too big and shallow to contain any liquid! Evidently, my dear friend, you still have a mind overgrown with weeds ! 16 Exactly the same kind of situation is found in another anecdote which immediately follows the preceding one. Hui-tzu once said to Chuang-tzu: ‘I have (in my garden) a big tree, which is popularly called shu (useless, stinking tree). Its main stem is gnarled as with tumors, and nobody can apply a measuring line to it. Its branches are so curled and bent that no one can use upon them compass and square. Even if I should make it stand by the thorough- fare (in order to sell it), no carpenter would even cast a glance at it. Now your words, too, are extremely big, but of no use. That is why people desert them and nobody wants to listen to you’. Chuang-tzu said: ‘You must have observed a weasel, how it hides itself crouching down, and watches for carelessly sauntering things (i.e., chickens, rats, etc.) to pass by. Sometimes, again, it nimbly leaps about east and west, jumping up and jumping down without any hesitation. But finally it falls into a trap or dies in a net. 435 Absolute Reversal of Values Now look at that black ox. It is as big as an enormous cloud hanging in the sky. It is big, indeed! And it does not know how to catch a rat. (It is useless in this sense, but it does not die in a trap or a net.) You say you have a big tree, and you are worried because it is useless. Well, then, why do you not plant it in the Village of There-Is- Absolutely-Nothing , 17 or in the Wilderness of the Limitlessly- Wide , 18 idly spend your days by its side without doing anything, and lie down under it for an untroubled sleep? The tree, then , will never suffer a premature death by being cut down by an axe. Nor will there be anything there to harm it. If it happens to be of ho use, why should it cause you to fret and worry ?’ 19 The passage just quoted, in which Chuang-tzu clarifies his attitude against the kind of rationalism and utilitarianism represented by Hui-tzu is of great importance for our purposes, containing as it does in a symbolic form some of the basic ideas of Chuang-tzu. These ideas are so closely interrelated with each other that it is difficult to deal with them separately. Besides, some of them have already been discussed in detail in connection with other problems, and others are directly or indirectly related with those that have been touched upon in the foregoing. Here for convenience I will classify them under four heads, and discuss them briefly one by one from the particular viewpoint of the present chapter. These four are: (1) The image of a strange, fantastic region which is designated by such expressions as the Village of There-Is-Absolutely-Nothing and the Wilderness of the Limitlessly-Wide; (2) the idea of idling away one’s time; (3) ‘abnormal bigness’; and (4) the idea of free wandering. P (1) The two expressions: the Village of There-Is-Absolutely- Nothing and the Wilderness of the Limitlessly-Wide, are very characteristic of the philosophical anthropology of Chuang-tzu. They describe symbolically the spiritual state in which the Perfect Man finds his absolute tranquillity and freedom. In another passage Chuang-tzu gives us a hint - symbolically, again - through the mouth of a fictitious Perfect Man 20 as to what he means by these terms. I am going to unify myself with the Creator Himself. But when I become bored with that, immediately I will mount on the Bird-of- Pure-Emptiness and travel beyond the limits of the six directions (i.e., the Universe). There I shall wander to my heart’s content in the Village of There- Is-Absolutely-Nothing and live alone in the Wilderness of the Limitlessly-Wide . 21 In the light of what we already know about the major ideas of Chuang-tzu, the ‘Village of There-Is-Absolutely-Nothing’ or the 436 Sufism and Taoism k ‘Wilderness of the Limitlessly-Wide’ evidently refer to the spiritual state of Nothingness or Void in which the perfect Man finds himself in the moments of his ecstatic experience. At the highest stage of ‘sitting in oblivion’ the mind of the Perfect Man is in a peculiar kind of blankness. All traces of phenomenal things have been erased from his consciousness; even consciousness itself has been erased. There is here no distinction between ‘subject’ and ‘object’ . For both mind and things have completely disappeared. He is now an inhabitant of a strange metaphysical region which is ‘limitlessly wide’ and where ‘there is absolutely nothing’. This, however, is but the first half of his being an inhabitant of the Village of There-Is-Absolutely-Nothing or the Wilderness of the Limitlessly-Wide. In the second half of this experience, the reality of the phenomenal world begins to be disclosed to his spiritually transformed eyes. All the things that have once been wiped out from his consciousness - including his own consciousness - come back to him in an entirely new form. Being reborn at a new level of existence, he is now in a position to command an extensive and unobstructed view of the whole world of Being as it pulsates with eternal life, in which infinitely variegated things come and go, appear and disappear at every moment. We know already that this aspect of the Perfect Man, namely, his being an inhabitant of the region of Nothingness and Limitlessness, is discussed by Chuang- tzu in a more philosophical way as the problem of the Transmuta- tion of all things. Being perfectly familiar with that which has no falsehood (i.e. , the true Reality, the Way), he does not shift about driven by the shifting things . 22 He regards the universal Transmutation of things as (the direct manifestation of) the Heavenly Command, and holds fast to (i.e., keeps his inner gaze inalterably focused upon) their Great Source . 23 (2) The Idea of idling away one’s time is closely related to the idea of living in the region of Nothingness and Limitlessness. For the Per- fect Man cannot be an inhabitant of such a country unless he is idling away his time, doing nothing and enjoying from time to time an untroubled sleep. ‘To be idle’ is a symbolic way of expressing the basic idea of Non-Doing. The principle of Non-Doing which, as we saw earlier, represents, for Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, the highest mode of human existence in this world, demands of the Perfect Man ‘being natural’ and leaving everything in its natural state and to its natural course. He does not meddle with the fate of anything. This is the ‘indifference’ of the Perfect Man to the ten thousand things, of which mention was made earlier. But ‘indifference’ in this case does not imply ignorance or lack of Absolute Reversal of Values 437 cognition. On the contrary, all things, as they come and go, are faithfully reflected in the ‘void’ of the mind of the Perfect Man. His mind in this respect is comparable to a spotless mirror. A well- polished mirror reflects every object, as long as the latter stands in front of it. But if the object goes away, the mirror does not show any effort to detain it; nor does it particularly welcome a new object when it makes its appearance. Thus the mind of the Perfect Man obtains the most lucid images of all things, but is not perturbed thereby. (The Perfect Man ) 24 does not become the sole possessor of fame, (but lets each thing possess its own fame). He does not become the treasury of plans (but lets each thing make a plan for itself). He does not undertake the responsibility for all things, (but lets each thing undertake the responsibility for itself). He does not become the sole possessor of wisdom, (but lets each thing exercise its own wisdom). He embodies completely what is inexhaustible (i.e., the ‘limitless’ activity of the Way), and wanders to his heart’s content in the Land-of-No-Trace (i.e., the region of Nothingness). He employs to the utmost what he has received from Heaven, and yet he is not conscious of having acquired something. He is ‘empty’ - that is what he is. The ‘ultimate man’ makes his mind work as a (spotless) mirror. It detains nothing. It welcomes nothing. It simply responds to, and reflects, (whatever comes to it). But it stores nothing. This is why he can exercise mastery over all things, and is not hurt by anything . 25 I have heard that if a mirror is well-polished, dust cannot settle upon its surface; (that is to say) if dust settles upon a mirror, (we can be sure that) the mirror is not well-polished . 26 The image of the perfectly polished mirror as a symbol for the state of the mind of the Perfect Man is found also in the Tao Te Ching. Purifying your Mysterious Mirror, can you make it spotless ? 27 Thus the Perfect Man does not do anything - that is, with the intention of doing something. The moment a man does something, his very consciousness of doing it renders his action ‘unnatural’. Instead, the Perfect Man leaves all things, himself and all other things, to their own natures. This is the meaning of the term Non- Doing (wu wei). And since he does not do anything, he leaves nothing undone. By virtue of his Non-Doing, he ultimately does everything. For in that state, his being is identical with Nature. And Nature accomplishes everything without forcing anything. (3) The ‘abnormal bigness’ of the Perfect Man has produced a number of remarkable symbols in the Book of Chuang-tzu. We have already seen some of them; the huge gourd which is too big to 438 Sufism and Taoism be of any use, the big useless shu-tree in the garden of Hui-tzu, the black ox, lying in the meadow, doing nothing, being unable to catch even a rat. These, however, are relatively homely symbols; they are things of a moderate size compared with others which we find in the same Book. As an example of such fantastic symbols, we may mention the famous story of a huge mythical Bird, which we encounter on the very first page of the Chuang-tzu. In the dark mysterious ocean of the north (i.e., the northern limit of the world) there lives a Fish whose name is K’un. Its size is so huge that nobody knows how many thousand miles it is. (When at last the time of Transmutation comes) the Fish is trans- muted into a Bird known as P’eng. The back of the Peng is so large that nobody knows how many thousand miles it is. Now the Bird suddenly pulls itself together and flies off. Lo, its wings are like huge clouds hanging in the sky. And as the ocean begins to be turbulent (with raging storms of wind) the Bird intends to journey towards the dark mysterious ocean of the south. The southern ocean is the lake of Heaven. In fact, in the Book entitled Ch’i Hsieh 2S which records strange events and things, we find the following description (of this Bird). ‘ When the Peng sets off for the dark mysterious ocean of the south, it begins by beating with its wings the surface of the water for three thousand miles. Then up it goes on a whirlwind to the height of ninety thousand miles. Then it continues to fly for six months before it rests ’. 29 This is immediately followed by a masterly description of the impre- ssion which the Bird is supposed to receive when it looks down upon our earth from the height of ninety thousand miles. The Bird is already wandering in a region which is far above the ‘worldly’ world where all kinds of material interests and inordinate desires are bubbling and foaming in an endless turmoil. It is not that the Bird does not see the ‘dirty’ world of vulgarity. The ‘dirty’ world is still there, under the Bird. The only difference is that the world looked down from this vertiginous height strikes the Bird’s eyes as some- thing beautiful, infinitely beautiful - another symbolic expression for the way the mind of the Perfect Man mirrors everything on its spotless surface. (Look at the world we live in. You will see there) ground vapor stirring; dust and dirt flying about; the living things blowing (fetid) breaths upon each other! The sky above, on the contrary, is an immense expanse of deep blue. Is this azure the real color of the sky? Or does it look (so beautifully blue) because it is at such a distance from us? (However this may be), the Bird now, looking down from its height, will surely be perceiving nothing but a similar thing, (i.e., our ‘dirty’ world must appear to the eyes of the Bird as a beautiful blue expanse ). 30 439 Absolute Reversal of Values Chuang-tzu brings this description of the Bird’s journey to an end by going back again to the idea of the ‘bigness’ of the Bird and the corresponding ‘bigness’ of its situation. By the force of his pen, the Bird is now alive in our imagination as an apt symbol for the Perfect Man who, transcending the pettiness and triviality of human exist- ence is freely wandering in the ‘void’ of Infinity and Nothingness. (Why does the Bird soar up to such a height?) If the accumulation of water is not thick enough, it will not have the strength to bear a big ship. If you pour a cup of water into a hollow on the ground, tiny atoms of dust will easily float on it as if they were ships. If, however, you place a cup there, it will stick fast to the ground, because the water is too shallow while the ‘ship’ is too large. (Likewise) if the accumulation of wind is not thick enough, it will not have the strength to support huge wings. But at the height of ninety thousand miles, the (thick accumulation of) wind is under the Bird. Only under such conditions can it mount on the back of the wind, and carry the blue sky on its back, without there being anything to obstruct its flight. And now it is in a position to journey toward the south . 31 Here the Perfect Man is pictured as a colossal Bird, soaring along far above the world of common sense. The Bird is ‘big’, and the whole situation in which it moves is correspondingly ‘big’. But this exces- sive ‘bigness’ of the Perfect Man makes him utterly incomprehens- ible, or even ridiculous, in the eyes of the common people who have no other standard of judgment than common sense. We have already seen above how Lao-tzu, in reference to the ‘abnormality’ of the Way, makes the paradoxical remark that the Way, if it is not laughed at by ‘men of low grade’, would not be worthy to be considered the Way. In fact, the Bird P’eng is ‘abnormally big’. Chuang-tzu symbolizes the ‘men of low grade’ who laugh at the ‘bigness’ of the Perfect Man by a cicada and a little dove. A cicada and a little dove laugh scornfully at the Bird and say, ‘ When we pluck up all our energies to fly, we can reach an elm or sapanwood tree. But (even in such flights) we sometimes do not succeed, and are thrown down on the ground. (Of small scale it may be, but our flight w also a flight.) Why is it at all necessary that (the Bird) should rise ninety thousand miles in order to journey towards the south?’ A man who goes on a picnic to a near-by field, will go out carrying food sufficient only for three meals; and he will come back (in the evening) with his stomach still full. But he who makes a journey to a distance of one hundred miles, will grind his grain in preparation the night before. And he who travels a thousand miles, will begin to gather provisions three months in advance. What do these two creatures (i.e., the cicada and the dove) know about (the real situation of the Bird)? Those who possess but petty 440 Sufism and Taoism wisdom are not able to understand the mind of those who possess Great Wisdom . 32 This description of the imaginery flight of the Bird P’eng across the world is a very famous one. It is significant that the passage is placed at the very outset of the whole Book of Chuang-tzu. The uninitiated reader who approaches the Book for the first time will simply be shocked by the uncouth symbols that constitute the story, and will be driven into bewilderment not knowing how to interpret the whole thing. But by this very bewilderment, he will be directly led into the strange mythopoeic atmosphere which is typical of what we might call the shamanic mode of thinking. Unlike the ordinary kind of shamanic visions, however, there reigns over this image of the Bird’s journey an unusual air of serenity, purity, and tranquillity. And this is a reflection of the inner state of the Perfect Man who is no longer a mere ‘shaman’, but rather a great ‘philosopher’ in the original Greek sense of the word. Be this as it may, the forceful, dynamic style of Chuang-tzu and his creative imagination has succeeded in producing an amazing symbol for the spiritual ‘greatness’ of the Perfect Man. (4) As regards the idea of free wandering, there remains little to say. For the foregoing description of the flight of the Bird is itself an excellent description of the ‘free wandering’ as well as of the ‘big- ness’ of the Perfect Man. The ‘free wandering’ is a symbolic expression for the absolute freedom which the Perfect Man enjoys at every moment of his existence. What is meant by ‘absolute freedom’ must be, by now, too clear to need any further explanation. The Perfect Man is absolutely free, because he is not dependent upon anything. And he is not dependent upon anything because he is completely unified with the Way, there being no discrepancy between what he does and what Heaven-and-Earth does. In the following passage, Chuang- tzu, from the viewpoint of ‘dependence’ and ‘independence’, divides men into four major categories. The first is the man of ‘petty wisdom’; the second is the man of middle wisdom, represented by Sung Jung-tzu; 33 the third is the man of ‘great wisdom’ who is still somewhat defective in his spiritual perfection, represented by the famous Taoist sage Lieh-tzu; and the fourth and the last is the man of ultimate perfection, who is the real Perfect Man. Here is a man whose wisdom is good enough to make him suitable for occupying with success an official post, whose conduct is good enough to produce harmony in one district, whose virtue is good enough to please one sovereign, and whose ability is good enough to make him conspicuous in the politics of one state. Such a man looks Absolute Reversal of Values 44 1 upon himself with self-conceit just like (the above-mentioned small creatures ). 34 Sung Jung-tzu would surely laugh at such a man. Sung is the kind of man who, even if the whole world should praise him, would not be stimulated thereby to increase his usual (moral) exertion, and even if the whole world should blame him, would not be affected thereby and become disheartened. This is due to the fact that he draws a clear line of demarcation between the internal and the external . 35 He is, thus, clearly conscious of the boundaries of real glory and real disgrace. This makes him rather indifferent to petty interests in this world. However, he is not yet firmly established (i.e., completely self-sufficient and independent). Next comes Lieh-tzu . 36 He rides on the wind and goes wandering about with amazing skilfulness. He usually comes back to earth after fifteen days (of continuous flight). He is not at all interested in obtaining happiness. Besides, (his ability to fly) saves him the trouble of walking. And yet, he has still to be dependent upon something (i.e., the wind). As for the man (of absolute freedom and independence) who mounts on the natural course of Heaven and Earth, controls at will the six elemental forms of Nature, and freely wanders through the realm of the Limitlessness - on what should he be dependent? Therefore it is said: The Ultimate Man has no ego, (and having no ego, he adapts himself to everything and every event with limitless flexibility). The Divine Man has no merit (because he does nothing intentionally). The Sacred Man has no fame (because he transcends all worldly values ). 37 The last of the four classes of men here described is the Perfect Man. And the ‘free wandering’ is nothing other than a symbolic expres- sion for the absolute spiritual independence which characterizes his mode of existence in this world. It refers to his absolute Freedom, his not being retained in one place, and his not being tied to any particular thing. The expression is also interesting in that it is evocative of the original form of the Taoist Perfect Man as a shaman who, in his ecstatic state, used to make a mythopoeic journey around the limitless universe freely, without being obstructed by the shackles of his material body. The first chapter of the Book of Chuang-tzu is entitled ‘Free Wandering’. It is not, I think, a mere coincidence that one of the masterpieces of shamanic poetry, Yuan Yu (‘Traveling Afar’), which is found in the Elegies ofCh’u, pres- ents striking similarities to the mythopoeic part of the world-view of Taoism. Both the Taoist Perfect Man and the great Shaman of Ch’u ‘mount on the clouds, ride a flying dragon, and wander far beyond the four seas’ , 38 442 Sufism and Taoism Notes 1. ISA. 2. Analects, VII, 25. 3. ibid., VII, 33. 4. The ‘minutest thing’ here means the Way as it manifests itself within the mind of man. The shaman-mystic, by closing up all the apertures of the senses and the intelligence, turns back into the depth of himself, where he perceives the Wav working as a very ‘small thing’. 5. For the idea that the ‘sacred man’ constantly maintains the flexibility of the mind °u 3 r ’,? fant ’ see above > Chapter IX, p. 144. The point will be further elaborated in the following chapter. 6. For an explanation of the meaning of this expression, see above Chapter V Note 29. 7. Tao Te Ching, LII. 8. Chi jen SSA. 9. The ordinary text reads: A£'J'Atil I which, as Wang Hsien Ch’ien remarks, does nothing but repeat exactly the same thing as the first half of the sentence in a reversed order: rxi'J'A , A£^T j. Following his suggestion I read the second half: r^a?-, Ai'J'Aj (TftSI : Chuang-tzu, VI, p. 273. 10. Tao Te Ching, XLI. 11. Chuang-tzu, VI, pp. 267-268. 12. Chih li te, 13. op. cit., IV, p. 180. 14. See Chapter I, Note 15. 15. op. cit., I, p. 36. 16. ibid., p. 37. 17. temz®. 18. 19. op. cit., I, pp. 39-40. 20. : It is interesting that the name of that Perfect Man is ‘Nameless- Man’. 21. op. cit., VII, p. 293. See also VII, p. 296: 22. This does not simply mean that the Perfect Man remains rigidly fixed and devoid of flexibility. On the contrary, he goes on shifting himself in accordance with the 443 Absolute Reversal of Values universal Transmutation of all things. Since he is in this way completely unified with ever-changing Nature, all the ‘shifts’ he makes ultimately amount to his being changeless. 23. op. cit., V, p. 189. 24. In this passage, the Perfect Man is designated by the term chi jen SA, ‘ultimate man’, one of the several terms which Chuang-tzu uses to express the concept of the Perfect Man. 25. op. cit., VII, p. 307. 26. ibid., V, p. 197. 27. Tao Te Ching, X. 28 . , ‘Equalizing Harmony’ or the ‘(Cosmic) Harmony in which all things are equalized’, a title very typical of Chuang-tzu’s ontology (see Chapter III, Chapter IV). Some scholars are of the opinion that this is not the title of the book, but the name of its author. In any case, it is apparently an invention of Chuang-tzu’s imagination. He simply wants to imitate jokingly and sarcastically the habit of the thinkers of his age who substantiate their assertions by making references to ancient authorities. 29. Chuang-tzu, I, pp. 2-4. 30. ibid., I, p. 4. 31. ibid., I, p. 7. 32. ibid., I, pp. 9-11. 33. Sung Jung-tzu A3§T(=Sung Chien 5 g£Jf), a man who was famous for his teaching of pacifism and non-resistance. His thought is expounded in the last chapter (XXXIII) of the Chuang-tzu. His name is mentioned also by Mencius, Hsiin-tzu, and Han Fei-tzu. 34. Like the cicada and the little dove who scornfully laugh at the ‘big’ project of the big Bird. 35. He knows that what is really important is the inner judgment of himself, and therefore, does not care about how other people judge him from outside. 36. Traditionally, Lieh-tzu is considered to have been a Perfect Man who, together with Chuang-tzu, represented the school of Taoist philosophy that had been inaug- urated by Lao-tzu. He is made to stand chronologically between Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. 37. op. cit., I, pp. 16-17. 38. ibid., I, p. 28. 445 XI The Perfect Man Most of the characteristic features of the Perfect Man have already been mentioned explicitly or implicitly in the foregoing chapters. Some of them have been fully discussed, while others have been touched upon in a cursory manner. Besides, we have repeatedly pointed out that the Perfect Man as understood by Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu is nothing else than the personification of the Way itself. The Perfect Man is ‘perfect’ because he is an exact personal imago of the Way. In this sense, by describing the nature and the activity of the latter we can be said to have been describing the former. Thus in a certain respect, all the preceding chapters may be regarded as a description of the characterizing properties of the Perfect Man. We are already quite familiar with the Taoist concept of the Perfect Man. And the present chapter will necessarily take the form of a mere systematic recapitulation of what has been discussed in the course of this book concerning the Perfect Man. Let us begin by repeating the most basic observation about the concept of the Perfect Man, namely, that he is a man who is completely unified and united with the Way. When a man in the course of his spiritual discipline reaches the ultimate stage of Illumination, a stage at which there remains no trace of his ‘ego’, and therefore no discrepancy between ‘himself and the Way - that marks the birth of a Perfect Man. Lao-tzu calls this stage ‘embracing the One ’. 1 The ‘sacred man’ embraces the One, and thereby becomes the exemplar for all things under Heaven . 2 Controlling his vacillating soul, (the Perfect Man) embraces the One in his arms and is never separated therefrom . 3 The opening clause 4 of this second quotation is interesting because of its shamanic reminiscence. In ancient China, what corresponds to the English ‘soul’ (Greek psyche) was held to consist of two separate substances, one of them being hun , 5 and the other p’o . 6 Or we could say that man was believed to possess two souls. The former was the The Perfect Man superior or spiritual soul, the principle of mental and spiritual functions. The latter was the inferior or physical (or animal) soul, charged with bodily and material functions. When a man died, the hun was believed to ascend to Heaven, while the p’o was to go down into Earth . 7 As for the phrase ying p’o, here translated as ‘the vacillating (physical) soul’, it is significant that exactly the same combination is found in the famous shamanic poem ‘Traveling Afar’ (Yuan Yu) of the Elegies ofCh’u: Controlling my vacillating soul, I ascend to a misty height, And riding on the floating clouds, I go up and ever higher . 8 But of course the Perfect Man knows how to put under control his fretful and unstable soul by ‘sitting-in-oblivion’, so that he might ascend to the height of Unity and embrace the One, never to quit it. The Perfect Man is no longer harassed by the fretfulness of his soul. On the contrary, he always maintains his soul unperturbed. What do I mean by the ‘true man’? (I am thinking of) the ‘true men’ of ancient times. They did not revolt against scarcity (i.e., adverse fortune). They did not become haughty in favorable conditions. They did not make positive plans with the intention of accomplishing things. Such a person does not repent though he might commit an error; he does not fall into self-complacency though he might meet with success. Such a man does not become frightened even if he ascend to the highest place. He does not get wet even if he enters the water. He is not burnt even if he enters the fire. All this is the result of the (true) Wisdom having attained to the ultimate point of perfection in (being unified with) the Way . 9 The Taoist principle of ‘unperturbedness’ is best illustrated by the attitude taken by the Perfect Man toward his own Life and Death. The problem has been fully discussed in earlier contexts. Here we shall be content with giving one more passage in translation, which would seem to provide a good summary of the whole argument concerning this idea. The ‘true men’ of ancient times knew nothing of loving Life and disliking Death. They came out (into this world) without any particu- lar delight. They went in (i.e., died) without any resistance. Calmly they came, calmly they went. They did not forget how they had begun to exist (i.e., that the beginning of their Life was due to the natural working of the Way). Nor did they worry about the end of their existence. They simply received (Life) and they were happy (to live that Life). But (when Death came) they simply gave (their Life) back and forgot it. 446 447 Sufism and Taoism The Perfect Man This is what I would call: not revolting against the working of the Way by the use of Reason, and not interfering with what Heaven does by straining (petty) human (efforts). Such is the ‘true man ’. 10 Such an inner state cannot but produce its effect on the physical conditions of the Perfect Man. His calm unperturbed mind is reflected by the very peculiar way in which his bodily functions are performed. The Perfect Man is different from the common people not only in his spiritual state, but also in his physical constitution. The ‘true men’ of ancient times did not dream when they slept. They felt no anxiety when they were awake. They did not particularly enjoy food when they ate. Their breathing was calm and deep. They used to breathe with their heels." The common people, on the contrary, breathe with their throats (i.e., their respiration is shallow). You know those who are cornered in argument - how desperately they try to vomit out the words sticking in their throats. (Compared with the breathing of the Perfect Man, the breathing of ordinary people is just like that.) (This is due to the fact that, unlike the Perfect Man who has no desire, the common people) are deep in their desires, and shallow in their natural spiritual equipment . 12 The common people are here characterized as being ‘deep in their desires and ‘shallow in their natural equipment’. In this respect they represent exactly the opposite of what Lao-tzu emphasizes as the ideal of the Taoist mode of human existence: ‘no-wisdom and no-desire ( wu-chih wu-yu) n . ‘Wisdom’ here means the exercise of Reason. We know already that purifying the Mind of physical and material desires by ‘closing up all openings and doors’ is the first necessary step toward the actualization of the idea of the Perfect Man. The five colors make man’s eyes blind. The five musical notes make man’s ears deaf. The five flavors make man’s taste dull. (Games like) racing and hunting make man’s mind run mad. Goods that are hard to obtain impede man’s right conduct. Therefore the ‘sacred man’ concentrates on the belly (i.e., endeavors to develop his inner core of existence) and does not care for the eye (i.e., does not follow the dictates of his senses). Thus he abandons the latter and chooses the former . 14 We have already seen above how, in the view of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, Reason obstructs the free activity of Nature. Reason in its lowest form is the ‘sound’ or ‘normal’ common sense. The mode of living of the common people goes against the natural course of things because they are at the mercy of Reason and common sense. Boundless desire and the argumentative Reason constitute the core of the ‘ego’ . And the ‘ego’ , once formed goes on growing ever stronger until it dominates the whole existence of a man; all his actions are dictated by it, and all his feelings, emotions, and thinking are subjugated to its supreme command. This is why it is extremely difficult for an ordinary man to ‘nullify his own self ’. 15 Reason makes man ‘stiff’ and ‘inflexible’. Desire induces him forcibly to fight against the naturally given conditions and to ‘intend’ to obtain the objects of desire. This is the exact opposite of the Taoist ideal of conforming to the natural course of things, without reasoning and without desiring anything, and thus becom- ing completely unified with Nature. Lao-tzu finds in the ‘infant’ an apt symbol for his ideal. He who possesses within himself the plenitude of Virtue may be compared to an infant. Poisonous insects dare not sting it. Ferocious animals dare not pounce upon it. Birds of prey dare not strike it. Its bones are frail and its sinews tender, yet its grip is firm. It does not know yet of the union of male and female, yet the whole body is full of energy . 16 This is because its vitality is at its height. It howls and cries all day long, yet does not become hoarse. This is because the natural harmony in it is at its height. To know the natural harmony is to be (one with) the eternal Reality ( ch’ang ). And to know the eternal Reality is to be illumined ( ming ). 17 Thus the infant is ‘naturally’ at the stage of Illumination, because it is ‘naturally’ one with the Way. And the ‘weakness’ or ‘softness’ of the infant is a living image of the creative activity of the Way, which is eternally supple, soft and lissom. It is a symbol of real Life. Man, at his birth, is tender and weak, but, when dead, he is hard and stiff. The ten thousand things, grass and trees, are tender and fragile while alive, but once dead, they are dry and stiff. Thus the hard and stiff are companions of Death, while the tender and weak are companions of Life. Thus an army which is too powerful is liable to lose the battle, and a tree that is too rigid is breakable. The powerful and mighty end by being cast down, whereas the soft and weak end by occupying higher places . 18 The following passage is remarkable in that it gathers together the majority of Lao-tzu’s favorite symbols for ‘flexibility’, ‘softness’, ‘being low’, ‘being simple’, in short, the virtue of Negativity. He who knows the ‘male’, yet keeps to the role of the ‘female’, will become the ‘ravine’ of the whole world. And once he has become the ‘ravine’ of the whole world, then the eternal Virtue will never desert him. And he will again return to the state of ‘infancy’. 448 Sufism and Taoism He who knows the ‘white’, yet keeps to the role of the ‘black’ will become the model for all under Heaven. And once he has become the model for all under Heaven, then the eternal Virtue will never fail him. And he will again return to the Limitless. He who knows the ‘glorious’ , yet keeps to the role of the ‘ignoble’ will become the ‘valley’ of all under Heaven. And once he has become the ‘valley’ of all under Heaven, then the eternal Virtue will be complete. And he will again return to the state of ‘uncarved wood’. ‘Uncarved wood’ (in its ‘simplicity’ contains potentially all kinds of vessels); when it is cut out, it becomes various vessels. Likewise, the sacred man’, by using it (i.e., the virtue of ‘uncarved wood’), becomes the Lord over all officials. The greatest carving is non-carving. The highest key term in the particular semantic field of Negativity is the wu wei, Non-Doing, which we have met several times in the foregoing. As we have noticed, the most basic meaning of Non- Doing is the negation of all ‘intention’, all artificial (or ‘unnatural’) effort on the part of man. And the Perfect Man is able to maintain this principle constantly and consistently because he has no ‘ego’, because he has ‘nullified himself’. But the ‘nullification’ of the ‘ego’ as the subject of all desires and all intentional actions implies at the same time the establishment of a new Ego - the Cosmic Ego - which is completely at one with the Way in its creative activity. Heaven is long lasting and Earth is long enduring. The reason why Heaven and Earth are long lasting and long enduring is that they do not strive to go on living. Therefore they are able to be everlasting. In accordance with this, the ‘sacred man’ puts himself in the rear, and (precisely because he puts himself in the rear) he comes (naturally) to the fore. He remains outside, and because of that he is always there. Is it not because he possesses no ‘self’ (i.e., the small ego) that he can thus establish his Self ? 20 Thus the Perfect Man is in every respect a Perfect image of Heaven and Earth, i.e., the Way as it manifests itself as the world of Being. The Perfect Man exists by the very same principle by which Heaven and Earth exist. And that principle common both to the Perfect Man and the activity of the Way is the principle of Non-Doing or ‘being-so of-itself’. The conscious effort on the part of man to live or to procure his purpose violates this supreme principle and ends by bringing about a result which is just the contrary of what he intended to achieve. He who stands on tiptoe cannot stand firm. He who strides cannot walk far. He who displays himself does not shine. The Perfect Man 449 He who considers himself right cannot be illustrious. He who praises himself cannot achieve real success. He who places too great confidence in himself cannot endure. From the point of view of the Way, such attitudes are to be called ‘superfluous food and useless tumors’. They are detested by all. Therefore, he who possesses (i.e., is unified with) the Way never takes such an attitude . 21 Therefore, the ‘sacred man’ keeps to the principle of Non-Doing, and practises the teaching of No-Words . 22 If one pursues knowledge, knowledge goes on increasing day by day. If one pursues the Way, (what one obtains) goes on decreasing day by day. Decreasing, and ever more decreasing, one finally reaches the state of Non- Doing. And when one practises Non-Doing, nothing is left undone. Therefore even an empire is sure to be gained by practising (the principle of) There-Is-Nothing-To-Do. If one adheres to (the principle of) There-Is-Something-To-Do, one can never gain an empire . 23 Without going out of the door, one can know everything under Heaven. Without peeping out of the window, one can see the working of Heaven. The further one goes out, the less one knows. Therefore the ‘sacred man’ knows (everything) without going out. He has a clear view of everything without looking. He accomplishes everything without ‘doing ’. 24 What I have translated here as the ‘working of Heaven’ is in the original t’ien tao meaning literally the ‘way of Heaven’ . It means the natural activity of Heaven. And ‘Heaven’ here means the Way as it manifests itself in the form of Nature, or the ‘being-so of-itself’ of everything. Heaven, in this sense, is constantly active; it works without a moment’s intermission; it ‘does’ innumerable things. Its ‘ doing’ , however, is essentially different from the intentional ‘doing’ of man. Heaven ‘does’ everything without the slightest intention on its part to ‘do’ something. Its ‘doing’ consists in the ten thousand things being or becoming what they are ‘of themselves’. Heaven, in other words, exemplifies in the most perfect form the principle of Non-Doing. Commenting upon Chuang-tzu’s statement; He who knows what Heaven does (i.e., the ‘way of Heaven’) ... is at the highest limit (of human Wisdom). For he who knows what Heaven does lives in accordance with (the same principle as) Heaven , 25 Kuo Hsiang makes the following interesting and important remark; 450 Sufism and Taoism ‘Heaven - in this passage means Nature (‘being-so of-itself’). He who ‘does doing’ (i.e., does something with the intention or consciousness of doing it) cannot ‘do’ anything (in the real sense of the word). (Real) ‘doing’ is that the thing ‘does itself’ (i.e., it is done ‘of itself’, according to its own nature). Likewise, he who ‘does knowing’ (i.e., tries to know something intentionally and consciously) cannot ‘ know’ anything (in the real sense of the word). (Real) ‘knowing’ consists in (the thing) coming to ‘be known of itself’ . The thing ‘becomes known of itself’, I say. So (real ‘knowing’ is, in truth), ‘non-knowing’. It is ‘non-knowing’, I say. So the ultimate source of ‘knowing’ is ‘non- knowing’ . In the same way, ‘doing’ consists in the thing ‘being done of itself’. So (real ‘doing’ , in truth,) is ‘non-doing’ . It is ‘non-doing’ , I say. So the ultimate source of ‘doing’, is ‘non-doing’. Thus, ‘non-doing’ must be considered the principle of ‘doing’. Like- wise, ‘knowing’ originates in ‘non-knowing’, so that ‘non-knowing must be considered the basis of ‘knowing’. Therefore, the ‘true man’ leaves aside ‘knowing’, and thereby ‘knows’ . He ‘does not do’, and thereby ‘does’. Everything comes into being ‘of itself’, (and that is the meaning of the ‘doing’ of the ‘true man’). He simply sits, oblivious of everything, and thereby obtains everything. Thus (with regard to the ‘true man’) the word ‘knowing’ loses its applicability, and the term ‘doing’ disappears completely . 26 This is, indeed, an excellent explanation of the key term ‘Non- Doing’ as understood by Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, so much so that it makes all further efforts to clarify the concept superfluous. There is, however, one more thing which must be mentioned here not in order to clarify the concept of Non-Doing, but rather in order to clarify a peculiarity of Lao-tzu’s way of thinking. I have repeatedly pointed out as something typical of Lao-tzu the ‘sym- bolic’ way in which he develops his thinking. In the majority of cases, particularly in dealing with problems which he considers of crucial importance, he develops and elaborates his thought by means of imagery. ‘ Water’ is one of his favorite symbols. He uses it in reference to the supreme power of Non-Doing. The empirical observation of the activity of water provides at once conclusive evidence for his theory of Non-Doing and a picturesque presenta- tion of the way in which Non- Doing produces its effect. The softest of all things in the world (i.e., water) dominates over the hardest of all things in the world (like stones and rocks). Having no definite form of its own, it penetrates even into that which has no crevices. By this I realize the value of Non-Doing. However, the teaching through No- Words (i.e., the word-less teach- ing given by the Perfect Man, himself remaining silent but his per- The Perfect Man 451 sonal influence affecting ‘naturally’ all about him) and the effect of Non-Doing - few in the whole world can understand them . 27 In this passage no explicit mention is made of water. But that Lao-tzu means water by ‘the softest of all things’ is made clear by the following passage. There is under Heaven nothing softer and weaker than water. And yet in attacking things hard and strong, nothing can surpass it. For there is nothing that can destroy it . 28 The weak overcomes the strong, and the soft overcomes the hard. This everybody in the world knows, yet no one is able to put this (knowledge) into practice . 29 The ‘positive passivity’ or the ‘powerful weakness’ of water is for Lao-tzu one of the most appropriate images of the Way and, there- fore, of the Perfect Man. The highest goodness is like water. Water benefits the ten thousand things, yet it never contends with anything. It stays in (low) places loathed by all men. But precisely because of this, it is closest to the Way (and the ‘sacred man ’). 30 ‘Never-contending-with-anybody’ which is suggested by the nature of water is another highest principle that governs the conduct of the Perfect Man. An excellent warrior does not use violence. An excellent fighter does not lose himself in anger. He who excels in defeating does not treat his enemy as an enemy. He who excels in employing men humbles himself before them. This I would call the Virtue of ‘non-contending’. This may also be called making the best use of the ability of others. And such a man may rightly be regarded as being in perfect con- formity with the Supreme Principle of Heaven . 31 The ‘sacred man’ . . . never contends with anybody. This is why nobody under Heaven contends with him . 32 Thus the Perfect Man does not contend with anybody or anything. Like a good fighter he does not allow himself to be roused and excited. In this respect, he may be said to lack ordinary human emotions and feeling. In fact, he is not a ‘man’ , if one understands by this word an ordinary human being. He is, in reality, an infinitely large cosmic being. Concerning this problem Chuang-tzu has left an interesting record of a discussion between himself and the Dialecti- cian Hui-tzu to whom reference was made earlier. We do not know for sure whether the dialogue is fictitious or real. But, whether fictitious or real, it is a valuable document for us in that it elucidates one important aspect of the connotation of the Perfect Man. The Perfect Man 453 452 Sufism and Taoism The discussion starts when Chuang-tzu makes the following statement: The ‘sacred man’ has the physical form of a man, but no emotion of a man. Since he has the form of a man, he lives among other human beings as one of them. But since ‘he has no emotion of a man, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ (or likes and dislikes) cannot have access to him. Ah how insignificant and small he is, in so far as he belongs to common humanity! But infinitely great is he, in so far as he stands unique (in the world) in perfecting Heaven in himself ! 33 Against this statement, Hui-tzu raises a serious question. And the question provokes a theoretic discussion over the theme between Chuang-tzu and Hui-tzu. Hui-tzu: Chuang-tzu: Hui-tzu: Chuang-tzu: Hui-tzu: Chuang-tzu: Hui-tzu: Chuang-tzu: Is it at all possible that a man should be without emotions? Yes, it is. But if a man lacks emotions, how could he be called a ‘man’? The Way has given him human features. And Heaven has given him a bodily form. How, then, should we not call him a ‘man’? But since you call him a ‘man’ , it is inconceivable that he should be without emotions. What you mean by ‘emotions’ is different from what I mean by the same word. When I say ‘he is without emotions', I mean that the man does not let his inner self be hurt (i.e., perturbed) by likes and dislikes, and that he conforms to the ‘being-so of-itself’ of every- thing, never trying to increase his vital energy. If he does not try to increase his vital energy (i.e., by eating nutritious food, clothing himself, etc .), 34 how could he preserve his body alive? The Way has given him human features. And Heaven has given him a bodily form. (And as a result, he has come into existence as a ‘man’.) This being the case, all he has to do is not to let his inner self be hurt by likes and dislikes. (This is what I mean by ‘not trying to increase life’.) You ‘externalize’ your spirit (i.e., you constantly send out your spirit toward the external objects in the world) and wear out your mental energy, sometimes leaning against a tree, moaning, and sometimes lean- ing on your desk with your eyes closed. Heaven itself has selected for you a bodily form. But you (instead of conforming to the Will of Heaven, waste your time in) making a fuss about ‘(a stone) being hard and white ’. 35 Thus it is clear that ‘the Perfect Man having no emotions’ means nothing other than his being absolutely unperturbed whatever may happen to him and whatever may occur before his eyes. And there is a deep metaphysical reason for this. He can maintain this funda- mental attitude under all conditions because he is ‘one’ with all things which are themselves ultimately ‘one’. Since, as we saw earlier, all things are metaphysically ‘one’, the attitude of the Per- fect Man toward them cannot also but be ‘one’. The concept of the Perfect Man ‘having no emotions’ is, in this way, ultimately reducible to the more fundamental idea which is by now fully familiar to us; namely, that the Perfect Man has no ‘ego’ of his own. Having no ‘ego’ of his own, he makes no distinction between things. He is, in other terms, constantly ‘one’ . And his being person- ally ‘one’ - which is precisely what is meant by the expression: ‘having no emotions’ - is based on the objective fact that Reality is ‘one’. This, however, does not necessarily mean that the Perfect Man does not know in any sense the distinction between the infinitely variegated things of the phenomenal world. Rather, his ‘making no distinction between the things’ means only that, being fully conscious of all these things as different things, he is possessed of a spiritual eye with which he intuits behind the kaleidoscope of the changing forms the metaphysical ‘One’, of which they are but various manifestations. And when he looks at these seemingly different things from such a particular point of view, they disclose themselves to his eyes as so many repetitions of one and the same thing ‘piled up one upon the other’, all being equally ‘good’. (The true man’) is ‘one’, whether he (seemingly) likes something or dislikes something. He is also ‘one’, whether he regards all things as being ‘one’ or as not being ‘one’. When he takes the position of (everything being) ‘ one’ he is acting as a companion of Heaven; (i.e., he is taking the position of Heavenly Equalization ). 36 When he takes the position of (all things) not being ‘one’, he is acting as a companion of Man; (i.e., he is looking at the phenomenal world of Multiplicity as it appears to the human eye). Thus in him Heaven and Man do not defeat each other (i.e., he unites in himself harmoniously and without contradiction both the ‘abso- lute’ viewpoint of Heaven and the ‘relative’ viewpoint of Man). Such indeed is the nature of the ‘true man ’. 37 ‘Being without emotions’ should not be taken to mean that the Perfect Man does not actually experience anger, delight, sadness, gladness. He does experience all these and other human emotions. The only difference between him and ordinary people in this matter consists in the fact that in the case of the former, there always remains something unperturbed and unperturbable at the innermost 454 Sufism and Taoism core of his heart, even while he is experiencing strong emo- tions, something which is not affected by them, which is not touched by them. The emotions come and go in his inner world as naturally as the four seasons of the year come and go in the outer world. His mind is content with being in whatever situation it happens to be . 38 His outward appearance is still and calm. His forehead is broad and looks carefree. Sometimes he is coldly relentless like autumn; sometimes he is warmly amiable like spring. Joy and anger come and go as naturally as the four seasons do in Nature. Keeping perfect harmony with all things (which endlessly go on being ‘transmuted’ one into another) he does not know any limit . 39 Such being his basic spiritual state, the Perfect Man perceives in the whole world nothing to disturb his cosmic balance of mind, although he does notice accurately all things that happen to him and to others. He does participate in the activities of the world together with all other men, yet at the same time, at the very core of his heart, he remains detached from the clamor and bustle of the world. Calmness and tranquillity are the most salient features that charac- terize both the inside and outside of the Perfect Man. Attaining to the utmost limit of (inner) ‘emptiness’, I firmly maintain myself in Stillness . 40 (The ‘sacred man’), by being limpid and serene, becomes the norm of all under Heaven . 41 Chuang-tzu, as usual, is less laconic in describing the virtues of ‘calmness’ and ‘tranquillity’: Of all level things, the most perfect is the surface of water at rest. Because of this (perfect levelness), it can be used as a standard in levelling. And (the perfect levelness of still water) is due to the fact that (water at rest) maintains in its inside (profound calmness) and shows no agitation outside. Likewise, Virtue is a (spiritual) state which is attained when a man has perfected the calmness (of the mind). (In such a case) Virtue does not come out in a visible form, (i.e., since the inside of such a man is perfectly calm, no agitation comes out to the surface). But things, on their part, (are spontaneously attracted by his invisible Virtue and) cannot separate themselves therefrom . 42 Notes 1. pao i, 2. Tao Te Ching, XXII. The Perfect Man 3. ibid., X. 4. r*£&gj. 455 5. j&. 6 . m. 7. Li Chi, Chiao Te Sheng Concerning the p’o we find in the Tso Ch’uan ( , BS^-b^) the following statement: ‘When a man is born, (we see) in his first bodily function what is called the p’o'. 8. rtfc'lifptlifngli'g-, If <¥SlrJni:fiEj. This interpretation of the word ying (<§) is cor- roborated by another verse in the same poem, in which the shaman-poet describes the instability and fretfulness of his soul - this time the word hurt is used instead of p’o - which keeps him awake all through the night: 9. Chuang-tzu, IV, p. 226. 10. ibid., IV, 229. 11. The expression: ‘they breathed with their heels’ indicates the incomparable depth and tranquillity of their respiration. The vital energy contained in the inhaled air is made to circulate all through the body, in such a way that one is left with the impression that the breathing naturally welled up from the heels. 12. op. cit., VI, p. 228. 13. Tao Te Ching, III. 14. Tao Te Ching, XII. 15. ibid., XIII. 16. T Yii Yiieh ($tH! VIII) thinks that the word ^ is a mistake for # meaning ‘hidden place’, i.e., the genitals. The sentence would then mean: ‘yet its male member is full of force’ . In some other editions we find and used instead of 17. op. cit., LV. 18. ibid., LXXVI. 19. ibid., XXVIII. 20. ibid., VII. 21. ibid., XXIV. 22. ibid., II. 23. ibid., XL VIII. 24. ibid., XL VII. 456 Sufism and Taoism 25. Chuang-tzu, VI, p. 224. 26. .a*!*, 4'^ntfe, TUtii. Tf^tii, & JU^8£±, SntH^T£a. &WT$ol^, £ftgA&£oflfiSn,:r^rfn&. tt* «*. ffiiS«±IliJ. P- 224. 27. Tao Te Ching, XLIII. 28. r<g, 2 j The character 41 here stands for M meaning ‘conquering the barbarians’. The idea evidently is that even the sharpest sword cannot cut water and ‘kill’ it. 29. op. cit., LXXVIII. 30. ibid., VIII. 31. ibid., LXVIII. 32. ibid., XXII. 33. Chuang-tzu, V, p. 217. 34. Here again, Hui-tzu misunderstands what Chuang-tzu means by ‘not trying to increase life’. 35. op. cit., V, pp. 220-222. ‘A stone being hard and white’ is a reference to the famous sophistic thesis that a hard and white stone' is really two things, not one, because ‘hard’ and ‘white’ are two entirely different attributes; see above. Chapter IV. Note 18. 36. See above, Chapter VI, Note 17. 37. ibid., VI, pp. 234-235. » 38. r The last word A is explained by Kuo Hsiang as ‘being contented with whatever place it happens to be in’ (Mjfngc, £§±j). See Shuo Wen: r£ , There are many scholars who think that it is a mistake for ;£ (See, for example, Hsiian Ying r± , , te/gj), meaning ‘forgetful’ or ‘oblivious’ (of the essential distinctions between the ten thousand things). 39. op. cit., VI, pp. 230-231. 40. Tao Te Ching, XVI. 41. ibid., XLV. 42. Chuang-tzu, V, pp. 214-215. XII Homo Politicus Throughout the preceding chapters we have been describing the Taoist Perfect Man as a man of absolute transcendence. He wholly transcends the world of ordinary men and ordinary things in the sense that he is ‘oblivious’ of all distinctions between them, that nothing perturbs his mind, and that, consequently, he sits alone in the midst of the profound ‘tranquillity’ of being one with the One. He is ‘without - or above - human emotions’ , accepting the good as ‘good’ and also the non-good as ‘good’. He holds fast to the princi- ple of Non-Doing, and does not meddle with the natural course of things. Instead, he leaves the ten thousand things alone as they come into being, grow, and then disappear in accordance with the ‘times’ and ‘turns’ of each of them. He is ‘indifferent’ just as Heaven and Earth are ‘indifferent’ to the ten thousand things, treating them all as if they were ‘straw dogs’. The Perfect Man in this respect is a man of absolute Negativity. And all these and still other ‘negative’ properties belong to him because he is completely unified with the ‘way’ (i.e., natural, spon- taneous working) of Heaven, and ultimately with the Way itself. In comporting himself in this manner, the Perfect Man embodies the Way. But it is very important to remember that pure negativity or passivity does not exhaust the activity of the Way. In fact, the passivity of the Way is not ‘passivity’ as ordinarily understood. It is a ‘passivity’ backed with ‘positivity’. Or perhaps we should say that the Way is - or looks - ‘ passive’ precisely because it is too positive to be just ‘positive’ in the generally accepted sense. Non-Doing, for example, is certainly a passive and negative principle, but it is in reality a positive force in that it ‘leaves nothing undone’ . This fact is an exact counterpart of the Way being described as ‘Nothing’ not because it is purely negatively and passively ‘ nothing’ , but because it is over-plenitude of Being. The Perfect Man, as a perfect embodiment and personification of the Way, must necessarily reflect this ‘positive’ - or ‘supra-positive’ - aspect of it, too. Just as the Way itself is positively - and more than 458 Sufism and Taoism positively - engaged in the administration of the created world and governs, through the very principle of Non-Doing, the whole pro- cess of Nature to the minutest details of individual events, so is the Perfect Man positively interested in governing the world, again through the principle of Non-Doing. Besides, it is, more generally speaking, very characteristic of philosophical thinking in ancient China that it is vitally concerned with the problem of governing the people. Homo Politicus has, in fact, always been a central theme of all the major schools of Chinese thought. Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu are no exception to this general rule. It is extremely interesting to notice in this respect that a man like Lao-tzu who develops, on the one hand, a sophisticated metaphysics of the Way and describes the ideal man as an absolutely unworldly-minded man living high above the noise and fuss of everyday life, shows himself so keenly interested in the art of ruling an empire. For Lao-tzu, the Perfect Man cannot be really ‘perfect’, unless he stands at the head of an empire as the supreme Ruler of its people. The Perfect Man is at once a philosopher and a politician. This, of course, does not mean that the Perfect Man must posi- tively strive to gain political power or to conquer the world. He does not even try to make himself conspicuous. He does not display himself. Therefore he is conspicuous. He does not justify himself. Therefore he is illustrious. He does not praise himself. Therefore his merit is recognized . 1 He does not try to make himself conspicuous. But due to that ‘negative’ attitude toward himself - and more basically, because he is ‘perfect’ - he ‘naturally’ becomes conspicuous. He does not do anything on his part to attract attention, but the people sponta- neously gather around him. He keeps himself in the rear, but the people spontaneously, and even without being conscious of it, push him to the fore. The Tao Te Ching is filled with expressions referring to this peculiarity of the Perfect Man. The most famous and most typical of them all is probably ‘softening the glare and falling into line with the dust (of the common people)’. (The ‘sacred man’) blunts his sharpness, unfastens his knots, softens his glare, and falls into line with the dust. Such I would call the state of Mysterious Indistinction. Such a man cannot be approached too intimately. Nor can one remain too remote from him. One cannot bestow benefit upon him, nor can one harm him. One cannot ennoble him, nor can one humili- ate him. Thus he becomes the noblest of all beings under Heaven . 2 The Mysterious Indiscrimination’ ( hsiian t’ung ) 3 is a very significant expression. The Perfect Man, as a human being, lives Homo Politicus 459 among ordinary people as a member of society. He exists there in the midst of everyday life, quietly and calmly, behind and beneath other men. He ‘levels’ himself with the common people, without ‘discriminating’ himself from other men. Outwardly he seems to be exactly the same as ordinary people. But this is, in reality, a very peculiar ‘sameness’, for in his spiritual structure, he is soaring like the Bird P’eng in the azure of absolute freedom and independence. And it is through the spontaneous activity of such a man that the Virtue of the Way materializes in the form of a perfect political rule. According to the pattern of thought peculiar to Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, the Perfect Man, because of his spiritual ‘perfection’, spontaneously occupies the highest place in the spiritual world; and because he occupies the highest place in the spiritual world he must necessarily occupy the highest place in the world of reality. He must be the ‘lord over the officials’. 4 Thus here again we come across the paradoxical way of thinking which characterizes the Taoist sages. For according to them, the Perfect Man is a man who ‘freely roams beyond the realm of dust and dirt, and enjoys wandering to his heart’s content in the Village of There-Is-Absolutely-Nothing’. But exactly because he exists permanently beyond the world of dust and dirt, he can actually keep himself in the very midst of the dust and dirt of the real, material world. By remaining absolutely ‘indifferent’ to petty interests in the world, he is interested in the great problems of the actual world. Surely, he is not a man ‘whose ability is good enough to make him conspicuous in the politics of one state.’ 5 But he is good enough to be the absolute ruler of an empire, or even of ‘all under Heaven’. What, then, are the politics of the Perfect Man? From the point of view of common sense, Chuang-tzu says, the most ideal form of the management of political affairs consists in that ‘the ruler should devise all the rules and regulations for his own self, and thereby govern his people, for, in such a case, who would dare to disobey him and not to be “transformed” by his virtue?’. 6 Chuang-tzu declares that such a thing is nothing other than a ‘deceptive virtue’ . 7 ‘To govern the world by means of such a princi- ple is like trying to wade through the ocean, to dig a large river with one’s own hands, or to let a mosquito carry on its back a mountain!’ 8 The Perfect Man does not govern the world by means of man- made laws, which are but external matters designed to control only the external aspects of human life. He governs the world by ‘govern- ing himself’, that is, by perfecting his inner Virtue. When the ‘sacred man’ is in the position of the ruler, how could he conceivably be interested in governing the external life of the people? 460 Sufism and Taoism What he is interested in is that he should rectify his ‘inside’, (i.e., bring his inner Virtue to perfection) and then govern (his people). He is exclusively interested in firmly establishing his own affair. (Thus he leaves all other things in charge of their own natures.) Just think of a bird flying high in the sky, escaping thereby the danger of being shot down by a stringed arrow; or of a little mouse living in a deep hole under the sacred hill, avoiding thereby being dug out or smoked out. (Every living being has its own natural wisdom by which it knows instinctively how to live safely.) Do human beings possess less knowledge than these two little creatures ? 9 What Chuang-tzu means by ‘rectifying one’s inside’ is explained by himself in more concrete terms as follows: Let your mind wander freely in (the field of) Simplicity (where there is not even a trace of desires), unify your vital energy with the limitless Tranquillity, and follow the natural course (lit. ‘being-so of-itself’) of all things without letting your ‘ego’ interfere with it. Then the whole world will be governed (spontaneously ). 10 Briefly stated, this means that when the Perfect Man in the real sense of the word is actualized, the world becomes governed ‘of itself’. Not that the Perfect Man positively governs the world by instituting severe laws and enforcing them. The right ordering of the world is spontaneously actualized as the Perfect Man, on his part, ‘rectifies his inner state’. It is clear that this is nothing but putting into practice the fundamental principle of Non-Doing. And that is, for Lao-tzu, and Chuang-tzu, the highest and most ideal form of politics. Lao-tzu describes the situation in the following terms: A state may well be governed by ‘rectitude ’. 11 A war may well be won by tactics. The empire, however, can be obtained only by Non- Action . 12 How do I know that it is so? By the following observation. The more restrictions and prohibitions there are in the world, the poorer the people. The more civilized instruments the people possess, the more con- fused the land. The more skills and crafts the people have, the more bizarre (useless) objects will be produced. The more laws and regulations are promulgated, the more thieves and robbers there will be. Therefore the ‘sacred man’ says: I remain in Non-Doing, and the people are (morally) transformed of themselves. I enjoy quietude, and the people become righteous of themselves. I do not meddle with anything, and the people become prosperous of themselves. I remain free from desires, and the people of themselves become like the ‘uncarved block of wood ’ 13 Homo Politicus 461 As I have repeatedly emphasized, this supreme ability of the Perfect Man as a statesman is due to the fact that in practising Non-Doing, he is a perfect copy of the Way itself. The Way in its absolute reality is inactive (i.e., ‘non-doing’), yet it leaves nothing undone. If lords and kings abide by this principle, the ten thousand things will grow up and develop of their own accord. But if in the process of growth, desire (to act positively, against Nature) should arise (on the part of some of the ten thousand things), I would calm it down by the weight of the ‘nameless’ (simplicity of) ‘uncarved wood ’. 14 The ‘nameless’ (simplicity of) ‘uncarved wood’ will take things back to the (original) state of desirelessness. And if (the people) become ‘desireless’ and, consequently, ‘tranquil’, the whole world will of itself become peaceful . 15 The Way in its absolute reality is ‘nameless’. (It is in this respect like ‘uncarved wood ’). 16 The ‘uncarved wood’ may look insignificant, but nothing under Heaven is able to subjugate it. If lords and kings abide by the principle (of ‘uncarved wood’), the ten thousand things will of themselves come to pay homage to them. Heaven and Earth will join their forces to send down sweet dew, and the people will of themselves become peacefully governed, even if no decrees and ordinances are published . 17 Thus the Perfect Man in the capacity of a statesman exercises his rule in accordance with the principle of Non-Doing. ‘He does nothing other than doing-nothing.’ 18 But by ‘doing-nothing’ he is in truth doing a great thing. For ‘doing-nothing’ means in his case to do nothing against the natural course of all things. Therefore his ‘doing-nothing’ is tantamount to ‘assisting’ the natural and spon- taneous development of all things. The ‘sacred man’ desires to be desireless. He learns not to learn . 19 He thereby turns back constantly to (the Ultimate Source) which is passed by unnoticed by the common people. He assists the spontaneous being of the ten thousand things. He refrains from interfering with it by his own action . 20 Many other passages could be adduced from the Tao Te Ching, in which the idea of Non- Doing is extolled as the supreme principle of Taoist politics. But for our particular purposes what has been given is quite sufficient. There is, however, one more point to make in connection with Non-Doing as a political idea. In the foregoing we have been concerned mainly with the attitude of the Perfect Man in governing the empire in accordance with the principle of Non-Doing. We have not yet dealt with the problem of the inner state or attitude of those who are governed, the common people as the subjects over whom the Perfect Man rules. 462 Sufism and Taoism Already in some of the above-quoted passages it has been sug- gested that the ideal rule of the Perfect Man encounters hindrance if his subjects happen to have ‘desire’ and ‘knowledge’. The Perfect Man himself may be absolutely above all human ‘desires’ - because he is ‘without emotions’ - and above petty ‘knowledge’ to be acquired by the exercise of the rational faculty of the mind - because he has completely ‘chaotified’ his mind. But however Perfect he may be in this respect, he is not in a position to realize the ideal of ruling by the principle of Non-Doing unless the people, on their part, be also perfectly prepared for accepting his rule. And they are perfectly prepared for accepting his rule only when they are purified of ‘desire’ and ‘knowledge’. Thus the act of purifying the people of these obstacles constitutes part of the politics of Non-Doing. If (the ruler) does not hold the (so-called) wise men in high esteem, the people will be kept away from contending with one another. If he does not value goods that are hard to obtain, the people will be kept away from committing thefts. If he does not display things that are liable to excite desires, the minds of the people will be kept undisturbed. Therefore, the ‘sacred man' in governing the people empties their minds , 21 while making their bellies full; weakens their wills 22 while rendering their bones strong. In this way, he keeps his people always in the state of no-knowledge and no-desire, so that the so-called ‘knowers’ might find no occasion to interfere (and influence the people). If he thus practises Non-Doing, the world cannot but be governed well . 23 From of old those who excel in the practice of the Way do not try to make the people wise and clever. Rather they try to keep the people in the (simple) state of knowledgelessness. If the people are difficult to rule it is because they have too much ‘knowledge’. He who rules a state by (giving the people) ‘knowledge’ damages the country. He who rules a state by depriving (the people) of ‘know- ledge’ brings prosperity to the country. To know (the difference between) these two (forms of government) belongs to the standard measure (of the ruler). And to know the standard measure in every matter is what I would call the Mysterious Virtue. How profound and far-reaching the Mysterious Virtue is! (Its profundity is shown by the fact that) it works contrariwise to the nature of things, yet ultimately turns back to the Great Conformity ; 24 (i.e., at first sight the working of the Mysterious Virtue looks as if it were against the natural order of things, but in reality it is in confor- mity with the very working of the Great Way ). 25 The Great Conformity which is to be achieved by the practice of Non-Doing represents the highest degree of perfection among the various possible forms of governing the state. It is the art of gov- Homo Politicus 463 ernment peculiar to the Perfect Man. And judged by this standard, all the remaining political forms are found to be imperfect in varying degrees. The highest of all types of the ruler is such that the people under him are only aware of his presence. The next is the ruler to whom they feel attached and whom they praise. The next is the ruler whom they fear. The next is the ruler whom they despise. If (the ruler) is not trusted enough, it is because he is not truthful enough. If (on the contrary) the ruler is cautious and weighs the words he utters, then his task will be accomplished, his work done, and the people will all say: ‘All this we have done naturally, by ourselves .’ 26 The people feel this way because the Perfect Man rules over them by the principle of Non-Doing. They are vaguely conscious of his presence over them, but they do not notice that things run so smoothly because of his being their ruler. It is very interesting to observe that the second of the types of the ruler enumerated in this passage, namely, the case in which the people feel attached to the ruler and greatly praise him, evidently refers to the Confucian ideal of governing the people with ‘benevol- ence’. We would do well to recall in this connection the words of Lao-tzu which we have quoted earlier . 27 ‘Only when the great Way declines, do “benevolence” and “righteousness” arise.’ The impli- cation is that the highest ideal of politics from the point of view of Confucius and his school is, from the point of view of Lao-tzu, not only the second-best, but something indicative of the decline of the great Way. Only when the great Way declines, do ‘benevolence’ and ‘righteous- ness’ arise. Only when cleverness and sagacity emerge in the world, do wiles and intrigues arise. Only when the six basic kinship relations are out of harmony do filial sons make their appearance. Only when the state is in confusion and disorder, do loyal subjects make their appearance . 28 If the ruler abolishes ‘cleverness’ and abandons ‘intelligence’, the benefit received by the people will increase a hundredfold. If he abolishes ‘benevolence’ and abandons ‘righteousness’, the people will (spontaneously) return to ‘filial piety’ and ‘paternal love ’. 29 If he abolishes artifice and abandons (the pursuit of) profit, there will be no more thieves and robbers. If with these three (principles) alone one should think adornments are too scanty, let there be, then, something additional. Show out- wardly the plainness of undyed silk and embrace inwardly the sim- plicity of uncarved wood. Reduce selfishness and lessen desires . 30 464 Sufism and Taoism In one of the passages quoted above, we saw how in Lao-tzu’s view the highest type of government is represented by the ruler who governs the country so ‘naturally’ that the ‘people’ are conscious only of there being a ruler over them’, without attributing to him any particular virtue or merit. Chuang-tzu unreservedly agrees with Lao-tzu on this point. It goes without saying that, according to both Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, in such a form of ideal government not only do the people not notice the merit of the ruler, but the ruler himself is not conscious of his own merit. Lao-tzu: The ‘sacred man’ is such that he does great things, yet does not boast of his own achievement; he accomplishes his task, yet does not stick to his own merit. Is this not because he does not wish to display his superiority over others ? 31 And Chuang-tzu: When an ‘illumined king’ reigns over the world, his merit covers all under Heaven. But he is not conscious of the merit as something proceeding from himself. His transforming power affects the ten thousand things. But the people do not feel dependent upon him. There is ‘something’ occurring (in the world, because of his presence as the ruler), but no one could definitely name it. (The existence of that ‘something’ is clearly shown only by the fact that) it actually renders all things spontaneously happy and contented. He himself stands in (the spiritual state of) the Unfathomable, and wanders to his heart’s content in the There-Is-Nothing , 32 I shall bring this chapter to a close by quoting from the Tao Te Ching a passage in which Lao-tzu pictures in an idyllic tone an imaginary state which is governed by a ‘sacred man’ - a state based on the principle of Non-Doing, in which the highest ideal of Taoist politics is actualized in a concrete form. It is by no means a grand-scale ideal state like the Republic of Plato. It is almost a village. Yet, who knows? The people of this small country may possibly be even happier and more contented than the inhabitants of the Platonic state. A small country, with small population. There are (in this country) various tools of war, but the people are not tempted to use them. The people (are so happy and contented that) they regard death as no slight matter (i.e., they are reluctant to die because life is so enjoy- able). Nor do they want to move to distant places. Though there are ships and carts, there is no place to go with them. Though there are armor and weapons, there arises no occasion to display them. The people are taught to go back to (the Simplicity of immemorial antiquity) using knotted cords (instead of the complicated system of writing). Homo Politicus 465 They find relish in their food, and beauty in their clothes. Happy and contented with their own homes, they find delight in their old cus- toms. The neighbouring country is just there, within sight. The people of this country can hear even the cocks crowing and dogs barking in that country. And yet, the inhabitants of the two countries grow old and die without ever visiting one another . 33 Notes 1. Tao Te Ching , XXII. 2. ibid., LVI; see also IV. 3. . It may be translated also as ‘Mysterious Levelling’. 4. op. cit., XXVIII. 5. Chuang-tzu, I, p. 16. 6. ibid., VII, p. 290. 7- St©, ch'i te. 8. ibid., VII, p. 291. 9. ibid., VII, p. 291. 10. ibid., VII, p. 294. 11. This is an ironical reference to the Confucian idea of the ideal politics. A man once asked Confucius about the art of ruling the state. Confucius replied: ‘Ruling’ ( cheng ®) means ‘rectitude’ ( cheng IE). If you (govern the people) by ‘rectifying’ yourself in the first place, no one would venture to act against ‘rectitude’ - Analects, XII, 17. 12. tetfc, wu shih, synonymous with wu wei. Shih is defined by Hsun-tzu as ‘doing something in expectation of getting a profit’ (EfiJffiiHlf^Jfc), ,jE«Ji XXII. 13. Tao Te Ching, LVII. 14. i.e., I, the ruler, would calm down the desire of the people, not by supressing it by laws and edicts, but by disclosing myself to them as a living embodiment of the Way in its aspect of absolute ‘ simplicity’ , that is, the state of being completely purified of all desires and passions. 15. op. cit., XXXVII. 3 6. Because it is not yet carved into various vessels, each of which is distinguished from others by a special ‘name’. 17. op. cit., XXXII. 466 Sufism and Taoism is. mmn, (ibid., lxiv). 19. Ordinary men try hard to study and iearn in order to increase their knowledge. The Perfect Man, on the contrary, iearns to be without learning, so that at the ultimate stage of the decrease of knowledge he might be unified with the ‘simplicity’ of the ‘uncarved wood’. 20. op. cit., LXIV. 21. It is the ‘mind’ that insatiably seeks for ‘knowledge’. 22. The ‘will’ drives man toward gratifying his limitless desires. 23. op. cit., III. 24. *1111. 25. ibid., LXV. 26. ibid., XVII. 27. See Chap. I, Note 6. 28. op. cit., XVIII. 29. This may be thought to contradict what we have read in the preceding passage. In reality, however, there is no contradiction. For there, the point at issue was ‘filial piety’ and ‘paternal love’ being verbally emphasized. Here Lao-tzu is simply talking about the natural state of ‘filial piety’ and ‘paternal love’ which is actualized in the minds of the people, without there being anybody who ‘emphasizes’ the importance of these virtues. 30. op. cit., XIX. 31 Tao Te Ching, LXXVII. 32. Chuang-tzu, VII, p. 296. 33. Tao Te Ching, LXXX. Part III CONCLUSION - A Comparative Reflection I Methodological Preliminaries As stated in the Introduction to Part One of this work, I started this study prompted by the conviction that what Professor Henry Cor- bin calls ‘un dialogue dans la metahistoire’ is something urgently needed in the present world situation. For at no time in the history of humanity has the need for mutual understanding among the nations of the world been more keenly felt than in our days. ‘Mutual understanding’ may be realizable - or at least conceivable - at a number of different levels of life. The philosophical level is one of the most important of them. And it is characteristic of the philosophical level that, unlike other levels of human interest which are more or less closely connected with the current situations and actual conditions of the world, it provides or prepares a suitable locus in which the ‘mutual understanding’ here in question could be actualized in the form of a meta-historical dialogue. And meta- historical dialogues, conducted methodically, will, I believe, event- ually be crystallised into a philosophia perennis in the fullest sense of the term. For the philosophical drive of the human Mind is, regardless of ages, places and nations, ultimately and fundamentally one. I readily admit that the present work is far from even coming close to this ideal. But at least such was the motive from which I undertook this study. In the first Part, an attempt was made to lay bare the fundamental philosophical structure of the world-view of Ibn ‘Arab!, one of the greatest mystic-philosophers. The analytic work was done quite independently of any comparative considera- tions. I simply tried to isolate and analyze as rigorously as possible the major concepts that constitute the basis of Ibn ‘Arabl’s philosophical world-view in such a way that it might form a com- pletely independent study. The second Part dealing with Lao-tzu and Chaung-tzu is of a slightly different nature. Of course it is in itself an equally indepen- dent study of Taoist philosophy, which could very well be read as such. But it is slightly different from the first Part in one point, namely, that in isolating key-concepts and presenting them in a 470 Sufism and Taoism systematic way, I already began preparations for the work of co- ordination and comparison. By this I am not simply referring to the fact that in the course of this work mention was made from time to time of this or that part of Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought. I am referring to something more fundamental and of a more methodological nature. I have just spoken of the ‘preparatory work for co-ordination and comparison’. Concretely, this refers to the fact that I consciously arranged and presented the whole matter in such a way that the very analysis of the key-concepts of Taoism might bring to light the common philosophical ground upon which the meta-historical dialogue could become possible. Let this not be taken to mean that I modified the given material with a view to facilitating comparison, let alone distorted the given facts, or forced something upon Lao- tzu and Chuang-tzu for such a purpose. The fact is rather that an objective analysis of Taoist key-terms naturally led me to the dis- covery of a central idea which might work as the most basic connect- ing link between the two systems of thought. The only arbitrary thing I did - if ‘arbitrary’ it was - consisted in my having given a philosophical ‘name’ to the central idea. The name is ‘existence’. And the name once established, I could characterize the guiding spirit of the philosophical world-view of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu as ‘existentialist’ as opposed to the ‘essentialist’ tendency of the Con- fucian school. I think I have made it abundantly clear in the course of the second Part that by understanding the philosophy of Lao-tzu and Chuang- tzu in terms of ‘existence’, I have not arbitrarily forced upon them anything alien to their thought. The only point is that the Taoist sages themselves do not propose any definite ‘name’ for this particu- lar idea, whereas Ibn ‘Arab! has the word wujud which is, histori- cally as well as structurally, the exact Arabic expression for the same idea. Certainly, Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu do use the wordyu mean- ing ‘being’ or ‘existence’ in contradistinction from wu ‘non-beigg’ or ‘non-existence’ . But, as we have seen,yw in their system plays a very special role which is different from that of ‘existence’ here in ques- tion. The yu refers to a particular aspect or stage of the creative activity of the Absolute, the stage at which the absolutely ‘nameless’ Absolute definitely turns into the ‘named’ and begins to be diversified into myriads of things. Far better thanyw in this respect is the word tao, the Way, which is primarily an exact Taoist counterpart of the Islamic haqq, the Truth or Reality. But tao, to begin with, is a word having an extremely complex connotative structure. It covers an extensive semantic field, ranging from the Mystery of Mysteries to the ‘being-so-of- itself ’ of all existents. Its meaning is, so to speak, tinged with variegated nuances and charged with many associations. Certainly Methodological Preliminaries 471 bJ it does cover to a great extent the meaning of ‘ existence’ . But if used as an equivalent of ‘existence’ it would inevitably add many ele- ments to the basic meaning of ‘existence’. The use of the term ‘taoism’, for example, instead of ‘existentialism’ in those contexts where we want to bring out the radical contrast between the funda- mental position of Taoism and ‘essentialism’ - which by the way, is an English equivalent chosen for the Confucian conception of ‘names’ ( ming ) - would make the whole situation more obscure and confusing. In order to refer to the particular aspect of the tao in which it is conceived as the actus purus, it is absolutely necessary that we should have a far less ‘colorful’ word than tao. And ‘exist- ence’ is just the word for its purpose. These considerations would seem to lead us to a very important methodological problem regarding the possibility of meta-historical dialogues. The problem concerns the need of a common linguistic system. This is only natural because the very concept of ‘dialogue’ presupposes the existence of a common language between two interlocutors. When our intention happens to be to establish a philosophical dialogue between two thinkers belonging to one and the same cultural and historical background, Plato and Aristotle, for instance, or Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, Kant and Hegel, etc., the problem of the necessity of a common language does not of course arise. The problem begins to make itself felt when we pick up within a cultural tradition two thinkers separated one from the other by a number of factors, like Aristotle and Kant, for example. Each of them philosophized in a language which is different from that of the other. There is, in this sense, no common language between them. But in a broad sense, we can still say that there is a common philosophical language between the two, because of the strong tie of a common philosophical tradition that bind them together inseparably. It is, in fact, hardly imaginable that any key- term of primary importance in Greek should not find its equivalent in German. The linguistic distance naturally becomes more conspicuous when we want to establish a dialogue between two thinkers belong- ing to two different cultural traditions, Avicenna and Thomas Aquinas, for example. But even here we are still justified in recog- nizing the existence of a common philosophical language in view of the fact that in the last analysis they represent but two varieties of scholastic philosophy, both of which ultimately go back to one and the same Greek source. The concept of ‘existence’, for instance - in the linguistic form of wujud in Arabic and in that of existentia in Latin - appears with the same basic connotation in both the Eastern 472 Sufism and Taoism and Western scholastic traditions. Thus the problem of a common language does not arise in a very acute form. The problem does arise with real acuity where there is no histori- cal connection in any sense whatsoever between the two thinkers. And this is precisely the case with Ibn ‘Arab! and Lao-tzu or Chuang-tzu. In such a case, if there happens to be a central concept active in both systems, but having its linguistic counterpart only in one of the systems, we have to pinpoint the concept in the system in which it is in a state of non-linguistic fluidity or amorphousness, and then stabilize it with a definite ‘name’ . The ‘name’ may be borrowed from the other system, if the term actually in use in it happens to be a really appropriate one. Or some other word may be chosen for the purpose. In our particular case, Ibn ‘ Arabi offers the word wujud, which, in its translated form, ‘existence’ serves exactly our purpose, because it does express the concept to be expressed in as simple a manner as possible, that is, without ‘coloring’ it with special conno- tations. The word remains connotatively colorless mainly due to the fact that Ibn ‘Arabi uses by preference a variety of other terms, like tajalli, fayd, rahmah, nafas, etc., in order to describe the same concept with special connotations. That we are not doing any injustice to the reality of the world- view of the Taoist sages by applying the word ‘existence’ to the central idea of their thought will be clear if one takes the trouble of re-examining Chuang-tzu’ s description of the Cosmic Wind together with the analytic interpretation of it which has been given in Chapter VI. However this may be, with the establishment of ‘existence’ as the central concept of both systems, we are now in possession of a common philosophical ground on which to establish a meta- historical dialogue between Ibn ‘Arab! on the one hand and Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu on the other. With this in mind, let us review the main points of the two philosophical systems which we have already analyzed in detail in the preceding pages. I would like to point out at the outset that the philosophical structure of both systems as a whole is dominated by the concept of the Unity of Existence. This concept is expressed in Arabic by wahdah al-wujud, literally the ‘one-ness of existence’. For expres- sing the same basic concept, Chuang-tzu, uses words like t’ien ni ‘Heavenly Levelling’ and t’ien chiin ‘Heavenly Equalization’. The very words ‘levelling’ and equalization’ clearly suggest that the ‘ unity’ in question is not a simple ‘ unity’ , but a ‘ unity’ formed by many different things. The idea, in brief, is this. There are actually different things, but they are ‘equalized’ with each other, or ‘level- led down’ to the state of ‘unity’, losing all their ontological distinc- Methodological Preliminaries 473 tions in the midst of the original metaphysical Chaos. More briefly stated, the ‘unity’ in question is a ‘unity’ of ‘multiplicity’. The same is true of the ‘ wahdah ’ of Ibn ‘Arabi. In both these systems, the whole world of Being is represented as a kind of ontological tension between Unity and Multiplicity. Unity in the world-view of Ibn ‘Arab! is represented by haqq, ‘Truth’ or ‘Reality’ while in that of Taoism it is represented by the tao, ‘ Way’. And Multiplicity is for Ibn ‘Arabi the mumkinat ‘possible beings’, and for Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu the wan wu , ‘ ten thousand things’ . tajalli haqq > mumkinat sheng 1 tao *wan wu And the relation between the two terms of the ontological tension is that of Unity. It is a Unity because all the things that constitute Multiplicity are, after all, so many different phenomenal forms assumed by the Absolute (the Truth and the Way respectively). The phenomenal process by which the original One diversifies itself into Many is considered by Ibn ‘Arabi as the tajalli , ‘self-manifestation’ of the One, and by Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu as sheng ‘producing’. And Chuang-tzu, in particular, further elaborates this idea into that of the universal Transmutation, wu hua, lit. ‘things- transforming’. Such is the broad conceptual framework which is shared by the world-views of Ibn ‘Arab! and the Taoist sages. The framework is in its entirety constructed on the most basic concept of ‘existence’. In what follows we shall examine in terms of this framework and in terms of this basic concept the major points of emphasis which characterize the two philosophical systems. Note 1. 4, sheng-. ‘produces’ or ‘brings into existence’. II The Inner Transformation of Man The philosophical world-view of the ‘Unity of Multiplicity’, whether in the form of the ‘Unity of Existence’ or in the form of ‘Heavenly Equalization’, is an unusual - to say the least - world- view. It is an extraordinary world-view because it is a product of an extraordinary vision of Existence as experienced by an extraordi- nary man. The most characteristic point about this type of philos- ophy is that philosophizing act starts from an immediate intuitive grasp of Existence at its metaphysical depth, at the level of its being the ‘absolute’ Absolute. Existence - which has always and everywhere been the central theme for innumerable philosophers - can be approached and grasped at a number of different levels. The Aristotelian attitude represents in this respect the exact opposite of the position taken by the philosophers of Taoism and Sufism. For an Aristotle, Existence means primarily the existence of individual ‘things’ on the concrete level of phenomenal ‘ reality’ . And his philosophizing starts from the ordinary experience of Existence shared by all men on the level of common sense. For an Ibn ‘Arab! or Chuang-tzu, however, these ‘things’ as experienced by an ordinary mind on the physical level are nothing but a dream, or of a dreamlike nature. From their point of view, the ‘things’ grasped on that level - although ultimately they are but so many phenomenal forms of the Absolute, and are, as such, no other than Existence - do not reveal the real metaphysical depth of Existence. And an ontology based on such an experience touches only shallowly the surface of the ‘things’; it is not in a position to account for the structure of the ‘things’ in terms of the very ground of their Existence. A philosopher of this type is a man standing on the level of the ‘worldly mode of being’ ( nash‘ah dunyawiyah ), in the terminology of Ibn Arabi. Such a man lacks the ‘spiritual eyesight’ (‘ ayn al-ba$irah ) - or ‘illuminating light’ (ming) as Chuang-tzu calls it - which is absolutely necessary for a deeper penetration into the mystery of Existence. In order to obtain such an eyesight, man must experience a spiritual rebirth and be trans- ferred from the ‘worldly mode of being’ to the ‘otherworldly mode of being’ ( nash'ah ukhrawiyah). 475 The Inner Transformation of Man Since the former is the way the majority of men naturally are, men of the ‘otherwordly mode of being’ must necessarily appear as ‘abnormal’ men. The world-view of Taoism and Sufism represents in this sense a vision of Existence peculiar to ‘abnormal’ men. It is significant that the process by which this spiritual transforma- tion occurs in man is described by Ibn ‘Arabi and Chuang-tzu, in such a way that it discloses in both cases exactly the same basic structure. Ibn ‘Arabi describes it in terms of ‘self-annihilation’ (fana), and Chuang-tzu in terms of ‘sitting in oblivion’ (tso wang). The very words used: ‘annihilation’ and ‘forgetting’, clearly point to one and the same conception. And the same underlying conception is the ‘purification of the Mind’, or as Chuang-tzu calls it, the spiritual ‘fasting’. As to what actually occurs in the process of ‘purification’, details have been given in the first and second Parts of this book. And it would be pointless to repeat the description here. The ‘purification’ in both Taoism and Sufism consists, in brief, the man’s purifying himself of all desires as well as of the activity of Reason. It consists, in other words, in a complete nullification of the ‘ego’ as the empiri- cal subject of all activities of Reason and desires. The nullification of the empirical ego results in the actualization of a new Ego, the Cosmic Ego, which, in the case of Taoism, is considered to be completely at one with the Absolute in its creative activity, and, in the case of Ibn ‘Arabi, is said to be unified with the Absolute to the utmost limit of possibility. Perhaps the most interesting point concerning this topic from the viewpoint of comparison is the problem of the ‘stages’ of the ‘puri- fication.’ A comparative consideration is here the more interesting because both Ibn ‘Arabi and Chuang-tzu distinguish in the process three basic stages. The two systems differ from each other in details, but agree with each other in the main. Let us begin by recapitulating the thesis put forward by Chuang- tzu. The first stage, according to him, consists in ‘putting the world outside the Mind’, that is to say, forgetting the existence of the objective world. The world as something ‘objective’ being by nature relatively far from the Mind from the very beginning, it is relatively easy for man to erase it from his consciousness through contemplation. The second stage consists in ‘putting the things outside the Mind’ , that is, erasing from consciousness the familiar things that surround man in his daily life. At this stage, the external world completely disappears from his consciousness. The third stage is said to consist in man’s forgetting Life, that is, his own life or his personal existence. The ‘ego’ is thereby com- I 476 Sufism and Taoism The Inner Transformation of Man All pletely destroyed, and the world, both external and internal, disap- pears from the consciousness. And as the ‘ego’ is nullified, the inner eye of the man is opened and the light of ‘illumination’ suddenly breaks through the darkness of spiritual night. This marks the birth of a new Ego in man. He now finds himself in the Eternal Now, beyond all limitation of time and space. He is also ‘beyond Life and Death’, that is, he is ‘one’ with all things, and all things are unified into ‘one’ in his ‘ no-consciousness’ . In this spiritual state, an unusual Tranquillity or Calmness reigns over everything. And in this cosmic Tranquillity, away from the turmoil and agitation of the sensible world, man enjoys being unified and identified with the very process of the universal Transmutation of the ten thousand things. Ibn ‘Arab! who, as I have just said, also divides the process into three stages, provides a markedly Islamic version of spiritual ‘puri- fication . The first stage is the ‘annihilation of the attributes’ . At this stage man has all his ‘human’ attributes nullified, and in their place he assumes as his own the Divine Attributes. The second stage consists in that man has his own personal ‘essence’ nullified and realizes in himself his being one with the Divine Essence. This is the completion of the phenomenon of ‘self-annihilation’ in the proper sense of the word. This stage cor- responds to the first half of the third stage of Chuang-tzu, in which the man is said to abandon his old ‘ego’. The third stage, according to Ibn ‘ Arabi, is the stage at which man regains his ‘self’ which he has ‘annihilated’ at the previous stage. Only he does not regain his ‘self’ under the same conditions as before, but rather in the very midst of the Divine Essence. This is evidently but another way of saying that having abandoned his old ‘ego’ he has obtained a new Ego. Having lost his life, he has found a new Life in being unified with the Divine Reality. In the technical terminology of the Sufism, this is known as ‘self-subsistence’ (baqa’). This third stage corresponds to the latter half of the third stage according to Chuang-tzu’ s division of the process. Now man witnes- ses all phenomenal things mingling with each other and merging into the boundless ocean of Divine Life. His consciousness - or, to be more exact, supra-consciousness - is in the utmost propinquity to the Divine Consciousness in an ontological stage previous to its actual splitting into an infinity of determinations and particular forms. Naturally he falls into profound Silence, and an extraordi- nary Tranquillity reigns over his concentrated Mind. There is another important point to be mentioned in connection with the problem of the ‘purification’ of the Mind. It concerns the centripetal direction of the ‘purification’. The process of ‘self- annihilation’ or ‘self-purification’, if it is to succeed, must definitely be turned and directed toward the innermost core of human exist- ence. This direction clearly goes against the ordinary movements of the Mind. The activity of the mind is usually characterized by its centrifugal tendency. The Mind has a very marked natural tendency to ‘go out’ toward the external world, attracted by, and in pursuit of, external objects. For the sake of ‘purification’, this natural tendency must be curbed and turned to the opposite direction. The ‘puri- fication’ is realizable only by man’s ‘turning into himself. This is expressed by Ibn ‘Arabi through the famous Tradition: ‘He who knows himself knows his Lord.’ To this corresponds on the side of Taoism the dictum of Lao-tzu: ‘He who knows others (i.e., external objects) is a “clever” man, but he who knows himself is an “illumined” man.’ In reference to the same situation, Lao-tzu also speaks of ‘closing up all the openings and doors’ . ‘Closing up all the openings and doors’ means obstructing all the possible outlets for the centrifugal activity of the mind. What is aimed at thereby is man’s going down deep into his own mind until he comes into direct touch with the existential core of himself. The reason why this point must be mentioned as being of special importance is that such a thesis would appear at first sight to contradict the more fundamental thesis of the Unity of Existence. For in the world-view of both Ibn ‘Arab! and the Taoist sages, not only ourselves but all things in the world, without a single exception, are phenomenal forms of the Absolute. And as such, there can be no basic difference between them. All existents equally manifest, each in its particular way and particular form, the Absolute. Why, then, are the external things to be considered detrimental to the subjective actualization of the Unity of Existence? The answer is not far to seek. Although external things are so many forms of the Absolute, and although we know this intellec- tually, we cannot penetrate into them and experience from the inside the palpitating Life of the Absolute as it is actively working within them. All we are able to do is look at them from the outside. Only in the case of our own selves, can each of us go into his ‘inside’ and m-tuit the Absolute as something constantly at work within himself. Only in this way can we subjectively participate in the Mystery of Existence. Besides, the centrifugal tendency of the mind is directly con- nected with the discriminating activity of Reason. And Reason cannot subsist without taking an ‘essentialist’ position. For where there are no conceptual boundaries neatly established Reason is utterly powerless. In the view of Reason, ‘reality’ consists of various ‘things’ and ‘qualities’, each having what is called ‘essence’ by which it is distinguished from the rest. These ‘things’ and ‘qualities’ are in truth nothing but so many forms in which the Absolute manifests I 478 Sufism and Taoism itseif. But in so far as they are self-subsistent entities, they conceal the Absolute behind their solid ‘essential’ veils. They intervene between our sight and the Absolute, and make our direct view of Reality impossible. The majority of men are those whose eyesight is obstructed in this way by the thick curtain of ‘things’. They have their counterpart in Taoism in those people who, unable to ‘chaotify’ the ‘things’, cannot interpret reality except in terms of ‘ this’ -or-‘ that’, ‘ good’ -or-‘ bad’, ‘ right’ -or-‘ wrong’, etc. When the ‘purification’ of the Mind is completed, and when man has turned into a metaphysical Void, forgetting both the inside and the outside of himself, he is allowed to experience what the Taoist sages call ‘illumination’ ( ming ) and what Ibn ‘Arabi calls ‘unveiling’ (kashf) or ‘immediate tasting’ ( dhawq ). It is characteristic of both ‘illumination’ and ‘unveiling’ (or ‘tasting’) that this ultimate stage once fully actualized, the ‘things’ that have been eliminated in the process of ‘purification’ from the consciousness all come back once again, totally transformed, to his Mind which is now a well-polished spotless mirror - the Mysterious Mirror, 1 as Lao-tzu calls it. Thus it comes about that the highest stage of metaphysical intuition is not that of those who witness only the Absolute, wholly oblivious of its phenomenal aspect. The highest ‘unveiling’, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, is of those who witness both the creatures and the Absolute as two aspects of one Reality, or rather, who witness the whole as one Reality diversifying itself constantly and incessantly according to various aspects and relations, being ‘one’ in Essence, and ‘all’ with regard to the Names. Likewise, the Perfect Man of Taoism does perceive infinitely variegated things on the phenomenal level of Existence, and the spotless surface of his Mysterious Mirror reflects all of them as they appear and disappear. But this kaleidoscope of ever shifting forms does not perturb the cosmic Tranquillity of the Mind, because behind these variegated veils of the phenomenal world, he intuits the metaphysical ‘One’. He himself is one with the constant flux of Transmutation, and being one therewith, he is one with the ‘One’. The philosophical world-view of an Ibn ‘Arabi, a Lao-tzu and a Chuang-tzu is a product of such an ‘abnormal’ spiritual state. It is an ontology, because it is a philosophized vision of Existence. But it is an extraordinary ontology, because the underlying vision of Exist- ence is far from being an ordinary one. Note 1. Hsiian lan, X. Ill The Multistratified Structure of Reality In terms of historical origin there is obviously no connection at all between Sufism and Taoism. Historically speaking, the former goes back to a particular form of Semitic monotheism, while the latter - if the hypothesis which I have put forward at the outset of this study is correct - is a philosophical elaboration of the Far Eastern type of shamanism. It is highly significant that, in spite of this wide historico-cultural distance that separates the two, they share, on the philosophical level, the same ground. They agree with each other, to begin with, in that both base their philosophical thinking on a very peculiar con- ception of Existence which is fundamentally identical, though dif- fering from one another in details and on secondary matters. \i They further agree with one another in that philosophizing in I both cases has its ultimate origin not in reasoning about Existence j| but in experiencing Existence. Furthermore, ‘experiencing’ Exist- f ence in this particular case consists in experiencing it not on the ordinary level of sense perception, but on the level (or levels) of |> supra-sensible intuition. It Existence or Reality as ‘experienced’ on supra-sensible levels 1 reveals itself as of a multistratified structure. The Reality which one H observes in this kind of metaphysical intuition is not of a uni- H stratum structure. And the vision of Reality thus obtained is totally I different from the ordinary view of ‘reality’ which is shared by the ;§ common people. j | It is extremely interesting that both Ibn ‘Arabi and Chuang-tzu begin by giving a rude shock to common sense by flatly refusing to admit any reality to so-called ‘reality’, saying that the latter is nothing but a dream. Quoting the famous Tradition: ‘All men are » asleep; only when they die, do they wake up’, Ibn ‘Arabi says: ‘The world is an illusion; it has no real existence. . . . Know that you yourself are an imagination. And everything that you perceive and H say to yourself, “this is not me”, is also an imagination.’ In an exactly similar way Chuang-tzu remarks: ‘Suppose you dream that you are a bird. (In that state) you soar up into the sky. Suppose you 480 Sufism and Taoism dream that you are a fish; you go down deep into the pool. (While you are experiencing all this in your dream, what you experience is your “reality”.) Judging by this, nobody can be sure whether we - you and I, who are actually engaged in conversation in this way - are awake of just dreaming.’ Thus we see so-called ‘reality’ being all of a sudden transformed and reduced to something dreamlike and unreal. Far more remarkable, however, is the fact that for both Ibn ‘Arab! and Chuang-tzu the dictum: ‘All is a dream’ has a very positive metaphysical meaning. It is not in any way an emotive statement to the effect, for instance, that the world we live in is like a dream, that everything in this world is tragically ephemeral and transient. It is, on the contrary, a definite ontological statement recognizing the existence of a higher ontological level where all things are deprived of their seemingly solid essential boundaries and disclose their natural amorphousness. And paradoxically enough, this ‘dreamlike’ level of Existence is, in the view of both Ibn ‘Arabi and Chuang-tzu, far more ‘real’ than so-called ‘reality’. This dreamlike level of Existence is in the ontological system of Ibn ‘Arabi what he calls the ‘world of similitudes and Imagination’, while in that of Chuang-tzu it is the Chaos. Thus the basic proposition that all is a dream does not mean that so-called ‘reality’ is a vain and groundless thing. Instead of meaning simply that the physical world is a sheer illusion, the proposition indicates that the world which we experience on the sensible level is not a self-subsistent reality, but is a Symbol - an ayah (pi. ayat), or ‘indicator’ as Ibn ‘Arabi calls it, using the Quranic term - vaguely and indistinctively pointing to ‘Something beyond’. The sensible things, thus interpreted, are phenomenal forms of the Absolute itself, and as such, they are ‘real’ in a particular way. However, this again is a matter of immediate intuitive experi- ence. The metaphysical fact that behind and beyond so-called ‘real- ity’ , which is apparently a colorful fabric of fantasy and imagination, there lies hidden the ‘real’ Reality, does not become clear except to those who have learnt how to ‘interpret’ rightly - as Ibn ‘Arabi says - the infinitely variegated forms and properties as so many manifes- tations of Reality. This is what is meant by Ibn ‘Arabi when he says that one has to ‘die and wake up’. ‘The only “reality” (in the true sense of the term) is the Absolute revealing itself as it really is in the sensible forms which are nothing but the loci of its self- manifestation. This point becomes understandable only when one wakes up from the present life - which is a sleep of forgetfulness - after one dies to this world through self-annihilation in God.’ Chuang-tzu, likewise, speaks of the need of experiencing a Great The Multistrati fled structure of Reality 481 Awakening. ‘Only when one experiences a Great Awakening does one realize that “reality” is but a Big Dream. But the stupid imagine that they are actually awake. . . . How deep-rooted and irremedi- able their stupidity is!’ In the eye of those who have experienced this spiritual Awaken- ing, all things, each in its own form and on its own level, manifest the presence of ‘Something beyond’. And that ‘Something beyond’ is ultimately the haqq of Ibn ‘Arabi and the tao of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu - the Absolute. Both Ibn ‘Arabi and the Taoist sages distinguish in the process of the self-revealing evolvement of the Absolute several degrees or stages. Ontologically speaking this would mean that Existence is of a multistratified structure. The strata, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, are: (1) The stage of the Essence (the absolute Mystery, abysmal Darkness); (2) The stage of the Divine Attributes and Names (the stage of Divinity); (3) The stage of the Divine Actions (the stage of Lordship); (4) The stage of Images and Similitudes; (5) The sensible world. And according to Lao-tzu: (1) Mystery of Mysteries; (2) Non-Being (Nothing, or Nameless); (3) One; (4) Being (Heaven and Earth); (5) The ten thousand things. The two systems agree with each other in that (I) they regard the first stage as an absolute Mystery, that is, something absolutely unknown-unknowable, transcending all distinctions and all limita- tions, even the limitation of ‘not being limited’; and that (2) they regard the four remaining stages as so many various forms assumed by this absolute Mystery in the process of its ontological evolvement, so that all are, in this sense, ‘one’. This latter point, namely, the problem of Unity, will be further discussed in the following chapter. I Essence and Existence 483 IV Essence and Existence As we have seen above, both Chuang-tzu’ s ‘Heavenly Levelling’ and Ibn ‘Arabi’s ‘Unity of Existence’ are based on the idea that all things are ultimately reducible to the original Unity of the Absolute in its absoluteness, that is, the ‘Essence at the level of Unity (ahadiyahy . It is to be remarked that the Essence in the Unity of its uncondi- tional simplicity is, in Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, nothing other than pure Existence , there being here not even the slightest discrepancy be- tween ‘essence’ (i.e., ‘quiddity’) and ‘existence’ . In other words, the Absolute is actus purus, the act itself of ‘existing’. The Absolute is not a ‘thing’ in the sense of a ‘substance’. As Qashani says: ‘The Reality called the “Essence at the level of Unity” in its true nature is nothing other than Existence pure and simple in so far as it is Existence. It is conditioned neither by non-determination nor by determination, for in itself it is too sacred to be qualified by any property and any name. It has no quality, no delimitation; there is not even a shadow of Multiplicity in it. It is not a substance . . . , for a substance must have an ‘essence’ other than “existence” , a “quiddity” by which it is a substance as differentiated from all others.’ The conception of the Absolute being conditioned neither by determination nor by non-determination is more tersely expressed by Lao-tzu through single words like ‘Nothing’ and ‘Nameless’, and by Chuang-tzu through the expression No-[No Non-Being]. The last expression, No- [No Non-Being], indicates analytically the stages in the logical process by which one arrives at the realization of the Absolute transcending all determinations. First, the idea that the Absolute is Being, i.e., ‘existence’ as ordinarily understood, is negated. The concept of Non-Being is thus posited. Then, this concept of Non-Being is eliminated, because, being a simple nega- tion of Being, it is but a relative Non-Being. Thus the concept of No-Non-Being is obtained. This concept stands on the negation of both Being and Non-Being, and as such it still keeps in itself a trace or reflection of the opposition which exists between the contradic- tories. In order to eliminate even this faint trace of relativity, one has to negate the No-Non-Being itself. Thus finally the concept of No-[No Non-Being] is established, as ‘Nothing’ in its absolutely unconditional transcendence. And Chuang-tzu clarifies through the admirable symbol of the Cosmic Wind that this transcendent Nothing is not a purely negative ‘nothing’ in the usual sense of the word; that, on the contrary, it is a supra-plenitude of Existence as the ultimate ontological ground of everything, as Something that lies at the very source of all existents and makes them exist. ‘It would seem’ , Chuang-tzu says, ‘that there is some real Ruler. It is impossible for us to see Him in a concrete form. He is acting - there can be no doubt about it; but we cannot see His form. He does show His activity, but He has no sensible form.’ This simply means that the No-[No Non-Being] - or theo- logically, the real Ruler of the world - is actus , creative energy, not a substance. The Cosmic Wind in itself is invisible and impalpable - because it is not a substance - but we know its presence through its ontological activity, through the ten thousand ‘holes’ and ‘hollows’ producing each its peculiar sound as the Wind blows upon them. The basic idea underlying the use of the symbol of the Wind is comparable with Ibn ‘Arabi’s favorite image of the ‘flowing’ of Existence ( sarayan al-wujud). ‘The secret of Life (i.e., Existence) lies in the act of flowing peculiar to water.’ The ‘water’ of Existence is eternally flowing through all things. It ‘spreads” throughout the universe, permeating and pervading everything. It is significant that both Chuang-tzu and Ibn ‘AbrabI represent Existence as something moving: ‘blowing’, ‘flowing’, ‘spreading’, ‘permeating’, etc. This is a definite proof that Existence as they have come to know it through ‘immediate tasting’ is in reality actus, nothing else. Existence which is actus, thus spreading itself out far and wide, goes on producing the ten thousand things. The latter, as I have repeatedly pointed out, are various forms in which Existence (or the Absolute) manifests itself. And in this sense, all are Existence, nothing but Existence. And there is nothing but Existence. Viewed from this angle, the whole world of Being is one. On the other hand, however, it is also an undeniable fact that we actually see with our own eyes an infinity of infinitely variegated ‘things’ which are different from one another. ‘It is evident’, Ibn ‘Arab! says, ‘that this is different from that . . . And in the Divine world, however wide it is, nothing repeats itself. This is a truly fundamental fact.’ From this point of view, there is not a single thing that is the same as any other thing. Even ‘one and the same thing’ is in reality not exactly the same in two successive moments. 484 Sufism and Taoism These individually different things, on a more universal level of Existence, still retain their mutual differences and distinctions, not ‘individually’ this time, but in terms of ‘essences’. And these ontological differences and distinctions which the ‘things’ manifest on this level are far more solid and unalterable because they are based on, and fixed by, their ‘essences’. The latter provide the ‘things’ with an ‘essential’ fixity which ensures them from disinte- gration . A ‘ horse’ is a ‘ horse’ by its ‘ essence’ ; it can never be a ‘ dog’ . A ‘dog’ is ‘essentially’ a ‘dog’, nothing else. It goes without saying that this is the very basis on which stands the ‘essentialist’ type of ontology. How could we account for the apparent contradiction between the above-mentioned absolute Unity of Existence, Unity of all things, and the undeniable Multiplicity of the ten thousand things which are not reducible to each other, let alone to a unique and single thing? Surely, if one puts these two points of view side by side with each other, one’s mind cannot help being thrown into bewilder- ing confusion. To see the One in the Many and the Many in the One, or rather to see the Many as One and the One as Many - this naturally causes what Ibn ‘Arab! calls (metaphysical) ‘perplexity’ {hay rah). Faced with this problem, Chuang-tzu takes a thoroughgoing anti-essentialist position. The view of things, each being distin- guished from the rest by a solid ‘boundary’ of ‘essence’, he maintains, does not give a true picture of these things themselves. The ‘essen- tial’ distinctions which common sense and Reason recognize be- tween things are, according to him, devoid of reality. The ‘things’ ordinarily look as if they were distinct from each other in terms of ‘essences’, simply because ordinary men are not ‘awake’. If they were, they would ‘chaotify’ the things and see them in their original ‘undifferentiation’ . The things being ‘chaotified’, however, is not the same as their being sheer nothing. The very concept of ‘chaotification’ would be meaningless if there were no plurality at all in the world of Being. It is, as Ibn ‘Arabi maintains, a truly fundamental fact that many ‘different’ things do exist, no matter how ‘unreal’ they may be in themselves and from the viewpoint of the higher metaphysical level of Existence. The differences and distinctions that are observable in the world may reveal themselves as ‘unreal’ when observed with the ‘spiritual eyesight’ of an ecstatic philosopher, but in so far as things are factually different and distinct from each other, there must be some ontological ground for that, too. And the ontological ground cannot be anything other than ‘essences’. The ‘essences’ are symbolically designated by Chuang-tzu through the image of the ‘hollows’ in the trees, which emit all kinds Essence and Existence 485 of sounds as the Wind blows upon them. Chuang-tzu does not assert that the ‘hollows’ do not exist in any sense whatsoever. They are surely there. The only point is that they do not produce any sound by themselves. It is the Wind, not the ‘hollows’ , that really produces the sounds. ‘(One and the same Wind) blows on the ten thousand things in different ways, and makes each “hollow” produce its own peculiar sound, so that each imagines that its own self produces that particular sound. But who, in reality, is the one who makes (the “hollows”) produce various sounds?’ All this would seem to be tantamount to saying - although Chuang-tzu himself does not talk in terms of these concepts - that the ‘essences’ are not sheer nothing, that they are potentially exist- ent. The ‘essences’ do exist, but only in potentia, not in actu; they are not actual or real in the fullest sense of the word. What is really ‘real’ is Existence, nothing else. And the ‘essences’ look as if they were ‘real’ only by dint of the actualizing activity of Existence. The position of the ‘hollows’ in the ontology of Chuang-tzu corresponds to that of the ‘permanent archetypes’ in the ontology of Ibn ‘Arabi. The main difference between the two lies in the fact that in the former the relation between Essence and Existence is merely symbolically suggested, whereas Ibn ‘Arabi consciously takes up the problem as an ontological theme and elaborates it far more theoretically. Details have been given in Chapter XII of the first Part regarding the conceptual structure of the ‘permanent archetypes’. Suffice it here to note that the ‘permanent archetypes’ are the ‘essences’ of the things, and that they are described as ‘neither existent nor non-existent’ - which would exactly apply to the ‘hollows’ of Chuang-tzu. It is remarkable, however, that the ‘permanent archetypes’ are also described by Ibn ‘Arabi as ‘realities {haqa’iq) eternally subsistent in the world of the Unseen’. That is to say, the ‘permanent archetypes’, although they are ‘non-existent’ in terms of ‘external existence’, do exist in actu within the Divine Conscious- ness. The ontology of Ibn ‘Arabi is, in this respect, Platonic; it is more ‘essentialist’ than that of Chuang-tzu who does not concede anything more than sheer potentiality to the ‘essences’. V The Self-Evolvement of Existence The absolute and ultimate ground of Existence is in both Sufism and Taoism the Mystery of Mysteries. The latter is, as Ibn ‘Arab! says, the ankar al-nakirat‘ the most indeterminate of all indeterminates’ ; that is to say, it is Something that transcends all qualifications and relations that are humanly conceivable. And since it is transcendent to such a degree, it remains for ever unknown and unknowable. Existence per se is thus absolutely inconceivable and inapproach- able. Ibn ‘Arab! refers to this aspect of Existence by the word ‘ghayb, ‘concealment’ or ‘invisibility’. In the Taoist system, it is hsuan or Mystery that is the most proper word for referring to this absolutely transcendent stage of Existence. The Taoist sages have also a set of negative words like wu, Non-Being, wu-wu, No-thing or ‘Nothing’, wu-ming, Nameless, etc. These terms are properly to be considered as functioning still within the domain of the original transcendence. Conceptually, however, there is already observable a distinction between these negative terms and the ‘ Mystery’ , because their very ‘ negative-ness’ indicates their opposition to something ‘positive’, i.e., the following stage of yu or Being, at which the ‘boundaries’ of the things-to-be are adumbrated. This is the reason why Chuang-tzu proposes to use the complex expression, No- [No Non-Being] or No-No-Nothing in order to refer to the ultimate stage of Existence (i.e., the Mystery of Mysteries) without leaving the level of negativity. However, this distinction between the Mystery and these negative terms is ex- clusively conceptual. Otherwise, ‘Non-Being’, ‘Nothing’, and ‘Nameless’ denote exactly the same thing as the ‘ Mystery’ . They all denote the Absolute in its absoluteness, or Existence at its ultimate stage, qua Something unknown-unknowable, transcending all qualifications, determinations, and relations. It is important to note that Ibn ‘Arab! calls this ontological level the ‘level of Unity (ahadiyahf . The Absolute at this stage is ‘One’ in the sense that it refuses to accept any qualification whatsoever. Thus, being one here means nothing other than absolute transcendence. The self-evolvement of Existence 487 The Taoist sages, too, speak of the Way as ‘One’. As I have tried to show earlier, the ‘One’ in the Taoist system is conceptually to be placed between the stage of Non-Being and that of Being. It is not exactly the same as the Way qua Mystery, because it is considered as something which the ten thousand things ‘acquire’, i.e., partake of. The One, in other words, is the principle of immanence. The Way is ‘immanent’ in everything existent as its existential core, or as its Virtue, as Lao-tzu calls it. But whether regarded as ‘immanent’ or ‘transcendent’ , the Way is the Way. What is immanent in everything is exactly the same thing as that which transcends everything. And this situation corresponds to the conceptual distinction between tanzih and tashbih and the factual identity of the two in the system of Ibn ‘Arab!. Thus the Taoist concept of One, in so far as it refers to the Absolute itself, is an exact counterpart of Ibn ‘Arabi’s ahad, the ‘ absolute One’ , but in so far as it is ‘ One’ comprising within itself the possibility of Multiplicity, it is a counterpart of wahid, i.e., the ‘One at the level of the Names and Attributes’ , or the Unity of the Many. In short, the Taoist One comprises both the ahad and the wahid of Sufism. These considerations make us realize that the first and ultimate stage of Existence itself can naturally be considered from two different angles: (1) as the Absolute perse , and (2) as the Absolute as the very origin and starting-point of the process of self- evolvement. In the first of these two aspects, the Absolute is Mys- tery and Darkness. In the second aspect, on the contrary, a faint foreboding of light is already perceivable in the very midst of utter darkness. As Ibn ‘ ArabI says: ‘Everything is contained in the bosom of the Breath, just as the bright light of day in the very darkness of dawn’ . It is quite significant in this respect that the word used by the Taoist sages to denote the Mystery, hsuan , originally means ‘black’ with a mixture of redness. Lao-tzu, as we have noticed, likes us to use in this sense also the word p’u meaning originally ‘uncarved wood’ . Existence, at this stage of absolute simplicity, is like ‘uncarved wood’. In so far as it still remains ‘uncarved’, there is nothing observable but ‘wood’. But in so far as it contains the possibility of producing all kinds of vessels and utensils, it is more than sheer ‘wood’. Actually it is still ‘Nothing’, but potentially it is all things. There is at least a vague and indistinct feeling that something is about to happen. And that is the ‘positive’ aspect of the Mystery, the face of the Absolute turned toward the world of creation. Ibn ‘Arabi conveys the same idea by the expression: ‘hidden Treasure’ , which he has taken from a Tradition. And it is of 488 Sufism and Taoism the very nature of the ‘hidden Treasure’ that it ‘loves to be known’. It is, however, at the stage of the Divine Names and Attributes - in terms of Ibn ‘ Arabi’s world-view -that this ‘love of being known’, i.e., the inner ontological drive of Existence, becomes actualized. At the stage of the absolute Unity, the Absolute qua Absolute is characterized by a perfect ‘independence’ , and does not require by itself and for itself any creative activity. If ‘creation’ is at all conceiv- able at this stage, it is simply in the form of a faint foreboding. In the System of Taoism the concept of Non-Being or Nothing refers precisely to this delicate situation. ‘Deep and Bottomless’, Lao-tzu says, ‘it is like the origin and principle of the ten thousand things. . . . There is nothing, and yet there seems to be something. I know not whose son it is. It would seem to be antecedent even to the Heavenly Emperor.’ ‘The Way in its reality is utterly vague, utterly indistinct. Utterly indistinct, utterly vague, and yet there is in the midst of it an Image. Utterly vague, utterly indistinct, and yet there is in the midst of it Something.’ The ‘hidden Treasure loves to be known’. The Treasure lies ‘hid- den’ , and yet it is, so to speak, pressed from inside by the ‘desire to be known’. Speaking less symbolically, the infinite things that are contained in the Absolute in the state of pure potentia forcefully seek for an outlet. This naturally causes an ontological tension within the Absolute. And the internal ontological compression, growing ever stronger finally relieves itself by bursting forth. It is highly interesting to notice that both Ibn ‘Arab! and Chuang-tzu resort to the same kind of imagery in trying to describe this situa- tion. Chuang-tzu talks about ‘eructation’. He says: ‘The Great Earth eructates; and the eructation is called Wind. As long as the eructation does not actually occur, nothing is observable. But once it does occur, all the hollows of the trees raise ringing shouts.’ The issuing forth of the ten thousand things from the Absolute is here compared to the Great Earth belching forth the Wind. No less bold and picturesque is the mythopoeic image of ‘brea- thing out’ by which Ibn ‘Arab! tries to depict the matter. The ontological state of extreme tension which precedes the ‘bursting out’ and which has been caused by an excessive amount of things accumulated inside is compared to the state in which a man finds himself when he holds his breath compressed within himself. The tension reaches the last limit, and the air compressed in the breast explodes and gushes forth with a violent outburst. In a similar way, the creative drive of Existence gushes forth out of the depth of Absolute. This is the phenomenon which Ibn ‘Arab! calls the ‘breath of the Merciful’. In the theological language peculiar to Ibn ‘Arab!, the same phenomenon can also be described as the Divine 489 The self-evolvement of Existence Names, at the extreme limit of inner compression, suddenly burst- ing out from the bosom of the Absolute. ‘The Names, previous to their existence in the outer world (in the form of phenomenal things) exist hidden in the Essence of the Absolute (i.e., the Mystery of Mysteries), all of them seeking an outlet toward the world of external existence. The situation is comparable to the case in which a man holds his breath within himself. The breath, held within, seeks an outlet toward the outside, and this causes in the man a painful sensation of extreme compression. Only when he breathes out does this compression cease to make itself felt. Just as the man is tormented by the compression if he does not breathe out, so the Absolute would feel the pain of (ontological) compression if it did not bring into existence the world in response to the demand of the Names.’ This may also be compared with the image of a great Cosmic Bellows by which Lao-tzu symbolically-describes the inex- haustible creative activity of the Way. ‘The space between Heaven and Earth is comparable to a bellows. It is empty (i.e., the Absolute qua the Mystery of Mysteries is “Nothing”), but its activity is inexhaustible. The more it works the more it produces.’ Thus Existence, in compliance with its own necessary and natural internal demand, goes on inexhaustibly determining itself into an infinity of concrete things. And the ‘breath of the Merciful’ or the ontological Mercy pervades all of them, constituting the very exis- tential core of each one of them. And the existential core thus acquired by each phenomenal thing is what The Taoist sages call te or Virtue. It is worth remarking that the rahmah or Mercy as understood by Ibn ‘Arab! is primarily an ontological fact. It refers to the actus of Existence, namely, the act of making things exist. It does not primarily denote the emotive attitude of compassion and benevol- ence. But Mercy as bestowal of existence of course carries an emotive and subjective overtone. And this squares well with the ethical understanding of God in Islam. The creative activity of Existence is represented in Taoism in a form which is diametrically opposed to such a conception. For in Taoism the Way is said to be ‘non-humane’ (pu jeri). ‘Heaven and Earth’, Lao-tzu says, ‘lack “benevolence” (i.e., lack mercy).’ They treat the ten thousand things as if the latter were straw dogs.’ The difference between the two systems, however, is only superficial. For whether described in terms of Mercy (in Sufism) or non-Mercy (in Taoism), the basic fact described remains exactly the same. This because the ontological Mercy, in the conception of Ibn ‘Arabi, is absolutely gratuitous. What is meant by both Mercy and non- Mercy is nothing other than the all-pervading creative activity of Existence. Ibn ‘Arab! himself 490 Sufism and Taoism warns us against understanding the word rahmah with its usual associations. ‘There does not come into its activity any considera- tion of attaining an aim, or of a thing’ s being or not being suitable for a purpose. Whether suitable or unsuitable the Divine Mercy covers everything and anything with existence.’ This explanation of Mercy by Ibn ‘Arabi is so congenial to the spirit of Taoism that it will pass verbatim for an explanation by a Lao-tzu of the Taoist concept of non-Mercy which is as equally impartial and indiscriminating as Ibn ‘ArabFs Mercy in bestowing the gift of ‘existence’ upon everything and everybody. In the view of Lao-tzu, the creative activity of the Absolute is extended over the ten thousand things without a single exception precisely because it stands on the principle of non-Mercy. If even a trifling amount of human emotion were involved therein, the Absolute would not be acting with such an absolute impartiality. In the view of Ibn ‘Arabi, on the contrary, the Absolute bestows ‘existence’ to all things without excluding anything precisely because it is the actus of Mercy. The Divine Mercy being by nature limitlessly wide, it covers the whole world. As is obvious, the underlying idea is in both cases one and the same. The structure itself of this concept of Mercy or non-Mercy is directly connected with another important idea: that of the Absolute being ‘beyond good and evil’ . The creative activity of the Absolute, which consists in the bestowal of ‘existence’ qua ‘existence’ upon every- thing involves no moral judgment. From the point of view of the Absolute, it does not matter at all whether a given object be good or bad. Rather, there is absolutely no such distinction among the objects. The latter assume these and other evaluational properties only after having been given ‘existence’ by the indiscriminating act of the Absolute; and that from the particular points of view of the creatures. Otherwise, all existents are on the ‘straight way’ - as Ibn ‘Arabi says - or all existents are ‘so-of-themselves’ - as the Taoist sages say. There is no distinction at this stage between good and evil. This idea is formulated by Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu in terms of a ‘relativist’ view of all values. Ordinary men distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘beautiful’ and ‘ugly’, ‘noble’ and ‘ignoble’, etc., and construct their life social as well as personal, on these distinc- tions as if they were objective categories that have been fixed in an unalterable way by the very nature of the things. In truth, however, these and other seemingly solid objective categories, far from being ‘objective’, are but products of ‘subjective’ and ‘relative’ points of view. A ‘beautiful’ lady from the human point of view, Chuang-tzu argues, is ‘ugly’ and ‘terrifying’ enough, from the point of view of other animals, to make them run away as fast as their legs or wings 491 The self-evolvement of Existence can carry them. The distinctions are a sheer matter of relative viewpoints, a matter of likes and dislikes. As Ibn ‘Arabi says: ‘The bad is nothing other than what one dislikes, while the good is nothing other than what one likes.’ Thus in both Sufism and Taoism the basic proposition holds true that everything is primarily, that is, qua ‘existence’, neither good nor evil. However there is a certain respect - again both in Sufism and Taoism - in which everything is to be considered fundamentally ‘good’. This because everything qua ‘existence’ is a particular self- manifestation of the Absolute itself. And looked at from such a viewpoint, all things in the world are ‘one’. As Chuang-tzu says: ‘(However different they may look from each other) they are, in reality no other than so many things that are “affirmable” piled up one upon the other.’ They are at one with each other in being fundamentally ‘affirmable’, i.e., good. The Perfect Man ‘is “one”, whether he (seemingly) likes something or dislikes something’ . And Lao-tzu: ‘Those who are good I treat as good. But those who are not good also I treat as good. For the original nature of man is goodness. Those who are faithful I treat as faithful. But even those who are not faithful I treat as faithful. For the original nature of man is faithful- ness.’ Such an attitude would immediately be approved by Ibn ‘Arabi, who says: ‘What is bad is bad simply because of (the subjec- tive impression caused by) the taste; but the same thing will be found to be essentially good, if considered apart from the (subjec- tive attitude on the part of man) of liking or disliking.’ These considerations make it clear that for both Ibn ‘Arabi and the Taoist sages there is the closest and most intimate relationship between the Absolute and the things of the phenomenal world. Although the latter are apparently far removed from the Absolute, they are after all so many different forms which the Absolute assumes in making itself manifest at various stages and in various places. This intimate ontological relationship between the two terms of the creative process is in Taoism symbolically expressed by the image of the Mother-Child relationship. The Way at the stage of the ‘Being’ or ‘Named’ is considered by Lao-tzu the ‘Mother of the ten thousand things’. The symbolic implication of this statement is that all things in the phenomenal world are the very flesh and blood of the Absolute. And the Taoist ideal consists in man’s ‘knowing the Children by knowing the Mother, and in his knowing the Children and yet holding fast to the Mother’ . On the side of Ibn ‘Arabi, the same ontological relationship between the Absolute and phenomenal things is compared to the inseparable relationship between ‘shadow’ and its source, i.e., the man or object that projects it upon the earth. ‘Do you not see’, Ibn 492 Sufism and Taoism ‘Arab! asks, ‘how in your ordinary sensible experience shadow is so closely tied up with the person who projects it that it is absolutely impossible for it to liberate itself from this tie? This is impossible because it is impossible for anything to be separated from itself.’ The world is the ‘shadow’ of the Absolute, and, as such, it is connected with the latter with the closest relationship which is never to be cut off. Every single part of the world is a particular aspect of the Absolute, and is the Absolute in a delimited form. Ibn ‘Arab! describes the same relationship by referring to the Divine Name: ‘Subtle’ (latif). The ‘subtleness’ in this context means the quality of an immaterial thing which, because of its immaterial- ity, permeates and pervades the substances of all other things, diffusing itself in the latter and freely mixing with them. ‘It is the effect of God’s “subtleness” that He exists in every particular thing, designated by a particular name, as the very essence of that particu- lar thing. He is immanent in every particular thing in such a way that He is, in each case, referred to by the conventional and customary meaning of the particular name of that thing. Thus we say: “This is Heaven”, “This is the earth”, “This is a tree”, etc. But the essence itself that exists in every one of these things is just one.’ We shall do well to recall that in a passage of his commentary upon the Fusus Qashani also uses the Mother image. ‘The ultimate ground of everything is called the Mother (umm) because the mother is the (stem) from which all branches go out.’ It is worth noticing, further, that both Ibn ‘Arabi and the Taoist sages picture the process of creation as a perpetual and constant flow. Their world-view in this respect is of a markedly dynamic nature. Nothing remains static. The world in its entirety is in fervent movement. ‘As water running in a river, which forever goes on being renewed continuously’ (Ibn ‘Arabi), the world transforms itself kaleidoscopically from moment to moment. The Cosmic Bel- lows of Lao-tzu is an appropriate symbol for this incessant process of creation. ‘The space between Heaven and Earth is comparable to a bellows. It is empty, but its activity is inexhaustible. The more it works, the more it produces.’ The thesis of the universal Transmutation of things which Chuang-tzu puts forward also refers to this aspect of Reality. All things in the phenomenal world are constantly changing from one form to another. Everything is ontologically involved in the cosmic process of Transmutation. ‘Dying and being alive, being subsistent and perishing, getting into a predicament and being in the ascend- ant, being poor and being rich, being clever and being incom- petent, being disgraced and being honored ... all these are but the constant changes of things, and the results of the incessant working 493 The self-evolvement of Existence of Fate. All these thing go on replacing one another before our own eyes, but no one by his Intellect can trace them back to their real origin.’ These changes ‘remind us of all kinds of sounds emerging from the empty holes (of a flute), or mushrooms coming out of warm dampness. Day and night, these changes never cease to replace one another before our eyes.’ Ibn ‘Arab! pursues this perpetual flux of things down to a single moment. The result is his theory of ‘new creation’ , that is, the thesis that the world goes on being created anew at every single moment. At every moment, countless things and properties are produced, and at the very next moment they are annihilated to be replaced by another infinity of things and properties. And this ontological pro- cess goes on repeating itself indefinitely and endlessly. It is remarkable that neither in Sufism nor in Taoism is the ontological Descent - from the Mystery of Mysteries down to the stage of phenomenal things - made to represent the final comple- tion of the activity of Existence. The Descent is followed by its reversal, that is, Ascent. The ten thousand things flourish exuber- antly at the last stage of the descending course, and then take an ascending course toward their ultimate source until they disappear in the original Darkness and find their resting place in the cosmic pre-phenomenal Stillness. Thus the whole process of creation forms a huge ontological circle in which there is in reality neither an initial point nor a final point. The movement from one stage to another, considered in itself, is surely a temporal phenomenon. But the whole circle, having neither an initial point nor a final point, is a trans-temporal or a-temporal phenomenon. It is, in other words, a metaphysical process. Everything is an occurrence in an Eternal Now.
Change and tradition : cultural and historical perspectives
Butler University
1998-01-01T00:00:00Z
Colonial influence,Greece,China -- History -- 221 B.C.-960 A.D,France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799,Great Britain -- History -- 19th century,Nigeria -- Colonial influence -- History,Chine -- Histoire -- 221 av. J.-C.-960,Grande-Bretagne -- Histoire -- 19e siècle,China,France,Great Britain,Nigeria
vi, 426 pages : 23 cm,"Change and Tradition Faculty, Butler University.",Fifth century Athens: From the Iliad -- Poetry of Sappho -- From the history -- Herodotus -- From history of the Peloponnesian War -- Thucydides -- Pericles' funeral oration -- The Mytilenian debate -- The Melian dialogue -- Ancient China: Meinig model of China -- Yin and yang -- Mai-Mai Sze -- Ode to King Wên -- From records of the historian -- Ssu-ma Ch'ien -- The biographies of the assassin retainers -- The hereditary house of prime minister Hsiao -- Selections from the writings of Confucius -- From the analects -- From the great learning -- Mencius -- Human nature is evil -- Hsü̈n-Tzu -- Eminence in learning -- Han Fei Tzu -- Selections from Chuang-Tzu -- Two women -- The debate on salt and iron -- Early Islamic civilization: The Arab empire -- Early Islamic civilization -- Early Islamic civilization glossary -- Sacred biographies -- Abraham and Ishmael -- Muhammad's birth -- Muhammad's call -- Muhammad's night journey -- The constitution of Medina -- The lie about Aisha -- Selected hadiths -- Selected fiqh -- Islamic prayer -- Hajj map and diagram -- The alternative of Socratic faith and Abrahamic faith -- Al-Ghazali -- Layla and Majnun -- Nizami -- Poetry of Rumi -- Revolutionary Francy: Cahiers of Dourdan -- What is the third estate? -- Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyè̀s -- Declaration of the rights of man and citizen -- The declaration of the rights of woman -- Olympe de Gouges -- Speeches at the trial of Louis XVI -- Saint-Just 13 November 1792 -- Condorcet 3 December 1792 -- Robespierre 3 December 1792 -- Speeches of Robespierre -- On revolutionary government December 25, 1793 -- On the moral and political principles of domestic policy -- Victorian England: From natural theology -- William Paley -- Selections from the writings of Charles Darwin -- From notebook B -- From the origin of species -- From the descent of man -- Religious belief -- From poor laws -- Herbert Spencer -- From evolution and ethics -- Thomas Henry Huxley -- Minute on Indian education -- Thomas Babington Macaulay -- The white man's burden -- Rudyard Kipling -- From the subjection of women -- John Stuart Mill [and Harriet Taylor] -- Tsarist Russia: Expansion of Russian state, 1480-1794 -- Tsarist Russia, 1914 -- Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom -- Prologue to Boris Godunov -- Modest Musorgsky -- Newspaper advertisements for the sale of Serfs, 1797 -- Emancipation manifesto of Alexander II -- From the writings of Vera Figner -- The new democracy -- Constantine P. Pobedonostsev -- The October manifesto of Nicholas II -- Colonial Nigeria: From the interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano -- From through African doors -- Janheinz Jahn -- Sitting on a man: Colonialism and the lost political institutions of Igbo women -- Judith Van Allen -- Hausa dilemma tales,Includes bibliographical references
On Eastern meditation
Merton, Thomas, 1915-1968
2012-01-01T00:00:00Z
Christianity and other religions -- Asian,Meditation -- Asia,Spiritual life -- Comparative studies,East and West,Asia -- Religion
xviii, 76 p. ; 16 cm,"Almost from the beginning of his monastic career, Thomas Merton tentatively began to discover the great Asian religions of Buddhism and Taoism," biographer George Woodcock wrote in his introduction to Merton's Thoughts on the East. Merton, a longtime social justice advocate, first approached Eastern theology as an admirer of Gandhi's beliefs on non-violence. Through Gandhi, Merton came to know the great Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita, and further still came dialogues with the Dalai Lama and Taoist leader Daisetz Suzuki. Among the "Eastern" works of Thomas Merton are interpretations of the philosophy of Chuang Tzu and an unfinished journal Merton was compiling as he toured Asia to meet with its spiritual leaders. Eastern Wisdom, edited by Bonnie Thurston (author of Merton and Buddhism, 2007) gathers the best of his Eastern theological writings and studies into a gorgeously designed gift book edition. Included are poems, essays, dialogues, and journal entries that serve as the perfect entry for anyone curious about the religious beliefs of the East."--Publisher's description,Includes bibliographical references,On landscape -- On teaching/dharma, general -- Teachers/guru -- Self -- Zen -- Emptiness -- Enlightenment -- On practice/skillful means, general -- Contemplative life -- Solitude -- Fasting -- Possessions -- Prayers/praying -- Meditation -- Non-violence/ahimsa -- Compassion
The world's wisdom : sacred texts of the world's religions
Novak, Philip
1996-01-01T00:00:00Z
Sacred books
xvi, 425 pages ; 23 cm,A world Bible for our time from Buddhist, Hindu, Confucian, Taoist, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and primal religion sources. In this perfect companion to Huston Smith's bestselling The World's Wisdom, Philip Novak distills the most powerful and elegant expressions of the wisdom of humankind. Authentic, poetic translations of key texts are coupled with insightful introductions and "grace notes.",Includes bibliographical references,Chapter 1. Hinduism -- The early Vedas -- The Upanishads -- The Bhagavad Gita -- Grace notes -- Chapter 2. Buddhism -- The instructive legend of the Buddha's life -- The rebel saint -- Core doctrines -- Mahayana Buddhism -- Tibetan Buddhism -- Zen Buddhism -- Grace notes -- Chapter 3. Confucianism -- Confucius the man -- The Confucian project -- The great learning -- Mencius -- Grace notes -- Chapter 4. Taoism -- The Tao Te Ching -- Chuang Tzu -- Grace notes -- Chapter 5. Judaism -- Torah: the teaching -- Nevi'im: the prophets -- Ketuvim: other writings -- Oral Torah: the Talmud -- Grace notes -- Chapter 6. Christianity -- The life of Jesus -- The sayings of Jesus -- The life of the early church -- Grace notes -- Chapter 7. Islam -- The Qur'an: suras of Mecca and Medina -- The Qur'an: selections thematically arranged -- Hadith: sayings and traditional accounts of the prophet -- Grace notes -- Chapter 8. Primal religions -- Beginnings -- Returning to the sacred realm -- The spirit-filled world -- The shaman -- The sacred Earth -- Grace notes
The Gold Pavilion: Taoist Ways to Peace, Healing, and Long Life
Michael Saso
null
The Gold Pavilion,Michael Saso,Taoist Ways,Taoist Meditation,Daoist Meditation,Taoism,Daoism,Taoist,Daoist,Tao,Dao,Taoist Practice,Taoist Thought,Chinese Spirituality,Chinese Religion,Meditation,Gods,Immortals,Spirits,Yin-Yang,Qi,Chi,Qigong,Internal Alchemy,Nature Meditation,Visualization Meditation,Shangqing,Mysticism,Spirituality,Religion,Educational Texts
The Gold Pavilion: Taoist Ways to Peace, Healing, and Long Life by Michael Saso is available here in PDF format. Book Description: The Gold Pavilion: Taoist Ways to Peace, Health, and Long Life is a step-by-step instruction of Taoist meditation from ancient China. The writings of the ancient Chinese Taoist masters tell us that when the mind, heart, and body are in tune with the harmonics of nature, a new inner peace emerges. This peace can be achieved through Taoist meditation, which is revealed in this fascinating book. Author Michael Saso provides a concise introduction to the history of and many sources from which Taoism is drawn. he outlines the essential Taoist texts, the I-Ching, the Tao-te Ching and the Chuang-tzu, as well as the different forms of Taoist and Tibetan Tantric meditation. he then offers an engaging translation of the Gold Pavilion classic, a Taoist meditation first practiced by a great forth-century mystic, Lady Wei Huacun, founder of a special kind of Taoism called the Highest Pure School. This important text teaches how to find Tao, "the Way," within by emptying the mind and heart of all desires and concepts. Combining discussions of Chinese philosophy, history and healing arts, The Golden Pavilion reveals a way to find inner peace and harmony in a world with little time for quiet contemplation.
Full text of "The Gold Pavilion: Taoist Ways to Peace, Healing, and Long Life" Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "The Gold Pavilion: Taoist Ways to Peace, Healing, and Long Life" See other formats First published in 1995 by Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc. of Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo, Japan, with editorial offices at 153 Milk Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109 © 1995 Michael Saso All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Saso, Michael R. The Gold Pavilion : Taoist ways to peace, healing, and long life / by Michael Saso. p. cm. Includes bibliographic references. ISBN 0-8048-3060-6 1.Meditation—Taoism. 2. Healing. 3. Longevity. I. Huang t’ing ching. English. II. Title. BL1923.S27 1995 299'.51443—dc20 95-24661 CIP First Edition 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96 95 Frontispiece: Kalachakra. The male image, Mahakala, stands for compassion, the female, wisdom (see chapter 5). Mongol tanka, 16th century. Book design by Jill Winitzer Cover design by Sherry Fatla Printed in the United States of America To my mother, Beatrice Saso, who wonders what I do in the hills of China and Tibet, and to the monks, nomads, and others who made the sojourning so eventful. To the late Zhuang Chen Dengyun, who taught the medita¬ tions of the Yellow Court Canon as interpreted in these pages; the lay Taoists, men and women, of the Yuanxuanxue Yuan in Samdiptam, Kowloon, who practice Taoist meditation in their daily lives; and the Taoist master Shi Daochang, who learned these practices before the Japanese burning of Mao Shan in 1938 and the Red Guard destruction of the sacred mountain between 1966 and 1978 and taught “quieting the heart” (ding xinj until his death on Mao Shan in 1989. Contents Preface ix Chapter One A Brief Introduction to Taoist Meditation 1 Chapter Two Interior Peace 27 C11 a p t e r Three Centering Meditation; Colors that Heal 71 C II A P T E R F O U R The Gold Pavilion Classic: Taoist Emptying Meditation 99 Chapter Five Tantric Meditation 153 Notes 169 Appendix A Comparative Chart of Taoist History 183 Glossary and Index of Special Terms 185 Bibliography and Further Readings 203 Preface T he Gold Pavilion: Taoist Ways to Peace, Health, and Long Life is a step-by-step description of a way of Taoist meditation from ancient China. The first proponent of this form of meditation was a woman named Wei Huacun (Wei Hua-ts’un), who lived in the fourth century (d. ca. 330 c.E.). Married, with two sons who were employed at the court in Nanjing (Nan-ching, then called Jinling, “Gold Hill”), she received a Taoist ordination and prac¬ ticed meditation on or near the sacred Taoist mountain called Mao Shan. Her methods of meditation, which called for the emptying of the mind of all negative judgments and the heart of selfish desires, were the foundation of a special kind of Taoism called the Highest Pure school, founded atop Mao Shan (see map). Inner peace and healing were the results of her medita¬ tion. The Huang-t’ing Ching, the Gold Pavilion classic, is the text of the meditation attributed to her. The Chinese title literally means "Yellow Pavilion,” if translated in the standard dictionary meaning. The color to be visualized with this meditation in the ix The Gold Pavilion © Taoist tradition is a bright gold-yellow. The proper translation of the term, therefore, is “Gold Pavilion." This book proposes a way to find inner peace and whole¬ ness in a world with little time for quiet contemplation. I am indebted to many Taoists, laymen and -women as well as ordained priests, who explained so patiently the meaning of the Gold Pavilion classic. I am especially grateful to Zhao Zhendong (Chao Chen-tung), director of the Yuanxuanxue Yuan Taoist complex in Samdiptam, New Territories, Kowloon, who provided the written manuals, i.e., prompt books, used in the annotations of chapter 4. The Taoist master Min Zhiting (Min Chih-t’ing) of White Cloud Temple, Beijing; the late Shi Daochang (Shih Tao-ch’ang) of Mao Shan near Nanjing; and Zhuang Jiaxin (Chuang Chia-hsin) of Xinzhu (Hsinchu), Taiwan, explained their own meditative and ritual use of the Gold Pavilion text. To these and many others, I express my thanks. Though the text of the Gold Pavilion classic is written in metaphor and symbol, the method of meditation is in fact sim¬ ple and easy. The quelling first of negative judgment, and then of all judgment (the joining of a verb to a noun) is a meditative prelude to a life of inner peace and well-being. The person who learns to meditate as described in these pages finds peace and long life and brings healing to others. The Gold Pavilion classic, in the interpretation of tradi¬ tional Taoist masters, teaches the method of emptying prayer in a manner that even the layperson and nonexpert can follow. The reader is introduced to the meditation in chapters 2 and 3. An interpretation of the Gold Pavilion classic is given in chap¬ ter 4. I compare Tibetan Tantric meditation and other forms of X Preface ® apophatic or emptying prayer with Taoist practices in chapter 5. The total body (i.e., Tantric) style of prayer described here is used today in many parts of Tibet and modern mainland and overseas China. That is to say, the meditations taught in the Taoist Gold Pavilion classic are similar to a genre of prayer techniques shared by many religious traditions. All of these traditions teach the use of body, mouth, and mind together in union when pray¬ ing. In Buddhism this kind of total body prayer is called Tantric meditation. It is usually learned orally from a master, rather than from a book. Just as we must learn to swim, drive a car, or fly an airplane by taking lessons and then actually swimming, driving, or flying, so too Taoist Tantric prayer must be learned by “jumping in” to practice. Masters of Taoist prayer sometimes do write out the direc¬ tions for Tantric meditation in an easy-to-follow fashion. The commentary used to translate the Gold Pavilion classic is such a text. It helps understand the cryptic text itself. It contains directions for doing Tantric meditation without recourse to a liv¬ ing master. In such a case, the text is the master, whose words of explanation were once written down by an unknown disciple so as not to forget the master’s instructions. The oral directions that the master adds to the text and commentary are in fact descriptions of spiritual forces unleashed or controlled by the person doing the meditations. The illustrations found throughout the book show what these spiritual forces look like in the teachings of Tibetan and Taoist masters. When a text calls for a color, as for instance the blue- green color of new leaves in spring, the master describes what the blue-green spirit of spring looks like. For the Taoist it is in XI The Gold Pavilion ® fact the personified spirit of the East, a bearded ancient called Fu Xi (Fu Hsi), patron of the family and the element wood. For the Tantric Buddhist he is Dhrtarastra, in the Judeo- Christian tradition, Gabriel; each religious tradition has set images depicted in art and envisioned in contemplative med¬ itation. Taoist, biblical, and Tantric symbols sometimes juxtapose male and female images, seen embracing in close physical union. The Canticle of Canticles in the Bible, the Tibetan tanka pictures, and some passages of the Gold Pavilion classic are examples of such images. There are at least three possible inter¬ pretations of these stunningly graphic symbols. The first is lit¬ eral (that is, they depict sexual union). The second is figurative: the male represents compassion and the female wisdom (com¬ passion is tempered by wisdom). The third, truly Taoist or Tantric, meaning is that all visions, good or bad, are relative and must be burned away by the fires and washed clean by the waters of Tantric meditation. The Gold Pavilion classic embraces this last interpretation. In the true Taoist and Tantric traditions, the spiritual forces unleashed by prayer, whether good or bad, must be emp¬ tied from the mind and heart before union with the unmoving transcendent “other shore” can be realized. Tantric and Taoist prayer are therefore basically techniques for emptying the mind of images and the heart of desires, preludes to “being one with the Tao,” or one with the “other shore” of wisdom. The medita¬ tions that bring about this state of emptiness (called kenosis in Western religious traditions) also bring great peace, health, and serenity, preludes to an encounter with the absolute. P re face ® The Chinese words used in this book are generally roman- ized first in modern pinyin, which is the preferred system of the People’s Republic of China, and then using the Wade-Giles sys¬ tem (usually in parentheses). The exceptions to this are the words in chapter 4 and ancient names and titles that are already familiar in their Wade-Giles transliterations (i.e., Chuang-tzu, Tao-te Ching). xiii Taoist Monastery MONGOLIA © Chapter One A Brief Introduction to Taoist Meditation T aoism (the T is pronounced like a D) is one of China’s three great philosophical systems. With Confu¬ cianism and Buddhism it gives enduring value to Chinese culture. Confucianism provides guidelines for perceptive human relations. Buddhism teaches a sense of compassion for the living and care for the afterlife. Taoism furthers a sense of well-being and harmony with nature that fosters long life and good health. The popular saying sanjiao guiyi, “the Three Teachings make a whole person,” suggests the idea that we are somehow better, more complete human beings by learning from all three systems. The person who is filled with respect and benevolence for others and compassion for all living things, and who lives in close harmony with nature, lives long and is filled with inner peace and blessing. Another popular saying states: “Confucianism for the head, Buddhism for the heart, and Taoism for the belly.” The Confucian tradition advocates the rational side of human life. Buddhism teaches kindness of heart toward the living and the i The Gold Pavilion © chanting of sutras to alleviate sorrow for the deceased. Taoism offers ways to bring health, interior peace, and long life by har¬ monizing the human body with change in the outer world of nature. By integrating philosophy, meditation, diet, and exer¬ cise, Taoism reputedly can heal illness and slow the aging process. Many Asian and Western scholars divide Taoism into two portions, a philosophy for savants and a religion for satisfying the ritual needs of unenlightened peasants. Popular Taoism, they point out, heals by exorcism, celebrates village festivals, and uses alchemy (chemical medicines that can harm when taken as an overdose; in this sense, Western medicine too is a kind of sophisticated alchemy) to prolong life. Taoists themselves do not make such distinctions. Taoism is simply a way of maintaining inner peace and har¬ mony. To be healthy, one’s personal philosophy, religion, med¬ ication, and eating habits must be in tune with one another. Physical exercise, meditation (also called internal alchemy), good eating habits, festive holidays, good thoughts and actions, are required for a whole and healthy life. Taoism con¬ siders all these as a single process leading to peace, long life, and happiness. In its original sense, the English word healing means in fact “to be whole.” The word curing, on the other hand, means to use a chemical on the skin of a dead animal to make it into leather. Thus the term Taoist healing is more appropriate than Taoist curing. The Taoist ideal is to heal illness by making the entire person whole, rather than to cure a part of the body with¬ out healing the entire person of illness. True healing means making the whole person well. 2 A Brief Introduction to Taoist Meditation © Common sense dictates that we listen to our doctor when he or she prescribes Western medicine. Sometimes Western medicines cure one part of the body but harm other parts. Chemotherapy destroys cancer cells but causes harm to many other organs while doing so. Steroids such as pred¬ nisone, even simple remedies such as aspirin, can cause inter¬ nal bleeding and harm the immune system if taken too long or in large dosages. The Taoist ideal is to be positive, happy, and peaceful when taking these medicines so that they work quickly, before too much harm is done to other parts of the body. The Taoist master encourages the patient to obey the doctor, take the medicine prescribed, undergo the operation, and recover quickly by healing (making whole) all the other parts of life as well. Taoism is a perennial system of healing meditation that has been in practice from ancient times until the present day. The Taoist “way that never parted” draws on many sources: © The I Ching shows how to act in accord with nature’s changes. © The Tao-te Ching teaches how to find and follow the Tao. © The Chuang-tzu tells how to empty the mind and heart of all negative thoughts and judgments and live with good humor in order to find the Tao. © Yin-yang five phase philosophy attunes humans to nature’s changes. © The Gold Pavilion classic finds Tao within, by emptying the mind and heart of all concepts, even sacred spiritual images. 3 The Gold Pavilion © More than three thousand years have elapsed since the earliest phrases of the I Ching (pinyin Yijing, Book of Changes) were formulated about 1100 b.c.e . 1 The basic books for all Taoists, Lao-tzu’s Tao-te Ching (pinyin Laozi Daode Jing, Classic for Attaining the Tao) and the Chuang-tzu (pinyin Zhuangzi) were composed in the fourth century b.c.e . 2 The yin-yang five phase system {yinyang wuxing), explained in chapter 3, evolved during and after this period. Based on all of these sources, Taoists elaborated a plan of village festivals, healing, and burials from the second century onward. Like many streams feeding into a mighty river, alchemy, meditation, moun¬ tain ascetics and hermits, healing methods, physical exercises, martial arts, and breathing exercises, all became identified with Taoism during this lengthy period of time. During the Ming and Qing dynasties (mid-fourteenth to early twentieth centuries) Taoism fell out of favor at court. Scholars considered all later developments to be aberrations from the original purity of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu’s works. 1 Followers of the sixth to the fourth century b.c.e. texts were called Daojia (Tao-chia), "school Taoists.” Later movements were named Daojiao (Tao-chiao), "ritual” or “festive” Taoism. Festive healing Taoism was called superstitious, a “parting of the way,” thus indicating that Taoism had in fact two paths, a higher pure philosophy for the learned and a lower form of superstitious rites for the peasant. Taoists do not recognize these distinctions. For the fol¬ lowers of Lao-tzu, the very use of distinction and thought-split- ting is itself a form of illness. In chapter 71 of the Tao-te Ching the separation of knowledge and philosophy from reality is said to cause sickness. In the opening chapters of the Chuang-tzu 4 A Brief Introduction to Taoist Meditation ® the judging of “good and bad,” "high and low,” separates one from the Tao. The Taoist tradition finds wholeness essential for well-being. Only when philosophy, ritual, festival, and human living are in harmony can healing take place, and Taoists who follow this way are noted for their long lives. Special Taoist Terms There are a number of technical words used by Taoists when teaching and practicing the method of healing medita¬ tion. These concepts bear a special Taoist meaning. The first such term is ritual, a word that people of Western culture do not like to hear or talk about. 4 For most it means an out¬ moded, stilted form of behavior reserved for old-fashioned church services, which are best avoided. Ritual does not have this connotation in the Taoist system. Rather, rituals are actions that derive from the animal or physical part of us. Rites are by nature repetitious, meant to be performed again and again on special occasions. Eating, bathing, all bodily func¬ tions are ritual actions. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Valentine’s Day, the Fourth of July, are all ritual occasions that elicit actions repeated annually that satisfy basic physical needs within us. The mating of birds, the making of a bed, cleaning a room, walking the dog at the beach, dancing a waltz or a tango, even disco dancing, are rituals. Without ritual, life would have no celebrations. Healing, too, is a ritual. In the healing process certain acts are prescribed to heal certain forms of illness. These acts include not only taking the medicine but also observing the directions on the bottle. Some medicines are taken before, and 5 The Gold Pavilion e some after, meals. Some are taken with water, others with food. Taoist healing prescribes quiet meditation, happy thoughts, and good eating and breathing habits as a part of healing ritual. The word ritual therefore does not have a negative connotation in the Taoist system. The second term that must be understood before talking about Taoism is spirit. There are many Chinese words trans¬ lated by the single English word spirit. 5 These include the notion that the human soul continues to exist after death, and that unseen powers of nature operate in an invisible spiritual order. Long ago the Chinese personified the forces of nature by giving them spiritual names and ascribing specific powers to them. These spiritual forces of nature ruled like the feudal lords of ancient China. The Taoist’s ritual meditation “exorcises,” that is, rids the mind of fear by expelling such "demons,” whether seen to be ancestors or some unknown power in nature. Relieving religious fear is an essential part of healing. It is not surprising to learn that in general the Taoist does not fear spirits. 6 The Taoist learns how to conceptualize (imag¬ ine) lists of spirits and exorcise them from his or her own con¬ sciousness, as well as from the mind of a sick person. The Gold Pavilion classic ( Huang-t’ing Ching), one of the basic medita¬ tions taught by the great fourth-century Taoist mystic Lady Wei Huacun (Wei Hua-ts’un), rids the consciousness of all spiri¬ tual images before one meditates on the transcendent Tao. 7 Following the ideas of this fourth-century Taoist, most modern Taoists use very dramatic methods to drive the fear of spirits and demons out of the minds of those who are to be healed. Visualizing and then exorcising or “emptying out” the mind of all spiritual images, even if an image is good or if the 6 A Brief Introduction to Taoist Meditation @ spirit is thought to exist only in the mind, is very much a part of Taoist and also of Tibetan Tantric Buddhist practice. The sim¬ ilarity between Taoist and Tibetan Buddhist emptying prayer is described in chapter 5. Another concept that must be understood before entering into the subject of healing is the definition of a Taoist. The term Taoist, daoshi, pronounced “daoshr” in Chinese, means a man or woman who has been ordained or set aside and specially trained to perform a specific role in society. Anyone can learn about Taoist healing, but only those who have been trained and initiated in the Taoist tradition are truly “Taoists.” In order to be a recognized Taoist, one must fulfill three requirements: one must find and be accepted and trained by a licensed Taoist master (men and women are considered equal in the Taoist tradition); one must learn to meditate on the writ¬ ings of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, and promise to obey the rules and learn to play the music, sing the songs, and dance the steps of Taoist ritual; and one must receive a Taoist “register” (lu) or list of spirits to be envisioned, talismans to summon them, and mantra to command them, that is, empty them from the heart and mind before meditating on the Tao." It is not necessary to be a Taoist to learn Taoist prayer and healing, but by the same token one should not boast of being a Taoist simply because one has learned something about healing, ritual, meditation, or other practices. Though many experts in China and elsewhere claim to be Taoist, and though they may be excellent teachers of breathing, meditation, healing, or qi ( ch’i ) exercise, only those men and women who have fulfilled the three conditions outlined above are really ordained Taoists. It is the sign of a true Taoist master to claim to know nothing, to remain hidden, 7 The Gold Pavilion to avoid praise and fame, and to take no monetary recompense for healing. Identifying Taoists by Ritual and Color Having defined what a Taoist is from within the Taoist tra¬ dition, we must now try to identify what is and what is not Taoist from the many practices found throughout China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and elsewhere in Asia. There are certain kinds of healing rites that are not really Taoist, though their practitioners may claim them to be. There are other practices, such as "sexual hygiene” ( fangzhong ), descriptions of which sell very well in American book markets, that are outside the Taoist tradition and forbidden to the true Taoist to practice or countenance. 9 Throughout most of southeast China and Taiwan, Taoists are classified into two kinds, “Redhat” ( hungtou ) and “Blackhat” ( wutou ). The meaning of this color symbol differs from place to place in China. In most of southern Taiwan Redhat popular Taoists wrap a red cloth around their heads dur¬ ing ritual, and perform exorcisms and healing only for the living. Blackhat classical Taoists perform burial ritual for the dead, healing, and the Jiao festival of village renewal for the living. In northern Taiwan, however, a far more complicated sys¬ tem exists. Throughout this entire area, Redhat Taoists use the same ritual vestments as Blackhats, a black hat with a gold crown, and perform more or less the same rites of renewal {jiao) in the village temple. A momentous difference lies in the fact that the Blackhat Taoists actually “empty out” all the spirits from the 8 A Brief Introduction to Taoist Meditation © temple and their own body, while the Redhats summon the spir¬ its into the temple for a feast. During the Redhat rituals the prayers of the village are simply offered up to the visiting spirits in the hope that the requests of the villagers will be granted. In addition to the fact that the Redhats do not empty themselves of spirits during prayer but rather fill the mind and the temple with the benign spirits’ presence, there is another important difference: the people do not call the Redhat priests Taoists or daoshi but rather fashi or sigong (Fujian dialect: hoat- su, saigortg), that is, ritual masters rather than Taoist masters. This notion of filling rather than emptying indicates that the Redhat practices may once have derived from the medium or shaman traditions, not the Taoist. The medium is a trance expert who when possessed by a spirit can talk in tongues and sometimes heal. A shaman is a ritual expert who when in a trance can travel to another spiritual realm to look into the well¬ being of the deceased, heal the living, and bring the prayers of the villagers to the heavenly spirits. Both the medium and the shaman are unconscious of their acts when in trance. The Redhat priests act as interpreters for the mediums and some¬ times become mediums themselves. The color red symbolizes filling rather than emptying for the majority of Redhat fashi. To test this hypothesis (Redhats practice kataphatic prayer; Blackhats apophatic), I traveled throughout southern Fujian and northern Gwangdong Provinces, looking for Taoists and their registers. There is in fact a Redhat Taoist in Zhangzhou city, in southeast Fujian, who had received a bona fide lu register, knew the meditations of emptying, and had a classic Taoist license. The terms Redhat and Blackhat are there¬ fore relative to the place where they are used. The reason the 9 The Taoist envisions the five colors, five directions, as spirits from the five internal organs and sends out all spirit-images before meditating on the Tao. Ch’ing dynasty woodblock print from Xingming Guizhi. © w A Brief Introduction to Taoist Meditation 0 definition of red and black varies is that any person (including the reader) may go to one of the sacred Taoist mountains in China, find a master, study the registers, and receive a Taoist license. The Taoist tradition, whether using the term red or black, is truly Taoist (as defined in this book) only if it empties the mind of spirits and their images. 10 It is interesting to note that medium, shaman, and priest all practice healing. The medium, the shaman, and the popular fashi Redhat heal by visualization, while the Taoist daoshi heals by kenosis, by emptying the mind and heart of all spirits and their images. It is important that healing takes place, no matter which method is used. The purpose of this work is not to disparage those systems using visualization but to explain the process of Taoist “kenotic” healing, the emptying of worries from the mind and unfulfilled desires from the heart. My study "Mystic, Shaman, Oracle, Priest” delves further into these distinctions than I will here." From the above discussion it can be seen that at least two kinds of healers, and therefore two different philosophies of well-being (among many others), can be found in Asia. The first kind, which we are describing here, can be called the apophatic or kenotic tradition, which in simple language means emptying the mind of concept and image. The second is the kataphatic or “imaging” tradition, which heals by filling the mind with thoughts of good spirits and well-being. The kataphatic tradition, using medium possession or shaman trance to heal, can be very dramatic and even trau¬ matic. The possessed mediums sometimes cut themselves with knives, blow on trumpets, and act out the terrifying battle between the forces of good and evil. The medium or shaman is u The Gold Pavilion © impervious to the attack of evil, can draw a sharp knife across the tongue, dance on sharp blades, or walk on fire without harm to the body. The symbolic drama of the medium and shaman prove the efficacy of exorcism in the healing process. Such practices differ substantially from the healing practices of the apophatic “emptying” Taoist. The apophatic or emptying tradition of Taoism uses images to heal. Colors, sound (music), taste, smell, touch, and physical motion are important elements in human well-being. Images are envisioned and “good” thoughts elicited in the mind of the patient. But in the end, all thoughts, images, sounds, and colors are sublimated and emptied out in the encounter with the transcendent Tao, (wuwei zhi dao), the source of life, breath, and well-being. Healing, wholeness, and oneness with nature’s processes are one and the same experi¬ ence. Arriving at this experience of oneness through the Tao’s transcendent “nonimage” process is the goal of Taoist medi¬ tation and a vital element of Taoist healing. Color meditation and imaging are taught in chapter 3, and the prayer of apophasis is described in chapter 4. Men and women who practice these meditations and follow the other directives of the Taoist way of life for the most part live to a happy and healthy old age, climb the high mountains, and celebrate fes¬ tivals for the villages of China. An Outline of Taoist History After one learns some of the methods of Taoist meditation and healing, the appetite is awakened to understand something about Taoism and its lengthy history in China. Taoism is like a 12 A Brief Introduction to Taoist Meditation © great river that flows throughout the entire concourse of Chinese history. Like the Yellow and the Yangtze Rivers, it is fed by many tributaries. Some of these tributaries contain muddy waters. Others do not flow into the mainstream of Taoism but follow their own independent course. Taoism itself blends qui¬ etly into the flow of Chinese history, often going unnoticed by official Chinese historians. The history of China is divided into twenty-four dynasties. Each dynasty was begun by a soldier-emperor who conquered China by the sword. Any given dynasty’s history was later rewritten by literate Confucian scholars who often sought to please the reigning emperor rather than the fallen dynasty. Historians are famous for putting Buddhists, Taoists, women, and non-Han Chinese minorities last, after selectively describ¬ ing the past dynasty’s emperors, family, wars, intrigues at court, and other details that pleased the Confucian mind. Thus most dynastic histories do not say good things about Taoists, minori¬ ties, Buddhists, or other non-Confucian topics. Taoism’s development within the dynastic records is as follows: © Predynasty myths the Five Emperors, before recorded history Fu Hsi (Fu Xi), emperor of the east, founder of the home and the family Shen Nung (Shen Nong), emperor of the south, farming and fertility Huang Ti (Huangdi), emperor of the center, silk weaving and medicine 13 The Gold Pavilion © Shao Hao (Shaohao), emperor of the west, burial and afterlife rites Chuan Hsu (Zhuanxu), emperor of the north, martial arts and exorcism the Three Rulers: gray cord-marked pottery era Yao, heaven-appointed ruler because of human virtue Shun, appointed Yao’s successor because of virtue Yu the Great, who controlled the floods; Xia dynasty founded ©The Shang-yin dynasty, 1760-1100 b.c.e.: oracle bones, bronze, jade culture ©The Zhou dynasty, 1100-221 b.c.e. divided into: the Golden Era, to 771 B.C.E. the Spring-Autumn period, 771-481 B.C.E.: Lao-tzu, Confucius, many kingdoms the Warring States period, 481-221 B.C.E.: various philosophical schools ©The Qin dynasty, 221-207 b.c.e.: building of the Great Wall is begun © The Han dynasty, 206 b.c.e.-220 c.e.: Confucian exam system; first Buddhist monks in China; Dragon-Tiger Zhengyi religious Taoism founded ©The Three Kingdoms period, 221-265: Taoist religion approved by the Wei State ©The period of division, 265-589: the growth of Buddhism and Taoism; Taoist ritual and Lady Wei Huacun’s meditation system developed the Western Jin dynasty, 265-316 the North, West, and East Wei dynasties, 386-550: Buddhism favored 14 A Brief Introduction to Taoist Meditation the North Ch’i dynasty, 550-557 the North Zhou dynasty, 557-589: Taoist scripture Wushang Biyao' 2 catalogues various kinds of Taoist ritual meditation. the Liu-Sung dynasty, 420-502: Taoist canonical scriptures catalogued the Liang dynasty, 502-557: Buddhism and Taoism favored ©the Sui dynasty, 589-618: China reunified ©The Tang dynasty, 619-906: height of medieval Chinese civilization; Taoist texts are included in civil service examinations; Tantric Buddhism in China and Tibet © the Period of Five Kingdoms: Late Liang, 907; Late Tang, 923; Late Jin, 936; Late Han, 947; Late Chou, 951 ©the Sung (Song) dynasty: religious reformation in China the Northern Song, 960-1126: Taoism favored at court the Southern Song, 1127-1281: Dragon-Tiger Taoism favored ©the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty, 1281-1368: Quanzhen Taoism flourishes. Tantric Buddhism flourishes in Tibet. ©the Ming (Chinese) dynasty, 1368-1644: Taoism less favored at court; Mongolia accepts Tibetan Tantric Buddhism. ©THE Ch’ing (Manchu) dynasty, 1644-1912: Taoism out of favor; foreign colonial interests in China support Christian missions ©Republic of China, 1912-1949: devastating war with Japan, without reparation 15 The Gold Pavilion © ©The People’s Republic of China, 1949-present: Marxist-socialism in China 1949-1967: collectives, communes, suppression of religion 1967-1978: the Great Cultural Revolution, social and economic ruin 1979-present: economic reform, market economy, state capitalism, “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” controlled practice of religion The above outline does not indicate the development of Taoist meditation or the liturgical system that accompanied its growth as a popular movement. The following outline indicates the development of Taoist contemplative prayer. Taoist Meditation The history of Taoist meditation in China can be summa¬ rized as follows: « The two great Taoist thinkers Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu lived between the sixth and fourth centuries b.c.e. Their works, based on the principle of emptying and nonjudgmental thinking, are the philosophical roots of all subsequent Taoist practices. ® Religious Taoism combined Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu’s thinking with yin-yang philosophy, ritual, healing, and meditation at the end of the Han dynasty between 140 and 220 c.e. During the next four centuries Taoism developed monasteries, an extended canonical scripture, and magnificent festivals for community renewal. The coming of Buddhism to China pro¬ foundly influenced Taoism and all of Chinese society. ® Religious Taoism developed various systems for peace¬ ful living, long life, and healing between the second and seventh 16 A Brief Introduction to Taoist Meditation © centuries c.e. The most important of these is the Gold Pavilion classic. 0 Taoism was made equal with Confucianism only during the Tang dynasty (619-906). The emperors made Taoist texts a part of the official civil service examination. Princesses of the royal family became ordained practicing Taoists. o Taoism experienced a religious reformation during the Song dynasty (960-1281), some four centuries before Europe did. As a part of this reformation, laypeople began to meditate and took a greater role in Taoist arts and festivals. China’s reli¬ gious reformation was far more positive and sweeping than Europe’s some 400 years later. 0 Martial arts and other popular forms of Taoism evolved throughout the provinces of south and central China during the Yuan (Mongol) and Ming dynasties 1281-1368 and 1368-1644, respectively. Wood-block printing, which devel¬ oped well before the first press in Europe, made Taoist medi¬ tation, healing, and martial arts manuals widely available. 0 During the Ch’ing (Qing) dynasty (1644-1912) and the modern period, secret societies, business associations, and Tong special interest groups used Taoist arts, qi meditation, and healing methods for social unity and cohesion. Healing by the use of qi (ch’i breath), qigong meditation, kung fu martial arts, tai chi exercises, and many other popular arts from the Taoist tradition continue to develop in the modern world. 0 Today Taoism is one of the five officially sanctioned reli¬ gious movements in the People’s Republic of China. It is con¬ trolled by a special section of the State Religious Affairs Bureau, with a Taoist Association watching over its development. With Buddhism, Islam, and Protestant and Catholic Christianity, it is 17 The Gold Pavilion © considered to be important enough in modern Chinese social¬ ist society to have its shrines and holy places rebuilt and young Taoists trained at state expense, a part of the new “socialism with a special Chinese flavor.” The special status given to Taoism is due to its immense popularity with ordinary people everywhere in China. The early morning streets and parks of Beijing and other large and small cities are filled with young and old devotees, practicing tai chi and other exercises (including disco and ballroom dancing) before going to work. Taoist shrines and temples, like Buddhist, Islamic, and Christian shrines, are filled with pilgrims and tourists. On special festival days visitors must take turns enter¬ ing the Taoist shrines because so many are attempting to crowd in and watch the Taoist festivities. Centers for studying Chinese medicine and various heal¬ ing methods that are associated with Taoism are also to be found throughout China. Acupuncturists and massage experts who use qi (ch’i, breath-energy), traditional herbal remedies, and visualization methods to heal are given far more scientific status than in the West. Controlled experiments are used to measure the effects of these various techniques in healing ill¬ ness. Homeopathic, natural healing techniques, are studied as a complement to Western medicine. Following are some other sources for understanding more about Taoism from its prehistoric beginning until the present: Oracle bones and Ancient Writing The written history of China begins with oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang-yin dynasty, 1760-1100 b.c.e. Inscribed on the back of tortoise shells and the leg bones of 18 A Brief Introduction to Taoist Meditation © oxen, the oracle records show how the ancient kings of the Shang-yin dynasty invoked heaven before embarking on wars, journeys, burials, building projects, and recreational excursions such as hunting or visiting. The oracle writings ask about weather and success in warfare, hunting, or other royal projects by carving a question into the hard bone or tortoise shell and then applying heat to the surface of the bone or shell to call forth an answer. Prayers to heal the ill in the king’s immediate family occur frequently in the oracles. Illness is thought to be caused by the soul of an imperial ancestor or relative languishing in the underworld without prayer or sacrifice for relief. The notion that the merits, prayers, and good deeds of the living free the souls of the deceased from suffering, and thereby heal the illness of the living, remains a common Asian belief. The oracle bones make a clear distinction between the spirits of the heavens who control weather, the spirits of the earth who govern nature, and the souls or demons in the after- life-underworld who cause suffering and illness among humans. A triple world consisting of heaven, earth, and an underworld is deeply rooted in Chinese cosmology. Taoism addresses and "empties” the spirits of nature in later ritual. The I Ching Book of Changes The Zhou (Chou) dynasty (1100-221 b.c.e.) left behind the earliest written records, first in the form of bronze and bam¬ boo inscriptions, later in the written records of the Confucian tradition. The five classic books (the Books of Poetry, History, Spring-Autumn Annals, Rites, and the I Ching, the Book of Changes) are perhaps the oldest Chinese historical records. The 19 The Gold Pavilion © Confucian worldview permeates these works, a topic about which many fine studies in Western languages have been writ¬ ten. 12 The first two lines of each of the sixty-four chapters of the 7 Ching are among the oldest recorded Chinese documents. 1 -’ The first lines of the I Ching are an important source for Taoist philosophy, meditation, and healing. Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu (Laozi and Zhuangzi) The Lao-tzu Tao-te Ching and the Chuang-tzu were most probably composed during the fourth century b.c.e . 14 The Lao- tzu book (summarized in chapter 2) is the first and foremost work given to the aspiring Taoist novice to read. Taoist medita¬ tion, ritual, and healing are based on its understanding. The Chuang-tzu is the basic text of the Taoist meditative tradition. It is a very difficult text to understand or translate. 15 The book is divided into three parts: the Inner Chapters (1-7), probably composed by Chuang-tzu himself; the Outer Chap¬ ters (8-15), collated by his disciples; and the Miscellaneous Chapters (16-33), of later composition. The essence of the Chuang-tzu is contained in the humorous tales that accom¬ pany the rather obscure text. Some basic ideas from the Chuang-tzu are included in chapter 2. Taoist Schools Religious Taoism, a mighty river fed by the mystic texts of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, is Joined by many other streams and rivulets from the second half of the Han dynasty, from about the beginning of the Common Era up until the Tang dynasty, which began in 619 c.E. Three greater sets of regis¬ ters, lists of spirits’ names used in ritual meditations, their 20 A Brief Introduction to Taoist Meditation 0 appearance, talismans, and commands for summoning them and two lesser-known schools developed during this time: Dragon-Tiger Taoism, also known as Zhengyi Celestial Master Taoism, is one of the earliest Taoist healing movements. Its founder, Zhang Daoling, the "first” celestial master, lived in the second century c.e. Dragon-Tiger or Zhengyi Taoists medi¬ tate on the Lao-tzu Tao-te Ching as a sacred book, practice rites of healing and renewal, and receive a special Zhengyi Mengwei (Cheng-i Meng-wei) register in twenty-four segments when they are ordained Taoists. Their sacred mountain is Lunghu Shan (Dragon-Tiger Mountain) in southeast Jiangxi Province. These Taoists marry and pass on their registers to at least one of their children in each generation. After meditation on the Thunder Spirits, Taoists draw talismans to heal, bring rain, heal illness. Zhengtong Taoist Canon woodblocks, ca. 1445. © 21 The Gold Pavilion © Lingbao ( Ling-pao ) and its registers are mentioned by a Taoist scholar named Ko Hong, in a work called Baopuzi ( Pao- p’u Tzu, The Master Who Embraces Simplicity) in the early fourth century c.E. Lingbao Taoism teaches methods for healing and renewal based on the Five Talismanic Charms, the Lingbao Wufu. These talismans were used by the mythical emperor Yu, China’s Noah, to stop the floods. Its sacred mountain is Gozao Shan, (Ge Tsao Shan) in southeast China. Highest Pure Shangqing Taoism ( Shang-ch’ing ), reputedly founded by the woman mystic Lady Wei Huacun, teaches the healing and emptying meditations of the Huang-t’ing Neijing (the Gold Pavilion classic, Inner Chapters). Its sacred mountain is Mao Shan, twenty-five miles southeast of Nanjing in Jiangsu Province. North Pole Beiji Taoism ( Pei-chi ) teaches meditations and martial arts for healing. It invokes Ursa Major, the constellation that points to the polestar, to exorcise harmful spirits and thoughts from the conscious and subconscious mind. Its sacred mountain is Wudang Shan (Wu-tang shan) in western Hubei Province near the Shaanxi border. Q/ngwei ( Ch’ing-wei ), Pure Refined Taoism shares with the Tantric Buddhist orders of Tibet the use of thunder and light¬ ning meditations for healing. Many of its mantras written in Siddham (that is, late Sanskrit chants) are similar to those used by Tendai and Shingon Tantric Buddhism in Japan, brought from China in the ninth century (Tang dynasty), and by Tibetan Tantric Buddhism. Many of the healing methods used in these five kinds of classical Taoist "registers” became a part of the popular heal¬ ing tradition during the religious reformation of the Song 22 A Brief Introduction to Taoist Meditation © dynasty, 960 to 1281 c.E. Inspired perhaps by the spirit of simplicity found in the Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, the laity (ordinary people) derived ways of healing that simplified the complicated methods of the ordained Taoist priest. The Gold Pavilion classic contains some of these techniques and registers. Quanzhen (ch’uan-chen ) Taoism, a sixth great tradition, known as All True Taoism, was founded during the Song and popularized during the Yuan and subsequent eras, including the People’s Republic today. Quanzhen Taoism’s headquarters are at the Baiyun-Guan temple in Beijing. Its monasteries are found all over China. Quanzhen monks and nuns practice celibacy and abstinence (vegetarian diet) in a disciplined way of communal life. Married laypeople too may follow this reformed way of Taoist chant, Zen (Chan) Buddhist-like medi¬ tation, and Confucian family virtue. In today’s socialist China only two of these Taoist tradi¬ tions are officially recognized by the state. The Zhengyi tradi¬ tion of Dragon-Tiger Mountain in southern China and the Quanzhen school in Beijing (northern China) are classified as the two official Taoist sects. Young Taoists trained in Beijing and elsewhere are taught this simplified distinction and remain for the most part unaware of the rich Taoist tradition while attending the state schools. The Taoist masters who live in the mountains, however, and the “fireside” married Taoists of the towns and countryside villages, preserve and teach the old apophatic “emptying” traditions. Redhat Taoism, the kataphatic, filling or “imaging” tradi¬ tion, also flourished and continues to develop from the Song dynasty reformation until the present. 16 This tradition, however, 23 The Gold Pavilion © does require an expert such as a possessed medium, shaman, Redhat saigong, or Bon priest, to do the exorcistic healing. It can be described but is not easily imitated, nor is it to be tried by the Western or Chinese reader. The Taoist apophatic tradition, a practice that based heal¬ ing and meditation on kenosis or emptying, became a move¬ ment available to the ordinary person of China’s countryside and villages during the Song dynasty reformation, continuing to the present. The use of the Tao-te Ching and Chuang-tzu as meditation manuals, qi meditation, color visualization, mas¬ sage, herbal remedies, healthy exercises, all became a part of a popular Taoist movement, available to anyone who would learn it. There was no esoteric or secret learning preserved for an elite few. All that one needed to do, in the words of Chuang- tzu, was to learn to “sit in forgetfulness” and “fast in the heart,” that is, abstain from judgment in the mind and selfishness in the heart, to learn healing. Fasting in the judgmental mind and a selfless heart brought health to the body and to the society around the practicing Taoist. Members of the village commu¬ nity were taught this simple healing system. The visualization of healing colors and the prayer of emptying (“heart fasting” and “sitting in forgetfulness”) taught in chapters 3 and 4 are used as means to assist the layperson as well as the Taoist to live a long life of peace, happiness, and good health. They are useful in promoting wholeness, mental and physical well-being, and long life for those who come to the Taoist for healing. The Gold Pavilion Classic The Gold Pavilion classic has as its focus the Gold Pavilion, the “void space” above the kidneys at the body’s center of 24 A Brief Introduction to Taoist Meditation © gravity. The text itself has two parts. One, called the “Outer Chapters,” ( Huang-t’ing Wai-ch’ing) teaches a way of emptying meditation. The other, called the "Inner Chapters,” ( Huang- t’ing Nei-ch’ing) adds a list of spirits’ names to be sent forth from the Taoist’s body as a prelude to contemplating the Tao. Only the meditations (Outer Chapters) of the Gold Pavilion classic are presented in chapter 4. This translation is based on a commentary originating from the Taoist Shangqing (Shang-ch’ing) tradition, a text given to the beginner by a Taoist master. The cryptic meaning can be translated only by using a commentary, called a mijue (mi- chueh ) manual. 17 The text can be translated on a word-for-word basis in three distinct ways: For the purely physical meaning; as a description of the circulation of qi breath and color in the internal alchemy tradition; and as a meditation of apophasis (emptying) in the "heart fasting” and “sitting in forgetfulness” tradition of Chuang-tzu described in chapter 2. Following the Shangqing Highest Pure tradition attributed to Lady Wei Huacun, the translation presented here in all cases follows the apophatic or emptying tradition. It is from this last way that the Taoist method of peace, healing, and long life is mastered. 25 @ Chapter Two Interior Peace T he writings of the ancient Taoist masters tell us that healing must begin from within the self. When the mind, heart, and body work as one harmonious unit in tune with nature, a new inner peace emerges. The mind is no longer ruffled by the criticism or praise of changeable human associates. This new self is not worried by blame, avoids praise, makes no negative or harm¬ ful Judgments, in fact avoids making any Judgment at all. The rules for this kind of life filled with Taoist harmony are found in the books of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. The book of Lao-tzu, the Tao-te Ching is a brief eighty- one paragraphs. When a novice approaches a Taoist master to become his or her disciple, the master insists on three things: read and practice the book of Lao-tzu; take the vows or promises of the Taoist way of life; and reject any fame, glory, or wealth accruing from the way of self-cultivation that the master teaches. These three rules may at first seem excessive. Without 27 The Gold Pavilion ® understanding the Tao-te Ching, one cannot follow the way of emptying meditation. Without practicing the Taoist way of life, self-healing is impossible. The simplicity and selflessness of the Taoist way of life preclude accepting any recompense for heal¬ ing. The master warns the disciple that wisdom cannot be pur¬ chased, as can a work of art or an education. To demand a price for healing is to turn a profit on illness. To do this would make the healer ill and his or her wisdom no longer priceless. No mat¬ ter how simple the rules may seem, the Taoist novice must prove that he or she observes them before learning from the master. The very first phrases of the Tao-te Ching state that the transcendent, eternal Tao cannot be spoken about. “The Tao that is spoken is not the eternal Tao.” If one calls it wu, nonbe¬ ing or transcendent being, then the role of Tao as gestating heaven and earth is named. If one calls it yu, holding on or pregnant, then Tao is seen as a mother giving birth to nature. Therefore, if one would know the ultimate, transcendent Tao from within, one must let go, wu, be entirely empty. If one looks outward contemplating the yu, infinite variety of things in the universe, one can see “mother” Tao nourishing the greatest and smallest things of nature. Any judgment, that is, the joining of a noun or concept with a verb, is relative. To say “He is short” is a judgment. A person is only relatively tall or short, a work relatively hard or easy, the Tao wu (transcendent) or yu (immanent). “A speaker needs a listener,” “Before has an after,” “What goes up must come down,” are examples of relative judgments. One should try instead not to make any judgment. Meditation is best that does not put a verb to a noun. When judgment is suspended, 28 Interior Peace © then one suddenly becomes finely tuned to the workings of Tao in nature. Beginning with this state of suspended judgment, one begins to learn Taoist healing meditation. This meditation is not done through the mind’s knowing or by the heart’s willing but in the belly’s power of intuition and direct awareness of a tran¬ scendent presence. I use the word transcendent here not in the connotation that many Western sinologists assign the word, but simply as a convenient way to avoid using the cliche “nonact” or "nonbe¬ ing,” since, in the true Taoist use of the word, the Tao of wuwei “gives birth” to taiji, yang, yin, and the myriad creatures. This manner of act is called transcendent, rather than nonact, in these pages. The Taoist way of contemplating is described in the texts of the Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu summarized below. Its goal is to achieve a peaceful and tranquil mode of existence both when contemplating Tao’s presence and when living an ordi¬ nary daily life. Lao-tzu on Healing Meditating on Nature Nature does not “hold on” like humans do to possessions or judgments. Nature makes no judgments. It gives birth and lets go, does its work and moves on. When we sit in quiet con¬ templation and suspend judgment, we see Tao working in nature, the Taoist master teaches. We begin to understand how to contemplate, to look without making judgment. When we cease to make judgments, time passes quickly. An hour seems 29 The Gold Pavilion o like less than a minute. The person who stops making negative judgments does not grow old mentally, and sees much more deeply into the world of the inner self and into the outer world of nature. Meditating on Emptiness The person who becomes adept at not passing judgment soon becomes very peaceful. There is no need to flatter the powerful, pander to the wealthy, or lust after beauty in things or people. Inner peace of heart is more precious than all these external things. People with power, wealth, and beauty come to the Taoist to be healed of their inner cares and turmoil. The Taoist master teaches from chapter 3 of the Tao-te Ching that it is more important to: Empty the heart-mind, fill the belly, Weaken selfishness, strengthen the bones, Let go, Tao will rule! The Tao that breathes life and beauty into nature is like a bowl filled with good things that are never used up. These good things of nature sprout in spring, ripen in summer, are har¬ vested in fall, and “die” in winter, a cycle repeated annually in nature. Morning’s dawn, noonday heat, evening’s sunset, night’s rest are a smaller version of human birth, growing up, maturity, old age, and death. Life is a process of giving and emptying. Nature’s Tao blunts the sharp edges in our lives, unties the knots, gives from its bowl of plenty. Tao is as equally at home with the bright and fresh as with the soiled and dusty. By suspending our judgments of what is good and bad in others, or 30 Interior Peace © how they approve and disapprove of our lives, we become sud¬ denly aware that Tao does not have favorite people. We must be like Tao, treat all things in heaven and earth as sacred objects. Meditating on Tao as a Nourishing Mother The Tao of nature is like a mother who is always spinning forth primordial energy, yuanqi (ch’i) or life breath, nurturing all things in nature.' She eternally gives this life breath, qi, to all of The “three fives" are joined together in the Yellow Court or Gold Pavilion and contemplate Tao. Ch’ing dynasty woodblock print from Xingming Guizhi. Left column text: jing, qi, shen depend on me to be joined as one. Right column text: body, heart, mind, who ever separated them? ® 31 The Gold Pavilion © nature and never plays favorites. Tao always nourishes, eter¬ nally spins forth life breath, because it does not use up its qi in judgmental thoughts and selfish desires. This is why it can heal and does not die. Meditating on Qi Healing life power for the Taoist is called qi, primordial life breath. Each of us has life breath within us, stored in the belly (the lower cinnabar field) and regenerated in the pineal gland (the upper cinnabar field) in the brain. During the day we use up our life energy each time we make a judgment, lust after something with desire, worry, are angry or sad. Life breath is restored each night by sleeping, and during the day by meditating and by qi exercise. 2 Qi exercise and med¬ itation are important daily practices in the Taoist healing tradition. Meditating on Water Water is a very important concept in the Taoist healing and meditation system. With qi energy it symbolizes the action of Tao in nature. Water always seeks the lowest place, can fit into any space, and brings life to all living things. Though it is soft and yielding, nothing can withstand its power, not even the strongest metal or hardest stone. Since water always seeks the lowest place, it is closest to Tao. Since it is supple and yielding, water does not "contend,” fits any container, and always attains its goal. Thus we are told to meditate on and be like water in our daily lives. 32 Interior Peace © Meditating on Heaven’s Way Know when enough is too much. A blade too sharp will soon be dulled, A room full of gold will soon be emptied. Let it go! Do your work and move on. It is the way of heaven and the four seasons to do their cyclical work and move on, never holding on to the good things of nature’s abundance. Spring gives rain for plowing and plant¬ ing. Summer gives heat for ripening. Autumn gives up its abun¬ dance in the harvest. Winter is for rest and contemplation. Nature always lets go of the good things it produces. Too much of any one thing brings floods, droughts, rotting crops, and freezing. Moderation is a strict rule for the Taoist way of health. Never eat or drink too much. Always stop short before satiety in eating, and maintain sobriety in drink. The Taoist master will accept a modest drink of alcohol at a banquet or when toasting a guest, but ordinarily does not drink strong spirits. Monastic Taoists do not eat meat, fish, eggs, or milk products but do use garlic, spices, onions, and pepper. The rule of not eating meat is not absolute. When invited to a banquet or to a family feast, it is better not to offend the host. Taste small bits of meat or fish proffered at a banquet. Know how to stop before becoming full. The rule of Buddhist ascetics forbids for religious reasons the use of spices and meat or other living creatures. For health’s sake, the Taoists do not eat animal substances, but they do 33 The Gold Pavilion © occasionally partake of meat when invited to a banquet, or when not to do so would offend the host. The rule of good manners, respecting the other, and positive Judgment are always foremost in Taoist manners. Meditation on a Child "Be like a child,” the Taoist master teaches. A newborn child cries all day and is never hoarse. It has no hangups on sex. It eats, sleeps, does not carry weapons or contend. It does not get stung by bees or mauled by tigers. Its bones are soft, but its tiny fingers hold on to its mother with great strength. It is aware of breathing, does not say no, and thus can contemplate or “see” the transcendent Tao. Meditation on the Hollow Center "Be like a mother’s womb,” give birth and nurture, and then let go. Be like the empty hub of a wheel. If the center of the wheel is not hollow, an axle cannot be inserted, and the thirty spokes of the wheel are useless; they cannot turn. A bowl must be hollowed out to hold water. A room must be unclut¬ tered and have windows and doors to be lived in. Only when we are empty, unselfish, are we good to ourselves and others. Meditation on What’s Inside Colors blind the eye, sound deafens the ear, Flavors dull the taste, lust hurts the heart. Value what is inside [Tao], not what is outside. When the mind is filled with colors, sounds, tastes, and sensations, it cannot be aware of the presence of the Tao deep 34 Interior Peace © down inside. Tao eternally gestates life breath in all of nature. When the mind is emptied of concepts and images and the heart lets go of desire for things, the work of the Tao gestating in nature can be observed by the instinctive powers of the belly. In Taoist philosophy the mind is for knowing, the heart for desiring, and the belly for intuiting or sensing. By meditating from the center of the belly rather than from the mind or heart, one can intuit Tao’s presence. 3 Meditation on Life’s Difficulties One of the most important attitudes taught by Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu is that disapproval, scoldings, opposition, and contradiction must be expected and welcomed as long as we are alive and functioning. “Be happy when scolded, fearful when praised,” Lao-tzu jokingly warns us. By the very fact that we are alive and successful at our work, difficulties and contra¬ dictions come to us. If we were dead, then difficulties would not occur. So value opposition as you value your life. Run from praise and adulation with distrust. Do not depend for your self- image on what others think of you. Only when we are totally selfless, when we lose the need for praise or approval, can we be entrusted with ruling ourselves, our families, and the state. The Chuang-tzu (see later in this chapter) is filled with stories illustrating this principle. Meditation on an Uncarved Block of Wood The uncarved block of wood is a symbol of simplicity used by Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. If the mind and heart are carved into pieces by arguments and worries, the body becomes ill. Chuang-tzu tells of a huge gnarled tree too twisted 35 The Gold Pavilion © to be used for lumber. Because of this children come to play in its shadow and birds to nest and sing in its branches. Lao-tzu tells the Taoist healer to go wading in a cold winter creek, to shiver in its purifying coldness. Live in a crowded tenement without bothering the neighbors. Be thoughtful of the host’s feelings when invited as a guest; be sensitive as thin ice about to melt in spring, unspoiled as the flowers in a wild meadow, clear like a pool of still water unruffled by wind, fresh like new green grass by the side of a stream. To do these things one must envision oneself as an uncarved block of wood. Meditation on a Good Ruler or Employer Lao-tzu warns the Taoist healer that the best ruler, teacher, or healer is scarcely seen or known. The next best is loved, the third best is feared, and the worst is hated. If work¬ ers don’t trust their employer or political leader, students their teacher, or patients their doctor, nothing lasting will be accom¬ plished. The best ruler or healer says little, and when his or her work is done, the worker or patient says, “I did it." This is because healing must be in the patient, and work must be done by the worker. Meditation on Standing on Tiptoe One cannot stand on tiptoe for very long, or walk very far on one’s knees. Violent winds last less than a day and a tor¬ rential rainfall but a few hours. Heaven and earth make sure that violence does not last. Only when we are at peace within ourselves can we experience permanent health and wholeness. Food that is left over, deeds that require great and continual 36 Interior Peace © effort, a person who acts for glory and fame, are like people walking on tiptoe in a violent rain. None can last very long. Our hearts must be freed from all desires that are like a violent rain¬ fall or walking on tiptoe, that bring tension and stress. Our minds must be purified of all violent and negative images in order to remain calm and constant. Good deeds should not be seen, and well-spoken words leave no target for envy. Lao-tzu Jests: Good accounting needs no ledger, Well-locked needs no key or bolt, Well-tied needs neither rope nor knot. The Taoist healer helps all, Turns none away, whether they are likeable or not. Meditation on Healing The Taoist healer turns no one away, weak, poor, crippled, or outcast, and never deliberately harms anything." The person who is “one with the Tao” brings peace, great happiness, and nourishment for all, never rejecting anyone. When nourishing never try to preach or boss. “Be one with Tao” is the only message. Because they are one with Tao, Heaven is bright, earth at peace, The soul is spiritual, the valley fertile, Nature gives birth, leaders pure and simple. Meditation on Harmony Tao gives birth to One [qi breath]; One gives birth to Two [yang, heaven, male]; Two give birth to Three [yin, earth, female]; 37 The Gold Pavilion © These three gave birth to all other things. It is because they are in harmony That they can do this. (Tao-te Ching, chapter 42) Meditation on a Healthy Body The healer and the patient must realize that the body is the most important of our assets. The body’s health is more important even than acquiring fame, wealth, and success in business. Profit and loss in business can bring on ailments. To fall madly in love is a great misfortune. The most successful person always leaves a little undone so that others too may succeed. The straightest line bends with the earth. One must move a little so as not to freeze, rest a little so as not to perspire. The person who does not bend becomes ill. Wait patiently for the best pottery, which comes last from the kiln. Listen quietly for the Tao from within the body’s center, the belly, where the best music is silence. Those people are whole and endure who listen from within the body’s center. Meditation on Goodness The person who would be a healer of other people’s ills must be good to the kind and the unkind, true to the faithful and the unfaithful. Tao gives qi breath to all, plays no favorites, smiles on everyone. A person who is filled with good¬ ness walks through the battlefield unscathed by death. The tiger’s claws don’t scratch, a sword doesn’t cut, a bull doesn’t maul goodness. Goodness is defined by Lao-tzu as an interior quality that 38 Interior Peace © helps all others, whether good or bad, loyal or unloyal, useful or useless. Like the Tao, it sees all things as sacred and looks on all as something in which Tao dwells. Meditation on Wuwei, Tao’s Actions The Tao makes little things important. To those with little it gives much. It requites anger with goodness, tackles difficul¬ ties at once, while they are still easy. It rewards three precious things: kindness, care, and those who do not put themselves over others. In fact, it rushes to the aid of those who show kind¬ ness. It helps each thing find its own way, never telling others what to do. Tao hides behind coarse clothes. It is to be found deep inside the meditator. Meditation on the Ocean The reason the ocean is the greatest of all creatures is because it is the lowest. Therefore, everything flows into it. (Too-te Ching, chapter 66) Meditation on Others Never be weary of others, and they will not be weary of us. Our influence is greatest when others don’t fear us and when we don’t meddle in their lives at home. Meditate on all others with the greatest respect. When they come to see us, they will be better because of our respect. Meditation on Not Knowing The most difficult things to heal are knowledge, concept, and image. Memories of what others have said about us, what 39 The Gold Pavilion © injustices they have done, the images of what bad things could happen, fester in our minds and injure our stomachs. To heal, empty these concepts. Disputes about philosophy and reason bring illness. The Taoist healer doesn’t get ill, because he or she doesn’t catch the “know-all” sickness. (Tao-fe Ching, chapter 71) Meditation on Bending That which is dead is hard and brittle. That which is alive bends and is supple. To be healthy, be yielding like water, supple like grass, fresh and giving like Tao. Human ways are different from Tao. Humans in business and politics take from those who have little and give to those who have plenty. Tao gives of its plenty to all. Giving with joy makes one like Tao. of all the eighty-one chapters of the Tao-te Ching, the religious Taoists consider chapter 42 (Meditation on Harmony, page 37) to be the most important. Qi, yang, and yin are able to give birth to the myriad creatures only because they work in har¬ mony. In order that the people of the village who come to the temple for healing and renewal understand this message, the Taoists act it out in mime, drumming, music, and dance. The rite is as follows: First, when it is dark, three new candles are set on an altar in the center of the temple for all of the villagers to see. If there are too many people to fit into the temple the table is brought out into the village square so that all can witness the drama. Next, all of the lights in the temple are extinguished. The 40 Interior Peace © Taoist strikes a new fire from flint and sings “The Tao gave birth to the One.” At this point the first candle is lit. The Taoist chants how the first candle represents primordial breath, yuanqi, the breath of the Tao gestating. Then the second candle is lit for yang, and the third candle for yin. The reason the myriad crea¬ tures could be gestated, the Taoist chants, is because these three shine together in harmony. At this point all of the lights, candles, and lanterns in the temple are lit, so that the night becomes as day. Tao gestating the cosmos is acted out in song and dance. The forty-second chapter, on harmony, is thus brought to the attention of the whole village by a rite that anyone—children, elders, and for¬ eigners—can understand, even if they have never read the obscure text of the Tao-te Ching. Ritual is thus a vehicle to explain the philosophy of Lao-tzu. Meditations on the Chuang-tzli The Lao-tzu Tao-te Ching is the first book given to an aspiring Taoist to follow. The Chuang-tzu is used at the next stage of meditative practice, as a prelude to the third and high¬ est level of apophatic emptying meditation, found in the Gold Pavilion classic. Following the practice of the Taoist contem¬ plative tradition, I have paraphrased here the first seven chap¬ ters of the Chuang-tzu, as a prelude to learning the meditations of apophasis. The Chuang-tzu is one of the most literary and highly respected works of Chinese literature. Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist scholars all attempt to read and comment on its difficult passages. The mystic philosophy it proposes for the 41 The Gold Pavilion © reader is explained in humorous stories and parables, based on the teachings of Lao-tzu. The first seven chapters are consid¬ ered the most important for the master of Taoist healing. Some of its major ideas and the stories that explain them follow . 5 Wandering in the World of Relative Judgment O nce there was a great fish that lived in the depths of the northern sea. Its name was Kun. Its back was more than a thousand li [Chinese miles] long. Suddenly it changed into a bird whose name was Peng, whose back was also more than a thousand li in length. Startled, the bird took off from the sea and flew away. Its wings obscured the whole sky like a cloud. This bird, flying over the skies, eventually journeyed to the southern realm, the lake of heaven. Ji Xie, a historian of the exotic, recorded the following: "When Peng took off for the south seas, its wings first flapped just above the water for three thousand li. Then it rose on an updraft to ninety thousand li. Its flight lasted for six months; then it rested .” 6 All judgments are relative to the judger. We must not use the great Peng bird as a standard to judge small birds. Water deep enough to float a cup is not sufficient to hold a boat. Peng’s wings touched the water as it flapped, until it reached a height of ninety thousand li. The cicada and the dove do not need so much space to fly. Kun the great fish (a symbol of yin, autumn and winter) changed to Peng the great bird (yang, spring and summer). Each has its function in nature. One is not 42 Interior Peace © better than the other. We think they are different, but in fact one changes into the other. All human Judgments are relative to the Judger. A mush¬ room sprouts in the morning and does not last a month, while a butterfly lives for a season. A magic mushroom in the southern Chu state lives a thousand years, and the dachun tree for two thousand. A tree or a person is not good or bad because of how long it lives or how people Judge and talk about it. Some people have enough talent to do well in a small business, while others rule a company. Others yet become governors of an entire kingdom. The whole world may admire one of these and despise the other two. Yet they are no better or worse within themselves for what others say about them or Judge them to be. Liezi (Lieh-tzu) was a great Taoist sage who could ride off on the wind for fifteen days at a time. Yet Liezi depended on the wind to move, just as ordinary men depend on their legs to walk. What if there were someone who could mount into the heavens and descend into the earth, ride the six breaths of change (cold, heat, drought, rain, wind, fire), and wander in the transcendent ultimate (Tao)? Would this person make Liezi look bad? In fact, the person who has truly attained the Tao is selfless. The true spiritual person has no merit. The holiest sage has no fame. What others say of them is irrelevant. There was once a spiritual person who lived in the Guyi Mountains. Though very old, his skin was like snow and his body young and graceful. He did not eat any of the five starches but subsisted on wind and dew. He could ride away on clouds of qi breath, his chariot a flying dragon, into the 43 The Gold Pavilion © world beyond the four seas, outside the realm of Confucian logic. The most important thing about this person, Chuang-tzu states, was his inner peace of spirit. His presence harmonized village life and nature. The villagers who lived nearby were saved from illness and each year harvested good crops. This last quality alone was for Chuang-tzu the sign of the true Taoist sage. No matter what powers and virtues are extolled in the sagely person, it is because of interior peace alone that his or her presence brings blessing. Inner peace heals all natural and human calamities. King Yao, after visiting the holy sage of Mount Guyi, decided to give up his kingdom . 7 All the good things that come to the ruler of a kingdom were useless when compared with the inner peace of meditation. He compared the goods of the king¬ dom to a merchant who tried to sell fancy hats and shirts to the people of the southern kingdom of Yueh. The people of Yueh had no use for hats or shirts. They tattooed their bodies with bright colors instead. The values of Confucians, politicians, and modern consumer society are wasted on those who live lives of peaceful simplicity. Huizi asked Chuang-tzu what to do about a huge gnarled tree that could not be sold to carpenters for wood. Plant it in the realm of wuwei (Taoist action), Chuang-tzu replied, and go there to meditate. A thing that is useless will not be harmed by the world of politicians, consumers, or war. The values of con¬ sumer society chop down all things (and all people too) who seem useful for making a profit. The preservation of nature, a peaceful society, and a healthy human body are more impor¬ tant than profit. 44 Interior Peace © On Abstaining from Judgment A famous Taoist sage named Nan Guozi Ji (Nan kuo-tzu Chi) was meditating peacefully while sitting at a table. He looked up to heaven while practicing quiet breathing. In doing this, he seemed to have suspended his conscious judgmental mind. His friend Yan Chengzi Yu stood in front of him and asked, “Are you still there? Can the body’s form become dry wood and the mind like dead ashes? This person meditating by the table is not the same person who was here meditating a while ago.” “Yan,” said Nan Guozi Ji, “It’s a good thing that you ask me about it. Just now I had forgotten to make judgments. Would you like to know how its done? You’ve heard the sound of human music played on the flute, but not the sound of the earth’s flute. If you hear the music of the earth’s flute, you still haven’t heard the music of heaven’s flute!” Yan asked Nan to continue. The sound of the earth’s flute, Nan Guozi Ji explained, is heard in the wind playing on the hol¬ lows of trees, caves, mountains, and valleys. The sounds of earth are sometimes soft and quiet, sometimes loud and stri¬ dent. The sounds of heaven’s flute are heard only when all other sounds cease. One must listen to the intervals between the sounds of earth and humans to hear the music of heaven. The sounds of human music are made on flutes and vocal chords. Human words produce arguing, judging, agreeing, and disagreeing. Human sounds are more strident than the violent storms of earth. When humans compete with each other, there are plotting and scheming, indecision and concealment, appre¬ hension and distress, reserve and fear. The human mind is like 45 The Gold Pavilion ® a spear that flies forth deciding what is right and wrong. Some minds are firm, others change like weather. Some are mired in sensuous pleasure, others are plugged with hardened ideas like an old drain, unable to be cleared. Nan Guozi Ji compared human joy and anger, sorrow and pleasure, anxiety and regret, whimsy and resolve, violence and laziness, indulgence and extravagance, to the sounds of nature’s flute, short-lived as mushrooms sprouting after a rain. Day and night our feelings sprout from within us. They keep us from hearing Tao’s music. A monkey keeper in a Zoo once ordered that the monkeys be given three bananas each morning and four bananas each evening. This made the monkeys very angry, since they thought the three bananas were not enough. So the keeper ordered that four bananas be given in the morning and three at night. The monkeys were happy at this decision. Judging whether one idea is better than another, or (as philosophers did in Chuang-tzu’s time) whether a pure white horse is a different breed than all other kinds of horses, is like monkeys arguing over bananas. It is like saying that eyes are more important than ears, or the upper part of the body better than the lower. Without the viscera we could not live. Nothing in the world of itself is better than any other thing. Judging and feeling a thing to be good or bad obscures the music of Tao in the cosmos. Tao is obscured by distinction, partiality, and elo¬ quence. Tao is known when there is no distinction, partiality, or judgment. It is the truly wise person who sees that human feel¬ ings and judgments are simply a declaration of preference and wishes, like a monkey upset about three bananas in the morn¬ ing and four in the evening. It is the deepest of insights that 46 Interior Peace © sees how the elements of one’s physical body came into being with the cosmos. Life and death are simply different ways of relating to the cosmos. In this sense, Chuang-tzu asks us to consider how: Heaven, earth, and I were born together. The myriad creatures and I are one. All have this, our existence, in common. Tao makes no distinctions in gestating the myriad crea¬ tures. Only humans make distinctions about the value of things in their speech and judgments. In all, there are only eight pos¬ sible choices: be on the right or the left, discuss or judge, divide or argue, emulate or contend. The sage does not choose sides, argue, judge, or contend. Is there anything, Wangyi was asked, on which everyone can agree? " Humans live in houses, he answered, monkeys in trees, eels in damp places. Deer eat grass, centipedes eat snakes, owls and crows eat mice. Mao Jiang and Li Ji were reputed to be two beautiful women, but when fish and birds saw them they fled. The Taoist sage does not judge one person better or worse for their preferences, or declare herself or him¬ self more wise, benevolent, or chaste than others. The sage never harms anyone, does not pursue worldly affairs, does not dispute or argue about distinctions, and ignores all differences in social rank. Those who follow worldly ways see an egg and immedi¬ ately expect to see it hatch and hear the bird crow. They see a crossbow and immediately want to sit down to a banquet after the hunt. Princess Li Ji cried when she was sent to marry in the distant state of Jin. But when she got there and shared the 47 The Gold Pavilion © luxurious court life with the king, she repented her tears. People who fear death are like those who run away when young and fear to return home. The sage’s home is in the cos¬ mos. Eternity has already begun. “Suppose” Chuang-tzu says, “That I argue with you and you with me. ... If one of us loses and one of us wins, which one of us is right and which one wrong?” Agreeing with some¬ one does not necessarily make that person right. Disagreeing does not make the other person wrong. It is best to forget argu¬ ing. Let others be themselves, without forcing them to conform to one’s own idea or dream of how things should be. Our dreams are filled with illusions. Sometimes we dream of a banquet and wake up to an empty stomach. At other times we dream of monsters, failure, and violence. Chuang-tzu changes the bad thoughts to peaceful and quiet images. Life itself is a great dream, the images of which we can change at will. Once Chuang-tzu dreamed he was a butterfly, fluttering about enjoying itself. It did not know it was Chuang-tzu. Suddenly it woke up, and was Chuang-tzu again. We are not sure if it was Chuang- tzu dreaming he was a butterfly, or the butterfly dreaming he was Chuang-tzu. This is called hua, changing dreams. We are what we make our dreams to be. If we dream a bad dream, it is important to change the bad images to good ones. When we dwell on calamities or successes, we become what we envision. Healing means making the image good, removing anger, fear, and bitterness. To hear the flute of 48 Interior Peace © heaven, as Nan Guozi Ji did at the beginning of this meditation, we must empty the mind not only of negative ideas but of all images and judgments. We thus “change” ( hua ) our dreams and visions so that our spirit becomes peaceful (riing), like the sage of Guyi Mountain. “Let us take our joy in the realm of the transcendent rather than in the argument;” listen to the flute of heaven rather than the flute of humans. The Master of Healthy Living Once there was a butcher who was so good at carving that for nineteen years and two thousand bullocks he never once had to sharpen his knife. When asked by the king how his art had become so perfect, he answered: “What your servant loves most is Tao. There is no art greater than Tao. When I first became a butcher, what I saw in front of me was a piece of beef. After three years I saw the whole. Now I work with my shen [inner spiritual energy], not my eyes. The desire to know ended and the power of intuition was freed, by relying on heaven’s way. . . . The joints of meat have empty spaces between the sinews, and the edge of the blade has no thickness. When that with no thickness is put into the empty space,... the meat comes apart by itself. ...” “Excellent!" said the king. “From the words of this butcher I have learned how to nourish life!" The person who loves Tao has learned how to contem¬ plate, to use the power of intuition separately from the cogni¬ tive senses. The power of cognition or reasoning is mediated. 49 The Gold Pavilion © The external image is processed through the five senses into the imagination, from whence the bonds of concept, word, and judgment are formed. The Tao of the butcher moved freely through the void, empty spaces, unimpeded by the bones and sinews of the bullock. The king understood from this that the mind must be freed from the fetters of words and judgment to sense the movement or the “music” of the Tao in nature. Knowing the Tao intuitively is the way to “nourish life.” This nourishing is done by freeing the shen spirit, the power of will residing in the heart, from the bonds of the judgmental mind, from putting a verb to a noun, choosing between good and bad, making distinctions and preferences. This freedom of spirit and love of Tao can belong to anyone, even a person who is missing an arm or a leg. A man who did not understand the Tao of heaven was startled to see that the king’s favorite “minister of the right” was missing a foot. “This is due to nature, not to man,” replied the minister of the right. The Tao of heaven gives wisdom, peace, and good health to those whose spirit is free, not bound by the prefer¬ ences and judgments of human society. “The wild pheasant in the marshes prefers to have one bite of grain every ten paces, and a sip of water every hundred steps, rather than be locked in a cage.” Health is maintained by having this free spirit, not bound by the values or conventions of what the world takes to be a perfect physical body. Freedom of spirit means freedom from all imposed styles, including clothing, body style, size, weight, shape, color, even physical disability and deformity. In a later 50 Interior Peace © chapter Chuang-tzu finds Tao’s special presence and blessing in the physically deformed, like the minister with one foot. Fear of death, and excessive mourning are also forms of ill¬ ness and bondage. When Lao-tzu died, his disciple Jinsi went to mourn. He uttered three loud cries and came away, embar¬ rassed by the distant relatives who made endless loud lamenta¬ tions. If they understood Lao-tzu’s teaching, he said, they would not be mourning. Death is di (that is, God), letting go of the cord that binds us to time. There is no sense in mourning this release. The master who nourishes life teaches freedom from bondage. Thoughts and judgments that bind us in fear are worse ills than missing a hand or a foot. The life fire inside us does not go out at death. When kindling wood is burned, fire moves on to burn somewhere else. Living in the Human World When living in the human world, we cannot help but get caught up in the values, judgments, and worries of business and politics. Confucius sought to heal the evils of politics and commerce by teaching others, especially rulers and leaders, how to be virtuous. Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu felt that such an approach brought only opprobrium and scorn, sometimes even death to the teacher. Yan Hui asked Confucius’s leave to go heal the ills of the state of Wei. The king of Wei refused to see his own or the country’s problems. The dead lay in the street like the leaves of a dying banana tree. The sick crowded around the doors of physicians. Confucius warned Yan Hui that he would only bring suffering and misfortune on himself. The “perfect” person must first reach inner peace and not think of winning fame by 51 The Gold Pavilion © changing wicked people. The power of virtue is spoiled by seek¬ ing fame. “Desire for knowledge starts with contention. When com¬ peting for fame men crush each other, and knowledge is the weapon of their contention.” Those who practice human virtues but don’t understand the difference in nature and human ways try to force benevolence, justice, and law on the wicked. As a result, they are hated by the wicked and end up hurting others. Rulers kill virtuous ministers who try to help the welfare of the poor by changing the king’s or lingdao’s (the party boss’s) evil ways. Yan Hui suggested ways of changing his own behavior in order to be successful. All of these methods were rejected by Confucius. “Fasting in the heart-mind [xinzhai] is the only way,” said Confucius. 1 ' He defines xinzhai as follows: If zhi [the will] is kept one with Tao’s presence within, then one no longer listens with the ears but with the heart. If one stops listening with the heart, then one can hear with qi life breath, and listening with the ears ceases. Listening with the heart ceases when it is unified [with Tao].'° The heart stops [listening to the ears] when it is united to Tao. The qi life energy is itself empty of image, waiting for things [to be brought into the mind through hearing and seeing]. Only the Tao dwells in the void! Fasting in the heart means that the heart-mind is emptied so that only the Tao may dwell there. Heart fasting is the only way to keep ourselves healthy in the world of humans. When the door is kept closed, poisonous things cannot enter. 52 Interior Peace © Keep the ears and eyes focused on Tao within, so that the mind is not filled with the human struggles for fame. Shut out wordly knowledge and judgments, lest spirits and demons come and dwell inside, along with the human world and its tensions. Only in this way, says Confucius, can Yan Hui survive in the evil state of Wei. The Confucian way of benevolent virtue and the Taoist way of “fasting in the heart” are quite incompatible according to most ancient and modern scholars. Nevertheless, Chuang- tzu continues to use his created image of Confucius as the teacher for a healthy life in the world of humans. According to Confucius there are two great commandments. The first is for a child to love his or her parents, and the second is to fulfill one’s duty to country and sovereign. These very human values cer¬ tainly touch universal heartstrings. The Taoist way does not negate or dispute them. Rather, it adds a third principle. We must at all cost preserve our heart fasting, so that neither sor¬ row nor joy can affect inner peace, no matter what hardships or successes destiny brings into our life. This last rule is the per¬ fection of all virtue. In politics, sports, and drinking, things always begin with a show of friendship and end in mistrust, anger, and confusion. Politicians always sign treaties with a show of cooperation, but when they return home they begin to mistrust each other. Wrestlers begin their match by shaking hands but end in mutual rage, making sounds like animals in the throes of death. Banquets begin with toasts all around but turn into loud singing and brawling. A friendly argument can provoke brute 53 The Gold Pavilion © ideas when one party is driven into a corner. There are many things in the world of humans that we cannot change for the better. Inner peace lets things develop each according to its own destiny, without letting the inner self be hurt by what can¬ not be changed, no matter how hard we may want to change or heal others. Just as it is very important not to let external affairs pen¬ etrate into one’s inner state of peace, so also it is very important not to let others see and envy one’s inner harmony. Manifesting one’s inner peace could make one into a hero or, worst of all, a holy “guru.” This will lead to collapse, ruin, and personal downfall. Fame and reputation make one first into a sage, then into an oddball, and finally into an omen of evil. In order to lead people to find healing peace within them¬ selves, one should first become aware of their inner needs and feelings, and then lead them to their own discovery of heart fasting. When the sick person wants to act as a child, then we too must be like a child. When the patient wants to cast aside all differences, distinction, and judgments, then we too should cast them aside. The patient becomes the teacher, the sick per¬ son is the healer. To show this point, Chuang-tzu tells three stories. The first is the tale of the praying mantis and the chariot. The praying mantis was very brave. It feared no adversary, and stood up to any attacker. One day a chariot came along and the mantis was crushed beneath its wheels. Rulers, lingdao (party bosses), and law enforcers are like the chariot that crushed the mantis. No matter how right we know ourselves to be, it is best to get out of the way of the powerful and the mighty. We may know that our inner peace and healing qi are excellent. But if we show 54 Interior Peace ® these good things to rulers and offend them, at best our own lives may be in danger. At worst, we may be drawn from our way of peace and stuck on the revolving chariot wheels of the powerful and mighty. Tiger keepers in zoos and circuses understand the nature of their charges. They never feed live meat to the tigers, for fear of exciting their wild instincts to kill. When the tigers are no longer hungry, but are quite full, then they respect and obey their trainers. If one were to act against the rapacious or hunt¬ ing nature of the tiger (or the ruler), one would be killed and eaten. The same is true of those who train horses. The horse is a beautiful animal. It must be fed, combed, curried, and exer¬ cised every day. The trainer knows it is necessary to keep away from the hooves of the horses, lest he or she be kicked or injured when the horse is bitten by a fly. The only way to heal human ills, too, is to keep oneself and the sick person away from what harms nature. One of the best ways of doing this is to learn how to be useless, that is, not injured, hurt, or destroyed by being "used” in the world of humans. This notion of being useless is, of course, a special term in the Taoist system. It does not mean being useless to our family, loved ones, or nature. To illustrate its meaning, Chuang- tzu tells a series of stories about trees, animals, and deformed humans. Once there was a great oak tree that was used as a sacred altar for crop offerings in the state of Ji (Chi). This tree was so large that an oxcart when passing behind it could not be seen. It was one hundred yards in circumference, and were it not so gnarled and twisted, boats might have been hollowed out from 55 The Gold Pavilion © at least eight of its branches. A master craftsman with his apprentices passed by one day. The apprentices wanted to chop the tree down and cut it up into lumber to make houses, ships, coffins, and furniture. The master carpenter would not listen to them, and passed by the tree quickly. That night the tree appeared to the carpenter in a dream. The reason it had lived so long and not been cut down was because its wood was useless, the tree told the carpenter. All the other trees around had been chopped down for their lum¬ ber. The hawthorn, pear, orange, pomelo, and other fruit trees had been mercilessly beaten, their fruit broken off, and finally chopped down for firewood. But the old oak survived because it learned to be useless. “If I were useful, how could I have sur¬ vived to become so great?” The tree asked the carpenter if he too understood the meaning of being useless. A useless carpenter who would not outlive the tree knew better than to cut the useless tree. When he awoke the carpenter told his dream to his apprentices. “How can it call itself useless when it serves as an altar for the soil spirit?” they asked. “The tree just pretends to be an altar," he answered, "for the sake of those who don’t know that it is useless .”' 1 The great trees that appear throughout the pages of the Chuang-tzu all have one thing in common. They cannot be used for lumber, houses, boats, coffins, firewood, or fruit pro¬ duction. Thus they are “useless” in the eyes of the merchant, carpenter, and householder. But they can be used for their shade, for children to play under, birds to nest in, and villagers to dance under. The spiritual person survives with this kind of uselessness. In ancient China oxen with white foreheads, pigs 56 Interior Peace 0 whose snouts turned up too sharply, and humans suffering from hemorrhoids could not be used as a living sacrifice to the Yellow River . 12 Thus, being deformed or standing out from the ordinary, being “useless,” saves one’s life from religious sacri¬ fice, physical and social burnout. Chuang-tzu tells of a useless deformed man named Shu whose body was so twisted that the government gave him three bushels of grain and ten bundles of firewood weekly and never called him for wartime draft or peacetime corvee labor. Confucius is warned by the madman of Chu that his attempts to reform human society by his virtue are dangerous. One must avoid being useful, or one will be cut down for firewood, fried in the pan like good oil, eaten like fruit or cinnamon bark, worn out by the burdens imposed on oneself by claims to usefulness and notoriety. To be “useless” (wu yong) is a spiritual quality. “No use” in fact becomes “transcendent use,” used by the Tao of nature to heal others. Thus “no use” means "Tao use,” a per¬ son at one with nature. Virtue that Fulfills Tao’s Fu Contract Chuang-tzu tells many stories of people who lost their feet or toes or were deformed and ugly. All found interior peace by realizing that death and life, peril in living, good and bad for¬ tune, wealth and poverty, being valued or thought worthless, praise and blame, are part of the destiny of being human. “One should not let such things disturb one’s peace. One should not allow such things to enter the mind.” Remain peaceful, kind, and content with the outer world as it is. Changes in the exteri¬ or world cannot affect Tao’s interior stillness and peace. Such a person is “one with Tao’s peace by contract.” 57 The Gold Pavilion © In the state of Lu (Confucius’s home) there was a man named Wang Dai who had only one foot. His disciples were more numerous than those of Confucius. He did not use words to teach or discuss. His disciples came to him empty and went away filled with good. The followers of Confucius asked how this could be. Even though his body was deformed, could his heart and mind be perfected? How could he teach without words? Confucius answered that he, indeed, and all of his disci¬ ples should go to learn from the man with one foot. “Death and life are great events, but they cannot change him. If heaven fell and earth were disrupted, he would not be affected. His mind is like jade with no veins or flaws [not flawed by negation or attachment], and thus he does not let his interior [peace] be moved when exterior things change. 1 -' It is the destiny of things to change; thus he keeps his focus on the [unchanging] ances¬ tral Tao.” The symbol of union between the heart of the meditator and the eternal Tao is compared here to a contract that unites two halves of a talisman. The tao (dao) or heavenly half, and the te (de) or interior half of the meditator are always united into one. The changes of the exterior world do not affect this union. “If we see things from the viewpoint of distinction and difference,” continued Confucius, "then the liver and the gallbladder are as far apart as the kingdoms of Chu and Yueh [the provinces of Hubei and Fujian in north central and southeast China, respectively]. If we see all things as united [by Tao’s gestating and nourishing], then the myriad crea¬ tures are one.” 58 Interior Peace © The man with one foot kept his heart united with the presence of Tao. He did not let his ears and eyes become attached to the sounds and colors of the changing world. When all things are seen as one process, the loss of a foot or the loss of life itself is like the recycling or returning of so much earth. Only the truly virtuous (de or true virtue here means union with Tao’s process) have minds that are clear like still water. Minds running in the world of humans are like a turbulent muddy stream. They cannot find peace, even if the body has two feet and appears to be whole. To be in the world of humans is like standing in the middle of a battlefield where arrows are flying. One cannot help one’s des¬ tiny or be perturbed by being hit. If one wanders in the center of the battlefield, one is more likely to be injured than if one wanders in the interior world of peace. But whether one is injured, loses a foot, becomes ill, or remains whole, the inner awareness of union with Tao’s gestation of the cosmos need not be affected. The dif¬ ference lies in whether the meditator is distracted by the goods of the outer world or is absorbed in the presence of Tao within. Once there was a man named Aidaido. He was ugly enough to scare the whole world. Yet he was so peaceful inside that everyone trusted him. Men who were his friends felt com¬ fortable only in his presence. Young women said to their par¬ ents, "I’d rather be his concubine than another man’s wife.” The king asked him to be prime minister, but he turned the job down and went away. This kind of person considers knowledge and power a curse, conventionality as glue, moral virtue as a ruse to get one’s way, and art as a form of commerce. Such a person does not rule and so needs no power, does not divide things and 59 The Gold Pavilion © so needs no glue. His or her character is kind and never harms others, and thus needs not follow the conventions of socially approved “benevolence” and "reciprocal obligation.” Such persons are nourished by nature and so need no con¬ sumer goods or commercial art. They do not have “affection” or attachments and so do not use others to succeed or get their way. Such persons are small and insignificant in human soci¬ ety but great and unique in their oneness with nature. “How can a person be without attachment?” Huizi asked Chuang-tzu. Chuang-tzu answered that people without attachment do not inflict internal injury on themselves by losing awareness of Tao within, or external injury on others by desires and aver¬ sions. “Tao gives us our face. Nature gives us our external appearance. We harm our inner self by saying T like it’ or ‘I hate it’.” Tao gives us our being to rejoice in. Nature gives us our form to accept. If one wastes one’s energies trying to change others’ behavior in the external world, one’s qi vital energy is soon used up. Change one’s inner self instead by becoming peacefully aware of Tao’s presence. Virtue means to see what is beneficial and what is harmful in the external world as one. Neither should destroy our sense of inner peace and harmony. Tao Is the Great Ancestral Master The sixth chapter of the Chuang-tzu defines the nature of a Tao-realized person, the zhenren. Literally the Chinese phrase means “true person,” one who is always aware of the presence of Tao in nature. To know the Tao means to empty the mind of all other images. Nothing else can be in the mind or heart when 60 Interior Peace ® Tao is there. The zhenren is a person who has realized this unity of heart with Tao. A true person (Tao-realized person) is one who does not side with the majority or oppose the minority, who has made no plans or schemes to harm or put down others, who does not regret failure and is not self-complacent in success. He or she can climb mountains without fear of heights, walk in water without fear of getting wet, be near fire or desert heat without feeling hot. Such is the person whose heart and mind are one with Tao. Tao-realized zhenren of the past, Chuang-tzu says, were people who did not dream when sleeping and did not worry when awake. They did not eat fancy things, and took long deep breaths. Zhenren inhaled through their heels, while ordinary people breathed through the throat. The selfish desires of ordinary people went so deep that their connections with heaven and Tao were shallow. Long ago the Tao-realized did not know attachment to life or fear of death. Birthing was not theirs to assent to, and dying not theirs to refuse. Yet they did not forget their beginning [from Tao] nor seek to know what their end would be. They received joyfully what was given and made good what was forgotten. They did not let the mind harm Tao's inner presence and did not use humans to try to change heaven. This is the definition of a zhenren, a person who has realized Tao. 61 The Gold Pavilion 0 Tao-realized people forget, that is, free themselves from thoughts of fame in the world of people. In warfare they would rather lose the kingdom than hurt people (that is, the presence of Tao in their hearts). Their good deeds benefit a myriad gen¬ erations without looking to favor any one specially “loved” per¬ son. They are benevolent to all, not just loved ones. Their wis¬ dom is constant, unlike changing weather. For them personal profit and loss are equally unimportant. Life and death are part of a single journey home, in which we help each other walk along the way. When a stream dries up, the fish all come together in little puddles, keeping each other moist with their bodies. But their lives are better when they can forget each other’s ills and swim off healthily in a great lake. Our minds filled with worries are like fish in a dried-up stream, without water to swim in. Once minds are emptied, the waters of the universe flood in again. We can swim away in good health, forgetting our own and others’ ills, dissolved in the great ocean, the Tao-gestated cosmos. Worldly knowledge, as in Lao-tzu’s meditation in the Tao-te Ching is an illness that dries up the ocean of life around us . 14 It can be compared to a boat or a fisherman’s net hidden in a river at night, supposedly safe from a thief’s hand. But our knowledge, good health, and wealth can be taken from us, just as the boat or net can be stolen. There is nothing in the uni¬ verse, big or small, that cannot be destroyed or taken away. Only if we store things in the universe itself can they never be lost. The universe carries us through our bodies, toils in us through our life, slows us down in old age, and gives us repose in death. Nothing in the greater universe can be lost, and everything in the universe is good. It makes life good, and 62 Interior Peace 0 death good too. The “realized person” makes excursions into Tao, which cannot be lost, and takes Joy in remaining together with it. Chuang-tzu defines what Tao is: Tao has feeling and trust; it is transcendent act and transcendent form. It can be passed on but not received, it can be interiorized but not seen. It is its own origin and its own roots. It existed before heaven and earth, spirit-demons, or spirit-gods. It gave birth to heaven and earth. It is prior to taiji [t’ai-chi, the Great Ultimate ],' 5 but not too high, and the six directions, but not too deep .' 5 Born prior to heaven and earth but not timeworn, older than ancient antiquity but not aged. Chuang-tzu gives a long list of ancient sages who attained the Tao and were thereby able to fulfill the course nature appointed for them. The sun and moon have Tao and are there¬ fore constant in their course. The Big Dipper constellation has it, and so always points to the center of the northern heavens, fust as the Big Dipper always points to the center of the north¬ ern heavens, so we too should always be aware of Tao in the center of our body. The oneness of body and the polestar is one of the most important of Taoist meditations . 17 Zikuei asked Nu Ju, “How can your countenance be like a child, when you are so old?” “I am acquainted with Tao,” Nu Ju said. Because he had Tao, Nu Ju could Disregard all worldly affairs, Forget all external things, 63 The Gold Pavilion © Overlook his own existence, And be enlightened by the vision Of the “One” Tao. He no longer distinguished Past and present, Life and death . . . And was able to be peaceful No matter what disturbance. . . . He learned all this from enjoying The mystery of the eternal Tao. Once there were four friends named Zisi, Ziyu, Zili, and Zilai (self-aware, self-possessed, self-respect, and self- arrived). All four were friends, because all realized that death and life, existence and nonexistence, were all one process. One by one the friends fell ill and began to die. Each passed away without sorrow or joy, realizing that death was a release from bondage. The last of the friends, Zilai, said, “If we take the universe as a great furnace, and nature as a great alchemist, what place is it not right for us to go? Calmly we die, as quietly we live.” These and the other Taoist sages were “companions of the maker of things.” Their death was “an excursion into the unity of the universe.” For them death was but a change of lodging. Yan Hui explained to Confucius the meditation of “sitting in forgetfulness” (zuowang). My limbs do not feel, My mind is darkened, I have forgotten my body And discarded my knowledge. 64 Interior Peace 0 By so doing, I have become one With the infinite Tao. Ziyu and Zisang were friends. Once it rained for ten days. Ziyu was afraid that his friend Zisang might be without suste¬ nance, so he packed some food and went to take care of him. As he approached his friend’s door, he heard Zisang complain¬ ing. "My father, mother, nature, and all men have abandoned me,” he sang, while playing on a small lute. “Heaven covers and earth supports all things equally. What fate of mine is it to be so abandoned!” Little did he realize that his friend was at the door with healing food and care. Sitting in forgetfulness of self makes the healer able to see from afar and come to look after the needs of others. King Tai’s Response to Tao Once Yuejue asked Wangyi four questions: Do you know in what all things agree? Do you know what you don’t know? Do all things have no knowledge? If you don’t know what is good and what harmful, is the perfect person without this knowledge? To all four questions Wangyi answered that he didn’t know. Instead he said that the perfect person did not fear extreme heat or cold, lightning or storms, death nor life. How could he worry about what was good or harmful? Yuejue was delighted with this answer and went to tell Puyizi about it. Puyizi told of the ancient King Tai’s response to such questions: 65 The Gold Pavilion ® Asleep he was tranquil, awake at peace. He took himself to be the same as a horse or a cow. He knew human feelings and trust. His virtue was so deep that he didn’t distinguish “good” and “bad" in humans. Trying to make rules so everyone will practice virtue is like trying to wade in the depths of the ocean, chop a path through a river, or make a mosquito carry a mountain. The sage lets all persons do what they do best, without forcing everyone to be the same. Once Heaven Root was strolling on the sunny side of Mount Yin, just above the river Liao. He met Nameless and asked him how to govern the world. "Go away, worthless thing,” replied Nameless, “I’m too busy riding on the Great Bird [the Peng bird described earlier], beyond the six directions, wandering in a nonplace, in the domain of nothingness. How dare you disturb me with the wor¬ ries that fill the heart with controlling the world?” Realizing that he had come to the right place and the right person, Heaven Root asked the question again. Nameless answered: Wander with the heart-mind empty, Join your qi breath with nothingness [nonjudgment], Let all things follow their own nature, And have no selfish interests. Then the whole world will rule itself. Chuang-tzu relates how Lao-tzu once said that the wise ruler should not be like a servant or artisan, toiling with all 66 Interior Peace ® one’s strength and wearing out the heart and mind. Tigers and leopards are hunted for their skins. Monkeys and dogs are tied up because they are useful and clever. None of these make wise rulers. The ruler who responds to Tao has the greatest achieve¬ ment in the world but does not claim it to be his or her own glory or possession. The ruler heals all who come for help, but no one thereby becomes dependent on him or her thereafter. Rather they learn self-healing and joy from within themselves. Like their healer they stand in the presence of Tao’s mystery and make excursions into the infinite. Once there was a noted spirit medium named Zixian. He knew all about birth and death, gain and loss of wealth, long and short life, and he predicted events with great accuracy. People held him in great awe. One day Liezi, a person seeking the Tao, met Zixian and was fascinated by him. He went to Empty Gourd, the Taoist sage, and asked about Jixian. Previously he had thought that Empty Gourd was the best master, but now he wanted to learn the skills of the spirit medium Jixian. Liezi had studied with Empty Gourd but had not put into practice his teachings of emptiness. He was like a chicken peck¬ ing at grain in a cage. No “master” rooster had yet been able to fertilize his eggs. Empty Gourd told Liezi to bring Jixian the medium to meet him. The next day Liezi and Jixian went to visit Empty Gourd. When they arrived Empty Gourd was meditating on “earth” and “yin.” Jixian did not know this, and thought that perhaps Empty Gourd was ill. The medium promised to heal him and return on the next day. On the next day Empty Gourd was meditating on “yang” 67 The Gold Pavilion © and “heaven.” All thoughts were emptied from his mind. He looked radiant and in good health. Jixian the medium said that it was due to his powers of healing that Empty Gourd looked better. On the third day when Jixian came, Empty Gourd was meditating on taiji, with yin and yang in harmony (chapter 42 of the Tao-te Ching). Jixian had never seen such a meditation before and was puzzled. On the fourth day Jixian came again to see Empty Gourd, who was sitting in forgetfulness, united with the Tao in the abyss of meditation." 1 Jixian fled and was never seen again. Empty Gourd urged Liezi to find him and bring him back. But Liezi never did find the spirit medium. Instead he learned the ways of emptying meditation, becoming “intoxicated" with inner peace. 1 '' The way of the possessed medium and shaman trance is the polar opposite of the emptying meditations and “ecstasy” of Taoism. To confuse the two—mystic kenotic meditation with the shaman or medium trance—is to equate Jixian and Empty Gourd. Liezi returned to his home and for three years did not go out. He cooked for his wife, and fed the pigs with the same respect as when banqueting humans. He got rid of all artifice and embraced simplicity. No matter what hardships and diffi¬ culties, he remained “one with Tao” to the end. Wuwei Tao action is without fame or political schemes. It doesn’t try to reform others or take away their special work. It is not a slave to knowledge. It uses its qi to heal, and is never exhausted. In a word, it is “empty” and thus always aware of Tao. 68 Interior Peace © Not reaching out, not holding on, Responding, but not storing inside. Thus he can overcome self and not harm others. Chuang-tzu ends the Inner Chapters with a final story: The lord of the southern ocean was bright [yang]. The lord of the northern ocean was obscure [yin]. The lord of the center was Hundun, [primordial breath, taiji, emptiness], Yang and Yin loved to go meet at Hundun's place, Because Hundun treated them so nicely. Yang and Yin thought they should do something for Hundun, To thank him for his kindness. "All humans have seven apertures, So they can see, hear, eat, and rest. Only Hundun doesn’t have any. Let’s try to drill some for him." So each day they drilled one opening [two eyes, ears, nostrils, a mouth]. On the seventh day Hundun died. So too the life of Tao’s interior presence dies when we open the heart-mind to the thoughts, worries, and cares of the external world. The practice of sitting in forgetfulness and fast¬ ing in the heart made Hundun ( huntun ) alive to Tao’s presence. Opening the seven apertures made Hundun’s awareness end. The emptying of the mind and heart of all judgment, and the maintaining of peace and equilibrium, is the key to keeping the healing powers of Tao present. The meditation of the Taoist Lady Wei Huacun for emptying the heart-mind does just this. 69 © Chapter Three Centering Meditation; Colors That Heal hen the novice comes to the Taoist master to learn the meditations of healing, he or she is at first treated rather coldly and even turned away. Both Zen (Chan) Bud¬ dhists and traditional Taoist masters thus test the sincerity and humility of the applicant. Those who pass this first hurdle are told to read and put into practice the writings of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, the meditations of the two mystics described in chapter 2. They are taught the way of nonjudgment that shuns worldly fame and glory. They are also encouraged to follow the rule (/re) of the Taoist way of life, not to seek wealth, fame, or power from the way of healing meditation about to be taught to them. Finally, they are urged to master the yin-yang five phase system (also called the five stages, movers, or elements), an ancient protoscientific way of classifying changes in nature. This age-old method of classifying nature's permutations relates to changes that take place in the human body (micro¬ cosm) as well as the outer world (macrocosm). 71 The Gold Pavilion © The five phase system developed quite naturally from pat¬ terns observed in the yin-yang cycles of nature. Thus, as Lao- tzu’s forty-second chapter explained, Tao gave birth to One (pri¬ mordial breath). One in moving gave birth to Two (yang), and resting produced Three (yin). Another view of the process taught that One breath gave birth to the two principles of life, yin and yang. Joining, yang and yin formed the visible world. Separating, yang (fire) went upward to form the heavens while yin (water) flowed downward to fill the world beneath earth in the ocean. Heaven, earth, and water or underworld were thus born of yin and yang. The two principles continuously generate the three realms. The two principles also inform the four seasons and the visible world of nature. Yang produces spring and summer, while yin brings forth autumn and winter. Yang dominates from sunrise through the early afternoon, while yin rules from sunset through sunrise. In living things yang governs birth to maturity while yin prevails from later maturity through old age. Thus the two principles born from primordial energy, yang (male, bright, active, moving, ascending, fire, destroying) and yin (female, obscure, passive, resting, descending, water, birthing, and nourishing) are at work in all of the myriad crea¬ tures gestated from Tao. The four seasons are spatially related to the five direc¬ tions. Spring corresponds to the east, the color blue-green, and the element wood. Summer is in harmony with the south, the color red, and the element fire. Autumn responds to the west, the color white (the silvery sun shining on ripening wheat in the late afternoon), and the element metal (the scythe used to cut the autumn harvest). Winter touches the north, the deep 72 Centering Meditation; Colors That Heal ® purple of the sky before dawn, and the element water. A fifth referent is added in the Chinese system, the place of humans standing in the center of the cosmos watching the process of change going on in the world around. For the meditating Taoist, the center is celebrated in Chinese festivals during the third, sixth, ninth, and twelfth lunar months. Its color is a bright gold- yellow, its element is earth, and its function is to heal. Thus there are five phases or elements in the Chinese sys¬ tem, each with its own season, color, musical tone, and spatial and temporal referent in the outer cosmos, and a storing place within the body. The five elemental phases are related to the inner and outer cosmos as follows: Phase Time Color/Aura Space Organ Symbol Rite Tone (note) wood spring blue-green east liver dragon birth jiao (mi) fire summer bright red south heart phoenix grow zhi (sol) metal autumn white west lungs tiger marry gong (do) water winter dark purple north kidneys turtle aging shang (re) earth third, sixth, gold-yellow center spleen kiln renew yu (la) ninth, twelfth months The human body and its vital organs are intimately bound together with the outer world of nature and its cyclical changes. To be in tune with these changes is an essential part of well¬ being. Spring and the nourishing color of bright green resonate in the liver. Summer and the warm ripening color of red reside in the heart. Autumn and the maturing color of silver or white dwell in the lungs. Winter and the deep generating color of pur¬ ple are found in the kidneys. The central organ where the bright healing yellow of earth is stored is the spleen. These five organs, the liver, heart, lungs, kidneys, and spleen, are called zarig 73 The Gold Pavilion © ( tsang ) or “storing” places, because the elements of birthing, growing, maturation, harvest, and rest-generation are stored there. Another set of organs in the lower part of the body are called fu or passages, because the oxygen, foods, and liquids brought into the body to nourish it pass through them. These are the stomach, the large and small intestines, the gallblad¬ der, the urinary bladder, and a special term in Chinese tradi¬ tional healing called the sanjiao, the three visceral channels (literally, three energy sources or heaters) bringing food, liq¬ uid, and oxygen-breath nourishment into the bloodstream and the whole body. The five zang store healing energy while the six fu process it. Even though all of the bodily organs are important in maintaining health, the five storage areas are particularly emphasized in the meditations of Taoist healing. This is because of the interrelationship between the “storage” areas and all the other organs. The inner and outer cosmos are related through meditating on these five organs. All of the healthy memories, colors, sounds, fragrances, or feelings that are stored in the human body evoke well-being in an orderly manner, through the passage of time and the cyclical changes of the seasons. Thus the color of newly sprouting bright green grass, the leaves of a tree in spring, the deep green of an emerald, sun shining through pines on a moss-covered rock, are examples of color energy stored in the liver that can heal the human spirit. Bright red and pink roses, white star-burst chrysanthemums, deep blue-purple orchids, the golden yellows of marigolds and trumpet flowers, are used in decorative flower arrangements (in Western as well as in Chinese and Japanese flower art 74 Centering Meditation; Colors That Heal © exhibits) for their intense aesthetic beauty. The Taoist uses the visualization of these colors, storing them in the five zang organs to heal inner stress, anxiety, and sorrow. The same colors when seen in dull or sullied circum¬ stances can also cause harm and illness. Dull green in dying plants cries to be uprooted and replanted. Dull red symbolizes anger, dull white means approaching death, dull blue brings sorrow (“I have the blues” is a common jazz musical state¬ ment), and dull yellow signals an overwhelming sense of nega¬ tive judgment. Both the shaman and the Taoist systems of heal¬ ing use the bright healing forms and avoid the dull negative variants of the color wavelength. The colors are interpreted in both systems as follows: Taoist (apophatic) and Shaman (kataphatic) Symbols Healing Colors Harmful Colors bright green (new life) dull green (sickness) bright red (love, brave) dull red (anger, blood) bright gold (healing, Buddha) dull yellow (negative judgment) bright white (salvation) dull white (death) bright blue, purple dull blue (sad, trouble) (prayer, peace) The Taoist use of the colors listed in the left column is meditative, for instance, the envisioning of the color purple is thought to stimulate the pineal gland in the center of the brain, bringing about the excretion of the hormone melatonin to regenerate the body and bring good health. Meditating on bright purple, envisioning its energies circulating through the body and residing in the kidneys, brings health to these two lower organs and stimulates the ability of the mind to be creative. 75 © (The meditation on breath circulation is explained on pages 81-83). Bright green heals the liver, quells excessive fear or anx¬ iety, and brings the energy of freshly growing spring grass to the body. Bright red such as found in roses or peonies changes anger to love, and fear to courage and changes the will (thought to reside in the heart) from selfishness to thoughts of generous giving. Thus humans are almost universally moved "The Five Color Breaths contemplate Tao.” The five qi breaths (the children) are born from the five primordial elements. The Lingbao Five True Writs are held in the hands of the five spirits. Ch’ing dynasty woodblock print from Xingming Guizhi. © 76 Centering Meditation; Colors That Heal to send bright flowers to express feelings of love and giving. Fresh air conceived as bright white light is envisioned to be circulating through the body, clearing the lungs of polluting elements and the mind of festering thoughts and images. Bright gold-yellow heals the stomach and spleen of the ills caused by negative judgments and tensions. Dull green is a sign of illness, dull blue of sadness, dull red of anger, dull yellow of negativity, and dull white of death. One of the most uncanny rites of Korean and Altaic shamans is the use of five flags—red, yellow, white, green, and blue—to diag¬ nose illness and misfortune. Going into deep trance by rhyth¬ mic dance and drumming, the shaman travels into the nether¬ world and returns as a mythic general from the ancient past. The shaman holds five flags, colored bright red, bright yellow, white, dull green, and dull blue. The flags are wrapped into a bundle, and the sick person (or other onlookers) is invited to draw forth one of the staffs, not knowing which color will emerge. Drawing the dull blue flag means impending trouble, dull green means sickness, dull white means death (or the return of an ancestral spirit from the underworld to visit the liv¬ ing). Bright yellow is a symbol of the healing Buddha, and bright red means good fortune and blessing. Bright red or yel¬ low change the three negative colors to well-being. The meditation in which the five health-bringing colors are circulated through the body and stored in the five organs is taught by the Taoist master to only a few disciples. This is because the majority of those who come to study with the Taoist are interested in the medical, liturgical, or martial aspects of the Taoist arts as means to make a living rather than as 77 The Gold Pavilion © steps toward mystical union with the Tao through emptying or kenosis. Many Westerners who come to study Taoism also miss the subtleties of Taoist ascesis in the pressure put on them to finish a doctoral dissertation or publish a learned article. All of these motives, whether for profit or reputation as a scholar, pre¬ clude the exercise of kenotic meditation. The Taoist master often remains silent or talks of other matters in the presence of martial artists and scholars. Another powerful reason against teaching the method of color visualization to the novice who has not mastered the emptying way of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu is the fear that medi¬ tation of any sort, if not directed by a master, will lead to pride and selfish achievement for the misguided rather than a sense of selfless giving that is the sign of the person truly one with Tao’s process. Thus the next step in the process of emptying through the use of color is a crucial one. It is also surprisingly simple and can be learned by children and the elderly in a few easy steps. Centering The first step in the meditation is to be aware of the body’s center of gravity. This is done by pointing to a place about two to three inches below the navel and then focusing attention on a spot two or more inches inside. This place is called the lower cinnabar field (xia dantian, hsia tan-t’ian) in Taoist terminology. The meditator is told to imagine it to be in front of the two kid¬ neys, a kind of doorway to the body’s physical and spiritual (mystical) center. In the Taoist system there are three such cen¬ ters in the body. The first, called the upper cinnabar field (shang 78 Centering Meditation; Colors That Heal © dantian, shang tan-t’ian ) is in the center of the head, the region that in modern medicine would be called the pineal gland. This place is called the center of qi, one’s mental energies, thought, imagination, judgment, concept, and other activities of the mind. The second center is called the middle or center cinnabar field (zhong dantian, chung tan-t’ian ). It is the human heart or pericardial region, the center of yang, will, love, desire, hatred, and other willed attitudes toward external objects that follow on the conceptual judgment of the mind. The third center, the lower cinnabar field, (xia dantian ) is the true center of gravity in the body, the seat of yin, intuition, wisdom, and direct awareness of reality that is not mediated by intellectual judgment or will. The intellect and will are human faculties whose object is the outer world of change and imper¬ manence. The belly’s intuition alone is able to be aware of the transcendent, unmoving, eternal Tao. Thus in Taoist philosophy and spirituality (the two are the same) the intellect and the will are used solely to understand the changes that take place in nature. The intellect names, defines, and judges the myriad things gestated by qi, yang, and yin. The will freely (sometimes arbitrarily) chooses or rejects according to the judgments of the mind, as for instance, whether a thing brings fame, power, or wealth to the person judging. Only by emptying the mind of concepts and the will of desires can the intuitive powers of the belly be actuated. The meditation of centering on the lower cinnabar field therefore actuates the human powers of intuition and wisdom. These three human powers of intellect, will, and intuition are, like the five elements, intimately bound to the outer world of nature. 79 The Gold Pavilion © intellect idea judgment qi breath heaven head will love choice shen yang earth chest intuition wisdom feeling I'ing yin water belly The intellect controls qi breath and can send it anywhere in the outer cosmos, just by thinking or projecting. Thus when one thinks of a distant place, one’s mind goes there and imagines what it looks like. The mind can wander into the far-off heav¬ ens creating images of “star wars” or into a nine-tiered hell to see visions of punishment. The mind can also affect the body. When one is praised, mental images of glory and fame make the whole body feel elated. When scolded or blamed, fearful images remain in the mind and fester, harming and depressing the qi energies of the entire body. By emptying the images from the mind, whether of the outer cosmos or the world of social intercourse, qi energies are not dissipated either in over-elation or over-depression. The spiritual energy in one’s heart is like a king that rules over and controls the entire body. The shen or spiritual energy within is manifest in the human power of will. This inner ruler, whom Taoists envision as a king or queen dressed in red robes, is changed by meditation from a sophisticated self-willed potentate into a ruddy child. Nothing can harm the will that is childlike. As described in the meditations of Lao-tzu, tigers do not claw, serpents bite, or harmful spirits attack the “hiero¬ phant” infant in one’s heart. How keep body and mind one? Be like a child. Be aware of breathing, be soft and pliant. To see the transcendent Tao, have a pure mind, . . . 80 Centering Meditation; Colors That Heal 0 Don’t say no. To receive heaven’s blessing, Be empty like a mother’s womb, Give birth and nurture, then let go. The meditation that focuses on the lower cinnabar field awakens intuitive awareness of the Tao while emptying the mind of image and judgment and making the will simple like a child. This state is brought about by focusing the attention on the centering spot that is two to three inches behind and below the navel, and then filling the body’s organs with the five heal¬ ing colors. Color blinds the eye, sound deafens the ear. Flavor dulls the taste, . . . The Taoist sage fills the belly, not the eyes. Value what is inside, not what is outside. The goal of the Taoist color meditation, as with Taoist music and visualization, is precisely to fill the mind with color and the ears with sound that dull the senses and the imagina¬ tion to the worries, cares, and selfish goals of the exterior world. The mind saturated in healing colors, the ears with healing music, and the imagination with sacred images is easily urged on to the next step of total kenosis emptiness, and immersion in the Tao. 1 Instruction begins with a meditation that focuses on the circulation of breath. The student is told to fill the lungs with air by breathing in slowly through the nose and exhaling quietly through the mouth. If the nose is stuffy and breathing seems difficult, the master shows how, by focusing attention on the 81 The Gold Pavilion © lower throat and esophagus instead of the nostrils, the air flows in more freely. The breathing process is extended so that one breathes air into the lungs for about thirty seconds, pauses briefly, and then exhales quietly though the mouth for another thirty seconds. In the classical Taoist system, unlike other forms of breathing yoga, inhalation and exhalation are done without any audible sound. This is because awareness is extended to every slightest sound, including the passing of vehicles outside, the singing of birds, barking of dogs, and crying of children at a great distance. As the meditation progresses, the sounds of an air-conditioner, of neon lights overhead, of refrigerators and ticking clocks, become almost unbearable. When performed correctly external and internal sounds are not drowned out but become more acute in Taoist and Buddhist centering medita¬ tion. These are signs that the meditation is being performed cor¬ rectly. Next the meditator is told to focus attention on the breath process within the body. Air breathed into the lungs flows into the bloodstream, and is pumped by the heart through the entire body. The meditator watches this process, how air circulates from the lungs into the blood, down the front side of the body to the tip of the toes, up the back side of the legs, the backbone, the neck to the top of the skull, and downward again along the front of the face to be breathed outward through the mouth. The efficacy of the meditation (the "secret” passed on orally by the master) is that one watches this process as if with one’s eyes. One is told to follow the circulating breath with semi- closed eyes, moving the eyeballs first downward, then upward, following the breath energy as it goes down the front side (ren 82 Centering Meditation; Colors That Heal © channel) and up the back side (du channel), following it up to the top of the skull, down the forehead and nose ridge, and out through the mouth. In a subsequent lesson this process will be visualized as a marvelous stream of bright light or fresh water that washes through the body, leaning out past memories, aches, and block¬ ages. The air (qi breath energy) can be made to flow through aching joints, cleansing and opening them to healing. But in this first lesson, the oxygen and revivifying energy in the blood¬ stream is simply envisioned to be flowing through the body, revitalizing it. The process of circulation should take about twenty-three to thirty seconds, the actual time it takes for blood to be pumped through the body and brought back to the lungs to expel carbon dioxide and receive more oxygen. The reason pure air is breathed in through the nostrils and sullied air is exhaled through the mouth is simply to help focus the mind on the process of circulation. The mind thus occupied is freed from worries and the heart from selfish desires. This first meditation on breathing can be performed any¬ where and in any position. One can practice it while sitting in a bus, a classroom, or a long-winded Sunday sermon. Those who cannot manage a full-lotus sitting position (both legs crossed with the bottoms of the feet upward) may sit in a half-lotus (one foot up) or simply cross-legged, as when watching a campfire. One can also practice the breathing meditation before getting out of bed in the morning, while lying down, reclining, or stand¬ ing. The beautiful motions of tai chi chuan dance, when done properly, act out the circulating of breath energy through the body, bringing in energy, circulating it through the body, and sending it outward. 2 The most important thing to keep in mind 83 The Gold Pavilion © in any of the Taoist meditations is the rule to remain natural and comfortable. That which puts strain on the body, causing discomfort or distress, cannot be practiced for any great length of time. Like walking on tiptoe, in a strong wind or violent rain, nature does not allow the human body to tolerate pain or dis¬ tress for long. 3 Violent winds last only a morning, A great rainfall is over in a day. Heaven and earth make sure . . . Violence does not endure. The second step in learning the meditation of healing color is to focus attention on the lower cinnabar field, the cen¬ ter of gravity below the solar plexus in the human body. This second step in Taoist meditation is done without reference to breathing, for the moment. The meditator assumes a comfort¬ able sitting position, perhaps by putting a cushion or pillow on the floor and sitting on the cushion cross-legged. As in the first step of the meditation, a chair, bench, or couch may also be used, whatever is at hand and comfortable. The hands may be folded in the lap, so that they are held directly in front and slightly below the navel, thus keeping the meditator aware of the place for focusing attention. 4 While in this position the attention is focused on a point two to three inches below the navel and two to three inches within, depending on the size and weight of the meditator. To become aware of this fulcrum or center of gravity in the body is the point of the meditation. Artists, athletes, truck drivers, cyclists, musicians, poets, and writers are said to be unconsciously aware of this intuitive focus when acting in their professional capacity. Thus a basketball 84 Centering Meditation; Colors That Heal © star shooting a basket, an artist’s brush stroke, the “golden sec¬ tion” in nature, are examples of centering focus. 5 An easy way to find the body’s center when sitting on a cushion is to place the palm of the hand just below the navel and rock back and forth. The center of the hand will be located on the pivot, the place that moves the least when rocking back and forth. Imagine a spot within the body behind the palm of the hand, about two or so inches inside. Consider this place to be the body’s center of gravity. The meditation of centering focuses attention on this place. Taoist art conceives of it as a “void chamber” in the body’s center. The meditator, by focusing attention on this point, brings the qi mental energies of the mind down into the lower cinnabar field. It is from here that intuitive awareness of the inner and outer cosmos begins to takes place. Focusing the mind’s attention on this place can be done as a process. One is first aware of the upper cinnabar field, that is, the very center of the human brain where the pineal gland is envisioned to be. The meditator is helped by imagining this place to be filled with a bright purple flame, which is made to move downward from the center of the brain to the throat, the pericardial region (the heart), lungs, belly, and finally come to rest in the lower cinnabar field. Thus, like an elevator moving from an upper floor to the basement, the mind is seen to be lowered into the belly and allowed to rest there, from which place it looks out¬ ward at reality. 6 Once that awareness of the external world is felt in the belly, the meditator can be compared to a diver with goggles who looks up at the surface of the water, watching things float by. The things floating on the surface of the mind far above, 85 The Gold Pavilion ® such as ideas, concepts, images, are like flotsam and jetsam drifting on the surface of the sea. The meditator no longer grasps on to these distant ideas but lets them drift away, out of reach of the mind peacefully at rest in the belly. Once the meditator has become adept at bringing the mind to rest in the lower cinnabar field, he or she may also envision the middle cinnabar field, the heart, with its red- robed ruler, the “human will” spirit, residing there. The heart spirit is seen to be enveloped in a red light. It too is led down by the imagination into the lower cinnabar field. Here it changes from an imperious ruler to a reddish pink-clad infant. Now the intellect and its qi energy and the heart with its will¬ ful shen spirit are both resting peacefully in the belly. At this point in the meditation the beginner is simply told to be aware of the centering place in the belly, and to look outward from this vantage point at the external world. 7 Meditation may be an entirely new experience for many who read about Taoist visualization techniques for the first time. The notion of awareness of the outside world from the body’s physical center may be an unfamiliar idea. It is useful to pause and reflect on its significance. Scientists debate the objectivity of intuitive feelings and the “sixth sense” in the realm of scientific investigation. There is certainly a universal awareness of intuitive perception. No culture or religious sys¬ tem can be said to have a monopoly on intuition, just as no language can be said to have a monopoly on logic." Whatever scientific arguments are used for or against intuition, the point of the centering meditation is simply to make the novice intensely aware of what is going on in the world outside the self without being impeded by mental distractions or willful 86 Centering Meditation; Colors That Heal © desires. The Taoist and Buddhist centering experience demon¬ strates that intuition alone, perception that does not rely on words for its comprehension, can make the meditator aware of transcendent or nonchanging presence. Peace of mind and heart are brought about by focusing on the permanent, non¬ changing aspects of reality. It is this taste that is savored in the first experience of the quiet intuitive center in the lower belly area. 9 A much simpler way of “meditating from the belly” (the lower cinnabar field) is simply to focus indirect attention on the area two to three inches below the navel and two to three inches within. This simple form of physical awareness can be done while driving a car, riding a bus, sitting in a church, tem¬ ple, or shrine, listening to a lecture, or doing any other activity, such as walking, swimming, or playing sports. The effect on the physical body is to give a sense of quiet well-being that remains unruffled in the presence of internal stress or external excitement. Focusing indirect attention on the lower peritoneal (solar plexus) area quiets the action of the mind, balances the will and judgment, and calms the nerves by taking attention away from mind-imposed images and worries. Whenever attention is focused in the belly, either directly or indirectly, worries in the mind and unfulfilled desires in the heart almost immediately cease to drain the body’s physical and mental energy. The realization that thoughts created in one’s mind exist only in one’s mind (certainly in no one else’s) is a rare insight to be cherished deeply. All mental thoughts and images are like leeches that suck blood and energy only as long as one leaves them there to do so. Peace of mind means in fact an 87 The Gold Pavilion © understanding freed from any form of lingering judgment and unforgiven offenses. The peace that ensues from this freedom heals the self from a myriad festering memories and begins the healing process. Getting rid of lingering images that recall stress and anx¬ iety is one of the first goals of the centering meditation. Once the mind is cleared and the heart freed from all manner of wor¬ ries, then the belly’s intuitive awareness of the inner and outer world become far more desirable than the former condition of constant worry about deadlines, homework, schedules, fail¬ ures, and what others are thinking or saying about one. With the mind and heart quieted, and the pressure to “do” and to “finish” work relieved, the same work is in fact accomplished far more efficiently. 10 Be happy when scolded, Fearful when praised. By the very fact that this body is alive, Difficulties and contradictions come to us. If we were dead, disasters wouldn’t occur. So value difficulties, if you value your life. Only when we forget selfish interests Can we be entrusted with ruling the world. Acquiring the ability to disregard bickering, scoldings, and unjust accusations is not as difficult as overcoming the desire for praise, fame, and the power ensuing from human acclaim and approval. In the teachings of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, praise and glory are far more dangerous to well-being than disrespect, scold¬ ings, or blame. To transcend all forms of mental illusions, whether from personal or social sources, is to heal (make whole) 88 Centering Meditation; Colors That Heal © much of the illness arising from within the human heart and mind. The emptying of the mind of worry and self-illusion is achieved by the meditation of centering. The teachings of Chuang-tzu on xinzhai heart fasting and zuowang sitting in forgetfulness are put into practice by this simple technique. When attention is focused on the belly the mind becomes like a mirror, which does not store up images but simply reflects and lets go: The person who has touched Too Uses the heart like a mirror Not reaching out, not holding on, Responding, but not storing inside. Thus he can overcome self and not harm others." The meditation that empties heart and mind makes the medi¬ tator “touch” or be one with the transcendent Tao. In the words of Chuang-tzu, “We/ dao ji xu,” Only Tao dwells in the void [center]. In such a state of quiet centering, the meditator can see and respond to the needs of those around without exhaust¬ ing his or her own source of qi energy, and can thus heal rather than harm others. The teachings of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu summarized in chapter 2 are now even more meaningful to the meditator who has achieved sitting in forgetfulness and heart fasting. The inten¬ sification of awareness of nature’s changes around the meditator makes the very experience of wind, rain, sky, thunder, stars, sun¬ rise, and sunset far more important than watching evening tele¬ vision or following the human tragedies exploited in the daily press. The traditional Taoist master who teaches meditation gives 89 The Gold Pavilion © up any form of exterior distraction, including movies, television, newspapers, novels, lectures, and conferences, to maintain this sense of peace and unity with the transcendent Tao hidden behind and gestating and nourishing the changes seen in nature. The meditator is told to “listen to the quiet intervals in between the rustling of leaves and the song of the wind.” Like the quiet between breaking waves and the sky at dawn and sunset, nature’s most beautiful sounds and colors are found by listening to the “flute of heaven [Tao]” that is heard in quiet stillness. 12 The meditation of awareness of Tao’s presence within the lower cinnabar field, the centering meditation beneath the solar plexus, soon becomes an almost continuous form of meditative awareness for the practitioner. Friends comment on the new sense of peace found in the person who practices this medita¬ tion. Worries about livelihood, reputation, glory, and success are lessened and eventually extinguished. The Joy of centering meditation removes the need for other kinds of gratification. The “high” achieved by certain kinds of drugs and alcohol, the straining need for addictive substances, are obstacles to peace and awareness. 13 Storing Colors in the Five Organs Once the centering meditation has been learned, the novice is led by the master into the world of color visualization and storing. There are many ways of visualizing colors. The easiest way is to have a bouquet of flowers nearby, or a garden outside the window. A deep forest in the mountains, the 90 Centering Meditation; Colors That Heal seashore at sunrise or sunset, or one’s own room are all good places for meditation. Some people have strong imaginations and can visualize a color as soon as the meditation teacher names it. Others need to have the color nearby to see it con¬ cretely before visualizing and circulating it meditatively through the body. It is best to buy bright flowers or artistic pic¬ tures with bright colors, and have these at hand when doing the meditation for the first time. Once accustomed to the med¬ itation it can be done anywhere without the need for art or nature as an aid.' 4 The colors are chosen according to the time of the year, month, day, and hour of the meditation. The choice approxi¬ mates the following chart: Color Time Image Season Lunar Months Body Tone Direction green 7—11 AM. grass spring first, second liver C# east red 1-3 P.M. rose summer fourth, fifth heart D# south white 3-5 p.m. sun autumn seventh, eighth lungs F# west violet 7-9 p.m. purple orchid winter tenth, eleventh kidneys at north gold noon, gold midnight, sunrise, sunset third, sixth, ninth twelfth spleen A# center The time of the day, month, direction, and musical note evoke the color and healing power of the corresponding ele¬ ment. 15 For the novice learning the meditation for the first time, seeing the colors and circulating them through the body are key steps in learning the healing process. Each color has a spe¬ cific healing role. The meditation is taught as follows: Meditation on bright green. Choose a comfortable place to sit quietly, free from drafts and distracting noises. One may sit 91 The Gold Pavilion © cross-legged on a cushion, on a chair, by the seashore, in a mountain forest, or on a park bench, wherever one pleases. Begin the meditation by centering, as taught earlier in this chap¬ ter. When the mind and heart are freed from distractions, envi¬ sion or look at a bright green color directly in the foreground of your attention. See this green color to be refreshing like green grass in spring, light reflecting from moss in a deep forest, the bright green of an emerald, or the refreshing fragrance of pine needles. Breathe in this green through the nostrils, and see the color circulate through the body like a renewing aroma. Follow the bright green color with the eyes of the imagination as it cir¬ culates through the body. Bring it down to the toes and up the backbone, over the top of the head and down to the mouth. From there exhale the breath quietly, and again use the imagi¬ nation to examine the exhaled breath to see if it is a pure bright green, or if it has been sullied by picking up worries, cares, and unhealthy elements as it passed through the body. 16 Repeat the meditation several times, until a bright green color is envisioned when the breath is expelled. Bright green represents the restoring powers of spring that revivify and refresh the body’s energies. During this process whatever cares or worries may have remained after the first step of centering are further cleansed. When the meditator can visualize a pure bright green color, the conclusion of the meditation takes place. The purified green color is imagined in front of the meditator. It is breathed into the body and stored in the liver. The meditator must see in the eyes of the imagination the liver as being on the right side of the body, just below the rib cage. To assist the meditation, the Taoist presses the tip of the thumb of the left hand to the 92 Centering Meditation; Colors That Heal © middle joint of the index finger on the left hand. This mudra is used to store the revivifying green color in the liver and recall it for healing whenever the healing of cares, worries, or anxiety is needed . 17 • The color green can henceforth be used to renew the body when tired. Sitting on a green lawn, walking through a pine forest, seeing moss growing on stones, are all occasions when healing green can be stored in the liver. After a tiring lec¬ ture, a day at the office, or a drive on a busy highway, the sim¬ ple act of walking on a green lawn or listening to the leaves of trees stimulates the body to a sense of restored vitality and wholeness. Meditation on bright pink or red. Sitting again in a favorite meditation spot, feel your awareness focus on the cen¬ tering position. Imagine a warm, caring color of bright pink or red that is a sign of love or affection. This can easily be done by either imagining or having a freshly blossoming pink-red rose in front of you. With the eyes of the imagination see this bright pink-red color fill a sphere directly in front of you. Breath the bright red color into the body through the nose and see it circulate through the entire body as described in the meditation on green. The bright red color cleans the entire body of any resident feelings of anger, frustration, and vengeance. Breathe the color out through the mouth, and repeat the meditation several times, until any vestiges of anger, unfulfilled desires, and indignation are removed. When the bright pink-red color dominates the conscious¬ ness and fills the interior with a sense of benevolence, then with the eyes of the imagination see it to be poured into the heart and stored there. To assist in this process, the Taoist presses the 93 The Gold Pavilion © tip of the thumb of the left hand to the tip of the middle finger, a mudra or hand symbol linking the season summer, the direc¬ tion south, the element fire, and the heart together into a single meditative unit. Henceforth the color pink can be summoned from the heart by using this mudra to quell anger, opposition, and concupiscence. The pink-red color can be evoked to arouse a sense of benevolence within oneself and in others. 1 " Meditation on bright white. The color bright white, seen as rays from the afternoon sun, purifies the lungs and the entire body of any sullying images from the realm of sensuality, greed, and corruption. The bright white light breathed into the body in this meditation sees through artifice, deception, and pretense, totally emptying the mind of any trace of selfish power, desire for fame, or aggrandizement. Healing is effective only when motives are pure and selfless. When sitting in a favorite meditation place, envision the bright white rays of the afternoon sun as enveloping the body . 19 First become aware of the body’s focal center, and then breathe the bright white rays of the sun into the body through the nose. See them circulate everywhere, cleansing the body of aches and pains, purifying the mind of selfish thoughts and impure motives. When doing this meditation, those who smoke often see the lungs filled with the tar stains of tobacco, while those whose minds are filled with worries see blockages and dark obstacles as the bright light passes through the upper part of the body or the top of the head. Worries and stains are breathed out through the mouth. Perform the meditation several times, until the imagination sees the bright white light breathed out of the mouth to be pure and unsullied. The meditator then breathes the white light of the sun into 94 Centering Meditation; Colors That Heal © the lungs and stores it there while pressing the thumb of the left hand to the middle Joint of the ring finger on the left hand. This mudra or hand symbol, which presses the thumb to the ring fin¬ ger, touches the meditative meridian or connecting point between the lungs, the west, the season of autumn, and the element metal. The element metal can be envisioned as a bright silver sword that cuts away all selfishness, pretense, and fraudulent ideas from the mind and protects the body from evil. On the sword are inscribed the seven stars of the Big Dipper, Ursa Major, the constellation in the northern heavens that always points to true north. The Big Dipper is the symbol and model of Taoist practice, keeping the meditator’s mind, heart, and belly always focused on the Tao in the center. Henceforth the color white is invoked to purify the mind, will, and senses. Meditation on bright purple. The color purple brings health to the kidneys, renews the creative process within the mind, and leads to a sense of deep peace (the alpha state) dur¬ ing meditation . 20 Some Taoist masters (of Dragon-Tiger Mountain in Jiangxi Province and Mao Shan near Nanjing) immediately visualize the color purple emanating from the upper cinnabar field, the pineal gland area, when performing the centering meditation. An orchid, morning glory, or some other flower of a deep purple-blue tone can be used to assist the beginner to visualize the color purple. The meditator sees the color purple diffuse throughout the body, bringing feelings of peace, relaxation, and refreshing re¬ creation to the entire person. This meditation can be performed before an important examination or interview, to arouse a sense of creativity and intuitive insight. When the purple aura has purified the mind, heart, and senses, it is stored in the kidneys. 95 The Gold Pavilion © The meditator presses the tip of the left thumb to the base of the third or middle finger (at the spot where the finger joins the hand). This meridian connects the kidneys to the direction north, the element water, and the season winter. Meditation on healing gold-yellow. The last of the healing color meditations suffuses the person meditating in a bright gold-yellow. The color of bright yellow is the most impor¬ tant meditative color, since it changes negative feelings of the body, judgments of the mind, and worries of the heart into pos¬ itive healing powers . 21 The meditator may envision a bright yel¬ low flower or a glowing gold-yellow light that surrounds the per¬ son meditating and is breathed in through the nose and dif¬ fused throughout the body. Any negative colors such as dull yellow (negative judgments) or dull green (pain or illness) are washed away as the gold color flows through the arteries and veins. The meditation can be repeated several times, until a bright gold-yellow dominates the imagination. The meditator presses the middle joint of the third finger on the left hand with the tip of the left thumb and stores the gold color in the spleen when the meditation is concluded. For those who cannot easily control the imagination or visualization of this or any of the above colors, it suffices to be aware of the bright yellow of a flower or the polished gold of a statue, a piece of art, or jewelry to perform the meditation. Followers of religions that censure the use of statues and images can perform the meditation by contemplating sacred words or geometric patterns, as in the religious art of Islam. Buddhism in its Theravada, Mahayana, andTantric forms makes use of gold in most sacred images. A rich source of color visualization can be found in all religious and cultural traditions . 22 96 Centering Meditation; Colors That Heal © Meditating on the five colors is analogous to contemplat¬ ing the five spirits of the seasons, directions, musical notes (sound), fragrances, tastes, and bodily organs. The Taoist priest and Tantric Buddhist monk perform these meditations in a more elaborate manner. The five directions are envisioned to be a grand mandala or geometric design of a centered cosmos. In each of the five directions, in the many squares or circles of the mandala, and in each corresponding organ of the human body the meditator envisions a spirit to reside. The spirit is envi¬ sioned in exact detail. It is then meditatively “changed” into a sacred symbol such as a Sanskrit word or a flower, then into a color. Finally it is burned or washed away in the meditator’s imagination so that nothing is left. This process is described more fully in chapter 4, the interpretative translation of the Gold Pavilion classic. The layperson need not envision the spirits in the same detail required of the Taoist or the Tibetan Tantric monk. The process of seeing and storing the colors in the body is sufficient to bring about the quelling of mental judgment and inordinate desires. The meditations of emptying described in chapter 4 are as easy to practice as those described here. Though the text of the Gold Pavilion classic is complicated (the text is kept deliberately obscure, elliptical, sometimes even repetitive), the method itself is simple. The commentary immediately following each passage shows that behind the complicated system of symbols the method is indeed quite easy to follow, even for per¬ sons other than a Taoist priest or monk. Purity of mind and heart, the ascetics of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, are the only requirements of the person who would proceed further. 97 © C H A P T E R FOUR The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation he text of the Gold Pavilion classic is found in the numbered lines, fol¬ lowed by line-by-line commentary that explains the cryptic meaning of the text. See the glossary for a list of terms. First Stanza (Lines 1-7) 1 Lao-tzu, dwelling alone, made these seven word refrains, 2 To cast off body and all spirit form. 3 Above is Gold Pavilion, below primordial pass; 4 Behind the yu-chueh dark palace; in front of the gate of life. 5 Breathe in and out, between grass hut and cinnabar field; 6 Jade pool pure water, poured on spirit root. 7 All who can perfect this, constantly meditate [on Tao present]. line 1 To dwell alone means to void mind and heart of wor¬ ries, judgments, and images. 99 The Gold Pavilion © Line 2 The purpose of the Gold Pavilion classic is to teach the meditator to castoff all attachment to bodily form, and all of the spirits or spiritual forces that dwell in the microcosm, thus creating inner peace and emptiness. Line 3 The Gold Pavilion is a “void space” above the kid¬ neys, in the body’s focal point, the physical center of gravity. It is the void center of the body’s microcosm, from whence the Tao gestates the One breath; Two yang; and Three yin, as in the Tao-te Ching, chapter 42. The One is breath or ch’i, which governs intellect, thought, in the upper cinnabar field, the head. The Two is yang or shen soul, which rules as king of the body, the power of will, in the central cinnabar field, the heart. The Three is yin, the power of intuition ching, which is located in the lower cinnabar field approximately two inches below the navel and three inches within, directly in front of the kidneys. Primordial pass, kuan- yiian, is a specific point used in acupuncture, referring to the external access point that gives entrance to the lower cinnabar field, the “ocean of breath.” The kuan-yuan or primordial pass is the entrance to the Gold Pavilion, where the mind focuses or concentrates attention on the transcendent Tao during the meditation. Line 4 The yu-chiieh acupuncture point is below the navel, through which the two kidneys can be accessed. The mingmen gate of life is an acupuncture point on the back, in front of which the primordial pass and the kidneys are located. The inte¬ rior yu-chiieh dark palace, the gateway to the Gold Pavilion and Tao’s presence within the body, is located between the two kid¬ neys, midway between front and back. The acupuncture points wo The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation © guide the meditator to the places where the mind focuses during meditation. Line 5 The grass hut for inhaling and exhaling refers to the lungs. Air drawn into the lungs is visualized to circulate from the lungs and pericardial region (the area surrounding the heart) down to the lower cinnabar field and back up again. The heart is the organ identified with fire and heat purgation, while the kidneys are the source of coolness and water purification. The ch’i is seen to circulate within this furnace, pumped in a cir¬ cular motion by the bellows of the lungs. The meditation burns, washes away, and purifies all thoughts and desires, and all spir¬ itual images, before the intuitive audience with the Tao in the Gold Pavilion can be experienced. Line 6 The term jade pool has two meanings: the throat, down which saliva is swallowed to be mixed with breath in the belly; and the two kidneys, in which the ch’i, first purged by the heart’s fire, is now purified by the waters of the kidney. Once purified by fire and water, the mind’s ch’i, heart’s will, and belly’s intuition are poured into the Gold Pavilion, to be nour¬ ished by awareness of Tao’s presence. Line 7 All, men and women alike, who are able to practice this method can attain a constant awareness of Tao’s gestating presence within, giving birth to the “One, Two, Three . . . ,” as in the forty-second chapter of the Tao-teChing. The word ts’un, or “meditate” can also be translated as to exist, to keep. Second Stanza (lines 8-13) 8 The human in the center pavilion dressed in clothes of red, wi The Gold Pavilion © 9 Closes and bolts the double doors of the Gold Pavilion gates. 10 The dark pavilion is the entrance [to the Gold Pavilion] towering above, 11 For ching [intuition] and ch’i breath purified in the lower cinnabar field. 12 The jade pool’s [kidneys’] clear water ascends, made fertile [in the Gold Pavilion]; 13 Spirit’s source is strong and firm, till old age it never weakens. Line 8 The red-robed person who enters the Gold Pavilion in meditation'is the will, or the shen spirit, normally lodged in the heart, the body’s middle cinnabar field. The color of the heart is red; it controls the element fire, the direction south, and the season summer. Line 9 The will, once focused in the Gold Pavilion, closes the two gateways, the hsilan or male yang doorway, which allows breath to enter, and the p’in or female yin gate, which let’s ch’i thoughts and ching intuition slip away. The will thus provides the key to lock the gates of the Gold Pavilion, keeping mind and intuitive awareness focused within on the Tao. The passage can have three references: the purely physical; the yogic discipline of holding one’s breath; and the purely spiritual sense of focus¬ ing on the Tao. The Taoist Mao Shan Shang-ch’ing (Shangqing) tradition attributed to Lady Wei Huacun allows only the third, meditative sense, focusing attention on the Tao. Line 10 The yu-chiieh dark gateway between the kidneys is here the place of meditative attention. The Gold Pavilion is seen to tower above this spot: the meditator looks upward in awe from the lower cinnabar field, seeing the ch’i breath and ching intuitive awareness first purified by heart’s fire and 102 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation © kidney’s water, then circulated upward to Tao’s presence in the Gold Pavilion. Line 11 In the middle of the lower cinnabar field (between the two kidneys, the center of gravity of the body) ch’i breath and ching awareness are refined. Line 1 2 When the jade pool (two kidneys), with their pure water, refine the intuition, it ascends and is made fertile and life-bearing within the Gold Pavilion. The commentary expresses here the theory of ordinary and purified breath. When the mind’s atten¬ tion is focused on the exterior world (when the five senses expand outward to the exterior world of change, also called the hou-t’ien posterior heavens), then the breath is impure. When the five senses are closed to the exterior world and focused on the Gold Pavilion (the hsien-t’ien prior heavens where the Tao of non¬ change dwells), then breath is purified. Breath and intuition, now made aware of Tao’s presence, do not flow away. Line 13 The source or root of spiritual awareness, the ability to focus on Tao’s presence, is strengthened and solidified by this meditation on the Gold Pavilion. The Gold Pavilion is the t’ai-chi, the void place within the microcosm of the body, where the wuchi, the wuwei chih tao, or the Tao of Transcendent Act, is present. The text states that this awareness does not weaken even in old age; the meditator focused on the Tao is in fact out¬ side the world of change and thus does not age. Third Stanza (lines 14-19) H The central pond (heart) has a master who wears crimson clothes; 103 The Gold Pavilion @ 15 Three inches below this field is where the shen spirit dwells. 16 Link to the outer and inner worlds, repeatedly disconnect them; 17 The center of the spirit’s dwelling must be kept in order [free of judgment]. is The upper chest, ch’i breath’s passage, is intuition’s fu tally; 19 Quickly strengthen ching awareness, then of itself attention is focused. Line 14 The central pond is the pericardial region, or the middle cinnabar field. The shen spirit rules over the body as “will” from this region. Red clothing signifies that the heart rules over the element fire, the direction south, and the season summer. Line 15 The shen soul-spirit resides three inches below the top of the pericardial area, below the acupuncture point where the third rib bones join in the center of the chest: the middle cinnabar field. Line 16 The role of the shen spirit in the meditation is to keep the five senses (sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch) from rushing outward to focus on the judgments, thoughts, and desires of the outer world. Line 17 The shen spirit’s dwelling itself must be continually swept and kept clean from judgment, sensual attraction, fame, and glory, a teaching from the inner chapters of the Chuang- tzu. Line 18 The hsiian-ying upper rib cage and the ch’i-kuan air pipes or conductors of breath (by mental attention) are here 104 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation © personified. The spiritual forces governing these functions make a fu talismanic contract with the ching intuitive powers of the belly, to keep attention focused on the Tao. Line 19 The very act of focusing attention on Tao’s presence in the Gold Pavilion is so strengthening that the intuition holds on to the sense of transcendent awareness and does not allow itself to be drawn away. Fourth Stanza (lines 20-23) 20 In the central hall there is a master, always dressed in red. 21 If you can envision him, sickness can be crushed. 22 From this center vertically, one foot up and down, 23 If you can circulate breath here, there will be no ill. Line 2 0 The red-robed spirit within the heart purifies the depths of one’s own nature. The heart that is at peace, freed from negative thoughts and judgments, preserves the entire body from illness. Line 2 1 The red fires of the heart, through meditative vision, purify the body of all sickness and empty the mind of all nega¬ tive thoughts. Healing (wholeness) and peace result from thus purifying the heart. Line 2 2 The breath is circulated from the nose downward to the fires of the heart and then to the waters of the kidney. From there it is sent back upward again and expelled through the mouth. The elliptical circulation of breath is approximately a Chinese ch’ih foot in diameter. Line 2 3 The man or woman who can guard the mind and 105 The Gold Pavilion ® heart from negative thoughts and selfish desires, by visualizing the circulation and purification of breath, thereby causes the entire body to be healthy. Illness is seen as a result of negative judgments, desires, and feelings. The meditation on circulating breath visually expels these evils. Fifth Stanza (lines 24-29) 24 Breathing in and out within the [Gold] interior pavilion will renew the self; 25 By preserving constant inner ch’i focus, the body is filled with blessing. 26 Inside the fang-ts’un [Gold Pavilion], carefully cover and store ch’i. 27 Shen spirit and ching intuition returned there, though old, are made new. 28 Through the dark palace make them flow, down to the lower realm. 29 Nourish your jade tree, now a youth again. Line 2 4 The focus is now changed to the lower cinnabar field and the entrance to the Gold Pavilion. Ch’i breath and ching awareness, once purified by fire and water, are restored to their primordial ageless condition. Line 2 5 When breath (mind’s attention) and ching (emo¬ tions, intuition) do not flow away after things in the world of change, the body does not age. Line 26 Ch’i, the mind’s attention, must remain centered in the Gold Pavilion. Centering, or "focusing on the belly,’’ keeps ch’i from dissipating. 10 6 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation Line 2 7 The shen spirit or will, and the ching sense of intu¬ itive awareness, alchemically refined by fire and water, are also renewed and sent into the Gold Pavilion. The man or woman who meditates thus becomes a child again. The Gold Pavilion is called fang-ts’un (square inch) here, indicating the spot two inches below the navel, three inches within, where the mind is focused. Line 28 One visualizes ch’i, shen, and ching (intellect, will, and intuition) circulating down through the dark chamber between the kidneys into the Gold Pavilion. Line 29 The term jade tree refers here to the sinews of primor¬ dial breath that run through the body and vivify it. When con¬ nected to the gestating power of the Tao within the Gold Pavilion, breath is restored to its primordial state. By nourish¬ ing primordial breath, the eternal youth within the self is renewed and the body made strong by Tao’s gestating presence. The commentary rejects the way of sexual hygiene, calling it a lewd, non-Taoist practice. Sixth Stanza (lines 30-34) 30 When Tao is touched, there is no disturbance, no confusion; 31 The ling t’ai [heart] meets heaven in the central field [Gold Pavilion]. 32 From square inch [Gold Pavilion] center, down to the [dark] gate, 33 The soul’s doorway to the Jade Chamber’s [Gold Pavilion’s] core is there. 34 All say that this is what thou, O Master, will teach us! 107 The Gold Pavilion © Line 30 From long ago until today, there has been only one pathway to the Tao: the way of peace and simplicity. The Tao is found without outwardly striving or inner confusion. Peace and simplicity must be found in both worlds, the invisible cosmos of the mind-spirit and the visible world touched by the body. Line 3 1 The term ling-t’ai, spirit pavilion, means the heart. The central field is the Gold Pavilion, where the soul has audi¬ ence with heaven, and Tao. Line 3 2 Not only the soul-spirit but ch’i breath and ching intuition as well must enter the Gold Pavilion through the dark pass, as stated in line 10. The attention is now focused on this entrance. Line 3 3 Again the teaching is repeated: the gateway to the Gold Pavilion and the Tao’s presence is the dark chamber, the lower cinnabar field between the kidneys, the physical center of gravity of the body. Line 3 4 The master of the method, Kung-tzu, is here inter¬ preted to be the first of the Taoist trinity (San-ch’ing, the Three Pure Ones), Primordial Heavenly Worthy, Yiian-shih T’ien- tsun. Primordial Heavenly Worthy teaches that the Tao gestates and renews primordial breath from within the Gold Pavilion. Seventh Stanza (lines 35-46) 35 The ming-t’ang [heart], in all four directions, is cleansed in ocean’s depths, 36 Oh true [Tao-realized] person, a lone cinnabar sphere, see it here before you! 37 In the three passages, ching and ch’i are deep; 108 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation © 38 If you desire long life, refine Mount K’un-lun. 39 The red palace layered tower has twelve stories; 40 Within its palace chambers the five breaths are stored. 41 The child of the red-walled city stands in the central pond. 42 Beneath it is a great wall, a mystery valley city. 43 The secrets of eternal birth, within this chamber are urgent. 44 Cast out all lewd immoral desires, only conserve ching essence. 45 The one-inch field in a foot-high cottage can then govern birth. 46 Forge the pill, constantly focus attention, heart kept at peace. Line 35 The ming-t’ang bright palace was the structure used by the kings of early China and then by the emperor from the Han dynasty onward to sacrifice to the four seasons and five directions. Here it refers to the heart and the other four organs inside the body, which correspond as follows to the directions, elements, and seasons of the outer world: Organ Direction Season Color Element Number Symbol Spirit liver east spring green wood 3 dragon Fu Hsi heart south summer red fire 2 phoenix Shen Nung spleen center human gold earth 5 cauldron Huang Ti lungs west autumn white metal 4 tiger Shao Hao kidneys north winter purple water 1 tortoise Chiian Hsu The term hai-yuan or ocean depths refers to the kidneys. Thus the heart and the other organs, the elements, directions, mind’s thoughts, and heart’s desires are all to be fa, governed or washed pure in the water of the kidneys before having audience with the Tao in the Gold Pavilion. 109 The Gold Pavilion ® Line 36 The chen-jen, literally the “true” human, is a person who “sits in forgetfulness” and “fasts in the heart.” Only Tao dwells within the center of the person who is empty, according to the Chuang-tzu, chapter 4. The "lone cinnabar sphere” refers to the center of the Gold Pavilion where a bright red drop of light, Tao gestating primordial breath, appears before the med¬ itator. Line 3 7 The term san kuan, three passes, has multiple mean¬ ings, depending on the interpretation given the passage. For the Taoist master it means the passages of ch’i breath, shen will, and ching intuition, sent inward to the Gold Pavilion or out¬ ward to the world of change. The text says that the three pas¬ sages (in this case into the Gold Pavilion) are filled with ch’i breath, mind’s focus, and ching intuition, belly’s awareness. Mind controls the passage of ch’i from the upper cinnabar field, the pineal gland in the brain. Heart controls the passage of will- desire and the flow of words outward through the mouth and the hands to attain desires. The lower cinnabar field, the organs of the belly and the lower body, controls the outward flow of ching (emotional and intuitive awareness) and other fluids, wastes, and dispositions of the body. Intuitive awareness pre¬ serves ching within. Note that the sexual hygiene school takes ching in the lit¬ eral sense of semen, teaching that the male should not let semen flow away during intercourse, to nourish his own body instead with the retained semen. The female in turn is taught not to reach orgasm in order to “steal” the male essences and to preserve her own bodily fluids. Both the classical Taoist schools and reformed Ch’iian-chen Taoism reject all practice of no The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation 0 sexual hygiene as non-Taoist, a form of selfish and self-centered practice unrelated to Lao-tzu or Chuang-tzu. If taken in the meditative rather than the physical sense, the three passages are conduits of ch’i breath awareness, shen will, and ching intu¬ itive feelings inward to the Gold Pavilion or outward to be dis¬ sipated in search of fame, name, and possessions. The three outward paths are the nose and mouth for breath, the mouth and hands for will’s desires, and the lower organs of the body for sensual gratification. The three inward passages are the brain center, the pineal gland (called Mount K’un-lun in the next line); the twelve stages of the spine (between the head and the heart) through which ch’i energy circulates; and the heart (pericardial area) itself. Note that access to the three passages through acupuncture are the weilu coccyx or sternum; the hsia- chi point on the upper spine; and the yu-shen on the back of the skull, access points to nourishing ching, shen, and ch’i. Line 3 8 The person who desires to escape the dying process, to keep intuition, breath, and will from flowing away, must nourish and perfect Mount K’un-lun, the pineal gland in the brain’s center, from which (in modern terms by melatonin and other hormones) the body’s ch’i energy is nourished. Line 3 9 Likewise such a person must focus on circulating breath from the center of the brain (Mount K’un-lun) down¬ ward to the heart and upward along the twelve points of the spine to the pineal gland, in a continually nourishing process. Line 40 The five colors or vapors of the five elemental ener¬ gies, that is, the green energy of spring from the liver, the summer red of the heart, the autumn white of the lungs, the ill The Gold Pavilion 0 dark winter of the kidneys, and the bright gold of the spleen are seen in meditative vision to be stored in the heart region. The tail of the Big Dipper revolving continuously in the heavens points to the direction from which the meditation (color visual¬ ization) begins. If the tail of the Big Dipper points east, then the meditator begins by bringing the color green from the liver into the heart region, and so forth in ordered succession (south, west, north, center). Line 4 1 The youthful spirit of the heart is like a child stand¬ ing in the middle of a pool, bathed in the aura of the five colors. Line 4 2 “Beneath it is a great wall” refers to the jen ( ren ) pas¬ sage of acupuncture points that pass down the front of the body from the chin to the toes, and the tu (du) passage that runs from the heels upward along the spine to the top of the head and back down to the nose, through which the colors are circu¬ lated. The city in the mysterious valley refers to the kidneys and the passageway between them to the Gold Pavilion. Line 43 The secrets of eternal birth are urgent in the Gold Pavilion. Line 44 The secular interpretation of the text, that immoral or lewd desire for sexual hygiene is meant here, is rejected. Line 4 5 The term ts’un fieri, one-inch field, refers to the male yang principle, here interpreted to be the mixture of east’s spring green and south’s summer red within the Gold Pavilion, symbolized by a blue dragon and the trigram ch’ien. The term ch’ih-t’a, foot-high cottage, refers to the female yin principle, a 112 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation © combination of west’s autumn white and north’s winter dark¬ ness, mixed together in the Gold Pavilion to produce a white tiger and the trigram k’un (see page 121). The sexual hygiene school interprets the text to mean the joining of male and female organs. The spiritual or physical interpretation of the entire Gold Pavilion classic rests on these lines. The commen¬ tator chuckles at the non-Taoist use of this passage for physical purposes. To so misuse the text is to miss the core of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu’s teaching on the Tao. Line 4 6 By “forming the sphere,” by remaining constantly aware of Tao’s presence within the Gold Pavilion, the heart is at peace. Eighth Stanza (lines 47-52) 47 Watch the will, a wandering spirit, the three strange powers; 48 Only when emptied and void is the heart filled with peace. 49 Constantly focus on the Jade Pavilion, bright spirit will be present. so At all times retain the vast deep blue, never hunger or thirst. 5 1 Thus you will make the six ting (yin ) ladies have audience there. 52 Close off intuition’s outward path, eternal life is yours. Line 4 7 When the will is activated, it becomes a wandering spirit, always looking outward to satisfy the heart’s desires. The three sources of a wandering will are the "three worms,” here called three ling, soul powers. The first worm resides in the head, destroying ch’i energy by judgments. The second worm resides in the heart, destroying the will with desires for fame, wealth, and glory. The third worm dwells in the belly, causing 113 The Gold Pavilion ® ching emotions and intuitive awareness to flow away after plea¬ sure and sensations. Line 48 Only when the heart-mind "fasts,” abstains from judgments and selfish desires, is the soul truly at peace. Line 4 9 By awareness of Tao’s presence in the Gold Pavilion, the whole body and all of its spiritual energies are enlightened, filled with a bright light. The term shen-ming can also mean “bright spirits,” a term taken from folk religion referring to the spiritual forces of nature that bring blessing to humankind. But the commentary takes the term to mean that breath, spirit, and intuitive essence are thereby "made bright,” enlightened by Tao’s presence. Line 5 0 The thirst and hunger of the soul forTao presence is satisfied by meditating in timely fashion on the Great Void, here seen as a deep sky blue. The heart cavity is visualized to be filled with the deep blue-purple aura of primordial breath, cleansing it of all thoughts and desires. Thirst and hunger for outer things are quelled by color visualization and inner focus. Line 5 1 The six ting ladies refers to the six lines of the trigram k’un, the symbol of purified yin. Tao inseminates primordial breath into nature at the winter solstice, when yin is purest. The six ting ladies enter the heart and the Gold Pavilion. The body is filled with the blue-purple vapors of primordial breath, there¬ by bringing about ch’ang-sheng, eternal birthing. Line 5 2 By closing off access of intuitive awareness to the outer world and focusing on Tao’s presence in the center of the microcosm, one touches the principle of eternal life. Note that 114 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation © the awareness of the center is nourished by focusing the mind’s eye on the circulation of breath from the throat to the lungs, down the yen passage in the front of the body to the feet, upward along the tu passage behind the legs through the back¬ bone to the top of the head, and back down to the tip of the nose. Impure, angry, and negative thoughts are expelled by breathing outward through the mouth, while pure air is breathed in and circulated again from the nose. One assists the imagination to observe this process by consciously following it with half-closed eyes. As the ch’i is visualized to come up the spine and over the top of the head, the eyes roll upward in the sockets and then down again, following the breath as it is expelled through the mouth. In similar fashion, the eyes follow the circulation of the blue-purple breath from the heart down to the kidneys and upward again in the lesser circle, from the lower stomach and backbone upward to the top of the rib cage. Ninth Stanza (lines 53 -56) 53 In the middle of the central room, when spirit does there dwell, 54 The heart is cleansed of itself, not touched by the impure. 55 Visualize the five upper organs ( wu-tsang) in time with the seasons. 56 Perfect, control the six lower organs ( liu-fu ), clean as purest white. Line 5 3 These four lines are spoken by the six ting lady spir¬ its, 1 teaching how the heart and the bodily organs are purified by the Gold Pavilion classic meditations. The cheng-shih central or "true” room is the Gold Pavilion. The spirit of the heart, ruler of the body, is meant to dwell there. 115 The Gold Pavilion © Line 5 4 When the heart spirit is purified, all things fall into place by themselves. No sullied things or impurities can stain the clean of heart. Line 55 Meditate on each of the five organs in timely fashion, for example, the liver is filled with bright green vapor in spring in the annual cycle, or between dawn and 11:00 a.m. in the daily cycle of sun and moon. If following the daily movements of the Big Dipper in the heavens, the Taoist meditates on liver, green, wood, spring, and the first key of the Lydian scale when the tail of the dipper points to the eastern quadrant. This sys¬ tem is explained more fully in a later section of the text. The organs follow in order: liver east spring green mi morning 1st and 2nd lunar months heart south summer red sol afternoon 4th and 5th lunar months lungs west autumn white do evening 7th and 8th lunar months kidneys north winter purple-blue re night 10 and 11th lunar months spleen center gold la noon- midnight 3rd, 6th, 9th, and 12th lunar months Line 5 6 The six lower organs, the stomach, colon, large and small intestines, gallbladder, urinary bladder, and the triple conduits (food, drink, ch’i breath), are affected by emotional attachment. Joy, sorrow, happiness, sadness, and anger, are controlled here. By awareness of Tao in the Gold Pavilion, the emotions are kept pure. A bright white color is envisioned to fill the lower body, bright as the whitest snow. Tenth Stanza (lines 57-64) 57 When in the void transcendent state Tao is present of itself. 58 When things are let to be of themselves, affairs are no bother. 116 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation 0 59 Like ch’ui-hung [North Star] nonmoving, the body is at peace. 60 The void dwelling place of the transcendent is within the tent, 6 1 Alone, in this solitary vast expanse, the mouth is speechless. 62 Quiet, unsullied, no desires, the wanderer arrives in the garden; 63 Clear, calm, fragrant, chaste, Jade Ladies are present. 64 Perfect the te breath, light pervades, gateway to the Tao. Line 5 7 The term hsu refers to the heart-mind, which must be kept pure and void of all images and desires. Wu is the Tao, which eternally spins forth the single thread of ch’i breath, as in the Tao-te Ching, chapter 6, which is never exhausted. The Tao is of itself, tzu “of itself,” jan, “it is thus.” When the heart-mind is void, the Tao’s presence is made known tzu-jan of itself. Line 58 Wu refers to the myriad creatures that are spun forth from the Tao, as in the Tao-te Ching, chapter 42 (Tao births the One, Two, Three, and the myriad creatures). These things too, when left alone to be as they are ( tzu of themselves, jan as they are), cause no trouble. Line 5 9 If we are like ch’ui-hung, the North Star, immobile in the northern heavens while the cosmos circles around it, then our whole self will be at peace. Line 60 The void dwelling place of the Tao is like a great tent or pavilion, inside of which the soul rests. The allusion here is to huntun (Hundun, in the seventh chapter of the Chuang-tzu), inside of which the two children, yang and yin, love to play. Line 61 Inside of this vast expanse, face-to-face with Tao’s presence, the mouth can utter no words. Line 62 When the mind is clear and unsullied, and the heart 117 The Gold Pavilion © is without desires, then the soul is free to wander in this garden of primordial breath. The term te (as in Tao-te Ching) is a syn¬ onym for ch’i, t’ai-chi, yii-wei chih tao (immanent Tao), and huntun (primordial nondifferentiation). Line 6 3 The term yii-nu or Jade Ladies refers to the six lines of the trigram k’un, the purest form of earth, yin. When the heart-mind is fragrant with quiet and purity, the six yin ladies, symbols of the te of line 62, are present in the Gold Pavilion, singing and dancing before the Tao. Line 64 Perfect the state of te purity, the void center will be filled with a bright light, gateway to Tao’s presence. To perfect this state, the mind’s ch’i energy, the heart’s desires, and the belly’s intuitive powers must be alchemically refined in this bright light, a fire that blends the three into one, the primordial state of huntun, in preparation for oneness with Tao. II First Stanza (lines 1-5) 1 Nourish Tao [path], wander in darkness, dwell alone in the deep. 2 Nurture form and destiny, keep the transcendent void empty. 3 Pure and clean is Transcendent Act, mind cannot conceive it. 4 Feathered wings cover wu and ch’i, carefully kept detached, 5 Eternal gestation, always watch it, fly off to immortal realms. Line 1 To practice the Tao one must wander or roam in the “dark night,” the realm kept separate from worldly pursuit of fame, wealth, and glory, to concentrate on the void abyss within. 118 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation @ Line 2 The way to nourish one’s bodily strength and good for¬ tune is to preserve a pure and empty heart-mind. Line 3 The condition of wu-wei, the transcendent giving act proper to the Tao, is a state that is without thought or worry. Line 4 Like a chicken hatching its eggs beneath warm feathers, one should always keep one’s center free and separate from worldly concerns. The center of the Gold Pavilion, when filled with primordial breath, spirit-will, and intuition, contains within itself the three principles of cosmic gestation. The point to be emphasized here is that these powers are to be protected and pre¬ served within the Gold Pavilion. In the terms of internal alchemy, the drop of primordial yang in the center of the water trigram k’an, and the drop of yin in the center of fire trigram li, symbols of heart’s desires and intuition’s focus, are to be kept in a truly pro¬ tected mode within the Gold Pavilion of the microcosm. Line 5 The person who contemplates Tao’s eternal birthing or gestating of primordial breath within will “fly upward” to the realm of the immortals. Second Stanza (lines 6-12) 6 The five movements, even and uneven, have a common root; 7 The three fives, breaths united, are thereby joined to “One.” 8 Whoever desires to be one with them, polestar, sun, and moon, 9 Embrace jade, clasp the pearl, peace in one’s inner room. 10 If you can grasp this, myriad troubles cease. 11 You have them within yourself, hold on, never let go! 12 Then is attained “no death,” when one enters the gold room. Line 6 The five elements each have a yin (even) and yang 119 The Gold Pavilion ® (uneven) aspect in the meditations of inner alchemy. There are twice five (ten) symbolic numbers assigned to facilitate the meditation: 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 are yin, while 1,3,5, 7, and 9 are yang. Each element has a color, season, tone, organ, and sym¬ bol, as well as two numbers, to use in the meditation. east green spring mi liver dragon 3.8 south red summer sol heart phoenix 2.7 center gold middle la spleen cauldron 5, 10 west white autumn do lungs tiger 4,9 north purple winter re kidney tortoise 1,6 The numbers 1 through 5 are called the “raw” series because they lead inward to the transcendent Tao. The num¬ bers 6 through 10 are the “cooked,” because they lead out¬ ward to the changing, ripening, and harvesting world of (c nature. Line 7 The “three fives” refer to the raw set of numbers from 1 through 5, that is, east is 3, south is 2, west is 4, north is 1, and center is 5. The meditator becomes one with the eternally gestating Tao by making these numbers into three fives: east’s wood (3) joined to south’s fire (2) makes the first five. Center’s gold earth (5) is the second five. West’s metal (4) joined to north’s water (1) makes the third five. The meditation is done by visualizing colors, musical tones, and “breath" from the five bodily organs to be joined in the Gold Pavilion. Thus east’s green and south’s red are joined in the Gold Pavilion, and produce the deep violet color of pri¬ mordial breath. Earth’s gold is brought into the Gold Pavilion and refined into primordial spirit, a bright gold. West’s white 120 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation and north’s dark blue are brought into the Gold Pavilion and refined by intuitive awareness of Tao’s presence, a bright white. These “three fives” are joined as one with the Tao in meditation. Line 8 The person who would be one with this process, the very core and essence of the Gold Pavilion classic meditation, must also realize that the meditation includes contemplating the sun, the moon, and the polestar constellation Ursa Major. Line 9 To grasp the jade means to refine the drop of pure yin from within the “sun,” the fire trigram //, which has a broken yin line in its center. To embrace the pearl means to pluck the drop of pure yang from the depths of the ocean, the unbroken yang line in the center of the water trigram k’an. Thus jade means pure yin; and the red fiery pearl, found atop most Chinese tem¬ ples, symbolizes pure yang. The pearl is Tao-gestated primor¬ dial breath, in the depths of earth and ocean’s yin. The seven stars of Ursa Major always point to the North Star, symbol of Tao as the cosmic center of nature. The six stars of the south¬ ern constellation (Scorpio) are symbols of the six Jade Ladies, pure yin in the cosmos. Thus north and south, sun and moon, li and k’an stand for the union of yin and yang within the Gold Pavilion, in the presence of the gestating Tao. 121 The Gold Pavilion ® Line 10 For the person who can learn the meditation, all of the affairs of the world are no longer a worry. Line 11 Each person must grasp the method by himself or herself. Line 12 The secret of immortality is simply to enter into the Gold Pavilion, aware of Tao’s eternal presence. Third Stanza (lines 13-17) 13 Go forth yang sun, enter yin moon, this is myTao [path]. H Heaven’s seven, earth’s three, return mutually preserved, is Ascend, descend, enter, exit, join together a long time. 16 The jade stone ornament is my precious treasure. 17 You have it within yourself, why not preserve it? Line 13 The third stanza has three distinct interpretations of the spiritual, physical (sexual) hygiene and the breath exercise schools. The symbols of the five lines can be interpreted con¬ sistently in any of the three modes. Sun is yang, the trigram //, fire, or male. Moon is yin, the trigram k’an, water, or female. The going forth ch’u or exit is through the heavenly gateway, the trigram ch’ien. The entrance ju is through the trigram k’un for earth. Line 14 Heaven’s seven and earth’s three refer to the num¬ bers of the prior heavens ( hsien-t’ien ), or ho-t’u, configuration of the I Ching. Seven is the number for fire. Three is the number for wood. Joined together they add up to ten, the central num¬ ber of the ho-t’u, which symbolizes Tao as present. Fire or the trigram li is placed in the west in the ho-t’u chart, while wood 122 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation © and the trigram k’an are in the east. Thus when west’s seven, fire, (conceived of as a white tiger, li ) and east’s three, wood (the trigram k’an seen as a blue dragon), are joined, the number ten, symbol of Tao’s presence, is attained. Line 15 The interpretation of this passage is crucial for the three schools. The first interpretation can be explicitly sexual, if yin and yang are taken to mean the male and female organs. The sexual hygiene school teaches that male and female should unite in sexual activity for periods of long duration, without having orgasm or emission. Some modern American psychologists advocate use of this method in marriage coun¬ seling, which, though useful in bolstering the male self-image, misunderstands the goal of sexual hygiene. The practice was originally done to “preserve semen” (if a male), while stealing the female energies during intercourse. Reversed, the practice is used by a woman to steal male energies, while conserving her own. The practice was officially condemned by Confucian literati, Buddhist monks, and religious Taoist movements as chauvinist and without real or spiritual benefit. The breath control or inner alchemy school interprets the text as circulation of breath and swallowing of saliva, as in the well-known schools of qigong, t’ai chi, and kung fu exercise. The religious and monastic schools influenced by the great Taoist Lady Wei Huacun (d. fourth century c.e.) reject the sexual hygiene interpretation in favor of the “union with the Tao” as explained in this commentary. The colors of the five elements, combined from five into three, three into one, are cir¬ culated from the heart to the kidneys, in and out of the Gold 123 The Gold Pavilion 0 Pavilion, bringing awareness of the Tao’s gestating presence within. The ch’ien or upward passage (the tu meridian in acupuncture) and the yung or downward passage (/en in acupuncture) are visualized as channels for breath and color circulation in and out of the Gold Pavilion. In ancient Chinese alchemy, what nature takes 5,096 days (2,048, 1,024, 512, 256, 128, 64, and so forth) to evolve, the meditator accomplishes in a single moment interiorly, refining “gold,” centering awareness on Tao’s gestating presence. The elapsed time to be set aside for the awareness medi¬ tation is approximately forty minutes. The Chinese clock was divided into twelve shih hours, each shih being equivalent to two sixty-minute hours. Each hour was divided into six hou of twenty minutes each. The refining process of inner alchemy (neitan ) requires two hou, or forty minutes. The meditation itself is divided into four stages, according to the I Ching mantic sym¬ bols, yuan (spring, planting, Tao breathing forth ch’i), heng (summer, ripening, hatching, sacrifice), li (autumn, harvest, storage), and chen (winter, rest, contemplation). At the beginning of the time period the heart-mind directs its attention to yuan, the flow of primordial breath “between heaven and earth,” between the purple cinnabar field in the head and the middle cinnabar field of the chest. Then the breath is heng, first heated by the red-robed spirit in the fires of the heart, then sent down to the somber spirits of the water in the two kidneys, to be given as an offering to the Gold Pavilion. Note that the five colors, green, red, gold, white, and deep blue, are li harvested from the five organs, refined in heart’s fire (green plus red equals purple; gold equals gold; white and dark equal purified white), washed in kidney’s 124 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation © water, and mixed together into “one” for storage in the Gold Pavilion. Finally the three colors purple, gold, and white, now dark and formless, are united with the Tao within the Gold Pavilion. They are charged to overflowing with the presence of the Tao gestating from the depths of the dark valley floor (Tao-te Ching, chapter 6). The intuition is held in the all-absorbing presence of the Tao for a prolonged time, protected by the six Jade Ladies, who represent the purest powers of gestating yin, freed from all desires for fame, profit, or sensual gratification ( Chuang-tzu , chapter 1). The person so meditating is said to be in the hsien-t’ien, the prior heavens, touching the transcendent gestating Tao (wu- wei chih tao). If the faintest suggestion of self-profit, self-glory, or self-gratification enters, then the meditation is tainted; the method reverts to that of the hou-t’ien posterior heavens, and no longer belongs to the Mao Shan Shang ch’ing (Highest Pure) or Chengi (True One) tradition of the Taoist Lady Wei Huacun. Line 16 The prior heavens are symbolized by the purest jade, on which are carved the figure of the ho-t'u, the precious Ling-pao Chert-wen describing the above forty-minute process of inner alchemy. The center of the ho-t’u has the number fif¬ teen (five plus ten) inscribed on it, a sign of the Tao’s eternally gestating presence. Once tasting this presence, the meditator no longer desires to return to worldly pursuits, the worries of fame, wealth, and desire, goals of the posterior heavens. Line 17 The Taoist does not distinguish between man and woman, rich and poor, intelligent and foolish. Every person has the ability to be aware of the Tao’s presence within. 125 The Gold Pavilion © Fourth Stanza (lines 18-21) is The heart that knows the root source nourishes a separate flower. 19 Serve heaven, follow earth, unite with ching in the storehouse. 20 Nine-Source Mountain stands alone [in the northern sea]. 21 In its center lives a chen-jen, now you can command him. Line 18 The meditator must harmonize yang and yin exter¬ nally as well as internally. To do this is to know the source of strength in the Gold Pavilion. When the Gold Pavilion is filled to overflowing with Tao’s primordial breath, then the eyes see only the bright, the ears hear only wisdom, the nose smells fra¬ grance, the mouth tastes the sweet, the hair does not gray. This is the meaning of "nourish a separate flower”—awareness of Tao presence in the Gold Pavilion keeps all negatives away from external consciousness. The person filled with negative thoughts and feelings does not meditate on the Tao. Line 19 To serve or swallow heaven means to join with the drop of green jade (yin) in the center of yang; that is, in the cen¬ ter of the sun is a drop of pure green jade, symbolizing purified intuition. To follow earth means to regulate and harmonize with the drop of pure yang in the depths of the ocean, the drop of primordial breath held between the kidneys, just below the Gold Pavilion. Ching intuition and ch’i primordial breath refined from the outer world are then joined by eidetic (extraor¬ dinarily clear and active) vision into Tao awareness, and stored or kept in the Gold Pavilion. Line 2 0 Nine-Source Mountain is a mythical island in the northern sea, the home of primordial breath. Nine is a symbol 126 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation ® of yang or fire-purified breath. Here it refers to the spot between the kidneys, where breath is focused. Line 2 1 On this island dwells the Tao-realized person of Chuang-tzu’s fourth chapter, who sits in forgetfulness and fasts from all judgment or desire in the heart. The meditator has the ability to command this spirit; the mind controls the outward and inward flow of ch’i simply by being aware of the outer world and of Tao’s gestating presence within. Fifth Stanza (lines 22-27) 22 Interior yang, three spirits, can provide eternal birth. 23 For seven days with center’s five, revolve, mutually joining. 24 Mount K’un-lun’s peak, do not mistake or lose its location. 25 Hidden there is a purple palace with a cinnabar walled tower. 26 Boldly refine yang and yin into a bright red pearl, 27 For a myriad of years shining brightly, time itself stands still. Line 2 2 Yang when interiorized has three spiritual functions. The first is yilan-ch’i, primordial breath’s energy gestated from the Tao. The second is the spirit’s power to know the outer world, to name, compare, and judge it. The third is the spirit focused on the Tao’s presence in the Gold Pavilion, defined by Chuang-tzu as the chen-jen. These three spiritual functions are yang’s powers. Primordial breath is used up by focusing on judgments and desires of the outer world. By focusing on Tao’s inward presence, the yang powers are not used up. The medi¬ tator literally is one with Tao’s constant birthing ( ch’ang-sheng ). Line 23 For seven days practice circulating breath along the jen and the tu channels, keeping mind and therefore 127 The Gold Pavilion 0 ch’i focused on Tao in the Gold Pavilion (centering medi¬ tation). Line 2 4 Mount K’un-lun here refers to the point in between the kidneys, the entrance to the Gold Pavilion. The Gold Pavilion stands on the summit of Mount K’un-lun. Line 25 Hidden to all but the meditator is the Gold Pavilion, atop Mount K’un-lun, surrounded by a deep glowing purple aura of primordial breath, within a walled tower made of cinnabar. Breath refined by meditatively joining east’s (3) green wood with south’s (2) red cinnabar fire produces primordial purple breath. Line 26 Boldly take these two colors, the drop of green yin from the center of heart’s li fire, and the drop of red yang from the center of ocean’s k’an water, and refine the “bright red pearl” or the bright red cinnabar pill, symbol of ch’i breath, shen spirit, and ching intuition, fused in the alchemy of meditation. Line 2 7 This hidden light is eternally bright, outside spatial and temporal changes. Sixth Stanza (lines 28-31) 28 Root the self in outer yang, spirits of themselves will come; 29 Nourish the interior three yin, they too can eternally gestate. 30 The hun seeks ascent to heaven, p’o descends to the depths. 31 Reverse hun, exchange p’o, Tao and tzu-jan nature. Line 2 8 Outer yang refers to the primordial Tao-gestated breath that comes from the earth, k’un. The outer world of nature in its pure yin state, the depths of the valley floor 128 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation © ( Tao-te Ching, chapter 6), is the true dwelling place of Tao. When the Taoist refines the three spirits (ch’i, shen, and ching), then the outer world as well is a source for realizing Tao pres¬ ence, in the valley floor and the ocean depths, represented by the single yang line in the center of the trigram k’an. Such a per¬ son can nourish the three yang spirits from the exterior as well as the interior. The spirits of nature come to fulfill the summons. Line 2 9 The three interior yang spirits, represented by the tri¬ gram //, each have a yin line in their center. The three yin spirits from the external world, represented by the trigram k’an each have a straight yang line in their center. Thus when the three yin spirits of the external world of nature Join with the three yang spirits of the internal world of meditation, the three resulting trigrams are pure yang, the three unbroken lines of the trigram ch’ien. This is a sym¬ bol of the primordial breath eternally gestated by the Tao. Line 3 0 In the normal course of life, the hun or yang parts of the human body leave at death; and after purification in the chemical fires of the underworld, they ascend to heaven. The seven p’o energies are buried with the body in the grave. Line 3 1 In this meditation the yin and yang elements are fused together, so that the “seven” (symbol of the yin forces within) and the “nine” (three times three refined yang lines) are reversed. The yang energies are circulated downward through the jen channel into the purifying waters of the kidney. The yin energies are sent upward through the tu channel into the fires of the heart. Then all of the energies are poured together into the state of huntun {Chuang-tzu, chapter 7) in the center of the Gold Pavilion. Yang primordial breath is purple, yang spirit is gold, and purified ching 129 The Gold Pavilion © intuition is white. The three colors, mixed in the Gold Pavilion, lose all color and are darkened (the state of huntun). It is at this point that Tao’s gestating presence is realized. Ill First Stanza (lines 1-11) 1 The Big Dipper, suspended pearls, bracelet without seam, 2 Jade p’in, gold flute, forever strong and firm, 3 Bear heaven, suspend earth, complete ch’ien and k’un. 4 The trigrams are four times red [ripe] as red can be, 5 Yang comes first, then pi, each in its opposite gate. 6 Accompany them, to refine the pill, enter the dark springs. 7 Fresh sprouts, turtle, lead breath to spirit source. 8 In the center is a Tao-realized person, cap made of gold. 9 Wearing armor, holding a talisman, he opens the seven gates, to Here no branch or leaves, indeed it is the root. 11 Day and night meditate on it, always aware of its presence. Line 1 The entire stanza is filled with cryptic verse, requiring a master and an oral tradition to interpret meaningfully. The Big Dipper is seen as a string of suspended pearls in the northern heavens strung on a seamless thread. As it turns, it points eter¬ nally to pei-chi, the polestar, center of the heavens. It is a sym¬ bol of the meditator eternally aware of Tao’s presence in the microcosmic center, the Gold Pavilion. Line 2 The image now reverses the roles of yin and yang. Jade is symbol of the yin broken line in the center of the trigram //, a drop of pure yin in the center of fiery yang. Gold (metal) is the straight yang line in the center of the trigram k’an, a symbol 130 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation of the drop of pure yang in the depths of the ocean. The Taoist meditator keeps these pure states of yang and yin firm by awareness of the internal process of Tao gestating ch’i, yang, and yin. Line 3 Heaven’s yang is compared to a necklace, and earth’s yin to pearls strung thereon. The seven stars of the Big Dipper are pearls eternally revolving around the North Star, pointing to Tao in heaven’s center. Thus seven (west, yin, metal, tiger, the drop of yang in the depths of yin) now becomes the male prin¬ ciple. In completing it’s circling of the polestar every twenty-four hours, the Big Dipper always points to, or is focused on, Tao in the Gold Pavilion’s center. The jade pool, the spot between the kidneys (water), which is the gateway to the Tao, is now the “male,’’the source of pure yang’s union with the Tao. Line 4 There are four appropriate times or seasons, in the meditation of inner alchemy, for conceiving and nourishing the “child within.” The ch’ih-tzu ruddy child, also called the red cinnabar drop, is inseminated, nourished, matures, and rests in Tao awareness, just as the hexagrams cycle through yuan, heng, li, and chen, and the seasons pass through spring, sum¬ mer, autumn, and winter. The four stages of Taoist meditation follow this process: yuan for inseminating breath, spirit, and intuitive awareness into the Gold Pavilion; heng for the three principles offering sacrifice to Tao in the center; li for harvest¬ ing the brightly glowing drop or “pearl,” that is, pill, giving birth to the hierophant child within; and chen for dwelling quietly in the awareness of Tao’s presence. This last stage takes place in the “tenth month” of the lunar year, the time for the communal celebration of the Taoist Chiao rites of renewal. 131 The Gold Pavilion © Line 5 The language here is derived from inner alchemy and acupuncture. The motion of the breath is ni contrary to the outward progression (Tao births One, Two, Three) of ch’i, yang, and yin to the myriad creatures of nature. The medita¬ tor works from the multiplicity of nature back to the origin, returning to the source in the wondrous Tao (Three, Two, One, to Tao). Line 6 One sends the three principles back into the deep mys¬ terious source within the Gold Pavilion. The deep dark springs (hsiian-ch’uan) is the north, the jade pool between the kidneys. Line 7 The young green sprouts of spring, the “blue dragon,” joined with south’s fire, are refined into primordial breath and poured into “spirit root," Tao presence, from this place. Line 8 The realized person in the center is primordial breath, refined into the hierophant child within. The gold cap symbol¬ izes the number seven, the pure yang, the refined breath of lines 2 through 6. Line 9 The hierophant is dressed in gold armor and carries a talisman in his right hand for opening the seven gates. These are the acupuncture points t’ien-ken, weilii, hsia-chi, yil-chen, ming-t’ang, chung-lou, chiang-kung (see page 149), through which breath is circulated in the process of alchem¬ ical refinement. Line 10 These are not the branches and leaves of the outer body but access points to the spirit root in the Gold Pavilion. Line 11 By focusing on this process night and day, the Taoist meditator becomes constantly aware of Tao’s gestating presence. 132 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation © Second Stanza (lines 12-16) 12 The immortal, the Taoist, do they not have shen spirit? 13 [They] cause ching to be preserved year by year. H Mortals all eat grain, taste the five flavors; 15 Only ingest great harmony, yin-yang ch’i. 16 Then, able to avoid death, be one with the heavens. Line 12 The meditator is reminded again to be one with the hsien-t’ien, the Tao of the ho-t’u or prior heavens. In this con¬ figuration the Tao present in the center vivifies shen spirit. Line 13 The Taoist also "preserves ching,” keeps the emo¬ tions and intuition free from outer dissolution. The focusing of attention on Tao working inwardly and in outer nature is a day- by-day, month-by-month, and year-by-year endeavor. Line 14 Ordinary people all nourish themselves with the five grains, savoring worldly flavors. Line 15 Taoists nourish themselves on interior peace and harmony, the ch’i primordial breath of yin and yang. Line 16 This is why they are able to evade death, by being one with the prior heavens. Third Stanza (lines 17-25) 17 To know how to explain the five organs, each with a direction, is Realize that the heart spirit is king, ruler of the five organs. 19 When thoughts in the center move and rest, ch’i power leaves. 20 When the Tao of its own holds us, shen spirit is a bright light, 21 Throughout the day shining radiant, at night preserved within us. 22 When parched it quenches our thirst, hungry it makes us full. 133 The Gold Pavilion 23 Pass through the six fu, store there yang and yin. 24 Refine yang’s drop of yin, save it in nine [heaven’s gate]. 25 Those who continually practice this will not know old age. Line 17 Each of the five organs has a direction, color, sea¬ son, number, and symbol. The Taoist must know how to explain this to do the meditation. (See line 55 of chapter I, page 115). Line 18 The meditator must also know that the spirit of the heart is king of the entire body; the power of will controls the preserving or losing of mind’s ch’i energy. Line 19 When the thoughts in our mind control our move¬ ment and rest, then ch’i flows away. Line 20 If the Tao in the Gold Pavilion holds my attention, then the soul-spirit will be filled with a bright light. Line 2 1 It shines forth all day, nourishes inwardly at night. Shen is yang, bright, fire, heart, the trigram li, while ching is yin, dark, water, kidneys, and the trigram k’an. Line 2 2 When thirsty, Tao quenches our thirst, when hungry our stomach is filled. Line 2 3 The awareness fills our six lower organs as well, storing yang and yin energies there. Line 2 4 Refine the drop of yang in the center of yin, and with it stand before the Tao in the prior heavens. Line 2 5 The person who practices this peaceful awareness will not grow weak in old age. 134 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation © Fourth Stanza (lines 26-49) 26 The liver is the place whence ch’i is continuously refined, 27 Passing through the five organs, it generates three lights. 28 Above it harmonizes the san-chiao, refreshing all below. 29 Ching ministers heaven and earth’s gates, eternal birth’s Tao. 30 My shen spirit, hun and p’o both, are in the Gold Pavilion. 31 Ching flows to the inner source, fragrance reaches the nose. 32 Stand in the depths of the chest, within the ming-t’ang. 33 Penetrate to the hua-ch’ih, regulate yin and yang. 34 Then return to the mystery gate, serve heaven’s Tao. 35 The approach is within my body, I who must preserve it. 36 Pure, be still, transcend action, will’s motion will cease. 37 Ching and ch’i move up and down, regulating each passageway. 38 The seven openings, one with center, know not old age. 39 Returning, they sit at heaven’s gateway, to serve yin and yang. 40 Descend through the throat, one with enlightened spirit, 41 Pass beneath the hua-kai canopy, pure and refreshed. 42 Plunge into the pure clearwater, see my true form. 43 When time is ripe, pill is formed, eternal birth enabled. 44 Again pass through the hua-ch’ih, move the kidneys’ ching. 45 Look up to the ming-t’ang, approach the cinnabar field. 46 Now let all the spirits open mingmen, life’s gate. 47 Arrived, harvest heaven’s Tao, stored at spirit root. 48 Yin and yang’s broad expanse, as the endless flow of stars. 49 Liver’s ch’i breath is like a bracelet, perfect without seam. Line 2 6 The liver is the place where breath is meditatively refined. 135 The Gold Pavilion © Line 2 7 It flows through the body’s organs, giving birth to three lights, one each from sun, moon, and stars. Line 2 8 It joins to the san-chiao, the "triple warmer” acupuncture points in the upper body, where it is heated by the spiritual fire, of line 27, the ripening “summer” part of the meditation. Then it flows downward to provide “refreshing drink” to the other bodily organs, “irrigating” the new life within. Line 2 9 The ching intuitive awareness also is made to be aware of (minister to) heaven and earth’s Tao of eternal birth. Line 3 0 My soul-spirit, with its hurt or yang aspects (liver, wood, spring, green) and its p’o or yin aspects (lungs, metal, autumn, white), is now focused on and led into the Gold Pavilion. Line 3 1 When the ching intuitive awareness has flowed into the Gold Pavilion (Tao’s presence), a fragrance arises and is perceived by the nose. The nose breathes in and out the pure ch’i gestated by the Tao. Note that spiritual fragrance (or lack of it) is detectable by proximity to the meditator. Line 3 2 Attention is now focused on the ming-t’ang, the bright palace in the center of the chest, abode of spirit. Line 3 3 Here the heart-spirit regulates the flow of air in (yang) through the nose, and out (yin) through the mouth, in the beginning stages of meditation. Then it regulates the flow of ch’i purified breath from the heart to the kidneys, in the advanced stage of meditation. The term hua-ch’ih, flowery pool, J36 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation © refers to the mouth in the first stage of meditation, and to the kidneys in the second. Line 3 4 The soul-spirit then returns to the mystery gate, where it too “waits on” and is subservient to Tao. Line 3 5 The approach to the Tao’s eternally gestating pres¬ ence takes place in the cosmic center of the body. Awareness, preserved there, brings about autumn’s “harvest” of the immor¬ tal pearl. Line 3 6 When the mind is quelled and purified of all Judg¬ ment, then the heart rests in awareness of the wu-wei transcen¬ dent Tao and no longer runs after external fame, power, or wealth. Line 3 7 The ching intuitive awareness and the ch’i purified breath are refined into one essence; intellect is quelled and intuition alone is active. This quiet alpha state passes through all the organs of the body, bringing peace and health. Line 3 8 The seven apertures, the eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth, described in the Chuang-tzu, chapter 7, bring about the death of huntun, inner awareness of Tao, when opened. Now when focused on Tao in the center, the body no longer feels the aging process. Line 3 9 The five senses (seven apertures, that is, two eyes, two nostrils, two ears, one mouth) also sit at the gateway to the Gold Pavilion, watching yin-yang’s gestation. Line 40 When the breath first passes down through the throat into the lungs, it is first purified in the bright fires of the 137 The Gold Pavilion © heart, and in this process it makes spirit bright, enlightened. Focusing attention on breathing, the cessation of judging oth¬ ers, enlightens the soul. Line 41 The breath is circulated within the canopy of the chest, under the hua-kai, the upper rib cage, above the lungs and chest, down to the purifying and cooling waters of the kidneys. Line 4 2 When one looks at oneself from the lower cinnabar field, the centering place between the kidneys, at the entrance to the Gold Pavilion, then one’s real self is truly seen. Line 43 The timely practice of the meditation, the planting, watering, growing, harvesting (the refined cinnabar pearl), and meditating quietly on Tao presence, is analogous to the cycling of the seasons. If one practices this, then like the seasons and the annual rebirth of nature at the solstice, one can attain to union with the eternal process of Tao gestating in nature. Line 44 One must repeatedly pass through the “flower pool” (kidneys), moving ching intuition. Line 4 5 Then with the will from above in the ming-t’ang bright palace of the heart, approach the lower cinnabar field. Line 46 Then bring all of the spirits together to open the gate¬ way to the Tao (this refers to the Inner Chapters of the Gold Pavilion classic). Line 47 Now one can harvest (autumn) heaven’s Tao and store it in spirit’s root (Gold Pavilion). Line 4 8 Tao gives birth to ch’i, yin, and yang, spreading them everywhere, even to the farthest stars. 138 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation © Line 4 9 The bright green ch’i breath from the liver, when purified in the above manner, is compared to a jade bracelet that is eternally circulating through the body, so perfectly formed that no seam or flaw appears on its surface. Fifth Stanza (lines 50-67) so The lungs process ch’i after passing through the san-chiao ; 51 Returning to heaven’s gate, it serves the ancient Tao. 52 Pure [ching] waters from lower source penetrate the six fu, 53 Flowing from the nose up and down, awakening the ears. 54 Contemplate heaven and earth, aware of the child within. 55 Regulate, harmonize ching flower, hair and teeth renewed. 56 Facial color bright and fresh, aged yet not turned white. 57 Passing it down from throat, how can it be scattered? 58 Let all the spirits come together, mutually seek the pure. 59 Proceeding down into the heart, petals of purple color 60 Stored hidden in the hua-kai, fall on all the organs, 61 Swirling, gather all the spirits, spread by hu breath. 62 Now see all of my inner spirits reject the lewd and vulgar. 63 The spleen spirit returns, relying on this great family. 64 It too is stored in spirit root, never again withered. 65 Then at last stomach region is one with void transcendent. 66 Lock and bolt the mingmen [life’s gate], elegant like jade. 67 Longevity for a million years, and then some to spare. Line 5 0 The function of the lungs in the meditation of inter¬ nal alchemy is explained in these verses. The lungs process breath by passing ch’i through the triple warmers, the san- chiao, which here refer to the acupuncture points through 139 The Gold Pavilion © which energy is circulated upward from the base of the lungs through the entire body. Line 5 1 Once ch’i has been breathed in through the nostrils and seen to pass through the entire body, the mind focuses on the t’ien-men, the gate of heaven, which here stands for the entrance to the Gold Pavilion where ch’i now comes to rest. The commentary says that the primordial breath of the lungs (the west, metal refined into liquid-water) is in fact ching intuition; mind is no longer focused on word, judgment, and meaning but rather has become an agent for intuitive awareness of Tao’s presence, by being focused on t’ien-men. Line 5 2 The purified breath that has entered heaven’s gate is now circulated through the six lower organs of the body, the large and small intestines, pancreas, san-chiao, gallbladder, and stomach, symbolically purifying the six emotional powers (joy, sorrow, anger, delight, aversion, attraction). Line 5 3 The air circulates in through the nose, down and up again through the body, and is expelled. This process makes the body extremely sensitive to the Tao’s gestating process, both internal and external. The meditator hears sounds from great distances; birds, children, wild and domestic animals from the valley below echo in the sensitive ears on the moun- taintop. Line 5 4 The joining of the west’s two lungs (the trigram ch’ien, metal, white tiger) and the east’s liver (the trigram k’un, wood, blue dragon) creates primordial ch’i breath. The joining of the north’s two kidneys (the trigram k’an, water, tortoise) and 140 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation © the south’s heart (the trigram li, fire, phoenix) creates purified ching intuitive essence. When primordial ch’i breath and refined ching are brought together in the Gold Pavilion, then the new child within is born, the ruddy hierophant. Line 5 5 Doing the meditation keeps the meditator young. Line 5 6 Light radiates from the face, the hair is not gray. Line 57 Breathe in and down the throat, then where to focus attention? Line 5 8 Where the spirits congregate, at the Gold Pavilion gate. Line 5 9 Coming down through the red palace of the heart, the ch’i takes on a purple flower hue. Line 60 Cached from hua-kai (ribs) to liu-fu (six lower organs) depths, the purified ch’i breath and ching intuition nourish the entire body on their journey to the Gold Pavilion. Line 61 All of the "spirits,” the spiritual powers of the body (the Taoist’s lu list of spirits gives each a name), are purified and refined by breathing this Tao-gestated breath. Line 6 2 As spirit is purified, all sensuous, impure, and self¬ ish thoughts are washed away and henceforth avoided. Line 6 3 The spleen is the organ wherein the healing gold color of purified earth spirit is stored during meditation. Just as heart and kidneys produce purified ching, and lungs with liver refine primordial ch’i breath, now all of the spirits of the body are purged of any negative elements and refined into bright gold 141 The Gold Pavilion 0 shen in the spleen. Note that the five colors have now become three: purple ch’i, gold shen, and white ching. Line 64 Store these three colors, purple, gold, and white, in the Gold Pavilion, they will never fade or wither. Note that when the three pure colors fade, they become the three worms, the san-ch’ung that devour the mind, heart, and belly. Ch’i becomes dull blue from sad thoughts; shen becomes dull yel¬ low by negative judgments; and ching becomes a deathly gray- white by dwelling on impure or lewd thoughts. Spiritual death follows. Line 65 The stomach passage here is the Gold Pavilion, the entrance to the Gold Pavilion. When the three pure colors are poured into this central place, the meditator is one with the void transcendent. The commentary here mentions the “five grains” ( wu-ku ) that must be avoided for effective internal alchemy. Besides heavy white starches, meats, eggs, fish, and strong spices are also shunned by the practitioner for physical as well as spiritual health. Line 66 There is only an entrance, not an exit, to the Gold Pavilion, if the meditator maintains awareness of Tao’s pres¬ ence. The term mingmen (lifegate) here refers to the acupunc¬ ture point halfway up the spine that marks the top of the Gold Pavilion, the upper extent of the path of ch’i and ching as they circulate between the heart and kidney region, prior to entrance into the Gold Pavilion. The meditator forms an image of the heart’s red fires creating the child within, the cinnabar pearl in the body’s center. Line 6 7 The person who does this meditation is not tired by 142 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation © the process even for a million years, and then some to spare. The process of refining breath and purifying spirit is done thus. Sixth Stanza (lines 68-78) 68 The spirit of the spleen travels to the center palace [heart]; 69 In audience it regulates the five shen, forms three lights. 70 Above it joins with heaven’s breath, one with the ming-t’ang. 71 It penetrates the six lower organs, tunes the five movers. 72 Metal, wood, water, fire, earth, master of each one. 73 It travels through the blood vessels, one with body’s sweat. 74 The three spirits each attain it, and descend into Jade Flower. 75 Above, meet with primordial breath, years of life extended. 76 Carefully guard the seven outlets, keep out ill-fated events. 77 Sun and moon [light] spread everywhere, strengthen yin and yang. 78 Nourished by the Great Yin, become their true form. Line 68 In the oral teachings of the Mao Shan tradition, attributed to the Lady Wei Huacun, when the above meditation is performed, the meditative chart known as ho-t’u is symboli¬ cally planted in the body. In this state the meditations of line 6 in chapter II, and the configuration of the five elements is reversed. Fire in the south moves to the west, and metal in the west moves to the south. Thus, east’s wood (liver) is now burned by west’s fire. The breath in the bellows of the lungs purifies the mind and produces primordial breath. In similar manner, the metal of south (now in the central red palace of the heart) is refined by the waters of the north located in the kidneys; the result of the fires of inner alchemy is 143 The Gold Pavilion © purified ching, the intuitive awareness of Tao present in the Gold Pavilion. The central organ of the peritoneal region, the spleen, with its bright purified gold color, now takes over the role of chu-shen, the master spirit of the five organs. It travels into the heart palace, the place from which the entire body is governed by will. Line 6 9 The five elements now come to have audience in the heart and are regulated by the healing gold light of the spleen spir¬ it. It diffuses its healing rays through the body, Joining to the three sources of "light,” the purple, gold, and white aura of lines 59-64. Line 70 It passes through and purifies the upper parts of the body, the breath of heaven in the head (pineal gland) and the ming-t’ang heart. These are the upper and middle cinnabar fields (shang tan-t’ien, chung tan-t’ien ) in Taoist meditative ter¬ minology. Line 71 It then flows down to the lower parts of the body and purifies the six lower organs, regulating the work of the five moving elements there. Note that the so-called five elemental movers, wood-spring, fire-summer, metal-autumn, water-winter, and earth-center, are temporal as well as spatial regulators. Thus the meditator determines the color, organ, and direction from which to initiate the meditation according to the hour, day, month, and year, as explained in the Inner Chapters of the Gold Pavilion classic. Line 72 The spleen spirit has now become the master of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. Line 73 The gold healing light fills all of the blood vessels, 144 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation 0 the sweat glands, every pore of the body. The oral tradition insists at this point that “gold” is the symbol of the mind freed from negative Judgments, and eventually from any Judgments; verb is not Joined to noun in the mind that contemplates in the transcendent Tao presence. Line 74 Only when the three spirits, the purified form of ch’i, shen, and ching, are filled with this purifying light (mind emp¬ tied of judgment, will of desire for external wealth, intuition from emotional attachment, as in the Chuang-tzu, chapter 4), can they proceed into the presence of the Tao in the Gold Pavilion. Line 75 Looking upward at the Tao, as one enters the Gold Pavilion, the vision of yiian-ch’i Tao-gestated life breath, described in chapter 6 of the Tao-te Ching, is seen. This vision is such that the meditator desires to remain within the state of contemplation, undisturbed by the passing of the years. The word for year, nien, bears the connotation of harvest, here meaning that years are extended by being eternally one with the Tao’s gestating process. Line 76 This line is an allusion to the Chuang-tzu, chapter 7, the story of Huntun ( huntun ). Yin and Yang drill seven holes in Huntun, two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, and a mouth. Thereupon Huntun, a symbol of the person focused on Tao presence, dies. To keep huntun, the meditation on the Tao, alive, the seven apertures must be closed to external glory, fame, wealth, and sensual gratification. The allowing of any worldly or selfish motives into the heart-mind is pu-hsiang, a harbinger of misfortune. 145 The Gold Pavilion © Line 7 7 The cycling process of sun and moon is the cause of seasonal, monthly, and daily changes in the cosmos. When united with the primordial condition of yin and yang, continu¬ ally gestated from Tao, they become instead a source of eternal birth. Note that the term ch’ang-sheng does not mean eternal life but rather eternal birthing, in this context. Tao gives birth to One (primordial breath), an eternally gestating process. Line 78 The Great Yin ( t’ai-yin ) is the eternally gestated ch’i breath, the drop of yang or bright flaming red pearl in the depths of the ocean. This symbol appears on most temple rooftops, with two rampant dragons shown devouring the flam¬ ing pearl. The dragon is the mythical animal who by devouring the Tao-gestated breath from the depths of the ocean, springs into the sky and causes the rains of spring, the source of new life and growth in nature. The Great Yin in the depths of the ocean thus achieves its true form, bringing new life within the meditating Taoist. Seventh Stanza (lines 79-99) 79 Of the five organs, the kidneys are the master of ching. so Go forth and come in these two gates, unite in the Gold Pavilion. 81 Inhale, exhale in the void transcendent, see my true form. 82 Strengthen the sinews and bones, perfect the blood vessels. 83 Dim and hidden, unseen, pass through pure spirit. 84 Sit beneath the grass hut, contemplate the little child. 85 Morning and evening be in the presence of spirit’s bright light. 86 Exit by the nonbeing gate, enter by the transcendent door. 87 Purified, without selfish desires, nurture pure spirit. 146 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation 88 Nourished by ingesting purple breath, reach birth’s source. 89 Return, again close the seven gates, drink from t’ai-hsiian. 90 Let it too go down the throat, pass through spirit root. 91 Ask about the immortal Tao, and its wondrous ways? 92 The answer is: ingest spirit mushroom, Jade Flower, 93 Wear a plain white cap on the head, feet in the cinnabar field. 94 Bathe in a flower-filled pool, water the spirit root. 95 Let all three channels attain it [breath], open mingmen. 96 Instead of the five flavors, exchange them for shan good breath. 97 The Great Tao is broad and vast, let heart be no longer worried. 98 Let down your hair over your shoulder, be always in Tao presence. 99 Now my Tao-way is completed, don’t wrongly pass it on. Line 79 The last stanza teaches how to circulate intuitive ching awareness, purified in the kidneys, through the body. Line 80 Recalling the opening stanzas of chapter I, the kid¬ neys are two gateways, entrance and exit, to the Gold Pavilion. Line 81 By breathing or circulating breath within the center of the body, one becomes aware of the Tao child within. The basic goal of the Gold Pavilion classic is to remain focused on this centering spot in the body, aware of Tao’s gestating presence. Line 8 2 By so doing, by eliminating negative thoughts and selfish desires, the body becomes strong. Line 83 One cannot see this process until actually focusing one’s awareness on the spot between the kidneys, after purify¬ ing the spirit by the meditations of internal alchemy. 147 The Gold Pavilion © Line 8 4 One sits in the eidetic (vivid, moving image) medi¬ tation before the Gold Pavilion, here described as a grass hut, and contemplates the child within. The ruddy infant, the real self, is playing in the presence of the gestating Tao. Line 8 5 The adept is aware, day and night, of this presence. Line 86 The “nogate” or “transcendentdoor” leads to the Tao. Line 8 7 “Without selfish desires” means ending the search for glory, fame, and wealth and nourishing instead the spirit root within. Line 88 Spiritual nourishment is here symbolized by the cir¬ culation of the purple aura of primordial breath through the body. Hsuan-ch’i refers in Taoist terminology to the work of the Tao in the cosmos as gestating. Thus the meditator is told to be aware of the Tao’s eternal act of gestating primordial breath, like a thread eternally spun from the depths within one’s own body. The reference again is to the Tao-te Ching, chapter 6. Line 8 9 The meditator closes the seven apertures, as in line 76 , a quote from the Chuang-tzu, chapter 7 . The term t’ai-hsuan ( t'ai-yuan ) Great Abyss refers to the kidneys. To drink from the Great Abyss means specifically to be nourished by Tao’s presence. Line 90 The passing of breath and saliva down the throat into the lower body, and the visualization of breath circulating between the heart and kidneys, is summarized here. Line 91 The author now reviews the Gold Pavilion teach¬ ings. 148 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation Line 92 The Jade Mushroom is the drop of pure yang ch’i that is born from the depths of yin, the trigram k’an or water. The Jade Flower is the drop of pure yin ching intuitive awareness Meditation and acupuncture points, Ch’ing dynasty woodblock print from Xingming Guizhi. © 149 The Gold Pavilion © born in the depths of yang, the trigram /;' or fire. Spirit, when nourished by or joined with these two purified energies, can enter the Gold Pavilion. Line 9 3 The white cap worn by the Taoist is here a symbol of the west and the element metal. The liturgical cap of the Mao Shan and Chengi Taoist is made of gold metal, a symbol of meditatively purified breath and intuition. Into the top of the gold crown is placed a small flame-shaped pin, symbolizing that the Taoist is alive with the flames of alchemical meditation and has formed the ruddy child within. "Feet in the cinnabar field” refers to the yii-pu dance of yii, whereby the body as well as the internal awareness of the Taoist is moved to audience with the Tao. Thus the Taoist meditates in private and dances in public ritual to the presence of the gestating Tao. Line 94 The pool filled with flowers is the kidneys and the space between, from which one meditates on the Gold Pavilion. Once purified, the "waters,” the intuition, flow into the Gold Pavilion to irrigate spirit root, Tao’s presence. Line 95 The term san-fu can mean the twice three, or six, lower organs (in some commentaries), or in the Mao Shan tra¬ dition it refers specifically to the san-chiao, the triple warmers, spiritual channels within the body for conducting ch’i, shen, and ching into the Gold Pavilion. Acupuncture charts show points for accessing the san-chiao for healing and meditation. Line 96 Once the meditations are under way, the body no longer feels the need to be nurtured by the five flavors, but instead nourishes others by shan good deeds of healing, and by positive feelings toward all others. 150 The Gold Pavilion Classic; Taoist Emptying Meditation ® Line 9 7 Awareness through meditation of the Tao’s gestating presence leads to a calmness of heart and a lack of worry about past or future events. Worries from the past or future are only in the mind. Awareness of the present heals strain, stress, and illness occurring from negativity. Tao’s presence is positive. Line 98 The traditional Taoist, both man and woman, let the hair grow long, lived and ate simply, observed celibacy (unless married and dwelling in the city), and meditated in the above fashion. The married Taoist passed on the meditative and ritual teachings to a son or daughter, and the celibate mountain¬ dwelling Taoist passed on the Gold Pavilion classic meditative tra¬ dition and its ritual dramatic expression to chosen disciples. Line 99 With these lines, the Outer Chapters of the Gold Pavilion classic come to an end. The reader is warned to pass on these teachings in the correct, pure form, rather than in the heterodox or lewd commercial manner of sexual hygiene or the harmful, self-aggrandizing martial arts. The tradition of Taoist meditation and ritual, and the philosophy of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, are united in this Mao Shan Highest Pure Taoist tradition. © Chapter Five Tantric Meditation T he introduction to Taoist medita¬ tion given in chapters 1 and 2 acquaints the reader with a non- judgmental way of thinking that brings great interior peace and tranquillity. The symbols and imagery of chapter 4 can only be understood after learning to focus attention on the body’s center and to envision the bright healing colors of nature, taught in chapter 3. The imagination, once awakened by this visualization process, begins to develop new creative powers and takes quiet pleasure in contemplation. The newly acquired ability to create sacred images utilizes the entire person. The body dances, the heart sings, and the mind contemplates in the presence of the transcendent or the sacred. This form of total body prayer is called Tantric meditation. The use of body, mouth, and mind in harmony during prayer is found in all religious traditions. The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the simplified chant and dance of the Islamic Sufi tradition, and the Tantric Buddhism of Tibet (and to some extent of Japan) all use the entire body as a single 153 The Gold Pavilion 0 unit when praying . 1 The word Tantric describes the Buddhist version of total immersion in prayer. The use of mudra hand dance, mantra chant, and mandala (cosmically centered, geo¬ metrically patterned) meditation means in practice that body, mouth, and mind work in intricate harmony during prayer, leading to the emptying of mental images and selfish desires before transcendent union. There are two other physical ways of prayer leading to emptiness in the Asian tradition. The first is the concentration of mind attained when sitting, as in Zen (Chan, dhyana) or cen¬ tering (Samatha-vipasyana) meditation. The second is the devotional chanting of sutras or phrases. Various Pure Land Buddhist schools follow the method of devotional chant . 2 These two forms of practice have become more popular in the West than Tantric prayer during the twentieth century, and are the subject of a lively Buddhist-Christian dialogue. Though many Western church officials, both Protestant and Catholic, look on Buddhist and other non-Christian forms of prayer with some suspicion, in fact the Zen and Tantric methods them¬ selves have no doctrinal content and can be practiced without changing the belief, visual images, or faith of the practitioner. There are two very real obstacles to practicing the med¬ itations of kenosis or emptying both in Asia and in the West. The first is the busy life of the monk or professional clergy, which leaves little time apart from monastic chant or rectory (temple) management to teach the prayer of “emptiness” to the laity. The temple chant, pious discourse, and the Sunday sermon focus on morality, human needs, and scrip¬ tural exegesis rather than on methods of contemplation. Laity are provided limited access to contemplative prayer, though 154 T a n t r i c Meditation © they may seek far more than the Sunday sermon anecdotes and piety. A second obstacle is found in the personal life of the priest, nun, monk, or clergyman. A life that started out as a spir¬ itual quest becomes that of an overworked functionary who counsels the suffering, offers prayers for the needs of the faith¬ ful, heals the sick, and buries the dead. The Sunday service with sermon in the West and the public chanting of Buddhist sutras in Asia cease to be oriented toward the prayer of union that defines the mystic experience and instead become involved in the offering of prayers asking for things, or sermons on morality extolling virtue and condemning vice. Such prayers fill the mind of the laity with nonsacred images. Religion loses all meaning and function other than as a petitionary or moral¬ izing service for specific material needs. The mass exodus from religious services in the West and the sole use of Buddhist chant for “merit” in Asia are the direct results of these kat- aphatic or image-filling devices. The Sunday sermon that pro¬ motes virtue and berates evil causes that which is evil to be visualized and kept in memory. Good and bad images, such as crime portrayed on a television screen, desired consumer goods such as expensive cars, clothing styles, and accumulated wealth are visualized in prayer and ritual . 3 The Tantric way of kenosis or mystic prayer, on the other hand, removes all but sacred images from the memory screen. The mind is no longer involved in worries about health and ill¬ ness, praise and blame, success or failure, but is instead taken up with the awareness of sacred presence. In this condition, any thought, good or bad, is seen as a distraction from the state of transcendent awareness. The way of kenosis or emptying 155 The Gold Pavilion © prayer ceases to be the monopoly of the priestly or religious caste. Any person, laity or monk, businessperson or nomad, may practice it. Learning the way of kenosis or emptying prayer involves three phases. These three stages are recognized in Western the¬ ology and African and Asian contemplative sources. The stages are as follows: © Purgation or purification © Illumination or visualization of the sacred © The emptying of all images, or the “Dark night,” which precedes mystic union or awareness of the absolute . 4 Having successfully completed the three phases of emp¬ tying prayer, the meditator experiences transcendent union or awareness. The authenticity of the mystic experience is verified by a subsequent life of selfless compassion. The way of purgation or purification is always the first step toward true contemplative prayer. It is not the same as the “dark night” or emptying process called kenosis that empties the mind of sacred images. Rather, it is the prelude to all forms of prayer and creative visualization. The person involved in negative judgment, physical need (whether hunger or ill health), drugs or alcohol of any form, and selfish pursuit that harms or puts down others must first be purified and made whole before proceeding to the second and third stages of con¬ templative prayer. All Asian forms of prayer experience, includ¬ ing the Buddhist, Taoist, Altaic shaman, and pan-Asian me¬ dium, begin with strict rites of purification. Fire and water are both physical and symbolic images used in this process . 5 156 Ta n t r i c Meditation © The shortcomings of the Christian Sunday sermon system are to be found here. The laity are continually exposed to ver¬ bal descriptions of good and bad behavior but are rarely led beyond purgative images to a life of contemplative visualization (contemplating the life of Jesus, for example, in the Christian context, as explained in Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises'). Western clerics could lead the laity into higher forms of contemplative prayer, because they themselves practice it, but the duty to care for the parish community, the lack of spiritual guidance, and the low value placed on the contemplative life within the clergy make it difficult to lead a life of prayer in the modern Western clerical context. Tantric prayer, on the other hand, impels the practitioner into the experience of emptying kenosis by teaching two subse¬ quent stages that must by necessity follow the stage of purifi¬ cation. Whether in its Taoist, Buddhist, Islamic, or Christian form, the Tantric experience seeks in its second stage to fill the mind with sacred images, to value these images above all oth¬ ers, and then ultimately to empty the mind of all concepts, in order to preserve awareness of transcendent presence. The sec¬ ond or illuminative stage of prayer fills the mind and heart (intellect and will) with images of the sacred from a particular cultural-religious tradition. For the Christian, as in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, the stage of purification, a brief week of the month¬ long prayer experience, is succeeded by two weeks of contem¬ plative envisioning of the life of Jesus. For the Sufi mystic, the sacred words of the Koran, poetic imagery, and sacred dance fill the illuminative process. Tantric Buddhism teaches the two great mandala mediations, the Lotus World (Gharbhadhatu) 157 The Gold Pavilion © and the Vajra World (Vajradhatu, Thunder and Lightning, sometimes called Adamantine Mandala). 6 These meditations lead the monk and the laity into the second and third stage of kenotic or “emptying” meditation. For the religious Taoist, as was seen in chapters 2 and 3, a pure place called Daochang (Tao-ch’ang) is visualized around the meditator. All images within the memory, both good and evil, are sent out of the body before the illuminative stage begins. The meditative ritual for building this sacred place is called falu, literally, “lighting the interior alchemical furnace.” The meditator uses the palm of the left hand as a mnemonic or remembering device, pressing a joint on the left fingers with the tip of the thumb while emptying out all of the spiritual images and energies from the body. The medita¬ tion can be done in a simplified manner by the layperson as follows: Following the color meditations learned in chapter 3 and in the Gold Pavilion meditation, face the north or if in a sacred shrine, chapel, or temple, the sacred image (a crucifix, Buddhist statue, Taoist scroll). Pressing the base of the third or middle fin¬ ger of the left hand with the tip of the left thumb, see the purple energy from the pineal gland in the upper cinnabar field (center of the head) come forth and rest in the north center of the room. This color represents the primordial gestator of the cosmos. Next press the middle joint of the middle finger and see a gold-yellow light come forth from the heart and rest to the right of the pri¬ mordial Tao. This figure represents the Tao as a mediator between the inner human body and outer nature. Last, press the tip of the third finger and see a bright white light emanate from the lower cinnabar field (the front of the Gold Pavilion) and come 158 Ta n tr i c Meditation © to rest to the left of the primordial Tao. This figure represents the Tao as indwelling in the Gold Pavilion. Lao-tzu is seen in this vision . 7 Next the Taoist empties the five colors out from the five storage organs, as follows. Press the middle joint of the index finger and summon the color blue-green from the liver. Place this aura to the east (the symbol of spring, rebirth, and growth) of your body. The venerable figure of the east in Chinese iconography is Fu Hsi, (Fu Xi) the patron of family life and the home, and the source of the I Ching, Book of Changes. Press the tip of the middle finger to summon the red- robed lord of the heart to the south, behind you. Press the middle joint of the fourth (ring) finger to summon the white- robed spirit of the lungs to a spot directly to the west. Finally, press the base of the third finger to bring the dark-robed spir¬ it of the kidneys out, and place him to the northeast (next to the north, where the three primordial spirits are resting). The meditator becomes aware of Tao’s inner presence only after emptying all images out of the interior." An analogous meditation takes place when meditating in the Tantric Buddhist tradition. The Four Guardians, Dhrtarastra in the east, Virudhaka in the south, Virupaksa in the west, and Vaisravana in the north guard the four gateways to the temples of Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan. They also watch over the Lotus World mandala, where Vairocana the Sun Buddha sits in the posture of Zen or Dhyana meditation . 9 These guardian spir¬ its are found as part of the architecture in all Chinese and Tibetan temple structure. The iconography of Christian and Judaic art depicts the archangels Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, and Ariel in similar guardian roles . 10 159 The Gold Pavilion 0 The Tantric meditation in which the absolute is encoun¬ tered takes place in a sacred area guarded by purifying spirits sometimes of violent countenance. This is especially true of the Tibetan spirits. The terrifying forms of Mahakali, Dharamraja, and other protective deities are depicted graphi¬ cally in temple art." The figures depict huge blue-, green-, red-, and brown¬ faced deities robed in animal skins, with belts made of severed human heads and multiple arms laden with weapons of destruction. The weapons are meant to cut from us any rem¬ nants of selfishness, impurity, and all obstacles to enlightened union. The tankas of Tibet, like the Buddhist statues of China, Japan, and southeast Asia, are meant to be used as images invoking the second stage of the mystic prayer of union. As explained again and again by Tibetan religious leaders, the Dalai Lama and the other great rimpoches who have come to the West, the painted or carved image becomes a part of the person who meditates in front of it. The aspects of the Buddha depicted in the picture or carved in the statue are ingested, or breathed into the meditator, and become a part of his or her person through eidetic, creative, living, visualization. The sacred Buddhist or Taoist image is thus not a deity or an idol in front of which the meditator worships. Instead, it is a hidden, subconscious aspect of the self that is made a part of one’s con¬ scious person in meditation. The great Asian works of Buddhist art, images of Kuanyin (Guanyin, the bodhisattva Avalokite- svara), Amida, Vairocana, Maitreya (also called Milo), are all meant to be made a part of the meditator’s conscious everyday life. The true Buddhist or Taoist devotee becomes the image 160 Hayagriva. Tibetan tanka painting of horse-head Guanyin, one of the twenty-eight manifestations of Avalokitesvara. Tankas are used in Taoist ritual to control and exorcise evil spirits. ® The Gold Pavilion © projected in meditation, a person filled with compassion, peace, serenity, and healing. In the practice of the Illuminative Way, the images of peaceful and violent Buddhist deities are seen by the Tibetan nomads, farmers, and many of the monks as deities invoked for favors, healing, and blessing. Tibetan pilgrims circumambulate the temples, turn prayer wheels, prostrate tens of thousands of times before shrines for “merit” (gongde ), based on the premise that all human deeds (the word karma means “deed,” not "fate” or “retribution”) have cosmic consequences, as cause and effect. Thus past, present, and future deeds can be atoned for by meri¬ torious deeds such as prostrating, circumambulating, chanting the mantric phrase “Om Mani Peme Hum” (Sanskrit: Om Mani Padme Hum, “Om, enlightened by the Lotus, Hum!”). By so chanting, prostrating, and walking, evil is changed into blessing, and the world becomes a “Shambhala,” a happy and compas¬ sionate place to live. Though such acts of devotion do not of themselves lead to the prayer of kenosis, in fact the elimination of all conceptu¬ al imagery other than the sacred is effected by the Tibetan man¬ ner of physical prostration and prayer. The images of the Illuminative Way become the path toward spiritual growth. This process is no more clearly seen than in the great Cham dances of the New Year, the fifteenth of the first lunar month (in the Chinese calendar), fifteen days prior to the Tibetan calen- drical New Year. Each temple performs its own Cham dance, maintaining its own manner of performing the dance and its own manner of explanation . 12 The Cham dance of Labrang temple, on the Gansu- Qinghai border, in northeast Tibet, is one of the most splendid 162 T a n t r i c Meditation © and well attended of the New Year performances. A huge fifty by eighty foot tanka painting is “sunned” (unrolled on a hill¬ side) on the day before the Cham, and butter sculptures are dis¬ played on the day after. More than one hundred thousand nomads attend the Labrang temple performance. The sacred area in front of the main temple of Labrang is laid out for the performance in the following manner. The tem¬ ple’s main entrance is the north side of the square. To the south, about a hundred yards away, is a series of high prayer flags summoning beneficent protective spirits to guard the area. To the right of the prayer flags is prepared a Goma fire altar for burning away all instruments of war and evil, and all impedi¬ ments to enlightened union. To the west of the sacred area is an altar for food offerings. The musicians, chanters, cymbals, drummers, bone trumpets, and twelve-foot base trumpets are arranged to the east and southeast of the area. All is in readi¬ ness by 10:00 a.m., but the first dancers do not appear until noon. The skeleton dancers come first, then each of the partici¬ pating deities appear in pairs, the blue-, red-, green-, and brown-faced spirits (Denjema, Gurkor.Turwo, Jenghe, in Amdo dialect), then a blue-faced Mahakali (Dzamenje) and Dharamraja (Chujia, or Enma). The stag and yak dancers also appear, and finally the black-hatted Shanagpa, some thirty in all, who form an extended circle around the sacred area, creat¬ ing a Vajra (Thunder World) mandala. The Shanagpa black-hat dancers twirl left and right, then welcome back Mahakali and Dharamraja into the sacred area. The two great kings dance sacred steps that make this present world of illusion into Shambhala, a place where love and 163 The Gold Pavilion © wisdom are supreme. After their dance is finished, the lead Shanagpa takes from a large box (offered by a monk) the five instruments of war and destruction, the hammer, hook, trident, Va]ra (thunderbolt), and rope. He dances with each of these over his head, one-by-one, replacing each and taking another until all have been held up to the heavens. The weapons of war (purification of evil) are replaced in the box, along with a large cylindrical roll of dzampa (an offering of highland roasted barley flour mixed with butter). The dzampa represents the lingam of Lord Shiva, that by which the world of illusion was created. 13 The monk, called Lanka, takes the offerings to the south of the sacred area and lays them in a large pot of oil boiling over the Goma fire. A flask of white alcohol is poured into the oil, which ignites in a huge mushroom cloud of flames, burning away all instruments of war, evil, impurity, and illusion. In these flames are consumed not only all of the illusory world but also the worries, good things, images of the sacred, and the entire illuminative world. Shambhala is a place in which com¬ passion and wisdom are united. Compassion is seen as the male (yang) and wisdom as the female (yin) aspect of reality. The Cham dance requires five hours to perform, plus almost three hours of waiting, some eight hours in all seated on the hard winter ground in the wind and dust of the Tibetan highlands. Much of the meaning is sangyak (Amdo dialect), a part of the oral teaching reserved for the monk initiate. But the meaning grasped by the nomads is clear enough. The great horned Dharamraja, who rules over the punishments of hell, turns this world into a paradise when deeds of compassion are ruled by wisdom. The nomads go back the two or three days by 164 Tan t r i c Meditation © bus and on foot to their snowbound pastures, satisfied that for another year their land is blessed and made peaceful by the presence of the great kings of love and wisdom. It is interesting that in the tanka paintings hanging in the temples, wisdom is always depicted as a woman, and compassion as a man. The two are seen embracing in union, a symbol of the divine and the human made one. Many Westerners interpret these sacred images in a literal sense, that sexual union between monk and consort is a part of the ritual process. This male-chau¬ vinist error is condemned by Lady Wei Huacun (see chapters 3 and 4) and by the monks of Tibet as well, who graphically demon¬ strate the modern literalist error when burning the lingam of Shiva. Teresa of Avila in the West, Lady Wei Huacun in fourth- century China, and the Tibetan spiritual masters of the past and today admit only the symbolic meaning of the images, depicted so vividly in temple art. 14 The Goma fire rite is an external act that illustrates a med¬ itation that takes place internally, within the contemplative life of the practitioner. Just as the Gold Pavilion meditation used inner fire and water to wash away all images and desires before realizing inner union with Tao, so the Tantric Buddhist adept burns away all inner visions of the sacred deities, the quiet and peaceful as well as the violent. The philosophy of Tantric Buddhism is the philosophy of emptiness, based on the same sort of nonjudgmental and nonvolitional act taught by the Taoist and other mystic masters. This practical philosophy of emptying is expressed in a very brief passage called the Heart Sutra, which is chanted each day by Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Tibetan monks and laity. A paraphrase of the sutra is as follows: 165 The Gold Pavilion © When Avalokitesvara was walking on the shore of deep wisdom, Enlightened, he saw that the five skandhas were completely empty. And thereupon crossed over all sorrow and care. “O Sariputra, form is not distinct from the empty, The empty is not distinct from form. Form is empty, emptiness is form. Sensation, imagination, judgment, consciousness, too, empty. Sariputra, all dharmas [thoughts] are empty of relation to reality, They are not born or destroyed, Not sullied or pure, not increased or diminished. The reason is that the empty [center] has no form, No sensation, imagination, judgment, or consciousness, No eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body feelings, or mind thoughts, No color, sound, smell, taste, movement, object of thought, No world to see, no world to conceive or understand. No avidya [ignorance] and no end to ignorance, No old age and death, no escaping old age and death, No four noble truths [suffering, desire, cessation, path], No wisdom, nothing attained. Because nothing is attained, the enlightened rely on the shore of wisdom, And have no snares or obstacles. Free from snares, they have no fears. Freed from the world of dream images, At last they reach Nirvana! 166 T a n t r i c Meditation © All Buddhas of the three time periods [past, now, future] Rely on wisdom’s shore to attain unsurpassed, complete awakening. Therefore realize that the Wisdom Shore is a great spirit mantra, A great bright light mantra, A supreme, unequalled mantra, Which can remove all suffering, a true, not false achieve¬ ment. Therefore let us chant the Wisdom Shore mantra! It goes like this: Gone, gone, gone to the other shore! Arrived at the other shore. Enlightened! Svaha! The union of the meditator with absolute wisdom in the Tantric system, and the union of the Taoist with the transcen¬ dent Tao, are both based on a prayer in which judgment and will are suspended. This way of peaceful intuitive union can be easily learned, in any spiritual or cultural context. The dialogue between those who follow the way of emptying and union is also one of few words, much peace, and mutual illumination. 167 Notes © Chapter 1 1. See the outline of Taoist history in this chapter for more on the history of Taoism. The reader may refer to a number of translations of the 1 Ching Book of Changes found in modern bookshops for an idea of how the I Ching works. The versions of Legge, Wilhelm, Blofeld, and Wu Jingnuan, among many others, are commended. 2. These two works are summarized in chapter 1. 3. John K. Fairbank’s and Edwin O. Reischauer’s China: Tradition, and Transformation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989); Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilization in China Volume II (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1956); and Holmes Welch’s Taoism: The Parting of the Way (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), follow this opinion. 4. Ritual is a term used to translate a number of Chinese words such as li, ji (chi), jiao, and yi into English. Li has a different meaning in the Confucian and the Taoist traditions. For the Confucian it means a stilted form of ceremony used at the courts of the nobles. By derivation it means a set of ceremonial bows and polite formu¬ las used by the noble class at court. By a third derivation, it means politeness, such as is proper to the learned and refined, but not to 169 Notes to Chapter One © the lowly and unlearned. The Taoist tradition jokes about this kind of li. For the Taoist li means the offering of food, wine, and song when guests or the spiritual energies that represent nature are invoked during festivals. Many of these concepts are taken from the Liji ( Li-chi , or Record of Rites); based on yin-yang philosophy, it is a second-century b.C.e. work used by the Confucian and Taoist traditions alike. This kind of ritual is associated with Chinese rites of passage such as birthing, marriage, healing, and burial. Ji means the offering at festivals of sacrificial items such as food, wine, and song to the invisible spirit elements of nature. Chinese offer rites of this kind for the seasonal changes in nature. Jiao (chiao ) means the offering of wine and incense during all festivals that celebrate life, such as weddings, building dedica¬ tions, and village renewals, and when meditating on the Tao of nature. Jiao ritual acts out the ideas of the Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu classics in symbolic drama. Yi refers to state rituals, religious sacrifices, and all other cer¬ emonies where a liturgical master, priest, or other expert is required. The words li and yi have almost the same meaning and are sometimes used together. 5. The word shen is the standard Chinese term for spirit. The word ling refers to a spiritual quality. The soul itself is thought to have two sets of functions, the hun or yang functions of intellect, will, and intuition, and the p’o or yin functions that govern the feelings and emotions. From ancient times the Chinese believed that the spirit of shen exists after death. After being alchemically purified in a hell-purgatory that restores yin-yang balance, it then "ascends to the heavens,” leaving the range of human memory. An orphaned soul with no descendants to remember it during festivals is a guei, a demonic or unrequited angry soul. 6. Note that the Confucian system keeps spirits at a distance, ling gui 170 Notes to Chapter One © shen er yuan ji, “Respect the demons and spirits, but keep a safe distance,” is a Confucian ideal. 7. See chapter 4. 8. At the time of receiving the register, one is also given a Taoist title, a name (with one of forty or more characters in a poem indicating the source of the master’s learning), a talisman, and other para¬ phernalia showing the authenticity of one’s register and ordination. A similar ritual is followed in the ordination of a Buddhist monk in the Tibetan and Japanese Tantric traditions. See Saso, M., Dokyo Hiketsu Shusei (Tokyo: Ryukei Shosha, 1979) for lists of various Taoist registers still used in modern China. 9. The so-called Tao of Sex, which is used by some Western therapists in marriage counseling, is preserved in sections of the official Taoist canon, as are many other extraneous texts from a variety of non-Taoist sources. The practice of fangzhong (suppressing the flow of semen in the male or orgasm in the female during the sex act) is based on the false notion that losing semen causes early death and saving semen promotes long life. The "saved” semen is in fact passed out through the urethra when next urinating. The grossly male-chauvinist act of having sex an endless number of times with many women or maintaining prolonged erection has no known health benefits in medicine, other than bolstering the male ego. The practice was condemned by the female Taoist Lady Wei Huacun in the early fourth century, and again by the male Taoist Kou Qjanzhi (K’ou Ch’ien-chih) at a later date. Those who practice it are not given a Taoist lu register or license of ordination. 10. This definition is taken from the Chuang-tzu Nei-p’ien, chapters 4 and 5, the terms zuowang (tso-wang, “sitting in forgetfulness"), and xinzhai, ( hsin-chai , fasting in the heart). See chapter 2 for an expla¬ nation of these methods. 11. Tibetan oracles, Mongol and Korean shamans, southeast and southwest China’s mediums, and the Redhat priest are the subject of a separate study now in progress by the author. 171 Notes to Chapter One © 12. Fairbanks and Reishchauer’s China: Tradition, & Transformation, and Arthur Cotterell’s China: A Concise Cultural History (New York: NAL-Dutton, 1990) provide a good beginning (with bibliography) for those who want to read more about the Confucian tradition. 13. The I Ching consists of sixty-four brief oracular statements, each followed by six “wings” or longer explanations of what the oracle means. The wings are of very late composition, probably 200 b.c.e. and after. The sixty-four opening oracles have no mention of iron- age metal implements and may have been composed before 1100 B.C.E. 14. Lao-tzu supposedly lived in the sixth to the fifth century b.c.e. and was visited and respected by Confucius. Most scholars agree that the present text seems to have been written out by his followers at a later date. More than two hundred translations of this work are available in English paperback editions. 15. A modern cartoon book, available in Chinese and English, prob¬ ably comes closest to capturing its spirit. For good modern trans¬ lations see the works in print of Burton Watson and the late Angus Graham. 16. The spread of the Redhat tradition is not limited to the Han Chinese. The Yao, Miao, Yi, Naxi, and other minority ethnic groups of southwest China were deeply influenced by and in turn affected the popular Redhat exorcism and healing rituals. This is especially true of the Yunnan Province in southwest China. The Dongba rites of the Naxi, the Daba rites of the Muosuo, the ritual manuals of the Yao, the Ngapa and Bonpo rites of Tibet are anal¬ ogous in many cases to the Redhat tradition of southeast China. The sinification of southeast China, that is, the cultural conquest and assimilation by the Chinese of the native groups of the south¬ ern provinces of Jejiang, Fujian, Gwangdong, Gwangxi, and Hunan, and other parts of the south, may account for the unmis¬ takable similarities between the ethnic minority cultures of the south and the newly evolved southern Song dynasty culture. The 172 Notes to Chapter Two © ethnic groups of southwest China in Gwangxi, Guizhou, and Yunnan borrowed from and deeply influenced Redhat ritual. Lao- tzu became a benign spirit, the same “Laozhun” (Lord Lao-tzu) patron of the Redhat ritual tradition. 17. The term mijue ( mi-chueh ) refers to a hand-copied manual, given by a Taoist master to his or her disciple, that explains the medita¬ tive or ritual use of a classical Taoist text. The manual used here derives from Taoist Lady Wei Huacun and the Mao Shan Shang- ch'ing tradition. It is used today in the Shangqing (Shang-ch’ing), Qingwei (Ch’ing-wei), and Quanzhen (Ch’uan-chen) schools men¬ tioned earlier. © Chapter 2 1. Qi (ch'i) is a word commonly used in Chinese and Japanese. It can mean primordial energy, such as in the scientific sense of atomic energy; life energy in plants, animals, and humans; and breath, as when one breathes in oxygen. The primordial Tao in this passage is seen to give birth to all three kinds of qi. 2. Put in terms of modern medical research, our bodies secrete a certain amount of hormones and other body-restoring elements when we sleep. One of these is melatonin, a hormone that begins to restore energy when we pass from ordinary consciousness into the alpha state (the left and right lobes of the brain beating in harmony at less than twelve beats per second), then the theta state (six beats), and into sleep. When one performs the non- judgmental qi meditations of the Taoist tradition, the alpha state is almost immediately reached. In meditation the body rebuilds itself and thus maintains health. The Taoists assign the color pur¬ ple to what modern science calls the melatonin complex, and thus meditate on "purple” to restore primordial breath. 3. The meditation of centering is explained more fully in chapter 4. 4. One of the signs of a Taoist kingdom is that the lame, crippled, out- 173 Notes to Chapter Two © cast, and needy come there. Confucius avoided the lame and physically deformed. Chuang-tzu makes these the men and women of greatest virtue. 5. The text is sometimes translated, sometimes summarized and para¬ phrased. 6. The great fish Kun is a symbol of yin, and the great bird Peng is yang. The six months of Kun’s journey in the water represents the six months of yin’s domination in nature: autumn and winter. At the end of this period yin’s dominance gives way and the great fish becomes the great bird, who flies off to the heavens, that is, spring and summer in nature. 7. Yao was one of the three great sage kings of ancient China, whose name occurs in the Outline of Taoist History in chapter 1. Confucius used these three kings as models of the good ruler blessed by heaven. Chuang-tzu here borrows the image and makes Yao into a Taoist sage-king. 8. This passage is cited again at the beginning of King Tai’s Response to Tao. Wangyi was asked four questions by Yuejue. 9. Xinzhai or heart fasting is one of the two basic Taoist techniques of meditation. The other is zuowang, “sitting in forgetfulness.” It is to be noted that in both cases Chuang-tzu puts the explanation of "heart fasting” and “sitting in forgetfulness" into the mouth of Confucius. In both cases Confucius teaches the method at the request of Yan Hui, a Confucian disciple. 10. The word fu for a talismanic contract is used here in the Chinese text, in the sense of uniting the two halves of a talisman. The fu in ancient China was a contract of loyalty made between the king and his knights or ministers on the one hand, and between the king and heaven on the other. The image here is of a fu contract made between Tao and the heart. The Tao and the heart are joined into one, as the two halves of a talisman are joined to prove loyal¬ ty between king and his knights. 11. The altar to the she spirit of the crops and soil is always put under the branches of a large gnarled tree. These trees with their shrines 174 Notes to Chapter Three © are often preserved in modern China. The shrines have been turned into sundry goods stores for tourists, altars to the spirit of consumerism that now rules modern socialist China as it does in the capitalist West. 12. In ancient China young women were sometimes offered as live sacrifices to rivers in spring, to ask for blessing from the river spir¬ it. Then a wise king of Chu in the south ordered that only the daughters of priests and shamans be used for the sacrifice. From that year on, it was recorded, human sacrifices ended. 13. For those who look at the Chinese text, the word xia in the ancient version should be read with the jade radical xia for veins or dis¬ tinctions, rather than with the man radical jia for error. The pas¬ sage is quoted from the second-century b.c.e. Huainanzi, the “Jingshen" chapter, with this poetic variation. 14. See Tao-te Ching, chapter 71, and the Meditation on Not Knowing in this chapter. 15. Note that Taiji is the same as primordial qi breath, hundun the demiurge or chaos in chapter 7 of the Chuang-tzu, and yuwei ji dao, the immanent Tao or nature mother, who spins forth breath in chapter 6 of the Tao-te Ching. 16. East, south, west, north, and the two directions of center and up and down. 17. See chapter 3. 18. Empty Gourd demonstrates here four of the nine stages of empty¬ ing meditation. See chapter 3 for later Taoist meditations on this passage. 19. Taoists still call ritual meditations that bring about union with Tao “getting drunk on peace,” zui taiping. © Chapter 3 1. The teaching that color, sound, and image can be used to “blind” the mind and turn the heart from worldly or selfish pursuits is com¬ mon to the Taoist and the Tantric Buddhist traditions. In both sys- 175 Notes to Chapter Three © terns body, mouth, and mind are used together in synchronicity to bring about immediate awareness of the transcendent experience. Mudra hand dance, mantra chant, and mandala meditation from a cosmic center are common to both systems. 2. The breathing meditation is in fact a quiet, meditative way of doing tai chi exercise. The word t'ai-chi (taiji ) in fact means pri¬ mordial breath, the Great First Principle of qi energy gestated by Tao. “Tao gives birth to One” ( Tao-te Ching, chapter 42) is trans¬ lated as “Tao gives birth to t’ai-chi” in many Taoist texts. The sec¬ ond step in the meditation shows how to focus on taiji, primor¬ dial breath. 3. See Tao-te Ching, chapters 22 and 23. 4. The so-called lotus mudra (hand symbol), the open right palm laid on top of the open left palm, placed palms upward in the lap with the tips of the left and right thumbs touching, is a simple way of representing the centering position. 5. A point 1.1618 or 8 /s off center, as seen in the curvature of the chambered nautilus, a horse’s hoof, and a deer’s antler, and pre¬ cisely the location just beneath the navel or umbilical cord in humans, represents a true fulcrum or balancing point in nature. 6. Many statues and paintings in Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, and other Asian sacred places depict ferocious guardian spirits who have eyes looking out through a shield on the stomach. The idea that the intuitive powers “see” directly through gut-feeling aware¬ ness is a universally recognized symbol. 7. The Buddhist Samatha-vipasyana meditation is quite similar to the Taoist centering process. The difference in the two systems is the Taoist use of color and sound to empty the place of centering atten¬ tion. The Chinese word for Samatha-vipasyana, zhiguan ( chih- kuan), means “cessation” ( zhi ) of the mind and will, followed by “contemplation” (guan ), looking outward. In both systems the lower belly is the place from which looking outward (guan ) takes place. 8. The term gut feelings in English, along with similar terms in other Indo-European, Semitic, Altaic, Pacific, Native American, and 176 Notes to Chapter Three © African languages, bears the universal sense of a kind of knowl¬ edge not mediated by the formation of a preconceived image, for¬ mal concept, or spoken word. Intuition refers to an experience that precedes word or formal logic but is nonetheless accurate. 9. It is not peculiar to the Chinese system alone that head, heart, and belly are considered to be the abodes of intellect, will, and intuitive feeling. These ideas are found in the tanka paintings of Tibetan Buddhism and the mystic symbols of Cabala and Sufi mysticism. Taoist texts teach the novice that the five zang organs are where the intellect, will, emotions, feelings, and intuition "rest,” whereas the upper, center, and lower cinnabar fields (head, chest, belly) are their respective offices or working places. The next chapter will show how these various areas are alchemically “refined” by the warming flames and cooling waters of interior meditation. The meditator becomes aware of the power of the lower cinnabar field to intuit the peaceful nonchanging aspects of nature. This new¬ found power to meditate is at first used to circulate healing colors and sounds within the self, thus purifying and healing the mind and heart of its worries and ills. 10. Tao-te Ching, chapter 13. 11. Chuang-tzu, chapter 7, as quoted in chapter 2 of this book. 12. Note the similarity here to the teachings of the two great Western mystics, John of the Cross (Juan de la Cruz) and Teresa of Avila. The Christian “dark night of the intellect and dark night of the senses” find parallels in Taoist centering and Buddhist Madhyamika "nonjudgment” texts as well as in Tibetan Tantric rites of fire emptying. 13. The use of drugs is absolutely forbidden in meditation. For the person who practices centering, drugs in any form impede the intuitive ability to be aware of the reality of the outer world. Hallucinogenic drugs pattern mind images by imposing figures from within the brain, giving the illusion of a heightened aware¬ ness of reality. The sense of peace and calm achieved by the centering process so far excels the high of drugs as to allow the 177 Notes to Chapter Three ® drug experience to be felt for what it really is, no more than chem¬ ically induced schizophrenia. 14. The importance of color in Tantric Tibetan and other forms of Buddhist art is analogous to the Taoist use of color described here. The symbolic use of color is perennial and universal. For success¬ ful visualization the colors must be pleasantly bright, rather than dull or garish. The colors take the place of envisioning spirits, prac¬ ticed by the ordained Taoist priest and Tantric Buddhist monk. 15. The choice of key or tone used to initiate a meditative chant does not depend so much on the time of day as the kind of chant being sung. The Taoist musician uses the tone that corresponds to the melody being used to chant a text. The text itself is called a Morning, Noon, or a Night Audience with the Tao, but the melodies and meditative colors used with the accompanying med¬ itation are very many. The meditations of Taoists and Tantric Buddhist monks use body or hand dance (mudra), the intonation of meditative mantras (sounds for which the tone rather than the meaning is important), and the visualization of patterned colors (a mandala or centered meditation) in a manner that coordinates body, mouth, and mind in prayer. Sound, motion, and color bring the whole body into a centered meditation. In this form of prayer it is important to realize that the whole body takes part in the med¬ itation. See the explanations of Tantric prayer in chapter 5. 16. The Taoist, shaman, and Tantric Buddhist traditions all use this visualization process to cleanse the body of ‘‘impure green” illness. The color green, like fresh grass in spring, is seen to restore a body tired out from worry and anxiety. The powerful Tibetan Tantric ver¬ sion of the meditation sees the color bright green as a tear coming from the left eye of Avalokitesvara (Kuanyin, or Chenrezi, the bod- hisattva of compassion), which turns into the healing spirit Green Tara. A white-colored tear from the right eye becomes the com¬ passionate White Tara. 17. The middle joint of the index finger is a meditation access point or meridian that connects to the liver, the direction east, the season 178 Notes to Chapter Three ® spring, and the color green in Taoist ritual meditation. Pressing this spot heals the body of fatigue. 18. When envisioned as a bright red flame it can also be evoked to give courage and a sense of spiritual protection for the meditator. The wrathful deities of Tibetan and Japanese Tantric Buddhism, such as the red face of Mahakala and the crimson flames around Acala (Fudo Myoo), purify the meditator of any sullying feelings of anger, pride, and vengeance. 19. Many do this meditation when actually bathed in the rays of the sun. Taoist, Tibetan Buddhist, and Qigong masters use the hands to “bathe” the body in sunlight. The use of body together with mind and imagination increases the effect of the meditation. Others prefer simply to imagine the process. 20. The modern term alpha state refers to a condition wherein the left and right lobes of the brain, when measured electronically, are seen to pulsate in harmony at a low rate. This condition brings about a feeling of peace, enhances awareness of the outer world, and excretes the restorative hormone melatonin into the body. Meditating for thirty minutes or so in alpha state refreshes the body as much as if not more than sleep. The Taoists believe that performing this meditation brings good health and impedes aging. 21. Bright yellow-gold is a universal symbol of healing and protection. The use of gold foil to cover a Buddhist statue, a chalice used to celebrate Catholic Mass, gifts of gold jewelry that show love and the natural blessing of wealth, are examples of the symbolic use of gold to protect, honor the sacred, and bring blessing. 22. Many of the rites of tropical Africa and South America use three major colors, white (birth), red (maturation), and black (death), in religious ritual. On closer examination, these three colors in fact include a manifold spectrum of shades. Red includes pink, yellow, and orange; and black diffuses into shades of purple, blue, and green in ritual and art. Culture assigns analogous meaning to color that, in any case, is comparable and analogous. 179 Notes to Chapter Four © © Chapter 4 1. The liu-ting (liuding ) six lady spirits represent the purifying powers of yin within the body that protect and keep the heart free from impure desires. Their opposites are the liu-chia (liujia ), male yang spirits that bring death and destruction. See Michael Saso, The Teachings of Taoist Master Chuang (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), chapter 4, for a description of the six chia spirits. © Chapter 5 1. The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola teach the meditator to kneel, stand, sit, and walk during meditation. An annotation sug¬ gests that the adept be continually aware of divine presence, a life¬ long form of spiritual practice. 2. The Pure Land method of chanting Buddhist sutras is meant, like Zen, to purify the mind of images and the heart of desires, thus ful¬ filling the third step of the Buddha’s fourfold path. The four noble truths of Buddhism are; all of human life is conditioned by suffer¬ ing; suffering is caused by selfish desire; the annihilation of selfish images/desires leads to enlightening peace; and once this peace is attained the rest of one’s life is lived in selfless compassion (love) for others. The third step, of emptying the mind of judgment and the heart of desires, is a kenotic form of practice. All of the Buddhist prayer methods, whether concentration of the mind (Zen, Chan, Dhyana), chant, or total body prayer (Tantric prayer) are meant to fulfill the third noble truth. The use of chant for "merit” or for awakening an act of pure faith in the saving power of Amida are later developments in the Mahayana (Great Vehicle) forms of Chinese and Japanese Buddhism. See the excellent works of A1 Bloom andTai Unno on Shinran and Tannisho, respectively, for this late Japanese.form of "Pure Faith” Buddhism. 3. The Senoi tribe of central Malaysia are noted for having had no known crime for four hundred years, until the coming of Islam and 180 Notes to Chapter Five ® Christian missionaries with the values of consumer society and money profit. The matriarchal Muosuo of Lugu Lake in northwest Yunnan Province, China, devout followers of Gelugpa and an ear¬ lier Kagyupa Tantric Buddhism, also have no known history of crime or violence, and have refused all modernization, electricity, or the use of motor boats in Lugu Lake. The Muosuo claim that the devout practice of Tantric Buddhism accounts for their peaceful way of life. 4. See Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism-, Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises-, and Gregory of Nyssa, Migne Patrology, for Western accounts of this process. The structural analysis of Ndembu African ritual by the late Victor Turner gives an excellent example of African ritual use of color involving white for purification, red for illumina¬ tion, and black for the step into the absolute. See Victor Turner, The Anthropology of Religion, vol. 3, (London: Tavistock, 1965). 5. Note the use of fire and water symbols in the Gold Pavilion text in this regard. Taoist and Buddhist rites begin with the lighting of incense (fire) and sprinkling of water for purification. 6. See Michael Saso, Tantric Art and Meditation: The Tendai Tradition (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990), for a simplified ver¬ sion of these two meditations in the Japanese Tendai tradition. The complete version of the text with Siddham Sanskrit mantras is published by the Scholar’s Press, Delhi, 1990. 7. See Michael Saso, The Teachings of Taoist Master Chuang (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978). 8. The fa lu is more complicated in its ritual form. The reader is referred to note 7 above for a fuller explanation. 9. See Saso, Tantric Art and Meditation, the Lotus Mandala, pp. 34, 65-66, for these figures. The gates of the Lotus Mandala are locked and sealed from all external influence during the meditation of Samatha awareness. 10. The visions of Isaiah and Ezekiel and those in the book of Revelation are biblical examples of protective spirits guarding sacred meditative or visionary areas. 181 Notes to Chapter Five © 11. The restored temples of Qinghai and Gansu provinces (part of Greater Tibet) are accessible sources for studying these remarkable figures. The red-faced Mahakala and blue countenance of Mahakali stare down at pilgrims and tourists who ride train, then bus from Beijing via Lanzhou andXining into the Tibetan temples of Northeast Tibet. Labrang temple at Xiaho in Gansu, Rongwo temple in Tongren (Rekong) and Kumbun temple (known in Chinese as Ta-er Si, a bus ride from Xining city in Quinghai) have been restored and are open to pilgrims and visitors as in the past. The temples and households of a village to the east of Rekong city (Huangnan) are dedicated to painting Tibetan style Buddhist images known as tanka. Older versions of tanka paintings, rescued by the farmers and nomads from the destruction of the Cultural Revolution, are for sale in the open markets of Labrang and Kumbun (Ta-er Si). These religious art works from the past can be purchased at a fraction of the price asked for in Hongkong and western markets, where they are sold to museums and art collec¬ tors for public exhibition. 12. The Cham dancers, called Chambawa, require three years of training and nine years of performing before becoming masters. The meaning of the Cham, its preparation, and its intricate dance steps are taught in private within the temple precincts for six to eight weeks before the performance. Cham dances are performed on the fifteenth day of the first, fourth, and seventh lunar months in most Tibetan temples. Thousands of nomads and farmers come down from the high grasslands to participate. 13. The Indian antecedents of Tantric Buddhism considered Lord Shiva (represented by the lingam) and his consort Lady Wisdom to be the gestators and destroyers of the world of judgment. By burning Shiva’s lingam, the world of illusion that impedes enlight¬ enment, as well as all of the images of the sacred, is burned away. 14. The tanka used here as illustrations are taken from Mongol as well as ancient and modern Tibetan sources. 182 © Appendix A Comparative Chart of Taoist History 1100-800 B.C.E • The 64 opening lines of the l-Ching (Yijing ) Book of Changes • Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Moses in Egypt, Exodus 600-300 B.C.E • Confucius, Lao-tzu, • Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Chuang-tzu; the Warring States in China Alexander the Great 200 b.c.e-200 c.e. • The first Chinese empire; • The Roman Empire; religious Taoism develops Christianity founded 300-500 • Buddhism comes to China; • Christianity comes to Taoist mystic Wei Huacun Europe 600-900 • Confucian, Buddhist, • Islamic, Judaic, and Taoist: three teachings, one culture Christian, three cultures 900-1000 • The religious reformation • Medieval Christianity, in China, laity meditate monks and nuns meditate 1300-1600 • Mongol conquest; the • 16th century religious Ming dynasty succeeds in reform; western mystic China; tai-chi and kung fu martial arts begin Teresa of Avila 1600-1900 • Western missionaries, then • Intellectual, industrial, colonial occupation come to Asia; Japan modernizes social revolutions in the West 1900-present • Marxist social revolution • Asian meditation and then modernization come to Buddhist/Asian dialogue come China; rebirth of religion. to the West While Chinese culture maintained a continuity over the last three millennia, the civilizations of Europe, northern Africa, and the Near and Middle East underwent continual and drastic changes. Taoism, a way of life rather than a religious belief system, remains throughout this period at the core of Chinese ascetic and interior practice. 183 Glossary and Index of Special Terms A the absolute xii, 156, 160, 167, sec transcendent Tao, wuivei chih tao Acala (L’udo Myoo) 179, Tantric Buddhist Spirit of fire purification Aidaido 59, a sage of the Zhuangzi Taoist tradition alpha state 95, 137, 173, 179, a quiet state of meditation, in which brain pulses are less than twelve beats per second Amida 160, the Buddha who saves all sentient beings upon invoking his name Ao a great fish, symbol of yin, in the depths of the Taoist ocean apophasis 12, 25, 41, the prayer of emptiness, in which mind and will are stilled apophatic prayer xi, 9, 11, 12, 23, 25, 41, 75, see above apophatic symbol 75 Avalokitesvara (Chn. Kuanyin, [pn. Kannon, Tbt. Chenrezi) 160, 166, 178, the Bodhisattva of compassion avidya 166, ignorance B Baiyun-Guan xiv, 23, White Cloud Taoist Temple, Beijing Baopuzi (Pao-p’u Tzu) 22, an early Taoist book published by Go Hong, in 317 c.t;. The title Gold Pavilion appears in this manual. 185 The Gold Pavilion 0 Big Dipper (Beidou, Pei-tou) 63, 95, 112, 116, 130, 131, a constel¬ lation in the northern heavens symbolizing prayer centered on Tao Blackhat (Wutou) 8, 9, Taoists of the Zheng yi school who perform burial rites as well as meditation on the Tao (distinguish shanag- pa, Tibetan black-hat Cham ritual dancers) bodhisattva ( pusa ) a person who, once enlightened, vows to save all sentient beings; also a term used in colloquial Chinese for a small statue Bonpo 172, (also, Bon) ancient Tibetan religion. Elements of Bon are preserved in the Nakhi Dongba rites today breath energy 82, (see qi, ch’i)-, the mind directs the flow of energy through the body in Taoist qigong meditation, and in Wushu mar¬ tial arts. c Cabala 177, the Jewish meditative tradition, and Islamic Sufi prac¬ tice, contain elements similar to Taoist prayer Cham dances 162-64, 182, Tibetan Buddhist ritual in which medi¬ tative visualization is acted out in sacred dance Chambawa 182, Tibetan Buddhist dancers ch’ang-sheng ( changsheng) 114, 127, 146, long life, or in meditation, Tao generating qi energy in the Gold Pavilion chen (zhen) true, Tao realized chen (zhen) 124, 130, 131, one of the four mantic words used in the I Ching; to prognosticate, rest, pure, meditate place of central focus during meditation Chengi (zhengyi) 125, 150 "True One” Taoist school of Chang Tao- ling, from Dragon-tiger Mountain, southeast China cheng-shih ( zhengshi) 115, another name for the Gold Pavilion, the place of central focus during meditation, chen-jen (zhenren) 110, 127, a Tao-realized person in the Chuang- tzu meditative tradition Chenrezi 178, Tibetan for Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva of com¬ passion ch’i breath (qi) 100, 101, passim, see breath energy, qi chiang-kung (jianggong) 132, acupuncture point, also "red palace,” symbolic name for the heart 186 Glossary and Index of Special Terms Chiao rites 4, 131, 170, Taoist ritual meditation for cosmic and inte¬ rior renewal ch’ien (qian) 112, 121, 122, 129, passim, the first of the eight trigrams, symbol of pure yang, heaven; three unbroken lines ch’ih-t’a (chita) 112, the Gold Pavilion as empty, a "foot long” palace waiting for the presence of the Tao; note the variable meaning of the text ch’ih-tzu (chizi) 131, the hierophant or ruddy child gestated within the Gold Pavilion when Tao is present ch’i-kuan (qiguan) 104, 176, the passage way of primordial qi into the Gold Pavilion during meditation ch’i-kung meditative exercise for nourishing and increasing qi ener¬ gy within the body (see qigong) ching (jing) 100, 102, passim, the power of intuition, located in the lower cinnabar field; the emotions; semen; yin energy Ch’ing-wei (Qingwei) Taoism 22, wu-lei fa thunder rites, shared with Tantric Buddhist practices of Tibet ch’u 122, the portal that leads from the Gold Pavilion, that is, the yang or qian entrance to meditation Ch’iian-chen (Quanzhen) Taoism 23, 110, the “All True" reformed Taoist school; see Baiyun-Guan, Beijing Chuan Hsii (Zhuanxu) 14, 109, Taoist spirit who rules over the north¬ ern skies and the kidneys in the Taoist body CHuang-tzu 4, passim, the 350 b.c.u. Taoist sage whose Chuang-tzu Nei-p’ien is the standard meditation manual for classical Taoist prayer Chuang-tzu Nei-p’ien 3-4, passim, the first seven chapters of the work attributed to the Taoist sage Chuang-tzu ch’ui-hung 117, another term for the North Star chung-lou ( zhonglou ) 132, acupuncture point used as a reference for Taoist meditation Chung tan-t’ien (zhong dantian) 79, 144, the central cinnabar field, i.e., the heart, in Taoist meditation chu-shen (zhushen) 144, the spirit of the heart, master of all the spir¬ its in the body Confucianism 1, 15, passim Confucius (K’ung-tsu, Kongzi) 14, 50, 51, 53, 58, 64, 172, 174, the 187 The Gold Pavilion ® great teacher of ancient China, who defined and taught the basic rules of social relationships D Daba 172, ancient Bon rites of Tibet, preserved by the Muosuo peo¬ ple of the Yunnan-Tibet-Siquan border Daode Jing see Tao-te Ching Daojia (Tao-chia) 4, a follower of the Lao-tzu Tao-te Ching, a school of philosophers in li.c.e. China Daojiao ( Tao-chiao ) 4, religious Taoism, and one of its many schools, dating from the late Han dynasty (2nd century c.E.) daoshi (Tao-chih) 7, 9, 11, a Taoist priest de (te) 59, virtue, power, the immanent Tao of motion, t’ai-chi Denjema (Tbt.) 163, a Tibetan Yidam protective spirit Dharamraja (Chn. Yenluo Wang, Ipn. Enma, Amdo Tbt., Chujia) 160, 163, 164, the Tantric Buddhist ruler of hell dharma (Chn. Fa, Ipn. Ho) 166, the Buddhist way, Buddha’s teach¬ ings Dhrtarastra xii, 159, guardian spirit of the east; one of the Four Heavenly kings who stand at the entrance of Buddhist temples Dhyana (Chn. chan, Ipn. Zen) 154, 159, 180, meditation for calming the mind di 51, the Chinese word for the highest deity, the heavenly equivalent for the Huang Ti visible ruler on earth ding xin v, to quiet or empty the heart and mind of thoughts and desires Dongba 172, ancient Bon rituals of Tibet preserved by the Nakhi people of Lijiang, Yunnan; see Daba Dragon-Tiger Taoism 14, 15, 21, 95, the Zhengyi Lunghu Shan school of Taoism du channel 83, the passage of qi energy from the base of the spine to the top of the head, and down to the mouth (see ren channel) dzampa 164, highland parched barley flour used as a staple diet in Tibet 188 Glossary and Index of Special Terms 0 E earth passim, center of the outer cosmos, corresponding to the chest of the inner cosmos, the human body F fa 109, dharma, Buddhist teaching, the power of the Buddha’s teach¬ ing (and perforce Taoist practice) falu 158, 181, a list of spirit’s names, their mantric commands, talis¬ mans and images to be summoned during Taoist meditation fang-ts’un ( fangcun ) 106, 107, the empty space in the center of the Gold Pavilion in which the hierophant is conceived when Tao is present fangzhong ( fang-chung ) 8, 171, sexual hygiene i.e., the suppression of semen in order to preserve male vigor. The practice is con¬ demned in actual Taoist practice fashi 9, 11, a redhat or popular healer as opposed to a Daoshi Taoist master fasting in the heart-mind see xinzhai five phase system ( yinyang wuxing) 4, 71, another name for yin- yang five element cosmology fu 57, 104, 105, 174, a talisman, or talismanic contract with a spirit, energy of nature fu 74, 134, 139, 141, one of the six organs of the lower abdomen; i.e., Iiu fu Fu Hsi (Fu Xi) xii, 13, 109, 159, the spirit patron of the East, primor¬ dial human being, creator of the sixty-four hexagrams G Gharbhadhatu ( Gharbadhatu ) (Chn. Taizang jie, Jpn. Taizo Kai) 157, the Womb or Lotus World mandala; see Vajra Dhatu the Gold Pavilion [concept] 24, 99, 100, passim, a void center in the microcosm (human body) wherein the Tao dwells the Gold Pavilion classic (Chn. Huang-t’ing Ching) ix, passim, a canonical text 189 The Gold Pavilion ® Goma fire 163, 165, Sanskrit Agni Hottra, a ritual for burning away all impediments to enlightenment, transcendent union gongde 162, meritorious human acts Gozao Shan 22, sacred Taoist mountain in southeast China the Great Abyss see t’ai-yiian the Great Tao ( wuwei chih too, wuwei zhi dao) 147 the Great Ultimate (Tai-chi, Taiji) 63 the Great Void 114, where Tao dwells the Great Yin 143, 146, mother Tao gestating primordial breath guan 176, looking outward Guanyin see Kuanyin guei 170, a demon or demonic spirit Gurkor 163, a Yidam or protective spirit of Tibetan Buddhism Guyi mountains 43, 44, 49, a place cited in the Chuang-tzu where sages and immortals dwell H hai-yiian 109, a Taoist meditative term for the kidneys heart fasting (Chn. xinzhai ) 24, 52, 54, 89, 174, a term from Chuang- tzu, chapter 4; the cessation of judgment and desire as preludes to union with Tao heart-mind (Chn. xin, hsin) 66, passim, the word xin in Chinese refers to all activities of mind and heart, i.c., knowing and willing Heart Sutra 165 heaven (Chn. tian, t'ien), 28, 31, passim, the highest section of the three-layered cosmos, corresponding to the human head heaven’s gate (Chn. Tianmen) 134, 138, 140, the trigram qian, the northwest direction heng 124, 131, a word from the I Ching Book of Changes, second of the four mantic words yuan, heng, li, chen, to sacrifice, nest, nur¬ ture Highest Pure school (Chn. Shangqing Pai) ix, 22, 25, 151, the Taoist meditative tradition, Gold Pavilion teachers hoatsu 9, Taiwanese pronunciation for the term fashi, a Redhat healer 190 Glossary and Index of Special Terms © ho-t’u (hotu) 122, 125, 133, 143, the River Chart, a term for the magic chart used by Yu the Great to stop the floods in ancient China; the paraphernalia of a ruler; a set of Talismans used by Taoists to renew the cosmos hou 124, a twenty minute period of time in meditation practice. A minimum of Two hou are suggested as an ideal time period hou-t’ien (houtian) 103, 125, the eight trigrams of King Wen, which represent change in the cosmos hsia-chi 111, 132, 149, acupuncture point on the back of the skull, used as a reference in meditation hsien-t'ien ( xiantian ) 103, 122, 125, 133, the prior heavens, the eight trigrams of Fu Hsi, the unchanging aspects of Tao in the cosmos hsin-chai 27, see xinzhai hsii 117, the empty heart-mind hsiian 102, the yang, male entrance to the Gold Pavilion hsiian-ch’i 148, Tao as principle working in the cosmos hsiian-ch’uan 132, Tao as source of qi being gestated in the cosmos hsiian-ying 104, the upper rib cage hu 139, to breathe hua 49, change, transformation; distinguish hua for flower hua-ch'ih 135, 136, flowery pool, the kidneys Huainanzi ( Huai-nan-tzu ) 66, 2nd-century b.c.e. manual of Taoist lore hua-kai 135, 138, 139, 141, rib cage, upper chest Huang Ti (Huangdi) 13, 109, Yellow Emperor, spirit patron of the Center, earth, (stomach-spleen) Huangnan 149, a Tibetan district in Qinghai south of Lake Kokonor Huang-t’ing Ching (Huangting Jing) 6, 22, the Gold Pavilion Classic Huang-t’ing Nei-ch'ing 22, the inner Chapters and Huang-t’ing Wai-ch’ing the Outer Chapters of the Gold Pavilion hun 128, 129, 135, 136, 170, the yang aspects of spirit, soul, as opposed to po (p’o) the physical and emotional aspects hundun (huntun) 69, 117, 118, 129, 130, 137, 145, 175, a term used by Chuang-tzu and later Taoist masters for primordial chaos, the demiurge, T’ai-chi (Taiji) and its personification as seen in chapter 7 of the Chuang-tzu 191 The Gold Pavilion © hungtou (hung-t’ou) 8, a Redhat popular healer; see fashi, Hoatsu huntun see hundun I Ching (Yijing) 3-4, passim, the classic Book of Changes Illuminative Way 162, one of the four stages of mystic prayer, namely, Purgative, Illuminative, Dark Night (apophasis, kenosis) and Unitive Jade Chamber 107, another term for the Gold Pavilion Jade Flower 143, 147, 149, drop of yin born in the depths of yang fire; the trigram li purified by Taoist meditation in the Gold Pavilion Jade Ladies 117, 121, 125, six Taoist spirits who protect the medita¬ tor from sullying thoughts and desires Jade Mushroom 149, drop of yang born in the depths of yin; the tri¬ gram kan purified by Taoist meditation in the Gold Pavilion Jade Pavilion 113, another term for the Gold Pavilion jade pool 99, 101, 102, 103, 131, a term for the kidneys, as used in the Gold Pavilion text jade tree 107, the sinews of primordial breath passing through the veins and arteries to renew the body jen (ren) 112, 114, 115, 124, 127, 129, the channel for conducting qi breath from the nose down the front of the body to the base of the spine during meditation Jenghe 163, Amdo dialect for a Tantric Idam protective spirit jia 175, one of six protective spirits of Taoist meditation jiao (chiao) 8, 169, Jiao (Chiao) Festival 14, Taoist rites of village or temple renewal jing 75, passim, essence, the power of intuition, centered in the belly (xia dantian ); also, essence, semen Jing gui shen er yuan ji “respect the spirits and demons, keep dis¬ tant," a phrase from the Analects of Confucius ju ( ru ) 122, the yin entrance to the Gold Pavilion; see ch’u 192 Glossary and Index of Special Terms © K k’an (kan) 119, 121, passim, the trigram that represents water; see li Kangba the people of Kang, East Tibet; includes west Szechuan, northeast Tibet, southeast Qjnghai, north Yunnan kataphatic 9, 11, prayer of visualization and imagination; the pos¬ sessed medium trance, shaman vision journey kataphatic symbols 75 kenosis xii, 154, 155, 156, 157, 162, self-emptying, prayer of, kenotic 11, 68, 158, empty, ‘‘Dark Night” of the soul and senses in prayer Kuanyin (Guanyin, Ipn., Kannon) 160, 161, 178, Chinese name for the Sanskrit Avalokitesvara, Bodhisattva of Compassion kuan-yiian 100, passim, entrance to the Gold Pavilion; midway between the fifth lumbar vertebrae on the back and the navel k’un ( kun ) 113, 114, 118, 121, passim, the trigram that stands for pure yin, opposite of ch'ien, for pure yang kung fu (gongfu) 17, 123, a term used in English to represent various kinds of martial arts; in Taoist usage, it refers to any kind of interi¬ or practice, self-perfection Kung-tzu 108, Confucius L Labrang temple xiv, 162, 163, the great Gelugpa monastery of Eastern Amdo province, Tibet; now in southern Gansu, on the bor¬ der of Qjnghai Lao-tzu (Laozi) 7, passim, the legendary founder of religious/ philosphical Taoism, author of the Tao-te Ching Laozi 14, Lao-tzu li 42, a Chinese measure for spatial distance (about '/2 kilometer) li 169, 170, the Chinese term for ritual, offering, courtesy, sacrifice li 119, 121, passim, the trigram that depicts fire Liji 170, early Han dynasty (206 tt.c.E - 25 C.E.) Ritual Classic; the Yueh-ling Chapter was used to formulate Taoist ritual meditation ling 113, 170, a term for spiritual power, insight 193 The Gold Pavilion © Lingbao (Ling-pao) Taoism 22, one of the three early religious Taoist schools Ling-pao Chen-wen 125, the Lingbao True Writs, ritual meditations for har¬ mony between the inner organs of the body and nature Lingbao Wufu 76, five talismans used in Taoist ritual to establish harmony between the body and nature lingdao 52, 54, a term used in modern China for a boss or leader ling-pao see Lingbao ling-t’ai ( lingtai ) 107, 108, passim, a Taoist term for the heart liu-chia ( liujia ) 180, six terrifying Taoist protective spirits liu-fu 115, 141, the six lower organs of the peritoneal region of the body liu-ting ( liuding ) 180, six peaceful Taoist protective spirits Lotus World mandala 157, 159, one of the two great meditative mandala of Tantric Buddhism; see Vajra Dhatu lower cinnabar field 32, 79, 86, 177; see xia dantian lu 7, 9, 141, 171, a register or list of spirits’ names, summons, and visual appearance given to a Taoist at the time of initiation; the equivalent of Abhiseka (Guanding) in Tantric Buddhist practice Lugu Lake 181, home of the matriarchal Muosuo people; see Daba rites Lunghu Shan 21, Dragon-Tiger Mountain, home of the Celestial Master or Zhengyi school of Taoism M Madhyamika (Chn. Sanlun, Zhonglun) 177, the Buddhist way of apophatic or emptying, non-judgmental prayer Mahakala (Tbt. Gurkor) 163, 182, male figure of a violent Idam protective deity Mahakali (Tbt. Dzamenje) 160, 163, 182, female form of an Idam protective deity Mahayana 96, 180, The Great Vehicle, salvation oriented Buddhism popular in East and Southeast Asia Maitreya (Chn. Milo, Ipn. Miroku) 160, Bodhisattva of the future Mao Shan ix, 95, 102, 125, 143, 151, 173, home of the Highest Pure Taoist meditation school middle or center cinnabar field 177, see zhong dantian 194 Glossary and Index of Special Terms © mi-chueh ( mijue ) 25, 173, directions for Taoist andTantric meditation learned by oral transmission from master to disciple mingmen ( ming-men) 100, 135, 139, 142, 147, the fifth lumber ver¬ tebrae in the meditation tradition; male organ in the sexual hygiene tradition ming-t’ang ( mingtang ) 108, 109, 132, 135, 136, 138, 143, 144, "bright palace” Taoist meditative term for the heart Mount K’un-lun 109, 111, 127, 128, Taoist term for the upper cinnabar field, i.e., the pineal gland in the brain mudra (Chn. shouyin) 154, 176, 178, hand symbols used as talis- manic signs to summon spirits during meditation Muosuo 172, 181, matriarchal people on the border of Yunnan- Szechuan-Tibet, who preserve the Bon rites of Tibet N Naxi (Nakhi) 172, people of the Lijiang district in Yunnan who pre¬ serve the Bon rituals of Tibet (see Dongba) neitan ( neidan ) 124, the meditations of internal alchemy Ngapa 172, Tibetan priests of Amdo (Qjnghai, northeast Tibet) whose rites, exorcisms, and paraphernalia are similar to Redhat Taoist usage ni 132, to go backward, i.e., to return from the many to the one, trace backward through the process of nature to the Tao of origin nien 145, to be one with the Tao through the year long changes in nature ning 49, a term used by Chuang-tzu to express non-change, i.e., one with the eternal Tao nonbeing 29, 146, (Chn. wu), the word used to describe the Tao, when yu, to have being or existence, is used to describe nature North Pole (Chn. Beiji) Taoism 22, meditation based on the North Pole star, focusing on Tao as center of the cosmos (see Peichi) North Star (Beidou, Pei-tou) 121, the seven stars of the Big Dipper which always point to the north pole 195 The Cold Pavilion © P Peichi (Beiji) 130, the North Pole star, focal point of the northern heavens. pi ( bi ) 130, a circular jade ornament with a hollow center; symbol for yin p’in (pin) 102, 130, female, symbol of yin, Tao as mother p’o ( po ) 128, 129, 135, 136, 170, the yin or bodily aspects of the soul- spirit. There are three hun and seven p’o aspects of soul polestar 119, 130, 131, see North Star, Peichi posterior heavens ( hou-t’ien, houtian) 103, 125, the world of change in nature; see yu-wei chih tao, Tai-chi, te (de) opposite is the prior heavens primordial breath (Chn. yiian-ch’i, yuanqi ) 72, passim, the qi or energy gestated by the eternal Tao Primordial Heavenly Worthy (Yiian-shih T’ien-tsun) 108, Tao as gestating prior heavens ( hsien-t’ian, xiantian) 133, 134, the abode of the eter¬ nal unchanging Tao (wu-wei chih Tao, wuchi) pu-hsiang ( buxiang ) 145, not fortuitious, unfortunate, unlucky Pure Land Buddhist 154, 180, belief that salvation or the "Pure Land" is won by invoking the name of Amida Q qi (ch’i) 7, 17, passim, breathing in and out, as distinguished from yuanqi (yuan-ch'i) existence as energy generated from the tran¬ scendent Tao qi breath, 17, 18, 31-32, passim, qi can be defined as primal energy ( yuanqi ) or breathing in and out, visualizing breath to enter the blood system and circulate through the body qigong ( ch’i-kung ) meditation 17, 123, 179, meditating on the flow of qi through the body; visualizing qi energy coming in and going out from the body Qingwei (Ch’ing-wei) "Pure Refined" Taoism 22, 173, the use of sid- dham Sanskrit mantra and mudra to visualize thunder and light¬ ning, purify the body 196 Glossary and Index of Special Terms © Quanzhen (Ch’uan-chen) “All True” Taoism 15, 23, 173, reformed Taoism, late Sung dynasty and thereafter R Redhat (Hung-t’ou) Taoists 8, 9, 11, 23, 172, 173, popular Taoism, healers, exorcists of southeast China; rituals are similar to Bon, Dongba, and Amdo Ngapa (Ngawa) priests Rekong 182, (Chn., Tongren), a town in Qinghai province famous for Tanka Tibetan Buddhist paintings ren ( jen ) channel 82, 112, the visualization of breath flowing down the front of the body to the base of the spine Rongwo temple 182, a Gelugpa temple of Rekong, Qinghai, Northeast Tibet s saigong 9, Minnan/Taiwanese dialect for a Taoist Samatha-vipasyana 154, 176, Sanskrit term for cessation and con¬ templation, literally "stop” (mental images) and “look” (contem¬ plate), an early form of Ch’an (Zen) practiced in China san-chiao ( sanjiao ) 1, 74, 135, 136, 139, 140, 150, the “triple warm¬ ers,” acupuncture point on the spine; three passages which “warm” (nourish) the body (food, liquid, breath) San-ch’ing (Sanqing) 108, passim, the Three Pure Ones, the trinity of Taoist spirits who gestate, mediate, and indwell in the macro and microcosm shartg dantian (shang tan-t'ien) 78, 79, 144, the upper cinnabar field, the pineal gland in the head Shangqing (Shang-ch’ing) Taoism 25, 102, 125, 173, the teachers of the Gold Pavilion meditation tradition; see Mao Shan Shao Hao (Shao-hao) 14, 109, spirit patron of the west, autumn, lungs she spirit 174, the spirit of the soil and crops in Chuang-tzu shen 49, 80, 170, passim, spirit, soul; located in the heart, shen as will governs all the spiritual powers of the body shen-ming 114, “bright spirits,” spiritual forces of the body and 1 97 The Gold Pavilion © nature visualized as separate entities Shen Nung (Shen Nong) 13, 109, spirit patron of the south, summer, heart shih 124, a period of 120 minutes, measure of time spent in medita¬ tion. A 40-minute period in quiet repose is considered minimal sit in forgetfulness see zuowang six ting ladies 113, 114, 115, protective spirits of Taoist ritual medi¬ tation sunya (Chn., kong, xu) the Sanskrit term for emptiness T T’ai-chi (taiji) 29, 63, 68, 103, 118, 175, 176, Great Origin, Tao of immanence, mother Tao as gestating qi tai chi chuan ( taijiquan ) 17, 18, 83, 123, graceful exercises following qi’s flow in the body t'ai-hsiian ( taixuan ) 147, 148, the source of qi breath, Tao in the center taiji see T’ai-chi t’ai-yin (taiyin) 146, the Great Yin, the great ocean, source of the drop of yang that renews the cosmos t’ai-yiian (taiyuan) 148, the kidneys tanka xii, 160, 161, 163, 165, 177, 182, Tibetan paintings depicting the visualizations of Tantric meditation Tantric xi, 96, 153-154, passim, meditation practice that uses the entire person, body (mudra), mouth (mantra) and mind (mandala) to pray Tantric Buddhism 15, 22, 153, passim, Tantric practice, as found in Tibet, parts of Japan, and to a lesser extent in China Tao-ch’ang ( Daochang , Jp., Dojo) x, 158, a place for meditation or ritual practice; “Tao” is present Taoist (Daoshi) 11, passim, a person who has received a lu register that includes instructions for ritual, qi meditation, mudra, dance, music and healing Tao of Transcendent Act [wuwei chih Tao) 103, the wuwei act of Tao which gestates qi primordial breath; see transcendent Tao Tao-te Ching ( Daode ling) 3-4, passim, the five-thousand word, 198 Glossary and Index of Special Terms © eighty-one chapter book attributed to Lao-tzu te (de) 3,58, 117, passim, the visible, moving aspects ofTao in nature Theravada 96, the Buddhism of south and southeast Asia, empha¬ sizing the self-perfection of the practitioner the Three Teachings 1, Confucianism for human relationships, Buddhism for the afterlife, and Taoism for harmony between the body and nature t’ien-ken (tiangen) 132, 149, acupuncture point on the head used as a reference for qi meditation t'ien-men ( tianmen ) 140, the trigram qian, the northwest direction Transcendent Act 29, 118, wu-wei, the work of the Tao gestating qi in nature transcendent being 28, an entity of which the notion "being” can¬ not be predicated, i.e., wu-wei chih tao transcendent Tao 6, 12, 34, 43, 167, the Tao named as Wu, as dis¬ tinct from the immanent Tao when named yu, or T’ai-chi, Tao as gestating mother true person see zhenren ( chen-jen) a person who is one with Tao tsang see zang ts’un (cun) 101, to meditate; also, an inch, i.e., the drop of yang qi gestated by Tao in the depths of the yin ocean ts’un t’ien (cun tian) 112, a technical term for the meditation in which east’s wood and south’s fire are alchemically refined into a drop of qi tsuo-wang see zuowang tu (du) 112, 114, 115, 124, 127, 129, the visualized channel for cir¬ culating breath from the base of the spine upward, over the top of the head to the mouth tzu-jan (ziran) 117, 128, nature, natural V Vairocana 159, 160, the Buddha seen as bright as the sun, in Tantric practice Vaisravana 159, the Buddhist protective spirit of the north Vajra Dhatu (Vajradhatu) 158, the Vajra World mandala 199 The Gold Pavilion © Virudhaka 159, the Buddhist protective spirit of the south Virupaksa 159, the Buddhist protective spirit of the west w wei dao ji xu 89, “only Tao dwells in the void," a phrase from chap¬ ter four of the Chuang-tzu Wei Huacun (Wei Hua-ts’un) ix, 6, 14, 22, 25, 69, 102, 123, 125, 143, 165, 171, 173, first recognized woman Taoist master d. 334 c.E.; transmitted the Gold Pavilion classic weilii 111, 132, 149, acupuncture point used as a place of focus dur¬ ing meditation wu 28, 117, 118, not, non-being, non-moved first mover’s action wuchi (wu/i) 103, the transcendent source, the Tao of wu-wei, as opposed to T’ai-chi (Taiji) or te (de) the immanent, visible Tao Wudang Shan xiv, 22, the home of Taoist martial arts, Polestar school wu-ku ( wugu ) 142, the five grains, starches to be avoided in the ideal diet wu-t'ou ( wutou ) 8, BlackhatTaoists, who belong to the Dragon-Tiger Taoist school and know the rites of the “Yellow” register for burial wu-tsang (wu zang ) 115, the five “storage” organs of the body: liver, heart, lungs, kidneys, spleen wuwei (wuwei) 29, 39, 44, 119, 137, transcendent or "non” act, the gestation of primordial qi from Tao wuwei chih tao (wuwei zhi dao) 12, 68, 103, 125, passim, the ulti¬ mate transcendent Tao gestating primordial qi wu yong 57, a term used by Chuang-tzu as a pun to describe the per¬ son who is "one with Tao:” i.e., “no” use means “Tao” can dwell within, as in the case of the great gnarled tree left uncut by car¬ penters X xia ( hsia ) 175, the lowest place, where the Lao-tzu points out, water always flows. “The Ocean is the greatest of all creatures because it likes to be in the lowest place.” 200 Glossary and Index of Special Terms © xia dantian (hsia tan-t'ian ) 32, 78, 79, 86, 100, 102, 103, 158, the lower cinnabar field, the centering place in the body just below the navel used as a focal point in meditation xinzhai ( hsin-chai ) 24, 25, 52, 53, 89, 110, 171, 174, heart-fasting, abstaining from judgmental thought and selfish desires xukong ( hsu-k'ung ) emptiness, kenosis, apophasis; the mind and heart are “emptied” during meditation V yang passim, the male, bright, active principle of change in nature yi 169, 170, change, i.e., the cyclical changes that occur regularly in nature Yijing (/ Ching ) 4, passim, the ancient Book of Changes, a classic in the Taoist and Confucian tradition yin passim, the female, hidden, receptive principle of nature yin-yang five phase system 4, passim, the time-honored cosmolog¬ ical system of China; also called five elements, five movers, five principles yin-yang philosophy 3-4, 16, passim, the archetypal structured cos¬ mology of ancient China yinyang wuxing ( yin-yang wu-hsing) 4, the yin-yang five phase sys¬ tem yu (you) 28, the immanent, moving Tao of nature, as opposed to wu the constant unchanging Tao of wu-wei Yu (as in Yii Pu) 150, Yii the Great, a mythical king who stopped the floods by pacing sacred dance steps, called Yii Pu the dance of Yii, based on the magic square of nine: 4 9 2 3 5 7 8 1 6 yuan 131, passim, primordial, origin yiian-ch’i 31, see yuanqi yuanqi ( yuan-ch'i ) 31,127, 145, primordial breath Yiian-shih T’ien-tsun 108, Primordial Heavenly Worthy, Tao asges- tating qi 201 The Gold Pavilion © yu-chiieh 99. 100, 102, acupuncture point just below the navel, used as a reference in meditation yung 124, a variant term for the ren passage from the nose down the front of the body to the base of the spine, during meditation yii-nii 118, jade women, Taoist protective spirits who guard the mind and heart from distraction yii-shen (yu-chen) 111, 132, 149, acupuncture point on the back of the skull used as a reference point during meditation yii-wei chih tao (yuwei zhi dao) 118,175, the Tao of change in nature z zang ( tsang ) 73, 177, one of the five main organs of the body; see wu-tsang zhenren ( chen-jen ) 60-62, Tao-realized person; a person who is one with Tao z hi 52, the will zhong dantian 79, 124, the middle cinnabar field zui taiping 175, drunk on peace zuowang ( tsuo-wang ) 24, 25, 64, 89, 110, 171, 174, the meditation of Chuang-tzu for "sitting in forgetfulness,” emptying the mind 202 Bibliography and Further Readings -, Huang-t’ing Ching (Huangting ling), Yunjiqiqian, (The Gold Pavilion classic), Beijing, Baiyunguan edition, 1435. Anderson, P., The Method of Holding the Three Ones; A Taoist Manual of Meditation, London: Curzon Press, 1980. Boltz, Judith, A Survey of Taoist Literature, Berkeley, California: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, Center for Chinese Studies, 1987. Huang, J. and M. Wurmbrand, The Primordial Breath, Torrance, California: Original Books, 1987. Kohn, Livia, Early Chinese Mysticism, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992. Lagerwey, J., Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society, New York: 1987. Liu, I-ming, Huang-t’ing Ching Chieh (commentary on the Huangting ling), Jiyunguan edition, 1799. Maspero, H., Taoism and Chinese Religion, Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981. Robinet, I., Taoist Meditations, Albany: State University of New York at Albany, 1993. 203 The Gold Pavilion © Saso, Michael, Taoism and the Rite of Cosmic Renewal, Pullman, Washington: Washington State University Press, 1990. -, The Teachings of Taoist Master Chuang, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1978. -, Blue Dragon, White Tiger, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990. -, Tantric Art and Meditation, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990. -, A Taoist Cookbook, Boston: Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc., 1994. Schipper, K. M., Concordance du Huang-t’ing Ching; Nie-King et Wai- King Paris: Ecole Francaise d’extreme Orient, 1975. -, Le corps Taoiste; Corps Physique, Corps Social, Paris: Fayard, 1982. Strickmann, M., Le taoism du Mao chan; chronique d’une revelation Paris: College de France, Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises: Presses Universitaire de France, 1981. Welch, H. and Seidel, A., Facts of Taoism, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1979. 204
Hesitant wolf & scrupulous fox: fables selected from world literature
Kennerly, Karen, compiler
1973-01-01T00:00:00Z
Fables
xxiii, 327 pages 25 cm,Over 150 fables selected from 5,000 years of literature,A little fable / Franz Kafka -- The sea-bird / Chuang Tzu -- The snake and the shepherd / Greece -- The hawk and the nightingale / Hesiod -- The Panchatantra. Poor Blossom -- The obedient dog / Ignacy Krasicki -- A fox and a dragon / Roger L'Estrange -- Keeper of the royal Hat / Han Fei Tzu -- Randolf's party / John Lennon -- The nut and the campanile / Leonardo Da Vinci -- Sick Kite and her mother / Roger L'Estrange -- Zeus and the horse / Gotthold Ephraim Lessing -- The story of the hungry elephant / Bulu -- The rose / Johann Gottfried von Herder -- The lion and the mouse / Babrius -- Cock in his litter / Aesop -- Fable of the man and of the lyon / William Caxton -- The acorn and the pumpkin / La Fontaine -- Chuang Chou hunting / Chuang Tzu -- The Kojiki. The mouse's hole -- Marten and the file / Aesop -- Nero's respite / C.P. Cavafy -- The two matches / Robert Louis Stevenson -- Drowning mouse / Babrius -- The frog jealous of the ox / La Fontaine -- The monkey and the spectacles / Ivan Krylov -- Crow's fall / Ted Huges -- The snail and the mirror / Aesop -- How the hair of woman is long, the understanding short, and what a ghastly lack of appreciation there is in them for genius / William Saroyan -- Fable of the mermaid and the drunks / Pablo Neruda -- Coyote goes fishing / Yurok -- The narrow spoonful / Julio Cortázar -- Hares and lions / Aesop -- The wasps / G.E. Lessing -- The companions of Ulysses / La Fonatine -- Fish soup / Ivan Krylov -- A counsel of birds for chusing more kings / Roger L'Estrange -- A fox and a hedge-hog / Roger L'Estrange -- The ostrich / G.E. Lessing -- Privilege / Ivan Khemmitser -- The frogs asked for a king / Phaedrus -- The squirrel / Ivan Krylov -- The rat recluse / La Fontaine -- Sword-fish and whale / Edmund Spenser -- Elephant and the ant / Edmund spenser -- Story of the old wolf / G.E. Lessing -- The fox and the crow / James Thurber -- Dog and his shadow / Babrius -- Chüang Shu-liang in the moonlight / Hsün Tzu -- A country mouse and a town mouse / Horace -- Field mowse and towny mowse / Thomas Wyatt -- The hedgehog and the hare / Leo Tolstoy -- Heron and humming-bird / Muskogee -- The crocodile in need of a surgeon / John Webster -- Patient forbearance / Babrius -- The dog and the dates / Sumer -- The fox and the grapes / Roger L'Estrange -- Fox and grapes / La Fontaine -- Fox and grapes / G.E. Lessing -- The fox and the grapes / Donald Gear -- The mookse and the gripes / James Joyce -- Wolf robbed / Babrius -- The wolf, the mother and the child / La Fontaine -- The fable of the wulf and of the lambe / William Caxton -- The cat and the nightingale / Ivan Krylov -- The wolf and the fox / La Fontaine -- Fox on the way to Mecca / T.E. Lawrence -- The raccoon and the crawfish / Mississagua -- The raccoon and the crawfish, II / Plains Ojibwa -- A fayr parable of the foxe and the wulf / William Caxton -- The Panchatantra. The donkey and the jackal -- Birds, beasts and bat / Leonard Jenkin -- The Panchatantra. Ape, glow-worm, and bird -- An ape judge betwixt a fox and a wolf / Roger L'Estrange -- Gnat and the bull / Babylonian ; Babrius -- How the pompous remark of the turtle spoiled the last moments of the lion who was shot by a hunter but was still proud and lonely / William Saroyan -- An eagle and a daw / Roger L'Estrange -- The ant and the caterpillar / Christopher Smart -- The grasshopper and the ant / La Fontaine -- Dancing out sand / American folk -- The lemming and the owl / Eskimo -- The tortoise and the hippo and the elephant / Bulu -- Man and the weasel / Babrius ; L'Estrange -- The man and the snake / La Fontaine -- The fox and the stork / Phaedrus -- The fox and the turkeys / La Fonatine -- The ass and the fox / G.E. Lessing -- At gourd-patch rise Old Lady Junco had her home and Coyote / Zuni -- The goat without a beard / John Gay -- The two dogs / Sumer -- Piscator's pleasantry / Babrius -- The Panchatantra. The frogs that rode snakeback -- The fable of the ape and of his two children / William Caxton -- The owl and the sun / Roger L'Estrange -- When Brer 'Possum attend Miss Fox's house-party / American folk -- Fish dance / Ivan Krylov -- The cock and the fox: or, the tale of the nun's priest, from Chaucer / John Dryden -- The fable of the belly and the members / William Shakespeare -- The lady and the bear / Theodore Roethke -- The plot against the giant / Wallace Stevens -- On angels / Donald Barthelme -- The fox and deer / American Indian -- Mother crab / Babrius -- The carthorses and the saddlehorse / Robert Louis Stevenson -- The feather-eared owl and the blind ass / Ivan Krylov -- Treachery / Leonardo Da Vinci -- The rat and the oyster / La Fontaine -- Prodigal / Aesop -- Fable of the man and of the god of the wodes / William Caxton -- The tiger and the persimmon / Korea -- The fox / Sumer -- The Panchatantra. The blue jackal -- Nightingale and bat / Aesop ; L'Estrange -- A lion and an asse / Roger L'Estrange -- Beans and husks / Kenkō -- The wounded pine tree / Babrius -- The Panchatantra. The mice that ate iron -- The bottle-bird and the monkey / India -- A camel at first sight / Roger L'Estrange -- The foxes/ Eskimo -- The two monkeys / John Gay -- The astonishing pigeon / Leonard Jenkin -- A salmon and a dog-fish / John Webster -- Coyote and his wife/ Wintu -- A physician that cur'd mad-men / Roger L'Estrange -- The dolls / William Butler Yeats -- The rich man of Sung / Han Fei Tzu -- Mountain in labor / La Fontaine -- The clod and the pebble / William Blake -- The glow-worm / James Boswell -- Skunk and his family / Sioux -- You are too kind / Babrius -- The fable of the wulf and of the dogge / William Caxton -- A very real story / Julio Cortázar -- A fable with a still moral / Marvin Cohen -- The black marten / Aesop -- Fox / Ainu -- All stories are Anansi's / Trinidad -- Fable of the wulf and of the hongry dogge / William Caxton -- The image / Edmund Spenser -- The owl and the two rabbits / Eskimo -- The dove and the fox / Marie de France -- The woman and the jug / Aristophanes -- Woodpecker and the toad / Andaman Islands -- The mole / Aesop -- The moon begs a new gown / Roger L'Estrange -- Snake and child / American -- A lamb, a wolf and a goat / Roger L'Estrange -- The very long tale of an ass and his driver / Leonard Jenkin -- The story of the crocodile / Vandau -- The cock and the fox / Marie de France -- The wolf on his deathbed / G.E. Lessing -- Story with no moral / Julio Cortázar
Masterpieces of world philosophy
Magill, Frank N. (Frank Northen), 1907-1997,Roth, John K
1990-01-01T00:00:00Z
Philosophy,Geschichte,Philosophie,Quelle
Includes bibliographical references and indexes,Introduction: On reading masterpieces of philosophy in a changing world / John K. Roth -- The analects of Confucius / Confucius -- Bhagavad Gita / Unknown -- Democritus : fragments / Democritus of Abdera -- Euthyphro / Plato -- Apology / Plato -- Crito / Plato -- Phaedo / Plato -- Republic / Plato -- Metaphysics / Aristotle -- Ethica Nichomachea / Aristotle -- Politics / Aristotle -- Meng tzu / Mencius -- Chuang tzu / Chuang Chou -- Principle doctrines and letter to Menoeceus / Epicurus -- Tao te ching / Unknown -- De rerum natura / Lucretius -- Discourses ; and, Manual / Epictetus -- Outlines of pyrrhonism / Sextus Empiricus -- The city of God / Saint Augustine -- The platform scripture of the Sixth Patriarch / Hui-neng -- Crest jewel of wisdom / S'ankara -- The book of salvation / Avicenna -- Monologion ; and, Proslogion / Saint Anselm of Canterbury -- Incoherence of the incoherence / Averroës -- Summa theologica / Saint Thomas Aquinas -- William of Ockham : selections / William of Ockham -- The prince / Niccolò Machiavelli -- Novum organum / Francis Bacon -- Meditations on first philosophy / René Descartes -- Leviathan / Thomas Hobbes -- Pensées / Blaise Pascal -- Ethics / Benedictus de Spinoza -- An essay concerning human understanding / John Locke -- Of civil government : the second treatise / John Locke -- Theodicy / Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz -- Three dialogues between Hylas and Philonous / George Berkeley -- A treatise of human nature (Book I) / David Hume -- An enquiry concerning the principles of morals / David Hume -- The social contract / Jean Jacques Rousseau -- Dialogues concerning natural religion / David Hume -- Critique of pure reason / Immanuel Kant -- Foundations of the metaphysics of morals / Immanuel Kant -- An introduction to the principles of morals and legislation / Jeremy Bentham -- Phenomenology of spirit / Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel -- The word as will and idea / Arthur Schopenhauer -- The philosophy of history / Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel -- Philosophical fragments / Søren Kierkegaard -- Concluding unscientific postscript / Søren Kierkegaard -- Essay on liberty / John Stuart Mill -- Utilitarianism / John Stuart Mill -- The methods of ethics / Henry Sidgwick -- Thus spake Zarathustra / Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche -- Beyond good and evil / Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche -- Marx : selected works / Karl Marx -- The will to believe / William James -- The world and the individual / Josiah Royce -- Principia ethica / George Edward Moore -- The life of reason / George Santayana -- Creative evolution / Henri Bergson -- Pierce : collected papers / Charles Sanders Pierce -- Pragmatism / William James -- Ideas : general introduction to pure phenomenology / Edmund Husserl -- Tractatus logico-philosophicus / Ludwig Wittgenstein -- Human nature and conduct / John Dewey -- I and thou / Martin Buber -- Being and time / Martin Heidegger -- The quest for certainty / John Dewey -- Process and reality / Alfred North Whitehead -- The right and the good / William David Ross -- The logic of scientific discovery / Sir Karl R. Popper -- Philosophy and logical syntax / Rudolf Carnap -- Language, truth and logic / Alfred Jules Ayer -- An inquiry into meaning and truth / Bertrand Russell -- Being and nothingness / Jean-Paul Sartre -- Phenomenology of perception / Maurice Merleau-Ponty -- Zen Buddhism / Daisetz T. Suzuki -- The rebel / Albert Camus -- The courage to be / Paul Tillich -- Philosophical investigations / Ludwig Wittgenstein -- Word and object / W.V.O. Quine -- How to do things with words / J.L. Austin -- Theory of justice / John Rawls,Examines and summarizes nearly 100 influential works through critical essays that focus on their themes and major points
Alchemy, Medicine, and Religion in the China of A.D. 320: The Nei P'ien of Ko Hung
Ware, James R.
1967-01-15T00:00:00Z
null
Never before published in any Western language except in fragments, this classical work of Chinese mysticism is a fundamental _ and fascinating _ source for the study of Taoism (Deism) as belief and as practice. In the China of the 4th century A.D., alchemy, medicine, and religion were so closely interrelated as to form a single study; the Western gap between science and religion, and between scholarly study and moral practice did not obtain. This work, in effect, is a compendium of the state of knowledge and the mode of life open to the initiated in Ko Hungs time. In particular, it recounts the actual ways of Taoism as they have existed until fairly recent times _ and it has been a prime canonical perpetuator of those ways. Taoism has tended to be known in the Occident only through the pure philosophical distillations attributed to Lao tzu and Chuang tzu. It was, however, the extraordinary amalgam of mystical insight, wild speculation, superstition and legend, disciplined observation, and intellectual control which together give the Nei Pien its unique flavor. Ko Hung was apparently the first to break the taboo against putting this strictly oral tradition of a secret cabala into writing. The material that a Westerner would separate under the term alchemy is said to surpass in historical value the writings of Stephanus of Alexandria, and its goals and concerns are identical (and not by coincidence) with those of the west: e.g., mercury, gold, elixirs of immortality. In the Taoist case, however, the theoretical framework is that of the Yin and Yang, as expressed in the symbolism of the hexagrams. Also, as in medieval Western alchemy, there was a double purpose in its practice: On the one hand, it was an exercise in religious symbolism in the Jungian sense; on the other, it was a first attempt at an empirical investigation of reality, grounded on careful observation and the compilation of data. Still, experience deferred to tradition: poisonous mercuric and arsenic compounds continued, unfortunately, to be prescribed ritualistically, and the development of more positive medical remedies was largely fortuitous or incidental. In addition to the text, Ko Hungs autobiography is included, and A Taoist Library, the bibliography of texts prepared by Ko Hung himself,, is appended. There are also page references to Sun Hsing-yens edition of the Chinese text, which remains available to scholars. This volume is a source of primary evidence for students of mythology, religion, and the history of science, as well as for the sinologist and those more generally concerned with the development of this vastly influential culture, an influence likely to expand still more in the coming decades.
Purity of heart and contemplation : a monastic dialogue between Christian and Asian traditions
null
2001-01-01T00:00:00Z
Monastic and religious life -- Comparative studies,Asceticism -- Comparative studies,Contemplation -- Comparative studies,Vie religieuse et monastique -- Études comparatives,Ascétisme -- Études comparatives,Méditation -- Études comparatives,Christianisme -- Relations -- Religions asiatiques,Contemplation -- Études comparatives,Spiritualité -- Bouddhisme,Spiritualité -- Hindouisme,Spiritualité -- Taoïsme,Spiritualité -- Christianisme,Asceticism,Contemplation,Monastic and religious life
xx, 364 pages ; 24 cm,Includes index,Notes bibliogr.p. 309-343. Index,Part 1. Hinduism. Regaining the lost kingdom: purity and meditation in the Hindu spiritual tradition / Pravrajika Vrajaprana -- Heart yoga: a comparison of two texts, Pratyabhijna-hridayam (Kashmir, eleventh century) and Kaivalya-darsanam (West Bengal, nineteenth century) / Thomas Matus, O.S.B. Cam. -- The space in the lotus of the heart: the anthropological spirit in the writings of Bede Griffiths / Cyprian Consiglio, O.S.B. Cam. -- Part 2. Buddhism. A. Chan -- Glistening frost and cooking sand: unalterable aspects of purity in Chan Buddhist meditation / Martin J. Verhoeven -- Cleansing the heart: Buddhist bowing as contemplation / Rev. Heng Sure -- The historical Hai-neng, the sixth patriarch of Chan (Zen) Buddhism, in dialogue with the unknown author of The cloud of unknowing / Nicholas Koss, O.S.B. -- B. Zen -- Zen and the impurity of purity / Francis H. Cook -- Zazen: a path from judgment to love / William Skudlarek, O.S.B. -- Sacred fools and monastic rules: Zen rule-bending and the training for pure hearts / Rev. Taigen Dan Leighton -- Doubt and breakthrough in the desert fathers / Kevin Hunt, O.C.S.O,Part 3. Taoism and Confucianism. A. Taoism -- The Taoist tradition of meditation: history, transformation, and comparison / Liu Xiaogan -- Chaos: a thematic continuity between early Taoism and the way of the golden elixir / Paul Crowe -- Through detachment to vision: Chuang Tzu and Meister Eckhart / Joseph H. Wong, O.S.B. Cam. -- B. Confucianism -- Benedictine humility and Confucian "sincerity" / Donald Corcoran, O.S.B. Cam. -- Part 4. Christian and Western perspectives. Purity of heart: discovering what you really want / Laurence Freeman, O.S.B. -- On the re-creating of desire and purity of heart: an exploration / Bede Healey, O.S.B. Cam. -- Purity of heart: a dialogue / Mary Margaret Funk, O.S.B. -- Christian self-understanding in the light of the East: new birth and unitive consciousness / Bruno Barnhart, O.S.B. Cam
The divine matrix : creativity as link between East and West
Bracken, Joseph A
1995-01-01T00:00:00Z
Religions -- Relations,Creative ability -- Religious aspects,Interfaith relations,Religions,Christentum,Nichtchristliche Religion,Deities
xi, 179 pages ; 23 cm,"Dialogue among religions has always been challenging. Today, the questions are becoming more fundamental: are the various traditions - Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Tao - even talking about the same thing when they speak of Nature, or God, Emptiness or Brahman? The Divine Matrix represents a bold scholarly attempt to provide a framework for discussing theseand other - questions that will keep the interreligious dialogue project from grinding to a halt." "In The Divine Matrix philosopher and theologian Joseph Bracken first locates the Infinite as transcendent source and goal of human activity as the notion common to virtually all the major world religions. He suggests that the Infinite is prototypically experienced not as an entity but as an ongoing activity - the principle of activity for all beings (God included). This idea is consistent with the notion of eternal and continuous motion in Aristotle, with the "act of being" (actus essendi) in the theology of Thomas Aquinas and Meister Eckert, and with the ground of being of Shelling and Heidegger, as well as with Whitehead's definition of "creativity." Bracken goes on to show that this idea is implicit in descriptions of Brahman in the Hindu Upanishads, in the experience of pratitya-samutpada ("dependent co-arising") in classical Buddhism, and in descriptions of the Tao in Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu."--Jacket,Includes bibliographical references (pages 169-174) and index,Motion and infinity in the philosophy of Aristotle -- Being and relations in the theology of Thomas Aquinas -- The ground of subjectivity in Eckhart, Schelling, and Heidegger -- Creativity and the extensive continuum in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead -- The dynamic identity-in-difference of Brahman and Atman -- The Buddhist doctrine of dependent co-arising -- The secret of the Tao -- Conclusion: The divine matrix
Benét's reader's encyclopedia
Murphy, Bruce, 1962-
1996-01-01T00:00:00Z
Literature,Art,Music,Literatur,Wörterbuch
Long recognized as the outstanding reference on world literature, Benets Readers Encyclopedia is the one against which all others are measured, and is the single-most complete one-volume encyclopedia available for those with a serious interest in the subject. The entries explore all aspects of literature from around the world: biographies of poets and playwrights, novelists and belletrists; plot synopses and character sketches from important works; historical data on literary schools, movements, terms and awards; myths and legends; and more. Completely revised and updated, this fourth edition captures the diversity of todays canon, with greater attention to African-American, Eastern, Middle Eastern, African, South American, Eastern European and womens literature,For nearly 50 years, this unique single-volume encyclopedia of world literature has been hailed as the best available. Here are over 10,000 informative entries, covering everything a reader could wish to know, including biographies of poets, playwrights, novelists, essayists and belletrists from around the world and through the ages, from Aristophanes to Toni Morrison, from Chuang Tzu to Juan Rulfo; plot summaries of important literary works, ranging from Beowulf to Wuthering Heights to Things Fall Apart; sketches of principal characters from literature, from Salome to Leopold Bloom; myth, legend and folklore, covering everything from Isis to the Midgard Serpentto to the paladins; biographies of artists, musicians, philosophers and other historical personages ranging from Roman emperors to U.S. presidents who figure prominently in literature; accounts of significant schools and movements in literature, such as the Bloomsbury Group and the Beat writers; original titles, as well as the most familiar English titles, for works in languages other than English and recipients of major literary awards, including Pulitzer and Nobel prize winners. From book cover
Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism - theoretical map and historical pilgrimages
null
2018-01-01T00:00:00Z
Absolute horizon,Cosmos,Neoplatonism,Plotinus, Gnosticism,Hegel,Kabbalah,Maimonides,Taoism,Plato,Sefirot,book
Signposts to Silence provides a theoretical map of what it terms ‘metaphysical mysticism’: the search for the furthest, most inclusive horizon, the domain of silence, which underlies the religious and metaphysical urge of humankind in its finest forms. Tracing the footsteps of pioneers of this exploration, the investigation also documents a number of historical pilgrimages from a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds. Such mountaineers of the spirit, who created paths trodden by groups of followers over centuries and in some cases millennia, include Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu, Siddhattha and Jesus, Sankara and Fa-tsang, Plato and Plotinus, Isaac Luria and Ibn Arabi, Aquinas and Hegel. Such figures, teachings and traditions (including the religions of ‘Judaism’, ‘Christianity’ and ‘Islam’; ‘Hinduism’, ‘Buddhism’ and ‘Taoism’) are understood as, at their most sublime, not final destiny and the end of the road, but signposts to a horizon of ultimate silence. The hermeneutical method employed in tracking such pioneers involves four steps: • sound historical-critical understanding of the context of the various traditions and figures • reconstruction of the subjective intentional structure of such persons and their teachings • design, by the author, of a theoretical map of the overall terrain of ‘metaphysical mysticism’, on which all such journeys of the spirit are to be located, while providing a theoretical context for understanding them tendentionally (i.e. taking the ultimate drift of their thinking essentially to transcend their subjective intentions) • drawing out, within the space available, some political (taken in a wide sense) implications from the above, such as religio-political stances as well as ecological and gender implications. Continuing the general direction of thought within what the author endorses to be the best in metaphysical mysticism in its historical manifestations, the book aims to contribute to peace amongst religions in the contemporary global cultural situation. It relativizes all claims to exclusive, absolute truth that might be proclaimed by any religious or metaphysical, mystical position, while providing space for not only tolerating, but also affirming the unique value and dignity of each. This orientation moves beyond the stances of enmity or indifference or syncretism or homogenisation of all, as well as that of mere friendly toleration. It investigates the seemingly daunting and inhospitable yet immensely significant Antarctica of the Spirit, the ‘meta’-space of silence behind the various forms of wordy ‘inter’-relationships. It affirms pars pro toto, totum pro parte, and pars pro parte: that each religious, mystical and metaphysical orientation in its relative singularity represents or contains the whole and derives value from that, and that each represents or contains every other. This homoversal solidarity stimulating individual uniqueness is different from and in fact implies criticism of the process of globalisation. While not taking part in a scientific argument as such, Signposts to Silence aims at promoting an understanding of science and metaphysical mysticism as mutual context for each other, and it listens to a number of voices from the domain of science that understand this.
Full text of "Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism - theoretical map and historical pilgrimages" Skip to main content We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape "Donate to the archive" Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Upload icon An illustration of a horizontal line over an up pointing arrow. Upload User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up | Log in Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.5" floppy disk. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Internet Archive Audio Live Music Archive Librivox Free Audio Featured All Audio This Just In Grateful Dead Netlabels Old Time Radio 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings Top Audio Books & Poetry Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Podcasts Radio News Archive Images Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art Featured All Images This Just In Flickr Commons Occupy Wall Street Flickr Cover Art USGS Maps Top NASA Images Solar System Collection Ames Research Center Software Internet Arcade Console Living Room Featured All Software This Just In Old School Emulation MS-DOS Games Historical Software Classic PC Games Software Library Top Kodi Archive and Support File Vintage Software APK MS-DOS CD-ROM Software CD-ROM Software Library Software Sites Tucows Software Library Shareware CD-ROMs Software Capsules Compilation CD-ROM Images ZX Spectrum DOOM Level CD Books Books to Borrow Open Library Featured All Books All Texts This Just In Smithsonian Libraries FEDLINK (US) Genealogy Lincoln Collection Top American Libraries Canadian Libraries Universal Library Project Gutenberg Children's Library Biodiversity Heritage Library Books by Language Additional Collections Video TV News Understanding 9/11 Featured All Video This Just In Prelinger Archives Democracy Now! Occupy Wall Street TV NSA Clip Library Top Animation & Cartoons Arts & Music Computers & Technology Cultural & Academic Films Ephemeral Films Movies News & Public Affairs Spirituality & Religion Sports Videos Television Videogame Videos Vlogs Youth Media Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Mobile Apps Wayback Machine (iOS) Wayback Machine (Android) Browser Extensions Chrome Firefox Safari Edge Archive-It Subscription Explore the Collections Learn More Build Collections Save Page Now Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Please enter a valid web address AboutBlogProjectsHelpDonateContactJobsVolunteerPeople Sign up for free Log in Search metadata Search text contents Search TV news captions Search radio transcripts Search archived web sites Advanced Search About Blog Projects Help Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Contact Jobs Volunteer People Full text of "Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism - theoretical map and historical pilgrimages" See other formats TA ^ 4 " ; ; ; z TE " y adu EIE 5, W^. f - f Pe Ei i y Ps p ‘ A Y: T sie S m š 2 Ss erg. HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2 ^s y : 3 Z sg? ee t x gie K r u e r ^, E e S °, be as? % 21 $, T - alb 1 r wl r] tly d Y E" F - "NA A. PM + ê ; : X " " 3 z $ s an. E "1 “A "PERO! ^ " ; E p X ¢ dr " ł kor P- wA Sirr Bt = 7 5 t ES. 2 ^ » E a = è ý ~ cu e fnt 9, 4 i x id A s " D d & = is j ae £ ^ I A F d oh e : if ^" : = en E. x E ts tg x fa * ; e a * - ra ; ee A " x E SS v : Tid 21 5 j^ 3 a posts o Silence Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages ` 4 *y r PR s cial ^4 i= - $ $o HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2 Signposts to Silence Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages AOSIS Published by AOSIS (Pty) Ltd, 15 Oxford Street, Durbanville 7550, Cape Town, South Africa Postnet Suite #110, Private Bag X19, Durbanville 7551, South Africa Tel: +27 21975 2602 Fax: +27 21975 4635 Email: [email protected] Website: https://www.aosis.co.za Copyright © J.S. Krüger. Licensee: AOSIS (Pty) Ltd The moral right of the author has been asserted. Cover Image: Photograph and background image by J.S. Kruger entitled, ‘Original Rubbing’. All rights reserved. No unauthorised duplication allowed. Published in 2018 Impression: 1 ISBN: 978-1-928396-45-1 (print) ISBN: 978-1-928396-46-8 (epub) ISBN: 978-1-928396-59-8 (pdf) DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52 How to cite this work: Kruger, J.S., 2018, ‘Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages’, in HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2, pp. i-546, AOSIS, Cape Town. HTS Religion & Society Series ISSN: 2617-5819 Series Editor: Andries G. van Aarde OA Printed and bound in South Africa. Listed in OAPEN (http://www.oapen.org), DOAB (http://www.doabooks.org/) and indexed by Google Scholar. Some rights reserved. This is an open access publication. Except where otherwise noted, this work is distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), a copy of which is available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Enquiries outside the terms of the Creative Commons license should be sent to the Rights Department, AOSIS, at the above address or to [email protected] The publisher accepts no responsibility for any statement made or opinion expressed in this publication. Consequently, the publishers and copyright holder will not be liable for any loss or damage sustained by any reader as a result of his or her action upon any statement or opinion in this work. Links by third-party websites are provided by AOSIS in good faith and for information only. AOSIS disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third-party website referenced in this work. Every effort has been made to protect the interest of copyright holders. Should any infringement have occurred inadvertently, the publisher apologises and undertakes to amend the omission in the event of a reprint. HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2 Signposts to Silence Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages J.S. Krüger Religious Studies domain editorial board at AOSIS Chief Editor Andries van Aarde, Post Retirement Professor in the Dean’s Office, Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria, South Africa Board Members Warren Carter, Professor of New Testament, Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth, United States Christian Danz, Dekan der Evangelisch-Theologischen Fakultat der Universitat Wien and Ordentlicher Universitat professor für Systematische Theologie und Religionswissenschaft, University of Vienna, Austria Pieter G.R. de Villiers, Associate Editor, Extraordinary Professor in Biblical Spirituality, Faculty of Theology, University of the Free State, South Africa Musa W. Dube, Department of Theology & Religious Studies, Faculty of Humanities, University of Botswana, Botswana David D. Grafton, Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations, Duncan Black Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Hartford Seminary, Hartford, Connecticut, United States Jens Herzer, Theologische Fakultat der Universitat Leipzig, Germany Jeanne Hoeft, Dean of Students and Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology and Pastoral Care, Saint Paul School of Theology, United States Dirk J. Human, Associate Editor, Deputy Dean and Professor of Old Testament Studies, Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria, South Africa D. Andrew Kille, Former Chair of the SBL Psychology and Bible Section, and Editor of the Bible Workbench, San Jose, United States William R.G. Loader, Emeritus Professor Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia Isabel A. Phiri, Associate General Secretary for Public Witness and Diakonia, World Council of Churches, Geneva, Switzerland Marcel Sarot, Emeritus, Professor of Fundamental Theology, Tilburg School of Catholic Theology, Tilburg University, the Netherlands Corneliu C. Simut, Professor of Historical and Dogmatic Theology, Emanuel University, Oradea, Bihor, Romania Rothney S. Tshaka, Professor and Head of Department of Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa Elaine M. Wainwright, Emeritus Professor School of Theology, University of Auckland, New Zealand; Executive Leader, Mission and Ministry, McAuley Centre, Australia Gerald West, Associate Editor, School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics in the College of Humanities, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa Peer review declaration The publisher (AOSIS) endorses the South African ‘National Scholarly Book Publishers Forum Best Practice for Peer Review of Scholarly Books’. The manuscript was subjected to rigorous two-step peer review prior to publication, with the identities of the reviewers not revealed to the author(s). The reviewers were independent of the publisher and/or authors in question. The reviewers commented positively on the scholarly merits of the manuscript and recommended that the manuscript be published. Where the reviewers recommended revision and/or improvements to the manuscript, the authors responded adequately to such recommendations. Research Justification Signposts to Silence provides a theoretical map of what it terms ‘metaphysical mysticism’: the search for the furthest, most inclusive horizon, the domain of silence, which underlies the religious and metaphysical urge of humankind in its finest forms. Tracing the footsteps of pioneers of this exploration, the investigation also documents a number of historical pilgrimages from a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds. Such mountaineers of the spirit, who created paths trodden by groups of followers over centuries and in some cases millennia, include Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu, Siddhattha and Jesus, Sankara and Fa-tsang, Plato and Plotinus, Isaac Luria and Ibn Arabi, Aquinas and Hegel. Such figures, teachings and traditions (including the religions of ‘Judaism’, ‘Christianity’ and ‘Islam’; ‘Hinduism’, ‘Buddhism’ and ‘Taoism’) are understood as, at their most sublime, not final destiny and the end of the road, but signposts to a horizon of ultimate silence. The hermeneutical method employed in tracking such pioneers involves four steps: e sound historical-critical understanding of the context of the various traditions and figures * reconstruction of the subjective intentional structure of such persons and their teachings e design, by the author, of a theoretical map of the overall terrain of ‘metaphysical mysticism’, on which all such journeys of the spirit are to be located, while providing a theoretical context for understanding them tendentionally (i.e. taking the ultimate drift of their thinking essentially to transcend their subjective intentions) e drawing out, within the space available, some political (taken in a wide sense) implications from the above, such as religio-political stances as well as ecological and gender implications. Continuing the general direction of thought within what the author endorses to be the best in metaphysical mysticism in its historical manifestations, the book aims at contributing to peace amongst religions in the contemporary global cultural situation. It relativises all claims to exclusive, absolute truth that might be proclaimed by any religious or metaphysical, mystical position, while providing space for not only tolerating, but also affirming the unique value and dignity of each. This orientation moves beyond the stances of enmity or indifference or syncretism or homogenisation of all, as well as that of mere friendly toleration. It investigates the seemingly daunting and inhospitable yet immensely significant Antarctica of the Spirit, the ‘meta’-space of silence behind the various forms of wordy ‘inter’-relationships. It affirms pars pro toto, totum pro parte, and pars pro parte: that each religious, mystical and metaphysical orientation in its relative singularity represents or contains the whole and derives value from that, and that each represents or contains every other. This homoversal solidarity stimulating individual uniqueness is different from and in fact implies criticism of the process of globalisation. While not taking part in a scientific argument as such, Signposts to Silence aims at promoting an understanding of science and metaphysical mysticism as mutual context for each other, and it listens to a number of voices from the domain of science that understand this. This book is original research, and contains no material plagiarised from any other publication, or material published elsewhere. J.S. (Kobus) Krüger: Research Associate, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Pretoria, South Africa. Contents List of abbreviations used in the text XV Biographical Note xvii Introduction xix Chapter 1: Scanning for beacons 1 81 Interlocking crises and the search for meaning 1 to the Nature of things 1 'metaphysical mysticism' and related terms 5 clearing space for the convergence of religious and mystical traditions 8 linkage across epochal divides 12 82 Tendency towards Unground 15 quatenus and quia 15 historical-critical, social-critical explanation 15 intentionality 16 tendentionality 17 the quest of the human species as one differentiated whole 20 Chapter 2: Encounter with science 23 §3 Strategies in addressing the relationship with science 24 asymptotic parallelism 24 positivism-materialism 26 fundamentalism 27 liberal integrationism 28 naturalistic totalism 29 84 Science and questions of ultimacy 31 85 Voices of modern scientists 32 Albert Einstein 32 Werner Heisenberg 35 Charles Darwin 36 Richard Dawkins 40 Intelligent Design 43 Daniel Dennett 47 Contents Part One: Unground Chapter 3: Arche §6 Synoptic map Diagram: Arche §7 Unground §8 Eternity §9 Infinitude §10 Cosmos §11 Arche §12 The human being §13 The status of our understanding Chapter 4: Absolute Horizon §14 Non-reference 815 (Not-)naming the unnameable, (not-)speaking the unspeakable nibbana, impermanence and non-substantiality in Early Buddhism the emptiness of emptiness in Mahayana Buddhism Nishitani Keiji Chuang-Tzu Meister Eckhart F.W.J. Schelling Chapter 5: End §16 All things end §17 Poignant End, tragic End tragedy Qohelet (Ecclesiastes) Ibn Arabi Matthias Grunewald St John of the Cross Johannes Brahms Thomas Altizer §18 Transcended End Chuang-Tzu the Buddha Chapter 6: Origin §19 Potentiality, novelty evil and perfection? aurora viii 53 53 55 55 56 59 60 63 65 67 71 71 74 74 75 77 78 79 80 83 83 86 86 88 89 91 91 93 94 95 95 96 99 99 100 101 Contents §20 Intimations from the Greek and Near Eastern-Western contexts 103 Hebrew faith, Judaism 103 Genesis 1 103 Isaac Luria 104 Platonism (the Timaeus of Plato) 107 Christianity 113 the Fourth Gospel 113 Cusanus 115 Gnosticism 119 the Manichaeism of Mani 121 Islam 124 the Qur’an 125 Ibn Arabi 126 Jalaluddin Rumi 127 821 Interim summary conclusion 129 822 Intimations from the Eastern context 129 Taoism (Chuang-Tzu) 129 Hinduism 129 the Upanishads 130 the Bhagavad Gita 131 Sankara 132 Buddhism 135 Early Buddhism 136 Mahayana 138 §23 Further provisional conclusions 140 Part Two: Eternity Chapter 7: Principles 145 §24 The function of the dimension of Eternity 145 Tall Tales 145 the dynamics of the Principles 147 §25 Paintings of Dawn 149 the Upanishadic philosophy and its offshoots 149 the Buddha 152 Mahavairocana 154 Stoicism 154 Ibn Arabi 157 Kabbalah 160 Jacob Boehme 161 unlikely quintessential MM figure 161 Contents the death, birth and growth of God divinity, nature, humanity inevitable, necessary evil concluding comments Chapter 8: Witting (Knowing) §26 First light §27 Some cleared and travelled pathways Greek insights Pythagoras Heraclitus medieval Sufi insights Knowledge (Alim) as a Name of God for Ibn Arabi Kabbalistic Wisdom (Hokhmah) and Intelligence (Binah) insights from within modern physics Albert Einstein David Bohm Chapter 9: Wanting 828 The possibility of passibility 829 Buoys in unchartible waters Tanha, dukkha and karuna in Early and Mahayana Buddhism eros and apatheia in Plato and Plotinus Plato Plotinus Rahman, Mahabbah and Ghadab in Ibn Arabi Hesed, Gevurah (Din) and Rahamim in Luria Love in Franz von Baader Chapter 10: Willing S30 Will-o'-the-wisp S31 The art of tracking Early Buddhism's teaching of sankhàra Yogacara's teaching of parinispanna, Dharma-kaya, alaya-vijfiàna and Tathàgata-garbha Sufism's teaching of Mashi'ah John Duns Scotus’ teaching of voluntas divina Schopenhauer's teaching of Wille 852 Summary 163 165 166 168 169 169 173 173 173 175 177 177 179 180 180 180 183 183 187 188 189 189 192 195 196 197 201 201 205 206 207 210 212 215 217 Chapter 11: Becoming §33 Auto-manifestation §34 Fragments Parmenides Gaudapada the Awakening of faith in Mahayana Sutra Chapter 12: Can-ing §35 Capacity to act and undergo S356 Sandhi Taoism Mahayana Buddhism Stoicism Neoplatonism Sufism Kabbalah Alfred North Whitehead Chapter 13: Conditioning §37 Reflexive, transitive, reciprocal effecting 838 Complementary historical correlations Lao-Tzu Patthana Vasubandhu Aristotle Stoicism Plotinus John Scotus Eriugena Spinoza David Bohm Chapter 14: Singularising §39 Selfness §40 The mountain spring anonymous forest-dweller(s): Chandogya Upanishad the Buddha: Md/apariyayasutta Lucretius: De rerum natura Proclus: Stoicheiosis theologike G.W. Leibniz: Monadologie J.G. Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre Contents xi Contents Chapter 15: Pluralising 299 §41 Otherness 299 §42 One boiling magma and many moving plates 304 ‘Multiple unity’ (Eriugena) 304 ‘The way begets one; one begets two; two begets three; three begets the myriad creatures’ (Lao-Tzu) 308 ‘I think, therefore | am’ (René Descartes) 310 'l and Thou’ (Martin Buber) 314 Chapter 16: Totalising 319 §43 Wholeness 319 §44 Tortoise, sparrow, weaver, bee 322 Proclus 323 Fa-tsang 325 G.W.F. Hegel 329 context 329 epistemology 330 method 332 idea (/dee) (III19-244) 333 Nature (Natur) (III.245-376) 334 Spirit (Geist) (III:577-577) 336 religion 338 metaphysical mysticism? 340 totalism or totalitarianism 341 Part Three: Infinitude Chapter 17: Rim of a wheel 347 845 Unground becoming Ground: Infinite being 347 846 Four mountain flanks 350 Father, Son, Holy Spirit 351 ten Sefirot 357 ninety-nine Names 358 sat, cit, ananda 359 upaya, karuna, prajfià 360 das Sein, das Nichts, Entborgenheit, Verborgenheit (Martin Heidegger) 361 Chapter 18: Energy-Matter 375 847 Darkness and light 375 xii Contents §48 Spectrum of light 378 to apeiron (Anaximander) 378 akasanaficayatana (the Buddha) 380 hyle (Stoicism) 382 epektasis (Gregory of Nyssa) 383 ishrag (Shihabuddin Yahya Suhrawardi) 388 ahduth shawah (Azriel ben Menachem) 392 forma prima corporalis (Robert Grosseteste) 395 materia prima (Giordano Bruno) 400 the Universal Infinite One, Akàsha and Pràna (Vivekananda) 402 Chapter 19: Life 405 849 The urge to be 405 850 To life! 408 Greek-Hellenistic thinking 408 Plato 408 Aristotle 409 Stoicism 411 Plotinus 412 Indian thinking 414 Chinese thinking 415 Giordano Bruno 417 Schopenhauer, Nietzsche 417 Schweitzer, Driesch, De Chardin 418 Henri Bergson 419 Chapter 20: Love 425 851 Prior to lover and beloved 425 852 Wise, inclusive balance 428 Mencius 428 anonymous: Avatamsaka Sutra 429 Ramanuja 433 Bernard of Clairvaux 436 Jalaluddin Rumi 441 Hasdai Crescas 444 Novalis 446 Chapter 21: Thought 451 8553 The stick insect as messenger 451 xiii Contents §54 Circles 454 Indian Buddhism 455 Abū Hamid al-Ghazalt 459 Moses ben Maimon 462 Thomas Aquinas 467 George Berkeley 473 Immanuel Kant 476 Sri Aurobindo 478 Part Four: Cosmos-Event Chapter 22: Light show 485 §55 Totum 485 outsider and insider perspectives 485 contingent, significant, beautiful 486 Spirit: matter-life-love-thought 488 Cosmic Origin and End 490 §56 ... pars pro toto 491 human constitution 491 human development 491 life after life 492 growth points 496 morality 498 sin, karma, tragedy 499 surprises, acceptance, forgiveness 500 conditionalistic totality in Horizon 503 §57 Trees and the forest 504 materialism 505 Richard Dawkins 505 Howard Bloom 508 idealism 510 T.L.S. Sprigge 510 Jeremy Dunham, lain Hamilton Grant and Sean Watson 513 theism 514 Teilhard de Chardin 516 in lieu of a conclusion 522 References 523 Glossary 537 Index 539 xiv List of abbreviations used in the text ABC Absoluteness Becoming Cosmos CTH Conditionalistic Totalism/Totality in Horizon MM Metaphysical mysticism Biographical Note After retiring as professor in Religious Studies at the University of South Africa, J.S. (Kobus) Krüger became research associate in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Pretoria. His work centres in mysticism, particularly of a metaphysical nature as it manifests in various historical religions and outside of institutionalised religion. He is interested in mysticism as an area of potential and real encounter amongst various traditions and creative persons in this field, with particular emphasis on the meeting between Christianity and Buddhism. Throughout, his main interest has been the development of a framework that would accommodate all religions, understood as the human being’s need for radical and comprehensive orientation within the universe (with mysticism as its deepest dimension) in one theoretical framework of understanding. The present publication is an addition to the following methodological, historical and theoretical books from his pen: * Studying religion. A methodological introduction to science of religion (1982) * Metatheism. Early Buddhism and traditional Christian theism (1989) * Buddhism from the Buddha to Asoka (1991) * Along edges. Religion in South Africa: Bushman, Christian, Buddhist (1995) * Sweeping whirlwinds. A study of religious change: Reformed religion and civil religion in the city of Pretoria (Tshwane) (1855-2000) (2003) * Sounding unsound. Orientation into mysticism (2006) * Turning-points in Buddhist mysticism and philosophy (2007) * Die waarheidsweg Dhammapada: Vertaal uit Pali, verklaar, verstaan, vertolk (2017) xvii Introduction Behind the interpretive scheme of this book lies a personal history of involvement in the issues raised and academic teaching spanning four decades, but it is not in the forefront; this is not an autobiographical account. It is a book about metaphysical mysticism; it is also a venture into metaphysical mysticism, aware of its provisionality. Such books are not necessarily mumbo-jumbo, irrational ramblings or idiosyncratic beatific visions, as some learned among its despisers would predictably see mysticism. The exploration approximates the outer edge of our human talk, the Horizon where serious talking, religious and otherwise, expires. It is therefore also about the end, and the beginning, of religion. | sensed that the edge, the Horizon of religious talk, its becoming utter silence, is important. Religion at its best issues neither in presumptuous certainty nor frustrated dumbfoundedness, but in a peaceful, understanding silence - a ‘learned ignorance’ (docta ignorantia), to borrow the eloquent formulation of the medieval mystic Cusanus (Nicholas of Cusa 1401-1464). It is a silence into which our rational, fact-based words eventually dissolve, but from where we may resume talking, yet conscious of the radical relativity of all such talk. This is not an excercise in any one specific academic subject such as Theology, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Sociology (of religion), Psychology (of religion), Linguistics, and so on. It does not fall back into a pre-critical naivety behind academic scholarship with its disciplinary boundaries and its strictures of academic rigour and is second to none in its admiration for the achievements of science and scholarship. Yet it does not intend ‘scientific’ truth, and does not pretend a ‘scientific’ argument. Neither does it proclaim religiously. The exploration enjoys and participates in the multilogue of human discourses about the ultimate meaning of things. This implies a critical openness towards all that humanity has produced. It is religion-friendly, but not institutionally tied to any specific religion, and not written from within the conceptual framework of any religion accepted as axiomatically normative. Searching religious minds today might be in a situation comparable to that of the homeless wanderers of ancient India and others in similar situations at other times. And like then, something new may be in the offing today, on the annihilating-creating edge of things. Perhaps Horizon cancels all claims to finality of any kind. Therefore, no final position is proclaimed, and no final article of faith confessed. | moved outside religious camps and formulae, with a certain sense of direction, but neither proceeding from nor How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Introduction’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. xix-xxii, AOSIS, Cape Town. https:// doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.00 xix Introduction arriving at any fixed, final position. | do that in non-polemical conversation with a number of authors from the past, but without merely repeating any existing view, limiting myself to any one tradition or producing scripture-bound exegesis or application of any existing texts as if truth were a final, fixed given in any of these. It developed in a context of friendship with the mystically inclined of the past and those of the present. | think | have a sense of how the Roman scholar- theologian-politician Boethius (c. 480-525 CE) could have felt when he, tortured and with his execution by the henchmen of Emperor Theodoric on hand, sought an inclusive, open-ended wisdom. What mattered to him in prison was not the belabouring of the finer points of any existing system, nor the brewing up of something new. What he was in need of was the distillation of the essence and the harmonisation of the best available to him. Let me add that belonging to a specific religion in no way precludes one from being a ‘metaphysical mystic’ in the sense intended here. This will become abundantly clear on pages to follow. Ibn Arabi, Isaac Luria and Jacob Boehme were shining examples, to mention three. Today there is no way back to a pre-scientific manner of thinking. Religion and mysticism cannot simply be parked in a cosmology (pre-scientific or scientific) like a car in a parking garage and driven out again. The relationship is much more organic. So there is sufficient reason to be interested in the relationship between the knowing of science and the non-knowing of mysticism. Indeed, as trail-blazed by, for example, quantum physics, science contains great promise for the construction of a worldview for the present age. | would want Abhidhamma and quantum theory to talk to one another. But it is not done here; the book does not engage with science as such directly, and does not conduct a scientific argument. Science remains in the background (see Ch. 2). While moving across the terrain covered in this investigation, certain associations kept returning. The first was that of an ancient labyrinth. | had the sense of exploring its many winding paths with their many choices but no dead ends; in the end, with patience, all of them would lead into an empty but sacred centre, from which we may return, enriched, to the outside world. The second was that of the ruins of an ancient temple, originally bathed in bright sunlight, but now overgrown by the jungle. Nevertheless, its layout can be reconstructed, and the grandeur of its appearance can be imagined. This was a journey into a half-forgotten, imagined holy place, a sacred space. Cosmos is the outer courtyard of this imagined eternal temple - bustling with life and all its problems, and surrounding, protecting and giving access to an inner space where an eternal liturgy is unfolding itself. That inner courtyard is Infinity and Eternity. At the centre of it all is a most inner, most holy space that is completely empty of object or figure: Absoluteness. Does this empty centre carry any undertones of the fear, the cosmic loneliness, the existential anxiety, XX Introduction the nihilism of shifting signs as may be present in contemporary (post-) modernity; or does it perhaps read it into the contemporary cultural mood? No, it does not; on the contrary. The third was that of a beautiful wilderness. One wanders into that, filled with curiosity and fascination and a sense of adventure. There lies the wilderness, without any set routes. One finds one’s own way in accordance with the landscape and the availability of nourishment and with one’s inner sense of direction. Others - many - have travelled through this landscape before us, and we can pick up their tracks. We study this field, make it our home, enjoy it in the way a tusker elephant may spend years drifting in the wilderness, outside the herd and avoiding the hustle and bustle of the tourist crowd, while tasting and eating at his leisure, getting to know the area far from the often-travelled road as well as he knows himself. Overall the journey of this exploration is a moving forward, but with considerable doubling back to look again from a different angle, with an ever enriched experience. In the large historical context, the story of metaphysical mysticism is not one of straight progress. Ancient Parmenides remains as relevant as medieval Aquinas, and Aquinas as relevant as modern Hegel, and Hegel as relevant as any post-modern thinker. | assume a homoversal community transcending the various epochs of human history. The traveller in this beautiful wilderness is not trapped in loneliness. On the contrary, one feels at home in an open space, conscious of others finding joy there. Therefore, the exploration takes part in the historical quest of humankind to find clarity concerning the nature and meaning of things. It does not come up with a preposterous ‘theory of everything’, but explores a general direction of inclusive (meta-)religious thought. It is also an orientation for others who might be interested in this general problem. For that reason it provides quite a lot of straightforward information, at times detailed, on the various figures with whom | entered into conversation, and it avoids language presupposing initiation into the in-house jargon and fine print of any discourse. Obviously many finer points of detail will not receive their due. The book is organised around ‘theory’ in the sense of a hypothetical framework permitting understanding. The categories forming the matrix of this framework are developed in conversation with various historical figures: some in the form of brief vignettes only, others in the form of more extended conversations; some once-off, others continued throughout the investigation. In the various chapters the theoretical and historical lines are intertwined, but can be distinguished easily, owing to the division of the chapters in sections (§s). Chapters usually start with a sketch of the theoretical possibility envisaged there, followed by a discussion with others. The reason for that is obviously not that the argument of this publication arose separately from Introduction history, but because it may make for easier reading. Apart from providing the necessary anchorage in history, such figures provide critical challenge of what | attempted here. Since an earlier monograph was devoted in its entirety to African religion (Krüger 1995), it was not included in the ambit of this already voluminous offering, and | restricted myself to Western and Eastern schools of thought over the last two and a half thousand years. Presenting and overview of the terrain, there is, for purposes of consolidation, a fair amount of cross-referencing and recapitulation. Throughout, | was gratefully dependent on existing scholarship, mentioned in the text and in the bibliography. Owing to considerations of size, the publication does not contain many or lengthy quotes from such sources. For the same reason it does not in the main text itself always mention or enter into discussion with the authors of such sources who had a deeply appreciated impact on my thinking. | cannot bring under words my indebtedness to a circle of companions (some also colleagues) of mature wisdom who formed my thinking over years, some of whom have read this manuscript and made invaluable suggestions for its improvement. The weaknesses that remain are all mine. J.S. (Kobus) Krüger Research Associate Faculty of Theology and Religion University of Pretoria South Africa xxii Chapter 1 Scanning for beacons E 51 Interlocking crises and the search for meaning to the Nature of things Three entangled sets of problems compel us, humans of today, to rediscover and return to the root and nature of things: Firstly, there is the ecological crisis announcing the destruction of many forms of life. Nature has unexpectedly appeared to be fragile. Humankind's relationship with nature has become profoundly disturbed. Scientific developments and their technological applications and extensions have not enjoyed the guiding and orienting support of a relevant integral view, and have become a problematic force in the overall tissue of reality. Indeed, at least the biological course of life on earth seems to have entered a new epoch in the modern era of industrialisation. Is humanity and together with it much of life on earth, perhaps doomed, partly (largely) to be terminated by human overpopulation and by the closed, greedy and violent human fist? If this is not necessarily so, what resources might be available to prevent the end of life on earth? If inevitably so, what meaning could be found in, or projected into, such an eventuality? How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Scanning for beacons’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 1-22, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.01 Scanning for beacons * Secondly, there is the social crisis with its many faces. This reminds us that injustice towards children, women, minorities, majorities, the socially vulnerable and the humiliated of all kinds, is today as prevalent as at any time in the past. Human life is ruptured by the mutual alienation of individuals, religions, peoples (as ethnic-cultural entities), nations (as politico-economic entities), races and classes. Interhuman exploitation overlaps with the exploitation of nature. Non-human forms of life also are our neighbours, there to be loved as ourselves. Is this achievable? * Thirdly, there is the loss of legitimacy of all traditional religious and other value systems, even when they are propped up laboriously, sometimes aggressively. Traditional religions have lost the right to claim moral leadership of society. They are all in crisis. Humanity has entered a new kind of culture, global in spread but shorn of ultimate meaning. Traditional systems of ultimate meaning arose in cultural and cosmological conditions that were so different from present conditions, that to many they seem to have lost all relevance. Let us distinguish two types of ‘relevance’: the immediate, short-term relevance of closeness, operating close to the coalface of things. This implies real social power or desired power or at least a residue of social power. Then there is the relevance of distance, ultimately seeking orientation from what we shall term Horizon: on the edges, in the margins, seemingly off the page of current events. This is the 'relevance' of the meditations of the homeless Gotama, of the solitary man on the cross, of Muhammad brooding in the desert (Whitehead). The first type of relevance freely dispenses criticism of this and that; the second type, not necessarily having any direct social leverage, speaks quietly on the verge of silence, attempting what may be expressed with the Kantian word 'critique', pushing through to the root of things. Our time seems to call for the second relevance and for 'those who know how to work in perfect stillness, imperceptibly bringing the future into being' (Kingsley 2010). The three sets of problems mentioned above, occur in various mixes in different parts of the globe. Nightmarish apocalyptic visions announce themselves, but allow me for the sake of argument, to entertain the possibility of a 'bodhisattvic', 'messianic' perspective - one perhaps leading to a manner of pro-existence for all. Let us assume that this could indeed involve revisiting the traditional religious intuitions, seeking to interpret them as somehow mutually related, somehow verging on the ultimate Horizon, and somehow relevant for today. Just as ancient Polynesian wayfinders did over vast stretches of ocean, just so humanity today would have to draw on all dimensions of human experience and knowledge; remember past stretches of water covered and islands passed on the way here. They should be able to read the waves and the winds of the present moment, and have sound understanding of the groundswell and the deep currents in the ocean of human consciousness. The way explored here centres on the dimension of mysticism, that unconquerable, unowned Antarctica of world orientation. Skipping the history of the word, by ‘mysticism’ (from the Greek muein, referring to the closing of Chapter 1 lips or eyes), I do not mean non-verifiable and non-falsifiable mystery-mongering and extravagant irrationalism. Nor do | have in mind merely individual, inner feelings of peace and calm, ecstatic enthusiasm, vague sentimentality or passive tranquillity. By mysticism, | mean interest in gaining an integration of: (D enlightened wisdom and insight into the depth of reality (2) lucidity of emotion and will (3) a life of transparent universal generosity, and probably (4) a spiritual discipline, perhaps in community with like-minded people, that may involve a regimen (of, for example, meditation), aimed at gaining (1), (2), and (3). This is a treatise on (1). Enlightened wisdom seems to imply intellectual integrity that reaches beyond academic integrity (mere adherence to disciplinary rules). In addition, it also implies ‘mystical’ integrity, a sense of an ultimate Horizon, reaching beyond religious integrity (loyalty to institutionalised religion with its organisational and conceptual accruals). Mysticism thus understood, is a continuation of world orientation in the broadest sense, which has always had the basic components of: (D right knowledge (ii) right sentiments and attitudes (iii) right behaviour supported and facilitated by (iv) right institutions and structures to ensure Ci)-Ciii). ‘Right’ means suited to the world as it is, being effective and appropriate to meaningful existence. This investigation listens to the wise and enlightened of the past and the present in all cultures, religions and mystical traditions; the visionaries and explorers of the inner world. The days of monocultural, monoreligious isolation are numbered - our time is crying out for a new, inclusive-pluralistic, totalistic vision, appropriate to the cultural conditions of today and the foreseeable tomorrow, beyond the mere rehashing of traditional views and dogmas. The various wisdom traditions are not to be mingled, but respected in their individual integrity. | also assume some continuity among the various mystical traditions evolved by humanity, and among the great mystics who are conspicuous among that differentiated but continuous stream. Often the study of mysticism takes its point of departure in concrete, historical religions - for example, it might be the study of Christian mysticism. It could also, butonly secondarily, be interested in a generalised phenomenon called 'mysticism'. That procedure is valuable. It contains the truth that historical contexts and continuities need to be respected and preserved. In this study, an alternative procedure is explored. | do not take the primary referent to be this or that historical religion, with mysticism as one of its aspects. | take the primary referent to be the homoversal function of searching for ultimate meaning with mind, body and soul, Scanning for beacons of which religious institutionalisations and conceptualisations are derived instantiations. Having said that, the risks and dangers in relating worldviews, religions and philosophies from different times and cultures are daunting, including the possible emergence of false parallels and anachronisms. What then, could come to the fore as the best possible outcome of this kind of undertaking? It could be an intellectual understanding, an emotional-volitional relationship and a morality connected to the two most basic focal points of the human religious, mystical urge: a positive relationship could ensue, both to what | shall term ‘Absolute Horizon’, and to concrete Cosmos. Horizon is ‘far’ in the sense that it is uncrossable, and yet it is ‘near’ in the sense that everything - every sparrow, every second - is immediate to it. Horizon relativises all entities presumed to be massive and eternal, and yet it also affirms things in their relativity and contingency, including religions and worldviews. Contingency does not imply contempt of things, but understanding of their preciousness. It is love displayed towards individual things in their fragility. This has moral implications: away with might, force, homogenisation and megalomania in every form. Relating to Horizon and Cosmos - each in its own right and both in an essential togetherness - constitute what I shall refer to as the largely hidden tendency, mostly hidden, but sometimes coming to the fore in all systems of ultimate meaning. These are the two ultimate poles of the human craving for meaning, that is, for ultimate orientation. We need to discover our emerging from, our being part of, our return to and our yearning for the dimension of Absoluteness on the further side of all our conceptual, ritual and institutional systems. Furthermore, we need to live joyously in the world, with our minds, bodies and senses open towards the world, in spite of all the drudgery and suffering our world contains. We need each of Horizon and Cosmos in a strong sense and both together. Finding harmony between them is a basic interest leading this journey. They form the final two criteria in the engagement with various systems of ultimate meaning on these pages. These two poles of human orientation are largely unexplored in religions. It is as if the experience of most believers prefers to settle in the more comfortable areas around the equator. The region of Absoluteness is shunned as too cold, inhospitable and dangerous; and Cosmos, though studied by science as never before, is often experienced as largely barren of meaning. | want to explore both avoided (and evasive) Absoluteness and tainted Cosmos at the same time, suspecting that both are interrelated and of vital importance for human life. We need both radical transcendence and radical Cosmic immersion, together with the sense of a positive link between the two. The submerged rock on which all neatly designed ships of meaning are finally wrecked during journeys such as ours here, is the question: Whence the subjective sense of evil, suffering and alienation, or even objective evil? Could we avoid such wreckage? How? We will have to face this question. Chapter 1 ‘metaphysical mysticism’ and related terms Religion may be understood as world orientation with an exceptionally radical and integral intention. By ‘radical’, | mean ‘vertically’ deep (or high): penetrating thesurface of everyday experience. ‘Integral’ indicates the ‘horizontal’ dimension of gathering as much of life and world as possible, preferably all of it, in religion’s embrace. Striving to cover these ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ dimensions, religion is ‘comprehensive’, even ‘ultimate’ (i.e. to those who accept it). This is religion in a functional sense. This function almost inevitably takes normative structural shape. In addition, this has always included three sets of aspects: prescribed knowledge sometimes vested in sacred books; attitudes and sentiments; and behavioural patterns and institutions. Mysticism, as understood in our study, is religion at its most radical and comprehensive, moving beyond book, convention and institution. Distinct from mysticism, religion with its normative teachings, socialising rituals and disciplinary ethics is here taken to be the societal outside of the human search for ultimate meaning. It is belief and institution, firm and conservative. A central dimension of the concept 'mysticism' in the sense deployed in this book is that it is an individual quest, not a collective enterprise. It was therefore not, generally speaking, a manifest part of traditional societies with traditional religions, but came to the fore in epochs when individuals became conscious of their own singularity. It is by definition an individual journey, or perhaps one travelled by small bands of lightly equipped friends, untrammelled by the baggage and entourage of a large religious caravan. At the best of times, mystics were the respected vanguards of religion; at the worst of times, they were ostracised and penalised by those institutions. Mysticism has social implications; it is a form of social protest, at times with direct social impact. Typically, it avoids being part of a social contract, and of becoming heavily institutionalised in itself. Why load our leading concept to be metaphysical mysticism? 'Metaphysical' is intended as a useful mark of distinction from more practical, devotional and emotional kinds of mysticism, such as experiences of love, unity and so on. The kind of mysticism explored here is a form of understanding, ‘metaphysical’ not intended as hyper-abstract philosophy. It is simply used in the literal sense of the word as understanding and saying something - as far as that may be possible - about what may be 'behind nature' as experienced in everyday life and captured in the selective net of science. Inaddition to allowing space for intuitive cognitive experience, metaphysical- mystical’ here also refers to the attempt to make clear in rational terms the nature of such intuitive understanding. The kind of ‘mysticism’ suggested by ‘metaphysical’ in this exploration should not be mistaken for mystification: it would take it upon itself to express its perspectives in a consistent, coherent, clear, communicable manner. Consistency is taken to mean that its points of Scanning for beacons departure and its derived arguments and conclusions should not contradict logic. Coherence is taken to mean that the various parts of the argument should dovetail meaningfully and coherently. Considerations such as these add weight to the desire to remain in the ambit of ‘metaphysical’. In addition, it would expect of itself to make meaningful contact with the ordinary experience of reality and with science. What we attempt here wants to link up with the discipline generally known as history of religions or, more broadly, religious studies, without limiting itself to the history of discrete religions in relative isolation, phenomenology-types of studies, social studies or comparative studies of various religions. Here we take a step further. While wanting to stay close to and on friendly footing with religious studies, it is not an exercise in religious studies in the disciplinary academic sense. Metaphysical mysticism is distinct from theology, the latter being defined as the self-reflection of an institutionalised religion. It differs not only from confessional theology, but also from philosophical theology, especially insofar as philosophical theology is usually not conducted in a general sense but in a specific sense: as the reflection on ‘God’ in the context of this religion. Whereas confessional theology bases itself on the authority of normative scriptures and/or on certain creeds, philosophical theology wishes to conform to the generally accessible and binding rules of logic and reason, such as consistency and intelligibility. Yet it remains theology, usually religion-specific (Jewish, Christian, and so forth). This exploration is not an exercise in comparative theology either, as has in the recent past been espoused by, for example, Robert Cummings Neville (1991), continuing the work of theologians such as Paul Tillich, Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Hans Küng. This latter programme also boils down to the understanding, expressing and examination of the Christian gospel, from a Christian point of departure. Metaphysical mysticism steps outside that determining framework. It belongs to wisdom literature in a broad sense rather than to technical theology. For theology as the self-reflection of faith, the medieval Christian theologian, Anselm (c. 1033-1109), coined the term fides quaerens intellectum: faith/belief, already certain of its truth, arrived at by authoritative revelation, seeking rational understanding. Anselm was a Christian theologian, but this definition could be applied to all religion-specific theologies. Theology has a strong institutional connection. It is the self-reflection of the religious institution, or at least the self-reflection of faith with a strong sense of such an institutional setting or belonging. Mysticism does not necessarily have any such involvement, neither in institutionalised social reality, nor in subjective individual belief. These meta-religious reflections step outside of any religion-specific restriction. They neither proceed from any such a priori commitment, nor lead to any such Chapter 1 commitment, but they are drawn towards what lies behind, before, after, formalised religion. ‘Metaphysics’ as understood here is obviously related to philosophy as the general human endeavour to understand things rationally. A portion of theology (philosophical theology’) shares that interest, proceeding from faith assumptions. Yet a difference in emphasis between the type of mysticism explored here and philosophy (and theology in the philosophical sense) is that metaphysical mysticism does not shy away from its transrational, intuitive root. Of course, the voice of rigorous reason, of logic and philosophy, as that tradition emerged two and a half millennia ago in various civilisations (cf. Geldsetzer 2010), remains normatively important. Yet, for its own journey, this exploration would prefer terms such as metaphysical mysticism, sophiaphily Clove of wisdom’), philaletheia Clove of truth’) and cosmosophy (wisdom of cosmos’), rather than cosmology in the scientific sense, or Philosophy in the disciplinary academic sense. Naturally, there are overlaps between the domains of Philosophy and metaphysical mysticism, not only in Hellenic and Eastern philosophy, but also more recently in the West. Representatives of French spiritualist philosophy, including Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Henri Bergson (1859-1941) and Louis Lavelle (1883-1951), are cases in point. Therefore, this is not an exercise in either academic Philosophy, Theology or Religious Studies, nor is it in opposition to those disciplines as they are presently mostly institutionalised academically. It seeks to explore the borders that such disciplines may share with mysticism. In doing so, | shall move into the areas of overlap among them and into the space encompassing all of them. It is a search for a capstone, connecting and integrating the four-sided pyramid of science, theology, philosophy and religious studies, while respecting their boundaries and without interfering in their affairs. The concept ‘MM’ would not mind being associated with the notions of gnosis and wisdom tradition either, obviously without identifying with everything that might pass under those names. Not explored in this experiment, are the distinctions between ‘mysticism’ and four other cognate concepts: spirituality, esotericism, occultism (Faivre 2000 [1996]; Gibbons 2001; Hanegraaff 2012) and spiritualism/spiritism. Spirituality is generally used as a generic concept, representing the whole range of a person's or a social group's orientation in the world with reference to a transcendent source of meaning. 'Mysticism' | would use in a stricter sense, as an individual's search for and experience of unity or non-duality with the ultimate dimension of cosmos and existence. Seen from the top, we have two concentric circles: spirituality the outer circle, mysticism the inner circle (Kourie 2006, 2008). 'Metaphysical mysticism', referring to the cognitive side of that enterprise, is even more restricted. Scanning for beacons The word esoteric has a range of meanings: * Firstly, it may mean secret knowledge, accessible only to initiates into a secretive group. | do not wish to express a value judgement on such a strategy, but mostly it was deemed necessary to escape hostile attention, and in principle, it did not contain any disdain for 'the masses'. 'Metaphysical mysticism' as used here, is not intended to have that connotation. It is inclusive, public and accessible to all, seeking communicability and communion. * Secondly, ‘esoteric’ may be used to denote a search for an understanding of some inner, deeper, mostly hidden reality or dimension of reality, underlying and implicitly present in ‘exoteric’ which is apparent, easily accessible sensible common-sense reality. In these reflections, ‘metaphysical mysticism’ is roughly equivalent to 'esoteric' in this second sense. This book could also be classified as belonging to the category of wisdom literature, at times closely related to 'esoteric' in this sense. * Thirdly, whereas 'esotericism' always demonstrated a deep fascination with symbolism (such as numbers) as such, the emphasis in 'mysticism' has usually been more directly on the experience or understanding of such a deeper dimension of reality itself. The following reflections are not esoteric in this third sense. The term occult is sometimes used as a synonym for 'esoteric'. 'Mysticism' and 'occultism' can overlap: in the European tradition, Eckhart was a mystic in the more puristic sense of the word; Boehme, a mystic-esotericist(occultist). The present endeavour aligns itself with mysticism, not with 'occultism'. MM is not associated with spiritualism/spiritism - neither in the sense that ‘spirit’ is taken to be the only reality, nor that ‘spirit’ is taken to exist distinct from 'matter', nor that the dead continue to exist as disembodied 'spirits' with whom the living might have contact. clearing space for the convergence of religious and mystical traditions Ours is not the only time to be faced with the extraordinary invitation, extended by the wider cultural situation, to observe synoptically. There were other such opportune times in the past. One example is the time of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) in China. Especially the 16th and 17th centuries were a period of intense intellectual activity that saw the fruitful interaction and rapprochement of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, even Catholicism and Western scientific learning coming to China. Like ours, it was an age of critical reassessment of the past, intense awareness of the present, and certain expectations of the future (YU 1981). As far as the relationships between various religions are concerned, our day witnesses two extreme positions: the first sees only particularisation, irreducibility and differentiation; the second rushes ahistorically into universality Chapter 1 and non-differentiation. Neither is acceptable. When seeking a hermeneutical route somewhere between those extremes, three broad strategies open up before us: * Firstly, such traditions in the plural might be acknowledged, but only in separateness. No relationship between them is sought. More than one of these could take turns to receive some attention, even respectful attention. It is more likely that one's interest be confined to one tradition only, avoiding the others and easily turning into isolationism and separatism. * The second route takes us one step further by studying various traditions or figures comparatively, noting similarities, differences and historical connections. This is important, but does not necessarily provide a bridging, unifying vision. * The third and most fruitful way is to look at them comprehensively, in their togetherness in one context, allowing oneself to be drawn into their truth claims, as expressions of the same perennial tradition. This is the way of coordination, and it could be done in various ways, some being more promising than others. One (wrong) turn is superficial syncretism, taking bits and pieces from various contexts and knocking them together. Here we need not enter into an analysis of the word 'syncretism'. What | mean here, is a facile mixing of elements from divergent systems into a superficial agreement. Fusion ends in confusion. From the point of view of this endeavour, a superficial collecting of similar-sounding ideas without sense of context should be avoided at all cost. A second synoptic perspective is to look at traditional answers simultaneously and yet to do so from a separating point of view, highlighting the differences, the breaks between them. This critical kind of focus is an antidote to superficial harmonising and, while drawing attention to the difficulties that may lurk in various traditional answers, it stimulates further thought. It is a stronger position than the previous option, and expresses an important aspect of a meaningful hermeneutic today. There is also another turn to take, complementing and including the critical one. It is possible to have a sense of a universal intelligentia spiritualis, an essential togetherness of these traditions, like rivers all conditioned by the same forces of gravity, rainfall and so on, all coursing towards the same ocean and meeting there, sharing their waters. This is the strongest position to take. Following this promising turn, again several options are available. One is to see them as substantially 'the same'. This is an oversimplifying approach, coming close to superficial, eclectic, ahistorical mixing and matching. Another, better way is to see them as tending in the same direction, acknowledging the real differences between them; not mixing them up, and yet realising that they share the same space, address the same problems, have the same destination, and have coinciding features. Mysticism is not native to any religion in isolation. The challenge is to acknowledge the jagged breaks between the different mountains, but to see them as belonging to the same range in the same landscape. Scanning for beacons That is the approach followed on these pages. This terrain is like a landscape across which many people travel. The landscape itself is the same. Yet, all these individuals and caravans see it from varying angles, enter it from different starting points, travel in divergent directions, find themselves in dissimilar positions, look at unidentical scenes, are led by differing interests, and offer varied descriptions and accounts of their diverse journeys. How does one execute this constructive exercise in relatedness? Again, at least three possibilities open up. These, it appears, are not absolutely dissimilar, but only relatively so, and they overlap: * One is the creation of a brand-new paradigm. In real life it is only possible up to a point. Everyone in known history has stood on the shoulders of others, learning and borrowing from them. All culture and religion build on previous experience. Even so, a few heavenly-graced ones have made relatively fresh starts. Some of these pioneers are known; others, like the original Upanishadic visionaries, are not. The experiment between the two covers offered to the reader has no aspirations of grandeur. It explores the riverbeds of old truths. In this sense, it is a conservative exercise. * Another possibility is to develop a synoptic perspective from within one existing tradition, assimilating the other traditions into that one as it is. This is not only psychologically an understandable position to take, but could also yield significant theoretical gains. An example would be the Christian programme of Nicholas of Cusa (Cusanus) (1401-1464), who came up with a groundbreaking attempt to reconcile various religions known to him - by integrating them into Christianity, even defining them as more or less deformed or provisional forms of Christianity. As the argument unfolds, we will encounter other similar minds. Likewise, one could take any other existing scheme as normative framework for good integration. This is not such a programme either. * A third possibility, the panoramic interpretation, may arise from an open receptivity to several existing traditions simultaneously, although not exclusively beholden to any particular one. Any study of a particular religion as a fact (an institutionalised set of ideas, sentiments and actions) presupposes an all-inclusive matrix where homoversal function is primary. Disinterested inclusiveness of soul and mind in the search for meaning is, | believe, better than one-eyed partisanship. Today, as in Hellenism, the Italian Renaissance and the Chinese Ming dynasty, we live in a time that makes this third possibility a viable one once again. This is such a kind of search. Speaking for myself, | detached myself from institutionalised Christianity 4O years ago, yet never rejected Christianity. Likewise, | am not embedded in any formal Buddhist institution, and | have never become a disappointed, disillusioned, institutional Buddhist either. This is not a ‘syncretistic’ book, but it is a ‘synoptic’ one, wishing at least to see them together; a 'symphonic' one, interested to hear them together; and a 'synthetic' one, piecing them together in a larger systematic framework in the perspective of ultimate silence. There is a price to pay, of course, for an Chapter 1 inclusive interest. Firstly, | will be heavily and happily indebted to existing interpretations and secondary sources for expert information and interpretation. Secondly, working on such a wide canvas blurs precision of detail, not doing justice to each of the individuals and traditions looked at. | accept that price. Interested in the many, this exploration is driven by a passion for a pax fidei. It is interested in clearing a space in which the movement towards convergence in the world we live in today, could be possible. It clears an agora: an open space of assembly and democratic discussion, of public speaking and hearing, of negotiation and bartering of ideas, with the possibility of persuasion and agreement. Indeed, it has no higher claim than that of ‘possibility’; at the very best of ‘probability’, and of a sense of direction and orientation. | have neither the means nor the desire to convince against their will the agoraphobic: those fearing the accommodating space, the inclusive conversation and the open community. Such a clearing of space inevitably has a creative side to it. It is not a passive registering of a state of affairs, but an active construction, a contribution to the development of a new perspective announcing itself today. That is the progressive side of this undertaking. It needs to be factually and historically correct, informed by current scholarship, which is always in the process of development and revision. In addition, it needs to be self-critically aware of its own unavoidable, sometimes idiosyncratic selections and emphases, even as it attempts to understand well and in a balanced manner. The main thing is to be moving in the right direction. Seeking a theoretical space, these reflections are greatly indebted to the impetus of the Buddha as recorded in the Pali scriptures. The Buddha’s emphasis on emptiness and impermanence, and his analysis of the constituents of a human person, play a large role on pages to follow. According to current predominant historical opinion (Bronkhorst 2014), the complex cultural world of early Buddhism was dominated by two master metaphysical options. The first, already present to some extent in die Upanishadic tradition and destined to reach its final form in Advaita Vedanta, was eternalism (sassata-ditth/): the belief in some eternal substance. The second was held by the Lokayata school: the materialistic belief that all is reducible to lifeless matter (obviously with certain implications for a post mortem existence of humans). A third view held by many was a continuation of the old mythological belief in a pantheon of gods, Brahma the first among them. Views similar to these three also dominated Greece of the time. Today they remain three basic orientations, in the forms of modern idealism, scientistic materialism and theism (but now in the form of a strict monotheism). As far as the theistic option is concerned, the Buddha adopted a friendly attitude of peaceful transcendence. The idea of emptiness - this particular footprint on the sands of time, as large as that of an elephant and large enough to include those of other game - points in the most promising direction. Overall, and considering all their many deviations, the other footprints point in the same direction as this one: there must be a waterhole somewhere ahead. Scanning for beacons Nevertheless a new step, taking into account the stones and thorns of today, must be taken in our own time. Behind us lies the spoor over the long stretch of time, but it is not about the elephant, nor about its footprint. It is about the water. All flowers grow towards the sun; all religions grow towards Horizon. Distinct from early Buddhism as recorded in the Theravada scriptures, our wandering has a strong cosmological interest, not limited to the psychological, phenomenological domain of human subjectivity, as was the case in early Buddhism. Early Buddhism is not the norma normans of this endeavour, but provides working hypotheses that may be explored in various directions in new contexts. So the factors constituting the human personality are here extrapolated to become factors constituting cosmos. Different from most of early Buddhist teaching, it is also pro-cosmos, pro-life and pro-body. It operates in the context of the contemporary sciences and realises that early Buddhism was embedded in an ancient cosmology which stamped its teaching: the pearl has to be loosened from an ancient bezel by means of historical criticism and imaginatively reset and displayed in another cultural frame. In any event, Buddhism, in its historical intention, is not an authoritarian body of teaching; the students are supposed to test the depth and breadth of the water for themselves. An example in history of the kind of utopian open space imagined here is Plato’s Timaeus. Plato is quite friendly towards popular, traditional religion, but not without irony. His political concern for the quality of the communal life of humans ultimately carries his cosmosophy. He leans heavily on and learns from the religious and philosophical traditions available to him, yet integrates and transcends them in his own way. His vision of the cosmos includes the mathematics and science of his day. He makes no claim to divine revelation or higher states of consciousness inaccessible to others, but allows the vision to come from the mouth of an ordinary, educated man, Timaeus, claiming no more than likelihood for his views. He develops his argument in a rational way, open to criticism and correction of his friends, in a democratic discussion at the marketplace of life. He does it all with an unsurpassed myth-creating imagination and speculative, constructive power. He commands respect, but demands no obedience or faith. In today's world, such an integration of art, science, mathematics, civil and popular religion, philosophy and theology in a grand MM design is unattainable. Perhaps they will never really be comfortable in one another's company again. Yet, weary and wary as they are of 'grand narratives', is this not perhaps the kind of utopia many disillusioned (post-) moderns nevertheless dream of? linkage across epochal divides The synoptic perspective bridges not only the breaks between various MM traditions at a given point in time (synchronically), but also the breaks between various historical epochs (diachronically). This second type of relative Chapter 1 discontinuity may affect the reception of past epochs within a single tradition - for example, the reception of early Christianity within later Christianity. It also affects the reception of past epochs across two or more traditions - for example, a reception of ancient Indian Vedism in contemporary Western culture. Why bother? Did the old MM systems not have their day before the age of modern science? Did sets of cultural conditions very different from those of our present time not determine them, and are they not completely outdated now? Should we not at best display them in the museum of the history of ideas, as objects of an antiquarian interest? The answer is negative, for they have an abiding relevance that is worth pursuing. In contemporary literature, there is no more eloquent statement of this approach than the contribution of Kingsley (2010) on the historical connections between Mongolia, Tibet, Indian Buddhism, Greece and the Americas. It establishes historical connections antedating the scope of this journey of ours by several centuries, and incorporates a much vaster geographical interest. A broad historical vision of this nature needs to incorporate Africa as well. It is true that the primary locus of discontent any of the old historical religions addressed some 2000 years ago is not necessarily the primary locus of discontent today. In addition, the primary focus of the ancient message of salvation may not necessarily appeal immediately to the present generation. Therefore, directly applying the answers developed then for a set of problems belonging to then, to the different problems of today is not possible once one has become aware of the sometimes terribly broad chasms of historical divides. This is not only the case within one broad historical stream, but even more so across various streams (Konik 2009). Simplistic repetition today of any of the forms taken by any of the old traditions in a bygone epoch would amount to ahistoric or anachronistic fundamentalism or romanticism. The alternative would be to engage in a process of responsible, reflective mediation and articulation of the many pasts that we are heirs of today, in the context of a larger intercultural multilogue. Any set of features in any historical epoch constitutes a delicate balance of interlocking relationships, which cannot be disentangled easily. No religious item occurs in isolation. Each is embedded in a religious nexus of great complexity, and reciprocally implied in other factors: social, economic, political, psychological, and so on. Any item then was part of an entire package. Touch any aspect, and the whole web vibrates. Nor is ‘today’ a stable rack on which portions, cut from the body of a past, can just be hung to dry and then be consumed. The present is a constantly shifting set of relations of all kinds: social, political and economic, cultural, philosophical and scientific. Any attempt at reconciling any past with today would require an unpacking of as many of such variables as possible in a conscious process of critical appropriation, of inventive translation and interpretation - a tracing of real and possible connections with the past, an identification of viable growth points and doomed Scanning for beacons dead ends. All of this implies the very active and self-conscious involvement of the present-day participant in the human story. Discovering or inventing living with, or at least finding viable links with strange pasts, moves in the tension between two equally essential poles. Obliterate any one of them, and the fascination with the process of negotiation as such, will break down. It is the tension between distance and proximity: between then and now, there and here, difference and similarity, them and us, transcending and integrating, being outsider and being insider, strangeness and familiarity. If the tension becomes too taut, differences become incomprehensible: the connection snaps altogether. If the tension becomes too slack, similarity becomes identity; interest fades - if ‘we’ have it all right here and now, why bother with ‘them’? Clearly, we could take many positions on such a continuum. Some individuals - by dint of situation, temperament or taste - would be drawn by the fascinating attraction of distance, the otherness; others would want to emphasise the proximity, the virtual sameness. The risk associated with a fascination by distance is naive escapism into a romanticised past; the risk of a strong sense of similarity is simplistic absorption of one into the other, of conversation reduced to subjection. Learning and dialogue are selective, critical processes of acculturation. In our day of the convergence of all historical, cultural and religious streams in one public space, such a critical, inclusive appropriation of the past(s) may be pursued by all who reflect on religion, theology, philosophy and mysticism - whatever might be the nature of their self-identification or social and cultural association. Such a conversation (not interrogation) needs to be: * historically well-informed * led by fairness and understanding as far as the intentionality of any juncture of the past is concerned * critical * theoretically adequate * progressive-constructive * critical of the modern scientistic worldview, of unconscious or deliberate effortstoraisethattounqguestionable norm, and to subject potentially critical inputs from the past to its dominance. Deliberate myopic self-enclosure in any one sector of humanity is not a responsible option - that is, it does not do justice to the direction of the past, does not follow the perhaps unintended drift present in all serious search for meaning. It does not interpret and address the complexity of the present situation sufficiently and it does not anticipate the requirements of the future adequately and creatively. | am not positing any identities here, only postulating possible convergences among the great mysticisms, and hoping to find a metaphysical-mystical space where an illuminating, life-giving sun shines. Chapter 1 E 52 Tendency towards Unground quatenus and quia These reflections do not wait for some supernatural revelation, nor rely fundamentally on any ancient documentations or collections (canons) of such revelations, claimed by themselves or their followers to be supernaturally backed. So I shall make no distinction between 'sacred books' and any other book, even though | shall be led by a sound respect for such books, the various religious traditions they represent and the scholarly disciplines which interpret them. | would be prepared to regard them as ‘true’, but then in a quatenus Cinsofar as’) sense, not in any quia (‘because’) sense. That is to say, | shall take them to be true insofar as they appear to be true on the evidence available, not on mere authority. Precious as a historical, institutionalised religion may be in the hearts of its followers, it is not absolute, but a product of history. Supreme wisdom is to be found in books held to be holy by their adherents, but their messages must be tasted carefully, rolled on the tongue, and then ingested - or not. This does not detract from the respect that is due to those great ancestors from all cultures, the cloud of witnesses surrounding and accompanying us. This journey is a process of remembering, learning and adding historical depth to understanding. The past is relevant to the extent that it may serve the future. None of the constructions of the past are eternally true. Likewise, the path trodden here starts from and proceeds within a particular historical context. historical-critical, social-critical explanation A historical-critical, social-critical interest will therefore lead the understanding of such traditions and texts in this investigation. Such understanding investigates how religious constructs link up with the social contexts, the historical backgrounds and circumstances from which they arose. The embeddedness of specific forms of mysticism in their respective institutional religious contexts and their wider societies must be acknowledged. Sufism is historically an Islamic phenomenon, much as it also transcends the institutional boundaries of that religion, of religion as such, and can be open to modern Science (Haeri 2008). These reflections want to be aligned to present-day historical, critical scholarship of society and culture. Here too, finality of understanding is neither claimed nor sought. No historical picture, whether loyalist or critical, is ever ‘correct’. After all, every interpretation of the past is a construction by the present, a present which will in due time be the past itself, and the object of the same kind of semi-arbitrary appropriation by some new present lying in some future, and one that is construing its own historical pictures, just as our own present is doing today. The past changes with the changing present all the time. Scanning for beacons Like a fly on a wall, we see what we see, but that seeing occurs from a very limited perspective, and it touches only the surfaces and angles that are open to us. We live, think and speak within the confines of our particular historical setting. All the same, integrity dictates that we see as sharply and widely as possible what we can see, and describe what we see as honestly as we can. Speaking of historical and social critique, this approach is critical of reducing the MM search of humanity to social construction, which is assumed to be unrelated to any depth dimension of society and the world. It does not work on the assumption that the great MM constructions (or their religious articulations) were or are naive, useless or dangerous inventions, as the dominant episteme of our time implies. Fully realising the constructed nature of tradition and cultural products such as religion, it believes that it is time for an old tradition - openness to Silence, to Unground - to be wrought anew for our time. intentionality The investigation presents a limited survey based on a restricted number of case studies of individual persons who have trod this terrain. The standards of validation and evaluation for trustworthy case study research, such as credibility, dependability and confirmability (Creswell 2013:243-268) have been borne in mind. Religions as collective endeavours are also treated as historical cases. | shall try to be true to the intentions of authors and books and traditions of the past - that is, | shall follow a general hermeneutical phenomenological approach. This means that | shall strive adequately to describe, reconstruct and analyse that which the initiators and authors of such books and traditions actually, subjectively, experienced and meant. Following on that, | shall respect the re/igious interpretations of such books (from allegorical to symbolical to theological): how, according to their influential thinkers, the messages of corresponding literature tied in with the central teachings of those religions. That is another aspect of an 'intentional' reading of such messages. We assume that all relevant messages need to be interpreted in the sense of being translated into and for the cultural and social context of today. This task is very much akin to translating or interpreting from one language into another. The choice is to stick close to the donor language, or to elect to say now, in the receiving language, what had been said then in the original language - but now as if for the first time in this language. In other words, how would the original author have said it /f he had lived today, and /f he had written in the receiver language? Each procedure involves risks, and a perfect translation is therefore impossible. By staying close to the donor language, the receiver language can be potently enriched; but working more creatively with the source language has its own advantages. Interpreting classical traditions and texts 'mystically', one stands before the same challenge. For example, the Buddha presupposed Chapter 1 the scaffolding of the cosmology and social structure of his day; it largely determined his teaching on rebirth, for example, and gods and heavens and hells. There is of course the complication of the reception, formalisation and fixation of his message by his followers in his own time and shortly thereafter - but that does not affect our present problem, so we can let it rest. The challenge is: what do we, who live in very different circumstances today (in which science rightfully plays a most influential role), do with his original message today? The cosmology of his time simply does not apply to our world, which has been shaped by science. So, what about rebirth and so on and so on? There is not one or any easy solution to this challenge. There are those who wish to stay as close as possible to the original message of whatever religion, at any cost. The line followed in these chapters is different. Here the question would be: suppose the Buddha (to stay with him for the moment) did not live 2500 years ago, but today, would he have articulated his message in the way written up in the Digha Nikàya? No, clearly he would not. The gem would have been the same, but the bezel would have been quite different. So the challenge, the experiment, remains: how might what any ancient message intended, be translated and interpreted today. tendentionality Beyond the three methodological guidelines just mentioned, the interpretation of such books and traditions followed here, will be tendentional. 'Intention' refers to that which is subjectively, consciously intended or meant by people; ‘tendention’ here refers to what exceeds the conscious intention, to the trans- intended drift or inclination of a theoretical structure or an argument. It refers to the deepest lessons religions teach, perhaps implicitly and subconsciously. 'Intention' refers to the hermeneutical act of interpersonal communication; ‘tendention’ to allowing oneself to be drawn into the structure of an argument, regardless of the person by whom it is put forward. This is not to deny that a tendentional reading is more than mere reconstruction, and contains an element of transformative interpretation. One takes part in a discussion courteously and respectfully, yet realising that one's friends are like fingers pointing towards the mysterious moon out there. A tendentional reading concerns itself with the moon. The manner of decoding messages presented in these pages does not assume some know-it-all, having-arrived attitude. This experiment is led by a hunch, reinforced by study, that all people intuitively know where north is and want to move north, and are in fact, heading northwards. This sometimes occurs via strange deviations, oftentimes by dint of circumstance. Some have penetrated further north than others have; some have indeed reached what is reachable by human endeavour. Hence, such MM thinkers, books and traditions Scanning for beacons are guides. Weare sitting at the feet of the great ones, not patting them on the head. In what is to follow, some play a more seminal, some a more distant and challenging, and others a more confirmatory role. To remain with the ancients for another moment: Plotinus worked in accordance with a tendentional principle. He built his system by synthesising the wisdom of the ancients before him. In that operation he distinguished between those venerable philosophers of old who discovered the truth and those of them who approximated it most completely (Enneads 11.7.1). Christianity in its entirety did the same, interpreting the Old Testament as essentially oriented towards Jesus Christ. The assumed tendentional drift is a hypothetical construct guiding this journey. | will read these authors as having a certain tendency or inclination - even if such a tendency might be quite hidden in the text itself, even if its author(s) may not be conscious of it. | will read them in this manner even if the tendency is up to a point an extrapolation from our dreams and aspirations of today, and even if my reconstructed tendency may not coincide seamlessly with those authors' outspoken intentions or the accepted interpretations of their commentators. It is a generous, inclusive reading of traditions, assuming their essential tendencies to be generous and open-ended themselves. | am prepared to ascribe it to them as their direction, the moon to which they are pointing, irrespective of whether this clearly manifests on the surface. That moon is Absoluteness. | read such traditions and individual authors as partial rather than as false, if this is in any way possible. Truth cannot be interned in any institution, any localised, national or cultural tradition, or any set of propositions. The fly might guess or extrapolate what the invisible underside of the table looks like. Iron file dust is arranged in accordance with the magnetic field of a magnet that may be hidden from sight. Likewise, all religions and religious and mystical literature are here seen as arranged over some hidden magnetic field. The point in interpreting figures from the past is to fathom what ultimately, as if via a broken mirror, fascinated them in the first place. Was it not, ultimately, the wonder of their being something at all - something arising from ‘what’? Why, and how, and to ‘what’ does it return? Consequently, | accept that all historical, exoteric religions and their books - whatever their external circumstances and conditions might be - grow towards the ultimate light and warmth that give shape, life and beauty to all things. That is the true, hidden, inner meaning of such religions and their books. Such religions and their sacred books have an open, potential meaning. That potential meaning is 'unlocked' up to a point (as if showing a hidden but available treasure), but itis also 'imagined' and 'performed' (as in understanding, interpreting and above all performing - however inadequately - music imagined by an unknown composer). The music is the same every time, and never the Chapter 1 same; and it is not reducible to the sensible data, the bars on paper, the instruments, or the performers. All such explorers from the past proceeded from sophisticated cultural and religious base camps above the more humble cultural and religious villages further down. Otherwise, they would probably not have made it to ‘higher’. In addition, more likely than not, they might have felt the emotional and practical need to return to those base camps and villages, the various ‘-isms’, ‘-ities’ and ‘-doms’. Yet up here, those visitors are of a kind, a band of quite free spirits as far as their cultural and religious points of departure are concerned, sharing the same need to see far in all directions. This, | postulate. So | assume their various and indeed sometimes very different contexts as a given, but that is not where my primary interest lies. | shall attempt to reconstruct and interpret the footprints in the historical order that they were made, but not primarily in terms of religious belonging; | shall interpret the visitors to these heights as a community of friends, sharing the same MM passion across cultural and religious borders. This kind of dialogue, operating at the breadth of range intended here, so necessary in our world of today, is a difficult and hazardous undertaking. The community of those who might want to join in such an adventure is only at the start of their venture. There remains a huge ambivalence in such a tendentional understanding: to what extent is such interpretation discovery of what such books intend (perhaps unconsciously), or are they invention on the side of the interpreter? The readers of such texts find themselves in a circularity of mutual stimulation from which there is probably no escape, but which is virtuous rather than vicious. A tendentional interpretation of the past in the sense intended here, allows us to work conservatively and progressively at the same time. We respect the past - that is, the many pasts - and we imagine a future as a creative extension of those pasts. This includes, to be decided from step to step and situation to situation, the possibility of rejection of elements from the past, and revolutionary change - or of an adoption of something from an almost forgotten past. ‘Tendentious’ with its derogatory association, implying an arbitrary, aggressive, dogmatic imposition of an alien meaning upon such narratives to suit our purpose, enforcing a hermeneutical closure on them, is not intended. Nor is a presumptuous subsuming or inclusion of them into a new system, restricting or reducing the other positions to the one favoured by ourselves, intended. Likewise, we do not intend any deformation of any tradition from our present point of view, as if we know better than they what they (unfortunately unsuccessfully) tried to do. This approach does not mean that we arrogantly and patronisingly know better than they do. We merely follow the hints and clues given in those traditions themselves, sometimes as if hidden deliberately, sometimes as if lightly, playfully, concealed just under the surface. We wonder, suspect, guess, Scanning for beacons try out and play with such possibilities. Above all, we remind ourselves that such attempts are inventions, discoveries of imaginable possibilities, not scientifically provable facts. We postulate here that the great hidden tendency under and in all religions and MM’s, is the bipolar tendency towards Absoluteness and Cosmos. the quest of the human species as one differentiated whole Understanding the past comprehensively would mean finding a way back to the hidden archetypes and symbols embedded in the biological species that we call ‘human’. | assume that mystical wisdom, one of the basic types of human response to things, preceding the various religions and likely to surface at any time, is buried in layers of the human constitution as old as our species itself. Let us in principle allow ourselves to be drawn into a tradition as ancient as the human spirit itself, going back to primordial forms of shamanism. The arcanum (secret) is present in us, and is willing to give access to the quiet, patient seeker. It is a kind of philosophia perennis, going back to very early layers of the human constitution before humanity dispersed into the different cultural and religious blocs as it spread across the geographical continents. Because of the limitations of this investigation and its understanding of 'mysticism' as becoming clearly manifest with the arising of a certain sense of singular selfhood, the contributions of various archaic and traditional religions from Africa, Australasia, the Americas, Polynesia and so on, magnificent as they are, do not feature in the historical picture of this compendium. Similarly, owing to space constraints, the connections between the personal ecstatic experience of the shaman in a preliterate society and that of the mystic in a literate culture and religion with a philosophical tradition will regrettably remain unexplored. This experiment remains an exercise in understanding the multifaceted Eurasian MM tradition of the last two and half millennia. Nevertheless, | am profoundly aware of the contributions such older traditions made to the spiritual reorientation necessary today. Hence, this study is by far not a history of transordinary experience. | have chosen to focus on individual MM authors from some of the written traditions of East Asia, India, the Near East, the Hellenic world and the West. Shining in their absence are, for example, Confucianism and Baha'i. This exploration treads a middle path, neither too broad nor too narrow: too broad would be an attempted inclusion of the traditional shamanic wisdoms; too narrow would be, for example, a linkage to the Abrahamic faiths only. Based on that restriction of scope, problematic as it is, we may now enter into conversation with MM teachers of humankind and the schools and traditions that they founded, perhaps deliberately, perhaps unintentionally and accidentally. 20 Chapter 1 On the following pages we shall touch on the teachings of MM geniuses such as the ones mentioned below. We shall consider: * |nindia, the teachings of the Buddha, the critique of Nagarjuna, the panoramic vision of Asanga and Vasubandhu in Yogacara Buddhism, the Advaita- Vedanta of Sankara, the poetry of Krishna devotee Mira Bai and visionary thinkers in modern India, such as Vivekananda and Aurobindo. * |n East Asia, Taoism (Chuang-Tzu and the probably composite, legendary figure of Lao-Tzu - where the historicity of the latter figure and others such as Moses is of no great concern to the argument of this essay), and later Buddhist syntheses such as those of T'ien-t'ai and Hua-yen (Fa-tsang), and the Zen teachings of Dogen. e |n pre-Christian Hellenic Europe, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics. * |n Judaism (where not all were believers), the ancient myths of creation and Jahweh, Philo, Jesus, the Kabbalah (such as Isaac Luria), Chassidism and Baruch de Spinoza. * |n Christianity and the West (which was not a straight continuation of Greece, and where not all were Christian), Jesus, Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus and Proclus, Hildegard of Bingen and Hadewijch. * |n Islam, the prophet Muhammad and mystics such as Rabe'a a al-Adawiya, Mansur al-Hallaj, Suhrawardi, Ibn Arabi, Rumi and Mulla Sadra. * Strongly non-aligned ones such as Kabir (wandering traveller on the restless, endless journey of this kind) - who might neither avoid nor settle in any camp, but move appreciatively through and beyond each occurring on his path. In doing so, the roamer, accepting some food and drink, would move on, fascinated by the empty horizon, always shifting yet always defining the landscape in its busy fullness. The haunting image of the lonely rhinoceros drawn in the Khaggavisana Sutta of the Sutta Nipata comes to mind. Minds such as the above constitute the family, the genealogical tree from which this venture stems. | freely seek the teaching of all masters, constrained only by time and ability. They lived on various cultural continents, sometimes mutually isolated for centuries, and yet they shared a common ancestry and inhabited the same world. Todo justice to any of them in a format such as this is impossible. Ideal typical oversimplifications are the inevitable price to pay for a procedure of thisnature. Such mindsillustrate many possible combinations of ‘metaphysics’ and 'mysticism'. Some could devote all their time to it, others only part of their time, even though it might have been the hidden axis of their lives. In line with the 'tendentional' approach, one has to acknowledge that some of the individuals mentioned above were more gifted than others and some have made a greater contribution. Yet | am interested in the MM ideas rather than in establishing a hierarchy of personal ‘greatness’; in theoretical tendencies rather than in the historical and social 'success' of 'great men' (the story of religion and even MM thought is a story of social discrimination against women) on the hit parade of history. The preponderance of men in the list above reflects the appalling androcentrism of religious history as such. A mystic is a mystic is a 21 Scanning for beacons mystic - yes, but not quite. Gender discrimination looms largely. Indeed, ‘in the usual portrayals of religion women are notable by their absence’ (Anderson & Young 2004:ix). This unfortunate state of affairs is not by far rectified in this book, simply because of the limitations of my expertise. Figures suchas the ones listed above form the apex of what we might imagine as a pyramid. Today the shelves of bookstores are stacked with popular books on ‘spirituality’, ‘metaphysics’ and ‘mysticism’. Important things happen there: it is the compost from which new plants grow. Then there is the level where the classical traditions of nations, peoples, cultures, religions and languages are maintained, protected and reinterpreted. Again, this is a magnificent necessary layer. And then there is the level where great breakthroughs are made. The bottom-up and top-down movements that take place among these three levels need to be recognised, appreciated and encouraged. A journey such as this has to be authentic. No hitchhiking is allowed here, no matter how grand the vehicle. On this road one travels on one’s own two feet touching, experiencing the ground from one step to the next, personally validating each step. | wish to listen to such noble ones without subjecting any of them to anyone else’s teaching, attending, as it were, a conversation among those great equals. They are all ancestors of ours, forming a single, differentiated community of those who meditate and reflect on ultimacy, on the nature of the cosmos, life and humanity. Different as they are, they all incline towards Absoluteness. | wish to do justice to each free spirit in her or his unique singularity and | wish to see them all as arising, like unique yet similar flowers and fruit, from the same root, on the same tree, even if from different cultural and religious branches. Welive in a fragmented world; the various MM traditions are like shards of a broken mirror, yet somehow all reflect the light of the same, whole sun. When attempting to find links among figures such as the above, one could work inductively from a limited number of cases towards the construction of a comprehensive, inclusive frame presented as compelling, because it is based on ‘the facts’. This attempt does not work backwards through time trying to establish some general common core that underlies the diversity of religious and worldview systems. An alternative way might be to work from within some committed religious point of view. Ibn Arabi could say that to have lived one religion fully is to have lived them all. He recognised the relative value of each of the many religions in an open spaciousness - yet, speaking as a Muslim himself and knowing that he was doing so, he thereby relativised his own religion and his own belonging to it. What is offered here is not this second option either, but instead one that relates the various religions to the Horizon transcending, yet integrating all of them. 22 i i Encounter with science For millennia science in a primitive sense was part of religion. From about six centuries BCE, science in the more mature sense gradually emerged and evolved to become a massive tree, not only competing with religion for resources and loyalty, but also growing to overshadow it in modern culture. In its own right and on its own terms and increasingly free from religious tutelage, science strove for radical and integral knowledge of the world solely based on fact and reason. It has become the mightiest factor in determining humanity’s behaviour in the world today. In the secular West, science has taken over certain functions of religion and many, perhaps the majority, deem it more suited to the needs of survival and meaning. In the other sectors of humanity, including the traditional cultural blocs such as the Middle East and Africa, traditional religion is offering stiff resistance. Whether religion will in the long run be able to hold its own, remains to be seen. The problems of traditional religions have become clear to increasing numbers of people in those countries where science exploded onto the scene. Challenged by science, religion’s truth claims have, in the eyes of many, become unfounded, restrictive, prescriptive and proscriptive. That applies particularly to the largest monotheistic religions of the West (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). Religious social institutions - again, particularly in that family of historical How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Encounter with science’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 23-49, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.02 23 Encounter with science religions - have become tainted as authoritarian. Religion is looked upon as the last resort for attitudes and sentiments that are broadly regarded as reactionary and out of touch with contemporary reality. Sexism and the like are seen to be associated with religion as an institutionalised force. However, science is not exempt from comparable problems and temptations. At least since Thomas Kuhn, the role that power and the protection of vested interests play in the scientific enterprise have become known. Mainstream science as conceived in popular culture increasingly developed along mechanistic lines. It is not as though modern science merely stood back from questions of ultimacy. In popular culture, it had amore ominous dimension: a tendency to foreclose such questions; even, by default and sometimes by design, at least implicitly to answer them in devastating ways. Life could become a chance accident in a lifeless and essentially meaningless cosmic desert. The net of mathematics spread over dead matter could coincidentally produce the most fascinating facts, predict events with astounding accuracy, and design the most efficient technologies leading to the most advanced machines - but, finally, also serve the greedy needs of economically advanced nations. Nature could become an exploitable object. Traditional religion seemed powerless to halt this juggernaut. This treatise does not engage directly with the sciences, so this chapter will limit itself to: (1) Outlining five overall strategies in addressing the relationship between MM and science. (2) Listing 20 questions of MM importance implied by contemporary science. (3) Dealing with the manner in which a few prominent scientists of the last two centuries themselves reflected on some of these questions. E S3 Strategies in addressing the relationship with science Strategies for dealing with the relationship between science (natural science, that is) and religion (and the radicalisation of religion in MM) at the present time, include the five ideal types listed below. They are not an exhaustive set of pigeonholes. Certainly, the mesh of the sieve could be made finer, and obviously in real life there will be various expressions of each type, deviations and mixes and combinations of them. asymptotic parallelism This position may be taken from the MM/religious side of the big divide between the two discourses. | do not intend the conservatism of the good folk who have not really been confronted by the challenge of science and who - even in 24 Chapter 2 pockets of present-day culture - simply continue to believe as if scientific accounts of the world are of no concern. Epistemologically, it may be assumed that an ancient mythological account of the world has been revealed supernaturally and is literally true down to the last detail. Many people, still living innocently in geographical and cultural isolation, follow this route. However, where the innocence has been destroyed beyond a certain point, it turns into pseudo-innocence, leading to cultural and religious obscurantism. Beyond naive conservatism, at the level of informed reflection, an attempt may be made to evade the challenge of science by the tactic of strong separation of the two discourses. Any link between science and ultimate meaning is severed. The believers withdraw into the untouchable stronghold of faith, tradition or the experience of God. This kind of faith - perhaps untroubled, perhaps panicking - opts to ignore science, and not to address the genuine MM issues raised from within it. The Reformed Christian theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) followed an asymptotic line of religious reflection: faith and its self-reflection (theology) shall not seek a synthesis of any kind with science. That view has an ascetic motive: protection of the purity of faith and its self-reflection; it also has a prophetic motive: protest against the quasi-religious escalation of science. Science, sticking to its job and staying clear of grandiose worldview presumptions, has great dignity and value, this position holds. Notwithstanding, any systematic hybrid of science and theology is anathema. One cannot doubt the integrity and resolve of this kind of faith, in whatever religious context (Christian or otherwise) it may occur. Yet this position cannot be maintained. Science is not merely a collection of facts with low-level empirical and theoretical relevance; it has meta-empirical implications at a fundamental level. Science may not be ignored as if it is of no MM concern. The divide may also be looked at from the other side: the split may be effected from the side of science. Biologist Stephen J. Gould (1941-2002) took the position that religion and science do not speak to the same things. It may take the form of scepticism, effectively shutting science off from any search for transcendence: nothing can be said about a metadimension, but if people really insist on trying their luck, whatever they say or believe can only have the status of private, subjective opinions. Here too, the strong separation is difficult to uphold. This approach is easily sucked into the worldview of materialistic atheism. To assume that science and MM operate at two completely different levels or in two completely different provinces of meaning without any connections and mutual implications between them, oversimplifies complex issues. In passing, asymptotic parallelism is also a strategy often employed to determine the relationship between various religions. Then it is the functional equivalent of what henotheism or monolatry were, for example, in the ancient 25 Encounter with science world: the existence of many gods is affirmed or admitted or at least not questioned in myth or belief system, but ‘for us’, for all practical purposes, there is only one God. Otherwise, there was the possibility of kathenotheism: concern with one god at a time, without rejecting the others. Today the same strategy is often followed: the value, even the truth of various religions ‘for their adherents’ is admitted, but ‘for me’ or ‘for us’ there is only religion X: suum cuique. It may be tolerant, but it is not inclusive, and it does not offer a theoretical solution to the conundrum of religious or MM truth. positivism-materialism This strategy, not inherent in science itself, often amounts to a comprehensive, quasi-religious, quasi-metaphysical worldview. The ‘a’ in its self-professed ‘atheism’ seldom denotes mere withdrawal from the meta-empirical level. It seldom amounts to a purely methodological agnosticism (‘weak’ positivism), but easily drifts beyond that point, becoming a ‘strong’ position with heavy overtones. The ‘weak’ position would declare: for scientific purposes, we restrict ourselves to the empirical facts. The ‘strong’ position would deny all meta-empirical meaning, or derive all meaning from materialist presuppositions. In doing so, it readily exhibits its own meta-empirical, quasi-metaphysical overtones. The vacuum left by the disqualification of the traditional concept of a personal Creator-God is often quickly filled by a subpersonal set of forces understood in a mechanistic sense, often grown into a complete materialistic worldview, explaining all. In ancient India, philosophical materialism was well developed, and adopted in various ways in philosophies such as those of Kakuda Katyayana and the Lokayata (6th century BCE) (Bhattacharayya 1983:188ff; Frauwallner 1973:215-266). Early forerunners of this position in the Hellenic world include Democritus (c. 460-370 BCE), Epicurus (341-271 BCE) and Lucretius (c. 99-55 BCE). Since the 17th century, materialism has slowly but surely become the dominant model in modern culture. This strategy is not to be equated with the caricature of it often presented by religious people, as if materialism as such implies vulgar hedonism and the like. As its history shows, its sophisticated supporters have always thought it to be compatible with art, humanism, morality and all other expressions of high culture. In contemporary discussions this strategy either denies that the questions that will be raised in 84 can be answered in any meaningful way at all, or answers them in ways that would keep the enquiring mind within the limits of empirical science. This may be termed the route of positivism (sticking to observable facts only), scientism (sticking to scientific procedures and results only) or reductionism (ultimately reducing all reality to matter). 26 Chapter 2 fundamentalism Fundamentalism - a social force of considerable weight in contemporary society - is not to be identified with conservatism, as little as asymptotic parallelism is. Nor is it simply a blunt, uninformed rejection of science. It is the strategy of selective acceptance of some scientific results, and their absorption into traditional religion. It is the adoption of such items into the frame of a traditional theological position, and the often ingenious adaptation of such scientific notions within the religion’s confines, often narrowly and strictly defined. Those elements that cannot be made to fit onto this Procrustean bed by stretching or shrinking are then lobbed off and cast away. This operation often relies on good information; it may have the measurements of the guest. It is the religious bed that will not accommodate this visitor in its full, living integrity. The point of the fundamentalist exercise is the attempt to try and save as much as possible of an outlook that is based on ancient, pre-scientific, mythical documents. Fundamentalism is usually associated with an ahistorical, uncritical scripturalism. The religious book speaks directly to scientific issues on the level of science. Mainly forms of Judaism, Christianity and Islam are treading the way of religious fundamentalism, although it is not confined to those ‘religions of the book’. A well-known example of such conflation or confusion of science and religious faith and myth is the equation of the six days of the Creation story according to the witness of faith in the book of Genesis, with the periods of geological time. Another example is the direct, simplistic equation of the scientific postulate of a Big Bang with the act of creation in Genesis. The point is not to strip old mythical accounts of the world, or the various MM traditions expressed through such myths, of their value. On the contrary, they should be taken seriously, but they need to be interpreted. The most basic assumption behind fundamentalism is the belief in a personal divinity, anthropomorphically understood in an uncritical sense: God is human- like, loving, jealous, acting and reacting, rewarding and punishing and intervening in nature as it pleases him, sometimes in response to human pleas. There are many shades of fundamentalism, from relatively progressive to extremely reactionary. One such possibility is the deus ex machina (‘god out of the machinery’) model. This is named after a procedure in Greek and Roman drama: if the author did not know how to resolve a complex plot, he often allowed a god to be lowered onto the stage by a crane to speak the last word. Small wonder that this procedure was later criticised as showing a lack of skill on the side of the dramatist. It remains a favoured procedure in certain religious quarters when settling theoretical complexities. A supernatural divinity of the traditionally theistic variety is lowered into the debate. Miracles are a stock device in the fundamentalist arsenal. 27 Encounter with science Scientism and fundamentalism can become strange bedfellows by the simple device of dissociated thinking. The human mind can somehow manage to contain theoretically incompatible ideas under one blanket. The two discourses are then not synthesised theoretically, but simply stuck together or left alongside each other without talking to each other. Fundamentalist believers may even be scientists hoping to find a safe haven in eternal or traditional religious certainties. Such eating one’s cake on Sunday and having it on Monday is no solution. The challenge posed by science is too radical for a pick and choose approach to ancient religious scriptures. One cannot abandon the ‘how’ of biblical creation while retaining the ‘who’. The inevitable implication of accepting the ‘how’ of science, is the radical problematising of the ‘who’ of traditional theism. ‘God’ can never be the same again. A complete MM overhaul is necessary. Traditional theology as a master paradigm, adapted here and there, is no longer a way to go, and this venture, sympathetic as it is of the Christian tradition, dispraises that approach. The same applies to Buddhist or any other form of fundamentalism. liberal integrationism In liberal integrationism, some traditional religious framework, however attenuated, remains the frame of reference and interpretation. Its attitude to science and culture in general is not as narrow and selectively exclusive, but inclusive and accommodating. In its interpretation of its scripture it is not as bound to the letter, but allows for more freedom - either reading texts historically critical as nested in their time, or allowing for a variety of allegorical and spiritual interpretations, or both. It regards at least some traditional beliefs as dispensable in the light of modern science, or at least as reinterpretable. In its continuity with its own tradition, it is not reactionary and backward looking, but progressive and forward looking. It is more creative, bold and free than fundamentalism is as far as its relationship to the mother or host religion is concerned. It is prepared to adapt that framework, even considerably. However, both theoretically and emotionally, it continues to move in the ambit of such a mother religion. Presumably, there are limits as to how far liberal integrationism might go in its grafting of science onto a religion - or (and this is more often the case) their religion onto science. Not anything goes. To what extent must it comply with the letter or spirit of the old, normative tradition? When is some opinion beyond the pale? The shibboleth's dividing fundamentalism and liberal integrationism may vary. Must women be subordinate to men? Can water be changed into wine? Do dead bodies return to life? To mention one example from the sphere of Christianity: Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) found it relevant to reinterpret 28 Chapter 2 the resurrection of the believer in existential terms; the traditional article of faith in Christ’s bodily resurrection means that Christ has created the possibility of a new existence. In the monotheistic faiths of the Middle East and West, the most basic ontological assumption of liberal integrationism is the belief in divinity. Its assumption of or belief in a divinity may come in a number of varieties. Mostly, but not always strongly, the view of divinity that is held, has a personalistic flavour. Yet the personhood of divinity may be stripped of some features of human personhood. The risk run in this strategy is that religious reflection may be reduced to the ashes of a once-burning bush of faith enthusiasm. As theology, it could become -/ogy without theos- as a living reality. In mimetic desire to be scientifically respectable, the academic engagement with religion could successfully inscribe itself in the established scientific field of force, but at the cost of the critical and creative role of religion. The same would apply to other religions, such as Buddhism. Here too, the vigorous, strict, challenging classical teachings could be atrophied to the level of non-nutritious savouries, merely pandering to the contemporary consumerist palate. This approach too, is turned down in our contemplation. The original teachings of Christianity and Buddhism (to stay with these two for the moment) are to be studied and appreciated in their original embedding contexts. Their explicit intentions are to be respected and not whittled away, and only then the arduous step towards a creative tendentional extrapolation suitable to the deepest needs of the present cultural crisis can be undertaken. That should certainly not simply amount to a mere surrender to contemporary cultural and social dictates to ensure money, institutional growth or survival. It would be the ultimate betrayal. naturalistic totalism A fifth possible strategy in negotiating the relationship between MM and science may be termed 'naturalistic totalism'. That is the one sought here. This approach would want to transcend the ontological break between 'nature' and 'supernature' and seek organic interrelationships of all levels and forms of being - and may (or may choose not to) refer to that All as somehow 'divine'. Seeking a way to express an alternative view, beyond theism and atheism, yet imbued with mystical significance, | shall explore terms such as trans-theistic, meta-theistic, or a-theistic. As far as the last term C‘a-theistic’) is concerned, these reflections distinguish between ‘atheism’ and ‘a-theism’: the former refers to a flat, mostly materialistic reactionary denial of ‘God’ and every possible functional equivalent of such an idea; the latter is not a position of denial, but extension of the mystery. 29 Encounter with science This strategy would be open to science and would admire and delight in its insights. Even if this inquiry does not venture into science itself as it explores a path to a mysticism of nature, we dare not - in fact, we cannot even if we wanted to - withdraw from the powerful sphere of science, for it determines the cultural landscape on which all of humanity exists today. Over and above, we do not want to. This strategy would also promote an alignment of science and MM, while respecting the distinctiveness of the competencies of both spheres (Clayton 2007:95). MM is awarded its own dignity, its own course and is regarded as at best partly dovetailing with science. Undoubtedly, some positive alignment between the two discourses is the challenge and invitation of our day, but this strategy would opt for a meaningful conversation and integration above a mixture spoiling both. Having to read the dated science presented as part of an MM argument, can make for embarrassing reading. The great Hegel is a case in point. So is Bergson. Such subjection occurs in contemporary Christianity, where the reduction of religious reflection to the status of a series of footnotes to modern science, is a problem. The same threat is present in, for example, the appropriation of classical Eastern Buddhism to the dictates of contemporary Western tastes (cf. McMahan 2008), reducing Buddhism to the status of a toothless tiger, tamed, paraded and (mis)used for palliative purposes. MM and science should at best be discussion partners, neither absorbed into the other, each critical of the other. No doubt MM has a lot of catching up to do as far as science is concerned. Equally, the great MM insights of humanity over millennia and cultures have a lot to offer. In terms of foundational Western antiquity, an MM for today would appreciate not only Plato, but also Aristotle. As philosopher, Aristotle was as tough as nails, and a label ‘MM’ would have hung skew around his neck. One of the most influential metaphysicians, he was not exactly a mystic. Still, how would the kind of attempt made here measure up to his uncompromising scrutiny? Of course, it would be anachronistic and in a sense pointless to ask what the report of the examiner Aristotle would have looked like. Yet, it is an interesting experiment. Would he have faulted its procedure on the grounds of it being insufficiently inductive (working from the bottom upwards)? After all, was he not the founder of what would become the Western scientific methodology? Indeed he was, but in his own scientific work he was not satisfied with the mere gathering of information, upward generalisation and a level of theorising directly linked to observation. Lover of empirical detail and master of induction that he was, he also came up with a metaphysical theory, modified over many years, but one that was certainly not unconnected to his science. Naturalistic totalism would encourage serious effort positively and directly to engage MM and science. Yet in the reflections presented here, it is not done; this plate is full as it is, and it has no ambition to be branded amateur science. Science is a background presence in these reflections; it does not become constitutive content, but remains context, just as MM is thought of as being 30 Chapter 2 context, not content of science. This experiment emphatically does not erect an MM that is an extension of science, does not develop its argument from within science, and does not enter into dialogue with science in the context and on the methodological (experimental, mathematical) terms of science as such. E 54 Science and questions of ultimacy The scientific picture of nature implies questions reaching outside the domain of science itself. Such questions concern not only fact, number, empirical chains of cause and effect and explanatory models and theories, but stir on the edge of contemporary natural science. They include: * ‘What’ ‘was’ ‘before’ the beginning? How absolute was the beginning? According to contemporary science, time banged into being with the Big Bang (yet, see Greene 2004:272). Whether true or not, that does not disqualify the question concerning ‘what’ might lie ‘before’ the Bang. Might the Bang be part of a larger picture? Is there a yonder? * Will the universe utterly end? * If so, ‘what’ will ‘be’ ‘after’ the end? Again, the same difficulties arise as in the case of the beginning. e Is the universe spatially finite or infinite? * Arethere more universes than one, existing simultaneously and sequentially? * What is the relationship between ‘matter’ and ‘life’? e ls the world process driven, or led, by anything else, anything more, than physicality? * Whatare the forces driving evolution? * What is the relationship between ‘life’ and ‘consciousness’? * Are life and consciousness fortuitous outcomes in the process of material nature? * Does the world process proceed blindly along aimless contingencies, some resulting in something new and some not, or is it pushed or drawn towards an end, a predetermined destination? Is there some other dynamic? * Whatis the relationship between determinism and freedom? * Whatis the position of humanity in nature? * Whatare the origin and role of suffering and evil in it all? * How does the emergence of religion fit into the evolutionary process? * Does the entire process have any meaning (any ‘why?’, ‘whereto?’), and if so, what might that be? * |sthe deep structure of the world one of harmony and co-operation, or one of struggle and conflict? * What morality, if any, is implied by it all? * Onthe basis of science, might, could, must a dimension of ‘divinity’ (in whatever sense) be taken seriously into account? * Will 'good' ultimately triumph over 'evil'? 31 Encounter with science Can science answer those questions? Can they be answered at all? Is something approaching a dimension of ultimacy hovering just under the surface of the present picture of science - some understanding of nature that would recapture the kind of all-inclusive vision still possible in premodern times? The parts and powers of nature according to a Kanada and an Empedocles had a metaphysical depth and touched people at a mystical level. Early Buddhism and its extensions into Hinayana and Mahayana as rafts of salvation were intimately tied to the science and the cosmologies forming the cultural and scientific matrix in which those schools developed (Kloetzli 2007 [1983]. At the height of the European Middle Ages, Dante could express an almost seamless integration of nature and such a transcending dimension. He could conclude his mighty vision of God with a reference to divine ‘love which moves the sun and the other stars’ (Paradiso XXXIII.145)5, and it had the backing of the science of his day, going back centuries. Yet, already in the 14th century, nature was receding into the background of religious interest as theology narrowed its focus effectively to encompass only divinity and humanity. Modern science did not arise as organically interrelated with the dominant religion of its time. Science and theology became two very different discourses. As far as Western Society was concerned - and that was the context in which science in the strict and strong sense of the word developed - the old synthesis of nature and divinity was only really kept alive in the esoteric tradition, to resurface with some force in Romanticism. Today no simple return to or repetition of outdated cosmologies, whether ancient Indian or Semitic or European, is possible. What is more, the ancient cosmologies were not merely external husks that could be peeled off and discarded easily. To some extent, they structured the messages of salvation themselves. BllS5 Voices of modern scientists The 20th century witnessed at least two revolutions in physics, making incursions deep into the territory of understanding the 'ultimate' nature of time, space, matter, causality and other basic ideas: the special and general theories of relativity, launched by Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and quantum theory, of which Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) was a pioneering figure. Both of them thought deeply about the possible MM implications of their physics. Their struggles to understand the deeper essence of nature evoke all the complexities and perplexities underlying any investigation such as the one attempted here. Albert Einstein Einstein was a meditator - neither on the small human condition, nor on Ultimacy as such, but on cosmos in both its micro- and macro-dimensions. Those meditations of his on cosmos were backed by MM assumptions (Isaacson 32 Chapter 2 2008). At the beginning of his career, when his great breakthroughs occurred, he was an empiricist and a positivist, building on the work of particularly, David Hume (1711-1776) and Ernst Mach (1838-1916). He was not interested in any reality that might lurk behind what could be observed experimentally and expressed mathematically (Einstein 1933:346). He was also averse to religion, which in his case meant Judaism, into which he had been born. In fact, Einstein never associated himself with the Jewish religion, or, for that matter with any institutionalised religion. From the time that he developed his general theory of relativity onwards, a significant change took place in his thinking. An MM author, whom he had studied carefully as a young man at the same time as his avid reading of Hume and Mach, came to play an increasingly important role as years went by. That author was, like Einstein, Jewish by ethnic association, but, again like Einstein, not Jewish by religion. It was Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). The philosophically and mystically mature Einstein approximated no one else as closely as he did Spinoza. Over several decades in his confrontation with quantum mechanics, he increasingly adopted a realist position. There is a physical reality apart from our observations, he believed, and that can be known objectively; its secrets can be unlocked by sufficiently broad theories. A real, even deterministic causality determines the relationships between real, discrete things that occupy real locality in space-time. That philosophical position of his had MM undertones. As he saw it, quantum mechanics, with its uncertainty principle, wreaked havoc. It was also irreconcilable with his own idea of a God who did not intervene in human and natural affairs, but who was nevertheless the guarantor of an eternal order. An often-repeated phrase of Einstein over the years was that God (or ‘the Old One’, as he liked to call him) ‘does not play dice’; the natural order was completely deterministic as Spinoza had maintained. Einstein adopted a deistic position: there is a God who somehow created the universe, but he does not involve himself in the day to day running of that universe, and least of all does he perform supernatural miracles. As Einstein put it, not miracles overriding the normal laws of nature, but the very absence of miracles proves the existence of God. The universe reflects an elegant, harmonious, simple, divine design. In addition, to him there is hardly a distinction between this idea as an article of faith on the one hand, and, on the other hand, as an active guiding principle for the construction of scientific theories and a criterion in evaluating such theories. On MM grounds and in line with Spinoza, he did not believe in free will. Apart from his scientific misgivings, this played a role in his view of quantum theory. His resistance against the implication of uncertainty in quantum theory was enmeshed in his metaphysical faith in an orderly universe and an orderly God. Einstein did not concern himself with the origin and nature of life. He was not interested in the nature and emergence of consciousness either. Yet, he did assume that some superior consciousness was behind physical nature, and 33 Encounter with science that physical nature operated according to the eternal laws laid down by that consciousness. For all of his life, Einstein maintained an uneasy combination of empirical observation and experiment on the one hand, and mathematics on the other hand. Throughout his career, his strongest point was the execution of brilliant thought experiments. These imaginative leaps he, with the assistance of friends and colleagues, then articulated in elegant mathematical formulae. To him mathematics contained the rules of an eternal order, an order of great simplicity and harmony. Those were essential criteria in his evaluation of scientific truth. It seems that Einstein did not believe that there was just a happy but fortuitous coincidence between reality and mathematics; rather, that mathematics was inscribed in the texture of reality itself. Exactly how did Einstein arrive at his scientific theories? By empirical uncovering of what is there - by speculative invention - by trans-rational intuition, in the sense of somehow being graced to see and pluck a handful of flowers from a mysterious branch - by a combination of these? Whatever the case may be, they do not differ fundamentally from the ways in which philosophers or metaphysical mystics of the kind in which we are interested here, arrive at their ideas. Einstein subjected scientific theories to four main criteria: (D demonstrability in terms of the axiom of the strict causal coherence of all phenomena (2) mathematical expressibility (3) experimental confirmability or falsifiability (4) overall elegance, simplicity and beauty. The first (1) is still a point of debate among physicists (the quantum problem); (2) and (3) are shared by physical theorists. Once again, there seem to be points of contact with philosophical and MM insights, at least as far as (3) and (4) go. Of course, MM systems never claimed experimental confirmability or falsifiability with the same rigour and even in the same sense as physical theories do. Yet they have always been expected to work with experience. Of the great thinkers in this field, the Buddha (to mention one) presented his teaching as ehipassika (‘come-and-see-able’): experientially testable. Also, incidentally, he presented his teaching as a radical understanding of all- pervasive causality. Looking at Einstein, particularly in his debate with quantum physics as a case study, we may conclude that the problems of theoretical physics, by their inner momentum, overflow into MM problems. Einstein's older contemporary, A.N. Whitehead (1861-1947), is another case of an accomplished scientist (mathematician) to whom science was closely connected to MM. The theoretical physics of the 20th century and since then, grappled at least by implication with the perennial ultimate questions of humankind. There is 34 Chapter 2 sufficient reason to believe, as Popper (1968) suggested, that scientifically unwarranted assumptions are involved in all scientific enquiry. A basic problem debated by Einstein and quantum physicists concerned the question whether, in or behind the scientific observation of empirical phenomena there is the rock bottom of a ‘real’ or ‘objective’ reality, or whether ‘reality’ might exist in the scientific perception, the act of observation and measurement. In the case of Einstein, the first position (increasingly espoused by him) amounted to a meta-scientific, metaphysical realism; the second could amount to a form of empiricism or positivism (held by the early Einstein himself). In fact, throughout his career, Einstein remained strongly indebted to Descartes’ type of thinking insofar as it rested on the assumption of a break between the knowing subject and an objectively knowable reality. Werner Heisenberg Heisenberg was a particularly able philosopher among the early champions of quantum theory. Judicious and balanced, he had a sympathetic understanding of the metaphysical and even religious side of the dynamics of the science- religion interplay. His approach, when extended, has no fewer MM implications than that of Einstein. He drew the conclusion that our speech (in whatever form) does not merely reflect reality, but constitutes reality (Heisenberg 1958:167-186). Heisenberg did not adhere to a reductionistic type of positivism. He was not a realist in the strong sense of the word either. He approached a kind of middle position. This entails that, for all practical purposes, there is an 'objective' reality; but that there are no grounds for a dogmatic, metaphysical realism, which makes all sorts of claims concerning an objective Reality in the big sense of the word. Humans construct reality in interplay with a field of forces, of which the ultimate nature cannot be determined. In the perspective of Heisenberg, the ultimate status of all such 'knowledge' would be one of uncertainty, coupled with pragmatic testability and usefulness. There is no absolute objective truth. Yet Heisenberg's interpretation of quantum theory, at least by implication, does seem to favour a worldview in which chance is an important factor. The point of this brief analysis was only to discover how scientific thinking and MM thinking met in the minds of two particularly creative and influential scientists forming our world. In the final analysis, it appears that both Einstein and Heisenberg were aware that fundamental physics implies metaphysics, perhaps even mysticism. That sets them apart from the present broad stream of scientific opinion, which by default lands in the pitfall of a mechanistic worldview. Notwithstanding, neither of them developed the MM dimension in acomprehensive sense.It remained inthe background. A younger contemporary of theirs, quantum physicist David Bohm (1917-1992), did actively investigate 55 Encounter with science such links, and with great promise. We shall return to him in due time and acknowledge his contribution. When relying only on the words of eminent physicists themselves, could we correlate science with a mappa mundi of a different kind? Could nature become Nature? It appears to be so. The biological sciences over the last two centuries have brought about a revolution in contemporary thinking equal to that of physics-chemistry. Putting the phenomenon of biological evolution beyond reasonable doubt, these sciences challenged the very foundations of a worldview that had been dominant for millennia. The Big Bang was not the only absolutely dramatic, inexplicable fact in the history of the universe. Another one of a similar order was the emergence of life itself. Was this miraculous intervention from elsewhere or luck in the chemistry of matter, or something else? These factors cause a fair measure of discomfort in contemporary discussions on religion. Then there is the projected scenario of a sixth mass extinction of life on earth, at least partly resulting from human greed that exploits nature for its own selfish enjoyment. What may be the metaphysical-mystical implications of all of this? General scientific opinion admits that the human factor is having a cataclysmic effect on life as we still enjoy it today at this late hour. Human culpability has become a topic of global concern. The ecological disaster signals a crash of what humans always unquestioningly accepted as permanent and enduring, causing the human species to perch on the precipice of a biotic disaster. Life might be snuffed out anyway, even if there were no human culpability. In fact, life, earth and the universe itself will, as science predicts, in one way or another, come to an end. What might be the meaning of the present flash of life in the great darkness? Even if the vast majority of people, hedonistically minded, would want nothing better than to enjoy what can be enjoyed as long as it can still be enjoyed, the best among them will not allow this species to do so without any reflection and soul-searching. For, paradoxically, this species is doomed to choice - choice led by thought. Let us now take a step back and turn to what a few biologists themselves have to say about this. Obviously, it is impossible to deal with this comprehensively. Charles Darwin If any one individual had to be singled out as typical of this dramatic shift in thinking, it would be Charles Darwin (1809-1882), who wrought his revolution in the biological sciences half a century before Einstein. Darwin's revolution would prove to be comparable to the one that Einstein was to launch in physics. 36 Chapter 2 Darwin had no rabid antireligious fixation. A cautious, patiently thoughtful, liberal man, he, in principle, did not banish an MM interest from an interest in the evolution of life. He bracketed it out methodologically from biology. Yet, certain interesting assumptions and implications emerge from his science of life. At the time when Darwin’s Origin of Species was published (1859), his cultural milieu (Victorian Britain) was still largely dominated by a conservative type of Christianity, running across denominational divisions. This broad consensus included the belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good God, who created the world at some point in the not too distant past (a few 1000 years). God was ontologically very different from his creation, and between the various kinds of living beings that he created ran unbridgeable lines of species demarcation. Humankind in particular, having been created in the image of God, was of a very different order than the various species of animals. Not only was it intelligent and free, but it also introduced evil in a previously perfect creation by Adamv's historical deed of disobedience. Humankind was also given dominion over the rest of nature. In spite of Adam's disastrous act, God continues his loving preservation of his creation and intervenes ad hoc in its workings by means of miracles, often as a result of the prayers of humans. In the person, life and death of Jesus Christ, God supplemented his self- revelation in nature by a revelation in his only-begotten Son. Christ's death in principle removed all sin from humankind, and his resurrection had the additional cosmic implications of a new life in a resurrected body for those who trusted his love and teaching, on a new earth - and eternal punishment in hell for unrepentant sinners. At the time, liberal forms of Christianity were also a social presence of some significance. It circumvented several of those beliefs, and had already shown itself open to the idea of biological evolution. To many, traditional Christianity had become like an old overcoat: threadbare and not really fit to keep out the new cold winds of the modern world, but comfortable and still loved for sentimental reasons, and worn particularly on certain ceremonial occasions. The quasi-religious romantic reverence of nature impressed by its beauty and assuming its inherent goodness, but stripped of traditional religious imagery, was another stance taken at the time. Then, at the other extreme, the rejection of religion in general and Christianity in particular was already quite a powerful social and cultural force. In such quarters, evolution would be honed as a weapon against religion of any kind. From the start, Darwin's theory was caught up in those crosswinds. As his thinking developed over decades, he continually wavered between various possible explanations of the indisputable facts of the historical relatedness of all forms of life and the changeability of species. New species emerge, and existing ones die out. But why? And how? What was the mechanism 37 Encounter with science operative in this process? The organic model of evolution suggested by his older contemporary, Alexander von Humboldt, initially impressed Darwin. To Von Humboldt, nature was an organism with a diversity of interrelated parts; nature itself - not a transcendent divinity - was creative, and that natural process was not devoid of a certain moral quality. Intermittently Darwin also entertained a deistic idea, somehow faintly continuous with the Jewish-Christian-Muslim tradition: God did create the world and the natural laws, but then retired and became quite idle (otiosus, to use a classic term for this kind of god), allowing nature to work itself out without interference from his side. As pointed out, Einstein entertained a similar notion. Once Darwin hit on the notions of natural selection and survival of the fittest, it became the dominant set of ideas, eclipsing others. Evolution worked without moral motivation or intelligent reason. Chance replaced design. New biological possibilities arise fortuitously. If such random modifications by accident happen to facilitate the survival of a species, they become part of that species through successful mating and reproduction of offspring better adapted to the environment. If not, they disappear. It is a blind, aimless, mechanistic tangle of forces run by one unintended and unintending criterion: survival in the competition for scarce resources. This idea was picked up by some and hammered into the already fissuring rock of religion, like a splitting wedge. It could be - and in due time was - developed into the opposing ideologies of liberal social concern for the weak, and ruthless competition, exploitation and elimination of the weak. It soon became the main thrust of what would become known as Darwinism and neo- Darwinism. In his Origin of species, Darwin restricts his attention to natural processes (on a par with gravitation, as he says) and deliberately refrains from speaking about nature as an active or divine power (Darwin 1952a [1859]:4O0ff., 230ff.). He grants that, speaking about the dynamics of evolution, recourse to metaphorical language (appearing to personify an unplanned process) is inevitable. Nevertheless, he regards it as negligible. Therefore, in using a phrase such as ‘workmanship’, he is at pains to point out that he does not mean it literally. The same applies to the ‘selection’ in ‘natural selection’. On the contrary, evolution is not a conscious, teleological process at all. It is merely a process of blind elimination of the weak, of which the ‘survival of the fittest’ is the unplanned outcome. Natural selection is the weeding out - or rather, simply the disappearance - of those individuals and species that cannot meet the challenges of their environment successfully. On the one hand, Darwin states that his theory need not shock the religious feelings of anyone (1952a [1859]:239). He does not deny the existence of a Creator, but has decided to restrict his interest to the realm of secondary causes. 38 Chapter 2 On the other hand, his theory tends towards a certain worldview - one to which Darwin ascribes ‘grandeur’ (1952a [1859]:243). Indeed one cannot deny him that achievement. His vision - yes, it is that - has a certain ambivalence. He can speak in the Origin of species, almost deistically, of the powers or laws ‘having been originally breathed by the Creator’ into nature. These laws include growth with reproduction, inheritance, the struggle for life, natural selection, divergence of character, and the extinction of under-achieving forms of life (1952a [1859]:243). The Creator does not interfere with that process initially set in motion - a process proceeding by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations; one governed purely by what facilitates the survival of the individual possessor of any trait. Even sentiments of social solidarity and loyalty are, in the final analysis, reducible to their survival value. Subtly he conflates an idea of a Creator and an original creation with a metaphysic assumption of ‘the war of nature’ as point of departure (1952a [1859]:243). Nevertheless, Darwin clothes this implicit metaphysic of conflict as the basis and rule of life with a utopian optimism. As far as the past and present are concerned, the slow process of planless selection through competition has led to the more complex organs and instincts, including morality (with aspects such as love and sympathy) and religion in the human being. Forms of life 'most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved' (1952a [1859]:243). Moreover, it will, Darwin believes, ‘intend to progress towards perfection’ (1952a [1859]:243). In Darwin’s thinking, humanity - descended from some less highly organised form of life - is one species, differentiated into several sub-species (Darwin 1952b [1871]:342ff., 59Off.). The difference between animals and humans is one of degree, not of kind. In fact, as far their mental faculties are concerned, there is no fundamental difference between humankind and the higher mammals (Darwin 1952b [1871]:287ff.). His final statement concerning the human mammal indubitably reveals, on top of a disinterested concern with scientific fact, a certain passion and awe before a profound truth (Darwin 1952b [1871]: [M]an with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system - with all these exalted powers - Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. (p. 597) Wasthis delicate balancing act an attempt to reconcile his Christian inheritance of theistic creationism with an implied new metaphysic and ethic, based on struggle and conflict pure and simple? Darwin could be read to point in two directions: towards some kind of MM leading towards greater compassion and perfection, or towards a hard philosophy (also in nuce a metaphysical position) of ruthless competition, leading in no particular direction. He should not be censured for that ambivalence. As it was he had enough on his plate, and achieved immensely. 39 Encounter with science Yet, not only did he not lead into the promised land of a synthesis of his new biological insights and MM; he did not clearly point out the direction in which that land lay. Darwin’s ideas would later merge with those of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche to form a strong antireligious swell in science and popular culture. And it could, and did, play a role in the motivation of social movements such as late 19th century to early 20th century imperialism and extreme capitalism, as well as Nazism. On the other hand, strands of his views could also be interpreted to allow a morality of altruism. Richard Dawkins In the recent past, nobody advocated the modern evolutionary synthesis with more verve than Richard Dawkins (b.1941). This he promoted in a number of books, such as his The God delusion (2006). In this book, he draws out the implications of Darwin's idea of natural selection to uncompromising conclusions, not brooking the idea of 'God'. To be fair, Dawkins makes it clear that he is attacking only the belief in 'supernatural gods' and its associate, namely conventional 'supernatural religion’ (2006:15). In other words, he is using what is known as a ‘substantive’ definition of religion (focusing on content), not a ‘functional’ definition (focusing on function, on what it does). His collaborator, A.C. Grayling, does the same (Grayling 2013). By 'God' Dawkins means the conventional notion of a very anthropomorphic ‘God’: a petty, interventionist, jealous person; ‘religion’ is the uncritical belief in such beings or such a person. Dawkins' atheism is the rejection of that theism and religion as delusional, and is not aimed at views such as deism and pantheism. Confusion of such metaphorical uses of the word 'god' with the theism and religion of the scriptures and religious institutions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and of ordinary language, is 'intellectual high treason' (Dawkins 2006:19). Dawkins himself does not explore such alternative avenues to understanding. Dawkins is a scientist, not a scholar of mysticism, religion or philosophy. Nevertheless, his entering into the border zone between science and MM must be welcomed as necessary. Yet, placed in a wider context, the overall impression his book leaves is not unproblematic, and highlights the difficult questions facing humanity today in its search for meaning. In the final analysis, the views he puts forward in his book, by default seem to conform to the materialistically positivistic type of thinking (see 83) - by default, because he fails to deal with other possibilities, even if he says that he is not advocating a narrowly scientistic way of thinking. There are even hints that he, after all, may be interested in the margins of science and in non-theistic systems of ultimate meaning (2006:155ff.). His argument rests on a rather narrow historical basis, setting up the ideas of 'God' and 'religion' as easy targets that he then proceeds to shoot down with 40 Chapter 2 accuracy and relish. Overall, his work is a mix of biological science, inadequate social, philosophical and historical analysis, and a measure of what resembles resentment. That is not to say that theism of a certain simplistic variety is not still a powerful reactionary social force today. Of course it is. Yet, intellectually there are more important and more challenging aims to achieve. His book is quite restricted in its vision, and does not demonstrate an interest in the broader, and | dare say, more profound stream of alternative MM reflection, as this manifests in a variety of traditions. On the other hand, he does not preclude such an interest either. Proceeding from his scientific basis and bias, Dawkins concludes that God ‘almost certainly does not exist’ (2006:111ff.). ‘God’ is understood to be a larger- than-human person, although quite similar to a human person, but outside and unaffected by the processes of nature. If someone wants to restrict the meaning of the word ‘God’ to such a being, it is fine; and to then decry or deny its real existence, would be correct. But that restriction fails to acknowledge that the word ‘God’ is really only the tip of an iceberg drifting in a wide ocean in which humans thrash about in their search for comprehensive, radical meaning. The strength of Dawkins’ narrow (substantive) definition of religion is that he can be very clear and firm. The price he pays for not using a broad (functional) definition (e.g. religion is the search for comprehensive meaning), is that he overlooks the generic character of ‘religion’. He also fails to dwell on the comparable but sometimes very different forms the search for comprehensive meaning takes across a very broad spectrum, and the comparable (sometimes different, sometimes similar) structures it may assume in various parts of the world and in various historical epochs. So by dint of his definition, he would not be able to engage with non-theist systems such as Advaita - they are just ‘not religion’. It may prevent him from spotting the semi- or quasi-religious role that science may play. Some larger issues and significant connections across a broad spectrum are missed and so the scope of necessary debate is narrowed. We should not discard ‘religion(s)’ of the monotheistic type. Interpreted tendentionally, they contain vast MM treasures. To mention an example: the Christian teaching of the Trinity is not simply bad arithmetic (‘1=3’), but a profound model of the mutual inherence of different principles, applicable on a larger scale (see Ch. 17). The question about ‘God’ and his ‘existence’ cannot be answered directly by science on the basis of empirical evidence. On such logic, it would simply be of the same order as deciding whether the Abominable Snowman really exists out there somewhere. Yet it is not quite that simple, even if most religious believers probably believe exactly what Dawkins believes they do. To his credit, Dawkins enters into debate with the traditional arguments for the existence of God. However, the context of his argument remains quite limited. In the larger historical frame of MM reflection, such theism had already been disposed of in pre-Christian Greece, India and China, and in the millennia since. Ideas of ultimacy change with the times, in a historical process for which 41 Encounter with science the term ‘evolution’ might be suitable. Ours is a time for new designs, but then the issue has to be taken up in a sufficiently broad framework. Dawkins seems to stop where the going gets interesting. His argument can be appreciated - as far as it goes; but is that far enough? Clearly, ideas of ultimacy (of comprehensive and radical truth), expressed uncritically in anthropomorphic theistic terms, are no longer adequate and must be transcended. The meaning of physical nature and life cannot convincingly be captured by such concepts any more. They must be left behind. Dawkins’ kind of response is understandable and necessary, but it is not sufficient. In the terms of S3: he settles for positivism-materialism, as if that were the only alternative to anthropomorphic theism. Compounding the problem, Dawkins seems to award a remarkable degree of finality to science. Science is presented as the end of mystery, the sooner the better. Of course, people differ in their personal inclinations. Some might be attracted by mystery, others, repelled by it, might wish to overcome it as quickly as possible. This is no problem, as tastes vary. When (any)one - that is, science, religion (in any sense), or art - is put forward as the only legitimate interest, problems arise. His book, as it stands, does not reveal a full and frank acceptance of the fact that science, like any religion and other types of cultural discourse, is a collective human achievement, embedded in all the social forces and conditions (such as politics and finances) that mark all human discourse as epoch bound, and not final and absolute at all. Of course, science made and is making huge advances in our understanding of the world. We dare not fall back behind such gains. In another sense, science of a certain type could become another absolutistic, totalitarian grand narrative, with the same illusions of grandeur as any religion. Evolutionary materialism's claim that it has arrived at the ultimate foundations of life, is premature. Dawkins does not erect sufficient safeguards in this regard against the temptation for science to assume quasi-religious, even messianic, overtones. The debate should not be reduced to the format of a duel between positivistic religion and positivistic science, both glaring at each other. Wider issues are at stake. Dawkins is to be commended for his insistence on the civic rights of religion and the right to free speech. It certainly is more than religion (of the kind he chastises here) has customarily granted the theories of modern science over the last century and a half. A book such as the one by Dawkins (2006) is a thought experiment. On the last page of his book, in the concluding paragraph, he comes up with this final sentence, startlingly, unexpectedly so: Could we, by training and practice, emancipate ourselves from Middle World [...] and achieve some sort of intuitive - as well as just mathematical - understanding of the very small, the very large, and the very fast? | genuinely don't know the answer, but | am thrilled to be alive ata time when humanity is pushing against the limits ofunderstanding. Even better, we may eventually discover that there are no limits. (p. 374) 42 Chapter 2 Suddenly a potentially sunlit glade opens up before the reader. Having disposed of a simplistic idea of ‘God’, the real journey lies ahead, and what a fascinating journey it may turn out to be. A sentence such as that would have been a good one to start a book with, and to take the quest from there. | would like to think that it points in the direction of the exploration of the wilderness of Arche beyond outdated ideas of God and religion - that is, of a kind of non- supernaturalistic, bio-phylic, cosmo-phylic MM, in touch with all of humanity’s reflection on its own destiny, and aware of its own provisionality. Intelligent Design There is another approach to the issues of the origin, nature and meaning of life, carrying the flag /nte/ligent Design. Since the 1980s, quite a diverse body of thinking has arisen, dealing with questions such as the following: Was or is there ‘intelligence’ at work in the origin and development of life? If so, what is its ontological status - is it part of the process, or outside it? Assuming evolution, is it haphazard, or does it have a planned direction (is it a random process, or a purposeful, teleological one)? If some intelligence was or is present in this process, could it be called ‘God’? If so, how does this God relate to the God of traditional religions, particularly Judaism, Christianity and Islam? Again, assuming some such intelligence and design, how did, or does, it manifest itself - by distanced deistic design, continual ad hoc intervention, or in some other way? The debate surrounding these issues has become a religio-political battle zone with wide ramifications (including, in the USA, the issue of whether evolution should be taught in public schools and, if so, what version of evolution). This context largely explains the polemical rhetoric of scientist Richard Dawkins on the one hand and Christian apologist Alvin Plantinga on the other. Theism and atheism are at each other's throats, but neither is an adequate MM explanatory strategy. There is a space beyond both, more inclusive than either of them is. Those carrying the banner of Intelligent Design seem to be following a number of broad strategies. These include: * On the far right, those who say nay to evolution, arguing that species were ‘designed’ and created separately as completed and essentially unchangeable products of God's handiwork a few 1000 years ago. The theory of evolution is not only, religiously speaking, unbelief, but also false science. This false science rests on misleading interpretations of the evidence - and perhaps, it might even be suggested, on hoaxes. Intelligent Design is here simply another word for old-style biblisistic creationism. Leaning towards the right flank of Intelligent Design would also be the conservative position of Reformed philosopher of religion, Alvin Plantinga (Pennock 2001). 43 Encounter with science * A broad central position that holds that evolution as a biological theory might somehow be accommodated in a theory of a personal divinity as creator and sustainer of life. This position could take on a variety of modalities, ranging from more ‘right’ (conservative) to more ‘left’ (liberal). On the right flank of the central phalanx the position taken long ago by Augustine (354-430 CE), the great church father, has been adopted for Intelligent Design purposes: God planted certain potentialities in his original creation, and these potentialities have been allowed some leeway to work themselves out. * On the far left of the Intelligent Design army, a phalanx that is not personalistically theist and creationist, but that may be satisfied by referring to Intelligence in the abstract as designing evolution - probably intervening in the process - from the Outside. The programme of Intelligent Design has a strong aftertaste of personalistic theism, even when it is defined - without explicit reference to God - merely as a 'hypothesis that in order to explain life it is necessary to suppose the action of an unevolved intelligence’ (Dembski & Ruse 2006:3). This amounts to a restatement of Thomas Aquinas' fifth argument (proof) for the existence of God: natural beings do intelligent things - things they themselves clearly do not have the intelligence to plan. That proves the existence of some intelligent being outside of it all: God (understood as a supernatural Creator). Does it really? Is it the best, or the only conceivable, explanation? The postulation of some unexplained, inexplicable entity or being (by whatever name, including ‘intelligence’) outside of nature and the process of evolution, is part of the problem rather than a solution. This kind of argument remains a deus ex machina pseudo solution. Moreover, who designed the designer? Such regressive arguments do not lead to a rock bottom of some indubitable Ground. No, by infinite regress it leads nowhere. Inevitably, it collapses. Some other way has to be found. The dilemma set up by Intelligent Design proponents, namely either design from without or else materialistic chance and blind natural selection on the inside, is an oversimplification. In addition, the blanket idea of Intelligent Design is too narrow to cover all non-materialistic positions, and it offers too easy a shelter for religious fundamentalism. To my mind, the concept also smacks too much of the mindset associated with the brilliant architect, spaceship designer or breeder in the modern West. Having said all of the above, it appears that Intelligent Design contains much to contemplate, and that it is a stimulating participant in the present debate about the origin and meaning of life as studied by the biological sciences. If the origin and evolution of life is not adequately explained by any of the models sketched in this chapter, then how may we proceed? The idea that elements of knowledge, of desire, and of will are co-present in matter from the very beginning, announces itself. Not as fortuitous by-products of a blind 44 Chapter 2 process of sheer matter, and not as something extraneous to matter, preceding matter, attributes of aGrand Anthropomorphic Person or Designing Intelligence either, but there with matter ab initio, part of the cosmic process as such. The general direction of the approach followed here would place biological evolution in a wider cosmosophical frame. The processes of evolution studied by the sciences are seen as part of a larger process of devolution and involution: of cosmos itself emerging from an open, inexhaustible field of forces, ultimately deriving from Absoluteness (devolution) and returning to Absoluteness Cinvolution). This view does not imply the acceptance of a supernatural creator, reduced to the format of an anthropomorphic, personal individual, ontologically separate from nature. In the scientific view of the world (Zelazo, Moscovitch & Thompson 2007), the emergence of consciousness was a third phase in the emergence of things. Important issues came to the fore, including the following: the relationship between mind/consciousness and energy-matter; the relationship between mind/consciousness and life in general; the relationship between human mind/ consciousness and animal mind/consciousness; and the relationship between consciousness and what might lie ‘above’, outside’ of or ‘beyond’ consciousness - that is, /f there ‘is’ anything. Then, if there is, what might that 'X' be? In the modern epoch, thinking that is based on the natural sciences has developed increasingly sophisticated models of consciousness as a product of brain activity - that is, in the final analysis, of matter. It continues a venerable materialist tradition, which has mostly taken two forms: a more severe eliminative position (there are no mental phenomena) or a more accommodating epiphenomenalistic position (there are mental phenomena, but they are secondary, deriving strictly from material phenomena). Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was the pioneer of modern monist materialism in the study of human behaviour: there is only one substance, namely, matter. Initially he taught that mental phenomena are epiphenomenal, but later in his long life he shifted towards a more uncompromising eliminative stance. The Western modern tradition in its various modulations in turn, rested on ancient models. Recently the staggering developments in the construction of computers have added huge impetus to this manner of thinking. It would be fair to say that it has probably at present become the dominant mode, coming in many varieties, far too numerous and various to interpret here. It is not the only type of model. At the opposite extreme, for example, lie a host of varieties of another grand strategy that may include idealism and panspsychism Ceverything-is-psyche’-ism). In a weaker form, this kind of position may merely argue that all explanations of reality need some reference to consciousness; that we have access to reality only through consciousness. Inastronger form, it may hold that all things, including matter, are manifestations 45 Encounter with science of consciousness. Strong forms of idealism or panspsychism may argue that the world is the product of some collective social mind; or of the individual, personal mind; or of some cosmic mind; or of a mind outside of and behind the cosmos. Furthermore, that this mind is assumed to be the sole reality, of which all things are manifestations. Of the modern pioneers, George Berkeley (1685-1753) held that both physical and mental phenomena are perceptions in the mind of God. Idealism, insofar as it absolutises consciousness to be the sole substance of all, does not determine the direction in which the reflections and meditations of this pilgrimage is moving. Various positions between materialism and idealism, trying to juxtapose and perhaps even combine elements of both, have been adopted over the last four centuries. Descartes is the father of a position in modern thought, holding that there is an essential dualism of matter and mind. Mind (not-extended in space) and matter (extended in space) are two separate substances, but they nevertheless meet and link up mysteriously in the pineal gland in the brain, and interact inexplicably in a two-way psychophysical process of causality. Descartes bequeathed an unresolved dilemma of a rationalist idealism (the human mind is a reservoir of ‘ideas’) versus a mechanistic materialism (Dunham, Grant & Watson 2011:34-46). The latter would eventually win the day. Two generations later Leibniz (1646-1716) accepted the two-substance dualistic metaphysic of matter and mind, but rejected the idea of interactive causation between the two. Instead, Leibniz postulated that the two separate substances merely operate alongside each other in an unconnected parallelism, by means of a mysterious pre-established harmony. A third in-between, harmonising position, phenomenalism, might hold that neither matter nor mind is ontologically reducible to the other. Nevertheless the things of reality, real as they are, are somehow constituted by the mind; the knowing mind has no access to 'objective' things in themselves (perhaps because there are no such things in themselves), but only to ‘phenomena’ (things merely manifesting as 'appearances' to the senses). The father of modern evolutionary theory, Charles Darwin, did not settle for the modified dualism of Descartes. It seems fair to conclude that Darwin increasingly saw himself as a materialist and determinist: mental actions are functions of the brain, fully caused and explicable on materialist grounds; free will is an illusion. It meant that in effect Alexander von Humboldt's notion of the cosmos as an organism (which had fascinated the young Darwin) was gradually replaced by the materialistic, positivistic model of August Comte. For the mature Darwin, human moral behaviour, emotional expression, reason and religion were outgrowths of animal instinct, which was itself an outgrowth of purely material conditions. Consciousness is somehow emergent from the brain, and the brain evolved as an adaptive measure. This must not be understood to mean that Darwin denied or denigrated morality, aesthetics and religion. Nature itself developed morality, aesthetics, and sublime emotions such as awe and loyalty. In short, he turned to biological and physical nature as 46 Chapter 2 the only necessary and sufficient explanation for even the most complex problems raised by consciousness, culture and society. What did physicists have to say about this problem? In the 1960s, quantum physicist Erwin Schródinger kept physics (specifically quantum physics) very separate from consciousness (specifically its hallmark, free-will); indeed, he said, ‘quantum physics has nothing to do with the free-will problem’ (Schródinger 1961:67). This amounts to the asymptotic parallelism discussed in §3. Circumspect as usual, fellow quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg (in 1958) cautiously granted that psychological phenomena could, up to a point, be explained by recourse to physical, chemical and biological processes - but not ‘ultimately’ so. As a matter of fact, he intimated that quantum theory challenged such a reductionistic assumption, which he found to have been a 19th century one: ‘There can scarcely be any doubt but that the concepts of physics, chemistry and evolution together will not be sufficient to describe the facts [of human consciousness, or “psychology” ]’ (Heisenberg 1958:106). He neither separated matter and consciousness bluntly, nor wanted to fall victim to materialistic reductionism. He hinted that the experience available at present is not sufficient to decide firmly against the reductionistic strategy and in favour of a complementarity model, firstly as far as physics, chemistry and biology are concerned, and secondly as far as physics, chemistry, biology and ‘psychology’ are concerned (1958:102-106). He left the question open as to exactly how such complementarity might be envisaged. In general, quantum physics probably does not necessarily endorse the materialistic vision of everything. Daniel Dennett In his materialist argument, Dennett (6.1942) proceeds from the hypothesis that ‘mind’ is a recent by-product of matter; the burden of proof rests squarely on those who would want to argue differently (1996). From matter to life, to consciousness, to human consciousness, there is no qualitative or quantum leap and there are no discrete staircase-like steps. There is only, over billions of years, slow incremental evolutionary development upwards, as if moving up a slowly sloping ramp showing no hiatuses: mind is matter organising itself in degrees of complexity. According to his line of thinking, a conscious robot is in principle possible; and all conscious beings are the sums of large numbers of minuscule automata (robots) operating in larger systems of the same kind - there is no 'extra' substance, no quasi-separate mind stuff, involved. Let such a model of consciousness, basing itself on physics and chemistry and related sciences, be explored to the full to see how far it leads. Therefore, on the next few pages, we shall trace Dennett’s version of a science-based argument. Then | shall ask to what extent his argument may also involve a constructive element, introducing a basic worldview bias. That would be fine, as long as it is done openly - the agora is public. That is indeed the way in which Dennett works, inviting the reader into his workshop as he undertakes proving the validity of his model. 47 Encounter with science Materialistic evolutionary thought treats consciousness as a relative novelty, continuous with the physical and biotic processes described earlier. Consciousness is merely a manifestation, or (attributing slightly more self- sufficiency to it) perhaps a by-product of matter-life, occurring in various modes and degrees among various species of living beings, but not in all of them. It somehow emerged from increasing biological complexity (as life had emerged from increasing complexity of matter) at a certain stage of evolution, being sculpted by natural selection as a mechanism to adapt to environmental challenges. In his version of this strategy, Dennett views bacteria, amoebae and ants as ‘mindless’, equally so as rocks, discarded slivers of fingernails, carbon atoms and water molecules. Four to five billion years ago, there was no consciousness at all; early forms of life were merely macromolecular robots, and we, contemporary conscious humans, are made of tiny robots. Even so, there are ‘reasons’ for the ‘purposive actions’ of macromolecules, but they are unaware of them. There was ‘information’ in early life, carried by fluids. There was even a rudimentary ‘intentional’ stance in such forms of life: a sense of ‘aboutness’, of responding to stimuli, much like chess-playing computers. Nevertheless, this intentional stance was not reflective; it is ‘as if ' they were somehow rational agents without, in fact, being so. They had no ‘reflective appreciation’ of the ‘reasons’ for what they were doing. They did not ‘think’, but there were reasons for what they were doing. Such forms of life - including of course the brain - are artefacts that get their reason following intentionality from the larger system of which they are part - that is, from the ‘intentions’ of ‘Mother Nature’ (the process of evolution by natural selection) (1996:53-54). Plants take up an interesting position in Dennett's hierarchy of emerging mind: they have no minds, but, their taking things into account and reacting, indicate that they do possess a certain intentionality, on the border between mere sensitivity and sentience. Yet they are, in his terminology, only ‘Darwinian creatures’: they still occupy the bottom of the edifice; they are solely determined by what they inherit via natural selection. Dennett makes the point that, below a certain level, forms of life do not have minds; they do not think reflectively. There is no argument about that, but how does he account for the behaviour of even the simplest forms of life, without them being aware of any reasons? Are phrases such as ‘Mother Nature’ merely innocuous anthropomorphisms, or do they perhaps suggest a rationality present in - perhaps inherent in the larger system of nature? Two main emphases seem to hold sway in contemporary discussions of the relationship between human and animal consciousness. The first focuses on what is taken to be an essential continuity between the consciousnesses (minds) of humans and other forms of life, particularly primates. This approach would not only want to define itself as fully in line with the natural sciences, 48 Chapter 2 but might argue that - ultimately - human consciousness is fully explicable in terms of physico-chemical-biotic processes. The second emphasis, while not necessarily denying continuities between human and other forms of consciousness, would tend to focus almost exclusively on human consciousness, viewing it as unique. Today, not many would subscribe to Descartes’ dualism of matter (res extensa: ‘extended substance’) and consciousness (res cogitans: ‘thinking substance’), with the implication that animals, for all their complex behaviour, are (like plants) exclusively defined in terms of res extensa. Devoid of consciousness (i.e. rational thought) they are, according to him, mere machines and mere matter. As far as animals are concerned, he was a complete eliminative reductionist. Somehow he entertained the notion of the embodied nature of (by definition, human) consciousness; but he could not accommodate the notion that animal life may contain consciousness. Descartes attempted to resolve his dualism of matter and mind by taking recourse to a deistic idea of God: God has created both matter and mind, exists outside of both, but has made some connection of both possible. That idea of God has today largely been abandoned, leaving a huge vacuum. It seems doubtful that the relationship between matter and mind - even understanding either of them in its own right - can be resolved without some inclusive framework of understanding. Materialism is not merely the equivalent of science. It is a foundational worldview option in which a great deal of intellectual and emotional energy and commitment are invested. It approximates a metaphysical stance. Dennett presents his materialistic starting point - 'the orthodox choice today in the English-speaking world', as he states (Dennett 1987:5) - up front as a tactical choice, at least to some extent determined by 'taste'. Presenting his philosophy as 'allied with, and indeed continuous with, the physical sciences'(1987:5), it is nevertheless not, in the final analysis, proven ‘science’. He attempts to connect and extrapolate various undecided dotted lines. A phrase such as ‘the materialist's best hope’ (1996:73) for the claim that the material network itself is the master of consciousness, is quite revealing. What are the implications of such a throw-away phrase? Probably it points to the role of extrascientific preconceptions and biases. Dennett's materialism- atheism is a worldview choice. Such positions are not settled solely by scientific proof. A materialistic model is not necessarily the most convincing one to connect science with wider assumptions concerning the ultimate nature of things. Materialism does not offer the best overall explanatory framework for consciousness. From Chapter 3 onwards, | shall explore the possibility that matter, life and consciousness are fundamental, coherent and mutually inherent aspects, ultimately co-emerging from a dimension of inaccessible, non-substantial emptiness, becoming the world. 49 Part One Unground Arche A picture of (Meta-)Nature in and behind empirical nature is essential to an integral understanding of things, yet this need has largely been forgotten. In one way or another and more or less clearly, such intimations are being carried in the religious, mystical and esoteric traditions that have come down to us through the centuries. ll56 Synoptic map This chapter will outline the structure of Arche (see §11 below), unfolding in following chapters. Reading it can be postponed until later, but beginning with the synoptic overview may have its advantages, like seeing a landscape from the air, before starting to explore it on the ground. In the explanation of Arche below and in the rest of the book, key concepts operating at a certain level (such as ‘Absoluteness’, ‘All’, ‘Eternity’, ‘Infinitude’ and ‘Cosmos’) will regularly start in upper case to indicate and emphasize their significance in this model. They operate at the level of a word such as ‘God’. To highlight the linkage of such concepts with certain other concepts used in existing religions, the first letter of such concepts (such as ‘Trinity’, Father’ and ‘Son’ in Christianity) when used in contexts that | interpret as equivalent to the key concepts in the model presented here, will also regularly be capitalized. For the same reason key concepts from religions other than Christianity and How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Arche’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 53-70, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi. org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.03 53 Arche from other MM systems, operative at the same level as those in the model presented here (such as the ‘Names’ of Allah in Islam, ‘Mercy’ in Kabbalah’, ‘Emptiness’ in Buddhism, ‘Ideas’ in Plato and ‘the One’ in Plotinus) will obviously be treated in the same manner. The All is like three concentric zones emerging from, circling around and returning to the core, empty Absoluteness, while remaining permeated by Absoluteness. It is like a holy fruit: Absoluteness is the seed, Cosmos the outer skin, Eternity and Infinitude the layers of flesh in between. Absoluteness is the centre of the world, a centre that is everywhere, in every instance of time or place. In this analogy the inner zone, the least dense and circling outwards, is Eternity. The outer zone, the most dense, is Cosmos, perceived by the senses and studied by science. Between Eternity and Cosmos: Infinitude. The three zones radiating from the empty centre are not separate, but they are interconnected in an eternal circulation from centre to periphery and back and out again, for the empty centre is both creative Origin and receiving End. All individual things in the Cosmos, from sub-atomic particles to stellar galaxies, are part of that eternal circulation, swung outwards in the movement of concretisation and drawn back inwards in the movement of disintegration. The emergence from, the existence in and the return to the empty centre by All, occur in every moment of time. History as a movement through time is part of that process. The All can also be described as the process starting from an inaccessible, uncrossable Horizon on the outer edge of human experience, taking on denser shape inwards through Eternity and Infinitude and becoming concrete in Cosmos. Eternity manifests in nine principles; Infinitude, in four aspects; and Cosmos with its myriads of individual things essentially expresses four basic features. The challenge is to find or achieve an optimal, balanced integration of all of these dimensions, and not to emphasise any one or more at the expense of the others and the entirety. On the next page the reader will find a diagram outlining the basic categorial scheme underlying the book as a whole. This diagram provides a framework for profiling various MM models emerging in different cultures over time. It also serves as a context for identifying the relative strengths and weaknesses of significant figures from the distant and more recent past. 54 Chapter 3 Diagram: Arche I. Unground A Absolute Horizon B End C Origin Il. Eternity A Pre-/meta-consciousness 1 Witting (knowing) 2 Wanting (desiring) 3 Willing (intending) B Pre-/meta-being 1 Becoming 2 Canning (can-ing) 3 Conditioning (condition-ing) C Pre-/meta-existence 1 Singularising 2 Pluralising 3 Totalising Ill. Infinitude or Spirit A Infinite energy-matter B Infinite life C Infinite love D Infinite thought IV. Cosmos A Energy-matter B Life C Soul D Mind E 57 Unground Unground is the First. As far as we can go, we are aware of a Horizon. The word 'Horizon' as used in this introduction does not have the connotation present in the original Greek horos, namely a bounding circle, a definite boundary, a clear landmark, separating two different regions. Here the term means a certain non-reachable, non-fixable point where all things peter out and disappear from view. Yet that encircling Horizon provides coherence and hence meaning to all things. The fact that this and other terms in this context 55 Arche are capitalised, is an expression of the awe in which this particular human person, the author, stands before this absolute depth; it is not a name of Something or Someone, of some eternal nunc stans. The problem is that such nouns run the risk of becoming reified, substantialised, personalised; it is a problem of language. Therefore, when the term 'Unground' is used for the mystery of the becoming and ending of things, it intends the absolute limit of human thought and experience. This word is borrowed from 16th-17th century German cobbler and mystic, Jacob Boehme, and it intends not an ultimate 'Ground' of things, but the utter transcendence of any notion of firm Ground. Nothing can be said or known about Unground analogously. To be able to say, ‘my love is like the melody that's sweetly play'd in tune’, | already have to know both my love and the melody, at least up to a point. Cosmos cannot not be known, at least at a common sense, conventional level; it is in one's face all the time. Infinitude can be known, experienced, apprehended to a degree by some who have the inclination and perhaps training, and a talent developed over time, like travellers with good eyes in a desert who are able to see some distance ahead of them: things can still be made out, but only just. That is what mystics do. Eternity cannot be seen (experienced, known) definitively. Things emerge on Absolute Horizon. That process of emergence is referred to as Origin. By ‘Origin’ and ‘emergence’, | do not mean the ‘historical’ beginning of things, as may be taught by science or some religious revelations; this argument does not concern itself with how the world actually started. In that sense too, it is aligned to ancient Buddhism, which admittedly largely restricted itself to what may be termed phenomenological psychology. We postulate an argument compatible with contemporary science. It is a phenomenological argument, attempting to understand how the world in its essential structures emerges, for the contemplative eye, from the mystery of Absolute Horizon. And all things are also seen to return to that Horizon. This disappearance into Unground is termed End. The chapters that follow will attach equal importance to the two movements of Origin and End on the edge of Absolute Horizon. Together, the threesome: Horizon (Absoluteness), Origin and End form a triad of Unground. Whatever is, happens in, is part of, an eternal continuum of emerging from and collapsing into Unground - but it is not mere return; the end is not the same as the beginning. ll S8 Eternity Eternity is the Second. By 'Eternity' (etymologically related to the Latin aevum, Greek aeon, literally meaning ‘age’) | do not intend the common meaning of temporal extension without end. ‘Eternity’ here has the connotation of 56 Chapter 3 timelessness, implying absolute non-determinedness, non-definiteness (non- distinctness). Eternity also emphasises radical openness, undetermined potentiality. Adding to the usefulness of ‘Eternity’ is that (particularly in Gnosticism) aeon also contains more specific reference to phases in the emanation from the absolute Abyss. Without subscribing to Gnosticism in any of its forms, let us admit eternal effluences from Horizon, which are also enduring influences into, and in, Cosmos. This notion comes naturally, once the idea of Cosmos emerging from Emptiness (to use the Buddhist term) is accepted. Nine such primordial elements of emergence - referred to as ‘Principles’ - will be distinguished. In Chapter 1, 'evolution', as a model used in science to describe the gradual development from simpler to more complex forms of life, has received some attention. That magnificent achievement may be absorbed into a larger MM frame, which would involve abrading the rough monistic, materialistic edges sometimes attached to it as if they were necessary implications of science. Thus, instead of defining evolution as a blind process of pure chance, we could see it as part of a larger process that we might simply call ‘appearance’ or 'emergence'. ‘Appearance’ signifies the way, not out of matter, but from Horizon on the edge of the phenomenal world. Cosmos and all its forms and species of beings and individual beings flash forth. 'Disappearance' refers to the reverse process. It contains an element of sequence, but also of the essential nature of things. Cosmos came, and Cosmos will go. There is therefore a double and simultaneous movement: from Unground to Cosmos (appearance?) - that is, from Eternal and Infinite Potential to the concrete; and from Cosmos back to Unground (‘disappearance’). Appearing and disappearing will not be presented as occurring alternatively, separately, one after the other. They are two aspects of the same structure. While some things appear, some disappear. Within individual things and species, both tendencies occur at the same time. The process of physical and biological evolution demonstrated by the sciences is thus driven by a more basic energy in a larger circuit. Cosmos does not appear ‘outside of Absoluteness. Rather, the process of interrelated Eternal Principles and Infinite Aspects becoming Cosmos that will be discussed later can be imagined as a process of thickening, concentration, relative densification emerging from Absolute Horizon. Cosmos is the result of a process taking place on that Horizon; it is permeated by Absoluteness, and bound to dissolve into what it has always been. An implication of this train of thought is the possibility of more than one cosmos appearing and disappearing both concurrently and consecutively. 57 Arche Three triads of Eternal Principles (see Diagram) are not imagined to be substances (things, persons, spirits, and so on), but functions underlying all that takes place in the universe. Yet it is understandable that such functions may be expressed in mythological forms (e.g. as semi-divine beings, such as Sophia, Logos and so on), as has happened in history. Internally, each of these triads is thought to consist of three interdependent, complementary, mutually constitutive dimensions, adding up to a relative unit with its own internal structure and dynamics. The first of these triads may be termed the triad of Pre-/meta-consciousness. It consists in what we, at this early and still inarticulate stage, may refer to as the functions of Witting (Knowing) (Ch. 8), Wanting (Ch. 9) and Willing (Ch. 10). The second triad consists of the dimensions of Becoming (Ch. 11), Canning (can-ing) (Ch. 12) and Conditioning (condition-ing) (Ch. 13). This is the domain of Pre-/meta-being, which is distinct from Pre-consciousness yet linked to it and interdependent with it. The third triad (Pre-/meta-existence) consists of the dimensions of Singularising (Ch. 14), Pluralising (Ch. 15) and Totalising (Ch. 16). This is again distinct from Pre-/meta-consciousness and Pre-/meta-being, yet linked to both and linking them. Here the aspect of individuation (of ‘standing-out’, ex-stare) makes its entry. Together, these three triads form a coherent whole. The ‘Pre-’ does not refer to any Substance ‘before’ Consciousness, Being or Existence. It refers to the non-existing dimension of Eternity ‘prior’ to the emerging dimensions of Consciousness, Being and Existence. In the three triads of Eternity, contradictions are not assumed between the first two Principles, to be reconciled in a higher conjunction in the third. For example, in the triad of Pre-consciousness, Witting and Wanting are not assumed to be such contradictory opposites that are reconciled in Willing. The logic of our analysis of the dynamics of Eternity does assume that there are differences and counteracting movements among the constituting Principles. It also assumes movement forward from the first through the second to the third, carrying forward the whole triad as such. The triad has not become a closed unit. It is begging to be carried forward into a next triad, in a circular movement in which none has absolute priority over the other. Being timeless, there is no temporal order or sequence among the threesome of Pre-consciousness, Pre-being and Pre-existence. Eternity with its nine primal categories ‘is’ ‘outside’ space-time, interlocked as if in a chain reaction, flashing forth from impenetrable depths, and eventually cooling, as it were, in the concrete things of space and time making up Cosmos. They are eternally co- emergent, in an eternal spiral dynamic, emerging from and disappearing back into Unground. 58 Chapter 3 This movement, variously conceived, has over centuries been variously termed - such as origin and end, appearance and disappearance, love and strife (Empedocles), emanation and return (Plotinus), integration and disintegration, ascent and descent, procession and recession, evolution and involution, explosion and implosion, explication and implication (David Bohm). The return is not merely the retracing of the procession in the opposite direction, as Neoplatonism assumed (Proclus 1963 [1932]:propositions 35-37). Novelty is added. Moreover, emphatically contra Neoplatonism, appearance (emergence) is not devaluation. Nor do | intend ‘return’ to refer to the manner in which the universe will end as anticipated by science; by ‘return’ | do not mean physical contraction or something similar in a physical sense, but the assumption that eventually Cosmos, like all its constituents, subsides into Absoluteness. B 59 Infinitude Infinitude is the Third (refer to Diagram). By 'Infinitude' | again do not mean mere 'endlessness' (‘infinity’), but a dimension in which the emerging Principles assume a stronger ontological character, yet are still formless, unlimited, undefined, undetermined, unrestricted. Unground, on the way to becoming Cosmos, becomes Eternity, becomes Infinitude. Four Aspects are projected to arise from Unground. In traditional terms, they may be called /nfinite Thought, Infinite Love, Infinite Life, and Infinite Matter. Finely tuned individuals may sense them beyond the manifold multiplicity of the things of the physical senses. The human species has brought forth exceptionally gifted people in this respect: visionaries and prophets. Today there is a growing awareness of this possibility - even necessity - in contemporary culture. This sense does not militate against the drift and the findings of contemporary science. In addition, the sense of uhity with the dimension of Infinitude, providing depth and perspective to people's lives, cuts across religious traditions. | take the word 'Spirit' as an equivalent of 'Infinitude', to apply to these four in their togetherness. Here it is not 'a' Spirit or 'the' Spirit; both the definite article 'the' and the indefinite article 'a' are too definite, specific, individualising. Through lack of a better word, ‘Spirit’ suits the purpose | have in mind: neither as Supreme Being nor personal 'soul' nor Substance in the singular or plural, but simply primal, undifferentiated energy, with indeed some of the associations of the Latin root (spirare): ‘to breathe’. ‘Breathing’ with its inhaling and exhaling also suggests an element of great importance: the rhythm of coming and going. From Absolute Horizon an inspiring breath emerges and into Absolute Horizon, it expires. That ‘breath’ inspires Cosmos, and eventually Cosmos expires. It is similar to the Indian concept of pràna and the Chinese concept of ch'i. It must be stated emphatically that ‘Spirit’ as used here, also has no connection with notions of immateriality. The contrary is more applicable. 59 Arche B S10 Cosmos In addition to the dimensions of Unground, Eternity and Infinitude, there is Cosmos. ‘Cosmos’ is the terrible, beautiful world of nature, from stars in the process of being born to stars dying, and all things at all levels of reality. It is ‘Nature’ as an entirety, in which we live and of which we are part. This, our Cosmos, our universe, is the Fourth: an impermanent and insubstantial thing, with a beginning and an end and the possibility of others existing before, after and alongside it. Its space and time emerge from Infinitude as its continuation. Time and space are ‘included’ in timeless, spaceless Infinitude - even if ‘included’ is inevitably an inadequate spatial metaphor to suggest something transcending space and time. It is almost unavoidable to present Infinitude (and Eternity and Absoluteness) as ‘before’ and ‘outside’ Cosmos, even if that is not what is intended. Cosmos with its space-time is a moment in the movement of Unground. Cosmos will be taken to be an integral whole of four: Energy-Matter, Life, Soul and Mind. Energy-Matter and Life together form Body; Soul and Mind together form Consciousness; Body and Consciousness together form Cosmos. Altogether Cosmos will also be called ‘Spirit’ - but now (taking it a step further than was the case with Infinitude) in the definite sense of ‘a’ Spirit; the word ‘Spirit’ will therefore here be used in the domain of the finite, not Infinitude. The meaning of each of these terms will be explored as the train of thought moves along. Cosmos is the outcome, manifestation, of the Arche of Unground-Eternity- Infinitude. The ancient Stoics distinguished the whole (holon), that is, cosmos, from the all (oan); the latter is the infinite void surrounding, and including, the whole. Listening to them (Brunschwig 2003:206ff; Gosztonyi 1976:116-120), let us speak of the existing Cosmos as ‘Whole’ (Ho/on) - for this, we may also use the terms ‘Nature’, ‘Totality’ or ‘Spirit’. Let us reserve the term ‘AIr (Pan) for Unground, Eternity and Infinitude - and including Cosmos (Spirit/Whole/ Totality/Nature). For the first (the cosmic ‘whole’), the medieval Christian MM Eriugena used the word totum, for the latter (all existing things plus a transcendent dimension), the word universitas. (He was not entirely consistent in his use of terminology.) Cosmos disappears, not into ‘Something’, let alone something ‘Else’; not into Nothing. Its disappearance is simply: End, Absolute Horizon, from which it also emerges. Absoluteness is neither ‘more’ nor ‘less’ on the same scale, neither 'identical' nor 'different' from Cosmos. Time-bound Cosmos is part of a timeless Whole. Timeless Eternity is implied in time, and time is implied in timeless Eternity. At the level of Cosmos - that is, of concrete empirical nature - a temporal and spatial spiral process takes place. This Whole came into being, and it 60 Chapter 3 will disappear. This process is patterned on and expresses the eternal Principles of Eternity and the eternal spiral process taking place in Infinitude. The achronic process in the heart of Unground-Eternity-Infinitude takes diachronic shape in the process of the coming into being and disappearance from the realm of being of the things concatenated through the different levels of being. Cosmos as it develops and unfolds from moment to moment, is an ever- changing singularity. It is this specific Whole (cf. Smuts 1927:100ff.), here, now and thus. The term ‘Event’ wants to capture this aspect. As existing singularity, Cosmos is also, at the same time, an internally differentiated entity - not merely a mechanical sum of parts, but a ‘society’, an ‘organism’. That is, by virtue of its interdependent parts, it exists in a manner comparable with and analogous to human societies and the living things of our everyday experience. We shall treat Cosmos as consisting of innumerable small singularities, each of which is a society, a whole, a concretum. Put differently, the cosmic Whole is made up of many beings. Each is both an individual singularity and a society containing individual singularities, linked up and down through many ontological levels (Wilber 1996), from the simplest elements of nature at the bottom of the ladder of being, to higher than common human beings, up to the totalistic All (Pan). Everything (every singularity concretum), from the minutest to the largest (Cosmos), expresses the underlying blueprint of all. It is shot through with Unground-Eternity-Infinitude. It is not a matter of a union of two distinct natures, hypostases (of ‘God’ and ‘nature’, to borrow classic Christian terminology), but of a non-monistic, non-dualistic Archephany (manifestation of Arche’). Everything that is, manifests ‘concretely’ (in the sense of empirically ‘real’) in a foursome: the functions of Acting/Being; Sensing/Living; Feeling/Loving; and Knowing/Understanding (speaking structurally: Energy/ Physicality/ Matter; Life; Soul; Mind). By ‘concrete’ and ‘real’, the type of brute hardness associated with sticks and stones is not understood. ‘Con-crete’ is taken in its etymological sense of ‘grown together’: the things of experience, even sticks and stones, contain various dimensions (the ones just mentioned above), all mutually implicit. Cosmos is ‘real’, not an illusion: its reality is not denied, but is understood as ‘concrete’ and as ‘relative’, that is, not separate from, but a manifestation of Absoluteness. At the level of concrete empirical nature, this perspective would see every empirical singularity (wholeness), from the smallest to the All, somehow partaking in Acting-Living-Feeling-Knowing. The conventional definition of life is here, analogously, extrapolated to the Cosmos as a whole. Cosmos is a living ‘organism’. There is an analogy (an analogia entis, here not taken in the usual Christian theologial sense) between the great cosmic context and the small context of plant, animal, and so on. In the order of our human knowledge, the 61 Arche small context comes first. It is our starting point. In the larger ontological order it is the other way round. Cosmos is ‘alive’; ‘feeling’ and ‘intelligent’; it is ‘divine’. This idea was postulated in principle by Plato in Greek thinking and picked up in later times by others, such as Giordano Bruno (1962). In our framework, evolving biological life participates in that cosmogonic process, which in turn participates in the ‘theo’-gonic process of emerging Arche. At the level of Nature (Cosmos), in the process of cosmic evolution, the functions of knowing, feeling, living and material being emerge simultaneously. This is an extrapolation of the MM of ancient Theravada Abhidhamma (Nyanaponika 1998 [1949]) to Cosmos as an entirety. However, these four are not equally manifest at all times in all cosmic events, such as in the various species of life emerging over time. To use the microcosmic analogy again (as the Stoics did a long time ago): my body as a whole is alive, but my fingernails are ‘less’ so than my heart. In this historical process of evolution, ‘life’ seems to have made its manifest appearance only gradually and in a long process of refinement. Likewise, only later, ‘knowing’, ‘thought’, seems to have become manifest in the process of life. Going back in time through the process of cosmic becoming, we humans tend to make strong distinctions between humans, other primates, other mammals, less complex forms of life going back to mindless prokaryotes, even lesser inorganic beings, and so on, right back to the blind chemical forces raging in the bellies of stars. The implication of such perspective is that mind (consciousness) arose out of not-mind, just as life is assumed to have arisen out of not-life. Ultimately such reductionism runs into serious difficulties: blind matter, assumed to have spewed out with a big blind bang, mindlessly produced living, feeling and knowing. From the perspective of these reflections such an assumption is inadequate. To think that we could save ourselves by a blind leap of faith into supranaturalistic divine intervention in this blind process of nature, at its beginning and along the way, is equally unconvincing. These reflections explore an assumption opposite to both reductionism and supranaturalism. It assumes that living (life), feeling (soul) and knowing Cmind') emerged concomitant with energy-matter, from the depths of a mysterious Origin; and that it is heading towards End into which it will eventually submerge. The entire process is permeated with responsive feeling and adaptive, creative intelligence, manifesting themselves in the finch's weaving of its nest and the crocodile’s nurturing of its young and a myriad other miracles, as much as in the human’s self-conscious design of all sorts of things. The human being's existence and achievements are at the surface of a depth of feeling and knowing inherently spread throughout the realm of being, working themselves out in various ways through the various species and individuals in those species - whether the individuals are aware of that or not. Shot through with intelligence from its very Origin, evolving Cosmos designs itself in accordance with certain Principles emerging from Unground itself. 62 Chapter 3 The standard popular scientistic view assumes a reductionistic view of reality, according to which everything that is, is collapsed ‘downwards’: consciousness, in the sense of ‘mind’ (thinking), is regarded as at best a side- product, an epiphenomenon, of primitive ways of reacting to the environment Clife), which is in turn regarded as a side-product of ‘matter’. Life and mind only emerged later from chemical processes, utterly devoid of all consciousness in any sense (Seager 2007:11ff.). Here a different line of argument is proposed. B S11 Arche We have now arrived at the first, overarching, all-determining category, termed Arche. Here it stands for the basic, multi-faceted primordial pattern, expressed in all things. This is perhaps the most suitable word for what is intended in this argument, partly because it is quite neutral and avoids the heavy burden carried by a traditional word such as ‘God’ in all its permutations. ‘Arche’ is here used in its original Greek sense: ‘beginning’, ‘origin’, ‘first principle’. Plotinus elevated it to a term of supreme importance in the MM context. Much as Plotinus is admired in these chapters, the word is not used in the sense that he made normative for Neoplatonism. The meaning of the word ‘archaeology’ resonates in the manner in which it functions with us here: digging into foundational layers of reality; also, meanings resonating in ‘archetype’: a prototype, pattern, original model, all-present stamp. What | have in mind is the original blueprint, the exemplar, underlying all of reality, and manifesting in that reality. Nature is like an ever-developing and ever- changing language, with Arche as its implicit grammar. It does not refer to some Substance, of which all things are modifications, which is what arche meant in ancient Greek philosophy. What we are aiming at here might have been termed Archetype as well, since it is understood to be the original model ‘in’ or ‘behind’ reality. The paradoxical qualification anarchic (borrowed from Christian patristics) expresses another idea implied in our usage of 'Arche' here: that ultimately the arche of things is not grounded and fixed, but groundless and boundless (‘absolute’), and without ruler, so to speak. Everything that is, exists as expression or manifestation of Unground-Eternity-Infinitude-Cosmos. Every such concretum - whether it is as large as a universe or as small as a snail - can roughly be understood and explained with reference to that anarchic Arche. What | am aiming at here, is that the brief song of the single bird - as much as every human individual person and every human society, whether large or small, every work of art, and so on - is to be understood as in relationship to every other thing. It is to be understood in relation to the Cosmic Totality, to Infinitude and Eternity; and as appearing from and disappearing into Absolute Horizon. From that vast network and that ultimate Emptiness, the concrete 63 Arche thing - again, single or collective, small or large - derives both ultimate relativity and penultimate dignity. What has been sounded as anarchic Arche here, is neither a generic name for a kind of being nor a personal name for a Substance or an individual Personal Being. It may belong to the same category of words as the Tao, Original Nature, Buddha-Nature, Emptiness, or Godhead, all in their most radical sense. Premature and unwarranted closure is the problem with the word ‘God’, for example, when it is reified and reduced in the form of an anthropomorphic personification. The same possibility lurks in words such as ‘Spirit’ and ‘Buddha- Nature’. So | prefer to avoid them, or at least use them sparingly, pruned of uncritical anthropomorphic overtones where they might occur. Sucha stripping to the barest essentials does not exclude that the mystery might be expressed in mythological, anthropomorphic language and imagery. It might serve sucha purpose well. Art, literature and traditional religions are full of such treasures. Nevertheless, it needs to be appreciated for what it is: allegory, symbolism. It cannot be literal, referential truth. It is only a word for a movement intimated and postulated to underlie both macrocosm (the universe) and microcosm (individual existence). The empirically ‘real’ world as a whole from top to bottom, beginning to end, and inside to outside, is assumed to consist in energy-matter, life, soul and mind, all four inseparably interwoven, and to bea manifestation of Arche, which is suffused with Infinitude, Eternity and Unground. This conceptual space admits the echoes of many teachings, such as Neoplatonic notions, elements of Gnosticism, Jewish, Christian and Muslim mysticism, the Yogacara Buddhist teaching of the triple body of the Buddha, the Hindu Trimurti, and Advaita Vedantic distinctions. These will emerge more clearly in following chapters. At this early stage of our journey, a few brief glances sideways will serve to illustrate the point. For example, the idea of Unground is not irreconcilable with the idea of God- above-God, as found in the Christian thinker Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327), allowing space for Eckhart’s phrase as tendentionally sound. The ideas of Eternity and Infinitude may be presented as, in broad terms, functional parallels to the idea of the Trinity in Christianity (see Ch. 17). Arche also allows for an alliance with the Buddhist teaching of the trikaya (the ‘three bodies’ of Buddha-hood). Here the idea of Unground, centring in Absoluteness, is the equivalent of the notion of dharma-kaya ('essence' body); the ultimate, essential Buddha as radical Truth is nothing less than the notion of radical Emptiness. The ideas of Eternity-Infinitude seek to operate at the level of the Sambhoga-kaya, lying between, and linking, the heart of emptiness with the world of the senses out there, enabling the external world to be. Moreover, the idea of the concrete cosmic Whole links up with the notion of the Nirmana-kaya: the historical, empirical Buddha - surrounded by and part of - the empirical world of sensory experience. 64 Chapter 3 At a mythological level the popular Hindu notion of the Trimurti (Brahma the creator; Vishnu the preserver, asleep between creations; and Shiva the destroyer, making space for new creation in the cycle of birth and death) express the basic understanding of the cosmic cycle. Taking into account the divergence and postulated strange convergence of traditions such as the above, | sense the opening up of a space referred to here as Absolute Horizon - transcending all of those traditions. From that Absolute Emptying at the heart of all things, at the heart of Arche itself, such religions may receive a relative endorsement. Nevertheless, that Absoluteness will also undercut the pretence to being absolute in any sense that any one of these religions may harbour in itself. Absoluteness is the absolute Origin - and the absolute End. Somehow struggle, conflict and suffering - in short, evil - need to be located on this map. In chapters ahead, we shall be aware of the dark shadows in the valleys of the landscape surrounded by Horizon. Darkness and cold, evil and suffering, negative as we humans see them, are also part of empirical nature. The model explored here widens the early Buddhist view of human suffering to Cosmic life as a whole, as revealed in the theory of evolution. In early Buddhism, human existence grows from three roots (müla): greed (/obha), hatred (dosa) and delusion (moha) concerning its own non-permanence (anicca), and non-substantiality (anatta). The result is suffering (dukkha). Extended to Cosmos: all Cosmic forms of life (like all things) are impermanent and non- substantial, they come about and disappear. Yet every living being, from bacterium to human, is driven by the desire to maximise itself, involving self- centredness, competition and conflict. This leads to suffering. This is here taken as equivalent of ‘evil’. Something is deeply wrong and for some inexplicable reason deeply embedded in the nature of things. There is also sympathy and co-operation among humans and in the rest of nature, but in empirical nature the rule of selfish power reigns. Notwithstanding, it is not a closed circle, but imagined as containing the possibility of moving towards peace. In this process the bodhisattvic dream that every person shall be a Buddha (the Lotus Sutra, see Watson 1993) and every being happy, and the Messianic dream that all things shall be saved, play a key role. Such bodhisattvic beings are the locus where an alternative manner of existence is realised. They actualise the want in all of existence: peace. E 512 The human being The human being is part of the process of originating and ending of Cosmos; and yet it also has a certain unique position in Cosmos, as witnessing eye and mouth. To ‘know yourself’, as the ancient adage urges, is to know yourself as part of that large process. The connecting of microcosmos and macrocosm is 65 Arche not an uncritical mixing of the anthropological and cosmological dimensions, committing the fallacy of ambiguity or equivocation, using the same words misleadingly for totally disconnected realms of being. The connection is based on the assumption that reality is of one piece, and that microcosm and macrocosm share the same basic structure, like seed and fruit. The ontological splits between human, cosmic and divine are tragic implications of forms of traditional theistic religion. As microcosm-spirit, participating in and reflecting Cosmos-Spirit, the human species carries the seed of ennoblement in itself. The responsibility of the human being, the meaning of its seemingly exceptional intelligence and its freedom, is to break through the encasement of ego (individually and collectively) standing over against a world, and to mature into /pse, realising its being part and expression of Arche. Yet, somehow, the human being is also, as far as we can see, a prime instance of evil in the world. The upshot of the argument of these reflections is that the self-centred human being (ego) is capable of maturing into an Arche-centred /pse: thinking, feeling-willing, acting with wisdom and compassion. This occurs towards the self; towards the individual other human; towards human groups from small and intimate to large and seemingly impersonal to humankind as a whole; towards animals; towards plants and sub-vegetative life; towards the Cosmic Whole. It implies a morality of human and ecological solidarity and responsibility, cutting off domination and exploitation at the root. The process of maturation occurs at the levels of individual existence as well as species development. In contemporary thinking inspired by science, the human being is cosmically insignificant. Yet, more than one mystical tradition sensed that the human being has cosmic significance. In a sense we cannot avoid being anthropocentric; thinking ants would inevitably look at the world from an ant-centric point of view - and why not? So anthropocentrism is not to be suppressed or avoided (which would be impossible anyway); it is to be filled with humility, love and responsibility. It is not only the single individual human being who may develop to higher forms of insight, feeling-willing and action. Among humans as a biological species, exceptional individuals are the vanguard of an upliftment of the species as a whole towards a clearer realisation of Arche. The development of the individual contains the evolution, biological as well as mental, as well as spiritual, of the human species. More than that, such individuals are the growth points of Cosmos as it spirals in its eternal cycle of emergence and return, like a tree growing upwards through cycles of winters and summers, periods of drought and abundance. Even as they enter the realm of death, such creative individuals drop seeds, which sprout, grow and draw the entire species forward. An analysis of the history of humankind reveals the annual growth rings of spiritual drought and the rings of spiritual abundance. So where are we now in the large movement? Is humanity, life, on the way up or down? Our vantage point is too small and peripheral, our perspective 66 Chapter 3 too narrow, our vision too myopic to make any grand pronouncements. Yet, even in the scenario of the end of life on Earth (partly as result of human folly and greed), may we assume in an act of intuitive faith rather than promulgated belief, the following: that Cosmos is spiralling forwards in a process that incorporates disintegration, and that some individual human beings are agents of that process? Such kinds of postulates would be, well, kinds of postulates, ultimately dropping away into the annihilating darkness of Absoluteness. This kind of speech has a performative possibility that materialistic reductionism does not have. That is to say, this scenario provides a basis and a motivation for values and attitudes of solidarity with all things and service to all things that reductionism cannot. It has a utopian quality: it is not a descriptive, realistic (scientifically-proven) speech, but transformative speech, inspiring people to follow certain courses of action. It has a creative quality: it brings about what it is talking about. Ultimately, the ideas of the cynic and the ones put forward here may be equally unprovable in purely rational terms, but the two sets of ideas work out very differently in the actual living of life. E 513 The status of our understanding The human mind cannot know totally and finally; but it can create, in an imaginal sense, more or less fitting models for orientation and principles guiding human existence and action in the world, such as that which has been sketched above, and that will unfold step by step. It is not 'the truth' promulgated based on either supernatural revelation or science. That is what MM's have always done, and it has always been part of religions. The visionaries of our species in all religions saw as widely and deeply as human short-sightedness permits, and said what they saw. They or their followers often extrapolated beyond the limits of human abilities and awarded eternal value to their limited insights. Any description of any landscape has to begin somewhere and end somewhere, but the landscape itself is inexhaustibly varied and it allows for many intersecting perspectives, many criss-cross journeys and many accounts of such journeys. One function of the model put forward here is to provide a ‘map’ on which such journeys, as found in various cultures, can be plotted, and it is in itself such a journey, fully conscious of its own relativity. Human reason and speech are structured by the limitations and organisation of the human mind and human sensory experience. We cannot lift ourselves out of these by our own bootstraps. Intuitively, humans may reach higher. The moment they start reasoning and speaking, they get tied up in knots. Rather than cutting out mystical intuition altogether, it seems better to accept the inevitability of the shortcomings of the human mind and tongue. Analogies breaking down are better than nothing. It may be true that we should not attempt to say what cannot be said; and yet we dare not not attempt to say 67 Arche what cannot be said. That is, given with being inquisitive, puzzled, awestruck human beings. We can only see from here, from the ‘bottom-up’, as far as we can. Yet in the exposition of what we see, it is possible to adopt, as it were, a bird’s eye view, to reconstruct the scene from the ‘top-down’. The risk in such an undertaking is that the false impression could arise that we may come to believe to be somehow endowed with a God's eye view. That has been the problem with most religions and theologies. Nagarjunas making people aware of this error, were rare. What we see and say, are seen and said from nothing but a paltry human perspective, from the human side of things. To emphasise the human centeredness of our understanding (different from ant or imagined ‘universal’ mind) | shall from time to time use the word ‘homoversal’, but not 'universal'; humankind is a speck in the universe. Notions such as those put forward here have a heuristic value - that is, as being context-providing, significant in MM terms, useful to make sense of nature, that is, of empirical cosmos and history, and at best critically alignable with, not reducible to, the natural and human sciences. Apart from science, there is another connection, namely with art. Ultimately art, like science and MM, is directed at and expresses a sense of Horizon, and good art opens deeper levels of experience than surface sense experiences and enjoyments; it is directed at not only entertainment, but at truth. Like art, MM models are compositions, constructions, poetry (also in the etymological sense of poiesis: ‘a making’). A certain aesthetic quality could be counted as a criterion for good MM. Like good art, good models of this kind are neither purely arbitrary, nor simply reflections of reality as it is. Like good art, they are somehow in touch with the deep structures of the collective human spirit, and in touch with the deep structures of Spirit/Cosmos. There is some profound resonance between the human being and Spirit/Cosmos. MM speech at its best can be expressive of that relationship. It can be 'original' in the sense of tapping into the origin of things. Such understanding is also akin to religious faith, understood as a basic trust and an understanding of the essence of things, the ultimate test of which is the difference it makes to how people live and die. Nobody taught this and existed this as exemplarily as Jesus. Growing up 'fatherless in Galilee' (Van Aarde 2001) and living in the margin of the institutionalised religious Jewish tradition in which he grew up and outside the Greek-Roman intellectual academic establishments of his time, he did not come up with metaphysical or theological schemes. Instead, he saw deeper, cut through all presumptions to the bone of religion and through the bone to the marrow of life, adapting the religion of his tradition to suit the needs of ordinary, humble people. Whatever learned scholars did before him inside and outside his inherited religion, and would attempt to formulate in grand designs after him, he reduced to the non-presumptuous analogy of a caring Father. Could Jesus have used another term, such as ‘Mother’, to express his central idea? In his historical context, 68 Chapter 3 probably not. Would it be conceivable in a wider context, ultimately in the widest context imaginable? Yes. Indeed, at the edge of Horizon all conceptual constructs dissolve, but meaningful speech such as his can emerge, the truth value of which is not reducible to proof or disproof on scientific grounds. In the case of Jesus, from an early stage onwards, starting in the writings of the New Testament and continued in church theology, his person and teachings were embroidered in various ways to add to his status and meaning. In trying to cancel the nihilation of his life and death, they often missed the point. Their constructions were often impressive and probably even inevitable (I shall return to examples), but mostly unaware of their own constructedness and relativity. Jesus did not engage theoretically in MM, that is why no separate section is devoted to him here. He emptied all intellectual and social power constructs, and for that reason he is of the highest relevance to MM. Even the minimalist theology of a loving Father that he used, came to End on the Cross, and with that he turned into the Origin of self-giving love. That is the essence of religion and mysticism, including the metaphysical variety. If the latter variety has any meaning, it would be to serve authentic, loving existence. Continuous with faith in the broad sense, the reflections in chapters to come nevertheless present themselves as argument. On succeeding pages, we shall meet the ‘imaginings’ of many MM minds and their efforts to give such 'imaginings' intellectual form. It would be a serious mistake to treat such imaginings as obfuscating blather, feeble science or arbitrary fabrication. Not for a moment forgetting its own constructivist nature, this attempt stands clear of the reduction of all valid theoretical discourse to scientifically provable discourse. It is also removed from the repetition of traditional religious doctrine and reputed supernatural revelation, immunising it from critical discussion. The procedure followed, largely conforms to the parameters for acceptable reasoning set by early Buddhism (Nanananda 1976). In addition to the application of analytical, differentiating thought (vitakka) and its concomitant, the finer investigation and deliberation (vicàra), at least two other concepts are distinguished. The first and positive one is paññā, meaning wisdom or insight, transcending the domain of reason. The second and negative one is papafica, the unguarded proliferation of conceptual constructs, transgressing the limits of applicability of reason. This latter tendency of the human mind carries unwholesome implications in its wake, such as setting the thinking subject (T) over against objects; the attachment to that 'l' and its thought constructs; conceit, and inevitable entanglements in disputes and conflicts. This Buddhist perspective gives great scope to reason (vitakka and vicàra); is fully aware of its limitations and dangers (papafica); and allows for the possibility of transrational insight and understanding (pafifià), which is quite different from reason running wild. At most, even the keenest eye can only hazard guesses at shimmering outlines on the edge of vision on Horizon: perhaps trees, perhaps camels? 69 Arche There are no axiomatic certainties indubitably established in processes of deductive reasoning. By close inspection, revelations turn out to be penultimate human constructions. Inductive reasoning is valid up to point. Analogies fizzle out. Then follows Absolute Horizon, absolute non-sightedness, as if in total darkness. Silence. The argument of this inquiry is neither inductive nor deductive in a strong sense, neither fully empirical nor completely a priori. It does not seek some first, indubitable principle from which all can be deduced. What is presented here is rather like a landscape dimly emerging as a thick fog partly lifts, and the onlooker tells of a picture that he sees with a mixture of scrutiny, memory, imagination, projection and chatting to fellow spectators. To borrow the term of C.S. Peirce (1839-1914) (Olson 2002:85-101), the procedure followed here is a kind of abductive reasoning: the model developing here would present itself as meaningful, useful, sufficient for the purpose in mind, compatible with science, and in line with the deep drift of humankind’s MM longing. Contemporary scientistic ideology is deficient in that its explanatory ceiling is too low, refusing to admit the possibility of science-transcendent dimensions. Theology is encumbered by problematic oversupply. This occurs through its mostly inflated postulation of the reality and the definitely accepted features of an Other Reality. It bases this postulation on an assumed other side of the edge of human experience and thought as essential condition from which the world is deduced. My inquiry remains on this side of the Horizon. Aware of its own expiry on the edge of things, it tentatively seeks provisional words to give some coherent conceptual expression to its intimations; does not present its position as final, dogmatic or exclusively true in any sense, but explores coherence and convergence at every step. What would be meaningful criteria to gauge the quality of MM perspectives on the world, as developed over the last two and a half millennia? The following are put forward, as adding up to an integration of truth, kindness and beauty: * asense of wonder, issuing in ultimate not-knowing and non-knowing * arealisation of the value of the imaginal dimension of meaning-providing macro-perspectives * combining and balancing the foregoing with critical intellectual rigour and a respect for logic * integrating, totalising range and ability * linking up meaningfully with the contemporary experience of the world, including science - but not with science alone or in particular * a historical understanding of a wide range of predecessors and contemporaries from various, even widely diverging, religious contexts - but not from any religion alone or in particular * anaesthetic quality * the difference it makes to the quality of human existence in the world. 70 : Absolute Horizon E 514 Non-reference We hover before absolute silence. It is a sense of sound dimmed completely, not of a ceiling above our experience with something above it. The words ‘Something’ and ‘Nothing’, ‘Being’ and 'Not-Being', do not apply. So we are not following the realism of, for example, the late classical philosopher and theologian Boethius (c. 480-525) who would play such an important role in the medieval debates. According to him, every noun, including ‘nothing’ (nihi), is a predicate, and therefore must signify a ‘something’ (aliquid). More subtly, in his Sophist, Plato explored a distinction between ‘being’ (on) and ‘not-being’ as the direct negation of ‘being’ (yet still parasitising on ‘being’), and ‘non-being’ (me on) as negation of both. As will become clear, Eastern Taoism and Buddhism pursued this disappearing path even further than Plato and his followers in Western MM. Be careful with nouns and adjectives. Not only the words and thoughts (soundless words) are imploding, but also binary logic, of positive and negative, present and absent. Only ‘something’, however attenuated or superlative or hidden ‘it’ may be, can be ‘absent’. So, the negative is, in the end, just as inadequate as the positive. Everything, every word, every thought How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Absolute Horizon’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoreti- cal map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 71-82, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.04 71 Absolute Horizon simply peters out. Yet, it is not the same as mere denial, cynicism (in the modern sense of that word), indifference or nihilism. The road on which we are travelling, is awe, taken to the very end of our human capacity, where unsound reigns. The turn of phrase, ‘the Absolute’, sometimes occurring in this sort of context, is deliberately avoided. With its definite article ‘the’ and its capitalised noun, it is too definite, as if it were referring to some Absent but Real Substance. In the end our abilities to understand, think and speak referentially fray and unravel into signlessness. The terms used here, 'Absoluteness' and ‘Horizon’, do not ‘refer’ to something aside from, in addition to, ‘ordinary’ life. There is just the flow of ‘ordinary’ life, appearing and disappearing, and its Horizon. ‘Absoluteness’ has no substantialist association. It is intended as an equivalent of the Buddhist ‘emptiness’ (sufAfiata), which is just another way of noting the ontological non-substantiality of things. Another term to consider could be ‘transcendence’ (Smart 1996:196-205). Its etymology is promising. It comes from the Latin ‘trans’ (‘beyond’) and ‘scandere’ (to ‘rise’). Perhaps it is handy for our purposes, but it parasitises on an opposite, which would be something like ‘staying on this side’. That is precisely what its twin concept ‘immanent’ (‘remaining inside’) means. Transcendence might imply that another side, for example a transcendent Subject, is supposed as semi-known. This inquiry does not presuppose that. Eventually merely a shimmering Horizon is sensed which cannot be transcended, to which the notion of 'beyond' with any implication of either 'is' or 'is not' no longer applies. No Kantian Ding an sich, no One, no Brahman, no substantial God, no Nothing, no mythological Person or Seed or Egg can be proven or postulated on sufficient grounds. Anyway, any such notion would be a human construction. Such conceptual constructions, fabrications, are tolerable up to a point, but should not be pushed too far. Simply come to the end of the road and admit it. Not a boundary with an Other beyond; not oneness with a transcendent referent; just disappearance. Neither sensory experience nor science, neither speculative reason nor mystical intuition can 'transcend' it. Go as far as you can, then you and your ideas fizzle out. Notions such as 'transcendence' and 'immanence' break down: both 'moving outside' and 'staying inside' become meaningless. Absoluteness should not be thought of spatially as ‘above’, ‘beneath’ or ‘in the centre’; it should not be thought of temporally as ‘first’ or ‘last’; or numerically, as ‘one’ or ‘the one’; gender ('He' ‘She’, It) does not apply. Inappropriate as the following words may be, Absoluteness ‘is ‘before’ time, ‘outside’ space. ‘It’ ‘ 3 is’ unknown, unknowable. There ‘is’ ‘nothing’ to know. Such non-referential concepts may, at their best, be like the tools of the mountaineer, helping one to get to a site of insight, where the only appropriate response is utter silence - yet a silence that people 72 Chapter 4 may want to talk about to express and share their sense of wonder. Those who have been ‘there’, are not necessarily disadvantaged in terms of normal, everyday intelligence. Some were highly gifted in science, literature, visual arts and practical affairs. Yet, they seem to have moved into a different kind of understanding altogether. Nicholas of Cusa coined the term docta ignorantia (learned ignorance’) for the paradoxical knowing of what cannot be known; the category ‘know’ as we know it in everyday life becomes inapplicable. There seem to be degrees of (non-)understanding Absoluteness. Some see further, hear the Unsound clearer, than others. There seem to be longer and shorter sojourns in the awareness of ‘Absolute Horizon’. To this momentary or extended transcending of ordinary consciousness, the term ‘ecstasy’ may apply. Here it does not mean frenzy or overwhelming feelings of any kind, just silence in the margin of things. In following §s | shall visit some explorers who spoke about the process of their sliding into non-knowing. Here we are interested in the outcome of that slipping into some dark abyss. That seems to be the passing into a dimension where feeling and thinking lose all content and reference. It is not the vacuity of death, but can occur in highly rational people in the midst of life. Going on what such mystics tell us, it may perhaps be called a non-self- conscious awareness without an object, an ‘absolute’ awareness; not unconsciousness or infra-consciousness, but superconsciousness, consciousness overreaching, demolishing, itself. In the sense that every single thing in the world and the world as a whole is voided, all such things may be taken to be diffused with incommensurable Absoluteness. In that sense, all things and all words, mental pictures and everyday experiences used by us to connote that mystery, are empty. Absolute Horizon transcends all historical religions and science. So does the notion of Absolute Horizon have any relevance? Yes. Does it not amount to an escape away from, a denial of the brute and beautiful realities of life? No. Even if it signifies a Horizon, where everything d/s-appears, reality and life are unthinkable without it. Absolute Horizon is non-dualistically distinct from Cosmos: neither identical, nor different. About the Fullness of Cosmos much can be said - it can never be exhausted; about the Emptiness of Absoluteness nothing can be said. Nevertheless, there is a mutual interdependence of speaking and non-speaking, seeing and non-seeing, understanding and non-understanding (Collins 1998:159ff., 196ff.; Sells 1994; Sobti 1985; Welbon 1968). Clear, open sky above, inviting us to drift, float, fly into eternity may symbolically represent the disappearance of sets of ideas that were previously clogging our minds. The dizzying physical features of an abyss dropping away in front of and beneath us from a great height, triggering our primordial fear of falling, is another evocation of this impenetrable dimension. The haunting Abyss holds an abiding fascination for the human mind. 73 Absolute Horizon E 515 (Not-)naming the unnameable, (not-) speaking the unspeakable nibbàna, impermanence and non-substantiality in Early Buddhism The Buddha was the first historically known pioneer of those who became fully aware, in a reflexive (theoretical) sense, of Absoluteness. In his terminology according to the early Pali suttas, it was hinted at as nibbàna (cooling, 'extinction'; English nirvana). That was, in his teaching, the highest achievement. It stands to reason that the Buddha, when pushed - by those who wanted to understand better or by the drift of his own thoughts themselves - to explain what that state entailed, could have made a distinction between the situation of the sage (arahant) while alive, and the situation of such a person after death. That is about as far as he went. Concerning the state after death of the saint (arahant), the Buddha - according to the Pali suttas and the Abhidhamma - called it khandha-parinibbana (the ‘full extinction of the groups of existence’) and an-upadisesa-nibbàna Cnibbàna-without-[psycho-physical] basis’). After death, the saintly sage as psycho-physical individual no longer continues to 'be'. This was intended as a middle way between 'eternalism', that is, eternal continuation of existence on the one hand, and ‘annihilation’ in the sense of materialistic reduction (just being reduced to lifeless matter) on the other hand. As for the attainment of nibbàna by the perfect sage while still alive, it was referred to as kilesa-(pari-) nibbàna (the '[full] extinction of defilements’) and sa-upadisesa-nibbàna (nibbàna-with-[psycho-physical] basis). In this case, the saint is fully alive, but morally and epistemologically, has become fully purified. The 'feeling-willing' and the type of 'knowing' of ordinary, suffering people, have been transcended. The Buddha was reported to have remained in this state for 45 years after his enlightenment. So, what does the living, fully enlightened sage ‘know’? Such a person knows that, deep down, everything - including himself or herself - is not only anicca (impermanent), but also anattà (non-self, insubstantial). That does not amount to a denial of the empirical reality of self and the world. It refers to its ultimate status. Our 'Absoluteness' is intended as an equivalent of anattà: in the final analysis, any presumed core of the world has dissolved. Into what? The privative prefix ‘an-’ (‘a-’) does not give any content, as little as does the privative ‘nir-’ Cout’) in nibbàna (nirvana). The living sage knows that, in the final analysis, the core of the fruit is empty; there ‘is’ nothing to be known, even though, empirically speaking, such a one still ‘is’ and is alive. With exhaling the last breath, the sage as such ‘ceases’ to ‘be’. At this point reflection on the status of the arahant after death seems to suggest that such a person finally ‘enters’ into ultimacy, Absoluteness. At that level, the notions of idealistic eternalism as well as 74 Chapter 4 materialistic annihilationism have been transcended, according to early Buddhist teaching. The question of the status of the deceased saint blends with the question concerning the ultimate nature of the experienced cosmos. The corpse or the ashes of the deceased arahant are still there, but essentially such a person has entered the domain of ultimacy, beyond eternal life; beyond eternal death. The notion of ‘conditionality’ (oaccayaté) was put forward as the positive equivalent of the negative notion of non-substantiality. The individual thing is seen as part of a larger conditionalistic context. It points towards the concept of organic ‘Wholeness’: the single thing is stripped of any presumed individual ultimacy by being co-ordinated in ever-expanding wholes of successive and simultaneous connections, finding its culmination in an all-encompassing nexus, so radical and comprehensive that there is no place for hard individual knots (‘substances’). There the Theravada arahant sits quietly. In the perspective of ‘being’, such a one, however quiet, is very much present empirically. At a deeper level, the arahant is a manifestation of mysterious non-substantiality. The arahant is a saint, having disposed of the defilements of greed and hatred, tied up with the false notion of atta C‘self’, ‘substance’). In the perspective of ‘knowing’, such a person is the true sage, realising the true status of his own (non-)‘being’. When such a person dies, the last remnant of a membrane separating him or her as an entity, imagined to be separate from Wholeness and Absoluteness, finally drops away. The interpreters of the Buddhist message knew how difficult it was to say something - anything was too much. To say enough (evoking a sense of mystery but not killing it with words) is impossible. In early Buddhist terms, to fall into either 'eternalism' or ‘materialistic nihilism’ would be too much; to maintain the ignorant silence of the worldling would be too little. As far as the ultimate metaphysical questions of his day were concerned (there were 14 of them), the Buddha did not present any view. The ultimate nature of reality cannot be conceived of in rational terms. He remained silent. the emptiness of emptiness in Mahayana Buddhism In Mahayana, nirvana is not dissociated from empirical reality. Somehow, it is in the midst of ordinary life (samsára). More than that, it is ordinary reality: nirvana is samsára in a certain perspective. Absoluteness is not found elsewhere; it is in, coincides paradoxically with, the relative, that is, with all the interconnected things making up reality. Nirvana coincides with, is, the 'suchness' (tathataà) of reality. It is that same reality as ‘empty’ of substantial own-being - it is sünyatà Cemptiness’). Of all Mahayana MM thinkers, none emphasised the qualitative transcendence of Absoluteness and, at the same time, the non-difference of Absoluteness from ordinary reality more strongly than Nagarjuna (founder of Madhyamika) in the period between 2nd century and 3rd century CE. Yet it 75 Absolute Horizon was in Far-Eastern (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) Buddhism that the non- difference between the absolute of nirvana and the relative was emphasised most strongly. This non-difference was extended to include blades of grass, frogs plopping into ponds, and bamboos. Nagarjuna makes it clear that ‘emptiness’ (i.e. ‘Absoluteness’) itself is empty - that is to say, it is a mere word, a construction, and does not refer to, describe or designate anything. It has no ontological content. There is no such thing (or Thing, or Person). Nirvana (our 'Absoluteness is not some (semi-)separate Super-reality; it is the radical implosion, the utter annihilation of any such fabricated idea, even emptiness. As he said in his Mülamadhyamakakarikà CXIII.8): The wise men [/.e, the enlightened ones] have said that sunyata or the nature of thusness is the relinquishing of all false views. Yet it is said that those who adhere to the idea or concept of sunyata are incorrigible. The implication of this trend of thinking is that everything is ultimately suffused with, non-different from, Absoluteness. The only difference between people is that some realise (i.e. know) it, and some do not. Those who realise it are the enlightened ones. They are the ones whorealise Absoluteness (i.e. somehow express it) in the midst of life. Thus, we find that, in Mahéyaéna Buddhism, the idea of Absoluteness was pushed to the outermost limits, at the same time paradoxically identified with the mundane world lived in and experienced by all. From a psychological point of view, it is understandable that the nirvàna- sünyata complex of ideas could place a ‘negative’ (‘pessimistic’) as well as a ‘positive’ (optimistic) emphasis on Absoluteness. The first would tend towards seeing it as a form of annihilation; the second, towards the affirmation of some form of happiness. It would have been very hard to avoid either of these two approaches, and indeed both accents occurred in Buddhism. The Unground as Absolute, following Buddhism, intends transcending both. It transcends the notion of being, as well as that of not-being, of happiness as well as of unhappiness, of positive knowing as well as of negative not-knowing. It could instead, at most be (non-)referred to as non-being, non-feeling (non-happiness/ non-unhappiness), non-knowing. 'End' refers to the end at the edge of things; 'Origin', to the beginning at the edge of things. All we can approach (not have), is the Horizon of disappearance of being, feeling and knowing and the Horizon of the emergence of being, feeling and knowing. ‘Beyond’ these events, we cannot be, feel or know (say). The categories ‘is’, ‘feel’ and ‘know’ do not apply; they lose all reference. The Màdhyamika of Nagarjuna is Absolutism at its most consistent. No system, Indian or non-Indian, has surpassed or equalled its radicality. Yet in Indian MM there were those who presupposed Nagarjuna, even as they tried to build systems of thought on the (non-)basis laid by Nagarjuna, following as he was in the footsteps of the Buddha. Most prominent among such Indian systems of reflection were the Buddhist Yogacara school (mainly Asanga and 76 Chapter 4 Vasubandhu in the 5th century) and the Hindu Advaita-Vedanta school (mainly Gaudapada and Sankara in the period between 8th century and 9th century). The question is whether (and, if so, to what extent) they might have compromised the absolute Absoluteness of Nagarjuna in such attempts. As far as Yogacara is concerned, even as their scholars turned to speculative thinking, they did not abandon the notion of Emptiness (Absoluteness), as pioneered by the Buddha and Nagarjuna. Yet they managed to see it as the womb of all things. We will return to this. In the case of Advaita-Vedanta it may be somewhat different. Sankara's position may be termed a version of critical realism: critical as it is, it seems to remain a form of attenuated realism. The Absolute, Brahman, stripped of all limiting qualifications, nevertheless remains Being (Sat), albeit Pure - that of which all things are manifestations. In our present context, the problem here is not how the world of things may have emerged from the Absolute, but what the nature of that Absolute is, and what the relationship between Absoluteness (the ultimate) and the empirical world/nature (the phenomenal) is. In Advaita-Vedanta the Absolute did not transcend the notions of being, knowing and feeling-willing (Sat-Chit-Ananda) altogether. However transcendent the Absolute might be, it still is primordial being-knowing-feeling - in the categorial system of our model: aspects of Infinitude (see Part Three). The 5th century (CE) Mahayana classic The awakening of faith in Mahayana (Chinese: Ta-ch'eng ch'i-hsin lun; Sanskrit: Mahàyànasraddhotpàda) CAsvaghosha 1967), providing a summary of the essentials of Mahàyàna, uses the term pu-sheng (an-utpanna) for what we are envisaging here. It suggests a dimension beyond all determination. It is used both as an adjective ('Unborn', ‘Unproduced’) and as a noun (‘No-birth’, ‘No-production’), not intended as the diametrical opposite of birth or production, but as transcending that order altogether. It is the equivalent of Nàgàrjuna's Sünyatà. Sankara's East-Asian Buddhist (Hua-yen) contemporary, Fa-tsang, sought a different route than Sankara to relate Absoluteness and the world (nature), without compromising the radical incommensurability of Absoluteness. This he did by mutually, dialectically including empty ultimacy (Absoluteness) and the phenomenal (nature, the empirical world). Even as Absoluteness absolutely transcends the phenomenal, it coincides with it and the many things in it. In no sense is it another, a deeper or higher Reality. Not only is it not a 'separate' reality, it simply 'is' not, in no sense whatsoever. We will return to Fa-tsang. Nishitani Keiji This same paradoxical view, proceeding from the Buddhist view of absolute emptiness (sunyataà) but now transgressing the boundaries between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ thought, was expressed by Nishitani Keiji (1900- 1990), one of the foremost figures in the Kyoto school of philosophy. As this school demonstrated, ‘East’ and ‘West’ are rapidly ceasing to be separate categories. 77 Absolute Horizon Everything is poised on the brink of an abyss of nihility, says Nishitani. Yet this absolute nothingness is not a ‘something’ behind the everything (Heisig 2001). The human person is only a mask (a persona) of absolute nothingness. Not only is there is no ‘true’ or ‘real’ thing (God, or Ideas, e.g.) behind it; the absolute nothingness itself is no such thing-in-itself. Nor is the human person a mere illusionary appearance. In its being a manifestation of absolute emptiness, it is very 'real'. This is the paradox of nothingness-sive-being (sive: 'or', not as alternative, but as synonym). Like Fa-tsang and Dogen in this tradition, Nishitani contracts the phenomenal and the ultimate emptiness to the point of virtual identification, without totally collapsing them (Nishitani 1982): Nothingness is not a 'thing' that is nothingness. Or again, to speak of nothingness as standing 'behind' person does not imply a duality between nothingness and person. In describing this nothingness as 'something' wholly other, we do not mean that there is actually some 'thing' that is wholly other. Rather, true nothingness means that there is no thing that is nothingness, and this is absolute nothingness. (p. 7O) In a phrase reminiscent of Augustine, he calls sünyata absolutely transcendent, but not situated 'on the far side of where we find ourselves', but 'on our near side, more so than we are with respect to ourselves’ (Nishitani 1982:91). The difference is that to Augustine, God is an ontologically other Being, apart from us and the world. Even in the meontology of Heidegger, Nishitani finds a remnant of substantialist ontology (Nishitani 1982:96). We shall return to Heidegger. There remains indeed a difference between Christian-Western meontology or negative theology on the one hand, and Buddhist emptiness on the other. As far as Nishitani is concerned, in Western thought the closest analogue to the radical emptiness of Buddhism may be found in the mysticism of Meister Eckhart. Chuang-Tzu In China, Chuang-Tzu (4th century BCE), a founding figure in what would eventually be called ‘Taoism’, was no less radical in his non-thinking of Absoluteness, no less subversive of objectifying conceptual thinking and theoretical positions about 'being' and the rest, than the Buddhist thinkers mentioned above. Whereas the style of the Buddha's non-thinking was one of quiet, serious serenity and that of Nagarjuna one of rigorous, ruthless dialectic, Chuang-Tzu exposed the absurdity of every pretence to certainty with light- hearted playfulness, expressed in witty stories (Graham 1981; Watson 1968; Wu 1982). To him, Absoluteness (non-being, wu) or emptiness (Asti) is neither being nor nothingness (the mere opposition or denial of being). It can neither be known nor named, and it is beyond good and evil. It is neither in opposition to the world, nor something ontologically other than the world. In the final analysis, non-being cannot be talked about. It can only be alluded to evocatively. Of the non-being of nature (t'ien hs), the non-speaking and the non-doing (wu wer) of the sage are metaphorical expressions. 78 Chapter 4 Meister Eckhart | turn to the third great philosophical tradition deriving from antiquity: the Greek-Mediterranean heritage, since 2000 years ago to some extent overlapping with the religions of Judaism and Christianity, as well as Islam (when it arrived on the scene). In the Western tradition, nobody circled Absolutism with greater fascination than the Dominican scholar-mystic, Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327). Eckhart radicalised, ‘Absolutised’, the Neoplatonic negative theology with its lingering substantialist view of God. There is little doubt that Eckhart derived his knowledge of Neoplatonism mainly from Proclus' Elements of theology via an abridged Arabic version of it (we shall return to Proclus). In the Christian adoption of that tradition, 'God', stripped of attributes and unknowable, nevertheless remained a substantial ‘X’, however much attenuated. The parasitism of non-speaking, non-knowing, on speaking, knowing of some sort, based in firm belief in God, was not eradicated. Eckhart seemed to have wanted to keep the dynamic unrest, the creative annihilation of Absoluteness, alive. With him, the word 'godhead' (Gottheit) denoted a step beyond the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To interpret 'godhead' in his case as an add-on to the Trinitarian dynamic of God would not seem to do justice to his intention. From our perspective, he may be interpreted as implying that even a foundational concept, such as the Trinity is for Christianity, is somehow cancelled by a deeper annihilating vortex spiralling into Absoluteness. The conceptual construct of the Trinity, speculatively fertile and necessary as it may be, is nevertheless not 'absolute' in the sense of being indubitable and self-evident. It is 'Absolute' in the sense of imploding into and yet manifesting Absoluteness. The Three, conceived of as Persons, collapse into meta-personal Absoluteness. Ultimately not only all forms of creaturely being-knowing-feeling are annihilated, but even the most sublime, most profound forms of divine being-knowing-feeling - even divine justice, even divine love. 'God' collapses into and arises from Absoluteness. The ‘godhead’ Eckhart sensed, is absolute negation, and yet, at the same time, affirmation of what ‘is’. In Buddhist terms: form is emptiness; emptiness is form. The same, we sense, also applies to the Cosmos (Eckhart would speak of ‘creation’). So when he says that God is born in the human soul, | understand him tendentionally to say that the human being, like everything else, manifests Absoluteness. Godhead/Absoluteness is not Something or Someone else than, different from, the ordinary world, from us (the ‘human soul’). In that sense, using Christian parlance, God (meaning ‘godhead’, i.e. Absoluteness) was not incarnated once only 2000 years ago, but is continuously being incarnated - in the vocabulary we used so far, concretised as being-knowing-feeling-willing in Cosmos and all its individual forms. In that sense, ‘I’ am, non-dualistically, eternal, divine, absolute. 79 Absolute Horizon Eckhart’s thought spells the end of God as anthropomorphic Subject over against the human subject, of envisaged, conceptualised God. Praying to God to free him from God, Eckhart’s Abgeschiedenheit (detachment) refers to the mystic's true insight into the non-substantiality of all things, including God; his Gelassenheit (abandonment) refers to the mystic's serene abandonment to Absoluteness. Eckhart stretched the possibilities of historical, orthodox Western Christianity to the limits and beyond. Not surprisingly, the Church condemned him for that. Yet in doing so, he followed and spun out the golden thread, the absolutist tendency, latent in the Western religious tradition. F.W.J. Schelling Compared to the limpid calm of a Buddha, the sovereign incisiveness of a Nagarjuna, the confident speculation of an Asanga, the light playfulness of a Chuang-Tzu and the condensed economy of expression of a Dogen, the attempts of another explorer, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854), make painful reading. Yet, in that difficult style, the inclination of a visionary lover of wisdom and truth to ‘see’ and ‘speak of’ Absoluteness and to reconcile that with the teachings of Christianity and his Neoplatonic inheritance as well as with a real appreciation of nature, is palpable. Throughout his long and active intellectual life, his philosophy of nature (Naturphilosophie) retained certain essential features, which never added up to a perfectly balanced system. Schelling started all over a number of times, tried out various approaches with varying success, and was not ever quite satisfied with any of them. Nevertheless, overall - and placing strong emphasis on his later thought - he could be read to suggest the following 10 perspectives: 1. The universe is an organism of parts making up an organic whole, so much so that every atom contains the whole, and is an infinite world in itself. 2. Life is eternal and omnipresent, and every particle of matter shares in that. 3. The universe is the self-revelation, self-manifestation, self-contemplation, of God. 4. As one organic unity, nature nevertheless encompasses a great range of manifestations running from objective to subjective. 5. Nature is essentially in a process of development, and there is no fixed ‘being’. 6. Nature is the creation of the absolute Spirit as Will. 7. In the universe as a supreme work of art, truth and beauty are one. 8. Nature has not been brought into being once and for all, but is an eternal process of becoming. 9. The world of appearances has no reality in itself. 1O. The point of the world-process is the return of the finite to the Absolute. 80 Chapter 4 The above express the commonality of Schelling’s thinking with the Romanticism of the time, and its sense of interconnectedness, wholeness and ego-transcendence. They also mark interesting parallels with Buddhist thinking. With his emphasis on life and feeling, the difference between his thinking and the rational inclination of Hegel (see Ch. 16) is obvious. Hegel’s World Spirit is rationally transparent; Schelling’s is not. Schelling’s thought must be rated highly. However, his historical influence was limited, no doubt hampered by the abstruseness of his writing and the fact that in an age of high positivism his philosophy seemed to be an unpalatable mixture of science and obscurantist mysticism. My immediate interest is how he fared as far as Absoluteness is concerned. Admittedly, Schelling uses the concept, ‘(the) Absolute’, regularly - but what does he understand by it? In his earlier thinking, it appears to be a general equivalent for God, the ultimate Spirit. Round about 1806 (his 31st year) we see him enter into an almost desperate drive to push the idea of the 'Absolute' into deeper waters than he had reached thus far (Brown 1977; Esposito 1977; Schelling 2002:1-78). The total threat of evil and chaos, radical darkness and death, and conflict in the heart of God became a new concern, absent in his previous work. This new start by Schelling attempted to rediscover the spiritual dimension that was lost in European philosophy since the Enlightenment. Apart from Boehme, other aspects of this tradition, rediscovered by Schelling, included Neoplatonic negative theology, mysticism in general, the Trinity as metaphysical speculation, the Jewish and Christian Kabbalah, and Nicholas of Cusa. His uncompleted and thrice rewritten book Die Weltalter ('ages of the world’) offers a singular insight into the struggle of a passionate sophiaphile trying the impossible. This book was planned as his magnum opus and it would occupy his mind for at least 20 years. In the end, he abandoned the attempt. His grand design remained a twisted torso, alluring in its suggestiveness and majestic in its failure. Eventually, the ideas of Die Weltalter would be taken forward in his thinking on mythology and revelation that would occupy the last four decades of his life. The 'ages' of the world (das Vergangene ['Past], das Gegenwártige ['Present'] and das Zukünftige ['Future']) refer to the three ‘periods’ of the process of divine self-manifestation. The past is God's eternal (non-)being; the Present is the world as God's Creation; and the Future is the return of all things to God. Only the first part (the Past) reached some measure of closure, but even that part was rewritten several times. Of those, three attempts (1811, 1813, and 1815) were published after Schelling's death, and without his consent. | shall here briefly confine myself to the third and longest version (Schelling 1958 [1927]:577-720). At least until the second half of the 20th century, posterity did not look kindly on the Schelling of Die Weltalter and what followed upon it, branding Schelling agnostic, a theosophist and an irrational mystic. The time for his rehabilitation as a pioneer of a way of thinking transcending 81 Absolute Horizon both scientific positivism and religious traditionalism, may have arrived (Zizek 1997). This essay would support that. What Schelling overall had in mind for Die Weltalter, was nothing less than telling the history of the unfolding of the Absolute in time. His view breaks out of the ancient mould of timelessness. What was static participation in Plotinus, becomes dynamic evolution in Schelling. Something happens; God develops. The world emerges from and will return to God as the Absolute. In his book, Schelling reiterates the classic idea that the divine cosmic process is a spiral, moving through what he termed Zusammenziehung (contraction) and Ausdehnung (expansion). In the case of God, contraction means that God contracts himself to the point of utter non-being. As absolute will and freedom, God also expands, and in that movement God creates the world. Here traces of Kabbalah are evident. The ‘Past’ was for Schelling not temporal, but referred to a meta-temporal Archetype of temporal reality, unfolding historically in the world. Reminiscent of Eckhart, he too speaks of ‘Godhead’ above God - transcending the God of traditional theology. In Die Weltalter the emphasis lies on the dramatic, basic bipolarities of contraction and expansion within God. His agonising God, struggling within himself, remains trapped in pain. Here Boehme is subltly hovering in Schelling’s thinking. Could he have broken down those dualities further, allowing them to recede into utter Emptiness and Silence? It is noteworthy that Schelling did not see the world as an emanation or extension of God, but as his Creation. He was particularly sensitive to the possible accusation of pantheism (a charge indeed levelled against him by F.H. Jacobi). In his (let us say ‘panentheistic’) view, creatures are distinct from God, yet also embraced in him. Looking at him in the larger historical context sketched in this S, it seems that Schelling agonised a great deal, constrained by the historical possibilities and limitations available to him in Western theology and Neoplatonism. He did not achieve an easy, happy peace, as others whom we have observed did, and he did not resolve the stresses and strains in his tradition. 82 End E 516 All things end To most reflecting persons the real entry into the windings of mystical experience is the experience of the End of things. This may come as a single shocking discovery or as a chronic sense of impermanence and mortality, eliciting an existential terror of annihilation and nothingness. At the level of human existence, it is mostly the experience of dying and death and the sense of loss and bereavement triggered by it, which confronts one with the inescapability of End. Nothing lasts forever. Looking forward, we know that - whenever, but with certainty - humanity and all present species of life on earth as well as earth and sun and the billions of stars and galaxies presently blazing, will end. All the dykes of human culture, civilisation and religion, erected and maintained to protect our neat lives, meet the same fate. Awestruck as we may be before the achievements of the human spirit in art and science, cities and architecture, technology and philosophy, we know that some time they all become curiosities, perhaps remembered and understood and missed, perhaps not. At times, such as the periods of the Egyptian, Roman, Chinese and other empires, it may seem as if an eternal order reigns. Yet, eventually all such achievements are reduced to rubble. History, telling of things great and vile but all gone, is the story of End. AII glories of culture and civilisation fade away. How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘End’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 83-97, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi. org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.05 83 End The great ordering systems of religion fare no better. In their heyday, they seem to their adherents to be the enduring earthly reflections of an eternal order of heaven. But eventually, in tandem with changing economic, political and wider social and cultural circumstances, all worldviews change, lose their aura of inviolability, decline, and become relics of a distant past. Widen the frame of space and time sufficiently, and they become like ephemeral specks of dust in an immeasurable expanse. Mental pictures of God (including names, characteristics and deeds attributed to ‘him’) are subject to the same fate. They briefly play their role of transcending and integrating human experience to certain groups, all transient, but then, given sufficient time, they lose their appeal. Today we are witnessing the collapse of mythological and religious edifices that have endured for centuries and millennia. Rigorous thinking has the same obliterating effect. Continuing the critiques of many since the beginnings of philosophy in China, the Middle East and Mediterranean Europe, the modern epoch has produced various approaches - Kant, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault and others - demonstrating the human quality, the constructedness, the relativity of all such grand edifices, coming to naught - and perhaps amounting to naught? Using the tools of logical, linguistic, historical, sociological and psychological analysis, a radically critical perspective on religious ideas reveals them to be human constructs. Attempting to provide substantive answers to the ultimate questions plaguing humankind, reason ties itself up in knots. In the end, there is nothing to think, nothing to say. Enter the process of uncompromising criticism, and you are on the way towards the edge of religion. No religious institution, no religion, can claim final truth. The impermanence of things in the order of time is not only empirical fact; it suggests the non-substantiality of all things small and large, short-lived and spanning billions of years - of the universe, of Cosmos. What | refer to here as ‘End’ certainly has a temporal aspect: things end in time, then they are no more. But it also reminds us that everything in its singularity (no matter how small or large and impressive) and all things in their totality, even while they still exist as part of reality, hang over Absolute Abyss which strips them of every claim to final truth. Their disintegration lurks just under the surface. There is a small step from the categories of temporal changeability and brevity to metaphysical non-substantiality. Impermanence becomes Absoluteness. Sadness of soul about the incompleteness, the premature termination of things, becomes metaphysical anxiety about the hollowness of things. Things are shot through with Absoluteness. The moment that is discovered, whether in one mind-blowing experience or in a process of decades, things end. End is the de-absolutising of even very important things such as cultures, civilisations, languages, nations, peoples, religions and concepts of God spanning millennia. End is the Absolutising of things: they collapse into radically empty Absoluteness. The realisation of End implies a certain attitude and ethos. 84 Chapter 5 A first implication is the law of letting go. We are stripped of our most precious possessions: those that embellish our existence and add to our value in the marketplace of human society, as well as those that are essential, constituting our very core identity. This discovery pushes the notion of non- idolatry to the limit. Paradoxically, to love ‘God’ with all your heart, soul and mind - that is, to be passionately involved with Arche, including Absoluteness - is to let go of 'God' - that is, of every concept of enduring substance of every conceivable colouring, whether personal or impersonal. Absoluteness consumes every humanly created absolute, projected into eternity. End creates space for the law of forgiveness and grace. Evil is not absolute. Eventually even that is washed away in Absoluteness. No doctrine of a planning and organising God can be kept erect in the presence of innocent victims of violence or starving children. Let go of theodicy. Evil can never be justified. What else can we do but wait for it to pass away into the Abyss - as it will, eventually? Allowing that to happen may be what forgiving grace is about. Evil will End, as all things do, and a new beginning will come. What more realistic solace can we expect, and offer others, in extreme situations of suffering and injustice? There is a further implication: the law of appreciation and respect, of kindness and doing justice. Wealth, health and all the other good things of life End; that realisation does not demand an ascetic avoidance of life, but a grateful appreciation of its contingent beauty and a commitment to its protection. Working, struggling and even fighting on a practical level from the dimension of Horizon adds quality and effectiveness to human struggles. In End all things, even the smallest, most evanescent, glow with beauty and dignity - not because they are eternal, but precisely because they fade so quickly and, in their puny slightness are permeated by so much depth. Each tells the story of Arche. This implies loyalty and loving care, extended to the people we share our lives with and those who we do not know; to the weak and powerless, the sick and the elderly, the poor and the destitute; to products of culture, won and protected against great odds with much struggle and heroism; to nature as a whole, and to all its creatures. It implies living affirmatively, loyally - knowing full well that the objects of such loyalty eventually all pass away. Plant a seed, whether in personal or social life, tend it - whilst fully realising the truth of End. The law of End teaches us to slow down. Pause. Observe ends - not only of epochs, centuries, lifetimes and years, but also of a single breath. Each ends. And each ending reminds us that we are constantly on the threshold of Absoluteness. Do not enforce or hasten End. Have patience. Let things, as far as possible, take their natural course. Do not kill: take no life; burn no book; persecute no heretic. End - whether it is experienced as the temporal termination of things, or as their metaphysical breakdown, or both - evokes a range of human responses. 85 End A distinction into two broad types will do, with a stronger remainder of the real lingering on in the first group, and a stronger measure of stripping in the second. E 517 Poignant End, tragic End A first group includes attitudes such as grief, sadness, resignation and rebellion, even defiant joy. Each may be heroic. Opposite as some of them may be, they share one feature: serious pathos, intense emotion. tragedy Such poignancy can become tragic. This, even to the extent that the perception of a situation by an actor or observers in terms of one or more of the aspects touched on below, might be termed a ‘tragic’ perception. We understand tragedy here as a way of experiencing and interpreting End. Tragedy is the confrontation with End as total and final disruption and collapse, tension and rift, with the threat of chaos, nothingness and meaninglessness (Reid 2002). It is triggered when an individual or a group of human beings sense themselves to be confronted by a radical negation of some order, hitherto accepted as unshakeable, the way things are, perhaps divinely ordained. It may be a threat to the order of nature, hitherto assumed everlasting. It may be the disruption of a social order of millennia, centuries or even decades, such as the fall of an empire or a political regime. It could be the rupture of orders of social relationships such as friendship, marriage, family, religious or cultural communities by events such as conflict, separation and death; also the breakdown of a religious order, a system of doctrine, a mythology, an ideology - of a system providing ultimate meaning. It may be the collapse of a person's identity, threatening the own sense of sanity, the own niche in a stable world and social acceptance; or even a person's own death. Pre-tragic poignancy stops short of the threat of nothingness and meaninglessness: End is sad, but part of the order of things. Dislocating the human person (whether actor, victim or onlooker) and the human world (social and ecological), is such a total and radical onslaught on people's sense of normal reality, that it has religious (worldview, metaphysical) implications. The order of nature, cosmos, gods, God, is shaken to the core, and it disintegrates. The heavens collapse. It is not merely a desperately difficult situation, but more specifically, involves clash and conflict of some sort (such as physical, social, cosmic or divine). It may be a no-win moral dilemma, an irresolvable either-or of two duties, tearing the human person or human community apart, making meaningful thought, emotion and action impossible, unbearable as such 86 Chapter 5 impotence may be. The first-level moral dilemma becomes the meta-dilemma of morality as such, threatened by an absolute abyss of nihilistic meaninglessness. In his wider metaphysical scheme, Hegel’s model of tragedy emphasises the conflict of two goods, the one-sided adherence by an individual to a partial position, as the essence of tragedy (Hegel 1951:558-566, 1954:527-533; Roche 2005:51-67). Ambiguous as Nietzsche’s thinking (Nietzsche 1964:27ff.) on the birth of tragedy is, he essentially understands tragedy as the creative outcome of the conflict of two antagonistic principles, personified in the two Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus: the clarity of ordered surface life (represented by Apollo) versus the hidden, threatening depth of chaos (Dionysius). An individual or human society involved in such a situation is not a mere victim of the situation, an innocent bystander, but also an actor, who, to some extent at least, brings it about. A rock from outer space obliterating all life on Earth would be catastrophic, but not tragic in the sense intended here, as an ecological catastrophe, induced by human greed and folly, and even by well- intended but mindless technological applications of science, would be. In full- blown tragedy, human freedom, responsibility and accountability loom large. The choices that one had, have become blocked, due to one's own actions. Yet the ash of human freedom is still glowing, even if the situation has turned into doom. Tragedy is constituted by human action, freely done and perhaps even partly intended, yet carrying devastating, unforeseen yet partly foreseeable, consequences. The tragic figure is partly responsible for his own fate. He carries guilt, has to live with regret. The real-life tragic hero Giordano Bruno largely brought his death over himself. In his theory of tragedy, Aristotle (384-322 BCE) highlights the element of human fallibility (hamartia) (Eden 2005:41-50; Halliwell 1987:37ff.). Universalising Aristotle's ideas, he may be understood to have implied that failure is enmeshed in even the finest human efforts, exposing the extreme and inescapable vulnerability of human existence. Human responses to the full realisation of the implications of a tragic event, an end, multiplied by realising one's own contribution in bringing it about, occur on a wide range, including extreme feelings of loss, grief and suffering. People are overcome by alienation, doubt and despair, madness and resignation. Some denouement of the situation, some sublimation of one's suffering, some saving grace, may be possible - coming out in responses such as raging protest, heroic fortitude, metaphysical justification, supernaturally revealed religious belief, or awaiting a miraculous supernatural delivery. Aristotle's view that a good tragedy arouses pity and fear and, by deepened understanding of the workings of the human mind, effects purification (katharsis) in the onlooker (Halliwell 1987), could be taken to point in this direction. Hegel finds the hidden redeeming element, inherent in tragedy, in the reconciliation of tragic opposites in the greater process. Nietzsche seeks exit from tragedy by gaily, heroically affirming life in spite of tragedy and because of tragedy. Jaspers sees liberation from tragedy in the tragic contemplation itself - release is found in the very 87 End failure (Jaspers 1947:930, 944ff.). The religions teach their various triumphs over death and tragedy. The visual arts, music, literature, philosophy and religious mythology reveal innumerable instances of poignant, even tragic End and dealings with that. Spotlighting a few random examples will suggest some of the possibilities. Let me start with two brief references. In the novel, The Stranger, of Albert Camus (1913-1960), the (anti-)hero Meursault faces execution by guillotine. Declining the services of a chaplain, and beyond rage and emptied of hope, he simply opens himself happily to the tender indifference of the world. The 20th-century protest of Dylan Thomas (1914-1953): not to go gently into the night, but to rage against the dying of light was an individual, futile railing against End in the form of death, and the poet knew it. Religious thought came up with elaborate constructions somehow to come to terms with End. Qohelet (Ecclesiastes) Sometime during the 3rd century BCE an unknown Hebrew author, known only as Qohelet (‘preacher’, or ‘speaker’), experienced the Hebrew faith in eternal Yahweh (who had made an everlasting covenant with his people Israel) as stretched to breaking point (Fox 1999; Loader 1979; Rudman 2002). The name Yahweh does not even occur in the musings of this disillusioned man, written up in his collection of sayings (Ecc/esiastes). Moreover, this profound mind does not present himself as part of any meaningful social nexus, of divinely-chosen Israel, but speaks as a solitary individual. He may have continued pessimistic strands in the Egyptian and Babylonian cultures, and he may have been influenced by elements in Greek-Hellenistic culture. More significantly, his reflections arose spontaneously from within the post-exilic Hebrew situation in the wider context of the time. A dream, a divinely guaranteed reality had been shattered. He was obsessed by End, particularly in the form of death - not only with its physical and social aspects, but also with its meaning. The upshot of his reflections was that death cast a long shadow of meaninglessness over life. Life has its fleeting joys, which may be enjoyed, but taken as a whole, it is hebe/ (transitory, vain, empty, futile, absurd). He sensed an irresolvable conflict between what justice demands and what life actually offers: toil and wealth, the pleasures of life, being just and wise, are torn by irreconcilable, offensive incongruities. The link between worth and reward had been smashed. Contrary to what the believer might expect, life did not reveal any sense. It was the End of meaning. He approximated tragedy. In his view, the human person was not necessarily responsible for this fate, but merely the disillusioned onlooker. There was no way out, no resolution, philosophical or religious, of the meaninglessness of life. Yet this unknown Hebrew sage did not move over the edge into Absoluteness. It was not the emptiness of Jewish Kabbalah yet. He cut his losses. His faith in life may have been shaken, but his belief in God was not. Nevertheless, 88 Chapter 5 God had changed. He had now become a vague, general Being. Religious belief had been stretched to the very limit of its capacity, but it did not implode completely. A religious and political-ideological construction had burnt out, but the embers were still faintly glowing. In the end, he turned back, and did not view the world consistently as empty. His last, summative word was, '[f]ear God and obey his commands; there is no more to man than this. For God brings everything we do to judgement, and every secret, whether good or bad’ (Ec 12:13-14). After the breakdown of the utopia of justice on earth, only the fear of God, obedience to his law and the expectation of his judgement remain. In the end, the preacher advises us to accept the evanescent little that life has to offer and to silence our religious protest, in submission to a distant, inscrutable God. That was enough to allow its inclusion in the Hebrew-Christian Bible. Ibn Arabi Like its sister religions, traditional Islam assumes continued life after death (akhirah), based on an unquestioned belief in eternal Allah. Death is the uninterrupted transition from transitory, insecure life to a higher, boundless form of life, enjoyed in the afterlife. The world will End, but that too is subject to the will of eternal Allah. Yet, in esoteric Islam (Sufism) extraordinary depth and beauty of expressions of End and Absoluteness occur - and in none more so than in the acknowledged grand master (a/-shaykh al-akbar) of Sufism: the Arabic-Andalusian scholar-mystic, Ibn Arabi (1165-1240 CE) (Chittick 1994, 2007 [2005]; Corbin 1997[1969]; Ibn Al'Arabi 1980; Izutsu 1983; Nasr 1964:83-121; Sells 1994:63-115]). The theosophic gnosis of this colossus was at odds with the literalistic, legalistic exoteric Islam of his time, and he had to resort to indirect allusions. Notwithstanding, his being part of exoteric Islam was not an embarrassment to him. He accepted outer Islam as representing anecessary layer and precondition of faith. Apart from Ibn Arabi himself and contrary to some views, it must be recognised that tasawwuf (mystical Islam, Sufism) was not an extraneous addition from elsewhere to Islam but that it arose as a development from within the original religion itself. In its own way, it was a tendentional (see Ch. 1) interpretation of the inner possibilities of Islam as a formal religion. Sufism was influenced by Neoplatonism and perhaps even Hinduism, but its mystical inclination was an extension of what was present in the life of the prophet and in the Qur’an itself. Sufism is an unfolding of an implication of the shahadah, the Islamic profession of faith in Allah. Islam, including Sufism, is the encounter with and submission to creative, pure, ineffable Presence. The question is whether Sufism would tolerate a tendentional interpretation towards the radical Absoluteness hinted at in Taoism and Buddhism. Ibn Arabi's creative interpretations of Islam in the literal sense of the word hinted at a profound level of meaning, moving towards the edge of End. 89 End His very use of language, constantly shifting without arriving, like a continually turning kaleidoscope, precludes and undermines fixed meaning. His aim was not to present rational explanation in the philosophic (fa/-safa) sense of the word, but gnosis, contemplative, intuitive intellection. Central to Ibn Arabi's thinking is his notion of the ‘Real’ (a/-hagq) - in his usage not unrelated to A//ah (the personal name of the deity), but moving at the most abstract level attainable. To Ibn Arabi, the word 'God' or 'Allah' refers not to Absoluteness in its state ‘prior’ to being determined, but to its being determined. He uses the word a/-hagq to hint at the Absolute. The event of mystical union with the Real implies the ecstatic passing away (fana) of the ego-self in love. The lover ‘Ends’, perishes, loses consciousness of self. God is all; that is to say, the duality between divine and human has been transcended. In order to reflect the divine Real, the mirroring human has to be cleaned, erased, has to become invisible. The End of ego is achieved through fasting, vigils, poverty and other exercises. With the End of the separate human subject, only a/-hagq remains. It is not the Real in itself. It is the reflected picture: the Real as reflected in a mirror. Yet Ibn Arabi delights in ambiguities and paradoxes. Has the mirror disappeared, or is it merely invisible? The point of the analogy seems to be that the existence of the existing human being is essentially correlated with divinity, and vice versa: the Real remains eternal, albeit essentially in relation to, reflected by, the mirror. It seems that Ibn Arabi envisages a togetherness, a for-and-in-each-otherness, of divinity-and-humanity. Proclaiming the Oneness of Being, he nevertheless moves towards disintegration of entities, whether cosmic, human or divine. The fusion of human and divine (ecstatic in both cases) annihilates human self- centredness, and it undermines theological certainties. Unless the God of belief is transcended, the outcome is idolatry. Within the historical parameters of 'monotheistic' faith, it seems to approach, as close as can come, Absoluteness. No wonder that at times he was accused of being a crypto-Hindu or Buddhist. Indeed, such Indian influences were probable. Yet - in the end, close to absolute End - dhat al-haqq,the incommunicable Reality beyond all names and distinction, including that of creator and created, remains intact. The human disappears, but the necessary existence of hidden Reality, never attainable, stays. The human individual perishes, but the deity - abstracted from names and features - takes over. That, it seems, was not Ended. The similarity between the intuition of this great Muslim mystic and Advaita-Vedanta with its notion of Nirguna Brahman (Brahman without attributes) is obvious. Does Ibn Arabi's reference to 'the Real' retain an element of Being, essentially unscathed, perhaps as an inalienable part of the monotheistic faiths, even at their most radical? It seems so. True, as the source of all things, the Real is no thing over against any other thing. Referring to 'necessary Being' at the highest level, the term wàjib al-wujüd denotes the non-delimited Essence of God or the Real that cannot not exist. 90 Chapter 5 Matthias Grunewald Western mainstream Christianity turns on the death of Christ. The cry of the dying Christ for his forsaking God (Mk 15:35), brought about by the freely committed sin of humankind, spells tragic End. The authors of the New Testament and the founding fathers of the church conflated that tragic death with eternal life. Christ arose from death, removing the sting of death and guaranteeing to all who believe in him, a resurrection from death and life everlasting. Christ the victor, eternal Son of eternal God, does not succumb to absolute End, but conquers it gloriously. End is beaten down by the majestic tour de force of victorious Christ. It was against-End, End confronted, conquered and denied. Continuing the fascination of medieval Christianity with death, no Christian artist pictured the agony of Jesus Christ on the Cross in such gruesome detail as the German Renaissance artist, Matthias Grunewald (c. 1480-1528) in his Isenheim Altarpiece (c. 1512). The colours of the decomposing body and the taut lines and crooked angles of the tortured Saviour hanging from nails, leave nothing to the imagination. This is death at its ugliest. It is End at the outermost limits of agony, made even worse by the fact that the one who suffers such unspeakable pain, is the Son of God. Yet even this terror, precisely this terror, was understood by the painter to offer solace to suffering humanity. It was indeed intended to comfort the sick and dying in the hospital where these panels were placed. Someone suffered even more, and that was the Son of God who bore not only their physical agonies, but also their sins, thus saving them from the tortures of hell. One can expect that even as this painting consoled those who lay in fear of death on the threshold of the afterlife, awaiting the judgement of God, it also strengthened their culturally and religiously induced fascination with death as torture and punishment. This was the most terrible End imaginable - and, since it was part of the eternal plan of a righteous, merciful God, it was inescapable. Tragically, they had brought it over themselves and over the Son of God. Under that Cross on which their Saviour was nailed, they lay waiting for their End - guilty but, miraculously, forgiven; fearful but hopeful that their eternal post-death existence would take the form of a blessed afterlife. This was tortured but saving, expectant End. St John of the Cross The Spanish poet-mystic St John of the Cross (1542-1591) provides a unique window on the ways in which prophetic religion and mystical religion may be conjoined. His memorable contribution to the mysticism of End was his concept of the ‘dark night’ (noche obscura) of the soul. As he explained, this dark night manifests itself in three ways: first, there is the night of sensual denial and deprivation; secondly, there is the night of cognitive deprivation, of not- understanding, that is of faith; thirdly, there is God as dark night. Having passed through these three stages of night, the soul reaches union with God 91 End (Saint John of the Cross 1983 [1935]:17ff.). His dark night is a symbol of nothingness (nada) in a variety of forms: the realisation of creaturely insignificance; the dissolving of the ego-self; nakedness of spirit; stripping of the greed for power, pleasure and possession; social leaving and rejection; the discovery that all things social and natural are nothing compared to God (Kurian 2000). In his own suffering (first, being imprisoned and tortured by some Carmelite friars and then being rejected by his own brethren) he discovered the depths of abandonment. In the process of ascending to God, the soul experiences all sorts of internal suffering such as temptations and fear as it revolts against the very idea of 'nothingness'. Yet this darkness of nothingness applies to the human side of things only. God is not subject to End. God is absolute fullness. The point of human self-emptying is to receive the fullness of God. Here John echoes the thinking of his fellow Spanish mystic, Ibn Arabi. In his prison cell, John intimately experienced the comfort of God, and composed songs of loving ecstasy. The joy of the fullness of God far exceeded the necessary suffering. We must free ourselves from all attachments, he taught, except the attachment to God. In the dark of night, the fire of love in John's heart led him on (Nims 1959): [7 ]o where there waited one | knew - how well | knew! - in a place where no one was in view. (p. 19) In darkness, beyond feelings, images and concepts ... we meet God. John gives classic expression to adoration as the key motif in Christian mysticism (De Villiers 2008:124-139). This approximates ‘negative theology’, profound mysticism of love, presented in unsurpassed lyrical poetry - searching for God, hidden yet real and finding him joyfully. Ensconced in ecclesiastical tradition, sacramental liturgy and scholastic theology, it is not absolute End. In the oscillation between positive belief and negative non-belief in Western religion, the pendulum in John’s case did not swing out to the extreme limits of the latter. The question is: could John have drawn the conclusion that the obliteration of the cognitive faculties of the human person implies the obliteration, the End, of traditional God in a more fundamental sense than he thought? Reflecting on this question, we must bear in mind that during the late medieval to early modern period of the flowering of mysticism in the West, the common tradition of Judaism-Christianity-Islam in the West (particularly in Spain) was in a tragic process of breaking down. Nevertheless, there were certain themes common to all three shapes of religious institutionalisation, notably the belief in one personal God, that were untouchable. The great mystics in each tradition (Kabbalah, Christian mysticism and Sufism) were largely bound to the institutional and theological constraints of each religion, sometimes enforced with a strong hand. Apart from that, almost without 92 Chapter 5 exception, in their own hearts and minds, they remained deeply indebted and committed to the religion-specific particulars of their own religion. That was certainly the case with John, as had also been true of Ibn Arabi. Johannes Brahms No artist gave more profound expression to the sting of death and the joy of victory over death than Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) in his choral symphony Ein Deutsches Requiem (1865). It is the song of a man who was preoccupied with death during the period of its composition. It is also the song of a man who has moved dramatically away from the heavily positive Lutheran- Protestant religion of his youth, to a humanistic faith. His music also marked End of another kind: the End of orthodox faith. His masterpiece, weaving together texts from Luther's Bible translation and setting them to music, is still fed by a deep piety towards the Christian Bible. However, his faith is no longer Christian in any orthodox sense. His Requiem is a sustained avowal of finitude. There is consolation. His music conveys a profound sense of agony, and, dramatically opposed to and connected with that, of exuberant joy and dignified serenity. He does not find the consolation in the promise of a life everlasting after death, not in the expectation of a resurrection from death, guaranteed by Christ. Death is overcome here and now, precisely in the finitude of things. The end of death is sublimated, purified, transcended, in the beauty of the music itself, and then this (un)believer still believed in God, the Eternal, but it was a post-Christian belief. Shorn of exclusively Christian content, his music was intended as a human requiem, addressed to all humankind, regardless of religious partisanship. To him, the ultimate Horizon of the radical transience of things, as experienced in death, was universal. In End, Brahms found consolation in a universal, eternal God. There he made a last stand, and did not enter into Absoluteness, into which even the faith in eternal God must eventually enter. It would be wrong to force Brahms into the dilemma of either believing ‘really’ and ‘truly’ (i.e. literally) exactly what the original documents and the tradition believed and said, or of being dishonest by using those texts, but twisting them cynically to suit his own idiosyncratic tastes (Minear 1987:81ff.). In accordance with Brahms' undisputed integrity as a person and as a musician, he did, one must accept, assent to the validity of those texts. Otherwise, he would not have quoted them as he did. In good faith, he interpreted them in accordance with his own mystical needs, which he also attributed to his audiences. That is what they, to his understanding, really, essentially, meant. Up to a point, Brahms followed through on a 'tendentional' reading of sacred books, in this case, of the Bible. In his hands, the Bible clearly seems to say something else than what its original authors had in mind, also than what its later orthodox Christian interpreters had in mind. The wrath of God at the last 93 End day (the dies irae), as feared in traditional Latin-Christian music of death and eternal judgement, is wholly absent from his Requiem. Nevertheless, his interpretation was somehow continuous with the original explicit intention of the Christian Bible, even as he brought out what he perceived to be the original implicit message of those documents, not coinciding perfectly with the explicit intention. The technique used by Brahms was simple. He (re-)interpreted the biblical messages on death by his selection of texts and omissions from such texts. Portions that seemed to place an exclusively Christian emphasis on things were omitted from the libretto. In the sixth movement, for example, Brahms quotes from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians (15:54, 55) 'then the saying of Scripture will come true: "Death is swallowed up; victory is won!" "O Death, where is your victory? O Death, where is your sting?" The preceding and following thoughts of Paul in this section, connecting death with sin, the law of God and victory through Jesus Christ, are omitted. In Brahms' vision, death is not eliminated from the human condition as Christian orthodoxy decreed, and the resurrection of Christ plays no role. To him, death is transcended in the midst of life. | am not defending Brahms' particular interpretation of Paul or of Christian faith here. One may ask for instance, whether he could not have (re-)interpreted the motif of the resurrection of Christ in terms of a universal mystical inclination of all of humankind. That is the route suggested by the logic of Arche, as developed on these pages. His overall strategy is understandable. His musical transcendence of death is an affirmation of life, guaranteed by eternal God, and it is not the prerogative of one (the Christian) religious institution. To him, the particularistic emphases of traditional Christian orthodoxy spread out into a generic human faith in eternal God, but the faith in eternal God does not peter out into empty Absoluteness beyond all institutionalised religion. The pull of Absoluteness lures further than Brahms was able to go at the End of his orthodoxy. Thomas Altizer At the halfway mark of the 20th century, going further than Brahms could go a century earlier, and following through on impulses provided by William Blake, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger and others, Christian theologian Thomas Altizer (b.1927) moved closer to absolute End. He again deals with the theme of the 'death of God', and presents God as 'the Nothing' (Altizer 1967, 2003). Yet this is not an easy 'Nothing' but a tortured agony. Drawing on typically Christian theological concerns and mythology, this picture of the self-extinction of God, finally expressed in the crucifixion of Christ, remains in the ambit of the sentiments painted by Matthias Grünewald. The spectator of the divine drama according to Altizer is witness to divine self-annihilation, agonisingly tragic and saving at the same time. This variant of a classic theme is Christian to the core. 94 Chapter 5 E S18 Transcended End A second group of responses to End as temporal termination and metaphysical breakdown involves attitudes such as easy abandonment and ultimate peace. These responses move beyond tragedy, closer to the end of End, where End itself as a theme of experience and reflection finally disappears on Absolute Horizon, and where End is not a final, serious concern, but a return to Absoluteness. Edging closer to, deeper into the absolute abyss, this human response is not pessimistic resignation. Neither is it rebellion, nor paradoxical affirmation of death. Eternal existence is not sought, not for body or soul - as little as nothingness is feared. It is without struggle and conflict; there are no grief and suffering; no metaphysical or religious compensation and no defiant laughter. When such persons die, every day a little and one day completely, they enter their destiny - which was also, and will turn out to be, the origin of all things - with happiness. They observe and live through the fall of political, economic, social and religious orders with equanimity. They calmly let go of religious and other absolutisms. End is radical and total, the touching of Horizon, and easy. This non-serious acceptance is not pre-tragic, but post-tragic; not pre-nihilistic, but post-nihilistic; neither pre-theistic nor pre-atheistic, but post-both. Chuang-Tzu A benchmark for the incredible lightness of leaving remains the Taoist philosophy of Chuang-Tzu, who simply dropped all struggles as far as being and non-being are concerned. Chuang-Tzu is not a primitive, who is pre- reflectively at home in the cycles of nature. Karl Jaspers categorises early Chinese religion as pre-tragic (1947:920). That does not apply to philosophical Taoism, as exemplified in our friend from the period between 3rd century and 4th century BCE. His appears to be a reflexive post-tragic position. In fact, when Jaspers sees the transcendence of tragedy in not providing the final answer to tragedy, but in leaving the question open (1947:959), he is approximating what Chuang-Tzu suggested. Chuang-Tzu's 'answer' is no- answer, letting go completely, and so entering Absoluteness. End is met in a fasting of the mind, in quietude (ching) and emptiness (hsü) (Wu 1982:61ff.). Freed of all fear, presumptuousness and ambition, the sage has left behind all concern with ugliness as well as the beauty of the senses, ignorance as well as the joys of knowledge and understanding, happiness as well as the mourner’s sadness, low immorality as well as the rightfulness and decency of high morality. Such a person has been reduced to the state of receptiveness and utter simplicity (ou), to the actionlessness of water. The just leaving, the non-doing (wu wei), of the microcosm (the human person), is a symbolic expression of the non-being (tien hsü) of the macrocosm. End is utter quietness and peacefulness. Free, this sage has died to the self, and meets the loss of health, 95 End reputation, riches and his own physical death together with the End of all things, with complete equanimity. There is no hankering to find or keep anything. It is letting go, letting be, putting down, forgetting, sinking into Absoluteness with peaceful lucidity. For Chuang-Tzu the acceptance of End is not tantamount to acceptance of annihilation. Nor does he trivialise his death by the acceptance of his individual survival after death. He accepts death because ‘at bottom | [...] have neither beginning nor end’ (Graham 1981:23). the Buddha The point of departure of the young Siddattha Gotama’s journey into End was his discovery of decay and death. When he was a dying old man of 80, his final message to his disciples, summarising his essential teaching, was: ‘Decay is inherent in all component things!’ (Mahàparinibbàna Sutta, 6.7) To that, he coupled the exhortation to his followers to work out their salvation with diligence. That meant taking leave of things, which in turn was associated with purification from the intoxications of ignorance, delusion, and attachment to self and other things - all Ending. Seeing that the Master’s death was near, Ananda wept. The Master did not console him with promises of eternal life hereafter, or with the reassurance of Eternal Being. His only consolation Cif it can be called that) consisted in reminding him once again serenely of End as essential part of the nature of things (Rhys Davids 1977:158f.). Accepting End, non-permanence, desiring neither being nor annihilation, is wisdom and salvation. Yet this was not resigned nihilism. Less playful than Chuang-Tzu, the Buddha was equally unperturbed by End, taught happy enlightenment, and at least hinted at an affirmation of life and compassionate involvement in the world. That element would be developed in Mahàyàna Buddhism. In traditional early Buddhism, the final stages on the meditative journey of Ending into Absoluteness have been mapped out, ending in nibbàna. In the experience of the 'infinity of space' all consciousness of form, all consciousness depending on sensory stimulation, all consciousness of diversity and multiplicity, end. Details and differentiations disappear, end. Then the visitor to these heights transcends the dimension of the 'infinity of space' and enters the experience of the ‘infinity of consciousness’. There is just consciousness: consciousness of consciousness. In that consciousness, there is no split between the subject who has the consciousness, and the o(O)bject of consciousness. Is it possible to conceive of reality itself as, at a very basic level, attenuated to the level of consciousness? Indeed, some metaphysical systems have defined reality as just that. This stage also connects with sublime systems of mysticism, which revolve around the idea of human consciousness merging with Eternal, Divine Consciousness. It is compatible with a kind of pantheism. Even that level is transcended, ended. For even here, 'consciousness' is still an idea. One is 96 Chapter 5 conscious of consciousness. It may still remain a super-Substance. The seeker of Absoluteness then moves out of and beyond the ‘infinity of consciousness’, and enters and remains in the dimension of ‘nothingness’. Consciousness is stripped away. Even nothingness, ethereal as it is, is still a superfine Object of our thought, imagination, ideation or experience. There is a step beyond that. So there is a more advanced position, that of ‘neither-consciousness-nor-non-consciousness’. The world, things and consciousness are getting even thinner. Consciousness is on the verge of disappearing, but it is still there. Then the End of consciousness is near. The next contour on this map of the mountain of the ever-increasing attenuation of mind and world is the ‘cessation (nirodha) of consciousness and feeling’. Now, utter cessation - the threshold of utter End - is reached. After that, the pioneer of this route (the Buddha) declared, he attained nibbàna: the highest insight and liberation, beyond the dimension of Brahma, the mythological god of creation who does this, that and the other thing, who gets angry and is appeased, and so on. Nibbàna (is) beyond Space, Consciousness and Nothingness. The early texts speak of this as coinciding with the insight into insubstantiality (anattà), or emptiness (sufifiata), which is ultimate wisdom. In our present context, let us call it the Horizon of radical Absoluteness. Near this apex of (non-)experience, the routes of meditative absorption and radical insight meet. Why would anyone embark on this journey at all - this journey which seems to lead nowhere, to have no relevance at all, to take one away from the world, from life and all its enjoyments and responsibilities? Because one is drawn towards this depth deeper than death, sensing that it is the ultimate truth, from which one may return to life with singular clarity of mind, simple happiness of heart and purity of life. With sublime simplicity and calm, Zen masters compressed transience in their reticent little poems. Their return to the Great End of things in their own deaths is rarely sorrowful and never morbid, but mostly lightly matter of fact, just hinting at some great depth - nowhere else to be found than in the midst of the world as it is. End is nothing extraordinary, just the transient, empty suchness of things. As Japanese Zen master Tokken (1244-1319) expressed this attitude when he took leave on his deathbed (Stryk & Ikemono 1981[1973]): Seventy-six years, Unborn, undying: Clouds break up, Moon sails on. (p. 76) That is all there is to it. End is a continual experience of the human species. It is good to pursue the road of radical End to its utmost. However, End is not absolute, total, final, closed. It evaporates on Horizon, and is balanced by an opposite: Origin. 97 - Origin E 519 Potentiality, novelty Everything that is, is an event (an ‘emerging’). Why and how Absoluteness issues forth into the many things of the world, is the supreme miracle and mystery. That event cannot be explained by recourse to something else. It happens because it happens, because that seems to be so in the ultimate nature of Unground. Such ‘mystical’ acceptance may be articulated in fumbling thought, word and argument. Then it would become 'metaphysical'. No 'explanation' reducing this miracle to any Outside factor would have value. All we can do, up to a point, is to contemplate the wonder and the dynamics of the movement from absolute emptiness. The first roots, the rudimentary intuitions underlying worldviews, start to stir here. Such rudimentary intuitions have both a highly personal, individual timbre, and at the same time, they are embedded in the collective psyche of humankind. Differences in nuance develop, take shape and end up as heavily divergent systems, comprehensive mythological and metaphysical narratives, in which the faint hints of undifferentiated distinctions become hardened into stark dualities, even dualisms. Flitting, hardly expressible intuitions become How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Origin’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 99-141, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi. org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.06 99 Origin programmatic manifestos, as if referring to substantial ‘things’, ‘beings’ or ‘entities’. According to such variant systems, all things may, for example, ultimately be reducible to one principle (monism), two principles (dualism) or a larger number of principles (pluralism); to matter (materialism) or spirit or some equivalent of it (idealism). Cosmos as a whole may be evil, or there may be no such thing as evil at all. God (supposing that such a notion is entertained) may be a being separate from the cosmos (theism), or may coincide with the cosmos (pantheism), or may include and contain the cosmos (panentheism). Cosmos may be the creation of God and separate from God (creationism) or may flow from God (emanationism); and so on. To its champions the faint intuition becomes the moment of clear truth, which in turn almost inevitably fans out in detail to become the grand edifice. Along their paths, the developing systems can deviate from their original points of departure. It is important to trace their development and challenge their extended logic and broad applications. It is even more important to uncover their first principles. What | want to do here, is move back behind such substantialising talk, to the roots of such elaborate systems. Where would such dim intimations of faith that some people have, come from? A historical tradition; a combination of historical traditions? Ancient, pre-cultural, archetypal memories, rooted in nature itself ? Ancient dreams, with similar roots? Pure speculation; illumination from within; inspiration or revelation? In various cases such pictures would undoubtedly be various mixtures of these. In the last resort, we may postulate, they come from humankind’s being part of Arche, however much they may also be interpretations of interpretations of existing traditions. Absoluteness has a ‘womb’-like character. As Origin it is open Potentiality; it also has the aspect of Novelty, Creativity (cf. Whitehead 1978 [1929]). It is not only promise, but becomes actuality in the appearance of Cosmos. An element of freedom (speaking anthropomorphically) is adumbrated on the Horizon as Origin. What becomes in Cosmos is foreshadowed on the Horizon of Absoluteness, in its aspect of Origin as Potentiality; it is the realisation of Absoluteness in its aspect of Creativity/Novelty. Origin contains, in embryonic essence and principle, the workings of Cosmos. From the perspective of the reality of Cosmos, the creative potestas (‘power’) of Absoluteness as Origin is an implication of its overriding potentia (‘potentiality’), its absolute possibility. evil and perfection? The following is implied in the drift of our tentative reflection: perfection appears as a possible 'future' possibility, rather than as a 'presently' given. In the depth of Unground, in Origin, evil and perfection are possibilities, working themselves out in the arena of Cosmos. Struggle is somehow part of the texture of the theogonic, cosmogonic, anthropogonic processes. Cosmic emergence 100 Chapter 6 Cincluding biological evolution), with its flaws, is necessary in the process of the self-perfection of Arche. All Ends radically; Absoluteness is Origin; Origin is Potentiality and Novelty; evil is somehow part of Unground and Cosmos, yet intended to be transcended in the spiral of things towards perfection. Such a movement spiralling forwards is neither a return to an original perfection, nor a straight line of steady improvement and progress, but proceeds through failures towards perfection in which all beings may be happy. This is not scientific fact, but mystical fiction, dream, utopia, nevertheless providing meaning and inspiring action. In their human perspective on ‘evil’, observers may emphasise the not-yet-realised possibility of perfection - that is, the presence of ‘evil’ in the world; or they may emphasise the being-realised, at least in principle, of perfection, anticipating the utopian overcoming of evil - that amounts to the diminishing, denial, of ‘evil’ in any ultimate sense. The first of these two perspectives focuses on ongoing struggle, on faith in a gradual attainment of perfection; the second, the great anticipation, believes that everything that leaps forth out of the darkness of Absoluteness, exemplifies, is already, in principle, perfection. By realising, in the sense of coming to know this hidden truth, it is realised in the sense of being made manifest. In Cosmic life, the Potentiality is actualised, made to happen, as far as possible. The highly developed human person, a bodhisattvic, messianic person, humanity at its best, is at a creative edge of this movement. In the past, humanity had an immense role in promoting evil, and may do so in future, making it a prime locus of evil in Cosmos. Of that possibility, a story such as the fall in Paradise is a mythical reminder, and something like the Holocaust, a historical example. Today humanity is again poised on the brink of committing an evil without precedent to all life on earth. Yet, in the past humanity has produced, and it may in future produce, radiating beacons of light. aurora What has been said above introduces some first intimations, both in the order of insight (epistemology) and the order of the Archetypal movement of things Contology). We have started to discern, and started to whisper about shadows beginning to move against the wall of our cave in the faint light: beginning, end and transformation; nature and humanity; knower, known and knowledge; whole, part and that which transcends both; matter, life and mind; goodness, beauty and evil; life, death and rebirth; identity, change and transformation; necessity, potentiality and freedom, and so on. The drift of the inklings mentioned above concerning the faint shadows at the dawn of Origin, suggests an attitude of affirmation, gratitude and joy towards what is - not only mind, but equally so matter, body and all its functions. Every existing thing is a miraculous event, continuously emerging 101 Origin from the Depth. There is no room for a pessimistic despising of life or any of its parts or functions, no running away from it with its imperfections. Human beings are neither cosmic outsiders nor subordinate or superior, but a significant part of and partner in Cosmos, with a great responsibility, realising that their actions, performed in freedom, bear fruit and go to seed - in their own lives, in the Whole of Cosmos and the All of Arche. In Chapter 3 it was said that ‘real’, empirical life, cosmic life as we know it, is not separate from, but part of Arche, suffused with the dynamics of Unground, Eternity and Infinitude. Everything, including human beings, is constantly standing in the great aurora, before an open Horizon, at the cutting edge of the emergence-subsidence of the world, replete with possibilities. Sometimes, in certain situations, real life limits the possibilities of human actions; in some situations humans have more time and more space to transform more radically, and create anew more freely. In principle, in every moment of real time and every location in real space, human beings, with all things in an emerging- subsiding universe, are in the eternal moment of open, creative Origin, unceasing emergence. New beginnings in life, at least as far as a person’s spiritual growth is concerned, can take place many times during a lifetime. As is the case with End (Ch. 4), ‘Origin’ does not only and primarily refer to historical beginning, beginning in time, but to the dynamics underlying and manifesting in things in every historical moment. Cosmos becomes a playing field of possibilities. It implies an ethos of freedom, and of respect for Cosmic reality (what was in the past, what is in the present, and what may become in future) - for Cosmos is provisionally realised possibility, concretised Novelty, in an open process of emerging-subsiding. From earliest times, primal religions understood nature as a growing, decaying, dying organism, continually reborn as it moves through the yearly and monthly seasons, in an eternal cycle. This was told in innumerable stories and presented in mandalas of many forms, such as the sand paintings of native American Indian cultures (the Navaho), the colossal megalithic structures of the Druids of ancient England (Stonehenge) (Argüelles & Argüelles 1972), and the rock engravings of the hunter-gatherer San of Southern Africa (Kruger 1995). Let me look at some examples of how Origin was perceived and responded to in two religio-cultural contexts (the ‘Near Eastern-Western’ and the ‘Eastern’ one). This geographical distinction is an oversimplification. For our present purposes, | include the Mediterranean world and Arabia, and the areas north of it (including present-day Iraq and Iran) in the ‘Near Eastern-Western’ bloc. One reason for this pragmatic arrangement is that the family of religions originating in the ‘Near East’ (such as Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Baha’i), which became the dominant type of thinking in Europe and the rest of the ‘Western’ bloc over the last 15 centuries, share many traits and were engaged in intense debate for millennia. ‘Near East’ and ‘West’ here mean west of India. With India and the regions (including India, Tibet, China and Japan) 102 Chapter 6 and religions (including Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Shinto) east of India, another distinct context of thought, sharing key traits, comes to the fore. For present purposes, | refer to this bloc as ‘the East’. | am not interested in the blocs as such and the commonalities and lines of influence and borrowing running between them, but rather in a few powerful individual voices from them. B §20 Intimations from the Greek and Near Eastern-Western contexts Let us start with some views held in the Hebrew community of faith: the original ‘people of the book’, as Muslims came to call themselves, also Jews and Christians, acknowledging a special family relationship between these religions. Let us not see this family in an exclusive sense, but acknowledge the wider relationships with all those paths that do not place such heavy emphasis on books. What we find, are not merely interesting incidental parallels or unexpected historical connections, but structural similarities and confluences of tendency. Those similarities and confluences are not merely historical accidents; they arise from the Origin of all things. Hebrew faith, Judaism O Genesis 1 There is no more monumental start to any book than the first words in the Hebrew Bible, introducing the mytho-theological account of creation in Genesis 1:1-2:3: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ Assuming that phrases such as ‘in the beginning’ (be’reshit), ‘God’, ‘formless and empty’ and ‘darkness over the surface of the deep’ (Gn 1:2) are notions tendentionally stretching out to Absoluteness and primordial Origin; what absolute miracle does the word ‘create’ (bara) contain. How is it possible, conceivable: Cosmos (‘the heavens and the earth’) somehow out of ... what and how? An unknown individual wrote down this particular perspective on the origin of the world, probably in the period between 7th century and 8th century BCE, a few centuries after the legendary figure Moses (presumed 13th century BCE) was recorded in those scriptures. In passing, whether Moses was a historical figure or not, is of no importance in the context of the overall argument of our venture, as is the case with Lao-tzu and others. We are not addressing the historical accuracy of ancient narratives of the Buddha, Jesus or anybody else. This narrative of Origin took shape in the crucible of the meeting of Israel with the dominant Assyrian-Babylonian worldview. This first outline of Origin in the Hebrew Bible is carried by two master intuitions. Firstly, there is an 103 Origin absolute distinction between the world and an Other: God (Elohim). That perfect Other is the one and only, holy, living, personal, loving Creator of all, and ontologically separate from Cosmos. This is the first split, which underlies anything else that may be said concerning the Original nature of things. The second basic intuition at the beginning of the Hebrew Bible is that the set of foundational truths have been uniquely revealed in the history of the people of Israel. These two principles provide the setting for a number of other basic assumptions: * there is a polarity between Cosmos and some primordial chaos * nature is a hierarchical unity of being, coming from the hand of God * nature is originally good, without any trace of evil - evil is not tragically inherent in the world * there is an unbridgeable distinction between the human being and the rest of nature * the human being has a special, privileged relationship as far as God and the rest of nature is concerned * strictly distinct from God and subservient to God, the human being is also the image, the likeness, of God * the human being is ruler over the rest of Creation e evil is the result of human disobedience to God * history is linear, with a definite beginning and a definite end. Proclaiming exact parallels with modern cosmological and evolutionary theory would be far-fetched. Historically, this perspective is, up to a point at least, part of a worldview, now dated, common to the cultures of that particular region and time. Yet these notions express certain basic intuitions concerning the Origin of things, which have retained an enduring interest and relevance to this day. Reading this section from the Hebrew Bible, one is privy to a primal vision concerning the Origin of things, monumental in its simplicity and grandeur. It is not the route followed in this exploration. O Isaac Luria The 7anakh (the canonical Hebrew Bible) was not the last word in the development of Hebrew-Jewish thought as far as the Origin of things is concerned. Biblical elements, such as the account of creation in Genesis, Ezekiel’s vision of the divine chariot and Isaiah's vision in the Temple, became the source of an esoteric MM tradition - the Sefer Yetzirah (between the 2nd century BCE and the 2nd century CE) being the earliest extant document of this tradition in full flight. From the 11th century onwards, it took the shape of what has become known as Kabbalah (‘tradition’), which developed strongly from the 15th century onwards. It had its own speculative version of Origin. 104 Chapter 6 Gnosticism (see below) influenced Kabbalah. On the other hand, Gnosticism itself was an outgrowth from the monotheistic religious stem, and had perhaps been influenced by early forms of Jewish theogonic speculation. One among many Kabbalists, an exceptionally gifted and influential one, was Isaac Luria (1534-1572): born in Jerusalem and died in Safed in Palestine - the figurehead of later Kabbalah, even though he was strictly non-writing (Fine 2003; Scholem 1974:119-286). Chronologically, he flourished 15 centuries after the emergence of Jewish Gnosticism. To him the mystery of Origin was of prime significance. In broad terms, this mystical genius followed the typical trends of Kabbalah, which distinguished two aspects in God in eternity, before the world came into being: Ein-Sof and the ten Sefirot. Ein-Sof is unknown, unknowable God, concealed but real, and he contains potentially the world and all its manifestations. This concept, with Ayin (Nothing', or ‘Nought’), approximate what is here termed ‘Absoluteness’, ‘Eternity’ and 'Infinitude'. The difference is that in the footsteps of the Zohar (the main text of the Kabbalah), Ayin does not precede God as Ein-Sof, but follows it as the primary start or wrench with which the externalisation of the divine light takes place. The inexpressible fullness of Ein-Sof is transformed into nothingness, and from this nothingness 'all the other stages of God's gradual unfolding in the Sephiroth emanate' (Scholem 1974:217). This is quite different from our model, in which Being emerges from empty Absoluteness, preceding whatever happens next. The Sefirot are 10 spheres encompassing the unknowable divine centre. They are dimensions of God, emanations of Ein-Sof, revealing and manifesting divinity. Ontologically, they mediate between Ein-Sof and the world. They are, as it were, the primordial moulds or forms (vessels, instruments: ke/im) into which Creation would be cast. These ten Sefirot have the same general function as the Principles that will be ascribed to the level of 'Eternity' in Part Two. The Lurianic vision retains the idea of God's unity and transcendence. These two ideas were essential to Judaism, and non-negotiable. Nevertheless, their differences from the simplicity of the Genesis myth are clear. God is much more complex; the relationship between divinity and the world is much more intricate; and the position and role of humanity in the great process are much more involved - human responsibility is so much greater. Humanity is not only responsible before God, but, to a large degree, is responsible for God. To the general scheme Luria, an original speculative mind, adds his own accents, deepening the strong intellectual flavour of the Kabbalah tradition. Above all, he elaborates on what takes place in God before the Creation of the world. The beginning of the world is not the real beginning. The real beginning, the true Origin, took place in the depths of divinity. 'Before' the Creation of the world, God was not simply eternally there in eternal repose; he was involved in an internal drama. The external world germinated from that intra-divine event. 105 Origin Putting together the various traditions of Luria’s cosmogonic myth (Fine 2003:127-149), we may assume that he taught that, initially and before creation, there was only the limitless light of divine presence. However, divinity included an element of darkness and evil and judgement, comparatively small in the vastness of light and compassion, like a drop of water in the ocean. Evil is somehow present in Ein-Sof. Then, in line with other Kabbalists, he saw God as withdrawing into Himself, in order to create a space, a vacuum, in which He could manifest Himself. This act of divine retreat is known as Tsimtsum (‘contraction’). It is the beginning of cosmos and life. The universe becomes possible because of the self-shrinkage of God. This primeval shrinkage also created the space for God to purify Himself of the evil, intertwined with the good in Him. The space left by Tsimtsum contained mainly evil, but also a degree of divine light. To the same degree that light and compassion were predominant in primal Ein-Sof, darkness, evil as well as stern judgement, are predominant in that new space. The undifferentiated content of what had gathered in empty space will then become the substance out of which creation eventually comes forth. Ein-Sof acts on this inchoate mass, illuminates and animates it. This He does through the medium of His own emanations, the ten Sefirot, in a process of continuous descent from Ein-Sof and re-ascent, back into Ein-Sof. The spread of God's illuminating light through the created universe is not uniform, but in the form of separate sparks here and there. The souls of individual humans are such sparks. The world, and human existence, is a mixture of good and evil, reflecting divinity itself. This mixture was compounded by the sin of Adam, the first man, tainting all human souls to a greater or lesser degree with evil. Divinity starts to heal itself again in a great restoration (7igqun). All of this started to take place in God itself before the Creation of human beings. These struggles, including an element of evil, are inner divine processes. Humans would have a huge responsibility in the great task of mending themselves, the cosmos and God. The mystic person accelerates the final Messianic redemption of world and divinity. Luria's mythology was spelt out in a staggering wealth of esoteric symbolic detail. Reduced to its essentials, the structure of his thought is clearly related to Gnosticism in character, but without the stark, unbridgeable dualism that typified the Gnostic idea of divinity. The imaginative freedom with which Luria interpreted the original, normative Hebrew Scriptures, as well as the Kabbalah tradition, is striking. The point of what he aimed to achieve is obvious. He wanted to provide an account of the primordial Origin of things, good and evil. It is important to bear in mind the essentially mythological, imaginal nature of his thinking. It produced not fact, but creative, transformative fiction in order to satisfy a need for comprehensive understanding and motivation for a meaningful, good life. His views are highly challenging and stimulating to any attempt today to somehow make sense of the emergence of the world, and to understand the human position in Cosmos as a potentially positive factor in the great process. 106 Chapter 6 | close this summary with three observations. The first is that Luria introduced the feminine principle into the concept of divinity. The second is that he saw the material world as somehow continuous with divinity, without sacrificing the transcendence of God; the material world is relegated to a lower level in the great scheme of things. Here we hear echoes of Neoplatonism. Luria transcends the ancient classical account of Genesis with its simple dichotomies, in the direction of a greater comprehensiveness, inclusiveness and non-dual mode of jointing its various elements - in short, in the direction that this investigation senses to be a relevant one for today. But, thirdly, although Lurianic Kabbalah was not quite dualist, there is an element of early Buddhist, Gnostic and Neoplatonic pessimism as far as Cosmos is concerned, an element that these reflections wish to overcome. Platonism (the Timaeus of Plato) Dating from roughly the same time as the Genesis account, ancient Greece had hunches concerning the beginning and basic pattern of reality, very different from those contained in the Western-Asian monotheistic intuition with its one, omnipotent God. One of the basic themes, found in Homeric poetry (period between 8th century and 9th century BCE) and Greek tragedy, was the unresolved relationship between the power of the gods and the power of fate: the gods are not omnipotent, but have to grapple with the capricious force of fate as well as they can. A 1OO years after Aeschylus (525-456 BCE), that problem still occupied Plato (427-347 BCE) towards the end of his long life, in his dialogue Timaeus. In the whole of Western-European thought, perhaps no single MM book dealing with Origin was more influential than this one, produced towards the middle of the 4th century BCE (cf. inter alia Cornford 1956 [1937]; Reydams-Schils 2003; Runia 1986). In terms of pioneering vision and measure of influence, Plato is on a par with a very small number of groundbreaking luminaries, such as Abraham, according to the Hebrew Bible and the Buddha according to the Buddhist scriptures. History is not done with Plato, and one can understand why. His thinking is too varied to be simply repeated or taken at face value. That is part of his greatness and his enduring charm and challenge. He did not present one perfectly coherent system. In addition, he did not altogether move beyond the cultural conditions of his time, which in some respects differ dramatically from our own time. Listening to him with understanding includes interpreting him creatively. Many variants of 'Platonism' followed him, picking up or developing different strands in his work. How does Plato arrive at his account of Origin? What is the origin of his understanding of Origin? In the theogonic, cosmogonic account of Timaeus, Plato neither claims special revelation for his ideas, nor appeals to such a divine source as a literary 107 Origin device to impress the significance of his ideas on his reader. He does not insist on some super experience, and does not purport to have any access to any special level of consciousness. His sensing of the shadows against the wall differs from the paradigmatic models expressed by, for example, Hebrew faith and the Buddha, according to those respective scriptures. In addition, his argument is neither inductive nor deductive in any strict sense of the word; it is a classic example of what C.S. Peirce would call 'abductive' reasoning. Plato allows the argument to come from the mouth of a perhaps real but unknown, well educated but ordinary man, Timaeus, who communicates them to his friends in an open, free conversation among equals, in a manner that shows the tentative nature of these reflections, struggling to find a satisfactory degree of clarity and consistency. Timaeus and his friends are, after all, but human, trying their best to understand, so Plato lets Timaeus go about constructing a combination of popular traditional religion, philosophical tradition, myth and speculative reason. These four strands are woven together artfully. The result is so deft, rich and varied, yet containing so many hidden tensions that his interpreters down the centuries failed to pin down his ideas in any final form. Plato picks no fight with the first of these levels (popular religion) and even goes some way to save its face by accepting the gods of national mythology, but not without a hint of irony. He was, after all, a wise man, and throughout his life his main concern was the quality of human life together - that is, politics. After the death of Socrates, he lost his faith in popular democracy, but he did not withdraw from life in the market place in principle, and it would not have occurred to him to despise it, or popular religion that is part of it. At the same time, he knew that this level of relationship to the Origin of things needed to be transcended and integrated into a larger scheme. From the models of the world produced by his predecessors in the philosophical tradition such as Parmenides, Heraclitus, Empedocles and Pythagoras, Plato (mostly openly) derives essential building blocks for his system. He makes no bones about this dimension of his project. The Timaeus unfolds as a sustained attempt at synthetic thought, combining, integrating and transcending those older models by developing a new mould, carrying the mark of his own great mytho-poetic imagination. But it must be added that Plato's thinking reveals some similarities to Indian thinking that has led many to postulate - apart from the undoubted common background and origin of the two cultures - later Indian influence on the Greeks, not least on Plato. In any event, the ideas developed in the Timaeus are not presented as infallible, but as speculative; not as demanding acquiescence, but at best as commanding respect; not as perfect truth, but as only a possible account of the blueprint of things. Seriously intended as these ideas are, they also reveal a remarkable lightness of touch. They are neither purely rational philosophy, nor pure myth, but at times something in between. They are not merely a mixture of the two approaches, but a third type of discourse, one with a dignity 108 Chapter 6 of its own. Plato’s picture of the world with which he allows Timaeus to come up, is the result of a kind of reasoning combining myth and reason, and the status of his story is, by his own happy admission, nothing more than ‘likely’. Striving to transcend the possibilities and the limitations of traditional religion on the one hand and existing philosophy on the other hand, this style of thinking also consciously tries to connect the world of religion with the world of science and philosophy, and to harmonise myth with reason and fact. It is clearly an experimental text, not 'original' in the sense of starting from scratch (which text, which author, however creative, does start from scratch?) but ‘original’ in the sense of moving close to the Origin of things with great intuitive-speculative power. In the Timaeus, mythical-symbolic imagination and rational argument may not be identical, but they are not separable either. How does Plato's mythological narrative run? He imagines a grand spectacle, the centre stage of which is occupied by the Demiurge, Fabricator of the universe: 'God', we may say. Plato then proceeds to present what is essentially the trans-temporal structure of the world, in the form of a story in time. In that story, the Creator did not create the universe out of nothing. No, he took a pre- existing chaotic world of matter, and proceeded to order that chaos so that it might, as far as possible, be good, like himself. Giving it life and intelligence, he made it a living animal. This he did by forming it after the model of the eternal universal animal, existing in the world of eternal, pre-existing Ideas. To make the universe visible and tangible, the Demiurge made it of fire and earth. Air and water became necessary. He constructed this cosmic animal in a spherical shape, and caused it to rotate on its own axis. Since there was nothing outside of this living being to which it had to relate, it needed no eyes or ears, nor any limbs, nor any organs for respiration and nutrition. Before God made this spherical body, he made soul of three elements: Same, Other and Essence. He placed soul into the universal body and spread it throughout the body. Soul ordered the body in accordance with the rules of harmony, as expressed in mathematics and music. At this stage of Creation, God was well pleased. In order to bring it more in line with its eternal archetype, God created time and its portions, such as days, months and years, as well as the heavenly bodies (sun, moon and so on) necessary to measure time, and positioned these bodies in accordance with the laws of mathematics. He then created four kinds of living creatures (gods, who are the stars in heaven; and the beings dwelling in the air, the waters, and on dry land). In his remarkable amalgam of rational thought and mythological expression, Plato introduced a third most basic constituent (in addition to, in fact between, the ideal model and the sensible copy). This third element was a substrate, mediating between the other two, and allowing the ideal model actually to take sensible shape. Plato refers to this medium as a recipient, a nurse; in cosmological terms, it is none other than space. Plato made up this fanciful story, and, not in the least concealed this fact. At the same time, it seriously reflects the state of the art, mathematics and science of his day. In passing, in the metaphysical-mythical emphasis he places on 109 Origin mathematics, he stands between Pythagoras before him and thinkers such as Einstein, Bohr and Heisenberg long after him - but the seemingly inherent link between mathematics and physics has never been explained. Plato’s story also contains his most basic intuitions concerning the deeper nature of reality. Indeed, it is a grand narrative, grand in every sense of the word. Today, as throughout the entire period of Western culture, it is still admired - not only as far as content is concerned, but also in terms of style of thought: open, dialogical, and yet not shying away from religion in the radical sense - from MM. In stark summary fashion, the most basic underlying principles guiding the Timaeus may be listed as follows. For Plato, the most basic assumption is the fundamental distinction between - not separation of - two levels of being: the level of eternal Ideas, of Being; and the level of derived, relative being, of the transitory, material counterparts of eternal Ideas. In fact, the cosmos as a whole is a concrete counterpart of such a pre-existing, supreme ideal type, or archetype. Plato was not a dualist (as tradition tended to portray him), but a one-world idealist: real things are real by dint of their participation in the real Ideas, hierarchically ordered, with the Good at the apex (Dunham et al. 2011:8, 19ff.). Plato does not step back, outside Being, into the absolute non-being of Absoluteness either. To him, the highest knowledge (in the terminology that we use here, MM knowledge) comes about as the human mind, driven by desire (eros), embarks on a road of recollection (anamnesis), and ascends by gradual growth, aided by education, towards an ecstatic discovery of the eternal, immutable Ideas. Plato imagines an anthropomorphic God, but it is part of his mythological scaffolding, rather than of the essential house of his thought (I am not ignoring the difficulty and the risk of distinguishing these two types of thought, inseparable in Plato). In this penultimate context of anthropomorphic god talk, he makes no big fuss about whether there is only one god or not. Yet the drift of his thought seems to be in the direction of monotheism. That is how theologians from the Abrahamic faiths interpreted him, not without basis. Yet, it would be anachronistic to force Plato into categories such as polytheism, henotheism (the particular preference of one god in a polytheistic scheme) and monotheism. That was not the centre of gravity of his thinking. A more radical reading, tendentional but justifiable, could interpret him to point towards a monistic idealism of sorts. Above, a distinction was made between 'trans-temporal structure' and temporal story, 'story in time'. Again, it is important not to overemphasise this distinction. Plato's tale as a whole introduces the notion of history seriously as a very significant category. Somehow, he senses, the cosmos has a historical dimension. In Plato’s intuitive sense of Origin a duality between God/the Good/Ideas on the one hand, and some force of chaos/evil on the other hand, remains. His mythological God did not create the world out of nothing; he worked on what 110 Chapter 6 was pre-existently there, ‘before’ time. In this sense, Plato reflected a duality similar to the one discernible in the Genesis account of Creation. Ultimately, Plato did not allow himself to be drawn into a final, clear-cut demarcation between God and pre-existing chaos-matter. His Greek heritage of the unresolved tension between God and capricious necessity (anangke) remains. Is this an unresolved hangover, or a suggestive shade of a distinction within divinity itself ? The latter is the more fruitful interpretation. If Plato was no full- blown monist, he was no dualist either. Timaeus’ ambivalence was eventually given up. Later Platonism turned towards derivationist monism: matter is an outflow of the One; Christian theologians, on the other hand, severed the tie completely: God created the world out of nothing (ex nihilo), and matter was definitely not divine. Chaos-matter is not God. It is not as good as God is (by far not), but it is not anti-God. It is not something entirely novel emerging out of nothing by divine fiat, and it is not evil. Plato does not offer an explicit solution to the problem of evil. At the root of things, absolute Being and absolute Goodness are the same. Evil is not denied, but somehow belongs to the conditions of limitation, which are worked upon by the Ideas/God. Remarkably, halfway through his book, he seems to realise that something very important is still amiss. He has the pre-existing Ideas; he has primordial matter-chaos; and he has God. However, he still has to cover the aspect of, shall we say, 'enabling space' - the kind of thing that is really the central notion of this chapter of ours. Somehow, one must explain, or rather contemplate the miracle that something, the world, actually happens. In order to satisfy this requirement, Plato introduces a concept that has not failed to excite the imagination and tease the abilities of interpretation of scholars over the centuries. He calls it by a variety of names, including mother, receiver (upodoche), nurse (tithene), and space (chora). In the scheme of our argument, Absoluteness becomes the world, and this becoming, this Origin, is the supreme miracle, worthy of contemplation. In Plato's system, the Ideas (plus pre-existing chaos-matter) add up to form the Absolute. In order for Absolutely Real actually to become the relatively real (the cosmos), some 'X', some purely passive and receptive matrix, having no qualities of its own but allowing things to ‘take place’, is necessary. Plato's upodoche (not to be identified with the primal chaos), chora, tithene, fills that need. For Plato there is only one universe, which is a living animal, divine, suffused with 'soul', of which 'reason' is the highest part. He could therefore conclude the Timaeus with a doxology to the cosmos (Cornford 1956 [1937]): [LH]aving received in full its complement of living creatures, mortal and immortal, this world (kosmos) has thus become a visible living creature embracing all that are visible and an image of the intelligible, a perceptible god (theos aisthetos), supreme in greatness and excellence, in beauty and perfection, this Heaven single in its kind (monogenes) and one. (p. 359) TH Origin This is, of course, quite different from the Genesis tale of Creation in which the world is also severely relativised, but in a different sense than is the case in the Timaeus. Plato’s notion anticipates a notion that would surface in the 20th century again (Earth as a living being), and it must be counted as a major prophetic vision of his, worthy of being picked up in our time of ecological reorientation (that will be dealt with in Ch. 22). Plato has no anti-cosmic sentiment or resentment, even if the world is not perfect. It ranks lower on the descending scale of Being, but it is not despised. It is marked by a relative lack of Being, but it is nevertheless also relatively good, to the extent that it shares in Being. The human being is part of the divine, living universe, and is a 'heavenly plant', by virtue of its most divine component, namely the rational part of the soul. The human being is inherently good, and does not commit evil, or prefers bad to evil, wittingly and wilfully. By their essential nature, all people desire the good. Yet, the good is distorted through ignorance, which is the source of evil and vice. In another late dialogue of his, the Sophist, Plato makes a distinction that is of great importance to our central problem concerning the nature of reality. He formulates it as the distinction between to me on (non-being) and ouk on (something that does or could exist, but does not exist or exists differently than something else). The first negates Being as such, indeterminately. It seems to me that with this meonto/ogy Plato tends towards the kind of thinking pioneered in Taoism and Buddhism, and sought in this orientation: Absoluteness. The term apophaticism as used overwhelmingly in Western and Near-Eastern MM on the other hand, even though used with an appeal to Platonism, accepts the reality of Being, even of a Being, even though nothing can be said about it. There is a difference between the two. Plato did not develop the idea of the world as emerging from a meontic Absoluteness. His world becomes through participation (methexis) in transcendent but real Ideas, dealt with in several dialogues (the Phaedo, the Parmenides and finally in the Sophist). By introducing Ideas and distinguishing that level of reality from empirical things, Plato manages to introduce the category of becoming in his cosmogony. This is a step away from Parmenides' monism. In general, his theory of a plurality of Ideas involves that the Ideas, in which all becoming participates, do not come into existence themselves. The Ideas as the ultimate causes of things do not push the things of the world into existence; his emphasis falls on the participation of things in the Ideas as a being effected through a process of teleological approximation: the things are drawn towards the Ideal perfection from a chaotic state. A problem with Plato's theory of participation by one level of being (phenomenal reality) in another semi-separate level (the Ideas) may be what Aristotle made famous as the ‘third man argument’. Plato's position seems to necessitate an infinite series of participations: this empirical ‘man’ and the Idea ‘Man’ add up to a set, which would necessitate a third level of Idea (a higher ‘Man’), in which the two 112 Chapter 6 previous levels jointly participate, and so on and so forth ad infinitum, in a never-ending series of approximate participations. The notion of Becoming in the sense of auto manifestation from the horizon of Absoluteness, of natural unfolding, would avoid this problem. Overall, Plato’s cornucopia of ideas concerning the origin of things amount to an Objective Idealism: his world is real insofar as it shares in a realm of Ideas. As said, Plato’s thought is open-ended and not dogmatic. There is a certain epistemological modesty in his design of the order of things. It is not authoritarian and is there for anyone to check. That is not the least of its attractions. Christianity O the Fourth Gospel For the last 15 centuries the religious history of the West was dominated by Christian orthodox assumptions concerning the Origin of things, based on Hebrew faith, dependent on Greek thinking and generally in opposition to Gnosticism (see below). Around the last decade of the 1st century CE, John introduced the Fourth Gospel with the following words (Jn 1:1-3), equal to the opening lines of the Old Testament in their lapidary quality: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. This opening harks back to Genesis 1. Again, assuming that ‘beginning’ (arche) here refers to a dimension absolutely outside time and world (cf. Bultmann 1968:15f.) - that is, to something akin to radical Absoluteness, how is it possible, conceivable, that it could contain a - the - ‘Word’? Divine ‘Word’ did not ‘become’; somehow, it ‘was’ ‘with God’, ‘was God’. ‘Beginning’ here refers to absolute transcendence. Yet, the mystical intuition of John senses that the absolute negative and a great positive hang together essentially - not only as far as the coming into being of the world is concerned, but also as to the nature of God. Both assumptions underlying the Hebrew vision of creation (the absolute distinction between God and the world, and the unique position of Israel) are modified. As for the first assumption: transcendent God is now defined as essentially incarnate in Jesus. The Word, God, Revelation, Creator, eternally pre-existent, took on human flesh in Jesus. The second basic assumption of Hebrew faith is also adapted: the notion of Israel is expanded to that of the church, that is, to all (including those outside of Israel) who believe in Jesus as the incarnate Word. The miracle of the existence of the world is looked at through the miracle of the incarnation of the Word in Jesus. The exact relationship between God and the Word is a mystery, accepted and celebrated in faith - not only in this introduction to the Gospel, but in the 13 Origin Gospel as a whole - as a matter of fact, in the entire New Testament and throughout Christian history of orthodox Christian reflection on the primordial Origin of things. The Word and God are One; and yet God the Father is greater than the Word (the Son). The Son obeys the Father; and yet the Son is not subordinate to the Father, and he should receive the same honour as the Father. The root Christian intuition concerning the Absolute Origin of things (as exemplified in the Gospel of John) would, over a number of centuries, be elaborated into the Christian theological dogmas of Trinity and Christology: of eternal triune God (Father, incarnate Son, and Holy Spirit), Creator and Saviour of all things. Following the Fourth Gospel and the other New Testament authors, most of Christian tradition would inscribe Jesus of Nazareth into divine eternity. For the rest, this early Christian sense of the genesis and essential nature of things echoes that of the unknown Hebrew author of Genesis 1: * the world is not an emanation from God (no monism) * the origin of the world and the human being is not a tragic but a good and positive event * evil (the Gospel speaks of 'darkness', 1:5) is part of the present world, but it is not originally inherent in the world (no dualism) * the created world is good * in spite of the unique unity of the incarnate Word and God in Jesus, the difference between the human being in general and God, and between nature and God, remains * the process of the world is a planned, linear history, from creation through sin and salvation to the end of time. Much as Christianity emphasises End in the death of Jesus, it also emphasises Origin and Life, which elevates it above being an obsession with death. Various themes central to Christianity (its teachings of Trinity, of Christ, of the Holy Spirit and Creation, of eternal life) refer to joyful Origin. Before all and at the root of all, there are the inner-divine movements of loving, divine begetting - of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. From that Original depth, and out of/from nothing (ex/de nihilo), came the Creation of the world and of humankind. There is not only an original Creation from nothing, for Creation is continuous (creatio continua):the continuity of the world remains utterly contingent, and dependent on God eternal. In Origin God designed his plan of eternal Life, which was executed through the incarnation of his Son. In Christianity, the resurrection of Jesus from death is a dramatic, extremely condensed, religion-specific symbol of the pan-human and indeed cosmic process of Origin arising from End. The Son's resurrection, celebrated at Easter, inaugurates eternal Life, in which all of Creation will share. There will be a new heaven and a new earth. The Holy Spirit empowers people to share in eternal Life, in this life and in eternity. 114 Chapter 6 Much of Christianity (particularly in the Middle Ages, as Dante portrayed in his Commedia) saw earthly life as not the real thing, but merely a preparation for eternal life. Death is the beginning of one’s eternal destiny, hopefully in eternal heavenly bliss, with God. At an early stage and for a short while even the idea of transmigration was acceptable in some quarters. Christianity is essentially, according to its inner logic, the celebration of Life eternal, in which God, humankind and Creation co-celebrate in love and joy - now, in anticipation of eternal Paradise. Sin and evil, bad and sad as they may be, are merely passing shadows under the sun of God’s love, embracing all that is, lasting for ever - and starting in the Origin of God’s triune mystery. Li Cusanus Leaping towards the end of the Middle Ages, | pay profound respect to the great Christian metaphysical mystic Nicholas of Cusa, standing in the long shadow of the philosophy of Plato as worked out by Neoplatonism, and Aristotelianism, and straddling the divide between the Middle Ages and the new world of the Renaissance. Cusanus worked in the channel hewn by the intuitions expressed in writings such as the Fourth Gospel, as indubitable truth. He also had at his disposal the highly developed speculative tool of the Trinitarian dogma, which he used with great dexterity. In addition, he deferred to Neoplatonism, particularly to Proclus, as authoritative. No Christian metaphysical mystic paid as much attention to God (in our vocabulary: Absoluteness) as Origin, Possibility, than Cusanus did towards the end of his busy life, being involved in Church affairs. It is as if his entire life's work culminated in the idea of God-as-Possibility. This idea found supreme expression in his very last book, De apice theoriae (‘Concerning the loftiest level of contemplative reflection', composed a few months before his death) (Von Kues 1966:361-386). His basic intuitions are clear. In the very centre of his attention, stands the question: how could the world emerge from the realm of divinity? He does not take the world for granted. He is not satisfied merely to marvel at the flowering world, flowering simply because it is flowering. Being not only a contemplative but also a speculative mind, he wants to understand and explain how and why the miracle of the world could take place. With a burning passion, he wants to penetrate as deeply as possible into the mystery of Origin. Cusanus' passion for the Origin, which not only precedes, but also underlies all empirical things, expresses itself as a passion for unity. Behind the multiplicity of the empirical, sinful world lies the oneness of eternal Origin. God is One; the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is the bedrock of his thought. Let me now survey the landscape of his thought by a triangulation exercise focusing on three books: De docta ignorantia (‘Concerning learned ignorance’, 1440) (Hopkins 1981); De pace fidei (‘Concerning the peace of faith’, 1453) 115 Origin (Biechler & Bond 1990); and De apice theoriae, (‘Concerning the Loftiest Level of Contemplative Reflection’, 1464). In passing, the difference in style between the three is fascinating. Cusanus received De docta ignorantia in a vision en route back to Italy from a visit to Constantinople in 1437. Appearing in book form 3 years later, it is a carefully crafted, well-balanced thesis in grand style; he was a serious, still youngish man approaching the pinnacle of a brilliant career as theologian and church diplomat. The second book (De pace fide/) was also conceived as a vision, 16 years later when he was in his early fifties, an accomplished figure standing with great confidence at the pinnacle of his life and work. It was occasioned by the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. Now Cusanus could afford to write a book, for the time incredibly daring in its boldness, within 2 months’ time, in supreme confidence and an easily readable style. Eleven years further on, worn out by church politics, disillusioned and hiding in mortal danger in the castle of Andraz, he produced the third book (De apice theoriae), marvellous in its playfulness with speculative ideas and words. It was as if he felt that he had nothing to lose; imagination could roam freely. Overall, his passion for Origin in the three-oneness of God seeks to overcome splintering in all respects. Thus, it seeks to address the schisms in the Western church and to promote the pristine unity of torn Christianity, including East and West. It seeks the hidden unity in all religions, including the dreaded Islam, behind the varieties of historical form and ritual (re/igio una in rituum varietate, as formulated in his De pace fidei, 1.6). It seeks the unity of philosophy, theology, science and mathematics, and it wishes to maintain the unity of speculative reason and mystical experience. In this effort, we - also hovering between epochs - may recognise a kindred spirit, standing in the awkward transition from the Middle Ages with its grand old certainties, to the Renaissance with its exploration of dangerous new possibilities. From his major work, De docta ignorantia, Cusanus' path into Origin is laid out in advance. In short, God implies the world, and the world implies God. Each pole is essential to render the possibility of the other actual: the possibility of absolute, Originating God is actualised through the world, and the possibility of the derived, originated world is actualised through God. Of course, those two reciprocal necessities are not of the same order: God is absolutely necessary for the world to pass from possibility to actuality; the world is relatively necessary for the possibility of God's being Creator to become actuality. The Creation of the world is an event, relatively necessary, in the eternal life of God. That is its true Origin. Originally, God enfolds all things (is the complicatio of all things); the world with its many things is the unfolding explication (explicatio) of God, and it is only as they multiply in time that they fall away from God. Evil is not actually real; it is merely the relative absence of Being. Even in their multiplication, each of the many things of the unfolding universe is a contraction of the universe as a whole. God and that universe (one in its manifoldness) are taken up in a circular movement: from the Infinite One 116 Chapter 6 to the finite many - and back. This is Christian Neoplatonism-Aristotelianism. It is also the normative background against which this little bas-relief sculpture of our great predecessor emerges. Where Cusanus' Christianity comes in, is in his projection of the dialectical play of possibility and actuality right back into the primordial nature of triune God, with Jesus Christ as centrepiece. The last year of Cusanus' life was devoted to an increasing radicalisation of the idea of ‘Possibility’ (translation of Hopkins; more literally, simply ‘can-ing’ or ‘being able-ness’, from posse: ‘to can’/’be able’) (Brüntrup 1973; Hopkins 1998:1431-1434). To this notion | shall return in Chapter 12. First, in line with his principle of the coincidence of opposites (coincidentia oppositorum), he allows the two contraries ‘possibility’ (posse) and ‘being’ (esse) to coincide. He expresses this novel idea in the neologism possest: the ‘can-be-ness’ of God. What ‘is’ God? Answer: ‘can-be-ness’, that is, Possibility (Hopkins 1998): The loftiest level of contemplative reflection is Possibility itself, the Possibility of all possibility [...] 19.111. Nothing can possibly exist prior to Possibility [...] Likewise, nothing can possibly be better than Possibility - or be more powerful than Possibility, or more perfect, simple, clear, known, true, sufficient, strong, stable, easy, etc. And because Possibility itself precedes all possibility that has a qualification added, it cannot either exist or be named or be perceived or be imagined or be understood. [...] 28.Xll. The triune and one God [...] is signified by ‘Possibility itself’ (17,19). (p. 1431ff.) To Cusanus, God’s Possibility equals actual reality. His ‘can’ equals ‘is’. Not only ‘is’ God of necessity what he ‘can be’; the world too ‘is’ divinely necessary - because God ‘can’ allow it to be, or create it (posse facere: ‘can create’). That is why God (‘Absoluteness’) is also the complicatio omnium (the enfolding of all things, of actual reality - in our terminology, of Cosmos). They are, and are essentially, because God can produce them. God is the Possibility to bring Cosmos forth and in God, Possibility and Actuality coincide. The same thing can be looked at from the point of view of the world/ Cosmos. So Cusanus consciously emphasises the emergence of the world (Cosmos) as a ‘Possibility to Become’ (posse fieri: ‘can-become’), on the basis of God’s posse facere (‘Possibility to make/bring forth’). Because God is Possibility to make, Cosmos is Possibility to become. Divine Possibility continues to cast its light even on what has been made (‘Possibility to have been made’: posse factum). In his last book Cusanus’ thoughts find their apex in the notion of posse ipsum ('can-ing -itself). At the end of his life of reflexive labour, his ultimate name for God, approximating the Unknowable and Unnameable, is: 'can-ing- itself’, 'bossibility-itself '. Now he could rest in peace, exhausted but happy. In our model, Absoluteness becomes Possibility, and Cosmos becomes as a manifestation of Possibility. Cusanus substantialised Possibility and identified it with the Christian view of God, which is not the case in this essay (also see Ch. 12). 117 Origin The religions that need to be somehow reconciled today are more, different and vastly more complex than the ones considered by Cusanus. The great alternative religio-philosophical approaches of India and China in all their wealth, better known to us than they could have been to him, invite us to explore new avenues - different from his. Today it is possible to appreciate his comprehension, in spite of its limitations, of the religions known to him. Recognition is due of the pioneering quality of his thought in the Christian context of the time. In De pace fidei, his model for the reconciliation of religions, boils down to a soft Christian imperialism, absorbing them in quite a friendly way, as deviant forms of Christianity. This is a strategy that has been followed quite often since. Today a wider possibility than that which was available to Cusanus, and one that is explored in this argument, beckons us: Absolute Horizon is their shared Origin; Christianity, like all other religions, is understood as a relative, contingent expression of a drift tending towards Absolute Horizon, carrying all of them. Today, the sciences look very different from the paradigm that dominated the intellectual landscape of his day. Quantum physics and biological evolution have burst onto the scene in a manner that he could not have foreseen. And yet his overall model of MM appears to offer fertile perspectives for a contemporary meeting of biological and spiritual (d)evolution. Also, keep in mind that Cusanus rejected the geocentric theory and anticipated, on speculative assumptions, the idea of an infinite universe and a moving earth, which would only, well after him, emerge on scientific grounds with Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) and Johannes Kepler (1571-1630). Cusanus reminds us that the dove of the future needs two wings to fly: facticity-science-rationality and radical religion (MM), and the second no less than the first. Cusanus’ view of each of the manifold individual things of the world, each unique in its singularity, yet each nevertheless also a contraction of the universe as a whole, remains highly relevant to an ecological vision today. Each is a unique mirror of totality. Nature as a whole and each of its species and individual creatures are reciprocally involved: one for all and the whole, and vice versa. Likewise, his vision of the relationship between the world (universe, nature) on the one hand and divinity on the other hand, as intimate as possible, without slipping into a flat pantheism, deserves careful study. Also his presentation of human knowledge of Origin, condensed in his memorable phrase ‘learned ignorance’ (docta ignorantia), is a catchy formula for the essence of MM understanding. Higher than sensory knowledge, imagination, memory and reason, lies the understanding of the intellect, where all contraries and contradictories coincide. This is the realm where only a suprarational understanding, an unknowing knowing or a knowing unknowing, applies. Inthe terminology we chose to use, Cusanus’ views can be read tendentionally as not incompatible with the notion that Origin and the original knowledge of 118 Chapter 6 Origin appear from, and disappear into, Absoluteness. Yet there is a world, Cosmos. We may speak of it, and joyfully live in it. The ruminations on these pages wish to be understood as legitimate extensions of the Bible and the Christian message and tradition. Nevertheless, they do not add up (in contemporary terminology) to either a conservative orthodox or a liberal variant of Christianity. A third candidate for an appropriation of the Christian message today may be Gnostic Christianity (O’Regan 2001). The three MM forces, those of Gnosticism, Christianity and Neoplatonism dominated the early centuries of the Common Era in the West. Therefore, a careful look at Gnosticism will be useful. Gnosticism It is understandable that under certain conditions (such as adverse climatic conditions and diabolically threatening social circumstances) some may see the universe as darkly ominous, and divinity fraught with unresolvable tension. What has generally become known as ‘Gnosticism’ (a term invented in the 18th century) belongs to such groups. Gnosticism took a speculative step right into the divine abyss itself. That is where its account of the Origin of things starts. A terrible drama played itself out in Origin; this world is merely a trembling aftershock. Gnosticism presupposed a personal, profound, intuitive (‘esoteric’) knowledge (gnosis), giving access to divine mysteries, inaccessible to everyday reasoning. The question of what ‘Gnosticism’ really amounted to seems to be far from settled. ‘Gnosticism’ (containing a bewildering variety of forms) presupposed a general basic pattern of ideas, which lent themselves to endless variation. It was not an individual religion as such, but a wide-ranging trend. Here | restrict myself to a rather stark constructed ideal type, accepting that this picture does not satisfactorily cover individual instances of Gnosticism, but trusting that it may nevertheless be sufficiently representative to serve as a basis for our discussion. The pessimistic theogonic and cosmogonic speculations of Gnosticism pivoted on the hunch that in the depth of eternity there were two gods to begin with, or that within God a tragic primordial fall occurred, and that the world is the secondary outcome of that upheaval. The creator-god (Demiurge) of the world is blind, imperfect, evil. He was identified with the Creator of the Hebrew Bible. Gnosticism was anticosmic: the world is a demonic system, inherently evil, and that evil goes back to divinity itself. Evil in the world, the evil world, is the extension and application of the evil within the divine realm - an evil that was sometimes seen as derivative, sometimes as equally primordial, the eternal opposite of the good. In the second case, there is a stark dualism between two irreconcilable principles in divinity itself. In the created world the Ti9 Origin good is trapped in evil. The human soul is enslaved in ignorance, alienated from its true self. All of this was decked out in the most complex and extravagantly fanciful anthropomorphic mythologies. The Gnostic adept is redeemed through gnosis, and death is an act of liberation as the soul returns home to its source, but the final completion of cosmic redemption is still outstanding. In this process salvation messengers and redeemers, play a significant role. The historical beginnings of Gnosticism are largely shrouded in mystery. It is generally accepted to have arisen between roughly 200 BCE and 200 CE around the Mediterranean, in circles beset by general pessimism and anxiety, and alienated from official religion. As far as its Hebrew roots are concerned, it may well have continued and radicalised the pessimistic trend expressed earlier in Qohelet (see 817), exacerbated to a level of total despair by the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. How could a good God have allowed that to happen? Despair was now pushed beyond the brink of what was tolerable within Hebrew-Jewish faith. Gnosticism probably also drew on Greek and Iranian sources. In general, during the Hellenistic period thinking individuals were afflicted by levels of existential and social anxiety unsurpassed in history. Gnosticism was one powerful expression of that disillusionment in the natural and social world. As radical withdrawal, it was also a form of social protest. In centuries that followed, it would spread eastwards and westwards, and flourish. It would become an adversary of Christianity. Yet, because of its adaptive and protean character, it overlapped with Christianity to a considerable degree, and also entered into symbiosis with that religion, and took over some Christian elements. Even the opening words of the Fourth Gospel (see above) were probably written with Gnosticism in mind, perhaps partly in opposition to it, but nevertheless reflecting it. As areligious complex, Gnosticism eventually petered out after the triumph of orthodox Christianity. Orthodox Christianity not only managed to become a popular, widely acceptable religion, but it also ruthlessly persecuted Gnosticism and various groups associated with it. Yet Gnosticism lingered on and left traces in Jewish, Christian and Muslim circles for many centuries to come. It remained visible in medieval Christian sects such as the Bogomils (11th century) and the Cathars ‘sometimes also known as Albigensians’ (period between 11th century and 13th century); in a speculative Jewish mystic such as Isaac Luria (see above); a maverick Gnostic-Christian thinker such as Jacob Boehme (1575-1624); a poet such as William Blake (1758-1827); the contemporary Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran (1911-1995) (Cioran 1993 [1973]), and in other quarters of the modern epoch (O’Regan 2001). Christianity and Gnosticism struggled to define themselves against each other, and in the process became, or remained, remarkably similar in many respects, like hostile sisters. For example, contrary to its classic Hebrew antecedents, Western Christianity by and large barely escaped a hostile contempt for the body and its natural functions and the world - partly due to its main founding theologian, 120 Chapter 6 Augustine of Hippo (354-430) who could not rid himself of Manichaean influences in his youth. The early Christian theologian Marcion (c. 85-160) demonstrated considerable overlap with Gnosticism as it is stylised here. His contemporary, the theologian Valentinus (c. 100-160), may be regarded as its most representative early figure. Li the Manichaeism of Mani Mani's Teaching (216-276 CE) was the historical apex of Gnosticism. With its wide geographical spread to the extremities of Asia and Europe and its ability to adapt to a variety of cultures, the religion founded by him (Manichaeism) was a strong, institutionalised religion in its own right for at least three centuries, from the 3rd century CE onwards. Mani hailed from the banks of the Tigris River in Iran. A syncretist, he presented himself as the successor to the Buddha in India, Zoroaster in Persia and Jesus further to the west, and brought the Gnostic MM impulse to its highest flowering. Mani's teaching elaborated, in fantastic mythological form, classic Gnostic intuitions of the beginnings of things. A primordial dualism of good and evil, spirit and body, light and darkness, is the first epoch. Light and darkness become mixed, and a struggle for supremacy ensues; that is the second epoch. The coming into being of the cosmos in time is merely an outcome of that struggle in eternity and history, stretching once and for all from the beginning of the world to its final end. It is the gradual process of liberation of the light from the darkness in which it is still captive. Mani himself is the consummation of all religions, the final redemptive figure, called and supported by his divine Twin-Spirit (identified by his followers with the Christian Holy Spirit and the Buddhist Maitreya). Redemption is the prerogative of the elect, through esoteric knowledge and a harshly ascetic lifestyle. Finally, in the end, the eternal dualism of light and darkness is restored, but now it will last forever; this is the third and final epoch. There is no denial of the stark grandeur of Mani's vision and the depth of his belief in the Father of Light, who, in the present epoch, is hidden and only represented by his emanations that are operative in the world. In eschatological anticipation, the Father of Light is joyfully adored (Asmussen 1975): The Light is come, and near the dawn! Arise, brethren, give praise! We shall forget the dark night [...] He gives health and joy to the world [...] he takes away fear [...] and he puts an end to pain. (p. 142) Yet the dualism of light and darkness will remain in all eternity. The MM argument unfolding on this journey of ours is sympathetic towards certain elements of Gnosticism, but it takes up a very different position in other respects. In the lists below, | take issue with Gnosticism as an ideally typical construction; the details do not necessarily apply to specific historical groups; and obviously, an ideally typical model does not contend that it is the historically ‘right’ reconstruction, let alone the only useful one. 121 Origin Similarities: * The type of MM model explored here would - like Gnosticism - award primary place to understanding, insight, wisdom, not to obedient faith. Here may lie an essential difference between Gnosticism and Christianity as ideal types: in the latter, salvation comes from an outside saviour; in the former, it comes from inner enlightenment. In this respect, our meditations move close to Gnosticism (as to Eastern systems such as Vedanta and Buddhism). * |n the direction followed by a model such as the one developing here, such insight is - in line with what appears to have been a typical Gnostic concern - immediate. The social implication is that, much as such insight respects and learns from great teachers, it is not necessarily dependent on such authoritative figures; least of all if they are presented (or present themselves) as divinely ordained and endowed with indubitable authority. In our intuition, religious institutions and officials are not deemed essential, but may have a relative, useful function. Such structures, when presented as 'essential' for salvation (particularly if they are of a hierarchical nature, such as men ranked above women), inevitably led to authoritarianism, blind obedience and the persecution of all deviant (‘heretical’) opinion. In Christianity the dictum extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church no salvation’) - going back to the church father Cyprian in the 3rd century CE, and meaning by 'Church' the official, dominant social institution - has been a particularly problematic notion. The Church's persecution of Gnostic sects and the destruction of their writings blot the record of Christian orthodoxy. On the other hand, while 'typical' Gnosticism seems to have contained a strong anti-authoritarian streak, certain groups containing Gnostic elements (e.g. some Cathari) also seem to have had a hierarchical organisation, in which women, while more equal to men than in Orthodox Christianity, probably did not share in all rights and responsibilities. * This model affirms the typical Gnostic affirmation of the feminine principle (sometimes personified - as, e.g. Sophia) in mysticism, and of the position of women in social life. Gnosticism - and early Christianity, with the enormous creative space it allowed women - express a genuine MM concern and ideal. The affirmation of women in an emerging MM for our epoch, resonating in these reflections of ours, is here intended as an equal juxtaposition of genders, indeed as the transcendence of gender dualism. * This model is consciously and deliberately open to the wisdom traditions of humankind; exclusivism is foreign to its intentions. * This emerging model views ancient Gnosticism's speculative interest in the Origin of things, and concepts such as Bythos (‘Depth’, ‘Abyss’) and Proarche (‘Before-beginning’), with great interest. The differences include: * Unlike some forms of Gnosticism, the kind of model explored here would not present its understanding as final or indubitable revelation; it is merely 122 Chapter 6 provisional, tentative and relative construction, operating under post- Enlightenment conditions. The kind of insight espoused in these reflections is not a matter of elitist, special privilege (as some Gnostic schools maintained of their views), but is accessible to everybody. It is not ‘esoteric’ in the sense of secret or inaccessible, as some of Gnosticism was. The frame of reference of original Gnosticism was Greek thinking and the family of religions emerging from the Near East. Hospitable as it was, the historical horizon of Gnosticism - apart from Manichaeism - centred in the Greek-Semitic Mediterranean world. An MM for today will be open to all that humanity has produced. The limitations found in a publication such as this are due to practical restrictions of time, space and knowledge, not to principle. No doubt born from its sense of marginality and fed by its persecution by the dominant forces of the day, Gnosticism sometimes had an oppositional, antithetical stance of resentment that is foreign to the MM trend followed here. Our stance is irenic-ironic, not adversarial. Although realising positively the great importance of myth in humankind's search for meaning, this emerging model, unlike ancient and medieval Gnosticism, seeks to formulate its tentative insights in the language of clear elucidation. In our tracing of Cosmos unfolding from Unground, we do not follow Gnosticism's complex mythological hierarchies of various emanations. Yes, the imaginal faculty of the yearning human person must be rehabilitated, but at times the contemporary reader - at least this one - has great difficulty in relating to the extremely elaborate mythological schemes of Gnosticism with their phantasmagorical personages. Science is the most telling difference between the situation then and the situation now, in which we have to find our way. In ancient Gnosticism fanciful mythological emanations CAeons) carried an ontological weight that is not possible to maintain under the scientific and philosophical conditions of today. This model shuns fanciful, wild exegeses of existing canonical creation stories, as was sometimes the case in Gnosticism. Allegory, useful as it is, can take one only so far. The Christian Bible, for example, can tolerate only so much before the connecting link between itself and a transformational interpretation of it snaps. Not anything goes. Therefore, this model is not parasitic on any existing canon, twisting and turning it beyond all self- recognition. It would rather honestly step outside such canons as absolute points of reference. Such a step may still seek to define itself as a legitimate tendentional extension of such canons. Unlike Gnosticism with its extravagant speculations, this model avoids complexity, but seeks simplicity, consistency, coherence and reasonable communicability. This model is, unlike typical Gnosticism, not pessimistically a-cosmic or anti-cosmic, but strongly pro-cosmic, world-friendly, history-friendly, 123 Origin emphasising the ab Origine goodness of the world. It does not see Cosmos as Originally a catastrophic evil, and does not split mind/spirit and matter/ body/flesh, despising the latter, but elevates matter, body and its natural functions, to being the good expression of Spirit. It does not turn away from life, but loves it, and eschews the Gnostic alienation from Cosmos. The route sought here, is this-worldly pro-existence, for the benefit and happiness of all beings in this Cosmic cycle. * Whereas the Gnostic narrative presents the great drama as moving from divine perfection through inner-divine loss and fall, to a recovery of the divine perfection, this model sees the great Archeic drama as a spiral of divine manifestation, return and unfolding. * Unlike most of Gnosticism, this model is not dualistically postulating a polar split in the Original dimension of things. It does not blame a bad Creator God - or anybody else, human or angelic - for Evil. It does not see Evil as an aggressively antagonistic antisubstance, but as derived presence, inevitable shadow in the Archegonic process. Evil is not the great primary adversary of Arche. * This model hopes that now and in time to come, humanity will continue to produce its great prophets, its enlightened intellects, its pure hearts, its caring creators of justice as circumstances require, but it does not project all its hopes on some mythological Saviour figure (or figures) in the past, present, or future. * Different from typical Gnosticism, this model would not see the earthly, human nature of great figures such as the Christ or the Buddha and others as mere semblance. Precisely not. Cosmos is significant. As great MM prophets, they are fully earthly and human, even if they - like all of us, but more clearly - also participate in, and express, the higher dimensions of Arche, petering out in Absoluteness. * This model does not claim to know the End of things and does not imagine dramatic apocalyptic visions; it listens attentively to the projections of science and tries to harmonise that with a vision of the spiral of emergence and subsidence. It trusts that All will be well. * This kind of model is not elitist in the sense of ascribing any superiority to itself, as some forms of Gnosticism were. On the contrary, it seeks open dialogue with all - while emphasising that in a participatory argument merit should be the decisive factor. By inner conviction and commitment, this kind of orientation is for all, even if it is not, and will not be, held by all. In spite of such differences, no one who studies the tragic history of Gnosticism can fail to be impressed by the depth of their commitment and their search for ultimate meaning. Islam The basic structure of Islam is very similar to that of its two sister religions, Judaism and Christianity. Yet the prophet Muhammad's experience of 124 Chapter 6 monotheistic Ultimacy had unique characteristics, and an unsurpassed single- mindedness and simplicity. In the revelations the prophet (c. 571-632) received (afterwards written down in the Qur’an), the topic that | termed ‘Origin’ features strongly (Rahman 1994:passim). The Qur’an neither indulges in nor countenances speculation or an intuitive grasp of Original knowledge from the human side. There is no delving into the depths of God. God (Allah) has revealed original knowledge to his prophets, lastly and finally to Muhammad, the seal of the prophets. As far as the physical Origin of the world is concerned, there is no stepping behind infinite, all-powerful, all-merciful, purposeful God and his sheer creative command. O the Qur'an Before creation is only God, who is the sole Origin of all. He is not the topic of speculation. All is radically contingent upon him who decided to create the world out of nothing, and governs it through natural causation. Pantheism as well as atheism, materialism as well as chance are cut off at the root. God created everything for his own glory and he leads the process of the world purposefully to its final destiny. There is no cyclic or spiral motion in an eternal process of beginning and end. Yet there will be a relatively new beginning, to which the notion of Origin also seems to apply. For, after the final judgement, this earth will be transformed into a new garden. Earth will not be destroyed, but transformed on a new level of Creation. There will be an eternal hell. Whether on the new earth or in hell, humans remain whole persons, from whose selves their bodies are never severed. The human being is not split into two substances, body and soul, and is distinguished on this earth from the rest of Creation by virtue of the fact that God breathed his own spirit into him. That elevated Adam above even the angels. One angel refused to acknowledge human superiority, and became Satan, who is anti-human rather than anti-God. God's sovereignty can in no way be challenged, so the struggle between good and evil is a reality for humankind alone - it has no cosmic dimension, let alone an inner-divine dimension. Evil is in no sense co-ordinate with God. Gnostic speculations are completely foreign to the teachings of the Qur'an concerning the ultimate Origin of things. Yet it is not impossible that the Qur'an may hold telltale signs of Manichaean influence, the main difference between the two systems being the world-affirming stance of Muhammad. To Muhammad the human being is free, in order to fulfil his mission as God's vice-regent in the order of nature. Yet the human being is also free to disobey the command of God. He carries good as well as evil tendencies within himself. Eventually God's cause will triumph and overcome the evil tendencies in the human being, reinforced 125 Origin by the principle of Evil (Satan). All people are equal before God, and men and women have parity before him (this understanding was not maintained in historical Islam). In the prophet Muhammad’s understanding of God, ‘his’ transcendence received such a strong emphasis (even if ‘he’ is sooken of anthropomorphically), that it could be radicalised towards Absoluteness. In the prophet’s understanding of Origin, creativity was the dominant aspect. God as Origin is sheer actuality. Speaking of God as potentiality (as Cusanus would do) would have sounded quite unacceptable to his ears. The aspect of continuity features in God’s ongoing governance of the world, on its way to his eternal purpose. There will be no final End - only a relative End with the judgement of humanity, after which a relatively new creation in the unbroken continuity of God's eternal reign will take place. The above essential structure was put forward with great poetic and mytho- symbolic force, so that a peeling off of ‘philosophical’ truth from merely 'allegorical' dressing would be an extremely hazardous undertaking. Religious truth and mythological expression are inextricably interwoven. And yet the Qur'an allowed for remarkably free - in our terms, 'MM' - interpretations in reaction to the heavy, wooden forms that the Qur'an reception took on in ultraconservative circles over the centuries. Passing by early forms of Muslim mysticism, notably Shi'ite mystical thinking (continuing certain Gnostic influences), let me now turn to two great figures in the Sufi tradition. O Ibn Arabi Much as Ibn Arabi emphasises the Absolute and the End of all phenomenal things and knowledge (see previous chapter), he also emphasises the self- revelation of the Absolute (Izutsu 1983:252ff.). To him the Absolute is an inexhaustible fullness of being, manifesting Itself in all things, material and immaterial, even as it, paradoxically, conceals Itself in and behind them. This self-manifestation (tajalli of al-haqq is the self-determination, self-delimitation, of the Absolute. In his view, as in the tawhid (the belief in One God, deserving to be worshipped) informing all of Islam, Supreme Being' remains the dominant category, as it was in the Neoplatonic tradition in the manner in which it was appropriated in all three monotheistic traditions. It is not submission to one of the many existent beings, to 'a' Being, nor is it Absoluteness in the sense spelt out in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4. Ibn Arabi analyses various 'stages' in this emergence of Being. Clearly, this is related to our central concern here: how can Absoluteness be Origin? How can Unground bring about, become, unfold as, Cosmos? He actually uses the term 'emanation' (fayd) for this multifaceted emergence. It must be added immediately that he does not take ‘emanation’ to mean (in the 126 Chapter 6 Neoplatonic sense) different levels of being, but different forms of the self- determination of the Absolute. The fact that our Sufi reconciles such conclusions with traditional monotheistic presuppositions makes his contribution all the more remarkable. All of this highlights the astounding daring, originality and profundity of Sufism in general and a giant such as this in particular. The very first stage is that the Absolute manifests Itself ... to Itself only. This is the arising of Self-Consciousness in the Absolute. This is not an event in a temporal sequence, but an eternal event. With that, all existing things in the world make their appearance - in the Absolute, and not in actuality yet, but in potentia. In other words, Origin as potentiality arises in the Absolute. Cosmos as such and all within it do not exist in actuality yet. They become dimly discernible, as would-be things. Then - again, not in a temporal sequence - comes a next Self-manifestation of the Absolute. The Absolute manifests itself in the various forms of concrete existence. Origin emerges as Creativity. While he subscribes to the Muslim view of creation ‘out of nothingness’, that ‘nothingness’ to him in effect means ‘out of the Absolute as Origin, Possibility and Creativity’. An implication of his view is that Cosmos and all within it ‘exist’ from all eternity. An additional unique feature of Ibn Arabi's envisioning of Origin is his view of perpetual creation. The world goes on being created anew - and everlastingly so - at every single moment. The Absolute is everlastingly becoming Cosmos. Another implication is that Cosmos is not flatly identified with the Absolute (that would be pantheism); no, Cosmos exists in, emerges from, returns to, the Absolute (a form of pan-en-theism). In addition, Ibn Arabi envisions the paradoxical coincidence of End and Origin. Cosmos (and the human being in it) is not only created anew every moment, but also ceases to exist every moment - the same moment. Everything is constantly changing, and yet there is something eternal, unchanging: Origin as Continuity, | would interpret him to say. In the end, this genius held on to eternal Being. That is deeply ingrained in the monotheism of Near Eastern-Western metaphysical mysticism; not absolute Absoluteness where even the haziest fringe of Being eventually just peters out and nothing remains to fall back on, but ‘The’ Absolute. O Jalaluddin Rumi Another creative receiver of Muhammad's message, and similar to Ibn Arabi in the essential structure of his thought, was the Persian Sufi poet, Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273) (Schimmel 1980 [1978], 1992).'Rumi' means ‘the Byzantine’ (from Rum which is Byzantium, later Constantinople, today Istanbul). Having been born in what is present-day Afghanistan and died in Konya in present- day Turkey, he excelled as mystic in a century dominated by mystics. 127 Origin Rumi was fascinated by the startling immediacy of God’s rule. This constant, loving marvel at the miracle of Creation was the secret of Rumi's life. In our terminology: Cosmos is immediately transparent to Absoluteness. In this respect, Rumi displayed an attitude very similar to that of the great Zen poets. To him as Muslim, God himself is untouched by change. Yet God is permanently engaged in novel creation out of nothingness. The world and everything in it leaps out every moment gratefully and joyfully from the 'nothingness' ('adam) out of which it has been and is being created. That 'nothingness' is not understood in a negative sense. It is, in our terms, sheer positive Potentiality. It is an ocean of possibilities, a treasure trove in which uncounted possibilities lie hidden to leap forth in an intoxicated dance at God's command: ‘Be!’ As Muslim, Rumi does not conflate God and nothingness. Yet, at times, he seems to come teasingly close to it. ‘Nothingness’ is not only 'the first and initial station', but also 'the final position and end of everything', the 'abyss of Divine Life', beyond everything conceivable, even beyond the revealed God; it is the deus absconditus (‘the hidden God’) (Schimmel 1980 [1978]:242ff.). ‘Adam virtually coincides with fana (annihilation), and it is more: the unfathomable depth of God. The point of true human existence is to become non-existent again, returning to the depth of God in this life - ending in Absoluteness, as it Originates from Absoluteness (to translate him tendentiously into the idiom of this exploration). This basic understanding was elaborated in thousands of moving poetic phrases. Consider the following gem, incidentally also suggesting Rumi's acceptance of a chain of being, stretching continuously - and in principle reconcilable with an evolutionary perspective, we might add - from mineral to the ultimate of non-being, ‘adam (Schimmel 1992): | died as mineral and became a plant, | died as plant and turned to animal. | died as animal and became man. What fear |, then, as | cannot diminish by dying? Once when | die as a human, lIl become an angel, And I shall give up angelhood, For Not-Being, ‘adam, calls with an organlike voice: ‘Verily we are His, and to Him we return!’ (p. 156) No doubt Rumi could also have changed the order around, from ascent to descent, and could have said: 'Not-Being, 'adam, calls with an organlike voice: » “Verily we are His, and from Him we originate". Indeed, at this mystical level of Islam, Origin may tendentionally be seen to appear as manifestation of Absoluteness, the Abyss from which all things emerge and to which they return and in which they are suspended in all eternity. 128 Chapter 6 E 521 Interim summary conclusion Given their views of Origin and Original knowledge of it, the Abrahamic religions, for all their impressive grandeur, could take on authoritarian forms, becoming systems of revelatory positivism: divine revelation has been given and enscripted infallibly. It is the mystical traditions of these religious contexts that provide remarkable evidence of other possibilities, as we could witness in Luria, Cusanus, Ibn Arabi and Rumi, approximating Absoluteness as Origin and the source of all that is. That is here taken to be the latent, powerful tendency inherent in those religions. In their mystical forms, they tend towards convergence with views pronounced in the Eastern context. So let me turn to three such systems. B 522 Intimations from the Eastern context Of the metaphysical mysticisms (that term taken in a very broad sense), Taoism, Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta entertain radical concepts of Absoluteness. How would this type of thinking envision the becoming and being of Cosmos? Taoism (Chuang-Tzu) In Chuang-Tzu, the effortless quietude of ending life (and all things) is paired with beginning, both arising from and at home in the 'jumble of wonder and mystery' that he referred to at the death of his wife. In our terminology, End and Origin coincide dialectically in Absoluteness. Chuang-Tzu's Ultimate is not Being, as has been the central supposition of Near Eastern-Western thinking, but, in line with much of Eastern thinking, Non-Being. The distinction between Being and Non- being is not scholastic hairsplitting; it is of the utmost importance. To Chuang-Tzu, Non-Being or Emptiness (wu or hsÜ) is not mere nothing, the mere absence of being. It is beyond both being and not-being. As such, it is not utter other-worldly transcendence. In the words of Kuang-Ming Wu, it is Non-Being and not Being that 'beings' beings (the latter would be the position of Plato, Spinoza and Heidegger - and, in the last resort, also Luria, Cusanus and Ibn Arabi). Non-being is indeed ‘beginning’, a 'not-yet. It is a ‘potent Non-Being’. It ‘begins the beginnings of being’. It lets beings be. Salvific and supportive, it empowers beings. Being is the child, born of and fed by the mother, which is Non-Being (Wu 1982:76ff.). It would not be unwarranted to interpret Chuang-Tzu as indeed suggesting that Absoluteness is Origin - that is, Potentiality and Creativity. Hinduism From the perspective of the expedition undertaken here, the generations of Hindu and Buddhist philosopher-mystics that we are looking at in this section 129 Origin appear like free-climbing mountaineers scaling sheer rock at dizzying heights. In historical perspective, it is as if the tendency at the heart of MM that we are following, has been fast-forwarded. The leaps from polytheism and henotheism to monotheism to monism to non-dual metatheistic Absoluteness have been made with breathtaking boldness. The historical antecedents of the Indian experiment lie in the fruitful synthesis of ancient indigenous Indian religion and imported Vedic religion, roughly since the middle of the second millennium BCE. Chronologically that places those Indo-Aryan seers about 1000 years before the Buddha and legendary Lao-Tzu. Li the Upanishads From our vantage point in this part (Part One) the Upanishads/Vedanta (roughly the period between 4th century and 7th century BCE) are the apex of the Vedas, and Advaita (‘non-dual’) Vedanta (9th century CE) is one of the highpoints of Vedanta. The Original knowledge of the oldest Veda (the Rig-Veda) was hailed as revealed (shrut/: ‘heard’). Its content revolved around a polytheistic or henotheistic pantheon, similar to that of the Greeks, Iranians and other peoples of the time. They seemed to have believed that the universe had its Origin in a cosmic sacrifice and dismemberment to produce the many things in the world. Theirs was a vigorous, exuberant worldview. Over the next millennium, the concept of divinity became more sophisticated and more attenuated. In the later hymns of the Rig-Veda there was a strong tendency towards monotheism, according to which the universe was created by one personal divinity, called Brahma. This view was contemporaneous with Hebrew monotheism. However, the avant-garde of Indian religious thought gradually moved into a different ambit (speculative, ascetic, acosmic, individualistic, inner-directed) from the one inhabited by their Hebrew counterparts, who never compromised the personal character of the One God and his chosen people. Social-ethically, both systems rested on the unquestioned but questionable assumption of male dominance. With the highly speculative Upanishads (Vedanta) a new epoch started, which was dramatically different from the previous one. Now, for a period of about four centuries, Indian MM proceeded deeper into unchartered territory. Sacrifice was interiorised. Outer, social sacrificial ritualism was increasingly transformed into an inner, individual mystical journey, centring in One eternal, imperishable Ultimate Reality, referred to as ‘Brahman’. This monism was something different from monotheism. The monistic strand was woven into a variety of patterns. In our present context an important distinction that was made at times by the late-Upanishadic men brooding solitarily in forests, was the distinction between Nirguna Brahman 130 Chapter 6 CBrahman-without-attributes) and Saguna Brahman ('Brahman-with- attributes’). In the latter form, Brahman could be known, described and approached; in the former, ‘He’/‘It’? was completely unconditioned, and hence unknowable, unnameable and unapproachable. At that stage of Indian speculative thinking there was no doubt that Brahman at the very least ‘is’: eternal Being. All things, external as well as internal, nature as well as soul/ spirit, objective as well as subjective, are somehow manifestations of the One and Only: Brahman. The complete identity of the individual, inner human substance (soul: atman) and Brahman was particularly emphasised. The entire Vedantic system, including the elements of karma (determining one’s destiny after death) and reincarnation, circled around this central passion: ‘That (i.e. Brahman) thou art. In the words of the very early Chandogya Upanishad (III.14, 1-4) (Macnicol 1963 [1938]: All this is Brahman. Let a man meditate on that (visible world) as beginning, ending, and breathing in it (the Brahman) [...] He is my self within the heart, smaller than a corn of rice, smaller than a corn of barley, smaller than a mustard seed, smaller than a canary seed or the kernel of a canary seed. He also is my self within the heart, greater than the earth, greater than the sky, greater than heaven, greater than all these worlds. He from whom all works, all desires, all sweet odours and tastes proceed, who embraces all this, who never speaks and is never surprised, he, my self within the heart, is that Brahman. When I shall have departed from hence, I shall obtain him (that Self). (p. 142) This gain came at a high price: the disdain for Cosmos. This was the shadow cast by these pioneers' speculative daring, and this shadow followed their every move. And then, of course, the question of why and how Nirguna Brahman, the eternal Brahman-Atman (Ultimate Reality-Soul) manifests as Saguna Brahman, and eventually as the world, has not necessarily been dealt with. What exactly is the nature and status of the world? Is it completely real - completely unreal? Or something in between, relative, derived, semi-real? And how does all of this relate to these visionaries' idea of a devolving-involving universe in an eternal and unspeakably depressing cycle of periods (ka/pas), of which the dreaded, never-ending wheel of individual reincarnation is part? O the Bhagavad Gita A next stride towards the development of the great synthesis of Advaita Vedanta was taken with the compromise of various Indian positions, worked out by unknown poet-thinkers, the authors of the magnificent Bhagavad Grità (‘Song of the illustrious Lord’). This gospel developed sometime between the 5th and 2nd centuries BCE. The hero-god Krishna, none other than an avatar (manifestation) of the great god or meta-god Brahman, appears to the warrior Arjuna, bound to do battle, and instructs him. One of the constant themes in this slender masterpiece is that All comes from and returns to the supreme Brahman: the Absolute that transcends all empirical categories, and is the End of All - and also its Origin. 131 Origin Let us listen to one such proclamation of Brahman-beyond-Brahma Cin Hindu mythology, Brahma is the Creator-god). The Gità (IX.4, 7-10) reiterates the great Indian vision of the eternal return of things, their devolution from and return to Ultimate God. Brahman is potentiality, continuity and novelty (Mascaró 1962): All this visible universe comes from my invisible Being. All beings have their rest in me, but | have not my rest in them [...]. At the end of the night of time all things return to my nature; and when the new day of time begins | bring them again into light. Thus through my nature | bring forth all creation, and this rolls round in the circles of time. But | am not bound by this vast work of creation. | am and I watch the drama of works. | watch and in its work of creation nature brings forth all that moves and moves not: and thus the revolutions of the world go round. (p. 8Of.) The Grtàhovers on the edges of three levels of thought. Firstly, it accommodates and utilises the level of anthropomorphic traditional theistic speech (Saguna Brahman), as, for example in the verbs taken from common life in the above quotation (such as ‘rest’ and ‘watch’). Secondly, it uses that conventional speech to suggest a more abstract, more transcendent level. In the above quotation, ‘invisible Being’ suggests the level of pure Being, stripped of qualification (Nirguna Brahman). Yet it still seems to move at the level of some Eternal Substance (‘Being’). And then, given our tendentional reading of our great authors and traditions, one may think that the G/té hovers on the edge where substantialising thought, even the purest and most rarefied and sublime (The Absolute’, ‘Being’ as such), peters out in an even deeper (non-)level, (non-)dimension, of non-substantialist Absoluteness. O Sankara | now turn from mystical poetry, full of hidden meanings, to metaphysical systematisation, striving to be clear and coherent. That next stage, the culmination really of this growing system of thought, came in the period between 8th century and 9th century CE with Sankara - neither just rational-technical philosopher, nor merely pious devotee, nor religious propagandist, but one of the greatest representatives of the type ‘metaphysical mystic’ of all time. Sankara (c. 788-820 CE) used very much the hermeneutic proposed here, namely a tendentional reading (his own) of past and present. According to some, he even forced his inherited Vedantic texts into the mould of his own philosophy. Nevertheless, there is no denying his significance as one of the greatest thinkers of India, in spite of living, according to legend, for 32 years only. Our leading question in this chapter is: How, if at all, can or does Absoluteness be, or become, Cosmos? How is this change - if it is a ‘change’ - possible, conceivable, explicable? In Sankara's inherited Sanskrit apparatus: What is the relationship between Nirguna Brahman (Brahman-without-attributes), Saguna Brahman ('Brahman-with-attributes') and the external world (loka)? 132 Chapter 6 Of course, chronologically, between the Gità and Sankara lies the massive edifice of Mahayana Buddhism. Sankara undoubtedly worked through Mahayana via his inspiration, Gaudapada, in developing his thought. We do not have the space to enter into the historical negotiation process that may have taken place between Mahayana Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. Let me rather just stay with a schematic summary of the essence of Sankara's thought regarding Absoluteness as Origin (cf. inter alia Dasgupta 1975 [1922]:406-494; Grant 2000:148-163; Ramaiah 1982). To this great MM scholar, this explosion of genius in a brief life of 32 years, Brahman (the Absolute) is and remains eternally its own pure, unchanging and indiluted Self; universal and undifferentiated into particulars; and unrelated to anything outside itself. It eternally 'is' Itself. And all things of everyday experience 'are' also It, and nothing else. There is nothing else than Brahman to start with, and It does not become anything else. In our terminology, it seems that there is no Origin in the sense of absolute Novelty/Creativity. Nothing new (not to mention something new ‘out of nothing’) happens. There is only eternal self-perpetuating Being. So what then about the world that people experience in their everyday lives? Where does it come from? What is its reality value and status? Brahman is the One Substance, and the One Self (Atman) of all. From the standpoint of the highest, ultimate truth, the plurality and reality of things, as experienced in everyday waking life, become apparent as the assumption and construction of ignorance. From that highest point of view, not only the universe as an existing reality and the multiplicity of things making up the universe, but the very ignorance, assuming the universe to be such, is a delusion itself, and non-existent. In truth, there is no ignorance, and there is no crossing from ignorance to true knowledge. True enlightenment does not destroy ignorance, but reveals that it never existed. Sankara did not see the empirical world as the mere figment of our imagination (like the son of a barren woman, to use an example of the time). What was at stake for him, was not the empirical reality of that world (he accepted that), but its ultimate status and value. It is real up to a point and for all practical purposes, but then it disappears, so to speak, into the Absolute. It is an appearance only, not of something e/se, but of its own deepest essence. Nothing has any reality except as the Absolute (Brahman). That is known by revelation in the shruti and by critical reflection, that is, by intuition and speculation, but in the final analysis, by negation. Ultimacy has no attributes, but the ascription of such attributes, unreal as they are, may serve a provisional, useful purpose, namely somehow to approximate Ultimate Truth - but then they have to be dismantled. The highest provisional affirmation ascribes to ineffable Brahman the characteristics of Being, Truth and Bliss. Yet the wider context for Sankara remains the firm abolishment of all finite limitations and conceptions of the Absolute. In Sankara's view, Brahman does not become Cosmos as something else, it does not become at all. From the highest 133 Origin standpoint, ‘Cosmos’ ‘is’ nothing but Brahman. In Brahman there is no Potentiality, nor Novelty/Creativity. Strictly speaking, there is no End and no Origination. In Sankara's Absolute, nothing happens. Sankara's writing could be seen to hover on the threshold of Absoluteness, and implies, one may think, Absoluteness in the most radical sense of the word - to which, provisionally, for therapeutic purposes, the following features may be attributed in order to accommodate the searching soul: ‘being’, ‘truth, ‘bliss’, ‘one’, ‘substance’, ‘origin’ and others (some used by Sankara himself and some not). So he might not have objected too strongly to ‘Potentiality’ and ‘Novelty’ either - as long we know that these are (hopefully) useful constructions. Even his Atman and Brahman point away from themselves into a deeper abyss. It seems that most receivers of Sankara’s message hold him to the constructive monistic side of his mysticism. It is possible that Sankara himself gave them grounds to do so. Is even speaking in the manner of Sankara, not a manner of speaking that, too, must in the end after recognising its own constructedness, its being a kind of Saguna construction, subside into absolute silence? Here things get quite difficult, because Sankara did believe that the overcoming of ignorance was achieved in a direct (in his words ‘non-indirect’) experience of Brahman in the state of samadhi (contemplative absorption). Did Sankara not underestimate the power and effect of his own speculative genius (constructing the Absolute ‘according to Sankara’)? If that is granted, could he not have inserted more dynamism and vitality in his notion (yes, his notion) of the Absolute? That brings us to a second and related problematic aspect. An issue is Sankara’s apparent lack of appreciation for Cosmos. Though he did not outrightly deny the reality of Cosmos, he underplayed its status and significance. In his philosophical treatise Aparoksanubhuti (‘direct cognition/ self-realisation') he explains his central idea with great clarity. ‘I’, the empirical self, am in truth the Self (Atman), which is Brahman (Vimuktananda 1982): | (that is the Self) am verily Brahman, being equanimous, quiescent and by nature absolute Existence, Knowledge and Bliss [...] | am without any change, without any form, free from all blemish and decay [...] | am without any attribute or activity, | am eternal, ever free and imperishable [...] | am free from all impurity, | am immovable, unlimited, holy, undecaying and immortal [...]. (pp. 16-17) This unity of Brahman and Atman, he illustrates with a number of enlightening analogies (Vimuktananda 1982): Just as a thing made of gold ever has the nature of gold, so also a being born of Brahman has always the nature of Brahman [...] Just as earth is described as a jar, gold as an ear-ring and a nacre as silver, so is Brahman described as Jiva [...]. (pp. 30, 35) It seems that Sankara brilliantly and rightly emphasises that the earring is ‘nothing else’ but gold. That is a most profound idea. Could he not have marvelled somewhat more at the beauty of the earring as a little object in its own relative right? Could he not have dwelt more on the many beautiful individual earrings, 134 Chapter 6 on all the multitude of individual things made of gold? Could he not have said with more emphasis and joy that the precious goldness of the gold takes unique, concrete shape in this particular earring? In addition, would that not imply that the gold itself graciously allows its own goldness to be divided into a manyness, without losing any of its essential goldness - in fact, gaining a lot of significance in this Potentiality and Novelty - without sacrificing or compromising its goldness one bit? Does Cosmos not deserve more significance and love? Does Absoluteness not allow Cosmos to be? Also, does that not have immense implications for Absoluteness itself - such as that something happens on Absolute Horizon, and that from that Horizon many things emerge, in a sense distinct from Absoluteness, but not different? Could he not perhaps have said that Nirguna Brahman becomes Saguna Brahman and the world, that this event is not a loss but a gain, and that to think along such lines is not falsehood and ignorance, but truth and understanding? 'Gold is earring' is just as true and significant as 'earring is gold'. Wanting to forge Sankara's 'gold' into an individual, concrete thing of beauty, | borrowed freely from Sankara's near-contemporary Chinese Buddhist, Hua-yen scholar Fa-tsang, who also played with gold (cf. Krüger 2007:115,-136). So let me move into Buddhism straight away. Buddhism The argument of this chapter has been cumulative. This perspective on Buddhism will therefore carry further aspects of the argument dealt with in other contexts above. Throughout its formative periods, Buddhist MM cosmosophy reflected the physical cosmology - the science and mathematics - dominant in each of those periods. Yet Buddhist cosmosophy also used and adapted such cosmologies for its own purposes. That means that Buddhist cosmosophy was not static, but changed over time. As little as, for example, the presupposed and implied cosmologies of the biblical book of Genesis, or Plato are normative for today, just as little are the various cosmologies of Buddhism normative now. What is required today is a tendentional interpretation that would, in our critical- appreciative appropriation, disentangle ‘form’ and ‘intention’ and let go of aspects of both as may be demanded by our integrity for today and tomorrow. In contemporary Buddhism, this is as much an issue as in Judaism and Christianity today. For the observer, keen to learn where to find wisdom, this is no easy matter either. Must we take the six days of biblical Creation literally? How would Jews and Christians be able to separate form from content? Very much the same problem arises with regard to Buddhism. Can one have the living tortoise and remove its encasing shell? That is the hermeneutical question. Two tendencies seem to carry the day in contemporary (i.e. modernised westernised) Buddhism. The first is simply to repeat the ancient cosmological ideas as normative for today. This amounts to Buddhist fundamentalism. The second 135 Origin tendency, equally uncritical, is simply to skip the awkward part and to end up witha shallow version of sellable Buddhism, reduced to being personally successful peaceful and calm (McMindfulness). Both are ahistorical positions. The third, the difficult but necessary task, would be to enter into the separation the fluid yolk of enduring MM message and the white of dated cosmology contained in the same brittle shell, and to explore the promising possibility of a mutual enrichment of Buddhist MM intuition and contemporary science. That is the road favoured in this exploration. In the present context | am not primarily interested in Buddhist cosmologies and cosmogonies. Here | am interested in the deep functions and features of reality - in the most basic ontosophical patterns underlying the Buddhist cosmologies, specifically in the set of views related to Origin, as expression of Unground. O Early Buddhism How is Original knowledge arrived at, according to the Buddha (or early Buddhism)? (As with Jesus, revered as the Christ, history cannot clearly establish the distinction between the historical figure of Siddhattha Gotama, revered as the Buddha, and the teaching of the early community.) The Buddha and his early followers (cf. Bodhi 1978; Dharmasiri 1974; Jayatilleke 1980 [1963]) rejected speculation (as found in Plato) as well as divine revelation (as found in the Abrahamic religions) as sources of knowledge concerning the deep structure of the world. The only way to Original Knowledge, Knowledge of Origin, if possible, could be through personal insight, based in personal experience. This kind of ‘higher knowledge’, this final insight into the Nature of things is - together with moral purity and meditative or contemplative experience - an aspect of personal purification. It may be termed 'empirical' knowledge, but with the qualification that it was extended to lengths beyond the limits of our present associations with the term 'empirical'. It included extrasensory intuitive perception, understood to penetrate into dimensions of reality beyond the abilities of common understanding, based on limited sensory abilities. This avenue to Original truth was in principle open to all, and the implication was that advanced people should gain their own share of such understanding. Notwithstanding, the fact was that for most lay Buddhists the end result, in psychological terms, probably did not differ that much from faith/belief in the Abrahamic religions: acceptance of superior authority - not necessarily in the sense of institutional power, but at least in the sense of mental, spiritual superiority. While the Buddha based his understanding and his truth on different grounds than Plato did, there was in principle the possibility, even necessity, of checking things out for oneself, overcoming mere faith/belief. The intention was always that initial faith/belief would mature into enlightened insight. Permanent submission (even in love) to superior, divine power was never expected. Given his antispeculative stance, there were indeed certain questions concerning the deeper nature of the world that the Buddha passed by as 136 Chapter 6 unanswerable. He refused to be drawn into speculative questions such as whether (with reference to temporal duration) the world was everlasting or not, and whether (with reference to spatial extension) the world was finite or infinite. The Buddha compared answers to such questions to the construction of an ascending staircase leading nowhere. Yet, not only are these questions in our present time of great interest to scientific cosmology, but they also touch on cosmosophical themes. The Buddha also refused to accept answers to questions on the basis of some superhuman, supernatural, divine revelation. Ultimate insight was a wholly natural thing. Such questions needed to be answered based on personal experience, or not be answered at all. At a later stage in early Buddhism, the Buddha was deemed ‘omniscient’; initially, he presented himself as an agnostic pragmatist: he was just not interested in certain matters, regarding them as not being, strictly speaking, of any value with a view to human happiness. As we saw earlier, the monotheistic religions were eager to provide revealed answers to such questions, and Plato tried his mythopoetic hand at answers as well. Yet may there not be a problem here? The Buddha’s message of human deliverance (as contained categorically in the Four Noble Truths) did seem to rest on certain cosmological, ontological assumptions, and to have had certain cosmological, ontological implications. How? Well, his absolute peak experience during the night of his enlightenment did seem to have such associations, regarded in addition, as essential to his core MM teaching. Firstly, he remembered his own many former existences; secondly, he saw exactly how karma works, as part of an endless round of rebirth; thirdly, he saw at first-hand the primary role of desire for existence as such and of sensuous desire in particular, in the tainting of human life. All three imply an ontology and cosmology of an endless cyclical existence - neither revealed supernaturally nor postulated speculatively, but seen and verified without a shadow of uncertainty. Is it just a coincidence that this view in broad terms was also part of the fabric of the Vedantic culture of the time, of which he was a child and in which he was brought up? His truly original contribution of non-substantiality (anatta), was his unique message of salvation. Yet, does the whole construction not make a certain culturally embedded and transmitted ontology and cosmology at least partly and indirectly, but in a real sense, normative? For a contemporary appropriation of ancient Buddhism, these are important hermeneutical questions to answer. The nirvana experience, vastly elaborated in the Buddha's own teaching and in that of his early followers, particularly in the Abhidhamma, contains in essence the whole of early Buddhist ontosophy. It may be possible to argue that he merely accepted Vedantic views as part of the make-up of his listeners, and adjusted his message to suit the existing worldview of his Indian audience. Yet the Buddha seemed to have claimed that he personally 'saw' the round of eternal rebirths in the eternal process of karmic samsāra as indubitable Truth. 137 Origin That which early Buddhism claimed that the Buddha experienced directly as a result of his final insight, and what early Buddhism developed in cosmological speculation, are hardly separable. It was an impressive integration of more enduring metaphysical mysticism and the more time-bound science of then. In later stages of Buddhism the integration found other, different expressions (Kloetzli 2007 [1983]. Also, any attempt at integration today would have to find its own expression, with reference to contemporary scientific cosmology. That will be attempted from Chapter 7 onwards. There is an aspect of the Buddha's or early Buddhism's central mystical message concerning the Origin, the basic structure of things with which the approach attempted in these reflections does not fit well. Buddhism, at least early Buddhism and subsequent Theravada Buddhism, always came down rather heavily on the side of End. It never rejoiced in Origin. Coming into being, the continuation in endless cycles of rebirth and suffering was surrounded by misgivings. In the admittedly rather extreme formulation of contemporary Theravada master, Mahathera Narada, speaking of the aspirant to sainthood (Nàrada 1980): All dissolving things are fearful [...] The whole world appears to him like a pit of burning embers, a source of danger. Subsequently he reflects on the wretchedness and vanity [...] of the fearful and deluded world, and develops a feeling of disgust [...], followed by a strong will for deliverance from it [...]. (p. 429) Must we accept that the Buddha claimed to have verified views such as the ones mentioned above, with their world-rejecting implications and all? Alternatively, did he work with the materials that he had at hand, not necessarily giving it the measure of finality that it received at the hands of some of his scholasticising followers? It seems impossible to come to definite historical conclusions here. Difficult as it may be to unscramble the mix of the cosmology of the Buddha's time and an MM understanding somehow transcending that, this seeker - listening to him in a vastly different cultural setting - nevertheless prefers to follow that route. O Mahayana Mahayana (which gradually became a markedly distinctive trend within Buddhism over a few centuries and started to flourish from the 1st century CE onwards) was also a synthesis of a unique philosophy of human salvation and certain cosmological and ontological presuppositions of the time, distinct from those supporting and merging with the teaching of early Buddhism (Kloetzli 2007 [1983]:51ff.). From the Indian Mahayana texts, one may glean an understanding of their basic understanding of the Original features of reality. As in early Buddhism, the ideal remains to be liberated from the world. Yet, this liberation receives a far more positive twist, in that the world becomes the locus of benevolent, compassionate service to all beings, and the cycle of 138 Chapter 6 rebirth becomes a means to ensure precisely that. Yet a certain reserve remains dominant. Not only were Indian Buddhists not really interested in history (including natural history: the way in which the empirically-given universe may have come into being and may have unfolded in time), they were essentially not interested in the world (Cosmos) as such. Myths took precedence over historical facts. Cosmology merely served a soteriological function: it was background to the saving foreground of salvation. A vast number of mythological, supra-mundane personages (divine Buddhas and Bodhisattvas) populated the higher reaches of reality, but they did not feature in attempts to account for the Origin of things. Buddhists always placed a strong emphasis on what is termed 'Absoluteness' here, distinguished from active gods, operative at a lower level. The world as it is remained a domain overcast by shadows. Its Origin and existence were not topics of wonder, joy and affirmation. As in the teaching of the Buddha, Indian Mahayana (particularly as worked out in the Madhyamika philosophy) retained a strong dialectical critique of human knowledge as, ultimately, constructions trapped in self-contradictions, and therefore completely unreliable as source of true knowledge concerning Origin, yet paradoxically potentially useful with a view to the attainment of Original truth. Salvation comes via wisdom and insight (fana) in the true nature of human existence, against the backdrop of certain cosmological views of the period, which were utilised as scaffolding for the soteriological message of those Indian Mahayanists. Mahayana continued, and emphasised strongly, the idea that the human being in its true Origin essentially and ultimately shares in the good Buddha nature. Yet overall, the process of the emergence of Cosmos from Absoluteness was not a central topic of interest. The acosmism and the emphasis on insight as means of liberation place Indian Mahayana quite close to Gnosticism, to a degree that mutual borrowing cannot be ruled out (Conze 1967:651-667). Apart from direct mutual borrowing, Conze allows for the consideration of the following three possibilities: (D Joint historical development in a larger shared Asian-European context. (2) Parallel development as a basic type of response, triggered independently by similar sets of conditions, such as social alienation. C3) A common root in a philosophia perennis, going back to prehistoric times before the division and dispersion of humanity on various continents. The main difference was that Indian Mahayana Buddhism, unlike Gnosticism, did not indulge in speculative mythologising about events prior to the world, such as a tragic fall into divine depths (Conze 1967:661f.). Indian Yogaàcara thought developed the idea of Buddhahood, Absoluteness, as womb (7athaàgata-garbha) (cf. Williams 1989:96-115). A related concept was alaya-vijfiána (‘storehouse consciousness’). It is comparable to a repository for seeds: everything people think, say and do enters into it and leaves its traces there - from where, in a remarkable continuity, corresponding states of 139 Origin affairs sprout. This is how they explained the workings of karma: not substance, but emptiness - and yet continuity and new beginning. With notions such as these, Yogacara theorists of mysticism did not make life easy for themselves. How can one maintain the ideas of absolute emptiness and potentiality at the same time? That is the problem addressed in this attempt too. Does ‘potentiality’ not imply a continuous ‘something’? This was the issue where the two sub- schools of Madyamika went separate ways: whereas the Prasangika school uncompromisingly rejected all conceptual thinking, the Svatrantika school allowed more space for speaking positively and adopting a position - relative as such a position might have been acknowledged to be. Perhaps we can only postulate both simultaneously: Horizon is the End of things and the Origin of things with, somehow, between the two, a measure of continuity. Indian Yogacara did not cover the cosmological dimension of the emergence of things from Absoluteness explicitly - that is, it did not really envision concrete Cosmos as coming forth from Absoluteness. Such a turn towards the real world - with dewdrops reflecting moonlight, frogs plopping into water and pebbles striking bamboo plants - all brimming with beauty in their very fragility, was taken in East Asian Buddhism. This positive turn towards the world opens a door, not only to the empirical sciences, but also to nature as an object of curiosity, and one which fills with wonder. Here the Buddhist sense of emptiness is dialectically unified with fullness. In our terms, every item in the concrete world, large and small, derives ultimate value from its being part of a vast nexus, stretching into Infinitude and Eternity, and reflecting - in a paradoxical way of impossible possibility - Absoluteness. The view of Origin put forward here resonates with this drift of the Buddhist message. E S23 Further provisional conclusions This chapter was a particularly long trek on our expedition. The terrain was difficult and varied. It is with relief that we can rest in this clearing on this plateau, before negotiating the winding descent. Looking back, I still believe the direction set out on in our own, contemporary context, is the true north. The central mysteries encountered on this trek concerned the relationship between Unground as Origin and Cosmos, and the relationship between Unground, Cosmos and evil. After pausing with a few of the great ones, those mysteries remain mysteries. I find that they may be 'explained' up to a point in the sense of being made clearer, plainer, as mysteries, but not in the sense of being accounted for - particularly not by being deduced from one or more other, higher principles which would make them appear to be evident or necessary, or by being made evident scientifically. Looking back, it seems that while the Hellenic, Near Eastern-Western and Eastern blocs always retained certain typical culturally conditioned structures, 140 Chapter 6 they may be channelled to flow in the same direction, and to enter the same ocean. Likewise, the mystics that we visited each remains uniquely individual, and yet they can be brought into harmony. The differences are in emphasis, not in tendentional essence. In brief: the dominant Near Eastern-Western voices (Judaism, Christianity and Islam; Platonism less so; Gnosticism not at all) rightly tend to affirm Cosmos, but do not penetrate to the level of radical Absoluteness to the degree that the Eastern voices do, even though they tend in the same direction. Indian religions (we looked at Taoism, Hinduism and Buddhism), show a profound interest in Absoluteness. On the negative side, they tend to look down on Cosmos. Closest to an optimal balance of both strengths are the systems of East Asia, such as Taoism and Chinese, Japanese and Korean Buddhism grafted on that stock. As far as Original knowledge is concerned, it seems that four major avenues announcing themselves in this chapter - revelation, speculation, experience and imagination - deserve attention, but also qualification: * ‘revelation’, not in a sense presupposing two separate ontological levels (natural and supernatural) and not claiming to present absolute and exclusive truth, but in the sense of Unground freely opening itself up as a loving gift to a grateful recipient; * 'speculation', in the sense of the ability of human consciousness, deeply rooted in a pars pro toto identity with Unground, actively to investigate, postulate and try out experiments of thought, without claiming absolute and exclusive truth for its provisional outcomes; * ‘experience’, in the sense of personal experience and vision, direct intuitive access to the Original depth of the world, likewise without claiming absolute and exclusive truth for its own discoveries; * 'imagination', in the sense of creative composition, akin to works of art, opening new ways of thinking. 141 Part Two Eternity 5 Principles B 524 The function of the dimension of Eternity In the unfinishable human search for radical and integral meaning, some kinds of ideas are necessary, some unnecessary; some useful, some useless; some possible, some impossible. Given the nature of the world and of human beings, final knowledge concerning the ultimate nature of Cosmos is impossible, and yet ideas concerning that dimension are necessary and useful. Humans find themselves in a position of being damned if they do entertain such ideas and damned if they do not. Their tools are limited: observation, experience, generalisation, speculation, imagination, intuition, tradition. That is about it. All of this places huge constraints on the telling of Tall Tales about Cosmos. Engaging in the activity of finding Horizon has a certain inevitability and a relative validity about it. Tall Tales The presently dominant Tall Tale about Cosmos is a mechanistic one. Here we are exploring an alternative analogy with antecedents in history - that of Cosmos as a body: material, corporeal, alive and conscious; born, growing, How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Principles’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 145-168, AOSIS, Cape Town. https:// doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.07 145 Principles decaying and dying in an ongoing process; emerging from and receding onto Absolute Horizon. From the innermost space of our imagined temple, we are now entering its inner courtyard: Unground unfolds as Eternity, and Eternity unfolds as Infinitude, and Infinitude unfolds as Cosmos. We are edging closer to the 10 OOO things of the world of the senses. Why do we not simply fall back on the old myth becoming dogma of a jealously loving God creating everything out of nothing in six days? The reason is that this does not solve the mystery, but clothes it in mythopoetic words. Taken as a myth in the sense of beautiful, old, mystically inclined poetry, it is monumentally impressive. However, it invites the exploration of other possibilities, perhaps better alignable with our experience of today. Another option is just to fall back on the materialistic theory: the universe is just matter fortuitously exploding onto the scene and rearranging itself through time. That too, requires an act of swallowing, enforced by the cultural conditions of today. In addition, it does not measure up to the requirements of the mystic taste. What then, about just postulating a massive identity of Being through all eternity? This also seems to miss a few nuances: the beauty and wonder of becoming, the poignant impermanence and ending of all things. We have reason to explore an alternative route, one exploring the direction of evasive Horizon. Why not just abandon the whole thing? In a sense, | have already, of course. We are not embarking on a journey, guaranteed to reach a fixed, predestined, safe harbour. We are only entering some distance into a vast ocean. Is that not what makes up the noble fragility of being human in this vast, dangerous world? So let us row quietly in our bobbing little boat among the high waves close to the rocky beach. Let us therefore attempt to uncover a number of Principles with the status of undetermined potentiality, operative in the structure and workings of Cosmos. If subjected to a naively realist or critical realist test of correspondence with some objectively real state of affairs, they fail. Such tests have their value in the field of fact and science. All the same, these Principles may be useful fictions, to be discarded like the raft that the Buddha refers to, once they have served their function to orientate us on how to exist well within our Horizon. The Principles of Eternity are not ‘fact’; they are speculative suppositions, ‘imagining’ supposing ‘fact’, behind ‘fact’, contextualising ‘fact’ - and in that sense reconcilable with ‘fact’. In spite of the awe that these Principles inspire, they are not thought of or presented as purposive, intelligent divine or semi divine beings - even if it is understandable that people in the past have personified them and ascribed all kinds of anthropomorphic features to them, and may continue to do so today. | wish to stand clear of mythological anthropomorphisms in the sense of Gnostic aeons or other kinds of living beings such as angels or spirits. Anthropomorphic-mythological expression may be a magnificent vehicle to 146 Chapter 7 carry its cargo, but only as long as the distinction between vehicle and cargo is maintained. We may have the wine in no other way than in a variety of vessels of clay, but the vessels are of clay, and are not the real treasure. These nine Principles are the roots, the ‘DNA’, of religion as a homoversal need, and of the historical religions and metaphysical systems produced in history. The historical religions usually latch onto one or more of these Principles and attach an overriding quality to them, as will be indicated in chapters to follow. They have an in-between status in the margin of our understanding, beyond our firm reach but somehow affecting us. They are useful boundary concepts, ‘functions’ rather than ‘entities’, ‘possibilities’ rather than ‘realities’. These regulative categories are not part of Absoluteness, for Absoluteness ‘is’ not and has no parts. They just emerge in and from Absolute Horizon and are not experienceable parts of empirical Cosmos itself. They are enabling capacities - eventually taking on empirical forms, structures, organs, in Cosmos itself. Cosmos is an Arche-phany, and these regulative Principles are essential underpinnings of the world. Thus, | shall refer to them not in the form of nouns (Will', and so on) but in the form of gerunds (Willing, and so on). Nouns suggest substantive entities. Gerunds, noun-verbs, hover ambivalently on the edges of verbs, are not quite nouns (denoting ‘things’) yet. Therefore, the sometimes awkward-sounding titles of the following chapters are not designed to be willfully deviant. These Principles are fleeting primordial original sparks, like flashes of lightning between impenetrably deep space and Earth in the dark clouds of a midnight storm, discharging tremendous energy and light and of great significance for Earth and life on it. Cosmos is not there yet, and yet these nine lightning bolts, unleashing energy, mark the beginning of 'otherness' in the depth of Unground itself. In End Cosmos disappears; in Origin Cosmos appears, reappears. That 're-' is important: it moves between unbroken identity and utter annihilation; it signifies some continuity. We seek a route between the first two, narrow as it may be. In other words, we are exploring the Buddhist notion of continuity as an alternative to both identity and nihility, in the cosmological, cultural context of today. We can only speak in anthropomorphic terms of that presupposed dimension. We have no other measure than ourselves, but we must know that we do it and allow it to perish under the guillotine of End. For that same reason, they are not presented as the Principles. The scheme makes no claim to finality or exclusivity. the dynamics of the Principles Eternity is seen as a system of structuring Principles, creating the possibility for Cosmos to be (see the diagram in Ch. 3). Even if Life and Consciousness 147 Principles emerged quite recently into the bright daylight of the history of Cosmos they were in principle possibilities, even latent potentialities, even implicit eventings from the very beginning of Cosmos - and emerging from Horizon. Wishing to avoid the pitfalls of dualistic creationism and monistic identity, the set of Principles are intended to clarify the dynamics of that non-dualistic, non- monistic emergence. The manner in which these constituting elements are presented here, is quite linear. Yet it is not a matter of temporal succession, but of essential conditionalistic relationships. There is no historical or ontological subordination among the three sets of Principles. These nine stand each for all. They are neither separate nor identical. All are timelessly co-emergent and co-extensive. They are all mutually co- constitutive, with each element in each triad presupposing the other two elements, and each triad in turn presupposing the other two triads. The three sets of three are not mutually exclusive pigeonholes into which reality is fitted. Each of the three clusters tells the same story three times over in complementary perspectives. Each and all nine of them simultaneously and together are taken to provide a significant perspective on Cosmos as a whole and on every one of the things making up Cosmos. In wisdom, the human being is aware that it has no existence separate from Cosmos and from Unground, and that it is saturated with Absoluteness. In this final reconciliation, it realises that Absoluteness is in fact no Other. That is the tendention inherent in all religion and all MM, the drift of all the mythical accounts of revelation and enlightenment, the ultimate message of all burning bushes and bodhi trees. The dynamic of the manifestation from Unground seems to be associated with some inadequacy, non-perfection, some necessity to achieve what is not there yet. Furthermore, it appears that in the process of Cosmo-genesis from Horizon, there is contrariness, opposition, even conflict and struggle. In addition, there may be a measure of imbalance among the Principles. Add to that the fact that the human being does not exactly appear to exist in a kind of pre-established harmony with Cosmos and Unground, and does not seem to realise its emptiness of substance. All of these together - the dynamics taking place on Horizon, in the Principles of Eternity, the agonising reality of Cosmos, the painful situation of human beings and their warped perspectives - seem to add up to, or constitute, what is called ‘evil’. There is no point in denying evil, neither in presenting it as the outcome of a specific act of human sin (disobedience), nor in presenting it as merely a subjective human illusion that will disappear if we just open our eyes; also not in picturing it in terms of an eternal dualism, irreconcilably opposing good and evil. Evil is not completely non-existent, existing merely in the eye of the human beholder. If that were the case, the warped perspective would have to be explained anyway: Why do 148 Chapter 7 humans see the world so incorrectly? There seems to be an element of non- alignment in the developing bigger scheme of things. The process of the manifestation from Horizon implies a movement towards a state that is not there yet. The process itself does not seem to proceed smoothly. It has its lack of adjustments. It has its possible alternatives. E 525 Paintings of Dawn Let me set up camp here and pitch my tent in the company of the caravan of pilgrims - a caravan made up of wayfarers from all quarters of the world, all epochs of history, merging and mingling with a multitude of individual motivations - all searching after the same destiny, without necessarily realising that they are doing it. This book is not a chronological history. If ventured upon, a comprehensive history would realise the complexity of the historical forces in the unfolding story of MM. I do not adhere to a ‘great man’ model in religious or MM history, reducing complexities to single events. Certainly, there were and are most remarkable personalities, but they should always be understood as interacting with wide-ranging historical forces preceding and surrounding them. The Buddha was perhaps the greatest personality in Indian history, but he was also the first one to say that every singular event - including himself - is merely an entangled, disentangling knot of multiconditionality; the history of Western civilisation is much more than a series of footnotes to Plato, or the Christ. To what extent, and how, did those who have preceded us linger on the thin membrane between non-being and being? How did they paint the emergence of things in the glimmer of Dawn, with faint silhouettes becoming clear objects? Was it just a creationist 'Fiator a physicalist ‘Bang!’ to them? In previous chapters, this has already received some attention. We stood before Plato's chora, tithene (‘nurse’) and upodoche (‘receiver’), Sankara’s eternal Brahman- Atman, and Ibn Arabi's fayd. However, we are not ready to leave yet. In the orientations below, we shall explore the possibility of a linkage between Cosmos and a Horizon of becoming. the Upanishadic philosophy and its offshoots Between the 7th and 4th centuries BCE, thoughtful minds in India increasingly drifted towards the notions of eternal unity, identity and substance. Casting around for words, those Upanishadic philosophers called the eternal substance Brahman. Myth was mixed with philosophy, personal designations of Ultimate Reality with impersonal ones. Peering into this darkness, how does the world of the many changing, visible forms (Maya) emerge - if at all - from the eternal formless One? The term Saguna Brahman (‘Brahman with attributes’) was an 149 Principles attempt to bridge this gap. Did something happen to Brahman itself: from being Nirguna Cwithout attributes’) taking on attributes, establishing a link with the phenomenal world? Yet, even Nirguna Brahman is eternal Substance. Does this view, majestic as it is, explain the mystery of there being an empirical Cosmos? Sometimes these great unknown visionary poets fell back on myth - for example a golden egg emerging from the eternal ocean in the great dawn, becoming the Creator God (Brahma), who then created the world. Can anything ‘happen’ or ‘change’ in Eternal Being? Do such temporal categories hint at an eternal series of layers? All such efforts were more ofan awestruck contemplation of an eternal mystery than a theoretical explanation. In Upanishadic MM, the balance between Brahman and Maya (in our terms, Unground and Cosmos) still allowed for a relative, derivative becoming or reality of the latter. In later Vedantic teaching the pendulum, oscillating in its very nature, swung towards the unchanging nature of Brahman, and hence the illusion-like nature, the non-becoming, of the world. Of interest from the perspective of this orientation is the Upanishadic teaching of pralaya. In a great cyclical movement, the world periodically dissolves and comes into being again, is destroyed and recreated. The question of weighting returns: how utter and final is the destruction, how novel the new origin? In addition, how does the novel emanate - by which process or mechanism? In early and classical Samkhya (an orthodox school) (Larson 1969), there were two kinds of eternal Being: prakriti (matter) and purusha (beginningless, self-sufficient soul). In a sophisticated theory of the coming into being of the empirical world, these two become linked to each other and together they constitute the world of the senses. At the time of pra/aya, the world returns to unmanifest prakriti; at the time of creation, the forms become manifest from prakriti again through the activating presence of purusha. In this process of becoming, the purusha remains alien, essentially detached from matter, in an eternal dualism. They do not take the step further back into radically empty Absoluteness, and therefore their Origin is not stupendously novel. The Purva- Mimamsa system (another early orthodox school) adhered to a view that this universe has existed as it is from eternity, and that the world cannot absolutely be dissolved, and therefore cannot originate. Becoming is no startling mystery. Contemporary with Upanishadic MM (although not an orthodox variation of it), Jainism too, held a doctrine of pra/aya. In its version, the universe is also eternal. It only goes through extended periods of decline and renovation. They did not share our problem: the dynamics of becoming in a strong sense. Their renovation was change of an eternal substance, not radical origin. In extensions of Upanishadic MM in later centuries, various emphases continued to be placed. In the standard interpretation of Sankara's system of Advaita Vedanta, the phenomenal world is foam, a mirage, a dream, a matter 150 Chapter 7 of mistaken Identity. He does not appear to have been particularly interested in how the foam appears, or in its exact texture. All his attention was focused on the eternity of Brahman. It was not the case that Sankara simply failed to elucidate the appearance of the world. He did not try to elucidate it. He was not fascinated by the bubbles of surface froth, but by the deep, eternal ocean of Being on which they foam. The mystery is shifted a step back: how is the eternal existence of Brahman conceivable? In the non-dualism (Visistadvaita) of Ramanuja (c. 1040-1137 CE), the reality of the differentiated many is strongly affirmed. God remains eternally unchanged. Pralaya is merely an interruption. God merely suspends the Cosmic process for a while. The universe as the cyclical process of pralaya and relatively new creation alternating with each other is the self-expression of the Absolute. In pralaya the world is in a state of latency; creation is the actualisation of possibility. The mystery of Origin looms large. Therefore, Indian MM kept circling the twin stars of nothingness and being, change and eternalism, annihilation and origination, in forms too many, too subtle and too varied to be reviewed here. The overall dominant tendency in the original Upanishadic period was towards idealistic non-dualism, implying not creation of something from nothing by someone, but appearance of what is eternally there. The following contemporary quotation concentrates that sweep of thought (Ranganathananda 1980 [1968]: The invisible (Brahman) is the Full; the visible (the world), too, is the Full. From the Full (Brahman), the Full (the visible universe) has come. The Full (Brahman) remains the same, even after the Full (the visible universe) has come out of the Full (Brahman). (p. 63) That contains the central focus of Upanishadic MM awe and perplexity. In the modern period, nobody articulated the ancient intuition with more clarity than Vivekananda a century ago. The world is not ‘created’, and certainly not ‘out of nothing’. Brahman (Vivekananda 1964 [1907]:123), ‘is eternal, eternally pure, eternally awake, the almighty, the all-knowing, the all-merciful, the omnipresent, the formless, the partless.’ This characterisation does not appear as irreconcilable with what the monotheistic religions in their higher reaches, influenced by Neoplatonism, said about ‘God’. In the schools mentioned above the problem of the space referred to here as ‘Eternity’ opens up. Regardless of whether there are two eternal principles (such as the interplay of consciousness and matter in Samkhya) or one (such as in Ramanuja), the problem of the dynamics of the transitions (the successive stages or hierarchical levels) in the process of ‘becoming’ (or in the gradation in being) invite pondering. That also applies to what Vivekananda, in the case of Advaita Vedanta, referred to as the ‘projection’ of the world from Brahman. What happens between the eternal ‘is’ and the ‘projection’, and also, in the ‘projection’? 151 Principles the Buddha The Buddha was also a child of the Upanishadic age. His contribution was to push the notion of Absoluteness further back than was the case in the Upanishadic world. Not only the traditional god Brahma but eternal Brahman Itself, was emptied of substance. The Buddha did not address the in-between dimension investigated here directly and in the exact context or terms interesting us, but his teaching is interpreted as implying the direction taken here. His teaching of meditation tracked a psychological or epistemological route: it is the journey from the domain of external Cosmos to the domain of Absoluteness. Could that journey of psychological inwardness imply a deeper cosmological dimension? Could the subjective journey towards and into Absoluteness not be a journey back, a return? May there, preceding it and presupposing itin the great scheme of things, be another journey: Absoluteness Becoming Cosmos? There is the journey of human subjectivity, the little journey of human experience and knowledge; and there is the Great Journey of the Original emergence. The first journey is each individual's way back towards Absoluteness, our discovery and appreciation of our true status and destiny; the second is the way of Absoluteness exteriorising. The first is the way of the individual on the journey to the true human destiny, perfect liberation; the second is the way of the Cosmos en route to its destiny of perfection. In the Mahayana, this second destiny was envisioned in the bodhisattvic dream as perfect happiness for all beings. The second is the one investigated here. Advanced meditation is about traversing the way back, like salmon swimming back up river and waterfall to the place where they were spawned. | believe this is a valid interpretation and extension of the Buddha’s teaching. Ultimately, advanced meditation is not only about becoming personally calm; it is about insight into the nature of Cosmos, emerging from Absoluteness and returning to Absoluteness. Therefore, nirvana is not only the end destiny of meditation; it points to the Origin of Cosmos. It is not for nothing that early Buddhism attached ontological significance to nirvana: at his death, the Buddha entered a domain to which neither being nor not-being can be ascribed. He reached Absolute Horizon. He knew that the flame goes out without going anywhere. In the Buddha’s teaching of advanced meditation, the meditator progressively transcends ‘form’ - that is, in the language of this journey: Cosmic reality with its many forms and manifestations. This progression then advances through a number of successive meditative states Cjhanas). | touched on these stages in Chapter 5, but in view of the unusual subtlety and significance of that scheme, | shall now revisit them briefly again, from a different perspective, namely: the /hanas as mirroring the process of Cosmic becoming. 152 Chapter 7 First the meditator transcends all experience depending on empirical stimulation, and all mental representations of form and diversity - and experiences a state of infinite space (the fifth jhana). (We are not touching on the preliminary stages of the first four jhanas here.) That is still a preliminary stage, not the final destination. Then the meditator moves deeper or higher and enters a state of the infinity of consciousness: empty, unformed, formless consciousness (the sixth jhana). Even that is a consciousness, albeit an extremely attenuated consciousness of consciousness. Then that is transcended: the meditator enters a state beyond consciousness, a state of no-thingness (the seventh jhàna). That also hovers on the edge of consciousness. Then the next jhana opens up: the level of the cessation-of-ideation-and-feeling (eighth jhana). In this state the meditator 'experiences' an absolute quiet, where the differentiation between object and subject, between me and (in the vocabulary ofthis model) Unground has been left behind. Yet, even that is still an awareness of sorts. Then the level of neither-ideation-nor-non-ideation (ninth /hana) opens up. Then the supreme ‘is’ there - but it ‘is’ not, and is not ‘experienced’: the meta-jhàna of Absoluteness (in ancient Buddhist language: nibbana). The culmination is not finalised in a Substantial Eternity. No, it just peters out. The End and Origin of Cosmos - Absolute Horizon - is attained. Except that the word 'attainment' means nothing here. Words no longer apply. In our MM reflection, we reconstruct the Great Flow of Unground: the cascading river of Cosmic Becoming against which we struggle back to discover our Origin. The river of Originating descending from the heaven of Absoluteness descends through cascades, as a result of which the ocean of material Cosmos, teeming with life and consciousness, is formed. In that we exist, with a strange longing for a lost Source and Destiny. Those stages must not be reified into clear-cut entities. They are just pointers to a mystery. We might as well ask the salmon to draw a map of the river. Nevertheless, it follows its instinct, and gets where it needs to go. The Buddha knew the non-domain of Absoluteness. He refused to give definitive answers to questions Ending in Absoluteness - because of his knowing unknowing. It is possible to cast the meditative scheme of the higher (formless, arüpa-) jhanas in early Buddhism into the mould of Eternity and Infinitude, the two stages in the unfolding of Unground postulated in this exploration. Reversing the order of our human meditation, Absoluteness is the ontological equivalent of nirvana. The ninth, eighth and seventh jhanas would then allude to the dimension of Eternity: of 'no-thingness', of a 'state' prior to subject-object ideation of any sort. That is the topic of this Part Two. Further 'down' in the process of Absoluteness becoming Cosmos, the sixth and fifth jhanas (Infinite Consciousness and Infinite Space) roughly cover aspects of what I call ‘Infinitude’. They will be discussed in Part Three. Then comes the level of Cosmos - containing, among other things, thought processes and feelings. 153 Principles Mahavairocana In another way, the argument unfolding here also seeks an alignment with the proposition put forward in esoteric Buddhism: the Cosmos as Buddha, Buddha as Cosmos (Verdu 1981:116-120). Maha-Vairocana (Sanskrit: ‘Great Resplendent One’) became Dari Rulai in Chinese and Dainichi Nyorai (‘Great Sun’) in Japanese. In Sino-Japanese Buddhism Vairocana expressed the full ambivalence we are trying to understand here. Vairocana is the embodiment of Sunyata (‘Emptiness’). It is that embodiment in the form of all that is (the universe). The universe is Emptiness come to body, speech and mind. As ‘body’ (‘reality’), it is the dharma- kaya (‘Truth Body’) of Buddhaness. As empirical reality, it therefore has the simultaneous and mutually implicit implications of Being and Truth (Wisdom). Emptiness ‘becomes’, ‘is’ Cosmos. As might be expected, the pull to somehow re-anthropomorphise, re-personalise this extremely sophisticated idea of ‘Buddha’ in statues and so on proved to be very strong. From our point of view, the implication of this idea of Buddhahood - of Emptiness/Absoluteness as Cosmos, and of Cosmos as Real, Living, Loving Truth, arising from, manifesting, returning to, Absoluteness - is what the path we are seeking here, is about. Stoicism Stoicism set out with Zeno of Citium (c. 335-260 BCE), a century or two after the rise of Buddhism. In the school that Zeno founded in Athens, classic Greek optimism had clearly come to an end. It was a time of great anxiety in the Mediterranean world, in which the individual human being’s struggle for meaning in the context of a capricious world order was thrust to the centre of attention. With Gnosticism three centuries later, that anxiety would reach even deeper. Zeno himself was probably of Semitic, perhaps Jewish, descent. Indeed, elements of the Semitic religious world are recognisable in his thought. The historical distance between now and ancient Stoicism - Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus and others - must be maintained even when MM connections across vast stretches of time are appreciated. Engaging with this ancient MM tradition, let me link up with some distinctions made by it (Algra 2003:153ff.; Brunschwig 2003:206-232; Frede 2003:179ff.; Pohlenz 1964; White 2003:124ff.). With the benefit of two millennia of continued reflection in the European tradition plus the contributions from other cultural contexts, we can appreciate how the Stoics groped for an understanding of the spark of becoming being. Our 'Cosmos' approximates their kosmos or holon (the ordered universe as a Whole) - that is, the existing universe of experience. Does our 'Absoluteness' point in the same direction as their Void (kenon)? ‘Void’ to them was not the same as ‘space’. If space is filled, it is ‘place’ (topos); conversely, insofar as place has extension, it is space. If space is not yet filled, it is chora: potential place, and of a physical nature. Their concept chora is more 'physical', less 154 Chapter 7 ‘metaphysical’, than chora was for Plato (see §20). To the Stoics, neither filled space (place: topos) nor potentially filled space (chora), is the Void. The Stoic Void is not something spatial. It is non-material, and therefore not real (to the Stoics ‘reality’ and ‘materiality’ coincided). The extracosmic Void is without centre, quantitative extension and direction, or qualitative distinction. It does not have any influence on the material universe. The Whole (ho/on) merely rests in the Void (kenon), like an island in the sea. To compare it to Buddhist thought: literally, the word ‘Void’ means roughly the same as the Buddhist ‘Emptiness’, but the meaning of the Stoic concept was less stripped of content and reference. To the Buddhists, Emptiness was primarily an epistemological category, with profound ontological and soteriological implications. Void is in the Stoic way of thinking ‘not’ real; while not referring to a radical dimension of ‘non’-real, of Non-being, it may be thought to suggest such a dimension. In the end, to the Stoics, Void was part of their physics. Emptiness was the very centre of the Buddhist worldview; Void was rather peripheral to the Stoic worldview. The significance of the Stoic teaching from our point of view lies in the fact that they were the first in the European MM tradition to make a distinction between ‘space’ and ‘void’, even if they did not develop this strongly. Of great interest is the Stoics’ emphasis on materiality. They propounded neither a materialism denying mind nor an idealism relegating matter to an inferior order of being. The universe is material. Every entity existent is material. Reality was defined as bodily reality. Yet this did not imply materialism in the sense that there is nothing but brute matter. They did not deny the reality of oneuma (spirit) as the highest reality, but even that is material: it is a fine, fiery breath, air. That is God; God is material. They were materialists, not atheists. Yet they rejected the anthropomorphic ideas of divinity entertained by the Greeks in general. They eschewed any suggestion of dualism, and sought a kind of monism in which matter and spirit, though not completely identical, are united all the way. From the point of view of the requirements of a contemporary MM, their great emphasis on materiality and corporeality must rank as one of their great achievements. Their universe is a large, living, acting, rational being, material and spiritual, cosmic and divine at the same time. That is a trailblazing train of thought. These reflections, though using a different terminology, are also seeking a fusion of matter and mind in a divine Cosmos - Originating from Absoluteness. Did the Stoics keep mum about Absoluteness because of a certain shortcoming in their MM reflection? Was such an idea perhaps not really possible at the time in their world? Alternatively, would such an idea have run contrary to their basic intuition of the world, their strong emphasis on concrete, physical, corporeal reality? One may suspect that something of all three may have played a role. Their passion for corporeality, which would draw a lot of opposition from their contemporaries might in later times not have encouraged 155 Principles them to explore any dimension ever so subtly distinct from the world of the senses ‘behind’ or ‘beyond’ that. Yet, in the long run, monism becomes problematic. The strength of the Buddhist position was its emphasis on Emptiness; the latent weakness of their position was its acosmic, anti-matter, anti-body tendency. Compared to that, the strength of the Stoic position was its emphasis on matter and corporeality as non-negotiably central and good; its possible weakness was its lesser emphasis on Void in the radical sense as Absoluteness. An MM for today and tomorrow needs a combination of both strengths. Is such a double focus - that is, on Absoluteness and on the full concreteness of the world including its materiality, honouring both equally strongly - possible? How can the link be imagined? All of this is of particular interest, for our present urgent question is: What is the connection between Unground and Cosmos? If the Stoic Void is not quite Unground; if they did not quite raise the issue of Absoluteness, Non-being, did they nevertheless somehow reflect on the possibility of the world being there? In other words, did they explore what | am calling Eternity and Infinitude, intermediate between Absolute Horizon and Cosmos? Yes. They were aware of that dimension, and addressed it with their notion of archa/ (‘Principles’). They entertained another concept: sto/cheia, also meaning ‘rudiments’, ‘principles’ or ‘elements’. The sto/che/a referred more to the ‘Cosmic’ side of things: the basic building blocks of earth, water, fire and air. Their archai on the other hand could be seen to operate more in the domain of our ‘Eternity’ or 'Infinitude'. The archai are ungenerated and indestructible Principles, without beginning and without end, and therefore somehow prior to the world, and not accessible to empirical investigation. They are not entities Csomethings’), but not ‘nothing’ either; they are ‘not-somethings’. Put differently: archa/ are basic ontological concepts - they have to do with the basic patterns underlying the world; stoicheia onthe other hand are cosmological concepts - they have to do with the rea/ity of the world as it is. The Stoics had their own equivalent of the Indian idea of pralaya. They referred to it as ekpyrosis (conflagration). The universe is periodically annihilated by fire, and is then recreated in an eternal cycle. Annihilation by fire is the equivalent of saying that God consumes the cosmos, but that was no mere metaphor; the Stoics did not think in terms of a split between the material and the 'spiritual'. One was the other. Be that as it may, God then brings the world forth from himself again, and consumes it back into himself again, and so on without end. It is moving to witness Chrysippus (c. 280-206 BCE) - perhaps the greatest Stoic thinker of them all - swaying high above firm ground in a strong wind on the flimsy tightrope between annihilation (End - Ch. 5) and coming into being (Origin - Ch. 6). Our question remains valid: what, if any, are the underlying Principles structuring the becoming and being of the world? What are the Principles (archar) of all things, somehow contained in the divine seed, and sprouting to become all things? Some Stoic categories such as the 156 Chapter 7 unity, plurality and cohesion of the cosmos, and an all-encompassing rationality inherent in the cosmos, may count as such regulative, structuring Principles in a sense similar to the one that | intend here. Causality, taken as a sense of relationship (association), is another such primary category. Materiality, vitality and divinity are also such archa/. Above all, activity (to poioun) and passivity (being acted upon: to paschon) are basic Principles mentioned by Stoic authors. Stoicism remains fascinating and relevant. It confirms that this exploration is on a promising track. It encourages us, challenged as we are by the marvels and shocks of today's science, to develop ideas such as the inseparability of matter and mind. In that respect, it may be understood to link up with Buddhism. Just as Stoicism offered great opportunities for an interaction with the sciences of its own day, the general direction taken on our exploration is encouraging with a view to today's challenge to reconcile science with MM. Ibn Arabi More than 1000 years after Chryssipus, in the 12th century, the Sufi, Ibn Arabi, also wrestled with the problem of the evasive link between the Absolute and Cosmos. This is a structural problem to all MM systems marvelling at the fact that there is something and not nothing, a world, and pondering its becoming and reality against an unknown and unknowable backdrop. In the founding myth (Gn 1), arising in the early days of the tradition in which Ibn Arabi stood, the world came into being as ontologically utterly separate from the eternal Being who made it in a series of chronologically separate acts of immediate creation. How did that creative interpreter of his tradition, Ibn Arabi, attempt to give content to the gap-link, 'Eternity', that we are groping for? To Ibn Arabi the God of revelation (A//ah) is a self-manifesting form, assumed by an even more primordial level of Being, the Absolute, the Real (a/-haqgq). Structurally, this is almost the same as the devolution from Nirguna Brahman to Saguna Brahman in Vedanta, or as the non-dualism of Ramanuja (who died 28 years before the birth of Ibn Arabi, in faraway India). How close the MM similarity seems to be, in spite of the geographical and cultural differences. The difference is that Ibn Arabi was a Muslim theist, and therefore supposed to uphold a stronger ontological difference between the Absolute and the world than the followers of the Upanishads were obliged to, but did he? Definitive statements here probably miss the mark. The first pole on Ibn Arabi's ontological continuum is the primordial Mystery of Mysteries, the absolute non-manifestation of Absolute Being (in our present context, the functional equivalent of our Unground), the plane of the Essence (dhat). The opposite extreme pole is the Self-manifestation of the Real on the plane of the sensory world (our dimension of Cosmos). As Ibn Arabi sees it, the Absolute and empirical reality are contradictorily identical (cf. Izutsu 1983). That is to say: their relationship is not one of 157 Principles simple identification. That would be pantheism. Yet, ultimately, they are the same, even in their strict separation. In essence, the world is nothing other than God, but in its determined forms the world is far from being the same as God. As Muslim, standing in the monotheistic tradition, Ibn Arabi could not overstep a line of non-identification. The world is the shadow of the Absolute - not less, not more. Anticipating a term that would emerge in 19th century Europe to attain this very aim (i.e. a narrowing of the gap between theism and pantheism without identifying them), Ibn Arabi essentially thinks in pan-en-theistic terms: God is not the All, but the All is ‘in’ God. In the end and after all, this great metaphysical mystic keeps the gap between the Absolute and Cosmos larger than was the case in, for example, the non-dualism of a Sankara in the Indian tradition. Between these two (the absolute non-manifestation and the concrete manifestation of Absolute Reality) lies the mysterious in-between dimension fascinating me in this chapter. Given the fact that the Absolute to him is Eternal Being, the gap-link between the Eternally Real and the empirical world must consist of a series of stages or degrees or modes in the unfolding of ultimate Being (Reality) in its process of Self-manifestation or Self-disclosure (tajalli. They are links in an unbroken ontological continuum of descent. He combines Qur’anic creation with Neoplatonic efflux and overflowing. In the model of Arche that is explored here, the notion of ‘Being’ is attenuated more radically than is the case with Ibn Arabi; indeed, it is annulled. At the 'upper' end, these reflections of ours (closer to the tendention of Taoism and Buddhism) see Being as bleeding out empty, dissipating into Non-Being; at the 'lower' end they see Being concretising as Energy-Matter (closer to the intention of Stoicism). How does Ibn Arabi picture the field of our Eternity and Infinitude? In his version of the mysterious yet vital field between unmanifest Absolute Reality (dhat: ‘Essence’) and empirical reality, he distinguishes three intermediary levels of Being. The first in-between level is the plane of the Divine Attributes and Names. This is the level of the Absolute manifesting as the One 'God' and 'Lord'. This level of manifestation refers to Allah the Merciful, the Absolute as the ground of the world and all his Divine Names (eternal essences refracting the Absolute). Called tashbih, the experience of this level is an essential aspect of true understanding of the Absolute. It is just as important as the level and the awareness of the Absolute as such, as free of all determinations (tanzih). In the ninety-nine Names of God, the One starts a process of distinction and differentiation, but without abandoning being manifestations of the One, until the world concretely actualises the Divine Names. The Names are the relations in which the Absolute stands to the creatures. In their 'centripetal aspect of facing the Absolute, the Names are One, and are the Absolute; in 158 Chapter 7 their ‘centrifugal’ turning towards the world, the Names are ‘other’ than the Absolute. According to Ibn Arabi, the ideal combination of the absolutely hidden aspect of the Absolute (tanzih) and this first level of manifestation (tashbih) was achieved only in Islam. The hint of exclusivity cannot be taken as his final word. It seems to me that anthropomorphic speech of Absoluteness takes place at the tier of Cosmos itself, where microcosmic human beings produce their ideas, easily turning them into idols. In Eternity and Infinitude, the possibility for such speech is provided, but all such conceptualisation takes place in historical conditions. That relativises all such speech. Ibn Arabi lived and thought in the era before the radical unmasking, from the 18th century onwards, of all theologies as so many human constructs. Today all MM must pass through that fiery brook. No item can slip undetected, hidden at the bottom of the religious luggage, past this checkpoint. Any form of special pleading for any historical religion - Islam, or any other one - must be transcended. The human sciences (history) had equally profound implications for the understanding of religion as the natural sciences. Hence, | see radical MM as standing outside, even as it includes every concrete historical religion, in an irenic-ironic attitude of relative affirmation, without affording a special status to any one. There was also a remarkable degree of religious inclusivity, even indifference, in Ibn Arabi's thinking. He is reported to have said that at a young age he saw himself in a vision as under the guidance of Moses, Jesus and Muhammad (Ibn ‘Arabi 2001:7). In addition, he described his heart as a temple for idols, a Ka’ba for pilgrims, and a tablet for the Pentateuch and the Qur'an (Guillaume 1977 [1954]:7). | believe, given the tendency towards Absoluteness of his thinking assumed here, that he would not have objected to add: his heart was a vacant space for Absolute Emptiness. The second in-between level of Being is the plane of the Actions, the Presence of Lordship. Here the Names do not only enable the world (the first intermediary level does that), but cause the world to be (Izutsu 1983:102ff.). Everything and every event in the world is a self-manifestation of the Absolute through the causing presence of a definite relative aspect of the Absolute, called Divine Name. The third in-between level of Being, and the one closest to the sensory world, is the plane of Images and Imagination, of eternal Archetypes. This is the half-spiritual, half-material world dimly reflected in waking human consciousness, and properly entered in true dreams. The Absolute starts to cast its shadow. The locus for the appearance of the world appears. It is the ontological aptitude of the world, the world in a state of potentiality. In the scheme developing here, that would be the equivalent of the dimension of Infinitude (see Part Three). 159 Principles | find it impossible not to be impressed by the grandeur, beauty and subtlety of Ibn Arabi's panorama of the great cascading waterfall of Being, and not to sense that he is pointing toward the same mystery as the one scented on this similar journey of ours - which is also the one nosed and sought, without always consciously realising it, by all MM from the beginning. Kabbalah The Kabbalistic MM with its notion of ten Sefirot (Fine 2003:56; Scholem 1955 [1941]:213ff.) (comparable to the Gnostic emanations [aeons]) is of singular interest in our attempt to clarify the Principles mediating between Unground and Cosmos. Kabbalah tends towards empty Absoluteness as far as its monotheistic axiom permits. The Kabbalistic system of Sefirot seem to have the same function as our Principles, but whereas our Principles emerge from empty Absoluteness, Kabbalah does not entertain the notion of Emptiness/ Absoluteness in the strong sense intended in this model. Even the concept Ayin, referring to the 'non-existence' of God in the sense of being beyond our human ken, does not seem to nihilate the theistic assumption of the ancient Hebrew faith. In the 16th century a speculative and imaginative visionary such as Isaac Luria continued the notion of the 10 emanations contained in the Zohar, written or (more probably) compiled in Spain a decade or two before the end of the 13th century, by Moses de Leon. Connecting Ein-Sof and the world in the Zohar, the Sefirot ((numbers', then ‘spheres’, ‘emanations’) are ambivalent. On the one hand, facing the Absolute, they are dimensions, emanations, manifestations, revelations, of Ein-Sof (God- in-itself). As the 1O stages of descending divine self-manifestation and revelation, they also have a foot in the world of creation. As symbols of the divine, they constitute the very essence of that world. These 1O spiritual forces emanate from God like life-giving light from the sun, and unlike absolutely withdrawn God-in-itself, they can be contemplated by humans. The inner- divine movement and the cosmic movement are two sides of the same movement. The divine unfolding of the Sefirot has as its counterpart the coming into being of the world. Through the mediation of the Sefirot, the world of creation corresponds to the divine dimension, and everything in the created world has a counterpart in the divine world. The Sefirot mediate ambivalently, but are not ontologically separate from, 'outside' of, God, and, because of their mediating function, the world and everything in it share in a degree of divinity. Between Ein-Sof and the world, the Sefirot constitute a blueprint of the world, and are operative in the world. The human person is the microcosm, reflecting and representing the macrocosm. As the universe in miniature, the human being contains all of these divine-cosmic qualities and forces. It therefore influences the macrocosm, and even divinity. It is the task of the human being to restore divinity-cosmos to the state of harmony. 160 Chapter 7 The Sefirot are: * Kether Elyon (the ‘supreme crown’ of God) * Hokhma (the ‘Wisdom’ of God) * Binah (the ‘Intelligence’ of God) * Hesed (the ‘Love’ or ‘Compassion’ of God) * Gevurah or Din (the ‘Power’, particularly the sternness, of God) * Rahamim or Tifereth (the 'Mercy' or 'Beauty' of God) * Netsah (the 'Endurance' of God) * Hod (the 'Majesty' of God) * Yesod (the 'Basis' or 'Foundation' of all active forces in God) e Malkuth (the ‘Kingdom’ of God). Among these divine-cosmic forces complex relationships exist as they cascade downwards in patterns of three's from Ein-Sof to the world. These 1O add up to an organic whole, like the limbs and organs of a human body, souled by Ein-Sof, and representing the entire cosmos; or like a tree, permeated and fed by the hidden yet present and active life-force of Ein-Sof. Our notion of Principles seeks an alignment with the Kabbalistic model. Jacob Boehme A motto of this inquiry is to bring together those from the past who belong together, with a view to the present and the future. By ‘belong together’ | do not mean identity in some unhistorical sense, but historical convergence of quite different roads, imagined to proceed from the same Origin and tending towards the same End. Therefore, | shall now listen to a vagabond voice calling from a seemingly quite different direction than the preceding ones. Nobody in all of Christianity stood before the great mystery (the Mysterium Magnum, as the title of his last book rings) of Unground with more profound awe, than Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) did. Indeed, in his convoluted thinking and tortuous writing he was the one who coined the term Unground (Ungrund): the Godhead is ‘more’ (rather ‘less’) than firm Ground that we can stand on and get hold of; it is indeterminate Abyss; it is as nothing to us. O unlikely quintessential MM figure If one is interested in the breaks and bridges between historical epochs in the West, particularly between medieval, Renaissance and modern thinking about God, nature and evil, Jacob Boehme's significance can hardly be overestimated. His thinking was the sum - and more than the sum - of major streams in Western religious thought: Gnosticism, the German-Flemish mysticism of the Rhineland, emphases within Lutheranism, hermeticism, 161 Principles alchemy, Paracelsus, apocalyptic thought, Jewish and Christian Kabbalah, and more. He contributed to the last great flowering of the Renaissance, and he has been hailed and blamed as the prophet of the modern ideology of the inner- worldly fulfilment of the divine process that would culminate in the typically modern ideologies of world domination, such as Nazism, Communism and scientism. The human being was no longer a humble contemplator of God's work in nature as during the Middle Ages, but an essential actor in shaping its own destiny - as well as the destiny of nature (Walsh 1983). That someone of the scientific stature of Isaac Newton was influenced by the ‘theosophist’ Jacob Boehme in the development of his theory of gravitation (Gibbons 2001:48f.; Wehr 1971:124), is more than a negligible historical curiosity. It is indicative of the connection (mostly hidden and unrecognised) between certain levels of theorising implied by science and MM thought (Nicolescu 1991 [1988]:69ff.). Boehme’s thinking fell in fertile soil at the beginning of modern classic science. That kind of thought may also be relevant at the present time. Although his writing career was short (from 1612 to 1624), it was densely packed, with subtle developments of expression and content. On the other hand, his thinking remained internally consistent throughout, and each of his books addresses the same core questions from the same central perspective. In this summary, | remain close to smaller, lesser-known works belonging to the middle and latter part of his career (1620-1624). A large part of Boehme’s fascination, as well as of the difficulty of rendering him ‘systematic’, is the vivid nature of his mythopoetic thinking. To him ideas were not abstractions, but living realities. A major figure in the Western esoteric movement, his thinking is symbolic in a strong sense of the word: words and ideas are saturated with the meaning and power of their referents. They do not refer to objects external to them, but participate to a very high degree in the overwhelming world of the spirit. Reading Boehme is struggling through a jungle of trees, thick undergrowth and exotic flowers and animals, not strolling through a neatly laid-out garden with ordered beds of cultivated plants. Thinking (in the sense of envisioning, intuiting) at gut level, Boehme expresses his ideas (rather visions) in the most concrete, plastic forms. This cobbler-mystic with very little formal education but conversant with the major forms of MM speculation available to him, expressed his cosmosophical vision in a language which is extremely difficult to decrypt and render in more or less systematic form. Seeking perfect, clear consistency in his thinking and writing would be expecting too much, however desirable it may seem. Coldly decoded and conceptually packaged, his message of what transpires in the unfolding of God boils down to what is summarised here. | shall abstract from his unique manner of expression, and reduce his wealth of associations to bare outlines. His writing is too ambiguous and rambling, his thinking too obscure and dynamic, too tortured by dialectical tensions and too replete with a sense of ultimately unresolvable conflict (evil), to surrender itself to the format of an outline. Yet he did 162 Chapter 7 undoubtedly succeed in developing his imagining as a coherent vision. This of course is if we look at the big picture and do not get bogged down in the detail. Rather than in its exactness, the strength of his thinking lies in its fecundity, challenging those who belong to a different epoch. Boehme is a visionary in the tradition of the great seer-prophets of humanity (cf. Berdyaev 1958:vff.). The classical Christian symbolism projected a transcendent God, who created the world out of nothing. Boehme transmuted that myth into an eternal, Self-actualising Divinity, bringing forth the world out of his own Being. Therefore, divinity is present in all things, large and small and divine forces glow in all things, living and lifeless. The split between divinity and the world was the first one Boehme strove to overcome, without succumbing to a flat identification of the two (pantheism), and without simply reducing one to the other, which would have amounted to an abstract idealism or an atheistic materialism or a similar kind of monism. The second split he strove to overcome, and overlapping with the first one, was the simple split between good and evil of conventional Christianity. These two central concerns give rise to an enormously complex structure, which Boehme, in spite of his valiant efforts, could not explain lucidly. Yet he conducted his struggle, awkward as it turned out in respect of both the content and the presentation of his thought, with great integrity, passion and speculative ability. The question stubbornly dogging us on this part of our journey remains: How does the process of ‘divine’ self-actualisation in the unfolding of the world proceed? How did Boehme envision it? Taking as his principal point of departure the belief in one God and steeped in awe of one divine mystery permeating all, Boehme defines that unity as fraught with eternal internal tension (cf. Bornkamm 1925:111), as consisting dialectically in the contradictory yet complementary opposition of ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ (Bóhme 1955-1961:597). LI the death, birth and growth of God In Boehme's thinking, the concept 'divinity' is multivalent. On the one hand, it refers to the primordial 'Unground' (Ungrund) ‘prior’ to the manifest God; on the other hand, it refers to the revealed God in its self-manifestation and it approximates Eternal Nature. The theogony of Boehme shows us a God in the process of self-generation and development, of suffering and dying and being born, and of revealing Itself in that process. This occurs as a threefold movement within divinity. The main difference between Boehme and orthododox Trinitarian teaching is that, whereas in the latter case this doctrine is embedded in the saving and sanctifying activity of God in Christ, it is in Boehme - in spite of his very sincere allegiance to Lutheranism - embedded in a naturalistic speculative mysticism (Walsh 1983:14). This encompasses the intradivine theogonic process from Ungrund to full embodied manifestation in nature and humankind. 163 Principles Divinity is, first of all, unfathomable, impenetrable darkness. This first principle constitutes Absoluteness as the indeterminate, completely open Ungrund (Koyré 1968 [1929]:281ff.; Weeks 1991:148ff.), that is, resting on no ground. It is primordial negative reality, pure nothingness, utterly withdrawn from our knowledge. It is not ‘unknowable’ in the sense that it simply exceeds the range of our knowledge, although on the same continuum as our other objects of knowledge, but in the sense that it is ‘qualitatively’ not on such a continuum at all. It is not a referring ‘concept’, but a ‘symbol’, suggesting absolute transcendence. As the Absolutely Transcendent, it is also Absolute Freedom and Will. In his emphasis on the Will, Boehme leaves behind the classic and medieval primacy of Being, and indeed lays a foundation of modern thought. Boehme’s vision has neither the attitudinal nor the cognitive associations suggested by the concept atheism. As far as the first principle is concerned, (not yet) God is locked in a terrible struggle in Itself, with Itself. Divinity suffers. Ontologically, this suffering precedes the suffering of Christ, of God in Christ. The divinity of Absolute Transcendence dies, in order that the manifest God may be born (Deghaye 1985:37). In order to reveal Itself, divinity requires an Other than Itself, to act as mirror (Deghaye 1985:25). Thus the condition for God’s emergence is created. This process is beyond good and evil in the ordinary sense of the word. Yet the ultimate root of evil must be sought there, in the desire and quest of primordial divinity to manifest itself in an Other. Such a desire presupposes a lack, thus suffering (evil) in divinity. The duality between the desire to remain in Itself and the desire to become an object to Itself, to double Itself, implies opposition, discord, struggle, which is implied by the word ‘evil’. Evil is thus an inevitable, necessary moment in the eternal theogony. Divinity would not have been able to manifest Itself without conflict, duality and struggle. God is the sovereign good - but also the God of anger and wrath (Koyré 1968 [1929]:184ff.), and without evil we would not have known that God is good. The theosophical gnosis of Boehme is the knowledge of good and evil, light and shadow, as opposite and contradictory yet mutually interdependent and even interpenetrating elements like day and night; constitutive, in their togetherness, of the ultimate nature of things and of divinity. Retaining a link with his Lutheran legacy, Boehme addresses the seeming dilemma between dualism and monism by implying that evil, wrathful divinity, is not the real God in his full manifestation. True God, love, only emerges in the good (Koyré 1968 [1929]:184ff.). There is an element of eternal Necessity in that drama, played out in divinity Itself. There are also the elements of eternal Freedom, Contingency, Will and Choice. If ‘tragedy’ is the meeting and mixing of conflicting Necessity and Freedom, then that concept is eminently applicable to Jacob Boehme’s God, and to nature and human history. That is indeed the terminology used by Schelling and Berdyaev to interpret his intention. There is no revelation, no growth and no redemption, neither for God, nor nature or human, without terror and suffering. 164 Chapter 7 Then a new stage in the theogonic drama, a new movement in the divine symphony, a new phase in the devolution of God, up to a point discontinuous with the previous one, is reached. The terrible anguish is followed by harmony. God becomes manifest, is born. Now God is transformed into life, power and bright light. This moment is the ‘Yes!’ of a primordial, progressive revelation, preceding the creation of the world. The coming into being of nature and humankind is constitutive of the birth of God. In that sense, humankind is pre- existent, but the locus of this existence is still God Itself. The knowledge is still its self-knowledge. Without proto-evil in the sense touched on above, the dark struggle of divinity would not move forward to the full birth and manifestation of God. In Boehme's theosophy, God is not the eternal Immovable of Greek and Vedantic metaphysics. God is born and dies. Yet this should not be seen in temporal terms, as if it all happened before the world came into being. The struggle in God takes place eternally, in a frame in which time is included. O divinity, nature, humanity Boehme's search for an integrated vision of everything in which all things are interrelated and interpenetrating, led him to the discovery of one and the same underlying pattern present and operative in all things. His vision amounts to a pansophic syncretism of the scientific, alchemical, astrological, meteorological, theological and other insights that he had access to in his private studies. Theology, cosmology and anthropology converge, implying the rejection of both a creatio ex nihilo [creation from nothing], as well as emanation from God. Creatio ex Deo [creation from God] would come closest to Boehme's intention. For Boehme, the world would not have started with a blind Big Bang. Nor (as his Mysterium Magnum shows), was it put down finished and perfect by a fully actualised perfect Being. Nature is part of an eternal, divine trial and error process. History is not the linear, inexorable execution of a divine big plan. Boehme's was a struggling, devolving universe, embodying struggling, devolving divinity, which is intimately related to struggling, devolving Eternal Nature (Hvolbek 1998:110). 'Evil' is part of nature as a spiritual entity developing towards higher states of being and consciousness. This is very different from the dominant scientistic vision of a universe in which life and consciousness are a hardly explicable speck. God would not be revealed to itself without nature and human, but would only be an eternal stillness. External Nature is the symbol of the interior world. The entire blueprint of all reality, divine, human and natural, is contained in the smallest part of nature. Time with all its manifestations is shot through with eternity and its eternal patterns. Everything, literally everything - from the days of the week, to all sorts of animals, to the heavenly bodies, to kinds 165 Principles of stones, etcetera - is allocated its place in the universe in accordance with this scheme. Although nature as a whole is the embodiment of God, and God the prototype of nature, Boehme does not identify God and nature pantheistically. He uses the symbol of a mirror to indicate the relationship between divinity and nature. In nature the coincidence of opposites occurring in God, is mirrored. What is implied in that measure of continuity is that all of nature is metaphysically homogeneous. Manifest, empirical nature, carrying and manifesting the all-pervasive eternal code, mirrors God. The divine principles and the qualities of Eternal Nature are also engraved and actualised in the human, which is the eye of the universe. God is born and reveals itself in the human person, to the extent that Boehme does not consider God apart from its coming in the human spirit. Conversely, Boehme does not consider humankind without reference to God. Human nature is not fixed. Like the existence of God, the existence of the human manifests itself as Freedom and Will, ruling out any notion of being doomed to perdition. As God must die in order to be born, so human must die in order to be born. In the human, as in nature, as in God, Freedom is of paramount importance, never compromised by Boehme. This is upheld not only for the sake of the human alone. For, in Boehme’s mind, the full manifestation of goodness in freedom in the human being is vital for the redemption of the whole of creation. The future of the cosmos is dependent on the further development of the human. In his thinking the possibility, the necessity, of a further evolution of the human being, not physically so much as mentally and spiritually, the evolution of consciousness, the overcoming of evil, are of central importance. The human being has an immense cosmic responsibility. Yet, in spite of the optimistic vision of Boehme of a final light-world, there is no doubt that this present human existence is marked by intense anguish. O inevitable, necessary evil Boehme was particularly sensitive to social and natural evil in the world. The mystery of good and evil stands at the very centre of his theosophical search. Unde malum? [whence evil?] was the most central question of all, the root of his religio-metaphysical thinking. Thinking symbolically, he did not intend to solve the problem of evil theoretically, but rather led his readers deeper into the mystery of good and evil. His unique perspective in this respect, not without precedent in Western MM thinking, is his most original metaphysical contribution. In order to understand his doctrine of evil, it will be necessary to situate it in the wider context of his thought. In the thinking of Boehme, suffering and evil go back to the essential nature of divinity itself. There is a dark principle eternally present and active in the primal substance of things, painful and ill accommodated, like a disease existing inside the body of a living being. On all sides, even in God, he saw a raging battle between light and darkness. His was a tragic theogony. 166 Chapter 7 So how does the notion of ‘evil’ fit into Boehme’s theosophic vision? He offered an alternative to the two major solutions to this problem that dominated Western thought over the last two millennia, namely monistic Neoplatonism and dualistic Manicheism. Whereas Neoplatonism denied evil any ontological status, treating it as the relative absence of divine being and goodness, Manichaeism postulated evil as a second primal reality, over against and virtually equal to God in power. Boehme came up with a third solution between or beyond the first two, tracing the ontological root of evil, if not evil itself, back to God Itself. For Boehme, evil is not simply a shortage, a privation, but a real force. It is not absorbed into a unitary Absolute, nor considered illusory. Both this force and God’s eternal overcoming of it are constitutive of God. Evil, manifesting itself as resistance in complementary opposition, is for Boehme an inevitable, necessary condition in the evolution of the good, of God. At this level, his vision pictures intense suffering and anguish, even ‘hell’. Yet this is theosophically tolerable, for there is meaning in it. At this level, evil is not absolutely negative. It is part of Eternal Nature, of life itself, a condition for the birth and manifestation of God, ‘functional’ evil, or perhaps even ‘progressive’ evil (let us call it ‘evil T). It is fully present in the depths of divinity, locked in internal struggle towards self-manifestation. There is a further possibility, namely evil as pure destruction, chaos, irredeemable in terms of the struggle forwards. This may be called absolutely ‘dysfunctional’ or absolutely ‘regressive’ evil, locked up in principle in the vortex of the first triad (let us call it ‘evil 2’). It is what hinders the birth of God, thwarting the progress towards full manifestation of the divine. This is utter darkness, regressive inversion, and this possibility is symbolised in the figure of Lucifer. The mythological figure of Lucifer was originally the carrier of light, representing, for Boehme, the perfection possible for created being, but came to invert the process of the birth of God. There is an essential difference between constructive struggle and suffering (evil T) and purely destructive evil Cevil 2’). Like the wife of Lot, Lucifer, the paragon of evil 2, looks backwards, not forwards. He wants to return to the abysmal desolation, reactivate the primordial dark fire. What Lucifer is at the level of the supratemporal process, Satan is at the level of time-space reality. On further investigation, the distinction of two types of evil turns out to be relative. In Gnostic fashion, Boehme postulates a fall (a presence of evil 2) prior to Adam, which is redeemed in the creation of Adam and the birth of the Saviour. Finally, Boehme is looking forward to a salvation in which even the purely regressive evil of Lucifer ultimately serves the good. Coming to nature (the macrocosm), from Boehme's basic presuppositions it follows that the first origin of nature lies in struggle and suffering. Given the nature of God and the intimate relationship between God and nature, natural life consists in the conflict of opposing principles. The creative resistance, eternally overcome in God, is the source of suffering in nature. Nature, in eternal genesis, is struggle and suffering. Without the strife of being against being in 167 Principles the words are extremely tightly positioned in this sentencenothing would exist. Here Boehme seems to come close to the Buddhist analysis of tanha and dukkha as constitutive principles of all life, and to Darwin’s notion of the survival of the fittest in the struggle for life. The world of darkness, actualised in the reign of Satan, wills to revert to the initial stage of the cycle of becoming. However, the real fall did not occur with Adam in the Garden of Eden, but before that, before creation itself. For after that fall of Lucifer a new world, the present universe, was created, still marked by this awesome double aspect: labouring under evil, yet open to the future. Death remains the fermentation of life. The microcosmic (human) fall of Adam was not the origin of evil, but necessary for the full revelation of goodness. It was indeed a felix culpa [fortunate guilt]. Ultimately light triumphs over darkness. Ultimately, even Lucifer is a moment in the theocosmic drama. In comparable vein, in the Buddhist Lotus Sutra even Devadatta, opponent of the Buddha, will become a Buddha (Watson 1993:182-185). O concluding comments In search of an MM of nature (including its dimension of suffering and evil), Boehme proves to be a beacon of bold mythopoetical and speculative thought. The structural and historical continuities between his thinking and the comparable constructions of Sufism and Kabbalah discussed earlier in this chapter are evident. Ambiguities abound in his thought. His complex intuitions do not 'solve' the problem of the existence of the world, of suffering and evil, theoretically. Yet he did not claim to produce a balanced theoretical system, and would not have wanted to be seen as producing such. He does not think away a burning sense of evil and the reader is constantly confronted with his struggle and hope, and with the paradoxes of freedom and necessity in the process of the world. The final criterion to be applied to his thinking, as to any attempt at MM, is not whether it is 'true' in the sense of 'corresponding' 'scientifically' to an objective state of affairs. The criterion is rather whether it is useful in helping people who have come face to face with the stark reality of life, of suffering and evil, somehow to accept that, ultimately, the dark side of life is comprehended in a larger scheme of things, awesome in its impenetrable depth, and yet offering a perspective of light and happiness. That was Boehme's intention. We seem to have arrived at a crucial stage in the evolution of humanity. It is a time when, for the first time in history, the human being has the ability to destroy itself and all life on earth in attitudes and patterns of behaviour, bolstered by global technocracy, that may be termed 'evil'. Now, voices such as those heard above - the Upanishadic visionaries, Buddhism, Stoicism, Sufism, Kabbalah and Jacob Boehme - need to be heeded, not parroted, but understood historically and tendentionally for our time. 168 Witting (Knowing) E §26 First light In the first soark of becoming Cosmos there was Witting (Knowing), emerging with unfolding Unground, ab Origine. From the Horizon of that utter Non, a world is starting to emerge. Flanked by its partners Wanting (see Ch. 9) and Willing (see Ch. 10), it proceeds to unfold via the level of Infinite Consciousness to the concrete level of Cosmic Consciousness. In the process of mystical experience (e.g. in the case of Buddhist jhàna meditation), consciousness is the last to go. In this chapter, we witness the Origin of its beginnings. This Witting (Knowing) in the open space of Eternity is one of the principles behind Consciousness as we know it in Cosmos. The roaring river of Consciousness down below in the ravine of this Cosmos, in which we are swept along, starts as a thin next to nothing wisp in remote mountains of Eternity, withdrawn from our gaze. That beginning - ‘before’ Infinite Consciousness, and ‘before’ Cosmic Consciousness - is Witting (Knowing). ‘Witting’ and ‘Knowing’, grown from archaic proto-Germanic roots, are here utilised for Archeic purposes. The old verb wit derives from a root (weid), meaning ‘to see’, ‘perceive’, ‘know’, and lies at the basis of ‘vision’. It has cognates in ancient languages such as Greek, Latin and Sanskrit How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Witting (Knowing)’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 169-182, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.08 169 Witting (Knowing) (e.g. in ‘Vedas’). ‘Know’ likewise has an ancient root (can), and is family of the Greek gnosis and the Sanskrit /fana (both meaning intuitive knowledge in spiritual matters). Taken together, these ancient words are suggestive of a darkness prior to the bright light of everyday waking consciousness and the clear knowledge reigning in the world determined by science. The light of human consciousness, science and knowledge originally starts glowing in darkness of Eternity. First, Witting explodes as pre-intentional awareness, like a flash of light aiming at nothing in particular, prior to any subject- object distinction. It is a sheer event, Unground as pent-up Potentiality lighting up, with Witting as prime Principle. Why does Witting happen? To explore that, we would have to ponder the Principle of Wanting: somehow, Eternity needs to do it. This Event is absolute Freedom. So why does Eternity do this? Because it ‘wants’ to - without any coercion from ‘outside’. There is no ‘outside’. Absolute Horizon bursts open as Knowing, as primordial Awareness. Light is perhaps the most arresting symbol for this brightness, illumination, understanding, clarity, transparency, effulgent beauty. Can we ‘see’ it, ‘feel’ it, experience it? No. Yet, something in us responds to the notion of such a Principle, like the anadromous salmon remembering and anticipating shafts of light in a bright pond above. Mathematics and logic and their extension in science with its insatiable curiosity share in this thirst. The mechanistic-materialistic paradigm inhibits present-day humans from accepting this as their ultimate Horizon. In the most profound moments of their consciousness, human minds are lifted in remembrance of Origin and anticipation of Return. In the perspective of the reflections documented on these pages, any boastful claim of achievement is ruled out. What we may have, are merely remembrance, longing and groundless trust. In this first layer of rationality, there is a first shimmer of Witting, right or wrong Knowing, and criteria for deciding between them. The appearance of Eternity as Witting contains a first shimmer of distinction, in the sense of light contrasted with darkness. With that first dawn of Knowing comes the possibility of ignorance (lack) and falsehood (opposition) - of imbalance, of the ‘evil’ counterpart of Knowing. Evil as ignorance and lie has its roots in emerging Unground, becoming Eternity. Why am | projecting human features onto such a big screen? Rather cut the whole thing to pieces with Ockham's razor? And yet, can we live meaningfully without such a context, larger than the immediacies of the senses and minimalistic explanations - provided that such a wider context is cohesive in its own right and compatible with the best of human knowledge? Minimalism, formal correctness and simplicity are to be balanced by criteria such as integrative power, which are to be expected of sense-providing frameworks of understanding. Having said that, of course this model has no factual, scientific status. 170 Chapter 8 The developing first Awareness of Eternity unfolds in at least the following mutually implied forms, One: it unfolds as differentiating. In this chapter it is not ontological differentiation (being different things) that we are interested in, but differentiation as an epistemological category (making distinctions). Witting as primordial distinguishing, emerges. In the human mind, this making of distinction will in due course take shape as the intellectual feats of analysis (taking apart) and discrimination (observing differences). The Latin prefix ‘dis-’ (as in dis-cernere; hence the English verb ‘to discern’) and the equivalent Sanskrit prefix ‘vi-’ (as in vi-/Aana ‘consciousness’), have this exact meaning: knowing implies taking apart. Two: relating as co-ordinating, associating, comprehending, accommodating, organising, synthesising, wholemaking, linking together, harmonising is essential to all sensemaking. The English ‘consciousness’ comes from the Latin con-scire (‘knowing together’), which is the exact equivalent of the Sanskrit sam-jfia (Pali safifia ‘perception’, ‘sense’, ‘ideation’, consciousness"): the con-stitution (‘setting up together’) of mere sensations of physical stimuli to become meaningful ideations. Three: with each of the above, two manifestations arise: the sense of correctness and incorrectness. There is an emerging sense that the differentiating and relating may give rise to truth and error. Four: as an aspect of this process, imagining, anticipating, appears. Cosmos is imagined on Horizon; it unfolds as the ability to imagine and anticipate, explore and create new possibilities - and yes, allow the word ‘design’. Let me add a proviso. ‘Design’ is not understood here as the work of some substantial Intelligence. Eventually, deriving from some inaccessible but suspected Horizon, ‘designing’ emerges to become an organic part of Cosmos itself from its very beginning so many billions of years ago. Cosmos, a manifestation of Unground, is a ‘self-organising’, ‘self- constructing system’ (terms borrowed from Kauffman 2006:153) - understood in an MM framework. Here we have to abstract from our Cosmic category of time (a temporal future). In addition, the possibility of failure is given with Eternity itself. In Cosmos, the possibility becomes reality. From our human point of view, that is unfortunate. Yet, our dissatisfaction is understandable. After all, humans are part of the unfinished experiment, of the trial and the error (and leaning dangerously over towards the error side of the Cosmic and human experiment). We are satisfied neither with the world as it is, nor with ourselves. Understandably. The fact that we suffer, holds the hope and promise for something better. We may, after all, be part of a process of improvement. That is the bodhisattvic perspective. But here we are interested in ignorance and lie as possibilities originating from way back, from long ‘before’ the sinning humans of myth. 171 Witting (Knowing) * Five: there is preserving, continuity, emerging in Eternity. Emerging and development imply retention and conservation. Again, we have to abstract from our Cosmic category of time (a temporal past). Retaining, conserving, is a root of Cosmos. In Cosmos the Eternal possibility of preserving will take concrete shape as the temporal history of the emergence-subsidence of the world, life and humanity, in which nothing is lost. Eventually, Cosmos itself will end and be preserved. The human mind with its faculties is an extension of a Consciousness inherent in Cosmos, and that Consciousness is an extension of Principles emerging from an inaccessible depth. Cosmos-humanity participates in the dimensions of Witting sketched above. Cosmos-humanity differentiates, combines, tries and errs, imagines, remembers. Such phenomena in nature and humanity are Archephanies. The human mind is the tip of a submerged iceberg. It, as well as the powers present in the simplest forms of life, are better understood by recourse to such a dimension than by reducing it to blind matter. That is not to say that the materialist perspective should not be followed through as far as possible. It must. Nevertheless, a perspective is by definition limiting. Such a limiting ‘materialist’ methodological perspective is something else than a totalitarian ‘materialistic’, mechanistic worldview, excluding every other aspect. The materialist perspective is of course valid - up to a point; but is that all? Does it need more: an expanded context, a wider set of connections? Yes, one would think. The perspective explored here postulates that the presence of Consciousness is not the result of blind luck occurring in matter only, but the outcome of a set of Principles emerging from Unground and triggering - ‘in the beginning’ - the emergence of a Cosmos. To develop that intuition is a difficult undertaking, and such a wider context cannot be scientifically proven, and nothing of the kind is claimed here. From Witting comes - eventually, in the downward cascading from Unground - the sentient discriminating, synthesising, projecting, remembering (storing) capacities in nature. In human consciousness all of this has developed to most remarkable proportions - from elaborating causal connections in macro theories, to devising complex experiments, to reconstructing and treasuring the history of the universe, to anticipating what will happen millions of years from now. Also, all of that is part of larger processes of Cosmoses coming and going. Ultimately, the following types of conscious activity, seemingly so discordant in human consciousness, can be imagined as expressions of the same phenomenon, deriving from the same source: * mythico-poetic reason dominating traditional cultures * dualising-objectifying reason dominating modern Western rationality 172 Chapter 8 * mathematical-logical-scientific reason dominating contemporary thinking * meditative, intuitive reason dominating traditional Indian thought * Speculative reason transcending all cultural boundaries * mystical awareness, the knowing unknowing present in all cultures and religions. That source is Witting, hidden in the recesses of Eternity. As the MM contemplator sits quietly, the connection with Witting beneath the cleverness and stupidity of human conscious minds and thoughts, may be discovered. Witting is the generative source, the original creative space from which human minds and thoughts ultimately derive. The human mind and the designing intelligence of Cosmos are restrictions, limitations, of that First Knowing, like drops of liquid condensed from the thinnest vapour. Here mind, consciousness, thoughts and the like are fully acknowledged as empirical phenomena, but not derived from a supernatural Substance - as little as they are from matter. To adapt the words of the 5th century CE Theravada commentator Buddhaghosa Coriginally written with reference to the non-reality of a human substantial 'self): in Eternity Witting (Knowing) ‘is’, but a Thinker (Knower) is not found (Buddhaghosa 1979:587). Human intelligence and the intelligence inherent in the process of nature ultimately arise from Witting arising from the nowhere of Absolute Horizon. E 527 Some cleared and travelled pathways Let us now follow in the steps of a few of the wanderers seeking a vantage point to gaze up towards this altitude. Greek insights L1 Pythagoras In the 6th century BCE a Greek contemporary of the Buddha, Pythagoras (c. 570-480 BCE), born on the island of Samos but consolidating his mission in Croton, southern Italy, was an MM pioneer. He called his enterprise ‘philosophy’, and was perhaps the first person to use that word. This enigmatic hierophantic figure combined mysticism, metaphysics and science in a unique cosmosophical vision that would play a significant role throughout history, perhaps largely as a result of its reception by Plato. It is noteworthy that the main spokesperson in Plato's Timaeus is a Pythagorean (Timaeus). The underlying impulses of this school of thought included intellectual curiosity and dissatisfaction with outdated mythological accounts of physical nature, but - above all - an MM drive. Pythagoras' achievement was to lay the foundations of a holistic 'total science', integrating scientific, metaphysical, religious and ethical principles, and expressing this synthesis in certain spiritual 173 Witting (Knowing) techniques and an entire lifestyle. This kind of construction - cosmosophical, existential and soteriological at the same time - was continued in Plato, but lost its prestige in the wake of the thinking of Aristotle, which introduced a new empiricist perspective that would reach its apex from the 17th century CE onwards. Since then empiricism has largely become positivism. Since the Italian Renaissance, in figures such as Paracelsus and interests such as alchemy, the old passion started to awaken once again. Through the centuries, Pythagoras was both maligned as charlatan and revered as spiritual teacher, depending on the interpreters’ perspectives. In this essay he is respected as a pioneer in the development of a strategy of integration of science and speculative mysticism - a strategy to be redeployed in each new generation as science and culture generally change. The principle of integration stays; the execution must be adapted from cultural situation to cultural situation. ‘MM’ is the name given here to that enduring programme. It appears difficult to reconstruct with historical accuracy what the sage of Samos actually taught as far as his speculative metaphysics was concerned. The quintessence appears to have been the conviction that number is the key to the world. That makes him relevant to the interest in this chapter in primordial Witting. Stripped of the later tradition which assimilated him to Plato, he at least seems to have considered numbers - with its associations of identity, difference (opposition) and harmonious combination (harmonia) - to be principles ‘behind’, operative in, perhaps even coinciding with, existing things (Riedweg 2005 [2002]:23ff., 587). To Pythagoras, number stood for a kind of proto-rationality. It is not to be expected that Pythagoras, as pre-Socratic thinker, would or could have made the fine ontological distinctions that would only make their entry with Plato and Aristotle. To him and his followers, numbers were somehow the original stuff out of which everything was made and of which it consists - probably in the sense that all things are somehow analogous to numbers, modelled on numbers, and that numbers are the first things in nature, the elements of all things. To them numbers were not mere contingent quantities, but prime metaphysical-mystical qualities. Numbers are the substance, the essence of all things. They are symbols of primordial 'roots' lying at the basis of reality and yet part of the tree as a whole. The numbers four (2x2) and nine (3x3) for example, stand for ‘justice’, that is, perfect harmony; and two (2) stands for ambivalence, differentiation, conflict. These and other configurations underlie all of cosmic reality. Music expresses the essence of the world. Musicology and cosmology, aesthetics and physics coincide, with arithmology as the link between them. From the point of view of this investigation, assuming an isomorphism of macro- and microcosm (nature and the human mind including its moral and aesthetic sense), Pythagoras' intuition is understandable. It is not necessary to reconstruct Pythagoras’ cosmology here. Yet it remains relevant to consider the probable function that numbers had for this sage. 174 Chapter 8 Running the risk of anachronistic (mis)representation, | would say that they had the function of operative archetypes. | am not arguing that Pythagoras was ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in any specific respect; only, that he pointed, in his time, in a direction that we may still consider fruitfully today. His pioneering concern with the common foundations of mathematics, music, cosmology and mysticism remains fascinating in a time of disintegration. | trust our Witting in Eternity - drawn to the notion of some primordial dawning of rationality as unity, differentiation and relationship - can be aligned to this ancient pioneering project of a proto-rationality inherent in material nature. In the modern epoch, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was probably the scientist most influenced by Pythagoras. His declared aim was to integrate cosmology and astronomy with MM. His MM was an integration of Christianity and Pythagoreanism. A final solution to the relationship of science and MM is unattainable, and, like any ‘final solution’, unwarranted and violent. Rather, we should keep in mind the fruitful collaboration between the two spheres oftentimes in the past, and patiently keep working towards a constructive, dialectical harmony between these two discourses in future. O Heraclitus Before the substantialising theories of Consciousness that would arrive with Plato and Aristotle, Heraclitus the Obscure of Ephesus (fl. c. 5OO BCE, therefore a younger contemporary of Pythagoras, and probably influenced by him) found the key to unlock the mystery of all in the Logos (‘word’). Yet his key seems to obscure even as it uncovers. Like Pythagoras, this pre-Socratic thinker lies on the further side of distinctions that have become part of our present- day intellectual scene. In spite of that, or perhaps for that very reason, Heraclitus still contains challenging and suggestive perspectives and he has not lost the fascination that he has always held. To him, Logos lies at the root of the world process. We are part of it, part of an eternal cycle. If his Logos were to be looked at as an infinite substance, we might have had to consider it in Part Three. That would be a mistaken understanding. Heraclitus' thinking seems to signal an ontosophical stage or level before that. In his aphorisms, we are confronted not by a system fine-tuned in all directions, but by intuitions and speculations about a primal appearance, half emerging from a darkness. We are witnesses to the first self-revelation of what lies at the basis of all, and which is concealed as much as it is revealed. We encounter a raw originality, both in Heraclitus himself and in what he is alluding to so obscurely in the fragments he wrote down in the last decade of his life. As with all the authors interviewed in this essay, the intention can neither be to interpret him exhaustively, nor to do it historically or systematically (cf. Kahn 1979:93ff.), but merely to pick up signals of correction and support from the 175 Witting (Knowing) point of view of our own specific adventure. Here, | listen to him to catch echoes of Witting. In any event, given the nature of his thinking and the fragmentary nature of his extant cryptic utterances, any overly coherent rendering of his thinking must be suspect. In his vision, the aspects of knowing and being are intertwined. Logos is ‘reason’ as well as ‘reality’. Logos is the universal, eternal, even divine structure of the world. It is ultimate reality. Why is it called Logos? At a first level, presumably because it is sooken about. It is heard (taught by Heraclitus) and may be comprehended at that level. Yet, according to Heraclitus, people do not comprehend. What he teaches, engages the science of his day. By postulating fire as the single source of natural phenomena, he participated in science. However, his basic intuition surpasses science as such. So what is the depth content of his teaching? Logos refers to that too. Now it points to a level deeper than human discourse - to a dimension to which the word ‘word’ somehow applies, to some revelation. The first principle of all is simply Logos. There is no speaker behind it. Heraclitus gives no hint at all of any such thing or person. Nor is Logos itself to be substantialised as some kind of 'self-subsistent' power or principle behind the world. That would only come with his Stoic followers. Yet there is the hint of a kind of proto-‘reason’, proto-‘rationality’, proto-‘intelligence’ - even of universal, eternal ‘law’. His Logos seems to hint at ‘meaning’, but it would not be the same as the clear, consistent rationality of bright Consciousness. He wrote obscurely, because his theme, his Logos, was obscure. Participating in the bright clarity of knowledgeable speaking, Logos ambivalently drops away into an Unknowing. He is at pains to say that men are oblivious to that depth dimension. They wander like sleepwalkers. It takes a Heraclitus to explain it to them, and even then, they do not understand. Did this obscure prophet at the dawn of European MM see and anticipate what we, uncomprehending sleepwalkers of today, have to learn: that we cannot live by science and reason alone? As far as both 'being' and 'knowing' are concerned, his unfolding of Logos is striking. In terms of reality, his world is one of multiplicity and conflict. War begets and rules all. Yet the world is also one and coherent. Heraclitus is the Greek father of the Western model of the dialectical process of unfolding and ambivalent reality. His 'reality' is not a dominating presence; it is dialectically cancelled, absent. Reality is deeply unstable. In terms of the knowing side of Logos, he is equally significant. For, how does Logos as understanding unfold? Again, it occurs through a dialectical process. It is differentiation, contradiction. Yet contradictions are associated, synthesised. Logos is coherence, order, law. That also mattered a great deal to him. Yet his Logos as 'knowing' is not the massive certainty of clear contradiction-free speech, based on irrefutable, 176 Chapter 8 proven facticity. We know - and our knowing is cancelled. Knowledge is deeply unstable. He seems to beckon us towards a dimension prior to clear, firm consciousness. Perhaps our sense of Witting (with the two movements of contradiction and conciliation as its primary expressions at that most primordial level), points in the direction of the ambivalent dawn of consciousness that Heraclitus seems to have seen at the dawn of Greek thought. An emphasis on Logos would recur in Greek MM right through to the Hellenistic period. By then, highly developed epistemologies, including theories of consciousness, dialectics and logic, had developed. Heraclitus' combination of epistemological revelation and ontological appearance would resurface later in Christianity, among others in the first verses of the Gospel of John. Even so, there would be an important difference: in Christianity, there would be an eternal Being behind and in the Word. The great attraction of Heraclitus is that he, intuiting the level of Eternity, evoked a mystery devoid of that assumption. In Stoicism - the true heirs of Heraclitus in antiquity - we find the type of problem interesting us here, at least implied. Going back to Heraclitus, Stoicism (first Zeno) taught that a seminal Logos pervaded and activated the universe as generative principle. However, Stoicism gave a substantialising twist to the idea of Logos, which did not occur in Heraclitus. medieval Sufi insights Li Knowledge (Alim) as a Name of God for Ibn Arabi In the period between 12th century and 13th century thinking of Ibn Arabi, the notion of the Names of the self-manifesting Absolute has great significance (Izutsu 1983:99ff., 141ff., 152-196, 486-493). The Names are, as it were, the channels for the self-articulation, self-externalisation of the Absolute right through to the level of the emergence of the world. Each Name represents to him an attribute, an aspect of the Absolute in its relationship to the emerging world. Causing the world to be, they have an in-between, ambivalent status and function between the Absolute and the world, sharing in both. They are the Absolute, and they are present in every existent thing, causing it to be. As the undifferentiated Absolute, all Names are identical; in the self- differentiation of the Absolute and its becoming world, each Name is distinct from every other Name, and they have different ranks. One of these Names is Knowledge CA/im). Our Eternity in general and Witting in particular, seems to approximate the pattern of Ibn Arabi's thinking here. For to him the primordial polarisation taking place within the Absolute is that of Self-consciousness - that is, the Self- polarisation within the Absolute of knowing subject and known object as a differentiation within the Absolute (Ibn Al'Arabi 1980:27). Because of his adherence to Being as primary category, he seems overall to attach a stronger 177 Witting (Knowing) character of ‘beingness’ to the Names than the orientation of this book permits. In his comparative analysis, Izutsu seems to underestimate this fundamental point of difference between Sufism and Taoism. Being remains the watershed between theistic religions and Vedanta on the one hand, and Buddhism and Taoism on the other hand. No, rather than a vertical watershed with either-or implications, it is more of a horizontal distinction between deep and deeper, Ground and Unground, substance and emptiness, with a porous membrane between them. The Names are part of the second to sixth strata of Ibn Arabi's extraordinarily complex and refined vision of the phenomenisation of the Absolute: e |n the first stratum the Absolute, al-Haqq (in our terms, that would approximate Absoluteness prior to Eternity), is still completely free of any limitation. * The second stratum represents a self-determination of the Absolute within Itself. There is only still 'a faint foreboding of self-articulation. The Absolute, in other words, is potentially articulated’ (Izutsu 1983:153). Self-consciousness arises in the Absolute in all eternity. The Names, at the stage of them all being identical, find themselves here. * |n the third stratum, the potential Self-determinations of the Absolute become actualised. * |n the fourth stratum, the full split into independent Self-determinations takes place. This move is reflected in the relative independence of the Names. Ibn Arabi's notion of what may be called archetypes operates at this level. The archetypes, though they are the essences of the possible things, are non-existent (adam), that is, they do not have a temporally and spatially determined existence yet (Izutsu 1983:160ff.). They are intermediate between the Absolute and the phenomenal world. In our terminology: they might be said to partake in Eternity. e Inhis fifth stratum, the world comes into being potentially in the consciousness of the Absolute. Our Infinitude might overlap with this stratum. * Inthe sixth stratum, the world comes into actual being. In our terminology, Cosmos emerges. He sees the Names as operative even there. Indeed, in our model, Cosmic Consciousness is an extension of the Thought of Infinitude. Throughout, one can sense Ibn Arabi struggling to tread a fine line between an identification of the Ultimate and the world, and a strong division between them. Not only that. His model attempts to reconcile Islamic revelation with Greek philosophy. His ‘Knowledge’ CA/im) as one of the Divine Names and archetypes is therefore double-edged. On the one hand, it is the eternal self-Knowledge of the Absolute; on the other hand, it partakes in human experiential knowledge, through human organs of cognition. Those (in our terms ‘Cosmic’) organs are also nothing else than phenomenal forms of the Absolute. His Knowledge spans and connects the entire range from the arising of Divine self-Knowledge to the cognition of human beings. 178 Chapter 8 Kabbalistic Wisdom (Hokhmah) and Intelligence (Binah) In the speculative Kabbalah, two of the ten Sefirot (Hokhmah and Binah) deal directly with the difficult task of bridging the gap between Nothingness and Cosmos, as far as the aspect of Witting (Knowing) is concerned. Stepping aside from great individual theosophical thinkers such as Azriel ben Menachem (c. 1160-1238 CE), Moses de Leon (c. 1250-1305 CE), Moses Cordovero (1522-1570 CE) and Isaac Luria (1534-1572 CE), even a general overview of speculative Kabbalah should reveal the intellectual beauty and profundity of this school of MM. In addition, the potential fruitfulness of the Kabbalistic approach to reconcile contemporary science with an MM for today must be appreciated. In Kabbalah the theistic assumption of the ancient Hebrew faith is adapted, not completely overthrown. Ein-Sof is God - the God of Abraham, Moses and the prophets - in his most hidden dimension. Insofar as he transcends the capacities of the human mind, he is non-existent CAyin). Kabbalah attempts to reconcile the traditional Hebrew idea of creation and its strong implication of transcendence, with the Neoplatonic idea of emanation with its immanentist implication. The Sefirot bridge the gap between the hidden God and the finite world via four stages or grades: the emanation of the Sefirot as primordial patterns in God himself; the investment of the Sefirot with creative powers; the union of the Sefirot with matter; and then the emerging of the actual world (Epstein 1975 [1959]:232f.). In essence, this is a panentheistic view: the world is potentially contained in God; the potential world becomes actual through the level of the Sefirot. The hidden God as such has no attributes. Yet Ein-Sof, insofar as he is active throughout the universe, does manifest himself as having certain aspects: the ten Sefirot. The second and third Sefirot (Hokhmah and Binah) may be understood as patterns of divine thought at the root of reality. Yet they are essentially ambivalent. From the side of reality, they represent 'God as the immanent thinking power of the universe’ (Epstein 1975 [1959]:236). The first Sefirah, Kether, is the highest one of all, the 'crown' of divinity: the Abyss of 'Nothingness' - that is, of radical Unknowability 'above' Wisdom and Understanding. It initiates and enables the arising of Hokhmah (the ‘Wisdom’ of God) and Binah (his ‘Intelligence’, ‘Understanding’). With these two, the movement towards manifestation becomes more pronounced. Yet it is important to bear in mind that this level as such lies beyond the horizon of human experience. It precedes the division between the subject and the object of consciousness (Scholem 1955 [1941]:220). Hokhmah represents the point between the 'Nothingness' of Kether and the created world. It hovers between Nothingness and reality as the primordial, first revelation. It is the first flash of cognition, before cognition becomes 179 Witting (Knowing) limited in any way. Mythologically, it is seen as male. This Wisdom of God is also referred to as mystical seed, sown into creation: still undeveloped and undifferentiated, but nevertheless containing the essence of all that exists. At this stage, the world exists in God’s thoughts, so to speak. Binah stands for the unfolding of Hokhmah as differentiation in the divine intellect, but still preceding created reality. In Binah God appears as the eternal subject. Seen as female, it is compared to a vessel, receiving, and yet also giving birth (to the next triad, the emotions), providing depth and breadth to Wisdom. In this remarkable speculative construction the seed for differentiation and the other movements of Cosmic Consciousness has been sown, and has started to sprout - still concealed underground in the soil of ‘hidden God’. Our model of the Witting of Eternity is compatible in spirit and tendention with the Kabbalistic vision. insights from within modern physics O Albert Einstein Einstein did not work out a systematic MM. As far as 'God' is concerned, his overall position was a vague veneration for a mysterious, inexplicable force behind nature. Overall, his attitude was a combination of deism and agnosticism. Yet, if any one thing stood out for him in his study of nature, it was a sense of awe before some transcendent order and orderliness manifest in the universe. An incomprehensible universe somehow reveals and presupposes some superior lawful rationality. On occasion he would use words such as 'God', 'Spirit' and so on, but the deepest layer of his view always remained a fascination with a transcendent harmony as such, operative in the cosmos. Hearing the music of the spheres and loving his violin were to him related passions. In his heart of hearts, he was a modern-day Pythagoras, who likewise saw music, mathematics and science as related to some transcendent order as the essence of things. Reach back as far as possible into Einstein's mind, and one finds a sense of harmony as the first and deepest root of all, cosmos as well as God. That was his final ultimate, his first principle, behind which there is no going. O David Bohm In the second half of the 20th century, David Bohm (1917-1992) wrote extensively on what he termed the 'implicate' and 'explicate' orders (Bohm 2003). He was not only a physicist (working in the interface between relativity theory and quantum theory), but also a philosopher with an interest in the kind of question fascinating us here. No modern scientist with equally impeccable scientific credentials ventured more deeply into MM. What is more, he himself did not present such ideas as irreconcilable with responsible mainline science (although the physicist establishment did), but as rationally justifiable 180 Chapter 8 extensions and implications of that science. However, he rejected the mechanistic model of the physical world. In his system, the ground of all things of experience is a ‘holomovement’, an ongoing cyclical process, which expresses itself in concrete reality. All of reality - matter, life and consciousness - flows from two basic, reciprocal mechanisms driving the holomovement, namely ‘unfoldment’ and ‘enfoldment’. A covert, implicit order unfolds to become an overt, explicit order, which then enfolds back into the implicit state. Of these two the implicate order is the primary actuality; the explicate order, the secondary one. At the root of all, in his vision, is a preconscious movement that continually recedes ever further, constantly escaping our human thought. Every implicate order recedes into a greater one. Implicate order becomes super-implicate order becomes super-super-implicate order, behind traditional, limiting, personalising concepts of ‘God’ (Bohm 2003:119f., 146f.). Bohm approximates the notion of Absoluteness. Somehow, he is prepared to attribute a notion such as ‘super-intelligence’ to that depth dimension. So far, Bohm seems to endorse the approach explored on these pages. One problem must be noted (as pointed out by Howard Bloom) (Bloom 2012:441ff.). To explain his notions of the implicate and explicate orders, Bohm made use of his glycerine experiment, which needs not be set out here. The important point is that his reverse of the explicate to the implicate in this experiment was a return to what had been there all the time; it was not the creation of something new at all. Here’s the rub: Should Bohm’s experiment be interpreted as a failed, but all the same brave and useful, analogy for Cosmos actually emerging de novo from Eternity, from Absolute Horizon? Alternatively, did he mean to say that all was always there, albeit implicitly, from all eternity? Undoubtedly, here we are also up against the limits of language, of all conceptual thought. One wants to say only the minimum. Push it 1 mm too far and you end up in substantialist talk about Absoluteness. | would want to give Bohm the benefit of the doubt. Tendentionally, he was on his way to the silence of Absolute Horizon, but he probably stopped too soon, or went too far, which boils down to the same thing. Speculate about Eternity to your heart's delight, but do not give content to Absolute Horizon; anyway, you cannot do it. Absolute Horizon problematises Bohm's analogy more than he seems to have been aware of. How does the factor 'super-super-intelligence', according to Bohm, manifest itself in the process of 'unfoldment' to become consciousness? How is the thinking of consciousness foreshadowed in the depth of the implicate order? That is the question here. Indeed, four of the five features mentioned above in 826 somehow appear in so many words in his writing about the level of implicate order becoming explicate. Even if they are not developed strongly in the particular work of his that | am reading here, they are touched on as implied root categories in his endeavour to explain the most fundamental essence of all. At the level of the implicate order they anticipate the structure, function 181 Witting (Knowing) and activity of explicit human consciousness. They are hidden in the vast preconscious background of ordinary, explicit consciousness. Firstly, in Bohm’s thinking, the category of wholeness, order (not the mechanistic order of scientistic dogma, but a transcendent implicate order) is the root of all. Like music, the depths of the implicate dimension of the holomovement has meaning, which derives from a subtle coherence right up there: the contrasting coherence of the implicate and explicate orders. In ways that are at present only vaguely discernible there are /aws, a ‘holonomy’ (the law of the whole’), beyond the reach of quantum theory. In Bohm's view new wholes may continually be discovered - the assumption of lawful togetherness remaining a basic category. The idea of implicate implies a certain togetherness of at least two factors, as does Bohm’s postulate of the togetherness (wholeness) of explication and implication. Secondly, in likewise manner, ‘certain similar basic principles of distinction will prevail in the holomovement’ (Bohm 2003:89). The very notion of ‘explication’ in itself, at the most rarified level conceivable, contains the principle of distinction. What is more, the differentiation between the implicate and explicate orders implies distinction, even separation (separability) at the most primordial level of becoming. Thirdly, at the level of the implicate order Bohm assumes ‘an approximate kind of recurrence, stability (Bohm 2003:94). It connects the notions of order and difference. Music serves him as an analogy: an element of 'reverberation' is necessary for music with its sense of continuity to occur. This element of co-presence prevents mere fragmentation of the distinct. This element is assumed to be at the bottom of the nature of reality, namely that it is movement. This set of ideas can be assimilated into the category of 'preserving' (826). Fourthly, Bohm distinguishes an element of projection, creativity, active in the unfolding in the implicate order (Bohm 2003:119). Incidentally, he finds the current model of evolution in biology to be too mechanistic. In Bohm’s thinking, Eternity was not distinguished as a distinct level or grade in the unfolding of his implicate order ‘forwards’ towards becoming explicate order. Nor did he see his implicate order as receding ‘backwards’, disappearing on 182 Absolute Horizon. Chapter 9 Wanting E 528 The possibility of passibility Need, want: an overtone of human existence as a whole and of all living and non-living nature. In Cosmic existence, it shows various shades: objective lack, that is, a deficiency without full awareness of it on the side of that which lacks - the plant requires, wants, needs, water in order to survive but does not fully realise that it does not have it objective drive or compulsion towards something - the plant wants water, in the sense that it will do everything in its power to bore down to water, again without being fully aware of it subjectively lack, subjectively felt, with overtones of distress and suffering - the victims of the earthquake desperately want food and water to survive; they do not have it but their bodies require it, and they know it compulsion, subjectively felt, towards attaining something - the victims are deprived of food and water, and they will do whatever they can to obtain it, even if helplessly crying for help is their only recourse desire or wish, subjectively felt, without the implication of objective deficiency - the billionaire wants another limousine desire or wish, subjectively felt, and not for one's own benefit but for the benefit of an other - the mother wants her child to live, and gladly sacrifices her own life for it. How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Wanting’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 183-200, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi. org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.09 183 Wanting We are here up against a strange peculiarity: it seems impossible to distinguish nature as it ‘really’ is, from our human take on it, that is, from our projections onto it. The categories of our thinking and our words describing nature mould the things of nature to fit the shapes of our minds, thinking patterns and words. We see and talk about nature anthropomorphically. Even hard-nosed scientists, firm and definitive materialists do that: Thus, one of the ‘primary desires’ of any living thing is the desire for food; another ‘primary desire’ is to avoid becoming food. Molecules have ‘needs’; a plant is ‘striving upward’ (Dennett 1996:37, 58, 61). In nature there is ‘pitiless indifference’; nature is not only witless, but also ‘callous’ and ‘heartless’ and does not care (Dawkins 1995:131ff.). In such scientific writings, are such descriptions, such projections, just unintended, unconscious slips of the finger on the keyboard; shorthand, a manner of speaking; innocuous metaphors; rhetorical tricks to make us sit up; serious category mistakes; or intended to capture the ‘real’ nature of nature? They are probably a mixture of these. We seem to have a few strategic choices: seriously to root out all anthropomorphic thought and speech about nature; or pooh-pooh it, and use it tongue in cheek as means to enlighten the less educated. Conversely, we could accept it as an inescapable and useful formative element in our dealings with nature. If we adopt the third strategy, we have another choice: either restrict our attention to observable nature, or explore - and speak anthropomorphically about - ‘Nature’ that is not observable, but somehow seems to be implied by ‘nature’. These reflections have adopted the latter course. We may speak thus, but self-critically so, about nature and Nature. We cannot avoid it, but we can see through what we are doing when we are doing it. In addition, the manner and content of our anthropomorphisms can be probed and plumbed to a remarkable degree. The fingerprints of their human makers can be lifted from all gods. This brings us back to Wanting as a postulated dimension of Eternity. In the orientation that we are wanting, seeking here, may we think that Wanting is a Principle governing Cosmos, deriving from eternity beyond? Yes. Longing, passion, love and suffering have Eternal roots, becoming deep functions in Cosmos as a whole. Is it not something similar to what Paul had in mind when he referred to ‘the universe [waiting] with eager expectation’ (Rm 8:19)? Of course, this is said from within our human, all too human, feelings, hopes and fears, love and suffering. It is either that, or silence. Silence before Ultimacy is good. In the beginning was the Word, says John; and before the Word? one may ask. Silence. The Buddha, to mention one, adopted it; and Jesus expired in silence. Speech also has its place as a signpost to silence. Some of the greatest followers of the Buddha and Jesus spoke eloquently, systematically and at length for the sake of serving silence. Do not confuse such speech with, or collapse it into, scientific argument. In this chapter we do not seek verification or falsification within the methodological confines of empirical science: Wanting may be thought of as 184 Chapter 9 ending on Absolute Horizon and arising on Absolute Horizon. This stance is not taken on the basis of asymptotic parallelism, but based on respecting the distinctiveness inherent in the competencies of the spheres of science and MM (see S1, §3 and 813). For the reasons explained earlier, the key words of this chapter are used in their gerund forms (C‘Wanting’, 'Needing), to forestall a tendency to substantialise them. The words do not refer to a reality, a structure or a being. They hint at a primordial function arising from Horizon, in a Wanting, Needing to become manifest. This Wanting arises at the level of Eternity. It is a possibility right through from Eternity to Cosmos, a living being, of which humankind is a small cell. Absoluteness is beyond good and evil. Yet, in the emergence of Wanting in Eternity, the possibility of good and evil arises. Wanting is the Principle not only of an emotional force, but also of a moral force inherent in Cosmos. This aspect becomes abundantly apparent in humankind. Yet somehow, something like the love of sub-human creatures for their kind and even occasionally across species derives not only from blind biological drives such as hunger and procreation, but also from some Principle inherent in the Nature of things. As a kind of being, humanity is a member of the community of Cosmos, in which the ‘rest’ of Cosmos is not merely an object on which humanity bestows its sentiments. Likewise, the very idea of 'Wanting' implies shortcoming, in that sense 'evil' (malum). Concretised in Cosmos, Wanting can also take wrong turns, be perverted, and in that sense be 'evil'. It can become 'evil' in the sense of being intent on the aggrandisement of self at all costs, involving suffering for oneself or others, as human history as well as evolution demonstrates. Avoid pitting agape (understood as ‘giving love’) against eros (understood as ‘wanting love’) as two irreconcilable emotive attitudes. Both giving and seeking arise from the same Principle, from Wanting. Wanting occurs in the company of Witting, Willing, Acting and Interacting (see Ch. 10 and further). Morality as a human phenomenon has an emotional, attitudinal aspect, and that aspect is inextricably connected to cognitive and practical dimensions. Morality is not about feelings and attitudes only; at its higher levels, it is also about the cognitive understanding of historical norms and situations, and of acting ‘response-ably’ and effectively in those situations. Nevertheless, centrally, morality does have an emotional, attitudinal aspect. That this aspect derives, ultimately, from Eternal Wanting is our present concern. At the level of emerging Eternity, Wanting does not occur in isolation, but as interconnected with all the other Principles that will be discussed. A weakness in the criticisms of ‘design’ in the coming into being of the world, put forward by materialists such as Dawkins and Dennett, is that they tend to reduce any conceivable more-than-material preconditions for the existence of the world (which they do not accept, to begin with) to an 185 Wanting intellectual aspect (cf. Barham 2004:210-226). In passing, | am not siding here with the ‘design’ philosophers and theologians, as little as | am siding with the materialists. The point here is merely that there is more at stake than the possible workings or lack of intelligence in nature. The non-material preconditions (but always occurring together with material conditions) of Cosmos also include the Principle of Wanting with all its implications of pathos, emotion, affect, feeling, valuing and suffering, such as: * positive (constructive) desire and negative (destructive) desire * pain and pleasure * anxiety and confidence * wrath and forgiveness * love, hatred and fear * compassion and sympathy * coldness and callousness * detachment and involvement * blissfulness and happiness * anguish and suffering * indifference and vulnerability * cruelty, severity and mercy * self-directedness and other-directedness * requiring and giving * yearning and satisfaction * hopefulness and despair * bias and impartiality. It is inevitable that religious, philosophical and MM systems should colour the world of humans in emotive tints. For example, the key emotive tone of Taoism is non-preferential impartiality; of Christianity, self-sacrificing love; of Islam, sovereign mercy. In the highly personal secular worldview of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) atheism blends with rationalism and neo-Stoicism to produce a life-orientation of detachment, but not cold indifference; in the atheistic materialism of Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) optimistic messianism mixes with an acceptance of the inevitability of disillusionment; in Emil Cioran (1911-1995) tortured Gnostic pessimism takes on a passionate, even joyful timbre. It is an interesting field, but not our present concern. Our present concern is: where does emotivity in the broadest sense - in whatever hue or flavour and wherever it occurs - ultimately come from? The perspective of this chapter is that all forms of pathos, love, and so on, may be postulated ultimately to derive from a common root or Principle, stirring in some inaccessible Depth. That is, regardless of how divergent and opposing they may occur at the human level, in cosmos generally and at the divine level (in the many religious projections of humanity). The unrest, the feeling, the Wanting, as yet inarticulate, is primordial. 186 Chapter 9 At the level of concrete cosmos, Wanting and all its ramifications occur in conjunction with Witting, Willing and Being with all their ramifications. This will be picked up in more detail later. | shall also argue that at the level of all the anthropomorphic gods of humanity (loving, jealousy andsoon), the connectedness of divine mercy and love with divine intellect and divine being (including divine embodiment) is a criterion for the relative, functional meaningfulness of such god talk. Note: ‘relative, functional meaningfulness’, not ‘absolute truth’. For at the level of the god talk of Cosmic beings (humans), there is no such thing as absolute truth, conforming to reality. If the criterion of truth as provable correspondence to some reality is applied, all anthropomorphic god concepts, inescapably operating within the confines of Cosmos, are untrue. Nevertheless, that does not render them useless. There were better and worse god constructions on the way of human development. Some carry the seeds of further ennoblement and self- transcendence to Absoluteness, and deserve our respect. Others are capped with a hard ceiling, enclosing the spectators of the paintings against the ceiling in a closed space, and shutting them off from the clear sky above, and are better discarded along the road of the development of MM. At the level of Infinitude, the question (Christian, but not only Christian) of the passibility of God (his ability to suffer: from the Latin pati, 'to suffer) - also divine love, mercy, and so on as divine attributes - are meaningful, although not corresponding to fact, and there are better and worse projections. Here, at the level of Eternity, we are transfixed by a dimension prior to religion-specific God and theology and cosmos - that is, by the question of the very possibility of passibility in the most generic sense imaginable. That possibility of passibility is the Principle underlying the entire register of ‘feeling’ and ‘emotions’ in cosmos and human, starting to stir in the Eternity of Wanting Unground. This kind of explanation does not compete with or replace scientific explanations of the origin and development of feeling etcetera, for example as presented by evolutionary biological science (along Darwinian lines), or psychological developmental science (say, along the lines of Piaget). It ‘wants’ to complement science. A contemporary example of such integration of scientific understanding of feeling and understanding the world of feeling as emerging from a deeper order, was suggested by David Bohm (2003:39ff., 103ff., 203ff., 218ff., 253ff.). E 529 Buoys in unchartible waters | shall now further explore the possibility that, as far as the factor ‘emotions’ is concerned, the alternatives of scientism and traditional theism (including its ad hoc adaptations) do not exhaust the range of possibilities open to those interested in ultimacy. The format of this already large compendium does not allow lengthy in-depth discussions with a great number of encouraging and challenging perspectives, so | restrict myself to a few particularly interesting ones. 187 Wanting Tanha, dukkha and karuna in Early and Mahayana Buddhism In the vocabulary of the Buddha of early Buddhism the affect tanhà (‘desire’) looms large as a pivotal emotion in the human psyche and human existence in its state of being unenlightened. It is the emotional overtone of human life, devoid of understanding of the ultimate insubstantiality of all things; humans ‘desire’ an optical illusion. This craving is the chief cause of the ills of life. By ignorantly assuming that one has an eternal, substantial essence, one desires to maximise that quality. It occurs mostly in isolation from and at the cost of other forms of life, and of one's true spiritual destiny. Even the unenlightened desire for non-existence is covered by this negative cloud. This self-centered pursuit of a wrongly understood happiness is driven by ignorance (moha) of the true nature of things, and associated with negative emotions such as hatred (dosa) and unhappiness (dukkha). With his antispeculative stance the Buddha does not conceptualise ultimate insubstantiality (sufifiatà: Emptiness, our Absoluteness) as becoming cosmos, and in the process somehow - analogous to human emotional life - showing signs of desire (Wanting) in any sense. The Buddha's rigorous intellectual asceticism and his psychological focus on human existence indeed leaves little space for such a move. Buddhism provides the seekers of liberation with ways and means to rid themselves of this kind of desire. This is achieved neither by repressing it nor by giving it full rein or by controlling it, but by becoming liberated from it. This liberation entails discovering its dynamics and, in the final analysis, by understanding its nature and origin. Inthe Buddhist account of the enlightenment of Siddattha Gotama, under the bodhi tree, to become the Buddha, he demonstrated freedom of desire and hatred, and fullness of compassionate love. This liberation grew organically from the insight into the ultimate non- substantiality of things. In Mahayana, an additional emphasis emerges, not replacing but rather complementing the above one. Metaphysical Emptiness, Buddha Nature as metaphysical Selflessness (our ‘Absoluteness’), assumes the quality of compassion (karuna). Karunà transcends the psychological, human dimension (addressed by the Buddha of early Buddhism); it now emerges from the ultimate depth of the universe itself. In Mahayana Buddhism, particularly at the level of popular religion, this intuition is decked out in the richest metaphorical, mythological garb. This places the concept ‘Bodhisattva’ (like ‘Buddha’) in the dimensions of our 'Infinitude' (Part Three) and our 'Cosmos' (Part Four). Yet, it seems inviting to interpret its tendention in terms of our ‘Eternity’: Emptiness is Wanting Cosmic happiness. This primordial drive becomes concrete, manifest, unfolded, in the mythopoetic figures of Bodhisattvas and Buddhas. The great compassion derives from the essential Nature of all things, from Buddha Nature, and takes 188 Chapter 9 on a cosmic quality. Now Emptiness Itself becomes the subject of Wanting: a need, a passion, for universal Cosmic well-being and happiness. In the Bodhisattva this is indeed longing, but it is not ignorant, selfish tanhà. For example, in a mythological context, the celestial Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, perfect illustration of the great truth of Emptiness-becoming-Compassion, is filled with profound compassion and the desire for the liberation of beings. That great truth is, in our term, Wanting. The Bodhisattvic vow to seek the happiness of All, arises from a force generated from the innermost essence of Nature Itself: Emptiness. This chapter as a whole is a reformulation of the ancient Buddhist metaphysical-mystical insight. Unground, with Absoluteness at its heart, becomes a universal Principle of Wanting. Cosmos - physical nature, the evolution of life, consciousness - can, in the final analysis, be understood in such a context. eros and apatheia in Plato and Plotinus An excellent candidate from the first centuries of Hellenic reflection on an MM background of human emotions, integrated with the science of the time, would have been Stoicism with its theory of impulse (horme) and emotion or passion (pathos) (Brennan 2003:257-294). However, | now turn to Plato, the most influential figure in Western MM. Does he help us to understand human emotivity as somehow tied in with a structural feature of cosmos itself, ultimately arising from a dimension beyond cosmos? L1 Plato An obvious place to start would be Plato's ideas concerning eros (erotic desire, love). In his dialogues Symposium, Lysis, and Phaedrus, the characters of Plato famously discuss eros from various perspectives, without achieving finality, and without Plato unequivocally expressing his own view on the matter. The reader is invited into an open process of dialectical thinking, and interpreters can only construe a probability of what Plato's position might have been. Therefore, it is no wonder that his followers in later generations picked up various threads to spin out. Nowhere does Plato pronounce all-knowing proclamations. The speeches of his characters are tentative, criss-crossing probes of light into a night sky. At the very least the contributions of the various interlocutors, deftly used by Plato in his dialogues, seem to peak in the notion that eros is essentially the desire for the vision of the Beautiful (the Good) in the most general and sublime sense. In Western thought, his complex treatment of eros, most significant in its own right, was destined to play an influential role in Christianity. Nevertheless, contrary to the anti-erotic accent that crept into that religion, Plato does not 189 Wanting reject or despise eros at the physical level, but honours it as a stage ona graded continuum (as was also the case in early Buddhism, as illustrated by the Dhammapada). Between Plato’s Ideas on the one hand and humankind with their eros on the other, there is no dualistic split, but a continuous scale of perfection, in which eros is the driving force upwards. His is an end-directed Cteleological', ‘final’) structure. It is top-down (drawing, participated in) and bottom-upwards (striving, participating in) at the same time. Beautiful things are steps only, the final destination of which is the contemplation of the Idea (Form) of absolute Beauty. Is there, ultimately, a real ontological link between the Ideal world of the Forms and the empirical world? Plato probably does not allow for more than participation as contemplation. Plato’s eros is not to be reduced to selfish, acquisitive love, as has happened in some modern renderings of Plato (cf. Nygren 1957; Osborne 1994:86ff.; Rist 1964). In addition, in Plato, unlike early Buddhism, there is a certain rightness and nobility albeit flawed and incomplete in eros. It is halfway between utter lack and incomprehension at the bottom extreme, and fulfilment and final understanding at the top. As is the case with tanhà in early Buddhism in its developmental model from immature (foolish) to mature (wise), Plato’s eros can be gradually ennobled, but in a model more positive towards desire than was the case in early Buddhism. Plato ties physical eros essentially to philosophia Clove of wisdom’). At its pinnacle, sexual desire for the desirable, the physically beautiful, becomes meta-sexual - philosophical - desire: love of wisdom, culminating in the gazing upon true beauty, that is, upon the ideal form of the Beautiful as such, which is the same as the ‘good’ as such. Eros is the guide leading from a deficiency of beauty and truth in the creature to the fulfilment of the philosophic vision of beauty, on one continuum of experience. Implicitly all human desire, however imperfect and crooked, is love for perfect Wisdom and the Forms of Beauty and Goodness. So far, our connection of Witting and Wanting seems to find some warmth in the presence of this great figure. His connection of physical eros and philosophy (in the sense of sophia-phily, see Ch. 1) also extends a measure of encouragement. Yet, now we hit a snag. In what has been attempted so far, Wanting at the level of cosmos in all its forms participates in and expresses the Wanting of Arche. Cosmic and human ‘wanting’ - not only physical, but also metaphysical - is connected to Wanting becoming manifest from Unground. | understand ‘wanting’ of life (food, sex, procreation and so on) as well as ‘wanting’ of ultimate insight (original ‘sophia-phily’: MM) to ultimately derive from Eternal Wanting. Might Plato suggest something akin to that? It does not seem so. To Plato eros is one-way traffic: up, from the physical to the Ideal. The word is not used for the way down. To think of the divine as in any sense Wanting anything, would have been un-Greek. Eros, mythologically personified, is not a god, but 190 Chapter 9 a daemon (a kind of semi-divine being, which includes the rational part of the human soul), intermediate between gods and men. The gods are perfectly happy and beautiful and in possession of good and beautiful things. It must be added that by ‘gods’ Plato did not mean the Olympian gods with their flaws - of them he was highly critical - but a certain level of derived being, lower than the Forms but higher than humans. At what is human and daemonic eros ultimately directed? At the level of demythologised speech there is the transcendent realm of the ideas, including Beauty, which is the good. The Ideas are not just concepts in human heads, but constitute Ultimate Reality itself. They are the philosophical sublimations of the gods, and the eternal archetypes of empirical reality, not limited by time, place and observer. In his Parmenides he refers to ‘the One’ (to En) as infinite, formless, beyond space and time, non-being, nameless, unknowable and indescribable. That is our Infinitude at its most sublime. Is there any level somehow comparable to our Eternity or to empty, non-subtantial Unground? No, it appears. Plato’s eros is good, relatively so - but it refers exclusively to the ascent from the world of humans and daemons to the Idea of Beauty or Goodness, not to the descent. Plato does not linger on the dimensions termed ‘Absoluteness’ and ‘Eternity’ in the ruminations of our essay, let alone on Wanting at such a level. The upper level of his building of being is occupied by the Ideas (Forms) such as Beauty and Goodness, with Being mixed in somewhat unclearly (there seems to be a remarkable degree of inconsistency in his construction) (Rist 1964:16ff.). Nevertheless, there can hardly be any doubt that the Ideas constitute the ultimate, most abstract level with which Plato cares to concern himself. Perfect Being, Truth and Beauty are the apex of all in Platonic thinking. At which level(s) does Plato’s eros lie? At the level of our ‘Cosmos’. Yet there seems to be at least a hint in Plato that the gods (not the Ideas) are Wanting: they (e.g. the demiurg in the Timaeus) are wanting for creation to take place. The divine level is a sohere of happiness. They do not need anything for themselves. But it may be legitimately thought that in Plato his gods do appear to have the quality of love (even if the word eros is not used for them) (Rist 1964:30ff.). They want a world to be. They give creatively. The Ideas of the Ideal World are perfect as they are. They are not wanting. If there is no movement from Ideas to Cosmos (gods, daemons and humans), presupposing some motivating movement within the realm of the ideas themselves - then surely something essential would be left unexplained in Plato’s model? There seems to be a lacuna between the Ideas and the world; and no matter how desperately the world may ‘love’ the Ideas, the gap remains. 191 Wanting O Plotinus Five centuries after Plato and standing in the Platonic tradition, Plotinus (c. 204-270 CE), who was truly a mystic thinker of the highest order with a rich inner spiritual life, postulated two, three or perhaps four levels of being. He was a formidable synthetic thinker, forging the major systems in the tradition before him into a single system, not by simply adding them up in an eclectic type of unity, but by interpreting them tendentionally, creatively. A problem with interpretation is whether the One at the top and Matter at the bottom of Plotinus’ system are to be interpreted as levels of ‘being’. In any event, Plotinus’ view of top and bottom is one of strictly non-reciprocal dependence of the lower on the higher. In this respect, the model sought in this essay is different in that it senses a reciprocal relationship between Absoluteness and Cosmos: Cosmos feeds back into Absoluteness. First for Plotinus there is to En (‘the One’). This coincides with his notion of divinity (‘God’). The One/God refers to a dimension way beyond the anthropomorphic gods of mythological thought. Plotinus pushes the notion of ‘God’ further into transcendence than had been the case with Plato. The One/ God constitutes the uppermost stratosphere of his thinking (Plotinus 1984): Generative of all, The Unity is none of all; neither thing nor quantity nor quality nor intellect nor soul; not in motion, not at rest, not in place, not in time: it is the self-defined, unique in form or, better, formless, existing before Form was, or Movement or Rest, all of which are attachments of being and make Being the manifold it is (VI.9.3). (p. 701) He assimilates Plato’s Ideas (Forms) into that concept - they exist in the One. On the other hand, he makes his ‘God’ - the One - in a sense, more accessible to humans: it is not a matter of distant contemplation only (as had been the case with Plato’s ideas); humans can become one with It. The world originates in the One, and shares in the One. From the One, two (or three) further levels of being cascade downwards successively. Yet note that ultimately his is not a developmental model but a static hierarchical one of participation, amounting to a form of realism inherited from Plato and setting the parameters for most of what would follow in idealistic thinking. The mystic becoming one with the One is probably more of an epistemological than an ontological ‘realisation’. First, there is the duality in unity of On (Being) and Nous Cintelligence’, ‘mind’). The One as such transcends Being and intelligence. From On-Nous proceeds Psyche (‘Soul’), covering both individual human souls and nature. At the bottom - teetering on the brink of the whole system (Plotinus is hard to pin down) - there ‘is’ Hy/e (Matter), but strictly speaking, it ‘is’ not. Matter is the point of exhaustion of the being and goodness of the One. It is important to note that although Plato is Plotinus’ chief inspiration, Plato probably took the various aspects and levels of being as continuous emanations of the Supreme, without seeing them as discrete levels to the extent that Plotinus would do. 192 Chapter 9 The system of Plotinus, which has played such an important role in Western MM and which may have had historical connections with Upanishadic thinking, is of great significance for meditations such as ours. Might Plotinus’ to En point in the same direction as our Absoluteness (Unground), and might it be Wanting in any sense? In addition, what about his matter (Hy/e)? Might our ‘Wanting’ drift into the orbits of Plotinus’ to En and Hyle? Let me start at the bottom of his pyramid, with Matter (O’Brien 1996:171ff., 117ff.; Oosthuizen 1974:124ff.; Pistorius 1952). Plotinus indeed entertains the notion of absolute Lack. Although ultimately deriving from the One, Matter is attenuated to a virtual state of non-being, absolute deficiency, essential poverty, at most a bare aspiration towards existence. In the words of Plotinus (1992): There must, then, be some Undetermination-Absolute (apeiron kath’ auto), some Absolute Formlessness [...] whose place is below all the patterns, forms, shapes, measurements, and limits [...] (1.8.3). [... and it js...] the Authentic Essence of Evil [...] Primal Evil, Evil Absolute (kakon proton kai kath’ auto kakon) (1.8.3). (p. 78) It is mere indetermination, 'absolutely indefinite and undefined [...] actually nothing, [yet] potentially everything' (Pistorius 1952:120). 'Negation- Absolute’, ‘Eternal Nothing’, ‘it can never become anything’; yet is ‘the basis and mother of all becoming’ (Pistorius 1952:119). It is the absence, the opposite, of God, of the Good; yet it is also ‘the primal condition [...] a cosmic necessity' (Pistorius 1952:129). Then it is also Evil. These seeming inconsistencies indicate difficulties inherent in Plotinus' thinking. It appears that he entertains a number of ideas, not quite harmonised in his theory of matter. It is an indefinite kind of substratum of all; a level of being; and as utter Lack, it is the principle of evil. In our present context, the third of these is the most interesting. Let us look at the opposite, uppermost end of his scale of being: The One. The One/God/the Good (Plotinus 1992): [/]s that on which all else depends, towards which all Existences aspire as to their source and their need, while Itself is without need, sufficient to Itself, aspiring to no other, the measure and Term of all, giving out from itself the Intellectual-Principle and Existence and Soul and Life and all Intellective-Act (1.8.2). (p. 76) The drift is clear: his utterly Beyond is the Source of All. It is also the teleological End of All, and the Attractor to that End. This teleology is Platonic. All things are wanting, and desire the great return. He sees a stronger ontological continuity than Plato had done between the Good and the world, via the intermediaries of Mind and Soul. Yet, like Plato, he sees the Good Itself as lacking nothing. It is without any need' (anendes). In our term: It is not Wanting in any sense. Again, the thinking of Plotinus reveals unharmonised trends. He did not quite succeed in harmonising the divergent influences of Plato, Aristotle, 193 Wanting Pythagoreanism and Stoicism to which he was indebted (Armstrong 1967 [1940]). Perhaps, after all, its closest ally was Aristotle’s view of the remote, completely transcendent unmoved mover. The One, in a sense beyond being (Dunham et al. 2011:26ff.), also seems to be a first, super Being, an Infinite Subject, including all existences. So far, it could correspond with what | will attempt to understand in Part Three (Infinitude). His notion of the One also suggests an Origin of Being absolutely transcending (epekeina) Being: radically unspecific, nameless, unknowable, indescribable, inexpressible Carreton), formless, beyond time and space, beyond limit. This seems to point towards Absoluteness and Eternity - paradoxically, in the same direction as the very opposite of his scale (matter). The question is whether Plotinus's ‘One’ should be interpreted as a substance (hypostasis) or not. Emphasise its positivity, and it becomes a hypostasis, staying in line with Aristotle's notion of ‘substance’, to which Aristotle added nine ‘accidents’ (including quantity, quality, time and location). Emphasise its negativity, and it tends towards being denuded of substantiality. His One and his None have the same implication: absolute transcendence; but how far did he push it? Understood as beyond Being, utterly devoid of any content or reference, his 'One' could approximate Buddhist Emptiness. That, | understand tendentionally, is the final inclination of his thinking. The question is how consistent he was in following through in that direction. Plotinus MM would become the basis of the 'negative theology' of an important strand in later Jewish, Christian and Muslim mysticism. It does not seem to be as utterly empty as the Buddhist notion of Emptiness (our Absoluteness): after all, an experienceable union with it is possible for the upward-striving human being. Although Plotinus does not crudely anthropomorphise divinity, he does at times (quasi-)personalise this supreme hypostasis (e.g. he refers to it as 'Father', with certain personal, emotional and religious overtones) (Rist 1964:71ff.). The human eros culminates in mystical union with the One. This goes considerably further than Plato was prepared to go. In this respect Plotinus' notion of ‘union’ seems to position it closer to the dimension of 'Infinitude' (Part Three) than to ‘Eternity’: one cannot experience 'Eternity'; there can be no felt unio mystica with it. Nevertheless, 'Infinitude' can be accessed in mystical experience. In our present context the question is: is the One Wanting? For Plotinus, pathos, suffering and so on characterise lower forms of existence. To divine nature he ascribes impassivity, impassibility (apatheia). Desire is innate in the material, mortal world. That world is pathetic: full of emotion and desire - and, taken by itself, miserably inadequate. Ultimately deriving from the divine state with its divine apathe/a, it desires to return to that state of non-desiring. Thus far (111.5), Plotinus’ view of eros follows Plato closely. Yet, Plotinus can speak of The One as eros: love - even Self-loving (VI.8.15), and in effect loving creatures, insofar as they are Itself. The One eternally returns to Itself in desire and love. Even so, the One is perfect, and without needs (III.6). 194 Chapter 9 On the whole, Plotinus seems to hover ambiguously between apophatic ontology and a more radical meontology: God (the One or the Good) is beyond the ‘being’ of the things it produces, but does not seem to be stripped of ‘Being’ altogether. Plotinus also stands between the ultimate metaphysical dimension of Plato and Aristotle on the one hand, and the personal Divinity of, say, the Christian fathers, on the other. In addition, his to En seems to be both less empty and featureless than the Unground we are suspecting, and less the Source of Wanting with all its emotional and volitional implications. Platonic and Neoplatonic thought and the kind of theology and mysticism - kataphatic (speaking affirmatively) as well as apophatic (non-speaking) - based on them, have guided us up to a point. There is all reason to treasure this MM inheritance. This trend of thought, represented but never dominant in the Semitic monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, nevertheless represents the apexes - or rather, the one converging MM apex - of those religions, and pointing beyond all three of them. What interests me in this chapter is the question as to what extent representatives of that broad theistic stream may have seen the Principle of Wanting - desire, emotion, feeling, suffering, love and so on - as emerging from Absoluteness? Of two of them (Ibn Arabi and Luria) | have already taken note in previous chapters. The bad religio-political relations between sectors of Judaism, Islam and Christianity today do not reflect their profound MM affinities. At the heights of the MM thinking from within these religions they are kindred spirits. Their respective systems are, for all their differences, structurally similar, hairs from the same head. In their various ways they remain beckoning, reassuring buoys, far out at sea, and relevant for any raft attempting to escape the confined dock of positivism with its nihilistic implications. Li Rahman, Mahabbah and Ghadab in Ibn Arabi In his mysticism of Love, Ibn Arabi continues and develops the Platonic- Neoplatonic mysticism of eros, with a touch of Gnosticism added. In his imagination emerges a divine pathos, mark of a sym-pathetic (i.e. loving, suffering) God, linking God and Cosmos (Corbin 1997 [1969]:105ff.). As indicated in the previous chapter, for this Sufi the divine Names are archetypes, essences, operative at a level between the Absolute (a/-hagqg) and the phenomenal world. They mark the beginning, actualisation and fulfilment of the process of self-determination, self-articulation, of the Absolute. They are not phenomenal reality yet. In short, Ibn Arabi's Names may be interpreted as moving at the level of our Eternity. Why did God create the world? In classic Sufi parlance: because God was a hidden treasure, yearning to be known. Witting (knowing) and Wanting (yearning) are compressed in the heart of Ibn Arabi's Absolute. 195 Wanting Rahman (‘Mercy’), the highest Name, for Ibn Arabi primarily refers to the act of making things exist; it mediates the mystery of divine manifestation. The word has a strong emotive undertone of compassion, benevolence and mercy. Closely related to Mercy is Mahabbah (‘Love’). Following, and subordinate to God’s Mercy and Love, is His Ghadab (‘Wrath’). Dispensing with the details of Ibn Arabi’s complex theory, the important idea for us now is that these Names occur at the archetypal level, emerging from God as the Absolute. At the most primordial level, at the beginning of the emanation of the Absolute, at the very first stage of the appearance of Mercy, it is Divine Mercy exercised upon Itself. lon Arabi pictures the emerging of mercy as a moment in the self-‘objectification’ of the Absolute in the process that eventually culminates in the creation of the world, where the Absolute manifests itself in creaturely forms. The emergence of Mercy, taking firmer shape, proceeds via a number of steps, which we need not analyse in detail now. In a telling analogy, Ibn Arabi compares the gushing forth of mercy from within the depths of the Absolute to pent-up air exhaled from the chest of a man (Izutsu 1983:131). Building up within the Absolute, it explodes out into the real world of cosmic existence. Divine Love has the unique association that it is the driving divine motivation, the principle, operative particularly in the creation of the world. The inner- divine process, as Ibn Arabi sees it, obviously precedes human action, feeling and morality, but has human action as a consequence. Love illustrates this very well. To this powerful speculative mystical intellect, Love is the most basic driving force, the root cause behind emotive and moral attitudes such as anger, fear and so on. (| Hesed, Gevurah (Din) and Rahamim in Luria As has become apparent in previous chapters, Luria and his fellow Kabbalists opened a window on an enthralling landscape. With the other Sefirot the triad of Hesed (‘Favour’, ‘Grace’, ‘Compassion’, ‘Kindness’, ‘Goodness’), Gevurah (or Din) CPower’) and Rahamim (‘Mercy’) make up the ‘aspects’, ‘stages’, ‘names’, ‘faces’, ‘garments’, ‘beams of light’ or ‘branches’ emanating from the depth of God (Ein-Sof) (Fine 2003:126ff.; Scholem 1955 [1941]:213ff.). Historically speaking, the concept of the ten Sefirot may have drawn on the Platonic idea of Forms analysed above via Neoplatonism, but they are not reducible to Platonism. In Luria’s vision, the 10 branches organically grow from the tree of God (of which Ein-Sof is the hidden root and sap); this tree is also the tree of the universe, down to its smallest ramifications. This system is worked out in a plethora of symbolic and mythical detail fascinating the esoteric mindset, but not central to the MM approach. So all we are interested in here, is the basic structure of his thought as far as our Wanting may be concerned. Given the complexity and esoteric nature of his thinking and a linguistic barrier, | am greatly reliant on secondary literature. 196 Chapter 9 In Luria’s Kabbalistic theosophy, Hesed, Gevurah and Rahamim express the Origin and the process of emergence of the entire range of emotions and moral attitudes as they appear from the hidden abode of Ein-Sof, eventually to surface in the world. They are, as it were, the conduits for the manifestation of the emotive and moral dimension in the world, from the original Source to the actual outlet (creation), and to the pond (the world). This analogy of ours has only limited value, for the ‘substance’ of the conduit is exactly the same as that of the water itself; there is no difference, only differentiation. It is like water channelled through conduits of ice. To switch metaphors, the three are stages in the exhalation of Ein-Sof - that is, in the process of progressive differentiation of inner divine feeling. They are still at the level of devolving Ein-Sof, still prior to the creation of the world, but eventually become concrete in the world, like breath condensing in the air. Hesed stands for the primal, unconditional Love in and emanating from Ein- Sof. Gevurah stands for divine Severity, for the Sternness of God’s judgement. It is the dialectical opposite of Hesed; Gevurah indicates the allowance within emanating Ein-Sof for suffering and fear. In his triad of divine emotions and attitudes, the third, Rahamim, is the reconciliation, the harmonising balance, of the first two. That is why it is also referred to as Tifereth (‘Beauty’). O] Love in Franz von Baader In the section on Plato and Plotinus, it was argued that the contradistinction between eros (understood as self-seeking love) and self-giving love, which would become so strong in instances of later Christianity, forces an issue, which is not pronounced in the Platonic tradition itself. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that agape and a set of associated ideas - centring in the unconditional, forgiving Love of God for humanity and Cosmos - have always been central to Christianity. 'God is love' is the briefest and most comprehensive compendium of Christian teaching and sentiment. One stands in awe before the love of Jesus on Calvary, and before ‘him’ (‘Father’) whom Calvary points to ... and beyond ‘him’: before Eternity and Unground. Traditional Christian orthodoxy views God in substantial terms. However, the 'negative', apophatic MM tradition, largely based on Neoplatonism and the appropriation of Neoplatonism through the lenses of Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335- 395) and the anonymous theologian-philosopher, Pseudo-Dionysius (the period between late 5th century and early 6th century) in that religion, could tendentionally be interpreted to point in the direction of Eternity and Absoluteness. In the MM urge towards increasingly radical negation, several Christian thinkers shot their arrows to hardly tolerable extremes. None adopted a more rigorous position than Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1328). Nevertheless, it seems to me that to discover thinkers from the Christian context speaking on the wavelength of Absoluteness-Eternity, one would have to seek quite far to 197 Wanting the left of mainstream theology, also of Neoplatonic, apophatic mysticism. This directs my curiosity to someone like Franz von Baader (1765-1840) (Baader 1855ff.; Betanzos 1998; Górtz 1977; Lambert 1978), who was a follower of Jacob Boehme, who had in turn been influenced significantly by Jewish and Christian Kabbalah. There is sufficient reason to work on the assumption that Sufism, Jewish Kabbalah and esoteric Christian theosophy are soul mates - not only by dint of historical connectedness, but also because of the inner logic of a shared basic orientation. What does Baader - to whose thought love is the essential key - contribute to our understanding? Baader was a unique - but after his death largely neglected - intersection in the cross-currents of mysticism (mainly Eckhart, Boehme and Louis Claude de Saint-Martin [1743-1803]); Romanticism (mainly Hamann [1730-1788], Herder [1744-1803], Goethe [1749-1832], Hölderlin [1770-1843] and Novalis [1772-1801]) and Idealism (mainly Schelling and Hegel). What makes this rather inelegant writer relevant in our present context is his passionate endeavour to overcome rationalistic philosophy, uncritically associated with science, and the threat of modern materialistic scientism as a worldview. In 18235, he warned against what he termed 'modern nihilism'. Yet, he was no scientific ignoramus, but well trained in the medicine, mineralogy, chemistry and physics of his time, and an accomplished mining engineer. Philosophically, his main targets were Descartes and Kant, with their insistence on autonomous reason. Yet he was neither a theologian in the traditional sense nor a pietist with its emphasis on irrational feeling. Rationalistic Enlightenment and sentimental Pietism were the two flanks of the spirit of his time that he attacked vigorously. In our terms, he was a Christian MM theosophist: a speculative intellect, an intuition suffused with emotion, and a conservative (but by no means uncritical) treasurer of the Christian faith. Baader's vision was inspired, above all, by the idea of organism, which he championed in Romanticism. Cosmos is a living, feeling organism. At this stage, he deserves to be questioned further with respect to three questions. First question: what is the relationship between God and Cosmos? Baader took care to distinguish his theistic position (he termed it A//ineinslehre: 'all-in- one-doctrine', a version of panentheism) from pantheism (termed A/leinslehre: ‘all-one-doctrine’): participation, but not ‘being part; connection, but not confusion, mixture or identity of God and humankind, God and Cosmos. God is a living, individual Personality (IV. 24), eternally originating in himself, but without any intrinsic relation to Creation, and not devolving to become cosmos. In effect, he restored the old Christian-theistic faith, presenting it as the most adequate modern philosophy. As for matter and creation, he vehemently rejected attempts either to present it as a force eternally independent of God (Manichaeism), or to absorb it into God monistically (the idealism of Hegel). God is not acosmic, but does not have a material body; nor is matter the direct creation of God (ll. 477, IV. 345, XII. 213). 198 Chapter 9 What is, according to him, the deepest cause of Cosmos? It is the Love of God (Górtz 1977:57ff.). For this ‘love’ Baader is happy to use the term Eros. Incidentally, more than any other modern Christian thinker, and to his credit, he accommodates human eroticism in his system (IV.165ff., 179ff.) (Lambert 1978:190ff.). This divine love - and neither blind law nor chance - inspires the eternal cycle of cosmic descent and re-ascent. In his emphasis on God's love for cosmos, he goes further than (Neo-)Platonism. Baader admits that the Love of God has Need for an Other: the eternal nature of God in its primordial condition (Urstand) shows a certain /ndigentia Dei (a divine Need) (IIl. 400). Nevertheless, he does not pursue this rigorously. Second question: does Baader allow for a notion of Absoluteness as Eternity, from which manifest God and cosmos emerge? It seems not. The revealed divine Person is the ceiling of Baader's contemplation. God's existence is the non-negotiable, innate axiom of all axioms, but Baader is not interested in Love insofar as it may stir primordially in some hidden depth, only insofar as it appears firstly, finally and manifestly in revealed God. In this respect, he appears to be speculatively less daring than his inspiration, Boehme. He lacks the passionate drive exhibited in Boehme's clumsy writing about the Qualities, such as Desiring/Sourness, Sweetness and Bitterness. Often Baader declares the manner of God's movement towards creation to be inaccessible, and beyond the limits of our knowledge. It is pointless to speculate about the how and why of creation. It is a mystery. Furthermore, it is pointless to wonder about the origin of manifest God (V. 260, VII. 267, X. 318) (Görtz 1977:102ff.). Third question: how does Baader account for the dark side of being, for suffering and evil? The deepest motive for Baader's insistence on the divide between God and matter seems to be the old theodicy problem: if matter is awarded a high status and brought close to divinity, God would become responsible for evil, he feared - for evil is associated with matter. If not its source, matter is at least its locus. Besides, that God should be responsible for evil is impossible. Baader saw evil as the result of the sin of humanity. Before the possibility of chaos and evil arose, God created a first creation, which was utterly free of matter. In that creation (Baader continues an old tradition), Lucifer rebelled against God. In any event, evil is not part of the divine realm (that would be a pantheistic view), but the result of a contingent fall of the human creature. Appreciating Baader's explosive enthusiasm, inspired rhetoric and profundity, | nevertheless cannot escape the impression that he was a reactionary rather than an original figure, an eclectic rather than a creative one. Perhaps that was an inevitable shadow of his Romantic interest. His depreciation of matter holds no promise for the cosmological and ecological concerns of today. In that same context, his theism lacks creative imagination. He does not root love - in fact, the whole gamut of ‘feelings’ - as deeply as | had initially expected, knowing that he hailed from Boehme. He weakens Boehme's vision of a struggling, 199 Wanting developing Divinity in which pathos - including suffering and love, trial and failure - is a central feature, and of which evil is an inevitable shadow. The drift of our own argument does not lead us to posit a competing Principle of Evil in Eternity or in God. Evil only becomes actual with the actuality of Cosmos. We assume a possibility of evil emerging with the Principles of Eternity, including Wanting - and in that sense it is inevitable and necessary. 200 m Willing E 530 Will-o'-the-wisp Advanced meditation, as practised in Buddhism, travels the road of the disappearance of consciousness. Here, in Chapters 8-10, we are attempting to conceptualise the opposite process, postulated as presupposed by the movement in meditation. This prior movement is the emergence of Consciousness from Absoluteness, not merely in a restricted human individual sense, but in a Cosmic sense. Here we are not speaking of Cosmic or human consciousness yet, nor of Infinite Consciousness. We are reflecting on the conditions for the elemental possibility of Consciousness, as they surface from utterly indeterminate Origin. "Willing' as used here, lies behind and is somehow operative in intentional, free volition as well as other conscious inclinations as found in human beings; in subconscious proclivities and instinctive tendencies that are shared by humans and other animals that are lower down in the chain of being; in vegetative functions; and even in the world of physical nature as a whole. It is here understood to be a transcendental Principle, co-constituting, and co-operative in all of reality. The level to which Willing is here extrapolated, is the level mediating between Absoluteness and Infinite Consciousness. Willing as a postulated Eternal Principle hovers on the further edge of Infinite Consciousness. How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Willing’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 201-218, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi. org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.10 201 Willing The anthropomorphic nature of the category ‘Willing’ is not denied, but acknowledged candidly. We have no other toolbox to work with, no other plan or design to work from, and no other material to work on, than our own human mind-bodies, with Cosmos and its implications assumed to be their intimate extension, their organically surrounding shell. When reflecting, we cannot get out of our human mind-bodies. Apart from that, an assumption of our argument is that reality is of one piece, and that microcosm and macrocosm share the same basic structure. To regard this as a naive or underhand fallacy of ambiguity, would be a symptom of the tragic split between cosmos (nature) on the one hand, and the human being on the other hand. To use Christian language: the Incarnation of the Word should emphatically not be restricted to the Word being born as a human, but extended to its being deeply, inextricably inserted in nature as a whole, from its most primitive to its most highly developed forms of life. Three Principles belong to the level of a possibility of Consciousness. Willing is the third. Together, mutually implied, Witting-Wanting-Willing create the conditions from which Consciousness arises. Meaning is the hallmark of Consciousness; and meaning is not only sensing (Witting) and valuing (Wanting); it is also intending (Willing). Primacy is not awarded to any of the first three Principles. Willing is not a mere epiphenomenon of any of the previous two, or of their combination. Nor is Willing the dominant force, from which the other two derive. The same musketeer like interconnectedness present among these first three Principles (one for all and all for one, and one in all and all in one), also applies to the relationship between the Principles making up the second and third triads. It also applies to the first, second and third triads as wholes. Eventually, in Cosmos, Consciousness (Mind) and Matter, Energy form one inextricable nexus, in which neither is to be awarded primacy. These mutually constitutive elements are organically connected: in humans, in Cosmos, in Infinitude; and they make their first appearance in their togetherness on the edge of things, in Eternity. Willing is not the sole or primary driving force in Eternity, Infinitude or Cosmos. It is one of several Principles. Nevertheless, that does not detract from its significance. Underestimating its significance would result in a skewed understanding of things (a distorted MM) and skewed life praxis (a distorted ethics). As it is meant here, Willing carries the consideration of Witting and the wish of Wanting further, and connects the wish of Wanting and the ability of Becoming (which is the first element of the next triad). Locked in itself and without the empowering capacity of Becoming, Willing would remain tragically impotent. It is incomplete in itself and is the necessary link between the first and second triads. The great Principles of Witting, Wanting, Willing, Becoming, Acting and Interacting co-arisetogether conditionalistically simultaneously (aninapplicable 202 Chapter 10 temporal category). | have chosen to start with the pole of Eternal Pre-/Meta- Consciousness, but could also have started with Eternal Pre-/ Meta-Matter. For the first triad the classic notion of ‘Freedom’ presents itself; with the second triad, ‘Necessity’ enters; both are mutually implicit as the two halves of the seed of Nature unfolding as nature (cosmos). Therefore, Willing is not to be isolated from the other Principles, or reduced to being an epiphenomenon of any one or more of the others, alternatively elevated to being the supreme Principle, from which the others are reduced. It ties in with the others as a fundamental Principle emerging from Unground and operative in Cosmos, ina system of dependent co-origination of them all. Willing is not the be-all and end-all of all. Is Willing good and kind, or evil and cruel? It is beyond both sets, and carries in itself the possibility of both. Is it blind and arbitrary, or seeing and purposeful? The same answer as to the previous question applies. It must be understood in its larger context. Is the hand blind? Yes, if observed in isolation from eye and mind, but no, if observed organically in the company of eye and mind it is, as it were, endowed with sight. The functions are inextricably entwined. The mutual implication of Consciousness and Matter, Freedom and Necessity makes its first division in Eternity, like the first split in an impregnated ovum, and remains implicit throughout the entire process of beginning, continuing, changing, developing and ending Cosmos. In their mutuality, they are formatively present in Cosmos as a whole, in all the various forms of Cosmic existence, and in human existence. | am not declaring an easy harmony between them, and | have to admit the possibility, in this complementarity, of all sorts of dialectical tensions and struggles which may - somehow, beyond our ken - be meaningful. The spark of connection between Consciousness and Matter, Freedom and Necessity may be the locus of that with which we as humans have a problem: evil. It is neither a reality, nor a Principle in its own right, but a possibility. Evil ‘is’ partly there, in the inaccessible, dark heart of Eternity itself, and partly in our - the beholders' - eyes. Our limited perspective does not allow us to see all sides of it in every situation. The chameleon on the branch, all eyes, can only roll its eyes in all directions at once and try to get them around the branch, and guess and gauge and triangulate - and hope for the best as it strikes. Nevertheless, there are many misses. The possibility of evil arises as inevitable shadow of Willing. Willing carries the possibility of perversion. Such perversion arises as the result of the possibility of misalignment between Willing and its partners. Between Willing and Witting, Willing and Wanting, Witting and Power, things can go wrong. That is a necessary risk. Willing can wilt; or it can become misdirected. Such perversions boomerang back on all its partners, with cognitive, emotional, and practical consequences. 203 Willing The small decisions we take here, near the centre where things huddle close together, take on wide-ranging proportions as we move further away. One such wide divide at the outer band of concrete Cosmos concerns the relationship between free will and the necessity of natural law. Is there such a thing as free will at all? How much manoeuvring space do humans have to explore alternatives and exercise choices freely, or is it all determined, predetermined, in advance by the iron necessity of natural law, which allows no exception? How much freedom may we discover in Willing? Must our anthropomorphic limitation not lead us into a tangle from which there is no hope of escape? We seem to be confronted, right at the start, with a dilemma. It seems to be either the inexorable working out of law (also approximated by terms such as ‘destiny’ or ‘fate’): keeping nature, humans and God bound in an iron fist. Conversely, it is freedom: perhaps zero freedom in the lower forms of life, some freedom in humans and absolute freedom in God. All sorts of permutations have been explored in the course of religion and philosophy. Should we see an initial impulse of absolute freedom in God harden into the inexorable determination of nature in his creation? Does the absolutely free God remain standing idly outside the fixed order, leaving it to run its predetermined course? Or does he intervene from time to time, perhaps to accommodate the needs and desires of praying humans, otherwise to make sure that the overall execution of His plan is ensured - perhaps by causing axes to float, or by raising dead bodies to life? Alternatively, should we conflate the notions of ‘God’ and ‘Law’ completely, so that one is the other, and all that reigns, is divine Necessity, without any exception? Else, should we grant hard Necessity its merciless rule, and then simply turn away from it and focus all our attention on the little space we (seem to) have to exist in good faith, as existentialism did? Such are the options tried out in history. In the various theologies of religions, this basic problem and seemingly insurmountable paradox of Freedom and Necessity also recurred throughout history as the question of the relationship between the will of God (or gods) and the will and freedom of the human being. Aeschylus, Shakespeare and others sublimated this dilemma in magnificent tragedies. Perhaps taking a step back behind that aporia (two inconsistent, irreconcilable positions, locked in conflict) will add greater depth and perspective, without ironing out the dialectic flatly and completely. Neither collapsing them into a superficial harmony; nor glorifying an irreconcilable conflict; but envisioning, from a higher perspective in Eternity, a coherence, while maintaining the stark contrasts. That is what we are trying to do here. Human freedom - in relation to human systems of control, nature and its physical and biological laws, and God - is an issue of enormous significance. Let us not make any broadly sweeping, apodictic pronouncements now. Rather let the issue unfold itself step by step as we move along. At this stage, let it be said that freedom, though not an absolute, emerges with Willing as Principle from the source of all things. 204 Chapter 10 This seemingly inescapable clash of two orders is a crucial problem in all MM. It is where Augustine and Pelagius, Calvin and Servetus, Einstein and Bohr parted ways, and where Democritus, Spinoza and Sartre took their various last stands. All of these figures, seemingly conflicting as they were, must somehow be absorbable in a larger schema, as so many diverse, and one-sided emphases. We need to find a way where Consciousness and Matter, Freedom and Necessity, are mutually constitutive. Nature is neither good nor evil as an inexorable feature or fate. It is an open process, in which Willing is a most significant Principle, though not in isolation. In this endeavour we are drifting in a stream of thought that would move ‘behind’ the constructions of ‘God’ into a meta-theistic dimension of Eternity, the first primordial expression of Unground, where we may imagine Willing as emerging in pristine beauty. Unground, erupting in Eternity, bursts open with Willing. It flashes forth - not as the First Principle nor as the Only Principle constituting everything, but as one supreme Principle among others. Primus inter pares - as they all are. E 531 The art of tracking The art of tracking animals for hunting purposes by our hunter-gatherer forebears was a crucial step in the development of science. | would want to see what is attempted in these reflections as an application of the same principles that guided them. | wish to track - that is, understand and interpret - the footprints of MM colossi who walked the earth in the past: sometimes massive and powerfully present, sometimes rare and secretive, sometimes daunting and regarded as dangerous, but always fascinating. The hunters did what they did for sustenance and survival; our search is also a matter of life and death. To them it was an exhilarating quest; our adventure, too, is sheer enjoyment. In their case, the prey was not stationary, but on the move, always out of sight until the last moment; in our case, we are not like visitors to a zoo or game park, admiring some creature standing or lying down, but exerting ourselves to the utmost, in the urgent business of tracking elusive creatures. In order to catch up with their quarry, hunters cautiously and systematically gathered information from signs to conclude where the animal was probably going; we are also bound to keep our noses close to the ground, and painstakingly to gather correct historical and other kinds of information concerning those beings. The hunters' animals were there before they arrived on the scene, but then disappeared from the hunters' sight ahead of them; our mystics ruminated before us, in their own historical circumstances, but are, in another sense, well ahead of us: we have to track them, catch up with them as they keep moving just outside our sight. Complementing their close scrutiny of facts such as trampled grass, the hunters of old had to anticipate the route that the gazelle would have taken, reading the signs as pointing in a certain 205 Willing general direction. We too have to go boldly, speculatively, beyond the immediately given or the historically available, and conjecture possibilities - we have to work in the knocked-together framework of imaginative preconceptions in a process of positive and negative feedback, constantly modifying our working hypotheses. The hunters identified with the animals and projected themselves into their skins, felt, thought, like them; in our search for MM meaningfulness, we identify with the great wounded, enter into their skins. The hunters respectfully, quietly, tracked their wounded, quietly moving animal brothers; we do the same as we track the movements of the silent ones on the edge of our reach. Early Buddhism's teaching of sankhara The Buddha taught that the human being is constituted by the mutual interdependence of five factors (khandhas): matter (form, corporeality: rüpa), feeling (sensation: vedana), perception (ideation: saññā), emotional and volitional factors (sankhàra), and consciousness (vififina). In short, they were differentiated in two groups: matter and mind (the latter consists of feeling-perception-emotional and volitional factors-consciousness). These five constituents (upadanakkhanda) are intimately intertwined and interdependent, making up the human person as a whole. None of them is reducible to any of the others. The human person is a unit of mind and matter: ‘mind-matter’ (néamardpa). Yet ancient Buddhism saw the higher levels of meditation as attaining dimensions of formlessness (arüpaloka) (Narada 1980:11, 45f.). The step | am taking is to extrapolate the essence of this suggestive scheme in three directions: back, to Unground Originating as Eternity; wider, to Cosmos (Nature) as a whole, thereby moving out of early Buddhism’s psychological, phenomenological restriction of interest; and lastly, denial of the separation of body and mind (or matter and mind) at any level. For now, how does Eternity appear in this perspective? Importantly, at least in orthodox Theravada Abhidhamma, these categories were not ‘real’, discrete ‘things’, bearers of qualities (entities). They were classificatory groupings of qualities, functions, ‘evanescent occurrences’, ‘flashes of actuality arising and perishing with incredible rapidity’ (Nyanaponika 1998 [1949]:xvif.) operative in the human personality. Carrying those ancient notions over long stretches of time to today, | find that it is compatible with our venture to speak of the function of the categories of Eternity here. The categories of Eternity are not put forward as substantial, transcendent entities. Playing a similar organising role as the khandhas, they have the ontological status of enabling possibilities. Our attempt to co-ordinate the first and second triads, that both arise simultaneously and interdependently, leads beyond both abstract idealism and abstract materialism. 206 Chapter 10 In the human mind (the locus of this ancient Buddhist pattern), the khandha- scheme suggests a distinction between, (1) sensation (the link between matter and mind), (2) the cognitive, and (3) the emotional-volitional aspects. The cognitive side (perception and consciousness) has been dealt with in Chapter 8 as Witting. The term ‘Consciousness’ is here used for the triad of Witting- Wanting-Willing as a whole. Here we are particularly concerned with sankhàra: the emotional-and- volitional aspect (variously translated, including 'mental formations"). | take the liberty to treat them separately, as Wanting (Ch. 9), and Willing (Ch. 10). Early Buddhism's view of sankhàra encapsulates what has been covered in these two chapters. On the side of Wanting, it includes emotive dispositions such as love, hate, prejudice and resentment. On the side of Willing, sankhàra, particularly in the form of cetanà (‘volition’), largely overlaps with the notion of kamma (karma): choosing, willing, deciding, intending in a broad sense, which is extremely important and formative in the course of one's life, and one's fate. In the present adapted schema, it is the great activating Principle as the conditions for Consciousness arise. The upshot of what has been said thus far is this: the Buddha and scholastic early Buddhism may be interpreted - admittedly tendentionally, but openly and fairly and not coercively - to provide some support for postulating transcendental Eternal Willing. The Buddha would probably not have endorsed the speculative quality of our schema, but support would seem to be forthcoming from other sectors in Buddhism as a whole. Let us see what the Indian Mahayana school of Yogacara offers in this respect. Y ogacara's teaching of parinispanna, Dharma-kaya, alaya-vijnana and Tathagata-garbha Over some centuries, in the HTnayana treatises, the systematic inputs of earliest Buddhism ballooned in size and complexity, and the dhammas/dharmas (components of reality) in some quarters tended to be seen in realistic, substantial terms. That was the case particularly in the Sarvastivada sect, not in Theravada. The Madhyamika school (Nagarjuna and his followers) punctured the substantialising balloon. What remained was Emptiness - the Buddha's original intention - both in epistemological and ontological terms: ultimately, all our mental constructs are empty, non-referential; the things of our experienced world without substance (but not ‘unreal’). In a next great Indian move, Yogacara (founded by Asanga and Vasubandhu, 5th century CE), came up with a brilliant outburst of creative, synthetic speculation. Without compromising the gains made by Madhyamika concerning the meaning of Emptiness, Yogacara dared to develop a schema explaining how the world of experience (in our terminology, Cosmos) arose from 207 Willing Emptiness (our Absoluteness), how it worked, and how and why it could be purified to produce happiness of life, calmness of mind and clarity of thought (Anacker 1986; Chatterjee 1987 [1962]; Kochumuttom 1982). Their schema was not meant to be final, fixed truth. It was merely a mental map, to be torn up as soon as it had achieved its function: a clear, clean mind and the attainment of a free, compassionate life in the world. It was an ad hoc toolkit, intended to be dismantled after serving its liberating purpose, not to become an aim in itself. The map taking shape in the chapters of our exploration concerning the emergence of Consciousness, track the movements of Yogacara in its emphasis on Emptiness-Absoluteness as the Origin of all. Yogacara expressed the ultimate truth of Absoluteness with four roughly equivalent terms (see below). These denote sheer Emptiness (Sünyatà); yet they also contain the notion of that very same Emptiness as the Source from which all things spring. All four imply that Emptiness carries the potential not only for all of concrete reality, but also specifically for an enlightened consciousness. Our Principles, giving words to the domain of Potentiality implicitly present in the Horizon of Absoluteness, follow that lead. Consciousness is the condensation, corporisation, of Absoluteness in various ways. Everything 'is' Absoluteness, but the simple word ‘is’ contains extremely subtle nuances, as Yogacara saw and said. The Yogacara conceptual apparatus covers what | have called ‘Absoluteness’; it also posits ‘Consciousness’ at the level of our ‘Infinitude’; and it deals with consciousness (mind) at the level of our ‘Cosmos’ (empirical reality). It does not in so many words articulate the level of Potentiality, Possibility, at the level of what | have called Eternity, but the substance of this level certainly seems to be there by implication: Sünyata somehow becomes the concrete Cosmos experienced by the senses. As said, Yogacara has four terms referring to Emptiness as the Source of the world: * Firstly, the term parinispanna (the ‘perfect’/‘perfected’) refers to the deepest insight: into ‘emptiness’. From it, arise the paratantra (‘dependent’) and the parikalpita (‘imaginary’) levels. The latter is the domain of everyday, concrete life, and both are expressions, levels, of Emptiness. e Secondly, the term dharma-kàya (Dharma-body') refers to that same ultimate Emptiness as the ultimate dimension, the ultimate nature of things (i.e. it is ultimate ‘Buddha-ness’). This term already suggests the ultimate Absolute as the Source giving rise to all things - including the historical Buddha and the innate potential in all beings to achieve enlightenment. e Thirdly, the term ālaya-vijňāna ('storehouse-consciousness) may be interpreted to express the idea that that very same Emptiness is the great container, the great granary, into which all things done in the world, fall back as so many seeds. From that storehouse, seeds - some pure and some 208 Chapter 10 bad and contaminated - sprout. It is a great circular system, a spiral movement, in which the dropping as well as the sprouting seeds are a mixed lot of good and bad ... but the pure seeds can be cultivated to lead to liberation. It is not a closed circle, but an open-ended one, containing a promise. In our terms: things End into Absoluteness, and things Originate from Absoluteness, and there is an element of continuity between the two, in a spiral movement. The à/aya-vijfiàna is the great ocean on the surface of which the waves of empirical reality appear and move. * Fourthly, the term Tathàgata-garbha (‘womb of the Tathagata’ - that is, of the ‘Thus-come’ [the Buddha]) - expresses roughly the same idea with different imagery. The great Emptiness is womb - and not only womb, but also embryo. Siddhattha-become-Buddha, also the other Buddhas, are born from this Emptiness; all humans, as potential Buddhas, implicit Buddhas, are born from it. Realising this is the great liberation, and it bears fruit in a different kind of life. Where Yogacara approximates idealism, is in its presentation of the entire process as a process of Consciousness. Admittedly, typical of mainline Indian MM, it is not really interested in the external, material world out there. It does not deny its existence, but assimilates it so closely to Consciousness that the distinction becomes fuzzy. This is where the interpretation becomes tricky. | follow the line that Yogacara is 'phenomenalism', bordering on, even overlapping with, ‘idealism’ in a strong sense of the word. Yogacara is essentially a meta-psychology, a theory of Consciousness, an MM serving the purification of the mind. In Consciousness these theorists distinguished, apart from the level of the ‘storehouse consciousness’, seven other levels. Manas is the active, organising mind. Then there are the six levels corresponding to the six senses, which connect the knowing ‘subject’ with the external world as ‘object’. Altogether, there are eight levels. It is not the external world as such that is 'imaginary', but the subject-object scheme that we impose on it. Ultimately, the subject-object dichotomy is false, imagined, fabricated. The 'truth' is the interconnectedness of all things, like waves on the deep, impenetrable ocean of unsubstantial Emptiness understood by the enlightened mind. Faithful recipients of early Buddhism, the Yogacara thinkers awarded karma, and with it volitional intention (our Willing), a key position in its scheme. That which drops seeds into the great granary, are our actions, driven by our cravings and our will. These seeds continue reproducing themselves in the great granary until they reach maturity. Then they sprout, and a new round begins. The ancient teaching of karma is understood as primarily the working of Consciousness, in which Willing is a significant category. We may pick up a trail, inviting us to interpret Willing as somehow implied in Absoluteness, and operative in the becoming of Consciousness. The relationship pertaining between Yogacara's Emptiness and Consciousness is not that of an immobile 209 Willing identity, but a dynamic spiral movement, driven by karma with the component of Willing featuring hugely. Let us not forget that the Yogacara philosophers were Mahayanists for whom life revolved around the concepts of Buddha nature, the liberation of the mind, and the bodhisattvic existence. All contain Buddha nature, and emerge from Buddha nature. Contemplative insight aims at liberation from egocentric desire and will. Supreme human existence is bodhisattvic existence: becoming doctor, nurse and medicine for all the sickness of the world. Willing - firm resolve, commitment and dedication - is embedded in that existence. It is pure, embodied Willing. It would have gone too far for them to have denied the factor of matter altogether. Yet, what mattered to them was to realise that even the world of matter is mind made /n the sense of being mind constituted: what we ‘see’ is all grasping and being grasped, and that is what our unenlightened minds condition us to see. Where do Asanga, Vasubandu and their followers lead us on our present quest? It does not seem necessary to change our course as far as the high value we attach to Matter is concerned. True, their emphasis was not quite there. An appreciative emphasis on Matter is necessary in our time. Our tentative scheme can go along happily with the Yogacara emphasis on the slant of our natural perspective on the world of matter as a graspable ‘object’, apart from the knowing subject. We need to explore the interconnectedness of Mind and Matter, giving both poles their due. Hence, Consciousness, like Matter/Energy, arises from Absolute Unground. Willing is an important constitutive Principle in their interpenetration. Next, let me follow a few representative windings of MM thinking in the "Western' cultural sphere as it developed under the influence of Neoplatonism in the development of the Semitic monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, where the idea of God as Willing Agent was the supreme and central category. Sufism's teaching of Mashi’ah | am again drawn to the Sufi system of Ibn Arabi, not only because of the obvious quality of this thinking, but also because of his moving critically and creatively on the edge of his institutionalised tradition: a tradition pointing in the same direction as others that are seemingly so different. So let me attempt once again to crack the code of his complex thinking, and to see whether it can be unpacked in the terms of the non-religious investigation of this book. Is the schema that is presented in this investigation reconcilable with his MM system? His thinking is not - and was not intended to be - easy, and yet his was not an exclusive, secretive, deliberately concealing kind of esotericism; what he wrote, is 'esoteric' 210 Chapter 10 in the sense of dealing with the deeper meaning of things, but it is also an attempt to say it, as far as that may be possible, in communicable language. One difference is clear: Ibn Arabi is committed to theistic (specifically Muslim) faith assumptions. Yet lon Arabi is aware of a Beyond, which is beyond ‘Allah’. Between that Beyond and the created world this side of the river, he postulates a number of stepping stones. Knowledge (A/im) is one such stepping stone across the river, one such link in the connecting chain; Mercy (Rahman) and its cognates are another; Will (Mashi'ah) is a third (Izutsu 1983:105, 126ff.). To Ibn Arabi, the One becomes Self-conscious (the aspect of Knowledge). Based on this Knowledge, Will arises. Based on this Will, the world is created. Willing is a necessary assumption to make sense of Cosmos. Ibn Arabi confirms that in Muslim theological vocabulary. In his system - his version of 'Eternity', shall we say - Will occupies a position between Knowledge and Power in a scheme of superior-inferior relationships. What they point to in Ibn Arabi's vision, is a divine Essence, the Absolute as the One ('One' not intended as a number, but as a level beyond all number, all relations and limitations). His vision could - following a dotted line leading to an Absolute Horizon, explicated by Buddhism - be radicalised, to empty out into sheer Absoluteness. In his system all events that occur in the world are, ultimately, due to the Divine Will. This covers not only good, but also bad. This is the creative Command of God, the Will of God, constituting and bestowing existence on the world. This supreme Will is not the same as the Sacred Law (God's obligating or moral Command), which commands and approves and disapproves of various acts. For even transgressions of the Sacred Law are effects of the supreme Mashi'ah, and fall under the decisive domain of Mercy, the ultimate end of all. Evil is evil, but it falls under the higher power of Divine Will and Mercy. Therefore, we see this great figure wrestling with the problem of evil, not denying it, and somehow wanting to accommodate it in a scheme of things in which Will and Mercy are superior, eternal Divine Names. They are ontological assumptions, transcendental Principles, operative in the world. In the end, his distinction between God's two types of Will probably remains an unresolved paradox: how can God command something, which is then not done? If it is not done, how can the non-compliance then still be covered by God's Will? To resolve the paradox unambiguously, it, seems, Ibn Arabi would have had to move into a consistent determinism, or fatally undercut the notion of God's Will. He refused both escape routes. In our experiment, it seems better to locate talk of God's moral commands at the lower level of anthropomorphic, mythological speech - that is, if such God-talk is deemed useful at all. At that level, we humans fabricate our models of commands and commandments, deeming them to be supernaturally revealed, and obeyed and disobeyed, followed by rewards or punishments. It does not belong at the level of sounding the depth of Eternity proper. Here, there is only the first emergence of Willing without subject or object. 211 Willing John Duns Scotus’ teaching of vo/untas divina Two generations after lon Arabi, European Christianity reached what would in future, in some quarters be hailed as its theological apex: the synthesis of Thomas of Aquino (1224-1274). It is not the Angelic Doctor | am turning to now, but someone some 40 years later who - because of his complex thought, obscure writing and premature death - was destined to exert an inconspicuous but far-reaching influence in later centuries: John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) (cf. Bettoni 1978 [1946]; Duns Scotus 1994; Wolter 1990). It was he who would by some in the present time be noted, hailed or blamed as the initiator of the epochal movement that would become known as secular modernism. Will was a topic of considerable interest to Scotus, to the extent that in some quarters his overall position was wrongly reduced to a form of voluntarism Cwill-ism’: all is will). If it is true that the notion of ‘will’ has become a crucial presupposition of modern European thinking, then it probably acquired its first groundbreaking theoretical exploration in the thought of Duns Scotus. William Ockham (c. 1285-1347) would then push it further, by ranking God's will above his love and reason (Willing above Witting and Wanting). Duns Scotus, a Franciscan priest, was known for his personal piety, but the very structure of his thinking leaned heavily on rational argument, based on Christian revelation and faith. His mode of thinking might be called meditative: he dwelt contemplatively on the mysteries of God and creation. To him, thinking of God was only a means to the end of loving contemplation of God. Refusing to shut himself up within the limited horizon of the two major schools available to him (Augustine and Bonaventura versus Aristotle and Thomas), he sought a new synthesis via a critical investigation of the options available to him. Syntheses, that is disentangling and reweaving seemingly irreconcilable systems and thinkers, are forged in the heat of struggle. From the vantage point of today, where the historical horizon is so much wider and the need for synopsis urgent, his approach is to be appreciated. Duns Scotus wrote in an age and in an intellectual style quite different from that of our contemporary time and fashion. Tracking the intentions of his thinking, we must allow for that. Yet he does not seem to have allowed for the dimension groped for here by means of the notions of 'Unground' or 'Eternity', ‘prior’ to the God of religion (as Ibn Arabi had indeed done). The revealed God of Christianity was as far as Duns Scotus was prepared to go. In tandem with being arational philosopher, he was also - even primarily - a Christian theologian and the two were not perfectly harmonised. To Duns Scotus, the primary metaphysical concept was 'being' (to which we shall turn from Ch. 11 onwards). That was his primary transcendental category. Co-extensive with 'being' are 'one', 'true' and 'good'. He emphasised the univocity of ‘being’ - that is, it applied in the same sense to all beings: God as 212 Chapter 10 well as creation - thereby probably eroding the distinction between the ‘being’ of God and the ‘being’ of creation, perhaps even by implication annihilating the serious ontological difference between God and his creation. Reconciling the univocity of ‘being’ with the radical otherness of God creates a structural problem, given the prior assumptions of theistic creationism (indeed held by Duns Scotus). God’s otherness could now be a matter of degree, but not of kind. In any event, he did not transcend the notion of ‘being’ in the direction of ‘non-being’, it seems. This exploration seeks a different route. Nevertheless, a similar basic problem remains: how can the relationship between the ‘non-being’ of ‘Absoluteness’, the ‘Infinite’ being of ‘Infinite’ ‘God’ and the concrete ‘being’ of the many things of the world be understood? Can the same word (‘being’) apply to all three? The argument pursued here postulates not a dramatic qualitative break, for beyond ‘Infinitude’, ‘being’ peters out outside the range of sense or mind, disappears ‘Absolutely’. But yes, with ‘Infinitude’ and ‘Cosmos’ emerging from Absoluteness a denser continuity can be found, and sense and mind can start picking up ‘something’. This problem also pertains to Willing. How does Willing emerge from Absoluteness? What is the relationship between Willing at the levels of Eternity, Infinitude, and those many finite, individual things? Let us not overreach and ensnare ourselves in complexities, but rather attempt a piecemeal approach. So, our question at this stage is only this: what did Duns Scotus have to say about Willing, or his theistic equivalent of it? In Duns Scotus’ theory of the will, the intellect and the will are the two most fundamental properties or faculties of the human soul. The soul is a substance. So what is the status of these two faculties? Are they strongly distinct from the soul - for example, are they mere accidents of the soul, or do they possess the quality of ‘being’ themselves? Are they ‘parts’ of the soul? Duns Scotus argues that they are potencies, or potentialities (ootentiae). He makes the following distinction: First, potentia relates to potency or power in the order of act or operation; and second, it relates to potency or power in the order of being. As he sees it, the human will occupies a middle position between two extremes: the will is neither fully identical with the soul, nor fully different from it. The will is neither fully ‘being’ (fully part of the soul), nor fully 'not-being' (fully apart from the soul). Between the soul and its willing obtains a 'formal' distinction: they are neither one and the same thing, nor two different things altogether. The will is a power (potentia) of the soul, yet ‘formally’ distinct from it. In one sense, the soul can be looked at in isolation from the will; in another sense, the will (like the intellect) is a necessary operation of the soul. Scotus attempts to reconcile and transcend the alternatives available to him in medieval scholasticism. To him the will is not an implication or 213 Willing expression of the intellect, nor subordinate to the intellect (as was held by Thomas). In the complex relationship between the intellect and the will, the will has a unique nature and irreducible function of its own. The will is dependent on the intellect in the sense that the intellect is a necessary precondition for the working of the will; on the other hand, in the final analysis, the will determines itself. Neither is superior to the other; in one sense the intellect precedes the will; in another sense the will directs the intellect. They are mutually causative, mutually dependent, and mutually subservient. This is a promising line of thought. It is noteworthy that an exact contemporary of Duns Scotus, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), likewise assumed a delicate balance of the will and the intellect. In his /nferno, the key to the sins of Lower Hell (heresy, violence and fraud) is the evil will: an active willing of evil, paired with the faculty of the intellect, and laced with emotions and attitudes such as pride and envy. The question remains: How did Duns Scotus see divine will (vo/untas divina)? Let me repeat that by 'God', Duns Scotus means (in our terminology) Infinite Being. He does not, by extension, extrapolate the term 'God' somehow to cover what may transcend divine Being. | find no support in him for ideas such as Nonbeing, Emptiness, Unground, Absoluteness and Eternity (in our sense of the word). Does he present any sufficient reason for abandoning the route we are on here? | do not see any. Let me follow this enigmatic figure a bit further, to see where this track might lead. According to him, God as the First Supreme Cause (the Maker), is, understands and wills. In him intellect and will belong essentially to his being, and perfect understanding and perfect will are indissoluble. The divine will is immutable and eternal. In addition, just as he knows and loves himself, he knows and loves his creation. A novel emphasis is that divine will, eternal and immutable as it is, is nevertheless free; so the world, though being what it is, could have been - and can be now - different from what it in fact is. In short, the world is radically contingent: it is not of necessity the way it is. God's will is the cause of that contingency. Duns Scotus' insistence on the significance of the will is valuable, and may be extrapolated tendentionally to the realm of Eternity: Willing as a first Principle, prior to 'God' talk. His insistence on the will as mutually implied with the intellect is equally impressive, and supports the line of thinking adopted in these reflections. Probably the same structural problem marking Ibn Arabi's thinking is also present in that of Duns Scotus: the tension between God's supreme, ultimate, creative will, and his moral will (which can be transgressed). In this form, that tension comes with the territory of theism. Even apart from theism, the problem of evil is not soluble by purely theoretical means; it is also a practical issue. Lastly, Duns Scotus' notion of the radical contingency of things was a most important line of thought. 214 Chapter 10 Schopenhauer’s teaching of Wille If ‘voluntarism’ is not an appropriate epithet for the thinking of Duns Scotus, it does apply to that of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). With him we step into a very different world than the one inhabited by Duns Scotus. The corpus christianum had dissolved; Romanticism had left its mark; the world of India had announced its presence in the Western cultural sohere. Schopenhauer made use of the new input from India - particularly the Upanishads and Buddhism - in a limited and selective manner, to confirm his own philosophical taste. He was also a bridging figure between the Idealistic systems of Fichte and Hegel of the early 19th century on the one hand, and the depth- psychological and vitalistic impulses in European culture in the late 19th century, on the other hand. In his thinking, reason and intellect become surface phenomena; they are relegated to instruments of the will (Wille). There are no hidden depths of the kind that intrigued us in the previous schools of thinking. There is one and only one supreme principle, and that is the Will: the first and last, ultimate reality and substance, the Thing-in-Itself of Kant: dependent on nothing else, cause of everything. Schopenhauer presented himself as the pupil of Kant by envisioning the world as representation (Vorstellung): all things are present to us as phenomena (mind appearances). Then Schopenhauer takes leave of Kant: the solution of the mystery of the world (the great apriori, the Ding an sich) can indeed be found - in the world itself, in the external and internal experience of the individual human being; and it can be named: blind, unconscious, irrational Will. As a metaphysical reality, the Will is sovereign and free; the individual will is subject to the overall Will, and hence has only limited freedom. The Will, primarily the urge to propagate and maintain life, determines not only the human person; analogously, all of reality - organic as well as inorganic - is the objectification of will. The essence is Will; the rest - individuation, corporeality - are mere objectification and form. History is the variable expression in different mores, epochs and people, of the one unchanging Will, moving in non- progressing, purposeless, directionless cycles. History has no intrinsic significance. Schopenhauer takes the step into a pessimistic worldview: suffering, loneliness and conflict are the outcome of voracious, insatiable Will. Via the road of aestheticism, art - particularly music - offers some temporary relief; as an immediate projection of the eternal Will itself, art can quieten the restless human will. A more durable relief is found via the road of ethics: the ascetic denial of the Will, culminating in its complete extinction, and in compassion. Here Schopenhauer finds the essence of all great religious roads of salvation, such as Buddhism and Hinduism: the individual atman realises its unity with 215 Willing eternal Brahman. Small soul disappears into large Soul, small will into large Will - that is, he said, into nirvana. From the perspective on Eternity on these pages, the strengths and limitations of Schopenhauer’s vision are conspicuous. His appropriation of Indian MM marked a great historical stride forward in Western MM. His thinking does coincide with certain pessimistic emphases, as held in certain schools at certain times of Indian thinking. Overall, his appropriation is patchy: he views the Buddhist idea of liberation, for instance, as a merely negative concept. India has much more to offer in terms of an analysis of ultimacy, and of active, positive involvement in the world, as the Bhagavad-Grtà attests for Hinduism and the extolling of the bodhisattva ideal for Mahayana Buddhism. One should not deal with Schopenhauer harshly; he made use of what was available at the time. He assumed that the sages of all times - from ancient India, via mystics such as Eckhart, to himself - taught essentially the same message (Halbfass 1988:105ff.). His assumption deserves attention, but the ahistorical nature of his view is problematic. It misses the point that MM, like everything else, is taken up in a vast historical process of change and adaptation to ever-changing circumstances. The very real historical particularities and differences between MM systems are not to be underestimated (as he in fact did) but to be taken into account seriously. A philosophia perennis cannot be a static thing, merely to be stated; any convergence of the kind can only be found in a particular historical situation, as work always in progress. While its roots lie deep in the human constitution, it is not simply a given. All sorts of historical borrowing played a major role in bringing about similarities, and today it is not a simple fact either, but a challenge. Schopenhauer did not sufficiently allow for critical correction from the side of India; he did not have a sufficient sense of history. Schopenhauer captured an emerging mood of his time. His vision is sombre, anticosmic, anti-erotic and misogynist. Required today, is a pro-cosmic MM, with all the positive implications flowing from such a basic stance, including the seeking of happiness for all beings, an affirmation of life and eros, and, at a practical level, respect and full equality for women. Like few Western MM before him (such as John of the Cross), Schopenhauer discerned the depths beneath the surface manifestations of consciousness, but he stopped at the level of Will, as substantial drive, as nameable, describable Ground. He does not seem to have been drawn towards the mystery of Will itself emerging from an even deeper profundity, from insubstantial, unnameable, indescribable Infinitude as, for example, Meister Eckhart had intimated before him. He seems to have avoided associations of extreme transcendence, and presented his Will as an immanent, directly discernible force. In the language of this exploration: his Will operated at the level of Cosmos. But here he also took a problematic turn: Cosmos is not, as he saw it, only the objectification of blind, indifferent Will, and human life is, in essence, not merely the drive to procreate. 216 Chapter 10 By substantialising Will as the one, supreme entity, Schopenhauer replaced a particular one-sidedness with another. Whereas previously Reason had been awarded superiority, Schopenhauer managed a palace revolution, replacing one absolute ruler with another, but did not attempt to reconcile a number of Principles. What his vision gained in force and clarity, it lost in balance and nuance. We could have proceeded by studying the thinking of another exponent of a metaphysic of the Will, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), who marked a certain progress beyond Schopenhauer, his teacher, by replacing the former’s pessimism and negative denial of the human will with optimism and activism. Yet, in his case, too, gains of force are made at the cost of balance. With him, the Will is again played off against the domain of compassion, which is denigrated as weakness; against reason; against the emancipation of women; against Christianity, and so forth. In the end, for all his rhetorical brilliance and his acuity of thought, one may suspect him to be driven by resentment, but not offering the kind of large-souled, inclusive, synoptic MM that we are seeking here. Let us grant this wounded loner the understanding he deserves, but follow his track no further. E 532 Summary In the previous three chapters, we have imagined Witting, Wanting and Willing together, as co-emerging pre-conditions for Consciousness. We do not see an anthropomorphic God behind the surrounding hills, ready to intervene at any time in accordance with his own will and our requests. Nor do we sense the depressing aura of an all-determining necessity, gripping things with an iron fist. Neither arbitrarianism nor necessitarianism would seem to do justice to the reality of the situation. We need to move beyond that dilemma if we can. Cosmos seems to be an open, evolving process, driven and led from deep within itself. Human consciousness is made up of conjoined reason, emotion and will (and more). Above it, allowing for it and including it, we postulate a Cosmic Will, conjoined with a Cosmic Reason and Love. Cosmoses are singular events, born and ending. Our present one is one of them. Above Cosmic Consciousness, we discern - postulate - Infinite Consciousness, again made up of Reason, Emotion and Will, not concrete and manifest. Above that emerges the Witting, Wanting and Willing of Eternity, arising from utterly inaccessible Absolute Horizon. This is where every word is one too many. Consciousness is not all there is; there is also the complex set of phenomena grouped around Being, Energy and Matter. Fully to appreciate the problems of the relationships of Consciousness and Matter, Freedom and Necessity, we will have to enter into that set. At this stage, it seems necessary to understand the 217 Willing world process, Cosmos, as run not only by Consciousness and Freedom, but also by Matter and Necessity. That connection is where sparks fly. Cosmos, balancing between Freedom and Necessity, is a precarious thing, open to chance as well as inevitability, error and evil and unimaginable suffering as well as beauty and love. The best we can do, is to make sure that the rafts we construct to carry us down the stream of life are as sturdy and useful as possible for the purpose of bringing us to the ocean of insight, goodness and beauty, and then abandon them. As far as the word ‘g(G)od’ is concerned, our argument would be tolerant: * Firstly, of a space for myths of divinity, including human-like gods with personal names, from Ahura Mazda to Zeus and many in-between. Such projections fulfil a deep human psychological, social and religious need. Myths are troves of insight into human nature and the nature of the world. Understood well, they need not conflict with science, and deserve better than being discarded as nonsense. Perhaps there are other life forms in Cosmos, more intelligent and more noble - or evil - than us. Yet the MM impulse leads to the transcendence of any mythological fixations. * Secondly, of something like 'Cosmic pantheism'. Humanity with its consciousness and its human nature, is part of nature, part of Cosmos: a living, conscious Being, for which 'divine' may be an understandable term, although not necessary. e Thirdly, of Infinite ‘Divinity’ ('God', 'Spirit) without too much reservation, making sure that it is distinguished clearly from the first two senses. Here the term 'divine' emphatically does not refer to a personal being, a bigger version of ourselves, but to a transpersonal level where the limiting articles 'a' and 'the' no longer apply: Infinite Consciousness and Bliss, Infinite Beauty and Goodness, Infinite Being and Energy. At that level, a term such as ‘panentheism’ may be useful: Cosmoses are somehow expressions, manifestations, of a deeper background of (‘divine’) Infinitude. It is also a penultimate level. * Fourthly, ultimately, the concept ‘g(G)od’ loses reference, peters out. 218 . Becoming E $33 Auto-manifestation | stare up in amazement and fear at the second of three mountain peaks - each with three flanks; all three steep, awesome in their beauty, and with their tops covered in dark, impenetrable cloud. Up there is not where gods reside; the realm of gods lies lower, at the contour of myth linking the clouds of Infinitude and the plains of Cosmos. Along the slopes of the first three-faced peak, we explored the primordial Principles of Consciousness; now we shall explore those of Being. Because of the commonalities of the terrain and the experience of the previous climb, the going - this sophia-philic wondering wandering - may be a bit easier now. | will presuppose and build on what has been said in the previous three chapters, without unnecessary repetition. On the other hand, the structure of the second mountain is different from that of the first, and it will undoubtedly raise challenges and obstacles of its own. There are a number of dead-end intuitions. Cosmos does not arise from either Something or Nothing. It does not emerge ex nihilo, in the sense of out of a Nothingness, by whatever means, or by whatever pre-existent agent. Such a Nothingness is easily understood as a kind of negative opposite, a mirror image, of a substantialist view of a supernatural Being or Agent creating it all. We need to get outside such notions. ‘Absolute Horizon’, ‘Absoluteness’, ‘Unground’, it seems to me, is as close as we can come to conceptualise How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Becoming’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 219-226, AOSIS, Cape Town. https:// doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.11 219 Becoming the sheer emergence of the ultimate mystery (how can there be, and why is there, something, a Cosmos?) without substantialising some pre-existent ‘X’. The prefix ‘ex’ (out of ’) almost inevitably suggests such overtones. Therefore, rather allow Unground, and then Cosmos, to Become. There ‘is’ no other, pre- existing agent affecting the stillness of Absolute Horizon; no change of some pre-existing Substance, and no creation out of some pre-existing Nothingness. At most, let me indulge my sense of wonder by contemplating Becoming. | cannot see how our intuitive and speculative gnosis can be pushed any further. Becoming just happens. The concrete things of the world, the world itself, are instantiations of Becoming. They are not Things in a heavy sense of the word, just our takes, our fixations, of a continuum, a series of evanescent events, an appearing and disappearing flow, with Becoming one analytical cut from our side of that process. Clumsily said, Absoluteness realises itself, primordial non- manifestedness becomes manifest. At most, we may consider that it happens, and perhaps unfold aspects of the dynamics of such a procession, but that is as far as we can go. Ideas of a personalised God may be understandable and useful from a psychological and educational point of view. It is a kind of shorthand, affording people a handle easy to grasp in their hour of need. Yet, its limitations are apparent to anyone scratching under the surface. It lures us into an infinite regress: Cosmos could not have brought itself into being - for that, God must have been responsible; but then, how was God brought into being? - Which poses another demonstrandum, and so on, ad infinitum. ‘Personalised’ is just that: a personification of the unknown, a creation of a Big Person like us little ones, and most likely designed to fit our personal needs and requirements, like a personalised vehicle. The notion of an ‘analogy’ between ‘this’ side (the world) and some postulated ‘other’ side (such as a personal God) does not really help. In order to postulate an analogy between two things, both have to be known, however faintly. The point is: we do not, cannot, ‘know’ of any other side, neither by reason, nor by revelation. Go far enough, and all we get is End and Origin. Somehow, beyond the something-nothing dilemma, on Absolute Horizon, auto-genesis stirs. What emerges here is inadequately called ‘Becoming’:the possibility of happening, being, continuing, enduring, changing and ending, This line of sensing emphasises that Unground is not to be understood nihilistically. Absoluteness means absolute disappearance from sight; and something appears on that Horizon, and Cosmos emerges. The term ‘becoming’, like ‘change’, appears to be quite hopelessly trapped between substantialism (implying no becoming, no change) and nihilism (there is nothing to become, change). Such are the limitations of human thought. The way out seems to be to allow genesis, becoming, change and end to flicker unsteadily in the haze of inaccessible Horizon. The possibilities of our constructive conceptualising cannot get us any further. Cosmos is neither the 'same' as, nor something 220 Chapter 11 ‘different’ from Something or Nothing outside of it. We cannot get beyond these neither-nor negatives. Thought and talk go bankrupt. Nonetheless, on this side of the Horizon, we may talk of becoming and change. The generation, conditioning, continuing, changing, (d)evolution, decaying of Cosmos and every one of its constituent parts, is part, an extension, of that primal genesis. Life with all its trials and tribulations is an expression of emerging Becoming, like surface waves on a deep ocean current. Cosmos is real, and manifestation of auto-manifesting Absoluteness. Cosmogony and ‘theo’-gony (but here intended to refer to Unground beyond a personalised divinity) are two aspects of the same process. The spiral of Originating and Ending continues eternally. In that spiral Absoluteness absorbs, processes, even the bad (evil). Even evil is not separate from Absoluteness, but - incomprehensible as it seems to us -is included in its eternal movement. Its movement is a cycle of enrichment, forward, like surface water sinking into the deep and water at the depth rising to the surface, and all the while the ocean current keeps moving in its mysterious way. The individual droplets are part of all of that and reflect all of that. E S34 Fragments In this 8, | am again trying to see contributions made by our sophiaphilic predecessors and contemporaries as fragments of a puzzle which, when assembled well, may aid us in seeing a comprehensive picture. The picture emerging in these reflections on the puzzle with 1O OOO pieces is not some ‘final’, ‘real’, picture. It is just another fragment in the ongoing - and essentially never-ending - human search for integral meaning. In the final analysis, MM is a-gnostic gnosis. Parmenides | now pick up a glorious fragment in the MM endeavour: 150 lines, all that remained of a poem of Parmenides (5th century BCE), one of the first European contemplators of the great mystery, and one of the greatest of those pioneering map makers of consciousness and world. He most likely worked in an established pre-Socratic tradition of MM reflection on what really 'is', distinct from the world reported by the senses. His poem abounds in ambiguities and word play (cf. Curd 1998; Dunham et al. 2011:10-18; Kingsley 2003). Not surprisingly, what he intended, cannot be pinned down exactly. There is no single generally accepted reception of Parmenides. That he was a monist cannot be disputed and that his position boiled down to a variety of objective idealism is defensible, although not strictly proven from his extant fragments. In any event, he did not deny reality, matter and so on, but somehow saw all of that as included in a whole (Being), 221 Becoming which is somehow essentially tied to Thought (Truth). Parmenides understood the problem as no one before him: if the world became (came into being), there is a limited number of options available to explain that becoming. Parmenides eliminates a few: the world could not have been created by something else, could not have arisen from nothing, could not have arisen at any time in the past, and it does not have any parts and cannot change. All of these are negations, by which he became the forerunner of a number of MM thinkers, from Plato over Plotinus to Hegel. What remains and what he accepts, is that the world /s eternally. The central axis of his mystic thought was the idea that change - not only in the divine order, but also in the cosmic order - is an illusion. He Cor rather, the goddess leading him into ultimate truth) rejects the feasibility of notions such as creation and destruction. What remains, is utter changelessness, perfect fullness, simplicity and completion, without any lack, without future or past. That is ultimate truth, paradoxical truth, for it is true even of changing empirical being. Perfect fullness, stillness, is everything, and everything is (Kingsley 2003): [Plerfectly complete - just like the bulk of a sphere neatly rounded off from each direction, equally matched from the middle on every side. (p. 179) At the level of science, he may have been the first Western thinker to postulate that the earth was a perfect sphere (ibid.:233ff.), and that our common-sense idea, fed by our senses, of a flat earth, was an illusion, useful for practical purposes, but without substance. Perhaps that discovery is an important key to his thinking. Was his MM an extrapolation of the discovery of the spherical earth, or at least intimately connected to it? For, obviously, as a matter of axiomatic assumption to him as a Greek, a sphere must be perfect. On such assumptions and as an attempt to integrate MM and the cutting-edge science of his day, his MM becomes quite understandable and, given his pioneering position, with no prior support to lean on, highly impressive. He attempted to account for empirical experience, science and MM at the same time, in the same framework. He did that with his own seamless harmony of intuition, observation, speculation and mythopoesis, which is not easy to unscramble today. A similar integration is what we, with the profit of two millennia of scientific advance and a long tradition of MM thinking, need to achieve for our own time, to satisfy our hunger for integral meaning. It will be no easy achievement - if it ever transpires. Here we are exploring the idea that Absoluteness-Eternity-Infinitude emerges as fluid Cosmos. However much we may deceive ourselves about the world, in itself it is neither an objective illusion, nor an epiphenomenal reflection of something else, nor a subjective (self-)deception. Parmenides would have shot down the 222 Chapter 11 possibility of a Principle of Becoming. There is only one reality, he says. With that, it seems to me, the drift of the intuition unfolding itself in these chapters can go along wholeheartedly. There are not two realities - at least not in the sense of the ‘natural’ one and then outside it another ‘supernatural’ one, perhaps the latter one being the ‘real’ one. This empirical world ‘is’ Absoluteness- Eternity-Infinitude. With that, we can agree. The ‘is’ needs not be taken to exclude relativity, plurality and change. That there may be a succession of Cosmoses born and going extinct, arising from Eternity and returning to Eternity, is not allowed for in the perimeters of Parmenides’ grand vision. In addition, that there may be Wanting in the inmost recesses of things, is excluded by his theory. In his reality there is no distinction between inside and outside, and - perhaps by implication - not between consciousness and being either inside or outside. That may be taken to imply idealism. Nor would he have concerned himself with their arising from some hidden depth as two interdependent and complementary aspects of one reality. To him, allis a static circle without beginning and end; it is eternally present non-Becoming and non-Ending perfection. This seems to be a closed monism. It could not accommodate Becoming. Gaudapada Brahmanic thought had been theistic and sacrificial. Then, around 700-600 BCE, the progressive Indian thought pattern became meta-theistic and meditative. The time of the Upanishads had arrived. That dramatic change was the key to the future history of Indian MM. The newly arrived Upanishads contained a rich diversity of intuitions and speculations in need of further development and clarification. Several systematic trends of thinking developed. One of these was (Advaita) Vedanta. It would become the dominant MM model in Hinduism. Sankara (788-820 CE) would be the most prominent representative of Advaita Vedanta. | now turn to Gaudapada (probably 8th century), who was probably two generations older than Sankara, and to whom Sankara felt himself deeply indebted. To Gaudapada belongs the honour of revitalising and developing boldly and clearly, in his Agamasastra (also called Mandukya- Karika, a commentary on the Mandukya Upanishad), the non-dualistic thinking of the Upanishads, launched a 1000 years earlier. Gaudapada no doubt did that under the influence of Mahayana (Madhyamika and Yogacara) Buddhism; probably he had, at least at some stage, been a Buddhist himself. Sankara would steer the enterprise away from the Buddhist and into the mainstream Hindu channel. To Gaudapada the question of becoming was the most fundamental question of all. His MM answer was straight to the point: there is no becoming (cf. Bhattacharya 1989; Dasgupta 1975 [1922]:418ff.). 223 Becoming In his words (IV.19): [T]he Buddhas elucidated (the theory of) absolute non- origination (ajat/) (Bhattacharya 1989:121). The Buddhas only spoke of origination/becoming (ati) kindly and skilfully to accommodate lower order minds, naive realists (IV.18; 1.42), who could not cope with the radical teaching of non-origination, in order gradually to lead them into the deeper insight. The ultimate state of the self is ‘all-pervading’, ‘changeless’, ‘non-dual’ (I. 10; |. 17), not ‘bound with cause and effect’ (I. 11), ‘unborn’/non-originating (1.16; III. 2; Ill. 48; IV. 4; IV. 22-23; IV. 71; IV. 100). The world is mere illusion or magic (maya), appearing as real, no different from a dream (ll. 6; IV. 31): That which is non-existent at the beginning, and at the end, is so also at the present; being like the unreal, things still appear as not unreal. All that appears as manifest, as outside, are imaginary creations. There are no many things, either different or identical. Duality, birth and death, are false distinctions imposed by maya on the unmoved, unmoving non-dual. When this mind activity, this thinking that there is production, ceases, sorrow ceases. Gaudapada seems to say that, from the ultimate point of view, ‘origination’ is a category mistake: it does not apply. The ultimate transcends that very notion. To him the category ‘Becoming’ simply could not apply to the Absolute. Gaudapada follows a different route than the one beckoning us. Was Gaudapada consistent? If he had said that everything, including ultimate reality, is just a dream, in a thorough-going idealism, his position would indeed have been fully consistent. He does not seem to have said that. In addition, ‘is’ maya on his account not ‘something’, namely ‘something else’ than ultimate reality? Does it not ‘arise’, and constitute some (bad) ‘change’ of the ultimate? Does mind activity, imagination, sorrow, not ‘arise’ and ‘cease’? If it is just a dream, why bother? How would Gaudapada have responded to such questions? It appears that, for some inexplicable reason, change (Origination, Becoming) does take place on Absolute Horizon. Cosmos does emerge. Cosmos remains shot through with Absoluteness ('is' Absolute) - and it is also (relatively and non-dually) real. On this spectrum, one can place the emphasis on the Absoluteness or on the relative reality of Cosmos. Nevertheless, it is not called for to push either to the point of denying the other. We need to hold on to both the absolute and the relative. Gaudapada seems to undervalue the second. Unless we give the second its full due, any ground for attending to Cosmos with love and responsibility is cut from under our feet. Why not withdraw into a shell of indifference? It seems to me that the acceptance of the world with all its relative but real determinations and changes, beginnings and endings, and of the duty of responsible existence in the world, is not merely an accommodation of the weaker brethren, but the very essence of understanding Unground, and, from a pragmatic, moral point of view, a necessary assumption. 224 Chapter 11 the Awakening of faith in Mahayana Sutra For further direction | now turn to the speculative Awakening of faith in Mahayana Sutra (cf. Hakeda 1967; Suzuki 1900; Verdu 1981), flanked by the Lankávatàra Sutra (Suzuki 1978 [1932]). Both were seminal texts for East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) Mahayana Buddhism. The extremely condensed text Awakening of faith in Mahayana was perhaps written by an unknown Chinese author in the period between 5th century and 6th century CE, and then translated into Sanskrit. The Lankàvatàra Sutra was originally composed in Sanskrit, probably before the end of the 3rd century CE at the latest. As far as | can tell, Indian Buddhism did not address the question whether, and if so, why and how Absoluteness stirs, nor why and how Cosmos arises. It seems that the Buddha himself would have relegated such questions to the realm of the insoluble, irrelevant and speculative. One might suspect tendentionally that the Buddha’s message does contain certain interesting implications, worth exploring. Hinayana scholasticism did not provide any theoretically coherent answer to the question of universal causality, that is, Cosmic becoming in a broad sense. The world of paccaya (‘conditionality’) was simply the assumed backdrop of its teaching on human karma and its soteriology: samsara was just a given, the negative foil for nibbàna. We take note of the Yogacara scheme of the absolute parinispanna; the relative, transitory paratantra bobbing on the surface of that absolute; and the false parikalpita (empirical reality misunderstood to exist separate from the absolute parinispanna). The question is: how does absolute parinispanna become empirical paratantra? We only hear of winds of ignorance (avidya) driving universal causal becoming. Yet that is no more than a confession of ignorance - perhaps even of rejection? No seminal Principle of Becoming, no reason for it, seems to be forthcoming. Surely, what could then arise is the temptation of seeing Cosmic Becoming as 'a sort of delirious sickness contracted by ultimate reality’ (Verdu 1981:24f.). Indeed, a closeness of Indian Buddhism and Gnosticism would seem to announce itself. If that is the final outcome of Buddhism, it would become impossible for us, on the course we have embarked upon in this essay, to follow it. Our problem is: How can we envisage real genesis, and genesis of the multiply real, from Absolute Horizon - without diluting the full force of a radical concept of Absoluteness? In Fa-tsang's analogy of the golden lion: why, how does gold become lion, while still remaining gold? According to the Awakening of faith and the Lankàvatàra Sutra, as uncovered by Verduin a daring and original manner (ibid.:29-42), Origination is fundamental to Tathatà (true ‘Thusness’ ['Suchness' p, which is SGAyata Emptiness’). In our 225 Becoming present context: Süfiyatà is the matrix where Cosmos is conceived, and from whence it is manifested. Both our sutras encourage us to interpret Absoluteness (Emptiness) in this sense, without it being compromised; on the contrary, its true character is manifested in that very process. Far from being an endless vacuum, Absoluteness becomes. It is essentially self-embodying, self-defining, self-limiting - and in that very act self-actualising, self-manifesting. In classical Mahayana language (the Heart Sutra): the absolute is the relative, the relative is the absolute; emptiness is form, form is emptiness. We are here entering territory different from Parmenides’ changeless perfection or Gaudapada's featureless not- becoming. Here, undetermined potentiality by inner necessity and freedom becomes limitation. Extrapolated: Emptiness and the phenomenal world, that is, Absoluteness and Cosmos, co-exist in mutual dependency. The essence of Suchness is undifferentiated and devoid of all characteristics, and yet, simultaneously, this same Emptiness, Suchness, Absoluteness is from the beginning (Hakeda 1967): [LF]ully provided with all excellent qualities; namely, it is endowed with the light of great wisdom, the qualities of illuminating the entire universe, of true cognition and mind pure in its self-nature; of eternity, bliss, Self, and purity; of refreshing coolness, immutability, and freedom. It is endowed with these excellent qualities which outnumber the sands of the Ganges, which are not independent of, disjointed from, or different from the essence of Suchness. (p. 65) In order to elucidate the nature of Emptiness, the Lankàvatàra uses the expressive concept 7athàgata-garbha (‘womb of the Tathagata’). It explains (LXXXII) that (Suzuki 1978 [1932]): [7 ]he Tathàgata-garbha holds within it the cause for both good and evil, and by it all the forms of existence are produced. Like an actor it takes on a variety of forms [...]. Cp. 191) In terms of Fa-tsang's analogy, the gold allows itself to become: to become lion with its myriads of individual organs and hairs, while remaining gold. Yes, empty Absoluteness becomes - and eventually becomes Cosmos, without sacrificing - in fact, realising - its emptiness. It allows, contains, essentially and freely, Becoming. The gold is not some ‘other’ (‘transcendent’) ontological reality somehow also ‘immanent’ in the hair of the lion. Fa-tsang’s illustration overcomes any such split, however much the latter may be assuaged by terms such as ‘participation’ or ‘analogy’. 226 . Can-ing E 535 Capacity to act and undergo A sense of awesome power in and behind things has always been a central aspect of the experience of ultimacy in all religions. From the perspective of this contemplation, Eternity, unfolding as auto-genesis, emerges as the capacity to act and undergo. To emphasise an important theoretical point of Part Two of this essay, the gerund 'can-ing', awkward and clumsy as it may sound, is maintained as key word, in spite of more attractive substantive nouns such as ‘capacity’, ‘potentiality’ and ‘possibility’. The theoretical point is the following: the Principle of Can-ing, emerging on Absolute Horizon is not a substance itself or a quality inherent in (a) Being, Person or Substance. Can-ing, but there is no one who cans, we say with a nod of acknowledgement towards Buddhaghosa in his Visuddhimagga (XVI.90): ‘not the doer but certainly the deed is found’ (karako na, kiriya va vijjati) (Buddhaghosa 1979:587). What Buddhaghosa said in a restricted anthropological context, is here extended to the process of becoming Cosmos. Here this exploration also takes a different route than Nicholas of Cusa, whose views on ‘possibility’ (literally, 'can-ing' [oosse]) as developed in his last work (De apice theoriae) were referred to in Chapter 6. On the one hand, he says that ‘can-ing’ precedes existence. On the other hand, he is very explicit that ‘can-ing as such’ (posse ipsum) is the hypostasis omnium C‘standing-under’, How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Can-ing’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 227-239, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi. org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.12 227 Can-ing the basis of all things) (Von Kues 1966:378). In this work he once again shows himself to be a ‘negative’ theologian in the classic mould as he had been all along since De docta ignorantia a quarter of a century earlier. All qualifications are stripped off, yet hypostasis is retained, and that is equated with God as conceived of in the Christian belief system: ‘By “can-ing as such” the Trinitarian God is signified’ (ibid.:584). This exploration takes a step further back towards sheer Absoluteness. As sheer possibility, Can-ing is here neither hypostasised nor identified with Being or with any particular historical concept of God, neither masculine nor feminine. Before the thick, charged, active cloud of Cosmic being, power, causality and life thunders and flashes, a thin wisp, hardly discernible, is faintly discernable inthe clear, empty sky of Absolute Horizon. Absoluteness begins to condensate in the ethereal form of Can-ing as the sheer capacity to act and to undergo - prior to transitivity (that is, subjectivity relating to objectivity), reciprocity (that is, two-way movement) and reflexivity (that is, rebound, throwback, on the first subjectivity). Eventually Eternal Can-ing, a transcendental Principle without substance, becomes Infinite Power and Life, and then manifests as Cosmic Power, Causality, Action. Can-ing is an all-underlying, all-structuring Principle pervading Cosmos in its totality and every being in it, eventually finding expression in a plurality of actual acts. It is the non-substantial root, eventually bringing forth the external world as fruit, setting in motion the train of Cosmic, causally linked events. Being suffused by this principle, Cosmos, and everything in it, is self-creating. At the level of Eternity, of Absoluteness beginning to stir, this root is sheer Principle, potential, promise, incipient function. Deep in the heart of reality, arising from Horizon, is a capacity and tendency to act and undergo. In the act of being produced, Cosmos and each of its myriad constituents are not merely passive, but they participate in Eternal Can-ing: in undergoing the process of being born from the mother, the daughter is also active. This is not weak passivity, inert submissiveness, uncreative compliance or surrender: as a strong capacity to allow, it is receptivity and creativity in one. The daughter announces herself, makes her appearance. At an archetypal level, the association with the principle of femininity is obvious. It is to be seen in conjunction with the masculine principle of begetting. The two are mutually implied. The myriad things share in the Can-ing of Absoluteness, participate in their own production (Becoming). The thing produced and coming into existence has its own share of Can-ing, non-dually distinct from Eternal Can- ing. Eternal Can-ing bestows freedom to act on Cosmos and its creatures. Primordial Can-ing expresses the capacity of Unground to allow, encompass, accommodate, support, endure, and sustain the world. Can-ing pervades the world, makes it possible, like oxygen suffusing bloodstream and tissue and 228 Chapter 12 making the body possible. Here we are mainly looking at the aspect of Freedom; later we shall have a closer look at the aspect of Necessity. Throughout, we need to be aware of their mutual implication. Freedom is not restricted to preconsciousness and eventually to Consciousness, and Necessity not to Pre- Being and eventually to Being (Matter). There is no split between Freedom and Necessity. Both permeate all of reality, in the macrocosm as a whole and its various processes and genera and in species of being in their various degrees and combinations. Equally, it must be acknowledged in the microcosm as its innermost, most essential truth. E S536 Sandhi Originally, the term sandhi (Sanskrit, junction’) was used in several contexts, such as two roads meeting or two houses joining. Such connections are dynamic sites. The word came to be applied particularly to the meeting of two sounds in spoken language. Somewhere between the need for precision and the need for economy shortcuts are taken in the speaking mouth, compromises are made, creative solutions are forged or winners and losers emerge. Similar things happen when systems of ultimate meaning meet. Various religions or systems of mysticism with their divergent conceptualisations may be understood as analogous to different sounds in one language, sounding together in the human mouth. In our day, the meetings among science and religions and other systems of ultimacy are sites of challenge and change. With others, we are seeking a euphonic articulation of various understandings of the ultimate mystery of things. This is different from reducing such systems to some poorest common denominator. Taoism As was the case with other systems of ultimate meaning, the roots of Taoism lie in insights originating in prehistoric shamanic religion. Yet it set out on its course in historical times, perhaps 1000 BCE, unencumbered by the compulsory baggage of mythological supernatural personae and an infallibly sacred scripture, to reach great heights of MM gnosis. Of course, it did give rise, understandably and acceptably, to religious myth and ritual, but these were never presented as depicting or enacting an exclusive saving truth about one or more quasi-human creator deities. The point of departure of this Chinese model of All is a concept of natural, cosmic creativity and power, equally present in macrocosm and microcosm. Good nature, worth living and enjoying, is seen as a real structure, not as an illusion, as was the tendency in India; and not a structure of substances, but of dynamic forces and action. Added to that, in Taoist MM phenomenal nature is the exteriorisation, the dynamic expression, of an Eternal blueprint, preceding 229 Can-ing and structuring the physical universe. In addition, Tao is not a way of strife and conflict, but essentially the Way of, and towards, macrocosmic and microcosmic harmony, peace and happiness. Eternal energy (ch), eventually becoming cosmic energy, shows two interdependent and interacting modes: yang is active, positive energy; yin, its passive, negative counterpart. Together, they manifest the primordial fact of arising and decay - let us say, of Origin and End. To a thinker such as Chuang- Tzu, life and death, like cosmic time and space itself, are but two of the endlessly variegated forms of undifferentiated, transtemporal Eternity, successively assuming different forms of self-manifestation. This has the implication that no empirical thing has an essence in itself, but only a relative distinction from the other, and from the undifferentiated, ‘chaotic’ Tao (Izutsu 1983:315ff., 322ff.). This vision is essentially dynamic, presupposing a process of unobstructed transformation (change) from Tao to the things and back, and between and among things. There are no absolute barriers, only total unobstructedness. In the thinking of Lao-Tzu, the Way, although it is in itself undifferentiated and nameless, a Darkness that transcends all things, is also the Origin of all. The Tao Te Ching (l; XL) reads Cibid.:391ff.): The Nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth. The Named is the Mother of ten thousand things [...]. The ten thousand things under Heaven are born out of Being (yu), and Being is born out of Non-Being (wu). (p. 391) Thus, the Way is essentially creative. At the stage of Non-Being in the self- devolvement of the Way, it ‘is’ not, and yet ‘is’ potentially, and gives birth to Heaven and Earth. It is pregnant with eternal energy. In imagery reminiscent of the Buddhist Yogacara concept ‘womb’, Lao-Tzu refers to Absoluteness as a ‘granary’. Emptiness is supremely productive, and in this productivity, the principles of activity and receptivity (passivity) are mutually constitutive. In the Taoist MM masters one finds true Absoluteness [...] and also true Becoming, and Can-ing. Any useful hermeneutic will be clear that there are no identities across cultural, societal and historical contexts, only, at best, felicitous contacts and convergences, perhaps inclined in the same direction, perhaps even moving forward in loose company. On that understanding, this meeting with Taoism has been, like the previous ones, profoundly rewarding and encouraging in our search for MM orientation in the world of today. Mahayana Buddhism The argument set out in the previous § is presented as in line with the Buddhist prime concept of karma (kamma): acting, doing. It is also presented as in line with the intention of the Mahayana Buddhist concept of Tathagata-garbha, as developed in the Yogacara school (around the 4th century CE), the anonymous 230 Chapter 12 (probably Chinese) sutra Awakening of faith in Mahayana (before the 5th century CE), and East Asian Buddhism (the Hua-yen [Kegon] school, founded in the 6th century or 7th century). The empty womb of Buddhaness (Emptiness, Absoluteness) is - paradoxically - the source where all things are conceived, from which they are born, and by which they are activated. The connection between this train of thought and the elevation of the feminine principle in MM is clear. In fact, one of the differences between early Buddhism and the later Mahayana was the higher philosophical and mystical standing awarded to femininity, to include a number of celestial Bodhisattvas, possessors of infinite compassion and wisdom. The mythical goddess Prajfiapàramità (‘Perfection of Wisdom’) is, for example, the mother of the Buddhas. This archetypal connection offset the traditional androcentrism, inherent in ancient Buddhism as a social institution, as in all religions deriving from the ancient world. Absoluteness ‘becomes’, ‘is’ Absoluteness as agent. 7athatà (‘Thusness’) is empty with reference to its logically prior state of bare indetermination; but precisely in that state it is full with the potentiality to manifest itself totally - it is therefore totally non-empty, full (Verdu 1981:45ff.). In our terminology, it contains Eternal Principles of Becoming and Can-ing. Discriminative words break down when attempting to describe this mystery. According to the Awakening of faith in Mahàyàna (Verdu 1981): Thusness, (Tathatà; Chinese: chen-yu; Japanese: shinnyo), if relying upon discriminative words, has two different aspects. One is that it is truly empty, for only this aspect can in the final analysis reveal what is (ultimately) real. The other is that it is truly non-empty, for its essence comprises, in total completeness, all the undefiled qualities (of self-manifestation). (p. 46) This formulation, moving at the same high level of MM sophistication as Chuang-Tzu, contains in an exemplary way, and as concisely as can come, the problem, the intuition and the sense of wonder leading this exploration. Stoicism As indicated earlier, ancient Stoicism spoke of two archai, basic patterns or regulative, structuring divine principles underlying the world: the Active (to poioun) and the Passive (to paschon). In Stoic cosmology and metaphysics (Frede 2003:179ff.; Hahm 1977; Pohlenz 1964:64-110; White 2003:129ff.) the cosmos is periodically consumed by fire (the ekpyrosis, ‘conflagration’). At such periods ‘god’ consumes the whole cosmos (which they took to be a living being) back into himself; he then brings it forth from himself again. Of fundamental structural significance in this process of world constitution is that there are two most basic all-pervasive principles in nature, essentially co-operative in an inner unity. On the one hand, 231 Can-ing there is an active (life-giving, rational, creative, directive) element (principle, force). This generative principle in the universe was also referred to as /ogos spermatikos (‘seminal reason’), maker (demiurge), or ‘god’. On the other hand there is a passive element (principle, force) (that which is acted upon), counterpart to, and permeated and determined by the first, which is eternally inherent in it. This passive, impressionable, qualifiable principle, was held to be material (prime matter), and perhaps taken to underlie the four elements earth, water, fire and air. There seems to have been some difference of opinion among Stoics as to whether the active principle was immaterial or material, with the latter probably the dominant position. The two Principles were not dualistically dissociated. Overall, the Stoics were corporealists: the ultimate substance of things must be corporeal; and corporeality means that which either acts (activity) or that which is acted upon (passivity). What is significant in our immediate context is not the corporeality of it all, but firstly the thread of thought that the world proceeds from god, and secondly that this happens in accordance with the principles (archa/) of activity-passivity. These are metaphysical prior assumptions, which Stoicism derived from Plato and Aristotle, largely synthesising those two philosophers. Stoicism seems not to have settled for an unqualified monism of god and world. There is a measure of distinction: In the phase of collapse into god, god is utterly unadulterated, approaching absolute transcendence from the world. Stoicism had a clear sense of the primary significance of the categories of acting and being acted upon in the coming into being of the world, yet it does not seem to have penetrated to the transcendental levels of Absoluteness and Eternity, as found in Taoism and Mahayana Buddhism. Their archai lie wholly within their cosmos. Yet this philosophy can be seen to join the route explored on our expedition: Cosmos emerges from, is non-dualistically and non-monistically permeated by, and returns to, Absoluteness. The Becoming of Cosmos from that primordial condition is governed by activity and passivity. That is a thread worth holding in our hands as we hope to move safely through the labyrinth of human responses to the mystery of the becoming and ending of the world. Neoplatonism Plotinus was acquainted with the scientific and philosophical thinking of his day, including that of India and of those preceding him. His approach to things was conciliatory, universalist, inclusive and synthetic, and not bound narrowly to any religious institution. Such features, apart from the substance of this thinking and his historical impact, make him a significant guide on the route of this exploration. 232 Chapter 12 A basic principle underlying Neoplatonism in its various forms is the axiom that every productive cause is necessarily superior to its result. Higher cannot be caused, produced by lower, only lower by higher. Extrapolated to present debates concerning evolution, Plotinus would have rejected the notion that, say, consciousness, could arise from matter, as is held in materialistic scientism. He accepted an unhistorical scale of being; the notion of historical evolution lay 16 centuries into the future. Nevertheless, his top-down model of the hierarchy of things allowed for a bottom-up perspective. That perspective was secondary, and strictly subordinate to the larger movement of a devolution from higher to lower, from the One through Intelligence and Soul to Matter. The One is immanent in all else, yet is also beyond and different from (transcendent to) all else. How did Neoplatonism account for the dynamics of this relationship, of the emergence of the world from the One? Is the relationship between the empirical world and the One such that anything at all happens? Is there any change, any Becoming? Terms such as ‘dynamics’, ‘emergence’, ‘change’ and ‘becoming’ are misleading, in that they push Plotinus further into a historical or quasi-historical view of things than that which he actually held. To him, reality is a structure of dependence of various levels of reality. Being ontologically ‘posterior’ means being contained in the ‘prior’. It seems to be a complex but essentially supratemporal relationship of partial overlap, partial mutual immanence and partial mutual transcendence of 'prior' and 'posterior (O'Meara 1996:66-81). Is reality, taken in the widest sense, from the One to Matter, in his system static? Yes, it appears, in the sense that his reality is - contrary to axiomatic (post-)modern assumptions - completely ahistorical. Nevertheless, it was not static, in the sense that his system did in fact allow for a considerable degree of dialectical tension. The One and Matter are two poles, positive and negative, eternally poised in a tautly ambivalent relationship. The emanation of the One from Itself, thereby constituting the rest of reality, is in his Enneads a purely ontic relationship. 'Emanation' (Oosthuizen 1974:59ff.) means that the many are extensions of the One, just as - these are his own analogies - light is an extension of the sun, the circumference an extension of the centre, heat an extension of fire, smell the extension of objects, rivers extensions of a spring, fruit extensions of the root. Plotinus does not associate temporal sequence with such ‘emanations’; the emphasis is squarely and solely on the aspect of ontological primacy. Incidentally, Plotinus did not use the term 'emanation' himself, and it is not a Platonic idea either. Nevertheless, the term is expressive of Plotinus' view. His thinking here reveals, if not Gnostic influence, at least the presence and spread of Gnostic ideas in the environment in which he thought. At least in this respect, the underlying structure of his system may be said to be similar to Gnosticism, although without the extreme pessimism and dualism prevalent in some Gnostic sects (such as that of Valentinus). 233 Can-ing Clearly, Plotinus was up against the same fundamental perplexity that we are confronted with in this attempt of ours to make sense of things, including the existence of Cosmos since around 14 billion years ago, before which point it had not been in existence. Our perplexity concerns the paradox of the difference and sameness of empty ultimacy and the 10 OOO things of empirical reality. Is there any Becoming, any Can-ing involved in this? To Mahayana precisely that Emptiness-Becoming-Fullness was a source of explicit, joyful wonder, the very centre of their MM; to Plotinus it seems to have been an intellectual embarrassment - at least, it did not become a focus of contemplative awe in itself. In the end, he envisions reality as a hierarchical structure like a pyramid, and unbecoming. He could say (V.2.2) (Plotinus 1991): L7 ]here is from the first principle to ultimate [that is, last, 'lower'] being an outgoing in which unfailingly each principle retains its own seat while its offshoot takes another rank, a lower, though on the other hand every being is in identity with its prior as long as it holds that contact. (p. 362) That really begs the question intriguing us here. Plotinus is not quite Parmenides, but he does not seem to have developed a theory of change either. He does not hold a fully-fledged monism, and gives indications of tending towards a version of non-monism, but without accounting for Becoming. He does not appear to linger on the full extent of this problem, and takes for granted what is really a major issue, in need of prolonged contemplation and theoretical explication as far as that may be possible. On the one hand, he maintains the idea of sameness: whatever proceeds from the One, remains ontologically identical with the One. That is his main thesis. On the other hand, he cannot avoid introducing the idea of change, of ontological ‘otherness’: there are definite differentiations, breaks, in a process of degeneration, between his levels of emanation. That is a secondary thesis, or assumption, or at least implication. Have these two assumptions been reconciled theoretically, their relationship explicated? It seems not. In the end he falls back on a principle of evil unaccounted for, thereby fuelling a dualistic tendency. He hovers between monism and dualism, but does not quite strike a balance, moving forward. He did not develop a notion of ‘process’, of ‘Becoming’, of ‘Can-ing’. Plotinus’ model poses a challenge to our contemporary groping for understanding. On the assumption that the above interpretation of his system is adequate, we need a view more dynamic than his, and one more appreciative of the exquisite beauty of the world and its many things in all their ephemeral concreteness - yet without compromising the absoluteness of atemporal, aspatial Absoluteness. We need to envision, imagine, Cosmos (time) as dynamically born from, and also non-dualistically and non-monistically part of Absoluteness-Eternity, and with its own relative existence and value. We need simultaneously to do justice to two essential things. Firstly, we need to appreciate the historicity of things - such as the real beginning of Cosmos with 234 Chapter 12 time so many datable years ago, the real emergence and evolution of life through time, and - one day - the real end of Cosmos and time. This is a given of our (post-)modern mindset, part of the scaffolding of contemporary MM thought, which cannot just be dismantled. Secondly, we need to see space for significant change, Becoming, on Horizon. Taking into consideration the caveats expressed above, a possibility opens up to read Plotinus cautiously, tendentionally in the direction that the train of our thinking is pulling and pushing. Following this route, we may postulate that his lowest level (d) - the world of Matter (Hy/e) - corresponds (not in content or value, but in function or position in the ontological scale) to our Cosmos; and that his first i.e. highest level (a) - the One (to En), the undifferentiated source of all - corresponds functionally to our Absoluteness. Then we may interpret his third highest level (c) - the world-Soul (Psyche) - as operating at the level of, and roughly corresponding in function to, what we intend with Infinitude. Between the One (Absoluteness) and the world-Soul (Infinitude) lies his second highest level (b), Mind (Nous). It may be appropriated to refer to the level of 'Eternity', deriving from Absoluteness, and feeding successively into the two ‘levels’ below. Furthermore, his Nous could be interpreted to express the same function as our Principle of Witting: to him Nous is the supreme (divine) Intelligence. In effect, it may also be interpreted to function as the creative principle (Hatab 1982:58). This interpretation - his Nous as functional equivalent of what we term creative Eternity - would draw Plotinus into the vicinity, not only of the Upanishads and Vedanta, but also of Mahayana Buddhism. As in Yogacara Buddhism, Plotinus’ Nous could be understood as a storehouse in which all potential beings pre-exist, and in which they are primarily activated, as eternal, divine thoughts. Sufism In the unmistakeable and inimitable diction of the grand master of Sufism, Ibn Arabi, the attentive listener can pick up MM sandhi and trace the lingering sounds of Neoplatonic, Hindu (Vedanta), Buddhist, Jewish (Kabbalah), Christian and Gnostic thought. Yet the water of his understanding takes on the unique colour of his particular bowl, made from the clay of a particular set of historical, social and religious conditions (medieval mystical Islam). That is unavoidable. In endless interreflections, impossible to pin down, Ibn Arabi's ambiguous words and associations evoke the mystery of divine emanation. Ibn Arabi unmistakeably imagines the divine Names as archetypes in the theogonic, theophanic process - that is, the process of the emanation (fayd), the Self- manifestation (tajall/), of al-hagq (the Absolute), culminating in the determination of concrete, empirical reality. First, the Absolute overflows to become the non-existent Names (archetypes); then the Names overflow to become creation. In this context, the Neoplatonic roots of this thinking are 235 Can-ing obvious - indeed, Ibn Arabi referred to the ‘divine Plato’, and he himself became known as /bn Aflatun (‘son of Plato’). In Neoplatonic vein, the Names in his vision cause the world to be, and are ever present in the world; they only become existent and knowable themselves insofar as they become the created world. The divine archetypes and their concretisations are reciprocally and simultaneously constituted (Ibn Al'Arabi 1980:31ff.; Sells 1994:75ff.). We can discern activity, passivity and reflexivity in the fundamental capacity inherent in the Absolute of the master. Procession and return - and what proceeds and what returns - are mutually constitutive. All the divine Names together exercise the function indicated in our scheme as Can-ing, allowing Cosmos to Become, and thereby actualising Absoluteness. The Names are jointly operative in the creation (khalq) of the world (Ibn Al'Arabi 1980): The divine causality on which the Cosmos depends is the Divine Names, which are every Name on which the Cosmos depends. (p. 126) Thus Ibn Arabi's Absolute is/becomes ‘Commander’ (amir), issuing the powerful ‘Command’ (amr): ‘Be!’ (kun) CIzutsu 1983:197ff.). And the world is created. In the ontological structure of the process of creation according to Ibn Arabi the feminine principle, co-operating with the masculine principle, is obvious. He speaks of an intermediate level, an essential link, between the wholly inaccessible Absolute and plural reality - not discrete from either the Absolute or creation, but expressing a non-dual relationship involving thorough mutual implication. The timbre of the voice and the accent are different, but the sound is consonant with those of Taoism and Mahayana Buddhism. Yet, he does not venture towards emptying Absoluteness as far as they do. Kabbalah The symbolic veil (inviting and protecting, revealing and concealing) that Isaac Luria weaves before the ultimate mystery of Cosmos emerging from Absoluteness, contains an interesting paradox: the process of the making of the world is the process of 'the breaking of the vessels' (Shebirath hakelim). 'Vessels' (kelim) refers to the Sefirot: the 10 luminous divine emanations or inner-divine containers, as it were, of God's light. Luria seems to envision the emergence of the world as analogous to the birth of a child from the mother's womb. The birth of the child is also the rupturing of the mother. The birthing of the world is both a joyful and a traumatic event for both mother (divinity) and child (the world), and surrounded by confusion and chaos. The 'breaking of the vessels', signalling the scattering of the divine sparks and their becoming entrapped in space and time, occurred outside divine control. There is no other way. This is the 'passive' side of the emergence of the world, also carrying the aspect of necessity. Neither mother (Ein-Sof) nor child (the world) has a choice in the matter; they have to undergo the process. Nevertheless, it is the supreme act of divine creation; it is the 'feminine' aspect of (in our terminology) Can-ing. 236 Chapter 12 It is not weak inactivity, but is supercharged with Can-ing. This association also emphasises the ambivalent position of the created world, hovering between the longing still to be part of the mother (or return to her, if that were possible) and the inevitability of a separate existence. The similarity of this imagery as found in Luria and the general Buddhist pattern of thinking, arises from the nature of the reality that the observer of the miracle of Becoming and Can-ing is contemplating: Fullness/Being is implied, contained in, and proceeds from, yet is not identical with Emptiness/ Absoluteness. That does not exclude the possibility of some historical connection of Buddhism and Kabbalah along a common journey over a considerable stretch of time. In Christian mysticism, sexual imagery was also a strongly developed theme. Without doubt this imagery has its primary roots in prehistoric shamanic layers of the human search for the ultimate meaning of things. Far from being a hangover from primitivism, it expresses a profound MM intuition of receptivity and activity in the core of things. The ‘active’ (‘masculine’) aspect of the productive creation of the world in the tradition of Kabbalah is suggested by the ninth divine Sefirah called Yesod (‘foundation’), associated with strength. This vessel is the equivalent of the Gnostic emanation referred to as Power (Caen). Yesod is the procreative force dynamically active in the universe, absorbing, concentrating and channelling all the Sefirot above it, particularly Hod (‘majesty’) and Netzah C‘fortitude’, ‘endurance’), and then manifesting in Ma/kuth - that is, the established Kingdom of God at the level of the physical universe. Thus, Kabbalah thinks in terms of a union of the active and passive in God, from which the world is derived (Scholem 1955 [1941]:227). This remarkable MM imagining is relevant to our reflection on the miraculous Eternal moment of Can-ing, enabling the emergence of Cosmos from Absoluteness, while remaining and participating in Absoluteness. Alfred North Whitehead | now listen to a different sound from a different epoch: that of the modern mathematician and metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), one of the most significant speculative MM minds of the last century and a half. Adding weight to Whitehead's thinking is the fact that he was an accomplished scientist, speaking with authority from within mathematics. That is a rare achievement among those interested in MM. Let me listen to his masterpiece Process and reality (1929). Whitehead is typically modern (in contrast to a premodern thinker such as Plotinus e.g.) in that his metaphysics is thoroughly dynamic, historical and evolutionary. His thinking also signifies a move away from a deterministic, materialistic worldview and the Cartesian bifurcation of reality into the physical 237 Can-ing (res extensa) and mental (res cogitans). His world is bipolar (or ‘dipolar’), having both physical and mental aspects. At first hearing, his abstract language seems very different from that of the passionate MM individuals and schools above. It is especially in the last chapter of Whitehead’s magnum opus (Whitehead 1978 [1929]:342-351) that we are allowed into the mystical part of his metaphysics. Unexpectedly we come across tenderness and emotion. He had lost a son in the First World War. Is there any meaning in it all? Yes, in the larger developing scheme of things God understands. His substitution of process for substance marks a turn in Western metaphysics. It started a century or so before him, and is an inviting signpost on the road that we are following here. In his essentially Platonist 'philosophy of organism' creativity constitutes the primary category in his overall vision of process. Creativity is not a substrate existing apart from the individualised acts of actual entities in the world, but is present in them and their activities. 'Creativity', the principle of 'novelty', is the ultimate notion of the highest generality at the base of actuality. Whitehead understands creativity as an ‘eternal object’ in which things participate. In this respect, he is linking up with Plato's notion of eternal Ideas, markedly different from the kind of approach unfolding in this essay. He distinguishes between the principle of 'creativity' and 'God'. God as well as the world is in the grip of the ultimate metaphysical ground, the creative advance into novelty. God is the principle of concretion, of order, mediating between original chaos and creativity and concrete reality with all its actual entities. Without God, there would be no actual outcome from creativity (Whitehead 1927:145, 1978 [1929]:349). Whitehead's position turns out to be a modern restatement of Plato's vision set out in the Timaeus: His God is the functional equivalent of Plato's Demiurge, the artist-artisan forming the word. Rather than share the usual theistic doctrine of a wholly transcendent God creating the universe ex nihilo (whatever that might be taken to mean), Whitehead's vision sought an alignment with the Platonic thinking of the Timaeus: cosmos is traced back to an aboriginal disorder from which the world emerges under the primary stimulus of creativity as primordial principle. Whitehead's God is not static, but dynamically bipolar: He is prior to as well as consequent to creation; that is, he precedes creation, is affected by it and changes with it, responds to it. A significant difference is that, whereas the Platonic-Neoplatonic tradition would mostly fundamentally contrast 'being' and 'becoming' (Plato's creation myth does not really challenge that), Whitehead clearly wants to overcome that division. To him 'process' entails that ‘being’ is constituted by ‘becoming’. That is a great step forward, necessitated by the texture of the dynamic contemporary worldview. It is remarkable how easily he adopts anthropomorphic speech about God. One can understand why a substantial school of Christian theology (process theology) followed his example. The emotional tone and undercurrent of his 238 Chapter 12 thinking (‘God is the great companion - the fellow sufferer who understands’) (Whitehead 1978 [1929]:351) is Christian, and this, to an extent, also resonates with Mahayana Buddhism. Theology carried certain features of his thinking, at times isolated from his larger theory, over into its own discourse. Whitehead himself made that possible in the last chapter of his Process and reality. Our Eternal Principle of ‘Can-ing’, with ‘God’*talk accommodated at the level of Infinitude (see Part Three), moves in the vicinity of Whitehead's distinction of Creativity and God. Another instance of convergence concerns his vision of Cosmos as an active, self-creating agent, an organism (this will be picked up in Ch. 22). Whitehead's ‘nature’ is fundamentally ‘organic’ and physical existents are ‘organisms’ (not ‘mechanisms’), marked by the interrelatedness of parts and parts, and parts and wholes. The universe is not lifeless in the sense of mechanistic materialism, even if it is not in every respect ‘conscious’: consciousness only arises at a derivative, later stage of organismic integration. Categories still to be discussed, such as Conditioning (Ch. 13), Totalising (Ch. 16) and Infinite Life (Ch. 19) also find support in Whitehead. The difference is that Whitehead does not begin and end with Absolute Horizon. 239 Conditioning E 537 Reflexive, transitive, reciprocal effecting This chapter postulates Conditioning as a basic constitutive Principle in the nature of things. The correlativity of non-substantial, impermanent event flashes replaces substance as central perspective. The main historical antecedent of this view (Theravada Buddhism) will become clear as we move along. ‘Conditioning’ as used here is not restricted to, but includes ‘causality’. ‘Causality’ usually refers to sequential relationships of determining factors in narrowly defined avenues, for example: sufficient heat causes water to boil. ‘Conditioning’ refers to the postulate that anything, in fact everything in the world, is contemporaneously, reciprocally correlated to everything else in networks that we cannot hope to trace exhaustively. ‘Conditioning’ is more than ‘concurring’. ‘Conditioning’ implies an element of effective changing in meshes of creative relations. Every event-thing is context dependent. If a singular event-thing changes, the context changes, affecting every other one and a new gestalt emerges. If the context changes, every singular event-thing changes. The meaning (the contextual reference) changes; an individual event-thing can become something 'new' - something relatively new, that is. The Principle of Conditioning is understood as interconnected with Becoming and Can-ing How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Conditioning’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 241-267, AOSIS, Cape Town. https:// doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.13 241 Conditioning in mutual presupposition. It is distinct from them and proceeds beyond them in the sense that it affects change - that is, the production of another state, involving reflexivity (subject/agent effecting change in itself), transitivity (subject/agent effecting change in object/patient), and reciprocity (a two- way movement between subject-subject [agent-agent]). Conditioning involves multirelational giving, receiving and reciprocating. Initially, Conditioning is reflexive. The potentiality to act upon itself, to be acted upon by itself, arises on the Horizon of becoming Cosmos. In conjunction with the yetto emerge Cosmos, it becomes transitive, reciprocal and secondarily reflexive: Unground constitutes, produces and changes Cosmos; Cosmos constitutes, produces and changes Unground. Unground becomes the process of manifestation, involving Cosmos and the reflex of Cosmos on Unground, right up to End - and then the process is not just wiped out, but somehow remembered, carried forward. The movement of emergence from and return to Horizon is not a mere return in a closed circle, but an open-ended spiral. Cosmos has eternal implications. Conditioning is not only the potential to act upon, but also the potential to be acted upon. It is effecting and undergoing. In the act of producing a daughter, the mother is produced as mother. The potter forms the clay; the clay determines the activity of the potter, constitutes the potter. ‘ABC’ (Absoluteness Becoming Cosmos) is a circuit with feedback from Cosmos on the original source of the energy flow. Conditioning includes the potential to activate: to trigger self-perpetuating chains of reciprocally linked relationships that empower the multitude of Cosmic events. The relationship between manifesting Unground and manifested Cosmos is neither of a completely heterogeneous nor completely homogeneous nature. It is not heterogeneous in the sense that Cosmos (the result) is something completely different from Unground; that would emphasise duality too strongly. Neither is it homogeneous in the sense that Cosmos is simply identical with Unground; that would amount to monism. Via Conditioning, Unground unfolds gratuitously for no other reason than its own Witting, Wanting and Willing. Something happens. The danger of surreptitiously substantialising Unground lurks; it comes with talking. Use discourse, but also destruct it to become silence, realising that, at the approach of Horizon, analogy expires. Unlike a horizon in the generally known Sahara of which another side is accessible and comprehensible to us, here ‘is’ no Beyond: only End - as Origin. Absolute Horizon (Unground) appears to us as Eternity, involving Conditionality. In the actual workings of Cosmos, the mutual implication of Freedom (the space to act) and Necessity (the linkage of acts, narrowing the space to act) is delicate. Karma as free action and karma as determined outcome (to use Indian terms, extrapolated to Arche) are not in an easy balance. The risk of tragic failure C‘evil’), of the disturbance of the balance between creative space and necessary linkage, comes with the challenge of being Cosmos, and being a part 242 Chapter 13 of Cosmos, as a human being is. It is not so that Freedom is increasingly funnelled into an increasingly narrowing and inescapable dead end of Fate. Every necessity remains part of a system opening up creatively towards new, unexpected possibilities under the Principles of Becoming, Can-ing and Conditioning. Necessity and Freedom are two mutually implying aspects of Conditioning that here is not understood as determinism. Nature finds and creates new ways. Seeded by these nine Principles, Cosmos appears as an unimaginably complex organism of which Matter, Life, Feeling and Thought are inextricable, mutually inhering and conditioning elements. At the level of Eternity postulated here, primordial Conditioning can, in conjunction with Witting, be imagined to involve the aspects of taking into account, responding to challenges, and anticipating the outcomes of such responses; also reacting creatively to such feedbacks in a continuous process. In the argument put forward here Cosmos is assumed to be a multifactorial feedback system. It does not move in a straight line, and it has to negotiate challenges, respond to challenges and anticipate the outcomes of feedbacks. This would allow for understanding evolution as a complex interactive process involving multiple lines of reciprocal conditioning between species and their environment. Neither ironclad determinism, nor a substantialist first cause or a detailed master plan for the universe laid out in advance by a grand personal architect or super intelligence, is called for. Conditioning is assumed as a primordial constitutive Principle of the world. E S38 Complementary historical correlations Lao-Tzu A famous passage of the 7ao te ching states (Lao-Tzu 1979 [1963]:67): Thirty spokes share one hub. Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the cart. Knead clay in order to make a vessel. Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the vessel. Cut out doors and windows to make a room. Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the room. (p. 67) The relevance of Lao-Tzu's homely similes (a cart, a jar, a room) can be paraphrased as follows: In each case 'the nothing' refers to the emptiness constituting the essence of all three items, which represent the empirical world, the world of utility. ' The nothing' conditions the tens of thousands of things in the world. The actively turning and passively turned wheel is constituted by the enabling empty hub from which the spokes protrude and around which the wheel of the cart circles. The jar, actively containing and passively filled with food, water or gems, is constituted by the enabling empty hollowness at its centre. The room, actively being a loving home and passively being filled with laughter and tears of children, is constituted by the spaces of its doors and windows. 243 Conditioning Paraphrased: Absolute Absoluteness, the Mystery of Mysteries, is absolutely ‘beyond’ the phenomenal world. Yet, it turns towards the phenomenal world, and at a‘slightly lower stage’, the absolute Mystery of Mysteries becomes ‘the Granary of the ten thousand things'(Izutsu 1983:398ff.), thus beginning to manifest creativity. The phenomenal world is a stage in the self-explication of the Way, and all things are as it were contained in a state of potentiality in Absoluteness. Thus the Way, eternally inactive, is also eternally active; eternally empty, it is eternally full; its emptiness is supremely productive (ibid.:409). Empty Absoluteness becomes a Principle, enabling all things, pervading and affecting the phenomenal world. This Principle is also expressed in ancient Chinese thought as the dialectic of yin yang, conceptualising the balancing complementarity of seemingly unrelated and even opposing tendencies in the natural world, and functioning within the large, dynamic system of the whole of reality. Lao-Tzu contents himself with the essence of the matter, and does not bother with working out the mechanics of the process of Conditioning. Buddhism does, in staggering detail. Patthana We turn to two different classical Buddhist views on the relationship between empirical reality and emptiness, and the role of correlativity: Theravada and Mahayana Yogacara. In view of the importance attached to causality in Buddhism and the complexity of that input, I shall now present its contribution in some detail. Several of the early Buddhist schools (according to tradition there were 18), produced their own systematic presentations of the Buddha's teaching, which had been presented by him, according to tradition, over more than four decades. These systems, termed abhidhamma (Pali) and abhidharma (Sanskrit) were grounded in the original teaching of the Buddha himself, insofar as he chose to present his teaching in less popular, more stringent systematic form to advanced pupils. It gradually took further detailed shape as it was elaborated during the three or four centuries after the Buddha. In their later elaborations the Abhidhammas are very different from Taoism's limpidity; it certainly also took on a more scholastic form than would have been the case in the earliest stages of this philosophy. | now turn to one of the three extant systems: the Theravada Abhidhamma. It consists of seven volumes, of which the seventh (Patthàna) deals thoroughly, specifically with the topic of conditionality (cf. Narada 1992, 1993; Nyanaponika 1998 [1949]; Nyanatiloka 1980 [1952]:139-145). ‘Condition’, ‘conditionality’, conditional relations’, ‘relativity’ and 'correlativity' are possible English translations of the Pali term paccaya. This teaching has to be understood as cohering with the fundamental dhamma theory, which is essentially connected to the notions of impermanence, non-substantiality and 244 Chapter 13 radical emptiness. Dhammas, the basic building blocks of Abhidhamma ontology, are quantum like ‘event-things’, without any relationship to a putative Substance in or behind the phenomenal world. The Buddha had cut off any notion of such a Substance at the root. In that sense, the dhammas and the wholes made up of them are radically contingent. This is nothing else but another way of stating the essential Buddhist teaching of anattà: ‘non-self’. It would be a serious mistake (perhaps made by some early Buddhist thinkers themselves, including the Sarvastivada sect), to regard the dhammas themselves as mini-substances: that would obviously just shift substantial thinking from a macro to a mini scale. To the Buddha, the bottom category was not indestructible atoms, but change, process. The dhammas add up, through complex correlations, to form the manifold of the world as it is humanly experienced. Early Buddhism developed the notion of an all-pervading mutual conditioning of phenomena (‘dependent co-origination' (paticcasamuppada) and ‘relativity’ or ‘conditionality’ (paccaya) without any recourse to either personal divinity or transpersonal substance. Human action (kamma) is part of that. One of the strengths of the Abhidhamma system is that it challenges the common understanding of causality as a one-on-one linear impact of one entity on another, by absorbing it into a wider multidimensional framework of reciprocally implied events. The present exploration moves mainly in the current of thought that Buddhism cut through the mountains of human existence-in-the-world. However, whereas the Abhidhamma largely restricts itself to human psychology and human rebirth, this attempt has a wider cosmological interest. Early Buddhism showed less interest in a critical and constructive involvement with the science of its day than was the case in the Greek thinking of the time. The leading question of the Abhidhamma is a psychological, phenomenological one; our present one is a cosmological, and wider ontological, metaphysical one. What follows now is a kind of ‘double-check’ in the sense that the usefulness of the Abhidhamma scheme will be tested by applying it to our emerging model and its wider concerns. This model, in turn, will be tested in the light of the Abhidhamma view of conditionality. For this exercise, we turn to Chapters | and II of the Patthana, leaving out the dense and detailed Chapters III and IV. The Patthàna lists 24 modes of conditionality. Some of these appear to be duplications and subsidiary applications of others. In the following summary the numbers and names of the original scheme are provided. It must be borne in mind that the seeming long-windedness and repetitiousness of that text which does not fall easily on the ear of the contemporary casual reader, derives from it being a meditative text, studied in intense meditative, chanting sessions in which monks who were bent on achieving ultimate liberation considered each word in utmost concentration. These sections were not intended for quick consultation and superficial reference, but for serious introspection by students of the human mind in the human world. 245 Conditioning Before the conditions are listed, mention must be made of a mysterious concept - mysterious because it is so very obviously at the same time connected to and disconnected from the system of 24 conditions as such. This is the notion of asankhata: the 'Unconditioned', ‘Unformed’, ‘Unoriginated’. It is nibbàna, beyond all becoming and conditionality’. Interestingly, the Abhidhamma does not posit a conditionalistic relationship between 'the Unconditioned' and the phenomenal manifold of conditionality. Yet it seems to be called for, also in the context of the early Buddhist teaching. In the Dhammapada for example (see Chs 5-7 of that collection of poems), worldly existence and nibbàna are related like the two banks of a river: opposites but mutually implicit. In Mahayana Buddhism (e.g. the Heart Sutra), this would become a theme of profound wonder. It is also the theme of the quote from the 7ao te ching above. Understood as Absolute Horizon, it is an essential, structural element of this model. The Abhidhamma restricts itself to conditionalism at the phenomenal level of existence. This set of 24, although analysing different types of conditions, is one coherent whole, that is in itself a conditionalistic nexus. Some relevant ones namely the following, have been selected from the list: (1) ‘Root condition’ (hetu-paccaya) is one that has the same function as the root of a tree: Something exists as long as its root exists and dies as its root is destroyed. In the context of our emerging model, tying Cosmos to Absolute Horizon/Eternity as root condition would be unacceptable. The Abhidhamma system is limited to existents and Emptiness is regarded as beyond conditionality, as precisely Unconditioned. (2) ‘Object condition’ (àrammana-paccaya) refers to a physical object (e.g. an object of sight), as a sine qua non condition for consciousness. Extended to our model, one may draw the implication that ‘matter’ is a necessary condition for consciousness. This is not the same as reducing consciousness to matter (as materialism implies). Nor, of course, should materialism simply be turned on its head by reducing matter from consciousness (as forms of idealism imply). Both are mutually necessary. That is an essential structural element of this model. (3) Predominance-condition’ (adhipati-paccaya), in the Abhidhamma model, refers (ccomplementarily to no 2) to the fact that at a given time and in a given situation one of more phenomena, all in principle equally necessary, may in fact predominate. Again, Abhidhamma limits the application of this principle to the field of meditation and spiritual liberation. Extended to our model, it implies (e.g.) that at a given time matter may be the dominant condition. This allows for an acceptance and endorsement of current evolutionary theory, according to which consciousness arose later than life, and both later than matter, in the process of the development of our universe. This is the case in the 'epoch', the span of existence, the situation, of this our present Cosmos, but it must not be overextended to metaphysical proportions. At the Cosmic level, this essay argues, energy matter, life, 246 Chapter 13 love and thought are in principle, sub specie aeternitatis (‘under the aspect of Eternity), equally necessary. (6) 'Co-nascence- or ‘co-arising condition’ (sehajàta-paccaya) is relevant from the point of view of our present interest. It refers to the simultaneous arising of two event-things, such as the four aspects of materiality (in the ancient Indian cosmology: earth, water, fire and wind), as well as to the five groups of khandas (matter, sensation, perception, emotional and -volitional factors, and consciousness). It confirms (like no's 2 and 3 above) the notion of anon-reductionistic, multifactorial, totalistic combination of, for example, the four basic dimensions of Cosmos (matter, life, love and thought). (7) ‘Mutuality condition’ (aAóZiamafifia-paccaya) coincides with and reconfirms no's 2, 5 and 6 above. In our present context the nine Eternal Principles are confirmed as being mutually conditioned, every one necessary to support every other one in each constellation, and each constellation as a whole. The Principle of Conditioning is to be seen as essentially co-constitutive with the other eight (as has been argued in Ch. 7). (8) 'Support-condition' or 'dependence-condition' (nissaya-paccaya) refers to a condition that serves as a necessary foundation or base for some event- thing. For example, the physical senses are the necessary supports for consciousness. Again, as is the case with no's 2 and 3, it by implication, allows for the mutuality of matter and consciousness without reducing any one in relation to another. To the Abhidhamma, things are contingent, but not for that reason, arbitrary. They have no absolute substantial referent, but they are all interconnected. There is no simple linear line of causation, but complex diachronic as well as synchronic meshes of connections. In effect, the notions of incessant change (anicca), non-substance (anatta), radical emptiness (sufifiata), conditionality (paccaya) and unconditioned-ness (asankhata), all in their correlational togetherness, replace the mytheme of gods as most basic explanatory context. The model developing in this book, arguing for Cosmos as a Whole emerging from and receding into Absolute Horizon in a process of which Conditioning is a central feature, presents itself as broadly compatible with this Abhidhamma view. What is added, is Horizon as constitutive factor. The term 'Conditionalistic Totalism in Horizon' (CTH) captures what is intended here. Vasubandhu Both types of Buddhist views analysed here (Abhidharma and Mahayana Yogacara) are represented in one remarkable MM author: Vasubandhu (period between 4th century and 5th century CE). In his youth, he wrote a classic monograph in the Sarvastivada Abhidharma tradition, the Abhidharmakosa, and also a commentary on that work (cf. De la Vallée Poussin 1988-1990 [1923-1931]:vol |, 253-325; Verdu 1981:5-17, 174-176). Extending the early Buddhist hunch of a pan-correlative nexus enmeshing all 247 Conditioning of life and reality, the Abhidharmakosa develops a complex theory of general correlativity involving six major types of ‘causes’ (hetus), and four types of ‘conditions’, or 'sub-causes' (pratyayas). It contains a wealth of reflection on active, passive and reactive causality. In our grappling with the question ‘How is the world brought into existence on Absolute Horizon?’ particularly the first of the hetus, namely karana-hetu Cefficient causality’) is interesting. As a kind of universal Conditioning - a supreme, all-ruling influence - it pervades all things. It is not thought of by Vasubandhu as ontologically transcendent in any sense, but as simply blowing through the universe, a collectively shared, supreme force. Yet Vasubandhu goes no further where we may have expected him to do so, and does not relate it to any source. It is almost as if a cloud of unknowing veiled this most basic of all types of conditioning, as if it were an afterthought, an extrapolation from individual karma, to a cosmic scale, without an investigation of its own nature. It remained that: a force all-ruling but unaccounted for. The world of experience is nothing but a flux of factors, constituted by the human consciousness to create the collective experience of ‘the world’. The ‘world’ is merely a sequence of consciousness events. In his model, Cosmos does not become an entity, a ‘subject’, just as little as the individual human being is one; and its relationship to an ultimate source is not explained. As we saw in Chapter 6, the Buddha also chose to remain at the psychological level; the ontological level of the origin of things was seen as the field of unwarranted speculation. In terms of the problem intriguing us here (a linkage of correlativity between Unground and Cosmos), the early Vasubandhu does not seem to offer much help. He himself seems to have felt that a different MM point of departure was required. After his conversion from Sarvastivada to Mahayana and becoming co- founder of the Yogacara school with his brother Asanga, Vasubandhu, in his subsequent writings, returned to the problem of world-producing (Verdu 1981:18-25, 177-179). He now subscribed to and helped develop a very different model. He dramatically simplifies the concept of ‘conditioning’. At the level of human existence, consciousness becomes a ‘storehouse’ (àlaya-vijfiana) bringing about the outer world. Human consciousness becomes a repository into which the actions in the outer world return as ‘seeds’, which sprout again. It is a feedback system of correlativity, flowing back and forth between consciousness and the outer world. Of course, the main new difficulty faced by these MM theoreticians was how to avoid becoming substantialists in the Upanishadic sense of the word. They had to retain the basic Buddhist notion of ‘no-self’ (no-substance, an-atman) at all costs. There is some difference of opinion as to whether they actually succeeded. Did they in essence return to the Upanishadic idea of Nirguna Brahman: a non-qualified state, on this side of the more radical Buddhist notion of Emptiness, as expounded by, for example, Nagarjuna? This is a subtle problem, to which we do not have to provide an answer. To the extent that the Yogacara thinkers saw an immutable ultimate, it becomes problematic. 248 Chapter 13 In his attempt to avoid eternalism, Vasubandhu presented the à/aya-vijfiana as ever-developing, at the same time conditioning cause and conditioned effect, an ever-changing stream of seed impregnations and seed maturations. The point intriguing us most in our present context is whether the Yogacarins allowed for extrapolating their new idea of correlativity to cover the emergence of Cosmos as a whole from absolute Emptiness, or whether they remained at the level of individual and collective human consciousness and karma. It seems that they did not take the step towards a universal cosmogony intentionally, but that it may have been implied in their approach tendentionally. A handicap to them was the fact that the idea of Cosmos as a ‘whole’ would have been quite foreign. On the other hand, the notion of a transcendental source of reality - to boot, Emptiness itself - is manifestly operative in this system. At the deep bottom of all, beneath all the surface agitation, moves the great ocean depth. We stand back from Vasubandhu and his colleagues to the extent that they may have implied that the world is merely illusory, at most a common human projection. Our reflections lead us to rejoice in Cosmos as a real manifestation of Absoluteness. On balance, what we are attempting here may harmonise tendentionally with aspects of the later Vasubandhu's thinking on the production of the world. We move in the direction of Absoluteness Becoming and Conditioning Cosmos, and being conditioned by Cosmos. Aristotle Turning to Aristotle (384-322 BCE) we do not find any support for the idea that Cosmos may be understood to emerge from Absolute Horizon. Yet his world does depend on a transcendental dimension in which the notion of causality features centrally. Aristotle was above all an empiricist with strong scientific interests, but he was not a materialistic reductionist. Nor was he a dualist, or did he regard matter as inferior, as was the threat in Platonic and Neoplatonic thinking. In his early work Categories (Kategoria/) (Aristotle 1973:12-109) Aristotle distinguishes 1O predicates, foundational in the sense that no more abstract or more general concepts to understand anything are conceivable. Organising reality conceptually, they are the most basic perspectives in which things can be observed. His prime interest in abstracting these categories is the human being; they are primarily the most general predicates assignable to a human being. Still, his categories also operate as foundational to all of reality. His list consists of the following: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, having, doing and being affected. Aristotle is not interested in our Absoluteness at all. On the contrary, he makes a fundamental distinction between the first category (‘substance’) and the other nine (‘accidents’). 249 Conditioning Of the 10 categories, substance (essential ‘whatness’, ousia) (Aristotle 1973: 18-35) is the one most important to him. He ascribes the concept ‘substance’ to an independent, concrete, individual something, or to a species of things, capable of existing independently, and with the ability of remaining the same, while taking different and indeed contrary properties. ‘Substance’ refers to what is ‘essential’ and not merely ‘accidental’. Projected to a metaphysical plane: ‘substance’ - neither ‘emptiness’ nor ‘event’, to mention two other possibilities - is the hub of all. This set the tone dominating Western metaphysics for two millennia and is a significant difference between Aristotle and thinking informed by mainly the Chinese and Indian models. To Aristotle, Substance was the most basic category of all. To the Taoist and Buddhist thinkers Absoluteness does not allow Substance as a final category: Dig deep enough and all substances dissolve, not only in conditionality, but also beyond that, in absolute emptiness. This is where the road between Taoism and Buddhism on the one hand and, on the other, Jewish, Christian and Islamic thinking splits. With Aristotle the philosophical destiny of ‘Western’ (including Jewish, Christian and Muslim) metaphysics, with Substance as capstone, has been sealed: Apophatic 'negative theology' may become thinned, attenuated, to the point that all conceptual attributes are erased, but bare Substance remains. Advaita Vedanta claims the same. Absoluteness takes a further step: Substance itself is erased. Of Aristotle's 1O categories, the following three appear to be of special interest in our present context: ‘relation’ (pros ti), ‘doing’ (po/ein) and ‘being affected’ (paschein) (Aristotle 1973:46-63, 78-81). Scrutiny reveals that it is not really the case. They are merely intended to have empirical relevance; none of them has a bearing on the ultimate level of things. The model that is emerging here, sides with Buddhism and Taoism on the slope of non-substantialism of the great watershed. Together with Indians like Sankara, Aristotle is a Greek champion of the opposite slope, namely substantialism. As said before, the analogy of a horizontal, porous distinction between substance thinkers and emptiness thinkers, deep and deeper, is more relevant than the picture of a vertical division (a watershed) with its either-or implication. A key set of primary, underived principles (archa/) in a complex argument in the Physics (Physikes) of Aristotle (Aristotle 1970:50ff.) relates to change (kinesis) in the nature of things. So does Wanting, for, as Aristotle points out, ‘shortage’ or 'privation' (steresis) (ibid.:86) is an essential factor in ‘becoming’. It is fascinating to read how Aristotle is grappling with the very 'koan' of our meditations: From ‘what’ does Cosmos arise? Aristotle makes it clear that the ‘ultimate material’, the ultimate ‘X’, is sheer potentiality, which he calls Ay/e (of which our word ‘matter’ with its modern materialistic connotations, is an unsatisfactory translation). To Aristotle the ultimate material forever evades us, yet we cannot quite get rid of it. It is always there, eternally persistent: there 250 Chapter 13 is something that underlies all opposites and all change, an ultimately underlying factor (hypokeimene) Cibid.:70-71, 80-81) - in usual vocabulary: ‘substance’. Much has been written to reconcile various notions of ‘substance’ in Aristotle’s various books. In addition to ‘matter’, Aristotle in his Metaphysics, also postulates ‘form’ (e/dos, in function quite similar to Plato’s notion of ‘idea’) as a necessary and unchanging presupposition, prime substance, for the existence and change of natural things. To Aristotle, nothing can come into existence or pass out of existence in an absolute sense (ibid.:82ff.). So, in this fundamentally crucial respect, Aristotle reprimands us. Nevertheless, we persist in arguing - rather, sensing - precisely that. Things arise out of a field of potentiality, which just arises - from what? Silence would be the only answer - which is why the Buddha gave that answer, and why legendary Lao-Tzu put in his disappearance act, heading West never to be seen again. The only words perhaps pointing non-referentially to this mystery of mysteries might be 'Emptiness' or 'Absoluteness', and so forth - cancelling, transcending Substance, however subtle Substance may be conceived of. Is it useful or necessary to dwell on this porous layer, dividing substantialism from underlying non-substantialism? Perhaps not. Can we ultimately avoid it? At least this great master of Greek-Western thinking suggests that the questions intriguing us are not vapid. Explaining the why and how of natural phenomena and their changes, Aristotle in his Physics analyses the notion of ‘cause’ (a/tia) Cibid.:126-139). By 'causes' he means the essential conditions for natural things to exist and to be what they are. Causes are the most basic types of factors to be taken into account in explaining that. Therefore, in essence, this formulation has the same function as and overlaps with the 'categories' above. In fact, Aristotle refers to his factors as archai (‘principles’) Cibid.:128). This model of causality of his was part of his theory of nature, with an immediate relevance to nature. It is also connected to his metaphysics. Aristotle distinguishes four types of equally primordial causes: hyle (the ‘material’ aitia), eidos (the ‘formal’ aitia), poioun (the ‘efficient’ or ‘motive’ aitia), and te/os (the ‘final’ a/tia). The first cause intends unformed, undetermined ‘stuff’ or ‘matter’ with the potential of being formed into something (e.g. bronze). The second intends the ‘form’ or ‘plan’ in accordance with which something (e.g. a statue) is caused. The third intends the ‘power’ or ‘agent’ (e.g. the sculptor) effecting the act or process of causation. This third is really the only one corresponding with what moderns associate with the idea of causation. The fourth intends the ‘aim’, ‘end’ or ‘purpose’ of the event or process of bringing something into existence. A complete explanation of a natural event considers all four conditions. It is obvious that these four ‘causes’ have the same function as his earlier list of ‘categories’: they are the basic perspectives to be taken into account in explaining natural phenomena. Essentially, they are, to Aristotle, archai. 251 Conditioning To ‘Matter’ we shall return later. The formal cause points to the distinguishing characteristics of a thing. It covers at least the categories of quantity, quality, relation, place, time, and position. It also touches on the kind of notion raised in our chapter as Witting: there is meaning, intention, order, coherence in things. The motive cause, in which his category of ‘doing’ resurfaces, has contact with our Principle of Willing and the aspect of ‘activity’ mentioned in §37. This cause will be looked at below, in connection with Aristotle’s idea of the Unmoved Mover. In addition, Aristotle’s thinking is committed to the notion that every existing thing is end directed (teleological). It is noteworthy that Aristotle does not understand the te/os to be external to the caused object and the process of causation, but internal to it. Our notions of Witting, Wanting and Willing, including the anticipation of outcomes and creative adaptation to feedbacks in a never-ending process forward, is reconcilable with Aristotle’s immanent teleology, against the present scientistic commitment to expunge such an idea, assuming that it implies ‘occult’ forces or ‘spiritualist’ thinking. Specialists in the field of Aristotle tell us that he changed his mind quite often. Nevertheless, there are some underlying continuities. His Categories, Physics and Metaphysics circle around the same questions, and the same and related concepts recur. To cut a long and intricate story short, towards the end of his Metaphysics, Aristotle directly addresses the central question intriguing us: Does Cosmos have any anchorage in a transcendent dimension? If so, how? Is there ultimate causing ... by ... from ... ? His categories of ‘substance’, ‘relation’, ‘doing’, ‘being affected’, his cosmic ‘causality’ and ‘change’ - where do they ultimately derive from? For, as a matter of fact, Aristotle defines metaphysics as the science of the first causes and conditions underlying all things, by which he probably (but opinions differ) meant the most general notions applying to things, which would make metaphysics the most general science of all. Yet he also included theology, the special science of divinity, as the last chapter of his metaphysics (as would be the case with Whitehead). All movement (change) in the world, as he postulates speculatively in his Metaphysics, must have proceeded from some primal cause which, itself, is not caused but is the principle of change. If this were not so, we would be trapped in an infinite regress. Aristotle’s own solution is to postulate - rather arbitrarily, one might think - an eternal first cause, a primary substance, which is immaterial, pure, perfect form, spirit, thought. There ‘must’ be a first cause, a prime ‘Unmoved Mover’ (kinoun akineton) (Aristotle 1961:346), and that is God: ‘a living being, eternal, and most good’ (Theon ... zoon aidion ariston) (ibid.:546); ‘a substance (ousia) eternal (aídios), unchangeable (akinetos), and separate from sensible things’ (ibid.:547); the supreme ‘intellect’ (nous) Cibid.:349). The prototype of Aristotle's Unmoved Mover (God) was probably Plato's idea of a world-soul. As the master himself said Cibid.): There must be an extreme which moves without being moved, which is eternal, substance, and actuality [..] the unmoved mover [...] has no contingency [...] 252 Chapter 13 On such a principle, then, the whole physical universe depends [...] God therefore is a living being, eternal, and most good [...]. It is clear, then, from what | have said, that there is a substance eternal, unchangeable, and separate from sensible things [...]. Cp. 345) At this stage of our journey, is there any reason to change course and to subscribe to Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover or a similar notion? Not really. In the end, Aristotle does not establish a necessary connection between his Unmoved Moverandthethings of experience.His view of causality does not accommodate reciprocity. His proof does not coerce, as little as would the proofs for the existence of God in Christian scholasticism, erected on an Aristotelian foundation by theologian philosophers such as Anselm (1033-1109) and Thomas of Aquinas (1225-1274). Aristotle's argument is that the Unmoved Mover ‘must’ exist, on rational grounds. From a Buddhist perspective, touched on above, that would be unacceptable. Nagarjuna would have demolished it as rational proof. Rather stay with our lack of substance and our admission of poverty: There is merely beginning Moving, Conditioning, emerging from an absolutely inaccessible Horizon to become world, but no Mover, no Conditioner is found, or proven. The koan of emergence is no closer to a theoretical solution; but how beautiful is the starkness of existence, how awesome the darkness from which it emerges. Stoicism Modifying Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics came up with their own original cosmogonic model (cf. Frede 2003:179ff.; Hahm 1977:57-90; White 2003:138ff.), shedding its own light on our problem. At this stage, | am not interested in the more concrete (closer to Cosmos) aspects of this process according to them, but in the primary conditioning dynamics operative in the process. Indeed, in their cosmogony causality played an essential role. All of reality is enmeshed in a network of necessary causality; and in the coming into existence of the cosmos, causality is operative. Stoics distinguished (see Ch. 12) two fundamental principles (archar) determining all things: activity and passivity. These two, our argument went in §37, are aspects of primordial Conditioning. Contrary to Aristotle, they believed that the cosmos intermittently comes into being and passes away. In their vision of the (re-)genesis of the cosmos these archai play a constitutive role. The active principle or force, determining all things in the universe and permeating the passive principle, really amounts to a combination of Aristotle's four causes. To these MM thinkers, the active (rational) principle manifests as one cause, in which not only the formal, efficient and teleological aspects but also the material cause are fully integrated. Of great significance to the kind of thinking intriguing us here - one that would transcend the one-sidedness of 253 Conditioning both materialisms and idealisms - is that Stoicism probably saw the active principle as both spirit and matter. Although they did not elaborate on the features of the passive principle, it was at least matter. As matter, their active principle was perhaps a combination of the active physical elements of air and fire; the passive principle, most likely a fusion of the passive physical elements of earth and water. In the Stoic active principle, we may recognise Plato’s world-soul and Aristotle’s prime mover. In Stoic terminology, the active principle, conceived of as god, acts on matter, introducing the semen, so to speak, of spermatikoi logoi (‘seeds of logos’), impregnating receptive matter, and thus (re)producing the cosmos. They mythologised the active principle in the cosmogonic process as male Zeus, the passive principle as his consort Hera, bringing into being divine nature. Aristotle’s notion of causality has been reworked creatively into a new theory. Their theory was neither dualistic nor monistic, but organic; they related ‘activity’ and ‘passivity’ as if a joined couple, together producing offspring. From our vantage point, Stoicism’s inseparable connection of spirit and matter is attractive. Stoicism may not have attenuated these elements as much as our model wishes to see them as they melt away in the direction of Absolute Horizon and appear from the nowhere of that Horizon. However, in its own manner, it did hold fast to the inherent mutuality and irreducibility of matter and mind - as Buddhism had done in its anthropology, and as this essay explores doing. | will return to this in more detail later on, in dealing with Infinitude and Cosmos. We also warm to Stoicism’s continuation of the widespread ancient idea, recurring today, of nature as an alive, rational and intelligent being, coming into existence and perishing. Again, similar to early Buddhism, the Stoics subscribed to a notion of pan-causality, from which nothing is exempt. The Stoics kept grappling with the problem of freedom versus determinism, without coming down hard on either side. Like Buddhism, they did not elevate the idea of substance to the level of a prime, unassailable foundational category, as Aristotle had done, even if they did not go quite as far as Buddhism in actually demolishing that notion. The Stoics accommodated traditional, popular religion in a wider MM perspective that thoroughly relativised such religion, yet did not strip it of psychological and social value. Influence of Buddhism on Stoicism has not been established, although this can probably not be ruled out. As for Taoism, we may safely eliminate such a historical possibility. Rather, it seems to be a case of structural affinities, given certain similar intuitive points of departure. An appreciation of Hellenistic Stoicism grew with each step of the panorama unfolding before our eyes. A simple religio-political or philosophico-political choice is not called for; a larger synoptic synthesis (including all of human MM) is the way to go. Features of Stoicism such as the ones sketched above remain useful building blocks for a contemporary worldview. 254 Chapter 13 Plotinus Transcendent and stripped of attributes as it is, Plotinus’ immutable ‘the One’ nevertheless stands closer to Aristotle’s ‘Unmoved Mover’ than to Buddhism’s ‘Emptiness’ and Taoism’s ‘Non-Being’. His One might be called ‘the Absolute’ (Inge 1948:104ff.), with the definite article and with an element of substantiality lingering in it. The problem facing Plotinus in his Enneads is the following: How does the One give rise to the plurality of the empirical world? He did not see the empirical world as originating at some point in a diachronic sequence. Nothing dramatically new could have happened historically at any point. Nevertheless, the question of the link between the One and the empirical world remains; in that sense, it is the problem of Conditioning. Excluded for Plotinus is the Gnostic option that some other force, apart from and diametrically opposed to the One, underlies the existence of the world. Like Aristotle, he wishes to escape from an infinite regress; in the end, there must be a stable source of being. Nonetheless, how would such a source (the One) and the many empirical things be related? How different or similar are the One and the world, with complete difference at one end of the spectrum and complete identity at the other end? Are they different or identical in essence? In the Plotinian model, the One is transcendent and distinct yet immanent at the same time, immutable yet, as such, indwelling in the things. In his scheme, transcendence and immanence are not alternatives but correlates. In his view of causality there is no producing activity involved, only sharing presence. To him it was not a matter of dynamic omnipotence, but of quiet omnipresence. Plotinus seems to view the world of the senses as different from the One, but also as participating in that transcendent realm and timelessly imitating it. For him there is 'Conditioning' of a static variety, as ontological dependence in a timeless hierarchical structure, but no ‘becoming’ and no 'causing' in the sense of effective 'changing'. His version of Conditioning expresses the power of similitude, amounting to ahistorical continuity, derivation and overflow, but not to creative novelty. Naturally, on such assumptions the effectiveness of Conditioning would seem to decrease with each step down the ladder: the effect at each level is inferior to that of the level above it (Enneads V.1.6). As far as the relationship between the sensory world and the transcendent One is concerned, Plotinus' thinking appears to be neither strongly dualistic nor firmly monistic or pantheistic in the sense of identity of the source and the lower strata of being. In its own fashion, his is a variant of non-dualism. The world is neither utterly different from nor completely identical with the One. Overall, similarity prevails over difference; it is a relationship of continuity, somewhat stretched, but not at all close to breaking point. 255 Conditioning Plotinus’ vision communicates a remarkable beauty and peace: The world of the senses approximates, as it partakes in, the transcendent eternal One in its timeless repose. To Plotinus the world is something like a crystal sphere, dirty and opaque on the outside, but of a continuous substance with an illumined, illuminating glowing core deep inside, into which we may gaze. Being is radiant. The ultimate MM experience consists in that substance gradually becoming clearer as the mystic contemplates that inner light. He uses this image (Enneads VI.4.7) to explain the causing presence of the One in the universe as a whole; everything is affected by that central immobile principle, yet that principle is not divided (Plotinus 1991): Or imagine a small luminous mass serving as centre to a transparent sphere, so that the light from within shows upon the entire outer surface, otherwise unlit: we surely agree that the inner core of light, intact and immobile, reaches over the entire outer extension; the single light of that small centre illuminates the whole field [...] we can no longer speak of the light in any particular spot; it is equally diffused within and throughout the entire sphere. We can no longer even name the spot it occupied So as to say whence it came or how it is present; we can but seek, and wonder as the search shows us the light simultaneously present at each and every point in the sphere. (p. 446) Beautiful and moving as it is, the Plotinian vision does not address the challenge we face in our time: understanding a novel Cosmos, one that keeps on changing. Whence might it come from? What might its relationship to its inner secret be, if there is one? Whither might it be on its way? As said earlier, | cannot follow the great man in his fateful demotion of matter in the larger scheme of things. One may suspect that he is still moving in the ambit of the Aristotelian idea of an Unmoved Mover; what was a matter of pure intellectual speculation in Aristotle, becomes a mystical vision in Plotinus. May there be a further step to take, towards a Horizon of Emptiness transcending the notion of an ultimate substance, however subtly thought of? John Scotus Eriugena At the beginning of the epoch disparagingly known as the European ‘Middle’ Ages (as if dangling embarrassingly between the Classical-Hellenistic and modern epochs), the Irish Christian Neoplatonist John Scotus Eriugena (c. 800-877) developed a remarkable model of causality. This system was largely based on the Neoplatonic model of Proclus as championed (without recognition to Proclus) in the period between the 5th century and the 6th century by an unknown Christian monk, Pseudo-Dionysius. By the time of Eriugena, 'Dionysius' had acquired a status second only to that of Augustine. In his major work, Periphyseon (‘Concerning nature’; also called De divisione naturae: ‘On the division of nature’) (cf. Cappuyns 1964 [1933]; Moran 1989; O’Meara 1988; Sheldon-Williams 1968, 1972, 1981), Eriugena presents a model of what he terms universitas (‘universe’). He could speak (11.528 B) of ‘the universe, 256 Chapter 13 comprising God and the creature’. In Chapter 3, such a notion was referred to as ‘All’. To explain the structure and functioning of that All, Eriugena developed a model revolving around the notion of ‘causality’ (the term generally utilised in interpreting his views). This model was his own remarkable construction of the Neoplatonic emanationist theory of the Chain of Being, through his synthesis of mainly Augustine (354-430) and Pseudo-Dionysius. In his circumstances of relative cultural obscurantism in central and northern Europe, he had only a sketchy and indirect knowledge of Aristotle and Stoicism. For Eriugena the concept natura (reflected in the Latin title of his work) includes empirical reality as well as God, ‘being’ as well as ‘non-being’. He distinguishes four divisions or classes in the all-encompassing universitas (1.441 A): (D that which creates and is not created (quae creat et non creatur) (2) that which is created and creates (quae et creatur et creat) (3) that which is created and does not create (quae creatur et non creat) (4) that which is neither created nor creates (quae nec creat nec creatur). In this system ‘create’ refers to the process of production in the broadest sense. Eriugena’s perspective is an original restatement of the classic Neoplatonic scheme of God as the ultimate ground from which all things proceed and to which they return. On that assumption, classes 1 and 4 refer to God, and classes 2 and 3 to the created world. God is uncreated (1 and 4). He is said either to create (1) or not to create (4) - or rather: He both creates and does not create. Taken in a pseudo-historical sense, this could mean that God creates the world (1), but that after the eventual return of the world to God (in 4), he no longer creates; creation ceases. Such a pseudo-historical view is an understandable yet ultimately invalid extension of our human categories to a dimension that is essentially supra-temporal. Realising that, the ‘creates’ and ‘nor creates’ in classes 1 and 4 together emphasise that the creation of the world is God's free choice. Eriugena’s (1) and our ‘Origin’ (Ch. 8), and his (4) and our ‘End’ (Ch. 7), appear to be functional equivalents. Inserted (bracketed) between these two ultimate dimensions, his world emerges. On the one hand, the created universe in its two dimensions (2 and 3) is the result of God’s free choice, as Eriugena as Christian would want to see it. On the other hand, being contained in this necessary scheme of things, the world and the creation of the world - and its causal (Conditional) structure - assumes a necessary, supra-temporal, supra-contingent dimension. Classes 1 and 4 locate God in a realm of non-being, suggested by the term anarchos (‘without beginning’/‘ground’). In terms of our problem of Conditioning, God to Eriugena is without Condition external to himself; he is self-conditioning. The Irishman’s system is tendentionally inclined towards replacing the typical Western emphasis on substance, being, as supreme metaphysical category with an emphasis on non-substance, non-being. Significantly, what Plotinus had called 'the One', Eriugena called 'nothing' 257 Conditioning (nihil) (cf. Duclow 1988:23ff.; Sells 1994:34-62), perhaps radicalising Plotinus. Yet, even in his thinking, negation implies excessive plenitude (the superessential [hyperousion]) of Pseudo-Dionysius rather than negation in the absolutistic sense (cf. III.634B ff.). Significantly, Eriugena saw a remarkable continuity between God and the world. Under 'creation', he understood the theophanic self-manifestation of God. That, from our point of view, is no problem. That is indeed the way to go: Cosmos appears from an Absolute mystery, somehow Origin. No, our question would be whether Eriugena is sufficiently consistent and far-reaching to warrant the grouping of his notion of 'non-being' in the same class as, for example, classical Taoism and Buddhism looked at above. Does his notion of ‘non-being’ truly transcend ‘being’, or does it still circle within the horizon of 'being', however subtly understood? It seems that our MM journey does not, or rather should not, (1) reach a final dead-end, a definite 'Is-not', Nothing; (2) nor does or should it reach a line beyond which 'Is' merely becomes thinned by so many degrees but essentially remains, or is supercharged. No, (3) the firm line of conceptually graspable reality just becomes a dotted line, just disappears, as our conceptual and experiential capacity comes to an utter end; that is Absolute End, but open- ended. To use an example from Buddhism: when the Buddha compared the situation after his physical death with a flame, refusing to use either affirmative ‘is’ or denying ‘is not’ language, he was not seeking to escape via a meaningless, useless analogy; he was rejecting both options, while keeping the mystery open. This shows the way to an MM with cosmosophic implications: neither affirmative 'theism' nor denying 'atheism', but agnostic 'a-theism'; neither 'being' nor 'not- being’, but ‘non-being’; neither presence nor absence nor death of God (all three presuppose an existing reality), nor positivistic denial, but letting go, realising that there is an unreachable, uncrossable Horizon, where things and knowledge just peter out into a mystery of Absoluteness - from which they also emerge. A sympathetic interpreter such as Moran uses the term 'non-being' to suggest Eriugena's meaning (Moran 1989:100, 212ff.). In terms of the distinctions made above, that would have to be qualified, in the sense that Eriugena did not attain the level of radicalism found in the Taoist and Buddhist patterns of thought. The quotation above is indicative of the mixed mode of his thinking: ‘God is anarchos' expresses his embarrassment. ‘God is [...] is not phased out completely. Eriugena's thinking may not be representative of the dominant ontotheological (as Heidegger would call it) Western tradition, but it does not quite make the breakthrough to Absoluteness either. Typical of Christian Neoplatonism, he speaks of a divine level as superessentia ('super substance', perhaps ‘more than substance’, but not ‘non-substance’). It is a super thinned superlative, not a cancellation. To demand more, would be unfair, given Eriugena's situation in place and time. | would think that the drift of Eriugena's 258 Chapter 13 thinking is towards ‘non-being’, ‘anarchy’ in the radical MM sense of those words. In principle, it is all there, and it would dawn fully later in Western thinking in a figure such as Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327). Moran draws Eriugena in the right direction, but the break with substance-centred thought is not complete. A phrase such as the following does not resolve but exacerbates the problem (Moran 1989): The first principle of Eriugena’s system is not being but, rather, the concept of a person or consciousness, who is above and before all beings of which it is the cause. (p. 230) Is this a matter of a careless formulation, or a terminological problem, or is it indicative of a conceptual problem in Eriugena? In short, Eriugena’s MM is not 'me-ontic' to the same degree as that of Taoism and Buddhism. Admittedly, language here reaches its limits. Still, there remains a difference, worth upholding, between Neoplatonic apophaticism and Absolutism. Admittedly, Eriugena introduced the idea of meontology (the study of me-on: ‘non-being’) to Western Europe, under the influence of Neoplatonism, as reconciled with Christianity by Pseudo-Dionysius. However, is he consistent in his development of the notion of ‘non-being’? Alternatively, does his concept hint at a sufficiently radical level? Or, is his 'non-being' just another level of being? Could the same critical question be raised against our own presentation? Are we not, after all, utilising the noun 'Unground', and might it not have substantialist implications, as if it were some 'Being', Something? Once again, let me remind myself that throughout 'Unground', 'Absoluteness' and other similar terms do not ‘refer’, but merely postulate and project speculatively absolute boundary notions, End without content. 'Being' does not apply at all. Eriugena, with Neoplatonism generally, seems not to have annihilated as deeply as our Asian models. In his time and context, Eriugena produced an astounding MM system, but the apparatus and vocabulary for such thinking was not available yet. Groundbreaking, synoptic Eriugena did not have the benefit of the radical challenge of Indian and Chinese MM. To the extent that he did not make a clear distinction between 'being' and 'non-being', the accusation of 'pantheism' regularly levelled at him in Church circles may be understandable. Yet that was clearly not the inclination of his thinking. He certainly did not flatly identify God and the world; on the contrary, he emphasised the transcendence of God. It would be more justifiable to apply the modern term 'pan-en-theism' to his thinking. Dimensions 2 and 3 of his system together refer to the created order. Dimension 3 refers to the world of the senses. Dimension 2 occupies a position comparable to what this essay is approximating with the terms ‘Eternity’ with its ‘Principles’ and 'Infinitude' with its ‘Elements’. In Eriugena’s Platonically inspired Christian vision, this dimension of the principles of all things includes God's ideas and volitions. The ideas are aspects of God's self-manifestation and, like God, transcendent of 'being'. This appears to 259 Conditioning support our notion of the ontological status of Principles. Like Neoplatonism generally, he saw causation to proceed through the mechanism of likeness: the empirical world is caused by being similar to (note: not necessarily identical with) the ideas (Moran 1989:251). To summarise, in terms of our problem of Conditioning, Eriugena seems to say: God conditions himself; God conditions the level or realm of intermediate conditionality (ideas); and that level conditions the world. We can admire him for notions such as these. Yet, in addition to the critical question concerning the substantialisation of the notion of ‘God’ that has been raised above, there are two other aspects where the limitations of his model have become apparent. First, in his system the aspect of dynamic causality in the empirical pluralistic world itself is underplayed. Secondly, his God is not ‘caused’: is not reflexively affected by empirical nature. Eriugena’s position on matter is interesting. Given his Neoplatonic connection (in Neoplatonism ultimate reality was spiritual), his system is in effect a version of idealism. The basis of this is the Neoplatonic assumption that the effect must be similar to the cause: all must be similar to the spiritual One, without necessarily sharing all characteristics. On the one hand, this implies a devaluation of matter, as was the case generally in Neoplatonism. On the other hand, he saw even matter - the opposite, the imperfect, the inferior - as enfolded in self- manifesting God Cibid.:233). On the route unfolding in our reflections, matter is seen as an essential element in the emergence from Absoluteness, second to no other element and not inferior or evil. As it stands, Eriugena’s way of thinking stretches orthodox Christianity to its limits. | see him as extrapolating Christianity’s inherent tendency towards Absolutism as far as he could or dared to go. It should cause no surprise that various arms of the Catholic Church (in 1210, 1225 and 1585) condemned his great work. In fact, one cannot escape the impression that he is interpreting the Bible and Christian dogma from the viewpoint of his MM. In his own manner he is reading the Christian tradition tendentionally, attempting to reconcile West and East - which, to him, could have only meant the Greek ‘Eastern’ European tradition. Of the ‘East’ in the sense of the East Asian and Indian worlds, he could not have known. Muhammad had been born some two centuries before Eriugena, and during Eriugena’s lifetime, Islam began its philosophical dominance, which would last for several centuries. Al-Kindi, an exact 9th century contemporary of Eriugena, developed the first reconciliation of Neoplatonism and Islam. Irish Eriugena and Iraqi Al-Kindi - independently of each other - attempted the same project: a synthesis of Neoplatonic MM and monotheistic religion. As often happens in history, similar challenges and conditions bring forth similar solutions. Neither of these pioneering spirits - one in Christian Europe, the other in Arab Islam - seemed to have been aware of each other or of their 260 Chapter 13 similar roles ina greater unfolding MM drama. Far from diminishing Eriugena’s significance, it highlights his creative achievement against great odds. In any event, the working out of a positive relationship with Islam would have to wait for Eriugena’s disciple, Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464). Today a similar kind of project is called for, but on a larger scale than Eriugena could have known of in his time. MM today stands on the same kind of threshold as Eriugena did nearly 13 centuries ago, but the partners in today’s MM multilogue are more numerous and more diverse. Taking all of this into account, it should be borne in mind that Neoplatonism as a whole might have been the result of philosophic and religious syncretism involving India and the Hellenistic Mediterranean, not necessarily consciously intended, but following in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE). In addition, Indian MM might have influenced earlier forms of Greek thinking as well. Spinoza In the early modern period a remarkable MM system with structural similarities to Aristotelianism, Stoicism, Neoplatonism and - unbeknown to its architect - Vedanta made its appearance in Holland. The life experiences of its Jewish author, Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677), predisposed him to a search similar to the one undertaken by some of our contemporaries. Of Portuguese marannos descent (Jews forced to convert to Christianity on the Iberian Peninsula), he was alienated from social constructions - ethnic, religious, political and academic - with their disciplinary power and the prices they exact. He overcame the sorrow that easily comes with such loss and isolation with immense dignity and personal integrity. As a young man, he became disillusioned with intolerant, institutionalised religion, yet he accommodated its mythological god talk as a means to inculcate morality among the majority of people not amenable to high reason. Consistent with this approach he championed the political ideal of the full acceptance of religious diversity in public life. An accomplished scientist (a specialist in optics) he had to endure vehement opposition from both the Jewish synagogue and the Dutch Reformed theologians for his alleged pantheism and heretical interpretation of Scripture. Sensing the need to come to terms with the scientific worldview emerging in his time, he proceeded to develop a metaphysical system on the strictly rational basis of the impregnable mathematical method, without recourse to supernatural interventions, such as falling back on divine miracles. He assumed that his views of God were established rationally and with indubitable certainty. To him the Hebrew, Latin and Arabic literatures of his time, shorn of their religious idiosyncrasies, carried the same living philosophical tradition, born in 261 Conditioning Greece. He sought an alternative to, a middle position between, dogmatic religion and atheistic science, and his metaphysics was borne by a mystical undercurrent (cf. Bennett 1996:61ff.; Curley 1969; Elwes 1955 [1951]; Spinoza 1925; Wolfson 1960 [1934]). In Spinoza’s thinking, the factor of causality plays an important role. It is not lost on us that the heading provided for the entire first part of his Ethics is ‘Concerning God’ (De Deo). It is not the God of Jewish, Christian and Muslim theological apologetics, but the God of rational philosophy. Attempting to overcome theism, deism and atheism and settling - but perhaps not quite - in pantheism, his system culminates in the idea of an 'intellectual love of God' (amor Dei intellectualis): the love towards God, which is the same love with which God loves himself. This is the highest perfection and bliss that humans can aspire to, and can attain through an immediate, intuitive knowledge, which is the highest kind of knowledge. The garb of mathematics and 17th century rationalism clothed a metaphysical mystic. Spinoza refers to ‘mystical knowledge’ as ‘intuition’ (scientia intuitiva) CILXL.ID, meaning the immediate, clear perception of the essence of God and of things. This intuitive knowledge does not arise from any external source, but from God's infinite intellect, of which the human mind is part. | take this to be amysticalunderstanding in the sense of this exploration: a sense of participating, both ontologically and epistemologically, in Wholeness, sufficiently to provide meaning, happiness and an ethos with universal outreach. However, would Spinoza have endorsed Absoluteness? Spinoza links the love towards God and the resultant pleasure to the realisation of God as cause. In his Ethics (Part I), he tackles the problem of causation head-on. In the opening line of his book, his Definition I (the first of eight) defines 'self-causation' (that which is self-caused' [causam sui] as 'that of which the essence involves existence' (/d cujus essentia involvit existentiam). This definition is coupled with what he understands by ‘substance’, namely ‘that which is in itself (quod in se est), and ‘is conceived through itself ° (quod per se concipitur) (Definition IID. The word ‘God’ makes its appearance in Definition VI: it refers to ‘a being absolutely infinite (ens absolute infinitum) - that is, ʻa substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.' It is clear that 'God' is a - no, the sole - substance: not the Creator at a certain point, but the eternal, self-caused ontological support of the world. His term 'Nature' is co-extensive with 'Substance' and 'God'; he speaks of 'God, or Nature' (Deus, sive Natura). In terminology reminiscent of Eriugena, he distinguishes two aspects of nature: creative (natura naturans) and created (natura naturata). 262 Chapter 13 Following on his Definitions, he postulates seven axioms, of which the following four explicitly deal with causality: (D ‘Everything which exists, exists either in itself or in something else.’ (2) 'That which cannot be conceived through anything else, must be conceived through itself.' (3) 'From a given definite cause an effect necessarily follows' and 'if no definite cause be granted, it is impossible that an effect can follow.' (4) 'The knowledge of an effect depends on and involves the knowledge of a cause. His position, seemingly so clear on the surface, nevertheless gave occasion to considerable puzzlement and various interpretations, into which we need not enter. For our present purpose, and not taking into account all that Spinoza had written, it is sufficient to note that indirectly (he does not indulge in open polemics) he refutes two forms of ontological dualism: the split between matter and mind, and the split between the world and God. As will be indicated in Chapter 15, these dualities occurred in the thinking of Spinoza's older contemporary, Descartes. The first is the split between matter and mind / form, deriving from the Greeks (Stoicism being a notable exception) and revitalised in Spinoza's time by Descartes with his contradistinction of ‘extension’ and ‘thought’. To Spinoza these are two aspects of the same and only infinite substance, God. Yet he takes care not to conflate them. To him ‘thought is an attribute of God’; so is 'extension'. The upshot of Spinoza's substance monism is neither an idealist reduction of matter and the material world nor a materialist reduction of mind, but the attribution of both materiality and mind or consciousness to God. The most dramatic aspect of his system, going against the grain of the religious tradition of the medieval West, was that he asserted God to be (to use Aristotle's terms) the material cause (in addition to being the efficient cause) of the world. Interestingly, his insistence on the necessity and power of God excludes the possibility of God having passions, will or purpose, that is, a large part of what we would call ‘consciousness’. On the other hand, his definition of 'substance' (III) specifies 'that which is conceived through itself ', which seems to imply the aspect of consciousness. This investigation sides with Spinoza's general drift as far as the non-duality of mind and matter is concerned. The second split rejected by Spinoza pertains to the relationship between a mutable, caused world and an immutable ultimate cause (substance or God). This dualism also had an ancient pedigree, harking back mainly to Aristotle and monotheistic theology. Spinoza implies that Greek (Aristotelian) philosophy and the traditional monotheistic idea of creation render the notion of causality impossible. For how could a changeable, complex (and material) world be 263 Conditioning forthcoming from a totally other unchangeable, simple (and immaterial) substance (God)? In Spinoza’s perspective, the postulate of creation out of nothing would not solve the problem of the substance ‘causing’ a totally different kind of being, but begs the question. The relationships among (D ‘nothing’, (2) ‘the substance’ and (3) ‘a totally different kind of being’ would not be resolved. By implication, Spinoza also censures emanationist theories of the kind that something essentially different (and material) emanated from a substantial (absolutely changeless and immaterial) source via any number of intermediary steps. His implied criticism is correct: inserting even an infinite number of gradual minute steps does not solve the logical problem. Yet Spinoza did not simply settle for a straight pantheism in the sense of a simplistic identification of ‘God’ and ‘everything’. To him the sum of all modes (i.e. all things) is in God, yet is also transcended by God as the infinite substance. It would seem that the modern term ‘panentheism’ covers his position. Somehow, creatures are passing modes of a Substantial, Infinite Matter-Mind Being. Ironclad consistency on his chosen path, followed so single-mindedly, would seem to demand some form of monism. He seems to follow such a path, but it is not exactly obvious how strictly and narrowly he understands it. Does he intend it to be as unyielding as, for example, that of Parmenides (see Ch. 11), Gaudapada (see Ch. 11) or Sankara (see Ch. 6 and 7) - for all three to whom the phenomenal world was an illusion? Does Spinoza rule out the existence of particular things and change altogether? Does the participation of things in God's eternal and infinite essentiality exclude their temporality? Probably such occlusion was not his intention. This is the sort of problem arising inevitably, given the direction of thought followed by Spinoza, just as it was the case with the Upanishads and Neoplatonism. His MM system is obviously of a kind with the latter two systems. All three seek to derive all things from One. One should hesitate to come to definitive conclusions concerning Spinoza's intentions. Yet, in the end, the 'geometrical' method is not as clear as Spinoza undoubtedly intended it to be. His theory does not seem to provide sufficient basis for Becoming and Conditioning in the dynamic sense explored on our perambulation to come into play; he remains close to the classic idea of substance. Better than the concept of an ultimate, infinite, unchanging Being in itself in whatever sense, would be to ascribe change to whatever self- conditioning Origin appears on empty Horizon beyond substance of any sort. Spinoza's naturalism deserves endorsement. His ambition was to satisfy the procedural requirements of the emerging modern science of his day, but it is doubtful whether contemporary scientism would be prepared to follow him into the dimension of MM. | have no serious quarrel with the fact that he uses the word 'God', although the content he gives it is problematic. In this perspective, his thinking appears remarkably static and we may sense a vast hinterland receding into Absoluteness behind his infinite, substantial God. Ultimately Spinoza probably settled panentheistically for an idea of 'God' as 264 Chapter 13 somehow identical with the physical universe, thought of as infinitely large; and God-Universe thought of as both (inseparably but not identically) Infinite Mind-cum-Infinite Matter. Interpreters of Spinoza tend to emphasise one or the other, assimilating his thinking to either materialism or idealism. That is not the best way to read him. The drift goes beyond such a duality. His version of the ontological proof for the existence of God (going back to Aristotle and the scholastics) is not convincing. Neither should one make too much of his geometrical, rationalist method. It ‘oroves’ nothing. Inexorable deductive argument is not the best way to do MM. It must be borne in mind that Spinoza made use of that procedure to link up with the science of his day against the theological dogmatism of his time. It has to be redone in each new time in terms of that time. Remarkably, his method does not obliterate his mystical inclination. That yearning can be suppressed in certain circumstances, but not eradicated; in his case, it radiates clearly through the thick integument of the early modern epoch. Nevertheless, the aura of indubitability this method seeks to provide, needs to be deflated. All such theories are constructions, more or less receptive to the open mystery beyond, and more or less useful. Other aspects of his view of causality requiring critical interpretation include his necessitarianism, according to which all things are strictly determined in a strong sense, and his limited compatibilism of necessity and freedom, according to which only God is a completely free cause - that is, not determined by outside factors; all other causes are necessarily determined by yet more causes. Finally, Spinoza perhaps does succumb to a deterministic reductionism. Rejecting any notion of a 'final' (teleological) causation directing events, he will find it almost impossible to escape from a mechanistic reduction of causality, mathematically expressed. Spinoza was used here as one example from the early modern period. Now the waters in the MM thinking of a contemporary physicist will be tested. David Bohm Whereas classical physics permitted only a causal (even deterministic) description of the physical world, quantum physics brought about a momentous change by seemingly permitting an indeterministic description of at least microphysical processes. A style ofthinking very different fromthe deterministic one exemplified by Spinoza, appeared. To account for the baffling complexities of quantum physics, various theories were put forward, the most widely accepted one being the Copenhagen interpretation pioneered by Niels Bohr in the 1920s. Given the vague and tentative nature of Bohr's writing, the wider philosophical implications of his thinking remain notoriously unclear (Faye & Folse 1994). He (and others) suggested for the most fundamental level of 265 Conditioning physical phenomena an inherent indeterminism, according to which the notion of causality is to be renounced - at least as far as that level is concerned. With David Bohm (also see Ch. 8), it is a different matter. He considered the possibility of a wider context, allowing for both causality and the puzzling behaviour of matter at subatomic level. Even with reference to the domain of quantum physics, he wanted to preserve causality. In his book of 1996 (Bohm 1996 [1957]), devoted to causality (and anticipating his later work on the enfolding and unfolding orders), Bohm is well aware of the limited range of applicability of the term ‘cause’: ‘more fundamental’ than causality is the reality that ‘everything comes from other things and gives rise to other things’ in ever wider ranges of effective relationships and regularities - in his words: of ‘conditions’ (‘background causes’), and ‘inside a wide variety of transformations and changes’ (Cibid.:1, 33, 132ff.). Actually, he refers to this as a ‘principle’ Cibid.:1, 8).'Cause' and ‘causal laws’ refer to artificially abstracted situations, that is, situations from which their full contexts have been removed conceptually. In such situations, causes are necessary relationships, directly effecting changes. The ‘laws of nature’ (including ‘laws of chance’) are wider and more general than causal laws. One might say that whereas Spinoza strives to maximise causality, Bohm limits and relativises the range of this notion. Yet, within its domain, he insists on its validity. Admittedly, Bohm’s argument so far has no immediate MM point. He goes as far as to say that a complete understanding of the totality of interconnected effective relationships can never be achieved, even if progressing science can approximate that ideal more and more Cibid.:31ff.). What he wants to do in this book, is present a model of causality that would overcome the notions of absolute indeterminacy, as it appeared in microphysics, and of the simultaneity of opposing (‘complementary’) pairs of behaviour (e.g. wave-like and particle- like). He aims at overcoming mechanistic science. Whether he succeeds in doing that in a convincing manner at the level of scientific argument, must be left to the experts in theoretical physics. We stay with the MM question. Nevertheless, Bohm goes well beyond the dominant mechanistic model Cincluding its quantum-physical manifestation) by claiming that nature may harbour in it an infinity of dimensions at various levels and modes of being, hitherto undreamt of in science Cibid.:133ff.). Therefore (ibid.): [LE ]very entity, however fundamental it may seem, is dependent for its existence on the maintenance of appropriate conditions in its infinite background and substructure. (p. 144) Vice versa, each thing in the universe contributes to what the universe as a whole is. He eschews both determinism and indeterminism in favour of what one might call a pan-conditionalistic model of becoming and change, comparable to the intuition of Buddhism concerning the dependent co- origination of all things. In his 'qualitative infinity of nature' the horizon of 266 Chapter 13 reciprocal becoming is forever shifting back (Bohm 1996 [1957]:160). These are intriguing suggestions hinting at a larger-scale structural feature of reality in a manner relevant to the notion of Conditioning. As noted in Chapter 8, lawfulness (‘holonomy’) is central to his notion of the living totality of a ‘holomovement’, consisting in unfolding implicit order and enfolding explicit order. As we come straight from Plotinus and Eriugena, the Neoplatonic slant of Bohm’s thinking - whether by accident or by design - is remarkable, except that where the world picture of classical Neoplatonism is static, that of contemporary science is dynamic and historic. Bohm develops that possibility. Again it becomes apparent that few - if any - contemporary MM positions are brand new. All basic intuitions had their precursors long ago in the one long, continuous search of humankind as a whole for meaning transcending the daily struggle for existence. 267 Singularising E 539 Selfness Let us now explore the third peak, Pre- or Meta-Existence, that comprises Singularising, Pluralising and Totalising, mutually implied. No individual thing, large or minutely small, is a fixed, closed unit. It is a temporary node in a process in which such individual identities constantly form and dissolve by encountering pluralities of 'others'. This occurs by being and becoming part of ever-increasing larger wholes, and eventually, arising from and ending on Absolute Horizon. By using the term existence (‘standing out’) we are not joining in the existentialist cry of the anguished human individual, threatened by nihilism, standing out, alienated, from the human crowd and the natural cosmos. The term 'existence' refers to Cosmos and all its constituent beings as emerging from Absolute Horizon. The 'ex-' is not intended to mean 'out of ' in the separatist sense. Cosmos too, as a concrete singular, unique ‘event’ (coming out’) 'sub-sists' or 'in-sists' ‘in’ Absoluteness. The first (Ch. 14) of the three flanks of this peak revealing itself now, is connected with unity and identity; the second (Ch. 15), with alterity and plurality; the third (Ch. 16), with totality and non-duality. These three How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Singularising’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 269-298, AOSIS, Cape Town. https:// doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.14 269 Singularising perspectives are inseparably interrelated. Establishing a relationship among oneness, manyness and wholeness is an inescapable given of any synoptic perspective. These three in their togetherness have cropped up in various historical contexts in the course of human reflection on these matters. In the 5th century Augustine of Hippo, in his De quantitate animae (‘the measure of the soul’ [XXXII.69]) could not decide whether all human souls are one, many separate individuals, or a combination of one and many. Towards the end of the 18th century, in his Critique of pure reason, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) worked out the foundations of human knowledge. In that context, he devised a table of all possible reasonable judgements that might be made. His first category is ‘quantity’, consisting of the three subforms ‘singular’, ‘particular’ and ‘universal’; a very different context than that of Augustine, and very different from our own present context, yet with a similar tendency to find a comparable type of pattern. In yet another context, and closer to our present concern, various religions have placed various emphases: Islam was drawn to a stark vision of unity, whereas forms of popular Hinduism enthusiastically embraced plurality. People have usually gazed at the mystery of things through one of the panes of this three-paned window. We shall now move in a wider context than the nature of the human soul (Augustine), or the nature of human knowledge (Kant), or the nature of the mythologised gods of humans. We are fascinated by all three perspectives (Singularising, Pluralising and Totalising) on the overall theogonic, cosmogonic process from Absoluteness to Cosmos. As in the previous chapters of Part Two, the gerunds denote neither a state nor an entity, but an incipient possibility. What appears here as this Principle is not perceptible, but it is imaginable as a potentiality of something relatively new. The Principle of single Selfness appears, preceding twoness, manyness, togethernes, yet mutually implied in them. Singularising is the Principle underlying the qualitative uniqueness, completeness, identity, integrity, continuity of individual empirical events. Empirical, Cosmic events, in every small, singular instance at every singular moment, are appreciated as dramatic event-ings from Absoluteness. The single raindrop falling, carries in its fragility, the message of unrepeatable uniqueness. Singularity is both event and relative structure; this leaves space to accommodate the notion of continuity. The basic Buddhist intuition of the nature of the human being is applied to the nature of the world as such. Like the human person in the Buddhist view, all things and Cosmos are shot through with Emptiness (Absoluteness); there is no massive substantialist identity, but continuity and a light, relative identity of each as a temporary composite structure, consisting of various components, which, in turn, form part of larger composites. These emerge from and are permeated by, Absolute Horizon. 270 Chapter 14 Singularising is the Principle connecting the single human person, other singular identities and Cosmos as a singular identity with the root of all things. The singular cosmic event or thing (whether atom, cell or individual living being) is a manifestation of the Principle of Singularising emerging on Horizon. The literal meaning of 'in-dividual (not divisible’) is not intended here. Every 'individual', from cosmos to sub-atom and everything in between, is indeed ‘divisible’ into infinity. The ‘individual’ is both the whole made up of constituting elements (each further divisible) and a constituent part of larger wholes embedded in even larger wholes. Such individual identity is only relative, but distinguishable from the moment of integrated wholeness. It is a matter of relative emphasis and perspective. We have to come to terms with all three moments, and find a balance among them. In the history of human reflection such relative distinctions have often hardened into absolute alternatives. Therefore, in this chapter, we focus on the moment of relative individuality, which is not the singleness of isolation. Oneness, unity, identity, singularity, individuality have significant implications of plurality (difference, alterity) and integration (totality), both internally and externally, but here it is about the very being itself of a thing, its relation to itself. Singularising takes firmer shape further down in Infinitude and Cosmos, but here we encounter the first hint of Selfness. This Principle may be detected in poignant human life. ‘| am", or at the end of life, a defeatist or triumphant ‘I was!’ - what loaded statements by short-lived individual human persons, these are. Our question is: Is a tendency towards singularisation inscribed in the very nature of reality, latent in all of reality, and does it ultimately derive from an inaccessible dimension that cannot be verified empirically, but envisioned imaginatively? On this MM quest, we attempt to see the nature of human individuality, and the individuality of each individual thing and the individuality of Cosmos, as resonant with the deepest nature of reality itself, with Singularising as a Principle in all things. Mysticism presupposes a marked sense of singular selfhood. Yet it is more likely than not a journey in the company of friends. It is not necessarily being alone or solitary, although there is no fear for that and it is sought at least from time to time. The mystic as defined in this exploration is essentially not self- centred. Ego becomes ipse, authentically ‘oneself ’; assuming the freedom to take responsibility for the self; discovering the essential individual integrity, deeper than the contingencies of race, gender, possessions, dogma or age. It is saying ' with confidence and dignity, but without vanity; assuming one's continuity through time for a brief while as a combination of factors, that is, one's relative identity - while accepting one's contingency. It is not postulating any part of the self as eternally unchanging or as existing independently of other things. Around the ‘I’, a timespan of billions of years and a space of tens of billions of light years spread out, appearing from and disappearing into Infinitude. 271 Singularising Inside the ‘Il’, the infinitesimally small and brief tumble away, eventually disappearing into Infinitude. Somewhere, sometime between the large and long and the small and brief, the empirical ‘I’ flashes forth as a radically impermanent yet continuous singularity, permeated by Unground. The f is a point of balance of many forces, a result of many influences, a creative point exerting a certain influence. It flashes for a fleeting moment and yet, in its puniness it contains and represents Cosmos. This is the positive side of I-ness. On the negative side is an overemphasis on unity, with the ugly twins, exclusivity and repressive inclusivity, two only apparently opposing concretisations of the dimension of Singularising. This takes place at both the psychological (individual) and the social (collective, political) levels. At the level of social collectivities (collective individuals’) ‘One God’, ‘one people’, ‘one nation’, ‘one party’, ‘one boss’, ‘one religion’, ‘one church’ with ‘one dogma’ and ‘one agenda’ appeal to people at a subconscious level, and are therefore useful for ideological and propagandistic purposes. ‘Unity’ as supreme article of faith and as centralising social reality, has a strong affinity and mutually strengthening effect. It is about power. A critical attitude towards both the ideology and the reality of centralised social power flows from the position taken in this investigation. They are one-sided aberrations of a primordial urge deriving from Unground. This view of unity lies at the root of theocracies and totalitarian governments as history demonstrates. Human beings who intuited the nature of the world often felt a need to reduce to oneness. In the meditative practice of mysticism, one very important exercise has always been the observance of singleness, the concentration on one single thing to the exclusion of all other things. In Indian religions, this is known to lead to states of calm in various degrees. In Neoplatonism, the One had very much the same function as the absolute focal point of metaphysical and spiritual attention. Manyness and otherness are illusions, we hear the Advaita Vedantin say. Such attempts have run across cultures and religions. If taken to extremes, it becomes the monistic fallacy, manifesting in the effort to reduce everything to matter, or to mind. The first led to forms of materialistic monism, the latter to forms of idealistic or spiritualistic monism. Below we shall look at some samples of such attempts. It is necessary to give the Principle of Singularising its full dues, yet the human being cannot live by unity alone. E S40 The mountain spring Let us stay on our chosen course, attempting to discover a remarkable perennial mountain spring. It is visited by various single travellers, thirsty enough to want to get there, and able to do so by scaling the mountain from various sides. 272 Chapter 14 Some only slake their own thirst. Others scoop water into containers of various shapes and sizes and colours to carry it to those lower down. Some tell the folk down in the various villages what the water is like. Then, various things can happen in the villages. The water loses its freshness, tastes as if it has been preserved in the containers for too long, and becomes infested with life- threatening organisms. Otherwise, the containers become the focus of attention; the water ‘must’ be drunk from containers only or exclusively from certain containers. Alternatively, the same water is poured from container to container, and soon, people forget about the origin of the water, and the once living water turns stagnant, stale and unhealthy. When the scouts talk about the original taste, they use differing words and analogies to describe it. Then, when they or various groups meet on occasion and converse in their different languages, it seems as if they are talking about different liquids. Yet it is the same water, preferably to be drunk and tasted straight from the spring itself. It is not something in containers, nor something to talk about. It is certainly not something to fight about, for it never fails. Let us appreciate a few singular scouts below. anonymous forest-dweller(s): Chandogya Upanishad In Chapter 6, | sat at the feet of mystical seers of ancient India and paid my respects to them as they announced the unity in and behind the plurality of things. | need to return to them and again pick up one of the earliest pre- Buddhist Upanishads, the Chandogya Upanishad (probably around 650-600 BCE), written in prose (Gotshalk 1998:159-187; Hume 1968 [1921]). In this simple, forceful, visionary document, Uddalaka Aruni educates his son Svetaketu in a mixture of mythology and sublime speculation concerning the true nature of things, including the place of human beings in it all. In the beginning was one divine Being alone, the teaching goes, one only, without a second. Yet there is a sense of differentiation, for Being had the urge to become many, to develop and differentiate itself to become plurality. However, plurality does not constitute a different reality. The many are only modes, manifestations, names and forms of the ultimate and supreme reality, just as all things made of clay are clay, all things made of gold are gold, and ocean water in many vessels is the same ocean water. The human soul is presented as formed of the eternal Soul, and manifesting That. The subjective and the objective coincide, are one. In a lapidary formulation, chiselled indelibly on generations of listeners’ minds, Uddalaka pronounces to his son that ultimately there is a - one - finest, spiritual essence, and that the human soul is That CHume 1968 [1921]:246-250): That which is the finest essence - this whole world has that as its soul. That is Reality (satya). That is Atman (Soul). That art thou (tat tvam asi), Svetaketu (VI.8.7). (n.p.) 273 Singularising This axial idea is repeated with a wealth of poetic images, all boiling down to the same idea: the world is Brahma, that from which one came forth, into which one will be dissolved, in which one breathes (III.14.1). Realising this unio mystica, is liberation. The individual phenomenal self, in its innermost, original true essence (Atman) has the great Self (Brahman) as its ground and source, and is 'identical' with It. Although not directly perceivable, Being is present in all things, like salt dissolved in and spread out throughout water, invisible but nevertheless discernible through taste; sensory experience may fail to detect the all-pervasive mysterious presence of Brahman, but another faculty - intuition - can. Like a spider's web is spun from within the spider and tiny seed becomes big tree, the Atman and the eternal Entity are ‘one’. Yet these very similes, striking as they are, seem to beg rather than solve the mystery of the ultimate relationship between the world and ultimate reality. Is the identity partial or complete? What would 'identical' (That art thou) mean here, and what would the difference between 'essential' and 'accidental' and between 'true' and 'imaginary' or 'illusionary' be? Is the appearance of the world necessary? Volumes have been written about these questions. Not all the Upanishads, it seems, came to the radical monistic conclusion of the later Vedanta that all phenomena are mere illusion. Cosmos may after all have a derivative, relative reality. The salt and the water are not quite identical. Monism may be paired with either idealism or materialism. In the equation of Brahman and Atman the question whether the ultimate substance is matter or mind, has not necessarily been addressed (Mittal 1974:85ff.). Yet the dominant drift in the Upanishads was towards an early form of ‘idealism’: Brahman-atman, the inward and only world, is the world of self-consciousness, reason, feeling and will. The meaning of unity and identity has been interpreted variously in different schools and over time in this great Indian tradition. Perhaps we should allow this early intuition to stand in its majestic inaccessibility as a reminder of the mystery of the Principle of Singularising. Yes, materialistic monism was also an option, and indeed one taken in India. At the extreme opposite of the Chandogya and other Upanishads, the broad Lokayata movement saw the world as consisting of at least the four elements of earth, water, fire and air, with a fifth (ether) added in some quarters (Jayatilleke 1980 [1963]:90ff.). Yet, as far as this movement settled for matter as the one and only ultimate substance underlying all empirical things, it was an early form of materialistic monism. Any 'materialism', however much it may allow for a plurality of subfactors and -forces, is, in any strong sense of the word, per definition monistic: matter is sole reality, and all phenomena are fully explicable in terms of matter and its functioning. Lokayata philosophy rejected religion as not instituted by gods at all, but invented by human beings. The existence of an Intelligent Being (God) as the cause of the world is denied. As a whole, this philosophy cannot be seen as an MM movement. Nevertheless, 274 Chapter 14 while some were nihilists and extreme sceptics, at least some representatives adopted, if more by implication than intention, a fully-fledged metaphysical position of materialistic monism. According to this view, the universe has neither meaning nor purpose. The world is simply the way it is: the result of the combination of the four (or five) material elements. There is no recourse to anything outside the dynamics of matter itself to explain the world. It will be clear that such materialism is not reconcilable with the drift of this treatise. On the other hand, matter needs to be appreciated much more positively than has been the case in MM thinking generally over the millennia. the Buddha: Mdlapariyayasutta The Buddha as individual teacher is not to be lifted from the historical context of India of the time. His teaching was also 'conditioned'. With his teaching of multifactorial dependent origination (including both mind and matter), he sought a middle position between the two opposites of the time, held by the Upanishads and the Lokayata. Sometime around the period between 5th century and 6th century BCE the Buddha taught a short sutta, the Mülapariyayasutta (‘the sutta concerning the root sequence’) (Horner 1976:3-8; Trenckner 1979:1-6), containing in a nutshell the essence of his teaching. In it, he lists a number of topics that might become themes for MM contemplation. Among them is the triad of ‘unity’, ‘plurality’ and 'universality'. The Buddha was well aware of the ways in which these topics were dealt with in his time. We here find a typical early Buddhist approach to our theme. Should 'unity' be promoted to supreme category, forms of monism would be the result, as was the case in the Upanishads of the time. Should 'plurality' be promoted to supreme category, forms of dualism or pluralism would be the result. Of this second possibility, early Buddhist scholasticism itself provided examples, particularly the Sarvastivada sect, from the 3rd century BCE onwards. The Buddha's approach was to seek a middle way between, or rather beyond, the extremes of, on the one hand, compacting to a point of monistic unity, and, on the other, fragmenting to a point of incoherent scatter with, at best, mere compiled aggregates. He trod the road of a non-dual process of dynamic conditional connection. As for the question of the ultimate 'universality' of things, he followed a unique empiristic road, declining speculative constructions unconnected to sensory experience. Yet he brought all experience under the common denominators of non-permanence, non- substantiality and suffering. Reality is a dynamic conditionalistic nexus (paticcasamuppada: ‘dependent co-origination’; paccaya: ‘conditionality’, 'relativity') and in that sense, a ‘whole’ (see Ch. 16). This teaching strove to facilitate salvation, taken to exist in the integration of the human personality, in the context of a profoundly understood reality. 275 Singularising So how is the topic of ‘unity’ dealt with in this sutta? The answer also applies to the aspects of ‘plurality’ and ‘universality’, which we discuss in the next two chapters. So the perspective of this sutta will not be repeated there. The Buddha explains that understanding is layered. An uninstructed average person would consciously reflect (safjanat/) on unity; string together chains of argument (mafifati/ and fabricate speculative metaphysical systems, adhered to with great subjective conviction and attachment. Such a person would think along one of the following four lines: he would (1) identify himself with unity, (2) construe and project himself as part of unity, (3) construe and project himself as separate from unity, or (4) construe unity to be part of himself. Furthermore, he would rejoice (adhinandati) in unity thus construed. The Buddha suggests that such systems are developed from and for the sake of self-interest, as overarching systems in which their architects nestle. The whole thinking pattern revolves around the ‘self’ as an unhealthy centre of thinking. This style is precisely what the Buddha put forward as a profoundly wrong sense of personal individuality and identity. The ‘self’ becomes the centre of the universe; metaphysical systems centred in 'unity' reflect that basic orientation. The Buddha demolishes obsession with ‘self, psychologically as well as metaphysically. He couples his ontological rejection of every form of substance metaphysics, with reference to both the human person and the world as such, with an epistemological critique of 'thinking' in terms 3 of the polarity of ‘subject’ and ‘object’, ‘T over against X. This MM of non-substantialism (anattaà) is the one feature that distinguishes Buddhism (and Taoism) from virtually all other systems. Buddhism is the eradication of egocentrism in all its varieties. The Buddha did not deny the existence of empirical selves as relatively continuous series of functions (Collins 1982), but he did deny 'selves' in the sense of eternal, permanent substances enduring through all change. That included human souls as well as divine beings. To imagine that is illusionary, the root of wrong thinking. This is a basic understanding running through the entirety of Buddhist history. Even in the idealism of Yogàcàra MM the thinking of the unenlightened person is understood to be determined by the polarity of 'grasper' and 'grasped' as bias. All the constructions following on that are mere illusionary imaginations. The Buddha then explains the manner of thinking at the stages beyond that of the average worldling. At the supreme level of insight such a person knows intuitively (abhijanati). This is not the result of a switch to some other source of information, such as supernatural revelation, but an extension of sensory experience. The Buddha does not disqualify conceptual thought as such. To him it remains useful as a critical, analytical, clarifying instrument, but decidedly not as speculative scaffolding. With that scaffolding, the Buddha has also left behind the orientation around ‘self’. Forgetfulness of impermanence and non- substance, with reference to both the individual person and the ultimate nature 276 Chapter 14 of reality as such, is the root of evil. Hence, the Buddha sought a way of multifactored coherence against the backdrop of emptiness, leading beyond the dilemmas of eternalism and nihilism, substantialism and chaos, monism and pluralism. Early Buddhism taught that existing things are not eternal, but at best continuous over time, and that such things are made up of constituent factors called dharmas (Pali plural: dhamma). Naturally, the question would arise: what is the ontological status of those dharmas? About 250 years after the Buddha the Sarvastivada school held an interesting view: the compound things can fall apart, but the dharmas themselves (their list contained 75 dharmas) are self- sufficient and persistent realities. To anticipate Leibniz: the dharmas are ‘monads’, irreducible units. Like Proclus and Leibniz, the Sarvastivadins saw their basic units as combining to form the empirical things. In terms of the concern of our Chapters 14-16, the Sarvastivada position added up to a unique combination of oneness (radically singular, irreducible, atomic dharmas), manyness (75 dharmas) and wholeness. It can be argued that every attempt at a systematic account of the world has to come to terms with those three Principles. In terms of the impetus of early Buddhist thinking, the view of the Sarvastivadins, unintentionally but in effect, implied a substantialising position. In Theravada Abhidamma throughout its history, a different view was held: dhammas are ontological actualities, ‘thing-events’, evanescent occurrences, ‘flashes of actuality arising and perishing with incredible rapidity’, but not stable, perdurable entities (Nyanaponika 1998 [1949]:xviff.; Narada 1980:187ff.). The quality of each is variable in accordance with the relational system to which it belongs (Nyanaponika 1998 [1949]:41). Dhammas flash forth as singularities on the very verge between being and non-being. In passing, an investigation of the similarities of ancient Buddhist dhammas with the quanta (physical reality at its most reduced scale) of contemporary quantum physics would be an interesting undertaking. Buddhist meditation reflects a balance of an accent on unity with an accent on plurality without being trapped in either, and issuing in insight into emptiness. The accent on unity is reflected in the concentration (samadhi) type of meditation; in the fifth /hana ideation of manifoldness (nanatta) is no longer noticed. Then the advanced Buddhist meditator does not find oneness (as in Neoplatonism), but the dimensions of infinity and ‘nothingness’ (akificafifia). The accent on plurality (the next chapter) is reflected in the bare attention (sati) type of attention, where the passing multitude of things is noticed mindfully. Because of that, comes the true insight (vipassana, pafifia) into the interdependence and ultimate non-substantial emptiness of phenomena. The route unfolding on this journey of ours follows the direction pioneered by early Theravada Buddhism, here turning to that teaching as a model to 277 Singularising approach issues of cosmology. The Theravada dhammas emerge at the level of what this essay distinguishes as Cosmos (Part Four). Here, in Part Two, we are taking a step further back, postulating a Principle of Singularising presupposed in the emergence of Cosmic thing-events. Our attempt most likely contains more speculation than the Buddha would have endorsed. Extrapolating from early Buddhist psychology, this essay sees Cosmos as the ever-changing outcome of a never-ending process, conditioned by varieties of factors, and arising from Absoluteness. Cosmos, the universe, does not possess some unchanging single core and is not part of some eternal, unchanging monistic substance. Yet Cosmos has a relative identity, integrity, individuality, and a certain continuity. The theorem of ‘Singularising’ also wants to clarify the precious value of the existence of continuous, relatively stable individual identities in Cosmic reality, which all derive from empty Absoluteness. Relative singularity, yes - proceeding from Eternal Singularising, as a moment in a larger movement. Lucretius: De rerum natura During the same centuries as the ones during which the Upanishads, early Buddhism, early Jainism and the Lokayata flourished, Greece saw developments parallel to those in India. In Greece too, monism vied with pluralism, and idealism with materialism, and there were also various combinations of those positions. Additionally, there were attempts to steer a course between or beyond both types of extremes. Of the early classical MM authors visited in previous chapters, none pushed further towards the notion of a totalitarian idealistic monism than Parmenides of Velia. Before Parmenides, other Greeks had found the one basic substance from which all things emerge and to which they all return in various natural phenomena such as water (Thales, 6th century BCE), a boundless something without qualities (Anaximander, 5th century), air (Anaximenes, 6th century) or fire (Heraclitus). Those positions may be called ‘naturalism’, but they were not 'materialistic' in the strong and exclusive sense the word would adopt in later times. They were also early forms of monism in the sense that all things were seen as modifications of one basic element, but again not in a strongly developed sense. Parmenides went a step further: there is indeed a single ultimate reality (Being? or ‘the Real’); and that single substance is absolute fullness, motionless, continuous and indivisible, not giving rise to anything and not allowing any change. Nothing happens. There is only oneness; the plurality of sensory experience is an illusion. That position amounted to monism pushed to the limit. Challenged by the uncompromising absolute monism of Parmenides, subsequent Greek thinkers needed to adapt it in order to save empirical reality. 278 Chapter 14 Finally, ancient Hellenic materialistic monism received its most sublime visionary expression in the Latin poem of Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 99-55 BCE): De rerum natura (‘on the nature of things’) (Lucretius 1965a; 1965b; 1976). In his poem, Lucretius sets out a complete materialistic explanation of the natural world. He had more than a scientific aim. He wanted to rid human life of two fears, which he regarded as the root of all ills: fear of death and fear of gods. The two ancient schools of Lokayata in India and Epicureanism in Hellenism differed from modern materialism in detail and scientific sophistication, but their epistemological, ontological and worldview underpinnings were the same as those of their modern counterparts. These underpinnings are what concern us here, not the detail of Lucretius’ physics. The basic model is simple, clear and consistent: all things are complexes of atoms and nothing more. Yet he did not deny the existence of happy gods residing somewhere, but they do not interfere in human affairs and never made a single thing out of nothing (de nihilo). Nor does anything return to nothing, but to constituent elements which have physical existence, but are too small to be seen with the naked eye. In addition to these invisible miniscule 'bodies' there is the necessary postulate of a void, an empty space otherwise movement would be impossible. Lucretius makes the explicit point that apart from matter and emptiness there is nothing - no third element discernible by either the senses or by reason. The universe is infinite, and all things are taken up in ceaseless motion in infinite space. There is thus an infinite supply of matter. In all of this, there is no deliberate design or conscious intent on the part of the atoms (or on any other part, for that matter). There is no teleological movement. It is all a result of chance, explicable as the outcome of random collisions and combinations through infinite time and space (Lucretius 1965b): L/]t is because many atoms undergo many changing conditions throughout all space during limitless time, and are moved and stirred by blows, that, after having tried every kind of motion and combination, at length they chance to fall into such groupings as those from which this world of ours is formed and continues to exist (1.102A4ff.). (p. 37) Given sufficient space, time and matter in the form of minute particles, everything - including the emergence of sentient beings, soul, mind and spirit (II) - is eventually possible in a blind process, we hear him say, anticipating contemporary monistic materialists. Indeed, there is nothing new under the sun. Lucretius did an excellent thing in stretching his materialistic model to its limits, enabling his readers to gauge the possibilities and limitations of this version of monism. In our present context a shortcoming of Lucretius' vision is that the transcendental question - the question concerning the possibility and status of oneness as a category - is not raised. That is what really interests us here. Apart from that, | am not convinced that this materialism is the 279 Singularising way to go. The facts that he adduces so poetically do not prove the truth of his picture. His model overstretches the possibilities of matter, defined in a restrictive manner as shorn of every vestige of rhyme or reason, and not entering into any combination with any form of life and consciousness that is not reducible to physical matter. His materialistic monism falls short of explaining what it claims to be explaining. Accepting it, would have required more credulity than the assumption of principles prefiguring consciousness and life, inherently co-present with matter. In Greek-Hellenic thinking Plato, Aristotle and Stoicism in their different ways explored the space between the absolute (and idealistically inclined) monism of Parmenides on the one hand and the materialistic monism of Leucippus and Democritus on the other hand. Doing that, Plato, Aristotle and Stoicism took up positions quite different in content but comparable in function to that of the Buddha, who also sought a path avoiding the extremes of idealistic (some Upanishads) and materialistic (Lokayata) monisms. In his account of the origin of the cosmos in the Timaeus, Plato assumes matter as a pre-existing chaotic condition, subsequently endowed with life and intelligence. Plato may be called a pluralist in the sense that he accepts the existence of a large number of primordial Ideas, approximating monism in the sense that he awards pride of place to the ‘ideal’ component of things, with ‘matter’ somehow part of the mix. Yet, he was not a monist in the sense of a Parmenides. The Aristotelian and Stoic schools also found that monism in both its one- sided idealistic and materialistic varieties had explanatory shortcomings. A century or so after Leucippus and Democritus launched their philosophy, Aristotle, while sharing their empirical, scientific passion, rejected their materialistic monism with such great effect that it was virtually dead for 2000 years. He devised his set of four types of causes (material, formal, efficient and final) in conscious opposition to their theory, in an attempt to escape from the cul-de-sac of One-ism in any form. Contrary to Plato, Aristotle took a great interest in individual things. We might say that the phenomenon of empirical ‘singularity’ fascinated him a great deal. That we can only admire. To Aristotle, ‘matter’ was the principle of individuation: that which distinguishes one individual (say Socrates) from another (say Callias). All of this would have a long and complex history in philosophy in centuries to come. The main point now is that Aristotle had an eye for empirical individual things, and he had an eye for matter (to him it was a basic principle of reality), but he did not postulate Matter (or any other single thing) as the ultimate one and only. Not too distant from Aristotle, Stoicism (Hahm 1977:34ff.) also argued that prime matter never occurs by itself in nature, and is not infinite or unlimited. Nevertheless, to them it was a basic constituent of the cosmos, and it had a high MM value: it was the passive principle, unqualified substance, and they 280 Chapter 14 could call it ‘divine’. Yet, it was not the sole basic principle. There was also the active principle: reason, mind (/ogos), even soul. Both matter and reason (mind, soul) play equally important roles in the generation of the cosmos. Their position was not dualistic, but it was not monistic in a reductionistic sense of the word either, and materialistic monism was out of the question. At the root of cosmos lies a non-dual unity of mind and matter. The upshot of this excursion confirms the suspicion that monism in any absolutist sense (as in a thoroughgoing materialism), is not a branch to sit on. Proclus: Stoicheiosis theologike In the Stoicheiosis theologike (‘Elements of theology’) (Proclus 1963 [1932]) of Proclus of Athens (c. 410-485 CE), 'Oneness' is discussed as the first and supreme transcendental category. By ‘theology’, Proclus did not intend the meaning that the word would later acquire in the monotheistic religions; his usage largely overlaps with what we indicate here by MM; in his own life ritualistic theurgy also played a large role. Though distinct phenomena, historically there has at times been some overlap among mysticism, esotericism, magic and occultism. Jacob Boehme in the 17th century is another striking example. Again, to start with, a positioning of this great text in its historical context: With this book, Neoplatonism reached its final systematic theoretical culmination. By then the philalethia pioneered by Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria two centuries earlier had become a school system. The three great markers preceding the ideas on oneness in this book of his were (looking backwards) Plotinus’ Enneads, Plato's dialogues and the poetic fragments left behind by Parmenides. Proclus lived two centuries after Plotinus at a watershed time when one cultural epoch (Graeco-Roman supremacy) was finally crumbling, and another (the European Middle Ages) was emerging. He looked back on an MM tradition of eight centuries linking him with Plato, the initiator of the movement of thinking of which he, Proclus, was the last great ancient representative. Parmenides flourished roughly one century before Plato. Two generations before Parmenides there was Pythagoras, to whom the notions of ‘one’ (hen) and unity (monas) as serious MM ideas really go back. In spite of the lack of explicit references by Proclus and other Neoplatonists, the possibility of Indian (Upanishadic) influence on Neoplatonism must also be borne in mind. Yet Proclus' Neoplatonism is not merely Western acculturated Upanishadic thinking, but the natural unfolding of ideas present in Greek thinking from the beginning. Ahead of Proclus lay the development of the European MM tradition with its own impetus, which would find its own culmination, and would start to decline, 281 Singularising some nine centuries later at the time of consolidating figures such as Aquinas and Dante (13th-14th centuries). Add another seven centuries, and we arrive at our own century, which is also a time of decline and new birth: high modernity is crumbling, and an unknown epoch is emerging. Therefore, chronologically, Proclus stands two-thirds from now on the way back to Plato. As for the European(-Western) tradition as a whole: behind Proclus, starting roughly 600 BCE with Thales of Miletus, lay a 1000 years of reasoned reflection on the true nature of things. Ahead of Proclus, to the point where we reorient ourselves today, lay 1600 years of continued reflection. After and largely through Proclus, Neoplatonism continued to exert considerable influence in Western MM. Yet as an individual, he is an example of the accidents of religious and academic politics and the fickleness of fame. Even during his lifetime, he was a sidelined figure, under pressure from Christianity that was in the ascendant. In later centuries, he continued to be either ignored or attacked as pagan. Yet the basic structure of his thinking found fame twice - both times under false names. First, in the 6th century, an unknown Christian monk under the pseudonym ‘Dionysius’ adopted and dressed Proclus’ system up in the garb of Christian language, and presented it as the work of a Ist century Christian (a convert of St Paul). Then, during the high Middle Ages, Proclus again found fame under the name of Aristotle whose star as the great authority was then at its zenith. This second mistaken identity goes back to an Arab book, written in the 9th century, and actually based on Proclus’ The elements of theology. Therefore, we have the remarkable phenomenon of the same metaphysical structure, attacked in one case as the product of an unregenerate, pagan mind, but twice lauded under mistaken flags: first as true Christianity and then as true Aristotelianism. He only started to gain recognition in his own right from around the 13th century onwards in the thinking of Nicholas of Cusa and during the Renaissance. Proclus’ system consists of 211 axiomatic propositions, each explained and argued. This format could lead the reader to believe that he arrived at his views by strictly deductive means. That was hardly the case (Hathaway 1982:122ff.). He systematised existing ideas, mainly Plotinus’ floating and not always consistent speculations, committed to writing in the Enneads. Plotinus provided the creative intuitions; Proclus arguments create the impression of rationalisations and systematisations of those prior intuitions. Of Plotinus his student, Porphyry said that he experienced the ecstatic state of union with God four times; of Proclus we have no such information. The first six propositions of the Sto/icheiosis theologike deal with the One, the Units and the many (Proclus 1963 [1932]:1ff., 187ff.). In his cosmogony Proclus in fact inserted a novel category which he termed Henads (Units) between the One and Nous-On ('Intelligence'-'Being^), which in the system of Plotinus was the first hypostasis derived from the One. In passing, it may also be noted that Proclus (probably for various reasons) (ibid.:252f.) elaborated 282 Chapter 14 the first two-in-one hypostasis (Being-Intelligence) of the master Plotinus into a triad by the insertion of Life (Zoe) between the first two. Below that Cessentially continuing Plotinus) come Soul and, right at the bottom, Matter (Body). What concerns us right now, is his notion of Unity, which to him is higher in the hierarchical order of things than Being and Intellect. Proclus does not deny plurality (o/ethos), but postulates that every manifold somehow necessarily participates in the One (to hen) (proposition 1); otherwise plurality would disintegrate into nothing (ouden) or divisibility ad infinitum - and both of these alternatives are unthinkable to him. All that participates in the One is both one and not-one (proposition 2), for participation implies distinction, some 'otherness' - otherwise it would simply be complete identity. He does not repeat Parmenides. Proclus sees unity and plurality as essentially correlated fundamental principles of reality. All that participate in the One are necessarily both one and not-one, that is, plural (proposition 2). From the point of unity, plurality is an add-on, qualifying unity. Conversely, from the point of view of plurality, the previously not-one ‘becomes one’ by participation in the One (proposition 3). Their unity must be due to 'a "one" which has entered into them.' Therefore, Proclus distinguishes the many 'ones' from the one metaphysical 'One' behind and in and beyond and other than everything: the ‘One itself’ (the auto-hen, as he calls it) (proposition 4). He implies that unless recourse is taken in a One that is not analysable any further, one is doomed to the process of infinite regress mentioned in proposition 1 (also see proposition 14). He is thus taking up the position adopted by Aristotle with his postulate of a first Unmoved Mover. Anticipating the topic of the next chapter, we can clearly observe that Proclus neither denies plurality nor sees it as either prior to or coexistent with the One, but as radically secondary and posterior to It, and participating in It (proposition 5). Plurality proceeds, unfolds, from the One. Plurality is not denied, but seen as descent into imperfection. Why and how that happens, is the central concern of Proclus and his fellow Neoplatonists. Proclus implies that the One is transcendent and immanent at the same time: while determining all plurality, it itself remains unaffected by plurality (Proclus 1963 [1932]:191, 199f.). In Proclus, plurality can derive from the One only because the One intimately combines unity and multiplicity in itself. Proclus thus found it necessary to attempt to bridge what would have appeared to him to be a huge gap between the transcendent One and the empirical plurality of things in the system of Plotinus. He accomplished this bridging with the help of the notions of Enas (‘henad’, ‘unit’, 'one)) and Monas (Cmonad?, bolstering his notion of participation. Both terms go back to Plato. Whereas ‘monad’ in Proclus ultimately refers to the originative principle, the transcendent 'One' (proposition 21), it also denotes the head category from which each of the strata of reality proceeds. Thus henads (units) derive from 283 Singularising the One as ultimate Monad; intelligences, from the monad Intelligence; souls from the monad Soul, and bodies from the monad Nature. There is, therefore, a hierarchy of monads. The category ‘henad’ has the specific function of explaining singularity and plurality. He clearly felt a need to find an MM context for the fact of singular things in the world. There is not only the one transcendent ‘One’, but by dint of the participation of the many in that One, also many phenomenal, derived ‘ones’. The transcendent One implies a plurality of ones. Later on in his book (propositions 113-128), he applies this concept to the ancient mythological Greek gods, in a last moving but futile attempt to save the old world against all the odds at the time of its final collapse (ibid.:257ff.). The One causes the many, without being changed by the many in the process; it therefore remains intact. To him the One, identical with the Good (propositions 12, 15, 20), is the unadulterated primordial principle (proposition 20). Beyond the One there is no further principle; for unity is identical with the Good, and is therefore the principium of all things (arche panton). It needs to be re-emphasised that 'the One' does not refer to a finite quantity or number in the world of appearance, but to infinite potency (propositions 62, 86). Transcending even Being, the One is nevertheless the source of the plurality of individualities (ibid.:259, 270f.). The One ‘conserves and holds together the being of each several thing’ (proposition 13) Cibid.:15), that is, It is the ground of individuality (and plurality). A first general observation is that Proclus illustrates that any MM account of the world needs to relate oneness, manyness and wholeness. This brief analysis has focused on Proclus' notion of oneness. It stands to reason that in a frame of thinking such as Neoplatonism, the balance between the monistic or pantheistic tendency on the one hand and the due observation of individuality will be most delicate. Proclus illustrates this difficulty. A second general observation: we note that he does not relegate the world of plurality to the realm of the unreal, as is for example the case with Parmenides. In spite of the effort he put into bridging the gap between the world of the many and the transcendent One source of all (his propositions 28 and 29 are clearly an attempt to ensure continuity); it is questionable whether he succeeded. Safeguarding the transcendence and immanence of ‘producer’ (the One) in relation to ‘product’ (the empirical individual) is a difficult balancing act. Is the separateness of the individual real or imaginary Cillusionary)? Each, if pushed far enough, would break the tenuous connection. This is of course not his (nor Plotinus’ or Plato's) problem only; it is the problem of every effort to find a way between monism and dualism or pluralism, including the route explored in this MM. Yet it must be attempted. Proclus’ solution (whether it really is one, is of course the question) is that the product (proposition 30) (Proclus 1963 [1932]:217f.): 284 Chapter 14 U]s at once identical with it [that is, the ‘oroducer’] in some respects and different from it: accordingly it both remains and proceeds, and the two relations are inseparable. (p. 217) A third observation: there is no feedback from lower to higher among the levels of reality. Thus, each Monad participates upwards in the higher Monads, but not downwards. That means: each receives from above and passes on downwards, but not the other way round. There can therefore be no feedback from the phenomenal world into the dimension of transcendence. There is no reciprocity between the One and the phenomenal world of the one-many: the phenomenal one-many participate in the One, but the One participates in nothing (Sweeney 1982:140-155). This journey explores precisely such a feedback in the movement to and from Horizon. A fourth observation concerns the structural similarities between Neoplatonism as voiced by Proclus, and the Upanishadic tradition, which strengthens the assumption of stronger historical connections than is usually recognised. The Chandogya Upanishad and the Stoicheiosis theologike are two individual members of one family, two Spirit brothers, so to speak. This is not a forced imposition, but the recognition of a natural, organic relationship, and probably some, yet untraced, historical familiarity. A fifth observation relates to his proposition that unless the One is postulated, one is doomed to a non-stoppable process of disintegration ad infinitum, and that that is necessarily an intolerable idea, is disputable. This criticism is fundamental to this essay. Furthermore, his postulate - a version of Aristotle's Unmoved Mover - seems arbitrary. A need (‘there should really be °) is not necessarily its own fulfilment (' therefore there is’). Relativity does not prove a firm Absolute. By extension, | would want to add, the possibility that - tendentionally - his thinking could have radicalised Absoluteness further than actually happened, deserves careful consideration. Is the ‘nothing’ (ouden) that he speaks of disparagingly in his very first proposition, necessarily something to deny? We are here poised on the divide between Neoplatonism and Buddhism(-Taoism). Proclus cuts off the possibility of 'nothing' at the very outset; the Buddha pursues it as ultimate truth (but in a qualified sense). Proclus finds refuge in a notion of transcendent yet unchanging substance; the Buddha rejects that assumption. Proclus proclaims unity to be the supreme category, to the point that the One is not affected by plurality at all. A Buddhist- inspired view would collocate unity with plurality and totality in the context of processes of all-pervading change, relative coherence and continuity between beginning and end, arising from and subsiding into Absolute Emptiness. The model tried and tested on these pages greatly admires Neoplatonism, but finds more alignment with Buddhism-Taoism. A thin, significant line divides Buddhism and Neoplatonism (and Buddhism and Upanishadic monism) at this level. Let Buddhism inadvertently drift a few degrees towards the substantialising of Emptiness, and the essential distinction between the two types of systems will 285 Singularising have broken down; let Neoplatonism be drawn a few degrees further towards amore radical denuding, including even the One and the Good, and the line will have been crossed. It seems to me that tendentionally Plotinus’ teaching aimed at Absolute Transcendence, but that, in the way it was worked out, the One functioned as first Substance. There is another fundamental difference between the type of model seeking form on these pages and the Neoplatonic one. That model proceeds from the axiomatic priority of the actual above the potential (Proclus 1963 [1932]:71ff., 240ff.). Its point of departure is the assumption of a superior, perfect One giving rise to inferior Many. The model explored in this treatise does not make the assumption of a substantial 'One' as ultimately necessary and non- negotiable terminus a quo. All we find are traces, tracks, disappearing altogether and appearing inexplicably. We do not find Cosmos emerging from an actuality full of potentiality, but from potentiality appearing from empty, inaccessible nowhere. The furthest back we can go, are ‘Eternal’ Principles, and these are a mixture of abductive intuition and extrapolating speculation, hopefully providing some context for an understanding and appreciation of Cosmos, not concepts strictly ‘provable’ as corresponding with reality. Treatment of the One by Plotinus and Proclus, reminds of the early Buddhist meditation exercise of concentration (see above). In Neoplatonism, the object of contemplation becomes increasingly more evanescent from a semi-empirical (numerical) category to a wholly (or almost wholly) transcendent category. In early Buddhism, through a nine-level scale of abstractions, the cognitive content of the object of contemplation gradually disappears, concomitant with the emergence of a range of subtle emotions, until the supreme state of samadhi is attained. The structural similarity between Neoplatonism and Buddhism cannot be overlooked. Where Neoplatonism awards absolute priority to Unity, Buddhism is open to Plurality as well, and allows both to sink away in the wider depth of Emptiness. | read the attainment of the One (to Hen) in Neoplatonism as inclining towards the same as the Buddhist dimensions of ‘nothingness’ (akificafifíiayatanam), ‘neither ideation nor non ideation’ (nevasafifianasafifiayatanam) and ‘cessation’ (nirodha). An important difference is that what the Buddha and his followers present as essentially a way to physical and psychological calm, Plotinus and his followers present as a full- blown cosmogonic scheme of procession and return. In this respect, | seek an alliance with Neoplatonism. However, in its voiding of even the most abstract level of experience into emptiness, Buddhism sees further. A sixth observation concerns Neoplatonism, here represented by Proclus, as link between Plato on the one hand and the theologies and philosophies of the monotheistc religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam insofar as they were connected to the (Neo-)Platonic tradition, on the other hand. That such historical and structural connections exist is beyond doubt. In his late dialogue 286 Chapter 14 The Sophist (Cobb 1990) Plato implies the metalevel of Absoluteness. He raises the problem of ‘non-being’, which is different from ‘not-being’: not-being is the mere denial of a possible or conceivable empirical state of affairs; non-being has to do with a metalevel, transcending the empirical level of both being and not-being. That level is altogether ‘unthinkable, inexpressible, unutterable and unsayable’ (238C). In Plato’s dialogue (238E) the stranger concedes that he cannot avoid speaking of to me on as if it is ‘one’ (hen). The question is whether Neoplatonism took this proviso of Plato as seriously as Plato probably intended it. One is not so sure, at least as far as Proclus is concerned. A tendentional reading of (Neo-)Platonism as drifting towards transcending even the ‘One’ would minimise the distinction between Buddhism and (Neo-)Platonism. Proclus uses the concept ‘One’ in a more substantial sense than Buddhism would be able to condone. When we come to the use that Neoplatonism was put to in the monotheistic theologies and philosophies of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, it is even more the case. There the distinction between this ‘One’ and a living, personal Being, jealous that his exclusive singleness should not be threatened becomes thin indeed. | reluctantly take leave of Proclus for now. The atmosphere one breathes in the company of this last great Neoplatonist is one of resignation, even sadness, realising that something great was coming to an end. Perhaps this also comes through in the final haunting words of Plotinus himself in his Enneads (VI.9.11). The supreme life, he says, is a life taking no pleasure in the things of the earth, and ‘a flight of the alone to the Alone’ (ohyge monou pros monon). As far as the ‘no pleasure’ is concerned, we had occasion to express doubts; Cosmos is to be loved. What could the great North African have meant by the ‘flight of the alone’? Self-centred narcissism it certainly is not. Perhaps we can pick up a sense of personal solitariness; and it was a time when anxiety about a social world in collapse started to take over. The individual was alone, but the second ‘Alone’? Perhaps it was intended as solace to the lonely human individual. Remember, Plotinus says, the ultimate truth is the One, and that One is also Alone. His system was not a piece of abstract, hair-splitting reasoning; it was MM in the purest form: intuitive thought, and feeling. A human being and a system of thought, capable of expressing such depth so subtly, deserve respect. G.W. Leibniz: Monadologie Let me now observe an early modern offshoot of Neoplatonism. The first academic work (1663) of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) dealt with the principle of individuation (Leibniz 1959:1-5). Fifty years later, his mature metaphysics centred in his unique adaptation of the concept of ‘monad’. | shall here restrict myself to the last stage of Leibniz’s thinking, culminating in 287 Singularising his Monadologie (1714) (cf. Bobro 2004; Brown 1990; Coudert, Popkin & Weiner 1998; Jolley 1995; Leibniz 1959 [1840]:705ff., 1973; Mungello 1977; Rescher 1967; Russell 1992 [1900]), in which he provides a metaphysical basis for singularity, his prime metaphysical category. The ancestry of his idea of ‘monad’ includes Plato’s Ideas, Aristotle’s forms and Proclus’ monads and henads, discussed above. Leibniz did not take over his idea of ‘monad’ directly from Proclus, but most likely from Kabbalah (Coudert et al. 1998:72), which in any event had a strong Neoplatonic component. Among the many movements of mysticism-related thought influencing the synthesising Leibniz - either directly or indirectly, and being present either openly or residually - Plato and Neoplatonism were not the least, providing his thought with idealistic undertones (Dunham et al. 2011:59-72). Leibniz was essentially a Christian Platonic-Neoplatonic thinker along the lines of an earlier figure such as Cusanus. Continuing the spirit of a Cusanus, he was an irenic figure in all directions. Not only in his embracing universalism but also in his diplomatic involvement in practical life, he was a successor to the 15th century MM scholar. He defended Christian orthodoxy and tolerated pietism and Schwármerei as well. Other traditions he not only tolerated but admired, made an impact on him, including Aristotelian scholasticism, Chinese thinking (Confucianism), Jewish (particularly Lurianic) and Christian Kabbalah, and a measure of occultism and alchemy (including Rosicrucianism). His ecumenism included non-Christian religions, but he does not seem to have been aware of the possible Indian (Upanishadic) connections of Neoplatonism. Thinking progressively at a time when modern science, then in its infancy, demanded a new orientation, he nevertheless made no secret of his openness to the mystical tradition in its widest sense. Yet, essentially, he was an intellectual in the modern sense of the word, neither a contemplative mystic given to a meditative discipline nor prone to visionary ecstatic experience. His ‘mysticism’ was considerably less developed than his rational ‘metaphysics’. Nevertheless, Leibniz moved in circles that saw an intimate link between the new science and pansophism. All of these influences played a role in moulding his monadology. In his inclusive attitude, stretching across barriers of times and cultures, | find in him a precursor of the general approach unfolding in the reflections of this treatise. So how does Leibniz’s teaching of ‘monads’ fit into the larger picture of his thought? In Neoplatonic vein, Leibniz sees ‘the ultimate reason of things’ (ultima ratio rerum) in‘acertain dominant Unity’ (Unum) which is ‘extramundane’: ‘greater, higher, and prior to the world itself’ (mundo ipso majus, superius, anteriusque) (in his De rerum originatione radicali ‘On the radical origin of things’ [1697]) (Leibniz 1959 [1840]:147f.. This Unum is the absolute metaphysical necessity, not in need of any reason itself. It translates into the multiple individualities of the world, and that is what his monadology is about. 288 Chapter 14 The problem that dominated ancient Greek thought is still very much alive. Leibniz’s argument for the existence of that Unum is the ontological argument, well established in scholastic philosophy and theology, that essence necessitates existence, so God (supreme Unity) must exist as the Necessary Being. There must be one single source, from which all existent things continually issue and are being produced. In Leibniz’s frame, Unum is the God of Christianity, the author of creation. God, understood in a deistic sense (he created the world but does not intervene in it) would remain the ultimate foundation of his system. Nevertheless, the Neoplatonic structure of his argument is obvious. Aristotle is present too, amalgamated with Neoplatonism: Unum is the efficient and final cause in one (Leibniz 1959 [1840]:149). And he also sees the spectre of a hopeless infinite regress hanging over the non-acceptance of this Unum. To Leibniz, as to Proclus who was our Neoplatonic representative above, insistence on this 'One' is clearly not an arithmetical issue; more than a number, ‘One’ is a term for all-round potentiality and perfection, transcendent yet also immanent. On that traditional basis, Leibniz promulgated his theory of monads. Created by/emanating from the Unity, they are also distinct from the Unity. A plurality of individuals, deriving from Unity, they nevertheless do not lose their respective identities. In his thinking this notion made its appearance earlier (around 1685), and the word itself came up a decade later (Rutherford 1995:166). Glossing over the considerable difficulties of interpretation raised by this notion, its essentials boil down to the following: By ‘monad’ (Monade) Leibniz means a simple substance: without any parts itself, but entering into compounds. There is an infinity of independent monads. They are the true atoms (Atomes) of nature, the basic, constituent elements of things (/es Eléments des choses) (proposition 3). This may raise expectations that we are back with Lucretius, but that is not the case. Leibniz does with Lucretius what Marx would do with Hegel: turn him upside down. The difference is that the upside down goes in the opposite direction. Marx would invert Hegel's idealism to materialism; Leibniz inverted Lucretius' materialism to idealism - well, almost, for Leibniz did not espouse a full-blown monistic idealism.In any event, monads themselves are neither extended, nor compounds of elements that are more basic. They have no parts, but they do have a differentiated internal structure. Each monad is unique, and differs from all others. Monads 'have no windows' (proposition 7), but by that phrase Leibniz does not mean that monads are completely self-enclosed and isolated, incapable of entering into relations and that there is no interaction among monads. That would run counter to their job of forming compounds. Actually, monads are substances and the hallmark of substances, according to Leibniz, was that they are principles of force, capable of action. What Leibniz seems to have meant was that, being absolutely basic, their internal structure cannot be affected from outside. Nor did he mean that monads do not change. They do, 289 Singularising but their essential change comes from an internal principle, and they are perdurable substances, continuous through all change. In short, monads are fundamental metaphysical entities. In terms of our present chapter, one could say that his monads, modelled on the notion of human persons, are individuals, singularities; a monad is the archetype of a person. At their most fundamental level, these ultimately real entities are soul- like substances (ames, proposition 19). Resisting the materialistic mechanism of his day, he sees monads as indestructible spiritual substances, endowed with perceptions and appetites. Perceptions and appetites are more than mechanistic matter, but less than full consciousness. Not all monads are the same. They exhibit functions ranging from mere appetite to full reason on a hierarchical scale, only those of the highest level are capable of self- consciousness. In any event, the monad is the dominant ente/echy or form in everything: actualising, constituting and maintaining everything, from minute particle of matter to living thing. As far as the relationship with matter is concerned, Leibniz is not easy to pin down, and interpretations vary considerably. Matter is not a substance to him, and he seems to suggest that monads are not essentially materially embodied. He does not seem to be an idealist monist in the sense that external material reality is rejected or devalued as mere appearance. On the one hand, he divides monad and matter, but on the other hand he also sees matter as an aspect of monads. There is, firstly, God as the supreme monad, and pure spirit. Then there are monads as such, the original individual substances. Thirdly, there are compounds of monads. Unique as this view is, it nevertheless fits well with the Neoplatonic model of Proclus (see e.g. Proclus’ proposition 6). Leibniz’s monadology does not amount to a monism in the sense of an exclusive emphasis on oneness. His system of oneness is also a system of manyness. It wants to explain wholeness (compound). Not only monads, but also compounds are ‘individuals’ - the first essentially, the latter in a quasi-sense, and they are embodied. Monads become manifest in the world in conjunction with material bodies. For example, sensation without bodily senses would be unthinkable. God, the supreme monad, is the only individual substance that is not a spatio-temporal existent. Leibniz does not quite overcome the notion of bodies as machines (e.g. propositions 64 and 77). He believed that with the concept of monad, he overcame the dualism of mind and matter in Descartes, but that is not necessarily the case. He is less dualistic than Descartes, but more so than Spinoza. As the soul follows its own laws of final causes, so does the body follow its own laws of efficient causes, and they accord by dint of a perfect, divinely pre-established harmony (systèm de /l'Harmonie préétablie) (propositions 78, 79, 80). That might not necessarily imply real interaction or 290 Chapter 14 interpenetration, let alone real union of mind and matter in an individual being such as a human person. In addition, it leaves the nature of ‘matter’ and ‘body’ unexplained. Yet it must be noted that for Leibniz there was real connection among individual things in a shared world. Monads perceive a real world; his view did not amount to solipsism. | also note with appreciation that, contrary to the reductionistic materialistic monism that began to appear in his day, there is nothing utterly lifeless in his universe (proposition 69). Even in the smallest part of matter, there is life and soul (proposition 66). His thinking is idealistic as far as he awards primacy to the spiritual: everything emanates from a single supreme substance (God) (propositions 38-41), who is pure immaterial spirit and pure activity - ultimately perfect, necessary and sufficient. He continues the Neoplatonic tradition of an ontological continuum with spirit and matter at the opposite extremes. Derived matter is not entirely alien to the original spiritual substance (God), but a modification of that substance. His Neoplatonic understanding of the essential structure of God and the world is not apophatic C‘negative’, unknowing), but kataphatic ('positive', knowing). Since human minds participate in the divine mind, they are in possession of innate ideas, emanating from and corresponding to divine ideas. The monads are known neither through the senses nor through intuitive understanding, but through reason, capable of constructing theories; in that sense he is a rationalist. Leibniz has a sharp eye for the moment of real singularity in the world, and he awarded a metaphysical background to them: monads, derived from God, are singularities, constitutive in the composition of the world. They are the transcendent sources for empirical individuality. They remind of the eternal dharmas of the Buddhist Sarvastivada school. In Leibniz's universe, all things are connected, and therefore each monad represents the entire universe, is a mirror of the universe (propositions 62, 63, 67) (Leibniz 1959 [1840]:710): Each portion of matter can be conceived of as a garden full of plants, and as a pond full of fish. But every branch of each plant, every member of each animal, every drop of their juices is in turn such a garden or such a pond. (p. 710) Even the earth, air or water between plants or fish contain such wholes (proposition 68). A sentiment such as this is impossible to 'demonstrate' empirically or ‘prove’ rationally (contrary to what Leibniz would want us to believe). It is a pure MM postulate according to the definition of MM applied in these meditations. We note that with Leibniz, too, singularity, plurality and totality are co-present all the time. Similar to all the other figures visited, Leibniz is a link in one single chain concatenated backwards, forwards and sideways. Behind him is Proclus and the Neoplatonic network surrounding Proclus, in front of him is the German 291 Singularising Idealistic network, and sideways of him is - among others - Chinese thinking. For yes, Leibniz’s analogy reveals a relationship with Fa-tsang’s analogy of the golden lion nearly 1000 years before: parts and wholes and parts and parts are interpenetrated. It was not possible for me to establish whether Leibniz came to that idea via his Chinese studies or all by himself. Either way would be remarkable: if he was influenced by Chinese thought, it would be a signal of the breadth of his historical connections; if the idea arose in his own mind, it would be a signal of the breadth of the human mind and the spirit of MM. The one network of human consciousness spans all the earth and all times. Leibniz himself, like all other individuals, is proof of the truth of his analogy. There is no such thing as an isolated individual thing. Leibniz did not set out to argue for the Principle of Singularity as a significant element of the secret of the universe. Nevertheless, indirectly his ‘monads’ register that. Leibniz contains all of Western thought before him, and his own thinking is a germinating seed that would flourish in German Idealism a century later. This fanning out of his singular system in various directions is one reason why he presents a challenge to interpreters. There seem to be unresolved tensions in his thought - problems, if not of coherence and consistency, then at least of clarity. His thinking at times appears to be somewhat contrived, as if he was doing his best to avoid Spinozistic pantheism. Nevertheless, his is a remarkable attempt to root empirical individuality in a metaphysical context, and his notion of ‘monad’ is an expression of the Principle of Singularising. Apart from the primary interest in this chapter, he deserves respect for other aspects of his singular existence, such as his affirmative immersion in practical life for the good of all. His fascination with China and his overall willingness to integrate a variety of systems is remarkable. Perhaps the quality of immediacy to God of every monad signals a sense of mystical immediacy to God. From the perspective of this peregrination, Leibniz appears as not moving close to apophatic mysticism, not to mention Absoluteness, as his ontological argument for the existence of God illustrates. J.G. Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre A century after Leibniz, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) raised the problem of the ‘I’ to the level of metaphysical primacy. | will now briefly take note of this forceful man of action, somewhat alone and half-forgotten, but in recent decades re-emerging into the light of interest as precursor of movements such as phenomenology, existentialism and depth psychology. In line with the format chosen for this S, | shall refer to Fichte's treatment of our problem in a single seminal writing of his - the early Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre (‘Foundation of the entire theory of cognition’) (1794) - dispensing with the wider framework of his thinking and its development over 292 Chapter 14 time (cf. Claesges 1974; Copleston 1999 [1963]:vol 7, 32ff.; Dunham et al. 2011:116ff.; Fichte 1845:83-328; Schrader 1972; Seidel 1976). Let us in passing glance at the historical context of his thinking. Since the Renaissance and the Reformation and in tandem with the rise of capitalism, a sense of the significance and the uncertainty of the human individual started to billow out over the Western world. The philosophy of the emerging modern age reflected that ambivalence. The individual, increasingly cut loose from nature and tradition, was in crisis, yet individuality was at the same time seen as the escape route leading out of that crisis. Descartes’ dictum (see Ch. 15), ‘| think, therefore | am’ was not a foundational adage for rationalism only, but also for individualism, haunted by solipsism; the primacy of the ‘I’ as guarantor of indubitable rational knowledge was established. At the end of the 18th century, Kant also attempted to push through, as Descartes had done, to the bottom of the crisis of human knowledge, and like Descartes, he continued, but also radicalised, the emphasis on the role of the human person as constituting knowledge and morality. Contemporaneous with Kant’s thinking, the French Revolution elevated the dignity of the individual as primary ordering principle in the social and political contract. The social, political and philosophical developments in tandem made a deep impression on receptive young European intellectuals such as Fichte. Looking further back and across cultural divides, Protestant Kant did for modern Western MM what Buddhist Nagarjuna had done for Indian MM 16 centuries before. Both delivered critiques of human knowledge, by implication rendering all rational, soeculative metaphysical systems untenable. Yet Nagarjuna himself accepted a faculty higher than reason: intuition (prajfia); and after Nagarjuna came Yogacara with their idealistic system, describing consciousness as the root of reality. Kant did not go the route of intuitive MM gnosis. As Nagarjuna was followed by constructive metaphysics informed by his critique, so the constructive metaphysics of German Idealism followed Kant, informed by his critique and attempting to overcome the inconsistencies and gaps they found in his thinking. Kant accepted a mysterious thing-in-itself (Ding an sich) beyond human experience of things as ultimately foundational. That is the one thing Nagarjuna rejected. Kant left no possibility of knowing such thing-in-itself, Fichte felt. Ultimately, Kant could not explain where human sense constituted knowledge and the knowledge-constituting apparatus of the human mind come from. What ultimately causes our knowledge, and how? Fichte wanted to bridge the gap that he detected. To Fichte, Kant’s system also suffered from a related stress fracture: it failed to connect theoretical reason and ‘faith’ (i.e. belief in the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and practical morality). Bold Fichte attempted to construct speculative bridges across the chasms that cautious Kant left gaping. In both Buddhism and Idealism, daring new constructions in very different styles followed on very different cautioning critiques. 293 Singularising Registering his European context, Fichte proceeded to lay his own metaphysical and political accents, critiquing, extending and developing Kant by securing and radicalising his mentor’s premises. Unlike his erstwhile youth friend F.W.J. Schelling with his nature mysticism, and his Berlin colleague F.D.E. Schleiermacher (1768-1834) with his definition of religion as essentially the feeling of absolute dependence, Fichte was no metaphysical mystic. Nevertheless, let us follow in his footsteps a little further. He was a metaphysical moralist, and in this combination, morality had priority over metaphysics. Yet he is of interest to the topic of this chapter as a figure of extraordinary power who, in a bid to remain faithful to Kant while overcoming the ambiguities of Kant, raised the theme of the active ‘P (/ch), striving after freedom, to central metaphysical position. In this notion he discovered the supreme transcendental unitary principle that he sought - admittedly incapable of proof but nevertheless, the most basic, self-evident axiom, from which could be shown that all sense of consciousness and reality flows. Fichte’s thinking amounts to a double-edged idealism: both an epistemological idealism in the usual philosophical sense of objects of knowing being regarded as somehow created by or at least dependent on consciousness, and also a moral idealism in the sense of striving after an absolute ideal. The openly declared impetus in all his thinking is the ideal of the realisation of freedom; that, to him, is morality, and is the true epicentre of his idealism, making it essentially an ethical idealism. The colour of Fichte’s teleological idealism is activistic and optimistic. The human being is in the constant process of making and remaking itself in the process of making and remaking its world. The ultimate aim of all action seems not to be the realisation of personal individual freedom, but the freedom and independence of an absolute f. Throughout, the distinction and relationship between the empirical human “l and the absolute ‘I’ remain unclear. Reduced to basics, the ground plan of Fichte's system as found in his Grundlage is as follows: * Firstly, Fichte distinguishes as the first metaphysical principle an absolute ‘I’ as act of positing. Reflexively considering what goes on when we ‘know’, that is the first, foundational notion that may be postulated. It is for him the minimalistic yet undeniable transcendental point of departure with reference to which everything else, including nature, needs to be deduced. Everything else issues from the auto-productive /ch, which by and in itself is pure activity (7hathandlung). We note with interest that Fichte dramatically moves away from the classic Greek-European notion of person as somehow related to substance; now person becomes activity, freedom. His postulate of the ‘I’, Fichte believes, disposes of and replaces Kant's notion of a thing- in-itself hidden mysteriously and unexplained behind everything, including thinking. The /ch as freedom is the one common root of both practical 294 Chapter 14 reason and theoretical reason, joining them together. In ‘activity’ will and intellect coincide, become ‘free intelligence’. A second, antithetical principle - the principle of counterpositing Centgegensetzen) - is by necessity implied by the first principle. This is the moment of difference. The T implies an opposite, ‘not-l’ (Nicht-/ch, to use Fichte's vocabulary), and that Other is necessarily constitutive of the f. There is thus essentially an ‘intentional“object’, to make use of terminology from the toolbox of the phenomenology of Husserl a century later, and actually going back to Fichte. The Nicht-/ch is produced by the activity (Thathandlung) of the Ich itself. In order to activate itself, the /ch requires some resistance, some boundary, and some limitation for itself. The ‘I’ finds itself through the ‘not-l’, in fact, a plurality of 'not-l's. The ‘not’ does not denote a flat contradiction or denial of the original thesis, but the opening up of alternative possibility: it creates the possibility for the existence of a body, a natural world and human civilisation, and of a dimension of rational, free and striving human beings. Here the fundamental moral, activist quality of Fichte's personality and metaphysic once again announces itself. The ‘not-l’ is posited by the ‘I’, in order to overcome it. The ‘not-l’ is limited, made by the ‘Il’ and remakeable by the ‘I’. It provides the raw material for the striving of the f; it challenges the ‘I’ to become itself, and is the battleground upon which the moral striving is exercised. ‘I’ and the world, mutually implied, can and must be changed for the better. Thus, the human longing for freedom is pushed by the need to overcome the obstinacy of the world, and pulled by the infinite, unrealisable desire for freedom. It is important to note that this opposition (positing ‘over against’) of T and ‘not-l’ takes place not outside, but within the ‘lI’. Fichte does not seem to have intended this idea as a denial of the reality of the world, or as a claim that the world is created by the I. Yet his focus was so strongly on the world as constituted by the ‘I’ and as the battlefield for the realisation of the freedom of the f, that he lost sight of the need to explain the status and origin of the ‘objective’ world fully. Thirdly, a synthetical fundamental principle: the /ch and the nicht-/ch are not mutually completely exclusive, but mutually determined and determining, limited and limiting, as we have already started to see. Subjectivity and intersubjectivity, human subjectivity and nature, are mutually implied. The separation is separation in reciprocal relation, unity in distinction. The thesis, antithesis and synthesis are mutually implicit: one makes no sense without the other two. Thus, Fichte was the father of this famous triad in the context of German Idealism. In his thinking, this mutuality is the basis for the theoretical reason as well as the practical reason: the ‘I’ assimilates the ‘not-l’, and so comes to final self-consciousness; and the ‘I’ must subdue the 'not-l', in order to attain the ideal of freedom and independence. Morality is acting from a sense of obligation to that freedom. The ‘Il’ and the 'not-l' are both posited within the ‘I’ - not as a completed fact, but as a task, a mission, an ideal, in infinite deferral. 295 Singularising From the vantage point of where we are at this stage of our perambulation, Fichte, part of the massif of German Idealist metaphysics, is impressive, but along the flanks of his thinking, a number of slippery crevices become visible. The strengths of his system, as marked out in his manifesto, are obvious, and up to a point seem to support what is evolving in these chapters. For example, in the way he outlines his principle of 'l'-ness it seems to be interrelated with what was discussed in previous chapters as Witting (his thinking), Wanting (his will) and Can-ing Chis freedom). He supports our notion that selfness is not for a moment to be separated from otherness (manyness) and togetherness. That is a step beyond Descartes. All synoptic systems need to harmonise those moments. His ‘I’ is by no means intended as existing in isolation from the latter two. A valuable implication at the level of human existence of Fichte's vision is that subjectivity is per definition and by its very nature intersubjectivity. The empirical individual presupposes many other individuals; the freedom of the empirical human individual presupposes that of other individuals. What will be argued in the next chapter is in line with this thinking. Another strong point is that, more than anyone else in the Western tradition before him, he dismantled the notion of substance as primary category. In Buddhist terms, his /ch is no atta. In fact, Buddhaghosa bon mot ‘not the doer but certainly the deed is found' up to a point resonates in Fichte's notion of the ' as essentially activity (7hathandlung). That is a great stride away from Neoplatonism. Yet, a problem in Fichte's model is that he does not go back 'behind' the self- positing ‘I’. His system articulates what proceeds from the ‘I’, but does not take the step backwards into what precedes the ‘I’. Fichte's speculative terminus a quo of all experience is the constitutive, spontaneous ‘Il’, positing everything, including the ‘Il’. By a further step back, | do not mean the acceptance of some mysterious thing-in-itself or some personal mythological divinity. As indicated in the previous paragraph, when he substitutes activity for substance, he seems to approximate the Buddhist idea of non-substantialism, which is a cornerstone of the attempt at understanding unfolding in our argument. However, not quite. In fact, he continues the Aristotelian attempt to obviate an infinite regress by assuming the existence of an Unmoved Mover; in Fichte's case, it is an absolute ‘T. But the meditations of this essay, guided by Taoism and Buddhism, see a need to peer through such a transcendental ‘I’, and find themselves drifting into Infinitude, Eternity and Absoluteness, into empty ‘non-l’ (not ‘not-l’). Fichte does not explain how ‘I’ arises and his postulate of the 'l' as simply being there without any reason (schlechthin) is rather arbitrary and begs the question. Probably, given his cultural and historical context, he could not have considered radical emptiness (in our terminology: Absolute Horizon). A problem related to this, is that, as many commentators over time have pointed out, the relationship between the ‘absolute’ ' and the finite T 296 Chapter 14 is obscure. What exactly does he mean? To what extent does the notion of /ch apply to the individual human, to what extent is it a transcendental category, perhaps even a supra-individual Self ? It is not easy, perhaps not possible, to decide when he is busy with a phenomenological procedure and when with a fully-fledged metaphysical idealism. Perhaps the absolute ‘I’ is an ideal of the finite self - of all finite selves, insofar as they are moral beings, striving for freedom. | read him as, in his notion of ‘I’, at least skirting the notion of Selfness (Singularising) as a constituent Principle in things, the Principle of Otherness (Pluralising, see Ch. 15) in his ‘not-l’, and the Principle of Totalising (see Ch. 16) in his third principle. His second principle is singularly negative. The ‘not-l’ has no Original dignity initself. He does not deny cosmic reality, but seems to see it ‘ohenomenologically’ as the ‘object’ of ‘intentional’ cognition. Yet a problem from the point of view of this wandering of ours is certainly that, in Fichte’s model, nature, matter and the body appear to be the raw material on which, or the tools with which, the 'l exercises its moral duty and expresses its freedom. Nature is opponent and instrument, nothing more. The problem, it seems, is perhaps not so much his proceeding from the transcendental standpoint of ‘I’, but the manner in which he works out the necessity of the 'other. In the way he works it out, it is a negative boundary. In whichever way one looks at Fichte, he is not positively interested in nature for its own sake. Nor is he interested in the natural sciences. He does not deny the reality of nature, but it has a shadowy sort of presence as grist to the mill of the T, nothing more. It is no Other to which the human being can relate in mystic participation or caring responsibility. As Schelling correctly pointed out, Fichte did not overcome the mechanistic view of nature of the 17th century. That goes completely against the grain of our attempt. Contrary to his protestations, he did in effect devalue nature. In the reflections of this essay, every singular ‘f is seen as an intrinsic part and expression of Cosmos and Arche. His third principle is not particularly impressive either, and does not move beyond the second one. It reaffirms the mutual limitation, but does not move into a mutual inclusion or a next step or level. As said, a further step back (towards Absoluteness) needs to be taken - and a step forward into a true reconciliation of T and ‘not-l’ in something more than either. Fichte remains trapped in a disjointed division between subjectivism and objectivism. In opposition to the objectivism of modernity, he pitted an absolute subjectivity, not overcoming the opposition as such. Another opacity in his model concerns his views about God, as it came under attack in the atheism controversy CAtheismusstreit), launched by F.H. Jacobi (1743-1819) in 1799. Fichte fell between two chairs. No doubt, his ideas concerning God did not conform to orthodox Christianity, but of course, that did not make him an ‘atheist’. His absolute ‘I’ is an as yet unconscious ‘God’, revealing, discovering and realising itself in and through nature and humanity. 297 Singularising This is a becoming God, and certainly not an individual person. To Fichte, there is no personal God existing outside the human being and outside the transcendental moral order of things. That moral order is God. This view led to Fichte being accused of atheism. The problem was that his thinking, or writing, or both here, were not entirely clear, and that he seemed to fail to draw certain inevitable conclusions. His sharp distinction of religious and philosophical discourse and his failure to achieve integration was a hangover from Kant's own position. Nevertheless, he opened the whole dimension of layers of consciousness, thereby anticipating what Jung and others would bring to light a century or so later. As far as knowledge of ultimacy is concerned, Fichte also demonstrates a certain shortcoming. His strictly formalistic method of argumentation is probably an inheritance from Spinoza, but unlike Spinoza, here no intuitive procedure of coming to an understanding of things, emerges. Notwithstanding the obvious novelty and force of his style of thinking that pioneered an enormously productive period in speculative metaphysics, the argument leaves an aftertaste of forced dialectics. Fichte's great strength is his teleological morality, with its implied emphasis on moral action with a view to the improvement of things. This could be reconciled with the Buddhist bodhisattvic ideal, and this book is happy to be aligned with that aspect of his thinking. A weakness of his construction is that his ethics is premised on the assumption of an antagonistic relationship of the human ‘I’ with nature. It would be far more fruitful to allow ethics to flow from an MM locating of the human person in Cosmos in a positive relationship. One may suspect that his ethics would not be able to provide sufficient safeguard against the collective egoism of the human species, or sufficient motivation to serve and protect nature in the present threat of the impending ecological disaster. 298 - Pluralising B 541 Otherness Pluralising refers to the possibility of distinction in various shades and grades (twoness, manyness, difference, diversity, disjunction and so on) emerging on Horizon. In some MM systems, a sense of otherness was expressed as a vertical duality, such as between God and his creation. In other systems, it could be a horizontal duality or plurality between two or more irreducible principles in reality itself, such as matter and spirit. In yet others, it could be expressed as both a vertical and a horizontal duality or plurality with one or more supernatural gods interacting with another hierarchically lower level of reality, with its many associated components. The game of oneness, twoness and manyness was played in many ways, in accordance with many sets of rules. Contrary to the view in strands of Indian and Western MM, manyness is not an embarrassment in need of being explained (away), but an essential aspect of the world; one to be affirmed. Selfness and Otherness are equidistant from Absoluteness. From the point of view of monism, plurality might be stripped of value and reality and declared mere delusion. From the point of view of this emerging model, Pluralising is not derivative, but Original. Manyness is not How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Pluralising’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 299-317, AOSIS, Cape Town. https:// doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.15 299 Pluralising inferior to Oneness in a hierarchical subordination, but equal to it in a co-ordinated balance, equally manifesting and demonstrating the inner dynamics of Unground. There is no Singularising without Pluralising, no Pluralising without Singularising. In the meditative practice of mysticism, one important exercise has been the observance of plurality. The Buddha, for example, was not obsessed with the attainment of Oneness, and taught a non-judgemental attention to, a choiceless awareness (sat/) of the many things as they arise and subside, against the backdrop of the insight into ultimate non-substantial Emptiness. Itis as if the drive towards Becoming develops a certain pressure to ‘become more’. In becoming Subject, it apparently needs to generate Subject-Subject and Subject-Object relationality. Distinctness, an essential moment in the becoming and being of Cosmos, does not necessarily imply superiority and inferiority. It is true that division is the root of competition and conflict is not an accident in the world, and it seems to be part of the structure of the emerging world, going back to the cosmogonic process itself. The way to go is not to curl up in the foetal position in oneness, but to embrace the scatter of the world with its many fragments and its struggles, and yet not to remain in conflict, but to move forwards towards reconciliation, without giving up oneness and manyness. One of the ways in which people’s relationship with the depth of the world is expressed, in addition to a sense of unity with an Ultimate, is a sense of otherness. As far as MM is concerned, its associated knowledge may take the form of a sense of receiving a revelation from an Other. Its emotional tone may be one of personal response, of awe and love, before an Other. Alternatively, it may be one of fear and servility, as the history of religions demonstrates repeatedly: a wholly Other divinity imposes his law, which the human being is obliged to obey without question. Its devotional expression is communication, such as in prayer. In individual life, the sense of otherness may lead to inner tension and division between inclination and what is felt to be obligation, either self-imposed as duty or Other imposed as divine law. | am split: what | want to do, | do not do, but what | hate, | do. Whether that Other will is merciful or wrathful is not essential in our present context; the essential thing is the otherness, the distance. The term ‘mysticism’ is admittedly not usually used for this sense of encounter with Otherness, but | wish to retain the possible link between both ways of relating to ultimacy: a sense of oneness and sameness, and a sense of twoness and otherness. A sense of otherness has its own dangers, and it cannot be the final word. However, it has its own dignity. It is also rooted in a primal dimension of things. Often a sense of awesome Otherness, of a mysterium tremendum et fascinans (terrible and fascinating mystery’, to borrow from Rudolph Otto’s Das Heilige [1917]), is aroused by a sensed experience of encounter with nature or with God (or gods). Such a meeting may also lead to 300 Chapter 15 a range of emotions, which turn it into mysticism. This variety of mysticism is particularly at home in monotheistic religions: God, a transcendently Other, is loved with heart and soul. Love, whether directed at divinity, humanity or nature, implies duality - and does not exclude more. The history of mysticism is full of examples of this kind of experience. Look at that tendentionally, as pointing beyond itself and asking for a further connection. That connection announces itself as Totalism and expires in Emptiness. In previous chapters the ‘-theism’ part of monotheism received some attention. In the present context, the ‘mono-’ part of it is important. | note that monotheism is not by any stretch monistic, but essentially implies both unity on one hand (the one God), but also a clear duality and plurality on the other hand (the ‘one’ God is ontologically strictly distinct from the world and from the many things making up the world). This Other-directed mysticism is not necessarily inferior, as seems to be implied in the most widely used definition of ‘mysticism’, but it needs to be understood and granted a relative value against the backdrop of Absoluteness. The ‘One’ in ‘monotheism’ is not the same as the ‘One’ in Neoplatonism. In Neoplatonism, the pluralistic world does not stand over against it, but emanates from it and participates in it. The monotheistic ‘mono’ hails from an altogether different, Near-Eastern mythological background. In the developing history of the founding sources, ‘mono’ increasingly came to mean a numerical one; and the relationship between that one God and the world is one of difference, not of unity or continuity. Within the monotheisms of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, sophisticated attempts were made to accommodate it to Neoplatonism, but the distinction between 'one' as it functions in the two systems is worth upholding. Between monotheism and polytheism there are significant differences. 'Monotheism' refers to the belief that there is only one God; 'polytheism' is here understood as an umbrella concept to mean the belief in a plurality of gods in a wide sense. This includes varieties such as 'henotheism' (the enduring focus on a single god in a pluralistic pantheon with a hierarchical structure of higher and lesser gods) and 'kathenotheism' (various gods are venerated in turn, one at a time). Following these definitions, there is no absolute break between monotheism and polytheism; early Hebrew religion for example was a variant of 'henotheism' that gradually evolved into monotheism proper. Here 'polytheism' is not used in a pejorative sense. Monotheism and polytheism express quite distinct perspectives on the world and both are here taken to be equally original. The strictness of Jewish and Muslim monotheism with its Cosmic reservations expresses a worldview quite different from the inclusive cosmic affirmation of the Germanic, Greek-Roman, Indian and other pluralities of divinities. Yet, from another point of view, monotheism and polytheism are related, and both are transcended on Horizon. A plurality of divinities may be experienced as living presences in the world, and they may 301 Pluralising be fully recognised by their adherents to be mythological manifestations, human projections of an inaccessible depth - which is not necessarily the case among the more sturdy conservative theoreticians of the monotheistic religions. As sources containing truth regarding the human situation, the Greek, Roman and Indian mythologies (to stay with the cultural areas mainly featuring in this book) offer profound insights. In fact, the ancient Greek, Roman and Indian stories of gods and goddesses have a democratic inclination missing from the Hebrew stories with their one patriarchal ruler. Forms of present-day theology (e.g. those influenced by Karl Barth [1886-1968]) strongly differentiate ontologically between the natural world and a Wholly Other, and make a point of awarding absolute Power to that Other, expecting obedience. Such thinking may be forceful and effective (as was the case in the struggle against Nazism in the 1930s and 1940s), but it might also become instrumental in promoting an authoritarian mindset and be used as a tool in political power struggles. It can all be understood, and from the perspective of this exploration such thinking is not so much rejected as false but rather seen as, in the last resort, something to be transcended. On the Horizon such an ontological difference, with its associated power and obedience, evaporates. Returning from that Horizon has other individual and social ethical implications. The sense of a divinely Other might lead to a sense of special privilege, or one of estrangement and isolation. Collectively, even if some inner-group identity (a ‘we’) is achieved, this is easily pitted against an other group or other groups. It happens all the time. The sense of otherness may infiltrate and take over the relationship to nature of an entire culture, to the extent that they are alienated from nature. The contemporary world is living through and struggling to escape from this split of knowing human subject versus known object. A sense of otherness without the reconciling and integrating ‘totalistic’ viewpoint of the essential togetherness of things is an aberration. At the level of social and political ordering of life, a healthy emphasis on Pluralising provides a basis for democracy with its implied pluralism, tolerance and distribution of ideas, wealth and power. Historically soeaking, Neoplatonism did not succeed in countering the latent totalitarianism in state and religion in Europe, following the merger of ancient Near Eastern theocratic monotheism and the Roman Empire with its centralised order. In that troublesome historical context, mystics tended simply to withdraw into Oneness, away from manyness, perhaps hiding but not necessarily undermining real and ideological patterns of social and political ‘oneness’ as unitary domination in Church and State. This essay adopts a very different social and political morality. What is needed is a loving acceptance of and immersion into the many. A top-down hierarchical perspective, anchored in the idea of oneness at its apex, needs the corrective of a perspective proceeding from the idea of the many as a positive value. To prevent this ‘democratic’ perspective from denigrating into its own version of 302 Chapter 15 a tyranny, namely the mass tyranny of numbers, a ‘totalistic’ integration of both in a further step beyond ‘one’ and ‘many’ is required. That will receive attention in the next chapter. Both monotheism and polytheism may be understood, critiqued, tolerated and accommodated as far as possible. The point is to appreciate both in their relationship to Absoluteness, appearing in the Principles of Singularising and Pluralising. All such systems circle around Absoluteness, some closer, some at greater distance. A sense of Otherness as an I- Thou relationship, is possible towards other human beings and living creatures; it can be felt towards Cosmos as a whole and towards a supernatural Person - but, by definition, not towards Absoluteness. Mythologised, personalised gods fulfil a deep- seated human need, but beyond the gods is Eternity - and beyond that, 'is' Absoluteness. In his drama Nathan der Weise (1779), Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) addressed the question that blighted so much of Western Near Eastern history and, connected with religio-political animosities, resulted in the loss of many millions of lives: which one of the three monotheistic faiths (Judaism, Christianity or Islam) is the true one? Which of the wise Nathan's three sons received the real, precious heirloom: the ring? Nathan's answer, that the truth of the real ring will be established by the manner in which the three sons behave during their lifetimes, is profoundly meaningful. Yet, Nathan's answer must be widened and deepened. Widened: not only these three, but all religions need to be drawn into the ambit of our interest, and deepened. Not one of the three monotheisms (or any other religion, for that matter) is absolutely true, and none is absolutely false. All are true to the extent that their relative understandings of things approximate Absoluteness, and all are wrong (i.e. not living up to the best promise in them) to the extent that this depth dimension is denied or not realised. ‘Oneness’ and ‘Twoness’ are not absolute values in themselves, and enforcing that as if they were so by means of verbal, ideological, institutional and physical violence, would be a travesty of truth.'One' is a privileged number’, but so is ‘two’, with its own unique symbolic associations for human beings. So are the combinations 'three', 'four', 'five', 'six', 'seven', ‘eight’, ‘nine’, ‘ten’ and so on, as all of the esoteric and some of the mystical traditions of humankind attest. In cultures such as the Babylonian and in individuals such as Pythagoras and right up to this day with its science, numbers have always carried rich meanings, ultimately deriving from the Principles of Singularising and Pluralising. To move to the empirical level again: the fact that | am one of many things, made up of many things and destined to disintegrate into many things, is just as essential to my being as that | am uniquely l; they are mutually implied facts and experiences. That one becomes many and many one, is essential to the Cosmic process. Cosmos has a tendency towards unifying, and it has a tendency towards multiplying. 303 Pluralising E 542 One boiling magma and many moving plates In this study we are not naively inhabiting some make-believe Pangaea of 'one' religion. Nor are the religious continents on which humanity exists, taken to be separate blocs of institutionalised ritual and teaching. They are all manifestations of the same Archeic dynamics, have one common source in the subconscious layers of the collective human consciousness - and deeper, in the Nature of Cosmos itself and the secret it carries. None of these continents is eternal. They move apart, converge and collide, and their collisions have often been occasions for dramatic changes on the surface of human consciousness. In addition, there were always singular creative eruptions of the force below, such as those we shall witness now. ‘Multiple unity’ (Eriugena) Eriugena has more to say to us (cf. Ch. 13). The concept of ‘multiple unity’ (unum multiplex), used by him, highlighting the complexity of the relationship between oneness and manyness, ultimately derives, via Pseudo-Dionysius, Proclus and Plotinus, from Plato himself. The problem of the relationship between oneness and manyness is intimately related to the problem of the emanation of the world. Neoplatonism with its emanationism (the many are continuous with the One) followed quite a different route than monotheism did, with its creationism (the many are discontinuous with the One). That ties in with the nature of the ‘One’ in the two cases: in classic monotheism, it is one real Person; in Neoplatonism, taken broadly, it tends towards transcending being and number altogether - but this attempt remains ambivalent. There were attempts to reconcile the two approaches. One of the most intriguing of these is found in the Periphyseon of the Neoplatonic-Christian theologian MM, Eriugena. He does not stand isolated, but forms a historical knot in whom several strands meet and from whom certain strands lead into the future. In that historical context stands the historical figure of Jesus, on whom Christianity would be built, and who could not have foreseen what his future would be in the Christian church, theology and philosophy, and what would become of his message of love in centuries to come. In that complex tradition of transmission and interpretation over several centuries, of which Eriugena was an instance at the end of the ancient period and at the beginning of the Middle Ages, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Proclus and Pseudo-Dionysius were the most significant theoretical-theological markers. For now, a few comments on Plato and Plotinus must suffice to suggest that background. As for Plato, in his own thinking on oneness and manyness, he oriented himself in relation to Parmenides, Heraclitus and Pythagoras. Plato was neither 304 Chapter 15 monotheist nor monist, neither dualist nor pluralist, in any strong sense of the word. There is no point in getting drawn into squabbles about words; one person's duality is another person's dualism and a third person's non-duality. Where exactly Plato stood as far as the relationship between the empirical plurality and its possible source is concerned, is open to debate. In various dialogues, including specifically his notoriously enigmatic Parmenides, he deals with the doctrine of atemporal, aspatial but very real Ideas, in which sensible things participate. Both Unity and Plurality are such Ideas; sensible things participate in both those Ideas at the same time: as far as a single thing is one, it participates in the Idea of Unity; insofar as it consists of various parts, it simultaneously participates in the Idea of Plurality. To the question regarding exactly how this relationship of participation and imitation with the level of Ideas is to be understood, he has not given a single unequivocal answer. Plato suggested that the many sensible things, each of which are both one and many (i.e. divisible), are intimately related to a plurality of Ideas. These, in turn, are subsumed in one differentiated hierarchy, with the Good as the supreme Idea, and includes the notion that the two worlds of Ideas and of sensible things are neither simply one, nor simply separate. The world of the Ideas is the substantial but non- material, fundamental and highest, true reality; and then there is the derived reality of the world of the senses - the material world of change. Are these worlds essentially the same or different, one or two? What does participation mean? These ideas, multivalent as they are, were carried forward in the Platonic tradition, continuing to exert their seminal influence. Plato did not leave a perfectly clear message, but raised questions haunting future generations. The relationship between the plurality of empirical things and the Principles of Singularising and Pluralising is a problem this essay is also pondering, with a strong intent to steer clear of both monism and a two-tier reality. The structure of the universe according to P/otinus was not only a synthesis of what had gone before, but also a remarkable, creative step forward. As seen in Chapter 9 and Chapter 13, Plotinus’ reworking of Plato and Aristotle places 'the One' unambiguously at the apex of the hierarchy of being. The interesting point is the relationship between that One and the multiplicity of particular things. Strongly as Plotinus wished to distinguish the sensible domain of the many and the domain of the One as different, he nevertheless did not see them as completely opposed, but followed Plato's lead of participation by means of imitation. Somehow, for Plotinus, the One is at the same time transcendent to and immanentinthe many. Insofar as the One is ‘negative’ (utterly unpredicable), it is transcendent; insofar as it is ‘positive’ (the first and ultimate principle of reality), it is immanent in the sense of being the active First Cause, radiating into the various levels of being, making and preserving all things. The One is not the productive cause of the pluralist physical reality in a dynamic event or process in which something dramatically happens. It is the immutable pattern timelessly and omnipresently inherent in, and comprehensive of, the many and, in that sense, the cause of the many (Costa 1996:356-385). 305 Pluralising Unity, the One (to Hen), is the basic condition for all things (ta panta) to be. Plotinus opts for a variety of non-dualism of the two domains of the One and the many: neither complete separation (as in Gnosticism) nor complete identity (as in Parmenides), but mutual inherence in which the domain of multiplicity is not original, but utterly derivative from the One. The 'two-ness' of the two domains hovers between the one-ness of identity and the two-ness of separation. He did not resolve this ambiguity theoretically. The One is responsible for both the oneness in the many (as far as the many participate in the oneness of the One) and the manyness of the many; the relationship appears to imply similarity as well as difference. Plotinus seems not only to have relished paradox, but to have become stuck in contradiction (Bales 1982:40-50). Sections such as the first, second and third tractates from his fifth Ennead, dealing precisely with our present problem, are profound and thought- provoking, but also quite perplexing. A turn of phrase such as the One being hen polla, ‘a one-many' (Plotinus 1984:122) (also translated as ‘a One-that-is- many’) (V.3.15.12) (Plotinus 1991:454) contains in a nutshell the beauty and profundity, as well as the perplexing quality of his thinking. Plotinus’ followers in centuries to come, would not have an easy time reconciling the various accents in his seminal book. On the positive side, it may be said that he was the first to express, in his paradoxical notion of hen polla, the idea of a coincidence of opposites that would find its finest expression in the Christian Neoplatonist Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464). Let me not forget that Plotinus was a mystic who was reported to have experienced a mystical union with the One, ineffably present in the many. The concept ‘MM’ as used in these reflections, disallows hiding behind ‘mystical’ feelings and experiences that cannot be backed up by thought. Plotinus himself stood firm on the connection between clear, rational speech and an awareness of dimensions transcending that (Gerson 1994:218ff.). Yet, has he entangled himself in a dilemma from which he did not quite extricate himself? Indeed, he could not quite succeed in harmonising the diverse and essentially divergent strands of the tradition he had inherited. Let us try out another - clearer, simpler and more consistent - possibility than the one explored by Plotinus: namely that the Principles of Pluralising and Singularising are co-eternal, both emerging from empty Absoluteness and indeed having real effects in Cosmos, and that in Cosmos, plurality is not inferior to, but of equal dignity as unity. Eriugena stepped into the stream of Christian Neoplatonism after the Tigris of monotheism and the Euphrates of Neoplatonism had already joined several centuries upstream. Included among those before him in the already established tradition of Neoplatonic Christianity, were Marius Victorinus (4th century), Augustine of Hippo (354-430) and Pseudo-Dionysius (period between late 5th century and early 6th century). Our aim here is not to compare Eriugena with his forerunners, but simply to get a taste of his thinking as far as the problem of oneness-manyness, sameness-otherness is concerned. 306 Chapter 15 Following the formulation of Plotinus’ hen polla, Eriugena wrote of God as unum multiplex (‘multiple unity’) in his Periphyseon as he attempted ultimately to reduce the many things to the unity of God, without explaining them away: ‘God is a multiple unity in himself ' (deus est enim unum multiplex in se ipso) (11.674C). He consciously strove to maintain both identity/singularity on the one hand, and difference/multiplicity on the other hand - his second emphasis being rare in medieval Christian theology and philosophy (Moran 1989:71). In his Book IIl, which deals with the third aspect of universal nature, namely that which is created and does not create (in other words, the phenomenal world as creation), Eriugena has occasion to discuss the relationship between unity and multiplicity in considerable detail. He CIIL651Bff.) deals specifically with numbers. All numbers, he speculates, are causally and eternally in the Monad (monas). In the Monad all numbers are indivisible. Yet the singularity of the One is ‘both simple and multiple’, for It ‘pours itself out as multiplicity into all’ (se ipsam in omnes multipliciter diffundit) (11.652C). The Monad is the beginning, middle and end of all numbers, for from It they proceed, through It they move, and towards It they tend (IIIl.653C). Therefore, they all subsist eternally (aeternaliter [...] subsistunt) in the Monad. From the Monad come, first, Two (Duas), then Three (Trias), and so on (1II.654B), each number with its own meaning. In essence, Eriugena's view is thus another instance of the Neoplatonic theory of emanation of the world from the One, without severance of the essential and substantial link between them. Plurality, numbers - like all creatures - are ‘both eternal and made’ (aeternos esse et factos) (lll.660D). One of the most critical points in Christian Neoplatonism is obviously to maintain the balance between emanationist continuity and creationist difference. At least in intention Eriugena wanted to safeguard both. From a Buddhist perspective with its radical Absolutising (emptying) of Oneness, additional pressure would be brought to bear on Eriugena's construction. In the same context as his discussion of the supreme singularity of the Monad and the derived meaning of plurality, Eriugena makes it clear (11.663C-670C) that composite bodies and the elements from which they are made do not come ‘from nothing’ (de nihilo), but from primordial causes which inturn derive eternally from God. At most, he argues, the necessary (understand: compulsory) belief of ‘out of nothing’ means that there was a time when created things were not; but in another sense, potentially, they subsisted always, eternally, in the Word and Wisdom of God. By implication, all things, being from God, are simultaneously both 'eternal' (aeterna) and contingently ‘made’ (facta) (11l.666B). Buddhism, of course, does not teach some quasi- substantial ‘Nothing’ into which things disappear and from which they appear, but an absolute petering out of thinking and being to the extent that Eriugena's talk of Monad and God would become problematic. From a Buddhist point of view (tendentionally extended - that is the argument of this book) the notion of emanation would not necessarily be unacceptable, but the world and its 307 Pluralising numbers would not derive from a/the superessential (even if quite thinned) Monad/God, but simply make its appearance on Absolute Horizon via an emerging Principle of Pluralising (and Singularising). The way to align Christianity (and the other monotheistic faiths) with Neoplatonism, and Neoplatonism with Taoism and Buddhism, is to extend monotheism and Neoplatonism towards the radically open, accommodating space of Absoluteness. Via Eriugena, the notion of the paradoxical coincidence of unity and multiplicity would reach Nicholas of Cusa. His phrase ‘coincidence of opposites’ (coincidentia oppositorum) attempted to capture Eriugena’s intention of reconciling singularity and plurality, and the transcendence and immanence of God. In a book of 1462 (De non aliud: ‘Concerning the Non-different’) he named God the ‘Non-different’. He proposed this term as a more adequate symbol of ultimacy than ‘Being’ or ‘The One’. Like Eriugena, he attempted to negotiate a way between dualism and pantheism, a way that might succeed in reconciling creationism with emanationism. Indeed, the term ‘Non-different’ underwrites the notion of singularity, present in even the multiplicity of things. But the problem of saving that accent without sacrificing plurality was not really resolved. With the heretic Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) the synthesis of Christianity and Neoplatonism would break down. He identified with the broad Neoplatonic tradition as it found shape from Plotinus to Cusanus, but not with the Christian Trinitarian and Christological orthodoxy. To him God, essentially unknowable, was behind, under and in the plurality of all things; and the world, an emanation of the divine unity. This detour into the Hellenic-European tradition illustrates that the world seems to compel the MM contemplative to come to terms with, and reconcile, what have here been termed Singularising and Pluralising; and that the classic Western model of reconciliation of Neoplatonism and Christianity was fraught with inner tensions. ‘The way begets one; one begets two; two begets three; three begets the myriad creatures’ (Lao-Tzu) How did the ancient Chinese thinkers and classical authors speak about plurality - the ‘ten thousand things’ - as they called it? Whereas the monotheistic- Neoplatonic school took refuge in sometimes forced paradox, Taoism presented a more harmonious view. In addition, whereas the former sought a high degree of precision in its formulation, the latter was satisfied with a high degree of suggestive vagueness. The ancient Chinese MM observed one single eternal principle: the Tao (‘way’), as functioning ‘before’ the universe itself and also operative in the universe. The Tao is not a monotheistic person and not a monistic substance, but a dynamic, 308 Chapter 15 structuring and normative principle. It is a direction, process, flow, energy, in accordance with which the universe in fact unfolds and a good life should be lived. The Tao is both a pre-established and a normative pattern of harmony, guaranteeing co-operation and integration in Cosmic and human existence. The one, all-comprehensive Tao expresses itself in two complementary modes: the yin and the yang - or rather, a two-in-one: yin-yang. These two subsidiary principles (the ‘negative’ and the ‘positive’) interact and intermingle. In their dynamic mutuality, they cause and structure the world and the plurality of individual things in the world, and its functioning in all its processes such as birth and decay. These subsidiary principles are neither dualistically seen as split, opposing forces, nor as monistically conflated, with one being an epiphenomenon of the other. They are complementary opposites, manifestations of the one Tao and in their balanced togetherness constituting a systemic whole. In the wake of this ancient MM, came ‘Lao-Tzu’ (supposedly around the 7th-6th centuries BCE, although ‘his’ book, the Tao Te Ching, appeared only around 250 BCE). It is a compilation arising over some centuries rather than the work of one hand, even if the unity of the final work suggests one strong MM mind breathing in it. Lao-Tzu projected the singular Tao with its dua/ basic modes operative in the ten thousand things under the heaven, back into Absoluteness, so to speak - that is, into pure, as yet unrealised potentiality, containing within itself the essence of all being and life. Absolutely empty, utterly quiet, pure potentiality, the Tao is not only ‘prior’ to cosmic existence, but also actually ‘present’ ‘in’ reality. The 7ao is Te (the ruling force in cosmos). Finding harmony and union with the ‘pre’- and ‘meta’-personal Tao by way of mystical intuition is wisdom, happiness, well-being and true morality; and that is the search of the sage. The multiple are manifestations of One, and One merges with absolute Absoluteness: the One is the stage at which the positive move towards Being has already begun (Izutsu 1983:399). Chuang-Tzu (probably 4th century BCE) exemplified this trend of thinking in his own inimitable way. In his presentation, the absolute 7ao transforms itself non-dually into the opposites of yin and yang, and into the many objects of the world. Every single one of the plurality of things, has its own Tao and Te, its own manifestation of the law of yin and yang - that is, its own manner of expressing the eternal Tao. The mystic path is the process of return to - that is the discovery of - the origin. The return to the state of absolutely undifferentiated ‘nothingness’ (Asd: ‘void’, ‘emptiness’) does not spell the dissolution of each singularity (Girardot 1983:249), and the many things interblend harmoniously, without losing their particular distinctiveness. The singular being remains. Also, the many things remain. Yet, the singular being is not separated from the many other things by borderlines. They all interpenetrate. The taut thinking, in either-or terms of manyness, oneness and noneness, amounting to a deadly trap, is relaxed. These three harmonise easily. 309 Pluralising It appears that the inherent human need to reconcile the one and the many was, in classic Taoism, also expressed as a coincidentia oppositorum, but without the stresses and strains of monotheistic Neoplatonic thinking. Undoubtedly, the indefinite nature of the classical Mandarin language was an ally in this fluid type of thinking. Taoism is also more consistent and more thoroughgoing in its apophaticism than the Neoplatonism we have looked at. These classics suggest a remarkable coherence of Singularising, Pluralising and Totalising, readily reconcilable with Buddhism. In addition, there is the utopian promise of the establishment of an MM context that is alignable with contemporary cultural conditions, such as this essay is pursuing. The thinking taking shape in these reflections cannot escape the charm of this ancient perspective. ‘| think, therefore | am’ (René Descartes) The ideas of René Descartes (1596-1650), which finally overthrew the medieval dominance of Aristotelianism-scholasticism, were so successful that they could appear as perfectly obvious to his successors. His thinking would provide a huge impetus for the individualism, humanism and rationalism that would be hallmarks of the modern epoch. The term 'MM' may not be wholly inappropriate to his thinking, in the sense that, by his own admission, his metaphysics derived from an intense experience of doubt and certainty with mystical undertones (taking place in November 1619), and that it proceeded from a direct, immediate experience Cof himself as thinking subject). It is not without reason that his main work (published in 1641) - and developed according to a mathematical psychological methodology - is nevertheless called ‘meditations’ (‘Meditations on first philosophy’; Meditationes de prima philosophia) (Descartes 1967:169-235). Let us proceed to the relationship of singularity and plurality in his model of the world. Both foundational themes in his thinking - God and the immaterial soul - functioned in a type of thinking in which duality was both a structural principle and an unresolved problem. A first split in Descartes' metaphysics runs between the thinking individual on the one hand, and other human minds and a world at large on the other hand (Versfeld 1940:148-170). The foundational point of departure of his metaphysics is the thinking ‘I’ (more precisely, the thinking ‘mind’) as indubitable, intuitively known subject. His ‘I’ was not a transcendental ‘Il’ as would be the case in Kant and Fichte, but an empirical, psychological ‘I’. The plurality of ‘other’ human subjects has the status of an afterthought, and he provides no intrinsic link between the singularity of his own and the plurality of other minds. The notion of not-self, of otherness and multiplicity, is not put forward as a necessary idea. His claim that his conclusions, drawn from his own experience, 310 Chapter 15 apply to the human race as a whole, seems to be self-evident to him, and he provides no grounds for such a carry-over of his observations. He does not argue the case for a plurality of minds and for a necessary relationship between singularity and plurality. '' and other minds are not theoretically reconciled as essentially related; relations between the singular ‘Il’ and ‘others’ are merely accidental, external. Alterity does not appear to be theoretically necessary. To guarantee knowledge of a world outside his own solitary mind, he postulates the existence of God. Descartes does not proceed from any kind of field theory, any 'totality', as being at least of equal significance as the notion of singularity (the importance of such an all-inclusive theory will be argued in the next chapter). His model lacks a sense of the wholeness of all things. He is not at home in nature. The solitary empirical, psychological T, not organically embedded in a world, is the point of departure of his thinking. Today we are urgently in need of a reintegration of humanity and nature. Descartes does not really argue the case for singularity, identity, as a fundamental point of departure either, as his famous dictum cogito ergo sum CI think, therefore | am’) seems to want to imply. From the awareness ‘I think’ the conclusion ‘lam’ Cor rather ‘my mind is’) inthe sense of being a certain continuous, singular identity, does not necessarily follow. In Chapter 8 and Chapter 12, we had occasion to ponder that Buddhaghosa very consciously did not draw such a conclusion with its substantialising undertones. Clearly, much hinges on what one takes to be 'proof in these matters. What is called for in a context such as this, it seems, is not only clarity and distinctness, nor a (quasi-) mathematical or formal logical or scientific type of proof, but the presentation of an item in an entire package of reciprocally implied and complementary items. The package as a whole should be coherent and consistent, and shed light on the reality of experience. In the matter of ‘singularity’ and ‘plurality’, Descartes has not presented a convincing case, supported by sufficient argument. He proceeded one-sidedly from the perspective of ‘singularity’ - a limited perspective, and one that should be developed in intimate relationship with the equally valid and complementary perspectives of ‘plurality’ and ‘totality’. A second and irreducible split runs between God and the world. A perfect, infinite, omnipotent, omniscient and uncreated substance, God, is to him a clear and distinct, necessary and provable idea, equally evident as his notion of himself (meditation III). In chronological order of knowledge, God comes second. Yet, in ontological order, God is Descartes’ first principle. We need not enter into the problem of Descartes’ circular argument (he knows God with certainty, but God is the basis of his certainty). The only thing interesting us here is the relationship between God and the world. God is for Descartes the prime substance in the sense of something not in need of anything beyond itself for its existence. To prove the existence of God, Descartes takes recourse in both the ontological and the cosmological strategies. According to the first, 311 Pluralising God’s real existence is proven by an appeal to the very possibility of the concept of God; according to the second, by an appeal to a world, which can only have been caused (created) by God. From the certainty of the existence and perfect truthfulness of that God, who would not deceive us, follows the certainty of the reality of the external world as God's creation. A God is necessary to impose and guarantee the correlations of one’s own mind and otherwise only extrinsically related minds, and material things (bodies). There is NO organic connection between God and the world. A third split is the one between mind (soul) and matter (body) (meditation VI). Descartes intended his theory as presupposed and implied by the Christian orthodox view of the immortality of the soul (Cottingham 1992:256-257). The mind (soul) according to him is an incorporeal substance ('thing' [res], distinct and independent from the body, and he was convinced of its continued existence after physical death, released from the body. On the idea of the indubitable reality of God, follows that the indubitably real world itself consists of two created substances: non-spatial, thinking mind (res cogitans) and matter (body) (res extensa - the latter extended in space and brought into motion by God). These are two completely different kinds of substances, only meeting in the pineal gland and somehow interacting with each other (hence the fitting description of his view of their relationship as 'interactionist dualism’). Descartes does not demonstrate an essential connection between the thinking mind and an external reality. His criterion of truth (individual, subjective clarity and distinctness) does not necessarily imply any meaningful relation to a reality. One painful and extremely problematic implication of this dualism is that the bodies of animals are purely mechanical assemblages of matter: automata, machines. Hence, Descartes endorsed, and perhaps practised, vivisection. Later materialists (such as Julian de la Mettrie [1709-1751]), not Descartes himself, drew the further conclusion that the human being too, is nothing more than a complicated machine (homme machine). Descartes himself was not a (materialist) monist, but a dualist in a strong sense. He cannot wholly be blamed for the full-scale materialistic reductionism in much of modern scientific enterprise, including the life sciences and human sciences. Remarkably, because of this unresolved dualism, Descartes was also a link in the development of the idealist tradition in Western thinking, from Plato to Kant's transcendental idealism and further. He consciously linked up with Plato, adapting the Platonic Ideas (eternal archetypes in the mind of God) to become contents inherent in the human mind, to the extent that the res cogitans (thinking mind) could seem to be capable of producing its sensual world without involving external objects at all. The two substances of matter and mind have no organic connection. Here a different route needs to be found: one on which mind and matter are understood to be non-dually, mutually implicit, both arising simultaneously. On the assumption of mind and matter being two separate substances, those following in the footsteps of Descartes 312 Chapter 15 had the unenviable task of explaining how these two might actually at times act in unison, as if connected. Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) for example, following an older tradition, explained each such occasion as an instance of direct, immediate intervention by God - a perfect example of a Deus ex machina attempt, strategy, device to solve a conundrum. Today, the relationship between matter and mind remains of paramount importance, inviting the exploration of a true integration of the two, without falling back on a supernatural divinity, discontinuous with Cosmos. Fourthly, although Descartes himself was a believing man who deliberately presented his metaphysics as in line with orthodox Christianity, the split between faith and reason was another duality lurking in his thinking. He soent much of his life avoiding confrontation with the still powerful Church of his day, bearing in mind the fate that befell Galileo in 1633. That is why he went to stay in the Netherlands. In the days of early modernity, traditional Christianity and modern science were not comfortable bedfellows. At the very least, it can be said that he did not integrate reason and faith; to him they were two clearly distinct discourses. His stance of radical doubt and his rationalist choice for reason as the sole basis of evident knowledge and understanding (including being certain of the existence of God) undermined ‘faith’ as a relatively distinct mode of knowing and understanding, yet reconcilable with reason and science. It opened the door for 'faith' as an uncritical acceptance of irrational pronouncements. A generation later than Descartes, Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), although critical of Descartes in some respects, was nevertheless a Cartesian in his strong distinction between faith and reason. Whereas Descartes took care not to force the issue, Pascal took an essentially fideist position, accepting that reason and faith were irreconcilable. Without renouncing the logic of reason, he leapt into the arms of faith (with its own ‘logic’). After Descartes, Seren Kierkegaard (1815-1855) was another philosopher to accept a rift between faith (obedience) and reason. Revelation cannot be demonstrated rationally; it can only be accepted in a leap of faith. Understandable as such manoeuvres may be in circumstances where no way out of a fatal dilemma seems possible, it is not the MM way sought on this journey. A meeting and convergence of the functions of faith and reason is required, without subjecting one to the other. By 'faith' | here mean an attitude of fundamental trust, without accepting the necessary existence of a ‘real’ Being or Person outside Cosmos in whom trust is placed. 'Faith' is here not intended as the blind acceptance of religiously prescribed articles. It is not understood as an alternative to ‘reason’ in an unresolvable dilemma. Between the two and reconciling them, a mode of cognition can be sensed that can broadly be called 'intuitive', arising from the depth of the human being's rootedness in Cosmos, and taken to be closely associated with imagination and speculation. We are seeking convergence on the other side of the dualism threatening Descartes' epistemology. 313 Pluralising Descartes’ model with its various modes of duality is entirely home-grown Western by nature. Yet, in passing, let us not lose sight of cross-cultural, cross- religious structural affinities that have been central to our perspective throughout this essay. A prime candidate for a comparative study of a preoccupation with duality would be the classical Indian school of Samkhya. Comparable to Descartes of much later, Samkhya postulated the duality of consciousness (purusha) and matter (prakrit/). Unlike Descartes, those ancient Indian thinkers denied the existence of God (in their terminology /shvara) as guarantor of reality and truth. Again, like Descartes and unlike other schools from antiquity, they did not postulate empty Absoluteness as the womb of all things, mind as well as matter. Descartes illustrates the necessity of and the difficulties in connecting Singularising, Pluralising and Totalising in a meaningful triadic pattern, shedding light on our human experience of Cosmos. Setting the tone for much of modern thinking, he also exemplified its limitations. ‘I and Thou’ (Martin Buber) The thinking of the Jewish theologian philosopher Martin Buber (1878-1965) on the dialogical structure of reality, found its finest expression in his book '! and Thou’ (ch und Du) (1958 [1923]). It flowered in a long tradition of magnificent Hebrew-Jewish monotheistic reflection, demanding exclusive allegiance and devotion to a single God. This monotheism eschewed the manyness of heathen polytheism and, at least by implication, also the Indian and Greek monism. It adhered to the twoness of a primary, personal Creator God on the one hand, and a secondary opposite - or rather a concentric twoness - on the other hand. The secondary twoness is made up of God’s human and sub-human creation and, as central focal point, God’s elected people, Israel, amidst the rest of humankind. The long history of Hebraism- Judaism was the response to the call: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One’ (Dt 6:4). God is One, and Other. This monotheism did not withdraw from history as monism did, but was fully immersed in the historical process; its God acted in history. That was a great strength. Additionally, it provided a soil for what is understood as ‘mysticism’ in these reflections. As has become clear, this essay does not reserve the word ‘mysticism’ for a ‘oneness’ or ‘identity’ of contemplative(-and)-God. MM is alignable not only with Singularising, but also with Pluralising, particularly in the form of an intense dialogical relationship with a personal God. In this tradition stand not only a David with his devotional songs, but also a Jesus and a Muhammad with their respective experiences of ultimacy, and their followers. Here | restrict myself to the Hebrew-Jewish trunk. At the outset, it must be noted that in the case of monotheistic mysticism, confronted by Neoplatonism, the problem of unity- duality remains: does the mystic attain complete union with God, or does the 314 Chapter 15 ontological duality remain intact? In Jewish mysticism (as is the case in the other one-God faiths) reports of both outcomes can be found. Largely, Jewish mysticism emphasised the otherness of God, either in the sense of a manifest living presence, or an eternally unknowable, hidden God. Only a small minority sought or claimed a complete absorption into God, with pantheistic implications (Scholem 1955 [1941]:122f, 221ff.). An earlier theologian-philosopher, Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), seemed to have established the unbridgeable ontological gap between God and the world once and for all - yet the word 'mysticism' as used here is not inapplicable to him either (Faur 1999). Partly in reaction to Maimonides (Tirosh-Samuelson 2003:218-257), mystical Kabbalah from the 13th century onwards sought its own way between the sea of dualism and the rock of monism, as can be observed in the teachings of the two great 16th century Kabbalah teachers in Safed: Moses Cordovero (1522-1570) and Isaac Luria (1534-1572). Cordovero refused to imaginine God and the world as separate entities. Well before Spinoza, he expressed the non-dual secret of all things in the phrase: ‘God is all reality, but not all reality is God’ (Scholem 1955 [1941]:253). The concept Tsimtsum in Lurianic Kabbalism expresses the idea that God contracts in order to make an Other, the world, possible; in the beginning there was only God; at present the world and the relationship between God and the world are fragmented; but in the end, all things will return to God. Such approximations of the mystery of non-monistic non-duality in words remain elusive. These Jewish mystics attempted to maintain the non-negotiables of Jewish theology. Yet, bound to non-monistic monotheism, they also shied away from dualism and pluralism. A question concerns the extent to which this delicate balancing act with its fair share of seemingly unresolvable ambiguities was the outcome of the meeting of Jewish creationism with Neoplatonic Aristotelian emanationism, (cf. Pessin 2003:91-110) or whether it was a natural development arising from monotheism itself. It was probably a measure of both. The paradoxes of singularity and plurality are inescapably given with every serious effort to understand the world and human existence in it in relation to what may transcend it. In Buber’s book, the mutual implication of the moments of Singularising and Pluralising can be observed. His initial point of departure (in his doctoral thesis) had been the notion of singularity in a mystical context, yet he increasingly came to see the individual as essentially involving encounter. He would write (Buber 1958 [1923]:16, 32, 44) that there is no | taken in itself, but only the | of the primary word l-Thou and the | of the primary word I-It. In the beginning is relation. Through the Thou a man becomes |. Buber parted from Orthodox Jewish religion in his youth, but he would remain loyal to Judaism and established a fruitful relationship with Hasidic mysticism. His model in ‘land Thou’ was particularly akin to Hasidism's emphasis on individual dedication to God, not excluding communal solidarity and 315 Pluralising involvement in life with its joys and sorrows. A significant difference between Buber and the classic Hebrew model is that he does not emphasise the people of Israel as God's primary opposite, but the individual human person, regardless of religious affiliation. This is the existentialist side of his thinking, derived from Kierkegaard and others. Nevertheless, without naming Israel, his model leaves space for collective singularities. Every great culture, he says, 'rests on an original relational incident, on a response to a Thou made at its source ' Cibid.:75). Buber's first distinction is the one between ‘I’ and ‘It’, even if he connects them to form one word: ‘I-It’. This is the world of objects and facts, of experiencing and using, of science, of institutions and economics and the state, in an end-means scheme and a chain of causality, involving no mutual relation. Here the | is individual, differentiated from other individualities. It is separation. The human being cannot live without It. This is part of the basic truth of the human world, but it is not the whole truth. The second duality is between ‘I’ and ‘Thou’, also combined to form one word: 'I- Thou'. This is the realm of relation, and it concerns our intercourse with nature, our relation with human beings - and with ‘spiritual beings’. This is the realm of spirit, of art and religion, of freedom and destiny. Here the | is person in relation to other persons. A third duality is found between the worlds of ‘It? and ‘Thou’. Both ‘It’ and ‘Thou’ suggest primarily an attitude to our surroundings, therefore Thou may become It, and It may become Thou. The world is twofold, in accordance with the human being’s twofold attitude. Buber sees this division as inherent in creation (ibid.:39). More than a useful but slightly overworked ideal type, this duality amounts to a basic split in life. In this Buber is a typically modern person, trapped in the dualism of mind and matter, as has become clear in, for example, Descartes, to continue in existentialism. This is a rift that needs to be overcome. Buber does not provide a picture of integral wholeness, and does not stretch forward towards Totality. A fourth duality with its own unique shades runs between the human world and ‘God’. God, to him, is the extension of the ‘Thou’ rail of his parallel track, strictly not of the ‘I’ rail. Buber speaks of an eternal Thou (Buber 1958 [1923]:99f.), not perceived by us. Nevertheless, he says, we feel addressed by a Thou out of a deeper mystery, out of the darkness, and we answer Cibid.:61). It is true, one must readily admit, that clothing the ultimate mystery as a Thou, addressing it as Thou, is a basic human trait, observable in all cultures and religions, and profoundly understandable. Speaking from within the Jewish tradition, Buber describes this relation as being chosen and choosing Cibid.:101). The old problem of union versus duality of mystic and God recurs, we find on his pages. In this encounter, he makes it clear, the lis not to be given up, and remains indispensable in this relation. God is the wholly Other; He is also the wholly Same and Present 316 Chapter 15 in all things. Buber admits the possibility of a mystical relationship in which the relation of | and Thou is not dissolved Cibid.:111ff.). The essential features of the ancient Hebrew faith remain intact. The Hasidic love of the ordinary world surfaces. The entire history of Jewish mysticism is contained in Buber’s writing. God comprises (he says in panentheistic style) but ‘is’ not (pantheistically) the universe or my Self. He brooks no monism and no pantheism. God is a Person - that is, he enters into a direct relation with humankind Cibid.:168). This chapter of ours can accommodate such accents, but as part of a larger picture. Buber not only did not reach out sufficiently towards a Totality including but not reducible to I- Thouness, but also did not peer back sufficiently into the darkness of Absoluteness, beyond Thou. His mystery and darkness are part of theistic apophatic language. 317 a Totalising B 543 Wholeness Totalisingis put forward here as not merely aresultant derivative of Singularising and Pluralising, but a third emerging Eternal Principle. What we are touching on now has an epistemological as well as an ontological side. Epistemologically, analytical thought focuses on singularity and plurality, on the distinguishing marks of things and the differences between things. It takes things apart, concentrates on aspects. The totalising focus is associative, synthetic and synoptic: seeing things as related. Both types of thinking are essential; dissociated from each other, analysis becomes barren, synthesis swollen. In the history of MM, the emphasis seems to shift between analytical disjunction and associative conjunction. Every system, having become closed, implodes from within or is exploded from without, and new attempts at wholeness arise. Today there appears to be a new need for an integral vision, and it needs to be consciously for today, not for all times. In their own way, these reflections seek such wholeness. By realising its open-endedness and provisionality, any holistic theory may hope eventually to pass on in the large process of things, having been a brief but perhaps relevant moment in an ever- changing context. How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Totalising’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 319-344, AOSIS, Cape Town. https:// doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.16 319 Totalising Ontologically, the world appears essentially relational, organic. Twoness (and more) can become more than a mere helter-skelter juxtaposition of fragments, more than an incoherent mass of things; it can become a bonded relationship. Cosmos is about togetherness, adding up to gestalts, hierarchical wholes, contexts (‘woven-together’-nesses) of ever-increasing size and complexity. This is not always clearly the case, or at least we cannot always pick up meaningful patterns, restricted as our normal registration apparatus is. Yet without wholeness, there would be no world, no life, no consciousness, no meaning. Empirical totalisations come in all sizes and shapes, all drifting towards inclusion as Totality in all-inclusive Horizon. Conditionalistic Totality in Horizon (CTH) condenses that to which this exploration leads. Cosmos is a social phenomenon. It is shot through with conflict as singularities meet other singularities and totalities other totalities in situations of plurality. Such conflict simultaneously seeks resolution. Through nihilation, dominance or subsumption in larger totalities, it seeks wholeness. The relationality includes the mutual interpenetration, dynamic involvement and interaction of the individual parts making up wholes, of parts and wholes, and of wholes and wholes in ever-expanding nexus. The relationships between and among the constituent parts (each a pattern of parts) and between the whole patterns and the parts, become ever more subtle, the interpenetrations become more widespread and fine-tuned. Cosmos appears as a multitude of momentarily poised but ever-changing, ever-shifting constellations, ruled by pan- relationality, which we term Totalising. Under scrutiny, every seemingly solid constituent part disintegrates into smaller parts, at the bottom scale of things manifesting merely as flashes of events, petering out on Horizon. The same happens at the top scale of things. Human beings seek totality, which is not mere eclecticism or synthesis, and not merely meeting halfway in compromise, but integration, which by its very nature intends and tends towards transcendence to higher levels as far as is attainable. From a higher vantage point, ravines and crevasses lower down are less threatening, and observed as part of the mountain, to be crossed and understood synoptically from higher up. From such a point of view, for example, the rifts between science and mysticism, between various religions, between various mysticisms, and between seemingly contradictory positions such as theism and atheism, appear less threatening than at a lower altitude. To remain with the last one for a moment: contemporary ‘theism’ and ‘atheism’ are two sides of the same coin. They share assumptions, in terms of which theism says ‘is’, and atheism, ‘isn’t’. From a higher altitude, a dimension beyond that dilemma comes into sight. Life is full of stresses and conflicts, but there is a difference between those that are merely destructive and those that may be constructive and creative, while they are reaching out to something greater such as reconciliation, healing and peace. This is a utopian, ‘messianic’, ‘bodhisattvic’ 320 Chapter 16 element in a totalistic vision of the world, yet one shrinking back from the achievement of an end. This vision beckons us away from the views of a Parmenides and some Upanishads, according to which the whole is just eternally what it is. It also leads us away from the idea of a restoration of all things to a primordial condition (apokatastasis panton) as final closure, or a final victory of one force over another, after which nothing happens. No, there is an element of incompletedness, openness forward, in the eternal nature of Arche itself. Eventually - at last, possibly - Devadatta will become a Buddha (Lotus Sutra); he carries this destiny in him, but will this performative possibility definitely become actuality? The movement of things is not a straight line nor a circle but a spiral, including a large element of freedom and therefore possible failure. Nevertheless, the movement is not an eternal return to what has been; every return is more. Emptiness and form (better formulated as emptying and forming) presuppose each other in a non-ending non-dual process achieving an impermanent optimal, open- ended balance of forces, not a closed-down stasis. The dialectic of Origin and End, of integration followed by and implied in disintegration and transcendence, continues. On a limited scale, such totalities reach a stage of provisional finality. As totalistic synopses become larger, finality becomes more elusive. There may beatendency towards homoeostasis, but the more complex those relationships become, the more unattainable homoeostasis seems to become. It is constantly deferred. Pictures of totality are constantly in the process of breaking down, either from the inside by forces inherent in the tendency to reach only a provisional measure of stable balance in themselves, otherwise by outside forces, knocking them over or luring them into larger patterns. The human need for wholeness is here taken to be part of an inherently dynamic process towards an essentially open Horizon. History and experience show that to curtail that need prematurely, leads to fixation and closure. The human search for inclusive truth becomes dogma, which by its very nature is exclusive, narrow. The search for free communion and community becomes institutionalised church and state with their fixed borders. The search for genuine authority becomes power, force and violence in one way or another. Beware of anything claiming to be the final truth. The implication of the view put forward here runs counter to an assumed principle (‘the principle of plenitude’) that every possibility must eventually be actualised. Accepting such a principle would imply the eventual closing down of the Archeic process. This essay does not sense the world as moving towards realisation of a plenitude of potentialities. No fixed set of initial possibilities needs to be assumed. The movement emerging from Eternity, finding in our Cosmos one relative formation is inexhaustible. The process is absolutely open. Absoluteness has no boundaries. Totality is neither perfect beginning nor completed, perfected end. 321 Totalising Above, | have referred to the intricate relationships between wholes and parts. Singularities are not merely an endless supply of grist to the mill of totalities. It is not one-way traffic, from singular via plural to whole. Singularities have a dignity of their own. The Principle of Totalising implies that in their own way, singularities contain the totalities of which they are part, like a single drop of water reflecting the one lying next to it, and the sun, and the universe. Each singular thing is pars pro toto, reflecting the implicit connectedness of all things, like a cell containing and representing the body of which it is part. Each singular moment of time encapsulates everything that has gone before and anticipates everything that may follow. It is for one brief instant a ‘now’ in which everything hangs together, but in its very existence that moment is annihilated; every now-here derives its glory not only from its own singularity, but from its being part of totality. At the level of the human being in this perspective, the individual appears to be neither a mere heap, bundle, mass or aggregate of fleeting constituents, nor a perdurable substantial entity. The human singularity is an organic whole, better integrated, or less so, and capable of development to a higher level. The human individual is not sempiternal in any sense (nor is any part of it, such as a soul), but appears from and disappears in an eventually trackless space without mark or definition. Nevertheless, ‘before’ that occurs, and in the wider context of the great emptiness, a human singularity can achieve wholeness. Personal growth means increasing realisation of one’s embeddedness in and response-ability to all things; and that means increasing acceptance of one’s responsibility for all things in the contexts of smaller and larger societies, finding their culmination in the community of universal humanity and universal life. A social, political implication of this perspective for our contemporary world is the search for a balance of individual freedom and a loose, open-ended coherence in ever larger constellations, yet treasuring the smaller, constitutive constellations of language, culture and religion. It means the overcoming of racism and sexism in all its forms. The ultimate horizon of this view is not only humanity, but also the community of all living beings. This implies the overcoming of the human-centred exploitation of nature by humankind and the discovery and development of the interconnectedness of all things. Such an eco-political theoretical perspective and a praxis derived from it, are the paramount needs of our time. E 544 Tortoise, sparrow, weaver, bee The tortoise hatches, shell and all, lives in it, dies in it, finds protection in it and withdraws into it at any sign of danger. They are the religious conservatives and probably exclusivists, if not in theory then in practice and sentiment, with all the attendant attractions and dangers of such a position. The sparrow 322 Chapter 16 concocts its nest from all sorts of bits and pieces, feathers, twigs, cotton fluff - not exactly a work of art, but one never sees an unhappy sparrow, and they raise their young in such nests. Such people are the happy eclectics, the syncretists. Perhaps their achievements are not the greatest, but they do provide shelters and create homes. The weaver finch, connecting twigs and other useful stuff, constructs elaborate nests. These are works of art, engineering feats. Such people are the synthesists, creating new and often impressive constructs by interweaving existing material. Then, there are the bees, flying far and wide to collect nectar from various sources, absorbing and processing it, to produce from within their own bodies precious honey. Such creative ones (yes, ones) are rare. Proclus In spite of the scholastic hardening in Proclus’ Elements of theology (the first extant rigorous metaphysical system’) (Hathaway 1982:123; cf. Kordig 1983:114ff.) of what, in Plotinus, had been a flowing movement of thought, a reading of Proclus’ masterpiece in order to uncover his intuition of totality, becomes a rewarding undertaking. Attempting an account of a complex world, seen as a Totality, his system is extremely complex in itself, and not without ambiguities and obscurities. As discovered in previous chapters, the final category of Neoplatonism was the substantialist One, not empty Absoluteness. While taking that into account, it appears that Proclus demonstrates profound insight into the dynamics of Totalisation, which he expresses with great formal rigour. To him the pre-existing First Principle, the One as such, lies beyond the category of wholeness (to Holon) (73, 100). Wholeness occupies an intermediate position between the One and the phenomenal world. Reality fans out from strong simplicity (the One) through wholeness to weak multiplicity; wholeness is re-achieved by returning from the scatter towards the utter simplicity of the One. Existent things (panta ta onta) are not only related to eternal wholeness and the One, but also to one another - either as wholes comprehending parts, or as parts comprehended in wholes (66). Wholeness is related to part in three ways, in the following descending order: whole-before-parts (ho/on pro ton meron), whole-of-parts (holon ek ton meron) and whole-in-the-part (holon en to mereri) (67). The latter means that every whole is implicit in each of its constituent parts. Conversely, in ascending order, every whole-in-the-part is a part of a whole-of-parts (68), and every whole-of-parts is a part of whole-before-the-parts (69). From what has been said, it follows that every 1. The bracketed numbers in this summary refer to the propositions in his classic book. 323 Totalising whole is an existing thing in that it participates in Being, but not every existing thing is a whole (73). In the system of Proclus the triad Being (On), Life (Zoe) and Intelligence (Nous) fit in at a lower level than the Henads. These primordial dimensions are three ‘successive’ stages in the unfolding of cosmos from the One (101), and they are three ‘synchronic’ aspects of a single reality (103). ‘Successive’ here doesnotimply quasi-temporal sequence, but vertical, sub-ordinate dependence; by ‘synchronic’ is intended Proclus’ notion of horizontal, co-ordinate interdependence. As far as ‘succession’ is concerned: each is predominant (without excluding the other two) at a certain stage of the emergence of things from the One. As far as ‘synchronicity’ is concerned: each of the three essentially implies both of the others. Proclus is palpably struggling to articulate a holistic vision, that mission impossible - but inevitable, and necessary. He seems to intend a table of vertical and horizontal categories capable of organising the relations among all things phenomenal and transcendent. This is totalistic intuition at its most intense. It is noteworthy that as he gropes for a holistic understanding, the notion of threeness suggests, at a symbolic level, interconnectedness beyond the juxtaposition of duality. In proposition 103 Proclus points out that at the phenomenal level ‘all things are in all things (panta en pasin), but in each according to its proper nature’ (Proclus 1963 [1932]:92). Proclus seems to suggest the following: * The One is constitutively present lower down in the Henads. * And at a next level, in each of the three aspects of the triad of Being, Life and Intelligence. * The levels of the Henads and of Being-Life-Intelligence are not reciprocally constitutively present higher up in the One. * Thelatter triad as a whole is mirrored in each of its three constituent aspects. All three aspects are mutually implicit as cause and consequent in each of the others, and each contains the other two. * By implication, every singular thing at the level of empirical one-many is implicitly and interpenetratingly present in every other singular empirical thing (102). In his search for a 'total' view of all of reality, Proclus stands in a long Greek tradition. The Stoics, for example, saw the individual entity as a part of an organic whole, but they do not seem to have articulated the idea that ‘part’ and ‘whole’ are mutually implicit, as would be the case in Proclus. They allowed for no reciprocity in the relationship between the many parts and the one whole. Proclus also exemplifies a search that would be continued after him, a search to account for the world holistically - whether in MM or scientific terms (or rather, in both). As for science, the broad approaches of systems and complexity theories in the sciences today, express the same need for 324 Chapter 16 connecting, inclusive, comprehensive complexes. An MM such as Neoplatonism, scanning an ultimate, all-inclusive, all-integrative horizon, seeking the interlocking and interinclusion of many systems - and always open, shifting and never final - would move one or more steps further than scientific systems, but not necessarily be incompatible with them. It aims at a most inclusive context, a most comprehensive matrix, allowing for reciprocate connections among all sorts of individual entities and all sorts of smaller and larger wholes, including MM and science (cf. Fideler 2002:103ff.; Mayer 1982:317ff.; Smith 2002:1ff.). In previous chapters, | have balanced and weighed up Vedanta and the Neoplatonic system with its ultimate category of the One, against Buddhism and Taoism with their empty Absoluteness. So let me turn to a Buddhist writer once again, and this time, pay my respects to an exceptionally fine MM figure from China. Fa-tsang Roughly two centuries after Proclus, the Chinese master, Fa-tsang, also lived at a time of destiny - not a time of decay as was the case with the Hellene, but of construction. An epoch was coming together. His thinking was not a last flower, the final synthesis of an ancient, dying tradition, but a first bloom, a pioneering statement of a budding totalistic vision. Politically, the T'ang Dynasty (618-907) under Empress Wu (625-705) was approaching its zenith. Philosophically and mystically, T'ien-t'ai and Hua-yen thinkers were harmonising and systematising a great variety of teachings imported from India over several centuries, making something new and original out of them. Fa-tsang indeed saw all previous Buddhist schools as finding their culmination in Hua-yen. This was not unlike Proclus' attitude vis-à-vis all previous Greek-Roman (Hellenic) philosophies. Whereas Proclus was a rationalist and a scholastic, Fa-tsang was an imaginative person with an uncanny didactic talent to present profound MM points in simple, terse, delightful analogies. His totalistic vision was, | venture to say, the culmination, philosophically and historically, of Buddhism. Of all the MM figures visited in this orientation, | admire none more than Fa-tsang. The model taking shape here would also appreciate the support of nobody more than that of this 7th-8th century Chinese monk. Fa-tsang's Hua-yen philosophy was driven by the ancient Buddhist intuition of finding an MM way beyond the dilemma of eternalism and nihilism. He also wanted to overcome the Abhidharma view of the human person made up of a large number of quantum-like flashes (dhammé), not really adding up to an organic view of human personality and existence. His thinking seems driven by the Mahayana pathos for a love including the world as an entirety and every single being in it. He managed to harmonise a positive appreciation of the small, singular thing with the whole in a totalistic vision of nature. All of 325 Totalising phenomenal reality (ontology) and all thought (epistemology) he saw as emerging from, existing in and receding into emptiness. In his Chin Shih-tzu Chang (Essay on the golden lion’) (Ch. VIII) Fa-tsang distinguishes three pairs of dialectically contrasting yet complementary characteristics as the basic ontological categories: totality (wholeness, universality, unity) and singularity (particularity, individuality); similarity (identity) and diversity (difference); and integration (conjunction, coordination) and disintegration (disjunction). Anticipating Niels Bohr's motto contraria sunt complementa (Verdu 1981:38): * The first pair of inter-inclusive correlatives moves at the level of phenomenal reality. It expresses the simultaneous need to envision the phenomenal world as one whole, and to give the plurality of singularities making up that phenomenal whole, their due. * The second pair of opposites addresses the relationship between the level of ultimacy (in Buddhist terms, emptiness) and phenomenal reality. Between these two, a relationship of simultaneous complete coincidence (identity) and transcendence pertains. Emptiness is the true essence of the phenomenal world. Emptiness and the phenomenal world are the same, identical. Yet there is also a differentiation between emptiness and the phenomenal world. There is, of course, also a differentiation between the many singularities constituting the totality of the phenomenal world (the second side of the first pair). Each phenomenal singularity is suffused with, identical with, the same essential emptiness. This second pair of opposites (identity and difference) does not annul the first pair (totality and singularity). In the identity of the phenomenal world with emptiness, the plurality of singularities of the phenomenal world is not robbed of significance, but, on the contrary, is provided with ultimate significance. The difference between this vision Cinformed, it must be emphasised, by Taoism) on the one hand, and the monistically inclined visions of Neoplatonism and Vedanta on the other hand, is testable on the tongue. In Taoism-Buddhism, Cosmos is affirmed. This is a great stride beyond not only Neoplatonism, but also early Buddhism. | believe Fa-tsang has the edge over his Neoplatonic and Vedantic contemporaries, Proclus and Sankara. Emptiness is not divisible, he argues - and yet it differentiates itself in a most significant way. * The third pair of opposites deals with the dimensions of integration and disintegration as they are operative at both levels, that is, of ultimacy and the phenomenal world. ‘Integration’ refers to the coordination of both poles in both of the first two pairs, and to the mutual coincidence of ultimacy and phenomenality. ‘Disintegration’ refers to the disjunction of both poles in both of the first two pairs, and to the non-identity of ultimacy and phenomenality. Furthermore, integration and disintegration are conjoined in their own dialectical relationship. All six opposites are themselves parts, conjoined with one another and with the complete six-fold system of 326 Chapter 16 categories as mutually implicit and mutually constitutive, and contrasting with one another and the system as whole. Each singular category receives its value from those relationships. Fa-tsang on occasion illustrated his vision with the example of a room filled with light. He had a room covered with 10 mirrors on all four walls, and in the four corners, against the ceiling and on the floor. In the centre, he positioned a statue of the Buddha, with a torch alongside it. Then he lit the torch. Infinite reflections occurred within reflections; Buddha-nature (emptiness) was everywhere. To top it off, Fa-tsang took a small crystal ball, held it up in his hand and explained (Chang 1971): Just as all the mirrored reflections in the room are collectively and individually reflected in this small ball, so all phenomenal things in the world in their non- obstructed mutual reflections as well as the Buddha-nature, are reflected in all and each of them. They are non-obstructedly reflected in each singular phenomenal thing. (p. 27) In another famous simile (the golden lion) (in Ch. VII of his Essay) (Fung 1953:349-351), he suggests 10 mutually implying principles, overlapping with the six categories outlined above. They boil down to the following: * Ultimacy (emptiness) and the phenomenal world coincide without being monistically identical. Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form, to speak with the Heart Sutra. In his analogy: there is no lion (temporal Cosmos) apart from the gold (Absoluteness), and no gold apart from the lion. In one sense, lion is gold, and gold is lion; in another sense lion is not gold, and gold is not lion. The twosome gold (Absoluteness) and lion (Cosmos) are mutually inclusive, without coinciding undialectically. They are neither monistically one and the same thing, nor dualistically separate; they relate non-dualistically, non-monistically. * Each phenomenal singularity contains each and all other singularities in the plural. The singular presupposes the many, as much as the many are grounded in the singular. In mutual interpenetration and inter-inclusion, all are each and each is all. Each embraces and is embraced by all (is ‘mixed’) - yet, precisely so, it is uniquely itself (‘pure’). Eye 'is-not' ear, and foot 'is-not tail ... and yet eye 'is' ear and foot 'is' tail. * Singular parts and totalistic whole are similarly mutually constitutive. Eye, ear, nose and so on, each in its singular uniqueness, is constituted by the face as a correlated whole, and vice versa. This face as a whole is this face because of precisely those singularities in their individual uniqueness. This eye makes this face; this face makes this eye. It is greatly significant that Fa-tsang manages to transcend what was a temptation to early Theravada Buddhism, namely to shy away from substantialism to a degree inhibiting the notion of ‘wholeness’, and settling for the notion of a human being as merely an ‘aggregate’. * Yet individual singularities remain free and uninhibited, and they are not subsumed under one heavy super identity. Each is all and all are each, and yet each remains itself and immediate to emptiness. Each thing contains 327 Totalising every other thing; they all run through each other freely, without obstruction. Each single hair is gold - and precisely because of that, an irreplaceable singularity. In our vocabulary: each singularity is uniquely significant because of its being immediate to Absoluteness. * MM attention can focus on Absoluteness (the gold) or on Cosmos (the lion) with its myriads of singularities (single hairs). The one is foreground and the other background, one prominent and the other obscure. Alternatively, the MM focus could - and that is the superior perspective - focus on both together and simultaneously, each-in-the-other. Then the dialectical identity of conventional phenomenal reality and ultimacy is realised cognitively. That is enlightenment. * Complexity and simplicity are mutually constitutive. On closer inspection, each simple singularity (each part of the lion) turns out to be extremely complex. The whole is not a static inert mass but a dynamic interplay of minutiae of infinite complexity. * There is no closed totality. Every singularity in the Cosmic totality contains and reflects infinitely multiplying containments and reflections in a never- closed process. The whole lion is present in every singular hair. All the lions in all singular hairs are repeated in every singular hair, without end. * Cosmic totality implies another, higher totality involving Absoluteness as well. The levels of ultimate insight (involving the totality of Absoluteness and-Cosmos) and relative insight (involving Absoluteness-only or Cosmos- only) are mutually implied. Looking at the gold-only and not the lion is ignorance; looking at the lion-only is ignorance. Seeing gold-and-lion in their essential coincidence-and-distinction is insight. Conventional understanding and ultimate understanding are mutually implicit and constitutive. The relative is not to be despised or devalued, neither ontologically nor cognitively. * Past, present and future coincide in a single instant of time. Each of these three consists of past, present and future; they are nine moments, each with distinct uniqueness. Then, the tenth: the harmonious interconnection of the nine, allows each to retain its uniqueness. It is the lion all over again, but now in temporal perspective. The lion undergoes production and destruction from instant to instant. Thus Fa-tsang postulates a 'now' (the tenth moment), but how different it is from the undifferentiated eternal present of a Parmenides or a Sankara. * The tenth principle seems to be a gesture towards Yogacara, and perhaps characterises Fa-tsang's vision as a variety of objective idealism: all is derived from the evolution of mind. Yet, in his case, even that disappears into emptiness. Another variant of Asian Buddhism would deploy the same totalistic structure: the Japanese Soto Zen of Dogen (1200-1253), some five centuries later and contemporary with Aquinas in Christian Europe. Emptiness (the Buddha nature) is absolute - but even so all the phenomena of the universe, without exception, 328 Chapter 16 are expressions of ‘it’ (Kim 1987). The ordinary ‘is’ the absolute; the symbol ‘is’ the symbolised; there is no gap between the two. Absoluteness and the phenomenal are not monistically the same; they are not dualistically different; they are dialectically, non-dualistically, non-monistically, ‘identical’ in utter compression. With reference to traditional theistic terminology, one might formulate: there is no 'transcendence' which then also, in addition, happens to be 'immanent in' phenomenal reality; 'transcendence' and 'immanence' coincide. G.W.F. Hegel LI context Coming from the clarity of Fa-tsang, it takes perseverance to disentangle the opaque prose and convoluted thinking of the third totalising champion of an epoch | wish to turn to: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). Yet the opacity of his writing conceals a heroic attempt to collect his own time - modernity - in the form of comprehensive and consistent thought. Hegel was system builder par excellence. One is involuntarily impressed by the scope of his interests, erudition and synthesising power. He stands much closer to our present world than the previous two. His thinking and writing are one heaving movement, like life itself as he saw it. That is the way he wanted it, and it commands respect. In keeping with what has gone before in this § | shall, in an overview of Hegel’s teaching, refer to one of his texts. This will be neither his first, rambling book (Phánomenologie des Geistes [1807]), nor his second and greatest work (Wissenschaft der Logik [1812-1816 D, but his own summary of his entire system: Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (‘Encyclopaedia of the philosophical sciences’. The first edition of this work [referred to here as 'I'] appeared in 1817; the second [II] in 1827; the third [III] in 1830. Below the Roman number will refer to the edition used, and the immediately following number to the relevant section in that edition. This interview will revolve around one question: would the concept 'MM' somehow apply to him and if so, how? The following tendentional rendition of the essence of his system as he defined it at the height of his powers will, for reasons of space, have to be ahistorical, that is, without relating it to the development of his own thinking over time and in his other works, and without relating it to the history of the reception of his work. Hegel can be and has been interpreted in many ways, for which his style of writing must largely be blamed. Since his death, several ‘Hegels’ have emerged and mighty streams of acclaim and critical scholarship exist. Yet, even some of the most critical approaches, such as Marxism, build on Hegel. My interpretation follows generally sympathetic attempts such as those of Copleston (1999[1963]) and Seidel (1976), and more recent attempts such as that of Dunham et al. (2011). 329 Totalising Hegel did not know Fa-tsang, but he knew Proclus and wrote insightfully on him. Hegel’s problem (the relationship between Idea and Nature) is similar to Fa- tsang’s problem (the relationship between gold and lion); and both Hegel and Fa-tsang boldly see the schools preceding them in their respective traditions as culminating in their respective totalisations. The basic structures of their models are remarkably similar. Yet, as far as gold-lion is concerned, Fa’tsang’s vision does not seem to contain the notions of process and progress, of externalisation, alienation and return, as is the case with Hegel. Hegel’s thinking has a developmental aspect, which may seem lacking in Fa-tsang. If that were the case, the prize would go to Hegel. However, here one should be careful. Fa-tsang conjures up an impressive correlation of past, present and future in which the element of futurity is ultimately, harmoniously interconnected and balanced with past and present. This he does in a manner that allows each to retain its distinctiveness: past and future, remembrance and anticipation, from present instant to instant. With Hegel, the teleological element dominates. Hegel’s Encyclopaedia was his equivalent of Proclus’ E/ements of theology: his compendium of MM wisdom for an age, the gist of it all. Also, in content and structure Hegel was related to Proclus. They share the passion for aconsummate system. As the Neoplatonic One manifests Itself and returns to Itself, so in Hegel the Idea alienates itself in Nature and returns to Itself through successive dialectical steps. In Hegel the return is also an advance. Another telling difference between the Neoplatonism of Proclus and the Idealism of Hegel is that Hegel saw finite Nature as a constitutive condition for the self-realisation of the Idea, whereas in the case of Neoplatonism, the One is perfect from the outset, and the finite (matter, nature) occupies a quite different and indeed awkward and embarrassing position. Hegel sees the teleological process as real becoming, Movement and transition; whereas the ancient worldview, exemplified in Proclus, was ahistorical and static hierarchic, the ‘modern’ worldview, championed by Hegel, is historical, progressive, to the core. Hegel wished to articulate the gains of modernity, including its science, in terms of an anti-positivist ‘Idealist’ framework, which, in spite of differences, overlapped with the concerns of Romanticism. This made him part of the broad company including diverse thinkers such as Von Baader, Fichte and Schelling and the MM poets Friedrich Hólderlin and Novalis (G.P.F. von Hardenberg). Hegel distanced himself from what he considered Romanticism’s aestheticism and emphasis on feeling; he took his stand on reason. O epistemology Following certain leads in Kant and Fichte, yet also correcting them dramatically, an underlying epistemological assumption of Hegel’s system is the reliability of the human mind as source of understanding the ultimate nature of things. There is no gap between a thing-in-itself and the human ability to think. 330 Chapter 16 Hegel’s entire speculative historical approach was a post-Kantian attempt to heal that rift. At this point, it is important to note that by human mind he did not intend the singular individual human mind, but a collective human ‘spirit’, which is not merely the product of individuals put together. In this respect he goes against the grain of modern thinking (here following in the footsteps of Rousseau) with its idea of larger human wholes as the outcomes of ‘contracts’ made by individuals, and of the common good as the sum of private goods. On the contrary, for Hegel the collective human spirit constitutes the individual. His totalistic interest becomes apparent from the outset, as he in effect awards priority to what here has been termed the Principle of Totalising. It is noteworthy that Hegel does not present the collectivity of the human mind as existing independently of individuals, and insists on the very real interdependence of the many human individuals. Whatever opens up metaphysically, must according to Hegel, proceed from the assumption of the human mind as gateway. Since his earliest studies at Tübingen, it was impossible for him to fall back on any claim to supernatural revelation, claiming to give information on God apart from the human mind, and captured in scripture, dogma or institution. He called the latter ‘positive religion’. In unfolding his panoramic vision, Hegel did not bypass the fact that religion is humanly constituted. He supported the rejection by Fichte of Kant’s notion of an unknowable thing-in-itself, and took the bold step of indeed speaking of the ultimate nature of things, of thing-in-itself. Hegel questions the critical philosophy of Kant for taking empirical experience to be the only basis for theoretical knowledge (as empiricism had done), thereby disallowing the dimension of speculative thought about ultimate Ideas. Hegel wanted to correct Kant, in fact the entire tradition before him, in another respect. To him ‘logic’ did not, as had ordinarily been the case since Aristotle, refer to thinking operations, correct or incorrect, of the mind only; it did not deal with epistemological categories only, but with ontological categories, with reality itself. He made an extraordinary connection between mind (or rather Spirit) and reality, to the point of identifying them. He understood ‘logic’ to coincide with ‘metaphysics’ (III:24). Hegel was at pains to distance himself from irrational modes of knowing. ‘Thought’ (Denken) and ‘reason’ (Vernunft) were what mattered to him. Pure thought thinks itself; the lower order 'understanding' (Verstand), on the other hand, deals with finite determinations and distinctions (1I:25, 80). To him thought and reason refer to the transcendence, in higher unities, of the limited distinctions made by 'understanding'. Indeed, a higher point of view, above understanding, is attained by means of 'speculative' thought (spekulative Denken) (III:9, 82), by which he does not mean unwarranted, wild guesses, but reason operating at its highest, coming to supreme rational insight into the workings of history. He certainly did not satisfy himself with a docta ignorantia of some dark abyss, perhaps illumined by some irrational intuition CAnschauung). Whereas Romanticism claimed that the dimension of supreme ultimacy was inaccessible to human understanding, Hegel claimed that it was accessible to thought and reason. 331 Totalising The attempt to overcome the dualisms of (1) of things-in-themselves versus the world of appearance and (2) rational concept versus intuitive understanding, is paramount in all of Hegel’s thinking. Overall, he was a visionary thinker, speaking only from his own direct insight, and coming up with one of the most grandiose speculative totalistic ‘visions’ in the history of humankind. He did that as a deliberately modern, secular, rational, inner-worldly person, not exactly identifying with mystics absorbed by outer other-worldly concerns and non-knowing. In the terms of our concept ‘MM’, he was truly ‘metaphysic’, but not quite ‘mystic’. Li method Hegel's dialectical method structures his entire totalistic strategy. It is the vantage point from which he sovereignly and circumspectly surveys heaven and earth. It seeks to overcome the law of non-contradiction which states that ‘A’ and ‘not-A’ cannot both be true. For Hegel both can be true as abstractions from the bigger picture, aspects of a higher truth. Thus the resolution of contradictions drives, as it were, Hegel's thinking forward. This aspect opens interesting possibilities of comparison of Hegel with, for example, classical Buddhist fourfold and Jain sevenfold logic, which cannot be pursued here. As a method in his intellectual programme, it means that Hegel seeks higher ground, so to speak. He seeks a higher concept, which would include two lower order concepts, rehabilitating them as compatible rather than rejecting either or both of them as incompatible. Understanding all, he connected and forgave all, allotting each thing its place in the great scheme of things, forgetting nothing. The teleological (aim directed) dimension of Hegel's thinking must be stressed. It must also be emphasised that for him, teleology did not imply the presence of an anthropomorphic conscious, 'subjective' intentionality, simply similar to the way the human mind works. His 'idealism' was in this respect ‘objective’: It wanted to conceptualise the nature of things, the workings of reality as such. After that, Hegel moves onto the higher level of 'absolute' idealism, transcending the notion of ‘objective’. The German word Begriff (intentionally including the notion of ‘grasping’), expresses his intent. Similarly, it is possible to lift, from the English ‘concept’, the Latin (con-capere): ‘taking’, ‘clasping’ or ‘together’. Hegel's signature notion here is Aufhebung, simultaneously containing the paradoxical meanings ‘cancel’, ‘preserve’ and ‘raise’ (to a higher level). By being elevated to a higher level, both lower concepts are 'cancelled', but also 'preserved'. The world process is a never-ending battle of opposites at ever higher levels of actualisation, implying mediation (Vermittlung) of the lower pair of opposites. In Hegel's hands this is a sophisticated methodological tool, not to be oversimplified by being reduced to the slogan (not used by him) of ‘thesis’, 332 Chapter 16 ‘antithesis’ and ‘synthesis’. Hegel uses his basic intuition to great effect, for example in his interpretation of history. To him it was not merely a method applied to reality, which would hopefully yield good results to be further tested, but the truth - and not only truth merely corresponding to or in line with reality, but the whole truth of the whole of reality itself (III:6) - in fact truth as reality. That is why Hegel could call the first part of his Encyclopaedia ‘logic’. His system as a whole, as summarised in his Encyclopaedia, is one sustained application of this method to the field of metaphysics and its applications in nature, politics, art and religion. The Absolute (Idea, God) to him is not a transcendent, self-sufficient substance; itis not Nothingness either. Choosing between those two alternatives was also the dilemma of Neoplatonism. The notion of ‘becoming’ (Werden) to Hegel was the logical outcome of the cancellation, preservation and sublation of the two opposites ‘being’ (Sein) and ‘the nothingness’ (das Nichts) (11:86-88). In passing, | note the definite article preceding his ‘Absolute’ and his ‘Nothingness’. Again: It seems to award a substantialising character to his notions, which is absent from the Taoist-Buddhist notion. From the point of the route taken in these reflections, Hegel’s Absolute appears to be not as radically empty as is the case in Taoism and Buddhism. To him ‘the Nothingness’ is the direct opposite of Being, not its end and origin. Hegel could say (III:88) that Being and Nothingness are ‘the same’, meaning that they are one, that is, unified in ‘Becoming’. Hegel reveals his hand very early in his book: His philosophy has, as point of departure, the traditional Western religious triadic theme of God, creation (he calls it Nature) and the human spirit (111:1). But he turns that religious scheme into secular philosophy - that is, pure, abstract thought (Denken) without the admixtures of feelings, representations, desire, will and so on that he found in Christianity (II:2-3). This provides him with the basic scheme of Idea-Nature- Spirit, which he then develops in ways that revolutionise the traditional Western religious view of God, God's creation and the human believer. For one thing, Hegel lets go of the traditional sequence; there is no first and no last (1lII:575). Hegel did not entertain the idea of Absoluteness as trackless emptiness, as point of departure of his MM. To him 'the Absolute' is the totality of the becoming universe, the process of its own becoming, a circle whose end is implied in its beginning. O idea (dee) (III19-244) In Hegel's usage, the term ‘Idea’ is interchangeable with ‘the Absolute’; with eternal, infinite universal Thought/Logos; with God. It refers to the universe as a whole, all-inclusive reality as such, a comprehensive totality. In his line of thinking, the ancient Greek tradition, going back to at least Heraclitus, re-emerges. In developing his notion of Idea, Hegel applies his method meticulously and in 333 Totalising staggering detail that we need not follow here. Associations of wheels within wheels, or rather, of triangles soawning triangles, emerge. Hegel defines ‘the pure Idea’ (die reine Idee), the point of departure of all, as ‘the Absolute-in-and-for-itself (an und für sich) (III:18, 213). Again, ‘Idea’ is not a purely logical, epistemological category. Idea contains the unity of ideal and real, finite and infinite, soul and body; Idea is possibility, carrying its reality in itself (111:214). It is substance as subject. The Idea/the Absolute is free, determining itself and not determined by anything outside itself (1:162) (Hegel 1959). The ‘unity’ referred to is not unchanging identity, but a process (III:215) involving life (das Leben) (1III.216-222), knowing (das Erkennen) (CIII.223-232) and willing (das Wollen) (IlI.233-235). The structural similarity of our emerging model to that is obvious. The difference is that whereas our categories are Principles emerging from empty Absoluteness (informed by Taoism and Buddhism), Hegel’s are aspects of what he terms ‘the Idea’, with substantialist overtones. The Absolute is the teleological totality of reality. When Hegel speaks of ‘the Absolute’ (das Abso/ute), he declines the notion of radical emptiness as ultimate category, calling such an understanding (in a thinly veiled barb aimed at Schelling) as 'the night in which all cats are grey.' In terms of our map, he operates at the level of Infinitude, with implicit assumptions of certain Eternal Principles, but not spelling them out. In his thinking, Becoming is the highest operative category. Li Nature (Natur) (111.245-376) Hegel defines 'Nature' as 'the Idea in its difference' (/dee in ihrem Anderssein) (III:18, 247ff.). It is nothing other than the Idea, but now in the form of alienation, externalisation (Entáusserung), devoid of freedom, and demonstrating only necessity and contingency. As such, nature is the opposite, the negative, of the Idea. It is clear that Hegel is seeking an alignment with classic Greek-Western thinking, such as Neoplatonism with its vision of matter as inferior manifestation of the One (II::248). Hegel differs from Proclus by his introduction of the dialectical principle, issuing in sublation. He derives Nature from the Idea; Nature is a moment in the self-development of the Absolute, but it is not deified as such: Nature is divine qua being in the Idea, but not in itself; Nature as such is not God - that would be pantheism, and Hegel was highly critical of that. He creates a developmental model in which Nature is conceived of as a system of stages, each issuing by necessity from a previous one. Here too, he demonstrates his method by his drive to interrelate the most diverse things organically, things commonly thought to be mutually irrelevant or in irreconcilable conflict. We need not enter into the fascinating details of how he accommodates space and time, matter and movement, gravitation and the movement of the planets, light and the elements, air and heat, electricity and chemistry, fire and organic life, sex, sickness and death. 334 Chapter 16 Hegel clearly went to a great deal of trouble and put a lot of thinking into this aspect of his system. As such, the point of departure of his model of nature is promising. It maintains that Nature should be understood as a partial system within a larger context. He directly challenges the Cartesian dualism with its subject-object split, and goes decisively beyond the Kantian attempt to resolve that problem. He opposes scientistic, naturalistic realism, according to which that which science uncovers is the whole truth. In principle, he allows for the increasing complexity of singularity and plurality and the reconciliation of these in larger totalities in Nature. Those are most valuable inputs. Seren Kierkegaard (1815-1855) certainly had a point in arguing that overall in the Hegelian system, singularity comes a poor second to totality. Hegel’s overall notion of Nature as a living organism, driven forward teleologically, is highly relevant today, even though the manner in which he worked that out is problematic. His system was an effort to overcome the mechanistic view of nature predominant at the time (and still today), which Romanticism tried to overcome in a different manner. He was certainly not anti-science in principle. The point may be made that much of contemporary science, with its emphasis on functionality and complexity, would, from the scientific side itself, open up to 'totalistic' thinking. Overall, Hegel's MM implicitly seems to endorse a movement from Nature (to Spirit). He does not seem to have had a true relationship with empirical nature or a particularly well- informed relationship with the natural sciences, and he forced empirical nature and the natural sciences into the prefabricated mould of his speculative system (1192-298, 111:245-376). In the end and overall, one has the impression of an idiosyncratic edifice, in too many instances unable to escape the umbrage of being branded pseudo science. A central concern of this study is the optimal compatibility of MM and the various natural sciences of today. To an alarming extent, Hegel takes unwarranted steps from ‘metaphysics’ to ‘physics’, causing him to deduce all sorts of explanations of natural phenomena from his own postulated categories in ways that fly in the face of science. Examples of the inadequacy of Hegel's thinking as far as the nature that is investigated by science is concerned, can be multiplied from his works. One such instance is the lack of evolutionary bridges between various forms of life, including the transition from nature to human mind, in his work. Given his developmental thinking, an integration of it with evolutionary theory would seem natural. Evolutionary theory did not originate with Darwin but has been around since the Greeks. Hegel was fully aware of the versions of evolutionary theory current at his time, but he dismissed that outright. His interest in logical relations excluded a sufficient interest in real temporal relations between forms of life (Houlgate 2005:173f.). Compared to the point of departure of his system as such and his impressive historical achievement as far as human culture is concerned, his treatment of nature reveals no significant sense of 'historical' development. It is a weakness in his model, commented on by many. 335 Totalising Hegel came up with curious mixtures of his philosophy and science, and at times raised quite remarkable pseudo-scientific ideas, presented as metaphysically meaningful (Pinkard 2000:562-576). Quite simply, he interfered in science, and burdened and cluttered his MM with science. His dealings with natural sciences were the most glaring shortcomings in his work. He seems to have held empirical science in low esteem, in comparison with lofty metaphysics. We have here worked on the assumption that such mixtures and mix-ups are to be avoided. Shoemaker, stick to your last. Nevertheless, one also walks in two boots. An integration retaining the unencumbered integrity of both the scientific and MM perspectives and procedures is as good as can be hoped for. MM may be viewed as striving to develop a higher order, meaning-providing context for the sciences, but not as the normative foundation from which the sciences and their results are to be derived (as Hegel assumed); likewise, the sciences are the context for MM. We need not resign ourselves to a hopeless fragmentation of experience. Hegel’s MM did not accommodate the scientific project as a hospitable contemporary MM should, but held it captive in the golden cage of his system. If some totalistic MM for our time emerges, it will have to be built on a thinking involving both the empirical sciences and the various MM traditions of humankind. In our day, it could only be a gestalt with hazy edges among its constituent parts, loosely hanging together. It could be explored, but not fixed. Looked at from this angle, Hegel’s programme was indeed heading for premature, totalitarian closure. This is not to say that his MM of nature is without value. For example, his notion that nature is ‘a living whole’ (III:251) is a restatement of an enduring MM view that commands attention and resurfaces in these meditations as well. O Spirit (Geist) (111:377-577) Hegel takes 'Spirit' as 'the Idea, returning from its being different, into itself (III18). The following quotation contains some key elements of his view of Spirit (III:584): The Absolute is Spirit; this is the highest definition of the Absolute. Finding this definition and grasping its meaning and content is, one might say, the absolute tendency (Tendenz) of all culture and philosophy, and all religion and science sought this point; world history is to be understood from this impulse only. Is Hegel's influence so pervasive that our venture imbibed it without realising it? In any event, I follow him when he says that ‘philosophy’ (MM? shifts what religion doesatthelevel of mythic representation, to a higher gear. Nevertheless, | have put some distance between our empty 'Absoluteness' and his substantialist 'the Absolute'. At least at this stage, it would be premature to endorse his notion of ‘Spirit’. Whereas he takes Christianity as his religious point of departure, this exploration would rather operate in an inclusive horizon of religion and religions, even as it assumes that, as religions, Taoism and Buddhism have advanced furthest towards ever receding Absoluteness. 336 Chapter 16 He terms the first stage of Spirit subjective spirit. Spirit comes to self- consciousness in the human spirit. Then the second level of finite Spirit is attained: the objective spirit (mind) (1:402ff., IIl:483-552), actualised in human institutions such as legality, jurisdiction, private morality and social ethics (Sittlichkeit) in its manifestations such as family, politics and economics. This dimension, in elaborated form, plays a central role in the Encyclopaedia, as in Hegel’s lifework as a whole, and in this field (contrary to the MM of nature) he makes a major - though obviously time-bound and also otherwise debatable - contribution. These dimensions do not play a central role in this design of ours and they are only touched on from time to time. As objective mind, Spirit takes part in an objective moral world order that it has produced, and which is actualised in art, religion and philosophy (11I:553-557). Objective Spirit culminates as ‘the finite worldly mind (We/tgeist) in its totality as it unfolds and becomes conscious of itself in its temporal development [...] in finite and teleological wholes’ (I:449,cf. 11:549). In the process of this progressive teleological development, the collective human spirit comes to a point of complete, absolute self-knowledge. The historical world spirit, objective mind, exists concretely in the politically unified nations of peoples. Hegel saw himself as the progressive synthesiser and consummator of the modern epoch, the inner contradictions of which (as manifested in, e.g. Descartes) he sought to overcome. This impetus of his thinking is often overlooked, as he is discredited as being a reactionary defender of the post- Napoleonic Prussian state and the grandfather of totalitarian political thinking (Popper 1974 [1945]). Totalism is not necessarily totalitarianism. The first is a search for a wide, open horizon; the second is a closed bunker. In fact, Hegel rejected any repressive order, whether in the form of the old regime or in the guise of the new order. German to the core, he was a progressive democrat in the terms of his time, with a moderate and pragmatic streak. His thinking was a sustained effort to work out the implications of freedom and autonomy in all respects - religiously, morally and politically - that he saw bursting forth in the French Revolution and the new order inaugurated by Napoleon. He had a vested interest in the protection and cautious reform of that new post- Napoleonic order in Germany. He did not foresee the global world order, driven by technology that would emerge in the 20th century. On the negative side, in his historical analyses his method tends to dominate the material. Instead of allowing the individual voices to resonate in a loosely coherent framework, Hegel often forces their individual contributions into his own prefabricated mould. For example, he overestimated the political achievements of the Prussian state of his time. Now, at a next (third) stage, as a reconciliation at a higher level of subjective and objective Spirit, Absolute Spirit (der absolute Geist) is realised (I:453ff., II:553ff.). The notion ‘God’ comes strongly to the fore. Given Hegel's departure, Absolute Spirit/God is not to be understood as entirely transcendent. There is 337 Totalising no divinity outside the unfolding process of history. This is the stage of the self-actualisation of the Absolute in finite history; it is also the elevation of the finite to the infinite. The Absolute is actualised in that the finite, with all its warts, is both cancelled and preserved in the Absolute/God. At this level, freedom is achieved. | now briefly note his treatment of religion (including 1:465-471, 11:564- 571), taking into account that his discussions of religion and philosophy (I:472-477, 1:572-577) flow into each other. O religion Hegel was always interested in religion, but he never associated himself with institutionalised religion. He used the Christian dogmas of Christology and Trinity to express his own system. He himself on occasion spoke of the Absolute as ‘God’. As a matter of fact, his own system, presented as preserving, integrating and elevating all previous systems of religious thought and philosophy, is in effect the ultimate ‘proof’ for the existence of God. He did away with the denial of God (atheism) in the name of reason. He saved God by reason, at a higher level than mere feeling and piety or authoritarian religious dogmatism. Confidence in God, supreme confidence in reason and unsurpassed self-confidence of humanity coincided. Probably no modern Western thinker took the Trinity and the incarnation of the Son as seriously as had been the case with Hegel. To him the Trinity was the prime model for dialectical thinking of his own variety. The incarnation was the prime model of all reconciliatory thinking: the divine empties itself into the human. If philosophy in the grand sense of the word was for Hegel the metaphysic of the Absolute, then Christianity, addressing God as 'Spirit', was for him the supreme, in fact the 'absolute' religion. Yes, Hegel did not merely incorporate Christian theology as an abstract system of ideas or dogmas in his scheme, but the concrete Christian religion as a whole, with all its social and historical aspects. His ‘idealism’ does not deal with ‘ideas’ only, but with all dimensions of concrete reality, in an astoundingly comprehensive vision of all of reality. All other religions are ‘true’ to the extent that they are in line with Christianity. This of course does not make Hegel a fundamentalist in the contemporary sense of the word. For him, Christianity was not normative because it had been given positively once and for all in one book (the Bible) or in one historical individual person (Jesus), to be accepted (swallowed, as Bonhoeffer would say) in blind faith; Christianity was the best religion insofar as it expressed the truth of things, as uncovered and articulated in the thought of Hegel. It is as if he wanted to protect Christianity from positivism, rationalism and Romantic emotionalism (Schleiermacher), but in the process subjecting his protégé to his own dominance. 338 Chapter 16 His interest in the intricacies of Christian dogma took off from the start of his studies at the Protestant theological seminary in Tübingen. Among the formative influences and events at the time was the ‘pantheism controversy’, launched by F.H. Jacobi's (1743-1819) attack (1785) on Lessing’s and Spinoza’s alleged ‘pantheism’ and hence - by necessary implication, it was suggested - ‘atheism’. The relationship between God as ‘One’ and the ‘all’ of the many things, would remain a pivotal interest for Hegel for the rest of his life. Some 15 years later (1799) Jacobi launched another attack, this time suggesting that the transcendental philosophies of Kant, Fichte and Schelling necessarily led to what he coined ‘nihilism’ Cnothing-[matters]-ness’). Instead of taking recourse in speculative reason, Jacobi himself fell back, in a kind of realistic fideism, on supernatural revelation and belief. Such encounters led Hegel to explore instead the path of speculative thought. Giving his own twist to the traditional Christian view, he does not see ‘God’ theistically as a Person. That God has ‘revealed’ himself means that God can be known in thought. Repeating Aristotle’s view, he in fact defines God as self- thinking Thought. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity functions as arepresentation of his schema of the three moments in the unfolding of the Absolute as thought: e ‘Creator’ represents the Absolute in the aspect of universality (111:567). * In creation and in the Son, Jesus, the universal dialectically ‘others itself, generates the opposite of itself, namely particularity (11:568). * The Holy Spirit represents the moment of reconciliation of universality and particularity (1II:569). Obviously, his view of the Christian dogma ties in neatly with his notion of Christianity as the highest religion. Hegel's reconstruction has all sorts of intriguing theological implications vastly exceeding our present limited scope. Much has been written about all of this. Religion presents the Absolute only inadequately, in the form of mythical representation (Vorstellung) at best, thereby placing itself over against the Absolute. For example, to him traditional Christianity falsely identified God with the external individual, the empirical historical Jesus (1:470). Only the ‘absolute knowing’, towards which the philosophy of his own time reached out, could approximate an adequate ‘form’ for the absolute ‘content’. Once again, he follows his usual procedure: The truth of religion is saved by being relativised, that is, sublated into a larger, more inclusive system. The absolute knowledge is the final completion of religion. Hegel distinguishes his position from pantheism (God and the world are identical), atheism (finitude is absolutised), theism (the Absolute is personified), dualism (God and the world are separate), and acosmism (only God is real; the world, though it may be ‘in’ God, is stripped of value, even of reality)(e.g. 11:57:33). Hegel found the latter in Spinoza. Inevitably, even encyclopaedic Hegel had his limitations. In spite of his totalistic aspiration and endeavour, the field of his religious interest and 339 Totalising expertise was quite narrow. Today we have to include more in our religious, philosophical and MM purview than was possible to Hegel. The argument of this treatise, for example, operates in the framework of a general history of religions, taken as widely as possible. This was a possibility not available to Hegel. He knew Greek religion well and interpreted it brilliantly; he had a solid knowledge of Judaism and Roman religion, and referred to Persian and Egyptian religion and Islam, but in these instances too, he superimposed his own scheme on them with a heavy hand: they all culminate in Christianity as the apex of religious history. His knowledge and appreciation of East Asian MM was less than that of Leibniz and Schopenhauer. In his Encyclopaedia, for example, there are only passing references to the Bhagavad Grtà and to Rumi (1:573). In his philosophy of history he saw the cultural contributions of India and China as being on the threshold of the realisation of the Absolute Spirit, which takes place as a movement of progression from East to West, to come to its religious fruition not merely in Christianity, but specifically in German Lutheranism. Just so, he saw it as coming to its most progressive political fruition in the Prussian state. He saw the French Revolution as an extension of the Protestant Reformation. Religiously he made much of the tension, Protestantism versus Catholicism. He interpreted Catholicism as dominated by an obscurantist clergy, an outdated, premodern form of Christianity, bound to be superseded by Protestantism, which he regarded as a secular modern religion. To him Protestantism, sublated onto the level of secular humanism, was not a matter of true belief (in his terms: a 'positive', that is, a doctrinaire book religion); it was the expression of a secular worldview, in tune with the times. It must be noted that he turned away from traditional Christianity at an early age, as alien, not only to the spirit of the times, but also to the natural genius of the Germanic people. What he meant by ‘Christianity’ and 'Protestantism' in any sympathetic way was his own accommodation of these historical entities to his own system. Li metaphysical mysticism? Hegel places a strong emphasis on the ‘objective’ side of the movement of Spirit. He does not seem to have achieved, or striven after, or advertised the kind of personal enlightenment and integration of will and emotion, coupled with a lifestyle built on a mystical discipline, which marked the classical models of mysticism in Neoplatonism, Taoism, Buddhism, Vedanta or the monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. He demonstrated the ‘metaphysical’ part of ‘MM’ in abundance, but not the private, individual ‘mystical’ part of it. The classic Christian mystical ways of purification, illumination and union, historically abundant in Germany and the Lowlands, played no role in his thinking. He knew mystics such as Meister Eckhart and Jacob Boehme well and he absorbed their theoretical inputs, but he elevated such inputs to the level of metaphysical discourse. His own personal interest in a tremendous and 340 Chapter 16 fascinating mystery never becomes the topic of self-disclosure. Yet the absolute Spirit was undoubtedly exactly that to him. He consciously stood away from what he saw as mere feelings, intuitions and so on, as not sufficiently ‘thought’, and hence deficient (III:20), and looked on mysticism, understood in that sense, with disapproval. He subsumed the irrational under the higher truth of thought. Yet he did appreciate the (Christian) awareness of God's indwelling Spirit, and the Christian's consciousness of one's reconciliation and union with God, as experienced, for example, in the Christian cult (Seidel 1976:233). That should count, | submit, as a measure of 'mysticism'. His 'mysticism' (assuming that it is not a wholly inappropriate term) did not position itself beyond but inside thought and reason. To some extent, his reticence to reveal his own feelings and experiences must also be attributed to temperamental and personal reasons of privacy, also, partly, to sociological reasons. He saw the thinker of his own time not as withdrawn from the world (e.g. as a recluse), but as a professional figure (a professor at a public institution of a secular state). He did not seek access to his 'Absolute', except as mediated through its manifestations in time, but he also accepted the submersion of the particular and subjective in the larger order of the Absolute. Hegel largely operates at the level of what will, in Part Three, be discussed as Infinitude. He seems to flinch from empty Absoluteness, probably sensing annihilation in it. He does not thematise the dimension of what has here been called Eternity, as such. Nevertheless, the Principles analysed here do feature to a greater or lesser extent in his system. In conclusion, 'philosophy' was for Hegel not devoid of metaphysical mystery as would, to a remarkable degree, become the case in the era after him. In the words of Seidel: 'Since its content is the same as religion, namely the truth, philosophy becomes the recollective meditation upon this true content of religion. Cibid.:245) O totalism or totalitarianism What general conclusions can be drawn from the evidence summarised in this profile of Hegel? But firstly, his fate. In him, his epoch attained its supreme moment of confidence. Not every totalistic culmination is necessarily triumphalistic. That of Proclus was not. Astonishingly, within one generation after Hegel, his system - the system for his time - broke down. He was not destined to be the figurehead of his age, as Aquinas had been for the Middle Ages and largely continued to be in the Roman Catholic Church. The intellectual disciplines integrated in Hegel's vision - history, science, philosophy, theology - retreated into their own jealously guarded protected bunkers, giving up on the big picture. 341 Totalising In Christian religious thinking (theology) large-scale systematic thinking was largely abandoned in favour of historical criticism; ‘metaphysics’ became a term of scorn. Partial perspectives were totalised; scientistic positivism (Comte) and materialism (Marx) started to entwine the ruins of Hegel’s temple of thought. In some quarters, there was a decline into resignation or pessimism (Schopenhauer). What did not happen, was that his MM system was deepened and enlarged. The very idea, ideal of an integrating centre was abandoned, and with it the idea, ideal of atotalistic MM. The disintegration of Hegel’s achievement was a symptom of large-scale dissolution, markers of which would be the First and Second World Wars, the outcome of which would be the fragmented world of today. Why did that happen? Probably the whole project was just too big to handle. Possibly it could not contain the explosion of new discoveries and challenges. Maybe it was felt to be totalitarian, domineering. In all likelihood, the very idea of modernity as a cultural utopia had already started to wither. Probably science by implication seemed to render all previous attempts at MM - and therefore by extension the very idea of such projects - inconvenient. Overall, Hegel’s system was a dyke unable to resist the flood of anti-metaphysical sentiment that had been building up since the Middle Ages. Doubtless, some might think, the perennial pendulum that had been swinging in all the philosophical civilisations since their beginnings, between idealism and materialism (ontologically speaking) and between metaphysical rationalism and scepticism (epistemologically speaking), had swung as far as they could in the first direction with Hegel, and by necessity started to swing back; it was in the nature of things that the supreme moment would not last. Perhaps the very fact that the reaction set in so quickly was a testimony to the extreme achievement and success of Hegelianism. It was modernity’s greatest moment, impossible to ignore, difficult not to admire, improbable to continue. Yet, one may suspect that the neglect of and forgetfulness towards MM will not last. That dream is a perennial expression of the Eternal Principle of Totalising. Nevertheless, it cannot be a matter of repeating Hegel. A possible MM today would have to push further back towards empty Absoluteness, which would make any such attempt less serious and more playful than Hegel had managed. It would need to be more open-ended, more provisional, more inclusive of science and more inclusive of all of the religions and MM totalisations that humankind has come up with in the past. These features are lacking in his system. By overemphasising his particular age, seeing it as the apex not only of all historical ages but of the total movement of Spirit, he was not sufficiently open to all ages, and did not do justice to the perennial tendency in all of MM. Totalism is difficult but open; totalitarianism, closed. The tendency of Hegel’s thinking was towards the first. Intentionally and tendentionally his thinking was inclusive, bent on seeking balance and harmony at great costs, non-fanatic and 342 Chapter 16 non-extremist. He believed that all serious, consistent thinking must be and is ‘system’ (1:6, II1:15-16). His own ‘system’ illustrates what he means: each singular concept implicates all the others together with the entirety of the conceptual system as a whole. That makes entry into his thinking difficult; on the other hand, it makes it easy: the entrance is everywhere. His thoughts constitute one mighty totalistic endeavour. He sees the ‘Whole’ as the ‘Truth’. In fact, that is exactly the point many of his critics, not least Kierkegaard, held against him. That is not the whole Hegel. In principle, he works on the assumption of the essential reciprocity between whole and singularity: the singularity can only be known by knowing the whole; the whole can only be known by knowing the singularities, each individually and all in their interrelationships. The whole, including not only the constituent singularities but also the relationships between the singularities and the relationships between the singularities and the whole, is more than the sum of its parts (1:112-113, 164). Yet, in practice, Hegel does not always seem to see a perfectly balanced reciprocity between the singularity and the whole; he awards the whole priority, and often seems to force the singular parts into the mould of the whole ... yet, as conceived by one singularity: Hegel. At a more personal level: towards the end of Hegel's life, his demeanour appears to have tended towards closure and the protection of his own thinking. Was this merely a personality trait of an ageing man, as is the case with many ageing persons (not to forget Luther himself, who also later in his life displayed considerably lowered levels of tolerance of views other than his own)? Hegel does seem to have carried a great deal of unresolved anger related to social class and status within himself from youth to old age, and a burning ambition to prove himself. Did this perhaps link with the very structure of his thinking? Was Hegel personally stuffed with hubris? No, in fact, he was quite an ordinary, almost nondescript, sociable, likeable person. He did have a near-impossible intellectual programme. He did not present himself as a special individual; he was merely the voice of an epoch. Did he present his own philosophy as the end of all philosophy, of all history? No. He would have vetoed any suggestion that his philosophy was the final one. He assumed that history moves on; hence, as the latest philosophy, his was the result of all previous ones, containing them all, and therefore the most comprehensive and richest (III:13) thus far. On Hegel’s assumptions, he could not really not say that, in his philosophy, Thought thinks itself at a more advanced level than ever before in history. He would not agree that it made him a megalomaniac, for Hegel himself as a human individual - like Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon in related fields of endeavour - was merely a tool in the great movement of Spirit. He had a strongly developed sense of tragedy. He knew that every philosophy, in and for its own time, should realise its own tragic temporality. Be that as it may, even a sympathetic interpretation must conclude that he did take his construct a bit too seriously as the preservation and elevation of all that had gone before. 343 Totalising From today’s point of view, it is obvious that Hegel’s project is in need of correction. His hermeneutics of history does have a coercive streak, different from the ‘tendentional’ hermeneutics advised in our design. His method and the manner in which he applied it, forced history into the rhythm of his own waltz, exposing him to the risk of being as doctrinaire as any ‘positive’ religion. It is impossible to view any other time and all previous times except from the vantage point of one’s own position in one’s own time. That is one thing. Hegel did more than that. At the pinnacle of his career, he seemed to view his own thought as the apex stone of the entire philosophical movement, and fixed all that had preceded him in place, like blocks in a pyramid. The dynamics of Hegel’s model is very different from the one suggested in this essay. Does Hegel necessitate any serious overhaul of our emerging attempt at this stage? | don’t think so. On the contrary, his strengths and weaknesses confirm the general direction we have taken. The epochs represented by the three totalisers met above, have perished. The most recent one, represented by Hegel, has perhaps entered its final death throes. Each of these figures made his own unique contribution in their own circumstances. Simply reviving the model of any one of them today as it stands, would be anachronistic. At present no such grand synthesis is in sight. No interest in totalism could pretend to produce the overly ambitious kind of programme a Hegel sought to realise. Largely, our time finds itself in a stage of turning away from systematic systems-of-all. Nevertheless, the need for a totalistic vision remains, and signs of sighs for a new one are discernible. The scope of this exploration does not allow entering into discussions with contemporary figures exploring a large-scale vision in and for our own epoch, such as Ken Wilber (1995) and Jochen Kirchhoff (1998, 1999). 344 Part Three Infinitude i Rim of a wheel E 845 Unground becoming Ground: Infinite being Infinitude mediates between the Eternal Principles and manifest Cosmos. Like two-faced Janus, the ancient Roman god of gateways and transitions, Infinitude balances on the threshold of Eternity and Cosmos. It faces both backwards towards Eternity and forwards towards Cosmos, providing continuity between Absoluteness and Cosmos. The essential outlines of Cosmos are beginning to be adumbrated at the level of Infinitude, but are not concretely manifest yet. Cosmos with its space-time will concretise from Infinitude as a relatively novel thing. Infinitude is like the rim of a wheel, giving cohesion to the nine spokes (Eternal Principles) surrounding the empty hub (Absoluteness). Infinitude is the edge of the wheel - almost, for onto it the outside tyre (Cosmos), completing the wheel, is still to be fitted. So Absoluteness, Eternity, Infinitude and Cosmos cohere concentrically, mutually interrelated and interdependent. This rim consists of four joined, interconnected and equally essential sections: Matter with its time and space; Life with its birth and death; Love with its volition and emotion; and Thought with its reason and intuition. The interconnections and meetings of these dimensions (such as intuition linking Life and Thought, How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Rim of a wheel’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 347-374, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.17 347 Rim of a wheel and volition linking Life and Love) could be described in various ways. In the following chapters, | shall endeavour to understand what each entails and investigate some historical models that have developed over time. Infinitude as used here, intends neither actual infinity (a completed infinity, to which nothing can be added - a paradoxical notion, as Aristotle pointed out) nor ‘potential infinity’ (a potentially endless sequence, to which can always be added). 'Infinitude' here refers to a faintly discernible and hardly accessible dimension at the outer edges of human thought and experience: formless, unlimited, undefined, unrestricted, non-concretised and undetermined. Notwithstanding, prior to the concrete world, the beginnings of a relative differentiation within Infinitude itself can be discerned: Infinite Matter, Infinite Life, Infinite Love and Infinite Thought. These four emerging dimensions are neither merely four different names for the same thing, nor four separate, different substances, unchanging, self- contained, rock-bottom ultimates. What is discerned here does not deny the relative distinctiveness of each of the four sides of Infinitude in relation to the other three. The four are neither simply identical, nor simply different, nor is any one reducible to any other one. They fulfil four distinct and equally necessary functions of one organic whole. Thesefourarerelatively autonomous yet mutually indwelling,interdependent and interpenetrating aspects of the same emerging Whole: Infinite Spirit. The 'relatively' qualifying 'autonomous' here is important. None of the package of four is operative on its own, but essentially so as a member of this foursome. They have different functions but equal status; there is no first and no last, no hierarchical order of higher and lower, no one is an epiphenomenon of any other one, and they could be listed and discussed in any sequence. It would be possible to start with Thought, to counter the dominant drift of thinking in contemporary materialistic culture. Or we could go through them in the sequence Matter, Life, Love and Thought, so as to stay closer (at least formally) to the contemporary scientific model of the world, in which matter is the point of departure. It is possible to refer to Infinitude as 'Spirit', but not as 'a' or 'the' Spirit as if a specific individual, singular thing (or person), neither as one member of a generic group, nor asthe only specimen of its kind. Alternatively, this quaternary may (saluting Neoplatonism) be termed 'One'. Again, let me (for the same reason) not speak of ‘a’ or ‘the’ One. Just integral ‘Oneness’, internally differentiated, but prior to Cosmic differences, and containing the germ of such differences. The drift of this essay would also allow the acceptance of the notion of ‘Infinite Being’ as a wrap-around concept for the totality of emerging four- dimensional Infinitude. Some, seeking to experience contact with the edge of cosmic existence, have concentrated on realising their being one with 'Being'. 348 Chapter 17 So this essay also accepts the notion of ‘Being’, but on condition that it is not understood as ultimate category, but as breaking down at Absolute Horizon; and that it is not understood as eternally static, but as dynamic, transient Event. Cosmos and the multiplicity of singular things making up Cosmos are not separate from emerging Infinitude, just as there are no boundaries between Infinitude and Eternity. Cosmos and all its constituent things are contained in, soaked through with Infinitude. Concrete as the things of the world are, they carry within themselves all four shades of Infinitude. This approach does not envisage the particular things of the world as participating in a transcendent substantial dimension of reality, as Plato did with his hierarchy of a plurality of Ideas (with the Good at its apex) in which empirical things participate. No doubt, contrary to Plato’s intention, his scheme could be interpreted in the direction of a dualism of ontological levels. We are steering away from such thinking. In addition to ‘Spirit’ and ‘Oneness’, this dimension, this whole-of-four, may also be referred to as ‘Splendour’, ‘Glory’ or ‘Beauty’, not as object of a physical sensory experience with an accompanying aesthetic pleasure, but as a numinous Archephany, arousing awe. Matter, Life, Love and Thought in their togetherness is Splendour. Indeed, the watcher of the empty darkness of the night of Absoluteness and Eternity can feel blinded by the brightness of a light in which neither colours nor the firm shapes of things can be discerned. The words ‘Divinity’ and ‘God’ may, with reservations and in a qualified sense, be reutilised too. Let me keep a distance from the manner in which the word ‘God’ has traditionally been used in the religions. Firstly, in terms of the vocabulary of this essay, ‘God’ is by definition not an ‘infinite’ individual being. Secondly, ‘God’ as such a being with characteristics is a human construct. Therefore, | will not speak of ‘a’ or ‘the’ God. The word ‘Godhead’ (e.g. Eckhart), being indefinite, and suggesting a stronger meta-theistic position than ‘God’, might be used as an equivalent for Infinitude. Even so, | would do it sparingly and with great reservation. Interpreted tendentionally, the concepts of gods or God in the religions were attempts to reach beyond the confines of Cosmos and express absolute ultimacy. Nonetheless, they did not succeed. God and gods remained barely masked human figures, with jealousy, anger and all, hovering on the fringes of the world. God(s) did not escape the gravity of earth and its human inhabitants. They were never quite the supra-/extra-Cosmic beings their makers intended, and hung precariously between the strict non-determinedness of Infinitude as set out in this chapter and the determinedness of Cosmos. From the point of view of this exploration, gods presented as transcending Cosmic reality were Cosmos bound anthropomorphic projections. Yes, there were sophisticated efforts to derive the world from such a dimension, as the theologies of the world religions attest. One example is the distinction made in some late 349 Rim of a wheel Upanishads between Nirguna Brahman (Brahman without attributes, the ultimate) and Saguna Brahman (the personally manifest Brahman, and source of the external world). In Taoism and Buddhism, deriving the being of the world from a personal God or gods was never on the agenda. In the theistic religions originating in the Ancient Near East, individual metaphysical mystics at times made valiant attempts to transcend the pull of anthropomorphism. Reaching out to the level of Infinitude and further back has indeed been the subconscious, inarticulate, tendentional wanting of all religions. In the indefinable, indescribable glory of Infinitude all framed mental pictures of ‘God’ are reduced to their real, limited, significance. At most they are ‘icons’, pointing paintings, not reproductions, like photographs. As mythological reminiscences or dreams of Glory, conscious of their relativity, icons may be appreciated and treasured. Insofar as all such human ‘paintings of Infinitude’, inadequate as they are, express the insight that Absoluteness, via Eternity and Infinitude, truly becomes Cosmos, they are to be appreciated, for Cosmos is to be upheld and loved, in spite of all its blemishes. Somehow, it expresses Beauty, Splendour, Glory. At this stage of the process of the emergence of things from Absoluteness, actual ‘evil’ is not a relevant category yet. Infinitude is beyond good and evil. Evil makes its appearance when Infinitude becomes actualised Finitude, concretised Cosmos with its differences and opposites. Yet here, in Infinitude, undifferentiated, undifferentiating Matter, Life, Love and Thought, before subject and object and all the rest of the Cosmic distinctions, shine as the manifestations of pure, radiant light. Shall the mytheme of a Fall be projected into Infinitude to account for evil on earth (as, e.g. in Gnosticism)? No. Infinitude lies beyond the explanatory capacity of myth, which would here confuse rather than clear up anything, and the category of evil is not applicable at that depth of sheer becoming. The realisation of Cosmos is not seen as an event or process of smooth perfection. It is a struggle, with conflicting opposing movements, successes and failures, progressive creative forces and retarding reactionary forces. E 846 Four mountain flanks In Chapters 17-21, we come to the central concerns of religions as found in history. It is as if the religious urge of humanity draws people to one or more of these dimensions - much more so than to the meontological dimensions of Absoluteness and Eternity, as if to a massive mountain with four flanks, much more so than to the empty sky above it. Individual climbers have usually concentrated on one of these flanks, with less or no interest in the others. Ideally, all come into play in a balanced, integrated manner. Corresponding with the distinct aspects of Infinitude, various types of relation to that dimension surrounding human existence have arisen over time: the mysticism of 350 Chapter 17 experiencing and achieving unity with Infinite Being as a whole; the mysticism of realising Life; the mysticism of Love; and the mysticism of gnosis (Thought). The mystical identification with Matter has been sadly neglected in history. Under the impact of the magnificent discoveries of modern science, the time has arrived for this dimension to receive its due. Father, Son, Holy Spirit Let me now pause in the company of the early Christian theologians who tried to understand the mystery fascinating us here. In their case, given their faith assumptions and philosophical background and the conditions of their time, the problem was formulated as the relationship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. By following the criss-crossing procedure adopted in this study, shifting angles and looking from new angles, established patterns may suddenly take new shapes, and promising new ones may emerge. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is a case in point. It has come to be regarded by most outside and many inside Christianity as at best outdated, at worst cryptic nonsense, forged by the two hands of ecclesiastical and political power. If understood well, it is a magnificent speculative achievement, transcending the political machinations that have undeniably played a role in its development (and that of Christology, which is so intimately related to the teaching of the Trinity). This theological construct is relevant to attempts to think metaphysically-mystically, beyond the confines of the Christian religion. The observations below do not take sides based on what has come to be accepted as orthodox Christianity. They cut across the board, and apply to the majority of serious theologians of the classic period of the first seven centuries (and thereafter). From the point of view of our present concern, three limitations of this Christian doctrine as usually held, must be pointed out: * Firstly, it has largely been identified with a semi-mythological construct of three anthropomorphised 'persons' (Father, Son and Holy Spirit); in spite of the semi-attachment of the 'Mother' (Mary) with her softer touch over the Christian centuries in Catholicism, the ancient Near Eastern family relationships of male dominance still shine through the later rational, philosophically-inspired overlay. * Secondly, its conceptual apparatus is tied to a substantialising manner of thought. * Thirdly, it has more often than not been enforced by the instruments of power of an Imperial Church and treated monopolistically, as if absolutely - and therefore exclusively - true. Dig deeper. This dogma is a construct; it is not the repetition of a revelation. Seen thus, the three Persons appear as a historically, culturally, religiously 55] Rim of a wheel bound expression of a profoundly human intuition of the Infinite dimensions of Being behind and in all that we experience in life and all that science, art, religion and philosophy are exploring. Let me outline the plot of this doctrinal drama in a few strokes, ignoring the intricacies of the debates over time, by highlighting the relevant positions taken and refuted over the first seven centuries: Early Christianity struggled to articulate the relationship of the man Jesus to God; obviously, this affected the nature of God as such. It took centuries to reach a fairly common understanding. The inner logic of their Trinitarian model compelled the early theologians to specify the exact relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but this drove them into ever more subtle distinctions. The connection of theological thinking and quite brutal church politics complicated things. The boat of early Christian systematic thinking ran the risk of capsizing either on the side of monarchianism (a very strong emphasis on the unity of the Trinity) or tritheism (a view inclining towards the extreme of ‘three gods’). With Origen (185-254) (fellow student of Plotinus at the feet of Ammonius Saccas), early Christianity took the final turn towards Greek Platonic thinking, which at the time seemed to provide the best conceptual scheme to express the central mystery of their faith. To Origen the Logos (‘Word’, Christ) was the first to have appeared from the eternal Father, followed by the rest of creation in a series of emanations. The Word is in any event not of the same essence as the Father. The teaching of Origen would only be denounced in 399 CE, but contemporaries of his already opposed it. In our present context the monarchian train of thought, specifically its so- called modalistic version, is interesting. It was soon rejected as heretical, but even in the 5th century, Augustine of Hippo still showed signs of a lingering monarchianism. According to this view, as championed by Sabellius (early 3rd century), Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three modes (aspects, ‘masks’ or manifestations) of the one, divine Person, as the one sun is bright, hot and round. This indivisible God revealed himself successively in the world as the Creator, the Saviour and the Sanctificator. Revelation was a process, taking place in these three modes. Yet, to the modalistic monarchians, the three divine modes were not merely a matter of three different and interchangeable names for the same thing; the distinctions between the three, as far as they went, were real. Therefore the name Patripassianism (pater passus est: ‘the Father suffered’), hung around their necks by their opponents, implying that according to them the divine unity was so strong that the Father suffered on the Cross, probably went too far. Since his enemies in the Church burnt all Sabellius’ writings, it is not possible to form a truly adequate opinion of his views. Nevertheless, his and 352 Chapter 17 his colleagues’ relevance to our attempt must be honoured. Of course, firstly there is the difference that Sabellius held on to divinity as having three modes, whereas our understanding of Infinity is more comfortable with four. (This is of no great consequence.) Sabellius, with the whole of the early Church, derived the threeness from the Bible and built his construction around Jesus the only Saviour, whereas our attempt works on assumptions that are more general. Sabellius seems to have thought of God in concrete, personal terms, acting in history, whereas this venture imagines ‘Godhead’ at the level of Infinitude, beyond personhood. From the point of view of this study, one can only empathise with Sabellius - as a matter of fact, also with his enemies - in his and their struggle to articulate the relationships between the ‘three’. They fought because they cared. Our attempt to articulate the relative differentiation of the four modes of ‘divine’ Infinitude, neither identifying nor separating them, has a great deal of sympathy for the Christian theologians of long ago. A watershed was reached with the First General (Ecumenical) Council, convened at Nicaea in 325 by Emperor Constantine. There it was decided that Christ (the Son) is ‘of the same substance’ (homo-ousios, from homos ‘same’ and ousia ‘being’, ‘essence’, ‘substance’) as the Father, cutting off any notion of subordination in the Trinity as far as Father and Son were concerned (as held by the heretic Arius). Father and Son are consubstantial. Slightly to the right of radical Arianism stood the party of the Homoeans, from its determining formula (homoi-ousios, from homoios ‘similar’ and ous/a - thus ‘of similar substance’). This was an attempt at compromise, declaring the Son, though distinct from the Father, to be ‘like’ the Father. Orthodox Christianity was poised on the subtle but important difference between ‘similar’ and ‘same’. An iota (/) made all the difference. ‘Same’ won the day. Arianism in all its forms (including homoi- ousianism) would be condemned finally at the Second Ecumenical Council (Constantinople 381 CE). Abstracting from the power games of that time, the MM philaletheian of today cannot but be impressed by the thoroughness, acumen and passion of all the characters - winners and losers - in their struggle to say what must but cannot be said. Subtle differences in emphasis between oneness and threeness remained among the leading orthodox theologians of the time. Whereas Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296-373) stressed the unity of God, (Father and Son are 'one' in essence) the great Cappadocians Gregory of Naziansus (c. 329-390), Basil the Great (c. 330-379) and Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-395) complemented this with a strong emphasis on the threeness: Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three ‘Persons’ (hypostases). These developments added up to the classic formulation: 'three Persons, one Substance’ (treis hypostases, homoousios; Latin: tres personae, una substantia). The theologians behind this achievement were not power obsessed hair-splitters, but MM thinkers of the highest order. 353 Rim of a wheel Obviously the drift of the argument developing in this essay, reaching back behind the notions of eternal, firm divine ‘substance’ and ‘person’ to Infinitude, Eternity and Absoluteness, is different from the substantialist thinking of the developing Trinitarian dogma. The crown witnesses for our model are Taoism and Buddhism, not Platonism and Aristotelianism. Yet this dogma can be accommodated in the kind of thinking developed here. From the depth underneath the anthropomorphic nomenclature of ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ and prior to the concepts of ‘Substance’ (ousia) and ‘Person’ (hypostasis) a space of Infinitude opens up. The Trinitarian dogma is relatively true. From our perspective, someone like Gregory of Nyssa, the apophatic Cnon- speaking’) mystic who said that God in essence is incomprehensible and can only be contemplated in darkness, was a great figure. With his view of the limitlessness of God, he approximated an MM inspired by Infinitude and empty Absoluteness as closely as can be hoped for, given his cultural and religious context. This is supreme Christianity, with conscious intentionality virtually coinciding with subconscious tendentionality towards Absoluteness that draws all religion, mysticism, science and philosophy into End, which is also Origin. At the Second Ecumenical Council (Constantinople 381) the Nicene Creed was adapted and expanded to affirm that the Holy Spirit too is God even as the Father and the Son are. The Holy Spirit is to be worshipped and glorified with Father and Son, even though the Holy Spirit, it was formulated, ‘proceeds from the Father'(to ek tou patros ekporeumenon) only. Note that the Church of Rome later inserted the phrase ‘and from the Son’ (Filioque) at exactly that point. We will return to this below. By then a doctrine of a Triune Divinity was firmly formulated. The three Cappadocians had made a great contribution towards its refinement. That was not the end of the story. The Third Council (Ephesus 431) focused on the Person of Christ. Everybody agreed that Christ was fully God, one of the Trinity. So, how was his divine nature related to his human nature? Clearly, the answer, indirectly addressing the relationship between God and humanity, even Creation, would also impinge on the Trinity. Nestorianism (after Nestorius, middle 5th century) emphasised their distinction; his contemporary Eutyches emphasised their union to the extent that his position became known as Monophysitism Cof a single nature’). The Council, calling Mary Theotokos (‘who has given birth to God’), forged a close relationship between divinity and humanity, with Mary as the Mother of God. At the Fourth Council (Chalcedon 451) it was finally decided that Christ had two natures, not one, and that these two are unconfused (asunchutos), unchangeable (atreptos), indivisible (ad/airetos) and inseparable (achoristos). Again, this had a sideways impact on the concepts of both Divinity and humanity (after all, Jesus Christ, fully God, is the representative of all humankind). The decisions taken at Ephesus and Chalcedon were momentous, with deep significance that can be appreciated from the perspective of this 554 Chapter 17 essay - for Infinitude, with its own internal distinctions, and Cosmos are indissolubly connected. They are, in a sense, ‘one’. For our purposes, it is not necessary to pursue the story of this subtle speculative balancing act concerning the relationships of Father, Son and Holy Spirit over generations of theologians and seven Ecumenical Councils in various twists and turns further. Yet one more chapter needs to be mentioned. In 589, the Synod of Toledo in Spain (not an Ecumenical Council) inserted the term Filioque (and from the Son’) into the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed: the Holy Spirit was now said to proceed from the Father 'and from the Son'. As becomes clear from the declaration arrived at by that Synod (Denzinger & Schónmetzer 1963:160), this insertion (made without any consultation with the Eastern Church) was probably intended as added protection against Arianism: Father and Son were truly equal in all respects. Only in 1014 would it become dogma in the Western Church. Quite apart from its theological value or not, that innovation would have an enormous effect on Christianity. In 1054 it would almost finalise the split between East and West, even though Eastern Christendom (seated in Constantinople) and Western Christendom (seated in Rome) were becoming estranged for various reasons, apart from this theological issue, over several centuries. No matter how close the relationship between Divinity and humanity became in Mary and Christ, there remained an essential difference between these two realms. With the third Person, the Holy Spirit, actually dwelling in the believers, the distinction between Divinity and humanity became so much more subtle. So did the distinctions between the three Divine Persons. The distinctions between the three Persons of the Trinity, made in various ways in East and West, had far-reaching implications for those two Christian blocs, including their very distinct spiritualities. Were all of the above MM interpretations of the Christian heritage (involving the Bible, the Christian tradition, Greek philosophy), the intuition, the high- flying speculative construction, the careful formulation - were they mere logic- chopping sophistry? Alternatively, in spite of the inevitable human weakness in it all, were they sincere and impressive attempts to express the mysteries of Divinity and the relationship between Divinity, humanity, and creation at large? The second is accurate, | believe. Those theologoumena and this essay are struggling with the same generic problem, and, | suggest, this essay provides an interpretive framework for appreciating those Christian dogmas tendentionally. Are those old Christian attempts totally irrelevant to our cultural situation today, under the obligation to come to terms with science and reconcile science with a context-providing MM? No. I believe that this Christian construction contributes value to these contemporary debates. Yet it should not be understood in an exclusive, monopolistic, absolutistic sense. Other theologies make comparable contributions, deserving equal respect. 555 Rim of a wheel The source documents of Christianity and the inherent logic of that religion are too rich to be captured in any dogmatic system. This applies to all theologies of all religions. Each has its own logic, its own genius. Efforts to capture the flow of religious sentiment in well organised and institutionally backed dams of dogma and scholastic system are not simply wrong, but they must always be seen for what they are, including their limitations and weaknesses. So the doctrine of the Trinity is understood as one impressive yet relative formulation of the perennial human search to understand the process of Absoluteness becoming Cosmos via Eternity and Infinitude. This exploration does not propose a one-to-one correspondence of the ‘Persons’ and any of the functions of Infinitude clarified in these chapters. Yet it does seek a positive alignment. Seen from this perspective, the Person of ‘Father’, the all-powerful Creator and Sustainer, combines the dimensions of Infinite Energy and Infinite Life; the Son, the Reconciler, is a condensation of the intuition of Infinite Love; and the Spirit, the Enlightener, is a symbol of Infinite Wisdom. In Christian thinking, these functions are not exclusively committed to any one category. The Father is wise, the Son exists in all eternity and the Spirit is powerful, and so on. The main point of interest here is that in many ways in many combinations over many centuries these Infinite functions surfaced in the Christian religion. Let me take the tendentional interpretation of this dogma a step further. As a speculative construction, the Christian doctrine struggles with, has to resolve, the relationships between the ‘oneness’ of God and the ‘threeness’ of the Persons, and the relationships obtaining among the three Persons themselves. Since the first efforts to express their faith systematically, theologians of the Church attempted to retain at the same time both the inseparability and the non-reducibility of such entities. Yes, the word ‘entities’ is not misplaced here; Christian theology did operate with Greek-derived metaphysical notions such as ‘hypostasis’ as the final ground of things. This essay has taken leave of that manner of thinking. Of course, the problem of reconciling the four Infinite functions with one another, and all four with Eternity and Absoluteness, and with Cosmos, remains. What has been suggested in §45 above is comparable to what has been attempted in Christian Trinitarian thinking. Consider, as an example, the orthodox concept of the 'perichoresis' (from the Greek peri ‘around’ and chorein ‘to contain’) (the mutual interpenetration and mutual inherence) of the three persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each of the three persons must be understood in its own ‘hypostasis’, the fathers argued, but each of the three must also be recognised in both of the others, thereby striving to maintain the unity and monarchy C‘alone rule’) of God. The attempts to understand and express the relationships between ‘oneness’ and ‘threeness’ never ended; it has been given as task to each new generation and every individual Christian MM. Let us remember two Western Christian thinkers several centuries after the classic formative age of the 356 Chapter 17 Trinitarian dogma: Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327) and his younger contemporary Jan van Ruusbroec (1293-1381) - kindred spirits, each with a profound view of the Trinity, but with different emphases. Eckhart stands closer to the radical emptiness intended in this treatise of ours. Yet Ruusbroec could also speak of the ‘abysmal indeterminedness’ (afgrondighe onwise) of the One Trinitarian God (in his classic Die geestelike brulocht, II.D.10) CAlaerts et al. 1981). Whereas Eckhart tended to see the oneness of the Godhead behind the threeness of the persons, Ruusbroec tended to emphasise the oneness /n the relatedness of the three Persons. The argument put forward in this essay is not interested in accommodating various religious, philosophical and MM perspectives in one particular, traditional, normative system. Rather, its interest lies in accommodating the various particular historical perspectives in a general framework transcending all of them. It argues from the general to the particular, not from the particular to the general. When looking at the Jewish, Muslim, Vedantic, Buddhist and Christian systems from a perspective outside and more general than any of them, their differences become less daunting, their similarities more obvious. ten Sefirot The Infinite foursome also features at least implicitly in other cultural and religious encasings, mythologies and vocabularies, in related religions such as Judaism and Islam, which seriously reflect on Godhead. Judaism never compromised on the unity of God, but his characteristics of being and bestowing being (creatorship), living and bestowing life, loving and commanding love, and wisdom and bestowing wisdom, shines through on every page of the Tanakh. In a later creative figure such as Moses Maimonides (c. 1135-1204), God is stripped of all mythological and positive assertions, in order to safeguard his absolute unity and infinite being; his being alive is not denied, but it is unknowable, beyond all human understanding, in other words: infinite. The same is true of God's other essential attributes, such as his loving will towards the world and his wisdom. These attributes are neither identical with, nor separable from, God's essential nature. The same set of problems vexing Christian theology and the thrust of this essay, are present in Maimonides. As in Christianity, the ontological gap between God and the world remains. As far as the relationship between the attributes of God are concerned, Maimonides tended to make God's will and love subservient to his being and his omniscience; a later theologian, Hasdai Crescas (c. 1340-1411) would stress God’s love and will. In Chapter 7, attention was paid to Kabbalah and the Sefirot. At this point it is enough to note that the ten Sefjrot (literally, ‘numbers’) are aspects of Divinity, without any ‘being’ of their own and never hypostasised as Persons or 357 Rim of a wheel the like. Infinite God is beyond all measurement or number; so these ten are symbolic, not intended to exhaust all possibilities and stipulate any exact number. The relationship between infinite indeterminedness and the relative determinedness coming to the fore in the names of this tenfold hierarchy remains intriguing. Kabbalists went through similar motions as their Christian counterparts: these divine aspects remain relatively distinct, and yet every one of them is identified with the totality of infinite God, and, by that very fact, with all the other aspects. There is neither separation nor confusion. Yet there is a certain hierarchy from kether down to malkuth. A contemporary interpreter addresses our perennial problem, discussed with so much passion in Christianity, as follows with reference to Kabbalah (Schaya 1971 [1958]): Although every attribute of divine being may have its particular ‘place’, its particular ‘number’ in the causal unity of the Sefiroth, and although each of them radiates the All in accordance with its own eternal mode, yet essentially all his aspects are nothing other than his one and indivisible light. (p. Tff.) The structural and functional similarities with the Trinitarian theological construct are clear. The basic intuition of the symbolic value of the number three are comparable. | note with interest that the ten Sefirot cascade downwards along three pillars (mercy, severity and mildness) in patterns of three's (three triangles) from Ein-Sof to the world (Kether, Chokmah, Binah; Chesed, Geburah, Tipareth; Netzach, Hod, Yesod). The differences are equally clear. The Christian doctrine attempted to strike a balance between hierarchy and equality: the Father has a certain priority, the status of the Son is somewhat different in Eastern and Western Christianity (as is apparent in the acceptance or not of the filioque), and the Holy Spirit proceeds from one (or both); yet there is no subordination. In Kabbalah, there is a clear hierarchical structure. More than any of the additional religious schemas looked at here, the Christian theologians ontologised and consciously and deliberately personalised their three manifestations, thereby incurring certain difficulties. The Kabbalistic manifestations have names and might be personalised at a more popular level, but, MM speaking, they are manifestations of the Endless. The route followed on our journey also avoids hypostasising the inseparable original dimensions of the one quaternary of Infinitude. A thorough comparison of the Christian teaching of the Trinity and the ten Sefirot of Jewish Kabbalah would be a fascinating enterprise. ninety-nine Names In Islam parallel patterns occur; there theologians and mystics wrestled with the same structural problem. God's unity is non-negotiable, but Sufism went further than Islam generally in seemingly crossing the divide between the undifferentiated (infinite) Godhead and the mystic human being, at least in certain figures (such as al-Hallaj [c. 858-922]). Each of the ninety-nine names 358 Chapter 17 of Allah expresses a distinct attribute of Infinite Allah. In Islam Chere Islam differs quite dramatically from Christianity) the attributes are just that: attributes, never hypostasised into ‘Persons’. This was the reason why Islamic theology always at least suspected Christian theology of carrying the germ of tri-theism, if not of having the disease. Yet the speculative problem remains. Allah’s Power, Love and Wisdom are infinite. How is that to be comprehended? Here | make only the minimalistic claim that all MM’s are of a kind, and that the ways Islam looked at this problem, can be harmonised with the model of this essay. For example, the most frequently occurring Names, the Compassionate (A/-Rahman) and the Merciful (A/-Rahim) can be comprised in our Love. Working that out and testing it, would require far more space than is available here. There is no end to the possible permutations of understanding Infinitude, its ‘oneness’ and its ‘features’, the level of its radicalness and its connection with Cosmos, and the interrelationships among its features. All conceptual and verbal attempts are indeed nothing more than flimsy boats, carrying the traveller across the stream to the shore of Infinitude, beyond which no traveller can proceed, and then to be abandoned. The problem we are dealing with here must not be reduced to a numerical, accounting problem (one, or three, or ten, or ninety-nine - or four). In addition, it touches one of the most sensitive nerves in any MM enterprise, transcending all religious apologetics and polemics. sat, cit, anànda An impressive vision is contained in the notion of Saccitànanda (sat-cit-ànanda ‘Being’-‘Consciousness’/‘Mind’-‘Bliss’), as found in the MM of some Upanishads and continued in Advaita Vedanta: the ultimate One (Brahman), with which all phenomenal things are ultimately identical, is Being, Consciousness and Bliss. These three are transcendental aspects of the ultimate Reality: Brahman. Brahman (also referred to in the Upanishads with the terms the Infinite, the Absolute and the Godhead) is a unity of these three fundamental attributes, which are not thought of as separate, but as somehow mutually implicit. The argument presented here does not follow the substantialising trend of thinking as far as Absoluteness (‘the Absolute’, in Vedantic terminology) is concerned, probably held by most adherents of Advaita Vedanta. However, Unground is in the process of becoming solidified as Ground, underlying all phenomena. This process culminates in Cosmos, and returns to Unground. It must be added that at that relatively early stage of Indian MM thinking, the phenomenal reality still had some derivative reality, and was not yet the illusion that it would become in later Vedantic teaching. What those Upanishads intended, anticipated by millennia what our model is attempting to express as Infinitude nevertheless manifesting as Cosmos. The three aspects of Brahman can largely be assimilated to our model: the correspondences with ‘Being’ and ‘Thought’ are obvious, and ‘Bliss’ can be assimilated to Life and Love. $59 Rim of a wheel As one might expect, the relationship between the Vedantic model of Brahman and the Christian model of Divinity (the Trinity) has stimulated lively debates. For our purposes, let us restrict ourselves to the possibilities exploited in the Indian Christian context. In that context, the attempts to work out the relationship between these two models can be reduced to the following three, all three represented by well-known theologians, with various permutations and degrees obtaining among them (cf. Aleaz 1996): * Firstly, and obviously, there would be the exclusive model, in effect rejecting Advaita Vedanta as irreconcilable with Christianity (e.g. PD Devanandan). All exclusivist thinking runs the risk of ignoring the challenge of our time to think in terms of greater mutual accommodation. * Secondly, Advaita Vedanta could be reinterpreted in order to assimilate it to the Christian mould (e.g. Swami Abhishiktananda, Bede Griffiths and Raimundo Panikkar). Essentially, in this second framework the Hindu Saccidànanda is transformed into Christian Trinitarian thinking. * Thirdly, the opposite could be done: assimilate the Christian model to the Advaita Vedantic one, intending thereby to do full justice to the intentions of the Christian model (e.g. Brahmabandhav Upadhyaya, RV De Smet and KP Aleaz). The above three do not exhaust all possibilities. The second and the third are seeming opposites; in fact, they are similar. A further road, walked in this treatise, moves outside and beyond both of these religious and MM complexes, allowing both to be transcended by Absolute Emptiness, yet also allowing them space to stand and be respected as worthy attempts to say the unsayable. The road walked here leads not into the confines of the Buddhist (or Taoist) religion or any fixed Buddhist (or Taoist) theoretical model. It follows the direction pointed out explicitly from within the latter two complexes and, | venture to say, at least implicitly and tendentionally present in both the Trinitarian and Saccidànanda models: the direction towards Absolute Horizon, annihilating all systems. upaya, karuna, prajnha Another functional equivalent of the Christian Trinitarian model is to be found in Pure Land Buddhism. At the level of popular religion the ‘Pure Land of the West’ (Sukhavati) might be seen as a real place, in which blissful rebirth may take place by the grace of the Buddha Amitabha's compassion, activated by the devotee's reciting of his name. At a more abstract MM level, it is perceived not as a place but a blissful state of being. Either way, it is not ultimate nirvana yet, but a stage just short of that. There are three gateways to final liberation: upaya C‘skill’, ‘activity’), karunà (‘compassion’) and prajfià (‘wisdom’). Popular Pure Land is quite similar to forms of Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam 360 Chapter 17 in that the element of devotion is paramount and mythology is strongly present. Those features enable such religions to have great popular appeal. Pure Land differs from, for example Christianity, in that typically Buddhist, its ultimate category is not a Saviour (in the case of Pure Land, the Buddha Amitabha) but nirvana: emptiness. In addition, the three 'gateways' are not Persons (as is the case in the Christian Trinity). Our Absoluteness is intended as the ontological equivalent of psychological nirvana. ‘Prior to’ or ‘after’ Absoluteness (depending on the direction from which one looks and moves) lies Infinitude. In a sense, our fourfold Infinitude can be aligned to the complex of upáàya, karunà and prajfià. These are readily compatible with those in the model developing here: skilful activity with Life, compassion with Love and wisdom with Thought. Incidentally, calling the Buddhist set 'gates' would express their liminal function, connecting emptiness (nirvana) with existence in the world. All three are psychological, soteriological, ethical categories, without explicit ontological associations. A notion equivalent to 'Matter' is conspicuously absent from this Buddhist triad. This is a relative shortcoming. On the other hand, by implication this aspect is hardly avoidable. It percolates through in the question whether salvation (‘Pure Land’) has a physical, geographical reference or whether it consists of an existential state, and in the clear distinction made between 'Pure Land' and 'nirvana'. Such notions impinge on our categories such as Absoluteness and Cosmos. Pure Land theorists, or theorists from any other Buddhist sect for that matter, do not seem to take issue with the relationship among the three categories upaya, karunà and prajfià. Taking the Buddhist doctrinal complex as a whole into account, prajfià would be the primary category followed by karuna, which would in turn be followed by upaya. das Sein, das Nichts, Entborgenheit, Verborgenheit (Martin Heidegger) At the end of this diachronical cross-cultural review, let Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) be heard. Heidegger's legacy is a quite consistent corpus of thought, spread out in a large number of writings over decades. The last 40 years of his life circled around one single theme: Being (Sein), with little variation in content. That later Heidegger is particularly relevant to this chapter. Would the way explored here move in broadly the same direction and cross the long, swerving yet continuous footpath that this intriguing figure followed through the forest, setting up his signposts? Heidegger's reworking of the European past is a fascinating aspect of his work. To connect him to some of the preceding figures, a few markers: rooted in Pre-Socratic, Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy as he was, he also knew Neoplatonism well, although this latter debt is never quite acknowledged in 361 Rim of a wheel his work. Overall Heidegger presented his own thinking as a magisterial caesura in the history of philosophy, with little admission of learning from and being influenced by others, excepting early Greek philosophy. Given the classic Greek background in which he was steeped, his enduring interest in the problem of Being is understandable. The way he works this out also reveals his Neoplatonic heritage and a similarity of thought with that school. In his early days, he lectured on the phenomenology of religion, Augustine and Neoplatonism and the philosophical basis of medieval mysticism, including Meister Eckhart (cf. Caputo 1978), in whom he was so immersed that a book on mysticism seemed imminent at the time. Eckhart probably remained an enduring if underground influence throughout his life. Heidegger also had an interest in and expert knowledge of medieval scholastic thinking, which had been his first point of entry into philosophy. In his early years medieval mysticism was very high on his list of priorities and he retained a life-long interest in it. Boehme remained an enduring presence in his thinking, notable in both his earlier existentialism and his later religiosity. Among his more recent predecessors in German thinking Hegel, Hdlderlin and Nietzsche are relevant in positioning Heidegger: Hegel, the culminating voice of confidence in the epoch of modernity; Nietzsche, the voice of anguish on breaking ice and a shout of defiance; Hdlderlin, the voice of a prophetic announcement of a new dawn - and Heidegger himself, the voice, at first of desperate bravado, then the extended voice of the prophet Hólderlin, claiming to bring the latter’s true message to light in a time of forlorn waiting, or perhaps becoming the poet’s successor. Coming to the possibility of links between Heidegger and ‘non-Western’ systems of thought, it is not clear to what extent Heidegger knew Jewish and Muslim mystical thought. Of India, he had very little knowledge. Only in the last decades of his life was Vedanta brought to his attention. He was pleasantly surprised by the - indeed remarkable - similarities between his own thinking on Being and that of ancient Vedanta. His own thinking was directly dependent on the ancient Greek thinking of Parmenides, which was quite similar to Vedanta. On the other hand, he had quite a sound knowledge and understanding of Taoism. This interest of his in Far Eastern culture went back to an early stage in his career. Yet he was remarkably reticent in referring to it in his own lecturing and writing. There seem to be three reasons for this. Firstly, his sense of academic propriety might have inhibited him from writing about views not accessible to him in the original language (Parks 1987:7, 47ff.). Secondly, he obviously (correctly) understood that engagement is not a matter of superficial matching and mixing, but involves accepting the enriching challenge of the other party in the terms of one’s own (in his case: Western) tradition. In that sense, he confined himself to Western tradition. Thirdly, Heidegger did not readily acknowledge indebtedness to others, creating the impression that his ideas and utterances originated in himself or, later, from a special access to Being, 362 Chapter 17 which became a functional equivalent of God. His writing was never a dialogical enterprise with real acknowledged reciprocity, a process of open, appreciative- critical exchange with others. In his Sein und Zeit ('being and time’, 1927) (Heidegger 1986 [1927]) he does not address the question concerning Being as such. He focuses his attention on the human being and makes a distinction between being human (Dasein: ‘being there’) and other forms of being. Non-human being simply ‘is’, but the human being ‘exists’ - that is, has a special relationship to Being in that it can raise the question concerning the meaning of Being. Heidegger is concerned with understanding the structural elements (Existenzialien) of human existence as they feature in everyday life. He set himself the task of analysing the structural elements of human existence in its temporality (Zeitlichkeit), being-in-the-world (/n-der-Welt-Sein), concern (care, anxiety: Sorge), resoluteness (Entschlossenheit) and, at the root of all, mortality (Sein zum Tode), and so on, in great detail. The human individual being 'is' not merely, but has the choice between authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) and inauthenticity (Uneigentlichkeit). Dasein is in constant danger of relegating itself to being merely part of the world, capitulating to tradition, sinking into the anonymity of Mr Average among the They (das Man), thereby denying its own uniqueness. Heidegger's fear of everyday existence, his nostalgia for pre-industrial society (with its simple tools, e.g.) and his aversion to industrial society necessitating democratic (‘mass’) institutions, is clear. This anti-liberal neoconservatism, deploring industrialisation and urbanisation and the like, was the soil from which his National Socialist sympathies would gradually grow from around 1931, culminating in his joining of the Nazi Party in 1933. With his phenomenological analysis of the experience of the human being (Dasein) he operates in a manner comparable to Siddhattha's analysis of human existence. Siddhattha's analysis originated against the backcloth of Emptiness; in Sein und Zeit Heidegger does not provide an MM backcloth for his analysis. He does not establish a link to a transcendent side of human existence. That would come later. A difference between Heidegger's negative analysis of human existence and Buddhism’s analysis of human existence as dukkha C‘suffering’) is that the latter holds out the promise of peace and happiness, which Heidegger does not. Resonating with the desperate time between the World Wars after the collapse of old Europe, his book was an immediate hit, a book without joy or love, unable to find a way to warm human companionship and, in a larger public setting, to workable large-scale social institutions. He offers diagnosis, but no therapy. At an individual level, his message stalls in the insistence on the freedom to be oneself. It would not be unfair to say that at the emotional, volitional and practical levels of his own existence, Heidegger did not achieve the personal integration and lucidity associated with mysticism at its deepest as understood in the model developing here. 363 Rim of a wheel Heidegger was out of touch with the emerging fragile democracy of the Weimar Germany of the time. In Sein und Ze/t the person, the philosophy, the ideology and the social setting were interdependent (cf. Fischer 2008). The rebel would find a cause. In the following few years the individualistic decisionism of Sein und Zeit would leap into the strong arms of totalitarianism and resonate with the decisionism of the Third Reich. What is attempted in this exploration hardly finds resonance with Heidegger’s first influential book. It was no MM document. Heidegger’s notion of metaphysics, Being and related concepts, which he raised after Sein und Zeit and returned to in a number of lectures and writings, is of interest in our present context. A sample of this turn is given in his inaugural lecture at the University of Freiburg, Was ist Metaphysik (1929)?, in which he clarifies that the sciences and pre-scientific, pre-philosophic human existence relegate what falls outside its immediate domain of interest (namely the beingness of things), to the realm of irrelevance, as if it is 'nothing' (das Nichts, das Nichtige). Heidegger latches onto that. This ‘nothing’ is not to be substantialised as if it is an object; it 'is' not, is not 'a being', and cannot be ‘thought’. It ‘is’ the absolutely 'not-being' (schlechthin Nicht-Seiende), confronted in angst. Yet precisely this ‘Nothing’ is the condition for the human being (Dasein) to exist; the human being emerges from this transcendent ‘Nothing’, and exists in it. The quest for the Nothing leads to metaphysics, understood as the quest for Being as such and as a whole. The Nothing is not the opposite or negation of the beingness of things, but its essence, enabling being things to be. Science restricts itself to the beingness of being things but presupposing the Nothing, needs to take the Nothing seriously. The human relationship to beingness essentially implies an involvement with the Nothing, and thus metaphysics. Philosophy issues in metaphysics. Heidegger has now arrived at a three-way split on his road. First, the threat of nihilism is still there, but he seems intent on not going there. Secondly, the notion of ‘nothingness’ at this stage could become an equivalent of Eckhart’s abyss and Buddhist-Taoist emptiness. Would he take this turn, perhaps position himself in line with the apophatic thinking of his German predecessor? Thirdly, might he opt to fill the void with some external powerful force demanding commitment and promising salvation? Would he take this third, fatally wrong turn and perhaps follow the dangerous siren calls luring him in the background in Sein und Zeit? In Vom Wesen der Wahrheit Cof the essence of truth’) (1930) (a lecture going back to 1930-1931 and repeated several times with slight changes in years to come), he continues his turn towards Being, now in terms of its relationship to Truth. Going back to the beginnings of Greek thinking, he envisions being (Sein, Greek on) as intimately coupled with truth (Greek aletheia), translated by him as Entborgenheit ('unconcealment). He moves decisively from truth as a purely epistemological concern into ontology. 364 Chapter 17 Truth is not confined to assertions; truth is, primarily, a feature of reality itself. The essence of speaking truth, is being open to the thing that is sooken about, allowing it to show itself in a domain of openness and unconcealment. The being thing (das Seiende) is the present (das Anwesende), that is, the revealed (das Offenbare). Existence in the unconcealment also constitutes the essence of the human being (Dasein). Truth is not an achievement by the human ‘subject’ speaking about an ‘object’ (which is the dominant trend in modern Western philosophy). Truth is an opening of the human being, essentially in freedom, to the openness of the thing; it is the attitude of 'letting be' (Sein lassen): letting the being be. Close to the concern of this chapter of ours, Heidegger declares the openness in which the human being stands to pertain not only to singular instances of being, but also to the unconcealment of Being as such and as a whole. To Being in this sense, he applies the Greek term Physis. Being as a whole (elsewhere he also calls it Kosmos), unconceals itself. But that Being hardly ever becomes a theme of human reflection, he contends. Pushing further, Heidegger's text reveals a mystery: the mystery of concealment (Verborgenheit) of being, which is more primordial (older', he says) than unconcealment (Entborgenheit) - a concealment which makes the unconcealment possible (1930:193ff.). By this mystery, he understands more than an embarrassing puzzle waiting for a solution. He implies a primordial ontological paradox of presence and absence: of being made possible by 'non- being' (Un-wesen), of truth made possible by 'un-truth' (Un-wahrheit) (which is, needless to say, not the same as ‘falsity’). Even in philosophy, in metaphysics, this paradox of Nature becoming unconcealed, thereby strengthening the mystery of its concealment, does not become a theme of reflection. That is why traditional academic philosophy needs to be transcended. The structural similarity of Heidegger's thinking to Neoplatonism is clear. Could his transcendence of unconcealment by concealment be seen as moving in the ambit of the intention of our chapter to see light as transcended by darkness, and the manifestation of Being by an ever-receding darkness? Could this allow being things to be seen in a context even 'older than Cosmos, namely Infinite Being, and Infinite Being in the still 'older' contexts of Eternity and the utter darkness of Absoluteness? He does not follow through in a similar direction explicitly. Nevertheless, here we may approximate a vital area in his thinking. Our attempt is totally borne by the conviction that the human being proceeds from and is enveloped by the mystery of a series of larger contexts that end on unknowable Horizon. The free flight of MM seems to be beckoning. Yet it is at this stage that the undertow of a vólkisch fixation on the German people as cultural and biological entity with its pseudo-mystical blood and soil associations starts to display itself. By the early thirties, he moves freely and enthusiastically in Nationalist Socialist company, even though the anti-Semitic sentiments and ominous intentions of the movement, bent on dictatorship, were clear. The possibility of 365 Rim of a wheel an alternative to both Communism and Nazism, based on the notion of a community of free, compassionate individuals, rooted in the vision of a spacious MM, was not developed. He would join the NSDAP on May 1, 1933. As rector of the University of Freiburg (1933-1934) he would promote the Nazi cause: enforcing the Nazi political agenda in the running of the university. It is as if the German cause, in National Socialistic dress, replaced the focus of his conservative Catholic youth. At a practical level, he was politically naive and balanced precariously on a tightrope between his role as significant intellectual and being a small, tolerated cog in a big political machine. Somehow, an incipient and potentially great MM seemed to glide high above in the sky in total abstraction and without any practical content and moral implication, unconnected to the subterranean waters of the collective convulsions in his society. Somehow, his political stance was connected to the core of his philosophy at the time. Did Heidegger after Sein und Zeit close the lid on threatening nihilism? It would seem not. He clothed National Socialism in the garb of pseudo-mysticism. In order to unlock the MM potential of Heidegger’s thinking, the deeply problematic aspects of his thinking and the implications and applications of that thinking have to be recognised and taken into account. Heidegger’s lecture Einführung in die Metaphysik [‘introduction to metaphysics'] (first delivered in 1935) (Heidegger 1983) provides another analysis of the concept 'Being'. At the time he is starting to distance himself from crude National Socialism as it exists on the ground, but has not undone the heady mix of hyper abstract philosophy and National Socialist ideology. The problem, he explains, is that 'Being' is suspended between definiteness on the one hand (specific trees, and so on), and indefiniteness and vagueness on the other (what exactly ‘is’ 'Being'?). ‘Being’ ‘is’ not a being thing in the sense that God, earth, cup and so on 'is' in our understanding and speech, with reference to the sphere of actuality and presence. Going back to early Greek thought, and through an analysis of the various modulations of the German word scheinen ('glow', ‘come to light), Heidegger concludes that Being is Appearing, that Appearing is the essence of Being (ibid.:107). He derives the essential connection of Being and Appearing from the Greek roots, identical in meaning, pohu- (becoming physis: translated by him as ‘being’) and pha- (becoming phaenesthar: ‘appear’): so Being is Appearance, (as seen above) Unconcealment (a/ethe/a). Being is Appearing, making manifest, and becoming manifest. In passing, Heidegger's strong focus on Greek-German thought in his corpus of writing was related to his fascination with the primordial etymology of Greek and German words which express the roots of Being. This was not unlike the role awarded to Hebrew and Sanskrit in other quarters. Let me again register, down to the wording, the proximity to the Neoplatonist Orthodox theology of, for example, a Palamas (see Ch. 18) with its vision of light and glory (doxa). That is the good part. The problematic part is that this 366 Chapter 17 lecture remained situated in the context of an acceptance of the state and its apparatus at that time. In Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes (1935/36) he deals with his central concern, Being as Appearing, Unconcealment, from a different perspective once again. A work of art - such as a pair of farm worker’s boots or a Greek temple - allows one or another thing (a being) to appear, become manifest in its essence. This is the a/etheia of that being: what it is in truth. Since it is about truth, art is thus not a matter of representation of, correspondence with, some reality. The temple does not imitate, but presents the god. Unconcealment is concealed, unknown, a mystery encircling all beings, like a clearing (Lichtung) in the jungle, allowing them to appear, but not observed and thought about as such. The concept 'clearing' with its association of clarity and light reminds, with all differences, of Gregory and Suhrawardi (see Ch. 18). Heidegger can say that truth originates from nothingness, but this is not taken in any substantialist sense: out of a previous 'non-truth', ‘non-being’, the truth of the thing, its being, emerges. Could his description of the clearing be related to what this investigation is struggling to articulate: light emerging from darkness, the being of Cosmos emerging from Non-Being Absoluteness, with Infinite Being the link between them? Perhaps. In Heidegger, beingness (being things) recedes into and emerges from the mystery of Being-Nothingness. A difference between what this investigation has attempted so far and what is found in Heidegger, is that this essay speaks of Cosmos as 'emerging' and introduces the notion of Absolute Horizon as a word to give some meaning to 'emerging'. In terms of Fa-tsang's simile of the golden lion: | am spellbound by the magic moment of ‘gold’ ‘becoming’ ‘lion’, ‘being’ ‘lion’. What a subtle difference between ‘lion’ and ‘gold’, what an event, this coincidence! What might ‘becoming’, ‘being’ mean in this context? The notion ‘Infinite Being’ is a take on that magical event. In Fa-tsang's imagery: Heidegger speaks of the lion, of a mystery lurking in the lion and the emergence of the lion, but not of the gold from which the lion emerges. Implicitly, as one may read him, he issues a warning that substantialising dangers lurk in notions such as 'Absoluteness', Emptiness' and 'gold'. Speaking could (would?) contaminate the mystery. His warning must be taken seriously. It would be the ultimate error, as Buddhism kept reminding over the centuries. Yet MM systems such as Yogacara and Hua-yen point a way of speaking before and within, but not about, the mystery, and without desecrating the mystery. Indeed, our notion of Infinite Being here seems to approximate Heidegger's notion of Being. The problem is that (to make use of Fa-tsang again) Heidegger's notion is not really a connection of gold and lion. In the context of the present argument, this lack of connection is important. He does not entertain an idea of radical Emptiness (Absoluteness) on the further side of Being, and he does not connect Being with the concreteness of being things in this world either. 367 Rim of a wheel His thinking lacks mysticism (the gold of emptiness). It also does not provide concrete moral guidance, neither for a wholesome individual existence, nor for a wholesome public (including political) existence in the world (the lion). He was living proof of this. Infinite Being, as intended in this exploration of ours, links both ways: towards Absoluteness and Cosmos;towards radical mysticism and morality. In Heidegger’s thinking, the connection is not made. The personal ‘mysticism’ part with its universal outreach and compassion, inner personal clarity, integrity and wise and skilful action does not materialise. He does not explicitly link his reflections to mysticism, neither as it occurred in Western thought, nor as a homoversal occurrence. In his life, it does not seem to have featured in a serious sense. He stands before the promised land of radical mysticism, so to speak, but does not enter into it. In a postscript to Was ist Metaphysik (1943[a]), he re-emphasises that by ‘Nothing’ he does not mean a nihilistic denial of the beingness of things Cin their ‘empirical’ presence, we might say), but the equivalent of what he terms ‘Being’ (das Sein): Being-as-such. No matter how hard we search, that cannot be found, he says. All we can find, is das Seiende (beings in their beingness). ‘Being’ as das Nicht-Seiende, the not-beingness, is therefore the equivalent of ‘the Nothing’: the ‘space’ (Weitráumigkeit) guaranteeing each thing its being and constituting the miracle ‘that being is’. Thinking about this dimension is true Thinking (Denken). In the same year Heidegger approaches the same problem as part of his ongoing interpretation of Nietzsche since 1935. | here mention only his Nietzsche’s Wort ‘Gott is tot’ (1943[b]) CNietzsche's phrase “God is dead". This phrase expresses not Nietzsche’s private opinion, he argues, but a historical movement, and as such the implicit presupposition of Western metaphysics. Nietzsche aims at more than the Christian God; it concerns the suprasensory world as such, which has, since Plato, been regarded as the real world in contradistinction from the inferior sensory world. The suprasensory world (with all sorts of associated notions such as ideas, God, progress, culture, civilisation, moral law and so on) has been the domain of metaphysics, and it has now come to an end. The supreme values have been devalued. There is no aim, no answer to the question ‘why?’. Western metaphysics results in nihilism, which is much more than ordinary atheism or unbelief; it is the groundswell of Western history, with universal implications for the modern world. Neither the demise of Christianity nor the revolt of the masses or technocracy is the cause of nihilism. They are its results. Nihilism is grounded in metaphysics itself. Heidegger argues that Nietzsche's own thinking remains ambivalently trapped in metaphysics, for Nietzsche posits the metaphysics of the will to power as the overcoming of nihilism. However, it is not. Nietzsche remains metaphysician, does not understand the essence of nihilism. His own metaphysics is deadly in itself, for it disallows Being, as has been the case throughout Western metaphysics. Being, starting even before Plato and Aristotle, has always been 368 Chapter 17 forgotten, unthought, withdrawn in its truth. This is the ‘oblivion of Being’ (Seinsvergessenheit). Besides, metaphysics is not merely an error. It is a moment in the history of Being itself. Nihilism is the essence of metaphysics, and the Nothing is the essence of nihilism, and the Nothing is Being, we might paraphrase. Roughly at this time, around his occupation with Nietzsche and Hólderlin in the mid 1930s, he starts to reflect on the end of metaphysics, and his awareness of Being (now written as Seyn) starts to take on a quasi-religious shape. These reflections, meditations, on Being (published 100 years after his birth under the title Beiträge zur Philosophie [vom Ereignis]) (Heidegger 1989) in form often drops into incomprehensibility. He does not place a high premium on communicability. What Heidegger offers here, is not tentative speculation, conscious of its own limitations, but unverifiable, unfalsifiable and often ambiguous oracle-, revelation-, guru-like pronouncements, open to various interpretations. In content, his writing reminds of an initiate into a rather exclusive cult of God-like Being. His notion of Being as it emerges here, leads one to suspect a functional equivalence with the old Neoplatonic Christian theology of the deus absconditus. It suggests itself as a secular theology with the same structural elements as the Christian theology that he abandoned in histwenties. God becomes Being andthefallintosinbecomes Seinsvergessenheit and Seinsverlassenheit Cabandonment of Being’), from which one can be saved, in which process Heidegger himself seems to play a significant role as prophet. The God spoken of by Nietzsche is dead, but perhaps a new, unknown God, announced by Hólderlin, will bring delivery from nihilism, and he might be awaited. Heidegger's assimilative, almost symbiotic reading of his texts, undercutting the otherness of such texts and their authors, is something different from the tendentional reading with its recognition of historical differences and of the conscious intentions of authors, which are advocated in this essay. In addition, all of this still centres in a strong fixation on the German people (e.g. Heidegger 1989:42ff.). During the years immediately preceding the War, Heidegger does not seemto have distanced himself openly from the 'euthanasia' of 'inferior human beings and the increasingly violent nature of National Socialistic anti-Semitism, let alone resist it or offer solidarity with the pockets of resistance emerging at the time. That continued through the War period. Heidegger was seemingly not aware of the dissociation in his thinking between the two universes of Being and ordinary, including political, reality. He developed no moral basis related to Being on which practical life could be founded. He provided no middle axioms for effective public morality informed by compassion flowing from Being and constructed no ducts through which the potential of his thinking on Being could be channelled into real life. In addition, he provided no concrete moral lead to industrial society from his place of escape and refuge in the idyllic hut in Todtnauberg. His dream turned 369 Rim of a wheel out to be a nightmare. Yet, simultaneously with, and unaffected by all of this, as if operating at some Olympian height on a completely different level than ordinary reality, he continued his reflection on sublime Being. After the War, Heidegger never admitted to any political wrongdoing, assumed no responsibility for what had been done by the National Socialist State, recognised no personal guilt and felt himself misunderstood on all sides. In his thinking, a shift had certainly taken place: Being became its centrepiece. Nevertheless, he still provided no bridge from Being to being a moral agent, acting critically, constructively, concretely in society. What he now did, again astutely in tune with the post-War mood in his country, was to seek a route into an apolitical, private subjectivity. He would find a large sympathetic audience and following. Shortly after the war, in his Brief über den 'Humanismus' ('letter about humanism’) (1946), he sets out the direction he would be following for the rest of his life, centring in the notion of Being and openness and his critique of an objectifying manner of speech concerning that openness. I note his insistence that Being is not an object, 'a' Being, some substance under whatever name, with appreciation. The term 'MM' put forward in Chapter 1 of this book indeed intends the awestruck experience, orientated to non-fixable openness, observable in Heidegger's work at this time, as it is in the lives of many others journeying in this domain of human experience. We may applaud Heidegger's positioning of the human being (Dasein) as standing in the openness of Being. What is thought (in Denken) and brought anew to language born from stillness, is the human experience of openness. In fact, the human being, human language, is the locus where the clearing becomes clear. Up to a point, this investigation can warm to what he says concerning the role of language. The awe is silent, yet speaks; the speech gives access to the openness and in the human speech, the openness reveals itself. Thought, silence, speech and openness are intertwined. In a Buddhist context: there is not only critical, devastating Nagarjuna, nevertheless tolerating the level of conventional speech; there is also receptive, constructive Vasubandhu. Furthermore, there is the supremely light-hearted speaking of Taoist Chuang- Tzu and Buddhist Fa-tsang. In the drift of this essay: projective, inventive speech, not claiming correspondence to what Heidegger critically refers to as 'onto-theological' fact, but expressing and promoting the sense of non-fixed Infinite Being in Cosmic beings, could indeed belong to MM. This may happen through playful mythopoetic constructions in full awareness of their own limited usefulness. An essay such as this can be nothing more than a makeshift, homemade compass, carried in hand over a difficult landscape to find one's bearings. Heidegger himself did not quite see it that way. He was not playing, but was deadly serious. What he had to say was not his private opinion, but - still brimming with authoritarianism - presented as the voice of Being itself. What he expected, invited and allowed was not critical discussion, but 370 Chapter 17 discipleship. In addition, his Being did not peter out into a vast and empty beyond, but assumed the marks of a sovereign, hidden God. The aim of this excursus on Heidegger precludes any attempt at comprehensive interpretation. No doubt, the interesting sociology of his fame, especially the remarkable reception that befell him after World War II in some philosophical and theological quarters, would be a rewarding topic. | also will not touch on his increasing theoretical involvement in the last quarter of his life with technology (he became a pioneer of the ecological movement) and art Cincluding his own attempts at poetry and his fascination with Cézanne). Rather, one more time, let me test the notion of 'MM' utilised in this essay against Heidegger's idea of ‘thought’ (Denken) as set out in Was heisst Denken? (what is thought?) (2000 [1952]. He distinguishes thought from both philosophy and science. His attitude towards philosophy seems ambivalent. On the one hand, he glorifies philosophy; on the other hand, with the claim that in our time we are not thinking, he seems to debunk technical, rational philosophy. By not being thoughtful (in spite of the rationality of the technological age) he intends the oblivion of Being, the missing of a receptive encounter with Being as the source of existence and meaning. The same topic is addressed in his 75th year, in Das Ende der Philosophie und die Aufgabe des Denkens ('the end of philosophy and the task of thought) (Heidegger 2007 [1964]. Here it becomes quite clear that he does not think of Thought as the termination of philosophy and metaphysics in a negative sense (indeed: 'philosophy is metaphysics’) , but the culmination (Vo/lendung) thereof. The problem he has with Western philosophy and metaphysics (he refers to Hegel and Husserl), is that it is built on the subjectivity of consciousness. Heidegger repeats the basic theme: Truth (aletheia), Being, enables the presence of beings. The clearing makes presence possible. Thought (Denken) is the raising of the question concerning that dimension. And, in view of our interest in Neoplatonism throughout, he makes clear that by Lichtung he does not (as was the case earlier in his life) mean the metaphor of ‘light’ (brightness), but the spatial metaphor of a 'clearing' (in a forest) (Capobianco 2010:87ff.). There is a connection between the two, but 'clearing' has primacy, for in the clearing there can be light as well as darkness. Again Heidegger goes back to pre-Platonic Thought (here, Parmenides) for his inspiration. Consciously stepping out beyond Hegel and Husserl, he enquires into the concealedness that makes presence possible (Heidegger 2007 [1964]:88). By this time, he has long left the phenomenology of his early work behind. Presenting in his own manner the style of thinking of Vedanta and approximating the core intuition of Buddhism and Taoism, he refers to 'the calm heart of the clearing’ as the ‘locus of silence’. Beyond the endeavour of the enquiring subject, Heidegger postulates thinking as receptive ‘hearing’ (Vernehmen) Cibid.:88). That is as far as his thinking of Being developed. Is this stepping out of the confines of philosophy, attained in his old age, perhaps 371 Rim of a wheel the outcome of the route embarked on in so much agony in his Sein und Zeit 4O years before? Does Heidegger’s position mark him as tending towards MM in the sense intended in this model, perhaps the most significant exponent of this tendency in the (post-)modern Western context? Indeed. Being was the central interest of Heidegger since a turn in his thinking during the 1930s. Now his affinity for pre-Platonic and pre-Aristotelian Greek philosophy and Neoplatonism comes through strongly. He does not present Being as a reality, but is fascinated by the mystery of Being, by Being as mystery. That is also the focal point of this chapter. How does he articulate this sense of awe conceptually? His critique of what he came to see as the essence of ‘metaphysics’ and termed ‘onto-theology’, is of central importance. By that, he means Western inclination, going back to Aristotle, to postulate a highest Being, namely God. Importantly from our point of view, Heidegger does not enter into a regress, postulating that Being is transcended by an even higher Being as Ground, and he wants to transcend the metaphorical and mythological speech accompanying that tendency. However, would he allow Being (the seemingly, ‘as if’, ‘Nothing’) to dissolve into - and to appear from - Absoluteness, Emptiness? No less than any of the figures visited in this chapter, except the exponents of Pure Land Buddhism, did Heidegger make ‘Nothingness’ atheme of reflection in his writing on Being, as has been noted in the Japanese reception of his work. This feature also distinguishes him from Hegel. To the extent that he does that, he confirms the drift of this treatise: experiencing the amazement, the awesome shock of being confronted with the wonder of Being as resulting from the backdrop of an awareness of Absoluteness, emptiness, ‘Nothing’. Yet whereas he (continuing the kind of analysis provided in Sein und Zeit) sees angst as the basic emotional connection to the Nothing, this essay relates to the attitude of a Siddhattha, resting in Absoluteness in peace. Reflecting all the anxiety of the period between the World Wars, Heidegger probes and probes in deadly seriousness, without the limpid calm of the ancient Indian. Compared to the easy style, seeking clear communication, of a Siddhattha expressing his ideas, in most of Heidegger’s writing his forbidding language does not exactly provide easy access to his thinking. There remains a difference between his insistence on Being and the Buddhist insistence on absolute Emptiness. Looking at him alongside some of the others, our reflections on Being have been worthwhile. It would be banal to conflate such divergent systems into a false identity, and such a procedure has consistently been avoided throughout this essay. Likewise, it would have been pointless to read the model of this essay into his or any other system. Nevertheless, a methodological axiom of this study is that all such perspectives have the same Origin and that, however far they might move apart as they wind through history, they ultimately tend in the same direction and have the same End. As far as their cognitive status is concerned, 372 Chapter 17 all such systems are constructions, at best (self-)educational toys, but some are more open and receptive towards Absoluteness than others. In his thinking, Heidegger, proceeding from the roots of Greek-Western thinking, reconstructs that thinking to be more closely related to Buddhism than is visible at the surface. Parmenides on the one hand, and Lao-tzu and Siddhattha on the other hand, do not appear as such antipodes as is usually assumed. From the point of this exploration, Heidegger does appear to be problematic regarding his social and political ethics. MM as understood here, is connected to effective social presence and action, driven by love towards all living beings. Mysticism is not morally irrelevant. There is an essential symbiosis between MM, mysticism of purified emotion-volition and mysticism of the compassionate, effective deed. Heidegger set out from an antimodern, reactionary, authoritarian version of Catholicism. Rebuffed by the Church (in his youth he aspired to become a Jesuit), he reacted to that Catholicism by aligning himself to another reactionary, authoritarian movement, National Socialism. He never overcame both by transcending them in a larger framework, which might have prevailed over all resentment. To summarise and conclude: * With reference to Absoluteness: Heidegger moves as close to the edge of the abyss of Absoluteness as anyone before him in the Western tradition. It ties in with our focus on the unfolding of Origin. He approximates Indian (Vedantic) and East Asian (Buddhist and Taoist) thinking, but there remains a difference with the Buddhist-Taoist insistence on absolute Emptiness, followed in this essay. Heidegger does not speak of the darkness behind or in, the lighting or clearing - not the darkness of nihilism, but of Absoluteness. * With reference to the Principles distinguished in Part Two: Heidegger's model is strong on Witting (Ch. 8: the intellectual side of things), yet weak on Wanting (Ch. 9: the emotional-volitional side of things). It is also weak on Becoming (Ch. 11: there is no real connection between Being and beings), yet strong on Can-ing (Ch. 12: Being becomes an instance of power). In his thinking, the Principle of Singularising (Ch. 14) features very strongly: he placed an enormous emphasis on individual authenticity. His model is weak on Pluralising (Ch. 15): in life and thought, he could not relate to otherness; his options were restricted to subordination to or exertion of power over, or virtual identification with some idealised 'other'. Furthermore, his model is not strong on Totalising (Ch. 16): he did not exactly have an inclusive, integrating mindset, and he surprises at times by the exclusivism and provincialism in aspects of his thinking and positioning in life. * Anticipating Cosmos (Part Four): Heidegger's anticipation of the ecological concern must be appreciated, but again he remains at the level of abstract generalisations; his thinking is not exactly useful for a workable public morality. Towards the end of his life, he set himself up as a prophet of doom, 373 Rim of a wheel while airing vague future quasi-religious expectations of salvation. Such a stance is of course unassailable, but it provides no norms and criteria for constructive-critical engagement with the world. After all, one may fear, there may be an inner affinity between Heidegger’s initial subjection to an authoritarian version of Catholicism, his later collaboration with authoritarian Nazism, and then his attitude towards authoritative Being, on which he himself was the authority. The greatest problem may be that Heidegger’s notion of Sein itself is impoverished of warmth. After these general references to various systems and the relationships among them as far as they may affect our notion of Infinitude, it is now time to pay closer attention to each of the facets of the quaternary of Infinitude. 374 Energy-Matter E 547 Darkness and light Various religions and metaphysical systems, including Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, despised Matter. Those who stood in mystic awe before it were rare. This chapter aligns itself with such ones. It sees Matter as one of the emerging constituents of Infinite Being, alongside and co-emerging with Infinite Life, Love and Thought. A closer look at the terms kataphatic (‘affirmative’) and apophatic (‘negating’), used to suggest two types of mysticism, would be useful in our present context. The first denotes a theology and mysticism of ‘presence’, celebrating experienceable Being. God is (omni)present, and that presence can be positively affirmed, experienced and thought. Typically, such affirmative speech would attach anthropomorphic and mythological categories to God without any sense of problem: we can talk with and about him. This attitude would celebrate the presence of God Who is so and such and who did this and that in the past, is even doing it right here and now, if only we would open our eyes. However, he has no physical, bodily existence. This chapter is aware of the limitations of this type of speaking about Being as if it were an available entity, How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Energy-Matter’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 575-404, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.18 375 Ene rgy-Matter and as if it were an available person (‘he or ‘she’), in this context often referred to as ‘a’ or ‘the’ ‘supreme Being’, or ‘God’. This chapter is also critical of the fact that Matter has not been seen as part of that Being (God). With ‘negative’ MM, we enter into deeper water. It comes in four shades of intensity: 1. 376 Firstly, it may refer to a lack of application or the weakness of the human cognitive faculty before the brightly, perfectly manifest (but non-material, non-corporeal) divine majesty. This is thinly distinguishable from kataphatic mysticism. Being (God) can be known, but, because of dust or a beam in the viewer's eye, is not known. . Secondly, it may refer to the experience of the hiddenness, like a star behind a cloud, of a very real Reality, a very real (non-material) Being. This occurs mainly in the context of the theistic faiths and it could blend with agnosticism in contemporary parlance: God is incognito. It may blend with the idea that God is ‘absent’, so absent that he cannot be remembered, called to mind or thought. The fact that X is absent, does not mean that X does not exist; X could be in the room next door. His absence may trigger pangs of suffering, but that is precisely because his reality is not in doubt. In the notion of Deus absconditus (‘the hidden God’), the denotation of Deus is not different from its denotation in Deus revelatus ('the revealed God’), although the connotation differs. The anguish could be intensified by the question: Suppose, just suppose the unimaginable, that, for whatever reason, X is not coming, perhaps because he is dead? The absence of the Beloved is a recurring theme in theistic mystical literature. It is also an element in the modern Western crisis of meaning. Many Westerners miss that disembodied, absent God. That is not the line followed here, as we attempt to come to terms with Infinite Being. This essay does not share such a sense of loss. It does not walk in the procession of disillusioned doubters mourning the absence (even the death) of Matterless God. Nor does it join the queue of those who celebrate it with paeans of cynical joy. These reflections do not presuppose either the presence or the absence of such an un-Mattered Being. . Thirdly, the cognitive negation may, in the minds of its adherents, blend with the ontological dimension: Being as such is without form and therefore incomprehensible, beyond human cognition. Our meditation accommodates that at the level of Infinitude: it interprets ‘Being’ as an aspect of sheer formless Infinitude, just, only just, starting to announce its emergence, hovering, as if tentatively, on the threshold of ‘is-not’ and ‘is’ and of human cognition - and as showing Infinite Matter as one of its dimensions. . Fourthly, apophaticism may (but that is seldom the case) refer to what is termed ‘Absoluteness’ on this journey. On Absolute Horizon, Infinite Being is transcended altogether. Being disintegrates and with it Matter. That is the ultimate MM Horizon of this essay. Chapter 18 It is interesting to note that in the affirming and negating mysticisms the physical qualities of ‘light’ and ‘darkness’ regularly presented themselves as analogies of epistemological and ontological aspects of knowing or not knowing God. Epistemologically, ‘light’ in mystic meditation often means clear knowledge and understanding. ‘Darkness’ means not merely not knowing (which would still imply the possibility of knowing, not knowing being a lapse); no, ‘darkness’ means non-knowing, the inapplicability of our faculty of knowing altogether. So, as the mystically fascinated observer peers into the depth, one ‘sees’ an ever-receding darkness the further one looks. The closer to us, the brighter things appear. Yet a remarkable paradox, a turning of the tables, makes its appearance. The losing, the abandonment of the bright certainties of convention and empirical fact and the entering into non-knowing is ‘enlightenment’. The refusal to look further than the seemingly obvious, to keep staring at the small patch of bright around us, is blindness. The further we look towards Absoluteness, the darker it becomes, and yet it is not a dull, dead darkness, but a glowing one. Kingsley says of Parmenides: he ‘never describes himself as travelling out of darkness into the light. When you follow what he says you see he was going in exactly the opposite direction’ (Kingsley 1999:57) - the road is the road into ‘the dark places of wisdom’. Indeed. However, let me see clearly that the road leads back again from Darkness to the light of everyday knowledge and science, intensifying their clarity. Ontologically, ‘light’ easily becomes a metaphor for existence; ‘darkness’, for the threat of not-existence, death. Therefore, existence (of Cosmos) could readily be associated with eternal light. Our meditation sees a different emphasis: beyond the light of Existence lies a dimension, not of negative Nothing, but of transcendent Non-Existence, of Absoluteness - metaphorically speaking, absolute Darkness. The world, Cosmos, is a patch of light surrounded by Darkness. Again, that Darkness is not dead dull: it glows with creative potential. The darkness, although not ‘seen’, has, for the mystical imagining, its Splendour, Glory, Beauty. Infinite Matter is an aspect of an intermediate band, connecting Cosmos and Absoluteness-Eternity. Peering into it from our cosmic side of Horizon, we see Matter emerging brightly; on its further side, Matter disappears in darkness. Again, the road leads back from the awareness of Non-Matter to an intensified appreciation of physical Cosmos as a precious, ephemeral opportunity. Light as a physical entity, a form of energy, makes its appearance with the emergence of Cosmos. Yet it does not simply bang into existence out of nothing as a purely physical, material entity. In these reflections, physical light is revealed as emerging from a depth beyond comprehension. The Cosmic Event with its physical light starts to happen on Absolute Horizon, emerging as Infinite Energy-Matter. This dimension of Infinite Energy-Matter on the outer edge of cosmic energy matter is as far as mystic experience can reach. There is nothing to fear, nothing 377 Energy-Matter to desire, nothing to hold on to. People think they see figures in the light emerging from the darkness. They give them names, tell myths about them and make their myths compulsory. People see more than there is, and also less. Their myths are not lies. They are understandable; contain profound intuitions of truth, guiding humankind through all kinds of desert to fertile lands of spirit. There nevertheless is a simpler awe: before Infinitude, not as if there were some Thing or some One outside of us, confronting us. The attitude in these meditations is quiet awe before the emergence of the things of Cosmos ... from mystery that, for lack of something better, may be hinted at as Infinity, including Infinite Energy-Matter. This dimension, it is postulated, lies beyond the sticks and bricks of everyday experience and is not only accessible to mystical experience but also merges with the cosmological dimensions investigated by current theoretical physics. E S48 Spectrum of light to apeiron (Anaximander) Let me start this historical survey by revisiting two ancients standing at the beginning of humanity’s reflective awareness of Infinitude: Anaximander and Siddhattha Gotama. Their quality has been tested and enhanced by the intense heat of thought over millennia. From the beginning, the problem of Being was a preoccupation of Greek thinkers. It would remain so in later European thought. The first to whom ‘Infinitude’ was a central intellectual and mystical concern was the lonian Anaximander (c. 612-545 BCE) of the cosmopolitan Greek city of Miletus, a melting pot of cultures, languages and religions. That coastal city of commerce lay in south-western Asia Minor (modern Turkey), where Asia and Europe met and mixed. Anaximander found himself in a situation where scientific impulses, a variety of religions and a number of ancient mythologies (Greek, Phoenician, Hittite and other Near Eastern ones) competed, presenting a challenge to a thinking person who would be unwilling simply to pick one or stop wondering. Anaximander sought an Ultimate ‘behind’ the manifold. He found it neither in a personal deity to be adored in a religious cult, nor in a natural element such as water, air or fire, but in the speculative idea of featureless indeterminacy, stripped of all quantity and quality. What makes him unique was that the idea of Infinitude was the central axis of his thinking, more so than with any other Greek MM thinker. From the perspective of the comparable situation today (the challenge of science and reason, the meeting and collision of religious discourses, the undermining of traditional mythologies, and the search for the ultimate nature of reality) he was a pioneer of MM, seeking a reasonable, intellectually defensible position with a mystical undertone. He called the great indeterminacy to apeiron (‘the Boundless’). That was the central concept dominating his thinking to a degree unequalled in Greek 378 Chapter 18 thought before or after. Using related concepts such as ‘Eternity’ and ‘Infinitude’, we have the advantage of two and a half millennia of refinement and development behind us. Anaximander started it all. Having nothing to go on, he did not succeed in anticipating and fielding all possible critical queries. Yet, the vision he came up with contained a basic structure emerging as we today are exploring the same type of problem and experimenting with the same type of strategy to solve it: emergence and return of all things from some indeterminate source, and the evolution of life from, ultimately, that same source. Anaximander could indeed be called the father of the idea of biological evolution in the West: earth developing from wet to dry, and producing living beings, first living in water and then migrating to land. To him the universe evolves from the divine apeiron as from a seed. Divine yes, but not a mythological god. In terms of present-day culture, his thinking was neither theological nor quite scientific yet. His concept 'the Boundless' did not go as far as 'Emptiness' in Buddhism or Taoism. Nor is it clear whether he understood his key concept to mean quantitatively unbounded (spatially and temporally without end) or qualitatively unbounded (utterly indeterminate) (cf. Sweeney 1972:55-73). Probably both, referring to the origin of all, and thus ‘inexhaustible in resources, as well as itself without origin and terminus: it is indestructible, immortal, ageless and, for that reason, divine’ (ibid.:62). Does the Unbounded just surround the world, or does it also permeate the world? Did opposites arise subsequent to the apeiron, or were they potentially present in the apeiron? Are they the same as their source, even identical with it, or distinct, even different from it? By implication, was there real change from the apeiron to such opposites? Was his view by implication monistic, or perhaps dualistic? Such questions are undecided among his specialist exegetes (ibid.:59ff.). His thinking operated prior to such finer distinctions, including the distinction between matter and spirit. In the end, Anaximander probably did not completely transcend the idea of this primordial source, this arche, being a semi-material ‘something’, some substance. Yet his central category does point toward a limitless openness. His views deserve attention precisely here, under the heading 'Infinitude'. Even Absoluteness may have been the implied direction of the drift of his thinking. He must be appreciated and admired in terms of what was possible to him, given the historical situation in which he struggled. He was the first to break the ground for all who would till this land, and he could not anticipate all possibilities that would only emerge as following generations dealt with such problems. To Anaximander, the world first crystallises out of the Boundless in the form of warm and cold, dry and wet and so on - in short, in the form of physical opposites. Such categories, taken from nature, were the principles through which his Cosmos emerged in a cosmogonic process of emerging and returning to its source. Such categories seem to have the status of creative potentialities rather than actual realities. That would imply some sort of momentous 379 Energy-Matter change - some eternal self-movement - from mere potentiality in the Boundless to become the ‘real’ world. It becomes something else ... but probably not quite. There was an element of ‘otherness’ between the Boundless and the world, but what exactly was the degree and quality of that ‘otherness’? His Boundless contains in principle everything that becomes. From the Boundless, worlds emerge and to the Boundless they return - notions we can relate to today. We see him manoeuvring between the hard rock of monism and the deep sea of dualism. These are the typical problems and implications we are coming across repeatedly as we explore this type of model systematically and historically. It is also the problem of a chapter such as the present one. Here the material, physical aspects of his thinking are not simply discarded as a naive primitivism, but as a dimension worthy of scrutiny. Let us not hide our admiration for his achievement, primitive as it may seem to the historically naive of today. His apeiron itself was probably alive and self- moving, a living body, with awareness, knowledge and consciousness of some sort Cibid.:62ff.). The model emerging in these reflections listens respectfully and carefully to the ancient lonian; this imagining also suggests Matter, Life and Thought in the creative dimension of Infinitude. akasanaficayatana (the Buddha) The Indian Siddhattha Gotama was probably a slightly younger contemporary of the Greek Anaximander during the remarkable age in human history, starting around the 8th century BCE, termed the ‘axial period’ by Karl Jaspers (1953). Our present topic brings to light a strikingly similar interest in this dimension between the Greek and the Indian, as well as a striking difference: in spite of their similar interest Anaximander moves closer to the physical world; Siddhattha rather explores the inner world and a dimension beyond Anaximander’s apeiron. Overstretching the intentions of the early Greek thinkers themselves, Greek thought became the foundation of an outlook that would eventually culminate in the triumph of modern science seemingly without a mystical affinity. This essay explores the essential connection between science and mysticism, exteriority and interiority, as two sides of the same thing. In terms of the model of Infinitude put forward here: the sciences are the investigation, in the human context, of the outer aspect of Infinitude (the rim of the wheel) as it becomes concretised in Cosmos; mysticism is the investigation, in the human context, of the inner aspect of Infinitude (the spokes of Eternity). In principle, science and mysticism can be linked. Present- day dominant culture has lost that connection and it is called upon, in our own liminal time, to restore the integration, for the sake of humanity and all life on earth. The rupture between the two already started to become manifest in the centuries before the Common Era, and over time widened to the chasm that we witness today. 380 Chapter 18 The Buddha emphasised the concept of àkàsaánaficayatana (‘Dimension of Boundless Space’) as a dimension of advanced meditation. It is noteworthy that the element àKkàsa (‘space’) in the phrase does not fly away in the blue yonder, but, while having no objective reality, nevertheless retains a connection with physical reality (Cosmic space). It is an in-between dimension. In Theravada Buddhism, it is not totally unconditioned; only nibbàna (the psychological epistemological equivalent of ontological sufifiatà ‘emptiness’) is completely unconditioned. The ‘Dimension of Boundless Space’ (the equivalent of our ‘Infinite Matter’) features between totally unconditioned Emptiness and totally conditioned Cosmos and Cosmic Space. Accordingtothe TheravadacommentatorBuddhaghosainhis Visuddhumagga (the path of purification) (Buddhaghosa 1979), the experience of Boundless Space is a refinement of the experience of physical objects in the world (‘gross physical matter’, X.1). This refinement becomes possible through the contemplation of nine relatively pure material objects (kasinas), such as coloured discs. Having reached a certain level on this contemplative path the mystic, dispassionate and non-attached towards even such subtle materiality, then wants to surmount materiality as such (X.2), and simply withdraws his attention from the sphere of sensory stimulation. What now opens up before him is ‘Space’ (X.7). The sense of physical materiality is surmounted (X.14, 21), and consciousness of Boundless Space arises. With the abandonment of the perception of materiality in all its variety (X.20) (differentiations of sensory shapes, colours, and so on), the greed associated with materiality also fades away (X.15). By ‘boundless’ or ‘unbounded’ (a[n]-anta) space (Buddhaghosa [X.23] interprets) is meant that neither the arising nor the termination of this space is made known. It is not the most advanced stage to attain: ultimately there is simply complete epistemological, ontological petering out, the utter non- signification of sufifiatà, nibbàna. With the notion of ākāsānañcāyatana, the Buddha and Buddhaghosa touch theoretically on the level of Infinitude, and explain the mystical experience of the serious meditator as taking place in that dimension. This confirms the notion that Infinitude as postulated in this essay is a level accessible to humans who have undergone meditative mental training. Early Buddhism was also aware of the dangers lurking in this achievement. The truly advanced person, the arahant, is one who has severed the fetter of attachment and craving, even for Boundless Space. Early Buddhism moved on the plane of human perception. Its antispeculative stance is unmistakeably manifest. Did early Buddhism perhaps have an idealistic implication, reducing all to human perception? Hardly. It simply bracketed such questions out, not finding it a matter of interest. Yet, by implication, one might say, the Buddha did suggest a theory of the constitution of the human person - and, by implication, of nature. | venture to say that the Buddha's judgement of contemporary attempts such as this one, to work more constructively, even speculatively, would have been mildly critical (probably much milder than 381 Energy-Matter rather pedantic Buddhaghosa’s). That is what some of the Buddha’s Mahayana followers did anyway. His message did have metaphysical implications; in the end, it is an inescapable dimension of the human need to understand. The Buddha’s marking of the area of Boundless Space can be understood in terms of our fourfold Infinitude and as operating between Absoluteness (Emptiness) and Cosmos (where today’s sciences of the exterior world play their significant part). Akasanaficayatana amounts to an extreme rarification of Matter (in early Buddhist terminology: form [rdipa]). Fleeing from matter lies at the root of many evils. The physical matter of the universe, experienced by the senses, investigated by refined instruments and mapped by sophisticated theories, appears as a condensation of Infinite Matter and is therefore precious but by no means absolute. A space for a meeting between the Buddha's ancient Indian meditative tradition (revitalised for today) and contemporary chemistry and physics of the atomic and subatomic world spreads out. In passing, the work of Tarthang Tulku (1977) may be mentioned as one attempt at such accommodation. hyle (Stoicism) As noted in 825, Stoicism appreciated Matter positively. For our present purposes, the very wide and nuanced range of Stoic formulations of their understanding may be summarised as follows (cf. Lapidge 1978:161-186; Long 1996:224-234; Sandbach 1975:71ff.; Sellars 2006:81ff.; Todd 1978:137-160): a. The four material (‘Cosmic’) elements (stoicheia), namely earth, water, air and fire are ‘horizontally’ continuous in the sense that they continuously change into each other. This pertains to the physical level of things. b. They are also ‘vertically’ continuous with a more ‘transcendental’ (not a Stoic term) tier, namely the ultimate Principle (arché) of Matter (hylē). Now the metaphysical level of things enters into the picture. c. At the metaphysical level, Matter is in turn ‘horizontally’ continuous with a second ultimate Principle: /ogos (roughly: ‘Reason’). d. The term ‘god’ or divinity (theos) is used to connote both of these Principles: Reason quite unambiguously and directly so; Matter less so, and rather by implication. The word ‘god’ is used in a wide variety of senses; not excluding the notion of a personal God, but that is not the only or even the usual sense. e. Matter is equated with passivity (being acted upon: to paschon), Reason with activity (to po/oun). f. These two Principles are essentially inseparably conjoined and mutually implied to the extent that Stoicism may be called a monistic system - yet allowing for a measure of distinction between Reason and Matter. They are two aspects of the same primal substance. This places Stoicism between the two extremes of Platonic idealism and Epicurean materialism 382 Chapter 18 (Long 1996:225ff.). At a transcendental level ‘Being’ implies ‘Matter’ (to use our terminology), but is not reduced to Matter in the sense of the ‘empirical’ physical existence of things. Matter may be said to ‘subsist’ rather than to ‘exist’ (Sellars 2006:83): enabling the ‘real’, empirical things to exist. It is a hypostasis. At the Cosmic level, every existent thing is material, being a compound of Matter and Reason. As far as the genealogy of the Stoic notions is concerned, it is possible that they ultimately derive from Platonism, especially as set out in Plato’s Timaeus (see §20): Reason might be an equivalent of Plato’s Demiurge (fabricator of the universe) in that dialogue, with Matter the equivalent of the Receptacle (recipient substrate), enabling the sensible things to emerge. With the second, Plato probably meant empty space (chora), continuous with sensible things. That would not be totally disconnected from the ancient Indian notion àkàsa described above. Stoicism is more resolute in its attachment of prime importance to matter than both Platonism and early Buddhism. This essay endorses the Stoic accent. Stoicism expressed certain ideas that not only anticipated a number of modern ideas, but ideas that remain relevant to attempts today at moving in the direction of a meaningful MM, in touch and reconcilable with modern science, without succumbing to materialism. epektasis (Gregory of Nyssa) One of the most important figures from a golden age of Christian theology was Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-395), hailing from Cappadocia (north-eastern Turkey). Gregory, one of the fathers of the Trinitarian teaching, was a great theologian (cf. Drobner & Klock 1990; Keenan 1989:86ff.; Meredith 1990:128- 147, 1999) - not only because he was a sharp-witted and consistent intellect (although his thoughts cannot be reduced to a neat system), but also because during the course of his life, his orthodox theology became increasingly infused with mysticism. He was perhaps the most significant pioneer of mystical theology during the first centuries of Christianity. Rather remarkably, mysticism and mainstream Christian orthodoxy were never organically connected, except in a few rather rare exceptions, including Gregory. The notion of infinity played a significant role in Gregory’s mystical theology, but Matter was not part of it in an essential sense. Since its beginning, Christianity fell back on (Neo)Platonism, not Stoicism, as its default philosophical option when reflecting on the relationship between Cosmos and its Beyond. Standardised school Platonism itself settled for a two-storey image of reality, consisting of the sensory world and a transcendent but real dimension of Ideas as ultimate foundation in which human cognition may participate; it did not emphasise the continuity between the sensory world and the Ideas, and did not grope back behind the Ideas themselves. 383 Energy-Matter As far as the theological, mystical tradition behind Gregory was concerned, its Christian roots mainly go back to Clement (c. 150-215), teacher at the Catechetical School of Alexandria and to his pupil Origen (c. 184-253), who succeeded him as teacher at the same institution. Philosophically, both of these Church Fathers were Platonists, but Neoplatonism also soon made its entry into Patristic thinking. The treatment that befell (Neo)Platonism in the hands of the theologians was not mere application, but adaptation with sometimes a considerable degree of looseness and innovation, particularly so in the case of Gregory. Working out the ideas bequeathed by Clement and Origen, Gregory made a distinction between kataphatic theology and the non-speech of apophatic theology. Following Plato, Origen had emphasised the mysticism of light, the essence of God could be known by the human intellect - but that bright essence also transcended conceptual knowing. With its intellectual inclination, Origen’s thinking was vintage Platonism; Plato also had a mystical strain, insisting that the Idea of the Good was beyond conceptual thought. Gregory of Nyssa on the other hand emphasised another aspect, the aspect of darkness. In this respect, this creative pioneer moved closer to the mysticism of Absoluteness than any Christian theologian had done before him. Neither transcending nor bringing into question either the fact of a personal God's real existence, as taught in the Bible and Christian doctrine, or the (neo)Platonic primacy of Being, he belongs in category (b) in the typology of 847. In terms of our overall model: a lighter, brighter side of the band of Infinitude (because closer to normal human cognition, situated in Cosmos) can be picked up by the mystically inclined. Any penetration into the further side so to speak, of the band of Infinity, the side of Eternity-Absoluteness, would yield no clearer cognitive understanding. On the contrary, as one moves towards the innermost secret, cognition falters and fails and is destructed - just as Being is. Cognition will be picked up again in Chapter 21. With regard to the ontological aspect (which is our present concern), a related distinction to the epistemological one could be made between the mysticism of union (the mystic, or the soul, becomes one with God), and a type of mysticism to which that would not apply, because - if understood consistently and radically - there 'is' ultimately nothing to be united with. Gregory adhered to the notion of a union with God, although he did not propagate or give evidence of an ecstatic experience in this regard. By contrast, the Buddha did not seek any such union, in fact, annihilated it. Here Gregory's Platonic heritage comes through: Being does not falter. God is, inaccessible to ordinary cognition, present, and in the presence of that Being, the mystic can share non-cognitively but lovingly. To Gregory, God, being perfect, is real, though unlimited (without any determination) and hence incomprehensible. He understands the divine presence not as an objective reality over against the mystic perceiver, but as the reality within, in which the mystic participates. Nevertheless, real Being it is. 384 Chapter 18 To him the peak of the great search is the regaining, through faith, moral purification and increasing knowledge of God, of the original union with the indwelling God as Being. In the Archeic model the band of Infinite Being lies between Absolute Horizon, where Being dissolves altogether, and Cosmos with its relative being, including all the things in it. Being would become ‘less’, as it were, the deeper the mystic goes. That is the Buddhist journey, followed here. Nevertheless, it can accommodate the mystics of all traditions who had a sense of realising their unity with Being, Infinite Being, and calling that ‘God’. The shortcoming of such theistic mysticisms was that they fell short of appreciating the radicalness of Absoluteness and awarded ultimacy to the category of Being. Gregory’s mystic journey is not ajourney reaching out towards Absoluteness- beyond-Being, but towards and into Being, indubitable, unshakeable Being, as the ultimate foundation. His is an epektasis (‘stretching forward’, from Phlp 3:13): a perpetual stretching out of human and angelic creatures in search of God, but never coming to final rest - not because Being is dissolved on Absolute Horizon, but because eternal Being cannot finally be reached. The difference between the two conceptions should not be collapsed. In Gregory, the search for God is an unending quest, a boundless process; but it is not abandoned. With his notion of unattainability, he deconstructs human language and conceptual thinking up to a point, but does not apply it ontologically to imply the annihilation of the substantial reality of divine nature (Mosshammer 1990:99-123). Nor does he conceive of Matter as an aspect of Infinity in any essential way. His structure is not to be conflated with the akasanaficayatana, petering out into the sufifiatà of nibbàna, of the Buddha. Gregory's unending progress does not imply transcending the notion of God as an ultimate Substance. Platonism remains essentially intact in Gregory's theory, and Matter retains its inferior status. Gregory worked his ideas out in (among other writings) his polemical book Contra Eunomium (‘Against Eunomius’), a heavy attack on not only the thinking, but, sadly, also the person of the Arian theologian and fellow Cappadocian, Eunomius (Gregor von Nyssa 1992). Eunomius accepted the knowability and expressibility, with full clarity and logical rigour, of the essence of God. Gregory rejected that notion, while creating space for a non-intellectual meeting with God - in fact, a union of being with God. We can know a good deal about God's activities (energe/a/) insofar as they affect us, but we cannot know God's inner essence (ousia), which is unlimited: beyond measure, undetermined, immutable, without beginning or end, growing or lessening, with nothing outside of it. His approach was worked out more clearly in the work of his mystical maturity, De vita Moysis (the Life of Moses’) (Gregory of Nyssa 1978), probably written a few years before his death. There a distinction is made between the meeting with God in light and in darkness. In the flaming light of the burning bush 385 Energy-Matter (Ex 3:2-14) God is first radiantly revealed to Moses, by implication ‘illuminating the eyes of our soul with its own rays’ in an ‘ineffable and mysterious illumination’ (11.19). In passing, this same kind of allegorical interpretation of this very same text would resurface in Sufism. Then (Ex 20:21; 24:15-18; 11.162-166), says Gregory, God reveals himself in the darkness of a cloud (11.163): [7]his is the seeing that consists in not seeing, because that which is sought transcends all knowledge, being separated on all sides by incomprehensibility as by a kind of darkness. (p. 163) And then (Ex 33:18-23; |I.219-244) Moses, in spite of his ‘straining ahead’ (epektasis) (1l.225ff.), is not permitted to see the glory of God face to face, but from a hole in the rock which is covered by the hand of God, he is ordered to enter. He will only be permitted to see the back of God after he has passed. This is the final stage of the soul's ascent to God. In Gregory's allegorical interpretation, this in no way signifies any diminution in the Being of God; it merely emphasises that Divinity, Being, is 'by its very nature infinite, enclosed by no boundary’ (11.236). Human cognition of God can only be a never-ending progress, since the fullness of God, Being, in its state of being unlimited, is beyond the human cognitive reach. He now moves beyond theological thought before him. After Gregory, such mystical theology of Divine infinity was further developed by (Pseudo-) Dionysius the Areopagite (period between late 5th century and early 6th century), Maximus the Confessor of Constantinople (c. 580-662), John of Damascus (died c. 750) and others. Dionysius went beyond Gregory in declaring that God is 'beyond all being' and that the hidden divinity 'transcends being' (Parker 1976:3). Yet he had in mind an excessive plenitude, a super abundance of Being, rather than deconstruction in the absolute sense. In his exposition of the Orthodox faith, John of Damascus (1989 [1898]) makes the point that God is ineffable, unutterable, incomprehensible, incognisable, indefinable and incomprehensible, and that 'neither can we know, nor can we tell, what the essence (ousia) of God is’ (L.I-ID). This is pure theologia negativa. God is also without beginning, without end and infinite (I.I), but none of this detracts from the fact that God is also most definitely 'eternal and everlasting [...] unchangeable, invariable [...] good, just, maker of all things created, almighty, all-ruling [...] sovereign, judge [...]’ (I.I. This is a mould of thought quite different from that of Siddhattha and the movement he inspired. Of great interest is the connection made in the Orthodox Hesychast tradition between Infinity and light. The notions of Splendour, Glory and Beauty, mentioned in S47, fit well with that. For example, the mysticism of Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022), the greatest Hesychast (from hesychia: ‘quiet’) mystic of Byzantium, was a mysticism of Light. In his silent Hesychast experience, he 'saw' the invisible light of Divine fire, without beginning and immaterial. 386 Chapter 18 Another impressive figure in this tradition was Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), strongly influenced by Gregory of Nyssa. He provided the final Orthodox theological justification for the beauty of light seen in the silence of Hesychasm: what is ‘seen’, is not the undeniable but inaccessible essence (ousia) of God, but the suprasensible, immaterial yet experienceable fire of his energies, his manifestation. Palamas’ mysticism was a mysticism of Light, contemplated by Christians, sacramentally united to Christ interiorly, within their own hearts (Meyendorff 1964:173ff., 1974:116f.). This was a reiteration of what Gregory of Nyssa had said nearly 1000 years before. None of the Hesychast theologians, including Gregory of Palamas, laid the same emphasis on the image of darkness, as had been the case in Gregory of Nyssa. Palamas made the classic theological distinction between God’s immanence and presence in the world, and his transcendence. In all of this, God remains the ‘Wholly Other’ Being (Ware 1991 [1963]:78). Eastern Orthodox mysticism, even in its negative flights into beyond, did not escape from the gravitational pull of substantial Being. Their ultimate was like the further side of the moon, hidden to the unsighted human being but undoubtedly there, rather than like the empty darkness of outer space. Light and darkness are two sides of the same moon. From the perspective of our journey that position is appreciated, but darkness beyond draws my gaze: Emptiness transcending Being more consistently than was the case in the Orthodox mysticism of darkness, and thereby extending its inner tendency. Infinitude, including Infinite Matter, aimed at in this chapter, is different from the Divine infinity sooken of so impressively by the Orthodox theologies of light and darkness. A meeting can be imagined, but like that of one river joining a larger one with a stronger current, which ultimately enters the ocean. Orthodox Christianity paints a Christian religious ceiling of exquisite mystical suggestiveness and splendour. Only the brutally insensitive would want to tear it down. Gaze through the paintings and the ceiling, however, and see the empty darkness beyond. The darkness is the larger, deeper context. Yet the paintings have their relative beauty and value. Critical and negating as it is of mental constructions, Absolutism is also loving and tolerant in its affirmation of humankind and its needs. In Christian apophaticism, Matter as such did not feature positively as a primordial dimension of Infinite Being. Icons were held in high regard because they safeguard the mystery of the Incarnation: God becoming man and taking on material flesh. To that extent, they avoided a dualistic contempt of matter and body. Icons emphasise that material objects have no divine content in themselves, but that some of them can at least become symbols that represent Divinity. Matter can be redeemed, taken up in the process of deification (theosis) in the qualified sense of God-bearing and be glorified in a transfigured Cosmos. It remains creation, essentially different from God. Infinite God has no material dimension. 387 Energy-Matter ishrag (Shihabuddin Yahya Suhrawardi) The Arabic term in the above heading (meaning ‘radiance’, ‘light’, ‘illumination’) (Suhrawardi 2006 [1998]) captures the essence of the MM system of the seminal Sufi thinker, Shihabuddin Yahya Suhrawardi (1155-c. 1191). The mysticism of light and darkness is not confined to Christianity. In our attempt to trace interrelationships within one MM network across religions and cultures, Suhrawardi commands attention. To begin with, it must be stated that Suhrawardi, like other Islamic figures, should primarily be understood within the horizon of the Islamic world with its own, unique structure. Yet, on that assumption, a larger relevance of Islamic MM must also be affirmed; homoversal MM cuts across historical, cultural, socio-political and religious blocs. The great risk attending any search such as this one, for a larger inclusivity, is superficiality. That is, not doing justice to the singular in venturing to come to terms with the general and the universal. Finding an optimal balance is the challenge. Given the constraints of this compendium, more than a cursory analysis of the various criss-crossing lines converging in this genius and flowing from him is not possible. Add to that the fact that Suhrawardi, significant as he is, is an under researched scholar-mystic, and it is obvious that this interpretation - by an enthusiastic non-specialist - can claim no more than probability value. Yet, overall, at least the spine of his MM body seems clear. The structural similarities between the Christian Orthodox mysticism of light and darkness and this brilliant facet of Sufism cannot be denied. There are factors that need to be substituted - especially the historical figure of Muhammad for Jesus; the sacred scripture of the Qur’an for the Bible and the belief in the oneness of Allah for the belief in the Trinity and the Incarnation. These do not affect the basic fact that both of these religions and the mysticisms evolving from them came from the same monotheistic Abrahamic root experience and share a common dependence on (Neo)Platonism for their philosophical self-interpretation. In a significant sense, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are variations of two basic themes, threads of one history: the attempt to reconcile monotheistic faith and experience with rational reflection, and the idea of ‘God’ with the idea of ‘world’. To emphasise these structural similarities, | shall on the following pages stick to the chronological sequence of three monotheists, regardless of their religious affiliation. Suhrawardi’s project was cut short by an untimely death, but he remains an MM visionary today and as relevant as ever (cf. Nasr 1964:52-82; Walbridge 2005:201-223). He was born in north-west Iran, wrote in Persian and Arabic, and ended his life in Aleppo at the instruction of the Sultan (Saladin, famous from the Third Crusade). He was not 40 years old, a victim of political and religious manoeuvring at a sensitive political juncture in Syria: Saladin was dependent on the support of orthodoxy and could not afford alienating them. Suhrawardi was Sacrificed. He thus met a similar fate as another great Sufi, Hallaj. 388 Chapter 18 Outspoken and provocative as he was, he nevertheless did not dissociate himself from Islamic shariah (the divine law). To Suhrawardi, discursive philosophical reflection and speculative knowledge on the one hand and immediate, intuitive mystical experience on the other hand, were inseparable. Indeed, the brilliance and rigour of his rational discourse are obvious (Walbridge 2005); and yet, in his hands the second became the primary mode of knowing, providing the basis and context for the former (Corbin 1975 [1964]), both together enabling the return of the mystic from the exile of Darkness to the Light. Suhrawardi places the one who achieves both disciplines (speculative knowledge and mystical experience) in equal degree at the summit of the hierarchy of sages. Light is the shining golden thread that ties his entire system together. He programmatically envisaged an ‘Oriental’ (oriented to the rising sun’) philosophy, or theosophy, not only in the sense of its eastern geographical position (contrasted to that of the West), but also in the sense of implying inner visionary enlightenment. In Suhrawardi’s own self-understanding, he wove together the inspirations of the Arab prophet Muhammad, the much earlier Iranian prophet Zoroaster, and Greek philosophy from its earliest times through Pythagoreanism and Platonism up to Neoplatonism. He was not a superficial eclectic and did not define himself as anything but a true Muslim believer, but the perennialist tendency in his thinking, embracing all, is clear. The product of his original and harmonising thought was a complete, closely argued, coherent and finely textured system of an idealist type. Like Plotinus, he saw reality as a continuous series of downward grading. Neoplatonic emanationism makes its presence felt throughout Suhrawardi’s system, as does, up to a point, the Zoroastrian system - yet without the dualism between the worlds of light and of darkness. Closer to his own time, his innovations largely sprang from critical adaptations of the Aristotelian-Neoplatonic philosophy of the Muslim Avicenna (980-1037). Suhrawardi’s thinking was not affected by the rising tide of Aristotelianism in the form shaped by another Muslim, his older contemporary Averroes (1126-1198). In fact, at the very time that Neoplatonic-influenced MM started to take precedence in the Muslim East because of the work of Al-Ghazali (1058-1111), taking off in full flight under the influence of Suhrawardi, Aristotelian rationalism started its ascendancy in the Christian West, under the influence of the Muslim Averroes. In Islam, mysticism gained anew opportunity; in Western Christianity, scholasticism would become the norm for centuries to come. Perhaps that remarkable case of fortuitously sliding doors was one cause of the unfortunate drifting apart of the two religio- cultural blocs of Christianity and Islam in following centuries. In developing his system, Suhrawardi consciously revived the ancient Zoroastrian teaching of Light and Darkness, assimilated it to the Platonic teaching of the Ideas and to subsequent Neoplatonic developments, and absorbed both 389 Energy-Matter in Islam, as understood in exemplary fashion by Sufis preceding him (his main guides were Hallaj and Al-Ghazali). The outcome, in his masterpiece, Hikmat al- Ishraq (the philosophy of illumination) (Suhrawardi 1999), was an original theosophy of Light/lllumination. /shrag evokes the splendour of the rising sun. Ontology and epistemology merge: /shraq is the illumination and reflection of Being as well as the becoming aware of that theophany. His theosophy of Light was also a theosophy of Being. All of reality is an emanation from the ultimate referent in his system: the pre-existent Supreme Light of Lights (Nur al-Anwar), which is absolute Reality, and from which all things spread like rays from the sun. The Light of Glory as Being is the ultimate, necessary ontological category, illuminating all things and reflected in all things. Allah is wajib: the necessary and sufficient cause of all things (Suhrawardi 2006 [1998 ]:61ff.). In his Hikmat al-Ishraq he develops a version of the well-established ontological type of argument to prove that, in order to escape from an infinite regress, there must exist a necessary Being as cause of everything else. His innovation is that he defines this Being as Light. All derived forms of light (Suhrawardi 1999): [M]ust end in a light beyond which there is no light. This is the Light of Lights, the All-Encompassing Light, the Eternal Light, the Holy Light, the All-Highest Almighty Light, the Dominating Light [...] Everything other than It is in need of It and has its existence from It [...] Nonbeing cannot overtake the Light of Lights. (p. 87) The original Light of Lights is the ultimate substance, the basic entity manifest in itself and manifesting others, the source from which the entire universe emerges as a hierarchical system of individual lights with ever decreasing grades of intensity in a vertical order of descent. Light takes shape, so to speak. Like Plotinus, Suhrawardi thought in terms of ontological dependence, not historical sequence. To him the world had no beginning in time (Suhrawardi 1999:116). The devolving process of cognition-and-being is graded in degrees of perfection. The sacred Light flowing down diminishes in intensity. Continuing the Zoroastrian impetus, Suhrawardi's scheme may seem to come close to a dualism between a universe of active Light and a universe of purely negative, passive, dark matter, but that would be a misunderstanding. From the reality of immediately clear awareness as 'light', he drew the conclusion that having such clear knowledge was tantamount to being a ‘light’ at any one of various levels. All these lights are mutually reflective, both vertically and, at each level, also horizontally. Such lights are self-aware 'distinct luminous individual incorporeal things’ (Walbridge 2005:213), concrete and in principle perfectly discernible, and differentiated by differences in intensity. Suhrawardi's MM qualifies as kataphatic in a strong sense of the term. A concept such as Deus absconditus would not fit his system at all. His position conforms to (a) in our typology in 847. In his words, ‘We ourselves are only veiled from It by the perfection of Its light and the deficiencies of our faculties - not because It is hidden’ (Suhrawardi 1999:113). 390 Chapter 18 Physical light, physicality as such, not being self-aware, lies at the bottom of the scale of Light, but in a continuum from top to bottom. Suhrawardi is neither a pantheist nor a dualist. The physical world is not Divine, but it is not God's enemy either. It is Gods' reflection. The physical sun can be praised as, 'one of the greatest and most distinguished manifestations of the glory and the essence of Allah’ (Suhrawardi 2006 [1998]:86). The Light of Lights is absolute Being. The centre of his universe is not empty, but super full. In his hierarchy of light-as-being he could entertain the notion of an immaterial yet real, substantial alam a/-mithal (imaginal world, as Corbin called it), an intermediate world of all kinds of archetypal images between the ultimate Being (Light) and the shadowy world. This imaginal world intermediate between the beings of pure light and the sensible world is accessible to, can be ‘seen’ in mystical experience and articulated in the symbolic and mythical discourses of humankind. Not only philosophy but also science (in Suhrawardi’s case, interested as he was in light, science was particularly optics and astronomy) follows theosophical vision and intuitive experience, and is dependent on it. This essay, seeking a positive understanding of the sanctity of Cosmic Matter, deriving from Infinite Matter, finds, it appears, some potential support in the MM of Light of Suhrawardi, more so than in the MM of Gregory and his successors. Suhrawardi would continue to exert a strong influence on Sufi MM in centuries to come. A following, starting with Shams al-Din al-Shahrazuri quite shortly after Suhrawardi's death, became known as /shragis (/shragiyun), named after his major book, Hikmat al-Ishraq, and they still exist in Iran. Merging the thinking of (among others) Suhrawardi and Ibn Arabi, the monumental contribution of the Iranian Shi'ite MM Mulla Sadra al-Shirazi (1572-1640) (cf. Jambet 2006; Morris 1981; Rahman 1975) would give new and enduring impetus to an Illuminationist MM, in which Nonbeing is completely enveloped by Being. Contrary to Suhrawardi with his overwhelming Light, Mulla Sadra had a more inaccessible God. His God appears in hiddenness (Jambet 2006:187). Mulla Sadra was an existentialist before 20th century 'existentialism': yet whereas the latter applies to human existence, Mulla Sadra spoke of the existence of God. To him 'existence' is the prime category, the only reality, and that is God. What we are testing in this chapter is neither 'Being' asan abstract concept nor God asreal existent entity, but the emergence of Being as Infinite proto-Matter, halfway between nonbeing Absoluteness and real Cosmic existence. 'God', as thought and spoken of in the religions, is here located at that level. Yet it seems that support for the notion of the significance of Infinite Matter as an aspect of God would not find resonance in the thinking of Mulla Sadra. Abstracting from the important inner Islamic differences, such as those between Suhrawardi and Mulla Sadra, the overall structural similarity of this brand of Sufism to the Eastern Orthodox Christian vision of super essential 391 Energy-Matter Being is obvious. The Eastern Orthodox tradition had a stronger emphasis on darkness; the /shragi tradition a stronger emphasis on light. Within the Sufi tradition, Suhrawardi may have placed a stronger emphasis on the conceptual ‘whatness’ of Being; Mulla Sadra on the real ‘thatness’ of Being (God). Nevertheless, Being, in whatever degree of concreteness or abstraction, remains the necessary core and pivot of the respective Neoplatonic Christian and Neoplatonic Sufi worlds. The similarity with the world according to Vedanta, centring in Brahman, is obvious. This appears to be crucially different from the Archeic view of All taking shape in our exploration, circling around empty Absoluteness. Suhrawardi does not entertain the notion of an ultimate darkness of Absoluteness, which has nothing in common with a darkness of exile, evil or inferiority. It is the Darkness of Nonknowing and Nonbeing, the glorious Darkness of the mystery of End and Origin, the Empty centre devoid of Being (including Matter) in any sense, even of the super essential variety. Suhrawardi’s world flows outward from light to darkness; the one emerging here, from darkness to the light of manifest Cosmic being and knowing, with Infinite Matter as a beautiful aspect in between. This all too fleeting visit to an MM genius confirms that the search for MM community across differences is most worthwhile. | sense an affinity of the notion of Infinitude of Being emerging in this essay with Suhrawardi’s intermediate dimension of alam al-mithal. Even an uncompromising accent on Absoluteness allows for an intermediate dimension of Infinite Being. I understand the mysticisms of community with God, such as those of Orthodox Christianity and Sufism, with their obligatory retention of the mythological pictures of God handed down in the monotheistic tradition, as at home in that dimension of emerging Being. Suhrawardi lives in the Light. His system of interreflective lights reminds of the Buddhist Fa-tsang’s room of mirrors (see 844). Yet Suhrawardi would not have appreciated the Emptiness in Fa-tsang’s analogy, or the Darkness from which the Orient, Aurora, arises. A last comment: In a sense, one might say, in presenting science (e.g. optics) as ultimately embedded in an MM framework, he anticipated the kind of programme investigated in this treatise. It needs to be done repeatedly, by each generation for its own time, in terms of its own impermanent, perishable scientific, philosophical and religious conditions. ahduth shawah (Azriel ben Menachem) Contemporaneous with Suhrawardi in medieval European-Western Asian MM with its undercurrent of common philosophical ideas and its cross-currents of seemingly irreconcilable religious and religio-political differences, Azriel ben Menachem (c. 1160-1238) (cf. Scholem 1974, 1987 [1962]) worked out his system 392 Chapter 18 of Kabbalah in the town of Gerona in north-east Spain. He fits in the Provencal Spanish school of Kabbalah, which was speculative, as distinct from the German school, which placed the emphasis on the devotional and practical sides of mysticism. It would be unrealistic to trace the various stages and shades of the tradition to which Azriel belonged - including ideas on the Sefirot: (1) as ideal patterns determining the eventual creation, (2) as being invested with creative power themselves and (3) as becoming unified with matter and involved in the actual production of the world. What lam interested in here is the possible resemblance of our Infinitude, specifically Infinite Matter, with the Kabbalistic system, hinging on the pivotal concepts of Ein-Sof (unending, infinite) and the ten Sefirot emanating via Ayin (‘nothingness’). All of this was speculatively developed in many diverse ways. Azriel was a profound MM thinker, not rejecting the rational philosophy of his day, but brilliantly crowning it with speculative mysticism. As was the procedure so far, let me take a snapshot of this one figure, without blurring the wider historical background. The immediately preceding context was that Azriel studied with Isaac the Blind (died c. 1235, and really the founder of the Provencal school of Kabbalah), whose thinking revels in light mysticism (Scholem 1987 [1962]:288f.). As the latter’s most prominent disciple, Azriel took the master’s teaching to Spain and audaciously developed it further by adding logical rigour to it, integrating the scattered ideas into one organically coherent and richly textured system, and expressing it in more philosophical language. As for the subsequent context, Azriel predates the Zohar ('radiance', 'splendour) (compiled by another Spanish Jew, Moses de Leon of Granada [c. 1250-1305] by about a century. That classic would appear around 1300 and was destined to become the authoritative textbook of Jewish MM. Azriel was a seminal, pivotal figure in the development of Kabbalah, for example, it was he who gave the term Ein-Sof the technical meaning it would thenceforth carry. The Zohar would build on Azriel's notion of God as Ein-Sof, presenting God as ‘hidden’, ‘non-existent’ (Ayin), at least as far as human cognition is concerned: what cannot be known, does for all human purposes not exist. In the Zohar the ten Sefirot are 10 successive channels of light, serving as media for the manifestations of God, understood as infinite light. After the Zohar came Luria with his notion of God's illuminating light spread throughout the created universe. Probably Azriel's thinking also infiltrated the MM of the Christian Jacob Boehme with his idea of Ungrund (see Ch. 7), half a century after Luria. Closer to our immediate interest, the structural relationship between Azriel's vision of being and light and that of Suhrawardi seems obvious, but exploring such a relationship in any detail here would not be possible. In Azriel, having 'the most speculative, productive and penetrating mind in the group’ (Scholem 1987 [1962]:360), the process of the Neoplatonisation of 393 Energy-Matter early Kabbalah reached its apogee. According to Scholem he could have had direct or indirect contact with the tradition of Christian Neoplatonism stemming from John of Eriugena’s De divisione naturae (see Ch. 13), in turn going back to Pseudo-Dionysius. At that precise time, Eriugena’s thought was very much in the sights of the Christian ecclesiastical establishment, which resulted in his magnum opus being banned and burned by Pope Honorius IIl in 1225. Jewish scholars could have known of these events and taken note of the contested ideas. The term in the heading above, 'ahduth shawah - referring to Azriel's rendering of the notion of indistinct unity, of the coincidence of opposites Cibid.:312) - testifies to his ability to toss and catch opposites in mid-air: the paradox of traditional Jewish monotheistic faith and Neoplatonic emanationist speculation, and the paradox of the coincidence of Being and Nothing. To Azriel - reminiscent of the Neoplatonically influenced Christianity and Islam with their light symbolism sketched above - God before creation rested in himself, hidden in his own reality, all of his powers united Cibid.): [A]s the fire’s flame is united in its colours, and His powers emanate from His unity .. and they are all emanated from one another like perfume from perfume and light from light, for one emanates from the other, and the power of the emanator is in the emanated, without the emanator suffering any loss. (p. 312) As pointed out in Chapter 6 with reference to the Zohar, 'Nothing' or the 'Nought' CAyin) in Azriel and the Gerona circle surrounding him does not precede God, but is an aspect of superessential God. This Nought or Nothing is the nihil, the highest potency, out of which God creates, in a joining of the Genesis account of Creation and Neoplatonic emanation. Nought is assimilated to God himself; is God under the aspect of the superessentiality of his goodness. Here one is dazzled by the dialectical brilliance of Azriel as he juggles the two concepts of Being and Nought C(ibid.:420ff.). Is this, however, quite the transcendence of both in Absoluteness? Probably not. It is monotheism transcended and Neoplatonism pushed to the limit, but it is not Absolutism. In the words of Scholem (1974): in Azriel's writing: Being and Nought therefore are only different aspects of the superesse of the divine reality [...] both are modalities of en-sof itself that constitute the indistinct unity of ‘Ought’ and of ‘Nought’. (p. 424) Azriel’s concept of Ein-Sof is suggestive of the cognitive inconceivability of the hidden God. Ontologically, it occasionally 'seem[s] to point to a neutral stratum of the divine nature', but he remains an infinite Person, 'the master of creation' in a ‘theistic reinterpretation of the Neoplatonic "One" ' Cibid.:431). With Azriel, Ein-Sof becomes the proper name of a Person Cibid.:432), acting through the Sefirot as means (ibid.::432). The Neoplatonic hierarchy of Being has been absorbed into the Sefirot: the first three correspond to the Neoplatonic world of the intellect, the second three to the world of the souls, and the last four to the corporeal world (Cibid.:452). Azriel retains the notion of a hierarchical 394 Chapter 18 downward order from intellect to soul to inferior matter; this model sees them as emerging concurrently, imbued with equal value and dignity. Admitting the oversimplification of the wealth of Kabbalah and Azriel in this picture, | reluctantly take leave. In sum, it seems that E/n-Sof after all does not, as is the case in the Archeic model, signify an ontological indeterminedness, onto which the human, in awe before the incomprehensible, projects humanlike characteristics such as being, person and creator. That is the difference between ‘the Infinite’ of theistic Neoplatonism on the one hand and ‘Infinitude’, ‘Infinite Being’, as envisaged in this essay. This difference has been confirmed in every analysis of the theistic Neoplatonic type of MM thinking so far. In each of the three examples analysed above, that type of thinking did not leave much space for the veneration of Infinite Matter. That is not to say that Matter was not held in high regard by some in the theistic tradition, in spite of being influenced by Neoplatonism. For example, the first great Hispanic-Jewish philosopher, Solomon Ibn Gabirol (c. 1020-1058), in broad terms adopted Plotinus’ vision of emanation. Whereas Plotinus imagined a process of degeneration through stages of decreasing reality and splendour, finding its nadir in Matter, Gabirol elevated and spiritualised Matter, seeing it as a spiritual entity, part of the World Soul. From the vantage point of our endeavour, that is a treasure from the past. Another example, a century and a half later, came from Christian theism, as represented by Robert Grosseteste. Let me look at him in some detail. forma prima corporalis (Robert Grosseteste) During this period, one concatenated set of foundational ideas stretched from Iran and Syria across Europe to Ireland, across the institutional and theological divides of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. At the time that Jewish Kabbalah was flourishing in figures such as Azriel ben Menachem, Western Christian theology was starting to consolidate the epoch of scholasticism, rallying around Aristotle. Its standardised programme would consist in the provision of definitive answers to difficult questions by systematically arranging, analysing, comparing and improving on the views of previous theological and philosophical authorities by way of rigorous reason, in formalised arguments. | here do not engage with the obvious representatives of that new tradition, but attend to a somewhat atypical figure. In England (at the time not part of the European theological mainstream), scholasticism had not been strongly established yet, but it was in progress. A somewhat eccentric figure, promoting that development yet also developing his own idiosyncratic vision, was the bishop of Lincoln and lecturer at Oxford University and probably chancellor of that institution, Robert Grosseteste (c. 1170-1253) (cf. McEvoy 1982; Southern 1986). Of humble background yet with a standard theological training, 395 Energy-Matter this English clergyman and church leader was a pioneer in the scientific developments, not only of the 13th century (dominated by Aristotle), but of modern science with its experimental method. Only when approaching the sixth decade of his long life did he start to make a serious study of theology, without sacrificing his fascination with earthly things, medicine, stars and the sciences dealing with those phenomena. The new start in his later life meant that, adding to the Augustinian mould of his thinking, he learnt Greek and read Greek Fathers, especially Origen, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, John of Damascus and Pseudo-Dionysius. His own general religious outlook was congenial to that of Dionysius and his work on that illustrious predecessor was his most notable scholarly contribution in the field of patristic studies. His independence of mind showed itself throughout his serious theological work. Not a typical scholastic, he did not seek finality of answers protected on all sides, but in imaginative speculations retained an open-ended, even experimental tentativeness of outlook, no doubt coming from his scientific discipline. He did not exactly hide the subjectivity of his views either. The very first sentence of his most famous work, the forceful and original though brief treatise De /uce (‘On light’, probably produced when he was around 70 years of age) (Southern 1986:139) makes that delightfully clear Cin my opinion’). Grosseteste was adventurous and in theological temperament not quite in tune with the dominant fashion of his time. His emphasis on light as such was a continuation of the Greek metaphysical mysticism of light with its ontological, epistemological and religious components, as can be observed in Pythagoras, Parmenides and Plato, which coloured all of subsequent early Christian and medieval thought (Beierwaltes 1957). What makes him interesting from the point of this essay is his combination of science and theology, particularly in his views on light. Indeed, fundamental consideration of light as the rarest form of matter in the context of reflection on Being occurred not only in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Muslim Sufism and Jewish Kabbalah, but also in Western, Roman Christianity. As he matured, Grosseteste developed from scientist to theologian to speculative metaphysician. In the last stage of his life, around his sixties, his life seems to have taken a new turn. He underwent a profound spiritual experience, adopted a Franciscan way of life and became a visionary. However, in De /uce, mysticism remains in the background; rational metaphysics dominates. For that reason it would not qualify as ‘MM’ in the full sense intended in our model. Nevertheless, it offers fascinating reading, as relevant today as it was then. Light was a prominent theme in the Bible and the Fathers, as pointed out above. Not only Gregory but also Basil, with his interest in light as a link between Creator and creation, would have provided special inspiration to Grosseteste. In line with his passion for science, the significance of physical light would have struck him for several physical reasons (Southern 1986:206, 217ff.), such as that it is of central importance in astronomy and that, moving in straight lines, 396 Chapter 18 it conforms to geometry. To him, light was not a mere analogy. MM speaking, at first glance the title of his De /uce might seem to connect him not only to the Greek Fathers, but also to Suhrawardi. Yet direct influence of Suhrawardi on his slightly younger contemporary is unlikely. Apart from a personal spiritual interest in the interpretation of light shared by both (Corbin 1964:211ff.), the obvious reason for their common interest in light would be the general cultural and philosophical world shared by educated Christians, Muslims and Jews, in particular the shared Neoplatonic model of Being radiating from God, this together with Aristotelianism (cf. McEvoy 1982:149ff.). Grosseteste also knew the Book of optics of the Muslim scientist, famous in Europe at the time, Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham [965-1040]), as well as the metaphysics of the Muslims Avicenna, Al-Ghazali and Averroes and the Jewish Avicebron (1020-1070) (McEvoy 1982:160; Southern 1986:187). Grosseteste’s cosmological design cannot be understood outside of that historical context. He sought cross-fermentation from outside his own religious and philosophical tradition and attempted a synthesis of the various strands of thought floating around in his day. The new frontiers he explored were mainly Greek Orthodoxy with its language and its great tradition, Islam, and Aristotle, combining all of that with an unabated interest in the science of physical nature, particularly light. It strikes as most remarkable for his time. This essay warms to his inclusive spirit. In his densely argued cosmological treatise, Grosseteste in essence postulates that light is ‘the first corporeal form’ (forma prima corporalis) (Ginter et al n.d.). The book is an interpretation, in terms of the science (Aristotelian) and philosophy (Neoplatonism-Aristotelianism) of the day and Grosseteste’s main theological models (Augustine and Basil), of the first three days of creation, starting with the Divine command: fiat /ux, ‘let there be light’ (according to Gn 1:1- 3) (McEvoy 1982:158ff.). Grosseteste follows no one slavishly. As for science, in rejecting the idea that the world has no beginning, he distances himself from Aristotle. He also contradicts Aristotle’s division between earthly and extra earthly matter; to Grosseteste, matter everywhere is one, although not uniform. As for theology, whereas Gregory of Nyssa takes refuge in an allegorical interpretation of light (see above), Grosseteste, in his own brilliant piece of writing, does not do that: he speaks mathematically, scientifically. It was a different age, and in this respect, Grosseteste stood close to our own age and to the interest leading the journey made on these pages. In and for his time he achieved an integration of science and theology. Grosseteste's focus on light is supported by his empirical observation that a single point of light will instantaneously expand to produce a sphere of light. By implication light is the prime instance and the origin of the generation and motion of all corporeal things. Grosseteste's universe is dynamic, which distinguishes it quite starkly from the Neoplatonic model. He also saw that extension is a necessary concomitant of corporeity. Thus, the link between 397 Energy-Matter light and corporeity is established. He does not develop the idea of light as link between God and the world, although he does refer to light (/ux) as the ‘first form created in first matter’ (orima forma in materia prima creata). He conceives of the universe as a process of outward rarefication and inward condensation. Spreading outwards instantly in the moment of creation in all directions to the outer limit of the universe, light (as outwards spreading /ux) becomes extremely rarefied. Then, in a reflected form (lumen), it starts to contract and condense and turns back to the centre via a series of nine celestial spheres (not subject to change), converging in the geometric centre of the universe as a mass of four consecutive infra-celestial spheres (fire, air, water and earth, all subject to change). Throughout the process of return it remains light, a self-generating force. This is also a process from simplicity in the rarefied higher spheres, continuous with the initial origin of light, to the multiplicity of things on dense earth. It all adds up to a harmonious universe, suggested by the role of the perfect number, 10, in its workings. How might our notions of Infinite Being and Infinite Matter, in the frame of our developing model as a whole, relate to his system? At first sight, he does not seem to shed a great deal of light directly on our specific theme. Yet, let me read carefully. By ‘infinity’ (infinitas) in his treatise, he means quantitatively unending extension in the physical and mathematical senses. Yet a qualitative, 'spiritual dimension does announce itself as he continues. Light is not only corporeity itself, but is of a more exalted and of a nobler and more excellent essence than all corporeal things, and is in fact closer to the forms that exist apart from matter, namely, the intelligences, that is, angels. Towards the end of his treatise he claims that in the lower bodies light is more corporeal and multiplied, in the ‘higher bodies’ it is ‘more spiritual and simple’ (spiritualis et simplex). The first and highest celestial sphere is moved by 'the incorporeal power of intelligence or soul’ (virtus incorporalis intelligentiae vel animae), an ‘intellectual moving power’ (a virtute motiva intellectiva) which diminishes as it moves the lower spheres. Scientifically, his booklet with its linkage of light and matter, in a sense anticipates modern science with its equivalence of energy and mass. Metaphysically, it is a creative package, not developed in detail by the author. Itis not a comprehensive, fully integrated web of MM writing. He never achieved that. For example, although he has written about angels elsewhere, he does not here elaborate on intelligences (angels) as beings at some intermediate level of being in this scheme. Exactly how the various topics touched on relates to Godiin his framework is not explained either. Obviously, inspired by Scripture, God would be seen as ‘light’, but the exact relationship between the Creator God and his creation is not discussed. He does not broach the idea of an emanation of the world from God, although his basic model is largely the Neoplatonic one of expansion and return. God remains in the background as the great mathematician, so to speak. He does not explore light itself (or matter) 398 Chapter 18 as an intermediate dimension between God and the world as Suhrawardi does either, which would have been of interest to this chapter. On the assumption that fiat lux is the hidden presupposition under his construction, it may seem probable that God’s creative word (fiat) would neither allow nor need intermediate beings or levels of being between God and the world. The coming of the world into being is an immediate event from the word of God, not a continuous process, and the ontological break between Creator and creation remains non-negotiable. Yet, as we saw, he does distinguish among levels of being, ranging from merely material to spiritual, in a process of becoming. He makes a distinction between sensible, physical light and suprasensible, metaphysical light. That brings his design somewhat closer to the kind of thinking preferred in our emerging one. The difference remains that whereas Grosseteste proceeds from the concept of a perfect personal Divinity as the ground of Being, this essay proceeds from the notion of devolving Unground. Still, his phrase forma prima corporalis, just as a phrase, is attractive from our point of view. Infinite Matter could be termed that: it is a level, a ‘first form’, of becoming Being, implying Matter. This overview has shown that there is much to appreciate in Grosseteste, not least his understanding that nature needs to be placed in the centre of attention and his boldness in integrating theology and science as he attempted to understand the universe as a unit, comprising both the natural and the ‘supernatural’ dimensions. Because of the oneness of all things in God, the natural world is replete with symbols of God. As for the religio-political aspect of things, his readiness to establish links across the various religious blocs is duly noted as encouraging the approach of these meditations and reflections. Yet others in medieval Christianity seem to provide even more support than Grosseteste for the present project. Pre-eminent among these is the Christian pantheist David of Dinant (c. 1160-1217), who was accused of transgressing the ontological break between the Creator and creation and condemned as heretic by the Church in 1210. After all, he taught that there are three primal principles: God, Spirit and Matter, coinciding to the extent that matter may be called ‘Divine’ and God may be referred to as primal matter (materia prima). There may be insurmountable divisions between the institutions and theologies - each with its own complex and idiosyncratic set of symbolic associations - of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but not between the mysticisms springing from them. It was rewarding to observe how, at the same time, similar MM ideas evolved in all three of these religions, under the same set of (largely Neoplatonic) influences. Totally embedded as these MM’s were in their theological and religious settings, they also transcended such settings as they drifted tendentionally towards Absoluteness. Yet the gap between what they intended and what our concept of Absoluteness intends, remains. That also applies to the notion of Infinite Matter (Light), which in this essay 399 Energy-Matter refers to a central aspect of a level of emerging Being; to them (with Gabirol and Grosseteste as examples of promising exceptions) it remained a symbol of something spiritual. materia prima (Giordano Bruno) Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) worked at the time when a new type of natural science (pioneered in the astronomy of Copernicus 1473-1543), started to take shape in the 16th and 17th centuries. Bruno sought an integration of the new cosmology with new speculative religious metaphysics, free from the confines of the old school theology, which was still dominated by Aristotle. He proposed integration of the emerging science of the time in a new MM context that revitalised ancient philosophical and esoteric themes in Western tradition. Bearing a Platonic stamp, his thinking also had predecessors in the pre- Socratics and Neoplatonism, Eriugena and Cusanus, as well as Renaissance Hermeticism. He paid a heavy personal price for his daring, for he was arrested in 1592 and ended his life tied to a stake in Rome in 1600. The single most dominant aspect of Bruno’s thinking was his overriding fascination with the notion of infinity in every facet where it may be applicable. He passionately embraced an open universe, in which humankind can find its true destiny. Stimulated by the idea of an infinite cosmos latent in the work of Copernicus, Bruno was captivated by the speculative idea of an infinite universe without a centre, substantially homogenous in every part, living and with an omnipresent, universal spirit (Aquilecchia 1993:265). In his De /a causa, principio e uno (Concerning the cause, principle and unity’) he postulates that the universe is ‘one, infinite, immobile’, ‘without end and limitation’ (Bruno 1962). Behind all the changes is one, homogenous, substantial substrate. By implication, Bruno left behind the idea of a linear, teleological historical process with a beginning and an end and replaced it with the idea of an eternal cyclical movement without beginning and end. In his mind, this construction was clearly not intended as ‘correct’ exegesis of the Bible. Nor was it simply the extension of sensory perception. It probably had the status of a necessary speculative projection of the MM imagination. He presented it as reasonable and scientific, but it was tinged with inspired intuition. After his death, science and religion, reason and MM would fall apart: for example, Galileo was no longer prepared to die for the connection, as Bruno had been. The universe according to Bruno is an emanation from a primordial divine unity. Seen from below, the universe is multiple, but seen from above, it is one organic whole. Bruno embraced both dimensions: the unity and the contingent multiplicity. He introduced the notion of ‘monad’ (understood as a living, original and indivisible unit) into the MM discourse. In spite of the obvious 400 Chapter 18 proximity of this thinking to, for example, Advaita-Vedanta, the differences in outlook (such as Bruno’s celebration of the contingent plurality of individual things) should not be overlooked. How does he view Matter? Continuing the Neoplatonic model, Bruno views nature as an order of hierarchical dependence. At the top is one Principle (uno principio), one essence common to all things. In the process of descending emanation, the supreme unity diversifies into two derived substances: the formal principle (forma 'form', or anima 'soul') and the material principle (materia ‘matter’). He also speaks of two forces (activity and passivity) and two minimum elements (minima). Reflecting David of Dinant, God is the third of the three absolute minima. Soul and matter are not two separate substances, but two aspects of the same primordial substance. None has primacy over the other; both are infinite and divine; both are eternally co-existent and mutually dependent and thus only analytically distinguishable. He postulates the existence of a World Soul (anima del mondo), equally present in all things as artist or artisan (artefice interno). To this, | shall return in the next chapter. Matter is equally important. In this respect, the revolutionary significance of Bruno for the development of a model appropriate to contemporary conditions is to be noted. Presently the understanding of the true nature of Matter is of prime importance. This essay fully endorses Bruno's extremely high valuation of Matter. Materialistic reductionism, declaring empirically accessible matter to be the only substance of things (known by him in the forms of Leucippus, Democritus and the Epicureans), he resolutely dismissed. All the same, he attempted to integrate elements of their thinking into his own system. Bruno distinguished two levels of Matter. Matter of the higher order he called 'first Matter' (materia prima); matter of the lower order, that is physical nature accessible to the senses, he called 'sensible matter' (materia sensibile). Linking up with David of Dinant, Bruno calls Matter 'a divine thing'. He did not intend an identity of the two entities, but a participation: Matter participates in Divinity, which both transcends and includes Matter. All existing things are expressions of Souled Matter; Matter is the non-perceptible, unformed, qualityless, primordial substrate of all things; the infinite, latent primordial possibility of all things. To him Matter is an eternal yet also malleable homogenous substance, the passive potentiality of all things, fecundated by Soul to bring forth the various individual, even oppositional things. The individual Cosmic things arise from and subside back into Primal Matter. Therefore, in the end nothing is ever totally destroyed. Bruno seems to have groped for a vision according to which physical nature is a set of formations of infinite Matter (and Soul). Matter itself is defined as essentially interdependent with Soul, and as an aspect of God who is both immanent in and transcendent to the world. He would exert significant influence on, among others, Spinoza and Schelling. Today a transcendence of the 401 Energy-Matter dilemma of old-style supranaturalism with its sharp ontological breaks between (a) firstly God and world and (b) secondly between soul and matter, as well as of flat positivistic materialism, remains as relevant as in Bruno’s time. It should be stated here that in its overall conception and development the book presented here has been profoundly indebted to Bruno (cf. Kruger 2004). As far as Matter is concerned, the main difference is that Bruno assumed Matter to be not only infinite, but also an eternal substance, derived from an eternal, substantial God. He did not pursue the route towards non-substantial Absolute Horizon, as our argument intends. the Universal Infinite One, Akasha and Prana (Vivekananda) In order to gain a different perspective on the landscape of Infinite Being as Infinite Matter, let me now veer away from the remarkably homogeneous range of medieval monotheistic and early modern MM to explore a different range, the Indian range of Advaita-Vedanta. Yet is it so different? Does light not also play a central role in Hinduism as symbol of the overcoming of ignorance by understanding, for example in the festival of Diwali - its MM meaning harking back to the Vedas? The Indian school of Advaita-Vedanta goes back to the first forest thinkers of India, from the 7th century BCE onwards. Starting from a polytheist position, these earliest forest dwellers gradually pushed through to a non-dualist position, finding its culmination in Sankara. Let me turn to a modern representative, Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902). Born from a Bengali aristocratic family and a disciple of Ramakrishna (1836-1886), Vivekananda became famous for his address at the opening ceremony of the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 (Vivekananda 1964:vol 1.5-24). Speaking charismatically and writing clearly, he became the most celebrated modern exponent of Advaita-Vedanta. Vivekananda speaks a great deal about what he terms 'Infinity', but he does not intend what is envisaged in our Archeic picture. To him 'Infinity' appears to be a characterisation of the ultimate: ‘Brahman’ C‘Atman’, ‘God’, ‘Being’, ‘the Absolute’ - note the definite article), implying Its being eternal, eternally pure, eternally awake, almighty, all-knowing, all-merciful, omnipresent, formless and partless (111.123; 1V.85), ‘Spirit’, ‘the Universal Infinite One’ (1.341, 363), ‘the only Reality’ (11.248), ‘the One Infinite Being’ (III.8). Such terminology approximates ‘positive’ theistic Neoplatonic terminology, but it must be understood that Vivekananda intends transcending that mythologising and personalising modes of speech. Typically, he and the tradition to which he belongs would paint the Infinite in negative language (1.499). Again, we are reminded of Western monotheistic-Neoplatonic apophatic speech. Interestingly, Vivekananda believes that the Occident has missed that notion of the Infinite altogether (1.500). 402 Chapter 18 To him the very notion of Infinity implies a relativising of the world to the point of being mere maya (illusion, owing to ignorance) (1.563, II.83, 305). The Infinite could not have become the finite (11.132) since that would have resulted in a ‘minus’, a limitation, in Infinity. Change implies production by something external and more powerful (11.228). Therefore, Infinity cannot change (11.80) and be divided (11.414, 431, 469f.), and this universe can only have the status of mere appearance and not reality, because of our human looking through time, space and causation (II.13Off.) as if through a veil (11.135). Not that the universe does not exist, but it is not what we naively take it to be, namely something different from Infinity/the Absolute. No, the universe simply ‘is’ the Absolute (i.e. Infinity) (1.418f.). It is merely ‘the apparent evolution of God’. This ‘whole universe as it exists is that Being’ (1.363). Thou are that! Thou art God! (11.134, 399, 471; III.547, 422). God is not a separate Being, and | am not a separate being. God is (and we are) the Universal (11.419), Infinite Being, Infinite Reality (11.339), the Infinite Individual (11.346), the Divine Being (II.401), the Existence Absolute (11.402), the Infinite Soul (11.431) - also Infinite Love in which Love, Lover and Beloved are One (II.53) (see Ch. 20). Vivekananda's Advaita MM is accommodating, in his words ‘friendly’, accepting what has preceded it, ‘not in a patronising way, but with the conviction that they are true manifestations of the same truth’ (11.347). Yet the notion of Absolute Horizon, inspired by historical Siddhattha and legendary Lao-Tzu, takes MM reflection a decisive step back behind Vivekananda's position. He does not allow for Absolute Horizon in the absolute sense of the word, where Being is transcended altogether. To him Infinity is an ultimate category, but his Infinity has substantialising overtones, as the nomenclature used by him (see above) to characterise it, amply demonstrates. Not only is our Absoluteness not the same as his Infinity; our Infinitude is not the same as his Infinity either. He speaks more definitely, more ‘positively’ of Infinity even when he intends speaking ‘negatively’ about it, than our Archeic model, which allows only for formless Infinitude, just, only just, starting to announce its emergence, on the threshold of ‘non-is’ and ‘is’. To him Infinite Being is Perfect Being, on the assumption that a stringent view of causality would not allow for any other view. That is disputable. ‘Advaita’ ((non-dual') need not have the implication of attaching illusionary status to Cosmos. 'Non-dual' could also allow for Unground, wholly inaccessible to us, to 'cause' a relatively autonomous (in a sense) Cosmos, without losing sight of their identity (in a sense). What about Matter? In spite of the two and a half millennia separating Vivekananda from Siddhattha Gotama, the remarkable continuity in the Indian MM tradition is unmistakeable. In Vivekananda the ancient Indian notion of akasa (space?) utilised by Siddhattha Gotama, resurfaces, but quite independently of the former. In this respect, this essay is moving close to Vivekananda. To him the universe itself is composed of matter and force. All matter is the outcome of one ‘orimal matter’, called Akasha; and all forces in nature are the manifestations of 403 Energy-Matter one ‘primordial force’ called Prana (VIII.192ff.). Under the conditions of contemporary science, they would be grouped together as ‘matter’ and ‘energy’. The important point here is that modern Advaita Vedanta in the figure of Vivekananda sees a dimension beyond the ‘gross’ matter registered by the senses and their extensions in instruments, and insists on a dimension perceptible by the mind. It suggests the dimension hinted at in a different terminology by a David Bohm and others as opening up on the other side of presently prevalent crude materialism in contemporary culture. What Vivekananda does not do, is extend his primal, primordial level towards the depth of Absoluteness, as Siddhattha had done. In its own manner, this essay with its notion of Infinite Matter wishes to capture a most important aspect of that primal, primordial level of emerging Reality - not ultimately deriving from an eternal Spirit, but emerging from empty Absoluteness. The art of MM composition envisaged in this exploration is the construction of a balanced integration of the categories of Absoluteness, Eternity, Infinitude and Cosmos, each with its constituent aspects. Vivekananda’s model has its strengths, but it also emphasises certain aspects at the cost of others. | find that his model loses sufficient sight of the very top and the very bottom of the chain of being (to use that term for the moment): at the top, the non-reality of Absoluteness; at the bottom, the real reality of Cosmos. This survey of some MM views of Matter from history was worthwhile, confirming the hunch that reductionistic materialism may be the worldview of choice for most of contemporary scientific and science-dependent popular culture or perhaps the only option available to many, but that is by no means the only or the most convincing route to take. Seeking an alternative route does not imply settling for mythological theism or the denigration of Matter as has been the case in most idealistic systems. On the contrary, it may imply the elevation of Matter to a high ontological status indeed, and as aligned to and integrated with other dimensions at such a level as having equal status. To these other dimensions | shall now turn. 404 i Life E 549 The urge to be Cosmic life is here discerned as manifesting an unconquerable urge to be, and to be well, and to achieve such a state of well-being - an urge encoded in Infinitude as background of Cosmic life. It is present in the most primitive forms of life as well as in the instinctual drives of higher developed organisms to live and to preserve life. Let us think of life and matter as connected in the sense that both, inextricably linked, are intrinsically part of Cosmos as a whole. Here the term hylozoism (Greek: ‘matter’-‘life’-ism) becomes useful: not in the sense that matter as such, or every manifestation of matter is explicitly alive, but in the sense that Life as Infinite influence permeates all that is. Cosmic life may be thought of as having its origin in a dimension transcending what is envisaged in both materialistic reductionism and super naturalistic creationism. The understanding proposed here does not militate against the scientific fact that in the historical sequence of this our evolving Cosmos, matter appeared first and that life emerged from matter. It is suggested that life as experienced and observed in everyday human existence and as studied by science can be interlocked with the kind of MM scheme emerging here. How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Life’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 405-423, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi. org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.19 405 Life Only with the engagement of both discourses together, would human knowledge of facts be able to progress to the understanding of meaning and to the motivation of benevolent praxis towards all life. Empirical nature then becomes Nature as living, meaningful whole. Biological evolution could be recognised as part of the devolution of Spirit from Absoluteness to Cosmos. Another fact is that wealthy sectors of humanity are hedonistically spoiling earthly life. It may not be the only factor precipitating an ecological disaster, but it is a significant one. As part of an alternative culture, biological life needs to be connected to a ‘more’, here thought of as Infinite Life. Such an intervention can only be made by humanity itself, following the most profound elements in its MM traditions. Infinite Life is not the divine possession of everlasting, interminable existence (as Boethius said in his Consolation V.V1). It is the possibility of life as we know it, but prior (not in a temporal sense) to its appearance on Earth. Infinite Life is not biological life yet. It is postulated as a life enabling precondition, necessary for biological life on Earth. Infinite Life does not refer to some pre-existent state of affairs. It has the same ontological status as Infinite Matter. As Infinite urge to be, it is a formless reservoir containing the potential for the abilities of adaptation, responsiveness, development, growth, continuation, appetite, sensing pleasure and pain, self-organisation and creativity (the production of novelty implying an element of freedom). Life on earth is neither the result of a fiat from some supernatural elsewhere, nor the result of a blind, chance shuffling of sheer matter. In a way, Infinite Life is a functional equivalent of what is referred to as 'eternal life' in some religions. Nevertheless, it is not the same. It is not an existence of endless duration as somehow a happy continuation of earthly life after death, reserved for some individuals of the human species, the other individuals of that species doomed to an equally endless state of existence as a most unhappy continuation of earthly life (eternal death’), and all other forms of life just perishing. Such myths serve a psychological and social need in some individuals, societies and religions. Humans have a deeply ingrained need to see goodness rewarded and evil punished, and they appear to need to emphasise their superiority over 'lower' forms of life. All of that is understandable, but the notion of Infinite Life does not serve that need. All biological forms of life from minute prokaryotes to very clever humans (homo sapiens sapiens) express Infinite Life, are carried by Infinite Life while they live out their lives. Then they all die. Biological death is not the end of the story. | am not implying some living happily ever after for some predestined or exceptionally virtuous individuals of one species, either by imputed merit or own perfection. All forms of life die. Death is more than the decay and disintegration of biological bodies rejoining the physical materials and forces of nature. It signifies the return of all biological life to the reservoir of Infinite Life, 406 Chapter 19 to Infinitude-Eternity-Absoluteness. End as termination is linked to End as destiny. Realising that, is salvation and happiness. At death |, you, all - from prokaryotes to humans - become, in a sense slightly more emphatic than we already are, part of the cycle of Cosmos. We are recycled. The droplet returns to the ocean. Our being part of the spiral of Arche as a whole is realised. Humans are privileged: as far as we presently know, we are the only ones with the ability to know consciously and self-consciously and to appreciate life in the context of Life. What a precious surfacing from the ocean of Infinitude are our lives - if we are very strong, 80 years, with perhaps a bonus of a decade or two thrown in thanks to modern science - before we submerge again into Infinite Life. Only the most finely tuned human minds, touching Infinitude, realise this. Such minds make contact not only with Infinite Life, but also with Infinite Matter, Love and Thought. This spiral of Origin and End, repeated and symbolised in every birth and hatching and every death of every living creature, is not only a chronological process occurring over a period of time. It is actualised at every moment of every life. Birth and death take place in every body every second. Even if all life on Earth should come to an end, Infinite Life, with Infinite Matter, Love and Thought, functions. In that sense, ‘Il’ cannot die: not in the sense of having an eternal substantial soul or being part of an eternal Substance, but in the sense of being part of an Archeic spiral in which the moment of Infinite Life can be discerned. The Eternal Principles we can only postulate, but Infinitude can be glimpsed, sensed, experienced, deriving from it a sense of the beauty of Cosmic life in its very transience, with its miraculous arising, its glowing health, its energetic activity and its end, which can be noble. The above is the larger context of our being part of the biological process of procreation, of being born, of metabolism, responsiveness to stimuli, adaptation to the environment, and death and decay. In their contact with the margin of Cosmic life, some have concentrated on Life. That is the mysticism of the active deed, exemplified by a Francis of Assisi', a Matilda in Dante's Purgatory and a Gandhi. It is karma-yoga. It is loving the Lord with all one's strength of body. This is achieved by living strongly, promoting the well-being of all living beings. The insight emerging in this chapter gives rise to a morality in which all life is respected, loved and actively served. The preservation of one's individual biological life is not the ultimate good. There is more, and many have gladly sacrificed their lives for a higher good. On the other hand, contrary to much of religion (including large chunks of Buddhism and Christianity) cosmic life, including food and drink, sex, family life and friendship, is not to be despised as evil, but celebrated (cf. Davis 1976). There remains the mystery of pain and suffering and the inescapable fact that all life seems to be at the cost of other life. The strong become stronger 407 Life by feeding on the weaker. Even if we would emphasise the dimensions of co-operation and so on (see the next chapter), the dimension of life at the cost of life would remain. The argument that there is no problem at all, that it is all a matter of human perception with a misplaced sentimentality, does not solve the problem. All we have is the human perspective, and in that perspective pain is pain and life without pain is not possible. All theodicies - from the notion of the best of possible worlds to the notion of an almighty God - have been wrecked on this rock. This essay drifts towards imagining that pain and suffering are inevitable effects of the process of limitation, as Infinitude becomes Cosmos; and that Cosmic life as it is, is part of a larger process. Cosmos is a pearl resting in the mother-of-pearl! of Infinite Life. Life on Earth is a secretion of Infinite Life, essentially continuous with and similar to Infinite Life, and irritation is part of its production. In addition, the pearl may still be developing, growing, in the direction of beauty and perfection, we may imagine, as we contribute towards that development. For that to happen, Infinite Life is to be imagined together with Infinite Love and Infinite Thought. The notion of Infinite Life provides a transcendental basis for a human morality centring in an affirmation of life. At a biophysical level, human life revolves around the experiences of pleasure and pain, the physical reactions of desire and revulsion and the overall tones of suffering and relief from suffering. Human beings are capable of transcending such experiences of life and accessing a dimension here referred to as Infinite Life. From that, human beings can return to life with a strong affirmation of biological life, balancing strength, endurance and moderation in all things. At a psychological level, visiting the domain of Infinite Life opens the possibility of existing with courage, resoluteness and fortitude for the good of all Cosmic life. B S50 To life! Greek-Hellenistic thinking O Plato Two centuries after Anaximander, Plato in his Timaeus (see Ch. 6 and Ch. 9 of the present publication), put forward the notion of Cosmos as a living organism. He did not get round to working out his vision in detail as far as empirical life is concerned; the biological sciences do not exactly feature in his writing. Yet he certainly put forward creative ideas concerning the origin of the livingness of such life on earth - ideas which this argument would not mind being aligned with up to a point. In short, his Demiurge, stripped of its mythological jacket, is not a particular, personal God, but may be interpreted as the Idea of Life, of Livingness, of which all forms of concrete life, from the universe as the Great Living Being to the many concrete forms of life, are so many instantiations. In the mature Plato ‘Life’, ‘Living Being’, may even be the most embracing of all 408 Chapter 19 Ideas, in which firstly the world as the great Cosmic Living Being, and secondly all living beings, participate. The Demiurge as the Idea of Livingness is the genus of which they are specifications. Essentially the Idea of Livingness, of Living Being, includes the notion of self-movingness. From the Demiurge, understood thus, the notion of a Soul of the World may be derived, and from that, all other souls of existing beings derive their relative reality. Such souls therefore have an intermediary status: on the one hand, they participate upwards in the transcendent dimension of Ideas, on the other hand, they ensoul specific bodies, thereby awarding movement (i.e. life) to them. Life is the principle, which gives the Cosmos and its inhabitants the element of durability. Plato’s notion of the indestructibility of individual souls fits into this framework. Since the ultimate category is Being as Idea (to be precise in our present context: Living Being as Idea), and since that Living Being is deathless, and since all living creatures participate in that Idea of Living Being through their life-giving souls, it must follow that such souls cannot die. This expedition follows a different route, aligning itself with the Buddhist intuition of ultimate emptiness, transcending a notion such as ultimately indestructible Ideas (including a notion of Living Being), and disallowing the notion of the eternity of souls. Plato’s Idea of Life is not an intermediate stage (such as our Eternity or Infinitude) mediating between a further level of transcendence (such as our Absoluteness) and Cosmos. His Life, essentially tied to Being, is the ultimate category. That ultimate level, that terminus a quo, is not empty in any sense, but perfect fullness, somehow allowing change, but not changing itself. O Aristotle Whereas Plato worked downwards from the top of transcendence, Aristotle (see our Ch. 13) worked upwards from empirical reality. Plato forged a metaphysics with scientific implications; Aristotle was a researcher in the field of natural phenomena, developing theories with metaphysical import. With him, biological life as observable on land, in the skies and in the oceans would become a topic of serious research and thought. The issue at stake now is not Aristotle's pioneering contribution to biology as a natural science, but whether (and, if so, how) he explained the origin of life, the enabling conditions for life. Could ‘life’ in some sense in his view have been an enabling transcendental condition for the world as such, apart from biological life? First, Aristotle does not seem to have been interested in any transcendental role for the infinite (to apeiron). To him cosmos is finite, and infinity as such does not exist. It is not an actuality, neither as some substance nor as some principle or potentiality that can become actual. To him infinity, in the most general sense, may have meant something like the potentially indefinite extension of anything that can be extended, such as number. Even so, the question remains whether (and if so, how) he sought a transcendental origin of life. 409 Life Of the four types of causes distinguished by Aristotle (material, formal, efficient and final), the fourth at first glance allows some connection with a transcendental dimension. Aristotle himself may have excluded the necessity of conscious deliberation in beings themselves in their teleological directedness, but is a link with a transcendental dimension, however it might be understood, necessarily excluded? According to a line of interpretation seeking to connect Aristotle strongly to present-day scientific thinking, the teleological structure of the world according to his physics (the notion that the ground of each thing is to be found in its final cause) might not have been connected to any more than materialist notion at all; Aristotle does not accept any ontologically different, pre-existing Good/God that things in the world willy-nilly measure up to, and he only allows for immanent good as purpose. In this view, the teleological good (final cause) may simply refer to performing well in the things that beings (such as humans - and the universe as a whole) do anyway (Anagnostopoulos 2009:335-347). In Aristotle’s view, God did not create the world, and God does not actively run the world. That would not necessarily exclude a transcendentalist explanation of the world. Indeed, along a second line of interpretation, the teleological process (certainly not effected by God, who is wholly detached) is all done by the natural world itself, having an inherent natural tendency to become godlike. Then the Unmoved Prime Mover is merely a model for emulation - but even so teleology does have a transcendental reference (Sedley 2010:5ff.). The argument of this essay is closer to Aristotle as presented in this second line of thought (if itis correct - it appears that there are a number of unresolved ambiguities in the thinking of Aristotle). But even on this second type of interpretation, even if Aristotle stood in awe before the world as manifestness somehow connected to meaningful hiddenness, a notion such as 'Infinite Life' would have been foreign to his way of thinking. As for biological life as such, Aristotle's assumption of hylomorphism C‘matter-form’-ism) is relevant to this discussion. By that, he meant that the soul is the ‘form’ of the body and that the body is the ‘matter’ of the soul. He wished to avoid the extremes of (1) a dualism of body and soul (Plato's potential error), (2) reducing the soul to the body and (3) eliminating the soul altogether (Shields 2009:292ff.). This opens a perspective on comparing Aristotle’s hylomorphism to early Buddhist notions such as khandha (the five ‘groups’ of all existence) and nàma-rüpa (integrated ‘name-form’, i.e. ‘mind-matter’). By this construction, emphasising the interdependence of corporeality and mentality, Buddhism also strove to find a middle way beyond the soul substantialism of some Upanishads and the reductionist (eliminative) views of the materialists of the time. There is a certain similarity between the Buddha's resistance against materialism and Upanishadic eternalism, and Aristotle's resistance against reductionism (eliminativism) and Plato's eternalism. Whereas the Buddha emphatically incorporated his linkage of name-and-form in an MM package related to absolute Emptiness, Aristotle did not do that. 410 Chapter 19 The dynamics of the movement involved in the interaction of matter and forms has a seemingly unstoppable momentum (Lewis 2009:162ff.). In order to avoid an infinite regress, Aristotle postulates an ultimate, primary Unmoved Mover. To Aristotle that is pure form, which is perfection, that is, divinity. Aristotle’s God is pure thought, in its perfection neither desiring nor doing anything (certainly not creating anything), only engaged in self-contemplation. There is no contact with his Unmoved Mover. Aristotle had no mystical interest. Yet the divine contemplation expresses what Aristotle regarded as the highest form of human existence. The relationship of the world to the Unmoved Mover is not unambiguously clear in his thinking. It is not MM in the full sense of articulating a dimension of human experience of transcendence, and of explaining the becoming of the world - including life - from a transcendent source. His thinking does not allow any notion of ‘Life’ as a transcendental category. Aristotle takes the distinguishing mark of life to be self-initiated change, which he attributes to ‘soul’ (osyche): being alive and being ensouled are co-extensive. On those assumptions, he distinguishes three levels of life: at the bottom, plants (feeding and procreating) with their specific kind of 'soul'; then animal life (perceiving and moving) with an animal soul; and then the highest form, human life (thinking), with a human soul. Again, (unlike Plato) he does not push the notion of 'life' into any transcendental dimension, continuous with cosmic life. ‘Life’ (‘soul’) in any transcendent sense (including ‘infinity’) is not the ultimate cause of change, including self-initiated change (life). O Stoicism In Stoicism (see Ch. 7), its founder Zeno - very similar to Plato - probably took the Cosmos to be a living (ensouled: sensing, reasoning) being (zdon), with individual living things organically part of it (Hahm 1977:136ff.; Sandbach 1975:82ff.; White 2003:128ff.). Zeno's successor, Cleanthes (c. 330-230 BCE), followed the founder in this Platonic view and in a broad sense also reverted to Aristotle's notion of the three levels of life, which he then applied to the cosmos as a whole. He may also have extended Aristotle's view of the human soul to the notion of the world soul. The third leader of this school, Chrysippus (c. 279-206 BCE), continued and probably for the first time developed fully the view of cosmos as a living, that is ensouled, being: sentient, rational and divine. What makes the Cosmos alive is what also causes a human being and all living creatures to be alive: psyche, conventionally translated as ‘soul’. A better translation might be ‘life’. ‘Life’ in a human being was taken to include sensation as well as perception, emotion and thought. Here Chrysippus followed not only Aristotle, but also a wider trend of Greek thinking. In a living being psyche is equated with pneuma (literally, ‘wind’), understood as a mixture of air and fire, and imparting coherence to the living being. It is significant to note that the Stoics accepted the corporeality of the soul: its being physical 411 Life and intimately integrated with the body, yet also being a substance in its own right and not reducible to corporeality (Long 1996:236). The question is whether the rubric here termed ‘Infinitude’, specifically Infinite Life, intermediate between Absoluteness-Eternity and Cosmos, may be related to Stoicism's archa/: their Principles structuring everything that exists. It is noteworthy that the Stoics probably derived their notion of archai from Aristotle’s biology: their Cosmos is a living being; its birth is exactly like the birth of other living beings. Their archai are the Principles bringing the cosmos into existence, and in totality (including matter) have an overarching life-enabling function. The archai are (in modern terminology) a set of transcendental principles, with one function: to bring about cosmos, centrally seen as alive. Behind and operative in the birth and life of the cosmos and of its parts (the living beings on earth), a dimension of structuring principles is discerned. Our concept of Infinite Life does not coincide with Stoic archai, but is aiming in a similar direction. O Plotinus Plotinus (also see Ch. 9 and Ch. 13) saw Infinity (apeiron) as the transcendence of all formal determination, including empirical, cosmic being (cf. Clark 1996:275ff.; Sweeney 1992:167ff., 243ff.). Firstly, this applies to the Good, the One: It has no characteristic, is beyond any description. At that level of transcendence, Infinity is perfection, since It seeks nothing. At the bottom rung of emanation, Matter is also infinite, that is, indeterminate, but at that level Infinity is anything but perfection. Soul (osyche) and Mind (nous) are infinite to the degree that they transcend cosmic being. As Mind springs from the One, so Soul springs from Mind: it is something other than Mind, while Mind remains unchanged. Yet when Soul produces the next level (Matter, and body, and bodily life, and sensation, and growth) it in itself does change. In his words (Enneads V.2.1) (Plotinus 1991): Soul arises out of the motionless Intellectual-Principle - which itself sprang from its own motionless prior - but the Soul's operation is not similarly motionless; its image is generated from its movement. It takes fullness by looking to its source; but it generates its image by adopting another, a downward, movement. This image of Soul is Sense and Nature, the vegetal principle. (p. 436) Plotinus goes on to describe the ambivalent position of Soul: while remaining connected to Mind (intelligence) and via Mind to the One, Soul also reaches down to the vegetal order and the 'life of growing things' as its province. To paraphrase: Soul produces biological life, even as it remains infinite Itself (V.2.1). It fulfils, so to speak, a downward mediating function between the One and cosmic life. Continuing Plato and Aristotle's identification of ‘soul’ with ‘life’, Plotinus views Soul as primarily, essentially alive and the source of life of all living things. Soul, life, is also (as was the case in Aristotle) primarily defined as self-motion and sentience. 412 Chapter 19 Soul, indivisible in Itself, is also unifying. It is the non-corporeal principle informing and regulating cosmos as a whole and every single body in it. Yet Plotinus is not a panpsychist in the sense that he believes that there is only one Soul. There are individual souls, not identical with the large Soul, but particular versions, unfoldings, of Soul. Plotinus adheres to neither a reductionist (life, soul, is reducible to matter) nor a dualist (soul and matter are essentially unconnected) position. To him Soul devolves: from the All to the lesser, from the whole to the single part, from the largest to the smallest. Matter derives its very being from Soul in the sense that Matter is Soul at its weakest. We might interpret: without Soul (livingness), there would be no Matter, no body - no biological (‘vegetal’) life. Plotinus’ Soul, infinite (undetermined), is productive at the level of biological life, yet without possessing such life. In a sense, life may also be said to be implicitly contained in Mind (VI.7.17). | believe our notion of Infinite Life is an approximate to what Plotinus had in mind with his psyche as infinite, yet life- producing power. A significant difference is that whereas our attempt presents the four Infinitudes as equal, much as they are intertwined, Plotinus presents a hierarchical structure of dependence with Mind (in our terminology: 'Infinite Thought’) at the top, Soul (in our terminology: ‘Infinite Life’) in the middle, and Infinite Matter at the bottom. While sharing Plotinus' expansive (from centre to periphery) interest, this essay does not share Plotinus' depreciation of matter, and ranks biological, bodily life higher than was the case in his system. He seemed to have been 'ashamed' of his body, according to his student and biographer Porphyry. Whereas Plotinus (in what has been called ‘henological’ metaphysics) (Sweeney 1992:255) describes the One as infinite, this essay would radicalise that position by introducing the notion of Absoluteness, transcending both his Oneness and his Infinity. Greek-Hellenistic thinking continued to play a formative and normative role in Western philosophy and thinking through the Middle Ages and well into modern times, and with reason. Those systems provided the metaphysical basics from which Western science would develop. Yet, from their side, the monotheistically inspired theologies and philosophies in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim contexts introduced the notion of Life in a way that one does not find in their Greek- Hellenistic precursors. In their original contexts, those theologies and philosophies believed in a living God as ultimate Referent, which introduced an entirely new impetus. Life became a value at the highest level. | shall not at this stage pursue the role of (Infinite) Life in those Greek- influenced theistic contexts further, except in passing to note the case of Robert Grosseteste (see previous chapter), who in this respect, too, developed his own unique vision of things under the influence of Aristotle, and via the Muslim Avicenna (McEvoy 1982:290ff.). Again, one is struck by Grosseteste's empirical scientific interest and his knowledge of the science of his day in his dealing with the topics of the vegetative soul (vegetable life) and the sensitive 415 Life soul (sensory life in animals and humans). In his system, the single but tripartite human soul includes the ‘rational’ soul as a third part. In this way, he sought to maintain an essential connection of the human being to animal and vegetative life. A question interesting us now is: What is the origin of the human soul according to Grosseteste? The answer appears to be: it was directly created by God as a unit, thereby making it an image of God. Here the theistic theologian in Grosseteste takes over. His interest seems to have been restricted to life as it manifests in the human being. Nevertheless, given that limitation, his definition of ‘life’ in all three of its powers as reducible to the ‘single dynamic principle of attraction and repulsion’ at all three levels is interesting Cibid.:318f.). Indian thinking In orthodox Indian MM thinking, Atman in the sense of the absolute Self (‘the Absolute’), has since early days been the supreme category. In one version (Mundaka Upanishad, one of the earliest Upanishads, and written in verse), life comes out of Atman (Brahman) like herbs out of the earth (1.1.7) (Basu 1911): As the spider stretches forth and gathers together its threads, as herbs grow out of the earth, as from a living man come out the hair, so from the Imperishable comes out the Universe. (p. 208) Telling analogies do not solve theoretical conundrums, but the above analogies of that ancient version of non-dualism suggest that somehow life is eternally latent in Brahman, at some point emerges from Brahman, and always has its roots in Brahman, from which it materialises without any exertion on the side of Brahman. Especially the herb analogy above, carries the overtones of life (jrva, etymologically related to ‘breath’): the immortal essence of any living organism, whether human, animal or plant, which in a sense is not affected by physical death. It is a compelling set of associations, to which the reflections of this essay are drawn. This includes the notion of ‘Imperishable’, not understood in a substantialist sense (‘never dying’), but as suggesting a dimension transcending both life and death, and in that sense 'imperishable'. That would also apply to our notion of ‘Absoluteness’: Life appears from Absolute Horizon beyond Life, yet brings forth Life, not as something alien to Absolute Horizon and as something becoming concretised in Cosmic life. Biological life, every single individual carrying it, lives and dies, yet life itself, perishable as it is, reaches back into and forward into a deeper dimension. The term 'Infinite Life' intends to express that. Generally speaking, the concept Pràna appears to have the same function in the thinking inspired by the Vedas. Present in original Atman (Brahman) and in fact identical with Atman, is Prana: the life force, life principle manifesting in air (vayu) at the level of Cosmos as it evolves from Atman (Belvalkar & Ranade 1974 [1927]:146ff., 155ff., 291ff.; Raju 1969 [1937 ]:vol Ill: 581f.). At the cosmic level, Pràna is the support and sustainer of the world, and also its unifying principle. Pràna is not only physical air (however subtle), 414 Chapter 19 but in its various forms also produces movement, action (karma) - and, in progressively fuller expression, life with all its biophysical functions: all the voluntary and involuntary activities of Cosmos and all the bodies in it. Life is Prana, and Prana is life. Prana is thus the intermediate, vital and vitalising principle between the absolutely indeterminate ultimate on the one hand and determinate Cosmos on the other hand. Particularly in Yoga and Vedanta this notion, taken to be the infinite source of cosmic and individual life, has been developed to levels of great sophistication, allowing the universe in its entirety to be seen as a living organism. Our concept of Infinite Life aims at a similar function. The difference is that whereas post-Upanishadic Vedanta would see Pràna, co-extensive with Atman, as eternally substantial and unchangeable, this model would emphasise Infinite Life to be evolving from empty Absoluteness. The factor life as such does not receive a great deal of positive value in early Buddhism, neither at a biophysical nor a metaphysical level. In the meditation system of early Buddhism with its various levels of meditative absorption Qhànas), positive emphasis is placed on the attainment of Infinite Space (akasanaficayatana: fifth level), which can be thought of as matter infinitely attenuated. There is Infinite Consciousness (vififianaficayatana: sixth level) and Nothingness (àkificafifiayatana: seventh level). As for love, the meditation of the four Brahmavihàras (Sublime Abodes’) amounts to Infinite Love (see next chapter). Nevertheless, there is no absorption into Infinite Life. If anything, early Buddhism was quite disdainful of life. In its traditional listing of 40 themes of meditation, the body and its manifestations of life are incorporated, but in the context of disgust. Among the 10 loathsome subjects (asubha) are the meditations on corpses in various stages of decomposition, and the 32 parts of the human body, all impure. Such contemplations lead only to the first absorption. In the final analysis, the highest aim of Buddhist striving was to escape from the round of rebirths. In this respect, this essay parts company with Buddhism in that form. The Buddha emphasised the uniqueness of human life, compared to a tortoise surfacing from the ocean ever so rarely, but the point is that such birth awards human beings a unique opportunity to escape from the round of birth and death altogether. The Indian Mahayana vow commits the bodhisattva to the benefit of all living beings in their state of woe, but even that is not tantamount to endorsing life as such or providing it with transcendental backing. The notion of Infinite Life in our model, from which all Cosmic Life comes and to which it returns, positively honours and loves Life. Chinese thinking Chinese thinking in general and Taoism in particular (cf. Fung 1953; Graham 1989; Stepaniants 2002:223f.) affirmed natural life. ‘Taoism’ came to be used for the general thinking of educated people who, especially during the Warring States 415 Life period (403-221 BCE), tried to escape from the political disorders of their time by finding refuge, as individuals, in the world of nature. By then educated people had left behind the belief in divine beings for some time already, and the attempt to explain the workings of the universe rationally by means of the two dialectical forces of yin (passivity, darkness, femaleness, earth) and yang (activity, light, maleness, heaven) had been established. The point of departure of their MM was obviously nature, including living, procreating nature. In Taoism Cin this respect differing from Confucianism), the good human life was primarily a spontaneous life. That would not be a life of self-indulgence, but of harmony with one’s true nature, requiring moderation for the sake of optimal enjoyment of sounds, colours and tastes. It would also be a life marked by non-aggressive tolerance. Life is to be prized, and for that reason, one’s vital forces are not to be exhausted unwisely. Yet this life of adaptation to the deeper current of nature would also exclude a passionate clinging to life, as becomes clear in Chuang-Tzu (see our Ch. 5): Death is but a change from one form of existence to another, and therefore holds nothing to fear. In order to lead such a natural life, recluse literati strove to know the laws underlying the transformations in the natural order of things. In this school, the concept of 7ao ('path', ‘doctrine’, ‘principle’), originally used for human morality, became an MM concept for the all-embracing first principle, producing the entire natural order. In previous chapters, enough (for the requirements of this essay) has been said about the 7ao and the basic structure of Taoist MM, and its profound significance for what this essay terms Absoluteness. In an exercise such as this, seeking one-to-one correspondences between details would be the wrong way to go. Nevertheless, the downward flow of the Tao can be understood and appreciated (Fung 1953:178ff.). From Tao, insofar as it is related to reality (the ‘Great Oneness’), come Heaven and Earth, emanating respectively into the active yang and the passive yin, with their harmonious interaction. All things in the universe are manifestations of the 7ao, operating as it does through its power (Te). Ch'i is another term, like Te intimately associated with the Tao, and of special interest to this chapter (cf. Graham 1989:101ff.). In meaning, it is quite close to the orthodox Indian notion of Pràna. Ch'i refers to the Tao's becoming active in the universe as yin and yang. It is a sea of universal, ceaselessly flowing, vitalising psycho-physical energy. The myriad things solidify out of and dissolve into ch. And by opening oneself to ch’, the force pervading and unifying everything in the universe including one’s own body (primarily as breath), it is possible to become mystically unified with it. Taoism illustrates the need to find a vitalising bridge between Absoluteness and concrete Cosmos, anchored in each of both opposite banks of the river - in Taoist terms: a bridge between Tao and the myriad things. The notion of ch'i fulfils that need, of which our notion of Infinite Life is a functional equivalent. Taoism’s confirmation of a positive, light-hearted acceptance of life, without clinging to it, is deeply appreciated. 416 Chapter 19 Giordano Bruno In Bruno’s attempted integration of early modern science and Renaissance Hermeticism, the concept of life was of central importance. Other Renaissance figures with a Hermetical connection, notably Paracelsus (1493-1541) and Tomasso Campanella (1568-1639), likewise saw nature and earth as complex living organisms. In passing: in the emerging early modern period scientific experimentation was not tied to a mechanistic metaphor for reality as is presently the case, but seen as participation in, communication with, a living reality. Bruno also did not think of nature in materialistic, mechanistic terms. Picking up his De /a causa, principio e uno again: as discussed in the previous chapter, we see Bruno’s emanating reality as manifesting in two derived, interdependent but not identical substances. These are Matter (materia) and Soul (anima) or Form (forma). The universe and everything in it is filled with Soul, as a room filled with a voice that can be heard everywhere in it. Continuing ancient Greek and Hellenistic thinking, he also postulated the existence of a World Soul (anima del mondo), which leads nature in the production of living species (Krüger 2004:216ff). It is also the universal Intellect (intelletto universale). Thus, Bruno adapted Plotinus' scheme, according to which Soul followed Mind (nous) in the hierarchy of emanation. In Bruno's system, the World Soul is the inner, immanent artist or artisan (artefice interno), the principle of Life, the life-creating energy, forming nature from the inside. Sometimes he refers to it as ‘Nature’, or simply as ‘Life’. For all practical purposes, he identifies 'Soul' and 'Life'. This implies neither an identity of Life and Divinity, nor an identity of Matter and Life, but it does award a certain primacy to Soul (Life) over Matter. Life is homogeneous throughout nature, even though it manifests to a lesser degree in a stone than in a living creature, and there is only a difference of degree between organic and inorganic life. Cosmos is a living Organism (Kirchhoff 1980:96ff.). His vision may be seen as a variant of pan-psychism. His substance ‘Soul’ (i.e. Life) is distinct from but not separate from God: emanating from God, it is also co-eternal with God. In his own way, Bruno was God- intoxicated; it must be added that his version of 'God' is a version of Deus Absconditus (‘hidden God’). Bruno’s views resurfaced in, among others, the 19th century thinker Schelling with his idea of a world soul (We/tsee/e) and the omnipresence of life; and, now, in the work of among others, James Lovelock (1988) and Jochen Kirchhoff (1999). Our model greatly appreciates the martyr from the late Renaissance, not least because of his love for Cosmos as living, true and good. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche The discovery of life in the context of evolutionary theory was one of the significant achievements of the modern West. Born almost a century before 417 Life the arrival of Darwinism, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) nevertheless anticipated Darwin’s view of survival in a universal struggle of all against all as the main mechanism driving evolution. In a sense Schopenhauer remained a Kantian, understanding Life as the equivalent of Kant’s ‘Thing in Itself’, and biological species in the context of Platonic Ideas: they were the concretisations of transcendent essences. The essence of the world can only be found via experience by the human of his own bodily existence, which is nothing else than the objectified, experienceable form of the action of Will in time and space. Consciousness is but the surface of things, merely slave to the blind Will. This unconscious Will to Life, which is concentrated in the genitals, blindly drives the human being. In fact, all organic life is, analogously to the human being, essentially Will. The same applies to all of inorganic nature from chemistry to the movements of the planets: all phenomena are concretisations of the Will to Life. Schopenhauer's vision amounts to metaphysics in the classical sense: The Will is the Absolute, the Thing in Itself, beyond which no reach is possible. Not surprisingly, Schopenhauer's metaphysics is extremely pessimistic: solitariness and conflict are endemic in existence. Our argument deliberately swerves away from his Cosmic pessimism, to celebrate Cosmos; away from his substantialised Will as Thing in Itself, to a further, always receding Horizon; from his isolation and elevation of the irrational Will, to the acceptance of a dialectical interrelationship of Life with Matter, Love and Thought, all co- arising from, existing in and returning to Horizon. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), mightily under the impression of Schopenhauer, challenged and stimulated by Darwin’s work and falling back on pre-Platonic Greece, proclaimed that life as such is Will to Power and that Will to Power means the Will to be master of itself and its surroundings, not the mere adaptation to those surroundings. This is not only a biological but also a social and psychological fact of life and a moral imperative. Life is inherently self- affirming at the cost of others. That vision is affirmed as antidote against the threat of nihilism following in the wake of the necessary ‘death of God’. Although he rejects substantialist metaphysics, his view of Life as Will to Power amounts to a transcendental, foundational, semi-metaphysical meta-category. This essay parts ways with Nietzsche, including his bland rejection (smacking of resentment) of religion; relativising, transcending, absorbing of things into an ever expanding Horizon is something else than flat rejection. Our view incorporates Love, complementing Life, into the foursome of Infinitude, becoming Cosmos. Schweitzer, Driesch, De Chardin The first decades of the 20th century saw further MM responses to the challenge of materialistic Darwinism, including those of Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), Hans Driesch (1867-1941) and Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955). Schweitzer presented his ethics of universal respect for life as rooted in the will to live, 418 Chapter 19 which to him was not only a biological but also a spiritual phenomenon. Hans Driesch challenged mechanistic evolutionary theory and proposed the notion of an autonomous life -force, akin to mind, operative in the universe as a whole, taken to be the organism within which all other organisms function in accordance with a principle of entelechy (Greek ente/echia: the realisation of potential). Teilhard de Chardin placed evolutionary theory at the centre of a worldview revolutionising Christian thinking and spirituality. The above authors, each significant in his own right, are noted in passing. Henri Bergson (1859-1941), a close contemporary of the three above, who also attempted to provide a large-scale MM context of explanation for the phenomenon of life, will now summarily be viewed from our slit of interest. Henri Bergson Bergson was born in the year (1859) that Darwin's The origin of species by means of natural selection appeared. Half a century later (1907), in his own book Creative evolution (L'évolution créatrice) (cf. Bergson 1975 [1907]; Conze 1963; Deleuze 1988 [1966]; Hancock 2002:139f.; Lacey 1989; Russell 1971 [1914], he came to terms with evolution and set out his views on biological life and its origin in brilliant style. Bergson studied biology in his youth, remained fascinated throughout his life by the phenomenon of biological life and knew Darwin and Neo-Darwinism well. In a broad sense, he accepts evolution, referring to it as 'transformism' (transformisme). Bergson also knew Plotinus well, lectured on him and approached biological evolution from a perspective that may be called Plotinian in a broad sense. The important question is whether he managed to effect a meaningful relationship between MM on the one hand and on the other hand empirical science as practised by its experts, without compromising either - a murky grey and notoriously dangerous area of overlap. Does his metaphysical evolutionary model tie in successfully with the facts of science, specifically biology? Did he somehow envision biological life as sprouting from a transcendent root? To start with, in his book (Bergson 1975:296ff.) he presents a critique of the notion of ‘nothing’, ‘void’, ‘nought’ (/e néant, vide, rien) in a discussion which is relevant to our notion of Absolute Horizon as the Origin of Infinite Life and Cosmic life. He posits a principle of creation, but insists that it is not to be seen as a conquest over nought, thought of as a kind of pre-existing substratum or receptacle - if not physically, then at least logically. He argues that the notion of efficient causality exercised by anything (including ‘an absolute’: un absolu) and involved in the existence of the world, must be dispensed with, since it tries to solve a false problem: the idea of ‘nothing’ inevitably assumes the subsistence of a ‘something’ (ibid.:5O3). Bergson does not see nature as a massive given and thinks of it as a complex process of actualisation of some virtuality (Deleuze 1988 [1966]:96), which is however not extended intuitively or speculatively to the brink of Absolute Horizon. 419 Life Such ‘Horizon’ is not the same as the quasi-substantial ‘Nothingness’ rightly debunked by Bergson, who called the latter a pseudo-idea, a contradiction in terms, parasitic on ‘existence’ (Bergson 1975 [1907]:308ff.) and in fact not subtracting from ‘being’, but adding to it. ‘Absolute Horizon’ does not intend Bergson's quasi-‘annihilation’ (ibid.:320). Bergson posits at each moment only things participating in the flow of duration, but does not share the fascination with the Horizon of being. In this respect, he seems to lack an interest that was present in Plotinus. A set of concepts important to Bergson include ‘current of life’ (courant de vie), ‘vital impetus’ (the usual translation for é/an vital) and ‘an original impetus of life’ (un élan originel de la vie) Cibid.:94ff. and passim). An important question is how it is explained and related to the other dimensions that need to be taken into consideration when envisaging a worldview. If this current, this impetus, does not appear from an absolute transcendence, then what is its status? It seems that for Bergson, life (let us say Life) is the dominant Cosmic force, simply there since the beginning of the world. That is as far as he seems prepared to go. His é/an vital appears to hover not quite comfortably between the two chairs of biological science and MM. He takes part in many a biological argument and seems to have aspired for a complete and successful integration, but it is doubtful that he achieved that. Bergson's é/an is not really amenable to scientific treatment by means of experiment and measurement. His argument is less of a biological argument than was the case with his fellow vitalist, Hans Driesch. In the case of Driesch, his philosophy stood and fell with its scientific success. That was his undoing. Driesch stands as a beacon warning against rocks. Bergson's thinking is less dependent on science, yet as far as he was concerned, its integration with the science of the day was also intimate and, from today's point of view, it must be said, rather dated. As far as our aspects of Cosmos other than Life are concerned, Bergson does not materialistically derive Life from Matter, but seems to assume a conflict between them. Throughout its various modulations, his model amounted to a duality of a certain kind: not a dualism in the sense of sitting embarrassed with two totally unrelated basic principles in his lap, but in the sense of accommodating both, however as opposing principles and not reconciled as correlative in a positive sense. If we read Bergson tendentionally (cf. Deleuze 1988 [1966]:91ff.), perhaps the split is not as bad as it seems. Bergson's élan, though decidedly not a physical force, may be a degree of matter, just as matter may be a degree of duration. The duality (seeming dualism) would then be subsumable into a unitary view. This interpretation would salvage a great deal, but it does not exactly lie on the surface of Bergson's writing. At least on the surface, his Life is badly alienated from his Matter. Overall, in this respect his position seems to be weaker than that of Plotinus who clearly stated a substantial continuity between Matter and Soul (the principle of Life). To Bergson, Matter appears to be a dead downward weight, 420 Chapter 19 Life an upward striving force, fighting and overcoming Matter. His duality is starker than Plotinus’ distinction. He also falls back behind Bruno’s view of the Soul as immanent artist or artisan. Like Bruno, Bergson also compares evolution with the creative work of an artist; however, creative evolution is not an inner force immanent in Matter, but its adversary. The duality could be and has usually been understood as a dualism. The opposition between Matter and Life surface in his rejection of the Darwinian model of natural selection (which he labels as mechanism) on the one hand and teleological finalism on the other. His own view is presented as an alternative to both, albeit closer to teleology than to mechanism. His eschewal of mechanical materialism with its associated rigid intellectualism is meaningful, but not his countering of materialism by an equally one-sided vitalism. Bridging links are not provided clearly. Not unlike another precursor of his, Schopenhauer (see above), Bergson also devalues the intellect. Whereas Schopenhauer monistically relegates intellect to being a surface phenomenon, an instrument of the Will, Bergson seems to postulate an opposition between the impetus of life and the intellect. On the one hand, there is the primitive vital phenomenon of instinct and its noble cognitive extension, namely intuition; on the other hand, there is the less fortunate evolutionary development of intellect, ending up as abstract logic. He does not view intelligence as succeeding instinct in the course of evolution. Rather, he sees both deriving semi-autonomously, divergently but not without contact and interaction, from the same evolutionary urge. Whereas instinct becomes intuition, intelligence is inherently flawed in that it cannot move and reach that far. Intuition is connected to time and Life, which is continuous flow (duration); intellect on the other hand, moving upstream against Life and time, as of necessity freezes the flow, sees separate things in order to act and is connected to Matter with its separate spatial entities. He feels that the tendency towards separation is irreconcilable with the flow of duration; form is only a snapshot view of flux. This essay postulates that Infinite Life with its two aspects of continuity and entity emerges from Absoluteness and is mutually intimately and positively implied in Matter with its time and space, Love with its volition and emotion, and Thought with its intuition and intellect. The interconnections (such as intuition linking Life and Thought, and volition linking Love and Life) could be spelled out in various ways, but imagining them as a harmonious whole rather than as pitted against each other in conflict, is a better way to go. Bergson unnecessarily, mistakenly, sees conflict among these dimensions. He forces fissures where bridges are necessary. As will be argued in Chapter 21, Thought, involving the two equal and mutually implicit forces of intellect and intuition, is in turn interdependently linked to Matter, Life and Love, among which it has a steering function. In Bergson’s terms, rather than forcing a split between instinct-intuition on one side and intellect on the other, exploring intuition as a positive link between instinct (Life) and intellect (Thought) would do more 421 Life justice to these notions singularly and the composite of the four in their togetherness. His position concerning the flow of life and the possibility of individual living beings is comparable to that of early Buddhism (with which he does not demonstrate any direct acquaintance). To Bergson ‘duration’ (/a durée), presented as an alternative to both unchanging substance and nothingness, is what lies at the root of things. His views are reminiscent of the ancient Buddhist notion that the world is a continuous, impermanent (anicca) flow, devoid of substance (anatta) and therefore ‘empty’ (suffia), but decidedly not understood as negative quasi-substance. Both early Buddhism and modern Bergson face the same difficulty of manoeuvring between the notion of static, unchanging things and that of non-existing non-entities. Buddhism (taking into account the many divergences of opinion since its earliest days) managed to salvage the relative identities of changing entities as complex combinations of factors and as centres of action (kamma) by means of its pafica- upadanakkhandha scheme (non-substance, yet continuity as well as relative individual identity). A question would be whether Bergson succeeds, or whether to him duration as perpetual, multiplex becoming on the one hand and entity on the other hand, remains vague and unreconciled. To this reader the latter is the case; Bergson does not succeed in finding an optimal balance, an integration. In passing, our vision places a high premium on the contingent individual being, in all its impermanence and non-substance, as a most valuable centre of action in the world. In comparisons of this kind across time, the danger of anachronism looms large, yet the measure of similarity, if not in answer then at least in problem, between Buddhism and Bergson should not be denied. Again, and importantly, Bergson cuts himself off from any equivalent of the Buddhist notion of 'emptiness'. Bergson, of Polish Jewish descent, turned Christian in his early fifties, bravely confirmed his Jewish identity at the end of his life. In his last major book, The two sources of morality and religion (originally published in French in 1932), (Bergson 1954), he has moved into ‘mysticism’ more deeply than was the case with his 1907 book on evolution. Now the mystical flavour of his metaphysics becomes more pronounced than before. He presents mysticism (equated with intuition) as guiding all of our thinking, not only religious but also scientific, as well as our practical action. It is the apex of what he terms dynamic religion, which is contrasted to static religion. Religion, both in its lesser static form and its superior dynamic form, is seen as a crystallisation, a popularisation, of the mystical dimension, which is associated with intuition, transcending abstract intelligence. Bergson takes the daring step of presenting mystical experience as an argument in favour of the existence of God. Not surprisingly, Bergson conceives of God in terms of (in our vocabulary) Life (and Love), and decidedly not in 422 Chapter 19 terms of (in our vocabulary) Matter and Thought. Instead of achieving a harmony among these basic forces, he maintains an antagonism among them. This is an anticlimax. He also lets the opportunity slip to develop a more radical new notion of godhead. Not surprisingly, Bergson undervalues the role of intellect in mysticism, where it could play a constructive role in the form of speculation, aware of its own limitations and its status of being mythopoetic construction. Bergson is more irrational than his model Plotinus. He does not seem to have found a balance regarding the relationship between the é/an vital of the first book and the God of the second book: Is God seen as distinct from and the source of the vital energy or is God identified with it? His thinking remains unclear; in any event, throughout his writing career he never settled for pantheism. A reader of Bergson comes under the spell of the charming vagueness of his thinking and writing; that is its attractiveness, but also its weakness. It is time to move on to the aspect of Infinite Love. Life is to be lived, and loved. 423 Love B §51 Prior to lover and beloved What sort of MM discernment could provide a background, not only to understand reality as it is, but also to promote a morality of love towards all beings? It would need to be a morality that would not succumb to the law of claw and tooth, and not elevate it to the basic law of nature. In this context, ‘discernment’ is listening to the depths of the human spirit, envisioning a kindness-understanding, kindness-promoting frame of thought. Psychology and other sciences speak about the empirically accessible origins and manifestations of emotions in all their many shades. We have to know and come to terms with that. MM explores a more remote hinterland of emotions and volitions. The world is here taken to be in principle, ab Origine - shot through with Love. This view is neither presented as fact proven by hard science, nor as arbitrary private opinion, but as one not only articulating with an ancient intuition of humankind, but also having a strong bearing on how people exist in the world of today. That is a very important test for any metaphysical framework. Emotions and volitions in humans and other beings are not the chance outcomes of blind contingency in an indifferent process of evolution. Yes, they do arise in an evolutionary process, but that process itself is part of the Cosmic process, with roots in Infinitude, in Infinite Love. How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Love’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 425-449, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi. org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.20 425 Love Love is here understood as the urge to co-be well, and the volitions and sentiments (emotions) motivating and enabling the interactive ability to achieve that. In the dimension of Infinitude there is no fall from grace, no dualism of eternal spirits, no s(S)ubject or object of love, no lover and beloved. There is only Infinite Love, without quality or qualification. Such a notion can neither be verified nor falsified by an appeal to the 'facts'. It can be known by its fruits. | wish to understand the volitions and emotions of the higher forms of living beings, particularly human beings, in a context that would encourage an ethos of universal love among humans and extend from humans to all ‘lower’ forms of life. Of course, such love is not the overall factual truth of life. Life as we know it is mostly selfish, greedy and dominated by conflict and hatred. It employs all kinds of instrumental end-means strategies - with a few strands of co-operation and harmony sparsely woven into that fabric. The love intended here is a potent force with a direct bearing on reality, with enormous transformative potential. Love is of the essence of mysticism and also a powerful creative force. Define humans as essentially selfish, and they will act selfishly; define them as essentially benevolent, and they may act kindly. It might ask for patience in order to get there. Without utopias in that sense, the human species cannot live. In human beings, there is an ingrained categorical imperative to love. Love comes first and last, hatred and greed in between. As Infinitude becomes Cosmos and bursts open like a ripe pomegranate spreading its seeds, Love incurs the inevitability of dissonance, friction and conflict. Love encompasses emotion, volition and behaviour. 'Emotion' refers to the affectional tone or quality of this dimension of life, such as suffering and joy. ‘Behaviour’ refers to the actual actions/deeds - mental, verbal and bodily - and patterns of behaviour, determined by and determining those actions. Between emotion and behaviour operates 'volition': the will, driving action. Infinite Love as Emotion is a beacon, like the Southern Cross in the night sky. At the botttom of the longitudinal axis, indicating the empty centre of the southern celestial pole as it rotates around that centre is sheer kindness, arising from the still centre of Absoluteness and Eternity. The next star, on the lateral axis of our constellation, is joy, happiness without qualification or reservation. This is bliss, arising in conjunction with Infinite Being and Infinite Life, precursor of the happiness of earthlings and their possible fellow inhabitants of Cosmos. As the third star, also on the lateral axis, there is emotional feeling with an implication of suffering, eventually co-suffering with Cosmos and its suffering children. Passion, with its implication of compassion, is adumbrated in the depth of Infinite Love and subtly written in the fabric of Cosmos as a whole. The top star on the longitudinal axis of this constellation is peace, equanimity. In the constellation of Infinite Love, is unagitated, equanimous peace. 426 Chapter 20 Love contains pleasure and pain, joy and sadness, yet they do not overwhelm it. Love remains clear, calm and quiet. These are the co-ordinates of Infinite Emotion. Infinite Love is the dimension experienced inthe mysticisms of the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which introduced the dimension of God as Love (Emotion and Will) into the human discourse. That was their greatest gift to the world, in mythologised form. However, look behind the myths; sense the empty depth behind those faces in the clouds, prior to lover and beloved, subject and object. This model discerns Infinite Love as a primordial structural dimension of the world and as arising on a Horizon inaccessible to human thought or experience. Love, but of no Lover, is in the process of becoming. Let me not project evil with the concomitant of suffering into Infinitude. Nevertheless, let me not deny the possibility of suffering, and of co-suffering, written into Infinitude Itself. In addition, let me not come up with any kind of mythological or other explanatory device for evil. Shall we produce a theodicy, a vindication of divine justice and providence in view of the reality of evil? No. Yet, we assume that somehow in Infinitude, beyond our reach, stirs Love that will save Cosmos from evil. The entire gamut of emotions felt by humans and other forms of life, derive from Infinite Love and tend towards the experience and expression of love in thoughts, words and actions. That is the origin and destiny of the emotional, volitional aspect of existence. The notion of Infinite Love provides a transcendental root for a morality centring in love for all living beings. Fun and laughter, weeping and lamenting, wrath and forgiveness, happiness and anguish, anxiety and confidence, sympathy and callousness, cruelty and mercy -they all arise from and long to return to Love. Even anger and hatred parasitise on it as perversions, and can only be appeased by love. Love seeks harmony: finds it where it exists and creates it where it does not exist. Lovers of Infinitude in the various religious contexts where they can be found, have a deep sense of transcendent beauty illuminating the world and reflecting in the world as if by mirrors. Some, seeking to transcend the greed and hatred inherent in human existence, have sought and found relief and salvation at the edge of earthly existence, where Cosmos emerges from and merges with Infinitude. Theirs has been a mysticism of love - of emotion, volition and surrender. It is bhakti-yoga. It is following the command to ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart (kardia), with all your soul (osyche)’ - ultimately transcended in Absoluteness. This essay does not deal with the emotional side of religion (shorthand condensed as ‘love’) in a theistic context. Nor does it endorse atheism, whether in the form of rabid antitheism or in the form of disinterested a-theism. It is a meta-theism, sympathetic towards but also critical of the mental pictures of 427 Love gods projected by human beings since an early stage in their emergence as a species. Humans attach names and characteristics to nameless, featureless Infinitude between Cosmos and Eternity-Absoluteness. Although not necessary, this is probably unavoidable and not bad. That is how human minds work; they see things in accordance with themselves. As such, prayers, the emotion-filled encounters of humans with their God, are neither right nor wrong - but they are efficacious, because human emotional-volitional life derives from Infinitude and is intimately connected to Infinitude. Every volition and sentiment is a prayer, expressing or seeking attunement with Infinite Love. An implication of this argument is that there is no essential difference between natural love (love of cosmic, physical beings for other cosmic, physical beings) and mystical love (love of cosmic beings for Infinitude or a Being or Person discerned there). They are manifestations on one continuum. Touch a stone with respect and you feel the secret of Love under your fingers. Caress a living being with love and you give sensible form to Infinite Love. Let me listen to the voices of a few lovers of loving Infinitude, in chronological order. E 552 Wise, inclusive balance Mencius Mencius (Meng K'o, Meng Tzu, Mengzi) (c. 370-290 BCE) (cf. Chan 1963; Cheng 1985:110f; Fung 1953; Lau 1970), who lived about two centuries after Confucius (c. 550-480 BCE), continued his master's humanism, but added an element of mysticism to it. While not rejecting the traditional Chinese feudal system, Mencius nevertheless built a large measure of human-heartedness into that social model, saying that an ideal government should be benevolent, its ruler should be a sage and the welfare of the common people should be its highest aim. His political philosophy was based on his belief in the inherent goodness of human nature: what had been possibility in Confucius, became definitive teaching with a strong MM component in Mencius. Thereby he added significant depth to the teaching of Confucius. As one among many of his sayings demonstrates, he taught that (Lau 1970): [N]o man is devoid of a heart sensitive to the sufferings of others [...]. Suppose a man were, all of a sudden, to see a young child on the verge of falling into a well. He would certainly be moved to compassion, not because he wanted to get in the good graces of the parents, nor because he wished to win the praise of his fellow villagers or friends, nor yet because he disliked the cry of the child. (p. 81) He also built his philosophy of education from this point of departure: The environment surrounding an immature person should promote the development of the germ of inclination towards goodness innate in human nature. Every human being is a potential sage. 428 Chapter 20 His moral philosophy of altruism (shu) and commiseration (ts’e yin) was not developed along mere utilitarian lines, but had a transcendent, metaphysical root: Heaven. Human-heartedness has been given by Heaven. Moreover, his metaphysical root has a mystical dimension (ibid.:129ff.). Originally, the human individual is one with the spirit of the universe and may recover ‘the lost mind’, the ‘child-like mind’, the original nature and return to that oneness. Such experience, the supreme human state, is a state of love and is to be achieved through works of love, removing the obstructions to the free flow of the original energy (ch). This ch'i was part of the general Chinese cosmology of the time. As part of human nature and expression of the life force, Mencius also distinguished ‘will’ as active part of the mind, alongside aspects such as humaneness and wisdom (Cheng 1985:129f.). Taking into account all differences between then and now, there and here, the present sympathetic reader can pick up a voice in which love was a central category. Acting lovingly is not a matter of obedience to external commands, but of looking inwards and reconnecting with one's own intrinsic nature, which is essentially connected to Heaven. Mencius not only believed 'that a man can attain oneness with the universe', but he also had 'absolute faith in the moral purpose of the universe' (Lau 1970:45f.). He imagined an MM-centred in Love. anonymous: Avatamsaka Sutra From the perspective of this chapter, | now interpret a Buddhist Mahayana sutra CAvatamsaka Sutra: ‘Flower ornament scripture’) (Cleary 1993). Infinite Love as set out in this model finds no direct equivalent in the jhàna system of early Buddhism as such. There are levels of meditative absorption in Infinity of Space and Infinity of Consciousness, but not of Infinite Love (nor of Life). There is a close approximation in the Sublime Abodes (the Brahma-vihdara), as set out in the Tevijja Sutta (the 13th sutta of the Digha Nikàya). The difference is that the four sublime virtues (benevolence, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity) are extended universally, pervading all four quarters of the globe, above, below, all round, in all directions, everywhere, across the entire universe, not omitting anything, not passing anything by. In the terms of this model, it amounts to Cosmic penetration and omnipresence, not Infinitude. Yet the connections are clear. The practice of the four Abodes of universal cosmic love is but a single step removed from experiencing 'Brahma' (shorthand for what humanity has called ‘gods’ or ‘God’). In 851 the four Abodes were utilised to express the dimensions of Infinite Love. Mahayana Buddhism leaves no doubt concerning the transcendental function of Infinite Love. The Avatamsaka Sutra, dating from around the 1st to 429 Love 2nd centuries CE, originated somewhere in the Indian cultural sphere (India, Central Asia) and was composed in Sanskrit by an unknown number of anonymous minds from an unknown number of heterogeneous original sources. In the Indian culture of the time, some Buddhist texts were published under the names of their authors: These were works of scholarship and were known as sastras (‘treatises’); other texts (sutras) emerged without identifying their authors, but were attributed to the Buddha. This did not entail a claim that it had been literally proclaimed by Siddhattha Gautama, the Buddha, or a theory of verbal inspiration by a celestial Buddha, but signified that the teaching corresponded to the central teaching of the Buddha. In that doctrinal setting, the anonymity of authorship would not have been an embarrassment, signifying loss of intellectual property and prestige, but the expression of the very teaching of non-self. This massive MM text as a whole teaches the interrelatedness of all things and what such a vision entails. It pictures Cosmos as seen through the enlightened eyes of a Buddha or advanced bodhisattva. Buddhahood, bodhisattvahood, is the supreme epistemological principle. It is also the supreme ontological principle: In the Sutra these two mythological personages signify the principle of transcendent and enlightened reality, in addition to supreme insight. The Avatamsaka Sutra is about Buddhahood taken as the transcendent essence of the world, the emptiness of the world, as seen from a perspective of supreme insight. These two principles are continuous and coincidental: the world is a miraculous, radiant, dreamlike vision. The Sutra approximates an idealist position, as would be developed in Yogacara philosophy. Book One (7he wonderful adornments of the leaders of the worlds) (1.55-149) provides remarkable suggestions of what this attempt approximates with the term ‘Infinitude’: unlimited potential mediating Emptiness and concrete Cosmos. Right at the outset of this first book, the various realms and states of being are presented as aspects of universal, comprehensive and Cosmos- embracing Buddhahood (symbolic of radical emptiness and supreme insight), which is inherent in all beings as the potential for enlightenment. The Buddha body fills Cosmos without end and cannot be grasped (1.65). Formless, it is nevertheless always abiding in compassion and pity (1.70). 'Signless, patternless, without images’ it (‘he’) is nevertheless seen ‘like clouds in the sky’ (1.72); ‘like space, inexhaustible [...] formless, unhindered, it pervades the ten directions’ (1.73); his ‘accommodational manifestations are like conjurations’ (1.73). The realm of the Buddha is ‘boundless, immeasurable’, ‘signless, formless, present everywhere’, its sphere of action is ‘free from hindrance’ (1.109). ‘The sphere of the Buddha is boundless’, his voice ‘limitless and inconceivable’, and he ‘appears in disguise in all kinds of forms’ (1.121); and so forth. This piles up mental images to the extent that mind is exploded and the reader is filled with an overpowering 430 Chapter 20 sense of empty Buddhahood manifesting as potent Infinitude and then as concrete Cosmos. All of this includes the aspect of love and compassion. In effect, it amounts to the same as the Yogacara construct of the three bodies (trikaya) or levels of Buddhahood: the mundane, cosmic level; the supra- mundane Absolute beyond the reach of conceptual thinking and intermediate between them, the intermediate level of Glory and Bliss (sambhoga-kaya), manifesting universal compassion. The last book (Gandavyüha Sutra) (XXXIX.1155-1518) describes the pilgrimage of a young man, Sudhana, towards enlightenment, sent on his way by the bodhisattva Manjushri, the metaphoric personification of Wisdom. On the way, Sudhana is taught by 52 masters, spiritual guides and noble friends: not all monks or even Buddhists, and none claiming the whole truth or demanding allegiance to a fixed system in the form of institution or set of dogmas. At the third last stage of the pilgrimage, Sudhana encounters the bodhisattva Maitreya (XXXIX.1452-1502) and he is invited to enter Maitreya’s Tower. Maitreya (meaning ‘the Compassionate/Loving One’) is a metaphoric personification of Compassion - in the terminology of this chapter: Love. At the request of Sudhana (XXXIX.1489ff.), Maitreya snaps his fingers, the doors open and Sudhana may enter the Tower, a metaphor for Infinitude as intended in this essay. It is as vast as all of space, as measureless as the sky, adorned with incalculable beauty and glory such as chambers of jewels, jewel lotuses, bejewelled promenades and stairways and radiant gems. Inside the tower are hundreds of thousands of other towers, similarly arrayed, each infinitely vast, each distinct, all reflecting in each single object of beauty and glory in every one of the multitude of towers, each gem mirroring the entirety of all the towers with all their objects of beauty. It is a truly inconceivable realm, flooding Sudhana with joy and bliss, clearing his mind of all limiting conceptual thought. The book continues to pile up staggering, concept-transcending visions of beauty. Realising the truth of reality, namely that the phenomenal world is suffused with this dimension, beings on the path towards enlightenment and Buddhahood are filled with love. They (XXXIX.1500-1501): [A]re tireless in guiding and perfecting all beings, because they are aware all is selfless; they never cease taking care of all beings, because they embody universal love and compassion. (n.p.) Sudhana then returns to Manjusri, personification of Wisdom, with whom he started out. This suggests that Wisdom was in him from the very beginning of his pilgrimage. Finally, he visits the bodhisattva Samantabhadra (‘Universal Virtue/Good’), personifying moral perfection for the sake of all other living creatures. From him he learns that Wisdom is only good to the extent that it is of value to all living beings. In the end, Compassion for living beings is what matters. 431 Love Book Twenty-five (XXV.530-693) is another lengthy celebration of what has been the source of marvel of this chapter of ours: the origin of love in the phenomenal world from a dimension of what has here been termed 'Infinitude'. Book Twenty-five (entitled ‘The ten dedications’) once again starts by blowing to pieces the common-sense world of a limited number of stable, fixed entities: in a state of deep meditation, there appears to the bodhisattva called Diamond Banner (XXV.530): LA]s many Buddhas as atoms in a hundred thousand Buddha-lands from beyond as many worlds as atoms in a hundred thousand Buddha-lands in each of the ten directions. (n.p.) The intention of such hyperbole is to smash conventional thinking and open up a space for 'Infinitude'. Within that context appears ‘volition’ and ‘emotion’, to be expressed in practical deeds. Book XXV speaks of 1O indestructible ‘dedications’ or ‘vows’, all directed at the saving of all sentient beings. This includes giving, forbearance, energy, compassion, kindness, joy and equanimity: | should be a hostel for all sentient beings, to let them escape from all painful things. | should be a protector for all sentient beings, to let them all be liberated from all afflictions. | should be a refuge for all sentient beings, to free them from all fears. | should make a resting place for all sentient beings, to enable them to find a place of peace and security (XXV.531f.) [...] with a most profound intent, a joyful mind, a pure mind, a mind conquering all, a gentle mind, a kind, compassionate mind, a mind of pity and sympathy, with the intention to protect, to benefit, and to give peace and happiness to all sentient beings [...] (XXV.533), [...]. (n.p.) And so on, ending once again with an evocation of a dimension of staggering vastness and non-obstruction, beauty and goodness. This dimension of Buddha-lands, Buddhas and heavenly bodhisattvas, both transcendent and non-dually present in phenomenal reality, is the source of the love of the ordinary bodhisattva (the human being seeking enlightenment). Buddhahood is not the aim eventually to be attained, but the beginning, the origin of compassion in the world. The void or emptiness that is the essence of things, the lack of inherent nature in all things, the principle of interdependence and interrelation, the beautiful world existing in a Buddha's vision: that is the groundless basis of compassion. In the vocabulary of this essay: Cosmic love derives from Infinite Love in the Horizon of Absoluteness. The difficulty faced by such a text is that it oscillates between the impossibility of saying anything (given the nature of its central orientation) and the necessity of saying something (given its commitment to exist compassionately in the world, including its need to speak and its commitment to communicate with people). In the 6th century, this problem would even lead to a split within one of the two main branches of Mahayana: the Madhamika school (founded by Nagarjuna roughly in the same period that gave rise to the Avatamsaka Sutra). Whereas the Prasangika sub-school uncompromisingly rejected every conceptual position, the Svatantrika sub-school allowed for 432 Chapter 20 adopting a position in the ongoing debate about truth, with the proviso that its relativity be written boldly in its programme. It would appear that the Avatamsaka was closer to the second strategy. The Svatantrika epistemology took up a middle position between Madhyamika and the second main branch of Mahayana: the Yogacara school, which developed a grand speculative MM of the idealist variety. Given the nature of Buddhist thought, such oscillation is not weakness to be overcome, but inevitable and wholesome tension between silence and speech. Moving on the edge of Absolute Horizon, this investigation is only too conscious of its own vulnerability. Balance is never a stable position, but always an unsteady act of compensating for excess in two or more directions. To speak or not to speak: that has always been the dilemma of MM. In the words of the best, the silence speaks. Ramanuja We now move from one Indian MM classic to another: the Bhagavad Gita (produced round about the beginning of CE - also see Ch. 6), which elevated passionate, self-surrendering, loving devotion (bhakti) of devotee to god or goddess as a path to salvation, to a status at least equal to the way of thought and knowledge (jfiàna) and to the way of works and action (karma); the former with its risk of abstruse metaphysics, the latter with its risk of hard asceticism. The Gita, part of the epic, Mahabharata, is astory of war and battle between families. This scene becomes the site for mystical experience. The great warrior, Arjuna, is taught by his charioteer (in reality the hero god Krishna) to do the right thing - that is, to do battle. The central message of the poem is unconditional emotional surrender to God. This admonition is followed by the injunction to selfless, compassionate love for the fellow human, whether enemy or friend (12.18). Behind such injunctions, together with their moral implications, is the eternal World Spirit, Brahman. The Ultimate, the deity as Person and the god-man charioteer, all merge. It is theism with pantheistic leanings. In this section my concern is with the South Indian Ramanuja (tradition has awarded him a long and fruitful life: 1017-1137 CE), the greatest exponent of Hindu bhakti and Hindu theism (cf. Kesarcodi-Watson 1992:98ff.; Lott 1976; Overzee 1992; Van Buitenen 1953; Veliath 1993). Ramanuja read the Gta as expounding bhakti to be the most advanced stage of mystic attainment. The easiest way to locate Ramanuja is to contrast him with his fellow Vedantins, Sankara (788-820 CE) on the one hand, and Madhva (13th/14th century) on the other hand. Sankara's monistic system, known as Advaita (‘not-dual’, ‘not- different) Vedanta, taught that the individual, the world and the Absolute (Brahman) are ‘not-two’, but one. At the other end of the Vedantic spectrum, 433 Love Madhva’s monotheistic system (perhaps influenced by Christianity or Islam) taught that the individual and the Supreme are different; it is hence known as Dvaita (dual, ‘different’?) Vedanta. Standing between those two, Ramanuja's position, which spread out over a number of books, became known since the 16th century as Visistadvaita. He taught that the Supreme, Brahman, is the only all-encompassing reality, and is one - but Brahman has qualities, attributes, modes, forms, distinctions and various manifestations. This was where he mainly differed from Sankara, whose monism inevitably ended up ascribing illusionary (maya) status to the world, which resulted out of ignorance and false imposition (avidya). Ramanuja's MM struck a fine balance between feeling and intellect, bhakti love and consistent systematic thought. He was intimately in touch with the popular religion of his time with its emotional overtones, and particularly with the bhakti mysticism of the wandering ecstatics roaming India from the 7th to 10th centuries (Kesarcodi-Watson 1992:110ff.). Structurally, Ramanuja nevertheless developed his system entirely from the enscripted tradition of sacred revelation (shrut/): the Upanishads. He counted the G/té (really a smriti scripture, that is, acknowledged to have been composed by human authors) as having the same status. He did not see himself as speculating, but simply as elucidating the tradition. On that basis, he proceeded to promulgate realism as far as the existence of the world is concerned, yet at the same time he saw the world as non- different from Brahman. He seems to have imagined a version of what moderns would come to call panentheism: the phenomenal world is part of all-embracing Brahman. Ràmanuja rejected the distinction between Saguna Brahman (Brahman with attributes) and Nirguna Brahman (Brahman without attributes). The material world is a quality of the deepest depth and highest height of Brahman, the Supreme. Unity, yes; but it is an internally differentiated unity. That is the locus of the real world, the world of experience. The formative and normative core dimension of Ramanuja's MM is widely agreed to be the inseparability, the organic interrelatedness that he postulates between God and the universe. The world of names and forms, the entire body of sentient and non-sentient beings, is the body of Brahman. In itself, this master metaphor is by no means self-explanatory and could be taken to mean various things and have quite divergent implications. On balance (so his thoughts may be safely reconstructed) Ramanuja's universe is inhabited by - more, organically integrated with - Brahman as its living soul, Brahman being the dominant force. The organic relationship of God and universe precludes reducing his system to dualism, monism or pluralism. God and universe, though inseparable, are distinct, the universe being of a lesser status and entirely and eternally dependent on God and being instrumental to God. Yet it is part of a living, conscious, loving Being - a Person: Brahman. 434 Chapter 20 The following quotation from Ràmanujas commentary on the Gita (Grtabhashya) contains the essence and gives the flavour of his thinking (Van Buitenen 1953): God, the Supreme Person, is modified by all existing beings and things which modify him by constituting the body of which He is the àtman [...]. God is said to be the quintessence of all entities. All these entities with their peculiar individuality and characteristics have originated from God, are shesas [‘dependents’] of God and depend on God inasmuch as they constitute his body, and God himself is modified by all these entities of which he is the atman [...]. God himself, however, does not depend on them (II.1.3.8-11). (p. 101) Consistent with the above, Ramanuja saw the /;va (individual soul), though non-identical with Brahman, as inseparable and having its true Self in Brahman. The soul’s highest bliss consists in having a direct intuition of Brahman. At the religious level, Ramanuja worshipped Vishnu as the Supreme God, flanked by his consort, the goddess Lakshmi. At that level Vishnu (a name for Brahman, the Supreme Reality) is worshipped as a Personal God. By such mythological means, Ramanuja provided ordinary people with a religion in which emotion and love played a greater role than the intellect as the means to salvation. At that level, his system is devotional theism, and the vision of God as responding to human devotion and entering into deep personal relationships with humans forms the ultimate basis for a morality of love in everyday life. He connected the religious level with the MM level. Metaphysically speaking, the object of loving devotion, Brahman, while being One, is thought to manifest non-divisibly in the two modes of individual soul G7va) and material world (prakriti/). The various existing entities, animate and inanimate, are His modes (prakáàra). Ramanuja's ‘Brahman’ operates at the level of Infinitude as intended in this essay. His idea of infinity is that of unbounded, measureless, unfathomable maximum - including infinite bliss. Brahman has unlimited qualities: He is not only perfectly blissful, but also all-knowing, all-powerful, all-embracing, endowed with limitless, maximum mercy, affection, generosity, friendliness, sweetness, compassion (yet excluding suffering and being affected by human weakness), boundless love for his devotees, and grace (prasáda). In his infinity he is not only ‘a subject enjoying bliss’ in ‘immeasurable magnitude’, but also the ‘cause of bliss’ in the world (Veliath 1993:67), and he can be experienced and enjoyed in loving meditative devotion (bhakti) and bliss. That is the central focus of his teaching. His Brahman is very different from the qualityless Brahman of Sankara. It must be added that by adjectives such as the above-mentioned, Ramanuja did not emphasise non- fixity (the core of our definition of Infinitude), but immeasurable immensity, transcending the capabilities of rational thought. In his system, the inexpressibility of Brahman is due to his superlative qualities. His thinking amounts to a form of kataphatic mysticism. 435 Love Ramanuja differs fundamentally from Sankara. To Ramanuja, Brahman was differentiable. He allows for manifestation as event, not merely as eternal stasis: Vishnu is the origin of the world (the Creator); it sustains the world (the Preserver) and eventually reabsorbs the world (the Destroyer). The Will of Brahman drives this process. During the stage of extinction (pralaya), distinctions do not exist and the supreme principle (Brahman) has not yet re- evolved. Therefore, Brahman can, at that stage, be called ‘Non-being’ (Asat) and ‘Undeveloped’ (Avyakrita), but only in the sense that he is not connected to names and forms. Subtle existence is never denied (Van Buitenen 1953:55, 116f.). Brahman evolves and assumes various forms out of love, for the benefit of the world and purely as sport or recreation (ibid.:59). This essay, seeing the world (Cosmos) as Infinitude becoming Cosmos, appreciates Ramanuja's realism and his emphasis on Love. Yet we must go further. Following the more radical emptying thinking in the Indian Buddhist tradition, it would see Infinitude as absorbing anthropomorphic mental pictures of gods in a spaciousness and relativising them to the point of disappearance. It sees Infinitude as devolving from an even deeper Eternity, itself appearing from and disappearing on the edge of an inaccessible Horizon. Ramanuja does not have an intention towards Absoluteness. From our point of view, theistic personalism can be accommodated in the space of contourless Infinitude anthropomorphised in various ways (‘Person’, and so on) by human beings with their mystical yearning for transcendence. Such a loving Person is not the root and cause of all; it is a manifestation of a deeper truth, and a projection of the human mind into Infinitude. Comparing religions, philosophies and MM systems from various cultural contexts, historical origins and epochs and relating them structurally, requires extreme caution. Seeking to integrate them into one differentiated whole is even more difficult. Considering all necessary provisos, we dare say that Ramanuja's mysticism of Love is kindred in spirit and structure to what is found in Judaism-Christianity-Islam, to which I shall now turn. Bernard of Clairvaux Since its inception, Christianity evolved as a religion of love. During the 12th century, love blossomed as a central theme in Christianity as well as in Judaism and Islam. Human subjectivity, the world of emotion, was discovered. In secular life romantic love was celebrated in literature and music (the troubadours), and in Christian faith and theology, mystic love was elevated to new heights. Even in this company, the theology of love of Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) stood out in its fervour (cf. Bernard of Clairvaux 1987; Bernard von Clairvaux 1994; Dreyer 2007; Evans 2000; Leclercq 1976 [1966]; McGinn 1994; Pranger 1994; Sommerfeldt 1991; Stiegman 2001:129ff.). His position was assured when, a century and a half after his death, Dante made 436 Chapter 20 him his final guide in Paradise, accompanying him to the very end of his journey that culminated in his vision of God. Bernard was a multi-faceted personality: man of action, of deep sentiment, of thought. Wielding immense influence in the 12th century, he was not a philosopher in the technical, academic sense of the word at that time and he took pains to make that plain. Nor was he a theologian in the rational, systematic sense of the word, which at the time was in the process of becoming scholasticism, as was the case with his great adversary Peter Abelard (1079-1142). Concerning the teachings of Christianity, he was a solid, conventional theologian: guardian of orthodoxy rather than explorer of frontiers. He was steeped in the Bible and the thinking of the Fathers, whom he interpreted intuitively, in private prayer and communal sacramental liturgy. He never studied at one of the new academic schools of the day and the locus of his theology was not the schools with their new analytical, critical style of thinking and their secular learning, but the cloister with its strict discipline in accordance with Benedict’s Rule, aiming at a secure faith. Working in that spiritual setting, in the circumscribed Christian context available to him at the time, Bernard exercised his considerable gifts of synthetic ability, creative originality and his great talent for literary expression. His main contribution, marking a relatively new departure at the time, was that he was outspokenly an experiential thinker, with equal emphasis on experience and thought. He was a champion of a new subjectivity with a deep understanding of the range of emotions. His was an intellectual spirituality, a spiritual intellectuality, an experiential theology - in the vocabulary of this endeavour: MM. Bernard’s insistence on a mysticism of love (dilectio, caritas, amor) in his historical context, is impressive. He was not only church politician, defender of the faith, polemicist and heretic hunter, but also - above all - contemplative. To the two comings of Christ Gin his incarnation and in his final return at the end of time), Bernard added a third: the advent interiorly in the soul of the Christian. The 14th century Flemish mystic, Ruusbroec (1293-1381), would pick this up. Bernard expressed his understanding of union with God in Christ in various smaller works, but particularly in his large work, Sermones super cantica canticorum (‘Sermons on the Song of Songs’), which consisted of 86 sermons on the love between Christ and the individual Christian. To Bernard, this intimate individual relationship is possible only because of the relationship between Christ (the bridegroom) and the Church (the bride). This masterpiece was the mature articulation of Bernard’s MM of love. He started this work in 1135 and it was still unfinished 18 years later at the time of his death. Totally immersed in this biblical text with its erotic imagery of passionate love and marriage, Bernard’s mysticism was not untouched by the chivalry and courtly love of his century, but that was incidental rather than essential. His corpus of sermons is a celebration of the love between Christ in God and the individual in the Church. First comes carnal love, then rational love, then spiritual love; 437 Love first the love of the slave, then the love of the hireling, then the love of the son. To forge a link to the wider mystical tradition: the first is Bernard’s equivalent of karma-yoga, the second of jñāna yoga and the third of bhakti-yoga. Across cultures and religions, Bernard and Ramanuja sing the same song to the sun, like birds of the same species in different trees. To Bernard spiritual love is essentially a going out of oneself (an ecstasis, excessus), a being raised (raptus) above the ordinary capabilities of one’s faculties, God entering and taking possession of one’s soul in a union of love. Bernard testifies that such an entrance occurred to him many a time (Leclercq 1976 [1966]:74). He utilises the standard map of the soul’s progress through ascetical purification, virtuous illumination and loving union. Alternatively, these three stages are called contrition, devotion and piety; or confession (confessio), devotion (devotio) and contemplation (contemplatio) - the third being the highest and properly mystical stage. In the amorous analogy of the Song of Songs, these three stages are described as the kiss of the feet (penitence), the kiss of the hands (active virtue) and the kiss of the mouth (the personal encounter with the Beloved). Additionally, he frequently distinguishes four steps in the growth of love on the human side: love of self for the sake of self; love of God for the sake of self; love of God for the sake of God; love of self for the sake of God (McGinn 1994:183ff.). In the mysticisms of other religious orientations, similar roadmaps, comparable stages of mystical development, have been developed in other doctrinal settings. In Bernard's Christian mystical event of love, Christ the God- Man (included in the divine identity) and the Church (site of the encounter) are the cardinal determining factors. This is quintessential Christian sentiment. What about God, the source of love? Adhering to the traditional teachings in the Western Church concerning the Trinity and Christology, Bernard describes God (ibid.:152f.) as not only Eternity, but also as infinite Love, these two being identical and both beyond all measure, each representing both in their togetherness and both together representing each singularly. God is also Power and Wisdom, all four integrated as the length, breadth, height and depth of God. That is his definition of God. The saintly heart responds by ‘embracing’, 'clasping' and 'retaining' God with the two arms of fear and love (ibid.): What is more loveable than his love which determines the fact that you love and are loved? And yet, when eternity is added on to this love, it becomes still more lovable, for the certainty that it will never end frees it from all suspicion. (p. 156) God, the holy origin of all things, is Love. He loves in the spontaneous perfect freedom of his infinite nature and he initiates all love. Love is not a quality of or an accident in God, but the divine substance itself (Sommerfeldt 19911101). That is Bernard's central theological motif. As Love, God is present, and although not changed or affected by what is outside himself, can be moved from within by his own love (McGinn 1994:194). The presence of God is dynamic movement, 438 Chapter 20 not flat, unchanging condition, for as the soul advances God becomes more and more actually and effectively present (sermon 74). In Bernard’s mysticism, the Word become flesh is more fundamental than his death or resurrection. One of the characteristic features of his mysticism of love is his interpretation of the Incarnation as expressive of God’s wish to be known by humans, and as taking beautiful form in the flesh (caro) of Jesus. God’s love and lovableness is before us in the form of Christ, attracting our human love. Bernard does not shy away from a heavy emphasis on precisely the body of Christ and, tied to that, from anthropomorphic language about God (Stiegman 2001:133ff.). Bernard’s notion of infinity denotes the ineffable immeasurability of God and his qualities, including love, in a kataphatic sense, not in the apophatic sense as associated with Neoplatonically inspired mysticism, which was not in vogue at the time (Evans 2000:103ff.). God is the Being of all things (esse omnium): he is their cause, not the stuff of their being (factor causale, non materiale: Bernard certainly had no pantheistic inclinations). Precisely as such, God is utterly incomprehensible. The following excerpt illustrates the close association of the infinity of God in himself and at the same time of his close presence to his creatures (Sermon 4.III.4) Cibid.: He who governs all is all to all, yet he has no particularities. All that we can say of him in himself is that 'he dwells in inaccessible light' (1 Tm 6:16). His peace is beyond our understanding (Phil 4:7). His wisdom is beyond measure (Ps 144:3). No man can see him and live. (Ex 33:20). Yet he who is the ground of all being is not far from each of us (Acts 17:27), for without him is nothing (Jn 1:3). But, to make you wonder more: Nothing is more present than he (ni/ eo praesentius) and nothing is more incomprehensible (nil incomprehensibilius). (p. 226) In Bernard's view of the presence and the infinity of God, a certain dramatic tension, a mystery, remains. Christ, the Lover, is not just available and that is that. God can never quite be found. Love as described by Bernard is a dynamic principle, ambivalent, hovering between fulfilment and postponement. In the words of Pranger: the 'sense of mystery remains and is intensified by the suggestion of the simultaneous overwhelming presence, as well as absence, of the beloved' (Pranger 1994:142). The greatness of Bernard is that he was aware of the non-final balance between divine presence and divine infinity; and of the ambivalent relationship between sacred and profane, Spirit and flesh (in our terms: Infinitude and Cosmos). Our notion of Infinite Love 'embraces' and 'retains' (to borrow the abbot's own terms) his medieval Christian model of God as infinite Love, but in a wider, deeper ambit of Infinitude emerging on Absolute Horizon. Insofar as his affirmation of the body of Christ tends to be an affirmation of Cosmos and the body, it is to be applauded. It is to be noted, though, that Bernard's attention to the carnal love of Christ quickly moves on to a spiritual love. In addition, in the end, and in tune with his time, he probably saw no intrinsic worth in the fleeting world and no value or beauty in sexuality - in 439 Love spite of the explicit message of the Song of Songs (Dreyer 2007:126ff.; Stiegman 2001:135ff.). His allegorical reading of the biblical book did not rub off on his view of real life outside the cloister. Nevertheless, could his writing unintentionally but shyly tendentionally and ever so slightly have opened the door to a true celebration of Cosmic life? At least he avoided the extreme dualism of spirit versus body, flesh and matter, as Gnostic Catharism, flourishing at the time, taught. He assumed not an absolute break, but a measure of continuity between flesh and spirit. Let us throw open the window to the sanctity of profane (Cosmic) love without losing - in fact, by radicalising - the sense of mystery and non-fixed Infinitude, and by relating Infinitude to Absolute Horizon. At both ends of the spectrum (Origin and Cosmos) this essay would want to place different emphases than the great Christian mystic had done: Origin would be emptied more and Cosmos would be affirmed more. Appreciate the object of love in its precious reality and its absolute contingency. The ambivalence of the emergence of Cosmic beings from Absoluteness constitutes their beauty, the loveliness of earthly love. In some respects, Bernard was ahead of his time, in others he was a child of his time. He should not anachronistically be blamed for what, from our present historical situation, might appear to be problematic. Nevertheless, this mystic saint's instigation in 1146 of the Second Crusade (which would end in failure in 1148) appears remarkable, even taking into account the vast chasm in time and cultural conditions between now and then. His role was largely determined by his very intimate ties with the powerful institution of the Church, in the hierarchy of which he held no prominent position, yet on which he wielded enormous influence. Indicative of this was his canonisation in 1174, shortly after his death. He was not exactly a solitary on the fringes of institutional life, but a powerful political figure, swaying the Church. In that context, his take on Islam was typical of the Christian sentiments of the time. He saw Muslims as hardened sinners, having turned down the opportunity of hearing the gospel and being converted, and therefore as enemies deserving of religiously inspired military violence in a holy war. The mystic of love's active involvement in the power politics of Church and State in his day reflects the unique historical conditions of the time, no less brutal and complex than our own. To him the Crusade was an opportunity for demonstrating one's love for God. From the point of view of our argument, an MM of love for today would command a different course. In the terms of the model put forward in this treatise, the mystical-intellectual programme of Bernard can be appreciated, yet a nostalgic return to him and to what he stood for would be problematic. Today we exist in a new horizon with new opportunities, invitations and challenges. An emotional focus on, an attachment to one system of - for example - Christianity (as was the case with Bernard) is understandable and acceptable, but a myopic theoretical position espousing Christian (or any other form of) exclusivity is to be turned down. 440 Chapter 20 A deliberate choice for a limited Christian world of thought such as the one inhabited by Bernard would be reactionary. He lived in a different epoch, and must be understood and appreciated over this vast distance in time, circumstance and mentality. This essay proposes an open, inclusive MM, positively accommodating all of humankind’s religious projects as so many searches for ultimate meaning, all oriented towards the same north pole. That is the space to be explored here. Bernard was atroubadour of divine love. From its own religious preconditions, Islam sang equally remarkable songs of love. Reading Bernard flanked by Ramanuja and Rumi is like looking at a family photo, observing family features. Jalaluddin Rumi During the 12th to 13th centuries, the theme of love flourished in Islam, influenced by Sufi thought and producing its finest flower in the mystical love poetry of the Persian poet Jalalludin Rumi (1207-1273). Through his spiritual friend Sadruddin, who was a disciple of Ibn Arabi, Rumi knew the thinking of Ibn Arabi well. Considering their common Sufi sentiments, they were different mystical types: Ibn Arabi's was essentially a mysticism of Thought; Rumi's, a mysticism of Love. Although Rumi was a great MM in the sense of this essay, his mysticism was less integrated with theosophical reflection than was the case in Ibn Arabi and (to mention another great Muslim theosophist) Suhrawardi. Ibn Arabi was overwhelmingly a theosofist; Rumi, overwhelmingly a theophile. That is not to say that love (hubb) was not a prominent theme in Ibn Arabi's thinking. On the contrary, he wrote a great deal and most profoundly about it. To him God'slove has a most significant corollary: God's being known. All things come from God and wish to return to him. God's love to be known is the creative force that brings all things into existence and occasions their desire to know and love him. The world is God's self-disclosure, so that to love the world is to love God. To Ibn Arabi love has divine roots: it sprouts from the deepest roots of things, in his terminology, from wujud (non- manifest Being) (Chittick 2007 [2005]:35-51). This chapter turns on the view that Love (understood to contain the whole range of emotions operative in Cosmos) is not an epiphenomenon of matter, which did not bang blindly, lifelessly, lovelessly and thoughtlessly into being. Matter, Life, Love and Thought co-emerge as mutually inherent on Absolute Horizon. That is in line with Ibn Arabi's thinking. In Chapter 6 note was taken of Rumi's vision of the world leaping out every moment from the ‘nothingness’ of ’adam. Now it is time to see how his appreciation of the world and its emergence might be related to the texture of love in his thinking (cf. Bausani 2004:9ff.; Nicholson 2003 [1898], 2004:48If; Padmanabhan 2004:461ff.; Schimmel 1980 [1978], 1992, 2003). To him love 441 Love was not pretty foam on the world, but a structural element in the nature of the world (Nicholson 2003 [1898]): "Twere better that the spirit which wears not true love as a garment Had not been: its being is but shame. Be drunken in love, for love is all that exists. (p. 51) Like Ramanuja and Bernard before him in other religious worlds, he breathed in the atmosphere of a mystical tradition, in his case based on the Qur'an and its reception. Love, directed at God alone, had become a central aspect of Islamic mystical poetry. Like Bernard, he knew the earthly love stories of his own medieval culture and they fed into his mystical poetry, describing the pain of separation and longing and the joy of union. Yet, different from Bernard's, Rumi's mystical love was religiously inclusive: He was a friend of both Christians and Jews and at his burial they took part in the funeral prayers, each in their own religious idiom. He understood that the various religions long for the same inexpressible essence; that the religion of love is different from all religions and knows no difference between sects. The transcendence of God, the Infinite, is the basis for his tolerance of all religions. In his own way Rumi interpreted all religions tendentionally - all aim at the Infinite: Every prophet, every saint has his path but as they return to God, all are one (Rumi 2008:10). Those drunk with God, tho’ they be thousands, are yet one (Nicholson 2003 [1898]:61). All of this love, expressed by the poet in a multitude of staggering images, is a Divine gift. It is rooted in the eternal Kindness of God, originates in God, is co-eternal with him and is his foremost quality (Schimmel 1980 [1978]:341). In his Divani Shamsi Tabriz, named after Rumi's spiritual mentor, Shams Tabrizi (1185-1248) and written in the New Persian language, he drew on a revered hadith (Nicholson 2003 [1898]:15): David said: 'O Lord, since thou hast no need of us, Say, then, what wisdom was there in creating the two worlds?' God said to him: 'O temporal man, | was a hidden treasure; | sought that that treasure of lovingkindness and bounty should be revealed’. (p. 15) About God, he himself spoke in exuberant kataphatic poetry, veiling the blinding brightness of God, the One Eternal Sun, by metaphoric language, like stained glass pieces protecting from, yet also revealing the sun (Schimmel 1980 [1978]:47, 336 ). His unsightedness was not caused by darkness, but by excessive light; he did not withdraw into apophatic silence, but could not contain the flood of kataphatic love-intoxicated words gushing over his lips. The essence of Rumi's poetry was his preoccupation with God, his burning love for God as Creator (khalig) and Ocean of Love, ever continuing his work of creation ex nihilo ('adam). God is the Living, the Everlasting, and the spark of not only his Power and Wisdom but also of his Love, Kindness and Mercy can be discovered in everything. Love, like Being, Beauty and Goodness, belong essentially and exclusively to God and are manifested in a thousand 442 Chapter 20 mirrors in the phenomenal word. Divine Love is a positive Cosmic force in the world, without which the world would be frozen. Sun, earth and mountains are lovers, and everything in the world loves something. Love shuns extreme asceticism: like Bernard, Rumi sees human love between woman and man as a symbol of the love between God and the believer; but more than Bernard he appreciates it in its own right as good and divinely inspired. The world, though merely mirror, is affirmed as positively beautiful. Rumi approximates Absolute Horizon more strongly than was the case in Bernard. To the Persian poet, God is utterly transcendent, virtually to the point of non-existence from a human point of view, beyond personalism. However, as far as | can see, God remains an eternal noumenon, the Ground of Being, of all Creation (Padmanabhan 2004:468), an inconceivable superabundance, closer to Neoplatonism and Vedanta than to Taoism and Buddhism. His God is ‘inexpressible reality’, the ‘non-dual reality’, ‘the Absolute One without attributes’, ‘strikingly similar to the monism of the Upanishads, of Sankara’s Advaita and of Plotinus’ Sublime’ (Padmanabhan 2004:469, 478). Yet his MM, brushing the limits of what is possible in Islamic orthodoxy, does not transgress the boundaries between God and human being set in the basic tenets of the Qur'an. After all, he stands closer to Ramanuja than to Sankara. According to Rumi scholar R.A. Nicholson (2004), Rumi was: [A] pantheist in the sense that he identifies all real being with God and regards the world of phenomena as a mere image of the divine ideas reflected from the darkness of not-being: the universe in itself is nothing, and God alone really exists. (p. 481) On that assumption, this essay would emphasise both the emptiness of Absoluteness and the reality of the world more strongly than this interpretation of the Persian MM poet allows: on this journey of ours, the world is seen as real and from Infinitude to Cosmos real novelty, real change occurs. Rumi's notion of God is understood to overlap with our notion of Infinitude. His accents differ. First (as said): our notion of Infinite Love, eventually petering out at Absolute Horizon, extends further into emptiness than the Love he sings of so eloquently in his poetic imagining. Second: alongside Infinite Love, and intimately integrated with it, emerges Infinite Thought. Rumi attaches little value to Thought (which will be considered in the next chapter). To him, discursive reason, compared to love which flies to heaven, is a donkey carrying books, and a stick in the darkness for the blind compared to a candle for those who can see beauty (Rumi 2008): Love resides not in learning not in knowledge not in pages and pamphlets Wherever the debates of men may lead that is not the lover's path. (p. 115) And (Rumi 1996): My religion is to be kept alive by Love: life derived from this animal soul and head alone is a disgrace. (p. 182) 443 Love Hasdai Crescas Remaining in the Middle Ages, to the Jewish scholar Hasdai Crescas (1340-1410/11) will and love constitute the highest good of human existence (cf. Epstein 1975 [1959]:217ff.; Frank, Leaman & Manekin 2000:263ff.; Guttmann 1988 [1964]:224ff.; Langermann 2007:229ff.; Lasker 1977, 1997:399ff.). Why and how love? Barcelona-born Crescas was an outstanding teacher of Jewish law (halakha) in Christian Spain, but during his life and after his death he remained in the shadow cast by the other Spanish-born Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), whom he criticised trenchantly. The fact that Crescas did not win many adherents and did not become the source of an enduring school in Jewish thought, may be attributed to the untimely nature of his thought: at a time when Aristotelianism was not only the fashionable but the dominant paradigm, Crescas explored another one, a novel and original paradigm, intended to oust Aristotelianism. It was too early to have much effect. He also strove to re-establish the traditional doctrines of Judaism, preserving Jewish identity and loyalty at a time of severe crisis. His central concern was the defence of Jewish orthodoxy against the double threat of intellectualist Aristotelianism (particularly in the garb of theistic Aristotelianism as championed by Maimonides) and Christian theology. Considering the common philosophical culture prevailing in Europe and particularly Spain at the time, the possibility that Crescas might have been influenced by figures such as the 13th century Muslim Al-Tabrizi (Langermann 2007:238f.) and the Christian theologians Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus from the same century, should cause no surprise. As far as his own influence is concerned, Crescas could, according to some, perhaps have foreshadowed the thinking of Giordano Bruno and Baruch Spinoza. Crescas was not a theosophist in the sense deployed in our model. Striving to combine rational argument and erudition in the general Western philosophical tradition with ha/akhic studies and apologetics in his religious tradition, he was a philosopher-theologian, which is not quite the same as being an MM. Combination is not the same as integration and transcendence, and could still imply a certain disengagement of the two. That was the case with Crescas. Although the Kabbalah could have influenced him, he did not write with a mystical intent, as his main book, a philosophical treatise under the title Or Adonai (‘The light of the Lord’, completed in 1410), indicates. This comes out in the way he deals with infinity. He makes a great deal of infinity, but does not use the Kabbalistic term Ein-Sof in this respect. Although Love is the central tenet of his thinking, he does not relate it to the notion of infinity, but immediately connects it to God as positively revealed and known. The target of his interest in infinity was Aristotelian physics, in the context of his refutation of naturalism as a threat to orthodoxy. While accepting infinity as real and 444 Chapter 20 defined as unfinalisable magnitude, Crescas refuted Aristotle and argued for the infinity of empty space as the receptacle of all things, and the infinity of time and number, as well as of causality. In the medieval context, entertaining the possibility of an infinite universe was a novelty and a great achievement. In his application of the notion of infinity to causality, Crescas did away with Aristotle’s argument for the existence of a terminus (called ‘Prime Mover’ by the Greek) in the chain of causation, intended to end what would otherwise amount to a futile infinite regress. That is a significant theological offshoot of his anti-Aristotelianism. Crescas obviously accepts God as cause of the world, but this is unrelated to the notion of causal or temporal infinity. He accepts the notion of creatio ex nihilo, not in the sense of an Absolute devoid of being, but in the sense of creation stemming from God alone as its eternal Ground. That is his traditional Jewish faith, not intending a version of absolutism at all. In the context of creation, Crescas places a high premium on the Will of God: the world is not a natural necessity, but it is a divine necessity - the outcome of Divine Will, and in that sense, he postulates, necessary. Creation is the necessary diffusion of Divine Love, which is the highest attribute of his Will. This act of free Will to create, is a corollary of the notion of Divine creation ex nihilo. Will, Love, are essentially part of the eternal, unchanging nature of God. Not Thought but Goodness is the central feature and primary content of his God idea, organising the various attributes of God into a whole. God is centrally a volitional, emotional being, blissful and joyous. Crescas' emotional-voluntaristic emphasis is what distinguishes him from Maimonides, who awarded priority to reason. He therefore severely criticised Maimonides' formulation of the basic tenets of Judaism. Among the sine qua non non-negotiables (oinnot) of Judaism, Crescas includes the Love of God, which Maimonides did not have among his list of non-negotiable dogmas. Crescas awards the central position to God's goodness, grace and love. Compared to that, the beliefs in immortality and retribution, the coming of the Messiah and the eternity of the Torah, penitence and the power of prayer, though true, are of secondary importance - for Love seeks no reward and desires nothing in return. Denying such beliefs would amount to heresy in Jewish terms. Crescas, pious Jew and expert in the halakha, does not dispute that, but does not award the highest priority to it. Here a certain ambivalence in Crescas' position emerges, structurally similar to the ambivalences observable in the cases of, for example, the Muslim, Ibn Arabi (see Ch. 5 and Ch. 7). Transcendentalism, understood as the tendention towards Absolute Horizon, can accommodate traditional loyalties, but is not reducible to them. The intuition of absolute ultimacy, transcending every cultural and religious form, can be found both inside and outside the various existing religious camps. In this essay the emphasis falls on the structural similarities cutting right across religious divisions - yet without sacrificing an appreciation of the uniqueness and value of each of these religious organisms, growing from various cultural soils over time. So, Crescas 445 Love is not censured for his religious obedience. On the contrary, it is appreciated, but not as an absolute. Crescas distinguished a further, lower tier of religious conviction: opinions left to the discretion of the individual Jewish believer. Among these, he included beliefs concerning the spatial locality of heaven and hell and, remarkably, views concerning the knowability or unknowability of the Divine essence. From the perspective of the explorer on the present journey, a sense of ultimate ignorance, beyond Neoplatonic apophaticism, is (to stay with Crescas’ scheme) neither a matter of private opinion nor of semi-compulsory belief or a fundamental religion-specific item; it transcends all of those. Then, Crescas was the leader of a religious minority persecuted by Christians in a time fraught by unbelievable social tensions in Spain. His own son was killed in that context. That situation would not have stimulated apophatic thinking - it was a time to take a strong defensive-offensive stance. Yet, in passing, let me not forget a theist from the same epoch, the Christian, Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), with his ideal concerning a peace of religions (De pace fidei, written around the fall of Constantinople to the Muslims in 1453). Ours is a different time, inviting the mystically inclined as never before to be aware of a wider Horizon, transgressing the boundaries of all historical religions and science, while embracing all of them. An implication of the Catalonian's imagining of God is that in the human personality, feeling and free will are not secondary concomitants of the intellect, but the primary and central factors, their realisation constituting the supreme goal of human existence. Not knowledge but active love for God, expressed in morality and the participation in religious observance, bring about true communion with God. Thus, the state of ultimate human happiness is not achieved through rational philosophy, but through revealed religion and living according to the Torah, the purpose of which is to bring the believer to eternal life, through love for God as expressed by observing his commandments. Novalis Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg: 1772-1801) was lawyer, poet and scholar of literature, philosopher, natural scientist (metallurgist) and mathematician. The life span of 29 years granted to him was not enough to integrate all of that (Schmid 1976). Celebrated (alongside Hólderlin) as one of the pioneering poets of German Romanticism, Novalis was no mere youthful, irrational, impulsive, death-obsessed dreamer but an accomplished metaphysical mystical poet- thinker, also standing in the tradition of the medieval mystics (including Meister Eckhart). Like Rumi six centuries before and from a vastly different religious and cultural world, Novalis celebrated earthly love as arising from a great depth. 446 Chapter 20 Connecting him to the medieval Jewish orthodox theologian-philosopher, Crescas, is more difficult. It may seem like leaping across a broad and deep chasm. They lived in utterly different, seemingly completely incongruous epochs and their respective worldviews may appear to be completely incompatible. Yet there is bedrock underlying the chasm between these two figures, connecting their seemingly disconnected worlds and providing structural continuity across the vast differences. That bedrock is their shared emphasis on love. Novalis stood for something quite different, yet not unrelated. In the thinking of both of these figures, love was the central organising theme. Yet the contrasts in the connected divide are equally significant. Whereas Crescas accepted a dichotomy between the immanent and a supernaturally transcendent (was there really another possibility available to this 14th century theologian?), Novalis stood in a different tradition. His thinking continued the presupposition of an emanating Absolute, differentiating itself, and the return of the finite that has come about in that process, to the Absolute. Significant names in this tradition are Plato and Plotinus, also Jacob Boehme and (contemporaneous with Novalis) Franz von Baader (see Ch. 9), all allowing for an appreciation of Christianity. Novalis' position is an affirmation of love as world-immanent. Novalis assumes a divine longing for unification. This eros manifests in human love (including sexuality) as well as in nature, in history as well as in Cosmos. Realised via nature, eros, from a human perspective, includes sympathy between human and nature. This erotic principle, this longing for unification, for losing own, separate identity, is operative everywhere, in the larger context of a sympathetic coherence of nature as a whole. Eros has cosmological significance. The human is the product of that love, the revelation of the principle of love, and awakens to nature in the experience of a feeling of eros. Human sexuality expresses, is woven into, a cosmic erotic principle, which is ultimately rooted in what he calls ‘night’. Novalis, standing at the beginning of the 19th century and Nietzsche at the end of it, had opposite attitudes towards Christianity. Novalis found a new Christianity: in Christ the principle of love was realised; Nietzsche vehemently rejected Christianity. Yet both are similar in their affirmation of this-worldly life, eros. That does not mean that Novalis simply rested within the confines of empirical reality. He assumed a stark contrast between that reality and a background depth beyond it. The symbol of the first is day; of the second, night, as he worked it out in his six Hymnen an die Nacht (‘hymns to the night’) (published in 1800) (cf. Gade 1974; Haywood 1959:52ff, 145ff.; Novalis 1988 [1978]; Ritter 1974:141ff.). To Novalis night is the symbol, discoverable by turning inwards, of a principle of transcendence beyond time and space, of absolute identity beyond the differences and divisions marking individuality. For all purposes, his notion of ‘night’ is the equivalent of the term ‘God’, implicitly understood by him as Mother Goddess. 447 Love Paradoxically, the loss of individuality through love also constitutes the true realisation of the self in love; and night is also eternal life. Night is the realm of death, unification beyond individual identity, absolute identity. Night is sacred, ineffable, and yet imaginable in poetry. It is not transcendence in a supranaturalistic sense, and it is not completely separate from day. Access to the deeper knowledge of night, compared to day, is given by love, because love is the essence of night, the primordial ‘Mother’, the ‘Queen of the world’ (Weltkónigin) herself. Love links light and night. Unlike day, night is not ‘something’, does not have the quality of reality, is ‘nothing’; it is radically devoid of the categories of time and space. To Novalis, night (the dimension of identity) and day (the dimension of non-identity) are oppositionally, dialectically simultaneous, and yet night has priority, is the origin of day. As a higher dimension, it is the negation of the empirical world; yet it envelops the day, the empirical world, and gives meaning to it. Death is the beginning of life. Day is dependent on night. Moreover, night does have a quality: the dynamic principle of eros, which is the creative centre of all, and that is mirrored in human love, including erotic lust. By human love, the world is to be sanctified. The first four hymns work out the discovery of night as ‘nothingness’ beyond time and space; the inner world in the human soul; the site of bliss and love; present in the day, the world of light, life; providing meaning to earthly existence. This structure of his thinking is filled with Christian content: Christianity is a religion of night, over against the religion of light, which does not address the problem of death. The deep love of night, although vastly transcending love in the form of human sentiment, is available to the human person through Christ, who embodied the highest form of love, namely the gift of the self for the other, and comes to fulfilment in the day, in human love. Novalis produces his own personal mythopoetic rendering of traditional Christian mythology: the six hymns are a myth of initiation and salvation, through life and beyond life. Novalis accesses deep archetypical layers of human religious consciousness and approximates inaccessible Absolute Horizon, clothing all of this in Christian imagery and symbolism. The six hymns witness to a growth in Novalis, from the intimate personal experience of the death of his beloved Sophie to the universal revelation of death as the door to mystic union with Christ. This is classic apophatic Christian mysticism, transformed into a mysticism of love, overflowing to become an appreciation of the value and beauty of cosmic life and human eros. At first it is a withdrawal from ordinary life, then a return to it, but in the context of, ultimately, Night. The six hymns can also be understood as structurally akin to Mahayana Buddhism, Night being the equivalent of transcendent Emptiness, yet infusing ordinary life and finding expression in a compassionate existence. Essential structure must be distinguished from mythopoetic expression. 448 Chapter 20 While assuming polarity of Divinity and nature, Divinity and humanity, spirit and body, humanity and nature, but subsuming it in a larger context, Novalis overcomes dualism, separation, of what is inherently connected. Love is central: human love derives from cosmic eros, which derives from Night (Gade 1974:239ff.). Read together with the authors above, he offers support for the postulate of a confluence (dynamic, non-finalised movement) of views towards an understanding of Cosmic and human love expressing Infinitude, which has Love as a central feature. 449 Thought E $53 The stick insect as messenger How did the stick insect come to look the way it does, just another twig among twigs and surviving thanks to this ploy? It could not have planned this camouflage, given its humble intelligence. Yet, could it - somehow - be a messenger of a profound dimension of things? Could all forms of life, natural law and logic, mathematics and music be the results of blind, mechanical connections of material causes and effects over long periods of time, and nothing more? Alternatively, could some individual mythological Person outside nature have planned and produced life in all its detail? Neither of these solutions seems quite convincing. Look down a different road: from empty Horizon and Eternity and inextricably connected with Infinite Energy-Matter, Life and Love, arises Infinite Thought - and from that Cosmos arises, and with that Cosmos is infused. Throughout, we need to bear in mind Nagarjuna's insight into the constructing, fabricating nature of the human mind, which renders all religious and metaphysical systems ultimately empty. Yet, instead of bluntly rejecting the traditional religious notion of supernatural creation, this orientation would absorb it tendentionally into a naturalistic hermeneutic, inviting it into an MM space which, in its own way, follows the command to ‘love the Lord your God [...] with all your mind’ ‘thought’: dianoia). In Indian vocabulary, what is proposed here is in line with /Adna-yoga. How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Thought’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 451-481, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi. org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.21 451 Thought Human ‘thinking’, in any serious sense as generally understood in the disciplines of the various sciences, philosophies and theologies, is equated with reason. It is taken to connect concepts logically, concepts and objects factually, and aims and means effectively to master the world. The dominant paradigm of today, led by science and technology, more or less exhausts the scope of the word ‘thinking’, with artistic insight accommodated in the margin, and religious and mystical insight falling off the page as superstitious mystery mongering. ‘Thinking’ is exclusively taken to be correct or incorrect, right or wrong, with reference to the rules of logic and rigorously proven correspondence with facts. Seen in a wider context, human cognition is like a house with four walls: one is absorption, learning, retaining what is good from individual and collective experience and the past; a second is creative thought, anticipating and achieving novelty, improvement; a third is correct analysis, taking apart, awareness of the individual, the specific; the fourth is synthesis, seeing widening connections of complex wholes. MM thought at its best, as observed in figures visited so far, partakes in this: (D =Itwould be opento the cumulative attempt to understand comprehensively since an early stage of human existence. It would see itself as part of it and be informed by it. (2) It would anticipate the future and, like all responsible thinking today, be concerned about the future of humanity and life on earth, and in its own way pioneer the kind of awareness required to co-exist as humans, and as humans with all other species of life, into the future. (3) It would subscribe to the rigours of analytical thought, including conforming to the rules of logic and remaining critically aware of the real differences among religious and philosophical schools of thought. (4) It would spot unsuspected connections and create new ones. It would allow for and encourage synthetic, even speculative thought, with a clear awareness of the need of integrating it with the other three. It would overcome the fragmented nature of things - including the disconnectedness of science and religion, and of the plurality of religions. (5) In addition, good MM thinking as observed in the type of thoughtful person visited so far, would rest on the foundations of a subconscious common to humankind, be dug into the soil of Cosmos, and would have a roof that could be opened to the sky above. MM is experiential knowing, cognitive experience of Infinitude beyond the split of knowing subject and known object and is capable of being developed by dedication and practice. At the pinnacle of human thought, instinctual life, emotional intelligence and conceptual cognition meet and are extended to become ‘knowing’, ‘insight’ and ‘wisdom’ in the sense investigated here. MM 'thought' can guarantee no certainty of the kind secured by tying thought exclusively to fact and logic, nor to the tradition of an indubitable 452 Chapter 21 divine revelation. Yet, MM knowing unknowing is something quite different from mere uncertainty and doubt, the latter two being regularly demonstrated by the disillusioned ones of today. Such resigned or rebellious uncertainty and doubt are merely the obverse side of dogmatic certainty, not a true alternative to it. It is the tail of a coin of limited value, of which dogmatic certainty is the head. Both are locked in at the same level of thinking as opposites, one being the ‘yes’, the other the ‘no’. What is needed is to transcend the coin itself, to absorb it into a unit of higher value. That would not amount to a rejection of the coin with its two sides and its lower value, but to its transvaluation, the honouring of its relative, limited value while stripping it of any claim to absolute value. In this way, the fruitless and at times banal tussle between traditional ‘religion’ and ‘science’ with their respective claims to indubitable certainty and the inevitable counter-claims might also be transcended. We need no quasi- scientific religion or quasi-religious science, but an MM aligned to a strong and confident science, yet one conscious of the limits of its methodology; an MM radicalising and relativising all religion, yet understanding its ultimate drift. This essay in meta-theism with its notion of Infinitude, differentiates clearly between itself and the mythological world pictures with their larger-than- human beings. Perhaps there are smarter-than-human living beings elsewhere in the universe, aware of what happens on this little planet, perhaps even conscious of the sighs and prayers of humans. Thoughts are efficacious because they are connected to Infinitude and via Infinitude to every other being in Cosmos. In that sense, every thought makes a difference for better or worse, to the one who thinks and to the larger context. The model developing here presents Infinite Thought (together with Energy- Matter, Life and Love) as the origin of thought-full Cosmos, in which, through an evolutionary process, Consciousness comes to manifestation, through prehuman consciousness, and within species specific human consciousness. Human consciousness manifests in the consciousness of individuals as well as in socio-culturally structured collective epistemes. Human cognition (thought) is exercised in art, science, philosophy, theology and so forth, but its apex is MM wisdom. Here the human being 'knows' and 'thinks' not only logically and factually, but also intuitively, viscerally, at a level touching Cosmos as a whole as well as in the transcendent dimension of Infinitude. At this level, finite thought realises its unity with Cosmos and, beyond that, with Infinite Thought. ‘Realise’ here means both: ‘understand’ and ‘convert into lived experience’. That is the experience sometimes termed ‘enlightenment’, occurring in some form or another in different religions and mystical systems. At its most advanced, human thought evanesces on Absolute Horizon, and knows it. The notion of Infinite Thought provides a transcendental basis for human understanding. This includes the knowledge and explanation of things (the natural sciences and technology). It also encompasses the following: interpretive insight 453 Thought into situations and the historic dynamics of human existence (the human sciences); also intelligent, appropriate, skilful action in the field of individual and social life (such as morality, civil existence, social institutionalisation, and politics). In addition, human understanding embraces aligning actions with anticipated outcomes and the application of reason in comprehensive philosophy, and it includes the imaginal worlds of mythology and art in all its forms, from music to architecture. Ultimately, such human understanding evolves into enlightenment. ‘Thought’ in this context refers to emerging function and process, and is not intended in a substantialised sense: there is Thought as Thinking, but (to follow the lead of Buddhaghosa) no Thinker, and no Thought as fixed Idea. In this model, Infinite Thought is assumed as a stage in a process, arising from Eternal Principles and concretised in Cosmos and its children, including humans. What has been termed ‘metaphysical mysticism’ in these reflections is a kind of experience and intuition of ultimacy linking up in particular with Infinite Thought, but without severing the ties with the other modes of Infinitude. It does not amount to an idealism reducing the world to a fabrication of the human mind. Cosmos is real and it does derive from Infinite Thought, but not Thought in isolation, in abstraction from Infinite Energy-Matter, Infinite Life and Infinite Love. MM understanding (insight, wisdom) is a precious experience in which the individual human person relates to the appearance and disappearance of things from and into an inaccessible depth. It lies beyond the purely rational cognition of science and philosophy; beyond religious traditions of supernatural revelation; beyond theology, that is, the attempt - rather, the whole gamut of similar but mostly conflicting religion-specific attempts - to combine the previous two; and beyond religion-specific devoteeship and piety. In the sense intended here, it is the pinnacle of human growth and mental development. The world is not dark and blind. A great wisdom works in the laws of thought; in the laws and workings of the natural order; in the evolution of life; in the consciousness of living beings. MM is a becoming aware of this wider context. B 554 Circles The various world orientations and their thoughtful theoretical expressions are circles, not separated by impenetrable boundaries, but joined by porous membranes, all eventually dissolving and surrounded by a circle including and transcending all the smaller ones - and also dissolving them. The large, all- inclusive space is the metaphysical-mystical one, transcending religion-specific thought. It is possible to move in the large circle without necessarily being in any one of the smaller ones. Yet, by implication, one is inside all of them, for the large one includes the smaller ones. Where one takes one's social stand, 'inside' or ‘outside’, is not an either-or choice. Being mystical outsider may create its own social form of friendship, the lighter the better. By entering into a few of 454 Chapter 21 these circles, one seeks for windows to the others and to the ultimate expanse surrounding and permeating all of them. Indian Buddhism The Buddha rejected all attempts at factual statements that exceeded the human conceptual ability, as meaningless, false (not corresponding to reality, therefore misleading), existentially irrelevant and dangerous. In the early suttas fourteen such unanswerables (avyàkata) were listed, including the question as to whether the world is eternal or not; it also included the question whether the soul is identical with or different from the body. These two questions could be recast as early anticipations of what would become the problem of all forms of idealism (and materialism). As for the second of the two questions, the relationship of soul:body is not identical with, but related to the question of the relationship of mind:matter, and idea:reality. In the context of our present argument, we could put it as the question of the relationship between Thought, Love, Life and Matter. The Buddha rendered all answers to such questions epistemologically deeply suspect. The problem was seen to be the propensity of human thinking to proliferate viciously and invest its concepts with the character of objectivity, thereby weaving an entangling network in which one becomes hopelessly entrapped, accompanied as this process is by desire and hatred. The early suttas refer to that process as papafica ‘expansion’; then ‘illusion’, ‘obsession’; then ‘obstacle’ to spiritual progress) (Nanananda 1976). The Buddha’s seed of radical epistemological critique slumbered through the phase of Abhidhamma and germinated fully with the Madyamika of Nagarjuna several centuries later. However, from the beginning the aim of meditation was to transcend all conceptual constructions and the affections and volitions accompanying them. In the more advanced stages of early Buddhist meditation, this occurs progressively from jhàna to jhàna. The first jhàna still contains analytical, conceptual thought (vitakka, vicàra). In the second jhàna that is left behind and, as far as the cognitive dimension is concerned, a state of deep concentration (samadhi) and one-pointedness Cekodibhàva) is reached. In the third jhàna that is transcended, and a state of profound mindfulness (sati) and attentiveness (sampajafifia) is achieved. In the fourth jhàna the possibility of ‘higher knowledge’, based on meditative, contemplative experience opens up beyond sensory perception, rational knowledge, supernatural revelation, religious tradition, hear-say, unitive contact with Divinity or mere authority. This is true ‘knowledge and insight’ (Aanadassana), ‘knowing and seeing’ (jànáti passati), ‘wisdom’, ‘mystical insight’ (pafhfia), seeing and understanding things as they really are. Open to every person, private yet communicable, it is nevertheless not the pasture of many (Jayatilleke 1980 [1963]:467). 455 Thought Early Buddhism shows another route to follow: the higher jhànas, with their own vistas. Transcending the fifth jhàna (the dimension of the ‘infinity of space’: akasanafhicayatana), the visitor to these heights experiences the sixth /hàna Cinfinity of consciousness’: viifianaficayatana). Nevertheless, even that is a consciousness, albeit an extremely attenuated consciousness. There is just consciousness, and in it there is no split between a subject who is conscious and an o(O)bject of consciousness. This level of experience corresponds with what this chapter is terming ‘Infinite Thought’. This sohere is reminiscent of the mystical experience of ‘God’ in theistic religions. Yet it is not the highest stage. Even subtler dimensions follow, namely the experience of ‘nothingness’ (akiAcafihayatana), the experience of ‘neither perception nor non-perception’ (n'evasafifianàsafifiayatana) and then the ‘extinction’, of all ‘perception’ and ‘feeling’ (safifiávedayitanirodha). These dimensions are here assimilated into what | term ‘Infinite Thought’, faintly discernible and hardly accessible at the outer edges of human thought and experience: non-concretised, formless, undetermined, unlimited, undefined, unrestricted, and then disappearing altogether. Beyond that is sheer emptiness, nibbàna: Absoluteness. That is the outermost Horizon of human cognition. Even the cognitive experiences of the advanced jhànas were ascribed to the predispositions of the meditating subjects (Dharmasiri 1974:197). All that precedes nibbàna are mental imageries and creations, determined and mediated by sensory, affective, discursive, social and other factors. All of these peter out in nibbàna, which is per definition non-experience, non-cognition. Applied to the focus of this chapter, the implications are obvious. 'God' and 'gods' are not the ultimate. They are conditioned concepts. The entire band of Infinitude as set out in this treatise would forfeit any claim to 'factual' truth. That is perfectly in order and is accepted wholeheartedly. At best, it could have a limited value as a tool to suggest the ultimate mystery that suffuses Cosmos. An interesting theorem of early Therava da Abhidhamma was the quantum- like nature of experiential moments or elements, of mental states (dhammas). This ties in with the nature of the problem dealt with in this chapter, and in this book as a whole: human experience of the world, including thought, as flashing forth, hovering between reality and non-reality, as part of (indeed making) a stable world of common sense - but ultimately flimsy, non-self-evident, relative. This is fundamental to our endeavour. Also remarkable is the apparent comparability of this ancient Buddhist notion with modern quantum physics. The dialogue is on. Buddhist Abhidhamma developed another concept relevant to our present interest: bhavanga-citta (Narada 1980:32f., 58, 163ff., 208, 211, 227) which means the continuous stream of human consciousness in a passive state, not interrupted by stimuli, not responding to external objects and not conceptualising - and more fundamental than even the four deeper jhànas. Modern Buddhist commentators are unclear about whether this is somehow identifiable with the 'subconscious' in Western psychology. Yet an assimilation 456 Chapter 21 of such a concept, not only with human depth consciousness, but also with a Cosmic Consciousness and eventually with Infinite Consciousness as explored in this chapter, is an inviting route to follow. Indeed, Yogacara offers significant pointers in this direction. The epistemological critique of early Buddhism had a mystical function. Conceptual thought and feeling, all experience, disappear into unthinkableness, inexperienceableness, hinted at by the word nibbàna. The Buddha rested in knowing unknowing. No positive conceptualising of Absoluteness is possible. Certain notions of divinity (in his time, including Brahma) are at best pragmatically tolerable at a lower level. This critique would deny ultimacy to all forms of theistic mysticism. ‘Infinite Thought’ in this model is intended as an equivalent to vihfianancayatana, a stage in transcending conceptual thought. A further step is taken here, one that the Buddha would probably have viewed with misgivings. Infinite Thought as a field of mystical experience en route to Absoluteness is in this model postulated as possible because of a prior event: the emergence of Cosmos from Absoluteness. The mystical experience of Infinite Thought is the way back towards Absoluteness, possible because of the first move from Absoluteness to Cosmos via Absolute Thought. That reconstruction would have fallen under the Buddha’s verdict of being speculation on an ‘unanswerable’ problem. Yet, in our contemporary situation, | suggest that this step may be taken in full awareness of its provisionality. The Buddha’s epistemological critique was continued and reformulated by Nagarjuna who demolished all conceptual constructs in the period between 2nd century and 3rd century CE. Yet it was not the end of Buddhist attempts to give an explanatory account of meditative mystical experience. Yogacara was intensely interested in mind or consciousness in the process of becoming purified and eventually passing over into Emptiness. That was Yogacara’s point of departure. Add to that the difficult, unresolved problem (bequeathed by the Abhidhamma scholastics) of the exact status and role of vififiàna as one of the five constituents (khandhas) making up the human person, particularly in its function of linking one birth to the next. An enduring ‘substance’ (atta) it could not have been; bhavanga-citta could not be construed to have such an implication. This invited clarification, even if it meant fairly elaborate conceptual construction, which is precisely what the Yogacara school - also known as Vijfiànavada (doctrine of consciousness’) - undertook. It is a sophisticated speculative MM theory of consciousness. It is not necessary to reconstruct the entire system here. Suffice it to say that it cannot be seen as anything but a speculative construction, basing itself (with sufficient reason) on the epistemological example of pragmatic radicalism set by the Buddha and reiterated by Nagarjuna. It was not an exercise in intellectual agility and power, but a therapeutic device. It was not pre-Nagarjuna realism (the Abhidharma epistemology) but post-Nagarjuna idealism. It had gone through the fire of Madhyamika. The argument of this essay identifies with that. 457 Thought They moulded the concept aà/aya-vijfiàna (‘storehouse consciousness’) as central category, which really was a tendentional interpretation of the notion of vififianaficayatana. In that system alaya-vij/Aana is not an entity available at the level of empirical experience. It has the function of a necessary postulate to explain the possibility and working of deep meditation as well as rebirth. Clearly, they were bound to find a middle path between substantialism and nihilism. The à/aya-vijfiàna operated at an ontological level between Absolute Emptiness and empirical reality. It was the level, the site, enabling the possibility of bodhisattvic vows and commitments to serve all beings. More than that, it was the condition for phenomenal reality, for the common and shared human world, as such. In à/laya-vijfiàna as purified consciousness there is no split of grasping subject versus grasped object, ego versus a/ter, which is the hallmark of empirical thinking in the common human world. It is not the immutable ‘oneness’ of the Vedas-Upanishads either. It transcends the pre-critical realism of the Abhidharma as well as the substantialism of Vedanta as well as the total speechlessness of extreme Madhyamika (only allowing for conventional speech and thinking). Our notion of Infinite Thought gropes for what Asanga, Vasubandhu and others have achieved in their thinking on consciousness. In their model, à/aya-vijfiàna is outside time and space; moving, unfolding; the source of individual identity and of human intersubjectivity; mediating between absolute emptiness and phenomenal reality; actualising the constitution of the world. What the Yogacara metaphysical theorists of mysticism designed, may be called a variant of idealism of a phenomenalist type: the world as seen through the eyes of an enlightened person is constituted by a bodhisattvic consciousness. That implies an awareness of the constructed nature of the conceptual apparatus itself as a mediating bridge: evoking an awareness of an ultimate dimension in the midst of the ordinary common-sense world, but not ultimate itself. It was an idealism dissolving itself in a mysticism of Absolutism. In other words, it would have avoided the trap of papafica, against which the Buddha warned so insistently as a prime danger. The Yogacara ‘Idealist’ system is based on the understanding that language and conceptual constructs have a pragmatic value, which makes them relatively but also (in a sense) 'truly' significant and life changing. Yogacara illustrates the Buddha's image of the useful raft to be left behind after crossing, and Wittgenstein's image of the useful ladder to be kicked away after ascending. A shortcoming of all Indian Buddhism was that it did not achieve a positive relationship with Cosmos, Nature. That would come later in East Asian Buddhism. This exploration moves along the religion-transcending MM trail blazed by the Buddha. It attempts to provide a theoretical underpinning of MM thought in relation to ordinary modes of cognition, befitting the present-day context. Doing so, it has an interest in the sciences investigating Cosmos, as 458 Chapter 21 any MM for today should, more than original Buddhism would seem to care for or allow. A thorough empirical cognition of nature was the particular genius of Western thinking. Neither early Buddhism, nor Madhyamika, nor Yogacara had any explicit cosmological interest to speak of, although they did imply, or rest on, certain time-bound cosmological assumptions. They had an exclusive existential-soteriological focus: the clearing of the human mind of impediments and the attainment of liberating insight. In today's world, non-human nature should not be left out of the picture. Human existence and Cosmic existence cannot be separated. Taking the step beyond ancient Indian Buddhist thinking to attain a positive, loving relationship with Cosmos and to achieve a calibration with contemporary science is a most important undertaking. Abū Hamid al-Ghazalt The concerns of the Persian Muslim, Abū Hamid al-Ghazall (c. 1058-1111), set out in his spiritual autobiography A/-Mungidh min al-Dalal (Deliverance from error) (McCarthy 2006 [1980], written towards the end of his life, are of interest in the context of this investigation. Al-Ghazali received excellent training in jurisprudence and theology and at a young age became one of the foremost Muslim academics of his time, teaching in Baghdad at a newly founded university (the Nizamiyah). Nevertheless, after four years, he became disillusioned with the legalism and intellectualism of the Sunni's. Overcome by doubt concerning the value of speculative reason and reasoned argument in apologetic defence of the faith (kalam, theology) he tumbled into a religious crisis, finding that his teaching had been motivated by the quest for fame and that he was standing on the brink of a crumbling bank. He then abandoned his career, wealth, social position and family and set out, around the age of 37 (1095 CE), in search of truth. Withdrawing to Damascus, he entered solitary seclusion with spiritual exercise among the Sufi mystics by practising meditation (dhikr) for 2 years. Eventually, via a pilgrimage to Mecca, he returned to his family and after more than 10 years (age around 48, in 1106 CE), resumed the teaching of Sunni theology, now in Nishapur. Thus Al-Ghazalt was a transformed person when he emerged from his mystical retreat and resumed his teaching. He died five years later, destined to become a revered and normative figure in all of Islam. His legacy was that he overcame the barren scholasticism into which theology had fallen at the time by integrating it with moderate Sufism. That was his outer journey. In his autobiography, he also describes his inner journey: how, driven by a thirst to grasp the real meaning of things, he left the lowland of mere conformism and inherited beliefs to follow the path of independent investigation, scrutinising the creed of every sectarian and philosopher, theologian and Sufi, devout worshipper and irreligious nihilist. He recognised 459 Thought that by birth all people share the same original religious constitution (fitrah), but are then socialised to embrace Christianity, Judaism or Islam. To Al-Ghazalt (anticipating Descartes' radical starting from scratch) the search for the real meanings of things, beyond scepticism, started with epistemology: with the search for indubitable certainty. Trying to reach beyond the not so certain certainties of the senses and reason, he delved critically and experimentally into the claims of various categories of those who seek truth. In his search, he never doubted the three fundamentals: faith in God Most High; the mediation of revelation by the Prophet; and the Last Day. Throughout his journey, he was led by a combination of faith based on revelation in the Qur'an; rational argument; and personal experience. The first category of those who seek truth critiqued by Al-Ghazali were those who engage in polemical, apologetic ‘theology’ (ka/làm). In his view, the limitation of ka/am was that it simply conserved the creed of the orthodox for the orthodox. Its attempts at penetrating into the study of the true nature of things could not proceed beyond the religious divisions, because of their very point of departure. They were stuck in a limited methodological ambit, namely the defence and explication of one religion, their own. Finding theology unsuitable for his requirements but not rejecting it altogether, Al-Ghazall then studied philosophy (falsafa), the second category of truth seeking, with enormous energy for three years, again pushing through relentlessly to the very limits of that discipline although not formally trained in it. He first wrote a summary called Magaàsid al-falasifa (‘The intentions of the philosophers’). Then, around 1094, he wrote a penetrating critique of philosophy in a book entitled Tah&fut al-falasifa (The incoherence of the philosophers’). Of the three philosophical schools, ‘materialism’ and ‘naturalism’ are rejected as ‘godless’. However, ‘theism’ (represented in Socrates, Plato and Aristotle), though not ‘godless’, is nevertheless partly ‘unbelief ' - as was the thinking of the Muslim philosopher, Avicenna (980-1037), who synthesised Aristotle with Islam. Al-Ghazal! applies a sliding scale: mathematics and logic are relatively in order, but the metaphysics of these philosophers contain 20 grave errors. Seventeen views are stigmatised as heretical innovations. Three amount to 'unbelief (i.e. they are totally incompatible with Islam): these are, firstly, maintaining the eternity of the world; secondly, the notion that God does not know particular things; and thirdly, the denial of the resurrection of bodies and their assembly at the day of judgement (Al-Ghazali 1997). Having done with philosophy, Al-Ghazalr embarked on a study of the third category of truth seeking, namely the doctrine of the 7a"[rmites: those who fall back on the charismatic teaching of the infallible /mam (the head of a Muslim community). Substituting mere authority for argument, he found they had no saving cure from the darkness of conflicting opinions. Then, finally, he studied the theory of the Sufi mystic way of the purification of the mind and the constant remembrance of God, practised it and gained 460 Chapter 21 experience of its fruits. At the end of his journey he wrote, ending in a prayer (McCarthy [1980] 2006:): | know well that, even though | have returned to teaching, | have not really returned. For returning is coming back to what was. Formerly | used to impart the knowledge by which glory is attained for glory’s sake, and to invite men to it by my words and deeds, and that was my aim and my intention. But now, | invite men to the knowledge by which glory is renounced and its lowly rank recognised. This is now my intention, my aim, my desire. God knows that to be true of me. | now earnestly desire to reform myself and others, but | do not know whether | shall attain my desire or be cut off by death short of my goal. Yet | believe with a faith as certain as direct vision that there is no might for me and no power save in God, the Sublime, the Mighty; and that it was not | who moved, but He moved me; and that | did not act, but He acted through me. | ask Him, then, to reform me first, then to use me as an instrument of reform; to guide me, then to use me as an instrument of guidance; to show me the true as true, and to grant me the grace to follow it; and to show me the false as false, and to grant me the grace to eschew it. (p. 72) Al-Ghazal! refuted Aristotelian philosophy in his The incoherence of the philosophers. Yet he retained confidence in logic and aspects of natural philosophy. Truth not open to doubt at all can be found, he claimed: not through argument and rational proof, but through divine grace and mystical experience. His main work, /hya Ulum-id-Din (‘Revival of the religious sciences’) is the explication of that approach. The very first chapter of this systematic work deals with the excellence of knowledge. The signs of a truly learned man (a learned man of the hereafter’; in the language of this essay: a truly MM person) are listed in this work (Karim 1982:73-109): (D A truly MM person does not seek the world. (2) His words and actions correspond. (3) His mind remains directed at what is useful with a view to ‘the next world’ (n the parlance of our design: the dimension of existence oriented towards Absoluteness). (4) He lives moderately, with simple needs, satisfied with little. (5) He avoids ruling powers. (6) He is reticent in giving fatwa (legal decision). (7) His main concern is ‘secret knowledge’, knowledge of the heart, mystical understanding. (8) He is of firm faith (a faithful Muslim). (9) He is humble, silent. (10) He avoids evil actions. (1D He relies not on what is learnt from others, but on his own insight and knowledge and enlightened heart. (12) He avoids novelties and innovations. Such excellent knowledge is understood to flow from noble intellect Cibid.:113ff.). The central question directed at Al-Ghazall in this chapter is: What is the source of intellect? His answer is straightforward traditional Islamic belief Cibid.:119ff.): God, the Creator, the First, the Last, who exists by himself without any partner, 461 Thought is single without any associate. He is, in addition to other features, the All-knowing, whose knowledge is without limit and eternal without any increase or decrease and without any defect. God is eternal and everlasting, without beginning or end; without form, not occupying space; not composed of a body; existing by himself; omnipresent; Almighty; All-knowing, with eternal knowledge; wise by his knowledge (ibid.:128-155). One of the central interests of this investigation is the relationship between mysticism and institutionalised religion. This was also the concern of Al-Ghazall. His elevated status in Islam is attributable to his success in reconciling traditional Muslim orthodoxy with mystical Sufism, to a high degree of satisfaction on both sides. Before him, they had been harbouring a great deal of mutual mistrust, in which the execution of the outspoken Sufi, al-Hallaj, in 922 was a particularly tragic chapter. Al-Ghazall’s achievement did not come easily, and he paid a personal price for it with great integrity. He provides a fine example of religious leadership. Al-Ghazal! is appreciated. His strenuous engagement with philosophy cannot be denied. He contributed a great deal to the debate that would occupy the attention of Islamic scholars in later centuries. Faced with apparent conflict between reason and revelation, he gave preponderance to revelation over reason (Bello 1989:145). His notion of God is traditional personalised theism. He did not quite fulfil his programme of radical doubt, and did not extend his epistemological critique to the basics of Islam itself. The promising mystical shoot in Al-Ghazalt’s thinking did not fully develop in its own right, bearing its own fruit. It remained subservient to traditional faith. Probably things could not have been different in medieval near Eastern European theism, also including Judaism and Christianity. Obedient faith of the heart, overriding cold orthodoxy yet not questioning basic faith assumptions, would remain a feature in those religions until the present day. However, religion-specific faith, religion- specific theology, religion-specific spirituality do not exhaust the possibilities. There is also the wider expanse of Infinitude and Eternity. Moses ben Maimon Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides [1138-1204]) is an impressive example of medieval philosophical theology with a largely hidden suggestion of mysticism (cf. Guttmann 1988 [1964]:152ff.; Kellner 2006; Rudavsky 2010; Stern 2005:105ff.). Destined to be graced with the epithet ‘the great eagle’, Maimonides was one of the most respected, if not necessarily broadly followed, Jewish thinkers of all time. Born in Cordova, Spain, as the son of a family of rabbinic scholars, he died in Cairo as the personal physician of the sultan Saladin, the Muslim hero of the Crusades. In between, under political duress suffered by the Jews under fundamentalist Muslim rule, Maimonides for a time perhaps publicly lived the 462 Chapter 21 life of a convert to Islam in Cordova; then wandered around in Andalusia while engaged in serious study; left Spain, travelled to Israel where he made a heart- rending pilgrimage to Jerusalem; eventually settled in Cairo in 1166, where he received the highest judicial authority in the Jewish community and became a prominent physician. He was buried in Tiberias, Israel. Maimonides knew little of Christianity, but knew Islam well, having lived among Muslims all his life. He probably knew the work of Al-Ghazalt (Dienstag 1975:XXXIXff.), although no connection becomes explicit in his works. His diet of Greek philosophers included Plato and Plotinus, but his main philosophical witness was Aristotle. He received this vast philosophical heritage through a filtering process of centuries at the hands of Hellenistic and Muslim commentators. A question would be to what extent Maimonides managed to mould all of that into a completely unified and consistent view. It may not have been the case (Guttmann 1988 [1964]:431), yet reducing Maimonides’ thought to a syncretism of uncritically accepted Aristotle, Plotinus and Jewish faith would be mistaken; he presented a magnificent drive at real synthesis (Diesendruck 1975:184ff.). In his overall aim to synthesise philosophy and Judaism, reason and faith, he attempted to replace mythologised supernaturalism with a naturalistic, rationalist conception of the world. In the process, he pushed God out to the fringes of thought as far as possible, without sacrificing the basis of Jewish belief. Throughout, and as philosopher, he remained a faithful Jewish believer, in constant dialogue with Jewish tradition and Jewish faith concerns. Faced with an apparent conflict between reason and revelation, Maimonides applied a hermeneutic of demythologising. He was unwilling to sever ties with the wide community, yet sought to educate (in that sense reform) the historical Judaism of his time, realising full well that his message was, and would remain, for the few. He found himself in the difficult position of being a religious leader, with the responsibility of having to steer a cumbersome ship through troubled waters in the right direction, ensuring that it does not capsize to either side. His efforts must be appreciated in that context. As a means to reduce tensions - that is, the psychological perplexities among his readers, social conflict and the theoretical complexities of the relationship between revealed religion and philosophy - Maimonides resorts to the ploy of simultaneously working on the two levels of exoteric and esoteric meaning and writing. The first, for the masses, is clear but superficial, the second difficult and hidden. His main concern as a loyal Jew seems to have been his desire to safeguard the unity of the Jewish community by simultaneously serving both the intellectual class and the broad base of faithful believers. He was an elitist intellectualist, serving broader education by diplomatic, subtle, oblique undermining of the false and inferior rather than by open, direct attack on it. Proto-Kabbalah (emerging over centuries) was also a factor in Maimonides’ historical context, but unlike Al-Ghazall in a comparable situation, he turned 463 Thought away from it. What put him off from the Kabbalah of his time might have been what he probably perceived to be superstition. Kabbalah remythologised around a pearl of mysticism; Maimonides demythologised and rationalised. Yet even Maimonides, the prince of reason, accepted the limits of reason. | here restrict myself to his major theoretical work, Moreh Nevukhim (The guide to the perplexed’) (1946), written in Arabic but in Hebrew script from around 1185 to 1190 (in his early fifties), and translated into Hebrew 10 years later. It addressed those intellectual believers who were committed to the reconciliation of Jewish Scripture with Greek philosophy - and thus, not unexpectedly, found themselves in a state of chronic perplexity. After initial consternation in some Jewish circles, it became a respected classic, though not necessarily one followed broadly. In his epistemology, Maimonides decries sense percepts, convention and tradition as reliable sources of knowledge, but accepts a priori rational axioms as a valid base. He values knowledge, that is, scientific knowledge in the Aristotelian sense (including metaphysics), above all things. The human cognitive faculty of mythologising imagination, though potentially useful to explain things to the masses, is of a decidedly lower order than reason. As for the possibilities and limitations of human reason, Maimonides makes a distinction between those topics that can be apprehended fully, those that can be apprehended partly and those that cannot be apprehended at all. In the third type of topic a distinction is made between those objects that humans would not necessarily, essentially, be interested in knowing; and those that humans long to know, in spite of their being unknowable. Maimonides senses that the literal, anthropomorphic, exoteric linguistic level of Scripture needs to be transcended esoterically, understood metaphorically, allegorically, and so brought in line with philosophy. Not that Scripture differs essentially from philosophy; quite the contrary, but the linguistic levels differ. An implication is that the inapplicable attribution of sensory qualities such as corporeality to God needs to be replaced by a deeper, more sophisticated view, recognising God's transcendence of such a level of expression and comprehension. Sensory mediated, superficial apprehension needs to be transcended in deeper, intellectual apprehension. So as to minimise conflict and perplexity the crossing over from surface to depth needs to be done carefully, utilising the exoteric wisely in order to attain the esoteric. 'Carefully' in Maimonides' case means more than friendly, diplomatically: it also means indirectly rather than directly, equivocally rather than unequivocally. Not quite surprising, given his historical context, Maimonides' concept of God is a synthesis of revelation, the Aristotelian 'First Mover' and the Neoplatonic 'One'. He eschews anthropomorphic language about God, in fact contends that all statements about God are inapplicable. Yet, while metaphysical truths about God are ruled out, he (following Aristotle) nevertheless allows for the possibility 464 Chapter 21 of proving that God exists. Following Neoplatonism, his view of God rests on the axiom of negative predication: only negative predications bring us anywhere near understanding God. Positive affirmations lead nowhere, and run the risk of substantialising God’s characteristics, thereby falling into the sin of polytheism. That God is, can be known, but not what or how God is. This is Neoplatonic apophatic Jewish theology, intended to safeguard the uncompromising starkness of the revelation to Moses of one, eternal God. This basic principle of the Jewish faith, shorn of all anthropomorphic add-ons, is highlighted in majestic simplicity. To ascribe attributes to God is to Maimonides quasi-knowledge; to deny such attributes is esoteric (i.e. philosophical) true knowledge (Maimonides 1946 [1881]): Know that the negative attributes of God are the true attributes: they do not include any incorrect notions or any deficiency whatever in reference to God, while positive attributes imply polytheism, and are inadequate CI.LVIID. (p. 81) Maimonides takes extreme care not to compromise God's absolute transcendence. God ‘is’ (since he ‘must be’ rationally) essentially and necessarily; singular (internally non-composite, non-complex); incorporeal (immaterial); changeless (not subject to generation and corruption) and without emotions. It is no easy matter to determine Maimonides’ position precisely, partly because of his distinction of exoteric-esoteric. For example, it is not clear why he should have bothered to provide proofs for the existence of God. Might it be part of a stratagem on Maimonides' side, to make provision for the weakness of some, erecting a halfway house to complete silence save the rationally necessary minimum? In any event, rational metaphysics is according to him ultimately transcended; every attempt to know God rationally is destined to fail. Maimonides' reason for that failure is God's utter transcendence. Maimonides provides four proofs for the existence of God. Of these the fourth argument (given in II.I), and unmistakeably derived from Aristotle, is relevant to our present argument. Maimonides takes his departure in the observation that phenomenal things pass from potentiality to actuality. For that to happen, such a thing must have a cause, which in turn must have been in a state of potentiality itself, and so on. Therefore, there must be a first cause in which there is no potentiality and that exists in an eternal state of actuality. Not being in a state of potentiality means, ipso facto, being free of materiality (here Plotinus announces himself). So one, immaterial God necessarily exists. From the point of view of this essay, at least five aspects of his argument appear to be problematic: (1) Change is seen as somehow an unbecoming notion. (2) Petering out into infinity is assumed to be not only an embarrassment, but also an impossibility. (3) Somehow the need is felt somewhere along the line to suspend, even deny, continuity between cause and effect (God and world) in the process of becoming (Maimonides rejects emanationism, here deviating from Plotinus). 465 Thought (4) Materiality as such is degraded (for Maimonides that implies being a state of mere potentiality). (5) The norm for what is acceptable is rational (Aristotelian-Neoplatonic), substantialist philosophy. His line of argument is quite different from that followed on our peregrination: (1) Change, non-terminable in some unchanging, fixed entity, is of the essence of things. (2) Appearance from and disappearance into unlimited, undefined, unrestricted yet potentially infinitely pliable Infinitude and beyond that fromandinto Eternity and untraceable Absoluteness is both metaphysically (rationally) and mystically (existentially, soteriologically) preferable above the sheer fiat of terminating that process in some unchanging entity or substance. (3) There is ontological continuity from one stage to the next in that process of becoming and decaying - in other words, no sharp ontological break exists between the world and what lies beyond it. (4) Matter is central to the entire process. (5) Reason (particularly of the substantialist variety) is not the ultimate yardstick - mystical insight can go where strict reason cannot, even if reason provides most important restraining checks and balances. Maimonides provides no coercive reason for the abrupt termination of the process. The line of reasoning of this investigation, continuing Buddhist thought in this respect, does not attempt such ‘proof’; it simply accepts change as the nature of things, there being neither reason nor need nor possibility for trying to stop it in its tracks. Maimonides’ speculative staircase does not lead to where he intends it to lead. A question presenting itself to the reader is whether this and the other philosophical ‘proofs’ proffered by Maimonides may have somehow been presented tongue in cheek, may have hovered somewhere on a continuum from esoteric to exoteric? Is there a deeper secret in his wisdom, apart from philosophical reason? At the surface of things Maimonides appears to have been less attracted to mysticism than, for example, Al-Ghazalr. Almost in passing, Guttmann (1988 [1964]:156f.) makes the provocative suggestion that according to Maimonides, metaphysical knowledge, in addition to a high degree of intellectual achievement, also requires the purification of the entire human personality. Truth culminates in momentary illumination or intuition. This feature of his epistemology, distinct from his acceptance of the Aristotelian notion of metaphysics as a demonstrable science, derives from Neoplatonic mysticism. How does Maimonides’ line of argument impinge on the nature of Divinity, in the terms of this chapter, on Infinite Thought? In addition, how is human understanding and intelligence to be understood and explained? Maimonides 466 Chapter 21 did not leave space for suprasensible, suprarational intuitive human cognition, organically rooted in and ontologically continuous with a trans-Cosmic dimension, which is where our journey is going. He places a massive emphasis on the ontological otherness of God, attempting to restore the austere, simple faith revealed to Abraham and Moses, by state of the art rational (i.e. Aristotelian) philosophy. Nevertheless, he stops short of taking transcendence to a stage where any proof of the existence of a substantial Transcendent becomes inapplicable and irrelevant - which seems to be the ultimate tendentional drift of his line of thinking. Maimonides’ writing is hedged in between traditional monotheism (in the Jewish form) and Greek-Hellenic philosophy of a strong rationalistic type. Reconfiguring the tradition of revelation in the Scriptures by means of a hermeneutic focusing on metaphor and allegory as he did was a good, understandable move, but mysticism remained underdeveloped and secondary to rationalism. Thomas Aquinas On his way to attend the Council of Lyon on March 7 in 1274, the Dominican friar Thomas of Aquino (1225-1274 CE), who would be the theoretical mainstay of the Catholic Church for centuries, suddenly died. He was 49 years old. The most fascinating biographical event of Aquinas’ life is that during Mass on the feast of St Nicholas, on 6 December 1273, 3 months before his death, he had a mystical experience of such magnitude and intensity that he stopped writing altogether. He is indeed reputed to have had a great love for solitude and meditation throughout his life, and many mystical experiences are attributed to him by legend. The Summa Theologiae remained unfinished. Supposing that the time had been granted to him and that he were to write again, what turn might his thinking and writing have taken? Having mystical experiences per se does not exclude speaking and even writing, as history shows. What did he see? What did his silence mean? The word ‘revealed’ in a statement reportedly made his great experience seems to confirm the traditional theistic nature of his experience. Thomas is here understood as someone whose thought was not merely the exercise of reason, proving and disproving strictly in accordance with the rules of logic or Scripture, prescribed and prescriptive belief and tradition; but someone whose thought also had a more radical mystical tone, suggesting experience of a dimension transcending the domain of reason, authority and tradition. Staying with his contribution to the problem of the existence and nature of God (Aquinas 1963), two aspects will be analysed: Firstly, his use of reason by looking at his five ways of explaining how the existence of God can be accounted for rationally; and secondly, his views on the infinity of God to see what light it might shed on the usefulness of postulating Infinite Thought. 467 Thought Thomas’ arguments do not set out to prove the existence of God as specifically understood in Christianity. He had a more preliminary line of argument in mind, namely the rational possibility on empirical grounds of monotheism in a more generic sense, without recourse to special revelation in Christian Scripture. That is where Aristotle comes in. As little as Maimonides had done before him, did Thomas uncritically apply Aristotle; he too sought a higher synthesis, transcending Aristotle, and in some respects, leaving him behind (Diesendruck 1975). His strategy implied the possibility of a general consensus, at least up to a point, involving not only Christianity, but also Judaism and Islam. In his historical context, at times marked by severe conflict between these three religions at the political and theological levels, the acceptance of such a degree of theoretical commonality and overlap was a noteworthy feature. Thomas was deeply indebted to Maimonides (he made a careful study of the Guide to the perplexed), and both he and Maimonides were indebted to Arabic thinking, including that of Al-Ghazalr. Equally noteworthy, given their passion to attain larger syntheses, is the fact that none of these three figures made an attempt to envision an inclusive MM transcending both the various religions and theologies of the time. The epoch did not allow that. Nor did the structure of Thomas’ thinking (to stay with him) really allow that. His philosophical argument that God exists and his theological reasoning concerning the how and who of that existence are mutually implicit and hardly separable. The theological reasoning could not brook any compromise. Thomas developed his set of five arguments in his Summa Theologiae, a work of great comprehensiveness and subtlety (Aquinas 1963). These arguments occur in an article (article 3) under the title ‘Can God's existence be made evident? (utrum Deum esse sit demonstrabile), which is part of a ‘Question’ (Question 2): ‘Whether there is a God’ (an Deus sit) (ibid.:5-18). Having only a propaedeutical character, the proofs are not dealt with extensively by him, yet that does not diminish their strategic significance in his overall system, as the history of the reception of Aquinas proves. (D His first argument, derived from Aristotle and also found in Maimonides (see above), argues that some things are in motion (motus, defined as ‘the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality’ [de potentia in actum], i.e. change) and therefore require a mover (‘something in a state of actuality’ [a/iquid ens in actu]). An infinite regress of movers is ‘impossible’. Therefore, thereis necessarilyanunmoved ‘First Mover’(Primum Movens): God. From the point of view of this essay, this first argument is problematic. The argument that change, movement from potentiality to actuality, proves the existence of something not taken up in that movement, begs the question. The ‘therefore’ (ergo) is not compelling. The obvious conclusion to be drawn from the universal fact of change would be: change is a universal fact. That happens to be what Buddhism postulated in its principle 468 (2) Chapter 21 of ‘impermanence’ (anicca), not necessitating any fixed, unchanging ‘substance’ (atta) at all, but rather implying the corollary principle of ‘non- substance’ (anattà). This journey follows through in the Buddhist line of thinking. Thomas followed Greek-Hellenic substantialist thinking. Could it have been possible for him to blend faith in Jesus with Buddhist philosophy instead of with Greek philosophy? Indeed, | argue (but he had no access to it). Thomas shies away from the idea of infinity, understood as a never- ending process of non-fixation (see below). Why should that be a problem? If things are infinitely interdependent, just simply admit that such non- terminable conditioning is a transcendental principle of reality as far as observation may penetrate and reason may reach. That was the argument of our Chapters 11-13. Thomas leaps from the empirical fact of change to a postulated fact of absolute, substantial non-change. Rather wade from the empirical fact of change into an ocean of change as far as reason can swim and imagination and intuition can float, and then just stop: that is where this line of thinking is heading. As said with reference to Maimonides: the acceptance of appearance from and disappearance into unlimited, undefined, unrestricted Infinitude and beyond that from and into Eternity and totally untraceable Absoluteness makes a stronger case than the sheer fiat of terminating that process with recourse to some unchanging entity or substance. Thomas' presentation of this argument as universal understanding (everyone' [omnes]), may have applied in the limited horizon of the time and situation, but not in a wider ambit of thought. The second argument, derived from Aristotle's notion of efficient cause and structurally similar to the first, argues that some things are caused by efficient causes. Nothing can be its own efficient cause (to do that, it would have to be prior to itself, which is impossible). So everything must be (and therefore is) caused by something else. An infinite regress of efficient causation is impossible. Therefore, there must be (and therefore is) a First Efficient Cause (Causa Efficiens Prima): God. Again, this argument cannot be deemed compelling. Firstly, replace the oversimplifying notion of unilinear causation with the notion of multiple and interdependent causation (see Ch. 13); that is what is found in nature. Secondly, overcome the horror of infinite deferral of finality. Thirdly (not said but presupposed in Thomas' argument), there is no pressing reason to postulate one single cause outside of the realm of empirical multiple intercausality. Fourthly, abandon the notion of discrete things (with the implication of One ultimate Substantial Being) in favour of the notion of fluid, continuous process of multiple co-constituting, non- substantial factors. Then Thomas’ problem and answer lose their relevance. This line of argument was condensed in early Buddhism's term paccaya (condition). Thomas’ argument also raises but does not solve the problem of the relationship between the ultimate Cause and the rest of reality. As Christian theologian, Thomas would have felt obliged to postulate an 469 Thought (3) (4) 470 ontological break between that Cause and the world. Somehow, the need was felt to suspend, deny, continuity between cause and effect (God and world) in the process of becoming. In the perspective adopted in this endeavour, that problem also falls away. The third argument runs that things in the universe are contingent (i.e. can either exist or not exist), since they are found ‘to be generated and to corrupt’ (generari et corrumpi). It is impossible that everything in the universe is contingent, since that would imply that there would be a time when nothing existed. That implies that nothing would exist now, since there would be nothing to bring anything into existence. Therefore there must be (and therefore there is) a non-contingent, Necessary Being (some being having of itself its own necessity’: aliquid quod sit per se necessarium): God. This argument follows the same direction as the previous two and appears to be equally unconvincing. To begin with, Thomas' extreme discomfort with the empirical fact of generation and annihilation, and thus with contingency (‘to be and not to be’: esse et non esse), is palpable. The rest of his argument follows from that. There does not seem to be any compelling force in that approach. Buddhism's sense is quite different: contingency in the sense of non-self-sufficiency at any level whatsoever is indeed the very fabric of reality, but there is neither purpose in nor possibility of trying to overcome that fact by fleeing into the arms of a postulate of some not-arising, not-perishing substance outside of and not continuous with empirical reality. Accept that reality as a whole is shot through with the processes of arising and decaying. Stop the fabrication of constructions somehow to deny that. The acceptance of this fact was developed earlier, in Chapters 4-6. Thomas' approach also leaves the problem of the relationship between contingent beings and the Necessary Being unresolved. Observable contingency of empirical things drifts into contingency as MM category. Postulate no fixed, non-contingent terminus a quo. Things (and Thought) just appear from and disappear on an inaccessible Horizon. The notion of Infinite Thought is merely a flimsy pointer into the ocean of contingency. Aquinas' arguments assume that the universe in its totality can be understood rationally. This essay declines that. It merely attempts to see coherence in things as far as we can see them. The fourth argument teaches that varying perfections of things occur in the universe. That necessitates the existence of an ultimate Standard of Perfection ('something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection’): God. Thomas does not explain whether that Standard of Perfection refers to an original perfection from which the universe has fallen or/and a future perfection towards which all things are striving. In the context of the present argument, it makes no difference either way. The point is that the real being of a causing ‘Maximum’ of Perfection, ontologically transcending (5) Chapter 21 the realm of relative degrees, is taken to be rationally evident. This is not a compelling argument. Rather stay with the reality of relative degrees in an emerging, evolving universe, perhaps spiralling in a direction. No one has a superior outsider perspective, from which it may be said to move from or towards perfection. Reason does not provide such omniscience either. Of course, humans may design mythological, performative, inspiring utopias, and have done so over the ages. Let us be clear: that is not the language of fact and reason. The very real factual existence of a Being, pushing or pulling towards perfection, cannot be claimed to be rationally compelling. ‘Therefore there is something’ (ergo est aliquid) of this kind, is not compelling. The fifth argument claims that all things in the universe act towards ends. Such acting presupposes intelligence. Not all things in the universe are intelligent. Therefore, there necessarily exists an Intelligent Being 'by whom all natural things are directed towards their end': God. This argument is directly relevant to the topic of this chapter. The premise of the argument, namely that natural bodies observably (videmus: ‘we see’) ‘act for an end’ (operantur propter finem) is dubious. Such a statement would not be an observation, but an interpretation, an imputation, operating on a level of abstraction beyond direct observation. That is not a major issue. The remark that natural bodies act 'designedly' (ex intentione), that is intelligently, seems to be arguably acceptable. That is, some individual things do so intentionally and intelligently and some do not. In the context of the essay, one may ascribe a certain intelligence to Cosmos as a whole in that sense, perhaps also to 'natural bodies' (corpora naturalia) such as Earth. Aquinas certainly did not entertain such an idea. According to him, unintelligent things do intelligent things (act towards ends), concluding that 'therefore some intelligent being exists' (ergo est aliquid intelligens), directing all things to their end. The leap to One Intelligent Being is not compelling (cf. Dharmasiri 1974; Nyanaponika 1981). This book argues that the world is to be explained on its own terms; such explanation must reach as far as possible, but stop short of making definitive statements about another level of being, ontologically continuous-discontinuous (i.e. ‘analogous’) with the world, as Aquinas does. This exploration would rather assume that intelligence (‘Thought’) is a pervasive quality or function throughout Cosmos; that it is more manifest in some instantiations than in others - that it emerges mysteriously from vast and shapeless mists, to which the epithet 'Infinite' may be given. We postulate that Thought emerged further back, from a transcendental Principle of Witting, still extended from this world; and eventually from this side of an absolute mystery, perhaps half suggested by a self-annihilating term such as 'Absolute Horizon', where the world ends. That seems to be the furthest limit that a combination of empirical observation, reason, plumbing of the best of humankind's mystical traditions, intuition and imagination, can reach. 471 Thought The MM model emerging on this journey seeks an optimal combination of empirical science, reason and imaginative, intuitive ‘poetry’, without claiming ‘therefore it must be’ for its notions. ‘Therefore some intelligent being exists’, held by Aquinas, is not a compelling conclusion. Likewise, rather than of an omniscient Person, ontologically discontinuous (‘totally different’, to use Karl Barth’s phrase) with the world, | would speak of Infinite Thought and Eternal Witting extending backwards from, but continuous with, this world, as far as we can ‘see’. Unacceptable would also be a flat positivistic denial of any meaning transcending reductionist science. Having demonstrated the existence of God, Aquinas proceeds to analyse ‘how’ God exists, but first making very clear that ‘we cannot know what God is’ (quid sit), but only ‘what he is not’ (quid non sit) (Aquinas 1963:19). This represents the Neoplatonic, apophatic strain in his thinking. The various ‘qualities’ he then analyses (God's simplicity [simplicitas], perfection [perfectio], limitlessness [/nfinitas], unchangeableness [/mmutabilitas] and oneness [unitas]) are mostly descriptions of what God is not, rather than what God is. Of interest to us now is Question 7, where Aquinas deals with God's limitlessness (infinity: infinitas) (Aquinas 1963:95-109). Does it have any bearing on this our chapter? | read apophatic thought as en route to Absoluteness, but, perhaps paradoxically and untendentionally, confirming Hyper-Reality. This appears to be the upshot of Aquinas' argumentation here. By 'infinity', he admittedly moves away from the classical Greek preoccupation with limit, structure, form, and moves into the trail blazed by Plotinus (Caputo 1982:125ff.). Even so, by infinity Aquinas understands perfection, completeness, actuality, not formless potential in a process of actualisation. His is the infinity of perfection. To Thomas, God is ‘being/existence itself subsistent’ (suum esse subsistens), and therefore 'limitless and perfect' (infinitus et perfectus). The one implies the other. The great Christian scholastic offers no support for our notion of Infinitude in general or Infinite Thought in particular. At the outset | raised the speculative question whether Aquinas' explicit writing might have taken a different turn after his great experience if he were to have been granted the time? Would he have transgressed the limits of the double role of Church theologian and philosopher and taken a step into free roaming MM bound for Absolute Horizon? Probably not. Every epoch affords its own possibilities and lays down its own conditions and limitations. Yet Thomas may be read tendentionally, trying his best to process the rather heavy double tradition of mythological monotheism and Greek substantialising philosophy without quite succeeding in breaking through to an openness of thought and style that his thinking may subconsciously have wanted to find. Indeed, the seemingly dry scholasticism as a whole of which he was the prime representative had its mystical undercurrent. Aquinas' fellow-Dominican, Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327), was one of those who spoke openly about what remained mute possibilities in the Summa (for Eckhart, see Ch. 4). In his 472 Chapter 21 sermons given and written down in his peripheral German vernacular and not in centralising, controlling ecclesiastical Latin, Eckhart could more freely express ideas that may well have been latent but in any case silent, in Aquinas' formal arguments. Let me not forget the church-political constraints under which both men worked. Rhetoric, strategy and tactics played a role in all of that. As it turned out, Thomas was canonised (in 1323), Eckhart condemned 6 years later (in 1329). George Berkeley In the context of this chapter, modulations of idealism are relevant. In previous chapters we have listened to the voices of MM thinkers who may in one sense or another be called 'idealists' - Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, Yogacara, Eriugena, Leibniz, Schelling, Hegel and Whitehead - coming to terms with aspects of their thinking. Let us now engage with the Anglo-Irish Anglican bishop, George Berkeley (1685-1753) (cf. Berman 1994; Dunham et al. 2011:73-88; Hoffmann 1978:247-268; Tipton 1974). In his system, written down early in his life in his A treatise concerning the principles of human knowledge (1710) (Berkeley 1939:509-579), gives prominence to the notion of infinity, directly coupled with knowledge - so let me pay close attention. Below I shall restrict myself to his 7reatise, and not take into account his most comprehensive book on religion, A/ciphron (1732). Overly condensed: Berkeley assumes two ontological realities: minds (spirits) and ideas; matter is mind-made. Minds are the subjects, active, and they perceive ideas; ideas are the passive objects of perception by minds. There is nothing else. There are two types of minds: infinite mind (God) and finite (human) minds. The ideas held by finite minds are faint and derived from the ideas held by Infinite Mind. Finite minds hold two types of ideas: ideas of imagination and memory, and sensible ideas (ideas pertaining to the sensible world). Infinite Mind creates in finite minds the ideas concerning the sensible world. Humans do not perceive a world out there, but merely the ideas of God; this saved Berkeley from solipsism (the notion that the individual's inner world is all there is), with its at least latent threat of nihilism (there is no trans- individual truth, meaning). In his words, he (Berkeley 1939) believes that: [A]ll those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind, that their being is to be perceived or known; that consequently so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit (6). (p. 525) Berkeley chooses the last option. In itself, there is no world out there, no matter. Matter, the physical world, does not exist as such, neither in the sense of a multitude of individual things, 473 Thought nor in the sense of a general substance, underlying phenomenal things. That is the centrepiece of Berkeley’s edifice. To make the point strongly, compared to Giordano Bruno (Ch. 19), Berkeley is at the opposite end of the scale. He is no Gnostic with the dualism inherent in that system, nor is he a Neoplatonist. Berkeley pushes beyond the limits of Neoplatonism. He also parts company with Descartes as well as Spinoza. He is removed from any form of scepticism (as held, e.g. by David Hume [1711-1776]). Berkeley was sure of his case, and saw it as firmly ensconced in the Christian belief system and dogmatic structure. This makes him a rather unique figure in Western metaphysics. The ‘being’ of matter consists solely in its being perceived by minds (6) Cibid.). Our senses do not present us with things, but with perceptions of ideas. To prove this thesis, Berkeley indulges in a series of detailed and sometimes intricate arguments supposedly demonstrating that the notion of matter as something ontologically distinguishable from mind is contradictory, unintelligible or meaningless. Berkeley presents not merely a variety of phenomenalism (in general, the view that the physical world is constituted by mind in the act of cognition, which is not the same as being caused by mind). He arguably held what has been termed immaterialism or subjective idealism. In a strong sense: the physical world is utterly and completely dependent on mind, to the extent of being produced by mind, leaving no space whatsoever for matter and the physical world to exist apart from, even relatively so, from mind - indeed the product of mind is as a dream. A problem with his construction, often noted, is that he leaves us with no criterion as to how reality may be distinguishable from imagination, truth from mere appearance and error, one person's experience from another person's. He provides no means of a reality check. By implication, science does not investigate a 'real' reality, but only connects ideas. As said, probably the notion of God saves Berkeley's system from solipsism, which is not to deny that God was in all likelihood the starting point of his entire philosophic venture. Another telling objection raised is that he cannot account for causality: there are no things that can cause other things; there are only sequences of ideas. On the whole, his construction appears to be one-sided, unbalanced, incomplete. In the model developing in this exploration, matter is, contrary to his view, elevated to something of exquisite importance. It is interesting but perhaps not entirely surprising that the Church, for his denial of the existence of matter did not censure Berkeley. Despising matter was always held in somewhat uneasy balance with the appreciation of matter as God's creation. What concerns us most here, is how God, infinite Spirit, features in Berkeley's model, and whether he has a mystical side. Berkeley provides at least one proof for the existence of God, neither unrelated nor completely dissimilar to the well-established cosmological argument. In short, it runs as follows: No idea can cause another idea; nor can 474 Chapter 21 matter cause anything; nor can finite human minds be causal factors. That leaves only God as infinite intelligent Mind to account for reality, that is, the reality of ideas. This is where his mystical side manifests itself: since the issue of matter has been solved by denying matter, only God remains, filling the entire horizon. In God ‘we live, and move, and have our being’, as he puts it (ibid.:575f. para. 149). With this in effect panentheistic vision, Berkeley wants to inspire his readers ‘with a pious sense of the Presence of God’ (ibid.:570 para. 156). Driven by a desire to overcome the Great Machine theory, he was, in the phrase of Tipton, 'impelled by a desire to bring men to a sense of the immanence of God' (Tipton 1974:297), with an implication that the world is eternally immanent in God. Assuming this to be a valid interpretation, what he produced may be called a Christian monism, in essence not that far removed from Advaita Vedanta. A full comparison would be a fascinating undertaking. In his A/ciphron it becomes abundantly clear that Berkeley did not challenge any of the classical dogmas of the Church. Nor was he ever seriously suspected of doing so. He was a fiercely committed Christian. Apart from his views on matter, he held no exceptional views. His proof for the substantial existence of God does not, as far as | can see, prove such existence. It seems to be not so much the end result of line of rational argument, but the a priori premise of faith from which his argument unfolds. In his own manner, he exemplifies the classic programme of fides quaerens intellectum. Space and the limited perspective from which Berkeley is observed here do not allow entering into a fuller investigation of his model with all its intricate implications and arguments. The two main, in fact insuperable difficulties are (1) that he denies matter any relatively independent existence, and (2) that he works in terms of a substance model of mind (Berman 1994:69f.), God being the Supreme, Infinite Mind. It is a kind of Neoplatonism, yet going further at both extremes than Plotinus had considered: at the bottom end of the scale, matter is denied; at the top end Mind is substantialised. Throughout this journey so far, there has been a sense of unease about both dangers as latent in Neoplatonism and raising their heads in theistic thinking from time to time. That has been pointed out regularly. In Berkeley, it went excessively far. What he delivered was not MM in the sense intended on these pages, but traditional Christian piety, taking the latent distrust in matter to the extreme limit. He offers no support for our notion of Infinite Thought. Rather than the two opposite theories ('only matter’ and ‘no matter’), both one-sided, it would be more rewarding to pursue the mutual implication of matter and mind. Does our contemplation add up to a variety of idealism in any of the senses encountered so far? No. Essentially it is an attempt to resay, in a 'secular' context, the classic dictum of the Heart Sutra: 'form is emptiness, emptiness is form’ (rüpam Sünyatà Sünyataiva rüpam). However centrally important the notion of Infinite Thought is in this model, it is not the only factor taken into 475 Thought account, nor the dominant factor. Before it is Absolute Horizon; alongside it is Infinite Matter, Life and Love. The ‘is’ connecting form and emptiness (the verb as such is lacking in the Sanskrit) is not an equivalent of esse (‘being’) in the classic Greek-Hellenic-theistic sense of the word. In the latter sense, ‘is’ implies permanence and substance behind, under, in changing ‘form’; ‘form’ is not ‘emptiness’, but presupposes eternal Being; and there ‘is’ eternal Being, and that Being may be Mind, Spirit (in which case the outcome would be an idealist system). In this essay on the other hand, ‘is’ is understood to imply ‘become’, with intensive and extensive connotations of change, impermanence, non- substance; the real ‘is-ness’ of ‘form’ (matter, the phenomenal world) is not denied, but affirmed, and it is understood as issuing from Emptiness, Absolute Horizon. Immanuel Kant In his critique of human reason, Kant (1724-1804) - partly responding to Berkeley - made knowledge dependent on the constitutive input of the human mind - that is, of a priori forms of perception (space and time) structuring sensory inputs, and a set of categories of thought organising the phenomena of experience into concepts, and combining these in judgements. Conjoined, the manifold of sensory data together with the forms of perception plus the categories of reasoning, make valid empirical knowledge possible; outside them, no such certain knowledge is possible. The human mind has no access to things in themselves as they may or may not exist outside of human perception and experience. All things are, essentially, things-as-known, things-as-constituted by the human subject, not things-apart-from-human knowing. This amounts to a transcendental idealism, which, in effect was comparable to the outcome of the critique of Nagarjuna. The effect of Kant’s work was the breakdown of metaphysical edifices and religious dogmas claiming to make true statements about what lies outside of spatio-temporal human experience and the reach of the categories of human knowing. To him, the traditional proofs for the existence of God are inapplicable (Kant 1952:561-604). However, God is a useful idea (ibid.:574). The ideas of everlasting soul and eternal God are no more than regulative ideas on the side of human thinking; they do not necessarily correspond to anything out there. Attempting to think coherently about such notions and proving them with reference to phenomenal reality, lands us in irresolvable antinomies. At first sight, this devastating line of argument of Kant may seem to lead to atheism and nihilism, as some of his contemporaries were quick to point out. After all, the eternity of God and soul may or may not be true. He disposed of 'God' as a pre-critical human construction, but once that stream had been entered there was no turning back. Yet, Kant did not intend the annihilation of 476 Chapter 21 religious beliefs and their eternal referents. On the contrary, he saw his critique as creating space for faith. He did not deny the ‘real’ existence of a Thing-in- Itself (Ding an sich) either, even if it cannot be ‘known’. Human eternal life and eternal God are postulates, necessary for a moral life - even if they cannot be ‘known’ theoretically for sure, and even if it cannot be ascertained whether they ‘really’ are. Practical faith goes where theoretical reason cannot go. God, world and soul as necessary regulatory ideas, even as real entities, were not threatened. Of that, Kant wanted to make sure. That strategy would be used in liberal yet pious circles in Christianity many times in the centuries after Kant. It boiled down to a version of apophaticism, this time Protestant apophaticism. Kant was steeped in modern science, including physics and biology, as it manifested in his time. It is of great significance that he felt obliged to go the way he did, in order to reconcile that science with the need to create space for ultimate meaning, and with the faith and religion of Christianity. Given the parameters of our meditation, his concern with science is nothing but laudable. In the perspective of this extended meditation, Kant did not go as far as he might have gone. He certainly did not go as far as Nagarjuna had gone. Kant’s retention of the 'Thing-in-Itself ' was a remainder of substantialism. And unlike Nagarjuna he left space for ‘faith’ as a saving experience, whereas Nagarjuna, for all his commitment to the Buddha, did not leap from the sinking boat of the quasi-certainty of factual knowledge into the quasi-secure boat of the certainty of faith. Nagarjuna found salvation in the absolute abandonment of substantialising thought in any shape or form whatsoever; Kant found salvation in postulating substance in the shape of Thing-in-Itself and the form of God. This is the ultimate difference, awesome in its basic simplicity and in the range and depth of its implications, between the two epistemological titans of Buddhism and Christianity. This experiment sides with Nagarjuna, but not because he is a Buddhist. This is not about comparing religions and preferring one above another or belonging or not, to any of them. It is about the depth of MM thought wherever it may be found. As it happens, the type of thinking represented by Nagarjuna provided sustenance for the religion of Buddhism for centuries to come. That same type of thinking could have - still could - provide sustenance for faith in Jesus, even it would require a rather drastic overhaul of Christian theology, beyond the kind of thinking represented in the figures of an Aquinas and a Berkeley. Nevertheless, it could be done, but that is not my concern here. More to the point: The thinking of Nagarjuna does not necessarily spell the end of all constructive (‘metapysical’) thinking. What it does do, is annihilate any pretence at finality and absolute certainty. Before Nagarjuna came the Buddha; before Kant, Plotinus. After Nagarjuna with his Madhyamika came speculative Asanga and Vasubandu with their Yogacara and equally speculative Fa-tsang with his Hua-yen. In comparable fashion, after Kant came Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and others. In the West, with thinkers 477 Thought such as Heidegger and Derrida, a new approximation of the more radical epistemology of Nagarjuna arose, with possibilities for intercultural dialogue. The notion of Infinite Thought, put forward in this chapter, moves into the space opened up most widely by a Buddha and a Nagarjuna, while appreciating the Western apophatic tradition. Could it be that the West, in which Kant was such a towering figure, finds itself at an early stage of a third development in its orientation towards radical meaning? By the ‘West’ is here understood the cultural sphere from Europe to the Middle East over the last 2500 years, with North America becoming a major force in it over the last two centuries and other parts of the world gradually drawn into its ambit. Similar developments took place in Greece-Rome and in India in the centuries BCE. In Greece a traditionalist and mythological era was superseded by a rationalist enlightenment, which in turn was followed by a period in which mystery religions with a strong emphasis on experience developed. A similar development took place in India: at the time of the Vedas and Brahmanas, traditionalism and mythological thought were dominant; with the Early Upanishads came rationalism; and with the Middle and Late Upanishads (and Buddhism and Jainism), individual, personal experience, with mysticism as one of its implications, came to the fore. In the West, a similar development is discernible. All three elements mentioned were present from the start of this era and played a certain role throughout. At the beginning, monotheistic religion with a strong overlay of traditionalism and mythology was the dominant force. Gradually reason, combined with empirical science, took over as leading force to take central position over the last few centuries. Might the present time be marked by the exploration of dimensions beyond both traditionalist mythocracy and rationalism-science? That may well be the case, and our MM map would lend support to it, integrating what is sound from all three (traditional religion, science and reason, and intuitive experience). Sri Aurobindo Idealism is not the prerogative of the West. Yogacara has been noted before. Staying with the chronological sequence followed in this §, | shall now briefly turn to another Indian MM thinker to whom the term ‘idealism’ is applicable: Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950), continuing a trend in Indian thinking with roots more ancient (Dasgupta 1962 [1933]) than was the case in its European counterpart. Aurobindo is exemplary of the kind of MM that has become possible in our day: Born in India and completely immersed in the Indian MM tradition (particularly Yoga and Vedanta), he was also thoroughly English educated (at the University of Cambridge), with a solid grounding in classical and modern 478 Chapter 21 European languages. To add to this exceptional mix, Aurobindo was an Indian nationalist, political activist and political prisoner. During his imprisonment, he had life-changing spiritual experiences, as a result of which he withdrew from political life and taught at his ashram in Pondicherry (then part of French India) after his release from prison, from 1910 until his death, further disseminating his thinking from there in his writing, mainly in his monthly journal Arya. His writing included commentarial interpretations of some Upanishads and the Gita, setting out his own MM vision. Subsequently his work has become absorbed in thoroughly inter-, transcultural syntheses with Western psychoanalytic, humanistic, existential and transpersonal psychologies. Aurobindo’s own background encompassed a wide reading in Western and Indian thought and other influences as well. To mention one aspect, through his collaborator, ‘The Mother’ (Mirra Alfassa), he absorbed aspects of the occult Kabbalah of Max Théon; Aurobindo’s notion of the ‘Psychic Being’ (see below) is a case in point. Such are the possibilities and realities of today. It must be added that Aurobindo was neither mere recipient nor syncretist. He reworked all that he absorbed in a highly original manner, resulting in a remarkable system (perhaps best known as ‘integral psychology’), in turn relevant to a possibly emerging pluralistic MM discourse of today and tomorrow. For present purposes, the most direct access to his thinking would be to view it as a variant of MM idealism. The ontology of Aurobindo amounts to envisioning the world as developing from The One, which is the ultimate source of all. This ultimate Reality is the equivalent of the Upanishadic concept of Brahman. The One unfolds via a complex hierarchical system of principles, faculties, manifestations, active steps in which each lower rung participates in the higher. The supreme One, the reality behind the appearances of the universe (the equivalent of the Brahman of the Upanishads) has, according to Aurobindo, following the great tradition, three aspects, namely sat (‘being’), cit (‘consciousness’) and ananda (bliss), which in their togetherness may be termed Saccidananda. In a process termed ‘involution’ by Aurobindo, the One sequentially becomes: (D Supermind (the link between the utterly transcendent and phenomenal reality). (2) Overmind (ego-less knowledge, the highest stage attainable by the human mind). (3) Intuitive Mind (direct perception, including the perception of significance). (4) Ilumined Mind (spiritual light, vision). (5) Higher Mind (pure conceptual thought). (6) Mental Mind (the ratiocination of ordinary human thinking). (7) Life (including the emotional dimension, and containing subconsciousness mind). 479 Thought (8) Matter (manifesting at more gross and more subtle levels, and in possession of a subconscious level of awareness) and, at the bottom. (9) The Sub- or Inconscient (utter emptiness, potentiality). This is the downward way of involution or descent. The essential way of return, termed ‘evolution’ or ascent, starts from the Inconscient and returns into The One through the same sequence, but in the reverse order (Aurobindo 1974:92ff.). In addition to the above vertical (down -'up), sequential visualisation of reality, Aurobindo’s vision (as far as human existence is concerned) also implies a ‘concentric’ Ccentre’-‘periphery’) model. At the centre of human life is: (1) Central Being (eternal, utterly transcendent Spirit); surrounded as it were by the layers of. (2) Psychic Being (the soul of every individual person, capable of development and evolving through successive lifetimes). (3) Inner Being (the subliminal faculties of the human being); and, at the outside. (4) Outer Being (the surface level, mainly consisting of the mental, vital and physical aspects of existence). The function of Integral Yoga (a term for the teaching and practice of Aurobindo) is to discover the inner Psychic Being as a manifestation of Central Being, resulting in a transformation of the outer layers of existence. This is achieved through psychic and spiritual transformation, and attainment of the higher states of consciousness mentioned above. Aurobindo’s ontology is vintage Indian thinking. It also reminds of that of Plotinus, 2000 years earlier (Chatterji 1982:257-272). Both encapsulate an entire tradition and absorb inputs from other traditions (in Plotinus' case, from India; in Aurobindo's case, from the West). To both all things emerge from the One and return to it. Whereas 'emanation' expresses Plotinus' conception, Aurobindo speaks of 'involution' from the One and 'evolution' back to the One. Aurobindo's vision, being modern, is understandably more dynamic than Plotinus' static vision of participation but no actual development. To both, matter is at the bottom scale of the eternal movement of things, with Plotinus more negative in his evaluation of matter and the body than Aurobindo. To Aurobindo, matter contains /n potentia everything that will emerge in the process of evolution. To him, the body is transformable and divine life is establishable on earth. Aurobindo's system is an objective idealism: all are seen as manifestations of Consciousness, and the 'Central Being' of all is Spirit. Aurobindo starts and ends with Supermind, and does not thematise a Horizon emptying the One as Being-Consciousness-Bliss. This exploration appreciates the fact that to Aurobindo, matter is not completely down and out. Plotinus came close to 480 Chapter 21 such a fatally negative perception of matter and body, and some of Christianity followed him. Aurobindo sees consciousness in life and matter, even if only veiled in matter. Matter, carrying the potential of evolving all, has that potential because of its being veiled mind. In this essay, matter is awarded a higher status: it co-emerges co-equally, mutually implicit, with Life, Love and Thought. It is neither idealism nor materialism. In his conception of the triunity of sat-chit-ananda Aurobindo, like Sankara before him, in effect awards pole position to chit. Yet Aurobindo allows for matter to be transfigured in the ongoing process of evolution and to become a perfect instrument for divine self-expression on earth. That is appreciated. According to Aurobindo (having learnt this from his first mentor, yogi Vishnu Bhaskar Lele in 1908) it is not ' who thinks; it is Thought occurring in me. From this teacher he learnt to silence his mind and experience the spaceless and timeless Brahman. That was of pivotal importance in his life. Prior to that, and prior even to his prison experience, he had mystical experiences, including experiencing a vacant Infinite. After 1908, his attention was singularly focused on the One. Our venture finds: Thinking is but no thinker - neither substantial ' nor substantial ‘Thought’ or ‘Consciousness’. Notions such as Supermind, Overmind, Intuitive Mind, IIlumined Mind and Higher Mind, the One and Brahman are all dissolved in Absoluteness. Reality is pulsating, boiling up from Absoluteness and falling back into Absoluteness every second. This does not exclude, but includes, a dimension of progressive, spiralling movement, including ends and new beginnings. 481 Part Four Cosmos-Event . Light show This chapter concentrates on how Cosmos - our home, the world of common sense, the object of science - may be understood and valued from this MM perspective. The necessary has cumulatively been said in previous chapters. It is time to draw some summary conclusions for this investigation as a whole, and to add a few clarifications. E S55 Totum outsider and insider perspectives This envisagement of the world combines two perspectives: * The first perspective is like a description of a brilliant light show of fireworks by an observer, astounded by the scene, standing outside of it. From such an imagined outsider perspective, our Cosmos appears like a flash among countless others exploding from some unseen, unknown source, precious in its fragility, lighting up, for a brief second, a dark, impenetrable night sky. We are of course not standing outside; we can only imagine it. * The second perspective is like the experience, the description by a mini Observer inside one of the bursts of heat and light of the light show, and part of it. As such insider mini parts, we cannot see the darkness outside of How to cite: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Light show’, in Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages (HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2), pp. 485-522, AOSIS, Cape Town. https:// doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52.22 485 Light show it; the light is too bright; it can only be imagined, presupposed. We cannot know the whole show, and we cannot know the source. Then something interesting happens. From within that flash two and two are put together; certain leads present in the situation are followed up. Through fact and reason in all of its various forms and shades (such as logic and mathematics), through intuition and speculation, through science, larger pictures - virtual outsider perspectives - have been constructed. This has been going on for some time (give or take a few hundred thousand years), by each epoch for its own time. It would be good not to forget what has been done before. The full truth cannot be known by the thinking mini observers. What they can know partially, is overwhelming enough. Perhaps the knowledge that the full truth cannot be known is the highest truth attainable. The brightness of here and now gains in meaning by understanding that it emerges from an impenetrable darkness. This exploratory argument was inspired by the insider experience of some visionary human beings and their quasi-outsider projections. In the writing down of it thus far, it has largely unfolded as if from an imagined outsider perspective, as an account of the process ‘before’ the Cosmos event. Such an imagined outsider perspective is imagined to be justified because the human beings who imagine the ‘outsider’ view are part of Cosmos, which in turn is part of a larger process. An enlightened person, one who has achieved a high degree of insider-outsider vision, would be someone who sees the light show in its ephemeral contingency against the backdrop of darkness, without fear. It would be someone who realises that, after all, all statements and mental constructs are to be Nagarjunated; they implode, have to admit defeat, but remain significant. contingent, significant, beautiful Early Buddhism taught that the aggregate ‘human person’ is not to be clung to. Todothat,isarecipe for disillusionment and suffering. The present investigation finds that Cosmos should not be clung to. Nevertheless, its value and beauty may be joyfully celebrated. In line with the East Asian MM system of Hua-yen, Cosmos becomes a thing of the most fragile beauty, balancing on the slenderest swaying bridge: the 'is' between Emptiness and Form - in Fa-tsang's analogy: the distinction between ‘gold’ and ‘lion’ (see Ch. 16). | find the seemingly obscure Chinese Buddhist speculation of 12 centuries ago fascinatingly relevant to our contemporary reflection on Cosmos, informed and challenged by modern science as such reflection must be. There is no line of separation between Absoluteness and Cosmos, only the subtlest but nevertheless significant distinction. The Horizon is everywhere. The deeper we enter into 486 Chapter 22 the mystery of becoming, the subtler that distinction becomes. It is like penetrating the depths of the very large and the very small. The strongest telescopes and microscopes and most esoteric mathematics take us closer to the mysteriously receding line between being and ...? Ultimately, we cannot say or know; 'Absoluteness' and 'Unground' say nothing. From the perspective emerging on this pilgrimage, Cosmos, the surface of Infinitude, appears as radically contingent, yet its contingency does not detract from its significance. On the contrary. The world is to be loved, for it is an embodiment of a mystery to which it is not monistically, dualistically or analogically related. Cosmos appears as a Whole of relationships, condensing in transient entities, surrounded and permeated by an unfathomable depth, each illuminating every other one and illuminated by it, and all reflecting the totality: breathtakingly beautiful. Marvel at the ephemeral single leaf in Cosmos, leaf-Cosmos; at Cosmos in the single leaf, Cosmos-leaf in an ever-receding depth. In a sense, Totum (Whole) coincides with, 'is', each pars (part). Pars pro toto and totum pro parte: the singular represents, contains, ‘is’ the whole; and the whole contains, ‘is’ every single one of its parts. Add pars pro parte: each single constituent of every larger whole represents, contains, ‘is’, every single other constituent. There are no separate entities of any kind in a strong sense, only conditionalistic relationships taking short-lived shape in relative entities. No singular event, no situation, occurs in isolation; it is always suspended in relationships, which ultimately disintegrate on Absolute Horizon. With the event of Cosmos, possibilities take definite shape, yet that definiteness is relative, not absolute. Between different things are porous membranes. Each event exists 'here', with boundaries: not absolute, but relative, and it merges with other entities. As event, it also exists ‘now’: at this time, having had a beginning when it appeared and a future when it will disappear, losing its identity, and yet not completely lost. It is, to use a contemporary term of great significance, recycled. It continues to exist in whatever attenuated form. The same perspective would apply to Cosmos. Contingent existence, whether in large or small format, is (to fall back on a venerable image) like a drop of water for a brief second seemingly disengaged from the moving ocean, but still sharing the same constitution as the ocean and every single other drop flying from and falling back into the ocean (Emptiness). The drop neither exists as separate entity nor disappears entirely; it is, so to speak, objectively remembered and recycled. It will not reappear again in the self-same form, with the same identity, but the ocean will continue to produce others in which this one will, so to speak, re-emerge. This vision celebrates each such short-lived, relative entity in its own right as significant and beautiful. Cosmos as a whole, and each of its parts, is a passing form, not in the sense of being an illusion or a veil of some eternal Substance; but in the sense of really emerging, in radical contingency, from Absolute Horizon, to which it returns. 487 Light show To continue with everyday pictures for the moment: water manifests in the intangible invisibility of gas; in relative solids such as the shapes of a frozen polar landscape; and in the impermanent fluidity of liquid. It is all water. Analogously, Arche can be seen under the aspect of the non-substantiality of Unground-Eternity-Infinitude; the relative solidity of Cosmos; and the historical and evolutionary impermanence and changing of Cosmos. Spirit: matter-life-love-thought The individual human person is, according to classic Theravada teaching, an indivisible unit of matter and mind (the latter consisting of feeling, perception, emotional-and-volitional-factors, and consciousness) intimately intertwined and interdependent; none reducible to any of the others. That model is here extended to imagine a model of Cosmos, which, as far as its own basic constituents are concerned, is neither monistic, nor pluralistic in the sense of harbouring irreconcilable aspects, nor reductionist, but integral. The possibility of defining Cosmos as a living, conscious being opens up. The ancient Buddhist teaching does not say that or recommend thinking that, but is here interpreted to suggest a perspective on the riddle of Cosmos, beyond both idealism and materialism. Various dimensions of Cosmos may be imagined as originally and essentially mutually implied: matter, life, soul (love) and mind (thought). In the first fraction of the first nanosecond of the historical becoming of Cosmos there was latent life and consciousness, and its beings are all concrete manifestations of energy-matter. This does not militate against the evolutionary idea of increasing complexity and historical emergence, development, over time. Cosmos is Spirit, and as such a connection of matter, life, love and thought. It is not primarily one of any of them (most certainly not a disembodied ‘Spirit’, but essentially all four together: a being in which all singular things, human and non-human - all of them interconnected and all somehow consisting of connections of matter, life, love and thought - participate. In that sense, they are all ‘Spirit’. This exploration therefore opts for an organic worldview over against a mechanistic worldview, yet aligning itself with creative developments in science over the last century. Equally strongly, this approach distances itself from the disengagement from matter as became the norm in Western mysticisms influenced by Neoplatonism. Plato’s concept of an ensouled, rational World Animal (dominating his mature philosophy) is returning to life. Nevertheless, everlasting, as he took it to be, that Animal is not. Of course the notion ‘animal’ in this context is a category mistake if taken literally (which Plato did not do anyway), pushing the kernel of truth too far. The view of Cosmos as a living being was not peculiar to Plato, but generally prevalent in 4th century and 5th century BC Greece 488 Chapter 22 (Hahm 1977:57ff.). This essay also resonates with the Buddhist notion of the Cosmos as Buddha, the 'Great Resplendent One' (Maha-Vairocana, see Ch. 7). Alternatively, Cosmos may be thought of analogically as a bodhisattva, moving towards full enlightenment in the Horizon of Emptiness. The ancient Theravada model of the human being does not presuppose a personalistic theism. The Indian mythological figure of the god Brahma itself falls under the aspect of non-eternalism. This applies to our Cosmos as well. Creationism is not presupposed. Analogous to individual existence as driven by kamma (i.e. causal action yielding positive or negative outcomes), the Cosmic process is imagined as neither pointless nor guaranteed fixed in advance (predestined) in some way. Cosmos shapes itself. There is an element of ongoing self-creativity in it all. Here the moment of truth in 'pantheism' is to be acknowledged. It is not merely an excuse for 'atheism', as Spinoza's thinking was branded by critics such as Jacobi. The word ‘pantheism’ itself, is not as self-evident as it may seem. The '-theism' part of it can in a wide sense probably be taken to suggest ultimacy (‘divinity’), not necessarily in personalistic form. ‘-Theism’ could simply express a sense of awe, even mystical awe. That is not a problem, on condition that 'divinity' is not taken in a substantialist sense or reduced to a mythologized magnified person. The 'pan-' part would, in general, express a sense that all things ultimately hang together. That is in order, and this model endorses it. Then a fork in the road appears. The ‘pan-’ could intend: (a) Cosmos (on the assumption that there is no wider context than Cosmos in and for itself), or (b) Void or Emptiness surrounding Cosmos (on the assumption that there is a wider context). Ancient Stoicism assumed (b). From the perspective of this particular observer of the great light show, (b) could be endorsed - on condition that 'Emptiness' is not taken in a quasi-substantialist sense. As far as (a) is concerned, issue is here taken with the supposition that Cosmos is all there ‘is’. It is accepted that Cosmos is ‘divine’, as manifestation of ‘divine’ (Empty) Unground. So 'pantheism' as a word is not necessarily taboo. All depends on how it is used. To say, ‘Cosmos is divine’, or ‘everything (conjoined) is divine’, or even ‘every thing Cin the singular) is divine’ (even ‘a god’, stretching it very far) could be fine, depending on context and intention. ‘Pan-en-theism’ literally means ‘all-in-God’, and by implication also ‘God- in-all’, making above all sure not to be understood as saying 'all-is-God'. It seeks to escape from the trilemma atheism, pantheism and atheism emphasising a sharp ontological break between God and cosmos. It is not a clear-cut case either, except insofar as it rejects (a) above. Our exploration is clearly in line with that. Everything depends on how the ‘theism’ concept is filled with content: something like ‘Emptiness’ is one thing; any substantialising connotation as found in, for example, the Indian Vedic tradition or in Plato, Plotinus, Spinoza or Hegel in the Western MM tradition, quite another. 489 Light show Earth shares in all of that, as do other stars and planets, in various modes and degrees. This view allows for manifest forms of life in Cosmos outside of Earth, and for the existence of living beings - perhaps vastly infra-human and perhaps vastly supra-human - as yet unknown to science. If they are out there, they too would be Cosmic condensations of Infinitude, but they would not be supernatural and they would not be the ultimate source of Cosmos. Cosmic Origin and End In the ancient Buddhist scheme the human person, like all existing things, is impermanent and non-substantial, yet nevertheless a process continuing through time and marked by intervals, that is, by the events of birth and death. That was early Buddhism’s third way, offered as an alternative to both eternalism (there is a substantial ‘Self °) and nihilism. The contingency of Cosmos implies that it has a temporal dimension. It had a temporal beginning, and will have a temporal end. During its temporal existence, from some 14 billion years ago to an unknown end in time, Cosmos is constantly, continuously, emerging from Absolute Horizon. Time, history, is part of Eternity. From the cosmosophical perspective explored in these reflections, the following arises: just as the historical end (whether as big rip, big chill or whatever other possibility may emerge) is not absolutely final but relative, just so its historical beginning (in a big bang or whatever other possibility science may put forward) is not an absolute but a relative beginning in a continuous cycle or spiral of supra historical Origin and End (Chs 4-6). Cosmos had not only a beginning, but it has an eternal Origin ina movement of devolution. It will not only have a temporal end, but has an eternal End as destination. The history of Cosmos is not seen as an event or process of smooth perfection. It is a struggle, with all kinds of conflicting opposing movements, successes and failures, progressive creative forces and reactionary retarding forces. Cosmos is not perfect, but it is not inherently evil either. As a self-transforming, self-regulating whole, it is in a process of development, of the adjustment of its various aspects, which inevitably leads to strains and pains. It contains an element of unrest, emerging from the deep, hidden recesses of Eternity and Infinitude. Yet the process of becoming Cosmos is not as such evil; nor is evil a substantial, eternally co-present, irreconcilable alternative. One may have a bodhisattvic dream: not of an apokatastasis (‘return’), thought of as a restoration or reconstitution of an originally perfect condition, but of a Cosmic bodhisattvic process towards ultimate peace. 490 Chapter 22 i556 ... pars pro toto Humanity is an almost negligible microdot in Cosmos, not the centre of the universe with a right to dominate. Yet it is nevertheless a noble microcosm, an epitome of the universe, pars pro toto, reflecting and illuminating the whole. The meaning of being human is to realise that, and to feel, think, speak and live in accordance with that insight, among all the other singular parts and larger wholes making up Cosmos. 'My' singular identity is that of Cosmic being; part and member of Nature in the widest sense; a living being, a human being, part of the human species; existing in friendship with kind, thoughtful folk of all times and places who are also astounded by the darkness. Furthermore, | am father, daughter, friend or in any other station in life; then come cultural, national, ethnic, linguistic, religious and other conventional markers of identity, none of which are essentially constitutive in isolation or above any of the others. This is a humanism in which '', human person, am a constantly changing, relatively balanced totality of the above and much more. human constitution The individual human being is a radically contingent event. ‘I’ emerges from and is suspended in Eternity, Infinitude and Cosmos from which it appears every moment; and every moment it is in the process of disappearing, returning into the vastness of Cosmos, Infinitude and Eternity. The human being is a flow of change. It is essentially non-self-sufficient, but exists in relationships of interdependence. And it consists of a vast number of similarly contingent smaller systems, decreasing in size ad infinitum. Every human being is a unique singularity, but precisely as such part of similarly contingent larger systems, increasing in size ad infinitum. Emerging from Cosmos and pars pro toto, it isa mixture of the same constituent elements as the rest, namely energy matter and life, together making up body; and pathos and thought, together making up consciousness. In conception it is constituted as a unique combination of these, and in death it is unbundled, disintegrates back into the larger Cosmic pool. The human being is not reducible to any of these four. All four coexist mutually inherently, interdependently: the body is wise, consciousness does not exist apart from matter. This is neither monism, nor dualism or pluralism; neither materialism nor idealism. It is conditionalism. human development The human person can be transformed and can develop spiritually, ‘metaphysically- mystically'. All mystical traditions have provided ways such as meditational practices towards transcending the ignorance, hatred and greed plaguing humankind. The following, restating ancient Buddhist practice, could be a roadmap. 491 Light show Initially comes full immersion in and close attention to any concrete, specific singular situation in all the richness of its texture. This is associated with four distinctive but mutually implicit roads, ending as Absolute Horizon: * the road of calm beyond all emotional disturbance and all conceptual constructions, eventually petering out in sheer silence * the road of wisdom, gaining insight into the contingency of all things, their arising from and returning to non-substantial Absolute Horizon, and how that understanding opens a possibility of meaningful happiness * the road of love, embracing in solidarity every singular event, no matter how minor, every singular situation, in its ever-increasing relatedness to ever-larger wholes, ultimately issuing in Cosmos, and * the road of non-violent strength, effective in promoting (not necessarily flamboyantly, but quietly) the good of the singular here now, and, in increasingly larger circles, pluralities and wholes. Relating to a situation (from the very small to the very large of Cosmos) involves an intellectual dimension in a broad sense, a dimension of understanding how the situation coheres, internally and externally. It has an aesthetic dimension, envisioning and constituting harmony and beauty, including the elements of stark contrasts and tragedy, where there is discord and ugliness. There is a moral dimension: love celebrating with the happy and sorrowing with the suffering, also effective, fitting, response-able action, drawing the situation forward; and then it also involves a dimension of peace, of stillness, quietness, even in words spoken and actions done. All of these have as source the discovery of Cosmos and all in it as emerging from and returning to the ultimate depth of Absolute Horizon. The language used above is quite specific, but is also an instance of pars pro toto: humanity is seen as a community of seekers of meaning, singing different songs that can nevertheless be heard as harmonious. The achievement of MM maturity comes in degrees. There are the truly great ones, sometimes known and sometimes not. Not all spiritually advanced people made it into halls of religious fame; some avoided it at all costs. The factors that go into the making of primary reference figures are many and varied, including sociological factors such as the needs of majorities of the time. Nevertheless, that human history produced exceptionally advanced people, deserving to be honoured as exemplars for all of humanity, cannot be denied. This imagined map is in part a tribute to such people, ‘great’ in the qualities described above and some as far advanced on the roads mentioned as humans can probably go. life after life As part of contingent Cosmos, the contingent human person is not eternal and has no eternal component such as an immortal soul. The perspective emerging 492 Chapter 22 on this pilgrimage is obsessed with neither life nor death nor individual life after death. Decay and death are essential aspects of the process of Cosmos. They have no sting. In the religious systems visited along this journey, particularly the following views leading people through the valley of death, are noteworthy: (D (2) (3) The Taoist vision of alternating life and death, florescence and decay of all things, manifesting the two interacting energy-modes, the yang and the yin. This makes for an easy acceptance of death as part of nature but without any obsession with death, and a positive acceptance of life, making the most of it and continuing life for as long as possible (‘immortality’), but without any obsession with it either. While not necessarily denying life after death, Taoism does not focus on life after death, but on happy, healthy, simple longevity in this life. The vision of the reincarnation of an eternal soul in a series of different perishable bodies, as held in, for example, mainline Hinduism. Views of this type were recurrent in most ancient cultures, including Greece. Earlier than Plato and a major influence on the latter, Pythagoras, for example (continuing a trend in ancient Greek religion) believed that the human soul was immortal and passed through a series of reincarnations (a process referred to as metempsychosis: 'transmigration'). It would have been surprising if this type of view did not arise in various localities in societies living close to nature, either as hunter-gatherers or as agriculturalists. Human life could easily be seen as analogous to, even part of, the eternal cycles of life and death and returning life in nature. From this point of departure, various accents could be placed: the process of reincarnation could be seen as a wonderful assurance of eternal life; as a series allowing the transmigrating individual to progress from one life to the next on a learning curve; or as a terrifying burden to bear. All of these occur. Assuming such a common context of origin does nevertheless not exclude all manner of historical intercultural influence (say, between India and Greece). The vision referred to as rebirth in mainline Buddhism. According to this, there is no eternal substantial soul/self, yet nevertheless a continuity, capable of continuing over countless births and deaths and entering into new aggregates to form new persons. The difference between this ‘continualist’ view of consciousness and ‘substantialist’ reincarnation of 'selves' is not always clear. In Buddhism itself, various accents could arise. The eternal process of samsāra terrified early Buddhism. On the other hand, it was believed that it takes a vast number of rebirths to form the qualities of a Buddha. Nevertheless, the Buddha taught that release from the cycle of samsàra was possible to both members of the order and the laity; that is what the attainment of (pari-)nibbàna was about. At death the arahant 'disappears' from human registration without a trace. Though not 493 Light show (4) (S) (6) common, it is not held up as unattainable either, and many were assumed to have made it. For example, the First Buddhist Council, convened after the Buddha’s parinibbàna, was attended by no fewer than 500 arahants. Such escape was the ideal, the norm in the school for arahants. In Mahayana, rebirth as a death trap was transformed into a utopia of compassion: rebirth becomes a series of occasions to serve all living beings, as long as it takes for all of them to be saved. At least in some MM Zen quarters any obsession with unending past and future was consciously disfavoured - what matters, is the contingent now. From the premise of radical contingency, | do not see the necessity to semi-hypostasise the radiating effects of a person’s life to a single identifiable, admittedly changing yet uninterrupted, even indestructible, horizontal continuity of being and consciousness. It must also be borne in mind that the two main types of Indian Buddhist teaching concerning rebirth CHinayana’ and Mahayana) were intimately connected with the cosmologies dominant in India at the time (cf. Kloetzli 2007 [1983]). The type of cosmology gaining ascendancy in our time commands a serious rethink of such ancient models of ‘life after death’. The Platonic vision of an eternally immortal soul transcending physical death. Plato’s writing is ambivalent in this respect, but, taking all into account, he probably did not postulate in a serious metaphysical sense the transmigration of the soul - even taking into account the long myth of Er at the end of the Republic, where he used popular lore to make the point that being just is a good thing. It is the same kind of operating at two levels that we find in Buddhism: the lower level of conventional (including mythological) wisdom is tolerated and used for a higher cause. In the theistic religions, the Platonic vision of an everlasting soul was often (for example, in mainstream Christianity) combined with the vision of a resurrection of the perishable selfsame body inhabited by the immortal soul during life, to exist as one individual in all eternity in a state of eternal bliss or woe. Stoicism gave its own twist to the notion of the afterlife: the souls of the dead continue to exist until the great conflagration, when they return to God (like the human person and matter do). There is the great Cosmic return, but not the eternal return (reincarnation) of individual souls. The materialistic view - to complete the picture of the major options deriving from ancient Greece and India and presently available to people: it excludes life after death, and affirms complete annihilation of the individual entity and its disintegration into matter and matter alone. Except for perhaps the materialistic view, the others contain speculative, imaginative, often strongly mythologising elements. They do not, cannot, present hard fact, are not scientific hypotheses, but intend to have the effect of motivating people to reflect on the importance and consequences of one's 494 Chapter 22 actions and attitudes in this life. The route taken in this exploration is no different; its constructed nature was clear throughout. As far as an after-life is concerned, it leads in a direction, harmonisable with, for example, Taoism and the type of Zen referred to above. This attempt at understanding accepts the recycling of the human person (an integration of non-separable body and consciousness) in the larger process of Cosmos (likewise an integration of body and consciousness). It endorses neither reincarnation nor rebirth as understood above. It does not accept the idea of an eternal pre-existence of the soul as a not-yet-embodied substance. It does accept the notion of life before life and life after life, since Cosmos is alive and since Life emerges from and returns to Absolute Horizon via Eternity and Infinite Life. It does not accept the notion of the continued existence of this particular individual, an eternal soul or a single stream of consciousness. 'l', this brief constellation of matter, life and mind will disintegrate and its elements will return to Nature somehow to emerge in other brief manifestations of existence, which is of matter, life, emotion and thought, perhaps even in other human beings. l will not live forever, but will shortly die; in fact, life is a process of dying, as death is a moment in the process of life. Life and death are not alternatives, but degrees on a continuum. Shortly ‘P will have flashed for a brief moment in the flash of Cosmos in the great light show; will have played a small part. Then it will be over; but it will also not be over. Every particular ‘I’ as an impermanent sum of patterns of thought, sentiments and behaviour will continue to exert some influence, more or less, for good or bad, radiate light or cast a shadow for a brief period, make a difference to the Whole. Every 'I' will ‘return’, but not as ‘Il’: aspects and elements will somehow, sometime, resurface from the great ocean in the great circulation. The process of Nature, consisting of matter, life, love and thought in all their forms, combinations and degrees of manifestation, rolls on. Dying is just as awe-inspiring as being born: returning to the great mystery is just as magnificent as emerging from it. There is a deeper dimension than death at that supreme moment after a lifetime, highly developed people may experience their return as a mystical experience: glimpsing not only the totality of Cosmos, but also the splendour of Infinitude. With death, human beings, like all beings, disintegrate; return to the Cosmic package of matter, life, passion and thought; to Infinitude; to Absolute Horizon. There is an afterglow, weak or strong, good or bad, enduring or fading quickly. | imagine a robust acceptance of life with all its ambiguity, its non-permanence and its non-substantiality. That includes a robust acceptance of death. That is becoming very significant in a technological society where dying is avoided at all costs and life can be extended to a degree unimaginable to previous generations and still, today, to certain societies. So, ‘I’ will presently die, like a leaf falling from a tree, returning to the fertile jungle floor. Of course there are differences: ‘Il’ am slightly more complex than the leaf, and ‘I’ know that ‘I’ will fall and disintegrate - the leaf does not. On the other hand, a flourishing life 495 Light show on earth after humans, without humans, is perfectly thinkable, but one without leaves? Hardly. And yet, spiritually, humankind is latently a tip of an unfolding branch of the Cosmic tree, of Spirit. growth points In a utopian sense, this envisagement postulates a potential progressive presence of the human person in the larger scheme of things. In the process of the devolution and involution of Cosmos from Origin to End, humankind is imagined to be of some significance, puny and flawed as this latecomer on the scene is in many respects. Humankind and Cosmos are related in an organic non-dualistic mutuality. As pars pro toto with exceptional mental abilities, its containing within itself of all things and the Whole, brims with possibility and promise. It carries a latent potential not only to destroy life on Earth, but to enhance it; to not only spread greed and strife, but also non-violent compassion; and to promote knowledge, understanding and wisdom, and above all an awareness of the devolutionary-involutionary connection of Cosmos with Unground. That is what | meant by ‘progressive’ above. Novelty for the good may be added; humanity is an agent in that - or rather, could be; this is not recording fact, but utopian, performative language. Assuming an interconnectedness of all and the universal presence of mutually implicit thought, passion, life and matter throughout Cosmos, increases in human consciousness (love and thought) will impact on life and matter. The scientific evolutionary perspective (great as far as it reaches) that consciousness follows matter and life, is to be enhanced (which implies a degree of correction) by the awareness that, in the larger scheme of things, matter, life, passion and thought move in interconnected togetherness. This is also something else than the type of idealism assuming that matter and life follow consciousness. Earthlings are taken to be susceptible to whatever forces and influences may be at work elsewhere in Cosmos, unbeknown to them. Within humankind, some persons, acting with profound insight into situations, whether single events or larger wholes; with great love and compassion for all beings; with sincere and noble intent; with effective power, are here understood to take not only humankind but also Cosmos forward in its spiral, potentially towards the good. Some are the truly great ones, none being the exclusive saviour of the world. Such ones have Cosmic significance, loving solidarity with Cosmos, realising (understanding, achieving) what all humans are in principle. They have opened windows on Infinitude and a Horizon beyond Cosmos. Utopia is not fact. Still, they and others like them are beacons, illuminating the world and beckoning a bewildered humanity. At the present time (meaning the time of recorded history, this epoch of Cosmic unfolding), such beings represent the peaks of human, earthly and Cosmic existence in all four its essential aspects; they are eminent models of being human, the best 496 Chapter 22 partes pro toto. It would be a crime of humanity against humanity and Cosmos if such treasures were discarded on the rubbish dump of history. The notion of the key position of humanity as such and of some individuals in particular in the large scheme of things, is a recurring MM theme in networks of historical connections. A few isolated examples will have to do. The Cosmic relevance of the respective messianic figures in Judaism and Christianity and the bodhisattvic and Buddha figures in Buddhism may be best known, but are not the only expressions of this notion in MM history. In Christianity the centrality of humankind in Cosmos, continued from Hebrew religion was a commonplace, and this was not unique to Christianity. What was quite unique in Christianity, was the degree to which that centrality was telescoped into one Person, Jesus Christ. For example, in the theology of Paul, reflecting aspects of the Jewish and Hellenistic thought of his day, there is an original man, a heavenly Adam, a pre-existent Logos (incarnated in Jesus), the pattern of all men and with great future Cosmic significance. In the Jewish Kabbalah of Isaac Luria Adam Kadmon (‘original man’) plays a central role in the creation of the world as the embodiment of the divine manifestations, and as the original essence of humankind; and mystic persons anticipate and promote the redemption of not only themselves and the world, but of God. In the thinking of the third leg of the monotheistic tradition surveyed in this envisagement. Islam, a structurally similar wave of thought can be discerned. To Ibn Arabi, for example, the human person has Cosmic significance and is so to speak the viceregent of God on Earth. The human person actualises the totality of Divinity and contains all Cosmic attributes, is the perfect microcosm, the ‘perfect man’ Cinsaén kamil). This is not human hubris and megalomania, but the acceptance of a burden of service and responsibility. Another medieval Muslim MM, Mulla Sadra, also spoke of the human person as ‘the perfect man’, the true microcosm - who is the true servant, the spiritual guide, not in the sense of counsel and teaching, but in the sense of realising in himself the return of all corporeal creatures into God (Jambet 2006:412ff.); this person is the prophetic harbinger of the final universal peace, when all will have returned to God inthe process of Origin and Return. The differences as well as the similarities between Christianity and its two sister religions in general need to be noted. In Christianity the Cosmic significance of humanity was singularised, individualised, contracted into one, personalised. But that person was not entirely separated from others: he represented all. This essay emphasises the key position of humanity as a whole in Cosmos, attaches great value to some singularly great and gifted ones, but no exclusive role to any single individual person. Not only in bodhisattvic Buddhism, but also in (e.g.) the modern Hinduism of Sri Aurobindo a comparable strategic role is awarded to humankind at its best. In Aurobindo's view ‘man’ (he still uses that language) occupies the crest of the evolutionary wave, since in 'him' Mind/Consciousness made a crucial breakthrough, and that change will be the major contributing factor in future 497 Light show evolution - indeed, that is not only possible, but would, according to Aurobindo, give the truest meaning to earthly existence (Aurobindo 1974:27-34). The differences of this view from the three theisms should not be underestimated, and yet the similarities and confluences, when viewed from a higher perspective, should not be denied either. morality This perspective on Cosmos andi its creatures, large and small, would encourage loving, skilful, transformative existence in the world. The morality announcing itself would create space for a positive appreciation of concrete existence in all its forms; involvement in life with all its difficulties; enjoyment and sharing of its gifts and beauties; amelioration of suffering among all beings; an eventual letting go, aware of Absolute Horizon. Opting for simplicity, it would veer away from the hedonism of modern materialistic consumer society. It would be able to tolerate the sometimes extreme opposites and paradoxes that existence throws at us, doing its best to make the world optimally liveable for all beings. A basic moral axiom of this MM orientation would be: act in such a manner that your actions in thought, sentiment, word and deed respond affirmatively and creatively to asituation as a whole. This morality would reject all absolutistic, totalitarian prescriptions and programmes as per definition confining. It is not a morality of obedience to a supernatural law, of supernatural punishment and reward, but of acting in accordance, as far as possible, with the natural order of things, and fully accepting accountability for the consequences of one’s actions. The key aspects of such a morality are the overcoming of lack of insight, and correspondingly, of selfishness and greed, and of hatred and resentment. Insight and universal compassion come together as responsibility, that is, co-response-ability. Co-response-ability means the ability to see and take into account as many factors as possible in and surrounding the situation in which action is to be taken. It also signifies the multifactorial sets of antecedents in the dynamics of the historical process preceding and leading up to the present situation, as far as possible; and the consequences of actions in a given situation: the foreseeable and intended, the foreseeable but unintended, and the unintended and unforeseeable, as far as possible. In all of that, one is one actor among others, but cannot necessarily be accountable for the actions of others crisscrossing one’s own. Anticipation of the future outcomes of present actions could, and would, involve a utopian element: thinking new possibilities and turning them into reality-changing possibilities. Given the complexities of the situations in which human individuals have to act responsibly, to ascribe to them absolute freedom would be unrealistic; they have limited, relative, more or less, space to operate in effectively. As far their own will and intentions are concerned, there are no 498 Chapter 22 restrictions on freedom to will the good. Such a morality would advise that the individual actor should find personal clarity in freedom concerning moral issues; live as naturally, easily and compassionately as possible, affirming all existence; avoid setting the self up arrogantly as a holy paragon of virtue, always bearing in mind that the world is shot through with sometimes unresolvable ambiguities and contradictions; and, aware of the relativity of all things human, avoid being the all-knowing taskmaster and judge of others. The social and ecological implications (Gottlieb 2006) of this approach are obvious. In this picture of the world, each entity, no matter how weak, derives value from its being an expression of the Cosmic nexus, rooted in Infinitude and beyond. This morality therefore opposes the manipulative exploitation of nature by modern technocratic society and all forms of religious, gender, racial and other discrimination among people. Politically, economically and socially in a wider sense, it opposes all forms of institutional violence ensconced in centralistic, totalitarian Dower structures, in favour of open, light structures of co-responsibility. It has significant implications for the judicial, educational, political, economic and other spheres of life. What the practical implications of such an approach to various sectors of society would be, lies outside the scope of this essay. sin, karma, tragedy Above, mention was made of the exceptionally great and the good. What about the bad and the ugly? Names could easily be multiplied. Evil is part of human sentiment, thought, speech, behaviour and institution. In accordance with the line of argument unfolding in this essay, human nature is not, in the final analysis, evil, nor did it become evil through some historical accident. Arising from depths beyond good and evil, humankind is a species fraught with tension and conflict in individuals dealing with themselves and others and groups and nature as a whole. Humankind is a species at war with itself and struggling to come to terms with its greatness and its pettiness and cruelty; its ability to advance in those aspects of life that matter most, yet also its hatred, greed and stupidity seeking selfish individual and collective gain wherever possible. Like Cosmos, humankind is not perfect, not inherently evil either. It is a struggling actor in a world process wanting harmony. This view does not subscribe to the notion of an original perfect nature, spoilt by the sin of disobedience committed at some point in humanity’s past by a progenitor, but to be restored some time in future. Nor does it accept the notion of karma in the sense that individuals exist and will continue to exist in states of happiness or unhappiness, wholly caused by their own past actions. This is not to deny that we largely create our own fate, and that every deed in thought, word and action has results in our lives and in the 499 Light show surrounding situation. The individual and collective actions of humans in their thoughts, sentiments, words, behaviours and institutions are fully part of the conditionalistic processes of Cosmos. These actions make a difference: synchronically around them and diachronically in what will follow. One’s actions in thoughts, words and behaviours feed, for good or for bad, into the contexts in which they are enmeshed. In their actions, humans do some good but also make huge mistakes because of lack of insight into situations and the deeper truth, lack of good intention and will. As far as all these shortcomings are present and determine human action, such actions are evil. Goodwill, intention and sentiment may be present, but insight into the full complexity of a present situation and intelligent anticipation of the outcomes of deeds, once done, may be lacking. To that extent, the notion of ‘tragedy’ becomes relevant. People may intend good and act in ways expressing such intentions, but the unintended and unanticipated outcomes may be horrific. The concept of ‘tragedy’ is taken to include, in an adapted sense, some of the substance of the notion of ‘sin’: the association with evil, but not the need for supernatural forgiveness for acts committed out of short-sightedness but perhaps with goodwill. Likewise, it includes, in an adapted sense, some of the notion of ‘karma’. It places a strong emphasis on will and intentions, and situates human actions wholly in the wider network of the general conditionality of things. The possibility of tragedy presupposes the reality of responsibility: the ability to anticipate, at least up to a point, the outcomes of actions, and willingly to shoulder such outcomes. It does away with the exact correlation of actions and outcomes according to some calculable quid pro quo law, predictably operative from one birth to the next, not to mention the simplistic moralistic correlations sometimes operative in such views. People act, and results follow, to some extent expanding into and interacting with the larger scheme of things. This process cannot be reduced to facile formulas. surprises, acceptance, forgiveness Life as a whole is not a tragedy, but abounds with good outcomes, which may be unanticipated and contrary to all expectations. From evil empires, good can accrue. From the rubble left by tyrants, plants can grow. Such ‘blessings’ do not come out of the blue or as gifts from the hands of a supernatural Person, sometimes when asked for it and sometimes without being asked. They are the outcomes of the natural workings of a conditionalistic Cosmos where powerful though unnoticed single events or sets of events can significantly reshuffle hosts of factors, which can lead to paradoxical new developments, in nature as well as in human life. All acts should be in good faith as well as is possible, in terms of what is forseeable, and then the outcomes left, not in the hands of fate or the gods, but in the nexus of Cosmos. A wise understanding of history would not link events by simple straight lines of causes and effects. The world is much 500 Chapter 22 more complex than that. Cosmos not only produces tragedy, but also creates spaces for giving and receiving, for grace and gratitude and the casting of one’s bread upon unknown waters. Given enough time, the eventual return may be good. It cannot be denied that life is full of suffering, some arising from nature and some caused by people and their actions, sometimes self-induced and sometimes induced by others. To reduce all natural suffering and injustice experienced in life to deserved karma or divine punishment is preposterous, just as it would be pointless to justify or explain natural disasters by appealing to karma or divine retribution. Things happen in the unfolding of situations. There are good and bad accidents - that is, events without apparent causes from a narrow, shallow human point of view, and Cosmos rolls on. As far as natural suffering is concerned, one changes what can be changed for the better and bears with fortitude what cannot. Such events are reminders of an infinitely larger, always changing context, surrounded by Infinitude, Eternity and Absolute Horizon. As far as human wrongdoing and injustice are concerned, the first step of this ethic is forgiveness, understood as the letting go of hatred in all its manifestations, such as boiling anger and long-simmering resentment, and of actions of revenge. Then follows the replacement of such sentiments and actions with non-violence and benevolence towards the doer, empathy with the doer, and, ultimately, equanimous inner strength. By forgiveness is not understood ignoring, repressing or forgetting the injustice or the anger. Nor is forgiveness necessarily believed to be the entirely adequate response. Why forgiveness? The question here is not primarily what psychological reasons there may be. That forgiveness is psychologically wholesome to the one who suffered an injustice is well established (Enright 2001). The question is what MM reasons there may be. This attempt at insight does not rest on the assumption of a hierarchical ontological break between a natural and a supernatural world, with the implications of obedience or disobedience and guilt on the side of humans in the natural order, and reward, punishment or forgiveness on the side of the divine, supernatural order, dependent on the meeting of certain conditions. Again, relativising and demythologising such theological schemes is not the same as rejecting them wholesale. From the contextualising point of this perspective, forgiveness is natural, in the sense that it fits better into the larger scheme of things than revenge. Understanding invites acceptance and forgiveness. To begin with, the better we understand the external single factors or the sets of factors behind and around an act or asystem of violence conditioning it, the more we will be able to forgive. There may be mitigating circumstances. The level of development of the doer needs to be taken into account. How much foresight, roundsight and insight did the doer of the deed have? 501 Light show How much could he or she (or they) have had, given the circumstances? What internal conditioning factors in the mental make-up of an actor may there have been? This is not meant as condoning evil acts or excusing them, but placing them in an understandable context. The mature, superior, noble person is privileged, obliged, not to be bowed by the ignorance, hatred and greed of the immature. The intention of the perpetrator and the possibility of unintended, unanticipated tragic outcomes are to be considered. Did the doer intend evil, or was the action or system based on good intentions, however uninformed or oblivious of their future outcomes they may have been? Intention matters a great deal. To what extent should Darwin be held accountable for economic exploitation, Nietzsche for Nazism, religious founders for the fanaticism of followers? A clear realisation of the contingency and impermanence of all things would make a difference in one’s evaluation and response. That concerns the deed, its context and its outcome. Things could have been different; they are accidental, contingent, not fixed fate. This perspective also has a bearing on the actor. Such a person is not seen as a solid, substantial Doer of Evil, but as a passing arrangement of factors. So is the sufferer of injustice. That does not mean that the perpetrator should be absolved of responsibility, but it does make a difference in one’s response to the situation and to the doer of evil. In the end, realisation of the non-substantiality of all things and their End in Absoluteness makes a difference. There is the possibility of calm, in realisation of the larger context regarding the dissolution of all things. All things End. How trivial are yesterday’s fights, yesteryear’s wars. Empires come and go, and in the end, they all become mere shadows. There is, in the larger picture, the assumption of the possible drift of the world process towards the good, into which attitudes and actions of goodwill would fit far more constructively than destructive ill will. Life is not about the survival of the strong at the cost of the weak; it is about responsibility for the benefit of as many as possible, ideally for all. In the long run, in the larger picture, victory belongs to forgiveness. Do the above add up to passivity in the face of evil? By no means. It is the beginning, but it does create space for adequate measures to be taken to deal with situations transformatively in the longer run. Issues such as effective resistance, compensation, restitution and so on, have not been touched on. Forgiveness, also self-forgiveness, does not always come spontaneously, and it demands a great deal of insight into the self and the dark corners in the own mind. The same perspectives as above apply: not to ignore, condone, excuse; to admit honestly; to be as realistic and benevolent towards the self as towards others; to accept forgiveness if it is given by those offended, and to practise self-forgiveness and compensation as far as possible. 502 Chapter 22 conditionalistic totality in Horizon The term 'conditionalistic totality in Horizon’ (CTH) expresses the general drift of what has emerged in this essay. It emphasises the following: (D The radical contingency of things, constant change, multifactoriality, relationships above substances, mutuality and reciprocity, complementarity and interinclusion. (2) The search for harmonious totalistic syntheses excluding all forms of totalitarianism (implying exclusivism and violence of any sort). (3) An ultimately silencing awareness of Absolute Horizon, inviting not only critique, but also relative acceptance of what is. This underlying strategy has been applied across the board in a number of contexts, such as the relationship among the constituent aspects of Cosmos, the constitution of the singular human being and all other beings, the relationships between singularities and wholes of every type, and the relationship between Unground and Cosmos. This strategy was also applied to appreciating different religions in their singularity, yet valuing the plurality of different religions as instantiations of a homoversal search for meaning, and the mutual implication of all. As for the religions, | do not attach absolute value to any one of them, but see them as relative ways, some indeed more suitable than others, towards MM silence. They are all precious cultural products, parts of the one human heritage, but not one could be set up as exclusively true; nor is any inclusively true in a totalitarian, overriding sense. There is a larger space, dissolving them all. And within that space of silence the correlativity of the various MM systems of schools such as Platonism, Neoplatonism, Stoicism, Buddhism, Vedanta and Taoism and a fairly large number of representative figures of such religions and MM systems were investigated. A point was made of breaking down barriers, for example, the artificial ones erected between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’, ‘Indian’ and ‘Greek- Hellenistic’ religions and MM systems. In fact, Greece was as much part of Asia as of Europe further to the west and north, even more so. Naturally, the various visions from Africa, Australasia, the Pacific islands and other parts of the world are equally part of this whole, but space did not allow going into any detail. Mediterranean Africa itself was a meeting point of Africa pushing up from further down south, towards Europe and Asia in its several varieties. This does not amount to a relativistic, even nihilistic flatland where all distinctions and differences are obliterated. On the contrary, distinctions and differences were deemed important on this wandering filled with wonder. The best way to treat such systems is as interrelated moments of one larger fluid complex, realising that ultimately they all End. This is not the same as saying that everything is eventually lost. Nothing is. This perspective also has implications for the relationships between religion (at its apex: mysticism) and society in general. As far as society is concerned, 503 Light show the material and mental aspects are mutually conditioning. All attempts at giving words to the ultimate dimension of things are conducted from within the cultural space dominant at any time and in the vocabulary and concepts available at the time. Yet, at a certain point, all such cultural universes break down, and the most thoughtful minds transcend them, but they often return to them as wise, diplomatic leaders, educators, participants. Available social and cultural meaning at one level and the unavailable meaning of Absoluteness at a next level are interdependent. In this ambivalence, mysticism has the function of de-absolutising any social (economic, political, educational - and religious) claim to triumphalist dominance. It is radically critical of totalitarianism of any kind. The natural sciences provide an important input in humankind's orientation in the world, but are not final in that they are methodologically restrained from dealing with meaning in a transcendent sense. There are also the religious and MM roads of discovery, leading beyond science into such areas. Science, Religion and MM should not be collapsed into each other and neither should become subservient to the other. It is a matter of finding an optimal, complementary balance of significant yet distinct approaches to the world, assumed to be compatible and mutually conditioning. E 557 Trees and the forest In a ravine stands a forest of trees in which many generations of birds made their nests, raised their young and created their societies. In a small cleft of Cosmos, a collection of symbolic systems produced by one species of life, homo sapiens sapiens, is to be found: religions (also arts and sciences and philosophy) stand like trees growing over millennia from the soil of Unground towards the sky of Emptiness. Those worldview systems were and still are the environments in which cultures and individual people build their homes. A problem has been that most people do not see the forest of systems of ultimate meaning but only the individual tree that they inhabit, where they were hatched and on which they perch and feed. Unfortunately, some would want to see other equally precious trees chopped down. Of course the various trees are similar, even the same, in the sense they are all made of wood and that they all have roots, trunks, branches, leaves, flowers and fruit. They are also interconnected by reproduction. Yet, in another sense, each one is an individual, separate tree. They are not all the same, and every bird has the right to live in whatever distinctly different tree it prefers. One of my main concerns was to respect the right to distinctness of each singular religion and MM encountered along the way. They do not all add up to the same, as superficial ecumenism maintains. Another concern was to be aware not only of the differences and similarities of the plurality of trees, but to see the forest as a whole. To start seeing other ways of looking at the world than through the 504 Chapter 22 system of one’s own group, is a great step forward. It is a responsible kind of macro-ecumenical exercise among individual religions. However, it is not enough; it is still possible not to see the forest for the trees. One of the objects of this adventure was to stand back and to recognise the gestalt in what, to the cursory glance, would appear as a mere disconnected jumble of trees, probably competing for the same space. Yet from a sufficient distance one becomes aware of the commonalities in weather and soil type, the good years and the bad years, the droughts and the forest fires leaving their marks in and on all of them. From a certain distance and perspective one perceives one jungle giving coherence to the many trees, and to several species of trees. These reflections were interested in the individual trees and in the types of species, but also in the forest as a whole, and above all in the clearings in the forest and the shafts of sunlight penetrating the thick canopy from an open sky. Gestalt is not fact; its recognition is partly discovery, partly invention, partly imagination, partly construction, dependent on interest, relevance, distance and perspective. In previous chapters, visits were made to predecessors walking this terrain since the arising of MM in the full theoretical sense of the word, roughly two and a half millennia ago. The extent to which the roads open to us today were opened in ancient classical times, is remarkable. Equally remarkable is the extent to which the same concerns have found original expression in modern figures such as F.W.J. Schelling (to mention a striking example). At the end of this exploration and staying with the format in previous chapters, | shall now acknowledge a few contemporaries in our present situation; some treading a path similar to the one followed here, some trying out other possibilities, some more daring than others are. Again, space constraints do not allow a large gallery of portraits of positions and their representatives. materialism O Richard Dawkins Materialism is at present probably the most dominant species of worldview, at least in the English-writing world. From this group the provocative work of Richard Dawkins has drawn a great deal of attention. In Chapter 2, | commented on aspects of his work, but let me return to the question of the materialist implication of his thinking. For this, | focus on earlier books of his, The blind watchmaker (1986) and River out of Eden (1995). That Dawkins is filled with a sense of 'awe' (Dawkins 1986:5) before the natural world is obvious on every page, and his work contains fascinating detail to back up such amazement. But then an inconsistency cracks open. On the one hand, as a biologist, he avoids the issue of an inclusive explanation of ‘why’ 505 Light show things exist at all by passing the buck, so to speak, downwards to the physicists, who deal with the most basic dimension of all things; biologists cannot and do not have to give such explanation. While pursuing the above line of thought, Dawkins in the same breath declares triumphantly that the mystery of existence has been solved completely Cibid.:ixff.). In passing and without making a fuss about it: here Darwin emerges as a kind of Messiah and Dawkins speaks in almost apostolic missionary fashion. He works on the assumption of, shall we say, a chain of being. Such a ‘chain’ can be seen as either a bottom-up or a top-down structure. He thinks in terms of the first: an upward development of a chain of being, link by link, with study of biology one link higher up than that of physics and study of physics the most basic. He calls this mode of argument ‘hierarchical reductionism’ Cibid.:13). Here a metaphysical choice comes into play. To comment on this immediately, this essay opts for a very different model, one that might be compared to a web: an intricate system of subwebs of being, interconnected to others and stretching infinitely in all directions. To mention one thing: one may guess that life has its own directness to ultimacy, just as matter and consciousness have. As a general principle, one can safely say, explanations should be as simple and economical as possible, and also indispensable. The line of argument followed by Dawkins is underdone: by implication, he explains life (as well as consciousness) by reducing it to lower matter and matter alone (' the ricochets of atomic billiards chance to put together [...] life’) (Dawkins 1995:xi). Moreover, where does matter come from? His argument supplies no sufficient reason to think that the mystery of being has been solved. The question ‘why’ living things ‘exist at all’ (Dawkins 1986:3) is really passed on to physicists, who are then burdened with the question as to what it is that may be ‘below’ matter. Dawkins suggests the possibility of ‘literally nothing’ (whatever that might mean) or ‘units of the utmost simplicity’ Cibid.:14). It begs rather than answers the question. Nevertheless, he presents the mystery of existence as fully solved. An undercooked fish is presented with an extravagant dressing of over-the-top assurance and finality. The book claims too much for too little. Can it really be an ‘intellectually fulfilled’ atheism? Cibid.:6). Natural selection, ‘cumulative selection’ Cibid.:43), all by itself, does not seem to be a sufficient all-explanatory postulate. That is not to say that gradual biological evolution should be denied; but it should be absorbed into a wider context. Nor is ‘explanation’ to be reduced to the mechanistic questions of how things are put together and how they work from an engineering point of view Cibid.:21ff.). This is unguarded triumphalist modernist ideology, seemingly so oblivious of the determining role of its socio-cultural setting that it serves as any religious and political ideology does. The problem is also not at all that this model is ‘atheist’, but that an inadequate alternative to ‘theism’ is developed. The scope 506 Chapter 22 and range of the book are narrow. The problem is not that Dawkins goes too far, but that he does not go far and wide enough. A closed materialism is insufficient. His model, lacking a wider framework and a reflexive, self-critical epistemology, is closed, totalitarian. In this book at least, he seems to be oblivious of previous cumulative efforts over the millennia to develop integral theories of reality. At least, no attempt is made to engage with them. There is no broad based consideration of the histories, challenges and possibilities of the various MM traditions devised in different cultures over millennia. By way of comparison, Neoplatonism makes the opposite choice than Dawkins: its chain of being develops top-down. That model has the same structural weakness as materialism (as espoused by Dawkins). It is also hierarchical reductionism, but in the opposite direction: matter derives from life, which derives from consciousness. Our theory does not endorse Neoplatonic spiritualism either. Yet, here at least, a wider open space is assumed. Its strength compared to the chain of Dawkins, is that it envisages a space beyond both life and matter; Dawkins’ model plugs such a possibility in advance. On the other hand, the basic problem with traditional theism, overall more similar to Neoplatonism than to materialism, is the problem of a missing link: there is an absolute ontological break between the world (including life) and its assumed Creator. The entire popular debate between ‘theism’ and ‘atheism’ (not really a debate at all, but all-out kill-or-die trench warfare) is simplistic. Both are insufficient. A larger theory of all-embracing interconnectedness of being, emerging from a mystery (one that cannot be comprehensively solved by appealing to engineering) is the type advocated in this essay. If materialism (at least the version tasted above) is undercooked, traditional theism as usually presented, is overcooked. It literalises myths of, and produces arguments for what ‘must’ logically be the case in another ontological dimension altogether, instead of simply allowing the world to be, to emerge from an unapproachable yet necessarily assumed Horizon, ever so subtly until it can be seen in all its beauty right in front of us - for physics, chemistry and biology to analyse. The postulate of an individual, personal Maker or Designer analogous to us is superfluous and unwarranted. This envisionment assumes the ontological continuity of all dimensions of Arche as far as the physical and spiritual eye can see. Yet dispensing with simplistic anthropomorphic views of supernatural gods is not as weighty as Dawkins suggests. At a certain level, his The God delusion (2006) is compulsory reading, but the real job starts after his critique. | do not think the book made any real creative advance beyond his earlier thinking. He presents a big picture, but it is a reductionistic one. Still, it appears to be more open-ended than The blind watchmaker. Could, should he have moved further into MM? Indeed. Reductionistic materialism has run its course and done what could be done on its assumptions. 507 Light show O Howard Bloom Recent decades saw various attempts - from within the natural sciences, computer science, mathematics and logic and their applications in various fields - at understanding Cosmos comprehensively in new ways. Such endeavours proceeding from science, turn away from religion and theism and yet venture into or at least touch on the dimension of metaphysics. One of these contributions is the exuberant 2012 book of Howard Bloom: 7he God problem. How a godless cosmos creates (Bloom 2012). For comparable projects see Talbot (1991) and Kraus (2012). Admittedly, Bloom's fascinating book is rhetorically rather profuse, overwhelming the unsuspecting reader with excessive numbers and figures zooming into the zillions with brilliant metaphors and stacks of synonyms on every page. That is fine; his book is the outpouring of astrong Aha!-enthusiasm, and an effort to gain subscribers to his programme; in Bloom’s terminology, it is a recruitment strategy. Bloom’s book does not offer more of the same presented by Dawkins, but strikes out on a course confirming this essay in some respects. He consciously steps outside of the materialistic paradigm C(ibid.:562). In addition, he moves beyond the old mythological concept of God and old mythological creation stories. Yet he remains acutely conscious of what he terms ‘the God Problem’. Having dispensed with ‘God’, how is ‘creation’ to be understood, explained? That is his ‘problem’. He works from within science and mathematics, seemingly without knowing or concerning himself much about how the other half (non-scientific meaning-makers such as philosophers, apart from a few) lived over the last 2500 years. He does link up with some mathematical-philosophical titans such as Pythagoras and Plato and science-philosophical heroes such as Aristotle, but a connection between the two discourses in a wider sense has not been forged. The ravine between the two cultures still gapes deeply and steeply. Taking the difficulty of the ‘translation’ (a favourite word of Bloom) of meaning into account, he cannot be blamed too heavily. He did not want to write a history of ideas; he wanted to make a point, state a case. Yet he does shape building blocks towards a bridge from the perspective of science. It is to be applauded that Bloom does not simply fall back on the chance ‘ricochets of atomic billiards’ of matter as sole bottom explanation of everything. One warms to his idea that ultimately the emergence of Cosmos is to be explained with recourse to what he terms (among other names) ‘Ur patterns’ (here Plato with his Ideas plays his role): a limited number of ‘simple rules’, ‘axioms’, ‘a handful of primal commandments’ (Bloom 2012:556) and their corollaries. From these the entire universe (in fact, many simultaneous and consecutive universes) with their ever increasing complexities are to be explained as unfolding of the implicate properties of such rules. Several of the Eternal Principles put forward on these pages occur in Bloom’s book in the form of such basic rules. The Principle of Totalising is one of those. 508 Chapter 22 To Bloom, changing context is a creative principle of the highest order: take an old thing, repeat it in a new context and what you get is something new. What counts, is 'iteration with a new big picture, with a new unifying concept, with a new grand design’ (ibid.:407, 505ff.). The universe is all about connection and reconnection, communication, conversation, meaning (ibid.:422ff., 478ff.). In our terms: Cosmos is a process of Totalising and re-Totalising in contexts of ever-increasing size and complexity, coupled with Witting, Wanting and Willing. Signs of these last three, in other terms and with different names, are not lacking in Bloom's book either. He does not shy away from the 'anthropomorphic' shape of pictured reality. This is a significant insight, transcending the quasi-objectivism assumed by most of science. The fact that he speaks of the universe with all its physical features such as atoms and photons and so on as 'persisting', as 'driven, motivated’, as having ‘volition’ and ‘primitive patterns’ of ‘will’, as making ‘choices’, as having ‘competition’ and ‘dominance hierarchies’ and ‘needs’ and ‘desires’ and ‘love’, ‘hunger’ of evolution and ‘craving’ (ibid.:509-563) - not as mere figures of speech but as actual descriptive terms - all of that is a new dance of discovery performed by one of the excited 'bohemian bees' in the hive of scientists, having found new flower patches (ibid.:522ff.). It is congenial to the argument of this essay. Such terms, he rightly claims, are acceptable because of an inherent isomorphism between human thought and the deep structure of reality. Good, although a reflexive critique of anthropomorphism would have been most welcome. The real problem is that his arguments stall, are not sufficiently contextualised in a wider Horizon. ‘Free will began in the first flick of the big bang’ Cibid.:513), he claims; but ‘consciousness starts with humans’ (ibid.:513). There is no connection between the two. They are loose ends. True, we may all be ‘children of the big bang’ (ibid.:539) (assuming that it is correct science) but he asks not what might lie behind the Big Bang and the rules; ‘behind’ not in a temporal sense, but in a deep-structural, MM sense. His world just bangs into existence (i.e. similar to Dawkins); not randomly, but according to a set of rules (i.e. different from and an improvement on Dawkins). This essay endeavours to tie up such loose ends with its concepts of Infinitude, Eternity and Unground, which encompasses Absoluteness, Origin and End. The Mystery cannot be explained, but it can be deepened beyond the reach of science, mathematics, computer programmes (such as those of Stephen Wolfram) and ‘the raw force of reason’ (ibid.:552). Not as belief, not as substitute for science, but as complementary and context-providing to science. In short, has Bloom solved the 'God Problem'? No. The Big Bang to him, starts ‘from scratch’, ‘from nothing’ Ccibid.:544, 555), without any further discussion, as if these are self-explanatory concepts. The universe creates itself. Up to a point, our envisagement also argues that. Yet it cries out for a larger context. Of course, one need not go the way of Aristotle back to his 509 Light show Unmoved Mover or theism with its uncritical view of a personalistic God. Yet, simply to stop with the Big Bang is too abrupt. There is an even bigger picture, necessary to what Bloom calls ‘emergence’ and ‘complexity’. This leads to his treatment of the law of entropy and his insistence that the universe is not simply on an unstoppable way down and out, but that there are larger forces in play. He couches this idea in terms of another metaphor, called (from his secular Jewish background) the ‘Big Bagel’ model. It is a cyclical model of sorts: the universe started and will return to raw energy, and a new Big Bang will emerge. It is about ‘annihilation and rebirth’ (ibid.:549). This notion approximates our idea of Cosmos emerging and returning to Absolute Horizon. On the last two pages of his book, he comes close to real MM concerns. Indeed, an interesting move in science. idealism Not all contemporary physicists are materialists. In fact, there are signs that what might be called ‘idealism’ in a broad sense is making a comeback. Throughout this investigation, MM thinkers usually labelled ‘idealist’ in one way or another were visited and engaged with quite extensively. This essay itself is not idealist in the sense that matter is seen as absolutely secondary to mind. But it would not mind being called ‘idealistic’ in a loose sense, such as accepting that the world in its entirety, including matter, is mind-dependent in a conditionalistic sense. Nor would it mind being called ‘materialist’ in the sense that the world in its entirety, including mind, is matter-dependent in a conditionalistic sense. But it would not locate itself in either of both camps. Rather than survey the possible range of meanings of ‘idealism’, let me again simply compare notes with two fairly recent books. T.L.S. Sprigge British metaphysician T.L.S. Sprigge (1932-2007) proposes a version of ‘absolute idealism’, which he also refers to as ‘pantheistic idealism’, ‘panpsychism’ and ‘pan-experientialism’. His philosophy is presented as in line with what has been put forward by Spinoza (whom he takes to be a ‘partial exception’ to idealism), F.H. Bradley (1846-1924) and Josiah Royce (1855-1916); actually, as a synthesis of Spinozism and Bradleyism. As in previous cases in this S | shall concentrate on one book, now Sprigge’s final contribution: The God of metaphysics (2006). The broad version of metaphysics endorsed by Sprigge may be showing signs of recovery after G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell’s attacks on it early in the 20th century. In his own view, the idealist case needs ‘to be tightened up somewhat’, but its ‘real core’ was not vulnerable to those criticisms (Sprigge 2006:266). At least in this last book of his, his metaphysics 510 Chapter 22 appears as a metaphysical version of Christianity, stripped of mythological accretions and theologoumena such as the notion of the Trinity. Towards the end of his life and at the end of his thinking, Sprigge settled in a pantheistic kind of religion with a Christian flavour. In his later life, he actually joined the Unitarian Church. In his book the reader finds illuminating stocktaking of previous figures in his tradition (also of Kierkegaard, as critic of Hegel), but one does not get the sense of any provocative new start or fresh contribution. A venerable liberal school seems to have come to an end. Idealism of this kind can clearly be a religion to live and die by. Sprigge illustrates that. As can be expected, Sprigge’s thinking is carried by two convictions: that materialism and any description of the human being and any other animal in purely physical terms (ibid.:473) is to be rejected; and that the individual human being is assumed to live in an 'inconceivably vast total reality’ Cibid.:475). Both of these express basic assumptions of this essay. Would the term 'MM' be applicable to his thinking? Indeed, up to a point, but one not far up the road. On every page, there is evidence of the 'metaphysics' part of his thinking. The ‘mysticism’ part is referred to seldom and tentatively, and only really comes to the fore on the last pages of his book (ibid.:541f.). Yet somehow it seems to be implied throughout, not unrelated to how we understand the term. Sprigge's argument moves in three steps. First come the metaphysics. Secondly, after that come the religious implications of the metaphysics. In effect, Sprigge intends his metaphysical position to provide support to a variety of liberal Christian religion and theology. Thirdly he mentions the possibility of mysticism, albeit vaguely, as a kind of extension of religion. He does not enter into a satisfactory conceptual clarification of what he means by the term, and seems to associate it with 'enthusiasm' of some kind, which can be somewhat 'intellectualist' (ibid.:161); and compatible with ‘religious experiences’ (ibid.:541) in a general sense. It seems to be ‘a sense of a greater whole with which we can feel at one and thus be relieved for a time from our usual daily worries', as when sitting perched on a rock with the sea lapping around it (ibid.:541). Nevertheless, he believes that any serious philosophical treatment of religion should at least 'take account of mystical experience' (ibid.:542). In a voluminous book such as his, this is rather scanty. Mysticism as understood in this essay is at least implied in his view of religion, as supported by metaphysics Cibid.:8ff., 523ff., 534ff.). Religiously relevant metaphysics might, he says, have something like a religious truth value; might prompt certain ‘cosmic’ emotions; and might have something to say about how best to live. That corresponds closely to the definition of mysticism in this volume, namely as referring to enlightened intuitive wisdom and insight into the depth of reality; lucidity of emotion and will; and transparent universal generosity in sentiment and deed. Reason is one of its avenues along which mysticism proceeds in my view, but not the only one, and it emerges from and 51 Light show expires into a very clear sense of silence, transcending reason. Such a sense of silence as transcending rational metaphysics, as constituting mysticism and as being the very marrow of an MM enterprise, is lacking in Sprigge’s thinking. Finally, he suggests social communality, normally with communal ceremonies, as constitutive of religion. In this respect, too, mysticism tends to be minimalistic, personal and small group oriented rather than social power oriented. As far as his metaphysical methodology is concerned, it cannot be described as entirely convincing. One reason is that his obtaining of truth limits itself to the application of reason. The factor ‘imagination’ is admitted (ibid.:476f.), seemingly to indicate that the ideal, essential facts of reality uncovered by reason are not necessarily subjectively experienced or experienceable in sensory accessible reality, but are (must be) imaginable at a higher level, that of reason. At times, he operates with rather tortuous applications of sheer reason, the linkage of which, with other dimensions of knowing in a wider epistemological framework, remains undeveloped. There is a lack of a reflexive sense of the element of constructedness in all of metaphysics. The problems raised by Nagarjuna in the East and Kant in the West do not seem to feature. The business of metaphysics is ‘to know something of the general character of reality as it really is’ (ibid.:476): admittedly, only ‘something’, but that something obviously corresponds to reality. There is insufficient sense of the radical relativity of ‘ultimate’ knowing; of ultimate silence; of the empty hub of all, around which our theory in its entirety revolves. Correlating with the above, Sprigge argues that ‘nothing exists except experience’, and that the physical world ‘must somehow be composed of experience’ (‘consciousness’) Cibid.:484). Bluntly put, ‘consciousness [is] somehow more basic than the physical’ (ibid.:499). At a ‘noumenal’ level, the physical world consists of a complex system of interacting streams of consciousness (ibid.:500). Reality, the physical world as it appears to us, consists in the existence of innumerable streams of consciousness (experience) interacting with one another. Besides experience, nothing exists at all. All those streams are included in a single, absolute, all- embracing consciousness (experience). This final referent (the final ‘subject’, we may say) is variously called by him ‘an infinite individual’; ‘an infinite being’; ‘the Absolute’, existing and possessing certain attributes; ‘a Being’; ‘an eternal reality’; ‘an Eternal Consciousness’; ‘a or the God’; ‘the universe’; ‘one total cosmic consciousness’. Perhaps the most condensed formulation of his position is: ‘a great spiritual being living out its life in innumerable centres of experiences and combining these all into one great experience’ (ibid.:543). | find that Sprigge conflates what | have termed Cosmos and Infinity, and fails to recognise an emptying Horizon beyond the category of Being. As result, his ‘Absolute’ turns out to be a substantialised entity. Sprigge also downplays matter. He correctly argues that nothing, including physical 512 Chapter 22 reality, is unthought, but, | think, overlooks (1) the fact that thought itself points beyond itself towards a deeper depth, and (2) that thought and matter (to stay with these two for the moment) are mutually interpenetrating co- constituents of reality. Harmonising and co-ordinating both offer better prospects than subordinating one to the other or collapsing one into the other. Idealism and materialism need to be subsumed under a more inclusive perspective. His ethics, insisting on compassion and the removal of suffering as far as possible, resonates very well with the intention of this essay, as well as his obvious ecological concern (1996:267-302). Sprigge knows that the ideal metaphysical thinker (he mentions Spinoza and Whitehead with particular appreciation) should be scientifically well equipped, but overall his references to science are rare, and one gets the impression that he is not really comfortable with science and does not feel it necessarily incumbent to enter into discussion with it. It is noteworthy that Sprigge’s references to ‘non-Christian’ religions and metaphysics are extremely sparse, and really limited to a few isolated allusions to Buddhism, Islam and Advaita Vedanta. There is no serious considerations of such models in his frame of reference. LI Jeremy Dunham, lain Hamilton Grant and Sean Watson A new generation championing the cause of idealism in today's world, focuses on its need to come to terms with nature as unlocked by present-day science. That, we receive well. An example is /dealism, by Dunham, Grant and Watson. (2011), that provides critical overviews of philosophical idealisms of the distant and recent past as well as of contemporary forms of idealism, including its presence in contemporary biology. The authors straight away distance themselves from any form of two-world idealism usually but incorrectly ascribed to Plato. Rather, they defend a version of organicist, one-world idealism in which ‘knowing’ (Ideas', to pick up the most typical term) plays a world-structuring role. On an assumed scale stretching from reductionistic materialism on the one hand to reductionistic idealism on the other hand, and positioning Dawkins close to the materialist extreme, Berkeley and Fichte could perhaps be positioned close to an idealist extreme. By 'reductionistic | here mean an idealism neglecting or denying the constitutive reciprocity of ‘Idea’ (‘Form’) and matter, awarding absolute priority to the first. In the terms of our model: at a ‘vertical’ or ‘diachronic’ level (both analogues are really inapplicable), this model of ours views the three dimensions of Principles of Eternity, Infinitude and Cosmos as mutually constitutive. Speaking ‘horizontally’ or ‘synchronically’ (again, inapplicable terms), the various Principles at the level of Eternity (three sets of three), the four dimensions of Infinitude (including Infinite Matter and Infinite Thought) and the four dimensions of Cosmos (‘Spirit’) (including matter and thought) 513 Light show are seen as mutually constitutive without any priority awarded to any one aspect or dimension. Abstracting from their detailed historical analyses and their dialogue with contemporary idealist thinkers, Dunham et al., could be understood to suggest a comparable position. Skipping the details of their argument: * A first point concerning the relationship between idealism and biology is noteworthy: our authors opt for an 'organisational', 'systemic' view of life largely following idealists such as Hegel and Whitehead and the two systems-biological models of (a) the team Maturana and Varela and (b) Stuart Kaufmann (2006:223-255). Conflating the two biological approaches, they take the world as a whole to be a system of relatively autonomous networks of living entities. Each living entity is a self-productive ‘autopoetic’, 'autonomous' system, internally consisting of purposefully coherent parts. In turn, they are embedded in and interacting with multiple other and larger organisations and finally in the universe as ultimate organisational, organic entity. In fact, purposiveness is the motor of cosmic novelty. Like Bloom, they reject entropy as an absolute. That is also the position of this essay: Cosmos is not simply winding down; its winding down is part of a larger spiral movement of devolution and involution. * Following the above-mentioned biologists, Dunham et al. do not derive the world from thought, and equally reject any representational notion of knowledge (knowledge taken simply to copy or extract information from an external reality). Instead, endorsing the position of the above-mentioned biologists, they take cognition (implying even choice and freedom) to be ‘immanent to all of life’, 'co-extensive with life’, even bringing forth a world. Cognition is ‘immanent to all of nature’. In fact, outspokenly in line with a Parmenides, they aver that there is an ‘unbroken coincidence of our being, our doing, and our knowing’. The organisational forms, irreducible to lower levels and instantiated in multiple forms, are real, are in fact ‘real Ideas’ Cibid.:248f.). | find this fresh approach to the physical sciences, correlating old and new in new ways, promising indeed. theism In conclusion, | wish once more to visit the domain that has dominated Western thinking about ultimacy for millennia: theism. By ‘theism’ | mean the belief in a personal God (not necessarily excluding a plurality of such beings), separate from and vastly superior to the world. This God is Creator, Sustainer, Saviour and Judge of the world; often supernaturally revealed; with whom a relationship of personal faith and obedience is possible, in fact expected; and serving whom has more often than not been normatively institutionalised in rite and organisation. This core can be accompanied by various sets of sometimes 514 Chapter 22 mutually exclusive corollaries in various religions such as Judaism (YHWH and Israel), Christianity (Trinity and Jesus Christ) and Islam (Allah and the prophet Muhammad). It is no secret that in today's world theism is in trouble, and not simply because of the wilful, sinful disobedience and lack of faith of unrepentant sinners. Enough has been said in previous chapters about the MM difficulties facing theism, largely triggered by modern science. | do not wish to return or add to such difficulties, but would rather now briefly focus on one endeavour from within theism to recast it in a mode reconcilable with science in its many forms, at the same time saving, not merely appearances, but its historical intentions. | shall here restrict myself to Christian thinking. The adaptation, updating, of Christian theism ranges from a more extreme ‘left’ to a more extreme ‘right’. A synonym for the ‘left’ on the spectrum may in this context be theological ‘liberalism’; for ‘the right’, words such as ‘traditional’, ‘conservative’, and ‘fundamentalist’ come to mind. The difference among the latter three is the degree of reflexivity in that position about its stance. ‘Traditionalism’ simply amounts to a continuation of a past without thinking much about it, without justifying or defending it; it simply continues the way things have always been. ‘Conservatism’ contains a stronger element of critical thinking about a stance: it is a conscious choice, an act of taking up a position overagainstother possibilities, adopting one, excluding others. ‘Fundamentalism’ (taken in a wide sense) is a thoroughly thought out intellectual position, often well conversant with contemporary discussions in fields (particularly science) impacting on that religion, and with apologetic (reasoned defensive, vindicating) and often polemic (attacking) strategies. The course of reflection on these pages moves outside the strictures of theistic religions. In principle, it is friendly disposed towards all forms of liberal theology, eager to discern signs of a drift towards Absolute Horizon. Figures such as Church historian Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930), philosopher and sociologist of religion Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923) and New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) remain outstanding representatives of an old school of Christian liberal theology, beacons of scholarship and intellectual integrity. All three were tragic figures, witnessing the crash, around the First World War, of the values they stood for. Could they have anticipated more? In hindsight, probably. The crash was not sudden; it came about partly because of an epochal erosion of classical Christianity, partly because of a lack of an integrating MM discourse, continuous with the human past as a whole and relevant to the times, deeply indebted to science. Nor do | have any quarrel with innocent traditionalism and cautious conservatism. The attitude of loyalty to a treasured past and a well-intending group with arich history behind it is a great good. They carried human societies through difficult times; they are living monuments to the human capacity to 515 Light show endure hardship for the sake of what is ultimately valued. In times of quick change with as yet unknown but certainly revolutionary implications, conservatism is a valuable measure to sift useless, dangerous novelty from real value, proven over time. Tradition is precious, and it should receive, where possible, the benefit of the doubt. O Teilhard de Chardin Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) is an MM thinker in the classic mould, developing a vision of the universe as a developing totality - both the vision and the universe infused with a spiritual quality. Restricting myself to his main work The phenomenon of man (1959), | shall not set out his system, but only address what | see as the essential strengths and weaknesses of that system. Given the ambition and scope of his work, Teilhard could, with a great deal of justification, have been presented here as a totaliser of his epoch, as Proclus, Fa-tsang, Thomas and Hegel had been of their respective European classical, Chinese T’ang, European medieval and modern epochs (see Ch. 16). No doubt, he intended something similar. In view of the overriding apologetic interest of his book he is here read as a revisionary theist: * Firstly, concerning his overall strategy. At the outset, Teilhard makes the point that his book is neither metaphysics nor theology, but purely and simply ‘a scientific treatise’ (Teilhard de Chardin 1959 [1955]:31). It turns out to be much more. Up to a point, it is evolutionary science; then it becomes a total, Christian speculative worldview, ‘a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow’ Cibid.:241). Teilhard, ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1911, made the vow of obedience to the Church and adhered to that all his life, with its implication of accepting the duty to proclaim the truth of Christianity as institutionalised in the Church. His attempt to present his system as mere science was probably an effort to throw the custodians of doctrine in the Church off his trail. This tactic (however sincerely it undoubtedly would have been intended) certainly did not succeed, and one can see why. The watchers on the wall saw it for what it was: an adventure way out of the ambit of historical orthodoxy. What he came up with, was in essence a form of Christian philosophy or Christian natural theology - that is to say, in his case: it was admittedly not based on revelation, but on reason and science, specifically biology. Towards the end of his book, he leaves little doubt concerning the apologetic interest of his book. His science, his Christian philosophy and his natural theology developed as a basis for the continued acceptance and propagation of the classical Christian doctrines. It appears that he intended his system to be a necessary explication, perhaps adaptation, but not revolutionarily so, of Christian theism. Here | have no interest in evaluating the orthodoxy of his Christian philosophy or theology, nor the correctness of his science. From today’s vantage point, his science 516 Chapter 22 would appear as dated in some respects. More relevant to my understanding, is what Teilhard produced over and beyond those two discourses, namely a full-blown metaphysical system as a blending of science and Christian philosophy and theology. Certainly, he had a point: the two discourses should not be isolated. He went way beyond the asymptotic parallelism mentioned in Chapter 2, and invested in a strategy of liberal integrationism (discussed in that same chapter). His combination of evolutionary science and Christian faith and theology is like a pair of Siamese twins, joined so intimately, sharing vital organs to such an extent that separating them would cause one or both to perish. In spite of his claim that what he is coming up with is not metaphysics but ‘hyperphysics’ (ibid.:32) and his motto that science, philosophy and religion should ‘converge’ and not ‘merge’ (ibid.:32), the outcome of his project is, in the terms of our model, a complete 'MM' fully merging those discourses. At this stage, under present circumstances, his project seems premature and overambitious. Having said that, all such attempts such as his must be welcomed as experimental 'gropings' (his term). | am moved by his personal integrity, the profundity of his questions and answers and his anguish at being misunderstood by the Church and being thwarted by that body in his efforts to publish or even write about what he believed in as the right way to go. Secondly, concerning his view of Christianity and the other religions. One of the central concerns of this essay was to take the relationships between the various religions (mainly the 'Semitic' theisms, and the religions of India and China) to a new level - transcending each and thereby saving each. How does Teilhard fare in this respect - after all, he spent many years in Egypt and China? Not too well, | fear. The temptation of liberal religious programmes is to surreptitiously tame 'other' religions and harness them before one's own cart. Guided by a belief in the superiority of Christianity, Teilhard proceeds to extol its historical role. Simplifying his, at times, quite ornate language and imagery, his argument boils down to the following: In the historical developments since Neolithic times, the diversity of human collectivities (with the competition that the co-existence of various forms of life inevitably entails) continued to develop (ibid.:228-234). In due time, especially five regions proved to be particularly favourable to the rise of superior civilisation: (i) Central America; (ii) the South Seas; (iii) the Yellow River; (iv) the Ganges and Indus Rivers; and (v) the Nile valley and Mesopotamia. As things worked out historically, in the conflict and struggle for influence surrounding these foci, the contest for the future of the world would centre in the last three, Europe being an extension of the last one. In Teilhard's view, old China lacked the inclination and impetus for deep renovation of the world. As far as India is concerned, we are heavily indebted to the mystic influences emanating from that sub-continent. Yet India got lost in metaphysics, and due to its ‘excessive passivity and detachment’ it was ‘incapable of building the world’ Cibid.:232), of directing human 517 Light show 518 evolution. The Western zone of the world (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome and particularly the Judaeo-Christian ferment) became the force of the future. This was not merely in an accidental historical sense, but in a necessary cosmo-evolutionary sense, in the great spiral of life. The voice of Hegel, representative par excellence of supreme Western self-confidence, is discernible in the background. At the end of his book (the epilogue, ibid.:319- 327), the secret is finally fully unveiled. The Christian phenomenon reveals the Presence of Omega. To Teilhard, claiming to speak not as 'the convinced believer' but as 'the naturalist', this is not merely belief but scientific fact. This fact is confirmed by the substance of the Christian creed. It is also confirmed by the 'existence value' of Christianity, introducing, by 'Christian love', a new state of consciousness. Here Teilhard is completely carried away by his conviction of the superiority of Christianity as the harbinger of a necessary stage in the evolution towards Omega, simply postulated as scientific fact. This fact finds further confirmation in the success of Christianity. Other ancient religions are bound to untenable myths and steeped in pessimistic and passive mysticism. Yet Christianity is forging ahead, more vigorous and more necessary to the world than ever before. In fact, the Christian faith is destined to take the place of biological evolution in the process of cosmogenesis. One may perhaps, as attenuating circumstance, adduce the fact that this was written before the collapse of European cultural and religious triumphalism with World War Il. Only up to a point. There is no sign of any informed theoretical approach relating Christianity to any other religion. From the perspective of this book, Teilhard's thinking here is lacking. He did not appreciate the forest, mentioned at the start of 857. Thirdly, concerning God and world. Coming to the content and structure of his theory, Teilhard uncompromisingly affirms a personal God, conceived of as necessary for an understanding of evolution. The Incarnation of Christ is an evolutionary occurrence, in which Christ subdues under himself, purifies, directs and super-animates the ascent of consciousness. In his complete integration of Christian creed and scientific evolution, he sees the final vision of Christian dogma as culminating in 'a superior form of pantheism', presented as 'essentially orthodox and Christian': God is not simply identified with the world, but ‘God shall be in all’ Cibid.:322, 338). That coincides perfectly with what he terms ‘the Omega point’ (‘/e point Oméga’). How does that relate to evolution? In effect reinterpreting Aristotle's Prime Mover as the great teleological cause (causa finalis) motivating the process of evolution, evolution is understood to be drawn forwards by the Omega Point towards its completion in that same pre-existing and transcendent Omega Point. The magnetic force dominating his entire system has been laid out. The rest falls into place. Abstracting from the details of his system: the world is the process of evolutionary development starting as pre-life Cla Prévie’) (matter). Matter is ‘the without’ of things (7e dehors’), which Chapter 22 nevertheless, even in its most rudimentary form, has a corresponding and co-extensive ‘within’ (‘/e dedans’): consciousness (‘la conscience’). This rules out reductionistic materialism. The world is driven forward by the ‘Law of complexity and consciousness’ (‘Loi de complexité et de Conscience’): inherent in the world is an evolving spiritual energy, drawing it forwards in an unstoppable upward curve which not only counters but eventually outstrips the second law of thermodynamics (entropy). His book largely consists of filling in this movement with a great deal of detailed science, of which biology is the mainstay. Whether the science is good or bad, is not for me to say, but that at least some of it is outdated, is obvious. In Teilhard’s thinking, pre-life becomes life (the biosphere: ‘la biosphére’), from the very beginning moving progressively in a precise direction, towards a precise predetermined destiny. At this point, the comment may be made that his edifice is impressive when placed next to that of Plotinus. It turns out to be both very similar to and in a significant sense the very opposite of Plotinus’ vision (Oosthuizen 1974). What in Plotinus, representative of ancient thought, is an ahistorical participation of the less below in the perfect above, in Teilhard, typically modern, becomes a thoroughly historical, in fact teleological, movement from the less towards the more, the perfect, which has all the while been present in rudimentary form in the less. Apart from Plotinus, Bergson is the most significant figure in Teilhard's model, but other shadows, such as that of Schelling, exactly a century before Teilhard, hover in the background. To Teilhard, personalisation of the universe, coinciding with the Omega point, is the ultimate destiny, the final end. The identification of the world as inherently divine and the body of the divine, is a promising line of thought which also offers a fascinating comparative perspective on non-Christian theology (Overzee 1992). Yet his thought falls short. As indicated above, the strong identification of science and mystical-speculative Christian philosophy, in his mind supported by orthodox theology as undercarriage, is not compelling. He has not sufficiently problematised, relativised and transcended the concept of a personal God in the direction of, first perhaps, a demythologised, 'trans-personal' being and then, finally, what has here been called 'Absolute Horizon' where all thought with its content (including personhood) silently expires. That, and nothing less, is the End (destination, but also termination; termination as destination) of all. That is where the current ultimately takes us. Teilhard knows of End as eternal crowning glory, but not as humble return to emptiness. Fourthly, concerning the central position of the human being. Central to Teilhard's thinking is the central position of the human being in the cosmic evolutionary process. Clearly, the Christian teaching of the Incarnation plays a vital role in his thinking Cibid.:321f.). According to Teilhard, the specific direction of cosmic evolution (geogenesis), extended and centred in biogenesis, has consciousness at its basis. Evolution is primarily psychical transformation. The progress of earth, life and consciousness has an essential 519 Light show corollary in the progressive perfection of the brain as the sign and measurement of consciousness (the process ofcephalisation, cerebralisation), in conjunction with other conditions, such as becoming biped. It finds its culmination in the human being. With the human being, consciousness, which was an essential factor from the start, becomes thought (‘pensée’), which marks another irreversible qualitative crossing of a threshold, forward in the universal scheme of things, enabling the beginning of interior life. This step, the event of noogenesis (‘la noogénése’) outside and above the biosphere, transformed the entire structure of life, introducing another order of complexity altogether. Again, this is filled in with a wealth of scientific detail, now derived from Teilhards own palaeontological knowledge and experience. Hominisation, introducing the noosphere Cla noosphére?, did not affect this species only, but marked a transformation affecting the entire planet. The earth finds its soul. At present (Teilhard writes in the late 1930s) a critical change in the noosphere is occurring. The discovery of evolution has made all the difference. In fact, 'man discovers that he is nothing else than evolution become conscious of itself’ (ibid.:243). Not only conscious of it, but taking an active hand in shaping it (ibid.:274f.). Teilhard, while emphasising that the higher was in principle present in the lower from the beginning as its aim, nevertheless sees a straight arrow from matter to life, to consciousness and thought. His thought is much higher than his matter. This essay senses a stronger co-presence, equality, mutual inherence, of matter, life, and consciousness and thought, which allows humankind to be the intelligent servant of earth, first among equals. | find that Teilhard’s theory disturbs this relationship, allowing insufficient room for the necessary strong criticism of humanity's de facto role today as a scourge on earth. Extending the Christian triumphalism discernible in this thinking, he preaches human triumphalism. In passing, one may wonder whether Teilhard could have been aware of the structural similarities of his thinking in this respect, with the thinking of his exact contemporary, the Hindu, Sri Aurobindo (see Ch. 21). A dialogue, teasingly attractive and possibly fruitful, passed Teilhard by. His predispositions may not have allowed him to indulge in an open dialogue with India. Yet, ironically, what he presented as pure Christianity seems to converge remarkably with this version of Hinduism. * Fifthly, concerning his view of an evolutionary, personalising All. Teilhard's model unfolds a grand synthetic vision of all things, driven by the energy of love, coming together in a move towards even further transcendence. The present time witnesses a coalescence of things not possible before now, he argues. The roundness of the earth relentlessly brings about the confluence of thought, a concentration of the energies of consciousness. Humankind has become a single organised membrane over the earth, one great body in the process of being born. Achieving this megasynthesis, this gigantic psycho-biological operation, is the spring and secret of hominisation. There is 520 Chapter 22 ever more complexity, ever more consciousness, having science as its crown (ibid.:274f.). Yet thinking has not completed the evolutionary cycle. More is to come. Where will it all end? In a sort of super-life C/a survie), super- consciousness (‘super-conscience’), a ‘hyper personal Chyper-persone’’). Over against what he takes to be humankind’s obsessive need to depersonalise, Teilhard argues for a hyper personalised God-in-All, the Omega Point, somewhere ahead, in which the Universal and the Personal will simultaneously culminate in each other. That is the theosphere (‘theospére’), emerging from the noosphere, detaching itself from and soaring beyond earthly existence. It is the ultimate and final great mutation in the process of evolution. He sees that as an affirmation of the Christian belief in a personal God (ibid.:320f.). That great Presence is, he says, that which mystics have always sensed (ibid.:292f.). The universe personifies itself, becomes a focus of personal energies, but does not become a person (ibid.:293). It is the Great Stability (‘/e Grand Stable’), not at the bottom of things, but at the top, the ‘Prime Mover ahead’ (‘Premier Moteur en avant’). Thus, the great escape from entropy is achieved. Earth will die, but ‘man’ will be extrapolated into a beyond. At last, the mind will be detached from matter, and will rest with all its weight on God-Omega Cibid.:316). Yet evil will somehow remain present in all of this, like summits are always accompanied by abysses. It is time to stop this soaring flight. Teilhard appears to have crossed the border into wishful science fiction with a Christian flavour, and/or a Christian apologetic with a scientific dressing. He asks: '[/]s not the Christian faith destined, is it not preparing, to save and even to take the place of evolution?' (ibid.:526). Certainly, with his separation of mind from matter, his kind of anthropocentrism and his triumphalist Christianity, he has ventured into quagmires that this essay has throughout steadfastly refused to enter. Firstly, from the vantage point of our journey, Matter, Life, Love and Thought appear together from and disappear together into a dim and evanescent Extreme that this pilgrim on the journey cannot approach, but in the awareness of which his heart is filled with a sense of mystery and awe, and of which the stories told by religions may be beautiful and inspiring. Science has a lot of beauty and truth to offer this side of the Horizon; so do religions and art. The discourses of entropy and End may go hand in hand, but there is more than End: there is also Origin. This essay does not see a Great Stability, but a Great Emptiness from which relative continuities and identities flow, and to which they return. Secondly, in the drama of Cosmic unfolding and re-enfolding, the human being may be a bud for the better, from which a beautiful flower and a nutritious fruit may grow for Earth and, who knows, even beyond. To say more would be to say less. And thirdly, looking at the forest of human systems of meaning, observing a gestalt, one may of course appreciate one more than others, may nest in it and return to it every night, but no tree is singled out as the only one containing the fruit of truth; nor does one chop down other trees. 521 Light show in lieu of a conclusion In an imagined conversation of the sort pictured by Plato in his dialogues, participated in by men and women such as Lao-tzu and Chuang-Tzu, an anonymous Upanishadic visionary and Sankara, Siddhattha and Fa-tsang, Socrates and Plato, Jesus and Rumi, Hadewijch and Mira Bai, Rabe'a a al- Adawiya and Hildegard of Bingen and others, | do not imagine one claiming absolute power and exclusive truth. | imagine - and let that be the last word of this envisagement - such women and men to be clothed with quiet dignity and inner authority, conversing amicably and lightly in gentle voices, not triumphantly but selflessly, and between and in their words a noble, shared silence ... 522 References Alaerts, J.P.M., Rolfson, H. & De Baere, G., 1981, Jan van Ruusbroec. Die geestelike brulocht, Lannoo, Tielt. Aleaz, K.P., 1996,Christian thought through Advaita Vedanta, ISPCK, Delhi. Al-Ghazali, 1997, The incoherence of the philosophers: a parallel English-Arabic text translated, introduced, and annotated by M.E. Marmura, Brigham Young University Press, Provo, Utah. Algra, K., 2003, ‘Stoic theology’, in B. Inwood (ed), The Cambridge companion to stoicism, pp. 153-178, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Altizer, T.J.J., 1967, The gospel of Christian atheism, Collins, Sinaloa. Altizer, T.J.J., 2003, Godhead and the nothing, State University of New York Press, New York. Anacker, S., 1986, Seven works of Vasubandu, the Buddhist psychological doctor, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi. Anagnostopoulos, G. (ed.), 2009, A companion to Aristotle, Blackwell companions to philosophy, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford. Anderson, L.M. & Young, P.D., 2004, Women and religious traditions, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Aquilecchia, G., 1993, Schede Bruniane (1950-1991), Vecchiarelli Editore , Roma. Aquinas, T., 1963, ‘Summa theologiae. Volume 2. Existence and nature of God (1a.2-11)', Latin text and English translation, introduction, notes, appendices and glossary by Timothy McDermott and Thomas Gilby, Blackfriars, London. Aristotle, 1961, Metaphysics, transl. J. Warrington (ed.), Everyman's Library, London. Aristotle, 1970, ‘The physics’, transl. P.H Wicksteed & F.M. Cornford, Loeb Classical Library, vol. |, n.p., Harvard University Press, London. Aristotle, 1973, ‘The categories. On interpretation. Prior analytics’, transl. H.P. Cooke &H. Tredennick, Loeb Classical Library, vol. |, n.p., Harvard University Press, London. Argüelles, J. & Argüelles, M., 1972, ‘Foreword by Chögyam Trungpa’, in Mandala, n.p., Shambhala, London. Armstrong, A.H., 1967 [1940], 7he architecture of the intelligible universe in the philosophy of Plotinus. An analytical and historical study, Hakkert, Amsterdam. Asmussen, J.P., 1975, Manichaean literature. Representative texts, chiefly from Middle Persian and Parthian writings, Scholar's Facsimiles and Reprints, Delmar, New York. Aurobindo, S., 1974, The future evolution of man. The divine life upon earth, The Theosophical Publishing House, London. Asvaghosha, 1967, The awakening of faith, transl. Y.S. Hakeda, Columbia University Press, New York. Bales, E.F., 1982, ‘Plotinus’ theory of the One’, in R.B. Harris (ed.), The structure of being. A Neoplatonic approach, pp. 40-50, State University of New York Press, New York. Barham, J., 2004, 'The emergence of biological value', in W. Dembski & M. Ruse (eds.), Debating design, pp. 210-226, Cambridge University Press, New York. Basu, B.D., 1911, The sacred books of the Hindus, transl. Sanskrit Scholars, vol. I, Sudhindranatha Vasu, Allababad. Bausani, A., 2004, ‘The religious thought of Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi’, in M. Ikram Chaghatai (ed.), Mawlana Rumi. Bridge of East and West, pp. 9-32, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore. Beierwaltes, W., 1957, Lux intelligibilis. Untersuchung zur Lichtmetaphysik der Griechen, Novotny and Sóllner, München. Bello, I.A., 1989, The Medieval Islamic controversy between philosophy and orthodoxy. lima and ta'wil in the conflict between al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd, EJ Brill, Leiden. 523 References Belvalkar, S.K. & Ranade, R.D., 1974 [1927], History of Indian philosophy. The creative period, Oriental Books Reprint, New Delhi. Bennett, J., 1996, ‘Spinoza’s metaphysics’, in D. Garrett (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Spinoza, pp. 61-88, University Press, Cambridge. Berdyaev, N., 1958, Unground and freedom. Six theosophic points and other writings, pp. v-xxxvii, transl. J.R. Earle, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Bergson, H., 1954, The two sources of morality and religion, Henry Holt and Company, New York. Bergson, H., 1975 [1907], Creative evolution, transl. A. Mitchell, The Modern Library, New York. Berkeley, G., 1939, ‘A treatise concerning the principles of human knowledge’, in E.A. Burt (ed.), The English philosophers from Bacon to Mill, pp. 509-579, The Modern Library, New York. Berman, D., 1994, George Berkeley. Idealism and the man, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Bernard of Clairvaux, 1987, Selected works, transl. G.R. Evans, Paulist Press, New York. Bernard von Clairvaux, 1994, Sámliche Werke, lateinisch/deutsch V and VI., in G.B. Winckler (Hrsg.), Tyrolia-Verlag, Innsbruck. Betanzos, R.J., 1998, Franz von Baader's philosophy of love, Passagen Verlag, Vienna. Bettoni, E., 1978 [1946], Duns Scotus: The basic principles of his philosophy, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut. Bhattacharya, V., 1989 [1943], The Agamasastra of Gaudapàda, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi. Bhattacharayya, K., 1983, Traditional Indian philosophy as a modern Indian thinker views it’, in S.S. Rama Rao Pappu & R. Puligandla (eds.), /ndian philosophy: Past and future, pp. 171-224, Motilalll Banarsidass, Delhi. Biechler, J.E. & Bond, H.L., 1990, Nicholas of Cusa on interreligious harmony. Text, concordance and translation of De pace fidei, Edwin Mellen Press, New York. Bloom, H., 2012, The God problem. How a godless cosmos creates, Prometheus Books, New York. Bobro, M.E., 2004, Se/f and substance in Leibniz, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht. Bodhi, B., 1978, The discourse on the all-embracing net of views: The Brahmajala Sutta and its commentaries, transl. from Pali, Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy. Boehme, J. see Bóhme, J. Bohm, D., 1996 [1957], Causality and chance in modern physics, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Bohm, D., 2003, The essential David Bohm, in L. Nichol (ed.), Routledge, London. Bornkamm, H., 1925, Luther und Bóhme, A Marcus und E Webers Verlag, Bonn. Bóhme, J., 1955-1961, Sámtliche Schriften. Faksimile-Nachdruck der Ausgabe von 1730 in elf Banden neu herausgegeben von Will-Erich Peuckert, Frommans Verlag, Stuttgart. Bronkhorst, J., 2014, ‘Misunderstood origins how Buddhism fooled modern scholarship and itself’, in D.N. Jha (ed), The complex heritage of Early India. Essays in memory of R S Sharma, pp. 307-325, Manohar, New Delhi. Brown, C., 1990, Leibniz and Strawson. A new essay in descriptive metaphysics, Philosophia Verlag, Wien. Brown, R.F., 1977, The later philosophy of Schelling. The influence of Boehme on the works of 1809-1815, Associated University Press, London. Bruno, G., 1962, Cause, principle and unity, transl. J. Lindsay, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut. Brunschwig, J., 2003, ‘Stoic metaphysics’, in B. Inwood (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Stoicism, pp. 206-232, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Brüntrup, A., 1973, Kónnen und Sein. Der Zusammenhang der Spátschriften des Nikolaus von Kues, Verlag Anton Pustet, München. Buber, M., 1958 [1923], / and Thou, transl. R.G. Smith, T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh. 524 References Buddhaghosa, 1979, The path of purification (Visuddhimagga), transl. B. Nanamoli, Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy. Bultmann, R., 1968, Das Evangelium des Johannes, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Góttingen. Brennan, T., 2003, ‘Stoic moral psychology’, in B. Inwood, The Cambridge Companion, pp. 257-294, Cambridge University Press, New York. Capobianco, R., 2010, Engaging Heidegger, University of Toronto Press, Toronto. Cappuyns, M., 1964 [1933], Jean Scot Erigé: Sa vie, son oeuvre, sa pensée, Culture et Civilization, Brussel. Caputo, J.D., 1978, The mystical element in Heidegger's thought, Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio. Caputo, J.D., 1982, Heidegger and Aquinas. An essay on overcoming metaphysics, Fordham University Press, New York. Chan, W.-T., 1963, A source book in Chinese philosophy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. Chang, G.C.C., 1971, The Buddhist teaching of totality. The philosophy of Hwa Yen Buddhism, Pennsylvania State University Press, London. Chaghatai, M.I., (ed.), 2004, Mawlana Rumi. Bridge of East and West, pp. 461-480, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore. Chatterjee, A.K., 1987 [1962], 7he Yogacara idealism, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi. Chatterji, P., 1982, ‘Plotinus and Sri Auorbindo: a comparative study’, in H.R. Baine (ed.), Neoplatonism and Indian thought, pp 257-272, State University of New York Press, New York. Cheng, C.-Y., 1985, ‘Mencius’, in D.H. Bishop (ed.), Chinese thought. An introduction, pp. 110-149, South Asia Books, Columbia, Missouri. Chittick, W.C., 1994, /maginal worlds. Ibn al-Arabi and the problem of religious diversity, State University of New York Press, New York. Chittick, W.C., 2007 [2005], /bn Arabi. Heir to the prophets, Oneworld, Oxford. Cioran, E.M., 1993 [1973], The trouble with being born, transl. R. Howard, With an introduction by Benjamin Ivry, Quartet Books, London. Claesges, U., 1974, Geschichte des Selbsbewusstseins. Der Ursprung des spekulativen Problems in Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre von 1794-95, Martinus Nijhoff, Den Haag. Clark, S.R.L., 1996, ‘Plotinus: Body and soul’, in L.P. Gerson (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Plotinus, pp. 275-291, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Clayton, P., 2007, 'Boundaries crossed and uncrossable: Physical science, social science, theoloy', in K. VanHoozer & M. Warner (eds), Transcending boundaries in philosophy and theology, pp. 91-103, Ashgate, Aldershot, Hampshire, England. Cleary, T., 1993, The Flower ornament scripture, A translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra, Shambhala, London. Cobb, W.S., 1990, Plato’s Sophist, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Sinaloa. Collins, S., 1982, Se/fless persons: Imagery and thought in Theravada Buddhism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Collins, S., 1998, Nirvana and other Buddhist felicities. Utopias of the Pali imaginaire, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Conze, E., 1963, ‘Spurious parallels to Buddhist philosophy’, Philosophy East and West 13(2), 105-115. https://doi.org/10.2307/1396797 Conze, E., 1967, ‘Buddhism and gnosis’, in U. Bianchi (ed.), The origin of Gnosticism, pp. 651-667, Leiden. Copleston, F., 1999 [1963], A history of philosophy, Volume 7. 18th and 19th century German philosophy, Continuum, London. Corbin, H., 1964, History of Islamic philosophy, transl. L. Sherrard & P. Sherrard, Kegan Paul International, London. 525 References Corbin, H., 1975 [1964], Mundus imaginalis, or the imaginary and the imaginal, Golgonooza Press, Ipswich. Corbin, H., 1997 [1969], Alone with the Alone. Creative imagination in the Sufism of Ibn "Arabi, University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. Cornford, F.M., 1956 [1937], Plato’s cosmology. The Timaeus of Plato translated with a running commentary, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. Costa, C.D., 1996, 'Plotinus and later Platonic philosophers on the causality of the First Principle’, in L.P. Gerson, The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, pp. 356-385, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Cottingham, J., 1992, ‘Cartesian dualism: Theology, metaphysics, and science’, in J. Cottingham (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Descartes, pp. 236-257, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Coudert, A.P. , Popkin, R.H. & Weiner, G.M. (eds.), 1998, Leibniz, mysticism and religion, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht. Creswell, J.W., 2013, Qualitative inquiry and research design, Sage, Los Angeles, California. Curd, P., 1998, The legacy of Parmenides. Eleatic monism and later Presocratic thought, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. Curley, E.M., 1969, Spinoza's metaphysics: An essay in interpretation, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Darwin, C., 1952a [1859], 7he origin of species by means of natural selection, in R.M. Hutchins (ed.), Great Books of the Western World, pp. 1-251, Encyclopaedia Brittanica, London. Darwin, C., 1952b [1871], The descent of man and selection in relation to sex, in R.M. Hutchins (ed.), Great Books of the Western World, pp. 253-659, Encyclopaedia Brittanica, London, Dasgupta, S., 1962 [1933], /ndian Idealism, University Press, Cambridge. Dasgupta, S., 1975 [1922], A history of Indian philosophy, vol. I, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi. Davis, C., 1976, Body as spirit: The nature of religious feeling, Hodder and Stoughton, London. Dawkins, R., 1986, The blind watchmaker, Longman Scientific and Technical, Harlow. Dawkins, R., 1995, River out of Eden, Basic Books, New York. Dawkins, R., 2006, The God delusion, Bantam Press, London. Deghaye, P., 1985, La naissance de Dieu ou La doctrine de Jacob Boehme, Albin.Michel, Paris. Deleuze, G., 1988 [1966], Bergsonism, Zone Books, New York. De la Vallée Poussin, 1988-1990 (1923-1931), Abhidharmakosabhasyam, vols. I-IV, transl. L.M. Pruden, Asian Humanities Press, Berkeley, California. Dembski, W.A. & Ruse, M., 2006, Debating design. From Darwin to DNA, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Dennett, D., 1987, The intentional stance, MIT Press, London. Dennett, D.C., 1996, Kinds of minds. Towards an understanding of consciousness, Basic Books, New York. Denzinger, H., & Schónmetzer, A., 1963, Enchiridion Symbolorum Definitionum et Declarationum de rebus fidei et morum. Freiburg, Herder. Descartes, 1967, Meditationes de prima philosophia; Oeuvres philosophiques, Tome ll (1638-1642), Garnier Fréres, Paris. De Villiers, P.G.R., 2008, 'Aanbidding van God in die lig van Bybelse spiritualiteit', Dutch Reformed Theological Journal 49, 124-159. Dharmasiri, G., 1974, A Buddhist critique of the Christian concept of God. A critique of the concept of God in contemporary Christian theology and philosophy of religion from the point of view of early Buddhism, Lake House Investments, Colombo. Dienstag, J.I., 1975, ‘The relationship of Maimonides to his non-Jewish predecessors’, in J.l. Dienstag (ed), Studies in Maimonides and St. Thomas Aquinas, pp. XIII-LIX, KTAV Publishing House, Sinaloa. 526 References Diesendruck, Z., 1975, ‘Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas’, in JJ. Dienstag (ed), Studies in Maimonides and St. Thomas Aquinas, pp. 184-191, KTAV Publishing House, Sinaloa. Dreyer, E.A., 2007, Holy Power, Holy Presence. Rediscovering Medieval metaphors for the Holy Spirit, Paulist Press, Mahwah, New Jersey. Drobner, H.R. & Klock, C. (Hrsg.), 1990, Studien zu Gregor von Nyssa und der christlichen Spátantike, EJ Brill, Leiden. Duclow, D.F., 1988, Masters of learned ignorance: Eriugena, Eckhart, Cusanus, Ashgate, Burlington. Dunham, J., Grant, I.H. & Watson, S., 2011, /dea/ism. The history of a philosophy, Acumen, Durham. Duns Scotus, J., 1994, Contingency and freedom, Lectura I 39, transl. A. Vos Jaczn, H. Veldhuis, A.H. Looman-Graaskamp, E. Dekker & N.W. den Bok, Kluwer Academic Publishers, London. Eden, K., 2005, 'Aristotle's Poetics: A defense of tragic fiction’, in R. Bushnell (ed.), A companion to tragedy, pp. 41-50, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford. Einstein, A., 1933,7he Collected Papers, vol 3, The Swiss years: 1909-1911, transl. A. Beck, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. Elwes, R.H.M., 1955 [1951], The chief works of Benedict de Spinoza, Translated from the Latin, vol. Il, Dover Publications, New York. Epstein, l., 1975 [1959], Judaism. A historical presentation, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth. Esposito, J.L., 1977, Schelling's idealism and philosophy of nature, Bucknell University Press, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Evans, G.R., 2000, Bernard of Clairvaux, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Faivre, A., 2000 [1996], 7heosophy, imagination, tradition. Studies in Western esotericism, State University of New York Press, New York. Faur, J., 1999, Homo mysticus. A guide to Maimonides's Guide for the perplexed, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York. Faye, J. & Folse, H.J. (eds.), 1994, Niels Bohr and contemporary philosophy, Kluwer Academic Publishers, London. Fideler, D., 2002, Neoplatonism and the cosmological revolution: holism, fractal geometry, and mind-in-nature; in H.R. Baine (ed.), pp. 103-118, Neop/latonism and contemporary thought: Part One, State University Press, New York. ichte, J.H., 1845, Johann Gottlieb Fichte's sámmtliche Werke. Erster Band, pp. 85-328, Verlag von Veit und Comp, Berlin. sm] I ne, L., 2003, Physician of the soul, healer of the cosmos. Isaac Luria and his Kabbalistic fellowship, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California. T scher, A.M., 2008, Martin Heidegger - der gottlose Priester. Psychogram eines Denkers, Rüffer and Rub, Zürich. Fox, M.V., 1999, A time to tear down and a time to build up, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Frank, D.H.F., Leaman, O. & Manekin, C.H. (eds.), 2000, The Jewish philosophy reader, Routledge, London. Frauwallner, E., 1973, History of Indian philosophy, vol. Il, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi. Frede, D., 2003, ‘Stoic determinism’, in B. Inwood (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Stoicism, p. 179ff., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Fung, Y.-L., 1953, ‘A history of Chinese philosophy’, vol. |, The period of the philosophers (From the beginnings to circa 100 BC) (1952) and vol Il. The period of classical learning (from the second century BC to the twentieth century AD), transl. D. Bodde, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. Gade, E.-G., 1974, Eros und Identität. Zur Grundstruktur der Dichtungen Friedrich von Hardenbergs (Novalis), NG Elwert Verlag, Marburg. Geldsetzer, L., 2010, Nagarjuna. Die Lehre von der Mitte (Mula-madhyamaka-karika). Zhong Lun. Chinesisch-Deutsch. Aus dem chinesischen Text des Kumarajiva Ubersetzt und mit einem Kommentar herausgegeben von, Felix Meiner verlag, Hamburg. 527 References Gerson, L.P., 1994, Plotinus, Routledge, London. Gibbons, B.J., 2001, Spirituality and the occult from the Renaissance to the modern age, Routledge, London. Girardot, N.J., 1983 [2007], Myth and meaning in early Taoism. The theme of chaos (hun-tun), University of California Press, Los Angeles, California. Górtz, H.-J., 1977, Franz von Baaders 'anthropologischer Standpunkt', Alber, München. Gosztonyi, A., 1976, Der Raum. Geschichte seiner Probleme in Philosophie und Wissenschaften. 2 Bánde, Verlag Karl Alber, München. Gotshalk, R., 1998, The beginnings of philosophy in India, University Press of America, Oxford. Gottlieb, R.S. (ed.), 2006, The Oxford handbook of religion and ecology, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Graham, A.C., 1981, Chuang-Tzu. The seven inner chapters and other writings from the book Chuang-Tzu, George Allen and Unwin, London. Graham, A.C., 1989, Disputers of the Tao. Philosophical argument in ancient China, Open Court, La Salle, Illinois. Grant, S., 2000, ‘The contemporary relevance of the Advaita of Sankaracarya’, in B.J. Malkovsky (ed, New perspectives on Advaita Vedanta. Essays in commemoration of Professor Richard De Smet, pp. 148-165, Brill, the Netherlands. Grayling, A.C., 2013, The God argument. The case against religion and for humanism, Bloomsbury, London. Greene, B., 2004, The fabric of the cosmos: Space, time, and the texture of reality, Alfred A. Knopf, New York. Gregory of Nyssa, 1978, The life of Moses, transl. A.J. Malherbe & E. Ferguson, Paulist Press, New York. Gregor von Nyssa, 1992, Contra Eunomium 11-146, Eingeleitet, übersetzt und kommentiert von Jürgen-André Róder, Peter Lang, Berlin. Guillaume, A., 1977 [1954], /slam. Penguin Books, London. Guttmann, J., 1988 [1964], The philosophy of Judaism. The history of Jewish philosophy from Biblical times to Franz Rosenzweig, Jason Aronson, London. Haeri, S.F., 2008, Witnessing perfection, John Hunt Publishing, Washington DC. Hahm, D.E., 1977, The origins of Stoic cosmology, Ohio State University Press, Sinaloa. Hakeda, Y.S., 1967, The awakening of faith. Attributed to Asvaghosaa, Translated, with commentary, Columbia University Press, New York. Halbfass, W., 1988, /ndia and Europe. An essay in understanding, State University of New York, New York. Halliwell, S., 1987, The poetics of Aristotle, Translation and commentary, Duckworth, London. Hancock, C., 2002, 'The influence of Plotinus on Bergson's critique of empirical science', in R.B. Harris (ed.), Neoplatonism and contemporary thought. Part One, pp. 139-161, State University Press, New York. Hanegraaff, W.J., 2012, Esotericism and the academy: Rejected knowledge in Western culture, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Hatab, L.J., 1982, ‘Plotinus and the Upanishads’, in R.B. Harris (ed.), Neop/latonism and Indian thought, pp. 27-43, International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, Norfolk, Virginia. Hathaway, R., 1982, ‘The anatomy of a Neoplatonist metaphysical proof’, in R.B. Harris (ed.), The structure of Being, pp. 122-156, International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, Norfolk, Virginia. Haywood, B., 1959, Novalis: The veil of imagery. A study of the poetic works of Freidrich von Hardenberg (1772-1801)'s, Mouton and Co., Gravenhage. Hegel, G.W.F., 1951, Sámtliche Werke, 2. Bd., Phánomenologie des Geistes, Frommanns Verlag, Stuttgart. 528 References Hegel, G.W.F., 1954, Vorlesungen über die Aesthetik. Dritter band. Sámtliche Werke, Vierzehnter Band. Stuttgart: Frommanns Verlag,. Hegel, G.W.F., 1959, Encyclopedia of philosophy, transl. G.E. Mueller, Philosophical Library, New York. Heidegger, M., 1986 [1927], Sein und Zeit, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen. Heidegger, M., 1976 Nachwort zu ‘Was ist Metaphysik? (1943 [a]; in Wegmarken. Gesamtausgabe, Band 9, pp. 303-311, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main. Heidegger, M., 1977, Nietzsche's Wort ‘Gott is tot’ (1943 [b]); in Ho/zwege. pp 209-267, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main. Heidegger, M., 1964, ‘Das Ende der Philosophie und die Aufgabe des Denkens', in Zur Sache des Denkens, pp. 67-90, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main. Heidegger, M., 1983 [1953], Einführung in die Metaphysik. Gesamtausgabe, Band 40., Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main. Heidegger, M., 1989, Beitráge zur Philosophie (vom Ereignis). Gesamtausgabe, Band 65., Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main. Heidegger, M., 2000 [1952], ‘Was heisst Denken?’, in Vortráge und Aufsátze. Gesamtausgabe, Band 7, pp. 127-143, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main. Heidegger, M., 2007 [1964], 'Das Ende der Philosophie und die Aufgabe des Denkens', in Von Friedrich-Wilhelm & Von Herrmann (Hrsg. Zur Sache des Denkens, pp. 67-90, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main. Heidegger, M., & Der Wahrheit V.W., 1976 [1930], in Von Friedrich-Wilhelm & Von Herrmann (Hrsg.), Wegmarken. Gesamtausgabe, Band 9, pp 177-202, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main. Heisenberg, W., 1958, Physics and philosophy. The revolution in modern science, Harper and Brothers Publishers, New York. Heisig, J.W., 2001, Philosophers of nothingness. An essay on the Kyoto school, University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu. Hoffmann, Y., 1978, "Dream-world" philosophers: Berkeley and Vasubandhu’, in B.A. Scharfstein et al. (eds.), Philosophy East/Philosophy West. A critical comparison of Indian, Chinese, Islamic, and European philosophy, pp. 247-268, Oxford University Press, New York. Hopkins, J., 1981, Nicholas of Cusa. On learned ignorance: A translation and an appraisal of De docta ignorantia, AJ Benning Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Hopkins, J., 1998, Nicholas of Cusa: Six Latin texts translated into English by Jasper Hopkins, Arthur J. Banning Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Horner, I.B., 1976, The collection of the middle length sayings (Majjhima-Nikaya), vol |, transl. from the Pali, Pali Text Society, London. Houlgate, S., 2005, An introduction to Hegel: Freedom, truth and history, Blackwell, Malden, Massachusetts. Hume, R.E., 1968 [1921], The thirteen principal Upanishads, Translated from the Sanskrit with an outline of the philosophy of the Upanishads, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Hvolbek, R., 1998, Mysticism and experience, University Press of America, New York. Ibn Al'Arabi, 1980, The bezels of wisdom, tranls. R. W.J. Austin, SPCK, London. Ibn ‘Arabi, 2001, Contemplation of the Holy Mysteries and the rising of the divine lights, Anqa Publishing, Oxford. Inge, W.R., 1948,7he philosophy of Plotinus. The Gifford lectures at St Andrews 1917-1918, Two volumes, Longmans, Green and Co., London. Isaacson, W., 2008, Einstein. His life and universe, Pocket Books, New York. Izutsu, T., 1983, Sufism and Taoism. A comparative study of key philosophical concepts, University of California Press, Los Angeles, California. Jambet, C., 2006, The act of being. The philosophy of revelation in Mulla Sadra, Zone Books, New York. 529 References Jaspers, K., 1947,Von der Wahrheit, R. Piper, München. Jaspers, K., 1953, The origin and goal of history, Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut. Jayatilleke, K.N., 1980 [1963], Early Buddhist theory of knowledge, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi. John of Damascus, 1989 [1898], Exposition of the Orthodox faith, transl. S.D.F. Salmond in Philip Schaff & H. Wace, A se/ect Library of Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second series, Volume IX, T and T Clark, Edinburgh. Jolley, N. (ed.), 1995, The Cambridge companion to Leibniz, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Kahn, C.H., 1979, The art and thought of Heraclitus. An edition of the fragments with translation and commentary, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Kant, l., 1952, Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Nach der ersten und zweiten Original-Ausgabe neu herausgegeben von Raymund Schmidt, Felix Meiner, Hamburg. Karim, Al-Haj M.F., 1982, /mam Gazzali's Ihya Ulum-id-Din, Book |, Kitab Bhavan, New Delhi. Kauffman, S., 2006, 'Prolegomenon to a general biology', in W.A. Dembski & M. Ruse (eds.), Debating design. From Darwin to DNA, pp. 151-172, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Keenan, J.P., 1989, The meaning of Christ. A Mahayana theology, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York. Kellner, M., 2006, Maimonides’ confrontation with mysticism, The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, Oxford. Kesarcodi-Watson, l., 1992, ‘Sankara, Ramanuja and bhakti’, in G.M. Bailey & I. Kesarcodi-Watson (eds.), Bhakti studies, pp. 98-155, Sterling Publishers, New Delhi. Kim, H.-J., 1987, Dogen Kigen. Mystical realist, University of Arizona Press, Tuczon, Arizona. Kingsley, P., 1999, /n the dark places of wisdom, Element, Boston, Massachusetts. Kingsley, P., 2005, Reality, The Golden Sufi Center, Inverness, California. Kingsley, P., 2010, A story waiting to pierce you. Mongolia, Tibet and the destiny of the Western world, The Golden Sufi Center, Point Reyes, California. Kirchhoff, J., 1980, Giordano Bruno, Rowohlt, Hamburg. Kirchhoff, J., 1998, Was die Erde will. Mensch, Kosmos, Tiefenókologie, Gustav Lübbe Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach. Kirchhoff, J., 1999, Räume, Dimensionen, Weltmodelle. Impulse für eine andere Naturwissenschaft, Heinrich Hugendhubel, Bergisch Gladbach. Kloetzli, W.R., 2007 [1983], Buddhist cosmology. Science and theology in the images of motion and light, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi. Kochumuttom, T.A., 1982, A Buddhist doctrine of experience. A new translation and interpretation of the works of Vasubandhu the Yogacarin, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi. Konik, A., 2009, Buddhism and transgression: The appropriation of Buddhism in the contemporary West, Brill, Leiden. Kordig, C.R., 1983, ‘The mathematics of mysticism: Plotinus and Proclus', in R.B. Harris (ed.), The structure of being, pp. 114-121, Albany, New York. Kourie, C., 2006, ‘The "turn" to spirituality’, Acta Theologica Supplementum 8, pp. 19-40, University of the Free State Press, Bloemfontein. Kourie, C., 2008, ‘Mysticism: A way of unknowing’, in P. de Villiers, C.E.T. Kourie & C. Lombaard (eds), The Spirit that empowers: Perspectives on spirituality, Acta Theologia Supplementum 11, pp. 59-75, University of the Free State Press, Bloemfontein. Koyré, A., 1968 [1929], La philosophie de Jacob Boehme, Franklin, New York. Kraus, L.M., 2012, A universe from nothing. Why there is something rather than nothing, Atria Paperback, New York. Krüger, J.S., 1995, A/ong edges. Religion in South Africa. Bushman, Christian, Buddhist, University of South Africa, Pretoria. Krüger, J.S., 2004, Goddelike oneindigheid. Die religieuse metafisika van Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) aan die hand van De la causa, principio e uno, Aurora Pers, Pretoria. 530 References Kruger, J.S., 2007, Turning-points in Buddhist mysticism and philosophy, Aurora Press, Pretoria. Kurian, A., 2000, Ascent to nothingness. The ascent to God according to John of the Cross, St Pauls, London. Lacey, A.R., 1989, Bergson, Routledge, London. Lambert, W., 1978, Franz von Baaders Philosophie des Gebets: Ein Grundriss seines Denkens, Tyrolia-Verlag, MUnchen. Langermann, Y.T., 2007, ‘East and West in Hasdai Crescas: Some reflections on history and historiography’, in Y. Tzvi Langermann & J. Stern (eds.), Adaptations and innovations. Studies on the interaction between Jewish and Islamic thought and literature from the early Middle Ages to the late twentieth century, pp. 229-248, Peeters, Leuven. Lao Tzu, L., 1979 [1963], Tao te ching, transl. D.C. Lau, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth. Lapidge, M., 1978, ‘Stoic cosmology’, in J.M. Rist (ed.), The Stoics, pp. 161-186, University of California Press, Berkeley, California. Larson, G.J., 1969, Classical Samkhya. An interpretation of its history and meaning, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi. Lasker, D.J., 1977, Jewish philosophical polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages, Ktav Publishing House, New York. Lasker, D.J., 1997, ‘Chasdai Crescas’, in D.H. Frank & O. Leaman (eds.), History of Jewish philosophy. Routledge History of World philosophies, vol. 2, pp. 399-414, Routledge, London. Lau, D.C., 1970, Mencius, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth. Leclercq, J., 1976 [1966], Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercian spirit, transl. C. Lavoie, Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo, MI. Leibniz, G.W., 1959 [1840], Philosophical writings, G.H.R. Parkinson (ed.), JM Dent and Sons, London. Lewis, F.A., 2009, ‘Form and matter’, in G. Anagnostopoulos (ed.), A companion to Aristotle. Blackwell companions to philosophy, pp. 162-185, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford. Loader, J.A., 1979, Polar structures in the book of Qohelet, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin. Long, A.A., 1996, Stoic studies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Lott, E.J., 1976, God and the universe in the Vedantic theology of Ràmànuja. A study in his use of the self-body analogy, Ramanuja Research Society, Madras. Lovelock, J., 1988, The ages of Gaia.a biography of our living earth, WW Norton and Co., London. Lucretius, T., 1965a, Lucreti Cari De rerum natura, W.E. Leonard & S.B. Smith (eds.), University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin. Lucretius, 1965b, On nature, transl. Russel M Geer, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, New York. Lucretius, 1976, De rerum natura. The poem on nature, transl. C.H. Sisson, Carcanet New Press, Manchester. Macnicol, N. (ed), 1963 [1938], Hindu scriptures, Everyman's Library, London. Maimonides, M., 1946 [1881], The guide for the perplexed, transl. M Friedlander, Pardes Publishing House, New York. Mascaró, J., 1962, The Bhagavad Gita, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth. Mayer, J.R.A., 1982, 'Neoplatonism, Indian thought, and general systems theory’, in R.B. Harris (ed.), Neoplatonism and Indian thought, pp. 3509-322, Albany, New York. McCarthy, R.J., 2006 [1980], A/-Ghazali's path to Sufism and his Deliverance from error. An annotated translation of Al-Munqgidh min al-Dalal, Fons Vitae, Louisville, Kentucky. McEvoy, J., 1982, The philosophy of Robert Grosseteste, Clarendon Press, Oxford. McGinn, B., 1994, The growth of mysticism. vol II of The presence of God: A history of Western Christian mysticism, SCM Press, London. McMahan, D.L., 2008, The making of Buddhist modernism, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Meredith, A., 1990, ‘The idea of God in Gregory of Nyssa’, in H.R. Drobner & C. Klock (Hrsg.), Studien zu Gregor von Nyssa und der christlichen Spátantike, pp. 128-147, EJ Brillpp, Leiden. 531 References Meredith, A., 1999, Gregory of Nyssa, Routledge, London. Meyendorff, J., 1964, A study of Gregory Palamas, The Faith Press, Leighton Buzzard, Beds. Meyendorff, J., 1974, St. Gregory Palamas and Orthodox spirituality, St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, New York. Minear, P., 1987, Death set to music. Masterworks of Bach, Brahms, Penderecki, Bernstein, John Knox Press, Atlanta, Georgia. Mittal, K.K., 1974, Materialism in Indian thought, Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, New Delhi. Moran, D., 1989, 7he philosophy of John Scotus Eriugena. A study of idealism in the middle ages, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Morris, J.W., 1981, The wisdom of the throne. An introduction to the philosophy of Mulla Sadra, University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. Mosshammer, A.A., 1990, ‘Gregory of Nyssa as deconstructionist’, in H.R. Drobner & C. Klock (Hrsg.), Studien zu Gregor von Nyssa und der christlichen Spátantike, pp. 99-123, Brill, the Netherlands. Mungello, D.E., 1977, Leibniz and Confucianism. The search for accord, University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu. Nanananda, B., 1976, Concept and reality in early Buddhist thought, Buddhist Publication Societym, Kandy. Narada, M.T., 1980, A manual of Abhidhamma, being Abhidhammatha Sangaha of Bhadanta Anuruddhacariya, Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy. Narada, U., 1992, Conditional relations (Patthàna), vol. |, transl. M.P. Sayadaw, Pali Text Society, Oxford. Narada, U., 1992, Conditional relations (Patthàna), vol. Il, transl. M.P. Sayadaw, Pali Text Society, Oxford. Nasr, S.H., 1964, Three Muslim sages: Avicenna, Suhrawardi, Ibn Arabi, Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Neville, R.C., 1991, Behind the masks of God. An essay toward comparative theology, State University of New York Press, New York. Nichol, L. (ed.), 2003, The essential David Bohm, Routledge, New York. Nicholson, R.A., 2003 [1898], Selected poems from the Divani Shamsi Tabriz, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore. Nicholson, R.A., 2004, ‘Jalal Al-din-Rumi', in C.M. Ikram (ed.), Mawlana Rumi: bridge of East and West, pp. 481-483, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore. Nicolescu, B., 1991 [1988], Science, meaning, and evolution. The cosmology of Jacob Boehme, Parabola Books, New York. Nietzsche, F., 1964, Das Geburt der Tragödie. Sämtliche Werke in zwölf Banden. Band |, Alfred Króner Verlag, Stuttgart. Nims, J.F., 1959, 7he poems of St John of the Cross, transl. J.F. Nims, Grove Press, New York. Nishitani, K., 1982, Religion and nothingness, transl. J. van Bragt, University of California Press, Berkeley, California. Novalis, D.H., 1988 [1978], Hymns to the night, transl. D. Higgins, McPherson & Co, New York. Nyanaponika, T., 1981, Buddhism and the God-idea, Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy. Nyanaponika, T., 1998 [1949], Abhidhamma studies. Buddhist explorations of consciousness and time, edited with an introduction by Bhikkhu Bodhi, Wisdom Publications, Boston, Massachusetts. Nyanatiloka, T., 1980 [1952], Buddhist dictionary. Manual of Buddhist terms and doctrines, Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy. Nygren, A., 1957, Eros and agape, SPCK, London. O'Brien, D., 1996, 'Plotinus on matter and evil’, in L.P. Gerson (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Plotinus, pp. 171-195, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 532 References Olson, S.A., 2002, ‘Plato, proclus and peirce: Abduction and the foundations of the logic of discovery’, in R.B. Harris (ed.), Neoplatonism and contemporary thought, pp. 85-101, State University Press, New York. O'Meara, D.J., 1996, ‘The hierarchical ordering of reality in Plotinus’, in L.P. Gerson (ed.), The Cambridge companion o Plotinus, pp. 66-81, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. O’Meara, J.J., 1988, Eriugena, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Oosthuizen, J.S., 1974, Van Plotinus tot Teilhard de Chardin. ‘n Studie oor die metamorfose van die Westerse werklikheidsbeeld, Rodopi, Amsterdam. O’Regan, C., 2001, Gnostic return in modernity, State University of New York Press, New York. Osborne, C., 1994, Eros unveiled. Plato and the God of love, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Otto, R., 1917, Das Heilige: über das Irrationale in der Idee des Góttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen, Biederstein, München. Overzee, A.H.,1992, The body divine. The symbol of the body in the works of Teilhard de Chardin and Ràmànuja, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Padmanabhan, S., 2004, ‘The poetic mysticism of Jalal al-Din Rumi: an inquiry’; in M. Ikram Chaghatai (ed.), Mawlana Rumi: bridge of East and West, pp. 461-480, Sang-eMeel Publiations, Lahore. Parker, J., 1976, The works of Dionysius the Areopagite, Richwood Publishing, New York. Parks, G. (ed.), 1987, Heidegger and Asian thought, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu. Pennock, R.T., 2001, /nte/ligent design creationism and its critics. Philosophical, theological, and scientific perspectives, MIT Press, London. Pessin, S., 2003, ‘Jewish Neoplatonism: Being above Being and divine emanation in Solomon ibn Gabirol and Isaac Israeli’, in D.H. Frank & O. Leaman (eds.), The Cambridge companion to Medieval Jewish philosophy, pp. 91-110, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Pinkard, T., 2000, Hegel. A biography, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Pistorius, P.V., 1952, Plotinus and neoplatonism. An introductory study, Bowes and Bowes, Cambridge. Plotinus, 1984, The Enneads, transl. A.H. Armstrong, William Heinemann, London. Plotinus, 1991, The Enneads, transl. S. Mackenna, Larson Publications, New York. Pohlenz, M., 1964, Die Stoa. Geschichte einer geistigen Bewegung, Vandenhoek and Ruprecht, Góttingen. Popper, K.R., 1968, The logic of scientific discovery, Hutchinson, London. Popper, K.R., 1974 [1945], The open societiy and its enemies, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. Pranger, M.B., 1994, Bernard of Clairvaux and the shape of monastic thought. Broken dreams, EJ Brill, Leiden. Proclus, 1963 [1932], The elements of theology, transl. E.R. Dodds, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Rahman, F., 1975, The philosophy of Mulla Sadra (Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi), State University of New York Press, New York. Rahman, F., 1994, Major themes of the Qur’an, Bibliotheca Islamica, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Raju, P.T., 1969 [1937], ‘Indian psychology’, in H. Bhattacharryya (ed.), The cultural heritage of India, vol IIl, The philosophies, pp. 581-607, The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Calcutta. Ramaiah, G.S., 1982, A philosophical study of the mysticism of Sankara, KP Bagchi and Co., Calcutta. Ranganathananda, S., 1980 [1968], The message of the Upanisads, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay. Reid, G.J., 2002, A re-examination of tragedy and madness in eight selected plays from the Greeks to the 20th century, The Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston. Rescher, N., 1967, The philosophy of Leibniz, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Reydams-Schils, G.J., 2003, Plato’s Timaeus as cultural icon, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana. 533 References Rhys Davids, T.W., 1977, Dialogues of the Buddha, Part III, Pali Text Society, London. Riedweg, C., 2005 [2002], Pythagoras. His life, teaching, and influence, Cornell University Press, London. Rist, J.M., 1964, Eros and Psyche. Studies in Plato, Plotinus, and Origen, University of Toronto Press, Toronto. Ritter, H., 1974, Novalis' Hymnen an die Nacht, Universitátsverlag, Heidelberg. Roche, M.W., 2005, ‘The greatness and limits of Hegel's theory of tragedy’, in R. Bushnell (ed.), A companion to tragedy, pp. 51-67, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford. Rudavsky, T.M., 2010, Maimonides, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester. Rudman, D., 2002, Determinism in the book of Ecclesiastes, Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield. Rumi, J., 1996, Jewels of Remembrance, transl. C. Helminski & K. Helminski, Threshold Books, Putney, Vermont. Rumi, J., 2008, Swallowing the Sun, transl. F.D. Lewis, Oneworld Publications, Oxford. Runia, D.T.R., 1986, Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato, Brill, Leiden. Russell, B., 1971 [1914], The philosophy of Bergson, Folcroft Library Editions, Pennsylvania. Russell, B., 1992 [1900], The philosophy of Leibniz, Routledge, London. Rutherford, D., 1995, 'Metaphysics: The late period', in N. Jolley (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Leibniz, pp. 124-175, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Saint John of the Cross, 1983 [1935], Ascent to Mount Carmel, transl. E.A. Peers (ed.), Burns and Oates, Tunbridge Wells. Sandbach, F.H., 1975, The Stoics, Chatto and Windus, London. Schaya, L., 1971 [1958], The universal meaning of the Kabbalah, transl. N. Pearson, George Allen and Unwin, London. Schelling, F.W.J., 1958 [1927], Schellings Werke. Nach der Origalausgabe in neuer Anordnung hg.v. Manfred Schróter. Vierter Hauptband. Schriften zur Philosophie der Freiheit 1804-1815, Die Weltaler, Bruchstück, pp. 577-720, CH Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, München. Schimmel, A., 1980 [1978], The triumphal sun. A study of the works of Jalaloddin Rumi, East-West Publications, London. Schimmel, A., 1992, / am wind, you are fire. The life and work of Rumi, Shambhala, Boston, Massachusetts. Schimmel, A., 2003, Rumi's world. The life and work of the great Sufi poet, Niaz Ahmad Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore. Schmid, M.E., 1976, Novalis. Dichter an der Grenze zum Absoluten, Universitatsverlag Winter, Heidelberg. Scholem, G., 1955 [1941], Major trends in Jewish Mysticism, Thames and Hudson, London. Scholem, G., 1974, Kabbalah, Quadrangle, New York. Scholem, G., 1987 [1962], Origins of the Kabbalah, The Jewish Publication Society, Princeton, New Jersey. Schopenhauer, A., 1969, The world as will and representation, Dover Publications, New York. Schrader, W.H., 1972, Empirisches and absolutes Ich. Zur Geschichte des Begriffs Leben in der Philosophie JG Fichtes, Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart. Schródinger, E., 1961, Science and humanism. Physics in our time, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Seager, W., 2007, ‘A brief history of the philosophical problem of consciousness’, in P.D. Zelazo, M. Moscovitch & E. Thompson (eds), The Cambridge handbook of consciousness, pp. 9-33, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Sedley, D., 2010, ‘Teleology, Aristotelian and Platonic’, in J.G. Lennox & R. Bolton (eds.), Being, nature and life in Aristotle, pp. 5-29, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 534 References Seidel, G.J., 1976, Activity and ground. Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, Georg Olms Verlag, New York. Sellars, J., 2006, Stoicism, University of California Press, Berkeley, California. Sells, M.A., 1994, Mystical languages of unsaying, Chicago University Press, Chicago, Illinois. Sheldon-Williams, I.P., 1981 [1968, 1972], /ohannis Scotti Eriugenae Periphyseon, vols I-II, Institute for Advanced Studies, Dublin. Shields, C., 2009, ‘The Aristotelian psuché’, in G. Anagnostopoulos (ed.), A companion to Aristotle, pp. 292-309, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford. Smart, N., 1996, 'Theravada and processes: Nirvana as a meta-process', in F.J. Hoffmann & D. Mahinda (eds.), Pali Buddhism, pp. 196-205, Curzon Press, Richmond. Smith, H., 2002, ‘Science and the Great chain of being’, in H.R. Baine (ed.), Neoplatonism and contemporary thought, Part One, pp. 1-11, State University Press, New York. Smuts, J.C., 1927, Holism and evolution, MacMillan, London. Sobti, H.S., 1985, Nibbana in early Buddhism, Eastern Book Linkers, Delhi. Sommerfeldt, J.R., 1991, 7he spiritual teachings of Bernard of Clairvaux. An intellectual history of the early Cistercian Order, Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo, Michigan. Southern, R.W., 1986, Robert Grosseteste. The growth of an English mind in Medieval Europe, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Spinoza, 1925, Opera, in Carl Gebhardt (ed.), vol. Il, Carl Winters, Heidelberg. Sprigge, T.L.S., 1996, ‘Idealism, humanism and the environment’, in P. Coates & D.D. Hutto (eds.), Current issues in idealism, pp. 267-302, Thoemmes Press, England. Sprigge, T.L.S., 2006, The God of Metaphysics, Qxford University Press, Oxford. Stepaniants, M., 2002, /ntroduction to Eastern Thought, Altamira Press, Oxford. Stern, J., 2005, ‘Maimonides’ epistemology’, in K. Seeskin (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Maimonides, pp. 105-133, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Stiegman, E., 2001, ‘Bernard of Clairvaux, William of St Thierry, the Victories’, in G.R. Evans (ed.), The Medieval theologians. An introduction to theology in the Medieval period, pp. 129-155, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford. Stryk, L. & Ikemono, T., 1981 [1973], Zen poems of China and Japan: The crane's bill, Grove Press, New York. Suhrawardi, Y.A., 1999, The philosophy of illumination, transl. J. Walbridge & H. Ziai, Brigham Young University Press, Sinaloa. Suhrawardi, Y.A., 2006 [1998], 7he shape of light. Hayakal al-Nur, Fons Vitae, Louisville, Kentucky. Suzuki, T., 1900, Asvaghosha's discourse on the awakening of faith in the Mahayana, transl. Y. Hakeda, SMC Publishing, Taipei. Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro 1978 [1932], The Lankavatara Sutra. A Mahayana text, Routledge, London. Sweeney, L., 1972, /nfinity in the presocratics. A bibliographical and philosophical study, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague. Sweeney, L., 1982, ‘Participation and the structure of Being in Proclus’ Elements of theology’, in R.B. Harris (ed.), The structure of being, pp. 140-155, State University of New York Press, Albany, New York. Sweeney, L., 1992, Divine infinity in Greek and medieval thought, Peter Lang, Berlin. Talbot, M., 1991, 7he holographic universe. The revolutionary theory of reality, Harper Perennial, London. Teilhard de Chardin, P., 1959, The phenomenon of man, transl. B. Wall, Collins, London. Tipton, I.C., 1974, Berkeley. The philosophy of immaterialism, Methuen, London. Tirosh-Samuelson, H., 2003, ‘Philosophy and kabbalah: 1200-1600’, in D.H. Frank & O. Leaman (eds), The Cambridge companion to Medieval Jewish philosophy, pp. 218-257, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Todd, R.B., 1978, ‘Monism and immanence: The foundations of Stoic physics’, in J.M. Rist (ed.), The Stoics, pp. 137-160, University of California Press, Berkeley, California. 555 References Trenckner, V. (ed.), 1979, The Majjhima-Nikaya, vol |. Pali Text Society, London. Tulku, T., 1977, Time, space, and knowledge. A new vision of reality, Emeryville, Dharma Publishing, California. Van Aarde, A.G., 2001, Fatherless in Galilee: Jesus as child of God, Trinity Press International, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Van Buitenen, J.A.B., 1953, Ràmaànuja on the Bhagavadgita. A condensed rendering of the Gitabhaya with copious notes and an introduction, De Ned. Boek- en Steendrukkerij, S-Gravenhage. Veliath, C., 1993, The mysticism of Ràmànuja, Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi. Verdu, A., 1981, The philosophy of Buddhism. A ‘totalistic’ synthesis, Marthinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague. Versfeld, M., 1940, An essay on the metaphysics of Descartes, Methuen and Co., London. Vimuktananda, S., 1982, Aparoksanubhuti or self-realization of Sri Sankaracarya. Text, with word-for-word translation, English rendering and notes, Advaita Ashrama, Calcutta. Vivekananda, S., 1964 [1907], The complete works of Swami Vivekananda, vol. I-VIII, Advaita Ashrama, Calcutta. Von Kues, N., 1966, Philosophisch-theologische Schriften, D. Dupré & W. Dupré übersetzt und kommentiert, L. Gabriel (Hrsg.), Bd. Il, Verlag Herder, Wien. Walbridge, J., 2005, 'Suhrawardi and illuminationism', in P. Adamson & R.C. Taylor (eds.), The Cambridge companion to Arabic Philosophy, pp. 201-223, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Walsh, D., 1983, The mysticism of innerworldly fulfillment. A study of Jacob Boehme, University Presses of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. Ware, T., 1991 [1963], The Orthodox Church, Penguin Books, London. Watson, B., 1968, The complete works of Chuang Tzu, Columbia University Press, New York. Watson, B., 1993, The Lotus Sutra, transl. Burton Watson, Columbia University Press, New York. Weeks, A., 1991, Boehme. An intellectual biography of the seventeenth-century philosopher and mystic, State University of New York Press, New York. Wehr, G., 1971, Jakob Bóhme, Rowohlt Taschenbuch, Hamburg. Welbon, G.R., 1968, The Buddhist nirvana and its Western interpreters, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois. White, M.J., 2003, ‘Stoic natural philosophy (physics and cosmology)’, in B. Inwood (ed.), The Cambridge companion to stoicism, pp. 124-152, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Whitehead, A.N., 1927, Religion in the making, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Whitehead, A.N., 1978 [1929], Process and reality. An essay in cosmology, D.R. Griffin & D.W. Sherburne (ed.), The Free Press, London. Wilber, K., 1995, Sex, ecology, spirituality. The spirit of evolution, Shambhala, Boston, MA. Wilber, K., 1996, A brief history of everything, Gill and MacMillan, Dublin. Williams, P., 1989, Mahayana Buddhism. The doctrinal foundations, Routledge, London. Wolfson, H.A., 1960 [1934], The philosophy of Spinoza. Two volumes in one, Meridian Books, New York. Wolter, A.B., 1990, 7he philosophical theology of John Duns Scotus, Cornell University Press, London. Wu, K.-M., 1982, Chuang Tzu: World philosopher at play, Crossroad Publishing Company, New York Yu, C.-F., 1981, The renewal of Buddhism in China. Chu-hung and the Late Ming Synthesis, Columbia University Press, New York. Zelazo, P.D., Moscovitch, M. & Thompson, E. (eds), 2007, The Cambridge handbook of consciousness, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Zizek, S., 1997, The abyss of freedom/Ages of the world. An essay by Slavoy Zizek with the text of Schelling's, transl. J. Norman, The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan. 536 Glossary acosmism anthropomorphism apophaticism atheism deism doxology dualism entropy epistemology esoteric exoteric fideism gnostic henotheism hermeneutics homoeostasis homoversal hypostasis irenic-ironic kataphaticism liminal metatheism monism nihilism ontology panentheism panpsychism pantheism phenomenalism the view stripping the cosmos of value, perhaps even of reality the ascription of human form to another kind of being, e.g. God literally ‘non-speaking’; a manner of speaking about God in which all attributes are negated/eliminated the denial of the existence of God the rational acceptance of the existence of a God as Creator, not directly involved in the world a formula in praise of God the view that reality or an aspect of reality consists of two independent and irreconcilable principles, e.g. good and evil a measure of the increasing disorganisation of the universe a view of the nature of knowledge knowledge available only to insiders knowledge available to all, insiders as well as outsiders a view that knowledge depends on revelation and belief mystical, occult knowledge giving access to divine mysteries the focus one god, in the context of a belief in a plurality of gods the art and discipline of interpretation the tendency towards equilibrium between diverse elements common to humankind as one species underlying substance as distinguished from attributes the combination of the realisation that things are not always what they seem to be, with the adoption of an attitude of tolerance and reconciliation highly affirmative speech about God and his attributes threshold (experience or situation) openness to the notion that, behind anthropomorphic God, there are unfathomable depths the view that reality ultimately consists of one single substance only the view that all moral and religious views and principles in the final analysis, amount to or refer to nothing a view of the nature of being the view that everything exists within divinity the view that everything is ensouled the view that nature as a whole is divine the view that, although things are not created by our minds, our knowledge and experience of things are always constituted by the human mind 537 Glossary propaedeutic solipsism sophiaphily sublate syncretism teleological theism theodicy theurgy 538 giving preliminary, introductory instruction the view that the individual self is all that exists or can be known the love of wisdom raised up, absorbed onto a higher level the facile mixing of various diverse systems of thought or religions purpose-oriented rather than cause-oriented a belief in the existence of one or more gods; the belief in the existence of one, personal, revealed God justification of the existence of God, particularly in view of the reality of evil the art or practice of securing supernatural or divine agency Index A abductive reasoning, 70 Abhidhamma, 62, 74, 137, 206, 244-247, 455-457 Absolute Horizon, 4, 55-57, 59-60, 63, 65, 70-74, 76, 78, 80, 82, 95, 118, 135, 146-147, 152-153, 156, 170, 173, 181-182, 185, 211, 217, 219-220, 224-225, 227-228, 239, 242, 246-249, 254, 269-270, 296, 308, 349, 360, 367, 376-377, 385, 402-403, 414, 419-420, 433, 439-441, 443, 445, 448, 453, 471-472, 476, 487, 490, 492, 495, 498, 501, 503, 510, 515, 519 Absoluteness, 4, 18, 20, 22, 45, 53-54, 56-57, 59-61, 64-65, 67, 72-81, 84-85, 88-90, 93-97, 99-101, 103, 105, 110-113, 115, 117, 119, 124, 126-130, 132-135, 139-141, 147-148, 150, 152-156, 159-160, 164, 178, 181, 185, 187-189, 191-195, 197, 199, 201, 208-209, 211, 213-214, 219-222, 224-226, 228, 230-232, 234-237, 242, 244, 249-251, 258-260, 262, 264, 269-270, 278, 285, 287, 292, 296-297, 299, 301, 303, 306, 308-309, 314, 317, 321, 323, 325, 327-329, 333-334, 336, 341-342, 347, 349-350, 354, 356, 359, 361, 365, 367-368, 372-373, 376-377, 379, 382, 384-385, 391-392, 394, 399, 403-404, 406-407, 409, 412-416, 421, 426-428, 432, 436, 440, 443, 456-457, 461, 466, 469, 472, 481, 486-487, 502, 504, 509 Absoluteness Becoming Cosmos (ABC), 152-153, 242, 356 Advaita-Vedanta, 77, 90, 401-402 ahduth shawah, 392, 394 àkàsànaficayatana, 380, 381, 382, 385, 415, 456-458 Al-Ghazali, 389, 390, 397, 460 allegory, 64, 123, 467 Altizer, Thomas, 94 analogy, 54, 61-62, 67-68, 70, 90, 134, 145, 181-182, 196-197, 220, 225-226, 233, 242, 250, 258, 273, 292, 325, 327, 377, 392, 397, 414, 438, 486 Anaximander, 278, 378-380, 408 anthropocentrism, 66, 521 apeiron, 193, 378-380, 409, 412 apophatic, 195, 197-198, 250, 291-292, 317, 354, 364, 375, 384, 402, 439, 442, 446, 448, 465, 472, 478 Aquinas, Thomas, 44, 253, 328, 341, 444, 472 Arche, 43, 53-56, 58, 60-66, 68, 70, 85, 94, 100-102, 113, 124, 147, 158, 190, 242, 284, 297, 321, 379, 382, 407, 488, 507 Arianism, 353, 355 Aristotle, 21, 30, 87, 112, 174-175, 193-195, 212, 232, 249-257, 263, 265, 280, 282-283, 285, 288-289, 304-305, 331, 339, 348, 368, 372, 395-397, 400, 409-413, 445, 460, 463-465, 468-469, 508-509, 518 Arius, 353 asymptotic parallelism, 24-25, 27, 47, 185, 517 atheism, 25-26, 29, 40, 43, 125, 164, 186, 258, 262, 297-298, 320, 338-339, 368, 427, 476, 489, 506-507 Augustine, 44, 78, 121, 205, 212, 256-257, 270, 306, 352, 362, 397 Aurobindo, 21, 478-481, 497-498, 520 auto-genesis (auto-manifestation), 219, 220, 227 Awakening of faith in Mahayana, 77, 225, 231 Ayin, 105, 160, 179, 393-394 Azriel ben Menachem, 179, 392, 395 B Baader, Franz von, 197-199, 330, 447 Becoming, 5, 20, 26, 49, 54-59, 62, 80, 111-113, 127, 129, 146, 149-154, 156-157, 168-170, 177, 181-182, 184, 188-190, 192-193, 202, 209-210, 219-228, 230-238, 241-243, 246, 248-250, 255-256, 264, 266-267, 269, 298, 300, 330, 333-334, 347, 350, 355-356, 359, 362, 365-367, 373, 387, 390, 393, 399, 411, 414, 416, 418, 422, 427, 436-437, 454, 457, 465-466, 470, 478, 487-488, 490, 495, 520 Bergson, Henri, 7, 30, 419-423, 519 Berkeley, George, 46, 473-477, 513 Bernard of Clairvaux, 436 Bhagavad Gité, 131, 216, 340, 433 Bloch, Ernst, 186 Bloom, Howard, 81, 325, 508-510, 514 Bodhisattva, 139, 188-189, 216, 231, 415, 430-432, 489 Boehme, Jacob, 8, 56, 81-82, 120, 161-168, 198-199, 281, 340, 362, 393, 447 Boethius, 71, 406 Bohm, David, 35, 59, 180-182, 187, 265-267, 404 Brahms, Johannes, 93-94 Bruno, Giordano, 62, 87, 308, 400-402, 417, 421, 444, 474 539 Index Buber, Martin, 314-317 Buddha, 11, 16-17, 21, 34, 64-65, 74-78, 80, 96-97, 103, 107-108, 121, 124, 130, 136-139, 146, 149, 152-154, 168, 173, 184, 188, 206-210, 224-225, 231, 244-245, 248, 251, 258, 275-278, 280, 285-286, 300, 321, 327-328, 360-361, 380-382, 384-385, 410, 415, 430, 432, 455, 457-458, 477-478, 489, 493-494, 497 c Calvin, 205 Can-ing, 55, 58, 117, 227-228, 230-232, 234, 236-239, 241, 243, 296, 373 Chandogya Upanishad, 131, 273, 285 Chuang-Tzu, 21, 78, 80, 95-96, 129, 231, 309, 370, 416, 522 Cioran, Emil, 120, 186 Conditionalistic Totality in Horizon (CTH), 320, 503 Conditioning, 55, 58, 221, 239, 241-250, 252-258, 260, 262, 264, 266-267, 469, 501-502, 504 consciousness, 2, 12, 31, 35-34, 45-49, 55, 58, 60, 62-63, 73, 90, 96-97, 108, 127, 139, 141, 147, 151, 153, 159, 165-166, 169-173, 175-182, 189, 201-203, 205-210, 216-219, 221, 223, 229, 233, 239, 246-249, 259, 263, 274, 280, 290, 292-295, 298, 304, 314, 320, 341, 359, 371, 380-381, 415, 418, 429, 448, 453-454, 456-458, 479-481, 488, 491, 493-497, 506-507, 509, 512, 518-521 Constantinople, Council of, 116, 127, 353-355, 386, 446 contingency, 4, 31, 164, 214, 252, 271, 334, 425, 440, 470, 486-487, 490, 492, 494, 502-503 Cosmos, 4, 7, 12, 20, 22, 32, 45-46, 53-63, 65-68, 73, 75, 79, 84, 86, 100-104, 106-107, 110-11, 117, 119, 121, 123-124, 126-129, 131-135, 139-141, 145-150, 152-161, 166, 169, 171-173, 178-181, 184-192, 195, 197-200, 202-204, 206-208, 211, 213, 216-222, 224-228, 231-232, 234-239, 242-243, 246-250, 252-254, 256, 258, 269-272, 274, 278, 280-281, 286-287, 297-298, 300, 303-304, 306, 309, 313-314, 320-321, 324, 326-328, 347, 349-350, 355-356, 359, 361, 365, 367-368, 373, 377-385, 387, 400, 403-409, 411-418, 420, 426-428, 430-431, 436, 439-441, 443, 447, 451-454, 456-459, 471, 483, 485-493, 495-501, 503-504, 508-510, 512-514 creationism, 39, 43, 100, 148, 213, 304, 308, 315, 405, 489 Crescas, Hasdai, 357, 444-447 Cusanus (see Nicholas of Cusa), 10, 115-118, 126, 129, 288, 308, 400 540 D darkness, 36, 65, 67, 70, 81, 92, 101, 103, 106, 114, 121, 149, 164, 166-168, 170, 175, 230, 253, 316-317, 349, 354, 365, 367, 371, 373, 375, 377-378, 384-389, 392, 416, 442-443, 460, 485-486, 491 Darwin, Charles, 36-39, 46, 335, 419, 502, 506 David of Dinant, 399, 401 Dawkins, Richard, 40-43, 184-185, 505-509, 513 De Chardin, Teilhard, 418-419, 516 De rerum natura, 278-279 death, 37, 65-66, 69, 73-75, 81, 83, 86-89, 91, 93-97, 101, 108, 114-115, 120, 129, 131, 152, 163, 168, 198, 205, 212, 224, 230, 258, 279, 312, 329, 334, 344, 347, 376-377, 385, 388, 391, 400, 406-407, 414-416, 418, 436-437, 439-440, 444, 446, 448, 461, 467, 479, 490-491, 493-495 deism, 40, 180, 262 Democritus, 26, 205, 280, 401 Dennet, Daniel, 47-49, 185 Descartes, René, 35, 46, 49, 198, 263, 290, 293, 296, 310-314, 316, 337, 460, 474 Deus absconditus, 128, 369, 376, 390, 417 Deus revelatus, 376 Ding an sich, 72, 215, 293, 477 Dionysius, 87, 197, 256-259, 282, 304, 306, 386, 394, 396 divinity, 27, 29, 31-32, 38, 44, 90, 105-107, 111, 115, 118-119, 130, 155, 157, 160, 163-167, 179, 192, 194-195, 199-200, 218, 221, 236, 245, 252, 296, 300-301, 313, 338, 349, 353-355, 357, 360, 382, 386-387, 399, 401, 411, 417, 449, 455, 457, 466, 489, 497 Dogen, 21, 78, 80, 328 Driesch, Hans, 418-420 dualism, 46, 49, 99-100, 106, 114, 119, 121-122, 148, 150-151, 155, 157-158, 164, 233-234, 255, 263, 275, 284, 290, 305-306, 308, 312-313, 315-316, 332, 335, 339, 349, 380, 389-390, 410, 414, 420-421, 426, 434, 440, 449, 474, 491 Dunham, Jeremy et al., 46, 110, 194, 221, 288, 293, 329, 473, 513-514 Duns Scotus, John, 212-215, 444 E Eckhart, 8, 64, 78-80, 82, 197-198, 216, 259, 340, 349, 357, 362, 364, 446, 472-473 Ein-Sof, 105-106, 160-161, 179, 196-197, 236, 358, 393-395, 444 Einstein, Albert, 32-36, 38, 110, 180, 205 emptiness, 11, 49, 54, 57, 63-64, 72-73, 75-79, 82, 88, 95, 97, 99, 129, 140, 148, 154-156, 159-160, 178, 188-189, 194, 207-209, 214, 225-226, 230-231, 234, 237, 243-251, 255-256, 270, 277, 279, 285-286, 296, 300-301, 309, 321-322, 326-328, 333- 334, 357, 360-361, 363-364, 367-368, 372-373, 379, 381-382, 387, 392, 409- 410, 422, 430, 432, 443, 448, 456-458, 475-476, 480, 486-487, 489, 504, 519, 521 End, 1, 9, 14, 31, 36, 42, 54-56, 59-60, 62, 64-65, 67, 69, 71-72, 76, 80-81, 83-97, 99, 101-102, 104, 107, 114-115, 117, 121, 124-129, 131-132, 134, 136, 138, 140, 147, 152-156, 158, 160-161, 172, 181, 190, 193, 203, 209, 211-212, 217, 219-220, 223-225, 230, 234-235, 239, 242-243, 251-253, 255, 257-259, 264, 270-271, 285, 287, 293, 304, 307, 315-316, 321, 328, 333, 335, 343, 354, 359, 361, 365, 368-369, 371-373, 379, 382, 385-386, 390, 392, 398, 400-401, 406-407, 422, 426, 430-431, 433, 437-440, 445, 447, 457, 459, 461-462, 471, 474-475, 477, 480-481, 490, 494, 496, 502-503, 505, 509, 511, 516, 518-519, 521 Energy-Matter, 45, 55, 60, 62, 64, 158, 375-378, 380, 382, 384, 386, 388, 390, 392, 394, 396, 398, 400, 402, 404, 451, 454, 488 epektasis, 383, 385-386 Ephesus, Council of, 175, 354 epistemology, 101, 177, 313, 326, 330, 390, 433, 457, 460, 464, 466, 478, 507 Eriugena, John Scotus, 60, 256-262, 267, 304, 306-308, 394, 400, 473 eros, 110, 185, 189-191, 194-195, 197, 199, 216, 447-449 esoteric, 8, 32, 53, 89, 104, 106, 119, 121, 123, 154, 162, 196, 198, 210, 303, 400, 463-466, 487 eternalism, 11, 74-75, 151, 249, 277, 325, 410, 489-490 Eternity, 53-61, 63-64, 73, 85, 102, 105, 114, 119, 121, 127-128, 140, 143, 145-148, 150-151, 153, 156-159, 165, 169-173, 175, 177-178, 180-182, 184-185, 187-188, 191, 194-195, 197, 199-200, 202-206, 208, 211-214, 216-217, 222-223, 226-228, 230, 232, 234-235, 242-243, 246-247, 259, 296, 303, 321, 341, 347, 349-350, 354, 356, 365, 377, 379-380, 384, 404, 407, 409, 412, 426, 428, 436, 438, 445, 451, 460, 462, 466, 469, 476, 488, 490-491, 494-495, 501, 509, 513 event, 2, 12, 24, 61-62, 76, 86-87, 90, 99, 101, 105, 108, 114, 116, 127, 135, 139, 149, 159, 170, 176, 192, 199, 211, 213, 217, 220-221, 228, 236, 241-242, 245, 247-248, 250-251, 261, 265, 269-271, 277-278, 288-290, 305, 320, 336, 339, 349-350, 352, 367, 377, 394, 399, 423, 436, 438, 457, 465, 467, 483, 486-487, 490-492, 496, 500-501, 520 Index evil, 4, 31, 37, 65-66, 78, 81, 85, 100-101, 104, 106, 110-112, 114-116, 119-121, 124-126, 140, 148, 161-168, 170, 185, 193, 199-200, 203, 205, 211, 214, 218, 221, 226, 234, 242, 260, 277, 350, 382, 392, 406-407, 427, 461, 490, 499-500, 502, 521 evolution, 31, 56-38, 42-45, 47-48, 57, 59, 62, 65-66, 82, 101, 118, 166-168, 182, 185, 189, 221, 233, 235, 243, 328, 379, 403, 406, 418-419, 421-422, 425, 454, 480-481, 498, 506, 509, 518-521 F Fa-tsang, 21, 77-78, 135, 225-226, 292, 325-330, 367, 370, 392, 477, 486, 516 faith, 6-7, 12, 20, 25, 27, 29, 33, 62, 67-69, 77, 88-91, 93-94, 100-101, 103, 108, 110, 113, 115, 120, 122, 136, 160, 179, 198, 204, 210-212, 225, 231, 272, 293, 303, 308, 313, 315, 317, 338, 340, 351-352, 356, 376, 385-386, 388, 394, 429, 436-437, 445, 459-463, 465, 467, 469, 475, 477, 500, 514-515, 517-518, 521 Feminine (also see woman), 107, 122, 228, 231, 236 Fichte, J.G., 215, 292-298, 310, 330, 331, 339, 477, 513 forgiveness, 85, 186, 427, 500-502 Fourth Gospel, 113-115, 120 Freud, Sigmund, 40, 84, 186 G Genesis, 27, 103-105, 107, 111-114, 135, 148, 167, 220-221, 225, 227, 253, 394 Gnosticism, 57, 64, 105-106, 113, 119-124, 139, 141, 154, 161, 195, 225, 233, 306, 350, 375 God, 6, 11, 17, 25-29, 32-33, 37-41, 43-44, 46, 49, 53, 61, 63-64, 68, 72, 78-82, 84-94, 97, 100, 103-111, 113-117, 119-120, 124-126, 128, 130-132, 139, 146, 150-152, 155-158, 160-167, 177, 179-181, 184, 187, 190-193, 195-200, 204-205, 210-214, 217-220, 228, 231-232, 236-239, 247, 252-254, 257-265, 270, 272, 274, 279, 282, 284, 289-293, 297-303, 307-308, 310-317, 331, 333-334, 337-339, 341, 347, 349-350, 352-354, 356-358, 363, 366-369, 371-372, 375-377, 379, 382, 384-388, 391-394, 397-399, 401-403, 408, 410-411, 413-414, 417-418, 422-423, 427-429, 433-447, 451, 456, 460-465, 467-477, 489, 494, 497, 500, 507-510, 512, 514, 518-519, 521 Grant, lain Hamilton, 38, 46, 133, 204, 217, 461, 513 Gregory of Nyssa, 197, 353-354, 383-385, 387, 396-397 Gregory Palamas, 387 Grünewald, Matthias, 91, 94 541 Index H Hadewijch, 21, 522 Hegel, G.W.F., 30, 81, 87, 94, 198, 215, 222, 289, 329-344, 362, 371-372, 473, 477, 489, 511, 514, 516, 518 Heidegger, Martin, 8, 94, 129, 258, 361-374, 478 Heisenberg, Werner, 32, 35, 47, 110 Heraclitus, 21, 108, 175-177, 278, 304, 333 Hesychasm, 387 Hildegard of Bingen, 21, 522 historical-critical, 15 human being, 39, 61-62, 65-68, 79, 86, 90, 102, 104, 106, 112, 114, 125, 127, 139, 145, 148, 154, 159-160, 162, 166, 168, 178, 194, 201-202, 204, 206, 215, 243, 248-249, 270, 272-274, 287, 294-295, 297-298, 300, 303, 312-313, 316, 320, 322, 327, 358, 363-365, 369-370, 387, 408, 411, 414-415, 418, 426, 428, 432, 436, 443, 453, 480, 486, 489, 491, 495, 503, 511, 519-521 humanity, 1-3, 14, 16, 20, 22-23, 30-32, 39-40, 42-43, 66, 83, 90-91, 101, 105, 123-124, 126, 139, 163, 165, 168, 172, 185-187, 197, 199, 218, 297, 301, 304, 311, 322, 338, 350, 354-355, 378, 380, 406, 429, 449, 452, 491-492, 496-497, 499, 520 hylé, 382 hylozoism, 405 Hólderlin, 198, 330, 362, 369, 446 I | and Thou, 314-315, 317 Ibn Arabi, 21-22, 89-90, 92-93, 126-127, 129, 149, 157-160, 177-178, 195-196, 210-212, 214, 235-256, 391, 441, 445, 497 icons, 550, 387 idealism, 11, 45-46, 100, 110, 113, 155, 163, 198, 206, 209, 221, 223-224, 246, 254, 260, 265, 274, 276, 278, 289, 292-295, 297, 312, 328, 330, 332, 338, 342, 382, 454-455, 457-458, 473-476, 478-481, 488, 491, 496, 510-511, 513-514 immanence, 72, 233, 255, 284, 308, 329, 387, 475 impermanence, 11, 74, 83-84, 146, 244, 276, 422, 469, 476, 488, 502 infinite being, 214, 218, 347-348, 351, 357, 365, 367-368, 370, 375-376, 385, 387, 392, 395, 398, 402-403, 426, 512 Infinitude, 53-56, 59-61, 63-64, 77, 102, 105, 140, 146, 153, 156, 158-159, 178, 187-188, 191, 194, 202, 208, 213, 216, 218-219, 222-223, 235, 239, 254, 259, 271-272, 296, 334, 341, 345, 347-350, 353-356, 358-359, 361, 374, 376, 378-382, 384, 387, 392-393, 395, 403-405, 407-409, 542 412-413, 418, 425-432, 435-436, 439-440, 443, 449, 452-454, 456, 462, 466, 469, 472, 487-488, 490-491, 495-496, 499, 501, 509, 513 Integral Yoga, 480 Intelligent Design, 43-44 Intentionality, 14, 16, 48, 332, 354 Ishraq, 388, 390-391 J Jesus Christ, 18, 37, 91, 94, 117, 354, 497, 515 John of the Cross, 91-92, 216 K Kabbalah, 21, 54, 81-82, 88, 92, 104-107, 160, 162, 168, 179, 198, 235-237, 288, 315, 357-358, 393-396, 444, 463-464, 479, 497 Kant, Immanuel, 84, 198, 215, 270, 293-294, 298, 310, 312, 330-331, 339, 418, 476-478, 512 karma, 131, 137, 140, 207, 209-210, 225, 230, 242, 248-249, 407, 415, 433, 438, 499-501 kataphatic, 195, 291, 375-376, 384, 390, 435, 439, 442 Kierkegaard, Soren, 313, 316, 335, 343, 511 Kingsley, Peter, 2, 13, 221-222, 377 L Lao-Tzu, 21, 103, 130, 230, 243-244, 251, 308-309, 373, 403, 522 learned ignorance, 73, 115, 118 Leibniz, G.W., 277, 287-292, 340, 473 Leucippus, 280, 401 liberal integrationism, 28-29, 517 liberal theology, 515 Life, 1-5, 10, 12, 14, 18, 21-22, 24, 28, 31, 33-34, 36-37, 39, 42-45, 47-49, 55, 57, 59-69, 72-73, 75-76, 80-81, 83, 85, 87-89, 91, 93-94, 96-97, 101-102, 106-109, 114-117, 122, 124, 128-129, 132-133, 137, 140, 147, 153, 160-161, 165, 167-168, 172, 175, 181, 183, 186, 188-190, 192-193, 202, 204-205, 207-210, 215-216, 218, 221, 228, 230, 232, 235, 239, 243, 246-248, 261, 271, 279-281, 283, 287-288, 291-292, 300, 302-303, 309, 312-313, 316, 320, 322, 324, 329, 334-335, 339, 343, 347-352, 356-357, 359, 361-363, 368-371, 373, 375, 379-380, 383, 385, 388, 392, 396, 400, 405-423, 426-429, 433, 435-436, 440-441, 443-444, 446-448, 451-455, 458-459, 461, 463, 467, 473, 476-477, 479-481, 488, 490-496, 498-502, 504, 506-507, 511-512, 514, 516-521 light, 18, 22, 28, 80, 88, 101, 105-106, 117, 121, 132, 147, 160, 164-170, 189, 196, 226, 233, 236, 245, 253, 256, 270-271, 292, 298, 311, 314, 327, 334, 349-350, 358, 362, 365-367, 370-371, 375, 377-378, 380, 384-394, 396-399, 402, 416, 439, 442, 444, 448, 467, 479, 485-486, 488-490, 492, 494-496, 498-500, 502, 504, 506, 508, 510, 512, 514, 516, 518, 520, 522 Love, 4-5, 7, 32, 37, 39, 55-56, 59, 66, 69, 79, 85, 90, 92, 115, 124, 135-136, 161, 164, 184-191, 194-200, 207, 212, 214, 217-218, 224, 247, 262, 300-301, 304, 317, 325, 347-351, 356-357, 359, 361, 363, 373, 375, 403, 407-408, 415, 417-418, 421-423, 425-449, 451, 453-455, 467, 476, 481, 488, 492, 495-496, 509, 512, 518, 520-521 Lucretius, 26, 278-279, 289 Luria, Isaac, 21, 104-107, 120, 129, 160, 179, 195-197, 236-237, 315, 393, 497 M Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon), 315, 357, 444-445, 462-469 Mani, 121 Materialism, 11, 26, 42, 45-46, 49, 100, 125, 155, 163, 186, 206, 239, 246, 254, 265, 274-275, 278-279, 281, 289, 342, 382-383, 402, 404, 410, 421, 455, 460, 481, 488, 491, 505, 507, 511, 513, 519 Matter, 8, 11, 22, 24, 26, 31-33, 36, 44-49, 55, 57, 59-64, 74, 80, 84, 97, 100-101, 109, 111, 114, 123-124, 135, 137, 146, 148, 150-151, 155-158, 170, 172-173, 179, 181, 189, 191-194, 198-199, 202-203, 205-207, 210, 213, 217-218, 221-222, 229, 232-233, 235-236, 243-244, 246-247, 249-252, 254-256, 259-260, 263-266, 270-272, 274-275, 279-281, 283, 290-291, 297, 299, 303, 311-314, 316, 330, 334, 338-340, 342, 347-353, 355, 361-362, 367-368, 375-388, 390-408, 410-413, 415, 417-418, 420-421, 423, 429, 431, 440-441, 446, 451, 454-455, 465-466, 473-476, 480-481, 488, 491-492, 494-496, 499, 502, 504, 506-508, 510, 512-513, 518, 520-521 meditation, 2-3, 32, 46, 122, 152-153, 169, 193, 201, 206, 246, 250, 277, 286, 291, 296, 310-312, 336, 341, 369, 376-378, 381, 399, 415, 432, 455, 458-459, 467 Mencius, 428-429 meontology, 78, 112, 195, 259 Mira Bai, 21, 522 Monadologie, 287-288 monarchianism, 352 Index monism, 100, 111-112, 114, 130, 155-156, 163-164, 223, 232, 234, 242, 263-264, 272, 274-275, 277-281, 284-285, 290-291, 299, 305, 314-315, 317, 380, 434, 443, 475, 491 morality, 4, 26, 31, 39-40, 46, 66, 87, 95, 185, 196, 261, 293-295, 298, 302, 309, 337, 368-369, 373, 407-408, 416, 422, 425, 427, 435, 446, 454, 498-499 Moses de Leon, 160, 179, 393 Muhammad, 2, 21, 124-127, 159, 260, 314, 388-389, 515 Mulla Sadra al-Shirazi, 391 myth, 12, 21, 26-27, 105-106, 108-109, 123, 139, 146, 149-150, 157, 163, 171, 218-219, 229, 238, 350, 378, 406, 427, 448, 494, 507, 518 N negative theology, 78-79, 81, 92, 194, 250 Nibbana (nirvana), 74-76, 137, 152, 153, 216, 360, 361 Nicaea, Council of, 353 Nicholas of Cusa, 10, 73, 81, 115, 227, 261, 282, 306, 308, 446 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 40, 84, 87, 94, 217, 362, 368-369, 417-418, 447, 502 nihilism, 72, 75, 96, 198, 220, 269, 277, 325, 339, 364, 366, 368-369, 373, 418, 458, 473, 476, 490 Nirguna Brahman, 90, 130-132, 135, 150, 157, 248, 350, 434 Nishitani Keiji, 77 non-substance, 247, 257-258, 422 nothingness, 78, 83, 86, 92, 95, 97, 105, 127-128, 151, 164, 179, 219-220, 277, 286, 309, 333, 364, 367, 372, 393, 415, 420, 422, 441, 448, 456 Novalis, 198, 330, 446-449 Novelty, 48, 59, 99-102, 132-135, 238, 255, 298, 406, 443, 445, 452, 461, 496, 514, 516 (0) Ockham, William, 170, 212 ontology, 78, 101, 137, 195, 245, 326, 364, 390, 479-480 Origen, 352, 384, 396 Origin, 31, 33, 37-39, 43-44, 54-56, 59, 62-63, 65, 68-69, 76, 95, 97, 99-116, 118-120, 122, 124-134, 136, 138-140, 147, 150-153, 156, 161, 167-170, 187-188, 194, 197, 199, 201, 208, 220, 230, 242, 248, 257-258, 264, 273, 280, 288, 295, 309, 321, 333, 354, 372-373, 379, 392, 397-398, 405, 407-409, 414, 419, 425, 427, 432, 436, 438, 440, 448, 453, 490, 493, 496-497, 509, 521 543 Index Otherness, 14, 90, 147, 213, 234, 272, 283, 296-297, 299-300, 302-303, 306, 310, 315, 369, 373, 380, 467 P pan, 60-61, 114, 127, 158, 247, 254, 259, 266, 417, 489, 510 panentheism, 100, 198, 218, 264, 434 pantheism, 40, 82, 96, 100, 118, 125, 127, 158, 163, 198, 218, 259, 261-262, 264, 292, 308, 317, 334, 339, 423, 489, 518 Parmenides, 21, 108, 112, 191, 221-223, 226, 234, 264, 278, 280-281, 283-284, 304-306, 321, 328, 362, 371, 373, 377, 396, 514 Pascal, Blaise, 7, 313 perfection, 39, 100-101, 111-112, 124, 148, 152, 167, 190, 223, 226, 231, 262, 289, 350, 390, 406, 408, 411-412, 431, 470-472, 490, 520 perichoresis, 356 Pierce, C.S., 70, 108 phenomenalism, 46, 209, 474 phenomenology, 6, 292, 295, 362, 371 philosophia perennis, 20, 139, 216 philosophy, 4-5, 7, 12, 14, 26, 39-40, 49, 63, 77, 80-81, 83-84, 88, 95, 108-109, 115-116, 132, 138-139, 149, 173, 178, 190, 198, 204, 232, 238, 244, 262-263, 274, 280, 286-287, 289, 293, 304, 307, 310, 325, 331, 333, 336-341, 343, 352, 354-355, 361-362, 364-366, 371-372, 389-391, 393, 397, 413, 420, 428-430, 436, 446, 452-454, 460-464, 466-467, 469, 472, 488, 504, 510, 516-517, 519 Plato, 12, 21, 30, 54, 62, 71, 107-113, 115, 129, 135-137, 149, 155, 173-175, 189-195, 197, 222, 232, 236, 238, 251-254, 280-284, 286-288, 304-305, 312, 349, 368, 383-384, 396, 408-412, 447, 460, 463, 473, 488-489, 493-494, 508, 513, 522 Plotinus, 18, 21, 54, 59, 63, 82, 189, 192-195, 197, 222, 232-235, 237, 255-258, 267, 281-284, 286-287, 304-308, 323, 352, 389-390, 395, 412-413, 417, 419-421, 423, 443, 447, 463, 465, 472-473, 475, 477, 480, 489, 519 Pluralising, 55, 58, 269-270, 297, 299-300, 302-306, 308, 310, 312, 314-316, 319, 373 positivism, 26, 35, 42, 81-82, 129, 174, 195, 338, 342 Potentiality, 44, 57, 99-101, 126-129, 132, 134-135, 140, 146, 148, 159, 170, 208, 213, 226-227, 231, 242, 244, 250-251, 270, 286, 289, 309, 321, 379-380, 401, 409, 465-466, 468, 480 Principles, 41, 54, 57-59, 61-62, 67, 87, 100, 104-105, 110, 119, 140, 145-148, 150-152, 544 154, 156-158, 160-162, 164, 166-169, 172-174, 182, 185, 200, 202-203, 205, 208, 211, 217, 219, 230-232, 243, 247, 250-251, 253, 259-260, 277, 280, 283, 286, 289, 299, 303, 305-306, 309, 327, 334, 341, 347, 373, 379, 382, 399, 407, 412, 420, 430, 454, 473, 479, 508, 513 Proclus, 21, 59, 79, 115, 256, 277, 281-291, 304, 323-326, 330, 334, 341, 473, 516 Pythagoras, x, 21, 108, 110, 173-175, 180, 281, 303-304, 396, 493, 508 Q Qohelet (Ecclesiastes), 88 quantum physics, 34, 47, 118, 265-266, 277, 456 Qur’an, 89, 125-126, 159, 388, 442-443, 460 R Rabe’a a al-Adawiya, 21 reason, 6-7, 23, 35, 37-38, 46, 48, 53, 65, 67, 69, 72, 74, 84, 102, 108-109, 111, 116, 118, 146-147, 172-173, 175-176, 185, 195, 198, 212, 214-215, 217, 220, 224-225, 232, 242, 247, 253, 261, 270, 274, 279-282, 284, 288, 290-293, 295-296, 310, 313, 329-331, 338-339, 341, 347-348, 355, 359, 362, 376, 378-379, 382-383, 395-397, 400, 413, 416, 443, 445, 452, 454, 457, 459-460, 462-467, 469, 471-472, 476-478, 486, 501, 506, 509, 511-512, 516 rebirth, 17, 101, 137-139, 245, 360, 458, 493-495, 510 reincarnation, 131, 493-495 relativity theory, 180 revelation, 6, 12, 15, 37, 56, 67, 69-70, 80-81, 100, 107, 113, 122, 125, 129, 133, 136-137, 141, 148, 157, 160, 164-165, 168, 175-179, 212, 220, 276, 300, 313, 331, 339, 351-352, 369, 434, 447-448, 453-455, 460, 462-465, 467-468, 516 Rumi, Jalaluddin, 21, 127-129, 340, 441-443, 446, 522 Ruusbroec, Jan van, 357, 437 S Sabellius, 352-353 Saguna Brahman, 131-132, 135, 149, 157, 350, 434 Samkhya, 150-151, 314 Sankara, 21, 77, 132-135, 149-151, 158, 223, 250, 264, 326, 328, 402, 433-436, 443, 481, 522 Schelling, F.W.J., 80-82, 164, 198, 294, 297, 330, 334, 339, 401, 417, 473, 477, 505, 519 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 215-217, 340, 342, 417-418, 421 Schródinger, Erwin, 47 Schweitzer, Albert, 418 science, 4-7, 12-13, 15, 17, 23-32, 34, 36-38, 40-49, 54, 56-57, 59, 66-70, 72-73, 81, 83, 87, 109, 116, 118, 123-124, 135-136, 138, 140, 146, 157, 159, 162, 170, 173-176, 179-181, 184-185, 187, 189, 198, 205, 218, 222, 229, 245, 252, 262, 264-267, 288, 297, 303, 312-313, 316, 320, 324-325, 329-330, 335-336, 341-342, 351-352, 354-355, 364, 371, 377-378, 380, 382-383, 391-392, 396-400, 404-405, 407-409, 413, 417, 419-420, 425, 446, 452-454, 458-459, 461, 466, 472, 474, 477-478, 485-486, 488, 490, 504, 508-510, 513-517, 519, 521 Sefirot, 105-106, 160-161, 179, 196, 236-237, 357-358, 393-394 selfness, 269-271, 296-297, 299 sin, 37, 91, 94, 106, 114-115, 148, 199, 214, 369, 465, 499-500 Singularising, 55, 58, 269-272, 274, 276, 278, 280, 282, 284, 286, 288, 290, 292, 294, 296-298, 300, 303, 305-306, 308, 310, 314-315, 319, 373 species, 20, 36-39, 43, 48, 57, 59, 62, 66-67, 83, 97, 118, 185, 229, 243, 250, 298, 406, 417-419, 426, 428, 438, 452-453, 491, 499, 504-505, 520 speculation, 80-81, 100, 105, 119, 123, 125, 133, 136, 138, 141, 145, 162, 175, 207, 222-223, 248, 256, 273, 278, 282, 286, 313, 369, 394, 396, 423, 457, 486 Spinoza, Baruch de, 21, 33, 129, 205, 261-266, 290, 298, 315, 339, 401, 444, 474, 489, 510, 513 Spirit, 8, 19-20, 22, 28, 55, 58-60, 64, 66, 68, 79-81, 83, 92, 100, 114, 116, 121, 124-125, 131, 146, 155, 162, 166, 180, 195, 198, 218, 252, 254, 260, 279, 285, 288, 290-292, 299, 316, 331, 333, 335-343, 348-349, 351-358, 378-379, 397, 399-400, 402, 404, 406, 425-426, 429, 433, 436, 439-440, 442, 449, 473-474, 476, 480, 488, 496, 513 Sprigge, 510-513 Stoicheiosis theologike, 281-282, 285 Substantialism, 220, 250-251, 276-277, 296, 327, 410, 458, 477 Suhrawardi, Shihabuddin Yahya, 21, 367, 388-393, 397, 399, 441 T tendentionality, 17, 354 theism, 11, 28-29, 40-44, 100, 127, 158, 187, 199, 214, 258-259, 262, 301, 320, 339, 359, 395, 404, 427, 433, 435, 453, 460, 462, 489, 498, 506-508, 510, 514-517 Index theology, 6-7, 12, 14, 25, 28-29, 32, 68-70, 78-79, 81-82, 92, 116, 159, 165, 187, 194-195, 198, 204, 238-239, 250, 252, 263, 281-282, 286-287, 289, 302, 304, 307, 315, 323, 330, 338, 341-342, 349, 355-357, 359, 366, 369, 372, 375, 383-384, 386-387, 395-397, 399-400, 413, 436-437, 444, 452-454, 459-460, 462, 465, 468, 477, 497, 511, 515-517, 519 theosophy, 165, 197-198, 389-390 Thomas Aquinas (see Aquinas), 44, 444, 467 Thought, 9, 21, 26, 30, 32, 34, 36, 42, 46, 48-49, 55-60, 62, 69-72, 74, 76-78, 80-81, 86, 88, 92, 94, 97, 99, 103-104, 106-110, 113, 115, 117-118, 127, 130, 132-133, 139, 141, 146, 151, 153-155, 159, 161-164, 166-168, 173, 177-181, 184, 189, 191-192, 195-196, 198, 205-206, 208, 212, 214, 217, 220-223, 231-233, 235, 243-245, 247-248, 252, 256, 258-259, 263-265, 276, 287-289, 292, 306, 319, 323, 326, 329, 331, 333-334, 338-339, 341-344, 347-353, 359, 361-362, 364, 366-368, 370-371, 373, 375-376, 378-380, 383-384, 386, 389-391, 394, 396-397, 405-411, 413, 415, 418-419, 421, 423, 425, 427, 431, 433-435, 437, 441, 443-445, 451-458, 460, 462-464, 466-472, 474-481, 488-491, 495-500, 506, 509, 512-515, 519-521 Timaeus, 12, 107-112, 173, 191, 238, 280, 383, 408 Totalising, 55, 58, 70, 239, 269, 270, 297, 310, 314, 319, 320, 322, 329, 331, 343, 373, 508, 509 totalism, 29, 30, 247, 301, 337, 341, 342, 344 totalitarianism, 302, 337, 341-342, 364, 503-504 tragedy, 86-88, 95, 107, 164, 204, 343, 492, 499-501 transcendence, 4, 11, 25, 56, 72, 75, 81, 94-95, 105, 107, 113, 122, 126, 129, 164, 179, 192, 194, 216, 218, 232-233, 255, 259, 284-286, 308, 320-321, 326, 329, 331, 365, 387, 394, 401, 409, 411-412, 420, 436, 442, 444, 447-448, 464-465, 467, 520 Trinity, 41, 53, 64, 79, 81, 114-115, 338-339, 351-358, 360-361, 388, 438, 511, 515 U unio mystica, 194, 274 Unmoved Mover, 194, 252-253, 255-256, 283, 285, 296, 411 Upanishads, 130, 157, 215, 223, 235, 264, 273-275, 278, 280, 321, 350, 359, 410, 414, 434, 443, 458, 478-479 Utopia, 12, 89, 101, 342, 494, 496 545 Index V Vasubandhu, 21, 77, 207, 247-249, 370, 458 Visistadvaita, 151, 434 Vivekananda, 21, 151, 402-404 Ww Wanting, 6, 55, 58, 135, 169-170, 183-196, 198, 200, 202-203, 207, 211-212, 217, 223, 242, 250, 252, 296, 350, 373, 499, 509 Watson, Sean, 513 Whitehead, Alfred North, 2, 34, 100, 237-239, 252, 473, 513-514 546 Willing, 20, 55, 58, 66, 74, 77, 79, 147, 169, 185, 187, 201-214, 216-218, 242, 252, 334, 509 Witting, 55, 58, 169-180, 182, 185, 187, 190, 195, 202-203, 207, 212, 217, 235, 242-243, 252, 296, 373, 471-472, 509 women, 2, 21-22, 28, 122, 126, 216-217, 522 Y yin-yang, 309 Yogacara, 21 Z Zohar, 105, 160, 393-394 Signposts to Silence provides a theoretical map of what it terms ‘metaphysical mysticism’: the search for the furthest, most inclusive horizon, the domain of silence that underlies the religious and metaphysical urge of humankind in its finest forms. Tracing the footsteps of pioneers of this exploration, the investigation also documents a number of historical pilgrimages from a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds. Such mountaineers of the spirit created paths trodden by groups of followers over centuries and in some cases millennia. This is a remarkable and significant book. It is simply written masterfully, covering an astounding transdisciplinary range. The profound meditative and mystical voyage that fundamentally forms the core of the book is highly appealing. Specifically gratifying is the manner in which the author succeeds to substantiate his view of the many-faceted discourses in the fields of philosophy and religious studies. The book is tied to known philosophical and theological premises. Yet, this is done in such a way that these foundational ideas are perused with genuine personalised authenticity. The effect is that the ‘renovated’ footing here becomes a paradigm in terms of which both cknowledged and reconstructed premises constitute a network for, and introduces ‘renewed’ discourse relevant to present-day science of religion. The construction of the author's reflexions, unpacked by concepts such as ‘Witting’, ‘Wanting, ‘Willing’, ‘Becoming’, 'Can-ing', ‘Conditioning’, ‘Singularising’, ‘Pluralising’ and ‘Totalising’ is really astonishingly creative and engaging. feb) Danie Goosen, Professor, Department of Religious Studies and Arabic, University of South Africa, South Africa This book is a major contribution to the field of mysticism, one to which scholars in this field will constantly refer. It contributes impressively to a ‘universal intelligentia spiritualis. The author transports the reader on a most remarkable journey exploring the ‘winding paths of an ancient labyrinth’ while discovering humanity's quest to find meaning and clarity within a ‘homoversal community and transcending the various epochs of human history. The peregrinations in the book take us into super-abundance, a wealth, a kaleidoscope, of deep enquiry and vast knowledge. Scholars in the field of science of religion are introduced to several leading figures within the sphere of metaphysical mysticism, who articulate the theoretical issues that are raised in the book. The different perspectives reflected upon and the extended conversations engaged in, witness to a plethora of information and in-depth scholarship and insight second to none. Celia Kourie, Professor Emerita, Christian Spirituality, University of South Africa, South Africa ao OLO 4 AOSIS I JUIN ELM WWVW.aosis.co.za Open access at ISBN: 978-1-928396-45-1 https://doi.org/10.4102/ aosis.2018.BK52
World philosophy : a text with readings
null
1995-01-01T00:00:00Z
{u'1': u'Philosophy', u'0': u'Philosophy -- Introductions', u'3': u'Philosophie'},Philosophy -- Introductions,Philosophy,Philosophie
xlix, 350 pages : 21 cm,This brief and inexpensive paperback provides an introduction to some of the world's great philosophical traditions through original sources. It can be used as a supplement to a traditional western-oriented textbook, or it can stand-alone. Organized by culture (Africa, China, Japan, Native American, Latin America, Arabia, Persia, India, the West), each self-contained chapter is edited by an expert in the area. The editors' extensive introductions to the selections are designed for readers with no previous study of philosophy. Each chapter also contains a pronunciation key, glossary, area map, and suggestions for further readings. An alternate table of contents is provided for world civilization courses,Includes bibliographical references and index,Introduction: What is philosophy?; Philosophy, science, myth, and religion; "Western" and "Non-Western" philosophy; Questions in and of world philosophy; The readings -- 1. Japanese philosophy / Graham Parkes -- A life of aesthetic refinement: Sei Sh⁻onagon From The Pillow Book of Sei Sh⁻onagon -- Impermanence as Buddho-Nature: D⁻ogen Kigen From Sh⁻ob⁻ogenz⁻o-Zuimonki -- The ubiquitously mobile mind: Takuan S⁻oh⁻o From The Unfettered Mind -- Seeing into One's true nature: Hakuin Ekaku From The Zen Master Hakuin -- Cut flowers suspended in emptiness: Nishitani Keiji From "The Japanese art of arranged flowers" -- 2. Chinese philosophy / David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames -- An ambiguity of order: China and the West -- Classical Confucianism -- The analects of Confucius From The Analects -- The Mencius From The Book of Mencius -- The Hsün Tzu From The Hsün Tzu -- Classical Taoism From the Lao-tzu, From the Chuang-tsu, From the Huai-nan Tzu -- Book of Changes (I Ching) From the I Ching, From "Commentary on the Book of Changes," Wang Pi -- Chinese Marxism From On Contradiction, Mao Tse-tung -- 3. South Asian philosophy / Stephen H. Phillips -- The Vedas From the Rg Veda -- The Upanishads From the Upanishads -- The Gita From the Bhagavad G⁻it⁻i -- The Yoga-sutra From the Yoga-s⁻utra -- N⁻ag⁻arjuna's "Averting the arguments" From Averting the arguments -- M⁻adhava's philosophic compendium: C⁻arv⁻aka From The Charvaka system -- The Ny⁻aya-s⁻utra -- The works of Sri Aurobindo From The Human Aspiration -- 4. Arabic philosophy / Eric L. Ormsby -- Ab⁻u Y⁻usuf Ya-q⁻ub ibn Ish⁻aq al-Kind⁻i From "On God" -- Ab⁻u Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakar⁻iy⁻a al-R⁻az⁻i From "On reason" -- Ab⁻u Nasr al-F⁻ar⁻ab⁻i From "On hierarchies of existence", From "On Aristotle's De Interpretatione" -- Yahy⁻a ibn ʻAd⁻i From "On cultivation of character" -- Ab⁻u ʻAl⁻i Ibn S⁻in⁻a From Augobiography, From "The soul does not die with the death of the body: it is incorruptible" -- Maimonides From The guide of the perplexed -- Ab⁻u al-Wal⁻id Ibn Rushd From "On creation.",5. Persian philosophy / Janet McCracken and Homayoon Sepasi-Tehrani -- Pre-Islamic Persian thought -- Zoroastrianism From Zoroastrians, Mary Boyce -- The Gathas From the Gathas -- The Zoroastrian Pantheon From the Avesta: "The cow's lament" and "The two spirits" -- Manichaeism From Fihrist of al-Nadim -- Mazdakism -- Post-Islamic Persian thought -- Early Islam -- The Shi'ites From "Speech," Nasir-i Khusraw, From "Free will and determination," Nasir-i Khusraw -- Sufism From Discourses, Jalaluddin Rumi -- Suhrawardi and illuminationism From "The sound of Gabriel's wing," Yahya Suhrawardi, From "A tale of Occidental exile," Yahya Suhrawardi -- Sufi poetry From Divan a Shamsi-tabriz, Jalaluddin Rumi, From "The dullard sage," 'Attar, From "Lover's craft," Forughi, From "The drunken universe," Savaji, From "The tale of the uniquely beautiful mirror maker," Hashemi, From "The Mathnawi," Jalaluddin Rumi -- The school of Esphahan and Mulla Sadra From The wisdom of the throne, Mulla Sadra -- Rhazes' platonism From "On the philosophic life," Rhazes -- 6. American Indian philosophy / J. Baird Callicott and Thomas W. Overholt -- The Ojibwa biotic community -- "The woman who married a beaver" (Traditional Ojibwa tale) -- "The moose and his offspring" (Traditional Ojibwa tale) -- The Lakota's relatives From Black Elk speaks, John G. Neihardt, From Lame Deer: Seeker of visions, John (Fire) Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes -- From an Indian land aesthetic to a land ethic From "A frist American views his land," N. Scott Momaday -- 7. Latin American philosophy / Jorge Valadez -- Integrating life and death From The Labyrinth of solitude, Octavio Paz -- An artistic vision of metaphysical truth From Aztec thought and culture, Miguel León-Portilla -- Latin American philosophical identity From The meaning and problem of Hispanic American thought, Augusto Salazar Bondy -- Through the eyes of the oppressed From The power of the poor in history, Gustavo Gutierrez -- 8. African philosophy / Jacqueline Trimier -- Ethnophilosophy From Banto philosophy, Placide Tempels, From "On negrohood," Léopold Sédar Senghor -- Professional philosophy From African philosophy: myth and reality, Paulin J. Hountondji, From "The role of prejudice and the hermeneutical circle," Theophilus Okere -- Philosophic sagacity From "Sagacity in African philosophy," Henry Odera Oruka, From Knowledge, belief, and witchcraft, Barry Hallen and J.O. Sopido -- National-ideological philosophy From Concerning violence, Frantz Fanon, From Consciencism, Kwame Nkrumah,9. "Western" philosophy / Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins -- Ancient ("Pagan") philosophy -- The Pre-Socratics -- Socrates From Crito, Plato -- Plato From Republic -- Aristotle From Metaphysics, From Nicomachean ethics -- Medieval (Christian) philosophy -- St. Augustine From Confessions -- The Great Schism -- Scholasticism From Proslogion, St. Anslem -- St. Thomas Aquinas From Summa Theologica -- Jewish philosophy -- The Reformation -- Modern philosophy -- Descartes From Meditations on first philosophy, From Discourse on method -- Empiricism From Treatise of human nature, David Hume -- Rationalism From Prolegomena to any future metaphysics that will be able to come forward as science, Immanuel Kant, From Grounding for the metaphysics of morals, Immanuel Kant -- Social philosophy, Hobbes, and Rousseau From Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes, From On the social contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau -- The Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries From The phenomenology fo spirit, G.W.F. Hegel, From Thus spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche,Introduction: What is philosophy?; Philosophy, science, myth, and religion; "Western" and "Non-Western" philosophy; Questions in and of world philosophy; The readings -- 1. Japanese philosophy / Graham Parkes -- A life of aesthetic refinement: Sei Sh́onagon From The Pillow Book of Sei Sh́onagon -- Impermanence as Buddho-Nature: D́ogen Kigen From Sh́ob́ogenźo-Zuimonki -- The ubiquitously mobile mind: Takuan Śoh́o From The Unfettered Mind -- Seeing into One's true nature: Hakuin Ekaku From The Zen Master Hakuin -- Cut flowers suspended in emptiness: Nishitani Keiji From "The Japanese art of arranged flowers" -- 2. Chinese philosophy / David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames -- An ambiguity of order: China and the West -- Classical Confucianism -- The analects of Confucius From The Analects -- The Mencius From The Book of Mencius -- The Hsun Tzu From The Hsun Tzu -- Classical Taoism From the Lao-tzu, From the Chuang-tsu, From the Huai-nan Tzu -- Book of Changes (I Ching) From the I Ching, From "Commentary on the Book of Changes," Wang Pi -- Chinese Marxism From On Contradiction, Mao Tse-tung -- 3. South Asian philosophy / Stephen H. Phillips -- The Vedas From the Rg Veda -- The Upanishads From the Upanishads -- The Gita From the Bhagavad Ǵit́i -- The Yoga-sutra From the Yoga-śutra -- Ńaǵarjuna's "Averting the arguments" From Averting the arguments -- Ḿadhava's philosophic compendium: Ćarv́aka From The Charvaka system -- The Nýaya-śutra -- The works of Sri Aurobindo From The Human Aspiration -- 4. Arabic philosophy / Eric L. Ormsby -- Ab́u Ýusuf Ya-q́ub ibn Ish́aq al-Kind́i From "On God" -- Ab́u Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakaŕiýa al-Ŕaźi From "On reason" -- Ab́u Nasr al-F́aŕab́i From "On hierarchies of existence", From "On Aristotle's De Interpretatione" -- Yahýa ibn Ad́i From "On cultivation of character" -- Ab́u Aĺi Ibn Śińa From Augobiography, From "The soul does not die with the death of the body: it is incorruptible" -- Maimonides From The guide of the perplexed -- Ab́u al-Waĺid Ibn Rushd From "On creation.",5. Persian philosophy / Janet McCracken and Homayoon Sepasi-Tehrani -- Pre-Islamic Persian thought -- Zoroastrianism From Zoroastrians, Mary Boyce -- The Gathas From the Gathas -- The Zoroastrian Pantheon From the Avesta: "The cow's lament" and "The two spirits" -- Manichaeism From Fihrist of al-Nadim -- Mazdakism -- Post-Islamic Persian thought -- Early Islam -- The Shi'ites From "Speech," Nasir-i Khusraw, From "Free will and determination," Nasir-i Khusraw -- Sufism From Discourses, Jalaluddin Rumi -- Suhrawardi and illuminationism From "The sound of Gabriel's wing," Yahya Suhrawardi, From "A tale of Occidental exile," Yahya Suhrawardi -- Sufi poetry From Divan a Shamsi-tabriz, Jalaluddin Rumi, From "The dullard sage," 'Attar, From "Lover's craft," Forughi, From "The drunken universe," Savaji, From "The tale of the uniquely beautiful mirror maker," Hashemi, From "The Mathnawi," Jalaluddin Rumi -- The school of Esphahan and Mulla Sadra From The wisdom of the throne, Mulla Sadra -- Rhazes' platonism From "On the philosophic life," Rhazes -- 6. American Indian philosophy / J. Baird Callicott and Thomas W. Overholt -- The Ojibwa biotic community -- "The woman who married a beaver" (Traditional Ojibwa tale) -- "The moose and his offspring" (Traditional Ojibwa tale) -- The Lakota's relatives From Black Elk speaks, John G. Neihardt, From Lame Deer: Seeker of visions, John (Fire) Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes -- From an Indian land aesthetic to a land ethic From "A frist American views his land," N. Scott Momaday -- 7. Latin American philosophy / Jorge Valadez -- Integrating life and death From The Labyrinth of solitude, Octavio Paz -- An artistic vision of metaphysical truth From Aztec thought and culture, Miguel Leon-Portilla -- Latin American philosophical identity From The meaning and problem of Hispanic American thought, Augusto Salazar Bondy -- Through the eyes of the oppressed From The power of the poor in history, Gustavo Gutierrez -- 8. African philosophy / Jacqueline Trimier -- Ethnophilosophy From Banto philosophy, Placide Tempels, From "On negrohood," Leopold Sedar Senghor -- Professional philosophy From African philosophy: myth and reality, Paulin J. Hountondji, From "The role of prejudice and the hermeneutical circle," Theophilus Okere -- Philosophic sagacity From "Sagacity in African philosophy," Henry Odera Oruka, From Knowledge, belief, and witchcraft, Barry Hallen and J.O. Sopido -- National-ideological philosophy From Concerning violence, Frantz Fanon, From Consciencism, Kwame Nkrumah
The Norton anthology of world literature
null
2001-01-01T00:00:00Z
Literature -- Collections,Anthologies,anthologies,Literature
7 volumes : 24 cm,A collection of world literature spanning from the epic of Gilgamesh to the twentieth century,Revised edition of: The Norton anthology of world masterpieces, expanded edition,Includes bibliographical references and indexes,v. A. Beginnings to A.D. 100 -- v. B. 100-1500 -- v. C. 1500-1650 -- v. D. 1650-1800 -- v. E. 1800-1900 -- v. F. The twentieth century,v. A. The invention of writing and the earliest literatures -- Gilgamesh -- Ancient Egyptian poetry -- The Bible: the Old Testament -- Genesis [selections] -- From Job -- Psalms [selections] -- The Song of Songs -- Jonah -- Ancient Greece and the formation of the Western mind -- The Iliad [selections] ; The Odyssey / Homer -- Sappho of Lesbos -- The Orestia [selections] / Aeschylus -- Oedipus the King ; Antigone / Sophocles -- Medea / Euripides -- Lysistrata / Aristophanes -- The apology of Socrates / Plato -- From Poetics / Aristotle -- Poetry and thought in early China -- Classic of poetry -- From Analects / Confucius -- Chuang Tzu [selections] / Chuang Chou -- Ssu-Ma Chien -- India's heroic age -- The Ramayana of Valmiki [selections] -- The Mahabharata [selections] -- The Jataka [selections] -- The Bhagavad-Gita [selections] -- The Tamil anthologies -- The Roman empire -- Catullus -- The Aeneid [selections] / Virgil -- Metamorphoses [selections] / Ovid -- The Satyricon / Petronius -- v. B. From Roman empire to Christian Europe -- The Bible: The New Testament -- Luke [selections] - Matthew [selections] --From confessions / Augustine -- India's classical age -- From Pancatantra / Visnusarman -- Sakuntala and the ring of recollection / Kalidasa -- From Satakatrayam / Bhartrhari -- From Amarusataka / Amaru -- From Kathasaritsagara / Somadeva -- China's "Middle period" -- [Selected prose and poetry] / Tao Ch'ien -- Wang Wei -- Han-Shan -- Li Po -- Tu Fu -- Li Ho -- Po Chu -- The story of Ying-ying / Yuan Chen -- Li Ch'ing-Chao -- The rise of Islamd and Islamic literature -- The Koran [selections] -- Ibn Ishaq -- Shahname [selections] / Abolqasem Ferdowsi -- From The conference of the birds / Faridoddin Attar -- Jalaloddin Rumi -- Golestan [selections] / Sa'di -- The thousand and one nights [selections] -- The formation of a Western literature -- Beowulf -- From The song of Roland -- Lanval ; Laustic / Marie de France -- From Thorstein the Staff-Struck -- Medieval lyrics: a selection -- The divine comedy [selections] / Dante Alighieri -- The decameron [selections] / Giovanni Boccaccio -- Sir Gawain and the green knight -- The Canterbury tales [selections] / Geoffrey Chaucer -- Everyman -- The golden age of Japanese culture -- The Man'yoshu [selections] -- The Kokinshu [selections] -- The tale of Genji [selections] / Murasaki Shikibu -- The pillow book / Sei Shonagon -- The tale of the Heike [selections] -- From Essays of idleness / Yoshida Kenko -- Atsumori ; Haku Rakuten / Zeami Motokiyo -- Dojoji / Kanze Kojiro Nobumitsu -- Mystical poetry of India -- 18 / Campantar -- Appar -- Cuntarar -- Basavanna -- Mahadeviyakka -- Vidyapati -- Govindadasa -- Chandidasa -- Kabir -- Mirabai -- v. C. Africa; The Mali epic of Son-Jara -- The epic of Son-Jara [selections] -- The renaissance in Europe -- Francis Petrarch -- The praise of folly / Desiderius Erasmus -- Niccolo Machiavelli -- Orlando Furioso [selections] / Ludovico Ariosto -- The book of the courtier [selections] / Baldesar Castiglione -- The Heptameron [selections] / Marguerite de Navarre -- Gargantua and Pantagruel [selections] / Francois Rabelais -- Essays / Michel de Montaigne -- Don Quixote [selections] / Miguel de Cervantes -- Fuente ovejuna / Lope de Vega -- Hamlet, Price of Denmark ; The tragedy of Othello the Moor of Venice / William Shakespeare -- Paradise lost [selections] / John Milton -- Native America and the Europe in the New World -- Florentine Codex -- Cantares Mexicanos -- Popol Vuh
Trends in supply chain design and management : technologies and methodologies
Hosang Jung, F. Frank Chen and Bongju Jeong
2007-01-01T00:00:00Z
Business logistics
xiii, 451 p. : 24 cm,Includes bibliographical references and index,1. A systems approach to viable RFID implementation in the supply chain / Can Saygin, Jagannathan Sarangapani and Scott E. Grasman -- 2. Applications of RFID in supply chains / Gary M. Gaukler and Ralf W. Seifert -- 3. A tool set for exploring the value of RFID in a supply chain / Ying Tat Leung, Feng Cheng, Young M. Lee and James J. Hennessy -- 4. The effect of RFID on inventory management and control / Uttarayan Bagchi, Alfred L. Guiffrida, Liam O'Neill, Amy Z. Zeng and Jack C. Hayya -- 5. Mobile supply chain event management using auto-ID and sensor technologies - a simulation approach / Frank Teuteberg and Ingmar Ickerott -- 6. Impact of information technology on supply chain management / Enver Yucesan -- 7. An agent-based approach to enhance supply chain agility in a heterogeneous environment / Chan-Che Huang, Tzu-Liang (Bill) Tseng, Hong-Fu Chuang and Yu-NengFan -- 8. Design of reverse logistics networks for multiproducts, multistates, and multiprocessing alternatives / Marc Chouinard, Sophie D'Amours and Daoud Ait-Kadi -- 9. Transforming the government value chain : emerging business models and enabling technologies / Nikolaos A. Panayiotou, Stavros T. Ponis and Sotiris P. Gayialis -- 10. Beyond partnerships : the power of lean supply chains / Leonardo Rivera, Hung-da Wan, F. Frank Chen and Woo Min Lee -- 11. Diverse production and distribution models in supply chains : a semiconductor industry case / Young Hoon Lee and Kyung Hwan Kang -- 12. Decentralized supply chain planning for two classified supply chains / Hosang Jung and F. Frank Chen -- 13. Multiagent system approach for dynamic lot-sizing in supply chains / Seokcheon Lee and Soundar Kumara -- 14. Integrating transport into supply chains : vendor managed inventory (VMI) / Andrew Potter, Denis R. Towill and Stephen M. Disney -- 15. Supply uncertainty and diversification : a review / M. Mahdi Tajbakhsh, Saeed Zolfaghari and Chi-Guhn Lee -- 16. Quantitative robustness index design for supply chain networks / Ming Dong and F. Frank Chen -- 17. Impact of reducing uncertainty in european supply chains / Paul Childerhouse and Denis R. Towill -- 18. Analyzing the effectiveness of the availability management process / Young M. Lee